#this question is subject to change though due to the timeline not being entirely planned out yet

[something-in-your-walls]

Sooo

Does anyone else find out about Captain Underpants being Krupp besiiiides Melvin in your au?

well, yes. its complicated. jasper knows (later in the timeline) and so does mr. ree. george and harold DO FIND OUT he exists at around book 2 with the talking toilets (they think he came to life from the patsy) but therefore have NO CLUE that its krupp at all for a good two books and (thanks to poopypants) they eventially start realizing that if cap WAS made from the patsy hed be leaking the printer ink the turbo toilet 2000 did in book 2 instead of blood when he got hurt, which throws them for a loop for a good while of the story.

[iamanartichoke]

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

[1-800-scaryphone]

a FINAL finalized version of norm’s timeline, i’m finally confident this time, let’s go:

norm says that he “had to leave his life behind, TWICE.” this means that he at least had some semblance of a life before mingus exiled him.

having done more research, i assume this implies that norm had some hope to resume his life after he landed. he must have had friends at n.as/a. i’m sure he had high hopes for when he landed (which were subsequently robbed), and eventually, plans for once he recovered. i’m sure that once he returned to earth, there were a handful of people who recognized and were thrilled to have sgt. allen back, and those who only saw his head and immediately feared him.

here’s my proposed timeline for this sequence of events, possibly subject to change:

norm lands on earth. he’s disoriented and in a daze. his vitals are out of wack, since he’s not only been traveling through space, but a WORMHOLE as well. therefore (despite his “odd condition” of not having a tech head) he is given medical attention.

during this time, norm most likely realizes the confusing condition of everyone he encounters and panics. he probably scurries away from people (to the best of his ability) when they approach him and freaks out until he either passes out or is “subdued” by medics.

people realize that this is sgt. norm allen, an astronaut who went missing five decades ago during an expedition.  n/a.sa experts freak out over his return. they want to ask all sorts of questions…now that callum can’t.

side note: i’m now of the mindset that this mission HAD to be secretive, considering that norm was hand-picked by the president and all, so i’m only counting those that would realize where he’d been- i.e. the folks at n.a/sa and, to some extent, mingus.

mingus also hears about norm’s recovery, as callum’s closest relative. she’s clearly not as thrilled that he’s back. her grandfather has spoken incoherently about the sergeant, and her jealousy spikes at the possibility that norm – of all people – might be the one to restore his memories.

norm slowly recovers, health-wise. he can walk around, barely; he experiences vertigo, far-sightedness, and blurry vision, and he’s still stumbling by the time he is banished from dialtown. while he’s around, though, his vitals are monitored closely, and he is studied because of his whole time-traveling wormhole experience. turns out he hasn’t aged a day. he does not fully recover before he is exiled.

norm, in the meanwhile, has the past fifty years summed up for him. callum started up the phone-ification craze, leading to the whole WORLD sporting all sorts of tech for heads. in the midst of his grandest speech, callum wiped his own memories…etc., etc. norm has a difficult time processing the news. his entire life is gone.

mingus forces n.a/sa to shorten his recovery time. although norm should be staying for a good few years (at LEAST six due to his extended stay in the cosmos + his wormhole travel), mingus pushes the narrative that norm is a menace. his initial reaction upon landing only serves to help her cause. everyone outside of n.as/a starts to believe her, and even a good few on the inside start turning.

eventually, everyone follows through on mingus’ policies, and they kick norm out. mingus exiles norm. norm is given equipment to continue his recovery “at home;” however, norm no longer HAS a home.

norm takes his issues up with the mayor, despite not being 100%. he stumbles over himself just trying to barge into her office. obviously, arguments are tough to deliver in that state. she kicks him out again.

you know the rest. he stews in his own bitterness and swears vengeance against the mayor.

a side note: norm went on this expedition in the summer of 1966, making him 33 years old when he left (the korean war started in 1950, 1950-18 = 1932, 1962-1932 = 34 - norm has an autumnal birthday, however, and he mentions leaving in summer, therefore? 33).

tacking on the extra six years (one year of recovery + five years of exile), this would make norm 39 (going on 40) as of the events of dialtown.

kudos to callum for being able to send norm on a successful space mission three full ass years before apollo 11, goddamn.

[satrangee-ray]

Meet my MC: About the Past

Inara Hepburn (she/they)

Trigger warnings: Mentions of queerphobia, bullying, loss of family member, sexual harassment.

More below the cut—

All characters and events depicted are fictional, any resemblance to real incidents are purely coincidental. The writer has no intention to throw allegations on, or hurt the sentiments of any community.

Background and family dynamic:

Inara Hepburn was born in 1992 at Los Angeles, California, to Manimala B. Hepburn and Thomas Hepburn, mainly as a last attempt to save their drowning marriage. Their birth merely delayed the inevitable, and two years later Thomas split with Mani for another woman, leaving her free from a toxic and abusive relationship.

Jobless in a big city all on her own, Mani decided to move back to her paternal residence in Kolkata with her two year old, to ensure them a happy and safe life. She took up a teaching job at a government school to cover for their expenses.

Growing up, Inara had a fairly good relationship with their mom, even to the extent of calling her their best friend. This, however, changed drastically when Inara came out to their mom. She was highly disappointed in them for "turning out" the way they did, and she kept searching for means to try and "change" them. Inara, on the other hand, had never felt more misunderstood, and hence, the easy dynamic between the two turned into a rocky one, with both of them dancing around the queer topic for years.

When Inara was 16, she was first diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Unfortunately, her therapist too turned out to be quite tentative in their approval towards her identity. They believed they could make her feel differently with pills and a couple of sessions. Feeling alone in a huge fiasco with no cooperation whatsoever from her family, friends, or doctor, Inara took to flushing pills down the toilet, and channeling all her feelings into journaling in her diary. It was from here that she found an idea forming, and two months into it, she started writing her first novel.

For one and a half years, Inara secretly worked on this novel, pouring her heart and soul out into perfecting every word. Finally, when it was done, Inara asked her mom to give her one last chance to explain everything, and gave her this book to read. Conditions being, no questions should be asked until the entire book has been fully read. Mani agreed, and by the end of it, she was in tears. The book had successfully managed to change all her inhibitions regarding people of different identities. Touched by Inara's talent and dedication, she helped her publish the book under the pen name Indradhanush.

Things had started to change for the better in the Hepburn household. At 21, Inara flew abroad to attend medical school. Four years later, a week before their graduation, they found out that their mom had passed away in a car accident on her way to the airport.

After their mom's demise, their aunt from Northern Irelands re-established proper connection with them, as she was their only parental figure left. Their aunt, uncle and cousin still keep touch with them, through occasional chats or video calls on Whatsapp.

Education and career path:

Inara completed her primary and secondary education from St. Jonathan's Convent, Kolkata (fictional). Throughout her school years Inara was equally good in science and literature. History-geography was not her forte, and the only reason she took up physics-chemistry-bio after her 10th boards along with the compulsory literature subjects is to avoid those two. 

Outside of strict school studies, Inara had always been an inquisitive kid, questioning and introspecting everything in and around them to the degree that people called them crazy. Their mom had a masters in Bengali, hence they grew up in the environment of understanding and appreciating fiction. This led them to write poems and short stories from a very young age. They had almost decided on pursuing a literature based career.

In her school days, Inara was bullied for being "different"; aka both partially white and queer. She found it difficult to fit in, and hence the constant taunts became a part of her childhood trauma. She was also groped and sexually harassed by her math teacher in his office when she was in the 9th grade. Inara and her mom tried to report, but couldn't file a complaint as they were threatened by the said math teacher who held an important position in the church.

After 12th, Inara spent two years pursuing a bachelor's degree in English literature, and writing their second book. But by the first year, she had already encountered her life changing medical book 'Diagnostics Principles' by Dr. Ethan Ramsey (source: her family friend/physician), and her mind about her main career plans had begun to change. As soon as she made a decision, she quit college and took a year off to prepare for a medical entrance examination.

Having obtained a scholarship to study abroad, they took up their seat at a medical school in Boston, and completed their 4 year MBBS course. In the second year, their mom got another book of theirs published, this time a spy thriller, and that too recieved an overwhelming response. No one in their school or college knew it was them, cause it all happened under their pen name.

After graduation, she took up an internship position in Edenbrook Hospital, Boston.

Personal life:

The only best friends Inara had in school were Ayan and Vaani, a family outside of family. They were the ones to always defend her and have her back whenever they would get bullied. Later, Ayan too came out as gay, and Vaani is still questioning her sexuality, but between them three, there are never any judgements. 

Inara fell in love with their classmate Pranani when they were 14, and they dated secretly for 4 years. Pranani's mom was a teacher in the same school and had an influence in the administration. Inara looked up to Pranani's mom a lot, until they realized she was the one to deliberately put them under that math teacher, to replace her own daughter's seat and transfer her to another section. Pranani knew, and did nothing to change it. On being confronted, Pranani tried to gaslight Inara and forcefully kiss her to dissolve the situation. Soon after, Inara broke it off.

Inara always had feelings for Vaani, and they had a short fling in their college days after she confessed. It mutually ended after they realized Vaani wasn't ready to commit, and they were better off as friends.

Inara held a key position in the LGBTQ+ committee of their med university. They ran several campaigns funded by the college over the four years, in and outside of the campus, to spread awareness, as well as aid and advocate for people of the community.

Childhood obsessions timeline— (in order of which one started first, cause none ended till date).

Disney musicals, Barbie movies, Tinker Bell

Akbar-Birbal

Rabindrasangeet 

Sherlock Holmes

Western country music

Bio-chem (started early on, distinguished later, reignited at the start of their medical career)

Agatha Christie

Shakespeare

Queer fanfiction 

Diagnostics Principles :).

About the books:

Phoenix– The first book by Indradhanush, based on an NRI queer couple in California who after several life turmoils find themselves and have a happy ending that the author felt she and her then girlfriend deserved.

The blurry insides of Truth– Second book by Indradhanush, and the last published till date, about a woman whose marriage gets interrupted due to attempted murder of one of her guests on her wedding day. Her to-be husband, a CID officer, stands accused. To what lengths will she go to defend him? Is she really defending him though, or is nobody who they seem to be?

That was my entry people! I had to change the name of my MC's school, because I can't put allegations on any real and existing one.

Hope you got a good insight into the past of my dearest Inara's life.

Tagging: @openheartfanfics @adiehardfan @barbean

[kitkatt0430]

the flash and the problem of the pointless sacrifice

It starts at the end of season one. Eddie Thawne picks up his gun and shoots himself, dying to protect Iris, Barry, and the rest from his dangerous descendent Eobard Thawne.

Season two ends with its reversal, Barry creating the Flashpoint Timeline that, though its eventually set back to 'normal-ish', leaves a time remnant of Eobard Thawne alive and well (if running scared from the Black Flash/Hunter Zolomon as a speed zombie) to wreak havoc once more.

And I get it. The Reverse Flash is one of the Flash's most iconic villains - killing him off in season one couldn't be permanent. But apparently Eddie's suicide could be and the message that sends is... unfortunate.

Eddie is an extremely kindhearted person and we see that about him again and again throughout season one. He always has a smile for the people he cares about and he's an absolutely terrible liar. But we also know that he was bullied as a child/teen and since he never brings up the subject of his own family, it's likely he doesn't have a support structure outside of Central City. And the support structure he does gain in Central City was Barry's support structure first. There's not a single person we see Eddie spend time with in season one that didn't know Barry first.

And that's a big part of what wears him down over the course of the season. When both Barry and Eddie need support, Barry gets it first. Barry's secrets are treated as something Eddie has to prioritize over his relationship with Iris. Barry's loved Iris longer than Eddie's known her and while Iris loves Eddie, she also loves Barry and she's infatuated with the Flash - not realizing he's Barry's alter ego. Over the course of the season, Eddie constantly tries to connect with Barry and Barry constantly holds back. Their relationship is never equal. And that's what leaves Eddie open to Eobard's manipulations with the future news article.

And Eddie tries to make his own future with Iris anyway. But even with Iris accepting his proposal, Joe makes it clear he'll never truly accept their relationship and Eddie's sense of self worth is at an all time low. And that's the state of mind he's in during the fight in the pipeline. When Barry chooses not to let Eobard go after all, it puts them all in a position of potentially having to deal with this fight between the two speedsters just... never ending. It puts Iris in danger because Barry cares about her and because while Eddie is Eobard's ancestor... Iris isn't. From Eobard's point of view, Eddie's the only one who isn't expendable and from Eddie's point of view... he's the only one who is expendable.

His answer is suicide. And his death immediately erases Eobard from the timeline, but its also implied to have contributed to the re-emergence of the singularity. But at least Eobard was dead.

At least, until Barry created Flashpoint at the end of season 2. Presumably Eddie was alive in Flashpoint, but we never see him. Maybe he stays in Keystone instead of transferring to Central City. Never meets Iris. Never gets worn down to feel like he's not good enough. Never kills himself.

When Flashpoint is reset, Eddie's dead again but now his sacrifice has been rendered moot because Eobard's still alive as a time remnant.

It sets a rather nasty precedent for the show.

Season two also ends with a suicide. This time it's Barry's.

Much like Eddie the year before, Barry's been worn down. He had his place in his family's come into question, with Henry leaving at the start of the season and Wally's arrival midway through the season. His back is literally broken by the stress of fighting Zoom and despite everything he's suffered for the city, his honor is called into question the instant a different speedster takes to thievery. He has to give up his speed to protect Wally only for that to immediately put Caitlin in danger. His colleagues are brutally murdered by Zoom to teach him a lesson. His father finally comes back for good, only to be murdered in the same place as Barry's mother.

Honestly, there is no question (to my mind anyway) that Barry's suicidal at the end of the season. And because Barry his time remnants are fundamentally the same person at the moment of their split, the time remnant Barry creates is suicidal as well.

That time remnant tears himself apart to stop Zoom's plan to destroy the multi-verse. His very existence also lures in the Time Wraiths that take Zoom away, transforming him into the mindless Black Flash. All at the cost of a version of Barry killing himself, going unlamented and forgotten. But at least the multi-verse was safe.

Until the Red Skies Crisis when the multi-verse is actually destroyed and rebooted.

Another sacrifice rendered pointless.

HR does not kill himself in season three. But he deliberately places himself in a position to be killed in Iris' place. He arrives on the heels of a scandal on his Earth where he's been revealed to have been taking credit for someone else's work - with that person's blessing, but its still ruined his reputation. He comes wanting to reinvent himself, but from the start he's not the person the team really wants. They want Harry. Cisco wants Harry. He gets it hammered in that his strengths aren't appreciated by the team because he's not a scientist. His efforts to help STAR Labs are dismissed entirely. The only reason any attempts to help his museum venture succeed are because changing the future might save Iris.

It's not that HR is disliked, but he's left acutely aware that he's considered 'a bit much' and that he's always going to come second to the people he puts first. In fact, Tracy's probably the only one who truly and completely appreciates HR as he is.

So HR swaps places with Iris, knowing that he's going to die when he does. And while HR doesn't kill himself, there's an argument to be made that what he did was still suicide by proxy.

And this is a sacrifice that sticks, because Iris West is the love interest. She's never going to be killed off for real.

Three seasons ending with a suicidal sacrifice. And only one of them doesn't have that sacrifice reversed or nullified. Unfortunately, that's not the end of it either.

Harry leaves his Earth at the start of season four. His relationship with his daughter, which was shown to still be strong in season three, has somehow deteriorated to the point where she's thrown him off her support team and he comes to Earth-1 to reconnect with the found family he forged during season two. He's in the midst of a crisis and his understanding of himself as a parent is unraveling. And then DeVoe calls the other pillar of Harry's self identity into question, because Harry's genius isn't enough on its own anymore. He's not smart enough to out think DeVoe and his Earth-1 family is suffering. So Harry creates his own downfall, burns out his own brain trying to be the smartest. And he sacrifices his last moments of lucidity to find the answer to stopping DeVoe. In doing so, Harry puts Barry in the position to save Ralph's life.

But DeVoe still gets the last laugh when he causes the STAR Labs satellite to come falling down, nearly destroying the city and creating Cicada in the process.

But unlike previous seasons, Harry doesn't die. He gets some of his intelligence back and immediately gets exiled by the writers back to Earth-2 due to the massive problems with ableism this show has. But that's a different conversation.

Season five is probably the only season not to include a suicidal character who's kills themselves. Nora dies when she erases herself from the timeline by accident, but we know now she'll be back in the back half of season seven, along with her new brother. But one out five seasons not taking a suicide (or similar action in Harry's case) and painting it as a noble - but ultimately useless - gesture is rather... bad as far as track records go.

Season six has the alternate Barry Allen - implied to be the Barry from the 90s show - who dies in place of this show's Barry. To save the multi-verse and let this other Barry go home to his wife, something he'll never have with Tina again. And the multi-verse is destroyed anyway.

Season seven opened with Nash Wells, whose usual method of investigating mysteries and hoaxes led to the Anti Monitor's freedom and the multi-verse's destruction. His home Earth destroyed so he can never go home. He's confronted with an alternate version of his dead daughter, who can barely stand his presence. He begins to hallucinate alternate versions of himself and is possessed by the Reverse Flash and all his research on how to create a new Speed Force - to try to make up for some of the damage he's caused - points to a single conclusion. The only way to make things better is for him to die.

Instead, Nash's death immediately makes things worse. The artificial speed force is flawed and Barry destroys it in the very next episode. And while one could argue that Nash's death allowed Barry to save Iris and ultimately restored the original Speed Force, it doesn't negate the fact that Nash's suicidal state of mind wasn't addressed by the people who called him friend. And his legacy was immediately deemed a failure and destroyed.

While I wouldn't say the show is glorifying suicide, there's a subtle and incredibly troubling repetition in the story telling on the show that frames suicide as the right decision in certain circumstances. Even though what's being sacrificed for often comes to naught. And it's incredibly uncomfortable, seeing it all laid out like this.

I'm still really not sure what to make of it all, but I've got no doubt it ties into the show's ableism with regards to mental health issues. Because every time its someone whose mental health has been brought down to a low point who commits these acts of 'sacrifice' and while the team grieves these losses... they don't seem to learn from them either. Because it just keeps happening.

(Think I missed something? Please, by all means, add on.)

[jungleuniversity]

How I Improved My MCAT Score (509 -> 518)

Hi Everyone! I got back my new MCAT scores awhile ago, but I thought I’d write a post about how I achieved my score, with hope that it could potentially help another student. I know that while I was studying, a lot of the advice I saw on the internet was overwhelming and made me feel that my level of studying would always be inferior to what others were doing. The vast array of available courses, practice tests, and other services available certainly did not help either, as there is no reasonable way to complete every single resource that exists. In this post, I’ll go through a timeline of my basic study plan and explain which resources I used and why I think they are worth using. 

Stage 1 - Kaplan 7 book set and other content resources

I had trouble coming up with a time frame for how long it should take to go through the Kaplan set, which is why I simply called this part the “first stage.” Many guides I have read online mention strictly separated “content review” and “practice exam” phases of studying. Personally, that would never have worked out for me because I would have gotten anxious every time I got a question wrong during the exam phase. Instead, I spent about 3-4 months simply reading and taking notes out of the books, and then doing a mixed exam and content review stage. I used each book in the following ways, especially the second time I studied: 

Biochemistry - For the first half of the book I took detailed notes as if I were learning from an ordinary biochemistry textbook for a class. For the second half, I eased on the notes and started drawing out the different pathways. I think I wrote down the Electron Transport Chain pathway 10-15 times and the Citric acid cycle path about 50 times. I did not draw the shapes of compounds, but I won’t tell you not to do that either. 

Biology -  Same as the Biochem book. I did spend extra time on “high yield content” that's more difficult to memorize, such as actin/tropomyosin activity in muscle. 

Physics - I cannot stress what I am about to say enough. The absolute most important things to know from this book are the units. If you are truly stuck on a physics (or often chemistry) question, there is a very good chance you can use dimensional analysis to force your way to the right answer in a relatively brief amount of time. If nothing else, PLEASE learn the units behind every concept. 

Chemistry - Use the advice from physics, but I also took pretty heavy notes, especially in the first half, since there’s a lot of content that, despite being easier than biochemistry in my opinion, are foundational and will cause problems if you skip it. 

Behavioral Sciences - This was the section that brought down my first attempt score. I found that the premed95 anki deck that’s in circulation was helpful, but it made me incredibly lazy in studying to the point where I would pretend to be productive, while just looking at slides. I was desperate not to repeat my mistakes, so I brute forced my way through the Kaplan book this time instead. I didn’t take notes the way I did for other subjects - instead I hand wrote every single bolded word and definition in a notebook, organized by chapters. This took about a week and I did not study any other subject during this time. I don’t know if I would recommend this method for Behavioral Sciences for everyone, but the truth is that after I did this, my practice section scores went from 124 to 128-130. One thing to keep in mind though, the last few sections of the Physics/Math book are absolutely critical to the Behavioral Sciences section as they are the only resource within the Kaplan set which explain the research methodologies for both Psychology and Sociology. 

Organic Chemistry - I took sparse notes on this book. I think it's the least useful out of the 7 book set, and I often had to look to the internet and old organic chemistry class notes to clarify mechanisms and pathways. Nevertheless, make flashcards or write down reactions such as the Aldol condensation, which more likely than not will show up at some point. 

CARS - Skip this book. In my opinion, there are better ways to study this section. Most importantly, use the CARS question packs from AAMC. 

Stage 2 - CARS, Mixed Content Review and Practice Exams (2-3 weeks)

This is around when I started taking CARS much more seriously, so I would recommend starting earlier. I mainly focused on using the two AAMC question packs, although the KhanAcademy passages were also useful. The first question pack was definitely a bit more difficult and you might feel discouraged after going through half of it. However, I promise it does get better. Part of the change is that as you read explanations for why you get questions wrong, your skill will begin to improve. The other part is that the second half of the question pack, as well as most of the second question pack are more closely aligned with the difficulty level of the actual test. 

This was also when I began taking NextStep full length exams. (Insert surprised Pikachu face) My first score was a 501. Definitely not expected at the time, but it was a necessary wakeup call to understand where my content gaps were. 

After each exam I took from this point on, I would take the rest of the day off after taking the exam. Just relax, after taking a 7 hour exam, you deserve it tbh. The next day, go over the entire exam, question by question and take notes where you need to. I wrote very brief 1-line notes for questions I got right and understood, and more detailed notes for all incorrect questions as well as correct questions that I did not fully understand. This is important for two reasons: First, this allows you to know exactly where your content gaps are and understand how you can improve applying the concepts that you already know. Second, there’s only so many different things they can ask you on the MCAT. It might sound endless, but there are a finite number of concepts and you are bound to see very similar questions on future practice tests and also on the real MCAT. In my experience, writing down the explanation for the correct answers on missed questions ensured that I never get a similar question incorrectly in the future. Overall, next-step exams were alright, but their content felt incredibly low-yield. Now, studying low yield concepts is extremely important, but it's obviously detrimental if that's all you study. 

For the next month, I would alternate between taking next-step and AAMC full lengths, with breaks in between to review my content gaps. My highest Nextstep exam was a 512, but I tended to score around 507-508. My aamc exams, in order, were 519, 517, and 515. The downward trend was concerning, but I was honestly happy since all of those scores were higher than my target at the time, 513. Also, I falsely began to think that NextStep exams were extremely deflated. (They are, but not nearly to the extent that you might think.)

Finally, the day before my first exam: I couldn’t sleep at all, and I went against common advice of not studying on this day. As for exam day, just trust yourself and the studying you have done. My main advice beyond what anyone else will tell you is to keep a close eye on the clock. Several people who tested with me lost up to 5 minutes on CARS because they forgot to take into account the time during their lunch break. Not every test center will have digital clocks, and the one I went to only had a tiny analog clock near the area they check you in. When I asked a proctor for the time, he just laughed. So make sure you look at the clock and remember the time when your break starts. 

My score on the first exam turned out to be a 509. Not necessarily a bad score at all, but this score was much lower than what I was aiming for. It was disappointing, mainly due to the time I put into studying, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. My behavioral sciences section severely pulled my score down, and there were a few content areas that I truly was not prepared for. I felt bad about it for about a week, and afterwards started studying again. 

Stage 3: Final Preparations 

Initially, I found it relatively difficult to study during the semester. One of my friends recommended I use UWorld questions to effectively use my time. This resource definitely helped me out when I felt like I simply did not have enough time to finish studying. They provide you with 1500 or so questions, categorized by section and sub categorized by topic. You can choose how many questions or passages you want to do in one sitting, and if you want it timed or not. After you finish, they provide you with personalized statistics for the session, as well as explanations for each question, which are saved and can be viewed at any time. Alongside simply rereading the Kaplan books, this is the best way to reinforce content knowledge. 

The final resource I used were the Altius exams. I purchased a pack of 5 on a whim because 1) I ran out of practice tests and 2) someone on reddit said these were severely under-appreciated. Well, that gamble paid off because I believe these exams are about as close as you can get to the AAMC full lengths, BUT they give you much more detailed explanations, and are just a little bit more difficult, so you actually end up feeling like the AAMC practice exams are a bit smoother and easier to pace yourself on. After purchasing, I had one month to take all five, as well as the then-recently-released AAMC FL #4. Altius exams were great, and honestly, my only “complaint” was that CARS felt a little bit too difficult to be as useful as it could be. I also studied Behavioral Sciences and Biochemistry the way I described in Part 1, since I felt like I underperformed on those sections. 

When second exam day approached, I forced myself to get a full night of sleep this, and it absolutely paid off. I was noticeably more aware during this test than my previous attempt, and corrected myself before making a bunch of silly errors. 

A month later, I found out I got a 518, which was higher than my original goal. 

Tl;dr: 

Studying for the mcat is expensive, and it can be hard to find advice on which resources are useful. 

In my opinion, only: Altius exams are amazing. UWorld is a great resource for content gaps and reinforcement, especially when you have sharp time constraints. Kaplan books are awesome for content review, but it should be fine if you buy an older edition (I used 2015).

[murasaki-murasame]

Since Higurashi Gou’s on break this week, I figure this would be a good excuse to make one big post going over all of my current theories, and also how I feel about the other popular theories in the fandom.

[This will have both Higurashi and Umineko spoilers in it]

On a meta level, my over-arching theory for Gou is that it’s basically a series of forgeries written by Featherine. Basically I think that some time after Matsuribayashi, Rika came into contact with Featherine, shared information about everything to do with Hinamizawa, and she decided to write her own stories based on that info.

Going down this route, I think the Rika we see in Gou [at least on the gameboard level] is basically a distinct fictional construct who more or less branches off from around Tsumihoroboshi or so. Basically I think this version of Rika doesn’t actually know the truth about Takano, or that her friends are starting to remember past timelines, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if whole elements of her backstory have been tweaked to fit the story that Featherine wants to write. I also think that the happy ending timeline she referenced in ep2, and her quoting stuff Keiichi said in the past in Tataridamashi, might instead be about some kind of original arc that’s just meant to trick us into assuming she’s talking about the last few arcs of the VN.

Mostly I just think that with how things have gone thus far, it really doesn’t come across like Rika actually knows about Takano being evil. This could just be a case of clunky writing where they don’t want to spoil it for new fans, so Rika’s being made to act weird and out of character in order to keep it a secret, but stuff like her rant to Keiichi in Watadamashi make me think that she straight up hasn’t been doing anything about Takano in these arcs, and her whole attitude in Tataridamashi of ‘we can change fate by saving Satoko’ while not saying or doing anything about Takano seems really weird if we assume that she remembers everything from the VN. The whole deal with Minagoroshi was that saving Satoko wasn’t actually enough to achieve a happy ending, since Takano ended up killing everyone anyway. So it’d be really weird for Rika to fall into that same mindset again.

And on the note of Takano, like most people I think she’s probably not the villain this time around, one way or another. For one thing it’d just be kinda underwhelming for old fans if they do that again, but I think they just don’t have time to actually do the whole Takano thing in Gou unless we get an entire second season after this. Which could happen, but I’m basing all of my theories on the assumption that Gou will just be 24 episodes, since that’s all that’s been confirmed.

There’s also the fact that the first half of Gou has provided far less evidence to allow new fans to even start piecing together what Takano’s deal would be. We haven’t seen Tomitake’s corpse get found with his throat clawed out, so it’d be pretty difficult for new fans to guess that Takano kills him in each arc. Technically they aren’t even shown to die in any arc in Gou yet, since they just go missing and their bodies are never found, so new fans wouldn’t even know if either or both of them die in any of the arcs. By extension, Watadamashi also didn’t have the whole plot point of ‘the police found Takano’s corpse in the mountains and figured out that it had died before the festival even ended’, which in the VN was a pretty massive hint that she was faking her own death. And since Tataridamashi avoided having Keiichi kill Teppei, while also ending before the festival can even get going, Takano and Tomitake don’t even do anything in that arc at all except show up to support the protests, even though Tatarigoroshi also provided it’s own massive hints toward Takano being suspicious, and her being responsible for Tomitake’s death.

Tatarigoroshi also ended with our first proper look at the GHD, but there was no reference to that happening in Tataridamashi, or any of the other arcs. If anything, it seems pretty intentional that every arc seems to end with a flash-forward to at least a few days after each arc ends, with no reference to the GHD happening. It’s possible everyone was just keeping it a secret from Keiichi at the end of each arc, but each arc has a different person telling him about what happened while he was unconscious, so it seems unlikely that they’re all coincidentally lying to him about the same thing. And in general I think that if the GHD happened in any arc, we would have gotten some obvious clues about it.

I know everyone disagrees about if Gou is actually meant to be accessible, let alone solvable, for new fans, but I’m on the side of thinking that it is, which is why I think the lack of any kind of evidence for the GHD happening [or Takano doing anything more suspicious than going missing in the first two arcs] says a lot about the direction Gou is taking with it’s mystery.

The question then is just whether Takano’s just being prevented from carrying out her plan in each arc, or if things have fundamentally changed with her. Personally, I’d prefer it if they committed to having her be genuinely innocent this time around. If she’s still evil but she’s just been getting killed off-screen or whatever, then presumably they’d still have to address her entire deal in order to explain why she needs to be taken out in each arc, which would defeat the whole point of not having her be the villain in Gou, and it’d feel super alienating for new fans. So I prefer the idea that she’s totally innocent. Which wouldn’t really work if Gou is a striaghtforward sequel to the VN, but it could work if Gou is an in-universe forgery. It could be built upon someone’s second-hand understanding of Hinamizawa and it’s history who doesn’t know about Takano being evil, or maybe the person writing it knows about that, but is intentionally changing it in order to set up a new mystery of their own for Rika to solve.

And one way or another, I do think that the whole meta purpose of Gou is to pose some sort of challenge or mystery for Rika to solve. It seems like some kind of third party is dragging her into a new loop with a new mystery she needs to solve, which could have a lot of different explanations, but it could be that Featherine is literally just presenting these new stories to Rika to see if she can solve them.

Anyway, when it comes to the murder mysteries themselves in each arc of Gou, my general theory is still that Keiichi’s been responsible for a lot of it, and one of the big conceits of Gou is that his whole perspective on things has been incomplete and subjective from the start.

In Onidamashi, I agree with the common theory that the events of Tsumihoroboshi were basically happening in the background, with Rena murdering people and falling into paranoia while nobody else realizes what’s going on. I think at the dump site she was genuinely considering killing Keiichi due to suspecting that he found out about her hiding the corpses there, and at the festival I think she ended up killing Takano and Tomitake because she assumed that Keiichi was somehow working with them and had told them about the murders she did.

In their fight scene in ep4, I think Rena was genuinely planning to murder him, and he only started full-on hallucinating about halfway into the fight, when he knocks her out on the table. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning her motives, but I think it’s pretty straight-forward. My theory that she killed Takano and Tomitake seems like it contradicts the idea that she’d still think later on that there needs to be more sacrifices for the curse, but considering how deep Rena’s paranoia is, it’s possible that even after killing them, she just continued to feel paranoid about everything, which made her think that those two weren’t enough to satisfy the curse for that year, and so she needed to kill more people. In general I think she was mostly just trying to protect her father out of fear that he was being targeted by Oyashiro-sama as one of the curse victims of the year, so she was trying to see if killing other people would let her father be spared.

I think that Rena probably got knocked unconscious when she hit the table during the fight, and Keiichi hallucinated her waking up and stabbing him, while in reality he was probably repeatedly stabbing her unconscious body.

Most importantly, I think that after that, instead of Keiichi passing out from blood loss [since I don’t think he actually got stabbed that much in reality], the Rena incident reignited his paranoia, and he jumped to the conclusion that Rika knew about Rena’s plans, and that she intentionally got him to lower his guard around her so that he’d get killed. So I think Keiichi took the knife Rena tried to use on him and then ran to Rika’s house and killed her, with Satoko probably being an unintended casualty. Which would also make the whole story Mion gave of the police suspecting that a burglar broke into their house surprisingly accurate.

I also think that Keiichi tried to claw his throat out after that, but he got found by the police and taken to the hospital before he died from it. Which is why I think he has a neck brace on when he wakes up later, and also why that one nurse asked him about his neck being itchy. Along the same lines of how I think Takano’s a complete red herring in Gou, I think there might not be anything going on with the clinic this time around either. That nurse might have just been asking a normal question about his condition, if they did indeed find him clawing his throat out. 

So basically I think the whole arc was a mix of Rena and then Keiichi killing people, and that Takano and Tomitake were basically just innocent victims. 

Watadamashi is the arc that I’m most iffy about, but basically my core theory is that Keiichi actually killed Takano and Tomitake off-screen during the festival after what happened at the Saiguden. It always stuck out to me that he seemed even more paranoid about things in this arc than he did in Watanagashi, and yet nothing really seems to come of it. But the way he freaked out at the Saiguden definitely makes me think he could have been capable of snapping and killing those two after everyone parted ways, and the show just kept that info from us.

I’m at least fairly confident about the idea that the whole phone conversation he had with Shion was her making up a fake cover story about what happened to Takano and Tomitake, and getting Keiichi to agree to it. I also think it was probably Mion on the phone posing as Shion. Either way, I think it was along the lines of how everyone in Tatarigoroshi agreed to a fake cover story to hide the fact that he killed Teppei. 

After the festival, I think Mion ended up lashing out at the village elders and killing them due to them talking about how Shion and Keiichi broke into the Saiguden and needed to be punished for it. They may have also found out about Keiichi killing Takano and Tomitake, or they at least suspected him of it, so Mion ended up killing them to try and keep him safe. I’m not entirely sure if she killed Shion here, but it’s possible she did, at least if Shion agreed that Keiichi should get punished.

After that, I think a huge part of Keiichi’s paranoia was due to his fear that people would find out about everything he did, and so I think that he got set off by Rika venting at him about what he did at the festival, and her talking about how she was surprised that Takano and Tomitake’s corpses hadn’t been found yet. I think that what actually happened between that episode and the next one is that, instead of joining Satoko for dodgeball, he instead followed Rika and killed her where nobody could see them, and then he took her body to the septic tank. I think this is the whole reason why Satoko was so suspicious of him afterward.

When you think about it, with how condensed the whole flow of events there was, she’d have no real reason to suspect him if he had spent the whole time playing dodgeball with her, and there were probably other kids playing dodgeball as well who would have been able to say that Keiichi was with them the whole time. But the only person who tries to vouch for Keiich is just Mion.

Along the lines of her covering for Keiichi at the festival, I think she was just lying about seeing Rika talking to a construction worker to try and draw suspicion away from Keiichi. I guess it might have really happened, but either way I think she was just trying to cover for him. Which makes me think that maybe she witnessed what he did, and was maybe even the one who moved the corpse to the septic tank after Keiichi killed her. Which would also explain why Mion coincidentally distracted Keiichi right before he tried to go into the septic tank room.

I think she was telling the truth about suspecting that Rika was behind everything, even if she knew about Rika being dead by that point. I think it was more about her thinking that Rika is working with all of the village leaders to perpetuate the curse killings each year, so even if Rika’s dead, there’d still be people following her orders. If we assume that she really did see Rika talk to a construction worker, maybe that made her think that she was giving them orders, and then at the end of the arc when she sees them on the security footage, she thinks of them as her minions.

Then I think the rest is fairly straightforward, with Mion assuming that there’s still some nebulous organization following Rika’s orders who are a threat to Keiichi even after Rika’s death, so she arranges to get him locked up in the basement while she goes off to try and murder them all.

I think it was the construction workers who Mion saw on the security footage [like Keiichi did], but I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with Satoko being at the estate and winding up dead. My best guess is that she snuck into the estate to try and question Mion because she was suspicious about her covering for Keiichi, or maybe just because she thought Mion could help her figure things out, but then things went wrong. Maybe Mion ended up assuming that Satoko was in on the whole thing and killed her, but I’m not sure.

What happens with Keiichi is a lot more iffy. It’s possible that it just went the way it was shown, with him passing out in the safe room and then getting discovered by the police, but with how the other two arcs ended, I doubt it was that straight-forward. It’s possible that the whole scenario of him smashing his head into the door until he passed out was more like a narrative illusion or fantasy, and that Keiichi actually managed to get out of the safe room and head back to the estate, where maybe he was responsible for Satoko and/or Mion’s deaths. I’ve at least seen some people on the Higurashi subreddit point out that in a few shots you can see door handles on the inside of the door in the safe room, which seem to vanish when Keiichi’s trying to bust it open, which could imply that the whole idea of him being unable to open the door was a lie.

I’m not sure if he’d have any motive to kill Mion even if he went full L5, but it’s entirely possible he got suspicious of Satoko and wound up killing her, if he went back to the estate. Though one thing that I think is noteworthy is that, even though I think Shion was probably dead by that point, he actually would have had a motive to kill her if he at least had gone L5. He blamed her for luring him into the Saiguden, so he could have wound up murdering her as revenge for that. But I dunno if that’s actually what happened.

One idea I’ve been toying with is that maybe Keiichi actually killed Mion in the safe room, and the whole strange scenario of him smashing his head against the door and leaving a weirdly giant blood splatter behind was an illusion covering up something like him wrestling her gun off of her and shooting her with it. Then maybe he dumped her body in the well, and then went to the estate where he saw Shion, and wound up killing her. At least if we assume that maybe Mion and Shion were working together in this arc instead of one of them already being dead. Ooishi did say that it was Shion who was found in the well, but maybe it actually was Shion who took Keiich into the basement. At the very least, there’s that scene where Mion leaves him alone in her house for a while and then comes back in a different outfit, which could have represented the two of them switching places off-screen.

In general I’m kinda iffy on this arc in particular, lol. It feels a lot more ambiguous and open-ended than the other two. Or at least more so than Onidamashi.

Also on the note of Watadamashi, the biggest question mark to me in all of Gou at the moment is the whole scene with the statue in the Saiguden, and the empty slot we see in it’s neck. It’s just a really baffling scene since it feels like it’s the only scene in the entire show thus far where it comes up in any way, but it’s one of the most blatantly important pieces of evidence we’ve gotten, even if I dunno what it’s meant to imply. It even happens in the manga version, so it’s definitely an important plot point.

What I can gather from it is that someone had already broken the head off the statue, presumably to steal the sword inserted inside it, and then they stuck the pieces of the head back onto the statue to make it look intact. Although I suppose we can’t just assume that the head being broken and the sword being stolen happened back to back. It’s possible that someone broke the statue, and then at some point later on, maybe even years later, broke back into the Saiguden to steal the sword.

Part of why the statue’s so bizarre is that it seems to be fundamentally different to the statue in the VN. Or at least it’s state is different this time. Instead of how the statue’s hand was broken off in the VN, the hand is intact while the head had been broken off and put back into place. I’ve seen theories that the statue in Gou is a replica of the original, but I think that’s unlikely, both because it just sounds difficult and inconvenient to get rid of an entire statue and replace it with something else, but also because the statue we see in Gou still has the slot inside it’s neck, and it’s the one that had it’s head broken open. If the statue in Gou is just a replica, there’d be no reason to go as far as to replicate the sword slot that nobody can even see from the outside, and if the point of breaking the head was to let someone steal the sword, then there’d be no reason for the ‘replica’s’ head to be broken. So I think it might actually be one of the big hints toward Gou being a fundamentally different world altogether to the VN, where even the history of everything has been adjusted in subtle ways. Satoko originally broke the statue’s hand in the VN before the curse incidents even started, which is way earlier than the part of the timeline that Rika and Hanyuu can go back to by the end of the VN.

I think this is one of the bigger pieces of evidence people use for Satoko being a looper, since maybe she’d have the ability to go that far back in time, but I still doubt that whole theory, so I’m more inclined to think that this is Featherine straight up changing what happened with the statue as part of the new mystery she’s setting up.

One way or another it definitely comes across like the entire thing with Satoko breaking the statue’s hand has been more or less retconned out of existence in Gou. On top of the statue’s hand not being broken, Satoko also never mentions anything about believing it to be the source of her hardships like she does in Tatarigoroshi. Which is another thing where the absence of a certain plot point or clue from the VN feels very noteworthy, especially if you look at it from the perspective of new fans.

Either way, I don’t have much of an idea for who could have stolen the sword, let alone WHY they did it. There hasn’t even been any hint at all toward the sword being involved in any of the murders thus far, and I definitely think they would have pointed it out if it was. So what exactly is the whole point of it? It could just be a ritualistic thing to set up the idea of Oyashiro’s sacred statue being desecrated, but we only find out about it in one arc, and only because the group breaks into the Saiguden and then happens to bump into the statue and knock it’s head off. So if the culprit wanted it to be some public display to stir up talk of the curse or whatever, they kept it pretty hidden, lol.

There’s only a few people who should even know about the sword, but there’s been no real hints toward Rika being responsible for it, and Hanyuu seems totally distanced from the gameboard this time around. Maybe Satoko knows about it, but I’m not sure.

I also have to wonder when exactly the sword got stolen in the first place. It might have actually been way before each arc even starts.

In general it’s just a weird bit of the mystery and I don’t think anyone has any concrete idea of what the fuck’s going on with it, lol.

Anyway, for Tataridamashi, I think the whole arc was basically designed to make Satoko suspicious without her actually being responsible for anything. Across all three arcs I think she’s been set up as a bit of a red herring, but it’s pretty heavy in this arc.

Basically I think that the events of Tatarigoroshi/Minagoroshi really were just happening the same way as in the VN, even if a lot of it was off-screen this time around. And with my theory of this being Featherine’s own spin on events, it’s possible that her ‘version’ of Teppei was just abusing Satoko in a way that didn’t leave visible bruises like in the VN, to basically goad everyone into assuming that she wasn’t actually being abused in the first place. I don’t think Satoko would have any logical reason to fake the abuse, especially stuff like her panic attack which was completely identical to how it went in the VN as far as I remember. And mostly I just don’t think Ryukishi would be comfortable writing a whole plot point of a little girl intentionally faking abuse for some kind of malicious or manipulative reason, especially if it involved twisting an existing story about genuine, realistic abuse. So I just feel fundamentally put off by that whole theory, lol.

Either way, one important thing that’s central to my theory here is the idea that Keiichi was going through a lot more stress and paranoia in this arc than we were shown. Even though they seemed to avoid the Tatarigoroshi route and go down the Minagoroshi route instead with him, I think he still had a lot of paranoia and anger building up inside him about the entire situation with Satoko and Teppei. Same with how Rena and Shion seemed like they were always about two seconds away from snapping and running off to murder Teppei. i also think that an important part of this is how Rika kept talking in ominous and weirdly mature terms about fate and whatnot, and she kept quoting something that Keiichi apparently told her but he has no memory of. I think this ended up contributing a lot more to his stress than he let on, but we did still see how he caught onto what she was talking about and was uncomfortable with it.

At the festival, I think Satoko’s intentions with Keiichi were totally innocent, and that she was taking him back to her house so she could give him Satoshi’s baseball bat. I think that she also set up a harmless trap in her house where Keiichi would pull on the cord to turn on the lights, and some stuff would fall on his head. She probably just set it up to try and lighten the mood and bring things back to normal, and also as a parallel to how earlier in the arc she set up a similar trap in Keiichi’s house. Even in Onidamashi there was a scene where she set up a trap in the school with stuff falling from the ceiling during one of their games.

So basically I think it was a variation of how Onikakushi ended, where this time around it’s Satoko who’s pulling a harmless prank on Keiichi, who proceeds to completely misinterpret it as her trying to kill him.

I’ve seen people point out that it seems really sudden for him to immediately go L5 that fast at the end of the arc, but like I said, I think he’d been dealing with stress and paranoia the entire arc, and it all just burst out at the end. I think he 100% hallucinated Teppei being there because he didn’t want to imagine Satoko doing it, and what actually happened was he ended up beating her to death with the bat instead.

Like with the fight scene in Onidamashi, the way that the lighting effects and gratuitous blood splatter happen in this scene make it seem like an over-exaggerated hallucination, especially since in this scene you can also see smaller and more realistic blood sprays overlaid on top of the super exaggerated blood all over the room.

After that, I think that since Keiichi was already hallucinating Teppei being the one attacking him, it lead to him assuming it meant he was alive, and thus that the entire situation with the village elders and the police working to arrest him and save Satoko was actually a complete ruse, and that they never wanted to save her at all. So, similar to how I think Onidamashi ended, I think he then took the bat, ran back to the festival, and attacked Rika, Mion, and Shion, due to believing that they were involved in some kind of conspiracy to protect Teppei. And then I think Ooishi pulled out his gun and shot Keiichi in the head to stop him.

So that’s basically why I think only those three specifically died at the festival [ignoring Satoko who probably died at the house], and the apparent weirdness with Ooishi pulling out his gun at the festival. I think that’s just meant to mislead us, and that Rena was repressing her memory of what really happened due to being traumatized by it.

I also think that’s why it seems to take Keiichi long enough to wake up in the hospital for it to be autumn, and why he has severe headaches after waking up. It’s possible that instead of it being due to having his head bashed in by Teppei, it was because Ooishi shot him in the head, and he managed to survive it with lasting injuries, and probably memory loss.

Also, aside from all this, I think that literally nothing happened with Takano and Tomitake in this arc, even after the festival. We didn’t see how it all played out, but we didn’t hear anything about either of them going missing, and they didn’t imply anything about the GHD happening even though a lot of time had passed, so I think they probably just survived the festival without anything happening to them, and the GHD never happened. Which seems like it’d imply that Takano’s straight up innocent in Gou, and not just that she’s been killed by someone before the festival ends each time.

So yeah that’s how I think each arc went. There’s a lot of room for interpretation, but I think one of the most important clues we’ve gotten is how every arc ends in basically the same way, with Keiichi getting knocked unconscious and then waking up at the hospital days if not weeks later and being told about what happened while he was unconscious. This is a notable enough pattern that it has to be central to the mystery, which is one of the reasons why I think that the answer is more or less that Keiichi actually WAS involved in all of these off-screen incidents, or at least most of them, and he just doesn’t remember it, and we weren’t shown it.

Of course, this all would imply that there isn’t actually a central ‘villain’ orchestrating everything who needs to be dealt with, and that literally everything is just the result of everyone’s personal problems leading to tragedy. Which might disappoint some people, but I think it could still make for a perfectly satisfying resolution, and honestly if we only have 11 episodes left to work with, it’d be way easier to pull off this sort of an ending than it would be to go through the entire Takano thing, or to set up an entirely new villain and then deal with them.

I also think it might be a sort of meta commentary on how there’s always been criticism about Higurashi’s ending veering away from focusing on the main cast’s personal problems, and getting into full on political conspiracy stuff for it’s final act. So maybe this is Ryukishi’s way of basically rewriting the story so that it stays more ‘focused’ on it’s central cast and themes right to the end. 

Also I just think it’d be fitting if the whole trick of Gou is that everyone’s overthinking it and looking for a deeper conspiracy that doesn’t actually exist. Which I think would honestly tie in really well with Higurashi’s central themes of paranoia and distrust, and be a fun way to mess with old fans who try and view Gou through the lens of how the VN plays out.

And even though it might seem like a surprisingly ‘simple’ answer to the mystery, I think it’s noteworthy that Rika spends all of Tataridamashi being 100% convinced that Keiichi’s going to challenge fate and save Satoko and achieve a happy ending, and since Gou feels like it’s designed to mess with Rika’s approach to fixing things, it feels like she’s being punished for having blind faith in Keiichi. So it might still take her a while to actually start suspecting him.

Anyway, that all aside, I know that the whole Satoko looper theory is probably the most popular one in the fandom at the moment, but like I said, I don’t really buy it. It feels like the obvious red herring solution that we’re being lead to believe, but I don’t think there’s any actual concrete evidence for it, especially when it comes to what her motive in any of this could be. I feel like a lot of the theory sorta ends up feeling like ‘I think Mystery Person X did the murder by using Mystery Tool Y’, where basically anyone could have done it instead of Satoko. I’m not entirely opposed to the theory as a whole though, especially with how what seems to be teenage Satoko shows up in the OP. There’s probably something going on with her, but I doubt that she’s been responsible for any murders or anything. If anything, I think it being *teenage* Satoko that shows up in the OP [presumably] might imply that whatever new importance she has is to do with stuff that hasn’t even happened yet in the story.

Considering that teenage Rika and the whole mystery of how and why she got dragged into this new loop when she did exists, I think that either the next arc or the final one might actually continue the timeline several years into the future when she and Satoko are teenagers, but I dunno how that’d play out.

There’s been lots of speculation that Lambda might tie into things here with Satoko, which I can’t help but like the idea of since I’m an Umineko fan, but I at least think that could happen without Satoko being the ‘mastermind’ or whatever. 

I think they’d have to be very careful about how they portray Lambda, if she shows up in Gou, since even though Rika’s connection to Bernkastel and even Hanyuu’s connection to Featherine can be fairly easily explained to new fans, the connection between Satoko and Lambda has always been a bit more weird and ambiguous. But if the story of Gou is a fictional story in-universe, it’s possible that Lambda’s role here can contradict her role outside of Gou, for the sake of introducing her in a more understandable way.

Basically I think they might portray Lambda [if she shows up] as effectively being Satoko’s witch form, like Bernkastel is to Rika, with maybe her being responsible for the new loops, whether or not Satoko herself has been responsible for any murders.

Satoko’s motives in doing any of this is a bit iffy, but it’d be neat if they lean into the idea of how Satoshi’s fate was left kinda open-ended and unresolved after Matsuribayashi. Maybe in Gou she ends up wanting to turn back time in order to save him from disappearing to begin with, or something like that. I at least don’t think she’d have any reason to kill anyone, unless she’s being forced into it, in which case it just means there’d be a ‘real mastermind’ behind the scenes, which I doubt we have time for.

I at least think that her deaths in each arc can be easily explained as unfortunate accidents, and that a lot of the moments of her being suspicious could just be red herrings with innocent explanations. Like how maybe she was suspicious of Keiichi in Watadamashi not because she’s actually the mastermind and was trying to place blame on him, but because he didn’t actually join her for dodgeball and instead just followed Rika right before she ended up dead. And her not having any apparent bruises in Tataridamashi might be due to Teppei not using that sort of physical violence on her this time around. She also might have genuinely had her big character development moment from Minagoroshi off-screen, and was telling the truth about revealing her abuse to the CWS and letting them save her.

There’s also the whole theory of Ooishi being behind everything, which I can maybe buy for Tataridamashi and Watadamashi, but I can’t really see it with Onidamashi.

One of my favourite ‘out there’ theories I’ve seen is that Satoshi is basically the culprit this time around, but that’s just because I really want him to be more important this time around than he was in the VN. I don’t actually think there’s any solid evidence for him being responsible for anything in Gou, and even though I’ve seen some really detailed and well planned theories to do with it, it’s another one of those things where you could basically replace Satoshi with any random character you want to explain how everything happened. But I do respect how much thought some people have put into this whole theory, and part of me’s rooting for it even though I don’t thin kit’s true, just because I want to see more of Satoshi in Gou, lol.

Anyway, in terms of how the second half of Gou will play out, I’m really not sure. The fact that the next arc is called Nekodamashi really throws off some of my predictions, since I was assuming the next arc would basically be Gou’s version of Meakashi. And I still do hope that they cover Shion’s backstory from that arc, but we’ll see.

The weird thing is that it sounds like Nekodamashi might be based on the one-episode original OVA from the 2006 anime, but with that being one episode long and this being four episodes based on the BD listings, I think any inspiration it takes from that arc would be very loose, and Nekodamashi will be almost entirely original.

From what I’ve heard, the Nekogoroshi episode mainly existed to hint at the existence of the Yamainu and the stockpile of gas they had stored to trigger the GHD, which is kinda interesting, since I think that the GHD is being effectively written out of the story this time around.

It’s possible the name is just a coincidence, though. Like how there was an arc called Onidamashi in some sort of short story collection released ages ago, that has nothing to do with the Onidamashi arc in Gou.

At the very least, we have some preview images showing Rika in the fragment world, so I guess we’ll see more of her there, and maybe the focus will shift towards her trying to actually piece things together and solve the mystery.

[the-darklings]

—𝗖𝗢𝗔 𝗙𝗔𝗤;

Hello, everyone! So with COA being such a long-running series and new readers finding it constantly, I have come to realise that a lot of questions I get often repeat. So to keep everything easy and clear and friendly for everyone regardless of whether you started COA at the very beginning of the story or just recently found it, I have spent the day relaxing, eating junk food, and compiling this FAQ. Please read through it because chances are the answers are here somewhere. I have sectioned the guide into following: general, story, ships, original squad (OCs), AUS, OC!V and tips/advice. If the answer to your question is not here, please feel free to send me a message and have a wonderful day! <33 - kat.

GENERAL:

when does this story update?

I try to keep a bi-weekly schedule (now usually Sunday updates). But I always let you know when the chapter is done by making a final word count post (pre edits). 

do you have a masterlist?

yes, you can find it here.

do you have a tag list?

not for COA. they’re very time consuming and I’m already really busy sorry :(

are your requests open?

I rarely open my inbox for requests. the only exception being the monthly blurb nights. then I reblog a prompt list and let people send some requests in for any fandom/ship. however, usually due to how many I get, it only happens every few months. that being said, you can still send me ideas/suggestions and if it inspires me, I will write it. that’s how the majority of the AUs have come about. but i’m also a very busy person so sorry if I can’t. 

can I make X or Y for COA and tag you?

yes. yes. yes. please, please, feel free to create whatever for COA (no matter how small or silly) because I consider it a great honour that I’ve been able to inspire someone else. whatever it is, please tag me. I wanna see.

okay, I made a thing and tagged you but you didn’t respond :(

Tumblr is notorious for eating my notifs. whatever it is (art/post/etc) if I don’t respond to it in a day or two, please give me a nudge. you’re not being annoying, I promise. chances are I missed it/tumblr ate it. 

I wanna scream/discuss/theorise about COA with others, is there any way for me to do that?

my amazing readers have set up this reddit page that is full of lovely people, theories, and memes etc. I check it often and interact on there, too, so feel free to drop by.

STORY:

how many chapters will COA be?

25. the last one being a very long epilogue.

have you decided on the ending yet?

yes. from as early as part 2. it's barely changed since. 

will we ever see more of Prague/Naples? hoe, please say yes.

yes. I plan to write both as COA bonus stories after the main story-line concludes.

will there be a sequel? 

depends. on two things: 1) if anyone will even care by that point 2) time. this story has consumed 5 months of my life entirely. i’ve been incredibly strict with myself when it comes to writing it (in a good way) but at best it won’t be finished till the end of august/beginning of september. so likely even if I do, there will be a break for a few months at least. I do have ideas though.

you promised us smut. where is it?

patience is a virtue. ;)

happy ending or tragedy? (please don’t say tragedy, you monster)

I would describe it more as “bittersweet” but whether it leans more towards bitter or sweet you’ll have to see.   

SHIPS:

any endgame hints?

you know more about the ending than you probably realise

can v/s finally go to Paris? for the love of GOD? pLEASE?

no

hector + v? powerful. will there be more of them in the future? 

agreed & yes. hector and v have their own arc to go on. it’s actually one of my favourites in this story. I don’t want to say more than that right now because I have plans for their dynamic so no spoilers. :)

please stop bullying john. give us some j/v content please? 

i, for one, adore john. it’s team S that’s bullying him lol. but wait till parabellum. i’ve always referred to that portion of the story as the second coming of j/v.

does lucien actually have a thing for v or is it a creepy obsession? 

it’s both.

I ship v with everyone :/ is that bad?

the sky is the limit. ship all the things proudly (but seriously, no, it isn’t. I ship all the ships, too, and that’s the fun of it) 

v/elder tho? 👀

🔫🤡

j/v or s/v? be honest.

you fool,,,, you buffoon. ot3 j/v/s is where it’s really at. imagine their POWER.   

ORIGINAL SQUAD:

what do the Elites/Lovers look like/how old are they?

please refer to this

will there be more step??

of course. he’s my baby. :)

will we see more of camorra/learn more about the elite’s and their backstories?

while I would love to take the time and flesh them all out with full backstories, only hector will be getting his backstory explored in the main canon because plot.

does lucien care for mika anymore or has he replaced her with v?

lucien is a messy hoe. mika is his subject of “affection” but v is his foil and equal. he recognises the same hurt in her that he has gone through himself so it’s more of a fixation. with time, lucien would likely destroy v so no bueno. 

I ship our OCs.

I do, too.

can we write about your OCs/V?

so you would have to come to me and discuss this more in private but I’m fine with this sort of thing usually. in fact, a prequel hector story already exists so you’re likely good but please contact me first. 

AUs:

when/how often do you update the vampire!au?

whenever I have time/inspo. mainly time. so this means you can get it daily or not get it for several weeks because COA is priority. I keep you all updated on when I have something cooking tho.

what is the actual pairing for vamp!au?

undecided as of yet. i’m leaning more towards ot3 right now but we shall see.

how often do you update flowing in me?

same as the above. whenever I have the time but I will keep you updated.

how many parts will flowing in me be?

I have 5 parts(ish) planned.

do you have a tag list for flowing in me?

I will. please leave a comment on the story if you want to be tagged in future parts!

will flowing in me feature other characters (john, winston etc.)?

this story is mainly camorra-centric but I do plan for John to appear at some point.

how did you come up with your lore in vamp!au?

to be completely honest....I just wrote a bunch of stuff down and used what stuck. mostly the ideas were pulled out of thin air while still trying to keep within the spirit of the canon material (the high priest, the holy church, the twelve priests, john being the boogeyman etc). camorra as the natural enemy seemed fitting and santino as a vampire prince even more so.

can we send you new au ideas/expand on old ones (manager!V etc)?

yes, always. I always try my hardest to reply but ofc I can’t promise I’ll be able to use them all but thank you in advance.

OC!V:

who is the face claim for OC!V?

weronika spyrka

what is her real name?

clara

how old is she at the beginning of the story and now?

23 beginning of chapter 1, 30 beginning of chapter 4 (current timeline)

will/would you ever write an original story about her?

I have considered creating something original out of COA itself or one of its sister series/concepts (like FIM). since I really started working on COA during last year’s NaNo, that might be the time I create something original this year. 

TIPS & ADVICE:

how do you write so much, so quickly?

I don’t think that word count is really reflective of the quality work itself. I don’t think you should worry how much you write, either. 100 words can be just as valuable as 1k. most of them time I have a deadline breathing down my neck and I do work well under pressure so that inspires me to force the chapters out. I also do very long days because despite what it might look like I’m not a fast writer.

how can I improve my writing?

read and practice. I know it’s dumb and overused advice but it’s how I learned english and found my style (still a mess and WIP) but still this advice does help. 

how do you keep motivated?

spite, your support, genuine adoration for these characters/word, a lot of spite. 

do you plan? outline?

I have a vague story outline with specific scenes in mind as I go along (helps to set up foreshadowing, twists, and those ‘full circle’ moments). I also plan each chapter scene by scene and know what each chapter is meant to accomplish. So yeah in a sense. 

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p25 reaction

---

Though, we might jump to Roxy & Calliope again. It might be that, now her Reload self is... verschwunden, she's going to regain consciousness to a certain extent again. We'll just have to see if her condition is any better than Rose's, but I would hope so.

---

"ROSE: Customarily, we speak in favorable terms about “getting to know each other” as people." Uh, wut? Rose... is talking coherently? I thought post-victory Rose would mostly have stayed to short sentences, in that discourse Dirk referred to. Talk about "working through the pain".

Well then! I suppose their discussion is more related to the ultimate self than Dirk was letting on. Of course it would be, I mean, Dirk is trying to get Rose in a favorable state of mind, maybe to break down her resistence to the ascension by convincing her of the validity of his point of view.

"ROSE: The more we learn about each other, the more the barriers between us fall and the closer we become." So, is that part of the ultimate self ascension, too? The more you understand other people and vice versa, the more even the barriers between your distinct ultimate selves fall away? ... Are they all evolving into their own story's version of Godhead Pickle Inspector?

"And to question this in any way is to succumb to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to sociological sin. ROSE: It is to renounce humanity itself, is it not? DIRK: Yo, hold on a sec. This shit is dynamite, I promise. DIRK: Gotta take care of something..." Pffff, Dirk is half distracted. And Rose was having her groove on, too! For a moment I thought he was grabbing for a pen to take notes. :P

"Rose’s phone is ringing, and I know I’m in for an encore of my last dead-end conversation with Kanaya, so I block her number. I’d like to be able to attend to Rose in peace. It’s only cordial for me to give the greater percentage of my attention to someone I actually invited over. The nagging wife can hold her horses." Oh Dirk. You garbage bag of a person, you. He's quite literally full of himself, lately.

"Rose isn’t speaking to me directly. She’s been relocated to somewhere in the workshop a little more comfortable than the fucking floor." Having her talk out loud, drowning in her own thoughts. It's almost as if he's inviting her to become like him.

"Her head is in her hands again, hair falling over her shoulders. Her face is entirely hidden from me." It's as if it always comes back to Rose biting through her issues while hiding her face. An allusion to the blindfolded Seer?

"Her shadow has faded to light behind her, assuming the shape of a Rose-like apparition. I nod to her, and she continues. When she speaks, it’s almost as if it’s the apparition that’s doing the talking." ... Is her shadow slowly detaching from her as a separate being?? That's some Peter Pan-type shenanigans. I'm not even surprised this came back to be referenced. So, what if that's what's happening, and it isn't just that her shadow is fading due to the light changing outside? If the ultimate self detaches from the body, doesn't that mean they're, like, closer to ghosts? Does Dirk have his old body stashed somewhere, if this has happened to him? I doubt it, since he was perfectly capable of fighting Jake, earlier.

"ROSE: If two people were to know each other in such a complete way, what remains of their individuality? DIRK: If you’re going there, we might as well start at the bottom and define what an “individual” even is. ROSE: Oh dear god." Rose might be afraid to let Kanaya in any more than she already is. But in the grand scheme of the ultimate self, it might also have a double meaning. Maybe Dirk is convinced they're all shards of the same self.

"I place my hand on my chin and broadcast the appearance of being deeply pensive about philosophy all of a sudden. She gulps hard, broadcasting her grim realization that I have indeed become serious as shit about this. Literally any kind of intellectual pablum could pour out of my mouth any second, and she’s not prepared. For all she knows, I’m about to start quoting Kierkegaard." Is Rose afraid her biological father is going to lay the philosophy aside and slamming psychology? ... No wait, Kierkegaard was a philosopher, I find. Then, she might not be prepared for philosophy as much as psychology, when I thought the former was taking place already, but apparently.

"DIRK: Hey, where I come from, Wikipedia is a venerated literary resource. So if I told you I boned the hell up on his pages, you gotta believe me. That’s not meant as like, a punchline or anything. DIRK: I’m a really, really well-read dude." His education came from Wikipedia. Well, it beats Uncyclopedia, I guess.

"ROSE: But there were only two human beings alive where you came from. ROSE: Who exactly were the academic cognoscenti of your era to determine which sources were deemed respectable? DIRK: That would be me, obviously." Rose already ruled out trolls at the beginning of this page to have a valid opinion in this matter, so )(IC was already out.

"DIRK: I suppose you’re going to tell me you haven’t read enough Wikipedia articles on loads of scholarly shit to fancy yourself an elite academic by 25th century standards as well? ROSE: No, I guess I have. ROSE: I’d be one of the top intellectuals by that measure. ROSE: A measure set by, I guess, literally one solitary self-absorbed teen boy for the express purpose of making himself feel clever." This. Such a good burn.

"apparently in any given era the standard for depth of intellectual mastery is inversely proportional to the depth of the ocean." Well, we don't know that it's true for ANY given era. I'm not sure the proportion of intellectici vs. plebs in ancient Greece was proportionally higher than in the 21st century. We just have a lot of philosophy of that age survive until today. Also, heh, ocean, makes me think of LOLAR and her denizen at the bottom of the sea.

"DIRK: Let’s have a totally amateur debate on philosophy. Hit me with the classics. ROSE: Um. DIRK: I’ll go first." Well, heh, okay, at least Dirk is aware his assessment of himself is full of crap. That continues to be one of his most endearing characteristics.

"ROSE: How about, ROSE: “Subjectivity is truth.” DIRK: Wrong, but valid. DIRK: Try this on for fucking size. DIRK: “Late 19th century existential phenomenology pre-supposes that free will is a thing.”" For all that these might apply to the ultimate self... They're just quoting/paraphrasing the Wikipedia page now, aren't they?

"ROSE: I don’t think I bookmarked that page. ROSE: Can’t back you up there. DIRK: But what if there’s no free will. ROSE: You didn’t put that in quotes." How does she even know? :P His tone of voice, presumably. And yeah, this starts coming back to the discussion about the alpha timeline and pre-destination in the existential framework of Paradox Space. I suppose it would make sense that the Ultimate Riddle comes back in the discussion of the ultimate self.

"DIRK: Haven’t we spent the entire day having a feelings jam on how none of us got here by accident? DIRK: Our lives were meticulously planned from clone-ception up through this very post-canon moment we find ourselves riffing in about the very free will we probably don’t even have. DIRK: Don’t you think it’s all a little too convenient?" He's acknowledging his state as a fictional character again, without stating it outright. Does he want Rose to come to the same conclusion as him by herself? Though it is ironic how, post-realization, he's had so much more agency in the nature of his own life. Unless he realizes he still doesn't. Wow, that's really getting meta.

"ROSE: This seriously is just a conversation between two stoned people now." ROSE: The bad kind, where neither one even gets to be high."PFfffffff. Yeah, actually, we need Gamzee's input up in here. 'have you ever, like, really LOOKED at your life?'

"DIRK: Seriously, Rose. Do you think that you have free will?" Is it in essence the question that leads to ultimate self realization? That Dirk is hammering so hard on it? Ironic though, that the question is twofold no: one outside of the story, and one inside of it.

"ROSE: I... DIRK: Stand up." WOOOOW. He's going to show off his powers now, isn't he? What's that even going to do to Rose, realizing he can do that without so much as breaking a sweat?

She might resist similar to John though, which is proof that his influence isn't total.

"She tries to stand up, but I haven’t narratively allowed it yet." That's another application of his powers, apparently - to offset, to negate action. He hasn't used it a lot yet, though.

"She attributes it to exhaustion, an all-encompassing sense of weakness due to her condition. Of course, she has been weakened by her condition, and thus she suspects nothing." I like Blaperile's theory, that what Dirk can allow them to do is limited to what they believe they're capable of OR which they can rationalize away. I hope it's only the former.

"It’s done deftly enough that she doesn’t notice how close I end up sitting to her. To be honest, I don’t even notice myself until I’ve done it. I continue speaking, and she remains rapt. But now even I can’t help but wonder where I’m going with this." Uh... Has he really started to lose track of his own motivations? More proof that he isn't omniscient and still being narrated instead of being his own narrator.

"DIRK: Logically speaking, individuality is a collection of processes and properties, interrelations of matter and experience all bundled together. DIRK: Your experience and processes don’t want to be bundled together anymore." So, is it only that her selves are trying to merge, or that even her own 'self' is trying to become something more, merging with others? And if so, is that Dirk confessing to what he's going through himself?

"A moment goes by, and she’s quiet, perhaps puzzling over what I said. Then I remember I haven’t narratively permitted a response. I’m forgetting myself, like a fool. Distracted by the surprise my own actions have caused me. I resolve to stay focused, remain in control. I let her speak." He's getting distracted again. You can't be both a character and an author, at the same time, for an extended amount of time.

"ROSE: I don’t understand. DIRK: You do, though. DIRK: We’ve been talking about it, but using different concepts." I wonder if Dirk is trying to retroactively tell Rose what they've been talking about, filling in the unshown conversation.

"DIRK: Your Ultimate Self, that which is revealed when the mind’s partitions are stripped away, and all potentiality of who you are and what you could have been flow together. DIRK: Those are the experiences and processes that are refusing to stay bundled, that’s what your body can’t endure." Ah, okay, so not like her self is trying to merge with his and other people's.

"The unbundling itself is your mind coming apart. DIRK: Because you’re not as strong as me. Not yet. DIRK: But you can be. DIRK: I’m working on that. DIRK: But for now, I’m focused on stabilizing you with my own expanding consciousness." Aka, with his narrative powers, he's stopping her body from breaking down further, because he doesn't allow it. Does she have to stay near him for that to keep working?

"DIRK: You can’t see it, what I’m talking about. But I can help you. DIRK: I can help you see what I see, if only for a little while. DIRK: All you have to do is open your eyes." I don't think her shadow is going to develop eyes. ... I like Blaperile's theory, that he'll give her limited control on the narration, guiding her to further understanding. It would allow her to develop her own idea about what her Ultimate Self should look like, with less influence from him.

"Rose opens her eyes. Not her physical eyes. She opens the others easily, internally, beholding a field of perception elsewhere entirely. They see what I want her to see. That which quietly desires to be seen." Rose's mind quest begins. 'That which quietly desires to be seen', is that the story, or at least the part of it that is narrated, aka relevant, true and essential?

"We’re not in my workshop anymore. Physically, yes, we’re still here. But on a higher textual plane, we’ve pulled back from that, from Earth C itself. Rose takes a shuddering breath and runs an invisible pair of hands afforded by her new sight over the narrative whole cloth, and begins smoothing out the wrinkles. ROSE: I see... John." Cooool! She's starting to gain the same understanding as Dirk, here's to hoping she does a better job with it than him. But hey, Dirk still acknowledges his physical form on Earth C, so he isn't a ghost, and he still thinks of the body as important, at least that's something and he hasn't started to think of himself as some immaterial conscience.

"DIRK: Doing exactly what you told him to do, like a good boy." Not sure if he's actually done everything John planned. Plus, yeah, Dirk's been influencing him along the way.

"ROSE: ..." She might notice that, too.

"DIRK: What’s there to be upset about? You knew this was how it was supposed to go down. ROSE: He could have made another choice." And he did, in the Candy path. I wonder how that influenced the rest of the story, and if Hussie really went and showed us that. Maybe Dirk 'knows' about the Candy path and the difference it would have made.

"DIRK: Then where would we be? ROSE: Who knows." Meanwhile, in another narrative context, at the same time... :P

"DIRK: If it can happen, then it’s been written. And if it’s been written, you can read it right now. ROSE: I... don’t know if I want to see." ... PFffff, that's directed to us. No, Dirk, not planning on viewing that path just yet.

"I’m not going to describe what she sees. First of all, that would be spoiling it. Unless you already know, in which case, I guess what’s taking place here qualifies as something closer to dramatic irony. But if you really want to see it for yourself, stop what you’re doing, flip the whole thing over, and begin again. I’ll be right here when you get back, waiting. Trust me, no one’s going anywhere." ... In the Candy path the people are also going to be thinking about what could have been, aren't they? :P I do hope this isn't implying we should read the Candy path now. I mean, it's a bit awkward, navigating back, plus I would rather think Andrew'd bring the two paths together or add a REAL indication, before making it relevant to have read both.

"DIRK: So, what do you think? ROSE: It’s difficult to say. ROSE: I suppose there are negatives and positives. I can’t say if that option would be any better or worse than what we’re experiencing now. ROSE: Whichever way our fate unravels there’s too much of... something. ROSE: Too much blood, too much sugar." I think there might be a bit of a 'sugar overload' in the Candy path, in that it might seem there's too much fluff? Maybe inertia is taking hold of them over there, and people are slowly coming to regret not taking control of their lives. Even though, in a meta sense, only John could and did.

"ROSE: I almost can’t see through it. ROSE: It’s as if our extra-canon reality, our surroundings, our actions and their consequences... ROSE: They’ve all lost the ability to blend the ingredients responsibly. ROSE: Do you know what I mean?" It's like their fate has split like a cherub: a violent and a passive path, no inbetweens. But then, like a cherub, will one path 'devour' the other?

"It’s growing dark around her again. The apparition she’s been projecting behind her fades, and she starts to bleed light and shadow in all directions. Her physical eyes are open now, and shining bright. It’s a striking sight. She’s beautiful, actually—diaphanous and disheveled and filled with the limitless light of metaspiritual curiosity." She's literally starting to project light. Cool! And if she overcomes her current issues, it would definitely be a useful tool, and something to bond over with Kanaya.

"She’s my daughter in every sense of the word. My equal, my mirror.

It used to be odd to consider it. A technical fact I’d accepted as a genetic reality, but nothing that could ever quite penetrate down to the soul. But in this moment it doesn’t feel strange at all. It feels right, suddenly. And I know she must feel the same way. There’s no way she doesn’t. All she needs is a nudge in the right direction." Is that Dirk knowing, or projecting? Still weird how Homestuck made it so parents and progeny can interact as equals in age and demeanor alike.

"We’re family. We belong together. And after years of micromanaging the inconsistent and confused desires of total imbeciles, wouldn’t it be a relief to have someone by my side who understood me?" ... He really wants to co-narrate with her.

"ROSE: But what if the person you catch... ROSE: Isn’t me anymore? DIRK: Who gives a fuck. She’ll be better." I hope and suspect Rose will be a better omniscient narrator than Dirk. But I understand her concerns. If your influence is so total, it can become totalitarian.

"Would it not be to renounce humanity itself?

And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.

Her body should be dead now. But I’m holding it together until I can implement the more permanent solution I have in mind." Has he done that to himself as well? Made a connection between his ethereal ascended form and his corporeal body? If so, he at least had the good sense to want to remain grounded. Still, Paradox Space, what the fuck? Having people die at 23 is only marginally better than 13.

"She regards me with an almost unbearably bright adoration. The kind that’s difficult to look at directly, but you can’t manage to look away either. It’s like the first time you see the Green Sun. Of course it is, because that’s the way I’m describing it. The truth belongs to me. And as of now, so does she." ... Eeeesh. I hoped he'd say, the truth belongs to Rose, too, but this. It's as if by ascending, she gave away a part of her agency to him??? He planned that, the bastard. Dirk, I really don't know what to make of you and your intentions.

"ROSE: I see it now. ROSE: You’re right. DIRK: Have I ever not been? ROSE: You...

A wrinkle in her brow. It smoothes out quickly. She murmurs to herself, trailing off quietly." Him, okay, I hope that means she can still cut loose in due time.

"ROSE: What... time is it...?

I step forward and steady her, hand firm but gentle against her cheek. That’s all she needs: a stable anchor. DIRK: Rose, does time even exist?" Dave (and Aradia, and Damara) would disagree.

---

Wow. I mean. Damn. Nice way of keeping us on the fence on Dirk's motivations. At least it should be a good thing he's no longer alone on that plane of existence. I'd rather have seen Rose immediately take control of the narration, but I can only hope it's due for the next page. It'd feel like reading her draft of CotL all over, her narrating in her longwinded fashion. :P

[that-terrible-writer]

Everybody Knows

This gif was found somewhere through Google, so credit to who it’s due.

This imagine. Holy fuck, this imagine has gotten so much feedback; it made my entire day. I would not shut up about it. I truly love Ray Palmer, so writing this second part wasn’t an issue at all. Please continue to comment and tell me how much of an asshole I am, I love hearing back! Thank you so much again, so glad there are Legends fans like me out here!

Ray Palmer x Reader

Part 2

Part 1

Warning: Still an asshole.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!!!! The Ray Palmer imagine has me in tears!!!! Please tell me you plan to continue it???? Your writing is amazing!!!”

“Omg! You are breaking my heart with everybody knows!! I need more!!!!!!!! It’s too good, my heart can’t take it.”

Your legs brought you to Jitters, a place where you felt calm and beside yourself. You would have felt more at ease if you had taken your bag with you that had your wallet; now you were standing in Jitters without getting a cup of coffee.

“Penny for your thought?” You heard a sweet voice from behind you. Turning to see Iris, smiling at you with some money in her hand, “Just treat me later.” She told you, placing the money down on the counter, guiding you over to two seats.

You let out a sigh, face planting on the table, “Iris, I don’t know what’s going on,” You muffled into the wood. You lifted your head to see her give you a, forced, confused look, “I know Barry sent you here.”

Iris placed down her coffee, reaching over to grab your hands, squeezing them in reassurance, “Everything is still ok, you’re still Y/N,” She softly smiled at you.

“Am I though?” You countered, sitting yourself up straight. You rubbed the side of your head, trying to calculate still what was going on. Your life ultimately took a turn in only the matter of a few minutes. Did you have a better experience with the Legends? Were you happier with them than you were with Team Flash? “I don’t even know what to do.” You sighed, your eyes wandering to the front door of the shop, “The look that Palmer gave me was so heart-aching. I never thought I would feel that way towards him but knowing that I had something with him, made all that hate disappear.”

“Would you give him a shot?” Iris proposed, lifting her eyebrow, taking a sip of her coffee. She truly was interested, this beats anything that she was watching on tv: ever. Your eyes shot her a glare, a deep sigh leaving you.

“You know I can’t,” You reminded her. You waved your hands in front of your chest, fumbling to find your words, “Even if I did, what would the chances be that I’m the same Y/N that he fell for? I’m not only hurting myself here, it would crush him.”

“Did I just hear that correctly or are you concerned about Ray Palmer’s feelings?” Iris joked. You tossed a sugar packet at your friend causing her to giggle even more.

“Now’s not the time to joke, West! My life is falling apart, and you think it’s a good time to crack jokes?” Your laugh died down, going back into your depressive state. Which life was better? Would it be best to risk everything to go on an adventure of time travel with the Legends? “I just don’t understand why I would leave the Legends to come back to Central City. Leave a life of time travel, what was I stupid?”

“Your mother was sick,” A voice answered your question. You turned to see Ray standing before you, hands in his pockets, his face giving off a sheepish expression, “She had stage four cancer. You decided to be by her side. That’s the reason why you left the Waver Rider. It was only supposed to temporary, but with  Flashpoint and the Legends not being affected―”

You reached out your arm, not being able to control the smile that appeared on your face, “Calm down, Palmer,” Your voice had that light chuckle that made Ray’s heart flutter. He gave you the same smile that you wore, his eyes going soft. You pulled the seat next to you out, motioning him to join, “You look weird standing there, come on, you goof.”

Ray hesitated to join, especially to sit next to you. It had been months since you left the Wave Rider, months of him not being able to be next to you yet right now, being able to be this close but not being able to touch you like he used to. Knowing that the two years he had spent with you were only memories to him: killed him. “How is your mother?” Ray asked.

You gripped your coffee, nodding a little before looking at him, “She’s alive. Healthy, so at least Flashpoint did something right.” You couldn’t look at Ray for a long time; you were confused. Your stomach was giving off that feeling of love at first sight, butterflies fluttering inside, something that you had to ignore.

“That’s wonderful,” Ray smiled. The knot that his stomach was forming was getting bigger. He was as nervous talking to you now as he was when he confessed his love for you. It felt like another chance to have you fall in love with him, something that he was prepared to do.

Iris was enjoying watching the two of you interact. She couldn’t help but smile into her coffee while hearing your conversation. Something was still there; there was no denying that. There was a crucial piece of information that no one wanted to tell Ray. It broke Iris’ heart, knowing that someone had to mention it to Ray but it couldn’t be her or anyone from Team Flash: it had to be you.

“Did Barry explain everything to you?” You questioned, finally having your eyes lock on to Ray’s. Your heart did something you never thought it would do to Ray Palmer: it skipped a beat. You felt your cheeks burn the longer you stared at him, your palms barely being able to grip the coffee cup due to them becoming sweaty.

“Yeah, he did,” Ray’s voice sounded defeated. For once, he broke eye contact away from you. He rubbed his hands on his pants, his lips turning in to a line; his heart sank to his stomach, “So you and Wells, huh?” He finally brought up the elephant in the room. Iris felt her phone ring, seeing that it was Barry on the other line. She excused herself, letting you be alone with the heartbroken man.

“Yeah,” You whispered, looking down at your coffee playing with the stirrer, “Coming up on a year.” Even though this version of you didn’t date Ray Palmer, you still had the hint of guilt come out of your voice. You were becoming softer, not wanting him to hear; it was as if you were thinking of his feelings. You glanced at the corner of your eye, seeing Ray fiddle with the napkin that Iris had left behind.

You wanted to know more about your actual timeline, the one that you came to terms with your real timeline, “Was I happy?” You piped up, changing the subject. Ray finally made eye contact with you once again; his eyebrows perked as his eyes grew. Was he going to tell you the truth or lie so that you could live your life, your happiness was his number one concern. You lightly slapped his arm, having a smile appear on your face, “You can tell me! What was I like on the Wave Rider?”

Ray finally broke down, the sigh that he gave out only made his lips curl into a smile, not being able to lie about it, “You were extremely happy. Every period we went to, you acted like a child in a candy shop. Always wanted to explore yet Sara had to pull you back a few time. Nate was always telling you not to leak any bit of history. Every time, though, you were always smiling and laughing.” When the words left Ray’s mouth, his sadness grew. Those memories came back again.

Memoires of exchanging gifts at Christmas, finding the perfect gift for each other. You gave him a microscope that Einstein had once owned, Ray giving you a first edition signed book from Oscar Wilde himself. There was another gift that Ray wanted to give you. A box that he had been fiddling in his pocket the entire night you had spent but he held off on asking you; trying to find a perfect time to ask you.

“You make it sound so amazing, makes me wish that Flashpoint never happened.” You laughed, looking back down at your coffee. You bumped into Ray, a playful gesture; one that you shouldn’t have done since you were already with someone.

“What was your issue with me?” Ray brought up. You let out a grunt, hoping to avoid the conversation.

“You were a know-it-all, something I can’t stand. Every time I was working on a new project or a new weapon, you had to bring up the fact you had more PhDs than me and that you knew what you were talking about with all the gadgets. You had no faith in me, what’s so ever.” You explain, squinting your eyes at him. Ray looked off towards the door, taking in the conversation, letting out a small sigh.

“That would be a good reason to hate someone,” He added, laughing. Ray got up from his seat, causing you to be alarmed, “I should head back to STAR Labs, maybe head out with the Legends,” His voice didn’t sound convincing at all. You knew he wanted to stay; he wanted to tell you more not about your time with the Legends but your time with him. He wanted to inform you that you were everything to him, he ached to convince you to join them once again and maybe, maybe, fall back in love.

He couldn’t help it though. You were happy in this timeline, and it wasn’t meant to be.

Ray felt a tug on his hand, stopping him in his tracks. He looked down to see your hand had grabbed his. You didn’t know what you were doing, but you felt this pull towards him; a feeling of finding that missing piece being put back into the emptiness. You realized that you had grabbed ahold of him, retreating your hand back to your side, “Sorry,” You stammered, tucking hair behind your ear as you looked down at the floor, “I just,” You paused, your eyes going soft. You looked back up to see Ray watching you out of curiosity, “I want to talk more.”

Ray scratched his cheek, becoming flustered with your demand, “Do you want to? What about Harry?” Ray asked, slowly taking back his seat.

“I don’t know what to believe,” You answered honestly, “I thought I was happy, to be honest, but now knowing that I had this life on the Wave Rider and,” You bit back on your words. Curling your fingers into a fist. The feelings that you had once held against the Legends instantly lifted that maybe spending some time with them would help you make a better decision on which life you wanted. With your thoughts always returning to Ray, now, would you be able to travel by his side without constantly wondering what it was like to be his?

“Did you loved me?” Your mouth rambled. When you noticed what you had said, your eyes grew in horror, and your cheeks were flushing. You waved your hands in front of your face, panicking at the moment it had happened, “You don’t have to answer that! I know that it’s a difficult subject―”

“I do.” Do. Present tense. You slowly brought down your hands to see Ray staring at you in awe. “You mean everything to me, Y/N. Yes, I would want you to come join us again but if you’re happy here; I can live with that too.”

“Can you?” Your heart broke at Ray’s confession, but he shook his head in denial.

“No, I was saying that to maybe convince myself about not having you around with me, but it didn’t work.” You couldn’t help but laugh, that this version of Ray Palmer was nothing you would expect. He was vulnerable, something you never saw when he was around. You felt horrible, trying to stop yourself from laughing but the more you thought about it, the harder you laughed.

“I’m so sorry,” You cried, wiping away the tears that had fallen, “I shouldn’t be laughing but that excuse,” You clenched your stomach, bending over to try and make the pain stop. You heard Ray join in with you, “That excuse was so bad and how you thought you could believe it.” You finally were able to compose yourself, seeing Ray also collect himself.

There was a moment of silence, just you two looking at each other. It was that pull again, the one that tugged right on your heart: the pull that made you want to run away with Ray. You didn’t notice that you were leaning in, placing your hands on his legs to push yourself up. Ray said nothing. His hand reached up to your cheek, his thumb lightly brushing your bottom lip.

“I will always love you, Y/N,” Ray softly said, pulling you closer to him. You had to know if you genuinely felt something for Ray Palmer or if this version of you felt nothing of all. You had to know. You pulled away, hearing coughing nearby. When you saw who it was that made the noise; you immediately stood to your feet.

“Harry,” You spoke, your breath caught in the back of your throat. Wells had his arms crossed, looking directly at you but it shifted quickly to Ray. Ray jumped to his feet, wiping his hands on his pants before sticking out one towards Harry.

“Dr. Wells, it’s great to see you again,” Ray’s voice crack out of sheer panic. Harry refused to shake the Atom’s hand, taking in a deep breath; displeased on what he had just witnessed.

“Dr. Palmer, likewise,” Harry said in a monotone, scaring you. He only used that voice whenever he was annoyed or angry; this time he was both. “I wish to speak to my girlfriend alone.” Ray nodded his head, walking out of Jitters where Iris waited for him. She watched the entire exchange between you and Ray. In Iris’ eyes, what Iris saw going on, was a connection that couldn’t be made up or just created. It was what she had with Barry, no matter what timeline they had; they were always brought back to one another.

Iris patted Ray’s back, walking out of the coffee shop, “I think she’s in there,” Iris told him, giving him that sense of hope.

“Harry, I can explain,” You walked slightly towards your other half, having him take one step back. Your body shook, scared that you wouldn’t have any time to explain yourself to him. You did love Harry; he helped build your mind to think beyond what an average human could imagine. He understood you.

“Barry already did,” His raspy voice gave out, shaking his pointer finger at you. Harry’s eyes glanced over to yours, filled with sorrow, his lips pressed into a thin line, “Do you love him?” He asked. Harry looked hurt, not wanting to hear the answer.

“I don’t even know,” You whined. You felt your eyes tear up, causing you to pace in the same spot, just three steps in the same place, “I was told about my altered timeline not too long ago. I don’t know what to think or how to feel, Harry! I feel like I’m ripped in half with my feelings. At one point, I was happy with the Legends and time traveling sounds like a dream but again, being here with our team, with you, I’m happy here!” You sobbed, rubbing your eyes. Your emotions were all over the place. Harry rushed to your side, wrapping his arms around you; having you cry into his chest, “I don’t want this feeling.”

Harry shushed you, kissing the top of your head, “I know, honey,” Harry calmly said, stroking your head. Honey, that word. It felt so different when Ray had called you honey earlier; it was as if it was perfect when he called you his.

Tagged: @mad-doctor-mew @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @inspiredbynewt

[empirelead-a]

@firelxrdsdaughter replied to your post: “Do you have any arcs planned out or already in the works for your...”:

I would seriously love to know what the arcs are tho PLS TELL ME

Since you did asked me nicely for this then I am glad enough to talk about this even further; plus, I do enjoy talking about Kuvira in general because not only is she currently my longest running muse, but her character as a whole has interested me from the start when she first came up on the screen. She had so much going on for her and the potential was obviously right there, but it was a shame her character got overlooked and her story was never touched upon further. But, at the same time, I have to say I am grateful because I get to play around with my ideas without the disappointment that would come with the creators. I even do have arcs for Kuvira that stemmed back from her younger years, like before Suyin took her in but that is something I wouldn’t want to go over just yet; I’ll save that for another time. Instead, my entire focus will be on the aftermath of the finale.

Let’s begin because you might be in for a long ride…

One of the things I would love to do definitely takes place right after Kuvira failed to take the city and was ultimately defeated by the Avatar and her friends. Of course, she did willingly gave up when she had a long talk in the Spirit World with Korra but that still doesn’t mean she was at all happy. In fact, she would be quite far from it--she was angry at the others, at the world leaders because - let’s be honest - they’re partially responsible as well, but most of all, she was angry at herself for allowing herself go this far. Just remember that Kuvira never planned on becoming a dictator, once upon a time she was genuinely a good woman. It didn’t really helped at the fact that the prison guards didn’t made her stay any easier and often enough reminded her defeat, goading her to do something terrible. Most of all, the worst part about prison is not at the fact that she lacked any visitors (the only person who sees her is Korra), it’s the fact that she is cut away from the earth; everything in her prison cell feels so cold, empty, and lifeless. It’s completely dead just like her spirit. So this arc would will be about Kuvira’s time out.

The next part I would do will take place around three to five years later, and after some therapy, Kuvira is finally allowed to be release from prison all thanks to Korra due to good behavior and the fact that a talent like hers shouldn’t be wasted. Though, this does not mean Kuvira is a free woman just yet, In exchange to be out of prison, she has been subjected to work for the United Republic doing hard labor work which is something she took without question; anything is better than prison and being in a box, cut off from the world and the very element that defines you. Of course, she has been kept and under close watch by several United Forces soldiers who took the job to keep a close eye on her; the world leaders don’t exactly trust her yet, afraid that she’ll try to rise back up into power which never happened. Those days for her are long over. Around five years later, Kuvira would soon get into an accident where she nearly lost her life after saving a couple people’s lives by former enemies who attempted to take her life but it came with a great cost. Her life was saved, but her arm ended up getting mangled by a giant building piece which complete crushed her arm. She ended up staying in bed for a couple of months while she was recovering and figuring out what’s going to happen to her, is she going to go back to prison? No, at the end, Kuvira ended up getting a prosthetic arm made out of metal. And the most interesting part to this is that the outer layer is made out of platinum so no other metalbender could use that against her, but the interior is made out of iron and other bendable metal which Kuvira uses it to her advantage. 

The next part would take place ten years later where Kuvira’s labor work finally ended and she’s fully a pardoned woman. But there’s still a certain sadness residing in her heart and her life still felt empty to the point where she think that being not-so free sounded better, so she ended up cutting herself off from the public’s eye to wander around the world and looking at the places she goes to in a new perspective, trying to find a place for herself in this world. And at this timeline, she became spiritual thanks to Korra’s help and teaching her about meditation and how to work on her anger better. Plus, Kuvira would totes have a new hairdo, just imagine her with short hair.

If you’re wondering about her relationship with the Beifongs, in my interpretation is that they will all eventually forgive her. Baatar being the first one, after all he was the one who designed her prosthetic arm in the first place; no one else is smart enough to come up with that. Of course, it was difficult from the beginning before they made up and all, he has every right to be angry with her and hate her as well, going on to ignore her for a while. But that’s difficult to do at someone you love very much, and I say they didn’t get back together until Kuvira is done with her spiritual journey which would take up at least a year or two because she ended up going into the Spirit World and met with our favorite tea-loving uncle. 

As for the other Beifongs, it took time but each and every one of them eventually welcomed her back. I can see Baatar Sr. and Huan being the second people to forgive her, the third people are the twins who can’t exactly stay mad at forever because they have fond memories playing power disc with her. It took some time for Opal to welcome her back and it did involved lots of tears and yelling, but she can’t forget the very woman who she saw as an older sister. FINALLY, there’s Su who’s - no surprise, no surprise - the most difficult woman ever. Similar to Opal, there was a lot of yelling and crying and maybe Kuvira earning a bit of a slap to the face, but at this point, Su’s an old woman now who can’t stay angry forever. This doesn’t mean she’s ready to fully forgive her just yet, but welcoming her back at the very least and offering her another chance is a good start.

I really hope what I have in mind for Kuvira’s future was satisfying. It is still a work in progress and like I said some of these things I have mentioned might change. For now, this is what I am hoping for we’ll get in the canon comics or something pretty similar. One can hope even though you have no confidence for Mike’s writing whatsoever.

[shinkanefanatic]

One More Time Ch 1, A Shinkane (Psycho Pass) Fic

Summary: 2 years have passed since the incident at Shambala Float. Kougami Shinya finally returns to Japan, with one thing on his mind: To eliminate Sibyl once and for all. Inspector Tsunemori, however, has no intentions of allowing that. What is to become of the former Inspector/Enforcer duo as tragedy finally rears its ugly head?

Disclaimer: Psycho Pass and its characters belong to Gen Urobuchi. I own nothing (sadly)

Set in a potential season 3 timeline, after the canon movie.

Chapter 1: Deafening Silence

______________________________

“You fool…You fool…”

A young woman’s voice choked out the same words like a broken record as she sat all alone on the dark streets of Japan. The female was covered from head to toe in red, her entire being soaked in blood. It looked as if someone had poured a large bucket of it on top of her. Mixing with the blood were her tears that ran down at an astounding rate, showing no sign of stopping anytime soon.

All that ran through the brunette’s mind as she remained there, broken and sobbing, were the horrifying events she had just witnessed. She had been through many awful things leading up to this moment, partly due to her work as a detective for the MWPSB. She had lost many people she cared about. It was a surprise to many how her crime coefficient never clouded because of the horrors she’d witnessed during these past 6 years in her job. Still, if there would be any time her hue would be called into question because of such traumas, tonight would be it. Out of all the things she’d been through, tonight was simply…No. There were no words to describe that night. No proper words whatsoever, could explain the unbearable agony that the Inspector known as Akane Tsunemori felt at this very moment in time.

“Why…?!” Akane screeched, plowing her fists into the crimson soaked pavement. She pounded away, again and again, somehow hoping such actions would put a stop to her pain. Soon, her own blood began to pour out of the tears created by the mashing of her knuckles with the rigid ground. Still, the actions continued own, regardless of this fact.

Why the hell is this always what happens?! The Inspector stopped hitting the pavement and wrapped her arms around herself tightly, Why…am I so powerless to save anyone…? Out of everyone, he was the one…The one person I wanted to…

Akane’s sobs sped back up again, her body collapsing into itself like a falling building in a disaster. Her cries echoed throughout the cold, deafening silence as Akane’s mind thought back to a few moments ago that had led up to this.

______________________________

“Follow me.”

“…Inspector, look-”

“Just shut your mouth and hurry up, Kougami-san.” The mushroom headed brunette spun around at the tall male standing behind her, handcuffs around his wrists- now her prisoner, with no way to go. This man was her former subordinate and senpai- formally known as an Enforcer. His name: Kougami Shinya.

Akane pulled Kougami along like a farmer herding their cattle as the two went in and out of various alleyways, around sharp corners, and carefully dodging every street scanner they came across.

Just a little more. A few more streets and Akane could reach her police vehicle to transport the criminal in her custody down to the PSB. Once there, the Inspector planned to make sure everything would fall into place. No matter what.

After looking both directions in case of anyone spotting them, Akane proceeded on with pulling Kougami along again. The raven haired man followed silently, watching the back of the woman he almost couldn’t believe belonged to the same little girl he had met 6 years ago. What used to be a naive, innocent child had now grown into a strong woman with nerves of steel and a heart of stone. Kougami had to admit, he was impressed with her growth.

One thought hit Kou as he followed behind her- he should have known of all people he would run into after returning to Japan, Akane would be the first. Hell, perhaps it was even what he had subconsciously wished for. Shinya was more then aware that coming back to his home country now was tantamount to suicide. That was fine. While the former detective didn’t want to admit he had grown older, that was only a very small part of his reasons for returning to Japan. He was simply…tired. After all the traveling he’d done after running from the very law he used to follow himself, the idea of living the rest of his days out in peace or quiet were a fool’s delusion. So before leaving Shambala Float and hopping onto an illegal ship set for Japan, Kougami Shinya made what he believed to be the last decision of his life. To take Sibyl down…either with him, or die trying.

From the information the 34 year old had gathered about the system’s expansion over the last 730 days, Kougami knew there was no better time to try his plan than now.

Sibyl of present was far more ferocious than years prior. So many things had changed. For instance, the collars that had been previously tested in the city of Shambala Float had been upgraded and placed around the necks of every one of Japan’s citizens. From newborn babies to the elderly. Even pets. Every single living creature in Japan wore such a device at all times, no exceptions. 24/7, everyone’s well being and actions were monitored. It made no difference, even if one’s hue was clear and pure. This was one of the new laws established by Sibyl. Also regarding the subject, the law pertaining to peoples psycho passes had also grown more merciless than ever. Now, it wasn’t simply one’s career and spouse Sibyl decided for them. No, from your child’s first name and entire life plan, to how one would grow and die. Sibyl controlled everything imaginable.

People would be better off dead then living like this…if it could even be called living at this point. At least that was Kougami’s feelings on the matter.

To add to it, at least 70% of Japan’s population was made up of people deemed unfit for society now. The standard percentage of a person’s psycho pass had changed quite dramatically, in hopes that it would keep the country more peaceful with less crime rates and drama. Today, if someone’s crime coefficient reached at even 50, you were immediately deemed a latent criminal and hauled away to the newest mental facility. Those left alone by Sibyl were the same ones who all had the appearance of a mindless zombie. It was terrifying, at the very least.

Thus what had brought Kou and Akane back together again, under less than ideal circumstances.

“Hurry.” Akane ordered sternly after having finally spotting her car a few ways away.

Before Kougami could respond, he was being dragged along again, once almost tripping from the force of the Inspector’s pull.

After finally reaching her goal, Akane quickly unlocked the car and prepared to force the latent criminal in if need be, “Don’t try anything, Kougami-san. If you do, I’ll be forced to get rough.”

The stoic man’s lips curled upwards at the cold-sounding remark. His mind instantly flashed to their brief fight 2 years ago and how she had managed to pull one over on him by throwing him backwards and pointing an actual gun at him, he who was supposed to be a much more experienced fighter. If there was one thing that hadn’t changed about Akane, it was her guts.

“Sure thing, Inspector. After all, wouldn’t want you to blow out my leg.” Kou joked, poking at Akane’s threat from 6 years ago during the Makishima chase.

6 years…it was short, but felt so long at the same time.

Shinya started to enter the car but stopped when he came to a realization. His sky blue eyes found themselves locked with hazelnut colored orbs that peered back at him with slight suspicion. From her eyes to everything else, Akane stood there before him- looking so powerful, so determined. It was enough to take his breath away.

Akane grew increasingly annoyed at this, however, “What are you doing? I already told you, don’t try to run.”

“No…” Kougami’s eyes softened warmly at her as his smirk developed into a calm smile, “Think I mentioned this to you before, but…getting arrested you like this. It’s not the worst thing that could happen to me.”

“Ginoza would definitely call you a pervert if he had heard you just now, Kougami-san. Enough stalling, and get in already.”

A low chuckle escaped the ex-enforcer as he gave in with an almost happy sounding, “Yes, ma'am.”

Just as Kougami leaned down to take a seat, a loud and all too familiar noise rang out towards the two.

Tsunemori’s eyes swelled widely as her instincts quickly carried her over to Kou’s side. Without warning, Akane pulled him to the ground as if to make him duck from something. The sound grew louder and louder until it seemed to swiftly zip past them, barely missing their ears. An explosion soon followed from the direction of where the sound had gone, blowing up a light post instead of its intended target.

Akane caught her breath as she processed what had just happened.

Kougami, who laid under her, was staring at the destroyed light post with a fowl glare, only knowing who the target should have really been.

Akane picked herself up as she noticed the source of the shot approaching from the shadows.

An old woman with short silver hair with glasses, wearing a black dress appeared with a sinister grin upon her face. In her hand was a dominator switched into enforcement mode.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t know about this, Inspector Tsunemori?”

“…Chief.” Was all Akane said as she stood in front of the gun’s barrel, acting a shield between it and the criminal behind her.

“You do realize this man is a wanted criminal…” Kasei looked over Akane’s shoulder. After catching his attention, the MWPSB head’s smile widened, “Much like Shogo Makishima was. How the mighty have fallen, isn’t that right…Enforcer Kougami.”

Kou remained silent but felt his blood begin to boil as anger rose up from the depths of his soul. Though he had never learned the truth about the Sibyl system and its chief, he had always known there was something…not right about her. Hell, Makishima had hinted it to him as well. The old woman’s current domineer and sudden apperance only served to confirm Shinya’s suspicions.

“Guess it has been a while,” Kougami forced a bitter smile, “Looks like you haven’t aged a bit, Chief. Is that a result of Sibyl’s ‘power’ too?”

Kasei’s eyes grew thin, like that of a fox staring down its prey before devouring it, “…You’d be surprised. The system does work miracles after all. For everyone living in this country now. Even the…mentally unfit.”

Another chuckle left Kou at the bluntness spoken to him. Before, it was 'latent criminals’. Now, society’s undesirables were flat out labeled as something as pathetic as 'mentally unfit’. It should have been no surprise. Not only had Sibyl grown bolder, but its overseer as well.

At that moment, Akane reached up and gently took hold of the dominator’s barrel. Anxiety replaced Kougami’s previous feelings of resentment as he carefully studied his ex-boss determinedly speak out against the one person no one in the PSB ever dared to cross,

“I apologize for taking this matter into my own hands, Chief.” Akane stood strong as she breathed steadily, praying she could encourage Kasei to lower the weapon against the man she had sworn to protect from death at any costs, “I realize your orders were to shoot on sight-”

“That’s exactly right.” Kasei nodded firmly, recalling back to their meeting in the PSB office a few hours prior after having found a street scanner that spotted Kougami entering the country, “Not only is the man a fugitive of the law, but a murderer as well. We cannot allow such a…plague to roam freely. You should understand this, Inspector. For the sake of our citizens trying to live peacefully here…”

All Akane could muster was an, “I know.”

Kasei continued, “Imagine what would happen if people encountered a man like Shinya Kougami. Just breathing the same air could cloud their hues to the point of no return. What would you do them, Inspector Tsunemori? How would you atone for such a crime? Allowing this man any form of freedom or existence would only add to the headcount he has already managed to pile up.”

The PSB’s director didn’t let her hand stray as she adjusted her gun’s aim directly towards Kougami’s head. The entire dominator glowed blindingly bright, ready to rain death upon it’s target’s head at the pull of a trigger.

“Just wait…!” Akane reinserted herself between the two in a desperate attempt to change the flow of the situation, “I realize the consequences of allowing Kougami’s freedom. That’s why I made the decision to come out here and arrest him immediately. I planned to take him directly back to the PSB and then-”

“And then what? You’d allow us to do a memory scoop of his memories from where he’s been since fleeing Japan and gather information as a result. A fine idea- using such knowledge could speed up the process of expanding Sibyl to other countries, as we had attempted years ago.”

Akane felt her heart catch in her throat at the mention of the memory scoop. The last time she had seen such a process be used on a criminal, the poor soul ended up violently dying in the chair due to shock. The brunette didn’t want to imagine the same fate befalling Shinya.

“That…isn’t…” Akane became increasingly concerned at the situation. Both she and Kou were backed into a corner, with very little chance of any escape.

“Then what would you have us do, Tsunemori?” Kasei’s eyes became darkly glazed over as her smile returned as if she were amused. Soon the dominator in her hand was closing further in towards Kougami’s face. A finger clenched the trigger just slightly, “Do you still refuse to accept it, despite all you’ve seen? Allow me to spell it out for you, Inspector- Tonight, the former Enforcer fugitive Kougami Shinya, will be erased for good.

Beneath her bangs, Akane’s chocolate colored orbs were trembling painfully. The Inspector’s teeth dug into her pale lips, nearly drawing blood.

Something had to be done immediately. Anything. Back when Kougami had fled the country after killing Makishima, Akane had promised- swore- to one day bring him home alive. The Inspector refused to simply let him die. Kougami had to live and atone for his crimes, so he could understand that what he had done, was wrong. For murdering. For breaking his promise to her. For betraying his entire division. Kougami couldn’t lose his life here. No matter what.

Not only that, but in the event that former detective did lose his life, Akane had a horribly, sickening feeling about what would soon follow afterwards. She had lost so many people over her time in this job, but Kougami…he would be the last straw.

It can’t happen. No matter what.

Yuki, her grandmother, Kagari, Masaoka, Aoyanagi; the countless victims of Akane’s past haunted her dreams nearly every single night she laid down. Bearing Sibyl’s truth alone and bearing such regrets were a recipe for anyone’s hue to cloud the darkest of colors. However, two things were keeping Akane from such a fate- or that’s what she told herself anyways. It made her feel better than believing she was an unfeeling monster due to the fact that her hue never clouded despite all the nightmares she’d been through. Of the two things keeping the Inspector going, one was her sense of justice. The other was the man her subconscious constantly showed her in the form of hallucinations in her times of need. The one who was finally physically at her side again.

Akane would never admit it to anyone, but Kougami’s existence had become a necessity in her life- hallucination or otherwise. Whether he were truly by her side or not, the thought of him never existing anywhere anymore was too much to think about. Therefore, Akane wouldn’t allow it.

"Chief, if you please.” Akane slowly turned around so she was facing both her boss and Shinya. The 26 year old raised her face from behind her bangs, the raging fire of determination burning brightly in her eyes, “Allow me to take him in for interrogation. I will personally see to it that something positive for the PSB comes of it.”

Kasei gave Akane a faraway frown, pulling back the gun’s trigger a little bit more, “…oh?”

“If not, you can have…” Akane reminded herself that Kougami was still in the dark about the truth of the things that made up the Sibyl system. She paused for a minute, carefully choosing her words before continuing, “…You may use me in any way you see fit.”

Kasei held back a laugh as the brain inside her head radioed their conversation back to the other brains of the system using the dominator as a communication device. Though no one could hear them, the brains speak out, “What a foolish girl. We already do. Still…”

The Chief’s eyes lit up as a thought came to mind. A very…pleasant idea of sorts. One that would quite indeed work to Sibyl, and Japan’s advantage, “…Yes. This will do nicely.”

The dominator lowered away from Kou’s face, surprising both Akane and Kougami at the signs of Kasei backing off.

“Very well, Inspector. I’ll allow an exception, but only this once. I just have one condition on the matter.”

Akane didn’t question it and agreed, “What is it, ma'am?”

It was then that Kasei’s face lit back up with a disturbing joy, “If Kougami really is as harmless and obedient as you claim him to be, see to it that he is transported via the proper vehicle for escorting criminals.”

It was then a large MWPSB van pulled up suddenly, parking on the other side of the street parallel to Akane’s car. The car shut off and out stepped Akane’s former boss, Ginoza Nobuchika.

“Well, I’ll be damned. So he really did return.” Gino’s tone was as cold and unfeeling as it had ever been when it came to his 'best friend’. The Enforcer’s gaze was glued at the pathetic sight of how far Kougami had fallen, now laying there strapped in handcuffs and at the law’s mercy, “Here I thought I had told you to stay away from us back on Shambala Float. Looks like your listening skills are as bad as they ever were. Or perhaps your just losing your hearing in your old age.”

“That’s rich, considering we’re the same age, Gino.”

“…Shut up, dumbass.”

While Ginoza and Kougami exchanged words in the background, Akane frowned deeply at this new development. Back in Kasei’s office, Akane had understood it that the news of Kougami’s return would be kept as secret as possible, and to not involve anybody unnecessary. If an Inspector had arrived, it would have made more sense. But Kasei had called for an Enforcer- much worst, someone Kougami knew. To add to it, Gino was also unaware of any truth regarding Sibyl and the Chief, yet she had taken the risk and personally requested Ginoza here, despite there being a chance Kougami knew something and spilled any information in front of Gino. Something didn’t feel right about this, not one bit.

Of everyone in the PSB, why request Ginoza to assist with Kougami’s escort? Not only that…Akane realized something else while she glanced at the dominator Kasei still held, A moment ago, Kasei was ready to kill him on sight. She just agreed to my suggestion now…so how did Ginoza know to come here so fast…?

Gino turned his attention away from Kougami and took notice of Akane’s brows furrowed anxiously. The man’s grew eyes softened warmly as he looked towards her with a calming smile, “Don’t worry, Tsunemori.” He began, walking over and placing a hand on her shoulder, “I will follow any orders you give- even if it’s sparing this fool here before us.”

Nobuchika’s stare flashed in Kasei’s direction for a second before he leaned further towards Akane’s left ear, keeping his voice as quiet as he could be as he continued,

“Listen, the rest of division 1 is hiding around the area on Kasei’s orders. If Kougami even acts like he’s attempting to run, he’ll be killed on the spot. The chief didn’t give us any clear details on the situation- she just suddenly came to the office an hour ago and ordered us to help in arresting an ex-hunting dog. None of us plan on killing him so you talk some sense into Kougami’s empty head.” Gino stepped back and looked at Akane strongly, “You’re the only one who can do this, Akane.”

Said woman gave a small smile and nodded. She still wasn’t sure what Kasei was up to, but at least for the moment, she knew she could count on Gino who had probably given a similar speech to the rest of the division. He knew as much as she did that Kougami needed to live, to atone. Simply dying on the streets like a dog, didn’t suit Kougami. Or at least, it didn’t need to. One thing was certain, and Akane couldn’t be more thankful- Ginoza was on her side.

“What’s the holdup, Inspector?” Kasei seemed to be growing more impatient by the minute, “Hurry and take the criminal in.”

Gino gave Akane a confirming nod, to which she responded with walking back to the spiky haired fugitive.

Like before, Akane grabbed Kougami’s arm and began leading him towards the PSB van. The two of them exchanged no words as they approached the back of the car and waited for the doors to open.

As the car opened, Kougami suddenly broke his silence, “Brings back memories. Never thought I’d ride in one of these again.”

Akane wanted to say something smart but she bit her tongue.

As the doors finally came completely open, her grip on Shinya tightened immensely. So much so that the force of the grip made him wince.

“Already starting on the torture, I see.”

“Shut up.”

“First Gino, now you tell me that.”

Kougami turned his neck to peer at her over his shoulder. At first, he held an amused smile but it quickly faded as he noticed something unusual about the woman who was always so collected and together.

The Inspector was trembling, quite violently too. She stood next to him, frozen in place like a statue.

“I don’t know what it is exactly, but something feels…wrong about all this.”

Akane just couldn’t believe how easily Kasei had been convinced to simply arrest Kougami. What was the PSB, or rather, the system really playing at? What did they really intend to do to him once Kougami was brought in?

Terrible thoughts plagued Akane’s waning mind as she held onto Shinya tighter and tighter.

Will they torture him, followed by disposing of him? Experiment? Do a memory scoop like Kasei had suggested earlier?

Her thoughts only worsened as Akane’s brain twisted the situation more and more, hoping to make sense of what was happening. Just as Tsunemori’s anxiety was hitting its peak, a sudden warmth grasped her right hand that was placed on Kougami’s shoulder. Akane snapped out of her trance and looked up. Her eyes widened, a handsome smile being reflected in them at the person before her.

“This isn’t like you, you know.” Kougami spoke in a hushed tone. His hand traced Akane’s carefully, “The Inspector I know would keep her cool under any situation. After all, that’s what makes a detective so good at what they do. So just calm down for a minute, all right…Akane.”

The Inspector was awestruck for what felt like several minutes. Though in realty only a few quick seconds had passed, leaving her heart to return to normal beating speed and her normal composure coming back.

Tonight hadn’t been the first time she had been on the receiving end of one of Kougami’s talks, but it was certainly just as effective as it had been all the times before.

Akane held back a smile as she felt the center of her chest tingle.

“…It’s pretty sad when I get lectured by a fugitive.” Akane gently removed Kou’s hand from her own, “Looks like I still need more training.”

Kou’s smile slightly grew at the sight of her returning to normal. Akane always did bounce back quickly when it came to serious situations. The Inspector was the very definition of strong, in every sense of the word. Perhaps it was one reason the raven haired man didn’t mind being arrested by her.

“Now that that’s settled, looks about time-” Just as Kou took a step towards the van’s interior, Akane pulled him backwards until he was within earshot.

“I need you to promise me something, Kougami-san. Do that and I’ll make sure everything works out.”

Kougami had several questions rise at that moment but instead of asking for answers, he replied, “And what exactly is it that you want me to promise, Inspector?”

Akane pretended to inch the two of them more towards the car as she mumbled, “Please, no matter what happens, don’t try anything stupid. If you even look like you’re about to attempt anything, you’ll be immediately killed. I know you may not care at this point about your life one way or the other…”

A part of Shinya silently agreed with her. Yeah. At this point in time, it didn’t matter what happened to him. It shouldn’t matter to the Inspector either, as far as he was concerned. However, he continued to listen carefully,

“Look, you may not give a damn whether you live or die tonight. But I’m saying you have no right to choose death.” Akane moved her arm downwards towards his forearm. Without warning, the detective gave it a good twist. Kougami flinched at the sudden action and peered back at her, where she responded with a quite angry look, “After all you’ve done, you really think you’ll just be allowed to die and that’s the end of things? I wont’ allow it. I can’t allow it. Chief doesn’t understand and neither does Sibyl- but I’ll make sure you aren’t simply shot like a dog. You have to live and atone.”

“Live and atone…huh.” Kougami hadn’t thought of it like that before. Not once had he ever felt an ounce of regret for murdering Makishima. To him, it was a crime that needed to be committed, no matter the cost. The only thing he wished had turned out differently was perhaps how it had happened. Akane had been hurt back then, Masaoka killed during the chase after Makishima at the time. That was his only regret otherwise though.

“Kougami, I’m not blind.” Akane tightened her grip on his arm, “I know you plan on dying tonight. Knowing you, I’m sure you had only one reason for suddenly returning to Japan after all this time- to do something about Sibyl, correct?”

Shinya wasn’t even surprised at this point. Akane’s detective instincts were as spot on as ever. Or perhaps it wasn’t her instincts that told her the truth of his return. Maybe Akane just knew him that well. Either way, it made no difference. At least, it shouldn’t have.

“Whatever you plan to do, I need you to put a hold on it until I say otherwise. I know more than you realize and if you charge in to attack Sibyl now, I guarantee it won’t be pretty. So please, right now, just promise me two things- Survive at any cost, and obey my instructions until we’re back at the PSB. All right?”

The latent criminal thought long and hard about Akane’s words. She made sense. And he had to admit, he was curious about what she meant when she claimed to know more then 'he realized’. But the part of her lecture that had stuck with Kougami the most, was her telling him to live. That it was…okay to live. That there was a reason, for him to continue existing in this world.

By this stage in his life, Shinya knew there should have been nothing tying him to this world any longer. He’d lost so much and knew his desired life of peace was all lost at this point. However, for just a brief moment, for the first time in 6 years…Akane had made him think, that perhaps he wanted to live, even just a bit longer. If nothing else, it was so he could be near the Inspector as long as possible before his end came. If that could happen, then he could die peacefully without any pain when he finally did reach his end.

A weight suddenly felt as if it had been lifted on Kougami’s shoulders. To think Akane could still tell him all those things, even after his betrayal…she really was a remarkable woman.

“…Akane.” Her name echoed softly as Kou barely parted his lips to say it. Spheres as blue as the ocean tenderly stared down at the female detective, unable to avoid her breathtaking gaze peering back at him. Without any more thought, he replied, “…Okay. You have my word, Inspector.”

Akane breathed a sigh of relief, “Good. Now, one more thing.”

“You’ve become awfully demanding after all this time,” Kougami’s face softened further with amusement, “Maybe you’ve been hanging around Shion too much?”

“Maybe. Had you the common sense to stick around, you would have known this already, Kougami-san.”

All Shinya could do was whistle and hold back a chuckle.

“More to the point…”

“Before that, may I say one thing, Inspector?”

Akane’s brows furrowed impatiently. They didn’t have much time and if they kept stalling, Kasei was sure to become suspicious.

“What?”

“You’ve really developed into one hell of a detective. Not to mention, a tough woman to boot.” Kougami leaned down until his height was on par with the shorter girl’s, “I gotta admit this now- I completely understand Gino’s over-obsessiveness of you.”

Confusion was the only thing Akane felt an such an offhand remark. Had he just…? No. This was Kougami Shinya, not Shion. He would never flirt, least of all, at a time like this.

Kougami finally shut up and turned to enter the car. His back still facing her, more surprising words escaped him as he stepped inside, but these fell on deaf ears.

“Always knew you’d grow into your own like this. No wonder you’re the one I often…”

At that moment, time seemed to bolt to a grinding stop.

Out of no where, Kougami felt his instincts screech out at him from the very depths of his being. He didn’t even have to think as he spun his body around as fast as he could.

For a moment, his left eye caught sight of a shimmer a few feet behind Akane. The man’s stomach dropped to his feet when he realized the source of the all too familiar shine. Before his own body even knew it, Kougami was making a mad dash towards Akane.

His arm grabbed onto Akane and swung sideways. Before the Inspector could question what was happening, her body was thrown away at incredible speed. As her body tumbled backwards, Shinya’s face reflected in her brown spheres. The look she saw on his face was enough to make her pupils dilate. When her brain registered what the reason for the expression on Kougami’s face was, Akane’s heart became like glass, getting ready to be shattered the moment she landed on the ground.

Though it was hard to hear through all the rapid movements, Akane then heard Kougami’s voice call out to her. It sounded…more faraway than it ever had before.

“Akane-”

The world went utterly silent. Tsunemori was still staring right at the man in front of her with an unwavering look of questioning and bewilderment. A second passed. Everything surrounding her felt like it shut down- time included.

The only thing Akane could hear was her own heart beating. The only thing she saw were Kougami who’s lips as they formed a few words.

…I’m sorry…

Akane’s lips also parted. Her voice screamed out as loud as it could but it reached no one.

…I couldn’t keep my promise again.

At that, the only sound that the world could hear was the firing of a dominator…set on execution mode.

______________________________

Author’s Comments: End of chapter 1 for a possible 3-4 chapter fic, based on my idea of events that would potentially happen in the event of a 3rd season of Psycho Pass. This was originally only going to be 2 chapters, but I decided to extend it. I’ll say this now- This fic, unlike so many of my others, WILL be finished. I’ve already got all of chapter 2 and part of 3 started. So please, please, please, leave me your thoughts and let me know what you guys thought of this. I apologize for any errors, misspellings, bad punctuation, and OOC-ness.

*Edit: Read Ch 2 here

[wazafam]

Apple TV+'s For All Mankind has provided an exciting alternate glimpse into world history through its first two seasons. The show, helmed by Battlestar Galactica vet Ron D. Moore, chronicles what would have happened in history had the Soviet Union beat the United States to landing on the moon in the 1960s. Those aren't the only changes to history, though.

RELATED: For All Mankind: Which Character Are You, Based On Your Zodiac Sign?

The point of divergence with the moon landing creates a ripple effect through modern history, altering world events in subtle and obvious ways. The show rarely showcases the changes, rather making them part of the overall fabric, which makes them a little more fun to discover as the series progresses.

10 The Soviet Union Landed On The Moon First

The entire premise of the series is launched when history diverges in a massive way in June of 1969. Instead of Neil Armstrong being the first man on the moon, it's Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. His success crushes American morale, much as the Soviet success with the first satellite, Sputnik, did in the early 1950s.

The show goes on to show that Apollo 11 crew Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did land on the moon, but it wasn't perfect. They crashed and were feared dead, but later were revealed to have survived.

9 Jamestown

The fear and embarrassment that follows the Soviet landing motivate NASA to accelerate their plans in regards to the moon. In the show, NASA plows forward with the Jamestown moon base, which never existed in actual history. This base, launched in 1973, became the centerpiece of the American lunar program. It was added on to and expanded into the 1980s.

In real life, NASA abandoned the Apollo program after a few landings, when public interest dwindled. Apollo 13 was one of the last flights of major interest to the American public, largely because of its in-flight accident, which became the subject of a movie about the real-life space crew.

8 Women Become Astronauts Sooner

From the beginning, the Soviet cosmonaut program was far more inclusive when it came to using both men and women. The first American woman in space, Sally Ride, didn't reach orbit until 1983 when she was part of the crew of the space shuttle Challenger.

In the show, the Soviets send a woman to the Moon after the US lands there. This leads NASA to be more ambitious in including women in the astronaut corps as well. Molly Cobb became the first woman in space in the show, with Apollo 15. Danielle Pool, Tracy Stevens, and Ellen Wilson are among the others to go as well.

7 President Kennedy

Senator Edward Kennedy ran for President of the United States in 1980 against incumbent Jimmy Carter but failed to win the nomination. In the series, he becomes President in 1973. Kennedy leaves a party on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 due to the Soviet moon landing and avoids a tragic historical event that forever tainted his political prospects.

RELATED: For All Mankind Season 2: 5 Things Episode 1 Answered (& 5 Questions We Still Have)

Kennedy succeeded in becoming President in the alternate history of the show, but his fortunes didn't continue. His personal troubles and the successive failures of the early Apollo program doomed his re-election and led to another change in history.

6 Reagan Becomes President In 1976

Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980 and oversaw the end of the Cold War, depicted in many excellent Cold War-era movies. In the reality of For All Mankind, he becomes President four years earlier after he defeats Kennedy in 1976 in a massive landslide.

Reagan is said to have won re-election in 1980, but the circumstances of that campaign aren't known. In the show as in real life, Reagan was bullish on militarizing space, particularly through his 'Star Wars' SDI program, which many feared would lead to nuclear war.

5 John Lennon Is Still Alive In 1983

Former member of the Beatles and legendary musician John Lennon tragically died in 1980, assassinated in front of his home in New York City. He survived in the world of the show and is shown in the second season of the series to be the advocate for peace he was in real life.

He calls for peace as the world hurtles toward nuclear conflict in the early '80s. While the outcome of the Cold War is expected to be somewhat similar, given there will be a season three of the show set in the '90s, it's not clear if events transpired exactly as they did in real life.

4 America Withdraws From Vietnam Sooner

Though the conflict with the Soviet Union becomes more pitched thanks to the moon landing, America's involvement in the Vietnam War deescalates. America withdraws from Vietnam much earlier, in 1970, a full five years before it did in actual history.

President Nixon does this in order to allow America to focus more on the space race, which they are seen to be lagging in. The fate of Vietnam is not known in the show past this point, though it likely mirrors that of real-life somewhat as the rest of the show's alternate history does.

3 Charles And Diana Don't Marry

The fourth season of The Crown depicts the historical fascination with the marriage of Charles and Diana in 1981. In the world of For All Mankind, this never happened. The show's alternate history has Prince Charles marrying Camilla Parker-Bowles, his eventual second wife, rather than Diana Spencer.

RELATED: Apple TV+: 10 Shows To Watch If You Like For All Mankind

This of course would have major repercussions to established history not yet explored by the series. The couple's two sons, William and Harry, would never be born in this scenario, altering the trajectory of the royal family into the 21st century.

2 The Wrath Of Khan

This change is fairly subtle. In episode five of the second season, “The Weight,” viewers discover that one of the greatest Star Trek movies ever, The Wrath Of Khan, has just come out in 1983. This is a slight change from real history, where the movie came out in 1982.

The movie famously changed its original title of The Revenge Of Khan due to the impending Revenge Of The Jedi, which of course was then changed to Return Of The Jedi. This suggests that Return Of The Jedi happened as is in the alternate timeline, though maybe not in 1983.

1 Mankind Lands On Mars In The 90s

A major consequence of the Soviet moon landing in 1969 is President Kennedy's commitment to beat the Soviets to Mars. This happens in the final moments of the second season finale when the show flashes forward ten years into the '90s. Fans see an American astronaut on Mars, fulfilling Kennedy's ambition and marking a massive departure from actual history.

Humanity has placed several rovers and probes on the Martian surface but remains far away from the prospect of landing a crew there any time soon.

NEXT: Chernobyl: 10 Other Historical Events From The Soviet Union That Deserve Their Own Miniseries

For All Mankind: 10 Things Different In This Alternate History from https://ift.tt/33aY0fz

[fakenigel]

Some extremely preliminary and scattered thoughts and comparisons on Cold War-era terrorism in Italy and the far-left under Ronald Reagan’s California

An American Strategy of Tension? Reagan’s California and the Cold War

The 1960s and 1970s were a period of tremendous political tumult for not only the United States and Italy, the two countries at the center of this piece, but for the entire West (which can be thought of, generally, as the NATO alliance, as well as many of the reactionary Latin American governments of the time) as it was embroiled in what was perceived to be an existential contest with its dialectical opponents to the east, the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent communist China. This was one of the most contested eras of the Cold War, but as much as the actors embroiled in this global conflict spent resources combatting one another (often through proxy wars), actors, both state and non-state, spent considerable resources waging what can best be described as domestic counterinsurgency campaigns. In the background of this piece is the idea that anti-communism in the post-WWII and Cold War era was a transnational affair, less segmented by borders than generally imagined. A main controversial conclusion of this approach is that similarities between events in Italy and the United States will be proposed to be less coincidence, and more a product of shared ideology, tactics, and counterinsurgency/anti-communist strategies on the part of Western states during the Cold War.

Particularly in the United States though, these types of counterinsurgency strategies were deployed in instances where there may not have actually been an insurgency by any accurate measure. The Church Committee’s revelations regarding programs like COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS, the brainchild of paranoid Central Intelligence Agency Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton (1954-1975), as well as subsequent scholarly and historical investigations over the years have revealed that, despite the protestations of the right-wing and aspects of the intelligence and security communities during the era, there was little to no evidence of a centrally planned foreign communist conspiracy to foment revolution or subvert the government of the United States[1]. Of course there were genuine left-wing plots, violence, and attempted acts of violence—the goal here is not to deny the agency of the left, particularly the New Left and associated movements, but to gain a clearer understanding of where they actually succeeded, where they failed, and ultimately how these movements lost momentum, and for all intents and purposes were destroyed. What I am aiming to highlight here is that minimally the far-right, security establishment, and intelligence establishment’s pursuit of evidence of a communist conspiracy in the West, their use of infiltration, instigation, and agent provocateur led to actual instances of violence that the left was forced to answer for, but may not have been totally responsible for. While Italy’s government and public have systematically recognized this reality, the United States and many other countries have not.

The questions are: did right-wing elements in the United States infiltrate and manipulate left-wing and New Left groups to commit violence that ultimately undermined the left’s political appeal to the public? If so, what were the actual political effects of these efforts, did they succeed? How did they alter the body politic in years going forward, up to the present? These types of issues and activities are the subject here. Liberal political science, particularly on the subject of New Left movements in the Western “democracies,” has assumed these organizations and movements had an agency and autonomy that may not have actually existed. The formidable repression these groups faced from the FBI, CIA, military intelligence, and police departments is well documented, but less attention has been paid to the actual mechanisms by which the repression took place, and even less attention has been paid to the particular issues of infiltration, instigation, and agent provocateur and what their effects have been and continue to be.

One of the most well documented and verified instances of the counterinsurgency dynamic I have referred to is Italy’s experience during the infamous “Years of Lead,” which lasted from roughly 1968-1980. The Years of Lead were a period of intense political violence featuring a bevy of terrorist attacks from both Italy’s far-right and far-left. While demonstrations and skirmishes between the left, the right, and the state had occurred prior to this event, a first major attack and inaugural bombing during the Years of Lead was the Piazza Fontana bombing which took place on December 12, 1969 in the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (National Agrarian Bank), killing 17 and wounding 88. While initial police investigations would attempt to finger anarchists (more associated with the radical left than right) with the bombing, it would eventually be confirmed in January 1987 through Italian courts that the far-right was responsible for this bombing.[2] One must consider the political ramifications of groups opposed to the right even being considered responsible for this bombing at a time when the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was rising to power. Further, consider that there where many other such violent incidents and bombings that were credited to Italy’s radical left—culminating in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro (Italy’s prime minister from the Christian Democracy Party who was planning to make a historic political compromise with Italy’s socialist and communist parties which would have cut the country’s rightists out of power)—which may have been planned, promoted, and/or executed by the right.

Bull and Cooke recount what is known about such activities in Italy

“[1] The main suspicion is that the state, or part of the state, connived with neo-fascist terrorists in pursuing a strategy of tension aimed at curbing the increasing power of the Communist Party and fostering a turn to the right. The responsibility of neo-fascist group Ordine Nuovo in the bombing massacres has indeed been fully ascertained by the courts, even though it has proved difficult to incriminate individual defendants, not least due to (largely proven) acts of obstruction on part of the state bodies. [2] As for the responsibility of the latter, starting with the secret service and parts of the armed forces, there exists very substantial circumstantial evidence pointing in the direction of their involvement in neo-fascist terrorism, at least in the sense of aiding and abetting their subversive activities and/or protecting them from prosecution. [3] Another suspicion is that the state did not do everything it could to fight left-wing terrorism, allowing it some space to develop in order to keep the Communist Party at bay, since the latter’s gradual path to power and government was jeopardized by the emergence of revolutionary groups to its left.”[3]

Within this brief yet comprehensive summary of terrorism in Italy during the Years of Lead, Bull and Cooke have identified three mechanisms by which the state, its security agencies, and far-right (in the Italian case often neo-fascist) organizations worked together, directly or indirectly, to harm the left politically and literally through the use, manipulation, and framing of terrorism.

The first they allude to involves the pursuit of a “strategy of tension” and involves the planning, execution, or allowance of terror by the state and its allies to lead public opinion toward supporting the status quo through the securitization of public life and the political process. This strategy involves steering political groups in directions advantageous for the state, such as infiltrating and steering far-left (and at times far-right) groups towards the utilization of violence. This is perhaps the least understood dynamic and may involve such complicated strategies on behalf of security and intelligence agencies that many critics doubt the veracity of claims that purport the usage this type of strategy. It is important to note that this is (or would be) a resource intensive strategy—the cost of infiltrators and agent provocateurs are not cheap, especially if many are necessary and they are needed for extended lengths of time. But if there was any time when governments were willing to foot the bill for such activities, the Cold War was the time. There remains evidence that the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) may have arisen out of this type of counterinsurgency strategy.

Researchers who subscribe to the theory that steering and manipulation by the state are responsible for a group’s use of violence point to definitive splits and different periods in a group’s existence as evidence of takeover or infiltration by outside parties. Often this involves the first wave of a group’s leadership being killed, jailed, or otherwise removed from activity, then a new set of leadership arises, one that ratchets up the violence the group is willing to use. In the case of the Red Brigades, this type of periodization of the group’s history is widely accepted. The first phase of the group was led by Renato Curcio until June 1974 when he was arrested. While the group was by no means nonviolent during this first era, its actions pale in comparison to the Red Brigade’s actions during the later phases, after Curcio’s arrest. Post-arrest of the Red Brigade’s founders and initial leadership, Mario Moretti came into leadership of the group. The group’s tactics immediately took a more violent turn; the Red Brigades would kidnap and kill Aldo Moro during this phase. Does the timeline of the Symbionese Liberation Army show this kind of periodization accompanied by a change in structure, as well as tactics (especially as they relate to violence)?

The second dynamic Bull and Cooke identify is one in which state security and intelligence agencies cooperate with, and aid and abet far-right terrorism. The assistance that security and intelligence agencies are able to give often ideologically allied right-wing movements ranges from money, weapons, and other material resources, to information about targets, to tips to avoid detection by the state, to protection from prosecution. In the most extreme cases, a security and/or intelligence apparatus with enough autonomy or independence from the state, or where the state’s interests are aligned as such, far-right groups often operate above the law and with impunity. An example of a far-right group with this kind of relation to a state and its security apparatus might be the case of the Grey Wolves which have operated in Turkey from roughly 1968 until the present. Despite the open secret that the Grey Wolves have been deeply involved from crimes ranging from heroin production and smuggling, to murder (the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II was carried out by a Grey Wolves’ member and is widely believe to be related to the neo-fascist Italian activity discussed here and elsewhere), it is clear that they exist and operate with state approval. Looking at the case of California under the governorship of Ronald Reagan and during the heyday of COINTELPRO, we see clear evidence of this type of activity emerge in the relationship between the state and federal security/intelligence officials and far-right, paramilitary groups like the Minutemen and the Secret Army Organization. In the case of California we see far-right groups who were evidently allowed to violently harass, assault, and even attempt to kill leftist radicals, dissidents, and organizers in the 1970s. Here, the case of Peter Bohmer is instructive. Bohmer, who is still a political economy professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was a victim a conspiracy between federal and state security officials and the far-right paramilitary organization the Secret Army Organization (successor to the Minutemen) in which he was harassed and had his life threatened, including an incident where he was shot at in his home and the bullets struck a woman inside, Paula Tharp, leaving her with permanent injuries.[4]

(More about the attempted shooting of Bohmer can be found in the following California Supreme Court opinion: http://caselaw.lexroll.com/2016/12/06/people-v-hoover-12-cal-3d-875-1974/)

The third mechanism and tactic that Bull and Cooke identify also needs more careful attention and study. This is the dynamic in which the state and its security apparatuses would allow revolutionary and armed left-wing groups grow and operate precisely because their activities would be counterproductive for left-wing forces attempting (and succeeding) to gain political momentum, whether that be through electoral means or otherwise. This tactic by the state is similar to the first one I discussed, in that the goal is to undermine left-wing political parties by having them associated with violence in the public arena. The violence then leads to a securitization of public life and a reaffirmation of support for the status quo and law-and-order rightists who then become seen as protectors of public order.

The subtle difference between the first method and this is that this method would seem to require less infiltration and instigation when compared to the former. As Bull and Cooke suggest in their description, this method involves the state simply allowing far-left groups to operate freely, with the belief that they will engage in unproductive and/or counterproductive behavior that aids the states counterinsurgency plans. This is different than the first proposed method in which the state is steering groups through the use of infiltration, instigation, and provocation (agent provocateur). This strategy assumes that security and intelligence officials believe that certain left-wing groups and/or individuals are already behaving in unproductive or counterproductive ways (in regards to the movements they are broadly identified with), and that officials have identified these unproductive and/or counterproductive actors, separating them from actors who are deemed effective, and thus require more intense counterintelligence efforts, such as protracted infiltration and provocation. There is evidence that something like this final method led to the death of Jonathan P. Jackson, brother of George Jackson, when he attempted to kidnap a judge to trade for his brother’s release from prison. It has been suggested that state and federal authorities were aware that the kidnapping attempt was going to take place and made no provisions to intervene, rather they allowed it to go on, in what seems to have been an attempt to frame Angela Davis and undermine the larger prisoners’ rights movement.[5] Another interpretation of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an alternative to the one already discussed above, is that state and federal authorities recognized the counterproductive nature of many of its doctrines and thus allowed it to operate. While I believe there is too much evidence to the contrary to suggest that state and federal authorities took such a “hands-off” approach to the SLA until the murder of black Oakland school superintendent Dr. Marcus Foster and the subsequent kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, it is worth considering. In general though, my view is that the actions of the SLA, like those of Italy’s Red Brigade in the phase when they decided to kidnap and murder Aldo Moro, are just simply too counterproductive and make little sense from a far-left perspective, even if we account for the ideological extremes and revolutionary fervor present in the 1960s and 1970s. More will be discussed concerning the counterproductivity of the SLA later.

The preceding paragraphs have been an attempt to introduce a typology of some of the dominant counterinsurgency trends that were used in the West’s many domestic theaters during the height of the Cold War and anti-communism efforts. The forthcoming sections will discuss a series of people, organizations, and events in California that relate to the far-left that seem to be symptomatic of the counterinsurgency strategies mentioned. Continual reference will be made to Italy’s Years of Lead and strategy of tension (and other locations in Europe, such as Belgium, where extensive documentation of these activities also exists) in order to make comparisons to the events discussed in California. This is because there is a greater level of official knowledge and sourced information in relation to Italy due to legislative inquiries and “truth and reconciliation” type policies. And then, perhaps more importantly, the comparison is important because there are very interesting connections between Italy and its counterinsurgency efforts and what we see in California under Reagan, all the way down to certain individual actors appearing in (and playing an important role) in both instances, particularly the figure “Ronald Hadley Stark,” who little is known about, but what is known is highly pertinent to this discussion and inquiry.

[1] United States Senate, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, S. Rep. No. 94-755, bk. III, at 681 (1976) [hereinafter Church III].

[2] Anna Cento Bull and Philip Cooke, Ending Terrorism in Italy (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), 2.

[3] Bull and Cookie, xii.

[4] 1. Everett R. Holles, “A.C.L.U. Says F.B.I. Funded ‘Army’ To Terrorize Young War Dissidents,” New York Times, June 27, 1975, http://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/27/archives/aclu-says-fbi-funded-army-to-terrorize-young-war-dissidents.html.

[5] Citizens Research and Investigation Committee and Louis E. Tackwood, The Glass House Tapes: The Story of An Agent-Provocateur and the New Police-Intelligence Complex (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1973), 112-115.

[seriouscuttervoice]

Apotheosis

Chapter 2 | I

Fandom: Mystic Messenger/Death Note (Crossover)

Characters: Rem, V, OCs (V’s family), Jumin Han

Links: AO3 | FF | First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Notes: This chapter is long, long, long overdue, initially because of writer's block and then because of the stages of grief that came with realizing V route was going to (and did) redact a lot of my fic into firm AU territory. I've decided that instead of changing my plans for this fic to align with the information provided by V route, I'm going to continue with what I originally had planned for the fic. I'm not complaining about having additional canon information-- it's fantastic-- but I fear my motivation to finish this will dwindle into nothing if I have to go off my original course too much. I started writing this chapter before V route and finished it after, and it's probably the first time I make a major divergence from canon (other than, you know, having V be the reincarnation of a shinigami from an entirely different series) on purpose. I really hope you enjoy this and I apologize for taking so long to get it out!

It's not her first week or even her first month at school when another student, not by his actions or anything he's said but by his mere presence, strikes Rem breathless. She's seen him before, in church, in class, but she never realized until now that she isn't the only person who spends their recesses outside alone. As if pushed away by some invisible force filling the air, he stands at the edge of the school courtyard; perhaps it's the same force that compelled Rem to wander off here in the first place. The tall and empty walls that should have diminished him with their size are inferior to the look in his eyes, ice and fire all at once, passionate scrutiny, and with a start this young boy reminds Rem not of her own downfall but of Misa's, the man she loved who used love like a weapon and turned a god to ash. It's too much memory for a boy so young, and when he turns that gaze on Rem in this soft, child's body and asks, "Why do you look at me that way?," Rem has spent enough time as a human to know that he is art.

"Do you want me to stop?" she asks, uncertain if she's disturbed him. He's a little shorter than Jihyun is, but it doesn't feel that way. The boy's eyes survey her up and down, appraising her with eyebrows arched, lips twisted for a moment in thought, before he shrugs and turns his face away.

"Do as you like," he tells her, and for a moment the command stupefies her, desperately searching in her mind for what exactly it is that she'd like to do so she can comply. Her eyes find her shoes, black and freshly shined the night before by Yunseo. The other boy wears similar ones of a slightly different style, his pointed at the front where Jihyun's are square, standard footwear for the compulsory school uniform. Rem hesitates, then raises her head again to look at his face.

"What's your name?" she asks, and the question feels too personal, a few characters on a page that could be the difference between life and death, a secret to be closely guarded yet is so easily taken away.

"You don't know it?" the boy questions, an overly critical crease in his forehead for someone his age. "We've been in the same class for two months and twelve days, we attend the same church, and we've visited each other's houses before, but you don't know my name?"

He speaks like he spends his free time reading the dictionary, a pastime Rem can't deny she's participated in herself before out of boredom, selective of his words in a way that's unnatural for his stature. She stares wide-eyed at him for his harshness. Human names and even faces are difficult, slipping in and out of her mind without a trace no matter how hard she tries, and she's tempted to ask how he can remember her name before she realizes he's not given any particular indication that he does.

"I suppose I've forgotten," she mumbles, allowing her language to slip back into the stiff formalness she was accustomed to as a shinigami to match the other's speech. She's surprised to find how unforced it feels, realizing for the first time that her quietness around most humans might be due to the amount of effort it takes to vocalize as they expect Jihyun to.

The other blinks, scowling but apparently unable to look away from her, and after a moment of contemplative silence he slowly utters, "My name is Jumin Han."

Jumin Han.

It's a name she's heard before, the Han part certainly is, in her parents' dinner conversations and dripping with bitter spite from Yunseo's lips. His family doesn't live far from where Jihyun's does, a large house with black panels that's more modern than most others in the neighbourhood, though the inside is more traditional than one might expect.

She repeats the name several times in her head, Jumin Han, Jumin Han, the words more precious than the other boy could realize, and somehow she knows that this time she won't forget.

"The conventional thing to do, at this point," the other says, startling Rem out of her thoughts, "would be to introduce yourself, but there's no need as I already know who you are."

She nods, her lips feeling stuck together, and though the boy is stern she finds herself taking his word for it easily, something about him exuding honesty and trustworthiness even while he rebukes her with his words. She feels she's somehow unearthed something, trespassed into a space she wasn't meant to be and stuck gold, like the earrings she wore as a shinigami, like the pink paint she took from the human world. He doesn't seem bothered by her staring, though he doesn't meet her eyes, and for a moment Rem longs to stay like this, silently drinking in the details of this boy's world, a world that appears to be all his own, separate from the oversaturation and noise she's come to associate with the human realm. He doesn't interrupt her, completely still and with perfect posture, and she knows then that she was wrong in her initial assessment of him. This boy is better than Light Yagami, greater than Light Yagami, and if the gods fell for him it would only be natural, his effortless honesty making him worthy of it, with no need for deception or delicate maneuvering to make it happen. He emanates magnetism, seems almost composed of it, and it's a quality she thinks can't be taken from him, a fundamental of his being that makes him meant to walk this earth.

She tears her eyes away; too much, too much, and when she does he takes a step toward her and she finds herself breathless once more.

"Spend recess with me," he says, his right foot barely a few centimetres from hers, eyes full of intensity. She nods again, refusing to look away this time, and he remains for just a moment, holding her there in his world, before he moves back.

And then he smiles.

Muscles in his face relax, eyebrows lose their arch, his lips curve just barely upward, and he looks at her with a carefreeness she wouldn't have thought him capable of as the warm light of morning seems to envelop her from his face.

"Good," he says, motioning to a bench by one of the paths in the courtyard. "Should we sit? I think we'll like each other, Jihyun."

Rem knows he's right, and it's a strange feeling, unaccustomed to attention or her presence being wanted, and together they walk away from the towering wall.

Jumin becomes a fixture in her life with ease, occupying a place she didn't know existed and fitting perfectly into it. The two of them are silent more often than not, but it's a different sort of silence than that she shares with her family, a silence that's whole instead of hollow, a silence that's full like a sponge with water, and while she can't tell if she herself contributes anything to that completeness, she knows Jumin does with his overwhelming presence. They don't speak because there's no need for words, and when the words do come they are easy, unedited in their clunkiness, too big for either of them and their children's bodies. She's half-tempted to tell him her history, to ask if he was a god once too, but otherworldly as he seems Rem knows there's something irrevocably human about him, the very thing that drew the likes of herself and Gelus to this world in the first place.

Rem's searches for gods who'd become humans are mostly fruitless, references to human descent almost invariably linked to Christianity. Typing in Gelus's name does nothing either, the other apparently uninterested in making himself known to other former shinigami, if he's even here at all. It's possible that if he too became human then he's in a completely different time period than Rem is, or a different timeline altogether. And there's also a chance he didn't become a human in the first place.

It's much easier to find references to the opposite, the concept of humans that become gods, deification or apotheosis as the process is called. Humans appear to be fascinated by the idea, and Rem supposes she can understand what the allure of power and eternity could be to people who never had them within their grasp. She too might find it enthralling, were the power she had not the power of death, and were the eternity she had not dependent on it. Her parents never ask what she's searching for, so she never has to hide it, though she likely could if she wanted to because Jihyun apparently inherited her talent for going unnoticed, though not through any ability to be literally invisible. He slips in an out of places almost without a sound, and those just realizing he's entered the room remark that he surprises them with his quiet. She doesn't broach the subjects she searches for with Jumin, either, though he'd undoubtedly be interested in the concept of descent from godhood, but he's too sharp and too perceptive for Rem to fully trust he wouldn't put the entire picture together.

He starts inviting her to his house, and though Jihyun is allowed to invite over anyone he wants, he's also allowed to go any place he wishes, and Rem prefers to be at Jumin's. The other boy's house is full of invisible people; kitchen staff and housekeepers that Rem rarely sees, going about their obligations to maintain the orderliness of the place. Jumin doesn't think twice about it, and soon neither does Rem, the novelty of being seen both unnerving and difficult not to enjoy. Jumin listens to her, and Rem knows that if she ever asked him to make her a promise he wouldn't break it, possessing a degree of respect for her that's totally foreign to her life.

Jumin's father is rarely home, though his mother always is, and Jumin makes a point to correct Jihyun when he refers to her as such, firmly informing her that the woman living in his house is not his mother. Rem gives him a questioning look, less aware of human customs than she expected, and Jumin says he'll explain it another time.

Jumin's insistence that he and Jihyun be alone most of the time is no discomfort to her, used to adults taking little interest in her life. Even when their parents get together for dinner, Jumin prefers that the two of them take off on their own as soon as the meal is finished, circling the perimeter of his garden or sitting on the rug in his bedroom.

"I thought you were looking forward to having dinner together with your father," Rem comments, purposely not phrasing it as a question so the other doesn't feel obliged to respond. Jumin leans back against the footboard of his bed, so large it could probably swallow him.

"I was," he says, tracing circles on his kneecap. Even outside of school, Jumin dresses as if in uniform. Jihyun wears a t-shirt and jeans, though Rem isn't sure whether or not they're expensive. "But his girlfriend is with him, and I don't like her."

"Oh," Rem says, and suddenly everything makes sense. She wondered why the woman who appeared to be Mr. Han's wife was so young, but time spent with Kyosuke Higuchi should've told her that this was normal for businessmen. Jumin's father seems so kind, though, she wouldn't have thought to connect the two even in spite of them having the same occupation.

"Mm," Jumin acknowledges. She watches him for a moment, wondering if he wants to elaborate, but he says nothing more so she doesn't press him. Jumin's bedroom is nice, a bit oversized but so is Jihyun's. Everything from the wooden floors to the bed to the armchairs on either side of the table in the middle of the room are white, the only exception provided by a fish tank that sits on top of the table, the fish swimming inside reflecting the sunlight with vibrant colours.

It's quiet for a long time, and Rem wonders for a moment why Jumin sits on the floor when his room has armchairs and a window seat, and she's trying to decide if that's too impolite to ask when she feels a weight press against her arm, eyes widening as she realizes Jumin has shifted to lean on her, just slightly, his dark hair falling on Jihyun's shoulder. The touch is unexpected, accustomed to her only contact being Yunseo's hand firmly grasping Jihyun's when crossing the street or in a crowded place.

"Jumin?"

Jumin stiffens, and Rem regrets it for a moment as he raises his head ever so slightly, then seems to change his mind and leans on Jihyun again.

"You know," he says softly. Jihyun waits. "I've never had a friend before."

This isn't surprising. Jumin is young, has hardly had enough time in the world for it to be confusing that he hasn't made friends before, but the word puts Rem on alert.

"Friend?" she echoes, and Jumin shifts off of her shoulder to engage her in a serious look.

"That's what we are, right?" he asks, and though his voice is steely the question is sincere, searching her face with his silver eyes for answers. "Friends?"

Rem returns his eye contact and for once wonders if Jumin feels her presence as strongly as she feels his, because he averts his gaze slightly to look at her nose instead of her eyes. It's a word Rem hadn't considered for them before. Friends… the weight with which Jumin spoke the word makes sense now, though Jumin himself wouldn't be able to understand it. He's a young boy with the body of a delicate child, only a few short years into school. Rem is ancient, lived for centuries without ever having a single friend, the closest perhaps being Gelus, but even then it was she who was fascinated by him, the other shinigami sharing no similar interest in Rem or anyone other than the human girl he watched. That, of course, was natural. And Misa could hardly be called a friend, care for her as much as Rem did.

But him… Jumin Han. He seeks out Jihyun's presence, remembers things about him that Jihyun doesn't remember about himself, hangs onto his every word even when they're clumsily put together and say nothing of importance. He's unselfish, doesn't only care for Jihyun to the extent that Jihyun can be useful to him, whether as a willing sacrifice or a soundboard. Jumin is considerate of Rem, gives her special attention that even her parents don't give her. His eyes are the only place that Rem holds any significance—that Rem ever held any significance.

"Yes," she breathes, and Jumin watches her, unwavering. "I suppose we are."

Jumin slowly nods, then shifts again, replacing his head against her shoulder once more. Silence overtakes the air, the distant sound of parents' voices downstairs drifting into the room from behind the closed door.

"Let's stay this way," Jumin murmurs, and Rem can hear in his voice that this time it's not a command.

It's a plea.

"We will," she says.

She hopes he can hear in Jihyun's voice that it's a vow.

[determinedduality-archive-blog]

A summary for the blog

Considering I have new followers, and I have been told by a few people that things were hard to follow when i was doing story posts I’m going to give a summary of what has happened from the Home; Arc had started to now, this will explain who Cotton and Ghost are, as well as hopefully explain how we got to this point. 

One day while Inky and Bunny were spending time with @resettime‘s kids in their timeline an anon had asked Inky about Endogeny. After being M!A’d human for a few days, Inky decided it was time to go home and check on the other monsters in the Underground, as well as finally open the Barrier.

However when they got their they had made a slight miscalculation and found themselves in a parallel timeline copied from theirs in everything but the Frisk and Chara who the timeline (read as Ceffie) made of code of Inky and Bunny to replace them and allow for a true Pacifist ending to occur finally. 

Inky at first followed behind the Frisk, a small much younger child Inky named Cotton due to their hair:

However soon Cotton approached Inky and the two made fast friends.  The two had met Toriel- despite Inky wanting to hide from her, Cotton had fell down causing Inky to carry them to Toriel’s and getting caught.

From here Inky and Cotton stayed in Toriel’s home for a small while before Inky had decided it was best to explain the situation to Toriel, timelines and all. Not only did they explain to her that they were her child from another timeline, but they talked her into allowing them to go break the barrier.  She gave the condition that she would travel after them to the Capital to make sure they arrived safely.  Inky agreed and the Ruins were cleared.

Inky had been asked about if Cotton had a separate Chara, to which Inky explained that yes, Cotton had a Chara and due to Cotton’s inability to speak the Chara ghost was translating and narrating what Cotton says and does for them.  This Chara, Inky dubbed the “amazingly wonderful” name of Ghost:

After leaving the Ruins the two ended up running into Sans who surprisingly remembered Inky from the original timeline and the brief moments he had seen Inky and Bunny split bodies in previous timelines.

Due to this, Inky was met with animosity, and was taken to Papyrus’s shed before the taller brother could witness either “human”.

From their Inky had to explain themselves to Sans, as well as explain why they had seven souls, the six human souls and their own.  After explaining everything and making a promise to protect Cotton and not allow their own LV to raise any further, Inky let slip that they knew Gaster, which prompted Sans to kick both children out of the shed.

From there the children entered Waterfall

and then soon Hotland where they passed through Alphys’s Lab.

They were greeted by Undyne who Alphys invited to help investigate the “creature” following the human she saw from her cameras

After Alphys left the True Lab to investigate the noise Undyne was making she came face to face with Inky, recognizing them from a picture Asgore had in his home:

After many questions and interrogations later, Inky asked to see the True Lab while Undyne subjected Cotton to anime to distract her.

Alphys agreed and allowed Inky to follow her, as long as they answered all of her questions.

After not only finding Endogeny, the original quest Inky set out for:

And attempting to talk to Alphys trying to convince her that the amalgamates deserved to see their families, the two “humans” and a ghost were allowed to pass into New Home.

From there they made their way to the Throne Room where while Inky and Ghost tried to make a plan for how to reveal themselves to their adoptive father, Cotton, wasting no time decided it was best to throw caution to the wind and approach the king of monsters, tripping in the process.

After being spotted by Asgore, Inky approached and explained they had six souls with them, the ones Asgore had being copies of the original timeline’s Inky was from.

Inky went immediately to the Barrier room and on New Years Eve Real World Time, Inky broke the Barrier releasing all of the Monsters.

After this Toriel, making well on her promise had showed up to protect the children.  The two timelines were joined together, allowing Bunny to find Inky and Cotton’s Flowey and Inky’s Asriel to fuse into one being with two consciousnesses. 

After some time recovering, the monsters left the underground.

During this time out on the surface @will-stab-for-chocolate had an event that eventually dragged Inky into a problem with Mocha, his soul deteriorating.  After struggling with Mocha’s verbal and emotional abuse due to high LV and lack of empathy, something Inky understood and didn’t blame their friend for, Inky was able to try to reach out and protect Mocha’s soul, making a makeshift Ink vessel for the determination to be housed.

After this Mocha was dragged into an event with his former Sans Dads that resulted in the capturing of Mocha’s soul, and subsequently Inky’s body and thus Bunny’s DT breaking down and eventually splattering causing the ink demon to need to recover as Inkitty:

While Inky recovered, Cotton asked Alphys to make Ghost a body, digging up their remains from their grave for DNA, Alphys was able to make Ghost a physical body to inhabit:

After all that was over, and the monsters were camping on Mount Ebott, a few days later human police were sent to investigate:

However, even though the officers were able to talk the children-Inky, Ghost, Cotton, and Bunny- as well as Asgore and Sans for guardians, to interrogate them about the monsters and the happenings in the Mountain.

This was until Ceffie decided things were growing boring and that the timeline had outlived it’s usefulness.

With that Ceffie deleted the entire timeline, save for the children who were scooped up by the Gaster that belonged from that timeline, and brought to his home.

Now the four children are timelineless, yet free to roam other timelines.  They may have no Underground to call their own anymore, but they are far from homeless, now staying with the Gaster named Cravat, Bunny’s creator and Inky’s voidbound friend.

((Consider this deletion of timeline to be a sort of Retcon without fully changing the characters or erasing any character development of the children.  They are now no longer Story Locked, and allowed to interact with any muses without the muns fearing any sort of interruption of plans.  This is a breath of fresh air for the mun who was trapped in the Story with very little motivation to continue. Thank you for putting up with the story, and for those who liked it, I am sorry but it was causing major interest loss for me, and I felt it would be better if I dropped the story rather than decide to go on any sort of hiatus or quit the blog due to lack of interest, especially considering the muses are very much still strong and eager to meet new friends and interact.   I hope you understand.