#though I assume that compared to death itself everything seems quite young

[creatureofthe-creek]

Hello there young one. Can I have a grim reaper themed collage with graveyards dotted around. I would be very grateful for this. Thank you very much youngin.- the reaper ♟️

🦴🪦🥀|+＊•.±♪+⇔+♪±.•＊+|🥀🪦🦴

🦴🪦🥀|+＊•.±♪+⇔+♪±.•＊+|🥀🪦🦴

[onesunofagun]

I shall now yell about Ingo, please stand by:

Ingo’s transformation from the underappreciated backbone of the ranch to an absolute ruff-wearing cantaloupe of a man is also pretty interesting (if you’re the kind of person who absorbs the Zelda series through your skin like a frog to live).

I’ve bolded the key points for skimmers.

Granted, the manga has it that Ingo just gets brainwashed by Twinrova into being a staunch follower of Ganondorf. That’s not canon, but it’s not informing any of this thinking, either way. 

In the beginning of OoT we meet Talon by waking him up from a nap, and we learn pretty quickly that he’s lazy and often yelled at by his daughter for slacking off like this. Ingo at the ranch confirms again that Talon doesn’t pull his weight around there, and since Malon’s still a child, it’s pretty obvious that Ingo’s settled with the bulk of the work.

Ingo is grumpy, he’s resentful, and he complains a lot. But he does do the work, and you can find him (presumably) in the process of mucking out the stables. 

Let’s examine what he does at the ranch:

Epona really liked that song... Only I could tame that horse... Even Mr. Ingo had a hard time...

Now, Epona is established in game to be a real winner of a horse. She’s fast, she’s smart, she’s got a lovely sorrel coat and white mane that seems to be quite rare or highly prized coloring. The catch is, she is notoriously wild. The only people she tolerates are Malon and Link, due in large part to being soothed by the song Malon’s mother taught her.

Ingo had to really try to crack this horse, which Malon’s observation suggests is unusual. 

Epona is very young when we first see her, so it’s never really revealed if she was caught wild, or bred at the ranch with a very headstrong temperament.

Ingo’s clearly the guy that’s breaking them in, though. The most Talon is doing is... sleeping in with the cuccos. We never see any organisation of the cuccos, in terms of egg collection or poultry farming, but nevertheless, Talon has the much less physical jobs even if he was doing them. His focus seems to be cuccos, deliveries to the castle and book keeping between naps (and to be fair it’s probably a little depression related, given the dead wife).

Malon gives us a cow later on, and she’s got the egg for the crowing cucco that wakes up Talon, so I’d like to assume for simplicity’s sake that even as a kid, Malon was up at dawn most days helping Ingo with the cows and milking them. It’s never really implied that she has amazing skill in dealing with horses, just that Epona has a special connection with her specifically. Other than that, Malon is simply kind and respectful of her animals (though I’ve got no idea how she got that cow to Link’s treehouse and that’s worth investigating). 

Later on, Ingo is also shown to be a competent rider. Enough that he has absolutely no qualms in challenging Link to races for wagers, and was quite confident of his ability to win.

The takeaway is, Ingo is usually VERY GOOD with both caring for and training horses, if not breeding them for the ranch.

That kind of lends to his grumbling, when he is referring to himself as ‘the Great Ingo’ and comparing himself to Talon, who is a ‘bum’. His claim to greatness may not be undeserved, at least in horse circles, and especially if he’s not getting particular credit for it, his bitterness and frustration (alongside envy, exhaustion, and dreams of recognition) would be quite deeply run.

So it seems that his friend and employer is clearly taking some advantage of him, especially after the death of Malon’s mother.

So now, let’s examine his feelings, and how he changes.

The feelings Ingo has about that are pretty textbook for the sort of thing ‘evil takes hold of and twists’, in the Zeldaverse.

Focussing on the game itself, Malon says this as an adult:

Since Ganondorf came, people in the Castle Town have gone, places have been ruined, and monsters are wandering everywhere. Mr. Ingo is just using the ranch to gain Ganondorf's favor... Everyone seems to be turning evil...

We do see other characters in Hyrule become influenced by the ‘darkness in their hearts’ as byproduct of Ganondorf’s reign. 

A prominent example of a character who was visibly dissatisfied with their lot, and then notably changes (while praising Ganondorf for what he’d done), is the Castle Guard who is heavily implied to have become the Poe Dealer. Even if by some slim means it’s not the same person, the Poe Dealer does still express that they could not do the work they do without Ganon as King, and that they now benefit from him being in that position and are grateful to him.

The Kakariko Carpenters seem to have given into their fantasies about living among the Gerudo women, and gone out to the Valley and gotten themselves taken prisoner. Following work near the fortress, the team chooses to act on their selfish desires and go for broke, chasing their dreams. They weren’t previously prepared to act upon these fantasies when Link was young, admittedly much milder in their still very prominent obsession, but seven years later, they’re quite happy to risk it all and piss away the stability of their careers (and nearly their lives) at the first opportunity.

Anyway, the trend is, those across Hyrule who are unhappy with their lot before Ganondorf’s coup tend to be ‘corrupted’ by seven years later, and appear to have given in to a twisted version of whatever they most wanted. 

This is noteworthy especially because the language in the game revolves around the Sacred Realm being opened and corrupted, too, by Ganondorf’s unbalanced heart and selfish goals. It is unable to be ‘sealed’ again while Link has the Master Sword. In aLttP, we know there is a mirror like effect to do with the sacred turned dark realm, in which it reflects the hearts of men. 

So it is very reasonable to say, that for OoT in particular, much of this evil influence plaguing the land and preying on the darkness an people’s hearts is a result of the corruption of the Sacred Realm. It is an indirect byproduct of Ganondorf’s acquiring of the Triforce, but not necessarily something he himself does to people on purpose, unlike the brainwashing of Nabooru.

Mr. Ingo is just using the ranch to gain Ganondorf's favor... But Dad... He was kicked out of the ranch by Mr. Ingo... If I disobey Mr. Ingo, he will treat the horses so badly...

This explains a lot of the more callous and greedy behaviour that Ingo shows later on, and why it seems to disappear when he is truly humbled by Link. 

Link’s win serves as a reminder of Ingo’s stagnating skill with horses, the very thing that made him feel so deserving of praise and recognition in the first place, in that for everything he now has control of at the ranch, he still cannot control that horse. He has become as much of a bum as Talon ever was, relegating Malon to do all the hard work while Ingo struts around uselessly. He’s even lost his touch with the Horses so much, in his arrogance, that now he has taken up mistreating them and using harsh and abusive methods (according to Malon’s concerns).

The humiliation and shame takes hold, his pride shattering with the loss of Epona-- not only as a valuable asset, but also as the horse he could never truly tame.

The dark feelings he was holding onto are let go of, as he regains a sense of humility, and the corruptive influence upon him dissipates. He even seeks out Talon to bury the hatchet and invite him back to the ranch.

Oh, I have to tell you about Mr. Ingo... He was afraid that the Evil King might find out that Epona had been taken away... It really upset him! But one day, all of a sudden, he went back to being a normal, nice person! Now my dad is coming back...I can't believe it, but peace is returning to this ranch!

But what about his obsession with Ganondorf in particular?

When the coup happened, Ingo watched the King of the Gerudo unwittingly play out a sort of grand parallel to what Ingo felt should happen on the ranch. To Ingo’s perception, I think Ganondorf was representing an ideal version of Ingo himself. 

A man of the desert, where hard work and grit are as second nature to survive the harsh conditions. A man frustrated with the King of Hyrule’s shit, and forced to swear fealty to him despite being a King himself. A man resplendent with wealth, with fine and flashy clothes and plentiful jewelry.

And perhaps the most important note of all, the Gerudo in OoT? 

They’re horse people. 

They love horses. Ganondorf’s horse is reputed to be a purebred Black Gerudo Stallion, which is obviously a specialty breed, that is fully armoured and as flashy as he is. When the Gerudo cut the bridge leading to the valley, the only way in and out is to have a skilled horse jump the gap. 

They also have a huge horseback archery range, and prowess in the sport is an incredible source of respect amongst the Gerudo, and many of the guards possess bladed polearms suitable for mounted use. From this, it can be assumed that during the recent civil war, Gerudo weapons, war tack and military tactics were probably built around mounted cavalry archers foremost, with a lesser focus on light and heavy cavalry aside (iron knuckle armour springs to mind).

Anyway, Horses are very important to the Gerudo in the era of Ocarina of Time.

So Ganondorf is also unique in the sense that he is the King of a people who value what it is that Ingo does very highly. He, of all people, stands to immediately recognise the knowledge and skill that Ingo possesses in rearing horses.

So this is a man who successfully stages a coup of Hyrule, who clearly inspires Ingo to do much the same of the ranch, and who Ingo also feels is very likely to take his side should he appeal the matter.

And Ganondorf does.

And if that’s not a great compliment to Ingo’s actual skill, I don’t know what is, because Ganondorf is not a man that suffers fools. He’s got a limited patience when it comes to shit that is beneath his notice. Clearly, he recognises that Ingo is indeed the backbone of that ranch-- and the main reason for the quality of its Horses-- and rewards this accordingly.

And for Ingo, being on decent terms with the big scary goth King is a very, very good place to be. But it’s more than that!

What a guy! Not only did he deliver on Ingo’s long due validation, he gave Ingo everything he’d ever dreamed of having to his name, and the authority to kick Talon to the curb. He gets it! Ganondorf, this great eight foot beacon of freshly sought divine power and topaz-encrusted glory, this absolute unit of a man, this great underdog horse-lover after Ingo’s own heart; he really understands how great Ingo is. Ganondorf is paving the way for people like them! Oh, to rub shoulders wiht such greatness when the rest of Hyrule is scorned. 

Ingo feels seen. The Great Ganondorf made all that thankless time spent shovelling horse shit while Talon slept mean something. The Gerudo appreciate Ingo’s talents.

And all Ingo has to do is keep turning out really good horses, and promise to present the King with his finest.

So Ingo knows he’s in deep shit when he gets cocky and loses Epona to a wager, who at this point, he’s prepared pretty well and sunk a lot of money into on the idea that she’s going to Ganondorf. 

Who he’s probably bragged to about how fast she is.

He lost her to some jerk in tights who’d barely ridden before, too. And then when Ingo tried to cheat him out of the win, the kid jumped the damned fence an in ass-bustingly cool move that really just drove home how excellent and rare Epona was.

One does not promise the King of the Gerudo a fast horse and then fail to deliver, let alone for such a stupid reason.

Honestly, by the end, the man’s just happy to be alive.

Also I’d like to think he and Talon had a much fairer delegation of work and forgave each other, each really learning to appreciate what they have and what’s really important.

how the fuck did the Kokiri leave the forest for this scene anyway, they don’t even have their faries???

[therenlover]

Brutal (A Demon!Daniel Bruhl x Starlet!Reader Ficlet)

(So, this is the first little ficlet in my Sour series, which can be found HERE! I hope you enjoy it! Also, enjoy blurry Checo, because he’s who @creme-bruhlee and I imagine as demon!Daniel)

“And I'm so tired that I might / Quit my job, start a new life / And they'd all be so disappointed / 'Cause who am I if not exploited?”

Synopsis: A crime of passion accidentally summons a handsome demon who offers to make your deepest desires come true... for a price, of course. 

Rating; M (16+)

Warnings: Vague Allusions to Past Dubcon/Noncon, Explicit Language, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Explicit Murder, Making A Deal With A Demon, Maybe A Tiny Bit Of Monsterfucking???? If You Squint??? Not Really Though

Word Count: 1500~

-------

“What is it that you desire?”

The man- no, creature- before you was shrouded in the darkest corner of your dressing room, perched languidly upon the chaise lounge that had been oh so kindly included in the rider of your contract by whatever filthy fucker decided they wanted to have you this time. He didn’t matter now, though. No, not now that his brains were splattered against the carpet. The only thing that mattered anymore was the creature in the corner. 

Even in the darkness, you could see its razor-sharp teeth glinting in the low light. 

Trembling with unused adrenaline, you smiled back at it, hands still covered in blood. “I’m not answering that until you answer a few questions of my own,” 

Surprisingly, the thing seemed to lean further back into its plush seat as it nodded, long pointed tail undulating slowly, like a python preparing to strike. “Very well. It makes no difference to me how long you draw out our little deal,” slowly, the thing chuckled, “Besides, for you, pretty one, I’d wait all the time in the world,” 

You groaned at his exaggerated wink. 

Still, it was too late to turn back now. With the blood on your hands for the death of the man at your feet, both physically and metaphorically, there was nowhere to go but forward. Maybe making a deal with the devil wasn’t your original plan, but it sure as hell was better than prison. With a sigh, you sat down heavily into your high-backed makeup chair. 

“So I’m assuming you’re a demon?”

The creature in the corner made some sort of deep, proud noise in its chest as its two, shadowy hands came up to stroke its curved horns, much like a goat’s, with a certain puff-chested reverence. Even while beholding it in that darkness, its features shrouded in black, there was an allure to the strange monster, a strange, sick draw. You were helpless to whatever had appeared before you and all its powers. Somehow, though, you had seemed to intrigue it despite your comparative weakness. 

“I go by many names, but demon is one of them,” it purred, red eyes glinting with something more than bloodlust, “I prefer others,”

“What should I call you then?”

“Whatever you please,”

You scoffed. “You said you had many names, why can’t you tell me even one?”

It huffed a long sigh, and if you didn’t know better, you would’ve said that you saw smoke erupt from where its nostrils should be. 

That being said, it didn’t seem like the thing was frustrated. If anything, the creature seemed amused. From its words, you could only assume it had been hundreds of years since it had last entertained itself on the human realm. You could only hope your rage was entertaining enough to keep any of its less desirable emotions at bay. 

“Names have power, Schatz. I can’t just go around telling everybody who I am,” it’s accent felt thicker as it leaned back, “but I suppose, if you and I were to make a deal, that I could allow you to name me something. Or I could choose one for you,”

“What if I didn’t make deal with you?” you challenged the creature with a smirk. 

It hummed low in its chest as it pondered your question. “Now that would be no fun,” 

“For me or for you?” You asked, crossing your arms over your chest. Time was getting short now, with the clock on the wall ticking down the minutes until someone would arrive at your dressing room door to lead you out towards the set where the rest of the cast and crew were waiting. If they found you with the body it was over. Things with the demon needed to be resolved, and they needed to be resolved fast. 

Thankfully, it didn’t toy with you any more than you expected it to. 

“For both of us,” it replied, tail flicking almost excitedly, “I can’t touch you if we don’t make a deal, for better or for worse, and even then your soul wouldn’t be mine to toy with until the deal was complete. That being said, you’re in a pretty sticky situation. I think you need me just about as much as I need you, so I’ll ask again; What do you desire?”

You swallowed thickly. 

On one hand, you couldn’t imagine things would end up very pleasantly for you once the dark shadow who had staked its claim on that awful chaise lounge finally did have a chance to get its clawed hands on your soul. On the other hand, though, you had nothing left to lose. Fame, especially so young, always came at a price. You would wager to guess that even if your soul hadn’t been claimed by a demon, that it had already been stolen away by the producers and directors that pulled the strings of your life like you were some obedient little puppet dancing for an audience who wanted to devour you whole. 

In the end, an eternity in Hell with whatever was grinning at you like the Cheshire cat from the shadows might even be preferable to the horrors you’d already seen. 

Slowly, you answered its question. 

“I want to make every single person who ever took advantage of me suffer the same pain they put me through,” 

The creature’s face split into a toothy smile. 

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” 

Moving like smoke on water, it stood from its place on the chaise lounge, morphing in shape and size as it approached and held out it’s newly human-shaped hand to you. In his new form, at least, you assumed it was a he, the creature was handsome, all dark eyes and slick hair. He looked young, and somehow, even with his new, thin lips and human teeth, he retained his signature smile. You took his hand and shook it without hesitation.

Even with your heart beating almost out of your chest, you had to admit that, with a demon at your side, you felt more empowered than you ever had before. 

He noticed. 

“I am known to my kin as Asmodeus,” he cooed, long eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks as he drew near to you. You couldn’t bring yourself to mind, “You, though, my sweetest pet, may call me Daniel,” 

Daniel. 

Somehow, even after you had seen the faintest traces of his beastly form, you had to admit that the name suited him. Maybe not as well as Asmodeus, but it worked well enough. You looked up at him through lidded eyes. “I’m-”

Before you could answer, he pressed a finger to your rouged lips. 

“I know everything about you sweetling, no need for introductions. There is one last thing we need to do to seal the deal, though,” 

A pit formed in your stomach as you gulped, caught in Daniel’s entrancing gaze. You had to assume there was some sort of magic to it, a spell that kept you trapped for all long as he could stare down into your eyes. Still, it would do you no good to fight it. Besides, the pangs that were making their way through your whole being weren’t fear. 

Oh no, they were something much worse. 

“What do we need to do?” You asked, wetting your lips with your tongue. 

Daniel replied with a sly smile and a soft chuckle. “I need you to kiss me, of course,” 

Who were you to disagree with the expert?

With all the strength and bravery you could muster, you surged up and met Daniel’s lips with your own, melting into the kiss as he quickly took over, skilled tongue darting into your mouth to claim it as his own. He bit hard on your lip, hard enough to draw blood, but you couldn’t bring yourself to mind, not when your hands were busy exploring up under his shirt and finding purchase on the firm muscles that waited below. 

To be fair, he wasn’t exactly keeping his hands to himself either.

Sooner than you would have liked, though, Daniel was pulling his lips away from yours. It was just a fraction of an inch, your swollen mouths still connected by a string of saliva tinted a dark red with your blood, but you were already keening from the loss of him the second you caught your breath. The sound pleased him. 

“What are we to do first, sweetling?” he purred, letting his nails run gently against the soft skin of your waist, “I’m at your command,” His breath was hot against your fact, and he smelled like gun smoke. 

It drove you wild. 

You snuck a look at the clock before turning back to him, eyes aflame. “In about ten minutes we’ll need to have the mess in here cleaned up with any evidence gone, but before we do that, I want you- no, I need you to fuck me. Can you make that happen?”

Daniel beamed. 

“Oh, sweet girl, anything is possible with me at your side,” As he whipped you around to push you against the chaise lounge, licking his lips, he couldn’t help but add, “I believe this is the beginning of a very beneficial partnership,” 

And against all odds, as you hooked a leg up around his waist and pulled him in for another searing kiss, you had to agree.

--------

a/n: WOW WOW WOW THAT WAS GARBAGE BUT I LOVED IT. I finished season 5 of Lucifer yesterday, so I was in the mood for some demonic shit. I hope it was at least semi-enjoyable despite being straight up shitty writing lol. 

Taglist: @tatestripedsweater , @elaineygrace , @multiyfandomgirl40 ,  @lovelymischief , @be-cautious-around-bri 

[astarlightmonbebe]

the devil judge ep. 4: thoughts

i know i already wrote like five paragraphs of thoughts yesterday. well it turns out i had some more, though this post mostly focuses on what we learned in episode four, as well as other questions, and some analysis.

yohan and the fire.

the number one question we’re (the viewers) left with at the end of the episode is how much of the story yohan tells gaon is true. considering what we know, i would say most of it is, but likely there are some crucial parts are different. now, this isn’t only based on yohan’s cryptic, ‘i knew it, people like stories like this.’ 

here’s what we know about the fire, and about yohan:

1) in episode one, at the ending when yohan looks at gaon, he sees a fire, and remembers seeing his brother looking at him. he also remembers touching his brother’s face, with what looks like a teddy bear in his hand - which i’m pretty sure we see elijah holding in the episode four fire. since this is introduced first, in episode one, and is obviously a true flashback, i am assuming that this actually happened. however, in yohan’s events, we don’t actually see this scene. of course, it might just have been omitted between yohan crying and then him leaving the church, but it’s certainly interesting, especially because parts we see in flashback usually make an appearance when the full memory is revealed. also note that the scene of his brother looking at him happened after the fire was actually put out, in the blue lighting, when he should have already been dead - of course, it could have just been what yohan saw when he looked at gaon, or it could have actually happened. 

2) the firefighter. in episode two, i think, we see yohan looking at homeless people and checking their wrists. his motive is confirmed in episode four, when he finally finds the firefighter who stole isaac’s watch. however, the firefighter is terrified enough of yohan that he has a panic attack of sorts when he sees him and then flees, eventually accumulating in his suicide. now, this reaction seems out of proportion compared to what we saw in yohan’s flashback. yes, the firefighter is guilty of stealing from a dead person, but there’s really no reason for him to be that scared of yohan. he could have just given the watch back and run away, but he fled as if terrified for his life instead. this insinuates that the firefighter had a negative experience with yohan during the church fire. also i’m 99% sure that the watch yohan takes back is the same one he gave to gaon which is interesting for many reasons.

3) elijah herself seems to hate yohan. now, this could be because she hates him for leaving her parents there and rescuing her instead of trying to save them, but apparently she wants him dead, which is a little concerning, especially since they are uncle and niece and live together. her reaction is strange towards someone who supposedly saved her life, and it doesn’t just seem to be because she wishes she hadn’t survived, etc. 

4) yohan’s line at the end itself. this line clearly indicates that he told his story for the purpose of manipulating gaon. if the story itself is more sinister, it makes sense for him to share a version that would make gaon clearly empathize with him.

my conclusion based on all of this is that the events likely happened in the order, but that yohan’s position in all of this might have differed a bit, and not been as heroic as initially described. yohan genuinely hates the people in power, believes in the cruelty of the world, and has a reason to. however, he also benefits immensely from making the events more sympathetic towards him, which makes it hard for us, as viewers, to completely trust him. all i can say is that i hope he’s not lying entirely, because if he lied with the purpose of manipulating gaon and steering him away from the actual truth, by telling a story he knew would make gaon feel strongly about due to his own trauma and backstory, then that’s just a disaster in the making.   

gaon as isaac’s lookalike.

this episode clearly established the story of kang isaac, who gaon shares a remarkable similarity to. there’s a possibility that he is isaac’s son, but that feels like it wouldn’t fit. gaon looks like he’s in his mid to late twenties. yohan is probably somewhere in his thirties, but it’s hard to tell with men that look like that lol. there’s at least a ten year age gap between them in my opinion. elijah is probably in her mid teens, given it has been ten years since the fire and she was a young child then. still, the ages don’t exactly match up, and there’s no scenario for how that could have occured, so why does he look exactly like isaac? 

there’s also the fact that no one else has noted his resemblance to isaac. i can understand why the other rich people didn’t, but jung sunah spoke directly to gaon about isaac, but didn’t seem to note any similarity. now, it has been ten years since his death, and i think if people aren’t looking for similarity they won’t see it, especially since glasses change a person’s face, but the jarring similarity should have at least turned some heads.

yohan is seen to give gaon isaac’s watch. this is symbolic for many reasons. one of them, like yohan said, is because he’s syncing gaon to yohan’s time, another way of demonstrating how yohan is introducing gaon into his world, bringing an outsider in. but the fact that he gave gaon a watch that belonged to his dead brother who looks exactly like gaon says something else. almost as if gaon is transforming into isaac, or something weird like that. it was just weird, period, and yohan obviously made it a deliberate choice. 

gaon and yohan in general.

i already talked about them quite a bit, and a lot of other people have as well, but this episode really served. first there was the white vs. black, especially when introducing gaon to the corrupt world of the rich. the white coat initially protects gaon in a way, but he takes it off when meeting with the actual rich people, as if his kind morality is not allowed there, further demonstrated by yohan bodily throwing him out of his chair when he tried to speak up. although jinjoo also went with yohan to a social event, gaon is invited to the intimate gathering of the top tier organizations, given a seat at the table, with yohan basically wanting him to see things as they are at the moment, making him aware of what yohan himself knows.

there was also the scene in the car, when yohan jerks the wheel. i think this scene was super interesting because it clearly demonstrates how yohan is just. not really that sane. which isn’t exactly what i mean, but i don’t know how else to describe it, because yohan isn’t exactly mentally unstable, though he certainly seems to be. instead, the yohan of today is just a mirror of the yohan who the priest described as the devil. he thrives off chaos. yes, his actions as a child were inventive and clever, but it also demonstrates how yohan can and will exploit other people for no other reason than enjoyment. the live court gives him the opportunity to do this to the whole world. he has a flair for dramatics, he’s the gamemaster, carefully orchestrating everything and enjoying the results for his benefit. not only is he making himself popular, but he’s turning himself into a godlike idol, which is honestly blasphemous considering the fact that he’s a judge, but it makes a lot of sense when you consider the fact that he’s been called the devil, the judge robes look like a priest’s robes instead, he has the symbol of the cross on his back (scar), etc...it all adds up, and the religious imagery is frankly insane. one wonders if he’ll end up a martyr, or cast into fiery pits. 

in cast interviews, or the clips that i’ve seen, gaon’s character has been referred to as an angel of sorts, a ray of hope. this is obviously in stark contrast to yohan, who is darkness, who is gray morality. gaon believes in the idea of justice taught in school, which i think makes sense when you consider the fact that his childhood was likely extremely unfair: living in poverty, parents killing themselves because of debt. he believes in lawful justice almost as if he has to, to have a chance to change things. he doesn’t understand what yohan is trying to make him understand: that lawful justice will never apply to the rich, that fairness doesn’t matter to million and billionaires, because they can change the law however they please the suit their benefits. it’s funny because that is what yohan is proving with the public, that the rich can be brought to justice. i’m really interested to see how their views will change when they get to know each other better and/or team up. there’s a lot of potential there (yes i’ve said this like five times. it’s all i think about right now.).

jung sunah.

i actually don’t have much more to say on that character, but as she’s revealed to be the actual head of the social responsibility foundation, we’re left wondering if mr. seo is just a figurehead, or if she just gained power by controlling him. idk if this makes sense - is she in charge charge of everything, or just in charge of mr. seo? i think next episode will more clearly demonstrate this.

the public, the ethics of live court shows, etc.

this episode was by far the most concerning one when it came to the live court show. whereas their first case was something that was clearly evil and neatly tied up, youngmin’s case was a brutal display of the power of the public and what it means when someone has the power to manipulate the public. youngmin definitely deserved to be punished. i think it’s actually super funny how his argument was that they didn’t have the right to judge him, when he did exactly that to everyone who suffered from his abuse. however, public flagellation seemed absurd. despite most people saying he deserved it, there was also the vibe that most people didn’t believe it would actually be shown. however, when it was, you could see that most of the public was deeply unsettled by this. yohan’s cult was also demonstrated in this scene, from the people cheering. 

was youngmin’s punishment justice? maybe, in a way. i don’t think there really was a punishment that would be right for him. flogging would scare him, but it also ignites his anger. in prison he might live a better life than most, but he would also be kept away from people he could hurt, which is kind of the purpose of prisons.

the flogging felt very dystopian, but i think it also showed the danger of the live court show perfectly. not only did it incite people and their bloodthirst at being offered a sort of justice, but it also showed how people feel when confronted with a decision they chose. over 95% of people chose for that punishment to be carried out, but few appeared to actually enjoy seeing it carried out. it’s a lot easier to click a button and feel as if you don’t matter in the large scheme of things than it is to see what happened as a result of you and many other people choosing to do something. it showed the power of the public, or more exactly, how yohan was able to manipulate the public into torturing cha kyunghee and ripping her family apart slowly. 

at the end of the day, i doubt few (of the viewers, at least, though i don’t really know) were actually satisfied or happy by youngmin’s punishment. it might have been satisfying to see his court breakdown, but when it comes down to it, it’s just more human suffering. 

it also begs the question of if yohan will ever be put on trial. could that even happen? it seems an almost inevitable conclusion to his trajectory right now - when you fight corruption with corruption, the only thing left when the corruption is gone is your corrupted self - but i think right now he’s also building the public as a way to protect himself, which has proved right so far. it’s interesting to wonder if the public will ever turn on him, and what will happen if public opinion shifts.

[theanimeview]

My Nitpick Issue with Sherlock in Moriarty the Patriot

By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting​

It may surprise some of you to know that I have degrees in book reading and writing. While earning those degrees I studied one specific time period more than the others--that being British Literature from late-17th/18th century through the early 20th century. This is to say that it is a time period I know a little more about than you might think. And early 1900s is probably my favorite period out of that timeline, particularly England under Victoria’s rule. 

And, perhaps, because of this strange obsession I have with the period, I presently have a small bone to pick over Moriarty the Patriot. 

It’s not the minor inaccuracies of the clothes, nor the adaptation of character designs. It’s not even the adjustment to social tendencies depicted that are more Japanese than British-English of any period thus far either--because those kinds of things happen frequently in adaptations. And it's not Moriarty or his backstory too! Because, again, this is an adaptation, and liberties will be taken to fit the new story (besides, even in the original works by Doyle the man’s backstory was inconsistent). 

My issue is with the character of Sherlock and his supposed “deductions.” Well, maybe more accurately it's with the writing of Sherlock. 

You see, Sherlock is almost always introduced the same way in an adaptation. He makes a judgment about someone (usually about Watson or the Watson stand-in) and then proves it using his observational skills. This introduction is important because it clarifies that the world of the characters is one based on where common sense and science not only work but make sense. His deductions are logical and based on some semblance of rationality. Here is an excerpt from the original novel: 

“I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, `Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' 

How does this prove we are in a world where common sense and logic works? Well, because he didn’t pull any of these deductions from thin air. He just used his eyes and common knowledge to make a quick judgment. 

In the example above, everything that Sherlock assumes is true and based on reasonable assumptions about the time period and about what he can observe of the person before him. 

The tan of Watson’s skin is something he notes because London is usually dark and wet around this season, so you’re unlikely to get a tan. The way the man walks and stands is also a thing he can observe, and fresh military men walk very differently from the average citizen or gentleman. These two observations, coupled with noticeable injury and limp could lead one to think that maybe he has just come back from the current war (the First Anglo-Afghan War). Of course, maybe he wasn’t injured in the war at all--maybe something else happened; however, you can make a pretty good guess that an abled bodied soldier would not be home and looking for a room in the middle of war-times if something hadn’t happened to him on the battlefield.

My point is that all of Sherlock’s deductions come from observing details, paying attention to the basics of the world (such as the ongoing war or understanding rigor mortis), and using your senses. Sure, there may be a few things the average person doesn’t know that Sherlock does, but that’s because Sherlock has studied different things and to a more serious degree. The level of understanding is different, but not impossible to achieve in one’s own time or effort. And, as another note, Sherlock is not perfectly observant all of the time. There are plenty of examples of him needing to take breaks, of him closing his eyes to block out distractions so he can better focus on what someone is saying, and of him smoking to zone out for a bit so that he can come back to a problem with fresh eyes at a later time. 

It’s absolutely vital to Sherlock’s character, and the original story, that all of the deductions are based on the “possible,” which is why the introduction of Sherlock in Episode 6 of this adaptation immediately irritated me. Here is the scene:

Side note:  I’m sorry it’s shown as a poorly made gif--I literally could not find a copy of the clip with English subtitles on YouTube so I could not include it as a video. If you want to look at it in the episode itself, it starts at about the 13:00 minute mark. EPISODE LINK)

Here is what bothers me so much. Why would a mathematician be checking to see if the staircase on a ship fits the golden ratio? More importantly, why would that in any way matter to Moriarty as a character? Based on what we’ve seen so far of this character, and we’ve had 6 and 1/2 episodes to define him so far, none of Sherlock’s statement makes sense here. 

Like, at all. (And I know that this also happens in the manga--doesn’t make sense there either.)

You know what would make sense though? For the time period and the character development we’ve seen of Moriarty thus far? A pause to consider-- and maybe even compare--staircases on the ship between the main steps for passengers and the steps for commoners or staff. 

Why would that make sense? Oh, thank you so much for asking. Time to get real nerdy here for a minute: 

Class issues were a serious problem in Victorian England (as they are now, though in a different way). These issues were not necessarily the same as depicted in the show but it was still consistently present throughout the society as a whole. (A good, short read on the subject can be found here for those of you interested: Social Life in Victorian England.)

One way that this issue came out was in the very architecture of homes. In Victorian England, nobleman homes and estates were built with main staircases, where the residents and guests walked, and servent staircases, where the staff and other temporary employees walked. The difference in these stairs was huge, as the servant staircases were basically death traps. 

In the late 1800s, a mathematician (and architect) named Peter Nickolson figured out the exact measurements that would generally ensure a comfortable and easy walk upstairs: 

BTW: Here is a great video on the subject and how they were death traps: Staircases in Victorian England

However, Nickolson’s math and designs were not used regularly in the design of houses for years to come. 

By the setting of the story, and given Moriarty’s interest in maths, his understanding of class issues, and beyond--this kind of knowledge would make far more sense than searching for the golden ratio in a man-made set of stairs. 

Moreover, the golden ratio is generally interesting to mathematicians (to my understanding) because it can be seen in nature frequently. It is a pattern found everywhere, from the way that petals grow on flowers, to how seashells form, to freaking hurricane formations! So why on Earth would Moriarty be interested in an architect's choice to use such a ration when planning a staircase? 

He wouldn’t, I believe. Nor would Sherlock generally be able to make that assumption based on his time gazing at the staircase, distance from said staircase, nor angle. 

So what can he deduce, if not that? Well, he may be able to deduce that Moriarty is a nobleman based on his attire. He may also be able to deduce that the man is a student based on age, as in an earlier episode we were told he’s quite young to be teaching in university and appears close in age to his students. Maybe he’s a student of architecture? But, if he’s a nobleman--as we suspect he is based on his attire--then it's unlikely he works a labor-intensive job or one close to it. So, he must be in academia for academic reasons such as mathematics. Physics during that time, as an academic subject, focused more on lighting, heat, electricity, magnetism, and such. And, Sherlock notes that Moriarty is specifically looking at the stairs, not the lights of the ship. 

So, BAM! I’ve deduced Moriarty is a young nobleman who is likely a student of mathematics. Perhaps he’s recently had a lesson on staircases or another algebraic concept that’s caused him to pause with momentary interest. 

It makes a heck of a lot more sense than finding a “golden ratio” in a man-planned and man-made staircase... don’t you think? And, maybe, we can even deduce that rather than a student he’s a professor who has just thought up an interesting lesson--though that would be a BIG jump from the data we’ve been provided here. 

Deductions that come from major leaps in logic make it seem like Sherlock is doing magic... and he is--because it is magical that people find it impressive or believable. It’s not. And I would argue that the original character would find it insulting based on his comments to Watson regarding being compared to other fictional detectives.

Pay in mind, I have this feeling about several adaptations, so my judgment on Moriarty the Patriot isn’t technically exclusive. It just hit me so hard in my first viewing that I felt I needed to share because generally, this issue of deductions becoming magic rather than stemming from logic doesn’t happen in the first two minutes of meeting Sherlock Holmes.

So... yeah. Thanks for coming to my absurd history/lit lesson through Moriarty the Patriot. I appreciate you sticking with me to the end and hope it was enjoyable.

You can watch the series on Funimation.com right now at: https://www.funimation.com/shows/moriarty-the-patriot 

Overall, it’s a pretty good series; although there was a lot more child-murder than I expected...

[cherripeach]

Chapter 5

Little Match Maker

Summary: Your life motto is “I have the power of god and anime on my side, don’t mess with me,” and you stand by that with your life. No human, magician, or random creature could ever stop your firm belief in it.

However, getting transported to this world that seemed to turn your already bad luck worse was not what you wanted to be in your life story, but you made the most of it.Making friends, enemies, and disasters, you were in your prime in this world, and so you decided to help as many people as you could flourish, at least what you believed to be.

Prologue 10.5: i want to see my little boy

Chapter Summary: Maybe some people at this school weren’t so bad.

Warning:  Curse words, jokes about death

Words: 2.9k

Relationships: developing but future twstxreader

After getting up off of the cement and cleaning all of the area up again because of the fight, your stomach started to sound like a whale and eat itself. Grim who had been complaining the entire time about not wanting to work and when lunch would be and sitting under a tree looked ecstatic as if he was just awarded a nobel prize. The cat was grinning up at you from under the tree while you were sweeping but said nothing.

Once your stomach growled louder for a second time, you called it quits, “Fine, let’s go get lunch.”

“Yipeeeeee!” Grim hopped up and sprinted to where you were with the broom. He began vigorously tugging on your mysterious, probably smelly, cloak once every second. Grim even though he did get in trouble for the fight seemed to have completely forgotten about it. He did not give off the vibes that he cared about the consequences of any of his actions.

A sigh slipped out of your lips while you shook your head and placed the broom in your hands onto the side of one of the statues, the one with Maleficent on it.

Grim, then, made grabby hands at you for you to pick him up and without amusement, you did. You placed him on your hip with your hand behind his back and began your track to the main building of the school.

The main building was a cursed old palace, so you got lost immediately after turning from the main hallway into another one. This place probably did have secret passages, but you don’t think those would help if you don’t even know where you are going.

The hallway was silent besides Grim’s cheers from next to your ear which hindered any sounds to go into that ear. Suspiciously, even with the lack of sound, there was no movement anywhere in the part of the building you were located. The hallway was covered in spiderwebs and had trash sprinkled through it; it did not look like a hallway regularly used. You even spun around once to make sure this wasn’t a prank and people weren’t following you. And in your effort you found that either it was during class and no one was moving or you were in an abandoned hallway which sounded closest to the answer.

However, there was nothing you could do besides keep going straight to see if you could find anybody because you do not remember which way you came down from. The hallways did change a litte, but gave the overall aesthetic of fairy tale grunge. You were now in a hallway with big open window sills giving sight to the outside and the odd well in the middle of the area.  The well was much brighter and welcoming than at night when you last saw it, so in your haze of tiredness and hunger you approached it. Grim who was still on your hip had started to protest your actions and threw his hands around him to make you drop him or stop going off track, so you dropped him right in a bush and continued with your trip to the well.

Upon closer inspection the well was in great condition and had no other problems than it was the 21st century and was located in the middle of this weird outdoors area of a school for young villains. Now that you thought about it though everything is weird in a school that trains villains.

You decided to become the one scene in Snow White but looking down at yourself in the water only brought your attention to your appearance which was not at all put together. The cloak even looked shabby on you compared to all of the gorgeous men that were wearing the same outfit yesterday. You did notice that there was a smudge of something on your face, so you grabbed your thumb and tried to swipe it off. However, after three times, nothing was working. Then, you bent forward to view your face better from the water and stood on your tippy toes.

Neither of those actions worked out for you in the end when you slipped on a piece of your cloak and flew forwards to bang your head on the bricks of the other side of the well, but you were instantly caught after hitting your head by someone’s hand or something grabbing the back of your collar. Death by a well did not seem like a way to go.

Stunned in your fall and catch situation, you did not move an inch from where the hand that held the back of your collar placed you which was with the other side of the well in front of your face. At least, until the person behind you gasped and dragged you up.

You were slowly lifted off your feet to come face to face with a long man with horns or something, so you assume he is either a cosplayer or a weird demon like thing.

“I was not aware that falling into wells was something a child of man would concern themselves with,” The huge man actually pouted at you, and he tilted his head as if he was confused at the prospect of you falling into a well.  

“I can’t say for everyone, but I would never purposely fall into a well. They just seem too sketch, but I did trip on my cloak, so thank you for that, dude,” As childlike as the man was, you couldn’t be mean to him when he did help you from dying a miserable death.

“‘Dude’?” The man who still had you by the collar of your cloak which you were quite impressed with tilted his head to the side more. “What do you mean by ‘dude,’ child of man? Is that a nickname that displays fear or reverence? Is it an insult?”

The man was the definition of a curious child, so you explained it to him, “Dude refers to those who identify as a male, but I sometimes use it for both genders. If you feel uncomfortable with the term I can always call you something else. What do you think?” You paused your thoughts to remember the situation you were in by looking down at where you were, and then you continued, “Could you also possibly let me down?”

The male’s eyes widened in realization as you were slowly lowered to the ground, “I sincerely apologize child of man, but you were about to fall down the well? Would that not kill you?” He looked like a puppy, and he might be another one of your soft spots at this school.

“Oh yeah, it would, but that’s okay. Death is inevitable,” You said while making a fist and hitting the area of your chest closest to your heart and closing your eyes.

“You are quite strange….You are the first human I have met who does not fear death,” The male locked eyes on you once you opened yours.

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” At this point and time, anything anyone at this school said would be taken as a compliment.

“That is concerning, child of man,” the male lightly shook his head while the smallest of smiles popped up on his lips.

“Hey now, gramps, I don’t need a lecture,” You threw both your hands up and then tossed them at him only causing him further confusion.

“Gramps?” The male was as lost as you were when you wandered away in a grocery store, “This is the second name you have called me. Do you happen to not know who I am?”

“Uhmm, am I supposed to? Other than the fact that you stopped my death I have never seen or heard of you.”  Now, your face flashed confusion. It seemed to be passed back and forth between the two of you.

“Ah that’s odd. You do not know of me. Really?” The man turned back to you and waited for you to nod again before continuing, “ Oh my, this is quite unusual, indeed. What name do you go by?”

You introduced yourself to him, and asked, “Hey, what’s your name to be fair. I’d like to at least know who had the balls to save me.” You shrugged your shoulders and winked at him.

The male was taken aback by either your statement or your winking, and it did not really matter to you.

He took a minute until he finally started up again, “What an odd sounding name. I am..it’s not important. Hearing my name will only bring you misery.” The man’s face twisted and became like one of a crestfallen and hurt puppy.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, but whatever to make you feel comfortable,” You just had to find the weird people didn’t you. He wasn’t the worst.

The male actually looked relieved at your notion, “Let us have you stay ignorant of the world’s ways, shall we? Feel free to call me whatever you want.”

“Got it, puppy.” You nodded your head at him and smirked a little. You were gonna take full advantage of this.

“Puppy?” Confusion was prevalent on the males face before he let out the smallest of giggles you have ever heard, “I did not know that was a nickname of fear for humans.”

“Oh it isn’t, and to make you feel better I don’t find you at all intimidating at all.” You began to walk over to the bush where you deposited Grim, your dumb cat, at.

“You truly are an odd human, child of man,” The small smile returned to the male’s face and he muttered a phrase you are pretty sure you weren’t supposed to hear, “It is truly quite endearing.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, puppy. Have a great day!” You waved back at the male once you found the bush and grabbed your stubborn cat who apparently took a nap.

And you two were then off while the male you met had smiled at your form leaving.

You realized after walking for another couple of minutes that you should have asked your puppy for directions because you were lost again.

Grim even started to pull on your uniform and yell in your ear more, so you walked faster or as fast as your legs would take you.

Finally, in a moment either of pure hallucination or euphoria, you arrived at the cafeteria where it was packed with not an inch of room at any table. The lines for food curved around each other and none stood out. It also seemed like a fight had broken out in the back corner of the room if the screaming said anything.

Grim, of course, did not notice any problem with this cafeteria and jumped from your arms. He scurried to the shortest line in the room with only one person in front of him. He jumped up and grabbed onto the counter once the person left and gazed at all the food in front of him. Finally, his eyes caught something, and he turned back to you with pleading eyes only to wait for you to grab a tray and place the food onto it. After he got his pick, he jumped back on your shoulder and started pawing at your head. You kept him on your shoulder while you grabbed your food and paid for it.

Finding a table would end up being a problem; there was not a single spot open even with many people in line and standing up. All you could do was sigh and trudge to find a bathroom or maybe even sit outside.

At least until you heard a voice call for your name.

You, in your confusion, swiveled around to find the voice, but out came the sunshine from the day before dashing to you. You were stunned and stayed in place until the boy was right in front of you. It also appeared that he brought another person with him who was following slightly behind him. The male was taller than the sunshine and had much longer hair. This was probably the fifth or sixth person at this school that you have met that had the face and body of a god. Genes must run well in this school, and you were begging to grab them from these males. The male must have cared about your staring, for once you made eye contact an icy glare met you. He must not like new people; must also be an introvert.

With your eyes stuck on observing the tall male behind the sunshine, you did not notice all of the efforts of the sunshine to get your attention until Grim shoved your head with his paw. You shook your head to gather your attention back and turned to face the sunshine’s eyes.

“Uh, sorry about that, dude.” You placed your hand on the back of your head in guilt.

“It’s okay,” He didn’t even look upset when he offered you his hand, “Want to come sit with us?”

“Um, sure, that’d be great,” Things seemed to be going up for you.

The sunshine took your tray from your hands and turned around to begin to walk across the cafeteria, “Oh, this is Jamil, he’s the vice dorm leader of my dorm, Scarabia!” He broke out into a beam when he mentioned his friend who was still conveniently behind him.

You decided to include him in the conversation since it never feels good to not be included, and you turned your head to face him and meet his eyes, “It’s nice to meet you, Jamil.” You tilted your head and smiled at the male.

“It is my pleasure. Kalim has talked about you,” you were taken aback that the sunshine had already mentioned you to his best friend from your eyes.

“Let’s hope it’s all good things,” You could only hope.

“Well, hearing that a magicless student caused a ruckus with a cat monster is always a great start to a year,” You could sense the sarcasm in Jamil’s voice.

“All nice things, then.” You sighed just hoping this year wouldn’t be a disaster.

Kalim was just grinning at the two of you interacting until he finally ended up at a table and placed yoru tray down next to another tray with way more food that looked homemade and nothing like the food from the cafeteria.

You laughed and guessed that the tray must belong to Kalim, “Someone’s food looks expensive.”

Kalim could not understand your joke, “Oh, you like it? You can have some if you want? Jamil makes the best of food!” The sun smiled at you again today, and you don’t know if you were going to make it.

“Ah, naw, I wouldn’t want to take any of it from you,” You had this strange feeling that being indebted to him was not the best idea, so you’d stick away from that for now.

You also grabbed Grim so as to stop him from taking any. He bit your hand, but not enough for you to pull away.

Kalim deflated and turned to face Jamil who shook his head at him causing Kalim to deflate even more and even pout his lips.

You four stayed in a comfortable silence with the only noise Grim chewing on his food. You slowly ate yours, and once you finished your meal you could only stare at your hands and play with them.

This was a lot more awkward than you thought.

Until Kalim finished his food, which was ridiculously quick and started talking about stories of his childhood to you and Grim. He talked all about his siblings and how helpful Jamil is to him. It was quite adorable. You even told a story or two about embarrassing things you did as a child, and both of the Scarabia boys got a chuckle from it.

The bell, however, rang in the middle of one of Kalim’s stories, and the two boys stood up, picked up their trays and yours, and went on their way.

You could only wave and pull Grim from trying to leave as the two made their way out. You gazed out the window and decided since it was on the first floor and no one was there, you were gonna exit out the window. Of course, someone saw, but that’s for them to know.

Since you got lost in the school on the way here, going around the school on the outside might help. You saw the well again, a big field, and even a large greenhouse. If this was a private school, this was the fanciest one you have ever been to.

You finally found your way back and deposited Grim off of a bench and grabbed your cleaning supplies to finish up the job.

Maybe cleaning a hundred windows wouldn’t be that bad.

[emy-loves-you]

Have Your Name (And Your Back) Chapter 1

(This is a continuation of AU-gust Day 31: Fantasy + Crime, but you don’t need to read it because chapter one is nearly identical to the one-shot)

Patton has never had a happy life, being an abused slave to his own parents, but it's the only life he's ever known. So when he unknowingly gives his name to multiple fairies, essentially giving away his life, Patton doesn't know what to do. Luckily, their head Fairy Roman has claimed Patton as his godson. And while the Fairies have his name, they also have his back.

Masterlist | Chapter 2

Patton grunted as he scrubbed the floors with all the energy he had. He bit back a whimper as his back throbbed from the fresh bruises and cuts. He wasn’t allowed to make a sound until he was asked a question. Patton knew that if he was too loud, his back wouldn’t be the only thing bruised.

“BOY!” Patton’s head snapped up to see his mother at the top of the staircase. Patton made sure to keep direct eye contact, partly because it was required and partly because his mother was wearing nothing but a loose sheer robe.

“Yes, ma’am?” Patton internally winced at the pain in his voice. Showing weakness just meant worse punishments.

Luckily she didn’t seem to notice, making her way down the stairs to the parlor. “Stop scrubbing the tiles. Your work was…” she sneered at the pristine floors, so clean she could almost use it as a mirror. “...adequate. Apparently we will have guests coming over for dinner tonight. Pasta won’t be enough for tonight. Since we haven’t been able to get a new chef yet, you’ll need to prepare a meal for the seven of us. Just cook up a few chickens and serve it with the pasta and salad.” She turned and started to walk away.

Patton whimpered. “The chickens?” That meant that he’d have to… k-kill the chickens.

Suddenly, a hand collided with his cheek. Patton reeled back, falling onto the ground behind him. Patton’s mother stood above him, fuming. “What did you say, boy!?”

Patton bit back a whimper. “Nothing, ma’am.”

She gave him a look before huffing, storming up the stairs. “We better have a perfect dinner tonight, boy! Or you’ll wish for a fate worse than death!”

Patton forced himself to stand up, ignoring the pain as dread forced its way into his system. He grabbed the cleaning supplies and limped his way over to the kitchen, putting them in their respective places. He then opened the door from the kitchen to the backyard, whimpering as a few drops of heavy rain hit his skin. He made it around halfway to the coop before collapsing.

Patton let out a strangled sob as everything hit him at once. The pain in his back from his previous beating. The pain in his knees and arms from scrubbing the floor for several hours. The pain in his face from talking out of turn. The pain from the heavy raindrops hitting his skin and freezing his bones. The pain in his heart from what he had to do.

Patton continued to cry, unaware that the rain had stopped. Or, more importantly, that the rain had somehow shifted to where the area around Patton remained dry; and the area around the manor’s windows increased with vigor, making it impossible to see anything from inside the manor.

Patton heard the sound of a twig snapping off to his left and immediately sat up, forcing his tears to stop flowing (a trick he’d found useful over the years). He internally frowned at the mud on his clothes before forcing a smile onto his face. He turned to look at the person approaching, confusion rising in the back of his mind. His parents had fired all of the staff over the past few years, and the guests weren’t scheduled to arrive until later tonight. And there was no way that his parents would be found outside in the mud. So who could it be?

Standing a few feet away from Patton was a young man, around 30 years old in appearance. He wore a simple black suit with a blood-red undershirt and handkerchief. His dark brown hair was perfectly arranged, and his tanned skin looked flawless. His dark green eyes pierced their way into Patton’s soul. (Patton was so busy observing the man’s ethereal beauty, he didn’t even realize that the man was completely dry). The man smiled at Patton, showing his perfectly white teeth. “Hello, young one.” His voice was deep and smooth, reminding Patton of a warm fire after a long day of work. “What is your name?”

Patton let out a shaky breath. The man was a stranger, and it would make sense not to talk to strangers. But Patton’s learned from experience that he would be in pain if he didn’t answer questions when asked. “My name is Patton, sir.”

The man’s smile widened slightly. “Patton, what a lovely name.” Patton shivered as the words brushed across his skin. “Tell me, Patton, why are you crying?”

Patton started crying again, not realizing that he was more eager to speak than normal. “I-I have t-to kill the chickens.” He whimpered out, wincing as one of his tears rolled over a cut on his jaw.

The man frowned, tilting his head to the side. “Why must you kill the chickens?”

Patton let out another sob. “We have guests arriving for dinner, and mother wants me to cook some of the chickens for supper.”

The man smiled. “Oh, have you never killed a chicken before?”

Patton shook his head. “No, sir. Ever since father fired the cook, I’ve been buying meat from the market. But we were on such short notice, and we have no meat beyond the chickens in the coop.”

The man’s expression darkened. “I assumed that your parents worked in the manor.”

Patton shook his head. “No, sir. My parents are Lord and Lady Hart. There are no more workers in the manor.”

The man frowned. “I was unaware that the Harts had any children. And how do they keep the manor in such pristine condition without anyone to take care of it.”

Patton smiled slightly, glad to prove his usefulness. “I am the only child of Lord and Lady Hart. And I am the one who takes care of the manor!”

The man furrowed his eyebrows. “You keep this entire manor in this condition. You can’t be any older than 10!”

Patton’s smile fell slightly. Yes, he did look quite young, with his blonde curly hair and big blue eyes, freckles scattered across his bruised skin. And maybe he was quite small, around the height of a 10-year-old and so skinny that most of his bones were showing. But it still hurt to be called a child. “I’m 14, sir.”

The man’s face was now blank. “What?”

Patton felt another chill go up his spine, but he forced himself to keep his voice from shaking as he spoke. “I turn 15 in the fall.” It was currently spring, when the rains were heavy and the winter chill was barely letting up.

The man smiled again. Even though there was no difference between this smile and the last one, something told Patton that this one was forced. “Ah, how I love birthdays. How will you celebrate it?”

Patton tilted his head to the side, confused. “Celebrate?”

The man clenched his fist slightly, but his smile and relaxed posture stayed the same. “Well, Patton, I came bearing a gift.” He knelt down to where Patton was still sitting on the ground. “Have you ever heard of a Fairy Godmother?”

Patton thought for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t believe I have, sir.”

The man frowned slightly before smiling again. “Well, in most tales, a young maiden in need will be blessed with a Fairy Godmother, who helps them achieve their dreams.” He brought his hand up to cup Patton’s bruised cheek. The hand was extremely warm compared to the chilly air, and Patton leaned into the touch. “A Fairy Godfather, on the other hand, is slightly different. They can protect young humans who have been hurt by the people they should be loved by. And you, Patton, have been hurt very badly.”

Patton shook his head. “But sir, I deserve my pain!” He saw the incredulous look he was given, and started rambling. “I slept in this morning and was late to cook breakfast, so Father set me straight. I didn’t have the flavor of jam that Mother wanted out on the table, so she punished me for not being prepared. I didn’t call Father ‘sir’ when answering his question, so I was punished. I spoke out of turn instead of doing my job, so Mother gave me a smack as a warning. She was very generous that time. Just today, I’ve been so disobedient. I’m a horrible son. I don’t deserve a Fairy Godfather!”

“Shh…” A thumb caressed his cheekbone, and Patton melted into the touch, still crying. He hiccuped as the thumb wiped away his tears. “Don’t cry, little one. You are not to blame.” Patton went to interrupt, but the hand grew warmer, and Patton sighed at the blissful feeling. “Patton, you may feel as though you deserved this, but you did not. No child deserves the pain that you’ve been through.” Patton let his head be tilted upwards, and his gaze was suddenly locked onto the man’s piercing emerald gaze. His eyes seemed to glow as he spoke. “Patton, I wish to be your Fairy Godfather. Will you allow me to protect you, to allow yourself true happiness? To end the pain and suffering, once and for all?” The air around them seemed to still at his words, the world itself bending to his will. “Patton Hart, do you accept me as your Fairy Godfather?”

Patton’s instinctive thought was to say no. He deserved his pain! The man would soon see how damaged Patton was, and Patton didn’t want to burden another person! But another, smaller part of him spoke up. It was the part of Patton that yearned for the warmth of this stranger’s hand. The part of Patton that smiled when he heard a happy tune, and cried when his parents stopped tucking him in at night. The part that didn’t want Patton to be hurt any longer. I want to be happy.

Patton let out a sob, nodding his head frantically. The man smiled sadly. “Child, you need to use that lovely voice of yours.”

Patton ignored the way his voice cracked as he forced himself to answer. “Yes! I accept you as my Fairy Godfather.”

The man smiled, his green eyes glowing. “Then it is done.” There was a flash of bright light, reminiscent of a fire, and Patton had to close his eyes. When he opened them, the man was gone, a small ring lying where he once stood. It was a beautiful gold ring with ruby gemstones along the band. He slipped the ring onto his finger, and was surprised to see that it was a perfect fit. Patton slowly stood up, noting that not only had the rain stopped, the pain on his cheek had completely disappeared. He turned towards the chicken coop, dread forming in his stomach from what he now had to do-

Five chickens were laid out next to the coop, all with their necks snapped. Patton shakily made his way to the coop, scooping up the chickens to take inside. Their feathers were completely dry, and so were Patton’s cheeks. He had no more tears to shed at the moment.

Patton lugged the dead chickens inside, checking his face in the nearby mirror. His cheek was still bruised, but Patton couldn’t feel any pain from it. Patton shrugged it off, focusing on the task at hand. He did his best to follow the directions from an old cookbook he’d found on how to properly prepare raw chicken. It took the rest of the day to cook, and Patton had just made the pasta when there was a knock on the front door. Patton ignored it, moving to make the salad. He knew that his father would answer the door, and that Patton was not to be seen by the guests.

Sure enough, Patton heard his father’s voice ring throughout the house. “Welcome! You must be Lord Ignis. It is a pleasure to meet you!”

The person laughed. “You’re referring to my brother. You may call me Viridi. These are my associates. You may call them Anguis and Umbra. My brother had some matters to attend to, but he and our final associate should arrive before dinner begins.”

Patton continued to chop the vegetables as he heard his father speak. “Then, let us wait for them in the study.” Patton heard footsteps moving in the opposite direction and sighed, wiping the sweat off of his brow. He’d been working in this stuffy kitchen for hours now.

The door suddenly swung open, revealing Patton’s mother. “Is the food ready, boy?”

Patton shrunk under her gaze, but continued to cut the vegetables. “The chicken and pasta are ready to be served, ma’am. I’m currently cutting up the vegetables for the salad. It should be ready in a few minutes.”

Patton’s mother glared at him. “It should already be done by now!”

Patton whimpered. “I’m sorry.”

His mother scoffed. “Grab some Chardenney to go with the chicken.”

Patton frowned. “We don’t have any Chardenney left…”

Patton shouldn’t have been surprised by the pain that now bloomed across the back of his skull. He whimpered as he accidentally cut himself with the knife. “Listen here you brat.” She growled out. “You are nothing but a nuisance and a waste of space. If you can’t do your job correctly, you’ll wish for death by the time I’m done with you.” She pushed him forward, and Patton winced as the knife dug into his skin. “Get some damn wine.” And with that, she left.

Patton held back tears as he held his now blood-covered hand close to his chest. The pain was excruciating, and Patton didn’t know what to do-

“Is she always like that?” Patton spun around to see a man sitting on the countertop near the door, relaxed as if he’d been there for hours. He wore an expensive-looking black suit with a purple undershirt and handkerchief. His pitch black hair almost completely covered his amethyst colored eyes. His skin was deathly pale, nearly translucent.

Patton attempted to ignore the pain in his hand as he answered the man’s question. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir-”

“Please drop the formalities.” The man interrupted, examining his dark purple nails. “Call me Umbra.”

Patton bowed his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Umbra. My name is Patton.”

Umbra seemed to shudder as his eyes appeared to glow. Patton blinked in surprise, and the glowing was gone. “It’s dangerous to just give your name out like that, Pa-” He suddenly stopped, appearing to sniff the air. His gaze focused on Patton’s hands. “You’re injured.”

Patton looked down, staring at his blood-soaked hands. He’d almost forgotten about his injury. “It’s fine-”

A hand touched his, and Patton looked up in alarm. Umbra was suddenly in front of him, inches away. Patton felt his breath catch as Umbra whispered. “I’d assumed it was the chicken I was smelling…” His fingers traced through Patton’s blood along the cut, and Patton felt a shiver go up his spine. They stood like that for several seconds before Umbra’s fingers suddenly grazed against Patton’s new ring. “Where did you get this?”

Patton saw Umbra’s expression and looked down at his feet. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

There was a moment of silence before Umbra sighed, letting go of his hand. “The bleeding stopped. Go ahead and rinse the blood off. I’ll finish chopping the vegetables.” Patton was about to speak up, but Umbra beat him to it. “Do it, Patton.”

Patton felt the shiver again as he went to do what he was told, knowing that he could get in more trouble for refusing. He carefully washed the blood off of his hands, making sure that there were no stains from it. He looked back at Umbra and was surprised to see that the salad was done and a bottle of Chardonnay sat next to it. “H-how?”

Umbra smirked. “I am a man of many talents.” He turned and opened the door leading to the dining room. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Patton. I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”

Patton shuddered as the door closed. He didn’t feel uncomfortable, but something about the people he’s met today…

Patton shook his head, grabbing the salad and wine. He needed to have the dining table ready for dinner!

Patton quickly had the food on the table, each dish covered to keep them warm and/or fresh. He then filled the glasses with wine before quickly hurrying back to the kitchen. Technically, Patton should go to his room (one of the old servant's quarters), but he didn't want to get in trouble for not cleaning up the kitchen. Patton felt his stomach twist in hunger, and Patton wished that he had eaten some of the food before moving it to the dining room. But that would be bad. Patton’s already done enough bad things today. Only good boys got food.

Patton heard the door from the parlor to the dining room open. “My esteemed guests, may I present to you: your dinner!”

Patton whimpered, hugging his knees. He wasn’t allowed to be in the dining room while the guests were eating, and the only other door led to the chicken coop, and Patton wasn’t allowed outside unless he was doing chores! He was stuck in the kitchen until the meal was over!

Patton whimpered as his stomach twisted painfully in hunger. He wasn’t told he could eat tonight, but maybe Patton could have some bread for cooking the chicken well on his first try?

Patton was about to get up and find some bread when he heard a familiar voice. “Thank you for treating us to this feast, Lord Hart.”

Patton’s blood went cold as he heard his father answer. “Please, Lord Hart was my father’s name. We have no need for formalities between us. My name is John, and this is my wife, Elizabeth.”

Patton felt his skin grow warm as the voice chuckled. “Then call me Rubrum.”

Patton forced himself to stand as the discussion continued. “Well, I’ve been introduced to the others, but who’s this young man?”

A different voice answered. “You may call me Glacies. It is a pleasure to be here, John.”

Patton cracked open the door and surveyed the dining room. Patton’s father was closest to Patton, sitting at the head of the table. His back was to Patton, and for that Patton was grateful. Patton’s mother sat on his left. A few seats down sat five men in expensive black suits with different colored accessories. Patton recognized one of them as Umbra, and-

Patton barely held back a gasp, remembering to stay silent at the last second. Sitting at the other end of the table, staring at him from his spot behind the door, was Patton’s Fairy Godfather.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taglist (Let me know id you want to be added or removed!): @bisexualdisaster106 @self-taught-mess

[princessjungeun]

Chuuves Royalty AU~ Part 3

Sooyoung managed to sneak back onto the palace grounds successfully, however she didn’t make it into the palace unnoticed. The thing about her palace was that her sleeping chamber is on the front of the castle. That being said anyone who is by a window on the right side of the place will see the princess sneaking in and out of her chamber. Usually her favorite groundskeeper, Mark, is able to keep a watch for her.

Unfortunately Mark had fallen ill and would be out for another week. That being said, Sooyoung could only hope nobody was not only able to see her, but also waiting for her in her room.

The princess quickly climbed a nearby tree, she then rolled up her sleeves and looked around to see if anyone was watching. When she assumed the coast was clear she started to scale the palace wall—about two years ago Mark noticed Sooyoung climbing out of her window. He knew she had a way out but not in without going unnoticed. So he installed a few extra bricks along the palace wall to use as a climbing wall so she could sneak in and out with ease— Hyunjin left the window open for her as usual.

Sooyoung lost her footing at the last second as she was halfway through the window. Resulting in her face planting onto the floor. It was only now that she realized she had fallen at the feet of someone.

Her eyes traveled up and she saw her father standing over her, clearly peeved. Sooyoung stood up, and brushed her dress off. Smiling innocently she rocked back and forth on her toes, weakly saying “heyyy daddy...”

The king sternly told her “Ha Sooyoung! You have run off one too many times. Not only are you embarrassing yourself, but this entire empire. Why do you keep doing this to us?”

Sooyoung kicked off her shoes and flopped onto her bed, “you know I have no interest in letting a man control me and this empire when the time comes. Hell I don’t even WANT to be queen, just have another kid so I don’t

Her father sighed before saying “you have one more suitor coming tomorrow. Prince Jiseok of the south Kim Empire will be coming tomorrow. His younger sister is slightly younger than you, she will also be attending. You will be with her for hours before as well. This way you will not have a way to pull one of your games.”

Sooyoung deeply sighed, running a hand through her hair, “are you serious? I have to babysit this girl?” The king responded “Sooyoung, she is 21. Just slightly younger than you. To be quite honest she takes her position more than you. I hope you will learn from her.”

Sooyoung rolled her eyes, already tired of this conversation, “yeah yeah fine whatever. No games.”

The king nodded and said “thank you.” He snapped his fingers at Hyunjin and asked politely “if you could please help her clean up before bed please?” Hyunjin nodded and quickly pushed the princess towards the bathroom.

For the rest of the night Hyunjin was stuck listening to Sooyoung complain about how she didn’t want to meet another suitor.

•

•

•

The next morning Hyunjin woke Sooyoung up as she did every morning, dragging her out of bed while listening to her bitch and moan about whatever was planned for the day.

“Sooyoungie I think this won’t be as bad as you think. Heejin is close friends with Princess Jiwoo, apparently she’s very sweet.” Hyunjin tried her best to tell Sooyoung to calm down.

Sooyoung had eventually gave in after finding guards at every entrance and window of the castle. Her father had clearly ordered them to stand guard keeping Sooyoung home all day.

The princess complained the entire afternoon, Hyunjin honestly finding it quite funny. It wasn’t until another worker knocked on Sooyoung’s door th at she quit complaining.

“Excuse me, I would like to let the princess know that her guests have arrived. The king would like her to report downstairs to greet them promptly.” The young worker told Hyunjin to relay the message.

Sooyoung sat up on her bed and asked “aren’t they two hours early?”

Hyunjin checked her watch, nodding and saying “yes but the king wants you downstairs so that’s where we are going.”

Sooyoung rolled her eyes and slapped her tiara on her head. Hyunjin stopped her quickly, brushing her hair nicely and placing the tiara back on her head. Hyunjin once d her over quickly, “Just because you’re moody doesn’t mean you can’t look pretty.”

The princess smiled weakly before straightening her posture and heading downstairs.

Sooyoung looked around to see nobody in the main room of the castle. She turned to a guard and asked “where’s my dad?”

The guard replied “the king has called a meeting with Prince Jiseok privately in his study. The princess is in the garden, you may find her there along with her handmaiden.”

Sooyoung sighed and thanked the guard, wandering into the garden.

Upon walking past the windows that lined the garden she saw the princess. Her black hair fell effortlessly behind her back, small bangs lightly covering her forehead. She could see the princess giggling as a butterfly landed on her nose, happily kicking her feet on the ground gently. Her smile was the brightest Sooyoung had ever seen, one that had seemed like it never faded, as if it never knew sadness.

“Sooyoungie lets not keep her waiting now.” Hyunjin held the door open, leading Sooyoung out to the garden.

The princess immediately stood up, smiling as she turned to face Sooyoung. The girl let out a high pitched squeal before hugging Sooyoung so tight she felt that her lungs would pop.

“Oh my goodness you are so pretty I can’t believe I’m meeting Ha Sooyoung of the Ha Empire. It’s such an honor! Oh goodness I can’t wait to be best friends! Oh this is my best friend and my handmaiden. Her name is Lalisa Manoban. She is such a good handmaiden oh my goodness this morning she killed this spider in my room. It was so big and scary I thought I was going to die! But she saved me isnt that so nice of her! Oh I see you have a handmaiden too whats her name?!” Jiwoo spoke at least 10 words per second and somehow Sooyoung managed to catch all of them.

Sooyoung stated “it’s nice to meet you too. This is Kim Hyunjin, she’s also my handmaiden and best friend.”

Sooyoung led Jiwoo to her bedroom, not wishing to stay in the outdoors any longer than she had to. Although Jiwoo was in fact very nice, Sooyoung just didnt click with her. She was loud and very excited about every little thing. Her energy was far higher than what Sooyoung was willing to tolerate.

Two hours into Jiwoo rambling on about how she wanted a pet penguin, Hyunjin and Lalisa were notified that the dinner was ready.

The two princesses headed to the main dining room alone with their handmaidens. Sooyoung noticed that second Jiwoo entered the room, her entire demeanor changed. The girl that was just whining about how she wanted a pet penguin was now standing tall, her chin held high with a subtle smile in her face.

“Good evening King Ha, it is a pleasure to meet you this evening.” Jiwoo spoke in an octave that Sooyoung didn’t think the other could actually use. For once her ears weren’t bleeding from the high pitched squeals and shrieks she was used to hearing.

“Good evening Princess Jiwoo, I see you spent time with my Sooyoung.” The king motioned to his daughter, a slight side eye to her as well.

Jiwoo smiled brightly “yes I did. Princess Sooyoung is very sweet, we had a good talk with each other.”

Sooyoung thought about how she did absolutely no talking in the two hours they spent together. She was snapped out of her trance when her father mentioned that she needed to introduce herself.

•

•

•

The dinner itself wasn’t terrible, Sooyoung’s favorite food was served after all. The princess didn’t fail to notice the way Jiwoo’s behavior was one she’d only even seen in her own mother, the queen. The way she was able to give clear and concise answers to every question the king asked. She knew everything about her empire down to each village. Jiwoo knew everything, even things she didn’t need to know, she knew. She was like little miss princess perfect and Sooyoung hated that.

“Jiwoo have you started looking for suitors yet? Perhaps thinking of getting married in the coming years?” The king asked, Sooyoung already knowing if Jiwoo answered yes that it’d be thrown in her face.

Jiwoo’s eyes flickered down then to her brother who nodded gently with a smile. She weakly responded “yes sir I have met a few princes. There hasn’t been one to catch my eye quite yet though. It is always a pleasure meeting new princes though. All of them have been quite polite to me, very good young men.”

The king replied “I wish my Sooyoung could say the same. She has run off upon meeting every suitor, like a little child. I wish she could learn. She is so immature, nothing like you-”

Jiwoo cut him off “I don’t wish to be disrespectful sir, but I think every prince and princess can choose how involved they wish to be with their people. It is not a competition, no need to compare us really.”

The king replied “I must disagree with you on that Princess Jiwoo. I think every child of a royal must be involved. I am saying I think it is very immature of Sooyoung to run off. She doesn’t know anything that happens in the villages either, hell I don’t think she even knows the villages. She does nothing but sit around all day then run off to another kingdom. She doesn’t even respect her own. It’s truly a pity I didn’t get a wonderful daughter like your parents did. You seem much more useful to the throne.”

Sooyoung’s mother gasped and said “Honey now I think that’s enough.” The queen saw the death grip her daughter had on the fork in her hand, the way her eyes were starting to burn with tears.

He continued on, “she doesn’t do anything. No matter what I try to say she doesn’t care. She is a lost cause. This empire deserves better than what she will ever offer it and that is a fact.”

Sooyoung stood up, pushing her seat back in with a loud slam. She flung the door open, walking out quickly, but not fast enough to hear her father say “and there she is running off again. Pathetic.”

[namjuicyy]

Sweet Night

.: Sweet Night :. 

Taehyung x Gender Neutral!Reader 

Your best friend is due to get married on Friday and you’re his best person. But what happens when the dynamic changes? 

ficswithluv | masterlist | requests are open

Words: 4.3k 

WARNINGS: mentions of depression; a disgusting amount of pining; reader and Tae being absolute idiots; implied smut (so Tae’s cheating);

S u n d a y

It was so cliche; being forced to share a bed in this tiny log cabin with your best friend. Seokjin just assumed that because you and Tae were so close you'd both be more than happy to share a double for the weekend. Hell, you'd done it ever since you were little and still sometimes to this day, so why would this weekend be any different? It shouldn't be. Yet there you lay in the darkness, wide awake and listening to Taehyung's breathing as he slept behind you, holding you close to his body as he had done every time you shared a bed since you were children. Arguably it's your fault he can't sleep without cuddling something - but you refuse to accept that accusation.

You weren't quite sure when things began to change for you; when you stopped seeing Taehyung as the greasy little boy with a boxy smile who used to terrorise the neighbour's cat under the guise of loving it and began seeing him as a beautiful young man, who wore that same smile whilst terrorising you. You didn't know when you started to fall helplessly and irrevocably in love with him. It just seemed that one morning you woke up and - poof! - feelings. What you didn't know was that there was a storm raging behind you inside the mind of the very man you had fallen for.

He was awake, eyes open in the darkness and staring at the back of your head as his mind screamed at him in the silence. Like you, he assumed his best friend was asleep and did his best not to disturb you with the never ending torture he was putting himself through. You'd gotten softer as you got older. There was more of you to grab, more of you to snuggle into. Your hair smelled like the cherry blossoms on Jeju Island and it took him back to the Spring you'd spent together on the island while the blossoms were in bloom. Pink petals fell on your hair as they blew off the trees. You turned to look at him and he could have sworn he was shot in the backside with one of Cupid's arrows. You were the most beautiful, most perfect creature he had ever laid his eyes on. He was able to pinpoint the exact moment he realised he was in love with you - it was then. When you were enthralled by the beauty of the nature surrounding you and paying no mind to him. When you were smiling brightly and taking photos with your own camera. He had to take a photo of you while you were so happy; so serene and peaceful.

You weren't allowed near his phone after that day, which was peculiar for the two of you as you'd both been so open with one another since the beginning. The reason for this was his home screen was that picture of you; his absolute favourite picture of you. You were so lost in the blossoms you hadn't noticed him taking your picture and though you were looking at his camera you weren't registering that it was in his hand. He caught your face lit up and partially hidden behind the raining petals while staring directly into his soul with adoration in his eyes. It was that picture he made sure to look at every time he did something on his phone. And it was that picture that remained in his data every single day for two years straight.

But God forbid he ever told you how he felt. Neither of you wanted to ruin this perfect relationship you had with each other and both of you assumed that confessing would do that. You both would rather each other in your lives as a friend than not at all. Which was, perhaps, an even worse thing to do as both of you were miserable and constantly pining after one another.

The members tried to get involved - tried to force you two to confess to each other on multiple occasions; and you almost did. However, the announcement of his most recent girlfriend stopped you and landed you in a month-long episode of depression. He was still with her - they were actually engaged, which was odd considering he was sharing a bed with you right now. Yet nothing would ever happen between you. In your eyes he was in love with her and in his eyes you didn't love him like he loved you.

You remember the day he told you the bad news.

"We're actually getting married." He announced over dinner when it was just the two of you.

You spat your drink out over him. "M-married? As in, in love forever, will one day have 2.5 kids in a three bedroom apartment crawling with dogs and dirty nappies married? Not married as in fake married to shut your parents up married?"

Tae laughed, his boxy smile making you melt. "As in through sickness and in health, richer for poorer until death do us part married, yes."

The richer for poorer line didn't sit well with you. "You asked her already?" He nodded in response. "And she said yes?"

"Don't act so surprised - I am quite the catch you know."

"What else is wrong with the girl besides the obvious?"

Tae groaned, "___."

"I'm sorry. Congratulations are in order, dude! I'm pleased for you." That was a blatant lie. He'd only been dating her for two years. He was only twenty-five... well, twenty-seven in Korean age which made more sense when you thought about it, but still.

"I actually wanted to ask you something."

"You want the funeral song played at the wedding? Sure thing."

"___!" Tae sighed but he was grinning a little at your joke. "We're going to be having a more Westernised wedding than traditional Korean. Obviously we will have the traditional Korean elements like the paebaek but we're going to be taking a more Western spin on it. So I was wondering if you would be my best man - or rather, best person."

You grit your teeth and swallowed the lump in your throat. Force a smile, force a smile! "Of course, Tae-Tae. I'd be honoured."

Cut to you crying on Yoongi's shoulder at 4am because you couldn't bear to go through with the role you had been given yet had no option but to go through with it. You couldn't breathe. You felt like you were trapped and the worst part about it all was that you made this prison yourself. The bars were made with all the words you never said with a lock made from the silence you hid behind. You could scream and scream and scream all you wanted but it was almost too late. You were too late.

This weekend getaway was a macabre farewell to Taehyung's "single" life given that the wedding was on Friday. Everything was all planned out and ready. Rehearsals had been completed. Outfits were chosen. He was really going through with this.

You turned in Taehyung's arms to look at his sleeping face only to be met with his eyes fully open and staring at you.

"I thought I could feel a creep watching me." You teased.

"Your snoring kept me awake. I was thinking of all the ways to kill you so I could get some peace and quiet."

"Oh wow, you can think? I wondered what that burning smell was."

"Hey! I'm smart, you know."

"Oh yeah? What's your IQ?"

"130."

"Alright fine."

"Not just a pretty face."

"I wouldn't even call you that."

"You're cruisin' for a bruisin', young lady."

"Ooh 'young lady'. Sorry, daddy. I'll try to behave."

The smile that was once on Taehyung's face slowly disappeared. He wasn't his usual bubbly self and he hadn't been for the last few weeks. Every time you asked him what was wrong, he automatically answered with "pre-wedding jitters. I'm fine." You knew Taehyung, though; and he wasn't fine. You've seen him when he's fine and he certainly isn't fine now. "Talk to me." You demanded gently. He hesitated. "You know I'm just going to keep asking until you tell me the truth."

"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing by marrying her."

"Are you in love with her?"

He was silent for a moment. "I do love her. I'm just not in love with her. That title belongs with someone else."

"So if you aren't in love with her - which you should be, by the way, if you're marrying her - then why would you marry her when you could be perfectly happy with someone else?"

"I don't want to hurt her - and I don't want to throw away my future and the possibility of being a dad one day for a chance with someone else when I'm fairly confident they don't love me back."

"Have they told you that they don't love you?"

"Well... no."

"Well then, there you go."

"They also haven't told me that they do love me like that, though."

"What do you want, Tae?"

"I want... happiness. I want to get married to someone I actually adore rather than someone I couldn't say no to."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't tell you the whole truth. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't ask her to marry me. She asked me to marry her. I couldn't say no to her and risk losing the relationship I grew comfortable in."

"Why lie?"

"I didn't want to be judged. I know you wouldn't I just... I don't know. It felt like the right thing to do."

"Tae-"

"I know' I need to make a decision. I just don't want to. I'm comfortable here."

"Here?"

"In this room where no one can get me in a warm bed next to someone who means the world to me." You didn't know what to say so you decided to remain quiet. That sounded somewhat like a confession but you couldn't get your hopes up. What if it wasn't a confession? What if he was just being his usual, beautiful self? You still weren't confident enough to ask him or tell him your own fragile truth. He was so brave for laying himself bare like that. How could you ever compare? "Would it be alright if I pulled you closer?"

Actions spoke louder than words did, so instead of waiting for him to pull you towards him, you snuggled into his body allowing your head to bury itself in his neck. Even for you two this wasn't normal best friend behaviour.

Do it. Your brain egged you on. Tell him. Now! Yet you still couldn't do it. Even though you had the perfect opportunity to, you just couldn't confess everything to him. You couldn't be as brave as he was just now. What was wrong with you?

"It's your turn." He told you, as though he could read your thoughts. "What's going on in that head of yours?"

"It's empty up here, Tae. You know this."

"Hey." Tae pushed you away a little but gently so as not to offend or startle you. "I'm the only one who's allowed to pick on you.

You didn't know who leaned in first. It could very well have been you but time seemed to alter as your lips moved towards one another. They connected; it was gentle at first but things soon began to heat up. You allowed Taehyung to use his tongue as he kissed you, as your bodies pressed together ever tighter until there was no room left. You've read that kissing your best friend was supposed to feel like kissing a sibling - it was meant to feel disgusting and wrong - yet you both couldn't pull away from each other as though strong magnets had been placed in your lips and connected as you kissed. In fact, though you could feel your heart racing and his hands wandering your body, your brain cleared itself of everything. It didn't allow you to concentrate on the fact that you were kissing the man you've loved for a long time. Nor did it remind you that said man had a fiancée waiting for him at home; whom he didn't love and could never. It never occurred to you to tell him to stop even when he started to slot himself in between your legs, when you let him cum inside you and when you held each other to sleep that night finally holding one another as you'd wanted to for years.

You were disappointed on Monday morning when he wasn't beside you when you woke up. You were dejected to discover he wasn't even in the house and you were upset when you found out he returned home alone.

T u e s d a y

Taehyung hadn't spoken to you since Sunday night when you both gave yourselves to one another. To be completely honest, you hadn't tried to get in contact with him either. Sunday had felt so right that you had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that he would end things with his fiancée and would come crawling to you dismayed at hurting her but excited for your future together. You thought you'd see him Monday evening after spending time with her yet you were well into the late hours of Tuesday evening and you'd not heard a peep. Not a single word from him or about him from any of your mutual friends. You didn't know what was going on but you knew that things were awkward between the two of you - and that the wedding was still going ahead. You knew this because his fiancée had sent you a reminder three minutes ago via email that tomorrow was the final wedding rehearsal and that everyone had to be there.

T h u r s d a y

You didn't show up to the final rehearsal - how could you? You had slept with the bride's fiancée and that was the ultimate crime you could commit. How could you show your face to everyone after consenting to such an insensitive act? How could Taehyung more importantly. It was his fault just as much as it as yours and yet his conscience had allowed him to turn up unashamedly pretending to be the dutiful future husband while little did his precious bride-to-be he had been balls deep in someone else.

There was a knock at your door not three hours after the wedding rehearsal had ended and much to your surprise, Park Jimin stood there holding a bag of Tupperware boxes containing your share and the leftovers of the wedding feast. The moment he saw your puffy eyes and your distant smile he knew something big had happened. He had no idea how bad the damage was, but "Tae looks exactly like you do." He told you. "He wasn't himself at the wedding rehearsal but he wouldn't tell me why. Which isn't like him. What happened? Did you two have a falling out or something?"

"Not exactly."

It took Jimin all of three seconds to piece together what would have happened. If you hadn't had an argument, but you both aren't speaking and you didn't show up to the rehearsal today it could only mean one thing. "When did it happen?"

"Sunday night."

"Have you spoken since then?"

"No."

"Why?"

"He obviously doesn't want to, Jimin. If he did then I may have shown up today or at least I'd know where I stand with him. If he wanted me around he would have made an effort but he obviously doesn't. Anyway, it's probably for the best that the slut that fucked her best friend five days before his wedding doesn't show up. I couldn't face tomorrow before all of this happened, how am I supposed to now?"

"By talking to him? Calling him? Ask him to come over so you can talk face-to-face."

"I don't know if I can. It still wouldn't change anything, would it? He would still marry her tomorrow."

"You don't know that."

"I do. That's it now. He no longer wants me around."

Jimin, by the time he left your place that night was absolutely furious. He was angry at you for moping around and not contacting Tae. He was angry at Tae for even getting married to that woman in the first place when it was obvious he was in love with you; and he was livid at Taehyung for not contacting you after the both of you slept together to hash it out and see where your relationship was going to end up. So he contacted Tae himself and gave him an earful down the phone.

Taehyung had no intention of changing his plans.

F r i d a y

You were meant to be at the wedding today but of course you couldn't do it. Simply bringing yourself out of bed should have been enough today let alone watching the man you were desperately in love with marry someone else. Everything hurt; your head, your bones, your heart. How could something as simple as someone getting married take such a toll on your body?

Midday rolled around - the wedding should be starting now. You poured yourself another glass of wine and tried to bury yourself in a horror movie. Your usual self-care movie featured couples happily in love and you couldn't do that to yourself. So instead you opted for movies where couples were horrifically killed in multiple different ways. Yes, this will do just nicely.

Your phone had been ringing all day to the point where you put it on silent and turned it over so you couldn't see the display screen and see which member of the wedding party was trying to get in touch with you today. Going awol was the best thing you could do. Lying would have hurt you more, and turning up may have been deadly. Instead you kept your curtains closed and your phone as far away from you as possible.

That was when you heard it - rapid knocks at the door that forced you out of your blanket burrito on the couch and towards the front door. Had you known who it was you wouldn't have answered the door. Had you known more trouble would come by opening the door you wouldn't have left your spot on the sofa.

Her.

On your doorstep Tae's fiancée stood wearing her puffy, princess wedding dress and makeup running down her face. You know how much money was spent on the artists to put her face together and there it all went rolling down her cheeks.

"Where is he?" She sobbed at you.

"If he's not with you, love then I haven't got a clue."

"He's normally with you when he's hiding from me. He must be in here somewhere."

"Well," you stepped aside, "you're more than welcome to come in and look for him but all you'll find that's keeping me company is my own filth."

"So if he isn't here then where is he?"

"I haven't spoken to him since Sunday, honey. I've no idea. Now, please can you leave so I can wallow in self-pity and you can go ahead and get married?"

"Don't you get it, yet? The wedding's off! He left me at the altar. No one can get in touch with him. No one knows where he is."

This wasn't like Taehyung to just disappear without telling anyone where he was. You knew him better than anyone. At a time like this, if no one could find him it meant he needed to think. He always went to think sat in the grounds of Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul. Since moving to Seoul from Daegu, he had always enjoyed the traditional palaces because of how quiet they were, and how you couldn't hear or see the modern world. It was serene and peaceful and when he had taken the right precautions to cover his face he was unrecognisable and left alone. You had no doubt he'd be there.

"I know."

"Would you go to him?"

"No. I'll tell Jimin where he is and Jimin can go."

"___, please. You're the only one he listens to and talks to. Please."

You relented and did as she asked. Maybe if you could save their relationship the guilt would stop eating you alive. Though, of course, this wasn't guaranteed and there was an even higher chance that you'd end up hurting a lot more for this - and even lose Taehyung forever; but this seemed like the right thing to do. So you showered quickly, dressed and left the house with wet hair making your way to the palace.

You were entering the grounds taking in the smells of nature when you noticed the cherry blossoms. You hadn't realised they were in bloom yet. You were so preoccupied in your little problems you'd forgotten the seasons still changed around you. The palace was so much more beautiful now there was a dusting of pink sprinkled around the grounds. You could fully understand why Taehyung enjoyed coming to this place to think and relax.

You saw him sat there - to you he stuck out like a sore thumb but the tourists completely ignored his presence. Knowing he'd run if he saw you, you took the longer route to get to him, joining him on the bench without asking too afraid he'd get up and walk away before you had chance to say your peace.

"Shouldn't you be getting married now?" You asked him when you'd been sat beside him a little while.

"I wondered how long it would take for you to get summoned. Who was it? Jiminie? Namjoonie-hyung?"

"The woman you left at the altar."

"Ah."

"Though I have to say, I didn't think I'd see a woman in a wedding dress on my doorstep... ever. Thank you for that first."

"You're welcome - I know it's what you've always wanted."

"So why did you do it? Why aren't you getting married today?"

"I had too much to think about."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Taehyung," you said sternly, "don't you dare. You fucked me not even a week ago then shut me out of your life to the point where I thought you didn't want me in it anymore. You then proceed to shut everyone else out, leave your bride at the altar so she comes knocking on my door looking like an absolute mess and dragging me out of my blanket burrito to bring your moping ass back to her, and you aren't even offering me an explanation to tell me why all of this has happened. Neither of us are leaving until I get the answers I'm looking for, Tae. Even if it means we're sat here all night. You're opening up and that's final."

"I fucked up big time, didn't I?" He asked quietly. "You don't have to say it - I know. I've ruined everything because I was afraid. I was afraid to hurt her, afraid to hurt you. Eomma got so excited when I told her I was getting married and I've disappointed her."

"You definitely haven't disappointed your mum, Tae. Not by not getting married anyway. She knows you will one day - she just wants you to be happy and loved. That's all any of us want."

"I got scared." He told you. At this point tears were beginning to form in his eyes. He pitied himself and his decisions of course, but those tears weren't for him. The tears were for everyone he thought he'd disappointed but hurt in the process. "I had what I thought I wanted but when I had that I discovered it wasn't what I wanted at all. I thought I loved her - I thought I wanted to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. It turns out, though, I wanted you instead... and then I had you - finally! Do you know how long I waited to have you? Everything became too real, though, and it freaked me out. It showed me that I wanted you... that my feelings for you hadn't gone and that I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life but I couldn't end it because I couldn't hurt her and I-" He took a deep breath but he began to sob. "I just wanted a forever, and now my forever's falling down and I can't stop it. I'm sorry, ___. I'm so, so sorry!"

His head fell on your shoulder as he wept harder, drawing more attention to him than perhaps he intended but still people didn't realise who he was. Or if they did they let him be which you were grateful for. There was a huge part of you that couldn't believe Tae had just confessed. After all these years of pining and wanting him finally he could be yours. All you had to do was tell him. "Tae, you have absolutely no idea just how much I adore you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you - maybe even marry you if things go well. I love you. I want you too. But you're still engaged."

Taehyung blinked. "I'm not. She doesn't know it yet but I'm ending things with her. You're right, it wasn't fair of me to do that to her. She deserves better than someone who only wants her because he's too afraid to be lonely."

"I'm proud of you, even if you are the world's biggest idiot sometimes."

"Would I - would I ever have a chance with you? You know, when I'm not officially engaged."

"Do you not want to spend some time being single first?"

"I was pretty much single with her. It feels like I'm about to hurt a friend - not a fiancée."

"Take me on a date first and we'll talk about it. And no, before you ask McDonald's does not count as a date."

"You're such a loser."

"Yeah but you love me."

"And you love me."      

[weepylucifer]

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 8

Interlude: David

“Talk to Nightingale,” Peter had said. Of course David was going to converse with Thomas, frequently and on all manner of subjects. The matter of the missing crystal ball, however... well, it couldn’t hurt for David to ask around in his spare time, and catch up with Thomas on the matter at his leisure. Perhaps when he already had something to show for his efforts. Oh, Thomas would be delighted. Certainly, he was going to try to hide it and insist on him following the rules and not interfering with investigations in the future, but beneath that, he’d be glad to have this task taken care of. Then he’d see that David could still make a valuable contribution to the modern Folly.

So, inferring that Peter didn’t want to be bothered looking for that crystal ball, David ventured out (with what he dearly hoped was Peter’s covert permission) to see if some of his old contacts from the demi-monde were still around. Certainly, he expected to find the demi-monde as much changed as everything else, but some people stuck around for a seemingly indefinite amount of time.

Oberon had apparently wed one of the new river daughters, acquired some children with her and was now hosting something called ‘art therapy’. Well, David had always loved to draw. He accepted the offer of an easel, canvas and paint and got to work.

“And I may choose what I draw?” he asked.

“Of course,” Oberon told him. “The aim of this procedure is for you to confront upon the canvas whatever you feel you must.”

David nodded.

Oberon’s place was spacious in a way that was not to David’s taste, but he claimed the minimalism was conductive to his creative process. There was coffee on for him - sweet and almost white with milk, the way he preferred it - and a plate of snacks (no obligation). The food was kosher, Oberon informed him. David hadn’t often been in a position to keep kosher (it had been unheard of at the old Folly, at Casterbrook everyone had received the same boarding school lunches, and during the war you ate what you could get) and thus couldn’t claim he had been afforded even the opportunity to miss it, but it was a nice touch.

“This looks as though you knew I would return here,” he said.

“I suspected it,” Oberon said smoothly. “Your return has made little waves already, and I assume it will only make larger ones.” Apparently the orisa Peter was involved with was a sister to Oberon’s wife, and thence the news had travelled.

“Are you glad to have me back, old friend?” David asked softly. He kept his eyes fixed on the canvas, where his sketch was coming along. It would be a simplistic little thing, compared to his usual work: his hand was quite out of practice after six years of handling his staff and rifle with nary any time for anything else.

He had kept a notebook tucked into his breast pocket, where some of the other men had carried bibles, quite worn by the end of the war. Beyond drafts for new spells, notes on troop movements and strategy, and idle thoughts of his scientific work that he had let his mind drift to during the lulls, there had been little sketches there, and snippets of poems. He had drawn most of the men in his unit at some point. His poems had been dilettantish, and they had shifted focus with the time: what had started out as paeans to sweet Phoebus Apollo, the boyish god of the eyes of sun, had turned, later, to the warlike deities. He had read one aloud once, one he’d deemed sufficiently disguised, and the lads had teased him for weeks about what a harridan of a girl he must have at home, that she must compare to Athena of strategy, while their Captain had watched on with a lopsided smile.

(”What happened to Apollo?” Thomas had asked later, when they’d been alone, the only ones awake during the first watch of the night.

“The war changed him,” David had replied.)

(He’d never shown Thomas the poems to Thanatos, the angel of death.)

“I am glad you ceased the abandonment of your post,” Oberon said. “I am glad you stopped hiding.”

“It was rather chosen for me,” David argued. “The abandonment as well as the return.”

Oberon gracefully nodded his assent. He was always rather graceful in his movement. David liked to look at him, had always rather. All the controlled strength to him, the fluid, natural elegance of him. Masculinity misted off him like a golden vapour. Perhaps he should ask... but no. A wife, children: potent obstacles to that sort of thing.

For some reason, he had to think of Peter for a second. He shrugged it off. If Thomas truly hadn’t figured that one out yet, well, what on earth was David to do? Perhaps it was best to let the young man be, and look for suitable candidates for some... little adventures later. Or perhaps he was being overly optimistic, seeing as Thomas still barely gave him the time of day.

“And what is it you seek here now?” Oberon asked. “Hopefully not to disappear again? Because I am unsure of whether I would lend my hand a second time.”

David shook his head. He had wanted to disappear so badly, then. Oberon had taken pity and helped him find someone who might assist in that, who would create for him a replica of a dead body - his dead body. Now, funny enough, it was the furthest thing from his mind.

“No more running,” David said. “I am assisting the Folly in an inquiry.”

“What is your capacity within the Folly now?” Oberon asked. “I hear tell from my wife that certain elements will want to know, and soon.”

David didn’t know what certain elements meant, nor the answer to the question. “It is yet to be determined,” he said. “The Folly are looking for a dangerous magical object, that might have recently been sold to someone unaware. I don’t know my way around the demi-monde as well as I used to, my friend. With whom would I begin a search for such an object?”

Under David’s hands, the canvas began filling up with landscape. Not so simplistic after all, apparently. He couldn’t recall consciously deciding what to draw, but now he had already started, and it was going to take itself to some sort of conclusion. He had drawn the snow, the overcast sky, now for the leafless trees. He added the dark trunks, tall and imposing, and a clearing in the middle.

“I will outfit you with a list of names, and places to start,” Oberon said. “The goblin market has changed little since you last visited. The faces differ, but the customs remain.”

“That is heartening,” David replied. Satisfied with the look of his painted landscape, he started populating it. The dark shapes, so still in the snow, pitiful heaps of humanity, sunken now, vacated of their souls. A corpse, a carcass, where was the difference? The werewolf, writhing in the snow. Beaten but not yet knowing it.

“Mind where you step, though,” Oberon said. “The relationship of the demi-monde to the Isaacs has hardly grown any more cordial.”

David looked up from the canvas. “What happened?” he asked.

Oberon shrugged. His tight shirt left little to the imagination, and David watched the ripple of his muscles below the fabric with appreciation. “The Starling is working on doing things a new way, reaching out, establishing relations between the community and the Folly, but the Starling is... a recent phenomenon.”

“Pardon me. The... who now?”

“Peter Grant. Nightingale’s Starling. Some interesting ideas, that one.”

Peter Grant. David hummed thoughtfully. Peter was turning out to be a more interesting person by the day. New ideas. Peculiar methods. A man after David’s own heart, it seemed, and handsome too. And... Nightingale’s Starling, really? Then he remembered the actual topic of conversation, and mentally walked himself a few steps back.

“What does Thomas say to that?” he asked.

“Not much.” Oberon rolled his shoulders. He was doing it on purpose, David was sure. “The Nightingale keeps to himself.”

There was something odd to that statement. David picked up a smaller brush, to finish off the contours of the werewolf in its death throes. “Hm? Strange. Thomas was always the social butterfly.”

Oberon gave him an expression somewhere between amusement and incredulity, which to David was entirely weird. “Is that so?”

“I can’t imagine Thomas never popped ‘round to mingle. Sure, he wouldn’t have before the war. But he is technically fae now, and it does seem like the kind of thing he’d do, barring any other society... no offense meant.”

Oberon shook his head. “The Nightingale can barely show his face in any demi-monde pubs without half the clientele fleeing through the back door. His arrival heralds emergency, and most likely combat. Nothing else. He’s not... widely trusted by anyone in my circles.”

“I don’t understand,” David said. His hand holding the paintbrush sped up a little. The outline of the soldier, the only one upright, bent over the werewolf, got a little messy, so he corrected himself. He had not forgotten this moment, even after there had started to be many like it. The bayonet affixed to the rifle, pointed forward and downward, soon to arch for the werewolf’s throat. The staff, too, strapped to his belt. And then, out of some inexplicable impulse, David gave him wings.

These were not the serene, down-feathered wings often featured in depictions of biblical angels. These wings were breaking out of the man’s shoulders in a way that should not be, wrong and painful and bloody and raw. At last, David took another paintbrush, dipped its stiff bristles into the scarlet paint and flicked it with his index finger against the canvas. A fine red mist.

“Are you finished?” Oberon asked.

David nodded.

“Well, let’s see your offering for today.” Oberon crossed the room to stand behind David, scrutinizing the painting.

“This is a scene that you witnessed?” he asked.

“Well, the wings are an embellishment,” David said, “but otherwise, yes.”

“Is this figure supposed to be you?”

“I don’t have wings.” David shook his head.

Oberon crossed his arms. He chortled. “Oh, but you do. False wings, of wax, and the foolish hope to boot.”

“I’m Icarus,” David surmised, “my hubris caused me to fly too close to the sun and I plummeted. Very on the nose, my friend.”

“Oh, not at all. You’re Daedalus. You made these wings, you gave them to him, and you are watching all you ever loved take a nosedive off a cliff, and you’re asking yourself what you have done.”

There wasn’t much David could say to that. He wondered where Oberon had received that information. He wondered how Oberon knew what he had done.

Oberon cocked his head and gestured again at the painting. “This is the Nightingale, then.”

“I do wish everyone would stop calling him that,” David said. “The Nightingale is a construct that served to maintain troop morale. I am told that over seventy years passed since then.”

“A blink of an eye to some of us,” Oberon stated. Of course, David thought, he was much older. But that wasn’t the point.

“The point is,” he said, “I want to know what happened. I want to know how almost eight decades went by and this...” He gestured at the painting. “...is still the reality.”

“Maybe,” Oberon said, “I am not the person to ask this question.”

----

It really was a nuisance, David reflected, to be without his own vehicle. In town, it would do, but not outside of it, and as far as he remembered, his new destination was quite a drive out. He had only been once or twice, but he was certain that, outfitted with the navigation device on his new phone, if he figured it out correctly, he might get there without much trouble. But the problem of the car remained.

Well, Thomas and himself had had an agreement, back in the day, to share everything they owned between them. What’s mine is also yours, it had run. They never reneged on that agreement, and David figured this was important enough to infringe upon Thomas’s Jaguar again. At least this time around, Peter couldn’t possibly get caught in the crossfire.

As he was leaving London, he switched the radio on. Modern music was something he hadn’t gotten around to discovering yet, but he expected it to be as changed from what he remembered as everything in this new age. What he got was a mellow-voiced man singing (he would only later learn that the song was about as old as the car he was driving),

Try to see it my way Do I have to keep on talking till I can't go on? While you see it your way Run the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone We can work it out We can work it out

While the lyrics were a little bit somber at times, the melody was upbeat and had David humming and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. It was repetitive and by the second iteration of the chorus he was singing along. His singing voice wasn’t anything to write home about, not at all like that of Thomas, but it raised his mood a few notches and that, he supposed, was rather nice to have.

The melody stuck, and still coursed through his mind when, hours later, he arrived at that strange little tower. He got out of the car and stretched his stiff limbs expansively before walking up and ringing the doorbell.

The door was opened by... oh boy!

The door was opened by, there was no other word for it, a fuzzy young woman. Owing to the rather warm weather, she was in shorts and a black-and-gold top of some sort that, David observed, cut off an inch or so above her navel. It was very plain to see, because of this, that the whole of her was covered in a fine golden fuzz, like... like the fur of a bee, if the hairs on a bee were indeed called that. A single tendril of a glamour beckoned, almost probing, testing the waters out of routine rather than genuine interest, telling of the taste of honey and the steady buzz of the swarm and a... fuzzy embrace. As per usual with fae of the female persuasion, this left David largely unaffected.

“Yeah?” the young woman asked.

“I am looking for Hugh Oswald,” David said. “Does he still live here?”

“Sure, grandad still lives here,” the young woman replied. “Why, what do you want from him?”

Grandad. Indeed, David thought. Hugh always did ensure us rather too profusely that he was interested in beekeeping a normal amount.

“I’m come from the Folly,” he said.

“Oh,” Hugh’s granddaughter said. “They have another guy now?”

“They’ve had me for a while, in fact. Long story.” For once picking up on his opposite’s reluctance, David said, “He will want to see me. I know him quite well, we served together.”

The young woman - just now it occurred to David that he hadn’t asked her name, was it awkward doing it now? - cocked her head in a deeply sceptical way. “But you’re not the Nightingale.”

So she too knew that moniker. The Nightingale. David felt anger bubbling up within him. He took a deep breath to contain it. “No. But he is why I’m here.”

“I don’t know about this,” Hugh’s granddaughter said. “I don’t want to stress him out.”

“He will very much want to see me,” David insisted.

“I’ll go ask him if he’s up for it,” the young woman said, and slammed the door in David’s face.

David waited a minute that felt approximately like a thousand minutes, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet with pent-up energy, picking at his collar as always when he was agitated. He’d never known why very little other people tended to have these little nervous habits, but to him they seemed natural as breathing. One plucked at one’s clothes when one was nervous, and one flapped one’s hands at about chest-height when one was in extreme happiness. That was how feelings were appropriately expressed. Curtailing these expressions could feel grating to the point of extreme discomfort, so he had never put much effort in trying, even when people stared sometimes.

The door opened again, revealing the bee... woman. “He says you can come up.”

David nodded. “Splendid.” She waved him to come in, and in he went. Not much had changed from his vague recollection of Hugh’s weird tower. Some furniture had been replaced or positioned differently since, but it was still much the same place.

“Out back,” Hugh’s granddaughter waved a hand in the direction of the staircase. “He’s in the garden.”

“I know my way,” David said, and yet still she followed one step behind him. Should he ask her name now? He did not.

They stepped out into the garden and David registered the omnipresent buzz of the swarm, the many bee-friendly flower arrangements and fruit trees before he registered the old man in the wheelchair. “Hugh Oswald,” he said, “We’ve much to discuss.”

The old man made a startled sound and recoiled so violently he almost toppled his chair over. David winced in sympathy and started towards him hands raised, not sure what to do to help but needing to do something, but Hugh’s granddaughter beat him to it. She rushed to her grandfather’s side and steadied him, stroking his back soothingly, then turned her head to throw David a look of pure venom. For a moment, he felt a prickle down his arms, like the painful little stings of a myriad bees.

“See,” she exclaimed, “this is why I didn’t want to let you in here, moron!”

“Mellissa...” Hugh Oswald gasped. His voice sounded as frail as he looked, god, he looked wizened, he looked like he’d disintegrate into dust at a careful touch, this couldn’t be, this wasn’t Hugh, Hugh was twenty and strong and full of the brimming vigour of youth, Hugh wasn’t old, couldn’t be old, and David was beginning to tremble- “Mellissa, you see him too?”

“What?” Hugh’s granddaughter snapped. (Mellissa, she was Mellissa, that was her name.) “Of course I see him. The idiot! I had no idea he was going to scare you!”

“But...” Hugh raised a shaking hand, pointing in David’s direction. He had trouble catching his breath, and his other, gnarled hand clawed into the armrest of his chair as he gasped. “David Mellenby is buried.”

“No, Hugh,” David said softly. Oh, he was still trembling, he felt like he should faint, but he couldn’t now. “No, I’m quite alive. Please, we can sit together and I can explain.”

“Nope,” Mellissa said. “You’re leaving. Right the fuck now, or I’ll have the hive on you.”

The bees seemed to buzz louder. David began to retreat.

“Wait,” Hugh Oswald said, sitting up a little straighter with a small amount of struggle. “Wait, Mellissa, let him stay. I want to hear...”

“Grandad, I don’t think you should...”

“If he’s really here and not dead, I want to know why,” Hugh Oswald said, his voice a tad firmer now.

Mellissa seemed extremely reluctant to agree to this, but she relented. “I’ll be close by.” She glared at David one last time as she went back inside the tower. “You pull any shit at all and I’ll see you chased out, Mr. Folly.”

David could do nothing but nod.

He picked up the spare chair and sat across from the old man. When he looked into his face, he could just about see, beneath the fine net of wrinkles and the wisp of thin, white hair, the boy Hugh Oswald he had known. It sent a shiver down his spine. He hadn’t realized...

He hadn’t realized until that moment what ‘eighty years’ really meant. At times, it felt like he had simply been transported into a kind of fairyland, a place where up was down, being... the way he was was legalized and celebrated with parades, but his lover was determined to never let him near again. A dimension of opposites. But Hugh, here, like this, showed him plainly that it was the same world, although having turned times upon times without his active participation. Hugh Oswald had grown old in his absence, so very old it seemed a miracle he was upright still. How many survivors of Ettersberg had died in those long interim years, simply from a too-long life? How had David not thought to ask?

“Yes,” Hugh said, “it’s not looking too well, is it?”

It took David a second to realize he meant himself. “You look fine,” he muttered, drawing patterns on the tablecloth.

Hugh Oswald made a wheezing sound. David grew worried, but then realized it was laughter. “Still a miserable liar.”

“I’m not...!” David started, but was there any use in denying anything now? Hugh looked frail, and that was obvious enough.

Hugh waved it off. “Do tell, old friend,” he said, and while he was trying very hard to put a calm face on it, the tremor was still present in his voice, “what brings you here, back from the grave? I found your body...” His voice caught, and splintered on the last word, and for an endlessly, agonizingly long moment, he fought to maintain his composure.

David felt like dirt. What had he done to the boy? How could you do this to Oswald, Thomas had asked him, a few days ago in that cave, and he had been right to ask.

“Never, in fact, in the grave.” In short, David summarized what had happened to him, his heedless flight into the countryside, the faerie he’d met, the long sleep. “I’m dearly sorry,” he said, something he seemed to be saying often these days, “of course I should’ve remembered that my sudden appearance would startle you. Only, I assumed Thomas had already told you I was back. You would’ve been the first to call, no?”

Hugh Oswald wheeze-laughed again. “Thomas? Hah! The Nightingale hasn’t spoken to me in over twenty years.”

David blinked.

David blinked again.

David blinked back to the year 1944, to Arnhem, Private Hugh Oswald’s first engagement. The boy had barely been of age. After the dust had settled, he had broken down weeping, and David had found him later cradled in Thomas’ arms, head resting on his shoulder, both hands clutching his Captain’s jacket, tears and snot leaving a growing stain on Thomas’ uniform. Thomas had shushed him, muttering that yes, he knew, yes, he understood. Oswald had become one of Thomas’ boys, a favorite, maybe. Thomas had always had a way of almost obessively mothering the youngest recruits. And David, of course, as Thomas’ lieutenant and partner (although no one would have known about that latter part, obviously) had, as a matter of course, shouldered his part of the weight.

They hadn’t talked for twenty years? Why? How?

“What happened?” he asked.

At this point, Mellissa came back out with a cup of tea which she placed in front of her grandfather, and nothing for David. David decided not to mind.

“What happened?” Oswald carefully took a miniscule sip of his tea, testing the temperature. “Time passed. I grew older. Thomas grew younger. It... pains him, I suppose, seeing me this way. It pains you right now.”

David waved it off. Yes, it... shocked him seeing Hugh like this. But that shock was his own thing to overcome. “People grow old. Surely Thomas is not so thin-skinned as to break contact with one of his closest friends over this alone.”

Oswald shrugged. “I don’t know what else it might have been. We used to meet fairly regularly up until the late sixties. I can’t recall exactly when, but he broke contact fairly shortly after the rejuvenation event. We didn’t see much of him after that.”

“Who else is still standing?” David inquired.

“Ah. Arkwright is still alive, Patterson, Simpkins, Gerald and Mercier - John, not Edwin, obviously. Giles the younger and Rooney, although he’s been having heart problems. Blaine and Gardiner. A few others. Thomas doesn’t talk to them, either.”

David began drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “Have you fellas asked him why? Has he ever explained himself?” It seemed impossible that Thomas should, for any reason, leave his ducklings behind. A world of opposites, again.

Hugh Oswald looked out at his garden. “We weren’t going to make demands of him. He’s... he’s the Nightingale.”

The flat of David’s hand hit the table so hard it smarted. “No!”

Oswald winced. “Wh- what...?”

“Perhaps Thomas stopped talking to you because you insist on doing this!”

“Doing... what?” Oswald cocked his head, confused at David’s sudden ire. Oh, yes, they all tended to forget he could be angry. Had always tended to forget that. Lieutenant Mellenby had always been the soft, pale shadow attached to Captain Nightingale, until they’d learned that he had been made Lieutenant for a reason, that he held ferocity within him rivalling, and sometimes surpassing, that of Thomas.

“The Nightingale. You really kept that up all these years, hm? He is still going about his life like that, isn’t he! The war has been over for such a long time! How old are you now, Private Oswald, hm? You must be pushing a hundred. Did you lads have him carry you all on his shoulders for the entire duration? And then you did not even have the common civility to reach out and inquire whether he was struggling?”

Because Thomas was having troubles, as much was clear. David remembered the other night in the reading room in stark detail, remembered how something had been revealed to him there in its sudden vulnerability that he could not categorize.

“It was just his way. You don’t...” Oswald interrupted himself, but David could guess at the end of that sentence. You don’t ask the Nightingale whether he’s struggling. Goodness but he wanted to drop his head into his hands and stay like that for a while. Thomas had gotten that nickname when he’d joined the school choir. In this moment, David wanted very much to chuck a fireball at a few of Oswald’s pretty flower arrangements, and was almost thankful for the inhibitor cuffs.

“Well, you didn’t know him before the war like I did.” David sighed. And how indeed would Oswald know? He was much too young. “I see how it all changed him. And it’s not improved a bit, it seems, in all the years. He doesn’t seem to have one true friend in all the world. He secludes himself even from me, and I’m his lover.”

Oswald shifted in his seat. “You...?”

“You heard me right, his lover.” He didn’t originally come here to unload this on Hugh, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. It was allowed now, the law was on his side now, and there was nothing Hugh could do but sit and take it. “Do you understand me? We are as Orestes and Pylades, Achilles and Patroclus, we are as Wilde and Bosie Douglas, we are two Alan Turings. We are Friends of Mrs. King. We commit acts of buggery upon each other, and we do so extremely well. We-”

“I know what a gay man is, Davey, you can quiet down,” Hugh Oswald said with a tired wave of his hand. “Look, none of us knew this for certain about the two of you, but a fair few of us suspected. We thought it best not to pry at the time. What makes you tell me now?”

“I’m...” David rubbed his eyes. They stung a bit. “I’m telling you in part because I can, I suppose. And because I need to impart to you that Thomas is a man who bleeds red. He lost everything too, you know. He lost me, and that is my own shame to bear, but he would have needed a friend, and what he got appears to have been a gaggle of mouth-breathers chorusing ‘If the Nightingale can do it, so can I’. Yes, you lads needed something, too. But you went back here and lived out a life in peace, and Thomas has kept on fighting the war every second since. And you’re surprised he didn’t show at company reunions? You gave him notice of my ‘death’, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Oswald gripped the edge of the table with both hands, attempting perhaps to keep his calm. “He sort of nodded, and dismissed me from the hospital room. ‘Thanks for telling me’, he said, ‘Dismissed, Private’. And he did that blank face of his. And that was it, that was all of it.”

David ran his hands across his face. He couldn’t begin to imagine how they both had to have been hurting. I’m such a bloody idiot. “This is a mess,” he groaned. “This is a mess and I’m not equipped to fix it.”

“Well, well.” Oswald patted his hand. “You’re back now, isn’t that enough?”

“No,” David said. “It’s too little too late. I fear we all broke Thomas, and there’s no unbreaking him.”

----

Back at the Folly, David parked the Jag, snuck in through the back door and collapsed on a couch in the drawing room. He felt drained. Driving from Herefordshire had taken a while. It was late, darkness was beginning to fall, and he was tired.

He felt more than saw Molly enter. When he turned and beheld her, she was carrying a tray with tea and small sandwiches. The small dog they had here now was following on her heel, hoping to catch a bite. David noticed just then that he had missed lunch and dinner, and he was quite hungry.

He gave Molly a small smile. “Oh, are these for me?”

Molly nodded, and set the tray down on a coffee table. The Folly was full of these rooms, David thought idly, rooms of artfully arranged armchairs and little tables, rooms that nobody now used. What a waste, what a tremendous waste. He took a sandwich. The dog - his collar said Toby - immediately begged, and David bent down and stroked his fur. Good boy.

“I still don’t understand it, Molly,” he said. “I saw Oswald, but he gave me more questions than answers. Why were things permitted to get this way? Yes, Hugh is old now, and frail, but he had a life, in his way. He continued doing what he loved to do. He fucked a bee, somehow. Why was this not a possibility... here?”

Molly tilted her head to the side. The look in her eyes was... calculating, somehow. Do you want to know? she seemed to be asking. Can you bear the knowing?

“I want to know anything anyone can tell me,” David told her. This was his penance. And more, he couldn’t stay his natural curiosity. He had to empty this cup to the bitter dregs.

She took a step forward, reached out her hands, and suddenly was touching him. In all this time, she had never touched him--

He blinked his eyes, and a brief bout of blackness enveloped him, and he was suddenly elsewhere. He was in his own bedroom. How had that happened? It was night, not dusk. He quickly cycled through, and dismissed, half a dozen hypotheses. He had certainly not sleepwalked, and Molly certainly hadn’t carried him here. This felt too strange to be any of those. And the room was different, clothes and books and magazines lying about that he didn’t own anymore and hadn’t in a long time. What...?

There was someone in his bed.

When David went closer to investigate, it felt like he was floating rather than walking. It took him a few seconds to identify Thomas there in his bed (where he had every right to be) because so much was different. This was not Thomas of present days, except if he’d fallen very grievously ill very quickly while David had been away. He was gaunt and sickly pale, messy, unwashed strands of his hair hanging into his face, his jaw littered with chestnut-coloured scruff. He was fully dressed, down to his combat boots, and clutching to his chest a piece of fabric - a jumper, one of David’s own old favorites.

He waved a hand in front of Thomas’s eyes and got no reaction. Just a vacant, empty stare fixed at the ceiling.

The door was cracked open, slowly, carefully, and Molly entered. She was carrying an empty laundry basket under her arm.

Oh, this had to be a memory, David thought. A memory that Molly was now sharing with him. How fascinating. How did she do that? Had she always been able to do that?

Molly approached the bed and gestured with her free hand in the vague direction of it. No reaction came from Thomas. He seemed catatonic, wholly somewhere else, or maybe nowhere at all.

Molly hitched the laundry basket higher up her hip. Still no reaction.

She gestured again, perhaps a bit frustratedly. When there was still no movement in response to this, she bent down and carefully, with the very tips of her fingers, reached for the jumper in Thomas’ hands.

“No!”

Immediately, Thomas snapped to, curling protectively around the bit of fabric. One of his hands twitched and his shield came up, with the same intensity as on the battlefield, with a whoomph of raw energy that, as always, even just in this second-hand memory, felt like it made David’s teeth rattle.

Molly threw up a hand almost in exasperation, and gestured again at the bedsheets, the jumper - a cream-coloured one - then at her laundry basket.

“No... no. You can’t... can’t.” Thomas looked up at her out of wild, red-rimmed eyes. His voice sounded like he’d screamed it hoarse. David thought of his boyfriend as he’d met him, with that easy grin and the sun on his face, thought too of his revered Captain, sure as a rock in every crisis, a force of nature when unfettered on the battlefield. This iteration of Thomas looked feral.

“It smells like him,” Thomas muttered. “It does, still, a bit. Nothing else does anymore.”

Molly shook her head, enveloped by deep pity.

“Do you understand, nothing else... Molly...” He began rocking himself back and forth, cradling David’s jumper to his chest like a mother her baby, like a child a favorite doll. “Please don’t take... please, please don’t make me...”

Thomas Nightingale, pleading.

Molly stepped back, and the shield broke apart, and Thomas buried his face in the cream-colored wool, and David could hear his flat, hitched sobs, like they were being torn out of him, and he wished to never have been born to cause such grief.

Beyond the window, the light changed. It changed rapidly, light and dark and light again, and David watched as Thomas remained still and unmoving on the bed, barely changing position, watched in fast-forward as his hair and beard grew, as he got ever thinner, as Molly came and went and tried and more often than not failed to force some food upon him, and the days turned to weeks turned to months--

“Stop,” he cried, “Stop, Molly, stop, I can’t see any more!”

Seemingly Molly had heard him and was complying, as David felt a huge, yanking tug and was back in the drawing room, breathing heavily and slightly nauseous and... still... holding a sandwich. He put it down for Toby. He wasn’t hungry now.

“Damn,” David said. He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, not caring if it didn’t look proper, there was no one here but Molly to witness it. “Was it like that all of the time?”

Molly vaguely waved a hand.

“But it’s better now. It is better now.”

Molly shrugged. She had always been able to communicate much with sparse gestures. She then lowered her hands, and looked at the floor.

“Listen, don’t you think that. You’ve done more than enough, I’m sure. You’ve given your all. You still do, don’t you?”

There was some movement at the door, and David looked up to see the second fae had appeared, the new one - Foxglove. Molly’s... sister?

She moved - in that gliding way the high fae moved - closer to Molly and opened her arms. Molly stood still as a statue for a second, then she accepted the comfort, hugging her sister, resting her head on Foxglove’s shoulder. Even amidst all the misery, David’s heart felt a flush of that comfort, too.

This is good to see, he thought. And he knew what he had to do next.

----

The light was still on in Thomas’ bedroom, pouring out under the door in a warm, golden sheen, so David knocked and then let himself inside.

Thomas hadn’t undressed for bed yet; he was seated at his desk, pen in hand, finally correcting Peter’s homework. It was good to see him, not whole by a long shot, but at the very least not driven frenzied by grief.

Thomas put his pen down. “What is it, David? Come to apologize for disappearing with the Jag a second time?”

“I’m sorry,” David said. He couldn’t bear to look at Thomas’s face and see that cold disapproval there now, so he hung his head, and scrutinized the carpet.

“You do realize you cannot just go off like that?” There was a small scraping sound as Thomas pushed his chair back and stood.

“What’s yours is mine,” David muttered. “What’s mine is yours.” He felt so very tired.

He felt the sigh more than he heard it. He knew without looking up that Thomas was rolling his eyes now. “Look, certainly it annoys me that you keep spiriting my car away, but there is more to this than me feeling territorial about my property. I didn’t know where you were all day. You only recently got back. We’ve not gauged yet how deeply you’re affected by what you’ve experienced, you might endanger yourself going off alone, you might be volatile...”

And now Thomas was stood before him, and David felt his hands resting on his shoulders - Thomas had such beautiful hands, fine and graceful, he had always loved them - cupping his face, combing through his hair, like Thomas was reassuring himself that David was really here. Searching. David laughed.

“I might be volatile? I? Me?”

“You’re something, that’s for sure.” A hand lifted his chin, gentle but unyielding. “Look at me, Davey. What’s going on?”

And David met those clear, grey eyes and something in him bubbled over. He threw his arms around Thomas with abandon, and pulled him close, and held him there. “Oh, Thomas. Oh, Thomas.”

A hand was carding through his hair, and it felt so good after the day he’d had. “David...”

“I went to see Oswald.”

Thomas’ hands withdrew, and he took a step back, disentangling them again. “You...?” For a moment, something flashed in his eyes, and was suppressed too quickly for David to decipher. “How was he?”

“He was old... very old. His granddaughter is a bee. But Thomas, I understand now. I understand it all.”

David laughed again. His head spun. “I understand why you are this way now. And you’re not mad at me because I ran away, you don’t even bear a grudge against me because of Ettersberg. Or perhaps you do, but that’s hardly the point, is it? You’re not angry, you’re scared.”

And there it was again, something flashing in the depths of those grey eyes, a flicker of uncertainty, ruthlessly smothered. “I beg your pardon,” Thomas said.

“For all these years you’ve had to go it alone,” David replied. He felt fevered in that way that resembled emerging from a week-long series of gruelling and time-intensive experiments crowned at last by success. How everything fit together so smoothly at last! Hypothesis, experiment, conclusion. “Letting no one close was where your salvation lay. You stopped contacting the lads because they couldn’t see that you were struggling with them starting to age past you. That you felt some sort of way about it. You’ve been Hugh’s Greek hero for so long. You don’t know how to step off that plinth and be human again. You have reason to fear that it will get bad... very bad, if you try it.”

David grinned, and seized Thomas by the lapels, and would have picked him up and spun him around the room if he didn’t feel so light-headed, so very drunk on the exhilaration of everything coming together at last. “But that’s all right now, my sweet songbird. I’m here! I will take good care of you. I understand you, fully. You’ve had to build these walls, but me going past them is a good thing. You can finally put that all down - that sword and shield, all down and away. And I will stand guard. Won’t that be good?”

Thomas tore himself away.

The exhilaration shrivelled, all joy in David took a fatal plunge at the cold rage in Thomas’ face.

“Lieutenant Mellenby,” Thomas said quietly (oh, he never raised his voice when he got angry anymore, he grew quieter), “What the fuck did you just say to me right now?”

David felt tears threatening to spill at last. He was no longer light. He was miserable and anchored to this carpet, his body a lead weight. “Thomas...”

“You have no right. No right at all. How dare you? How... dare you? After Ettersberg? After all you’ve caused to happen?”

“I only meant...”

“There’s the door. Leave now, before I start throwing fireballs.”

[ipurpleyou1993]

My thoughts on:

Melting Me Softly

Starring: Ji Chang Wook/Won Jin-ah/Yoon Sae-ah

- For those who do not know, this series is Ji Chang Wook's comeback entry since his military service ended. So, safe to say, many have high hopes for the series. 😊

- How hard is it to lose the one you love - in this case, death? Bez, it's super hard.

This gets even harder when you do not have proof of their disappearance and ONLY ASSUME that you've lost them.

Imagine the pain of having to mourn a loved one that you are still hoping to find alive in the back of your heart and mind.

This may sound like a spoiler but I literally cried on the second episode. ANG SAKIT! 😭🥺🙈

- Family FIRST. We all love our family. I love how this series shows us that no matter our age, we will all still be someone's child and sibling. We protect and love our own. And we will do all things we can to support them.❤️

- Pateince is key. 💯 So for the pilot episode, I had so many questions in mind already. I found it very confusing. Although I have to admit, it will all make sense as the episodes progress. Hence the first sentence - PATIENCE IS KEY. 🙈🤣

The Gist:

The series is about two individuals who entered a cryonics experiment during the 1980s for a variety show.

It was intended to be a 24-hour experiment but due to unfortunate circumstances, they woke up 20 years after.

In total, there were 6 participants in the experiment. But only two agreed to show their face for the viewership of the variety show.

One of the two participants to to agree is Ma Dong Chan. He is the male lead in the story and is played by Ji Chang Wook

Ma Dong Chan is a renowned director during his time. He is known to have the golden touch for all the shows he directed turned out to be certified blockbusters. He participated in this program because he is the kind of director to do all-bizarre things to prove a point. He believes that it is possible to change the world through positive and innovative media platforms.

The second participant is Ko Mi Ran. She is the female lead in the story and is played by Won Jin Ah.

Ko Mi Ran is every woman out there - she does everything for her family. Especially for her special needs brother. The reason she participated in the experiment is for her brother. You'll find out more when you watch it. 😉

The story begins after they wake up 20 years post-freezing. In 2 decades, everyone and everything changed, though for the two of them, it was literally just yesterday.

See how they cope with the change and how things progress from there in the series. 💜

What I liked about the series:

- First of all, JI CHANG WOOK! ❤️ We all know that Ji Chang Wook is a certified OPPA. No questions asked. From Healer to The K2 to Empress Ki, he made us fall in love with him - ALL THE FREAKIN' WAY. 😍❤️😊

I love how Ji Chang Wook got the role of an angsty director this time. It suits him - with his charming looks and seductive charisma. 😉❤️😋 This just goes to show that due to his great acting skills, any role just works for the man.

In reference to his director role, I love how he always says (as Ma Dong Chan) that he became a variety show director to give the people something to look forward to amidst all the negativity the world brings.

And when asked: Why do you go extreme measures for a variety show?

He always answers: Because I have to do what others are afraid of doing to make a change.

You see? He gave inspiring a new meaning. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

But seriously tho, it's so hard not fall in love with JCW. He's just... well look at that 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

- This is my first encounter with Won Jin Ah. I've got to say, the image of a frail woman suits her. She's sooooooo thin - LITERALLY. Hahahaha! I think one strong wind blow can affect her balance. 🙈😂🤪 But I appreciated her acting. Good job, girl! 💯

I like her character's feistiness, tho. She looks frail but her will power is strong. She will do everything in her power to support her family. Isn't she all of us? Hahahaha! Go for #GirlPower! 💜👍🏻💯

- I love the friendship of Ko Mi Ran, Kyung Ja and Young Seon. Despite the 20 year hiatus on their friendship, they still managed to chat and bond as if it was just yesterday.

Don't we all wish we have this kind of relationship? One that can withstand long pauses and boys coming in between. #SANAALL 😊❤️👍🏻

- The chemistry. ❤️ I've read reviews saying that JCW and WJA lack the connection required to make a kilig series. But I saw the chemistry. There's just so much push-and-pull going on that it makes the heart cringe and wonder - ANO NA BA TALAGA?!?!

- THE KISSING SCENE THAT WAS THE TALK OF THE TOWN!!!

SPOILER ALERT!

Check out this link👇🏻👇🏻

https://youtu.be/zveSVEdFuyI

undefined

Now we all understand why it trended that time. Who wants to go next?? MEEEEEEEEE! 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️

- I SUPER LOVE THE OST - BGM included. 💯👏🏻🎉 Tell Me, Please by Yeonjung is my personal pick! 😉😊👍🏻

As previously mentioned, I love all the music pieces included in the OST. They're all full of emotions suited for every scene it was played. Kudos to the music team of the series. Gujab! 👍🏻👏🏻🎉💯

I also liked the snippet of Can't Take My Eyes Off of You on the first episode (with Ko Mi Ran dancing in her PJ's). Hihi. ❤️😊💯

Link will be provided below for easier reference. 😊

- I love beautiful relationships between FAMILY. I liked how the family relations were displayed in the series - it was genuine and sincere. Makes you want to be a part of their family. 😊

- I love the comedy stint between Ma Dong Chan and his niece, Ma Seo Yoon.

In reality, it's actually rare for older people to listen to kids her age. But she is well-versed when it came to technological advances, what's in and what's not, and just LIFE in general. I found it funny because Ma Dong Chan actually listens to her and she MAKES A LOT OF SENSE - actually, she's MORE SENSIBLE than the adults in her home. 🤣🤣🤣

- I also liked the funny realization Young Seon had about her husband and son. This can be considered one of the best scenes in the series - for me at least. Hahahaha!

In reality (in the series), it is not intended to be funny. But it came across as funny to me because...well...20 years has passed and it is history repeating itself - literally. 🤣🤣🤣

Cons:

- Honestly? I found the beginning of the series very NOISY. All the shouting was literally banging my eardrums while watching. I almost skipped the first episode because of this. 🤷🏻‍♀️🙅🏻‍♀️

Also, the first episode was trying to be funny - and when I say trying, it was very evident that they were trying. Good thing tho, Ji Chang Wook was able to comvince me to continue watching despite this. 💁🏻‍♀️

- The 20-year love story gap did not quite work for me. Was too awkward to watch. Personal opinion, tho. 💁🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

- The acting appears to be too theatrical for me. It's soooooo exaggerated especially with the scenes of Hyeon Gi and Hong Seok. 🙅🏻‍♀️

- The villain's existence is somewhat "short-lived" and all over the place.

You're kinda expecting a lot of action since the series progresses in such a way but then, it turns out to be a "meh" ending for the villain. Then, the continuation of the evilness seemed as though it was put there just for the sake of it. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don't want to compare, but I'm so used to korean villains who are so agitating that they make you cringe on so many levels.

Soundtrack:

Melting Me Softly OST Playlist

Just a bonus clip since I really loved the scene this was played in 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

https://youtu.be/AiIBKcd4m5Q

undefined

There goes my thoughts. Happy reading and watching! 💜

CTTO - Photos/GIFs/Music

[hufflly-puffs]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Chapter 17: A Sluggish Memory

“Late in the afternoon, a few days after New Year, Harry, Ron and Ginny lined up beside the kitchen fire to return to Hogwarts. The Ministry had arranged this one-off connection to the Floo Network to return students quickly and safely to the school.” – But what about those students who don’t have access to the Floo Network, like Hermione and other Muggleborns? And it also doesn’t seem like they all arrive at the same time, so McGonagall has students dropping in her office all day.

So Apparation lessons cost no less than 12 Galleons? And the fact that Ron not mentioned this once, just like he didn’t talk about his new potions book costing 9 Galleons, really must mean the Weasleys have more money now.  Though I think it is interesting that Apparation is something you don’t learn at school but through a Ministry approved course. Bit like driving lessons then. And just like them perhaps not every student can afford them.

“‘I forgot you’d already done it … I’d better pass my test first time,’ said Ron, looking anxious. ‘Fred and George did.’ ‘Charlie failed, though, didn’t he?’ ‘Yeah, but Charlie’s bigger than me,’ Ron held his arms out from his body as though he were a gorilla, ‘so Fred and George didn’t go on about it much … not to his face, anyway …’” – Despite the fact that the twins are no longer at school Ron still thinks about their reaction and compares himself with them. But I guess lifelong unhealthy habits are hard to get rid of.

“Lost in visions of this happy prospect, he flicked his wand a little too enthusiastically, so that instead of producing the fountain of pure water that was the object of that day’s Charms lesson, he let out a hoselike jet that ricocheted off the ceiling and knocked Professor Flitwick flat on his face. ‘Harry’s already Apparated,’ Ron told a slightly abashed Seamus, after Professor Flitwick had dried himself off with a wave of his wand and set Seamus lines (‘I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick’).” – You know I don’t think we appreciate Flitwick as a character enough.

“‘It was Fudge’s idea originally, you know. During his last days in office, when he was trying desperately to cling to his post, he sought a meeting with you, hoping that you would give him your support –’ ‘After everything Fudge did last year?’ said Harry angrily. ‘After Umbridge?’” – You know, now that I think about it, Fudge never actually apologized, which was the very least he could do. He would have if he had ever had the chance to meet Harry, but only to get him on his side. I’m not sure Fudge actually felt remorse for the way he treated Harry. He created his own version of the truth, where he justified all of his actions.

“‘So, sir,’ said Harry, in what he hoped was a polite, calm voice, ‘you definitely still trust –?’ ‘I have been tolerant enough to answer that question already,’ said Dumbledore, but he did not sound very tolerant any more. ‘My answer has not changed.’” – I think this is the only time Dumbledore is strict with Harry. But it is a question of trust. Just as Lupin told Harry over Christmas: the question is not whether to trust Snape but if you trust Dumbledore’s judgement of Snape’s character. And obviously Dumbledore can’t tell Harry why he trusts Snape; in the end only Snape could make the choice to share this information with Harry. But Dumbledore asks Harry to trust him and Harry can’t, not entirely, not when it comes to Snape, and this causes a small rift between them.

“‘No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.’ Dumbledore paused and looked enquiringly at Harry, who had opened his mouth to speak. Here, again, was Dumbledore’s tendency to trust people in spite of overwhelming evidence that they did not deserve it! But then Harry remembered something … ‘But you didn’t really trust him, sir, did you? He told me … the Riddle who came out of that diary said “Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did”.’ ‘Let us say that I did not take it for granted that he was trustworthy,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I had, as I have already indicated, resolved to keep a close eye upon him, and so I did. […]” – There is a clear parallel to Snape here. Same as he did with young Tom Dumbledore decided to give Snape a second chance, because everyone deserves one. And yet, it is possible Dumbledore never trusted Snape a hundred percent either; at least he kept a close eye on him as well. His refusal to give him the position for the DADA teacher for so long indicates this, because Dumbledore wanted to keep Snape away from the Dark Arts as much as possible. Unlike Tom Riddle though Dumbledore knows that Snape feels remorse for his actions, and he knows the very reason why, and in the end this is why he puts the ultimate trust in Snape, telling him about the Horcruxes, asking Snape to kill him, trusting Snape to play his role in Dumbledore’s big plan even after Dumbledore’s death.

“‘I have not been able to find many memories of Riddle at Hogwarts,’ said Dumbledore, placing his withered hand on the Pensieve. ‘Few who knew him then are prepared to talk about him; they are too terrified.” – This indicates that those people do know that Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort. However I always had the impression that Hagrid never knew that Tom Riddle and Voldemort are the same person, and that Voldemort himself did the best to leave his past behind him, in changing both his name and face, creating a completely new identity. Perhaps those people who knew him back then, knew him as Tom Riddle, are right to be terrified, because the secret to defeat Voldemort is in his past, in those very few unguarded moments, before the man became a monster.

“Finally he was forced to accept that his father had never set foot in Hogwarts. I believe that it was then that he dropped the name for ever, assumed the identity of Lord Voldemort, and began his investigations into his previously despised mother’s family – the woman whom, you will remember, he had thought could not be a witch if she had succumbed to the shameful human weakness of death.” – I think human life in itself is defined by the fact that it will end. And knowing that our time is limited gives it value in the end. But I think Voldemort perhaps did define himself to be above humans. Being a wizard already made him special, and even among other wizards he was special, with his heritage, with his abilities. But even wizards die, even magic can’t prevent death, not until you are ready to sacrifice your soul. (And what’s a human without a soul?) And so Voldemort created himself and shaped himself into something barely recognizable as a human being, because if you are no longer human you can longer die. But when he does die in the end the question is as what.

I do wonder if Morfin put one and one together and realized that Merope gave birth to a son who turned out to be a wizard, or if he was simply too drunk (and dumb) to realize the truth.

We do learn two very importing things about memories in this chapter: you can implant a false memory into the mind of someone else and you can alter your own memory. Therefore not even memories can be a reliable source. They can be changed, erased or overwritten, and this again is another case of abusing consent. We are made of our memories and to take them away, to change them or to implant us false memories changes fundamentally who we are.

Also Dumbledore says he gained Morfin’s real memory through Legilimency, so Morfin did not give Dumbledore his memory freely. It is possible he agreed that Dumbledore could use Legilimency on him, otherwise the whole thing is quite problematic, no matter Dumbledore’s intentions.

“‘You are quite right – they can detect magic, but not the perpetrator: you will remember that you were blamed by the Ministry for the Hover Charm that was, in fact, cast by –’ ‘Dobby,’ growled Harry; this injustice still rankled. ‘So if you’re under age and you do magic inside an adult witch or wizard’s house, the Ministry won’t know?’” – Remember in book 4 when Hermione used a spell (I think it was ‘Lumos’) during the Quidditch World Cup, after the mass panic had broken out, and nothing had happened to her? Now we know why. There were so many wizards and witches there, all of them using magic, that it was impossible to trace that spell back to her (and Hermione probably knew that because she had read it somewhere). But considering this, the rule that forbids underage wizards and witches to use magic, is stupid. Basically every child in a magical household could get away with it, though I wonder how many of them know about it. Earlier Ron did complain over Christmas that he could not use magic to help him peeling sprouts for Christmas dinner. And if you, like Harry, are the only wizard within your neighbourhood every bit of magic will be traced back to you, even if you are sometimes not responsible.

“Harry noticed that the contents proved difficult to empty into the Pensieve, as though they had congealed slightly; did memories go off?” – Imagine it though, all those memories with little ‘best before’ labels.

“His right hand lay negligently upon the arm of his chair; with a jolt, Harry saw that he was wearing Marvolo’s gold and black ring; he had already killed his father.” – Not sure if the opening of the Chamber of Secrets happened before or after the murder of his remaining family, but Riddle leaves school and has already committed four murders. What is interesting is that he only learns now about Horcruxes, after he had killed his father and grandparents. So is it possible to create a Horcrux even some time after the murder, not just in the process of it?

“It is, as you will have noticed, very crudely done, and that is all to the good, for it shows that the true memory is still there beneath the alterations.” – I wonder if you can erase a memory for good. Dumbledore was able to find Morfin’s real memory underneath a false one, and it is the same with Slughorn: the real memory is still there. Despite both Riddle and Slughorn being very talented wizards they could not fully erase/change a memory. I wonder however what it does to you and your mind if the real memory is still there, but hidden, what kind of trauma that can cause.

“‘He [Slughorn] is much more accomplished at Occlumency than poor Morfin Gaunt, […].” – This does make it sound like Dumbledore took Morfin’s memory against his will.

“‘No, I think it would be foolish to attempt to wrest the truth from Professor Slughorn by force, and might do much more harm than good; I do not wish him to leave Hogwarts.” – So Dumbledore does not want to use force on Slughorn because it is morally wrong but because he is afraid Slughorn might leave (though it is possible he is simply afraid Slughorn will become a target again outside Hogwarts). But clearly Dumbledore thinks the end does justify the means.

Also, Dumbledore does the very same as Scrimgeour, he uses Harry for his own means. He might be more open about it his intentions; he told Harry he needed him to get Slughorn back to Hogwarts in the first place and now he needs him to get the real memory from Slughorn. And perhaps it is the fact that he acknowledges that he needs Harry, that he uses him, that makes Harry agree to do what he is told. Harry trusts Dumbledore and his trust is repaid with honesty (as honest as Dumbledore can be with Harry at this point).

[mymelancholiesblues]

My extensive analysis in why RE4 is the top-tier Aeon game

This will be a long ride (seriously though, this have around 9.453 words), so grab a cup of tea (or coffee, depending on your personal preference, of course), sit comfortably and read through this peacefully because Resident Evil 4 is my favourite game and I plan to finally thoroughly explain why. And, for that, first, I intend to contextualize every single prior point with the proper attention they need.

As we’re already sick to death of knowing, Leon and Ada are introduced on this franchise in Resident Evil 2. This is a game originally from 1998, the very end of the 90s, and despite clearly possessing superior quality if compared to the script of the previous game and first instalment in the franchise, it’s still unquestionably a game of its time, and, particularly, of its genre.

We’re talking about the B science fiction and horror hybrid genre: zombies. This is the sort of horror that is frequently campier than the rest since – and let’s all agree over this – zombies per se are not that terrifying. It’s actually their effect on mankind, on human reaction and on how human beings will deal with the gore and all the fairly specific situations this type of horror puts them in that really terrifies us – it’s different from ghosts or demons, for instance. That’s why, inevitably, every exercise of fiction on this genre will ultimately focus on conflicts between non-infected human beings, their greed, how they’re capable of displaying their most monstrous side in these circumstances, and so forth. You can have a read on the “zombie culture” subject and its origins here.

Moreover, Resident Evil is a Japanese game, which is significant, since we should know that cultural repertoire can greatly modify the way storytelling explicits itself, the way it unfolds and develops towards its conclusion, and especially which messages it chooses to prioritize and how those messages are decided to be delivered to the audience. Therefore, even though Resident Evil has fallen upon the clichès its genre generally falls onto (the main plot conflict focus now is much more on how bioterrorism is one of the worst products of the capitalist regime and the endless greed of imperialist countries), the narrative dramatic throughline of the franchise continues to be that of ending in a hopeful, optimistic note.

Back to RE2 OG being a product of its time, however, and characters like Leon, Claire, Ada and Sherry being introduced there: on characterization terms, while these early franchise games weren’t necessarily weak and incompetent in presenting those characters, they were definitely quite limited on how they could do so.

Furthermore, on the account of a not yet established videogames voice-acting trade, and primarily on the rough Japanese-to-English translation efforts that weren’t as easy and accessible as they are today, nor was the “entry” of Japanese entertainment production into the North-American market a normalized matter as globalization wasn’t such a stable and clear concept then as it is today, many typical Japanese storytelling devices, such as certain scenes originally carrying a heavy significance to them and meanings that we couldn’t even presume if we weren’t already part of their culture or had some degree of introduction to it, – eg, a man promising to protect a woman plot-situation: in Japanese storytelling, this is a trope that has more clear romantic undertones than it would have in the West (check here and here), just like childhood friendships carry different implications for their cultural baggage (it’s a typical romantic trope for them; take a look here and here) – were lost in translation and could easily come off as “corny” to the western public if the translator (and the voice actor) wasn’t careful in conveying the originally intended text and subtext messages. And they rarely were.

Leon wasn’t a complex or even a “complete” character back then as he is today. At the time of his introduction, in RE2 OG, he was a more straight play of The Paragon trope. Are you familiar with those more simplified and basic characterizations of, say, Captain America and Superman? Leon was like that! In fact, Leon was the first attempt of an entirely Japanese crew in making a North-American blond police officer, an idealist and overall nice guy that didn’t have behavioural issues like Chris did. So, Leon was an “upright” and “altruistic” guy. That’s what his character comes down to in his introduction. Those two words.

On the other end, we had Claire, who was an “independent” and “brave” young woman (let’s keep those describing terms in mind because they are important!). In her scenario, we would have a journey companion, Sherry, and in Leon’s, it would be Ada.

It’s really important to point out here that when they were developing these characters, coming up with their design and everything, the staff tried to make Ada’s colour palette contrast and complement Leon’s one, and Sherry’s was also thought out to do the same to Claire’s. So much so that we can see that in contrast to Claire’s fuchsia/magenta and black, we have Sherry’s cobalt blue and white. And to Ada’s deep red we have Leon’s navy blue (check this).

Now, about those “describing terms” I mentioned earlier. Similarly to the colour palettes case, staff’s primary purpose while characterizing the two extra journey characters was so that they would offer some sort of “disfigurement” of the basic traits that directed the main characters. Claire is brave and independent even though she is barely nineteen years old and grew up as an orphan, thanks mainly to her older brother’s affection and dedication, whom she actually happens to be looking for in this game. Sherry, however, has to survive independently in Raccoon because she has been neglected by her remarkably still alive scientist parents and has to be brave because she always had to fend off for herself. It’s just like Claire, but upside down.

Leon, on the other hand, upright and altruistic, meets Ada, who seems to have shady means to achieve her goals, and shows a skeptical, cynical demeanor on how she regards others. She’s Leon’s upside down as well.

In the original script, there’s a lot of “mamoru” being used – from Claire to Sherry, who later becomes a maternal figure to the girl (and forms a solid bond with her), and from Leon to Ada (and here is where we should remember that the “promise to protect” trope can oftentimes have romantic connotations in Japanese culture if it’s used in a given context and combination of circumstances).

As I’ve already said, the original game, a product of its time, relied more on “soap drama” writing than on a more organic text development, since it needed to be concise, delivering the message without losing its dramatic appeal to the plot. Thus, everything escalates too fast – the in-game time is short and the script needs to be on par with its pace.

We get to know the characters we have to know, the text then assumes we’re sufficiently familiar with the basic paradigms associated with fiction and storytelling so we should unconsciously recognize what certain parts will mean without needing anyone to babysit us through it. It’s clear, then, that the independent and brave young woman will be accompanied by the neglected and frightened little girl and they’ll form an adoptive mother-and-daughter bond, just like it’s obvious that the upright and altruistic guy will be glued by the shady and cynical woman’s side and they’ll team up and eventually fall in love.

However, the translation process was unpolished, as I said, so the dialogue lines, especially, came off a bit silly and occasionally somewhat unnatural to the audience – quite cheesy indeed. Nonetheless, as I also stated previously, all of those dialogue lines made sense within their own context since the game’s pacing isn’t bad and the events that transpire within it accompany said rhythm, are dictated by it. Within the plot, Leon and Ada, in addition to being attracted to each other, just spent the last almost 4 to 7 hours together, surviving together, helping each other, so of course they’ll fall in love. Just as it’s expected that Claire will feel responsible for Sherry’s life and Sherry will start seeing her as an adoptive mother figure. This little girl was neglected by her parents! And Claire saved her!

We can see those two dynamics as mirrored reflections (in which those two pairs of mirrors – Leon and Ada, Claire and Sherry – function extremely well as they contrast and complement each other), but also as a journey in which the sidekick is the “shadow” (I’d like to thank @madamoftime​ for her incredible analysis on this subject and for providing me with the sources to quote on this topic: here and here) of the protagonist. Ada is Leon’s shadow because he needs to “kill the boy and let the man be born” (as Maester Aemon advised Jon in ASoIaF — A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 7, Jon II) for this new world he’ll be entering after surviving Raccoon. He needs to be a little more like Ada.

But Ada also needs to be a bit more like Leon, so he’s her mirrored reflection / shadow as well. She needs to start believing in mankind a little more again if she wants to continue in this franchise narrative and make individual progress within it.

Oh, and mirrors are quite important imagery in Japanese folklore (check here), its mythology, etc. RE2 OG does a stupendous job in making use of that.

“The mirror hides nothing. It shines without a selfish mind. Everything good and bad, right and wrong is reflected without fail.”

We have a game story with two sets of characters that manage to tick all the boxes of what should be a complete and comprehensive narrative for them. Complete and that provides closure in itself. We didn’t need a sequel to presume that Leon and Ada would probably meet again, since following Ada’s apparent “death”, the audience knows that she’s helping him against the final boss and in a fashion that he’s also led to suspect it. Claire and Sherry too: we know they’ll take care of each other.

Even so, RE: CV serves to settle Claire’s saga and tie up her journey’s loose ends. In it, she finds her disappeared brother. (And this is precisely why I have my criticisms on the fandom’s constant vehemence in always demanding that she should come back for another cameo: Claire is one of the few characters that had the privilege of having her story thoroughly resolved.)

But then, Leon remained a pending mystery: what happened to him? Had he ever got the chance to confirm his (and ours) suspicions on Ada’s status? Plus: how did it happen? Have they ever met again?

you’ve haunted me all my life through endless days and countless nights there was a storm when I was just a kid stripped the last coat of innocence   you’ve haunted me all my life you’re always out of reach when I’m in pursuit long-winded then suddenly mute and there’s a flaw in my heart’s design for I keep trying to make you mine

(You’ve Haunted Me All My Life – Death Cab For Cutie)

RE4 comes out under this excellent reason: answering those questions. In addition to providing a new chapter to this famous and profitable franchise, it would also serve to solve Leon’s pending matters, something that Claire, his companion protagonist in the game that he was introduced on, got, but he didn’t. And look: this unresolved conflict is precisely what drives RE4’s dramatic throughline – so much so that if we think about the main saga plot to which these two games should be supposedly subordinate to, both RE:CV and RE4 seem a little… isolated? Because they are journey conclusions for these two specific characters.

Anyway, Leon is now a government agent (a career unkindly imposed onto him by the actual government, by the way, who wouldn’t just accept that the man simply moved on with his life while possessing the knowledge to what really happened in Raccoon) on a rescue mission six years after surviving Raccoon City’s incident. He’s now more cynical and is taking advantage of somewhat questionable means: being a secret agent for a corrupt government so he can achieve his own goals: put an end to bioterrorism and companies like Umbrella. He’s a little more like Ada.

And from the beginning of RE4 all plot aspects are set in a way that build our expectations over Leon and Ada’s reunion: the church bell that mysteriously rings in a suitable timing and saves Leon’s life at the very beginning of the game. The silhouette in red that appears outside the window and fires twice against the guy who is stomping his chest and prompts Leon’s to comment on how familiar the stranger figure felt (“Woman in red… Somehow so familiar.”). Everything, EVERYTHING that happens in RE4 is a carefully thought slow-burn set-up for us to wait and expect for their encounter.

Let’s not forget that the Anonymous Letter that he finds after passing out in that hut after the fight against Del Lago it’s hers (in the Japanese script, the personal pronouns are feminine, which prevents it to be a note written by Luis; source). In Project Umbrella’s translation of said file, we notice that she laments the fact that Leon is infected beyond her current capability to help him. Oh, and there’s also Salazar stating that he needs to deal with two rats before properly worrying about Leon, and Leon then wondering who’s the other intruder besides himself and Luis – which serves to further increase the audience’s expectations.

see her come down through the clouds I feel like a fool I ain’t got nothing left to give nothing to lose   so come on love draw your swords shoot me to the ground you are mine I am yours let’s not fuck around

(Draw Your Swords – Angus & Julia Stone)

When they do finally meet again (after we, the audience, already suspect that for at least three different situations Ada’s been watching and helping him) is this tension-charged scene. The scene backdrop, thoughtfully designed, is a monarchy style couple’s bedroom; as part of its decoration, there’s a painting, a gigantic and impossible-not-to-see one, that turns out to be Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (check here); and even the mysterious woman’s dress, evoking a Chinese red qipao, has butterflies prints (check here). This is essentially the perfect setting fans have unconsciously hoped for: we’re internally screaming “finally! they’re going to solve their U.S.T. and consummate their feelings!” After all, it’s a couple’s bedroom decorated with a purposefully noticeable painting (the only one large enough to be undoubtedly identifiable in a cutscene) which its symbolism and analogies are famously related to love and sex, and even the woman’s dress carries references to a Chinese romantic allegory that, curiously enough, strongly fits with them.

Ada enters the scene laying her gun barrel against Leon’s back – close, too close, in a staggeringly explicit intimacy imagery, one that we’d normally expect from a 007 movie, for instance –, and the subsequent dialogue follows the same tone: with her ordering him to surrender in a voice of velvet (“Put your hands where I can see them.”) and him throwing back a provoking bluff – also full of sexual innuendo – that serves only to advance their competition for dominance (“Sorry, but following a lady’s lead just isn’t my style.”). Oh Leon, you’re so full of shit and you’re well aware of it, as well as Ada is (“Put them up now.”). For them, this is all foreplay. (And that’s why Leon’s first response in this scene doesn’t bother me. I find it to be consistent with his characterization, he understands what’s going on in this situation and decides to join in the game.)

After their own little – and slightly anticipated – dance, and Leon’s little tip (“Bit of advice – try using knives next time. Works better for close encounters.”) – that uncoincidentally will come in hand later on in this game in another scene charged with this same unresolved sexual tension, and in which our expectations get likewise subverted –, Ada raises the curtains, folds her cards (“Leon. Long time, no see.”).

We all hold our breaths.

But Leon… Well, Leon is resentful, bitter, angry.

Naturally, since, for 1) although he, like us, certainly had a hunch for the identity of whoever put a gun on his back, he couldn’t be quite sure yet, and 2) this is the woman he has spent the past 6 years obsessing about to which end she came off to (later, a spin-off in the franchise will confirm his obsession for us, but nevertheless, one of Leon’s next lines in-game is already enough for us to deduce it), only to find out that the latest news pointing at her happened to be related “just” to the most infamous figure in the recent history of bioterrorism.

Ah, and also he spent the past 6 years dealing with the guilt and trauma of she possibly being dead, which he certainly considered to be his personal failure in preventing. So, there’s that. 

Therefore, Leon ruins the atmosphere – and all of our previous expectations together with it – and confronts her (“Ada… So it is true.”) Feeling hurt, betrayed, pissed off. But resigned too. Even when she pretends she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, clearly dismissive of how long it has been since their last exchange (“True? About what?”), his tone is huffy, sullen, when he states to her (doesn’t question, rather, chooses to assert) that it’s true, she’s affiliated with Wesker (“You, working with Wesker.”) And how does he know that? Did something in his investigations also lead him to presume that she’d probably appear in Spain to get something for Wesker? Then we weren’t the only ones hoping for this reunion, holding our breaths for it? See, we don’t even need a spin-off game to assume that yes, he’s been indeed obsessing about her for the past 6 years. 

When Leon throws this accusation, it comes from a sore spot, a particular personal ache, almost as if this Wesker issue was a betrayal aimed specifically against him. If we didn’t know any better, this scene would almost feel like it’s a couple washing their dirty laundry over the fact that of them is having an extra-marital affair. 

Ada drops her sly, disingenuous facade (“I see you’ve been doing your homework.”) – it looks like he learned the hard way that he should be a little more like her instead of simply diving in blind after all. 

Then, shrinking a bit, in a lower tone, he demands a reason (“Why, Ada?”), and she tosses it back since this is a question that can have a myriad of answers (“What’s it to you?”) to which he finally asks what he wants to know with indisputable clarity (“Why are you here? Why’d you show up like this?”), and something in his tone, the non-verbal stress in his words, gives us the impression of emphasis on “here” and “like this”, almost as if what he really wants to say is “Why not before (way earlier)? Under different circumstances (as a friend, as he wanted her to be)?” After a wry chuckle, it’s her turn to break with our expectations, – since Leon’s question steers the mood of the scene back to one of impending emotional and physical resolution – evading the emotional escalation with a dramatic stunt, but not without promising him that they’ll meet again. 

By the way, resorting to a ruse to get out of there, having thrown her timer flash bomb glasses so she could have a good pretext to withdraw without major impediments – it’s also a writing device to subvert the audience’s expectations here, since they’re naturally placed upon betting that if Ada tries to leave in a conventional, non-theatrical and unconvincing style, Leon is definitely going to make her stay, even if he has to beg her for it.

the angel came to Jacob the room began to glow Jacob asked the angel are you friend or are you foe?   the angel never answered but smote him on the thigh they wrestled through the darkness ‘til morning filled the sky   this thing between us has wings, it has teeth it has got horns and feathers and sinews beneath angel or demon to the truth I am bound and so this thing between us must be wrestled down

(Jacob and the Angel – Suzanne Vega)

We play RE4’s main campaign entirely in Leon’s shoes. It’s only after finishing it and unlocking the extra content that we’ll have access to how Ada reacted after their re-encounter: in a mix of anxiety and concern as Wesker now suspects that she went to meet with Leon and, because of it, is ordering her to kill him so there won’t be any disruptions in her mission (“And that US government lapdog… Leon… if you do happen to encounter him, put him out of commission. We can’t let him interfere with our plans.”). She tries from the get-go to bargain with Wesker that Leon doesn’t have a clue to what’s really happening, claiming that he’s there solely to save Ashley so he shouldn’t disturb, etc. (“He has no idea what’s going on. He’s nothing we need to worry about.”), but well, Wesker isn’t exactly inclined to be convinced (“He’s a survivor of Raccoon City. We can do without the extra distraction. Take him out.”).

So we see her apprehensively sighing his name after Wesker finalizes contact. We even have a brief scene where she observes Leon from afar using a machine-gun to contain another horde of Ganados, whispering to herself an apology to him and explaining why she can’t be helping him (“Leon… I’m sorry, but I can’t be seen with you..”) and if you, the player, try to disregard this by nevertheless attempting to run to where Leon is, the game will stop you with the phrase “If Leon sees me now, I would have to finish him off.”. The game enforces you to respect her decision: she won’t follow Wesker’s orders. 

Actually, even before she re-encountered Leon, from the very BEGINNING of her campaign when she discovers that he’s in this place as well (and murmurs his name when she sees and recognises him), she already realises that she can’t be seen with him or there’ll be trouble. So, when she nevertheless reveals herself to him, what she’s really doing is going against her best judgment and putting them both in danger because she genuinely wants to see him and let him know that she’s there too.

Additionally, this is the most probable reason for her not going after him in the past 6 years. Besides obviously wishing him to have emotional distance to move forward while she herself tried to do it, there was the possibility that she could put him in danger if she went after him. 

Mere seconds after Saddler kills Luis, Wesker comes in contact with her and spares no time in querying if she already had the opportunity to execute Leon (“Have you had a chance to eliminate Leon?”). We know that she did despite her dismissive reply (“Not yet”). She saw him quite a few times after their reunion at the castle. Plus, she knows that he’s right there in the exact same place that she’s now – the castle’s concourse level –, with dead Luis in his arms. She’s well aware of the fact that she could exploit Leon’s shock and vulnerable moment over Luis death to easily kill him undisturbed. 

Wesker realizes this is going to be an arm wrestle with her, so, instead, he proposes that she starts “taking advantage of Leon’s fortuitousness” (“If that’s the case, then maybe we can capitalize on his little lucky streak and take advantage of the distraction he’s causing for Saddler and his followers to retrieve the sample.”). But even this recommended scheme visibly disturbs Ada, as we can notice from her reaction just afterwards. 

Ada, of course, doesn’t cease to aid Leon and advice him in order to make his odyssey easier (even if she can’t accompany him as she did in Raccoon), nor does she stop worrying about the advancing of the Las Plagas infection stage on his body, leaving him a letter (again) over that topic, one signed with an affectionate lipstick mark (source).

The next time they see each other in-game is when, once again, Ada chooses to disregard her own best judgment and assessment of the situation by offering him a boat-ride to the island. A scene also packed with sexual tension, in which even a pun brimming with innuendo is allowed (“Need a ride, handsome?”), but still a much lighter in tone than their first shared one. In this one, Leon is finally close to her physically and, as a result of that, spends the whole trip fidgeting where he’s sitting, blatantly staring at her – to which she furtively glances back and sneakily smiles at him. 

All of it only for our expectations to be shattered a second time: she abruptly halts their short little cruise, given that they already arrived at their set destiny – and the fact that she really needs to go, otherwise Wesker will kill them both –, but not without first flashing her entire thigh to him (a privileged view he doesn’t refuse to savour) and nearly shoving her butt all over his face, as to show us and him that “look, I’m definitely interested, but this isn’t the right place nor the right time”. 

After Leon manages to briefly get Ashley back for the first time on the island, we see a small paper plane flying in through the window. Another note sent by Ada, lovingly identified again, offering tips for Leon’s itinerary to escape (source). 

Krauser’s first question when we see him talking to Ada for the first time is on Leon’s status (“What’s the news on our friend Leon?”), to which Ada’s answer (“He’s not making it easy.”) it’s a blatant and near hilarious lie to the audience. Yeah, it mustn’t be easy being forced to deal with that sort of demand: to kill the guy you love more than your own sense of self-preservation and safety. 

Everything that follows the lift she gave Leon and her exchange with Krauser is to showcase her desperation and the lengths she’s willing to go to keep Leon alive, since Wesker, whom just now seemed possibly satisfied with Leon’s participation in the most recent set of events (“Quite a jolly mess he’s made, that Leon. But all for the better. Saddler’s people have fallen into a panic. Their destruction is only a matter of time now!”) and in spite of her reiterated effort to try to convince him that after Leon rescues Ashley he wouldn’t pose any more threats to the ex-S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team captain’s plans (“Once he gets Ashley back, his job will be finished. He’ll no longer be a factor.”), sent in another agent to assassinate him (“No, I’m leaving Leon to Krauser.”). 

The pronouncement is enough to unsettle Ada and suspend her walk. The urgency to save Leon from Krauser is so high that we see her running after Wesker’s briefing – his order was for her to rush to retrieve the sample (“Hurry up and retrieve the sample.”), but Ada’ hurry is for Leon’s life (“Maybe you’ve forgotten, Wesker… I don’t always play by your rules.”). 

She succeeds in saving him from Krauser, and Leon’s reaction, naturally, is to shout her name, while Krauser is unsurprised by the betrayal (“Well, if it isn’t the bitch in the red dress!”). Ada unceremoniously gives away which side she on in this contest (“Looks like we have the upper hand here.”), and I really enjoy how the scene in which she lowers her gun after Leon dares her to shoot him in RE2R also seems like a visual echo to this one scene in RE4, since Ada chooses him again here – even if that will irreversibly mean trouble for her much sooner than she was prepared for. 

And then, Leon, expressing the enthusiasm of someone who’s already prepared for a hard pass, appeals in a frustrated tone for a resume on their earlier and systematically unfinished conversation – so that they can, at last, have the pending resolution they’re in need (“Maybe it’s about time you told me the reason why you’re here?”), and she rebuffs exactly as he expected her to (“Maybe some other time…”) before leaving him for his own solitary path once again; oh, and this nice detail of having Ada always promising to Leon something for “the next time”, though, is definitely something worth pointing out every time it occurs. By the second time Leon is confronted by Krauser, we have the latter vocalizing what anyone could and would reasonably deduce regarding Leon’s relationship with Ada (“So, you two are all hooked up now, is that it?”). 

Btw, it’s about time that I point out that I prefer the original Japanese version of Ada’s Report #4 (you can access Project Umbrella’s translation here), since its discourse feels more in character for Ada: for example, it’s relevant to emphasize how in this version she pretty much chooses to describe Leon repeating what Wesker suggested about his role in all that’s been happening, almost as if she were taking advantage of the things Wesker said so she can justify in her own assignment reports the help she continuously gives Leon throughout her mission in Spain and why it’s so important for her that he stays alive. What better way of combining business with personal contentment, huh? 

But when we see her interacting with Wesker as he reckons precisely those things she allegedly “thinks” of Leon (his resilience, his luck, the opportunity to take advantage of his protagonism in the ongoing events on the Island and so forth), her following reactions are always of explicitly and adamant indisposition. Which makes me firmly believe that no, Ada never intended to use Leon for anything there in Spain. 

Moreover, if we, as the audience, have paid attention to the story so far, we should know that actually, she’s been only delaying her goals thanks to Leon’s direct and indirect interferences. After all, it’s because of him that Luis takes a detour: in order to deliver the pills that would slow down the effects of Las Plagas on his body; something that ultimately leads Luis to die by Saddler’s hands, once again preventing Ada from putting her hands on the sample and concluding her mission. 

It is Ada who kills Krauser, but that was yet to happen when she reports it as a fact to Wesker (“Krauser is dead.”). There’s a hint of satisfaction and triumph in her voice, even though the guy isn’t dead yet. Wesker goes on to suggest that he’s hoping for Leon to die in the dispute against Saddler, then (“Really… Hmmmmm… Leon doesn’t die easily. That’s fine, we can use him to clean up Saddler for us. We’ll let them fight it out. Neither one of them will manage to come out unharmed.”), and everything in Ada’s body-language and facial expressions indicates her discomfort and impatience with this insistence on this particular subject – Leon’s demise (“Easier said than done.”). 

If she really was using Leon all the time, there wouldn’t be a reason for her to be so clearly annoyed at Wesker’s line of thinking (“Either way, it’s your job to clean up what’s left of them when the fight is over. Don’t forget who is running the show. Whatever happens, we can’t let either of them live to see tomorrow. Our goal is to retrieve the sample. Take out anything that might interfere with our plans.”), to the point that Wesker doesn’t even wait for her response before terminating their conversation. Ada is not complying in this specific topic and this infuriates him; she’ll, actually, – as we know – even go out of her way to intervene in Wesker’s last ideal scenario on this matter: Saddler killing Leon. 

The next scene where we see them together is the one where Leon is stumbling and squirming for some reason that Ada surely has a pretty good guess on which is it, but is hoping to be mistaken (“Leon, you okay?”), while he, on his end, also insists on ignoring what’s truly going on, guaranteeing that of course, everything’s just fine. 

Here we have another subtextual echo to RE2 OG that RE2R also uses to some extent in honour of those who’ve been accompanying the franchise for so long: the calm before the storm – the oddly unagitated moment before we see them saying goodbye and parting ways again –, even if this calm is, in fact, nothing but an illusion they’re briefly sharing. The audience gets anxious without knowing how to pinpoint what’s causing it. 

When Leon comes closer, although everything seems so strange, so out of place, we can see Ada reacting as if anticipating (and welcoming) a kiss. She lowers her guard almost completely, raises her hand gently towards his face and tilts her head slightly to the opposite direction so she can lean onto the upcoming contact. But he’s being controlled by the parasite in his body. For a quick millisecond, she thought she could touch him, kiss him, have that closeness once again – a resolution for emotional and sexual tension in sight. Perhaps they’d even help each other on their path through the island from that point on? 

When she kisses him in RE2R more so he’ll stop arguing and pointing out holes in her just newly-improvised plan than anything else, we have Leon reacting in a kind of dazed and stuporous state – going stiff and not entirely knowing what exactly he should do, looking not only surprised and confused but also hesitant, uneasy. Still, we can notice him adjusting his own weight so he can angle his head better and enjoy the kiss. It’s subtle, but it’s there (take a look). If we think about this in comparison, seeing Ada’s reaction to his approximation while being controlled in RE4 leaves a more bittersweet taste – realizing how much these two truly long for each other’s touch, but how the circumstances only seem to work against them when providing the opportunity to it in a distorted fashion (and observe how much care the producers placed into RE2R so it would be a consistent experience juxtaposed with RE4, RE6 and the rest of the franchise). 

But, well… Mind-controlled Leon almost strangles her and she has to follow that advice he gave her the first time we, the audience, expected them to address the elephant in the room in this game (their much-needed resolution): his tip to preferring knives in such close encounters. Despite the attack not being intentionally his fault and the fact that he just got kicked in the balls for it, Leon immediately asks her to forgive him (“Sorry, Ada…”), and Ada – with her throat still hurting and her voice hoarse – while seeing him swallowing all those pills, immediately urges him so they get rid of the virus in his body. Although she alerted him about the low chances of surviving the surgical intervention that’s needed to remove Las Plagas in a letter she sent prior to this unfortunately awkward meeting, she presses that they both take action (“We have to get that parasite out of your body!”), emphasizing the “we”. Oh, Ada. It’s not like she’ll just accept that his fate is dying a victim of this without trying to fight against it, right? 

Leon’s response, of course, is to prioritize someone else’s well-being and his own mission in helping them (“Yeah… But before that I gotta save Ashley!”) – he’ll do it again for Helena in RE6 under analogous circumstances: following Ada (his recurring element of personal need) vs his sense of duty (everything he believes and stands for) –, and this serves as a reminder to Ada about her own (“Fine… let’s split up…”). For a moment, perhaps, she thought it would be like that night in Raccoon, the two together against anything that threatens their way. As she goes ahead of him and walks out the door, we have a slightly longer focus on Leon’s face looking at the door she just gone through with a wistful expression. Leon’s own expectations weren’t that disparate from Ada’s, but both watched it slipping through their fingers again. 

Her last confrontation with Krauser has a great dialogue as well. She mocks him from the start (“Oh, Krauser. I’m sorry, I jumped the gun when I reported you dead to Wesker.”) since she couldn’t wait to put an end to him with her own hands so Wesker wouldn’t dare using this against her anymore (“Hum…. Think of all the paperwork I’ll have to fill out if you were to show up alive.”) We know that this isn’t just about convenience, but also a matter of self-preservation. Oh, and safeguarding Leon’s life. 

After killing Krauser, her comment is also loaded with double meaning, (“That’s a large thing you have there… But I don’t like it when men play rough…”) a remark that references directly her last run-in with Leon. The man she’s in love with just tried to strangle her (albeit under mind-control) and destroyed the mood that could’ve led them to have some physical closeness after years. 

Afterwards, Ada’s new goal, once again, involves providing help to Leon’s journey – helping him get rid of the parasite in his body and aiding him in completing his mission. That way she can complete her own in peace. 

She assists him in rescuing Ashley from Saddler’s hands – firing against the cult leader a hail of bullets and urging Leon to take Ashley outta the chair she’s imprisoned in and to immediately move out of there with the girl, leaving Saddler to her. All of this not without a cost: Saddler has the upper hand in the confrontation that ensues, and captures Ada. Again, helping Leon proves to be a disadvantageous choice to her agenda: helping him literally turns her into the cult leader’s new hostage. And Ada nearly thought her mission was over when she saw Saddler fall – almost put her hands on the sample. She’d finally be able to help Leon and still complete her own mission without major headaches… but, things are never simple for both of them, are they? 

On Leon’s side, having already removed the parasite off his body and with Ashley safe and sound under his guarding, the conclusion seems obvious: it’s time to go home, right? But he suspects there’s something missing (“Something’s not right.”), and orders Ashley to wait for him exactly where she is – where he knows it’s clear of threats. I particularly enjoy how he doesn’t still know for sure that Ada is being held hostage, but it’s like he catches this sense of foreboding hanging in the air that alerts his instincts about the oddity in the absence of a detail which he cares deeply about, one relevant enough to dissuade him in feeling confident to straightaway leave that place. “The ties that bind” (as per their theme song in RE6), hnm? Their connection is so strong that it’s like a sixth sense warning them whenever one or the other is under risk. As I thought, Capcom’s zeal in writing and developing their recurring plot themes and overall romantic subplot airtightly is infallible. 

And that’s how the cult’s leader baits Leon’s interest: hanging Ada well-tied on a clear view. Of course Leon will go up there to save her, even if he’s already vaccinated against the virus these crazy people injected on him and finally has the girl he should save and bring back home under his care, right? Obviously. He screams Ada’s name in what must be the fifth time in this game, and when Saddler approaches him still trying to exploit the control Las Plagas had over his body, he doesn’t waste any time in playing the cocky hero and provoking his adversary (“Better try a new trick, ‘cause that one’s getting old!”). 

Leon suspends time again, just like he did that dawn in Raccoon on RE2R when he confronted her about her lies and challenged her to shoot him while everything was falling apart around them – now, he does it with the enemy dangerously near them: he stops to check if she’s alright (“You okay?”) and she responds in a teasing but gentle tone (“I’ve been better…”)¹ – it’s really like they’ve stopped time and forgot space again. And that’s why Saddler laughs. 

Leon looks annoyed to be remembered of the presence of the antagonist (“What’s so funny?!”), to which Saddler sees then the opportunity to deliver the obligatory villain’s speech as an elucidation on what’s amusing him (“Oh, I think you know… The American prevailing is a cliché that only happens in your Hollywood movies! Oh, Mr. Kennedy! You entertain me! To show my appreciation, I’ll help you awaken from your world of clichés!!!”). I like how Saddler explicitly mocks Leon and Ada’s little moment since Leon seems to be so overconfident regarding his victory at the end of this long journey precisely because he just saved the woman he’s in love with (something that even makes him forget about time and space for a minute). It really is similar to the Hollywood clichés: the hero achieves ultimate victory when he gets to save his romantic interest – the end. 

Everything that follows from here is just as good: Leon making sure to warn Ada to step aside when Saddler starts mutating (“Ada, stand back!”) and Ada rushing to help him in her own manner, then throwing a Rocket Launcher for him and prompting him to put an end to the confrontation (“Use this!”) – an unmistakable echo to RE2 OG. I’ll harp on the same string again here: I don’t like for one bit that the writers chose to change the circumstances in which she helps Leon with this exact same matter in RE2R so that Leon wouldn’t have had any suspicion on whom might have thrown him that Rocket Launcher to finish Mr. X off; it bothers me a lot since this was a consolidated tradition on the franchise – this specific dynamic between them and Leon being conscious about it. Welp. 

He saves Ada, finally defeats Saddler, and… picks up the Las Plagas sample from the cult’s leader body. Ada’s mission goal. The sole reason for her to be there in the first place.

we fight every night for something when the sun sets we’re both the same half in the shadows half burned in flames we can’t look back for nothing take what you need say your goodbyes I gave you everything and it’s a beautiful crime

(Beautiful Crime – Tamer)

If she doesn’t get her hands on this damn thing right now they’re both going to die, that much she’s certain about. So she points her gun to the back of his head, asks him to forgive her and presses him to hand her the sample (“Sorry, Leon. Hand it over.”) and look, he knows she won’t shoot.

He’s not a fool to infer that she’ll because she just spent at least the last 48 or 72 hours helping him and saving his ass again, and again and again. Come on, think with me: Leon blacks out and spends six hours in that abandoned shack after fighting Del Lago, only regaining consciousness when it’s already dark; it’s dawn when he teams up with Luis in that hut just before he and Ashley follow their way to the castle; he gets stuck inside the castle practically the entire day because when he goes through the mines and the ruins at the back of the castle area it’s almost night again, which means that the amount of time he takes to finally leave the castle after facing Salazar and take Ada’s lift to the island fits the period of dusk to dawn; in the island his journey takes long enough for us to see the sunset again when the Ganados horde destroy the reinforcement helicopter U. S. sent him and he confronts Krauser without Ada’s help; it’s morning when Ada runs off after pointing her gun at his head and taking the sample, leaping into the air so the helicopter picks her up. Therefore, the game implies that we spend a day in each map: the village, the castle and the island – that’s 72 hours. In any case, it’s at least 48 hours.

So, he surrenders the sample to her because deep down he knows she’s bluffing and he also suspects that she must have her reasons.

In addition, let us not forget that their first reunion scene in this game has a slow-motion sequence to show us – amongst other things – that Leon is able to quickly disarm her even when she’s pointing her gun to his back at a distance of maybe less than two inches. As he was forced to become a secret agent to the government, he most certainly went through intensive training over the last six years, so, apart from knowing that Ada would never pull the trigger against him, we also know that Leon, if he genuinely wanted to, could easily disarm her. But he doesn’t. He chooses to give up the sample to her, he chooses her.

RE4 bluntly suggests that Leon is willing to brush aside his principles, ignore his sense of duty and ethics and even possibly betray his country – for her, to choose her. It’s fairly likely that hadn’t they been forced to follow different paths in RE2 OG and RE2R, he would’ve done the same. At the end of the day, that threat of “taking her in”, arresting her, was just bravado. This is clearer for him now, of course – six years after Raccoon, Leon had the distance of time and space to hone his wisdom and balance regarding this inner moral struggle he faces between what he feels for Ada and his consciousness, his integrity; although we all are well aware that at the decision-making time, romanticism would topple rationalism, that he’d let idealism speak louder than his sense of pragmatism. That he’d let her win.

This is how much he trusts her – it could be nothing more than a passionate impulse motivated by a gut feeling, an unexplainable instinct, it may not even be something he consciously desires, but it’s what he always comes down to – and that’s why he took that leap of faith six years ago in defying her to shoot, that’s why now, again, he takes a leap of faith passing her the sample without putting up a fight, because he KNOWS that she won’t shoot, he doesn’t need to challenge her once again so he can prove it to her and to himself. Thus, this is another mirror scene: that’s what he was going to do in RE2 OG and RE2R hadn’t she “died” – they don’t need her pointing a gun at him, that’s just a pretext for both of them. But, back to the story climax in Spain, his only reaction then, is to ensure, as much to himself as to her, that she knows what she’s going for (“Ada, you do know what this is.”). Yes, of course she knows. And he knows she does.

She goes on her way, reassuring him about the fate of the sample (“Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it.”), perhaps to reinforce that he didn’t make the wrong call. Leon’s sixth loud cry for her name is answered with a curt goodbye and a bit of quippy advice (“Gotta go. If I were you, I’d get off this island too.”). And I love how baffled he is to see her pressing the detonator button (“She really pushed it!”). Oh, Leon. He really only gave her the sample because he wanted to, didn’t he? So his bewilderment in seeing her activating the detonator isn’t only adequate but natural. This disappointment doesn’t last long, however, since Ada obviously won’t leave without granting him the key to his escape (“Here, catch.”), rush him to take his path outta that damned place and promise, in her own way, that they will eventually see each other again (“Better get a move on. See you around.”).

Leon’s reaction to the gift she throws him, a sneery remark, expresses his frustration and reveals a bit of his wounded ego (“Very cute.”). Yeah, Leon… this isn’t the moment for you two to have a resolution to all the emotional and physical hangings you still have. “Maybe some other time.”

shadows follow me but she is always out of reach but she’s my favourite thing to see her hook is my escape a reflection of my fate and she is everything I need, yeah

(Fangs – Night Riots)

Ashley embodies all of us, the audience, when she inquiries about Ada’s identity and her connection with Leon (“So, who was that woman anyway?”), and although he sounds intrigued by her curiosity, he looks as he might have been expecting it (“Why do you ask?”), to which Ashley proceeds reflecting the audience’s expectations and insists (“Come on. Tell me.”). Leon’s answer, strikingly brilliant and unforgettable (“She’s like a part of me I can’t let go. Let’s leave it at that.”), is one that RE2R without any kind of reservation or shame makes visual and textual echo in that scene where Leon complains missing her (“I can’t believe I actually miss her…”) and smiles wistfully – that’s why you miss her, Leon. It’s only at the end of RE4, then, that this 27-year-old Leon finally finds the answer to something that has been haunting him since he was 21.

In Ada’s scenario ending, we can see her exhaling, understandably relieved as the helicopter flies off that hell island: Leon’s alive! And she didn’t have to “die” this time to accomplish both: keep him alive and complete her mission. Everything worked! Everything’s alright.

Another detail that pleases me a lot – and that RE2R ALSO echoed – is that, after seeing him driving the jet-ski with Ashley towards the sunset, knowing that they’re going home, we have one last broadcast with Hunnigan, in which Leon reports to her about succeeding in rescuing Ashley and how he’s currently taking the young woman back home.

Hunnigan congratulates him, cheerfully, (“You did it, Leon!”), and Leon doesn’t dismiss it as a good excuse to flirt with her (“Thanks. You know, you’re kinda cute without those glasses. Gimme your number when I get back.”). Hunnigan’s answer, firm and composed, is point-blank and carries more than one meaning to the audience (“May I remind you that you’re still on duty?”). Remember Claire flirting with him after Sherry’s question offers an opening for that (“That would’ve been one helluva first date, though.”)? And how Leon, visibly embarrassed, trails off in a bland and ambiguous comment that it’s more to himself than to Claire or Sherry (“Yeah, you have no idea…”) at the end of RE2R? His body-language betraying what – actually, who – we know that surely just crossed his thoughts? RE4 had already done that much earlier! When Hunnigan reminds him how he’s still at work detail – thus he shouldn’t be thinking nor saying these kinds of things –, his reaction is to lament how this seems to be his karma (“Story of my life…”), because really, it’s primarily his job and his sense of duty that keeps him from having what he wants most, isn’t it?

We got a pay-off with this game. RE4 delivers everything the audience wanted with each and every scene and concludes Leon’s plot. Just like Claire reunited with her brother in RE: CV, Leon reunites with Ada in RE4 and, at last, finds an answer as to why he couldn’t, why he wasn’t able to move on in the past six years. Also, RE4’s ending promises us that they will meet again, so we didn’t really need RE6 to play its part as a “pay-off” entry. But, since we did get RE6… We carry on with one more satisfying addition concerning them and their relationship, the only difference being that now, according to their body-language throughout the game, they’re more physically intimate (without even weighing in RE: Damn, which implies it more directly).

I think RE2 OG (and now RE2R) and RE4 both do a great job in showing us Leon and Ada going through all the steps in the chemical process of falling in love with each other, while RE6 shows them at a more comfortable stage of “compassionate love” – the everlasting kind of love that no longer is as euphoric, restless and anxious as it was at the beginning (it’s worth taking a look at this biological process I am talking about and its scientific basis here, here, here, here, here and here). Furthermore, this makes me feel confident that Capcom’s writers working on the franchise’s big instalment numbers know really well what they are doing with these two (at least so far) when they have to present further development for them (amen):

“[…] Levels of the stress hormone cortisol increase during the initial phase of romantic love, marshaling our bodies to cope with the “crisis” at hand. As cortisol levels rise, levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin become depleted. Low levels of serotonin precipitate what’s described as the “intrusive, maddeningly preoccupying thoughts, hopes, terrors of early love”—the obsessive-compulsive behaviors associated with infatuation. If love lasts, this rollercoaster of emotions, and, sometimes, angst, calms within [the years]. […] The passion is still there, but the stress of it is gone […]. Cortisol and serotonin levels return to normal. Love, which began as a stressor (to our brains and bodies, at least), becomes a buffer against stress. Brain areas associated with reward and pleasure are still activated as loving relationships proceed, but the constant craving and desire that are inherent in romantic love often lessen. […] there is an inevitable change over time from passionate love to what is typically called compassionate love—love that is deep but not as euphoric as that experienced during the early stages of romance. That does not, however, mean that the spark of romance is quenched […] […] the excitement of romance can remain while the apprehension is lost. For those whose long-term [relationship] has transitioned from passionate, romantic love to a more compassionate, routine type of love, […] it is possible to rekindle the flame that characterized the relationship’s early days. “We call it the rustiness phenomenon.” […] That alone […] may be enough to bring some couples back to those earlier, exhilarating days, when all they could think about was their newfound love.”

Anyway, that’s why I think that all this “aloof RE4 Leon” talk is nonsense. This is the game that was originally thought as a resolution for Leon’s plot in the franchise – that’s why it ends with the “She’s like a part of me I can’t let go.” line (and that’s why this is my forever favourite OTP quote for them). So much so that RE6 really does seems “extra”: we know that by that point they already are more physically intimate, that they see each other occasionally, etc. But Capcom does a good job in exploiting RE6’s potential, since Leon and Ada’s issue was never only attaining physical intimacy nor sorting out their complex emotional connection and feelings for each other, but the seemingly impossibility of them staying together or, at least, finding peace in their own status-quo – a transition to the final, most mature, peaceful and fructiferous phase of romantic love.

Leon can resign himself and, technically speaking, betray his country… But can Ada simply turn her back on everything she’s involved with without this implicating putting Leon’s entire life at risk? Like it happened throughout RE4? This remains their main dilemma, and one that Capcom continues to exploit spectacularly since it’s a structure that doesn’t bore the audience – and no, I’m not contemplating the haters when I say this, I’m referring to the general audience.

My wish for RE8 – or whatever it is the next entry that features them? A resolution to this last major hanging between the two.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, I can only hope this was an interesting, worthwhile and satisfying read. 💓

¹ Also, have you guys seen that DMC5 blatantly makes a reference to this Aeon dialogue with Trish and Dante? (here)

[gascon-en-exil]

FE16 Black Eagles (Edelgard) Liveblogging

Chapters 17-18, minus the colossal amount of Dimitri/Dedue content in the first chapter which I covered at length here.

Altogether I’d consider Edelgard’s last two chapters to be easier than Dimitri’s, in large part to due to far less long range magic. That’s actually quite reasonable in terms of story; as the nation renowned for its magic users - and, by the last chapter of the Lions route, openly allied with the remnants of Those Who Slither - Adrestia would logically field more of them. The knights of Faerghus and the church and Rhea’s “dolls” (more like fantasy-flavored mechs, but that’s what they call them) don’t offer as big a challenge by comparison.

The other obstacles unique to Chapter 18 weren’t much either. The fire makes the map hard to traverse for non-fliers, but it slows down enemies too. Rhea as the Immaculate One has a much smaller attack range than Hegemon Edelgard and only gets one attack per turn, in addition to being a bigger target that’s easier to surround. It makes sense that the climax of this route wouldn’t be as difficult if they used the number of chapters for scaling. The Strike Force has had four fewer chapters to grow compared to the Lions.

I liked that the last chapter plays out on a heavily modified version of the Fhirdiad map used in the Lions route for the Cornelia fight, although this does mean that I only got to see two entirely new maps on this route: the Petra/Bernadetta paralogue and the Tailtean Plains of Chapter 17.

Kill list: other than Dimitri and Dedue’s gay high tragedy, Sylvain and Mercedes in 17, Ashe, Gilbert, Annette, Catherine, and Cyril in 18. Catherine was much easier to take down from range with the fires limiting her movement, whereas Cyril (I thought he died in Chapter 12? I guess not) was surprisingly strong as a wyvern lord packing a brave axe. Wyvern enemies continue to catch me off guard.

Oh, yeah. Rhea shows up on the field in a Seiros cosplay in Chapter 17, but Edelgard one-rounded her (at a weapon triangle disadvantage, no less) and then she and almost all of the reinforcements she spawned with left the map. With everything else going on in that map, the church contribution was quite underwhelming.

Story/Character observations

Let’s get the small stuff out of the way first. There’s a few last bits of monastery dialogue worth noting. Shamir gets in some more heavy subtext re: Catherine, only now they’re enemies and you could potentially have Shamir kill Catherine. Dedue is a bear. Fleche, the girl who tries to kill Dimitri on the Lions route but instead kills Rodrigue, shows up one last time to show how curiously well-adjusted she is on this route after her brother’s death a few chapters earlier. It was interesting to see those two and the NPC general Ladislava show up during exploration and comment on ongoing events. I wouldn’t say it humanizes them too much since the most you get is an NPC fawning over how awesome Ladislava is or more pathos and less torture in Randolph’s death, but it’s appropriate for the alternative perspective this route offers. 

I also need to call attention to a handy scholar NPC who appears in the library every chapter after the timeskip, dispensing info dumps that the books don’t cover and asking us to call into question the authorial intent of those books. Of course he’s obviously biased in favor of Edelgard and the Empire, but it’s a useful addition.

Onto supports. As a means of ensuring that I got the Hubert/Ferdinand paired ending I saved all their other A supports for the last minute, so that’s most of what I saw here. As per usual it’s Ferdinand who gets the more interesting stuff overall, with Hubert being more sedate and needing to be given practical reasons for marrying Dorothea or motivation to stop comparing Petra to Edelgard. Ferdinand’s high points come down even to something as mundane as what he’s drinking in various A supports - tea with Bernadetta, coffee (Hubert’s preferred drink) with Edelgard. Does Hubert/Ferdinand canonically happen before Edelgard/Ferdinand, and this is why the former’s paired ending has Edelgard jealous of them? Ferdinand’s A with Manuela is more theatre queen gushing, but his A with Dorothea walks a fine line between really sweet and really screwed up. Dorothea recalls bathing in a public fountain shortly after her singing talents were discovered and seeing a young Ferdinand staring at her and probably sporting his first erection. This is why she’s so hostile to him the whole time, and as said I don’t know how we’re meant to feel about that, or that this conversation resolves in romance. Or, rather, it would, if they didn’t then jump back to a confused simile about bees that’s now morphed into drones protecting a queen. From what little I know of insects male bees don’t have stingers and so can’t protect anything, so I do believe this metaphor subtly circles back around to lesbianism in the end. Everything with Dorothea inevitably does.

I’ve been neglecting it all this time, but I will say that Bernadetta improves slightly after the timeskip. She screams a lot less in her later supports, and in her dialogue in general she sounds more composed and less prone to immediately hiding herself away. Yay for actual emotional maturation.

I’m going to delicately sidestep the hotly-debated question of whether Edelgard’s goals justify her actions or whether this is in fact a bonafide villain route. The game itself wavers over this question at multiple points, not as shakily as Conquest does but still in ways that feel tonally off. The attempts at humanizing Edelgard by giving her a mundane fear of rats (that she acquired when she was being tortured as a child - totally normal circumstances!) and having her draw sketches of Byleth don’t land because they’re so disconnected from everything else, and her opinion of the religion of Seiros varies constantly. Sometimes she sees the value of spirituality in people’s lives and only takes issue with the corruption of the church, other times - including at the very end, when she’s about to cave Rhea’s head in - she’s declaring that humanity has no need for gods and will be better off without them. Having played her route it’s hard for me to call her a fantasy Protestant even in jest when she’s more of a dystheist (i.e. gods exist, but they are evil antagonistic forces) who will occasionally acknowledge that religion can have a positive impact on a strictly personal level. Even though she lays her plans out for Byleth early on, well before the timeskip, her ultimate aim remains unclear, not helped by the brevity of the epilogue which seems to be standard across all routes - just a short paragraph of text by the narrator over one of those stylized tapestries, cut to turn counts and character endings. Edelgard abolishes the nobility and the church after having conquered the other two nations by military force, and somehow we’re expected to believe that her regime will remain peaceful and stable and not collapse into anarchy in the space of a few years. Sure.

It does not help in the slightest that this route builds up Those Who Slither as a credible threat, only to shove them off onto an unseen postgame conflict. True, I theorized that allowing Claude and his various allies to live on the Lions route sets the stage for a massive Almyran invasion after the credits roll, but that’s more headcanon based on how FE doesn’t like to settle for unambiguously happy and resolved endings. Those Who Slither are the genuine antagonists of this route, and most of what Rhea has actually done is left unexplained. From a Doylist perspective I understand it, I really do: Those Who Slither take the focus for the Deer, and Rhea takes it for the church route, just as Dimitri’s revenge motivation only gets proper attention on the Lions route. However, these four stories are not all occurring simultaneously but are instead essentially AUs of one another, with Byleth choosing their starter Pokémon their house the catalyst for shaping all the events to follow. Looking at this route in isolation though it leaves Edelgard’s grand mission looking highly questionable.

One last thing, because I almost forgot about him: what happened to the Death Knight? He disappears from the game after the timeskip on this route. I assume you see him again if you recruit Mercedes and get her paralogue with Caspar, but it’s strange that one of Edelgard’s most loyal minions from Part 1 doesn’t even warrant a mention during her conquest of Fódlan.

Two routes down and two more to go - time to fear the Deer...’s lack of homoerotic content. Nothing makes me want to play something like knowing all the characters under my control are sexually uncreative prudes.

EDIT: Right, I remembered the DK but not the m!Byleth/Linhardt S rank. That should say something about how not particularly romantic it is. Really, the S rank with Gilbert and the one paired S rank with Alois where Byleth doesn’t marry someone else seem less offensive in light of how little there is to m!Byleth’s one “real” gay pairing. As always, you can get so much more out of conversations when both characters are allowed to speak and emote outside of irrelevant dialogue choices and stiff model gestures.

[longhairpidge]

foundations

So I wanna talk a little bit about Keith’s personal growth as a leader and how grounded he is this season, because I absolutely love it and how it shows how his recovery from personal trauma through the development of a strong relationship with his mother helped him mature in ways that he might not have been able to achieve without her presence.

“I left you once. I’ll never leave you again,” Krolia says when she meets Keith, and though he doesn’t know it at the time, she means it— and she stays. It’s the start of the establishment of a foundation and the kind of solid relationship Keith has never once had in his life, that’s going to change his life forever.

Because Keith is the product of the kind of emotional trauma and abandonment that you wouldn’t want to wish on your worst enemy, and despite his natural talent as a paladin, his drive, and his focus, it isn’t until he has a chance to reconnect with his mother and heal the holes and gaps he’s had in his life that he’s truly able to unlock the potential and confidence that has been buried within him until now.

From the very beginning, Keith is a character of few words, who’s a bit of a mystery and far more a young man of action. He doesn’t talk about his past, he doesn’t talk about his family, he doesn’t talk about who he is or where he came from— all we know is that Shiro has been in his life for a long time and that without him there, his life would have been very different.

Over time, we find out that all of this has to do with the fact that he doesn’t actually have any answers to who he is. He was orphaned at a young age. His mother left before he even knew her. The only thing he has to go on is his relationship to Shiro and now, his duty as a Paladin. There’s a fundamental void of information there; no core foundation he can fall back on to explain who he is, why he is the way he is, or where he came from.

Essentially, Keith is a character whose life has constantly been in flux; the only thing he’s ever known to do is to live in survival mode; and so, he has carved a life out of the only things he knows he can hold onto.

Until the two years he spends alone with Krolia to recalibrate and reflect, the primary way Keith identifies himself is through his relationship with Shiro and his role as a Paladin, because those two things are the only source of consistency he’s ever had in his life. Without those two things, he doesn’t know who he is and he doesn’t know his purpose in life.

When either of those identities are threatened, his entire sense of self identity is completely unended, and things go south really fast. This imbalance puts him at a strong disadvantage and is a big reason why he loses sight of his goals or loses control multiple times:

The Garrison: Though we haven’t seen details for this, we can assume that it was the news of the failure of the Kerberos Mission that resulted in Keith ‘washing out’ of the Garrison— his grief and feeling of loss is so strong that he acts out and is forced to leave. With Shiro gone (and presumably dead), it’s like Keith has no reason to even try or stay. And so he doesn’t. It’s when Shiro crash lands back on Earth that he taps back in and is once again motivated and ready to go; even though he’s been doing his own research on the Blue Lion, it’s Shiro’s reappearance that sort of sets the whole thing off as a group effort, whereas before, he was going about it completely alone.

The Blade of Marmora: This is not a failure- it’s more of a choice that he makes, and though it’s ultimately the right one, it is indicative of where Keith’s priorities ultimately lie. Keith spends literal months trying to figure out where his knife came from, and when he discovers the Blade, he goes through a trial of fire to unlock its secrets, only to readily give it up when he is told his only option is to either choose the blade or to choose Shiro. He chooses Shiro without a doubt. There’s no question in his mind. But even later, when he chooses to be a member of the Blade and leaves Voltron behind, he can’t 100% get behind the ethos of the Blade, as it conflicts with the moral values of Voltron—which prevents him from becoming a fully integrated Blade the way he’s supposed to be. He recognizes this and is uneasy with it, but it’s not until Krolia shows up in his life and he realizes that it’s okay to be his own person and to follow his own moral code.

Piloting the Black Lion: When Keith is initially chosen to pilot the Black Lion, it just doesn’t sit well with him. He can’t accept his responsibility or his new role; he feels as though he’s replacing Shiro, and he just can’t come to terms with it at all. He’s the red paladin, not the black paladin; Shiro is the leader of Voltron, not him. Despite Shiro’s previous efforts to encourage and prepare Keith in the event of something like this happening, he still can’t accept the mantle of responsibility in his new role- doing so would mean accepting that things have permanently changed for Voltron, and Keith is unwilling to do that. And so once it seems like Shiro’s back in action, Keith decides to leave and pursue a longer mission with the Blade of Marmora. Because now even though Shiro is back, his role as a Paladin is no longer clear, especially when ‘Shiro’- who we now know was actually a clone-?questions his judgment and instincts. This is because at this point in his life, Keith is still not confident about his ability to lead, even though he has already proven himself both worthy and capable, if not completely experienced as a leader. He doesn’t question Shiro, doesn’t question whether his instincts are the right one. And so, once again, Keith must recalibrate, find some sort of purpose, and he does so by leaving the team completely to go off on his own.

As you can see, all of these choices that Keith makes are in relation to his relationship with Shiro or his role as a Paladin. And in context, it makes sense that he would make these choices, based on the information he has and his experiences up to this point. He’s restless and unsatisfied, filled with the turmoil of uncertainty of just not knowing what the whole point of it all is. Because if everything falls apart, what does Keith have left?

Nothing, as far as he knows. Keith has no foundation.

No wonder he doesn’t want to pilot the Black Lion. No wonder he doesn’t know who he is without the guidance of his best friend and mentor. No wonder he’s afraid to say or do anything that will alienate the only people he has left in his life.

And then comes Krolia, back into his life, his own mother, a fellow Blade, a Warrior, and someone who knows exactly what it means to have to make tough choices in tough times.

Growth and maturity is without a doubt a combination of nature and nurture. Until this point, Keith has been functioning primarily through his own natural instincts and the mentorship of Shiro— which, while fundamental to his personal growth, is not at all the same thing as the guidance of an actual parent, whose relationship and personal motivations are different from that of someone who really isn’t that much older than you.

It changes everything.

For the first time in his life, Keith doesn’t have to make life or death decisions every day of his life. He doesn’t have to make decisions for a group of people he considers family but isn’t 100% sure he belongs to, doesn’t have to prove his worth to a fellowship of warriors.

He just gets some time, with his own mother, to just be.

For someone who has gone through that level of trauma, that is so healing and therapeutic just by itself.

As the creators themselves have mentioned, these two years allowed Keith to have a genuine bonding experience with his own mother, who understands his perspective in a way nobody else ever possibly could. It gives him perspective. It gives him focus.

There’s a certainty and a groundedness about Keith when he returns, and I can’t help but wonder just how many glimpses of the future Keith saw, and how many memories of the past it was juxtaposed against.

Over two years, both of them would have seen multiple glimpses of past and future. Sitting on the back of the space whale with nothing else to do, Keith would have had the chance to talk through these memories with his mother, to just sit and process the events of his life with an impartial (and loving) person in his life who is truly invested in his personal emotional growth.

We know for certain that he had two years to ruminate over his eventual confrontation with Shiro, though he didn’t know what it would bring, and it’s almost certain that he would have talked about it with Krolia, and he ultimately is prepared and calm when the time finally comes to face him.

It’s a stark contrast compared to when Keith goes through the Blade of Marmora trials, when we get a glimpse into his deepest fears. Shiro confirms the worst inner fears he has about himself and it cuts him to the core, even though it’s just a hologram.

He immediately reverses course:

Compare to now:

Keith is completely and utterly unfazed.

Even though ‘Shiro’ is saying crueler, meaner things than ever before, Keith has not only been waiting for this and anticipating it for two years, he has no reason to believe a single word. His mother has been by his side, proving every word of it wrong. 

Keith’s only resolve now is to bring Shiro back with him. He knows the truth. He no longer has any inner conflicts that could even make him for a second consider that the cruel words being thrown at him could have even an iota of truth.

He is dauntless now. Because he finally has a foundation.

And in the end, he confidently leads the battle against Lotor and has no hesitation in stepping into the role he was always meant to play, but wasn’t quite ready before.

With his mother (and his cosmic wolf!) by his side, Keith is far more mature, confident, and ready to take on his responsibilities as the leader of Voltron.

I can’t wait to see what he does next.

[whitewolfofwinterfell]

thank you so much for those phoebe/cole posts! just warmed my heart so much! maybe moved me to tears a bit. :) what do you think about dexter/brian? and grindeldore! and anything you want with charlie from lost? and boone/locke? thank you! you're so sweet.

Aw, you’re welcome. And thank you so much

As always I’m placing my response under the cut, because it got long (at this point I think we’ve established it’s impossible for me to ever give short responses haha).

Dexter and Brian

I’m assuming this means platonically? I know that some fans shipped them as a crackship, but I was never one of those people. I love dark ships and I’m not averse to incestuous ships either, but it’s too far even for me lmao. I don’t have that much of an opinion on these two. I find their connection interesting, but because it was only really in the first season (and a little bit in season 5 when he hallucinated him) I don’t have strong opinions on it. I think Brian is the literal representation of the darkest version of Dexter or his “Dark Passenger”. Because the thing is with Dexter, despite him being a serial killer and all his repeated spiel about being evil and not having any feelings or compassion, we see that that’s clearly not the case. His humanity grows more and more throughout the seasons, but even in season 1 he still has the ability to show kindness. He cares about Deb, Rita, Astor and Cody. He has strong feelings about children and fights to protect them no matter what, and whatever way you try to spin it, that’s not the way a psychotic cold-blooded killer behaves or thinks. Brian, on the other hand, really is a psychotic cold-blooded killer. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything, not even Dexter. His attachment to Dexter is much more about the thrill of having someone to share his sadism with and to have a partner in crime (literally), who he can learn from and teach so they can both become more ruthless and skilled killers. When Dexter kills Brian at the end of season 1, it’s about more than simply him choosing Deb over Brian, it’s about him sacrificing that darkest part of himself, it’s about him choosing love and selflessness over his Dark Passenger. Brian being the embodiment of Dexter’s Dark Passenger is all but confirmed in ‘Nebraska’ (6x07) where Brian appears to Dexter and consistently encourages him to give into his darkest urges and to let go of the good parts of himself. My perception of it is that Brian is a contrast to Debra - he represents the bad in Dexter and Deb represents the good. Whilst Brian pushes Dexter to embrace the bad in him, Debra encourages the good in him. This all goes back to the scene in season 1 where Dexter has to choose between Brian and Debra, and like I said, the choice he makes shows not only that he loves Deb more but that what she represents - the good - is more important to him.

Grindeldore

Sorry but I don’t really have an opinion on them. I don’t know much about them as a ship apart from the snippets I’ve seen from JKR over the years. I’ve stayed clear of Fantastic Beasts and anything HP related (except HP itself) since HP ended. The reason for that is because I feel that had HP had a well rounded and complete ending and anything else that follows is just a money grab and does nothing to add to the universe or characters.

Charlie Pace

This is an interesting one for me to discuss, because I recently completed a re-watch of LOST. If you’ve seen my post where I share my thoughts on my recent  rewatch (you can read it here), you’ll know that my opinion on Charlie has completely changed. When I was younger I loved Charlie, I thought he was witty and funny, and I enjoyed watching his friendships with Hurley and Desmond. But my most recent re-watch definitely opened my eyes to the uglier side of Charlie.

The thing is with Charlie is that because he’s used as a comedic character that generally overshadows the shitty aspects of his personality and characterisation. His addition is not the problem here. Obviously, his addiction causes a lot of his problematic behaviours, but that in itself is not an issue I have with his character. Heroin is a highly addictive drug (I believe the most addictive one in existence) which he gets hooked on it due to pressure from his brother. He tries to kick the habit to better himself and he succeeds. This and his death, which is a very selfless act that he does for the benefit of Claire, Aaron and everybody else on the island, are the two main aspects of his character I can praise. Everything else about him…not so much. Before I get deeper into this, I wanted to make it clear that I don’t think Charlie is a bad person, but I do think he’s a very flawed character and he does a lot of things that have led to me disliking him.

All Charlie does is whine and paint himself the victim. He never takes any responsibility for anything he does or anything that happens to him or around him, it’s always someone else’s fault. He blames Liam for his drug addiction; he blames Liam for the break-down of Drive Shaft; he blames Jack for Ethan kidnapping him; he blames Locke for his deteriorating relationship with Claire; he blames Eko for outing his heroin stash to Claire and he blames Sayid for Aaron’s kidnapping (by Danielle). There are probably more that I’m forgetting, but you get the point.

The way Charlie acts towards Claire is a large part of the problem that I have with his character. He meets Claire, develops some kind of hardcore obsession with her and immediately starts acting like her partner and the father of her child despite Claire not giving any indication that she is comfortable with that or even wants Charlie to fulfil those roles. In fact, in season 1, she explicitly tells him that she doesn’t need him to constantly look out for her and that her pregnancy doesn’t mean she’s weak or fragile and needs protecting.  Repeatedly, Charlie over-steps the mark with Claire, particularly when it comes to Aaron. He quite literally berates Claire numerous times for the decisions she makes regarding the well-being of her own child. When she wakes him up because she hears commotion on the beach, Charlie scolds her for it, takes Aaron out of her arms and says something along the lines of, “He’s going to be fussing all night now, give him here”, as though he knows Claire’s child better than she does. It’s one of the most infuriating scenes to watch ever. For some bizarre reason Charlie seems to think he has some claim over Aaron and assumes responsibility for him despite him literally being a stranger to Claire with no rights to Aaron at all, and I will never understand how anyone can view that as acceptable.

As well as the poor way Charlie treats Claire, he’s generally a selfish and egotistical character. All LOST characters are flawed and multi-dimensional, that’s what makes them so fantastic, but Charlie is definitely one of the more flawed characters. His addiction results in him being a pathological liar and very selfish. In addition, because of his failures he has this desperate need to be somebody else, to be this perfect man who is the embodiment of success, strength and responsibility. This is why he fixates on Claire because he sees a beautiful young woman who has been abandoned and alone and he wants to be the one to fix that. He wants to be the patriarch; the father and the husband; the defender of the family because he’s never had that before and when he meets Claire he sees a ready-made family. We know that he desires this from the flashback with Lucy whereby he takes a job and continues in his relationship with her because he wants to be “respectable” and “take care” of her. There’s nothing wrong with wanting this, but he goes about getting it in the wrong way and acts very inappropriately towards Claire.

I feel like this all sounds really harsh, but generally, my opinions on Charlie are very negative since my recent re-watch. Even the funnier aspect of his personality was a complete miss with me (perhaps it’s simply because I’m older now). But like I’ve said, I don’t think he’s fundamentally a bad person, he’s just very, very flawed. The problem with the way he’s written though is that his flaws are never really called out. When you compare him to someone like Sawyer, who also starts out in season 1 as a flawed character, he is constantly punished and called out for that and actively makes an effort to repent and redeem himself, resulting in a beautiful redemptive arc. Unfortunately, I just don’t think Charlie gets the same, because he’s not fully acknowledged within the narrative as being a flawed character that needs to develop. The only aspect of his arc that is acknowledged as a “flaw” (I feel like this isn’t the right word in this context, but I can’t think of a more appropriate one) is his addiction and because he overcomes this by going into recovery, there seems to be this assumption that he does develop, but even when he’s in recovery his behaviour is still shitty. So yeah, that pretty much sums my thoughts up on Charlie. Also I apologise if you’re like a Charlie stan, because this was essentially just a rant about how much I’ve come to dislike him lmao.

Boone and Locke

Now, this is a complicated dynamic to analyse. I like how their bond is developed at the start and I like watching them on-screen together before they find the Hatch. Unfortunately, after that I hate the whole “friendship” (if you can even call it that). Locke uses and manipulates Boone consistently, causes his death and still continues to lie even when Boone is seriously injured. The only reason Locke maintains a “friendship” with Boone is because he just so happens to be with him when he discovers the Hatch. The only way he can stop anyone else from finding out is by recruiting Boone and giving him this spiel about destiny and how they were meant to find the hatch and open it together as part of some grand plan. Locke is so adamant that he doesn’t want anyone else to find out about the Hatch that when Boone tells Locke he wants to tell Shannon, Locke knocks him out, ties him up in the middle of the jungle and drugs him. So not only does he get violent with him, abandon him in the middle of the jungle whilst injured but he also gives him drugs without his consent which results in him having traumatic hallucinations where he sees Shannon die. Locke tries to spin it as being something he’s doing for Boone’s benefit, but it’s not, it’s all about him protecting his secret. He doesn’t care about Boone or how his feelings for Shannon are impacting him, all he cares about is stopping Boone from telling Shannon about the Hatch. In forcing Boone to keep quiet about it, he creates a distance and tension between Boone and Shannon, who is the most important person in his life. Honestly Locke is 100% selfish and delusional in the way he behaves throughout this entire arc. He prioritises unlocking some mysterious hatch in the mysterious jungle over everything else including Boone’s well-being. He coerces Boone into climbing to the top of a massive cliff and getting into a plane which is hanging over the edge of said cliff. Anyone with half a brain cell could see that that plane was unsafe and likely to fall if anybody went inside, but Locke still pushes him to do it. When the plane inevitably falls, he drops him off to Jack in the caves, doesn’t bother to tell him how he got his injuries and runs off into the jungle. Now we all know that even if Locke had told Jack the truth about how Boone had got his injuries, Jack still wouldn’t have been able to save him, but nonetheless, he should’ve come clean before Boone died. What’s even worse about the whole situation is that whilst Boone is dying and Jack, Sun and the others are busting their asses to save his life, Locke is hammering on the Hatch yelling, “WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?!?!!!” I’m sorry………………what?????? Locke, I’m pretty sure you’re not the victim in this scenario. Like the fact that he thinks that he’s being punished for what happens to Boone is proof of how much of a shitty person he is in that scenario and how little regard he has for Boone’s life. And afterwards he continues to claim that Boone died because he was a “sacrifice the island demanded”. No, dude, Boone died because of your selfishness and your delusions. I mean, even if there was something spectacularly special in the Hatch or in the plane, how could it ever be worth risking Boone’s life in that manner? And I know that Boone was an adult and made his own decision to climb into the plane knowing the risks involved, but Locke manipulated and coerced him every step of the way. And it’s important to remember that despite being an adult Boone was still very young and Locke as a much older man had a lot of influence over him. Once again, age has changed my whole perception on this relationship and arc. When I was younger I actually thought Jack totally overreacted following Boone’s death but now I stand right beside Jack every step of the way because he’s absolutely right to react the way he does. Locke is an asshole for the way he behaves and his actions lead to the death of an innocent young man for no real purpose at all.