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makeste · 3 years

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some follow-up thoughts on BnHA 306

mostly Deku angst, but also a little Baku angst (and some TodoBaku angst) mixed in for good measure. because there’s plenty of angst to go around.

1. “if I’d only been stronger...”

I’ll talk more about Deku later in this post as well, because there’s definitely plenty to talk about; this is the most character development he’s gotten in almost 200 chapters. but for starters, I want to discuss the possible parallels between Deku’s current character arc, and what is arguably the most iconic moment of angst/character development in the series.

remember how this kid, who up until this point had rarely seemed to give two fucks about the world around him, suddenly revealed that he blamed himself for being the downfall of All Might? remember how it came almost out of nowhere? how he’d been hiding it, and trying to suppress it? “but even if I try to forget... sometimes it all just comes rushing back.”

yeah. so anyway, I got to thinking -- if being the cause of one hero’s downfall could affect someone this badly, what about being responsible for the downfall of all heroes?

what if a boy who wanted nothing more than to keep people safe suddenly found himself at the epicenter of a disaster that killed hundreds, possibly even thousands of people?

now obviously, this is not the sole thing that’s troubling Deku right now; this kid has a whole array of traumas as of the War arc. like, you know it’s bad when Society As We Know It Coming To An End Partially Because Of You is the least of your problems. but still, I think this is worth bringing up, because the hero kids blaming themselves for things that aren’t their fault is hardly anything new. and yet, what with everything else that’s been going on -- all of the Todoroki drama, and Vestige revelations, and hospital antics, and political strife -- I feel like it’s easy to forget or overlook this little detail.

the fact is that AFO put this entire plan into motion solely in the hopes of finally obtaining OFA. every single thing that happened at Jakku -- Tomura powering up; Machia waking up and going on his rampage (after being ordered to do so by Tomura); and even Dabi/Touya choosing this moment to finally strike (because he knew this was when the reveal would do the maximum damage -- when people’s faith in heroes was already wavering) -- every last bit of it can ultimately be traced back to AFO’s desire to steal OFA. which, obviously, makes it AFO’s fault, not Deku’s. but then, Kamino wasn’t actually Katsuki’s fault either. it wasn’t his fault the villains went after him (but he blamed himself anyway), and it wasn’t his fault that people got hurt in the ensuing battle to save him (but he blamed himself anyway).

just. I think we’re underestimating just how strong of an impact all of this likely had on Deku. we haven’t really had the chance to see him process it yet. he’s been too busy, and there have been too many other things going on. but I’m telling you guys, that empty look in his eyes in the final page of the chapter? I can all but guarantee you that at least some of that emotional weight is coming from this.

sure would be nice if he had a friend who knew exactly what that was like, and could help him process the guilt and all of the other associated emotions, just like Deku once helped him. unfortunately I’m not so sure things will be that easy this time around. anyways though let’s move on to a couple of other thoughts and speculations.

2. “...and I bullied him.”

one of my least-favorite BnHA fanfic tropes is the one where the rest of class 1-A somehow finds out about Katsuki and Deku’s history -- i.e. that Katsuki bullied Deku throughout most of their childhood. mind you, it’s not the concept itself that I dislike; it’s mostly how it’s used. a lot of times it’s just an excuse to have all of the other kids turn on Katsuki and ostracize him; either because the author thinks that’s what he deserves, or else so that Deku can eventually come to his rescue and defend him and shame the rest of the class for not seeing how much he’s changed. either way, it’s usually pretty awkward to read, and more often than not the characters are pretty OOC (especially Ochako and Todoroki).

however! there’s a big difference between fanfic and canon, and just because I’m not a fan of this trope in the former doesn’t mean it couldn’t be executed well in the latter. and lately I’ve been thinking about this a lot. mainly for three reasons:

the recent (can we still call it recent?? well whatever) scene where Katsuki confessed to All Might that he used to bully Deku is now one of my favorite scenes in the entire series, and proof that this can be executed well.

both Todoroki and Deku have finally had their respective big secrets revealed to the rest of the class. so like, idk. feels like it just might be secret-revealing season now, you know?

and lastly, as a result of Deku’s secret about OFA finally being revealed, the rest of 1-A now either knows, or can extrapolate, that he used to be quirkless.

and from there, I feel like it’s not all that hard to put two and two together with how terrible Kacchan and Deku’s relationship was when they first started at UA. that’s not a terribly difficult puzzle to solve. so I feel like it might come out anyway, and if so, I’d prefer Bakugou telling them himself, and taking responsibility as part of his atonement process. because we know that he regrets it. we know their relationship has changed. we know that he has changed. and so I think I might like to see this.

alternately, if confessing to the entire class is too much, at the very least I could see him confessing to Shouto, because I’ve always felt like this was one of the big things that made Katsuki so resistant to letting Todoroki call him a friend. because I feel like there’s a part of Katsuki that saw the parallels between Endeavor’s abuse of Shouto and his own bullying of Deku, and thought, he wouldn’t be so quick to call me his friend if he actually knew the truth. and so there’s actually been this roadblock wedged between them this whole time that Shouto doesn’t even know about. because Shouto hates Endeavor. and so it’s not such a leap to assume he’d hate Katsuki too if he knew just how terrible he’d been to Deku when they were younger.

not that I think he actually would! actually I don’t think either of those things is actually true (because Shouto clearly doesn’t hate his father either, in spite of everything that’s happened). but the point isn’t what I think -- the point is what Katsuki thinks. and I really do think there’s a good chance he’s worried about Shouto hating him, and it’s one of the things that’s made him so reluctant to accept his friendship. anyway, so I’m really just rambling now, but you get my point. I don’t know if this is actually going to happen, but it’s a scene I would like to see if Horikoshi decides to indulge me.

3. “...so when you wake up, please give him my best.”

and now, as promised, back to Deku.

ngl guys, when I first saw this image, my immediate thought was that Gran must have died. because I mean, hello, leaving U.A.?? donning himself in his teacher’s old cape?? empty, exhausted look in his eyes?? what else were we supposed to think lol.

but maybe that was an overreaction. because when I think about it more, Gran’s death isn’t strictly necessary in order to push Deku over the edge. first of all, there’s already the whole “hero society is in ruins now because of you” thing I mentioned earlier. but also, there are just so many other things. like, let’s just list them here because omg. what a rough couple of days this kid had.

he was forced to battle TomurAFO and was terribly injured in the process (most of which was his own fault, but he wouldn’t have gone that far with OFA unless he felt like he had no choice)

and it wasn’t just him that was injured, either. in fact, even though he tried to act as bait to keep everyone else safe, he wasn’t able to stop three of the people closest to him from nearly being killed right before his eyes

and of course that last one was especially traumatic, because it was Kacchan, and because he had to watch Kacchan nearly die just to protect him. out of all the things that Deku witnessed in this arc, this might be the one that had the biggest impact on him

he was also basically helpless to do anything to protect Shouto and Endeavor when Dabi showed up. so again, we have this running theme of people he cares about being hurt and him not being able to save them

and he also got sucked into the OFA Interstellar Dream Vortex for a brief spell during the battle, during which he learned that AFO had possessed Tomura. more importantly, he learned that Tomura was Nana’s grandson, a fact which was only briefly touched on during that scene, but which I think wound up being the trigger to the whole avalanche that ended with Deku leaving UA. but more on that in a moment

anyway so just to wrap this all up, the battle eventually ended, Tomura got away despite all of their efforts, and then Deku wound up comatose in the hospital for two days. which brings us to the most recent chapters, during which

Deku learns that he will be the last wielder of OFA, whether he likes or not

Deku learns the identity of the last two mystery OFA users

and then at some point, he wakes up and presumably talks to Gran, and winds up with his cape

something happened during these last two scenes which helped to push Deku over the edge. I won’t delve into the matter of the Second or Third users for now, although most of you already know my suspicions regarding that, and I do think that would fit into the general pattern here (that is, the pattern of Deku feeling more and more strongly that he is putting the people around him in danger, and his fear of losing them becoming so overwhelming that it eventually pushes him to leave).

but that’s not what I want to talk about for now. what I want to talk about is Gran. specifically, what it is that Deku discussed with Gran. and this is where we come back to that reveal I mentioned earlier -- that Tomura is Nana’s grandchild.

basically, what I think happened is that Deku mentioned seeing Nana in the OFA Zany Psychedelic Spirit Void, which led to the topic of Tomura, and the fun fact Deku recently learned about him being related to Nana. this, in turn leads to Gran divulging his various regrets about everything that happened with him and Nana and Kotarou. his intent is to apologize to Deku for placing the burden of their failures on him. unfortunately, the part that Deku actually gets fixated on instead is this:

All for One hunted down and killed Nana’s son (and probably her husband as well), and stole her grandchild and psychologically tortured him into becoming a mass murderer, for no other reason than that Nana had once held OFA

in other words, AFO can and will hurt and kill anyone Deku is close to, anyone who has any kind of connection to him at all, without mercy, and regardless of whether it actually gives him any kind of tactical advantage or not. he’ll do it simply to hurt him. no other reason necessary.

I don’t know about you, but for me that would be a terrifying realization. and for Deku, I think it just might have been the tipping point.

so, let’s recap.

Deku learns that AFO is after him

AFO/Tomura very nearly kills several of Deku’s most important people, including Kacchan

and then he learns that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and realizes that all of their lives are still in danger and will continue to be as long as Deku is AFO’s target

and then add to all of this the misplaced guilt about society already being shambles, and the heroes already having more than enough to worry about. they’re barely holding things together as it is. and we already know how Deku feels about being a burden to them:

and so instead, he leaves. of course he does. in hindsight, I think this was inevitable.

the question is, did anyone else also put the pieces together in time to realize what Deku was planning before he actually left? specifically, did Katsuki, who understands Deku’s self-sacrificial nature better than anyone else, see the signs and put two and two together? like he did back at Jakku?

and if he did, would Deku have been willing to accept his help again?

somehow, I can’t help but think it might not be that easy this time.

anyway, so that was a lot of rambling, lol. sorry about that. I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS about all of this angsty shit. tired nomad Deku needs hugs and comfort and someone to reassure him that he doesn’t have to face this alone, and that everything is going to be all right. HE IS JUST A LITTLE BOY. this is too much, and I cannot handle any of these feels, and oh my god, somebody please help him.

#bnha 306 #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #todoroki shouto #gran torino #bnha meta #deku meta #bakugou meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #long post #bakudeku #todobaku

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she-who-fights-and-writes · 4 years

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How would one write a realistic argument?

How to Write a Realistic Argument

Everyone argues.

Whether it be with a friend, sibling, parent, or coworker—arguments usually break out whenever there’s a stark contrast in opinion over certain things, which can happen a lot.

There are a variety of different kinds of arguments involving a wide range of people with different tempers. Because of this, writing arguments can be a bit difficult, but fear not, for this post is here to help!

1. Know The Writing Style of an Argument

For a very serious argument, the characters probably won’t stop and listen to what their opponent has to say.

It’s quick, choppy, and broken—each character shoving their emotions at one another and trying to get their point across without bothering to understand the other side’s opinions.

There should be a lot of em-dashes and italicized words for emphasis, and if it’s between two people, you want as few speech tags as possible; because there’s going to be a lot of back and forth, speech tags can serve to trip up the flow of the argument rather than help them.

When you do want speech tags or if there are multiple people arguing at once here’s some examples you can use:

Roared

Screamed

Yelled

Bellowed

Barked

Hissed

Shouted

Accused

Interrupted

Growled

Snarled

Spat

Screeched

Shrilled

But you also must know that your characters won’t just be standing stock still and yelling at one another; they’re going to be moving around, so here are some things you can describe your character doing during an argument

Expression contorting

Eyes narrowing

Speaking through clenched teeth

Baring their teeth

Lips twisting (into a sneer/into a snarl)

Hands balling into fists

Trembling

Breaking things/knocking stuff over

Pointing accusingly

Shoving

Spittle flying from their mouth

Stamping their feet

Face getting hot

Vein in forehead popping

Blood roaring in their ears/heart pounding

And if you want, to build tension you can put it in a dangerous place, like at the edge of a cliff or something—so you know fully well that if one of them goes too far it may end up with the other’s accidental death.

2.Know Your Characters

The most important factors of your argument are the characters participating in it.

You should have your characters’ tempers established beforehand so you know if they’re going to be hanging back while others argue or if they’re going to be throwing hands every other chapter.

Your characters’ tempers will shape how much tension the argument causes.

An argument with someone who is usually chill and slow to anger will be a whole lot more impactful and important than an argument with someone who is a known hothead, but it wouldn’t make sense if the argument happened over something minor.

Here’s a list of some of the tempers your character can have, ranked from lowest to highest on how much tension an argument with them causes

(Just so you know, these aren’t rigid categories; most people are usually a mix of everything!):

–Hotheaded Character–

Fights with a hothead hold the least tension.

Hotheads will fight over anything and everything, their quick fuse making them easy to irritate and anger. Their words can hurt people who aren’t used to it, but usually bounce off of close friends who are used to it and know that the hothead usually doesn’t mean it.

Arguments with hotheads have a high chance of turning physical, because their rage explodes in bursts rather than a slow buildup (the definition of going from zero to one hundred), and in any situation, hotheads are usually the ones to throw the first punch.

Because a hothead could get riled up about a spilled drink just as quickly as they can get riled up about a friend dying, just having a hothead getting angry during a moment of severe tension won’t bring you the umph that you’re looking for.

However, your hotheaded character can serve as an instrumental character in triggering more serious arguments, one of their mindless snide remarks going too far with a level-headed or shy character.

Examples of hotheaded characters:

Stanley Kowalski, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Lt. Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, Top Gun (1986)

Anger, Inside Out (2015)

–Aloof Character–

These characters are a lot like hotheads, but the many, many fights that they pick don’t involve them getting raging, screaming mad.

They’re cold, calculating, and cutthroat, and they couldn’t care less about what you think of them.

Their anger is a lot less “loose cannon” than the hotheads’. They say what they mean and mean what they say, and it’ll take a long time to recover from the tongue-lashings these people can dish out.

The greater tension, however, comes from when the aloof characters raise their voices and start shouting—their schooled, uncaring façade fades away and they’re left truly and undeniably angered by whatever tipped the scales.

It’s not too tension-building because these characters were just bastards to begin with, but it’s still unnerving and shocking to see a normally collected character lose their cool.

Examples of aloof characters:

Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Prince Cardan, The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Alex Stern, The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Sherlock Holmes, Most Media Types

Tony Stark, The Avengers

–Nonchalant Character–

These people usually don’t engage in meaningful arguments because they literally don’t care enough to bother.

When another character tries to pick a fight, a character who is more nonchalant will sometimes roll their eyes at whatever accusation is being leveled at them rather than retorting. This can go either way, perhaps escalating the tension or diffusing it by not offering up a reply.

Kind of like with the aloof character, they don’t have any emotional attachment arguments that they start or are dragged into. They’ll argue for the sake of arguing, but they really don’t give a fuck about it.

The part that draws the tension, however, is when the characters do give a fuck. A fight they get into turns heated, and a character’s normal devil-may-care attitude may morph into something else altogether.

Most nonchalant characters also may exhibit some hotheaded tendencies, which shows how muddles these archetypes can be.

Examples of Nonchalant Characters:

Han Solo, The Star Wars Saga

Deadpool, Deadpool (2016)

Angel Dust, The Hazbin Hotel

–Level-headed/Stoic Character–

These characters are the cool cucumbers of the group. They’re very, very, VERY slow to anger, and usually exhibit more maturity than their peers, almost never starting arguments.

They’re the masters of diffusing arguments with a few words, and hardly ever raise their voices.

Sure, they may serve as backup to someone else and may jump to their aid with a bit of heat behind their words, but this hardly happens when the argument is their own.

Many hotheaded or aloof characters may try teasing or pushing these characters in order to act out, but it rarely works.

On the few instances that a level-headed character is angered, it is pretty serious.

Either one of the other characters poked fun at something they shouldn’t’ve—their dead parents, something they’re self-conscious about, etc.—or a member of the group makes a terrible mistake with dire consequences, and the stoic character has had enough.

This causes a lot of tension because “oh shit, the calmest person in our group just went off” and can usually signal a breakdown of the group because their strongest link is snapping.

Examples of Stoic Characters:

Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher

The Mandalorian, The Mandalorian

Spock, Star Trek

The Doctor, Doctor Who

Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird

–Timid/Shy/Quiet Character–

An argument with a timid person causes by far the most tension out of everything, to the point where I call it “The Snap.”

Someone who is timid, shy, or quiet would rather not argue at all because they don’t have it in them to retort.

They may care a whole lot about the situation under contention, but for one reason or another they don’t want to start too much trouble. These people actively avoid conflict and usually try their best to diffuse situations before they start, whether it be by conceding, walking away, or pulling the nonchalant route and not saying anything.

However, unlike the stoic characters, they might be much more emotional; it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a timid character to cry when being berated by the others, and they may even be outwardly livid, but they always back down in the end.

However, they can only hold it in for so long.

If you have a character who spends the entire book meekly accepting the verbal (or perhaps physical) harassment of other characters, you should most definitely put a “Snap” somewhere in the story, a point where the character has had enough and fights back.

The timid character’s pent-up rage and sorrow explodes into a raging argument that will most definitely frighten the other characters.

The tipping point may be the death of the loved one or just a simple, ordinary jab from an antagonist—the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Unlike with the hothead’s quick bursts of anger like snap fireworks, the anger of a quiet character—much like with a stoic character—is like ten thousand pounds of dynamite with a very, very long fuse.

A quiet character will almost never have a contained argument once they’ve snapped; it will be like a category five hurricane, and God help the poor bastard that set it off.

Examples of timid/shy/quiet characters:

Carrie White, Carrie by Stephen King

Amélie Poulain, Amélie (2001)

Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

3. Know The Rhythm of An Argument

An argument isn’t just 0 to 100 and then back to 0.

The tension levels look more like a squiggly line than a single spike; the tension peaks and ebbs on various levels throughout an argument, especially if it’s a long, important one where both characters are snapping over a novel’s worth of building tension.

The argument can come in like a freight train or it can build up slowly, a character storming in after a realization or a single snide remark that snowballs into something much greater.

Then comes an accusation. Both characters brace themselves and realize that this argument isn’t just going to putter out.

More back and forth words exchanged. “I don’t like that you do this, this and this,” while the characters’ tempers flare even further, pushing them to say more extreme, hurtful things and working each other up into a rage.

A physical fight may break out between the two, throwing punches and insults.

The climax should be a huge, shocking exclamation or accusation. “I hate you!” “If you were never born, Mom would still be alive!” “This is all your fault!”

The tension ebbs. The characters stand in silence, bitter and ashamed of themselves.

They may agree on a few things, their tempers start to die down. They may come to some understandings or storm off with the tension unresolved. The argument ends.

This is the basic format of an argument; however, there are usually several levels of accusation-buildup before the eventual climax.

The whole point of an argument is that it leaves the characters’ relationships much different than they’d been before; they either understand each other much more, or they’ve become much more wary of one another.

If your characters’ relationship doesn’t change after an argument, then there was no point in writing it.

I really hope this helped! Happy Writing!

#writing #writing tips #writing advice #writing help #writers #writing an argument #writer #help with writing #help for writers

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limitlessgojo · 3 years

Text

Blood Bound: Blackened Bond (Ch 17)

Warnings: Action, Coarse Language, Fighting, Descriptions of Blood, Death, Gore, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Japanese Mythical Folklore, No Major Character Death, !Character Suicide!

Previous Chapter: Non-Standard

Next Chapter: 百鬼夜行 - Hyakki Yakou

Word Count: 3k

Tags: Kamo Noritoshi x Reader, Soulmates AU, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Fem!Reader

Taglist: @lessie-oxj @rizzo-nero @whoreuc @fkngkumiko @isl3t @gojoussunglasses @onepotatostand-blog @s-t-f-u-b-i-t-c-h @sunaswife @lordguameow @track5enthusiast @nayydoesthings @a1hina

Notes: If you want to be tagged for every update, and specify if you're okay with NSFW posts or not, please mention it in the comments below ty ❤

Extra Notes: PLEASE CHECK THE TAGS!!! This is one very loaded Chapter. Some might get triggered over the graphic depictions of violence. This is close to a bit of gore.

Chapter 17: Inferno: Flames of Hell

You wake up in the infirmary. Hiroki had healed you beforehand. You abruptly sat up, looking around the room, before finding him, cleaning some medical tools. “Thanks Niichan.” He smiled as he came over to hug you and messed up your hair.

“It’s okay. I didn't think Satoru would push you this hard. He’s a good teacher for you, much as I hate to call him a good teacher. Did you consider going to Tokyo Jujutsu Tech instead? You could’ve gone ya know, we wouldn’t hold you back.”

You mulled it over. “I think I’m staying here. I’ve settled in and everyone around me is amazing. They’re like a second family to me.”

He smiled before looking a bit annoyed. “Yeah well, glad you like them at least. Someone’s been waiting all this time for you. Rude if I don’t let him see ya, right sis?”

Hiroki walked over to the door and opened it, revealing Noritoshi with one hand up as if to knock.

Your mouth opened and closed.

“Y/n.” He was still so determined. What makes him have so much faith in you? You looked back to Hiroki, but he only gave you his trademark "Get your shit together" look and waved you off.

You walked up to Noritoshi by the doorway, and he stood back to let you through. You both ended walking quietly side by side in the hallway.

Noritoshi smiled, you didn’t run away from him for once.

"Y/n, can we… talk if you're up for it?" He asked quietly, a small sad smile on his face.

You took a deep breath, turned to face him and were thrown into a vision.

◇◇◇

"They've found us, run for it, love." Hotaru dragged you away from the small inn you were both staying at.

You stumbled after him and ran off. A member of the Abe clan had seen the both of you in the midst of fighting curses at an abandoned shrine. They tried to chase the both of you down, but you both fought back and ran further away until they’ve lost sight of you.

But currently, you are facing a much larger problem. A shadow in the distance. Just the silhouette of the curse was enough to etch despair deep in your bones.

With four large arms, two faces and a gigantic body, Ryomen Sukuna could be identified easily. You grabbed onto Hotaru and tried to push you both forward with your technique.

"Uraume. After them. I've heard rumours about a fated pair. It seems as if they are the ones." Sukuna smirked.

"As you wish." Uraume quickly caught up to the both of you.

They quickly froze your escape path, sealing you both in a circle of ice. Hotaru held you as you activated Inferno to break the ice and continued running. You were both dangerously running low on cursed energy. Especially as Hotaru had just fought over a dozen of curses.

"Hooh?? The woman does have power. I want her." Sukuna's eyes lit up madly. He shot a flaming arrow, forcing you to push Hotaru behind you.

Sukuna focused and slashed both Hotaru from behind. Uraume shot shards of ice towards you, but Hotaru shifted your positions.

You watched in horror as your lover took the attack for you. He was bleeding profusely and even his technique couldn’t help him from anemia.

“No no no no no, stay with me.” You screamed at him.

“Misaki, my love, for you I’d burn down the world, travel across thousands of miles, and kill anyone who tried to hurt you. I love you and I’m sorry we can’t be together much longer.” He teared up while cupping the side of your cheek.

“No, don’t go.” You leaned down to press your lips against his, trying to give him a bit of air. But it wasn’t enough. His hand fell limp and he breathed his last. Kamo Hotaru died in your arms.

"Hotaru, no." You sobbed out painfully, hugging his cold body to your chest.

"The talk of the town huh? You must be the soulmate pair judging by the marks on your hands." Sukuna stepped up with Uraume right behind him.

He was a terrifying sight upclose.

You froze as he knelt down and lifted your chin, "What a beauty you are. I wouldn't mind playing with you for a while and having you all to myself, before eating you up." He licked his lips lavisciously.

"So young, and such soft skin." Sukuna's hand trailed down your cheek and squeezed along the curves of your trembling body.

You never felt more dirty in your life. A man other than your lover, touching you like this. "Be my toy, would you? Your lover is dead after all. Why not humor me?" Sukuna jeered. He didn’t care about your silent sobs, even relishing in how you looked right now.

Utterly destroyed. With a monster claiming he wants you for himself.

He grabbed your chin roughly and forced a kiss on your lips. You snapped out of your shock, feeling your anger overcome your fear.

‘I'd rather die than let him have me.'

And so, you pushed Sukuna and Uraume far away and built a solid air barrier around you and Hotaru.

You thrust a hand out and an oil lamp came flying your way. It broke in front of you. Inferno was activated to spread the flames quickly. 'We are meant to stay together, my love, even if it means death.' You quickly slit your throat with a harsh cut, not wanting to die a slow death in the flames.

You choked out blood as Sukuna came near. He shattered your barrier easily with Dismantle, reaching for you. You panicked. You weren't going to die in time.

And you did the craziest thing you could think of. Activating Niflheim simultaneously with Inferno. Freezing everything around you, except for the still burning flames consuming you and Hotaru.

It didn't help too much. Sukuna produced flames out of his hand, while Uraume easily manipulated the frost.

Lightning shot out of your hands dangerously in your confusion. You don't know what you just did. But it didn't matter. You were quickly losing consciousness.

Crimson splattered onto the ground and over Hotaru’s corpse. You burned past the limits of your cursed energy, releasing bolts of lightning.

Sukuna’s hand reached out and activated his reverse cursed technique on you. “Not so fast.” He looked angry.

He was able to seal the cut, but with the last of your energy, you used Inferno on your body, bursting into flame before Sukuna and Uraume.

They were forced to back away and stared as you and Hotaru both turned to ash, the heat an insane temperature they couldn’t approach.

Sukuna threw his head back and cackled, "The lengths people go to for love. What fools Jujutsu sorcerers are!"

◇◇◇

The vision ends. You and Noritoshi gasp harshly. The hallway is covered in ice.

You slowly realized you unconsciously activated Niflheim. You swiped your palm through the air. All the windows along the hallway simultaneously opened.

The vision was far too vivid.

You covered your throat with your hands as though to stop a wound from opening, remembering how the dagger dragged through your neck bones. The flames felt painful as they ate at your body without your cursed technique protecting you from them.

Noritoshi kneeled down and touched his gut. He felt the poison of Sukuna's slash and Uraume's ice eat his body. After his past soul had died. Hotaru's spirit watched the events transpire from above you. So he was able to see it from a 3rd person's point of view.

How Sukuna had wanted you. How you ended your life for him.

You staggered back from Noritoshi, face as white as a sheet, running for the bathroom with bile rising up your throat.

That vision was eerily reminiscent of how Sora-nee died in your arms. You were on the borderline of hyperventilating.

Noritoshi ran after you, “Wait!”. You stumbled into the girl’s bathroom, opened a cubicle door and vomited everything out into the toilet.

The sounds of retching were loud even from outside. Noritoshi halted in his tracks when he saw that you’ve gone into the ladies room.

Fuck manners. If it was to take care of you, he doesn’t care about being gentlemanly or if he was called a pervert. He rushed in, wrapped his arms around you, pulled back your hair and rubbed soothing circles on your stomach.

You were vomiting pretty hard, to the point where it hurt your abdomen. “My dear angel, shhhh it's okay, I'm here.” You continued heaving and reached back with one hand to push him away. But Noritoshi was incredibly stubborn, not letting go of you.

“Noritoshi I literally smell like shit, please leave.”

“Nope. I don't care. I will take care of you. As your soulmate I’m responsible for you.”

Your eye twitched at that.

Both of you were still trembling from the aftermath of the vision. How terrible and cursed it was, that past life.

You closed the lid, flushed the toilet, then lifted it again. You leaned over with heavy breaths, but it looks like you’re done puking. Noritoshi just sat behind you, his hands stroking your belly, keeping your body warm.

It was nice. But he’s not yours anymore. It was only then you felt something wet on your shoulder. Noritoshi was crying.

“It almost… felt like I just lost you… My darling...” loud hitches of breath echoed in the bathroom.

You froze, not knowing how to comfort him at a time like this. You patted his head, and he leaned into your hand.

Even as you close your eyes, the images keep racing through the back of your eyelids. Flames. Blood. Lightning. Hotaru.

“I need to wash up in the sink.”

Noritoshi gave a soft grunt in reply, arms tightening around your waist. You stood up and half dragged him out of the cubicle. He never lets go. His arm is still around your waist, making you half waddle around the bathroom with him like a penguin with its child.

You brush your teeth with the spare toothbrush Jujutsu High has for its guests and rinse your mouth with several cups of mouthwash, the strong scent of mint hanging in the air. You spat it all out, but you still felt nauseous.

You turned and wiped away his tears with your sleeve. He bent down and tucked you under his chin, breathing in your scent. You were both alive. It was fine.

You pulled back when the door slammed open. It was Momo and Mai.

“......”

“.....”

The four of you had a stare off before realizing Noritoshi wasn’t supposed to be in there.

“Kamo kun, you’re in the wrong bathroom. Have you dumbed down so much you’ve forgotten?” Momo asked with wide eyes.

Mai stared at you and noticed how sick you looked. You just shook your head at her and quickly walked out of the bathroom, shrugging Noritoshi’s hand off of you.

'To hell with all this.', you thought to yourself

◇◇◇

"Wait!"

Noritoshi caught up to you in the hallway, grabbed your hand and turned you around to face him. He stopped caring about where he was.

"I'm never giving up on you. I won't, because I love you and I know that now."

You sniffed hard, tears running down your cheeks. You've had enough of this confusion. If you're being truthful to yourself, you missed him.

You missed Noritoshi and his kind words. His touch and his kisses. His soft bits of encouragement and picnic dates.

You want him back. It was just as Hiroki had said, you were pushing Noritoshi away without giving him a chance to explain himself.

But the vision completely broke you. You pulled your hand away, "Don't touch me. Don't follow me. Don't come near me." You whispered.

Noritoshi swallowed hard. "Why won't you let me explain myself?" But you just shook your head.

"Maybe we weren't what we thought we were." You didn't mean it, but you still forced the words out painfully.

Noritoshi flinched, "Why would you say that? You believed in us. I still believe in us. In you."

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, "That vision. Why did we have it? We could be dooming ourselves by staying together, Noritoshi, I can't do that to you. Maybe I am cursed to hurt the ones I love."

He scoffed. "Preposterous. They are our past lives, but they aren't us. We are different people with different choices. You’re not cursed Y/N, since when have you become so narrow minded?"

You stiffened. "Maybe I have always been so. I'm just tired of everything now. Plus I need to take down that damn curse, even if it kills me." You spun on your heel.

Something inside Noritoshi snapped. He now understands how it feels to be pushed away like an outsider. He grabbed your wrist, ignoring your angry whispers as he single-handedly dragged you back into his room.

This man was strong. Not even your hardest tugs threw him off balance. He slammed the door shut once you were both inside and you felt a bit shaken, not having any place to run.

"Why are you trying to do this all by yourself?! You may be a Special Grade Sorcerer, but that doesn't mean you're invincible! A war is not won by one person. Can't you trust me?" He hissed.

"Trust you? Trust you?! How about me? Big words from someone who didn't even want to let me meet or know the people he holds dear to him."

This was the most idiotic argument you had in your life. You didn't even mean half the words that you were saying. Just wanting to win a pointless argument you wished never existed in the first place.

"I thought you agreed to speak to me if that was still bothering you. You said we would work things out together." Noritoshi shook your shoulders.

You held your tongue not knowing what else to say. Noritoshi was still so sweet after all this mess. Pulling you into a warm embrace, patting your head as he cries into your shoulder.

"Will you stay with me at least? During the war.”

"Of course." You didn't even think as you agreed. Even Noritoshi looked surprised at your lack of reluctance. "I won't lose you."

You both stood awkwardly there, not knowing what to do. Noritoshi didn't want you to leave yet, wanting to bask a bit more in your presence. His mark cooled down as his hand slipped into yours.

But you stepped and turned away from him, ignoring how his fingers desperately clung onto the hem of your shirt. "I'll go then… Don’t want to intrude... "

"Would you like to stay for dinner and talk?" He called out hopefully.

"Thank you for the offer, but I'll be with Hiro-nii in my room." You purse your lips.

"I love you." He said once more. There was no room for hesitation in his voice.

You paused, temples throbbing heavily from the onset of a headache. Too many thoughts raced through your head and not all of them were good.

"I don't know what you heard the other day, but I will never take in any concubines. You're my one and only, Angel."

You only half believed him right now, his words going in one ear and leaving through the other. ‘People can lie. He is capable of lying.’ your shitty brain just makes every situation sound worse each time. This type of negative line of thinking was so unhealthy.

He must have understood your thoughts.

"My love please," he's begging you now. You turn to him, face full of confusion and hurt. You opened your mouth, and thought better.

This wasn't the best time to run your thoughts.

"I’m sorry for being in a really bad headspace right now. Are you willing to wait for me?" This time it was you who asked him this. Noritoshi studied your face before nodding. “That’s okay. As you have with me, I will do the same with you.”

You sucked a deep breath, eyes watering. “I’m scared.”

“It’s okay to be scared, we are just kids. We aren’t supposed to bear the weight of saving a nation this early on.”

“I don’t want to lose anyone anymore.”

“You won’t. We won’t.”

“I’m sorry for being such a pain. I know we need to talk about all of this, eventually.” You couldn’t help the whimpers that came out of your mouth.

“I love every bit of you. Even if you're like this… No... Because I understand how you feel. You have a right to be angry, because I held back a lot of things from you. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss you or love you.” He carefully put out a palm facing up, allowing you to make a choice. You slowly put your hand over his.

“For real?” you whispered so quietly, he had to strain his ears to hear you.

“For real. Since when have I lied to you?”

‘Not once.’ you numbly thought.

Who knew a man could be so delicate. He held your hand lightly, not daring to squeeze it. Just a sign of openness and faith. He lowered his head towards you, eyes hooded.

You shivered as his lips brushed against the back of your hand. Soft, warm and plush. Like the first time he kissed you on the cheek. Shaky yet loving.

"Get some rest then, good night." You left the room.

He wondered if you still loved him now. Gone were the nights you soundly slept in his arms. He could barely pull himself together as he readied himself for dinner and bed.

Back in your room, you sobbed into your pillow. It hurts so much, because your faith in Noritoshi isn’t what it used to be. You wish for yourself to trust him like you did before. It’s frustrating.

There are times you wish you never heard that conversation. But that means staying ignorant to his familial affairs which won't do you any good in the long run.

Love is painful. Love feels like you've filled your lungs with water and you can't breathe. Sometimes it's like that icy inhale of the cold morning air on the winter solstice.

But it also keeps you going. The warmth of being in Noritoshi's arms earlier was more than enough to convince you to stay.

Blood Bound: Table of Contents

#kamo noritoshi x reader #blood bound #blackened bond #red strings of fate #jjk x you #jjk x reader #jjk x y/n #jjk x oc #jjk fanfic #kamo noritoshi x you #kamo noritoshi #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jjk imagines #noritoshi angst #noritoshi fluff

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ekdmarsrem4 · 3 years

Text

IT MEANS EVERYTHING (NEWT X READER)

Requested? Yes. You know who you are. Thank you for the request, & a thousand apologies that it’s taken so long to post 💗

Warnings: Reference to Newt’s incident, descriptions of depressive thoughts/symptoms. Please, do not read if this could be at all triggering for you.

Tears burning hot in his eyes, Newt takes slow step after slow step towards the edge. He stares down, unable to tear his gaze from the cold, unforgiving concrete below. A shaky sigh bubbles past his lips, his breath turning to steam as it mixes with the cold night air.

He stands there, waiting - praying - for someone, anyone, to yell for him to stop, but there’s only silence. A suffocating void of anything good, anything bright, anything hopeful. Just the miserable, unendurable reality of the Creators & their experiments. Newt glances up, bloodshot eyes searching the sky for even the tiniest sign that someone - anyone - sees him, knows him, & wants him to live. But he finds nothing. And in that moment, he resolves to finally stop searching.

His mind is numb to the pain at this point. All that’s left is utter exhaustion - an overwhelming need for everything to just slow down, quiet down, end.

He teeters at the ledge, steeling himself as best he can, before screwing his eyes shut & letting his body fall forward.

But he never feels the impact. Instead he finds himself tangled in soft sheets, uninjured, & warmed by a body pressed tight against his side.

“Newt?”

She’s staring up at him, face pillowed on his shoulder, the softest smile pulling at her lips. She tracks her finger over his cheek, traces the shadow under his eye. “You okay?” she asks, & Newt can’t help but heave a sigh of relief at the sound of her voice. Nodding quickly, he presses his arms around her & pushes his face into the warm crook of her neck. “Nightmare.” he says simply, lips pressed tight to her skin.

“I’m sorry.” Y/N soothes, her hands gentle & grounding against his back as she holds him to her. “Was it about the Flare again?”

Newt shakes his head, nose trailing against her skin. He’s had a lot of nightmares about the Flare since arriving at the Safe Haven. All too vivid memories of the thick black veins that’d once raked up his skin. Memories of almost becoming a monster. And still, this most recent nightmare felt even more horrifying...

“You wanna talk about it?”

He doesn’t respond for a few moments, wondering whether he can handle saying certain things out loud. But, then he focuses on the feel of her skin, the smell & the warmth of it; the way her arms are looped protectively around his waist & how her heart beats strong & true against his chest.

He can do it. He’s safe. She proves that to him with every look & every touch.

“It...was about what I did in the Maze.” he stutters. “What I tried to do in the Maze.”

At that, Y/N leans back, a pained understanding in her gaze, a slight tremble in her hand as she gently tucks her fingers into Newt’s hair. “Newt...”

“I was there again...” Newt recalls shakily. “...in the maze, alone...just...nothing, to anyone...”

“Newt...” Y/N whispers, lips soft against his temple. “...you were never nothing, to anyone. What the maze and the Creators made you feel isn’t true. Your life means something, it’s always meant something--”

“Then why do I still feel this way?” Newt asks, leaning back quickly, hoping for an answer in Y/N’s eyes. “With everything I put you through-- you & Tommy & Minho, Fry, Gally, everyone...Y/N, I could’ve killed you when I had the Flare & now we’re finally safe & I’m still being a burden---”

“Newt.” Y/N’s voice is soft but firm as she presses her hand to his cheek & carefully guides his teary gaze to hers. “You’re not a burden, on me or anyone else. The fact that you’re still struggling with what you did in that maze doesn’t make you weak or burdensome or incapable of moving on & being happy.”

Newt can’t help but hang on her every word. He touches her cheek with tender fingers, feels how real she is.

“It means you’re a person, who, by no fault of your own, went through terrible, terrible things. And you’re still here, despite it all. And I couldn’t be more grateful for that, & I promise you that Thomas & Minho & Fry & Gally & Brenda & everyone else feel the same.”

“I just...I just feel like...maybe it would’ve been easier for you guys if I hadn’t...”

“No.” Her voice cracks & Newt’s heart lurches at the sound. “Losing you would’ve been it for me, because to me...your life doesn’t just mean something...Newt, your life is everything to me. All I want is for you to see yourself the way all of us see you, the way I see you, because if you did...you wouldn’t wonder why you’re still here. You wouldn’t wonder why you survived that night. You would know you survived because you were meant to. You would understand that the world is a better place because you’re in it, & that we are stronger, happier, & better people for having known you.”

Tears hanging on his lashes, Newt just stares at her in awestruck disbelief. His chest feels full, fuller than it’s felt in a while...but not full of fear or dread or shame. Full of something that makes the corners of his mouth quirk up. Full in a way that somehow makes his soul & his heart feel lighter, freer, stronger.

He presses his forehead to hers, touches his nose to hers. “You...I...h-how...”

But Y/N just shushes him gently & hugs him tighter. “We love you.” she insists, smiling through the tears welling in her own eyes. “I love you...& I want nothing more than for you to love yourself.”

Smiling through a sob, Newt kisses her softly, desperately, infinitely grateful. “Thank you.”

Thanks for reading 💗

A/N: Hi guys. I just wanted to reiterate what was said in this story. Struggling with depression or any other mental health issue IN NO WAY makes you any less valuable as a person or any less worthy of love or respect or happiness. You’re not a burden, you’re a human being. Please, be kind to yourself. And in those moments when you feel alone or abandoned, try your hardest to remember that you’re not. There’s always someone who cares and who is willing to show you just how much they care.

#Newt X Reader #Newt X Reader imagine #Newt X Reader fic #Newt X Reader fanfic #Newt X Female Reader #Newt imagine #Newt fic #Newt fanfic #TMR Newt imagine #TMR Newt fic #TMR Newt X Reader #TMR Newt #TMR #TMR imagine #TMR fanfic #Angst #Fluff

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Note

Prompt: Baxia and NHS.

Author’s note: this fic ended up having virtually no NHS, sorry

“This isn’t right,” Wei Wuxian said. “This isn’t how it should go – you’re not even supposed to be here!”

Nie Mingjue huffed, resisting the urge to roll his eyes only because he needed them pinned on the murderous battlefield the Lotus Pier had become. “No one can predict the future,” he said shortly, and stepped out into the hallway, Baxia lifted high, and another four Wen soldiers’ lives came to an end. “To think that you can is arrogance.”

“You don’t understand,” Wei Wuxian insisted, and honestly, if he hadn’t made himself extremely useful both as guide and back-up, Nie Mingjue would have sent him away long ago to spare himself the headache. “It’s not – you might die here.”

He sounded upset about that. It was flattering, given that they’d never spent any time together before now; he must be basing his impression entirely on Nie Mingjue’s reputation.

Flattered or not, Nie Mingjue still wasn’t very impressed right now. “That’s a risk you take when you fight, yes. Don’t blame yourself – there was no way to predict when the Wens were going to attack, or where; they could have just as easily have come to Qinghe.”

“They wouldn’t have been able to get close,” Wei Wuxian muttered, and that was flattering, too. “It’s just – it’s too early. We should have had another few months!”

Nie Mingjue wasn’t aware the Jiang sect had been taking the threat of Wen aggression so seriously that they’d been making estimates, but it was all for the best.

Maybe it would help them in the war to come.

“Anyone who says they can see the future is being lied to,” he said. “Man plans and the Heavens overturn; that is the way of things. Anyway, you’re not wrong: it probably would have been later, should have been later, but they were robbed of their victory at the Cloud Recesses. There’s no satisfaction in burning empty buildings with all the treasures and people gone, no victory in it – it’s no wonder they accelerated.”

Wei Wuxian looked stricken by the thought.

“Cheer up,” Nie Mingjue said. “The Jiang sect will survive. That will be bad news for the Wens.”

Jiang Fengmian might be mild-mannered to the point of weakness, but he was an excellent cultivator, and of course Madame Yu’s fearsome reputation had been well earned. After this, they would have no choice but to be on the front lines.

“But you might not,” Wei Wuxian said again.

“A worthwhile trade,” Nie Mingjue said, and shrugged when Wei Wuxian gawked at him. “Haven’t you noticed that they’re following us? Dozens if not hundreds of Jiang sect cultivators that might otherwise have been put to the sword will be able to escape, and between all those lives and one, even my own, which one do you think will be more useful in winning the war?”

“You,” Wei Wuxian said. “You and your Nie sect, holding down Heijan like an iron wall for the Wen sect to waste its strength against.”

Was Wei Wuxian a fan?

Bizarre.

“I appreciate your confidence in my necessity,” he said, and ducked into another small nook when a group of Wen soldiers too large to easily handle ran by. The momentary rest was welcome. “And if it makes you feel better, they’re not aiming to kill me.”

“They’re not?” Wei Wuxian asked, appearing like a ghost in front of one of the sentries to slit his throat. He was surprisingly adept in the arts of warring in confined spaces, the ambush and the merciless kill; it almost made one wonder what purpose the Jiang sect had for him.

“With these numbers, if they wanted us dead, we’d be dead,” Nie Mingjue said. They’d lasted a good while longer than he’d expected, actually, a tribute to Wei Wuxian knowing how to get through the Lotus Pier in a thousand unexpected ways and their united strength, but even that was flagging: he had cuts and bruises in a hundred places, some more critical than others, and Wei Wuxian for all his pointless complaining wasn’t doing that great either. Perhaps his nattering was his way of distracting himself from their imminent fate. “I’ve humiliated Wen Xu before. Wen Chao wouldn’t be able to resist the thought of capturing me – and when he does, it’ll be the Core-Melting Hand.”

A sharp intake of air.

“Are you sure? I can understanding wanting to take you prisoner, but…”

“If he doesn’t think of it himself, I’ll make sure he does,” Nie Mingjue said, and ignored how Baxia grew warm with rage in his hand. He flipped back his sleeve and dipping his fingers into the blood seeping out of wound in his chest – an arrow that had come too close – and began drawing on his right hand with his left. “There are worse fates out there.”

“But –”

“Normal people die faster,” Nie Mingjue said, choosing the least traumatic of the possible reasons. Wei Wuxian was young; he didn’t need to know the worst of Wen Ruohan’s wretchedness. Nie Mingjue’s cultivation was too high and too compatible with Wen Ruohan’s own: his fate, if he were to go to the Nightless City intact, would not be so easy as death. He was counting on Wen Chao not knowing anything about his father’s most vile preferences, or possibly just being too stupid to think about them. “That’ll be an advantage. But more importantly, losing my cultivation renders me immediately ineligible to be Sect Leader, and my value as a hostage will be significantly reduced.”

Wei Wuxian looked shaken by Nie Mingjue’s practicality. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and then focused again, this time on the bloody array making its way up Nie Mingjue’s arm to the elbow and down to the backs of his fingers. “What are you doing?”

“A legacy,” Nie Mingjue said, even as Baxia screamed in his mind like metal scraping against stone. “For my brother. He’ll need all the help he can get…speaking of which, it’s time for you to go.”

“What?”

“The Wen sect isn’t looking for you, however much you irritated Wen Chao,” Nie Mingjue said. “It’s always been my plan to ensure you got away clearly before I was captured – and it’s nearly time, now. No man can fight an army alone.”

His body burned, exhausted and worn out from the hours of fighting; he’d done as much as he could, and everything else left in him was for Huaisang, who deserved better than to be made Sect Leader too young the way Nie Mingjue had. He had hoped to spare him that, but if he couldn’t do that much – he could at least do this one thing.

This one terrible thing, forbidden by his ancestors, abominable anathema – but there was little Nie Mingjue would not do for his brother, and he had faith even if he had no hope.

Baxia was fighting him over it, resistant and rebellious in a way she hadn’t been since the first time he’d mastered her – the first time he imposed his will on hers, making the inexorable bend before him. They had been partners after that, and that was how he preferred it; but in the end he was the master, as it had to be, and she could not stop him.

“You should go,” he said again to Wei Wuxian. “If you get caught, what’s the point?”

Wei Wuxian’s hands were shaking, but he nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if he were responsible for this somehow. “Thank you.”

And then he was gone.

What a ridiculous young man.

Baxia was biting him, causing his palm to bleed, trying to mess up his design – urging him to fight instead, to fight kill slaughter a way out, any way out.

“I’ll try,” he yielded enough to promise her. He needed to stay on her good side, after all; the array wouldn’t work without her. “I’ll give it a try, with all my strength.”

He did.

It wasn’t enough.

No man can fight an army.

In the end, he’s forced down on his knees, as he’d expected, Wen Chao standing in front of him at a more-than-sufficient distance as if he was afraid Nie Mingjue would leap up and stab him even with four people and suppression array fierce enough to bring down a ghost general holding him down.

He was probably right.

“You’re a coward,” he told him, and Wen Chao laughed nervously. “A coward, and a fool.”

“Well, he caught you, didn’t he?” Wang Lingjiao snapped, her voice shrill with nervousness, and a single glare was enough to have her cowering backwards. “He did! Wen-er-gongzi, you’re a hero!”

No one believed her, not even Wen Chao, but with an effort he puffed himself up anyway. “You shouldn’t have stood against my Wen sect,” he said, aiming for lofty and mostly coming off as cheap. “This is a just punishment.”

The Wen sect would paint the ground blue and the sky green if it got them what they wanted, and Nie Mingjue snorted in disgust, closing his eyes for a moment to find the trigger for the array painted onto his saber arm.

It burned.

Baxia, kicked across the room to get her away from him, seethed. Still not assuaged, still unhappy, still rebellious – but he did try to escape. It wasn’t his fault that he was only human.

It burned.

“Wen Zhuliu,” Wen Chao ordered, as Nie Mingjue knew that he would. “Let’s see how the esteemed Sect Leader Nie likes it when there’s nothing left of his oh-so-great cultivation. When he’s nothing.”

It burned.

Nie Mingjue smiled through the pain, baring his teeth at the cautious approach of Wen Zhuliu. “No matter what I am,” he said, “I am enough to terrify your nightmares.”

“Not for long,” Wen Chao shouted, which was admission enough. “Wen Zhuliu! Do it!”

Nie Mingjue’s cultivation was usually like a mighty river, rushing through his veins – to feel it spill out of order, pouring out of his body and into the array in his arm, was painful to the extreme, like bleeding out but worse. But it had been long enough, he had distracted them long enough.

Nie Mingjue hoped that it would be enough.

By the time Wen Zhuliu put his hand on his shoulder, reaching down for his dantian, the river had become little more than a trickle.

Wen Zhuliu’s stone face cracked in two.

“What? What is it?” Wen Chao demanded, realizing something was wrong from the look on his retainer’s face. “What did the bastard do?!”

“I don’t know,” Wen Zhuliu said slowly. “But – his cultivation. There’s almost nothing left of it, and his meridians are all burned and twisted…his golden core is faint enough to be almost hollow.”

“That’s impossible,” Wen Chao scoffed. “Everyone knows how powerful Sect Leader Nie is! Even my father…what did he do? How did he – why did he –?”

He stopped, shook his head.

“It’s a trick,” he decided. “Do it anyway. I want to make sure there’s nothing left of him –”

There was a scream.

It sounded like metal against stone, harsh and ringing and shrill; it sounded like rage.

It sounded like hope.

Nie Mingjue smiled, a real smile his time, and shut his eyes.

Everyone else in the room turned to look.

It was the last mistake they made.

Nie Mingjue only opened his eyes again when a hand landed on his shoulder and fiercely shook him as if he were a disobedient kitten, and when he opened his eyes there was a woman glaring death down at him. She was tall, her features more fierce than beautiful, and she was dressed only in blood and guts.

“I knew you’d be lovely,” he said.

She smacked him in the face, hard enough that his head was ringing, and snarled wordlessly at him. There was nothing but rage in her face, in her eyes; the array he had used to give her every ounce of the cultivation he had built up for years, and most of his life-force besides, was forbidden for a reason – it would unleash something terrible into the world.

Something that knew no restraint, no mercy, only the desire to kill –

Well, in theory.

A small smack on the head was very much the least that Baxia could do.

“You’ll take care of Huaisang, won’t you?” he asked her, the remnants of his qi lurching unsteadily within him; he would have a qi deviation sooner rather than later as his body attempted to cultivate at its usual rate with virtually none of the spiritual energy required to do so, and his family did not have a good track record of surviving those – though he’ll be the first of his line to die from exhaustion rather than rage. “He’ll need someone strong by his side, to do for him what needs to be done…to tell him what evil is, in case he can’t figure it out on his own.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem Nie Huaisang has, actually; you’d be surprised,” said Wei Wuxian, who Nie Mingjue had entirely forgotten about, the sound of his voice a sudden shock of surprise.

He jumping down from some rafter where he’d been hiding – planning some sort of insane rescue, perhaps, or maybe just trying to bear witness. He had a flute clutched in his hands, of all things; Nie Mingjue hadn’t even known that he cultivated with music as well as the sword.

“Also,” he added conversationally, “what the fuck was that.”

Baxia hissed at him, a sound like the slow slide of a saber out of its sheath.

Wei Wuxian wisely took several large steps back.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he said, voice suddenly much more polite. “Forgive me my surprise, but – your saber just cultivated into a guai.”

“I wasn’t expecting her to get there this quickly,” Nie Mingjue said, nodding. “I’d been counting on them taking her back to the Nightless City…”

“Where she’d be able to use the resentful energy to cultivate into a guai, and therefore act as a weapon against the Wen from the inside,” Wei Wuxian said, nodding. He was really very clever, figuring out that Nie sect sabers could use resentful energy like that, in a way humans could not. Or, well, should not. “Except she really, really wanted to kill everyone here before they hurt you, so she did it faster.”

Baxia hissed again.

“What?” Wei Wuxian said, lifting up his flute defensively. “Am I wrong?”

She jabbed a finger at Nie Mingjue, who swayed a bit from the sheer force of it even though she hadn’t put any spiritual energy into it. So much saber qi…! Guai were truly different from humans.

“I don’t know what you want – fuck. You look terrible, Chifeng-zun.”

“That would be the blood loss,” Nie Mingjue agreed. “Possibly the impending qi deviation. Hard to tell, really…what?” he asked, seeing the expression on Wei Wuxian’s face. “You didn’t think this type of array is something you’re supposed to survive, did you?”

“But you’re not angry!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed, already reaching out to start transferring spiritual energy into him. It wouldn’t be enough. “You’re not – you’re empty.”

Nie Mingjue nodded.

“You gave her everything you had…no wonder she was able to cultivate into humanity,” Wei Wuxian said, and there it was again, that ridiculous admiration. “Mistress Saber, is the only thing wrong with him the lack of qi?”

Baxia jerked her head. If Nie Mingjue lived as something other than a comatose vegetable, he’d have to teach her to properly talk, assuming that guai were capable of that. They weren’t like yao, which had once been animals or plants and familiar with the generalities of things such as eating or breathing; guai were formed from the non-living, and had never known such simple things as mere words.

He missed their connection.

If he had any qi left, he would be able to figure out what she was thinking behind that flat expressionless face that had not yet figured out how to convey anything other than rage.

If he wasn’t going to die, he’d get to see the terrible, wonderful things she would do at his little brother’s side – he’d have to be sect leader now, yes, but he wouldn’t need to change himself, contort himself into something he wasn’t, to have the strength to hold it.

He would have liked to have seen it.

“Chifeng-zun? I know something that might help stop the bleed of your qi. But it’s…unorthodox.”

Nie Mingjue waved a hand, consenting; the alternative was death, so why not?

Wei Wuxian lifted his flute to his lips and began to play.

Much later, Nie Mingjue wakes up in the Unclean Realm, Nie Huaisang at his side and Baxia having apparently learned to properly scowl, and – yes.

No matter any of Wei Wuxian’s complaints, it was a worthwhile trade.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #wei wuxian #my fic #my fics #listen this was SUPPOSED to have more NHS #it just decided to go elsewhere #hamelin-born #worthwhile trade

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nothisis-ridiculous · 3 years

Text

Take Me Home Now

Chapter Two: The Violence Causes Silence

Set after the events of ME3.

A rewrite. Ao3.

FemShepxKaidan

"I never thought I'd see the mighty M-77 in the flesh, let alone hold one," the graveled voice silique over Mary's bedside, pointing the weapon harmlessly at the wall miming the clicking of the trigger with a soft pew. The corner of his wrinkled smile pulled tightly, white teeth freed in a short chortle.

"The damned thing almost killed me too!" The tenor of his voice booming across the room drawing momentary attention to himself.

Amber eyes returned to the woman that breathed gently beneath the single sheet covering her, "if only the shot were better. It's a shame to see a beautiful weapon mishandled."

The Commander's eyes shot open, "it's not a toy."

"A toy it is not," he countered softly in direct contrast to her gruffness, "it's a very serious weapon. Hard to get a hold of unless you have the right channels."

"Or the wrong ones."

"You've got me there," he murmured gently, "but I don't have you pegged for that type."

"What do you know about me?" The statement a test.

"Next to nothing, besides your bad aim."

The relaxed manner of his statement regulated the growl in her throat into a gentle rumble. The man at her bedside was a strange sort of familiar but annoyingly endearing. Probably the sole reason he wasn't knocked aside and that she was not halfway out the door. Well, if not for the half dozen other figures and said man possessing her weapon. It would have been easier to continue her ruse, eyes fluttering closed at the thought.

The figure chuckled, "your acting is as terrible as your aim. If you think that can fool me."

He gave her the time to shuffle upright, allowing her the space needed to feel out her scalp. Fingertips gently touching the tender ring left inches about her right ear, pale lips turning into a nearly imperceptible frown. He resisted the urge to clap on comforting hand on her shoulder and to pull her in. While he would never ask a woman's age, he guessed her to be in the same group as his son. The same burden rested in her eyes as had his son's: one among many he mourned for. Among the many, each around him mourned for. The war well over, but not without a hearty cost. This strange camaraderie drew him to this stranger.

"Military brat?" The guess was easy enough; she held herself uptightly. Besides, only a trained soldier could walk out of that hideout with barely a scar.

"No, but enlisted at eighteen. Parents were colonists, the Alliance-"

The awkwardly heavy tube vibrated in her weak arms, adrenaline crashing as the reality of her situation caught up with the teenager. She was fucked. Not fun fucked, but her life was about to end fucked. It hadn't even moved the Batarian she had struck with all of her might. The ill-placed blow barely skittered against his pauldrons.

The alien turned slowly, a sick smirk crossing his strangely wrinkled skin.

The creature yanked the metal tube from her grasp, Mary by some miracle, was fast enough to avoid the arc of his wild swing. Her mother and father went down with a thud. Mary somehow undaunted rushed forward without thought; just inches from the alien, she was yanked backward, a knee cruelly pushing her into the tile floor of her kitchen. Unseen hands pulling her hair and head upwards.

"You'll remember this, human," the voice hummed, twirling the pipe around the elbowed end pointed at the ground. Nudging the groaning male at his feet.

The first motion was a blur of blood covering the kid's face, running and spraying into her screaming mouth. The splitting of the second skull started and ended in silence.

The intrusive memory required a shake of her head to stave off; she had not thought of that event in years.

"I joined the Marines, did a few tours. Ended up here for the final conflict," Mary gulped down, trying to finish off with a change of subject, "you?"

Whether or not he noticed her foray into another realm, he didn't act as if he had. "I had retired years ago, but with the Reapers coming to Earth, it was my duty to return to service."

There the conversation ended. A long minute of silence passing between the two parties.

"So, what encouraged you to take out a raider encampment alone," he pressed with misplaced joviality.

The Commander stumbled, balked, "I wasn't alone."

You're fucking pathetic.

Pain seared across her cheek, requiring her hand to assuage it.

"Oh," he winced behind the soft utterance, "you did something good, recruit. They were an absolute menace-" He stopped, sensing the words fell on an empty mind.

But he was determined not to let this conversation continue in such complete disarray, "I'm sorry for not introducing myself earlier; I'm Roy."

"Roy?"

"I hesitate to go by a formal chain of command, and I'm not entirely sure if," he paused, attempting to clear this without sounding like a power-mad dictator, "communication since the Reaper threat has been sparse at best. My men have, and I have been operating by the seat of our pants for months. We heard London was the final push, by little more than rumor mind you; upon arriving we had failed to connect with head brass before the threat had mysteriously been defeated. Obviously, order has yet to be restored."

"What's the status report?"

The old man gave her a slow grin, "Comms are down, and with so many grounded on Earth, supplies are hoarded. Some Alliance and Council Forces are trying to keep the peace, but that is problematic when food, shelter, and ammunition aren't exactly plentiful. Some are... preferring to act selfishly."

"I suppose it doesn't take much to stir up old grudges," she remarked wryly, "where does that leave you?"

"We're interested in peace, rebuilding. We won't survive if we squabble now, the Reapers may have well defeated us."

Shepard shook her head, "let's hope some of the others share your integrity."

Some legacy she left behind, bringing together most of the galaxy just to have it crumble moments after the greatest threat was over. They were meant to be the best the galaxy had to offer.

"Who are you?"

A failure if the first snappy comment in her mind was to be believed. She didn't want to be Shepard at this moment. Mary didn't feel up to the name, to the adorning praise she had received, the lofty and quite impossible accomplishments she had earned. Shepard had saved the galaxy, but she couldn't save a mother and child. She was the part that had killed 304,942 Batarians. The countless others caught in the crossfire and the ones that she had failed impress with the gravitas of the impending culling. Selfishly, the loss of her crew weighed heaviest; what were a few souls compared to a few hundred thousand others?

Shepard was too heavy of a name.

Shepard didn't deserve this pathetic fate.

Shepard should be dead.

"Jane."

"Jane?" the man mocked impetuously.

The joke was on him. Mary was hardly any less generic. Instead of a response, it earned the old man a slow eye roll. One practiced from years of reacting to the impressed way most reacted to her first name, with the legacy "Shepard" held a boring name wasn't expected.

With a sigh, 'Roy' propelled himself upright, first glancing over the men huddled in the far corner, then to the door. He stalked away without a word, leaving Jane in his wake. Weaponless and quite confused.

"Well, aren't you getting up? I have something to show you."

Catching her before her mouth could form the words, with a frown, she pushed from the cot. Throwing a tentative glance at the men as she picked a path around them. They seemed to pay her no mind but nodded at the older gentleman as he walked by. The group had a couple of guns between them, but they were left against the wall. Close but in no obvious state of threat.

"That worried about little old me?" she mused in the three quick steps to catch her guide.

"We did find you in a raider base," his grin drew across his wrinkled face slowly, "but it was the supplies I was worried about. We hold a tentative peace."

"Peace, with who?"

If Jane had waited another moment, the noise from beyond the balcony would have answered a now pointless question. She strode to the ledge, overlooking the huddled masses. The number was easily under fifty souls, comprised mostly of humans -omitting a few asari, one salarian, and two turians in the mix. They huddled in small groups in the large courtyard provided by the open-air mall. A circular fountain, now placid, took up the center of the space, but only the Salarian lingered by the stagnant water running their hands over the clear surface of the water.

"How long ago were the Reapers destroyed?"

"A week."

"How long have I been here?"

"A day and some change."

Jane nodded, gripping the railing, "you're lucky this place wasn't destroyed."

"That's a word for it, damned lucky; the place has an atrium," he settled beside Jane, "beside our luck, we need to figure out how to feed everyone quickly."

"Although the Turians will still find a way to complain about their grub," she remarked cooly," then I brought a Quarian onboard, and I never heard the end of it."

Roy regarded her throughly, his curiosity was piqued, but he wouldn't push it. The woman had things she wanted to hide, and he would have to accept that for the time being. For now, he let her contemplate, allowing her the moment to hold something resembling a smile. Let the hardships of the situation come back slowly; neither of them needed the reminder of the losses they had endured. It would only get more difficult with time.

"Just don't leave out the east end. It makes this paradise just a little less idyllic."

Jane looked at him curiously but dropped it, "did you bring these people together?"

"As I said," he stated with a nod, pushing away from the balcony and beckoning her with a wave of his hands, "we arrived as what I could guess was the final push. There were a few wandering, dumbstruck. Others, like you, needing help."

He clipped down the frozen escalator, "I lost a lot of men getting to London. My unit of fifty quickly turned to fifteen, and we were lucky. Rather than join the intense fighting, we rounded up who we could. We've held out here since. It's becoming necessary to leave more often, but it's also getting more dangerous."

He rounded into the large chamber, with Jane on his heels.

"Lieutenant."

The sentiment echoed around the room, and the dulled faces brighten considerably. The other races with practiced coolness played at aloofness, though he had their rapt attention. The woman with him was a nobody, a newcomer, but he was important to each body in the room.

"LT?" Jane murmured, catching a moment of his ire.

A small figure streaked for the man, immediately whirled into the air with a fluidity she hadn't believed the man capable of. The girl squealed, clinging tightly to his thick neck. Her giddy laughter feeling out of place in the dower mood that stagnated around them. Jane looked away from the exchange, uncomfortable with the child. She wasn't exactly the kid sort... or one that should be left unsupervised with one.

Finally tired of being thrown about, the child put her hands on his cheeks, growing deathly serious, "I'm hungry, do you have food?"

Her parental figure admonished her from afar.

"Remember, we only eat when it is mealtime," he spoke gently to the mousy girl, setting her down promptly, "you'll grow too fast if you eat all the time. This old man can hardly lift you as is!"

"Fine," the child puffed, "only because I like playing with you."

The girl's eyes bored into Jane, giving the woman a cross look before returning to her disappointed Father.

"Why bring me here?"

Jane finally spat out, angry that she had been played. Angrier that it was working.

"I'm not above a little manipulation to get you to stay," his gaze remained on the girl, only slowly returning to the blue-eyed woman behind him.

"You can't know I won't fuck this up," she returned solemnly, "or be sure of who I am."

Roy's face hardened, "be practical. What will you do once your gun runs out of clips? You don't have armor. You don't have food."

Jane glared at him sharply, but was it being told no or being presented with logical advice that bothered her more?

"Go, if you like. I won't stop you," he shoved the gun into her hand, "I really won't. But neither can you come back."

"I-"

"Or you can try it out for a bit, get your bearing here. It's better than rotting or ending up with a bad crowd," he breathed out sharply," and don't start with that bullshit all over again. If you have that gun, you obviously know how to use it... and I could use, need, someone that can handle a gun. The rest can wait."

His change of tactics was noted, if she had tried to guess what sent his words reelings she would bet on regret. It was the first concrete sign of pain she had read from the man. It clouded his judgment of her, of whatever he thought she could do to help him. To help the community he was building. It was a noble pursuit; for that reason alone she had to take herself from it. Those around the Commander had the habit of getting killed.

"I'm not-"

"Cut that shit too, Recruit! What you've done previous to this point isn't important to me. Nobody gives a shit about your record- what you can do now matters. Being alive later for whoever claims your sorry ass is what matters."

#mass effect fanfiction #femshep x kaidan #shenko #mass effect #mass effect spoilers #take me home #fanfic #kaidan alenko #commander shepard

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alarawriting · 3 years

Text

52 Project #36: Escape from Sonnebend

Trigger warnings: This is a story about Meg. (Supervillain protagonist of my WIP novel, and the main character of story #18, “Thirteen”.) It does not have as much triggering content as the last story about her did, but Meg herself is triggering content. Story contains mentions of rape and torture, bioengineered diseases and horrible deaths. Also, being a victim of awful things doesn’t stop Meg from being a terrible person.

Title is shit and I may change it later.

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It’s been three days since anyone has ordered her to go anywhere, a week since she overhead two of the scientists talking about the future. Apparently Bush lost the election, and they expect Sonnebend to be shut down. Probably, the entire black ops agency that allows Sonnebend to exist will be shut down before Bill Clinton comes into power. She’d be eager to see it, except that she knows they’ll never let her go free. If Sonnebend is shut down, either they’ll send her to a different prison, keep her around to heal elderly politicians and work on their bioweapons… or they’ll kill her.

Activity has been winding down since mid-November. Now it’s mid-December and things are almost dead. High-powered researchers and administrators are taking their Christmas vacations. Meg doesn’t know if she’ll be alive when they come back. Are they moving their project to another location, or is it shutting down entirely? She doesn’t know if they know yet. She knows for a fact they’re not telling her.

Do they need to keep it open? They’ve got what they want.

She lays on the bed in her cell, because hiding under the bed doesn’t help. If she’s laying on the bed when the guards want to rape her, they’ll do it, and if she’s hiding under the bed, they’ll drag her out, beat her, and then do it. There’s no point to it. No point to trying to protect herself. No point in trying to protect anyone else.

Christmas is coming, but Meg strongly suspects she won’t live long enough to see it. Not like it matters. She remembers her last Christmas with David, the two of them in the tiny apartment on the 11th floor, a living tree that was heavy as fuck to carry but she’d gotten it up there with its pot and its soil, and she’d put it in the window so it would get sunshine, which meant they didn’t get any in the small common room because the tree was blocking it. David had experimented with chemical lights, blues and reds and greens and whites that ran on oxygen, slowly, and they’d covered the entire apartment with them, lights around every window they could see and lights around every door and lights criss-crossing the ceiling. She’d taken the drugs he was cooking up in order to test them, and as soon as she’d determined that they wouldn’t poison anyone, she’d let herself experience the high, giggling like the teenager she’d been as she lay back on the floor and pretended the ceiling lights were stars, making up fake constellations like The Butthole and Zeus’ Balls. All that December, she’d made cookies, pizzelle and horn cookies and Christmas-shaped iced sugar cookies and traditional New York black and white cookies, and eaten most of them because David had had a chronic low appetite and not much taste for sugar anyway. And then on Christmas she’d given him a Nintendo and a couple of games, and he’d given her a dozen CDs and Stuffy, a stuffed white and gray cat.

In August of the following year, the Special Service killed David, in his bedroom, unarmed. His blood ended up all over Stuffy. Meg never washed it out. His DNA embedded in her plush fur would comfort Meg when she cuddled Stuffy at night; it was a memorial no ordinary human would respond to, except perhaps in the abstract, but Meg could feel David’s DNA in the splatters of his blood. Slowly decaying – there wasn’t a lot of DNA in blood in the first place, since red blood cells don’t have nuclei, and it doesn’t last forever. But it was still there, the last time she saw Stuffy. In the townhome she shared with Tara, in her bedroom.

Is Tara still there? Is any of her stuff still there? It’s December. She was kidnapped in April. The billing service would probably have continued to pay the rent, but if Tara had moved out, Meg’s checks wouldn’t be enough to keep the lease.

Does it matter? Does any of it matter? She’s never getting out of here alive, is she? She’ll never see Stuffy or any of her other things or Tara or the apartment again.

She wants to cry, but she can’t. There’s no safety here, nowhere they can’t see her.

Four diseases, two viruses and two deadly bacteria, tailored to strike only Proximas. They’ll breed in the presence of catalysine, or they’ll look for the Proxima gene and insert themselves into the DNA there, breaking it in a way that will slowly poison them. They gave her no choice, but that’s a lie, there are always choices. She could have found a way to kill herself. She could have forced them to trigger the bomb around her neck. She could have waited until they had her in the sealed room, with the collar off, tasked with healing some important old man… and she could have killed whichever man she was supposed to fix that day, and forced her captors to shoot her.

But Meg wants to live. She did something terrible because she wanted to live, and she didn’t want to be tortured. She made those diseases. They gave her no freedom to do anything but study, genetics and biology and chemistry, on top of her medical school training and the training David used to give her in neurobiochemistry, and she used that knowledge to do what they asked. Because she knew they would check.

She remembers the blue homeless man vomiting, over and over, until he had no electrolytes left in his body and he died. The prostitute who could make a light show dance over her body, shaking and seizing until she was dead. The old man whose power mitochondria went into impossibly high gear, burning up all the phosphate and magnesium in his body to make too much ATP, and then his telekinetic power going out of control and tearing him apart. The homeless teenager crying as the poisons built up in his body. All her fault, and there will be thousands more, maybe millions, if her captors release the diseases they made her make into the population.

She hates herself, but she wants desperately to live, because she knows how to undo them all. She can immunize her people. She can. If she can get out of here alive. But the collar that suppresses her powers has a bomb in it. If she were to leave this place with it still around her neck… it would be the last thing she ever did.

There’s a click in the lock. Meg doesn’t look. She has no power over what’s going to happen, and if she turns her head to look, if she sits or stands up, if she visibly braces herself… then they’ll know she cares. They’ll know they’re hurting her, they’re frightening her. And she won’t give them the satisfaction… not until she can’t help herself, anyway. Without access to her powers, she only has a normal human ability to control herself.

“Get up,” a harsh female voice says.

Well. Small mercies. This isn’t going to be a rape, most likely. And they don’t torture her much anymore, not since she started cooperating. Torture doesn’t really work to get information – she knows that well, having tried it several times when she was a teen thug working for drug lords – but it works very well to terrorize people into doing as they’re told. But she’s been doing as she’s told. So it probably won’t be that.

It could be the execution she’s been expecting, but even if it is, there’s nothing she can do about it.

Meg gets up. Slowly, but not so slowly that the guard will decide she’s being insolent and shock her. The collar suppresses her powers, and it keeps her from escaping because of the bomb, but it’s also got electroshock capabilities, that all the guards can trigger by remote any time they want to. Electroshock’s how they captured her the first time – they went after her with the Special Service, the cops in hardsuits that her powers can’t get through, and the Special Service shocked her over and over, until her powers couldn’t handle keeping her conscious, and then while she was unconscious they put the collar on her neck. Since then, they’ve been able to shock her any time they want to, and they use it, frequently. Especially when they think she’s not being deferential enough.

She’s a former street kid and assassin for gangsters. She was living on her own since the age of 17. She went to superhero school with people who hated her, who’d fought her – and lost—when she was a supervillain. And she’s from Brooklyn. None of this lends itself well to respecting anyone’s authority or being deferential; she gave that up when she was thirteen and traded in a life as a Catholic school girl for a life in the criminal underworld. So when she first got to Sonnebend, they shocked her a lot.

She’s learned, though. Meg keeps her hate and her rage and her desire to commit bloody murder out of her eyes, out of her body language. If she ever has the chance, everyone who works here will die… but she’ll never have the chance, and she knows it.

The guard’s a black woman, head shaved, muscular. What progress America has made, Meg thinks bitterly. Now you can be a government thug and torturer even if you’re female and black! The guard motions her out the door, where there’s a second guard, this one a generic bland-looking dark-haired white man like practically every other guard in this place. “Keep moving,” the black woman says.

“Where are you taking me?” Meg asks. “What’s going on?”

“Keep your mouth shut,” the black woman says, but doesn’t shock her.

They’re taking her to her execution. She’s sure of it. Two guards usually escort her when she is taken anywhere, but she doesn’t recognize either of these two, and they’re not walking her in the right direction to be going either to the labs or the chamber with the one-way glass where she heals powerful old men, collar off but guns trained on her outside the chamber where she can’t see.

For a moment, Meg considers the possibility of killing these two guards. Even without her powers, she can fight; the absurd things she can do when she has her powers, the power-jumps, extending her arms, making tentacles, all that kind of thing… those are icing on the cake. All she needed to do to learn martial arts at master level was to find a dojo where the sensei had advanced skills and the urethane on the wooden floor had worn away enough that she could reach into her sensei with her powers and copy what he was doing down to the level of specific nerves firing and muscles contracting, and now she’s an expert. She could, maybe, grab the white guy, use judo to throw him into the black woman, then kick both of them in the jaw hard enough to snap their necks.

But what good would it do? She sees no evidence that they’re carrying keys that could unlock the collar; usually only a couple of specific people carry those keys, which have a distinctive appearance and are too large to hide in a pocket, and they wait for her in the chamber rather than walking around the base with them. She can’t get out, and any one of the guards can trigger the electroshock remotely, without even being near her, so she can’t escape. And if escape isn’t possible, what’s the point to killing these guys? It might make her feel better, for a few moments, but their friends will blow up her head, so it won’t help.

So she walks, with the white guy in front and the black woman behind, down a corridor she’s never traveled before. And probably never will again.

There’s a checkpoint, right before a door outside. The guard at the checkpoint looks up. “Where’s she going?”

“Where you think?” the black woman says, and hands him a sheaf of paper.

The checkpoint guy – another generic white dude, with sandy blond hair instead of black – looks at the papers, and then chuckles. “So I guess Williams and Becker aren’t getting a piece tonight, huh,” he says, and confirms what Meg suspects. Those are her execution papers. The guards who rape her nearly every night aren’t going to have the chance to tonight, because she’ll be dead.

Once again she considers killing them all. It won’t save her life, but at least it’ll take down a few of them with her. Once again she lets it go. Maybe, if she has a chance while she’s outside, since it looks like they’re taking her outside to do it. But she wants to see the sun again. If they’re going to bring her outside to kill her… then at least she won’t die in this nightmare building, where she hasn’t seen so much as a window since she was captured.

Is there snow outside? She doesn’t even know where Sonnebend is; no one’s ever told her what state they’re in, and with no windows, she can’t look at the sun and plants and try to guess. It could be Texas. It could be Florida. It’s probably not either since there aren’t enough guards with Latino names, but maybe it’s North Dakota. Maybe it’s Indiana. She has no way to tell.

The white guy with her chuckles, just a second later than you’d expect, like he’s not a native speaker and took a moment to parse what was just said. The black woman doesn’t. Stone-faced, she takes back the sheaf of papers. “Get moving,” she says to Meg, motioning her toward the door.

Outside, they’re behind the building. There’s a dumpster, and a loading dock, a short distance away. The black woman makes Meg walk in the opposite direction, along a wall with no windows or doors in it, nothing but unbroken beige brick. It’s cold; Meg’s breath makes clouds in the air. But there’s no snow. In the distance there’s grass and trees, but where they’re walking, there’s nothing but concrete. Meg stares hungrily at the grass and trees, at the sun in the sky, at the clouds overhead and in front of her mouth, as if she can make up for eight months of never seeing them by looking at them really hard, right now.

“Kneel down,” the black woman orders, and the tears Meg hasn’t shed in months well up. Not for herself. She has this coming. She may have tried to reform – first by being a superhero, then by becoming a doctor – but she’s always been a terrible person. She murdered her father, and then she became a murderer for hire, and then she’d helped David design drugs, and then she’d been a murderer again. She’d been a vicious jealous bitch around her first boyfriend, and had seduced her second, a man three times her age, just so she could take him away from her mentor. And then she’d gone to medical school, she’d tried to be a better person, but they’d kidnapped her and made her make diseases and because she was too weak to stand up to torture, many, so many, people will die. She’ll never have a chance to undo what she had done, to protect the Proximas of the US, or the world, against the engineered plagues she was terrorized into creating.

“Oh, you gonna cry now?” the black woman said.

“Fuck you,” Meg snarled through the tears. “I know you’re gonna kill me, so just do it.”

The woman sighed like she was at the end of her patience. “Kneel down, girl.”

“No. Shoot me standing up. I’m not gonna kneel to any of you anymore.”

“Have it your way,” the woman says, and points her gun at Meg.

It goes off, a deafening sound, but nothing that happens after that makes any sense. Meg sees her own body topple backward behind her, turning in time to see it fall, but she hasn’t been hit. There’s no pain. Is she a ghost? There’s her own bloody, headless corpse on the ground, and the black woman and the white man dragging the body off, but the black woman is also still here, tapping her foot.

“What—”

“Figure it out yet?” the black woman asks, and turns blue. The azurin mutation. In a small percentage of Proximas, melanin converts to azurin instead, and the person ends up blue. White people turn pale blue, with blue or green or purple hair, and black people turn deep blue, with blue eyes and blue hair. The buzzcut vanishes, replaced by a bright blue Afro that in shape and fluffiness looks like it came straight out of Cleopatra Jones. The woman’s face also changes, subtly, small aspects of eye shape and cheekbone placement altering, so she looks similar to the woman she was before, but not the same. Like sisters, or cousins. Except that one of them’s blue. Which means Proxima.

“You’re a Proxima?” Meg asks. She can’t quite believe this is really happening. She can still see the brown woman with the buzzcut and the dark-haired white man dragging her own corpse toward the corner of the building. Is this like Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge or something?

“Sure fucking am,” the blue woman says, and puts out her hand. “Shadow. Illusionist. And you’re Megamorph, the bio-controller.”

Meg has never heard her power referred to as bio-control, but it makes sense. Any organic tissue she’s touching, she can do nearly anything to, and any organic tissue she can reach through an organic channel, like a wooden floor or a shaggy wool carpet, it’s the same as if she’s touching it. She takes Shadow’s hand, tentatively. “Why… if you’re an illusionist, couldn’t you have told me what you were doing to begin with?” The tears are still in her eyes. Angrily, she wipes them away.

“Conserving power. I have to create the illusion of what they expect to be happening, and hide what we’re actually doing. The more you move around, the harder it is. Now kneel down. I was serious about that part.”

“Why?”

“Hard to rescue you if you’re missing a head,” Shadow says, and pulls off her belt something that looks almost, but not exactly, like the keys that unlock Meg’s collar.

“Those don’t look right. Are you sure they’ll work?” Meg hates that she sounds plaintive, almost whiny… but if Shadow’s here to rescue her, she really doesn’t want to get her head blown up on the verge of freedom.

“Tested them already. They’ve got some collared corpses in the pit around the corner.”

There’s a pit around the corner full of dead bodies. This doesn’t surprise Meg in any way – it makes perfect sense – but it horrifies her, hitting her in a nerve she’d have thought burnt out by all the horror she’s endured. Her knees go out from under her, which she manages to make look as if she’s kneeling like Shadow told her to, rather than that she’s half collapsing.

Shadow puts the key to the collar. There’s a clicking sound. Meg holds her breath despite herself.

And then the collar falls to the ground.

It works by magnetic induction, suppressing the part of her brain that controls her body’s production of catalysine, and suppressing the part that allows her to perceive and control her powers. Stopping the magnetic induction doesn’t instantly replenish her body’s catalysine, and without the catalysine, she doesn’t yet have any powers to perceive and control. So she doesn’t feel any different. “My powers will come back, right?” she asks, knowing it’s a stupid question – she knows how the collar works, she knows how Proxima powers work probably better than anyone. She knows they’ll come back. But at the moment, she feels painfully young, and not like an expert on anything. She wants Shadow to reassure her the way a mother might reassure a child.

Shadow nods, her expression gentle. “Of course they will,” she says. She reaches a hand down and helps Meg to her feet. “We need to get out of here.”

“Wait.” Meg takes a deep breath. She doesn’t want to admit to this, but she won’t let people die for her pride. “Do you know if… that pit, are there any of the victims there? The experimental subjects, of the bio-engineered diseases?”

“I figure that’s probably where they are, yeah,” Shadow says.

“I’m sorry, but… is there any way you can cover me to get in there? I… they made me make those diseases. I have to stop them, but I couldn’t keep samples. It’ll be a lot easier to inoculate people if I can get samples…”

Shadow grins. “Oh, yeah. We knew all about those diseases. That’s why the World Unity Collective decided to rescue you.”

World Unity Collective is Caesar Primus’ group, a supervillain gang dedicated to creating a world where the Proximas of the world unite and take over, which is supposed to bring about a utopia for everyone, Sapiens and Proxima alike. Meg thought it was a stupid idea when she first heard about it, training with Peace Force Tau, and she still thinks so. Proximas are different from Sapiens by exactly one gene, and there is absolutely no reason to think Proximas will treat the world any better than Sapiens have. But she doesn’t care anymore.

Over and over, in her prison, she called out in her mind, begging her mentor to hear her. Suri Chandrasekhar is the leader of the Peace Force, and an incredibly powerful telepath. Suri knew where Meg was going to medical school; if she was paying attention, if she cared, she would know Meg had been kidnapped, and with her powers she should have been able to find Meg… if she was looking. But she hadn’t. No rescue came from the Peace Force. And right now, Meg has reasons to hate Sapiens – reasons that are illogical, because there are billions of Sapiens and they cannot possibly all be responsible for the torments she’s suffered over the past eight months, but Meg’s reasons for hate are rarely all that logical anyway. If it’s Proxima supremacists who’ve rescued her, then yay for Proxima supremacy.

“I’ll ask you how you knew about the diseases later,” Meg says.

“Yeah. Let’s get this done quick.”

***

The pit’s covered with a tarp. As soon as she peels the tarp back, Meg has to shut off her sense of smell. She hasn’t eaten since the terrible cafeteria-grade scrambled eggs for breakfast, so there’s nothing in her stomach anymore – it’s all moved on to the intestines by now -- but if she had to smell this without her powers, she’d be puking up all of the nothing in her stomach over everything.

It’s not hard to find her diseases. There’s maybe twenty bodies in here, tangled together in a heap, most in a fairly advanced state of rot. All of them are infected. Or were, when they were alive. Apparently Sonnebend doesn’t kill lots and lots of people as a general rule. This isn’t a concentration camp; it’s a research facility, where part of the research is on how to kill people with diseases. And since the people had to be Proximas, that limited the supply; only one in ten thousand people has that one gene that differentiates Sapiens from Proximas. Can’t very well murder five thousand people in testing a disease if you have to screen fifty million to find them.

The viruses are easy. With the machinery of the cells stopped, they’re not replicating, but a lot of them are intact, easy to capture. The bacteria are harder. They’ve been dying since they killed their hosts. But there are a couple of subjects that still have live bacteria. Meg pulls them in and stores them in tiny nodules of fatty tissue in her breast, with no capillaries feeding them so they don’t have much chance to get out into her bloodstream. Not that it would matter; Meg’s powers automatically destroy any organic matter that would trigger an immune response. She can’t get sick. Even at Sonnebend, the fact that they removed her collar every few days so she could heal some politician or CEO or important donor meant that she couldn’t get sick; in the hour or so she had her powers, her body would destroy any potential source of infection. She’s going to have to be more careful to make sure her body doesn’t annihilate these infectious agents before she has a chance to engineer an inoculation or cure than she will to make sure they don’t actually infect her.

She climbs back out of the pit, with Shadow’s help. “I’m done. I’ve got everything I need.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here, okay?” Shadow says, and ten minutes later, they’re in a car parked outside the barbed wire fence, driving away.

“It’ll take them some time to figure out you’re not dead,” Shadow says, driving the car with a cigarette in her hand. “I took back the fake papers for your execution, so they’ll have a hard time figuring out who authorized it, or where I went, or who I even was. If they compare video feed of the outdoors to the indoors, they’ll see me and the fake guy I made walk back through the door but then never show up at the checkpoint right inside, and maybe that’ll give them a clue, but none of their video will have anything real.” She takes a deep drag from the cigarette. Meg wants to warn her about lung cancer and suggest she quit, but she looks up to Shadow too much to be her condescending prick doctor persona.

“What were you doing? Manipulating light?”

Shadow nods. “And sound, but fuck it’s hard. It’s so much easier for me if I just work on the brain. Altering myself and making another dude is almost the limit of what I can do with sound and light, whereas if I’m going in through the brain, I can make people see a full Hollywood spectacular. Aliens shooting laser guns all over the place. An army of Picts with bows and arrows. Whatever I want.”

“That’s really cool,” Meg says, somewhat awestruck. “Doesn’t that mean you really have two powers? Because a psionic illusion power and the ability to manipulate sound and light sounds like it’s two entirely different things.”

Shadow takes another drag on the cigarette. “Used to just be the psionic part. I got fixed up by a guy named Giovanni. Told him I wanted to be able to fool cameras. Closed-circuit cams were getting big around then. It was hard to pull a job when the security guys can see you on the cam, even if they can’t as soon as they get close enough to use their eyes.”

“Wait… this Giovanni guy can give people powers?”

“Yeah, though all he does is give Proximas new powers. He won’t give powers to a Sapien and he’s got some weird rule about what kind of powers he’ll give a Proxima, but what I wanted sounded to him like it’d work with what I already got. Gives me a motherfucking headache if I overuse it. I gonna need a whole fucking bottle of Tylenol tonight.” She laughs.

Meg puts her hand on Shadow’s shoulder. “No, you won’t,” she says. Her power can hurt when she invades people with it, unless she’s working to numb them or make them feel good, neither of which is safe to do while someone is driving… but it only takes a second, barely time for Shadow’s body to register that Meg’s power is inside it, to clear away the tension that’ll lead to a migraine.

Shadow turns her head. “What the fuck you doin’, girl?” she demands.

“I fixed it,” Meg says, beaming. “So you won’t get a migraine. I owe you a lot more than that, but that’s the least I can give back to you.”

For some reason Shadow does not look happy. She rolls her eyes and slumps slightly forward against the steering wheel, which is all right because they’re at a traffic light. “Listen, kid. I know you meant well, and I’m not mad. But you can’t just go doing things to people’s bodies without even telling them, let alone asking them. You gotta ask permission. If it’s a friend or an ally, anyway. I could give a shit, what you do to enemies and Sapiens, but with friends and allies you ask.”

“Oh.” Meg feels terrible. She’s overstepped a boundary she should have remembered, because in Peace Force Tau, Suri told her this, but she’s so excited to have her powers back and so grateful to Shadow and so desperate to show that gratitude, she forgot. “I’m sorry. I, I really should’ve known better, it’s just, I’ve been locked up so long… I’m really sorry…”

“Look, kiddo, forget it. S’alright. No harm done, and I do feel better. Just, remember next time. Ask.” She pronounces the word as “axe”. This makes Meg feel strangely nostalgic. One of her best friends from the days right after she got her powers, a teenage prostitute named Rhonda who was one of the most level-headed people Meg has ever known, used to talk that way. Most of the girls she’d known in those days had, actually. Whereas no one in the Peace Force or medical school would have used anything less than 100% proper English, like back in Catholic school.

***

It turns out Sonnebend is in Minnesota, near the Great Lakes. World Unity Collective headquarters is in Florida. They’re going to drive to Chicago to use something called a “transmat” to teleport to Florida, but lake-coast Minnesota to Chicago in Illinois is still what Shadow calls a “long-ass drive”. “We’d go faster if we had a boat,” Shadow jokes, and shows Meg the route on the map.

There are explanations. Shadow won’t tell her how she knew about the diseases – “you’re not cleared to know that, yet,” she says – but she explains eagerly why Meg was recruited. “We figured, since you created the bioweapons, you’d know how to stop them… and you might be able to stop others they come up with. Or create ones to threaten them with, if they keep pulling this kind of shit.”

“I don’t want to create bioweapons. Not against Proximas, not against Sapiens, not against anybody.”

“I hear you,” Shadow says. “You don’t have to. You do whatever you feel comfortable with, for the cause.”

Shadow talks a lot about the cause. Talks about being thrown out of her home for being a “devil child”, when she was 12 and turning from brown to blue. Talks about the Human Definition Amendment, a thing some conservative Senator has proposed that will define “human”, in the law, to mean “Sapien”, meaning Proximas will essentially legally be wild animals, with no legal protections whatsoever. Talks about Proximas being killed as “witches” in Africa, especially the ones with the azurin mutation, who couldn’t hide being Proximas, and being turned into weapons for the government in Russia and China and who knew where else.

Talks about the Special Service killing unarmed Proximas who are suspected of crimes, and that one hits hard, because that’s exactly what happened to David. His power was to see chemistry at the atomic level, completely useless for fighting, and he was a skinny twenty-something nerd and he wore coke-bottle glasses with a tint because he was photophobic, and he was unarmed, and they’d gunned him down in his apartment, and Meg had only lived because he’d sent her on an errand to find his lawyer. Because she’d assumed, when he said he’d need his lawyer after they arrested him, that of course, that was normal, that was how it worked. She was pretty sure he’d known they were coming to kill him, and had sent her on that errand because they’d have killed her too.

Caesar Primus – it means “Emperor First” and it’s pronounced the Latin way, like “Kaiser”, not like the salad – is, according to Shadow, the smartest and most experienced man on the planet. Meg assumes the experienced part is probably true, because apparently, he is somewhere around 2,000 years old, and was a gladiator in ancient Rome. She’s not so sure about smartest. The guy apparently still believes that Sapiens and Proximas are different species. A lot of people believe that, but mostly they are idiots, or at the very least, they know nothing of science.

He’s also bought into a lot of silly ideas about evolution, or claims he has and teaches them to his people. Shadow tells Meg that Proximas are the next evolution of humanity, superior because they are more evolved, destined to rule over humanity, and will survive instead of Sapiens because they are stronger. Meg can identify five errors in Shadow’s concepts of evolution off the top of her head, without any kind of deep dive, but she says nothing. If Shadow wants her to worship at the altar of Caesar Primus… Meg hasn’t done worship at an altar since she left Catholic school, not for anyone, but for Shadow’s sake, she’ll pretend.

And if it’s true, as Shadow implies, that Primus sent her to go rescue Meg, then she owes him as much for her freedom as she owes Shadow.

***

A transmat turns out to be a platform, where you put in some coordinates, step on the platform, and are instantly somewhere else, on a transmat platform elsewhere. It reminds Meg of Star Trek transporters, but makes more sense – she’d always wondered, how did the transporter beam know how to reassemble when it got where it was going?

The base is in a swamp, and the only ways out of the base are either to wade through alligator-infested waters, or take the transmat. Or fly, she supposes, for those that can do that. Wading would be annoying, but can’t hurt her; neither mosquitoes nor alligators, nor anything else in the water, can cause her any harm. But it’s obvious to her that that’s not going to be true for most people, and it bothers her a little. If the cause is so wonderful and important, why make it so hard to leave the base?

“It’s not to make it hard to leave,” Shadow explains. “It protects us from so-called superheroes, and it means that if you want to go anywhere, you have to take a risk. Keeps you strong.”

“But if you’re going by transmat that’s not a risk.”

“Yeah, but you can’t go anywhere by transmat unless Caesar agrees.”

The building’s far too much like Sonnebend. It’s made of concrete rather than bricks, a big brutalism box in the middle of a swamp, and there are windows all over the upper floors, but it goes down several floors underground. Sonnebend had linoleum tile and World Unity Collective headquarters has concrete flooring, like a warehouse, but either way there’s nothing alive, nothing for her powers to sense through her feet or the canvas shoes she makes herself from rubber and cotton. She’s not going to spend much time here, she can already tell.

“I need to go back to Baltimore,” she tells Shadow. “I don’t know what happened to anything I owned when I was kidnapped.”

Shadow is skeptical. “Do you really need any of that stuff, or do you just have a sentimental attachment to it?” she asks. “Revolutionaries have to be ready to break free of any material possessions, at any time. You can’t have sentiment. And here, your room and board are provided for, and I know with your powers you can make your own clothes whenever you want…”

“I want my medical textbooks,” Meg says. “I was trying to become a doctor when they kidnapped me.”

Now Shadow raises an eyebrow. “You think being a doctor is the best way to serve the cause?”

Meg smiles. That particular smile is the last thing some gangsters saw, once upon a time. “To heal, you need to know intimately how the body works and how everything fits together. That’s also what you need to know to be really creative about hurting people. You know, if it’s going to advance the cause to hurt someone in a particularly creative way.”

That makes Shadow laugh. “Oh yeah, I knew I was right about you. You’re gonna be a fantastic asset to the team, Meg.”

There’s no one else important in the base right now – Primus is apparently in DC, and his other top-ranked minions are away on various missions. No one here but Proximas with low power levels who work as grunts. Thugs, like she was once. The only person here to give permission for transmat use is Shadow, and she’s all in favor of Meg getting her medical textbooks once she understands what Meg can use them for.

Except that Meg’s read them all already. The term had been about to end when she was kidnapped. Her ability to directly sense bodies and how they worked had gotten her through med school in record time – she’d been there a year, and she’d learned two years’ worth in that time – and then Sonnebend had taught her more, because to create the diseases they wanted her to create, or heal the ailments of rich old men, she’d needed to know more. It’d been all she had to do that gave her any kind of pleasure in any way.

She’s not going back for medical textbooks. Shadow the true believer can give up material possessions and eliminate sentiment, if she wants. Meg believes in very little of this bullshit. She just worships Shadow for saving her.

World Unity Collective maintains a transmat in Grand Central Station, and Shadow’s able to advance Meg some cash, since of course she doesn’t currently have an ATM card, a credit card, or checks. Meg takes the subway from Grand Central to Penn Station, and from there the Amtrak to Baltimore, and then a cab to the Johns Hopkins medical school campus.

***

Meg walks down the street to the townhome she used to share with her roommate, breathing in the winter air. She can't stop looking at the buildings, the trees without their leaves, the sun behind the solid wall of white winter clouds. The people. There are so many people and they're so beautiful and they know nothing about the way the world really works, nothing at all. She wants to kill them, to save them, to tell them the truth. To take the men, at least, home and screw their brains out because she's free to choose not to, now. She doesn't do any of that.

She doesn't have the key to her old apartment any more, but the music inside tells her that her housemate Tara is there right now. Meg knocks, hard.

Tara opens the door. "Meg?" she asks, sounding shocked.

"Is my stuff still here?" Meg asks.

"Uh, yeah, yeah, of course. The landlady was just wondering where you were -- she says she's been getting your rent checks in the mail, but she sent us a note about the electric bill going up and you didn't increase the amount you were paying, and she was trying to get hold of you, but I had no idea where you were so I just paid it for you."

"I'll reimburse you." Meg walks into the apartment. She looks around the place. Everything is just as she left it. "Pack up my stuff for me and I'll have movers come get it. I'll pay the landlady for your share of the rent for the next two months."

"What happened to you, Meg? Where did you go?"

How does one explain that one was kidnapped by the government and has spent the past several months being raped, tortured and forced to work on biological weapons? One doesn't. "Something came up."

Stuffy is still sitting on her bed, David’s dried blood still all over her. Dried blood looks brown; she explained the stains on Stuffy as chocolate sauce to everyone in Peace Force Tau. Tara never went into Meg’s own bedroom, so she never had to make that explanation. Meg picks up Stuffy and puts her in her coat. She suddenly wants to cry, but badass supervillains don't cry, so she uses her powers to suppress the urge. She's going to have to figure out somewhere to put her. Obviously she can’t bring a stuffed animal back to a base full of supervillains.

"Meg, are you okay?"

She doesn't look at the Sapien who used to be her friend. "I'm fine," she says shortly, and thinks, No. Not even slightly.

Back on the street, it's cold and crisp and she can walk anywhere she wants. She can walk to a hot dog cart and get a hot dog. So she does. And ice cream. The whole time she was imprisoned she never had ice cream.

Tears sting her eyes again. Stupid that she has to keep using her powers for this. She should be tougher than this. She stopped crying after the first month in prison, never did it again until she thought Shadow was about to kill her. Why is she crying now?

When she was at Sonnebend, she never stopped wishing for her freedom, but she stopped believing or even hoping she would ever be able to walk around on a city street and buy a hot dog ever again. And then Shadow walked into Sonnebend and brought her out like Orpheus freeing Eurydice from Hades, except of course that Orpheus hadn't succeeded in the end. And Shadow did that because Caesar Primus had ordered her to. Most likely. She’d never specifically said, but Meg could read between the lines.

If Primus sent her to rescue Meg, Meg will do anything for him.

Meg knows his ideology is ridiculous. Right now she doesn't care. She'll burn the Sapiens' world down for what they did to her, and she'll enjoy herself doing it. Out of gratitude for the gift of her freedom, she will do anything for the people who saved her.

She’s got financial things to arrange – Meg has a lot of money. Being the most terrifying killer in New York City used to pay really well. She’ll reimburse Tara, get movers to take all her stuff to a storage unit. Buy some clothes – she doesn’t need new clothes, since her powers can reshape the ones she has, but she likes to shop for clothes. She likes to dress up in clothes that make every man around want to fuck her, and maybe she’ll pick some of them out and do it. She hasn’t had sex because she wanted to in eight months. Maybe she’ll fuck away some of the memories of Sonnebend before going back to Primus’ hideout.

And then she’s going to be the most vicious badass she can possibly be, with all the skills she acquired as a teenage assassin and all the knowledge she gained in Peace Force Tau, and Johns Hopkins medical school, and Sonnebend. She’s going to combine it all and she’s going to make Shadow proud of rescuing her, and Primus of telling her to do it. And she’s going to make humanity pay for what they did to her.

#52 project #proximas #cold light #holidays5 #superpowers

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dessarious · 4 years

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The Angel of Death Pt6

Inspired by this Story Starter by @someone-ev

AO3 Prologue Beginning Previous Next

“You can summon Tikki if you put the earrings on.” Marinette frowned in thought. The creature already didn’t like her and given that she did have both the ring and earrings it might consider her using them as proof of her intentions. She wanted answers, real ones, not a combative Kwami trying to figure out an escape plan.

“Is there anyway to ask them to come out without doing that?” Nooroo blinked at her, obviously shocked at the courtesy. A bright smile appeared on their face a moment later.

“Yes! Of course I can do that. Do you want to just talk to Tikki or should I get Plagg too?” She cocked her head at him in contemplation. Were all Kwami this eager to please? Would Nooroo be if they didn’t seem to think she was their master?

“Plagg is the one in the ring?” Nooroo nodded. Basic interrogation tactics said to question them separately and see if their stories and answers matched. But this wasn’t an interrogation and she didn’t have a protocol for simply talking. Dealing with clients yes. Dealing with people trying to kill her yes. Talking absolutely not. “Ask them both?” Nooroo gave her another bright smile before seeming to dive into his broach.

With no idea how long it would take she grabbed a granola bar, a bottle of water, and her laptop out of her bags and settled on the bed to wait. That at least she knew how to do. She started scanning her email to see what contract she should accept next and was researching the different targets when a flash of light interrupted her. Nooroo was back, looking proud of himself, along with the red and black Kwami who both looked extremely annoyed.

“Use us or don’t Hawkmoth but I will not be forced to listen to whatever speach you have to make us understand your intentions.” The red Kwami finally looked up and froze with their mouth open. Obviously they’d had more to say but seeing her stunned it into silence.

“You’re not Hawkmoth.” The black Kwami made it sound like a question so she shook her head. Both of them turned to look at the items on the table and then each other. She wondered if they could communicate telepathically. “What do you want?” Blunt and to the point. She liked this one.

“Plagg! Be nice.” The red one, Tikki she reminded herself, scolded the other but they scoffed.

“We have no idea who she is or what she wants and I’m not even nice to humans I do like.” She really liked this one. Nooroo cleared their throat.

“She has questions about the wish.” Both the other’s glared at him for a moment.

“Nooroo, why would you tell her about that?” Tikki sounded exasperated and Nooroo flinched back.

“It’s not their fault.” All three turned their attention to her. She cleared her throat nervously, not sure how to proceed. “Hawkmoth claimed he could bring my parents back to life when he Akumatized me and I was asking Nooroo about it.” Tikki gasped and when she looked to the Kwami they seemed almost scared.

“You’re the one who defeated my holder.” She just nodded, not sure what response the creature was expecting. “And you must have defeated Plagg’s holder as well.” Another nod. “I’m sure Hawkmoth commanded you to deliver our Miraculous to him so how did you end up with all this?” The Kwami pointed to the objects on the table and she hesitated. Would telling them she was an assassin paid to kill Hawkmoth make the situation better or worse? Worse, definitely worse. Would lying to the creatures make the situation better or worse? Probably worse.

“I killed him.” Plagg and Tikki both looked too shocked to respond. The look they were giving her was similar to one Talia always had when she’d screwed up badly. She had the same reaction as always, she started babbling. “I didn’t know about you when I took the contract. I’ve never seen this type of magic before and I just thought it was a meta or normal magical artifacts until I saw you. I didn’t kill him for your powers.”

“Wait, back up. What contract?” Tikki still looked horrified but Plagg looked thoughtful and she addressed their question.

“The mayor hired me to kill Hawkmoth. I can show you the emails if you want.” Now they were all staring at her with varying levels of wariness, concern, and pity. She didn’t like being looked at like that, it woke her pride with a vengeance. “It’s what I do and I’m the best at it so it’s no surprise that he contacted me to handle things. He certainly chose better than whoever gave you to untrained and untried children.” She expected her words to bring fear or at least disgust, but they all just looked even more concerned.

“Oh you poor thing.” Tikki’s words were followed by all three Kwami coming at her before she could react. Plagg was on top of her head, and was he purring? The other two were on either side of her neck, cuddling into her. What the hell?

“How is this an appropriate response to finding out I’m an assassin?” The words just came out in her confusion and she swore she felt Plagg laugh. Tikki floated in front of her face, giving her a stern look.

“Because child assassins don’t choose their line of work and the fact that you’re so concerned for others being forced into a life of fighting tells me that, no matter how good you are at it, it isn’t what you want in life.” She felt tears at the back of her eyes and looked away from the Kwami as she forced them back. She wouldn’t cry and she wouldn’t dwell on things that couldn’t be changed.

“Will you answer my questions now?” She heard Tikki sigh before the Kwami settled on top of her computer. The other’s stayed where they were.

“What do you want to know?” The creature sounded wary and she knew that no matter what the Kwami would try to persuade her not to make a wish. That didn’t bode well given what Nooroo had told her.

“Nooroo said there would be consequences if you wished for someone to be alive. What kind of consequences?” Tikki’s expression was guarded and the Kwami was studying her before letting out a little huff.

“The Miraculous, specifically the Ladybug and Black Cat, are about balance. Any action must be balanced out. In the case of using our Miraculous to make a wish that balance is triggered suddenly and the repercussions are usually devastating and long lasting. The last time a wish was made the Inquisition was started.” Well that was worse than she’d expected.

“What was the wish?” Plagg’s purring stopped abruptly and she could see tears in Tikki’s eyes. The poor thing looked devastated and before she could think the action through, she picked up the Kwami and hugged them close. Plagg ended up answering.

“The woman was Tikki’s holder and despite being bound to the Kwami of Creation she was plagued by miscarriages. The mental toll it took on her was terrible and in desperation and rage she wished all her children alive and well. Creating six lives ended up costing hundreds of thousands of deaths. The balance had to be maintained not just to the number of lives but the potential good and bad each of them could create. It’s not just about one life, but how that life affects others and the world as a whole.”

Marinette sat in silence, thinking, while Tikki cried. Plagg has said potential good and bad not actual actions. It made her think that it didn’t matter what the person actually did in life but rather what they could have done depending on all their choices, actions, and situations. She was almost certain she knew the answer to her next question, but she could help but hope she was wrong.

“What about wishing someone had never been born? Would it have the same effect?” All three Kwami’s seemed to stop breathing. Great.

“Worse.” Tikki’s voice was quiet and solemn. She just sighed. Why could nothing be easy? Just once in her life she wanted something to go right.

“Who do you hate so much that you’d wish they never existed at all?” Plagg’s question caused her to frown in thought. Hate? She didn’t think about it that way but perhaps he was right to say so. After all didn’t you have to hate someone, at least a little, to believe the world would be better off without them?

“Myself.”

AO3 Prologue Beginning Previous Next

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laufire · 3 years

Text

Supernatural s5

I finished it a little while ago, but I haven’t had the time to make an involved post about it -or watch that much of s6 yet; I’m trying to be Resposible and the time I have has been spent in advancing fics a little bit or answering short asks lol.

-I have really enjoyed this season for the most part, but there’s something I need to get of my chest LOL: all through it, the song “Too Many Dicks (On The Dance Floor)” played in my head xDD. Like, listen, I knew what I was signing up for with this show!! I didn’t expect NOT to find it offensive or regressive on multiple occasions!! But I guess s3-4 must have spoiled me lmao. I’m not saying those seasons are the height of feminism, but if you removed its most important female characters, ESPECIALLY Ruby, the plot of the season would fall apart. That’s not something you can say for s5 and preventing the Apocalypse, just sayin’.

It wouldn’t’ve been that hard to expand Meg’s, Anna’s or the Harvelle’s part (they had good material to go there -Meg as the faithful possibly opening her eyes, Anna as the betrayed and the juror jury and executioner, the Harvelles as normal hunters fighting something way too big for them-, but barely any time and like I said, no incidence in the actual plot of the season). Hell, I’m biased but bringing back Ruby would’ve at least taken care of the problem lol. Or if the show had indulged me and kept Bellamy Young as Lucifer, at least. But everyone with a real say in the plot is a dude, or at least wearing one as a vessel (angel’s conception of gender is clearly different from humans, but in terms of ~~representation the results are the same lbr).

-My constant frustrations with Supernatural’s bigotry-related stuff lol, like I said, I really enjoyed the season (that combination is one of the most frustrating things about the show lmao). Especially Castiel’s plot. The guy has reached Potential Hall of Faves status and that’s hum. A Problem xD

But seriously, he was breaking my heart in all the best ways. His search for God (the Absent Father that the show specifically compared to John añsldkfjasf. This show ISTG!!), his disappointment and sense of betrayal at being let down (he called God Himself “son of a bitch”!!!). I was especially fascinated by his Endverse version -that AU will have its own section lol-, although it resulted in making me reaaaally nervous whenever he was close to an addictive substance :). Like yes, those scenes were lowkey humourous and adorable (like when he drinks shots with the Harvelles and Ellen is fascinated and Jo delighted -... lowkey shipping this too btw. Lowkey shipping Castiel with lots of people-, or his combo with Sam when he got drunk), but also, you know, WORRYING xD

Some of my favourite scenes of his were, predictably, his interactions with Meg or Lucifer in 5x10. The Megstiel scene was SUPER HOT (both their voices are very unf-y lol), I can’t wait to edit it. And having Lucifer call Castiel “a peculiar thing” sure was something xD (although lbr, this Lucifer isn’t keeping with his rebel angel reputation, Castiel is carrying that all by himself smh).

Another scene I couldn’t get out of my head if I wanted to is when he uhhhh... completely LOSES IT and starts beating the crap out of Dean when he was ready to give it up to Michael. “I gave everything for you, and this is what you give me?!?” ooooooof. It was hard to watch, and fascinating and intense. I shamelessly loved it lmfao.

Though my favourite moment of his is one that can only be appreciated when you know certain things about s6. It’s the scene where, unlike everyone else, he shows appreciation for Sam’s plan of sacrificing himself to get rid of Lucifer. Because yes, at this point it’s the only thing that can save the world. But Castiel isn’t saying, “Sam’s life is a small price to pay in comparison”, because he will go into s6 and snatch Sam out of the cage immediately. s5 established Sam got out, so with that in mind, he didn’t bring it up because he didn’t want to create false hope in case he failed, but he backed the plan with the intention of saving Sam anyway. I love that. I love him.

-The entire season was Missing Ruby Hours for me lmfao. Like I said, some of the problems in the season wrt female characters would’ve been at the very least lessened if she’d gotten to be here wrecking havoc. But generally I just miss her and What Could Have Been with her here. I enjoyed some of the crumbs (Sam using the witchcraft skillz he learned from her! Sam immediately knowing Meg isn’t Ruby, unlike Dean! Her knife! The ARCHANGEL GABRIEL referencing her as “the demon Sam chose over his brother”!! The callbacks with Crowley or Brady!!), but I would’ve wanted her here, dammit xD.

-Aaaaand we’re finally getting to Sam, who is without a doubt the star of the season, if you ask me. His plan at the end, to let Lucifer possess him in the hopes he can fight back for just long enough to overpower him and throw them both into the cage, with no hopes for himself? This is the kind of Big Damn Hero stunt I’m a sucker for, I won’t lie. And I love that the show felt the need to confirm he was still alive at the end of the season hehe.

He really Went Through It this season and he held on lmfao. On top of everything (the apocalypse, the guilt of being its final trigger, the addiction recovery, etc.), he also had to deal with Dean’s usual bullshit, which is no small feat xDD. Like, sure, from an audience stand-point all those things are interesting (some fave/the fuck moments are when Dean is obviously peeved that Bobby still supports Sam because he wanted Bobby in HIS corner, or when he has the nerve to say he wants to say yes to Michael because he doesn’t trust SAM not to say yes to Lucifer lmfaoooo), BUT IT’S STILL A FEAT XD

One note: for all the talk about bi!Dean, bi!Sam is so SEEN this season xDD. AFAIC he totally hooked up with that bartender Paul (RIP Paul. At least in your last moments you enjoyed Sam, who’s clearly an energetic, attentive lover 😔). And Crowley refers to Brady as Sam’s demon ex-boyfriend and nobody bats and eye lmfao (that story is so angsty... the parallels to Ruby, how he ingratiated himself with Sam by pretending to have fallen off the wagon... ouch).

-I have mixed feelings on Crowley. On his own, I fell absolutely in love with the guy on his first appearance. A demon that DOUBTS Lucifer and doesn’t kiss his ass?? That wants to get rid of him and do his own thing?? And clearly enjoys ~earthly pleasures to the fullest (his complains about how the other demons ate his tailor had me rolling laksjdfa)? The way he turned the tables on Brady? OFC I love him. OTOH boy, does it annoy me knowing that fandom GLADLY embraced him when they condemned characters like Bela or Ruby for similar things. It’s not his fault so I still like him (he’s like Gabriel in that sense), but it’s annoying!

It also annoys me how Dean Must Be Right All The Time syndrome interacts with him lol. This season Dean decides they can trust Crowley (despite Crowley killing two humans in front of him and getting him beat up by Brady lol), so they can. Next season he decides they can’t, so Castiel will be WrongTM because Dean Says So. Ugggggh xD

-To be fair, however, this season has my fave Dean so far LOL. In the love/hate scale, this one has been almost solely in camp love, barring some of those moments of irksome hypocrisy that he’s so prone to xD.

But there was something about how this season’s plot chipped away at him, you know? For all the traits he has that drive me up the wall or unsettle me, I appreciate a lot of his personality because it makes him a unique and interesting character driving the narrative -his irreverence, his ability to think on the fly and get out of shitty situations, his disbelief. Seeing all of those things under siege this season made me hurt for him in a way I hadn’t anticipated LOL. By the time he was ready to give in to Michael (and I love that what made him step away from that choice was Sam showing a trust in him he patently didn’t deserve lbr), sometimes I felt terribly for the guy.

I also wonder if this season kind of marked like... the beginning of the end for him, narrative-wise? Making him Michael’s vessel (his angel condom) is the kind of thing that turns him from subject into object, and that can doom characters ime. The fact that he ~resigns himself to Sam’s death when his identity as a character came with being His Brother’s Keeper is another slight.

-I continue having mixed feelings about Destiel too LMAO. I’ve decided I’m just going to try to enjoy the good and interesting parts while I can, while trying not to think of future developments that’ll likely sour the ship for me lol.

Because in truth, yeah, I enjoy their interactions a lot here! The Endverse was particularly enjoyable for me (back to that in a moment), but the entire season had a lot of gems. That moment in the finale, when Dean is wounded on his knees after Sam sacrifices himself, and Castiel resurrects and heals him with a touch? And Dean is staring in awe and asks him if he’s become God?? Like wtf am I supposed to do with that. WHO SAYS THAT. XDD

-The Endverse. Omgggggggg. The Endverse. I doubt I can say anything about it that hasn’t been said a thousand times, but seriously. I loooove it, all of it. My favourite was endverse!Castiel, ofc. The way he was in No Man’s Land, not an angel and not quite a human, his ways of trying to cope with that, how burned he was... I uncomfortably related to some of it too lmfao, but let’s not get into that xD.

Seeing both Deans interact was gr10 too. They really couldn’t stand each other lmfao (do you understand me now Dean?? They actually reminded me of two OCs in an original WIP of mine that are in a similar situation -in this case it’s the future version purposefully traveling to the past though-, which made me even fonder of the AU). And the Destiel? *chef’s kiss*. The bitterness, like when Castiel laughs when present!Dean berates endverse!Dean about the tortures and then purposefully says “I like past you” to hurt him asñldkfjasf. Or those looks when Dean returns to the past and tells Castiel to “never change” d’aw.

I loved Lucifer!Sam in this episode too (and personally, I think in the finale Lucifer -and Michael- should’ve changed his outfit too. Sam’s clothes just don’t get to The Devil’s levels, but that white suit was perfect). He was terrifying xD.

BTW: I’ve decided that, since we never see endverse!Castiel die, well. He didn’t xD. I could see Lucifer keeping him alive and captive out of a sense of nostalgia, as Castiel is the only other thing close to a fellow angel left. Might even decide to return his powers with time, or to ~entice him with such an offer lol. And ofc I headcanon Sam is still inside, occasionally trying to fight. Cue in all the Castiel/Lucifer and Castiel/Sam fic ideas too (I have waaaaay too many of those for this mini-verse. It’s very inspiring).

-I’m still on the fence at Lucifer’s motivations but I can’t question how the family issues fit so, so well into this ‘verse. “Family is hell” is the show’s thesis, after all xD. IMO the angels in general don’t feel like a family, they’re a military body/cult lol, but the Archangels are another matter. I guess is the whole “only four angels have seen God-slash-Dad” thing, the rest were... well, the help, apparently.

But Lucifer, Michael, and Gabriel do feel like brothers when they interact (I’m guessing here Gabriel is the Adam: discarded by the other two like nothing :)))). Raphael too, but since he doesn’t interact with them... does he get to later? Or is he the odd one out? Did the others avoid him because he kept quoting Nietzsche at dinner?? LOL.

-There are no words to explain how terribly I feel for Adam. JFC that poor KID. Who was kind and helpful and intuitive, and only wanted his mother back and to help stop the end of the world. And that Sam and Dean will leave rotting in Hell for a millennia :))). It’s kiiiiiiiiind of hard to do for your show’s “heroes” when they do shit like that lmfao. It’d be different if they never tried to make him feel he’s family, but Sam tried to convince him with the bs “because we’re blood” and they did a half-baked attempt at saving him from Zacharias, and then... yeah. At least he had Michael in the cage, but still.

-I was already spoiled of this, but the reveal that cupids made John and Mary fall in love is so chilling (good on Dean for punching that cupid asshole, btw). It puts what Mary says about John in flashbacks, about how much she loves him and how perfect he is, in such a terrifying light. And I’m under the impression that the show didn’t bother to deal with this properly when they resurrected Mary and just... I hate that tbh. It’s a narrative choice that should have a huuuge impact, dammit.

-I kind of loved how bitter and angry Bobby was about (temporarily, thanks to Crowley, his new demon bf -watch out Rufus) ending up in a wheelchair. That there were no platitudes or false sentimentality and it just... was.

-The Harvelles’ had a good send off. I can respect Kripke for wanting his faves to go on his terms lol. Having Jo refuse Dean’s offer of a fuck on their possible last night on Earth with “I rather spent it with a little thing I have self-respect”? Not because she doesn’t have feelings for him, but because she thinks she deserves better from him? I love it. This guy knows his pettiness xD

-The fact that this fandom seems to have ignored Gabriel x Kali is one of the reasons I’m never going to vibe with it, sns. Immortal exes? Check. She tricked him and killed him... but then it turns out HE tricked and he’s alive? Check. BUT THEN HE STILL GOES BACK AND SAVES HER, DYING BY HIS BROTHER’S HAND?? CHECK CHECK CHECK. Ugh, why can’t they come back to me. I know, I know, Kali is a WoC and those are only allowed one (1) appearance before they’re killed off, apparently. So it might be a good thing that she doesn’t return xD. But gosh, they were gr10.

-Death the Horseman’s intro cleared my skin. I love him. I love how utterly terrifying he is and how chilling his and Dean’s scene was. And I yearn to find a picture of the guy a little younger and with a goatee, because he’s the most perfect Discworld’s Vetinari fancast I’ve ever found xDD

-I’ve seen tons of commentary over the years, and especially lately for obvious reasons, about how this season finale would’ve been a much better ending for the show. I’m not there yet, and it does sound like the finale was a mess and this one’s was a very well constructed episode (and, ofc, the Final Love Interest was NOT blurry!!). But even if by the end I come to loathe the finale, there’s one reason I already know won’t let me agree on the s5 ending being perfect: God xDD

The episode makes Chuck come across as a ~benevolent figure and no, fuck that, do NOT want, take it away from me!! Give me God as the Big Bad Wolf, the last evil to conquer any day. It’s like Dumbledore all over again: I enjoy the character a lot more if I feel canon and I are on the same page wrt his shadiness xDD

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a-court-of-healing · 4 years

Text

Does it Matter? Tony Stark X plus size Reader

@lilacprincessofrecovery Enjoy!!

Trigger Warning: Bulimia, body shaming

Disclaimer: I don’t own Marvel or these Gifs

This house is just too huge...too silent...too...too....lonely, she thought as she stared at the wall just hoping that she could possibly cause the ache in her chest to stop. It always seemed to come around when Tony was gone. Whether it be because he is in New York with the Avengers or some foreign land on a business trip. Right now, he was with the Avengers. She texts him every now and then trying not to seem too...desperate or clingy. She is terrified that if she is either one of those things, he’ll abandon her. Being a plus size woman, she already struggles with her self-esteem and the idea that he is going to leave her .It also makes it hard since they aren’t having sex. Not because she doesn’t want to, but she doesn’t want their relationship to all about sex, like some of his past relationships (they still sleep together and cuddle though). Especially when these stupid supermodels, that look like pure sex, throw themselves at Tony, and him being a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Not that he has really ever given her the notion that he would ever desert her. Surprisingly, even with Tony being his normal snarky self, he hasn’t ever been the one to leave. He always always comes back, and he always messages or calls her. Sometimes it’s “wish you were here,” with a photo of him or some sarcastic nonsense. But the more nonsensical the more it’s like Tony. Every now and then though it’s like some mambo jumbo talking about some science math stuff that was way over her head. That’s how she knows if he has slept or not, drunk too much coffee or if he has been drinking or not. Drunk, if he is drunk or not. Tony can handle his liquer rather well, but one too many coffees and he can kinda get manic. Another comforting thing is when he texts complaining about the Avengers.

“I wonder if Cap would be mad if I played Germany’s national anthem.”

“For the love of Thor, I thought Banner was crazy...but man you should see Clint drunk. By the

way, all he ever talks about is his kids. He’s got like twenty of them.”

“This kid is going to be the death of me.”

But the best part of any of his texts is the ending. Love ya baby. It always caused butterflies to flutter in her stomach and her heart to swell. Peter likes to text her as well. At first, she thought it was weird, because she didn’t know him that well. But now, she thinks he likes the idea of “mama stark.” Even though Tony and her weren’t married, that’s what he called her. She didn’t feel that old to be a “mama” to a 17-year-old, but it also warmed her heart that he liked her that much. Like just this morning he texted her

“Mama stark, what type of whale did you say you liked? Was it the humpback whale? No

I think you said it was dolphins, no it was totally whales. The killer whale? I’m shopping

for your birthday, and I want it to be perfect cause you’re so nice to me and Mr. Stark

really really likes you and it wouldn’t be right to not get you a present, especially if I

know that your birthday is coming up. Btw this is Peter, Peter Parker, but I think you

know that.”

It was precious the way he texted her. He always seemed to ramble on and on, but his heart is always in the right place. He also seemed to forget that she had caller ID and he was in her contacts, because more often than not, he was always telling her his name. She had texted him back almost immediately

“Peter three things: one, I already knew it was you two, you don’t have to get me anything for

my birthday and three, belugas.”

Whether or not Tony admitted it, he really loved Peter. He was happy to act as his mentor and he liked the idea of him looking at him as his father figure. Tony is a superhero as it is, and he knew Peter needed him. If needed, she knew Peter would be welcome to live with them in their Malibu mansion.

“I really need to get this wall painted a color other than this hideous beige. Tony doesn’t even like beige, so why is this living room this color?” Sometimes it was easier to think about frivolous things instead of the gripping pain in her heart. Today has been a super terrible good for nothing day. Being a bulimic in recovery, some days are better than others. Like the worst days are the ones where people post body shaming comments on her pictures, or when a picture of Tony goes out to a party or an event and there is a super skinny girl pictured with him that doesn’t appear to have eaten in a long time...and that triggers her times a thousand. She heard an interview today by some woman exploding about her weight. Explicitly explaining how Tony deserved someone who was skinnier and therefore prettier. This made her thoughts run rampant out of control. The thoughts in her head were even worse than the ones the woman was blabbing on and on about. None of these thoughts are producing anything good and are escalated way out of proportion, but that’s how her disorder is. But that isn’t even the worst part. The absolute worst part is that Tony hasn’t contacted her at all. Pure horror rolled through her veins.

What does he think? Does he agree? There was a crippling death grip on her chest. She has had this feeling before. Panic. She couldn’t help where she ended up next. Her legs went numb and she couldn’t even stop the fuzzy feeling in her head. She was climbing the stairs all the way to their bedroom. She has been through this many times before and she just knew that the monster roaring in her head wouldn’t be sedated if she didn’t satisfy it. She pushed past the door of their room and her legs dragged her to the bathroom. There it was, there was her best friend and mortal enemy. The mirror. ([Trigger warning: body shaming ahead] She hadn’t realized that she was naked until she was staring at herself. Stretch marks, cellulite, freckles, and all the things that screamed imperfection in her head. She pinched her stomach and tears welled up in her eyes and she knew at this rate, she was going to relapse and then the self-loathing would intensify. She began to shut down and knew that any minute she would be binging and purging.)

“What do you think you are doing?” A rough, harsh, and familiar voice roused her from her reverie enough to see a man with peppered hair and rugged stubble along his chin as if he hasn’t shaved in quite a while and was standing at the entrance to the bathroom staring dejectedly at her. It was as if someone had slapped him right across the face and killed his puppy.

“TONY!! What are you doing home? You aren’t supposed to be home for another week!”

Even her voice sounded if she had been caught doing something heinous or was a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. She felt cold hard shame run through her.

“Catching you doing something you promised you wouldn’t do.” Tony’s voice sounded wounded. He was hurting for her.

“Um...there was...I...a...inter-”

“An interview. I know. I saw it.” He started walking toward her and she couldn’t take her eyes off the floor. This was it. She knew it. He was here to kick her out and leave her. He did agree with the things that woman said.

“That’s why I’m here. I was afraid of what you would be thinking...what you could do…”

She had not been expecting that. At all. This was almost like a dream and she was in a trance.

“Wha….what?” Surprise covered her face and he sighed impatiently.

“I know you. We’ve been dating for a while and know what you think. I...I um….knew you would need me.” He smiled softly and reached for her hand and she honestly couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Tony... I totally under...understand if you realize….realize that…” Tears were falling haphazardly down her cheeks.

“Realize what? That you’re beautiful? That you are gorgeous? Lovely? Attractive? Pretty? Lush? Any other synonym for perfect and sexy as hell. But that’s not what you’re thinking, is it?” She couldn’t think of what to say to him. She realized he was waiting for her to speak. She shook her head and looked back to the floor. Tony sighed and turned her around and wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he could.

“You want to know what I see? I see these glistening blue eyes that look at me like I’m the most perfect man on earth. Wavy blonde hair that looks good no matter what she does with it. I see someone who has the heart of gold. Someone who supports me with whatever I do. She even all but adopted a 17-year-old boy because I...I...love him. These freckles all over her make her skin glow and these stretch marks are perfection.You are strong and you’re a fighter. THAT’S who I want and you are who I love. So what if you aren’t a twig, so what if you aren’t a supermodel? Does it matter what others say?” Her nuzzled your neck and smiled when he caught the scent of your hair. To hear these words come out of his mouth were like a balm to her heart. It made her feel like she was the best person on earth. She was the only one he wanted.

“Now, does that make me any more irresistible?” She shook her head in amazement. “Hey baby, can’t blame a man for trying.”

#tony stark #tony starkxreader #bulimia #bulimiarecovery #marvel #mcu #tony x reader

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mannatea · 3 years

Note

Excuse me I want the opinions about the apocalyptic humans are the real monsters please!

>Are you sure you would like to board this train?

Anyway, sure! I have a lot of thoughts. And opinions. And considerations. Hopefully this train of thought is worth the trip. All aboaaaaard!

Part I: This Mentality Doesn’t Exist in Just Fiction!

I take issue with this phrasing as a general rule because humans are still human. Calling them “monsters” for their evil deeds—something everyone is capable of performing, by the way—is just...asinine to the nth degree. Sure, we’d all like to imagine we’re not capable of Great Evil, but WE ARE.

I don’t want to dive into Purity Police Politics here, but here’s a question for (general) you: where is the line drawn? What makes a “bad” person “a monster” vs. just being a bad/thoughtless/careless person?

I think we can all agree that objectively some acts are evil. If you’ve been following the news this year, you probably have a million examples, but (TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS LINK) here’s a particularly terrible one; they even call the abusers monsters in this news article. Why? I think you know why. They want to emotionally distance themselves. They want to believe that these people are unique in their ability to cause harm and suffering to another human being.

But WOWEE!!! Spoiler alert: the writer is just as capable of abuse as the people who committed the crime!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I think most people are UNLIKELY to commit a crime like that, or even hurt another person with malicious intent or hatred in their hearts. But to pretend we are not all capable of it is putting yourself on a pedestal above the rest of humanity, and...I dunno. That’s awfully cocky.

Tumblr in particular loves to talk about toxicity and abuse, and they love to paint themselves as “better than” or “above” that behavior, but 1) we are all capable of toxicity, have been problematic in our lifetime, and have probably done something abusive to someone else at one point or another, and 2) we must remember that this is true of everyone else as well as ourselves. The important thing is that we strive to behave better, to learn to recognize when we are hurting someone else, to CARE THAT WE MIGHT BE HURTING SOMEONE ELSE, and to actively work to just be better/kinder people.

I totally get the desire to call a cruel, abusive, or evil person “a monster” but THEY ARE NOT. They are people. People are not infallible. Monsters by definition are imaginary creatures, but the abuse these people inflict is real. The crimes are real. The hurt is real. The effect these people have on those around them is as real as they themselves are, and to pretend for even a moment that it’s not, that they are somehow separate from you and I, that the rules apply differently for them than you and I, is just...harmful?

Because again, where do you draw the line?

Part II: Using Monster as an Insult

Monsters are creations, always, as they are by definition imaginary creatures. I think some might look to the Nature vs. Nurture Debate when it comes to criminal acts to try and justify their use of the word “monster” to refer to people like the abusers in the link above (aka: “society shaped them into that, it was never their natural inclination”) but that feels vaguely like cherry-picking to me, and I don’t like it.

Also, “Monster” is used as such a joking insult online these days (you’re a monster for dissing my anime waifu headcanons) it’s lost its bite if it ever had it to begin with. My beloved cat CiCi’s nickname was ‘Monster’ because the first Christmas I had her she rolled around on the Christmas presents and hissed at anyone who tried to move them. We also have an energy drink named Monster. Cookie Monster. Created ‘monsters’ with their own lore like werewolves and vampires and kelpies and Bigfoot.

So you risk one of three things by calling someone a monster: 1) it comes across like a joking insult/cute pet name, 2) you’re putting them on par with beings that literally do not exist except in fiction, and that half of this hellsite wants to fuck MANY people actually enjoy talking/reading about as part of an entire literary genre, or 3) you’re saying they’re literally not human beings and therefore not worth being considered as such.

None of these options are good.

Part III: “Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!™”

Maybe when literacy levels were super low and only the wealthy had the leisure time and access to literature they could read for fun, this kind of reveal was Intriguing, but I’m here to tell you that it’s never been interesting to any person who has lived in the real world, like, ever.

I feel like for children this may be different (I dunno, as a child you don’t always understand what’s going on around you/are more likely to be sheltered from these kinds of truths outside of fiction), but I highly doubt that, say, peasants in 1620 weren’t well aware that humans were capable of evil.

Sure, they did the same thing we like to do and called people who committed particularly heinous acts ‘monsters’ (probably for the same reasons we do as well as because they wanted to believe they were safe in their communities and that their neighbors were also different and not capable of doing that sort of thing) but again you see the general level of denial:

This person is not like me.

I am different.

I must call them something else.

Which, yes you are different, but the difference is NOT in WHAT you are, it’s in HOW YOU ACT and the emotions you act upon!

Society has a history of doing this separation, and of revealing in fiction that humans are actually the real monsters, but again, those of us who exist in the real world already know that human beings are capable of great evil. Even if we are surprised by the level of vileness or not is irrelevant; we all know that logically this kind of thing happens in the real world and that human beings are responsible for it.

Part IV: Bad Reveal. BAD!

In some pieces of media, the writers go out of their way to be like, “THE MONSTERS WE’VE HATED ALL THIS TIME AND HAVE BEEN FIGHTING WERE ONCE HUMAN LIKE US. WE COULD BECOME LIKE THEM! OH NO!”

Which...lol.

Let’s look at zombies, a monster created for the sake of this kind of narrative. They were “once human” but are now mindless beings completely unaware of the hurt they are inflicting, even on those they might have known in their lifetime. Zombies can infect living human beings, turning them into zombies. The humans in these stories don’t want to become zombies, so they fight the zombies (with varying results, depending on the particular piece of media you choose to consume).

Zombie stories have a huge cult following; people love this kind of thing. On the surface you might think zombie stories fit the above narrative, and they do, but like...literally. “They were human once but aren’t anymore!” is almost never a reveal in these stories; it’s something everyone already knows and is actively fighting against.

"Humans are the real monsters” rarely has much to do with the zombies. It almost always occurs when a human in the group of survivors betrays the others in a big way.

The betrayer is then painted as the REAL monster here, the REAL threat. You might notice that lot of post-apocalyptic and/or humans-vs.-monsters fiction follows the same pattern: humans fight monsters, (optional ingredient: the monsters were once human!), and then they find out that Actually, Humans Were the Real Monsters All Along!

Again, anyone reading this post already knows that. They go out in public and see people who can’t be assed to wear a mask. “Wah it itches.” “Wah I can’t breathe.” “Wah it’s inconvenient for me and I’m not infected I know I’m fine!”

These same maskless fools would tell you to your face that the betrayer in these stories is a monster. They themselves, however, are not capable of hurting other people! They’re better than that! That person is a monster! They would never betray their allies. Except they do, every day, by refusing to wear a mask to protect other people from themselves. “Just in case” isn’t a good enough reason for them because it’s an inconvenience and they don’t like how it feels.

Sure, wearing a mask during a pandemic seems like such a small thing compared to, you know, betraying your fellow survivors in the apocalypse, but you have to consider context. If wearing a mask during a pandemic that has literally killed huNDreDS oF thousands is so inconvenient they won’t even wear it for the 3 minutes they are in the gas station...would you trust this person in a post-apocalyptic setting? Would they gather food for a physically disabled survivor? Would they literally fight to protect someone ill? Share resources fairly? You know if they can’t wear a mask for three minutes in a whole damn day they wouldn’t step up like that. They could easily end up being the betrayer in a situation like that. They’ve never been desperate enough to do something like that before, and they probably don’t think they’re capable of it now, but we know what they do when something is a minor inconvenience to them. Imagine a major inconvenience. Imagine their whole life being turned upside-down!

My issues with the reveal of “Humans are actually the real monsters!” are many, but the biggest issue I take with it from a writing perspective is that it’s almost never accurate when you look at the scope of the story.

Tens of thousands of zombies vs. one (1) betrayer: and you’re telling me the betrayer is the real monster? The bigger threat??? BULLSHIT. Sure, it takes a real asshole to betray people during the literal apocalypse, but that act doesn’t take away from the fact that they are human, LET ALONE the fact that using this particular point as a Big Important Reveal tells me you’re a shit writer who thinks you’re smart.

(For the record, you might have a character who will prioritize this and consider that betrayer the bigger threat, but we’re not talking about character development/motivations so much as overarching narratives the writer includes in the story separate from that.)

Anyway, I’m not saying stories with this premise in them are shit, I’m saying that this concept as a big plot reveal/climax of a story is shit. How can this even be a reveal worth revealing? Has anyone ever turned on the news?

Part V: Drawing the Line and Other Particulars

I definitely do not have the expertise or the experience to make this a detailed point, so please forgive me for that, but let’s talk about that line again, because this point absolutely cannot be overlooked.

Where is it? What makes one person who commits a crime or evil act a monster and not another? Is it the act committed? Their mental state? What about the mentally ill? What about neurodivergent people? What about children?

As an extreme example: is a woman who throws her baby off a building a monster? NO!!! SHE’S HUMAN and she did something terrible. We might like to say we’re different and we would neVeR do that, but we don’t know because we have never been in her shoes. We are missing context even the courts will never have or fully grasp. We do not know or understand her mental state no matter what the doctors say. Calling her a monster doesn’t do anything but put her in a separate category from the rest of us, which is harmful on SO many levels, starting with the fact that it means nobody talks to her, nobody gets her side of the story, nobody listens, and so we have no perspective, no understanding, no desire to learn.

Things like this are why it took so long for PPD to even begin to be understood, and why EVEN NOW women are afraid to talk about it and all related issues. I follow a ob-gyn on YouTube and the amount of women in her comments who thank her (oftentimes VERY emotionally) for openly saying it’s normal to not immediately feel a connection to your baby when they are born is mind-blowing. Not everyone will feel that! Sometimes you have to get to know your baby because they are an individual person and that is how love works for some people! But 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 100 years ago: that was unthinkable to admit. You lied about it and you felt like a terrible person instead. What kind of mom doesn’t love their baby instantly? You must be the worst. Meanwhile, the woman you’re getting your information from doesn’t feel that bond either and is lying about it because she feels pressured and just as bad as you do. All this suffering, and for what?! Stigma. Being told you’re not human if you don’t feel like that.

Don’t you know the bond with that baby suffered from this issue, too? Don’t you think it affected the parent/child relationship for the rest of their lives?

Not everyone who commits a crime falls into a category like this, and maybe the woman in my example doesn’t either, but I hope your takeaway is that calling people monsters keeps them separated from other people to the point where their story becomes just as fictional as the monsters they are called, and when it is heard it is enjoyed as fiction, rather than seriously considered.

Let’s not pretend that this separation of humanity into “human” and “not human” based on the way someone acts hasn’t hindered progress in the mental health/medical fields for everyone. When people are not considered human they are not given human treatment, rights, consideration, or empathy.

Part VI: TL;DR:

we are all human and capable of doing bad things.

the difference between a bad person and you or I is a lot more complex and multilayered than “they did a terrible thing and I did not do that terrible thing.”

calling people ‘monsters’ for the bad things they do dehumanizes them and may:

strip them of responsibility for their actions by insinuating they were born that way or they aren’t actually human like you and I, and/or

prevent them from getting the help they need/from others who have not done anything bad yet getting the help they need

it’s not a good reveal in fiction

because most of us already know people commit evil acts,

and it is oftentimes is presented in a way that doesn’t actually make sense for the story.

Sorry that it got long and probably isn’t very well organized! I wrote it in bursts at work. But anyway yeah...

I don’t mind when characters feel this way about other characters, but to see it used as a narrative feature/reveal/et cetera in fiction is like, so tiresome. No shit, Sherlock. I turn on the news. I followed true crime for a while. WE ALL KNOW PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF DOING TERRIBLE, AWFUL THINGS TO OTHER LIVING THINGS.

Having *that* be your big reveal in a story is so childish it embarrasses me to see it. Wow, congrats on figuring out something at 47 that the rest of us learned on the playground before we turned 7!

#highwind91 #answered mail #tw: abuse #long post #idk i feel like posting this is a bad idea...??#oh well it's make idiot decisions day!#it's ok to reblog if u want thx for asking chi!

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brightbeautifulthings · 3 years

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Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

"'For the love of God, Montresor!' 'Yes,' I said, 'for the love of God!'"

Year Read: 2020

Rating: 2/5

Context: Starting two years ago, I’ve picked an intimidatingly long classic to read over the course of a year. I have a problem with trying to read books as fast as I possibly can, so if I set myself a thousand page novel, I’ll try to pound it in a week, and it will just be a miserable experience all around. So, a year is a nice compromise. I’ve hit the major Poe horror stories in the past, and I’ve been thinking about rereading them, but I couldn’t decide where to start. Reread my favorites? Read the ones I’ve heard of? What if I’m missing something awesome? As usual, my go-to answer is to read them ALL. For more thoughts on individual stories, see my monthly blog posts. Trigger warnings: character death, torture, live burial, cannibalism, decapitation, animal abuse, injury, severe illness, racism/xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, slurs, mental illness, bitter ranting from the reviewer.

Thoughts: My edition, with an introduction by Wilbur S. Scott, is probably not the edition I would have picked, since I prefer more notes or even essays to help me out with books that are 100+ years old. Context is helpful. Somehow though, my dad and I ended up with the same edition, so we decided to read it together. My dad loves all things horror (I come by it naturally), and we’re both longtime Poe fans, especially if you happen to put Vincent Price in one of his film adaptations. Scott’s introduction is particularly pretentious for a book we probably found in the bargain bin, and he manages to criticize the horror genre for not being “literary enough”. This is an Edgar Allan Poe collection, right? Way to alienate 90% of your audience right from the start. You can’t snub an entire genre and then attempt to explain why people like it. Like a lot of critical writing, it tells us more about Scott than it does about Poe, and I was circling his typos to entertain myself by the end of the introduction.

It did not get better. In short, I actively hated so much of this collection, and it's my most arduous and least enjoyed year-long read to date. To be even shorter, the only stories I found worth reading for pleasure were the horror ones I had already read and loved, and I'm afraid to examine too closely whether that has more to do with nostalgia and pop culture than the stories themselves. Poe has a way of lingering on pointless descriptions and belaboring a point to its absolute death, alongside an aggressively pretentious tone that suggests the narrator (and, by extension, Poe himself), knows everything there is to know about everything and you're an idiot for even asking. His true talent may not be horror, but in turning what might have been a good story into an intellectual soapbox and hammering it the point of absurdity. It would be different if the stories actually were intelligent instead of ridiculous. I’m happy to talk Aristotelian ethics, but the point is never to intellectually engage the reader–-it’s to show how clever the writer is.

On the whole, it seems like Poe struggles with telling a straightforward story, and I can’t tell if it’s because the short story genre has changed so much since then or because he’s so busy trying to show readers how smart he is that he forgets that stories have very specific components like suspense, exposition, or rising action (or endings). Most of them consist of some narrator speaking the entire time (I have all kinds of problems with this, from, “You just ruined the twist of your own story” to “No human talks for thirty uninterrupted minutes unless some idiot gave them a microphone.”), and few of them have anything resembling action, plot/character development, strong themes, or closure. There’s an essay-like quality to some of them (“The Imp of the Perverse”, “The Premature Burial”) where he seems to be trying to tease out a concept on an intellectual level, sometimes for pages and pages, before he remembers that he’s telling a story with characters and what could loosely be called a plot. I could do without all the intellectualizing, verbal grandstanding, and narrative cartwheels; just tell a good story, please.

And he does, sometimes. It's clear why Poe remains an essential part of the horror canon because those are easily the best stories in the collection, and I don't think that's just because I'm a horror fan. Horror seems to age better than some other genres because certain things remain consistently scary over decades or even centuries--being buried alive, for example. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is permeated by a feeling of bleak foreboding, culminating in some truly terrifying images, and “The Tell-tale Heart” is one of the better examples of Poe’s rambling narrator who thinks a lot of his own intelligence and slowly unravels over guilt. Both scared me to death when I was a kid, and I’m happy to see that they still maintain a high creep factor as an adult. (I also had the Great Illustrated Classics Tales of Mystery and Terror as a kid, because all a story about being buried alive needs is an illustration!) “The Cask of Amontillado” has long been one of my favorites (because there is something deeply wrong with me, probably), and “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of the Red Death” are both top-notch horrifying, the latter a classic plague story that's a little *too* relevant to the times just now (but, you know, also one of my favorites). The clock symbolism is some of the best in the entire collection. Why, pray tell, would you be afraid of time?

The tolerable stories are the detective ones and the adventure ones, in that order. I can see why Poe’s detective stories like “The Gold Bug” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” spawned a genre. I was getting clear Sherlock Holmes vibes from his character, Dupin. However, it reaffirms that something is a classic because of its effects on literature as a whole and not because it’s still all that accessible. Just because something is the first of its kind doesn’t mean it’s the best of its kind; in fact, it usually isn’t because that was only a starting place. I can’t help feeling “Murders” would have been more compelling as a horror story than a detective story. Murdering gorillas are cool; listening to someone talk about murdering gorillas, much less cool. I was extremely irritated by his hot air balloon stories ("The Balloon Hoax", "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall"), but apparently Jules Verne loved them, which makes a lot of sense. I was getting a lot of Verne vibes from things like "A Descent Into the Maelstrom" and even the utterly long, boring, and racist "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym." It's clear they had influence on other writers, even if they're not the best examples of their genres.

Which brings us back around to the bad. It's not worth my time or yours to list all the terrible stories in this collection, but I can briefly summarize what I found so terrible about them. First, Poe is tragically, emphatically unfunny. The things he seems to find humorous are either in very poor taste now (his tasteless descriptions of mental patients in “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”), or they’re outright ridiculous, almost slapstick, like the woman who gets her head stuck in a clock and is subsequently decapitated by it in “A Predicament,” which is an odd sequel to “How to Write a Blackwood Article.” I’m sensing that Poe is making fun of intellectuals or would-be intellectuals here, but with so much time and cultural distance, it’s hard to tell. In any case, it led to a running joke (“I’m going out for groceries!” “Don’t stick your head in any clocks!”). Somehow, I doubt this is the major takeaway Poe was hoping for.

Worst of all, they don't age well on representation either. Poe seems at pains to offend every single minority he possibly can throughout his oeuvre. There are a lot of horribly racist depictions of African Americans, snide comments about Jewish people (or the much more obvious anti-Semitism in “Four Beasts In One” where a mad king has a thousand Jews killed--really?), and blatant ableism (“Hop-Frog”). It's at its worst in "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," a novella that spans over a hundred pages, that is basically a tedious, xenophobic setup to paint the native population of an island as the most horrific and duplicitous monsters imaginable. (The narrator previously ate one of his shipmates, so can he really afford to throw stones here?) For inexplicable reasons, that story isn't finished, and by that point, I was grateful.

Poe's poetry is a little easier to work through than his prose. I love "The Raven" with its lilting rhymes and dark message, and "Annabel Lee" is very pretty, both ubiquitous in popular culture. I also liked "Dream-Land," "Al Aaraaf" (where Ligeia makes another appearance), and "Alone." Most of the poetry has pretty simple rhyme schemes, the subjects mainly love and loss. There's an excerpt of an unfinished play, "Politian," included as well, but it didn't make much of an impression on me. TL;DR: I stand by my initial opinion, which is to read his horror stories for pleasure and, possibly, his detective and adventure stories for genre purposes, and to skip the rest. I'll probably be looking for a smaller edition of the stories I like. This one is a massive hardcover, more like a book you put on your coffee table to look impressive than a book you actually read (but I don’t have a coffee table, so it’s actually just taking up more room on the shelf than any one book has a right to).

#book review #complete tales and poems #Edgar Allan Poe #horror fiction #poe readalong #2/5 #rating: 2/5 #2020 #bookoween

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thecomicsnexus · 4 years

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WORLD OF KRYPTON #1-4 DECEMBER 1987 - FEBRUARY 1988 BY JOHN BYRNE, MIKE MIGNOLA, RICK BRYANT, CARLOS GARZÓN, PETRA SCOTESE AND WALT SIMONSON

This is the story of how life on Krypton was and the series of events that led to its destruction.

SCORE: 10

I am not sure what John Byrne was trying to say with this story. It really left me thinking without being able to put the pieces together. The main conflict on this story really reminds me of the American Civil War and how the United States, more than a century after the war, is still going back to the same problems about racism. It’s like... after a war like that... is it possible for things to be reconstructed completely? It’s up to you to decide if you are American, but as usual, I am looking from the outside.

In this story, in the far past, used mindless clones as spare parts. And this was common practice, accepted by the majority. People who opposed cloning were seen as hippies. It was the gospel of Sen-M that “woke” kryptonians into rejecting such practices, claiming that the practice of cloning for these purposes was unethical. These conflicts between “clonies” and the majority escalated until the point where the city of Kandor (capital of Krypton) was nuked by an extremist organization named “Black Zero”. Of course this happened after a “trigger”. A terrible scandal that I will leave for you to read about in the comic itself. Let’s just say it was shocking, but clearly more shocking for the Kryptonians.

Years of war followed and Krypton was pretty much destroyed. Van-L, (one of Kal-El’s ancestors), managed to locate the leader of Black Zero, but on a desperate last act, he managed to activate a device (with a purpose that at the moment wasn’t clear).

Thousands of years later, we follow the story of Jor-El, on the day he is elected to have have a child with Lara (at that moment in Krypton, population was very stable, and new people were manufactured only after a vacancy opened). By this time, Krypton moved on from cloning and excelled at genetic manipulation, which proved to be more efficient that extending your life through spare parts.

Children are not born like on Earth, such practices were ancient for Krypton’s society. Babies were born in matrix chambers, protected from everything (this is key). Jor-El, however, asked to see a picture of the mother of his child, which was very unorthodox. He instantly fell in love with Lara (but as I understand, the two do not meet until the events you already read on Man Of Steel #1).

Everyone is really cold and distant in Krypton (almost feels like they are in self-isolation), but Jor-El is a rebel. And at this, he is very unlike his ancestor. Maybe this is a personality trait that was necessary for the story of Superman to happen. Not only Jor-El saved Kal-El’s life, he was able to figure out the “green death” wasn’t a disease.

So what was the green death? The device Black Zero detonated, caused Krypton to change and change, killing all its inhabitants (I would assume of radiation poisoning) and eventually the pressure of these changes caused the planet to explode. Now, I complained about how much the Kupperberg “version” was naive about space exploration. This version wasn’t very good at geology and radiation measuring. You would think scientist would figure out right away that radiation was killing them.

The book doesn’t explain why Jor-El and Lara do not try to escape Krypton with their “son”, that will be explained later (1989). But we can imagine why they didn’t. The exposure to Kryptonite already killed them. This is what I get from it. Even if they escape, they don’t have a way of surviving long enough. Since Kal-El was inside the matrix, he was protected from the radiation. This is the only reason, why he had a chance (although, technically, there were four more babies with him, they could have saved those).

The idea that kryptonite is radioactive is kind of obvious, as the damn thing shines by its own. Something Lex Luthor will not think about in the upcoming months (that is another amazing story).

While Krypton society was always a little cold, in this post-crisis version it’s chilling. I honestly like this version of Krypton over the “utopia” other writers usually use. It gives Superman a complete different super-power... human emotions. Feelings. In the end, that is the gift his father gave him. Not super-powers... the possibility of growing up in a warmer planet.

Mignola is an excellent artist, even though, sometimes the expressions are a little off, or some characters look too much alike. But I found the art in this story very fitting, very alien. Even the body language is convincing.

This is the first of three four-issue mini-series celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Superman. The next two are Smallville and Metropolis... but you need to read Millennium first.

#dc comics #comics #review #1987 #1988 #modern age #superman #world of krypton #krypton #mike mignola #walt simonson

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alarajrogers · 4 years

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Untitled Picard/Q-ish fic

This is very rough -- no beta, we die like women -- and I don’t even have a title for it yet, but I wanted to get it out there because it’s late. It was supposed to be for Tapestry Day, Feb. 15th.

It is very subtle Picard/Q, and could be interpreted as friendship rather than romantic feelings, because that is how I roll. It’s set in the current Star Trek: Picard series (up through episode 5), and explains why Q hasn’t been around to help Picard with things like supernovas killing billions of people (and for that matter other things that are spoilers so I won’t mention them but would affect his son.)

There was someone sitting in his study.

There was someone sitting in his study, and Laris and Zhaban were nowhere to be found. Quietly Picard edged toward where one of the various hidden phasers that Laris and Zhaban insisted on hiding in his study, dining room, bedroom and pretty much everywhere was stashed.

“You’re not very stealthy in your old age, mon amiral,” a voice said. A voice that was familiar, but that he hadn’t heard in… had it been decades? At least twelve years, to be sure.

“Q!” Picard stepped forward into the study, unable to control the joyful smile on his face. As soon as he was close, though, he took half a step back, literally taken aback by what he saw.

Q looked old.

Not as old as Picard himself, perhaps, but his face was lined and worn, his dark hair shot through with silver. He also had facial hair, a mustache and a brushing of beard on his chin and jawline.

“You look almost happy to see me,” Q said. “Well, you did. Now you just look shocked.”

“I never expected to see you age,” Picard said. “But I suppose you can take the form of an old man as easily as you took the form of a young one.”

Q smiled wryly. “I can, yes, but… there’s always been an element of truth in how I appear to you. I’m not doing this to make some sort of commentary on the fact that you’ve aged… a terrible mortal habit, there, but I don’t imagine I’ll break you of it any time soon.”

“No, I think not,” Picard agreed, nodding. “Are you saying you feel old?” He sat down in the chair that faced Q. “I remember when you told me of your new responsibilities in the Continuum, you said they’d age you prematurely, but I took it for a joke.”

“It was a joke. That’s not… why.” Q closed his eyes. “I know you called for me. You asked me for my help, didn’t you? And I didn’t come.”

“I… assumed that your responsibilities had become too onerous to spend time in the company of mortals anymore,” Picard said, carefully.

It had hurt. When Starfleet had refused to help the Romulans, when there were so many stranded and desperate and Picard had no resources to save them… he had called out to Q. Better to owe his omnipotent sometime-nemesis, sometime-companion something than to cling to his human pride and let billions die.

Q hadn’t come. Picard hadn’t seen him since… since several months before the supernova. Q had said nothing, then, to imply that he wasn’t going to come back.

Picard had spent a long time convincing himself not to feel betrayed by that.

“No, no,” Q said. “I’d have made time for you, if not…” He shook his head. “The one time you break down and spontaneously call for my help, and it had to be for this.”

“So there was a reason for it.”

“A very good reason.” Q snapped his fingers, and a glass of something alcoholic appeared in his hand. Another one appeared on the end table next to Picard. “Not the house brand, but I imagine occasionally you indulge in something you didn’t grow yourself?”

“Occasionally,” Picard said. Q would get to the point, eventually, and he had learned patience. He picked up the glass and breathed deeply of the aroma. “This is… actually from Betazed, if I don’t mistake it?”

Q nodded. “Adwana wine. Not particularly strong as alcohol goes, not to humans, but it interferes with telepathy.”

“Are we worried about telepaths?”

“Not… exactly.” Q took a sip. “When I’m in human form, the same brain centers that mediate telepathy in humanoids allow me to connect back to the Continuum. I’m not, currently, an extradimensional being driving a puppet around. This is me, mostly.”

The wine tasted rather like sake, but with a sweet undertone that was distinctly fruity and yet wholly un-grape-like. Almost like… blackberries, he thought. But not quite. “You’re shutting down your powers. Why?”

“I don’t want to have them right now,” Q said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, the Calamarain’s not going to show up on your doorstep. I can’t possibly fully shut myself down with a drink or two. I just… I don’t want to be so aware of it.”

“I suppose you have your reasons.” Picard set the drink down. It really wasn’t to his taste.

“And you’re just waiting with bated breath for me to tell you what they are, aren’t you?”

“That is why you’re dropping hints, I think.”

“You know me so well.” He twirled the drink in his hand. “Tell me, Picard. You had hypotheses, I’m sure. What did you guess was the reason I didn’t come when you called?”

“I’ve said. I thought your responsibilities—”

“There were other things you thought, though.”

“So I see the adwana isn’t interfering with your telepathy that much.”

Q shook his head. “I’m not reading your mind, but I know you.” He leaned closer to Picard. “Jean-Luc, there has never been a day in your life when you haven’t been considering multiple possibilities for everything that happens.”

“Well, I thought perhaps you were forbidden to interfere. Or—”

“Or?”

“Or that… well, why would you care about humans? You have your own life in the Continuum. You have a son. Perhaps your… interest in me was… a passing thing. Something you have no need for, anymore.”

“Mon amiral. Sometimes you don’t know me at all.” Q sounded mock-hurt. “But then, I imagine the truth would be… impossible for you to guess at.” He leaned forward. “I didn’t abandon you willingly, Jean-Luc. Yes, I had more going on in the Continuum than I’ve had in billions of years, but… in the Continuum, I’m a leader now. People look up to me. I’m not sure I have friends there even now. Allies, comrades-in-arms, but… no Q sees me as myself.”

“Well, by definition I don’t see you as yourself, since you have to take a different form to interact with me.”

“Yes. Ironic, isn’t it? I can most be me with a creature who literally can’t even see me. Worthy of being included in a stand-up comedy routine.” He took another deep sip, and then set the glass down with emphasis. “I was dead, Picard.”

Picard raised both eyebrows, head going back. “Dead? How?”

“Did you ever wonder… how could a supernova of one star, however large, start triggering an instability in space that blows up other stars?”

“Neither Federation nor Romulan science was ever able to explain that,” Picard admitted. He remembered something, then. When the Q killed each other with the weapons they’d used in the civil war… it had caused supernovas. “Good God. Did the war break out again?”

“In a sense.” Q looked down at his hands, folded in his lap in uncharacteristic stillness. “There was a bomb.”

“I assume you mean some sort of metaphorical something that best translates to my perceptions as a bomb?”

“Oh, no. An actual bomb. Made of Continuum-substance, of course, you wouldn’t have perceived it except through analogy, but… something that explosively releases raw energy of a form that disrupts the pattern of anything made of Continuum energy and tears it to shreds? Sounds to me like a bomb.”

“By any other name,” Picard said quietly. “But – you were dead? What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I was dead. Someone set off a bomb in the Convocation and… a dozen Q died. Which is actually a very large number. I realize it sounds like a trivial number to you—”

“No. You’ve told me that the Q number in the thousands, if that, and even if there were trillions of you, a dozen deaths are never trivial.”

“Thank you for that.” Q took a deep breath. “I was one of the casualties. The others… didn’t have a son. No Q was willing to spend the time and energy needed to put a dead Q back together, no Q had a pattern to follow they could use for reference to do so anyway… except my son. He used himself as the pattern and he spent the past… I don’t actually know how many years putting me back together and I don’t even know if I’m the same me anymore—”

“Stop.” Picard put his hands on one of Q’s. “You’re alive. That’s what’s important.”

“I don’t know if I am,” Q whispered. “I mean, yes, I’m alive, but am I me? I spent billions of years trying to preserve my identity, so many other Q trying to influence me, and now…”

“Listen to me, Q. Life changes us all. Being what you are, I imagine you don’t have much experience with the concept of scars, but even you changed over time, just from the demands of life.”

“This is a rather large change, Picard.”

“Yes. It is. But what’s the alternative? You can’t go back to what you were before, can you?”

“I suppose not.” He stood up and went to the window, looking out. “You know I would have come if I could, Jean-Luc, right?”

“I know.”

“And there’s nothing – I can’t fix it. I can’t fix any of it.” He looked back at Picard. “Do you know – of course you don’t. I changed things. We were – having an argument. You and I. Not important what it was about. But the point is… I altered the past.”

“Wait. What did you do?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He walked back toward Picard. “It’s all gone. All the changes I made. Retroactively. Because we can’t do anything in the region of space affected by the bomb.”

Picard stood up. “Tell me what you did that doesn’t matter anymore.”

Q sighed. “We were arguing about whether I actually care about you mortals. You were very upset. You pointed out that Data died and I did nothing, and he saved my life one of the few times I was vulnerable. You said that I live on the scale of a god and I can’t relate to mortals enough to be friends with one. So, I fixed it.”

“You fixed what?”

“I arranged for Shinzon to be adopted by a human scientist and taken off Remus in his childhood. Never grew up with the hatred and resentment of humanity. Resented you, but he ended up going into Starfleet anyway. No attempt to destroy Earth. So Data didn’t die, you didn’t suffer clone angst, Charlie – that was what his name got changed to – had a happier life and didn’t run around telepathically raping half-human women. Everything was wonderful.” He leaned his forehead on the wall. “And then there was the bomb. And every change made by any Q, ever, in that region of space, was reverted to whatever it had been before it was changed. And I was dead.” He swallowed. “And now – I’m back, but I can’t bring him back. I mean, I could, he died in Earth orbit, but how am I supposed to bring him back in a world where you idiots would declare him illegal and there’d be assassins trying to kill him?”

“Q. It’s all right.” Picard walked around a chair, and reached up to his shoulder. “No one expects it of you. Data wouldn’t have expected it of you.”

“You did, once.”

“Apparently that was in an alternate universe. I don’t think you can hold that against me.”

“But you were right.” Q closed his eyes. “I wanted him to live.”

“So did I.”

Q sat down on a sofa that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Picard sat next to him. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve… wanted to tell you, for some time. I never realized, back in the days when you came to visit me frequently… that I’d miss you, as much as I did, if you didn’t come back.” He held Q’s hand clasped in both of his. “I… did consider the possibility that the Romulan supernova represented your civil war resuming, and that I hadn’t seen you because… you’d become a casualty. To be honest, when there were no further supernovae, of course I was relieved because unexpected supernovae are horrible, but it also occurred to me that, if there’d been a conflict among your people, you’d resolved it. And if it was resolved so quickly…” He swallowed. “I thought that meant you were alive.”

Q raised an eyebrow. “What part of me suggests to you that I’m good at resolving conflicts quickly, Picard?”

“The fact that you did. The first time.”

“Obviously not well enough, or no one would have planted a bomb.” He took a deep breath. “So. You missed me?”

“I did. Although I wasn’t going to tell you, if you came back and it turned out your reasons for not coming to see me in so long were trivial.” Picard smiled.

Q laughed. “I suppose you don’t consider death all that trivial?”

“Not at all.” He let go of Q’s hand. “I’m glad you’re alive now.”

“I… suppose I am as well.”

“You suppose?”

“So many died, Jean-Luc. So many. And I’m alive.”

“That’s survivor’s guilt. It’s normal.” He smiled wryly. “There are times when I’m still miserable with guilt that I’m alive and Data isn’t. Or Jack Crusher.”

“Was he as boring as his wife?”

Picard raised a finger and shook his head. “None of that. We’re past the stage where you insult my friends, now. I expect you to keep a somewhat civil tongue in your head.”

Q rolled his eyes. “Oh, how will I ever live up to this overbearing expectations?” He looked at Picard. “It’s like you think I’m a good person.”

“Now that I know something of the culture of the Q Continuum? I do think you’re a good person. About half your flaws are species-or-culture specific, and the other half don’t outweigh the ways in which you try to do what you see as the right thing even when you have to fight your culture to do so.”

Q smiled slightly. “I think you’ve finally gone senile, Picard.” Picard stiffened slightly. “Wait. Did… you get a diagnosis?”

“Assuming that the thing you showed me was a real possible future at the time… I’ve managed to put it off for some years, based on the warning you gave me, but it’s not curable. Yes. I have Irumodic Syndrome. Thank you for the extra years, by the way. I wouldn’t have known to take the treatments that can slow it down or put it off, if not for you.”

“And you’re just going to let this happen?” Q stood up and started to pace, angrily gesticulating with his hands. “You’re all right with just losing your mind? Your intellect, your memories? You’re going to let all that disappear in a haze of confusion and end up in a nursing home drooling applesauce onto your bib?”

Picard turned his hands out and up in his lap, a shrug without shoulders. “I don’t see where I have an alternative. I suppose I could die in the course of this quest, and then I’d avoid it…”

“No.” Q spun on his heel and faced Picard. “There’s another way. Come with me.”

“Come… with you?”

“To the Continuum,” Q clarified.

Picard stood. “Q. You know I have no desire to become something other than human.”

“It isn’t about what you desire.” Q started pacing again. “I know what you want, Picard. If I was making this offer because I care about you and I don’t want to see everything that made you you slowly evaporate before you finally shuffle off this mortal coil and I never see you again, I know you’d say no. ‘I have no desire to be anything other than human, Q’, like being human is the ultimate achievement.”

“It may not be the ultimate achievement, but it is what I am. And if you’re not making this offer because you don’t want me to die—”

“I don’t want any more Q to die,” Q said, walking toward Picard, his eyes completely focused on Picard’s. “You’re a diplomat. You’ve stopped countless wars, talked species who were torn apart by civil war into negotiating with each other. And my war isn’t over, not if someone is planting bombs. And the next one could be my son. Or Amanda. Or my ex. Irritating as she is, I don’t want her to die. I don’t want any of them to die, even my enemies.” He knelt in front of Picard, looking up at him. “Please, Jean-Luc. I’m not asking because I want to make you a god and gloat about how you misuse power – in the Continuum we’re not omnipotent, anyway. I’m not asking because I don’t want you to die – I don’t, but I know you won’t accept a reason like that, and I accepted your eventual death as the consequence of caring about a mortal back when I first figured out that you were more to me than a project. I’m asking because the Q don’t have anyone like you, someone who can compromise but who has the kind of iron will and courage of convictions needed to demand that everyone around you compromise too.”

“My ability to compromise didn’t help the people of the Cardassian Demilitarized Zone, in the end,” Picard said softly. “It didn’t save the Romulans.”

“Yes, yes, are you sure you don’t already think you’re a god? You certainly take the blame like you think you’re omnipotent.” Q stood up. “I know you’ve failed at things. But you’re better at this than me. You’re better at this than any Q in the Continuum. And they won’t listen to you if you’re a mere mortal.”

“But they’ll listen to me if I’m a brand new Q?”

“Yes. Because you’ll make them listen. And because my faction will support you.” He paced again. “You’re worried about misusing your power? We can keep you from coming back to this plane of existence until everyone you cared about is dead, so you’re not tempted to intervene. You’re worried about not being human? Well, when you’re dead you’re not a human being because you’re not being anything at all. If you can contemplate ceasing to exist, how can you refuse to contemplate ceasing to exist as you are, transforming rather than dying?”

Picard took a deep breath. “If you’d come to me a few weeks ago, I might have said yes, but… I have obligations, now. I have to find Data’s other daughter, and protect her.”

Q took a deep breath. “I know where she is, but she’s beyond my reach.”

“So she’s in the Beta Quadrant, somewhere near the area of space affected by the Romulan supernova.”

“Yes.”

“And you can’t save her or help her because she’s in a place where Q power doesn’t work.”

“Yes.”

“I already know where she is, Q. She’s on the Artifact. Bruce Maddox told me, a short while ago.”

Q nodded. “Of course you do. But are you aware that when you came in and found me, you thought you were actually back home with your Romulan bodyguards?”

Cold washed over Picard. Q was right. When he’d sensed that someone was in his holographic study, the one that had been programmed to look exactly like home… he’d thought he was home. He’d thought that Laris and Zhaban were around somewhere and that the phasers they’d hidden about the room were also here. “I… yes. You’re right. I can’t deny it.” Picard took a deep breath. “But it doesn’t change anything. As long as I have enough of my mind here in the present that I can keep fighting, I need to find Soji and protect her. She’s all I have left of Data, and… I couldn’t save her sister. I owe it to Data, I owe it to Dahj to find Soji before the Zhat Vash do.”

“And that’s more important than preventing a war. A war that will cause supernovae and kill trillions of mortals as collateral damage, if it breaks out again.”

“I don’t have long to live, Q. Do I? By Q standards?”

“You could live another sixty years and it would be an eyeblink by Q standards, but… no. No, I think you have less time than that, and you know why.”

Picard nodded. “And you told me that you could, in theory, still resurrect Data, but you don’t want to bring him into a world that has banned his species. Which implies that if I died, you could, in theory, resurrect me.”

“Not if you’re in the dead zone when you die.”

“Yes, true. But if a transporter can create copies of people or hold a pattern in a buffer for 80 years, I’m fairly sure you can copy a pattern and hold it in a buffer as insurance against my death in a place you cannot reach.”

“Are you giving me permission to do that?”

“I’m saying yes. To your request. But not now. I’m still alive now, and I have obligations here. I’m not ready to give up my human existence and leave behind everyone I’ve ever known or cared for… yet. But you’re quite right. The nature of mortality says that sooner or later… I will, whether I want to or not.”

“You’re saying yes?” Q looked stunned.

Picard smiled. “I realize that my saying yes to you is an unusual occurrence, but it’s hardly unheard of.”

“I just…” Q shook his head. “I should have known. I picked you for the ability to think outside the constraints of the human condition. I’ve known all along that I could take you at the moment of your death, assuming you’re not inside the dead zone, but I didn’t realize you knew, and I didn’t think you’d give me permission.”

“There’s nothing about death, per se, that’s particularly marvelous,” Picard said dryly. “As a species, mortality gives us a reason to strive, while we live. As an individual… I can’t live forever as a human, and I shouldn’t, and I don’t want to. But from the perspective of everyone I care for, there’s no difference whether I die and cease to exist, or whether I become a new form of life but break my ties with my former existence. And…” He swallowed. “If there is any chance, any chance at all, that I can prevent what happened to Romulus from happening to other worlds… yes. Yes, very few sacrifices are too great for that. I’m willing to give up my death, and my humanity upon my death, to try to prevent war in the Q Continuum.”

“But you’re not willing to give up what remains of your life.”

“No. Soji is beyond your reach, you’ve said so. I presume the Zhat Vash are mostly beyond your reach as well. And I don’t want you stepping in to solve my problems, anyway.”

“Don’t friends help each other?”

“Yes. But friends also don’t demand godlike exercises of power from friends. You thought I’d be upset with you because you tried to save Data, and you failed, because of the bomb. Data wouldn’t have expected that of you and neither would I… alternate timelines regardless. Perhaps my grief was more raw when I said what I said in that other timeline, or perhaps you made me so angry I lashed out. Here and now, though… I want you to understand. You are not my friend because of what you can do for me, with your powers. I’ve never wanted you to do anything for me with your powers; the only time I ever called on you it was because billions of lives were at stake, and that was worth more than my pride as a human.”

“But Soji isn’t?”

Picard closed his eyes. “If you had the power to snap your fingers and ensure her safety, I might say yes, but you’ve told me you don’t. And I don’t want the Zhat Vash deciding to target the Q, not in your people’s weakened state… yes, I know, I know, you’re still omnipotent, we mere mortals can’t possibly hope to harm you, et cetera… but I know the Borg were attempting to work on a means of capturing and assimilating one of you, and that was before you had a war and invented weapons that work on your kind. I can’t rule out that the Zhat Vash could find a way to harm you if you turned your power on them as a blunt force instrument but didn’t have the power to find and stop them all.”

“I think that’s a silly thing to be afraid of, but I’m touched by your concern.” He said it as if it was sarcastic, but the expression on his face was tender. “But very well. I’ll stay out of your quest. I’ll let you live out however long you have, in your human life. I won’t do anything either to hasten or to prevent your death. And when you die, I’ll repair your mind if I have to, if Irumodic Syndrome has taken too much of it away, and I’ll make you a Q, and you’ll come to the Continuum with me to save my people, and your galaxy.”

“To try my best, at the very least,” Picard said.

Q smiled like a man who didn’t want to smile but couldn’t help himself. “You have no idea how delighted I am to hear that.” He spread his arms. “Hug?”

Picard chuckled. “I don’t do hugs, Q, I’m far too emotionally repressed for that. You know better.”

“I do, yes.” Q laughed… and then leaned in and kissed Picard on the cheek before Picard could stop him or back away. “Is that better? I understand you Frenchmen kiss each other like that all the time.”

“Two hundred years ago. Cultures change. We also don’t use expressions like ‘mon petit chou’ anymore.”

“I can’t call you my little cabbage?”

“Not without sounding hopelessly out of date and archaic.”

“You didn’t seem to mind the kiss, though.”

“I’m too old to let myself get riled up by your pranks,” Picard said, smiling broadly.

“What if it wasn’t a prank?”

“Then I’m too old to let myself get riled up by that, either.” He gripped Q’s arms by the elbows. “But don’t wait to come visit until I’m dead and it’s time for our bargain to come due. I’m going to worry about you if I don’t see you.”

Q shook his head. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

Picard released him. “And if you want to propose to me, you have to wait until we’re on the same form of existence. The stress of trying to arrange a wedding at my age really could kill me.”

Q choked on laughter for a moment. “Well, in English, ‘commitment’ is another term for being locked up in the funny farm, and that about sums up how I feel about marriage. But I’ll be absolutely sure to take you out on a few dates while you’re still human. Wine and dine you while it matters.”

“I look forward to it.” Picard glanced at the holographic replica of a clock. It wasn’t moving. Of course not. “Well, whether you have stopped time or not, apparently I am still growing tired, and the hour was late when you came to visit. I need to return to bed.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your beauty sleep, mon amiral.”

“I think I liked ‘mon capitaine’ better.”

“I did too. You never should have let them promote you.”

Picard shrugged. “Time moves forward. We can’t desperately cling to the past, even if it made us happier. Life gives us no choice but to keep growing and changing. Even you, I think.”

“Yes.” Q nodded in agreement. “Even me.”

“Take care of yourself, Q.”

“I’d tell you to do the same, Jean-Luc, but I know you won’t. Not while there are still swashes to buckle and fair maidens to save.”

“Well. I’ll charge into danger without much regard for the odds against me, but I promise to take care of my health, at least.”

“That’s the best I’ll get out of you, I suppose.” Q grinned, and manufactured a hat, obviously so he could tip it. “Until next time, then.”

And he was gone.

#picard/q #tapestry day #alara posts fanfic #picard #q (star trek)

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merinnan · 4 years

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DMBJ Ep 6

I’ve been a bit behind putting these up on Tumblr, so I’m afraid you’re about to get a dump of the remainder of Season 1, plus the first two eps of Explore with the Note! (not all in one post, of course - 1 ep per post as usual)

So! Episode 6!

The Xiaoge Rescue Count at the start of ep 6 stands at 9 for Wu Xie, 12 for the protagonists, 13 for everyone.

- And we start back with Chengcheng and High Jr. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS SUBPLOT, MAKE IT GO AWAY AND BRING BACK XIAOGE AND WU XIE.

- Why is Chengcheng calling her kidnapper dage? I don't like her or trust her. She is annoying and shady

- Oh, good, now we are back to Wu Xie being a good boy

- That is a lot of guns and explosives Sanshu has recovered

- I am annoyed at how they all seem to think that A-Ning needs to be shielded from everything unpleasant because she's a girl. She's a goddamn mercenary leader. I think she can take knowing these things - and it's better to let her know as it's found out so that she can adjust to the news properly, instead of springing it on her when it can't be concealed anymore, like what happened when the blood zombie showed up.

- On a completely different tangent, Wu Xie's neck dressing has stayed astonishingly clear for running around in a tomb, crawling through tight tunnels, falling off of ledges and being dramatically rescued, fighting bugs, and fainting all over floors.

- Wu Xie is so sweetly optimistic

- LOL, sure Pangzi, you're here for archeological study

- ....Wu Xie, you are disturbingly knowledgeable about guns for a college student

- Now that I've read the first novel between having watched ep 5 and now, my mind is slightly reeling from how innocent and babie drama Wu Xie is compared to novel Wu Xie

- Awww. Doesn't matter which Wu Xie it is, babie with gun always looks kinda adorable.

- Also, I appreciate Wu Xie's trigger discipline. So often shows have such terrible trigger discipline.

- Oooh, it's like a carved thing on the dais that got his attention. I thought it was like a computer drive or something at first, because it looked kinda like that.

- OH NO, THE LIVING VINES ARE HERE AND SNEAKING UP ON THEM

- ...and pushing the button made them retreat

- ...phew?

- I am still concerned

- The music signifies that something creepy is coming

- lol, babie. Looking so innocent even though He Knows What He Did

- I don't know what that sound is, but that's not a good sound

- ...earthquake? That's a bad thing to happen when you're in the middle of an evil cave.

- WU FAMILY, WHY ARE YOU THE ONLY ONES TRYING TO STAY ON YOUR FEET WITHOUT HOLDING ONTO ANYTHING?!

- So fucking stubborn

- This is where Wu Xie gets it from, if Erbai is wondering

- A-Ning is the smartest one, staying sitting down

- The tree opens up like a fucking security vault and ejects a coffin. Because of course if fucking does.

- Oooh, yeah, that's that shot from the opening credits

- "I can't read any of this, but it says this is the guy we're looking for"

- "His story recorded here is the same as what we know" WU XIE YOU JUST SAID YOU CAN'T READ IT

- Come on. Earlier in the show you said "yes I can read this" and read it. And in the novel, you puzzle it out from being able to read bits. This part, you flat out said he couldn't read it, and now are telling everyone what it says

- I love continuity, but dramas really don't

- The music now is similar enough to the Harry Potter music that I almost expect an owl to go flying past

- The owner of a coffin wanting the coffin to be opened hundreds or thousands of years later seems like it should be something more worrying than how everyone is reacting

- I wanna know how Sanshu knows the coffin has been there for 3000 years. Wu Xie can't read the dates on it, and the Warring States Period was 1500 years ago, not 3000

- JESUS CHRIST, SANSHU, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SENSIBLE ONE!

- Why are you suggesting you open the chained shut coffin in order to see if there's somehow something alive (or alive-ish) in there?

- Awwww! Wu Xie going "no, don't do that, Pokerface told us not to touch anything"

- Like. Not, "no uncle, that seems like a bad idea"

- But "Xiaoge told us not to, and we should do what he says"

- I have the feeling that if this Pangzi is agreeing with something, then you all should not be doing that thing. Because this version of Pangzi is an idiot

- HOW THE FUCK IS THE MOVING COFFIN GOING TO SECRETLY HAVE THE EXIT INSIDE IT, PANGZI

- THAT MAKES THE LEAST SENSE OUT OF EVERYTHING SO FAR

- Pan Zi's "WTF do you think you're doing" look

- This Pangzi is so bad

- I even like Chengcheng better than him. And I wish they had taken her into the tomb and used her as bait.

- I'm glad he's better in other adaptations. Like, I love the Pangzi in Chongqi. I am so glad that he was my intro to Pangzi, not this one

- DON'T MAKE THE BABIE SAD BY BEING DUMB

- A-Ning really should not be just standing there with her leg injury. I've had a muscle biopsy before where they took it from the thigh, which is a similar 'injury' to what she's got, and you do not get on your feet unless you absolutely have to for days afterwards.

- At least they have her limp when she's walking, and it's kinda sad that I'm glad they do that!

- And Pan Zi should not be doing hard physical labour with a fucking gut wound

- But I think I'm more annoyed by A-Ning, because I have personal experience with her kind of injury so know first-hand what kind of pain she's causing herself by standing and walking

- HUMAN BRAIN LOGIC GO

- Pangzi you fucking dick, just standing there watching. You should be pushing instead of Pan Zi

- Hahahah, after all his shittalk and boasting, and he can't do it

- Oh, there, finally

- I know that inside lid is supposed to be jade, but it looks so terribly fake. Oh my god. It's awful

- It looks like a bad Photoshop of one of those Windows 98 default backgrounds

- I love the looks everyone gives Pangzi every time he slips up and talks about getting money from the stuff in the tomb

- LOL, that's not a carving, that's a couple of translucent green plastic discs stuck on top of Windows Background Photoshop cover

- ...I'm kinda waiting for someone to suddenly shout BOO! really loudly while they're all carefully trying to listen for any sounds in the coffin

- They're almost at the end of the first novel in terms of plot, and there's still 4 and a half eps to go

- Wow, I think that's the first time I've seen Sanshu actually worried

- lol, and now Pangzi says he believes him, rather than get his ear that close to the coffin himself

- PANGZI DON'T STARTLE SOMEONE WHO HAS THEIR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER OF A GUN & DEFINITELY DON'T SMACK THE GUN

- Wu Xie has a lot of control to have not accidentally shot right then

- LOL, after all their declarations how they're archaeologists, not tomb robbers, & how they're here to protect cultural artefacts from robbers, etc - they go make references to the northern and southern schools of tomb raiding

- Just without actually saying exactly what the 'Southern School' being referred to actually is.

- ....and now Pangzi jumps in front of the pointed gun as he grabs it. Do you have a fucking death wish, dude?

- And now we see the infamous bronze armour! Jade armour. Whatever

- You'd think they'd have learned to fucking take all of A-Ning's guns away from her after last time she held one of them at gunpoint

- OMG, the face on the helmet is so fucking ridiculous, I can't - It's not even properly positioned over his face

- Aaaaah, Sanshu called him tianzhen I'm so happy at being able to identify that word now it's ridiclous

- That...that is not what peeled skin looks like

- Pangzi comes right out and admits he's a tomb robber

- And for the first time, no-one calls him on it

- Or correct him for calling them tomb robbers

- Ah, there you are, Xiaoge. I was wondering how long it would take for you to be back

- I see looking for people in a tomb requires no shirt XD

- Better shots of shirtless Xiaoge

- Like, same, Wu Xie. Same.

- Look, I have two braincells, and one is for Xiaoge and one is for pingxie

- YOU ACTING LIKE THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS, PANGZI

- Oooh, this is a goood shot of the tattoo. And of who the tattoo is on

- I don't have a Xiaoge problem. It's the opposite of a problem.

- Seriously, Pangzi is so fucking lucky that Xiaoge didn't kill him a dozen times over during their first meetings here

- Also, now that Xiaoge has explained why he threw a knife at Pangzi, I believe it's time to update the Xiaoge Rescue Count to 9 for Wu Xie, 13 for the protagonists, 14 for everyone.

- Although maybe I should have also been keeping a People Eyerolling At Pangzi Count given how often it's been happening

- More Xiaoge pics, feat. emotions that are not 'worrying about Wu Xie'

- Also, did he throw the corpse off the platform after he broke it's neck, or did it yeet itself off somehow?

- I mean, I too wanna know how Xiaoge knows all this stuff if this was all put here 3000 years ago

- I do love that Wu Xie is already about the only person who Xiaoge will actually look at instead of staring down or straight ahead

- LOL, Wu Xie won't even let Pangzi so much as touch this.

- I honestly appreciate that Xiaoge appears to travel lightly enough that he doesn't have a spare shirt

- EVERYTHING makes Wu Xie better than everyone else (except Xiaoge), Pangzi

- lol, Sanshu, yes. You tell him.

- Hahahah, and Wu Xie playing along with Sanshu, the little adorable shit

- THE LOOK ON HIS FACE

- KJFDHKJDAFHFKASDJHFKJASDLHGFSKLJ

- AND DON'T THINK I DON'T SEE THAT SMIRK, WU XIE

- There is absolutely not enough of little shit!Wu Xie in S1

- Loooool, his little nod at Sanshu now that they got their way and made Pangzi promise to stfu for the time being

- And that is the first time I've seen that style of carriage roll like a car

- Those skull ballistae were a cool aesthetic, though

- THAT CARRIAGE WAS ROLLING LIKE A FUCKING CAR, HOW IS IT BACK UPRIGHT AND ROLLING ALONG THE GROUND TO THE CLIFF

- HOW TF IS IT ROLLING ANYWHERE WITH A SMASHED WHEEL

- HOW TF IS HE ABLE TO HOLD IT FOR EVEN A SECOND, ESPECIALLY WITH ONE HAND

- A thin as fuck flagpole is going to give you jack shit in terms of something to brace with when it comes to that much weight

- THE SCRIPTWRITER OF THIS SCENE IS BAD AND SHOULD FEEL BAD

- *cries in physics minor*

- I can suspend disbelief for aliens, zombies, everything about Xiaoge, logic holes, and plot pits. Apparently my line is a non-cultivator breaking the laws of physics.

- Aaaah, here come the zombies

- So this dude is not the zombie dude

- He is the emperor, I think?

- OH MY GOD THAT GREENSCREEN IS JUST THE WORST

- I thought the one on the river was bad. The one of her falling as he dives off the cliff to save her is actively painful

- Oh, now it looks like we're gonna have a dumb love triangle in the flashback. Yay. *waves tiny flag*

- Bitch, be a bit more grateful. Yes, your ex-lover caught you as you were falling & did so by basically flying, but that's just standard wuxia defiance of physics. Your husband held a FUCKING CARRIAGE with ONE HAND for AT LEAST TWO WHOLE MINUTES to keep you alive before your ex finally showed up

- "Were you really frightened?" Your majesty, what kind of a stupid question is that?

- The emperor's armour is really pretty, I gotta say

- Uuuugh, this stupid love story hurts in a bad way

- I'm just gonna fast forward through it

- ...and there's the end of the episode.

- That love triangle is going to make me scream, I know it

- But that does explain how they're going to pad out the episodes a bit more with how far through the plot they are already

- None of them are even really that pretty to make up for the boring, trite, love triangle plot

- How do they expect to keep my attention through it if I don't even have eye candy?!?!

- I will be seriously headdesking if this flashback goes on for more than the next ep!

- Oh well, there we are. The end of ep 6

The Xiaoge Rescue Count at the end of ep 6 stands at 9 for Wu Xie, 13 for the protagonists, 14 for everyone.

#alicia watches dmbj #dmbj #xiaoge rescue count #daomu biji #wu xie #zhang qiling #wang pangzi #iron triangle #xiaoge

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