#this is hilarious bc he's only vaguely aware of anything that happens to him in the future

[may-nr1rooftoptriodefender]

What comes next

pairing: Levi Ackermann x f.reader/kinda oc

(it’s supposed to be reader but there are a few things important for the story… Nothing is mentioned in this chapter but for it to make sense in later chapters Im gonna say it. She has no first name bcs I suck at names but she has a last name. Her family and her background is already set. Hair color is black)

summary: When Yelena and her people arrive at Paradis, Levi finds himself in a tricky situation.

warnings: might contain Spoiler for Season 4!, set during 4 year time skip, ooc Levi?, kinda explicit (mentions of sex and vague descriptions) <- it’s not filthy hardcore but it’s there,…

(if i forgot anything I’m sorry, it’s 4am rn)

notes: Hi! I’m back y’all. First published Levi story, yay. Soo before we start, there are going to be more parts. This is just a little intro and the moments described happened in the past, next parts ain’t going to be flashbacks. English isn’t my first language so if you find any mistakes pls let me know🙏 tips are always appreciated.

Lastly, this is kinda smutty so I’ll put a MDNI here. You have been warned, if you still proceed to read, it’s on your own risk. I cannot stop you from reading anything but at least be aware of what you’re reading! (this is like the first smutty thing I published so bear with me..)

masterlist

part I

Seeing the outside world- the ocean, finding out about the enemy- Marley, the truth about the titans,.. it was hard to process. they needed new plans- new strategies to defeat Marley. Eren was their ultimate weapon. With him on their side they had to win. But how?

When Marley send out one of their ships to Paradis, it was like a gift. The second ship marked the arrival of their new accomplices. Yelena and her people were more than helpful. But Yelena wasn’t the only one. Onyankopon, Niccolo, and her.

Normally, he wouldn’t care. A soldier from Marley is nothing special. But she was so different at the same time. It was strange that all of them wanted to help Paradis. They betrayed their own country for them.

In order to come forward with their research, they accepted Yelena’s help. They started to build outside the walls. The titans were all gone, no need to worry now. Some were forced to help, some wanted to.

Niccolo wasn’t very impressed at first. He was complaining nonstop while cooking the seafood for the scouts. After Sasha took the first bite, he shut up quickly. He was quite flustered actually. She and Yelena were there too. She found it hilarious.

Laughing loudly with a quiet ‘I told you’ at the end.

Just like Yelena and Onyankopon, she never seemed to hate the Eldians of Paradis Island. He hated it. Thinking about her. She wouldn’t leave his thoughts. He tried, he really did- she was the enemy after all. But he couldn’t. He tried to see something he wouldn’t like. And maybe he didn’t like talkative people. Or people who invade personal space. But at the same time, she was a bit shy. She would give space if he needed it.

She was the only one who dared to come closer than the rest. Even if he was supposed to be enemy. This conflict was going on for years now.

Even if he didn’t really show it, he didn’t mind her tired eyes looking into his. Or how she sometimes followed him like a lost puppy. How she always greeted him when he entered the room. The way she says his name…

‘Good morning Levi.’

‘How are you Captain Levi?’

‘Do you need anything Levi?’

‘Levi.’

But is he really that special? It’s not like he’s the only one she’s friendly with. She greets everyone. She talks to everyone the same. She always smiles when someone said something funny.

But not everyone gets a knock on their door at every possible hour of the day.

‘Could we have some tea together Levi? I think I have a few more ideas regarding…’

‘Hanges the commander, You should go to her.’ , is what he should say. But he lets her in. Every time. Conversations are nice, if it’s with the right person. He isn’t talkative, so she does the most of talking. He normally would prefer it quiet, yet he doesn’t mind the conversation. She’s always calm, it’s never about difficult topics, she stays polite,…

He wants to hate it. They notice. Everyone sees that she spends more time with Levi. But that he actually likes his time with her goes unnoticed. And it’s not like she tries anything with him. Hange said to him once that she probably tries to befriend everyone. Showing that she isn’t the enemy.

‘And you know, it’s so hard to read you, she wants to make sure that you two are on the same side!’

Hange didn’t help his problem.

He genuinely thinks that those are her true intentions. There’s this other side though. What if she’s a spy for Marley. What if she’s trying to get more information. What if she wants us to trust her so she can betray us.

But she wouldn’t do that, would she?

No.

He still has to be careful. Actually, he fucked that up too. It’s too late for being careful.

He couldn’t resist when she looked at him with those eyes. These damn eyes. And her smile. How could someone look at him this way? No one ever did. He can’t believe it. But he wants to. He wants to be selfish for once.

One evening, she would come to his door again. With two teacups in her hand.

‘Would you mind if we talk?’

He could never say no to her. So she comes in. She sets the two teacups down and starts to prepare everything. Levi just sat down. He wanted to help her, but every time he tried she refused. He doesn’t like how other people do his tea. This was his room and she, a prisoner from Marley, tells him what to do?

He accepts it. When everything is ready, she sits down with him and they drink their tea. She starts talking, he replies sometimes. It’s nice.

Somehow, their usual routine changed. She did nothing wrong. One small slip up and it was over. He was listening, until she stopped talking. Looking him directly into the eyes. The smile from before slowly fading. Did he do something wrong? Well fuck.

And then the unexpected came. She complimented his eyes. He expected everything, but not that.

‘What.’

‘Your eyes. They’re beautiful. With the grey and the little blue sparks… You don’t see that often.’ Her smile was returning.

‘Why would you say that.’

‘Huh? Because it’s the truth?’

Not a lot people made him compliments. He has gotten love letters before, or weird request. But not compliments. They either found him to scary to say that to his face, or they simply didn’t find anything to compliment. Well maybe expect on the battlefield. On how he did a good job or something like that. But not about his appearance.

They loved to comment on his height rather than his other features.

And that was his moment of weakness. He didn’t know what to say. And he didn’t. He grabbed the base of her neck and brought her forward to his face. He kissed her. He didn’t know why he did it. He didn’t know why she kissed him back, bringing her hand up to his cheek. This was his sign to stop. He pulled back and stared at her. His eyes were wide because what the fuck just happened. Why did he do it. Shit she’s going to slap him now.

She looked at him. Not one word came out. Levi did the only rational thing.

‘Don’t take that personal.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Okay.’

…

‘Will you take it personal if I do it again?’

He should’ve said no, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t say anything, so he shook his head. A tiny smile formed onto her face and she pressed their faces against each other. He didn’t mind, even if he should.

She also didn’t take it personal when they left the kitchen. Or when she sat on the bed, when he followed soon. Or when he undressed her. She didn’t mind him seeing.

He didn’t take it personal when she whispered his name. It was so different compared to the other times. Only for him to hear. It felt good.

He didn’t take it personal how she let him do things he could only dream of.

How it could even get to this point. They shouldn’t have. The only thing he could focus on was the way she looked when he touched her. This beautiful face still looking at him this certain way.

No one could know. This intimate moment together. How she moaned his name. How he held her even closer every second. How good they looked together. How good they felt.

It was so against the rules. They were from two different worlds. Their countries were at war, yet they decide to forget all that for what? The world was cruel. He wanted more of that.

No one really knew what to say afterwards. Both in his bed. He felt filthy. Not because of what they had done, but because of what he had to do now.

‘You should clean up and then go to your room again. It’s getting pretty late.’

He couldn’t even look at her. But he saw the nod in the corner of his eye. She stood up and fuck- he might do it again. It wasn’t only the sex, her in his room, his bed, he wanted that. She looked so beautiful like this.

She started collecting her clothes and just as she was about to put them back on-

‘Clean up here. You can’t go back like this.’

Only a nod again. She looked guilty. A bit sad even. Before she could really disappear in his bathroom she turned around.

‘Levi-‘

‘That wasn’t personal either. No one can find out about this. We would get into trouble, you hear me?’

It was harsh, but he had to set boundaries. This went too far already no need to make it worse.

He could only dream of what was about to come.

———

I almost forgot- Happy Birthday Levi!!

requests are always open (I need ideas please🙏🙏)

Song recommendation - White Dress by Lana Del Rey

[abouttiimeadjacent]

      ❝ Hey. Hey! Hi! Remember me? I was-- I was naked? I'd fallen in the pool? Um-- have you seen ah-- see, there was a kid-- red hair, about ten years old maybe-- or um, maybe you've seen an abandoned pile of clothes. Because that happens. ...we have met, right? ❞

@likeariddle

[in-tua-deep]

Prompt idea that I sincerely don't know anywhere else to put out, but what if, one mother of the seven like... delayed giving up the baby idk why, but like, in the end the child goes to the academy, but like... they know the world outside this mansion full of all sorts of abuse and violence, and so is trying to bring good sense and awareness to all of other children somehow, even though like... you don't know very much or correctly the things in general, but is trying anyway because yeah

okay okay i will bite

it's gonna be Five bc u know how I roll by now and you didn't specify a child, so this is a non-twin world uwu

I see some people naming him Fievel so we're gonna have to go with that, nicknamed Five by the other kids who thought it was absolutely hilarious to ask "which one?" whenever Reginald snaps “Five!”

Though officially, of course, Five is number seven.

So Fievel is born in a park to a mother who was never prepared to have achild, but held him in the hospital and looked into the eyes of a man offering her money for her newborn and she says - no. 

Because she’s poor, yes, and she’s working two jobs to make ends meet, and this man might be able to provide for her child but - she doesn’t like the fact that he offered her money. As though he could place a price on a human life.

(His stupid mustache might have played a role as well. Bastard.)

So she keeps little Fievel, and it’s hard. It’s so hard. Babies are expensive, and she was barely making enough as it was, but her best friend works from home and offers to take him sometimes during the day instead of a more expensive daycare. Some of her other friends ask around relatives and friends and hunt through garage sales until she has a passable amount of baby items.

It would be easier if Fievel wasn’t such a precocious child. He’s curious and into everything, a loud baby that demands attention. 

“C’mon Fi,” She begs her three-year-old son from where she’s draped across the sofa. Aren’t kids supposed to sleep a lot? Why did she end up with the one kid in the world who is on the go twenty four seven? “Can we please take a nap?”

“No.” Fievel says with a mulish look in his eyes and he shoves a book towards her face and almost takes her eye out with a corner of it, “Wead to me.”

And she sighs, and she’s so tired, but she hauls herself up and pats the sofa next to her and her little boy beams at her with such - such love that it almost takes her breath away. “Dogger, again? How many times have we read this?”

Fievel kicks at her with his little soft foot, and she catches it in a hand and smiles and she drops the book in her lap to bring her other hard over to dust feather light fingertips against her baby’s sides.

He’s terribly ticklish and giggles even as he shrieks “NO” loud enough that their neighbors will probably complain to her about it again. But in that moment she doesn’t care as she brings her head down to blow raspberries on her son’s stomach and make him laugh.

She loves him so much. 

(But she never has any time. Her friendships are more distant now, because she’s either at work or spending time with her son. She’s always exhausted because she works such long hours and Fievel keeps her awake when she’s a home. She doesn’t blame him, he didn’t ask to be born into the world any more than she asked for him, really. But it’s hard.)

Fievel is a curious child. She takes him to children’s museums and zoos on the discount days and watches him run around with seemingly endless energy. She has to keep a careful eye on him otherwise he will disappear, get distracted and wander off no matter how many times she’s tried to tell him to never do so.

Then he turns four.

Her baby is so smart. And he’s restless. And even though the place she works has a daycare through them, the people there are one incident away from banning Fievel. She thinks that’s dumb, considering they’re the ones that didn’t watch Fievel closely enough and lost him almost four times in recent months. 

So she signs him up for preschool.

She gets him a brand new outfit for the day, fussing over him until he’s all squirmy and pouty and slapping her hands away with all the grump that a four-year-old can muster. 

She sends him off to daycare with ruffled hair and a wide smile and tries not to worry too much.

She’s at work when she gets a call from the school informing her that they’ve lost her son. She hurriedly lets her boss know and sweeps out of work without a backwards glance, showing up at the school just as her phone rings again and a flustered individual informs her that they’ve located him.

“I have no idea how he got out.” The frazzled teacher looks close to tears when she meets with the poor woman, giving Fievel a fierce look that promises that they will be having a talk about this. 

“I din’t do anything.” Fievel pipes up mulishly, “I didn’t go nowhere, the class did.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, and faces the teacher apologetically. After a pointed comment from a friend, she’s been vaguely looking into ADHD since her kid is like this, “I’ll have a talk with him.”

“I’ll - I’ll make sure to keep a better eye on him.” The woman looks floored that she isn’t tearing strips out of the school administration for losing her toddler. Actually when it’s phrased like that she probably should be more pissed off. But she also knows her kid and what a handful her is.

So she takes him home and sits him down.

“This can’t happen again, Fi.” She tells him, and he’s got his little arms crossed and he’s pouting with his entire body. “I mean it. I had to leave work, and you know I have to work.”

“You don’t hafta.” Fievel says harshly, “What about me?”

She sits on the couch next to him, heart heavy, “Baby, you know I have to work so that we can have things and go places.”

Her son scrabbles up on his knees and puts his hand on her arms and gives her big eyes, “I don’t need lotsa toys. An’ we don’t hafta go to the zoo.”

“Oh baby,” She pulls him into her arms and lets him snuggle into her, “I gotta work. And you gotta go to school and be good. Okay? You can’t be leaving the classroom again.”

“I din’t mean to.” Fievel sniffles, and she hugs him just a little tighter as the tears start to flow.

“It’s okay.” She murmurs into his hair, “I got you.”

To his credit, Fievel does his best. He still manages to leave the classroom somehow, seemingly whenever the teacher is looking away. No one seems to know how he does it. Emma who sits next to him exclaims that he just vanished like he went BAM and wasn’t there all of a sudden!

(Oh, the imagination of four-year-olds, the teacher thinks to herself.)

But whenever he does he seems to come back within fifteen to thirty minutes. Sometimes the teacher doesn’t even notice he’s gone before he’s knocking on the (locked) classroom door to be let back in. They don’t call his mother about the incidents anymore and the teachers nickname him Houdini with a sort of despair. 

Fievel is four-and-a-half when he’s taking a walk with his mother down to the park. He’s got his little rainboots on because he always wades into the pond and he likes the slosh of the water on his feet when it goes over the top, and his little duck shirt. He’s making loud quacking noises which don’t actually sound anything like a duck but when he looks at her for approval she nods with a smile.

They’re crossing the road at the crosswalk, holding hands because they always do, when the car comes careening around the corner.

She can’t react in time, eyes widening and she’s hollering and she moves to push her son and she only has eyes for him as she places her body between him and the car and - 

She watches his eyes go wide and afraid and she 

watches

him

disappear

and then the car clips her and she’s sent sprawling and that’s the last thing she remembers.

She wakes up in the hospital hours later with a concussion, a broken arm, several broken ribs, and a lots of scrapes. She’s lucky, they tell her. She demands to know where her son is. 

Hours later, when she’s worked herself up into a right tizzy, her son sprints into the room followed shortly by some very harried looking cops and she has to haul him into the bed so that he doesn’t hurt himself getting up.

“Gentle, gentle.” She warms him, wincing when he bangs a knee into her bad ribs, “I’m a little tender at the moment, baby.”

“You got hurt!” Fievel yells at the tops of his lungs and then immediately bursts into loud and terrified tears. So she ignores her bad ribs and messed up arm and cradles him close to her making shushing noises and stroking his back until he’s cried himself out and drops off right there in the hospital bed.

She gets out of the hospital with a cast and a bill she can’t afford right now and she sits Fievel down on the couch.

She wants to write off the fact that her son literally vanished before her eyes to the concussion. But - she thinks about a locked preschool classroom and a son that has a tendency to vanish when she takes her eyes off of him and -

It makes too much sense.

“Baby.” She asks, “Can you teleport?”

“What’s tell-ee-port?” Fievel asks, scrunching up his nose.

“Do you find yourself in other places without getting up and going to them?”

“Yeah.” Fievel states it so easily, like she’s dumb. “I told you so.”

She pressed her fingers to her face, “Can you do it now?”

Fievel frowns and then scrunches up his face real hard and then -

He’s gone. And then he’s opening his bedroom door and scurrying back out. He runs over and tugs at her pants eagerly, “I did it! Did I do good?”

She crouches down and ruffles his hair even though it kills her ribs, because she can’t pick him up with a broken arm. “Yeah baby,” She praises him, mind moving at an hour a minute, “You did good.”

That night she lays in her bed and watches Fievel’s chest rise and fall as he sleeps. He sprawls out like a starfish but sometimes in the night always buries himself into her side like a tick. She’s put a pillow in between them to try and spare her poor ribs, but she has doubts it will work.

Her son can fucking teleport.

That’s when she cries. Because she loves her son, but he’s a handful. She didn’t even notice. She didn’t notice that he son has a superpower. Doesn’t that make her the worst mother in the world?

Crying is a terrible idea. Her ribs are painful enough that she can’t sleep. She needs to ration her pain medication because they really can’t afford it. 

How is she supposed to handle this? How is she supposed to raise a child that can vanish without a second thought? Her bright beautiful boy who loves feeding the ducks and being pushed on the swings and playing unfathomable games with his friend Emma that she can’t even begin to understand the plot of.

(She’s almost certain one of them is supposed to be a cheetah for some reason? Or a lion? There’s a lot of running involved in the game, and hiding.)

It’s a few months later when her arm is healed and her ribs are better and Fievel is turning five when everything comes crashing down. Because she doesn’t get a call from the school. She gets a call from the police.

Apparently Fievel managed to get out of the school far enough away that he got lost. He admits tearfully to her that he’s been getting further and further away when he ‘jumps’ - and it’s not his fault. He tries not to jump. But it happens whether he wants it to or not and if he keeps getting further and further away then -

She thinks of a car and a road and putting her body between death and her son. And she thinks about the fact that when he jumps, she isn’t there.

Look. She’s not stupid. She always knew that her kid wasn’t exactly a normal child.

(Hello. He’s practically a miracle. She wasn’t exactly a virgin but that doesn’t really matter when she was very suddenly nine months pregnant where she hadn’t been before.)

So she reckons that the powers have something to do with that. And who does she know that definitely has a child who was also one of the miracle babies?

(He’d mentioned he’d already acquired like, what, four kids when he came to see her. As though that was supposed to make her want to give up her kid even more.)

So she requests some vacation days (that she can’t afford) and she pulls Fievel out of preschool for a week (it’s preschool it’s not that important) and they fly over to a city where she can hopefully get some answers.

(Fievel spends the whole flight with his face pressed to the window and his plane toy clutched tightly in one hand and his stuffed dog in the other as he enthusiastically makes whooshing noises.)

And she goes up the the big mansion thing and knocks and goes inside where she smiles at Fievel and tells him to go play with the other children while she talks to Mr. Hargreeves, thank you baby.

As she clenches her hands into fists and listens to Sir Reginald Hargreeves condescend to her about her ability as a mother, Fievel enthusiastically bounces over to the kids his age who stare at him like they’ve never seen anything like him before in their life.

(“I’m Fievel!” He introduces himself loudly, “And this is Doggy! My mama is here to speak to your dad.”

“Uh. I’m Six.” A bewildered little girl says back.

Fievel blinks, “Oh! I just turned five.”

The girl giggles, “No! No I mean my name’s Six. but I’m five-years-old as well.”

“That’s a funny name.” Fievel says.

“Nuh uh.” The girl refutes, “Your name is weird. See, ‘cause we’re all numbers ‘n you’re not.”

And he’s introduced to them all. One is tall and awkward looks. Two hides behind the others a little bit. Three has her hands on her hips and she looks at him, but softens when he tells her that he likes her hair. Four is a skinny wisp of a kid, with big wide eyes and no sense of personal space. Five sticks pretty close to Four. And Six, of course, is the one who talked to him first which obviously means that they’re temporary best friends.

Temporary, because of course Emma is his best friend. ‘Cause she’s in his class and they sit near each other and play together with each other first.)

And his mother comes out to Fievel bossing the others around and them going with it, all with bewildered little expressions on their faces. Fievel is balancing on the back of the sofa next to a little girl who is holding Doggy, possibly in the middle of an evil villain speech? The little girl is solemnly petting Doggy like she’s a Bond villain at the very least.

It makes her smile, just a little bit. 

“Fievel, baby, can you come here for a second?” She asks, and her son beams at him and vanishes from his seat over to by her leg where he pulls on her leg so that she’ll sweep him up into her arms. 

(The children gape at him, all wide eyes and staring between them and their father like they’re shocked. And they probably are. Reginald has informed her that none of them can teleport, but they do have a variety of weird powers between them.)

“You know that you’re getting big.” She says, and she tries not to cry, “And you’re not going to be in preschool soon enough.”

“Yeah!” He enthuses, “Gonna learn real stuff!”

And that’s just like her son. Voraciously hungry for knowledge. 

“Well, this is a school for very special people.” She tells him, and watches his eyes go big and round, “People who... can teleport, for example.”

Fievel considers that. And then twists around to look at the other children, “You can teleport?” He demands loudly, like it’s a betrayal of the highest form that they’ve been friends for an hour and this hasn’t been brought up. And maybe it is. She doesn’t claim to understand the intricacies of children’s hierarchy.

“Uh uh!” A little boy exclaims, frowning. “I can just throw stuff real good.”

“I’m strong.” Another little boy offers. And then proceeds to demonstrate this by picking up half the couch and sending the little girl careening onto the floor with a shout, but she gets up and dusts herself off easily enough.

“Okay.” Fievel says brightly, appeased by this somehow as he twists back to his mother expectantly. 

“Okay.” She says, her mouth dry. “Well. This is a special school for special kids. It’s, uh. It’s a boarding school.”

“What’s that?”

“It means you stay here.” She tells him. “I’ll - I’ll come and see you when I can. And you can call me whenever you want. But you have to stay here.”

“Like a sleepover?” Fievel asks, scrunching his face up in confusion.

“A little bit.” Her smile feels weak and forced and she can’t even see it. “Like a lot of sleepovers all in a row. And when you wake up, you don’t need to go anywhere because you live at the school.”

“Uh uh. I live at home.”

“Baby...” She cards her fingers through his hair. “I know it’s scary. I don’t want you to go either - ”

“Then I don’t gotta.” Fievel says, matter of fact as he starts wiggling to get down. She hefts him up in her arms.

“Baby. Fievel. Listen to me.” She says firmly, “I can’t take care of you well enough.”

He looks at her with betrayed eyes.

“It’s not your fault. You can’t control your powers.” She tells him softly, because she loves him and she doesn’t want to give him up but - “I can’t keep you safe, baby. And the teachers can’t keep you safe. But you’ll be safe here.”

“I don’t want to.” Fievel says, loudly. In the tone which says that a tantrum is approaching.

“You’ll learn how to control your powers!” She says in a forced cheery voice.

“I’m going to school with Emma.” Fievel insists in a slightly louder voice.

“You’re already getting along great with the other kids.” She insists.

“NO.” Fievel says, at maximum volume, and then he’s gone from her arms and she’s stumbling because it’s weird to go from holding something to nothing.

“He’ll show up in a bit.” She assures Sir Hargreeves, beyond tired. He’s been watching the whole interaction and she hopes he hasn’t gotten a negative impression of her son. 

If he’s able to handle six other super powered children then surely he can handle hers. No matter what he asks. No matter how difficult it was to sign over the rights to her child. He promised that she can visit Fievel on weekends whenever she wants, for however long her son wants to do so.

He’s going to keep her child safe. He won’t be running out onto streets. He’ll be able to train his powers, be able to control them, and maybe one day - 

(Maybe one day she’ll get her baby back. Safe and sound in her arms and able to control his powers so she doesn’t have to worry at all.)

So she leaves, and she leaves Fievel alone. And no matter how much he screams and cries and begs, no one lets him go back to his mother. He tries to run off, tries to jump away and follow after her - but a blond woman in pristine skirts comes and retrieves him. 

(He tries to jump away, but she keeps coming and finding him until he’s too tired to protest when she carries him back to his new (prison) school in her arms.)

Reginald tries to lock him in his room. He jumps out. Reginald tries to put him in time out. He jumps out. Reginald says he doesn’t get any dinner. Fievel jumps downstairs and raids the cupboards in the night.

It becomes an intense battle of wills between Sir Reginald Hargreeves and little Fievel.

Locks go on the cabinets, Fievel breaks them off by bashing them with one of the bookends he manages to snag. Reginald refuses to let Fievel play with the others. Fievel runs away again and has to be brought back by the blond lady. 

(“You can call me Grace if you’re so against mom.” she had told him demurely, after he yelled himself hoarse telling her that she’s not his mother that he has a mother and that she’s so much better in every way)

Then Reginald takes Doggy away, and Fievel begrudgingly has to fall in line lest he risk his stuffed companion. One of the only links to his real life he has.

(He doesn’t even get to keep his clothes. He has to wear the stiff awful uniform that the other kids wear. It’s the absolute worst. He looks stupid but no one listens to him.)

When his mother comes to visit, Fievel is sullen and still angry with her for abandoning him. He sulks and doesn’t talk to her a lot.

He grows like this. The Umbrella Academy turns six, and then others receive names after Fievel loudly points out that having numbers for names is weird and that no one should ever trust a man who names his kids numbers it’s lazy and stupid.

So One becomes Luther and Two becomes Diego and Three becomes Allison and Four becomes Klaus and Five becomes Ben and Six becomes Vanya.

And Fievel becomes Five.

They all think it’s really funny, that they all get names instead of numbers and Five gets a number instead of a name.

He’s six and Reginald sits him down and tells him in no uncertain terns that his mother essentially sold him. That Reginald controls him. And if Five isn’t a good boy then... well. Bad boys don’t get to visit their mothers.

(Reginald finds a far more... effective way of controlling Five than a stuffed animal.)

(Good boys also don’t talk to their mothers about their training. They smile and act happy and lie because they want to keep seeing her. They don’t tell her about how scary it is, how they desperately want to come home, how maybe their mother could take all the kids because they don’t even have mothers and it isn’t fair.)

So Five grows bigger, gets new uniform, clashes with Reginald as much as he dares, and settles in to life at the academy. He sprawls across Vanya’s floor and tries to remember all the story books he read with his mother.

(There’s only grown up books in the manor that they’re expected to read. And Five likes them, he loves to learn, but - he misses storytime. He misses the wonderful books about adventure and other worlds. He misses when he felt like he was going to go on an adventure because he had powers and was special!

He doesn’t wish he’s special anymore.)

Vanya asks him once why he hangs out with her, because she’s normal. Because she doesn’t have powers.

And Five looks at her and tells her that that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. He spend years surrounded by people without powers. He tells her about his best friend Emma, who definitely didn’t have powers. 

“I wish I had a best friend.” Vanya tells him, face sad and drawn and Five pulls her into the fiercest hug he can.

“You’re not my best friend,” He tells her, and she looks even sadder until he finishes it up with, “You’re my sister.”

“But you have a mother.” She says, sounding confused.

Five shrugs, “Doesn’t matter. Reginald is legally my dad, and he’s legally your dad, and so we share a dad. That makes us siblings.”

“Is a sibling better than a best friend?” Vanya asks after a long moment of silence.

Five doesn’t think so. He misses Emma. He misses his preschool. He misses his life, the life before the Academy. But Vanya looks so sad and pale that he hugs her again and says “Yeah, of course. We’re family.”

The others tolerate him in varied amounts. Luther thinks he’s dumb because he’s always mean to Reginald. Five thinks Luther is dumb, and he’s definitely right. Allison constantly bugs him for information about what she terms “the outside world” and Five has told her about birthday parties at least a dozen times and she still looks wistful and asks him to tell her about them again.

(They turn eight and Five produces a paper crown for his sister because she looked so wistful when he described Emma’s birthday tiara. Allison wears it until Reginald snaps at her to get rid of it, but Five sees her tuck it in the waistband of her skirt rather than throw it away.)

When Reginald snaps at Diego for his stutter, Five snarls and snaps back, getting between the man and his new brother and yelling because he knows that’s not how you help kids! Yelling doesn’t help! His teacher said so! And his mama!

Diego is never particularly thankful for his interference, but Five doesn’t care. 

Five is nine and he jumps into the mausoleum with Klaus and holds his most fragile brother and snarls, threatens to run away. To take Klaus and just go, that they’d go to Five’s mother and she would take them away from Reginald and this place and - 

Klaus always buries himself into Five’s side with his hands over his ears until the morning when Five either jumps away or glares with furious eyes at Reginald even when he’s punished after.

He’s nine when he gets into a screaming match with Diego who says that Five isn’t one of them that he has his mother and if he had the chance he would abandon them in a heartbeat.

Reginald threatens to cut off his mother’s visits if he finds Five interfering with “Number Four’s training” one more time.

Five looks at Klaus, who is his brother. Who is frail and skinny and pale with dark bags underneath his eyes.

Reginald looks satisfied because Five has always backed down before when his mother is threatened. It’s his ultimate trump card.

Five is so very very tired of his mother being used against him. And he loves Klaus. And these kids, they are his siblings. (He tries not to think about the fact that next year he’ll have officially been here just as long as he was with his mother. He hates it.)

Reginald finds Five in the mausoleum with cobwebs in his hair and his brother against his side and a glare on his face and Reginald forbids his next visit with his mother.

Five keeps jumping into the mausoleum. Klaus looks at him with wonder in his eyes and Five pries up the floorboard that hides Doggy (because even after Reginald found a better way to threaten him, he remembers) and cries himself to sleep. 

“You chose us.” Ben states instead of asks, very quietly, when they’re studying together. 

“My mother can look after herself.” Five says stiffly, not taking his eyes off the page. “Klaus can’t.”

Ben doesn’t say anything more, but Five feels eyes on his back for a good long while after that.

When Five is ten, they debut for the first time. They go to the bank, and stop the robbers.

(“We can’t send Ben in,” Five insists, “They’ll die!”

“They’re robbers.” Luther scoffs, crossing his arms.

“Doesn’t matter. They’re still people.” Five insists. “You definitely aren’t supposed to kill people. It’s a law.”

“Shut up, Five.” Diego says grouchily, “We just need to get this over with.”

“Dad’ll be pissed off if we let any of them escape.” Allison says, and the whole group goes quiet as they consider their father’s disappointed fury.

“I’ll go.” Ben mutters reluctantly, and Five tries to meet his eyes but the other boy slips into the vault before he can. The group stands silently as they listen to the screams and watch the blood splatter.

“This is wrong.” Five whispers.

“This is how it is.” Klaus whispers back, sounding defeated.

They don’t talk about it, after.)

Five smiles for the camera and lets Klaus lean on his shoulder and steals a thing of tissues from a reporter’s purse and uses them to wipe more of the blood from Ben’s face with a tight smile and the world goes on.

(He doesn’t know his mother watched. Doesn’t know the fury she flew into. Her son was supposed to be safe - he was supposed to be at a school. Why the fuck was he stopping a bank robbery like some kind of little child soldier?

She becomes a problem. And Reginald can be awfully practical about problems.)

Five is ten-and-a-half and he hasn’t seen his mother in a year and a half. And he’s tired and he’s rebellious so one day he sneaks out and finds a pay phone and the only reason he remembers his number is because his mother made him memorize it and quizzed him frequently.

(He’d gotten lost so often from wandering away and accidentally jumping. His rules were to approach either women with children or people who worked wherever and ask them to call her.)

Except the call can’t connect. Disconnected number. 

Five frowns, and end up doing some research which involves massive lies to the library, and then he has a picture of a newspaper obituary in his hands and a hole in his heart.

Car accident, the paper says.

Five crumbles it up, and then smoothes it out again because there’s a picture of his mother next to the article and Five doesn’t have any pictures of his mother. So he hides it under the floorboards next to Doggy and cries himself to sleep and then he gets up and does his training and doesn’t talk about it.

He doesn’t tell his siblings. Not even when Luther blows up and calls him a stuck up brat who can go cry to his mommy if he think it’s so bad here. Not even when Klaus jokes about running away with a cracking voice in the mausoleum, not really jokes at all. Not even when Vanya asked him for another of his mother’s stories and he started crying in the middle of them. He’d just told her it had been a hard day of training.

(Vanya never asks him questions if he mentions training. He feels bad about lying to her and using it as an excuse but...)

He waits for Reginald to tell him. He waits, because surely someone would tell him that his mother is dead. He’s her son. 

Reginald never tells him. He tells Five that he’s bad and still hasn’t earned back his visiting privileges. Five hates him so much. So so much. 

Five is twelve-years-old and he is sprawled across Vanya’s bed after a particularly brutal day of training. Reginald has been trying to overtrain Five the day before he puts Klaus in the mausoleum overnight so that Five will be too tired to jump in. It doesn’t work, but it’s an exhausting enough punishment. 

“I wish I didn’t have powers.” He tells Vanya.

“No you don’t.” Vanya says back fiercely, fists clenching in her blankets, “Not having powers sucks.”

Five tilts his head and looks at her, “No.” He says gently, “No one knew I had powers. And I was loved. I was so loved, Vanya.”

“Stop it.” Vanya says, face tight. “If you were so loved, why did she leave you here?”

And Five opens his mouth and nothing comes out, because it hurts. 

“You don’t wish you had powers, Vanya.” Five tells her finally, and there are tears in his eyes but he’s looking at the ceiling not at her so it doesn’t matter. “You wish you had a family. A proper family. Not this - this stupid academy. I hate it. I hate it here.”

“Don’t call it stupid.” Vanya says, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you have a family and we just - we just have the academy, okay? So don’t call it stupid.”

“We deserve better. We deserve a childhood.”

“We have a childhood.” Vanya scowls, “Just because it’s not as nice as yours was or whatever - ”

“This is my childhood, Vanya.” Five snarls, propping himself up to face her, “I know you all think I’m so spoiled and - and I’m not one of you or whatever, but I came here when I was five. My memories of before - Vanya they’re fading. I couldn’t pick Emma out of a crowd if I tried. I’ve been here for years longer than I was ever there, and it’s not fair.”

“You still have a mother - ”

“No I don’t.” Five cuts her off, his voice ice. Vanya’s eyes are wide, startled by his tone. “Vanya, look around you. When was the last time I saw my mother?”

Vanya’s lip wobbles as she realized she can’t remember.

“It’s been three years.” Five tells her, eyes hard and cold and angry, “She’s gone. I made a choice, and I chose you. I chose the academy. Because despite everything, I love you guys. You’re my siblings, even if sometimes you don’t act like it.”

“Five - ” Vanya tries.

“No.” Five cuts her off, hopping off the bed and shaking his head, “I’m going to - I’m going to go to my room. You get some more practice in or something. I think Pogo picked out this piece and you know what he’s like.”

He doesn’t let her get a word in before he jumps up to his room.

Five is twelve when he stands in front of Reginald and says “I’m not using my powers anymore.”

“You have an assignment.” Reginald says severely.

“No.” Five refuses politely, and his family watches with wide eyes from the sidelines. The only family he has left. “I’ve got control now. I’ve decided I’m going to be normal now.”

Reginald locks Klaus is the mausoleum early and watches with unimpressed eyes as Five picks the lock and strolls in. 

Reginald handcuffs Five to a rail. Five plucks a paperclip from his sock and picks those as well.

Reginald locks Five in a room from the outside and tells him that he’ll get dinner when he jumps out. 

Five opens the window and shimmies down the drainpipe and has to be picked up at Griddy’s where he’s charmed the owner out of a free doughnut and hot chocolate with a sob story about school bullies to explain his grubby appearance (the shimmy down the drainpipe hadn’t exactly been graceful. or clean.)

He locks Five in the basement in a weird room that’s soundproofed. Five tries to hunger strike but - it’s so quiet. He can hear the sound of his own heartbeat. He can’t stand it. It’s like the room was made specifically to torture him.

(He looks at the little bed in the room. The sheets were dusty. This room has been around for a very long time. He wonders who it’s for, Allison, perhaps? She’s always been fairly obedient, maybe this is the reason why.)

He jumps out on the second day, and doesn’t talk to anybody. Reginald is smug like the cat the got the canary, and Five hates it.

Then Five is messing around, and something slots into place, and he realizes - oh, he might be able to time travel. 

Once he figures it out, he’s desperate. He’ll save his siblings that way. He’ll take the to a time where Reginald can’t get them. They’ll be out of reach.

(maybe - maybe they can travel back in time. maybe he can save his mother -)

Five is thirteen-years-old when he time travels for the first time. When he runs out of the house like he’s done so very many times before, except he’s angry and frustrated and he’d tried to bait Reginald into telling him his mother’s dead again and he hadn’t and - 

Five jumps. It’s snowing. He did it. He jumps again, laughing. He jumps again - 

Ash.

He tries to jump, but his power fizzles out. He calls for his siblings. No one answers. He finds the academy - rubble.

So Five lives in the apocalypse. He tries to go home, he does. He buries his siblings as well as he can. He wanders around gathering food and textbooks. He picks up a mannequin and names it Dolores.

(He searches the rubble of the academy, but he can’t find Doggy or the picture of his mother. Either they were found and removed years ago, or they’re buried beneath too much rubble. Five doesn’t know.)

 He takes Dolores on a road trip. He tells her it’s to see if they can find any people, any survivors.

he arrives in a graveyard and traces his mother’s name with trembling fingers. this is the first time he’s been to visit her grave. this is the first time he’s seen her in four years.

So he survives. He grows up, desperately clinging to life by his fingernails. He does complex calculations, wondering what his mother would think of him now.

He meets the Handler. He becomes an assassin.

(he’s glad his mother is dead, so that she will never see what he has become.)

And then one day, he gets home. He falls into the courtyard, and looks at the faces of his grown up siblings and - 

(he’s so tired of losing people. he’s so tired of being taken away from his family.)

He hops to Griddy’s, he gets into a fight with assassins, he cuts a tracker from his arm, and he goes to Vanya’s apartment.

And he’s Five, but he’s also Fievel. And somewhere inside he’s still that same kid who loved his mother and wanted her to fix thing, who trusted her even though she didn’t have powers. His mother wasn’t ordinary, and he’s never seen Vanya as such.

So he asks her for her help.

(Later, she tells him that they hunted down his mother when they were fifteen, because they’d been absolutely convinced he’d just run away and gone back to herno matter how much Reginald insisted he was dead.

That’s when they found out about her death. Her date of death.

“I’m so sorry, Five.” Vanya says, tears in her eyes as the whole family shuffles and looks away.

And Five puts his hand on Vanya’s. “I knew, Van.”

Her head snaps up. Klaus blurts out a what in the background.

Five shrugs, “I’ve known since we were ten. It’s okay.”)

Five sends Vanya to investigate the eye. 

(He asks Klaus - “Have you - ”

“No.” Klaus says instantly, shaking his head. He knows what Five is asking. 

Five considers that answer, then shrugs. He’s not sure if it would be better or worse for his mother to be one of the ghosts that tormented Klaus. “After I - after, did dad get worse?”

“Yeah.” Klaus says simply, because it’s true.

Five hadn’t been there to jump into the mausoleum and try and shield his brother from invisible enemies. 

“I’m sorry.” Five says quietly.

“Me too.”)

Vanya comes back and the eye hasn’t been made yet. Five swears, loudly and at length.

And maybe in another world Five snaps at Klaus and denies Vanya and goes off on his own and ignores Allison but - 

In this one, Five was the only kid who not only didn’t care that Vanya was ‘ordinary’ but actively challenged her on it. Who told her in no uncertain terms that he was jealous of her. 

(It’s a very different book that comes out.)

In this world, Five shielded Klaus and challenged Reginald. He jumped into the mausoleum and hugged his brother and, most importantly, he chose Klaus over his mother. And Klaus knows that. Klaus has... a lot of loyalty to Five, and even though he’d though for a long time that Five abandoned him... he knows better now and he feels - he feels guilty for doubting his brother. That guilt may or may not manifest in being a bit clingy.

In this world, Allison thought Five was fascinating because he’d been in the real world. He’d been to real school. She remembers him telling her about his mother, about trips to the zoo and the museums and the birthday parties, about sleepovers and playdates and parks.

(She has a daughter, and she takes Claire to the children’s museums and to zoos. She tries her best for her daughter and hears Five’s voice telling stories in her ears. She does her best to be a good mother, she tries so hard.)

It’s a slightly more united family that stands against the apocalypse.

But there’s always something with them, isn’t there?

“Don’t you know?” The Handler says, with her perfect lipstick smile, “I don’t have to win, I just have to take you out of the game. Your weak spot has always been the same, hasn’t it?”

“You don’t have shit.” Five says, unimpressed. “My family is fine.”

“Are you so sure about that, Fievel?”

(Five already chose his siblings over his mother the first time. The choice is... much more difficult the second time.)

[angeltrapz]

ok saw asks!!! bcuz i have Amanda on th brain rn i wd like ur take on her interacting w Lawrence? personally idk how much she knew of his involvement bc she implies in 3 tht Lynn was entirely John's choice, but i also think th idea of her Knowing + deliberately not telling Hoffman is extremely funny. Hoffman cant come 2 th weekly disciple meeting bcuz hes got Cop Business so he misses Lawrence's introduction + Amanda is just like "sure John of course ill tell Mark that we got a new friend :)" and just never does. LOVE that thought

dhgsdkj thank u!!

it Is extremely funny 2 think that she just. knows but refuses to tell Hoffman + THAT'S why Hoffman doesn't know who Lawrence is until he jabs him w the needle + takes off the pig mask lmao omg. just like "oh yeah of course I'll tell Mark we have a new teammate don't worry abt it!" and she Never Does dkjkdsg??

okay but 2 Seriously answer yr question. when I think abt it I always think that like. it wld b pretty hard fr John 2 keep them frm each other given how integral Lawrence's participation is in every game from SAW II onward? 'cause like we know Amanda helps w the kidnapping process + placing them in their traps, which one CLD argue would only mean she wld see them after Lawrence would do his thing but. I feel like she'd be vaguely aware? bc she wld also then have 2 know that he survived his game, given that she helped set it up - we know that she'd AT LEAST know his name.

to elaborate on th idea that only HOFFMAN doesn't know (both bc it's fucking hilarious + actually how I view things happening jdkhfksd), I feel like Amanda + Lawrence's interactions wld be rather limited. in canon, Lawrence becomes a disciple after John "rehabilitates" him or whtever he wants 2 call it, but I feel he'd have to be aware of Amanda, too - both that she is also a disciple + SHE'S th one who helped get him in the bathroom in th first place. as grateful as Lawrence seems to feel toward John + as much as he believes in John's "work," I feel like that wld be smth he'd have to work thru: working side by side w someone who had a direct hand in basically destroying yr life as u knew it. n I feel like Amanda wld know that, n as such she'd want to keep her distance bc she can't predict how this man will act/what he will do, even if he is technically on her side. so like. things wld def be tense btwn them until Lawrence has had some time 2 process his new life + what tht means for him, and until the two of them can have some sort of talk/acknowledgement of that.

though I will say that their roles kind of imply they'd at least see a good bit of each other. Amanda scouts, in a way, helps subdue & bring ppl in, which wld then be brought to Lawrence fr any medical procedures they feel r needed (such as sewing th key behind Michael's eye in II) so it'd definitely be like a "hey did u bring some1?" sort of thing. Mark is muscle of course so like I know he def helped on tht end (I believe Amanda is th one who caught Lawrence in the parking garage but like it wld be SO much funnier if Hoffman was the one crawling around) but IDK if he rly Saw Lawrence bc. Cop Business. so he'd just kinda b like "here u go" n bring ppl to Amanda n then peace out 'cause he's gotta keep tht reputation of Respected Detective. we know he also might've messed w traps themselves as well (like The Rack in III), which wld definitely keep him separate from Lawrence bc Lawrence had No Involvement in designing/setting up traps. tht was strictly a John/Hoffman/Amanda endeavour.

as fr how they'd feel abt each other? it's really dependent on how u view thm as characters. Lawrence, after he becomes a disciple, believes that what John is doing is truly helpful and truly has the capability to change lives; he devotes himself 2 it, shows countless times tht he has complete faith in John + his methods, so much so that John left a tape fr him telling him to look after Jill + to act on his behalf if smth were to happen to her. he calls Lawrence his greatest asset. his trust in John + the Jigsaw legacy is unwavering.

Amanda, however, has been shown several times to act directly against John's beliefs, such as constructing inescapable traps (Kerry) or rigging others' games (Adam). th breakdown she has in III I think showcases the disconnect between her love fr John as a mentor/father figure, and the realization that not only is John entirely hypocritical and doesn't stay true to his own beliefs half th time, he truly has shown no regard fr her safety + has only been using her to further the agenda that was built upon a fragile foundation 2 begin with. u've mentioned this b4 too but John always liked 2 say that if u can anticipate the human mind, then nothing is up 2 chance - which wld mean that he KNEW Xavier might throw Amanda into the Needle Pit to get out of it. he KNEW Daniel was just a fucking kid and was perfectly fine w putting him in very real danger to get back at some1 he felt like needling fr the express purpose of provocation and nothing else. he KNEW Laura, a woman she'd formed a bond w and pretty much swore to protect th minute she woke up and saw her crying in the corner, could begin to seize n choke on her own vomit and die in that house. he knew all of those things, ENCOURAGED the belief that smth was wrong w her because she wasn't "fixed" as he had claimed, and it's so unfortunate that she doesn't realize that sooner (I fully agree that she deserved to lose her shit completely on John. it's what he deserved! it's what SHE deserved!!!) but she still Does before she dies (which, again, I Don't think should've happened. she didn't deserve 2 go out like tht + she deserved so much more of her story being told).

so there's the conflict of beliefs between thm. I think Amanda definitely starts out like Lawrence does, completely devoted + believing every word John says, but thru II we can see that certainty begin to falter n her faith in John is completely shaken by the end. I don't think Lawrence wld Know she felt tht way until after she died, if he ever finds out at all, bc I doubt that's smth she'd want to express. it's not even smth she discusses w John himself until III, in which she's already made up her mind to shoot Lynn as a final act of misguided disobedience. I still think tht Lawrence wld feel fr her in some way, though, bc even b4 he became a disciple he was rather horrified when Sing + Tapp had him sit thru her testimony; his feelings would change on this a lil, bc he'd see it as her rebirth (as she once did too), but I still feel like he'd want 2 like. watch over her a little. not super directly, + not because he felt threatened by her presence or anything like that, but because they're in this together n I'm sure John's told him abt some of the circumstances regarding how she came to be a disciple after her game as well. I feel like he wld definitely be saddened by her passing, bc I feel he'd come 2 respect her at least a bit, but fr him it's like. they have 2 keep moving. John is gone now too, smth I'm sure was probably a pretty huge blow fr Lawrence, and now he has to put his energy into making sure Hoffman stays unaware of him. just in case he has to act on that warning John gave him abt Jill. but he wld still miss Amanda n wld mourn her, to be sure.

I don't think they'd be close or anything like tht. kind of just friendly coworkers who only see each other every once in a while, passing thru the doors of each other's lives with a nod and a wave and maybe a greeting if they're feeling up 2 it. they're not too involved. Amanda can't tell u tht Lawrence's favourite flowers are sunflowers. Lawrence can't tell u tht Amanda's favourite smell is lavender or tht her favourite colour is a deep, almost greyish purple. but they're connected thru John, thru their work, n that still means smth to both of them, at least in some manner. when Amanda dies, Lawrence grieves. Jill pays for her headstone n Lawrence makes sure to bring fresh flowers every once in a while, but he has to hold his head up n keep walking. now tht John's gone, there's work to be done.

and someone's gotta keep an eye on Hoffman.

[monkeebratz]

Dad Eddie Brock Miraculous Ladybug AU - Initial Idea

OKAY SO THAT WAS A WILD FUCKING RIDE HOOOO BOY SO  LETS GET INTO THIS EVEN WILDER RIDE OF DAD EDDIE BROCK

SO. At the very start of the Eddie Brock Report. Show? Whatever its called. Eddie goes to Paris to report on a corrupt SOMEONE. I’m going to say somebody in the medical industry since that seems to be a theme here. And, of course, Eddie manages to fuck up and ends up loosing his tickets, papers, phone, and what have you. And is left stranded on the streets of Paris. 

Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng, newly married bakery owners, find this American stumbling around, clearly struggling, and invite him in. Because, honestly, its the good thing to do. And Tom’s a fucking GIANT of a man, even if Eddie DID try something, he wouldn’t get very far. Now, Sabine doesn’t speak English, but Tom speaks it a little, on behalf on Gina. So there’s a lot of miming and broken English and the handful of words Eddie picked up wondering around Paris. 

... I’m not entirely sure how, but, they strike up a friendship while Eddie is there. And when he goes back to San Francisco, he and the Dupain-Cheng’s stay in touch. Eddie works on his French and Tom and Sabine work on their English. This friendship grows into a long distance relationship. Which, once the Brock Show picks up, grows into an actual relationship! Now, I’m going to keep this purposely vague as to who is actually Marinette’s father bc honestly? It doesn’t REALLY matter. And by that I mean, it matters less if Eddie or Tom is Marinette’s biological dad, both are her fathers. So, feel free to pick and choose who is biologically her dad, but for this au, it doesn’t really matter! 

Anyway. When the Dupain-Cheng’s hear that they’re expecting, they tell Eddie, who is ecstatic! They’re having a baby! Yes!! Eddie, of course, knows that this kid is probably not his, but they will be in spirit. Annie, of course, knows about Tom and Sabine, and vice versa. Everyone’s very happy with the current situation. 

A few years pass, with frequent visits to Tom, Sabine, and baby Mari. Tom is Mari’s Papa, and Eddie is her Daddy. Later upgraded to ‘dad.’ 

And, when Mari’s about 8? Lets say 8. The events of Venom happen. And since this all obviously happens over the course of, lets say, a year, a lot goes down. Tom and Sabine hear about what happens with Eddie losing his job bc of that interview, and then they have trouble getting into contact with Eddie. He’s depressed and struggling and he doesn’t want his partners to see him like this. Doesn’t want his daughter to see him like this. 

But then VENOM happens and shit all goes. Like it does. 

Venom obviously has access to Eddie’s memories and he gets a call from Tom and Sabine and starts thinking about them and its its just. Eddie? Eddie you have offspring? Why are they not here? Eddie let us to go them and your mates. Eddie lets go. 

And Eddie, of course, is like IF, and that’s a BIG FUCKING IF, we go to Paris, there’s none of. THIS. none of that. (There is of course, lots of THAT) 

They go to Paris, and Mari is about 9-10 now and she’s so excited to see her Daddy! Tom and Sabine were just so worried its just big bear hugs. Also Tom is about the size of fully out Venom. Its hilarious. 

Venom, also, loves the idea of such a tiny child. So little. Very delicate. Much love. Pokes his head out and Mari is just. Screams. But not the bad scream, the excited child scream that comes with seeing something they love but nobody can tell the difference. So there’s panic. But then Mari has her hands full of squishy Sybiote face shouting “SLIPPERY PUPPY!” ANd all the adults are screaming.

There is, of course, and explanation of what happened and who Venom is and what’s been going on. So Mari gains ANOTHER dad, who is very eager to sit with her and have fake tea parties and have deep, kinda concerning children conversations about right and wrong and which is the best flavor of chocolate. (Venom likes dark chocolate and Mari loves milk chocolate and they will forever argue over which is better. Eddie stays out of it.) 

Now, when asked, Mari says she has three dads and one mom. That two of her dads are married and live in San Francisco and she lives her her Papa and Mama here in Paris. Nobody is ever really sure how to take that, but just kinda accept it? Mari’s whole class is weird. Though, considering how shy and isolated it seemed Mari was during her school years BEFORE the events of Miraculous Ladybug, I assume only a handful of people actually know this. 

(Also Gina gets along swimmingly with Eddie and they occasionally do reports together. And ride their motorcycles together. And drink and talk about how disappointing it was to miss so many moments of Marinette growing up.) 

Anyways, Marinette becomes Ladybug, yada yada. Except this time, there’s no secret identities. Not in the family, at least. Eddie and Venom are hero’s (or at the very least anti-heros or whatever you want to call it) and now all four of her parents are aware that she’s a superhero. 

Actually, scratch that. Marinette doesn’t become Ladybug. She becomes Lady Noire. Bc seriously this girl was clumsy as all fuck and being incredibly unlucky is like. Her THING. And also you have Venom and Plagg shenanigans. Father and daughter can bond over having these dumbass’ constantly all in their space. 

Eddie and Venom may or may not threaten Plagg that there will be NO dating. Mari is a baby and specifically THEIR baby. None of that. Plagg screeches bc SHE’S PRACTICALLY AN INFANT. A FETUS. ALSO ROMANCE IS GROSS AND HE IS MARRIED TO HIS LOVELY SUGAR CUBE NOT THIS TINY KITTEN. HE’S LIKE, THE YODA TO HER SKYWALKER. GROSS. WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. CHEESE AND HIS SUGAR CUBE ARE BETTER THAN ROMANCE. 

Tom and Sabine ask that Eddie and Venom stay with them, now that Mari’s a superhero and obviously needs their help. 

So then you have Venom and Eddie (as its full on Venom training the fledgling hero’s) kicking Lady Noire and Mister Bug into shape. And shutting down this flirting bc Mari is clearly not having it. There shall be respect in this relationship! 

(Venom; Can we eat Hawkmoth?

Eddie: ... Maybe.) 

And this is. Honesty all I got so far. Here you go. 

OH NO, wait, there’s also Mari have Eddie’s sense of humor and they’re both incredibly kind so take THAT.

And the ring/bracelets Eddie wears during the movie are from the Dupain-Cheng’s. The ring was Tom’s, the beaded bracelet is from Sabine, and the braided(?) bracelet is one that Mari made him. 

and now i’m done. 

I have no idea if i’ll continue this BUT here’s the tag list. If you’d like to be added, send me an ask for next time. IF there’s a next time. Or if you have questions, drop those too, I’ll see if I’ve got anything. 

@zalladane @sassydepression @virgil-is-a-cutie

[guardiandae]

Meta/Commentary Part 1: A Little ‘XO’ Wouldn’t Go Amiss

(Spoilers below)

Wade finally learned his roomie's real name on day two, when the proposed nickname of 'Priscilla' was rejected via stabbing.

"Y'know- I usually know a guy's name before I let him penetrate me," Wade joked, gritting through the pain.

"My name is Nathan Summers. You can call me Nate. Or you can shut your whore mouth."

I’m gonna say this right now so when I finally finish the sequel of this fic, nobody can cry foul or anything or pretend that I didn’t plan everything all along from the very start of this journey: There’s a reason why Nate stabbed Wade and it’s not just to be an edgelord. This fic starts written in Wade’s POV and then switches to Nate’s, and there is so much more info revealed from Nate’s perspective that changes how interactions are colored. In the sequel, it’s not written in that style but eventually you will understand Nate’s POV and be able to look back on this (and other moments) and be like, Ah. I spent a few months just agonizing over this fic planning. The levels of depth going on here, you don’t know.

Also it’s hilarious because, the movie never really establishes Cable’s real name so hi, it’s Nathan Summers. Scott Summers’ (Cyclops)’s son, but like... older than him because future and time traveling hijinks or whatever. This is only important because like, daddy issues.

-

technically they were even sleeping together, even if Nate slept in the only bedroom because he'd called dibs and Wade slept on the couch in a pile of fast food wrappers.

Denial.

Living with Nate was weird after living with Vanessa for so long. No more kisses -- not like he wanted any.

Denial!

-

Usually when Wade got home, Nate was never there.  Hours later when Nate did come back, he'd just go to bed. Other times, Wade was hired for jobs that took days of travel to complete. There was little interaction between them and they barely saw each other, so Wade took to leaving little notes behind.

[Went to get milk. And also to put a cap in someone's ass. He's a bad guy though, so don't worry. I'll be home late. xoxo] [Forgot the milk. Also didn't cap the guy so I didn't get paid. Can you pick some up while you're out? xoxo]

So much info in one little spot. Nate only sees them as roommates, as a living arrangement and tenuous partnership to serve as an end to both of their needs. Nate has a place to live, and his only responsibility, as we learn in his POV, is to pay the rent on Wade’s behalf, with Wade’s money, because Wade is a disaster and his memory is getting worse. Not only is Wade just an annoying person who can’t take anything seriously, in his incorrect opinion, but there’s that level of guilt for feeling like a freeloader when Nate is the kind of person who’s had to fight just to survive his entire life. Wade’s little notes are so sweet, but to Nate, 1. weird 2. is this a joke? 3. stop reminding me of how much you care and meanwhile i can barely bring myself to write a note back, aaaaaa

I need to remember to revive the note-leaving between them in the sequel. It’s too cute, I can’t stand it.

-

Mercenary jobs had become harder to come by, and then work dried up. It was almost like nobody wanted to pay a guy to kill people anymore. As if there could ever be a shortage of people in the world who needed to die. But when one door closes, another opens -- everywhere he went, he suddenly saw slews of missing persons flyers. Wade had never noticed how many there were before, but he took it as a sign. He'd always wanted to try his hand at being a P.I. and Wade hadn't realized that the market was booming with families desperate to find loved ones. He offered his services as a private dick to several different people, but every single case was unsolvable. It was like they'd just vanished into thin air, but he knew that wasn't possible. It was frustrating to realize he was such a lousy dick.

Spoilers, but this is when the Thanos snap happens, and Wade is completely oblivious. Could someone who can be so devastatingly observant really be so obtuse? Or is his mind just protecting itself from such an incomprehensible reality that everyone else is suddenly saddled with? These are things Nate wonders later as well. Even I don’t know for sure. (I haven’t watched End Game and there’s still more plotline to tackle during the Snap, don’t @ me about how Marvel did it, I don’t know and I don’t care, I have my own plans)  (By the way, characters will either be snapped or inexplicably alive, and that’s not a plot hole, that’s the joke. Welcome to Marvel, the writers never fucking make sense and I don’t have to either, YEET)

[Someone tried to sell a metal arm on the black market????!! It better be Bucky's and not yours. Not like I care.] [It was Bucky's.]

Rip Buckkyyyyyy lmaooo

But also, cryyyy because Nate is busy trying to help deal with absolute fucking chaos and he didn’t really stop to consider whether Wade would be wondering what happened to him. Ow. Yeah, I think Wade definitely subconsciously registered what happened and is in total denial of reality. It’s better that way. Nobody fucking tell him.

-

There was nothing that he hated more than being ignored. Might as well just talk to himself. Which he did a lot of lately.

Foreshadowing.

-

All of the warmth left his body at once, leaving him a little breathless and dizzy. He was vaguely aware of Nate looking at him, but it was less of a 'you're home' and more of a ' why are you here?'

This whole area of the fic hurts so good because I’m gay and I love drama.

Wade coming home, literally bleeding to death on the inside and in shock because, once again, everything went to shit for him, story of his life. And he sees Nate just there, dressed down, relaxed, and has this little flash of domestic happiness because he so desperately wishes that the domestic happiness was real and that Nate actually was waiting for him and happy to see him come home, and the hard snap back to reality where Nate doesn’t even like him is soooo fucking painful lol end me. And on top of that, he misread Nate’s concern as hate/disgust for him bc that’s what he’s used to, and then he passes out on the floor and wakes up with Nate over him because I’m gay and I love drama!!!!

-

"Wade, you died for a second," Nate told him. Wade couldn't quite tell if Nate was concerned for him or just annoyed. "I had to pull a piece of metal pipe from your chest. Can you tell me what happened?"

"I got a… pipe in my chest," Wade said, pausing for breath. His lungs felt wet and heavy. He should've left the pipe in.

"Very illuminating," Nate deadpanned, letting go. "Anything else I should know?"

This moment where Nate is so very fucking concerned for Wade, but then Wade cracks a weak joke, because that’s how he copes, and Nate is like, wow, fuck it, so much for being worried about you.

[[SCREAMS IN GAY.]]

-

These thoughts didn't feel like his own, even though they had his voice. His mind was always scattered, full of thoughts that flowed nonstop like a babbling brook. Sometimes it took a lot of conscious effort to reign himself in and make sense of his own head. But these just popped out of nowhere, in bold print, in boxes that were separate from everything else.

"Am I going nuts?" he wondered aloud, whispering to himself, because honestly, he was a little afraid of his own head right now.

(A little late to be asking that.)

And this is when the ‘boxes’ manifest for Wade. But in this fic, the voices that manifest in his head are his own intrusive, negative thoughts. The depression, the loneliness, the self-hatred, the belief and fear that Nate hates him too.

-

I’m gonna recap vs a full copy and paste because the next bit is long:

-Wade is coughing up blood clots from his lungs in the morning, or trying to. -Nate is disgusted but also sympathetic and offers to help Wade out. -A really layered conversation occurs.

“Maybe if I drown myself in the bathtub, the blood clots will rinse out. What d'you think?"

Wade’s exhausted. Joking, but also dead serious. Nate is concerned about Wade making such a dark joke, but he also can tell that Wade really is struggling.

“I’ll help you.”

“Really?” Wade is relieved Nate wants to help him, at first, but then remembers he just said he wanted to drown himself in a bathtub, and becomes disheartened again because he remembers Nate doesn’t like him. “Oh. Yeah.”

From Wade’s point of view: Nate just offered to help Wade kill himself, because of course someone would get a kick out of drowning him, he’s annoying, yadda yadda.

From Nate’s point of view: Wade isn’t okay and he offered to help him with his problem, because he sounds desperate and Nate doesn’t think that jokes will help Wade with his mental state, nor will the drowning actually do anything to solve the problem (the blood clots festering in his lungs).

"I bet you'd love to hold me down and watch me struggle," he said, still thinking about the drowning idea. Then, in a flirtatious tone, "I'll make it good for you, baby. Just promise me we'll do it face to face."

From Wade’s POV: He’s making a joke about Nate drowning him, but also making a sex joke to make it funny, to mock Nate if he really does want to drown Wade, so maybe he wouldn’t do it, or maybe it’d be weird and interesting.

From Nate’s POV: Wade is flirting with him, and his humor and still really dark and Nate really shouldn’t laugh at it or encourage that kind of thing.

From Wade’s POV, seeing Nate trying not smile: ah holy fuck he really wants to drown me.

"I don't want to watch you struggle," Nate said. If he did, he'd just leave Wade alone to keep coughing up blood.

"Ah. Consensual," Wade nodded. "Okay, well, I'd be open to some over-the-clothes stuff, and whatever happens while I'm still dead doesn't count."

Nate couldn't help but laugh. "I don't think we're having the same conversation."

Wade is continuing the joke, because from his POV he’s like, whelp, this might as well be what happens.

But they really aren’t having the same conversation. There’s more like, four different conversations happening at once. Wade’s very sincere idea of drowning himself as a solution to his problems, and Wade joking about Nate drowning him as a sexual innuendo.  Nate interpreting Wade’s dark humor as a shitty attempt at flirting that he neither wants to encourage nor outright shoot down, and Nate offering to give Wade a better solution to fix his actual problem.

And Nate’s solution is to use his telekinesis to just... remove all the shit from Wade’s lungs. But he didn’t communicate that idea with Wade before just doing it, even if he did ask permission, so that’s pretty shitty and hence why we had to add the ‘Nonconsensual Telekinetic Heimlich Maneuver’ tag. smh

"That was dubious at best and now we have to add a warning in the tags," Wade sighed. "Non-consensual telekinetic Heimlich maneuver…. This is problematic now. People aren't gonna click on this."

-

This is a good spot to stop for now and continue in another post.

[juliivn-blog]

[ bill skarsgård, cismale, he/him, 29 ] BRAIN STEW by GREEN DAY? whenever i hear that song, it reminds me of JULIAN NILSSON. maybe because they’re SELF-RELIANT but also CAVALIER. they’ve been living at mulberry apartments since SEPTEMBER of 2018 in APARTMENT 203 and have 1 ROOMMATE. [ lainie, she/her, 21+, cst ]

hello bitches it me ( lainie ) back at it again !! this time bringing u the anti adrian and pls be wary bc there are a lot of sensitive topics down below ( tws for major drug use, drug addiction, death, grief, shitty parenting, neglect, abandonment?? kind of idk better safe than sorry ) also u can find a tl;dr at the bottom since it’s literally SO LONG

BACKGROUND

so bear with me bc his background info is kind of Long!! his mom and dad are from just outside of st louis, missouri. his mom came from a pretty wealthy family and she was just like tryna be ~rebellious in her young adult years by dating julian’s dad (who came from a super trashy family and had a Bad Boy Rep). when she was 19 and he was 22 she got pregnant ( with julian ) and her fam was like get rid of that baby or ur gone !! but they were “““madly in love””” and she was on her rebellious shit so they literally eloped to the city ( st louis ) and got an apartment together and had julian but never actually got married bc they were too cool ( read: irresponsible ) for that. ofc this ended up being rly miserable bc she was used to living the rich life and now her family had disowned her, and suddenly she was starting to realize this dude she had a kid with was kind of a deadbeat party boy with no interest in having a family, not to mention she started realizing like?? i don’t actually want a kid this is a lot of work?? so like julian’s childhood years were a lot of him having to learn to take care of himself and not having anyone to depend on most of the time. and that’s not to say they didn’t both care abt him on some level bc there were definitely times they paid attention to him and gave him a birthday party or two but for the most part he was on his own

his secret favorite memory is flying a kite with his dad when he was 4 but u would be more likely to win the lottery than get him talking abt that

fast forward 5 years and finally julian’s dad, now in his late 20s and getting antsy, peaces the fuck out to los angeles to live his best party boy life. baby julian is very upset bc even tho his dad doesnt pay a lot of attention to him he like idolizes him. julian’s mom is saltier than EVER about having to take care of a kid but she doesn’t wanna go to LA ( especially for this asshole she doesn’t even like anymore ) and her parents won’t have anything to do with her or her illegitimate child so the NEXT 5 years are a lot of moving around from shitty apartment to shitty apartment and job to job by themselves. his dad would now and then send weird postcards and letters and pictures and stuff from cali so he had like a vague idea of the fact that his dad was living his own life somewhere that looked super wild, and when he was 11 years old he sent a letter back asking if he could come live with him. his dad contacts his mom, there’s a bunch of fighting, but in the end julian did indeed get to go live with his dad in los angeles, mostly bc his mom just didn’t give a fuck anymore and was lowkey like…u know what fine take him i can have my life back

obviously his dad does not know how to be a dad !!! he kind of thought of julian as his little like…..sidekick like he just thought having this 11 year old kid around was hilarious. so julian went to LA and was living with his dad and his dad’s friends in a relatively nice apartment but like it’s always filled with people doing drugs and having sex and it’s just. not child friendly at all. so that’s how julian was introduced to weed at the ripe young age of 11!!! from there on out he was like a big time weed and cigarette smoker, was very early having sex and trying other drugs, and by the time he graduated high school he was already hardcore doing coke

so julian like kind of wanted to go to college bc some part of him did crave normalcy, but he was way too far up his own ass to get his shit together for that !! plus like….he didn’t rly have good role models. so his first year after high school instead of getting on a good path for his future he decided living his best life would include moving into an apartment with his cokehead best friend. it was around that time that julian met his first boyfriend. he was already totally aware he was bi, had slept with boys in high school, but this was the first time he rly fell in love with a guy. he was like……….head! over! heels! for this boy. julian met him at a club and he was like sort of soft and relatively innocent until they started dating and julian got him smoking weed and then snorting coke

this next part is very triggering so please read with caution !! when he was 23, julian tried heroin for the first time. for about 6 months it gradually got really bad, his life started spiraling, and his bf was like….becoming unable to deal with it, especially bc while julian was getting worse his bf was kind of trying to move in the opposite direction and get off the coke and get his life back together. there was a lot of fighting, but his bf kept not actually making the move to end things bc he loved julian and was just like hoping something would turn around. one night, however, in a moment of weakness, he let julian talk him into trying heroin with him. it was kind of an “i promise i’ll get clean if u try it with me this one time” thing. being in and out of consciousness and not really aware of what was going on, he didn’t notice that his bf was overdosing and he ended up dying simply bc the heroin was too much for his body and he stopped breathing. julian didn’t notice until the morning when he woke up, and obviously that was by far the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to him and left some deep ass emotional scars

so following this, he actually did check himself into rehab. he was there for 3 months, got completely clean, but he only managed to stay that way for two weeks before he was first snorting heroin again and then back to shooting up and selling drugs

it was about 2 yrs later when he was 26 that he met his next bf while he was doing a deal at some seedy bar outside of town. they quickly fell into a completely unanticipated relationship–notably, julian’s first since his boyfriend’s death. in spite of that trauma and feeling guilty even as he did it, he started introducing this boyfriend to drugs. in his mind, it was kind of a thing where he fell in love really fast and really hard out of nowhere and he saw this sad little thing with no place to go and drugs are the only thing he’s ever known himself, so it was very natural to be like “here try this it helps” and also naively convincing himself he’d never let what happened before happen again

so 3 years later they’re living together and completely broke, living mostly off the money julian makes selling drugs and whatever else they can scrape up, when his bf decides he wants to do a road trip across the country. julian’s very impulsive, doesn’t really give a shit about anything in LA anyway, and to top it off has a hard time saying no to him. SO a road trip it is !! they make it all the way across the country before finally using up the last of their money and realizing they don’t have enough to get back

they stopped in north carolina for a while while julian saved up enough cash for them to at least get somewhere they liked better, which is how they wound up in baltimore !!

here their jeep completely broke down and julian sold it so that the money from that plus the money he made selling drugs they could put toward a deposit on an apartment

it’s in their heads to get back to la eventually, but baltimore is kind of their ~scene so julian’s in no hurry. he’s selling drugs again but they use a lot of what he’s supposed to sell so......they’re not going anywhere any time soon anyway ytseugukhej

PERSONALITY

so now that his lengthy as fuck background is over with………julian is an extremely EXTREMELY dry sarcastic person. the guilt over his bf has made him a hell of a lot worse, like his sense of humor is so so much darker than it was before that happened, but he’s honestly just a rly sarcastic person to begin with. he has some softness inside especially for people he rly cares abt, but you will not catch julian being sentimental or taking literally anything seriously unless you’ve managed to seriously worm your way into his heart

he’s not like a GRUMP tho at all he just….doesn’t take things seriously. he’s literally the embodiment of every bart simpson meme

“whatever my dude” is his aesthetic

he’s very careful about his drug dealing, he won’t go around talking about it or anything, he does it all under the radar as much as he can and especially having done it for so long now and having experienced a lot of traumatic crap, he’s pretty good at what he does and he won’t fuck with people he doesn’t trust

even when it’s warm it’s not totally unlikely to see him in long sleeves bc he has really bad track marks all over his arms from shooting up so much, especially in the early days when he was really bad at it

he absolutely will not talk about his past and if anything even close to it comes up in conversation he will skate right over that so qUICK ur head will spin

i think that’s IT FOR NOW if u made it this far i commend ur effort and attention span. im gna list some plots n stuff below ( beyond the song connections ) and hit me uP for some angst bc ya girl is here for the drama as usual

CONNECTION IDEAS

u can find song connections HERE

any and all drug related things !! people who buy from him ( especially weed, he’s a lot more lenient about to whom he sells weed as opposed to other stuff ), people he introduces to drugs, friends he actually does drugs with

he’s very dry and enigmatic but he’s also quite social so seriously give me friends for him. he’s high a LOT but not always and he likes being out doing stuff

definitely somebody or somebodies who don’t trust him and his drug addict bart simpson vibe please please give me people who don’t like him

along that same vein it takes a lot to get julian worked up and in fight mode bc he prefers to just let things roll off his shoulders but it would def be fun to have someone who gets him to that point

also somebody who?? maybe thinks they can “fix” him and genuinely does their best to try and persuade him to change his life and that it’s not too late to turn everything around ( this is basically the song connection medicine by daughter )

if ur muse is randomly from st louis missouri????? hit me up with a past connection from way back in julian’s childhood

also someone he went to high school with in LA if they’re from LA. this person would probably not be surprised at the way julian turned out ystefygdjhs

AND TL;DR BECAUSE THIS IS SO LONG

a drug addict and dealer who learned to take care of himself from an early age because of neglectful parents. got a boyfriend addicted to drugs and lost him to an overdose when he was in his early twenties, went to rehab, relapsed, met another bf years later with whom he decided to road trip across the country and got stuck in baltimore. dry, sarcastic, kind of a douche, epitome of every bart simpson meme, walking tragedy. 

[firebirdsdaughter]

Okay...

Finally sitting down to watch Zi-O ep 4...

Let’s game?

Well, no, actually no, we won’t, but I was trying to be thematic.

And in no particular order:

Okay, that explains it. When I saw the preview images it looked like they were talking to Emu, and then Geiz and Sougo both henshined and took a knee for some reason. It’s actually the other way round.

Geez, Emu. Since when were you this uncommunicative and unhelpful? That’s Taiga’s job!

Like seriously, you know these two are Kamen Riders. Just explain yourself to them instead of making weird vague statements.

Geiz at it again w/ the grump. Have I mentioned--you know where that’s going.

Tsukuyomi w/ the intercede again. I’m liking this trio.

Okay, I wanna know who Goggles is. The guy whose hand Geiz was holding in that future-flashback? A friend? Brother? This being Toei it’s unlikely to be a boyfriend, but it’s still possible. He looks like he mighta been a nice fellow, I’m sorry he died.

I guess this is a lot to take in, and Sougo is generally pretty slow on the uptake, it appears, so... But looks like he’s getting it now.

Tsukuyomi, I really hope you’re aware just how much of a problem child you just decided to adopt.

I actually agree w/ someone else I saw, I think. I kinda wish they would give her a better reason than ‘I don’t know’ for this. Like, I’m liking the idea that she doesn’t want her childhood friend to technically become a murderer by killing someone who is, at that point, still innocent, but this ‘I don’t know’ thing is kinda... meh to me. It doesn’t feel touching or sweet, and is even kinda out of character... But that’s just me. She’s super great, but she otherwise seems so decisive and confident that it’s a little odd.

OH MY GOD IT’S THAT CHURCH! I mean--it’s that wizard Bugster!

Fun fact, that Church is not just a Toei set. I have seen it in about FIVE other shows I think (don’t ask me to name them all, I can’t--but Kaname Jun was in one I think)

AH! Brave is here! But it’s back in 2016, episode... 2? Or maybe 3, but it would be when Hiiro literally just got there, so he’s still an ass. I mean, I still love him. But he was an ass.

Geiz, mister straight forward, just fucking informs them he’s from the future, I love him.

Maybe this has something to do w/ Hiiro’s sense that he should help them before... Aside from grumpy secondary solidarity, ofc.

‘From your perspective,’ Geiz, you are literally from 2068. I’m pretty sure, excepting folks from 2069 onward, that that’s the future from everyone’s perspective.

Also, to get this out of the way: AAAAAAH! SETO IS SO PRETTY! OH MY GOD I LOVE HIM SO MUCH EVEN WHEN HE’S A DICK! AND ESPECIALLY WHEN HE’S NOT!

Note: I don’t love him because he’s a dick, but what I love is grumpy, pretty much jerky characters who come out of that bc they start caring about someone or something (again, in Hiiro’s case). Did that make sense?

Also, I’m actually giggling bc of how much of a pompous ass my grumpy surgeon son was. The fact that this is literally like, right after he first showed up, means that he’s at peak dickishness and it’s really funny to look back.

Kids pulling on Geiz. God, honey, what were you expecting when you put that thing on? Well, at least they’re aware of how goofy it is.

On that note, ARE WE EVER GONNA SEE YOU WITHOUT IT?

Also, dear god, someone get this boy some fashion advice. I’ve SEEN that preview image sweetie. You canNOT dress yourself.

Oh my god, it’s the hospital helipad. Now I’m nostalgic.

Okay. Emu can teleport to game worlds now? Al... Alright then. You know what, whatever.

And Emu’s getting thrown around again. Some things never change. What’s still funny about this is still that Ijima Hiroki is (still) not a short man. He’s 5′ 10″. This, to me, makes how much Emu get’s thrown around utterly hilarious.

See, Emu. This is what happens when you don’t pull a Taiga, and discuss things w/ people. You’re the one who forced Hiiro to learn that, why are you doing it?

Aw, Sougo appreciates that Tsukuyomi is trying to save the future w/out killing him. Good kids.

Where’s that B99 ‘cool motive still murder’ picture? I mean, I know it’s a kid. But dude... You don’t have the right to other people’s lives (or body parts) just bc your son is dying.

Hm... I know people are thinking it’s named after Hiiro, but... What if it’s named after his dad? I mean, Kagami Haima was the director of the hospital, he had to start somewhere. To me that feels more logical? Bc it’s only been two years since Ex-Aid, that’s awfully fast to name a medical procedure... But it’s just a thought.

You know what, I bet Hiiro feels bad for brushing Geiz off in the past, so now he’s like ‘I must do everything I can to help these kids out bc when I met them before I was a jerk.’ Part of his ‘stop being an anti-social grump’ attempt. And he’s worried about Emu.

Does the Time Majin have an AI? How did it know to fly up to the roof right then? Is it telepathically connected to Sougo now?

So Uhr is helping Ora/Hora out? Maybe there is hope for a villain-family dynamic after all...

Also apparently that’s Takeru’s mech? Takeru has a mech? I really need to finish Ghost... But it’s either just for the sake of cameo, or it’s related to how Geiz got the Ghost Ride Watch. Now I’m wondering if he maybe stole the Drive and Ghost Watches from the Time Jackers? But if that’s the case, why did they have them? They usually use the Another Rider Watches...? Are Takeru and Shinnosuke okay? Oh my god, did Takeru die again? Actually, I guess Shinnoksuke also died a lot in that one movie so... Oh dear.

Is Sougo transforming in tiny spaces gonna be a thing now?

Come to think... Since the opening, we haven’t seen Woz. What’s prophet boy up to?

This tiny gremlin child who I adore and want to pinch the cheeks of just giggling to himself in his busted mech like a five year old.

Sorry, Geiz, you can’t beat the bounce.

Sougo just fucking slams this thing w/ the Time Majin.

And so, the path toward very reluctant and at first very awkward friendship begins. Let’s a-go kids!

But also god that boy is skinny. Honey, do you even HAVE hips? Are you okay?

Geiz is having feelings but is very confused right now. Punching things is generally a good venting method.

And the boys are still very bad at not being good at teamwork. Like, they’re already synchronising in pretty much every fight they’ve been in--not just in henshins but in attacks and so on.

Emu that looks NOTHING LIKE YOU, WHY would you call it a doppelgänger.

Since this is after Hiiro first showed up, it means that the two of them still don’t like each other (bc it took them a while to get there), so I’m not surprised that he wouldn’t call Hiiro immediately if something came up. Plus this may not show up bc CR relied on reports by witnesses and were in an abandoned warehouse. But then why is Emu...? Oh, I don’t know.

Was his henshin really always that deep?

Oh! There he is! Woz! I was wondering where you were! So, uh... Where were you?

Geiz: ‘Oh no, not again!’

Wow, he did the hoppity hop thing!

HE HAS GIANT BUMPS ON HIS ARMS! I LOVE THE GIANT BUMPERS ON HIS ARMS!

(I think they’re meant to be buttons?)

Aaaaand, right on cue, there Woz goes again.

Emu just like ‘okay then, let’s roll w/ this then, I guess!’

Wait, but the Brave and Snipe (and Genm, and then there’s Para-DX, and Poppy, and Cronus... Though I guess those last ones may not end up existing since they’re post-this?) Watches don’t seem to be in-show, so... Does that mean that Hiiro and Taiga keep their powers? Bc there was a Crozz-Z Ride Watch, so I now understand Ryuuga losing his, but there were so many Riders in Ex-Aid... Though maybe there’s a whole butterfly thing that simply by removing the primary everything is effected. Bc if you had to account for each individual Rider... Imagine how complex and difficult shows like Ryuki and Gaim would be to explain/sort through.

Hiroki has such a nice smile. Actually, pretty much everyone is Ex-Aid had a nice smile when they smiled.

Oh, god, yes. I really hope that the Rider trying to teach Sougo how to do the finisher in some way (miming for Emu, explaining for Sento) is a thing every time... Though I guess since they couldn’t get Gentaro we won’t get to see him do it... But maybe Takumi will? (I’ve never actually watched Faiz, so I have no idea what the finisher looks like)

Oh, hey. When Sougo hits him it says it in... Kanji, I think? But in Japanese characters of some kind instead of English.

ATTACK OF THE SUBTITLES!

Geiz standing of to the side trying to act cool while these two dorks help this man up.

... He’s wearing socks and... You know what, this is Japan. They’re probably his shoes for inside, and because he was running out to the ambulance with his dying son, he didn’t bother to change.

I love how Emu is like ‘who could we possibly... OH! That asshole!’ (again bc this is the very early season, back hen we didn’t like each other)

HE SAID IT! I guess they cut away so Seto didn’t actually have to eat the cake. Apparent he doesn’t actually like sweets? Maybe bc he’s such a sweetie. ^^

I really love it when the ones playing the ‘serious grumps’ are really adorably dorky and super nice. Like apparently, Seto was the funny and fun one, which I find so cute and hilarious.

Sougo here, getting into the groove of things during his second rodeo.

Emu’s like ‘are you two together?’ and Geiz is like ‘someone shoot me.’

Awwww. Of course Hiiro saved him. Though they haven’t shown us anything yet... So, maybe, even in the altered timeline, he and Emu still ends dup becoming close somehow? Can I pretend that’s the case? Seriously, Hiiro needs that kid. Otherwise he’s just gonna continue forgetting how to be human.

Why do you need another plate? But I think it’s cute how Junichiro is making so much food. I wonder if it’ll be like Mario in Zyuohger, where when he find out (if he doesn’t already know) he decides to just make life at the shop as homey as possible.

Geiz, maybe you should start using his name? Just to, you know, keep Uncle from getting suspicious?

ALSO WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WEARING WHY... I just can’t anymore. I love my dorky fashion disaster assassin son.

Here we are w/ the intense staring again. Wouldn’t be KR w/out it.

Geiz and Tsukuyomi be like ‘wow no pressure.’ Seriously, Geiz looks like he’s having a small panic attack back there.

He looks very pretty, though.

Aw, they’re keeping their Ride Watches together!

Well, there’s clearly a friendship theme, so I’m hoping there’s a level of deepening the bonds that just started forming in this episode. Unfortunately, I know nothing about Faiz other than apparently Kaixa is a horrible person (given that the preview images imply he’s strangling some poor girl, I am inclined to agree), so I can’t make any guesses there.

All I ask for Christmas is ONE episode where Geiz doesn’t wear that damn collar thing. I know it’s only been four eps but just ONE.

And, in final news, looks like they’re switching the Watches around.

Okay! Well, that's that for now. Now, my head hurts and I still want pizza, so... Not much else to say. Imaginary pizza for anyone who read all of this, you really didn’t need to do that.

I’m gonna pretend Hiiro and Emu are still friends somehow. Having a good time here, looks like we’re looking at another solid trio and I love it. Also, w/ OOO and Ghost apparently coming up... Good times.

[herotheshiro]

ok i didn’t do a review of the phoenix wright trilogy but i’ll do a mini-write-up on apollo justice which i just finished earlier. this is mainly due to me looking up apollo justice/ace attorney afterwards and seeing ppl talk vaguely abt how and where the series and characters go after this... i wanted to add my 2 cents to the void of the internet i guess lol

spoilers for aa4 below

i think as a story, apollo justice is quite good but definitely a bit lacking in writing compared to the 1st trilogy. i feel like this is pretty much the common fan opinion, esp since the 1st trilogy was written all together as a 3-game-set and apollo justice has to conclude everything within 1 game. i think this game did real good at revealing info over time... i remember when they revealed the troupe gramarye poster and i was like WAIT... THAT’S SHADI SMITH... HOLD UP... personally though, i think the ending was not very strong for me -- i feel like we nailed kristoph almost a bit too easily at the end without much i guess concrete evidence linking him to everything even if basically everything was really pointing to him. [EDIT: lol ok reading summaries on aa4 and yeah apparently this is the point and why it being a jurist sys trial was so important… and the realization that he really could get nailed for the crime that he’s been paranoid abt for years made him break down at the end. Ok that makes sense I guess, I was just used to things playing out like the 1st trilogy where you would last min get decisive evidence lol] other than that, there was quite a number of loose ends that didn’t get tied up

so what happened to valant? i think the implication was that he was gonna turn himself in out of guilt even if he didn’t actually kill magnifi (sp?). and also w trucy having the rights i guess it would be complicated for the 2 of them to work that out. that whole aftermath wasn’t entirely clear to me esp since they didn’t give him a post-credits scene

so we’re not gonna get an explanation for why thalassa left her not-even-1-yo son to fend for himself? that was like my no. 1 thing i would’ve liked to get a reason for but the ending is just her being like oh yeah i remember now he’s my son and that’s it. no explanation for why she left him behind and returned to troupe gramarye w/o him. like at least a “oh it would’ve been complicated to bring a literal baby to raise back into that traveling group” would’ve sufficed, esp since we’re supposed to get the impression that lamiror is a kind woman. yet she left her damn kid behind with only a bracelet. were we just supposed to assume the explanation i gave above? i mean yes i’ve looked it up vaguely and i think we get more info on apollo’s growing up in later games but i’ve heard w very little mention of thalassa. which i mean i get, thalassa left him when he was around 1yo so he prob wouldn’t remember shit but man we never gonna get that explanation huh. it’s kinda messed up to leave this baby behind who i assume you care about; it’s another story if she didn’t want the kid and therefore didn’t care what happened to him but she left a bracelet w him which implies she does care

also the loose end of them not telling apollo and trucy they’re siblings. i’ll save this for a later paragraph though

also side note but when i was finishing the game up and before i saw the ending, i literally had a passing, very brief thought like “oh what if lamiror was actually trucy and apollo’s mom lol. what a crack thought” but then it actually happened... i mean it’s good to wrap up that mystery of lamiror’s past, plus they were insinuating so hard that maybe thalassa wasn’t actually dead lol so yeah you knew the mom was gonna pop up fr by the end

apollo himself as a character. now i’m not gonna nit-pick as much here bc he does show up again in later games w more backstory and character development as i’ve heard, but yeah he is very much a mystery character in aa4 i feel. he has basically no given history throughout the game, and the lack of detail made sense at first when you slowly started connecting the dots that he and the gramarye power were related, but then they never really shed any more light on him at the end. they really only reveal he and trucy are related just to explain why and how he has the power to perceive, not even to really indicate anything abt them as characters. i kinda forgot about this as i played the game, but i read a write-up by someone else being like “oh yeah phoenix you know his motivations as a defense attorney but apollo has basically none” and i was like yeah that’s right huh. bc the 1st trilogy reveals p early on that phoenix had a certain motivation to be a defense attorney but apollo you don’t get that, he’s just an attorney just to be an attorney i guess. which i mean is fine, you don’t always need a reason to do stuff sometimes, but it does make him a weaker character. i think maybe in the beginning they were like oh apollo respects kristoph as a lawyer but then they don’t really develop mpre  backstory there like how they met or why kristoph decided to take him on. i thought the latter was gonna be a point that was gonna come up, like maybe kristoph took apollo on as part of his large masterplan or something bc i think kristoph does mention being aware of apollo’s “power” but yeah they didn’t delve further into that. anyway i’ll go less on this bc i’ll just assume they had plans for him to show up in later games therefore they didn’t fully flesh him out here. otherwise that means they just didn’t bother on him other than him having the perceive power and having a personal relation to the whole gramarye case

how did drew misham or vera idk who painted it know abt all of apollo’s 3 cases? i thought it was gonna be like oh phoenix or kristoph saw all this coming and somehow told misham abt it who drew it but uh that didn’t happen. was that bc drew misham was following phoenix in the news and saw the stuff happening w apollo and was inspired to draw his cases? that was a dramatic reveal when apollo/trucy/ema found it out but i mean i guess it was just to show that misham was connected to them/the overall story more than just a simple jurist sys test case

the last writing thing i’ll mention is abt trucy and apollo being siblings. after the whole phoenix x maya crap in the 1st trilogy i suspected they were gonna do the same with apollo and trucy... thankfully they didn’t which was good bc i liked them a lot as a platonic duo, also since i actually thought apollo was 25yo for a while so that age gap is pretty weird too if you do it romantically. i suspected they were actually related p early on after discussing my playthrough w my sis who upon googling info said ‘lol i did say why not ship them but i will not say that anymore’ so i was like lol it’s prob bc she found out they were related or something. regardless i mean i would have suspected that anyway bc the game pushes the ‘oh this perceive power is really only seen in trucy’s family line’ so hard so it’s like not that hard to draw the line bw them, esp when they’re super vague abt apollo’s history and how he even got that bracelet in the 1st place. anyway i think it’s cute to imagine two siblings running all over town to solve shit. as expected tho, there are still ppl out there who ship them even after knowing the truth which is meh but i mean what do you expect of fandom/the internet.

although one of my biggest disappointments is the fact that apparently even in later games, the two never find out they’re siblings. i mean i guess it’s not a major plot point that NEEDS to be addressed as covered in point #3 above, but come on? their mom is literally still alive? a mom and her children reuniting and developing their family relationship again? i mean she’s been so distanced from them for so long that a family reunion would be awkward sure but zak literally made phoenix promise to tell trucy apollo was her bro so i’m surprised he never told her even before his conversation with thalassa at the end of the game. like i thought for sure they were gonna reveal their sibling relationship in aa4 but sadly my imagined revelation scene never happened

(i literally thought up a funny scene too... them seeing thalassa and both being like “MOM??” at the same time and then looking at each other in confusion before thalassa confirms that yes she is both of their moms. although this makes less sense on apollo’s part since he prob wouldn’t remember what she looks like but i mean same bracelets)

otherwise, gameplay was pretty interesting this time around. music was bopping tbh, i played aa4 right after finishing trials and tribulations and wow the music quality improvement was so obvious. the perceive thing was pretty cool and their tutorial on how to use it was super cute lol (apollo: that’s cool but i’m freaking out a little here // trucy: yeah your eyes are kinda bugging out); although absolutely hilarious on how apollo "explained” it in court... imagine a lawyer looking real hard at you and then being like ‘actually you swallowed weird when you said this therefore you’re lying’... i cannot even imagine how that sounded the 1st time to the judge and klavier... anyway i also thought the MASON technologies chapter was really interesting, w phoenix going back and forth through time and using evidence from the future for the past and vice versa. fun time traveling stuff!

ok and that’s kind of all i wanted to say i guess. i’m prob gonna try to stay in the dark on fan content stuff like i was purposely doing before playing aa... i was looking some stuff up and i was like ‘huh... i didn’t get this impression of apollo or the apollo/klavier ship when i was playing aa4...’ i don’t want to get my own opinion of these characters warped by fan content/others’ opinions so i might just take a bit of time to solidify how i feel about/characterize each of the characters before i trek out into fandom land. also it’s prob bc i haven’t played apollo’s later games since he supposedly gets more character dev later. tbh idk if i will bc to be frank i’ve been using emulators to play aa so far and i don’t think there’s a rom out for the later aa games on 3ds. i mean if there really isn’t, i’ll prob just watch a playthrough on YT so i can continue the aa story since i did like apollo as a character despite his lack of backstory.

i was considering skipping edgeworth’s games to go right to dual destinies and continue on apollo’s story/the aftermath of that game, but tbh i’m less incentivized to since i’ve heard that the story/character continuity aspect kind of goes out the window in later games (also the point abt apollo and trucy still being in the dark abt them being siblings. even though yes it wouldn’t change how they interact w each other, i would also prefer the fact to be known officially in-universe so characters don’t be freaks as apparently there are some lines in later games that are a little weird). i mean i could end up having a different opinion abt the continuity, but yeah seeing those comments did put a damper on me diving straight towards dual destinies. so i might just play edgeworth’s games first as i originally planned anyway since they were developed right after even if they take place before aa4

[one-of-us-must-be-crazy]

Ok forgive me bc this isn't even from your list but... technological quirks for Samuels? I was watching the good place and the AI character in that show gets "drunk" from proximity to strong magnets. Does he have any issues like that? Magnets, radio interference, etc. Can you dropbox into a synthetic's mind? Can he connect to bluetooth? All questions that plague me.

I HAVE SO MANY OF THESE. I ended up brain-blanking last night becuase it was A Day and also A Night but anyway. 

Samuels, like the later marine models in canon, can connect wirelessly to various devices and networks; which means that if there’s a system for it, he can tap into it, and both wreak havoc or do helpful things like turn the lights on or off. This is basically bluetooth. Once he turned off Ripley’s music after the third time Mr. Roboto came up on ‘shuffle’ in an hour. 

He’s automatically, partially due to the wireless ability and partially becuase of his heightened senses, knows if a person he’s talking to is a person or a synthetic.

There’s nothing that can make him drunk, short of overwhelming his systems. Not to be a complete romantic sap but Ripley does it to him sometimes, his sense of logic that sits at the forefront of his mind ebbs away enough for him to sound a bit silly, tipsy. 

Becuase of the way that his vocal system is structured, he can’t cry, sing very well, and it takes him a LONG time to be able to mimic anything that sounded like human laughter. The weird noise and motion he made when he first tried out laughing sounded frankly horrifying, with Amanda collecting herself quickly to try and smile encouragingly “That wasn’t bad,” “That was horrible.” “Yeah keep working on it.”

With few exceptions, he can’t deny a direct order from his owner. When Ripley talked (threatened) WY into signing him over, she had him write her in as his owner, as much as she hated it. Better he has to listen to her to take the trash out than WY ordering him to get rid of a risk to the company and snapping her neck. 

This is stolen directly  from the book The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke, but around the same time that Weyland Yutani started to make all models fully lifelike in appearance for purposes of sneaky and otherwise unsavory goals, a few graduate students thought it would be HILARIOUS to program the machines printing the soft tissues to include ‘blood’ vessels down south, among other abilities. And a lot of nerve sensors. After the shit he and Amanda went through the least they deserve is having the robot able to orgasm. Beyond that I don’t give a fuck. It’s fanfiction. It’s garbage fanfiction. Leave me be.

During the uses of this bit of coding, if one or both parties involved go too hard at it, his voice goes to static. He’s not damaged, but the first time that happened Ripley flipped out “ARE YOU OKAY?! CHRIS? CHRISTOPHER PLEASE–” “I’m….fine…sorry,” and he’s so ashamed of it at first, hating to show what he is so obviously in any situation, let alone when he’s with her, but she likes it. Once she finds out that he isn’t injured, that its just a quirk or a glitch, she gets very smug about it “I broke you :) “

Obviously he doesn’t get mental illness, but his mind processes their trauma by adapting security programs; he feels something like anxiety as his logic programs tell him that there could be something wrong, that there isn’t, but there could be, and that he needs to patrol their apartment. Rewriting this adaptation takes both personal effort and a lot of external reassurance from his new companion.

He has photo-perfect memory, almost like a film, of everything he’s experienced and can view or upload playback of it in video form. E v e r y t h i n g. 

I have no idea how long a synthetic’s charge lasts for, so I wrote that once a month or every other month he tops off his power with a short recharge, to avoid having to spend multiple days unconscious recharging when he runs out entirely. A hidden port in his arm can connect to a wire for either phsyical computer connections or charging. 

Androids have a power-save mode during which they’re only vaguely aware of external stimuli for the sake of self-preservation (and of their operators, that should they be called on they can wake themselves and come to the humans’ aid). Internal temperature drops slightly, and processors slow down, while software programs shut down entirely. It’s similar to what a human would think of as ‘relaxing.’ Samuels uses this most nights to go to bed with Ripley. He wakes up from this with zero drowsiness.

Or of course there is a full shutdown, which is much harder for a synthetic to get out of, much closer to actual human sleep than power-save. Normally he’ll program if for a few hours, but only if he’s genuinely in need of running updates or diagnostics, or at risk of overheating, as he doesn’t like ‘leaving’ her alone for that long. During this, he doesn’t have any sound or vibration or the vague feeling that could be compared to a pulse, and Ripley tries to pretend that his more-or-less-dead appearance doesn’t bother her, so he can still wake up in bed like normal. 

Like any technology, a synthetic will eventually be out of date and incompatible with new updates. In theory his core processors and memory could be removed and replaced into a new body, and they’ve already done this once upon returning to Luna.  

Synthetics AI is adaptive, and while Samuels was already one of the “mistakes,” models that have become sentient during development, he’s very very VERY obviously Not Human the more you talk to him. Five, ten, twenty years after he’s been living like one however, he’s nearly indistinguishable from a human being in his words and behavior.

Becuase he can tap into wi-fi, he cheats at trivia games. Ripley could have killed him for it, but now they’re the champions at her favorite bar’s trivia night, and have won a lot of free alcohol, so she doesn’t mind.

I’ll post more as I think of them, becuase for some reason I feel like I’m forgetting a few of the main ‘rules’ I wrote. 

[radiantmists]

row part one thoughts

So I’m done with part one! this got super freaking long, so readmore:

Navani focus! I am so very happy about this, y’all have no idea. And given that the fused are going to strike at the tower, specifically to mess with the very fabrial Navani wants to fix, she’s going to do something amazing. 

Also, I don’t have to worry about her living to the end, or the tower being lost, because the epigraphs for part one seem very likely to take place after the events of the book.

I do have to worry about Kaladin, especially because I really don’t think spending more time around Lirin is actually going to help his mental state. 

That being said, I did enjoy the evidence that he was excited about his parents moving in-- the idea of him and Syl picking out toys for Oroden is so sweet. I’m excited to see him spending time with Oroden and his mom.

I’m less excited that Shallan and Adolin are leaving without him; I get why sending him on the honorspren expedition is a bad idea, but it seems like the parts of his support system that are adapted to his current situation, as opposed to his parents who are used to him as a child, have been systematically stripped away (Rock leaving, Windrunners deployed in Azir, etc).

I continue to be super interested in what Brandon’s doing with Rlain-- he still hasn’t been able to draw in Stormlight, and he refuses to bond with a spren who’s been coerced. I hope he ends up with a spren anyway; we know it’s possible from Venli, so the honorspren just have to stop being assholes.

I initially thought that Kaladin only ordered the grouchy honorspren to consider Rlain, not to bond him, and I kinda agree that he shouldn’t be allowed to threaten a spren into bonding someone; he knows how much they hate being trapped.

Which brings me back to Navani being threatened. Who could have had the chance to smuggle the spanreed ruby into her box? My immediate prediction would be the Mink, who goes missing with incredible ease, but we really don’t know enough about him at this point to guess. 

Second question, what ‘new fabrials’ does she need to stop making? It has to be a big deal, something she’s known for; it has to be conceivably causing suffering to someone. I do wonder if maybe it’s just the ones with spren trapped in the physical realm, instead of Cognitive, but Navani definitely didn’t invent this procedure-- why would they be holding her responsible?

Another possibility is that whatever Gavilar was doing has been pinned on her, which would make sense-- she’s known to be an artifabrian, whereas almost no one really knew what he was doing.

Almost no one-- Nale and another male herald (who I think by elimination has to be Kalak?) probably know the most. Nalan probably wont be helpful, though he’s promised to come teach Szeth Division at some point.

(Also, it’s hilarious that we all were wondering what relations were going to be like between Szeth and everyone else, and they just put him in jail. Navani’s encounter with him was wonderfully chilling, and true to the way he’s depicted in books 1 and 2. We like his antics with Nightblood, but he’s very much not stable and his reasons for switching sides don’t make any goddamn sense, tbh.)

On the other hand, we do have two heralds who are giving as much information as they’re capable of! Which doesn’t seem to be much, given that Taln is incoherent and Ash apparently doesn’t know anything. But still, it seems like several of our fonts of ancient wisdom have become very forthcoming, which is. So exciting. 

Wit’s only talking to Jasnah who also likes keeping secrets so who knows if we’ll actually get to hear any. Navani’s perspective on him is interesting, and I wonder why no one seems to have told her how clear he’s made it that he is actually something ancient-- Dalinar, Shallan, and Kaladin all seem to know. 

I also wonder who (if anyone) knows he’s a Lightweaver now. I continue to worry about what Hoid is planning on doing with all the forms of Investiture he’s collecting, but we didn’t get much info on him here.

Except Vasher seems to know a fair bit about him! Vasher wins the award for most useful worldhopper in this part. Like, guys, he explained the Returned. He didn’t even just explain it in a way that was confusing in-world but made sense to readers-- he explained it in a way that Kaladin, who knows very little about the wider cosmere, could understand. 

I do appreciate that it’s made clear that he figured out this stuff himself, and that his understanding could be (and has been) flawed. Still, we now have a workman’s understanding of basically all forms of immortality and resurrection thanks to him, which is fucking amazing, yall.

The other big sharer of this part: Mraize. We finally get some insight into one thing the Ghostbloods want-- a way to transfer Stormlight off-world. We’ve long known that the Ghostbloods were among the most organized worldhopping powers active in Stormlight-- for all we know the 17th shard is still hanging out in the purelake-- but this gives them an interesting context. They’re vaguely opposed to Odium but they don’t seem to care all that much, as long as their goals for power and/or economic fulfillment work out. Beyond that things aren’t clear. Yet

Which brings us to Shallan!

If she fucks this up and doesnt get the answers Mraize promised I will scream.

She’s become fairly stable, and also remarkably open about her alters. I think it’s kind of interesting that Kaladin is in the know but her brothers aren’t-- no matter how much she loves and cares for them, their lives are pretty clearly separate.

I’m pretty annoyed that she hasn’t told Adolin about the Ghostbloods, honestly; she really wouldnt have to explain much of her past to explain that she’s investigating them, and I really don’t think Adolin would take it badly. I mean, I don’t think Adolin would take any of Shallan’s past too badly, but I imagine her infiltrating a secret society wouldn’t even register for him.

I’m curious to see how the trip to see the honorspren is going to develop them and their relationship; Kaladin’s not going, so the love triangle is probably going to continue not to be an issue despite Adolin expressing worry about Veil straying, which, thank fuck for that.

Adolin rebelling against Dalinar is great-- I love how Kaladin notes that Adolin isn’t following the codes with religiousness anymore, but he’s ‘found his own balance.’ I’m a bit concerned that Brandon is going to write this as a problem, instead of something fair and natural; while I do think Adolin does have to come to terms with things a bit, he needed to stop hero-worshipping Dalinar and it’s good that it happened.

He’s clearly excited to go to Shadesmar so that he can talk to Maya more, so that will be a big part of things, which will be nice. I do wonder what exactly Shallan will be doing during the travel-y parts of this, though I imagine negotiating Shadesmar won’t be simple even if it won’t be as chaotic as last time.

(It is vaguely hilarious to me that they’re sending the couple who are bonded to a cryptic and a deadeye to meet with the honorspren and apologize for the Recreance. How could this possibly go wrong.)

I’m not super sure what to say about Venli’s plotline? It’s super interesting, I love the complex political hierarchy of the Fused and the way Leshwi deliberately is lower in status bc the position gives her more latitude. (Though it’s not clear to me how this status is determined.)

I like that Venli isn’t just joining up with the humans; I was excited about the possibility but I guess it would feel cheap. She seems somewhat aware that the Fused won’t just let her get what they want-- and more cognizant than Leshwi that they wont just fade away if the war ends-- but I’m not sure I see how exactly she’s going to go forward from here.

She is going to help the Fused trying to infiltrate the tower. Raboniel is experimenting with spren somehow, and Venli can see into the Cognitive Realm with ease; that should be interesting.

(Sidenote, Raboniel reminds me heavily of Semirhage, and the Pursuer reminds me of Demandred. I can’t imagine Brandon is totally unconscious of the parallels, especially given that these are his “dark one’s” constantly-resurrected leaders, and I think that’s fun)

Leshwi is also worried about humans learning to trap the fused, or perhaps all singers, the way they did the unmade. I am also worried about this, as it seems like a temptingly effective but also horrific solution to the issue of the constant resurrection of the fused. 

The most promising thing about Venli’s storyline is that she might make it easier to reach a resolution to this whole series that doesn’t require the extermination of one side, which I have some faith Brandon wouldn’t do.

(It’s hilarious to me that they just yeeted Nergaoul into the ocean, especially considering that you can see trapped spren in shadesmar somehow, and oceans there are land.)

In any case, Venli is going to collide with the tower squad soon enough, probably by the end of the book, and I’m excited.

I hope this doesn’t end with Rlain defecting away from the humans and to her, though that would be understandable especially given his inability to fully integrate with the Windrunners.

Sundry other things-- I wonder if Navani’s drive to understand will help her deal with Re-Shephir, who to my understanding is still lurking in the depths of the tower somewhere? It’s interesting to me that trapping the unmade doesn’t seem to actually require any radiant powers.

My other theory, which I’d been developing over the course of rereading the last couple parts of Oathbringer, is that the ninth unmade is the Sibling, and that it would have to be reawakened, possibly cleansed somehow, and possibly re-imprisoned in the tower fabrial in order to make it work fully. The ‘resistance’ that Dalinar describes in investing the tower seems to support this, at least to me.

I do wonder which Shard the sibling is aligned with; parallelism would suggest Odium, and this kinda makes sense if she’s something like the unmade, though how this would then allow her to repel void creatures i’m not sure.

(Huh, when did I decide the sibling was a she? I think the stormfather does call her that, although in that case why aren’t they the sister? Hmm...)

What does it mean that Wyndle figured out chairs? I’m genuinely fascinated.

Jasnah’s abolishing slavery!! This does more to endear her to me than literally anything she’s done in the past few books. I do anticipate a significant fight over this, especially since a throwaway line in Shallan’s first scene suggests that freeing the singers has actually caused a huge spike in the slave trade, as was predicted a couple books ago. I can’t wait for Kaladin to hear about it.

The Kholin’s don’t trust Taravangian; I’m a bit unclear as to how much the rest of the coalition actually knows about what he did, though my understanding is that it’s a nonzero amount. I’m actually a bit disappointed that he’s reached an agreement with Odium, as now rather than jockeying for the best position he’s just straight-up following instructions and trying to get Odium to win. He’s not trying to save as much of the world as possible anymore; all he can save now is Kharbranth.

I do wonder how he’s concealing his compassionate days now that everyone knows he’s a genius; it’s easy to pretend to be stupid when you’re smart, much harder to do the opposite. Maybe he just says he’s sick.

...That’s probably enough.

[savetheblackpaladin]

If you're doing requests how about paladins whose s/o isn;t a paladin so they are basically the one for odd jobs around the castle and usually Coran's assistant and one day Coran was experimenting and it accidentally get's on s/o's hair causing it to grow and grow and GROW. Like, Rapunzel style

Omg, yes! I love scientific mishaps! This is kinda long bc I don’t know how to chill so it’s all under the cut!

Do you know what happens when lithium reacts with water? It fizzes and catches fire. Nothing too dangerous. Move down the row to sodium and it reacts more violently, like a small stick of dynamite. Keep moving down past Rubidium, and things get downright explosive. 

Any chemist past their first year knows this and frankly, so should a certain 600+ year old Altean. 

You had complete trust in Coran, so when he asked you to hand him #55, you thought nothing of it. The Altean names for the elements didn’t exactly translate well, so it wasn’t until it was too late that you realized exactly what you handed him. Cesium.

You could only watch in silent horror as you whipped around and watched Coran drop a single, small, silver drop of certain death into a beaker filled with viscous purple liquid, praying to whatever gods were listening that you both would live. 

When nothing immediately happened you brought your hand to your chest, breathing a sigh of relief as Coran waked harmlessly past you. Then the beaker exploded in a flash of bright light as a shockwave strong enough to knock the both of you off your feet sent you straight into the nearest wall. 

You came to a few moments later, a little groggy but nothing worse for wear. You quickly glanced down at your body and moved your limbs around. Satisfied nothing was damaged you glanced at Coran and saw he was still out, but nothing seemed damaged. You ran a hand through your hair, frowned a little at its damp feeling but decided to count your blessings; you were both lucky not to have been skewered with glass or worse.

“Coran? Coran, you ok?” You tapped on his shoulder and smiled as he came to with a start. “Welcome to the world of the living, old man.”

“Y/N? What happened?”, he looked around and spotted the shattered beaker and splotches of purple around the lab. He grabbed your shoulders, anxiously checking you over for damage, “Are you OK #5? I’m so sorry I put you in danger. Is anything hurt - oh,  looks like some tonic got in your hair. Do you feel funny?”

“Uhm…”, that was concerning, “Should I feel funny?”

“Uh, no? Listen, why don’t I clean up here and you go…shower that stuff off and, uhm…take a nap? I’ll send your ‘boo’ to you for dinner!”

You gagged at Coran’s use of Earth slang and pulled away from him, “Please, don’t do that. I’ll see you for dinner.” You mumbled a goodbye and Coran waved you off with a smile. If you had to listen to him use the word ‘boo’ again, it would be too soon. You made a mental note to ask Lance to stop teaching him that stuff.

Stifling a yawn, you started your shower and examined the ends of your hair. Was it always that long? Huh, you could have sworn it was an inch shorter. Also, was your scalp really tingly or did the explosion take more out of you than you thought? You shrugged, there was time to deal with that later, that nap Coran suggested sounded absolutely fantastic and you were eager to crawl into bed.

The tingling on your scalp was still there after your dried off but honestly, you were too tired to deal with it. As your head hit the pillow you vaguely wondered if you had a concussion and that was your last thought before lights out.

Shiro:

immediately notices your hair when he walks in and has a slight moment of panic because what does he do???

he tries to reach out and touch your hair but he’s unsure of what to do so he ends up hovering his hands over your head and making small noises of confusion that eventually end up waking you

He’s caught. 

“Uuuuuhm…Hi! I was…just about to wake you!”, his eyes dart away from you and he brings his hands to his mouth while looking extremely concerned. “Does your–how do you–hmmmm!” His voice goes incredibly high pitched at that last part and you just raise your eyebrows as he clears his throat and tries again, “Ahem, ok, uhm, does your…head?…feel heavier than normal?” You nod and he continues, “Ok, so uhm, don’t freak out but ah, your hair is long, like, 10 feet long.” He smiles and there’s a pause before you attempt to run to the bathroom.

I say attempt because you tripped on your hair and Shiro catches you before you hit the floor, but just barely

he laughs at you and carries you to the bathroom so you can see the massive amount of hair you now magically have.

he collects the rest from your bedroom as you continue looking at your reflection in disbelief

he starts rubbing your neck as you lean your forehead against the mirror and groan

offers to cut it to a reasonable length since having hair over 10 feet long is just inconvenient

you let him cut however he wants, just please get rid of it (it’s heavyyyyy)

he likes long hair so he ends up cutting it to your mid-back 

offers to try and layer it but you shoo him off. You need to yell at Coran. And eat. Turns out growing hair is hungry business.

Low-key thinks this is hilarious but turns into a mama hen when you tell him it’s a result of an explosion

he has words with Coran later. it’s, uh…it’s not good.

Lance

Honestly? he’s ecstatic and wakes you up like a small child on Christmas

“Getupgetupgetupgetup!!!! Oh my god! This is the best thing since Kaltenecker!”

he was literally bouncing you up and down on the bed. Like his hands on your shoulders, bouncing you.

He starts asking you if he can braid your hair before you fully wake up so you’re absolutely confused and decide to kiss him and mumble ‘shut up’ against his lips

he complies before gently pushing you away and caressing your face

“Ok, I’m good. But babe, I gotta tell you something, so please don’t freak out?” You nod and he continues, “Uh, somehow your hair is like freakishly long. Honestly, where is the end?”

He’s right, where is the end? Oh, on the floor. Ok then.

You ask him if he can cut it, since he used to trim his sisters’ hair, and he agrees to. After he gets to play with it because this is awesome

you agree. but only if he goes and gets you some food because you’re reeeeally hungry and not sure how long you can just sit there without food.

After you’re sated, Lance spends pretty much the entire afternoon playing with your hair

first he brushes all of it until it’s silky smooth

then he plaits it all into one long, thick braid. it takes awhile.

somewhere he found some blue ribbon and begins weaving that in the braid

also he found glitter? so now that’s in there too. and some flower-like plants from the kitchen

the end result is actually really pretty and now that it’s all braided, your hair is shortened so that the end barely brushes the floor

deciding to make the best of the situation you keep the braid for the rest of the day, even though your neck is killing you by the end

it helps that every time Lance looks at you his face lights up and he gets this lovey-dovey look on his face that gives you warm fuzzies

he’s a little upset when he has to cut it off but leaves your hair long enough that he can still play with it

Keith

Honestly, probably doesn’t notice your hair at first. He’s too concerned with how cute you look snuggled in bed and is seriously considering joining you but then he remembers that there’s dinner

wakes you up by gently sitting next to you and running his hand through your hair until you start stirring

that’s when he notices your hair is longer than normal because usually he doesn’t have to extend his arm this far….oh, it’s not stopping

You wake up to Keith holding his hand above his head with your hair still entangled in his fingers, his face fixed in pure horror

you scream

he screams

it continues until you both run out of breath

once that is over, Keith de-tangles himself while you explain that this was probably the result of the explosion in the lab but you don’t get much farther than that because Keith is now grabbing you by the shoulders demanding to know “What explosion in the lab, Y/n? What? Happened?”

he’s mad and upset but so glad you’re ok but why didn’t he know about this???

you explain it again, slowly, and make sure Keith isn’t going to blow up on Coran

he begrudgingly agrees only because you obviously aren’t hurt

However, your neck kind of hurts from all the hair so you ask Keith if he can cut it for you and he agrees

he’s kind of weirded out by how fast your hair grew. It’s not right and he wants it g.o.n.e.

Hunk

notices your hair the moment he walks in and he immediately turns around and lets the door shut behind him

he collects himself for a second, surely convinced it was your blankets around you not your hair because tha-a-a-t would be craaaazy!

he tries again and nope, that is definitely your hair. Ok. Weird.

he starts wondering if maybe it’s food related but he hasn’t used any new ingredients so probably not.

it’s not like you guys have landed on a planet recently

maybe you’re part alien and being in space has like, activated your alien DNA? ooooohh, you and Keith can be alien-buddies!

no wait, he remembers your recent scan in the healing pods and you are fully human

He’s got nothing else so he gently wakes you with a high-pitched, “Heeeyyyy Cupcake! Did you have a good nap? …Yeah? That’s great. Uh, listen I don’t know how to say this so I’m just gonna–You’re hair is–I dunno I’m eyeballing this–12 feet longer than usual?  Where you awar–oh, nope. Definitely not aware. Oookay, let’s just, yeah, c’mere.”

He wraps you in a hug as you take in the nest of hair you were sleeping in. He lets you go when he feels you relax.

you explain what happened and even though he’s extremely alarmed, you seem fine and your hair doesn’t seem to be growing anymore. Although he can’t really tell.

“So uh, what do you want to do? I think it’s actually pretty cool! Like, you two literally found the cure for baldness. Baldness!”

you want it gone

while Hunk is a man of many talents, cutting hair is not one of them. He suggests either going to Shiro or Lance since both seem to keep their hair in check. But not Keith. He would cut your nice hair with his knife, like some kind of barbarian. 

however, please let him braid it for a while, it looks like so much fun!

Pidge

you wake up to Pidge sitting on the opposite side of the room, your hair stretched out because she’s busy measuring it

you sit up and she immediately asks you when you fell asleep because the rate of hair growth is just fascinating

you’re still stuck on the fact that the hair between her fingers is attached to your head

Pidge is a simple girl and takes this all in stride and honestly, the fact that she isn’t freaking out really calms you down. which is wonderful because she needs to know every single detail 

you gladly go into detail because for some reason it seems really hilarious right now

like seriously? you get exploded and wake up looking like Rapunzel. Space Rapunzel.

when finished she pulls out hair scissors and offers to cut your hair back to its original length

to the best of her ability, of course

although you know her better than that

you know she misses her long hair so you ask her if she wants to play with it before it goes?

she screams yes! and tells you to stay still while she raids Lance’s bathroom. He has the best hair supplies.

you two end up playing with it until dinner in which you have to, once again, explain what happened

everyone wants to play with it too and somehow it turns into a sleepover

you cut it off in the morning though because your neck is killing you

[bartsugsy]

I just wanna say, I'm so happy you're embracing your feelings towards Rebecca. It's just reached a whole other level of ridiculous now heh 😂😂😭😭.

this was probably the wrong (right?) time to send this message because i’ve been yelling about this theory all evening and….

i have some more Thoughts

ok, i think i sort of accidentally went back to trying to really fathom out her character again, but it always feels pointless, because i don’t know how we’re supposed to take her. i don’t know ultimately where her story should be or where it should be going. as far as i can tell, she’s there to further along robert’s story. that’s it. and that makes me annoyed because as much as i sort of just utterly despise her, why do i want to watch a female character help build up a male character without the writers even bothering to even try to make her character work in any kind of sensible way, or fleshed out, or even the slightest bit consistent? she’s so sloppily written and… you can sort of figure things out about her, but nothing that makes me understand why she is someone i would root for? 

like. i just want to know what the writers think of her. are we supposed to really be that invested in her? and if so, why haven’t they tried harder to make that happen by making her seem like more of a real multi-faceted character? as opposed to someone who, until literally two days ago, has never made a decision that someone else didn’t influence.

i just don’t really know where they can take her? because now she seems to have realised how shitty robert treats her and i enjoyed her earlier this week, tearing a strip off of him and rejecting him because she deserved to have a scene like that, but…

idk i’ve spent a lot of time talking about her with people today and thinking through her very thinly constructed character and it feels like they’ve started to do a 180 - they’ve had her take a stand against robert, they’ve had her stand fast in this one decision that she’s made by herself, against what other people have told her (yes with the prompting from vic, but she’s stood by it, so i’m sort of giving it to her anyway, baby steps etc). is that the extent of her character arc? where else can she go from here?

rebecca spent years - 5? years? 6? - idolising robert. She thought she was in love with him and she thought that she was the only one who knew him. She thought she was his aaron, essentially - the one person in her family who knew he was the sort of person who would cheat on chrissie, who was allowed to see all of him. i think she thought that she was more special to him than chrissie, and in that, didn’t actually ever see the real him at all.

earlier today i accidentally rewatched the first rob/rebecca kiss - the one that happened the day before ssw, rob’s inexplicable way to prove to himself that he wasn’t going to cheat on aaron that still makes literally no sense to me and almost annoys me more than The Incident because of it, but is saved only by the fact that it had less than zero effect on the story. the things that that scene - and the scene before it - did establish were: robert treats rebecca like shit and rebecca doesn’t really seem to notice. she just lets his words and tone mostly roll off her, still presses forwards and tries to see if he’ll give into her. she doesn’t stop or give up at that scene either. he strings her along just enough that she can just sort of blankly ignore the shit he says to her otherwise, especially when she brings aaron up.

and i think she must be jealous of aaron. it’s the only way her story works, in all honesty. for her to think that she was always something special to robert and to slowly be forced, over the course of the months of her returning to the village, to understand that the person she spent years she was to robert is in fact aaron dingle.

that and she must think of robert in a slightly delusional way - she puts him on a pedastal, ignores a lot of the bad things about him in favour of the good, because he really does treat her like shit. he’s occassionally genuinely nice to her, cares about her just enough, but largely treats her like a play thing - someone he can use to get his own way. he has so little regard for her feelings and she makes it so easy for him, lets him treat her that way, that he just continues, has really no respect for her (as little respect for her as i imagine she has for herself).

but despite every shitty thing he’s ever done to her, still she wants him. even after they’ve ostensibly drawn a line under things, she still makes promises to him, still tries to help him, still tries to stay in his life and bribes him to help her and… for all that i think she spent so many years convinced she was the person who knew him best, i think she blithely ignores so much of him in favour of this idea of who she thinks he is in her head.

this is literally the only way i can make sense of her continued responses to him, alongside both his behaviour to her on show and his canonical behaviour to her previously.

(i’m not really sure what to say about the first abortion anymore, because it 100% seems like something robert would do and i always stood by that, but in the light of her talking quite calmly about it to chrissie and saying it was the right thing to do, i sort of wonder if maybe rebecca was just throwing it in robert’s face for shock value, if she didn’t put up quite the fight that was originally implied, if it seemed a lot more of a joint decision? or maybe it wasn’t, but rebecca still recognises retroactively that it was the right thing to do? she certainly doesn’t seem to blame robert for it or any trauma she’s suffered relating to it when speaking to chrissie? which makes me think that she was trying to hurt robert and blame it on him, more than anything else?

idk, i feel vaguely uncomfortable about this line of thinking, hilariously enough, because i always want to make sure i’m holding robert as accountable as possible to his numerous fuck ups, but i think canonically speaking this is no longer as big of a fuck up as we once were led to believe it was. and at least that makes a damn slight more sense that she’d still continue loving him, wanting him in that same blind way as she does when arrives in emmerdale. no much more sense, but some.)

ANYWAY BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND

so i think rebecca is in love with this idea of robert that she has in her head, and there are ways you can parallel that with aaron and his relationship with robert during the affair

the difference comes from the second thing we know about rebecca, which is that she’s very easily led - and has shown very little agency at any point during her time on the show. where aaron would fight back against robert, rebecca never has - until recently.

we see him time and time again openly manipulate her. i won’t go into detail because i’ve done it already. one or twice.

(me: rebecca is such a boring character. also me: writes literal dissertations on her PICK A SIDE LO smh)

(me: liked rebecca before the Incident. also me: now writes thousands of words on why her character doesn’t work HYPOCRACY EVERYWHERE)

(me: knows that the character i thought rebecca white was was someone who despite everything, would ultimately do the right thing by the people she cares about and was largely better than giving into drunk, awful robert’s ridiculous seduction and had mad respect for her when she initially walked away, but also knew that she could potentially be at the mercy of Plot. also me: has been dealing with that and having to realign my every notion on who rebecca white is ever since because i am an obvious slave to canon and if she honestly didn’t do anything wrong that night, why the hell did she try to walk away in the first place)

(me: apparently has never held robert sugden to the same standard. also me: loves him anyway bc at least when he’s doing terrible things the show either invests in redeeming him or acknowledges that his actions are terrible. it took a long time for me to even like his character the first time i watched it but i got there and that time and backstory and the fact that it was so in character makes it easier to sympathise with than rebecca the walking plot device. still think he acted worse of the two of them that night, but as always, that’s just my take on it. but at least he’s shown remorse. she’s done nothing but imply she’s as big a victim as aaron in all of this. which. no.)

A N Y W A Y

She has the least amount of agency of any fictional character I’ve ever scene, has never been able to make a decision for herself that wasn’t somehow influenced by someone else… until this week.

Rebecca decides once and for all to keep the baby. Again, yes, Vic had to prompt her to take that step, but she’s still learning, she’s not used to being a grown adult person but she can totally take care of a living breathing child. 

she also, to my first point, has finally stopped buying robert’s bullshit. maybe it’s something about being pregnant and contemplating motherhood and one of his comments was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but she’s been outright wary of him, completely unwilling to be around him, in a way she never was before. 

so…. there we have it. character development, such that it is. is it satisfying? sort of….? but not really? there’s still not much else to her, is the thing. and where else does she have left to go? she’s found a spec of agency, she’s realised that her feelings of love weren’t for the actual flesh and blood robert sugden, but the version of him she has in her head.

she’s on a mission to get aaron to see the same (not aware that aaron knows far worse things about robert), despite her determination just one day before that she didn’t want to get involved. 

but… again, where can this storyline develop that’s satisfying not only for robert and aaron but rebecca too? 

it’s my firm belief that actually the most interesting direction to take her in would be to take her character development to the extreme - have her go out for revenge. become a character that grows from having no agency to taking every single drop of agency for herself and getting her own back at the man who she held in her heart for years, but turned around and crushed it

(around the time she realised that not even a baby would make him want to be with her)

everyone around her thinks she’s keeping the baby because she thinks it’ll win robert back. but if she’s keeping the baby for her and wants robert out of her hair for good, or wants to teach robert a lesson, or wants to take revenge because robert is eventually interested in the baby and still has basically no concern for her…

to be honest, with the way she was able to still look at robert, to let every horrible comment he’s said to her go and still want to be with him, still actively try to be with him despite being turned down repeatedly, it actually feels like a more believable direction for her character to take than anything else. because… that blind desperation has to come from somewhere. out and out villainise her - they’ve built seven months worth of backstory as to how and why she could be pushed to the extremes and it would make her a hell of a lot more interesting. hell, it would be better constructed as a dive into soap villainy than chrissie’s turn ever really was (which was ok, but extreme and pretty out of odds with the character we’d seen from her before - i really don’t mind though because i fucking loved her scheming overdramatic ass). plus, rebecca deserves to be able to put robert through some pain 

(obviously not ultimately really hurt him in any way but, you know, still)

idk, it’s just. a more enjoyable concept. it would fit her character magnificantly, when all is said and done. she’s been so meek, so easily manipulated for such a long time, has made near on every decision around robert, that giving her this opportunity to really do a 180 and take is to a soapy extreme would be amazing.

will they do this? i’m assuming not? if we’re supposed to like rebecca???? and i still don’t really know if we are or not. 

what could they do instead? a lot of things that are less interesting, probably. and less satisfying for all of the characters involved. like. i guess she’ll just plod along, hating robert but staying firm in her decision?

or maybe she’ll start liking robert again which would make no sense but i guess the plot means that everyone forgives everyone else on a soap in one way or another eventually, but when ‘not liking robert’ is actually a genuine part of her character development… idk, is that satisfying? is that a good thing for her character? because i don’t feel like it is and i don’t feel like she should like robert again. he doesn’t deserve it from her. and i don’t have any interest in watching him make it up to her.

i don’t know. it’s 2am now and i want to sleep. i feel like maybe i’d be able to start comfortably theorising about her if i knew whether or not we were supposed to like her character. i do know that… there are a couple of ways they could take this storyline that would be ok with me, but this is literally the only way i could think of that would help save rebecca’s character and still make sense -

- but i just don’t think, regardless of what we’re supposed to feel, they really care about her enough to worry if she makes sense or not, so. she could really go in any damn direction (and i’ll be here once more, scrambling to make sense of an illogical character all over again)

(see, this is why i know i should actually just give up)

[juliivn-blog]

*  bill skarsgård, age 27, he/him  | oh, them? that’s julian nilsson. they’ve lived in carina bay for, like, one week. last time i spoke to them they were a drug dealer, and if i remember correctly, they’re an aries. seeing them around always makes me think of track marks hidden beneath a long-sleeved shirt, the watery reflection of a neon sign in a motel parking lot, the eerie quiet of 5am after a sleepless night. ( lainie, 24, cst, she/her ) 

hello bitches it me ur local bag of literal garbage ( lainie ) back at it again !! this time bringing u the anti adrian and pls be wary bc there are a lot of sensitive topics down below ( tws for major drug use, drug addiction, death, grief, shitty parenting, neglect, abandonment?? kind of idk better safe than sorry )

so bear with me bc his background info is kind of Long!! his mom and dad are from just outside of st louis, missouri. his mom came from a pretty wealthy family and she was just like tryna be ~rebellious in her young adult years by dating julian’s dad (who came from a super trashy family and had a Bad Boy Rep). when she was 19 and he was 22 she got pregnant ( with julian ) and her fam was like lol get rid of that baby or ur gone !! but they were “““madly in love””” and she was on her rebellious shit so they literally eloped to the city ( st louis ) and got an apartment together and had julian but never actually got married bc they were too cool ( read: irresponsible ) for that. ofc this ended up being rly miserable bc she was used to living the rich life and now her family had disowned her, and suddenly she was starting to realize this dude she had a kid with was kind of a deadbeat party boy with no interest in having a family, not to mention she started realizing like?? i don’t actually want a kid this is a lot of work?? so like julian’s childhood years were a lot of him having to learn to take care of himself and not having anyone to depend on most of the time. and that’s not to say they didn’t both care abt him on some level bc there were definitely times they paid attention to him and gave him a birthday party or two but for the most part he was on his own

fast forward 5 years and finally julian’s dad, now in his late 20s and getting antsy, peaces the fuck out to los angeles to live his best party boy life. baby julian is very upset bc even tho his dad doesnt pay a lot of attention to him he like idolizes him. julian’s mom is saltier than EVER about having to take care of a kid but she doesn’t wanna go to LA ( especially for this asshole she doesn’t even like anymore ) and her parents won’t have anything to do with her or her illegitimate child so the NEXT 5 years are a lot of moving around from shitty apartment to shitty apartment and job to job by themselves. his dad would now and then send weird postcards and stuff from cali so he had like a vague idea of the fact that his dad was living his own life somewhere that looked super wild, and when he was 11 years old he managed to send a letter back asking if he could come live with him. his dad contacts his mom, there’s a bunch of fighting, but in the end julian did indeed get to go live with his dad in los angeles, mostly bc his mom just didn’t give a fuck anymore and was lowkey like…u know what fine take him i can have my life back

obviously his dad does not know how to be a dad !!! he kind of thought of julian as his little like…..sidekick like he just thought having this 11 year old kid around was hilarious. so julian went to LA and was living with his dad and his dad’s friends in a relatively nice apartment but like it’s always filled with people doing drugs and having sex and it’s just. not child friendly at all. so that’s how julian was introduced to weed at the ripe young age of 11!!! from there on out he was like a big time weed and cigarette smoker, was very early having sex and trying other drugs, and by the time he graduated high school he was already hardcore doing coke

so julian like kind of wanted to go to college bc some part of him did crave normalcy, but he was way too far up his own ass to get his shit together for that !! plus like....he didn’t rly have good role models. so his first year after high school instead of getting on a good path for his future he decided living his best life would include moving into an apartment with his cokehead best friend. it was around that time that julian met his first boyfriend. he was already totally aware he was bi, had slept with boys in high school, but this was the first time he rly fell in love with a guy. he was like……….head! over! heels! for this boy. julian met him at a club and he was like sort of soft and relatively innocent until they started dating and julian got him smoking weed and then snorting coke

this next part is very triggering so please read with caution !! when he was 21, julian tried heroin for the first time. for about 6 months it gradually got really bad, his life started spiraling, and his bf was like….becoming unable to deal with it, especially bc while julian was getting worse his bf was kind of trying to move in the opposite direction and get off the coke and get his life back together. there was a lot of fighting, but his bf kept not actually making the move to end things bc he loved julian and was just like hoping something would turn around. one night, however, in a moment of weakness, he let julian talk him into trying heroin with him. it was kind of a “i promise i’ll get clean if u try it with me this one time” thing. being in and out of consciousness and not really aware of what was going on, he didn’t notice that his bf was overdosing and he ended up dying simply bc the heroin was too much for his body and he stopped breathing. julian didn’t notice until the morning when he woke up, and obviously that was by far the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to him and left some deep ass emotional scars

so following this, he actually did check himself into rehab. he was there for 3 months, got completely clean, but he only managed to stay that way for two weeks before he was first snorting heroin again and then back to shooting up and selling drugs

it was about a year later when he was 23 that he met kit while he was doing a deal at some seedy bar outside of town. they quickly fell into a completely unanticipated relationship--notably, julian’s first since his boyfriend’s death. in spite of that trauma and feeling guilty even as he did it, he started introducing kit to drugs. in his mind, it was kind of a thing where he fell in love really fast and really hard out of nowhere and he saw this sad little thing with no place to go and drugs are the only thing he’s ever known himself, so it was very natural to be like “here try this it helps” and also naively convincing himself he’d never let what happened before happen again

so four years later they’re living together and completely broke, living mostly off the money julian makes selling drugs and whatever else they can scrape up, when kit decides he wants to do a road trip across the country. julian’s very impulsive, doesn’t really give a shit about anything in LA anyway, and to top it off has a hard time saying no to kit. SO a road trip it is !! they make it all the way across the country before finally using up the last of their money and realizing they don’t have enough to get back

which is how he wound up in carina bay! they’re currently living out of julian’s car with a little makeshift bed in the back and he’s selling drugs again to try and save up enough so they can get home, but they use most of what he’s supposed to sell so it’s.......not going very well euyagafdhs

so now that his lengthy as fuck background is over with………julian is an extremely EXTREMELY dry sarcastic person. the guilt over his bf has made him wayyyyyyyy worse, like his sense of humor is so so much darker than it was before that happened, but he’s honestly just a rly sarcastic person to begin with. he has some softness inside especially for people he rly cares abt, but you will not catch julian being sentimental or taking literally anything seriously unless you’ve managed to seriously worm your way into his heart

he’s not like a GRUMP tho at all he just....doesn’t take things seriously. he’s literally the embodiment of every bart simpson meme

"whatever my dude” is his aesthetic

he’s very careful about his drug dealing, he won’t go around talking about it or anything, he does it all under the radar as much as he can and especially having done it for so long now and having experienced a lot of traumatic crap, he’s pretty good at what he does and he won’t fuck with people he doesn’t trust

even when it’s warm it’s not totally unlikely to see him in long sleeves bc he has really bad track marks all over his arms from shooting up so much, especially in the early days when he was really bad at it

he absolutely will not talk about his past and if anything even close to it comes up in conversation he will skate right over that so qUICK ur head will spin

i think that’s IT FOR NOW if u made it this far i commend ur effort and attention span. im gna list some plots n stuff below and hit me uP for some angst bc ya girl is here for the drama as usual

CONNECTION IDEAS

any and all drug related things !! people who buy from him (especially weed, he’s a lot more lenient about to whom he sells weed as opposed to other stuff), people he introduces to drugs, friends he actually does drugs with

he’s very dry and enigmatic but he’s also quite social so seriously give me friends for him. he’s high a LOT but not always and he likes being out doing stuff

definitely somebody or somebodies who don’t trust him and his drug addict bart simpson vibe please please give me people who don’t like him

along that same vein it takes a lot to get julian worked up and in fight mode bc he prefers to just let things roll off his shoulders but it would def be fun to have someone who gets him to that point

also somebody who?? maybe thinks they can “fix” him and genuinely does their best to try and persuade him to change his life and that it’s not too late to turn everything around

if ur muse is randomly from st louis missouri????? hit me up with a past connection from way back in julian’s childhood 

also someone he went to high school with in LA if they’re from LA. this person would probably not be surprised at the way julian turned out ystefygdjhs