#this is way more material on A Complete Unknown than I ever expected to post

[wellntruly]

knighthooded replied to your post

your rec and this poster are so charming I might have to go see it after all!!

As one parasocial critic friend said, I have no dog in this fight: I like the Bob Dylan song in this movie and maybe 2-5 more, and that's what I got for ya vis-à-vis Dylan investment. But I like when things are interesting, and as another parasocial critic friend said, Dylan is nearly the antagonist of his own biopic in this, and that is interesting! As she also said, correctly, the version that goes full Miloš Forman's Amadeus OWNS BONES, and this is not that, but that frisson there between Bob and everyone else definitely makes the proceedings more engaging than they could be otherwise. It is also I believe a big part of what makes it so funny.

Is A Complete Unknown "accurate"? Who knows, not me. Does it include multiple moments of women or Pete Seeger watching awestruck and/or annoyed as Dylan noodles out one of his songs? Oh you bet. Did the two and a quarter hours fly by? Honestly yeah.

And I think the main thing I missed mentioning in my initial Letterboxd review, is that there really is a mysteriously compelling quality to the musical performances in this. There is something going on with the way James Mangold shot them, maybe that everyone sung live? Something in the editing? Not sure. But it's nice.

The other thing I missed is just how much Now, Voyager is in this.

[fortheturnstiles]

hi kiki <3 of all my mutuals I think your opinion on a complete unknown is the one I care most about…so 🎤….?

OKAY here goes . [also thank you this ask made me smile.. you wanna hear from little ol me ? :o) hehe]

the gist is i didn't like it but i didn't really expect to like it very much so i don't really feel let down by it necessarily. I'm already really picky when it comes to biopics and i only tend to like the stuff that's either really outrageous (i.e. Ken Russell's Lizstomania, All that Jazz if that counts) or formally unconventional (i.e. I'm Not There) and the rest of the stuff that gets churned out of the major hollywood studios is a complete turn-off for me. I watched Walk the Line for the first time a few weeks ago because i thought hey why not see where this guy is coming from. and maybe being a fan of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story prior to ever seeing Walk the Line ruined it from me but it was maybe the corniest movie ever made, or at least could possibly make about johnny cash. which theoretically should be difficult. but not for mr james mangold. Beyond the general cheesiness of the whole thing i was left wanting a lot more about how Johnny Cash fit into a larger musical scene / moment that he was apart of and the history of country music coming out of nashville in tandem with rock n roll which was just not what that movie was going for at all unfortunately.

NOTE: SOME VAGUE SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AHEAD IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING. medium length ramble incoming. if you want to read some slightly more concise thoughts from me on the movie here is the review i posted on letterboxd

All this is to say is i was going in with EXTREMELY LOW expectations. Other than I thought the performances would probably be really solid and they indeed were!!! Timmy was great i think he did an incredible job and his physicality and all of his mannerisms were very evocative and embodied as Bob. His voice was also pretty good and i like how his speaking voice became more unintelligible as the movie went on that made me smile. his mannerisms also changed and shifted as time went on throughout the movie which was a good choice imo since he starts out so young and malleable and then gets more jaded and hardened as becoming Famous often does to a guy. The musical performances were also better than I expected them to be but I have mixed feelings about them still.. i don't like that they chop a lot of the verses out of the songs to make them shorter. Within the movie itself the beats for a lot of the song sequences feel exactly the same and it got old very quickly, aside from the song to woody + hard rain's a-gonna fall + i'll keep it with mine scenes which i wholeheartedly enjoyed.

my main issue is i just think it makes absolutely zero sense to make such a bland and artistically unadventurous biopic about BOB FUCKING DYLAN. And i know that the timeline it takes place over is based on the book that was used as the source material but i think it ends right before stuff actually got interesting for him in terms of his turn away from acoustic folk music. and all that stuff is documented in Dont Look Back + No Direction Home so what reason do i have to watch this new movie then? i guess to see timmybob flirt with and kiss and proceed to fumble beautiful women ... most of the Strong negative feelings i have about this movie are due to the extremely flat characterizations of both sylvie(suze) and joan. I think both of their roles as creative and political/philosophical influences on Bob are minimized to the point of nearly nothingness. Sylvie does a bit of whipping bobby into shape and encouraging him to release an album of his original music but her political influence on him and his songwriting is understated or mostly to completely omitted. which bums me out. Bob and Joan's relationship is dramatized in a very strange way with them making it seem like they would have these Moments of Passion and randomly on and off just hooked up with each other and were also in the scene performing around and with each other etc but like. omits anything about bob and the baez family knowing each other . which maybe is a purposeful choice i guess maybe they didn't want to be involved but idk the whole thing makes the bob/joan relationship strung very thin and not very Involved when they certainly were Involved. to a degree. whatever i guess i dunno i think there is maybe an interesting movie that could be in there but wowwww was it just such a beat-for-beat rehash of Walk the line and all subsequent musician's-rise-to-fame biopics. and surprisingly very safe and not artistically or intellectually challenging piece of work for a man who was so famously strange and controversial and difficult to figure out that they make the climax of the movie about it. and it just goes by like a cloud of smoke . perhaps i have too much bias for the work of Todd Haynes but I truly just think I'm Not There is such a great movie about Bob Dylan the artist and the symbol/icon that there doesn't need to be anything else. and the documentary filmmaking about Bob Dylan the artist/symbol/icon as well as the Man (as much as he allowed it to be) that already exists is great. i feel so Old Man Yells at Cloud over how useless this movie is for me. I do hope that it works for some people, especially people who are new to Bob. If this can be a gateway to dylan for them that's beautiful and I am happy. but it didn't work for me

[jerzwriter]

Sunday Six Sneak Peek

Hey all, this is a sneak peek at the Tobias/Casey polyamory AU I'm working on. I expect to have the first part up very soon!

Background: I initially planned on making this a series with a distinct beginning, middle, and end to wrap up in about six chapters. But, the more I developed it, the more I realized there was enough material to make this an ongoing alternate universe that I'm really excited to share with you. It's completely separate from my Tobias/Casey or Ethan/Kaycee headcanons, and I hope you'll enjoy it!

Premise: What happens when something that was supposed to be just for fun turns into the real thing? When love enters the equation between two people who view the concept in completely different ways, can it work? In this universe, we'll follow Casey and Tobias (and some others along the way) on their journey, where a happy ending is what both desire, but nothing is guaranteed.

The series will include characters from canon, as well as original characters. I'll provide more background when the first chapter is posted.

Chapter 1

The cantankerous doctor approached the nurses' station, intent on disregarding the animated conversation he heard from clear down the hall. Completing his chart, placing it in the folder, and finding refuge in his office was all Ethan hoped to do. But, as was often the case when Dr. MacTavish was involved, his best-laid plans unraveled seamlessly, and he found himself helpless to regain control. I know I'll regret this, he muttered to himself just before he threw his hat into the ring.

“Who is getting engaged?”

All eyes turned to him, but Jackie was first to respond. With arms crossed and a shit-eating grin on her lips, she replied. “Casey... and Carrick. You mean you haven't heard?"

She might have caught the gobsmacked look on Ethan's face if not for Casey punching her shoulder in a not-so-friendly way. But one thing was sure, if Ethan had been ambivalent before, they had his full attention now.

“I’m sorry, what?” he gasped.

“I’m not getting engaged!” Casey shot-back. “Jackie’s just being an ass.”

She hoped her answer would assuage her one-time boss and former lover, but she knew the man she now considered a dear friend too well. One of the most astute diagnosticians of his generation, there was no way he would let this go. As his mentee, Casey was pretty good at picking up on cues herself, and it only took a glance in his direction for her to know her inquisition was only beginning.  

~~~~~~

He plastered her with tender kisses as she nestled into place in his arms. It wasn't the first time she had marveled over how perfectly their bodies melded together, but the feeling had never been this strong. They were two mismatched puzzle pieces discarded from their original sets that somehow fused together perfectly, resulting in an image more beautiful than their creators could have ever dared to dream.

He was no less overwhelmed. Coming down from the peak of unbridled ecstasy, a passion previously unknown, the realization was blinding. That was all he had ever desired; primal gratification had always nurtured him to his core. But now, as she lay in his arms, basking in the afterglow as her ragged breathing returned to its normal state, he found the answer to a question he never posed.

Casey wrapped her curvaceous leg around him as she reached up to place a single kiss on his chin. His answer was there. True ecstasy hadn't ended moments before; this was where it happened, right here, right now. It was found in the perfect world they created each time they came together - it was divine, it was theirs, and he never desired anything more.

Casey's eyes fluttered as she began to drift off to sleep. Smiling, she imagined the next sound she'd hear would be his graveled voice saying Good Morning, waking her like he had many times before. But sleep was not yet to be had, and she couldn't have been more unprepared for what happened next.

@choicesficwriterscreations

Tagging others separately.

[whumpster-fire]

His Dark Materials Thoughts: Daemons and Disability / Neurodivergence

More stupid His Dark Materials thoughts and headcanons because I still can’t get over this series.

I’m really curious how various disabilities would interact with having a daemon. I’d guess that for a lot of conditions the daemon could basically fill the role of a service animal, especially if the person had the condition from childhood so they could settle in a form that was capable of helping - e.g. daemons assuming forms with strong senses of smell to check for allergens. And this would probably be true for some neurological conditions where there’s something physically messed up in your brain.

However, I think for neurodivergency, it’s different: if the human is neurodivergent their daemon is neurodivergent as well. And while a human and daemon are “one being,” daemons still have their own personalities and emotional needs.

Using autism as an example because I’m autistic and can speculate based on my own experiences:

Autistic people are usually very close to their daemons, even by the standards of the setting, because while anyone’s daemon inherently understands them better than other people do, the gap is much, much wider for ND people. Real talk, I think I was drawn to this series and the concept of daemons so strongly because the idea of a companion I could fully trust and interact with without the constant fear of breaking some unknown and unspoken rule and who fully empathized with me was something I wanted soooo badly.

A lot more sensory information is “transmitted” between human and daemon than most people notice because the brain tends to filter it out. Autistic people’s brains aren’t as good at filtering out “junk” sensory info though, and this includes what comes through over the bond between them. You can’t actually see through your daemon’s eyes but autistic people tend to feel shared sensations more intensely and pick up on things like smells and textures that a neurotypical brain would tune out (and this works in both directions). This makes autistic people more vulnerable to sensory overload than in our world.

Sometimes only one of the pair is verbal, or at least verbal with others / much more comfortable talking to others. If it’s the human, people tend to not notice because “daemons should be seen and not heard” is kind of the norm in the setting but if the daemon is speaking for the pair most of the time it’s seen as weird. Some autistic people may also be more comfortable talking to other people’s daemons than to the humans, which isn’t technically part of the taboo but it’s pretty frowned upon.

For both tactile-seeking and tactile-defensive people, the daemon’s settled form is often determined by the need for physical affection - either because as they grow into teenagers it becomes less socially acceptable to touch other people as much as they need to, or because the only touch that feels safe for the pair is with each other. A settled form doesn’t always follow the human’s preference, but is always a form the daemon is comfortable with and likes. Daemons settling in forms their human actively hates is rare, and usually means there was already serious conflict between them with the human refusing to accept their nature - i.e. sailors’ daemons usually take seabird forms or mammals like otters or minks that can stray away from the water, settling in a dolphin form was noteworthy for a reason because it’s such a drastic act, and IMO that was probably caused by the human trying to abandon the sea entirely and fighting with his own daemon about it until she was like “Let’s see you take us away from the sea now!”

But anyway: daemons don’t just settle in forms based on symbolism or social convention if it’s going to make both them and their humans miserable and/or mess up their relationship IMO, and usually they show a preference for forms similar to their settled one in the years leading up to settling (e.g. Pantalaimon clearly liked his stoat/ferret and wildcat forms and mostly took other ones for reasons of practicality and convenience, and I said this in another post but I think he became a pine marten because it was the closest he could get to combining the two). If a pre-adolescent human and daemon are super cuddly with each other and that touch is really important to them, the daemon will probably settle in a form that’s compatible with that. It’s rare for autistic daemons to settle as something as small as a mouse where they could only be carefully pet with one or two fingers, for example, and they usually take mammalian or sometimes avian forms.

Brushing a daemon’s fur, and other techniques such as joint compression that are hard for a person to perform on their own body, can help both of the pair calm down and cope with sensory issues.

Unfortunately, given how fucked up the culture in Lyra’s world is, I shudder to imagine how they treat neurodivergent people. I can totally imagine people treating this closeness as the cause of autism and not a symptom, and treating it as a child “being socially impaired because they only interact with their daemon / let their daemon do too much for them and never learn to socialize with other people.” Aside from attempting to cure autism with Intercision, there are probably a bunch of horrible, abusive treatments passed off as “therapy,” like forcing children to do therapy sessions with their daemon trapped on the other side of an opaque, soundproof wall (doesn’t interfere with their bond if it’s within the separation limit, but keeps them from seeing / hearing / touching each other), caging the daemon, muzzling them to keep them from speaking for their human, or even not letting them sleep in the same room.

Another common problem is parents / educators treating an autistic person’s daemon like a service animal and offloading their responsibilities on them. Just expecting them to handle something like a meltdown or panic attack by themselves because “You’re part of them, you understand them!” and ignoring that the daemon also has fears and anxieties and sensory issues.

Expectation: Your autistic child’s daemon understands them better than you ever could and will be able to quickly and discretely calm them down from a meltdown / sensory overload without you needing to get involved and actually do your job as a parent.

Reality: You have two autistic children who share a soul and feel each other’s emotions and pain, and one of them likely has at least one sense that’s way more sensitive than a human’s. They can certainly be a source of comfort and support to each other, and can pick up on each other’s warning signs and remind each other to use coping strategies / get out of stressful situations and not try to “push through,” but this is a skill that takes time and maturity to learn, and it only works before the pair are completely overwhelmed. As stated above autistic people feel sensations and emotions from their daemon extra-intensely, and vice versa. A full-on meltdown or panic attack is such an overpowering flood of negative emotions that, combined with the stress of whatever caused the meltdown in the first place, usually just overwhelms both partners, especially in children. The best you can hope for is whichever one holds it together a bit longer is able to help their partner into a safe place and ask someone for help. Even if the daemon (or human) doesn’t have a meltdown their emotional battery will still be absolutely drained for probably the rest of the day.

[bondsmagii]

I picked up a copy (2nd edition with color and all) of House of Leaves at work today, and I just started reading it! Ngl, I did flip ahead and saw the formatting of some pages, which is what really sold it to me, in addition to your posts, being egged on by my coworker and boss when I asked if we had it in stock, and finding out that a recent grad at my uni did their thesis on this book. I plan to read this regardless, but I'm also realizing that this may end up being super close to my/my families experiences growing up, and I was curious if I could get a heads up?

I am still terrified of the dark, and have never slept in a pitch dark room in my 20 years of life because I panic so badly. Both my brother and I have had vivid and gory nightmares from a young age for unknown reasons (I still get them when I think of home; they feel more real than here when I wake up and often the pain lingers too). Also the walls of our house used to bleed, the walls would crack because the house would move and then settle back to close the cracks up due to a support beam loosening and tightening in a wall, even after the wall was taken down and the beam thing welded into place). And my brother and I share the same fear of a man who sits in the corner of our room growing up and watched us (my dad had the same belief as a kid when he grew up in the same house). And there were some incidents with magnets and time.

Now I do have some issues but I am Not Psychotic (yet), for what it's worth, but I was wondering if I could get a heads up how close to home this book might hit? I'll probably read it regardless, but there seems like a chance it might make life feel a little less real in specific ways that I'm concerned about already. If you don't wanna that's cool too, I respect that. I am really excited to read this though as everything about it seems like my kind of book

god, the book is so, so good. I'd definitely encourage giving it a go if you can! overall, the book isn't straightforwardly scary, like, it's not like what you'd expect from a standard horror book. but, it does deal a lot with existential threat/questions, and it is a meta book -- as in, it professes to exist as it does in its own universe, in this universe. Johnny Truant, the in-universe editor, is convinced that the threat can spread to readers simply from viewing the material. there's a lot of him speaking directly to you, warning you about the dangers of reading the book, and there's a lot of very evocative writing about his own descent into madness and the potential threats to you (including passages where he tells you to imagine things, or tries to convince you that something is lurking behind you -- a passage that myself and many others have been physically affected by).

it definitely makes life feel a bit weird. that's a big part of reading it, and pretty much everyone I've ever known or spoken to has this experience. it does stick with you, and it does linger, and it does make everything seem strange. I found this to be pleasant -- I love it when books do that -- but it might be something that you want to look out for. to be honest, for all I talk about the uselessness of the 'unreality' tag, House of Leaves is something I would use as a brilliant example of something that is actually dealing with unreality.

in terms of House Terror, I don't think it should hit too close to home for you. it's not a haunting. the house itself is an existential impossibility, filled with inconsistent measurements and an entire ever-changing labyrinth. there is a lot of emphasis on the dark, though, and detailed descriptions of characters in completely dark spaces. one of the characters, Karen, is also severely claustrophobic, so there's detailed descriptions of dark/enclosed space-triggered panic attacks, if that's something that might bother you. there are also detailed descriptions of vivid nightmares, and especially in Johnny's sections, there's some more straightforward monster horror as well. in terms of the kind of thing you've experienced, though, I think the closest you'd come would be the moving walls. even so, this house in the book is so far outside such comparatively minor movements that I don't think you'd really see it on the same scale at all.

I hope this helps! if you have any further questions let me know, because this is a great book and I'd love if you could get to read it. if anything gets a little too close, don't be afraid to hit me up and I'll give you a summary so you can skip the part and read on if you want.

[fragilevixenfic]

The Darker Side of Love

Rating: M

Category: Angst/Post En Ami/Smut/Angry Sex

Summary: Mulder does not want to talk but he does not want Scully to leave, either.

“Betrayal stings in a bitter way but regret leaves an even bigger hole in a heart.” – Unknown

Edited/expanded from a piece written during Vicky’s (@frangipanidownunder on Tumblr) workshop focusing on specific words, tone, and mood to create a scene. Thank you for the fabulous beta work, Monika (@monikafilefan) and Kasey (@slippinmickeys). I’m eternally grateful for your insights.

I cannot let you burn me up,

Nor can I resist you.

No mere human can stand in a fire

And not be consumed.

-A.S. Byatt (Possession)

10:00 PM

Mulder had ignored Scully in the drive back from the empty offices, steadfast in keeping his eyes forward as she stared out the window. The expectation of an argument had gone flying by like so many drops of rain in the wind and renewed the dull ache in her heart as he drove right past her exit, opting for his own. Despite the anger written on his face, he wanted her next to him. He squeezed her hand only once before going upstairs and it felt more like pity than love. She pushed the emotions a little further down and stood in the doorway, watching him as he paced. Watching him as the pieces of his psyche finally began to crumble before her like a castle in the sand as the surf finally came to wash it away.

What have I done?

Scully held her palm to her lips as she stared at the physical representation of her failure; the manila folder Mulder onto the table and let every piece of paper fly across the lacquer top. They scattered onto the floor like so many hopes and dreams. They were now nothing more than nightmares manifested as Mulder tossed the disk onto the center of the mess, the glints of light reflecting darts of light across the ceiling, and heaved a heavy sigh as he sank against the cushions. She didn’t need the reminder of her self-inflicted catastrophe but he was providing it for her in the form of a massive printout of empty promises. There was already an ache in her belly and a lump up in her throat, and she swallowed the last of her nerves as she held a breath in. She wanted to be numb and run, but every nerve seared and tingled, pushing her to stay.

The leather squeaked and his eyes found hers but words wouldn’t come, like a punishment. His fingers twitched and knuckles went white as he squeezed air; it sent a chill down her back as she imagined who he was picturing on the other end of his fists. Something was burning behind those flecks of jagged gold and green that Scully didn’t want to decipher. Her tongue clicked the roof of her mouth as her eyes zoned out on the low, erratic bubbling of the fish tank. It was worse than any lecture and the wretchedness had already been doing the trick to her pneuma as she stared at the carnage of paperwork in front of him.

“Just say something,” Scully bit down hard enough on the corner of her lip that the taste went tinny and the first tear betrayed any hope of calm, coaxing a breathy sigh from Mulder.

Request not met. He’d set up camp in another non-committal night of no communication and anxiety; enough to make her blood pressure spike and make her cheeks go hot. Stalemate. Scully’s white flag went up as she felt the door staring at her back, willing her to just walk away and surrender. She teetered in her heels and grasped the molding as she heard the snap and skitter of his belt before her eyes could register the motion. Her gasp rivaled any sound Scully had ever made but it didn’t persuade more than a tilt of the head from Mulder. He leaned back as the sweat gathered along his brow. She recognized the distinct ember of change brewing beneath his lashes as he stared up at her.

“I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to think,” Mulder tossed the belt onto the finished surface with a resounding thud and pushed his fingers into the cushions, desperation in his eyes. “Not tonight.”

“Then what do you want?” Scully held her breath and took a step closer, letting his eyes set fire to her soul as he tilted his head to look at her. “Do you want me to leave? Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder shook his head and stood, moving past her like a tornado with his fingers wound through his hair. “No.”

The disappointment in his voice was killing her as she backed up until the curve of her spine touched the wall, watching his jaw clench and his eyes narrow toward the floor. He paced for a long, agonizing moment. The silence was deafening, maddening, claustrophobic, and the pressure against Scully’s back only added to the suffocation as the oxygen refused to leave her lungs. Her exhale came out in a rasp and a whimper, tugging his focus until he was peering into her embodiment, bulldozing the remainder of the barrier she had built to keep the emotions in check. Composure evaporated as she let her tears fall; the unmentioned ardor sweeping down her cheeks as she bit down on the edge of her lip.

Scully ran her palm along her chin, capturing the stray droplets as the word came out despite every effort not to say it. “Please…”

Mulder diminished the distance, enfolding Scully’s frame in his arms, he pressed his fingers against the small of her back and dragged the fabric of her long-sleeved, high neck top up. Scully breathed toward the ceiling as Mulder freed her from the confines of her top, pulling it up and over her head before discarding it in the direction of the couch. Mulder knelt, guiding her out of her shoes and undoing the button and zipper on her slacks, exposing the pale curvature of her hips and legs along with a matched set of pale blue undergarments. He looked up at her from her waistline as he leaned in and set his teeth against her skin until she twitched under his grip. A moan pushed her lips apart.

“I can’t…” Mulder manhandled her, gripped her backside as he stood and thrust his pelvis against her as her arms wrapped around his neck. “I need…”

“I know,” Scully couldn’t have been more aware of Mulder’s magnetism as she hiked her knee around his hip and felt the sting of the mahogany trim as it struck her shoulder blades.

Scully didn’t want soft and slow and she knew neither did he, as his erection uncomfortably pressed against the remaining layers of clothing between them, inviting her warmth as her inner thighs quivered just enough to make his eyes roll back. Mulder thrust again and the punctuated cry was marked by the involuntary tightening of her fingers through his hair. The swirling of energy nearly toppled him over. Mulder let her feet touch the floor and looked down at her small, capable hands as they undid his jeans and pushed them down toward his knees before sweeping the soft material of his sweater up and away from his torso. He stopped to gaze at her and sighed into the drafty apartment at the delicate beauty that he had become so enamored with; exasperation, however, had become a prevalent frame of mind.

The pause was short lived as Mulder let his motions become frenetic and haphazard. He shed the last layers of cotton blends away from alabaster and blush before wrapping his arms around her waist. Scully held onto the wall as his thighs pushed against her, slowly sliding his cock past her slick folds until he had filled her completely. Mulder craved her proximity as he guided her legs a little higher, reveling in the electric heat as his unrelenting thrusts picked up speed. The intensity continued to build until it finally vibrated both framed pieces of artwork off the wall. On an ordinary day, the thudding of their frames hitting the floor might’ve been enough to stop every thrust that Mulder had made…but not tonight.

“Do you even understand…” Mulder’s voice came out in a growl, the sweat dripping down his temples as he locked gazes with hers and pinned her wrists above her head, bottom lip trembling with every syllable. “At all?”

“I had to try,” Scully’s fingernails were wreaking havoc on his shoulders, leaving blistering marks as she held onto him and felt the weight of his anger, his frustration, his unyielding passion as it bruised her backside with every grind of his pelvis into hers. “I couldn’t…not…try.”

“I don’t know what I would’ve done,” Mulder had tears down his face, betraying the gruffness he was desperate to convey as he moved a little slower, bucking his hips just enough to coax a throaty moan from her. “If anything bad…had happened.”

“I know…Goddammit, I know,” Scully’s fingers moved to his cheek, reclaiming his tenderness as he drove into her again, impulsively, and hopelessly sought possession of her affection, despite never losing it to start with. “I know.”

He didn’t want an apology or a semblance of redemption. He tipped the metaphorical glass and heard his name called to the rafters; he wanted to go back to the moment before the clandestine invaded under the veil of a continuously lit cigarette and a shroud of smoke.

Thanking anyone who cares to peek at this. Tagging @baronessblixen @today-in-fic @reasonandfaithinharmony @dreamingofscully @wtfmulder for the extra love love.

[bl00dgutsgl0ry]

I Don’t Lose.

Pairing - Tartaglia/Childe/Ajax x Reader

Warnings - VERY mild angst, so much so that I wasn’t even going to tag it at first.

Other Comments - I promise I am working on asks! I just kinda wanted to post this little drabble, since I was working on it before I went on hiatus! Anyway be prepared for my garabgo posts to come back up on your pages >:^))

      Childe’s work schedule was horrendous; and calling it a schedule is an overstatement if anything. Now (Y/n) knew that Childe’s time out for work was going to be long, but it seemed as though recently the guy just couldn’t catch a break. He’s been gone for about three months now, with the only contact being a couple of hastily written letters.

      (Y/n) and Childe were never officially dating each other, but they had gotten pretty close over the time that they’d known each other in Liyue. Though he’s not the only person the young traveler had gotten close to. (Y/n) was extremely sociable and charismatic, which is what drew Childe to them, but it also attracted a certain ex Geo Archon.

      Zhongli seemed to always be asking for (Y/n) to accompany him every where or vice versa, borderline addicted to their presence with him. He had grown used to it when they were trying to set up the Lantern Rite a couple months back. Childe was still in Liyue at that point in time so the Geo Archon knew to keep his distance, but now with the Harbinger out of the picture he didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

      Zhongli was aware of how Childe felt about (Y/n) even if Childe himself wasn’t fully aware of his feelings, and in addition to that he was also Childe’s friend too. So there was a small voice in the back of his mind telling him that it was wrong to try to steal (Y/n) while Childe was off on a mission. He couldn’t help but think though, that he would be a better match for the traveler. He wasn’t going to be gone in a different part of Teyvat for months at a time, and if they permitted him to he could even accompany them on THEIR travels; something Childe was unable to do.

      Everyday Zhongli made it his mission to get (Y/n) tea to help start of their day, and much to his ignorance the traveler had started to expect the small cup of professionally brewed tea at their doorstep with a soft smiling Zhongli gently holding it out to them, before being invited inside the small apartment in the middle of the busy harbor.

      And today was no different, at least not to Zhongli or (Y/n). The traveler smoothly opened their door, being greeted by the ex Archon before opening the door a little wider for him to walk in and set the cup down.

      On a completely different side of Teyvat, it was Childe’s last day in Inazuma for the mission he was sent on, yearning to see the young traveler who had captured his heart. He had sent out a letter to them about a week before to give it enough time to reach them, telling them that he was going to be Liyue for a while after this mission which he was excited for, before quickly jotting down the place he wanted to meet (Y/n) and the estimated time he would be getting there; 13:00 sharp.

      It was now 15:03 and (Y/n) and Zhongli had set out on a daily commission which he had offered to help them with. It was always fun when Zhongli came along with (Y/n) on their mission, as it got lonely traveling through this unknown place with no one but Paimon by their side; so the company and help was greatly appreciated.

      Childe on the other hand, was not having as great of a time, as he had waited around in the previously mentioned spot for about an hour before giving up and deciding to go straight to their apartment. There had to be a logical explanation as to why they never came, maybe they didn’t get the letter? Childe had a habit of letting himself into (Y/n)’s apartment and today was no exception. As he quickly picked the doors lock and let himself in, he once again was let down, as his expectations were not met and (Y/n) was no where to be found in their cramped apartment.

      He couldn’t help but search around their home, looking for the one thing that would have notified them of his arrival; half heartedly hoping that it wasn’t going to be their wanting them to have a good reason as to why they never came. But after a couple minutes of searching, he found the familiar envelope with his name written across the corner in fancy calligraphy. It was sat atop the small side table next to the young travelers bed; irritating Childe even more. Not only had (Y/n) not even bothered to open the envelope, but they went through the length of setting it next to their bed, giving them another chance to open it this morning.

      Meanwhile Zhongli and (Y/n) had just finished up the rest of the commissions they needed to get done, but (Y/n) couldn’t help but feel as though they were forgetting about something. Zhongli was in Heaven right now, he loves spending the entirety of his day with them, nothing brought him more joy than seeing the way (Y/n) would celebrate to themselves a little when finishing off a couple treasure hoarders, or an angry hoard of hillichurls. The day was coming to an end though, and it was starting to get dark so the idea of getting food then going home really resonated with the two.

      As usual once they got into the harbor again they went straight to Wanmin Restaurant, as much as they liked the other expensive restaurants that Liyue Harbor was full of, nothing could compare to to homestyle meals of Wanmin. As the pair was finishing up their meals, Zhongli had placed a large hand atop (Y/n)’s.

      “(Y/n) it has been a pleasure spending the day with you as always. I thoroughly enjoyed fighting the ruin guard with you, and I am disappointed that our day is coming to an end. I was wondering if you would let me accompany you again tomorrow?” Zhongli’s hand had began to gently hold (Y/n) and their face was dusted a light shade of rose. Zhongli sat their waiting for what felt like an eternity for their answer; he spent this time memorizing every detail on their face as to never forget it. 

      (Y/n) smiled shyly and nodded before giving Zhongli’s hand a subtle squeeze and finishing off their meal.  Zhongli could feel a sense of dread forming in his heart. He new Childe was back in Liyue, which he knew because he had spotted him staring at the back of (Y/n)’s back for the entirety of their meal; How the traveler didn’t notice this he would never know.

      (Y/n) noticed the small change in Zhongli’s demeanor and the way his eyes stayed fixated on something, causing (Y/n) to turn around and see what the ex Archon was staying at so intensely. When their eyes met with Childe’s cerulean ones, they gasped quickly getting up and rushing over to him. Zhongli sighed, before quickly footing the bill and going to follow (Y/n).

      “Childe I didn’t realize you were coming back today! When did you get here?” There was something odd in Childe’s eyes, as the way he was staring at Zhongli with such malice made (Y/n)’s blood chill a little.

      “Yeah, no wonder you didn’t know (Y/n). You disregarded my letter like trash. I got here a little after noon, and waited for you at Wangshu in for almost an hour.” Childe’s voice was serious and deep, something the traveler had rarely heard come from Childe. (Y/n) pulse was racing, the look in Childe’s eye was never a good thing. 

      “And you. I had a thought of you doing this but I brushed it off cause I never thought you would. Clearly I was wrong. But here’s something you don’t know Zhongli. I. Don’t. Lose. So your advances on (Y/n) aren’t going to do anything. I am willing to do anything to anyone who tried to take away my world, you are not an exception just because we’re friends.”

      Zhongli rolled his eyes before chuckling to himself, only further infuriating Childe; and before anyone could stop him the Harbinger pushed Zhongli to the ground, quickly materializing his hydro blades and pointing them at the ex Archons throat, his amber eyes widening with shock.

      “Like I said Rex. I don’t lose. Don’t ever touch what’s mine again, no matter how long I’m out of Liyue for.” Childe’s arm wrapped tightly around (Y/n)’s should, roughly pulling them against his side; before walking off and leaving Zhongli on the ground. The walk back to (Y/n)’s was filled with tense silence. Once they had gotten back into their home, Childe unloaded everything.

      “Why (Y/n)? Why would you not even try to open my letter? Have you gotten tired of me? I know my work is crazy and hectic but you have to be mine. I’ll go crazy if I see you with anyone else.” 

      “I never got a letter from you Ajax! Zhongli had been bringing my mail to me so I only ever saw what he had given me. I need you to trust me! Doing that to Zhongli in the middle of the harbor was uncalled for and you know it.” Childe’s eyes were staring into (Y/n).

      “Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Zhongli later, but tonight it’s just gonna be you and me. I need to make up for all the time I’ve been gone. Who knows what Zhongli has done to you.” Childe’s signature smirk was back on his face, bringing (Y/n) an odd sense of comfort before nodding in agreement. (Y/n) giggled in response before lightly punching Childe’s arm.

      “So does this mean we’re official?” Childe barked out a laugh before pressing a soft kiss to (Y/n)’s lips.

      “What do you think?”

[caffernnn]

Haru’s hopelessness - an extensive rambling.

Watchers of Free! Eternal Summer - y’all remember this moment, right? 

Throughout S2, as some of the boys now have to seriously think about their lives and paths after high school, Haru struggles to think past what he’s always known: swimming for his friends/himself, eating mackerel, and being free. Things arguably take a darker turn once Haru cannot run from the question anymore and breaks, lashing out at Rin and saying he doesn’t have a dream or a future. 

There are so many things that can be unpacked from this quote alone, and my thoughts on the matter will probably be sporadic, but here are a few key things I’d like to try diving into in this post:

My interpretation of Haru’s, Makoto’s, and Rin’s characters’ mindsets

What Haru is likely trying to say

How Makoto and Rin interpret his words (based on their mindsets and experiences)

I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on it all as well, so please feel free to add on :)

DISCLAIMER: This post will reference material outside of S2 itself to explain my insight/interpretation of the characters (S1 episodes, High Speed novel), but I won’t be putting full links to all of those materials in this post. If you’d like a specific link to anything I’m referencing, let me know and I can try to dig one up.

When first hearing Haru say that he doesn’t have a dream or a future, it is shocking and concerning, especially to his friends. However, as broken as lost as Haru is in this moment, the weight of his words and what he’s verbally trying to convey is most likely different than what his friends hear. I feel as if a big reason for this comes down to the different ways the characters perceive time and approach general goal-setting. 

Here is a video that can give a frame of reference for what I mean by “time perception,” but I’ll still try to explain my thinking ---> https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJsdVUhu/

Rin and Haru butt heads on many occasions throughout the series due to having opposing characteristics and approaches to life. The big difference that comes into play during S2 is how they both approach goal-setting and time. As soon as we’re introduced to Rin, it becomes apparent that he is someone who is a visionary that has always set his sights on the future. From boldly proclaiming his Olympic goals in elementary school to encouraging their team to put their relay trophy into a time capsule, Rin establishes himself early on as a dreamer that puts his all into his long-term goals. Being someone who thinks about things in this manner isn’t inherently good or bad, but it does lend a hand to many of the issues we see Rin go through in S1 (having tunnel vision on his goal that isolates him from his friends, being prone to catastrophize when confronted with road blocks along the way [like when he breaks down after losing to Haru in middle school], etc.). However, all of that dreaming puts him at an advantage now when preparing to move forward into post-high-school life. He has a frame of reference for most of his next steps (winning races, talking to scouts), and now he just has to make it a reality.

Haru, in essence, lives his life in the moment. If he wants to swim, he’ll try to swim; if he wants mackerel, he’ll try to make mackerel. He lets the people around him (usually Makoto) worry about the possible consequences for his actions (swimming too early in spring might get him sick, swimming in a fish tank might get him kicked out of XYZ place, cooking mackerel after a long bath might make him late for school, etc.). The way he thinks about all of his “tomorrows” beyond acting freely on impulse is through having a consistent routine or norm to cling onto. When swimming, he’ll swim freestyle. When given a choice, he’ll default to eating mackerel. He’ll find a way to get in a swim or a bath most days because water is safe. He’ll walk with Makoto to and from school, sticking to the side of the path closest to the ocean and anticipating sharing the same split popsicle. This is about as much thought as he lends to the future, usually: he’ll keep doing the things that make him happy and comfortable, whatever that’ll mean to him in the moment. In opposition of Rin, this frame of mind based in immediacy and short-term goals helps him in S1 (teaching Rin to appreciate the moment, connecting with his friends, not getting lost in the overly analytical or competitive side of swimming), but it makes the challenges that come with his looming graduation in S2 much harder to cope with. 

The reason that it’s important to understand how both Haru and Rin frame their perceptions of time is because it plays right into what Haru is saying during their argument. He is frustrated with Rin because Rin doesn’t understand the way Haru thinks/lives moment-to-moment (he yells as much in this fight) and he is tired of hearing people for years try and push him into long-term thinking about his future when he doesn’t naturally approach life that way. Think back to one of the first things Haru said in S1: 

“When you're ten, they call you a prodigy. When you're fifteen, they call you a genius. Once you hit twenty, you're just an ordinary person. About three years until I'm ordinary. Man... I can't wait to be ordinary.”

Because of Haru’s swimming abilities, people have looked at him as a prodigy and have had their own visions about his potential or his future ever since he was young. Even if it seems like flattery, Haru feels boxed in by all of this. Being considered a prodigy comes with expectations that put him on a pedestal he never asked to be placed on -- if he’s going to swim, he’s expected to swim well; if he swims well, he’s expected to capitalize on his abilities in a competitive manner or expand his horizons to other forms of swimming; if he’s going to live his life tied to the water, people view him as a swimmer before they view him as anything/anyone else. Haru has been frustrated with all of this since he was younger (as expressed in S1), but it gets even worse as people close in on Haru from all sides with advice and sentiments that compound in Haru’s head as belonging to the echo chamber he hates so much. 

So... what does this all mean in relevance to Haru saying he doesn’t have a dream or a future? Here’s my line of thinking: all of the internalized frustration Haru has with long-term thinkers (from his perspective) speaking over him and not taking time to understand his in-the-moment intuition-led mindset comes out in this line. What Haru is trying to say is that he doesn’t have a detailed long-term plan because he isn’t a romantic visionary like Rin. He wants to stick with his relatively free lifestyle (y’know, the one where he can do what he wants, but still ultimately sticks to a routine) because he sees no point in forcing himself to put effort into big changes if 1) he’s satisfied and 2) the system isn’t broken.*

*we learn later, especially through Haru and Makoto’s later fight, that these two points are up for debate, but this is what Haru has convinced himself to believe at the time of this specific confrontation.

However, with the way Haru vocalizes this frustration, it is vague enough that Rin and the others hear something much different. It’s written right on their faces. Like I mentioned earlier, being a long-term thinker prone to catastrophizing, Rin interprets (and possibly misconstrues) Haru’s words to mean that he doesn’t think he has the potential or abilities to strive for something. Rin feels Haru’s words like a punch to the gut because he relates Haru’s hopelessness to the times he has felt lost and hopeless, like when defeat after defeat led to him breaking down after his middle school race with Haru. It’s shocking and it stings for Rin to hear, because as much as he’s learned to believe in himself and his own future, he’s also held onto those dreams and hope for his friends. I’ll admit, his dedication and borderline obsession with swimming lends to him mostly vocalizing the dreams he has for his friends that are related to swimming (Makoto and Haru getting scouted, Sousuke returning to swimming), but the love is still there. 

The idea of long-term vs short-term thinkers I’ve presented isn’t completely dichotomous or black-and-white, even though Haru and Rin tend to fall on the far opposite sides of the proposed spectrum. So, where does someone like Makoto fall? 

Makoto is an interesting case. From how I’ve come to understand his character, I would say he also looks to the future, albeit in less idealistic or extreme ways than Rin. Makoto’s forward line of thinking presents itself through both his people-pleasing tendencies and his caring disposition. When Makoto interacts with people, he is often observant and calculating, trying to figure out how he can navigate a conversation in the most complimentary or polite manner. This ability and tendency to understand/empathize with others ties into a lot of the roles he takes on: team captain, big brother, part-time position as a swim coach, full-time position as Haru’s impulse control... he is inclined to think about the future and all of the possible consequences for his actions. This also ties into some of the other things we know Makoto’s character for, such as being a scaredy-cat (aka, someone who overthinks consequences in fear of the unknown) and a ray of sunshine (aka, someone who wants to see the best in people and holds onto optimism/hope for the people he loves, even if it sometimes means not saving enough for himself and his own abilities). 

Despite being more of a forward-thinker, Makoto has definitely been influenced by his close relationship with Haru. Makoto has spent most of his life observing and learning how to read Haru, and it has been shown time and time again that Makoto is one of the people (if not, the person) that understands Haru best. He understands that Haru values the freedom of choice and harbors a desire for unconditional appreciation. He understands that Haru puts stock in consistency/reliability and needs time and space to process or reflect when life deviates from that carefully-crafted norm. Makoto’s actions towards Haru over the years all reflect him trying to be respectful of these observations. Even when he can tell something is bothering Haru, Makoto tries to let Haru work it out on his own first, not prodding him for information but letting his presence/support be known all the same. I digress, being best friends, their lives and routines are tightly woven together. Because of this, Makoto spends a lot of time also living in-the-moment with Haru -- he is a large proponent in Haru’s “free” lifestyle. 

Since Makoto has a foot in both Haru and Rin’s respective worlds, how does he interpret Haru’s declaration that he doesn’t have a dream or a future? Surely, since he understands Haru and his position so well and has always been respectful of his mindset/wishes, he gets what Haru is trying to say... right? 

Unfortunately for Haru (or fortunately, depending on who you ask), Makoto is immediately concerned by those words in a way similar to Rin. Like I mentioned earlier, Makoto holds deep optimism and hope in his chest for all of the people he cares about. Even though he never forced lofty expectations onto Haru to swim or be anything other than himself, he still holds so much care and hope for his best friend. For Makoto to hear that Haru might not have that faith in himself or the belief that he is worth a bright future, it breaks his heart. Similar to Rin, he is probably thinking back to his own moments of hopelessness, and I can’t help but think back to the lost and scared Makoto fighting with himself during the middle school days. When entering middle school, Makoto struggles with his identity, trying to figure out just how dependent he is on Haru’s friendship. One of his darkest moments in my mind comes from Chapter 8 of the High Speed! 2 novel, when Makoto is beating himself up especially hard after being frozen by his fear of the ocean yet again. Haru finds Makoto alone on a secluded part of the shore, where he says this:

“Will I be alright even if Haru isn’t here? …..I wanted to make sure of that.”

Raising his eyebrows, he shows a lonely smile. Makoto was fighting all along. He was suffering, all along. In a place where Haruka’s thoughts couldn’t possibly reach... 

“Would Haru be alright even if I weren’t here?”

If Makoto’s internal struggles throughout their middle school days reveal anything, it is that Makoto has experienced a hopelessness that he wouldn’t ever wish on his friends. To think that Haru might now be at war with himself in a way that makes him question his own place in the world, his future... it is the ultimate catalyst for Makoto to step in and try to talk to Haru. Sadly, we all remember how that confrontation went...

ENTER: THE FIREWORKS FIGHT (S2E11)

(Since this post is already super long, I might go more into my thoughts on how this all plays into the misunderstandings about the fireworks fight in a separate post. We’ve talked about the fight at length on multiple occasions and you can definitely find my thoughts on the matter if you look under the “#fireworks angst night” or “#meta” tags on my profile.)

If you’ve made it this far into the post, thanks for sticking with me. I’d love to hear about how you interpreted Haru’s words or how you think the others took in his breakdown. 

[shihalyfie]

"Canon” and “not canon” in the Adventure/02 universe

This is something I want to talk about, because it has a certain degree of relevance to the question of what I choose to take into account in my analyses and what I don’t. I write a lot about Adventure and 02 because both series are ridiculously consistent over their 104-episode runtime, but there are times when things contradict or don’t quite track together, and I have to figure out how to best rationalize them -- which means I need to make arbitrary decisions on what to count and not count, and when one does make those kinds of decisions, you’re very liable to get the complaint: “but that’s not canon!”

Which always makes me think: who decided that? And in the end, this is something that I think extends beyond just Digimon; every fanbase for everything always wants to believe there’s a clear-cut answer to things that everyone’s supposed to follow in a canonical timeline, and things that fall outside it. And sometimes, for some franchises, that is doable, because official staff will actually say outright that “this counts, and this doesn’t.” But that’s not how Toei and Bandai work, and their modus operandi has always been to toss a bunch of often-contradictory stuff at everyone and go “figure it out yourself,” and I think at some point the fanbase really needs to acknowledge that this so-called clear-cut boundary of “canon” and “not canon” doesn’t actually exist at all. Or in other words, any assertion of something being “canon” or “not canon” in the Adventure and 02 universe is purely something arbitrarily defined by fans, and was never determined by official - which, conversely, has actually encouraged you to take as much as you want and figure out the rest yourself.

Before we begin, I do want to make clear that this is not about one’s personal canon based on one’s own preferences -- that is to say, if you’re going “I don’t consider this canon because I don’t like this/don’t want to work with this,” then that’s entirely your right, especially if you’re doing creative work and need to decide what to apply and to not to apply. (Although, as always, one must be conscientious and respectful of those who do like it and consider it canon, because everyone’s going to differ on this.) What I am talking about is when people take a substantial part of the franchise that they otherwise like, such as a movie or drama CD, see one detail that’s contradictory in terms of the timeline or lore, and take that as evidence of “yep, the entire thing’s not canon. We’ll just throw the entire thing out, then.” It just makes me think -- you threw out a perfectly good work for that?! That’s such a waste!

First of all, Toei and Bandai don’t work that way

In general, a lot of the contradictions in the series have a “right hand is not talking to left hand” problem, because as much as we would like to believe that a Digimon series is written by a single consistent entity, the franchise itself is a huge trade-off between Toei and Bandai, and a lot of things from Bandai -- spinoffs, crossover material, games, what have you -- don’t exactly have a stellar track record of being vetted by Toei anime staff. It’s pretty well-known that game portrayals of certain characters can be really off or have misleading info, and even V-Tamer’s somewhat guilty of it. So this is going to happen no matter whether you like it or not, and it happens with any long-running kids’ series that involves a collaboration between multiple companies like this.

Moreover, the traditional custom for Toei “side movies” (in this case, meaning things like the original movie, Our War Game!, Hurricane Touchdown, and Diablomon Strikes Back) is that they’re produced with minimal involvement from the original series’s core staff -- at most, the producer is lightly involved -- and are sometimes even worked on simultaneously with the start of the original series, so you often end up with a movie that’s impossible to fit anywhere in the series timeline because there wasn’t any communication with the two sides. And for that, it’s all too easy to dismiss those movies as “non-canon”, with the fanbase arbitrarily deciding that canon ones are canon because they fit -- but Toei itself has never taken this stance.

The other thing is that, given that Adventure/02 is famous for its ridiculous level of worldbuilding consistency thanks to its director Kakudou’s conscientious efforts on it, it means that as a result, anything not made by him was prone to running afoul on it, and it’s not like the stance back then was to just reject all of it wholesale. “Doesn’t comply with the lore” is so often equated with “not canon”, but Kakudou, the author of that lore, not only made no indication of invalidating or disliking those non-compliant things, but also conversely made an active effort to make those things relevant in spite of that! (See: Our War Game! below.) The official stance is to not deny those works for being noncompliant -- it’s just that Kakudou seems to be the detail-oriented kind of person who personally prefers to work with things that have a high level of consistency (he’s very quick to say “I wasn’t involved on that” whenever someone brings up something from said external materials, not in any condescending way, just “I wasn’t involved, so don’t attribute that to me”). In fact, one of the reasons there wasn’t initially a third Adventure series was that he had difficulty finding a way to adhere to the higher-ups’ pressure to keep all of these contradictions consistent -- so the official stance itself is to try and maintain all of those side works, and that it would be better to end the series itself than to have to do something like deny them.

Which makes things very frustrating for the fans, of course, but nevertheless, that’s how it is -- even back in 2000, the right-hand-not-talking-to-left-hand phenomenon was this significant! And it would have been easy for official to step in and go “okay, we’ll put a statement out here that these don’t apply,” but no, the stance was be that it would be better to stop dragging it out longer and cancel a whole series than to deny those works, which leads us to the current situation. (Plus, think how insulting it would feel from a PR perspective if someone got attached to one of those “non-canon” materials only for official to come out and outright say “yeah this doesn’t count anymore”; we can name examples of this happening in other franchises that have understandably gotten a lot of people upset, and it would be especially offensive to do this right after said material had been released.)

Bolstering the concept of official staff’s very loose opinion of “canon” are the Adventure novels, which were supervised by Kakudou himself and written by Digimon episode screenwriter Masaki Hiro, and are non-compliant with Adventure timeline by design, because it’d be bad for the format to try and depict every single detail in the anime in the form of three novels. Several events are condensed or shuffled out of order, or even sometimes completely different (Koushirou’s incident with Vadermon goes very differently from the anime version). Despite that, this is said directly to be intended as a series of novels to help people understand Adventure and 02 better, and several details in Two-and-a-Half Year Break and Spring 2003 are incredibly consistent with it (namely in the sense of details meant to retroactively connect Adventure to 02, and other background details like Daisuke’s backstory). So you are supposed to do some kind of mental leap where you don’t take the contradictions around the actual events too seriously, but still accept the spirit and the background information you learn from it and retroactively apply it to Adventure and 02 -- and, presumably, that’s probably what you’re expected to do with everything else, too.

And this isn’t even getting into the fact that the anime itself has occasional contradictions and errors due to things like animator error or simply different writers writing different episodes -- the Adventure and 02 staff were certainly very detail-oriented, but they are human and of course inevitably slipped up here and there. How seriously do you take honorifics shifting from episode to episode in ways that don’t seem intentional, or the fact every background material refers to Osamu and Ken having a bunk bed and yet the actual episode with both of them fails to depict it? How do you deal with the fact that the Animation Chronicle is one of the most extensively useful post-02 reference materials with tons of production background info not revealed in the anime, and yet is infamously full of suspected typos that would cause some pretty massive implications if true, or all of those other Bandai and Shueisha-commissioned “side books” and other pieces of media meant to entertain the kids while the series was airing but clearly had no input from Toei staff whatsoever? 

In the end, frustrating as it is, the answer seems to be the same as ever: figure it out yourself.

The standards for what’s “canon” and “not canon” are way too arbitrary

Let’s look at a handful of things that have been historically dismissed as “non-canon” by the fanbase:

The Adventure mini dramas and Armor Evolution to the Unknown: Drama CDs that were generally dismissed as non-canon because they’re “too crack” to be canon (their writing style is of the “it’s okay to push the boundaries of characterization for the sake of comedy” sort, and it wouldn’t be until later when we finally got some more serious drama CDs). The latter is full of honorific inconsistencies, most prominently Daisuke and Ken still being on surname basis at a time they’re not supposed to be (due to the fact that it was released while the series was still being produced). But official word is that you’re still supposed to consider them canon -- and yes, that’s Kakudou himself giving official sanction to a drama CD that involved a massive amount of fourth wall breaking and a completely unexplained reunion between the Adventure kids and their Digimon sometime between 1999 and 2002 (apparently this wasn’t the only one, either). How is this supposed to work? Figure it out yourself.

Hurricane Touchdown: The funny part is that up until Kizuna validated Wallace’s existence, there was no actual consistent agreement on why this movie shouldn’t be canon (the Western side being “evolutionary form timeline violations”, the Japanese side being Wallace’s status as a Chosen Child prior to 1995), which really goes to show you how arbitrary all of this is. It also has a sequel drama CD in the form of The Door to Summer, which is also contradictory with Hurricane Touchdown’s ending, so we’ve got two layers of “it can’t be canon because...” -- and yet it has a lot of interesting Daisuke characterization, and, heck, the whole character of Wallace himself, that would all be rejected if you throw this out wholesale. Then Kizuna came along, and there’s a general sense of hesitation against easily denying officially-sanctioned “main” entries like that, which retroactively forced people to somehow skip past all that and accept it, just for the sake of Kizuna’s notability.

Diablomon Strikes Back: Similar to the above, it used to be constantly dismissed as “a non-canon fun movie” because of the evolutionary forms that appear in it, despite the fact that 02 itself established that it wasn’t that hard to restore evolutionary forms if you figured something out. Somehow, a ton of people treated it as such an impossibility that “they figured it out in the first three months of 2003″ would be a viable explanation, and yet official word is that of the second through fourth movies, this is the one that had the most amount of initial consultation with the TV anime staff! And then tri. and Kizuna came along and clearly had high-level evolutions in play too, and dismissing DSB on these grounds meant dismissing those by proxy, and a lot of people were too intimidated to do that and decided to retroactively validate DSB instead, after years of having dismissed it for this reason. Again: look how arbitrary this all is.

The tri. stage play: Mainly because its timeline of events doesn’t fit tri. at all (in regards to the reboot and part 5). This is a fair assessment to make in light of the fact that it doesn’t seem to work very hard to be compliant with the very series it’s branded with, but, funnily enough, it’s actually more lore-compliant with the original Adventure and 02 than the tri. anime series is, and yet the few minor contradictions it makes with the tri. anime series are sufficient to consider it completely kicked out of canon, yet those same people who declare it so aren’t as willing to hold the anime to that same standard just because it holds a more prominent “main” position.

On the other hand, let’s look at some of the things that have been more likely to be accepted than the above:

Our War Game!: Reading this is probably going to make everyone go “whaaaaaat?”, but yep: according to Kakudou, the second through fourth movies were all made without his supervision or involvement and thus have lore contradictions (although he also made sure to say that they’re very fine movies, too). We still haven’t figured out what the lore contradiction is, and so the fanbase considers it canon, and even 02 itself makes multiple references to “the Diablomon incident” in 2000, so you can’t consider this non-canon in the slightest...but yes, according to the official side, it’s actually got a contradictory incursion somewhere in there. There is one hypothesis as to what it is, and it’s such a minor thing that no fan or even official member of staff would dare deny the movie for it, but it still contributes to how arbitrary this entire concept is: Kakudou didn’t want to give anyone (except Miyako, who’s based off a real person) canonical birthdays or blood types for the sake of preventing horoscoping, but Sora’s birthday is portrayed as being around March in the movie. And yes, Kakudou himself refers to this as being something that only happened because he wasn’t involved. (Remember what I said about him historically being quick to disclaim involvement on anything he wasn’t involved on, regardless of how much of a minor detail it is, yet doesn’t necessarily intend to deny the work entirely due to it?)

Tag Tamers: A very vital part of Ken’s backstory that establishes a lot of context behind the Dark Seed and the elusive Akiyama Ryou, which also does not make sense with 02′s timeline and characterization at all, presumably because Bandai and Toei weren’t properly communicating on what kind of details they needed to iron out for this. But of course, all of us would like some explanation to Ken’s backstory, and we have to apply some kind of logic as to how that makes sense, and I’ve yet to see people declare Tag Tamers (or any of the other WonderSwan games) as entirely non-canon as a result.

tri.: For obvious reasons, it’s a “major entry in the franchise”, so people are generally more averse to dismissing it so easily (or, at least, for reasons that aren’t related to pure preference), but I find it rather ironic that Kizuna’s the one that got all the attention for apparently being lore non-compliant, when the exact same lore points mentioned in Kakudou’s reasoning as to why it’s non-compliant (along with a ton of things that actually were in Adventure and 02′s text) are gone against even more regularly and prominently in tri., whereas Kizuna still goes out of its way to adhere to most of these and only seems to have incurred a contradiction in terms of originally intended ideology, and, possibly, its extensive use of the aforementioned movies. (Recall that this got brought up for Kizuna specifically because Kakudou was initially consulted for it; he wasn’t involved in tri. to begin with at all.) See above on how people’s unwillingness to write this one off so easily despite everything ended up retroactively dragging DSB into “accepted canon” territory; that’s how arbitrary this entire thing is.

Then, tied to all of this and making it even more confusing is Kizuna, which, again, putting all issues of personal preference aside, is basically being torn back and forth between all of these whenever you try to apply one of the above arbitrary standards. It’s allegedly lore-noncompliant with Kakudou’s lore and thus lacks his involvement, but it does have the involvement of original series producer Seki Hiromi who was known to be responsible for the series’s original human drama themes (including the premise of 02 itself) and personally vetted the scripts so that everyone could be properly in-character and the original themes still intact; it’s supposedly a “main” entry to the point where people will stop denying older works’ canonicity because of it (see Hurricane Touchdown above), but, legally speaking, is actually classified in the same “gekijouban” category that the first four movies and things like the Tamers through Savers movies are; the staff will say to hell and back that the 02 epilogue still holds (and the movie makes abundant retroactive references in both worldbuilding and themes to it), but many people out there will still insist that the movie ending that way means that (like with DSB above) “they figured it out” between the movie’s ending and the epilogue is apparently some kind of impossibility, and either the movie is non-canon or the 02 epilogue is invalidated now. (My personal stance on this is that the epilogue itself provides the answer to how they figure it out if you look closely at the movie’s themes, but that’s a tangent.)

The point I’m trying to make is that regardless of whatever stance you take on all of the above points, this is all extremely arbitrary, and these fanbase rationalizations on why this and that isn’t canon are constantly contradicting each other, shifting, and occasionally based on really meaningless things. And, again, it’s fine if you’re saying that you don’t consider this or that canon because you personally dislike it or where it went, or you find it difficult to work with, or between two contradictory things you prefer one or the other (I certainly have my fair share of strong opinions in this regard) -- but it would be better if we all admitted this and went “I just don’t consider this canon” instead of acting like there were ever some universal consensus or official backing.

"It didn’t happen this exact way, but something resembling it still happened”

So, we’re in this uncomfortable situation where we’ve been handed a ball of knots and have to work with it (a very frustrating situation especially for fanfic writers), and I have to personally say that I think all of this comes from people having far too inflexible of a concept of “canon” and “not canon”, especially to the point of rejecting a full-on perfectly fine entry just because of one timeline issue. I honestly think it’d be better if we could rather take a certain stance close to the Pixiv dictionary wiki’s view of how Wallace can appear in Kizuna: “(some version of) Wallace exists in the timeline of the main story.”

Right, so: Hurricane Touchdown is contradictory. The evolutions don’t work at that point in timeline, and Wallace shouldn’t be able to be a Chosen Child from before 1995. Those things don’t work with Adventure and 02′s timeline and lore. However, let’s look at the following story: let’s say that, between 02 episodes 14 and 15 (when the movie first screened), while school was on break, Daisuke and his friends went on a summer adventure to the US and met a boy named Wallace, who had a struggle regarding one of his partners losing his sanity, and bonded with him and helped put his partner to rest. No part of this contradicts 02 at all. There we go! So we can safely say that some story that mostly resembled Hurricane Touchdown happened in the canon timeline. Some of its details weren’t exactly the way they happened in “the movie we, as the audience, saw” -- but something that substantially resembled the movie still happened in the universe of Daisuke and his friends. And you can apply that same logic to Tag Tamers, or any other vital canonical but ostensibly contradictory material -- the media that we as the audience got may not accurately reflect the events in universe, but there’s absolutely nothing saying that some more timeline and lore-consistent alternate version didn’t happen in canon instead.

Moreover, even Adventure/02 itself gives you a bit of precedent for this concept -- namely, the fact that the final episode of 02 reveals that the entirety of Adventure and 02 is part of Takeru’s novels. It’s a pretty common theory that there might be differences in the way “the story we got” was presented, versus how they actually happened in the world Takeru lived in -- of course, Takeru certainly went out of his way to remove as much bias from the situation as he could, but you can hardly say that he, as a human, would be completely free from it, and he himself even admits that everyone he consulted had differing opinions on the events in question. And not every single piece of Digimon media has the Hirata-Hiroaki-as-Takeru narrator, which means that perhaps it’s not entirely out of the question that the different takes on the stories that the Tokyo Chosen Children went through in their youth would not be entirely consistent with each other, depending on who’s telling it. But that doesn’t mean that those events necessarily didn’t happen at all, just that some of the details were different from what we as the audience saw.

In the end, I leave the rest to everyone else to figure out -- as I said, I think this is a decision everyone will have to make for themselves, whether they’re a fanfic writer picking and choosing what to include for the sake of a coherent fic, or whether they’re just expressing a preference to not have to think too hard about or work with something they’re turned off by. (And in the case that there is someone who expresses their dislike of working with something and doesn’t want to consider it canon, I think it’s very rude to give them grief for that, and conversely, if you don’t want to consider something canon but encounter someone who doesn’t have as much of a problem with it, it’s very rude to try and expect them to change their opinion to yours.) But I do think it would do well for all of us to have a bit more of an open mind and a creative attitude towards these kinds of things before trying to shove everything into a “fully canon” and “fully not canon” binary.

[a-simple-imagine]

Welcome to Westworld

Synopsis: Y/N and Natasha visit Westworld where they meet a particular blonde.

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x fem!reader,  elements of Dolores x fem!reader

Words: 4.2k+

A/N - This turned out a little longer than expected and totally self-indulgent. I guess it is a crossover.

"Can you believe we're  actually here?" Excitement oozed from every word that left your lips as you step off the train. It was nothing more than a train station but you couldn't help but admire it. It was almost too perfect, the pristine white and black of every surface; it was elegant. Even the people who occupied the platform were dressed in white.

"Not really," Natasha groaned, pushing you gently forward. "All I got from Tony for my birthday was a card."

"Yeah... well... I'm his favourite."

It was definitely meant as a brag after all this place cost thousands of dollars. A young woman calls out your name as she approaches. She was a traditional kind of pretty, piercing blue eyes with not a blonde hair out of place. Not a blemish on her ivory skin. "Welcome to Westworld."

Natasha was already being lead away by one of the men in white as you follow your guide.

"Given it's your first visit, I have a few questions for you."  She draws your attention back. The woman proceeds to inquire about your medical history; basic questions about previous conditions and your mental health. She takes you up the escalators, and at the top is a giant screen advertising the park. You couldn't wait to get inside.

"So how does this all work?" You wonder, "Is there like an orientation... or tutorial, maybe?"

The other woman smiles ever so softly, it was a gorgeous smile. "No orientation, half the fun is figuring out how it all works. You'll start in the town at the centre of the park; it's relatively safe. Then the further you go out the more intense the experience becomes. how far you go is up to you."

You nod along as she speaks; wondering if Natasha is going through the same line of questioning. "Makes sense."

The woman whose name you have yet to be told leads you into what you assume is a dressing room. Different selections of clothes lined the walls. With glass display cases in the centre. "This will be the first choice you make; everything in here is bespoke and exactly your size so please take your time."

You drift over to a display of dresses. They ranged from simple picnic dresses to eccentric ball gowns. Your fingers dance over the material of each dress before selecting a blue one. It had a high collar to frame the face paired with a flattering "V" cut. long leg-o-mutton sleeves and full skirt with pockets. It was adorned with a delicate red rose pattern. "Found something you like?"

You almost forgot she was here. You shake your head, placing the dress back. Your eyes fall to a display case of pistols that stood centre. "Are those real?" You ask as you walk over.

"Real enough," She responds; the guns were in perfect 3 x 3 lines.

"I thought you couldn't get hurt here," you comment as you look over the following case which held a few shotguns.

"Only the right amount." You look to her, brows furrowed a little before focusing on the suits. You didn't have anything against the dresses but they weren't practical for what you had in mind. A suit on the other hand; you'd look like a traditional cowboy.  You select a black jacket before turning to your little companion.

"Uh... should I get changed in another room or?"

"I can help you or I can step out of you like," you chucked a little until you realised she was serious. The blonde takes a few steps closer, you swallow hard at how close she is. She smells good; sweet. "Whatever, you want."

You're stunned for a moment. "I... can dress myself- thank you though, really."

she smiled tightly before wandering away. "I'll be outside if you need anything."

You opted for a long black jacket with matching slacks that were held up by suspenders. A striped white shirt and a little red scarf to complete the look. You had a gun holster strapped to your hip with a small silver pistol lodged in it. You'd gotten changed a couple of times before finally settling on this look and went to find your guide. "How do I look?"

"Time for the final touch," she leads you to a corridor with hats hug up on the wall. In different colours and sizes. You select a white hat to help break up the black a little; it was more tan than white. An Ivory hat. And thus concluded your introduction to the world, she left you to walk down a long corridor to a brown door. You twisted the nob and walked through to an ensemble of men and women. It was old fashioned, really looked the part. You find Natasha sat at the bar, nursing a whiskey.

"Damn, cowboy," you comment playfully, "Is this seat taken?"

Natasha turns to you, eyes drifting over your outfit as you take in hers. She wore dark brown trousers with a lighter brown vest no shirt underneath which showed off her arms. A brown hat on her head. "I'm surprised you didn't come out in one of those dresses, you're not gonna be too hot in that?"

"I almost did," You shrug a little, glancing around at the men in costumes. "I don't reckon so but I can always take off the jacket."

The bartender poured you a drink you never asked for which you took with a smile, heading over to get a look out the window. There was nothing but darknesses you twisted on your heel to glance back at her. "I wonder what it's like...

The once cramped compartment felt so much freer as light spilled into the cabin. You turn quickly to get the first glimpse of Westworld. The large mountains, canyons, the blue sky. It was all... surreal. This place must be absolutely huge.

Pulling up to the station; you're not even sure how you got on the train. Yes you walked through the door but how did a static door lead to a moving train? You get down off the train almost too scared to step into the unknown. Natasha trailed behind you as you walk into the small town of Sweetwater. It didn't seem all that big but it was busy. Too many things were hitting you at once you weren't sure what part to take in.

"Slow down, dude," you almost stumble into two girls as she calls out to you but you manage to dodge, with each step you feel your confidence grow.

"Come on Natasha," she's a fair few paces behind. "What should we do first- Hurry up,"

You wait for her to catch up before continuing. Glancing at each building as if trying to find something to break the immersive experience but everything seemed like it fit into this world perfectly. You couldn't even tell who were guests and who were the hosts, everything just worked. "What do you wanna do?"

"I don't know, it's your present." A large white building catches your eye. MARIPOSA was written in large black letters across the top of the building, above some decking. Saloon and hotel were written slightly smaller. "I think we should-"

Her voice drifts as you wander over to a poster that was pinned to a post, fluttering gently in the breeze. You flatten it out and a giant smile spreads over your lips as the words WANTED becoming clear as day

"You sure you can handle that?" The voice of reason has returned. Natasha was stood behind you.

"I'm a tough girl," you argue, "I could do it."

"Maybe start smaller, yeah? Stay in town get the lay of the land-"

You're not in the mood for Natasha's sensibility. Maybe you weren't ready to go hunting for outlaws but you could if you wanted to and surely you could find someone around here willing to help out. It's almost second nature to drown out her talking when you don't wanna listen as your attention becomes drawn somewhere else once again. You catch sight of a woman with a tan and black horse. Her light blue dress stood out against the otherwise drab colour scheme. She had beautiful golden hair that absorbed the sun. You don't know what it is but you can't help but watch her for a moment as she tries to shove a bag into the satchel on her horse; a can spilling out and onto the floor. Without a second thought, you're walking towards her, scooping up the can.

"Excuse me miss, I think you dropped this." Her delicate features come into view and you have to take a step back to appreciate. She was beautiful; overly so. Some would even say perfect. Her lips curled up into a gracious smile that brings joy to your face.

"Stop running off on me," Natasha scolds as she walks up behind, placing a hand on your shoulder. "Who's this?"

It takes you a moment to even comprehend that Natasha is talking. "Uhhh... I don't know."

"I'm Dolores," the otherwise annoying southern drawl is charming to the ear. "Thank you for the can,"

"You're Welcome," you tilt your cowboy hat a little, introducing yourself and Natasha. "So are you from around here, Dolores?"

"I am," she nods, smiling brightly. "I live just down the road but I don't think I've ever seen you two before. Suppose you're some of those newcomers, we get a lot of those."

You glance to Natasha who just shrugs. If she lived here that meant she was a host even though she definitely didn't seem like one. And you technically were newcomers just not in the way she's probably thinking. "That we are ma'am. I hate to be a bother but we were wondering if you might now what there is to do for fun around here?"

"It's no bother," she deliberates for a moment, putting the can away on her horse. "I guess it would depend on what you're looking for."

"I guess it would," you chuckle. Half the fun is figuring it out but you had no clue where to start. "Uh... what do you do for fun?"

She looks to you for a moment, paused in thought. "I go to my favourite spot by the river and paint."

"That sounds nice," not what you were expecting her to say but sure. You look to Natasha wondering what she wants to do.

"I think we should secure a place to sleep and eat first, maybe get a drink too."

"Alright," You sigh, logic beats fun here. Secure food and shelter was a very Natasha thing to say. "Would you mind taking us out tomorrow? We could go down to the river- I promise we won't get in the way?"

"I would be delighted." You can't help but feel a little delight at her words. "I'll meet you two back here tomorrow morning then."

"Perfect."

"Do you have horses?" The blonde asks, climbing up and onto hers.

"I'm afraid not we came on the train, know where we can get one?"

"I can bring some if you like?" She offered, her hand patting her horse a couple of times. "Or there is a stable on the edge of town, they should have a few if you got the money."

"We'll buy a few, thanks." May as well get some for the duration of your stay.

"I guess I'll see you two tomorrow then,"

"Bye Dolores," you wave as she rides off. Instantly turning to Natasha with the giddiness of a small child.

"I can't believe we came all the way here and you just wanna sit on the side of a river with some random girl."

"I wanted to go bounty hunting but you said no," you huff. "Besides, it's just one day. I'm pacing myself so where to next?"

"I need a drink but maybe we should get a couple horses first?"

"Okay... let's find the stables,"

It takes a while to find the stables. In the end Natasha had to ask a local who pointed you in the right direction. The stables were a big reddish-brown barn with a paddock to the left. One door was left open so you just wandered on in. It was considerably darker inside, dirty too. Despite the smell, there didn't actually seem to be a horse in sight.

"Howdy, folks. You looking to sell or buy?" An older gentleman startles you from the right. He had a white mustache but lacked hair on top of his head.

"Buy? How much is a horse?"

"Depends on the horse missy." You weren't sure how you felt about being called missy but you let it slide. "I've only got one left, ain't too many selling these days but he's a real beaut."

"Can we afford this?" Natasha asks quietly. The thing with theme parks was that despite the expensive entry fee, nothing seemed to come for free. You could steal a horse but that seemed risky so buying one was the next option.

"I don't know but Tony said to go nuts. I'm taking that as buy the horse."

In the very back stood just that; a horse. Black as the night with patches of white across his back, a crescent of white adorned the top of his head. "He's a big fella but gentle as can be," he reaches over to run his hand across the horse's nose. "I should be getting more in soon but this is the best I got for now. I'll even throw in everything you need to look after him, saddle and all."

"We'll take him," you declare quickly before Natasha can have a chance to say no.

"Great, let me just grab his papers."

You smile to Natasha. "Go pay the man,"

With a roll of her eyes, she wonders after the stable keeper. Staying with the horse, you walk closer; reaching out slowly. The animal was soft to the touch and made your smile brighten. "I think I'll call you moonshine."

Natasha returns a moment later with papers in hand. "He's ours."

"Great... do you know how to ride a horse?" You ask Natasha. The stable guy opens the door to let the horse trot out so he can attach the saddle. You watch him carefully to make sure you remember the process just in case.

"Do you?" You didn't so you shake your head. You'd never thought the skill would come in handy.

"Guess it's time to learn."

"You're all set," The man announces, slapping his hands together.

"Thank you," you take the horse's reigns and begin walking back towards the door. Thankfully the horse follows. "Where to next?"

"Food?" Natasha suggests. "Find a place to sleep.

"Let's hitch the horse and grab some food, I think I saw a restaurant back in town."

"Hitch the horse- listen to you cowboy."

After dinner, you retire to the Sweetwater inn. It was incredibly cheap but money was different back then so it makes sense. The next morning, Natasha is up at the crack of dawn, waking you up at around ten. You have breakfast before finding Dolores at the wayside.

"Morning, you two."

"Good morning, Dolores." You answer with a yawn.

"I see you got yourself a horse,"

"His name is Moonshine," you answer. "They only had one though."

"That's alright. One of you can ride with me."

"I'll ride with you," You weren't giving up the chance to get closer to her. Natasha's brows furrow at your eagerness. "I don't trust Natasha on a horse."

You climb up behind Dolores and it's a little daunting being up so high up. It's instinctive to put your arms around her to make yourself feel safer. Heat rushing to your cheeks as you realise you've just grabbed a woman you hardly know.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" you pull away.

"It's alright, have you ever ridden a horse before?" Dolores quarries.

Your head shakes. "No."

Reaching behind her, she searches for your hands. You take hold of hers and she places them around her. "We'll be okay just hold tight."

Dolores feels warm in your embrace and she smells like fresh linen. It's weird how... normal she felt. You kind of expected her to feel hard and cold but she felt like any other human being. It's like when you put your arms around Natasha who gets annoyed when you don't let go. "I'll go slow at first so you can get used to it."

You nod a little even though she can't see and with a flick of her wrist, the horse starts moving. Your grip tightens around her at the motion but you relax with a heavy sigh. It takes a second but you work up the courage to look at Natasha who seems at home aboard Moonshine; no surprise there.

"You doing okay back there?"

"Mhmm,"

The horse gets faster but it's not as bad this time; you've grown accustomed to the motion. You don't know how long you're up there for but you approach the river with a gentle curiosity. Natasha helps you down form the horse, which doesn't seem as big from the ground. Looking out over the river, it was a beautiful spot of lush green. Natasha walks up beside you as Dolores collects her things from her horse. "She felt real," you hum quietly, not bothering to look at her. "Like I don't know how to explain it... she doesn't feel like a machine."

"Doesn't mean she isn't one," Natasha pats you firmly on the back. "Remember that,"

You watch her walk to the river edge before glancing at Dolores who had set up her axel.

"Whose horses are those?" You ask out loud, pointing to a spot where three horses roamed. They seemed to be enjoying the grass.

"Oh they're wild," Dolores replies. "Do you want to get closer?"

With Dolores leading the way, you approach the three beasts. One was chestnut brown, the other tan and finally the third was a greyish white. The white horse trots closer to the two of you as Dolores offers out her hand.

"Here," she hands you a slice of apple. "Put your hand out real flat."

Doing as instructed, the horse seems cautious but eventually takes the free food leaving a little slobber in its wake.

"Hey Nat, we could have just gotten a couple of these instead of buying one."

"I don't know about you but I don't think we could tame a wild one."

"They're really quite gentle," The host interrupts, stroking the neck of the horse. You're utterly amused by the whole situation. This place was, in terms of technology, so advanced, and yet life was simple. It was the little moments that were so enticing- although you still wanted to go chase criminals at some point.

The day is spent with Dolores. It's joyful and peaceful although you're not sure how much fun Natasha is having. As the sun began to set and Dolores insisted she had to get home, you go your separate ways and head back to Sweetwater with Natasha.

Tonight was Natasha's turn to pick and so you ended up in the Saloon. It was surprisingly full and lively. A man sat at the piano, playing tune after tune. There was a poker game taking place between a group of men. And you were pretty sure there were working girls wondering about offering their... services.

"How do you think they make them so realistic?" You think out loud as you stand at the bar. "Like Dolores was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And there's just no way you could tell she wasn't another human being without knowing beforehand."

"Will you shut up about Dolores," Natasha groaned. "There are plenty of other..."

Her voice trails off and you find a stranger stood just behind you. She was a pretty brunette and sporting a deep blue ruffled and laced corset dress. It looked good on her. A soft hand danced ever so lightly over the skin of your cheek. "You're new," she hums, bringing her fingertips to her lips. "Not much of a rind on you."

You swallow hard under her gaze as she smiles. "I can give you a discount. It's normally five dollars but I can do it for four."

You glance towards Natasha, it had become a habit since entering the park. You wanted to gauge her reaction; figure out what she deemed okay. "Go ahead," The redhead brings a shot glass to her lips, knocking it back. "I don't care if you fuck a robot,"

"She's not-" you cut yourself off, "thank you for the offer ma'am but I'm gonna have to decline. Maybe another time."

"You don't have to be so negative all the time." You growl as you lean down against the bar, signaling for the bartender to refill your glass. "Maybe actually pretend to enjoy this place."

"How am I being negative?"

"The point of this place is to have fun and experience the old west. Live without limits," you try to keep your voice down but not so much it's drowned out by everything else going on in here. "You don't have to keep telling me everything isn't real- I know that. I know the hosts aren't people but they're basically the same so just stop it. Maybe I should have come alone."

You down a shot of whiskey which burns as it drifts down your throat before finding a seat at an empty table. "Look I'm sorry," Natasha takes up the seat opposite you. "I'll try to take this more seriously okay? I don't mean to ruin your experience."

"Would you really not be mad if I fucked that girl?"

"I mean... it's your money to waste. Why? Are you curious."

"Maybe just a little," you chuckle. It was a genuine curiosity if you were being honest. Surely they can't feel real in those moments. "I won't though."

Natasha is relatively happy as you get a couple drinks in her, so the night practically flies by. You even try your hand at a little poker which you're bad at but Natasha seems to be cleaning up.

Day 3 of your Westworld adventure and you're not quite sure what to do. Where to go? Or who to talk to? You stood staring at the wanted poster from the day you walked in. Natasha was in the general store picking up some supplies. Maybe today was the day to do something a little more... exciting. Then you spot her again; Dolores. She brings a smile to your lips as you watch her but it's quick to fade as three men approach her. You can't hear them but you also can't just assume they have bad intentions so you keep an eye on the interaction. Mainly on Dolores in the middle and when she tries to push past and they stop her, you spring into action.

"Fellas, how about you leave my friend here alone."

They all turn to you and you take a step back. Are they hosts or guests? You couldn't tell. "Or what?" A nasally voice assaults your ears. The owner was a short man with thick brown hair. "We can do whatever we want so fuck off."

"I said, leave her alone." You stand your ground, hand lingering on the gun you hadn't had the honour of using just yet. "Now."

The biggest of the lot was a burly man with a thick beard. He definitely seemed like he would win if this ended in a fistfight. He towers over you, grabbing you by the arm but before you can react, Natasha is between you. Pressing the man's arm up against his back. "You so much as look at my girlfriend again and I will break your arm, you understand? Now the lady asked you nicely to leave so I'd listen if I were you."

Natasha releases him and he fixes himself. A triumphant smirk appears on your lips. You may have wanted to test out your gun but maybe Natasha jumping in had been for the best. "Come on boys. It's not worth it."

"Thank you," Dolores looks relieved to see you and it fills you with an undeniable warmth. There was just something about her that you absolutely adored; and it wasn't just the pretty face.

"It was no big deal," You respond casually. "Some guys can be such assholes."

"Still, I'm grateful." You're proud of yourself even if Natasha did the heavy lifting. "I'd love to have you over for dinner tonight to say thank you. I'm sure my daddy would love to have you join us."

"We would love to," Natasha answers for you; you a little surprised actually. This was the first time Natasha seemed interested in Dolores, you kinda thought she hated her. "As long as it's no trouble."

"None at all." Dolores insisted, climbing onto her horse. "Just grab your horse and we can go now. I'll show you the rest of the ranch too."

You walk alongside Natasha to collect moonshine from outside the general store. "I can't believe you nearly got into a fight over a fucking robot."

[chaosincurlss]

In another world, I’m camped at my best friend’s bedside, reminding her of all the ways I’m going to help her heal, of all the ways I am grateful she survived, of all the ways I love her. She wears a sleepy smile that I’ve seen nothing short of a million times, and a hospital gown that does nothing to hide away the deep purple of the harm the world has done to her. One person should never have known so much pain, and she never should have had to be the one reaching to swipe away the tears that cascaded along my cheeks. Of course, she wouldn’t be the girl I’d grown alongside if she wasn’t the one trying to piece me back together, even when she was the one falling apart. That would be the place where I know myself, where I know the person before me, where I’ve memorized the features of the face my eyes can’t leave.

In this world, I’m looking down at a person I’ve been told is my best friend, but the girl in the coffin looks nothing like her. Everyone comments on how she looks as if she’s sleeping, but those are just the lies they need to tell themselves, because the truth is that this corpse looks like nothing more than some mangled version of Elena Gilbert. As if some twisted person had been given a canvas and asked to paint an idea of her, a broken and warped idea of her that no restorative makeup was going to fix. Some depraved creature had been let loose with the idea of Elena Gilbert and they’d left her this distorted thing. Her cheeks sunken from where her bones had been crushed and they hadn’t cared quite enough to conceal it, the line of her hair disrupted by the loss from when she’d been pulled across the gravel, the perfect button shape of her nose that should be scrunched by laughter now forever scuffed by the injuries she would never have the chance to recover from. From the slumber she would never have the chance to awaken from. I don’t know why people say they look like they’re sleeping, now more than ever, I don’t understand why they say it. At best, they look dead. At worst, they look like someone you’ve never met, but are expected to mourn anyway.

In this stranger’s stray strands of chocolate hair, I was expected to find memories of the times we’d spent playing dress up before we had any idea of what the world would be. Of when we would take turns in whichever princess dress happened to be the favorite that week, though the plastic pearl clips were the constant that stayed with us through it all, and I wished I had them now — I wished I could tuck her hair away just as we did when we were nothing but a twirling vision of trouble in tiaras, and I wished for the magic they held for us then, the type of magic that could undo the very worst of days.

When I took this stranger’s icy cold hand in mine, it should have reminded me of the very first time she’d slipped her fingers between my own, when her skin against mine spoke of something more than it ever had before, of the night that had felt like finally coming home. When we’d held our breaths, and let the silence lay heavy in the darkness of a childhood bedroom, words too much of a threat to such a flighty thing, if we’d even had words for what we were at all.

There was a sickening connection that I didn’t care to recognise in the midst of all of this — one I didn’t care to recognise, which meant that it was the only thing my mind could latch itself on to. I wanted no link between this nauseating period in my life, and any kind of happy moment that I’d been lucky enough to share with Elena, but it was there. This sense of blur that only came along with an emotion so intense that the human body didn’t know what to do with it. There was no part in our mind well enough equipped for the way that our feelings can simply overpower every other function we have, so comes the blur. Either end of the spectrum, the body doesn’t care to differentiate, it all hits the nervous system in the same way, the edges of it lost to the intensity of it all.

The moments of undiluted ecstasy. The moments of debilitating grief. A blur.

How we went from friends to more, the stretch of time it took and the ways it wove its way into my days and into the very fabric of my being, much like the days since the accident and the flurry of planning for the wake and the way that it chipped away at the very fabric of my being. A blur.

The moments when our hands ventured further than they ever had before, the way she said my name as if it were a question, as if it was everything to her, the moment they said the word ‘dead’ and there wasn’t an inkling of a question to it, as if they weren’t taking everything from me. A blur.

The way her lips brushed over the sensitive skin of my stomach and demanded that every hair I had stand in salute to her and the ways she could make me feel, the way my screen lit up with her smile every time there was a call to make and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to feel again. A blur.

Promises of forever made through tears as we braved her empty home for the first time since her parents went over the bridge and how I couldn’t leave her side, how I wouldn’t let her drown in her despair and waste what they would have wanted for her, how I stand alone without her arms around me and there’s nothing to keep me from going under. A blur.

As I try to find my memories’ home in this shell of a person I don’t recognise, without the comfort of the warm chestnut hues that housed every up and down of this rollercoaster that we had called us, the want of warmth soon boils over into a burn. A burning rage for the emptiness of it all, for the finality we would never have, for the clarity she would never be able to grant, for the moments that should have come with the time that we always assumed was guaranteed. Each moment ahead became blurred — first by the silent and pure anger that bubbled for a life that would remain unlived, buried six feet under with every possibility that went with it — second by the tears that came alongside the accompanying agony of such a realization.

From my parents, to my teachers, to my friends, to passersby on the street — I had always been this little gust of Chaos, the ever-twirling bundle of blonde curls, whose path you didn’t dare enter. Not without a taste for Chaos, or a strong enough armor to combat it.

And, oh, how the Chaos swirled below the surface, nothing in my path but this future of shattered bones and scattered dreams, and all that I knew was that I needed to reach for something real, and the scrap of this imposter that I’d been given was nothing close to enough. So much was left buried beneath the surface, beyond this face that I didn’t know, there had to be a piece of the girl I loved somewhere below the chunky wool of the turtleneck the undertakers had insisted upon. A freckle that sat just where her shoulder met her neck, perhaps they’d tucked away her mothers necklace to keep it safe, there had to be a piece of her somewhere, something to tie me to this desolation.

So, my fingers curled at the material, and pulled in search of a prayer that any God who watched over this abomination knew wouldn’t be answered. They would sit in their almightiness and laugh at the girl whose heart broke too easily, the girl who filled herself to the brim with more hope than any one person should be able to carry, the girl whose mouth would fall agape as her eyes fell upon the jagged markings that should be the dip of Elena Gilbert’s collar bones, the exact place where sweet kisses would pool in exchange for the sweeter sounds of her laughter. Not only was this not the body of someone I knew, it was barely a body at all, something sewn together and strategically layered with thick clothing to fool those who dared to gather here in this place that had no hope of salvation.

At once, my hand dropped away, and the material sprung back into place, returning back to its post to guard the secrets that lay below. I expected that the horror had found its way out from within, that the discovery couldn’t have gone unnoticed, but when my gaze shot upward — the same busy conversations were carrying on. The same stories being swapped of the loveliness of the girl we had all known, and the tragedy of such an accident, an accident that had somehow lost its details between the asphalt and this room. Silence and I weren’t well acquainted with one another, though my mind swam with the images that were now seared upon my brain, and they were something as unfathomable to me as the fact that I apparently hadn’t made a sound. Then I can feel that edge approaching, the one where the blur takes over, the one where your mind decides that your fragile little self has had too much of the emotion that it has given to you, and floats you out to sea until you can be trusted to be returned to calmer waters. There was no comfort to be found within the confines of the casket, lesser comfort to be found in the walls that surrounded me, and yet I couldn’t help but search — as if she might round the corner at any moment, and this might have been nothing more than the worst corners of my mind grasping at my dreams. Solace was all that I asked, among all of the unknown, just a moment of relief.

In a sea of unfamiliarity, there stood a startling reminder of what unfamiliar truly was, a face in the flood of bodies that swirled in this whirlpool that threatened to pull me under — an expression of complete stillness amid this Chaos, tucked away at the very edges of the crowd, where another may have let him remain nothing but alien. Not me, not the ever dutiful hostess whose role was snapping back into place at the sight of a guest left unwelcomed, one who was also uninvited as far as I was concerned. This skin of someone who planned, who preened, who tended to the details and the finer details of events — it was the familiar ground I’d needed to find my footing once again. It wasn’t the hand I’d wished to hold, it wasn’t the beauty mark I’d sworn to worship for the rest of my days, but it pulled me far enough away from the depths to satisfy the ever watchful guardian within my mind that was determined to protect me from myself. If I never said it aloud, the Gods that spent their days laughing away at my misfortune would know and wonder at the miracle of my gratitude for the rudeness of a man who showed up to a funeral without invitation. For they would know that if it weren’t for that moment, if my eyes hadn’t caught on his, if I wasn’t compelled to leave Elena’s side and ever so politely quiz him on his funeral attending etiquette — the waves would have crashed over me, and I never would have seen shore again.

[midnightactual]

Critical Analysis & Tactics IV (CAT-4): Yoruichi vs. Soifon Part A

How strong is Yoruichi? That’s actually a very involved question. I’ve decided to create a series of articles detailing my thoughts on the matter by looking at military incidents and confrontations involving her. This is the fourth, and you may consult the others at your leisure:

CAT-1: The Hollowfication Incident

CAT-2: The Central 46 Trial Breakout

CAT-3: Yoruichi vs. Byakuya

CAT-5: Yoruichi & Soifon vs. Aizen

CAT-6: Yoruichi vs. Yammy

CAT-7: Yoruichi, Kisuke, & Isshin vs. Aizen

CAT-8: Yoruichi & Co. vs. Yhwach

CAT-9: Yoruichi vs. Askin

I’ve obliquely talked about this fight before (here) as it relates to Yoruichi’s disinclination to use her zanpakutō, but not in great detail. It says quite a lot about their respective powers and abilities, but to an even greater extent it reveals the exact nature of their relationship prior to Yoruichi’s departure from the Seireitei. These are all matters which I feel there are points of confusion and misunderstanding on by others. Given that, I’m going to give my own perspective on all these issues.

Since the is a long post, let me as usual put the basic conclusion here up front: this fight wasn’t particularly serious in terms of physical danger, as Yoruichi was hardly trying and Soifon radically underestimated her abilities. This fight is far more about psychology and mutual understanding of one another.

01. I’ve discussed this in the past (here), yet it bears not just repeating but additional emphasis: Yoruichi is at her absolute weakest ever during the Soul Society arc, as she herself alludes to in chapter 119:

She drops Ichigo like a sack of potatoes despite him being injured and slumps against the wall because she’s so winded, and openly comments on the fact that she’s wildly out of shape. It’s abundantly clear that she isn’t performing at anywhere near her previous or future maximum abilities during this arc.

02. Yoruichi’s attire also bears some scrutiny. Notice how she’s dressed above. She has on her stretchy pants, and we know from earlier scenes with Ichigo in chapter 116 that she’s wearing a turtleneck (plus you can see the sleeves poking out of her jacket). Also notice her footwear. All throughout Ichigo’s bankai training, Yoruichi is wearing shoes with integrated greaves. These appear to be flats based on the shoes she wore as a Taichō (and which Soifon still wears as one) but modified to suit her preferences. By the time she fights Soifon, however, her outfit has notably changed, as seen here in chapter 157:

The turtleneck has been replaced by the keisen shōzoku-inspired top, as she later reveals and which even here is evident from the lack of sleeves. The shoes have also been replaced with boots instead (which are capable of dispensing anken). She has cloth wrapped around her arms, and her shins are wrapped in gaiters. She only wears this variation on her outfit when fighting Soifon. (As seen in CAT-6, when she later fights Yammy, she’s wearing an outfit identical to when she trained Ichigo.)

In reality, gaiters largely exist to protect against scratching, puncture, or friction. The wraps on her arms are similar to puttees, and serve a similar function, while the remainder of her scarf functions like a neck gaiter. One might ask why she’d discard hard greaves for soft gaiters, and the answer is that their protective power is actually likely superior.

As noted in CAT-3, in chapter 117, Yoruichi completely halted Byakuya’s release of Senbonzakura using a cloth ribbon, and as noted in CAT-5, in chapter 177, did similar to Aizen. I would suggest that that cloth ribbon is special, and that her arm wraps, gaiters, and neck gaiter are made of the same material. I would also suggest so is her hair wrap, given it repeatedly survives Shunkō, to include her Raiju Senkei form where electrical Kidō is literally running through her hair. What this cloth material is and what its exact properties are remains unknown, but it seems incredibly durable. (Given it appears to be a tan color, it might not be related to the Ginpaku Kazahana no Uzuginu of Byakuya’s scarf, but it could be the same material but processed or treated differently, possibly explaining the immense value of that scarf beyond mere rarity.)

This assertion is supported by the fact that during the actual fight, in chapter 157, Yoruichi both takes and deals several blows to areas protected by these garments, suggesting they were made specifically for fighting with Hakuda:

A question becomes apparent at this point, which is: where did Yoruichi get this stuff? More than likely from the storage depot above the study chamber, which is likely where she also got the first outfit she used for this mission (since she obviously didn’t bring it with her to Soul Society given she came as a cat). In other words, I think it’s very clear that Yoruichi specifically equipped herself to fight against Soifon, knowing she would likely be dealing with Hakuda and might have to use Shunkō and dressing to compensate for her own weakness.

03. Yoruichi and Soifon’s reunion is very telling regarding how truly familiar they are with one another. Here’s how it starts:

I want you to pay attention to how close Yoruichi is before Soifon notices her approach. Part of this is due to Yoruichi’s speed, but remember: she’s not flash stepping at anywhere near her optimum, and would be conserving her energy heading into battle. Part of this is due to Yoruichi’s stealth, but remember: Yoruichi felt Renji’s ambient reiatsu approaching even at a notable distance through solid matter. Soifon doesn’t notice Yoruichi until the very instant before she’s tackled off of Kiyone. (The closing-in panel at top-left suggests the bottom panel is indeed Yoruichi’s own perspective, as she hits Soifon in the very next panel.)

But I want to make a point regarding reiatsu detection before proceeding: Shinigami who are very familiar with each other will naturally detect one another’s reiatsu at distances at which other, more powerful Shinigami won’t. An example of this is Rukia detecting Ichigo’s approach before Byakuya does in chapter 581, presumably due to the nature of Ichigo and Rukia’s bond:

And another example is Yoruichi and Yūshirō detecting one another at a great distance in the Soul King’s Palace in chapter 628, while not noting anyone else on either end, presumably because they’re related:

In other words, people with strong bonds should have a distinct advantage in identifying one another even if one part is moving quickly or attempting to conceal themselves. This suggests that Yoruichi and Soifon do not actually share such a bond, a point which will repeatedly be made over the course of their fight, but especially two pages later back in chapter 153:

Stop and think about their situation. Soifon can see the eyes and skin color of Yoruichi at this range, and likely also feel her reiatsu... and she still doesn’t recognize her. How many dark-skinned, gold-eyed people are there in the Seireitei who wear orange jackets and move quickly and stealthily? It’s worse than the translation here lets on, by the way:

The original Japanese here at the bottom-left is, “何者だ貴様!!” which translates to Romaji as “Nanimonoda kisama!!” Yes, that kisama. The literal translation would be something like, “Who are you, you bastard!!” I think Soifon calling Yoruichi “kisama” is all the proof you need to firmly establish she has no idea who this is, and doesn’t recognize it as Yoruichi until she hears her voice. I also think that reaction panel firmly dispels any idea that Soifon is acting and doing this just to insult Yoruichi, because this is a face of shock:

It’s very obvious that Soifon is surprised by the fact that she’s seeing Yoruichi again, despite all those visual indicators, which is... strange, and perhaps suggests something about Soifon’s powers of observation. Regardless, this can be taken in contrast with the next page, and Yoruichi’s reveal:

Which is surprisingly playful. Yoruichi isn’t stressed at all here, and remains fairly upbeat and comparatively unperturbed for the first section of the fight until Soifon tears the (breakaway?) sleeves off of her uniform. It’s pretty clear that Yoruichi doesn’t go into this fight expecting a hard slog, even if she took precautions with her outfit. Indeed, I would say she expected it to be merely a performance review.

The point remains: Soifon didn’t identify Yoruichi until well after they’d made contact, and past the point when it should’ve been obvious who was accosting her.

04. Starting in chapter 154, we’re treated to repeated scenes presenting Yoruichi and Soifon as equals:

This first panel makes it very clear visually, and that sets the tone for what follows.

It’s also echoed in the way that they trash-talk each other.

And also reflected in the visual framing of their exchanges; these panels are clearly designed to kind of ‘reflect’ one another. Take notice here of Soifon’s further trash-talking: she’s asserting that she was a better warrior than Yoruichi even when Yoruichi was her Taichō! How’s that for confidence? And it should tell you a lot about how Soifon looks back upon Yoruichi’s tenure, which we’ll get into later.

This apparent equity is also reflected in them trading hits. Yoruichi’s injury seems more grievous, given she’s coughing up blood, but Soifon doesn’t seem to regard it as a more notable injury than she herself suffered, nor does it actually impact Yoruichi’s performance any more than Soifon’s does her. (Nor will Soifon’s strikes with Suzumebachi seemingly do anything to slow Yoruichi down as the fight goes on.)

This sense of equity will persist right up until after Soifon reveals her shikai and starts to speed up, at which point she will reveal that she’s been “going easy” on Yoruichi and that (in her mind) they’re not equals.

I think it’s because of this rather thorough visual symbolism (and Yoruichi’s reactions of surprise as Soifon’s performance) that many people walk away with the impression that Soifon and Yoruichi are equal in performance, not just in this fight and this arc, but throughout Bleach. We already know, however, from (01), that that simply isn’t true: Soifon here at her maximum output can only just rival Yoruichi at her weakest.

This is emphasized by the fact that Soifon will go on to fail to score two consecutive hits with Suzumebachi on Yoruichi, and by the fact that we know (from her escape from Byakuya with Ichigo) that Yoruichi isn’t going all out with her flash steps here either. This is not only Yoruichi at her weakest, this is also Yoruichi fighting in a very conservative fashion. And Soifon still can’t take her out despite earnestly trying.

05. The motivations of both parties are rather plainly established. Soifon’s motivations are revealed by the panels above with her, “Which of us... is the better warrior?!” and, “Now do you see? I’m better than you!” remarks. This further emphasized by a panel in chapter 158:

Soifon is obsessed with proving she’s better than Yoruichi, and rubbing Yoruichi’s face in the fact.

Yoruichi, meanwhile, rather obviously turned up to see where Soifon was at in terms of her progression, as chapter 154 alludes to:

Yoruichi is there to see whether Soifon has filled her proverbial shoes. This shouldn’t be surprising as we know from Soifon’s flashbacks in chapter 159 that:

Yoruichi added Soifon to her bodyguard unit in the first place because she “[admired her] skills” and was “expecting great things from [her].”

In other words, Yoruichi showed up to see how Soifon had been getting on in terms of her skills for all this time, and seemed to largely expect a fairly casual encounter (although she was prepared for it to escalate). She wasn’t anticipating Soifon’s mindset and drive to actually try and kill her. Soifon, meanwhile, is resolute in her determination to punish Yoruichi for what she regards as having been abandoned.

Click here for Part B!

[erekiosuncreativeideas]

The Part-Time Puppeteer - Chapter 01

Summary :

Based on @fedoraspooky​‘s Puppet AU.

Lukas is a student in need of money. He manages to find a job in a famous television studio as a stagehand. However, his situation changes greatly when the directors give him one of the main roles of a new TV show for children. Lukas has to fit into this new and unknown world, meeting all the other actors, all while dealing with his student life. What could possibly go wrong?

Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/23828971/chapters/57259018

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New fanfiction on A Hat In Time ! I hope you're all well and safe in this very hard period.

I had started this fanfiction for a while and I figured that posting it might help to make me write more. I work a lot with motivation/encouragement, so posting it might be one of the best ways to motivate myself.Anyway, I hope you'll like this story! :D

Don't hesitate to leave me a comment/like/reblog if you do, it'll help me a lot!

Happy reading !

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Chapter 1 - “What the absolute fuck?”

Lukas Pryce had seen many strange things in his short life, especially as a college student: people doing incredibly stupid stuff during parties (not that he went to a lot of them), students watching porn in the lecture halls, wandering drunk students in the middle of the night… But this right there? This was way weirder than anything he had ever seen before.

“What the absolute fuck?” thought he young student, as he tried to take in the sight in front of him.

He was standing up in an entrance hall of a famous movie studio, the Dead Bird Movie Studio. To be honest, Lukas never really understood where the name came from and never really thought much about it until more recent events. All he used to know was that they made a lot of stuff, from movies to TV shows, and even musicals! It was strange to think that a single studio could manage such different genres and still doing a good job with them. The student never thought he would ever step in a place like this, but his life had recently taken a route very different than what he expected.

Several persons were running in front of him, most of them carrying fire extinguishers. A fire had apparently started in the middle of a shooting and smoke could be seen through the doors leading to the filming stage. No one was noticing him, as they were all preoccupied with the current situation, and Lukas almost thought about leaving. But he couldn’t, as much as he wanted to.

Being a college student, especially a law student, was hard. In a system where students were in debt and had to pay a lot of things, Lukas couldn’t afford to lose one of the only job opportunities he could get in his two years spent at the university. While he did have nice parents who helped him to fund his studies, he didn’t like the idea of depending too much on them, especially on studies which were quite expensive.

So, yeah, he needed the money too much to consider leaving.

Lukas tried to get closer to the people, hoping to stop someone long enough to know if he should wait and come back later. Well, it did seem like the most reasonable solution, yes, but he had lost too many job positions because of his hesitation. Maybe he would look like a complete idiot, but if it meant he would get this job, then, he didn’t care!

-“Hum, excuse me?” he asked, as he managed to grab a someone’s arm, stopping them from doing whatever people did in case of fire emergencies. It was a blond man in his forties, and he was very much angry from the sudden interruption.

-“What are you doing? Let go of me, there’s a fire in there!”

Lukas tried to get more of him, but the man pulled his arm from the student’s hand, who didn’t really know what to do with himself. It was a bad time to go to this job interview, after all.

“Maybe I should just leave and go back later?” he thought quickly, turning away from the reception desk. He could call the studio later to reschedule the interview. Sure, Lukas never liked phone calls in the first place, but hey, what can you do against a fire emergency? It was better to leave this place, call back later and have another chance next week. Or at least, he hoped so.

However, before he could push the exit door, two voices interrupted him. While most of his surroundings were loud and full of agitation, these voices were even louder, cutting short all of Lukas’s inner monologue. The young student stopped in his tracks and threw a glance behind him, more than curious about what was happening on the other side of the room.

Two figures entered the room, apparently arguing with each other in the most intense way. One was a tall and sturdy black man, while the other was an older and smaller blond man. The former was wearing a set of very excentric clothing, while the latter was wearing a black costume, as well as a black cap on his head, which was hiding his eyes underneath. Both made big gestures with their arms, as they bickered. Something about them felt really familiar to Lukas who, for a brief moment, didn’t understand why. It was only when he heard their voices through the general brouhaha that he remembered: they were the famous directors of the Dead Bird Movie studio!

-“Was it really necessary to have that many sparks in the last scene?!” asked the sturdy man -DJ Grooves-, pointing the smoke coming into the room with both hands.

-“Of course it was!” replied the older one, much louder, stomping his foot on the ground. This was the Conductor. It wasn’t his real name but the old director never accepted to tell his real name to the media. He was mostly known as “The Conductor” and all of his movies were signed this way. Well, so were DJ Grooves’s, but the latter’s real name usually appeared somewhere in the credits.

They had recently started to work together on several projects and, while those became extremely famous blockbusters, it was said the two directors had problems working together in the past. It had seemed to improve through the years, but Lukas remembered reading an article somewhere, dealing with the direction problem on their latest movie at the time. While they were both very competent, they also had very different ideas and visions about movie-making, which made the filming quite difficult sometimes.

The argument kept going despite the agitation around them. In fact, most of the people in the room were avoiding them, by distancing themselves as much as possible from the duo, passing from one side to the room to the others by doing a detour in order not to be noticed.

-“It was? Darling, everything caught fire! I know you like action, but this was way too much!”

-“Pfff, as if you knew the basics of action movies! I know what action scenes need! Mind your own part of the movie, the music!” he said, putting a strong and ironical emphasis on the last word, as if he was mocking it. Which, in retrospect, was probably the case.

-“Excuse me? Conductor, darling, we talked about this: music is as important as action! A movie without any good music is worthless, just as it is without good and measured action!”

The bickering continued for a while and Lukas couldn’t help but stare at the two directors. They didn’t seem to hate each other as much as they did in the past, at least from what he had seen on TV, but it was quite impressive nonetheless. They both had strong personalities and those didn’t mix well together.

Lukas didn’t know what to do. He instinctively opened his shoulder back to take the job poster out of it. It was about a stagehand position, which didn’t need a lot of experience. It demanded to know how to fix set materials and to know how to sew -which he did-, nothing hard, really. What matters was the pay at the end of the month, pay he very much needed for his studies.

He hesitated a moment: should he step in? Most of the people here seemed to avoid them as much as possible, maybe there was a reason for that? However, if he didn’t do anything, he would get back home without any more job than before. What if someone showed up not long after he left and got the job? He didn’t want to take the risk.

Lukas needed that money.

The student took a deep breath and walked towards the two bickering directors, feeling his heart sink in his chest. Not only was he approaching celebrities, but he was also going to interrupt them to ask for a job! In a way, this was an extremely bold move, which contrasted tremendously from his usual behaviour. In any other situation, he would have chosen to leave, not to bother them, try later… But he wanted this job and he was ready to step out of his comfort zone to get it!

He finally arrived next to the two men, who absolutely didn’t notice him in the least, continuing their previous argument about the (un)necessity of using such or such pyrotechnic. Lukas felt eyes land on him: some workers seemed to notice his intent of interrupting the two directors and silently shook their head in his direction, telling him to give up, that he would end up regretting doing it eventually.

But the student didn’t listen. Instead, he cleared his throat, first once, then twice, this time a bit louder. The two directors immediately stopped talking and turned in his direction, surprised by the sudden interruption.

-“Hum… Excuse me, I- I saw that you were looking for a stagehand and I‌ came for the interview,” he started, unsure. Lukas wasn’t afraid to approach people, usually. But this wasn’t a usual situation: he was facing two famous movie directors! And interrupting them in an argument during a fire emergency!

… Suddenly, the whole thing didn’t seem like a good idea anymore.

The two men were now staring at him, probably not knowing how to answer. Lukas felt very nervous, being stared at that way. He felt like they were examining him from top to bottom, as if he was just an object.

All of a sudden, the Conductor let out a huge sigh and, still very much angry, quickly grabbed one of the fire extinguishers from someone’s hand. He then pushed it violently in the student’s arms:

-“You know what, fine, you’re hired!” said the old director curtly, before turning away to leave like a sulking child: “Go put out the fires with the others!”

Lukas remained unmoving, too shocked to react right away. Next to him, DJ Grooves let out a tired sigh, maybe because he was used to that kind of things. When the Conductor noticed Lukas’s non-reaction, he stomped his foot once again and pointed to the room from which came the smoke :

-“Now!”

Lukas jumped at the harsh order and turned to the stage room as fast as he could, extremely confused by what had just happened. Did he just… Get the job? That easily? There had to be a catch somewhere!

But here he was, passing through the door, only to find something on fire in the middle of the stage, surrounded by several people trying to put the fire out. Without thinking much, the student ran to meet them, almost falling down because of the weight of the fire extinguishers. No one seemed to notice him as they were all focused on the danger in front of them.

Lukas then joined their effort, disabling the safety lock on the device before spraying the fire.

Surely, this was just an exception… The working conditions weren’t going to be any weirder, were they? Lukas felt doubt growing in him, as the flames became weaker and weaker as seconds passed.

What did he get himself into?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

End of the first chapter ! I hope you enjoyed it ! :D

Chapter two is still a WIP at the moment, but that might change in the near future! My other fanfiction, Reliving An Old Nightmare, is my current priority, but I might continue this one if I'm in need of change! 

Thank you for reading !

Chapter 2 =>

[srhlsx]

CHAPTER 20

master | ch. 19 | ch. 21

That morning, you were nervous. You had made a point to go to school early to fit in some solo practice since you knew group practice would be grueling this afternoon. You tried to convince yourself that you weren’t going to school early to avoid interacting with Iwaizumi on the walk to school, in the hallways, or at your locker. That’d be silly. But...

You hadn’t gotten over what you had confessed to him. You had decided for once in your life you were not going to hold back your feelings and in a moment of post coital bliss you spoke them into the universe. You were sure of the building feelings, having thought you were in love before but realizing how different it could actually be when the person was good. You just wished… that you hadn’t done it.

You were sitting in your seat for the first class of the day when Iwaizumi sat down in his chair behind you harshly, making his desk hit the back of your chair. The jolt surprised you and made you jump since you had been so immersed in your textbook and checking your homework that you hadn’t even noticed him walking in.

“Where were you?” He asked. Iwaizumi didn’t lean in to talk to you, opting instead for a normal volume of voice as he unpacked his materials.

You paused but didn’t turn around to face him when you answered. “Wanted to get some practice in,” You said to your textbook. You heard him pause behind you, obviously noticing the way you wouldn’t look at him.

“You’re avoiding me.” He stated, voice having lowered to barely a whisper.

It made you tense and pause what you were doing, your eyes only focusing on one single word printed on the book in front of you - chloroplast, chloroplast, chloroplast - “I um, really need to finish this up before class starts.” You shook your head and mumbled the response to him, definitively ending the conversation.

Iwaizumi didn’t try to push it any more. He stared at the back of your head for a few moments longer until the teacher at the front of the room demanded everyone’s attention. Bristling slightly, Iwaizumi chewed at his cheek in thought until he tasted blood. With you sitting in front of him, there was no way he was going to focus on class anyways so he let his mind wander to thoughts about what could be going on with you.

You couldn’t breathe properly. You were so focused on making sure that your focus was on the teacher and not the boy sitting behind you that you had forgotten the most basic of human needs - air. You sucked in a deep breath, hoping the air filling up your lungs would help alleviate the pain in your heart, and let it out in a heavy sigh - catching the attention of your instructor and the rest of the class.

“Something the matter, Miss (Y/n)?” Your teacher turned around partially from where they had been writing on the board, looking at you over their glasses.

“Uh, no ma’am.” You stuttered, embarrassed and looking back down at your notes. “Sorry.”

The older woman turned back to her lecture and the attention turned away from you, but your breathing wasn’t back to normal. You began to transition to your next subject, clearing your desk of previous materials and making room for what was needed now. You felt a light tap on your arm and looked down to see a hand holding a hard candy out to you. You looked at the hand skeptically, knowing it belonged to Iwaizumi.

“Here,” He mumbled, nudging the candy at you again. “I know you like the distraction when you’re stressed, so just take it.”

You snatched the candy out of his hand without a word and unwrapped it, quickly popping it into your mouth. The artificial flavor you immediately recognized as your favorite and the fiddling with the hard candy in your mouth was a welcome distraction, you actually felt yourself relax just a tiny bit. You were still uncomfortable and your chest still ached very deep down inside, but you felt like you could breathe again and that was an improvement.

“Thank you,” You mumbled around the candy, still not turning around and focusing on the new lesson instead.

- - - - -

When the bell for lunch rang, Iwaizumi was hopeful that this weird slump you were in had passed and that you’d turn around and ask him what his lunch plans were, like you always did. That didn’t happen. Instead, you bolted up in your seat, grabbing your packed lunch that had been sitting at your feet, and swiftly exited the room before he even got a chance to say anything.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, a slightly befuddled look on his face, until Oikawa came looking for him. “Iwa~” He greeted, sitting down in your chair. “Where is-”

“Something’s up,” Iwaizumi interrupted. “With (y/n), she won’t even look at me.”

Oikawa narrowed his eyes at his friend in thought, having no idea what had happened between parting ways with Iwaizumi days earlier and this moment. “I’ll go look for her,” He said, getting up and leaving his friend to sit alone.

Something told Oikawa to go to the dance studio. He’d been a few times, meeting you there after practices to try and sneak a few glances into your club life. What he found this time was a little more of a sad sight than he was actually expecting. You sat in the middle of the studio floor with your lunch in front of you, lights off, alone. You saw him reflected in the many mirrors that were on the walls so it wasn’t a surprise when he spoke up.

“I thought I’d find you here,” He came strutting into the space and took a seat next to you, picking up a piece of your lunch and popping it in his mouth.

You smiled sadly at your food, not looking up at Oikawa as you spoke. “Yeah, I just kind of… needed a different setting.”

“Something bothering you?” He pushed.

“Well, I do have to break up with my boyfriend soon.” You attempted to joke, finally looking up at his concerned face. 

“About that,” He started, trailing off and turning to mess with the food in your lunch. “What do you say we keep going?” He looked up at your confused face before continuing. “Well, it’d be a little suspicious and heartless if you dumped me right after such a devastating loss.”

“I am the ice queen though,” You mumbled with a sarcastic tone into your sandwich before taking a bite. “Wouldn’t be too off brand.”

“You know that nickname is bullshit,” He said, his tone strict when he saw the unconvinced look you shot at him. “But I was also hoping because I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do after graduation, and if we ‘break up’ now, they’re going to be all over me (y/n), more than before.”

You mulled over the proposition as you chewed on your food. You had gotten this far already, what were a few more weeks or months at this point in the whole ordeal. You looked at him, his chocolate eyes pleading you to agree, and you nodded your head. “Yeah,” You said after swallowing. “Yeah, let’s keep it going.”

He let out a sigh of relief and did his best to tackle you in a hug from where you were both sitting. It knocked you over and you let out what felt like your first genuine laugh in days. “Get off me you freak,” You laughed, shoving him off. He rolled over and laid down next to you.

“I really appreciate it, (y/n).” He said to the ceiling, resting his hands behind his head. “Especially with everything with Iwa, I’m grateful you guys are my friends.”

You completely froze. Your eyes were wide and unblinking as you too stared at the ceiling, not daring to move or even take a breath. He knew. He knew and he was okay with it? 

“It’s fine, (y/n)~” He laughed, one of his genuine laughs. “I figured it out a little while back, Iwa kind of confirmed it the other night. I’m happy for you guys, for real. Two of my favorite people.”

The tension still hung in the air but it wasn’t as bad as it had been a moment before. You felt the blush fade away from your face and an unknown weight lift from your chest and shoulders. This heavy secret you’d been carrying around was now known to the one person you’d been most worried about finding out. It wasn’t ideal, you were sure that Oikawa would’ve felt betrayed but you felt confident that he was honest when he said it was fine and he was happy - Oikawa Tooru was many things, but he was not a liar.

“I told him I was in love with him.” You whispered, breaking up the silence that had built between you for a few minutes. You scrunched up your eyes tightly in hopes that the burning tears would just go away when you thought of what had happened between you and Iwaizumi. “He didn’t… say anything.”

“Iwa has never been good with feelings,” Oikawa said quietly. He turned his head to face you, the feeling of him playing with a loose piece of your hair made you turn to look at him as well. He studied the strands intently, a soft smile on his face before his eyes turned to yours. “Do you ever think it could’ve been us, (y/n)? For real?”

Your heart broke in that moment. He didn’t look sad but was genuinely asking the question and looking for an answer.

Maybe. 

If you had stopped yourself that night after the party, things wouldn’t have gone where they did. If you hadn’t shared those lingering glances, searching for each other when you knew you shouldn’t be. If you hadn’t cried to him and had him hold you when you needed it most. Maybe things would’ve been different and instead of falling in love with his best friend, you might’ve fallen in love with the boy you were fake dating. But that’s not what happened, and you couldn’t change things now.

“I don’t know, Tooru.”

TAGS: @iihxneybunz75​ @bambisfuneral​ @svtbitch​ @gayverlinq​ @bubbleteaa​ @keekee-732​ @oikawannabeyourbabie​

[farelian]

Galactic Quarrels: Contact

First of all i want to mention that the flag shown in the first post of this series is not mine, and originated from the original story of Templin Institute with their series Stellaris Invicta. I recommend you to watch it, the worldbuilding and storytelling is glorious and amazing.

The flag's design will soon be changed to something original made by me, for now use it as a reference, thank you

~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the launch of the first human intergalactic spacecraft in the year 2125, humanity cheered with the success of the Hyperdrive and the mass-production of ships fitted with the faster than light technology is already underway. transport, cargo, tourism, and military ships are retrofitted with the Hyperdrive and the biggest shift in human society happened. Trips to planets and mining sectors in the solar system that previously would take months to complete now can be achieved in seconds.

Food and resource shortages on Mars and the lack of rare minerals on Earth are no longer a problem due to the fast delivery time made possible by the Hyperdrive, and shipyards that are building UTF warships that have undergone so many delays with the lack of spare parts, components, and electronics will be completing the next Terran Battlegroup in the coming months.

The hyperdrive is a massive success, not only by bringing Humanity to other distant solar systems but also easing transit costs between planets, and also stopped the ever-growing problem of shortages due to miscalculated arrival dates or the depletion resource reserves.

With these problems reduced to ash, the UTF’s economy is now growing at a fast rate and it’s people living in conditions near to a utopia. But living under these conditions came at a cost, resources and commercial goods do not simply come out from thin air, so the civilian population is put to work in mines, factories, plantations, and other hard-working environments to meet the ever-increasing need of commercial goods and demands.

The term hard-working is greatly exaggerated, these workers still living in good conditions, enough food and water and shelter, and treated equally like any other.

In some cases, people are forcibly resettled from their homes either on Earth, Luna, or Mars, to work on mining ships that are headed for the asteroid belt to gather resources and minerals. Unmanned automated mining drones are the ones used to collect minerals, but human labor must be done to reach the deeper resources inside an asteroid, and achieve maximum efficiency. The families of the resettlement victims are horrified, but the UTF assured them that their husbands or children will come back home safely after their three-month working period.

Some see these resettlements as a good solution to unemployment and/or laziness in the population. But others see it as another form of forced labor imposed on the population, and with the secretive nature of the resettlement, fear spreads of whether who is going to be taken next against their will. But the paranoia soon subsided as the first batch of workers resettled three months ago returned to their homes and family, and tell the story of good living conditions and their safety was guaranteed. The UTF wished that the problem ended right there, but skeptics among the population doubted the words of the workers.

Theories of the UTF forcing the workers to say that to their families and passings is to protect the government from the possible civil outcry that could happen or the brainwashing of these workers to become loyal laborers. Through the screens and holographic projections across human cities, the UTF reassured the populace that these rumors are false, and the workers are treated equally and humanely with no brainwashing or the beating of freedom of speech.

The statement appeared to have calmed the populace for now, just in time for the newly built Terran battlegroup of two battleships, four cruisers, and eleven frigates, with five destroyers coming out of the production line in the coming days. The UTF military power is growing at a rapid pace with the invention of the hyperdrive.

On the frontier, UTF exploratory vessels are exploring solar systems near Sol, with Sirius and Alpha Centauri being absorbed into the UTFs borders by the construction of a frontier outpost in the star systems, and the most shocking of all, a planet lush and vibrant with plants and alien wildlife the size of Earth in Sirius. Sustainable calm oceans, and no tectonic plates with similar rotation time, it makes the perfect natural home for humans. Devoid of earthquakes made by shifts in the tectonic plates, meaning buildings doesn’t need a strong foundation to withstand earthquakes, meaning less material needed for construction of a colony.

And in 2132, in the colonization of Sirius 3, now known as New Haven, the discovery of another habitable planet in the Trappist System, the majority of the planet’s surface is water but stable landmasses. Seeing how common habitable planets are in their part of the galaxy, the UTF launched a colonization campaign where people are encouraged to volunteer as colonists for the colonization of another world to be added into the UTF. The campaign was a success with over one million volunteers signing up in the first month. Equally distributed to New Haven and Trappist 4, now renamed to Spes, the UTF now have five celestial bodies under its rule in seven years.

With many systems being absorbed into its borders, and many more planets being colonized, the UTF is growing, its economy growing faster and faster with a seemingly endless source of materials and millions of factories under its belt, more ships are built, shipyards and stations are completed, more Unions under its banner and development never ceased.  Determined and patriotic citizens work hard, their minds filled with years of propaganda and luxurious living lifestyle with security in mind, with many more job opportunities to come, everything is stable. And inventions after inventions made things even better, the creation of the Antimatter Reactor brought even more power into ships, being able to be fitted with more systems and components. Battleships became increasingly larger with bigger weaponry, army equipment reached new heights with the introduction of a Nerve-Cancelling drug and Combat suits offering better protection, while Mech Suits offering more firepower into the battlefield.

Tanks increased in weaponry while becoming more elegant and heavily armored. It’s also worth mentioning that all of these mining stations, starbases and outposts are state-owned assets. No civilian or private corporation is to ever build mining outposts, research stations, or trade centers in space. But that doesn’t stop the economic growth of all Unions under the UTF, and if not working for the government, the population worked for these corporations adding a line of employment into human society.

Violence and crime is still an aspect of everyday life, it's impossible to fully eradicate crime without being a hive mind. Police forces are given more and more advanced equipment each month, unmanned combat and scanning drones, full-faced helmets and exoskeletons for riot police, shock batons, expandable riot shield and so much more. All of this is an effort to reduce crime in the Unions, although successful, criminal minds will find a way around some of the measures taken to prevent their operations, a large crime organization has never been truly formed in the UTF.

Not like previous expectations of the future, instead of white, open and wide green fields, UTF cities and Unions are tightly packed with towering thin skyscrapers, and a black but non-figuratively toxic atmosphere of factories working around the clock. These specifications are only seen in industrial heavy cities though, with other cities like Al-Jabari in the new green Sahara shows great leisure opportunities and wide living spaces, the perfect vacation spot.

~~~~~~~~~

The year is 2136, the year where everything changed. UTF Battlegroup 7 is out on its patrol on the Northern outer rim of UTF territory where future constructions have been planned, it's smooth sailing until their sensors detected a strange unknown object in the next solar system previous scans have never picked up. It’s small and giving off a signal, like a beacon.

The Commander of the Battlegroup split their fleet and sent one cruiser with three destroyers and seven frigate escorts to investigate the object on the neighboring system. While the Interception Flotilla is on their way to investigate, the rest of Battlegroup 7 went back to their designated patrol route.

The Captain on the cruiser and its escorts went to the edge of the system and initiated a jump over to the next system, nicknamed “The Rodina” By many with no particular reason, when asked they replied with “It just sounds cool” The fleet jumped into the Rodina system only to arrive right on top of the object, it’s smaller than expected... there are lights on it... and thrusters.

The Captain spilled his coffee after realizing what it is, an alien spacecraft, and they just jumped on top of it and probably startled the crew with the size of the cruiser. UTF Captains or Commanders don’t receive first-contact training, no one does. The Marshals doesn’t see it as necessary due to the speculation that this early into the space age Humanity won’t be meeting any aliens

With no training on how to handle sudden first-contact situations, the crew is confused about what to do. The Captain does what’s logical and ordered comms to hail the alien vessel. The vessel itself is strange in design, harboring the color blue with a sleek design and curves around its thrusters, it looked similar to a squid.

Comms attempts on hailing the spacecraft succeeded, but what came through is unintelligible garbling, chirping, and hisses that terrified the entire crew, it sounds horrifying. The captain immediately ordered the Linguist masters on the ship and the ship’s AI to translate the words being spoken, silence fell across the bridge as the Linguists and the AI worked to translate the language.

Many of the crew feared a hostile confrontation, and many feared being fired upon. The Captain yelled into the comms, on the line with the other human ships to not open fire in a panic. The linguists and AI succeded on translating the Alien language, although it's only a rough translation, it's enough. The language is then uploaded into the crew’s microchips.

The message conveyed through the transmission will change humanity, forever.

“By order of the Galactic Assembly identify yourself!”

[cruelangelstheses]

with quiet courage

fandom: coraline rating: G characters: coraline, wybie words: 2.1k additional tags: canon compliant, post-canon, fluff, angst, mental health issues, character study description: years later, wybie gives coraline a gift. a/n: hi, this was written for the @ethereal-zine! i just thought it would be interesting to explore the long-term effects that the whole ordeal with the other world could have on coraline’s mental health. title from “with quiet courage” by larry daehn

read it on ao3

—

Something feels...wrong.

She can’t explain it, can’t even fully comprehend it herself, but the house feels different tonight, like it’s just waiting for the right moment to pounce. Every creak sends chills down her spine. This isn’t right.

Coraline glances out the kitchen window at their garden, but finds that she can’t really see it, despite the fact that the moon is close to full, last time she checked. She raises her gaze to the sky, squinting in confusion, and her heart nearly stops at what she sees: a shadow passing over the moon in the shape of a button, holes and all.

Gasping, Coraline pushes herself away from the window, every inch of her suddenly on high alert. That’s when she hears it: a familiar metallic skittering across the floor, a sound she knows all too well.

She bolts out of the kitchen and up the stairs, leaping into her bedroom and slamming the door shut behind her. Her blood rushes in her ears.

It only gives her a few moments’ reprieve before she hears the skittering again, even closer and louder than before. Coraline backs away from the door, frantically searching her room for anything she could use as a weapon. She digs underneath her pillow for the pocketknife she bought in secret a year or two ago, but inexplicably, it’s nowhere to be found. Her heart nearly stops when she sees the hand crawl in from underneath.

The hand is severed at first, but from its wrist seems to grow an arm, a torso, another arm, all made out of needles. Coraline steels herself as the Beldam materializes before her eyes.

“You are my daughter,” she hisses, as something else appears in one of her hands. “You’re going to stay with me forever.”

In one hand, she holds another needle, already threaded. In the other is a gift box, and inside it sits a pair of black buttons.

“Hold still,” the Beldam continues. Coraline tries to move, to fight, to do anything, but her whole body is suddenly frozen. “This will only hurt a bit.” She takes a step forward, needle pointing at Coraline’s face, and then—

Coraline jolts awake and sits up rapidly, trying to catch her breath. The morning light streams through her bedroom window, a reminder of where she is: not the Other World, but the real one. Reaching under her pillow, she feels for her pocketknife. She is seventeen now, but still the events of her childhood plague her dreams.

She still has her stuffed animals. Most of the time, they sit on her shelf, watching over her like guardian angels, ensuring that danger doesn’t even make it through the doorway. Sometimes, though, on nights where the house creaks more than usual, on nights where Coraline swears she can feel a sinister gaze burning into her back, she grabs a few of them and sleeps with them in her bed, holding them tight against her chest, as if they will cast a bubble around her body that protects her from any harm. Sometimes she doesn’t even sleep, just lies awake in terror for hours on end. She’s far too old to sleep in her parents’ bed, but some nights, she tiptoes over to their bedroom and cracks the door open, just enough so she can see that they’re still there, safe and sound.

Coraline loves her parents, but they don’t completely understand everything. It’s not their fault; they have no memory of being kidnapped by the Beldam, and they weren’t witness to anything else that happened that fateful year. She tried to explain bits and pieces when she was younger, but they dismissed it as a child’s wild imagination or particularly vivid dreams, and she’s not sure she can really blame them. After all, it hardly sounds believable.

She’s made some other friends at her new school, and they’re wonderful, but none of them get it, either. They don’t understand why she cringes every time they point out the tiny door that leads to nowhere when they come over to her house. They don’t understand why buttons and dolls disturb her to this day, or why when she looks at a snow globe, it always takes her a moment to register that there is nothing frightening inside of it. “Something happened to me when I was a kid,” she told them once, to allay their concerns. “It was really scary. I could’ve died. So if I ever do something...weird, that’s probably why.” None of them questioned her, then, when she bought that pocketknife. If nothing else, she’s grateful for that.

Wybie and his grandmother are the only ones she can actually talk to about what happened, and she’s not going to come to them every single time she has a paranoid thought (which is, unfortunately, fairly often). Usually she can calm herself down, anyway; she just has to take deep breaths and remind herself that the key is gone, at the bottom of a bottomless well, and the Beldam can never open that godforsaken portal ever again.

It takes lying there for another ten minutes, eyes closed and focusing on nothing but the sound of her own breathing, for Coraline to finally muster up the energy to pull herself out of bed. At least it’s a Friday, she tells herself. She has to work a bit this weekend, but her job involves more stocking shelves than interacting with other people, so it’s still better than school.

It’s not that she hates school. She likes learning when it’s interesting, and she likes seeing her friends. It’s not even that she dislikes other people, because she doesn’t, really. Even people she thought were weird or annoying at first, like Wybie, have grown on her with time. It’s just that she fears she’ll have a flashback or a panic attack in the middle of class and embarrass herself. It’s happened before—in middle school she was branded a freak when a sewing project in her home economics class brought her to tears for reasons she didn’t know how to explain. Strangely enough, she feels safer in her neighborhood. It’s an environment she knows well, and as odd as her neighbors are, she trusts them to protect her, even if they might not be aware of it. She remembers Mr. Bobinsky’s warning not to go through the little door, and she remembers the adder stone given to her by Misses Spink and Forcible—and, of course, she remembers Wybie, who once called her crazy before he saw the Beldam’s severed hand for himself, before he helped her dispose of the key for good. Technically, he’s the one who found the Coraline doll that spied on her in the first place—a fact that she hates him for on her worst days—but she knows that he had no idea, and it doesn’t do any good to blame him. After all, even if he may have inadvertently introduced Coraline to the Other Mother, he also helped to defeat her.

While Coraline is choosing her outfit for the day, her phone buzzes: a text from Wybie. Hey Jonesy, it reads, meet me outside then. I got something for ya.

Coraline raises an eyebrow. That could mean anything. Still, she sends him a quick Ok and slips her clothes on. If it happens to be a slug or something, at least she can say her day got off to an interesting start.

Being writers, her parents don’t have to wake up as early as she does, so Coraline usually fixes her own breakfast—often something quick, like a muffin—and heads out the door. Today is no exception, her meal a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. It sort of makes her feel like a kid again, in a good way. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, Cheerios in her spoon, the sun rising over the foggy mountains, a feeling of quiet peace and even innocence settles over her like dust on a bookshelf. In this moment, there is no fear, no nightmares, no flashbacks. In this moment, she is not a teenager doing her best to survive even while her mind begs to differ. She is the little girl she once was, before she was forced to be brave in the face of true horror. The sky glows pink and orange, a phenomenon unknown to the Other World. She’s grown to appreciate daylight more since then.

Finally, Coraline vaults her backpack over her shoulder and pushes the front door open, saying a silent goodbye to her parents in her head. Sure enough, at the bottom of the hill, leaning up against the Pink Palace sign, is Wybie, who looks like he’s playing a game on his phone. When he hears the sound of her footsteps, he looks up and waves to her.

“You’re back,” she says once she’s close enough to him to talk without having to shout. For the past two weeks, Wybie has been on a school trip to Germany. (Coraline couldn’t go because she’s taking Spanish instead of German.) It’s pretty stupid for them to get back on a Friday and then have to go to regular school for one day, in her opinion, but that’s just how it worked out. “You said you have something for me?” She can’t help but wonder if it’s a souvenir of some sort. She’d joked about him getting her one, but she didn’t actually expect him to do it.

“Yeah,” Wybie says. As they start to walk down the path that leads to town and their school, he pulls something small out of his jeans pocket, holding it in both hands so she can’t see what it is. His voice sounds strangely solemn. “So, you know how you said Miss Spink and Miss Forcible gave you that stone that one time? The one with the hole in the middle?”

Coraline remembers it well: the adder stone that helped her find the ghost children’s eyes all those years ago. When she read up about them later on, she found that rocks with naturally occurring holes in them, called adder stones or hag stones, are said to have magical properties. One of them is the ability to see through a witch or fairy’s disguises or traps, but others include the prevention of nightmares and curing whooping cough.

Coraline certainly doesn’t have whooping cough, but she does have nightmares, and she’s already seen the power of an adder stone for herself. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “They’re pretty rare. The Other Mother destroyed the one I had.”

Wybie flashes her a little half-smile and opens his palms, revealing a round, grayish stone with a medium-sized hole in it. “We visited the north coast one day,” he says as she takes it from him, “and I just happened to stumble across it. Apparently that’s one of the places where they’re more common, in northern Germany.” He shrugs. “I saw it, and I knew I had to give it to you. Not like you’ll need to find any more ghost children’s eyes, but…”

Coraline holds the stone up to her eye, feeling an odd comfort when she looks through the hole, even though nothing seems different. Feeling a soft smile spread across her face, she slips the stone into her pocket and says, “Thank you, Wybie.” Then, to lighten the mood, she adds, “I guess taking German was a good decision after all.”

Wybie blows a raspberry at her. “Hey, who got to go to a foreign country? Not you.”

They banter back and forth like that for a while, but part of Coraline is still focused on the stone in her pocket and the thoughtfulness behind it. It’s so small, but both the stone and the gesture give her the burst of courage she needs to get through the rest of the day, the week, the month. It’s a different kind of courage from what she had to muster up to stop the Beldam. It’s subtler, quieter. It’s the courage of a girl who has seen real ugliness, who has felt the deepest and most primal sort of fear, who went through hell and came out alive but unsure where to go from there. How do you keep on going when you’ve been face to face with death?

The answer, she realizes, is simple: it takes courage. It might be the kind that only a few people can see, but it’s courage all the same.