#you can accidentally make a choice that causes a dude to get killed

[little-miss-dilf-lover]

hiii can I plz request a tangerine x soft/femreader where they’re on a cute date at a nice restaurant and they’re having a great time. Tangerine gets up to go use the restroom and while he’s gone some musty crusty dude who probably looks like a divorced Librarian walks up to reader and harasses her. Reader doesn’t know what to do since she’s more of the quiet and shy type and then tangerine (who is fuming when he sees some Walmart wearing dude yelling at his girlfriend) punches him and starts a fight. Meanwhile the reader trying to stop it cause her anxiety can’t take any more of this when the crusty dude accidentally ends up punching reader. Now she’s basically crying and tangerine quickly stops throwing hands and gets her out of there. (Obviously he’s gonna kill that guy some other time but yk he’s an amazing boyfriend so) then they get home, tangerine apologizes and takes care of reader, and she ends up falling asleep while cuddling w/ him.! Although tangerine is loving this moment they’re sharing, he can’t stop thinking about just how much pain he’s gonna inflict on the crusty dude. Sorry for this being so long and thanks! 😅

hii!! the way you described it made me giggle😭 i love stuff like this. thank you for requesting, hope you like it 💌

uncomfortable encounter

tangerine x f reader

wc: 1.2k

warnings: reader gets hits and hit on, little bit of violence- just him being protective for his girl

a/n: this was in my drafts, im not back from my break just yet. I just felt bad and wanted to give you all something

masterlist + rules

taglist

Every couple of weeks, Tangerine would take you out on a cute little date of your choice. He’d do the whole get-up; dressing up nice, buying you flowers, opening your door, anything to make you feel like a princess. He would always be chivalrous but during your dates, he’d go the extra mile to show you how much he loved and appreciated you.

For this date you had decided on a quaint pub by the river, specifically choosing it for its calm and serenity that Tangerine desperately needed after his week at work. Enjoying each other’s company as you both indulged on your dessert, chatting and sharing playful remarks throughout the entirety of the evening.

Everything was all flowing perfectly, you were gossiping about your job while you finished your drinks, both occasionally gazing out at the swan-filled stream that your table was overlooking.

He places down his glass and picks up your hand, pecking a sweet kiss on the back of it before excusing himself to the toilets. “I’ll be right back.”

“No problem.” You smile, taking another sip from your drink as you watch him walk away.

Turning your attention to the bay window, looking out at the view, your eyes darting as they watch over the birds and wildlife.

“That was quick.” You grin, turning around when you feel a presence behind you. “I’m sorry— I thought you were someone else.” You wryly smile as you apologised to the stranger.

“No problem, sweet cheeks.” He grins, causing a shudder-like feeling over your whole body. “Feeling lonely?”

You didn’t enjoy talking, especially if it was to a stranger that made you feel wildly uncomfortable. You didn’t really know how to respond, just awkwardly smiling as you try to distract yourself by playing with your straw.

“You not like me or something? … that’s not what your lips are telling me.” Nodding down to your mouth, noticing the way you were biting the bottom lip. You weren’t biting them provocatively, it was just something you did when you were anxious, harmlessly chewing on your bottom lip to deter you from thinking about your nerves.

“You’re cute.” He smirks, brushing over his greasy hair. “Let me buy you a drink, and maybe the more you drink… the more you might wanna come home with me.” Stroking over the sleeves of your upper arm, staring down at you.

Flinching at his uncalled touch, waiting impatiently for your boyfriend to return.

The man trails his dirty hands over the fabric, breathing heavily with his mouth open, itching his stubby fingers lower.

You felt stuck, it was as if you were paralysed in fear. When you hear the familiar voice of Tangerine yell “Oi” from across the pub, it felt like you could finally breathe again. “What the fuck you doing?” He grits, yanking on the back of the man’s collar to pull him away.

“Hey, man. Nothing. She was practically begging for it.” He groans, stroking his throat.

“Excuse me?” Tangerine grimaces, his eyes displaying nothing but fury as he looked at the man. “What did you just say?” His words were slow and taunting.

“Nothing— nothing.” He stammers, trying to back away.

You knew where this was heading, you’d seen this a dozen times before. You could tell by your boyfriend’s furrowed brows and contorted face that he was about to do something. Something aggressive.

“Say it again.” He whispers, his demeanour nothing but cold and rigid. “Go on.” Provoking him as he tightens his grip on the man’s t-shirt.

“N—no.” Shaking his head, looking at you with hateful eyes.

He grips the man’s face, holding his cheeks tight as he forces his gaze away from you. “And why’s that?”

“What you gonna do? Huh? Cause a bigger scene? We’re in a pub for fucks sake.” He snarks, his features suddenly shift and grow taunting.

Tangerine takes the bait and lands a firm solid punch to the side of the man’s face. Hitting him repeatedly until the man stumbles back, flailing his erratic arms as he landed unsuccessful strikes on your boyfriend.

“Hey.” You say softly, looking nervously around the room. Eyes dart between the two in fear as you make a step towards them, speaking a little louder than before. “Come on, that’s enough.”

The man momentarily sends a scowl your way before wavering a wide lunge that accidentally catches you across the cheek in the process. Tangerine immediately drops the man to the floor and rushes to your side, his hands now tender and soft as he cups your jaw. His worried eyes searching your face, honing in on your tear-filled eyes.

“I’m so sorry… are you okay? Are you hurt?” He questions, his tone scared and rushed.

Nodding with uncertainty, he carefully takes your hand, holding it in his as he leads you away from the man on the floor. He picks up your bag in his spare hand as he leads you out of the pub, guiding you through the crowd of people that were circling around.

“I shouldn’t have done that…“ he says regretfully, searching your face. “I’m so sorry.” Smiling painfully as he wipes his thumbs under your eyes, delicately swiping away your tears. “How bad does it hurt?”

“I’m fine.” You lie, burying your face in his chest. Hugging him tight.

He sighs, resting his chin on the top of your head as he wraps his arms tighter around you, comfortingly stroking your back as you stood under the fairy lights of the smoking area. “People are coming… let’s get you home.” He says softly, slowly separating from your embrace.

Nodding your head as you sniffled, allowing him to take your hand and lead you to his car.

The journey home was pretty quiet, with occasional sniffles and ‘you okay?’ diluting the silence. Spending the majority of the way home with your eyes glued to the floor of the car.

Once you get back home, he immediately sets you atop the kitchen counter, standing between your legs as he gently holds a bag of frozen peas to the sore parts of your face. His free hand carefully stroking over the other side of your face.

After a little while, the swelling starts to go down, so he changes you into his hoodie and pyjama bottoms that he was warming up on the radiator for you. Dressing you before carrying you into the living room and laying you down on the sofa.

He returns shortly after with two teas, a pack of biscuits and your favourite blanket. Snuggling beside you as he cocoons your head in his bicep, holding you close while he flicks through the channels on the tv. He glances down at you, watching your eyes flutter while they attempt to stay open.

He knew he should be enjoying this quiet moment with you, but once he notices the growing red patch on your face that was lit up from the tv, he couldn’t help but plan exactly how he was going to get this man to pay. It wasn’t solely the fact that another man touched you, hit you even. It was because of how uncomfortable and uneasy he made you, how strained your features were when the man looked at you. How frightened this man made you feel.

Tangerine would do anything for you, he’d kill for you. And that’s exactly what he was planning to do.

@tangerinesgf @kpopgirlbtssvt @ch3rries-n-cream @earth-elemental18 @ashlynhasmanyhyperfixations @idontknowwhattohaveasmyuser @thewinterv @navs-bhat @ilovetangerinewithallmyheart @theredvelvetbitch @randomawesomeperson102 @lov3lypeaches7 @princess-pebbles-things

[oh-three]

The Acolyte S1E8:

Yeah, nobody expected that to happen. Osha was in so much distress she tapped into the powers of her people and accidentally took a go at Qimir's mind.

Sol still trying to prove the vergence.

Damnnnn, Pip really packs a punch. I actually did want to know what Sol was gonna say though.

And……there she goes.

Bazil, what the fuck??

Looks like Mae gets to actually go back to Brendok. What a glorious landing.

Rayencourt over here foreshadowing every fallen Jedi ever. I mean…he's not wrong. But, oof, he was not being helpful at all.

There's something kinda neat about Qimir giving Osha the choice to be trained or not. Like, most Sith are kinda just apprehended or get manipulated, but Osha's over here taking the middle path and that's actually really neat of her. And the fact that Qimir's letting her.

HOLY SHIT, DARTH PLAGUEIS.

Damnn, he's gonna kill Qimir, isn't he? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that despite the rule of two, the master doesn't encourage the apprentice to find their own to kill them.

Something, something, the way Sol's reliving that night whilst walking through the ruins of the base 😭

She was right there!!!

The only one there who's not gonna be sentimental about it is Qimir, and that is not good for anybody else because he's not gonna wanna fail twice.

Qimir vs Sol rematch 👀 👀 👀

WHAT A MOVE.

The way Mae telling Osha what Sol did is the thing that made her snap 😭

[Vernestra has joined the fight.]

I…..didn't know that lightsabers could make that noise.

Wonder if Qimir knew Mae was coming or if he was actually about to surrender.

Mae wanting to Sol to pay for what he did via Jedi Council and Senate is actually very mature of her all things considered.

Watching Osha Force-choke Sol is actually so heartbreaking 😭

I know what I said earlier, but that kyber crystal is fucking red now. Also, she just passed Qimir's test…

Omg, she actually killed him 😭

The blade being two different colors, watching the red corrupt it, was actually really crazy, what the fuck.

Ahhh, so the theory about Vernestra knowing Qimir's true!

Wait, Sol's eyes aren't open anymore. Maybe he's alive after all. Or he just wasn't dead yet.

Question is- is Qimir going after Vernestra and her team, or after the not-twins? Would be funny if he just ran, though.

Omg, the Force echoes are strong enough that Vernestra can sense what happened the first time.

Vernestra leaving herself along out in the open as bait for Qimir to attack >>>

Watching this whole troop of Jedi waltzing through the forest behind Bazil is actually hysterical.

Osha and Mae making up after all that's happened is actually everything.

Mae stopping to genuinely ask Osha what she wants 😭

Qimir really wasn't gonna let them go without taking one of them as his apprentice, was he? I love how he's helping them, though. Instead of just killing them and running.

Dude, this show could totally have a season two.

"…What did I do?" She said it so softly 😭

Mae being so lost and alone that she tells the story of what happened on Brendok to Vernestra 😭

Yeah, no, Sol's dead.

Vernestra's voice when she told Mae the truth as she's gathered, and then as she tells the Senate commitee. You can tell that she still loves Sol, but is not denying that he made a terrible mistake 😭

There has to be a second season. I mean, obvious Osha and Qimir both die or something if Plagueis ends up with Palpatine, but.

Osha/Qimir shippers going crazy right now.

Ayyy, they ended it off with a Yoda cameo, nice. Wish we'd been a bit more involved since he's Grnadmaster, but, y'know, it is what it is.

[stevie-petey]

Oh.my.god. THAT WAS SO AMAZING ‼️‼️ I was really scared it was gonna be all sad but you did a really good job balancing it out with humor and bits of fluff. The way Steve and bug interact with Robin is so cute I love them so much. The way everyone is rooting for Steve and bug to work it out (except Jon of course but he's not here so he's outta luck). I love the relationship between Dustin and bug, it's so sweet that he wanted to take care of his big sister. When he cried about her going to college my poor sweet boy. It's crazy how bug and Jon are kinda matching, like they both haven't been away from their family and don't want to, the only difference is bug is dealing with it in a healthy way. I've said this multiple times but I love how you don't turn Nancy and bug against each other. Bug understands that her insecurities aren't Nancy's fault and her ( and steves) to deal with. Bugs guilt with Nancy not knowing omgghgg 😭. Steve being upset for Nancy reminds me of season one when Steve was upset on bugs behalf when he thought Nancy and jon cheated on him and bug. " If you can't be mean, he'll be mean for you" is what popped into my head even if it doesn't exactly fit this situation. Dustin and Steve being upset bug was hiding her sessions with Mrs. Kelly, they just wanna take care of her and she doesn't want to burden them. Max calling her out with no hesitation, the party's teen angst is coming at bug full force. Bug is too cute " I'm a felon now😰" girl shut up before I kiss you on the lips on God. Bug trying to be nice to Eddie even if she's still cross with him is relatable. Eddie can't help that he got dragged into this situation and bug understands but she's struggling to let that grudge go because it's her baby brother they're talking about. I already know bug will be disappointed in Lucas for turning his back on his friends even if he turned around and made a better choice to help the party. God I can't imagine Dustin and Steve's fear when their files match up. They just talked about how much they'd miss her when she had to leave and now her life of being threatened. Bug doesn't care that vecna is trying to kill her, she's worried about Max. I could feel her panic through the page. Trying to wake her up and bring her back. I know this is going to cause more tension between Steve and bug. He worries about both of them but bug is only worried about Max. Yes she's afraid, but she'd give her life in a heartbeat for any of those kids and everyone knows it. Which brings me to a weird thought. I was thinking about Jason and how he pulls a gun on Lucas in the attic. Bug wouldn't waste a second getting in-between him and Lucas, and how everyone gets injured in one way or another, I can see bug getting shot accidentally. Like when Jason and Lucas start fighting and the gun goes off. It works out because she'd be hurt and maybe not able to help max quick enough. But maybe I'm weird and my brain is making things too dramatic. I just thought it'd be weird if everyone got hurt except bug. But party aside id love to see Jonathan's pov talking to argyle about the phone call with bug. I mean he was already telling him about not going to college with Nancy, wouldn't be telling him about everything else too? I feel like if it got out what Jonathan did the kids in the party would argue a little bit. Will would still ship jug and partially because of his nostalgia. He'd think it's for the best while everyone is raising pitchforks at Jon.

All that aside, you did beautifully my dear. Truly lovely work, you always come through for us and I'm so grateful. I will be rereading this everyday of the week and I can't wait. I hope you're doing well, and I hope you know you blew my mind with this. Love u Hun I'll keep you in my thoughts.

dude i added as much humor as possible because of how depressing these next few chapters get ugh :((

and we finally get some insight into dustin and why hes been so mean !!! the roles are reversing !!! hes becoming bug when their dad left because now SHES leaving god i love them so much !!! its insane.

bug and nancy ,,,, we will see later exactly how bug feels about nance and vice versa. a certain someone specifically hones in on the tension between em and uses it to their advantage ;)

max !! eddie !! the party and steve and dustins worries for bug !! so so so much to unpack there. max is like bug, she can read people and see what theyre hiding. eddie ?? mans just wants a friend and bug understands he didnt ask for whats happening to him. lucas my baby :(( and steve n dustin god theyre in for a rough few days dealing with bug and vecna whew.

now as for steve and bug dealing with max ,,,,, ur onto something and im so fucking happy ur able to see where im goin !!! such a relief as a writer lowkey

THANK YA FOR READING !!!

[yandere-mc-yt]

I’d like to request cryptid!Fundy chocolate-and-despair’s alphabet pretty please👉🏾👈🏾

~🧝🏾‍♀️

I got you! It's been a while since I thought about Cryptid!Fundy so this will be fun

Warnings: Yandere Themes, obsessiveness, possessiveness, suggestive, violence implied, forced relationship, forced affection, dubcon/noncon touching mentioned, noncon implied

Cryptid!Fundy Alphabet

Affection: How do they show their love and affection? How intense would it get?

Before the relationship, Fundy would be pretty reserved about being affectionate, worried that his darling would catch on and friendzone him. The most affection he'd show is finding excuses to hold their hand and of course lots of talking and spending time with them!

Now as for AFTER they get into a relationship (or "relationship")..... Fundy practically explodes with affection. Dude is an animal by instinct so he's super cuddly and loves to hild his darling. He also surprisingly passionate compared to other versions of himself so..... 👀

Blood: How messy are they willing to get when it comes to their darling?

He likes to think he's outgrown the violent urges to kill people he had a hundred years ago but now that he has a darling, he's regressed a bit. Unkess his darling can convince him otherwise, he WILL make anyone that gets in his way disappear.

Cruelty: How would they treat their darling once abducted? Would they mock them?

No!!! He would never mock them- if anything he's extremely apologetic but giving his reasoning being he had no choice. Like even if he feels guilty for doing so, he will stand by his decision (unless convinced). He will treat them pretty well if there's no conflict between him and his darling.

Darling: Aside from abduction, would they do anything against their darling’s will?

Honestly a few things- he'd force affection often. Some cases he'll let them reject him but if he's feeling desperate for love, he may try to try to coerce them or straight up force himself on them. He always apologizes afterwards but might.... get a little victim blame-y.

Exposed: How much of their heart do they bare to their darling? How vulnerable are they when it comes to their darling?

Dude practically bares his soul to them once he's exposed himself and confesses his feelings for them. Even if they've rejected him and he's had to resort to kidnapping them, he's still mostly transparent wirh his darling about how he feels and how badly he wants them. Even if it hurts.

Fight: How would they feel if their darling fought back?

He'd feel so shitty about- especially when it pisses him off and he accidentally takes it out on his darling afterwards.

Game: Is this a game to them? How much would they enjoy watching their darling try to escape?

Not a game at all- he's a hundred percent serious about having a relationship with them and freaks the fuck out when his darling escapes.

Hell: What would be their darling’s worst experience with them?

The more physical aspects of the forced relationship- that and probably learning that Fundy may have killed a loved one out of jealousy/feeling threstened by them.

Ideals: What kind of future do they have in mind for/with their darling?

He definitely wants to spend the rest of his life with his darling and if they're a normal mortal then he'd find a way to gove them a much longer lifespan. Kinda vague sure but he's always been a wanderer and until his darling, he hadn't thought much of what he REALLY wanted to do with his life.

Jealousy: Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope?

Gets EXTREMELY jealous and almost always lashes out. Most cases he's lashing out at anyone that seems to be into his darling but will also cause trouble for his darlings friends/family. If it's his darling that's directly causing his jealousy by rejecting him then he may hurt them depending on factors.

Kisses: How do they act around or with their darling?

Before the relationship, he'd be pretty friendly though introverted. Maybe if his darling was a bit more observant, they'd notice that he was trying to be closer to them.

After he's made his feelings known though, he'd try to be be flirtier.... and maybe failing at it. If it's at the point where he's kidnapped his darling then he'd be extremely anxious and trying to win them over even harder.

Love letters: How would they go about courting or approaching their darling?

Subtly- or at least he'd try to be be subtle if it doesn't seem like his darling is going to reject him. He's pretty anxious so he wouldn't be overt with his advances unless it's post yandere reveal.

Mask: Are their true colors drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?

Kinda? He's definitely a lot more bare with them since he isn't hiding his feelings or that he's not human anymore. With anyone else, he's still reserved and mostly rejects any opportunities to be too friendly.

Naughty: How would they punish their darling?

Fundy isn't really one for punishments but if he had to do something.... maybe give them the cold shoulder and take somethings away? Maybe his darling might like being left alone for a bit though so that might not count.

Oppression: How many rights would they take away from their darling?

If they're kidnapped then obviously he wouldn't let them leave- but jokes aside, he wouldn't take many away unless they're being punished.

If he didn't have to resort to kidnapping his darling/are in relationship, then he'd just kinda be a normal shitty jealous boyfriend. That means no talking to people he didn't like even if they were friends, ect ect.

Patience: How patient are they with their darling?

Pretty patient pre-confession but it almost all evaporates post-confession (and kidnapping).

Quit: If their darling dies, leaves, or successfully escapes, would they ever be able to move on?

Fundy would be distraught as all fuck if his darling died on him- if it was old age then maybe he'd be able to cope better but if not then he'd be desperately trying to find a way to bring them back.

As for leaving or escaping..... what would make his darling think he wouldn't try to bring them back to his side?

Regret: Would they ever feel guilty about abducting their darling? Would they ever let their darling go?

Yes and yes! I've already given reasons in orher questions so I won't repeat them here lmao

Stigma: What brought about this side of them (childhood, curiosity, etc)?

Loneliness? The kind of creature Fundy is the type to mate for life and something about his darling made him realize how alone he was. It also doesn't help that something just clicked wirh them that's never happened with anyone else before- probably because he allowed hismelf to get close to someone for the first time in a long time.

Tears: How do they feel about seeing their darling scream, cry, and/or isolate themselves?

Absolutely horrible- it hurts because he just wants to make them happy and specifically for them to be happy with HIM.

Unique: Would they do anything different from the classic yandere?

Probably be WAY more willing to let his darling go compared to most yanderes as long as they're in a relationship.

Vice: What weakness can their darling exploit in order to escape?

Literally just. Be nice to him. If darling pretended to waem up to the idea of a relationship and give him love back then they'd be un-kidnapped in a blink of an eye.

Wit’s end: Would they ever hurt their darling?

Unfortunately yes but he'd never actually hit his darling though- maybe grab them really hard or grab then by the throat in a moment of desperate anger. But... he can also do worse things if its the name of passion.

Xoanon: How much would they revere or worship their darling? To what length would they go to win their darling over?

Fundy is practically groveling at their feet, begging for love. There's a lot he's willing to do win them over- kill, steal, literally obey their every whim if darling is willing to give even a fraction of affection.

Of course if WILLING- if it's a kidnapped darling then he's a little stricter on what he will or won't do for them but will still do what he can in the form of romantic or passionate gestures.

Yearn: How long do they pine after their darling before they snap?

Probably a decent amount of time like a year or so if there's no threat of the darling going away/falling for another person. If there is, then it'd probably take a few months for Fundy to snap and act on impulse.

Zenith: Would they ever break their darling?

GOD not on purpose- his darling would have really have to had push him to be his worse self for him to have broken them. Fundy would be regretful if he broke them but he'll also convince himself that by still taking care of his poor darling, that that'd be enough penance for what he'd done to ruin them.

[goodusernamepending]

I’m really digging Malevolent so far, here are my reactions to the first 5 episodes.

Warning: it's super long and dumb

E1

“~And you call it madness ~ Ah but I call it love~” a bop

Off to a great start, our head’s haunted and our eyes have stopped working. Also the voice in our head started growling when we picked that book up. This is some demonic possession shit

The voice started out so soft and friendly like ‘hey buddy, I’m your friend. Just calm down’ and then it immediately gets pissed when Arthur start asking questions

“I have your eyes” disconcerting

And we murdered our partner… this is a great start to the podcast

Several shenanigans including hiding a dead body and almost killing a guy later

We learn that the thing in our head was sent to Arthur via book, it’s possessing our eyes so we’re dependent on it. There are other worlds caused by the choices each world makes and when a being or world dies it is sent to The Dark World where our creepy new friend is from. A junkyard for realities.

We also learn that it’s 1934 and that Arthur lives in Arkham ma. The same town Lovecraft wrote about….

Catchy little tune from the opening again except… the voice recognizes it and Arthur doesn’t… I’m going to remember that for later

Obligatory: someone else (wearing a white mask the voice recognizes) is after the cursed artifact that we’re in possession of and almost shoots us

Voice reveals that they don’t remember who they are before getting very angry at Arthur for basically trying to be a good detective even though he’s blind now. *Growl*

Oh and the previous tenant of our office left town in a hurry… great!

Oh creepy mask guy knows where we live… GREAT!

The last detective who worked in our office that we got our cases from had a partner who died horrifically… GREAT!!!

And I’m so happy to know that our dead partner Peter (RIP) felt like he was being watched in this creepy house when they were trying to find that dead girl

But at least the voice is nice enough to tell us it’s a sunny day, right?

Nah, he’s suspicious, why did he get so angry when Arthur mentioned not asking more questions about the dismembered dead girl. Why is this important to them?

Hidden bookshelf door!!! 10/10 podcast!!!!

That mural… a mass of black tentacles, wet mouths and writhing goats legs…I kinda want to draw it now

And if there was any doubt in my mind that this was going to be some Lovecraft shit, Arthur name drops The Miskatonic University

What are you, voice? How do you know the mural’s name?

“Arthur, I am not this creature” oh but you’re totally a completely different eldritch horror, aren’t you?

A second more secret, more evil basement

Oh… very bad things are going to happen to us

E2

I agree with Arthur, you got a cult! What are you!

You saying “I have your eyes still” like it’s a threat doesn’t instill confidence!

This conversation with the librarian makes me realize that if this were one of the older cosmic horror short stories, Arthur would be the weird stranger someone meets that kicks off the plot. You meet this guy that walks as if he can’t see but his eyes are clearly assessing everything around him. He leaves long pauses when he talks as if he’s listening for something and once he slips up and calls himself we while asking to see a cursed book on an old god because he’s researching a cult. Our boy is a weird dude and I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets chased by monster hunters in the future.

congrats, you've upgraded to homicide

Wait. waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait! "I can't feel my arm!" "No, but I can" Body Snatcher!

I have a very bad feeling about this new development and Arthur agrees but at least Voice doesn't seem to actually want our body. can't tell whether or not this is foreshadowing.

God I love the conversations that these two have about their situation and the possibility of them switching places. And who tf are you voice?

dice again? why?

out of everything, Accidental child acquisition was not something I was expecting

Are we being chased by goats right now?

That song again! and something terrible happens immediately after

I swear to god if this child is the antichrist I will eat aquarium gravel

E3

"Where's the car?" "All over the place" "And the driver?" "All over the place as well" add vehicular manslaughter to our list of crimes

with the creepy mansion this feels like a ttrpg side quest

Arthur speaks so softly about the baby

dice sounds again? maybe this is a ttrpg. Is it a meta thing and the writers are choosing story beats with them or is it part of the story?

I think this show solved the problem of visual descriptions in podcasts.

Normally a writer has three choices for this 1: make the characters describe their surroundings and appearances of other people which can sound a bit stilted and out of place since sighted people don't do that, 2: choose not to describe anything or anyone unless you have to which feels more real but sometimes means the audience has no idea what's going on, or 3: have the audio show told in something other than first person or present tense (It's a radio show, series of letters, phone calls, there's an omnipotent narrator, ect...)

But with a blind main character and a secondary character guiding them, there's an in-universe reason to describe the scene to us. we can see just as much as Arthur can so the voice is our eyes as well. It's brilliant!

maybe that's why I feel the need to use the word we while talking about this podcast, I feel like I'm inside Arthur's head.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

one of the missing girls was an unnamed immigrant, was this polish family related to her?

This is some spooky ghost shit that I can appreciate

I feel like the choice to free or destroy will have ramifications for Arthur down the line

"I have to hope that any creature can be redeemed" Damn! careful, your insecurities are showing (luv this)

E4

Arthur is very sweet with the baby

probably not a good idea to bring a baby on our horror road trip anyway

Aww <3 he described the baby for Arthur, this is so sweet

This is too relatable. If I accidentally asked for a ride from the wrong truck and the driver said yes I would also get in anyway just to avoid being rude.

I feel like every new episode is just a different horror movie, this one feels like a hitchhiker slasher flick

Maybe the weird gas mask guy is nice actually? Maybe I'm just being too judgemental.

nope he's going to kill us

it's like a bad joke 'Two men who hear voices are on a road trip together'

there are four known fear responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. Arthur is a fawner, in times of danger he will become so polite that he will follow the serial killer into the creepy basement

first dice and now a coin flip I really hope this series has a Q&A

can he... hear us? is it something about sanity that brings you closer to these monsters? Oops never mind

"We need to get the fuck out of this basement now!" really Arthur? NOW YOUR CONCERNED!

Another Missing girl!

"Arthur, tell that voice in your head that my mother was not a whore" Literal chills

Arthur has been stabbed and Oh the tension is palatable!

Pros to bringing the severed head: We might get some answers. Cons to bringing the severed head: It's a rotting severed head.

Every time violence happens the voice gets very excited by the prospect of murder

Calamity follows these two wherever they go

Well Arthur is dead, that's the end of the podcast

"This too shall pass"

E5

Oh god not another voice. Fuck are we in jail!

Adam Fry

An asylum, if MoonKnight taught me anything it's that this is neither real nor harmless

the door feels oddly shaped... please don't be flesh

Oh that is not a human

"Wait did I tell you my name?" Oh god something was in our head and we just told it exactly where to go and who to find!

"We've been in a coma for over a month" I'm so excited to see how things can possibly get worse than this over the course of the podcast

At least our voice has a name now. Hello John, it's nice to meet you

That song again

Oh no... we're too late...so what killed her

Wait... I actually had to go back to listen to our confrontation with Eddie. Arthur did shoot him but I'm pretty damn sure that John strangling him is what finished the job... what game are you playing here, John?

Between the monster library book, Arthur dreaming of that otherworldly asylum, and these new visions I think that he might be slowly un-tethering from reality. Using these visions is tempting but I think John's right about this changing us. Let's see what the dead girl has to say

fingers

oh it's never good when the creature can see you through your visions

"It felt like he tricked us" "He wanted us to touch her" I am having all the bad feelings

"He can't come through"

"No"

"But?"

"But maybe other things can"

Not much to say about this next part there's a monster chasing our boys and I'm terrified. Good job podcast.

"It looks like foulness"

Ah yes when in doubt pull a Hansel and Gretel

John knows Robert Frost

Dice whenever we find something

We're being hunted, something has seen us, our lead is dead, and we need to find her diary to get some answers lets fucking go!

So far I am LIVING for everything going on here definitely going to keep listening

[rollercoasterwords]

hi, good evening or whichever,

so i started reading as the worm moon dies like a year ago, when u started posting i think, then left it at regulus’ interlude because of life i guess, i had a no reading streak, but then i started reading again yesterday and binged it in 6 hours because… yes. it’s fucking great. like, you’re really an amazing writer. and i’ve just come to compliment the shit out of your fic and your choices for this story. i beg your pardon for the intrusion and this long ass ask.

1. the action. as a writer myself it’s so fucking hard to pull of action scenes and fast paced moments. i never got confused on how they went to point A to B, what happened was clear but still rushed and fast paced. especially the chamber of secrets dude. i was at the edge of my seat, almost screaming at the laptop. SO GOOD.

2. james. gosh dang it. you fucking nailed it. such a hero, such a self sacrificial guy. he intrinsically believed he was good, that he would vanquish evil. and then. HE FAILS. it hurt so bad, it felt all so wasteful. and then. HE’S KILLED BY THE SISTER OF SOME MISTAKE HE MADE. he just so carelessly and accidentally killed peter, and then he can do nothing as his sister kills him. it was so fucking good. i love when every sacrifice he made was all for him not to reap any of the fruit. christ. i still get chills. i love him.

3. remus and sirius. like, your characters in general but they killed me. i love that at the start remus was hellbent on the cause, all rationality, every sacrifice was necessary. he even suspected sirius of being to cowardly for the fight but THEN. remus is angry at sirius because he went too far in his sacrifice. how cowardly am i now remus. delicious fucking food.

and yeah i could say many more things but this is your blog and i can go insane in my own head about this fic so i will.

thank you for this story, the work that you put into it, and your generosity for sharing it. i am eagerly waiting for the last two chapters :))

hi!! responding a bit late lol but no need 2 apologize i love long asks <3 so glad ur enjoying the fic!!

action scenes can def be tricky 2 write but they're also so fun <3 helps that i usually have a little movie playing in my head while i write them so i just picture what's happening + describe that lol

& james!! yeah i knew from the beginning that i wanted his character to serve as a sort of deconstruction of the whole 'chosen one' trope in the fic, so i really wanted to write someone who embodied that figure of The Hero Destined for Greatness and have his entire life build up to that & then very decidedly have him fail!! so that ultimately what kills him is sort of like a reflection of himself: not a hero, but a kid seeking vengeance. love a tragedy etc

r&s have been very fun 2 write in this fic as well...i do love a bit of irony & u hit the nail on the head w ur summary lol. i was talking to a friend abt this as well tho to give remus a bit of credit technically sirius DID do more than he strictly had to--like he could have just erased his memory up to the point where he & r got captured by poachers & still think he'd been captured by the order rather than that he was working with them when he went back w his memory erased, bc up to that point he really hadn't been working w the order! but he knew if he only erased the 6 months he was actually w the order he'd be putting a huge target on remus's back; so really the only reason he went back further & completely erased all his time w remus was to protect him. & that's part of why remus is so angry! sirius didn't strictly have to erase literally every part of their relationship, but he did it to protect r...i love when love makes everything worse <3

anyway ty 4 ur message + the kind words etc! <3

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for shooting my brother several times in the chest and then cursing him?

ok. so uhh important context. i (132 with more gender than you can hold in your silly little brain) and my brother (134M) are both immortal—vampires if you wanna get specific. this all happened like 20 years ago but he's recently told me he's still upset about it so i wanna clear this up and apologize if i gotta.

so a bit of context for our relationship: we had a bit of a falling out early on as kids (around.... idfk , 8? 10? we were like super teeny) and have never really been close since. i turned at 14 (result of a few bad life choices) and i accidentally turned him just a bit after that (he's understandably still pissed at me for this, but like also i was like 14 dude i did not know any better). thennnnn he moved out basically on the spot and i didn't hear from him for decades.

next time i saw him i think was at our dad's funeral? he ignored me when i tried to reach out so i left it be. he's always been reserved and shit but he seemed.... uncharacteristically depressed and isolated about it.

after that, about 20 years ago, i found out that he's been killing people to survive cause he doesn't know how to just make connections for food like a regular ass person?? anyway no judgement we gotta do what we gotta do but like, i gotta stress that this dude has the biggest fucking stick up his ass you've ever fucking seen. he has been aghast at me for wearing clothes with the word "slut" on them. or like. idk tanktops and booty shorts. he's sneered and condescended at me before for just like. playfully calling my friends names and shit. so this was like a pretty huge surprise to me. but it was definitely him.

so, like any good little brother would do, i confront the bitch. i go back to the supposedly-abandoned shabby ass building i saw him leave from last week, follow him carefully for a little bit and go "hey dude what the fuck is up with you. are you fucking ok my guy."

so then he says he doesn't wanna talk to me. which like yeah fine. i get it we don't have a good relationship. so i tell him like yeah, i know i was shitty to you but i'm all the family you've got at this point and i'm fucking worried for you. he tells me it's none of my business. fair ig. i comment that he looks kinda malnourished cause honest to fuck at that point he looked like a tall bag of bones. he says to leave him alone but the cracks in his voice leaves me kinda worried that if i do that he'll just fucking keel over and die? like the dude is wobbling all over the place, barely keeping balance trying to walk in a straight line. so i go uhhhh nnnnno, i don't think i will. and like i know it's kinda not my business but he just. looks so fucking miserable and pathetic and tbh... he's kinda all I've got left too.

so i ask when he last ate and he's like "a couple months ago" in a tone that's like, he thinks that's something to be proud of?? and i'm like . dude that sounds like an eating disorder. (for y'all reading this that don't know vampire biology, a little bit a few times a week is healthy. a moderate amount once a week is reasonable too but less common. every other week is already a problem. over a month is basically just self harm and causes health issues and shit.)

then he gets realllll defensive real fast and shouts at me that it's not an eating disorder, and if it were then it's my fault anyway and he didn't choose to be like this. so i say like, yeah that's fair, that's on me, but like please just. check out a blood bar or something. or like ask your friends? or even my friends cause like, i have connections and can find him reliable food. if he'd just let me help. like you don't have to like me or forgive me i just want you to live, dude.

so theeeeeen he tells me that "maybe he doesn't want to". and i'm like dude........ i'm not gonna do fucking nothing watching my only brother starve himself to death. i tell him that i know he's killing people and that it's not like him. and he doesn't have to. i can help him. he tells me, "not anymore." says he doesn't plan on eating ever again. so I'm like "ok............. yeah that makes no fucking sense at all im taking you to get food like Right Now." he didn't like that, as you can imagine.

....but then. he pulls out this fucking knife

and I'm like what the fuck is that, equal parts exhausted with him and afraid. it's got runes on it so i know it's enchanted. he tells me it's enchanted to cause unhealable wounds, and it's the only thing that can kill a vampire. i ask him where the fuck he's going with this, he says that he doesn't plan to make it long enough to need to eat. i tell him that's insane and there's no fucking way im gonna let him off himself in front of me. he tells me i can't stop him and moves to fucking slit his own throat right there, so naturally i uhh panic and . shoot him. several times. with a regular gun though, so i know he'll be fine with some rest, but it definitely still hurt so i do get why this would be an Asshole thing to do

.... and then once he was incapacitated i brought him to my most reliable witch friend, and had xem curse him to not be able to harm himself. and disenchant the knife while xey was at it. and like usually that would go against my values, cause... like it should be within his free will to hurt himself, but it seemed like he was in serious danger so i freaked. i bribed some of my friends into feeding him and after a few months got rid of the curse, and now our relationship isn't too bad, but he mentioned still being upset about the whole thing recently so i just wonder if this was really an asshole thing to do after all. so, aita?? ive said sorry about it but we haven't like talked in depth about how he felt or anything.

[frogs-in3-hills]

dgs case 2 thoughts babeyyy. oops it's long this time

sooo no trial this case!! very interesting!! personally it felt like things got a little boring quite often, maybe because there were so few areas to explore? and i think the pacing was, much like the first case, a little sluggish at times. however i still think it felt wayy better than the aai games, which also had no trials. i would love to have seen a version of aai more like this case, with "argument" portions removed and the logic system more similar to the dance of deduction. overall i am really glad they let the story do what it needed to do instead of trying to squeeze a trial in there, it would have felt really forced considering the setting

i am sooooo obsessed with the dance of deduction by the way,, i think out of all the unique investigative functions throughout the series (magatama, perceive, mood matrix, etc) this might be my favorite. the conceit of it is so creative with ryuunosuke having to course correct using his observation skills, and it actually makes me appreciate sholmes' presence a lot more since it offers a lovely bit of insight into his character: you can kind of see where he's going with everything, but it's his vivid imagination, not stupidity, that leads him to get details wrong-- and those details cause his deductions to spiral out of control and miss the mark. he's so creative, but he doesn't even stop to think that the world might not operate with that same level of creativity. i just think that is so charming wtf. and while it does seem a little too easy i imagine it will get more difficult later, and mechanically i think the visuals really spice things up and i love seeing them take full advantage of the 3d models. i think its a really excellently designed system

speaking of taking advantage of 3d models can i just say i love how the settings are built and how the characters take up that space??? because i looovve the way it creates a more dynamic space and feels more like the characters exist in their environment, while still keeping true to the visual novel style. all that is to say i'm so impressed by the actual game design here and i'm really excited to continue playing through it

anyways i guess i should like. talk about the plot. i guess. hi this case was like super fucked up, but like, in a very unique way?? genuinely, the conclusion to this case felt more like a danganronpa trial than it did an ace attorney case. and the fact that this random 15 yo kid accidentally killed this guy for NO reason?? that's heartbreaking dude, it makes me wonder a lot about what asougi's true goal was and how it relates to the concept of revenge and closure. bc what dgs is telling us with this case is that the truth isn't necessarily all that rewarding, right? knowing who killed asougi doesn't make me or ryuunosuke or susato feel better, and knowing he wasn't planning to reveal pavlova's identity makes her feel worse. even before that, learning that he literally just broke his neck due to an unlucky fall only invites this keen sense of unfairness. there's no closure or revenge or schadenfreude, just a little girl who made a really horrible, but ultimately sympathetic mistake.

i said last post that i felt asougi might be one of those seeking revenge types, or something like that, what with his connection to family honor as well as his obvious ambition. so i can't help but wonder if, when we finally figure out what it was that asougi needed to do in london, ryuunosuke has to face a choice: is he really going to continue his friend's legacy? after all, he's the one holding the sword now, which isn't just symbolic of a man's soul or his honor or whatever, it's a weapon. why did asougi really want to bring something like that so badly?

anyways aaaaaug susato. shes great i love her. no crazy thoughts abt her yet but i love her

anyways i think thats about all i wanted to say there, i liked this case a lot and i'm really excited to keep playing ^_^ semester doesn't start back up for a few more weeks so i'll probably have plenty of time to do so

[ninety-pairs-of-socks]

WAIT FR THAT'S SO SWEET THANK YOU ｡⁠:ﾟ⁠(⁠;⁠´⁠∩⁠`⁠;⁠)ﾟ⁠:⁠｡ I'd love to hear your prediction reasons and details!! And I'm so happy that someone's genuinely excited about my project, I hope it won't disappoint :D

yw ^^ danganronpa is one of my favourite game series cause of how nicely it's written and its development is cool, so i tend to get a little carried away/excited when someone makes a fangame about a fandom---i will literally break my hands to draw this i don't even mind as for the predictions, i'll try to summarise it the best i can but i doubt it won't be wordy, also, i have bad english; okay here we go 1. there's no actual mastermind in the game, rather, the traitors are the ones positioned to function it for an unknown reason other than their popularity across rhythm heaven (and i didn't know who to pick) 2. karate joe survives cause---he's 55 man, and a god at martial arts i think he's practically considered a weapon at this point, mc adore survives cause she has---like- some detective energy, and she's swag, aka-chan survives cause come on dude at least one kid has to survive the game (shE'S ALSO SGRUNGLY IM SORRY I LOVE HER), and dj yellow survives cause i know if i positioned him as a victim/killer those dj school stans will come after me chapters 1 - 6 predictions (in a nutshell): ch1 - the motive is basically "kill someone or your loved ones die lmfao", and Nova took that to heart, having to guilt-trip the Paddler in order to kill them hhh (it's not a physically throttle case more like a "walk into a trap" case ch2 - Pop Singer unknowingly reveals herself as one of the traitors, Red Donpan tries to set up a murder plan in order to thwart the (non-existent) mastermind's plan, it ends up working, but she accidentally ends her own life in the process ch3 - As everyone else grows anxious, Girl and Munchy Monk form a truce and strive to protect everyone by forming some safety group as they venture to find whoever is responsible for the killing game; their plan almost works, and as the traitors were responsible for keeping the game running, one of them had to act fast before those two ruined it, forcing T.J. Snapper to murder the two ch4 - the Samurai and Crop Stomper get into a feud from the motive and yeah ch5 - let me just say reporter could be a GREAT final killer; as the last traitor remaining, she had no choice to kill someone, so she chose Forthington as a last resort; Forthington went along with the murder plan much quicker than expected when Reporter reasoned with him--but the true reason Reporter did this? she wanted the remaining participants to spread the n e w s. no longer did she want countless innocents to die, and ending the game meant the survivours would be able to inform other residents about the killing game so no one else could become a victim in another killing game and last but not least, ch6 - for Choir Kid, it's either a "curiousity killed the cat" case or immaturity which got them killed as the others tried to flee to the temporary exit evilly laughs in the most evil way ever

[casspurrjoybell-17]

Heart’s Choice - Chapter 38 - Part 2

*Warning Adult Content*

"Do I need to go coffin shopping?"

Barely suppressing a shudder at the knowledge that I've been lying in David's bed for three days, I manage a weak smile.

He has the aura of a handsome serial killer... charming but deadly... and I honestly don't know if I would have found waking up in a coffin any less creepy than waking up in his underwear.

"I hope I haven't caused you too much trouble," I say.

"Not at all."

He waves his hand.

"But this is also what I mean by 'costs.' As a vampire, my metabolic needs are perhaps a tenth that of the average human. I can go many days without sleep and require... sustenance... at most once a week and as infrequently as every two. Exertion naturally increases these needs but in the course of daily life, my energy requirements are low."

"How is that a 'cost?'" I ask.

Not having to sleep or buy groceries as often sounds like a good thing.

David smiles and sits beside me, perching on the edge of the bed.

"Humans measure their lives by these things, when they sleep and when they eat, when the day begins and when it ends. As time goes on, this scale becomes increasingly meaningless. Time itself loses meaning to a creature with unlimited time on his hands. Human concerns become... trivial."

"What are you saying? That John will forget what it's like to be human?"

"In time, that is a possibility. You must anchor him, as he once anchored me... remind him that, though it may seem to lose meaning, time remains precious."

I nod.

"Okay, what else?"

David shifts, adjusting his position and crossing one ankle over the opposite knee.

"John's... appetites... will also change. The period immediately following his turning will be the most intense... and the most dangerous. It is not unusual for a newly turned vampire to accidentally kill a donor or a partner, for that matter. Personally, I have faith in John but that will be something for you to consider. He will find you even more irresistible now and you must decide to what extent you wish to subject yourself to his... desires."

This time, I fail to conceal the shudder that wracks my frame from head to toe and David frowns.

"Are you cold?"

'No, dude. I'm fucking creeped out.'

"A little."

He pats the coverlet and gets to his feet.

"Well, I will leave you in peace, then but first, allow me."

I hold still as he gently extracts the IV needle from my arm, swabs the site with an alcohol pad and deftly places a Band-Aid over it.

"There. You'll find a change of clothes in the washroom. Make use of the shower or bath if you like but be mindful of your condition. You may feel lightheaded or nauseous. I'll have breakfast sent up."

He turns to go and I call after him as he reaches the door.

"Wait. When can I go and see John?"

Pausing, he looks back at me over his shoulder.

"Soon. Relax and recover your strength. You will be needing it again before long."

He leaves, closing the door after him.

It shuts with a gentle snick that makes me wonder if he locked me in for my own good.

In the interest of preserving my peace of mind, I decide not to check.

David's bathroom is as lavish as his bed and after half an hour soaking in a huge corner tub with jets and bubbles and fancy soap, I'm ready to forgive his creepiness a little.

Dressed in clean, expensive, comfortable clothes that aren't mine, I emerge to find he kept his word regarding breakfast as well.

While I was in the bath, someone had entered the room... creepy... set up a table and chair and laid out an expansive and comprehensive breakfast spread... creepiness forgiven.

Checking beneath the covered trays, I discover perfectly poached eggs doused in rich hollandaise sauce and topped with fresh dill, a half of a perfect avocado alongside butter and a rack of whole wheat toast, a plate of crispy bacon, a bowl of fresh fruit salad, a little cup of yogurt and a side dish of granola.

There's also a pot of coffee with cream and sugar, which is what I go for first.

I hadn't felt very hungry but as soon as the first bite of food passes my lips and flavors explode across my tongue, I'm suddenly ravenous.

What seemed like far too much food for one meal proves just enough and I'm a hair shy of overstuffed as I polish off the bite of bacon I'd saved for last.

Then, suddenly exhausted again, I return to David's bed, lying back and shutting my eyes.

I only mean to rest and digest a while but my mind wanders like a small cloud blown across a vast sky and I fall into a deep and dreamless sleep once more.

A loud crash and raised voices wake me and I bolt up in alarm.

The room is dark, the day having passed into night while I slept but my eyes pick out details even in the gloom.

Whether this is because of my new 'sort of but not quite a vampire' abilities or simply because there's enough light to see by, I don't know.

"Where is he?" John's voice, muffled by walls yet still loud, reaches me from the hall.

David answers him.

"He is resting. I..."

"What have you done?"

"Nothing, John. I have done nothing, save treat his wounds and serve him breakfast. You have my word."

"Then let me see him."

"John, I really don't think..."

A feral roar and another resounding crash is all the answer David gets.

Remembering their fight at John's house and how it played out, I'm up and across the room, throwing open the door 'which wasn't locked after all' and stepping into the hall, despite every survival instinct I have telling me to run the other way.

At the other end of it, John stands with his hand wrapped around David's throat, holding the other man a few inches off the ground.

Both men sport bruises and bloody scratches on their faces and arms and their shirts are torn to shreds.

John was already nearly David's match when he was half turned and now as a full vampire, it seems he's gained the upper hand.

"John, stop."

John drops David, who collapses in a heap and turns towards me.

I draw back as he approaches.

His face is dark with rage and a red light glints in his eyes and for a moment, a shadow of fear falls over me, chilling my heart.

He stops, his expression shifting from burning intensity to a softer regret.

"Carlos..." he reaches for me, his expression betraying every truth in his heart.

My vision clears.

In place of a monster, I see only the man I love and foolish or not, I trust him not to hurt me.

With his name on my lips, I step forward and walk into his arms.

His embrace is gentle and warm, yet fierce and tight and despite all the strangeness that surrounds us, it feels exactly like home.

[thepersonperson]

More complaining under the tab.

Tags from @nyan-bynary: #oh thank god I'm not the only one that hated the letters thing and the pacing is driving me insane slightly ngl #like gege's style is how he doesn't really dwell on dead characters more on people's relationships to them

Currently, there is more time dedicated to Megumi helping a mother grieve the loss of her criminal son than there is his reaction to Gojo's passing. Even though Megumi despised the man at the detention center for accidentally killing a child, his death causes him to be visibly upset. Yuji coming back to life is also a bit difficult for him to swallow. It takes him a couple of chapters shake it.

Like we all saw how badly Gojo and Geto reacted to Riko's death and they barely knew her. We saw Yuji's breakdown at Shibuya. Maki and Yuta snapped from the deaths of their loved ones. Megumi killed his sister and his not-dad with front row seats to the carnage. Thematically and characterization wise, he should be a little more messed up. Dude spent his 16th birthday in gore soup.

#but gOD everything about everyone's reaction to gojo dying. to THE LITERAL PILLAR OF JUJUTSU DYING has been a whole lot of nothing😭😭😭 #like even if no one cares as a person (which gege's established that people DO) the lukewarm non-mention is still baffling HELLO???? #I hope that whatever gege does next he's able to negotiate a better contract for his and his stories' sakes bc this is baaaaaddd

Gojo changed the balance of the world by being born. Therefore his death should also cause a significant upset in some way. (Unless, huffing copium, he's not dead and will be coming back!!!)

But yeah this is something where you can literally feel the burnout of the mangaka. If Gege had the schedule of the Dungeon Meshi creator, I think it would've turned out much better. JJK 265 & 266 are so fudging good because they take a step back to feel out emotions like the earlier parts of the manga. But Gege isn't getting that breathing room workload wise, so the story suffocates with its creator.

#(manifesting heian spin off SO hard) #also yea sukuna might still be alive there's one whole finger left #it'd be interesting to see him try to live as close to 'normal' as he can bc he can't just slice his trauma away anymore #hopefully gege gets to add what's missing for the anime I HOPE we get some things paced better there

This manga needs the Bleach CFYOW treatment so badly. It doesn't sit well with me that Sukuna, Tengen, and Kenjaku aren't given arc-length backstories despite causing literally everything. For less impactful characters by comparison, it's bonkers that Geto, Mahito (tbh Jogo and Hanami too), Toji, and even Naoya have better fleshed out motivations and character relationships. (I'm usually pretty lenient with Gege's narrative choices and will take the manga as is, but this isn't defensible...)

And if the story is going to continually draw attention to nature vs nurture debate, you have to show how the antagonists wound up like that. Mahito vs Yuji is the argument of nature. Sukuna vs Yuji is the argument of nurture. But unlike Mahito, Sukuna's side of things only has hints.

I'm ok with Sukuna dying like a hateful blobby worm. It's the lack of reaction to it and the lack of emotional explanation for it that makes everything feel odd. This guy saw off several characters into the afterlife while addressing their personal hang ups. Even non-Sukuna kills like Rika, Junpei, Nanami, Choso, Toji, and Nobara's fakeout got that. I really am betting it all on that final finger cheese and rice.

Since Sukuna still has that final finger. Maybe that’s where we’ll get an afterlife scene or even a backstory? Yuji basically confirmed Sukuna is only like this because of circumstances. So…I would like to be shown those circumstances.

I’m ok with Sukuna dying and all the students surviving. But the execution of that has been so poorly paced and unsatisfying. Can I please get a proper grieving scene? Megumi and Nobara being all smiles at the Gojo letters is...weird.

I think there’s something to say about a manga where overwork/exploitation kills people having its mangaka rush the ending because of overwork/exploitation.

[akilah12902]

Creature Feature: Giant

I don’t know if they make bread with human bones, but they definitely eat people.

Hello everyone, today we’re going to be talking about giants.

Check the tags for some warnings and look below the cut for more!

Fled one time in my life. From the Ice Giant. And know what? I'm not a bit ashamed.

– Rasmund Kvaalkje, Clan Tordarroch oarsman

This powerful, primeval monster is quite possibly the last of its race. The Ice Giant resembles a man in many respects, but is blue as frost and taller than a tree. Though it seems capable of reason, all attempts to communicate with it to date have ended the same way – in a quick and painful death.

Myrhyff Bestiary Entry

According to legend, Golyat had once been a knight who violated his vows, for which he was punished by the Lady of the Lake. Transformed into a giant, he fled into the mountains and would only descend into the inhabited lowlands when hunger forced him to it. There's no knowing how much truth lies in that legend, yet it is incontrovertible fact that this dangerous giant gobbled up shepherds and sheep alike, and was so widely feared, governesses used him to scare children into eating their vegetables. Though he came across as a wild, unthinking beast, Golyat used simple tools and any item could turn into a deadly weapon in his powerful hands. When fighting Geralt, Golyat wielded a millstone, making his every blow truly crushing. Luckily, Geralt already had some experience slaying giants and made quick work of Golyat as well, with the much appreciated help of three knights - Milton de Peyrac Peyran, Palmerin de Launfal and Guillaume de Launfal.

Golyat Bestiary Entry

Giants are extremely rare in The Witcher, but a couple do exist. I’m specifically excluding the Cloud Giant from the Blood and Wine DLC because it’s not, as far as we can determine, a real life creature.

Golyat is your first introduction to Toussaint in Blood and Wine; as you’re riding into the duchy the beast comes smashing through a couple of windmills hot on the heels of a young knight, and you and your escorts decide to help the kid out. I later rather regretted doing so, because it turns out he’s a Nice Guy, but there’s no way to know that from here and the giant is going to be a problem anyway.

You can apply Ogroid oil and get into an extended battle with the huge monster... or you can pull out your crossbow and shoot him in the one eye visible beneath his helmet, which kills him instantly. So, y’know. Up to you.

The other giant is in a secondary quest in the main story of the game; about a year before the events of Witcher 3, in 1271, a terrifying Ice Giant named Myrhyff, accompanied by a flock of Sirens that he had bent to his will, gatecrashed the island of Undvik in Skellige. Clan Tordarroch was forced to flee to Ard Skellig, where the an Craite clan took them in. However, the clan was broken, even more so by the loss of their Jarl, who stayed behind to try and fight the giant.

Hjalmar an Craite, in an attempt to win fame and prove he would be an appropriate next king of Skellige, left with a crew of men to try and kill Myrhyff and win back Undvik. Of course, he left some time ago and there’s been no word, so Crach an Craite asks Geralt to go see if his hothead of a son is dead or not.

Off to Undvik it is, although if you stop in at The New Port tavern you can speak with Axel, a Clan Tordarroch warrior and relative of Jarl Harald Houndsnout, Jarl of Undvik, who gives you some information about the Jarl.

When Geralt arrives, it’s to a wrecked island. If you land more northward you’re going to want to work your way down to the southeast to Marlin Village; you may find some graves with an Craite shields on them along the way. As you work your way into the island, you’ll see Myrhyff, accompanied by sirens, walk by an enormous under-construction ship and toss some unidentified meat up into it.

Climb up into the ship yourself and you’ll find an old man who calls himself Octo and a number of skulls on sticks. Octo explains that he and the sirens are building the boat for the giant to set sail at Ragh nor Roog, and that the giant feeds him human flesh, possibly as a cruelty. He also acts like his companions, the skulls, are still alive. Octo is in fact the erstwhile Jarl of Undvik, Harald Houndsnout, but he’s clearly in no shape to provide any particular help, apart from pointing you in the right direction. He does ask you for some twine and nails, which you can give to him if you feel like being nice. NOTE: YOU NEED SOME SPECIAL NAILS, REGULAR ONES WON’T DO. YOU CAN FIND SOME NORTH OF THE BOAT BY THE BARRICADE OR AT THE DORVE RUINS

Continue onwards and find Hjalmar’s camp, which is covered in blood and several corpses. Geralt finds a couple of sets of footprints and the signs of a boat being dragged, going in different directions. The footprints are from before the attack, he notes; two people left beforehand.

The boat is the main trail but there’s two benefits to following the footprints. There’s a trail of arrow-shot nekkers and evidence that the archer was trying to kill the other man on foot.

The archer did eventually kill the man; you find him slumped outside a cave with a Hornwall horn next to him. The horn causes sirens to just fall out of the sky, so you’re going to want it.

The archer isn’t in sight, but you find evidence that some trolls dragged him into the nearby cave. Continue following that trail and you’ll come across a group of (ice) trolls cooking something in a big lidded pot. Or, more accurately, someone. There’s a human voice yelling for help from the interior.

You can either get into a fight with the trolls or challenge them to a riddle game. You know how fighting trolls goes, so let’s cover riddles. Geralt offers himself in addition to the guy they already have if he loses, but I’m not sure he’s being sincere. And really. It’s a bunch of trolls. Riddles In The Dark this is not.

The answer to the one the trolls ask is, of course, “a troll”. You don’t even get to pick what Geralt asks, because the trolls aren’t capable of comprehending metaphor whatsoever—you win as long as you can parse what they ask.

The man in the pot is Folan, a close friend of Hjalmar and one of his crew. 

Folan details how the expedition originally went sideways; the helmsman, terrified of sirens, stuck wax in his ears and didn’t hear the crew warning him about the rocks. The group got inland but were harassed by sirens the entire way. Hjalmar used the Hornwall horn often, but he wound up causing an avalanche. They eventually reached the giant’s boat and things calmed down a bit, but Egnar of Faroe stole the horn and ran. Folan gave chase, and the rest we’ve covered.

Folan knows where Myrhyff’s lair is, and offers to come with to help.

Head back to the boat drag tracks, and start following those. You’ll come across a dead man and the boat; the boat’s broken and the man shows sign that he’d been attacked trying to run. You can find tracks that confirm the giant went after them. Follow those and you’ll come across a cave that the men fled into, and claw marks on the walls where the giant couldn’t reach. Head in and keep following the trail, including diving off a cliff into an underground lake. The giant may not have been able to get in, but his flock of sirens and harpies could and did. Eventually you’ll come across dead sirens/harpies and two bodies (Thorsten and Arvin an Tarradoch), then evidence of a cave-in and at least one other body. Keep trekking and you’ll finally come out on the surface, at Clan Tarradoch Forge. (There’s a set of tools here you’ll need to pick up in order to be able to make master level armor, so don’t forget those!)

Enter the building for a truly gruesome sight; this appears to be the giant’s butchery. Folan comments that there’s nearly twenty men here, but none of them are Hjalmar. As he says this, someone or something humanoid runs out the door.

It’s a devourer. Geralt makes a dry comment about mice in pantries, and picks up on a couple sets of footprints. The footprints split into two; follow the human ones to the Dorve Ruins. Here you’ll find Hjalmar, who is alive and reasonably well, although he’s being attacked by sirens. Kill the sirens and speak with Hjalmar; he says there’s only him and two others left of the crew. One other, once Geralt points out the one crewmember remaining in Dorve (Leif) is dead, not unconscious. The last crewmember, of course, is missing.

But! We have Hjalmar and Folan in tow, time to go kill that giant!

Geralt and Hjalmar clear the path to the cave, and Folan offers to cover them from afar.

Enter the cave and work your way over to Myrhyff. The beast is sleeping, and the last crewmember, Vigi the Loon, is locked in a makeshift cage. Vigi asks you to let him out, but Hjalmar says that you should leave him in there, as Vigi is prone to doing daft things.

Telling you ahead of time: if you don’t let him out now, he dies after Myrhyff’s down about a third of his health when the giant picks up an anchor to use as a flail of sorts and smashes right through the cage.

If you do rescue him (by sneaking over to a cabinet and collecting a key without waking Myrhyff), he promptly proves his nickname correct and wastes your surprise attack on kicking Myrhyff.

Oh well.

Actually fighting the giant is going to be tough; he hits very hard, has an extremely wide swing, and, once he picks up that anchor, has a helluva reach as well. Ogroid oil will be useful, and Quen will help too. Yrden can be used to limit his movement. Despite having been accompanied by sirens earlier, Myrhyff doesn’t appear to summon any during the battle.

When you get the giant down to zero health, a cutscene ensues where Geralt saves Hjalmar and Hjalmar slays the giant. Hjalmar says that the credit should be Geralt’s, and you’re free to accept it or say Hjalmar should get it instead. It’s mostly a cosmetic choice, so whichever you’re happy with.

You can also leave with the remaining crew or stick around to do things; you can loot if you stick around, and return to tell Octo/the former Jarl the good news. However the man won’t leave with you; he says he’ll finish the ship and use it as a funeral pyre, which is one hell of a gloomy outcome to that.

Maybe Hjalmar will have learned something about rushing in hotheadedly, though... Oh wait, no he doesn’t.

[keenzinemugstudent]

So I re-watched Twilight and can I say there's a lot of issues that needs to be said

Bella and Edward are not something that kids or teenagers need to think that's romantic their relationship is not healthy and it's not something that kids need to be thinking it's normal that's not a relationship anyone should be having honestly also I don't like Bella the minute she knew that Edward was watching her sleep can you say creepy!? And how she get a big ass paper cut by opening a gift? Then her boyfriend just throws her to the wall making her bleed even more great idiot! Than he left her in the fucking woods! You could have just broken up with her in her house why did you have to take her so far in the woods just to break off your relationship??

Mouths go than she goes to see jake this poor kid she was just using Jacob just to put herself in danger just so she can see Edwards ghost or whatever and then she started having feelings for him which I was happy about cause bitch getting over her ex but then Edwards life in danger she leaves to save him come back and just dropped Jacob after telling him that she loves him that's honestly fucked up bro in the fact I noticed that when she's with Jacob like she's happier like she shows more emotion when she's with Edward she just looks sad? She shows emotion but she doesn't show it as much as when she's with Jacob.

Also when Edward did not tell Bella about his family and the pack chasing Victoria honestly I would have been pissed off because she's here trying to kill me so I deserve to know what the hell is going on I don't want to be out of town for my safety you better tell me what the hell's going on so I can know everyone's fine don't keep secrets Edward you brought her into your world don't hide any damn secrets now! I like Leah Clearwater I feel bad for her because not only did Sam imprint on her cousin but now she's a wolf and she's forced to be with them and see them be all lovey-dovey like wow that's gotta hurt, also Seth is so sweet!

Imprinting uh I didn't have an issue with it till I found out they can imprint on kids...wtf? They say it can be brother or guardian or lover but then I found out that Quil and Jacob imprinted on little kids wasn't it bad enough that they turn into wolves and have to control their anger so they don't accidentally hurt anyone but now they have no choice but the imprint with a random stranger even kids!?

Jacob forcing a kiss on Bella made me want to slap him apparently from what one of my friends told me in the book Charlie congratulated Jacob for basically assaulting his daughter...Charlie wtf man I understand you want your daughter and your best friend's son together cause you hate her bf but the kid kissed your daughter against her will! You better get on his ass for that shit! And I feel bad for Rosalie her backstory was just heartbreaking glad she got revenge on those bastards! Also, Jasper's back story was just yikes dude was a confederate soldier he was my favorite too I love his and Alice relationship I'm honestly mad that we did not see anybody else's backstory I love listening to the legends of the Quileute's fucked they called mutts and dogs who tf wants to be called that. Bella is an idiot she's getting married to Edward and then she tells Jacob to kiss her because he's upset that he found out that they're getting married the whole thing is crazy! I honestly just wish that Jacob would just get over her and see that she's not the one for him I understand that he does not want her to be a vampire but that's her choice but babygirl could careless bout what you think her life should be! Glad that the war is over I'm at the Young vampire girl Bree was killed because she was just a kid man I felt bad for her damn vultori, Glad the army dead glad Victoria is dead I feel bad for Jacob for getting his bones broken by that vampire and having to have them re-broken just so they can heal right feel bad for Charlie because Bella and Edward is going to tell him that they're going to get married and you know that's going to break his heart he doesn't want to see his daughter getting married to the man who left and broke her heart gonna have to reread the books causes I know they're a lot more fucked up shit in there

[sweetbitterimpossiblecreature]

A Brief And Concise Summary Of Is Wrong With The ACOTAR Series

I think we can agree that a lot of ACOTAR is pretty iffy. Consider this a very brief refresher.

What's Wrong With Feyre/Rhysand (juxtaposed against Feyre/Tamlin)

Rhysand drugs and sexually assaults her in Book 1

This is "for her own good". Because he "has no choice". Despite the fact that, from what we know of the plot, Amarantha thinks that Clare Beddor was the one Rhysand was diddling, and is only interested in Feyre because Rhysand, "her" man male, has taken an interest in her.

If we extrapolate from this we can figure that Rhysand is the one directly putting her into danger.

Now, let's be clear: drugging someone is bad. Sexually assaulting someone is bad. One could argue there were extenuating circumstances. But if, in such a situation, what your mind goes to is "I know, I should assault this person... for their safety" I have questions about your moral qualities. There were a million things he could have done. He could have done whatever he did to Clare - that is, remove her ability to feel any pain - easily. He could have helped her escape. Under The Mountain, he - while still there unwillingly - has a lot of power, as Amarantha's side piece. Maybe this would have resulted in him being punished- however, he is hundreds of years old and a badass motherfucker, and she is a nineteen year old human girl.

Now, onto Tamlin. Obviously not a lot of people really ship F/T anymore after ACOMAF, because compared to F/R, it's boring. I read another person's post about it, which was very enlightening: they said that Feyre's personality is essentially a mirror. When she is with Rhysand, she's snarky and malicious- because she is "bouncing off" his energy. When she's with Mor she's super feminist and "in awe of her strength". On the other hand, Tamlin is kind of an empty character. He's a pretty boy with anger issues, which should be more interesting than it is. SJM manages to make him bland. Because Feyre has nothing to bounce off of, (a lot of this is from the person's post), she and Tamlin together is mainly just him introducing her to his world.

What Tamlin Does: prevents a skinny twenty year old from going on dangerous missions with him and combat-trained soldiers, accidentally blows up a room with her in it, and, at the end, prevents her from leaving the house.

This is not a Tamlin apologist post. Obviously it was really fucking gross of him to do that, and their relationship was toxic. However, a lot of his abuse stems from their inability to communicate, as well as own negligence. He does not knowingly and purposefully sexually assault her or rape her mind. And tbh, leaving a girl without combat training at home while he goes on missions with a bunch of muscled sentries is... kind of reasonable?

Again: not a Tamlin apologist post. It was abuse. However, if Rhysand is "allowed" to sexually assault, mind-rape, and drug Feyre "for her own safety", why is Tamlin demonized for preventing her from leaving his mansion "for her own safety"?

Another pertinent point: Rhys is never punished for sexually assaulting her. It is brushed off as part of his "mask" or that his hand was forced. Jesus Christ my dudes, his hand was not forced under her skirt. If he has to maintain his gross rapist abuser tyrant oppressor mask... why? Who did that benefit beside him? None of his actions remotely helped Prythian. They were done solely for his buddies - five people safe in a rich hidden city - and no one else, which is explicitly stated.

Finally, the power dynamic is fucked up. Feyre is less than twenty five years old. Rhysand is 500. There is a tendency in fantasy romance to romanticize a centuries year old man with a young girl, because the man does not show symptoms of age, and so it is easily ignorable. However, can we just briefly acknowledge how fucked up it is? Rhys is over five times older than Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and other known predators/abusers. She is twenty. That is really fucking gross. She is in a vulnerable position and he takes rampant advantage of that.

If he had wrinkles, liver problems, and erectile dysfunction, more people would acknowledge it.

Let's be clear: I'm not saying writing a book with an uneven power dynamic is automatically bad. For example, in The Locked Tomb series, which is in my opinion THE BEST FANTASY SERIES THAT HAS GRACED THIS EARTH (lol i'm starting fires), one main character Harrowhark Nonagesimus is in a position of power over Gideon Nav, the other main character. However, this is not glossed over or romanticized. Gideon resents Harrow for this- there is a relationship of mutual antagonism, fraught with unwilling familiarity and intimacy from growing up together. They are roughly the same age. While there is a certain power dynamic (in that world, there is a dynamic of necromancer and cavalier, i.e. sorcerer and sword) the "empowered" character (Harrow) emphatically respects her and does not abuse this power, although both would of course deny this, and she does make a show of threatening and being aloof. In short, while Gideon obeys her, Gideon also has power over Harrow, and the idea of what is essentially slavery is not romanticized.

Feyre Doesn't Face Any Consequences For Her Own Actions

Let me present a radical notion: a guy preventing you from leaving his house does not justify completely fucking ruining his country and harming the people inside it.

In other words: Tamlin does not deserve what she did to him.

I know that sounds iffy. We're conditioned to think that if someone is an abuser, then they are the scum of the earth, they deserve to die, torturing/murdering/doing anything to them is completely A-OK. However, here's another radical notion: someone harming you does not justify you doing worse.

Obviously, the effects of psychological abuse can cause you to hurt other people (see: Nesta), but Feyre deliberately and maliciously (oh, God, that insufferable POV of her in Spring Court; she reads like a cartoonish Disney villain) dismantles his country. She uses sexual manipulation (Lucien), torture (causing the sentry to be whipped), and mind-rape (who didn't she do this to? lol).

A summary of the entire first half of ACOWAR: "It smelled like roses. I hated roses. For this capital offense against my olfactory system, Tamlin and the entire Spring Court deserved to burn in hell. I knew exactly what I was doing. I smiled at him sweetly: no longer a doe, but a wolf. He didn't see my fangs.............." *aesthetic noises*

Man. I'm starting to think SJM had a horrible experience at a Bath & Body Works and took it out on the rest of us. Don't do it, Sarah!! I know Pink Chiffon and Triple Berry Martini are way too strong, but don't take it out on an innocent population!!

She steals from Summer Court (there are, yk, other solutions to theft. Like maybe asking politely) and ruins Spring Court. Her boyfriend - yeesh sorry, MATE - does nothing while a dozen Winter Court children are murdered.

Now: moral ambiguity is not automatically bad. Again using The Locked Tomb as an example, in the second book (spoiler alert), Harrowhark has a sort of moral ambiguity. She was raised from the beginning to worship the King Undying as God, and so she obeys him without question. Because of this, she commits a lot of crimes in His name: she "flips" - i.e. kills - the life force of planets, and she plots murder (albeit the murder of someone who tried to kill her first). There is no attempt to justify this. There is also no attempt to paint her as a virtuous and yet also badass Madonna figure. She is desperate, plagued with the "wreck of herself", and the book clearly displays her moral pitfalls. While her POV is of course colored by her mindset, it also is limited by her lack of information, and we as readers can acknowledge that.

BACK TO ACOTAR: Feyre is seen by everyone as gorgeous, formidable, and essentially perfect. Rhys sees her as flawless, "made for him", wonderful, beautiful, blah blah blah. (THEY ARE SO BAD FOR EACH OTHER; THEY EXCUSE AND GLORIFY EACH OTHER'S CRIMES, IT'S SO BAD, GUYYYS). Tamlin is insanely batshit in love with her, or whatever. To the Night Court she's the High Lady. In this way she personifies the Mary Sue character. (Excerpt from the TV Tropes page on Mary Sues: "She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal." Sound familiar?)

There is the Ourobous scene. And yet, paradoxically, while presented as an acknowledgment of her flaws, it is in fact a rejection of them. She sees her own brutality... and instead of recognizing that she has these deep, deep moral flaws and realizing that she needs to grow and be better, she in fact "accepts" them.

Guys: Self love means: "I'm important to me, so I'm going to get a massage today after work", or "heck, why not splurge on some expensive lotion, you only live once" or "you know what? I had a tough day today. I'm going to get that strawberry cupcake". SELF LOVE DOES NOT MEAN "oh, I accept all the war crimes I have done, I love myself". LOVING YOURSELF DOES NOT MEAN ABSOLVING YOURSELF OF ALL WRONGDOING.

It's this refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing that is so grating about ACOTAR. It's so goddamn one-sided. And you can tell that after Book 1, SJM decided to completely change the trajectory simply because of how jarring Book 2 reads compared to the first one.

Also: Feyre is a very, very young girl (compared to the other ruling fey) who did not know how to read for the majority of her life. She has no experience whatsoever in politics. Her being High Lady is not a win for feminism.

Rhysand: He Sucks

First, he is 500 years old. He should be written as such, not as some 20 year old virile frat boy feminist. Fantasy is all the more compelling for its elements of realism, which is a concept that SJM does not appear to grasp.

Second of all, his morals are absurd. He is written as the Second Coming of Christ, as someone who can do no wrong, ever, and his flaws only serve to make Feyre love him more. Anything shitty he does is written as part of his "mask" and she can See Beneath It and knows that it "hurts" him to maintain this "mask".

Fellas, WHY DOES HE HAVE TO MAINTAIN THIS MASK???? There is no reason for it. If A) he does not give a shit about Court of Nightmares (we'll get back to that), only about Velaris, and B) Velaris is hidden/protected from the world, what is he pretending for?

It would not hurt him politically to be seen as someone who cares about his country.

"Pretending" to be "Amarantha's whore" does not in any way shape or form benefit the macro-world that is Prythian. In Amarantha's name, he commits atrocities. He commits war crimes; he systemically oppresses entire societies. It doesn't even really benefit Velaris, because Velaris is already hidden.

Let me put this in a real-world perspective. This would be like if Donald Trump was suddenly like: "I know I was a shitty president but IT WAS ALL PART OF MY MASK, WHICH WAS TO PROTECT THIS MICROCOSM OF PRIVILEGED PEOPLE THAT I CARE ABOUT". Like: okay? Sorry, or whatever, but I don't actually give a shit. What about the parents of the children who died? What about Clare Beddor? What about the people who were held in slavery, murdered, tortured?

Rhysand: omg it sucks that my cousin Mor was oppressed by this toxic misogynistic culture from the Court of Nightmares.

Also Rhysand: lol whatever, who gives a shit about Court of Nightmares. They all suck. They meanie. Lol what did you say? That there might be other girls just like Mor who are oppressed by this system? Lol whatever. I can't do anything, I gotta maintain my Mask. I gotta sit on this throne and show the entire Court that not respecting women is completely okay.

In summary: by parading Feyre around as his "whore" (!!) he demonstrates by example that it is completely okay for the Court of Nightmares to abuse their women.

A good ruler cares about all his people. Rhysand cares about a tiny tiny fraction of his people: those who were fortunate enough to be born into Velaris.

God, I'm exhausted. Onto Nesta:

The only character who successfully breaks the Mary Sue effect Feyre exerts on her people is Nesta. Her POV for the first half is a joy to read.

Obviously it sucks that Nesta was a huge bitch to Feyre for the beginning of her childhood. However, it was wrong for Rhysand to threaten her- he is a man male with a huge insane amount of power, and it is not okay for him to threaten to bring the brunt of it down on a young girl because she was a bitch to his girlfriend.

I've seen a lot of discourse on the morality of F/R sending her out of Velaris. Here is my two cents:

It was okay for them to cut her off of their money. If they don't want to enable her self-harm, that is their choice. Again, it's their money, even if it wasn't fairly earned (Rhysand born into an enormous fortune).

It was not okay for them to banish her from Velaris with the implication that she was an embarrassment. Let me explain.

If Rhysand and Feyre are talking to her as sister/brother-in-law, then that is that. They have the complete right to express disapproval and try to help. However, they should not be using their royal privilege against her.

If they are talking to her as ruler to subject, then they have the power to banish her from the city. However, a ruler would not give a shit about a random subject getting drunk and having sex. So, they should not be talking her about her problems as a ruler to subject.

I've heard it compared to her being sent to rehab. However, rehab is a system designed to help people with certain problems. It has specialized medical centers and involves therapy. Nesta gets her life threatened multiple times. It is not rehab.

In summary: why did SJM inflict this upon us. Throne of Glass was actually good! GAHHH! After the first few books she completely whipped around and introduced the idea of males and mates and fey and that C is actually A and the quality took a huge nosedive. Sigh.

Final horrible but unmistakable truth: The entire ACOTAR series reads like a bad A/B/O fic. I hate to say it but it's true. We're lucky there were no heat cycles. OH WAIT

[agendratum]

ok so

as usual after finishing an arc of mdzs my head is full, many thoughts. so let’s talk about the guanyin temple confrontation.

first thing that i kept paying attention to were actually the changes made in order to turn it into live-action. so in cql they had to make the gray-gray characters, the “there are no good or bad guys, just people and their circumstances” characters (unless you’re jgs, than yeah you’re a bad guy and everyone agrees on that actually) into slightly more black and white characters. by the end of cql we are lured into this fake sense of security, “haha, we know who the bad guy is!” (then a year passes and here you are, now a jgy apologist), by the end of mdzs, you just know that, well, decisions were made, unfortunate decisions, by many different people. 

cql had to make wwx into a bit nicer version of himself. the good protagonist couldn’t lose control and accidentally kill a bunch of people, and then kill another bunch of people fully willingly, cause his sister just died and that was the last connection he had to the idea that something still matters in this world. no, out protagonist should be... like a little bit nicer than that. so they lifted some of that responsibility for atrocities off him, but they couldn’t just evaporate it, could they? they had to put it somewhere. they put it on jgy. after all he’s the big bad in the end of the story, well, the only surviving person from all people that could be considered big bads, he’s the one that “did every terrible deed imaginable”. he could take that responsibility, they had to make his grayness into a slightly darker shade anyway.

i am actually kinda surprised by how different my reaction to jgy was in mdzs. obviously, there is a year difference between me watching cql and me reading this part of mdzs, and over that year i changed my opinion on jgy 5 thousand times and joined the camp “actually meng yao deserves all the best things in the world”, but anyway. when i was watching cql i was like, oh my god, can someone just kill him already, before he does something bad again, before more bullcrap comes out of his mouth, and also stop yelling at this kid about all the “valid” reasons to why you killed his dad. in mdzs my reaction to jgy’s confessions was like, “huh. he has a point”.

now don’t get me wrong there, some shitty things were done, but the thing is, the things he did really made sense from his point of view, from this position and life experience he really had no other way to go. i especially was convinced by his reasoning to why he couldn’t cancel his engagement with qin su. not only he would suffer from this story, because he already went through so much to make this marriage possible, but also qin su’s parents and herself would most likely suffer, their public image would be destroyed, only jgs wouldn’t lose anything. and you could feel the hatred and bitterness he felt towards his father talking about this, and everyone in the temple could agree with that, because he “just forgot he made another child”, he didn’t even notice.

another interesting detail for me was lxc saying, “it’s not that i didn’t know that you did some of these things, it’s that i thought you had a good reason for doing them”. so yeah, a reminder, lxc isn’t blind and he isn’t an idiot. he trusted a person he thought he knew better than anyone else, and he believed in this person. the problem, i think, is that “a good reason” is different for lxc and for jgy. lxc would understand a righteous reason, doing something for the greater good. working for wen ruohan? that was explainable. they all were fighting in a war, fighting for the better, brighter future, and meng yao’s contribution to that future was immeasurable. what if he killed some people there? he had a good reason in lxc’s eyes. but meng yao had other good reasons in his life, some of these reasons lxc never had to deal with in his life. survival, for example, is one of them. meng yao’s early years were very different from lxc’s. not to say that lxc’s life was easy, but it was never truly unstable. meng yao had to learn how to survive in a world where no one wanted him. he lived with one dream, promised to him by his mother, a future where he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore, where he wouldn’t have to smile at people he hated, please every one of their desires so they wouldn’t harm him. and then he entered this life promised to him and he still had to survive, but now in a luxurious man-eats-man world of lanling jin.

meng yao’s life really was this unstoppable ball of snow rolling down the mountain, and every decision he made just made the ball bigger and it would just roll faster. there is even a moment where jgy accuses lxc of being naive. lxc isn’t really naive, of course, it was said in the heat of the moment, but it is a fact that lxc was never kicked down a staircase, never had to crawl back up, and the thing is, at the bottom of the staircase, there are other good reasons to do things.

and in a way lxc understood that jgy in his position really didn’t have any other choices, he just couldn’t find peace in this mindset. he kept repeated through that part, “and yet, and yet, you shouldn’t have done that, you should have...” and he never said what exactly jgy should have done. because lxc doesn’t know. jgy doesn’t know. no one knows. what choices were better? how could he fix all that and still survive? in a way, lxc saying that reminded me of wangxian farewell in the burial mounds. when lwj asks, “you really indent to keep going like this?” and wwx, who wished, who longed for another solution, for some way out, asked him, “what else can i do? what method can i choose to resolve this, not use this technique and still protect people i want to protect?” and lwj didn’t have an answer. lxc didn’t have an answer either.

another amazing thing about guanyin temple confrontation, is that it’s very heavily wwx’s pov. most on the novel is his pov of course, but there were a loot of his thoughts in this arc. and he was rather understanding towards jgy. not in a way “i agree with every reasoning behind every decision you made” but in a way “i understand that you had your reasons, but all of them will become irrelevant really soon, they already are, because the crowd will only remember you as a son of a whore who did every terrible deed imaginable, and all the good deeds will be forgotten” 

now his thoughts on nhs, or who he suspected nhs to be, were way less nice. especially compared to live action, nhs didn’t make such an impression on me as he made through wwx’s thought process in the end of guanyin temple arc. of course, wwx is no sect leader yao, he is not the one to jump to conclusions, he just noticed that if you put some facts together, they actually start making a lot of sense, and formed a full picture. but he didn’t have any proof, so he kept it mostly to himself. yet he still thought for a moment about nhs as someone who didn’t care about collateral damage that much, who was ready to sacrifice lives of juniors, sect leaders, anyone, if it would add to jgy’s kill count and make his fall and destruction even more disastrous. not that those are not the things that happened in live action, but you know, when wwx put it all together like that in one paragraph, i really felt it. like, oof, dude it’s ROUGH. and not even jgy’s death was enough, as nhs basically admitted to stealing meng shi’s body and planning to repay jgy for what he did to nmj’s body. yikes

i mean i still support nhs in everything he does, but yikes

also side note, glad that the dead cats situation finally became clear for me. this whole year i was so confused about who left all these dead cats for juniors to find. i thought maybe xue yang did?? to lure wwx?? so apparently it was also nhs. good to know.

another detail, probably the last one my brain can generate for now, that pained me a great deal was my poor child jin ling. i already cried about some things related to him and this arc, but there was another little one in the very end here, after jgy died. jin ling realised, that there were now three people, wwx, wn and jgy, his little uncle, that were responsible for his parents’ death. people he had every right and reason to hate. all three of them. and yet he couldn’t hate any of them. he couldn’t avenge his parents, that died so long ago he couldn’t remember them, because all three people responsible for what happened, had something, some reasons, some circumstances, that made them really not the bad guys in jin ling’s life. and they all cared about him, protected him. how could he hate them? how could he not? and in this way this poor child repeats, unfortunately, his uncle’s curse. to have someone he wants to hate so much but just simply can’t. it warms my heart at least that jin ling has a much better support system than jc had when he had to live through that experience. so there is hope.

[nikosasaki]

FISHBONES ⋆ act I

One condemned bridge, two boys, and a dead body.

act I | act II | act III

word count: 4.7k

The rotting smell of the warm air around Crossroads Bridge made Dev want to vomit. It was the sour scent of rotting eggs, or a rotting corpse, caused by the sun warming up the salt marshes that stretched all throughout Dev’s hometown of Windfield. Everyone knew the smell was at its worst around Crossroads Bridge, and even before it had been condemned people liked to avoid the bridge for that exact reason. However, it was a Friday night, which meant the beach around the new bridge, all the way on the other side of town, would be crawling with Dev’s drunken classmates. When Dev’s choices were between crossing a stinky bridge or having the school’s football team drunkenly calling him some racist shit, he would prefer the rotting egg smell any day.

Dev could faintly see the line where the bridge met the land ahead of him, beyond the abandoned buildings that decorated this side of town. The bumpy path was only barely illuminated by the headlight Dev had duct taped to his steering wheel. The street lanterns around the path had been shut off years ago, and their empty metal corpses did nothing but remind Dev of how much he was not meant to be there.

The bike slowed down as it rolled onto the deck of the bridge. Dev had to be careful to not hit one of the larger holes in the deck and accidentally launch himself over the railing. If he fell into the river below it would, without a doubt, kill him. The water was deep and filled with rocks, and even if he managed to survive the fall the undercurrent would finish the job and drown him.

He weaved slowly across the rotted deck, headlight swinging and illuminating the big nothingness ahead of him. In the distance, he could faintly make out the soft yellow lights of his home, out on the last strip of land that separated Windfield from the greater lake. His eyes scanned the horizon over the bridge’s railing to try and find his house. He found Stevens’ now-empty fishing shack, his neighbor's home, and then—a black figure.

The front wheel of his bike dipped into a small pothole, and with a shout Dev was flung forwards off his bike. He hit the deck with a thud, the bridge groaning and creaking from the impact. He scraped across the ground for a few inches, bare skin being scratched up by the asphalt. Tonight is the night, Dev thought briefly, that I get murdered.

"Who's there?" A sudden voice called out. The black figure on the railing stirred. Dev’s cheek was flat against the crumbling asphalt. He could feel the little rocks dig into his skin. He didn't dare to move.

"Dude, I can see your lights—hell, I heard you. I know you're there," The figure’s—boy's?—voice told him. His voice sounded strained and a little raw, like Dev's younger sister after she'd thrown a tantrum. The figure moved a bit more, and Dev finally noticed that the person was standing on the railing. Straight. As if he was about to leap off.

It didn’t look like a figure who was getting ready to murder someone, Dev decided, and he dared to scrape himself off the ground.

"You're alive," The figure was clearly just a boy, Dev noticed now that his head was on straight again.  

It was a boy from school, Dev realized with a sinking feeling. A boy Dev was all-too familiar with: Isaac Adler. Despite the darkness that he was shrouded in, there was no mistaking Isaac for anyone else. If not the hunched-over wire-thin posture and heavy black boots, the glint of a silver nose ring gave away his identity immediately.

Dev felt himself ease up slightly at the sight of that metal ring. Scary as he might be, Isaac Adler wasn’t a murderer. Probably. Considering the position he was in, Isaac wasn’t about to hurt anyone. Except maybe himself.  

"What are you doing out here?" Dev questioned, voice shivering despite the clammy warm air. He was a little afraid of Isaac, but he was far more afraid of what the boy might do if Dev simply left him there. He ignored the burning pain of the scrapes on his arms and knees and took a few steps forwards.

"What are you doing out here?" Isaac responded. Dev could see him turn away as the soft thump, thump, thump of rubber soles stepping on metal echoed through the darkness.

"That's not fair," Dev crossed his arms as he spoke, a frown on his face.

"I'm busy. You should get going."

Dev squinted at the boy, taking another tentative step forward. It was much like approaching a wild animal; one wrong step and he flees, or he eats your face off. In Isaac’s case, he would much sooner do the latter. He was infamous around town: the son of an alcoholic burnout, the local plug who was only welcome at parties so long as he had something to sell, the boy who was always covered in bruises from starting fights he would never win. He was terrifying.

But not that night. Here, he was almost pitiful.

"Busy with what?" Dev questioned, not wanting to give up.

"None of ya's," He responded. His accent was a little more evident now, words carrying that familiar Windfield drawl. It sounded like someone trying to swallow their words before they escaped their mouth.

Dev, instead of continuing the argument, began walking. Not back to his bike, as Isaac had clearly hoped, but towards the railing. He didn’t know what he was thinking—not even thinking at all—as he walked up next to Isaac.

"What're you doing?" Isaac asked, feet shuffling on the metal to distance himself from the approaching boy. He moved more hesitant now, Dev noticed, as if he’d suddenly become afraid of falling off.

"None of you's," Dev repeated, failing to mimic the accent. Dev put both hands on the chest-high railing, awkwardly swinging one leg across.

"Dude, what the—"  

Dev kicked his legs around, scooting across the railing on his stomach and pushing himself up to sit. With something of a proud smile, he looked back up at Isaac.  

“Happy?” Isaac questioned.

In any other situation Dev would have been afraid of him. But not that night. If he was right—right about Isaac’s reason for standing on top of that bridge—staying was the only reasonable thing that Dev could think of doing. The only human thing.

“Do you wanna sit?” Dev asked, eyes still looking up to the other boy. He couldn’t see much now, just a silhouette against a black sky, and he tried to not think how terrifying it looked. How easy it would be for Isaac to push Dev off of the railing now.

“I want you to leave.” Isaac said. His voice pitched, only for a moment, but Dev had still heard it. It sounded like someone who was about to cry.

“I-uh, I don’t think I can do that,” Dev’s confidence wavered. He wasn’t meant to be here, and he wasn’t even sure if his presence was going to make any difference. Then again, he thought, isn’t it worth it to try?

he decided that it was.

“I can’t-uh, not yet. Not until you leave, too.”

Isaac let out a heavy sigh. “You’re really gonna stay here until I leave?”

“Yeah—yes. I’m going to sit here, and either we leave together or I bore you to death with fish facts. Your pick,” Dev figured he sounded pretty tough. Aside from the mention of fish, maybe.

“Fish facts?” Isaac questioned, and Dev swore he could hear laughter in his voice. “What do you know about fish?”

That was all the invitation Dev needed, really, to unleash any knowledge he had. It might not have been usual knowledge for a teenage boy to possess, but it was the kind of knowledge Dev had. The kind of knowledge that kept him company during the nights he spent alone in the public library.

“I know loads about fish,” Dev said with a grin. “For example, we—uh—we have a lot of sheepshead minnow in the marshes. They’re pretty cool. There’s this chemical in insecticide that causes a malformation in sheepshead minnows where their spine would grow wrong, and they couldn’t swim anymore. It was a serious threat to the population for a while, since it caused them to die really early, and they couldn’t reproduce. It’s why houses close to the marshes aren’t allowed to use insecticide. You get bendy fishbones that way.”

“Bendy fishbones,” Isaac repeated.

“Yep. It also caused them to be toxic for a while. But it’s fine now. No more bendy fish, and sheepshead minnow reproduce like crazy so it’s not a balance you can easily upset.”

Dev fell quiet, letting a moment of silence pass. That was way too much. Dev couldn’t exactly read the other boy’s expression in the dark, but it could hardly be one of genuine interest. Perhaps he’d chase Isaac off the bridge by being terminally nerdy.

“That explains it,” Isaac said, making Dev tense with the suddenness of it. Isaac slowly crouched down to sit down on the railing. He dangled his legs over the railing as well, leaving a few inches between his and Dev’s knees. “The shirt.”  

Dev frowned down at his own chest with a frown. He was wearing a shirt from his old summer job at Jim Stevens’ business, Jim’s Fishing Supplies. It was a vague shade of salmon pink, and it sported a fish with a hook in its mouth, the line looping around it.

“Oh,” Dev was thankful for the dark night sky, or Isaac might have seen him turn bright red. The embarrassed warmth spread all throughout his body, making him sweat even more than he already was. I look insane, Dev thought, like one of those toddlers that’s obsessed with dinosaurs.  

He had been that toddler when he was younger.

Isaac leaned his head back, and when Dev looked back at him, he could see that Isaac was smiling. He wasn’t laughing—not really—but he was sitting, and he was smiling. Dev felt a sense of pride, looking at the grin on Isaac’s face. Something warm twisted in the center of Dev’s chest, speeding up his heart rate and making the blush on his cheeks burn even hotter.  

“What’re you staring at, huh?” Isaac asked, though there was little malice in his voice. The question did make Dev extremely aware of the fact that he’d been staring, and all of the sudden he wasn’t entirely sure how to act.

“I-uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—” Dev scrambled, trying to find his footing on the ledge and pushing himself off the railing with his hands. “I wasn’t-you know, I—”

Suddenly the ledge under his feet disappeared, and Dev’s upper body scraped over the edge of the railing as it slipped into the nothingness below. He felt nothing but blood rush in his ears as his arms flailed, trying desperately to grab at the metal railing. A painfully loud scream escaped him, but Dev himself couldn’t hear it. His eyes squeezed shut, and he waited to feel himself hit the water. To feel his bones crush on the rocks.

I’m going to die.  

With a painful smack, Dev’s right arm managed to wrap around one of the lower metal beams. The arm burned, and if he wasn’t panicking Dev might have been worried that it was broken. There were more pressing things to worry about, though, as he dangled back and forth, desperately trying to hold on.

“Are you okay?” Isaac’s voice above him sounded worried, and Dev could hear Isaac’s boots land on the bridge deck. “Can you hold on to something?”

Dev dared to open his eyes again, looking at the railing in front of him. He swung his other arm up and tried to pull, but quickly discovered that wasn’t going to happen. His upper body strength—or lack thereof—wasn’t up to the task.

“I’m hanging on!” Dev finally responded. He could feel a loud thumping between his ears, the feeling of his erratic heartbeat shaking his body. His arms were hurting, and he wasn’t sure how long he could continue to hang on.

“I’m coming to get you,” Isaac promised. Dev tried to focus on this—on the sounds of Isaac’s footsteps—in order to keep himself calm. Focus on anything but his current situation. On anything but the fact that he was hanging above certain death. Focus on anything but the sound of groaning metal as his white-knuckled hands held on for dear life.

“Dude? You there?” Isaac’s voice cut through the noise, almost startling Dev.

“I-I’m here!” Dev called out. His palms were sweaty, and they were slowly slipping. He tried to pull, tried to adjust his hands, but they only slipped even further. “Please hurry!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m trying!”

Dev could hear him now, coming closer. The metal under Dev’s hands vibrated softly with every step of Isaac’s boots. It was comforting, in the strangest way. Dev could faintly make out Isaac’s features as he neared. He looked like a real action hero.

“There you are,” Isaac sounded relieved, something Dev had not expected. “Okay, uh. This is going to take some trust, yeah?”

Dev trusted Isaac. Maybe not entirely, but enough to not kill him.  

He didn’t have a lot of other options, anyway.  

“Yeah.”

Isaac shuffled closer, feet right next to Dev's hands. Isaac crouched, letting go of the support above him and sitting to straddle the support beam with his legs.  

“I’m going to reach over and pull you up. No sudden movements, or we both die.”

Dev watched Isaac reach out, grabbing Dev by both wrists tightly. Despite the darkness Dev tried to look into his eyes. Looking for some reassurance that the boy wouldn't drop him.

"You have to let go," Isaac softly but sternly told him, giving another tug.  

Finally, Dev relaxed his fingers and allowed them to slip off of the metal, feeling himself being pulled up by Isaac. He kicked his legs hard, swinging them forward and wrapping around the support beam. Isaac let go.

"Ho-ly crap," Isaac huffed, leaning on his knees for a second before getting back up. He didn’t wait to see if Dev got up before moving back to land.

The two of them quickly made their way towards land again. Isaac crossed rather gracefully, stepping over the support beams as if he'd done it hundreds of times before. Dev was crawling behind him on hands and knees.

"I-ah, thank you," Dev huffed, eyes fixed on nothing but the few inches directly ahead of him. Focus is good. It wasn't the longest crawl—thirty feet at best—but the sooner he got to solid ground the happier Dev would be.

"Of course," Isaac said, not turning as he spoke. "I couldn't exactly let you die."

He could have. Dev had half-expected him to. It was nice that he hadn't, though.  

Isaac's boots landed on the soggy grass with a wet thud, finally making Dev look ahead and crawl the last few inches towards the riverbank. Isaac looked down, reaching his hand forward again to help Dev stand up. This is getting a little pathetic, Dev thought to himself, looking up to shake his head at Isaac.  

"I'm good, thanks."

He put one foot down in the mud, thankful for the relatively steady ground beneath him. The other foot followed, and with complete unearned confidence Dev leaned his body forward.

“Woah, hey—” Isaac began to warn him, but it was too late.

Dev could just see Isaac reaching out to try and catch him before Dev slipped, falling flat on his ass, and sliding into the shallow water at the edge of the river. He didn’t even scream, the fear immediately making way for embarrassment. Dev could feel water fill his shoes, and pants, and yet he kept sitting. He had to sit in his own shame for a second. If he sat for long enough maybe Isaac would leave and they could pretend this never happened.

“I’m starting to think you’re doing this on purpose, Fishbones.” Isaac was smiling as he looked down at Dev, his arms crossed. Dev pouted in return, not sure if he should be more upset at the joke or the awful nickname.

“I’m really not.”  

Dev spread his hands to the side, pressing down into the ground to try and push himself up. His left hand sank slightly into the mud, but the other took hold of something hard and smooth. He could just barely make out the outline of what seemed to be a trash bag to his right.

“Gross, I’m pretty sure I’m touching someone’s trash,” Dev mumbled.  

He could hear Isaac sigh and Dev lifted his head to see Isaac stepping into the water, holding out a hand towards Dev. With some reluctance Dev took the hand, letting Isaac pull him up and out of the water. The two of them stood in the ankle-deep water for a moment, Dev feeling embarrassment creep up on him. He looked up at Isaac only to see him distracted by something behind Dev. Isaac looked confused for a moment, but the confusion quickly made way for something that looked like panic in Isaac’s eyes.

“What’s that—” Isaac fell silent suddenly, eyes growing impossibly wider. Within seconds, he had turned and ran back onto the grass. He curled in on himself, hands on his knees as his breathing turned erratic.

“Uh, Isaac? Are you—”

“Get out of the fucking water,” Isaac managed to say, still dry-heaving.

“Huh—”

“Get out!”

Dev jumped up and out of the water, dropping the plastic bag and letting it be taken away by the river’s current. Dev took a quick few steps to go stand next to Isaac as he struggled to breathe. Isaac was gagging, Dev realized, feeling panic rise in his own throat.  

“What…” Dev carefully spoke, slowly looking away from Isaac and moving to turn around and look at the river.

“Don’t turn around,” Isaac warned him just a moment too late.

In the water, just barely visible, Dev could see the outline of the plastic bag. Though, it was far too large for a regular trash bag. Something stuck out above the water where Dev had torn the plastic bag. The shape of it looked strange. Like a human head.

“Is that—?”

“We have to go,” Isaac gripped Dev’s arm, pulling on it as he began walking back to the top of the bridge.

“Wh-what? Isaac, is that—?”

“Shut up and keep moving,”

The two of them walked back to the middle of the bridge. Back to Dev’s bike. Dev didn’t even notice that he had started shaking. He couldn’t feel anything—not his wet clothes, not the heat of the air around him—just Isaac’s hand on his arm as he continued to pull Dev along. The other boy didn’t let go. Not even when he picked up Dev’s bike. He didn’t let go of Dev until they reached the first row of houses across the bridge.

“You should go home,” The feeling of Isaac's hand on Dev's arm disappeared.  

Suddenly the realization of everything rushed up to Dev, hitting him like a ton of bricks. He had to hold himself back from crying, or throwing up, instead letting the panic get stuck in his throat and almost choking on it.

“Oh m— oh-okay. Th-that was a dead body. Holy shit. W-we should call the cops,” Dev rambled, hands nervously fidgeting in front of his chest. “We-we didn’t… Who was—” The bile rose in his throat, and he forced himself to shut up and choke it back down.

“Hey, no. Shut up,” Isaac grabbed Dev roughly by both shoulders, letting his bike fall down onto the dirt. “We’re not gonna do shit except go home and never talk again. Got it?”

“Wh-what?” Dev looked up at Isaac with teary eyes.  

“We’re gonna go our separate ways,” Isaac told him again, slowly. “And neither of us is ever going to mention this. To anyone.”

“I-I can’t do that.”

“Yes you can,” Isaac reassured him, though his tone was harsh. “Guys like us, we go to prison for shit like this. So we’re gonna go home and pretend this never happened.”

Isaac bent down just a little, making sure he was looking Dev right in the eye. With the soft glow of street lanterns ahead of them, Dev could faintly make out the purple bruise around one of Isaac’s dark brown eyes.

For the first time that night, Dev felt truly afraid of Isaac.

“O-okay,” Dev finally said.

“Good boy,” With one final rough pat on his shoulders, Isaac released him.

Dev remained frozen to the ground as Isaac disappeared into the neighborhood ahead of them. Dev stood and watched for what felt like forever, until Isaac was long gone. When Dev finally got home he didn’t think about the steps he took, or the sound he was making. His mind was completely empty, his body moving on auto-pilot as he peeled off his soaking wet clothing and hung them in his bedroom window to dry. He laid in bed in nothing but a clean pair of boxers, eyes squeezed shut.

He could see it clear as day, projected onto the backs of his eyelids. It was a girl. The body in the river was a girl. She was hardly recognizable as such, with her head caved in on the right side like a cracked-open egg. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was open. He had seen it—could never stop seeing it. Her gray skin. Her purple lips. The way her jaw hung open in a silent scream.

In his head, the girl screamed at Dev all night.

---

The next morning, Dev was drowning. His wide eyes were looking around while his limbs were kicking. There was nothing to see, just a deep darkness that surrounded him. I’m dying, I’m dying, he kept thinking to himself. He was struggling to keep moving—to try and find the surface—while his lungs kept inhaling the salt water around him. He could hear his own screaming, muffled and painful, as the darkness around him consumed him. It wasn’t until the feeling of complete nothingness overtook him that Dev woke up, coughing and dry-heaving as he sat up straight in his bed.

He took a moment to steady his breathing—in, hold, one, two, three, out—before grabbing some clean clothes and making his way to the living room.

Dev’s parents didn't question the scrapes on his skin for long. A quick half-lie about his wheel getting stuck in a crack on the road was enough to settle their worries. Dev’s parents had always trusted their son. He’d never given them a reason not to. Until now.  

The normality of his morning—breakfast with his family, helping his sisters get ready for school—allowed Dev to forget about everything that had happened to him. And he did, for a moment. Right until he had to put on his shoes. His sneakers were still cold and wet, the soles covered in half-dried mud. It made him want to vomit all over again, the feeling of water filling his lungs creeping back up on him.

Still, he had to keep going. There was nothing else he could do.

When Dev got on his bike, his socks were already becoming wet. He tried his best to ignore it as he rode away from his home, towards the bridge. Not because he wanted to, but because it felt like something he needed to do.

As he rolled onto the deck of the bridge Dev could feel his stomach turn in on itself, twisting so hard he felt his breakfast climb back up his throat. It tasted like salt water.

Dev swallowed hard, forcing the feeling back down. He needed to do this. Even if it felt like a horrible idea—even if he knew it wouldn’t solve anything. It felt like something in the back of his mind was forcing him to look, an awful sort of morbid curiosity, body moving towards the railing against his own will.

When he finally dared to look over the railing towards the water, Dev regretted it immediately. Dev had never even considered that there would be something that made him feel far worse than seeing the body: not seeing it.

There was nothing in the river below.

The body was gone.

---

When he arrived at school, Dev was on the verge of a panic attack. He was covered in sweat, and a panicked look was stuck on his face. When he saw a familiar head of dark curls a few steps away, Dev shouted through the hallway without thinking.

"Isaac!"  

The other boy was on him in an instant, pulling on Dev's arm and dragging him down the hall and shoving him against a wall, his hands on either side of Dev’s head.

"What the fuck?" Isaac cursed. "I told you not to talk to me, remember."

It wasn't a question, but Dev still nodded. In the daylight, Isaac looked far more terrifying than he had the night before. That bit of warmth Dev thought he’d seen was completely gone—or perhaps it had never existed in the first place. He was all cold eyes, pale skin, and the deep purple bruise around his eye that looked like it was staring right at Dev.

"S-she's gone," Dev barely managed to get his words out, body tense.

"Who?"  

"The girl. The o-one in the water. She's not there anymore."

Isaac frowned, inspecting the scared look on Dev’s face, and laughed. It was deep and loud and completely void of joy, and it made Dev’s veins run cold.

“You think it was me?” Isaac accused, still laughing.

“I-I didn’t say that, I just—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Isaac straightened himself out, taking a hand off the wall to wipe across his bruised eye. “Of course you think it’s me. Of course the fuckup would try and cover up a murder, huh? What, am I at the top of your suspect board as well?”

“I-I’m sorry,” Dev tried to look anywhere but right at Isaac, suddenly very aware of just how close they were. “I didn’t mean it like that—”

“You did,” Isaac stepped back, removing his hands from the wall behind Dev. “Don’t worry, I’d think the same thing. Still, I didn’t do anything. Not to her, anyway.”

“I believe you.”

Isaac laughed again, humorless, taking another step back. “Do you?”

Dev wanted to object, but the objection was drowned by the sound of the shrill school bell ringing. The two boys began walking, Isaac ahead and Dev following in tow.  

“You following me now?” Isaac said with a sigh as Dev followed him to the lockers, down the now-empty hallway.

“I—uh. My locker,” Dev motioned towards the blue metal doors. “It’s next to yours.”

“Of course it is,” Isaac rubbed his hand across his forehead and Dev swore he could see a slight smile on Isaac’s face.

“You shouldn’t talk to me again,” Isaac said again as the two arrived at their lockers. “Not just because of the… y’know. It’s a bad idea. In general.”

The rational part of Dev knew Isaac was right. Still, there was another part—a much louder part—of him that couldn’t help it. They had gone through this together. Isaac might have been the only person that would ever truly understand how Dev was feeling.

Dev didn’t even look at his locker as he opened it up, watching the side of Isaac’s face instead. He’s not all bad, Dev though. Can’t be.  

“What if I want to?”

Isaac turned his head, expression unreadable, mouth halfway open to speak, until something in Dev’s locker caught his eye. His frown deepened, and Dev’s eyes followed.

“What’s that?”

Dev looked at the crumpled paper laying in the center of his otherwise tidy locker.

“I-uh, dunno,” He inspected it for a moment, doubting if he should grab it or not. Isaac wasn’t as patient, reaching out and taking the paper before Dev could think it over for too long. Dev watched, heartbeat becoming louder, as Isaac unfolded the piece of paper. 

---

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(also tagging @witchofinterest​ bc I feel like u might want to see this :D)