#what level of canon are we classifying things on now?

[missfrustration]

grip on the barrel (toji fushiguro x reader, 18+)

rating: explicit 18+, minors do not interact!

tags: pwp, shameless smut, canon universe, hate sex, misogynistic and sexist language, degradation, gun kink, muzzle kink, masturbation, semi-public sex, vaginal sex, co-workers, not for the faint of heart

A/n: the following content contains some pretty intense gunplay, and some seriously fine toji content, you have been very warned! on ao3 here!

word count: 2.3k

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“I didn’t think you were the type to torture someone after they spit out everything they know.”

“I didn’t think I would be hired to work with a brat like you.”

The man in front of you methodically wiped off his stained knives before putting them in an engorged purple worm you couldn’t believe was real. You shook it off.

“Maybe if you weren’t so bold in how you handle your missions, I wouldn’t have to help your sorry ass, Toji.”

The man says nothing, choosing to lazily stride ahead of you to the rendezvous spot in the tunnel of back alleys.

Although you were hired specifically for your information-gathering skills and methods, you were not fully briefed on the assigned target, the ‘Vessel.’ Yet here you are, with the secretive organization’s lead hitman at their disposal, Toji Fushiguro.

You catch up to him, pointing a conniving finger at the side of his face. It’s the same side that has that harrowing scar on his mouth. 

“And what you did back there? I’ve been doing this as long as you, Toji, and we both know a chump that’ll start talking after a few punches. Bringing in the damn armory fucks up our plan when you start cutting off tongues.”

“Let’s get one thing straight, little lady.” He turns to you, towering over your figure with an intimidating presence that is overly purposeful. The blood on his chest from the mission is prominent, with no intention of him to hide it. “I don’t play when there’s money on the line. If you don’t follow my lead, we don’t do the job right, and you’ll end up like them. Got it?”

You step up to him, unbothered by his threat. He cocks his head at your audacity to challenge him.

“I can work fine on my own. Not my fault your m.o. is shitty enough to have a girl like me work with you.”

“The only time I work with girls like you is when they have hands that please me. Don’t get ahead of yourself, sweetheart.” He clicks his tongue at you, rubbing his neck. To him, you’re a pest he’s stuck with that he has no intention to entertain.

“I’m sure they get paid to please you. Must be dehumanizing to fuck a hardass.”

“They’re the ones that end up giving me money. I do too well for them.”

“Jesus, gag me.”

“With that attitude, I won’t.” His comebacks come out with ease, yet they make you want to die on the spot.

“Look, I know you know more about this stupid vessel than the organization does. Not only that, you reveal classified client information to the only suckers that you decide to keep alive. That doesn’t sound like getting the job right; it sounds like you don’t care what’s best for the clients if it’s in the way of your fucking ego. Likely, you don’t even have the brain capacity to process what I just said.” 

His face clicks to you as it contorts in anger. In a flash, his fingers fly to your hair, pulling your head by the scalp to yank your eyes to him. His other hand pulls a gun from the creature and aims at the thick of your temple.

His face levels with yours, now flush against your ear. 

“I don’t need a wench like you talking shit to me. All you women are good for is being fucked.” His words are like daggers, piercing violently into your ear in booms.

Toji moved quicker than you could process, and your breath hitches from his hands on you. He slams you against a brick wall and the barrel of the gun presses against the side of your head. His hands roughly tangled in your hair, and his annoying mouth pressed to your ear again.

“I got no brain, huh? Say that shit again when I paint yours all over this fucking alley.” His tone is purposeful; the words are annunciated as he buries the gun to your head. He wants you to be scared enough to submit under him.

You should back down now—say you’re sorry about pissing him off and to let you go—yet you’re the opposite of scared. Your hastened breaths seem to be from the terrifying scene presented to you. That’s the natural reaction from someone else in your position. 

You try to pry yourself off, only succumbing to his raw strength. But Toji can see the change in your eyes when the weapon is turned on you and your bodies feel so close. 

Mmph.

You moan from the hands that hold you, making any words of defense hold no weight. You scramble from his hands to grasp any dignity, but the eyes that were once blazed in hellfire are now doused in curiosity.

“Oh, interesting ,” Toji says, pulling you close as he looks at your heated face. His face is irritatingly smug. “I guess I was right about you, little girl.”

“You fucking asshole,” You seethe. “Just put me down.”

“Oh, do you really want that? I can tell by your eyes that you fucking love this, don’t you?” He glides the handgun down your face, sliding down your chin and now firmly planted on the corner of your lips. “I can shut that dirty mouth up if I wanted to.”

“Like hell you could.” 

But you can’t deny the sensation in between your legs when he points the gun at you. He rubs the barrel of the handgun, twisting it against your skin as if to carve it into you.

This same man has killed more people this week than nights in a year. He tortures with no remorse and kills with no feeling—a cold, calculated monster who now turns all of his sadistic tendency towards you. You were so close to death that you could practically taste the power from the barrel that could shoot into your skull at one pull of his finger.

And you can’t help but moan again. 

You can’t help but pant from feeling overwhelmed by the dangerous man in front of you. It was like spinning a life-or-death roulette, with each second more thrilling than the last. 

“You’re drooling like a mutt. You’re the craziest bitch I’ve met.” Toji laughs. “Why don’t you show me you’re more interesting than women I use off the job?” 

Your bloodstream fills will rage, caging your body from total submission. But you know he has you cornered: your biggest turn-on has been revealed. 

“You fucking deaf? You can’t do anything better than every girl that’s opened her legs for me.” He snares.

“Asshole.” 

Your mouth moves to suck on the gun. The hard rubber of the silencer clacks with your teeth, and your lips clasp a ring around the barrel. 

You’re not stupid to know that there are a few more shots in his magazine. Toji shot in the ceiling earlier to intimidate the grunts you got information from. He’s only a trigger away from blowing your head off, yet the level of danger has you moaning on the gun, half-lidded and legs trembling against Toji’s calloused body. 

“Jesus,” Toji says.

You notice a glint of exhilaration in Toji’s eye, and a jolt of arousal runs down your spine when you feel the pressure of the gun increase. 

Toji shoves the silencer down your throat, watching your lips swallow it down and eyes begin to water.

Above all, Toji was more interested that you haven’t pulled away from the long barrel shoved down your throat, instead your cheeks hollow out. You choose to take it in your mouth, now sucking enough to taste the bitterness of the gunpowder still left on the muzzle.

“Thought I was just some hardass, hm? Now I have you gagging it down like a slut.”

He pulls it out of your mouth, watching you cough out. 

“Bastard, I know you like this too.” You say, “You wouldn’t keep going unless you liked it.”

“With some girl thinking she’s all that?” Toji forces your body on the ground with your back flush to the brick wall. “What I want is to have you squirm.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Your ass hurts from that fall, causing you to shift your legs. 

“Easy.”

You don’t think you should’ve shifted, as Toji eyes narrow on them. In one fluid motion, he grabs your legs before ripping your cargo pants off of you. He didn’t even spare a second to look at your black lacy underwear before tearing it off. Within seconds, he already has you stripped bare on your bottom half. 

Then he grabs his gun again. 

“Don’t keep them closed.”

Toji’s hand split into your thighs, cracking them open with sandpaper palms. Even his grip is brutish, and you see your soft skin squish from it. When you tried to close your legs, it seemed that he would wretch your plump thighs wider. He puts himself between them. 

You can see the lights in his eyes go off when Toji’s face contorts to sick pleasure. He grabs the gun and dives it between the aching apex of your thighs. 

The second the cold muzzle of the gun touches your clit, you feel a wave of warm fuzz. You practically melt into the touch. He languidly rubs it against you, watching you twitch against the gun in sick intrigue. 

“Such a deprived slut.”

“And you’re a sick fuck.”

Yet, both of your eyes are glued to the scene. Toji is practically fucking you with the gun with the way it rocked into you. You moaned against him, reveling in the way he could easily mutilate your body if he wanted to. It all made the gun slick against you faster. 

A devilish smirk came to your face. 

“Put it in.” 

Toji raised an eyebrow, obviously persuaded by your offer yet not wanting to give in without pure degeneracy.

“Touch yourself before I do.”

No, this man wants to defile you without holding back. You could practically gag, yet it was lost on the erotic sound on your tongue. You fucking hate Toji, yet you’re hate fucking at its finest with the Sorcerer Killer. 

You gather your juice on your fingers before diving into your pink bud of nerves. The thousands of nerves screamed in lust when the skin contacted. 

“Shit.” 

Toji’s eyes gall to your hands, watching you fuck your sensitive clit. Your hand flicks back and forth so fast that invites Toji to thrust the silencer into you. You feel your walls stretch to the gun, screaming from the pain of the rugged ridges, yet your legs shake from the ecstasy. 

The way that Toji grips his trigger makes you lull your head back. Your fingers start to work a pace that rocks you closer. You feel so close, but you stop before you can cum. You want this moment to last.

Toji could give less of a fuck what you wanted.

“Who said you could stop?” Toji says, starting to thrust it inside you at a degenerate pace. He grabs your hair, lunging into your ear. 

“Keep. Going.”

You grunt in annoyance, yet you comply like a dog.

Your fingertips come back to your pink bud, rocking your hips against your hand slowly. Toji’s body is pressed against you, focusing on panting and sucking your sensitive ear, encouraging you to keep going. He grunts into your ear, lips taking your lobe, biting it hard enough for you to squeak, thrusting the barrel fast enough to make you cum; it’s all so sadistic, yet you didn’t stop him.

Toji rustles his hand out of your hair and down his pants, popping his hard erection out before immediately beating it off. The way he starts to pant from the sensation, from the vision of you, was both annoying and so enticing. You displayed your dripping arousal to him, watching the movie that was his cock bucking into his hand. 

You ram against the wall from the sheer intensity of Toji thrusting his silencer into you, erotic noises come out of your mouth, ripping out of you when Toji bites down on your neck. It was the catalyst for your entire cunt to burst in pleasure.

You burst into animalistic moans as you cum on Toji’s gun, and he sure as hell loved it. He helped you ride that despicable orgasm with each deep thrust of the gun hitting your cervix. The pleasure was so overwhelming your thighs hugged against his body, and you lunged into the crook of his neck. You bit down on the flesh of his shoulder mid-climax, fully enthralled by sheer pleasure that it was almost too much to bear.

Once Toji pulls out of the gun, he eyes down the creamy substance that stained the black exterior. It dripped down like honey before it lifted onto Toji’s tongue. He swallowed it with an insatiable hunger, practically rolling his eyes when his lids fluttered.

“The roughest girls taste the sweetest,” He groans erotically. “It makes me want more.”

“Like you could’ve taken it further,” you panted, starting to get up.

Toji scoffs.

“Oh, that would’ve really killed you,” He darkly laughs, “and I need you to make it to the rendezvous. I’d rather die than have to carry you there.”

“If you keep your vulgarity, I would rather die than have you touch me again.”

“Don’t be like that. I can catch you on a day we're off and easily break you in like a fucking bottle. Get a little vacation from work; I’ll make sure your little legs can’t get up again.”

“Don’t count on it, asshole. Don’t think we’re buddy-buddy just because you made a girl cum for once.”

“Just admit it. You loved it like a filthy little vixen.”

“In your dreams.”

But Jesus, if he can make you feel like that without his dick, you can’t imagine what full-on sex with a cold assassin is like.

There is no fucking way to save this business relationship now.

[dapurinthos]

still staring at the numbers for the post-purrgil'ed chimaera, holding up different things like i'm matching paint swatches to dye formulations for fabric, going:

okay conceivably some of the populous might have managed to evacuate while still in lothal's atmosphere, i will allow for a generous amount there.

of course, the deaths from the initial assault, ones during transport, and arrival in the skeletal whale death ring around peridea.

but! i think there was an attempted mutiny at some point in the first two years simply because of the human-centric, xenophobic attitudes of the empire that a good amount of the various enlisted, noncom officers (possibly some of the junior ones, too, the ones without that much contact with thrawn, as opposed to, like, lts. pyrondi, lomar, watkin, etc.) would definitely have an undercurrent of: 'if we had a human commander this wouldn't have happened' (because people, in a crowd and scared, are stupid).

and some deserters well. deserting to go after ezra because: see previous reason re: stupidity, and a driving need of 'kill the jedi who got us into this mess'. pik and waffle are so ashamed of you guys. your dogtags ended up as a chainmail shirt for ezra! tsk.

the people sent out to explore peridea for resources (you need water! it's the immediate second things to do in a survival situation!) that just. didn't. come back (maybe even eaten by whatever presence the mortis gods have there. or whatever baylon is looking for). attrition via the natural inhabitants of peridea.

& the dathomiri fortress definitely ate some people because we all know what their architecture is like, probably with some defence zombies prior to whatever thrawn did to wake up the great mothers (possibly used whatever resources were available in the fortress [were there books there? WERE THERE BOOKS? dave answer me dave] and the chimaera's databanks to learn ur-kittât because he would).

look. someone has to figure out a decade of happenings, dave, and we all know it's not going to be you.

thank you for coming to my tedx talk.

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Pleasure Is My Business: Part One

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.1k

Summary: You’re brought back to your high school days with this case. You put that behind you when you graduated, but life has a funny way of bringing you closer to the person who made your life miserable back then.

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there are any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated

x

"The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture." - Camille Paglia

Before you leave for work, you grab the coffee you premade as soon as you wake up. The coffee is right next to your high school reunion invitation. The opened card stares at you whenever you pass by it, begging you to acknowledge it. High school was one of the worst years of your life because not only did kids bully you, but you felt their own pain as your own.

It wasn't fun.

This reunion is in a few days but you're still in Quantico. Looks like you won't get to go, and honestly, you're kind of relieved. Spencer wants you to go and prove to everyone you're this hotshot FBI agent (which you are), but you don't feel like proving to a bunch of people who never gave a fuck about you in the first place.

"Are you gonna go?" Spencer says from behind you.

"We'll, seeing how it's in a few days and we're not in Dallas, I don't think so. It's so stupid because instead of a night, they made it a whole weekend getaway. As if I want to spend more time with them than I have to."

"Maybe you can go to the other one."

All you can do is shrug. You really don't want to get into this right now, plus, you have to get ready for a case Hothc pulled together. Hotch got called to Dallas early in the morning to do a briefing on a case sent by Patrick Jackson, the attorney general.

Hoyt Ashford, a hedge fund manager for a major bank, has turned up dead in a hotel room. Hoyt didn't do too well in the public eye after going on talk shows and talking about how the real estate crisis wasn't a real thing. He posted an apology video about the issue, but once word got out that he died, his lawyers classified it as a suicide.

If you know any better, then that's not true.

According to Hotch, there was Viagra near Hoyt's body. Considering that his wife was at home with the kids, it's safe to assume the prostitute he was with killed him. Something that's confidential and not to be mentioned in any reports is that Hoyt took $10,000 out of a fund in cash. No one saw the prostitute he was with, which isn't surprising since they know how to be discreet. According to Patrick, this is the second murder in Dallas.

You might be able to attend your reunion after all.

"Female serial killers are a fascinating field," Spencer says once everyone is in the air. "We don't have much information on them, but what we do know involves throwing the rules completely out the window. Take the signature, for instance. They don't torture or take trophies because there is no sexual gratification when a woman kills. Murder is the goal. They don't have to do anything extra."

"So, basically, women are more efficient at killing," you half-joke.

"Historically, they have had body counts in the hundreds."

"Assuming that the job is the stressor, what are some of the reasons prostitutes kill their customers?" Hotch asks over the phone.

"Money, drugs, and PTSD. At some point, every call girl, no matter how well paid, gets coerced into an activity she didn't consent to. Aileen Wuornos used to purposefully stage paid sexual encounters as an excuse to murder men she thought would rape her," you explain.

"Wuornos was psychotic and disorganized. I think this girl is poisoning them before she has sex with them."

"She's using Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine. It's a popular rat poison in China which can be easily soluble in alcohol," Spencer explains after reading the files Hotch sent over.

"Poison is the perfect MO. It's quiet, quick, and the victims never see it coming because they think they're getting lucky." Hotch makes an uncertain noise. "Does that mean something to you?"

"These men are paying $10,000 a night for discretion as well as sex. She has a history with them. She didn't decide to kill them at the moment. She walks in with the intent to kill them, and she's doing it before she sleeps with them. She's not just organized, she's also methodical. She decides early which one of her clients is worth killing," Hotch says.

"Maybe the victims all share the same fetish. Both victims were in their fifties, highly visible, and careful of their image. If they were kinky in the same way, they'd go to great lengths to hide it."

"We're facing a corporate culture that'll do everything it can to keep us out."

"Actually, I had some luck there. Hoyt's wife isn't too happy with how he died. She agreed to talk to us but because every silver lining has a dark cloud, the hedge fund released a statement." JJ pulls out her phone to read the statement that was sent to her. "Ashford died peacefully in his home, according to lawyer David Madison.' They're already trying to close ranks."

"Does that language sound familiar to anyone else?" Spencer asks.

"What do you mean?"

"It's the same thing as the murder of the first victim. 'According to the company lawyer, Stanton died peacefully in his home'."

"Y/N and Morgan, start with the wife and see if you can get her to open up. JJ, call the lawyers and tell them I want to meet with both of them."

"You want to play them off each other?"

"I think one of them wrote both press releases. Let's see which one calls us back."

Once you land, you and Derek head over to the Ashford home where Yvonne Ashford is eagerly waiting for you.

"Mrs. Ashford, we're very sorry about your husband," you say.

"I've been getting nothing but condolences all day. I feel like a hypocrite for accepting them, knowing how he died."

"We think your husband might have been targeted because of something sexual he did with this call girl. I know this is hard, but is there anything you can tell us about what he liked?"

"In bed? I can sum it up in one word. Younger."

"How much younger?"

"Twenty-five. That was when I first met him."

"So, your age difference was part of the attraction?"

"Are you kidding? It was the whole relationship."

"Mrs. Ashford, no offense, but your husband spent a lot of money on this woman. Was there anything else at all that he liked from a younger woman besides the ego boost?" Derek asks.

"There's a certain kind of man, Agent, for whom the only kind of sex that matters is the ego boost. In a marriage like ours, you have to work at it or in my husband's case, pay for it."

Your phone rings and you step off to the side when you see Hotch is calling.

"Yeah, Hotch?"

"We got a meeting with a madame that sets meetings up like the one Ashford was in. Spencer is heading over to meet with her. I want you to go with him."

"Sure." You hang up and walk over to Derek. "I got to go. See what else you can find out about Hoyt."

"Yeah."

The madame, Lauren, is hosting an open house where she is able to meet clients discreetly. It's actually pretty smart since people might think they're there for the open house instead of something else entirely.

"This is actually pretty smart," you say when you meet up with Spencer. "Properties like this are safe and an inspection-free investment for large sums of cash."

An older woman walks out of the house with a big smile on her face.

"Well, hello, you two!"

"Are you the--"

"Isn't this neighborhood just fabulous? You're gonna love this house," she cuts your boyfriend off. She escorts you two inside the house for more privacy. "You two need lessons in faking it. I teach a class."

"So, you arrange dates for escorts?" you ask.

"All I arrange are meetings. What happens between two consenting adults when that meeting is over is something I'm not liable for. Now, who wants a scone?" she offers from a platter.

"Listen, we're looking for someone who is a high-end prostitute who takes fees up to ten thousand dollars. She has the intent of killing her clients before having sex with them."

"Oh, yes. We all know about this woman. She's terrible for business."

"I guess there's only so many men that can afford the service you provide, right?"

"Yes, but with the way she's behaving, she's only hurting herself. An escort's client list is the most important investment she has. It's her daily income and her retirement package when she sells the list."

"She's not working with a service then. No madam would allow an escort to kill off the clientele."

"What about the type of work your employees do?" Spencer asks nervously. "We're sort of operating under the assumption that this escort is killing men who make her perform a specific sexual act."

"What did you have in mind, sweetie?" she smirks.

"I... I don't even... I don't know."

"Don't mind him," you giggle. "It's his first time."

"If I may, I think you're looking at this all wrong. Start with this question: why would a man pay a woman five figures?"

"It's not just for sex, is it?"

"Of course, you've got to be good in bed to be successful, but that's the easy part. What men want more than the no strings attached sex is a therapist. Someone who will absorb the worst parts of their personalities."

"They're looking for someone to tell their fears and insecurities to. Everything they can't take home to their wife."

"That's what I groom my girls to do--how to talk to these men and how to listen. Don't get me wrong, deviancy comes with the territory. I can't tell you how many men need to be submissive as an outlet from their extremely stressful jobs. I can tell you that if the sex was the reason she was killing these men, she would have broken long before she charged $10,000."

"It isn't how these men act in bed, it's how they act out of it," Spencer says.

This unsub isn't killing at a specific time because it's whenever her client wants to meet with her. While you've been talking to Lauren, another murder has taken place. You and Spencer leave the open house and immediately head over to an office firm.

Joseph Fielding is found dead inside the elevator, tied to an office chair with X's marked in lipstick on his eyes, and clear tape wrapped around all over his mouth.

"The victim is Joseph Fielding. He was the CFO here," Rossi says when you two get there.

"Was he poisoned?"

"Yes, and staged. She killed him in his office and then rolled him out here to be found."

You walk over to the victim but pause when you see the energy left behind by the unsub. It's blue because the unsub is a female, but you recognize this energy. There are eight billion people in this world with eight billion different base energies. Every single person you've met has their own energy signatures, and you're familiar with this one. Not only have you seen this energy before, you know the person attached to it.

You've met and gotten to know this person before.

"I know this unsub," you say.

"You do?" Hotch asks.

"Yeah, but I can't put a name to it yet. I've definitely seen it sometime in my life."

Hotch gives you time to put a name to the unsub, but for right now, he focuses on what he can see physically.

"The lipstick is new."

"It was done postmortem. Reid said female serial killers don't leave a signature. I think she did that just for us. She's already exposed him at his most vulnerable. Now she wants to be noticed."

There is commotion by the barrier formed by local police by a man trying to get through, which he does eventually.

"Which one of you is Aaron Hotchner?"

"Me."

"I'm Larry Bartlett. I represent Mr. Fielding in Webster Industries."

"This is a closed crime scene, Mr. Bartlett."

"I know. I spoke to Ellen Daniels, and she said you're a very reasonable man."

"Escort him out, please," Hotch says to one of the officers.

"No, wait. Please." The officer tries to grab him, but he doesn't leave right away. "The press is outside and they can smell blood. Is there any way we can handle this discreetly?"

"We're not about to lie for you," Derek says.

"You don't have to lie. Just don't comment."

"Excuse us."

Hotch takes the team off to the side to talk about the benefits of not commenting on the murder. "Is there any reason to go public yet?"

"Validating her is exactly what she wants. If we hold back, she's more likely to make a mistake," you say quietly.

"He doesn't need to know that. We need everything you have on Fielding like bank accounts, tax records, and emails."

"Everything?" Larry asks in uncertainty.

"Everything."

"I'll gather everything and send it in the morning."

x

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[gospelofme]

Some thoughts about Wolffe in episode 7 of The Bad Batch

It was interesting to see that he’s kept his same armor design. I noticed Cody had kept his more or less, but had changed the color to grey and altered the design slightly. Perhaps Wolffe did so because the Wolfpack is still a thing or perhaps he’s honoring them.

He still has that intimidating reputation. That has obviously carried over from the Republic era to the Imperial era. Even the TK troopers and Commandos respect him (at least to his face). He’s in charge of Commandos, clones, and TK troopers and it’s a clear leadership. There isn’t an Imperial officer breathing down his neck or micromanaging him.

The way he had a “don’t fuck with me” attitude towards the Shadow Operative was classic Wolffe. He obviously doesn’t give a fuck about this guy’s elite training. He’s not afraid of him in any way and I’m confident Wolffe could kick his ass. And I think Wolffe is confident of that as well. I’ll be thinking about the way he walked into and pushed aside the Shadow Operative with his body.

He didn’t bring any TK troopers with him to intercept “the rogue clones”. Only clone troopers. I feel like this was intentional. I think he knew he’d be able to communicate better with other clones if that’s who he brought with him. Plus I wonder if those were the ones he hand selected because he trusts them the most. The TK troopers don’t seem to have an issue answering to him, but I get the impression Wolffe doesn’t trust any non-clone.

We know Wolffe eventually joins up with Rex. I initially thought that maybe he was a double agent, but I feel like he was genuinely shocked Rex was alive. That revelation coupled with the claim of clone experimentation by the Empire could be what sparks that rebellion inside him. I don’t think the Empire lied about Rex being dead (I think they assumed he was because he was recorded to be on the ship when it crashed into the moon). But Wolffe does end up extremely paranoid about the Empire finding them in Rebels, even going so far as to intercept Ahsoka’s messages to Rex, thinking it was a trick by the Empire.

I am hoping that they give us more Wolffe in the coming episodes. Especially since Rex knows Wolffe is alive and can be reasoned with to a degree. I would be disappointed if they don’t really show us how Rex, Gregor, and Wolffe come to be their trio we know in Rebels. Of course that makes me worried for Echo…

I wouldn’t be opposed to Wolffe doing his own investigating and perhaps becoming a double agent for Rex. I’m not sure what level of clearance he has, but he’s high up enough to be sent to order around a classified soldier and retrieve Omega for Hemlock. I’m not sure if he knows that’s who she’s for or if she’s simply wanted and he doesn’t give a fuck why. Because like Rex said, Wolffe was trained to follow orders and not ask why.

Wolffe likely has his inhibitor chip, so Rex would need to figure out a way to remove that. I’m curious as to how they’re doing that, unless they have secured the medical machine used to extract them. I don’t see Rex risking clones that still have their chips around Ahsoka. Plus he seemed really strict on having the Bad Batch remove theirs before even dealing with them. I know I read somewhere that after Order 66 was complete enough for the Emperor that the chips were deactivated, but I’m not sure if that’s current canon or now lore.

[captainsimagines]

pretty woman, this is me trying || eight

Summary: Bucky Barnes does not like to be touched. He’s completely ready to live a distant life and give up when the time is right. Until Stark hires him his own personal pretty woman. Over time, Bucky Barnes begins to learn how to touch again. How to feel again. How to love himself again.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female SexWorker!Reader

Trope(s): Holiday Fanfic ; Slow-Burn ; Friends to Lovers

Based on the Song(s): sweet nothing by Taylor Swift and Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls

(8/14)

Mini-Series

Warnings: relived nightmares; explosions; canon-level violence; explicit language; panic attacks; softness

Word Count: 2,670+

~

     Bucky hated canceling plans. Especially if what he’s canceling for is Avengers business.

It was a rare thing for Bucky to suit up nowadays. Steve almost always made sure he wasn’t needed or subbed for him. But this was Hydra business, and no one knew Hydra better than the Winter Soldier himself.

The mission was simple: Infiltrate the base, rescue any forgotten hostages, collect classified files, then set the place ablaze. All Bucky had to do was lead the team through the halls.

His mind would remember. He remembered every twist and turn the Soldier took while he was conscious. He just prayed it wasn’t a place where they froze him, or where they did the unthinkable.

“Are we ready?” Steve called, strapping the shield onto his back. He glanced from team member to team member, his gaze landing on Bucky longer than the rest. Bucky narrowed his eyes, clenching his jaw.

It wasn’t Steve’s fault Bucky was dragged from his perfectly quiet apartment. Away from you and Axel. Poor Axel was probably pawing the front door while he waited for Bucky to return. But it was Steve’s fault for putting Bucky at the front of the group. The leader. A push that attempted to show Bucky that he was trusted, that leadership was a good quality. A quality he had in the Second World War.

Not now. Not in the future.

“Ready,” Bucky answered, adjusting his earpiece before jumping from the quinjet. He landed on the dirt, only slightly cracking his knees. He walked without checking if the team was following—they obviously were. He could hear their breathing. Their fingers brushing the triggers of their guns.

The hallways always looked the same. The same gray, boring brick. The same cold atmosphere. Bucky led them through the entire base, pausing to let Natalia and Clint collect evidence. Steve quickly sketched the layout of certain rooms and of random maps they encountered.

His earpiece crackled with Jarvis’s voice, but it was distorted. He sounded urgent, and that immediately raised a thousand red flags for Bucky.

“Pack it up,” Bucky ordered, lifting his gun and aiming around the corner.

“We still have one section to scout,” Steve countered.

“I said,” Bucky growled, “Pack it up.”

Steve stared at his friend, searching his face. Bucky’s earpiece continued to crackle.

“Okay,” Steve surrendered. “Pack it up.”

The brick wall near Natalia and Clint suddenly exploded, sending smoke and debris directly into their bodies. Steve yelled for them, lunged even, but the wall near him also caved in. Bucky held his hand out, gripping Steve’s just in time, and tugged him into his chest. He turned, shielding Steve with his body as Steve used the actual shield to cover Bucky. Steve stuttered incoherently, probably too stunned by Bucky’s close proximity. But Bucky didn’t give him time to think too much about it. He stepped back with the intention of finding Natalia and Clint under all that rubble.

Masked men ran from all directions, some firing their weapons and others abandoning the base altogether. Bucky couldn’t tell if they were Hydra or not. If they were, he promised himself he would get through it. Finish the mission, protect his friends, and crumble later.

This is what training with you was all about. Being able to face situations where touch was inevitable. His friends needed him, and he would let himself be needed.

“Get down!” Steve yelled, absorbing the flash of bullets with his shield. Bucky dove the other direction, clawing at rubble with speed. Brick by brick, he tore his way to his friends. They were hurt, and they needed him.

He was needed.

Movement caught his attention, and a moment later Clint kicked his way out. Clint panted heavily, his forehead and bare arms bleeding. He moaned in pain, clutching at his stomach.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asked, still moving rubble in his search for Natalia.

Clint nodded in response. He readied his bow, took a deep breath, and went to help his Captain. Arrow after arrow, precision in each fire.

The voices were growing louder. It was two against however many. Bucky should be fighting, lessening the number of bullets in his rifle. But Natalia was still unaccounted for, and her human lungs could only withstand so much pressure.

Another explosion, this one knocking him from his kneeled position. He made to get up, but a heavy weight pushed at his chest. Rubble, brick—No.

No.

It was a foot.

“The Soldier.”

Bucky choked, his eyes flashing with fear. He didn’t recognize the man. He was certain he had never encountered this man before in all his life. But it was the dominance, the sheer pressure of his boot that unnerved Bucky. How a man could look so evil just by looking down at him… It was almost poetic.

Bucky shook his head, his mouth wobbling against his will. “Get off of me.”

The Hydra agent simply stared, angling his head as Bucky spoke. Like Bucky was speaking another language entirely.

And wasn’t that the case? Bucky Barnes was nonexistent in this realm. It was the Soldier’s voice they were familiar with. And the Soldier had never spoken much.

“Congratulations on escaping us.”

He was going to vomit. He was going to tremble directly out of his own skin.

“I’m so glad you’re going to do it again.”

The man knew Hydra had lost. That they would continue losing. That this base was only the first of many, and he wasn’t going to leave here alive. This was a taunt. A taunt aimed at Bucky given the position they were currently in.

Bucky raised his gun, pointing it at the man’s head. The agent didn’t move, didn’t frighten. He looked at Bucky, his mouth splitting wide, and laughed.

Foot still applying that awful pressure, he looked down at Bucky and laughed.

Bucky pulled the trigger, ignoring the horrible sound of heavy meat slapping against the concrete floor, and vomited in the corner of the room.

All his progress, all his breathing techniques, all his past—made a joke.

He vomited until his stomach truly felt empty. Until his common sense kicked back into gear and reminded him of Natalia.

He could break later.

Natalia needed him.

He went back to the rubble, avoiding the heavy stream of fresh blood coming from the dead agent, and searched. Picking up brick by brick, Bucky practically buried himself in his search.

But—

There.

Her slender hand.

Bucky did his best to dig her out, catching stray bricks before they hit her exposed limbs. He brushed soot from her cheeks, pushed back her hair, and pressed his ear to her chest in search of a heartbeat. An unnecessary effort—the only thing powerful enough to kill Natalia Romanov was Natalia Romanov herself.  

She was knocked out, unable to stand and unable to carry a weapon.

So Bucky took a deep breath and picked her up, carrying her bridal-style out into the hallway. Past the pile of dead bodies, following Steve and Clint out as a unit.

The quinjet caught up to them, operated automatically. The back opened, ushering them in. Steve ran forward, shield still propped in case of hidden threats. Clint kept glancing at Bucky, then at Natalia’s face, obviously stunned. Bucky held Natalia tight, doing his best at elevating her neck and keeping her warm. Her eyes moved fast behind her eyelids, as if trying to wake herself up. She had taken a hit to the head.

At the foot of the quinjet, Bucky stumbled. He fell forward, hugging Natalia close so she wouldn’t take the impact. But this stop, this sudden lurch back to reality, hurt Bucky’s body. Holding Natalia became a burden, a trigger to his gag reflex. He held her tight, fighting himself, refusing to give in.

“It’s okay, Barnes,” Clint’s voice sounded, soft and tender. “Hand her to me.”

Bucky shook his head. “I can do it.”

“I know you can. You were doing it completely on your own. But we have to go.”

Bucky tried standing, tried digging into that abyss of nasty super strength his body caged, but his legs kept wobbling. This wasn’t happening. Not now.

“It’s only a few more steps, Barnes. You can throw her ass to me in just a few more steps.”

Clint’s attempt at a joke had Bucky trembling. Still, he swallowed that nausea, that pang of disgust with skin other than his own, and lurched.

Lurched those few extra steps needed so the quinjet doors could close completely.

And once they did, Bucky dropped Natalia.

“Nat deserved that, no doubt,” Clint joked, scooping Natalia into his own arms. He was battered and bruised and yet, Clint still carried her.

Why couldn’t Bucky’s body allow him the same grace?

Bucky remained kneeled, shaking, looking down at the hands that had achieved and lost so much in the time span of fifteen minutes.

“Buck?”

Bucky looked up at Steve, ashamed by the awful and troubled expression he saw there. “Fly us home.”

Steve made to reach out, to comfort him, but Bucky fell back. Avoiding his touch.

Steve failed to restrain the sound of hurt from his throat. The touch of protection in the hallway wasn’t enough, Bucky understood that. But it was all Bucky could give for now.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispered, continuing to shake.

Steve’s eyes glossed over. “It’s okay, Buck. Just let me know when, okay?”

“When?”

Steve bit his lip, his breath stalling. “When I can touch you again.”

Steve turned back to the controls before he could see Bucky’s expression of pure pain.

He was trying. Bucky was trying. He had hired a companion who was easing him into it. He was getting used to it. This was just a minor setback. So much happened that it overwhelmed him. The agent’s confrontation overwhelmed him.

He wanted to tell Steve that he was making progress. That he could hold someone’s hand again and allow his hair to be braided.

He was making progress, unbeknownst to Steve. He wanted to scream it and provide the proof.

Instead, Bucky tucked himself into a dark corner, counting the seconds until he was able to see you again.

~

     Hydra base exploded. Barnes not doing good.

Stark’s message had you dropping your groceries and sprinting from the store to your car. Fuck the subway, fuck the taxis—driving yourself would allow more illegal manuevers.

Security let you in after you threw them your I.D, disregarding your urgency. They probably assumed your problem would be settled by the Avengers themselves quickly.

You sprinted down the hallways, running into the night crew and other unfamiliar faces. But one face, beautiful and bruised, met yours.

“Are you okay?” you asked Natasha, your voice splintering near the end.

Her grin was feline. “I love that that’s the first question you asked, even though it’s not the question you had.”

You made a pained sound in your throat. Natasha quickly put you out of your misery. “I’m okay. He’s in his apartment.”

You tried your best to give her an appreciative smile, but what formed was neither kind nor awkward. A wobbled smile. You bid her goodbye, finally noticing Axel by her side.

If Axel was here with her, it meant she went to go get him for a reason.

This was bad.

You sprinted to the elevator and waited those dreadful, stretched seconds. Didn’t matter how fast you ran. Bucky was going to feel far away until he stood in front of you.

“Bucky?” you called, closing the apartment door behind you. The lights were off, but the faint sound of water running let you know someone was home. The moon shined through the long windows, illuminating your path to Bucky’s bathroom. Your breath stalled when no other noise followed. Just silence accompanied by running water.

“Bucky?” you tried again, pushing the bathroom door open. The shower was entirely glass. Spacious enough that five people could fit in there with leftover wiggle room. You glanced around, noting the foggy mirror and damp marble. You shrugged off your jacket and gloves, squinting hard to see through the steam. “Bucky?”

There, on the shower floor being pelted by the hot droplets, was Bucky. Naked, knees curled up to his chest and long hair covering his face.

Defeated.

“Oh…” A small whimper escaped from your mouth. You brought a shaking hand to your mouth, debating your next move. Slowly, you stripped until you were left in your undergarments. Nevermind the heat or the steam. Bucky was breaking.

“Look at me,” you practically begged, kneeling in front of him. He made no movement, no indication that he knew you were there. He stared blankly at the marble floor, eyes cold and nearly white. “Tell me what happened.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t unhook his arms from around his knees, nor did he stop you as you touched the pads of your fingers to his skin. You traced tiny circles, then your name, then his name. Anything to pull him from that dark abyss that was swallowing him.

Finally, in the most broken voice you had ever heard, he muttered, “He laughed at me before I killed him.”

You froze.

“He laughed at me as I pointed the gun at his face. He knew about me. What Hydra did. And he just… Laughed as I pulled the trigger.”

“Then he deserved it.”

His gaze lifted, his eyes stern. “I didn’t want him to see me.”

“Bucky—”

“He saw me,” he breathed, his face falling. “And he laughed.”

You lunged, but abruptly halted before barreling straight into Bucky’s massive build. He didn’t stop you or wince in fright.

“Can I hug you?”

Bucky searched your face, eyes darting from your eyes to your cheeks to your lips. Maybe searching for hints of violent intent, you didn’t know. But he searched no longer as he reached out first, and tugged you into his chest. Curling against you, molding you into his grip.

Safe. You felt safe in his arms. And it hurt you to realize this considering Bucky was breaking. It wasn’t the right time to have this epiphany. But moments like these were crafted with absolute certainty—the sudden drop of the stomach, the playful numbness of the fingers, the burst of glorious red within the chest. Epiphany’s were one’s own, settled with a date and specified time.

Here was yours.

As Bucky gave you a small piece of himself, your body gave one back instinctively.

“I’m going to stay here, okay?” you told him, lifting a hand to cup his head from behind. Water splashed into your face but you ignored it. “I’m going to stay here and have you hold me for however long you need to. I am yours to hold.”

“You’re mine to hold,” Bucky repeated, hugging you tighter.

“Good, good,” you soothed.

“I don’t like fighting,” he admitted, his lips dangerously close to your bare shoulder. You pushed the need to kiss him deep down. “I don’t like reliving my past.”

He was a boy taken from his youth. Ripped from the life he hadn’t quite constructed yet and placed in the middle of a war. Thrown off an icy edge and abandoned. Pulled apart and put back together.

“I just want to be at peace. With your cookies, and Christmas, and Axel, and… And you.”

“You have me.”

His lips brushed against your shoulder, experimenting with the feeling. He didn’t kiss you. Instead, he lifted his head and met your eyes again.

“Would you believe me if I said I’m just too soft for all of it?”

Instead of a verbal reply, you bent to kiss his shoulder yourself. His breath jumped. You looked up at him, questioning if he was okay. His chest rose unevenly before he nodded, inviting you to kiss him again.

You kissed his shoulder. Both flesh and metal. Over, and over, and over again.

Until your skin turned raw underneath the water.

~

[vivyd-mind4172]

Murder Drones AU: What if the AbsoluteSolver can infect human beings?

In this AU, the AbsoluteSolver becomes much more potent and can have the potential to infect human beings. While the events of Copper 9 are still canon, there is another perspective that we will delve on: the humanity side of things.

Scenario:

During the time before Cyn blew up Earth where the humans began to experiment the Solver and trying to understand it, one random human scientist got obsessed with the solver and decided to experiment it on a much deeper level: to pass the Solver onto organic organisms like humans and see its results.

The scientist began assigning other scientists to his own team for this project in order to observe its code and how it works while at the same time, he or she works on the technical side of things with the help of advanced technology: to create nanites or nanomachines and inject them into humans, specifically on the blood. Due to the sensitivity of the experiment, the lead scientist decided to experiment in a secret laboratory.

After weeks of experimentation, human testing commenced. Installed with the Solver code inside the fully developed nanomachines, the scientists began finding human subjects to inject the nanomachines into the blood. It was a success. Now the observations began.

The human subjects were observed, and noticed interesting discoveries:

There are times that they can't stand or sit still (cue walking around aimlessly or sitting with legs hugged like they're feeling something inside their bodies), as if a sign of the Solver nanomachines affecting their biological systems

Somehow started to gain a sudden interest with technology and other related items (cue dreamy-like staring at phones, worker drones and computers, constant interaction towards worker drones, talking directly towards tech items like phones, monitors, etc.)

Sudden obsession of drawing of the AbsoluteSolver symbol (cue finger dipped in soup, sauce, almost-solid food and drawing on food trays or tables, pencil on paper, visible drawings on walls or floors using any form of writing media including saliva, constant tracing of the symbol on a random surface like glass, walls, etc.,

Some subjects showing robotic-like speech and mannerisms (cue subjects thinking and behaving like androids, though still retaining their personality, tendency of walking straight and turning around corners with a sharp turn instead of a curvy path or manner)

Constant visit of testing and experimentation cell inhabited by 'Nori' and 'Yeva', with Nori referring to them as family.

(P.S. Other observations are currently redacted (aka still figuring out other ideas but these will do for now))

After a while, the worst has finally come. the Solver began spreading inside the lab and then the world outside, with the human subjects behaving aggressively and began attacking fellow humans and scientists alike, biting or scratching them and leave them alone, with some of them eating off of corpses like hungry zombies. Those who have been bitten quickly began turning into one of the Solver humans and started biting or scratching and attack others as well. With this the cause of infection or spread would be contact with infected Solver blood, filled with Solver-installed nanomachines.

Some of the humans, both safe, injured, and most especially not bitten, evacuated out of the planet before its imminent explosion and went to other neighboring planets as refuge. As for those who have been scratched, they were medically treated safely. . .only for now. What they don't know is that they are already infected with the Solver nanomachines, but slowly. It was only a matter of time before they go wild and started spreading the infection onto other human colonies as well, though a classified observation showed that the scratched individuals did not turn into monsters (for now), making it much more interesting in a way that Solver began to evolve in humans.

Another major observation is that the Solver can be inherited onto offspring (similar in canon), which means that it can be spread genetically due to the nanomachines affecting an infected individual's genetic structure.

There is also a certain, 100% chance that the inherited offspring can have Solver abilities like telekinesis, regeneration, etc., though it would be dormant for now at first, and the trigger of the Solver might only happen through first time experience of extreme stress or lethal/fatal/life-threatening danger.

Note: Consistent extreme stress/danger/trauma can have a chance for a scratched human to turn into a zombie and began biting and attacking other fellow humans.

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

That is all for the description of this AU of Murder Drones (for now). If you like/get interested in the lore, feel free to create human OCs of your own where they get infected with the AbsoluteSolver within this AU and have their own backstories, experiences, personalities, etc.

[thelaithlyworm]

Now I've fallen into a thought rabbit hole about the biological and ecological implications for all of the DMBJ Snakes.

All of the larger snakes would've hopefully needed to eat every few years to grow and shedding their skin would be a pain. Are they eating enough people or have insanely slow metabolism to last for decades or even centuries between grave robbers breaking in. Also hope that they come out and sun occasionally and don't have low vitamin D levels.

Not even of thinking how the ecosystems and the organisms around the tombs would be screwed beyond belief if those snakes decided to leave the tomb for greener pastures. How would regular non grave robber people react to several completely new species of snakes?

Would a black market exotic pet trade around the tomb snakes silently sprout up? How would a zoo begin to house the snakes if they have a human-like intelligence and communicate across species? How would the new antivenin change the pharmaceutical industries since Black Hair Snake venom could be used as an immunosuppressant.

Would a few people would be into the whole parasitism thing (for science and research *cough cough*) and allow the more parasitic species to spawn in them like the scientists that let a botfly larva live in them? How would the normal cobras and pythons in the wild react to this new competition? Herpetologists and Taxonomists would have the headache of their lifetime and for future generations trying to classify them.

Meanwhile some poor person is suddenly the new fascination of an Albino Candle Dragon that gives them annoyingly real hallucinations and doesn't want to eat them every couple of days. Might have an idea to use them as a therapy animal.

Would a few people would be into the whole parasitism thing (for science and research *cough cough*)

Ah! On my list of I Can't Prove This About DMBJ Canon But I Totally Think It Happened... I think there was something like this happening around Gutongjing back when Fo-ye was working there.

One of the characteristics of snake mines is unusual longevity in the surrounding area. Gutongjing has a legend about some soldiers who drank water from a lake close by and got Super Stronk -- close enough.

We see what Wu Xie first calls a "bug plate" when he's investigating the Yinchuan mine, and while he's mistaken as to what bug was in there, he does mention that critters that nested in rock were sometimes used for medicinal purposes.

While investigating Gutongjing, Li Cu et al. find snake eggs packaged into Hazard containers for export in large quantities. The ability to decipher snake pheromones is rare, so I don't think it was for that.

The thirst for immortality, especially and specifically among people of power and wealth, is one of the big drivers of the setting. Whether we set Fo-ye's activities at Gutongjing in the 40s (drama) or 80s (novel), he would still have been in IT's pocket, doing his best with all the strings attached to him.

Conclusion:

Fo-ye got funding for Gutongjing because his backers thought the Black-Hair Snakes might improve their longevity.

[unfortunately-obsessed]

I'm obsessed with the logistics of the Spider-Society so here goes nothing

My hc is that Miguel dethroned his father. I don't think Tyler Stone would willingly give Alchemax to Miguel, and wouldn't put him on his will either.

But all that equipment we see in the movie is expensive, even for 2099 where they have an orbital lift and flying cars. The size of the building alone must be a fortune, after all, it is New York.

So, Miguel probably dethroned his father and got Alchemax, and that's where his money came from. SS building might been listened as a subsidiary of Alchemax with a bunch of classified projects no one (private sector or otherwise) dares to bat an eye.

Now the fun parts!

We have not only humans on the societies but also all kinds of sentients species. A T-Rex, a pork, cats, and even Lego! Do you think he recruited one by one? Oh, so many types of bathrooms...

Miguel had to design a DTD (that's what I call their "watches", Dimension Travel Device) for each of them, to deal with their specific molecular vibarations. Or maybe he lets Layla do it while he deals with other things? I can't take the image of my head of Lego Peter waiting for his DTD, watching a 3d printer work on it like the hand of the creator, and he's star-struck.

Having to make a full battery of exams when the physiology is different, to make sure the DTD works like it should but also that they are capable of taking the strain of travelling across the multiverse.

There's probably an infirmary somewhere that most resembles a hospital. Fully equipped. Employing nurses and physiotherapist and every type of doctor in every type of speciality.

A rotatory shift with Spider Doctors from different realities, and Layla tries not too overwork them but still all of them with a headache for having to deal with not only a bunch of injured self-sacrificing heroes but!! Different anatomies!!

Do you think non-human Spiders have to bring medical encyclopedias with them?

Spider Scientist (and medical doctors too) that are so glad and excited to finally have resources to use, but still need to go through Miguel and get their researches approved (it's hard for him to say a no tbh, he's a scientist too after all)

Physics and engineering and biologist and all kinds of scientist

Mechanic workshops. All kinds of different technologies interacting more and more. The SS equipment improving with each passing day because of Spiders from universes that are further in the timeline sharing their advanced tech.

It's so many departments to have. Logistics and TI and Security. Do you think it has a daycare? Teams that deal with holes in the multiverse (like that one in Mumbattam), the Strike Force itself, which probably is divided in squadrons with its leaders. And– so many people

Soooo much food. Spiders are constantly refueling. It's insane. And SS probably caters to all kind of tastes, nutrition necessities and allergies too. Spider Chef working overtime.

Probably has some temporary dorms. It has therapy offices!

Do you think Miguel would pay the workforce? He looks like he would want to pay, even those that are working part-time.

Probably gives them something valuable instead of actual currency, something they can exchange for currency and may be universal but not hard to find, like diamonds.

And Layla? She's a Supercomputer not only running SS but probably managing Alchemax too, not to say being Miguel's personal assistant and still giving support to any Spider that summons her (like Jess in that scene with Gwen)

Underground the building there are levels and levels, floor to celling with servers and servers and processors for her.

I don't think it would be all – in the tech sense – free 24/7 access, though. There's a limit there to prevent Heroes from spending too much time there, or from getting gadgets that they could bring to their home and accidentally (by butterfly effect or even directly) prevent a Canon event.

Even the infirmary probably only deals with heroes that got injured on missions, too. Again, to prevent a Canon event from not happening. It probably doesn't treat the common cold.

Oh, gosh- can you imagine if there's an epidemic of a powerful cold that knocks out them? Can you imagine the headache of coming up with a vaccine????

[elwenyere]

Fic Writer 20 Questions

I was tagged by my beloved @frostbitebakery: thank you so much, my friend!!!

1.) How many works do you have on ao3

56

2.) What's your ao3 word count?

301,664 words

3.) What fandoms do you write for?

So far, the MCU, Star Wars, and Top Gun.

4.) What are your top five fics by kudos?

Call Me By Your (Pet) Name (MCU, Sambucky)

Tactical Engagements (Star Wars, Codywan)

Citation Needed (MCU, Stony)

Helps to Relieve My Mind (MCU, Sambucky)

Good Soldiers (Star Wars, Codywan)

5.) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do, yes! Sometimes it takes me a little while to write back if things in real life are hectic, but eventually I do, because I love chatting with readers about what they noticed in a story and what I was thinking about/working on while writing.

6.) What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I have never written what I would call an unhappy ending. But sometimes what we know about the canon ending can still make the ending of a fic bittersweet, and that's true of a fair number of fics I've written. I think the two fics that leave canon angst most fully on the table are my MCU ficlet A Stitch in Time, which is about what else Steve might have done while returning those stones, and my wee Star Wars piece Yes, It Feels Like That, which is a moment with Leia's grief during ANH.

7.) What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I swear: I used to write plenty of fics that were happy all the way through! That happens a lot less frequently now. But Right on Time is just about the happiest ending I could give to a post-war Codywan, and my Sambucky fic Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice is (to me) maybe the funniest fic I've written.

8.) Do you get hate on fics?

I've been very lucky with readers who are largely very generous.

9.) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I am a relative newcomer to writing smut, but I have dabbled, yes. I'm not sure what kind of smut it is. Feelings-forward, I guess?

10.) Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I think the only thing I've written that could come close to being classified as a crossover was my very first multi-chapter fic, Should You Choose to Accept It, which included characters from both the mainstream Avengers and Agents of SHIELD and mashed up the plots of Iron Man 3, CA: TWS, AOS Season One, and Mission Impossible 3.

11.) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of.

12.) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet!

13.) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yes! The Stony identity porn/professor AU fic Citation Needed was a collaboration with the incredible @festiveferret, and it is the most fun I've had writing fic.

14.) What's your all time favorite ship?

Cannot pick a favorite, but my first OTP was Mulder/Scully, and they will always have a special place in my heart.

15.) What's a WIP you'd like to finish, but doubt you ever will?

God what a painful question. 😅 I am a stubborn bastard, and I don't know if I've fully admitted defeat on any of my WIPs, even the ones I've neglected the most. But the WIP that's probably been waiting for my attention the longest is the sequel to my Stony fic Three Little Words; or, Five Times Steve and Tony Didn’t Actually Apologize + One Time They Did, which I cannot abandon or scrap for parts because I'm really attached to the bits that I have written, but which I haven't been able to make progress on for a long time. Bug me for snips about it if you like: I would love to be able to share what I have so far.

16.) What are your writing strengths?

A borderline aggressive amount of figurative language, narrative beats that feel layered, and I think I have a decent ear for dialogue.

17.) What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm so, so, so inexpressibly slow, and I also build up increasing levels of anxiety about WIPs when I'm not getting outside perspectives about them, so I find it nearly impossible to write anything longer than 20k.

18.) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I have experimented with this a little bit in the past, and I'm currently trying it again in a WIP in a language I'm not deeply familiar with, which is nerve-wracking. But I think it can be so effective when done well, and I'm excited to keep growing in that area.

19.) First fandom you wrote for?

Stony in the MCU: a missing-scene fic from Endgame

20.) Favorite fic you've ever written?

I love all my children equally, but my Codywan fic Recollection is probably the fic that felt most ambitious to me at the time that I wrote it: memory-related temporal shenanigans, surreal scene changes, some heavy psychic territory, and my very first smut scenes. I'm proud of how many new things I tried.

----

Open tags for anyone who would like to play!!! This was very fun: @ me with your answers if you'd like to join. <3<3<3

[soulerflaire]

Binged all of the last season of Star Trek: Discovery today. Thoughts under the cut.

Very mixed feelings on it. On the one hand, I'm glad they were able to go into the season knowing it would be the last, and write an actual send off to the show instead of rushing some half-assed ending in two episodes, or just cutting off completely with no ending at all. On the other hand, I have a lot of complaints about how things went.

First off, the Progenitors storyline did not interest me in the slightest. I was fine with their tech being the macguffin to drive the plot forward, but once we actually got to it, I just didn't really care about the fancy facility or the Progenitor lady in it. It was obvious Michael was going to either hide it again or destroy it, so all the time spent with her deciding that and learning about the Progenitors' motivations or that they didn't build the tech either was just wasted to me.

I was completely baffled by Dr. Culber's character arc this season. I don't really understand what they were trying to do or say with it. He has a weird experience with a temporary personality transplant, and it affects him deeply but he doesn't understand why or how. People tell him it was clearly a spiritual awakening for him, but they never explain that. Maybe it's because I'm not a spiritual person, but "feeling weird about the world after having your brain taken over by someone else for a few hours" doesn't equal spiritual awakening to me. Regardless, he just becomes kind of weirdly serene for the rest of the show. And then at the last second, when they have the chance to actually make it something spiritual, they provide a rational (for Star Trek, anyway) explanation for all of it, by saying he somehow had access to residual memories from the other personality. But he doesn't acknowledge it as a rational explanation, he still acts like it's some mysterious spiritual thing. I don't know. I just didn't get it. It felt like they were trying to say something about "not everything has a rational explanation" but they didn't follow through, so I really just don't understand what the point of his character arc was. Were they just trying to give him mental/emotional peace after all he's experienced? 'Cause doing it this way was completely unsatisfying if so. This was a magic button fixing his trauma, not actual healing.

But my biggest gripe is the treatment of Zora. This whole season, I was thinking "Man, Zora isn't really in this show at all anymore, is she?" She does nothing beyond acting like the computer, and the crew pretty much just treats her like a normal starship computer. We spent a lot of time previously focusing on Zora and her development as a person, only to have her barely exist as a character this season. And in the last 15 minutes of the finale, we find out why: that damned animated short. A while back, someone wrote an animated short where the Discovery (and thus Zora) has basically been abandoned in a nebula, and a guy ends up on board, and Zora falls in love with him (because he's the only person she's talked to in decades/centuries), but eventually he leaves because he has a family. And god forbid that stupid little short not be canon, so what do we do? We order Zora to go sit in a nebula, alone, while everyone she has ever known, her entire family, grows old and dies without her. Where? Classified. How long? Classified. Why? Classified.

That is an unimaginably cruel thing to do to a person. Which is why we didn't treat her like a person this season, in the hopes that everyone would forget all that stuff and go "Oh, yeah, I remember the animated short!" and clap. And the worst part is they didn't even bother to make up a reason! They couldn't even do a "Michael told her to stay there during a mission, and things got messy and they lost track of her, and now they're searching for her" thing. We get no explanation at all, Michael literally just tells Zora that her clearance level isn't high enough for her to know why she's being put through hell. And of course because we've decided Zora isn't a person, since that would get ethically messy, Zora just accepts that and does what she's told. For my own personal happiness, I am just pretending that was a nightmare Zora had and it never actually happened.

The season wasn't all bad, though. I enjoyed Saru and T'Rina's interactions. I think Tara Rosling did an excellent job with all of T'Rina's little mannerisms, especially the slightly stuttering head turn she does when something is bothering her. That combined with Doug Jones' acting with Saru really helped create the chemistry between their characters. I also liked seeing a relationship where both people were mature, reasonable adults who talk things out instead of blowing up at each other or almost breaking up at every minor disagreement. Also I loved seeing Tilly pretty much all the time. I desperately hope that we'll see her in other shows, she's such a great character.

I think I would have really liked Rayner's character arc and growth...if it had happened slowly over the course of a couple seasons. It definitely felt rushed, and his place among the crew didn't really feel earned to me by the end. I liked the parallel between him with the Breen and Michael with the Klingons, though I would have liked to see Michael acknowledge that more in the moment, rather than after the fact. I'm chalking that all up to rushing to get it into one season and just not having the time to flesh it out properly.

Also there were several plot holes and things that just didn't add up, but I don't feel like nitpicking those right now. It's Star Trek, you're gonna get stuff like that.

Definitely not Discovery's strongest season, and pretty bummed to see it end like this. Overall a good show, just has a weak finish.

And Zora definitely wasn't abandoned in a nebula for centuries for no reason, and instead was granted full personhood and made a member of Starfleet, and I refuse to acknowledge anything to the contrary.

[yeetingmeselfintosun]

This is somehow a very similar (and maybe worse? Idk) dilemma as what I’ve seen, and had to worldbuilding for a fic, in Naruto. Similar issues of scale, because there’s so many varying things from canon versus what makes sense, but a possibly even more scuffed existing military hierarchy? Like at least in Tcw you get like, positions that vaguely resemble actual military positions, but in Naruto it’s horrible.

For those of you unfamiliar with Naruto, there are only a few ranks/positions:

academy student (always an actual child)

genin (most of the time an actual child)

chuunin (slightly less likely to be a child, implied to make up the bulk of a village’s forces)

tokubetsu jounin (like an inbetween, specialist rank?)

jounin (usually not a child, considered to be the cream of the crop of soldiers)

the Jounin commander (of whom there is only one? And we never really learn what his function is?)

ANBU agents (spec ops if they were completely upfront about the fact that they assasinate ppl, it’s even in the name)

The kage (military dictator yipee)

Seems fine at first, even if you gloss over the fact that these are partially made up of children (it’s a shonen, it’s to be expected), in the show and manga, these are treated simply as indicators of strength, not of command power. This would not make me as angry as it does if not for the fact that there is a seperate system for classifying strength in canon,,,,,,

With the exception of the kage, and I guess the Jounin commander, you don’t see any of the other ranks commanding any group of soldiers larger than a team of say, 10. So yeah it’s quite bad. Also the stronger Jounin are functionally superweapons, so that leads to a similar-ish dynamic to Jedi generals on the battlefield, but again, very rarely so we see Jounin leading anything but small teams. Add onto the fact that the mission system is set up with a sort-of ‘mercenary’ like pay structure, like you take missions and are paid a specific rate for that mission.

Star Wars manages to get on this level of insanity by virtue of the scale being so obnoxiously huge that you can’t get away with just ‘exporting’ existing military structures and specific sizes on stuff like battalions because it’s approximately 5 gorbillion times the size of any existing military. Also the implications for how much food the clones is quite goofy, as you mentioned before, but my main hang up is on the supply lines in general. Like you need to transport so much stuff along (possibly disputed) hyperspace lanes, possibly to remote locations, from whatever farming centers the republic relies on, and some how get it down to planets. Given how literally every ground battle in Star Wars always has a lot of space combat and separatist blockades going on overhead, how tf do they get the goods down through atmo? Are the shipping ships also heavily armed like Venators? Worldbuilding around not super well thought out worldbuilding from large franchises with ungodly amounts of lore is possibly one of my kinks Fr Fr

I also super agree about everything you’ve written about fox, this is now canon in my eyes, since everything makes much more sense imo!

GAR Organizational Structure (with bonus despair)

point the first: the structure tcw gives us for the GAR is nonsensical. captains are leading legions, a battalion is apparently sufficient for a marshal commander, and generals are, oh my god, leading troops out in the field—the way no general irl actually does, because they are a strategic target and if the enemy kills/captures them it would be a tremendous blow. not gonna lie: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) is a disaster and should be ashamed of itself. 

i mostly ignore all of the above for my sanity, because 1) it’s more fun to watch jedi waving laser swords around amidst thickets of blasterfire, 2) the whole endgame is to kill them anyway, so who cares if a few jump the gun, and 3) maybe cody just really digs all those cool cats down in the 212th. maybe he runs ops with them whenever he can get away with it. whatever, it’s explainable.

(nothing will ever explain why rex, a junior officer, was leading a whole-ass legion. i cannot forgive. i will not forget.)

point the second: the only hard numbers we have for how big the GAR is are in the repcomm books, which put it at 3 million soldiers. this is. it’s. it’s absolutely ludicrously small. to put it in perspective, the united states armed forces alone comprise about 1.4 million active duty personnel in its various branches. that’s ONE military on ONE planet. the GFFA has anywhere from 12 to 70 million inhabited planets. sure, most of them won’t participate in the war, but even if you take the lower figure of 12 million, assume 10% are participants (whether as suppliers, victims, allies, or just re-supplied a star destroyer that one time), and take 10% of that as ACTIVE participants, then the number of planets the GAR needs to have a presence on is still 120 thousand. do a little math, and for the GAR to maintain a US-sized presence (which i think we can all agree is plenty large enough to bully a planet into submission) x 120k, the GAR would have to have 170 billion active duty personnel.

if the last number was too small, this one’s too huge. It’s beyond enormous. how do they feed everyone? but consider: the GAR wouldn’t have to have the same presence on all planets. some of them might be small, like the rishi outpost. some might not need active policing at all, such as core planets like alderaan. i’ll admit right now that i’m extremely lazy and don’t feel like crunching the numbers to determine the size of the GAR presence on upwards of a million planets. i’m just gonna say “one billion active duty clones for the war.” it’s still hysterically enormous, but it’s a lot more manageable.

my headcanon for the organizational structure of the GAR, using both wikipedia and wookieepedia for reference:

GAR: 1 billion active duty clones (broken down into 10 systems armies)—led by yoda, who is eisenhower

systems army: 100 million clones (2 sector armies)—led by a marshal commander, each of whom is attached to a jedi councilmember (so ponds, cody, wolffe, etc. our beloved cc-2224 is marshal commander of the 3rd systems army.) 

sector army: 50 million (5 planetary armies)—led by a rear marshal commander, each attached to senior jedi masters who are not on the council (so gree, bly, fox, etc)

planetary army: 10 million (5 corps)—senior commander (note: given the unit mobility we see in the show, “planetary” is more a polite request than an actual rule, especially as attrition takes its toll. troops go where they needed.)

corps: 2 million (5 divisions)—corps commander

division: 400 thousand (5 legions)—division commander

legion: 80 thousand (5 brigades)—legion commander

brigade: 16 thousand (5 regiments)—brigadier commander

regiment: 3,200 (4 battalions)—regimental commander

battalion: 800 (4 companies)—major

company: 200 (4 platoons)—captain/1st sergeant

platoon: 50 (5 squads)—lieutenant/staff sergeant 

squad: 10 (2 fire teams)—sergeant

(fire) team: 5 troopers

(“active duty” in this context (the context being slave soldiers) means all clones of age to deploy who are not on medical leave. the total number of cadets of all ages, who are not considered active duty, probably dwarfs this 1 billion figure by like a factor of 978645, which i’m not even going to think about because the sheer logistics of that is staggering. the only reason this army wasn’t discovered sooner is because of movie magic.)

the eagle-eyed among you may notice that several of the formations i’ve separated out (e.g. brigade and legion) are actually the same size irl. in my defense: it’s a billion fucking soldiers! there is no existing military structure on earth that can accommodate a command of that size!! something had to give!!

again, those keen-eyed among you may notice that there are no less than eight different ranks of commander, only three of which are supported by wookieepedia. in my defense: star wars gave us a crappy starting point, and i can only work with what i’m given. either i bump up NCOs to commanding platoons and companies and reinstall our beloved rex as captain of torrent brigade (my soul fucking shudders), or we have to deal with eight different unit sizes all led by officers addressed formally as “commander.”

(it is clone etiquette to address commanders by title and name in mixed company, save the highest-ranking officer, who is THE commander and may be addressed sans name. it is clone humor to fuck with non-clones by sending them on goose-chases in search of “the commander.”)

moving on.

according to wookiepedia, the ranks of jedi are thus:

grand high jedi general—yoda (actually i lied, i made this one up)

high jedi general—the other 11 councilmembers

senior jedi general—all jedi masters

jedi general—all jedi knights

jedi commander—all jedi padawans

as far as i’m concerned those ranks can stay as-is, with senior and regular generals getting scattered throughout the command structure wherever i feel like putting them. it’s not like they make sense as military leaders anyway; they’re last-minute pasties to cover up the GAR’s scandalous bits and make it fit for public propaganda.

of note, there are 12 jedi who sit on the jedi council, but only 10 sector armies. conveniently, yoda doesn’t need to command a sector army, because he commands all the armies. likewise, i headcanon shaak ti doesn’t actually have a command, as she stays on kamino for quality assurance purposes. gotta make sure there aren’t any ethics violations going on.

some may have noticed that fox, despite answering to the chancellor and not to a jedi, is in the “rear marshal” category. i did this (actually @countessofbiscuit did this and i shamelessly stole it) because i (we) headcanon fox not just as head of the coruscant guard, but the head of the CG, GAR military police, and penal battalions. he’s got a big command, too, even if he doesn’t have a jedi to show for it. plus, it makes for excellent intraservice beef if palpatine pushed for fox’s promotion against the prevailing cultural trends of the GAR. (poor fox.)

final notes on this already long-winded and horrific post: seniority within the ranks of the marshal commanders depends on the seniority of their attendant jedi and their own level of experience. e.g. mace windu is the senior-most jedi after yoda, so ponds commands the 1st systems army. however, ponds dies relatively early in the war, so bacara, despite being assigned to the 2nd systems army (i just made that up, i have no idea if ki-adi mundi has seniority after mace), outranks ponds’s replacement because he has more experience. most of this is tacit and doesn’t really affect anything except who sits where at mandatory formal dinners, but it’s also used to justify who’s allowed to eat the last donut—to mixed success.

how DO they feed everyone, though? like, seriously?

[m-s-justice]

Once again, I show up to the Cod:z tag with a fucking essay. Once again it's about Dempsey. Sorry for Demposting :'(

The whole point of this is just to focus exclusively on a point made very briefly in my previous one. The whole Dempsey-Player dynamic (and a little bit of Treyarch mixed in for spice) is just so strange.

Three main questions I’ll try my best to answer, and a few more open-ended ones to chew on.

What are the lines?

What causes the lines?

Player control and the extent of it?

what the fuck is up with the lampshading seriously is this gag a joke or an actual part of his character now???

1.

The first question is easy. Pretty much all of his lines referring to the Player are, to put it lightly, incredibly rude. He frequently insults and even outright threatens us. In Shangri La, he says that he’ll appear in your living room and that he’ll have “words with you”. The most polite is when he’s being passive-aggressive. “Why do my guns feel so light? HINT. HINT.”

2.

So what causes him to speak up? That’s also pretty easy: anytime his ability to kill is threatened, when the Player isn't doing well,  or when they make him do something he doesn’t want to(though the last is much more rare). The majority of his lines are ‘out of ammo’ lines but he does have a few of him demanding headshots or blaming you for his lack of points(which he’s right for doing but also fuck him he’s a rude bitch and I’m going to force him to walk into a horde). In Classified, he’s particularly sassy: “Wait, this isn’t the secret song. What the hell do I need this for?” “I suppose you want me to comment on this thing, right? Hey you made me pick it up, pal! Well guess what! Fuck this thing in partiular.”

He’s clearly not enthused about the whole “being controlled by an untouchable entity”, but he also is strangely flippant about it. Fatuous, almost. It’s actually kind of concerning how nonchalant he is about it. But that could have a little something to do with the next point

3.

How much control does the Player really have? In the grand scheme of things? Not very. In cutscenes, Dempsey is in full control, we have no input over what he does. In game, we only have control over his body, and even then, not complete control. Dempsey can talk all he wants and he can still have minor control over himself with idle animations and the like. This is compounded by the linear story-telling. There is only one major story EE in every map and the outcome never changes. This is pretty much expected as COD is a FPS, not a choice driven game. The most Player influence we ever got was in BO2 with Maxis vs Richtofen, but even then Treyarch said "Fuck Richtofen" and made the Maxis route canon. So no matter what, Dempsey will still so the only thing he can(progress the story via the EE)

Despite this, one would imagine that he’d be more concerned about his total lack of autonomy while in a combat zone, yeah?

4.

But this could be dismissed as a running joke; Treyarch giving Dempsey a neat, ultimately harmless and insignificant quirk. Except.

Except there’s an in-universe explanation for it. It’s a side effect from the 115 testing for Ultimis and after getting his soul extracted, Primis starts acting similar to his Ultimis counterpart with the same happening to his teammates. But you know, maybe that’s just a one-off thing. "Oh, Dempsey is just insane in canon now. The 115 fucked him up and now he thinks he’s the Player Character."

Except. It’s fucking acknowledged. Characters on the level of gods know that he’s doing it. And try to manipulate him with it. Only two do it, but they are the Shadowman in Revelations and Samantha in Classified.(ok, both Toffens make fun of Demp in Alpha Omega, but he clearly has no idea that it’s rude to talk about someone who is listening.)

“Oh… oh Dempsey… another big tough man without a brain… always a good soldier… always the American savage… and always so eager to kill my puppets! Who are you always talking to? I always hear you doing it. Even when the others aren’t around. You are like a talking doll! Speaking to people who aren’t there! Maybe Teddy DID break you! But you can stop him! It could be so easy! Just pull the trigger, and… POP! No more Teddy! What is it you want? Do you want to stop fighting? Do you want to go home? Do you want your memories back? What he took from you? Kill him for me, and I can give you EVERYTHING!”

Wow that’s a lot to unpack, but for now I’ll only focus on what’s actually relevant to my point. Samantha fucking knows that Dempsey is talking to ‘someone’. Comparing him to a doll and contemplating that Richtofen actually managed to ‘break’ him. The latter bit of the statement lines up with the in canon reason, but still. (the doll bit is an admittedly apt comparison, considering that’s exactly what we’re doing with him, but I feel like that was unintentional on Treyarch’s behalf.) Of course to others he comes off as absolutely insane, but to us who are there, it’s a really odd thing to point out. Samantha could’ve easily utilized Dempsey’s lack of memory and his unrelenting hatred of Richtofen to manipulate him, but instead she mentions ‘people who aren’t there’.

And the Shadowman. He’s kind of a bitch and is very manipulative, but to be manipulative you have to know your audience, so here.

“ ‘Tank’ Dempsey. Do you even have a first name? You know so little about yourself. You used to talk to imaginary forces all the time! Forces you thought controlled your destiny. Or have you forgotten that? Of course you have! It’s all Monty’s fault!”

A lot shorter than Samantha’s schtick, but still telling enough. For Primis, who hadn’t even been experimented on, by sheer virtue of being Dempsey the Player(and probably Treyarch, too, considering the whole ‘controlled your destiny’ bit) is immediately brought up in an attempt to exploit him. Which is so strange. It implies something much deeper than what is really there.

But above all, the one link between every line regarding Dempsey and his connections is the fact that the Player(and Treyarch) are either fake or just ignore him.(though, considering his treatment over the series, yeah kinda.)

“Speaking to people who aren’t there”

“You used to talk to imaginary forces all the time!”

“Dempsey, whoever you’re talking to I don’t think they are listening.”

Which is so strange. Why bring it up in the first place, if his calling is responded to with only silence? Why try to manipulate him with it, if Dempsey is so clearly unaffected by his circumstances regarding his lack of control? The important-non importance this facet of his character is given just confuses me. Maybe they were going to do something with it, eventually, but y’know. He just gets killed off.(I’m entirely bitter about this)

End of Post(me complaining)

The whole thing is just sitting in between being a joke given justification and a Chekhov's Gun. And I really wish Treyarch let Dempsey pick it up. If not for some serious plot point or justification, then just to do something with it. It’s been given the spotlight from characters of great importance and knowledge, so why not do something with it?

I hope I don't come across as someone ungrateful or unnessecarily scrutinizing, but the vibes are off man. Takeo's obsession with honor and the Emperor got utilized and made into character development, as did Nikolai's drinking and nth Wife gag. Richtofen got his madness explained and could be viewed as perhaps not redeemable, but definitely pitiable.

Dempsey is just ruthlessly mocked at ever convenience and while thrown into focus few times by some big names, it's nevery really made into anything more. I dunno where they were going with this, but man. Dempsey as a character was so underutilized. For a fan favorite, he gets a whole lot of nothing.

Ah, but that's for another post. This one is already far too long.

[cblgblog]

Idk if you've answered this already, but what are your thoughts on Peggy knowing about the red room and doing nothing about it?

Idk if I answered it or not either, honestly, but for the record, I think it’s a baseless, asinine assumption to say that she did nothing about it. What, because it still existed in Nat’s time, that means that Peggy never punched any holes in their operation, or at least tried? What’s that assertion based on, besides this weird need people have to blame her for everything that ever went wrong in history, be it irl or MCU?

Look, we were supposed to get—or at least it was something Hayley talked about the potential of—a show that followed Peggy through the decades with SHIELD. In an ideal timeline, we could’ve gotten The Crown, but with Peggy Carter. We could’ve watched the founding of SHIELD, the Red Menace obsession of the 50’s, the anti-government, Vietnam stuff of the 60’s and 70’s…but we didn’t get that. We didn’t get to see what she did in those years, aside from bits and pieces.

Does that mean that nothing happened in that time, that she didn’t do anything of note? Clearly not.

The antis accuse Peggy fans of portraying her as perfect, yet they’re the ones who, again, blame her for not personally stopping every awful thing that happened ever. A, if she had, the MCU would be a pretty boring place. B, that’s an impossible ask. She was running a security organization with bases all over the world. That is a lot of ground to cover, an infinite amount of threats and potential threats to look into. She’s not going to be able to take down every bad person in the world, and to pretend that she should have, on a human level and a narrative level, is idiotic.

Also, the Red Room are not amateurs. Clearly, they were a thing long before Peggy came on the intelligence scene, and long after. We’re not talking about, why didn’t Peggy stop this one dude who was cooking meth in his mom’s basement. We’re talking about a longstanding, well-run operation. Where then is the evidence that Peggy did nothing about it? Again, is this assumption based on the fact that we never saw her do it? We never saw her do 50+ years of intelligence work, but canonically, she did it. Her obituary, and Sharon’s extended eulogy in CW make it clear that most of what she did is still classified. The more likely scenario is that she did make moves against them, or at least stay as informed as she could about their goings-on, but it wasn’t enough to bring down the entire operation.

The Red Room were damn good at what they did and, cold as this sounds, Peggy would’ve had a million other things to worry about. Even if she could’ve devoted all her resources to stopping the Red Room—which she couldn’t have—there’s no guarantee that would’ve been enough to stop them.

Fury knew about them, why didn’t he stop them? Clint knew, knew that they kidnapped and tortured his best friend, why didn’t he do anything? Why did Nat herself not get around to taking them on until after CW? Or Laura, for that matter. She used to be SHIELD, that’s confirmed now, why didn’t she care about any of those kids that weren’t hers? Why did Laura Barton, world’s greatest wife and mother, handwave away the suffering the Red Room caused?

Do any of these people get the same flak for not stopping them, or the bad faith assumption that they never did anything to try/didn’t care? Also, you know, plot-wise, the Red Room has to exist past Peggy’s time so…kinda stupid to blame her for not stopping a thing that it would break Natasha’s—a more important, well known character overall—whole story arc if she’d stopped.

TLDR: I think it’s a shitty, baseless assumption on multiple levels, which is how I feel about the majority of Peggy/Hayley hate, honestly.

[thetriggeredhappy]

in the dadspy au, what if jeremy was just going to be an assistant/cook/janitor at the base while his dad was being the mercenary (since spy didnt want him to follow the "career" but didnt want to be separated from him), but then jeremy turned out to be even better than the hired scout so they promote him to that position and spy is not happy with this at all

ok i was gonna put this in the queue to post but im impatient because im happy with this one. only thing i didnt have was spy being upset by this development

(warnings for canon-typical violence, discussion of mercenary-type things, paranoia, alcohol, and exactly one proper fight scene. consider this pg-13)

-

“Would you prefer the good news first, or the bad news?” Dad asked.

Jeremy looked up at him from where he’d snatched up the sunday comics from his dad’s newspaper and was doodling little hats on the characters while they waited for their food to arrive. “Uh,” he said, “good news first.”

“Alright. The good news is, do you remember that line I’ve been tailing? The one in New Mexico?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, then nodded a little more confidently. “Immunity, safehouse, somethin’ like that, right?”

“...Something like that,” Dad agreed carefully, and that made him raise an eyebrow. “It went well, and I think there’s the very real possibility that I’ve all but closed the deal, all they want now is an interview.”

“...Interview, singular,” Jeremy said slowly.

“That’s where the bad news begins. Unfortunately... merde, how to phrase this?” He drew a hand down his face. “They’re fully willing to hire me on, but this is a more... corporate affair than I’m used to. They have rules, stipulations. Long story short, they will not hire you as a mercenary on the basis of your age.”

Jeremy tensed. “What?” he demanded. “That’s stupid, I’m old enough to drive and buy guns and whatever the hell else.”

“But not rent a car, at least in many places in the United States.”

“But—“ he started, and remembered they were in public, and lowered his voice to a hiss, leaning in. “We’re hired killers, thieves, criminals. Do they really think we’re above having fakes? False documentation?”

“Actually, that is one of their requirements,” Dad said dryly, taking a paper from his jacket and consulting it. “I’m not happy about it either, mon lapin, but those are their rules. Already they have slightly bent them for one individual, and already I am on thin ice. But I may have a way to manage this.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy asked, nervous now.

“I know the woman responsible for new hires and managing the team I’ve applied for. She owes me a favor—a fairly hefty one. When I go in for the interview, one of my demands will include you being hired on, not as a mercenary, but for... for custodial purposes, something like that. Cook, janitor, security guard, secretary—whatever job there is that needs doing there, and I am sure that there will be one. Something to allow you to live there. Pay will likely be her stipulation, and the play I hope to make is that really, you’re overqualified for the position and she’s lucky to have someone so competent available, and in the worst case scenario, the pay is still good enough even for just one of us that we will not cut too deeply into the savings.”

The savings. That made Scout blink, because they only ever brought up the savings when—

“You think this could be it?” he asked quietly. “Like, it it?”

A hard exhale, and he leaned his cheek on his hand. “Potentially,” he finally said. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but the job promises a variety of things. Medical attention available, extremely low levels of danger, and most of all, confidentiality. The only people who will know any name we give them would be the woman in charge of hiring us and their singular medical professional. There is no mode of communication to or from the compound outside of emergency lines to the organization and a single secure payphone located two miles away, there is no civilization within a twenty-five minute drive minimum, and this operation has been going long enough that the local authorities have long since grown used to being paid off, and likely don’t even remember what for anymore. I cash in a few valuable favors and ask this employer to turn a blind eye, we’d have somewhere remote and secure to spend our time after our deaths are faked and once the contract is over, we can start over. No ties to the past.”

“Freedom,” Jeremy marveled.

Silence for a few seconds, broken only by the quiet chatter of the rest of the diner. “I want to warn you, this work may not be glamorous. It may not even be particularly easy. I’m giving you the option of saying no,” Dad said.

“What?! Yes, hell yes, are you joking? To get us to living like normal people? Steady work? Livin’ in one place? Count me in!” he laughed.

“What if the job is something you won’t enjoy? Long hours, boring work?” Dad asked, entirely serious.

“I’m still on board.”

“What if the other people working there are rude to you? Disrespectful?”

“Well most of the people I meet through our job now try to kill us, so really it’s an upgrade.”

“What if there’s no diner nearby?” he asked, and there was a glint of humor in his eye.

“Damn, sorry, that’s the dealbreaker,” he joked right back, and that made him snort, shake his head, greet the waitress as she came back with their coffee and soda and then informed them that their food would be out shortly.

“I’ll ask,” was what Dad said once she was gone again, and that was that, and they started driving to New Mexico two nights later.

-

“—A warm welcome to our two newest recruits. This is the Spy, and this is the Guard.”

“Guard?” asked one of the men at the table, his accent thick and distinctly Russian. It made Jeremy tense slightly, but he didn’t let it show.

“Night Guard,” Jeremy answered, voice clipped.

“He’s not technically hired on as a mercenary like you all, he won’t be joining you on missions,” the short woman apparently named Miss Pauling (Jeremy was fairly sure it was a fake name) said, hands folded in front of her neatly. “He’s here to work security. Keep an eye out during the night, filter through the camera footage, handle the archiving, things like that.”

“We’re hiring on a civvie now?” asked another man, thick Scottish accent a little harder to digest than the eyepatch and the grenade he was in the process of fiddling with the internal mechanisms of.

“He’s combat ready, and will still be armed. His job is to essentially make sure you’re all safe enough to sleep through the night,” Miss Pauling said.

“I’m not some chump,” Jeremy agreed. “I know my stuff.”

“How old is he?” another man asked, this one in a hardhat with a heavy drawl, looking concerned.

“Twenty, for your information,” Jeremy said, a little sharply, eyes narrowed.

“If you have any other questions, there’ll be time later on. For now, I do need to show our two newest recruits where they’ll be staying,” Miss Pauling cut in.

There was an audible scoff from one of the men at the table, a dramatic rolling of eyes. Jeremy glared at him. He unfolded and refolded his extremely tattoo’d tree-trunk-like arms, tugging the visor of his hat between. “Sorry,” he said, accent thick and distinctly Californian. “I just don’t have the most trust for some scrawny kid in slacks and creep in a ski mask.”

“Scout, don’t start,” Miss Pauling warned.

“Just saying,” this man, apparently called Scout, muttered under his breath regardless.

“Don’t,” she said again, more firmly, and ignored the second eye roll she got for the trouble. “If you two would follow me.”

And they were shown around the base, and Jeremy in particular was shown into a room stuck behind three locked doors, where he found camera feeds and recording equipment. She gave him a basic overview and a thick packet of instructions and policies labelled ‘highly classified’ and a phone number to call if he had any further questions, and a set of hours that were apparently meant to become the new standard for him (with the quiet addendum that if he finished early that was alright, and that technically he could turn in early if two or more members of the team were already awake for the day and he was caught up on the archiving of old tapes).

Then he was left to “get used to the equipment”, which he assumed meant his dad was getting a similar rundown of his job, and it took a pretty quick glance through the packet to understand that clearly this place ran on an extremely secretive and closely monitored series of systems. In the packet, between the sections on camera maintenance and operation hours, were a few sheets detailing what were apparently the movement patterns of the various members of the team, including frequented locations and previously recorded large-scale infractions (mostly on the part of the Soldier, the Medic, the Scout, and one from the Demoman).

He wasn’t the one with the title Spy, but fuck, it seemed like he might as well have it. His entire job wasn’t even necessarily to keep the team safe overnight—he was just meant to watch all of them to make sure nobody was anywhere or doing anything out of the ordinary.

The next time he saw his dad, waiting outside the infirmary to get some sort of physical evaluation, his face was arranged carefully enough that he could tell he’d figured out something was up, too.

“Got your job assignments?” he asked quietly in French, glancing towards the door into the infirmary.

A nod, a glance. “I’m intrigued by the methods used in employee evaluation,” he deadpanned. “Especially the fact that apparently, they’re willing to assign employees for the explicit task of doing them.”

“How often?”

“Weekly.”

“Thorough,” Jeremy deadpanned, and glanced towards the hall at the distant sound of laughter, echoing from somewhere else on the base. “That’s basically mine too.”

There was a long silence, and when Jeremy looked back over, his dad was giving him an almost expectant look, waiting. All he had to offer him was a shrug, which was returned after a moment with a vague shake of the head. “I don’t believe it will be a problem,” his dad said simply. “Not for us, at the very least.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, anyways, good luck with the… physical, or whatever,” he said, and received a pat on the shoulder before he walked back off down the hall, hoping to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do with an entire room all to himself. He’d almost never had one before.

-

He was used to time changes and jet lag, to needing to switch his sleep schedule on the regular, but the switch to a straight up night shift was a rough one.

His nine-to-five was actually a ten-to-six, as in 10 PM through 6 AM. This meant that, assuming he managed to get his schedule in order, he’d be able to join in on the team dinners if he woke up early and could eat breakfast with them before he went to bed.

Very quickly he realized that going to dinner and breakfast with the team was going to become a staple part of his routine, because it didn’t take long before he began to feel extremely lonely all of the time. In a dark little room, everyone else asleep, scrubbing through tapes from during the day while half keeping an eye on the live feed from around the base that never showed much of anything, it was brutal. It was suffocating.

It was easy, at least. It didn’t take long before he got efficient at it and could start zoning out, and it wasn’t like he was under much pressure. His was the only room without any cameras in it. Security risk, apparently. 
And to be honest, what small amount he and Dad interacted with mercenaries and other criminal types, Jeremy didn’t really tend to like them much. A lot of them were loud and rude and had the potential to turn around and try and kill them whenever they felt like it. He didn’t expect that he’d like the team as much as he did. He especially didn’t expect to like them so much without ever really talking to them.

But watching the camera feeds from throughout the day, seeing what they were up to, they were just... nice people. Soldier out by the dumpsters practicing rocket jumps and wrangling raccoons and apparently trying to learn how to spin a rifle, Pyro’s regular minor explosions in the kitchen while cooking and the surprised and frantic way they cleaned it up every time, the Demoman’s tendency to whistle wherever he went, watching through the feed as they all played cards and argued and jostled each other. They all seemed really nice. Really cool. Really dorky, too, but mostly just really nice and really cool.

And there were a few of them he was less sure about—he couldn’t get eyes on the Medic most of the time, what with the one camera in the Medbay being tilted down at an angle that made it hard to see much of anything but the occasional bird (probably by those same birds). The Heavy tended to just sit and read, and was pretty much silent most of the time otherwise. The Scout tended to leave the base pretty often. And the Sniper didn’t even live on base, he had a van outside that he could only occasionally see movement in when he squinted at the far edge of the camera leading outside. But even then, Heavy and Sniper mostly just seemed quiet, and Medic just seemed busy, and the Scout just seemed like a little bit of a dickhead.

But then one day when Jeremy was at breakfast the Heavy caught him leaning to try to get a look at the cover of the book he was reading, and he blurted that he was just wondering what book was so great that he’d stay up until like four in the morning reading, and then the entire team was gawking at him and asking questions and insisting that it was insane that there was someone actually watching all those cameras, and he shrugged and said there was always supposed to be someone watching the tapes back it was just usually some office worker type a hundred miles away. And they seemed almost... upset with him. And maybe that was fair, it wasn’t like he ever talked to any of them much, mostly he just spent breakfast and dinner half-asleep and listening to their chatter. And Demoman admitted that he’d honestly assumed that Jeremy slept his entire shift, he just always looked so tired at breakfast. There was almost this discomfort. This distrust.

And so, now that the jig was up, he made it a point to say some things to certain members of the team. To tell the Medic that his camera was tilted down so that he couldn’t see most of the room, and to very pointedly say that it was weird how that happened and that he didn’t know why they set it up like that in the first place, but it was really none of his business. Made it a point to warn the Engineer in the morning that the previous night, Soldier had been doing something in the fridge for a while, and to maybe check the labels before he made breakfast. Made it a point to tell the Demoman that the camera in his workshop was right in plain sight, and that if he moved one of his blackboards an inch or two to the left, it would obscure the room a pretty hefty amount. Made it a point to tell the Sniper that the camera on the rooftop seemed to be glitching out, and it’d just sort of lost the tapes of the previous two nights, and that it was really unfortunate since for all he knew there might have been someone ignoring the signs about there being no personnel allowed up there.

In return, he found that Pyro would sometimes make little sparkly notes with smiley faces on them and stick them to the door to the security room. That Sniper started tipping his hat at the camera above the door into the base from the garage. That on occasional drinking nights, the team would suddenly turn and start waving at the camera, laughing the whole way. On one night in particular he could hear through the low-quality and tinny speakers that they were trying to cajole him into leaving the security room for a while to join them for cards, and god, but he wanted to.

And he noticed more things. Soldier walking with a slight limp some days when rocket jumps had rough landings. Being able to count the doves in the infirmary and even tell them apart to some extent through blurry close-ups. The Engineer making it a point to sweep really regularly regardless of what project he was working on.

And then he noticed a weird thing.

It took him a long time to get used to the patterns of hallways, the cameras not really lined up linearly after a while, too many branching paths. He learned to follow progress, to flick from one camera to the next as someone walked around corners. And for a while he thought maybe he wasn’t very good at it.

Until he realized two things. First of all, that in a hallway where he knew there were five doors, he could only see four—apparently the door to Pyro’s room was just barely out of sight of the camera. He only figured it out because one day it swung open wide enough to almost bang against the wall.

And then, when he realized there was somehow that massive blindspot, that there was a corner with a blindspot too. One where that Scout kept disappearing.

He watched a few more times to make sure, and yep. He’d see the Engineer walking around the corner, flick to the next screen, and there he was, continuing down the hallway. And then later that same day, the Scout, walking, and flick to the next camera, and he wasn’t there.

One of the worse parts of the job was that he never got to see Dad anymore, never got to just sort of hang out the way they did all the time when he was growing up, and he knew he would miss it but he didn’t know how much. And he found it was even worse when he had something important to say, doubly so when he had something important to say but no idea if it was actually important.

He tried to bring it up casually, in the like ten minutes of time he ever got alone to talk to Dad. Dad was fighting the kettle trying to make some tea and he was trying to stay awake long enough to figure out how he was going to say this.

“Uh,” he said, and Dad looked at him. “So, uh, what’s the read you’re getting on that Scout guy?”

“Lazy,” Dad shrugged, looked back at the kettle. “Arrogant. He seems to care very little about doing his job correctly and has horrible communication on the field.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, fought a yawn down. “Uh. So like, kind of a dickhead.”

“Indeed,” Dad said, nodding vaguely.

“So uhhh... not the best.”

“Where are you going with this?” Dad asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“I, I dunno, the guy just likes hanging out in this one blindspot in the cameras, and it’s kinda freaking me out,” Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Dad frowned. “Strange. I wasn’t aware that there were any blindspots in the cameras.”

“There’s only a few, and only for pretty small spaces I think? But apparently he just likes hanging out in one of them.” Jeremy scuffed his shoe on the ground, glancing over as voices started echoing down the hall towards them. “Just thought it was weird.”

“I’ll look into it,” Dad muttered, voice quiet, and then raised it again slightly. “I refuse to keep up with sports.”

“C’mon,” Jeremy said, knowing this game well, changing subjects into something more normal as people entered earshot. “I’m not even asking you to keep up with sports, I’m just saying, I’d kill to go to a baseball game right about now.”

“The American Pasttime!” Soldier called from the room over.

“Exactly,” Jeremy agreed, nodding at Soldier as he also entered the kitchen, a half-asleep Demoman in tow.

“Any ghosties or ghoulies on the cameras last night, lad?” Demo had enough energy to ask, blinking blearily at the contents of the fridge.

“Oh, a billion,” Jeremy said.

“Guard!” Soldier barked, the most awake person in the room. “Should these ghost-ghouls appear again, don’t be afraid to point me in their direction! I have significant experience with them already and do not fear the likes of them!”

“Yeah sure,” Jeremy shrugged.

“You’re a champion, Guard,” Demo said with what was either a really disoriented blink or a wink, slugging him on the shoulder and wandering back out into the common room with the entire carton of milk in his other hand. Jeremy gave him a mock-salute that Soldier copied with absolute conviction. He and Dad shared a glance after the two of them left, and Jeremy was the first one to break, snickering under his breath.

“I’ll look into it,” Dad said, and also left the kitchen, and Jeremy nodded and started trying to remember what else he’d been planning on doing before bed.

-

“So,” Dad said a few days later, materializing next to Jeremy when he was in the middle of his jog and making him almost jump out of his skin, skidding to a stop.

“You’re enjoying that new watch way too much,” Jeremy panted, out of breath and still very much startled.

“Maybe,” Dad said, and he was smiling. “But as I was saying.”

“All you said was ‘so’,” Jeremy pointed out, giving him a look.

“There’s a juvenile joke here about how I’m your father and so of course I say ‘so’, but if you wouldn’t mind it, I did have something important to say, mon lapin,” Dad replied, and Jeremy rolled his eyes hard at the horrible joke and cheesy name, fighting back a smile of his own.

“Go for it,” he said, and took the opportunity to bend and tighten his shoelaces.

“So. Regarding that Scout and his habits. You mentioned he spends time in blind spots of the cameras, oui?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Keeps, uh, I guess he keeps getting infractions for going off base too much, too. I’ve logged him leaving like three times this week already,” Jeremy nodded.

“Indeed. Well, considering how new we are to the team, I did not want to jump to conclusions, and so contacted Miss Pauling and asked on your behalf for any older records, and I found out something very... intriguing.”

Jeremy looked up at him, blinking. ‘Intriguing’, historically, had always been a very, very bad thing.

“Apparently, it has been two years since they last had a Guard situated on base. The previous one was a much older gentleman, retired from being a full member of the team due to health complications but not entirely ready to part with the company. The previous guard was somewhat strict, and the Scout—the same as we have now—very much disliked the man. He continued acquiring near-constant infractions under the man’s watch for leaving when he was not meant to, so much so that the previous Guard proposed enstating trackers on the team when they went off-base. And before this policy could take hold, the previous Guard left the base one day and did not return, and finally was found dead a state over, one month later.”

Jeremy blinked once, twice. “Holy shit,” he said, and took note of the wary look on his face. “Okay. So we’re thinkin’ the same thing, right?”

“I would assume so. And…” Dad hesitated, moved to fidget with his cufflinks. “And I would not be particularly concerned about this, as I’m confident that you wouldn’t have gotten his attention from what you’ve been up to lately, and therefore wouldn’t be in danger yet should history attempt to repeat itself, but… he’s already taken a disliking to you.”

“What?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“I believe it’s something as simple as some sort of shallow jealousy. Another American on the team, also relatively young, filling the position of someone he disliked previously. He regularly complains about the fact that you don’t need to go do the same job as the rest of us.” Dad shrugged, glanced over at him. “That, combined with the fact that you have somewhat conflicting duties, well, he tends to rather tetchy. He claims that considering he’s meant to be the first line of defense, they shouldn’t also need a guard at night.”

Jeremy had a number of opinions about that, but he stuck to the most relevant ones. “I really don’t like this guy,” he said. “Might be, uh. Worth keeping an eye on.”

“Agreed.” Dad glanced back over his shoulder towards the base, then at his watch. “Enjoy the rest of your run. Don’t forget to eat.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hit the bricks already, old man,” Jeremy scoffed, waving him off, and Dad rolled his eyes, disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. “You’re gonna be using that thing all the damn time now, aren’t you?”

“Oui,” came a voice from nowhere, and Jeremy huffed a laugh, meandering his way back into the rest of his jog.

-

Jeremy hummed along to the radio, flicking between cameras on autopilot and wondering when exactly to take his lunch break.

He didn’t face the clock or anything, so he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had a pretty solid rhythm at that point. Click, click, click, between the camera to the road, the camera to the main entrance, and the camera in the hall towards the middle of the building, for about one second each. At just about any time after 11 or 11:30, those were the only three in real time that he needed to keep an eye on, mostly for people coming back late from bar hopping or if Miss Pauling was rolling in on a delivery. All the other cameras he could see out of the corner of his eye, and any movement he’d pick up on pretty quick, even if it was usually just the doves fluttering on the camera to the Medbay. After he cycled through those (and there was almost never anything there) he’d cycle back through to the tape he had in, put it on high speed, and watch it for about two or three minutes, get through a chunk of that time. Mostly he’d just be making sure nobody had been in the base while the team was away ni o(which indeed there never was), so there wasn’t much of a reason to take it off high speed, and the second part of the night would be watching the tapes for the time the team was back on base.

Movement on a camera made him click the pause, and he glanced off to the side. One of the doves had shuffled to face the other direction. He rolled his eyes, looking back at the bigger monitor again and pressing play.

The second half of the night was a little more interesting. He just had to look at the tapes for the time the team was there, check for discrepancies that might point to Dad messing with the disguise technology off-the-clock or the enemy Spy having infiltrated. For the most part things were straightforward, but he at least got to see his teammates up to funny things sometimes. Pyro’s antics were usually entertaining. Soldier he only caught some of, on the basis of him often walking off out of range of the cameras when he went on his excursions. Demo was funny sometimes. Honestly, just seeing the Sniper anywhere but as a fuzzy distant shape was interesting.

Movement on a camera. Same dove. He ignored it. Click, click, click, all three cameras clear, back to the fast-forward of the same empty hallway as before.

He really needed to figure something out, for the Scout. Maybe he and Dad were just being paranoid. It would be insane for him to try to outright kill anyone who inconvenienced him, not to mention reckless, and stupid to boot. Acting like that in their line of work would make him a lot of enemies extremely quickly. It would make more sense for the old Guard disappearing to be unrelated, to be honest.

Yeah. Hell, he barely knew the guy, and here he was assuming he’d straight up whacked a guy for getting a little too on his case about something. Maybe they were wrong.

Movement on a camera. He glanced over and froze outright.

It took him five seconds to come to his senses enough to pause the playback on his screen.

Figures. Shapes. Not at the front entrance, in the hallway, there next to the back way, by the garage. At least three, moving carefully, hard to make out in the darkness.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic, focus.

Jeremy ran through a few things in his head. He’d already done a headcount, the only people he wasn’t sure about were the Sniper and the Medic, but he hadn’t seen the Medic in any of the hallways out of the infirmary. Three figures were two too many to be any of the team, and besides that, they didn’t look like the Medic. Too short to be the Sniper, moving differently. Different clothes.

Three people. He hopped up, rushed over to the wall, yanked open the panel he had there. Three buttons, which he needed to hit in order. The first would send an alert to Miss Pauling, the second to whoever was assigned to be on alert that night, the third would set off the alarm.

He hit the first, hit the second, and hesitated on the third.

Okay. Technically if he didn’t hit that third button, he’d be breaking protocol, which was, according to the manual, ‘grounds for termination’. He was pretty sure that meant a long swim with some concrete shoes. And it was apparently recorded every time he hit these buttons, so they could deduct from his pay on false alerts. So they’d know if he didn’t hit this third button. He needed to think fast.

This was a different button than the alert button. The alert was more subtle, set for just one person. The alarm was throughout the entire base, over every loudspeaker. Louder than a fire alarm. If he hit this one, these intruders would hear that there was an alarm going off. Anyone smart would book it, high tail it the hell out of there. But he still didn’t know where they came from.

There hadn’t been movement on any of the screens, and he looked at the camera feed facing the road already, a few times even. He should’ve seen them. And if they found their way in once, they could do it again.

If he didn’t hit the button, on the other hand, whoever was on alert would wake up and wonder why they’d gotten an alert but the alarm wasn’t going off. If they were clever, which they probably were if they’d lasted this long, they’d come to the security room to see what was up and they could work from there.

He closed the panel again and moved to wait.

A minute later, still no movement from the hallway where most of the rooms were. That was fine, they’d just woken up, and probably needed to get dressed and grab their guns.

Another minute later, no movement, which was fair, they just needed a second to get their bearings. The intruders, meanwhile, were just lurking, slowly making their way down the hall.

Another minute later, no movement, and he opened the panel to press the button again before he continued waiting. Maybe they didn’t hear him the first time.

Another minute later and he took to standing next to the panel, mashing the button rapidly, eyes on the screen where the intruders were passing the kitchen, starting to get pretty far into the building.

Another minute later and he stomped his way into his sneakers, grabbing his flashlight and gun and guard cap from where they were hung on the wall. “Fine, I’ll fucking do it myself,” he grumbled, and carefully shouldered open the door, taking one last glance at the camera before he shut the door behind himself.

He kept his footsteps quiet, squinting into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting as he crept towards where he’d last seen the figures. It was near-silent in the base at night except for the distant, quiet hum of generators and occasional shift of plumbing. It was getting more and more familiar, and he found himself able to tune it out somewhat, instead listening intently for footsteps besides his own, making sure to click the safety off his gun while he was still alone and not when he was close to whoever had decided to break in.

Okay. Dad did this all the time. He could handle this.

He slowed as he approached the corner near the kitchen, peering around as carefully as he could, tugging down the brim of his cap to try and hide any potential shine from his eyes. He caught sight of a vague shape standing near the doorway, hesitating before it crept inside, into the common area.

Not ideal, on the basis of that being their goddamn kitchen, but at least there would be cover.

By the time he managed to sneak up to the doorway, he could make out the sound of vague whispering. It was far enough that it gave him the boldness to peer into the room, and just slightly lit by the glow of the clock on the oven he could see two shapes there in the kitchen, the third lingering nearer to him, there by the table.

Jeremy was only just starting to make a plan, relieved to have the jump on them, when there was the distant sound of a generator humming to life, and all the figures stopped, paused for a moment.

“Fucking spooky here,” one whispered, barely audible.

“Calm down,” another whispered. “What, scared of ghosts?”

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, shifted onto the balls of his feet and started creeping a little further into the room. If he could just get all three of them to one side, so he wouldn’t need to pivot so much…

“You don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts here,” the first protested, and swore quietly at what sounded like their winging their elbow against the corner of the tale, and Jeremy tried to stick near the wall, managed to creep half-behind one of the chairs, trying to keep his silhouette indistinct. “These guys kill people.”

“So do we,” the third mumbled, moving out of sight in the kitchen, and Jeremy bit down on a swear, starting to inch behind the couch. “Don’t be a coward. And stop making so much noise.”

“You can’t shoot a ghost,” the first pointed out, moving a bit closer to the kitchen, giving the table a wide berth now. “Or punch it.”

“I can try,” the second said, and stopped at the sound of a rustle.

Jeremy held his breath, weight half-balanced against where he’d tried to step, newspaper trapped beneath his foot.

“That one wasn’t me,” the first whispered. There was another, more significant rustle throughout the room, and Jeremy could see a glint as the intruders drew their weapons.

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, and just barely managed not to swear out loud.

The first one was the closest by, lingering beside the arm of the couch Jeremy was crouched in the shadow of. “Do they have a cat here?” they asked, voice quiet.

The second was approaching into the main room more carefully. From the sound of the footsteps, trying to keep a shoulder closer to the wall, clearly paying more attention to the door. “Are you stupid or something?” was the reply, voice also quiet.

The third didn’t speak, but huffed out a laugh, which was enough to tell Jeremy that he was out of the kitchen.

Jeremy inhaled shakily, exhaled shakily, shifted his grip on his handgun and flashlight, and took a split second to think. Inhaled one more time.

He leapt to his feet, swinging his flashlight like a billy club and clobbering the first figure across the side of the head, sending them tumbling to the ground. From the sound of the impact, a dislocated jaw at the very least. One down.

A shout from the other side of the room, arms moving to try to aim, clearly struggling to see him, but that third figure was in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the oven’s clock, and that was enough to figure out where the head and chest were. He aimed, fired, got what he was pretty sure was the neck considering the brief spray of blood that splattered against the oven, darkening the room completely.

A swear from the second figure, and Jeremy wanted to swear too, because he’d hoped that second figure would be stupid and try and charge him, but now he was ten steps away and didn’t have time to fiddle with and cock the gun again, other hand full with a flashlight and no way to—

Oh, duh.

“Stay where you are,” the second figure ordered, but Jeremy’s eyes were a little better adjusted and besides that, he wasn’t the one talking. He lifted his flashlight and clicked it on.

The second figure cried out, recoiling at the sudden blindingly bright light in what had been near-darkness, and Jeremy had time to finagle his thumb up to cock his gun again, now able to aim with absolute accuracy, this shot connecting with the figure’s head.

He exhaled.

It took Jeremy two minutes to remember to fire a bullet into the chest of the unconscious guy, and another minute for the other mercenaries to start showing up, half-dressed and armed. Dad, presumably to prove a point, showed up pretty close to the middle of the pack almost fully dressed. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure how long it took before Miss Pauling showed up, but he wasn’t even halfway through their questions by that time.

“Guard, headcount?” she asked before she even bothered saying hello, still wearing her motorcycle helmet and looking more than a little bit miffed.

“Uh,” he said, eyes drawn away from where Medic was assessing the bodies on the kitchen table, “seven present and accounted for. Sniper’s probably out at his van, don’t know about the Scout.”

“Alright. Pyro,” she said, and Pyro stood at attention, bunny slippers squeaking at the movement. “go wake up Sniper and get him in here.”

Pyro nodded, handing their weird unicorn plushie thing to Jeremy as they passed by, giving him a solemn nod before hurrying away.

“Okay. Guard, hit me with a rundown, then,” she said, and shot a glance around the room. “No peanut gallery needed. And Medic, please don’t take them apart too much. I gotta get rid of those later.”

“Uh. Spotted these guys on the cameras, hit the first and second alerts,” Jeremy said.

“And not the third?” she asked pointedly.

“They were, like, right next to the door, and—here’s the thing, Miss P, is I dunno how the hell they got in here,” he said, and there was a general balk from the room. “No, seriously. They didn’t come in on the main road, they were in one of the back hallways by the garage. There’s gotta be a hole in the cameras or something, because I seriously don’t know where they came from. And if they booked it, they’d take whatever vehicle they used to get here, too, and we might not figure it out. Thought I’d just wait for whoever the hell was supposed to be on alert so we could… I dunno, at least see which way they went.”

“Guard,” she admonished, and he shrank a little bit. “That was incredibly reckless. What if nobody had shown up to help you?”

“Uh,” he said, blinked, “but… nobody did show up.”

A pause. She blinked. “What? You’re the one who did that?” she asked, entirely shocked, pointing towards the three bodies on the table.

“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that my job?” he asked carefully, shifting the stuffed animal under his arm.

“No, you’re—you’re just supposed to be the Guard, you’re supposed to watch cameras, not—“ She paused, taking a second to push up her glasses and rub at the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling. “Okay. Points for… going above and beyond, here, but Guard, don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Miss P,” he mumbled, tugging on the brim of his guard cap, and sighed to himself as Miss Pauling moved away to try and stop Medic from attempting to covertly steal a few organs from the corpses. Dad clapped him on the shoulder supportively, and that did make him feel a little better. He wasn’t expecting a clap to the other shoulder, and looked up, surprised to see Heavy there, looking just slightly less grim than usual.

“Little Guard man is credit to team,” he said simply, solemnly.

Jeremy straightened up slightly. “Oh. Hey, thanks,” he said. Heavy nodded at him.

“It’s true,” Demo called, and he looked over, got another approving nod. “Really saved the lot of us, lad.”

“I, I mean, hey, it’s… what I’m here for. Or, uh. I thought that was it, anyways,” he shrugged, glancing away. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty cool, though.”

Dad bumped his arm for the last part, and he snickered. “My question,” Dad continued, doing his best to ignore him, “is primarily regarding who, precisely, was supposed to be present to help Guard with this. Who is meant to be on alert?”

“It’s meant to be Scout, ain’t it?” the Engineer asked from nearby, frowning. A general murmur of agreement. “Could he have slept through it?”

“Heavy doubts this,” Heavy grumbled, looking troubled.

“Why’re we awake?” asked Sniper from the doorway, and various teammates called out a greeting. Sniper seemed half-gone, and completely grumpy, but not as grumpy as Pyro, and not nearly as gone as the man leaning heavily against Pyro’s shoulder.

“Hey,” the Scout managed, grinning, speech garbled, visibly sloppy and unbalanced. “What’s up, guys?”

Groans from parts of the room. “Drinkin’ again, Scout?” the Engineer drawled, visibly irritated.

“That’s my trademark, lad, go on,” Demo laughed, but the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely there.

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said, voice firm in a way that made Jeremy almost flinch in sympathy. “Are you aware that we’ve had a situation here while you’ve been sleeping?”

“Weren’t sleeping,” Sniper murmured, and eyes turned to him. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Came stumbling in ‘round when I was heading in. He was out for the night. Bar, looks like.”

“What?” Jeremy demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t I see him leave on the cameras?”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, and Jeremy looked at her. Her expression was hard to read. “It’s possible he went through the back tunnel.”

“Back tunnel?” Jeremy asked, and glanced around. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of it.

“For emergencies only. Scout’s the only one who I’ve given a key card to. I have one too. It’s supposed to be used for transporting especially sensitive information, most of the team isn’t supposed to even know it exists. If there’s a gap in the cameras around the back of the building, he might have been using it to… sneak out to go to town, even though he knows he’s already in hot water for leaving the base so much,” Miss Pauling said, glaring at Scout, who was looking increasingly annoyed.

“Whatever, it’s not a big deal,” he protested, scoffing.

“That tunnel is for emergencies only,” Miss Pauling stressed. “I trusted you with the privilege of knowing about it account of having worked here for so long, and you’re using that privilege and key card to mess around?”

“He was coming back from around the front of the building, at least,” Sniper chimed in, and Pyro nodded. “Not that I’d understand the point of sneaking out if he’s going to just walk back in the front door.”

“Key card?” Medic repeated from near the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, it’s, it’s a magnetized card, that can be read by a card reader, used like a key,” Miss Pauling explained, deflating a little bit.

His eyebrows furrowed further. “Would it happen to look anything like this?” he asked, picking up a lanyard from the table and holding it up, showing the room the card clipped onto the end of it.

Two beats of silence. “Spy, would you mind?” Miss Pauling asked politely, nodding towards the Scout, who had gone pale.

“Not at all,” Dad said just as politely, and walked over towards the Scout and Pyro, then circled around behind them, and sank a blade into the Scout’s spine. He promptly crumbled to the floor, dead.

“Well. At least that’s that mystery solved,” Miss Pauling sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose again. “Now I’ve gotta block off time tomorrow to get rid of three bodies, and then hopefully that’s the last we’re gonna hear of this or else the Administrator is gonna kill me.”

“What about the Scout?” Heavy rumbled.

“…Scratch that. Four bodies,” she mumbled, face dropping into her hands. “And then I need to find his replacement. Ugh.”

“Can’t imagine you’d need to go far,” Demo said, and Jeremy looked up, and Demo was very obviously tilting a thumb in his direction.

“He’s proven himself to be better at this job,” Dad agreed, shrugging. “And I would say on a bad day he’s still a better runner than the previous Scout on a good one.”

“He can clearly handle a firearm well,” the Engineer noted, looking over one of the bodies.

“And a blunt object,” Medic chimed, just a bit too pleased. “This jaw is almost completely shattered!”

“Okay, okay, fine, sure,” Miss Pauling waved off, one hand still pressed to her face, clearly overwhelmed and tired. “We’ll get his paperwork in tomorrow. Congratulations, you’re the new Scout, any questions? Can the questions wait until morning? Great, thank you. Good night, everyone. Medic, have the bodies in bags for me at least, okay?”

A distracted thumbs up from Medic, and Miss Pauling was groaning, wandering back out of the room, and most of the team followed, yawning amongst themselves. Sniper half-attempted to ask again why the hell any of them were awake, but gave up halfway through. Pyro, for one, made sure to at least retrieve the plushie from Scout’s arms before wandering off, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder.

“So,” Dad said, and when he looked over, he was smiling. “A promotion, mon lapin. Congratulations, new Scout.”

“Do I gotta wear that stupid outfit he always wears?” Jeremy asked, entirely serious. His reply was a laugh and a pat on the shoulder before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Pops, I’m serious. Do I? Dad!?”

-

“—So that’s why I figured, y’know, might as well tell you guys,” Jeremy finished rambling, hands in his pockets, continuing down the hallway. “Because… I dunno. I could tell Miss P, but it’s nice having secret stuff, y’know?”

“You think this is how they actually got in?” Demo asked, looking dubious. “Little blind spot in the cameras?”

“Only a couple feet wide, you said?” Sniper grumbled.

“Sounds possible,” Heavy said hesitantly.

“I dunno. Maybe. But if I tell Miss P about it, they’re gonna fix it,” Jeremy shrugged, turning the corner and stopping. “There. I knew it.”

They stopped with him, following his line of sight. “You’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Sniper deadpanned. “You want to tell me he’d been climbing out a window like a teenager?”

Jeremy shrugged, moving to open the window in question. It swung open easily, just large enough to push through with only a little bit of a problem, barely needing to turn his shoulders. “He’s not much bigger than me, and what the hell else would he be doing here?” he pointed out.

“Heavy cannot fit through that window,” Heavy deadpanned.

“Yeah. Sorry, big guy,” Jeremy apologized, leaning back inside and closing it again. “But hey, mystery solved, right?”

“Well, if I ever need windows to climb out of, now I know just the lad for the job,” Demo said, nudging him. “Thanks, Guard. Or, er, Scout. Och, now that’s going to take getting used to, aye? Might just stick to calling you ‘laddie’, laddie.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he laughed, nudging him right back. And as much as they ribbed him for it, he did see a kind of appreciation there. Just like he’d figured, they seemed to take note of him taking their side and not just Miss Pauling’s.

Now he just needed to switch back over to the day shift.

[ruby-whistler]

You've probably talked about this kinda thing before (I'm willing to hunt down the post if so), but I'm pretty new to your blog and I'm curious; what makes you like c!Dream so much? Other than, like, his potential - or the skill that went into writing him - I mean specifically as a character, what causes you to sympathize with him as opposed to others like Wilbur or Quackity?

If it's personal you obviously don't have to answer! I've just read tons of posts like that from c!Tommy apologists and I realized I'd never read one from the other side of things (so to speak) and I think you present your ideas and stuff rly well :p

Alright, I’ve made a couple of replies like this, but this one is going in the masterpost to later link it to people - thank you for your interest, and I hope you don’t mind this one being a bit detailed.

Initially, on more of an emotional level, the answer to that question would be Dr3. It was how I got into Dream apologism, it justified my compassion for the character, and made me feel more comfortable where the rest of the fandom was overwhelmingly negative.

The c!Dream that people portray seems unsympathetic, and pretty fitting on the surface - a relentless manipulative villain with an insatiate thirst for power who threw away his friends in order to gain control over others for the sake of being on top.

Until you actually look into canon, and do some analysis, and realize that's,,, rather far from the truth.

See, the thing about c!Dream is, that he's a person much like anyone else in the story. He's not a "villain" or some morally black character only because of his actions. It's all about context, which doesn't excuse actions, but it might explain them and make an impact on the way we view the character himself.

In this fandom, people usually look at him, and then throw both accurate characterization and any of that context out the window.

Because power, and hurting people, and chaos isn't his goal or his motive. It's a means to an end. Everything is a means to the end to this character, including himself, which I find fascinating.

Is it wrong to do? Yes. Will it get him closer to his goals? Yes? Then he's going to do it, no matter who gets hurt in the process. No matter if he gets hurt in the process.

And this ruthlessness is not inspired by cruelty, this efficiency isn't out of enjoyment. It's out of genuine attachment and perhaps even desperation, but that's difficult to get into.

He's had such a downward spiral into doing continuously worse things - and for what? For control? For power? No, he never cared about that in the first place, why would he start now?

Do you know what he did care about?

His friends. The server. The people he feels responsible for.

c!Dream's goals have never been selfish at all, no matter how much people try to paint it that way. His ends were always for others - considering how likely the theory that he got himself locked up on purpose is, that enforces the sentiment even more.

If he didn't care about the server, why would he fight against L'Manberg and then list his reasons for it always as reasons "we" had? He pretty much never used "I" when talking about it, I know because I counted it.

If he didn't care about the people, why would he stand against Schlatt - despite understandably still despising L'Manberg - and actively support them in getting their country back when he could've just left them alone? Schlatt wasn't hurting him. Wilbur taking a tiny piece of land wasn't threatening him.

Manberg was threatening the server's peace, which is why he fought against it. L'Manberg threatened (and ruined) the server's relative peace and unity, which is why he fought against it.

It was never him fighting to control the server, it was him fighting for the server and the people in it, even if he ended up hurting them in the process, and that's pretty clear from analysing his motives before the second season.

And yeah, his thinking is flawed, I noticed - but cc!Dream has confirmed his goal in the end is for everyone to get along and, well, stop hurting each other, as well as him having an "ends justify the means" mentality.

And I guess that silent realization of - hell, he cares - was what drew me to have such a strong attachment towards the character.

So thinking about him forcing himself to do all this terrible stuff - about him being stuck powerless inside a cell, hurt over and over again - about just how desperate he must've been, alternatively, how ready to sacrifice himself he must've been back at the Finale.

If you recontextualize the story from c!Dream's perspective, it all falls into this picture of someone who wanted to protect people more than anything, and who cared more than anyone, and ended up losing everything, not entirely by his own fault, but because of the cycle of violence he was actively trying to stop.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Dream is incredibly selfless both in his overarching goals, and in his smaller more immediate ones. He will, more often than not, put himself in a disadvantageous situation if it means his friends or allies aren’t caught in the crossfire or harmed.

His relationship with his friends - Punz, George and Sapnap specifically - is incredibly tragic. He wanted to protect Punz, he showed genuine concern about him, he was willing to have one less person on his side just so that people wouldn't target him.

He wanted to protect George, but he hurt him in the process, because he was too caught up in being in the right, and Sapnap was distraught thanks to Tommy telling him that Dream doesn't care about him, and Quackity who despised Dream was there to fan the flames, so they fell apart rather easily.

He wanted to protect the cat, and he failed.

He wanted to protect Techno, stand up to Quackity, and he failed.

If you think about it, he failed to protect everyone miserably.

Alright before I break down sobbing incoherently - as you can probably see, my sympathy towards c!Dream doesn't come from him being a good person to any degree, more from just incredible amounts of sadness.

You see, c!Dream is a very reserved character, and he puts up the "cruel scary villain" front on purpose, and he doesn't talk about his emotions on purpose. However what we see of him is pretty much enough to classify him as a rather tragic character.

Most of his actions, with enough context, shift the way I think about the character in a more positive direction only because if I like the way a character is written, it's going to bleed into my feelings for the character himself. Ruthless villains are my jam. A character being fun to analyse and too complex to complicate further is pretty much the only thing I need to become attached.

Did I mention the prison arc yet? I cannot see a character suffering and not be sympathetic, I don't think that's a thing with me. Healing arc potential, isn't it?

A lot of people also relate to the character on a deeply personal level! Trauma responses such as cutting people off and emotionally isolating yourself, trying to regain control of your environment or to get back the past, some people even relate to,, what's being done to him during the prison arc. There's definitely some amount of projection going on, but I'd say I only do it to a degree where when I'm depressed I'll start relentlessly posting about a healing arc.

It's just hard to see a villain with good intentions hurt and alone, even if he's done terrible things, and not feel some amount of empathy. Most people don't care to see him that way, but my blog's mostly a place for those who do.

Anyways, here are some essays to check out perhaps if you've read this far that elaborate on some of the points further-

[ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ]

- and here's an explanation like this from a fellow Dream apologist. Might be useful to get multiple perspectives on the subject. Feel free to also send asks if you have any questions! That's what I'm here for.

[rangikuxmatsumoto]

[ Misconception: Rangiku moves on fully after Gin and doesn't grieve him. ]

send me a misconception you think people have about my character and I’ll explain if it’s true or not. | Accepting

Hello! And thank you for coming to my TEDTalk today. The concept that Rangiku moves on and doesn’t grieve Gin’s death is 100% false – when in actuality Rangiku is grieving the loss of Gin well before his death. I am going to attempt explain with both canon and also my interpretations; the only problem with using canon is that unfortunately Rangiku suffers from what I trademarked last time at 2 AM in bed as ‘Surface-Level Storyline’, #RangikuDeservedBetter.

While I would classify Rangiku as second-tier main character, she isn’t deemed important enough to really get to see what makes her tick. We don’t see a lot beyond the surface-level, her character isn’t developed beyond that for one reason or another. And unfortunately, Rangiku plays the all-important factor of being Gin’s driving force, reason for redemption/pity, but that’s it. We see more how Rangiku matters to Gin, but we never really see the reverse because Bleach in Shonen and they’re only allowed what, 1 main love interest storyline, otherwise the world ends?

Anyways, back to the main topic.

From the start of the Soul Society Arc, Gin is introduced as a villain and upon reflection and rewatching, we actually don’t see Rangiku and Gin interact all that much. Again, this is one of the things that truly infuriates me about this ship because it created mainly in tension, flashbacks and one-sided narratives and only in Gin’s death do we get any sort of canonization that there is/was a relationship between the two; beyond just the concept of them growing up together. It’s only in the dramatic conclusion that we see Gin’s true intentions and his true feelings, where his heart truly lies and who it lies with.

Now, in those flashbacks and one-sided narratives we see it at first from Rangiku’s point of view. Whenever Rangiku dwells on Gin, questioning his motives or what he’s doing her tone* (in the anime), and her demeanor are often sad, confused. Other than their original flashback panel/scene for first time meeting/introduction, most of her thought process on Gin revolves around his notorious abandonment/disappearances from her life.

Waking up to find footsteps leaving wandering away from their little shake, the view Rangiku has of Gin in more memories is that of his back. She’s constantly questioning his motives, his reasonings, wondering what he’s plan is for her, what he truly wants out of her. Her inner monologue during her fight with Kira is literally asks that exact question. Here was see that Rangiku doesn’t even know where she rests in Gin’s life. They had become Shinigamis because of his desire to make sure she doesn’t cry anymore, which should seem like a cementing force in their places in each other’s worlds. But Gin’s actions speak to the opposite of that. It’s as if his narrative goes from this protector of Rangiku, this desire to fulfil some sense or purpose to something entirely different once he comes in contact with Aizen, after he becomes a Shinigami.

As the Soul Society Arc wraps up and we see the departure of Aizen&Co, the idea that Rangiku is already beginning to grieve the loss of Gin starts to take shape.

She’s grieving the loss of the boy she once knew; she’s grieving the man she thought she knew. I also think she’s starting to grieve the loss of the future she thought they had. She states at one point “That’s what I hate most about you…” we can only assume that it is his disappearing act because that has been a reoccurring topic when it comes to Rangiku’s narratives revolving around Gin, but I also want to point out that it could be regarding to Rangiku not knowing Gin’s motives.

It is only at the end of their character development arc that we find out the whole truth, but Rangiku never truly does – this notion that Gin keeps her at arm’s length to protect could be the something she hates. The walls that Gin has built around himself, the façade that he has crafted has kept everyone out, including Rangiku and she is starting to realize how she doesn’t know who Gin really is and why. But also, the fact that Gin leaves her with nothing – but questions.

The stages of Grief are:

1. Shock & Denial

2. Pain & Guilt

3. Anger & Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Upward Turn

6. Reconstruction & Working Through

7. Acceptance & Hope

Obviously, the manner in which grief manifests for each person is different and how long they move through the stages is unique to each individual. Because Rangiku suffers from Surface-Level Storyline Syndrome we don’t see any of these stages or mentions of these stages until depression, in the filler Reigei arc, and while that is not recognized as canon, I think it’s important to mention and will come back to this later.

It is my belief that Rangiku is already going through stage 1 and 2 during this period. The shock of Gin’s betrayal is the first manifestation of her grieving process and while Gin isn’t dead (yet), he’s gone, it’s a break-up, a loss of the person most important to her. She’s in pain, she feels betrayed. The weight of being one of Gin’s most important, longest connections brings in a sense of guilt – how did she not know, how did she not see, how come she couldn’t stop him.

These feelings have to be weighing on her for much of the Arrancar Arc and Fake Karakura Town Arc and it comes to a dramatic head at the Winter War.

You can simply see the ferocity in her gaze the whole interaction with Gin prior to his fight with Aizen. Compared to how she looked at him the last time she saw him as he left Soul Society verses how she looks at him upon their reunion.

At some point we’ve entered the stage of anger but at the same time we’re still in denial because Rangiku’s question to Gin, to which Gin turns back on her – is how could he do this to Kira?When in reality she was asking ‘How could you to do this to me?’

It’s also interesting to mention the lack of Gin’s smile during the entire interaction with Aizen. I would safely assume that Gin didn’t expect Rangiku to make some dramatic show of force, to show up in her state because she had to know she wasn’t strong enough to take on him, let alone Aizen. It’s almost like during those few precious moments, he’s trying to recalculate his plan, which is why he ferries her away and places her under kido. And why he continues that rouse to Aizen in claiming that he killed her.

Of course, this leads to Gin’s “I’m a snake” monologue – referencing back to TBTP. Small side note, it wasn’t until years of watching, reading and writing Bleach that you start to notice these little things; but Gin’s narrative has always been defined by the ‘I’m a snake’ statement when in actuality he’s always been depicted as a fox or kitsune which in Japanese folklore are considered “faithful guardians, friends, and lovers.” I could write a whole research paper on this, but anyways back to the good stuff.

It is during the Fake Karakura Town/Winter War that the transition happens in the GinRan ship. Up until this point it was always from Rangiku’s point of view but now we’re getting Gin’s. We have the narrative in our heads that Gin is this terrible person, he’s a villain, he’s working with Aizen, he’s betrayed the people he cares most about and then BOOM. He flips the script.

The true reveal takes place, we see Gin’s motives for everything – and that motive is Rangiku; what was done to her; what was stolen from her; Gin is seeking revenge. In order to do this, he’s kept the driving force, his whole reason at arm’s length to protect her. In the end, he fails.

And the grief process for Rangiku starts over.

After the conclusion on the Winter War are we sneak a peak at how Soul Society and the rest of the Shinigami are moving on. No one has come out of that war unscathed and that’s the whole point – the loss of those three captains was a ripple effect that didn’t just hit each individual’s division directly, but it radiated out to those around them. The personal impacts that each of these captains had on so many among their ranks. We’re given this insight by Rangiku, who sees those around her picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, realizing their shortcomings and working to grow stronger. They won’t be defined by that one battle, they won’t be defined by the loss of their mentor, they’re moving on.

Rangiku claims that she too is moving on, and that Gin’s bad habit of leaving her with nothing is actually a sort of blessing, she has nothing to cling to, nothing to hold onto, nothing to keep her back from stepping out and moving forward…which is utter nonsense. While Gin may have left nothing physically for her to hold onto, he left her with everything emotionally, and mentally.

Rangiku never learned the reason for Gin’s actions, no one besides Aizen truly knows what happened to her as a child, who she is and what she was. Gin kept that from Rangiku for all those years, he never had the chance to explain her role in his actions. So, what did Gin leave her with? Questions.

Gin also left her with all the memories she has recanted over all the arcs leading up to this, as if the image of him lying there dying isn’t seared into her brain. As if her birthday isn’t going pass and she isn’t going to think of him, of why that day is important.

We’re back to the stages of grief, she’s denying that she has anything to hold onto. She’s still in a state of shock, she’s mourning his loss. I have referenced before that in the filler arc after this there is a mentioning of a month having passed and Nanao mentions to Rangiku that it’s good to see her kind of coming back to her old self to which Rangiku sort of questions what she had been for the last month – in which Nanao responds in kind that she had been depressed.

Now this isn’t canon, but I think it ties in rather well, because unfortunately with Bleach being a shonen feelings are kind of just dropped like a hot potato. One moment they’re sad and then not anymore. We don’t see really any other character suffer besides that of Ichigo, but then we have this moment where someone else mentions that another character’s personality has been off for a month (shocker off-screen however).

Now comes my interpretations.

For the whole period of the Soul Society arc until the end of the Winter War you are seeing Rangiku going through a grief process as well as character development. She is learning during that whole time how to live without Gin.

In the beginning, it’s simply learning to live without him romantically perhaps. Since Aizen references that he always assumed Gin has “feelings” for Rangiku, I have personally headcanoned that they had a relationship that may have been one of those ‘worst-kept secrets’ in Soul Society. Everyone knew they were together, but it was meant to be hush-hush, however as things were beginning to heat up with Aizen’s plans, I have always pinpointed around the events of Isshin’s disappearance, Gin ended things – out of protection for Rangiku.

Gin’s betrayal cements this process, Rangiku needs to learn how to live without him in her life and without him in Soul Society. Their lives had been so interwoven for so long that pulling back would be a process, learning to live without him would be like learning breathing again. It wouldn’t be easy.

While she has proven to herself that she can live, thrive and survive without Gin in her life, the idea of death isn’t exactly what she had in mind. The idea that he’d still be there – without being there – is where her mindset is at until ultimately, she is forced to truly let him go for good. And so, she grieves, hard, for months, if not years – if not for the rest of her life.

One has to, right? To see the man, you loved die before you, not knowing why, not understanding his motives, never getting the answers to the questions you don’t even know you should ask, it must be torment.

They were in a sense soulmate, meant for one another – Gin devoted his life to literally a stranger. He had no idea who this girl was, but he saw a crime being committed, he knew it was wrong and swore vengeance on someone he didn’t know without even knowing the girl’s name first. And Gin was Rangiku’s whole world, when someone doesn’t start counting the days until they’ve met you, you’re important, you’re literally their everything. She is basing the passage of time off of when she met the boy who saved her life. To lose that person, it can’t be something you simply get over, in a month, or a year. You simply slowly start to come to terms, with the new reality and the new normal. That void never goes away, the hole in your heart is never going to be filled, not by drink, not by another person, not by things. It lingers and for a time it gets worse before it gets better.

Now, of course, I have to talk about the haircut. The start of The Thousand Year Blood War is 17 months later, so over a year and a half has passed, and I don’t think that is enough time for Rangiku to have healed or to be out of her grieving process/mourning period. I think it will be with her forever, but we enter a new stage in the grief process, the Upward Turn and Working Through.

It’s pretty cliché to do the whole “New Hair, New You” thing after a break-up, but I get why it’s done. It’s meant to show growth, it’s meant to show the passage of time, it’s meant to show the letting go of one’s former self. For the most part prior to the events of the main storyline of Bleach, Rangiku always had shorter hair. So, it’s kind of natural for her to go back to that to start over. I’m not against it, I think it’s a way to show that she had let go somewhat, moved on to a point she felt comfortable with.

The way I have written Rangiku is that after the events of the Winter War, there’s a pronounced shift in Rangiku. There’s a more complex level of emotions to her after Gin’s death – she’s able to eventually return to a resemblance of her old self but she’s never quite there. The majority of her soul was taken by Aizen, but that hurt far less than when he stole half her heart.

TLDR; Rangiku did grieve and continues to grieve for Gin after his death, but over time she processes his death, learning to accept her new reality and in some sense of the manner move on while still holding onto the memories (the good and the bad) that she had with the man she loved from the moment she saw him.