#this is just part 1 of the whole thing
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Cosmism and Elysium - Hegel, time, communism, thoughts, end of the world
Plain text version here. Sources under the cut:
Various quotes from the following writings:
Russian Cosmism edited by Boris Groys
Timeline of Russian Cosmism by Anastasia Gacheva, Arseny Zhilyaev, and Anton Vidokle, e-flux journal
Optimists of the Future Past Perfect by Arseny Zhilyaev, e-flux journal
Cosmology of the Spirit by Evald Ilyenkov from Statis journal and an abridged version of the text
Noosphere wikipedia page
Disco Elysium, Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz, Disco Elysium artbook
#disco elysium#sacred and terrible air#inframaterialism#pale#pĂŒha ja Ă”udne lĂ”hn#web weaving#de web weaving#de meta#this is just part 1 of the whole thing#long post
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Imagine you live in pelican town. The new farmer has been here a couple weeks now and seems to be settling in, except... He's picking the weirdest friend choices. Like sure it's not weird to befriend the local fisherman, especially when he has an interest in fishing himself, but you're pretty sure you've seen him rooting through the Saloon's garbage with the local homeless man. As well, he keeps harassing the poor guy who works at Joja even though you KNOW he doesn't want to be friends with him.
And since you're on the topic of weirdness, isn't it odd he seemingly runs everywhere at a full sprint? Or just... Eats entire raw fish while fishing for "energy reasons"...
...
Despite all that, it's too early to call him off putting or anything... He has been engaging in town traditions, and he's started helping out with the old community centre. He's probably like the rest of you. Someone with a few quirks, that will fit in with the valley great!
Surely he can't get any weirder... Right?
#been playing my new sdv save some more recently#i keep thinking about the whole âeldritchâ farmer thing#where the famer is just... objectively strange#i fucking love it#i love the idea of the farmer being some sort of higher being#someone who doesnt understand local conventions#someone who doesnt get why its considered weird to eat whole raw fish fresh from the river#or how it might be offputting to greet someone for the first time using their name#but at the same time#this eldritch entity genuinely wants to be a part of the community#they want to learn and they want to love and they want to learn to love#i see minmaxxer/speedrunner eldritch famer a lot#mainly played off for gags#but not genuinely loving their live in the valley eldritch farmer#at least not often#theres so much temptation to write an eldritch farmer x shane fanfic set in spring 1 or some shit lmao#text post#stardew valley#sdv#sdv farmer
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i need a name for this bug
#ultrakill#v1 ultrakill#v2 ultrakill#v1#v2#doodles#should i tag as ship? i think it can count so why not#v4v#y2r1#so far i call it two things#hybrid and w1#get it because uhm#w is a letter thats just two v's smushed together#i am still to fully design this abomination but ill get there!!!#so far im sticking with 1 head for those two#jsut because it fits better with the whole combined and intertwined so much they arent sure who is who sometimes deal#two heads would mean one controls one part and the other the other stuff#but no they both move this entire thing together#id imagine its by constantly giving each other requests they approve of#sorry for my tag ramble enjoy my sketch o7#W1
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helsinki tit preshow (not full)
youtube
youtube
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#didnt get to film the whole thing again#part 2 is mostly redundant with part 1. just more hd and with complete answer to the last question#dan and phil#phan#daniel howell#amazingphil#ti misc#my ti
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listen im ace and im pro kink at pride and whatever, but the way some of yall are wording your posts in response to the backlash against it is uh. really taking me back to the ace shitcourse era.
yall know theres nothing wrong with being a "virgin", right? that its not inherently shameful to have not had sex, to never have sex, even if youre not ace, even if you do want to have sex someday, like, its fine that you haven't had sex?
maybe if your problem is that theyre trying to police your behavior and shame you for expressing your sexuality, you can say that? instead of resorting to "haha stupid virgin gets no bitches" like my god. do you not hear how fucking regressive that attitude is? i know, i know, youre "joking".
get a better joke
#toy txt post#god im going to regret this post im gonna regret it so much i can feel it in my bones#let it flop..........pls#internalize my message let it sink in and understand what i am saying and then let the post flop#i say. knowing the ppl who need to see such a message are the ones who will make me regret this post and regrwt not having#1 million bajillion disclaimers#virgin is in quotes bc its a bullshit made up stupid purity culture concept anyway and quite frankly i hate even seeing the word#disclaimer: the previous sentence is not me saying that it is a slur for asexuals. it is me a single individual saying this specific word#grosses me out to read and see everywhere when its a stupid bullshit binary made up or at least historically largely used#to shame largely women and i dont know why we're still using it in 2023#and ive just been. seeing such an uptick in this whole like. attitude? lately and like#im ace im minorly sex repulsed. mostly about anything sex at me bad. other adults sex at each other consensually? go wild#i like to think im pretty chill about it. i try to be. i think its fine ig to be like 'my meat is huge i fuck so much so good'#like okay not my thing but good for you. love that for you#but then some of yall have started turning it back around back to. 'haha your meat so small and shriveled you get no bitches'#'haha stupid incel virgin' like okay. didnt realize we all went back to fucking. middle school but okay#god im gonna run out of tine to get ready for my thing writing this stupid post UGH evil#but like idk we've kinda circled back to being like haha being a virgin still is stupid and silly and shameful#and if im quite honest. i do think the acecourse played a part in that bc i felt like we were making good progress in like#hey guys is fine to not have sex ever if you dont want to its fine to not want sex its fine#and then aphobes went fucking rabid on us and splintered and destroyed online communities all over but especially on tumblr#and so many aces went back in the closet we stopped talking about it we stopped spreading awareness and now this stupid goddamn like#and now this stupid bullshit attitude is back where its like funny to call someone a virgin as an insult but like no bro trust me its okay#its okay for me to do it bc im a hot queer person with huge meat instead of a cisstraight frat bro with huge meat#? like you know the issue was the behavior right? not the fact that it was straight dudes saying it? its bc the thing being said was shitty?#you know you can dunk on the puritan bitches trying to police your behavior at pride without getting us as collateral damage right#stop making me read that stupid ugly ass word ur not cool or funny#whatever#if you come on to this post to start shit i will not only block you but as many of your mutuals and followers as i can find. i will scroll#i will block this entire fucking website if i need to do not test me. i am exhausted and the acecourse ate up all my tolerance in 2015.
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Bradley "Boyfriend" Bradshaw
Messy hair, hickies and soft clothes <3
#sam draws#fanart#digital art#art#top gun#top gun maverick#rooster#bradley rooster bradshaw#bradley bradshaw#top gun art#top gun fanart#tgm#miles teller#I'm kind of in the middle of a whole medical issue so art might be a lil slow#sorry about that everyone#i had to go to the ER and everything lmao#im okay for the most part but its a thing thats been going on all year and im#1. really fucking tired of this and being in pain#and 2. really want to know what the fuck is going on with me that this keeps happening#hopefully ill get referred to a specialist now that its happened again#since that was kind of our plan#but we'll see!#but yes#between me being in pain and trying to work enough hours to keep my apartment art may be touch and go#i just wanna sleep all the time it really sucks
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Haunted (Matt Murdock x TRT!Reader, Fic, SFW)đ§ïž
Right, so close to 3 years ago, I had an ask in my box: 'what would happen if TRT!Reader/Jane Hind lost her memory just before returning to Matt after her three months away', aka: just before point where they both confessed their love and got together in mainline TRT. So I wrote up a fairly angsty, no happy ending sort of fic about it, which you can find here. But there just felt like there was more to the story, and the idea of a sequel wouldn't leave me alone, so I've worked on it in little bits and pieces over the past few years and I'm finally ready to unleash that into the world now that it's been edited to my satisfaction.
This will have a happy ending and hurt/comfort, once we swim through a lot of Matt Suffering. <3 Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader
Chapter Summary:
Leaving him like that shouldnât have bothered you as much as it did. You didnât know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldnât glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it. He⊠shouldnât have been alone. That was wrong, somehow. There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that⊠that youâd made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting. Matt was alone. Youâd left him alone. It was the right choice, one youâd made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back. So⊠why did you feel so very sick?
Wordcount: 11, 805 words so, hilariously, about 3 times the length of Part 1
Warnings for this chapter: angst, alcohol, matt spiraling fairly badly, he throws some things, LOTS of TRT references and spoilers so I wouldn't do this one unless you've finished the Miami arc in TRT.
Sad Matt gif as a reminder that the angst is pretty heavy here because I'm really going to emotionally beat on this poor man for a bit.
At Ciroâs insistence, you gave yourself one month in Hellâs Kitchen.Â
A month wasnât much time, granted, but it would hopefully be enough to see if there was a chance of bringing back the memories youâd lost: memories of friends, of your life here, and of⊠of whatever it was that youâd had with Matt Murdock. Based on his grief over the loss of Jane Hindânot you, but her surely, the role, the mask youâd worn while hereâhis attachment to her had been deep and fervent, and those feelings appeared to have been at least partly reciprocated. The dangerously intimate photo youâd found in your memory box was all the proof you needed of that.Â
Your past self had already been accustomed to his touch when the photo was taken, based on the way sheâd allowed him to press his head tenderly to her temple, his dark eyes warm and fond as he'd smiled in her direction even if he couldn't see her, his arm draped over her shoulders. She should have been put off by the proximity, by such a blatant show of physical intimacy, but instead of looking distressed, sheâd been relaxed and comfortable where sheâd confidently tucked herself up against his side. Try as you might, you hadnât been able to find any hint of discomfort, any clue that signaled the obvious affection sheâd felt was an act, her shoulder angled in a way that made you think sheâd wrapped her arm comfortably around his waist, her grin bright and so very real.
This couldnât be you.
When was the last time you'd looked that happy?
When was the last time youâd let someone hold you close?Â
And when was the last time someone had looked at you like⊠like they mightâŠÂ
âDid I⊠love him, Ciro?â
âI believe that⊠you might have, yes. Him, and this city. That is why I encourage you to stay, for a time at least. See if the memories return to you. Even should you leave, it would be wise to know of the life you led here.â
Ciro had sent a check to your office, booking you for the month and clearing your schedule. Just like that, you were free to focus on looking for something that might trigger the return of your memories. Though what that something might be, you werenât really sure. A more thorough examination of the apartment had been your first step. Unfortunately, thereâd been nothing there that seemed familiar beyond the same cheap decor and calculated set pieces youâd always used. Youâd quickly ruled those out. They were meaningless distractions meant to reinforce the lie of whatever pre-planned identity youâd taken on. In this case, that identity was Jane Hindâpractical, professional, detached, likes sailboat paintings and the color grey. Based on the fine layer of dust you'd found coating everything but the kitchen counter and a neat stack of mail, no one else had spent much time here during your months away. That, at least, fit your pattern. You werenât in the habit of making friends or putting down roots. There was no point in doing so when youâd just wind up cutting them loose and running again.Â
What had unsettled you far more were the hints of connection youâd found quietly tucked away:
A fleecy stuffed bear holding a plush crystal ball, the threads connecting the two uneven as if hand-stitched. That kind of time and effort wouldnât have been spent on anyone but a friend, and the bearâs prominent position on the counter lent it far more importance than any of the other decorations.
A tacky âHandsome Devilâ coffee mug, the curling red script and clichĂ©d devil horns design bizarrely out of place amongst the rest of the plain white mugs in the cupboard. An identity like Jane Hind wouldnât have been caught dead drinking from it, which meant someone else was here with enough regularity to have a mug of their own. Further digging revealed a second decorated mug, this one adorned with the name of the law firm co-run by Matt. You could have written off one mug, but two? Two was a pattern.
An entire drawer in the dresser devoted solely to a pile of dangerously soft shirts that clearly didnât belong to Jane Hind, the fabric threadbare and worn. They looked about the right size to be Mattâs, though, the faint traces of scent a match for him. The fact that they took up an entire drawer indicated heâd visited often enough to need a space for his clothes.Â
Youâd⊠made space for him in your false life. That wasnât something you did.
Or had you been the one wearing them?Â
Maybe�
Youâd spent a long moment holding one of the shirts in your hand, rubbing at the fabric in hopes of stirring something. When that hadnât worked, youâd even brought it up to your nose to inhale slowly, just in case the traces of scent brought some memory back.Â
Clean soap. Salt. Copper. Faint cinnamon.Â
All it had done was remind you of holding a grieving Matt in his kitchen after heâd realized your memories werenât coming back. It was a gloomy enough memory, but ultimately unhelpful.
You'd tossed the old shirt on top of the dresser and moved on.Â
While you didnât know who exactly youâd been here in New York, the longer you searched, the more it became clear what had happened. Youâd started to slip, your years of isolation forming a crack in your layers of armor. That fracture had allowed an attachment to form, an insidious connection worming its way in through the open gap like poisonous roots through crumbling pavement. Youâd grown weak, and careless. There was no other explanation for why youâd broken so many of your rules, dominoes tipping one by one until it cascaded into a waterfall of mistakes. Youâd slipped before, of courseâloneliness was natural and expected, which was why you had so many contingenciesâbut youâd never let yourself get in this deep. Not until now.Â
What you didnât know wasâŠÂ
Why?
Why here?Â
Why these people?Â
And why the fuck hadnât you followed your rules and run?Â
If there was an answer to be found in Jane Hindâs apartment, you couldnât seem to find it, no matter how hard you look, no matter how many of her belongings you dug through. Even your memory box had failed you, the photo of you and Matt at the back of your stack of pictures an outlier you couldnât explain, this fruit of an as-yet unidentified poisonous tree. You had no real leads, no faint ringing of memory to guide you beyond a vague sense that, somehow, this started with Matt. You didnât even know where to begin.Â
At least, not until some shaggy-haired guy named Foggyâwhat the fuck kind of nickname was that?âshowed up entirely and rudely unannounced at your front door, dressed in a cheap suit and wearing a bizarrely determined look. Despite your doubts, you reluctantly allowed him in. He made it pretty clear he knew you, and if you were lucky he could tell you more about your life here.
âSo I know you usually skedaddle when things get uncomfortable, which I imagine they are at the moment. How long are you trying to stay?âÂ
âOne month.â You shrugged casually, a cover for just how warily you were watching him as he paced in yourâin Jane Hindâs living area. He knew far more about you than you knew about him, a reversal you were uncomfortably aware of. That vulnerability was almost enough to trigger a retreat beneath that cold, brittle shell youâd used long ago, though you quickly caught hold of that instinct and buried it back down deep where it belonged. Still, you couldnât quite hide the cool clip to your voice, your walls firmly in place. âLeaving after that. Donât see the point in staying if the memories are gone. Truthfully Iâm not sure why I stayed in the first place, especially once it was clear I was getting attached. No offense.âÂ
âNone taken, my hopefully-still-friend-when-your-memories-come-back.â He abruptly swiveled on his feet to face you, squinting at you thoughtfully. âHow badly do you want your memories back?âÂ
You thought of out-of-place mugs and hand-stitched psychic teddy bears; of faint cinnamon and a worn photo frame; of the way youâd held a broken Matt in his kitchen until heâd carefully pushed you away and asked you to leave, his face closed off and distant despite the tears on his cheeks and yours.Â
Youâd⊠been someone here. Someone cared for. Someone whose loss was mourned. Â
Even if you left, you needed to know just who that someone had been, if only so you could make sure this never happened again. Not until you reached your island in the sun.Â
âBadly enough to stay for the month,â you said quietly.Â
âThen put some shoes on. Weâre going on a memory hunt.â
Over the next few weeks, Foggy took you all over Hellâs Kitchen.Â
You visited Jane Hindâs office, abandoned warehouses, and empty rooftops covered in thick blankets of snow. He reintroduced you to Karen, to your upstairs neighbors, and to a bartender who didnât seem all that inclined to be introduced to anyone. You drank crappy beer and slightly less crappy vodka, played pool, and went to the zoo to stare for far too long at penguins, which Foggy refused to explain no matter how much you pressed. He had you focus on sights, on smells, on sounds that might trigger a memory. He joked with you in between, and he was just funny enough, friendly and clever enough, that for the first week or so, you were consistently cracking a smile. Hell, you even laughed now and then, much to your surprise. He really did know you, enough so that you gradually began to relax around him, just a little. He was likely hoping the addition of a friendâs voice would bring back what youâd lost, especially when paired with all the other sensations.Â
But no matter how much you both tried, your memories remained lost.Â
God, you hadnât thought this would⊠would hurt as much as it did. Yet with every day that you failed to find your way back to who youâd been, the more that fierce ache, that old longing inside you grew. Your smiles became brittle, your laughter fading, until both finally dried up like withered, crumbling leaves beneath a bitter frost. You couldn't help pulling away really, not when your soul curling up in the dark might protect you from the agony of knowing that maybe, just maybe, youâd finally found what you'd always wanted. How fitting that it had been ripped away from your bloodied, desperate hands like so many times before, one more square for the filthy patchwork quilt of shredded lives and possibilities youâd been forced to leave behind. What was worse: even your memories of that seeming joy had been stolen, too, leaving you with nothing left to carry but the tattered scraps of a ghost and the photograph of a stranger wearing your skin.
It shouldnât have been possible to miss what you couldnât remember. Yet here you were missing it all the same.Â
It didnât help that Matt was avoiding you in every way that mattered. Youâd thought about calling him if only to ask him questions about your life here, but you could never quite work up the courage to do it. He must have felt the same since he hadnât reached out to you, either. And why would he? He knew as well as you did that your memories likely werenât coming back. It made sense to cut that connection, tear it away like a weed before the roots could do more damageâsomething you should have done sooner, for both your sakes. What you hadnât expected was just how good he was at dodging you, somehow absent no matter how many places Foggy took you to, places he swore Matt frequented with you when youâd lived here, as if Mattâs mere presence might be enough to trigger some memory in you. Had he been that important? Either way, it didnât matter. You hadnât seen Matt once since youâd walked out, doing your best to ignore his hitched breath as youâd opened the door. Youâd forced yourself to ignore, too, the broken, agonized sound of grief that heâd let out as you quietly shut the door behind you, leaving him alone.Â
Leaving him like that shouldnât have bothered you as much as it did. You didnât know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldnât glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it.Â
He⊠shouldnât have been alone. That was wrong, somehow.Â
There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that⊠that youâd made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting.Â
Matt was alone.Â
Youâd left him alone.Â
It was the right choice, one youâd made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back.
So⊠why did you feel so very sick?Â
Sympathy.Â
That was all you were feeling. Matt was grieving a woman heâd cared about, one whoâd died and left a cold stranger in her place. It was normal to feel for someone in that much pain, and no one should be alone while grieving. Maybe this was for the best. The sooner you were fully out of his life, the sooner all his friends and family could step in, and the sooner he could move on. He wouldnât be alone, then. And even if he was, his loneliness wasnât your goddamn problem. You had more than enough troubles of your own.
Protect yourself.Â
Protect what you might one day have.Â
All else was irrelevant.
You just⊠hoped he was doing alright.Â
He did his best to avoid you, but that only grew more difficult once your ghost began to haunt his every step.
Even Josieâs quickly became off-limitsâsomething he discovered one night when he stepped through the front door where he was promptly met with the familiar, comforting scent of you floating like a haze beneath the smell of cheap beer and sour sweat. His body went rigid the moment he recognized it, your presence across the room a sharpened knife that only widened the wound carved into him by your death. And if the scent of you was a knife, then your bark of laughter was a cruel twist of the blade, one that left him gutted and shaking there in the doorway. He drank in his apartment after that, waiting for that blessed moment when he would feel nothing, waiting for the very second the glorious shroud of night fell. Only then could he finally escape to the streets and drown himself in a far better kind of pain, taking his rage and his grief out on whatever piece of shit had the misfortune of falling into the Devilâs path.Â
But Foggy seemed determined to shove the specter of you directly into his face.Â
âYou need to talk to her!â Foggy snapped, his voice only just shy of a shout. Matt ignored him as he headed for his office, desperate to retreat from your scent lingering on Foggyâs clothes. Foggy had taken you to a coffee shop that morning, one youâd frequented when youâd lived here, and now each inhalation was a vicious torment. It felt like breathing in shards of glass, the sharp pain of it throbbing with every stuttered, choked breath he drew in. If Foggy noticed, he didnât seem to care. âChrist, Matt! You love her and we both know it. If you talk to her, it might trigger somethingââ
âStop,â Matt grit out, reaching up to scrub his hand angrily over his face. He stalked his way over to his desk, still desperate to escape somehow, even if it was into his work. âJust stop, Foggy. I did talk to her, and you know what happened? Nothing. She didnât remember anything at all. Sheâs gone, and you dragging this out is just making everything worse for all of us.âÂ
âSo what, youâre just gonna roll over?â Foggy scoffed, crossing his arms as he planted his feet in Mattâs doorway. âAre you sure you actually loved her? Because Iâm pretty sure she loved yââ
Matt slammed his fist down on his desk, the furious crack of it echoing through the office like a gunshot as he shouted, âDonât you fucking dare!âÂ
Tension hung thick in the air as Mattâs chest heaved, his teeth bared, blood and adrenaline running hot in his veins as if Foggy were some sort of-of threat. Everything in him shook with rage, or maybe unshed grief, the burden of them both impossibly twisted and tangled beneath the sea of his guilt and his self-loathing until he couldnât tell which was which. He just couldnâtâhow was he supposed to force it all down when Foggy had just come so close, so dangerously close to shattering what few pieces remained of Mattâs crumbling armor?
It was bad enough loving you the way he did only for you to slip through his bloodied, desperate grasp like whispering grains of sand. What was worse, this entire disaster was one of his own making, a series of mistakes whose snarled, winding paths led inevitably back to him just like they had so many times before in his life. This loss of someone whoâd truly understood him, accepted him, cared for him had already broken something inside him he wasnât sure heâd ever be able to repair. But that fracturing inside him would surely rise up to consume him if Foggy were right, if youâd truly cared for him that deeply before your memories were taken, so deeply that you might even haveâŠ
I miss you, sweetheart.
âŠloved him the way he loved you.Â
Abruptly Mattâs surge of rage drained away and his head fell, leaving him feeling all the more empty and broken. He braced his arms weakly against his desk, drawing in a shaky breath as he forced himself to confess, his voice gone hoarse and ragged with grief. âI loved her, Foggy.â He lifted one shaking hand to his face. âGod, I loved her so, so much. I canât⊠I donât know what to do without her now that sheâs gone.â âI know, Matt,â Foggy said gently. âI know.â âI loved how she always smelled a little like coffee, and the way she always managed to wind up climbing into the oddest places for a case. She had one of the foulest mouths Iâve ever heard, but I swear she could use it to talk her way out of almost anything or to bring someone up out of whatever dark hole they were trapped in. She was⊠far kinder than sheâd ever admit.â His lips quirked, but there was no humor in it, the expression miserable and gutted. Youâd have likely argued with him about how kind you were if youâd been here. But there was no chance of that now, no matter how much the scent of you on the air told him otherwise. âSome days it felt like she was the only thing holding me together, like the only time I could breathe was when she held me in her arms. She was always there when I fell apart, or when it all⊠when it all started to hurt too much. And I tried to give her whatever pieces of me the Kitchen hadnât already taken, to be there for her like she was for me, to keep her safe. We were finally going to make our relationship official when she came back, her and me, even if thereâd⊠already been something there for a while now if Iâm honest.âÂ
And it had, it had been there, this soft, tender thing that had developed slowly but surely between the two of you, a tangling that came by degrees rather than all at once. It had sprouted, grown, and blossomed so gradually that even now he struggled to point to any one moment where it had truly begunâthe night he found you in the warehouse, maybe, or that first game of Devil Hunt, or when youâd both almost taken the leap before heâd realized you were drunk. But the question of where it began didnât matter. All that mattered was that it was there, something nameless yet still so good and warm and perfect, a connection nurtured in the low light and the blood-soaked soil of the Kitchen. Youâd felt it just like he had, and youâd been willing to take that chance with him despite the baggage he carried behind him like an anchor destined to drag him down. You never would have agreed to kiss him when you came back otherwise. Now that chance was gone.Â
âHow much did she know before she left?â Foggy asked quietly, leaning against the doorframe.Â
âShe knew that I-that I wanted to be with her, but I never told her that I loved her.â Matt blew out a slow, heavy breath. âI was too scared of chasing her away, I guess. I thought maybe when she came back, if she still wanted me, I would⊠I decided that I would tell her. But I waited too long. Now sheâs gone and Iâll never be able to tell her. All because of me.âÂ
He finally lifted his head, tipping it at Foggy. Neither of them dared mention the wetness on Mattâs cheeks. Even speaking about thisâabout how much heâd loved you only for him to ruin itâwas almost more than he could bear, the edges of the wound still fresh and raw. Then again, maybe he deserved that pain after how miserably heâd failed you, just like everyone else in his life. âI miss her. And whatâs worse is even when sheâs right there in front of me, sheâs not. Sheâs not, Foggy. Because I-I fucked up. Iâm the reason the woman I knew, the woman I loved, died. Iâm the reason sheâll never remember what we had, why Iâll never hold her again, and why sheâll leave New York at the end of the month like she does whenever sheâs afraid of forming a connection.â He let out a bitter laugh, waving towards the windows, towards the place youâd once held dear. âI couldnât even keep her here before. She almost ran last summer and the only thing that stopped her was being kidnapped. That was what slowed her down long enough for our thread to turn red, not me. She wonât let that happen a second time, not now that sheâs seen what happens to people I care about. Do you understand?âÂ
The door to Nelson and Murdock creaked open, Karenâs voice making its way in first. Her voice was followed only a moment later by anotherâs, one still so familiar.Â
ââI mean, winding up in a pool while chasing a kid sounds about right for me, so even if I donât remember, I wonât argueââ
âI had to keep you here somehow.â Foggyâs voice remained quiet, but there was no disguising the ferocity in it now, the fervent belief. âGet out of your own head and talk to her, Matt. Fight for her. She would want you to.âÂ
No.Â
No, no, no.
Your body may have been here, whole and real, but the woman whoâd known him wasnât. The song of your voice, your sweet scent, the flames of heat and stirred air currents around you flaring into a familiar shape: all of it was nothing but a lie, a snare for his senses, a ghost of his own making, and he wasnât about to be caught by it again.Â
He darted back around his desk, shoving his way past Foggy on the way toward the front door, his heart racing. If he was quick, if he just put up enough of a front, he could get out before they trapped you here with him like theyâd planned. He wouldnât relive this grief again, he couldnât, not without falling apart. The moment heâd had with you in his apartment had been enough agony for one lifetime.Â
âHey, Matt.â You cleared your throat, shifting awkwardly on your feet where youâd stopped by the front door. Your stance was cautious and guarded, almost wary of him. It was just one more reminder of how uncomfortable he made you now. âAre youââ
âHeading out,â he said stiffly, only belatedly remembering to trace one hand along the wall as if his heightened senses hadnât given him a clear map of the room the moment his adrenaline spiked. That spike was a curse all its own. It made the scent of you so much stronger, the lie of it fresh and present as it twined around him. His chest hitched just once before he forced himself to breathe his mouth. But that route of escape had been cut off, too. All it did was shift his focus to the taste of you on the air, and the taste of familiar fabric once so tenderly given.Â
You were wearing one of his shirts.Â
He fumbled for his cane, his hands starting to shake before he finally found it where heâd left it against the wall. He couldnât let you see him like this. It wasnât your fault that you didnât remember him, nor was it your fault that heâd lost you. Heâd done enough damage without adding a layer of guilt to what you were dealing with, too. But despite his attempts to hide what he was feeling, his face a hard mask, your fingers still brushed gently against his arm a moment later. It was an offer of help, or maybe an attempt to reach out, to slow him down, to connect. It was a kindness, a sympathy he didnât deserve. Even now, you read him far too well, this touch the same as it had been that first night heâd met you when youâd gently brushed your hand against his arm. âHey, do you need⊠I could walk you home.â
He shied away from your touch, finally managing to roughly unsnap his cane before going for the door. âIâm fine. I justâI have things to take care of. Excuse me.â Â
He went straight home and showered, but no matter how many times he scrubbed, he couldnât seem to wash the ghost of your scent away.
You slowly wandered around Mattâs office, taking it in. This was another place youâd supposedly frequented, a place that should have been familiar, and one you'd avoided until now.
Even though Foggy had assured you it was alright, it felt⊠almost wrong to explore a strangerâs space like this without them present. But you couldnât help but brush your fingers across the battered desk and the small labels in braille you couldnât read, run your hands along the chair for clients that you might have sat in once, and trace curiously the small seashell next to Mattâs laptop. The base scents of Matt were stronger here where he spent so much time, only partly erased by the smell of coffee and paper. The room was clean, cared for, and well-organized despite how rundown the office was. Important to him. You could tell that much, even if the scents and sights had failed to spark any memories.
Maybe⊠knowing his space wasnât enough.Â
This was about more than just figuring out who you were, now. For some reason, you needed to know who Matt was, too: this man Jane Hind had cared so much about and whoâd cared so much about her. You told yourself it was practical. Matt was your best bet when it came to remembering who youâd been. But some part of you deep down recognized the lie. No, there was something in you inescapably drawn to him, a pull you couldnât quite explain. Maybe that strange, unnatural gravity was what had started this whole mess in the first place. What was it about him that was so different, that had driven you to break every last rule youâd lived your life by for over a decade?Â
And why⊠did you spend so long wondering if heâd ever climbed out his office window?
It had been twenty-nine days, and not a single memory had returned.Â
Oh, there were beats now and then when you thought that maybe, just maybe something was coming back, but those moments were painfully few and far between. Even in those moments, you couldnât say remembered anything, exactly. It was more a frustrating sense of deja vu, a fleeting little itch at the back of your mind like youâd forgotten something important, flashing road markers to warn you of the dark, empty gaps in your memory. That sense was probably driven at least in part by Foggyâs growing desperation as he frantically hunted for something that might trigger a return of your memories.Â
But the rest of that feeling⊠the rest was all you.Â
There was no denying a traitorous part of you wanted to remember no matter how ill-advised it might be. You wanted to remember this bizarre little family youâd stumbled into and then lost, just like in Los Angeles. You wanted to remember the love youâd had for this place, this city, this taste of mutual affection that had grown up around you after going so long without. After endless ages and ages of drought, of starvation, you hungered for even these bare crumbs of connection, something to tide you over until you found safe haven on the distant horizon. What a tempting thought it was to slither back into the life of this woman whoâd been so cruelly murdered and replaced by a stranger wearing her skin.
Was this what a demon felt like when it took over a body? To walk around with someone elseâs face, to speak with the unnatural voice of the dead, tormenting the loved ones that remained?Â
That, ultimately, was why it didnât matter what you wanted. Your presence in this city only spread rot and suffering. It would be better for everyone involved if you left like you should have long before now. Then they could all grieve without you tainting the very soil around them.Â
Especially Matt.Â
Youâd seen him once or twice in passing as your time in New York wound down. Even at a distance, youâd marked the growing circles under his eyes, dark enough to be visible despite the glasses he always wore. The rest of him wasnât doing much better. It seemed like every time he crossed your path, there was another bruise, another cut across his face or knuckles, a shifting canvas of pain painted across skin grown pale and drawn. He didnât just look tiredâthat wasnât what this was. This was something far worse, a haggard exhaustion, a weariness that couldnât be solved with sleep, if he slept at all. This was someone being haunted.Â
Probably because the ghost of Jane Hind kept crossing his path. But that would be solved soon enough.Â
Youâd already packed up your things, not that you had much to take. Just your bag and your memory box. Youâd be leaving the next day. Foggy was still convinced he had a few more days, but you had other plans. You couldnât give Matt back the woman heâd lost, nor could you give him a body to bury, a grave to lay flowers across, but you could give him what Jane Hind had carried with her until her dying breath.Â
âI thought you might⊠want these before I left tomorrow,â you said quietly. âI⊠sorry, itâs⊠itâs a bag with myâwith her things.âÂ
Matt took it carefully from you, the motion mechanical and stiff. He hadnât really invited you the rest of the way into his apartment, the two of you now stalled out in the hallway just beyond the closed front door. He hadnât taken his glasses off, either. It made it harder to read him, his face closed off and impassive, a wall of red glass placed firmly between you. Come to think of it, you hadnât seen his eyes even once since that day youâd first come back, and you didnât blame him. You didnât like feeling vulnerable, either, though that was just a guess when it came to what he might be feeling.Â
âItâs the shirts from her apartment, which I think are yours. And the stuffed bear.â You bit your lip and released it slowly, shifting uncomfortably on your feet. âAnd the⊠the mug, which Nelson said was yours, too. The one you used at her place. I also put the hoodie in there, the one she had with her while she was traveling. AndâŠâ You reached into your pocket, fumbling for a moment. God, you were bad at this, unsure of just how to do this without hurting him any more than was absolutely necessary. It wasnât a concern you usually dealt with since your goal was almost always the exact opposite, a precaution meant to destroy any threads of connection they held with you. Unfortunately, he wasnât giving you much to work with, though you didnât miss his subtle flinch when you drew the key from your pocket. âI thought you might want this, too.â
You cautiously edged forward, daring to breach the ring of radiant heat that surrounded him, the closest youâd come to him in almost a month. He went stiff as you approached, his jaw growing tight as the gap between you both closed. Another step, and his head cocked as if he were listening to your footsteps, or maybe⊠maybe he was just waiting to find out what you had to give him. But he wasnât telling you to fuck off or just set your gift aside, which was a good sign. So you hesitantly reached out and brushed your fingers lightly against his bicep, a signal so he knew you were about to pass him something.Â
A breath.
He remained absolutely still amidst the sudden, crackling tension in the air as your fingertips skated gently down and around his forearm, stirring all the little hairs, his skin shockingly warm. All youâd intended to do to take his arm and guide it up so you could place the key in his hand, but you quickly found yourself distracted by a ragged scar along the back of his forearm, one your fingers seemingly made their way to on instinct. It was a deep scar, the original cut likely made by some sort of blade, the edges of it rough and uneven from messy stitching. Your curiosity got the better of you, so much so that you missed the way Matt had begun to hold his breath.
âWho fucked up the sutures on that?â You furrowed your brow, your thumb smoothly marking out the jagged line of it. âThey did a terrible job. No offense.âÂ
Mattâs face fell and you only realized too late just who it was that must have patched him up.Â
Before you could blink, heâd yanked his arm out of your grip as if your touch had burned him. âDonât,â he grit out, his chest heaving as he put a few steps distance between you both. âYou canâjust put your key on the bench.âÂ
âHow did you knowââ âBecause thereâs only one thing left it could be.âÂ
You nodded weakly, taking a few steps back towards the little bench beside the door. That unfamiliar ache, that sense of wrongness was back, the weight of it settling uneasily in your chest like a stone until you almost wanted to retch. It didnât help that Matt was just barely holding himself together while you were here.Â
Best to say what youâd come to say and leave him be.Â
You gently set the key down, and the quiet click of the brass against the wood seemed to echo in the hallway, a graveyard bell tolling with a looming sense of finality. What you were about to tell him would hurt, you knew it would, but maybe one day heâd find comfort in it. Thisâa sign of what sheâd feltâwas the real gift youâd truly come to give, the only true token of her you could offer. Your words, when you spoke, were almost as hoarse as his. âI thought you should know I⊠she wore it. The key. I asked them. She wore your key and she never took it off. Not once. Whatever you both had, she treasured it, and all she wanted was to get back to you. She didnât leave you by choice, Matt. I hope that⊠that helps.âÂ
Of all the things youâd said and done, it was this that finally seemed to break him. His face twisted in a sudden wave of grief, and regret hit you all at once. You quickly took a step towards him, one hand out, though you werenât sure what youâd do if he reached backâit wasnât like you knew how to comfort him, and you sure as hell didnât know if heâd tolerate you holding him again, nor whether he was someone that needed some sort of touch when he was hurting. But before you could take another step heâd flinched away from you, retreating quickly back into the darkness of his apartment, his voice ragged. âJust go. Get out.âÂ
âIâm sorry,â you whispered, backing away towards the door. âIâm⊠Iâm so sorry.â Â
It shouldnât have hurt as you closed that door one last time. But you cried all the same.Â
Somewhere within the apartment came the sound of splintering furniture and a hoarse scream wracked with grief.
âLook, Nelson.â You tiredly adjusted the strap of your duffle bag over your shoulder, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of your nose as if it would stem your growing headache. âI know itâs a day early. But another twenty-four hours isnât going to make a fucking difference.âÂ
âI donât need another day!â he pleaded, his arms spread wide where heâd blocked your front door, ensuring you couldnât leave your apartment until youâd heard him out. Youâd had no idea he even had a key until today and, not for the first time, you cursed Jane Hindâs apparent lack of common sense. You did not give out keys, or at least, you hadnât before coming here to this ridiculous fucking city. âJust five minutes. Thatâs all. Iâve got one last thing to try.â
âMaybe I donât want to try one more thing!â you snapped bitterly, dropping your hand. That anger was a good cover for the way something sharp and prickly had begun to catch in your throat, the incident with Matt still fresh in your mind. âIâve tried for a month, and itâs gotten me nothing. Fucking-fucking bars and random rooftops and a shitty little duck, goddamn penguins and keys, and none of it did shit! Janeâs gone, ok? Sheâs dead. And Iâm sorry, I know you all cared about her, but Iâm doneââ
âHave you climbed inside a thread?âÂ
â...What?â you asked in sudden bewilderment, your rage abruptly faltering in the face of pure confusion. âWhat the fuck does that even meââ
He let out a whoop, practically dancing on his feet. âYes! I knew it! I canât believe no one told you!âÂ
âTold me what?!â You chucked your bag back onto your couch in sudden exasperation. If this was thread-related, at the very least you could stay long enough to listen. âThereâs nothing to climb!â
âOk, so stick with me.â He rubbed his palms together eagerly, a bright light in his eyes. âBecause Iâm about to get really metaphysical.â
It took you what felt like hours to climb inside the shimmering honey-colored thread that lay between you and Mattâa thread that sang with his sorrow and your reluctant sympathy.Â
It wasnât right having your soul constricted like this, all of who you were narrowing down into something so small as you squirmed through a barrier that tasted and felt like dirt and earth, chasing after the sound of trickling water. There wasnât supposed to be anything on the other side. It was an emotional connection, nothing more.
And yet here you were, standing in a place that had no reason to exist.
âHoly shit,â you whispered in amazement, spinning on your heels to examine your surroundings. âHoly shit, he was right.â
Despite the late hour, the air was full of a muted light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, tinting the world a hazy, eerie green. High up above you roiled thick, sullen black storm clouds, silent flashes of red lightning carving their way between swirls of charred smoke. It wasnât much light, but it was enough to see by.
And what you saw was heartbreaking.Â
You stood in a dry, stony riverbed. The ground beneath you was cracked and brittle where the water had receded, leaving behind nothing but dust and broken branches. The river itself remained though just barely, the thin trickle of flowing water down the center of the riverbed a far cry from whatever immense force had carved its way through the landscape until the banks were a good ten paces from one side to the other. The terrain beyond the river didnât look much better, wilted, drooping cattails dotted up the bank before giving way to endless forest that stretched farther than your eye could see. Like the cattails and scrub, the pine and fir trees stood withered and brown, casting their empty branches up toward the sky.Â
If it had been beautiful here once, whatever had happened to you had destroyed that beauty.Â
âJesus,â you whispered.Â
âCan you hear me?â Foggyâs voice sounded distant and far away, tinny like he was talking through a long tunnel.Â
âYeah. Can you hear me?â
â...Ok, if youâre trying to respond, I canât hear you. But according to Matt, whenever you were here, it felt like memories. So poke around, see what you can find.â
You sighed and started down the riverbed. âNot super helpful, but ok. Letâs give it a shot.âÂ
The water was the most obvious place to start, and you made your way over to the thin stream that ran raggedly across the parched soil. Much to your fascination, you quickly discovered that what youâd thought was one current was actually two, one layered over the top of the other, each flowing in the opposite direction. The first of those currents hiding on the bottom was fairly calm, steady if a little restless, swirls of pale color that almost felt like curiosity, though how you understood that translation was a mystery. The second current seemed far rougher where it roiled atop the first, its section of the stream cloudy and thick with swirls of black and the red of an open wound. You hovered over the second current for a long moment, working up your courage, before you finally knelt and hesitantly brushed against it with one finger. It was just water. How bad could it be?Â
The moment your skin made contact, your chest seized on a sudden swell of agony. Your mouth filled with the taste of grief, with the sound of an empty home, the lack of some familiar scent that meant affection and warmth and softness and safety, the ache of an old wound reopened just when it had started to heal. Alone, always alone, I deserve it, so many gone, he was right, when will I learn? There was no hope for comfort from that pain, no escape from the darkness into tender arms that could hold you just right when it all hurt. All you had to look forward to was moreâÂ
You threw yourself backward, scrambling away from that terrible current as if what youâd felt might rise up and chase after you, snapping its teeth the whole way. You didnât stop retreating until your back slammed against the dry soil of the riverbank. Only then did you stop, panting, your eyes wide in shock as you cradled your hand against your heaving chest.Â
Emotion. Itâs emotion.
That was what the water was. Mattâs emotion. Which meant the other currentâone now shifting back to yellow despite a momentary surge of twisting, roiling blackâwas⊠yours.Â
Right. So you could rule the water out. But if that was emotion, where was memory?Â
Examining the rest of the river was the most obvious next step now that youâd ruled out the water. Based on what you could see, the original riverbed had been a mix of silt and stones of varying sizes, a firm foundation beneath a once-powerful river. Now, though, the grey, dried-out silt was covered in a strange sea of divots and dips, as if somethingâa lot of somethingsâhad been plucked up and removed. You traced one of the indents in the soil curiously, lifting your hand back up to consider the grit as you rubbed it between your fingers. Another glance around revealed the answer.Â
The stones.Â
There were still plenty of stones remaining in the riverbed, but the divots in the dry silt told you thereâd once been far more. If that was what youâd lost, then maybeâŠÂ Â
You rocked up eagerly to your feet, pacing around breathlessly as you searched for a promising stone to start with. Eventually you made your pick, plucking up a stone just small enough to fit in your palm, flat and smooth save for a little groove in it as if someone had run their fingers over it endlessly. Strangely, it smelled like honey and herbs, the surface oddly warm against your hand like the brush of a thumb against your mouth. You waited for a long, impatient moment, and when nothing else happened, you tapped it a few times.Â
Still nothing.Â
And something inside you⊠cracked.Â
âFuck!â you screamed, hurling the stone back down the river in a sudden rage. The pain and the loneliness youâd been suppressing for the last month, the last year, the horrible, endless eternity since leaving your family in Los Angeles began to claw its way up your throat, the clouds churning wildly above you in response. A wild rain came next, each droplet sharp and cold and edged like the blade of a knife, bitter and biting as it beat against your skin. You grabbed another stone, one that tasted like shitty beerâJosieâs beer. You threw that rock, too, then another and another, throwing stones that smelled and tasted and felt like your shriek of laughter as he grinned and caught you against his chest, like torn flesh and a needle held by tender hands, like your face nuzzling fearlessly against Mattâs throat as he whispered comfort into your hair and held you close, like synced breathing and hearts and dances between binary stars as you both fell into sleep, fell into safety, fell into one another, phantom sensations that only made the fierce ache in you grow stronger because with every stone you snatched up it became clear thatâŠÂ
Youâd been loved.Â
Not your identity.
Not the image you showed to the world.Â
Not the walls youâd put up in front of him before heâd found some way past them.Â
You.Â
And heâd loved you with every part of him.Â
You werenât sure when you started crying, a violent, vicious stream of tears that was just as much a product of rage as grief. Here was someone whoâd loved you fully, loved you despite every asterisk and bit of baggage and sharpened edge that came with being a broken hound, with being a former experiment still on the run. But you barely noticed your tears, spitting up at the unforgiving clouds and the howling wind, because you could howl, too, just as violent, just as much a threat as any storm in this place. âI want my fucking life back! I want him back!âÂ
You hadnât wanted it before, or maybe you had and youâd just been too afraid to ask for it. But now? Oh, oh, now you were furious, furious and hurting and screaming, because youâd denied yourself connection all these years only to find it in the last place youâd expected. That was what this had beenâhome, family, love. That had to be why youâd stayed in New York, why youâd risked everything for these people, for Matt. You werenât an idiot. Youâd have run the numbers and the math, made your calculations.
You couldnât bear to lose this. Not⊠not again.Â
You threw stone after stone, hunting frantically as your fingers bled dry, desperate fury into the air, reddened drops disappearing before they ever hit the ground. The trickle of water in the center of the riverbed had churned itself into a frenzy, but you ignored it. There had to be something here that would trigger a memory, something that would let you remember being loved again, something big enough, important enough, so you grabbed and you grabbed and grabbed and grabbed and grabbed until at last, you found a stone the size of your fist. You snatched it up with a ragged sob, cradling it greedily against your chest as if doing so might let you carry it out of here, because you wanted it, you wanted him, wanted to remember more than anything in the world.Â
âLet me have it!â you snarled, snapping your teeth at the howling winds of the storm as if you might catch this place between your jaws and tear it open until you at last found what belonged to you. âGive it back!âÂ
And with a blinkâ
He tore one of his bloodied gloves off, his hand shaking as he reached out to you.
You stilled the moment his fingertips brushed tenderly against your cheek, so very gentle, affection layered over blood and earth and hurt. And god, your skin was so terribly dry and cold, the beat of your heart uneven as it struggled to pump blood through your body, but he could feel you react to him, the barest parting of your lips as you dragged in a startled breath. He didnât want to startle you further or risk you fighting him, so he let his voice drop into a whisper, soft as the brush of a feather.
âItâs me. Iâm here.â
âI heard you,â he tried to say. âI heard you. Iâm here.â
And your weakened heart⊠skipped.
He wasnât sure if he reached for you or if you reached for him. All he knew was it was the sign heâd been looking for. In a heartbeat, he scooped you up off the floor, stealing you back from that dry, filthy cement and crusted blood that had tried to take you from him. He cradled your cold body against his chest, then, held you there where it was warm and where you were safe. You made the softest little noise, the sound choked and dry, but there was no disguising the heartbreaking relief in it. He pulled you in further, pulled you up until you were curled up in his lap, not an ounce of air left between your bodies, your head laying against his shoulder.
He would never let you touch the floor of this place again.
âDâŠâ you mumbled, not one hint of fear in you despite what heâd just done, the blood on his hands and the burning heat of violence that still lingered in his bones. You wearily slid your head over, inch by inch, until youâd buried your face against the sweat-slick line of his throat, nuzzling in against him with a hoarse sigh that only made him hold you tighter. You inhaled slowly then, heedless of the blood and dirt and sweat that coated his skin, your fingers coming up to hook weakly in the collar of his shirt. âYou came.â
And you⊠smiled.
He buried his face against your hair and let out a shaky breath. As he did, he dug down past blood and dust and dirt, dug and dug until he found the sweet, familiar scent of you, a scent he never wanted to leave him again.
The stone fell from your limp hands, a ringing in your ears you could barely hear beneath the sound of the water nearby, frothing and wild.Â
The increased sensory feedback had been bizarre, and there was⊠there was no reason he should have been covered in so much blood, his body burning as if heâd been fighting before coming to you. ButâŠÂ Â
âHey, you in there?â Foggy called.Â
âD.â The letter felt strange, and yet⊠natural, as you cradled it on your tongue. âD?â
And you knew what came after that letter, shaping the word again in your mind.Â
You knew.Â
You⊠remembered.Â
âAlways,â heâd said.Â
âAlways,â you whispered, casting your eyes up the riverbed towards another large stone. âAlways, D.â
He didnât know what you were doing or why youâd climbed inside the thread.Â
âAlways, D.â
All he knew was that it hurt.Â
âYouâre stuck with me, unfortunately for you.â
Heâd thought catching your scent, hearing your laugh, being forced to take back the key heâd given to you had been the worst of it. But no. It was far, far worse having to relive these memories of your time with him over and over and over without pause, his senses filled with you: with your touch, with your scent, with the taste of you on the air. He heard you whisper, laugh, and sigh; felt the brush of your fingers in his hair and your body shaking with laughter when he snatched you up during a game of Devil Hunt and the safety of you as youâd held him so tenderly after his fight with Foggy. All of it was a reminder of what heâd lost, what heâd never get back.Â
âDonât you give up on me, Matt. Ok?â
He was in agony. There was no blocking you out like this, no escaping your memory no matter how much he tried to push back or retreat, until he wound up trapped and spiraling in his kitchen.Â
âKiss me when you come back.â
On and on it went, memories snapping at his heels until all he had left to hide behind was rage. He swept his arm across the counter, glass shattering as he screamed himself hoarse. Eventually he found himself backed up against the wall, sinking down as he hitched out something like an agonized groan, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight. âDonât do this to me, sweetheart, pleaseââ
âAdoringly yours, because I do adore you, you ridiculous man...â
âLeave me alone,â he whispered. âJust leave me alone.â
â...Remember that. if nothing else.âÂ
In hindsight, it was a really bad idea to give back your key.
âMatt!â you shouted, pounding frantically on his front door. âMatt, let me in! Itâs me, I swear, I can-I canââ
Silence.Â
And you werenât willing to wait any longer. This wasnât something you could explain through the door, out here in the hall where the neighbors could hear. You needed to get inside. You knew he was in there somewhere.Â
Red threads never lied. Â
You wiped the blood away from your nose and took off for the stairs. It was only one flight up to the roof, and sometimes he left the rooftop door unlocked. Even if it wasnât unlocked, youâd use the key under the mat. You didnât remember everything. But you remembered that. And if the key wasnât there? Youâd break that fucking door down.
He sat unmoving in his meditation pose on the floor, the sound of your attempts to get into the apartment distant and far away. Meditation had been the only thing left he could think of that would allow him to escape the pain and the memories of you that had flooded his thoughts. Like this, with his mind and his focus withdrawn until it lay deep within himself, heâd hoped heâd be far enough away from the world that the ghost of you couldnât reach.Â
Yet even deep in meditation, his instincts were set off by the crack! of his rooftop door slamming open.
He was on his feet in a heartbeat, his heart racing as he bared his teeth, his body prepared to face whatever threat had just broken in. The sensations of you, at the very least, had quieted during his meditation, which should have left him enough space for some small margin of peace as he threw himself into a fight. But that peace was nowhere to be found, because you were here again.Â
He recoiled from that thought the second it crossed his mind. This wasnât you, that much had become painfully clear. Youâd passed away somewhere far beyond his reach, away from the home, the life youâd lived here. The woman that stood on his landing now was nothing but a ghost, a fading memory and a terrible reminder of what heâd had and lost, what heâd earned by daring to reach for something good. There was no undoing it, no washing away the blood on his hands. If anything, how he felt for you had doomed any hopes of you staying long enough for him to reform that connection with you. He knew how you operatedâhell, youâd tried to run on that hot summer night so many months ago after seeing just how much heâd cared, even if youâd ultimately changed your mind. At the time, heâd thought it was Destiny, the hand of God ensuring you remained in the Kitchen where Matt could keep you safe from the Man in the White Coat, here in this place where you both might⊠might shape something good out of all the broken pieces youâd both been left with. He knew better, now. Even the hand of God couldnât break the curse Matt placed on those he loved. You would leave, leave like all the others, and he deserved it.Â
The only question that remained was why you seemed so, so fucking determined to make him suffer.Â
âMatt.â Your voice cracked as you stumbled down the stairs. âMatt, Iââ
âWhy canât you just leave me alone, sweetheart?â he grit out, reaching up to fist his hands tightly in his hair. Heâd never known you to be unnecessarily cruel, but there was no other explanation. âGod, I-I canâtâyou canât keep doing this to me.â
âMatt, just let meââ
âDo you even care how much youâre hurting me?â He hitched out a broken laugh, something bitter and tormented, the sound absent all humor as you made it down the stairs. âAll those months, all I wanted was for you to come back. I begged. I prayed to God, over and over again, that he would bring you back to me. And now that youâre gone, you just wonât leave. I canât get away from you no matter what I do. Do you know what thatâs like? To lose someone you love only for their ghost to haunt you every time you turn around?â
A soft intake of breath.Â
There it was. Now that heâd said it, youâd leave. There would be nothing more frightening to the You heâd first known than a word like love.Â
âI justâŠâ His breath hitched again, something thick building in his throat. It was just another sign of his weakness, the same weakness that had gotten you killed.Â
âI warned you, kid,â came Stickâs voice, so smug that Matt bared his teeth. âI fuckinâ warned you the night I opened up her eye. But you didnât listen.â
He started to pace wildly, ignoring your voice as he hunted for some opening through which he could escape, flee from Stickâs voice hiding in the corners of his thoughts, from your ghost. With every step his movements grew more frantic, more furious as his rage built like a rising wave: rage at himself, at God, at the monster whoâd taken your memories and the possibility of a life for you here with Matt, and at you, too, because you just didnât get it. âI just want to grieve, and God canât even give me that much, can he? Is that what this is? Punishment? Revenge? Congratulations. Job well done. You can go.âÂ
You tilted your head as you watched him pace, the same cock of your head you got when considering your potential routes forward. As far as he was concerned, the only route heâd give was a route out the door. Â
âI donât know why you came back, and at this point, I donât fucking care,â he told you hotly, nothing but burning smoke and thick venom in each word. âWe donât have a red thread anymore. Thereâs nothing to keep you here. Leave. Now. Iâm not asking.â
Your soft response was a single letter, one that struck directly at the open wound inside his chest.Â
â...D.âÂ
He snatched up an empty beer bottle from the kitchen counter in a sudden rage, turned, and hurled it past you.Â
You didnât so much as flinch as the bottle came within inches of your head. Nor did you react to the distant shattering of glass, the sound of it barely audible over his anguished roar.Â
âLeave me alone!â Â
And then he froze in sudden horror at what heâd done, his heartbeat almost drowning out the soft sound of your steps. All heâd wanted to do was scare you away, frighten you away so he could break where you couldnât see, because it had hurt, it had hurt to hear you call himâ
Wait.Â
Youâd⊠youâd called himâŠ
âMy Devil Man, my Saint Matthew,â you whispered, the touch of your hands cool and endlessly gentle as you cupped his face. His skin was wet, damp beneath your thumbs as you swiped them across his cheeks, when had he started crying? You brought his head down until you could lay your forehead against his, the taste of salt hanging in the air. Your voice grew achingly tender, so longed for that he swayed helplessly on his feet, wanting nothing more than to be held like youâd held him so often before when he was hurting. âIâm so sorry, D. Iâm so sorry I left you alone, sweetheart.âÂ
He closed his eyes tight, his breath growing shaky. You couldnât know that he was two steps away from crumbling in your arms, fractures widening with every breath. He had no energy left to fight your touch, your misplaced mercy, but giving into the lie was another thing entirely. He couldnât bear to hope again, not when it would crush him if he were wrong. âFoggy told you to⊠he told you to call me that, didnât he? To see if youâd remember. But I canâtâyouâre going to leave me, youâllââ âDo you remember what I said before I left? Because I do.â You swiped your thumb gently against his cheek, your uneven breathing skipping and falling into rhythm with his as his hands shakily rose. They hovered hesitantly a few inches away from your face, terrified that you might vanish beneath his hands like a ghost. âI donât leave my box behind, and I wonât leave you behind, either. I told you that you were stuck with me after Nobu. I meant it. Itâs really me. I know youâre tired and hurting, sweetheart, but listen to my heart. What does it say? Truth or lie?â
âŠSteady.Â
Truth.
Could it really be you? Â
He held his breath as he dared at last to touch your cheek, stirring the fine hairs as he stroked his way along the familiar shape of your face, one heâd traced so often in his dreams. Your skin was damp with tears just like his, another sliding down to bump against his thumb as your lips quirked up into a brilliant smile. And the moment his trembling fingers passed your lips, you kissed the tip of each with a warm fondness, a mirror of that night youâd held his broken, torn body and heâd kissed your fingers and palm.Â
âHow much do you⊠do you remember?â There was a ringing in his ears as the world beneath him seemed to roll beneath him. âEverything?â âNot everything. Some pieces are still missing, with Foggy and Karen and my job, but I-I remember enough. I remember you, and what I had with you.â Your voice grew fierce and fervent then as you drew in a sharp breath, preparing yourself. âI remember you, D. And I remember that I love you. I love you, Matt Murdock, all of you, so, so much. And I will never leave you alone again.â You loved him.Â
You loved him.Â
The weight of itâbeing forced to let you leave the city, the ensuing months alone, the agony of the past few weeks thinking heâd lost you entirely, and now this, this, knowing you loved him like he loved youâhit him all at once, and with a sudden groan he started to drop. You caught him in your arms, the two of you sinking to your knees as you held him tight and he wound desperately around you in return. Only then did he start to fall apart in your arms, shaking in your hold, his grief, his hurt, his relief spilling out in choked gasps where youâd tucked his head down against your neck. He fisted his hands in your shirt as you both rocked, and a ragged moan tore free from him, spilling against your skin when you lifted your hands to trail your fingers lovingly through his hair. You knew, you remembered just how to hold him when he was hurting, a balm across every last wound. His shivering, touch-starved body remembered your touch, too, drowning beneath the sudden surge of good, warm, safe, soft after months of nothing but pain, so much so he couldnât help but gasp out your name.Â
âIâve got you now, D,â you whispered, burying your face against his shoulder until he could feel the heat of your tears against his shirt, too. âIâm here, now. Youâre not alone. Iâve got you, Matt.âÂ
âI thought you were gone.â There was no way for him to truly sync his breathing with yours, not with the way you were both crying, but still his body tried on instinct, tried and failed over and over again. He closed his eyes tighter, burying his face deeper against your throat as he pulled you in even closer, until there wasnât an inch of space between your body and his, where he could feel every beat of your heart against his skin, as if to make up for the way heâd almost⊠almost chased you away. âI thought youâd left me and I was alone. Iâm sorry. Iâm sorry I didnât try harder, and that I didnât-I didnât go with you, but I couldnâtâIâm so, soââÂ
âHey, hey, itâs ok.â You kissed shakily at his hair, his shoulder, and whatever other parts of him you could reach, your breath, your tears, your absolution washing over him like rain. âItâs not your fault, D. Itâs not your fault sweetheart. None of this was your fault.âÂ
âButââ âHey. Listen to me, before you get any further down in that hole.â You lifted his head from your shoulder, cupping his tear-stained face in your hands again. For a moment you both simply breathed with one another, your forehead to his, soaking in the contact, the affection that youâd both dearly missed and needed. âWhat happened to me outside New York, my memory loss⊠all of that is not your fault. It never was, D. There are-there are a lot of things weâll have to deal with in the future, things I need to tell you. Consequences of what weâve done, andâbut this isnât one of them. Never this. Youâre what helped bring me back.â âHow? I didnâtâŠâ He let out a breathless, watery little laugh. âI didnât do anything but try to chase you away.â âSome part of me couldnât help but be drawn to you. I remembered, deep down, I think.â You gave an amused little huff. âAnd once Foggy showed me how to get into our thread, all your memories are what brought me back, helped me remember, because I could feel it, how you loved me. That was the key. Speaking of whichâŠâ You leaned in to nuzzle up against his cheek, your voice lowering to a whisper. âI think I made you a promise, you ridiculous man. And itâs one I intend to keep.âÂ
And with one small tip of your head, and a single slow breathâŠÂ
âKiss me when you come back.âÂ
âŠyour lips brushed against his for the very first time, tender and achingly soft, and so full of love that it would have stolen his breath away if heâd had any left at all.Â
It wasnât the first kiss heâd envisioned months ago just before you left, something triumphant and wild. Nor was it anything like the first kisses heâd imagined before that, the first kiss heâd thought this journey with you might lead to. And God only knew heâd considered kissing you for the first time more than was healthy.
Your first kiss with him was, instead, shaky and gentle, tasting of salt and tears and the fading shades of grief retreating like streamers of night before a welcome sunrise. Slowly, and then more surely, his lips began to move against yours, finally allowing himself to truly taste you for the first time, his eyes slowly falling closed as your fingers ran fondly through his hair, you, it was really you, you remembered. With a quiet moan, he breathed you in deep, calling your grace, your love deep into him until it settled there against his heart, knowing that, no matter what else might come, he would never lose it again, one of his hands rising to tenderly wind around your throat, his other hand finding yours so he could lace his battered fingers tightly with yours.
It wasnât the first kiss heâd expected, but it felt perfect all the same.Â
Because all that was left was himâŠÂ
And you.Â
#the red thread#matt murdock x reader#matt murdock x f!reader#daredevil x reader#daredevil x f!reader#daredevil#matt murdock#fic#fanfic#reader#x reader#f!reader#angst#hurt/comfort#tw: alcohol#tw: depression#memory loss#matt is really self sabotaging here to an extent#this fic is three times longer than Part 1 which is hilarious#i have had this in my docs folder for ages and have finally edited it to my satisfaction#gonna post this on AO3 too but dropping it here first since the first fic was only ever posted here anyway!#and you'll get to have a fun 'Pasta writing 3 years ago versus Pasta writing now' experiment#when i post on AO3 i'll probably post the whole thing (including part 1) as one fic in separate chapters just for ease so I'll edit it then
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Queen instrumentals playing in Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death
(instrumentals arranged by Eos Counsell)
(insp. / template / BoRhap breakdown)
#good omens#good omens 2#goodomensedit#nina good omens#maggie good omens#metatron#maggie x nina#nina x maggie#v watches good omens#v posts things#this delights me#we spent so much less time with Crowley in the Bentley this season but they still found a spot for Queen#ngl i did not recognize them all on my own so if the xray feature thing is wrong. well#BoRhap is the only one i know/could hear well enough to recognize the specific part of the song#so the rest i just chose applicable lyrics#metatron one despite everything might be my fave as both wizard of oz and omelas reference#also radio ga ga supporting Nina#there are some shorter scenes where you can hear it playing but it seemed less relevant#it's always the same song for the whole episode (day?) except ep 1#also just discovered you can accidentally drag an image into the tags. this sure is a webbed site heh
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âYour own father used to say those people only drank water because it didnât rain bloodâ vs two district boys who are assumed to be murder machines, yet prove that statement wrong multiple times: Reaper and Marcus.
PART ONE: REAPER
When Reaper is first introduced to us, we learn heâs rangy but muscular; we read about him wrapping his hands around Coriolanusâs throat on the truck headed to the zoo and about Dill, his District partner, saying he has killed a Peacekeeper before in District 11, without ever getting caught.Â
Our first impression of him is that of a dangerous person, one whoâs even clever in his lethality, and because of that we know heâs a presumed possible victor.
Lucy Gray mentions him more than once as one of the biggest threats, when talking about how sheâs going to try as hard as she can to win the Games.
She also tells Coriolanus how Reaper apologized to the other tributes for having to kill them and told them he is going to make it up to them after, by taking revenge on the Capitol. Everyone takes this as him meaning it maliciously and with arrogance, âcause how else could he possibly mean it, right? Coriolanus thinks that heâs not only powerful, but good at mind games too.Â
But the truth is that Reaper meant that genuinely, even with a certain innocence, and naivety to how it could have been misinterpreted. There was no malice or arrogance in his statement, but there was guilt and regret and grief, because of being forced into taking lives. He went into the arena fully prepared and resigned to kill the others to save himself, but not without obvious dissent.
When the Games start, he arms himself and heads to the stands. Coriolanus thinks he does so to begin his hunt, even if everyone else had fled in other directions and he had made no move to go after them.
Right after this we read about how Tanner, someone whoâs also a presumed possible victor, is able to climb up to the first row of the stands and sit in the sun for a while, completely unbothered and unharmed. Reaper doesnât try to fight him, even if it would have only been to his advantage, since he could have easily taken out his strongest opponent now that the Games had just begun and he wasnât exhausted and starving.
His first interaction with another tribute in the arena is with a dying Dill, carrying her out of the tunnels, placing her in the sun and talking to her in the last moments of her life.Â
His first act with another tribute, is comforting a dying child.Â
This is when the âmurder machineâ image starts to crumble. Coriolanusâs classmates talk about how he doesnât look so tough, doesn't look like the person who âpromised to kill all the othersâ, which he never actually did.
But still, after all this, Coriolanus sees his distressed pacing around Dill, as him possibly being âeager to get back to the huntâ, a hunt he never even began, and not just him feeling pained and powerless at Dillâs condition.Â
When Coriolanus is sent into the arena to get Sejanus out, Bobbin, Mizzen, Tanner and Coral are the tributes who go after them to try to kill them. No sign of Reaper at any point.
When Lucy Gray gets out of the tunnels with a rabid Jessup after her, he makes no move to kill them either. Coriolanus points out how he lets Lucy Gray go and only walks up to the bottles of water on the ground.
Again and again and again, he has a chance to easily take a life to save his own, or take a small revenge against the Capitol, but he doesnât.Â
His second interaction with a tribute is with Lamina. He walks up to her, they negotiate an exchange of something both of them desperately need and that forms a bond between the two of them.
Then Coral, Mizzen and Tanner appear and he leaves, he goes behind the barricade and he falls asleep.
When he comes back out, heâs shocked to see Lamina and Tanner dead on the ground. And this is when he starts to make true his promise of avenging the tributes after their death.Â
He lifts Lamina up in his arms and places her next to Marcusâs and Bobbinâs corpses and then collects Tanner, Dill and Sol as well, and covers them all with the flag of Panem. And he keeps doing this with all the tributes for the rest of the Games, right until his death.Â
This is the best form of revenge he could take. Not only because he disrespects the flag, causing great disdain among Capitol citizens, but most importantly because he humanizes the tributes and gives them dignity, two things the Capitol has tried in every way to take away from them. He gives them as proper a burial as he can manage in those circumstances, makes it so now they can finally rest, tucked in a corner and covered, their corpses no longer on display for a bunch of sick peopleâs amusement. He honors them. He could have left them all scattered out on the dusty arena ground, but he didnât. He took care of them.
Even when itâs just him and Lucy Gray left and heâs one step away from winning, he shows no signs of wanting to attack her. Doesnât matter that he could easily take her out, save himself and finally go home. No, even then his main concern is that the tributes can properly rest with their corpses concealed.Â
Everyone expected him to kill the most people, but he died in that arena killing no one and without ever even attempting to. He died holding strong to his humanity and making sure the fallen tributes could hold strong to theirs as well even in death.
Contrary to what we and the Capitol are made to believe initially, Reaper turns out to be pretty innocuous. Heâs not a naturally violent or aggressive person, not a natural born killer and he refuses to be as well. This was a life or death situation and yet he didnât even harm anyone. He has killed before, he is capable of it, but if he didnât even do it in this case, even when all it would have taken for him to save himself was killing a girl smaller and younger than him, then imagine how dire and desperate the situation must have been when he had to resort to it.
He defied the Capitol by not participating in the Games, by not letting them turn him into the murder machine they wanted and expected him to be, and by honoring the corpses of the children whose lives have been so cruelly and unjustly cut short.
(Before moving on to Marcus, I wanna clarify some things in case anyone whoâs reading this has only seen the movie. Reaper snapping at Clemensia during the one-on-one mentor-tribute interviews never happens in the book, neither does him looking angrily into the camera in the arena and challenging the Capitol to punish him arrogantly. Like weâve just seen, this perceived arrogance and aggression in Reaper is a very surface level misconception of the people around him, thatâs easily debunkable, that who made the movie took and ran with wrongfully.Â
And actually thereâs a few heartbreaking scenes in the book that contrast heavily with the image the movie created of him, like him tying a piece of the flag around his shoulders like a cape and spinning around, watching it fly behind him, and then running in the sun with his arms spread wide; and him rocking gently back and forth on himself for comfort, after the snake attacks, which is not when he dies in the book. Heâs not the threatening, angry guy who tests the Capitol that they made him in the movie, heâs just a severely traumatized kid. Nothing more than a kid.
The movie made tons of stupid changes like this, that completely miss and disregard the whole point of both characters and story. Trust me when I say 99% of the characters are portrayed very wrongfully in it. So please keep that in mind.)
PART TWO: MARCUS
Marcus, like Reaper, was initially seen as a probable winner in the Games, before being murdered. Coriolanous makes note of his size multiple times, describing him as âtoweringâ, as having a âcolossal frameâ, as âdwarfing the other tributesâ and comparing him to a grizzly bear.Â
Itâs exactly because of his size that people think of him as a sure winner, as capable of taking down everyone else, as threatening and deadly.
But then we hear Sejanus, the only person who actually got to know him at some point, talk about him, and the first and one thing he mentions about Marcus is his kindness.Â
He tells Coriolanus how when they were still classmates in Two, he hurt his finger really badly and Marcus helped him by bringing him a cup of snow he scooped from the windowsill. He says he did it without being prompted by anyone, without consulting anyone, not even the teacher, and without even being friends with Sejanus.Â
Thatâs actually the very first thing Sejanus tells us about him. They werenât enemies, but they werenât friends either. Marcus had no real reason to do it, especially considering how the Plinths were, and still are, deeply despised in Two, for having helped the Capitol win the war. He did it almost as a reflex, because thatâs who he is as a person.Â
And this pure, unconditional kindness, told by the one person who actually knew him, goes against the image of him everyone formed by just looking at him, against what everyone assumed because heâs district, heâs a tribute, and heâs tall and strong and broad, so he has to be dangerous and lethal, he will brutally kill everyone to save himself, heâs capable of it anyway.
As I already said, the Plinths are deeply despised in Two, Sejanus is a filthy traitor in his eyes, one whoâs benefiting from a luxurious, safe life in the Capitol, thanks to blood money; blood of thousands of what were supposed to be his people, blood whose spillage made them lose the war and caused the realization of the Games, bringing Marcus to that very situation.
Sejanus doesnât have to worry about whether or not heâs going to be able to fill his stomach everyday; whether heâll be able to finish his studies or will have to drop out of school early to go work to help sustain his family; whether the dangerous working conditions will be the cause of his early demise or being sent to an arena to kill or be killed by a bunch of other children for amusement will be, and what will happen to his family once heâll be gone. All of this thanks to his familyâs betrayal.
No doubt he resents Sejanus and is angry at him, a part of him maybe even faults him a bit for everything, but he never takes it out on him. It would be easy to single him out, pick him and make him pay for this situation, since he canât make the whole Capitol pay; take some sort of revenge on Strabo Plinth in the name of Two and Thirteen and all other Districts, by harming his son.Â
Sweet Sejanus, who brings the tributes food when no one else thought about it, who keeps pleading with him to accept it, who tries to help them however he can, would probably let him do it. He would take the hit, metaphorical or not, because itâs clear he has guilt gnawing at him and would feel like he deserves it. And Marcus is definitely aware of it.Â
But he never gets violent, physically nor verbally, never tries to attack him or spit insults or hate at him. Instead he just ignores him.
He had many chances to do harm, even to kill Capitol citizens and Peacekeepers as revenge, a small and trivial one, but still a revenge, and he had many chances to let his frustration and anger out on Sejanus and use him as a punching bag, but he never did, because despite what everyone assumed about him, thatâs not the type of person he is.
PART THREE: SEJANUSÂ
Sejanus, whom Iâve already mentioned several times in this post, is another District boy with the ability to take lives, but whoâs repulsed and disturbed by the mere idea of it.Â
With Marcus and Reaper, itâs a matter of first impressions and then getting to actually know them and learn theyâre not like they seemed. With Sejanus itâs the opposite.Â
First thing we learn about him in the book is his background: born in District 2, his father made fortune during the war and was able to buy his family a life in the Capitol.Â
But the first thing we learn about him as a person is that heâs shy and sensitive.Â
Throughout the entirety of the book, over and over and over again, we see that heâs good, and kind, and gentle, and sweet and takes things so to heart. Itâs constantly pointed out by the people around him.Â
And itâs constantly shown to us by him as well, with the passion he puts into standing up against the dehumanization and mistreatment of District people; with how affected he is by these aspects and by the Games; with how he tries in every way he can to help the tributes; with how he made it his life mission to make things better for the Districts; with how heâs never mean or spiteful to people who bully and disrespect him.
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is at its very center a discussion on human nature. He (alongside Dr. Gaul) is the main character who explicitly talks about it, and he believes in the inherent goodness of humans and constantly advocates in favor of it. All the injustice and atrocities he witnessed, never made him change his mind or his actions, never made it so compassion and love werenât his driving forces.
His heart is big, and kind, and pure. And he wears it on his sleeve all the time. Heâs referred to as âemotionalâ and âcompassionateâ, his eyes are soulful, his face is incredibly expressive, and thereâs so many instances in which heâs described as speaking with a voice so full of sentiment, so many instances of his eyes filling with tears, of him wiping his face cause they spilled out.Â
Itâs well established how good and uncorrupted he is, how devoted to humanity he is, how much he values life.
And then in the third part of the book, we learn heâs an excellent marksman, a natural one even, who has been training in shooting every week since he was tiny.
Heâs so good, that the sergeant in Twelve, as to not lose someone with Sejanusâs ability, refuses to give him the recommendation he needs in order to train to become a medic, even when Sejanus purposefully shoots much worse than heâs capable of, to hide his talent.Â
The boy who values life more than anything in the world, has the ability to take one even with his eyes closed.
When he arrived in Twelve, wearing on his body the signs of the toll the Capitol, the Games and what happened to Marcus had taken on his mental health, with the prospect of building a new life for himself in which he could help the world become a better place, of training to be a medic and save lives, Coriolanus noted he had a much lighter air to himself, as if a heavy weight had been lifted off of him.
But when he is confronted with the reality that he is now a soldier and is expected to kill, Coriolanus says that his expression goes back to being as gloomy as it had been in the Capitol, the heavy weight now back on his shoulders.Â
At dinner he doesnât take a single bite of food, which is a behavior weâve seen from him before, one he falls into when his mental health gets concerningly bad. And the reason is that he is terrified by the idea of having to kill someone, or someone dying because he canât bring himself to shoot first. Because to him, every life is precious and none is disposable, and the possibility of being the cause of one being taken away, is an unbearable thought.
Reaper and Marcus had many chances and what could be considered reasons to kill, but they refused to. Sejanus, who is expected to kill because heâs a soldier and the best shooter, who would be punished, possibly even with execution, if he didnât, refuses to.Â
All three of them have the power to take lives with little effort but choose to cherish and honor them instead, choose kindness, choose humanity even over their own self preservation, proving both the Capitol and Crassus Snowâs statement about District people being bloodthirsty, wrong, by simply being their honest, uncorrupted selves until the end, by being truthful to who they are no matter what.
#divided it into three parts for an easier read#bonus third district boy at the end that doesnât appear in the title :) <3#honestly this is just an appreciation post for my favorite tbosas boys#âthey drink water cause they cant drink bloodâ said crassus fucking snow of all people father of coriolanus fucking snow of all people#nasty evil hypocrite same as his son#also thereâs obviously other examples of this with other characters#i focused on them specifically because 1) theyâre among my favorite characters hehe#but mostly because 2) i find the whole âfirst impact vs realityâ thing SO interesting#reaper ash#marcus tbosas#sejanus plinth#coriolanus snow#crassus snow#ballad of songbirds and snakes#the hunger games
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the real tragedy of tlou is that in saving ellieâs life, joel dooms their relationship. itâs not tragic that he killed a hospital of ppl and prevented a cure bcus we have no emotional attachment to any of those people or the notion a cure might actually work and fix the world. weâve travelled across that world with ellie and joel and seen how itâs in pieces and how unlikely it could ever be fixed the way the fireflies imagine. but emotionally we ARE with joel and ellie and as we see them in that car and hear joel tell his lie and see ellieâs face, we know that things canât be the same for them again. i am now and have always been of the opinion that joel lies in that moment to protect her from her feelings of guilt and the burden of thinking she has 2 save the world (and ive always said too he should have told her the truth eventually instead of her having to force his hand to get it), but regardless of that the choice joel made and the lie is always going to be between them. things will always be a little different now. an unspoken thing that eats away at the space between them, making it bigger and bigger. and thatâs why itâs really tragic because joel picked ellieâs life over and above anything else cus he loved her and thus knew her life had value independent of being a cure to save the world and she should get to live it, but whilst she is living it (something she is only able to do cus he saved her), he has to watch from afar. he saves her and loses her at the same time.
#this is not me saying i agree with the complete estrangement they have in part 2#thatâs still so divorced from the things they do for each in part 1 i just canât see it#but ive always said that i can see their relationship being different/colder/not remotely as close#especially as she gets older and keeps asking about the hosp and he keeps lying like he should have fessed up when it was eating her up#and honestly the whole thing would have been so interesting to explore in part 2 if theyâd done it properly instead of#killing joel off so fast and being very dull in how they explored their new dynamic with that lie between them#anyway i digress#tlou#the last of us#joel miller#ellie williams#the last of us spoilers
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Making sense of love for love's sake: the game
Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:
'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'
And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".
When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.
And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.
And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:
"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."
Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.
"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."
And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.
"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."
And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.
And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.
And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.
The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.
#wow look at me writing actual kinda thought out meta#also something something about how the pen being in his pocket wasnt a pen given to him by the author its a pen that was his the whole time#look even if this isnt the right interpretation as intended by the author i just kinda adore this headcanon ive come up with and i cant wai#to rewatch the show again through this lens and see if it holds up#i just adore the idea of this whole thing being this manifestation of a flawed doubtful person trying to navigate through their own messy#nonsensical thoughts to find their own happiness#bc yes thats what triggered me thinking of this whole thing. me seeing that post and thinking yeah that doesnt make sense7#but then again when you tell yourself things an put your own mental blocks in the way they dont make sense either but you still have to fin#the ways to work around them in order to find happiness#like those things dont go away we just find the loopholes or the ways to overcome them that mean we can be happy#the game is your own mind - deal with your own existential crisis as you wish#anyway this is only part 1 in what i hope will be a very extensive meta analysis of this show - stay tuned#love for love's sake
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god damn i do not post often but can i talk about intentionality for a second?? one second please
i'm gonna be talking about bg3 but this really applies to any fandom space. people will, surface-level, agree that a Black character is not getting enough content compared to their white counterparts because it's. obvious . take wyll, who is several hours behind on voiced lines compared to other origins despite being one of the original five (before they added karlach and whiteified her too but that's another post). it's hard to deny cold hard facts
but then instead of engaging in content that uplifts Black characters and creators, they'll go right back to pumping out more and more content of just their white faves. on its own, it's not actively harmful, but here's what the implication is, whether they acknowledge it or not: yes wyll has less in-game content, yes his writing didn't get the attention it deserved, therefore i don't like him as much. it only perpetuates wyll's lack of content by contributing to his sidelining in fandom spaces
what i would love for fans who claim to be allies to do is to step out of the comfort zone of their initial favorites (which can, in fact, be biased!) and start pursuing content centering Black characters with intentionality. like all things, anti-racism (actively pushing back against racism rather than simply "Not Being Racist") takes practice and effort. you can't really agree with us that wyll needs more content, then in the same breath say that it's because of that that he's not interesting to you . the point was right in front of you doing a jig and you still missed it
#bg3#wyll#wyll ravengard#this isnt even including people who didnt notice that wyll had less content in the first place#which is. a very damning admission. so you werent paying Any attention to him...? at all....? its obvious even on a first playthrough tf#i had to physically stop myself from saying specific white boy names in the main post bc i knew it would just be fanning the flames#and thats not productive. as much as i hate to admit it.#anyway we all know why halsin is so much more popular than wyll. the white man with as much personality as a cardboard cutout#ITS HARD TO APPRECIATE HIM WHEN HES 1) boring and 2) part of the reason wyll got less content bc adding him meant less time for the others#if people start things in the replies im deleting this post if im being honest. this needed to be said but#i am not in the habit of arguing with strangers on the internet and i am not starting now#tyto speaks#man i didnt even mention how white side characters with maybe 5 min total of screentime get so much fan content .#while wyll a whole ORIGIN character gets left out of party art and either infantilized or villianized beyond the point of recognition
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i have this really stupid idea in my head that im frankly a little obsessed with and the idea is this: trent crimm doing a drunk history episode on ted lasso's first tenure at richmond. is that how drunk history works? i don't think so. do i care? absolutely not. it's a special episode who cares because this image is not only hysterical to me but treasured. i treasure this image. i hold it close in my heart and also laugh and laugh and laugh.
#ted is played by what is very visibly a butch lesbian in a huge fake mustache.#roy is inexplicably played by himself in a wig.#ternt drunkenly and passionately explaining this whole thing. he says his own line and the trent actor (who also has a wig) gets to act it#trent waving his hands as he's explaining all this. the host being like 'not very often we get to have someone include the part where They#come into the story' and trents like [dorkiest finger guns]#also yes i said first tenure bc this scenario lives in post canon fantasy fix it land where ambiguously ted comes back to richmond#at some point. and also both bc my tedependent heart is obsessed and bc it's really funny#marries trent. just bc i want this to end with trent--hammered and pleased as punch--being like AND THEN I MARRIED HIM!!!!!#[falls back on couch happily] :)#also in the line of that great 5+1 social media fic#by jessjessthebest. a sequel thats just like a youtube video like#'we made ted lasso and trent crimm watch that episode of drunk history about them' and trent is just. head in hands the whole time.#ted is DELIGHTED.#anyway i rotate this in my brain fucking DAILY. it's so goddamn funny to me.#ted lasso#tedependent#tedtrent#trent crimm#the line in question being 'is this a fucking joke' i just realized i did not clarify that#no but really im obsessed with this it's so fucking funny#also any image trent had left of being a ruthless ex journalist is thoroughly ruined#all of his former colleagues have seen him and drunk and giggling and fully admitting what he was thinking at the time and oh boy#hes a disaster <3#gertspeak
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Ride 768: Doubashi attack!!
Pag 1
1: Orange....
âLess of a heroâ? Ah!?
2: Nonsense!!
You've never been a hero to begin with!!
Pag 2
1: Ha..... Hakogaku!!
Even Hakogaku caught up!!
2: Thick.... thick.....
3: A man like this holds the strongest of powers!!
6: I'm thin compared to him!!
That's not true, Oosumi-kun!!
7: Senpai, is he strong?
The Hakogaku member who last year defeated Sohoku's Kaburagi in the first day's sprint is
Pag 3
1: him, Doubashi Masakiyo!!
Buah!!
Pag 4
2: Buah...
So in the end you've decided to run?
3: âChickenâ
Pag 5
1: We're passing by the sign the signals 5km until the sprint line!!
2: Hakone Academy.....!!
3: Ace sprinter, Doubashi!!
Ugh.....
6: We're at â5km leftâ until the sprint
7: There's not much left
Pag 6
1: It won't take more than â10 minutesâ!!
2: So you've come, Doubashi!!
It's âsanâ!!
San!!
How many times have I told you!!
3: Again!!
Pag 7
1: You want to get revenge against me!!
2: That's how someone who won last year would speak, but you lost against me!!
3: Hahaha, are you being a sore loser?
I'm telling you you're the one who lost!!
4: Whatever, come at me!!
It's not whatever, what are you even thinkin when saying that!!
Are you that self confident
Pag 8
1: We'll definitely win!!
2: Interesting, buah!! I came here to humble you!!
4: Ugh....
He's different.....!! He's much more dangerous now that he's running rather than when I met him this morning in the tent!!
Pag 9
1: Hakone Academy's Doubashi!! He's so overwhelmingly intimidating!!
It's like the pressure of a huge raging bull that has its eyes on you!!
2: Just by looking at me he makes me feel like my hands and feet are restrained
Issa fought against someone like him last year!?
4: No!!
5: Calm down
Steady your breathing
6: Swallow your nerves, Danchiku Ryuuhou!!
Pag 10
1: He moved on his own!!
Everyone is so overpowered by Hakogaku that they're not moving!!
For me, on the contrary
2: It's a chance!!
Nagoya's Komao used the curve and jumped ahead
He plans on going ahead alone!!
Pag 11
3: The sprint line is 5km from here!!
Horse acceleration!!
I think I can aim for a breakaway victory!!
4: That guy has a reputation for running solo!!
Gallop!!
This is bad!!
5: Doubashi has an incredible pressure!? But isn't this kind of things
6: just fears that we create ourselves!?
7: I can keep going like this!!
Doubashi isn't worth fearing!!
Pag 13
1: Where are you going?
3: Uaaaaaaagh
Pag 14
1: I thought I was 200m ahead of him, and yet
2: I could have let you go freely, but if you keep wandering around in front of my eyes like that
3: I can't win comfortably!!
Wa-
Pag 15
1: Hakogaku's Doubashi accelerated in an instant and passed Nagoya!!
Gallop!!
2: Together with Sohoku!!
3: Ah!? âSohokuâ!? Tch!! He reacted at the same time as me...?
4: You're the only one who can react at the same speed as me in this leading pack
Orange!!
Pag 16
2: Chicken!!
Pag 17
2: Orange is still behind!?
3: Did he give an order to this guy?
4: And he still managed to keep up with my speed of reaction!?
6: What, this guy's eyes, this running
Pag 18
1: What happened, your expression has changed!!
So this guy wasn't a chicken!!
2: Sorry, Doubashi-san
We'll take this sprint
3: The two of us!!
Pag 19
1: Garuaagh
2: After stopping Nagoya down, Sohoku number 5 jumped out from there
3: and attacked again!!
Tch
4: Hahaha
I told you!!
Pag 20
1: âWe'll definitely winâ!!
2: Orange!!
Hahaha, what we're aiming for is to be
3: âJapan's number oneâ!!
4: I'll make you Japan number two!!
#yowamushi pedal#yowamushi pedal translations#yowapeda#yowapeda manga#yowamushi pedal manga#yowamushi pedal spoilers#ride 768#kaburagi keeps being the funniest person around i adore him asdhsdgfkd#how tf did he became 100 times more stupid since aoyagi left#did aoyagi take aways all of his braincells when he left????#was he actually kaburagi's brain????#anyway i adore him and i adora his relationship with doubashi ashdlsdfjhlds#their whole exchange in this chapter made me laugh so much i took longer than necessary to translate that part lmao#the best way to defeat your opponent is just to pretend youve won already against the#mental battle won: kabu 1 doubashi 0#now leaving those two dumbasses aside for a moment#DANCHIKUUUUU YOU FUCKING GO BOYYYYY#its his time to shine you go boy show us (and doubashi) what youve got#i love this thing they have where kabu gives the order#bc one would think danchiku (being the one with a brain) would do that but nope! kabu does#and when it comes down to it he is pretty good at it#btw lets not forget that kiji is about to arrive too#and hes going to be the last - which means by kabu's logic that hes the hero#which means that hes gonna win????#idk i feel like thats whats gonna happen
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making a list of my favorite quote/ones that stuck with me from each season 1 episode because i feel like it
(i'm starting this after episode 4 but it will be a WHILE before i post it)
episode 1: "bones are a lie peddled by Big Milk" - alice
i love this one because it's a great introduction to alice i think. also it radiates spiral so i hope we get avatar alice not dead alice (isnt there a podcast called alice isnt dead?)
episode 2: "If I wanted to clear the canvas, I would have used turpentine." - statement
this one was just fucking powerful and caught me so off guard like đ¶
episode 3: "What would I do without her?" - statement
the norris statement <3 it feels like martin asking what he would do without jon which makes mag200 a lot sadder and i love them
episode 4: "Perhaps you shall prove a stronger will than I, and will yet find it within yourself to destroy this hungry thing of wood and cat-gut." - statement
augustus sighting #1 and we immediately get jonah magnus expressing that it may be possible for gwen bouchard unknown family member to overcome the eye's hunger spooky violin
episode 5: "Voyeur needs to be seen to be believed." - statement
i feel like this one is pretty reflective of how the seasons gonna go? like if you explain the events of tma (mag200 specifically) no one's gonna believe you, it must be seen to be believed!! and also seen!! like the eye!!!
episode 6: "Not sca- This isnât some poxy blood test, some little pinprick, this is hundreds, thousands of razor sharp points pushing into your flesh." - needles
i love needles so much and i thought this was really funny because it was like "you dont find me scary!! what the fuck!!!" just kind of toddler michael energy
episode 7: "Itâs not like weâre wrestling with tape recorders and manila folders." - celia
STOP IT. celia you can't say that you just cannot!!!!!! you Knowâą too much maam i cant with you
episode 8: "Pleasure to meet you both. Iâm Gerry!"
RAGHHHHH OH MY GOD GERRY!!!! i love him so much and idk how to handle him being alive in the tmagp universe!! gertrude too but idk we got so much of her in tma and not nearly enough of gerry
episode 9: "And honestly, itâs kind of compelling by this point." - sam
they got him đđ the horrors got sam đđ also i found this to be an interesting contrast to jon's heavy resistance in season 1 like he was being compelled but he wasn't going to let anyone know that vs sam "its kinda compelling to trauma dump on this paperwork :]" how is he somehow even more victim material
episode 10: "Gosh youâre sexy, hereâs a twenty for your trouble.â - alice
does this count as a quote if shes also quoting what she thinks sam should say? idk anyway i love her i would say that to her if given the chance and it was very silly. i will not be addressing bonzo i am scared.
episode 11: "...Thank you, Alice" - gwen
dyhard dyhard dyhard dyhard dyhard. okay also, the way she CRUMBLED at the idea of anyone doing anything nice for her please someone give her a hug and let it be ME. this series is tossing me back and forth between sam & alice (what is their ship name) and dyhard but this put me back to dyhard
episode 12: "You know it's rude to have absolutely no game?" - alice
she's so fucking funny i need her to be okay so badly!!!! i don't think even tim made me laugh as much as she makes me chuckle and this one really got me. it's hard to write such a comedic character in a podcast since you only have the voice but they really nailed it i adore her
episode 13: "Is it my fault?" - gwen
each of these episodes just reveal a little bit more about how loving and soft gwen is and idk i love her so unbelievably much so seeing that she felt guilt about the bonzo stuff just made her so much more real :(
episode 14: "Christ, theyâre in the wallsâŠ" - statement
theyre in the walls!!! theyre in the goddamn walls!!!!! anyway that got me because i realized the hole before the statement said it. made more sad than scared tbh
episode 15: "Babies are cool!" - alice this entire interaction between her and sam & celia was so awkward, she is so obvious and i love her anyway
episode 16: "Itâs not like I was holding doors open for Mr Bonzo or anything." - gwen my wife is so so so stupid but i adore her AND this gives room for character development. i wish she did not do that though. i love when characters are flawed and have depth but i struggled to get past THIS flaw of hers
episode 17: "Thanks, I guess. Not exactly the same, though, is it?" - celia shes talking TO JON IN THE COMPUTER. SHE KNOWS. i lost my damn mind i love her i love her. get the gay people out of the puter please queen
episode 18: "Why would I need to talk to you? Your work is satisfactory. Unless you have a work-related issue I could assist you with?" - lena solidified my opinion that lena is the best boss to ever have, i adore her and i would want to work for her if she wasn't the boss of Creepy Establishment #1
episode 19: "Youâre going to throw it in the fishtank, arenât you?" - alice colin's behavior is like really worrying BUT i'm glad he's back. i was not convinced he was still alive
episode 20: "I suppose itâs too late for remorse, isnât it? And why should I be sorry? This is what IÂ deserve!" - ink5oul/statement they reminded me of jon a lot, like especially his season 3/4 transformation when he doesn't quite know everything but he knows he isn't who he was in season 1 anymore, i hope we see more of their life and they can be helped :(
episode 21: [Tape Recorder Bites Ink5oul] - audio description i know it's not technically a quote but this is just so fucking funny. why does it have teeth. what does this mean for the lore. holy shit.
episode 22: "Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood" - celia. knawing at the walls of my enclosure i am so not okay. i'm not okay. wtf. wtf. wtf. they're real. wtf.
episode 23: "I had a favorite mug. It said âlove you, bitchâ and had a picture of a drunk dog on it." - alice. okay i just love this entire interaction because gwen got to open up a little bit and my dyhard heart is so full
episode 24: "I am told that children like me, and Iâve always held the opinion that the world would be a better place if everyone just thought more." - basira. once again this whole interaction was so fun but like idk i loved hearing basira somewhat happy and in a safe place :] my wife <3
episode 25: " I am trying to help, to save us from this goddamned fucking nightmare machine!" - colin. MAN I REALLY WAS ROOTING FOR YOU!!! I WAS SO CONFIDENT YOU WEREN'T GONNA DIE!!!! it's over
episode 26: "I was worrying for a moment that you were Magnussing." - alice. MAGNUSSING BEING CANON MADE ME SAY IT EVEN MORE I'VE SAID IT LIKE TWICE ALREADY
episode 27: "You didnât tell me the room was labelled, âArchivist.â" - celia. oooooh somebody's got TRAUMAAAAA LMAO
episode 28: "So youâre telling me you know nothing about an OIAR external contract being found with the bodies of two tattooed thugs who met rather grisly ends?" - TREVOR HERBERT???? anyway. ink5oul mention!!!!! i hope they stop killing people it's really rude
episode 29: "Alice, er⊠weâve got to talk. Itâs important." - teddy. i knew it was over for him but i didn't think it was gonna be THIS bad??? bye babe i guess??? đ
episode 30: how do i even pick. the whole fucking episode. i can't. i am in a state of shock. i need to lay down for 30 years.
#honorable mentions:#âcanaries should stay above groundâ because holy shit (1)#âi donât scare so easy these daysâ because oh my god its our celia (7)#âi like themâ/âof course you doâ because weeping weeping weeping (8)#âoh no not again! oh the horrors! noooooâ that one was just really funny and not exactly part of the episode (9)#âcan he read?â (10) bc it enforces the gwen/jon parallels (âyou dont sound?? russian??â)#âthe deep will care for his bonesâ (11) it creeped me out and i loved it#âthe cover had this awful comic sans title 'mr. bonzo's on his way'â (12) comic sans font was so funny it almost made it not horrific#âI have a baby. Jack. Heâs just over a year old now.â (13) like BARNABAS. i know him.#âThe only drama is the dilemma of how I could possibly get by without you all to myself!â (14) alice.... alice....#âOh no! Who keeps taking Georgieâs face?!â (18) SHE'S BACKKKKKKK#''I swear if I hear one more word about Trevor-bloody-Herbert MP I am going to blow up Parliament.'' (27) because WHAT LMAO??? WHATTT#''when I first awoke I knew nothing nothing but the dream of things that sliced my who from me with claws like scalpels'' (30) i cried#''Theyâre gone Alice. Theyâre gone.'' (30) tweaking#''What happens now? You push me? Stab me? Or do I need to jump in myself? Come on whatâs stopping you?'' (30)#can i just put the whole episode in honorable mentions too atp.#''We are the hilltop. It is me and I am it and we are. We areâŠ'' (30)#''Yeah sure. Sorry to bother you. Goodbye Alice.'' (30)#okay i'm done#i can't i .. i ..#the magnus protocol#tmagp#magnus protocol#tmagp spoilers#tmagp season 1#the magnus pod
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thinkign about how alone and unloved morty was for all his life and rick was the first time anyobdy ever put such an amount of intense attention and dependency onto him . and rick had a whole new family and losing them made him stop seeing the value in other people as a whole and morty was the one and first thing that woke him up
#really long Tag rant down there#one of the most Things Ever about them to me is how morty barely even understands just how much rick loves him. more than anything#and its something ricks done on purpose hes made sure of it#because hes so weak he cant handle it#them being together is agony in avsolutely every way and sense but also theyre the best part of eachothers lives#morty because nobodys payed attention to him quite like rick has and all the exciting space adventures and rick just cause. he literally#just likes him thats it. and he never knew it#also i was thinking of this earlier. one of the reasons season 1 is soooo good to me is cuz you get to see morty grow on rick in real time#stuff like that moment where morty walks through the door and rick is instantly at the sight of him SUPER excited and he goes hey!!! but#then he clears his throat and goes Hey trying to pretend like this dumb scaredy kid isnt becoming his favourite thing hes ever known day af#er day#and goddamn night shaym aliens. in that moment where he realised morty had been fake the whole time i rlly wonder what he was thinking and#how he felt. like. oh man this is messing with me way too much this is Bad#and then he got drunk over it and yknow. that . is it post credits. i think. that scene#n literally At the Very beginning he was tired n drunk n stupid thinking like man fuck this im gonna blow this place up and do what prime#did to me. But he brought morty with him Even just at that point it flashed in his mind and he absolutely could not bear to let morty die#Breathes in#im rewatching in October bc anniversary month. i literally canât wait im so actually impatient i considered just doing it today So hard#odiespeak
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