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Wake Me From This Dreaming: Interlude

Hypnosx WMFTD! Y/N

Word count:5.6K

Warnings: Trama, angst, no beta

Notes: omg. Thank you everyone for waiting. Life has been super crazy lately. I hope you guys enjoy this. Don’t have much to say but we are nearing the end. Also this won’t be the last interlude. We might be meeting some important people soon.

The masterlist

Enjoy.

(Ancient)

It wasn’t that often Hypnos was on the surface.

The sea crashed against the cliffside, white seafoam and wet sea weeds left between the dark, jagged rocks.

Not leaving a single mark on the dirt path, Hypnos floated over the beaten path to the rocky beach. The waves crashed loudly against the land, like a twin to the roaring of a lion.

The sand, pure white and glittery in the moonlight, looked unlike anything seen in the underworld.

A moment of hesitation, then Hypnos landed on the loose sand, his bare feet unused to the sensations. Immediately he wiggled his toes, shivering at the oddness and let out a quiet chuckle.

He kicked at it with a grin, the arch of sand in the moonlight glittered before returning to be among the millions grains of sand.

He picked his tunic, bunching it up in his hands and began walking down to the beach. He saw places like this in countless mortals’ dreams but there had been something calling him to this one, to a maddening need to understand.

His footsteps trailed behind him like a shadow and he grinned at the sight then a rushing wave came onto the land. Cold water lapped at his steps, and he shivered in utter delight.

How marvelous, no wonder mortals often dreamed of water, of land and sensations. Someday, they will have names for all these places and one day, they will write them down on their own creations of stone, then paper.

For now, they will worship the gods in quiet, dark caves as they whisper, their clay forms made strong by the warm, immortal fire that Prometheus had stolen for them. It was a rebellious act that Prometheus was paying dearly for and would for a very long time.

So much had changed and Hypnos was curious what would come next. If he was with his sisters, the three fates and their heavenly tools, he might have begged for a peek at the grand tapestry and they would deny him just as they did everyone else.

The home of stars and void offered nothing like this. At home, everything just was and always will be until the last star died out.

With a happy sigh, he wandered along the beach, admiring the simplistic beauty of it all.

“Hypnos.” Thanatos called out.

His voice had gotten deeper since they last spoke, another sign that his twin was coming into his powers, bringing mortals to their final rest. Thanatos will have the last sleep but Hypnos will have all of the ones that come before death. Their dreams and nightmares were Hypnos’ as well, and he found that he was greedy for all of it.

Hypnos paused in mid step and turned with a cheeky grin.

“Why, isn’t it my favorite twin! Come join me, the water is horribly cold.” Hypnos said with a laugh. The water rushed over his feet as if punishing him for his rude words.

Thanatos’ disapproving scowl only deepened, his feet untouched by the earth and sea. His scythe, both a tool and a symbol of Thanatos’ duty, gleamed silver in the moonlight.

“You know Mother Nyx doesn’t like you leaving the underworld, Hypnos. Especially since Master Hades had been kind enough to not kick us all out.”

At his brother’s words, Hypnos scoffed. “Just because they won over the Titans doesn’t mean everything belongs to them now.”

“Actually, it does.” Thanatos said wryly. His lips twitched however, as if for one moment even he had to admit to the insanity of it. Master Hades had been ruling for quite some time but the ripples of effect the war between the titans and gods still echoed.

Hypnos suspected that the ripples would reach the end of time itself. He also knew they hadn't seen the true consequences of the war. Not yet.

Many of Nyx’’s children had rebelled against Hades’ rule and if Hypnos was a little braver, less desperate for his mom’s and Thanatos’ affection, he might have counted himself among them.

Hypnos shrugged, his eyes darted down and he wiggled his toes, getting sand between them. The whole world was quiet, but Hypnos could feel every single mortal and immortal soul that was asleep, all lost in his misty domain. Quiet murmurs of lovers in the dark, of exhausted mothers whispering a bedtime story for their babies lingered around him like a ghost.

“Why did you come up?” Thanatos asked finally, trying to sound like he didn’t care but Hypnos heard the curiosity underneath.

Maybe it was wrong, but Hypnos was tempted to lie. He met Thanatos’ golden eyes - and he looked so much like their mother in that moment, that Hypnos felt that familiar pang of shame, not being more like Thanatos.

“Mom- I mean, Mother Nyx and I had a disagreement.” Hypnos admitted. “She told me If I must behave like a mortal, I might as well join them.”

Hypnos threw out his arms, letting his tunic fall into the water as he gestured toward the whole beach. Toward the infinity of uncaring stars. “And I must admit I already like what I am seeing. Maybe I will go to them in the morning and- and maybe eat with them and when they have their parties I will join them in song and dance!”

Thanatos stared for a long moment, his eyes widened in shock. Then he tossed his head back in honest laughter, surprising Hypnos.

“Stop laughing.” Hypnos ordered but his serious tone was ruined by his own laughter. “Stop!- You know I laugh when you laugh.”

“Maybe you will become a hunter or- actually no, you will have to gather berries since I have seen your aim- Oh! Will you have little babies with a mortal?” Thanatos chortled and at the thought, Hypnos laughed hard enough he had to wrap his arms around his stomach.

Just like that, the anger Hypnos felt melted away like it never existed, he couldn’t remember the last time he and Thanatos had laughed together.

A gust of wind blew past them, pickling at his exposed skin. Hypnos took a deep breath, letting the chill fill his lungs, the cold reminding him of home. He signed as their laughter died down.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to drag you between me and mom.” Hypnos said.

“You didn’t.” Thanatos crossed his arms, the signs of his earlier joy already fading. His mouth went tight, “But you can’t do this, she needs you in the house - even if you are having a disagreement- and I can’t protect you from Master Hades if you are running away like a child.”

Hypnos slumped, he actually enjoyed seeing - touching, smelling, feeling- what morals saw in their faded dreams. And this was the first time in a long time that he and Thanatos were talking without their mother’s watchful eyes on them.

“I know.” Hypnos murmured, taking one last glance toward the millions of stars in the skies. He took in the feeling of sand between his toes, the chilly water against his skin and the smell of salt.

Thanatos sighed, “Come along.”

Hypnos looked up to Thanatos, a question on his lips but Thanatos had already left, returning to the Underworld.

For a moment, he allowed himself to wonder if he would have been happier as a moral, to just dream and live amidst the beauty of the world.

When he vanished, the inky black of the sea rolled upon the land and filled in the space of where his footprints marked the sand. Another wave crashed, then another and another, wiping away any sign of his existence.

Eventually mortals learned agriculture, their brow sweaty with heat of the sun, their hands buried in the cool dirt of the world, a place that their bodies will one day return to.

Then homes were built, many filled with families then cities were formed along with government institutions - and torn down by the bloody delights of war or greed- and society was born. Amidst the ever moving arrow of time, storytellers and bold artists and mad inventors and Greek heroes dreamed and created and fought and died.

Hypnos dreamt with them, often in amusement but occasionally he would paused in quiet admiration, not letting them know of his presence.

In a way, Hypnos grew along the side of mortals, their dreams were his, their nightmares were his as well

Only he never thought a moral could trap a god, let alone that god being his own twin.

Nyx’s purple lips were thin, her head bowed. Her dark hair was a veil against her pale skin. When Hypnos caught his mom in the right lighting, her hair was like the night sky itself, filled with shining stars among the void.

“But how?” Hypnos asked once more, his eyes widened as he looked at Charon who seemed just as lost.

His twin had been bound and sealed away by a mortal king. Something so impossible that Hypnos wondered if he was somehow caught in a dream without realizing it. He pitched himself. Hard.

They haven’t even known until afterwards, it had been Ares that freed him and helped bring righteous justice upon the arrogant moral.

Good. Hypnos thought, his nails digging into his palms. I hope Sisyphus never knows peace.

A boney hand rested on his shoulder, a quiet show of support. Hypnos glanced up at Charon, wishing that his older brother could make this go away. That he could bring Thanatos out of his room.

It seemed like just yesterday he and Thanatos would play in Charon’s boat, dipping their hands into the styx waters, gasping with delight when their sister, the river itself, returned their touch.

Charon groaned, his violet eyes locked onto Nyx. ‘Did that mortal have the help of a god? He must have, it can’t be possible otherwise.”

“We don’t know yet.” Nyx paused, “But it is possible that Mania had a role in it somehow.”

The name alone made Hypnos flitched, the goddess ruled before his mom did and she did not take kindly to being overthrown. He was too young to witness it but he remembered how exhausted Nyx had been, her voice worn out and her eyes hazy.

The underworld was a complete disaster and he couldn’t blame his mom for giving it over to Hades even if another part of him felt she should have fought harder for it. This was their home from home, the last place they were mostly together.

Eventually Nyx sent them away to their duties. Something that Hypnos ignored with the best intentions. He drifted along the hallways to where Thanatos’ room was, the candlelight dancing with the shadows.

Thanatos’ doors were a reflection of him, imposing and untouchable. Hypnos studied the careful details of butterflies dancing around an inverted torch. At the bottom of the door was a pile of dead butterflies, some in the middle of falling toward their doom.

It made Hypnos’ own door, decorated with poppies, lambs curled up asleep and wispy clouds, seem childlike. It was rare for him to feel embarrassed about it but right now he did. It was another reminder that his twin was outgrowing him.

Hypnos sighed, not letting himself get intimidated by a bloody door of all things and knocked on the heavy door.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Hypnos knocked again, loudly and for as long as he could.

“Thanatos?” Hypnos called out. “Hey, open up. Your favorite twin is here!”

Nothing.

Hypnos frowned, his hand dropping down. Maybe Thanatos had left his chambers?

“Thanatos?” Hypnos called out one more time. His voice lingering in the empty hallway.

Thanatos never responded.

(Part 14)

“Did it feel like this for you?” Hypnos asked, his eyes darted over to the door that his moral had closed. You were gracious enough to allow Hypnos and his twin some alone time before Master Hades’ meeting.

But all he wanted to do was call you back. He longed for the comfort of your hand on his back. For you to just be near him. Was it pathetic? Probably but Hypnos didn’t care.

Hypnos forced himself to face Thanatos. Odd how they were so alike but different at the same time. He saw himself in his twin and wondered if Thanatos saw the same thing Hypnos did.

It might be foolish but Hypnos hoped he did.

“No.” Thanatos admitted, not meeting Hypnos’ glance. Thanatos was hunched like a prey that was painfully aware of nearby predators. His lips thinned from stress.

The hearth’s fire danced and crackled loudly in the still room and Hypnos curled a hand over his rolling stomach.

“When.”Thanatos paused, closing his eyes. “When it happened to me, I couldn’t do anything, everything I touched died regardless if I wanted it to or not. Plants, beasts, everything. It was out of control. My emotions were like a stormy sea.”

“Oh.” Hypnos murmured, his eyes widened. “Is that why-“

“Yes.” Thanatos sighed.

Silence took over again. Hypnos opened his mouth then shut it. He never knew Thanatos to not have control over his powers. Hypnos was the problem child and regularly claimed victims for an unexpected nap time.

Hades may or may not have been a common victim of Hypnos’ powers.

For Hypnos, his godly powers flowed like a river for him, often overwhelming him until he learned how to control it. Now it was dried up and Hypnos feared it might not ever return.

“I can’t reach it at all.” Hypnos confessed, “I can move things sometimes but that's it.”

“I see.” Thanatos repiled, rubbing his mouth thoughtfully.

“What fixed it?” Hypnos bit hard on his thumbnail, watching Thanatos’ expression change into a grimace which told Hypnos that he probably wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I had to relearn everything. Everything.” Thanatos warned. “That and patience. It will be hard, it tested even me and you know that out of the two of us, I was the most patient one.”

Hypnos slumped into his chaise with a groan, covering his eyes with a hand. He won’t cry, he told himself. Not in front of Thanatos.

He didn’t hear Thanatos get up and jolted when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Thanatos was looking at him with a small, brotherly grin. One that Hypnos returned hesitantly.

“I know you can do it. You always had an unusual affinity for the powers and burdens of Sleep.” Thanatos said. “I don’t think even Chaos or our mother had such control over it.”

“You’re not just saying that?” Hypnos asked, his eyes stung with unshed tears. He couldn’t remember the last time Thanatos said anything kind to him.

“Of course not.” The complete and utter faith in Thanatos’ voice was enough to finally break Hypnos and before his twin could escape, Hypnos caught him in a rib cracking hug.

With a rueful smile, Thanatos patted Hypnos’ back awkwardly.

It will be fine, Hypnos told himself, it had to be.

(Current)

With his heart dropping into his stomach, Hypnos looked over the disaster that Zagreus had created.

Pain. Paaaain. This was actually causing him psychological and physical pain.

Hypnos might not be the most tidy soul around but this was something else. He bit down on his tongue as he went through his ledger. It was riddled with mistakes, misspelled names, no causes of death listed or causes of death with no names listed. Somehow he even messed up the dates.

Worst of all, Zagreus had taken up doodling pictures of Cerberus next to Hypnos’ doodles.

Hypnos’ doodles of his mortal and Monie were sacred, damn it.

“Your father was right to fire you.” Hypnos murmured bitterly, glaring daggers in the direction that Zagreus had fled. Zagreus didn’t even hesitate to shove the paperwork at Hypnos’ chest the moment their eyes met.

For a brief moment he made eye contact with his mom and he offered up a smile. But she turned away.

Hypnos told himself that it didn’t hurt.

With a huff, he went down the list, promising revenge on the godling. Maybe he could pay off a numbskull to bite Zagreus in a very unpleasant area. Or he could have you do something embarrassing to Zagreus during a fight now that you were allowed out of the house again.

Near the bottom, Hypnos spied a poorly written poem about Thanatos and his muscular arms.

Oh blood and darkness, there were some things Hypnos didn’t need to see. With a loud gagging sound, he wrote Zagreus’ name in large, blocky letters and sent the offensive scroll to Hades’ desk.

Hypnos knew a lost cause when he saw one.

With a fresh scroll and quill in hand, Hypnos waved forward the first shade. Hypnos wrote the information down like he always did, and slowly he worked though the line between yawns, ignoring the surprise stares from the shades that knew him.

They were polite as they spoke to him, as it was his right as a god and their place as a shade. Yet it didn’t remove the weight of their staring, the way their eyes lingered on his bared feet.

Bared feet that were touching the ground.

For a moment, he felt like he was back in Hades’ private office, everyone’s eyes on him. A memory of dull blue eyes flashed his mind, the fall of dirty flame red hair flashed in his mind and Hypnos pushed it away and shoved it into a box that was labeled ‘Do. Not. Look. Or Think about it. Ever.’.

“Next, please.” Hypnos chirped, waving the shades along. As he did, he noticed that his fingers were trembling. The quill unsteady in his grip.

‘Apparently the mortal just sucked the powers right out of him.’ One shade whispered as they passed Hypnos, gawking at him. Like Hypnos wouldn’t hear them.

The other shade clicked their tongue, ‘Poor little thing. Guess he didn’t fight hard enough.’

Of course, everyone heard what happened from the pitying glances he felt people gave his back, like he wouldn’t know. Hypnos wasn’t surprised but for some reason, that caused a rare, burning anger to bloom like a scarlet flower in his chest.

What gave them the right to look at him like that? To… to judge him for what happened.

His back stiffened unwillingly but he tried to keep the smile on his face. Because really, he was fine and everything was normal even if he didn’t have all of his powers back, so he had to stand here - because everything was fine, he didn’t need his powers to do his job- and act like he was happy to be back and working like normal.

Because he was.

Everything was normal - Hypnos most definitely did not want to scream until he lost his voice and maybe kick Pyrrhus in the unmentionables repeatedly for doing this to him- and he was fine.

He was fine.

Everything was just fine.

Hypnos wondered if since Gods were made of powerful, burning stars and morals of simple clay, then what is a god without power made of?

Dust? Or something even more worthless?

He suspected he wouldn’t like the answer.

His whole body ached.

Each step caused needles of sharp, lingering pain to shoot up his ankles. In the rare moments Hypnos was on the surface, he had seen the work farmers, laborers and slaves did, day in and day out.

Hypnos wondered how mortals didn’t fall apart after a hard day of work. With a soft groan, he rolled up the scroll, more than ready for his break. His bed was calling to him with every single step he took.

“You’re limping.” Your husky voice reached his ears first, then he felt your hand on his lower back.

Hypnos was torn between melting into you, letting your solid form take his exhausted weight or to pull away and act like everything was fine -because it was.- his eyes saw your concerned expression, and with a smile, he straightened up.

“It’s fine.” Hypnos said, stepping forward to keep walking. He winced, something that you noticed immediately judging from your narrowed stare.

“Hypnos-“ you tried but Hypnos shot you a look that made your eyes widened in surprise.

“I’m fine. Really. Let it go.” Hypnos warned.

He had joked about you carrying him around everywhere, to be the comic relief for everyone but the thought of more pitying stares made his guts turn sour. It was bad enough before when people were just annoyed at him.

You stayed quiet, trailing behind him like a faithful sentinel. Guilt churned in Hypnos’ chest, twisting his insides so much that his shoulders hunched.

It was like his anger was a rotten, dark oil that coated everything. He wanted to reach deep and yank it out so he could feel his own powers of heavy warmth and sweet dreams return. All there was bitter anger now, dark and slimy and suffocating.

Hypnos stopped abruptly, turning around to meet your stare, acid words ready on his tongue.

An ugly part of himself thought he would see pity in those intense eyes of yours. Just like everyone else. Sometimes it seems like you could see everything about him with just a single glance.

Only he saw concern. Then he saw the quiet love plainly written on your gentle expression.

Not even his own mother could look at him, not without the shame clear in her catlike eyes. It was a reminder that Thanatos had hid away from everyone - from Hypnos, from their own mother- after what happened for a long, long time.

Thanatos’ words haunted him, he had all the time in the world but Hypnos didn’t know if he could keep going like this.

Hypnos thought he finally understood why. This was horrible and he just wanted to lash out at everything for doing this to him. Maybe he should follow Thanatos’ example and lock himself away until he could be normal again.

His lips parted but no words came out. The rage inside his chest wilted like a dying flower. You didn’t hesitate, opening your arm in a quiet offer of a hug, the other hand gripping the spear tightly.

There was a soft, broken sound that filled in the hallway and it took him a moment to realize that it was coming from him. With a shaky breath, Hypnos took the offer.

The press of your solid form against his was a relief, and you held on tightly, as if you knew that Hypnos needed that. Tears burned his eyes but he didn't let them fall. Your cloak spilled over, hiding Hypnos away from the world.

“I’m sorry.” Hypnos choked out, his arms around your waist. He may be a god, supposed to be powerful but all he wanted right now was to curl up against you and never leave your arms.

“Don’t be, my love.” You comforted him with a tight squeeze, moving the spear behind his back like it was a shield. “I got you. Whatever you need from me, it is yours.”

Hypnos wanted to lighten the mood, crack a joke about getting him dinner and a deep glass of something alcoholic, that you should just carry him around like he joked about before but all he did was hug you tighter.

He didn’t know what he needed. He just wanted to be normal again. He didn’t like this helpless, angry version of himself.

You and him stood there for a long moment then Hypnos took a shaky breath and pulled away just enough to look up at you.

He offered up what felt like a weak smile. “Maybe let's just take a nap together?”

“Done.” You said, pressing a kiss against his forehead.

Hypnos closed his eyes and tried to will away the hopeless feeling that he will never be his old self again.

Hypnos reached deep, deeper inside of himself than he ever allowed before, trying to find something that might not ever come back.

A fleeting, untouchable dream.

Eyes that burned like liquid fire, matted red hair and nails that dig into his flesh and Pyrrhus laughed and laughed-

Hypnos jerked awake, his heart racing as he tried to reclaim his breath. You were already awake, running a smoothing hand though his damp curls as you held him close to your chest. Your deep voice was a gentle murmur of sweet nothings.

Each time Hypnos closed his eyes, all he saw was Pyrrhus’ wild blue eyes staring down at him.

His center, his godhood was a dim thing and no matter how hard Hypnos reached for it, it didn’t resonate. Just like Thanatos never responded to his calls.

Hypnos swallowed, his hands gripping you too tightly but you didn’t complain. You just kissed his cheeks, his forehead in comfort.

He wanted to say something, to break the overwhelming weight over everything.

No words came.

He couldn’t breath, everything was suffocating him.

Mad laughter filled his mind, Pyrrhus was in control once again and Hypnos was nothing.

With a grunt, Hypnos jerked away, nearly falling on his face as he stumbled out of his bed. He grabbed onto the wooden beam of his canopy bed with damp palms, nails digging into the wood. The silver gleam of the stars mocked him, a poor imitation of his once home, of the stories he loved.

He wanted to rip it apart.

“Hypnos? Breath. Now.” You ordered sharply, standing next to him, your large hand on his back. Hypnos blinked, surprised that you were so quick even though he knew he shouldn’t be.

It took everything for Hypnos to obey your order but he did. The breath he took was sharp, almost choking him but he took it.

“Now let out.” You told him, your hand rubbing up and down his back in gentle circles. And he did.

“Again.” You told him, your tone gentling.

His lungs burned as he breathed again and again but slowly, the pain eased up. Mostly. His head was throbbing in what might be the worst headache he ever had. Even after dealing with the nightmare that was Zagreus’ paperwork.

With a pitiful sound, he crumbled against you, his face hidden in your chest. For a moment, Hypnos allowed himself to pretend that he could hear your heartbeat, he knew it would have been strong and steady just like you.

“I’m so tired.” Hypnos whispered, his hands curling into fists against your skin. Your hand didn’t pause nor did you tell him to go back to bed; you knew what he actually meant.

“I know, love.” Your voice was a quiet rumble, one that brought comfort. Sensing that Hypnos didn’t want to go back to the bed, you guided him toward the spot in front of the hearth.

The chaise was soft as a cloud and Hypnos sunk right into it.

The fire had died down to ruby red embers and you got to work right away. Hypnos watched, admiring the way your muscles flexed under scarred skin. Each movement was graceful and sure.

When the flames were strong, you joined him by sitting next to him on the end of the chaise, one leg folded under the other. Your hand reached for his legs, placing both on your lap. Your hand cupped his ankle, rubbing along the jut of bone idly. Hypnos made a soft, pleased hum as you massaged the sore muscles and tendons.

The fire crackled and popped loudly in the stillness. The light from the flames were warm, casting shadows and enough light to make the silver constellations gleamed in the dark.

Your hand moving down to his foot in a trailing caress. With thick, strong fingers; you pressed and keened the soreness away. Hypnos watched with heavy lidded eyes, a blush steadily growing on his cheeks.

This may have been the most intimate you and him had been since… everything that happened.

Another thing that Hypnos felt guilty about, he just hasn't been able to muster up anything beyond kissing. Not that you complained.

Done, you switched to the other leg.

Hypnos licked his lips nervously, wanting to say something but the silence felt too heavy to break. So he didn’t.

Eventually, your hands to moved his claves, using long strokes to work the muscles. Heat crawled up the back of his neck. You were the only one to take care of him like this, each touch gentle and loving. That was enough to prompt him to speak.

“You know you don’t have to do this.” Hypnos whispered, still feeling like he was too loud in the stillness.

“I want to.” You said plainly.

Your eyes met his, and you were looking at him like he was something precious. Like he wasn’t a god without his powers, that he caused this to happen to himself. Unable to bear it, he tore his eyes away.

That ugly bloody flower reblogging in his chest, the anger burning as it grew.

He didn’t deserve to be looked at like he was a treasure, to touch with gentle hands, like he was still worth something.

Yet he let you.

Since his first breath, sleep and Hypnos were one and the same. Just like mortals were made of clay and Prometheus’ ever burning fire. To imagine otherwise, was to imagine a night sky without the stars and moon.

Yet here he was.

Hypnos listened to your steady breathing, curled into the safety of your arms, body cushioned by the softness of his beloved chaise. Monie was unreachable, the river lethe had lost its’ keeper, the eyes of his mask was blinded by darkness.

His powers were lost to him. Hypnos was now something empty. He was nor fire or clay

Yet his moral, his shade remained as his watchful guardian. An unbroken fixture when the rest of the world fell apart.

“If I never woke up, what would you have done?” Hypnos demanded quietly in the warm firelight, watching your expression.

You shifted, as if surprised that Hypnos even asked, then you stopped, and moved closer. You braced one bulky arm over his head, blocking him in as you held his stare.

Hypnos almost broke it, almost unable to bare the weight. It felt like you had peeled everything away and all that was the raw hurt with a single glance.

A calloused hand cupped his chin, holding him place.. Mortal eyes but utterly beautiful in their intensity.

“What do you think, love?” You asked, a thumb caressing his cheek. Hypnos flitched at the questions. He didn’t know or rather, he didn’t know what the correct response was.

Hypnos shook his head, mute despite all the tumultuous emotions inside his chest.

Then you spoke, your tone deep as the dark, soft as warm velvet. “I would have stayed. When I finished one book, I would have picked up another to read to you. Then another. And one more after that one. And if I had read every single book you have…”

You paused and Hypnos realized he was holding his breath, awaiting for the rest of your answer. There was a faint smile on your handsome face and hypnos ached to reach up and kiss you. “I would find you new stories and so on, until I read every single story that ever existed. When I finished the very last one, I would start all over again.”

Hypnos covered his face with a trembling hand, unable to stand the tenderness in your expression.

He chuckled wetly, “And you claimed not to be a romantic.”

You huffed out a laugh, brushing his curls with gentle hands. “For you? I will be anything and everything.”

Hypnos took a trembling breath, trying to find his strength. He felt your lips against his forehead.

“Hypnos?” Your tone was patient, gentle.

With a strength that he didn’t really feel, he met your eyes again, full with love.

“You can be as angry as you need to be.” You told him. “I don't care how loud you scream or weep, I will be here and I won’t let go.”

Hypnos felt like he had been dipped in ice. “I- but… I- “

“I am here, for the good and bad.” You whispered, so close that your eyes were unnerving in the firelight, god-like for a single, breathless moment. “I love you, Hypnos. Every single beautiful and ugly parts of you. All of it.” You said, like your words weren’t tearing him into impossibly small chunks.

For the first time since Pyrrhus had placed those horrible chains on him, since his mother had looked away from him once more, since Thanatos’ carefully picked words, since he had to lay everything out in front of Hades and everyone that matter, since everything…

Hypnos let himself breathe, really breathe.

It was sharp and painful and he wasn’t ready for how much everything burned, like a purifying fire. Tears rolled down his flushed cheeks and he gasped for more breath.

For a single moment, he thought back to the very first mortals, nothing but clay and wondered if they felt pain at the painful revelation of their flaws. Were they happy when they understood or did they weep for the past?

Hypnos wailed like a broken thing as he held onto you.

And you… a mere shade. A dead moral, no longer clay, only an immoral flame that won’t die until the unraveling of the universe. His beautiful, imperfect mortal. His love.

You were the one to stay in the end of it all.

#wake me from this dreaming

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the-christian-walk · 2 years

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WHAT TRUE FREEDOM LOOKS LIKE

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to [email protected]

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

John 8:36

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

Revelation 21:3-5

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Today, Independence Day (also known as the 4th of July), millions of people will celebrate their freedom in the United States. They will gather for picnics and cookouts, attend parades, and culminate the day with watching glorious fireworks displays. It’s a holiday where most people are off, a day filled with fun and enjoyment.

But here’s the thing.

There’s a large segment of those millions of people who are not really free because they have not yet accepted the true source of their freedom.

You see, people in America are entangled in their national history and pride so much that they believe freedom is grounded in a day 241 years ago when the nation’s founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, establishing the first thirteen American colonies as a nation liberated from British rule and tyranny. And although a democracy was born that day, a democracy we still enjoy today, it only set people free for the here and now. It hasn’t guaranteed anyone a future freedom nor will it.

This is because there is only one way to ensure that you are free now and forever, a truth that has existed since we started counting years AD. Maybe you have never thought about that but why do we use a marker that separates BC and AD anyways? I know you have seen this used all the time but most people fail to understand that the demarcation point is the birth of Jesus.

Thus, BC stands for Before Christ and AD, short for Anno Domini, means “in the year of the Lord”, the time that Jesus came into the world to bring salvation, and yes, freedom. Not just salvation and freedom for the short term but salvation and freedom eternally.

We base the way we look at time and years, the way we look at our history off of Jesus and yet as mentioned earlier, there are millions upon millions of people who don’t even acknowledge belief in Him, a number that reached roughly one third of America’s population in a survey taken three years ago. That’s a lot of people who think they are free, free to choose not to believe in Jesus, and yet they are actually imprisoned within their views of liberty and as far from free as they could be.

This isn’t just my opinion. The word of God from the Gospel of John tells us this:

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36

True freedom is only found in Jesus, the One who God sent to save all mankind from their sins.

Yes, you can proclaim democracy all you want to. But democracy is a system of government. Nothing more, nothing less. It hasn’t, won’t, nor will it ever bring you or anyone else salvation. Ever. Only Jesus, the Son, can set you free.

Free from what you may ask?

Look at these verses from Revelation 21 and the promise of a new earth and heaven after Jesus returns to judge the earth and take with Him those who believed and trusted in Him as Savior, those who are counted among the free indeed:

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:3-5

Here we find the promise and assurance of some of the things a Christ believer will be free from as soon as they accept Him as Savior.

1. Free from death.

Jesus conquered death and the grave after bearing the sins of us all on Calvary’s cross. His resurrection and ascension paved the way for us to follow once we place our belief in Him.

2. Free from mourning.

There will be no more need for grief for we will not lose anything or anybody ever again. We will live forever with God and Jesus, in the company of the other saints who gained their salvation.

3. Free from crying.

There will be no need for sadness as you enter eternity free from all the afflictions and hardships that your worldly life brought upon you. You will only experience elation and joy over having made it across the finish line to claim your part of eternity’s inheritance.

4. Free from pain.

This could mean a lot of things. Pain from the guilt and penalty of sin. Pain from illness or injury. Emotional pain from any number of life events that may have left you hurt.

One thing is certain. There will be no pain in heaven. None. And I don’t know about you but I am looking forward to that.

Indeed, the Lord will one day make all things new in a world that is free from every difficulty we’ve experienced in the past, are experiencing today, or will experience in the future during this temporary life.

So what does true freedom look like?

Look to Jesus, believe in Him, receive Him as Savior, and you will find out.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to [email protected]

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riddikulus-writings · 3 years

Text

Take A Nap

A/N: So yeah. I have a long, in depth fic for these two that's chock full of secrets and fluff and Actual Backstory but for some reason all I can write is smut. This is part two to Escapades and takes place just after the police van rolled down that hill. Also, can someone let me know if that link I tried doesn’t work? I’m still new to writing on this blue hellsite

Word Count: 1734

Pairing: Rick Flag x Female Reader [Codename Nyx, after the Greek Goddess]

Warnings: Still not really any plot, sorry guys. The plot for this is hidden elsewhere. Vaginal fingering. Semi-public sex. Dirty talk. Rick still won't shut up but he really should, though, people are trying to sleep. Choking. Uh, nothing makes sense, really? Movie innacuracies due to the fact this is now a bigger vehicle than the hippie van they were cruising around in, but the same concept still applies.

Apparently, the van was on fire. One by one they stepped from the wreckage, walking out into the road, weapons in hand. Nyx wished she could’ve taken a picture, because she was positive they probably looked pretty cool.

Disoriented. Possibly concust. But cool.

And suddenly, rolling to a stop, was the small dusty van they'd rode to town in. Abner was in the open slider door, waving them in. DuBois puffed out his chest, "Alright. To Jotunheim."

"Not yet," Rick stopped him, "There's something else we need to do first."

"Stop standing like you have an American Flag waving behind you and get in the fucking mini bus, Flag."

Nyx's voice shook him out of his reverie; he was the last one outside. He jogged to catch the bus before it began moving faster, piling in the door and sliding it shut behind him. His eyes immediately found Nyx, seated in the very back. Rick beelined for her through the others and took up the space on her right. Peacemaker called to him from a seat up, "So, where are we going, now?"

"The Mayor's mansion in town," Rick told him, "We need to get Harley."

"Oh, I miss her," Nyx mused quietly.

Oh yeah. Rick cringed to himself, remembering the three missions he, Nyx and Harley had been on before he’d requested to Waller that Harley be benched more often than not. The first had gone by fine, minimal issues. The second was better. No deaths, no infighting amongst the Squad. Nyx had loosened up around other people by then and banter even happened. And the third--

Ain’t it normally the gal makin’ heart eyes at the guy and not the other way around, Ricky?

He’d shaken his head and given Harley a stern glare for assuming things. Harley had simply given him her smuggest million dollar grin and continued about her own business and not his.

“Suicide Squad to Mr. Flag,” a hand was waving in his eyes, slowly coming into focus. It was Nyx’s hand, but Cleo’s heavily accented voice, “What’s the plan?”

Rick cleared his throat, looking among his teammates, “Peacemaker high up, across the street. Sniper for any possible danger. Cleo,” he pointed at her, “Abner and, uh… Sebastian… are around back. Take out any guards back there. DuBois scales the wall to the top, Nyx and I keep watch.”

“Question,” Nyx raised her hand up, “Why can’t we just walk in the front door?”

"That would give us away," Peacemaker told her blatantly, "Instant capture. Dumb idea."

"You're a dumb idea," she retorted, "Actually, a bad idea was bringing you along."

Whoa. Everyone's eyebrows shot up, "Nyx, what the fuck? No infighting. Knock it off," Rick's voice was low but firm with authority.

"He's-- he's got bad vibes about him," Nyx's words slurred, "I-I just don't like him."

"No one does," DuBois told her, patting the very quiet Peacemaker on the shoulder, "Everyone try to get some rest before we get to town. It's going to be a while."

The rest of the team hunkered down in their seats, leaning against their respective windows or leaning forward with their heads against the seat ahead of them. Cleo snuggled into Nanaue's side, and Peacemaker went as far as laying completely flat on his back, his thick splayed legs hanging in the aisle.

Rick reached over and tugged Nyx across the bench seat they were seated on, sliding her into his side, "What’s up between you and Peacemaker?" His voice was quiet, muffled against the hair at her temple.

She ducked away from him a little, tucking her head under his chin, "I've been with him a bit longer than you have. I just… can't explain it but I don't like him. He makes me uneasy."

Rick's thumb started rubbing circles in her hip, "So many trust issues."

"I have my reasonings," she yawned up at him, "Secret reasonings."

"Oh, I'm sure you do," he whispered, grabbing her chin with his free hand so he could look her in the eye. The dim moonlight through the window made her eyes seem almost black, "Extra secret reasonings, huh?"

Nyx leaned closer, staring at his mouth instead of his eyes, "Top secret."

Rick hummed in agreement and closed the gap, sealing his mouth over hers. He wasted no time dipping his tongue into her mouth, drinking in her moans before they could get too loud. He gently pushed on her, laying her down across the length of the seat. Rick followed her down, nestling himself between her legs. Nyx planted a foot on the seat beside Rick’s thigh as he hitched the other into the crook of his elbow, “Gonna be quiet?” he asked quietly, lightly peppering kisses down her neck. Sucking on her now-exposed collarbone.

She whined, a breathless whisper as she nodded desperately, trying to grind her hips against something. Rick moved back up, his free hand moving around her neck, “Quiet.”

He slowly lowered her leg, her boot softly hitting the floor. Rick sent a sidelong glance through the rest of the dark bus, and so far no one had moved from their previous positions. Thank God for that. What a sight they’d wake up to; Nyx spread over the only bench seat here, Rick looming over her, a hand around her throat. They’d either think he was trying to kill her, or get very uncomfortable very fast and ask him to stop.

Which, he wasn’t about to do whether someone woke up or not.

He turned his attention back to the panting woman beneath him, raising an eyebrow at the grin spread over her face. The more pressure he applied to her throat, the wider her lips spread. His right hand worked at the buttons of her black pants, “Filthy little thing,” he muttered, “There’s other people on this bus.” Rick snaked his hand down the front of her pants, stroking down her dripping sex, “All for me?”

“That is you,” she panted out, grabbing the back of his head to pull him down for another searing kiss. When he scooped his cum back up with two fingers and pushed them inside, Nyx bit his bottom lip so hard he was sure she’d drawn blood. He leaned into it, pushing his tongue on her mouth again as he worked his fingers and scissored her open.

“Quiet,” he admonished, again, pressing his free hand against her throat once more. He pinned her to the seat, squeezing his hand as tight as he’d let himself, “Gonna wake everyone up,” he breathed out, his nose brushing against hers.

Again, Nyx’s grin grew, her pearly teeth glowing in the shards of moonlight passing through the windows, “Good.”

Rick almost growled but couldn’t without fear of waking someone up. Instead he buried his face in her shoulder, “Fuckin’ filthy little thing,” he repeated, curling his fingers against that certain spongy spot he’d found that made her grind hard into the palm of his hand, “Gonna be a good girl and keep me in there?” She whined out a high pitched yes but otherwise stayed breathless, quiet pants crawling up her throat and Rick wanted nothing more than to shove his cock in her open mouth. He pulled up from her neck, almost sneering with the strain of trying to stay quiet as he worked his thumb up to the peak of her cunt, “Want you to cum all over my hand, sweetheart. Gonna do that for me? See if you can stay quiet.”

“Bastard,” was the whimper he got.

“That’s not very nice,” he told her, pressing his thumb hard on her clit. Her arm suddenly flew up to cover her face, Nyx burying her face in the crook of her elbow as Rick buried a third finger deep in her cunt, his thumb rubbing fast circles. He moved his hand from her throat, sliding it instead to her hip to hold her down as she bucked into his hand, “C’mon, almost there. I got you,” he muttered.

Her hips stuttered, low whines coming muffled by her elbow. She was choking his fingers and he had to remove one so he could keep them moving, working her through her orgasm. Rick’s hand got soaked suddenly and she went limp, her only movement coming from her chest that moved with rapid breaths, “Bitch.”

Rick tugged her arm from her face as he slid his hand from her pants, “What’s the matter, Nyx?”

“I--” she panted out, “hate being-- quiet.”

He flashed her a bright grin and tugged her pants back into place, giving her stomach a gentle pat, “You didn’t have to,” a quick peck on the lips, “But it would’ve been a bit awkward for the others. Especially when I wouldn’t stop.” Another whimper, and he raised an eyebrow at her, but simply stuck his fingers in his mouth.

“I’m going to sleep,” she whispered, dropping her hand off the side of the seat. Her knuckles brushed the floor. The other arm folded behind her head.

“I sure fuckin’ hope so,” DuBois grumbled from somewhere up front. “You two are disgusting.”

"No one told you to listen," Rick shot back, his whisper loud enough for DuBois to hear over Nyx's stifled giggles. Rick was grinning, though; thankfully Bloodsport couldn't see it.

"Someone needs to nap," Nyx murmured, a small smirk plastered over her mouth, "He sounds cranky."

“You ain't laying down there,” Rick suddenly tugged her back up to snuggle into his side, his arm draped over her shoulders as he scooted them both to the end of the seat, “Leanin’ or layin’?”

“Lay,” she yawned.

He turned and pressed his back to the window, head lolling to the side to lean on the seat. After some shuffling, she was between his legs, back to his chest. HIs arms wrapped around her, one leg from each of them on the seat and the other leg on the floor. They looked like they had the same boots on. Nyx nuzzled her head into his shoulder, “Y’smell nice…”

“I smell like jungle and sweat,” he chuckled, his laugh vibrating through her, “And blood. Go to sleep.”

And they both dozed off like that, just as they had several times before on Nyx’s couch. Their breathing evened, Nyx drooling a little onto Rick’s bicep. Rick shifted in his sleep and snugged her closer to his chest.

#Rick Flag #Rick Flag x reader #Rick Flag x female reader #rick flag smut #the suicide squad #Rick Flag The Suicide Squad #dc #dceu #suicide squad fan fiction #suicide squad fanfiction #rick flag imagine #rick flag one shot #dceu fan fiction

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translations-by-aiimee · 3 years

Text

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun - Chapter 16

Original Title: 二哈和他的白猫师尊

Genres: Drama, Romance, Tragedy, Xianxia, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 16 - This Venerable One is Stunned

This really couldn't be blamed on the beast-like Mo Ran. Anyone in such a claustrophobic space, trapped with someone he'd slept with countless times - regardless of whether the sex meant anything, whether it was out of revenge or out of love - smelling the familiar smell on the other person, he could never help the lurching feeling in his heart.

Besides, Mo Ran himself was a bastard.

Shi Mei was his white moonlight. He absolutely couldn't bear to touch it, and he doesn't want to destroy it.

He patronized Chu Wanning and only Chu Wanning. All of his darkness, bestial-lust, and bone-crushing rage could be vented with no fear of repercussion.

He crushed him, tore him up underneath him, forcing him to take part in all the tricks he would never try with Shi Mei.

In his previous life, every time he saw Chu Waning tilting his neck and moving his throat, he felt he was about to degenerate into a vicious beast that only knew how to drink blood. He wanted to bite the man's throat open, grind his teeth, suck out his blood, chew through his flesh and bones.

He didn't care about Chu Wanning. He could defile him as much as he wanted.

At the end of it all, his body had developed a habit. Every time he smelled the scent of Chu Wanning's body, his stomach would feel like it's on fire, his heart would itch, and he wanted to tie him down to a bed and fuck him senseless.

There was a moment of silence in the coffin and Mo Ran's racing heart could be heard.

He knows that Chu Wanning's face was very close. He could feel the other's breathing. If he bit it right now, Chu Wanning wouldn't be able to break free, but. . .

Better to forget it.

Mo Ran leaned back and distanced himself from Chu Wanning. It wasn't really easy considering there wasn't really much room in the coffin.

"I'm sorry, Shizun." Mo Ran snorted and pretended to be meek. "I didn't expect the coffin to - shake!"

As soon as he spoke, the coffin slanted again. Mo Ran rolled into Chu Wanning's arms again with a grunt.

Chu Wanning: ". . ."

Mo Ran retreated again, the coffin shook again, and the cycle continued several more times.

"Un-fucking-believable." Mo Ran leaned back again.

The golden boy and girl were probably walking on a slope, and the inside of the coffin wall was slippery. He didn't hold on for too long, Mo Ran helplessly rolled on top of Chu Wanning.

"Shizun. . ." He bit his lip, feeling aggravated.

This guy originally looked kind of cute as a young man. If he deliberately hid his wolf tail and act like a puppy, he could actually pretend to be similar.

Chu Wanning didn't say a word.

Mo Ran really didn't want to roll around again, so he simply gave up the struggle: "I didn't mean to."

Chu Wanning: ". . ."

Mo Ran whispered: "But the wound on my back still hurts so much. . ."

In the darkness, Chu Wanning seemed to sigh gently. The gongs and drums outside were a bit noisy and Mo Ran wasn't sure whether he had really heard it.

But the next moment, Mo Ran smelled a clearer fragrance of begonia flowers, and Chu Wanning's hand wrapped behind his back, blocking the gap that he might have crashed into.

However, it wasn't a hug. Chu Wanning's arms were empty, deliberately avoiding physical contact with Mo Ran. Only the clothes and Mo Ran were touching each other, but this posture was still somewhat intimate.

"Be careful, don't hit it again." The voice was heavy, like porcelain soaked in a stream, with a kind of ancient demure. If he listened to it without hatred in mind, it was actually very nice.

". . . Alright."

Suddenly no one spoke anymore.

At this point, Mo Ran was still a young teenager who wasn't as tall as an adult, so he leaned in Chu Wanning's arms, his forehead fitting underneath Chu Wanning's chin.

This feeling was both familiar and unfamiliar.

What was familiar was the person lying next to him.

What was unfamiliar was the position they were in.

Once upon a time, the past events all transpired in Wushan Hall where he was lying on Life-Death Peak. The Immortal Emperor, who had become a lonely man, held Chu Waning in his arms for dear life in the long, breathless darkness.

At that time, he was already higher than Chu Wanning, and his strength was greater than that of his shizun's. His arms were like iron bars of a cage, locking the little remaining warmth in his arms, like holding the last fire burning in the world.

He bowed his head and kissed Chu Wanning's long black hair, and then greedily attached himself to his face, burying deep into the neck of the other, biting and nibbling without pity.

"I hate you, Chu Wanning. I hate you so much."

There was some hoarseness in his voice.

"But you're all I have left."

A violent smash shattered Mo Ran's memories. The sound of gongs and drums suddenly stopped, and there was dead silence surrounding them.

"Shizun. . ."

Chu Wanning stretched out his hand. He touched his lips, and said solemnly: "Don't talk, we're here."

Sure enough, there was no sound of footsteps outside, and there was only dead silence.

Chu Wanning's fingertips ignited in a cluster of pale golden flames and stroked the wall of the coffin to make a narrow opening, just large enough for two people to see through.

Sure enough, they were carried to the outskirts of Caidie Town. The earth temple dedicated to the Master of Ceremonies Ghost was already densely packed with coffins. The fragrance of the butterfly powder in the air became even denser, floating into the coffin through the wood.

Mo Ran suddenly felt something was wrong: "Shizun, do you think that the scent here, as well as the scent in the illusion, seems to be a bit different from the smell in Young Master Chen's coffin?"

". . . What do you mean?"

Mo Ran was more sensitive to the smell. He said: "When we were on the north mountain, the moment the coffin opened, the smell that floated out was very good. Considering it was the butterfly fragrance incense, there was nothing to make me dislike it. But since entering the illusion, I always felt that the smell was similar, but there were some subtle differences. I couldn't figure out what was different, but now. . . I think I probably know."

Chu Wanning looked at him sideways: "You don't like the smell?"

Mo Ran stuck against the gap, still staring outside, and then said: "Yeah. I haven't liked the smell of incense since I was a child. The smell here, and in the illusion, isn't the hundred butterfly fragrance poweder at all, but a special high fragrance used by the people of Caidie Town to burn when worshiping the Master of Ceremonies Ghost. Look there—"

Chu Wanning followed his line of sight and looked at the clay incense burner in front of the earth temple. Sure enough, three arm-thick vertical incense sticks were burning, and they were passing a sweet smell into the wind.

The people in Caidie Town were good at making all kinds of powders from various flowers, so all the fragrances that are used to pray to the gods were made in their own town, and they don't buy them from other places. Since the flowers used are all planted in the outskirts of the town, the smell that turned out wasn't that different from something made by an amateur.

Chu Wanning pondered: "Could it be that the fragrance in the coffin of Young Master Chen had nothing to do with the smell in the illusionary realm?"

Before he could ponder the details of this new discovery, a dazzling red light from the earth temple interrupted his thoughts. The two people hiding in the coffin looked together and saw that the temple was shining brightly, reflecting its brilliant surroundings. There was a row of iron shelves on the side of the temple with red lotus lanterns for making wishes. Those lotus lanterns had originally been extinguished, but now they were all being lit up, one by one.

The boys and girls guarding all the coffins knelt down one after another, chanting: "The Master of Ceremonies has come down to earth to guide us wild ghosts and lonely souls to be free from eternal suffering, to meet a good man, to lie in the same coffin, and to be companions in the Underworld."

Through the sound of chanting, the Master of Ceremonies Ghost in the temple radiated golden immortal light. Then, she lowered her eyelids, slowly moved the corners of her mouth, and leapt off the offering platform.

Her movements were quite elegant and graceful, her appearance a million times more elegant

It's a pity that the body was made of mud and she was too heavy. The girl's house, with a bang, was smashed into a big hole in the ground.

Mo Ran: "Pfft."

Chu Wanning: ". . ."

The Master of Ceremonies Ghost also seemed dissatisfied with the placement of her feet. She stared at the big pit in the ground for a while before pacing out of the pit and straightening her clothes.

She looked like a woman wearing heavy makeup, dressed in red and green, quite cheerful. In the dark night, it turned its neck and came to the hundred people buried in coffins. The night breeze was full of the stench of corpses. She seemed to be in a better mood. She slowly opened her arms and let out a few giggles.

"If you believe in me and make offerings to me, you will be able to meet a good destiny and complete the lifelong event that you weren't able to complete during your life." The tender voice drifted in the night, and the ghosts kowtowed in excitement.

"Blessings of the Master of Ceremonies--"

"Please let the Master of Ceremonies bless this marriage--"

The pleadings were coming from all around her and the Master of Ceremonies seemed to be enjoying herself. She slowly moved among the rows of coffins, and her long nails scraped against the bright red vermilion lacquered coffin boards, making a sharp and ear-piercing sound.

Mo Ran was curious: "Shizun, I remember you said that demons, immortals, ghosts, gods, humans and the devil belong to the six realms, but this immortal doesn't like in heaven. How come she's with these ghosts in the underground instead?"

"Because it cares about ghost marriages, and her main food source is the offerings of the ghosts." Chu Wanning said. "Ghosts can greatly increase her power, otherwise she wouldn't be able to cultivate her immortal body in only a hundred years. With such benefits, she's happy to stay with her 'friends' in the underworld."

The Master of Ceremonies Ghost walked around the group of coffins and returned to the front. The empty and tender voice rang again: "Open a coffin and I'll bless the marriage. Starting from the left."

Following its order, the first coffin on the left slowly opened, and the golden boy and girl were greeted by the two corpses inside staggeringly crawled out, and the gorgeous flaming red dress made the face of the dead look pale and lifeless.

The married couple slowly approached the Master of Ceremonies Ghost and knelt down.

The Master of Ceremonies Ghost put her hand between them and said: "In the name of the master of ceremonies, I grant you this marriage after death. From now on, you will be husband and wife, man and woman together in joy."

Mo Ran rolled his eyes and muttered: "If you can't write a poem, don't do it. It should be a good marriage vow, so why does it sound so lewd?"

Chu Wanning said coldly: "You have a dirty mind."

Mo Ran shut up.

But it didn't take long for the Master of Ceremonies Ghost to personally prove that it wasn't Mo Ran who was dirty-minded, but the god in charge of the marriage who was the lewd one.

He saw that the married corpses seemed to have swallowed some kind of aphrodisiac. They were already two dead ghosts, but suddenly they began to tear each other’s clothes, feverishly kissing and embracing each other passionately. They were entangled so shamelessly in public.

Chu Wanning: ". . ."

Mo Ran: ". . ."

"In the name of the Master of Ceremonies, I give you the joys of heaven. If Yin and Yang can intermingle, what's the harm with life and death!"

The cry of the Master of Ceremonies Ghost became more shrill and much louder.

The movements of the two corpses became more and more exaggerated. After removing the clothes, the male corpse was actually full of passion, full of energy, and no different from a living person.

Mo Ran was stunned: ". . . Is this. . . fucking. . . okay???"

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#2ha novel #2ha translation #2ha #english translation #chinese bl #chinese novel #danmei novel #danmei #yaoi novel #yaoi #bl novel #chu wanning #mo ran #ranwan #the husky and his white cat shizun translation #the husky and his white cat shizun

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dangerousstrawberryshark · 3 years

Text

Random Thoughts: A Dark Past

This came into mind; the Male reader is a prisoner of war and is taken back to the mainland. As usual, me and @softboy5393 fanboying over this.

I went overboard with this.

You were taken by a Titan with a long face, like a horse into its mouth. You fell unconscious during the whole time.

When you woke, you were in some room. You looked around to see where you were, you noticed you had a red armband on your left arm. 'What the... where am I?'

Then the door opened. "Ah, I see you're awake." the unknown person said along with others. He had blonde hair and an undercut style which was pushed back. [This] He also had an armband on, but his was more of a lighter red.

You took the people that walked and noticed that Reiner was there. "YOU DAMN TRAITOR!" you attacked him. You didn't do that much damage before getting pulled off of him.

"WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS! DON'T TOUCH ME!" you yelled trying to get away from them.

"So, you're the guy that Pieck took? You island devils are sure are something." The one with blonde hair said, sitting down. Reiner was dusting himself off.

"I guess we should introduce ourselves? I'm Pieck. You already know Reiner. The one with glasses is Zeke and the one next to you is Porco." The girl- Pieck said. She had long, disheveled shoulder-length black hair, a Greek nose, and relaxed dark brown eyes.

"You probably have questions as to where you are?" you calmed down a bit to respond.

"Yes. And why am I here? Why did you take me from my home?" you said, backing away from them.

"You're in the nation of Marley. And it was Reiner's idea to take you."

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It had been 4 years since you were captured. You've kind of gotten used to the new environment. 'So, humanity didn't die after all?'

You were shocked by the outside world. There were these flying ships in the skies, a cart that was driving without horses leading it. The food you have never seen before. A picture that was too detailed for any person to draw.

"That's a blimp, that's a car, and that's a photograph," Zeke said, showing you everything.

You also got to meet others. "That's Gabi, Falco, Sophia, and Udo. They are the next in line to inherit the Titans."

Gabi looked at you with mistrust. She had hatred in her eyes. "Don't mind her, she hates anyone from the 'Island of Devils.'" Zeke whispered into your ear.

It has taken a while for Gabi to get used to you but in due time.

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You were walking with Pieck, Reiner, and Porco in the Liberio Internment Zone. There were stands everywhere and colorful decorations everywhere. You were amazed.

"Today's the festival, M/n. Ambassadors and famous families from all over the world are going to be here for Willy's speech. Of course, since you're with us, you'll be joining too." Pieck said she was your favorite out of all of them.

"Let's go try some things. Try this." she gave you some kind of dessert with a cone?

You gave it one lick... "WHY IS IT SO COLD?!?!" you said, others were looking at you weirdly.

"What's this?" You picked some triangle-shaped food with toppings and cheese? "Mmm, this is good! I never had anything like it!"

⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓⁓

You had a fun time at the festival but now it was time for Willy Tybur's speech. You sat with the others but Porco, Pieck, and Zeke were requested.

Then the sounds of instruments began to play and Willy came on stage. He bowed before starting. "Allow me to tell you a story."

(This is the entirety of Willy's speech)

"Approximately one hundred years ago, the Eldian race ruled the world with the power of the Titans."

"Between the appearance of the Founder, Ymir, and the present day, Titans have stolen the lives of so many people that the present population of the world..." showed Titans eating people. "Could die thrice over and still not compare."

Then the lights turned red, people appeared covered in blood and screaming. "Because of Titans, and an extraordinary number of races, and the cultures ad histories thereof, have been stolen from the world."

"That slaughter has defined human history and the history of the Eldian Empire. And when the Eldian Empire ran out of enemies, it turned to the killings of its own kind."

You were shocked. Was this the history of your ancestors? Were they like this?

"Thus began the Great Titan War."

"Houses holding eight Titans shed blood in combat among themselves. In these desperate times, one Marleyan saw a path to victory. He was our hero, Helos."

"By artfully waging an information war, he led the Eldian Empire's biggest threats to turn against and kill one another. By joining hands with the Tybur family, they forced the unbeatable King Fritz to flee and retreat to Paradis island." the crowd began to clap. You were awestruck.

"But even exiled to the island, the king still held power. Tens of millions of Titans are capable of crushing the world flat still slumber on that island." the crowd gasps at the revelation and fear.

"The fact that our world still exists undisturbed to this day is pure luck. That is the only explanation our Titan experts could muster up. My fatherland, Marley, decided to take the initiative against the island and sent four Titans to neutralize the threat, but that plan failed and only the Armored Titan returned."

'That's why Reiner broke down the walls.'

"In other words, the Eldian Empire, the scrounge of human history, is alive and well."

"Now, the story up to this point consists of facts known to everyone. The truth, however, differs slightly. From here on, I'll discuss the memories passed down in my family alongside the Warhammer Titan."

"The complete truth will be revealed here and now for the first time. Approximately one hundred years ago, the one who ended the Great Titan War was neither Helos nor the Tybur family." Two people standing side by side to him.

One was represented Helos and the other, the Tybur family.

"The man who brought an end to that war and saved the world was King Fritz. He came to regret the Eldian Empire's savage history and the infighting among his own people."

"Above all, he grieved for the Marleyans and the oppression they lived under. When he inherited the Founding Titan, he and the Tybur family devised a plan." The lights turned blue with King Fritz and the Tybur family shaking hands in agreement.

"To establish a single Marleyan as a hero in the war. His name: Helos. After that, King Fritz moved as many Eldians to Paradis as he could. Erecting the great walls around them."

"He left a warning if anyone threatens his peace, countless Titans would be unleashed in retaliation. However, he never intended make good on this threat." Things began to add up to you. That's why the world hates Eldians. 'I'm not what they say we are!'

He continued. "King Fritz made a vow of renouncing war and bound his successors to uphold it, just as he had. Thus his ideology was passed down to each new King of the walls and the Titans with the power to crush the world remain dormant."

"Marley didn't stop Eldia and pure luck hasn't kept the world from being crushed, it was the king of the walls, Karl Fritz, a man who yearned for peace. That's it. That's all he wanted. He said if Marley grew strong someday and came in force to shatter his peace and seize the Founding Titan, he would accept it."

"He believed the sins his people committed were so horrific that they could never be atoned for."

"When the day of retribution finally comes, I will accept it until then let me enjoy this walled paradise, free from strife and conflict. I ask for nothing but a brief span of peace."

"Those were the final words the king left us with." King Fritz stood next to Willy bowing.

The crowd erupted into chatter. "What does this mean?" Gabi was shocked to along with her friends. You were twice as shocked as they were.

"If what he saying is true..."

"So, Marley and the Tybur family didn't save the world?"

"Willy wouldn't lie..."

"That means Paradis doesn't actually pose a threat, right?"

Willy spoked, the crowd went silent. "It's true, to secure our own safety, my family joined hands with King Fritz and became heroes to the world. While our fellow Eldians became devils but plainly, we Tyburs are petty thieves, growing fat on honor we did not earn."

"I stand before you willingly parting with my false glory because I have come to understand that the world we share is in grave danger" the crowd began to chat again. The drums began to ring.

"With the Founder's might, King Fritz erected three walls, using a great host of colossal Titans..." the background changed to colossal titans conjoining arms. "Counted together, the walls surely contains tens of millions of colossal Titans."

"They guard the King's peace as his shield and his spear or they did, but now, that peace is being threatened from within. An uprising has taken place on Paradis, the king has been deposed, the Founding Titan stolen."

The background changed to a devil. "The thief is an enemy to every man, woman, and child outside his island. An enemy of peace, his name... IS EREN JAEGER." Your eyes widen...

"If the colossal of Paradis are ordered to walk, the rumbling will be felt across the Earth and death will follow. Until now, only royalty has had the power to wield the Founding Titan and King Fritz's vow has kept his descendants from using it, but this Eren Jaeger has found a way to use the founder without having royal blood."

"Which means he could begin the rumbling at any moment. Once the walls of Paradis begin to walk, there will be nothing we can do. Except flee in vain from the sound of Earth-shaking steps that will herald our doom." your face turned into a worried one. Was this going to happen?

"These monsters will crush every city, trample every tree and flower, they will literally flatten our world. I have always hated my blood and more than anyone. I have wished that my race would disappear."

Willy sounded like he gonna burst into tears. " However, I confess that I want to live. That despite everything, I believed this world is my birthright just as it is yours."

"The people gathered here may belong to different races, different nations but if we're to survive this crisis then for the first time in history, we must join as one. SO PLEASE, if you wish to live and lend me your strength, help me protect our world's future!" The cameras began to flash. The crowd erupted into cheering.

"If we work together, we can overcome any obstacle, any threat! I ask each of you to join me as I go to fight the devils who would plunge our world into hell! HELP ME DEFEAT THEM!"

The crowd continued to clap and cheer. "Here and now, as a representative of Marley's government, I send this message to the devils of Paradis!"

"CONSIDER THIS, A DECLARATION OF WAR!" As Willy said that, a Titan erupted from the building behind the stage. A Titan you knew very well.

"Eren..."

#x male reader #male reader #male reader insert #male reader imagine #attack on titan #aot #random thought #attack on titan x male reader #aot x male reader #attack on titan fandom #attack on titan thought

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

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What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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greenygreenland · 3 years

Text

Home: Lloyd Garmadon x Reader

-I LOVE ASKS. plz keep them coming, they make my day -i’m sorry i write slowly, I’m a perfectionist. -it’s also better to have quality over quantity, am I right? -takes place after Tournament of Elements but before Possessed

[REQUESTED BY ANON] Summary/ask: Maybe a reader with a "dark" power (like, not evil, but considered dark), and they were outcasted by it, everyone thinks they are bad and shit but they are just shy and insecure?

WARNING: MENTIONS OF VERBAL ABUSE (VERY BRIEF), BLOOD (BRIEF), INJURIES (ALSO BREIF), ETC.

Isolation. That was all you had ever known for the better half of your life. Most details were things you preferred to keep hidden away, locked up for good in that deep mind of yours.

You never had a whole family, but that was fine by you. Why should that matter when you had a father who loved and cared for you? Growing up, he always told you this: ‘Ninjago is so much more than our tiny home, my dear. Why should we worry about what we don’t have when there’s so much to discover?’

Even now, you held onto his words with your life. Even now when you forgot what his face looked like. Even now when you couldn’t remember his voice, or how warm his hugs were. Everything eventually faded, but not the emotions he made you feel.

Love, warmth, generosity.

Those were the only pieces of baggage you carried. Although heavy, they kept you from the evil strings of bitterness. You kept your chin up, high in the air so you could look to the sky. It was the limit after all, the portion of which you had to reach and reach until you couldn’t anymore. The only problem was getting there.

The alley was rather quiet today, a far cry from the usual bustling citizens looking for a shortcut or a food stand. You loved days like this, where no one would care to stare at you and whisper your name like it were a ball in a game. With your hood up, no one could see your face, and no one could cast you aside like the loner you were.

“What are you doing here?”

You wish you hadn’t heard his voice. As subtle as he tried to be, his snarky tone caused passing stragglers to glance at you. A sigh escapes your lips. What was he doing here? Didn’t he have anything better to do than follow you around and nag? You were cast aside as it was by your mother, forgotten by your so-called friends, and left behind by your ascended father.

He told you to stay away from that speedy idiot, the one your mother took away from you. The one who took after her with the same eyes, nose, and mouth. They had the same grin, too, the one where it looked like they thought they were better than you.

“If it isn’t Griffin Turner,” you grumble out. “What a pleasure.”

His stare isn’t friendly. You know under those red sunglasses that he’s glaring at you. He’s probably thinking about how much of a monster you are too, just like every other Elemental Master you ever faced in your life.

Griffin runs a hand over his oh-so-perfectly cut hairdo. “Oh don’t be a prick.” he spits out. “Have some respect for your older brother.” That grin doesn’t slide off his face no matter how dark your expression gets. He’s always been oblivious. First to your powers, then to your father’s death, and finally, to how terribly he’s been treating you.

It doesn’t matter that he’s your older brother. Bullying does not discriminate, and neither do you, blood ties or not. “Just leave me alone, I’m not in the mood Griffin.” He raises a brow. “Not in the mood? Since when did someone like you have feelings? You’re cold-hearted, just like your dad.”

You frown. “’Your dad’?” you echo. “What, so we’re only related when you choose?” Griffin shrugs absentmindedly. You know he’s trying to provoke you, get a reaction, but you just can’t help it. He was patronising you and your father.

“I’m just glad I lived with mum instead of dad.” he adds. “At least I don’t have to run after the garbage truck with a shopping list.” He snickers to himself and you go rigid. “Take that back.”

“What? Your last braincell?”

“Well--you--you’re a...” You pause. “At least I had someone who loved me and actually payed attention to me! Sure, I inherited dad’s elemental powers, but he taught me something you’ll never get: kindness. You think I don’t know? Look again you pathetic waste of space!” That wasn’t supposed to hit hard and you both knew it. Griffin could have said a million other insults that burned like the sun itself, yet somehow, with your puny words, you hit a nerve. A nerve that wasn’t supposed to be punched in the first place.

Griffin’s grin finally slides off his face. He stuffs a hand in his pocket and uses the other to adjust his bright sunglasses. He doesn’t say anything, but you can practically feel the air thicken between the empty distance. Griffin didn’t have lo self-esteem, but sometimes, his mum called him a waste of space. When you walked by the luxurious apartment, on days the kitchen window was left wide open, you heard what she’d say to Griffin--what she did to him.

Suddenly, you’re taken back to the age of six, when your parents were together and Griffin was more than your only brother. You were best friends. You did everything together. But then your father passed down his elemental powers to you, and it was then that everything changed.

Your father taught you that your powers were a gift passed down all the way from the days the First Spinjitzu Master lived among the people of Ninjago. It was a gift used to protect him when he was in need, a gift that possessed great power and majesty. Your elemental abilities had a double edge to it. Although beautiful, it possessed a great danger.

One slip-up was all it took. One mistake you never meant.

That day, you were practicing control and discipline over your powers. You never meant for it to happen, and if you could go back, you would a million times over. That day, all the control, all the mastery you had over your abilities disappeared in an instant. You swore it was only for a second, but it could have lasted a millennia.

Your element was more than a power. It was a living part of you with its own consciousness you couldn’t quite understand. When you slept, you saw him, the intangible person you never cared to learn the name of. He always sat in a plain of pure darkness, where you couldn’t touch or see him clearly.

You knew he never meant to frighten you, but that day, you only saw a monster. Perhaps it was you, perhaps it was him. You never knew because the moment you lost control, your world went black. From then on, your parents split. Your mother took Griffin away from you, and as time grew, so did the distance between you.

You wish you could change things starting from that day till now. Those forsaken words shouldn’t have left either of your mouths, but the damage had already been done. It cut too deep that not even magic could mend the wounds.

“Griffin I--”

“So that’s how it is.” A bitter laugh escapes his lips and you flinch like you’ve been struck. Griffin walks toward you at a painfully slow pace. The alleyway isn’t part of the city anymore. It’s a battlefield of honour, of pride, of two siblings who have been torn apart. He doesn’t meet your eyes as he pulls something out of his pocket. “Here.”

The wad of cash presented to you between his fingers looks more like an insult than a gift. Was he trying to rub in your face how rich his mum was compared to your dead dad? Surely this wasn’t an olive branch to apologise for being a jerk for the past eleven years.

He stares at your incredulous expression and yanks your wrist forward, slapping the bills into your hand and forcing it into your sweater pocket. “Look, I’m not patronising you, okay? Just...go to your friend or whatever and don’t spend that on drugs. Your financial situation sucks, I get it.”

His tone is rather aggressive, but you know that speech pattern. The one where it’s soft and bashful because he’s embarrassed to be talking out loud like that--like an older brother. You run your fingers over the cash in your pocket and stare at Griffin. He looks the other way and begins marching past you, making sure to bump shoulders.

“Griffin, wait.” You make a grab for his arm but he’s already gone at the speed of light. “Thanks,” you whisper to yourself. “I guess.” You aren’t sure how long you stay in the dead alleyway, frozen in your own thoughts. But as soon as you’re ready to make your way to the park, the alleyway fades, the honking of the cars disappear, and you’re completely alone in a surge of darkness.

“That has got to be a least three hundred.”

You heave out a long sigh as the darkness parts. Robes drag across the floor like liquid gold, sparkling and shimmering like the sun. “Such a coward, your brother. He shouldn’t have run away like that.” The man is a living contradiction, much like you. Although he lived in a world of darkness, that never stopped light from blooming in his cold heart. He cared for you as much as he cared for your father and those before him.

The man adjusted the collar of his red robes, yanking the thick fabric into all the right shapes and places. His pale face was like a sheet of paper, but the calm smile made up for that and tinted his cheeks rose. “Here,” he said, waving his arm. The wad of cash drifted out of your pocket, mixing with the mist until it was all but a speck of light. It drifted into one of the man’s pockets, which he patted.

“Honestly,” he says, “could you be more inconspicuous? Someone down the street looked like he wanted to mug you.” You frown and the man huffs. “When you need the money, come back. I’ll keep it here.”

“Thank you.”

“Raijin.” he says. “Call me Raijin.”

The mist began swirling like a whirlpool, twisting and turning until your hood whacked you in the face. The alleyway materialised as soon as your feet hit the pavement. The honking of cars sliced through the air, bombarding your ears in the cityscape sounds. “First Spinjitzu Master...” you grumble, rubbing your ears.

“LOOK OUT!”

You whip around in bewilderment and flatten yourself against the brick wall. A group of four or five fruit-coloured boys fly from the fire escape above. If you hadn’t reacted quickly enough, then you’d be as much of a pancake as the blue one (he was under all of them).

“I’m--gonna--die! Get off me Cole!”

“I...I can’t when Zane’s heavier than a rock!”

“Kai, move your stupid leg!”

“Everyone stop arguing! Lloyd is unconscious!”

The last bit sent the group in a rush of shouting, scrambling, and shoving. You wanted to do something to help, but these boys were the ninja, students of Sensei Wu and partly, Garmadon. In the world of elemental masters, they were known as the OG, the ones who defeated the Great Devourer, Garmadon, and so many more.

The last time you saw them (together, that was) had to be half a year ago on Chen’s forsaken island. You almost died, but Lloyd saved you. He and his friends risked their lives to help everyone off that island. If thy hadn’t been there...

You glance at Lloyd. He lay on the pavement, faintly breathing and coughing as Zane wrapped gauze around his wrist. The blood smeared on his face sent your heart tumbling. Just what had they done this time?

“Hey!” you exclaim. The boys remove their hoods and turn to you. Kai knits his brows together. “Aren’t you--?”

“Do you want help or no?” you gruffly retort. Zane’s bright eyes don’t leave your cold expression as you look between all the ninja. Cole and Jay look uneasy about the offer, but to even the blind, it was clear they had no choice.

“Yes.” Zane says. “We would be grateful for your assistance, (Y/n).” You nod and motion for them to follow you out of the alleyway. Kai carefully lifts Lloyd off the ground and onto his back. “Thank you for your generous offer.”

“Don’t thank me until he’s well.” you quietly reply. As scary as it was inviting people to your tiny apartment, this was the ninja. You owed them this much for being Ninjago’s protectors for so long. “We’re taking the back route because I don’t want to attract unwanted attention. It’s clear you had a run-in, let’s not repeat that.”

Halfway down one of the quieter streets, you heard Jay whisper this, “I heard she’s evil. Are you sure we should trust her?”

You want to be offended, but getting upset would only make everything worse. You re-called your conversation with Griffin, and that look on his face when you called him a waste of space.

He deserved the insult, you told yourself. Why should you feel guilty?

You spot a beat-up door worn with age. The blue paint peeled off the wood, scattering along the doorstep in little piles. As much as you wanted to renovate, you couldn’t afford it. You had to save up for college and rent.

You dig your hand inside your trousers’ pocket and produce a key. The scratches rub against your calloused hands as you stick it in the keyhole and yank open the door. “Bring him in.” No one says a word as you watch the ninja file into your home one by one. Like good guests, they remove their shoes and leave them in a little corner of the hall.

You close the door behind you and lock it, tossing the key in its respective place. “Set him down on the couch. I’ll get a med kit.” When you come back with the med kit and freshly washed hands, you weave past Cole and sit on the floor by Kai’s side. “He’ll be alright.” you calmly state.

Kai sharply meets your gaze. “His wrist is broken.”

“Yes, but bones can be mended. He will be alright.” You ignore the stares, they were background noise, and place your hands around the wound. “Raijin,” you whisper, “I need assistance.”

The last time you had to fix a broken wrist had to be about three months ago. It was a rather draining action, but for Lloyd, you would do anything. He needed you.

Suddenly, your body goes completely rigid. Your hands are cold and you shut your eyes, allowing the icy sensations to wash over your being. A breeze passes over your face and settles around your hands. You imagine Lloyd’s bones mending back into place, connecting painlessly like a puzzle piece would.

“What’s she doing?” you hear Jay whisper.

“I think she’s concentrating.” Cole answers. “Kind of...creepy if I do say so myself.”

You feel the bones clicking together, and once you are sure Lloyd is alright, you open your eyes and heave out a long sigh. “He...he will be...” You can’t finish that sentence. The world spins with dots and mingles in a flurry of colours and blurs. Someone was saying something, but you can’t make out what’s wrong with you.

The world fades to black.

“Here again?”

You frown uncomfortably as Raijin struts out from behind a curtain of shadow. It’s hard to disregard him, so you avert your gaze to the side. “I don’t choose when I come here, you know that.” He chuckles and it’s a low rumble. “You like him.”

“Who?”

“Lloyd. It’s not everyday you let people into your home. When you saw Griffin walk by with a broken leg, you didn’t heal him.” You sigh loudly. “Well, that’s different Raijin.”

“Is it?” There’s a suggestive tone to his voice you don’t like, as if he’s looking inside your head and hearing all your thoughts bouncing around. Raijin probably did hear some of it. He was, after all, a part of you, both soul and body. Silence falls over your shoulders and it sits there like an old pillow: uncomfortable, flat, and irritating.

The silence stretched and you felt small in the presence of Raijin. He had a way with his height and energy that somehow made him appear all the more regal. You can’t meet his eyes as you blurt out the dumbest question you could muster. “Will Lloyd be okay?”

The answer is obvious, but Raijin doesn’t comment on it. He folds his hands together and softly nods, as if he’s afraid of making you shrink further into yourself. “Thanks to your efforts his wrist is healed. Why don’t you see for yourself?” You perk up. “What--?”

The darkness curls under your shoes, stretching like gum and absorbing you in nothing. It’s cold, it’s dark, and it’s filling you with adrenaline.

You jolt upright.

“I see you and Raijin had quite the conversation.” a crinkly voice states. You rub your pounding head, accepting the steaming cup of tea from Sensei Wu’s hands. It’s been a while since you’ve seen the monastery, much less your old room. Wait, Wu? Your old room from when you were eleven? “Sensei?” He smiles kindly, giving your shoulder a good pat. “If you were wondering, Lloyd has been healed. Actually, he wishes to see you.”

“Me?” you inquire. “Really?” Wu chuckles to himself good-naturedly. He turns his back to you and slides open the door, revealing a red-faced Lloyd. He goes stiff like a board. “Uh--I--sorry--just passing--”

Wu gently guides Lloyd into the room, paying no mind to the stuttering mess his nephew had become. It’s an odd sight to see Lloyd, the Green Ninja, tripping over his own feet, adjusting his sleeves, and picking at loose threads instead of meeting your eyes like he did that day.

Lloyd had been like a gust of wind. He came to your rescue strong and fast, scooping your bloodied body in his arms with a gentle hold. When the time came and you all had to leave the island, you were still too weak to use your elemental powers, so Lloyd let you ride with him. Those crazy few weeks on Chen’s island had been traumatising.

The fact that you weren’t trusted by anyone due to your powers made it worse, until you met Lloyd and his father.

Wu quietly exists the room, gently closing the door behind. You silently thank him for his consideration. “It’s been a while.” you quietly say. Lloyd shuffles toward you with a bright smile, cheeks still tinted red. “I used to see you around Ninjago City a lot, but after a while, it was...I don’t know, like you disappeared.”

It’s your turn to avert your gaze. The truth was, you weren’t sure Lloyd still wanted to be your friend after the Tournament. You saw him less and less with each passing day, only ever giving a small wave here and there whenever he went to Borg Tower. After half a month, Griffin caught you talking with Lloyd. He bullied you about it and told you Lloyd was only acting like your friend.

Stupidly enough, you believed him. Your insecurities about being judged wore down your courage like a bath bomb in water. You couldn’t speak with Lloyd any longer, or give a simple wave that made him smile like the sun. One day, you decided to avoid him completely by taking a different route home. You never saw him again. Not until today.

“I-I’m sorry Lloyd.” you murmur. He blinks, knitting his brows together in confusion. “What do you mean you’re sorry? You didn’t do anything--”

“Yes I d-did.” You curse your wobbly voice. “I started a-avoiding you because I was scared we weren’t...you know...anymore. And a lot happened...and then...” Your eyes are burning with tears you know are filled with ages of stress and worry and anger.

You wanted to blame Griffin for making fun of you that day. You wanted to blame yourself for being so stupid. You wanted to blame Raijin for not talking to you when you needed him most. But you couldn’t. How would any of them know this would happen? That you’d eventually cut Lloyd off altogether until you were in isolation in that tiny apartment by yourself? How could you have known?

The side of your bed dips and gentle arms bring you in tight. It’s warm and reminds you of meadows with flowers, butterflies, and better days. When was the last time you actually hugged someone? Much less allowed them this close in your proximity? You didn’t have friends at school, so you always settled for books as your comfort. Books could not hug like people.

“I should be thanking you.” Lloyd said. “You healed me even though it made you pass out.” You sniffle, hesitantly wrapping your arms around Lloyd’s middle. As soon as you allow your shoulders to relax, warmth spreads through your chest. You recognised the sensation as a mix of comfort and relief.

To know someone else was here with you who cared and would sit with you as you cried your eyes out was new--but it felt good. When your dad died, you promised to never shed another tear. You couldn’t say you were good a keeping promises.

“If you want to tell me more, it’s okay.” Lloyd softly said. You rested your head on his shoulder, savouring the way he smelled like life itself. If you were to describe it, you’d call it grassy, flowery, and fruity all rolled into one.

“Well... You remember my brother Griffin?” you slowly begin. “He isn’t who you think he is. He always tells me things like I’m a monster because of my elemental powers, or that...”

You aren’t sure how long you talk for, but Lloyd’s there, listening to every word and drinking it in like gold. Sometimes he pitched in, other times he sat still in a silent horror you couldn’t fully comprehend. It never occurred to you just how broken your family relationships had been when it was your norm.

When your tears finally dried and you could breathe again, Lloyd took your hands and motioned for you to follow him out of the room. “Would you like to stay for dinner?” You smiled at him, enjoying the company his hand provided.

Wu rounded around the corner and said, “Would you like to stay forever?”

There was no question in that. You still had your old room and memories of when you used to call the monastery home. Why wouldn’t you want to make new ones? “Yes.” you reply. “I’d love that--if it’s fine with you.” Lloyd glanced at Wu, who simply nodded in confirmation.

Lloyd turns to you with a bright grin that you can only shyly match in response.

TIP JAR

Please don’t forget to reblog!

#ninjago #lego ninjago #ninjago lloyd #lloyd garmadon #lloyd x reader #ninjago x reader #x reader #reader insert #xreader #lego #ninjago wu #Sensei Wu

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ritsushinbro · 3 years

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My Critique of Rebuild of Evangelion's Characterization: I originally wrote this post on the Evageeks forum and decided to post it here. It discusses the relationship between Misato, WILLE and the pilots and whether it is realistic and in-character. Warning this post contains spoilers and is very long. Also has references to self-harm and suicide.

With each revelation that comes out regarding the measures WILLE take against Shinji and their own pilots, it becomes more and more unrealistic for me to the point where it's almost comical. Let's go through some of them here:

They wear the explosive DSS chokers 24/7 which will kill the pilots should they risk awakening an Eva.

They are kept in a single room rigged with explosives.

In Shinji's case, he is (intended to be) put in 24/7 solitary confinement with explosives fitted as well.

Shinji is escorted around the wunder whilst restrained on a stretcher. (NOTE: The only time he isn't, is when Sakura takes him to Ritsuko).

It is confirmed in another thread that Misato gave clear permission to the crew for them to shoot Shinji on sight if they suspect he is attempting to get into an Eva.

Now let me attempt to deconstruct these measures one-by-one:

It is understandable that Asuka and Mari wear DSS chokers because after all they are pilots and there is a risk of awakening. However in Shinji's case, he is forbidden from piloting and so there is no risk of awakening (remember Ritsuko did not think NERV would come after him, so they had no reason to think he would escape). So why place the DSS choker on him? Well we have already established it is simply because they have a resentment against him; there is no special, pragmatic reason. Is this realistic? Well I would say no for reasons I will explain later but I can certainly understand why others may say it is.

I don't think I will understand why they would keep their two main "soldiers" if you will, in an explosively rigged room. I believe others have stated that from a tactical point, it's an extremely dumb move on WILLE's part. After all, if Asuka and Mari didn't have plot armor, what's to stop Gendo from tricking WILLE into killing their own pilots with these explosives? How would WILLE stop Gendo then? Will they use Shinji? No, for reasons I will state later. And another thing, we know that their rooms were already fitted with explosives so why on Earth would they add extra after the events of Q (when they stopped 4th impact). What do they hope to achieve with more bombs? Make the pilots more "deader" than they already are? In my opinion, this doesn't even come across as paranoid but just plain childish. Is this measure realistic from a story standpoint? No not in my eyes.

We know they intended to put Shinji in a solitary cell as this is what they do in Shin. If it was solitary confinement on it's own, then I believe it would be a realistic measure that would happen in real life. However I believe the writers did not factor in the effects of solitary confinement (especially one that is rigged to explode) on fully grown men; never mind a 14 year old who's just come out of a 14 year coma. Many people think solitary confinement is a walk in the park so I made another post a while ago highlighting why that's not the case:

"I remember when before Shin came out people here theorized that if Shinji stayed on the Wunder, they would eventually softened to him and let him help in ways that wouldn't have involved piloting. However with these revelations it looks like they intended to keep him in an isolated room far from everyone else that is (presumably) rigged with explosives as well as keeping the choker on his neck. Not even allowed to freely leave his cell without WILLE's permission (it is unlikely they would let him out judging from these measures).

Even though Asuka and Mari were treated like this as well, at least they had each other and were able to leave as they had responsibilities in piloting. But Shinji was forbidden from piloting and was to be kept by himself except maybe being checked up on by Sakura now and again. So judging from these leaks (we will have to wait to properly see the full context) WILLE intended to lock Shinji in solitary confinement.

I have copied and pasted some of the effects of Solitary Confinement from Wikipedia below:

“Psychiatric: Research indicates that the psychological effects of solitary confinement may encompass "anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis." The lack of human contact, and the sensory deprivation that often go with solitary confinement, can have a severe negative impact on a prisoner's mental state that may lead to certain mental illnesses such as depression, permanent or semi-permanent changes to brain physiology, an existential crisis, and death.

Self-harm: According to a March 2014 article in American Journal of Public Health, "Inmates in jails and prisons attempt to harm themselves in many ways, resulting in outcomes ranging from trivial to fatal." Self harm was seven times higher among the inmates where seven percent of the jail population was confined in isolation. Fifty-three percent of all acts of self harm took place in jail. "Self-harm" included, but was not limited to, cutting, banging heads, self-amputations of fingers or testicles. These inmates were in bare cells, and were prone to jumping off their beds head first into the floor or even biting through their veins in their wrists. A main issue within the prison system and solitary confinement is the high number of inmates who turn to self-harm. Many of the inmates look to self-harm as a way to "avoid the rigors of solitary confinement."

Physical: Solitary confinement has been reported to cause hypertension, headaches and migraines, profuse sweating, dizziness, and heart palpitations. Many inmates also experience extreme weight loss due to digestion complications and abdominal pain. Many of these symptoms are due to the intense anxiety and sensory deprivation. Inmates can also experience neck and back pain and muscle stiffness due to long periods of little to no physical activity. These symptoms often worsen with repeated visits to solitary confinement.

Social: The effects of isolation unfortunately do not stop once the inmate has been released. After release from segregated housing, psychological effects have the ability to sabotage a prisoner's potential to successfully return to the community and adjust back to ‘normal’ life. The inmates are often startled easily, and avoid crowds and public places. They seek out confined small spaces because the public areas overwhelm their sensory stimulation.”

And this is just for solitary confinement. There are so many other things going on with and happening (or could happen) to Shinji such as the things below:

Shinji being only 14 years old.

Shinji being abandoned and neglected by his father.

Shinji being coerced/emotionally blackmailed to pilot Unit 1.

Shinji seeing girls he cared for "die".

Shinji being in a coma for 14 years.

Shinji being told he has a bomb on his neck.

Being told it is because he is being punished.

Being told he cannot pilot the eva anymore (he is effectively "useless" now).

Have his former co-pilot and friend try and punch him after he thought she was dead.

[Potentially] being told he started NTI and devastated the world.

[Potentially] being told that the girl he tried to save is "gone" and that she was a clone of his mother.

Being imprisoned in a cell (presumably) surrounded by explosives and not being able to freely leave.

Be completely isolated from everyone except when being checked up by a girl who's father he got killed. (NOTE: Mari might want to see him so Shinji at least has her, maybe).

Have his mother figure (the woman who made him pilot the eva the most) threaten to detonate the choker around his neck and blow his head off when he tries to leave.

With the above list, is it any wonder his head is so messed up? I understand the purpose of these films is all about growing up and taking responsibility but expecting Shinji to willingly allow himself to be subjected to the treatment WILLE had in store for him is pure, unadulterated masochism. Much of what was is written here can safely be considered cruel, inhumane and arguably, torture.

There is a massive difference between taking responsibility for one's mistakes and just letting the whole world torture you because you did something bad. My main fear and problem with Q and Thrice is that their main theme, which is accepting responsibility, is equated with accepting unreasonably cruel treatment. And I just think that is an EXTREMELY unhealthy message to send to people especially if they are depressed or live in abusive relationships."

When you take all these into account, does it place into perspective how messed up Shinji would have been had he stayed on the wunder? This is assuming that they thought they would never have a need for him, but as we find out in Shin, they needed Shinji in the end to defeat Gendo. If Shinji never left with Mark 09 and Misato successfully kept him "protective" custody, then one of three things would have happened when WILLE actually needed him to save everyone:

A: He would not have been in the mental state to pilot Unit 1 and Gendo would have completely wrecked him due to shit synch ratios.

B: He would have told Misato and co. to fuck off and die. We've seen this nihilism before from Shinji (after the 5th angel). His incarceration alongside the humiliation and guilt from wearing the choker will have ratcheted up by a million.

C: He wouldn't have piloted because he would have killed himself. There's only so much a 14 year old can take and when subjected to a fate that causes even hardened criminals to resort to self-harm, genital mutilation and suicide, then what chance does Shinji have?

Now back to my original point, do I think this measure is realistic? I would like to say yes if it was the solitary on it's own, however when combined with the other things, then I think the chances of Shinji commiting suicide is extremely high to the point where it's not believable for him to continue as an anime protagonist. You have to make sure the protagonist goes through difficulty in order to experience growth and change, however if you make it too harsh (to the point of committing suicide) then it seems less believable that they live to continue the story. On a separate note, many people think that Shinji was immature for leaving with Mark 09 the first chance he got and that this is proof that he is, in Asuka's words, a "brat". But let's be realistic, if this story is about Shinji's growth and maturation, then how exactly would WILLE's treatment of him be conducive to that? The truth is WILLE's sheer hostility towards him would have completely stunted any emotional growth and maturation in Shinji and it would have destroyed the point of the film. Also no-one can argue that WILLE would have eventually "come round" or "softened-up" towards Shinji because even after 14 years they still don't trust their own pilots. So yeah, Shinji most likely would have been stuck in solitary with a bomb around his neck until he either killed himself or the war ended (but even this doesn't guarantee his freedom).

Regarding the stretcher business. I don't understand why you have to restrain Shinji on a stretcher when the kid has already surrendered himself and has come voluntarily. Maybe WILLE are just full of bondage fetishists; it would certainly explain the chokers as well.

If the DSS chokers and the explosive rooms weren't enough, Misato actually gave orders to the crew to shoot Shinji if they thought he was trying to pilot again. At this point, I just think this is just overkill. I mean the kid has a bomb on his neck that prevents him from awakening an Eva, you intended to keep him locked up even though he can't really leave the wunder except with outside help and now you intend to shoot him if you think he'll get into an Eva. The problem with this, is that piloting an Eva requires all the bridge-bunnies to sortie the damn thing. Shinji cannot enter Unit 1 by himself, especially since the thing is being used as an engine so why do they assume that Shinji is capable of being Sam Fisher and sneaking into Unit 1? We see that Sakura and Midori are actually willing to shoot Shinji in 3.0+1.0 and do so when he merely suggests that he pilot Unit 1. But seriously what harm would Shinji have done in Unit 1 considering the fact that Gendo was already going to start another impact anyway? Why actively try and kill (or injure in Sakura's case) the only guy that can save your ass? One cannot argue that they were just being "desperate or panicking" because in Midori's case, she actually takes the time to confirm her orders from Misato. This shows that at least, she was still of lucid mind. This particular altercation just beggars belief in my mind and the fact that Misato actually gave those orders on top of all the other measures is absolutely extraordinary. So as you can imagine, I do not think this was realistically executed.

However, I can already hear some detractors say: "So what? Misato hesitated to detonate the DSS choker and also took a bullet for Shinji. She redeemed herself from putting the DSS choker on him and the kill-order for if they thought he would try and get into an Eva."

And to those people I say….not really. There is an idiom attributed to Benjamin Franklin and it goes like this: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." How does this apply to Misato and Shinji's relationship? Well Misato wouldn't have had to hesitate to pull the trigger if she didn't put it on him in the first place. Misato wouldn't have had to take a bullet for Shinji, if she didn't give permission for the crew to shoot him in the first place. Let's take this following dialogue for example:

916-929:

Kitakami: "It's a good thing we got Major Shikinami back. But why'd we have to take that disease along with her?"

Aoba: "Just leave it alone. Better than Nerv still being able to use him."

Tama: "If he tries to get into an Evangelion, all hands have permission to shoot on sight. There's nothing to worry about this time."

Kitakami: "Come on, that's all for show. The last time he broke out of here, the Captain couldn't put him down. I've got zero trust about this time either."

Nagara: "He was a kid. I can understand why she'd hesitate."

Kitakami: "That 'kid' caused Near Third Impact and murdered my entire family!"

Hyuga: "Near Third was a consequence of what he did, not his goal. The Captain's doing her best to atone for that too."

Takao: "That's right. She's who Kaji entrusted with Wille, and it's our job to trust the captain."

We learn a few things from this dialogue. Firstly, the older WILLE members are much more understanding to Shinji and Misato's situation: Aoba and Hyuga understand that it's better to keep an eye on Shinji and that he never meant to start NTI, Takao is one who always trusts Misato's judgement and Sumire understands that Misato would have found it difficult to kill a child, especially one that Misato was close with.

Secondly, it appears that the younger WILLE members (Midori, Sakura and Tama) are the ones that are fearful/hateful towards Shinji (NOTE: Tama is a strange case, he strikes me as the sort of kid that just follows what everyone else is feeling. He might not feel anything towards Shinji beyond what you'd expect).

Finally it appears that most of WILLE crew members are actually reasonable people and are not the extremely desperate and paranoid individuals some people on the forum believe. Remember this is AFTER Shinji started the 4th impact in Q. The fact that some of the WILLE crew members speak of Shinji in this way, show they are capable of understanding. Most actually trust Misato and respect her judgement except for Midori, who questions Misato's capabilities in following through on her threats.

Which brings me to my next point. Misato has had no hesitation in pulling rank in the past. In 2.0, she even has an altercation with Ritsuko, her best friend, right before they fight the 8th angel. Misato is a woman that will tell even her best friend to STFU, when it comes to doing what she wants. Having said that, (timeskip shenanigans aside) there's no reason why she couldn't have done the same with the younger WILLE crew members. She could have nipped all of it in the bud by telling Sakura, Midori and the rest of them that Shinji was groomed to cause NTI and it was not his fault.

Instead, despite being the captain that everyone loves and fears, she kowtowed to the crew's paranoia and had the pilots fitted with explosive chokers, put in explosively rigged solitary confinement and gave the order to kill Shinji if they feared the worst. This is the sort of thing that drives fully grown men to suicide, never mind 14 year olds that have just come out of a coma. Imagine if Shinji did commit suicide in his cell. Who would Misato and WILLE have turned to in order to defeat Gendo in the end? What if Gendo tricked WILLE into killing their own pilots with the explosives? They would be properly screwed then. If Misato actually cared, as we are led to believe from her hesitation to kill Shinji, then she would have told the rest of the WILLE crew to fuck off, instead of alienating and putting Shinji and the pilots in that much risk. Are we really expected to believe that Misato placed such extreme countermeasures on Shinji just to appease Midori and Sakura? Not likely. This is why I believe that Misato would not have put the DSS choker on Shinji in the first place, and her doing so in Q was extremely unrealistic and out of character, even with anything that happened during the timeskip.

Some of you will say: "Who cares about realism? It's a show about aliens and growing up." While this is true, Anno has proven that he is able to pull the themes off much better when you look at the NGE series. Disregarding the self-contained narrative, it is obvious that the purpose of Q was to bring Shinji to the same point he was at after episode 24 of the series. If we look at how NGE/EOE handled Shinji's depression, we see that it is quite realistic:

The neglect and coercion by the adults in his life, almost dying to angels multiple times, the sexual tension with Asuka, almost killing Touji, finding out Rei is a clone of his mother, Misato putting the moves on him and having to kill Kaworu all culminate towards Shinji's mental state during EOE. Shinji is passively suicidal but it's due to the *situation* and his own introverted tendencies instead of people actively trying to hurt and isolate him. He finds the will to live again due to his mothers words despite knowing just how difficult living might be. If you remove all the Evas and the Angels from the story, the themes that are touched upon (isolation, neglect, misunderstanding) still apply and the audience can still resonate with them.

The rebuilds however go about it completely differently. They bring Shinji to that same suicidal state by having all the characters/plot actively harm Shinji's mental health by:

Putting him in a coma for 14 years so he is completely clueless. Imagine how groggy you are when you wake up in the morning and then multiply that by a million.

Have Misato psychologically castrate Shinji by telling him he won't do anything with a look of disdain on her face.

Have Ritsuko make Shinji feel dread by telling him he has a bomb on his neck and it's because he is being "punished".

Not tell him why he is being punished when he asks Misato.

Have Asuka try to punch Shinji after he thought she was dead.

Tell Shinji the girl he saved is "gone”.

Have his "mother figure" threaten to blow his head off for wanting to leave with the girl you just told him is gone.

Have Asuka and Mari attack Shinji in Lilith's chamber even though Shinji was seemingly willing to listen to them had Asuka not kept attacking. (Watch that scene again and you'll see when Asuka learns what Shinji is trying to do, she stops attacking but instead of explaining that he's being manipulated, she just calls him a brat instead).

Even Mari was willing to potentially kill or cripple Shinji with the Anti-AT rounds. (We don't know what the AA rounds are truly capable of because the only time they are used on screen, they don't work. The round cartridges state that they are armor and AT field piercing and have explicit restrictions on their use. The fact that Mari requires Asuka's explicit authorization to use them imply that they are most likely lethal and would have killed/crippled Shinji had he been in a normal Eva).

Have Shinji's friend's head explode with the device Shinji's "mother figure" actually meant for him. Imagine seeing someone's head explode and then remember that your "mother figure" actually meant that to be for you. That would certainly mess anyone up.

Have Asuka then kick and manhandle him when he is catatonic.

Have Asuka force feed him to the point where he pukes whilst he is still grieving the death of his friend.

Have Shinji only be escorted whilst tied to a stretcher despite him coming voluntarily.

Have Misato place Shinji in 24/7 solitary confinement in a cell rigged with explosives.

Have Misato tell the WILLE crew to shoot Shinji on sight if they think he's getting into an EVA.

Have people tell Shinji that he's being a brat the entire time for reacting badly to all this.

By having Misato, Asuka, WILLE reject and "punish" Shinji so harshly so it kicks off his isolation and desperation, it makes Shinji's "recovery" seem less believable. Anno himself didn't even know how to make Shinji recover psychologically in 3.0+1.0 and he actually had to ask the voice actors on how to make that happen. The story made the WILLE crew go full scorched-earth and in doing so made Shinji's "growth" and his reconciliation with Misato seem impossible.

I have already stated that I believe Q represents "Condemnation" and Shin represents "Compassion" and I think both films pull that off brilliantly. But that doesn't mean I think the characters acted in a realistic manner. I do not believe that Misato would have placed such harsh sanctions on Shinji in the first place for the reasons I have stated above. And if she did, I do not believe that Shinji would have easily forgiven Misato (even IF she took a bullet for him) as we see he does in the film. I do not believe that WILLE were merely "scared and desperate" because as the dialogue above shows, they are surprisingly understanding (but still disapproving) of Shinji's situation despite him literally starting another impact. I do not believe that Misato would have bent over to Sakura and Midori's resentment and taken measures against Shinji, just to ease their minds.

In summary, my main problem with the post-timeskip rebuilds is that I feel they gaslight the audience in thinking that Shinji was just being a "brat" the entire time by having Asuka and Mari say: "You have grown a little/You smell like an adult now." However, the truth is Shinji's been through so much mental suffering perpetrated by the people he cares about, that it's a miracle he's not killed himself. It would certainly break most of us on this forum. The movies seek to show Shinji "finally" taking responsibility when the truth is, the plot went so above and beyond putting him down in such an extreme manner in the first place.

#evangelion #nge #nte #rebuild of evangelion #evangelion 3.0 you can (not) redo #evangelion 3.33 #evangelion 3.0+1.0 #misato katsuragi #shinji ikari #asuka langley shikinami #mari makinami illustrious #ritsuko akagi #3+1 spoilers #spoilers

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

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Here’s my response to @pussyibo, who tagged me on a post about Gg’s Li-Ning brand endorsement.

First of all, I’d like everyone to please read @accio-victuuri‘s wonderfully written, detailedly researched post on the Li-Ning brand, the Xinjiang cotton support rally on Weibo, and the narrative the state has spun on the issue. I would’ve provided similar information in my response as well—although no way I could’ve laid it out as clearly, as to-the-point as @accio-victuuri did—because this background is critical in explaining my thoughts on this issue.

I haven’t reblogged the Li-Ning ads, but I must confess that the decision had little to do with politics. I’ve always leaned towards re-blogging art than real people.

That said, however, Gg’s Li-Ning ads have, of course, crossed my dash. And I’d be honest and say this as well: I haven’t really found them—or by extension, the idea that Gg was endorsing the brand—offensive, precisely for the reasons @accio-victuuri laid out. Li-Ning is a legend in China; a highly decorated olympic gymnast, he was the national pride chosen to be the final torch-bearer and torch-lighter for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His company, established in 1990, was among the first Chinese brands with name-recognition overseas and has won high-profile international sponsorships—rare achievements among Chinese-owned enterprises, even to this day.

Based on Li Ning’s identity and his company being a National Brand, I’d be more surprise if the Li-Ning brand doesn’t use homegrown, “patriotic” cotton, before even considering the practical reasons—Xinjiang cotton being a domestic product that eliminates the costs of shipping, tariffs etc; that it’s of such superior quality that international brands touted its use—a reversal of the usual downplaying of their products’ Chinese origin, due to the common associations of “Made in China”=“Bootleg”,“awful quality”; that makes up ~20% of worldwide cotton production—ie. most Chinese families are probably already using products with cotton from the region (blankets, for example).

From that perspective, therefore, I’ve viewed the endorsement as little more than a case of a high-profile Chinese celebrity endorsing a high-profile Chinese brand, named after a national hero and targeted towards the local market. I breathed a little sigh of relief for Gg, admittedly—imagine if his new endorsement over those same few days had been for a brand under the Better Cotton Initiative; he would’ve been flayed alive, if the antis’ words were knives.

(And who said they aren’t?)

As such, I also haven’t considered the Li-Ning brand as “morally inferior” to Gg or Dd, or, the other way around, that Gg or Dd are “morally superior” to the Li-Ning brand. I haven’t considered drawing a moral ruler along this axis. I either believe they’re all doing what their sociopolitical environment has taught them, guided them, demanded them to do, or I don’t. Li Ning (the person and the brand), Gg, and Dd all have a celebrity status attached to them. They’ve all flourished in that one sociopolitical environment—that one they also call home.

Ultimately, Gg and Dd belong to China. They’re the product of the country, its all powerful, all controlling regime. No one can be isolated from their backgrounds—my background colours every word I say here; likewise, there’s no place I can draw a line and separate Gg and Dd from the Communist Red behind them. I wouldn’t have posted about China’s sociopolitical environment, researched on it as a GgDd fan otherwise.

I either walk away from them all, or I don’t. I either stay a fan, or I don’t. The latter is my choice. Every minute.

Have there been instances in which news about Gg and Dd make me especially uncomfortable? Yes. Photos of Gg in PLA (People’s Liberation Army; Chinese army) uniform for AT, or Dd in police uniform for BAH, for TTXS still give me stomach churns every time I see them. A violent squeeze of the heart.

Visceral reactions that come from, I suppose, the amyglada. More organic, primitive than thought.

I’ve seen those uniforms in RL action—uniforms worn by those who’re truly responsible for the labor camps and mass surveillance, the torture, the unreported deaths, the disappearances; uniforms Gg and Dd have expressed support outside their drama, their host roles:

Translation: #I support Hong Kong Police too# (On red banner) “I support HK police. You can beat me up now.” What a shame for Hong Kong.

(Dd reblogged the same post originated from People’s Daily, the State-Controlled Newspaper).

I’m going to go on a quick detour and provide the backstory of this red little box, this piece of propaganda that is much more blatant than a clothing ad. I’ll explain why in a bit.

Here’s an article that explained the incident from which the quote was drawn, that occurred on 8/13/2019 during the Hong Kong Protest and the airing of The Untamed. Essentially, a Chinese state media reporter was suspected to be a spy among the protestors after taking photos, refusing to show his press pass (he was found to have one but not his own), and possessing a “I love HK Police” shirt; he was tied to the luggage cart and beaten up. The reporter said the quote in the red little box; he suffered mild injuries and was soon discharged by the hospital. What was the background of this story, however? Why did the protestors beat up someone who could be from the press—who, regardless of their affiliation, protestors know should be protected? The protests began in June, 2019. Hong Kong had had another large scale protest in between September to November, 2014 (aka the “Umbrella Revolution”). Spies had always been an issue. Why didn’t a spy beating happen earlier?

Here’s an English-subbed documentary (warning: violence) that offers insight of the background—the fear and fury of the protestors. The subject is what is now known as 721 Yuen Long incident, or the evening Hong Kongers—even those who had not been involved, who had been unsure about the protests—lost their trust of the Hong Kong Police, once known as “Asia’s finest”.

That evening went like this. On 7/21/2019, the local mafia violently attacked the passengers of a late night train in Yuen Long station—passengers who weren‘t protestors (who wore black)—while the police ignored the multiple emergency calls from locals who’d spotted something suspicious, and didn’t show up on the scene while the beatings occurred. Evidences, which the documentary detailed, pointed to the Hong Kong Police, and the government that backed it, endorsing the beatings, therefore working with the local mafia to deal with the protests.

By 8/13/2019, therefore, protestors were convinced that their opposition wasn’t beyond using very low blows to get their way. One could argue that they overreacted to the spy-reporter; the Western media, who had long trusted HKers to know what they were doing, expressed its disappointment, and the protestors soon apologised. The Chinese propaganda machine, of course, jumped at the chance of casting the protestors as bad people, and the online rally on Weibo ensued (It lasted for at least three days; Gg and Dd reblogged post about HK between 8/14/2019-8/16/2019).

That was, briefly, the story behind Gg and Dd’s Weibo reblog.

Why did I make a detour and write up this story? Because I’ve actually posted blatant propaganda on my blog—the Weibo post, with its red little box. However, does it still feel like propaganda with the story?

Therefore, I haven’t, and don’t plan on pressuring anyone to stop posting and re-blogging specific pieces of GgDd information—be it an ad as in this scenario, or propaganda material from films, series, government/state-controlled media announcements etc. That I believe everyone should set their own boundaries, be their own judge of what they’d like to share on their own blog aside, I think—and this is where my opinion may deviate from many—“canceling” falsehoods often isn’t the best way to deal with them.

This opinion is likely, again, coloured by my background.

My observations have been this: “cancelling” is effective only if the cancelling force is, overall, significantly stronger than the force being cancelled. In the scenario that prompted this post, making Gg’s Li-Ning ads disappear from the dash is only possible if there are more fans who ignore the ads than those who post and reblog them. “Canceling” is therefore a competition of headcount, with tactics for sidekick—the side with more people, and people who are good at disseminating information, decides the outcome: whether the intended-to-be-cancelled material go viral within the fandom, or whether they die out.

I’d like to highlight this word: headcount.

This isn’t the most favourable kind of competition to participate in, therefore, if the potential opposition belongs to the populous country in the world, its members, people who may have participated in fan circles, which are essentially fan armies who’ve been used to organising, battling on social media for their idols. I’ve previously set up a hypothetical scenario, in which Dd’s supertopic members were encouraged by their government to scale the Great Firewall to Twitter, spread their support of Xinjiang cotton—a scenario that is not totally unrealistic, given that the Chinese government has previously mobilised fans for propaganda purpose.

We’ll use this thought experiment again ~ please bear in mind, once more, that this is SJD; a figment of our imagination.

Since we’re talking about Li-Ning brand, let’s add Gg’s supertopic members to the mix. The total supertopics member count is 6.11 + 8.34 = 14.45 million, as of today (2021/04/04).

Let’s say, only a tiny, tiny percent—0.01% of them are mobilised; that’s 1,400 people.

Is it possible to cancel the voices, the retweets of 1,400 in Gg and Dd’s i-fandom? Cut down another 90%, reduce the opposition headcount to 140. Is it possible?

There are also overseas Chinese who do not intend to spread propaganda, but believe in the story and have no qualms disseminating the information. There are also fans who wish to remove politics from fandom and pass all information along.

Here lies the frustration of those who’ve tried to raise their voice of concerns re: the policies and practices of the Chinese government on social media; and this is why I mentioned that my background informed my opinion. On social media, where headcount and whoever shouts the loudest, retweet etc the most wins the exposure game, it’s nearly impossible to win against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s propaganda machine, if the party chooses to have the machine running.

Their side has so many people.

One more RL example: here’s a scholarly article detailing how Diba (帝吧), an old, popular online forum in China with 20 million members, mobilised, collectively scaled the Firewall and engaged in a cyberattack of the Facebook page of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen on January 20, 2016 — the day of President Tsai Ing-wen’s first inauguration; they left a total of 26,000 comments against Taiwan independence, using Simplified Chinese (which China uses) for their font instead of Traditional Chinese (which Taiwan and Hong Kong uses)—ie, the commenters didn’t even pretend to be not from China. They were proud and open about their "Expedition”.

(China’s state-controlled tabloid Global Times—yes, the same one involved in the Hong Kong airport incident above—”concluded the campaign was a “fun normal incident” that showcased young people’s passion for politics”)

Is it possible to try to cancel something of that scale? Is it realistic?

Personally, therefore, I’ve always advocated for “immunisation”: rather than protecting a fact by wiping out its associated lies—the idea behind “cancelling” a message, not having it show up on the dash—I prefer to do so by allowing it to be visibly challenged, until observers are no longer easily swayed by falsehoods. I used Gg and Dd’s Weibo reblog re: Hong Kong police as an example—is the red little box propaganda, a challenge to the protests? Yes. Is it information that I deeply disagree with, something I wish I’ll never see again? Also yes. But by providing context to it, I’m hoping to turn it into a vaccine—something mimicking the virus, the potentially viral piece of information, but doesn’t function the same way anymore.

Hopefully, this vaccine will also encourage stop-and-think moments that boost future immunity; hopefully, with a few more boosters, questions will come automatically with such red little boxes reappear— questions about the context, the purpose, the message.

Questions like these, for this incident: why did the State media make this incident the “Gotcha” moment in the Hong Kong Protests, important enough for People’s Daily to make a rally-starting meme? Why was the reporter, Fu Guohao hailed as a hero, when he’d just got ... beaten up?

What did People’s Daily, and the government behind it, want people to find when the red little box popped up everywhere on Weibo, including the Weibo of the fastest rising stars from the hit summer TV series? What belief could be expected to be instilled into the audience with this photo, published by China’s state TV station (CGTN), of the reporter tied up to a luggage cart and surrounded by black-cladded protestors?

Who looked like the strong, evil side? The meek, good side? Why, finally, was the tag about the Hong Kong Police, when the conflict was between the protestors and an alleged Chinese state media reporter?

By then, Hong Kongers were already suspicious that the Hong Kong Police had been infiltrated by China’s law enforcement arm, from hints from the different dialects the police used, how they handled the protestors etc. It was the start the final break down of Hong Kong’s autonomy. Their suspicions were not wrong. Now, with the National Security Law having taken effect since July 2020, Hong Kong’s transformation into a police state is well under way.

What does the tag #I support Hong Kong Police too# mean now?

[Please excuse my using many examples from HK because 1) I’m familiar with the details; and 2) it’s the only instance in recent history in which the outside world can see, with relative clarity, a large-scale protest against the Chinese government and its outcome.]

Here’s my humble wish: next time, when a government-sponsored memes like this get translated and posted, be it originally reblogged by Gg, Dd, or other c-ent stars, be it on Twitter or Tumblr, the vaccinated, immunised will pause and wonder: What’s the story? What’s being told inside the Great Firewall, and outside?

If this happens, red little boxes on my blog, unpleasant as they are, are 100% worth it.

The Li-Ning ads are therefore worth it too, IMO, if they spark a conversation, a dissemination of facts and perspectives. To me, the latter is especially precious in this fandom, where significant language and cultural barriers exist. Fans who move Gg and Dd’s news and candies from Weibo are the pillars of this fandom. Sieving through that website is hard, translations harder; it’s unfair and unrealistic to ask them to also be the background knowledge deliverers.

I’ve tried to do a small part, but I’m ... slow. Very, very slow. However, even if the background isn’t available, I’ve found being careful, skeptical about the information is already a very good thing. At heart, this is no different from the lessons from media literacy here, except there are even more falsehoods and half-truths to wade through given the country of origin of Gg and Dd’s material, and trustworthy sources are not always available. Li-Ning brand is an example that things do not need to be blatant propaganda to carry a pro-CCP message.

What can i-fans do then about the Xinjiang cotton situation, if competing against the Chinese government propaganda machine on social media appears to be a losing game?

My thoughts are these, at the moment. First, please consider not dwelling on the competition, especially within fandom. Remember: getting several fewer fans to buy Li-Ning brand isn’t going to change the big picture.

Instead, if this is an area of activism you choose to participate in—please consider channeling your effort to watching the companies in your country. Put pressure on sustainability & good practice certification companies like Better Cotton Initiative, make sure they don’t, can’t have it both ways. Xinjiang cotton is either certified or it isn’t. There’re suspicions of forced labor on its production or there aren’t. The answer should be a simple yes or no, not whether the office is in Geneva or in Shanghai.

This is an answer that we, as consumers, have the right to know. Transparency in China isn’t for us to demand; we can, however, demand transparency in our own country. Remember too: it makes a far, far greater difference for one international company to re-consider its cotton source, than for one fandom to do the same.

Meanwhile, and again, this is my humble opinion—please do whatever you’re comfortable with, that is within your ability, to fortify your stance. Should you choose to speak out online, you’ll likely meet opposition. Responses on current events from the Chinese Foreign Ministry (you can also find the spokespeople on Twitter) can offer a glimpse of the counterarguments you may meet. How will you answer them? Here’s a clip of one of the spokespeople arguing that the US used to use black slavery to pick cotton in the past. If you’re American and this is presented to you—what would you say? (Does mistakes by one country in the past mean mistakes by another country in the present is automatically acceptable?) The opposition may also use vicious words, the most extreme of which is probably “racist”. If someone call you racist—if many Twitter users scream racist!!!!!!!! at you at the same time for your critique—can you stand firm?

[The pro-CCP camp has been taking advantage of the West’s effort to move forward from its racist past to stop any criticism of the Chinese government. It already knows the easiest way to silence the criticisms is to call whoever makes them racist.]

[If everyone fears the racist allegation, allows the conflation of Chinese government and Chinese people to take root, will there be more or less anti-Asian sentiments in the long run?]

[I’ve been called racist by writing these metas.]

The last thing I’d like to say is this: please be kind to your fellow fans who’ve kept mum, or been hesitant about making their stance known. Some may be closely connected to China, others may not be in a psychological / health space to deal with the politics. Also, and here’s my default way of looking at this: I disagree with the idea that anyone owes anyone else a declaration of their political beliefs. I can’t imagine this issue to be an easy thing to think about for many Gg and Dd fans, myself most definitely included ~ as a (former) Hong Konger, a uniformed Gg or Dd gives me an unpleasant visceral response, but at the same time, it also means I’m used to accepting, even genuinely liking people on the other side of this political ... Grand Canyon. I can imagine the conflict, the pain this issue may have caused some fans who’re not accustomed to the latter, as being a fan, IMO, is never purely logical ~ and I mean that in the best of ways.

Passion is the magic ingredient that separates a fan and a consumer. It’s also what makes choices difficult, when conclusions from logic, political stance included, conflict with it. Some make the hard choices quickly; some, slowly. Some make them in one go; some, piece by piece. Some never make them, let time be the decision maker.

As Dd said so famously and wisely, about the conflict between passion and logic: 愛就是這樣，沒有辦法 Love is like that. Nothing can be done.

The only common denominator is this: we’re all made to love.

❤️.💛.💚.

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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the-void-i-scream-into · 3 years

Text

White Tulips - a JunJin fanfic 2/3

Full Story: Part 1, Part 3

Hello Everyone! I hope you are all happy and healthy. Part 2 of my Junjin fanfic is finally up. Thank you so much to the beautiful and wonderful people who liked my fanfic. I am so sorry I have not been responding to your lovely comments. I had exams so I was really busy but I will get to them now. It took me a long time to post this next part because I wanted to finish both Part 2 and 3. I’ll be posting the other part too once I’ve proofread everything

As always, this chapter is dedicated to the Shooters GC (which I haven’t checked in so long, I’m so sorry) 🙈 🙈

Please do be warned, this does get a little dark. But it will pay off in Part 3, I promise.

Pairing: Kang Sujin x Han Seojun

Romantic Trope: Haters to friends to lovers

Word Count: 13.5k

Rating: T

TRIGGER WARNING: Some of the themes in this story are a little dark, specifically in section iii. Please be warned. I’ve added a summary for section iii in section iv so you can skip it if needed.

PART 2

They both spoke at the same time.

“Ya Kang Sujin…”

“Ya Han Seojun…”

“What the hell happened?”

Seojun had been in a strange state of mind all day. First it was waking up in the enemy’s bed, but that part he had completely blocked out. Then it was the massive hangover, the effects of which he was still reeling from. On top of that he had received a scolding for being late to practice, which caused him to be late to his commercial shoot, which caused him to be late for his recording session which was when he had been informed about his scandal.

Seojun normally didn’t care for rumors that spread about him. He relied on his performance to speak for itself; the people online with their uninformed opinions didn’t matter.

“But why did it have to be her?!” He had groaned when he first read the articles. But then he asked himself seriously, “Why did it have to be her?”

It all seemed too convenient. Additionally, she had been the one to drag him for drinks and then back to her apartment.

Was this another one of her schemes? What would she gain from doing this? Maybe it was because he was on to her and could see the truth about her and now she wanted him gone. Yes, it must have been that. Or was it not? Was his theory too farfetched? Maybe he was being too harsh. Maybe he was misunderstanding the situation.

Seojun felt conflicted. On the one hand, it would have been so easy to just blame Sujin and keep on hating her like he wanted to. On the other hand, he could hear Suho in his head, warning him about being too judgmental. Seojun normally trusted his instincts with everything but this time his own instincts were confused. Should be giving Sujin the benefit of the doubt?

Seojun knew that if he needed answers, he would need to go to the source.

“What the hell happened?” They both asked each other at the same time but neither had the answer.

“How the hell would I know? It was your apartment.”

“The pictures were obviously taken by someone was obsessed with you.” Sujin fumed.

“Are you saying this is my fault?”

“Then are you saying it’s mine?”

“I’m not the one who took us out drinking then brought me back home to her apartment!”

“I’m not the one with the crazy saesangs!”

“My fans are not crazy! They are way better than arrogant women with a princess complex like you!”

“Don’t call me princess.” Sujin said dangerously.

“Or what? You’ll get me drunk and back at your apartment again?”

“Ah shut up, you man-child!” Sujin hung up and Seojun flung his phone across the room where it bounced onto the couch. He was seething.

“Aish!” Seojun kicked the air.

“Did you talk to Sujin?” Heekyung’s calm voice startled Seojun.

“What? Oh, Noona.” Seojun gulped.

“How was she? Was she okay?”

“Umm…” Seojun blinked

“She must have been shaken. Facing something like this can be very upsetting.”

Seojun’s shoulders deflated. “Uh, yeah…” He hadn’t considered that.

“Did she agree to give a statement to help clear up this mess?”

Oh right, I was supposed to ask her…

Heekyung continued, “I do have good news. We’ve found the person who took the photographs. So he won’t be sharing them with anyone else.”

“You have?”

“Yes. It was unfortunate. A photographer happened to be there, just as you were leaving. He actually recognized you from your voice. Talk about having bad luck.”

Seojun frowned. So, it wasn’t Sujin.

“So will Sujin do it? We just need a simple statement. She can release a post on her socials and we’ll take care of the media articles.”

Seojun rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Um, I don’t think she’ll agree.” . Especially not after the blaming match that just happened. “Can’t we just clarify things on our end? Not get her involved?”

Heekyung smiled with a twinkle in her eye, “Oh I get it. You don’t want her to feel burdened.”

Seojun could tell what she was implying. “Ah-nee! Its not that at all!” His voice was pitched a little too high.

Heekyung laughed, “I’ve been at this for longer than you, Seojun-ah. You can be straight with me.”

“It’s not like that! I don’t care about Kang Sujin at all!”

But Heekyung wasn’t listening. “Just be careful. Your career has just started. You can’t afford scandals like these. People will turn against you in an instant, you know?”

Seojun swallowed. He knew all too well how people could turn against him in an instant, like the way thy did with Seyeon. But he wanted to believe that he would be able to face them.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

Heekyung nodded. “Good. Now I’ll go tell our PR team to release a statement about you and Sujin being just friends.” Seojun nodded gratefully. “I think the fact that you went to school together will help. Hopefully people will buy it when you tell them nothing happened between you two.” Heekyung winked as she walked away.

“It’s not like that!” Seojun called after her.

ii.

The situation subsided as quickly as it had risen. Move Entertainment published their official statement about how it was all a misunderstanding. That Seojun had only been visiting his friend from high school and the fact that the friend was also a mutual with rising online beauty guru Lim Jukyung helped establish the connection. Seojun had been glad that Jukyung had taken those selfies with Sujin with Seojun in the background otherwise people might have just taken the statement as an excuse.

What annoyed Seojun about the whole situation was not his reputation or the online speculation but how everyone else kept teasing him about it. This was made especially worse when they were all gathered around for drinks, including his own squad, Chorong and Co., who were eyeing Sujin with a mixture of adoration—that made them stare at her, and fear—that kept them from talking to her.

“Ooh, Han Seojun you better not drink too much or you’ll end up in Sujin’s apartment again.” Taehoon teased. Seojun gave him the death glare while Sujin made a disgusted face. Everyone else laughed.

“Guys! Don’t be mean.” Jukyung’s voice went unheard among the collective chatter.

“Han Seojun, I can see you’ve been keeping a very close eye on Kang Sujin.” Chorong whispered in his ear. Seojun elbowed his ribs.

“Pay up, Sujin didn’t kill him.” Suho asked from Suah.

“You guys had a bet?” Sujin asked icily. Seojun almost admired the scathing look Sujin gave Suho as she eyed the money being exchanged.

Suho’s and Suah’s hands froze right when they were exchanging the bills.

“No?” Suho said weakly.

“Kang Su, I bet on you okay?” Suah defended.

“Ah is that so? Well then you’re off the hook.”

Suah relaxed while Suho blinked forty times, sweating. “Kang Sujin. It was just a joke okay?”

Sujin just put her hand forward and Suho silently put the money in her hands.

“Wah, just 5 dollars? I’m worth 5 million you know.”

“Sure you are. And I’m the King of England.” Seojun said under his breath. Kang Sujin and her princess complex.

“What was that?” Sujin put her hand to her ear, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you over the apology you owe me.”

“What apology? I owe you nothing.” Seojun retorted, fully aware that he had actually come to this gathering to apologize to Sujin about the scandal and how he had behaved over the phone. That plan had since been abandoned.

For some reason, he could not spit out the three words ‘I am sorry’ to Kang Sujin. No matter how much he wanted to. There was just something about her that irritated him to the point of misbehavior.

Sujin clicked her tongue at Seojun but said nothing. Instead, reaching into her bag, she pulled out a notebook and a pen.

“Here, sign this.” She ordered, pushing the notebook and pen in his face.

“What is it?”

For Kang Sujin, the biggest issue from the scandal had not been the online noteriety and not even the teasing, but the fact that everyone in her office now knew that she was friends with an idol and had demanded that she get them his autographs.

“Its for my friends at work.”

“You have friends?” Seojun said with mock surprise.

“You know I was just as shocked to learn that you have actual fans. I always thought Suho was the one buying all your albums.” Sujin said.

“Of course I have fans! I am super popular you know!” Seojun defended, pulling the lapels of his jacket with pride.

“Yes I’m sure you’re veeeery popular.” Sujin’s words dripped with sarcasm. Seojun’s pride deflated like a balloon. “Just sign. And write something nice too.” She ordered. Seojun quietly picked up the notebook, not because he was nice but because he felt he owed her this much.

“You know my autographs are worth a lot of money, right?”

Sujin made a face. “Just sign the damn thing so that the girls at work stop harassing me about you.”

Seojun smiled as he signed. His fans were awesome. “How many?” He asked.

“Seven.”

He signed seven pages, each with a personalized note.

“Be nice to my fans at work.”

“I’m always nice.”

“Sure you are.” Seojun replied skeptically. He handed Sujin the notebook. “I better not find you selling these online.” He warned.

“I’d rather starve than live off of your autographs.” Sujin bit back.

“Okay, okay! No more fighting!” Jukyung pointed between the two. “Lets all enjoy our drinks in peace.” She looked pointedly at Sujin who pointed her chin at Seojun with a ‘he-started-it’ scowl.

“Han Seo, is it okay for you to meet us in public like this?” Suah asked. They weren’t in the usual private dining area that they frequented when it was just the core group of friends. They were out where everyone could see.

“We can always hang out at our place, if you want.” Suho offered. Seojun quickly shook his head. Seeing Suho and Jukyung together outside was one thing. Seeing how they lived together was quite another. Knowing they lived together was painful enough. He didn’t want even more fuel for his imagination.

“Its no trouble at all.” He put on a smile for Suho who seemed satisfied. But, to his surprise, he found Kang Sujin giving him a strange look. She chuckled to herself but said nothing.

As they all said their goodbyes, Seojun went out the back so that he could leave in privacy. He planned on taking the long route today. A bike ride would help him clear his mind.

“Han Seojun, wait up!”

He stopped just as he was about to put his helmet on. He was surprised to find Sujin there.

“What? Need more autographs?” He asked, cockily smiling.

Sujin made a sickened expression. “Not at all. I just… I had something to say.” She hesitated.

“Well say it.”

She cleared her throat. “It was neither of our faults. The scandal. It wasn’t that it was my building or your fans. It was someone shitty who didn’t respect our privacy. That’s… that’s all I wanted to say.”

Sujin waited for his response. Seojun could feel his face burning. He should have been the one to say all this to her, and yet here she was apologizing to him instead.

“I’msorryforwhathappened.” He said too quickly and too quietly.

“What?”

“Nothing!” Seojun shoved his helmet on to hide his embarrassed face.

“Drive safe.” Sujin said.

“Yeah, whatever.” He rode away.

Kang Sujin was just glad she was able to spit out the words she had been meaning to say all night long. It had been weighing on her ever since they had spoken on the phone. She had promised herself a long time ago that she would try to be a nicer person and for the most part she had accomplished that. But that Han Seojun just had a way of bringing her old self back to the surface. And that bothered her.

It doesn’t matter, she told herself. She would learn how to get along with Han Seojun. It was only a matter of practice. And besides, it wasn’t as if she had to be overtly obvious about it. She just had to tolerate him.

For Jukyung. It’s for Jukyung. She would want us to get along, she lied to herself. The truth was, that Kang Sujin believed that she didn’t have a choice.

Everyone loved Han Seojun, even her best friends who had never paid much attention to him back in high school. It was all because Sujin had been absent for so long. She had missed a huge part of everyone’s lives while Han Seojun had been there for all of it.

Sujin wondered whether, if it came to choosing between her and Seojun, they would choose her. A part of her believed they wouldn’t.

She had made such a mess of things before and left things unresolved for too long. She was certain that things would never go back to the way they had been, not fully anyway. There would always be a part of them that wouldn’t trust her. And there would always be a part of her that would be heavy with guilt.

“Ah-nee-ya.” She reassured herself. “I don’t need to worry about this.”

She was glad that the whole matter of being mistaken as Han Seojun’s girlfriend had been settled. She laughed at the very idea.

“Me and Han Seojun dating. Ah, how funny.”

Sujin had heard of horror stories about how such scandals ruined people’s lives and got them shunned by society. Thank fully, none of that had happened. Her precious peace was safe again.

Sujin could see her future now; a life where she worked hard at her non-profit, where she shared dinners and lunches with her friends and laughed about the old days, where she wasn’t told she wasn’t good enough, where she did what she wanted instead of being forced to do what her father wanted. Yes, Kang Sujin could see her like ahead—a life where she was finally happy.

iii.

At first Sujin thought she was being paranoid. But her co-workers seemed to be acting stand-offish with her, with some outright avoiding her. They weren’t replying to her as enthusiastically they used to and were having hushed conversations that immediately stopped when she approached them. They even made plans for lunch without including her.

“Is something wrong?” Sujin asked one of them.

“Not at all. Shall we get to work?” It sounded more like a snub than reassurance.

Sujin also felt the hairs on her neck rise from time to time, as if she could feel someone watching her. But when she turned around, everyone would look away.

Convincing herself that it was all in her head, Sujin ignored it and went on with her work.

But then it happened again at the convenience store. She heard her name being said in whispers behind her. When she turned, she found a couple of teenagers quickly putting away their phone. Despite the anxiety bubbling in her stomach, Sujin dismissed the incident and went home.

Normally after a long day at work, Sujin would throw her phone away, have dinner while watching TV, shower and go to sleep. But today had been strange and she was feeling out of sorts. She needed a distraction to help her calm down.

So, after a shower, she settled back on her couch with her dinner and her phone. Jukyung normally posted a new make-up tutorial by this day of the week. Sujin loved watching her transform herself from an ordinary looking girl to a stunning beauty, while explaining each step.

To Kang Sujin, Jukyung was an artist who used her face as a canvas. Sujin herself had learned a lot just from watching Jukyung. She was excited about what she would learn today.

Sujin dismissed the dozens of Instagram notifications on her phone. Suah was always tagging her and messaging her about some post or the other. Sujin would get to them later. As Sujin searched for Jukyung’s channel, her Instagram notifications kept dinging. She put it on mute and played the video.

This time, Jukyung was giving a tutorial on American style makeup and how it was different from Korean style. Sujin grinned all the way through the video as Jukyung talked through her tutorial. Sujin scrolled through the comments as she watched.

My beauty Queen! I love you!

I tried your winged liner look and was able to finally do it for myself. Thank you.

I use the exact same foundation but it doesn’t work for my skin. But looks great on you. <3

You didn’t mention the eyeliner you used here. Can you please add it in the description?

This is why I have trust issues. She looks like a completely different person. This is fraud.

Sujin frowned at the last comment. “She looks beautiful either way.” She said angrily aloud as she typed it in, punching the buttons as if she could punch the commentor. Sujin scrolled further.

Who else came here after reading the Soompi article?

This comment had a lot of likes and comments. Maybe Jukyung was getting famous enough to be reported by entertainment websites now. Sujin smiled proudly.

Lim Jukyung, yours is the best makeup channel here!

Saranghae unnie

I was so sad to learn that you were bullied as a kid. So glad that you’ve found success now.

Sujin swallowed thickly. It would always bother her to know that she had once exploited Jukyung’s past bullying for her own gain. The fact that she had once contributed to her bullying would always fuel Sujin’s self hatred. She was just glad that Jukyung had moved on from her past and had become confident in herself. And more so, had found a community online that adored her.

As Sujin scrolled down some more, she noticed that most of the comments were talking about how Jukyung was a survivor of bullying.

“Mwo-ya…”

Wow, I had no idea this girl was so brave. Bravo!!!

I’m a survivor of bullying too. Its nice to know I’m not alone.

I bet her bully is watching this now and regretting what they did.

I don’t watch makeup tutorials. Came here cuz of the bullying scandal. But stayed cuz she is so good.

The last comment made Sujin stop. “Bullying scandal?”

Sujin went to Naver and searched for scandals involving Lim Jukyung. The first few links were Jukyung’s most popular videos but beneath that were a slew of articles from slanderous gossip sites.

Girl from Han Seojun Scandal Turns Out to be a Bully

Online Star Lim Jukyung Gets Involved in Han Seojun Scandal

Han Seojun’s Alleged Girlfriend was a Bully in High School

“What?!” Sujin stood up on her feet in shock. With shaking hands, she went through the articles one by one. Somehow, someone had uncovered the post from her high school community page that had revealed what she had done to Jukyung. Except they had gotten their facts mixed up and had reported that Sujin had been the one to bully Lim Jukyung about her looks.

That girl is so despicable.

Han Seojun is hanging out with a girl like her? I can’t believe it. I actually used to like him.

I bet this girl seduced Oppa. Don’t dislike him!

I am so glad they’re not actually dating.

Her face is so evil. And she’s uglier than Lim Jukyung!

I bet Han Seojun was fooled by her. She feels like the type who uses her looks to manipulate men.

People like her should kill themselves.

Guys! I found her Inssa!

It really is her! This is authentic!

The room began to close in on Sujin. She immediately opened Instagram where her account was flooded with comments and direct messages from people either telling her to kill herself or threatening to kill her.

Her heart was beating so fast it felt like she would throw it up. She was equal parts shaken and angry. So many people were after her but she hated that these people felt they had a right to treat her this way.

Sujin opened up the messages on Instagram and began firing back to her haters, starting with the most recent messages.

Get off of my account before I report you.

No thanks, I’m not going to kill myself.

Threatening me will only get you sued.

You don’t have to follow me if you don’t like me.

“These assholes think they can bully me online? Well, they’ve got another thing coming.” Sujin growled through clenched teeth as she typed away with all her anger.

I did not bully her!

I made a mistake!

I apologized!

People immediately started responding.

You’re not even going to admit your mistake?

OMG! I can’t believe you actually replied!

Are you honestly defending what you did?

You can’t talk like that to me! I’m going to tell everyone you’re a total b****

How can you be so audacious after you bullied someone? Just kill yourself.

Do us all a favor and kill yourself.

Kill yourself.

KILL YOURSELF.

Sujin screamed in frustration and threw her phone away. It smashed into the wall and landed with a sickening thud. Her hands suddenly felt clammy. Clammy and sticky and sweaty and dirty, dirty, dirty. So dirty that they smelled.

She ran into the bathroom and furiously scrubbed her hands clean. Once, twice, three times. No matter how many times she washed or how hard she scrubbed, the dirty stench of the hate she had just received wouldn’t wash off.

Her hands became all red and felt raw and exposed. But she kept on washing till she ran out of soap. She fell to the floor, suddenly weak and exhausted. The cool tiles felt nice and it was then that she noticed how hot she felt.

Calm down. I have to calm down. She breathed in, then out. In, then out. She could hear her heart in her ears. Pounding and pounding. The walls were closing in. The messages on her Instagram suddenly had voices that shouted in her mind.

Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself.

A ringing broke through it all. First Sujin thought it was in her head but no, it was from the living room.

Her cellphone. Lim Jukyung was calling.

How could she face Jukyung? What would she say to her? Wouldn’t Jukyung say the same as everyone else?

Sujin cut the call. Notifications from Instagram were still coming in. She deactivated her account and deleted the app.

Lim Jukyung’s name lit up her phone again.

She turned it off and flopped down on her sofa, head pounding.

Her fragile little hope for a good life was now shattered completely. She could hear her father now. Hear him yell at her that she was useless, that she was pathetic, that she was stupid and inferior. Unable to beat even Lee Suho.

Kill yourself.

Her father had never told her this, but he might as well have. Even now it was his voice saying it over and over in her mind. It was his angry stare she felt on her back.

How would she face people now? People would hate her now that they knew what she had done. And her co-workers…. Of course they knew. That’s why everyone had been acting so strange.

This all felt so cruel and unfair. She had been so good these past couple of years. She didn’t want all of it to just be taken away like this.

But didn’t you do the same thing to Jukyung? Her father’s voice taunted. She was a good person too, wasn’t she? You’re nothing but a piece of trash.

I bet you think that you destroyed Lim Jukyung, Seojun’s voice said, but you’ve only destroyed yourself.

iv.

SUMMARY of iii: Because of the Han Seojun scandal, people find out about the community post that revealed what Sujin had done to Jukyung and people online start thinking that Sujin bullied Jukyung. They harrass her and it becomes a scandal of its own.

It was chaos at Move Entertainment.

“What the hell happened?! You told me you settled this!” The director threw a magazine in Heekyung’s face. Seojun saw this through the glass door and barged in.

“Is that how you treat your employees?” He demanded angrily.

“Get out. Get. Him. Out! Get him out of this company for good measure!”

Heekyung pushed Seojun out before he could do anything else, dragging him as far away as possible. “Don’t be an idiot. You can’t just barge in like that.”

“But he’s being an asshole. Should I just stand around and let you take it?”

“This is the adult world Han Seojun. Actions have consequences here.” Heekyung said reasonably. “And you’re the reason he’s so mad. A bullying scandal is serious. We’ve even publicly acknowledged that you and Sujin are friends. This doesn’t reflect well on you.”

“The articles are lying. Sujin didn’t bully Jukyung in high school. She just—”

“I know exactly what she did. You think I don’t know about what happened to my own sister?” For a brief moment, Heekyung’s professional demeanor slipped into anger. But she recovered quickly. “It infuriates me that my sister’s past is being brought up like this. But I have a job to do and I need you to cooperate with me. Okay?”

Seojun exhaled. “What are we going to do?”

“Nothing. The situation will sort itself out. You will need to keep a low profile, however.”

Seojun exhaled. “Noona, we need to set the record straight. Sujin is—”

“Sujin isn’t represented by Move, you are. None of us here can do anything about what is happening to her.”

Seojun clenched his jaw. “Have you seen what is being said about her?”

Heekyung looked away. “Its not like I enjoy saying this. I’m only telling you what I was told when I made the same request. She’s not represented by us. She’s not our concern.”

“Was Seyeon not your concern either?”

Heekyung had nothing to say to that. “I have to go back in. You stay here, arachi? Don’t do anything rash and…” she yanked Seojun’s phone from his hand.

“Ah!” Seojun tried to get it but Heekyung had the phone out of reach.

“I’m keeping this for now.” She said and left.

Seojun exclaimed in frustration, running his hands through his hair. Despite the animosity he had towards Kang Sujin, this kind of exposure to such vitriol online didn’t sit well with him. Kang Sujin deserved a lot of things, but she didn’t deserve this.

He knew Sujin was tough. But this kind of incident would make anyone crumble. He just hoped she didn’t do anything stupid.

“Sujin-ah. Can you explain your side of things?”

Of course her office had heard about everything. Apparently her past misdeeds were a trending topic online. Her supervisor had called her in as soon as Sujin had shown up.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Her supervisor asked.

Sujin inhaled, “When I was in high school, I fell in love with a boy. But he had a girlfriend… she was a friend of mine. I got jealous… and petty. I published an unflattering video of her on our school’s online community. She had been bullied in her previous school because of her looks. So the video was especially traumatizing to her. I was responsible for what happened in Saebom High, but I wasn’t involved in anything that happened before that.”

Sujin looked at her hands, still red and raw, “I have made up with her since then. I’ve apologized. We’re both friends now. And I’m not a teenager anymore.”

Something stung Sujin’s hand. Water droplets? No, tears. She hadn’t noticed when she had started crying. But she kept her face straight even when the tears didn’t stop. She looked at her supervisor.

“I am ashamed of what I did. If I could take it all back… you have no idea what I would do to take it all back.” Sujin furiously wiped away her tears. She hated crying in front of anyone. “I love working here. I really do.”

Even as she was saying the words, she knew what was coming. Of course her company wouldn’t keep her on. Even non-profits couldn’t afford bad reputations and the fact that Move Entertainment had worked with her company for a lot of benefits hadn’t escaped her notice either.

“Sujin-ah.” Her co-worker said, peeking from the cubicle wall as Sujin packed up her things.

“What?”

“I never thanked you. For getting me Han Seojun’s signature.” The woman said meekly.

Sujin gave a small smile. “You’re welcome.”

The woman handed her a bunch of sticky notes. “These are goodbyes from everyone. We know you’re not getting a farewell party so we thought you should have our thoughts with you.”

Sujin looked down at the brightly colored notes that contained encouraging messages from some of her co-workers. Her dismissal had been so swift that she hadn’t even been given the chance to say anything.

“If its worth anything… I don’t believe any of it.”

Sujin smiled gratefully this time. “Thanks, Chulhee-yah. I appreciate it.”

vi.

Sujin was both grateful and surprised by how much her friends had reached out. Apparently they had showed up to her place multiple times to see if she was okay, given that she was not answering any of her calls. Sadly, Sujin had not been there to receive them. She had gone to her aunt’s place to get away from everything.

That had not proved to be a good idea.

“Have. You. Lost. Your. Mind!!” Each word was punctuated with a smack from a slipper. Her mother, the once elegant and graceful Mrs. Kang, chased her daughter around in the most inelegant and ungraceful manner. Mrs. Kang’s sister tried to save Sujin by stepping in between but Mrs. Kang still managed to get a few whacks in.

“How could you let a boy stay over at your place?!”

“Omma! That’s what you choose to focus on?!”

“Yes! How could you have disgraced your family this way? And not just any boy, an idol? What the hell were you doing with an idol? Come here.”

This was one fight Sujin would never win. Her mother was not a force of reason when she was this angry. And it took a lot for her to get this angry.

Sujin didn’t mind these smacks. They came from a place of love and worry. Eventually her mother calmed down enough to address the other issue with Sujin. She took her daughter in her arms and wailed.

“How could those people be so mean to my daughter?”

“Omma, I can’t breathe.” Her mother smushed Sujin to herself.

“My poor girl. My poor baby girl.”

In the end, Sujin was glad she had come back to her aunt’s place. It gave her the break she had needed. Away from all of the noise of her online haters, Sujin found she could finally breathe. She found great comfort in her mother’s arms and her aunt’s assurances her that everything would be fine.

However, the dread of returning to her normal life still loomed over her head. Sujin felt her throat close up every time she imagined going back to her apartment. Would the people point and laugh at her on the street? Would she be able to live a normal life from now on?

It was strange how deeply all of this had affected her. Even now, as Sujin walked from the grocery store to her aunt’s house, she felt the paranoia that people were talking about her, pointing and laughing, even though they weren’t.

“Sujin-ah.”

And now it felt like they were actually calling out to her.

“Kang Su!”

Sujin turned in surprise, ready to fight whoever had called her. “Who is it?”

“Who do you think? It’s Jukyungie! ” A human mass known as Lim Jukyung ran towards Kang Sujin with arms wide open. The girls hugged each other tightly, Jukyung grinning with her gummy smile while Sujin stood, mouth open in shock.

Not far behind, were Suah and Taehoon.

“Ya Kang Su, at least answer your phone! Do you know how worried I was?” Suah scolded.

Sujin laughed, almost tearing up. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She had feared that her friends would turn away and curse at her after she had avoided them. But here they were, all gathered just for her.

“How’d you find me?” She asked the three. They all turned to Suho who stood there smiling.

“Hey Sujin. Have you been well?”

Of course, Suho knew where her aunt lived.

“What well? You all know what happened.” Sujin replied, not bothering to pretend that she was fine.

“Ya! What have you done to your hands.” Jukyung held up Sujin’s scabby hands with worry.

“It’ll heal.” Sujin smiled. Maybe it was the massive hug she had received, or the fact that her friends had traveled so far away to meet her, but suddenly, Sujin felt relieved. It was as if the entire situation was trivial and that she could see light at the end of the tunnel.

“Of course we know what happened.” Suho replied.

“And we know exactly how to fix it.” Jukyung grinned wider.

vii.

On the screen, in front of a ring light she had set up at her home, Lim Jukyung stood with a gummy smile and a warm welcome.

“Ahn-nyong-se-yo everyone. This is Lim Jukyung here with a new make up tutorial for all of my beautiful viewers. Uh, today I have a new kind of tutorial for you all. But before we begin, there is something that I think has been on all of our minds that needs to be addressed.”

Jukyung motioned to someone standing behind the camera to come forward. Kang Sujin entered the frame awkwardly, not knowing where exactly to look. The way Jukyung had set up her studio for this live event was to have the camera, the mirror with the ring light and her laptop screen facing her so that she could do her make up while also reading the comments. And while Jukyung was used to having all of this equipment focused on her, Sujin was not.

“Introduce yourself.” Jukyung said softly, nudging Sujin with her elbow.

“Ah, yes.” Sujin cleared her throat. “Ahn-nyong-se-yo everyone. I’m Kang Sujin.” She waved robotically while staring in the camera like a deer caught in the headlights.

Jukyung couldn’t help but laugh. “Ya, Kang Su, are you afraid of the camera?”

“Ah-neeeee, it’s just so unnatural.” Sujin quickly countered.

“Don’t worry, the camera doesn’t bite.” Jukyung put an arm around her friend’s waist. “Okay everyone now that my friend Kang Sujin is here we can talk about the recent—”

“Lim Ju, maybe we shouldn’t do this.” Sujin interrupted anxiously.

“Huh? But it’s already live.” Jukyung pointed at the camera.

“What?” Sujin on in panic.

Jukyung continued, “So everyone, as you all may have heard, Sujin and I went to the same high school together. However, before that I attended another high school where I was bullied for my looks. Sujin and I did not know each other back then and she had nothing to do with that part of my life so the allegations that she bullied me are completely false. That was another person and that person is no longer in my life.”

Sujin cut in, “However, it is true that I revealed Jukyung’s past to our school and posted an unflattering video of her online.”

Jukyung nodded, looking serious. “I won’t lie and say it was easy for me to have that happen. But… both of us have changed since then. We have grown up and grown past that time.”

The girls took each other’s hands in solidarity.

Jukyung continued, “I’m not the girl I used to be. Neither is Sujin. And while she did do something wrong… I’ve forgiven her. I would rather remember the good times we shared…” The time that Sujin caught that pervert, the time she helped rescue Jukyung from those kidnappers, the time she helped hide Jukyung’s bare face at the school trip. “There are things that I wish I had done differently too. I wish had been more confident in myself and honest about who I really was. I wish I had stood up for myself earlier. But the past is the past, and I would rather focus on the present.”

“Everyone, I am grateful for all of the love and support you showed to me. I know bullying isn’t something you get over easily and I saw a lot of you comment about the bullying that you suffered. I am grateful you shared your stories with me. I hope we can take this opportunity to help each other heal rather than put someone down.” Jukyung looked at Sujin. “Now you.”

Sujin recited nervously, “Ah. Ahn-nyong-se-yo everyone. I’m Kang Sujin.”

Jukyung giggled. “We’ve done that already.”

“Oh, yes. Um… I uh…” Sujin took a pause to collect herself. “Let me be the first to say that I’m not a nice person—”

“Yah!” Jukyung protested but Sujin carried on.

“But I’m also not the girl who posted that video about her best friend, not anymore. At that time… I was foolish. I let my personal problems cloud my judgement and I took my frustration and anger out on Lim Jukyung. I have regretted doing that every single day since it happened. I am sorry. I understand everyone’s anger towards me. I would be angry too if I heard this about someone else. However, I hope that you all will be able to forgive me, as Jukyung has.”

Sujin ended her speech with an apologetic bow. Jukyung bowed with her. The girls then shared a tearful hug. From the back, Sujin saw Suho give her a thumbs up. Sujin sent him a smile back. The girls parted, wiping their tears.

“Okay! Now that that’s out of the way, we can get on to the real reason why you are on here.” Jukyung clasped her hands together. “Sujin will be assisting me today.”

“Ah, yes.”

“So Kang Su, shall we bring out our model today?” Jukyung asked her with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

The girls nodded conspiratorially before turning to Suho who looked on, confused.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

viii.

“What is it? What are you laughing at?” Chorong asked Seojun as he leaned over his shoulder. They were at Chorong’s place where the boys were goofing off, playing video games and lounging about.

Seojun didn’t hear Chorong’s inquiry through his ear buds and kept on shaking with silent laughter.

“Hey, nobody said anything about me being in the video.” Suho was protesting on Seojun’s phone. Seojun turned up the volume to hear Suho’s annoyed grumbling more clearly. Of course, Seojun was going to make fun of Suho about this afterwards.

“Just sit down, Lee Su, before I get mad.” Sujin commanded.

“That attitude of yours has never worked on me,” Suho replied coolly.

“Come on, Suho-ya. I do your makeup all the time don’t I? It’ll be fine. I promise.” Of course, when Jukyung said this, Suho melted like butter on a hot pan. Sujin rolled her eyes but it was clear that it wasn’t out of spite.

“Okay everyone! Let’s begin with the base and then we’ll work our way up! I am going to keep this look as natural as possible so that its not modifying anything but merely enhancing his features.” Jukyung pushed Suho’s bangs out of his forehead with a giant pink bow shaped clip. Seojun was quick to get a screen shot of it.

“What are Lee Suho and Kang Sujin doing on Jukyung’s channel?” Chorong asked in Seojun’s ear, shocking him. Seojun almost screamed in fear. He pushed away Chorong’s face to watch the video in peace.

In the live video, Jukyung was explaining the differences of applying make up on a guy’s face, versus a girl’s face.

“Sujin-ah. Why don’t you read some of the comments while I’m buffing in his foundation? You have to buff it in for a long time to make it appear natural.” Jukyung told her audience.

Sujin moved towards the camera, blocking Jukyung a little as she read off of her laptop. Her unfiltered face was front and center for the world to see. At this position it looked unflattering, which made Seojun chuckle even more.

Sujin read the comments in a robotic monotone, “Jukyung Unnie, I don’t usually watch make up tutorials. But after today I’m your number one fan.”

“Mwo-ya, this girl has no camera sense.” Seojun said to himself.

“Thank you! I’m your fan too,” Jukyung replied brightly.

“Your looks are always so classy and stylish.”

“Thank you! I’m glad you liked them. Let me know if there are any other looks you’d like to see.”

“Will you do a tutorial on how to wear red lipstick properly?”

“I’m actually planning on doing that soon!”

“Lim Jukyung, you are so beautiful. Marry me please!”

Suho got up to see the screen, “Who asked that?”

“Sit down!” Jukyung pulled him back as he grumbled. “Sorry,” Jukyung said to the camera, “but I’m taken.”

“Are you and Kang Sujin really friends now?” Sujin turned to Jukyung and all Seojun could see was her shiny black hair on screen.

“Dangyunhaji! In fact, if I wasn’t dating Suho, Kang Sujin would be my boyfriend.”

Seojun scoffed, “As if. It would have been me.”

On the live, Sujin laughed, “Is that so? We can still be together though. Have an affair behind Suho’s back.”

“Sure.” Jukyung said casually.

“Yah!” Suho protested.

Both girls giggled.

Suho looked miffed, “Kang Sujin, you’re blocking the view.” He said peevishly.

“Oh sorry. I’ll move.” Sujin circled around the couple to stand behind Jukyung and read the comments over her shoulder.

Jukyung read something on the screen and pointed it to Sujin, “Read that one.”

Sujin hesitantly read, “Kang Sujin, I’m sorry for judging you.” She looked up, “It’s okay. I can be harsh in my judgements too. The key is to try to learn from your past.” Sujin smiled at the camera before turning back to the screen.

“Kang Sujin, you’re pretty.” Sujin recited in her monotone voice. “Yes. I know.” She said without looking up.

“She is also super smart!” Jukyung gushed. “She was one of the top students in class.”

“Could never beat me though.” Suho said smugly, still sore about the affair comment. Both girls turned to Suho and stared. His mouth became small. “Sorry.”

Jukyung went back to explaining her tutorial, slowly performing each step as Suho patiently sat. She made his eyes look bigger and applied a natural lip tint to finish off.

Both girls couldn’t help but gawk at how good Suho look by the end. Jukyung removed the pink blow clip from his hair in a daze.

“How do I look?” He asked Jukyung.

“Too good, Lee Suho.” Sujin clapped. “Too good.”

Jukyung blushed but couldn’t articulate her thoughts. She stuttered, “Uh-ah! Let’s look at the c-c-comments again!”

Suho grinned.

“Lim Jukyung, you were amazing as always!” Sujin read aloud.

“Thank you.” Jukyung bowed.

“Watch the latest and best movies for free at—”

“Sujin that’s just spam.”

“Oh. Right.” Sujin continued, “Lee Suho looks prettier than the both of you.”

The girls’ face fell flat. Suho just looked innocently at the camera. The girls cleared their throats.

“Ah that’s all the time we have!”

“Ah, yes! Time to move on!”

The two pushed Suho out of the frame together.

“I can still be on camera if you—”

“No, I think the people have seen enough of you.” Sujin said while smiling widely at the camera.

Jukyung went wide eyed when she looked into her computer screen. “Ya! This live got 3.3 thousand comments!”

“Daebak. Good job Lim Ju!” The girls grinned, but then Sujin squinted her eyes disapprovingly at something on the screen. “Lim Jukyung, you look so ugly without makeup? Ya, who wrote this comment? User name KimChee23? Why don’t you show yourself to me and then we can see who’s really ugly?”

“Sujin-ah. It’s just a comment.” Jukyung tried to calm her.

“Comments matter too! Otherwise people wouldn’t be writing them! Ya KimChee23 where do you live?”

Seojun laughed out loud as he saw Jukyung try to calm Sujin down on screen.

“So, is everything all settled now?” Chorong asked Seojun.

“I think, yes. Just look at all the comments praising Sujin.”

He was right, the comments section was flooded with statements of Sujin being a brave person for apologizing and changing her bad behavior.

“Great.” Chorong shook his friend’s shoulders. “Now you don’t have to be so troubled about Lim Jukyung.”

“Lim Jukyung? Why would I be troubled about her?”

Chorong was confused. He had not known about the scandal. The matter Chorong had been referring to was Seojun’s theory that Kang was apparently still after Lee Suho.

“I mean... haven’t you been in a bad mood all week because of her?”

“Why bother asking Chorong?” One of the boys said, “You know the answer to all of Seojun’s heartaches is Lim Jukyung.”

Seojun didn’t bother responding. He returned to his phone screen where Jukyung and Kang Sujin were wrapping up the live, waving at the camera with wide smiles. Suho was trying to get back in the frame and Sujin kept pushing his out of it.

“Ooh. Look at how Han Seojun is smiling.”

“Something good must have happened.”

“See! He’s always thinking of Lim Jukyung.”

“No I’m not!” Seojun protested. Quietly, he admitted. “I wasn’t thinking of Lim Jukyung.”

ix.

Han Seojun had arrived at Kang Sujin’s building an hour ago, but for the life of him he could not muster the courage to go up to her apartment.

“I have no reason to see her. So, why should I?” He argued with himself. He paced back and forth, going up the entrance and then going back again, unable to enter.

In his hands, Han Seojun held a beautiful arrangement of white tulips and yellow roses. White tulips as an apology and yellow roses as an offering of friendship. It was his way of apologizing for being a jerk.

After hearing everything she had said on the live event, Seojun had no doubt that Kang Sujin wasn’t who he thought she was. Certainly, if Jukyung and even Suho could trust her, then he could at least give her the benefit of the doubt.

It had felt like a good idea at the time to try to make amends with flowers. But now that he was actually here, at her home, he felt stupid.

What would Kang Sujin say when he showed up at her place? Would she laugh at him and tell him to go to hell? Would she be offended that he just showed up, unannounced? The uncertainly of it all made him anxious.

As he went back down the steps to the building entrance for the thousandth time, Seojun bumped into a lady.

“Oh ma’am. I’m so sorry!”

The woman had been carrying tote bags with plastic containers of food in them. The bags had fallen to the ground but luckily, the containers and the food inside them were unharmed, just a little shaken.

Seojun looked at the woman with an apologetic face. She appeared to be a very dignified lady, as old as his mother. Her hair was up in a chic bun and she wore well fitted, albeit a little worn out, clothes. Her brows were crinkled in disapproval. But upon seeing Seojun, her face softened.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” Seojun asked and his humble words spoken in that rich baritone subsided the woman’s irritation further to the point where she smiled.

“Omo, how can someone be so handsome?”

Seojun beamed. Elders had always loved him. “Ah, thank you.” He responded shyly. “Let me help you carry these.” He took the heavy bags from her, putting the flowers under his arm, careful not to smush them.

“Oh no. I don’t want to bother.”

“It’s no bother at all, ma’am. I insist.” He didn’t let the woman say another word, walking past her into the building. The woman smiled and followed.

“Are you going to visit your girlfriend?” The woman asked, eyeing the flowers.

“A friend. A friend who is a girl.”

“Is that what the youngsters are calling it these days?”

“Ah-nee-heyo. It’s not like that.”

The woman just smiled knowingly. “I’m going to visit a special girl too. My daughter lives in this building.”

They entered the elevator. Seojun asked which floor the woman wanted to go to. “Oh, I’m going to the same floor. Maybe my friend knows your daughter.”

“I’m sure she does. My daughter is a wonderful girl.”

When the lady walked in the same direction as Sujin’s apartment, Seojun said, “Oh. My friend lives this way too. What a coincidence. They might live right next to each other.”

“Then you should come over with your friend. I will cook for you.”

And when the woman stood in front of Sujin’s apartment, Seojun said, “Oh, this is my friend’s apartment. Are they roommates?”

“Young man, is your friend’s name Kang Sujin?”

“Yes, ma’am. How did you know?” Seojun asked, surprised.

The lady patted Seojun’s face, “At least you have good looks.” She punched in Sujin’s passcode and went in. Han Seojun stood outside for a full minute before he connected the dots. And then his eyes went wide.

“Sujin isn’t home yet. Why don’t you wait inside?” Mrs. Kang called out.

“I’m so sorry Mrs. Kang. I didn’t recognize you.” Seojun entered, placing the bags on Sujin’s counter.

“It’s okay, Son. You’ve known Sujin long?”

“I went to Sujin’s school. I knew her through Lee Suho.” He had only seen Sujin’s mother a couple of times at school. But never up close. She had seemed so stuck up like Sujin at the time; with her fur coats and expensive jewelry. Now she seemed like just another lady. Her appearance seemed to have humbled after the divorce.

“Oh Suho! Lovely child. How is he these days? Sujin doesn’t tell me anything.”

“He’s good ma’am.”

Mrs. Kang started lining the containers on the counter. It seemed like too much food for one person.

“Sujinnie never eats properly. She always scolds me for worrying but what can I do? She never takes care of herself.”

Indeed, when Mrs. Kang opened Sujin’s fridge, it was empty save a few water bottles and expired milk that Mrs. Kang threw away.

“And look at you! All skin and bones! It is unfashionable to be healthy these days?”

It was a complaint he had heard from his mother as well. But Seojun had to maintain a lean figure for his job, as he was about to explain to Mrs. Kang.

“Ma’am I actually have to diet beca—”

“I won’t hear it! Sit. I will get you something to eat. I’ve brought more than enough.” Mrs. Kang commanded. Seojun could see where Sujin got her tough exterior from.

“I don’t want to be a bother…”

“Nonesense! It’s no bother at all. Especially not for,” she eyed the bouquet Seojun had placed on the counter, “Sujin’s friend.”

Seojun wanted to protest Mrs. Kang’s assumptions but figured that denying it would only reinforce the idea. He would let Sujin clear up the matter.

“Well if you’re going to cook Mrs. Kang, you might as well let me help.” Seojun often cooked with his mother and was used to being in the kitchen so his culinary prowess impressed Mrs. Kang greatly.

“Your mother must be so proud of you.” Seojun grinned at the compliment. He decided that he liked Mrs. Kang.

Likewise, Mrs. Kang decided that she liked Seojun. She put the flowers he had brought in a vase and brought it to the table. As they cooked, she went on and on about Sujin and her many accomplishments. The woman was very proud of her daughter.

Seojun listened diligently as Mrs. Kang explained how much she was worried about Sujin. The non-profit sector didn’t exactly offer a lucrative career. Not as much being a doctor would have.

“I remember how much she had wanted to be a doctor as a child. Omma, I want to heal everyone, she would tell me. But when her father started pushing her and pushing her… suddenly it was all about ranking number 1, not helping people and her heart just wasn’t in it anymore.” Mrs. Kang lamented. She gave Seojun a considering look. “Has she told you… about her father?”

About the divorce? “Yes. I know.”

Mrs. Kang looked at him tenderly, “You must really be close to my daughter then. She’s a very private girl.”

Seojun didn’t understand why the woman as acting like it was some secret. Everyone knew about Mr. and Mrs. Kang’s separation.

The woman stared into the distance. “If I look back, I can only blame myself. I should have stopped it the first day her father started hitting her. But I was blind. I believed that it would all stop if she got good grades and got into a good university. My husband was always a tough man, but had never been like that to me, you see. I didn’t realize what he was doing to Sujin till it was too late.”

Seojun froze. He felt he had been told something he wasn’t supposed to know.

“And then, she started taking her anger out on other people… it might have been late, but I finally put my foot down. I’m glad my girl is in a better place now.”

Mrs. Kang looked down in remorse. Seojun found it hard to keep looking at her. He suddenly recalled what Sujin had said in Jukyung’s video.

I was foolish. I let my personal problems cloud my judgement and I took my frustration and anger out on Lim Jukyung.

Ah, crap. Seojun thought.

“My daughter is a sensitive girl, despite how strong she appears. I just want to know that she is with people who will care for her, and not hurt her.” Mrs. Kang looked at Seojun meaningfully. He swallowed.

“She is Mrs. Kang. You don’t have to worry.”

The woman pressed his hands gratefully. “You must have heard… about what Sujin was involved in recently.”

Seojun was sure he was going to die today. His heart felt like guilt had wrapped its sharp claws around it and was squeezing tightly.

“Ah. Yes.”

“Don’t believe any of it! My Sujinnie isn’t that kind of girl”

“Ah. Yes.”

“She did go a little astray in school, but what kid doesn’t go through a phase like that? Show me a teenager who has never made a mistake!”

“You’re absolutely right ma’am.” Was all Seojun could say.

“If only I could get my hands on that Han Seojun.” Seojun felt his heart stop. It was then that he realized that he never really introduced himself to Mrs. Kang. “How dare that no good idol take advantage of my daughter? Ah-nee, what kind of a person stays over a girl’s place like that? And doesn’t even help when she gets into trouble because of him?”

Seojun could see his funeral now, his mother crying for him as his friends lined up to regret their loss.

Guys… take care. Please check on my mother for me.

The door chimed as Sujin entered. She stopped in her tracks when she noticed Han Seojun and her mother sitting at a table full of food, waiting for her.

“Ah, Omma why have you come all this way again? Do you really like tiring yourself out so much?” Sujin scolded as she hurriedly put on her indoor slippers.

“Is that any way to greet your mother?” Mrs. Kang scolded back.

Sujin was undeterred. “You know I can always come and visit you and Auntie. Why do you have to come here? And look at all this food! How is this okay for one person? It always goes bad and then I have to throw it out.”

“It goes bad because you don’t eat enough, bad girl! You see what I have to deal with?” Mrs. Kang turned to Seojun who had gone white.

“Ya Han Seojun, what are you doing here?” Sujin asked him.

There was a second of silence where no one spoke. A pin drop could be heard.

“Han Seojun?” Mrs. Kang looked at Seojun. On stage, with makeup on, Seojun looked different. Here, in person, it was difficult to recognize him. But now that his name had been spoken, Mrs. Kang could see the young man whose face had been plastered all over the articles concerning Sujin.

“You… you’re the Han Seojun from the scandal?”

Sujin quickly caught on. “Seojun. Run.”

And then all hell exploded, or rather, one Mrs. Kang. Sujin jumped in her mother’s path as the woman got up with a slipper in her hand. Han Seojun lept off his chair and bowed furiously.

“I am so sorry Mrs. Kang. I am so sorry for all the trouble caused!”

Sujin desperately tried to block her mother’s blows but Mrs. Kang was a formidable woman. She smacked Han Seojun with her slipper.

“Do. You. Have. Any idea. What. Problems. You. Caused!” She punctuated each word with a smack. Seojun, for his part, did not run but rather took it like a man. He was just glad she was beating him with a slipper and not a heel.

“Run! Why aren’t you running?” Sujin asked him as she tried to grab her mother’s wrists.

“Are you protecting him? After everything that happened?”

“I’m really sorry Mrs. Kang.” Seojun said.

“Sorry? What good will an apology do? Will an apology undo the pain you’ve caused?” Her words sounded eerily familiar.

“Ah Omma, stop hitting him! He didn’t do anything. It was my fault. It was all my idea.”

Mrs. Kang stopped. “What?”

And thus, it became Kang Sujin’s turn to be given the mom-smack down.

“Ah Omma WAEEEE??”

“It was your idea to bring him home?!”

“Omma you’ve already beaten me about that!”

“I haven’t beaten you enough.”

“Mrs. Kang please! We were both drunk. Sujin had no choice but to—”

“What?” Mrs. Kang went ballistic.

Sujin glared at Seojun, “Han Seojun do you actually want us both to die?”

“YOU WERE DRUNK?!”

“Omma it wasn’t like that!”

“Mrs. Kang it really wasn’t.” Seojun chimed in.

“If it wasn’t then why is he bringing you flowers? Why is he showing up at your place?”

Sujin looked at the tulips and roses on her table. White tulips, a flower of regret. And yellow roses, flowers of friendship. Sujin knew exactly what they meant. She wondered if Han Seojun knew too or if he just got really lucky with his choices.

It was a while before Mrs. Kang calmed down. Seojun felt thoroughly sore. Both he and Sujin sat on the floor with guilty expressions on their faces, looking like school children being punished.

“Get out. I don’t want to see the likes of your around my daughter ever again.”

“Omma.”

Seojun bowed his head to the ground. “I am really sorry Mrs. Kang. I’m really sorry for all of the trouble that I’ve caused. I assure you I will never let anything like that happen again.”

Mrs. Kang crossed her arms and looked away.

“Omma. Neither of us had any idea that something like this would happen. Its not Seojun’s fault. And besides, he got into trouble too.” Sujin nudged him with her elbow.

“Yes, ma’am. I was almost kicked out of my company.” Which wasn’t exactly true but Seojun didn’t mind fibbing a little.

“You should have been!” Mrs. Kang fumed but then softened when she saw Seojun’s best puppy dog face. Han Seojun was always good with ladies, especially ones that were mad at him.

He inched closer to Mrs. Kang. “Mrs. Kang. I’m really regretful about what Sujin faced.” He took her hands in his. Sujin watched in astonishment as Han Seojun turned her mother’s boiling anger to a low simmer. “But I promise you, I will do everything in my power to make sure that this never happens again.”

Mrs. Kang cleared her throat.

“And look, the food we both prepared has gotten all cold. Wouldn’t it be better if we all eat and talk calmly?”

Sujin scoffed, not only at the blatant pandering but at the fact that it was working. Mrs. Kang’s anger all but disappeared. It came to a point that as they all ate, she began taking his side.

“How could you risk an idol’s reputation like that?” She asked Sujin who could only roll her eyes.

“Omma, how can you say that?”

“I mean, now that I think about it, it isn’t Seojun’s fault that his fans came after you.”

“Ugh, I can’t believe this.” Sujin scowled.

As dumb as Han Seojun had appeared, Sujin had to admit this was pretty shrewd. It made her wonder what else she had misjudged him on. He even got himself invited by Mrs. Kang to come by again for dinner.

“Your mom is incredible.” Seojun told Sujin as they walked to the convenience store. Mrs. Hand had sent them out for some ice-cream since she had brought nothing for dessert.

“She’s changed a lot after the divorce. She’s more herself now.”

They walked slowly, enjoying the night air and the silence. Oddly enough the quiet didn’t feel awkward or strange. Neither of them felt any pressure to speak. They got papico, the ice-cream that came in squishy bottles, and sat by on the benches outside.

“Kang Sujin,” Seojun began, “about what happened… are you… You know when I, um… I guess what I’m trying to say is…”

Sujin laughed, a clear gurgle of joy that made Seojun feel strange in his stomach. “Mwo-ya? Has the great Han Seojun been rendered speechless?” She laughed some more and Seojun didn’t stop her. “Relax Han Seojun. I’m fine.”

Seojun looked at his feet. “I… wasn’t happy with what happened to do… with the articles and how everybody was talking about you.”

“Gwenchana. It’s over now. I mean I had to make another Instagram account but all in all, its not as bad now. Besides,” she tilted her chin, “do you think a bunch of cowards who hide behind usernames are enough to take me down? I’m Kang Sujin, remember? Badass of Saebom High.”

“I thought I was the badass of Saebom high.” Seojun raised a brow.

“You were the gangster.” Sujin grinned, eating her ice-cream.

“I’m glad you’re tough. You don’t let these things bother you.”

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me. People telling me that I’m the worst and I should die wasn’t exactly easy.” She said grimly. “But you know what upset me the most?”

“What?”

“That I couldn’t beat those cowards up for saying what they did.” Sujin got up and punched the air. “If I could just get my hands on those twerps then I would teach them a lesson or two.” She punched the air.

The fire in Sujin’s eyes was so comical that Seojun burst out laughing.

“Don’t laugh! Hajima! I’m not joking.”

“Kang Sujin, were you always such a fighter?”

“Yup!” Sujin stated simply. She sat back besides Seojun, closer this time. And he noticed. “What about you?” She asked. “How are you doing?”

Seojun leaned back leisurely, “Eh, I’m fine. I don’t worry about public perception anyway. The people who matter will know me. Everyone else is just noise.”

“I bet your fans would leave you in a second.” Sujin teased.

“Don’t diss my fans. They’re all cool and awesome.”

“What, all two of them? Do they also happen to be named Jukyung and Suho?”

“You’re forgetting Chorong.”

The two giggled.

“Did your co-workers ask for more autographs?”

“Nope. Got fired before they could.”

“What?” Seojun stood up. Sujin relayed how her company had let her go after details about her past misconduct were released online.

“How could they just fire you? Isn’t that illegal?”

“Calm down. It’s normal for that to happen.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“Would you rather I get angry? There’s no point in doing that. I won’t get that job back.”

Seojun pressed his lips together in a tight line and sat back down.

“I’m surprised that you’re actually defending me.” Sujin sounded impressed.

“I mean… its wrong. Even if you and I don’t get along, what’s wrong is wrong.”

Sujin chuckled. She looked at the time on her phone. “I should get back. How are you getting home?”

“I brought my bike.”

“Your company lets you ride motorbikes?”

“Nope.” Seojun grinned.

“A’ight. Good night, Han Seojun. Stay safe.” Sujin walked back in the direction of the apartment. Feeling light and happy. While her online image hadn’t completely recovered, her relationship with Han Seojun had. She might not have to simply tolerate his presence now. They might genuinely get along.

“Kang Sujin!” Han Seojun called out to her, the woman who he thought was vile and destructive. The person that turned wasn’t that woman. It was the little girl who had looked to her father with love but only got his abuse in return.

“I’m sorry I misjudged you.” Seojun told the little girl.

The girl smiled. “I’m sorry I misjudged you too.”

It was unfamiliar territory, getting along with Kang Sujin. More for the group than Han Seojun and Kang Sujin. They all looked at the pair in wonder and shock when Sujin asked Seojun to pass the soy sauce and he obliged. It shocked them further when Sujin laughed when Seojun bragged about being recognized at a department store and being asked for pictures.

“Hey, you feeling okay?” Jukyung asked Sujin quietly.

“Yeah, why?” Sujin replied.

“Nothing. Just asking.”

“Hey, what’s up with you?” Suho asked Seojun privately.

“What?”

“You’re acting all weird around Kang Sujin.”

“Weird how?”

“You’re being nice.”

“Am I not supposed to be?”

“Okay! Who’s going to go first?” Taehoon asked the room, interrupting Suho and Seojun’s conversation.

They were at Suho’s apartment where he had a karaoke machine set up. Seojun had finally relented to visiting their place and it was just as painful as he had thought it would be. It was a mishmash to Jukyung’s bright and lively style with Suho’s dark and moody one.

The posters of rock bands and Junji Itou’s mangas were something both of them shared. It was fascinating how the two of the most caring people in Seojun’s life were into such dark things. Seojun saw Sujin eye one of the horror comic book posters suspiciously, as if the monster drawn in them could come out any second.

Chorong sang first, sharing a duet with his girlfriend. Then Taehoon and Suah went next. Duets seemed to be the theme of the night. Jukyung and Suho went next.

“Alright? Who else?”

Sujin was the only girl left.

“Well I’m not going up there.” She said when everyone looked at her. She eyed the other boys, all of whom were terrified of her. Even they could still hear Kang Sujin saying Ya Han Seojun, are you a gangster?!

“Jukyung-ah. Sing with me.” Sujin grabbed Jukyung’s hand and led her up before she could say anything.

“I’m singing too!” Suah joined.

Seojun went next. His was a solo and he clearly was the best performer. His rich baritone singing in a soft melody made everyone pay attention.

“Isn’t it nice to have an idol as a friend?” Suah asked. “Its like having a private concert.” Jukyung and Sujin nodded in agreement.

Everyone swayed their heads to the beat, except for Kang Sujin who was noticing the lyrics Han Seojun was singing.

I want to give you all of my days

I want to tell you all these feelings of mine

The sleepless blue winds

Brightly light up this night

He was singing about Lim Jukyung. Sujin looked over to her friend, who was looking longingly in Suho’s eyes. The two were entranced with each other, not noticing Han Seojun who stood just a couple of feet away, pouring his heart out.

After all the fun had been wrapped up, Seojun and Sujin had been the only two to stay back. Sujin had helped Jukyung clean up while Suho went to throw out the trash.

As Sujin cleaned the dishes, Seojun sat in the living room, looking at all of the pictures Jukyung and Suho had hung up. He could see how Suho and Jukyung would sit on the very couch he was on and watch TV together or lie around reading books.

He tried to replay those images, with himself there with Jukyung instead of Suho but he couldn’t. He couldn’t lie to himself about who she belonged to.

“You know, Han Seojun, I just realized something.” Sujin called from the kitchen.

“What?”

“You have two hands.”

Seojun looked at her like she had lost her mind. “Wow, Kang Sherlock. Your powers of deduction amaze me.”

“So, since you have those two hands, and you’re a gentleman, why not help me out over here? I assume you would feel bad that I’m the only one doing any actual cleaning.”

“You assume incorrectly. I have no issues with you doing all the cleaning.” Seojun turned back to the TV and was promptly hit in the head with a dish rag.

“Oops.” Sujin said flatly.

Seojun got up, dish rag in hand. Wordlessly, he took out the dishes from the washer and lined them up in the cabinets.

“Aren’t you ever afraid that Jukyung will be uncomfortable about you singing love songs to her?” Sujin asked in a low voice.

“What do you mean?”

“That song you sang. My heart is full of you, I’m starting to take after you?”

Seojun eyed her. “She won’t know.”

“I did.”

“Yeah but, you’re you and Jukyung’s Jukyung.”

“So?”

“So…” Seojun leaned closer, “you ranked number two in class for a reason.”

“Sujin-ah! I told you I would take care of everything.” Jukyung appeared from her bedroom.

“Don’t worry about it. Han Seojun helped.” Sujin assured.

The pair said their goodbyes to the couple and exited together. Han Seojun said nothing when he started walking his own way, while Kang Sujin turned to wave at him but was unseen. He was too lost in his own broken heart to notice anyone or anything.

She simply sighed, took it as just a Han Seojun thing and started walking in the other direction.

xi.

“I still can’t get used to this.” Suah said, waving a spoon between Han Seojun and Kang Sujin. The two sat opposite each other and were eating their food peacefully.

It was this peace that bothered Suah.

“I mean, how can you two just get along?”

“We’re adults Choi Su. We can learn how to get along.” Sujin stated.

Suho spluttered in laughter. “I thought you said that Seojun was a giant baby with no manners?”

Seojun gave Sujin a scathing look. Sujin went pink, “I never said that! You take that back!”

“It’s still strange.” Suah leaned closer. “What happened? Have you guys settled your differences?”

“Han Seojun got Sujin flowers.” Suho said cheekily.

“Yah!” Seojun protested. But it was in vain, the deed was done, and everyone oohed and aahed at this news.

“Did you really get her flowers?”

“Wait, when did this happen?”

“Does that mean that Seojun apologized first?”

“What kind of flowers?”

Seojun looked at Suho with the rage of a thousand suns. Suho just grinned back.

“Aren’t flowers romantic?”

“Ya! There was nothing romantic about it. All I got her were yellow roses and white tulips.” Seojun defended.

“OoooOoooh. Roooses. Roses are totally romantic.” Taehoon teased.

“They were yellow. Yellow roses are for friendship!”

“So, are you two friends?” Jukyung asked and everyone looked at Seojun and Sujin.

“Meh.” They both shrugged at the same time.

“Omo! Look at how in sync they are!”

“We are not.” They both said in sync.

Seojun had to admit, their group gatherings were much more comfortable now that he and Sujin had cleared the air between them. He enjoyed discovering how Sujin was less the ice princess he had thought her to be and more a regular girl. She also turned out to be much cooler than he had expected.

She had been the only one to see his discomfort when Jukyung and Suho suggested they all go on an overnight trip with them. Going to see their apartment; the very proof that Lim Jukyung and Lee Suho ate and slept—Oh God, don’t think about them sleeping—together was painful enough. Seojun didn’t need to see them canoodling for an entire weekend.

“What about it guys? Shall we go?” Jukyung looked around as everyone nodded excitedly, including Sujin.

But then her eye’s met Seojun’s. He said nothing but he didn’t need to.

“Lim Ju, it’ll be difficult for me to join. I just lost my job, remember? An overnight trip is...” Seojun knew Sujin was just making up an excuse.

“Oh, oh right. Sorry Kang Su-ya. I totally forgot. Something else then!”

The group moved on to discussing other options. Seojun sent Sujin a grateful look. She acted nonchalant, as if she had not just overturned everyone’s plans for him.

“Thanks. For what you did back in there.” He told her as they were all leaving.

“Forget about it.” She waved a hand in dismissal.

The next time the group gathered at a fancier restaurant than usual. A suggestion by Suho who had offered to pay for the food tonight.

“This place is so beautiful.” Suah commented looking around the interior.

“Are we celebrating something?” Sujin asked. “This doesn’t seem like a regular get-together.”

Sujin had only asked for the sake of asking. But something about the way Suho looked at her told Seojun that she was on to something.

“Well,” Jukyung held up her hand, “we do have something to announce.”

And announce she did. The big fat diamond resting on her ring finger had a lot to say. And suddenly everyone erupted with joy. The girls took Jukyung in their arms, squealing and crying with joy. The boys surrounded Suho, patting him on the back, congratulating him.

All except Seojun, who just sat there in a daze. Sujin happened to look over and see him, frozen in his seat. Sujin wasn’t alone in her observation. Taehoon also noticed but missed the implication.

“Look! Han Seojun is actually so shocked he—"

Sujin made it look like an accident, her bumping into the table and sending a glass down on the floor, shattering into a million pieces. The sound shook Seojun out of his daze and also distracted everyone from realizing Seojun’s inner turmoil.

“Oh shit.” Sujin said looking down.

“Hey, be careful.” Jukyung said.

“You okay?” Suho asked Jukyung, taking her arm.

“Excuse me, can we get someone to clean this up?” Taehoon asked the waiter.

The fuss over the broken glass gave Seojun enough time to recover. He then congratulated Suho with a massive hug.

“You both deserve each other. I mean it.” He told Suho and he meant it.

Maintaining a fake smile over dinner was easy. Everyone else was so chatty that Seojun’s and Sujin’s relative silence went unnoticed. Suah pestered Jukyung for details: “How did it happen?”, “When?”, “Why didn’t you call me immediately?”. Taehoon made jokes about marriage being the end of romance to which Suah started an argument with him and then it became about settling matters between the two.

Sujin didn’t remember much of what happened after that, the rest of the night was a blur. She just hoped that she had maintained enough dignity to not appear as bitter as she actually felt.

Even though they all parted very late in the night, Sujin couldn’t go directly home. She needed something to ease the pain. So naturally, she went to the nearest tent bar she could find. The place seemed to be overcrowded, with people waiting outside for others to leave. Sujin managed to sneak in and grab a table.

She downed half of a soju bottle in one go but then couldn’t muster the energy to drink further. Her side dishes went untouched. All Sujin could do was stare and wonder if there was any way to just take her heart out of her chest and throw it away. Because there seemed to be no relief from this pain she was feeling.

She banged her head on the table. “Ah wae? Why can’t I just move on?” She asked herself in frustration.

“Ugh, why the hell are you here?” That irritated tone and deep voice could only belong to one person. And indeed, when Sujin looked up she saw Han Seojun a few tables over looking at her in disdain.

“Wae? You have a claim on this place?” Sujin raised a critical brow.

“And what if I do?”

“Then give me everything for free. Since we’re friends who get along.”

“No. Friends pay double.”

“How stingy.” Sujin took another shot of soju.

The man running the tent bar came over. “Why don’t you two share a table since you know each other? I have customers waiting to be seated.”

“No way, I’m not sitting with her.” Seojun grumbled.

“Aha! I knew it! Being all nice to me was just an act.”

The owner ignored Sujin, “How can two youngsters be so rude? Get up! I’m moving you over there.”

This was how Han Seojun came to drink with Kang Sujin for the second time. They both looked at each other with scowling faces.

“What happened, Kang Sujin? You were acting all happy for the lucky couple.” Seojun taunted. He seemed a little tipsy but so was Sujin.

“Of course, I’m happy. I’m so, so happy.” She said wistfully.

Seojun scoffed. “Is that why you were whining about not being able to move on? I thought you said you didn’t like Lee Suho anymore.”

Sujin narrowed her eyes. “I don’t. And even if I allegedly did, at least I held it all in. You were clearly about to run away with Jukyung before I saved you.”

“Saved me? Puh-lease.”

“Why? Do you think that glass fell on its own?”

Seojun gave her a sideways look before taking another shot.

“You gonna eat that?” He pointed a chin to her plate.

“Nah, have it.”

They sat in silence for a moment. A comfortable silence where neither felt compelled to say anything.

Sujin shook Seojun when she suddenly smacked her glass down on the table. “I’m over Lee Suho.” She declared. “I’m over Lee Suho… but…”

“Just because you’re over him, doesn’t mean you stopped loving him.” Seojun said what she was thinking.

She looked at him, her pain evident on her face. In that moment, he let himself be vulnerable too.

“Isn’t it funny? Out of everyone I know, you’re the only one who gets… this.” Sujin said.

Seojun chuckled. “Exactly. Who woulda thought? Kang Sujin and Han Seojun having something in common.”

“You know it’s gonna hurt even worse from now on, right? We’re the closest to those two. That means we’ll be involved in everything.”

Seojun rubbed his faced. “I can’t think about that right now. Or I really will die.”

Sujin understood what he meant. “You know what I want?”

“What?”

“I want Suho to never find out that I still like him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can’t help that I feel this way right? You can’t stop yourself from feeling what you feel. But… I wanna keep my dignity. I wanna still be cool and… not be seen as some pathetic loser who’s still after her best friend’s boyfriend.”

Seojun took a shot, nodding.

Sujin leaned forward. “That’s why, I suggest we help each other out.”

Seojun gave her a look. “How so?”

“Well, if we see the other being too transparent, then we stop them, or at least take the attention away so that the other can collect themselves.”

“Like the broken glass today?”

“Like the broken glass today. And if it’s getting too painful, then we can just talk about it.”

Seojun laughed. “Kang Sujin, offering therapy. That’s rich.”

“Not therapy. Friendship. It helps if you talk about stuff like this.” Sujin insisted.

Seojun gave her a considering look. “What’s in it for me? These seem like things you want to do.”

“You’ll be able to attend Jukyung’s wedding without feeling like you’re dying on the inside.”

“There’s no guarantee that will happen.”

“You’re right, there isn’t. But at least that’s what it’ll look like. Think about it Han Seojun. Do you want Jukyung to always see you as the friend who is in love with her? Or do you want her to see you as a cool friend who she can comfortably rely on, without wondering if she’s hurting his feelings.”

Seojun thought about it. It felt like a bad idea. But there was a part of Han Seojun that was tired of his own attachment to Lim Jukyung. If it meant that it would help him move on, then he was willing to try anything

“Alright, Kang Sujin.” He raised his glass. Sujin clinked hers with his. “Let’s try this.”

I am bad at making memes but I do it any way

#true beauty #true beauty kdrama #true beauty fanfiction #true beauty soojin #kang sujin #kang soojin #kang soojin and han seojun #seojun x sujin #seojun x soojin #han seojun #kdrama #Sujin x Seojun #han seojun fanfiction #han seo jun #Kan Sujin Fanfiction #hwang in yeop #park yoona #junjin

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

Note

Having seen your thoughts on his deeply-unpleasant daddy, might I please ask if you have any thoughts on The Gladiator himself, Hugo Danner? (THE SUPERMAN WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN, if you will).

What would you do if you were the strongest man in the world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine? He made himself guess answers for that rhetorical query. "I would—I would have won the war. But I did not. I would run the universe single-handed. Literally single-handed. I would scorn the universe and turn it to my own ends. I would be a criminal. I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would be a secret, invisible blight. I would set out to stamp crime off the earth; I would be a super-detective, following and summarily punishing every criminal until no one dared to commit a felony. What would I do? What will I do?"

The thing that strikes me about Gladiator is that it almost feels like the book is unfinished. The quality and pace of the book is all over the place, but you can boil it's general story down to "unlucky bastard is born Superman before it's time for Superman to exist, without the necessary support, mindset and structure to become Superman, in a world that neither supports nor accepts the existence Superman, and just as he's about to have the life-changing epiphany that could make him something, he gets struck by lightning and dies in the 2nd-to-last paragraph".

The whole book is like if in the first Spider-Man story Peter Parker just gave up after Uncle Ben died and we never saw him again. It's a superhero/supervillain origin story that gets cut short right as it's about to lead to the birth of the character proper. It's frustrating, yes, but to my scavenger goblin brain that likes to dig through pop culture's trash to find nice forgotten trinkets to polish and make into something new, it also invites a lot of promise, if we get into the question of what could have happened to Hugo Danner if he didn't die on the cusp of his origin story. It's an idea I plan to use for my own pulp writings.

It's not so much whether or not Hugo MIGHT have been Superman, so much as: COULD he be Superman? Maybe, maybe not. I'd argue not, because even with all his power, and even with his parents trying to raise him as best they could, even with Hugo genuinely trying his best to be good and heroic and turn his gifts to mankind, it wasn't gonna pan out. The right pieces weren't there, the family structure wasn't there, the necessary aspects of the origin story weren't there, and ultimately, Hugo Danner wasn't cut for it. He is a failure at everything he tries to be super at.

At college on the football field, he kills a man. As a soldier on the Great War, he slaughters thousands for years, but fails to end the war, despite having been able to do so from the moment he enlisted. He is fired from a steel mill for working too far beyond the abilities of his fellows, and then fired from a bank for freeing a man from a locked safe, because the bank president suspected that Danner planned to use his powers to rob the vault. He tries using his powers to enact social change and fails again and again. He can't even enjoy daily life, because he cannot compete fairly with ordinary people, and because of that he must constantly hold himself in check, never able to fully express himself. And when he's presented with the idea of creating a race of people like him to dominate the world and to “conquer and stamp out all these things to which men of intelligence object,” he finds it ultimately distasteful, because he knows better than to expect good things to come out of his life. And then he curses God and dies. The whole book is one long argument as to why Being Superman Sucks.

He's not the break from tradition that Superman represented, he's a sci-fi superman who met the same tragic ending his predecessors did. In that paragraph above, the very first thing he thinks about, after remarking over his failure to end the war, is thinking about becoming some galactic dictator murdering everyone who steps out of line, before he considers becoming a fascist super-detective. Kind of a damning perspective to present your hero, isn't it? If Gladiator was released today, exactly as is, people would be quick to assume it's an origin story for a Homelander/Plutonian/Omni-Man kind of character. Hugo Danner was a Superman deconstruction before that became a pop culture cliche.

My favorite sections of the book are those that describe Hugo in the war. By far the best-written and most evocative, almost bordering on horror story. And they may be the most damning sections of them all. He never forgives himself for not ending the war when he could, because he's spent all those years killing and toiling away when he was just about the one person who could conceivably leap all the way to Germany and force the war to end. I imagine a lot of pulp heroes who suffered in the war, or any war, and walked out of it with a resolve to protect and do good by others, would be pretty pissed when discovering that, all along, there was this living god among them who actually could have ended the war single-handedly, but was just too damn busy slaughtering his way through fields of people who couldn't possibly fight back, to think about it.

And for all that Hugo says that he hates war and murder and bloodshed, he sure seems like a total natural for it:

Hugo, out of his scarlet fury, had one glimpse of his antagonist's face and person. The glimpse was but a flash. He was a little man—a foot shorter than Hugo. His eyes looked out from under his helmet with a sort of pathetic earnestness. And he was worried, horribly worried, standing there with his rifle lifted and trying to remember the precise technique of what would follow even while he fought back the realization that it was hopeless.

In that split second Hugo felt a human, amazing urge to tell him that it was all right, and that he ought to hold his bayonet a little higher and come forward a bit faster. The image faded back to an enemy. Hugo acted mechanically from the rituals of drill. His own knife flashed. He saw the man's clothes part smoothly from his bowels, where the point had been inserted, up to the gray-green collar. The seam reddened, gushed blood, and a length of intestine slipped out of it.

Hugo stepped over him. He was trembling and nauseated. The bellow of battle returned to Hugo's ears. He pushed back the threatening rifle easily and caught the neck in one hand, crushing it to a wet, sticky handful. So he walked through the trench, a machine that killed quickly and remorselessly

Hugo was learning about war. He thought then that the task which he had set for himself was not altogether to his liking. There should be other and more important things for him to do. He did not like to slaughter individuals. The day passed like a cycle in hell. No change in the personnel except that made by an occasional death. No food. No water. They seemed to be exiled by their countrymen in a pool of fire and famine and destruction.

And then later, after they kill a friend of his

He leaped to the parapet, shaking his fists. "God damn you dirty sons of bitches. I'll make you pay for this. You got him, got him, you bastards! I'll shove your filthy hides down the devil's throat and through his guts". He did not feel the frantic tugging of his fellows. He ran into that bubbling, doom-ridden chaos, waving his arms and shouting maniacal profanities. A dozen times he was knocked down. He bled slowly where fragments had battered him. He crossed over and paused on the German parapet. He was like a being of steel. Barbed wire trailed behind him.

Bayonets rose. Hugo wrenched three knives from their wielders in one wild clutch. His hands went out, snatching and squeezing. That was all. No weapons, no defence. Just—hands. Whatever they caught they crushed flat, and heads fell into those dreadful fingers, sides, legs, arms, bellies. Bayonets slid from his tawny skin, taking his clothes. By and by, except for his shoes, he was naked. His fingers had made a hundred bunches of clotted pulp and then a thousand as he walked swiftly forward in that trench. Ahead of him was a file of green; behind, a clogged row of writhing men. Scarcely did the occupants of each new traverse see him before they were smitten. The wounds he inflicted were monstrous. On he walked, his voice now stilled, his breath sucking and whistling through his teeth, his hands flailing and pinching and spurting red with every contact. No more formidable engine of desolation had been seen by man, no more titanic fury, no swifter and surer death. For thirty minutes he raged through that line. The men thinned. He had crossed the attacking front.

A man dipped in scarlet, nude, dripping, panting. Slowly in that hiatus he wheeled. His lungs thundered to the French. "Come on, you black bastards. I've killed them all. Come on. We'll send them down to hell."

And years later, when he's thinking back to the misery that had been his life:

His deeds frightened men or made them jealous. When he conceived a fine thing, the masses, individually or collectively, transformed it into something cheap. His fort in the forest had been branded a hoax. His effort to send himself through college and to rescue Charlotte from an unpleasant life had ended in vulgar comedy. Even that had been her triumph, her hour, and an incongruous strain of greatness had filtered through her personality rather than his. Now his years in the war were reduced to no grandeur, to a mere outlet for his savage instinct to destroy. After such a life, he reflected, he could no longer visualize himself engaged in any search for a comprehension of real values.

If he could but have ended the war single-handed, it might have been different. But he was not great enough for that. He had been a thousand men, perhaps ten thousand, but he could not be millions. He could not wrap his arms around a continent and squeeze it into submission. There were too many people, and they were too stupid to do more than fear him and hate him. Sitting there, he realized that his naïve faith in himself and the universe had foundered. The war was only another war that future generations would find romantic to contemplate and dull to study. He was only a species of genius who had missed his mark by a cosmic margin.

Even when he's thinking about the places where he went wrong, that he blames himself for, even when's engaged in introspection, his thoughts still gravitate towards violence and hatred, of squeezing continents into submission and of how much the masses are stupid to not appreciate him (because really, all Hugo wants is to be loved and appreciated for what he is), and how unlucky he was to miss his mark.

There's just no place for Hugo Danner. Maybe it was actually rather merciful that he got to have his misery ended briefly by lightning strikes, before he could either turn into something worse, or have his life ruined more throughly.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #gladiator #hugo danner #superman

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salamanderdr · 3 years

Text

Lost Family in a Mad Town

My ‘Town That Went Mad’ one-shot

By @salamanderdr

tw: death/child death/trauma

Featuring: c!Karl, c!Dream, c!Corpse, and Robin

Authors note: Also I am in no way a writer so sorry for any typos. I’ve never actually written a fanfiction so the only place I can put it is here. I wrote this because I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and I had to get it down. Karl and the others did such a good job on the stream. I literally wrote this in one sitting, I hope ya’ll like it qwq.

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Karl had been having these dreams for a while now. It didn’t seem like anything special. To him, they were just interesting stories to tell his friends. These stories are what he became known for, and he enjoyed the attention. What made the dreams so special is that most of them involved Karl’s friends getting into unusual shenanigans, which inspired most of the young men’s hangouts. However, one dream, in particular, caused Karl to reconsider if there was more to them.

~Once asleep, Karl finds himself in a rather interesting dream. In the middle of a small village, Karl stands next to the town’s water fountain. The setting is more rustic than he is used to, and his bright multicolored hoody stands out among the bustling villagers. Despite his appearance, the quaint villagers paid him no attention. Concerned, Karl realizes that he can't interact with the townspeople. Unsure of what to do with himself, Karl spots a familiar neon green hood. Karl walks up to the figure and lays his hand on their shoulder, whispering, “Dream... is that you?” The brightly clothed man whips around, shock in his voice, “H-how… who are you?” Karl tilts his head, “It’s me Dream, Karl. Don’t you remember me?” Dream put his head in his hands, “I-I… Karl? Y-yes.. I re”. Suddenly a deep voice pulls both men’s attention away, “Cornelius! You still waiting for us?” Karl looks behind Dream to see a pale man with cat ears and tail, holding the hand of a sweet-looking boy with a hat full of lovely wildflowers. Karl’s heart became warm, something seems familiar about the boy, like if he could be an old friend. Karl speaks again, “Dream, who are they? Did he call you Cornelius? Jeez, what the honk is going on?” Dream quickly turns to Karl, “I’ll explain it later. Just go on, I’ll find you.” Karl shakes his head “Oh, it’s fine I don't think they can see me.” Dream sighs, “fine, just stay quiet for a bit so I can focus.”

Dream walks over to the two who patiently wait for him “Sorry Corpse, I got sidetracked.” He gently offers his arm to Corpse. Still holding the boy’s hand, Corpse hooks his arm with Dreams. Dream smiles towards the boy, “Y’all didn’t miss me too much, did ya, Robin?” Robin giggles, “If anything, we’re better off without you.” The three laugh as they walk down the path as Karl follows close behind, also laughing to himself.

As the day ends and the night comes, Karl finds himself sitting beside Dream outside his little cottage. Slowly rocking in his chair, Dream speaks, “ I started remembering a little more, not much but enough to kinda understand what’s going on.” He looks at Karl, “I know you later down the line, don’t I?” Karl nods, “Yeah… so this really happened? You had a little family Dream?” he smiles. Dream frowns, “I did, a very long, long, long, long time ago,” he sighs, “this happened like hundreds of years ago, Karl, and you weren’t here. I guess those dreams you have are actually real things that happen.” Karl scratches his head, “I guess I’m learning new things about myself every day, haha. Hey, why don’t you tell me about them… if you want”. Dream looks longingly through the window where Corpse and Robin sleep, “ I found them. I was just planning to mess with the village for a bit, but then I got attached”. Karl's smile grows wider at this, knowing how Dream can be despite his usual dark intentions “and?” Continuing, “I found a boy and his blind friend, and I decided to play house… t-that’s it…” sweat starts to pour from Dream’s forehead “I lo-lost them, and it’s my fault.” Karl's face drops “W-what?”

Suddenly the dream changes and Karl faces a gruesome scene. Dream is on the ground, blood flowing from a deep wound in his chest, being held by Corpse, who is crying. Karl falls towards Dream, shaking him, “Dream! Dream! What’s happening? Who did this?” Dream splutters, unable to speak. Corpse cries for help, “Please someone! R-Robin, go get help!”. Not noticing him till now, Karl watches as Robin flees into the night in search of someone to help his dying adopted father. Corpse turns back to Dream, his voice shaking, “It’s gonna be okay Cornelius, Robin’s getting help.” In Corpse’s arms, Dream lifts his hand to Corpse’s face and wipes the tears from his sightless eyes, “Sorry, Corpse.” Karl watches helplessly as Dream takes his final breath, shocked about how tragic things have become. Karl stumbles to his feet and runs into the forest.

After several minutes, Karl leans against a tree, gasping for air. A voice suddenly speaks up, “Tragic, huh?” Karl jumps at the voice with a welp. He searches the empty trees to see Dream in his bright outfit, and this time, his disturbing clay mask with the eerie smile. Karl catches his breath and stutters, “W-wait, you died?” Dream moves closer, sitting in front of Karl, the morning sun reflecting off the mask, “Oh come on. You really think it's that easy for someone to get rid of me?” Karl shakes his head, “Of c-course not. It’s just, it was so convincing, it scared me. I’ve never seen you like that… What’s happening, what happened to you? What happened to Corpse and Robin?”, concern and millions of questions fill Karl’s head. Dream rolled his hidden eyes, “I guess I’ll be honest with you… it won’t really change anything. Well, you know I’ve been around for a while, and of course, you know I’m hard to kill. Those idiots didn’t know that though.”, he turned his head away “Karl, I bring chaos wherever I go, and I knew whatever that was wasn’t gonna last long, but I ignored it.” Seeing the Dream he was familiar with sitting in front of him, the one who terrorizes many of his friends in the present, his voice hardens, “Yeah, that’s for sure. So you left them thinking you were dead. That’s cruel. Even for you. They cared about you, Dream.” Dream looks back to Karl, “Well, it was a different time I couldn’t just reveal myself. The ones that ‘killed’ me already saw I would only bring trouble, but they didn’t realize it all started when they decided to take a man’s life. It only fanned the flames of chaos. Hahaha, if I did reveal what I am, I’d be in real trouble. Then I would have hurt Corpse and Robin.”, he looked towards the ground. Karl narrowed his eyes, “You didn’t want them to know you’re actually a monster.” Dream didn’t respond. Then in the distance, a bell rings.

Karl and Dream appear in the middle of the village to see the villagers in utter disarray. Dream speaks, “The Dream you spoke to was able to remember you only a little bit. When I was 'killed' I was able to show up. He should be watching right now. Heh, I guess I showed up so I could finish the story for him”. Karl looks at Dream, “so what is that story?” Dream looked at the crowd of angry townspeople, “Just watch for now.” Karl turns his attention to the mob. The people are angrily fighting about who killed the man known as The Wise Cornelius, paying no attention to the poor blind man and his adopted son, who were the real victims. As Karl watches, he begins to understand Dream’s role in the village. Yes, he was part of the family made up of a blind cat boy and a tragically orphaned child, but he also brought a lot of new knowledge to the villagers. His brilliance also seems to be what made him a target for the murderers’ Dream mentioned. To Karl, at least, the killers just didn’t understand Dream’s ideas and saw it as some sort of sin against God, knowledge, only meant to drag them all to hell.

Karl is snapped out of his thoughts to see two villagers dragging Corpse toward a prison, “W-wait! Dream what’s happening? What’re they doing to Corpse''. Dream didn’t speak. Robin’s cries rose above the crowd as he ran toward Corpse “Please don’t! It can’t be Corpse!! We’re all family, He would never hurt Cornelius!” Grabbing the arm of the villager, Robin is pushed to the ground “shut up kid! It couldn't be anyone else but him”. Corpse calls out to Robin as the other villager pushes him into the cell, “It’ll be okay, bud. It’s ok.” Tears running down his face, Robin grabs the bars of the cell as the villagers lock it, “Corpse, I can’t lose you too! You’re like a father to me!” Corpse places his hands on Robin’s “I-I know b-buddy.” Robin’s cries echoes throughout the village prison grounds, “P-please don’t go! I need you!”. Karl couldn’t help himself and began to cry too. Dream places his hand on Karl’s shoulder “They didn’t like how chummy I was with them, they framed Corpse because they believed I had already corrupted him” his grip became tighter, making Karl wince “they targeted my family Karl and I didn’t do a thing about it!”

The whole village, along with Karl and Dream, watched as the friendly local cat boy dropped into a lava trap, dying instantly. Robin fell to the ground, broken, weeping uncontrollably. No one comforted him. Dream speaks once more, “Robin was an orphan. His mother disappeared when he was very young. His father died in a war. He was so strong, and he was able to make his own family, but he lost that too. A child can only take so much really”, his voice grows cold when he says this. Karl nervously glances at Dream.

It was suddenly night, and Karl stiffened as a blood-curdling scream came from one of the cottages. From the dark, Dream sighs, “Another innocent life lost.” Karl stutters, “H-how long do they keep this up?” Tired, Dream answers, “Till there is no one left. They let their paranoia corrupt them. The feeling they had about me doesn’t leave, so they turn to just taking everyone else to hell with them”. A shiver runs down Karl’s spine. Dream voice is ice “They kill and kill and kill because they are too stupid to realize they are the evil they fear! Now that they have started this whole mess, they can’t stop”. Nervously, Karl whispers, “You really to cause people to go mad…”. Ignoring the comment, Dream asks, “And do you know who they blame all these deaths on?” Karl’s vision changes and his eyes widen in horror at the person in the prison cell. “A poor, innocent, orphan boy.” Karl looks directly into Robin’s eye, but the boy isn’t looking at him. He is looking at a figure behind Karl. Karl turns to find the ghostly figure of Corpse. The spirit walks through Karl, speaking to Robin and placing his hands on the doomed boy’s head, “Straight to hell buddy.” Just like that, Robin is gone.

Karl jumps awake, his bed soaked with sweat, fear being the only thing he feels. He cries for a long time. After a while, there is a knock at the door, and wiping his face, Karl opens the door. He finds Dream in his doorway, “Well, that was a weird dream, wasn’t it, Karl?” Dream lets himself in. Karl's eyes follow Dream, “W-was that real?”, Dreams sits down on Karl’s bed “Yes, that was real. Now you know one thing that happened in my past... that I caused”. Concerned, Karl asks, “Jesus Dream, there’s more?!” Dream lets out an unsettling laugh “Hahaha, of course, Karl! You don’t even know a quarter of the chaos I’ve caused, the villages and countries I’ve destroyed by just existing!”. Karl backs up, “so you let that happen? To your family, Dream?” Dream leaned back on his elbows, “Don’t worry too much about Robin… Did he seem familiar to you Karl?” he nodded, and Dream continued, “That’s because he came back as Tubbo. He got another chance at life. Pffft, not like it’s any better really! Don’t know about Corpse though, bet he’s still in hell”. Shocked, Karl angrily speaks over Dream, “How can you say that? Do you not care about them anymore, Dream?”. Though Dream’s mask was covering his face, Karl can tell Dream is grimacing, “Corpse, Robin died ages ago. I could care less now”. Horrified, Karl truly realized the monster he let into his house and into his life.

Karl didn’t sleep again for a while.

#dream smp #talesfromthesmp #dreamwastaken #karl jacobs #corpse #corpse husband #tubbo #mcyt

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chiseler · 3 years

Text

Downward Christian Soldiers

Father Charles Coughlin, 1930s

On January 14 1940, the FBI arrested 18 men in New York City accused of plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government. Fourteen were snatched up in their homes in Brooklyn, the others in The Bronx and Queens. Searches yielded more than a dozen Springfield rifles, a shotgun, some handguns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and the materials for homemade bombs. J. Edgar Hoover said they were plotting a terrorist campaign targeting transportation, power, and communications facilities; their goal was to rouse the military into staging a coup, placing a strong dictator like Hitler or Mussolini in power, and cleansing the country of Jews.

The men were mostly of German or Irish descent, and ranged in age from 18 to 38. If employed (a few weren’t), they held low-end jobs, including an elevator mechanic, a telephone lineman, a chauffeur, a couple of salesmen, a couple of office clerks. The 18-year-old was a student. Most troubling was the fact that six of them were National Guardsmen.

They were all followers of a Father Coughlin-inspired movement called the Christian Front. In his mid-1930s heyday, Coughlin was arguably the most powerful pro-Fascist voice in America. An Irish Catholic originally from Canada, he had first turned to radio in the 1920s simply as a way to expand his ministry beyond his tiny congregation in Royal Oaks. He had a strong radio voice, and when CBS started syndicating his weekly sermons in 1929 it was an instant success. The crash and start of the Depression politicized him. His condemnations of Wall Street and President Hoover brought him tens of thousands of fan letters a week, and his high praises for Hoover’s opponent FDR surely had an impact on the 1932 elections. Then, when the invitation he craved to sit among President Roosevelt’s circle of advisors didn’t come, he turned bitter as a jilted lover. He began denouncing Roosevelt, his New Deal, his Jew York advisors, and his friends in the labor movement as all facets of an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy to destroy Christianity and democracy. He also praised Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler for defending their people against this spreading evil.

Coughlin’s call for a “Christian Front” to combat the Communists’ mid-1930s Popular Front coalition with other groups on the left resonated with the Depression-driven anger and paranoia of many Americans, especially in cities like Boston and New York with large communities of lower- and lower-middle class Irish Catholics, who tended to be shut out of other right-wing movements precisely because they were Irish and Catholic. At his peak, Coughlin had tens of millions of listeners to his Sunday radio sermons, a million readers of his weekly magazine Social Justice, and received millions of dollars in small donations.

By 1938, rabid anti-Semitism had become the centerpiece of Coughlin’s message. That year, at a Christian Front rally in The Bronx, he allegedly gave the Nazi salute and declared, “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” In Social Justice he reprinted the anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which also topped Henry Ford’s list of favorite reading. In the autumn of 1938, when Coughlin said the Jews had brought Kristallnacht on themselves, radio stations, including WMCA in New York, dropped him. Several thousand Fronters “picketed the station, its advertisers, and Jewish-owned stores throughout the city,” historian Robert A. Rosenbaum writes. “The pickets returned every Sunday afternoon for many months. In the meantime, gangs of Christian Fronters roamed the streets and subways, peddling copies of Social Justice, distributing anti-Semitic leaflets, and orating on street corners, while harassing and assaulting people they took to be Jewish.” The city’s police force, which was nearly two-thirds Irish, turned a blind eye; some number of them were Christian Frontiers themselves.

The Front thrived in parishes in all of New York City’s boroughs. Some of the first Front meetings took place in a church hall near Columbus Circle, and some of the most frequent and well-attended were in The Bronx. In Brooklyn, Father Francis Joseph Healy, the pastor of the St. Joseph’s parish in Prospect Heights, was also the editor of the Brooklyn diocese’s weekly paper, The Tablet, which he made a platform for extremely anti-Communist, pro-Fascist, and pro-Coughlin thought. After Father Healy’s death in 1940, his managing editor Patrick Scanlan continued the paper’s reactionary slant. Scanlan ran Coughlin’s rants on the front page. Healy’s successor at St. Joseph’s, Father Edward Curran, was also a major supporter of Father Coughlin and other pro-Fascist and isolationist groups. During the war in Spain Father Curran wrote dozens of pro-Franco columns for arch-conservative publications around the country.

By 1939 small cells of Fronters in Manhattan and Brooklyn were calling themselves “sports clubs,” though the only sport they practiced was target shooting at rifle ranges. The Guardsmen in the group evidently pilfered the rifles and ammo from their posts, and trained other Frontiers in how to use them.  

Along with the cops and Guardsmen, the Front cells were also peppered with spies. The FBI had informants keeping tabs on them. Two independent investigators would write very successful books in which they claimed to have infiltrated the Front as well, and dozens of other underground hate groups. Richard Rollins’ I Find Treason would be published by William Morrow in 1941; John Roy Carlson’s similar Under Cover would be a runaway bestseller for E. P. Dutton two years later, galloping through 16 printings in its first six months. Both writers used pseudonyms. Carlson was actually Arthur Derounian, an Armenian immigrant. Rollins was apparently Isidore Rothberg, an investigator for Congressman Samuel Dickstein of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Partly because the writers used pseudonyms while naming scores of individuals they claimed were pro-Hitler and pro-Fascist, both books were widely denounced on the right as fabrications and smear campaigns. 

Derounian wrote that he was riding the subway one day in 1938 when he picked up a leaflet of “bitterly anti-Semitic quotations” published by something called the Nationalist Press Association on East 116th Street in Italian East Harlem. He decided to research, and found himself exploring a vast underground world of wannabe Hitlers and Mussolinis, society matron super-patriots, racists, Anglophobes, White Russians, and assorted conspiracy theorists and kooks.  Born in 1909, Derounian had grown up in another world of hate. After struggling to stay alive as Armenians in Greece at a time of chaos and slaughter in the Balkans, his family fled to New York in 1921. Arthur learned English and earned a degree in journalism at NYU in 1926. In 1933 he learned that the turmoil in the Balkans had followed him across the ocean, when the archbishop of New York’s Armenian Orthodox Catholics, while serving Christmas Mass in his Washington Heights church, was stabbed to death by radical Armenian nationalists opposed to his politics.

So when Derounian read that hate sheet on the subway in 1938, he was primed to follow up. The 116th Street address was an old tenement with a barber shop on the ground floor. The Nationalist Press “office” was a dingy back room stacked to the stained ceiling with right-wing books, newspapers and pamphlets. Poking around in the gloom were a few Italian men and Peter Stahrenberg, a tall blond Aryan type “with blunt features and a coarse-lipped, brutal mouth,” who wore a khaki shirt and a black tie with a pearl-studded swastika tie tack. Stahrenberg was the publisher of the National American, a pro-Hitler newspaper whose striking logo was an American Indian giving the Nazi salute before a large swastika. He was also the head of the American National-Socialist Party. Derounian, calling himself George Pagnanelli and expressing interest in the “patriotic movement,” wormed his way into Stahrenberg’s confidence.

As he explored Stahrenberg’s twilight world, Derounian claimed, he found pro-Nazis and pro-Fascists all over New York City, holding meetings and rallies in every borough. It was a topsy-turvy world where street thugs from the city’s poorest neighborhoods mingled with wealthy Park Avenue crackpots, and Irish Catholic Fronters convinced that Communism was an international Jewish plot sat in the same meetings with Protestant zealots convinced that the Vatican was a Jewish front. He met rabidly anti-Communist D.A.R. socialites, and retired military officers who were certain that FDR and the Jew Dealers were leading the nation to ruin. He met the prominent conservative organizer Catherine Curtis, introducing himself as George Pagnanelli; she kept calling him Mr. Pagliacci. He even found black pro-Nazis in Harlem. Some were attracted by Hitler’s anti-Semitism; others simply cheered the idea of a white man making trouble for other whites.

When the Christian Front clique was arraigned in Brooklyn’s federal courthouse in February, they all pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and theft of government property. The lawyer for 12 of them was Leo Healy – Father Healy’s brother. A crowd jeered and booed as they were perp-walked into the courthouse. Winchell and La Guardia both derided them as “bums,” La Guardia adding that if they were the best the enemies of democracy could muster, no one need lose any sleep. But the defendants also had their sympathizers. Father Curran was the keynote speaker at a large rally in Prospect Hall to express support for them.

Fourteen defendants were left when the trial began in April; one of the original 18 had committed suicide, and charges against three others were dropped. As the trial sputtered along through May, it began to appear that the FBI and prosecutors hadn’t built a very strong case. When the proceedings stumbled to a close on Monday June 24, the jury acquitted nine of the defendants and pronounced themselves hung on the other five. 

It was a major embarrassment for Hoover. The Front and their supporters cheered it as a great victory, and would continue to spread hate and violence well into the war years. Through 1942 and 1943 there would be numerous reports in the press of roving gangs of young men, mostly identified as Irish and affiliated with the Front, beating and sometimes even knifing Jews in neighborhoods like Flatbush, Washington Heights and the South Bronx, where Irish and Jewish communities abutted. Many shops, synagogues and cemeteries were vandalized. Jewish leaders pleaded with Mayor La Guardia and Police Commissioner Valentine, but they took little action.

Coughlin would rant on into 1942, when the federal government shut down Social Justice as a seditious publication, and the Archbishop of Detroit finally ordered him to stop all political activity. Father Curran, however, continued undeterred, making anti-Semitic, anti-war speeches to Frontiers and others through the entire war.

by John Strausbaugh

9 notes · View notes

burnedbyshoto · 4 years

Text

pet

— “Go on, pet,” you nip at his throat, skin that was much softer than you would think with the scales that plagued his body. “Make your owner happy.” —

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pairing: spinner (shuchi iguchi) x fem!reader

warnings: 18+, smut, fluff, cursing, bondage, desperation, dom!fem, praise, begging, orgasm denial, toys, over-stimulation, multiple-orgasm, xenophilia, marking/biting, cunnilingus, pegging, human-pet-play, collar and leash, and breeding

word count: 7,750

a/n: THIS IS SO LATE BUT LMAO COMMISSION FOR THE INCREDIBLE AND SWEET AND SUPER PATIENT @beauty-in-ferality THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT BECAUSE THIS SHOULDVE COME OUT LIKE A MONTH AGO ;-; I hope you like it!!! the breeding snuck in im sorry

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The life of a villain was one of… inconsistency.

To say the least, being a villain meant knowing that with every passing day, you were at risk. Unlike heroes who had a safety net in life, villains had nothing to catch them if they fell. Society was better with the help of influential individuals, but how you saw it, how you knew things to be, it was only better because the marginalized groups were easier to pick out.

It was always easier to push down those who scared you, those who were abnormal. With the emergence of quirks, the transformations once average humans made to become who they are now that marginalization increased.

Sure, All Might may have brought the crime rate to 6%, but with it, he took down millions of helpless people who also needed heroes but went ignored.

You were among one of those groups, a once happy family pushed to the brinks due to collateral damage brought by All Might. Saving people with a smile, but ignoring those he didn’t see. Your family had a long line of quirks dealing with death, and for so long, no one cared. After a massive villain attack occurred in your hometown, people feared your family, blaming you all on bringing death to over three hundred people. The heroes did nothing, All Might had solved the case in less than an hour but never returned.

You were bullied, ridiculed, put down.

It was no surprise to you or anyone of your neighbors when you finally disappeared and joined an albeit messy group called the League of Villains.

In this rat-tat group, you found a family.

Heeding the will of the Hero Killer: Stain, you for the first time since you were six found yourself among equals.

Just by the looks of them all, they were outsiders too, marginalized, hated.

The leader Shigaraki, well the dude had corpses all over his body and was quite the bratty man-child. Dabi looked like the love child of Frankenstein’s monster and some living girl. Toga had a cruel obsession with blood, knives, and death. Twice seemed mentally deranged, going from polar opposites in such a comical way that you were suppressing your snickers with every shouted sentence. Big Sis Magne and Compress, you couldn’t quite figure out why they had joined, but they evened out the team.

But the most marginalized, the one that had you stopping and staring while he walked into the meeting room, was Spinner.

Shuchi Iguchi.

A lizard man.

His pink eyes locked on you, and your lips pulled into a smirk. You did not miss the way his green scaly cheeks seemed to turn impossibly pink, embarrassment coursing through his veins.

This was good, you thought, letting Twice throw an arm around you while he screamed at Dabi about who knows what. Of course, the lizard wasn’t used to having anyone stare at him, especially without a look of disgust or hatred.

This was the first day you met your family, this misfit crew that left you wanting to tear your hair from your scalp at times, but without a doubt, you’d do anything for them.

As for Shuchi, well, to say the least, the two of you forged quite the relationship. You knew that he was someone you wanted, someone you craved, the ability to get with someone who wasn’t normal was too grand a chance for you to even pass by. One that ended with being caught with tongues down each other’s throats behind the building of an old hideout. Outed by none other than Twice — of course, it would be him.

But that was almost a year ago.

Today, in the present time, the two of you had been on the road for what seemed like ages. It was without saying that Shigaraki did not trust the MLA, and to be honest, even though your rag-tag group managed to beat them in the end, you agreed with his distrust. It was, however, a constant battle of wanting those he trusted near him and sending the ones he trusted most to do the scouting he needed.

So begrudgingly, Shigaraki deployed you and Spinner off to do his bidding outside of the confinements of the hideout. After a year of truly being against the law, it was weird being out in the open, attempting to blend in with the oblivious people of the world. But if there was one good thing about being a scout for your family, it was definitely the ‘pretending-to-be-normal’ part.

Six months of dating Spinner left you two with only one actual date.

To even call it a date would be a joke as well, the two of you had simply sat out eating lunch post-training one day. Both of your bodies screaming with exhaustion, muscles beat into you, and the chill of the winter sun looming gently on your skin while the two of you ate together.

So here, under the pretense of false disguises and the entire MLA wealth under your fingertips, you and Spinner felt like an actual couple.

However, it was those damn dates that kept putting the both of you down.

Every time the two of you tried to go out on a date, disaster struck.

The first date was plagued with the restaurant being destroyed when a villain threw a local hero straight through the wall.

The second date was ruined because a member of the MLA discovered the two of you, so you had to watch your food grow cold while you passed information.

The twentieth attempt at the date was ruined by a video chat from Shigaraki. Oh, how infuriating it was to see the phone too close to his face. Only for his scarred lips to scowl while you tried to explain why you both looked better than average.

But this was now your forty-third attempt, and you’d be damned if you didn’t actually get your loving boyfriend to do some cliche date things.

So it had started off with a simple date, the two of you decided to order in.

It took twenty minutes for someone to come knocking on your two’s motel door with a box of pizza, hot wings, and a box you didn’t know what it was. You paid off the man, not bothering to continue the light chatter he tried to attempt. You, after all, had more pressing matters at hand rather than attending to small talk.

Turning with the boxes in your hand, you smiled, seeing how Spinner had laid out a nicer blanket on top of the bed, trying to emulate a picnic that had failed for you two on multiple occasions. Being a villain to the world beauty was something hardly seen, tranquility and serenity was something saved for the heroes, but this? This was perfect.

Your head had been resting up against Spinner’s shoulder for some time now. A comfortable silence between the two of you. Your eyes trailed over to the green scales of his arm, the same arm that had once been skinny and lean had become muscular and broad. At the initial meeting, he could never beat you in an arm-wrestling competition. Something the league used as an ice breaker weirdly enough, but now? He could carry you above his head without breaking a single sweat.

That knowledge sent a pleasurable shiver down your spine, and Spinner was on full alert.

“Y/n?” he says slowly, sensing the gentle waves of lust that slowly rolled from you.

He could always sense it.

“We haven’t been able to do anything lately,” you pout, but there wasn’t even the slightest bit of sorrow in your voice.

Your eyes trailed up to his face, the scaly green face was flushed pink, and a lazy smirk filled your face. You thought it was amazing that despite the color and thickness of his skin, you could still see the colors of embarrassment riding through his cells. You rolled onto your knees, straddling him where he sat, and delighted in the way his pink eyes widened.

Spinner was not naive, but hell, was he so innocent.

“I want you to go into the bathroom and put on your collar,” you murmur against his cracked lips, his skin cold under your touch while you graze his shoulders. “I want you, Spinner…”

His breathing was harsh, and his eyes were slitted when he stared into your lustful eyes. He was falling under the control of your pheromones, and you took that to your advantage. You ground against his growing bulge fingers digging into his skin. He moaned in his throat, his eyes fluttering, his head mindlessly nodding.

“Go on, pet,” you nip at his throat, skin that was much softer than you would think with the scales that plagued his body. “Make your owner happy.”

There was no hesitation when you rolled off him and him standing up and walking into the shitty bathroom. Smirking at the sound of the bathroom door clicking closed, you stood up from the bed. You stripped your clothes, moving your hair from your face. Staring into the mirror, you could see the lacy black teddy you wore.

You were glad you had managed to pack a pair of heels with you, and while he remained in the restroom, you slipped them on. With grace and ease, you walked to the dresser provided by the motel and opened the first drawer. While you shuffled around in the drawer, the bathroom door unlocked.

It made no effect on your slow movements; in fact, you definitely moved slower while you pulled something long and leather out of the pile of clothes.

Tall, scaly, naked, and so very green. Your eyes drank in your boyfriend's nude state, naked as the day he was born with nothing but a pink leather collar sitting around his neck.

“Come here,” you hithered him with your finger, your legs parting, hip jutting out.

Spinner gulped audibly, and with a proud smile on your face, you watched him sink to the ground, his fingers pressing against the dirty floor, his ass in the air while he crawled to you. You continued to watch his every movement, amused with the way that he shamefully crawled to you despite the boner pressing against his stomach.

“Good job, Spinner,” you praise, your hand stretching out, cold metal burning against your warm skin. His eyes drop down to see you attaching the long leash to the collar before straightening out again. “Follow.”

You don’t give him time to heed your words, already tugging at the leash to the point where you heard a muffled choke. Grinning, you watched him scamper to keep up, his voice trying not to speak any louder than a whisper. Seconds before he could reach the bed to crawl up on it, you quickly turned around, ball of your foot slamming on the leash, choking him once again, sending his snout to the floor.

“Oh, sorry,” you smile at the way a ragged pant expels from his lips. So sweet, so rewarding. “I thought you were trying to move without your owner's permission!”

Spinner was trying to move without permission, but he couldn’t respond; after all, he was your pet. With a proud grin at how well he was behaving, you pressed the flat of your heel on his snout and shoved him up, your eyes looking at him with amusement. “On the bed, before I change my mind, pet.”

You’d never seen him scramble that fast to get on the bed.

His pink eyes stare at you, wide-eyed, and slits incredibly thin. He was on edge, he was ready for his first orgasm. You weren’t a cruel dom, that was the truth, but you weren’t prepared to give in yet. Not after hearing him choke twice, no, he needed to hold out some more.

You moved on top of him, your thighs straddling his smooth chest, the leash in your hand binding to the metal bar of the bed frame. It wasn’t too tight where he had to adjust his position on the bed, but just close enough where his Adam apple bobbed under the collar in worry that he would make noises.

Pet lizards didn’t make noises after all.

Once the leash was secured on the bed, your head turned around to look at his hard cock. It was large, monstrously large. Sheathed around green skin, this was one of your favorite parts of having a mutant as a boyfriend. Once he was really ready, the green skin would retract and show up to pink cocks that you would drool over any day. The thought of the two pulsating cocks immediately set a flare of fire to your core, the soft thumping of your body pleasantly reacting to your thoughts was enough ammo for you to continue.

You wanted to see the writhing cocks now.

“I want your eyes on me at all times,” you state, sliding back on his torso, making sure to circle your hips teasingly against his softly throbbing cock. “You look away, and I’ll leave for the rest of the night.”

You arrived at his cock, the salty scent of his slick pre-cum already invading your senses. Your mouth watered at the thought of his massive loads exploding down your throat. You had never been a fan of swallowing the near acid that was cum, but it was different with Spinner.

You wanted to milk his cum from his overstimulated cock for the rest of eternity.

Inhaling sharply, that was it, you needed to move.

Your lips wrapped around the head of his dark green cock. The angry green head seemed to sizzle against your cold saliva, and the taste of his salty pre-cum dripping down his length invaded your senses. Fingers continued to stroke and massaged his throbbing cock, and your tongue pressed flat against the slit in his head. His strained gasp of shock sent shivers down your body, your ass wiggled in the air, he was so fucking turned on. Your boyfriend was so, so innocent.

Hollowing out your cheeks, you let your teeth scrape against the underside of his cock, and you pressed down against his buckling legs. That must have hurt him a bit, but you went to trace over your movements with your tongue, nulling the pain.

His eyes were in and out of focus while you sucked him off, an internal battle to keep them on you while your mouth manipulated him. Your jaw relaxed more, the overall girth of his cock becoming too much when you went down further, but you needed to persevere. You wanted him to crack.

Further, you went down against his length, the more your tongue wrapped around his thick cock. Teeth dragging against the bulging veins on his member. You wanted to hear him scream your name, you wanted him to break character, to beg you to do what he loved most. Scream your name until his throat was hoarse and fucked him until his cock was a limp slab of flesh.

He did this to you.

You wanted to do this to him.

Your eyes dared his fluttering ones to close, he was finding it hard to keep them open, and that was all you needed. Shifting your hand to the base of his cock, you willed yourself lower against his slightly thrusting hips. The feeling of his cock pressing further down your throat thrilling you with this sense of competition.

You couldn’t let your pet win.

But shit, he was thick. His cock was mercilessly stretching out your throat, the throbbing and heated skin imprinting itself against your throat.

More, you willed yourself when your hand sharply twisted the base of his cock before continuing to pull the skin up and down. A restrained screech of pleasure resonated from Spinner's mouth, not enough for you to call him out on it, but enough to make you bob your head faster; his hips subconsciously thrust further into your mouth.

Tears pricked at your eyes, and Spinner’s body quivered under his restraint to not slam his hips into your mouth. The knowing of a reward is too perfect for him to risk losing control right now. Your free hand shifted to his balls, grabbing onto the heated flesh and kneading it until hisses escaped his disorientated mouth.

With one low groan from your throat, it was over for Spinner.

His body stiffened underneath you, and fiery sticky hot cum squirted into your mouth, shooting straight down your relaxed throat while he spasmed. Moaning, you rose from his cock, strings of saliva and cum attaching his cock to your lips.

He had managed to beat you at this, you thought with the smallest bit of pride. He was improving.

Making an effort to show that you had swallowed his cum. His chest rose and fell with his ragged breathing, a testament to his suppressed orgasms this entire time.

“Amazing,” you sigh, your eyelids heavy when you stare at him. “I do wonder how much you’ll like this next one. But for your owner to play fair, you’ll be able to speak.”

You don’t waste any time, pushing your boyfriend over onto his stomach, a small grunt of understanding escaping him when he landed on his face. How typical, his first orgasm was always a critical point for him. If you weren’t fast enough, he’d fall asleep.

Sliding off the bed, you grabbed the harness and strap on that had been in the dresser by the bedside.

Your eyes remained on his own, a smirk on your face as you slip your legs through the restraints. Fastening them tight around your thighs, you made a show to make him see just how good you look as you jut out your hip in a sultry fashion when it’s done. It’s tight against your legs, but you enjoyed that feeling. Spinner groans, his body sprawled out onto the bed as you saunter towards the bed.

Why did he look sensuous with his ass in the air and red staining his cheeks?

“Hands and knees,” you command, stepping back on the bed.

Spinner babbled for air, his chest ragging, tiredness evident in his every movement, but nonetheless, he shifted over to the position you ordered. Ass in the air, spluttering noises still heavy on his mouth.

“You look ready to pass out, yet you’re so ready for my cock,” you laugh, your index finger peaking through his pert hole. “I haven’t even fucking started fucking your asshole with my strap, and you look ready to cum again.” You ease your finger in as Spinner lets out a string of whines, his body trembling as he falls onto his forearms. Your tongue pokes out, savoring the way that his asshole contracts around your finger.

How he was going to survive this thicker dildo was beyond you.

“Does this feel good?” you grin, your finger inching in him, touching the soft walls of his rectum.

“Y-Yes, it does, oh my god,” Spinner stifles a wail while he thrusts his hips out towards you, trying to fuck himself against you.

Your finger makes it all the way in, and Spinner stammers out your name as you begin to pull it back out.

Your finger thrusts into him, and his hips tremble with resulting lust and need. Your hips are shifting in your own excitement, pressing the bottom of the dildo against his back. The discomfort from your own need is ignorable because god.. the way he trembles like a leaf sends your eyes rolling backward. His chest falls to the mattress as you continue thrusting into him. Spinner’s moans were stirring you on as you add another finger stretching him out.

“This feels — fuck, so good!” Spinner moans, fingers digging into the bedsheets while you work your fingers in a circle. You don’t bother to respond back, choosing to instead grip his balls again, watching his hips snap backward in retaliation.

He makes audible gawking noise, his spluttering fueling your massaging fingers. You chuckle as your free hands trail up and down his muscular thigh. Pinching and pulling at his scales until his ass clenches against your fingers. Your name was a broken prayer on his tongue. Your hand moves to his inner thigh, nails teasing the skin, and then grab onto his hard hot and leaking cock.

Spinner let out a silent scream into the mattress when you began to fist his length, the simultaneous activation of his cock and his anus making him drool. You watched his scarlet and green snout shoved into the pillow, his eyes not focused at all in his pleasure with a puddle of drool, holy fuck did that make your clit throb. “You’re taking my fingers so good, pet,” you groan against his rippling back muscles, your teeth biting into the sensitive skin. “I hope this feels as good as you’re making it look.”

Spinner spasms as your nails ripple against the puffy walls of his asshole. He’s nearly crying, and his desperate gasps turn you on further. Your hand that is moving down his length, fisting him as you go. A sadistic smile on your face as his cries continue. His body trembled. Your fingers were moving in a wave-like function as he gasps so desperately it was almost impossible to say that it was anything but art.

Your cunt is now throbbing at the sight of your boyfriend like this. Your heart hammered in your chest, the adrenaline rush of seeing Spinner being unable to do anything but babble incoherently made your thighs scorching hot. Your other hand releases his twitching cock, flicking his leaking tip when you pull away. Spinner’s pleading gasps are interrupted when you slap his ass, the way his body jerks at the stinging sensation, making you laugh.

“Don’t worry,” you say, grabbing the lube and placing a large amount onto the dildo. “I hope you’re ready for my cock, I want to see you squirm.”

“W-What?” Spinner pants, his eyes dazed, unable to focus on you while you stroke the plastic dildo in your hands.

“Think it’s too big to fit inside you, Spinner?” you wound with a pout; your hand shows off the cock that’s a bit thinner than his own dick. “I haven’t used it on you in a while.”

“It’ll… it’ll fit,” Spinner promises, sweat falling down his cheeks, eyes full of promise.

“Good.” you grin, “I just hope you don’t cum…”

Spinner shudders a shallow breath escaping his nose. The noise taunts you beautifully, a small spark of excitement going down your spine when your tongue slides against your lower lip.

“You’re doing so well,” you praise pressing the head of the black dildo onto his asshole, the head pressing into his clenching pert hole. Your grin widening when Spinner’s hips stuttered beneath your, a failed attempt of getting you further within him and trying not to give out entirely on you. “Now, you’re going to take my cock like a good little pet, and don’t cum.”

Spinner’s voice lets out a whiney splutter, and you shiver at the sound as you move your hips forward. The head of the dildo sinking into his awaiting and eager hole.

He splutters loudly, his fingers tearing holes into the bedsheets. You grunt at the sound of the tearing fabric, but you’re much more concentrated on the way that he is relaxing to the dildo up his ass.

One of your hands is moving up to rub soothing circles on his back as you push deeper inside him, you try to distract him from the initial and long-forgotten pain. Spinner replied with pitched noises, his back muscles flaring with every small movement of yourself. Rutting his hips back into you until you were undeniably inside him, bottoming out entirely so that your thighs push against his ass.

But you do not wait for him to adjust because he’s done this before, and he loves it when you’re rough. Your thighs twitch with your anticipation, and your hands find reins in Spinner’s hair, and with a small shift of your hips, you drive into him while slamming his head back. The pool of heat within you intensifies as Spinner’s back arches more intensely then you’ve ever seen him span before.

“P-Please go faster!” He begs, and you smirk, your thighs slamming heavily onto his ass, the spanking noises sending chills down your spine. “Faster!”

“Such a good little pet, taking my cock so well, maybe you do deserve to cum,” you praise, and Spinner dares to moan in horny pleasure, his head nodding in his emotional disarray.

“Owner is so good to me, so good, so good,” Spinner babbles as your hips drills against his ass.

A shriek of pleasure leaves his lips as you begin accelerating your hips against his ass. Your pace a lot faster than it has ever been. You began to plunge your hips against him, your fingers yanking at his roots so harshly you swore that you were ripping hair clean off his head.

But you were also lost in your sadistic glee in the way that Spinner moans loudly, obviously enjoying how you drilled into him. His hips slammed backward to meet yours, his ass bouncing with every thrust. You pant, one of your hands letting go of his hair to land another hard smack on his ass, expecting a raw noise in response. Your face lights up when your boyfriend lets out sinfully ragged moans at the action, his jaw-dropping as he mewls.

“I bet I don’t even need to move to fuck you like this,” you scold, your nails scratching against the curve of his spine, watching his scales flutter around your hard nails. “Maybe I should stop moving and watch you fuck yourself against me like the horny pet that you are.”

Your mouth perks into a prideful smirk, and Spinner is staggering again. Your fingers latch at the hair by the base of his neck, and you snap his head back, delighting in the way that he can no longer keep his eyes open, tears in his eyes.

“Please, owner, more!” Spinner gasps as you shift your hips harshly. His back arching as he clutches the fabric between his fingers. You laugh, your head leaning to press a few harsh bites against his spine.

Biting against scales was indeed a different experience; it was hard yet soft against your skin, it took a bit more strength, but finally, his skin broke, and Spinner howled like a wounded beast.

“Fuck, you look so damn pretty when you’re crying for me,” you moan, uncaring about how your thrusts are becoming more and more sloppy in turn for the power you’re giving. Spinner is so responsive to your actions that you could feel your essence beginning to coat your inner thighs. You’re positive that you’ll be coming as soon as you mount his cock later.

You grip his hips, angling your body so that you’re thrusting into him at a better angle. Trying to desperately find that angle that will make his eyes roll to the back of his head, to leave him lost of all and any words. To find the edge that will make him scream and drool and babble. The pitched, loud, and raw ‘fuck’ that leaves his lips lets you know you found his prostate. You continue in at that angle, the same power and depth as the rawness of his voice send sharpness down your spine.

Your body feels like it’s on fire as you feel so much power. Your boyfriend’s continuous whimpering is stirring you on because even though Spinner was a sub, whimpering was often something he would never do. Your right-hand leaves his hair, moving to grasp his still rock hard cock in your grasp. “Oh, poor baby,” you coo. “Does your cock need to come?” You pant, the action of your thrusting hips making you sweat.

“Yes, fuck, owner… yes, let me fucking cum!” Spinner blabbers, his eyes barely open, his face burying into the mattress as you fist his length up and down.

You stop your movements, panting against the shell of his ear while you watch his body desperately move against you still, eager, needy, wanting you to continue. Spinner lets out the most pained yelp you’ve ever heard from him, his body desperately and wantonly thrusting against you. “That's right, fuck yourself against me,” you giggle lightly almost too lightly for the activity the two of you were engaging in. “I love seeing your perky ass slamming against my cock, such a good pet, teach me how you like it.”

Spinner stammers, but his hips are relentless against your stilled body as he continues fucking himself against your dildo, the smacking of his ass against your thighs, an invigorating cry. Your laughs nearly inaudible at the sight of him still fucking himself against you.

“Owner!” Spinner cries, his cock is twitching spastically against your hands.

“Don’t cum yet!” you challenge, your fingers leaving his length, your hips pulling away.

“Please let me come, baby, please!” Spinner pants his hips on a one-track mind while he continues pushing against the strap-on, fucking himself against you despite your attempt to getaway.

Shoving him forward, you roll off the bend onto the ground, quickly getting yourself free from the dildo.

“Don’t make me take away your reward for not cumming,” you warn, watching Spinner's green cock skin move down, teasing you with the appearance of the two cocks you had been craving for a while.

You stripped yourself of the teddy, shivering slightly when the wet fabric from your slick brushed against your warm thigh. You returned to the same drawer you had once found the leash and pulled out three objects you had put on top of everything for this exact reason. Turning your head, you smiled lazily at the sight of Spinner on his back again, his eyes studying you while the painful-looking erection throbbed against his stomach.

“Legs straight out for me!” you cheer, watching him groan while he extended his legs.

He was behaving so well, with the amount of pre-cum dripping from his cock and spilling onto his stomach — hell you could smell it from all the way across the room — you knew it had to be painful for him right now. He had been so good, such a good little pet for you.

“You’re allowed to cum this time around,” you tell him calmly, your fingers securing knots around his ankles and fastening them to the bed frame. You held up a vibrator, and you saw all the color leave Spinners face when you pressed the probe into his ass. “I just pray you’ll be out of commission once I turn this on…”

Spinners heave when your fingers shove the device until only the top of it is keeping it from going all the way into his clenching asshole. “I guess I’ll have to make you start eating me out before I really let you have fun, ne?”

He doesn’t have the chance to respond because you’re already on top of his face. His pink eyes stare at you, almost red in his lust and passions. You slyly smirk pressing two fingers against your slick before rubbing it against his lips, “I hope you can tongue fuck me as good as my vibrator can fuck you,” you wink as you sink onto his face before he can interrupt you.

His parched lips separate as you move above him, you relish in the feeling of his smooth scales gliding against your skin. It was so much more beautiful than human skin, so much cooler than humans too. But then you felt his tongue tease the center of your lips; you were the master, not him. Your eyes narrowed, unwelcoming of his shy approach. So with the remote to the vibrator in your hand and the leash in the other, you used them.

The buzzing of the vibrator shakes the mattress, Spinner practically spitting into your cunt with his vicious and strangled yelp — courtesy of the collar. You moan loudly, yanking onto his hair as you shift your hips as if you were riding a mechanical bull, not wanting to let him adjust to this new position. Something hot and sticky splattered on your back, and you turned around to see that Spinner had cum, and by the looks of the milky white substance still unloading from his cocks, he wasn’t done yet.

“Look at your pretty cocks,” you coo, your chest fluttering in excitement, “I bet you can’t wait to cum in my hot pussy, huh, pet?”

You grin at the sight of the two twin pink cocks that stood erect. They were out the reason why you enjoyed fucking your pet so much. Excitement and heat flood your body, your hips are bouncing sloppily against his snout. But you were getting ahead of yourself. Spinner’s tongue pushed against your slit, lapping at the essence that had already gathered. And then a soft and pained groan escaped him as the tip of his tongue pushed against your cavern, and you whined at the way it vibrated through your core.

Your head tilted back as you ground your hips, big bucks shifting through your body as you attempted to get your own high off so you could mount him. His left hand gripped your soft thighs, trying to hold your moving body in place as his right hand curled towards your unappreciated sex, and he mewls at the way your body moved to help him press his claws into you.

“Fuck, pet,” you groan loud enough to be heard as the tip of his nose brushes against your clit, his teeth nipping at the skin of you fold as you grind downwards.

His tongue finally pushes through your softly throbbing core and twirls against your spasming walls. Then you’re also met with his fingers that run against the opposite wall of his tongue. Your cry of pleasure was loud as you yanked at his hair, your hand landing hard on the mattress as your hips slam against his face. You can feel him trembling underneath you, the wet sound of the vibrator well up to his ass, and his once leaking cock exciting you. But this situation doesn’t deter him, nor does it slow him down as he tries to desperately keep up with your demanding pace.

Pleasure taints your skin like alcohol, making you dizzy, letting incoherent thoughts babble from your tongue at the feeling of his long and cold tongue well within your spongy walls. You struggle to keep your eyes wide open as the pleasurable sensations continue to crash into you as he continues this assault on you. And as you try to reign in your mind, so that you could take control, he enters another finger into you.

Spluttering loudly, you nearly scream at the way his talons scissor within you, or how his tongue laps at your secreting juices as if he was a starving man with only one chance of salvation.

“You taste so good,” he moans against your dripping sex, and you almost scream his name at the way his words cement within your center. “Does this feel good, owner?”

The hand holding your right thigh moves to pinch and twist your clit, and you shriek as your hips buck wildly as sharp pleasure rips through you. Despite your lack of response, your action was enough to make Spinner pleased as he continues to whisper in tongues to you.

Your eyes lull to the back of your head as the tightened pressure, and blazing heat within you only grows with every push and flick of his tongue and fingers. But it's the chuckle that reaches you truly as you will yourself to take back control.

Gasping, you grab a handful of hair and yank his head backward, his tongue now reaching you at a new angle. Your eyes come down to meet his, and the lust and excitement in his eyes affect you as you bite down harshly onto your bruised pink lips. You then begin to bounce against his face in short yet hard jumps, your pussy grinding against him as his eyebrow arches in his pained pleasure.

“W-Who said you were in charge?” you gasp as you swivel your hips, and you can feel his lips smirk as his tongue twirls in rejection. Your hand presses another button on the remote, and you’ve never seen Spinners' eyes slam to the back of his as quickly as you had then. You turned your head around to the creaking of metal, his legs spasming erratically. The high pitch of the vibrator was loud in your ears, and his tongue went slack within you, his fingers falling from your cunt. Once more, milky white seed spurts from his cocks, getting everywhere

“Let’s see how you keep up, pet.”

Your hips were relentless as you rode his mouth, his tongue no longer able to keep up with his slurping and lapping into your moving cunt. Your fingers remained firm in his hair, and the free hand now plays with your nipples in your power drive. You twisted and tugged on the sensitive nubs as you rocked forward and backward. Your panting was growing with the increased pleasure in your body became electrifying, and Spinner was drowning in this new domination.

His tongue remained within your cunt, firing in and out of your spasming walls until he curled them the right way and hit your g-spot. Spinner could not doubt what he hit as your reaction was evident as you not only shrieked loud enough to wake the dead, but your thighs came slamming against his head.

He hit your g-spot again and again. The accuracy mindblowing as the slurping of your cunt hit your ears in the most ludicrous of ways. Your fingers dug into his skin as you drowned him between your thighs, and then it hit you.

Your release ripped through you the second he hit your g-spot again. The pleasure in your belly is too overwhelming, and your toes curl in electrifying pleasure as you sob into your hand. You can’t handle it anymore, the desire being too much, and your vision turns white as your jaw drops as your screams go silent.

When you come through, you slide off his face. Spinner's face was coated with your juices, shining so prettily against his scales, but his eyes remained at the back of his head, tongue falling out of his mouth, whines, and mewls pouring from his lips.

The vibrator!

Your hand shot out to grab the remote that had fallen from your hold while you were deliriously shot silly from your orgasm, and you looked at his trembling legs and pathetic hips thrusting into the air as if that would satisfy his raging boner.

A thought curled through your mind, and it sat so prettily within you, that you went with it.

Vibrator still on, you swung your leg over his thigh and loomed over him. The two cocks were vertically aligned, and although you had gone many times double penetrating yourself with his thick cocks, you wanted them both in your cunt.

The ties on his ankles are gone, as is the collar on his neck, and while he snaps up, desperate to get the vibrator off, maybe, you grasp the hot flesh of his cock and impale yourself on him.

“Holy shit.”

White-hot pain flared through your entire body at the feeling of his cocks burning into you. When you had lowered down onto him, his hips had spastically bucked up into you, sheathing you without giving you the time to accommodate to the pulsing flesh of his cocks. Unlike human cocks, his cocks also had the ability to move, and as if you were being fucked by tentacles, they withered inside you. Pushing against your hot velvet walls, scissoring against your spongey wetness, slamming against your cervix wall until your head dipped back in your ecstasy.

With you bottomed out on him, the both of you were unable to move because Spinner’s mind was revolving around the euphoric feeling of your wet and hot heat clamping around him, unable to completely accept his insertion. Your walls resisted his thickness, squeezing so tightly he thought his cocks might snap off within you, but it spit a lustful fire into him.

You swore you could feel the vibrator within your core, and you moaned voluptuously.

“Fuck me, pet.” He mewls as a painful throb in your pussy lulls, and you writhe your hips against him, “N-Now fuck me right. Don’t fucking make me regret letting you help out your owner,” you command as his eyes lock on yours.

There’s something that clicks between the two of your stares, it’s unsaid, and you smirk at the way that he nods his head, his cock twitching within you, sending a crashing pleasure through you once more.

Spinner chuckles breathlessly, small and knowing, and rightfully so as he adheres to your demand. His hips position to a better angle underneath you, a quiet attempt at testing your dominance, and you can only watch behind clenched eyes as he begins thrusting up into you. Your hips move down and in time with his. Both of you desperate under your nearing second orgasms. This heightened state of pleasure brought by the rawness of this all. Spinner’s hands grip your waist. His grip will, for sure, leave bruise marks as he slams your body faster against his. He’s stretching you out with every move, the feeling of his writhing cocks sending shockwaves through your body while you bounced on top of him. By god, does he know how to use his cock even on the brink of insanity. His hands shift as they drag out under your ass, clenching your supple flesh as this difference stretches you out in unimaginable ways.

His hips crashing into yours, the sounds of the vibrator, and your squelching sexes the loudest things in the room, and your cries fuel him.

Your body feels as if it is turning into jelly as he shifts you suddenly onto your back, your legs pressing over his shoulders. His cocks are bottoming out into you, slithering against your cervix, making your back arch off the mattress as you wail out his name. Spinners' heated claws press against your throbbing clit, the nail flicking at the puffy nerve.

You suppress a sob as he rubs harsh and delicate figure-eights onto your clit. Your pussy is clamping down on his hammering cocks, but not at all slowing him down, and he still grunts and increases his speed and strength.

Your noises of pleasure silence as his cocks hit the back of your walls, your teeth sinking into the flesh of his neck. Spinner howls, a predatorial glaze is coming over his eyes that screams his thoughts of mating and breeding and you, only you. Your legs are thrashing around as he drilled powerfully into you the same way.

Over and over.

Again and again.

Harder and harder.

His cocks smashing against your walls until he tilts the angle of one of his cock heads and crashes down hard against your g-spot.

“SPINNER!!!” You scream as he continues pounding into your g-spot, a soft thud, and a noisy buzz in the air, letting you know that the vibrator had fallen from his ass. But his pulsating cocks are too much for you to care, too much for you to even want to shove the vibrator all the way up his ass. It’s your turn to recite his name like a prayer as he continues fucking your brains out.

You shoot up off the mattress, your screams muffled through more bites on his neck, blood pouring into your mouth, the metallic taste making your eyes roll back in glory. He was yours. He was yours. He was yours.

Even though your legs were on his shoulder, you held on. The angle allows Spinner to drive his cocks against your g-spot over and over again. Your body is bouncing with every single slam. His body is giving you exploding sensations, your tightness making Spinner moan and curse.

“I needa – fuuuuck, pet do that again – I needa come!” you pant as your body slams against his own.

“Come for me, owner,” Spinner sighs into your mouth. “Come around my cocks.”

The built-up pleasure in your belly is profuse, it’s built up so fast, and your toes curl in electrifying pleasure. You can’t handle it anymore, the desire being too much.

Your orgasm slams through you, your vision nearly turning white as your jaw drops as your screams go silent. Spinner's mouth continues to move against yours, kissing sloppily against your teeth as he chases his own orgasm. His fangs are digging into your bottom lip as his jaw slacks.

His hips continue slamming into you. They’re brutal as they slam over and over again. He’s chanting your name as your stimulated cunt keeps clenching around his length. His pace is making you grow numb in his arms, although your hips still continue to desperately roll against his. His breathing is heavy and tense. Panting as he struggles to keep himself composed.

“Come inside me…” you whine into his ear, desperate to feel his hot seed within you.

His cocks now move apart, stretching you out in a new way as he presses your back onto the mattress again. The protruding veins on his cocks create insane friction against your walls, and it feels as if you’re being split into two. Spinner fucks you mercilessly, his fingers clenching your ass as you come apart for him. Hito curses loudly as he finally loses himself within you. His hips drilling forward one last time as a heavy load shoots into your throbbing cunt.

Load after load comes spilling from his cocks, your still clenching walls milking him dry. He cums so much, so much so that your belly swells and you moan absolutely satisfied.

“Shit,” Spinner murmured, relaxing entirely on top of you.

“Happy anniversary, pet…”

“I love you, mate.”

“Mmm… Get off me really quick,” you sigh, pushing him off of you.

Spinner grunts, falling onto the bed with tired eyes, “Where’re you going?”

“Gotta clean up my baby,” you smile, wincing when you land on both your feet. The soreness of your body is very apparent, and it has your head spinning slightly before you walk over to the sink. You warm up a cloth under running hot water, against your slightly aching fingers the warm water is a relief and you watch the dried blood slowly leave under your skin.

You wring the cloth of water and walk back to the bed, you easily climb it and see Spinners calm form on the bed. He breathes in deeply, his chest rising and falling contently.

“How are you feeling?” you ask rubbing the cloth against the dried cum on his stomach.

“That was intense,” he chuckles, his eyes cracking open to watch you clean him of the cum. “You?”

“Pretty damn good,” you smile, crawling to his neck, rubbing the dried blood gentle away. You press a gentle kiss against his mouth, living for the way he sighs against your hold. “Do you want to shower after waking up?”

Spinner can only grunt, no longer able to speak.

Giggling you pulled the blankets over the two of you, and despite the heavy smell of sweat and sex clinging to the both of you, you cuddle in close. Relaxing when his scaly arms tighten around you contently.

“Thank you,” he whispers when your nose presses against his chest.

“Sleep, baby,” you yawn. “Sleep.”

And so, the two of you drifted off, perfectly in love and content with how your night went.

#spinner x reader #shuichi iguchi x reader #spinner smut #bnha #bnha x reader #mha #mha x reader

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