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apocalypticavolition · 1 year ago

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Let's (re)Read The Eye of the World! Chapter 48: The Blight

Concept art by Filip Štorch and shrunk down just a tad or five, rendering his signature illegible. This reread compresses lots of things - for example, I fit spoilers for the whole of The Wheel of Time into every post! If you don't like that, it's best to be somewhere else.

This chapter gives us our last new chapter icon of the book: another tree at night, but this one twisted and bent over. It's got kind of a look of a flipped Aes Sedai symbol, with the tree making up the upside down fang (appropriate since saidin got the corruption and all) while trying to obscure the upside down flame of the moon. I don't think this symbolism ever means anything, but it's fun. This kind of icon means "Blight", or occasionally the worst of the things from it.

A large steel mirror, carefully turned down, away from the sun, now, glittered atop each tower below the high iron cup where signal fires could be lit when the sun did not shine. The signal would be flashed, to towers further from the Border, and by those to still others, and so relayed to the heartland fortresses, from where the lances would ride to turn back the raid. Were times normal, they would.

I can't help but feel that this kind of set up is actually less effective than signal fires would be. You have to figure out where the sun is, hope there's no clouds in the way or that it's not too early or late in the day to catch the light, angle the mirror appropriately, and hope the people at the other side manage to catch the glint of the tower and are also able to relay it down the line. Much simpler to just have the signal fires which can be lit at any time and are easily protected from the rain. Am I crazy?

“To escort you here means we may not reach the Gap before the fighting is done. I am robbed of the chance to stand with the rest, and at the same time I am commanded not to ride one step beyond the borderpost, as if I had never before been in the Blight. And My Lord Agelmar will not tell me why.”

If you liked fighting Trollocs so much, you shouldn't have become a Darkfriend. This is the Wheel punishing you, bub. All the other squadron commanders are gonna fight just fine cuz they're not filthy traitors to existence.

Eastward they would join other steel serpents, from Fal Moran, behind King Easar himself with his sons at his side, and from Ankor Dail, that held the Eastern Marches and guarded the Spine of the World; from Mos Shirare and Fal Sion and Camron Caan, and all the other fortresses in Shienar, great and small. Joined into a greater serpent, they would turn north to Tarwin’s Gap.

Is Jordan just describing the movements of armies here, or is he creating the imagery of the Great Serpent itself preparing to strike against those who fight to slay it?

Rand nodded. He could feel it, too, though he could not say what it was exactly he was feeling. The wrongness went beyond the first warmth he could remember out of doors this year; it was more than the simple fact that it should not be so warm this far north. It must be the Blight, but the land was the same.

Rand's Shadowsense is about as refined now as it's ever going to be.

The Shadow can only corrupt what's already there - the land's the same, there's just something wrong with the area the Shadow's claimed.

“Flowers can kill in the Blight, and leaves maim. There’s a little thing called a Stick that likes to hide where the leaves are thickest, looking like its name, waiting for something to touch it. When something does, it bites. Not poison. The juice begins to digest the Stick’s prey for it. The only thing that can save you is to cut off the arm or leg that was bitten. But a Stick won’t bite unless you touch it. Other things in the Blight will.”

Good to know that stick bugs are thriving in the post-apocalypse due to Aginor's horrible experiments.

The big youth glared at the obscene forest through which they rode as he might have at an enemy, or the banner of an enemy. He caressed the axe at his belt as if unaware of what he was doing, and muttered to himself, half growling in a way that made the hair on Rand’s neck stir.

Lan: Keep quiet or we might get killed.

Perrin: WOOF WOOF WOOF!

At least when Mat's making noises right now it's cuz he's throwing up. Get it together, Perrin. It ain't like there's wolves in the area to be encouraging you to focus on your powers.

“No two among the Ogier have found it in exactly the same place. The Green Man seems to be found where he is needed. But it has always been beyond the high passes. They are treacherous, the high passes, and haunted by creatures of the Dark One.”

Really this just makes the Green Man sound more and more like a Fantastica immigrant, since a key point of the world of The Neverending Story was that it couldn't be mapped because places didn't have spatially defined relations to one another, but instead travelers ended up where they needed to be going. I wonder if Jordan ever read the book.

For one brief instant the sun’s rays caught the shattered tops, and Rand’s breath stilled. Not hills. The broken remnants of seven towers. He was not sure if anyone else had seen it; the sight was gone as quickly as it came.

Remember what I was saying about the inefficiency of the mirror towers?

Nothing that big could live in a lake that size. Those couldn’t have been hands on those tentacles. They couldn’t have been.

Not gonna lie, the fact that our heroes never had to fight this bizarre aquatic Shadowspawn (or really any of the horrifying beasts of the far Blight) is one of the biggest disappointments of the series. And honestly as much as I'd like to blame my usual scapegoat, it's not as if Jordan did much with the Blight after this book himself.

“It is a simple thing,” she said, “a bending, so any eye looking at us sees around us, instead. We cannot have the eyes that will be out there seeing our lights tonight, and the Blight is no place to be in the dark.”

Moiraine says that it's a simple thing, but we don't actually see it get used that much. Rand picks up the trick in the mid-series, but he is of course the extreme end of the scale. I don't recall any other big instances of it getting used, which make me think that it's a simple weave geometrically but demanding of so much Fire and Air that Moiraine is one of the few modern Aes Sedai who can cast it.

“There,” Egwene said as if it were settled. “I know. I will make you my Warder, when I’m an Aes Sedai. You would like being a Warder, wouldn’t you? My Warder?” She sounded sure, but he saw the question in her eyes. She wanted an answer, needed it. “I’d like being your Warder,” he said. She’s not for you, nor you for her. Why did Min have to tell me that?

Probably because if you were hellbent on keeping Egwene's love no matter what you'd end up dying halfway through book two. Gotta love Moiraine's, "I can find shit for all of you to do in Tar Valon" claim too. That's "not technically lying" for "You all can spend five minutes getting instructions on where to go next as we march you lot through the Prophecies, then leave immediately."

The Warder was still awake, seated not far from him with his sword across his knees, watching the night. To Rand’s surprise, so was Nynaeve.

Not gonna lie, I kinda wish that every book had had a subplot that Rand (or one of the other six major characters) was completely oblivious to until right before the climax when suddenly all the subtext comes rushing to the forefront. It would have been fun.

“I will never shame you.” The gentle tone, like a caress, sounded odd to Rand’s ears in the Warder’s voice, but it made Nynaeve’s eyes brighten. “I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile. No woman deserves the sure knowledge of widow’s black as her brideprice, you least of all.” He set the untouched cup on the ground and rose. “I must check the horses.” Nynaeve remained there, kneeling, after he had gone. Sleep or no, Rand closed his eyes. He did not think the Wisdom would like it if he watched her cry.

The saddest thing is, at the end of the day, Nynaeve and Lan will marry and she will have the sure knowledge of widow's black. She's going to outlive him by centuries.

The other sad stuff of course includes: Lan's spent his whole life making himself miserable for no reason (he's still an amazing fighter after he and Nynaeve bang it out), he's making Nynaeve miserable for that same lack of reason, and Rand and Nynaeve don't have a relationship where he's able to comfort her in any meaningful way, so the best he can do for her is pretend that he's asleep.

Depressing chapter end, but don't worry: next time things get scary instead!

#let's read #wheel of time #wot #robert jordan #wheel of time spoilers #wot spoilers #rand al'thor #lan mandragoran #ingtar shinowa #moiraine damodred #mat cauthon #nynaeve al'meara #egwene al'vere #agelmar jagad #loial #perrin aybara

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anthonybialy · 1 year ago

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Mob Misses

Money isn’t the only thing inflated. Joe Biden thinks the term means its value increases, which is desirable just like it is for balloons. A professional clown made him a squirrel. As an amateur, he makes cash as worthless as his reputation.

The amount of sheer scumbaggery exhibited by our leader is the only thing exhibited in abundance. America struggles to escape the influence of a limp crime boss who gets his cut from every industry. The nation he rips off endures exactly what everyone who believes in properly-restrained government said would happen when it went unlimited. A full-time dirtbag who rips off resources is bound to think it’s common behavior.

The messenger is suitable for the message. Only Biden would think he’s being praised. Exploiting authority that was never his to seize is as shameless as deciding debts don’t need to be repaid because he proclaims it.

A criminal and criminally inept administration uncannily pimps policies that serve his crackhead brat’s shady deals. Haruspicy doesn’t require animal entrails. Nobody can afford bacon.

Personal grift is accompanied by other kinds of overreach. The ostensibly beneficial interference is the precise opposite, but we’d enjoy peaceful prosperity if it worked like smug dolts imagined. Those forced to pledge allegiance don’t even get benefits out of putting up with a bumbling godfather.

It’s unsurprising that Biden family capos can’t even invent clever schemes. Enriching himself by using a Chinese laundry is the worst sort of stereotyping. Taking classified documents and leaving them laying about was so blatant that it seemed like a sting. Meanwhile, his son who’s legitimate in one sense makes deals with the sort of rogues’ gathering from the opening of The Naked Gun while Daddy just happened to stop in and say hi. Life is full of coincidences. Don’t forget to notice the magic of the everyday.

Ineptness while corrupt will have to qualify as balance. There’s not a pleasant aspect about Biden’s personality or results. It’s not like he’s a jerk who gets things done, or at least good things. Confusing activity for progress isn’t a sign that Biden is declining, as he began his political career declined.

You have to take it. There’s never been a better case against coercion for supposed progress than a garbage presidency staffed by terrible people who are so unwilling to help others voluntarily that they can’t imagine anyone decent enough to do so. A lack of empathy explains a lot, including why pushy liberals explain constantly that they really care.

Sucking at making anything people want is a common characteristic amongst uncommonly useless White House underlings. A service rendered costs money, which offends defenders of thieving. Shoplifting is flourishing just like not paying back loans. This would be a good time to finally concede that government shouldn’t have our money or trust.

Unaffordable fuel might be by design if that assuages the inability to get anywhere more than figuratively. You can have all the solar power you want just like the free money that somehow isn’t worth that much. Democrats dream of taxing the Sun.

As for life on this planet, crazy prices on energy that actually makes things go keeps everyone idling. Dystopian science fiction where everyone’s trapped inside is too rosy. The commodity that literally fuels civilization getting more costly prompts everything else to become even pricey. Other items don’t need the assistance.

Paying like the mob is taking its cut is something those shaken down aren’t supposed to notice. Your precious free speech prevents your protection. Government already hassled reflexively before we got stuck with a president who serves as the bagman for his crime family. Nobody’s watching a mob movie that’s a documentary featuring no loyalty.

The president has done so little in so many years. A person with a paucity of life experience as Biden is bound to think everyone else acts like he does. Lame projection is merely one more dire consequence. The incumbent is dedicated to service if skimming to pay his bills count.

Policies that enrich him personally are surely coincidental. Biden sees thriving corporations with rich executives and figures government works the same. Going soft on the commie plague-spreaders who control China because he can make a couple yuan off them at least means he’s not this weak on purpose.

The most painfully obvious abuse comes naturally to a sleaze who got into government in lieu of learning skills. Possessing endless examples of why to properly limit the executive branch isn’t worth today’s misery.

Being a prototypical politician is not a compliment. The incumbent cant even fake well. A guy who’s spent his life preparing for this role bumbles in a way that’d make trainees shake their heads. The head of state is the worst at the only thing he knows. Biden’s last boss Barack Obama and the male in the Clinton marriage could at least con suckers into thinking they cared.

It’s not like we can exactly say the economy’s terrific. Finding a dollar that’s worth something is as tricky as identifying an honest one Hunter’s made. We endure an awful business environment in a diminished America, by at least the president’s unscrupulous. Biden can’t sympathize with your bitching while he’s doing so well.

#Joe Biden #corruption #economy #Democrats

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joeeatsdvds · 1 year ago

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Elemental

hey look it’s me posting a non-christmas film review that’s kinda crazy! anyways i saw this film today because i’ve been meaning to and now’s the perfect time with it leaving cinemas in a matter of days.

there’ll be spoilers under the cut for Elemental in this review!

for anybody who doesn’t know of Pixar’s ‘Elemental’ is the 27th feature film to be produced by the studio and being directed by Peter Sohn (also known for directing ‘The Good Dinosaur’, another Pixar film and a Pixar short ‘Partly Cloudy’).

‘Elemental’ when it was first teased to audiences received some criticism for how it looked, i would know because i was one of those people. though unlike the other people who were complaining i was simply sick of watching the trailer after months of it being shoved down my throat at every trailer showing at the cinema, on instagram sponsored posts, youtube ads and even a few ads on some mobile games. after the film came out though this seized mostly so my opinion once again became neutral of the elements and their element city.

originally lined up to be released in the uk at the same time as the us release the film was delayed until july 7th. upon its release the film was a flop and not doing very well at all earning it the title of Pixar’s lowest grossing movie in the box office on opening weekend. however ‘Elemental’ made a come back in the coming weeks making a splash in the overseas market when it released outside of the us. there was a lot of negative press surrounding the film when it came out however stating it was “the death of pixar” and being called “woke” for the inclusion of the studio’s first non-binary character who barely actually features on screen. reviews were harsh to say the least. things seem to have softened now though and so time for my opinions on the matter at hand, the film.

i do have my complaints about my experience but those aren’t actually anything to do with the film more about having to sit next to some random child for the whole movie + opening short.

before i go into the actual film i want to quickly talk about that teaser, the first glimpse at the world of element city, and where we meet our main two characters Wade and Ember. well scrap everything you know about that because that doesn’t actually happen in the film. both Wade and Ember do in fact go on a train and some of the stuff that happens in the teaser do happen in the film but that meet cute between Wade and Ember that you see where Ember’s headphones are knocked to the ground and both her and Wade go to pick them up at the same time? doesn’t happen lol. i get that they didn’t include this in the film because it wouldn’t make sense within the context of the film and the teaser was just to give you the faintest glimpse at the world and characters. Ember is very hesitant to even follow Wade onto the train in the actual film and when she’s on the train trying to find where he went she’s very cautious of those around her and one could say she’s even scared (as stated in the film by Ember herself she doesn’t like going outside of fire town because element city isn’t built with fire people in mind and she has everything she needs in fire town). also another complaint is that i don’t remember them introducing themselves to each other properly in the film but that might just be my brain forgetting that little unimportant detail.

something i question about the theatrical poster that was used (in the uk at least) is the inclusion of random irrelevant characters. sure you have Ember, Wade, Clod and Gale up at the top but why are Marco and Polo there? Lutz too. and the rest of the characters featured are all seen in the previously mentioned teaser and really aren’t that relevant at all in the final final.

the animation in this film was wild! everything is so polished and the rendering is just beautiful. i loved the little details of each of the elemental people. my favourites were the water people for sure and i especially loved the water bubbles present throughout their bodies that come and go throughout the film. the setting for the film worked really well with it all feeling colourful and lively with the colours of elemental city and fire town contrasting each other but eventually at the end of the film after fire town is rebuilt and the other elements begin to mix in with the residents of fire town more you can see more colours as they begin to harmonise together. my favourite scene has to be the scene of all of the flowers blooming as Wade and Ember swim around the tree it was truly spectacular!

the film’s story at its core is about the experience of being a child born to immigrant parents and the challenge of trying to fill the shoes of your parents who worked so hard to give you a good life and sacrificed everything to do so. i won’t go too in depth on this because i’m not the one to talk about this because i haven’t experienced any of that, i can’t begin to imagine what those emotions must feel like but i can sympathise with them and understand as an outsider. the film also features xenophobia between the different elemental people with most of it being prejudice against fire people, “elements can’t mix” is something that’s repeated several times throughout the film but it’s not until Wade and Ember touch each other’s hands for the first time is it found that elements can indeed mix. these core parts of the film’s story come from Sohn’s own personal experiences being born to Korean immigrant parents, growing up in new york during the 70s and marrying outside of the korean culture he was brought up in.

i appreciate that Ember was able to come to the realisation that running her dad’s shop wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life and that it wasn’t her dream. and i also appreciate that her father was accepting of that and that the shop was never the dream it was Ember herself who was the dream, she was everything that they had worked for. i’m glad that in the end both Ember and her father got happy endings as Ember gets to follow her passion of glass making and her father gets to retire from working the shop everyday.

as for Ember and Wade’s relationship (a major part of the film) they’re cute together. they genuinely want to be around each other and despite their elemental differences and being total opposites they make it work because they make each other happy. they go against the long standing “elements don’t mix” that they were taught and they show everybody that they can. i didn’t really feel too strongly for the pair of them initially (though to be fair it did start with Wade writing every code violation the store came under and Ember desperately trying to get the notebook back from him before he could ruin the family business) but they grew on me. i didn’t enjoy the kiss scene but that’s just a personal thing that i don’t like seeing in movies there’s nothing inherently bad about it. it was funny seeing all the kids in the cinema’s reactions to it though.

there were some iffy jokes in there that i didn’t think we’re very funny and more felt simply weird. of course obligatory mention of the “just a bit of pruning” joke but also the “hanky panky” joke at the end when Ember and her dad are saying goodbye. that last one just confused me like are they allowed to say that in a kids a film?

my favourite character in this movie is no doubt this one water person from the first teaser who as far as i’m aware isn’t present in the final film (or at least i couldn’t spot them that is)

rest in peace to this one water person in particular.

before i wrap this review up i just want to say that prior to seeing the film in my graphic communications class me and my friend were redesigning film posters and originally my friend made a poster entirely consisting of Gale and only Gale. it was a very low quality collection of Gale images as the film was just out in america. very funny considering that they just kept on using the same model for her in all of the promotional art that features her including the theatrical poster featured at the start of this post. gotta love that big smile and vacant stare, it truly looks like there isn’t a thought behind those eyes.

jokes of Gale aside i think that ‘Elemental’ is a good little film that (except for the weird jokes) did a good job of portraying the message it wanted to portray. the way that the world building was set up makes it feel like Disney/Pixar is going to milk a few more films or shorts or series out of it but personally i think that this film is good enough on its own. i really don’t think it needs a sequel but disney will be disney and no doubt there’ll be something else on the horizon if they deem it a big enough success.

overall i’d rate this film a ★★★ and a half stars out of five!

#joe soup reviews #pixar elemental

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lord-radish · 2 years ago

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Oh yeah I finished Tears of the Kingdom. I'll talk about the story in a future post, this one should be fairly spoiler-free aside from mechanics.

First of all, I made a post back when I started the game about how I don't want Breath of the Wild to be displaced by Tears of the Kingdom. I don't think Breath of the Wild should be seen as a glorified tech demo - not only for the effort that went into making that game in the first place, but because it devalues what that game did on its own merits.

Having played Tears of the Kingdom, I can safely say that the slow, calm, melancholic vibe of Breath of the Wild is kind of gone. Like it still exists a little bit, you're still clambering over hills and gliding over valleys between human settlements, but between the three biomes and the Gloom chasms everywhere and the new creation feature, everything's a lot busier and it's harder to sit back and take in that sort of atmosphere.

That being said, Tears of the Kingdom is incredible. It's jam-packed with story and gameplay functions that are a lot more robust than Breath of the Wild. It takes the wide-open nature of that game and busts what was already a groundbreaking sandbox game wide open, increasing verticality both ways and giving you unprecedented locomotive tools to get around.

I was thinking about Jak and Daxter because I've been revisiting the Snapcube streams of the first game, and as much as I love that game, I realised that it had finally hit a set of limitations that made it "old" in my mind. Like, Jak and Daxter is an incredible open-world platforming game. We're talking a seamless open world that looks and runs fantastically. That game has better tech for rendering shadows than most games have had for the past 20+ years.

But then I thought about Jak doing Ascend, and in comparison to Tears of the Kingdom, Jak and Daxter just seemed rigid in comparison. And that's fucking nuts, because JnD is one of the most fluid games ever! But something like Ascend breaks the mold.

The creation system is unbelievable. The powers set a new precedent for freedom. Like seriously, fucking Ascend? They give us physics powers that let you stick physics objects together and make bikes and cars and ladders and springpads and all this crazy shit - they give us fucking FLYING MACHINES, WITH STEERING - and THEN they add a power that lets you DIVE THROUGH THE CEILING TO GET ON TOP OF ANYTHING IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME????????? That's genuinely unbelievable.

I played 75 hours of this game. For me, that was enough. Getting to the ending was a bit of a slog, but it came after like 70 hours of total, unabashed fun and freedom to do what I wanted. I could have finished the game in like 40 hours or less if I rushed, but that would have hurt my experience with the game. I ebbed and flowed according to my own whim, and it took me all the way through Tears of the Kingdom.

I don't know how Nintendo keeps doing it, but they keep setting new standards for the open world genre. It's close to being a masterpiece on all fronts.

So after this, what do I think they should do next?

Personally? I don't think I have a third BotW-like left in me.

These games are unbelievable on all fronts, but I think this little sub-franchise within the wider Zelda franchise has run its course. Between 2017 and now, we've actually gotten three Zelda games set in this era - Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity may have been a side-game in a different genre, but that's a fully realised game in the same setting as Breath of the Wild.

The games look great, but I think the aesthetic of these games has gone as far as it can go. Story-wise and gameplay-wise, I don't see how they can follow on from Tears of the Kingdom.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm content. I've had my fill. I still need to play that Hyrule Warriors game, actually, but once that's done I think this era of Zelda has done everything it needs to do. What's up next? How are they gonna approach the setting from this point forward? I want to see something new.

#tears of the kingdom #totk spoilers #the legend of zelda

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mirceakitsune · 2 years ago

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Banned from Furaffinity for drawing jokes / caricature / satire 7 years ago

Furaffinity always had serious issues and strange behavior toward its community. What happened over the past two days however is beyond what I think any of us would have ever imagined seeing someday. I'm not really sure how I can even translate the situation without people thinking I'm biased and exaggerating because it happened to me, it's one of those things you have to experience for yourself to fully grasp it.

They have now banned me and another artist I followed for 15 years and admire. Our only crime was making satire art… 7 years ago (in both our cases) plus my latest render in my case. All pieces were SFW and in no way sexual, literally intended as jokes and nothing more. After two thirds of a decade, during which the pieces were up and nobody once complained, a coordinated ban was conducted over what our past selves did at a time when there were probably no rules against it to begin with; In my case I had even forgotten that old sketch, initially I thought they mistook the age of a character in my recent works since I didn't even remember doing child characters (only did that one time and another joke I think).

https://inkbunny.net/s/886450

From what I remember, this was essentially a joke about a similar artist who got harassed: I believe Subwoofer made a parody about animals eating babies and everyone started yelling at him because of it, I found the situation hilarious and made that drawing to honor it. Initially FA suspended me for one week over that sketch, citing how it was somehow cub porn… I'll let others deal with the mental gymnastics as they're far beyond me. Then they needed a reason to get rid of me for good, and so…

Yes: A parody with cartoon bunnies poking fun at the capitol insurrection on January 6th. The accusation, I kid you not, is that this image was promoting COVID misinformation along with QAnon… it also says they deleted some journals which I'm not even aware of. That render… is COVID… misinformation…

And to be absolutely clear, it legitimately wasn't even intended to support anything in any serious manner. As I said it was strictly parody with a silly story attached, mostly to poke fun at what went on. I did NOT claim the elections were stolen, that Trump was right, and in fact I legitimately believe QAnon is 90% crazy from the little I even bothered looking into that group.

This is a screencap for anyone who thinks I must be blowing this out of proportion and it couldn't have been like that. See for yourself: This is the reason they gave, the image they reference is the one with the same title. Let me know how in the heck I even said anything about COVID-19 in that 3D render.

The real motive they came after me is because I took Foshu's defense in that journal, against the people harassing them also for making a cartoon joke those same 7 years ago. I wasn't suspended for anything I said there however: The FA mods instead decided to look through my gallery and pick two jokes I made seven years apart. It was because of my stance there however, we both got banned at the same time and it was clear it came from the arguments we just had with the angry mob.

Though I figure worse is possible, I imagine this is one of the biggest abuses in FA's history. Both in what they try to interpret as being against their extremely vague TOS, as well as how they handled it. I'll see if anyone in the appeals will contact me after I explain the situation, but even if I get unbanned I'm unlikely to post there again: FA has gone completely nuts, everyone including the mods are acting like a cult on anything that is a social issue… not everyone as far as users go of course, but the platform at large has clearly become a nest for the most violent and delusional circles (just like Twitter).

I'm posting this to let everyone know it happened and I'll likely leave the place whatever happens next. But also to expose the extent of the abuse, in case anyone feels they can look into it and do some investigation; FA is of course its own private site and can do any insanity it wants, but for a community of its size I really wish someone out there could hold it up to a minimal standard. Inkbunny is the only one I trust any more, it's made some mistakes too but never anything like this… may it live longer than me and stay free no matter what the world's insanity throws our way.

#announcement #furaffinity

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ranboo5 · 2 years ago

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The world around Leaderboards breathes.

Breathing with it does not hurt.

The Beginner’s Guide, 2015 // Sanctuary + Fellowship Hall, Terrytown // Brian Magnier

My @mcytblraufest gift for @moonblanche !!!!!

So sorry for posting so close to the deadline; I was hit with some unexpected delays ^^” Anyway, I saw that you were one of my five fellow MCSR askers and also that you were partial to Tubbo, so...

Well, then I got a little carried away.

I hope you like it!! I had a TON of fun concepting, drawing for, and assembling this, and I ended up making a lot of art I’m quite proud of. I am saur happy with how my varying runner designs turned out in these I truly am

Continuations for the cut off transcripts of writing and some more (extremely rambling) commentary under the cut!

...with a much steeper time than what’s pictured.

...doesn’t come from fear. It can’t come from fear.

So the premise of this AU if it isn’t obvious is that Tubbo is isekai’d into the distributed society of the basically-monk-order of speedrunners loosely organized around Leaderboards, the closest thing there is to an authority, and over the course of his Wacky Adventures, Tubbo learns that meaningful striving for improvement and being part of something larger than yourself doesn’t have to hurt. After meeting Pres. Poundcake, who carries the title (a title Tubbo obviously associates a lot of baggage with) like it’s nothing – because, of course, in the world around Leaderboards it basically is – and learning that neither that title nor the man’s visions can help him orient himself, Tubbo goes to investigate this supposed central hub, only to find that it’s supposedly slow and outdated. Tubbo drifts around trying to decipher how these Verifiers deal with this backlog until he ends up hanging out with Feinberg, undisputed king of AA, who appears at first glance to be doing something Tubbo is familiar with the concept of – securing his supremacy with ever-escalating shows of domination. But one way or the other it turns out the drive isn’t fear. Tubbo has an answer about the meaning of Leaderboards’ apparent hierarchy, buzzing in his hands like a crumbling trident full of lightning.

He doesn’t know what to make of it.

Couriway helps, though. Back from a short-lived excursion into a survival world and one thousand runs that would never make the top of Leaderboards’ towers like his runs once did. Achievement is a strange thing. To make and to improve is a strange thing. To be part of something stranger yet. The brutality of it that Tubbo has known is not the default. There is something more to it, and it is in that that one can at once not be alone and not be consumed.

And, well, the world around Leaderboards breathes, and breathing with it does not hurt.

Drawing these was an Experience Ever. I might upload the timelapse later or something because Jesus Christ I spent 30 years on some of these...

I actually drew them in reverse order from how they appear! I had a lot of trouble getting a clear image for the first one with Pres. Poundcake, and the last one was conversely extremely vivid for me, so I just went ham. It was a pretty simple concept, and I wanted to capture a Feeling, so I decided to go crazy go stupid on painting it, which took easily longer than both the other two put together but ended up alright! Rendering all those trees was worth it lmao

It also helped me figure out what I wanted to do with the others – I tried to compose these so that Tubbo and the runner he’s drawn with would have, like, a diagonal progression down the page. I don’t know how well it comes across but I did it which I’m counting as a win

The second one I easily spent the least time on the environment of but I got to have one of my favorite designs be the star of the show. It was also very much the most fun to light and I’m quite happy with how it ended up! This one had to be dynamically lined in contrast to the Couriway one’s painting, which was mostly a lovely time except for the lightning... worth it however. This is the best my Fein design has ever looked I must say; I hope everyone understands now when I say FEINBERG MANTIS SHRIMP MECHA AGENDA WILL NEVER DIE

The one with Poundcake I had to do in, basically, crunch time (due to aforesaid delays), so I couldn’t spend 30 years lining and coloring it, and from the start it was always planned to be the least ambitious image anyway, but nevertheless I wanted to make it look nice/special and interesting to look at. I’ve come to quite like Pres. Poundcake as a streamer in the past little while and I wanted to have the drawing with his fictionalized avatar be fun, yk? So to compromise this out I decided to experiment a little and go with this picture-book vibe. I had some fun with the brushes, and since Pres. Poundcake is Tubbo’s introduction to the world, I paid the most attention to actually drawing an interesting environment for this one, too, or trying to lmao

I have talked for much too long but you must understand I tryharded this ridiculously hard so I have a lot to say dhsfdhjfjsdfh

#MCYTblr AU fest #god idk what to tag this . I would tag MC$R bc it's kind of the star of the show but also no one wants 2 see D$MP xover art abt it...#this was not the best move for clout I must say.#I am happy with what I made though so that will count #pencilmarks

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fabricated-misslieness · 4 years ago

Text

pairing: kaeya x prince reader (platonic..? I suppose?)

2k event | wc: 556 | cw: mentions of violence and kidnapping | royal au

anon: Can I request Kaeya with a kingdom AU where he kidnaps the prince of Mondstadt (the reader), but the reader thanks Kaeya for it because he's lazy and being kidnapped meant less responsibility? It's totally fine if not, thank you!

a/n: you didn’t mention romance so i just went with this

The prince of Mondstadt’s job was not an easy one. As the heir, he would have to learn many arduous lessons. Diplomacy, politics, economics, public speaking, waltz and sword fighting, in case an assassin came along.

But to the people of Mondstadt, the heir handled it well. He spoke with eloquence and had no quarrels with rushed decisions.

To you, however, the actual prince, it was like living in hell. You knew that one day your parents would be abdicating their title to you, and you certainly did not look forward to it. All these preparations, these awfully long lessons, were absolutely mundane. Honestly, while the thought of an assassin leaving the palace, having done his duty of rendering you unalive, wasn’t exactly the nicest thing you could experience; something similar such as being kidnapped was not so bad.

Though, if they were to hold you for ransom against your father, you would simply have to refuse. Not refuse in the way that you didn’t want your parents to pay, as it would surely be a large sum of money; but refuse in the way you didn’t want your kidnapper to even send a letter.

So when you wake up to being surrounded by a multitude of people –strangers, no less– you’re not quite as terrified as you should be. Though you have no time to be, as you’re knocked unconscious quick enough.

When you wake up again, you’re in an unattended holding cell. You deduce that they certainly don’t expect a pampered prince to break out, and they’re quite right.

As dirty and full of disgusting critters it may be, it’s a dream come true. You can’t contain the little shouts of celebration that escape you –”Ahaha, yes!”– which inevitably catches someone’s attention.

“I didn’t expect you to wake up during my night shift, your highness.” He slightly leans against the bars of your cell, smirk on his face. Though when he sees your smile, it’s no surprise that he’s confused.

“What’s your name?” Excitement is clear in your voice, but you make no move to mask it.

“Kaeya.” He says slowly and hesitantly. “I trust you don’t need my last name?”

“No,” You laugh in disbelief. “no, I certainly don’t. I just wanted to thank you, is all. Thank you so much, Kaeya!”

“Ah, did we catch a doppelganger?” Your father had a doppelganger, so when he’s in immediate danger, he can hide while his look-alike pretends to be him –and is probably killed in the process. You, however, didn’t have one; not yet.

“No, I don’t have one.”

“Well..” Kaeya clears his throat, looking you up and down as if deciding if you’re lying or not. “Doppelgangers don’t sleep in king sized beds under multitudes of embroidered blankets, do they?”

“No. You can trust me when I say they don’t.” He nods in reply, though he still seems skeptical.

You lay back down on your stone slab of a bed with a laugh. Because you’ve always been sleeping on soft mattresses, you seem to forget how hard it is. Kaeya grimaces and hisses for your pain, but you yourself ignore it. “I’m finally free! Oh-ho, this is real! No more responsibilities! Wooo!”

“The heir just had to be the crazy one, didn’t he?”

You glance up at him with a terrifyingly happy smile, “I’m not crazy, I’m just lazy! Ooh that rhymed!”

#kaeya x reader #kaeya x male reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x male reader #anonymousrequest #🌺-m.fluff

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thehomothings · 3 years ago

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Analysis of Kite's conflicting moralities, relationship with death, and the toll reincarnation may take on one's psyche

So, today I decided to compile all the thoughts I have had about Kite's interesting worldview since the first time I saw him into one post, mostly for my own sake, really. If you're familiar with the few posts I've made, you know it's gonna be a mess, but hopefully a comprehensible mess.

A heads up, this is going to be spoiler-heavy, and very much deal with subjects of death and dying as a whole. Also, some of these conclusions are drawn from my own experiences and close brushes with death, I'm not going to go into much detail but it might get personal and definitely dark. I'm not even sure if I can call this a meta-analysis, and I'm obviously no expert, so mayhaps take all of this with a grain of salt.

Been getting into drawing lately, and during the more simple and mindless part of the painstaking process of dotting every single star in this, I let my thoughts wander through the latest part of the fic I'm writing, and I got a better grasp on what exactly made Kite such an elusive character to me.

I'm not quite sure why I got so attached to Kite. Perhaps it was the air of tragedy surrounding him, how despite his sordid past he remained still open and gentle even if outlined by a healthy dose of cynicism.

But sometimes, I think it's the fact that he is so paradoxical. He's brave, yet fears death to such a degree that creates a whole Nen ability around it, is a pacifist yet will not hesitate to spill blood for his own sake or someone else's. Despite the many ultimatums and warnings of 'I will not protect you', he gave his arm and then his life to save Gon and Killua. He approaches each hunt and battle with a clear plan of action in mind, but his Hatsu takes the form of a roulette that gives him random weapons which are never what he wants, but what he seems to need for that exact situation, which he cannot dispel without using. When he draws a weapon, the decision is locked in and his or his opponent's fate is sealed. That's why each time he dubbs his weapon a bad roll. Every time he has to gamble, he sees himself as having run out of luck. When it comes to having to choose between himself and somebody else...well, there had never been a choice. In fact his aversion to using it may feed into its sheer power that we, unfortunately, saw too little of.

Let's go over his very first appearance when he saves Gon from the mother Foxbear.

It's not hard to see the strain searching for Ging has put on him; he's rash, prone to anger and punching a child for daring to get into trouble. In his mind, he's failing at his most important task, has not yet earned the right to call himself a hunter despite being in possession of his very own hunter license.

After killing the mother Foxbear and raging about having done so, he says this interesting line:

So yes, he finds killing for any reason rather irksome as most would do, yet I think something deeper caused him to absolutely lose it in this scene:

He had not been aware of Gon's identity, and despite being an animal lover and a naturalist, he made a choice to save the human instead of allowing nature to run its course. In fact, he says: 'No beast that harms a human must be allowed to live.'

How does one weight one life against another? How is the worth of it determined? The value of life... an impossible choice he's faced with and a choice which he seems to regret to some degree.

The Foxbear cub.

Here, he's speaking from experience, a tangible loss he has felt himself, and a hard and bitter life he does not want to impose on the cub.

His backstory is exclusive to the 2011 anime adaptation but there are hints alluding to it in the manga, for example, the fact that he does not seem to know his birthplace, or:

The choice of words is chilling.

Reading between the lines, one could draw the conclusion that he is an orphan. Something supporting this hypothesis is how he visibly deflates after Gon tells him his parents have (presumably) died.

So we see he is willing to go against his own moral code of not killing as to not doom another living being to the life he led, a lonely, hopeless existence that could barely be called one. He saw it best to put down the cub rather than leave it to die a painful, slow death.

The reason Kite himself isn't as cynical and cold-hearted as one would be after witnessing cruelty in its rawest form is those small crumbs of human kindness which he may have found in Ging.

It was not only a chance at an honorable life being Ging's apprentice gave him, but it also 'saved' him from being broken and twisted into what he hated and worst of all, death.

If we take that one minute of backstory as canon to his character-which I find myself inclined to do- these quirks of his make much more sense. He lived on the run. He lived on the knife's edge between giving up or pushing forwards. He lived as so a wrong move could be the difference between survival and the end.

Between rock and a hard place creates a mentality of black and white, absolute good or extreme evil, this or that. Except in reality, it's much harder than that. Deciding who to save and who to strike down is a heavy burden to bear.

It's almost easy to see how struggling to keep surviving could lend itself to a crippling fear of death and subsequently developing a Nen ability which once more goes against his own moral code in order to give himself a second chance...yet something about it strikes me as unlikely when I look at it this way.

Living life knowing it could end at any moment has the opposite effect, at least for me it did. One comes to accept that it is fleeting and while not eager to let it go, when death eventually and inevitably does come, there is no fighting it.

Especially when there is no hope that tomorrow will be a better day than this one.

Frequent near-death experiences numb one's fear in a way, even if it drives them to take precautions that render it unlikely to happen again and results in c-PTSD, but still, it does. It sparks a certain nihilistic view of 'if it all can end so easily, then what's the point of it all?'

Unless there are things to live for, a sure promise of a better future, and Ging gave Kite that. When he faced the threat of losing his second chance at life:

Really, what else could lead someone to develop the ability of 'the hell I'm going to die like this'?

I think a separate event, an even more brutal near-death experience that almost cost him his life as the hunter he so strived to be set him off to develop the secret roll of Crazy Slots, what I call Roll No.0, Ars moriendi. Unlike other weapons, it cannot come up in random and is directly summoned by him, or better said, summon by his overwhelming will to keep going and hopelessness of fighting a losing battle. I don't believe roll No.3 was the weapon that allowed him to reincarnate. I've named that one Wand of Fortune, a sort of armor instead of an offensive weapon since I find it hard to believe Kite, a Conjurer, would not focus on defences as well, and I will go into both mechanisms of these weapons hopefully in his backstory.

Despite knowing this battle to be a pointless one and being acutely aware of his soon to be demise, he did not immediately draw Ars moriendi, no, he stayed back and fought for the sake of the boys, kept Neferpitou occupied until they could reach safety. We can see evidence of this in the aftermath of the battle that seemed to have gone on until dawn, a torn apart landscape only signaling a fraction of the devastation that was Kite's power unleashed. It still wasn't enough.

In the anime sub I watched, when Gon apologizes to Ging about Kite's death, Ging said a sentence that infuriated me, because it belittled the utter suffering of the NGL trio.

"He would not die in your place." (No screenshot, sorry)

And I remember practically shouting at the screen, screaming 'how could you possibly say that? Of course he did. He absolutely did die in their place. How could you not know your own apprentice? Why-'

It was only last night that it hit me why Ging would say that.

Once upon a time, maybe Kite would not have given his life for anybody under any circumstances, even if he had a way out of it all. He would still need to die to come back to life.

His Thanatophobia could be attributed to the (possibly untreated) PTSD of the near-death experience in his later life, being so certain of dying that finding himself alive afterwards drove him to never want to go through that again. He quieted his fear by creating a sort of a loophole, that even if he lost the battle he would remain. Ging remembered that, but as evidence shows, something changed. Maybe he healed a bit, perhaps growing up dulled his fear to a certain degree, but eventually when it came down to his life or another's, he didn't choose himself.

Now, I can hear you saying 'but he didn't die, so what are you going on about??' And so I reply: Yes, he is alive, but he did die. He experienced that painful, horrible moment of staring death in the eyes and thinking 'This is it, this is the end', went through the actual process of having his soul removed from his body. And that moment stretches into infinity, ten lifetimes condensed into the mere seconds before oblivion.

Dying isn't so hard if one stays dead.

It's not so easy to open one's eyes and find oneself alive again after that, no matter how much that is the heart's desire. It's difficult, nigh-impossible to reconcile with life and walk amongst the living when everything had been so final, when death had been accepted to its fullest.

So Kite awakens, the twin of Meruem and back from the dead, his mind and identity both intact and fractured. In that he is Kite is no mistaking, yet he is not the same gentle pacifist whose first reaction upon sensing a monster's aura was to shield two kids from it at the cost of his arm.

I don't think many of you are familiar with Zoroastrian ideology, but Togashi is known for loving his religious imagery, and it's not only Christianism he derives inspiration from (evidence of which can be seen all over Kite's character and resurrection).

In Zurvanism-a branch of Zoroastrianism- there is talk of the twin spirits: Ahura Mazda -epitome of all that is good- and Ahriman -epitome of all that is evil-, the parent god Zurvin decides that the firstborn may rule in order to bring "heaven, hell, and everything in between."

Upon becoming aware of this fact, Ahriman forcibly tears through the womb to emerge first. Sounding familiar yet?

Zurvan relents to this turn of events only on one condition: Ahriman is given kingship for 9000 years, and then Ahura Mazda may rule for eternity.

Meruem ruled for 40 days, his death leaving the throne vacant for ant Kite, wearing a dead girl's face and seeming to be brewing some nefarious plan. No more is there any sign of that unrelenting pacifism and the sanctity of life he held so high, losing his own may have only served to show him how meaningless the pain and suffering he went through had been, dying only to be reborn as a member of the species that killed him. It may be that he has no desire to rule over the remaining Chimera ants or create an army of his own-

Yet I dread to think what a broken mind possessing limitless power might do to the world.

And that's it. If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you found it interesting, stay tuned, as I think a lot and I will make it your problem.

#Cw: talks of death and PTSD #When I say I unknowingly projected onto him #I can't tell if writing this was cathartic or torturous #and I gave myself heart palpitations so this is enough for today #And yes I refer to ant Kite by he/him pronouns because misgendering him on the account of his body being afab is just ignorant #even if I think skrunkly's genderqueer af and actually wouldn't mind she/her #still i wanna push the trans ant kite agenda #So yes this is how I unknowingly picked up Kite as a coping mechanism even if out attitudes towards death are practically opposites #don't mind your grandpa trauma dumping #What I'm saying is get ant Kite therapy before he sinks the world #I love reimagining Kite as a villain and I don't know why #Kite hxh #hxh kite #kite hunter x hunter #kaito hxh #hxh #hunter x hunter #meta analysis #theories #fic rambles #Icarus waffles #Kitkat #gon freccs #Ging freecss

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cherrybyunss · 4 years ago

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Ship: Haechan x Reader Word Count: 2k Tags: Smut, Explicit, Oral (M receiving), Masturbation, Dirty Talking

An excerpt from When It Gets Risky: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31129871/chapters/76918949

Excerpts Masterlist

_________

Donghyuck and you had been sexting. And seeing the guy at school the next day was, to say the least, a very amusing experience for you.

He was just as great at acting like nothing had happened as you were, and you had expected that. But you could feel him staring at you on multiple occasions, even checking you out at times. And every time your eyes met, you looked away and smiled to yourself. And every time you had to talk to him about something, you would look him right in the eye with the most innocent pair of eyes you could manage. You were sure it drove him crazy.

And you were proved right as soon as it was time for the lunch break.

Lee Donghyuck Meet me in the library. Now.

You smiled at your phone before getting up from your seat and complying.

You dropped him a text when you reached the library, before turning the knob on the door and pushing it open, slowly, trying to figure out if you got the location right for sure.

But before you managed that much, the door got pulled open from the other side. Your eyes widened a little at the sudden force, but the surprised expression soon turned into a smug one when you saw Donghyuck, looking almost mad, and really sexy.

It didn’t last long though, as Donghyuck grabbed your hand and pulled you inside, closing the door behind you, and not even giving you enough time to gasp before slamming you against it, and his lips against yours.

His kissed you with unparalleled, almost painful heat. It almost made you dizzy how wonderful his lips felt against yours. He was really skillful. The boy managed to find perfect harmony even in a moment of sheer desperation.

Your hands went around and met behind his neck in an attempt to pull him closer, if it was even possible. And he had his placed firmly on your waist.

He lightly bit your lower lip and sucked on it, testing your reaction, pleased at the gasp it drew from your lips, which you could deduce from him slightly smirking against your lips before moving closer, deepening the kiss.

You loved the boldness. And boy was he a great kisser.

You wanted more.

Just as he was starting to move down to leave kisses and marks on your neck, you slowly raised one of your thighs a little, attempting to create a slight friction against the growing bulge in his pants and your unclothed skin.

He gasped as he pulled away a little, and grabbed your thighs, letting you bathe in much pride at his reaction. With your bodies undulated in that one moment, you could tell how turned on he was.

He was breathing heavily, lips red, glistening and swollen. But you guessed that made the two of you. You noticed he had pretty lips. A pretty face overall. Perfectly in contrast with the most lustful pair of eyes you’d ever had staring you down.

Ah yes, this was exactly what you’d wanted.

“Such a fucking troublemaker.”

You smiled. “I must be, you look really troubled right now.” You said and reached up to give him a soft kiss on the lips.

He looked at you for a slight instance, and then lifted you up against the door the next, throwing your legs around his waist and resting his hands firmly under your thighs for support.

You gasped and grabbed his shoulders hastily. It’d caught you off guard. It was so hot, it’d rendered you speechless. All you could do was sigh at the feeling of his fingers gently caressing the bare skin of your thighs, never letting the feeling of butterflies in your stomach fade away.

“Now we’re talking.” He smirked, your reaction feeding his ego perfectly well. He leaned in against your ear. “I couldn’t think of anything but fucking you all day today. Do you know how much of a pain in the neck that is?”

You almost shuddered at the feeling of his breath fanning your skin.

He scoffed. “And you had the audacity to act all innocent, makes me wanna fuckin’ ruin you.”

You felt a massive rush of adrenaline through your veins all throughout your body. You’d never been more thrilled in your life. Maybe you did want him to ruin you.

“Now where were we?” He said as he moved your hair out of the way and dived right into your neck again, almost throwing you over the edge.

His lips felt absolutely heavenly against your neck. You were gripping onto his hair for dear life and had been finding it increasingly difficult to stifle your moans with each passing second, when almost as if he’d taken it as a challenge to get you to make a sound, he decided to latch his mouth onto a particularly sensitive spot and suck on it, letting him draw a moan out of you.

You felt his nails dig deep into your skin. “Fuck,” he whispered against your neck. “You even sound hot– Fuck.”

You struggled to form coherent phrases with the painful, ecstatic sensation, combined with the constant attack your neck was under at the time. “Hyuck, I–” Hearing his name made him breathe out against an already vulnerable spot, making your breath hitch. “Fuck!”

You slapped the back of your hand against your mouth to suppress your voice, making his ego soar even higher. Encouraged, he went on to leave a number of hickeys that you were definitely gonna end up having to cover up for at least a couple weeks.

“Hyuck, you’re so good at this– What the fuck!” You managed to say in the midst of the struggle.

He pulled away after one last dragged out kiss, and stared at the red spots he’d left. And then up at you, finally getting to catch your breath. He found you so hot.

You almost collapsed on his shoulder when he did pull away. And felt his breath hitch at the deep breaths fanning his collarbones.

And his reaction piqued your interest yet again.

He pushed you further against the door, grinding his hard, probably painfully hard, bulge against your clothed core. Your body shuddered at the contact yet again. You could see he was desperate for a release.

“Hey,” you leaned in and whispered against his neck, in the middle of leaving a lot of soft little pecks, and a couple of hickeys. “Let me take care of that for you, yeah?”

Donghyuck looked at your every move as he let go of your thighs and helped you back on your feet. He didn’t miss the way you looked up at him through your lashes as you slid down against the door.

You unbuckled his belt and undid his trousers. You could feel him twitch even at the slightest contact. You could only imagine how painful the clothes restraining his length must’ve been.

You slid the trousers and the boxers down in one swift motion causing his member to spring up, tall and proud.

You glanced at him ones, and on finding him looking at you with eyes hooded with lust, wasted no time taking his member in your hand and giving it a few light strokes.

Donghyuck had to almost slam his hand on the door in haste so as to retain his balance. It was all the encouragement you needed.

You licked up his shaft before taking him in your mouth. You initially swirled your tongue around the head, letting him get a good view of how your lips looked wrapped around his length, and hollowed out your cheeks to create the kind of suction you knew drove guys crazy. Then you slowly let the tip of his length hit the back of your throat, and your hand handle the length you couldn’t fit inside, before starting to pump him, putting pressure and sucking repeatedly every time you moved up his shaft.

“Fuck…!” You knew he was having a hard time not fucking your mouth, only managing to because you were good enough without it. His little moans and the hitching of his breath were the hottest sounds you’d heard in forever.

“Mm-hmm?” You asked for affirmation, without taking him out.

He shuddered. You looked up at him with innocent eyes, and he hated how much that riled him up. “Touch yourself.”

It caught you off guard. His voice sounded too authoritative, provided his circumstance at the time. It was hot. And who were you to not comply?

So you did. You dipped your unoccupied hand under your skirt, rubbing your clothed folds lightly. You realized then how bad this whole fiasco had you dripping. And the realization made you squirm.

You made sure not to get too carried away, for you couldn’t lose your rhythm. But even with that much being taken care of, playing with yourself made you feel like you were gonna see the stars anytime then.

As your moans, that were otherwise getting stifled, got louder, the vibrations Donghyuck felt against his length got increasingly harder for him to handle. You could feel him getting close.

“Fuck–” He managed to exclaim in whispers as he threw his head back. And with one last pump, he bucked his hips and came undone inside your mouth.

He looked and sounded so fucking sexy, you were sure you’d end up retaining a videographic memory of the guy in orgasmic bliss. And you didn’t mind at all.

You waited for him to ride out his orgasm before taking him out and standing back up. You’d made sure to swallow everything right up so as to not make a mess. And you realized he must’ve noticed it when his eyes darted down to your lips for a fraction of a second.

He lightly threw his head back one more time and took a deep breath before letting himself fall forward onto your shoulder, one of his hands still resting on the door, and the other having found its way onto your waist.

“That was the best fucking orgasm I’ve had in my entire life.”

You smiled. It wasn’t the first time someone had told you that after you’d sucked them off. “I’m glad.”

He nuzzled your neck, planting a couple of kisses around your collarbones. You loved the way it felt. But stopped him anyways.

“Let’s get out of here for now.”

Donghyuck looked at you puzzled. “What? But– I didn’t make you come yet?”

“Yeah, but we can always do that some other day.” You said, and studied his reaction. “Right?”

His curious expression soon turned into a small smile. He grabbed your waist and leaned in, and whispered against your lips. “We can do that every single day, baby girl.”

You smiled, resting your hands on his chest. “Good, because I’m honestly satisfied enough for now. But that by no means implies that I’ll be done with you anytime soon.” You said in between Donghyuck peppering your skin with kisses. “I need to know if you’re as good as you look like you’d be.” He smirked at the latter remark.

“You didn’t come, yet you’re satisfied?”

“You underestimate how hot you were.”

Donghyuck scoffed at your cockiness. “Well, all I’ll say is, thanks a lot for this, then. You were beyond amazing.” He said and kissed your forehead following a light peck on the lips. You found it really sweet how affectionate he was. “And next time, I promise I’m not letting you go before I make you come at least thrice.”

You raised an eyebrow, smiling. “That’s ambitious.”

“Trust me,” he said, planting another kiss right under your ear, “It’ll be the best experience of your life.”

You chuckled. You sure hoped it’d be.

“Let’s get out.” Donghyuck said, letting go of you to get a hold of the doorknob.

You placed your hand firmly on top of his before he could turn it. “Hyuck, uh–”

He breathed out. “Now I’m gonna have a whiplash every time you call me that.”

You facepalmed. “Listen!” You poked his forehead. And he feigned pain, earning a shake of head from you. “Don’t tell the others about this, please? I don’t want things to get awkward.”

“Yeah, okay, I won’t.”

You nodded. “Thanks.”

He tucked your hair behind your ear and placed a soft kiss on your cheek. “Come, let’s go.”

You smiled at the sweet gesture and followed him outside.

"One down, two to go." You remarked to yourself with a small smile.

_________

Read the entire fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31129871/chapters/76918949

Excerpts Masterlist

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soulmate-game · 4 years ago

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This is an alternate ending for my Bio!dad Joker / Bio!mom Harley AU. Or really, the timeline itself will be entirely different starting from the moment that Marinette’s plane lands in Gotham. If you haven’t read the original, you can do so here.

—*—*—*—*—*

“He’s going to find out, Mom.”

“No he won’t, don’t be silly! I’ve been very careful about hiding you from him, Nettie-pie.”

“Mom… I just have a bad feeling. I don’t think we can hide who I am from him. If he sees me, I think he’ll know.”

The phone went silent.

“If he hurts you, I’ll kill him. If I was crazy about him, Sugar, then I’m head over heels for you. Not even he can stop me from caving his skull in if he tries his usual tricks with you.”

“... My plane leaves soon, I’ll talk to you when I land. And mom?”

“Yeah, honeycake?”

“I love you.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Marinette often hated how accurate her intuition tended to be. She had barely even stepped out of the airport before she had felt the prick of a needle in her neck and the sensation of being shoved into a small, dark space before her vision cut out.

Looks like her mom wasn’t able to hide her existence away as well as they thought.

And unfortunately for Marinette, her darling asshole of a father had apparently had ample time to plan his first meeting with her. If he had just used the much easier to acquire Chloroform on her, then Marinette likely would have woken up early enough to come up with a plan. Chloroform was unreliable and wore off fairly easily. But no, he had actually had the time to steal hospital grade anesthetic.

Which meant that Marinette woke up with her wrists zip-tied to heavy links of chain above her head, and her ankles connected to the chain below her with what felt like ten layers of duct tape.

Lovely.

“Ah, there she is! Good morning, sleepyhead!” Those were the high-pitched, dramatic words she heard when she came back to consciousness. She didn’t even need to open her eyes to know who the speaker was— she had watched enough videos online and not-so-legally obtained Asylum and Prison footage to immediately recognize the speech patterns and tone that was echoing around her.

Apparently keeping her eyes closed was not allowed, because it was only a few seconds later that Marinette felt a harsh slap sting her cheek and whip her face to the side. Oh, that would become a bruise without a doubt. Her teeth betrayed her, cutting into the inside of her mouth with the force of the hit. So, when Marinette opened her eyes to glare at the sperm donor responsible for half of her DNA, she aimed her bloody spit right at him. It landed on his shoe, which only a few seconds later slammed into her gut.

Marinette gasped for air even as the chain she was on swung violently, making her dizzy and upsetting her stomach. Too bad she didn’t have anything in there to throw up on him, she thought angrily. The chain links rattled loudly, ringing in her head alongside the electric pain of both of her newly forming bruises.

“Honestly, is that any way to treat your dear ol’ Daddy?” Joker cooed with false offense, one hand over his heart. Marinette glared at him as best as she could as she continued to sway in the open air, the chain she was tied to being the only thing keeping her from plunging straight down into a vat of sickly green, bubbling liquid.

Marinette didn’t need to be told what that liquid was. And joker knew that, the moment he saw her look down at that vat and saw the realization almost immediately cross her face. So instead of explaining, he laughed. Loud, high, and deranged.

“Good, good! That idiot Harley kept you educated, at least,” he said between psychotic chuckles. “Ah yes, and she somehow managed to choose the perfect name,” he glided over to her, as if he was some ethereal demon of chaos instead of a human. His paper-white hand reached out, grabbing her chin in a crushing grip and turning her face this way and that. Inspecting her as if she was a piece of china and not a living being. “So easy to adjust. Right now, you’re Marinette. Just like how, all those years ago, your mother stood here as Harleen. But just as she was dunked into acid and became my harlequin,” he stepped back and grabbed Marinette’s shoulders. He spun her like a top, making the metal chain creak and clink as it wound into a few weak coils and then released back out, trying to go straight again. It sent Marinette twirling through the air in a horrid half-spin, one-eighty degrees one way before sharply spinning to the other side. Joker laughed.

“Just like that, you’re gonna go from boring old Marinette,” he stuck out his tongue like a child, as if the mere taste of her name was bitter. “And you’ll be reborn as my new little Marionette. Aren’t you excited?!”

“Fuck you,” Marinette spat, even as she tried to blink and return her vision to normal. She was far too disoriented to even come up with a plan— but she was still coherent enough to register that the sky was dark outside the high windows of the factory she was apparently in. She had been missing for a few hours then, which meant that her mom and Momma Ivy would have called for help a long time ago. Maybe if she just stalled long enough, it would get there in time. “I’m not a puppet. Not for you, not for anybody!” She snarled.

Joker rolled his eyes, but his smile still widened. “Oh, that’s what they all say. In fact, your mother put up a good resistance there for a while, but her inner chaos couldn’t resist me. You’ll bend even easier, I have no doubt,” her ran his hand along her cheek in a motion that was so gentle that it felt foreign, wrong, to her coming from him. She knew what he was doing. He was trying to whiplash her, take all her hope away before dangling the option he wanted her to choose in front of her like a carrot on a stick.

Too bad he didn’t know her at all. She cringed away from his gentle touch, revolted by the mere feel of his skin on her’s.

“And your accent is a nice touch,” he cooed as if her reaction didn’t bother him at all. It probably didn’t. “Exotic. Just the thing I need to freshen up my usual act a bit, the Boston twang my old Harlequins had is just… stale by now, don’t you agree?”

Marinette clenched her jaw at the reminder that he had tried to pass off a cheap look-alike as her mom when she disappeared, back when she was pregnant with Marinette, to hide her baby from Joker. How he had discarded that woman like trash when Harley went back to him, only to replace her again when her mom left him for good.

No matter how badly Joker spoke of her mom, Marinette knew that Harley had been the only Harlequin of his to actually last. The only one he kept around, and there was a reason for that. Now, he was looking for another replacement. One that was more than a cheap knockoff, and he was hoping that a teenager with not only Harley’s genetics, but also his own, would be the exact kind of right-hand prop he wanted. An obedient little puppet of chaos, just for him.

But Marinette was nobody's toy. She had been used and taken advantage of enough back in Paris, she had spent her whole life struggling to escape the side effects of her parentage. To deal with the things she inherited.

The obsessiveness, the way she was so quick to get attached. She knew she inherited that from her mom. But there was also the rage, the anger that Marinette constantly had to stuff down. Hide below the surface before it hurt someone. Keep under a tight reign and hide away in the back of her mind, her own dirty little secret.

The constant reminder of just who her biological father was. Because that anger, that viciousness, could only have come from him.

She had spent her whole life trying to carve herself her own identity, to create beauty with the chaotic elements she got from her blood. And she couldn’t blame her mother, not really. Her mother at least did her best to help, and always leant an empathetic ear when Marinette needed it. But Joker?

Oh, she could, and would, blame him even long after he was dead and gone. Because he was the one who hurt her mother, he was the one who twisted her and drove her to feel unfit to be a parent. And sometimes, Marinette thought it would be better if Joker never existed. Sure, that meant she never would have been born. But wouldn’t that have been easier, too? To not ever have to experience the struggle that came with being his daughter, a title she never consented to?

But she couldn’t change the past. She was alive, and she would use her life to spite everything that the Joker stood for. That would be her revenge. He wanted a toy?

Joker had been monologuing, but Marinette drowned it all out as she kept her periphery vision on the windows above her. Shadows moved out there, with familiar bright yellows and shadowy blacks. The bats were there. She just needed to stall.

She opened her mouth. Joker pulled a lever.

Marinette dropped.

Wire whizzed through the air, knocking the breath out of Marinette as it wound around her torso. She was barely able to piece together what was happening; one of the bats shot a human-safe grapple to try and pull her away from the acid.

But the chain and her restraints were stronger, heavier, and just dragged the grapple down with her body.

The impact sent a large wave of sickly green liquid surging over the side of the vat, and Marinette was dragged from view underneath the surface.

It burned.

She distantly felt the tape around her ankles peel itself away from her skin, the combination of acid and wetness rendering it useless. She felt the chemicals burning at her, sending painful tingles across every last inch of her skin. It got in her mouth, she didn’t have any breath in her to hold and ended up swallowing some. It seared her throat and created a river of lava inside her. It hurt.

It hurt so bad, she just wanted out. Out. Out. Out!

Someone pull her out now!

The zip tie around her wrist loosened enough for her to pull herself free, right as something heavy slammed into the heavy metal bowl. The entire container sloshed, slamming to fall onto its side. Marinette’s body was pulled alongside the rush of liquid as it flowed out, and she was able to breathe air again. Sweet, cooling air.

And then she hacked up acid, spitting and spewing it in an attempt to purge every last drop she had accidentally ingested. Like a cat choking on a hairball, she coughed and hacked and her chest convulsed and contracted to try and help her. Her ribs ached, she figured that the grapple that had tried to save her had ended up fracturing or breaking a rib or two. But all she cared about was breathing and getting rid of the chemicals she had inhaled. She needed it out. All of it. Out. Out. Out of her!

“Try to take a deep breath,” a gruff voice commanded, soft but solid. Something stable for her to cling to. So she did as it asked, forcing herself to stop hacking and instead focus on inhaling. As slowly as she could. It was difficult, the first few breaths cut themselves off with more involuntary coughing, but the owner of the gruff voice stayed nearby. Repeated it’s request. “Deep breath. Steady, now. In. Out. Good.”

Marinette was just starting to calm down, just starting to claw herself out of the haze of panic and adrenaline, when that wretched laugh cut through the air again.

“There you are! Heheheheh! My cute little Marionette!”

Marinette froze. She could barely think, barely understand her own emotions. But she knew she was different now. She knew there was no way back, he had taken it from her. He had taken her normality, he had taken all of her years of hard work and burned them right in front of her.

He had won. The bats hadn’t been fast enough. But, if her foggy mind was correct, Batman was the one trying to bring her back to lucidity. Batman was the one trying to help her get air back in her lungs.

Not her so-called father.

If he wanted a toy, she’d be a haunted doll. She’d harass him, haunt him, until he wanted nothing to do with her. She’d come back, like a possessed porcelain doll refusing to be thrown away. She would make him regret ever awakening the monster that she had spent so long forcing down. Because she was her father’s daughter, yes. But she was also her mother’s daughter.

And most importantly, she was Marinette Quinzel-Isley. Her own damned person. The Chosen wielder of the Creation miraculous. And she would never bow down and be used by anyone, ever again.

Tikki’s words from so long ago echoed in her mind. Resounded even louder than Joker’s laughter;

“That’s all order really is, Marinette. The decision to take all the chaos and madness around us, and make it make sense. Make it do something good.”

And wasn’t that everything Marinette had ever done? It was a part of her now. Like a tattoo she had inked into her very soul.

She took the chaos she was given, and turned it into something beautiful. And right now? Right now, the most beautiful thing she could think of was Joker’s face when she slammed her fist into it.

“Easy,” Batman repeated, but for a different reason now. Marinette’s lungs still stuttered a little, but her breathing was mostly under control. Now, he was saying it because Marinette was forcing herself to her feet. Her legs trembled under her, threatening to lay her out on the floor again. But she was every bit as stubborn as Joker, which made for a terrifying combination with her all-consuming fury. The acid had broken the mental chains Marinette had been using to hold it back, and now it burned fierce and bright in her eyes.

So Marinette kept herself up right, cognizant of Batman’s hand on her shoulder but ignoring it. She grit her teeth against the burning light of the room, everything suddenly too bright and colorful. Too vibrant. But it did little to distract her. She realized that one of her hands still gripped the heavy chain that had sent her drowning in the acid, and sent a snarl at her darling, jackass of a father as she whipped it out right towards him.

“Marinette!” Batman yelled, his grip tightening on her shoulder. But he didn’t pull her back, which spoke louder than any words he could have said to her right then. He wouldn’t save Joker from his daughter, he knew the man deserved at least this much pain. And sure enough, the metal links slammed right into Joker’s side, winding around him like a crushing whip.

But that was all Marinette had the strength to do. As soon as she saw Joker’s body hit the floor, writhing in agony and painfully loud cackles, her hand let go of the chain and her body tumbled down. Batman caught her.

“Red Hood, Nightwing, get Joker back to Arkham,” Batman’s order faded in and out of focus. Now that her most pressing desire was taken care of, the effects of the acid reared their ugly heads with renewed ferocity. Everything was too bright, too loud, and her thoughts echoed in her head like voices wrestling for supremacy. “Robin, Black Bat, stay on alert. Harley said that she’s incredibly trained,” he warned his partners. Marinette didn’t begrudge him, the only other two people who had survived being dunked into those chemicals hadn’t exactly treated him with kindness and pacifism. But she could barely focus on them anyway, too distracted by trying to reign in the chaos in her mind.

But Joker would never stay silent, even as he was dragged away in chains.

“Hehehahahahaha! Paper white, paper white!” He jeered cheerfully. “That’s my girl! Violent just like Papa!” Red hood knocked him out with a harsh punch to the side of his neck before he could say another word. But it was enough— enough for Marinette to gasp in realization.

Her skin. It was paper white, just like his. Not even Harley’s skin had been bleached like the Joker’s after her dip in the acid. That had always been makeup. Her mom had a healthy, peachy complexion like anyone else. A complexion Marinette had shared— until now. Now, she was unhealthily pale. Just like him.

A painful screech tore itself from her already raw throat, and Marinette’s fingernails immediately began to tear at her own skin. Red. Red was better than white— she didn’t want to look like him. She couldn’t. White was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.

“Marinette! Stop!” Strong hands clamped around her wrists, pulling her hands away from herself even as she wriggled and tried to keep clawing at herself.

“No! No no no!” Marinette howled. “I don’t wanna look like him! I don’t wanna be like him!” She managed to get one hand free and immediately tried to tear away at her face. Batman was able to wrestle her arm away before she could do any damage besides a few angry red lines. “I refuse! I refuse! I refuse!” She shook her head, not feeling as tears flung themselves off her cheeks.

“Okay,” Batman’s voice was solid again, soft and grumbly and stable. She grabbed at it again, drawn to anything that might help bring her stability. She needed his unflappable attitude right then, and he probably didn’t even realize how badly. “That’s good. But you don’t need to rip your skin off to do that, you know that right?”

Marinette hiccuped, finally sinking down to sob as the weight of everything she had lost pressed down over the chaos of deafening light and blinding sound that continued to jumble around inside her head. “He changed me,” she choked out. Batman nodded even though she wasn’t looking at him.

“He did.”

“Th-that f-fucking bastard,” Marinette managed a sad chuckle before devolving right back into sobs. “I wo-worked so h-hard. N-never hurt any-anybody. Never… never yelled. Ne-never hit… Not people who didn’t attack f-first.”

“I know. Your mom told me,” he confirmed calmly. Solid, tethering. Marinette swallowed another gulp of air, trying to calm down. But everything was too much.

“Mom!” She suddenly realized out loud, turning and grabbing at Batman’s chest, clinging to his uniform. She didn’t even care that she almost sliced herself on a batarang, she clung to him desperately with wide, crazed eyes. “G-get Mom and… and Ivy! They… they can help. They know—“ Marinette paused to breathe, then resumed. “Momma Ivy— she gave me—gave me a diluted… th-thingy, years ago, I can’t remember—“ Marinette’s eyebrows furrowed as she tried to get her mind to calm down. To work.

“The serum she gave Harley?” He asked. “The one that made her immune to poisons, and gave her increased physical abilities?”

“That!” Marinette agreed frantically, nodding. “I was too— too little, to give the real thing, so she diluted it,” she swallowed her spit and winced when it burned her throat. “It… I think it’s helping with the—the—the—“

“The chemical’s effects?” Batman suddenly sounded like he was paying much more attention than before, his shoulders a little straighter at her explanation. “You think it’s slowing down or numbing what it did to your mom and Joker?” Marinette couldn’t talk anymore, it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much, so she just nodded. “Good. That’s good, Marinette. Robin! Get Harley and Ivy down here, now!”

That was when the voices started. Sometime during the ten minutes it took to get her Mom and Ivy to her, they had apparently been waiting nearby anxiously incase the Bats had needed backup, the voices had built from ominous whispers to devious shouts, ordering her to do things like slam her elbow into Batman’s throat or see what happened if she splashed Robin with some of the acid that was still on the ground.

Her body didn’t move. She kept herself carefully still, focusing on ignoring her impulse to listen to one of the voices. She was still lucid enough to know that she would regret it if she did any of that. That the Bats were more on her side than any of the voices or the Joker were. But it was growing painful, and Harley and Ivy walked in to Batman trying to keep Marinette from hitting her own head. She had devolved to trying to knock herself out to get the voices to be quiet.

“Shut up,” she hissed, her voice hoarse and gravelly. “Shut up, shut up, shut. Up!” She was clearly talking to herself, her eyes screwed shut as she continued to try and hit her head. Harley gasped, hands flying to her mouth and eyes watering at the sight. This was something she had hoped she would never see.

“Harls,” Ivy spoke softly, putting a gentle arm around her wife’s back in support. It hurt Ivy to see Marinette in so much agony, but she knew it pained Harley even more. And much more personally. “Come on. We can help.”

“Y-you’re right,” Harley agreed shakily, taking a deep breath to try and compose herself before they both approached their daughter. Batman didn’t let go of Marinette, but did lean out of the way to give them access to her.

“Honeycake?” Harley called out softly, a little unsure how the chemicals were affecting her baby’s personality right then. The first few days were going to be the worst, and she knew that. The Dunk never took it easy on it’s victims. Marinette gasped, stopping her muttering and raising her head to look at Harley with wide eyes.

“Momma?”

Harley had to swallow heavily to shove back the sob that wanted to bubble up out of her. She had to be strong for her baby. She couldn’t break yet. But Marinette hadn’t called her Momma since she was little, now she called Pamela ‘Momma Ivy’ and her just ‘Mom’.

“It’s me, sugarplum,” she assured her daughter, kneeling down and cupping one of Marinette’s cheeks in her palm. And that was when she noticed it, and couldn’t help but widen her eyes in shock. But Marinette’s senses were so sensitive that she noticed it right away, and stiffened.

“Wh-what is it?” She grew frantic when Harley didn’t immediately respond, only winced in sympathy. Marinette knew that wasn’t good. “Mom? What is it? What did he do? What else did he do to me?”

“Darling,” Harley started, licking her lips nervously. “My sweet baby girl, your right eye… it’s green now, sugar.”

Marinette’s world froze. She tried to smile, but it came out lopsided and disbelieving. “No,” she somehow managed to breathe. “No, mom, I have your eyes. Your blue eyes. I love your eyes,” Her voice steadily got more and more panicked as she went on, not wanting to accept what her mother was clearly seeing. She watched as Harley’s face broke a little, a few tears escaping before the older woman could stop them. Marinette shook her head again, slipping her tiny wrist out of Batman’s hold and raising it to her eye. “No. It’s one of his tricks. He—he must have slipped a contact in my eye when I was passed out, that’s— that’s— that’s all—“ but her fingertip met her normal eye. No contact to be felt. Marinette’s hand fell into her lap limply. The room was absolutely silent as everyone gave her a few seconds to process just how much she had been changed, entirely against her will. She opened and closed her mouth, not sure whether she wanted to yell or curse or cry. Instead, her voice just came out in a very tiny, broken:

“...fuck.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Marinette had gone mostly mute. She would say a word here or there, but for the most part she was doing a good impression of a vegetable. She stayed silent, as still as possible, and just stared at the ceiling of her hospital room.

She had been like that for the past two weeks they had been monitoring her in the Acid’s aftermath. Her ribs, which had turned out to only be bruised thankfully enough, had healed. Her cheek and torso were healed up too, only the barest hint of sickly yellow to show as a reminder of Joker’s hits on her. Sometimes the cameras would catch her talking to seemingly empty air, only for a nurse to rush in and see that Marinette had gone silent yet again.

Tikki was doing her best to help. She had been separated from Marinette, but Pamela had found Marinette’s purse and returned it— and subsequently Tikki— when they had gotten her to the hospital. She was the only person Marinette regularly spoke to, because Marinette knew Tikki understood. Tikki had been around since the Big Bang, she had seen worse things than a little insanity. Tikki had always been there to help her feel at ease with her mind and body. She shared a piece of Tikki’s soul, even, according to the tiny god.

But talking to anyone else was too hard. Too scary. She still had those damned voices at war in her mind, trying to convince her to do things that made her lock her joints and keep her body absolutely still before she acted on any of the coaxes. Possibilities she had never considered before came startlingly easy to her mind now— like how it would only take two seconds to tear her IV out and stab it into her nurse’s eye. How she could use her blanket to strangle Momma Ivy, or how she could fake jumping out the window and Harley wouldn’t waste a second trying to save her.

They were horrible thoughts. Intrusive, ugly, and far too loud. She didn’t want to act on any of them, but sometimes she found her fingers twitching only a second before she could follow through on one.

She spent a lot of time meditating, because of it. Which is why most people thought she was ignoring them. She didn’t mean to, she just needed to meditate. It was like her brain was a giant room filled with filing cabinets that held her thoughts and emotions. Her whole life, Marinette had carefully kept this room alphabetized, organized, and neat. Every file in its correct drawer. Until Joker had come along, and ripped the entire place apart. Tore certain files in half, broke her cabinets, ruined her filing system. And now she had to put the room back together, one drawer and piece of paper at a time.

That’s what the meditation was doing. She was getting reacquainted with herself. Learning what had changed in her mind and trying to adjust. She couldn’t be the old Marinette anymore, but she’d be damned if she let the Joker turn her into someone ugly like him.

So she needed time.

One day, towards the end of those two weeks, she got a visitor slipping through her window. Considering her room was on the tenth floor, she had it pretty narrowed down as to who it could be. Batman had visited her every night, a silent shadow in the corner, but he had already left for the day so it couldn’t be him. None of the other bats had dropped by after the second day.

She turned her head to see that that was now changed; Red Hood sat on her windowsill with one leg inside the room and the other bent on the sill itself. He looked the very picture of comfort despite being a stiff wind (or quick shove— no, bad brain) away from falling to his death. And then Hood took off his helmet, which was ugly enough to inspire some of the more violent suggestions in her brain and make them seem appealing.

“Ya know. Red Hood used to be what Joker called himself,” were the first words out of the vigilante’s mouth. Marinette’s eyebrows pulled down, and it was clear she was confused (and a little angry) at what he told her. He grinned, his eyes still hidden by the domino mask on his face. “Eh. The bastard killed me, ya know. I was the second Robin, a lifetime ago.”

Marinette’s eyes widened at that, and the violent voices dimmed and seemed to grow muffled. Marinette couldn’t quite understand what they were trying to tell her anymore, which made her figure that she had better pay attention to what Hood had to say. She licked her dry lips, and spoke softly. Her throat was still damaged from the acid, so she couldn’t speak very loudly yet.

“Then how are you… you know, here?”

The man chuckled. “Another group of assholes happens to have a magic pit in their basement. It’s a glowing green lake, ten different types of bad news. But it brings people back to life, and they dunked me in it without even caring for a second if I even wanted to come back.”

Marinette’s shoulders relaxed all on their own. It seemed to sink into her brain all at once, a simple:

Oh. He gets it.

“I guess the water doesn’t take it easy on your brain, either?” She hazarded an educated guess. He laughed, shaking his head.

“Not at all. I went off the deep end for a while, and killed a lotta people. They deserved it at least, but I don’t like how violent I was back then. Before I learned how to cope. Attacked people who were innocent. Red Robin almost died when I attacked him, back then, when he was just Robin.”

“Then why’d you keep calling yourself Red Hood?” She asked, tilting her head. He finally turned his head to look straight at her instead of just staring out the window. His grin widened, but it was lopsided. The grin of someone who was healed from some serious shit, but knew that it would always ache. A bittersweet expression.

“Cuz he doesn’t own that name. I made it into something that stands for at least a little good. Something that scares the assholes who don’t care about killing or abusing innocent people. Hell, some people take comfort in the name Red Hood now. And you know what that means?”

Marinette shook her head, and his grin widened into a shark-like smile.

“It means I stole it from him. The name Red Hood. He’ll never use it again, and now it stands for the opposite of anything he’d agree with. You can do that too, you know. Find something to steal from him, or use something he gave you, and make it your own.”

“Turn the chaos into something good,” Marinette said dreamily, clearly quoting someone. Red Hood nodded.

“Exactly. It’s not gonna be easy, but you got the choice here. You ain’t going back to who you used to be, but you can take the victory away from him.”

“... make him regret ever dunking me in that stupid vat,” she agreed, narrowing her eyes as they filled with determination for the first time since her body hit the acid. “He wants a puppet, an obedient little doll, I’ll give him Annabel.”

“There ya go,” The vigilante slid off the windowsill and approached her bed, holding out his hand for a shake. “I can help you get to that. What do ya say?”

Marinette was silent for a long minute, staring straight into his masked eyes. And then, a slow smile spread over her lips. “I got one question, Red Hood.”

“Shoot.”

“How do you feel about black cats?”

—*—*—*—*—*

This took four hours, holy hell. I’m actually happy with how this turned out. What do you guys think? I even got to max length on Tumblr 😂

#maribat #ml x dc #mlb x dc #jasonette #bio!dad joker #bio!mom harley quinn #Poison Ivy x Marinette #platonic brucinette

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blush-and-books · 4 years ago

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The End of Julie and the Phantoms - A [very long] Theory

The core of this theory was inspired by many posts that I have seen saying that Julie’s “everything was a dream” shirt may have insinuated that nothing happening on the show is actually reality. I brought my series finale pitch to my dear friend @willexx who then helped me develop this headcanon into something I cried about during lunch.

It starts out pretty heavy, but there are some little light things here and there because it’s what the himbos would have wanted.

We start here:

In the last episode, the boys are ready too cross over. It’s an emotional moment for everyone, they’re crying, Julie is sobbing, and we as an audience have definitely seen better days. With one last “we love you, Julie,” a flash of light overtakes the garage space, blinding our screens.

The scene flashes to Julie lying in bed, waking up from her ringing alarm.

She is visibly confused, clearly wondering how she got to bed when the last thing that she remembers is the boys’ painful departure. When she reaches for her phone to turn off her alarm -- it’s a school day -- she quickly notices the date:

It’s the same day in 2020 that she met the boys, that she was going to clean out her mom’s garage, and that she had to perform to keep her spot in the music program.

So, none of it was real?

Not exactly.

The experience was a sort of dream-like saga that was designed for her to be able to grieve on her own, and rediscover her voice in her own way. But just as the panic sets in that it was a complete figment of her imagination, the feeling of cold metal on her left hand becomes too hard to ignore: One of Luke’s rings.

Reggie’s leather jacket is hanging in her closet.

Alex’s fanny pack is slung across the back of a chair.

But when she runs downstairs, clad in her dinosaur slippers, rushing to the garage to see if the guys were there -- they aren’t. They have crossed over.

As she moves through the day, she’s a new Julie, but everything else is the same. Instead of a baseball cap and low ponytail, Julie throws on her black jeans and Reggie’s leather and lets her hair run wild. She’s displaying a confidence that Flynn hasn’t seen in a long time, that seemed to have hit Julie overnight.

Julie sings Wake Up in music, and keeps her spot in the program. She doesn’t oogle Nick in the halls and she tells Carrie off when there’s an attempt at an insult made.

Real or not, the boys helped her. They did their job.

When she gets home, and Ray irks her about cleaning the garage or selling the house, she is quick to insist that she doesn’t want to move and that if he needs her for the rest of the night, she’ll be in her mother’s studio.

There aren’t any instruments except for the piano, and the space has the original layer of dust that it had before her and the guys started using the space again. Julie feels empty. But she reminds herself that the ring on her finger is real, extremely real, so she retraces her steps that she had taken in the first episode and tracks down the Sunset Curve demo CD, puts it in the stereo, and plays it.

Nothing happens. Or, at least -- nothing that she could see.

The camera pans up as Julie is hard at work to organize the garage, and we see the boys in the chairs on the ceiling, watching over her fondly.

~This is where @willexx started to throw in some epic ideas~

The boys are real, and they have crossed over, which renders Julie unable to see them. However, in her reset reality without them, no one remembers Julie and the Phantoms or the fact that the boys existed in the first place. The boys, while she can’t see them, visit her and try to make contact with her as much as they can, even though their times with her are limited since they are supposed to be on the other side.

She’ll feel a ghost of a touch on her hand or her hair, and know that Luke is there. When she’s in the car and the radio is on a country station, she knows that it’s Reggie. In a journal for school, a small “okay” will be written in the corner of a page, and it is Alex. These little notes keep her going, and she’ll just sigh and say “my boys,” and leave everyone around her confused.

Sometimes, when she wakes up in the morning, the demo tape can be heard playing in the garage. Somehow she’ll get filled with hope that if she runs into the garage, the boys will be there rocking out without her like she used to scold them for left and right -- but no one is there. Ray comments that the stereo is broken and Julie has no choice but to nod along.

One day she finds Luke’s songbook that had been buried in the plastic garbage bags of the boys’ belongings. She still brings Unsaid Emily to his parents, and she cries herself to sleep that night.

When Julie blows up as a solo artist, she actually records Unsaid Emily, and she records Bright, and all of the other songs that her and Luke wrote together. Luke Patterson is in the writing credits for many of the songs, where Trevor never bothered to list him, and a part of Luke is at piece.

On the two year anniversary of Rose’s passing, Julie finds Luke’s “angst flannel.” Ray asks where she got it; she tells him a thrift store. But it feels warm, like all of the guys are there, hugging her.

Another morning, she could swear that Luke and Reggie are strumming out Flying Solo on level one volume, and once again finds herself darting to the garage with no good excuse except to keep her hopes up. They, unsurprisingly, aren’t there -- but a note is, that says “you’re a star, Jules. We love you.”

The handwriting is messy. She knows it’s from Luke, who probably fought the boys to even write the note because he just wanted to talk to her even though they need to move on and his handwriting is awful. The note gets tucked into the pocket of the flannel, and when she needs to be reminded that she’ll be okay, she pulls it out of the pocket and holds it tight.

Before every show, she reads the note, and mumbles a little prayer to them wherever they are -- even if no one else believes they are real.

When Luke’s flannel starts to lose it’s original sweet scent of Emily and Mitch’s house, Julie spends an hour crying on the floor of her bathroom. A faded orange beanie appears in her room the next day.

Little notes from Luke appear here and there, but never from any of the guys. In the shadows where she can’t see them, Alex tells Luke that in order for both themselves and Julie to move on, Luke needs to stop leaving her notes -- so most of the ones that Julie finds are even more messy than usual, like Luke was trying to write them without the guys noticing.

During one of their forbidden conversations, Julie says to Luke: “hey, I never told you this before... But I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what I would do without knowing that you guys were still around. I think I would have lost my mind, and would have been convinced that I went crazy.”

Luke could have ran to Alex, repeated Julie’s tearful words, and given the drummer a fat “I told you so.” But he doesn’t. Julie’s validation is the only validation that he needs.

Whenever her and Carlos and Ray make an extra seat at their dinner table for Rose, Julie imagines, deep in her mind, that it is for Reggie too. Reggie deserved a seat at their table; deserved to be a part of their family. A family that would have loved him. And when a fork falls off of the table, Julie knows he’s there. One day, Julie asks Ray how he would have felt about having another son. He responds confused, and Julie gets tears in her eyes, and neither of them bring it up again.

When Julie and Flynn go to Pride together, Julie wears Alex’s fanny pack even though she hadn’t gotten any signs from him since they had all moved on. He still doesn’t reach out afterwards, too overwhelmed by her gesture to think of a way to properly extend his gratitude and love for the girl who is keeping his spirit alive -- but Luke lets her know that he was grateful.

Luke still visits Julie like he visits Emily and Mitch. And on Luke’s birthday every year, Julie goes to a little bakery after school and buys herself a cupcake; sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to light a candle and sing happy birthday. When she lights the candle, the candle gets blown out. Every year after that first year, she gets candles that you have to turn on and off so that Luke can’t ruin the moment.

(He ends up throwing the fake candle on the ground out of retaliation.)

Julie is so emotionally stable for the most part that the complete change is a shock to Ray. He tries to ask her what happened, but she always acts like nothing happened and then hides in her room for hours. Sometimes, she makes random little comments out of the blew and Ray has many conversations with Victoria on whether or not he should have Julie seeing Dr. Turner again.

At her first solo concert, Julie walks into the dressing room to find “Stand Tall” written three times, in three different handwriting styles, in red, pink, and blue. The message in blue is the messiest by far, and is followed up with a heart.

The name of Julie’s first album is Phantoms.

#julie and the phantoms #julie and the himbos #jatp #jatp theory #jatp headcanons #julie molina #luke patterson

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