#this could be whole debate BUT see death note has been my obsession right before aftg and psychiatry is my special interest so like.

[5a-alf]

I struggle to write impulsivity, probably because I myself am the least impulsive person you can imagine. The thing is.

HALF OF THESE MOTHERFUCKING CHARACTERS ARE IMPULSIVE.

What do you mean you do not spend time with your internal monologue before doing something. What do you mean you just do the thing. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO WRITE.

Also like,, how do you work on being a better person without thinking about what you are doing all the time?

[czenzo]

The Quarry: Prologue

[ao3]

summary: “Why’d you kill the music?” Max said with a subtle frown, stealing a glance over at her before moving his eyes back to the road. “I think you know why.” “Uhm, I don’t think I do,” he replied with an amused grin. “It begins with an ‘L’?” she pushed. “Like, the ‘L’ word?” Max paused for a second, and the short silence was drowned out by the tires still fighting against the stone-riddled road. “Lesbians?” “Lost, Max. We’re lost.”

The game's prologue, in the form of a written story.

words: 6433 rating: M, for descriptions and implications of gore, violence, and death.

note: I’ve been fighting with writer’s block lately, but have recently become obsessed with The Quarry, so I thought it’d be a fun challenge to try and translate the game’s prologue from a visual piece of media to a written one. It was so much more fun than I expected! 99% of the dialogue has been pulled straight from the game, I take no credit for it.

23:50 | June 24 - LAURA

Route 919

Driving through unfamiliar woodland at midnight wasn’t the greatest idea in the world, but after Max, her ever confident, self-assured boyfriend, had insisted they’d be fine, they’d clambered into his mother’s car and set off in the hopes of reaching Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp by ten o’clock, at the latest.

Laura glanced at her watch. 11:50pm.

With a small sigh, she reached over and switched the radio off—earlier, it had been audibly playing their favourite tunes, but now, shrouded by trees and the seemingly never-ending wilderness, the path they were driving down was so rough and bumpy they could barely hear the music over the sound of the tires struggling on the uneven terrain. Not to mention, she was sure neither her nor Max had any inkling of where they actually were.

“Why’d you kill the music?” Max said with a subtle frown, stealing a glance over at her before moving his eyes back to the road.

“I think you know why.”

“Uhm, I don’t think I do,” he replied with an amused grin.

“It begins with an ‘L’?” she pushed. “Like, the ‘L’ word?”

Max paused for a second, and the short silence was drowned out by the tires still fighting against the stone-riddled road. “Lesbians?”

“Lost, Max. We’re lost.”

“We’re just… we’re in geographic flux.”

“Right. So… lost,” she insisted, leaning her head against the window.

“That’s debatable.”

Slowly, Laura turned her head, still leaning against the cold window, to give her boyfriend a knowing look. Before she could think of a witty reply, the car hit a pothole, and the resulting jolt sent Max’s phone, which had been resting on the dashboard, flying towards the floor. She quickly snatched it out of the air and carefully rested it back where Max could see it—not that it was of much use, now. Earlier, it had been displaying their route clearly on a detailed, digital map, but now, thanks to the lack of signal, it was about as helpful as a rock.

“Nice catch, honey.”

“Thank you,” she replied with a pleased smile. “Man, the roads are definitely getting worse out here.”

“I guess it’s all part of the rustic summer camp experience.”

“Oh, right, that’s where we’re going? I lost track like two hundred miles ago…”

“Two hundred miles ago, huh?”

“Yeah.” A beat of silence passed between them. “You know what, Max. It’s okay. It doesn’t make you any less of a man.”

“You know if Columbus hadn’t gotten lost and landed on these golden shores, there would be no United States of America. Goodbye hot dogs. See ya later, apple pie.”

“Columbus never actually landed in North America.”

“What are you talking about?” Max stole another glance at her, features riddled with confusion, before turning back to the road.

“Didn’t even know he wasn’t in Asia.”

“Are you serious?”

“Just another guy who didn’t want to admit he was lost.”

“Well, ‘just another guy’ who’s got a whole day named after him, so… Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“Oh my God— Okay, just get us to camp already, before I roll my eyes out of my head, please.” Despite the mild frustration over being lost in the middle of nowhere, soft laughter still made its way out of her.

“I’m working on it. I’m working on it,” Max nodded confidently. Just as it had been doing for the past God-knows-how-many hours, the car continued its merry way down the unfamiliar, winding woodland path. It was only a matter of time before they hit a fork in the road, Laura thought, and clearly their no-bars phones would be of no help, so she turned in her seat and rummaged around in the backseats, sure that there must be a map of some kind somewhere back there. Just as she thought, underneath a few leaflets and stray receipts sat a map, neatly folded and ready to open up and guide them.

“Ah, viola!” she quietly exclaimed, moving the phone from the dashboard and using the space to rest the map on as she unfolded it.

“What is that?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“No but seriously, hun, what happened to the— the normal map?”

“This is the normal map.”

“The one on my phone.”

“No bars,” she explained, amused as to how he hadn’t realised that fact earlier.

“Of course not,” Max said after a defeated beat of silence.

“Okay, let’s see… So, we are… Huh. Well, I guess they don’t put summer camps on maps. Have you seen any signs for it?”

Max stared at the map in her hands, studying the twists and turns of the lines. If Laura knew anything about Max Brinly, he was likely still feeling the defeat of having to admit he had gotten them lost. It was eating at him.

His staring lasted much too longer than it should have, however.

“Hey, eyes on the road.”

Max dragged his gaze back to the windshield, back to the gravelly road, back to the never-ending trees… and back to the strange, pale, hunched figure sitting in their path.

“Whoa—” he gasped, instinctively pulling the steering wheel to one side, then the other, desperately trying to avoid whatever that thing was whilst also attempting to keep the car on the road.

“Max!”

The car swerved, and swerved again, and before Laura could register the feeling of the car’s tires falling off the road and onto the soft ground of the woods, the car had already crashed through the fences and was hurtling down a slope, further and further into the trees, further and further away from the road. 

To say it was bumpy would be an understatement. God bless the fellow who invented seatbelts, and God bless herself for having the sense to use it, because if it weren’t for that thin piece of polyester strapping her to the seat, she was sure she’d have been through the windshield in seconds. Tree roots threw the tumbling car this way and that, and as she gripped her seat and tried to stop herself from being thrown around herself, Max desperately fought with the steering wheel and pressed down on the break so hard she thought his shin might snap.

Eventually, after what felt like hours, the slope evened out, the car slowed, and Laura and Max came to a stop in a small opening in the middle of the wilderness.

“Are you okay?” were the first words out of Max’s mouth. He sounded breathless, flustered, and in shock, which matched Laura’s own current state perfectly.

“Yeah, yeah. I mean… still in one piece.”

“Jesus Christ, what do you think that was? A bear?”

“What? No, no, Max, that wasn’t a bear.”

“What was it?”

“I think it was a person…” she trailed off, unsure of herself. It had all happened so quickly, the figure was there and then it wasn’t, they’d barely gotten a glimpse of it before the car had flown off of the road.

Max’s face dropped, features suddenly stony. “Laura, are you serious?” His eyes were wide and full of concern. “Do you think we hit a person?”

“I don’t know… I mean it was really close. Like really close, but maybe we didn’t… I don’t know.” Her words came out jumbled and shaky, the shock making her stutter through the syllables. She didn’t like the feeling of weakness, of helplessness. Her limbs were shaking just as much as her voice.

Max shook his head and got out of the car, making his way to the front to inspect the damage. After a mere second of looking at it, he looked back up at Laura with sagging shoulders and a sombre look.

“What is it?”

“I really F’d this car up.” He bit down hard on his lip and stared at the bonnet.

“Maybe it looks worse than it is.”

“Ah… I should check out the damage before we try to start it up again,” he insisted, trying to keep the panic from seeping into his voice and failing ever so slightly. “Hun, could you grab my uh— my toolbox, from the trunk?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Laura nodded and clambered out of the car slower than Max had. Her legs felt like jelly. Outside it was unnervingly quiet; only crickets and a handful of birds were audible, and walking through the forest’s detritus was louder than either of those. Each step felt like a clap of thunder in comparison to the wilderness’ peacefulness.

Using her phone as a torch, she took a quick glance at the front of the car. 

“It’s not so bad,” she said over Max’s shoulder.

“My mom’s gonna kill me.”

“I’ll… I’ll go and get the toolbox.”

Walking around the car, it was reassuring to see that only the front of it was seriously damaged; the rest of the body had  merely suffered some scratches and other minor cosmetic damages, but nothing too serious. The trunk was still in tact and opened with ease, and within sat their bags and an array of other miscellaneous items that Max hadn’t bothered to clear out before he threw their things in and left for camp with her. 

After pushing a bag out of the way, she found his toolbox at the back, along with a small pile of letters and papers. Laura, most of the time, was never one to snoop, but the large, red, REJECTED stamp across the top of the first letter she saw was hard to miss. She daren’t pick it up and actively snoop, but a glimpse (or two) of the letter provided her with enough information.

Dear Mr Brinly… Thank you… Landis University… we have reviewed your application… unfortunately… unable to accept…

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she murmured, sighing as she heaved the toolbox out and closed the trunk, attempting to push all thoughts about that letter to the back of her mind. She’d bring it up eventually—but not now. There were more important matters at hand.

“Thanks hun,” Max smiled as he took the toolbox.

“D’you need a hand?”

“Yeah, actually, if you could just shine a light right here… Yeah. Perfect, thank you.”

The stillness of the wilderness was interrupted by the sounds of Max working on the car; soft metallic clangs and scrapes shattered the quiet, but Laura couldn’t find it in herself to care any more.

“The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

“Just picture yourself curling up in front of a big ol’ fire pit singing campfire singalongs.”

Laura let out a small, tired chuckle. “I don’t think people curl up right in front of big ol’ fire pits.”

“Why not?”

“Uhh, they don’t wanna catch on fire?”

“Then… picture yourself curling up in front of a big ol’ space heater.”

“Well, anywhere’s better than here…” she replied, letting her gaze drift away from the damaged car and towards the trees surrounding them.

Her phone flashlight was strong, but not strong enough to cut through the darkness past the first row of trees. It was like looking into a black hole, and it was nothing short of unnerving.

Curious, she took a step towards it. And another. She tuned into the sounds of nature—the crickets were still going strong, some birds continued chirping, and once again the soft crunch of the floor under her feet was louder than anything else. So loud, in fact, that she almost missed the strange whisper that came from behind the trees.

Almost.

“Silas…”

Laura frowned and shook her head. Surely she had just imagined that, right? 

She took another step forward. And another.

“Where are you going?” Max called out from behind her.

“Just, over here…”

“Just… stay there for a second, okay? I’m almost done.”

She continued to shine her phone’s light into the darkness, and still, nothing was visible. Her heard pounded in her chest, though she wasn’t quite sure why. She’d only imagined that whisper, after all. Though it wouldn’t do any harm to check it out.

“My God, Max. Hurry up!” she called over her shoulder. Her nerves were making her agitated and snappy, and it pissed her off. Max seemed to catch on to this and, after another quick examination of the car, made his way over to where she stood, staring into the trees.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m worried that there’s somebody down there.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah— they could be hurt. I don’t know.”

“I didn’t think we actually hit anyone—”

“Well, I don’t know— I just, I heard something, okay. Like, a— a woman.”

“…Do you think we hit her?”

Laura paused for a short moment and looked him in the eyes. There was nothing but concern and care in the way he looked back at her, and it eased her nerves. Max had her back. She had his. They were together, and that made everything better.

“I just want to check it out,” she replied, calmer.

“Okay, alright. Just don’t go too far, okay? Be careful.”

“Yeah, I will.”

He helped her down the small ledge that lead into the trees, his calloused hands gentle as he stopped her from slipping.

“Okay, thank you…” she hopped onto the ground below and looked up at him, where he crouched on top of the ledge. “Good luck with the car.”

Her phone’s flashlight continued to try its best as she slowly walked around, and despite her nerves and completely exhausted state, Laura took deep breaths and decided to walk with long, confident strides. Fake it ’til you make it, after all.

From where she stood, there was only one visible path, and so she strode along it in search of something—or nothing. She still wasn’t quite sure whether she truly heard someone speak. She would simply walk a short distance, look around, reassure herself there was nothing out there, and return to Max and get the hell out of the woods.

As she made her way down the path, stepping over overgrown, twisting tree roots, her phone’s light fell upon an old, worn poster nailed to one of the trees. Upon closer inspection, its edges looked burnt, and the poster was so discoloured it was almost too hard to read it.

“Harum Scarum…” she read aloud quietly. A poster for a travelling circus of some kind. Why it was seemingly in the middle of nowhere, she had no clue, but there was little point in dwelling on it. Onwards she went, though she noted in the back of her mind that she shouldn’t go much further. The thought of being too separate from Max in a place like this wasn’t good.

A minute or so further ahead, the trees appeared to become more twisted, branches stooping low and creating an almost tunnel-like effect. At the end of the strange, deformed flora sat what looked to be the remnants of a cage, metal bars warped and rusted over. The trees beside it had begun to grow around it, roots firmly planting the remains of the enclosure to the ground.

“What the hell?” Laura murmured as she crouched beside it. On the floor to her side sat a wooden sign, broken and rotten, but the painted letters on it were still legible. 

Silas the Dog Boy, it read. She stared at it for a considerable amount of time, until it clicked that it must have been related to the poster she found not too far back. Silas must have been an act for that peculiar travelling show, though it once again posed the question of why here? Why stop to perform in the middle of nowhere?

An owl cooing in the distance snapped her out of her train of thought. She shook her head, her shoulders, scrunched her eyes and rubbed them until phosphenes danced in the darkness, and hauled herself back to her feet.

She should head back. It was clear she wouldn’t find anything out here; her active imagination had simply freaked her out. Everything was okay—nothing was out here except some old remains of a long-gone travelling show.

Luckily, it was easy enough to follow the same path back to the car, and when the sounds of Max tinkering with the bonnet became faintly audible, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Silas…”

Laura stopped in her tracks. She turned around, whipping her phone to shine its light in the direction of the sound. Nothing.

Picking up the pace, Laura continued.

“Silas…”

Her heart pounded.

“Silas…”

She stopped again, frustration and fear getting the better of her. “Who are you? Where are you?” she called out, frantic. Her breath became shallow and rapid as she turned on the spot, desperately trying to spot the source of the voice between the trees around her. She couldn’t hear Max any more. Just the crickets. The birds.

The very quiet sound of someone moving close to her shoulder.

“Silas,” it whispered, inches away from her ear. 

Laura screamed. 

She burst into a sprint, leaping over the overgrown tree roots and ducking beneath low-hanging branches, legs pumping and arms swinging as she ran for what felt like miles. The end of her ponytail smacked against the droplets of sweat on the nape of her neck.

The relief that flooded her when Max and the car came into view was unlike anything she’d felt before in her entire life; it was so intense she almost began to cry.

“Max!” she called out, scrambling up and over the ledge he’d helped her down earlier.

Max closed the bonnet of the car and looked up with a smile that immediately disappeared upon seeing her panicked state. “Hey! Hey, hey hey. What’s wrong? What’s wrong, Laura, is everything alright?”

“Max!” was all she could manage again as she fell into him, wrapping her arms around him and taking in his comforting, familiar scent with each heaving breath. He held her tightly, and gently kissed the top of her head.

“Talk to me, what’s going on?”

“Holy shit,” she breathed, “there was something out there, there was— there was noises all around me, and—”

“Honey. Honey, honey, take a breath… it’s okay— it’s the woods, there’s a lot of stuff out there. There’s animals… it’s easy to freak yourself out.”

“No,” Laura insisted with a shake of her head. She knew there was something out there. That was not a figment of her imagination, not a result of her tired mind. There was something out there, and it knew they were here. “Can we just leave— please?”

“Yeah! Yeah, let’s go,” Max nodded, guiding her to the passenger side before hopping into the driver’s seat. The doors slammed shut, and neither bothered with their seatbelts in their desperation to leave quickly.

“You alright?” Max looked over at her as he started the engine, which successfully switched on and began softly rumbling. “Yes! There we go. Purring like a kitten.”

“Max, come on!”

“Here we go, here we go. We’re getting out of here.”

He put the car into reverse and pressed down on the gas. The tires span. And span. And span. They didn’t move an inch.

Mud splattered onto the tree in front of them. They’d gotten themselves stuck in a ditch, and the car refused to reverse out of it.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Laura said. “Max!”

“I just… Ok, give me a minute. Give me a minute.”

“We’ve got to go, Max! Please!”

“Laura, you’re not helping—”

“Come on, can you just— I am trying to get us out of here! Which is—”

“Alright, enough!” Max cried out, gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white. The visible regret on his face was instant. “Shit, I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Laura breathed, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry too. We’re both stressed, and tired, it’s not helping. Try the gas again.”

Max eased his foot onto the gas once more, and the tires continued to spin in one place, sinking deeper into the mud. He sighed.

“We’re okay. We’re safe in the car, really. We’re gonna be okay.”

Laura nodded, looking over at him and his comforting, familiar face. His cheeks, his chin, his nose were covered in splatterings of freckles, and his soft brown hair flopped slightly over one of his sea blue eyes. Things weren’t great, but she was with Max. And, just as he said, they’d be safe in the car—right?

There was a blur of motion through the window beside Max, and in a split second, a man was peering through to them. The car’s interior lights illuminated his face in an unsavory way, making him appear sinister and, quite frankly, terrifying.

“Jesus, fuck!” Laura cried out, jolting in her chair. Max turned to look out of his window and jumped back towards her.

“Oh, fuck! Oh my God, my heart just exploded.”

The cop nodded to the window. His face was thin, eyes tired and lines sunken low into his skin. His lips were set in a straight, stern line. If it weren’t for the obvious cop uniform, she would have been tempted to wind down the window and punch him. “Roll it down.”

Max complied. “Hi, Officer. How are you doing this evening?”

“Are either of you injured?” he asked, looking between them.

“Really, we’re fine. We’re just a little shaken up.”

“Mhm,” the cop nodded once, slowly, squinting at them with suspicion. He moved around to inspect the bonnet, crouching low to get a good look at the damage before pulling himself back up. Staring at them through the windshield, he asked, “Well, you folks wanna tell me what happened here?”

Max looked at Laura, the corners of his mouth downturned.

“Yeah, uhm,” Laura began, deciding it was best to be honest and avoid more suspicion. “We, um… Something jumped out right in front of the car, and— and we didn’t want to hit it, so we swerved, and… Now here we are.”

The cop was silent for a moment. “‘Something’ jumped out?”

“Ah— I’m sorry, it was just— it was so dark, and it happened so fast and they were gone, I don’t…”

“‘They’. Ma’am, did you hit someone?”

“No! No, God no, of course not. But— you know. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Sir,” he said, turning to Max. “Keep the car running.” He moved to the back of the car, and once he was out of sight, Max turned to face her, eyes wide and features riddled with confusion.

“Is this guy like, the all-time scariest cop?”

“I dunno,” she whispered back, “this is my first cop.”

“What, like, ever?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m not a criminal!”

Hooking their car to his own, the cop slowly but surely managed to pull them out of the muddy ditch, away from the trees, the crickets, the birds, and whoever—or whatever—had been determined to shake Laura, and back to the safety of the road. Once they were stable and safe, their car was unhooked, and it was only a matter of time before the cop returned to the driver’s side window.

“Now you folks wanna tell me, just what in the hell you are doing, all the way out here, this late at night?”

“We’re heading up to Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp,” Laura replied. “We’re new counselors.”

“You’re one night early.”

“No, no, we know… um, but we figured we’d get in early and scope it out, y’know? They know we’re coming, we called ahead.”

“And, to be honest, sir, one of us kind of oversold their navigation skills and got us completely lost,” Max added, raising one hand.

The cop sighed and looked at his feet, shaking his head dejectedly. His head was still looking down when his eyes snapped up to meet hers, half concealed by his eyelids. “You’re not going to make it to Hackett’s Quarry. Not tonight.” He looked over his shoulder at the surrounding wilderness for a moment before slowly turning back to them. “Harbinger Motel. It’s the nearest place, you can bunk up there for the night. Okay?”

“Uh… I think we’re just gonna stick to the plan, sir, I mean… Mr. Hackett knows we’re coming early and we called ahead—”

“No, Ma’am. You’re going to head to the Harbinger Motel. Do you understand?” 

The tone of his voice demanded compliance. Laura, however, was determined to find a way around this.

“Okay, fine,” she said, feigning docility, “Yeah. We’ll head to the motel. Understood. There’s just one small problem, uh…”

Max grimaced. “I forgot to spring for the ‘middle of nowhere’ coverage plan on my phone.”

“What he means is, we’re lost. Completely,” Laura added.

“Alright, ma’am. Step out of the vehicle.”

Max’s slow “Uhh…” was drowned out by Laura’s exclaim of, “Wait, what?”

“I just wanna show you how to get to the motel on your map there, ‘kay?” the cop explained, motioning to the map which had landed on the far end of the dashboard in their struggle-slash-tumble down into the trees earlier.

“Uh, for sure,” Max said, moving to step out.

“Son, remain in the vehicle.”

Max reluctantly, slowly, sat back in his seat, casting Laura yet another look of concern.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. I got it,” she reassured him. She climbed out, map in hand, and placed it on the bonnet in front of the cop. He swiftly smoothed it out and produced a pencil from one of his many pockets.

“Okay, so we…” he paused to lick his pencil, and Laura wondered if such a motion was even necessary, before moving it towards the map and making a neat dot along one of the many roads. “Are right about here. Harbinger Motel… is here.” Another dot was made, luckily not too much of a distance away.

“Right, okay, and where was Hackett’s Quarry again?” Laura pried. The cop’s hand moved to the left, pencil tip pointing in the direction of her true destination, but his hand pulled away in realisation before he could leave a third dot on the map. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. She knew which way to head.

“Well, I’m sure the fine folks at the Harbinger Motel can guide you there,” the cop said, folding up the map and handing it back to her. “First thing in the morning.”

Laura simply smiled. “Right.”

Soon enough she was back in the safety of the car, and Max looked more than ready to step on the gas.

“Harbinger Motel. Stay on the road,” came the cop’s voice once again through the window.

“Wait, but— but what if there’s someone out there?” Laura asked.

“Yeah, I’ll have a look,” the cop replied unconvincingly. He tapped twice on the car roof. “Good night.”

Once again, they were alone, though a quick glance in the rearview mirror showed that the cop was sat in his car not too far behind them, unmoving. Watching. Max stared at him.

“Why is this guy just sitting there?” he asked, frowning at the mirror and looking over his shoulder to squint at the police car.

“He was giving me major weirdo vibes.”

“The dude needed like, at least a dozen showers.”

“Oh my God, I know.”

“What was up with that thing, did you see that?” Max asked, gesturing to his jaw. Laura had noticed the dark stain there on the cop’s face, too, though she had been too preoccupied with trying to get rid of him she hadn’t dwelled on it too much.

“I think it was— was it blood?”

Max pulled a face and looked over his shoulder once more. Eventually he turned back to the wheel and braced himself to start driving. “Ah, man.”

“Alright, let’s get back on the road.”

“Yes,” Max nodded, relieved, as Laura showed him the map with the marked locations.

“I think I’ve had enough woodland encounters for one night, thank you very much.”

“Agreed… so, where’s this motel?”

“Okay, so we’re here,” she pointed at the first dot, then moved to the second, “and the motel is here.”

“Okay.”

“But we’re going here.” She pointed to an area off to the left.

“What’s there?”

“Hackett’s Quarry.”

Max paused for a moment in awe. “How’d you do that?”

“I dunno, kinda… tricked him into showing me.”

“Very slick,” he grinned, laughing. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just get to the motel? Just listen to this guy’s advice?”

“Honey, you really wanna listen to the advice of some creep ass cop, who told us in the middle of the creep ass woods to go to some creep ass motel?”

“…No, that sounds terrible.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s hit the road, shall we, ma’am?” The engine’s rumbling was comforting as the car started back up and continued down the road.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, leaning back in her seat for a second before sitting back up straight. “Ma’am? Oh my God, if he called me ‘ma’am’ one more time I was gonna shove that badge up his dickhole… Seriously, do I look like a ‘ma’am’ to you? I’ve got like twenty years before I’m a ‘ma’am’!”

“Mh-hm,” Max nodded, keeping his eyes dead on the road. He was just as unconvincing as the cop had been.

“What?”

“I… Twenty’s… debatable.”

“Easy.”

“I mean, I’m kinda into ma’ams.”

“Okay, we’re done here.”

Their laughter faded into comfortable silence as the car continued down the road, away from the cop, away from the motel, and towards their true destination.

Seeing the Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp sign come into view half an hour later, along with the main cabin, was nothing short of relieving. It had taken them a damn while to get there, and now it was well past midnight, but knowing they succeeded eventually was enough.

Seeing the lack of lights, people, and general signs of life, however, was unnerving.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Max said as they pulled up and got out of the car. “There’s nobody here. We drive all the way the fuck out here!”

“Max, can we just look around before we jump to conclusions?”

“Did you actually even talk to Mr. Hackett or did you just leave a message?”

“Well, what’s the difference?”

“This!” he said, exasperated, as he threw up his hands. “This is the difference!”

Refusing to admit defeat, Laura made her way to the main entrance and knocked on the door. “Hello?”

“I guess he doesn’t check his voicemail,” she heard Max murmur from off to the side.

“How was I supposed to know that?” she snapped, before pointing at the other car parked not too far from theirs. “I mean, clearly there’s somebody here.”

“Yeah, or it’s just an abandoned car and this is a complete waste of time.”

“Why would there be an abandoned— Look, Max—”

“I’ll be at the car,” Max said, exhausted in every sense of the word.

“Max, come on,” she pleaded as he opened the driver’s side door. “Max, don’t be a dick.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, throwing his hands up one last time. “I’m sorry.”

Laura knocked on the door again, yet still there was no answer. It was locked tightly shut. She had to rely on her phone’s flashlight again as she looked around. It was quiet and still. Crickets. Birds. Thankfully, no disembodied voice. 

She wistfully looked at the large map standing outside of the cabin. She had been so excited for camp to start, to spend her summer before college being a counselor with Max, but the events of the night had dampened her enthusiasm. The camp’s slogan, ‘What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger’ written in cursive at the bottom taunted her. She pulled herself away from the map and kept looking, praying she’d encounter someone, but ended up finding the entrance to a cellar of some kind around the corner.

The doors were chained shut, which was suspicious enough. When she leant down to peer through the gap, however, she could have sworn she saw motion from inside. It wasn’t unlike the strange hunched figure they’d almost hit on the road—it was curled in on itself, facing away from her, but the darkness of the cellar made it impossible to make out any details. She wasn’t even sure if it was a person, or just an animal of some kind.

It shifted to the side, and in the sliver of light that shone through the gap through which Laura looked, she caught a better glimpse of it. She still couldn’t see clearly, but it looked too much like a person for her to not be alarmed.

“Hey! Hey, are you okay?” she called down, wondering why on Earth they’d been locked in the cellar. A camp employee who’d been forgotten about when they were locking up in the evening, perhaps? “I’ll be right back, I’m gonna get some help!”

She jogged back to the car. “Max! Max, get over here!”

“What’s going on?” he asked, sticking his head out of the window.

“There’s somebody in the bunker. I think they might be stuck!”

“Stuck?” Max got out of the car. “Is it Mr. Hackett?”

“I— I don’t know. Just bring some tools so we can break the lock!” she called, before quickly making her way back to the cellar doors. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”

Max was by her side in no time, tools in hand. “Hey.”

“Wait, what— what are these?” Laura looked down at the tools in question, which were a hammer and a pair of wrenches—not the tools she would have gone for, herself.

“I don’t know, you just said ‘tools’.”

“Why didn’t you just bring the— Doesn’t matter. Look, there’s someone in there.”

Max peered through the gap in the doors. After a moment, he said, “Uhm… I’m not seeing anyone, Laura.”

“No, look, I swear—”

“I’m looking, I am.”

“Let me see.” Max moved and she took his place, looking through the gap once more. 

Nothing. No one. She frowned.

“There was definitely someone there.”

“…Okay. Okay, so…” Max lifted the tools in his hand, and after a moment of thought, Laura took the wrenches. She was pleased with how swiftly and smoothly she broke the lock that held the chains together, using the wrenches to pull and break it off.

“Damn,” Max exclaimed, impressed. She grinned at him.

Together, they heaved open the heavy doors and carefully descended the steps inside, both turning on their phone’s flashlights to illuminate the steps.

Max broke the tense silence first. “You’ve seen the Evil Dead, right?”

“Shh! Hello?”

The cellar was dim and dusty, and the last place Laura had expected to find herself in tonight. 

“Are you hurt?” she called out to the dark.

“Do you exist?” Max added. Laura playfully kicked him in the foot. As she took a step forward, Max held back, choosing to sit on the bottom steps as she explored the cellar.

“Be careful, alright?” he said, dusting off a step and making himself comfortable. Laura nodded and continued on, though stopped in her tracks at the sound of some commotion from the far end of the room. There came the sound of shuffling, scratching, and then the sudden sound of something small falling to the floor. She shone her light in its direction and found a collar—a peculiar collar; too big for a dog—labelled with the name Ian. She slowly walked over to it, apprehensive but curious. 

The collar only had her attention for so long, however. Her light followed small trail of a dark liquid—she hoped it wasn’t blood, but she wasn’t sure what else it could have been—coming from it, which lead to the corpse of some kind of animal, most of its meat stripped clean from the bones. It was unidentifiable, covered in blood, and the sight and smell of it made her retch.

“Max…” she gasped, turning away from the horrific sight. “What the fuck…”

“Everything okay?”

“I— Oh my God…”

“Hon, maybe it was just a possum you saw earlier or something?”

“No, there was someone here, I swear, and… and, oh God, I just saw…”

“Hey, it’s been kind of a night, you know?” he said as she came back towards him. He stood up and brushed off his legs. “Let’s just get to the motel, we can come back here first thing in the morning, we can check everything out, but… I mean you must be exhausted, I know I am. I think our imagination—”

Max couldn’t finish his sentence. To Laura’s horror and shock, something leapt out from the darkness and grabbed him, pulling him to the ground with a cry. It happened so fast, it was all a blur, and it was gone as soon as it appeared, leaving Max on the ground, cut up and bloodied.

“Max?! Max!” she called out, running towards him. “Max! Oh, God!”

He reached up to touch his shoulder, hand slow and shaky, and pulled it back to see it coated in dark, thick redness. “It’s blood…” he said, weakly. His whole left side was coated in it, gashes and wounds barely visible beneath it all. “I think… I’m bleeding a lot.”

Desperate, Laura hooked her arms beneath his shoulders and began to drag him back up the steps, though he was weak, and considerably heavier than her, so each step felt like a Herculean task. Step by step, bit by bit, fuelled by adrenaline and pure terror, she hauled her boyfriend back up to the entrance, to safety, away from whatever the hell was down there.

“There… we… go…” she heaved, bringing him up the last step. He murmured an unintelligible response.

And then was dragged back down.

“No!” Laura screamed, watching as Max’s bloodied body plunged into the darkness, mercilessly pulled away by some unseen thing. He began to scream, crying out in pain and fear as Laura held back tears. She was about to make a split-second decision, decide if she should leap in after him or if that would be pointless, but suddenly she felt a sharp pinch in the side of her neck. A needle? The world around her went fuzzy as Max continued screaming down below. 

Everything tilted to the side.

As Laura lay on the floor, feeling her consciousness slip through her fingers, two gunshots rang out, followed by a familiar, threatening voice that cried, “Does this look like the god-damned Harbinger Motel to you?!”

The world went black.

[remsmoonlight]

— title : a sweet truth

— word count : 2.1k words

— pairing : john wich x reader

— summary : you get an overwhelming need to share with John how you feel, unable to keep it to yourself anymore, leaving only the good to follow.

— warnings : none, issa soft one

note: my first one shot back and it’s john of course! anyways i need to binge the movies again because this man’s voice was difficult to master this time around, now i will be getting to requests now i have indulged myself oops

                    ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*   requests are open !   *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

The dull crackle that runs mindlessly beneath the audio of the radio is the only sound that can be heard illuminating the space of the bedroom where you and John lay contently together. He’d offered to repair the object, or even buy another but you refused stubbornly — remarking that it gives it a certain endearing charm. You had joked that it reminds you of him. In the sense that while it has a flaw, it was able to bring joy and amusement to a person’s life. It’s humbling to know that even the John Wick was human, that he had his flaws despite being difficult to witness them in the flesh.

It took a lot for John to bare the darkest and most damaged parts of his conscience. He couldn’t go another day where his mind leapt endlessly to conclusions, his mind conjuring haunting images of your departing body that would eventually come to pass — to him, it was inevitable. He fully convinced himself he was hallucinating when you had not retreated in fear, with the look of disgust cosying up to your reflection, but the opposite. He is still a man greatly feared by a whole world beneath yours, yet you still gaze upon him with nothing but warmth.

You will your mind to focus on the words from the small object, yet it’s the heat that is emitting from his body in waves that prevent you from fully taking in what is being said, its presence doing more to provide white noise than entertainment. The minor glint in your gaze turns upwards to drag your sight across the body that half lays on top of you.

Like vines, to be found in a twist of limbs that would be almost difficult to distinguish what belongs to who is a common occurrence, the sense of shielded from the scorching realities that the world bares boldly is an addicting concoction that you can only find with him. Your heart swells tenfold at the mere thought of him and being here in such a simple way that holds so much affection just for two people.

“ What ? “

The suddenness of his voice lifts you from your thoughts that run their own race, a shy lift of your lips can be seen twirling gracefully in response.

“ Nothing, I’m just thinking. “

“ Thinking? “ he asks you, a light hint of laughter gently coating the question with a feather-like touch. “ Are you trying to scare me? “

Eyes widen in response to what he says, a heavy burst of air plummeting to the soft mattress below the two of you. “ Don’t be so rude! “ A short chuckle trails behind your reply, secretly loving the cheeky side of his personality coming out to peek out.

You’ve realised that he has a warmth whenever you’re together, but even still he maintains an air of such seriousness you’re surprised he has not collapsed under the pressure of holding such a wall up with his bare hands, these moments are the kind that you paint mentally — a still of this moment in a thousand shades of gold. Upon your first meeting of his, you’d never associate that with him, with how intimidating and stone faced he was, it would be a honeyed lie if someone would have described him in such a way but here he is. Not a honeyed lie but a sweet tasting truth that you never want to be without again.

“ I’m sorry. “ he apologises as the amusement in his tones still very much present that would aim to refer to him as a hypocrite, but it’s not spoken with vitriol, his words directed towards you rarely contain any harshness. “ Tell me, I’m curious. “

It’s a minor debate that dances with only itself, zig zagging with a biro pen that creates a mess of lines converging at multiple points to create a tangle plot point that should not be as complicated as it’s being made out. Neither of you have muttered the L word, not even under your breath in passing and the one dominating emotion you can feel overwhelming your body entirely is incredibly close to it.. but is it too soon? Even as a description? It’s a fear you can feel tickling your neck from behind, whispering stained words of discouragement, but if you have learnt anything, it’s that hiding your feelings will be worse off in the long run. Never can a human being strive for the euphoria of authentic happiness clutched in their fist when they lock away their thoughts and their desires in a box to gather age and dust — leaving behind a hollow shell of what could have been had it the opportunity to bud and grow.

“ Well.. “ you begin, your sight lowering to meet the sight of his neck, unable to look him in the eyes fully and you approach the topic. “ I was thinking about you. “

“ Yeah? “

“ I’m just.. happy. More than I thought I could be and it’s you I have to thank. “ Your shoulders shrug as best they can from your position laying down on the bed.

“ I think I should be the one saying that. “ he replies softly, his words ringing truer than they could ever be realised to be as he leans down to leave behind a ghost of a peck behind your ear. It’s an action that is short and sweet.

Never did John imagine himself being rewarded for being the architect in more tragedies and more horrors than he could ever recall. Though, he soon realised your presence was rather the opposite, a ticket to a greener field void of bloodied bargains and death, and should he keep you in his life that would be an opportunity he would not let pass him by in a sea of missed chances left to drown due to his lack of motivation. He gazes upon you fondly in affection, a hand reaching up to draw mindless circles in the back of your hair, memories of his last bargain to leave his previous life playing before him as if an old gritty movie.

“ Stop it, John. I haven’t done a thing! “ your nose wrinkles as you refute what he says with a bashful glint that explodes in your gaze. After all the time you’d spent together and you still refuse to see yourself in the way John has painted you in —

“ You’ve done more for me than you realise. “

It feels like yesterday you shared your first kiss, fondly remembering how you’d mentally remarked that it’s so unfair that what is between you should be so perfect, a cruel joke were it not to work out. Though your heart is full of gratitude when you still tell yourself that not a worry should be had, your need for a physical reminder as you move your hand to his clothed back — bringing him closer as if to burn a permanent reminder into your fingertips.

“ I guess that’s why we compliment each other so well, huh? “

A wispy sigh plummets, your thoughts and emotions mixing more and more into a blend of intensity as you fully realise just how much you have fallen and adore the man who shares your bed. It has been such a long time you have had these emotions to this degree rouse from, what has felt like, an endless slumber. Yes, there had been a few who had caught your eye, but compared to the substance that has been created and nurtured from you both, they had nothing more than a water drop in a boundless and enduring sea. It’s a hope of yours that you don’t look foolish before him, getting so emotional over something like this, you scold yourself mentally — trying to pull yourself together before you completely crumble.

“ What’s wrong? “

“ It’s nothing, really. “ you shake your head, accompanying the almost denial. You want to let everything in your heart free, but the question is how to without scaring him off. There’s not much that can scare him, but you’d rather not throw a spanner in the flawless equation.

“ You don’t have to tell me, but it might help if you do. “ John lends a soothing weight in your hand as he interlocks your fingers together, leaving the choice completely up to you, refusing to force you to share something that is so personal to you. “ it’s your call. “

“ It’s nothing crazy.. “

The side of John’s brain that has been hardwired to jump to every scenario imaginable — good and bad, is running rampant. Itching to be prepared so nothing is able to disrupt the perfect day dream of a life that had only been made available through television shows and movies, now that he has it, every day he promises to never let it be ruined. Nothing good can ever occur from ripping away the first drop of water that touches a person starved of it for days, only a troublesome path of anger can walk that path on its twisted and turned limbs.

“ I think it’s time that I tell you how I feel, “ you state, your lips almost devouring your lips by how hard they bite them, a lost thought of how you have not drawn a drop of blood seeping into irrelevancy. “ how I really feel. “

“ Right? “

For the first time, John is completely unable to get a read of you. The apprehension that is emitting off you in strong waves is not something that comforts him fully, though the fact that you speak not from anger and have opted to stay in your current position as opposed to fleeing is the only source of relief he can continue to draw energy from. Curiosity is the only thing that dominates his mind, wanting desperately to hear the next part of your statement.

In his silence, your brows furrow purely from your own thoughts. Mainly in the wonder of how you can approach this while sounding as if you have capacity and are not obsessed with him as some are with their idols. You know that would be something that would probably scare him off. Your fingertips lay a random beat on the top of his hand, you nestle closer to him as to make yourself comfortable — this does feel like the right time. Should it not? You remind yourself that it is part of a plan that the universe has for you, that it is part of a bigger picture you are not allowed to know until the final moment.

“ I just, “ you pause, blinking as you gather your thoughts and your words further. “ It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything remotely close to this. “

Your words are like a cozy kiss goodnight before two lovers depart until the next time they see each other, a warmth that slowly grows in his heart overspills at the sentiment you individually wrap with each word you speak. He can’t help but tip his head ever so slightly, to take in every detail on your features — in his mind, nothing is more so perfect than this moment.

“ What I’m trying to say is, and you don’t have to say anything — “ the rambling leaves your lips so effortlessly, as if to savour the last few moments of normally before the inevitable confession. “ I can’t help but realise how much I am in love with you. “

His eyes widen instantaneously as his features follow suit, his lips part in surprise. With how your speech had begun, it should not have come as a surprise, yet to hear it from your lips is as pleasant as the final summer’s day, surrounded by warmth and an impenetrable energy that shields you from any harm that would befall you. He’d lived the life of a haunting ghost story that it soon became a belief that he was a monster, to hear you in this moment recite something so real is something that is difficult for him to wrap his head around. Maybe he isn’t a monster that has made its peace with the darkness, that there is more for him as a person.

The emptiness is soon replaced by a soft weight on your lips, he has leans down to join you — unable to fight the desire to savour the taste of him as you often do when you kiss. It’s a fight you have not yet one, and it’s a fight you imagine you would prefer losing. Time is no longer a concept, you’re too wrapped up in the concept turned reality that is John Wick, only are you able to concentrate on the burning that his free hand leaves as they slide up and down your waist. If this is a dream, neither of you want to awaken.

“ Who says I’m not feeling the same as you? “

[spike-and-faye]

Hello, I require your infinite wisdom please!! :O So I just finished cowboy bebop and I am so confused like who the fuck was Julia. WHAT was Faye's past. I literally never process tv shows and the bebop was not immune to my stupidity LMAO like... I guess the ending just really confused me, from what I gathered Spike and Vicious were friends? But then they weren't? And Julia dated Vicious but also Spike? And he? Went after Vicious even after Julia had died? I am Confusion. Please help. Thank u...

Oh BABEY I am so glad you asked! :) Be prepared for a long answer and I apologize in advance for how incoherent it will probably be.

ALSO Please note: this show is fucking complicated. I have watched it all the way through several times a year, every single year, for over a decade now, and I am *STILL* finding new shit every time I watch it. It's packed with symbols, motifs, allusions and underlying themes that are just so rich. It is so extraordinarily well-written that it could give a lot of classic literature a run for its money. I'm literally working on an in depth literary/film analysis my husband lovingly calls my Manifesto on the series right now. SO PLEASE don't beat yourself up about not catching everything on the first go round.

HEY BTW for anyone who hasn't finished the show, please know there will be MANY spoilers ahead!

Anyways ~

1.     Spike / Julia / Vicious:

The information we get on Spike's past, including Vicious and Julia, is pretty limited considering how big of an impact they have on the story. We get our first glimpse in Session 1: Asteroid Blues, then again in Session 5: Ballad of Fallen Angels, Sessions 12 + 13: Jupiter Jazz, and Sessions 25 + 26: Real Folk Blues. I recommend reviewing these episodes for you Julia and Vicious fix.

What we know:

Spike and Vicious were both members of an organized crime syndicate called the Red Dragons, which is roughly analogous to the Yakuza or the Mafia. Their positions in the organization are not clear, but there are some images alluding to them being hitmen, and they likely rose up in the ranks as they were close acquaintances of Mao Yenrai, a Capo of the Red Dragon.

Spike and Vicious were close comrades. Spike taught Vicious everything he knew about fighting, and the two had a deep trust in each other. Which Spike fucked up ….

^^Vicious looks hot asf here

Julia was Vicious' lover/girlfriend. One night in 2068 (three years prior to the time we watch in the Bebop) Spike is injured, presumably from a syndicate-related fight and he passes out in front of her door. She takes him in and nurses him back to health and he SIMPS HARD for her. We’re all but told he's in LOVE love with her. They start an affair, and Spike tells her he's ready to abandon the whole life - the syndicate, Vicious, Mao, all of it - and they could run away together.

WELL Vicious finds out about this whole affair, and is DOUBLY betrayed because his literal best friend and girlfriend have been having an affair, and tbh I think he was just as jealous of Spike's attentions as he was of Julia's. (Whether or not it’s a sexual thing for Spike … well … I have my own headcanons about that). SO when he finds out they're going to run away together, he gives Julia an ultimatum: you can either kill him, or I'll just kill you both. Spike had written her a letter about meeting him in the graveyard to start their new life together, which she tears up to hide his location from Vicious. (This is the falling ripped up pieces of paper we see in Spike's flash back in Session 5).

^^ r/gifsyoucanhear

**NOTE: There are those who disagree with this view, (looking at you Cowboy Bebop wiki) instead suggesting Vicious and Spike were buds in the past, but then hated each other once they were both considered as potential successors to Mao. That's why Vicious wanted him dead, and he was enlisting Julia (who he didn't necessarily have a romantic connection to) to help kill Spike since he knew Spike loved her. Personally, I think there is plenty of evidence that Vicious also wanted Julia, and in fact was already with her, when Spike started seeing her. If you want me to cite my sources please send an me an ask about it :)

Spike gets the idea, whether by her just not showing up or word around the syndicate being like YO Vicious wants you dead. Despite Vicious' ultimatum to Julia, he was gunna kill Spike either way. SO he sets up an ambush, and SadBoy™ Spike walks intentionally into their trap. Somehow, he doesn't die, though the entire syndicate thinks he did. (Note Annie's reaction to seeing him alive in Session 5). It’s also implied that this is where he lost his eye.

HIS EYE - possibly the most important symbol in the show so I do have to mention it. In episode 26, he explicitly explains to Faye that one of his eyes only sees the past. (PS this isn't dissimilar to Jet's arm… we can get into that another time). Basically, he's constantly living halfway in the past and halfway in the present, and describes the past like a dream he can never wake up from. Because dysfunctional or not - the syndicate WAS his family. (Again - see his relationship with Annie, Mao, and Vicious (prior to Spike's betrayal)). It's his reminder that Julia didn't run away with him, and that he'd left behind that life for her. (He didn’t know she was being threatened until the final episode). Basically Spike is hyper-fixated on what he had and what could've been.

Not long after this, Spike starts bounty hunting because like? What else is he going to do. He doesn't care if he lives or dies but if he has to be alive, he may as well be able to eat. He joins up with Jet Black on the Bebop.

TL; DR: Spike stole Vicious' lover, Julia, so Vicious made Julia choose between her killing Spike or Vicious killing them both. She instead went into hiding and Spike thought he'd been stood up. He fake died and got the hell outta dodge.

2.     What was Faye's past?

Ok let me start by saying Faye is my wife and my life. HOWEVER I hated her the first time I watched this show circa age 13 because I thought she was annoying/vain/shallow (also because #internalizedmisogyny lol am I right fam). Good news! She is all those things! But she's also very lonely and scared and an amnesiac and secretly a sweetie and she realizes she loves the crew of the Bebop like family.

SO my wife's backstory:

she was born in the 1990s (#only90skidsremember). There's some debate over her race/nationality, but due to the images of her hanging out in Merlion Park in Singapore, my bet is that she's Singaporean. She comes from a wealthy family with a big house, and we see some utterly *adorable* film of her as a child/young adolescent in Session 18: Speak Like a Child. I cry everytime </3

^^ Holla for the representation

In 2014, circa age 20, she and her parents were going into space when the shuttle they were on had some kind of malfunction/accident and it killed an unknown number of people, including her parents. At the time, the technology didn’t exist to be able to save her, so she was put into a cryogenic sleep state. Meanwhile, the Lunar Gate accident occurs, breaking up the moon and causing rock showers on Earth's surface. Most people died, moved to Mars, or settled underground.

She wakes up from her cryogenic sleep in 2068. (Also the year Spike leaves the syndicate.) She's 'woken' by the corrupt Dr. Bacchus who plans on charging her for the years and years of medical debt she's accrued. (See Session 15: My Funny Valentine.) Luckily a lawyer takes interest in her case (Whitney Haggus Matsumoto) and tries to help get rid of her debt. The two fall in love, but turns out Whitney is a Scumbag. He's actually Dr. Bacchus's nephew, and faked his death, writing Faye as the sole inheritor to his will. This means she'll take on all his debts. So baby girl has LOTS of debt at this point.

In the intervening years prior to her joining the Bebop, she gambles, cheats, gains a lot of street smarts, and adopts a very seductive character to get her way. She joins the crew on the Bebop in Session 3: Honky Tonk Women.

TL;DR: Faye is Austin powers

YIKES this is so long I am so sorry. Bitches are obsessed with this show. (I am bitches)

3.     The Ending

Okay I'm going to present this in the way, in my scholarly opinion, would be correct, though there are SO many interpretations other than simply 'Spike died :/".

To understand the plot of the last couple episodes we actually have to go back to Session 5: Mao is instructed* to sign a treaty with a rival syndicate called the White Tigers. (*He's instructed by The Van (Council of identical creepy old men) who are the actual head of the dragon. I think we only see them in Session 26.) Well - Vicious is a Bastard Man and he and his fellow mutineers blow up the White Tiger guys' ship and slit Mao's throat. Before he dies, Mao is like "Gotdamnit if Spike was still here this shit wouldn't have happened." Later in the Cathedral battle, Vicious explains to Spike he killed Mao because Mao 'lost his fangs'. He planned on killing Spike for good her, IMO, so there'd be no rival to take over as Capo for the Dragons.

^^These guys are The Van btw

THEN in Session 25, the Van basically catches Vicious and is like “you killed Mao and now you have to go to Time Out.” The Van also decides to just kill everyone associated with Vicious, just 2 B safe. That's why there's a big ass shootout at the Loser Bar where Jet and Spike are chilling, drinking, (missing Faye and Ed and Ein lol) and Shin (younger brother to Lin, who's helping Vicious overthrow the Dragon) explains all this to Spike. OH and PS JULIA IS ALIVE AND HERE IS HER LOCATION :). (**Notice Spike's reaction at this point is different than his reaction in Jupiter Jazz when he hears there's a Julia on Calisto. Much less excited… hmm…).

SO THEN you know we get some flashbacks of the past as previously explained *and* Julia just happens to run into Faye. She recognizes that Faye is one of Spike's friends from the Bebop (she was keeping tabs on him it seems) and picks her up. Faye doesn't know who Julia is but is like damn bitch I'm a little gay for you. (I mean … that may just be my bi ass projecting, but Faye is REALLY struck with her. Look at how she describes her to Jet, I mean come on.)

 Faye's like, 'we should team up' and Julia says 'no thanks but also tell Spike to meet me at *the place*'. Meanwhile back on the Bebop Spike and Jet are talking and Spike goes on about some dream woman who was his other half. (We assume he means Julia … I have my reasons to doubt this … I have a lot of angry DMs about my opinion here lol but I just do not give a fuck (: I can expand on this in another post or you can refer to the title of my fucking blog haha) Personally, I think Watanabe personally left this specific scene open ended, the same way he does with the ending and various other things.

more like SIMP Spiegel

ANYWAY Faye comes back to the Bebop to tell Spike about Julia, and Jet gets intel from a former cop buddy that there's some shit going down with the Dragons. (Again, the Van is hunting down everyone ever associated with Vicious, including your pal Spike). Bebop is attacked, Faye tells Spike what's up with Julia, and he heads out.

 PAN TO VICIOUS chained up - about to be executed - but what's that!? It's a bird!? It's a pla- no it's just a bird. (With one glowing red eye … hm … reminds me of Spike, also the drug Red Eye. Pls let me know if you have any thoughts on this). Just a bird with a BOMB! Explosion (RIP bird c. 2065 - too soon), Vicious kills the elders, his buddies show up and are ready to go fuck shit up.

this show could not be more of an aesthetic

MMMPhhh okay RAINY CEMETERY. Spike and Julia. She draws a gun, explains why she didn't meet him that day, and then hugs him. Now Spike is not *great* at showing his emotions but he literally just stands there. Maybe it's a stoic expression of how sad he is that he never knew she still cared, when it seemed like she dumped him. Maybe he's finally getting some closure on his past. Maybe the past doesn't mean the same thing it used to. (I'll elaborate later on this).

They go to Annie's to get stocked up on stuff, she lets them know she denied knowing Spike was still alive and hey also the Van was assassinated by Vicious and his guys so. Watch out for that. Then her shop is surrounded by Vicious' guys and she dies :(. Spike and Julia escape to the roof, but she's shot and dies in Spike's arms, and says 'it's all just a dream' :(. (Refer to: Spike living in a dream of the past).

Anyway Jet SAID he wasn't gunna go after Spike but. Jet's parental instincts kick in (oh yeah he was shot in the leg earlier btw) and he goes to Sitting Bull to see if he knows where Spike is. He basically says yeah Spike's about to die somewhere. (I want to do a further analysis on all the Sitting Bull scenes.) Well conveniently Spike returns to the Bebop, eats, tells his story about a tiger-striped cat. (At one point Jet asks if he's going there for her, and Spike is like well she's dead now so whatever). THEN we get to the scene where Faye is like HEY YOU CAN'T GO OFF AND DIE ASSHOLE and he's like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I 've been living in the past so I might as well see if I'm living now. (**This will play heavily into my interpretation of the ending). Faye is pissed, shoots the ceiling and he goes off to the syndicate headquarters to fuck shit up.

He basically John Wicks his way through the building, Shin dies, he and Vicious have the big boss battle and whatnot. He kills Vicious and stumbles back out down the stairs and says "Bang!" and collapses. We pan to the sky and see a star fade away.

Well that explains the plot … now here's what I think happened!!! ALSO may I mention, anon - you picked up on something I feel like a lot of people miss out on. Why *did* Spike go back to kill Vicious if Julia was already dead??

Basically, once it became clear that anyone associated with Vicious was being killed, Spike knew they'd hunt him down, and they weren't beneath Kill-Billing their way to him, (i.e. systematically destroying this companions to get to him). And for all his apparent indifference - he really loves his new found family. Jet is literally like an older brother to him. Ed is a little sister. Ein is well … a very good boy. And Faye? Well the relationship is complicated, and I'm not going to get into the 69,420 reasons I ship them here, but I think it is beyond argument that he really does care for her, even if that just in a filial way. He didn't want the syndicates to kill them for their association to him, or in order to get to him. So he did what he had to do to protect them. *AND NO* I am not saying that he didn't love Julia. But it was clear that his desire was no longer to run away with her. I think he genuinely loved and cared about her, but at some point between Jupiter Jazz Pt 2 and now, he accepted that their time together was over. Now he had a new raison d'etre, which is the Bebop.

I think at this point Spike has 'woken up' to reality (as he implied to Faye in their final conversation in episode 26: "Look at these eyes. One of them is a fake, because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I have been seeing the past in one eye, and the present in the other. I had believed that what I saw was not all of reality...I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was all over." (This is from the sub btw I'm too lazy to look up the dub transcript.) He wasn't going there to die, he's going to find out if he's really alive. This line is fucking cool and everything - but it's implications are multitude. I won't go into them all here but basically : what makes him alive now is that he's free from his past. He's alive because he has this new family and protecting them is all he really wants now. Spike was protecting Jet, Faye, Ed, (and Ein) by going and facing the entire syndicate, knowing that their lives would all be in danger.

SO - did Spike die? Well again - Watanabe has purposely and artfully left this open ended. Well, if we're following the symbolism from Sitting Bull, then yeah, the man is as dead as disco, and wouldn't that be a fitting ending? BUT at the same time, Spike always refers to having 'died' before (meaning when he was ambushed by the syndicate, and they all thought he died, and he pretty much did). Don't forget that in  movie (takes places roughly between episodes 22 + 23, and yes, was made AFTER the series but whatever) he like .. DIES dies. He goes to the afterlife and everything. He wakes up to find he's chilling with Sitting Bull, who's like nah it wasn't your time to die yet. So the fact Sitting Bull confirms Spike will die in the final episode, means yeah, Spike is pretty much dead.

BUT -- okay now hear me out -- could this death in the final episode be a death to his previous life? The person he was in the syndicate? Now that he's extinguished the Red Dragons for good, is it not possible that its merely *that* life which has ended? That's the optimist in me saying that, but if it keeps me from staying up all night crying, I guess it'll have to do. Watanabe definitely wants to leave it up to the viewer, so whatever you think, I feel like there's validity to it.

WELL any anon, sorry for the fucking lecture - and believe me, I could've said MUCH, MUCH more - but I enjoyed this question. I always love talking about this show so please all you fuckers feel free to message me or send an ask about anything any time. I am really slow at replying because #life'sAbitch.

Love you all.

SY,SCB <3

[seoafin]

BYE I WAS IMMERSED WITH GENSHIN’s STORY PLOT (AND THE FANARTS ON MY TL) WHICH WAS ALSO DROPPED EARLIER THIS MORNING AND FORGOT ABT JJK FOR A SPLIT SEVONDSJJSJEJ

but anyways ,, jjk 145// the more i write abt it, the more i’ll sound incoherent, this is ur last warning to ignore this 🧍‍♂️(1)

the one who is based on avalokitesvara (i’ll start calling it them as kannon from now) that i mentioned was actually brain (out of ppl) 😭😭

kenjaku (羂索) is shorten from "不空羂索観音 (fukukenjakukannon)" ,, they existed b4 the heian period... older then sukuna ?? suggested that brain is at least 1k years old... hsjsjjsjs

fukukenjakukannon, a manifestation of the buddhist god of mercy and compassion,, perhaps of some interest is that the fukukenjaku shares some kanji with gojou's infinite void followed by kanjis for trap & rope, with kannon directly referring to an all-knowing/overseeing divine existence. it rly does seem that kenjaku, tengen, and gojou's fates have all been strongly interwined throughout history,, kannon has been perceived as both male and female depending on the portrayal and the region, not unlike jjk's kenjaku switching bodies and genders over the course of time (kamo vs kaori vs getou)

some associations with kannon may be relevant to jjk. namely, as yuki mentions, salvation ,, kannon is a deity to serve his subjects, and resolve their suffering by eliminating its source,,, in which case, i think kenjaku's goal may possibly not be too far off from geto’s ,,,,, he may think that he is saving a group that is enduring greater suffering than any other. whether that is shamans, cursed spirits, or sth else entirely is up for debate. given his persistence over the millenia, and the likelihood of spreading suffering worldwide through a universal tengen merger, it's more than likely that he has a very personal motive. note that under his plan it is specifically the evil of a human that would spread and destroy all of humankind connected through tengen

this is an interesting contrast to sukuna, who is much more whimsical and far less calculated. i think the clash between these 2 in the past will have strong relevance for the future,,, on the other hand, since kannon has historically manifested in response to the suffering of various beings, it may be that the feelings of cursed spirits as a whole have led to kenjaku's existence. he could very well be a curse born from curses, instead of from humans.

okay now what i'm really excited abt: the relationship between kenjaku and the 6 eyes. 1 of the functions of kannon is to protect the 6 realms of rebirth/the 6 paths. u may already be familiar with this buddhist concept as it has been referenced in a variety of animanga (notably it is a major plot point of naruto, it's mukuro's ability in KHR, etc.). there's strong reason to believe this concept also has connections to the gojou 6 eyes ability. i think if we get to learn more abt the 6 eyes, i may be able to speak more on this point.

(as a side note here, i’ll mention that there’s an association between kannon and the protection of aborted children, perhaps relating to og kamo and the death paintings)

at the very least, we know that kenjaku and the 6 eyes are in opposition, and i'm speculating that the gojou bloodline is the true manifestation of a protective deity, at least for the humans, and kenjaku's goals are antithetical to that,,, perhaps, as yuki kind of suggested, taking the name kenjaku is a joke of sorts. if sukuna is malevolence incarnate, kenjaku is mercilesness,,

i think some of the core concepts being explored by the tengen storyline are that of form and existence. gojou satoru, tengen, kenjaku, and eventually the star plasma vessels are existences that transcend the norm,,, toji on the other hand, is the only example of the opposite. an existence that shouldn't have ever existed, in a sense. kenjaku seemed to have used that to his advantage in his manipulation of the events in hidden inventory,,, but it also leads me to believe that only a similar anomaly could undo the new destiny he's setting up for himself.

geto was the perfect piece to set kenjaku up for success in conducting a merger and putting this culling game into motion. geto's path has led to this outcome,,, in which case, an apt parallel as we have known all along is that gojou's path should lead to the counter-outcome: megumi, yuuta, and especially yuuji— these 3 will be the key to unravelling kenjaku's plan.

also tengen said that kenjaku’s objective is to send all the ppl in jpn to higan or turning all non shamans into one but he doesnt have enough cursed energy to do that,,, i did say that yuuji’s birthday took place in the 4th solar term where a part of a week long celebration haru no higan (higan 彼岸→other shore, buddhist pārāmitā), when ppl would honour the dead and sweep ancestral tombs took place,,,

so theres this buddhist mantra, called the “heart sutra” and the last verse of the sutra is,,

there are many sutras in buddhism, but the most well-known among them is probably the Heart Sutra,, altho it depends on the sect (of buddhism), the heart sutra is often read at funerals and memorial services, so even if,, and for some reason the sutra is often associated to kannon even in the utube thumbnail 👁👁 if u search up prajnaparamita sutra,,

heart sutra has the meaning of "an important teaching to reach the state of enlightenment by the power to see through the truth and essence." which is based on the idea of ​​"void" as this important teaching,, the sutra tells us what we shld do to be free from the suffering of this world and live in peace,, in the heart sutra, the idea of ​​"void" is especially important.

buddhism can be broadly divided into theravada and mahayana buddhism,,,,

theravada is a teaching that only some ppl (those who practice buddhism with strict lifestyle like the monks) reach the state of enlightenment, while mahayana is a teaching that all ppl (some who practice Buddhism) can reach enlightment even if u dont practice anything related to the religion,,, the idea of ​​the void has the idea of ​​not being caught up in individual things and not being obsessed with it, and the idea of ​​heart sutra belongs to the category of mahayana buddhism

"void" does not mean "empty" but "no substance (no fixed shape)". the sutra also states that "everything keeps changing" and "although it keeps changing, the essence (core) of things remains the same."

for eg, the idea is, "i am me, no matter how old i am,, my appearance and various abilities deteriorate, how I am evaluated by others, whether i feel good or bad."

in other words,,, it’s a teaching to be aware of the essence without being caught up in the phenomenon of change.

"void" means "no substance (no fixed shape)", which means that u don't have to be obsessed with things or get caught up in one value.

eg, the reason why diamonds are beautiful is that diamonds arent beautiful from the beginning, but that humans decide that they’re beautiful,,, and that each person has a fixed evaluation of the movement of their hearts that they feel is beautiful. but thats not always the case right?

the last verse goes like this :

“Therefore, Prajna Paramita is known as the most divine mantra,

the great enlightening mantra,

the utmost mantra,

the incomparable mantra,

destroyer of all suffering!

Since what is true is not in vain, listen to the mantra of the Prajna Paramita– it goes like this:

GATE GATE PARA GATE PARASAM GATE BODHI SVAHA!”

the translation of the last line is: “going, going, going on beyond, always going on beyond, always becoming buddha.”

quoted from a web here : “it suggests movement toward awakening. It expresses the enlightenment of a buddha as an unfolding process, rather than a steady state. It puts us in the hopeful position of one who may not have arrived, but who may be on the way. The destination may not be an end, but the journey itself.

As appealing as this translation is, it is by no means the only one. When you do an Internet search for the terms “Heart Sutra” or “Prajna Paramita” you get numerous references. At these various pages you will find several different translations of the mantra. These include:

* Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. Oh what an awakening! All hail!

* Gone, gone, gone beyond altogether beyond, Awakening, fulfilled!

* Gone, gone, gone to the Other Shore, attained the Other Shore having never left.

* Gone, gone, totally gone, totally completely gone, enlightened, so be it.

* “Oh, you have done! You have done! You have completely crossed the margin. This is Enlightenment! Congratulations!” “

the irony though of toji dying thinking that he should've stuck his principles but actually having ridiculous impact on the world,, this also puts a new spin on the "look upon the flesh of one who is free" (afaik it was left untranslated on his cover page when he invade dagon’s domain) and the implication is imo,,, the more cursed energy, the more restrictions and so in a way humanity goes into a devolution the more cursed energy there is because they will be bound even more tightly to the cycle than before,, which is the irony of the kenjaku & bodhisattva linkage

toji had a heavenly restriction and has zero cursed energy, which is an anomaly that is his own, which makes me wonder what he would've been like if he had an expressed technique,,, but it's the zero cursed energy part, that uniqueness, that makes him powerful in canon

im rly curious how having cursed power automatically seems to lock u into a binding,,, which is seemingly fate. the shaman world rly operates entirely on rules,, where this is because of tengen's barriers or the origin of techniques being more commonplace im not sure

i used to think CTs came abt when individual sorcerers made pacts with supernatural beings etc but now im not sure,, despite leaning hard on shinto and buddhist frameworks there isnt much overt indication over what is and is not a real power in canon,,, like we have mahoraga but are bodhisattvas assumed to be real and exist? or as figures of belief, are they and other figures of shinto mythology, all just cursed spirits in the end?

but that tengen is linked with the proliferation of 6 eyes and star plasma vessel, makes me start wondering how and why tengen started this whole barrier thing,, like yes jpn has a ton of cursed spirits but was it before or after the barrier i can't remember now

maybe Kenjaku was messing around too much back then,, i like how sukuna also maybe had very lil to do with this and is possibly going to interfere as a wild card once more. is the idea to use him as a hail mary so u convey more ppl to the other side all at once? unless kenjaku thinks sukuna is the person who got closest to the next evolution of humankind and is actually a fan 🥴

but yeah if sukuna and megumi can remake the world together can they just hit the reset button so tengen isn't somehow this massive jungian collective unconscious? is sukuna going to accidentally save the world lol,,, i didn't care for fate themes before since it felt like akutami hadn't wholly committed to it as a theme,,, but fate and collective responsibility/influence on the individual just became a much bigger theme

also the mind/body/soul thing with tengen,,, when is that idea coming back

so tengen and sukuna are so far the only ppl who have said to have evolved into curses, whereas kenjaku still seems to be a shaman, as well as angel. what catalyzes that??

also how tf are the cursed weapons made i have questions,, just putting it out here but i actually thought that if toji, presumably, didnt rebel and defected from the clan,,, what are the chances of zenin thinking of turning him into a cursed weapon lol

,,, does being a cursed spirit mean u are bound even more tightly to fate? or do u escape because u are no longer a human bound by ur technique and u are instead just energy that keeps cycling over and over.....cursed energy rly just karma with strength mechanics???

why did gojou get rid of the black rope only for yuuta go to find more??? seems contradictory,, like...did he exorcise sth in that couple years gap?? or were there other reasons? or is HE the one scared since he also hid the inverted spear of heaven,,, makes me wonder how common knowledge all these mechanics actually are

trying to wrap my head around potential megumi learned helplessness or not being able to work through his own problems, or if it's this weird backward wishing that he didn't HAVE to deal with problems if he didn't HAVE to do these things and there were simple solutions,,, like i don't think he's exactly lazy bc he seems to do a lot of work behind the scenes, but there's a certain stasis to him, a wishing not to know. i wonder if he was ever given the "u are a child and I'm the adult" speech nanami gave yuuji

nanami, qifrey and maybe reigen are the adult/ mentor figures i wish was/ is in my life orz

i think it's kind of funny how 145 is like suddenly christianity! this manga is just abt the many ways people seek freedom and want to be delivered,,,

but im not going to talk abt it 😔 — i only have lil to no knowledge abt it other than the lil trivias my friends dropped time to time whenever we’re having a discourse abt religion suddenly lmao and im not a big fan of talking abt things idk abt bc i’ll just look stupid otherwise LMAO

its interesting to note that christian have this uh for a lack of better way to describe it, higher power which can grant u eternal salvation or damnation while buddhism is just fending for urself in pursuit of enlightment ,,, while buddhism also have beings like devas/ deities it just means that 1) if ur born as one, u must have done a good deed sometime in one of ur previous lives,, 2) u just have a ridiculous long life span but yes u’ll eventually die again and rebirth as sth depending on ur actions,,, that goes for living in gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts or hells realms

this is completely unrelated but,, my mother used to blast the heart sutra frequently in my house back then and the only thing i catch is the “gate gate parasamgate bodhi svaha” which i used ,, whenever i see sth..that is supposed to be unseen

theres this time i stayed behind in cram school for an exam,, i purposely took a another path from my usual one to clear my head (but im still familiar) and i saw this guy standing on the side road and the only thing that went thru my mind back them was “why is he not moving? is he waiting for someone? is he lost or sth,, the main road is just 6 foot away tho lol”

it was until i keep looking at each house that i finally notice that the spot he stood on is not even a ground lvl asphalt,, it’s a fucking sewer which means that he’s actually floating 😭😭 i just jogged and say sth along the line “wow today, ma is cooking hotpot for dinner (i actually have no idea what she plans to cook everyday) i dont want to eat it cold,, so i better hurry up” out loud while chanting the verse in my head

theres also this time me and a friend were sitting on my motorcycle after getting our late night food run until a particular smell and when we stay silent, a woman is singing on the branch right above us that we dipped right away and i almost catch a ticket for speeding all the while thinking abt that verse💀

i dont mind seeing one of “them” but i do have a problem with them following me back home and end up haunting my house for some period of time,, that one or sth ghost who slam things around and giggle in the middle of the night is enough for me to deal with 😀

now im off crying abt genshin (again) now and i’ll go back to sleep afterwards,,, ALSO I LOVE WITCH HATE ATALIERJSJEJEJ- 🐱 (2)

you literally brought up THE SAME EXACT QUESTIONS I HAVE!!! like why would gojo send yuuta to find more of the rope if he destroyed it in the first place?? unless he destroyed it in the heat of the battle with miguel during the prequel but it didn’t look like that. also i saw on twitter kenjaku might not even be a male?? apparently when referring to kenjaku, tengen didn’t use gendered pronouns. im also super curious as to how the six eyes, star plasma vessel (riko...), tengen, and kenjaku are all entwined because kenjaku’s plan was a long time coming, even though he was foiled two times already.

this reminds me of the heavenly restrictions because im still so confused about what exactly it is!! is it something a person is born with or is it something that is placed on a baby by another person??

you brought up fate too and i think that’s such an interesting concept like with akutami making more and more references to the heian era and the “golden age of sorcery” in the end I feel like everything led up to this moment. the existence of cursed energy too just feels like this “endless cycle of fate” which makes sense considering this theme also kinda aligns with yuuji’s birth which was pre planned. idk...this whole thing is suddenly feeling so much more insidious than we may have originally thought.

the sudden christianity mention is a pretty odd choice on akutami’s part but a lot of ppl (including me) are speculating that hana is going to be a harbinger of doom or something. once again is she even japanese?? the western concept of angels have never been particularly altruistic either.

unfortunately gojo has always been treating megumi like an adult so i don’t think he was ever given the “you are a child” talk from gojo. we can see it in their first meeting too. when their conversation takes a turn to serious, it becomes a conversation is from one adult to another. gojo also seems like the type to pile even more responsibility onto megumi because gojo isn’t responsible, so megumi had to pick up that slack.

i agree with you. i think sukuna is literally a wild card LMAO he does what he wants when he wants and that’s in. i don’t even think you can have a contingency plan for sukuna because he’s just that unpredictable!!!

nanami, qifrey and MAYBE reigen LSDNFKJFKN....reigen beats gojo by far though so i’ll give reigen that (that's not saying much tho tbh 😭) reigen's still sexy as hell tho 😁

also you mentioned khr!! khr is one of my favorite mangas of all time....although amano akira cannot write women despite being one khr still holds a very special place in my heart. i had no idea mukuro was influenced by kannon (to be fair i was like 14) but then again...mukuro’s eyes....i can’t believe our tastes in animanga are the same....bestie our taste>>>

HELLO???? YOU’RE RUNNING INTO SUPERNATURAL CREATURES LIKE THAT??? also motorcycles!! now im like 80% sure you're in SEA somewhere, bc as someone who lived in a SEA country for 3 years and went to school in a haunted building I feel you LMAO

[umbraja]

Body Hair Positivity: Good or Gross?

It’s been a trend lately to embrace a more diverse image of beauty. Freckles and muffin tops, dark skin and curly hair, scars, tattoos, unusual proportions, crooked teeth, pretty much anything is supposed to be accepted under the banner of Body Positivity. 

But what about body hair?

And I’m not just talking about armpits or legs. I also mean unusual body hair. The kind people don’t talk about. The kind women aren’t “supposed” to have: chest hair, happy trails, beards, back hair. The kind that doctors call hirsutism and is often associated with hormonal imbalances from things like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Cushing Syndrome, medication side effects, menopause, or even just genetics. It affects somewhere between 5%-10% of women depending on the region surveyed but may be higher as it can often go undiagnosed.

It’s not like we’re taught how healthy body hair should look.

Humans have been removing body hair since before recorded history. Archaeologists have found evidence of early humans using clam shells and shark teeth to remove body hair. Ancient Egyptians are well known for their full body waxes. Ancient Greeks considered it “uncivilized” for a woman to have pubic hair. Roman boys celebrated their entry into manhood with a mandatory first shave. And medieval European Ladies plucked daily to remove all hair from their brows, temples, and neck - some even plucked their eyelashes. The “New World” was no stranger to body hair removal either. Thomas Jefferson, and many others, wrote of some Native Americans’ depilatory obsession.

“With [Native Americans] it is disgraceful to be hairy on the body. They say it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck the hair as fast as it appears.” - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

In the non-native US, body hair removal wasn’t really a big thing until the 20th century when we did a complete 180 on the subject. Before that Puritan values made sure that most body hair was covered by clothing so few bothered to remove it since no one was gonna see what was under all that cloth. Now recent studies say that 93 to 99 percent of American women regularly remove their body hair, making it one of our most widely practiced beauty norms. Girls as young as 10 are pressured into shaving, waxing, plucking, threading, anything to remove errant hairs as soon as they start to sprout. Refusal to do so leaves us open to bullying, both on the playground and in the office. Visible body hair can cost a woman jobs, promotions, and relationships so most of us remove it, no matter the cost. Which one study worked out to be more than $10,000 over the course of her life for the average American woman who shaves. If she waxes instead the bill goes over $23,000.

So what happened?

“Where eighteenth-century naturalists and explorers considered hair-free skin to be the strange obsession of indigenous peoples, Cold War-era commentators blithely described visible body hair on women as evidence of a filthy, ‘foreign’ lack of hygiene.” - Rebecca Herzig, Plucked, a History of Hair Removal

The driving forces behind hair removal in America are the same three that cause most of the nation’s problems: greed, sexism, and racism. Let’s go in chronological order. 

As the “Age of Enlightenment” began to secularize European politics, Imperialists needed a new excuse to justify their expansion into non-European territory. Naturalists like the still famous Charles Darwin handed them pseudoscience. It’s debatable whether or not these naturalists intended their work to be used as the foundation for white supremacist ideology that still plagues us today but there’s no question about how racists interpreted it. They saw evolution as a line that went from ape through colored people and ends at Aryan. Real science tells us that’s not at all correct and if anyone is closer to cave man it’s white people who often have Neanderthal in their DNA. But they didn’t have genetic sequencers back then so they used physical traits to “prove” it instead. Part of this was a gross mischaracterization that body hair could be used to determine a person’s place within the line of human evolution. They claimed people with coarse, dark hair were closer to apes and those with thin, light hair were more evolved. Guess who picked up on that concept in the 20th century.

Darwin further complicated matters in his attempt to explain why some white people were hairier than some indigenous populations by associating hairiness with evolutionary backsliding and mental illness.  

“[Hairiness in Europeans] is due to partial reversion; for characters which have been at some former period long inherited are always apt to return. We have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other characters to a lower animal type.” - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Other scientists and even medical experts of the time ran with this idea and before long the educated elite considered hairiness (along with other non-Aryan traits) to be a symptom of disease, insanity, and criminal violence. The uneducated masses were more familiar with freak show displays of unusually hairy people as “missing links” to our primate ancestors. Both cases considered having body hair to be a very bad thing. They’re also very bad science and not at all true.

Despite these very strong, racist feelings about body hair, it still wasn’t common for American women to remove it beyond the upper lip, neck, jaw, or between the eyebrows. Most women don’t have much hair there and those that did rarely had time or money to invest in removing it. Also they wouldn’t be caught dead admitting they had to so historical records might not be accurate about how many women actually plucked. For the first half of American history peach fuzz and other light hair was seen as normal and clothes covered the rest. But the 20th century not only saw women wearing less cloth and showing more skin it also saw them calling for gender equality. Critics of women’s liberation often accused suffragettes of sexual inversion - aka acting too much like men, which they saw as an abhorrent threat. To really drive this point home they often depicted women’s rights activists as being hairy, thus politicizing our pits. Pair this with the “hygiene” movement’s embrace of already mentioned racist views on body hair and you have a recipe for weaponized shame.

“Self-consciousness brings timidity, restrained action and awkwardness. The use of Del-a-tone relieves the mind from anxious watchfulness of movement.” - 1919 Del-a-tone depilatory advertisement

Enter Capitalism. Producers of hair removal products wanted to up sales so they did the exact same thing that was done with every other beauty product on the market - shame women into buying their stuff. It’s debatable if this was motivated purely by greed, in an attempt to reach an untapped market, or if the resulting gender oppression was intentional but men were spared of this aggressive shaming (until recently at least). Women, on the other hand, were flooded with advertisements for body hair removal products. From the first “razor for women” in 1915 to 21st century laser hair removal ads, women are constantly being reminded of our body hair. It doesn’t take a genius seeing ads that call smooth skin “attractive” or “sanitary” to extrapolate the opposite - that body hair is ugly, and dirty. A series of ads for Del-a-tone depilatory products even called it “necessary” for sleeveless fashion and suggests that not using their product will lead to social anxiety. Pair that with only ever using shaved models in all of fashion advertising and you send a pretty clear message: female body hair is something to be ashamed of. Advertising works. Now most American women actually feel gross if they’ve missed a shave, despite body hair being perfectly natural and not at all dirty. This disgust is so strong it has even bled over into an aversion toward male body hair which has seen a sharp decline in popularity since the shaggy chested disco days. Now men are being inundated with “manscaping” advertisements and expectations of manicured if not completely removed body hair.

So that’s the background but where’s this going?

While female body hair removal is firmly ingrained in western beauty standards, a new generation of women are rebelling against those ideals - body hair included. Recent studies have shown a shift in body hair trends among young women. Only 77% percent of women 16 to 24 reported regularly shaving their pits in 2016 and 85% shaved their legs, down from 95% and 92% respectively just two years prior. Since then we’ve started to see models, celebrities, and everyday women with unshaven pits and hairy legs. Body positivity campaigns have even gotten a few advertisers to include body hair in their ads. Now you can see razors actually shaving hair from women’s bodies instead of inexplicably running over baby smooth skin. 

Women have always told ourselves that hair removal is a choice but we’ve never before been encouraged to choose not doing it. Instead we’ve been brainwashed to think it’s dirty and disgusting and that no one will accept us for being hairy. Today’s young woman is actually presented with a choice, “to shave or not to shave” and a lot of them are choosing not to. Which is great news for people like me who have hirsutism and are sick of being shamed for how nature made us. 

But we’ve still got a very long way to go before I can be confident that my neck beard won’t hold me back both socially and professionally. A lot of the women who have publicly displayed body hair in recent years have come under attack by people calling them various shades of “gross” and some have even been sent death threats. It’s one thing for a rich and famous Hollywood movie star to take that kind of risk but for an autistic office worker living in a conservative backwater that’s a whole different game.

Whatever your thoughts and feelings on body hair, America still hasn’t escaped the shame of the last hundred years. Women are still very much judged for being hairy. A lot of people still think it’s gross. I’m not one of them but I’m full of unpopular opinions.

[a-real-ackerman]

Perfect Scenario

Sherlock Fanfic

summary: You, a super human, an excellent actor and a liar with debatable ethics; are having a hard time overcoming feelings  no one new you were capable of. On top of it, you have to deal with your “arch enemy” who has dedicated himself on the way of ruining your chances at your new life.

pairing: Sherlock x superhuman!Reader 

warnings: Mentions of abuse, mentions of suicide, violence, language and horrible mistakes... I dunno, I will write a current warning in red on every chapter.

A/N: Even tho I think Sherlock as an asexual character or not interested etc, I find working with well-known characters and less OC’s quite useful. Also, I see a lot of me in him so I will be writing about him more. Also, the reader is female. Also, gifs are never mine, all credits for those talented people. By the way, in case you see my mistakes don’t be shy, let me know! I am trying to improve my English.

Chapter One: “Trembling Hands.”

      “You don’t know who you are, unlike me.” was written on the card  you  recently received. Menacing words written in an elegant handwriting, appeared by your window, every morning since last Friday. there you stood by your counter, your e/c eyes wandering over the same simple words again and again, in a hopeless struggle to find any clues. You did not know what they wanted or cared about; what part of you they assumed they knew? Your super powers? Your business? Your therapist? Your past? Your parents’ death? All the lies you have been telling whole the time? 

      What you could analyse from each of these notes were the fact that they actually new about you. The words they choose were written in a friendly manner which told you that even tho you have never met them, they knew enough to consider themselves close to you. 

      You had a few assumptions on who they could be:

A secret admirer, in a sense, stalker

A conspiracy theorist who have witnessed your... condition?

One of the investigator who had researched you in your teens

Jimmy

     No matter which one they were,(more likely to be a he), he was a stalker. You did not like stalkers. But you were interested in this one’s motive. You wanted to beat their game before they could put their filthy obsessive hands on your very new and clean life.

     Hopping off the counter, you rushed into the living room and put the card on the brown coffee stand in the middle of the room, right next to others. Walking trough cold blue walls of you flat, you kept mentally checking the places you usually control, in case there were cameras. You were going to take a shower after all.

          “I have to ask him first,” said the man on the line, Holmes’ face shot a fake kind smile as he was face to face with the doctor. “ tell my brother I said hi.”

         Doctor threw a look at the phone in disbelief as Holmes hang up the phone. Sherlock was not in his mood for a new case. Especially not a case from his brother, which involves scammers, government, some mafia and a class action lawsuit that could bring them a big amount of money. The detective was too busy in his mind palace.

        John entered the flat and found his flatmate already waiting for him, sat on his chair with hands in praying position, eyes boring into him like he’s trying to ask something.

       Uncomfortable under the gaze, “Yes, Sherlock ask away.” sighed John.

       “John,” said Sherlock, “I have a suggestion.”

        John looked at him in suspicion, his eyes narrowing.

        “How about going out to see a play tonight?”

         John exhaled out of surprise to his friend’s suggestion, was he asking him on a date? For a case (of course)? 

          “Don’t worry John, about whatever you thought of-I don’t’ prefer to vocalise it. I think we may have a new case, which includes the leading actor. She seems to play a big part in this case as much as the play. I also want to witness myself if she was as good as they talked about.”

         “It’s okay, Sherlock, just for once.”

         Sherlock baffled,” What do you mean by ‘just once’? This is a case just like the others, you don’t want to solve cases anymore?”

         “No,” insisted John, “All I’m saying is: it’s okay to be a human just for once.It’s okay to take interest in a play, film or a person-”

         “-I AM NOT INTERESTED,JOHN,”

         It was too late to deny, John was already going upstairs, with a smug smirk of a self-proud mother who has just embarrassed their teenager.

         You have once again saluted the audience, holding hands with your teammates. A little stronger than usual maybe, you didn’t want to throw the decors and people off the stage. Your hands were trembling more since you couldn’t stop the seconds passing; and your head got dizzier every movement, with the help of flashing stage lights. Mavis, your co-actor since high school, leaned over your ear; “You always get so excited when it ends!” she whispered without knowing anything.

       You shot your perfect, warmest smile as your eyes wandered around the place in case anyone was suspicious. You locked your eyes with an awfully familiar man around your age, with curly hair falling on his forehead and eyes piercing onto you. He knew, he knew something and made it clear. He knew you.

”There she is,” you saw him whispering to his friend. You could listen to them is you focused enough, thanks to not being so human.

         But you choose to not hear anything.Thanks to your instincts being quite active this afternoon, every word had felt no different than a knife stabbing her ears. All of this pain was because you couldn’t use your power today. You were a bomb waiting to explode, your hands itching to throw people to the walls and your screams desired to ruin every window in the city. 

     The torture soon ends, but always leaves you shaken up. You turned from the left corner of the entrance of the theatre and entered the cafe where you have tea every night after performance. You didn’t die to drink it every night actually, yet the calming mix thing of this cafe could put an angry elephant down. Naturally, you could calm down too. It eased your nerves and relaxed your muscles which helped you overcoming your power. I you didn’t bother to control your powers, let’s say, no one nearby could survive.

    Whatever, you took your usual seat and smiled at the kind young waiter. You knew each other now, so you didn’t have to talk.(dreamy isn’t it? not having to talk?) You looked out of the window, watching the shiny cars passing by and colourful lights dancing. You slowly turned to the man who just sat in front of you, his arms crossed on the table and eyes gazing you in a weird expression between curious and astonished. Admiring and contemptuous. Familiar and hateful. Friendly and strange.

    “I have to say I am totally astonished by your acting,” he started. You were right about astonished. You smiled firmly, just because this one was choosing his words firmly. If he is one of those creeps you would send him off. But you had to be careful these days, anyone could lead you to the stalker.

    “You come here often.”

    “Yes, it’s not new. Everyone who has taken interest in stalking me knows.”

     He let out a chuckle which you didn’t expect to be this natural.”Sorry if I made you uncomfortable. Ironic, since I have come to apologise for making you uncomfortable.”

    His gaze took a lovely, apologising, soft form, which could melt your heart if you didn’t realise him checking for your expressions in between seconds. He was trying to impress you, for what?

    “It’s not very comforting of you when you follow me to a cafe.”

    “So it did,” he said, paying too much attention on your hands while you reached out to your tea.

    “Is he bothering you miss?” asked the waiter protectively, his voice a few octave deeper than usual.

    “I am fine, thank you Oscar.” you watched him walking away with a nod.”So what did what?”

    “Me. Looking at you. You noticed me in hundreds of people. You saw us talking about you.”

    “Please don’t start with that ‘love-at-first-sight-soulmate’ shit.” 

    “I was actually going to start with ‘you-somehow-know-you-are-in-danger’ shit.”

     Your mouth dropped with his super sassy mic drop. You had to be clueless, oblivious and self centred now. You were a normal person now.

     “Is this a threat? I am amused.” you smirked, don’t let them him the fear.

     “No,” he rolled his eyes, “This is an offer.”

      “I am Sherlock Holmes.”

      “OH!” you relaxed, “I know you, (y/n)(s/n).” you answered shaking his hand.

"Come on, drink it. You seem to be dying for it."

   You reached to the cuppa, not being able to hide your hands. As soon as this herbal smell filled your nose and followed it's way to your heart, a soft needy smile appeared on your lips. You felt your muscles getting back to normal.You opened your eyes.

"Now look," you threatened suddenly," if you are here to investigate my parents' death and sue me for it..."

He was more focused now, his gaze melted down to a more intense, even a curious one.

"I am tired. I am tired of this. For all my teenage years, my past, people defined me as a liar. So keep going, keep evoking my traumas. You won’t find what you’re looking for."

"There is a huge misunderstanding, "

He comforted you, leaning more onto the table, you almost loved this caring facade, a pair of eyes; signing no danger, no threat but just a simple caring feeling, were more than enough to let your guard down and believing someone. Just this once.

"I don't want to sue you. I offer you my help. Someone has opened your case again."

This was too much for you, with all energy trapped in your body your heart started to ache, your hands trembling in a way no one could stop.

"Trembling hands."

"What?"

"Show them."

You obeyed, held them up in front of him.

"I thought tea would help you."

"It does. When no one triggers me."

"Everything could trigger you. You live alone in the house your very own parents committed suicide. You don't even have pets which is surprising because you love animals, judging by a different cat and dog fur on your pants, coat, jumper, pretty much everywhere. You also have been avoiding your therapist, judging by the notification sound that you didn't answer after seeing the name. And no, it can not be your lover because you are alone live alone and have no attempt on your physical self-care, in addition, the cafe you go nearly every day or your friend group doesn't look for someone else after you arrive on your own. But those are not clear assumptions, knowing what your parents like is enough to assume you prefer to be single. You are alone for a reason. You think you’re dangerous.

So you live alone, have no one, and Scotland Yard is investigating you. You get stalked and for a reason, you always stay sharp and have a very defensive observant personality.

You are interesting enough for me. I will take your case."

"Is this a nerd way of asking for my number? If it is I will say yes."

"No, it's better, it is a smart way to interest you."

" What for? Why will you help me?"

" Because there is a game waiting for me,” he sighed, “and I am bored."

"Fine, this is my number here-"

"I already have it!"

Then he rushed out, putting his collars up, ruffling his hair.

A/N: I want to thank @fanfictionislovefanfictioni-blog​ for the request! 

[threephasebird]

Hello friend, it's Nicole from TAD discord, so sorry for awkwardly & randomly sliding into your dms. I've noticed that you've been reblogging a lot of The Untamed recently and I have just finished The Untamed & literally cannot think about anything else. I'm obsessed. Anyway, I've also noticed from your blog that your favorite seems to be JGY and I find that *fascinating*. He's very much not my fav, but he's such a complex character that I would love to hear your thoughts & feelings & analysis?

And to be completely clear, I will never try to debate with you or say your opinions are wrong or immoral or anything. I'm not an anti, I've stanned plenty of villains in my time. I'm just genuinely curious. I think the fact that you have such different feelings about this character is part of the beauty of stories and a testament to how complex and smart this particular story is.

Hello friend! First of all, thank you for your ask -- I love talking about my fictional faves, so there’s no need to apologize at all! There are definitely people out there who have already posted much more cohesive and succinct character analysis for JGY, but I’ve sat down for a bit to find an answer to the question of why I, personally, like him so much. I ended up finding six possible ways to answer this question, which I’ll list below and then go into (a lot) more detail under the cut. Hope you enjoy!

1) I like him because his motivations as a villain are complex and understandable

2) I like him because there’s no easy solution to his conflicts

3) I like him because he interacts with the story in a unique way

4) I like him because when we see him on top of his game, it’s fun to watch

5) I like him because LXC likes him

6) JGY is very small and has dimples

So, onward! (2.7k)

1) I like him because his motivations as a villain are complex and understandable

One possible way of looking at JGY is that throughout the entire story, his end goal is to eliminate all of the Jin family and come out on top as sect leader, chief cultivator and most powerful person in the cultivation world. However, I personally find it more intriguing to think that his specific plans shifted throughout the story and that he didn’t follow a long con the way NHS did, but that the common ground in everything he does is that he’s motivated by wanting security. Then, everything that he does afterwards is a step-by-step escalation when no matter what he does and how far he comes, his goal is always dangled right in front of him, but ultimately impossible to reach.

When he joins the Nie clan, on a superficial level it seems that this place could offer him the security he wants and needs, especially with NMJ protecting him -- but on the flip side of the coin, no one apart from NMJ and NHS seem to respect him, and his security entirely depends on NMJ’s goodwill. It’s an exteremely fragile position that could probably only ever last for a limited amount of time. Even if JGY never killed the guard captain and wasn’t thrown out of the Unclean Realm, how would the future have looked like for him? NMJ’s life expectancy was low to begin with, and once he had died (of natural causes, in this hypothetical case), NHS wouldn’t have been able to hold the same protective hand over JGY as his brother, and JGY would have become the disrespected advisor to the disrespected clan leader. (On a side note, I personally don’t think JGY released XY to get the yin iron -- I think it makes more sense that he wanted to use XY as bargaining chips against WC, seeing how he goes to free him immediately after WC asks for NMJ to release XY, to save the Unclean Realm and, in extension, his own ass.)

After JGY is thrown out, he’s basically out of options -- it’s go big or go home, because which other clan would take him in now? So he sets his sight on being recognized by JGS once more, and in order to succeed, he derives the plan of becoming a spy under WRH and do something so “heroical” that after the war, JGS has no other choice but to accept him into his clan. And at first, it seems like he succeeds and that he finally gets everything he wished for -- his father recognizes him as a son and gives him a position, he’s part of the Jin clan, he has power, he’s secure! But then it turns out that he was wishing on the monkey’s paw. His father doesn’t truly recognize him, and even in the Jin clan he’s disrespected (by JGS, by Madam Jin, by Jin Zixun), he doesn’t truly hold power (he just has to do whatever JGS tells him to), and he’s not secure (JGS instrumentalizes him because he’s useful to him right now, but does that mean he’ll be useful forever? So there’s a constant threat there).

I think the only reason JGS officially adopts JGY is that it allows him to claim the victory over WRH for the Jin clan and to expand his own power. Instead of JGY being recognized, JGS instrumentalizes him from the very first second and to make it worse, he makes JGY his attack dog the same way WRH did. I think the things JGY does under both WRH and JGS are absolutely horrifying, but I can’t help but also feel horrified for him. Under WRH, I think he tells himself that whatever he does is the lesser evil because it’ll end the war quicker, and that it’ll all be worth it in the end, and as a result, he loses parts of his own humanity there. And then under JGS, it’s the same fucked up shit again, except that this time, he also wants so very badly for JGS to value him, and in addition, he’s also completely out of options now. Without wanting to excuse the things he does under JGS, the only alternative at this point is for him to leave the Jin clan and the cultivation world as a whole, and I do think there’s a definite possibility that JGS would have him killed if he did because he knew too much about JGS’s plans.

Without passing judgment on his involvement in JZX and JZX’s deaths, as well as him killing NMJ and JGS for now (the latter being the one thing that I’m personally most horrified of), I don’t see JGY as a villain who enjoys being the villain the way XY does. I think he’s constantly horrified at himself and compartmentalizes to a degree where he’s actually derailing his own plans. Him throwing out XY immediately after killing JGS reads to me as him wanting to close the chapter of everything they did under JGS -- I think he must have acted out of a visceral emotion there or else he wouldn’t have left XY to die at the side of a road so carelessly (and, in effect, allowed for someone to live on with detailed knowledge of his own deeds). After rising to power (and finally, seemingly, really getting the security he’s always wanted), he doesn’t use that power to become WRH 3.0, but instead to do genuinely good things (such as building the watch towers). That’s not supposed to mean that him not being a cruel despot makes up for everything he’s done, but I find it interesting to think about from the perspective of, what kind of person could he have been if this opportunity had been given to him freely -- if his own class and social standing didn’t prevent him from that? I think he’d have become an incredibly powerful cultivator and clan leader if he’d have the same privilege as JZX.

In a way, I see JZX, WC, and JGY as narrative foils. WC shows us who JZX might have become if JGS treated him the same way as WRH treats WC. But, JGS doesn’t -- he shields his own son from this part of the Jin clan, and basically allows him to live in a completely different reality as JGY! JZX’s whole character arc is one of personality development, and becoming a hero, and falling in love -- he doesn’t have a clue about his father wanting to get his hands on XY and the Stygian tiger amulet and arguably about at least part of the war crimes he commits against the Wen clan. It’s not part of his life. In a way, JGY is the sacrifice being made to allow him to live his life unaware because in him, JGS found someone else to do his dirty work.

2) I like him because there’s no easy solution to his conflicts

Sometimes, when you want to be a villain apologist, all you need to do is point at one or a few bits of the story and say, “well if they hadn’t done that...”. (See, for example, Anakin Skywalker -- you wanna write a RotS canon divergence fixit? Just have Obi-Wan come back approximately one hour earlier and you have it, because before Anakin kills the Jedi even the Younglings he’s basically completely redeemable.) With JGY, you don’t get to have that. There’s no single turning point where you could say, “if he had picked the other option, he could have had a happy ending”. And part of the reason for that, which makes him a tragic character in my eyes, is that he crucially lacks options at many turning points.

In order to write a canon divergence AU for JGY where he comes out unscathed and redeemable, you’d have to go pretty far back in the story, and even then, you’d have to work hard to find a solution to his story that doesn’t a) rely on someone saving him (such as: LXC brings him to Cloud Recesses, or: JGS has a change of heart, frees his mother, and sends them a comfortable monthly pension), b) having him be dependent on someone else’s goodwill (such as: staying in the Unclean Realm in a delicate position).

If we don’t want to go back right to the very beginning or change fundamental parts of the story, well... As I’ve mused about above, if we let him stay in the Unclean Realm, he’d have never reached his goal of security either. If he never became a spy during the Sunshot Campaign, he wouldn’t have been accepted into the Jin clan and would have been out of options. If he never committed the atrocities for JGS, JGS would probably have kicked him out or killed him. (I do think there’s a lot of truth in what JGY tells NMJ in the empathy flashback, on that instance.) If he didn’t kill NMJ, there is a distinct possibility that NMJ would have killed him -- we see him try three times on screen, after all. (I’m leaving out the parts about him being directly responsible for JZX’s and JZX’s death in the show, as well as for controlling the corpses at Nighless City and JYL’s death, because it’s not in the book and I think it takes away from WWX’s character. As for QS’s and their son’s deaths...I personally do not see strong motivation for him to kill them, but in the end, we just don’t know which is, on a side note, a thing I really like about The Untamed/MDZS! Sometimes we just don’t know because the only people who know for sure can’t tell us anymore.) One option could be for him to confide to JZX, bring him over to his own side, and non-violently overthrow JGS, which would be a good and satisfying ending both to his and JZX’s character arcs -- but I also think there’s a high possibility JZX would hold JGY responsible for what he and JGS did, and never trust him with power again.

(Again, one thing I really do not wish to excuse away is how he killed JGS, and I just. Desperately wished he didn’t.)

I’ve been going over and over the possibilites for fix-its and canon divergence AUs, but in the end, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the only real choice JGY has throughout the story is whether to remove himself from the narrative or stay in it. He could make the choice to give up his mother’s dream, reject his father, and leave cultivation world (and, on a meta level, the story!) to become a “nobody”. (Small side note, though -- living on which skills?) If he doesn’t -- well, as soon as he enters the game, the cards are stacked against him.

To pick up on the meta level comment, I do find it fascinating that in a sense, JGY not only has to struggle for respect and recognition within the story, but that what he does also serves to keep his character part of the story. He could choose to give up and leave (and thus come out of the story redeemable), but then he wouldn’t be part of the story anymore.

3) I like him because he interacts with the story in a unique way

Continuing with the last point, JGY interacts with the story in two unique ways that distinguish him basically from all the other characters. He’s not actually supposed to be part of the story, but that he basically claws his way in. But that also means that his class and social status cannot be removed from any of the conflicts he encounters in universe -- they’re at the heart of all of them. In the empathy flashback, he says to NMJ, “You always scold me for indecent scheming. You always say that you are just and straight [...] A decent man shouldn’t resort to devious stratagems. [...] You’re of noble birth and have profound cultivation. What about me? How can I be the same? First, I don’t have the foundation of cultivation. No one has ever taught me that since I was a child! Second, I don’t have any background. Do you think that my position is very solid in the Jin clan of Lanling?” What I find so intriguing about this scene is that he’s right when he says he’s different from the others both in text and on a meta level because most of the other characters are never faced with the same decisions and have a natural place within the story (apart, to some degree, WWX and XY, where also interesting parallels can be drawn). And the other characters are, in a way, self-righteous to judge him when almost none of them come out of the story without blood on their hands -- WWX’s revenge, JC torturing demonic cultivators after WWX’s death, and so on...The entire cultivation world (even NMJ! even LXC!) were complicit in the war crimes against the Wen. But when the cultivation world turns against JGY, they are the most appalled by the things I as a viewer would be the most lenient towards (murdering JGS), and don’t care at all about the thing that horrifies me the most (murdering the sex workers).

There’s an interesting post by @pumpkinpaix​ analysing how class dynamics work in the story, which I highly recommend! I don’t want to repeat what has been said there already in much better ways than I can, but among other things, it makes some really interesting points about how much JGY’s class is tied with his motivations.

4) I like him because when we see him on top of his game, it’s fun to watch

Aside from any analysis, part of the reason why I like him so much is that when he’s acting as a villain, he’s just so much fun to watch. When WWX breaks into his vault in paperman form and JGY has approximately 5 minutes to get rid of the head, the torture bench (?) and anything suspicious, contact and inform Su She, run to a different building and come back, and nonetheless he manages to convince everyone but WWX and LWJ that he’s the victim in this situation, it’s just. Peak entertainment? For a short time, he’s on top of the game, and then he’s backed into a corner and becomes sloppy, and finally loses it all due to sentimentality (if he didn’t want to take his mother’s body with him and say goodbye to LXC, I’m sure he could have fled the country). I think Zhu Zanjin did an amazing job as an actor to portray how JGY is constantly assessing everything, how 23638 emotions flicker over his face in half a second, how his whole body language shows the constant anxiety and pressure and stress and fear he’s under, and how we actually get to see in his microexpressions when JGY chooses a path and commits to the acting and emotional manipulation to follow it through.

5) I like him because LXC likes him 

Here’s a secret: Actually, LXC is my favourite character. And LXC loves JGY a lot. So I’m kind of contractually obliged to at least love JGY a little bit as well?

On a more serious note, I’m very intrigued in their relationship because I do think what they had was genuine. I view it as two people being very open and honest and true with each other, while placing a lot of things outside the brackets and crossing them out. LXC even says that he was aware of some things JGY did (which ones? how? I need to know) but that he justified them to himself. I think they both realised that they could have had something very special, but under the given circumstances, LXC wouldn’t have been able to help JGY (see: point 2) even if he knew everything. Still, they were obviously very close and trusted each other as much as they could. I think in the end, when LXC seemed to have decided to stay and die with him, JGY pushed him away because he was the only genuinely good part of his life, and he felt like he couldn’t rightfully deprive the world of LXC. It’s all very tragic, and I’m very intrigued to explore what they could have been in a slightly softer world.

6) JGY is very small and has dimples

I can only speak for myself, but when I was watching, I was so prone at any point to believe in him no matter what was revealed. Look at him! Could this man do something wrong?

[chibivesicle]

Golden Kamuy - chapter 253 - the chaos continues!

I’m taking a chance to look at chapter 253 on its own again - what is this?  Early 2019?  So much happens in this chapter as Abashiri 2.0 unfolds as a giant cluster with a lot of similar characters interacting.

Team Hijikata, sans Kadokura, Kirawus and Ushiyama regroup outside the brewery.

Ariko is ironically with Toni as he picks up the rear.  They confirm that our convict has fled inside.  So this group will be somewhat effective as they aren’t a divided group.  Hijikata was also able to confirm that our convict is a foreigner as they had suspected.  Toni is able to use his awesome ears to let everyone know that he heard a military rifle.  This means that the 7th is on the other side of the building.  And boom the final panel shows why Hijikata is an effective leader.

He makes it clear they capture Jack, and retreat.  NOT engage with the 7th.  Wow.  Smart, this is what a good leader does, he makes the right call.

The action turns to Ogata in the fire watchtower.  He leans below the widow where Vasily fired so he’s not visible.  This then reveals that Ogata’s type 38 is inoperable.  And begin the replay of Ogata’s sniper battle with Vasily but even worse than before.  Instead of the single shot rifle, he’s got no rifle.  But he’s in luck!  Usami is also terrible with rifle care and love!  In his need to chase down Kadokura with his bayonet, he left his type 38 on the ground.

Ogata has an interesting monologue here were he’s asking if the rifle is where it was dropped and states if he hadn’t jumped back he’d have been shot.  I am working with the english translation here and life has been far to busy to seek out the original text.  Either he’s having a conversation with himself, or he’s talking to ‘Yuusaku’.  Why could this be the case?  The next page.

Ogata looks up at the spot where he was with a “. . . . .” speech bubble and then asks “Did you save me?”  Is it Yuusaku?  Is it his guilty conscience?  Could it even be Vasily?

But he continues to state that there is no way that is possible and that you are not that soft-hearted right?  Again, it could be Yuusaku since we know he was trying to be a good little brother.  But, it could be applied to Vasily since Ogata thought he knew exactly what type of sniper he is.  Being the next level strategic sniper that he is, Ogata begins to kick a hole in the side of the wall to escape out of sight since the ladder is currently being targeted by Vasily since he thinks that is the only way out.

And this makes my heart go pitter-patter for Ogata since he’s going to outwit Vasily.

The last panel has dialogue makes me think it is a bizarre mix of Yuusaku, Vasily and Ogata’s own conscience.  Something is trying to get Ogata to think about feelings and he’s not happy with it.  It be him annoyed Yuusaku is ‘haunting’ him.  It could be the fact that Ogata is pissed that Vasily won’t let him just do his mysterious goal(s).  Or he’s just upset he’s feeling things and emotions.

The action turns back to our puddle of drunken boys.  Nikaido wants to kill Sugimoto, Tsukishima tries to hold him back and he rushes off (or tries to) because he has to stop Jack!

It is a giant fail all around, Nikaido’s firearm leg backfires on himself, and we get an epic Koifail,  Koito tries to hit Sugimoto with a bottle, falls over drunk and doinks Tsukishima instead.

Poor Tsukishima, that’s gonna leave a mark and Koito returns to lying there making his high pitched cry of something.  He really can’t handle his alcohol.  As team Tsukishima is down and out for the count, Sugimoto is able to stumble upon his type 30.

He even takes the time to suck the beer out of the rifle, after he damaged it the last time it got wet in the swamp back in chapter 114.  This mean the shame he felt when Ogata berated him had a lasting effect on Sugimoto.  Maybe, try to take care of his rifle (sometimes).

Though Noda makes it clear the it must be thoroughly dried . . .

So Ogata still wins this ‘debate’ Sugimoto.

Back in the current chapter, Sugimoto then realises that he lost Asirpa which is a bad thing. . .  I guess no one heard Kikuta yell that he caught her either. . .

The action returns to Asirpa still aiming at Kikuta, who the cool, collected and sexy man that he is, is still trying to reason with her.  She points out that two of his statements have to be lies; that as someone who investigated the scene he knows more about the bodies and that they were there first is also a lie.

Kikuta smartly pauses for a moment before asking if she’s seen an Ainu gold coin.  Her shocked face is enough to allow him to continue talking.

Kikuta has confirmed that through some mean she’s seen one of the coins and that Kikuta can press forward.  He begins to reason that since the 27th collected a few of the coins, they’d have to be the first people on the scene since they’d be stolen.  His plan is to win her over with as much logic as possible.

Kikuta said that the existence of the coins was enough for Tsurumi to tell his men that it confirmed the existence of the gold.  This is a suspicious statement to me.  Kikutata is saying that this is what Tsurumi said.  How do we know that Tsurumi used this as a reason to get the men behind him?  It could have been a lie made up by Tsurumi who just said the gold coin is proof.  Unless someone else besides Tsurumi came up with this makes me want to not quite trust this.

Anyhoo, that is me just being suspicious of anything through the Tsurumi filter.

The conversation continues on with Kikuta wanting to link the coins to Wilk.  He explains that the tattoos are similar to the coins and knowing that Asirpa has seen the tattoos and the coin, he’s wanting her to think of her father’s involvement.  To sweeten the temptation, he says that Tsurumi knows more things and they can tell her the truth as to whether or not Wilk killed the other Ainu.  There is a moment of tension as she sweats while holding her bow drawn.  But the issue is resolved when she gets a full page to reply.

Asirpa shows that she is a big picture thinker.  She’s been worried since the start of the manga about if her father killed the other men even though she’s had enough evidence that he likely didn’t kill them.

Instead, she realizes that the future of the Ainu is more important and she has accepted that he entrusted this task to her.  Which is also confirmed by Sugimoto’s conversation with Wilk and by Kiro’s actions and Ogata’s words on the ice floe.

Her stance really puts her in the same area as where Kiro was and that by going to Karafuto she learned that she must become active in her role in everything.  Good or bad or indifferent, Asirpa has made it clear that she’s got more in common with the partisans than with most of the Japanese men she’s been traveling with.  I think on some level, Sugimoto realizes that, but denies it since he can’t accept the fact that Asirpa has many different challenges that he simply lacks.

This then makes sense why Kikuta tries so hard to get her to give up and abandon the gold.  Everyone around her will be killed!  I’m guessing Kikuta isn’t a fan of unnecessary death and destruction, but her reply is more interesting.

She’s upset that he’s stating this after she’s already witnessed death because of the whole ordeal.  Her own father’s death, all the people at Abashiri, Kiro.  Asirpa has committed to things and she’s already seen so many people die as a result of this.  And she’s right, Kikuta’s plea is far to late.

We then get a flashback to Asirpa and Sugimoto alone as to when they first teamed up in the beginning.  Is she having a nostalgic moment of when things were less complicated?  That she’d like to go back to things before the quest for the gold.  If she hadn’t met Sugimoto would she have missed out on the gold hunt or been older and able to handle it better?

Of course the tension of the moment needs to increase!  Usami emerges from the shadows.  Honestly, it is hard to tell if he wouldn’t just hurt her, but if he wants maximum Tsurumi love, he’s going to cut the bowstring.

And surprisingly, Kadokura tackles him and tells her to flee since everyone would be in trouble if she went with Tsurumi.

Asirpa escapes even as Kikuta tells her not to.  Usami then tries to pin down Kadokura, but his roll to escape trips up Kikuta.  I’m becoming suspicious of you Kadokura . . . are are more aware of things than you seem to be . . .of course Asirpa runs back into the building and we know that Jack is in the building. .

Kikuta tries to pursue her, but she fires an arrow at the ground near his feet and he hesitates outside calling her shrewd.  I think he’s disappointed he couldn’t win her over with words.  Though Ogata shouldn’t feel as bad, even someone like Kikuta couldn’t win her over to his side.

And poor Kadokura!  He’s being chased by Usami again and Usami’s obsession with him is just bizarre . . .

Why does Usami have such a fixation on him?  Kadokura also is hiding something and again, he’s more competent than he looks . . .

The action then returns to our sniper battle.

A figure wearing a cloak is visible around the brewery.  A hand is shown reaching for the type 38.  Shockingly, the man is shot in the head!

Vasily has scored another kill! 

Of course, as soon as I saw this, I was like, “Oh that poor decoy.”  Since I know Ogata isn’t going to run out into the open to grab his new baby.

We then see the body collapse; a man missing teeth with a few coins falling from his body.  And I just thought, nice nice.  Ogata paid off some [likely] drunk or desperate man to wear his cloak and reach for the rifle.  Realizing that Vasily will have to discharge the used shell casing, he sprints out.

In an example of speed and dexterity, he scoops up the rifle and leaps through the window that Ushiyama already broke open.  We see the next shot from Vasily hit the brick below the window.

Ogata begins to get cocky and snarky, by stating that you [Vasily] keeps missing his shots.  He notes that chances like he’s had don’t happen often and we just get upset sounds from Vasily.

Face it, in this replay of our sniper battle, Ogata has owned Vasily!  He’s several steps ahead and Vasily was lazy to think Ogata would use himself as the target again. 

This also means that Ogata knew where Ushiyama went through the window or found the open window well in advance.  He’d then have to time sending the poor decoy out so that he could rush in, grab the rifle and then leap through the window.  This isn’t a fair fight between the men; in the context that Ogata will out maneuver him.  Based on his cheeky attitude, Ogata knows it is Vasily and I’m even more certain that Ogata questioned him and knew there is a good chance he didn’t die due to his injuries.

Tsurumi is correct all the way back during the showdown in Barato.  We know the whole link to his father is one of Tsurumi’s lies slowly shown by Ogata’s involvement in Hanazawa’s death.  What still holds true is less about his parentage and more that 1.) Tsurumi knows that Ogata is ambitious - even though he doesn’t show it. 2.) Tsurumi doesn’t know his goal or objective - which we still don’t know.

Lastly, and most importantly, Ogata is an exceptional soldier and he’s not someone you want as an opponent.  Vasily, is an excellent sniper, but he lacks the other skills that Ogata possesses.

Since there is so much going on the action returns to the quest to corner Jack.  Toni is able to follow Jack and Ariko is able to read the blood trail. Kantarou proudly states that their group will prevent his escape.  He might be right.  They have the best team.  Not drunk or emotional and cohesive.

Of course it has to end on a cliffhanger with Jack spotting Asirpa.

This chapter continues the chaos that is this entire fiasco!  So much is happening.

Team Sugimoto-Asirpa-Shiraishi is completely broken!  They got separated and currently lack any cohesion.  This is resulting in Asirpa being constantly targeted and singled out - you know that thing that Sugimoto keeps telling her not to do.  Shiraishi was ignored and we have no idea what he’s doing.

Koito, Tsukishima and Nikaido are down and out for the count.  Perhaps, their beer mishap will help them detect issues from Tsurumi, hiding some of their reluctance to serve him blindly.  Plus, Nikaido is far to unpredictable of a factor - why did they bring him and what to they hope to achieve.  Kikuta’s distrust of Koito and Tsukishima is obvious, he grabbed Asirpa and left them behind and he’s been trying to not work with Usami as well.  Kikuta is almost showing his hand by not showing his hand. . . .

I hate to admit it, but team Hijikata is doing alright.  But Hijikata is a leader.

Boutarou is MIA.  We know he ran off some where or is doing something.  Is he hiding?  Does he have a hidden alliance with some of the group?  Kirawus?  Or is his loyalty to Shiraishi, one of the new cast members he seems to trust and like.  He also questions Shiraishi’s motives so he’s not playing dumb either.

And Ogata - Ogata is having likely an existential crisis about ‘emotions’ while in the middle of a sniper battle with Vasily.  As I continue to chew on his dialogue, I really think he has more than one listener for his one sided conversation.  Vasily is linked to Yuusaku.  It was the fact that Ogata did not kill Vasily and then he had his fever dream where Asirpa became Yuusaku.  Since then Asirpa, Yuusaku and Vasily have been linked to Ogata.

I’m beginning to wonder if the reason why Ogata all of this started when Ogata began to think about the possibility of guilt.  His fever is linked to something bad taking hold of him. . .

But what if this is the fact that Ogata is now recognizing his guilt and humanity through Yuusaku’s death?  He ended up in a situation where this finally bubbled to the surface.  Was the fever really a bad thing or did Ogata realize something during his fever dreams making a breakthrough.  Of course being the total suck at dealing with emotions, he’s just kept fighting them since, but Ogata can’t deny that something changed him after that event.

Well that’s all I have for now.  My brain is a bit of a mush from over 4 hours of Zoom meetings today.

It is clear chapter 254 will be as chaotic and high energy as the last few.

[aqours-remade-again]

So I mostly really loved SU Future but boy oh boy do I have some Opinions on Rose’s writing :))))))! (don’t we all though)

OK before I go on, full disclosure: for the most part I loved this premiere of Steven Universe Future. In particular, the episode with the Roses (and especially Chill Rose) and Pink Pearl in general is easily my favorite thing to come from SU in a very long time; far more so than the movie, actually. But oh my God; I’m so fucking sick and tired of this shit with Rose Quartz doing everything wrong.

Rose’s character arc, if... er... debatable, makes sense. Pink was born into the highest echelons of power within her society, with three elder sisters who were tyrannical and neglectful towards her. When given the opportunity Pink finally understood that their empire was built on genocide and destruction, and devoted herself to Earth’s freedom, and begged her sisters to not let this planet be destroyed. She faked her own death in a hopeful attempt this colony was just something to appease her and the Diamonds would lose interest afterwards; this resulted in a war with horrific consequences, and Pink/Rose spent the rest of her life, thousands of years atoning for this mistake. Even if it wasn’t a perfect narrative, its one that makes sense.

But this franchise and its writers seem hellbent to just pile it on, like every single bad thing that’s ever happened was Rose’s fault; and its getting really frustrating. I fucking HATED that the SU Movie basically boiled down to “lol this was all Rose’s fault :))))” Rose understood she made mistakes. Rose made a lot of mistakes. But again; she spent thousands of years atoning for them, and its because of that the Earth still exists at all. Earth would have been destroyed thousands of years ago if she didn’t chose to own her mistakes and fight for Earth’s liberation. And now we have a narrative about Pink’s “destructive tantrums” that physically maimed Volleyball? What the fuck is that? We literally saw in one of Steven’s dreams White Diamond reaching for a non-damaged Volleyball. The whole reason the Diamonds had a redemption arc (one that was EXTREMELY rushed btw) was because they did really horrible things and they needed to become better people if this universe was going to change; that’s the whole point of a redemption arc! Villains did bad things that needed redeeming! They did bad things in the past! That’s what a redemption arc is for! Why is it so hard to say that White did SOMETHING bad to Volleyball? What’s with this show’s fucking obsession with piling every single bad thing onto Rose’s name? What’s next? Did Rose do Chernobyl?

Rose saved the world, just as her son would thousands of years later. No matter how you look at it, no matter her mistakes, Rose is the second most important character to this universe other than its titular character, her son; perhaps THE most important. All this shit we see with the school for gems on Earth, the theme of how liberating and beautiful and wonderful the planet Earth is and why everyone fought so hard to protect it? That is owed to Rose who rejected the power of her birthright and her right to monarchy to preserve it; none of this would be possible without Rose’s rebellion. But it really feels like the narrative has forgotten that. Ever since Bismuth this narrative has been on a really bad downwards slope with this and its getting worse, and although we haven’t finished this miniseries... does anyone have any real hope they can fix it after this? It honestly disappointed me that Rose’s portrait is just gathering dust somewhere now; I was really hoping in the episode with the Rose Quartzes they’d find some common ground and take pride in their mother’s legacy, only to be immediately bombarded with this. And no, that Pink USED to be destructive but became a healer as part of her redemption arc, which in the narrative was resolved nicely a very long time ago doesn’t make it better. I was already on my last straw with Spinel’s backstory, this shit just reaks of “Oh shit uhhh what do we do now...? OK! Pink did ANOTHER bad thing! OK that’s the conflict now.”

And everyone, I love Steven Universe. Its one of my favorite shows ever. That’s why I get so upset about this. This narrative that Pink changed doesn’t make it better. It was touching when the fusion said about how Pearl always tried to see how Pink was changing and how Volleyball never understood Pink could never change; but after seeing that episode, how is any viewer supposed to reasonably feel other than piling onto the idea Pink was the worst person to ever exist? This idea of a “reverse redemption arc” doesn’t work when all that is ever added to Pink’s character now is more reasons to hate her. By the end of this, Rose’s portrait is gone. We are not being given more reasons to cared about a flawed character; just more and more to dislike her.

“I can’t even deal with one more horrible thing she did!” yeah me too Steven the writing surrounding your mom is getting really fucking obnoxious and I’m sorry the story can’t assign literally one bad thing to her sisters at this point. I’m sorry your mom has to be responsible for Literally Every Bad Thing That Happens Now and the entire narrative of her saving the world is almost nonexistent at this point.

anyways to end this on a positive note: the Pearls gay. this is Good

[lotornomiko]

Triumph’s Tribulation Five Sneak Peak

Ah I usually don’t like posting until a chapter is complete, but I am having a lot of problems offline, in addition to the the third and final segment of the chapter, the check in on Midgard, is giving me no end of difficulties. It was supposed to be a Rufus POV but seeing as his POV keeps derailing the fic and my timeline, I will take whoever I can get to be the narrating voice for Alicia and Co. at this point.

I’ve actually debated posting five as it is, but I am trying to have each chapter have three segments, even if one segment ends up being incrediably small like the Lenneth interlude was in uh was it chapter two...?

Right now I have Loki (With Frei!) and Lezard’s parts done...I am posting the Lezard part at least...it[’s mostly finalized, although I’ll probably tweak some words here and there when I go over it for the umpteenth millionth time...X_X

I’d say this scene is PG 13, though it is Lezard so has some darker edge to it...but still hopefully worksafe...! Side note, the A ending got strongly influenced after rewatching the A ending, and all the events leading up to it. It left me with the strong impression and opinion that Lenneth had some kind of mental, nervous break down when the seal broke. I think I even wrote down a few lines from it...if not to use in this chapter, then maybe a future one! I’m also currently in the midst of rewatching VP 2: Silmeria...so maybe that will find my muse for the Midgard crew in this! XD

Onto the scene excerpt now!!

====

The marble of the floor had sealed itself together seamlessly, not so much as a sliver of a crack to betray the chaos that had gone on just moments earlier. That of the anger that had been felt, the world itself a living extension of what had been in its God’s heart. Such has been Lezard’s displeasure that in that moment, Creation itself had acted, moving to protect him and his interests, spiriting the frightened Goddess away to somewhere else safe. Safe from his rage, and safe from his desires, the man who had once been human,  having pushed too hard, too fast, too soon.

She wasn’t ready. He knew that, every bit from her fight to her flight had in fact acknowledged it, the fear that was in Lenneth’s heart. It had sent her running, the Goddess scared, not so much of what he might do to her physically as much as the emotional havoc he had been intent on wreaking. The truths that had needed to be confronted, and with it would come all of its pain, such sorrow born of those lies that the woman had told herself. She wouldn’t be spared its sting, not even God himself able to shelter Lenneth from the agony of breaking free of such warped delusions. The comfort it had once given her, was now nothing more than a crutch, one that that divine beauty needed to break free of if that heart of hers was going to stand a chance at any true solace.

It wouldn’t be easy, that fact something Lezard could acknowledge in his more rational moments. His beloved needed a far gentler hand than he had thus far been capable of, that near overpowering lust of his, making him impatient and clumsy whenever she was so near. So consumed with the want of her, his attempt at a controlled veneer had all but shattered when her fear had turned violent, Lenneth’s fist finding its mark against his jaw. It had left him so close to doing something unforgivable, illusions torn and discarded if not for his world acting instead. Protecting him as much as her, Lenneth swallowed up whole into an abyss that had opened up beneath her feet.

Even now she was still there, free falling in an endless darkness, that heart of hers in an absolute turmoil that would only be the start of her unraveling. There was both pain and pleasure in the idea of it, Lenneth this intoxicating brand of everything that Lezard could have ever wanted. Her heart, her soul, that of her mind and her body, her tears, her agony, and that of her happiness, the man wanted it all. He was obsessed with the having of it, of attaining paradise with so perfect a being. It was so close to a reality, that he could almost taste it, his blood stained hands reaching for it, for her, Lezard this newly remade being, the ultimate Lord of it all, Lenneth and the effect she has always had on him, the one thing this God could not control.

Even now he was tempted, sheer folly though it would be to go after her right now. Lenneth was too wild in the moment, too angry and afraid, tormented by a truth he had only merely hinted at, such insinuations holding the strength to make a Goddess reel in an absolute terror. It was a fear not just for herself, for what might be done to her, but that of her world, the paradise that she had created. That perfect utopia that was nothing more than a lie that her wounded soul had retreated into, every insinuation that Lezard could make had the power to tear that universe apart from the root, the very foundations it had been built and brought to life upon.

It was a world of desires, that perfect paradise grounded in a pain so blatant that it had nearly torn the Goddess apart. That heart of hers that had been so ripped to pieces by the sins committed against her, it had left Lenneth reeling in an agony even she herself had not understood, the Goddess so overwhelmed in the moment as to escape into a fantasy. An illusion, the deceits woven there all by her own hand, the ageless woman latching onto a figment, the fragment that had been dangling before her. Seizing upon it, with that earring in her hand, out of all the lives she had slept through, it had been the latest, that of a child, a girl no older than fourteen when she had died, that had helped feed into a delusion. In that moment she had been thinking not as a Goddess, but as a human, a child, torn apart by a loss that had been about more than just one man’s death.

The seal had been broken, a flood gate of emotions overtaking the Goddess. How much agony had it been, to remember them all, every last life that had hosted Lenneth inside them. The highs and the lows, their joys and their pains, hundreds upon hundreds of women, all helping to shape the Valkyrie’s humanity. Her compassionate heart, the depth of her millennia of experience far more than anything those scant fourteen years as Platina could have given. She was just a sliver of what had helped shaped the Goddess, so small and inferior a speck, the child was not who Lenneth was meant to be.

So much more than any one human girl, Lenneth was in fact a being so uniquely her own. A caring Goddess, one whose capacity to feel and sympathize with the mortals a threat that Odin and the other Gods could not abide by. They hadn’t killed her, they had done WORSE, the woman’s free will taken from her, her true sense of being SEALED away.

A safeguard meant to control that which the Gods could not understand, that human compassion that that particular Goddess had been gifted with, the likes of which had been cultivated and learned over the course of a millennia of different hosts. Through them she had loved, and Lenneth had cared, the woman so wholly unique in her ability to FEEL, the Goddess the champion that the mortals had needed. The Gods had feared it, feared Lenneth and the allegiance that such emotions had wrought, Odin needing the Valkyrie to be a good little soldier who fell into line with his own selfish wants. Unable to dominate her as she had truly been, that tyrannous God had tried to eradicate her spirit, that of her true self, through such archaic means, such a brutal manipulation of the self, such that Lenneth had been little more than a doll. A puppet, beautiful and perfect, and so wholly without the feelings that would have interfered with the Heavens’ schemes.

The Gods had seen her as nothing more than a Death Goddess, a chooser of the slain to bolster their own armies with the souls of dead heroes. They had let her pick from the brave as though they were mere flowers, calling into service warriors from all corners of Midgard. Leaving her exposed to the very thing that the Gods themselves had feared, the emotions that were so plentiful in the humans, putting cracks in the shield erected around Lenneth’s heart. Bit by bit, that ancient magic had been worn away, the seal itself eroded with each and every encounter, until it had finally shattered, and with it went Lenneth’s mind, the woman having snapped.

It must have been so, so overwhelming, to have been hit at once with all those feelings, with the many lives she had slept through, their hopes, their desires, all coming to life within Lenneth in startling clarity. Was it any wonder she had lost her true self in the process, spinning from one host to another, again and again, until she had latched onto the most recent, that of the child, those scant years of fourteen the most overwhelming dream of them all given how fresh it had still been.

Even grounded in that child’s psyche, it had proved too much. Lezard himself had born witness to it, to that mental break that the Goddess had had. The tears that had fallen, the screaming that had been done, it hadn’t been just the Goddess, but the child, Platina, made horrified by the one solace of her life, Lucian the only kindness and warmth she had ever known, LOST, killed in turn by his own refusal to let go of his own delusions.

It had all been such a mess, a tragedy the likes of which all else had fallen short. Her puppet strings not just severed, but left tangled across the board, Lenneth had been operating on a grief born madness, forgetting who she really was, to play fantasy for one ignorant human. For some fake facsimile of him, Lucian a shadow, his miraculous return to life nothing more than a figment born of Lenneth’s own desperation and desires. Instead of the warrior she had known, he was something new, a puppet who was nothing more than some idealized version of who she had thought him to be, Lucian just one of the many dolls whose every thought had been painstakingly crafted by Lenneth’s power.

Creation itself had been remade on desire, on such potent delusions and lies, the many souls there not the people they had once been. They were just shadows of those that had died, annihilated in the Ragnarok that Lucian had helped Loki bring about. It hadn’t just ended lives, it had wiped out everything, including that of nearly every living being’s soul from existence, such devastation a permanent end, the cycle of rebirth itself destroyed. Such finality was there to it, that no one, not even God, could fight against, the world and its people entirely eradicated.

It left the world in complete ruins, Lenneth’s land a paradise populated in lies. It was a copy, a mere imitation of what had once been, formulated out of fragmented glimpses, the memories she had gathered, the people there nothing more than a pathetic bunch of puppets. They were just these hollow husks of what she thought them to be, these seemingly ideal versions ultimately falling short, all an attempt that was unfulfilling when it came towards truly easing the pain in the Goddess’ heart. They were all lies that couldn’t make her truly happy, anymore than they could satisfy her needs. Each and every last one of them, Lenneth living in a farce, a waking dream that could crumble apart so easily given the right push. If enough care wasn’t given, the Goddess would crumble again with it, her psyche perhaps lost to yet another kind of fantasy.

Lezard couldn’t lie and claim that he hadn’t considered it. Hadn’t given thought to molding Lenneth into a fantasy that would suit HIM best. But ultimately, he didn’t want the illusion, that of those broken remnants of who the Goddess had once been. He wouldn’t be satisfied with just a sliver, wouldn’t embrace the farce of just one of her sides. He wanted her everything and her all, Lezard made mad with the desire, with that need. It fueled him, his obsession with Lenneth the motivating strength that had led Lezard into doing the impossible again and again. He had died for her, traveled through time for her, even become a God for her, such a warped semblance of love a catalyst that had no limits and no match. Not even Lucian could compete, that young man unable to see past Platina, and past the Valkyrie, to the supreme manifestation of the woman, a Goddess so sublime as to move a heart that had once been so unfeeling.

Her mark left on him, Lenneth had helped shaped Lezard into this mad man, so utterly devoted in the pursuit of her. Worlds had been ruined, people slaughtered, time itself run roughshod all over, yet his hands were no less dirty than any of the other Gods. Than even HERS, Lezard creating his own world, his own perfect paradise to ease the pain that was in HIS heart. That it spilled hurt onto others, was of no concern, Lezard an unfeeling God who had no desire to rule or be worshiped by anyone other than by Lenneth.

Such blasphemies should have been sins enough to weigh even God down, yet Lezard was instead made unburdened by it all, free of the demands the throne of Creation should have made of him. He was free, having discarded duty the way he had discarded bodies, nothing but time on his hand, and power, and harboring a patience that was fast running out.

====

[wheresfury]

Death of Me (part 1)

~Pairings: Natasha Romanoff/fem!reader, minor Carol Danvers/fem!reader

~Warnings: Mommy kink, spanking, degradation, dirty talk, choking, roughness, anal play, anal fingering, butt plugs, vaginal fingering, dildos, Dom/sub, cruelty.

~Word count: 3,028

~Summary: You’re finally ready to make things more serious with a co worker, thinking you’d never see the mysterious Natalia Romanova ever again. You couldn’t be more wrong.

~Authors note: Hello! I couldn’t wait to finish the whole thing so I’ve decided to split it up for you guys. I will start writing the next part most likely tonight and there could actually be 3 parts to this, possibly 👀 anyways hope y’all enjoy!!

~Previous part to this series is on my Masterlist

———- ⧗———-

You sit back in your chair at your office. You’re a consultant to companies who are going under, you try your best to give them the advice they need to keep afloat. You chew on the tip of your pen as you squeeze your thighs together. It’s been three months since you slept with Natalia, the killer, and you cannot get her out of your head. To ease the ache you would sometimes sleep with your coworker, Carol. She was sweet and funny and pretty damn good in bed. Just not as good as a certain red headed killer. She couldn’t be harsh with you even after you asked, it just wasn’t in her nature and you could respect that. You cross your legs and continue to chew out your frustrations on the pen in your hand.

“Need some release, babe?” You drop your pen onto your desk and sit up straight. You look at Carol sheepishly. She walks over to you, smirking and hands you the file she was working on. You clear your throat.

“Thank you, Carol. That will be all.” You blush as she raises her brow. She leans in closer to you and brushes her lips with yours.

“Are we still on for tonight?” You nod your head in a sign of agreement as she closes the gap and kisses you deeply. You moaned into the kiss and leaned closer to her trying to deepen it. She pulls away and gives you a wink.

“We can continue this later, baby girl.” You’re sure your face is as red as a beet. You want her head between your legs right now. If only you weren’t at work. You sigh as she walks away and turn to your computer. You look at the clock and see you only have half an hour left. You decide to open google and research Natalia. This isn’t the first time and just like every time before you get nothing. Only the articles about her wanted status and all the gruesome murders she has committed. Absolutely nothing about who she is only what she is, a killer. You bite your lip at the wanted picture, the only picture of her you could find. She’s very secretive and impossible to find. Obviously if you were a serial killer you wouldn’t want to be found. You shake your head and exit out of your computer. You need to stop obsessing over this woman, who you will most likely never see again. You have a good thing going with Carol, why mess that up for someone you shouldn’t even be with. I mean it’s obvious she wanted nothing to do with you after she left you without a word. She didn’t kill you though so that must be something right? You look at the clock again and realize only ten minutes have gone by. You huff and get up to grab your things to leave early. You stop by Carol’s office on the way out and lean against the door frame. She looks up at you curiously. You decided to throw away any caution to the wind and see if Carol wants a more stable relationship.

“Uh… Carol… do you maybe want to make tonight a date instead?” Her eyes widen and she jumps up and makes her way towards you placing her hands on your shoulders.

“Do you really mean that, Y/N?” You nod and smile at the excitement on her beautiful face.

“Of course, Carol.” She still looks a little skeptical.

“Are you absolutely sure? I thought you just wanted you know… to have fun.” You sigh and look into her chocolate colored eyes.

“I know, Carol but I’ve been thinking maybe we should try, you know?” She brings you into a hug and squeezes tight.

“I would love that, Y/N.” You smile wide and hug her back circling your arms around her waist. After a good while you both pull away reluctantly. She gives you a soft kiss on the lips.

“I’ll pick you up at 7?”

“Sounds perfect.” You give her one last kiss on the lips and turn to leave, not without receiving a slap on the ass from Carol. As you make your way down to your car you feel as if someone is watching you. You look around trying to see if you can tell if someone is even looking at you. You shake your head at the mere thought someone would be interested enough to. You get into your car and start the drive home. You turn on the radio to fill the silence with some nice music. As you come up to a red light an all black motorcycle pulls up next to you. You turn to check the motorcycle out and it stuns you to see a woman on the bike. You cannot see her face due to the blacked out helmet and you wish you could. Your eyes widen as the helmet turns to face you. Your eyes snap back to the light, your hands tightening on the steering wheel. You can still see them turned towards you and you gulp. You get a very familiar feeling and are unable to make it out. The light turns green and the motorcyclist speeds off leaving you in a cloud of smoke. You shake you head and slowly make your way home. You pull into your driveway and notice that same motorcycle parked next door. You thought your neighbors were on vacation, maybe they rent it out whenever they are gone. You turn off your car and grab your briefcase from the passenger seat. You make your way to the front of your house and pause. Your door was unlocked. You were positive you locked it this morning, you always double check. You debate whether or not you should go in. Fuck. Now you wish you had some sort of defense other than your keys. You slowly turn the door knob and tip toe in to your home. You turn around and close the door quietly. As you make your way to the kitchen to get a knife the room light turns on.

“Cheating on me, kitten?” You stand still, shocked. Oh my god. It’s her. You gulp and slowly turn around. You nearly fall over when you see her leaning against the wall, arms crossed with one leg against the wall. She looked just as gorgeous as you remembered. She wore a brown jacket this time with a black tank top and black jeans with boots to match. Her hair has grown out as well, a little past her shoulders. She smirked darkly.

“On your knees.” You immediately comply with her demand, dropping to your knees in the middle of your living room floor. She sauntered over to you slowly, taking the sight of you in.

“Well, kitten? What do you have to say for yourself?” You blink rapidly trying to remember what she asked you. Then it dawns on you.

“I’m not cheating on you, Mommy. I mean we’re not dating.” She clicks her tongue and cups your jaw making you look up at her.

“I told you that you were mine and I would keep you around. Did I not, kitten?” You shake your head confused and she tightens her hold on your jaw.

“You just left, I thought it was a one night thing. Also you don’t own me, I’m my own damn person.” She releases your jaw and flicks you on the forehead. You look at her appalled and get up off your knees. She looks at you with a penetrating glare.

“Get back on your knees, where you belong, slut.” You glare back at her.

“No fucking way. I have to get ready for my date tonight. You don’t own me, Natalia.” Her face makes a visible twitch, her eyes widen slightly. She looks truly shocked at your knowledge of her name.

“How do you know my name, kitten?” She asks coolly making a shiver run down your spine. You clear your throat and roll your eyes at her. She grabs your neck in her left hand and slams your back into the wall of your living room. You hands try to hit her anywhere they can reach.

“Stop it, you bitch. How do you know my name?” She punctuated each word by slamming you into the wall every time. You grunt at the rough treatment.

“Your wanted picture was on the back of a newspaper. Your killing spree had not gone unnoticed. How have you not been arrested yet?” Her face becomes stoic once more as she grins a callous smirk.

“Why kitten, I’m the best money could buy. I’ll never get caught.”

“What are you a prostitute?” You say, just to piss her off. Her smirk still firmly on her lips she pulls you in the direction of your kitchen. She slams you into your kitchen table before roughly turning you around, bending you over the surface.

“Fuck. What are you doing?”

“Shut the fuck up, slut.” She brings a hand down on your blue jean covered ass. You jump at the slap, not expecting it. She rubs her hands all over your ass squeezing here and there.

“You see, kitten. I’m a spy who specializes in taking out a target-”

“So you’re an assassin. Why didn’t you just say so? Why use so many fucking words. I don’t have the time.” She growls at your interruption. Your eyes widen as she reaches underneath you to unbutton your jeans.

“What the fuck, Natalia!” She tugs your jeans and underwear down to your knees. She starts raining down spanks on your ass.

“You fucking brat. That is not what you’re supposed to call me. You’re already in so much trouble for fucking someone else. Someone other than me touched this cunt. My cunt.” You start to cry as she continues to spank you harder with every word leaving her mouth.

“Mommy, please! I’m sorry!” You cry out as she spanks you in quick succession.

“Whose ass is this, kitten?”

“Yours, Mommy!”

“Whose dripping cunt is this?” She asks cupping your soaked folds. You moan at the intrusive touch.

“Fuck. It’s yours, Mommy. All yours!” She hums and brings her palm down hard on your pulsating cunt.

“If it’s mine, why did you let that cunt fuck you? You’re such a desperate little slut you’d go to the first bitch who’d fuck you? Spread your legs for her? Pathetic. Do I need to get rid of her for you?” You start to panic, not wanting her to kill Carol.

“No, please. Not Carol, Mommy. Please don’t hurt her.”

“Oh don’t worry, kitten. I won’t be the one hurting her. You will.” You hesitate in speaking.

“What- what do you mean, me?” She slowly strokes your folds as she speaks.

“What I mean is that you, kitten, will break poor little Carol’s heart. I want you to make her cry, baby doll.”  You shake your head as best you can in your position.

“No I will not. She means too much to me. I won’t do it, Natalia.” She growls and brings a hand down hard on your sore ass.

“Don’t fucking disrespect me, bitch. You will do it otherwise I’ll fucking kill her. Do you understand?” Each word punctuated with a slap on the ass. Tears are running down your face at her words.

“Mommy, please. Please don’t make me.” You sound absolutely shattered at the mere thought of hurting Carol. She hums and rubs her hands over your ass and thighs.

“It’s your own fault, kitten. You shouldn’t have fucked someone else, you slut.” You roll your eyes at her possessiveness. Her hands grab your ass and squeeze, her nails digging into the  soft flesh of your ass. You release a scream at the pain, the burn of her nails against your sore cheeks.

“Never roll your eyes at me, kitten.” She releases your ass and steps back. You move to get up when she speaks.

“Stay still, kitten. I’m not done with you yet.” You hear her leave and then return seconds later. You jump as her hand comes into contact with your pussy.

“You’re dripping, kitten. Fuck. You love this, don’t you, kitten?” You whimper as she pulls on your dripping folds.

“Fuck. Yes, Mommy. I-I love it.” She hums and slowly pushes in two of her fingers. You moan at the sensation. She fingers your pussy for a while before she pulls out. You’re about to groan when you feel an object at the entrance of your pussy. You gasp as she starts to push a dildo into your soaked cunt.

“That’s right, kitten, take Mommy’s toy.” She thrusts the toy in and out a few times before leaving it in all the way. Your hands grip the end of the table, turning white at the pleasure.

“Where is your lube, kitten?” Your head makes a visible tilt in question.

“Why-Why do you need to know that?” She slaps your reddened ass making you jump.

“Don’t question me, kitten. Now unless you want to take this butt plug with no lube I would say something. For your ass’s sake.” Your eyes widen at her suggestion. You’ve never fooled around with that. You clear your throat and take a deep breath.

“Listen, Natalia. I’ve never done anything like that before. So I’m going to say no but thanks anyway.” You hear her laugh as she pinches you on the ass. You squeal as she steps away into your room. You look back as best you can in your position.

“Where are you going?!” You hear her rifling around in your drawers and tossing things around. You huff and lay back down waiting for the inevitable. You’re almost asleep when you feel a cold water like texture on your ass. Your eyes widen as you feel her rubbing the lube on your asshole.

“That’s a good girl, kitten. Took me a while to find it. You have a lot of cleaning to do later. You’ll be cleaning stuffed with my toys, baby doll.” Your eyes roll back as she slowly enters one of her fingers into your asshole.

“Such a good girl. I’ll go nice and slow for you, kitten. You’re doing so well so far.” You moan as she slowly thrust her finger in and out. The sensation was odd at first but now it’s becoming quite pleasurable. You feel her add a second finger and you almost lose your mind at the pleasure.

“Mommy, please. Please may I cum?” She stops thrusting holding her fingers deep inside you.

“You’re that much of a slut you’re ready to cum already? So desperate and wet from getting your ass fingered? Such a dirty whore. No you may not cum. You’re not even close to being allowed to cum. You’re in for a long night, kitten.” You cry out as she pulls her fingers out of you before choking on a moan as you feel the plug enter your ass. You feel utterly full and stuffed to the point you can barely think of anything else. She pulls up your underwear and jeans and gives you a tap on the ass.

“Up, kitten,” You get up and turn around feeling light headed “how are you feeling?”

“Stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey.” You see the faintest smile on her lips at your answer. She clears her throat and takes a step back.

“Good now, go get ready for your date.” You look at her incredulously.

“I’m not going.” She looks at you darkly and you start to sweat. You shakily smile and awkwardly giggle and point towards your room before quickly walking into it and shutting the door. You lean against the door trying to catch your breath. All you can feel is how full you are and how you wish you could rub one out but there is an assassin on the other side who will know. You shakily get ready for your doomed date with Carol. You don’t know if you can go through with it but you have to or she will kill her. You want to call it a bluff but you know she’s serious. You look in your mirror one last time, your skin slightly glistening from sweat, both out of fear and arousal. You take a deep breath and smooth out some wrinkles in your dress before stepping out into the living room.

“What a tease, kitten. You’re going to break Carol looking like that? You’re more sadistic then I thought you’d be. I admire that, kitten.” You frown at her as you rethink your outfit. Maybe you should dress down make it seem like you don’t care, even though you care too damn much.

“What exactly is it that you want me to do?” She makes her way towards you and brings a hand up to grab onto the back of your neck pulling you closer. Your breath hitches as your lips hover near hers. You feel her breath on your lips and you whimper, she has yet to kiss you at all and you’re dying to know if they are as soft as they seem.

“You want me to kiss you, kitten?” You nod in acknowledgement and you feel her hand squeeze the back of your neck.

“Please, Mommy. I want to kiss you so bad!” She smirks and blows air onto your lips making you shiver.

“I’ll kiss you, kitten. If you do everything I tell you to do tonight. No questions asked. Am I making myself clear, slut?” You blink rapidly as the realization of what’s going to happen hits you. You’re nervous as to what she will make you do to hurt Carol. You squeeze your eyes shut as you imagine Carol’s face, tears streaming down, red with hurt. It pains you to do this but dammit if you didn't like it a little bit besides you'll make it up to Carol one day. You reopen your eyes and meet her green ones.

“Yes, Mommy. Perfectly clear.” Her smirk turns dark as you grow pale. Well fuck.

———- ⧗———-

Natasha Series Tag list: @theunknowinglys, @whitecanary444, @kdragonwrestling, @kello-unknown, @baeszler

Forever Tag list: @cheethos

[d-pennants]

Spoilers for the Dragon Prince Season 4 and beyond.

My collated notes of all the hints about what is coming up in the Dragon Prince, from interviews, AMA, ComicCon panels. Updated with stuff from Through the Moon.

There will be 7 seasons of 9 episodes each total and possibly some side projects. The story will be in three arcs with a time skip between the arcs. Books 4 & 5 makes up the next arc, which may be called the Mystery of Aaravos. Book 4 is Earth.

Side projects have been confirmed to all be part of canon and include a video game set in Xadia, an tabletop RPG game called Tales of Xadia, a possible feature film of the Orphan Queen and a possible side story set during the reign of Sol Regem featuring Sir Phineas the Cursed and his travelling companion an elf professor Delilah Geel (Who wrote the Secrets of Xadia book).

The video game was in play testing in October 2020, and Wonderstorm was still hiring staff to work on it. After S3 came out they said there was going to be an announcement about the game in 2020, but things may have been delayed due to Corvid.

Through the Moon graphic novel is set between seasons 3 and 4. It feature’s Rayla, Callum and Ezran having returned to Katolis and receiving a request from Lujanne to go the Moon Nexus  for a ritual at new moon and bring Phoe-Phoe’s ghost feather. While there Rayla seizes the opportunity to use the lake’s power as a portal between life and death to try an answer the questions that have been plaguing her about the fate of her parents, Runaan and whether Viren is truly dead.

There will also be a second graphic novel set between seasons 4 & 5.

Reminder - stuff said in interviews, AMA & so forth is subject to the team changing their mind when it comes to actually putting stuff in the show or books. They’re still planning things out. So take things as “the current idea is this, but we’ll see how it pans out”

There’s no word on how long the time skip between season 3 and 4 will be, however, Through the Moon starts 3 days before new moon and S3 ended 2 days after full moon, which is only 11 days. About 17 days pass in TTM. The Tales of Xadia TRPG is also going to fit in between these season too. AE said a vague ‘lots of weeks.’

Season 4 will include the hero trio trying to address how to heal and start to change things in the world, however there are scars history has left that will impede them. Aaravos will bring those scars to bear, though the creator did say that Aaravos himself didn’t cause those scars, he ‘brought it out’ in the people who did.

There’s a big theme of understanding what’s happened in the past and how it affects what’s happening now. Questioning what their fore-bearers have done, admitting fault and forgiving mistakes. (BTW, this is on both human and Xadian sides).

“Ezran is the key to everything.” Ezran’s empathic ability will allow him to play a role in the world no other can as he can connect to non-human beings. Though the circumstances of S1-3, who his parents are and his strong compassion, Ezran is in a unique position to cause real change.

Callum will learn more Sky magic spells well as obsessing to work a connection to another arcanum - he is dedicated to being the best mage he can be. Callum will always have a conflict between what do you want to do with magic and what will you do for magic. One hint given is that Callum cannot perform healing with his Sky magic. On an Instragram Live AE admitted he was trolling a bit, but said a betting person would pick Callum being the first human archmage. On an AMA there was a hint that historically there may have been elves that learned a second arcanum. (However, interview stated Aaravos’ mastery of all the primals is just him - he’s special).

Callum’s ‘destiny’ is tied in with the Key of Aaravos Rune Cube. It will be very important coming up. The Key is being pulled towards a location in Xadia. The closer it is to the location, the stronger the pull. (Reminder - it previously belonged to Aaravos and unlocks a great power in Xadia). In Callum’s Spellbook it says that once Zym has been returned Callum intends to find out what the Key does and make Harrow proud.

Writers have been very cagey about whether Callum being able to learn an arcanum means other humans can. “Callum learning Primal magic means that Callum learned Primal Magic.”

They’ve referred to him as the first human to learn an arcanum. However, another interview indicates that humans may have been able to connect to the primal sources in the past - thus Callum relearned something that has been forgotten for over a thousand years

Are non-magical species able to evolve into one that can use magic?

JR: There have been humans long in the past that could have AE: Yeah, right JR: They’re like [waves hand], but modern day he’s a phenomena. Like nothing is done like this no longer. AE: Yeah, I mean if Callum is developing the ability to do Primal magic do you believe that Callum is special because he’s the only human who’s able to do it or do you believe that that Callum is special because he’s the first human in forever to realise it is possible for humans. You know that kind of a little bit the question - I mean he’s special either way and right, but is he special because he’s realising that that maybe those limitations weren’t true or is he an exception to to this limitation.

Cartoon Universe interview

Though they did point out there’s not been much incentive in the last 1000 years for humans to learn Primal magic, given that Dark magic is both easier to use and more powerful.

Rayla will have an inner conflict about her future as a Moonshadow elf that she needs to figure out. Including how being friends with humans and wanting to be a protector rather than the assassin she was raised to be will affect her relationships with her people. (Plus, the whole being ghosted and ghosted parents issue needs to be addressed). Update info from TTM: Rayla ends TTM by going on a quest by herself to locate Viren. Her clues are the Storm Spire, a cave and... a giant cocoon.

There is an unspecified but important storyline involving Runaan. But the coins will get addressed at some point.The coins would require very powerful magic to release the trapped elves and it may not be possible for Primal magic. However, Viren is capable of releasing people he has coined.  Also, Rayla knows something happened to her parents, but doesn’t specifically know about the coins. Viren showed Rayla a pouch and mentioned adding her to his collection. AMA answer suggests Callum didn’t see what Viren did in the history spell - he just know Viren did something to Rayla’s parents. TtM seems to confirm Callum’s spell didn’t show that part. Whether Gren saw Runaan in the coin seems up to debate - in the novel he knew Viren used magic on Runaan came out holding something small, like a button or coin.  (PS. They also confirmed Runaan slew Harrow, and Harrow is dead dead).

Soren has a complicated future ahead of him as he’s lost the only support system he’s known his whole life. He has a lot to learn and many places to go.

Claudia is going to get a lot worse and there’s a long way to go for her, though they did hint that there’s hope for her in the end. Her motivation is love and family, not power. However, she is willing to go to great sacrifices for her family... Also, her hair will get whiter. 

“When we get back to her in Season 4, there is some amazing stuff, just in the first few episodes, which by the way are also funny and quirky and all the things we’ve come to love about the character, but she becomes a very critically important driving force of the narrative in Season 4.”

Inverse interview.

It will be explained in S4 how Claudia was able to perform the resurrection spell. It hasn’t been used previously because she either a) didn’t know it - as in Aaravos taught her it - or b) didn’t have what was necessary to cast the spell.

The story about how Claudia managed to find a supposedly extinct for a 1000 years unicorn and capture it will be addressed in S6.

According to Claudia’s VA -  Racquel Belmonte - Claudia will likely have a protege dynamic with Aaravos. She will change her mind a bit on disliking all elves and open up a bit on seeing Viren’s connection to Aaravos.

They have a backstory about why Viren treats Soren so harshly compared to Claudia (though he’s manipulative of both), though it’s not indicated when this backstory will be shown. New info from the book said that Viren used dark magic to save Soren from dying of an illness. This ravished his appearance and whatever he did scared his wife, Lissa, into leaving him. Also Viren wanted a son who would carry on his path and is disappointed Soren isn’t like him. Viren feels some resentment towards Soren that he refuses to acknowledge.

AMA confirmed that Lissa will not be making an appearance in S4 or 5. There is a possibility she may be included in S6, but it’s just a potential idea. Early mage fam life involving Lissa will come up in the novels.  (BTW she currently lives in Del Bar and was in no danger from the smoky assassin as she has nothing to do with the leadership of Del Bar)

Viren became a bit of a card carrying villain in season 3, however in season 4 & 5 some of the complexities behind his actions will be revealed. (His VA said that Viren had understandable reasons in S1 & 2, but was a villain in S3, however, he’s happy with how S4 & 5 will develop Viren. Also he gave a strong hint that Viren will have a kind of “fresh start” thing going on, and “do a 180″, and his story is apparently kinda wild). 

Viren and Aaravos: Viren didn’t take Runaan’s warning that “you found something worse than death” seriously enough. Viren is ‘in hot water’ in his dealings with Aaravos. The question over time would be - “Wait, am I making my own choices or am I being led to choices you wanted me to make, Aaravos?”

This current era will be known as the Return of Aaravos. Apparently in S4 & 5 Aaravos is going to be very... mysterious. In fact the arc could be called The Mystery of Aaravos.

“The next two seasons are about understanding who Aaravos was, who they thought Aaravos was, how they realized what was happening, and imprisoned him.” 

This is tied into the Orphan Queen storyline, for more info see this post. Parts of this storyline will feature in flashbacks S4 onwards.

A lot of Aaravos’ motivation comes from a relationship he had with a character whose name is featured on the map from the novel. (Candidates are Skall’s Hook, Ruins of Elarion, Mount Kalik and Eboreus. They said on a Q&A that Elarion wasn’t referring to a person, just the city).

Aaravos has a speech coming up in S5 that explains about the history of magic and why he’s interested in humans. Summed up - Over 5000 years ago there was only one kind of magic, deep magic, and it was very difficult to wield, then something happened that split magic into the 6 Primals Source and gave every creature and plant a connection to one of the 6 Primal Sources, which were much more practical magics. Except humans. 

When asked what was coming out of the cocoon an interviewer gave “Aaravos’ physical form” and some jokes options. Ehasz replied, “I’m gonna say none of the… well, I’m not gonna say.” TtM update: In the world between life and death the cocoon held a corrupted version of Viren - a month after Viren was resurrected at the end of S3. Rayla says Viren is caught between life and death, but in the living world.

Janai is Queen Khessa’s heir, so she should be the next Sunfire Queen. Janai also has a brother. (Sunfire elves also have a Light Being form with healing powers that’s even rarer than the beserker Heat Being form. This fact has come up a couple of times so they’re likely going to introduce a character with this form - could be Janai’s brother). 

Janai will find out that Aaravos whispered something in Khessa’s ear before he killed her.

Also on Amaya and Janai:

Also, they did a reveal page for Janai's mount, a Twin-Tailed Inferno-Toothed Tiger, with some interesting info. These flying firecats are believed to only tolerate those of pure-heart and aggressive to those of ill-intent. You can't give a factoid like that and not use it somewhere.

Tales of Xadia will feature storyline content that bridges the gap between Season 3 and the newly-announced Season 4 of The Dragon Prince,” according to Fandom’s press release. “Players can explore the ruins of Lux Aurea, try to restore the corrupted Sunforge, and fight to stop the spread of the evil monstrosities it radiates. This off-screen story will come alive in game supplements—as well as in organized play events—prior to Season 4’s release.

Forbes

Sol Regem will be in season 4. (No character makes me think of “scars of the past” more than this character. He is not going to be interested in reconciliation between Xadia and humanity).

There will be a new elf character - Terry the Earthblood elf. Has similar powers to Toph from Avatar tLA and is said to be very funny. For reference this Earthblood elf is from Callum’s Spellbook;

Also a new dragon in season 4 - Rex Igneous (Fire King) the Earth Archdragon, who lives underground but comes up every hundred years. He’s appeased by food he hasn’t tried before (looking at Ezran and his jelly tart habit here);

They mentioned that both Earthblood and Tidebound elves will be introduced in seasons 4 & 5.

There’s another archdragon who has been mentioned at SDCC and in the novel, Luna Tenebris, who reigned between Sol Regem and Avizandum.. Ehasz said that the end of her reign is being explored in S4, but no current intentions to explore the beginning.

JR mentioned that the territory of the Skywing elves will be visited at some point, and how having a small portion of the population that has wings, and a even smaller population that can magically manifest wings, has an affect on their culture. (The three types apparently have different outlooks - with winged elves being known for moving on when they don’t care to deal with things).

They’ve mentioned a character that will be introduced in the video game will make it into the show. AE & JR were talking about how they were currently writing stuff for S5 and how this character just got their moment, so I think this character is due in S5.

Core novel Book 2: Sky will introduce a very important Dark Mage character not yet featured on the show.

Also, as a tidbit from AE - there’s a scene in S5 where someone makes a sacred promise to Bait.

Sarai will feature in the show again. AMA confirmed Callum’s father is “fully human.” His father may come up in the novels.

In the novel new lore about unicorns was introduced. This lore will be incorporated into the show at some point.

The reactions to elf/human romantic relationships will be a thing.

Aanya will be featured again. Ezran and Aanya will be friends. 

Queen Fareeda of Evenere actually survived the smokey assassin’s attack - she just went missing for a bit. Her story may come up later on.

Captain Villads and Berto are likely to be featured again, but not confirmed. 

They do have some stories about Callum’s father they want to tell, but it’s likely to be in books rather than making it into the show.

Crow Master has scenes coming up. The Crow Lord is real but that’s all they’re gonna say.

Some very epic beings will eat jelly tarts in the show.

And a finishing note to put the fear in you - possible major character death.

PS. It has been confirmed that Rayla, Callum, Zym (and Bait) are the main characters for all seven seasons, so this leaves... Soren, Claudia, Viren and Amaya. 

[chiseler]

Wanted Man: On THE FUGITIVE

The road at night is home to one of America’s perennially romantic figures: the man who’s on the lam. The escaping slave wading in the water to throw off the dogs; the western outlaw with his face on a Wanted poster and a price on his head; the Depression-era bank robber gunning his stolen V-8 toward the state line. Guilt or innocence is almost incidental; it’s the race to stay free, and the need to keep on the move, that lend such dark luster to the fugitive. The double meaning of “wanted man” is inherent, never stated more succinctly than in Nightfall (1957), when just before they kiss Anne Bancroft tells Aldo Ray, who is pursued by both cops and criminals, “You’re the most wanted man I know.”

With all due respect to Aldo Ray, the most wanted man of all was surely David Janssen, who carried one hundred and twenty episodes of the television drama The Fugitive (1963-1967) with a charisma deeply rooted in the unease, alienation, and desperation of the man on the run. As Dr. Richard Kimble, who escapes en route to the death house after being falsely convicted of killing his wife, Janssen imbued the show with a hunted, haunted, hellhound-on-my-trail mystique. His might be called a one-note performance, but that note is a suppressed intensity that never slackens for an instant; he never forgets or lets us forget that he’s under sentence of death. The fear of being caught is in his husky, constrained voice; the nervous smile that twitches one side of his mouth; his darting, plaintive eyes; the way he stands with his shoulders slightly hunched, as if against a cold wind. Every woman wants to give him aid and comfort. Who could resist a strong, quiet, kind, yet just possibly dangerous man who is also as lost, alone, and in need of help as the bedraggled stray kitten he fleetingly bonds with at the end of the series debut? Because Kimble is a mensch, at times perilously close to a saint, it’s all the more important that Janssen has a dark, gritty edge to his presence. While the scripts place him again and again in the position of risking his safety to help someone in trouble, Janssen brings out Kimble’s exhaustion and bitterness, his reflexive distrust of authority, his lonely and self-punishing stubbornness.

Every episode of The Fugitive ends with Kimble alone, walking down the highway, thumbing a ride, huddling in the back of a truck, skulking through a railyard, or slumping in the gloom of a Greyhound bus—disappearing into the no-man’s-land of the American night. The look and mood of the series are relentlessly drab and melancholy. “Another shabby room, another lonely night,” the narrator intones; another dreary town that looks just like the last, another cheap hotel, another menial job where the stranger must put up with bullying bosses and needling co-workers, another toxic web of resentments and desires waiting to trap the newcomer. The Fugitive paints the life of a drifter as a dismal and repetitive slog. In this it forms a perfect counterpoint to Route 66, another popular television show with which it overlapped. (Route 66 ran from 1960 to 1964, and Janssen was a guest star on the show just before The Fugitive began its run.) Buz and Todd, footloose buddies zipping around the country in a Corvette, are troubadours for the philosophy of moving on; at each stop they help release people trapped in emotional ruts, then motor on, restless searchers for some ultimate true home.

These contrasting shows nicely illustrate the two kinds of travel that haunt the American imagination: exploration and flight, discovery and escape. To be on the road is to be free, unfettered by emotional bonds or confining routines, going to the next new place. To be on the lam is to have no safe haven, no-one to trust, just a desperate and dwindling hope of eluding capture. In The Fugitive, Richard Kimble wants nothing more than to settle down, to return to the stable and wholesome life he once had as a pediatrician in the fictional small town of Stafford, Indiana. He roams (rather than fleeing the country) in the far-fetched hope of tracking down the one-armed man he saw running from his home the night his wife was murdered. He stubbornly pursues the dream of clearing his name—a determination that is part of the machinery required to keep the series in its perpetual holding pattern of flight and pursuit. The paradox of the show is that it depicts all the horrors of being a fugitive—the constant fear of betrayal, the impossibility of forming ties, the need to remain in a sub-legal twilight���yet also creates an irresistible glamour around the figure of the fugitive, who is strangely purified by his shadowy existence outside society, and who unintentionally seduces or provokes the masses gnawing at their private traps.

The show’s machinery is also kept running by Kimble’s dedicated hellhound, Lieutenant Gerard (Barry Morse). Writer Stanford Whitmore confessed to deliberately giving the character a name similar to Javert, the monomaniacal policeman obsessed with capturing Jean Valjean in Les Misérables. Gerard, who comes within a whisker of catching Kimble in roughly every third episode, is robotic in his idée-fixe; inhuman in his refusal to respond emotionally or change his mind. The keynote of his character is his peculiar refusal to state that he personally believes his quarry to be guilty. Every time the question comes up, Gerard smugly states that it doesn’t matter what he thinks. “The law pronounced him guilty. I enforce the law. Whether the law is right or wrong is not my concern. Let others debate and conclude. But when I begin to doubt, to question—I can’t permit it.” In a sense, Gerard is not a person at all, but a personification of authority at its most rigid and unimaginative. Often, people encountering Gerard remark that now that they have met him, they hope Kimble gets away. Even more often, the thwarted Gerard complains that he can’t understand why so many people, especially women, side with the fugitive and help him escape.

Kimble is a litmus test. Every plot turns on the way people react when they learn who he really is. Some help him because they believe he’s innocent; or because they’re grateful for something he’s done; or for some obscure personal reason, like a desire to get back at someone else who wants to turn him in. Some people betray him because they figure it’s their duty under the law, some for gain, some out of spite. Carrying his own story with him like a personal storm-cloud, Kimble continually stumbles into situations involving crime, injustice, mistaken identities, false accusations, and deceptive schemes. The whole country is filled with wrongly accused ie. nnocents and villains with law-abiding fronts. In “Come Watch Me Die,” Kimble helps a young man who is accused of murder but proclaims his innocence escape lynching, only to learn that he did commit the brutal killing and is a remorseless sociopath. Frequently Kimble is torn between his need to testify to things he’s witnessed, and his fear of coming forward and risking police attention. He’s a supremely ethical, conscientious man for whom the law and all its trappings is the enemy. “Come Watch Me Die” ends with a rare moment of humor, when a sheriff, favorably impressed by the way Kimble has captured the killer, asks if he has ever considered a career in law enforcement. The fugitive responds with a nervous, queasy smile.

Flung from one moral dilemma to the next, he is constantly caught between his societally-imposed guilt, which forces him to hide his identity, and his innate goodness. “Wings of an Angel” incisively illustrates the way he is caught between the forces of law and crime. Wounded when he (yet again) helps capture an escaping convict, he’s taken to the nearest place for treatment—which happens to be a prison hospital. He’s a hero to the guards whom he fears and a villain to the inmates, who sneeringly call him “cop-lover.” When some inmates recognize him, they blackmail him into stealing morphine for the prison’s junkies. Being a doctor adds to Kimble’s trials, as he often feels obligated to help the injured despite the risks of revealing his medical knowledge.

Though he always resists serious moral compromise, his life is constructed of lies and deceptions: in every town he assumes a new name, invents a back-story and a home town, fills job applications with phony references. He’s quite ready to knock people down to make an escape, steal a wallet when he needs identification, or fake his own death. His surprising competence at living outside the law is a large part of his attraction. In “See Hollywood and Die,” when he is held hostage by two young thugs along with a woman whose car they steal, Kimble convinces them that he’s a cool professional crook, and plays the part of a fast-working seducer to forge an alliance with his fellow hostage. The sense that this man could be dangerous, if he wanted to be, keeps him from seeming too idealized—or rather, it idealizes him in a different and more appealing way.

Much has been written about the transference of guilt in Hitchcock’s wrong-man stories. But being a fugitive, even with all the attendant ethical snares, does not tarnish Kimble’s conviction of his own innocence and his right to stay free and alive. (The one exception comes when, inevitably, he contracts amnesia, and on learning his identity, can’t be sure of his innocence.) The moral dilemmas so elaborately constructed in each episode can sometimes feel contrived or repetitive or strain credulity, but the show is driven by this basic, burning core of Kimble’s desperation, his raw fear and profound depression whenever he’s cornered or fingerprinted or locked in a cell. The suspense is superficial yet sure-fire: watching each episode, I know perfectly well that he’s not going to get caught, because if he did the show would be over, yet I respond with dutiful Pavlovian reflexes. Oh no! How’s he going to get out of it this time?

The Fugitive has the ritualistic, same-time-next-week quality of classic television, so different from today’s mandatory novelistic arcs. Each episode opens with a re-cap of the premise, which grows tiresome, though it comes in the deliciously portentous voice of William Conrad. (The credits were changed, very much for the worse, at the start of the second season; the season one credits include wonderful noirish footage of Kimble’s escape from a train wreck, and Conrad somberly intoning, “Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world for the last time, and sees only darkness. But in that darkness, fate moves its huge hand…”) The Fugitive was the creation of Roy Huggins, the veteran writer and producer who was also behind Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, Run for Your Life, and The Rockford Files. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Huggins taught himself to write by copying Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely in longhand, which is enough to put him in my good books. He got into movies when his novel Too Late for Tears was adapted into a taut and terrific 1947 film noir with Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. A member of the Communist Party until 1939, he was called before HUAC in 1952 and pragmatically named names—but only of those who had already been named. Presumably, he knew something about moral compromise.

The Fugitive was both a critical and popular success, though only for one season did its ratings break into the top five TV shows. Famously, the show’s finale (a two-parter called “The Judgment”) was watched by more people than any previous television program—72% of all households that owned TV’s tuned in. For the record, I have not yet seen the final episode, since I am still working my way through season three. I have an idea how it might go, though: I imagine Kimble will capture the one-armed man and be exonerated, at which point all of the scores of women who fell in love with him over the course of 120 episodes will appear, saying, “At last we can be together!” Then an enormous fight will break out, and he’ll be torn to pieces like Orpheus by the Maenads.

But seriously…

The enduring power of The Fugitive lies precisely in its unresolved tension, the way it portrays being a fugitive as a universal and eternal condition. Richard Kimble has nothing. He often carries a small suitcase, but since he’s regularly forced to flee with only the clothes on his back, the suitcases can’t hold anything that he’s attached to. He has no identification, just whatever petty cash he earned at his last job. He works as a mechanic, a farm laborer, a handyman, a lifeguard, a truck driver, a hospital orderly—always something faceless and expendable. He goes by whatever name he pulls off the top of his head. But his own identity clings to him as an inescapable threat: his fingerprints and his face inform against him, yet he never tries plastic surgery or burning his fingertips with acid. (He does dye his hair, but this fools no-one—though it vastly improves his appearance, and neatly distinguishes his fugitive identity from his previous square self.)

The scripts may insist that Dr. Kimble yearns to go back to being a solid citizen, with his medical degrees hanging proudly on the walls of his office, but those who love the show just want to see him in another shabby room, for another lonely night. He’s the eternal drifter; the hitch-hiker with the worried face; the guy keeping to himself in the corner of a boxcar; the stray that every woman wants to take in and console; the friendless stranger turning up his collar against the cold wind; the man who is from everywhere but here, and who’ll be from here soon.

by Imogen Sara Smith

[kyloreyorgana]

STAR WARS 9 ! TROS SPOILERS !

In case this is not obvious enough, this post will contain SPOILERS for the last Star Wars movie, which I’m just now coming home from. These are my first thoughts. I have tried to tag as best I could so that people who mute the tags don’t see my post. Do not proceed f you don’t want to read any spoilers.

You have been warned. Long (and I mean LONG) post ahead.

First of all, I’m happy to be back y’all! Just with TLJ, I come from months (or has it been years already ?) of inactivity to jump right back into the fandom, as obsessed as I was back when I came home from TFA. Which is funny because at the time TFA came out, I had lost all interest in Star Wars and heard so many critics from people who’d seen it and said it was horrible and that Disney basically sold the franchise to the devil that I didn’t even want to see it, to keep the good memories closer to my heart. One night, one month after its theatrical release, I thought “aw fuck I might as well see it, at least for Carrie, Mark and Harrisson” so I went to the cheap theater that was near my home... I had zero expectation, and really I think it’s the reason why I loved the movie so much. I didn’t chose to ship Reylo, this ship whacked me like Harley Quinn’s oversized hammer with the Hades and Persephone aesthetics. When I came out, completely mesmerized with what I had just seen, I jumped on Tumblr as soon as I got home, and I ended up creating this blog just days later. I wanted more and more, fics, metas, fanarts, headcannons, theories, cracks, I could never get enough. For TLJ and TROS, I had lost most interest in the fanfics and the fandom (because as much as I love the movies and some people in the fandom, most of it can eat shit as far as I’m concerned). I heard so many critics of TROS already, I was afraid I was going to be disappointed. But I loved it. Only Star Wars can make me go from utterly uninterested to “Wow I can’t wait to see this new Star Wars in theater, what a time to be alive”, to a stage of total obsession that lasts for months. And that is the reason why I don’t give two shits about anyone disliking the movies. It’s sad you didn’t like them, but it made me feel the same way I felt right back when I was a child watching the original movies with my father. It feels like home. And that is the best thing I could ask for.

Like in TLJ, I cried as soon as I heard the first note of the opening. The last Skywalker story, the last time I ever see my Space Mommy on the big screen...

I know the Reylo community is about to be nuts. The whole movie, like TLJ before it, is basically a series of things we’ve already done in fics and theories. I am 100% positive I have read a fic where Rey and Ren try to hold back a ship with the Force and Rey ends up involuntarily shooting lightning. Whichever one of you did it is probably going to have a stroke in the theater. I nearly did.

And really, I wish I could see the look on the Antis’ faces when they see the movie. I’m sure it is a sight to behold. I wanted to scream “TAKE THAT, BITCHES” more than once. As in TLJ.

My biggest fear was what they would do with Leia. I knew Disney said they wouldn’t use CGI and chose to stick with the scenes Carrie had already shot, and I was afraid it wouldn’t honor Leia’s legacy. Well I... have mixed feelings. While the way they used Carrie’s scenes and made it look like she really is here is to be lauded, it sometimes feels like Leia had nothing interesting to say but they tried to put her in a dialogue anyway, because she needed to be seen doing (or rather, saying) something in the Resistance. And about her death... I still can’t put my finger on what exactly I didn’t like about it but I felt like something was missing. Watching the scene, at first I didn’t know if she was having a heart attack or if she stabbed herself or chose to give up her life because she somehow felt it was the moment, I’m still not sure just why she did what she did. I wish they put something more to motivate her decision and explain what exactly she does. I don’t know, a flashback of Leia holding baby Ben, a little more dialogue, something. Not just Leia suddenly getting up and going to bed whispering her son’s name. 

I knew I was going to be disappointed. Among all the celebrities’ deaths, Carrie’s is the one that affected me the most, and believe me I was a wreck when Bowie passed. I miss her, I think about her every single day. And Leia deserved more, much more. When I saw TFA, part of the reason why I loved the movie was that, even though it pained my heart that Han and Leia’s son turned out this way, I thought they would make it right. I spent hours imagining a scene in the 9th movie where Ren would defeat Rey (incapacitate her the Skywalker style cutting her hand or something) and approach to give the killing blow, and Leia would enter the scene, pick up Rey’s lightsaber, look her son dead in the eye and say “Over my dead body, son”. Because Leia would never give up without a fight, even with her son. And she would get her son back, and her story arc would have been completed. I would have paid good money to see this. 

Episode 9 was supposed to be Leia’s movie, just like ep. 7 was Han’s and ep. 8 was Luke’s. When Carrie died, I knew it would be compromised and it broke my heart, because Leia deserved better. She lost everything. Her parents, her planet, her father, her husband, her son, her brother, the Rebellion, the Resistance, everything. She fought all the way, all her life even faced with the worst odds she never gave up hope, she inspired hundreds of people to keep fighting for what is right, and she would never have a satisfactory ending. What a fucking heartbreak. She didn’t even get to see Lando. Leia deserved more. Every little girl in this world who grew up with her as a role model deserved more. But c’est la vie, as we say in French... My only solace is that I know fanfics and fanarts are going to make me feel a little better about it.

Of course I cried every time I saw her on screen, and especially when they honored her body, as we all honored Carrie when she passed away. This was one of the many fanservice moments, and surely the one I liked the most, although there was some concurrence (more to it later).

Another thing I didn’t like is what they did to Poe’s character. Many people disliked TLJ because of it, which they attributed to a political agenda of hate on men. This is so ridiculous and has already been debated enough that I won’t get into it. I did like the evolution of his character in TLJ, because for me it was an interesting character development as well as a good message: wartime is not only about barging in fights head first, shoot first think later, as is, let’s be honest, everything Anakin ever does. At one point, the narrative of the reckless hero who saves the day when a situation seems impossible and everyone begs him not to do it gets old. Sometimes in war, you have to think ahead, to plot, and yes, listen to what your allies have to say. And it actually was a good critic of toxic masculinity. Could the conflict between Poe and Holdo have been avoided with minimally sane conversation ? YES. But the message was here (as were Holdo’s hair and dress and WOW gurl) and I thought that was it, and Poe would evolve into a wiser person.

But this Poe is, at least in the first half of the movie, not very likable. Hear me, I never really liked Han Solo (never been into macho men) but I really loved Poe in TFA because he was genuinely nice and brave. Here, he’s bitter and annoying. I told myself that he was jealous of Rey because he heard of Finn’s crush on her and he wanted to keep Finn all for himself, which I know is just a crack headcannon, but hey, anything to make it better I guess.

Of course, I’ll never forgive Disney for not making FinnPoe a thing, when even Oscar Isaac ships them hard. And trying to make Poe flirt with the other girl (whose name I even forgot and whose face we didn’t even see, now tell me again how Star Wars has been corrupted by feminists... sigh)  Speaking of, it is me or did two women kiss at the end ? 

I liked the new droid, it reminded me of my puppy. But at the end, it was just another fanservice moment, it didn’t really do anything useful onscreen apart from being cute and funny.

When Rey was finally revealed to be a Palpatine as I hoped, I giggled like a wee girl. Watching TFA, I begged the old gods and the new that they wouldn’t make her another Skywalker, because it would’ve spoiled the Star Wars spirit for me. The whole franchise, in my opinion, is a story about fighting for what you believe is right, no matter who you or your parents are or where you come from. Even though Luke and Leia’s ended up being Vader’s children, they weren’t the only meaningful characters. Anakin was basically a Space Jesus and went from a total nobody to the Chosen One. I didn’t want Rey to be a Skywalker because it would mean that your importance would only ever lay in your bloodline, and that is depressing and totally against the spirit of the Rebellion/Resistance: no matter who you are, you can fight for what is right. For this reason, I wished for Rey to be either a real nobody or Palpatine’s granddaughter, which is also why I liked the fact that Han and Leia’s son turned out bad, even though it made me sad for them (Leia didn’t deserve this). No matter your bloodline, you can always make things right, or fuck up badly if you let yourself be taken away. And, of course, the reveal that Rey and Kylo Ren are two sides of the same coin (aka one of the many times where I picture us Reylos screaming CALLED IT in our seats) was exactly what I hoped for, a beautiful balance. I didn’t share Palpatine’s implication that a Palpatine and a Skywalker are meant to work together, though. That is not how I choose to interpret this duality. That is not what they end up doing, anyway.

Speaking of that old pal Patine, seeing the trailers I feared I would feel nauseated that they chose to reanimate the Big Old Villain, just like they reanimated the Even Bigger Death Star in TFA (how lazy can you be ?). But I enjoyed it. What saved it was Palpatine’s will to be killed by Rey to perpetuate the Sith rite of passage. I don’t even care if it’s cannon or not. I was afraid they would recreate Vader’s dilemma in ROTJ with Rey, but I liked the choices she made. And the throne scene worked for me. Like the rest of the movie it was flawed, for instance we don’t even get an explanation on how he survived. Just like we don’t even get what Finn wanted to tell Rey, even though it was emphasized several times. Was it a love declaration ? What happened to the rushed romance with Rose in TLJ ? (What happened to Rose, actually). While we’re at it, why did Palpatine want Ren to kill Rey ? So many questions. So many flaws.

And, of course I cannot comment this film without mentioning my sweet star-crossed lovers, Rey and Ben. First, I’m really eager to see your reactions. We did it, Reylos! Years of hate and slander and we were right all along. Let’s rejoice.

I like Rey’s evolution. For the moment, I don’t feel like I have too much to say about it (which is fine because this post is way too long already). I like the way she handles her emotions, I like her choices and her character evolution. 

And Ben. Oh, sweet Ben. Although I think the part where he gets his old mask fixed wasn’t necessary, I kinda like what they did with him as well. I must say though that I liked his hair in TFA better.  Oh boy, I loved Kylo Ren but I absolutely adore Ben Solo. And I think the way the movie depicts him even surpasses some fics. The moment when Rey gives him the lightsaber and he gets up and does the Han shrug  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  I almost lost my mind. This ties with the hommage to Leia’s body as my favorite fanservice moment.

And their relationship... Look, I know I wet my pants really enjoyed myself in TLJ when they held hands, but that scene felt rushed even for me who ships them with the force of a thousand suns. Like many things in TLJ (and, as I said, also in TROS) it felt like things I had already seen in fanfics, but in the fics I enjoyed the most Rey had tried to kill him at least 5 mores times before even agreeing to have a one-on-one conversation with him. Their romance in TLJ felt like it was hormone-driven, but I get Johnson couldn’t really do a slow burn in 2 hours. When Leia died and they both felt it in the Force, I could feel that Rey wanted to touch him, to confort him, to grieve with him. I’m glad she didn’t. It wasn’t time. And I really like that she told him she wanted to hold Ben’s hand, not his. And Ben, the Dork Knight, finally realized that if he wanted The Girl, he shouldn’t, you know, threaten her and chase her but get back to the Light Side like she begged him multiple times. Because he really isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, this is apparently what makes him choose to tip over. That or the fact she saved his life. I was still frustrated by Leia’s death so I don’t know if I’m not entirely convinced because it happened just after, I’d have to watch it again. I liked Han’s moment, though.

And in my opinion, Rey and Ren’s fight on the wreck of the Death Star is as good as Anakin and Obi-Wan’s. My Reylo heart will always have a special place for their couple fight in TLJ (aka the best non-sex sex scene in cinema, don’t @ me) but I also liked this fight in light of their relation. Surprisingly, it reminded me more of their fight at the end of TFA, when we see Ren holding his blows and Rey barging in. I thought it was endearing.

The end. Oh my god, the end. I can’t wait to see the first gifs and I really really can’t wait for the HD gifs, because oh boy, I now only live for Ben Solo’s smile. That’s it, I found my will to live, my depression is cured. And the way he handles Rey’s body with the utmost care (while Finn apparently watches it and does or says nothing). And that kiss... And the SMILE. And the KISS. 

Oh, dear gods. Oh dear.

I can’t wait for the first fics in which Ben doesn’t die and they live happily ever after on Tatooine or Naboo or wherever they damn want. Or the fics where he is indeed dead and they still share a beautiful relationship (if Force Ghost Luke could get his X-Wing out of the water, I’m eager to imagine what Ben would do with his Force dick, tongue and fingers. Forgive me, it’s getting late and I’m still flustered thinking of their kiss)

And the fact that she declares herself a Skywalker ? I know a lot of people are disappointed in this, but apart from the fact that she completely deserves the title in my opinion when she inherited the will of both Luke and Leia, which is reason enough, she is absolutely married to Ben and deserves her place in that family. Also, it’s again a beautiful way to remind you that bloodlines don’t matter as much as what we choose to do with our lives. And while I’m glad they showed Leia’s Force ghost (I would’ve been really mad if they didn’t) I’m super frustrated they didn’t show Ben’s. What am I to believe, that he gave his life for her, became one with the Force and vanished into litteral nothingness for him to never be seen again ? Like hell I don’t. Again, counting on the fics and arts to right this wrong.

The movie sure has its flaws, and I still have many unanswered questions, like what the fuck is the badge Maz gives Chewie, or how Rey does her lightsaber staff at the end, and I wish they explained some things better. I wasn’t sure if the saber Leia wanted Rey to have was hers or her mother’s. Most of those questions will be answered by bigger geeks than me in this fandom, so I really can’t wait to read from y’all.

I know a whole lot of people are going to hate the movie. The antis, the gatekeeping trve fans (already I’ve seen people say that those who enjoyed the movies are not Real Star Wars Fans and welp, we’re going to see a lot of shit). The manbabies who genuinely believe in a feminist takeover and see equality as a direct threat. I’m specifically happy they will be disappointed while I got the privilege of enjoying Star Wars as much as I did. It’s not my fault, or Disney’s fault even, that they turned out to be on the Empire’s side. And the day has not come when I defend a megacorporation. 

Leia was the first SJW. The Resistance lives on. People will always fight against evil, like it or not. I know the world is a shitty place and we don’t have much hope nowadays for things to get better, and Star Wars has always motivated me to keep going and stick to my values and my convictions. I felt chills several times in the movie, like at the end where everyone comes to fight, and now I’m more willing to keep fighting than ever. For Leia.

Godspeed, Rebels! 

[nellie-elizabeth]

Supernatural: Atomic Monsters (15x04)

I love it when Supernatural goes meta. Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen a show do it better. It's goofy and yet still thematically appropriate. And it's respectful of the once-in-a-lifetime fandom experience of being a person who watches Supernatural. Who grows up watching it. Let's talk about it.

Cons:

There is one thing that this show can't make its mind up about, and it's when it's cool to murder people. Like, yeah, the kid in this story was a vampire who had killed a young woman and was worried about losing control and killing again. But this episode also featured a (kind of) return of Benny, reminding us that vampires can be allies and friends, too. We've done this so many times over the years - Sam and Dean have had many debates about whether well-meaning monsters can control themselves enough to be left alive. And they've allied with people who under normal circumstances they might have just killed. Rowena. Crowley. Benny. Even Cas, if you want to get technical about it. It was painted as extremely tragic that the young man in this episode had to die. But I wanted there to be at least a conversation about it beforehand, where Sam and Dean said that yes, a normal life probably wasn't possible... but death wasn't the only option. If we can't live in the middle-ground, where exactly are we going with all of this?

I'm not surprised that Dean and Sam didn't talk about Cas in this episode. It makes sense because Misha can't be in the whole season, and Destiel just broke up in episode three. They're going to draw this sucker out just a little bit. But yeah, on a selfish note, I admit I was hoping for at least a mention. Maybe Sam could remark that Dean's good mood seems like a front, given how upset he's been about Cas. Oh well. I'm choosing to remain optimistic.

Pros:

The monster-of-the-week story was not one I'll be remembering as a favorite or anything, but it worked as a nice mirror to poor Sam's state of mind. Obviously he's sad about Jack, sad about Rowena, feeling really low about things in general... but he's also having terrible nightmares about turning evil and killing his brother. And now here we have a story about a monster who is afraid of hurting his loved ones, and who chooses to die to protect others. That's a very Sam-Winchester-y choice to make, and I know for a fact that Sam would rather die than hurt anyone, especially Dean. So the foreshadowing here was clear, even if the details of the case this week weren't especially memorable on their own merits.

And that dream at the beginning... I loved the cool lighting, the fight choreography, Dean's signature "cupping the face of my dying boyfriend loved one" move... all of it was wonderful. Jensen's directing really shone in that opening scene. And Jared played Evil!Sam so well. The fact that they brought back his psychic powers, the demon blood, and used it to frighten Sam about what he might become... all of that stuff was golden. Poor Sammy. There's a great moment before they leave for the case when Sam suggests that Dean call on another hunter, and Dean insists that Sam needs to come along. You just know that Sam is scared of hurting Dean, or of being off his A-game and causing problems. The poor darling!

The impala brotherly moment at the end was really powerful, and showcased to me how far these boys have actually come. Dean is open and honest, saying that he wants to help Sam out of his funk, that Sam helped him to believe that what they do still has a purpose, and still does some good. Sam is then honest about his own feelings right back, saying that he can't let the past go, that he still thinks about Jessica, that sometimes it all catches up to him and he feels like he can't breathe. And then, as if wanting to appease Dean and brush past the conversation, he says "maybe I'll feel better in the morning."

The Dean Winchester of earlier seasons would have let it go, stayed in a place of denial, and moved right on. But this Dean Winchester says to his little brother: "And what if you don't?"

Sam doesn't have a good answer for him, but just the fact that Dean asked shows huge character development. As far as the boys are concerned, Chuck is gone. They are free. Now they can work on their emotional well-being. They can decide what the rest of their lives look like. And as a start, Dean wants to help his little brother, and he doesn't want to shy away from the rough parts of that. I am enamored with the character development here.

But let's pivot and talk about that meta goodness. We see that in the years since we last checked in with her, Becky has gone through extensive counseling, and has gotten married and has kids. She is also still an active member of the Supernatural fandom, selling art on Etsy and writing fic. Let us just track the way that this show has talked about its fans over the seasons. In the beginning, Becky was a manic, obsessed, crazy fangirl who literally drugged Sam and forced him to marry her. Over the years, however, they have taken a different tack, treating the fandom with respect, especially in episodes like the 200th. And here, we circle back around. We have an acknowledgment that this show has been on for fifteen years, that some of the teenage girls who fell in love with it when it first started, are now grown adults with careers and families. And that these grown adults might still love the show as much as ever, might spend their time online chatting with other fans, working hard on fanfic, turning their passions into lucrative careers. And this is not mocked or derided in any way. I was gobsmacked by how respectful this interpretation of fandom was, and was so, so pleased to take a look at an old character and show real change and development.

This episode also firmly telegraphs something about the theme of this final season of Supernatural. The year 2019 has been rough for me, in terms of beloved franchises choosing to go the "dark" and "grim" and "realistic" route, what with your Game of Thrones and your Endgame and your killing off of beloved depressed bisexual characters (ahem Magicians ahem). There was a not-so-small part of me that feared that Supernatural was going to go the same direction, ending the story with some dark tragic ending, because it's the cool thing to do or whatever. But after this episode, I'm fairly confident that's not where we're headed. Chuck, our villain, wants to end the story as a tragedy. But Becky, the audience avatar, tells him exactly how much the fans will hate that. And Sam and Dean have always been about free will, in the face of insurmountable odds. So it's looking like the boys are going to earn their happiness this season. And I'm very much all about it.

I feel like there's a lot more I could say about Becky and Chuck, but I'll leave it at that. This episode had a lot of really great stuff going on in it. For once, the C-plot episodes make sense for Sam and Dean, because they truly don't know that the bigger threat is out there. We get the nostalgia factor with returning faces like Becky and Benny. We get meta-commentary on the nature of storytelling and endings. We get Sam having sinister dreams and actually confronting his own depression and trauma. I'm a pretty happy camper!

8.5/10