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snackhobi · 4 years

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pairing: jungkook x reader / word count: 7.4k / genre: pacific rim au with brief smut (NSFW, 18+)

summary: there are no secrets in the drift. if jungkook were to see the mess inside your head and heart, laid utterly bare, he’d turn away from you.

warnings: sexually explicit content (briefly), unprotected sex (please be safe when you have sex) / reference to injuries but nothing graphic, giant robots powered by love punching big alien monsters

a/n: this is a birthday gift for the amazing @yeojaa. happy birthday, erin. this is completely self serving and is stuffed full with inside references that I hope you’ll enjoy. I wrote this in two days and it kicked my ass because I did so much reading and researching that turned out to not even come up in the story 👁👄👁 you know when I said I was studying? I lied. I was writing HAHAHAH ily I hope you like it hhhh (this is unbeta’ed so please forgive any mistakes it’s 1:30am as I’m scheduling this) (also summaries are so hard, I’m sorry)

Jeon Jungkook really is the perfect posterboy for a Jaeger pilot.

Broad across the shoulders and trim at the waist, all sharp punches and hard muscle, resilient and tough, with a face that’s the perfect balance of angles and softness; the cut of his jaw easing up and into his pretty mouth, the line of his brows subdued by his warm eyes—he’s a Goddamn vision, raw masculinity overlaid on rich veins of boyishness, glittering stratum that sparkle and shine even under the harsh lights of the Shatterdome.

He pouts when he thinks and his hair hangs a little in his big, big eyes and he has dimples that appear when he grins, teeth poking out onto his pretty pink lips, like someone took a rabbit and turned it into a man and packed on pounds of muscle alongside. Undeniably powerful and strong, but youthful and sweet, too.

Alongside Kim Taehyung—arresting and beautiful and somehow affable and approachable, all at the same time—they’re exactly what South Korea needs right now, propelling the country’s new look for their renewed assault against the kaiju. They’re the lucky new Rangers who’ve claimed ownership of the only Mark-5 that their homeland has produced, Bulletproof Striker, a fucking gorgeous Jaeger bristling with the latest and greatest technology that the world has produced.

But that doesn’t mean they’re the best that South Korea has to offer.

Cypher Zero is smaller, lighter, older, but she’s fierce. Just like her pilots. You and Yoongi might not be the burning beacons of hope that Jungkook and Taehyung are, polished and buffed to a squeaky shine, but you don’t need to be. You’re vicious and victorious and show no signs of stopping. The kaiju kills painted on your Mark-4’s shoulder are evidence enough of that, notches for each monster taken down, spray painted in one tiny corner of the huge swathe of burnished metal plating, the red edges of her midnight skin.

Bulletproof Striker is almost untouched, deployed just once since her recent launch, flawless exterior so at odds with Cypher Zero’s battered facade. Cypher’s beautiful, of course, but bears the history of your skirmishes, inside and out: scuffed paintwork, dented metal, rust dripping down from the ladder rungs dotted across her, melting into the obsidian of her hull.

Jungkook and Taehyung move in a way that’s practiced, disciplined motions of combat that their Jaeger echoes in turn. Her mechanical movements reflect those of the men inside her head, skilled and superb. Stunning. But you and Yoongi? You fight dirty, violent and rough; messy bar room brawls; shattered glass and clawing hands in beer soaked backrooms, tinged sulphur yellow under dirty lightbulbs; two kids who fought against a world that was against them.

(Two damaged people coming together in the Drift to make something even stronger than the sum of your parts.)

(Two damaged people who survived the rough hands of the Jaeger Academy, trying to take them, push them, shape them, break them.)

(Life isn’t kind. You’d learned that young, surrounded in the splintered remnants of your childhood home, the facade of family and happiness already gone, long long long ago, leaving you aching and lonely and cold. The prospect of fighting thousands of tons of alien hatred, lifting out of the depths of the uncaring, dark sea? At least you can see the kaiju coming. Broken households and loneliness? A little harder to lay your hands on.)

(But out of everything you lost, you’d gained one thing—Min Yoongi, another quiet, damaged thing, but with the biggest depths of warmth and love underneath that hard surface; your best friend, your brother-in-arms, growing alongside you, with you. Damaged kids turned bitter teenagers turned razor-edged adults, outcasts in solitude, but together. Not alone.)

(The deeper the bond, the better you fight. Falling into the Drift with Yoongi had been easy, years of tangled connection bleeding into the images that flashed across your brain. The same memories from different angles, overlaid with different emotions, undercurrents eddying under the surface that caught both of you and swept you up in its flow; the same mind, bridged by hundreds of tons of metal and technology and firepower underneath you, linked together in the silence of the Drift.)

There’s reverence, in the way these two new pilots look at you both, reverence and awe and respect alike: older Rangers, more experienced, history written across the worn edges of your Drivesuits, the paint flaking away from your battle armour, scuffs and scrapes on the once unblemished veneer; knowledge etched into the feline slant of Yoongi’s eyes, the turn of your shoulders and hips.

You know Jungkook’s track record. You know of the endless months of assessment and sparring and psych evals and Drift tests and simulation drops that every successful Ranger has to go through, and Jungkook had trumped them all, stood atop them like a conqueror surveying his hard-won lands—gifted, talented, some even said God-touched. And yet for all this indomitable talent and skill, there’s still humility at his core, a willingness to defer with respect.

That deference is obvious whenever he sees you. Jungkook’s dark eyes will touch your own, for a moment, dark and deep and bright—and then his gaze will skitter away, cockiness and bravado dissolving into something submissive, yielding. (Shy.) You’ve watched him orbit you, the younger ranger caught in your gravity, always nearby—the Shatterdome is only so big, for its magnitude and sprawling corridors—but never broaching that final gap, that little step, into Cypher Zero’s space, Yoongi’s space, your space. Keeping himself at arm’s length.

South Korea’s golden boy, less afraid of the Kaiju than he is of his sunbaenim.

Jungkook and Taehyung are both beautiful. But you and Yoongi are less so, unapproachable in ways that the younger pilots aren’t, private and prickly, like grasping a patch of stinging nettles with bare hands, stinging and burning.

As if Jungkook isn’t terrifying and gorgeous in his own ways. As if he doesn’t shine brighter than the sun himself. Taehyung moves through the world with a thoughtless, charismatic ease that Jungkook doesn’t share—but he’s still magnetic, bold and brilliant, monstrously skilled at everything he puts his mind to, training again and again and again to get it right, get it right, get it right.

To get it perfect.

But there’s no level of perfectionism that can surmount the twisted, unpredictable nature of the kaiju belched forth from the breach. No matter how good you are, how strong or fast, how smart or seasoned, sometimes you still get caught in that hurricane, even in a Jaeger.

It doesn’t matter how many engines are packed into each muscle strand. It doesn’t matter how fast the pistons and levers and gears shift and move. It doesn’t matter that the pilots in her cockpit are impeccable and incredible. Under the cloak of deepest night and pouring rain, blanketed in darkness and water from the heavens above and the sea below, movement is impossible to track—and when Steelbrute rises from the waves, no one sees the kaiju coming.

Bulletproof Striker takes the hit. Jungkook and Taehyung fight back but they’re blindsided and overwhelmed, and their Jaeger falls to her knees in the churn of the Pacific Ocean, salt water crashing over her in choppy waves as Steelbrute’s merciless maw gapes wide open.

Cypher Zero is 250ft tall and weighs 1410 tons. You and Yoongi are tiny specks of organic matter in a fearsome behemoth of titanium and tungsten and graphene and circuitry, commanders of a weapon that’s the same size as a skyscraper—and yet you wouldn’t think that for how fast you move. Zero hesitation. No verbal communication. Cypher’s legs cut through endless waves and gain momentum with each crashing step that slams into the seafloor before you leap forward in a flurry of motion and Drift powered fury.

Your motions in the Conn-Pod are ragged and incensed, your arms and legs moving in sync with Yoongi, with Cypher Zero, a snarl ripping out of your co-pilot’s usually quiet mouth as the kaiju lurches underneath you. The world narrows down to this: throwing yourself into the fray, jagged knuckles edged with plasma pummelled into Steelbrute’s skin in a scuffle that’s vicious, aggressive, until Bulletproof Striker regains her footing.

The sun is rising, grey and cold on the horizon when Steelbrute finally sinks into the sea, toxic blood flooding the water with neon blue. When you step out of the cockpit, Yoongi’s fringe is matted with sweat, and you can feel all the places the circuitry suit sticks to your skin—piloting a Jaeger is mentally and physically exhausting, every muscle and organ and bone working overtime for endless hours as you fight tooth and nail. Without the helmets in the way, there’s nothing stopping you bumping your foreheads together, heedless of the sweat slicked there; Yoongi’s hand rests at the back of your head, a familiar cradle.

“All good,” you say. Yoongi lets out a quiet bark of a laugh, rough and exhausted.

“I want a nap,” he says, like he always does, even if you’re a long way away from that, still fully suited and due to speak to the Marshalls. There are so, so many things separating you from the bliss of sleep.

One thing that’s not part of the normal routine, though, is the other pilots catching you, demanding your recognition, respectful (Taehyung) but insistent (Jungkook). You know that Yoongi doesn’t like attention or hero-worship, but there’s nothing except gratitude, here, bent heads and words of thanks. You’d saved their lives, after all. Saved their Jaeger from being torn apart, pain screaming through their own bodies of flesh and bone, connected to their metal monster. Of course they’re grateful.

You dismiss it with a hard cut of your hand.

“It’s nothing,” you say.

You’re speaking the words you know are in Yoongi’s head—years of friendship and shared Drifts leaving his thought processes wide open to you—although you know you’re sharper than he is, harsher than he is, even, for all that he looks like the cold one from the outside. Long lashes and silken hair don’t translate to something soft and feminine and pretty, and you’re all ragged edges and rough parts, bleeding into the delivery of your words. Yoongi rounds the words in his mouth and places them into the world with a rumble of quiet strength that belies his past, but you? Your tongue is cutting and terse and drips with distrust, even when you don’t mean it to, staring at these two boys, Jungkook’s eyes so brown and large when he stares back at you.

The truth is that you care about humanity, of course. You care about humanity and you care about the millions of people in the cities that line the coasts and further inland, and you care about your fellow pilots, skilled but soft-hearted as they are. You’re stronger. You have to be. That’s what Yoongi is, that’s what you are: fighters. You fight dirty because you fight to win, not to protect yourselves. You’ll fight and you’ll die for this, for them, even if there’s no friendship there. Not yet. You’re still too distant, for all that you’d thrown yourself in the line of fire to rip the kaiju from the younger Rangers.

And when Jungkook levels a look at you, there’s a flicker of something. A spark. All the glittering of his warm eyes comes together like the cascading sparks of molten fire that fall when metal is cut through— his eyes score through you, down down down, right to your core, underneath all the armour you’ve laid about yourself throughout your life. Your heart stutters. You’ve been watching Jeon Jungkook, and he’s all cocky Ranger bravado, or innocent brown eyes and shy, curving smiles, and yet.

And yet. You know he sees this soft part of you, somehow. Past the thorns and sharp leaves, past the hard husk, into the rich, bursting sweetness inside, oozing red gems of pomegranate that yield so easily to the fingers and mouth.

(He’s temerarious and modest and wickedly perceptive too, it seems.)

“That was our kill,” he says suddenly. Taehyung—the voice piece of the two, the one who’s been smiling and speaking, easy and slow—goes still at his side.

“What?” Yoongi’s eyes pierce through him, but Jungkook keeps his focus on you.

“Steelbrute. Our kill. It was a hit from our rockets that took him out,” Jungkook says, eyes still glinting with that sparkling shine. Slicing through you with an explosion of light. “Not your blades.”

Silence steals over you, for a breath. It’s never truly silent in the Shatterdome, an iron fortress that never sleeps, but for a second, there’s quiet. It wraps around you. Tight. Almost deafening.

But then you break that silence.

You laugh.

You laugh at the cheeky grin that pulls at Jungkook’s lips, the boyish lift to his face. You laugh at his shamelessness, the sudden 180 from his earlier fear. You laugh at the way he’s diluted this astonishing, formidable thing—humanity coming together to destroy alien predators that threaten the planet—into a competition.

“You’re a menace, Jeon Jungkook,” you say.

Stinging nettles you might be, but if you’re grabbed hard and fast by confident hands, you don’t wound. Jeon Jungkook defers to respect, avoids confrontation, bows his head and quiets his mouth, but he knows, now, that he can do this. That he can push you like this, and you’ll let him, sway against it, let yourself be pushed.

Yoongi slides you a glance out the corner of his eyes, a light touch, a tacit agreement to an unspoken question.

“You can have it. Steelbrute’s yours.” There’s the smallest curl to your lips as you speak for you both. There’s something weirdly easy and familiar to this, to this interaction, even if you’ve barely exchanged words before now, giving this triumph to the other pilots hand over fist.

(Giving it to Jungkook on a platter.)

You can see the flare of triumph in Jungkook’s eyes. You know it’s not for the notch of their first kill, one they can add to their Jaeger. It’s for something far harder to achieve, something far more ephemeral: digging down and past your cool veneer and lifting out a smile, spreading it across your lips like warm butter, liquid gold.

And he keeps making you smile.

Jeon Jungkook, you find, is a force of nature, relentless, an ocean. Sometimes he’s soft, loving waves of glittering blue that crash on pearly white beaches, playful and bright. Sometimes, he’s intense, the crashing waves of a storm tossed sea, powerful and unstoppable. Always, he’s striking, even when he’s not trying—even more so because of it, moving without thought or uncertainty, a silence settling over your thoughts whenever you see him like this. See him in this raw state, so unafraid where before he’d curbed his tongue and bent his head in front of you. Now, he’s just himself, without filter.

Taehyung is there too, of course. Both pilots join your small, fiercely private circle, not just a path from you to Yoongi any more. They become intertwining lines, a pattern that’s drawn between the four of you, pilots, friends. And you learn, that for all that you’d thought that Taehyung was the dominant one outside of their Jaeger, social and extroverted and unabashed, Jungkook isn’t quiet. Not when he’s comfortable.

(Not, now, when he’s with you.)

He’s a myriad of things, endlessly deep, so different from you, from Yoongi, but—the truth of it settles inside you, your joints, the marrow of your bones, the blood that pulses forth from your heart each time it beats in your chest, liquid life running through you.

Drift compatibility.

Not that it matters. You already have a partner. You’re never going to open yourself up to anyone that isn’t Yoongi, who’s seen every part of you already. There’d been no fear about letting Yoongi see inside your brain, your heart, the raw, bleeding parts of you—because he’d already known them. Just like you’d known his. Yoongi stands to your right, inside the Conn-Pod and out, a driving force, even in his silence.

But Jungkook is softer, sweeter, for all his raw power and skill, respect engraved into his every motion, even when he’s teasing and making you laugh. Even when he ignores the social guidelines that he should follow, does follow for others, everyone except you.

And you don’t mind. You don’t bite out insults at him when he slides into the quiet hollow you’ve scraped out, a small space with just enough room for the people you keep in your heart. You’re still barbed and spiked, warding away unwanted attention, but for Jungkook, the claws retract.

You’re still you, of course. Jungkook calls you mean, says that you bully him, even as he’s flopped across your bunk, eating your rations, shovelling coveted popcorn into his mouth. He might pout and sigh and cry oppression, but you’re soft on him and he knows it. That quiet hollow in your heart is a little larger, now, a little louder. Jungkook is brazen in his claim of this space, spreading each of his limbs wide as he fits himself into every part of it. He doesn’t know every piece of your past, and you don’t plan to let him see all the messy parts bundled in your chest, but. But he’s still there.

And you let him stay. You make a home for him inside you and let him take the key. He might tilt his head and goad you, might pretend there’s a genuine challenge in the set of his jaw, but you know it’s all tempered with admiration, veneration. Friendship.

(And where he clearly respects you, you admire him in turn. You’re reminded of your differences every second he moves and breathes and just exists in front of you, but you don’t have to be similar to someone to realise just how incredible they are.)

(But though you’re different, there are similarities. You’re not a mirrored image, a reflection, like you are with Yoongi. Instead, you’re a line drawn between two separate places, an isohel, sun lighting up your world for the same sweep of the clock even for how far apart you are. Sharing that same, tenuous thing, for all your contrasting parts.)

(This thing that’s growing, held in your hands. This soft, gentle thing, shimmering, frail, unfurling slowly but undeniably. Tinged with happiness, disbelief. Disbelief that you’ve found this, that you can see Jungkook across the echoing cavern of the Shatterdome’s main hall, so far in the distance, barely visible at the foot of his Jaeger—and something will settle in your chest. Featherlight, iridescent. Something comforting.)

When you fight the kaiju, now, it’s with a deeper reserve of desperation. Taehyung and Jungkook aren’t just fellow pilots, dongsaeng that you’re obliged to look after: they’re your friends, something more than that too, part of the rare handful of people in the world who understand, this overwhelming pressure to fight and win and protect the things you love. The people you love. They understand what it’s like to step into someone else’s head, to be connected to that person on a level that’s unfathomable, anchored in a depth of love that’s endless. You’re their aegis, now, their shield.

(Jungkook’s shield.)

Maybe that’s what’s to blame. Maybe that’s why you’re so sloppy, this time. Maybe that’s why you throw yourselves in the way of the blow that was meant for Bulletproof Striker. Maybe that’s why Ojousan shreds Cypher Zero’s chest apart, her head, why Yoongi is almost ripped from you, his fear and pain screaming through your neural connection. You feel everything he feels and more beside, your heart hammering in your throat as you scream, Jaeger’s arm swinging up and around in tandem with your own motions as you try to rip the kaiju away, anything to protect Yoongi, so scared of losing him, always always always, scared of being left alone.

But you’re not alone.

Bulletproof Striker lifts up like an avenging angel. Her horns roar a challenge, an echoing battle cry as the younger pilots move in. Heavier and stronger, keeping her balance even in the turbulence of a fight, she takes the hits, gives back her own, sends the kaiju down into the crashing waves, waits for it to rise. But the monster is crafty and quick and even as you’re lifting your left arm—Yoongi’s hurt, so hurt, you know this, feel this, but he moves with you to ready the plasma cannon buried in the mechanics of your Jaeger’s hand, even if he’s keening with pain—you watch as the other pilots, too, fall victim to the clawed tail of the kaiju, screeching through layers of alloys and across their Conn-Pod.

Terror strikes through every part of you and morphs into hate. You hate the kaiju, hate your own weakness, hate the pain that’s been saved from being written into your own body while Yoongi screams and sobs even though he still fights. Your motions are anguished and desperate as you battle to overcome this beast that’s almost taken away everything that matters to you—and Cypher Zero, Yoongi, as damaged and hurt as they are, come through. (Like they always do, for you, always.)

And somehow, despite everything, for all the self-hatred and pain and fear, you pull through. You pull through. Damaged and hurt but alive.

Barely.

Barely alive.

(One hand gives, the other takes away.)

It takes hours for them to pick Yoongi’s Drivesuit from his body, crumpled around him from Ojousan’s claws, cutting into the soft flesh of his body, body ruined further by the fighting he’d been forced into despite his injuries; so many of Taehyung’s bones are shattered, and when you finally see him awake and with his eyes open, there are burst blood vessels that cast red across the usually warm expression, his friendly eyes.

You should be grateful that they’re alive. You should be on your hands and knees, weeping, benedictions dripping from your graceless mouth as you thank whatever merciless God above decided to turn their gaze on you and grant you this leniency. So many pilots have died and will continue to die, you know this, but somehow your partners are still alive.

And you are grateful. You are. But there’s bitterness on your tongue, twisted across your palate, sour and acrid and filling you with its taste. You’d been foolish and reckless and you’d almost lost the things you cared about most, even if you’d destroyed the kaiju, torn it apart and left its fluorescent indigo blood to corrode the ocean.

That’s what’s important, isn’t it. Saving humanity. One person, two people, four people—you’re the tiniest cogs in a whirring engine of billions. Unimportant. Just a spinning part that keeps the machine going.

When you’re not with Yoongi or Taehyung, an unmoving presence from their hospital beds, a hovering gargoyle carved from stone, you’re with Jungkook. Always, always, always. Somehow you’d both escaped without the injuries inflicted on your partners—you’d manage to break your little finger, and Jungkook had a black eye and a twisted ankle, and the both of you had mottles of bruises cast across your skin, pulled muscles, an ache carved into your bones, but that was it. That was it. It was almost laughable, how unscathed you are.

You hate it.

(It should have been you.)

Your legs—unbroken, unharmed—hang over steel scaffolding, motionless as you watch the tiny specks of people scuttling across the catwalks that criss-cross Cypher Zero’s body. You can see under her skin, damage peeling back all the layers of metal that should be holding her together. Endless showers of sparks fall and scatter as she’s stitched back together. Your beautiful girl is so damaged, so disfigured.

(You’d caught Yoongi as he’d fallen from the harness, listened to the horrible noises that had torn out of his lips as he’d dripped blood and pain over your shaking hands.)

The bland food you’d scraped off your dinner tray settles fitfully in your stomach, still one second, nausea bubbling up your throat the next.

It’s one of the rare times you’ve been alone, since… since everything. You’ve been taking comfort in Jungkook’s presence, unwavering and understated, needing someone there when staring at Yoongi’s battered face proved too much. Even with his own upheaval Jungkook’s been there, at your side, always close. Eyes locked on you and taking everything in, the tired set to your face, the expression that tugs down your lips, and still, he stays.

But he’d disappeared after you’d eaten, a peculiar look on his face—you know him well enough now to recognise that look, that it means he’s got something in his head, some plan he means to unfold. It’s the first time you’ve seen it since Taehyung had been pulled out of the Conn-Pod. It’s some semblance of normality, an expression of something other than pale-faced dread and bone-shivering guilt.

(You feel it too, that survivor’s guilt. Taehyung and Yoongi will recover but it’ll take time and so much suffering and you wish you could take that from them, heft that burden onto your own shoulders.)

(You know Jungkook feels the same.)

(You see it written in the tense lines of his body. Hear it unspoken in the words he shares with you. The bruises on his skin melt from red to purple to blue to yellow, but even if his body heals, his brain and heart bear the scars of helplessness.)

Jungkook reappears, finds you at the heavy steel door that leads into your room, rusted and worn but silent as it swings open in front of you. His eyes are wide and he’s breathless, like he’s been running, chest heaving as he sucks in air through his parted lips, a flash of teeth and tongue as he smiles.

Despite everything, you smile back. Helpless for that smile, always, happier now for the sight of it, for how little you’ve seen it. You want to see that smile every day. You don’t want him to worry for anything. You want him to feel the same way you do, when you see him: that quiet, maybe selfish thought that things are okay.

Maybe he does. (His eyes are so warm.) He presses something into your hands, something soft and round like a well-practised secret, and then he’s gone. You can tell by the gait of his stride that he’s going back to Taehyung, giving you a moment of lonely reprieve to wash the grime and dirt off your useless body before you follow in his footsteps, stationed at Yoongi’s side.

The door swings shut behind you.

You lift your hand.

It’s an orange.

It’s a small, overripe thing, hard nub of the stem falling away from the skin with only the lightest brush of your fingers. You stare at the fruit, its brightness cutting through the muted sepia tones of your surroundings, a point of colour in an otherwise dull room.

You haven’t seen an orange in months. Rationing is tough on everyone, even Jaeger pilots. You’d mentioned in passing, so long ago, an old habit of yours. Before something else floated above it, more important and interesting, you’d made a fleeting statement that had flitted across the surface of the conversation: you liked eating oranges in the shower. Liked that nice, cool citrus sweetness in your mouth while the rest of your body was caught in the fall of warm water.

It’s such a small, tiny thing. Just the briefest lament—there are more important things than the fact you can’t have shower oranges any more, after all—and you’d forgotten you’d even mentioned it.

But Jungkook hadn’t.

It’s almost syrupy sweet, this orange. You savour each slice, pressing them between your teeth, feeling the rush of juice burst forth through the pith and skin, and it’s so good you could cry.

You do cry.

Your mouth is full of orange and your eyes are full of tears and your head is full of—of—something, something so all encompassing that it overwhelms you, water cascading down the aching planes of your body as you crumple inwards. Jungkook had protected you with the overwhelming power of Bulletproof Striker, and he’s protecting you now, soft and considerate and kind, vulnerable and human. Stripped of tons of metal and technology, Jungkook wears his beating heart on his sleeve and is none the weaker for it.

This seemingly small thing means so much, so so so much. You understand him, and he understands you too, knows that this gesture is indicative of support and care and nurturing, a tiny fragment of peace he can offer you in the tumult of everything out of your control.

A tiny fragment of peace that’s part of a greater whole, all the things that Jungkook gives to you.

When the Marshalls gather you and tell you the plan going forwards, you’re unsurprised.

It makes sense, of course. Four pilots down to two still leaves a pair, and Bulletproof Striker is nearly functional even if Cypher Zero will stay out of commission while she’s rebuilt. Simple maths. One Jaeger, two pilots. You and Jungkook.

You’re scared.

You know you’re Drift compatible. Every fight in the Kwoon Combat Room is evidence enough of that. A dialogue, each challenge is meant to be a dialogue to show physical compatibility, and it is: there’s perfect sync in how you each move to strike, even if your motions are so different, muscles burning and breaths coming faster each time you attack, parry, strike, block. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s a conversation, one that you and Jungkook fall into without thought.

And he would be the perfect partner. That much isn’t in doubt. Loyal and open and strong, honourable and brave and kind—and you know him, have grown to learn so much about this golden boy, this bright, brilliant boy. He’s fucking indomitable and anyone would be lucky to find themselves in the same Jaeger as Jeon Jungkook.

But there are no secrets in the Drift.

To let someone in, you have to trust them. And you do, you do trust Jungkook, probably far more than makes sense, some unspoken thing between you burning like a wildfire. But while you trust him, confident in his strength and his heart, you trust yourself less.

You’ll be flayed open, naked and defenceless. He’ll see right to the core of you, every dirty corner of your crumpled soul, every shameful part of your foundations, uneven brickwork layered into your shaky temperament; strong one second, weak the next. He’ll see that you’re hard inside, too, biting and acidic right down to your shrivelled heart. This nascent thing that you’ve been building with Jungkook, been keeping safe in the cradle of your careful hands, will sputter out and die.

“Baby.”

Yoongi’s voice is comforting, a familiar rumble that rolls through your ears as you rest your head in his lap.

“And I mean that you’re literally being a baby,” he continues, and you curl your lip back from your teeth in a small snarl, menacing.

Yoongi just continues to thread his hands through your hair.

You’ve Drifted with Yoongi often and long enough to know how every thread of thought unspools in that skull of his. You know he has every confidence in the unshakeable pillar of your soul. He’s a brother to you, a connection that thrums deep in your veins even without the intimacy of the Drift, and the love you hold for him is undying and true.

But whatever you have with Jungkook is so timorous in the face of that.

“It’s different.” Yoongi looks down at the twist of your face. You know his thoughts and he knows yours too, your face and heart an open book to him. “But different isn’t bad.”

You keep your mouth shut, keep the words swallowed down in your throat, shoved down to the pit of your stomach. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

“Baby,” he says again, softer, lower. This time, you know it’s an endearment.

At the end of the day, no matter what fear grips cold and endless at your insides, you’ll do it. You’ll Drift with Jungkook. You’ll throw everything you have into the pyre, watch it burn and turn to ash, if it means you can keep everyone safe. To save Yoongi, Taehyung, Jungkook—you’ll open yourself up to the mortifying ordeal of opening up, laying yourself bare. You have to.

It’s chaotic, anyway. The day that your practice Drift is scheduled is the day the next kaiju rises out of the breach, that dreaded rift between our world and theirs, because why would you be allowed to breathe, even for a second?

It’s a scramble into the cockpit. There’s no time for trial runs or test Drifts. You fly or you fall. Everyone’s in a state of orderly upheaval as you’re suited up and left to stride forwards into a Conn-Pod that isn’t yours, in a Jaeger that isn’t yours.

(Left to stride forwards to stand next to someone who isn’t yours.)

Your Drivesuit is grey. Jungkook’s is white. There’s a subtle hologramatic sheen laid across the planes of his armour, leaving him a multicoloured vision that shines out under the flicker of the cockpit’s endless tiny buttons and lights. Your own suit is a matte, gunmetal with accents of burning scarlet, far more battered and worn. Dark and wild in the face of Jungkook’s radiance. He’s the perfect answer to the kaiju invasion. You, though, feel like an interloper in a space that wasn’t designed for you, this circle room that’s been home to Jungkook and his true, real partner.

But he’s looking at you like there’s no one else he’d rather have by his side.

He doesn’t care that everything about this moment just cements how he’s too good for you in every conceivable way, elevated above you. Doesn’t care that you’re just a temporary stop gap. There’s trepidation, of course, skittering nerves that dance across his face for this first Drift, surrounded by all the commotion that’s swallowing the world up outside the cockpit. But there’s also that fire in his eyes, one you’ve learned to expect: Jungkook is a wildfire and will surmount any obstacle in a blaze of white-hot light.

And he wants you along for the ride.

(Burns bright for it.)

“You ready?” He asks, and the tiny tremor in his words takes you off guard even as it soothes a balm over the rash of apprehension that prickles across your skin.

(Because he’s nervous, too.)

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” you answer, truly.

His eyes crinkle into a smile, crescents of happiness as his lip peels back from his teeth. It should be jarring, seeing his sweet bunny smile in the pit of a Jaeger, so at odds with the military polycarbonate that girds his body with protection, the masculine edges of his face—but it’s not. The world is just a backdrop to Jeon Jungkook, dropping away as you fall into his eyes, twinkling stars of brightness and warmth that hold you safe, even now.

Peace and contentment steals over you. You’re almost shocked by it, the way your own face softens into a smile, the rising beat of your heart. Every ragged messy edge in you is smoothed over by Jungkook’s presence and you glow for him.

When the Conn-Pod drops, there’s the familiar weightlessness, the sway of your body in the harness as you fall. Anticipation roils through you as Bulletproof Striker’s head locks into place, whirring mechanisms securing you to nearly 2000 tons of metal, so much heavier than your own Jaeger. You’ve taken Jungkook’s usual place and he’s taken Taehyung’s, the right hemisphere, the dominant pilot, familiar with this machine in a way you’re not.

Not yet, at least.

“We’ve got this.”

Jungkook’s voice cuts through the noise, the AI talking at you, a narration of events you’ve long grown used to. You turn your head to look at him. He’s already looking at you, intent and sincere. Like always.

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, we have.”

There’s no point being afraid. In a few seconds, Jungkook will be in your head, washing over every part of you—and you’ll be in his, pressing your ethereal touch into every facet that comes together to make Jeon Jungkook who he is.

Seconds pass. There’s a little hitch in his breath, a stiffness to his limbs, and he shuts his eyes. You breathe in deep, deep, deep, sucking in a harsh breath into your greedy lungs—

—the timer hits zero—

—and then the Drift slams into you all at once, all encompassing and consuming, threading your minds together.

(Drifting with Yoongi is easy, the familiarity of coming home after so much time away.)

(But this?)

(This is throwing yourself into a cold lake on a hot summer’s day, bracing and refreshing and breath-stealing all at once, shocking life into every one of your limbs, so sharp and fast you’re scared you might drown before you breach the surface, water holding onto you and not letting you go. This is driving reckless and fast down empty roads, watching the world pass you in a blur, laughing in delight at the pleasure of it all. This is scaling a cliffside with nothing but your own hands and determination, digging your fingers into the unyielding rock, pulling yourself up-up-up, never letting yourself fall.)

(This is having Jungkook beside you. This is having Jungkook diving into the lake with all the grace of an Olympian before he rises to the surface, tosses his hair carelessly out of his face, and spits a mouthful of water at you with laughter in his eyes. This is having Jungkook behind the driver’s wheel, shifting gears without thought, looking away from the road to watch the way your hair dances in the wind. This is having Jungkook climbing beside you, waiting for you at the top, holding a hand out to pull you up and over so you can sprawl out beside him, exhausted and exuberant at the top of this mountain, basking in the sun with Jungkook just a hair’s breadth away from you.)

(He takes one look at you. He takes one look at all the dark of your memories, the cascading mess of your insides, the hidden things that are open to him in the Drift, cut open and peeled back for his gaze—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He sees everything, past skin and muscle and bone and nerves, even deeper, right into your heart—)

(—all the torrents that eddy the deep waters of your soul—)

(—and he doesn’t look away.)

(He doesn’t look away.)

(Can’t look away.)

(Doesn’t want to.)

(Never wants to.)

(Jeon Jungkook takes one look at you, your whole being, and he knows you.)

(And he doesn’t want you any less.)

It’s just a second, a flicker, a breath, this first connection in this Drift, falling into each other. But it’s also a lifetime, two lifetimes, four lifetimes; your memories, Jungkook’s memories, Yoongi’s memories in yours, Taehyung’s memories in Jungkook’s. Layers and layers and years and years piled over one another, a tumbling sprawl—but it’s easy. It’s easy, so easy, Jungkook seeing you, you seeing him, everything he is, everything you are, everything you are to each other, with each other, for each other. The important things. The things you need to know to navigate this together, in sync even before now, reading each other to a level neither had even realised.

And when you’ve killed the kaiju. When you’ve walked Bulletproof Striker back to shore, brought her back to the Shatterdome, back home, it doesn’t end. You lift out of the Drift, step out of your Drivesuits, as different as they are (as different as you are), and it doesn’t end.

Jungkook’s eyes linger, as heavy as a physical touch, and even as congratulations for a successful drop are bandied about you, he doesn’t leave your side. He keeps his hand against yours—not intertwined, but brushing, the curl of his fingers against your own. Touching. You’re not the protector here. He’s protecting you, in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling inferior or weak. You feel soft and warm and small and safe, pulled inexorably towards him, supported, buoyed up, and you don’t feel selfish for it.

Because he wants this.

He wants to be your comfort and your support.

He doesn’t want it to end.

(You don’t want it to end.)

And when you finally break away from those crowds, released from the shackles of responsibility and expectation—when you’re finally left alone, the two of you with each other, there’s no hesitation when you come together.

He lays you out beneath him and has you sobbing, back arching into the pleasure he draws out of your body, playing you like a maestro. Because he knows you, after all. He knows exactly how to trail his lips across your skin, your neck and stomach and thighs, painting marks across your body like it’s his personal canvas. He knows exactly how to have you twisting underneath him, how to pull those pretty sounds from your lips, fucking you with his fingers and his tongue until you’re a shaking mess. He kisses you sweet, merciless, letting you claw at his skin as you beg for more, more more more, wanting it, needing it, wanting him, needing him.

And you know he’ll give it to you. He’ll give himself to you, give you everything you ask for. You know how he wants to see you fall apart and you know how to move your body to have him gritting his teeth and staring in awe. You know how desperate he is to worship you, to show you his adoration and reverence, and you open up for him, unfurl like a flower, dripping nectar. When he finally presses into you, hot and long and thick, it’s so good you could cry. You draw him in-in-in, into your body and arms and heart, pressing your lips to the sweat at his brow, the taste of skin and salt and Jungkook bursting across your tongue.

There’s no Drift here, no curl of memories and unspoken thoughts between you. It’s physical and human, the crash of your bodies against each other, skin on skin, the thrust of his cock pressing into the dripping folds of your cunt. It’s the other half of that connection, the final piece, this thing you have with Jungkook, this perfect balance you have with him. It sears itself across your body and into your soul: it’s pleasure and passion and devotion carved into each touch of your lips and fingers, each roll of your hips, each time Jungkook makes you cum, gasping for him.

When he’s finally come apart inside you, spilling into your willing heat as you shake beneath him, arms and legs wrapped around his body as you pull him as close as you can, unwilling to let go—it still doesn’t end. You’re so wrapped up in Jungkook, in his arms, his heart, and you know he won’t let you go, either. He presses his lips against yours, chases those kisses, quiet and chaste to open-mouthed and dirty as the mood takes you, and then Jungkook rolls over you again, a spark in his eyes as he decides he’s still hungry for you.

You know, now, that all that time ago, when you carved that space for him into your chest, he’d done the same for you. He’d laid his heart at your feet and waited there, kneeling, for you to accept it, patient and willing. Staring at you with all the deep love you never thought you deserved, never thought you’d receive. But here he is. Here he is, love burning in his dark brown eyes. Eyes that have seen all the damaged, aching parts of you and love you anyway.

“I’m yours.”

Jungkook shines so bright at your words, a supernova of joy. His smile is so wide and his gaze is so soft, for you, for you, for you.

“Everything I am is for you,” he murmurs, letting the words curl into the air, settle across your skin, sink deep inside your chest. Your eyes flutter shut as you feel this touch of him inside you, wrapped around your heart.

And when you lift your hands, he comes so easily. He presses his cheek into the curve of your fingers, lets you hold him, lets you cup those lovely cheeks in your palms.

“I love you,” he says.

Right now, in this instant, there’s nothing but him. No kaiju, no Jaegers, no crumbling world, nothing. There’s only him, and you, together.

“I love you too,” you reply—and when you smile, gentle and tender, Jungkook falls in love all over again.

Burns bright for you.

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Iggy and the Stooges — You Think You’re Bad, Man? The Road Tapes ’73-’74 (Cherry Red)

CherryRedRecords · Gimme Danger - Iggy and the Stooges - Metallic KO (The Final Show) (Live In Detroit, 1974)

This new five-CD-clamshell collection of live music by the Stooges documents the band’s mad run toward self-destruction, through the autumn of 1973 to the winter of 1974. It was a winter of discontent: gas lines, Nixon holed up behind his Oval Office stonewall, Vietnamization horrifically piling up more ARVN and NVA corpses as American foreign policy lurched toward the exits. The dissipation, rage and derangement exhibited by the last Stooges line-up of the 1970s (Iggy, the Asheton brothers and James Williamson, with Scott Thurston along for the ride, playing barrelhouse piano) constituted a sort of proxy for a national psycho-social breakdown. Even before the tour started, Iggy was in bad shape, beaten up by months of hard partying and generally unhinged behavior in L.A., subsidized by his contractual relationship with David Bowie’s MainMan label. Following the commercial disaster of Raw Power, the band headed out on the road, in an attempt to salvage a rock-n-roll living. You Think You’re Bad, Man? captures some of those shows, and the band’s inexorable decline.

We should be clear: The recordings are of the general quality of a 1970s audience tape, captured by a well-positioned concert-goer. That means mid-1970s amateur tech, and “well-positioned” still places the device in a particular room, closer to or farther from various amplifier stacks. So on the 16 September 1973 show at the Whiskey, Iggy’s vocals are strongly audible and Ron Asheton’s bass thrum is athletically heavy; but the drums are a sequence of hollow pops, and the guitar inexpertly surfs the cacophony, occasionally rising for air, more often wiped out and washed out. The November 1973 show at the Latin Casino (often identified as located in Baltimore, but it was in fact a suburban New Jersey venue, in Cherry Hill, heaven help us) has an even more submerged quality, with the bass and guitar producing a sort of textured flow. Thurston’s heroic work on the piano is fairly audible, which is nice, but not what one went to a Stooges show for. In the New Year’s Eve set, at New York’s Academy of Music, Iggy’s vocals are sometimes pretty clear, sometimes distant and echoing (maybe he forgets to sing into the mic). Williamson’s guitar solos cut through the smeared miasma, but Scott Asheton’s drums are barely there. If you’re looking for the kind of clarity delivered by another archival Stooges recording released this year — Live at Goose Lake: August 8th, 1970 — you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s also the case that some of these shows have circulated widely in bootleg and semi-legit forms: see Bomp! Records’ Double Danger and Skydog Records’ Metallic K.O.

So, what’s in it for the listener? The 10 June 1973 show at Detroit’s Michigan Palace is the class of the bunch. All of the instruments are more or less audible as specific sources of music. The set features a strong version of “Gimme Danger,” a mainstay of these shows; Iggy’s rap in the song’s second half is typical of the period, but he sounds more desperate, for adulation, connection, sex, something. Williamson’s solo is blisteringly passionate and also pretty coherent. The set’s versions of “Head On” and “Search and Destroy” are ragged, but the band finds its groove again on “Heavy Liquid,” which they stretch out to twice its usual length, executing a fairly effective version of the metallic blues antics their old buddies in the MC5 used to get up to.

For a more whacko iteration of the Stooges’ live chaos, it’s hard to beat the latter half of the show at the Whiskey. They work out on “She Creatures of the Hollywood Hills” for nearly ten minutes, beginning with a coked-up go-go riff that flashes dayglo weirdness even through the tape’s crappy warbling. Around the song’s midpoint, the Ashetons’ rhythm playing decouples from Williamson, and the song totters around for a bit. Iggy cuts in with some seemingly extemporized scat (as in scatological) poetry: “Wanna blow it all away / Buttfuckers makin’ me pay / […] Dirty minds and dirty tricks / Gonna try’n sell my dick.” It ain’t Keats, or even Corso, but it sounds like a passably accurate accounting of Iggy’s L.A. sojourn. The band finds the riff again, and Williamson makes his guitar scream, silvery feedback keening as the song around it collapses into a swirl of noise. The even longer, weirdly wired version of “Open Up and Bleed” shuffles, staggers and irregularly explodes into full-throated, thunderous salvos. It sounds dangerous, the Stooges in their druggy, bedraggled and somehow still ecstatic mode.

Of the infamous Metallic K.O. show (9 February 1974 in Detroit), the less said, the better. It’s sad that Iggy’s vocals are so clear and strong on a night on which he’s so completely full of shit. Canvassing the increasingly hostile Motown audience for requests, he asks, “How about ‘Where Did Our Love Go?’” Then he squeaks out, “Baby, baby, where did my cock go?” That about sums it up. The band is sluggish. Iggy’s a miserably nasty mess. All the impending disaster of the six months of shows comes crashing down on the Stooges, alongside an audible fusillade of beer bottles. They try “Gimme Danger,” but they just end up hocking half-assed, strung-out bravado. And then they play “Louie Louie.”

Iggy would be back, resurrected in Bowie’s Berlin. But the feral force of the Stooges, which occasionally manages to assert itself during these shows, would never be recaptured. “Search and Destroy” would eventually show up in Nike commercials, celebrating the athletic spectacle of the Atlanta Olympics. The band’s scorched-earth song of Nam’s senseless violence repackaged as patriotic pathos? That’s perverted history, lost in the fun house. As a sort of corrective measure, we have this document, and that speaks to its cultural value. You Think You’re Bad, Man? situates the sound of Stooges in its native territory: in Nixon’s America, following its death trip to the bitter end.

Jonathan Shaw

#iggy and the stooges #you think you're a bad man #cherry red #jonathan shaw #albumreview #dusted magazine #iggy pop #live #1970s #punk rock #box set

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slasherholic · 4 years

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synopsis: you just fucked up big time and now Michael is going to punish you for it; but not quite in the way you were expecting.

contains: AFAB reader, noncon, fear play, vaginal sex, clit bullying with a dollop of tiddy squeezing

(part one!)

Smoke on the Water | Part Two |Michael Myers x Reader | NSFW

Terror seals your throat closed. The air will not come in and you are choking on nothing but fear.

Michael leers viciously from beneath a curtain of wild curls. His rosy lips have pressed dangerously, decidedly shut. Any flicker of that familiar scowl, that veil of frigid detachment he wears even in your dreams, is gone, melted without a trace; and the malice revealed beneath the ice is as final as death.

The Shape watches you, murder rolling off his dangerous body in thick, crackling waves, and you know that your life depends on what you are able to say in the next ten seconds.

Your apology floods out sickly and bumbling.

“Sorry. Please. Sorry. Accident. It was—accident. Please. Sorry; please.”

The frantic words are interlaced with shallow sputtering as you hack out the water still sitting in your lungs. His blood on your tongue is wild and sharp. Hardly more than a taste. You must have barely scraped him.

That realization doesn’t slow the desperate pleas dribbling from your lips.

Through tears you watch Michael draw in a long breath. It fills out the rigid muscles in his chest and suddenly he is towering again, a dreadful mountain of heat and murderous strength. His glare remains utterly unchanging.

A sob consumes you, choking you on breathlessness and spit. Michael doesn’t need a reason to kill you; but if ever a reason existed, this is it.

You clutch at his wrist, at the cruel hand still seized in your hair, and your fingers tremble. You beg him until your lips go numb and your words become not-words, just a weak, wet chattering.

And Michael’s vicious scowl, fixed across his face, uncompromising, uncaring—

—is unaffected.

Violent tremors wrack your body. You sob brokenly. That is it, then; what you just did has cost you your life.

You squeeze your eyes shut tight because you don’t want to see it coming. You don’t want to watch.

His fingers close around your wrist. You are almost sick. He pries you off his arm with monstrous ease. You squeal and sob harder, barely struggling in his grip. Fright has locked your muscles.

He drags you by your hair to your feet. You cry at him with a hopeless little chant of “please” and “no”, which goes unheard.

A huge hand engulfs your quaking wrists and twists them with staggering force into the lowest part of your back, capturing you in a helpless way. The grotesque heat of Michael’s body seeps into your skin and threatens to consume you from the inside.

You are still begging as he thrusts you belly-down over the edge of the jacuzzi, the hand in your hair pushing you down, down, until your cheek bites into the clammy wooden deck.

You shiver half-in, half out of the water, thighs and hips flush against the vinyl lining of the tub, bare ass poking out in the chilly breeze above, and your crying turns hysterical.

Michael’s fingers untangle all at once from your hair and your heart leaps into your throat. You know that when the hand comes back again, it will be to wrench your skull swiftly up and smash you brutally down into the wood. You try to block out the grisly images that assault your mind, of your brains dashed against the deck, of your naked body hanging lifelessly in the water below. You don’t want to be found that way; you don’t want your family to have to remember you like that.

And then, at the apex of another sob—with the suddenness of a fired gun—sparks of heat explode low in your belly, and there is a blast of furious pressure at your groin.

All the breath floods out your lungs in a dizzy rush. You gape, airless, and every feverish thought is halted. For a moment, you believe with your entire being that Michael has taken your clit between his fingers and pinched down viciously.

With a shriek and a squeal you rocket up from the deck, mindless as a panicked animal, your sole directive to escape the torment between your legs. You buck your hips wildly to get away, away, away from the merciless pressure.

In response, Michael’s grip on your arms snaps bruisingly tight. He thrusts you right back down into the wood.

Clammy needles seize you everywhere and new panic bursts shrilly in your mind, telling you that you must break free of The Shape’s dreadful hold by any means, to fight and claw and do whatever it takes to escape his murderous hands, his monstrous strength, scream your lungs raw, wake the neighbors, consequences be damned, and you agree. You agree wholeheartedly.

With furious purpose, you throw your head back and scream.

One piercing note makes it past your lips before Michael’s hand slams down over your face.

The hot palm engulfs your jaw with ease. Strong fingers wrap around your cheek and curl in tightly. You are rendered mute in an instant.

Fresh sobs wrack your body; you can still smell the blood from his hunt.

In a moment of jarring clarity, you realize that it cannot be Michael’s hand tormenting your cunt—both of them are restraining you.

It occurs to you now where you are, and what actions got you here in the first place, and oh, of course, it's a jacuzzi jet—

—and Michael knows which button turns it on.

This is your punishment, then. How foolish you had been to believe that Michael would take your life before making you thrash a final time in his hands.

You are not keen on giving him the satisfaction of that.

But the pressure at your cunt is staggering, and you have no choice.

You yell uselessly into Michael’s hand and twist your body as if on fire, pulling at his staggering grip, whipping your head this way and that. The vibrations rock you to your core. Everything below your hips is flooded with a terrible, pulsing warmth.

For the sum of your fight, all that can be achieved against Michael’s strength can hardly be called a wiggle.

Fireworks rocket up your spine and down into your toes which curl tightly. A sheen of cold sweat has erupted all across your face; it stains your cheeks between Michael’s fingers and courts there with your tears. The mixture rolls off the tip of your nose and plinks on the back of his hand. Your body aches terribly with fatigue but you cannot stop.

You squirm at the pummeling of your clit, at the terrible dizzying heat of it all, against Michael’s mortifying strength. Moments become minutes. The heat is swelling now to terrible extremes, filling you deep inside, coiling low in your belly, pulsing, throbbing. You can feel the slick building between your legs, sickening arousal. You squirm in Michael’s hands until your muscles throb and burn and threaten to seize. You have long since begun to beg him again—you can’t possibly take this. The words are hopelessly muffled but you are sure he can feel the vibrations, sure he can guess at your meaning, please, please, sorry, so sorry, please no more.

He hears it, you realize, but only because your begging has had the opposite effect—his cock throbs horrendously against your ass cheek, pulsing with new excitement.

At three minutes, your strength is gone, used up like a tank chugging along for miles on the barest of fumes, slowing to a crawl, and then a sudden stop.

You collapse on the deck. With a frightful shudder, you go limp in Michael’s stranglehold. Your cunt clenches around nothing. You tremble violently with a torturous orgasm.

Michael looms behind you a terrible wall of uncompromising muscle and heat. His steam sweeps against your back, clinging as moisture to your skin—skin which now feels too hot and tight for your own body. Your clit is swollen with a ceaseless pounding that throbs like a migraine in your temples and cunt alike. Fresh tears shimmer in your eyes. You draw breath deeply, nostrils flaring to gulp up air—drawing it around Michael’s hand is hard, but it is not impossible.

Your orgasm wilts and fades. You hope Michael will turn off the jet now.

Michael does not.

You whine pitifully; not knowing his purpose is a thought worse than death.

Is his goal merely to toy with you? To squeeze your body for the rest of its amusement?

The runoff from your torso has collected now in a clammy puddle beneath you and you shiver in it, at the cold and the heat, at the disgusting conflict between the two. Dreadful anticipation gnaws at your insides, twisting your stomach into knots. You try your hardest to cry again; but the wells have run dry, and nothing comes out.

Michael’s grip on your face relaxes slowly. Rough fingers drag across your skin as he lets go. A breeze beats faintly against your sweat-drenched cheeks and tickles your nape, and although you cannot enjoy it in this state, on some level, the cool air feels nice.

His hand returns again quickly. His palm digs in between your shoulder blades, hot and firm, spanning a startling width of you. He begins to lean forward, burdening you with his immense weight.

You know Michael means to pin you. You do not think you need to be pinned, not in this state—but this is still a hunt to him, and you are still his prey, and captured prey that is still alive to breathe and squirm and resist him must be subdued.

He pushes down until your chest is flush against the wood. Your heart hammers thunderously away on the deck, and you pray that he will not see it fit to crush you beneath him, to fracture your ribs and squash your lungs as he so easily could.

By some miracle, he does not.

The air behind you shifts suddenly. Water sloshes around your thighs as Michael steps forward. The heat of his body sweeps against you, the wet skin of his pelvis dragging against your backside, pressing in even closer. The burn of his arousal shifts against your goosebump-freckled ass.

And now it is prodding between your legs.

You heave a frail whimper as the swollen tip drags through the slick. Some pit of you aches for the first version of your death, the one where he bashes your brains out on the deck and leaves you a lifeless corpse floating face-down in churning red water. You do not want to die sobbing on Michael’s cock.

He sits huge and throbbing at your opening for a moment. Breathing. Waiting for some invisible cue. Perhaps just enjoying your reactions.

You tense your jaw, clenching your teeth until they ache, begging your body to relax, please, and maybe it will lessen the hurt; but the pressure of the jet will not allow your spasming muscles to go to slack.

You sniffle weakly, head knocking uselessly against the deck, and resign yourself to pain.

His grip on your wrists snakes tighter, holding you fast.

He takes you with a roll of his hips.

Your sniffling builds in your throat shrilly; but not to a scream.

You feel him stretching your walls, deeper and deeper, but it is miles away from the brutality you are so accustomed to, worlds away, infact. Michael sinks into you, and it is slow.

Your brain cries out, What on earth is he doing? But the rest of your body can’t find it within you to care.

You gape at the stretch of him. Your eyes wrinkle shut and you gasp as he nudges something deep inside of you, your cervix—wincing when he prods firmly at the flesh, pushing even deeper.

Michael’s thighs meet your ass all at once. You whine at the distinct pop of him seating himself completely inside of you. Pressed so firmly against the deck, you realize that you can feel the bulge of his cock sitting in your belly, a huge, straining pressure.

He holds himself inside you there, pounding and hot. You wish with all your being that you could muster the courage to let Michael know just how much you hate him.

This is just another of his cruel tricks, of course. The possibility that it is not is inconceivable. Michael does not fuck you slowly. Never. When next he snaps his hips back, you know that his following thrust will rearrange something inside of you.

A groan dribbles past your lips as he pulls out of you with the same taunting slowness, as if taking his time.

His next thrust is no different from the first.

You are gripped in a feverish shudder as he fills you again. Slow. Thudding. Hot. Your face wrinkles up and your nails dig into your palms so tightly that you think they might bleed. Not out of pain; simply because you can’t bear it. Not when you can feel every burning inch of him pulsing along your walls.

Hunkering down even closer to your body, Michael settles into his rhythm.

His hips snap forward quicker, filling you with his girth. He pulls out slower, frustratingly so. He seems almost to linger at your clenching opening before plunging in again. It is a deep fucking, meticulous and thorough.

You lie sniveling and whining on the clammy wood, stretched again and again. With what few thoughts cling to coherency in your mind, you scrabble to assign meaning to his actions.

Maybe he is making a statement about the cock you refused to keep down.

(In again, filling you up.)

Maybe he’s just entertaining himself with your frightened body, letting your fear of him spiral out of control, squeezing you dry of every last drop of fun.

(Out again now, and some tiny stupid part of you laments his loss as he goes.)

You settle upon the explanation that Michael is still waiting for just the right moment to hurt you. You clutch on to this truth and refuse to let go, because it is all that you have, because Michael does not fuck you slowly, because he is a predator, and you are nothing but a hole, and the moment you buy the trick and relax around his cock is the moment the hurt will begin.

When Michael’s rhythm changes suddenly, it is the opposite of your fears.

His methodical pace begins to falter. His calculated thrusts are growing sloppier with every snap of his hips.

And most terrible of all, he is stooping down closer to your body with every passing second.

The pressure of his palm on your back increases like a hydraulic press. Your feverish squirming is pinned to an unbearable standstill. Fresh terror rears up in your gut and you suck in breath deeply, knowing you have only moments before your ribs strain with his weight and your lungs are robbed of the commodity of air.

The moment never arrives.

He is only deepening his angle to reach your furthest places. Your eyes brim with overfull tears; your cunt now has nowhere to go but flat against the jet.

And with an appropriate cruelness, Michael’s cock has begun to strike something within you that makes you see stars.

You reel in his gasp, nearly crying out at the constant striking pressure—scarfing the noise down at the last second, for fear of being muzzled again. You do not want that hand over your face again. You do not want to smell the blood again. Please god, you do not.

Your only solace is that Michael is getting close.

You know it because his thrusts are growing more unbearable; he is trying to drive himself deeper, deeper, deeper into your hole.

Then comes the epiphany, short and sweet and obvious, an echo of an earlier observation:

It is late. The water is hot. And Michael is tired.

Suddenly, all is clear. He has settled on a sluggish rut into your body because he cannot be damned to put in the effort to fuck you any other way.

It is not just Michael you hate now, but yourself, too, because the slow pistoning of his cock has turned you near-delirious with sickening need. You know his gentleness is not deliberate—you know it like you know the sky is blue—but your body cannot seem to tell the difference. The heat has begun to coil low in your belly again.

Michael stoops even lower. You shudder down to your toes; you can feel his steaming breath beating against your nape, heavy and hot. God no, that’s too close. Far too close.

The dreadful intimacy is your breaking point.

You begin your feverish squirming again all at once, pulling weakly at the huge hand caging your wrists, seeking relief from the bombardment of sensations, the endless taunting of the jet, the slow burn of Michael filling your belly with cock over and over, again and again. The heat in your sex is surging horribly, building to tower over your head.

Without thought, you pull madly at your restraints.

In that same moment, Michael’s groin grows suddenly tense against your backside. You feel his muscles locking rigidly—

—and his horrendous heat and weight stooping forward all at once, careening into you—

—and as his dangerous body curls stiflingly around yours, he comes deep inside your belly.

Mortified does not even begin to describe the ugly panic that rears up inside of you. Your eyes snap shut tight and you can’t keep a lid on your distraught little noises. No no no NO, too close; the bare skin of his wet chest is ridiculously hot. He’s going to burn you up with his heat. Going to sear your lungs, going to suffocate you. Please, please, you can’t handle it now, not when he has threatened plain as day to rip your life away, not when in the past hour alone he has drowned you and choked you with himself and flipped your twisted illusion of need for him belly-up, exposing the hate and fear, fear that might stop your heart before his hands do. You cannot handle such cruelties when he has done all those things; you can’t handle such dreadful closeness.

You reel beneath Michael’s immobilizing weight, wiggling your hips and ass against his pelvis with a choked little sob—useless. He has you mounted on his cock like a trophy on a fixture, skewered in place, and in the end, all you manage is a futile squirming against his balls, a hot wet friction which elevates the throbbing low in your sex to a delirious pounding.

Some low reverberation begins in his chest and builds. It vibrates through your spine, rumbling up his sternum, building nearly into a short and gruff grunt before being stifled expertly. The pressure of the jet is trivial now, small, small, small—Michael’s frightful body eclipses your world.

The moment he stops pumping you full of cum, you are aware of it.

The mountain of muscle encasing you loses its tension more with every passing moment; the powerful tremors no longer ripple through his abdomen; and you can feel the heat of his mess sitting deep inside of you, threatening to burn through your stomach and spill out onto the deck below.

It is your undoing.

Your body tenses frightfully beneath his. Your second orgasm spills over.

It fades, with a shudder and a pitiful moan. You are so sore, so tender, so aching, so numb. You would beg him again if you could, for an end to the torment of the jet—but you don’t think you could formulate words even to scream bloody murder.

Your pussy clenches around Michael’s girth, squeezing him feverishly. You are not stupid—even if you could beg him, he would offer you no relief.

Against your back, Michael’s chest rises with breath, deep and slow. You realize, heart thundering louder in your ears, that he has rested his head on the deck somewhere above your own. He is watching you.

Your own breaths are a rapid gasping; the thought of meeting that black gaze again is more than you can possibly handle. You tuck your chin into your shoulder and refuse to return his look.

Minutes begin to pass. A new fear surges within you, fear that he will keep you pinned like this all night, that he will sleep here, dick stuffed in your belly, jacuzzi jets forcing you into an endless cycle of shuddering orgasms. It would be so easy for him to just keep you, trapped and defenseless, unable to wiggle, unable, if he chooses, to scream.

And then some pitiful thought comes crawling up through the weary haze; At least Michael is not hurting you.

You want to tell it to go and fuck itself. You also latch onto it with a grip colder and harder than death. Yes, that’s right; at least Michael is touching your body, and he isn’t hurting you.

In time, he clambers up and off you.

His stifling heat and weight retreat. You feel his thigh brushing against your calf as he sinks down on the jacuzzi seat, displacing massive quantities of water which seethe around your sides. He tugs forcefully on your wrists.

A breathless little whine seizes you as you are swept like a ragdoll into his lap.

Too frightened to move, chanting once more with your desolate plea of please, sorry, please don’t hurt me, you let him handle your limp body without a struggle.

His wet grip slides free of your hands. You are sure there are red furrows in your wrists from the ferocity with which he held you but you don’t dare to crane your neck and look, because he is reaching for your body again, up toward your neck, one terrible hand locking around your throat—ensuring you will go nowhere. His breaths beat hot and heavy across your scalp.

Scrunching up in a grimace, you squeeze your eyes shut. You cannot look Michael in the face again. You cannot risk knowing if that uncompromising murder still seethes there. You think to see that look again will kill you. A fresh set of tears searing your cheeks, you wait to be ruined.

His rough palm comes down suddenly over your breast. Your lips part in a startled little gasp. He gropes it roughly, fingers digging into sweat-warmed flesh with an adamant squeeze, a sadistic tugging motion that pulls your skin taut. There is a terrible jolt of heat to your hips as his thumb closes over your nipple.

Michael pinches you slowly and firmly. You squirm in the cage of his arms, craning your head as if to arch away from his cruelness, but doing so only settles you further into the bulk of his burning neck, his shoulder searing unbearably against your cheek, an inescapable wall of muscle, and you can do nothing.

He pulls and pinches. Palms and kneads. His rough hand toys with your breasts until they are dreadfully sore.

You resign yourself to waiting for the moment when your last drop of amusement has been spent; when that damning hand around your throat is snapping shut like a vice.

You wait, and you wait, and you wait.

Minutes pass; Michael has not tired of playing with your body, and you are still waiting.

After a while, his hand wanders elsewhere. To the numbed flesh of your tormented sex, where it squeezes and palms just as adamantly. He thrusts a curious finger up your slickness to feel his own mess there, his hot seed still oozing out. You grunt feverishly at his probing but remain limp and useless in his grip. Still waiting.

When half an hour has passed, and Michael’s methodical hands have violated every inch of you, and you are still allowed to draw your shuddering breaths beneath his hands, reason finally forces its way to the surface beyond the confusion, the panic, the dread. The reality of Michael’s actions becomes shockingly, pathetically simple:

He was never going to kill you.

He has been working you into a dreadful fright for the last half-hour, dangling the promise of ripping your life away over your head—but he was never going to deliver. Not tonight. Every action until now has been a purposeful manipulation of your suffocating fear of him.

You expect to feel dizzy relief; instead, you only feel tired.

Sleep and the heat of the water weigh heavy on your battered mind. If you could muster the courage to beg Michael now, your words would be, please drag me upstairs, please take me to bed, do what you want with me, but please, after that, please let me sleep.

Michael’s violation of your flesh does not slow. With a soft, defeated groan, you come to terms with the fact that any rest in the coming hour will be against his terrible body.

Your breaths are still dizzyingly shallow; relaxing into Michael is hard, as it always is, but you try.

You focus on the symphony of night. The chirping katydids, the whistling wind through the overbearing trees. You focus on the hot water seething around your middle, no longer a burn but a blanketing warmth. You wait for Michael’s fun to be over, for him to sling you over his shoulder and haul you up to bed like a favored toy, coveted because there is still amusement to be squeezed from your body, still plentiful fun to be had.

With that fantasy vivid in your mind, you surrender to Michael’s warm hands.

#Michael Myers #michael myers x reader #slashers #slasher x reader #tw: noncon #tw: abuse #darkfic #writing #horror #fanfiction #halloween

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skittlestrash · 3 years

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clearly, i have Thoughts.

well it’s nice to see that people still have ‘hating tyler posey’ as a personality trait long after the show has ended!

a) unless I have missed something (which! is possible!), his comment about being objectified is something he has taken back/gotten over. like, people are allowed to change their minds and second-guess things even if they stick with it/like other things about it/enjoy being naked ;P

b) also, and this ties in to ‘c’, he is like. notoriously honest and unfiltered. it means he doesn’t always word things the best way. I have never really heard or seen him actually being MEAN to anyone?? the angriest I’ve ever seen him is when he went off on transphobic assholes.

c) as always, I see people are complaining about him ~baiting~ and pandering. I saw some tweet the other day like “you are not pansexual!!” he NEVER SAID HE WAS. he never fuckin gave himself a label; everyone ELSE is doing that!! thus far it seems the ‘sexually fluid’ label seems the most fitting--because guess what! even if he is Mostly Straight that doesn’t negate his own fuckin personal experiences. he’s not BAITING just by nonchalantly describing his own life experiences and it’s honestly gross to me that people keep doing this about him hjshfjksd

d) I also like how people that have supposedly been around act Super Shocked that he’s Like This as if he hasn’t always been. yes, there’s more...information we know now, but he has ALWAYS talked about sex and been ridiculous. yes, even ~back in the teen wolf days~ Anyone remember Doin’ it Raw? (I miss it) anyone recall video of him naked from behind and shooting his girlfriend with nerf darts or whatever? anyone remember behind the scenes video of him shakin’ it in boxer briefs in the school showers set? anyone maybe recall the interview where he GOT WHIPPED BY A PROFESSIONAL DOMINATRIX AND DUG IT? because I sure recall all of that!

e) lololol at people constantly like ~he’s so unemployed~ like... I think he’s okay. he had roles lined up before covid hit; who knows if they’re still being planned or not, but also: he is constantly making music with some of his FAVORITE MUSICIANS. travis barker drummed on his song. john feldman produces his shit. he’s gonna release two EPs this year even if he doesn’t act another day (which I hope he does!). I am preeeetty sure he’s good. (also, he has ALWAYS been teen wolf’s biggest fan, supporter, and leader. which of course makes it even grosser for all the hate and racism aimed at him, buuuut yeah. so naturally he’s gonna always be like “yeah I’d love to do it again :D”; it doesn’t automatically equal LOL BECAUSE HE CAN’T GET WORK OTHERWISE)

f) back to pandering for a second--no, talking about hooking up with a dude is not automatically pandering. you CAN argue that onlyfans as a whole, and especially those video chats, are pandering, but that’s...what they’re there for. people are kinda paying to see people naked or almost naked. they’re paying to ask insanely sexual and personal questions. what on earth do you expect?! (this is not me JUDGING anyone on onlyfans by the way. there’s a reason I’M not on onlyfans--no one wants to see me and I also don’t want to be seen ;P) and would you rather he somehow screen so that only straight women are allowed to look at his stuff?? otherwise it’s BAITING and pandering to ~the gays~??

g) in other news, I do, however, worry a lot about his lack of sobriety. he SAYS it’s not nearly like it was before he got sober, but is it? will it get bad again? PLEASE BE SAFE AND HEALTHY I WORRY SO MUCH :(

h) NATURALLY I forgot something: but! various actors DO like... ~discover~ more about themselves when planning certain roles! did it ever occur to anyone that MAYBE his playing a bi dude and then a GAY dude maybe made him like 'huh, I am curious about what it'd be like' ?! (though even before that he mentioned how he’d Do Stuff with guys if he wanted, or whatever, see: Doin’ it Raw)

um. to sum up (lol), I am just so amused at how I, one that scrolls very carefully through the posey tags with my eyes squinted so I can move quickly past bare ass and Other Things, am like, less traumatized than the judgey mcjudgers.

byeeeeeee I still want him to do a cover of ‘punk rock princess’ if anyone can make that happen ;D

#tyler posey #meaningful conversation #lmao not really but

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katsukis-sad-angel · 4 years

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Thorns

Pairing: Alpha!Katsuki Bakugou x F!Omega!Reader

Word Count: 1.5K

Summary: Two clans have been at war for generations, one obviously more superior to the other, but that didn’t stop the constant bloodshed and turf wars. Being a tiny omega has its benefits and its struggles, but one day when you finally get banished, an aggressive blonde alpha takes you for his own.

Warnings: a/b/o dynamics, swearing, mentions of abandonment, bakugou’s thicc shoulders

A/N: My first tumblr series!! UGH. I hope this isn’t too bad. I’ve been working on this for a while so I hope you enjoy it. I’m super excited for chapter 2!

Chapter 1 💖 Chapter 2 💖 Chapter 3 💖 Chapter 4 💖 Chapter 5 💖 Chapter 6 💖 Chapter 7 💖

Chapter 1; Thorns

Gnats clouded your vision, each tiny bug making a dive for your tearstained face and getting caught in vicious swipes of your stained hands. The sound of running water was nearby, but each thicket of needle-like plants didn’t bring the calming noise any closer. Your trembling arms were ripped to shreds by the spines jutting from each branch.

That’s probably why the bugs were bothering you.

You had been traveling for days with no real sense of direction; the only thing you did know was you had to get as far away from your family lands as fast as possible.

The wind ruffled your tangly, (h/c) hair and blew your shredded dress around your bloody ankles. Your bare feet were scraped up as well, but you hardly noticed it when the sun came out. Its rays warmed your skin and gave you small comfort in your dire situation. The horrid clouds of insects dissipated quickly and you took a deep breath for the first time in hours.

A scent, it was of wood smoke and bubbling caramel, caught in the wind and invaded your nostrils.

An alpha.

No.

Your teary eyes widened and you looked around, hoping to get a glimpse of the owner of the scent.

No luck.

Had they smelled you? No, impossible. That morning, you had taken the utmost precautions and scrubbed your glands with clay and silt from a tiny stream.

A growl, deep and guttural met your ears from close by accompanied by the crackle of breaking twigs.

Scared, you tried to fight your way into a small clearing not too far ahead. Your scent going from a sweet meld of lavender and honey to the stench of dead roses made the alpha in your pursuit wrinkle his nose and pause where he crouched. He considered his options; grab you, grab you and knock you out, or let you go free. This was his clan’s territory! Just because you were an omega didn’t change that you were from an enemy clan! That’s why he had been tracking your movements. He couldn’t let your people get the upper hand.

You continued your frantic, yet futile attempts to escape the alpha. His bloodlust and anger were practically tangible. Thorn bushes tore across your limbs, sticks and rocks poked your sore feet but with the adrenaline pumping through your veins, you didn’t even feel the pain.

Nettles.

Mistaking it for a cluster of mint leaves, you plowed through it and immediately realized your fatal mistake. It felt like millions of tiny knives embedded themselves in your calves and feet. With a blood-curdling scream, you tripped over your own feet and fell face-first into the clearing you’d been aiming for.

Your poor legs, however, weren’t as lucky. From mid-thigh to your feet, nettle plants pressed their tiny hairs into your calf, raising welts as big as walnuts on the bloodied skin.

Sharp cries left your lips until you were able to worm your way into the clearing completely, lifting your skirt to see the damage done by the stupid leaves.

You had completely forgotten about the alpha. When he came out of the brush, his red eyes were fixed on you. Your sad cries faltered as your dilated, frightened orbs met his own. He approached you, fists clenched, vermillion cape fluttering by his feet, a thick fur collar settled around his throat, necklaces made of teeth and colored beads clattering and jingling against his broad chest as he moved. He was broad-shouldered and extremely muscular, but his face still held a childlike pudge, despite the weathered skin adorning them.

In short, he was very intimidating and very handsome.

Now he stood above you, glaring harshly with a scowl contorting his lips.

“Why the hell are you in our lands? You got a death wish or sum shit? Don’t you know what we do to people from your clan?” His tone was as harsh as the look in his eyes.

You cowered against a tree, fearful of what he would do. He didn’t look much older than you were but something in his stare told you he wouldn’t have a problem with fucking you raw and then slitting your throat.

“I-I’m s-sorry,” You whimpered, “I d-didn’t know I entered this part of the country! Please, f-forgive me! I mean n-no harm! I was exiled b-by my cl-clan!”

The alpha narrowed his eyes.

“Why the fuck should I trust you?” He leaned down so you were forced to meet and hold his iron gaze. The scent of fear emanating from your glands made him flare his nostrils in disgust. “You a spy?”

Pressing yourself further into the trunk, you shook your head vigorously.

He leaned closer, “Merchant? You sellin’ shit? Where’s your cart?”

Again, you shook your head.

His musk was suffocating; the smell boiling sugar over a smoky fire rolled over you in waves, making it difficult to focus, let alone breathe.

“Please… please d-don’t hurt me a-alpha.”

He growled in response.

“You got a name?”

“Y… Y/n.” Your voice was barely above a whisper.

“Tch-”

Suddenly the world went upside down. You squealed loudly when you realized what had just happened. The alpha had grabbed you and flipped you over his shoulder as though you weighed nothing. When you began to squirm, he nipped at the flesh of your thigh as a warning so you went still.

“Where… where are you t-taking me?” You whimper as he stood and began to walk through the trees.

“I’m the one asking the damn questions.” He snapped. After a moment of silence, you heard him sigh.

“Why the hell would they exile you? From what I’ve seen, your lame-ass tribe needs all the help they can get!” He snickered at the expense of your people, shaking his head at the mere thought of the last battle. His clan had defeated yours in less than 24 hours, killing all of the strongest alphas and pushing you even further back into the land of your fathers.

“I’m a runt.” You replied in a small voice.

“‘Scuse me?”

“I’m a runt. The s-smallest of the litter. I c-couldn’t speak for the first s-six years of my life b-because my v-vocal cords were underdeveloped. I’ve been an embarrassment to m-my clan since the b-beginning and they t-turned m-me away when I screwed up the rite of passage meal.”

“Never seen one of those.” He mused, “A runt? Hold on, deku is a bitchy little runt.” He adjusted his arm over your knees, “You are kinda shrimpy though.”

You wilted.

“Thanks.”

After a few more minutes of bird-serenaded travel, he spoke again, “Are runts supposed to be this thin?”

“I’m always the last in line for food and I eat whatever’s left.”

A hawk screeched overhead.

“And that would be…?”

“Not much.”

It was quiet again, no sound except the distant rush and bubble of water and birds chirping. The alpha wasn’t as bad as you thought; crude when he spoke, rough when he moved, and a cocky asshole, but there was something endearing about him. It was frightening.

“Alright dummy, don’t fucking move or show your face. Can’t let anyone see you. You’re mine.”

“Y-Yours?”

“Damn right.”

The sun licked your back, warming your tattered limbs and stinging legs. You smelled fire, metal, and cooking meat. Voices could be heard as well, children playing, men talking, and women gossiping.

Suddenly someone shouted, “Katsuki! You’re back!”

He grunted in response, but you knew he was smirking.

“What do you want?” He barked, “I’m busy!”

“We missed you!” Three voices said in unison. They were young girls.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! Hey, what’cha got there?”

“Mine.”

“Ooh! Is it an omega? Did you finally get a girl?”

“Maybe he’s gay! Is it a boy? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

“Back up! Stay away!”

The alpha was growling now, turning from left to right as people heard their conversation and became interested.

“He finally found an omega?”

“Took him long enough.”

“Wonder who she is.”

“She looks real thin, is she dead?”

“He’s bonding with a corpse? What the-”

“MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS!” He screeched.

You could hear him growling. He began to move quickly through the growing crowds of people, all of them trying to catch a glimpse of the prince’s omega.

After deeming all omega maidens of his clan, ‘gross’ he’d been searching for months to find a suitable mate. If he didn’t find a mate soon, he wouldn’t get to become the leader of his clan.

You were perfect.

You feared him.

Despite your injuries and excessive thinness, you were gorgeous.

You were ripe for the picking; a young, fertile female who would be his, who would carry his pups despite your origins.

You were submissive.

You depended on him.

He loved it.

Reaching the tent in the middle of if the camp, he tore back one of the curtains and entered the expensively decorated and well-lit room.

Kneeling spitefully before his parents, he lay you on the ground before them like an offering.

“Hey hag. Found one.”

Main Masterlist

@seiiblue , @bean-queen-606

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years

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Mongul

Wanted to chat about another Superman Rogue who has been around a while: Mongul.

Background

Now this guy enjoys something of a mixed reputation. On one hand he, unlike many other Superman classic Rogues, has actually been in some good stories. There’s the iconic For The Man Who Has Everything by Alan Moore which is the perfect encapsulation of his core character traits. There he’s a hulking brute, with enough raw power to go toe to toe with Superman and actually hurt him with physical force alone. He’s crude, making misogynistic comments to Wonder Woman, and gleefully reveling in the conquest he plans. Yet he’s also clever, using the Black Mercy to incapacitate his foe, and has an air of faux affability to him that only adds to his menace.

It should come as no surprise that an Alan Moore story is still Mongul’s best showing, but there are other stories worth mentioning as well. There’s Superman: Exile, the first meeting between the Post-Crisis Superman and Mongul and personally one of my favorite Post-Crisis Superman stories. There’s Mongul’s debut Pre-Crisis issue where he and Warworld first appear. There’s his attempt to hijack the Sinestro Corps during the Johns era of Green Lantern. Finally there’s his usage in Bendis Superman, which has been the first time in ages he’s been treated as a serious threat, and given an interesting way to serve as a contrast as Superman.

So why does he suffer from a mixed reputation? Well...

He sure does look familiar doesn’t he? He was created by Len Wein and Jim Starlin, and Starlin you might recall was the creator of Thanos, who was a ripoff of Darkseid. So Mongul is a copy of a copy, lacking the grandeur of Darkseid and the ambition of Thanos. He and Apocalypse are both cast in Darkseid’s mold, and have both gotten one really great and iconic storyline that guarantees they’ll stick around, but have also not traditionally fared well outside that one story. Also like Apocalypse:

He has a really bad habit of jobbing and being used by writers to prop up their characters. Jurgens used him to prop up Hank Henshaw in Reign of the Supermen and Henshaw again along with Zod in the Rebirth arc Revenge!, giving him a reputation as a joke. He also got killed by Sinestro pretty easily during his coup attempt.

Besides that he’s also unfortunately been treated as a generic tyrant for Superman to beat up, lacking much in the way of characterization, or in being a meaningful contrast to Superman beyond “Superman uses his strength to serve others, Mongul uses his to oppress them”. For a while I kind of wrote him off as a lost cause, someone that really didn’t offer anything as a Superman opponent beyond that one Alan Moore story. But recently I’ve changed my opinion; I’ve come to believe Mongul does in fact serve an important purpose and should be treated as an essential part of the Superman Rogues Gallery. Part of this turnabout was caused by really enjoying his usage in Bendis’ Superman run, which caused me to do a reread of Mongul stories, and got me thinking about who Mongul is, what he’s about, and what role he plays.

What Role Mongul Plays

A crucial realization hit me while I was rereading Mongul stories: Mongul is The Bully of the Supermythos.

He’s the guy who doesn’t delude himself into thinking he’s the hero like Lex does. He doesn’t consider himself above petty emotions or notions of right and wrong like Brainiac. He doesn’t have a sympathetic background like General Zod does. He’s the guy who enjoys pounding people into the dirt, who doesn’t mask his desire to lord over the populace behind pretenses of noble intentions. He’s gleeful as he crushes his enemies beneath his heel, he’s petty in that he enjoys forcing people to fight for his amusement, he’s dangerous in that while Darkseid can be bargained with, Mongul is always going to prefer to take what he wants via force and is powerful enough to do just that. In other words, he’s the exact kind of guy Superman started out wanting to take down, just living in the cosmic space where Superman can actually kick his ass without it feeling like punching down.

That core ethos, beautifully summed up in All-Star Superman, is in direct opposition to Mongul’s entire lifestyle. When the United Planets starts to form in Bendis’ Superman, Mongul is outraged, not just because it may pose a threat to him, but because the very idea of the “weak” uniting into a stronger whole downright offends him. He runs Warworld to cull the “weak and unfit” of the universe for his own amusement and entertainment, the petty schoolyard bully who has turned a planet-sized Death Star into his own playground, and he climbed to the top via crushing anyone that stood against him with his own two hands or outwitting them with his brain. He’s got no time for others who think they can rise above their station in life without the physical/mental power to back that desire up. If Superman believes that everyone is capable of greatness, Mongul is a firm believer that greatness is the sole purview of the very few (and really only himself).

This core conflict allows writers to bring back the bully hunter of the Golden Age and early New 52 t-shirt and jeans Supermen. Here’s a guy, a foreign ruler no less, who is actively oppressing people. We get to enjoy seeing Superman taking on a foreign dictator because he’s off in space instead of doing so here on Earth where thorny parallels to American interventionism abroad would be raised. Superman can be the Champion of the Oppressed again, and that’s always something I enjoy seeing.

I’d also like to bring up why Mongul was originally created. Len Wein wanted a foe for Superman who could match him physically. In other words, Mongul is like Doomsday if Doomsday actually had a personality. Mongul offers the opportunity for deeper exploration of Superman that Doomsday can’t. We know this literally because Mongul’s best story isn’t just a slugfest between the two the way Doomsday’s is. For The Man Who Has Everything is one of the best explorations of just how damn lonely being the Last Son of Krypton is for Kal. Exile explores the ethics of Superman’s no kill rule, his belief in the sanctity of life, his struggles to hold onto that belief in the face of the cruelty of others. His usage in Bendis’ run is to illustrate just how fragile the United Planets is, how easily it can break apart, and how hard Superman is going to have to strive to make it work. PKJ used Mongul in his Future State Superman: Worlds of War stories to show the lengths Superman will go to liberate others, his defiance in the face of Mongul’s attempts to break him. There’s an opportunity for psychological evaluation of Superman when Mongul shows up that just isn’t there with Doomsday. That alone is reason to keep him around, but he also brings a bunch of cool shit in addition.

Cool Aspects Mongul Brings to the Supermythos

He’s got a Death Star that doubles as a gladiator coliseum, where we get to see Superman compete with other gladiators from across the cosmos. Mongul lets Superman channel that Conan brutality in a very entertaining way, putting Superman in a setting where he’s facing lots of foes who can go up against him with raw strength and numbers alone.

It’s a place that channels that pulp science fiction that Superman was borne from in a very entertaining way in my opinion. Also they should set a Superman video game there (but that’s another blog post). The gladiators are also useful, either as oppressed prisoners for Superman to liberate, and showcase directly how he makes life better, or as bloodthirsty mooks that can actually challenge Superman without dimishing him.

The Black Mercy is an awesome science fiction concept. While it’s been overused in relation to Mongul, it’s also the embodiment of the unknown wonders and threats of DC Cosmic. In the right hands it’s a great tool for exploring characters’ psychology.

Bendis and Fraction reestablished that the name “Mongul” is a legacy one. The current Mongul is from a long line of Monguls, the sons killing their fathers when their fathers show weakness. Given how Rebirth has established the importance of legacy to Superman with Jon, something continued by Bendis, this may be a very crucial aspect to play off of. The way “Mongul” as a mantle is assumed is a dark contrast to the way the “Superman” mantle is taken up by others after Clark. Exploring the Mongul father-son relationship in contrast to the Clark-Jon relationship may be in the cards for the PKJ run given Mongul will be the first classic Superman Rogue appearing in PKJ Action. If not I hope some other writer will take a chance to explore the way the two contrast and compare with one another because it could be very interesting.

What I Would Change About Mongul

I think there’s already a pretty damn solid base to build off of with Mongul, but some aspects that I would play up to better establish him as separate from both Clark and Darkseid:

Making him more of a hedonist. This is a guy who eat, drinks, and fucks, and enjoys himself while doing so. He loves being a bad guy and isn’t “weighed down by his sins” or any such nonsense

Showcase his knowledge more. Mongul is smart, he’s been all over the cosmos, he learned about Warworld and the Black Mercy, show that he knows other dangerous secrets as well. Weapons, planets, florua, fauna, Mongul knows stuff not even the Guardians do

Establish some underlings. Instead of having Mongul job, use some of his gladiators, elite ones raised above the riffraff who can pose a threat and hold off Superman while Mongul accomplishes his goals

Appearance wise I’d like to make him look more different from Darkseid. I’d want to draw on dinosaurs for his look. If you need to justify it, just have another son replace the current Mongul and become the new Mongul, or have Mongul modify himself with enhancements in order to beat Superman

Mongul is cool and brings a lot to the table, DC just needs to stop treating him as a jobber and more as a legitimate threat. I was happy with how Bendis used him, and I am hopeful that PKJ will continue to treat him well. He’s a villain who actually has stories that showcase why he rocks, and not just cool ideas that have never come together like other Superman Rogues. Hopefully he’ll get more opportunities to showcase that.

#superman #mongul #dc comics #alan moore #brian bendis #phillip kennedy johnson #len wein #jim starlin #warworld #future state

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ostrichlady · 3 years

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THOUGHTS AND RAMBLES ABOUT SNK CHAPTER 139 (SPOILERS!!)

Rating of this chapter: Lukewarm tea.

And everyone knows lukewarm tea tastes bad.

I do think the best way to deal with this chapter is to not overanalyze it. Read it once, call it quits and move on. I did that and felt great the next day. But because I spent too many years of my life in this story, of course the thoughts came back and there are a few things I need to say before leaving this story behind.

I never wanted a happy or tragic ending. I never wanted for everything to be solved neither for everything to end on a depressing note. The only thing I ever asked for was that the finale was fair and made sense.

But unfortunately, what happened was the exact opposite.

Everything that happened after the 3 years time skip was a big whatever and the only thing that comforts me is that Armin is alive, and Historia seems happy with her child.

I still don’t understand why Reiner and Annie were so easily accepted. I mean, at least Reiner showed huge amounts of regret and we saw how he dealt with the trauma that everything caused to him (although now he's back to being a creep for Historia? Ew). But Annie? She herself admitted she would do the same shit all over again no problem, and why was she tearing after talking to Eren in the PATHS? Didn’t she say a few chapters ago that if they had to kill him, she wouldn’t hesitate and was almost judging Mikasa and Armin for not thinking the same way? Excuse me Annie, but what made you so emotional all of the sudden?

Then we learn that the world is still a very dangerous place for Eldians and Paradis; the yeagerists are in charge of the military force and will swoop the alliance’s ass very easily if they find them chilling outside. And my question is: killing 80%of the population lead to this? Really? At any moment, Eldians can be exterminated, this is even worst than before!? They don’t have proper military training, the world still doesn’t like them and the alliance ambassadors or whatever are not very liked either sooo...I truly don’t understand the point of this. Now, don’t get me wrong: I never liked the Rumbling plan because as Hange said, "There's never a good enough reason for committing genocide", and I also always believed the Rumbling would make everyone else hate Eldians even more. But if 80% of people had to have their lives taken, at least don’t let it go to waste!?

Anyways, going back to when they’re still at war.

So Eren went around everyone’s mind and now everyone cries for him. A little late, but sure.

Everyone who was transformed into a titan is back, making the previous chapter be even more useless. Imagine reading the volume, get some shock value with Jean, Connie and everyone else becoming titans just to turn the page and they are back. I mean, I thought it was really unfair Jean died (and I hope he’s not arranging his hair for when they meet Mikasa) but having him and everyone else coming back like this is just....dumb?

The fact we had Eren’s intentions explained this way makes the whole situation even messier. From his conversation with Armin to the road trip he did through people’s memories, it was just a big dump of information that did nothing but pull out a wtf from me. I think it would be a lot better if we saw a POV like the one from chapter 131, more honest and raw being that we would be seeing his true thoughts with no outside opinions and questioning. But this whole mess felt so, so displaced that for two seconds I wondered if they were all going crazy, Eren included.

And I will never accept that Eren “killed” his mom for the sake of whatever the heck this became. Just no. Carla was Eren’s most important person, the one who said he was special simply for being born, and you want to convince me she had to be pulled into this mess because of some weird shit Ymir had going on with Mikasa, and Eren had to follow through?? This was cheap shock value that didn’t even shock because of how nonsense it is. The scene in which Eren asks Reiner why did his mom have to die lost all of its value and weight. How can one rewatch or reread snk, see the tragic and emotional scene where a 10 year old kid cries and screams as he see his mom be EATEN BY A TITAN and feel anything at all? Honestly, what a disrespect to Carla. Someone should have told her Yeagers can’t be trusted.

Speaking of Yeagers: Grisha, your kids are a mess. Come take responsibility for this-

Besides the fact that Zeke was killed for absolutely NOTHING, Eren’s character became a joke on a dozen of panels. More than angry, I’m shocked with how Isayama pulled this off. From having one of the best MC in modern shounen to having a pathetic little idiot that doesn’t know wtf he’s doing and has an intense unresolved crush on the girl he’s always had zero chemistry with. Legit I would be less surprised if he said he had a crush on fucking Connie, for god’sake. All of his motives, ideals and determination were sacrificed in sake of complete obnoxious notions of love I’m not even gonna ramble about here. And don't come at me with the whole "Oh bUt hE's JuSt A tEeNaGeR aNd DoEsN't UnDeRsTaNd HiS eMoTiOnS aNd WaS hIdInG hIs LoVe FoR mIkAsA". That's a cheap explanation for a cheap argument for a cheap mess that makes no sense. If you’re an Eren stan, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened but I feel your pain.

Last but certainly not least: Mikasa and Ymir.

I could say so much about these two but to sum it up: what a miserable duo. I’m not head over heels for Mikasa but I thought she had her place in the story and could have had some good character development. But ever since the timeskip, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen and it really didn’t. If Isayama chose this way for her because there’s a message between the lines, I don’t care because this was the last chapter and we all wanted answers. So we’re working with what we have laid down plain which is: Mikasa had a miserable ending, can’t let go of Eren and is stuck in the past. Her so called “selfless” love and obsession towards Eren is a very unhealthy response to her own traumas. This connection between her and Ymir just proves even further what I said as both of them are devoted to a love that never gave back and deeply hurt them in more ways than it’s apparent.

And still on Ymir’s topic, I don’t understand why she now has stockholm syndrome towards that nasty, disgusting, waste of human being king when the plot was setting her up in a complete different direction!? That whole talk of Eren finally freeing her from being a slave to the royal family, and giving her the chance of choosing her own path, where did all of that go!? What was that chapter for!? All of this buildup just because she was waiting for Mikasa?

Where has the entire talk about “everyone deserves freedom because they were born into this world” go? Why has a theme bigger than any of the characters gotten reduced to “waiting for Mikasa to decide herself about her feelings ‘cause omg tragic loooovee story”??? This just makes the deaths of everyone, and the scouts look completely useless. That Ramzi kid really died for this...

I swear, what a mess.

Overall, if you read this chapter in one go and then sigh relief as snk is finally over, this ending will probably be okay or just meh. I’m not angry or anything near that. Just disappointed and shocked that these two last chapters were this bad. Again, even if there are hidden messages between the lines, this is the last chapter and we shouldn’t have to be debating that. It’s okay to pull out a bunch of foreshadowing and questioning and whatnot in your story but to leave things in the open with the most weird messages and morals on the surface is just...blergh.

#snk 139 #aot 139 #snk last chapter #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk spoilers #aot spoilers

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diamondcitydarlin · 4 years

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I am just...honestly fascinated by this sudden ‘change of heart’ with Guillermo tho in regards to being a familiar and becoming a vampire, there’s a lot going on there and a lot to unpack, and I’m hoping somewhere in the depths of what is about to be a long, directionless rant I’ll find the clarity I haven’t seemed to quite grasp yet.

ALSO I’M SORRY THIS IS A LOOONG ASS POST BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO PUT IT UNDER A READ MORE AND SUBJECT INNOCENTS TO MY BLOG LOL, BUT I’VE TAGGED ACCORDINGLY

So, I already made a post about ‘Collaboration’ and some of the interesting subtext we get within that episode. Mainly, that this episode is an interesting one for Guillermo because he finally gets what appears to be and should be (at least at first) the opportunity he’s always been waiting for. To this point, across seasons, Guillermo has driven home that his one and only aspiration in life, the reason he tolerates an endless, shitty position, is because he hopes to become a vampire. He’s wanted it since he was a kid. IF HE CAN’T BECOME A VAMPIRE, WHAT HAS THIS ALL BEEN ABOUT??

If it was as simple as just wanting to become a vampire by any means necessary, leaving Nandor for this golden opportunity should have been as easy as taking off an ill-fitting pair of shoes...but it wasn’t that, was it? When Nandor pretended to shuck him off as if it didn’t matter, Guillermo got angry and sad in equal measure and only really brightened again when Nandor came back and promised to do better by him. Not necessarily set down a concrete timeline for the ‘becoming a vampire’ thing though, but Guillermo didn’t seem to care about that all that much anyway. Interesting.

Now we’re able to see a version of things in which Guillermo is being treated better as a familiar, but rather than this development improving his mood he seems all the more aware of the fact now that...maybe he doesn’t even want to be a vampire anymore. Maybe he’s wasting his time here. Maybe he needs to swim towards open waters, so to speak.

Very similar to Nandor, Guillermo, I think, is not really aware or fully accepting of the inner workings of his own mind. He strikes me as a character that does a lot in the way of burying the truths of himself so far down, he even convinces himself that part of who he is doesn’t really exist- even when it does, and drives a lot of his actions. The show plays to this by only ‘showing’ us concretely how much Guillermo wants us to know, with only small hints and nods to other things going on. That fits and rings true to the norm for a mockumentary style of filming/writing, in that the audience has to rely on a lot of subtle cues from the subjects to figure out what’s ‘really going on’ with a character or plot line; the ‘camera’ in a mockumentary style piece is as much of a visceral, present character as anyone else in the cast and is treated accordingly (but then, like 99.99999% of human beings have seen the entirety of The Office and Parks and Rec, so yall know this already)

I think part of the way to figuring this all out is to ask why Guillermo wanted to be a vampire in the first place. His answer to this would probably be something along the lines of ‘because they’re cool’ which, you know, valid. That would be a fitting and satisfying answer if, say, I had given it because there was a time when I was about 4-6 years old that I, too, decided I would grow up to be a vampire. Because it was ‘cool’ and aspiring to anything else seemed boring. Again, valid. For someone who has dedicated pretty much ALL of his adult life to apprenticing into vampirism based on a childhood dream that never died? THAT begs a bit more of an in depth reason, I think, to which for now we can only guess.

I’ll try to make an educated one based on what I believe is going on here, that Guillermo himself is either not aware of or not ready to share with the cameras: I believe his drive to want to become a vampire, given it was based in childhood flights of fancy (and probably some Guillermo-self insert/Armand fanfics, let’s be hONEST) was rooted in a need to feel respected and powerful, at the heart of things. When we first meet Guillermo, and for much of season 1, we see that he’s quiet, subservient, meek, and we learn briefly about how he was bullied in school. I think Guillermo was raised to be this way and use silence/subservience as his only defense mechanism, which may also go a long way to explaining why he’s so reserved. For 10 years, I think it was enough for him to tell himself that everything would be better for him once he became a vampire, he’d have all the things he never had as a human. Respect. Appreciation. Power. Control over his own life.

That said, things have changed quite a bit for Guillermo since season one. While learning that he had Van Helsing blood came as an unpleasant shock, embracing and exploring that side of himself proved that he’s actually kind of a bad ass even without being a vampire. He only ever wielded this power to protect Nandor and others so far, but it is a power nonetheless, this agility and strength that is too great for even VAMPIRES to successfully fight back against. He’s also a smart cookie that knows how to manipulate a situation, something that he’s been using a lot this season too. So, power, then. He has it already. Respect he received from his vampire-hunting group.

But that still leaves appreciation and, dare I say it, maybe even affection/love. I think there’s a part of Guillermo that wants to feel like he’s accepted and cared for, but even when it’s offered (by groups like his vampire hunting clan, or Celeste’s vampire community lol) he seems to shy away from it going too far, like it’s just too much or ill-fitting coming from people he barely knows. Given that he’s a private, introvert type this makes sense.

One thing has remained consistent for Guillermo though, across both seasons and episodes, and that’s his seemingly unwavering concern and affection for Nandor. Even in this last ep when he’s unashamedly shucking off duties that don’t fit his job description and maintaining those professional boundaries like a BOSS, he still snaps to and gets to work the moment Nandor is kidnapped. Laszlo’s gone? Meh, who cares, not his jurisdiction. Nandor’s gone!?? Fuck it, he’s getting the keys. A ‘vampire’ offers him the opportunity of a lifetime to become a vampire quickly and live within an accepting community of likeminded people and Nandor told him ‘go for it’? He’s upset that Nandor didn’t fight harder to keep him.

So now he’s back and Nandor’s making a consistent effort not to abuse Guillermo’s position. This seemed the ideal resolution at the end of ‘Collaboration’, but after a couple of weeks it becomes clear that it wasn’t. For some reason. Guillermo’s no longer satisfied and thinks maybe it’s time to do more with his life.

I’ll try to sum up the points I’ve made so far into a concise version of where I think Guillermo’s at right now, at least subconsciously; mostly all the things he hoped that turning into a vampire would grant him, have already been granted. He’s learned that he’s strong, smart, capable as is, more than he or anyone else had ever given him credit for. I think it makes sense that his burning need to become a vampire has begun to ebb into a quarter-life crisis of questioning who he really is and what he really wants, because the dream he nursed for so long has turned out to be pretty shallow and maybe not even necessary. He realizes there’s more he could be doing than working tirelessly to an end goal that no longer seems so sweet.

But that leaves the ‘affection’ and ‘acceptance’ elements dangling in space, held up by his own affection for Nandor that has yet to be really defined. It’s pretty clear that Guillermo is nursing it hard, but what is the nature of it? Even as his sense of loyal devotion to a cause has started to fade, even as his view of Nandor as this unflappable role model has begun to disappear too bc he’s starting to see Nandor for who he really is (a himbo idiot that he can outwit, outmatch without even trying hard) this raw affection still remains. It’s still important that Nandor fights for him. It’s still important that Nandor is safe and protected.

And, as with the rest of these things I mentioned, I don’t think Guillermo is even really aware of how much he cares about Nandor, how much it drives his actions and thinking, how important that relationship is to him. It’s easier to just sort of...ignore that and pretend it isn’t a factor, that’s Guillermo’s modus operandi when it comes to complicated feelings.

I think back to that line from season 1, wherein Guillermo’s kind of musing wistfully about how different his life might have been if he’d stayed at Panera Bread/in a stable job with pay and benefits, but then handwaves that all away with ‘The heart wants what it wants’. By this point in the show he was already kind of drifting away from the goal of becoming a vampire (whether he realized it or not).

The heart wants what it wants indeed, Guillermo, but maybe it’s not really ‘becoming a vampire’. Maybe it’s something else entirely that keeps you tied to this house, this thankless ‘job’.

At this point, I really cannot say for 100% certain what I think will happen next with Guillermo. This show has proven solid at pulling out unexpected plot twists I wouldn’t have seen coming, but then, I also have been pretty good at predicting where they’re gonna go with things. Like 7/10 lmao. My two theories right now are:

He’ll become a vampire in the series finale- unwillingly, maybe by accident. This one I think is plausible because it’s a bit of a kick in the pants. It’s the outcome he’s wanted for SO LONG but has just realized maybe it’s not all he can do or wants to do. I could see a situation where, idk, maybe Guillermo expresses to Nandor his thoughts lately about moving on from this and, in an act of stupid desperation, Nandor thinks maybe if he changes him that’ll keep him in his life, so he does it while Guillermo’s asleep and then surprises him when he wakes up...only to find out maybe that wasn’t actually what he wanted anymore, but UH OH what’s done is done. This could provide a lot of tension in the next season, I think. But as it’s a bit of a ‘shocking’ twist type route to go, I can’t be certain this is what they’ll do. Kind of a toss up.

Guillermo leaves to pursue something else, which the camera crew will follow and document. This is the ‘sensible’/’safe’ route that most scripted shows would take, I think, in this situation...but again, I’m not certain about this one either because Shadows is known for throwing us for a loop and this seems a liiiittle predictable. It’s also very similar to what JUST happened in episode 8 and, were I writing the show, I’d worry it would come across as redundant. Like, maybe we already did this angle and should explore other options to keep the audience on their toes. Also, as much as they love putting Harvey with new casts of characters for episodic stories, I’m not sure they’d transplant him from the main cast for an extended period of time because he’s part of what makes that dynamic run so well. But then, the synopsis of the finale does say that vampires have to ‘survive without Guillermo’ while preparing for an event, so this may happen in some small, episodic measure again.

Anyway, to wrap this up into a conclusion, I don’t think I’m wrong in predicting that Nandor/Guillermo’s relationship has been set up in such a way as to keep us guessing, sort of a Sam/Diane, will-they-won’t-they type thing that will remain a constant throughout whatever happens next, but will require both characters growing independent of each other in their own respective subplots. At this point, it has always remained consistent that Nandor and Guillermo prioritize each other even when it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t think either of them are ready to realize, accept, and sort through the layers of what they feel for each other. The master/servant dynamic makes that difficult, I’d imagine, so I think inevitably we’ll see the show start to pull them away from that. All I’m saying is, if whatever is going on between them wasn’t VERY complicated it would’ve been resolved as whatever it is a long time ago. Nah, there’s some deep, repressed shit they’re ignoring collectively for whatever reason, and usually that points to something that will, at some point, become romantic. Either way, to understand Guillermo is to keep a close eye on how his dynamic with Nandor grows and changes and I’m, as ever, VERY eager to see how it does.

#guillermo de la cruz #nandor x guillermo #guillermo x nandor #wwdits #what we do in the shadows tv show #long post #meta

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smol-and-grumpy · 4 years

Text

Cross My Heart - CH.15

Pairing: Bodyguard!Dean x Reader; Chuck Shurley x Reader

Summary: After opening up a letter, the life as she knows it, changes forever. Her husband hires Dean Winchester to protect her but is Dean really who he said he was? And is her husband really worried about her safety?

Warnings: Flangst

WC: 2636

SERIES MASTERLIST

Y/N manages to get Dean to sit down on the closed toilet lid because she wants to tend to his wound. He only has a towel wrapped around him. A small one too, for that matter, because she has the last big towel wrapped around herself.

She’s standing between his spread thighs and Dean sits perfectly still, only flinches a little when she takes his band aid off, which prompts her to laugh, “Oh, come on, you are a big tough guy,”

“Well,” Dean chuckles, “You’re not exactly a light handed doctor, ripping it off like that,”

“I’d be careful what you say,” She warns him before spraying disinfectant on the wound, shielding his eyes with the palm of her hand. Dean flinches again, his hands coming up to touch the side of her thighs.

She’s working swiftly while he skims his fingertips over her thighs, rubbing up and down, distracting her.

When she peels the band aid out of it’s foil, Dean has managed to tug at her towel so hard it comes right off, and pools around her ankles.

“You’re distracting me,” She says, and moves closer, to place the band aid directly over his wound. He’s close enough for her to feel his hot breath on her chest.

Dean only chuckles lightly, his big palms stroking up her thighs and higher, until he has both her ass cheeks in the palm of his hands. “You’re distracting me,” He says, throwing her words back at her.

Before she can step away, Dean’s holding her back, his face comes forward, suck in her nipple, his tongue tickling it inside of his mouth until it hardens and she keens, placing her hands behind the back of his neck.

Y/N looks down to him, sees the towel tenting around his hips and she has to laugh, “What’s wrong with you? We just fucked and you’re ready to go again?”

He releases her nipple, looks up and places his chin on her stomach, smiles at her with a boyish smile that makes him look younger than he is, “Can’t help it. You turn me on so fucking much.”

She rolls her eyes, peels herself away from him and he just chuckles.

“Anywhere else you’re hurt?”

Dean grins and places his index finger to his lips, “Yeah, here,”

He’s totally cute. She doesn’t want to admit it, though. Leaning in, she pecks his lips, parts only so much that she can talk, “Anywhere else?”

“Yeah, but that would mean that we’ll get dirty again.” He says with a wink and she has to laugh before she pushes herself up.

While she puts the first aid kit back into place, Dean’s phone rings and he walks out to pick it up.

She follows and she can’t help but watch him. He’s standing there in only the little towel around his hips, the tent still very much erect and the way he talks with his hand, chest muscle moving, it turns her on, too.

Slipping into the bedroom, she gets dressed, leaving Dean some privacy to talk. When she walks out, she hears him ending the call and he looks at her, a frown etched deep into his face.

“What now?” She asks, because really, what is it now?

Dean shakes his head, “I’ll get an email. I’ll tell you when it’s here.”

She’s sitting at the table and waits for Dean to get dressed. When he walks out, she can hear a ping, it signals that an email has arrived.

Sitting down on the chair next to her, Dean clicks on it. It opens up to a copy of a document and he tilts the screen towards her, “Does this look familiar to you?”

Y/N squints her eyes and then her jaw drops. She gasps, clasps her hand over her mouth but she can’t tear her eyes away from the document. There’s something written in big bold letters LIFE INSURANCE. And there’s her name, and Chuck’s and it’s a sum of $10 million in case of her death.

“You didn’t sign it, did you?” Dean asks to be sure, even though he can see from her reaction that she’s never seen it before in her life.

“This is the first time I see this,” She feels her heart racing, “No, no, no.” She says, over and over. There’s something clutching at her chest, it makes it harder for her to breathe.

Dean immediately picks her up, walks her to the couch and sits down with her on his lap. He pulls her head to his chest, “Breath, baby. Breath with me, alright?”

She listens to his heartbeat, listens to his even breathing and tries to match hers to his.

After a while, when her breathing got back to normal, Dean made her look at him “You okay?”

“Not really,” She sighs, “How did you get this?”

“Ash’s my tech guru. I ask him to do some digging,” He huffs out a breath, “This is fucked up. I guess he won’t stop until you’re dead.”

Ash. The name does ring a bell. That’s the guy he went to see while she talked to Cas. Dean already suspected Chuck back then.

“Well, that’s really reassuring,”

Dean scoffs, “You know what I mean.”

She does.

“What can we do? Shall we contact the police now?”

“That would be the best,” He agrees and places his lips to her temple, lingers there, “Let me make some calls. I know just someone who could help.”

***

It’s a day later that Dean manages to reach the person he wanted to. Benny, he said. He was an ex-marine as well. It seems like they are a well-knitted bunch of people who once have sworn to fight together and trust each other. She admires that. Admires their loyalty. It’s nothing close to what she has. Meg is an exception to the rule here.

Benny is now a detective with the police but he’s not responsible for this district, but maybe Benny could help contact the right people. Dean’s been nervous about contacting him. He said that he hates to ask for help from anyone.

Dean walks out of the bedroom where he has been talking to Benny, a little smirk on his face, “Good, he said we’ll have to send him what we know and he’ll see where he can direct it to.” He sits down on his laptop and begins to send all the files that he has.

It’s later in the afternoon that she feels her boobs hurting. It’s not a good sign. Dean’s in the kitchen, doing some dishes when she walks in, “I think my period is approaching.” She says it like it is, there’s no need to hide because they’re sticking together like glue and she needs tampons.

He looks at her, one eyebrow raised, “I’ll go get them.”

How did she know that he’ll say that?

“I’m coming with you,” She crosses her arms over her chest and watches Dean dry his hands before walking over to her, rubs at her upper arm, his lips pressed into a thin line, his dimples are showing.

“I should have never promised,” He mumbles, his hands come up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

“You crossed your heart,” She reminds him which makes him smirk.

He walks out into the living room then, grabs his duffel, takes out something and she follows. When she’s close enough, he throws a little square plastic thing to her, she manages to catch it.

“In case someone needs to see it.” Dean says.

Turning it around in her hands she sees the word KANSAS. It’s a Kansas driver’s license. And there’s a picture of her, there’s her name but it’s not her last name. Instead of Shurley, there’s another name.

WINCHESTER.

Dean made her a fake ID? With his name?

“When did you manage to pull this off?”

His smile is cocky, “Remember when I went into town the first time?” He asks and puts on his leather jacket, “You told me that you’d like a new identity. Bobby made it.”

“So, what am I to you? Your sister? Your wife?” She teases him because she likes to see the blush of his cheeks.

“You could also be my grandmother for all I know,” He says with a straight face and a shrug of his shoulders that makes her roll her eyes and maybe she’s pouting a little.

Dean walks closer, the smile tugging away at the corner of his lips. He takes her jacket from the back of the chair and holds it out to her, “Come on, before you bleed to death.”

She wears it, and he drapes one arm over her shoulder, pulls her in for a peck on her forehead, “Granny,” He says and laughs and she elbows him in his ribs.

They arrive at the nearest store, which maybe, she thinks, it’s also the only store around here.

Dean gets off the bike first and takes off his helmet. She takes hers off too and magically, Dean produces a baseball cap out of somewhere and places it on her head before he lifts her off the bike.

Before they go in, he turns to her, “Okay, we go in, get what we want and then we’re out, you understand? You go look for your, whatever you need, and while I’m here I get some more things.”

“Condoms?” She asks, smiles smugly.

He has to laugh out loud, “I think it’s too late for that,”

“It’s never too late,” She says with a straight face to which Dean raises an eyebrow.

“Do you want me to get them?”

She laughs then, thinks it’s so easy to rile him up. Standing on her tip toe, she cranes her neck, whispers into his ear, “No, I like for you to fuck me raw.”

Standing back, she watches him. Watches his face change from confusion to being turned on at her nasty words.

He spreads his lips, his grin cocky, and he lowers himself, to whisper into her ear, “Good, because I love to feel how wet you are for me.” Dean boops her nose before he turns and starts to walk towards the entrance, turns around again to call out for her to follow. She’s been frozen in place, her face flush.

The bell rings when they step in and she immediately feels like all eyes are on her. Which is probably not the case. She just can’t shake off the feeling.

She walks past a stack of magazines, sees some tabloid ones with her face on the front page. Thankfully it’s not a big picture. Dean quickly takes her hand and pulls her to the back, searching for the sanitary aisle with her.

He did leave her to look at what she needs while he goes and buys some other things and while she stands there, she can swear that the young teen girl is staring at her. She pulls her cap further down her head.

Grabbing at a package of tampons, she heads out of the aisle to search for Dean. It’s not a big shop. It’s probably the smallest grocery store she’s been in. Probably six long aisles, at most, so it’s not hard to find Dean.

What she didn’t expect, though, is to find Dean talking to Liz. She has a young child with her, the boy is probably about six years old if she has to guess, but she’s never been good at guessing the age of children.

She stands there, dumbfounded, has the feeling that she’s intruding if she interrupts. Dean’s talking to Liz and then turns his attention to the little boy. He looks remarkably like Dean. And it shouldn’t affect her, because they’re nothing official — in fact, they’re probably as far away from official as it could get — but it does. There’s little pin pricks she feels in her heart.

The boy tells Dean something and he kneels down to understand him better. They were talking and laughing. Dean’s so gentle with the boy and his smile is so wide and bright. She wonders if Dean ever thought that his life would be better if he would have stayed with Liz. He wouldn’t have to be on the run, he wouldn’t have to risk his life again. They could be a little happy family. She wonders if Dean ever wants children. And if yes, if he wants them with her. Which is a stupid thought, if she’s honest. They aren’t at the stage yet where they are in the position to discuss the future. If there’s a future at all.

Chuck never did want kids. The company was Chuck’s child. That’s why she agreed to the IUD. She thinks that the last time, she didn’t even needed to replace it because they stopped having sex way before that but she got so used to it, that’s why it’s still there at all.

“Hey,”

Dean’s voice jerks her back to reality.

She watches him walk over to her, a basket with groceries in his hand, and he holds it out for her to drop her package of tampons inside. She keeps her head low, doesn’t want the teen to come around snooping which prompts Dean so place his hand on the back of her neck and he lowers himself.

“Look at me,” He whispers, “You okay?”

Looking up a little, she tries to smile but fails. She can see from the corner of her eyes that Liz is staring at them with annoyance in her eyes, “I— there’s a teenager staring at me. I think she might have recognized me.”

“Okay,” Dean says, takes her hand and looks around, “Let’s go,”

They walk past Liz who loudly calls out after Dean but he doesn't stop. He brings her to the counter, and opens his arms for her to crawl into while they wait for the cashier to scan all the things, shielding her from curious eyes. And after he pays, they walk outside and she gets on the bike while Dean secures their groceries on the motorcycle behind her.

He comes to stand next to her after, taking the cap from her head and holds out her helmet for her to take.

“Liz obviously wasn’t finished talking,” She says bluntly, because she sees inside the store and Liz is still looking at her like she’s something really disgusting to look at.

Dean braces his hands on his bike, caging her in and looks back over his shoulder to see where Y/N’s looking at before he turns back with a scoff. He looks back at her, the corner of his lips turning up into a grin, “You jealous?”

“Nah,” She tries to laugh it off.

He grins some more, before his face comes closer. Dean’s just an inch away, she can feel his breath on her.

“Liar,” He whispers before he kisses her. His tongue teases along her lips and of course she lets him in, welcomes the velvety smooth of his tongue, welcomes the taste of him. She can never get enough of it. He parts before it can get too heavy but she still feels something warm and wet between her thighs that she’s sure is not blood.

Dean pecks her nose and chuckles, “You’re cute when you’re jealous.”

“I’m no—,”

“Of course,”

“But is that her child?”

Dean leaves a lingering kiss on her forehead before he sighs, “Let’s get you back first, okay?”

He winks before he gets on the bike and puts his helmet on. He waits for her to put on hers and she can see that Liz is walking out, her lips pressed into a thin line and a frown etched deep on her forehead.

CH.16

#cross my heart #dean winchester #bodyguard!dean #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester fic #dean winchester fan fic #dean winchester fan fiction #nathalie writes

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makeste · 4 years

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BnHA Chapter 268: Please Don’t Tap on the Glass

Previously on BnHA: Dabi revealed his true identity to Hawks! His real name is actually [sound of semi truck horns blaring]. What’s that? You didn’t hear me? I said it’s [sound of dolphins chattering]. You really need to listen better. Anyway, so Dabi set Hawks on fire a bunch of times, and Hawks had some flashbacks indicating that Endeavor saved him when he was a small child, and just when it was starting to look like we might get our second tragic death chapter in a row, Tokoyami showed up to defend his mentor! Meanwhile in Jakku, Miruko remembered that even though kicking ass is fun and she’s really good at it, she still had a job to do, so she sped off toward Ujiko’s little hideaway, getting stabbed and impaled a bunch of times along the way and losing an ear and shit (I very much look forward to the cyberpunk robot-limbed Miruko 2.0 that we had better fucking get once this arc is over). Fortunately Endeavor showed up to help her out! Anyway, so absolutely no one was talking about this last week, but the chapter totally ended with Miruko about to bust open Tomura’s bacta tank with a badass roundhouse kick, so, uh. Shit might be about to go down you guys.

Today on BnHA: Shit does indeed go down, but at a very languid pace. Ujiko apparently built Tomura’s holding tank out of Nokia phones and kevlar, so even though Miruko gets a few good kicks in, she ultimately doesn’t do more than just crack it. So now the tank is just standing there leaking ominously while Ujiko sobs for no reason and we all ponder whether or not a 75%-charged Tomura will be any less doom-harbinging than the full-fledged deal. In the meantime we’ve got Girl Noumu thinking strategic thoughts and chucking acid at peeps; Crust still doing absolutely nothing; Endeavor not doing that much better to be honest; and Mic and Aizawa ready and raring to go kill the old man who turned their dead buddy into a sentient Einstein-Rosen bridge. Obviously I’m all in favor of this last bit, but I’m also on team “Mic and Aizawa not dying horribly” though, so. I do have some concerns here.

full disclosure, I’m very sleep-deprived for various reasons related to various things which can be broadly summed up as Just 2020 In General. so anyway, I’m dealing with it, but I’ve noticed that my rate of typos and errors and such has shot waaaaay up in this past week or so, so I’m just putting that out there that you may find some weird shit in this post! maybe I will write the same sentence maybe I will write the same sentence multiple times, or or the same word twice in a row by mistake, or use the completely wrong word. you are more than welcome to point this out and I will not take any offense and will indeed be grateful because I’ve apparently gone blind to it all! anyway so how are you I hope everyone is well

anyway! the chapter is early (god for all I know it’s been out for hours already. HOW FAR BEHIND AM I) so I’m recapping it early so that I will have more time to play Animal Crossing and fish and craft all of my troubles away. speaking of which Horikoshi, you had better not bring me any troubles this week, I am not in the mood do you hear

good fucking lord

is all of that Miruko’s blood??!? god, she’s even better at bleeding than everyone else. now hold up all you excited vampires, you all can get in line, I was here first

by the way Endeavor, I gave you a pass last week because your entrance was so fucking raw and you saved my girl’s life and that was really neat my man. but now that I’ve recovered from my shock and awe and am ready to be sarcastic once more, I just want to say... welcome to the party, guy. did you stop for drive-thru on your commute from the other side of the planet. were you simply not immune to the bizarre 5th dimensional time-stands-still effects of March 2020. are you curious at all how your son has changed during these past 20 years, and by “son” I am referring not to Dabi, but Shouto. are you looking forward to meeting all of Shouto’s children. are you excited to be a granddad. anyway thank you so fucking much for finally making your way down to this lair with all the speed and haste of a federal appeals process

and I see Crust is still fighting this guy after six decades

(ETA: I would be more upset about the scan quality here, but let’s face it, nobody actually cares about seeing this in HD. I’m sorry Crust.)

and we’re really expected to believe this is the very next ranked hero below Miruko. could it be that the hero ranking system is actually flawed. don’t tell me. I’m just as shocked as you are

seriously??

are we really going to stop and chat with Geriatric Hero: Crust over here. really. far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Number One. but I’m just saying, I’m pretty sure he does still have... let’s just check... one... two... yep, two arms. not that I’m saying your system for prioritizing which of your fellow heroes to help out should be based off of the number of arms they have. but also I am saying that

OH SONNY BOY

is that a two-page panel of Aizawa Hatake Kakashi Shouta and his loyal husband Screaming Man leaping into the fray to take on some high end Noumus with their bad and sexy selves. I think that’s exactly what it is. are we blessed or are we blessed. Aizawa I’m pleased to see you haven’t aged a day and are looking just as fine as ever in this the year 2045

oh wow Endeavor I thought you had incinerated it

why wouldn’t you incinerate it. please incinerate it. did you not learn your lesson. please don’t start taking your cues from Dilly Dally Hero: Crust over here

oh wow

and yet Miruko was kicking all of their asses like they were made of plywood. really though guys. only number five. okay

Aizawa’s shouting that he wasn’t able to erase that last Noumu who was impaling Miruko because his vision was obstructed. that’s okay Aizawa, that’s why Endeavor is hopefully about to incinerate him

oh snap here we go

again, one has to wonder what kinds of interactions with rabbits Horikoshi has had in his troubled young life so as to influence his writing of Miruko’s quirk in such a way. did you at some point get rabbits confused with... I don’t even know. polar bears?! not that I’m fucking complaining holy shit

anyway, so just a friendly reminder that if Miruko dies here I will in fact push the button which triggers the hidden ejector seat built into Horikoshi’s office chair. he will be missed. but he had a good run

ho lyyyyyyy shit

so... Miruko I love you but... then why would you break the fucking vat apart with your moon-powered legs. Miruko. Miruko are you listening. oh shit she’s missing an ear I forgot. oh shit. oh shit

MIRUKO I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BUT WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU JUST KICK THE BALD MAN IN THE LAB COAT INSTEAD goddammit well it’s been nice knowing y’all

well then. so this is happening. this is really happening. at least she saved us all from having to face the 100%-charged world-ending Tomura somewhere down the line. instead all we have to do is face the 74%-charged Tomura right fucking now. so that’s. ...I wonder how Tokoyami is doing

holy shit!

leave it to Girl Noumu to be the smart one. for a minute I thought maybe Ujiko had given her Ragdoll’s long-lost quirk. but then I realized that this isn’t a quirk at all, this is just her being smart and using her Big Noumu Brain. anyway so I’m preemptively sorry for having to root against you, Girl Noumu

so now she’s pondering how to disable Aizawa’s quirk. meanwhile I just remembered that we haven’t seen her quirk yet I think. please let it be something good

oh snap she ran away and made it out of Aizawa’s sight range oh fuck

the fuck is up with this thicc fucking Girl Noumu page I can’t tell wtf is going on

LOL OH SHIT

NOT TO WORRY GUYS SHE’S JUST SHOOTING BIG GIANT GLOBS OF ACID AT EVERYONE. can anyone tell if Endeavor has incinerated this Noumu yet down in the middle panel on the left. what is the fucking holdup

and now there’s a big double page of Miruko shattering Tomura’s Noumu Vat, and I can’t quite tell, but it looks like her eyes might be rolling back in a way which I decidedly do not like

(ETA: nah on closer inspection we’re good.)

didn’t she just do this like four pages ago. and how the hell did Tomura suddenly jump from 74% to 75% in like .2 seconds

oh thank god she’s still awake. but now she’s being dragged back now by the Noumu’s bone appendage things because Endeavor SERIOUSLY CANNOT GET HIS FUCKING ACT TOGETHER LONG ENOUGH TO FUCKING LIGHT ITS BRAIN TO ASHES ALREADY, LIKE SERIOUSLY THOUGH. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL OF THAT TALK ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING FAST AND THE DIFFERENCE A SPLIT SECOND MAKES

Miruko if we make it out of this alive, I’m promoting you to number one. Fatgum will be number two. the only two pro heroes in this arc who have actually impressed me at all. shame on the rest of you. shame

so now somehow or some way Miruko is being flung into Endeavor at the speed of light

I don’t understand this at all. did the Noumu retract those bone whips back into its body superfast while dragging Miruko back with them and somehow it managed to avoid being hit by her projectile body but Endeavor took the impact straight on. this doesn’t make any kind of sense to me with my admittedly rudimentary understanding of physics. but then again it is a fucking manga so I’m not about to call NASA and ask them if this could really happen. so this was a waste of a paragraph I guess!! my bad!!

swear to god this is like the fifth panel of Ujiko just screaming. please just stop. what do you have to be worried about anyway? although if Tomura suddenly went crazy upon awakening and just straight up killed you for no reason, that sure would be delightful! that wouldn’t happen, though. or would it

WHAT IS THIS FUCKING FISH TANK MADE OF

IS THIS A TUBE OF GLASS OR A FUCKING FALLOUT SHELTER

ENDEAVOR I’M GLAD YOU’RE CONCERNED ABOUT MIRUKO BECAUSE I AM TOO, AND ALSO IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO SEE THAT YOU DO HAVE A HEART, BUT ALSO MAYBE JUST LEAVE HER FOR NOW THOUGH, SERIOUSLY??

though on the other hand it’s already too late to stop this inevitable tide, so maybe at this point they should all just get the fuck out of there instead. at least Miruko did her fucking job and saved you all from having to face the invincible unstoppable version. that’ll be a real comfort to everyone when he’s out laying waste to the countryside, I’m sure. but still

-- oh no

the boys heard that. listen you guys, I want Ujiko to die as much as anyone, but I’m gonna need you to not go anywhere near Shigaraki fucking Tomura now or ever. please. do you hear me?? you two still have both of your ears goddammit I want some acknowledgement

-- NO!!!

(ETA: is that. a fucking Tomura dialogue bubble. something stirs in the east. a sleepless malice. the eyes of the enemy are moving.)

THE MANGA GIVETH AND THE MANGA TAKETH AWAY nooooo from 20 pages last week back down to the usual 17. I got spoiled. I expected too much. sob

so now we settle in to wait two weeks to see if Mic’s piercing tones can shatter this fucking adamantium tank like a wine glass. I’m not sure I’m ready for the Noumuraki Tomuracalpse you guys. then again by this point I’m braced for just about anything though so bring it

#bnha 268 #miruko #mirko #I finally caved and did it both ways #endeavor #aizawa shouta #present mic #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste spoiler recap #makeste reads bnha #happy easter everyone #don't mention it to horikoshi though #he's terrified of rabbits as we all know #they are vicious and unstoppable #so please treat them with respect

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always-and-forever-pan · 3 years

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MCU Vs. DCU in Character Arcs

The DC universe made me care about their villains, gave them better backstories and semi redemption arcs more in 1.5 movies than the MCU gave any of their characters in 23 movies, 3 short TV shows and numerous shorts.

And I'm honestly kinda mad about it. Mostly because MCU is one of my 3 most favourite fandoms of all time. They're my go-to action movies. But I've only seen Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey and am watching Suicide Squad as I type this.

To make a villain likeable, to bring them back to a hero or an anti-hero, or even just make them a villain we stan, you need to show something that views can get behind, something to make them relatable. Most commonly that's empathy, understanding of wrongdoing, and an active desire to fix their wrongs.

It's why the Winter Soldier works so well, we were given this assassin who's cold-blooded, deadly, the worst of the worst, but once he is a person again he's soft, he feels bad, he's actively trying to make up for it even though it's not truly on him.

And in direct parallel, we have Deadshot, a cold-blooded assassin working for money, deadly, one of the worst people. But then they put him in a team setting and within hours of meeting the team he has formed enough of a relationship with them to literally risk his own head to not have to kill one of the members. And when Harley's plane is shot down any way he is visibly upset and another teammate actually says "You couldn't have saved her".

And we love both of those characters for that. We want that! We NEED that! But where the DCU was able to do that on a smaller scale for some of their others, the MCU didn't do that for anyone else.

(Warning for some salt from here on)

And I hear you arguing "Oh Wanda showed empathy", and sure they showed her feeling bad in CA: CW but the context of that scene, and the lines they gave her made it so she was feeling bad because people were saying mean things about her and not because she accidentally hurt and killed people.

Like don't get me wrong, I was so excited when they decided to make Maximoff's MCU characters because what little of the comic I have seen made me STAN them. But the MCU butt fu*ked those two raw and I'm PISSED.

Like honestly they had the twins join a terrorist organization. Had Wanda mess with Tony's head making her an accomplice to the creation of a murder bot. Had Wanda mess with the teams head and then Bruce's so the Hulk would go on a murderous rampage with no one to stop him. Had them willingly working with Ultron, only to switch sides when he wanted to kill the entire world instead of just a few people making it seem more like a move of self-preservation than actual good motives. Then summed the movie up by saying "Oh her brothers dead so that good enough".

Only to turn around in the very next movie and have her show 0 empathy about the people who died past "They're saying it's my fault". Then they backed it up by her causing physical harm to some she's supposed to love with 0 hesitations.

Then the next time we see Wanda she's with the same guy we just watched her put through god knows how many floors, and within minutes of them being on the screen together she is refusing to allow him to choose between his life and the lives of half the universe. She is an accomplice to the decision of sacrificing an entire Black nation to save her white presenting boyfriend only to decide otherwise at the very last minute as her boyfriend begs her to kill him (Which in itself, MCU WTF!!!).

Even in endgames when she goes up against Thanos they give her some shitty line about "You took everything from me". They made her character revolve around the love of a man like she wasn't a complete person in her own right without him. They made her fighting Thanos seem like she wouldn't have if Thanos hadn't gone for Vision at the base of it when they could have had 1000+ other lines to make it seem like she was fighting for the right things and not just 'cause boy, love'.

The next time we see Wanda she has enslaved an entire town of people. Is forcing them to act against their will and for her enjoyment. The one person woken up while under the influence talks about how it hurts. And then they brush it off with some quip about how the people should be happy because Wanda wasn't doing it with malicious intent, that it was an accident. But still, Wanda shows absolutely 0 remorse for what she's done.

Now having said all of that let's compare her to Harley Quin. Harley Quin also willingly joined a terrorist, in her case, it was a person and not an organisation but still. The first we see of Harley in Suicide Squad we see her enjoying the pain and suffering she's causing, we see her willingly killing people including herself. And they summed it up with "Oh she did it cause she loves him" which I have some massive issues with.

We see Harley willingly steal, and kill, and hurt over the course of both movies. And yeah it's not making her a hero by any standards. But the DCU never tries to push that she's a good person either.

But what they also do is show us a Harley who is affectionate, who wants friends, who mourns when she thinks her love has died. They make us see ourselves in those little moments. They make her funny to offset her heavy crazy weirdness. They show us Harley who is empathic with her team and later with Cassandra.

They make Harley an anti-hero when they have her turn down bringing her love back in favour of saving people. Something the MCU did the opposite of with 'WandaVision'.

Do you see how those are different? Do you get why I can get behind Harley but not Wanda? And I will always say it but I hate that they made Wanda so HARD to like because if you ignore the red flags she is a BOSS ASS BI*CH.

And they did it to Tony as well, gave us so many likeable characteristics and boss moves, but never actually bothered to address personality flaws that lead there. They just made him go from 'not a single F for anyone else' to 'all the F's for everyone except me'.

They did the opposite to Rogers, made him go from 'countries and governments may be flawed but a single dictator having power isn't okay either' to 'I am going to ignore 117 countries and do what I want anyone even if it kills/hurts/maims your citizens because governments are wrong and I know best'

And I'm not saying that one is better than the other, actually, I kind of am saying that DCU did better than MCU here but the point is you cannot expect an audience to love and support a character you are unwilling to show to have humanity, to have empathy. And I really hate (Mostly out of jealousy) that the DCU, a fandom I'm not in was able to get that and the fandom I am in is still wandering in the dark with problematic lessons being relayed to us.

I JUST WANT A REDEMPTION ARC THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME HATE THE MOVIE IS THAT SO HARD!

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olivereliott · 3 years

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Top Five Harley-Davidson Sportsters, Part One: Ironheads

Harley-Davidson has just rebooted one of the world’s longest-running model lines, with the launch of the new Sportster S. But remarkably, it’s only the third major engine update in the Sportster’s 60-plus years on this earth.

Before the new Revolution Max-powered Sportster S came, we had the Evolution motor that debuted in 1986. And before that, the iconic Ironhead. But throughout each era, the Sportster has always been a mainstay of the custom scene.

To celebrate, we’ve rounded up our ten favorite Sportster builds, divided by their motors. This week, we’re featuring five top-shelf Ironheads from some of the world’s best custom builders—including illustrious names like Max Hazan [above] and Hideya Togashi [below].

Next week, it’s the Evo’s turn.

Hide Motorcycle There’s a long history of Japan’s love for Americana, and the humble Sportster is no exception. Case in point: this Ironhead Sportster by Hideya Togashi of Hide Motorcycle (that’s ‘Hee-day’). It was one of the stars of 2018’s Mooneyes show—a show that Togashi-san is a regular fixture at.

The bike’s built around an original but refurbished 1966 XLCH motor, complete with a Linkert DC-7 carb. But the rest of it is mostly is custom, and it was built without any specific style or theme in mind. “As always, I cherish the balance, and maximize the beauty,” says Hideya.

The motor sits in a scratch-built nickel-plated hardtail frame, with the OEM frame number plate grafted on. Hideya kept the original steering head, triples and forks, but added custom sleeves. The Harley rolls on 21F/18R wheels with drum brakes.

Hideya fabricated the aluminum headlight nacelle and fuel tank, and built the oil tank. The rear fender’s been scalped from a vintage Harley FX Super Glide, then modified to suit. Swept back bars and a pair of beautifully-bent nickel-plated exhausts add to the vintage vibe.

The paint’s extra classy too—a 1930s Harley scheme laid down by Skop Paint Works. Hide’s Ironhead blends vintage speedway and flat track styles together to create a minimalistic and impossibly cool machine. The perfect use of an Ironhead motor. [More]

Hot Chop Speed Shop Here’s another bike that stopped visitors to the 2018 Mooneyes event dead in their tracks: a twin-engined Harley drag bike by Kentaro Nakano at Hot Chop Speed Shop in Kyoto. Using two Sportster XLCH engines, Nakano-san built the monster as a tribute to the drag racers of the 70s.

Unsurprisingly, it picked up two awards at the show—from the top Japanese mags, Hot Bike and Vibes.

‘Double Trouble’ uses a 1969 Ironhead in front, with an older engine at the rear. Both run with S&S Super B carbs, fitted with custom velocity stacks. Kentaro’s friend Kazuhiro Takahashi of Sakai Boring helped rebuild the engines.

The two V-twins are linked by connecting plates, and their output shafts are connected to two separate primaries. The transmission’s a four-speed from a 1980s Big Twin and Kentaro has set the timing of the two motors so that they go ‘potato potato’ at idle, but scream at high revs.

The whole arrangement is housed in a custom hardtail frame, fabricated from steel tubing. There’s a set of early 70s Ducati Imola forks up front, with 18” rims at both ends wrapped in M&H drag slicks. Kentaro installed a pair of Airheart brakes up front, with a Wilwood brake out back.

All of the bodywork was fabricated in aluminum, from scratch. Fuel sits in the cylindrical reservoir up front, with oil held in the seat ‘cowl.’ Custom upholstery from Atelier Cherry adds to the period-correct look.

Double Trouble’s finished off with a narrow set of custom drag bars, with a 1970s H-D tacho out front. The bodywork’s been left raw, with tidy Hot Chop Speed Shop decals on the tank. Buttoned up, it’s both elegant and monstrous. [More]

Hazan Motorworks Max Hazan’s work speaks for itself, but what’s remarkable is that the American builder’s had an unmistakable signature from day one. If you don’t believe us, then consider the fact that this Sportster-powered artwork was only his fourth build.

“I start with a motor that I find aesthetically pleasing, put it on the table, and build the bike around it,” Max told us back then. In this case, the motor is exquisite. Max built it up with two 1981 Ironhead front heads, split the rocker covers and added matching Amal carbs.

The frame was built from 7/8” and 1” steel tubes, and also holds the oil and wiring. The front-end’s a work of art on its own; it uses two springs under the fuel tank, and a damper behind the headlight. The only rear suspension is a pair of springs under the seat, with about 1.5” of travel.

Max had a set of 1920s car tires in his hands, so he built the bike up with a 30” wheel out front, and a 31” hoop at the back. They suit the scale of the bike too—which measures eight feet long, but weighs just 300 lbs.

Almost everything was fashioned by hand, using metal that was lying around the workshop, or, in some cases, small salvaged parts. There’s a frosted shot glass as a taillight cover, and a porcelain doorknob on the hand shifter. The handmade tank only holds 1.5 gallons… but Max is under no illusions about his creation having to be ridden far.

Eight years on, this Ironhead still stands as one of our favorite Harleys—nay, customs—and some of Max’s best work. [More]

HardNine Choppers The 1979 Harley-Davidson XLCR is arguably too rare to be customized these days, but the owner of this Sporty has three. So he had no qualms about handing one over to Swiss builder Danny Schneider for a makeover.

Danny, who operates as HardNine Choppers, is an ex-motocrosser who had previously built two Triumph flat trackers, and was itching to give a Harley the same treatment. So he took on the project with the provision that he could turn it into a tracker. Luckily, the client agreed.

Danny’s work went deep—starting with the motor that he bored out from 997 cc to 1,340 cc, with KB Performance pistons. The carb is from the Harley performance specialists, S&S Cycle, and the exhaust is a custom nickel-plated system that exits under the seat. Danny had to relocate the oil tank to accommodate it.

The custom fuel tank echoes the lines of the original XLCR unit, but it’s actually a slimmer, split design (the left side houses the oil). Danny hand-shaped an aluminum tail section too, with slits to help dissipate heat. He made the seat pad himself, too.

Suspension is by way of Showa shocks from an FXR, fitted with Öhlins cartridges, and Bitubo rear shocks. It rolls on 21F/16R spoked wheels, with a Beringer brake set that Danny drove to the French company’s HQ to have made.

This XLCR is a clever mix of classic style and modern parts, tied together with a host of custom touches and a fresh paint job inspired by a mini-bike spotted on the street (true story).

It’s also a great story of perseverance; Danny took a two-year break in the middle of the project to welcome his daughter into the world and battle testicular cancer. Then he crammed two month’s worth of 15-hour days in to finish it in time for the MBE Expo show in Verona, Italy. Much respect. [More]

DP Customs We’ve featured a slew of slammed and hot-rodded Harleys from the now-defunct DP Customs over the years, but this was one of their wildest. Brothers Jarrod and Justin Del Prado built it as a personal project between client jobs, using Justin’s own 1000 cc 1979 Ironhead Sportster as a donor.

DP Customs went all-out, starting with a turbo that had been sitting in the shop waiting for the right project.

The motor was rebuilt with forged pistons and new valves and springs, then the turbo was installed with a custom draw-through setup, and a Mikuni carb. From the custom aluminum intake and exhaust, to the custom oil system that runs into a Mooneyes tank, it’s an impressive setup.

Like three of the other Harleys on this list, this one features a scratch-built hardtail frame. It uses DP Customs’ signature 6” stretch and 4” drop, with a custom 19” wheel up front, and a modified 15” car wheel at the back. The front brake’s a Brembo, and the rear is a custom system with a combination sprocket and rotor.

Up top is a wafer-thin seat, with a traditional peanut tank up front. DP Customs installed clip-ons with Biltwell Inc. grips, and head- and taillights—but there’s no speedo, and no turn signals. The asymmetrical paint job, red frame and gold wheels should clash, but somehow they harmonize, maximizing the Harley’s eye candy appeal.

DP Customs admit the bike wasn’t built with practicality in mind, summing up that “it hauls ass in a straight line, and the brakes work.” [More]

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anythingmaddow · 4 years

Text

“The Psychopath in Chief”

https://gen.medium.com/the-psychopath-in-chief-aa10ab2165d9

“Imagine — if you can — not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken … You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage?”

— Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

Among the accomplishments Donald Trump parades most proudly is that he has won 18 golf club championships. Like so many of his claims, this one is pure fiction. When the sportswriter Rick Reilly investigated for his book Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, he found that 16 of the claims were transparently false, and no evidence existed to support the other two. In one instance, Trump said he had won a championship at the Bedminster, New Jersey, club he owns, even though he was in Philadelphia on the day the event was held.

When Trump does play, Reilly reported, he takes “mulligans” (extra strokes that aren’t counted in one’s score ), throws opponent’s balls off the greens and into the bunkers, and kicks his own errant shots back onto the fairway so often that one of his caddies nicknamed him Pele, after the soccer star. “Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf,” Reilly concluded. “He cheats like a three-card Monty dealer. He throws it, boots it and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs.”

How do we deal with a person whose core impulse in every part of his life is to deny, deceive, deflect, disparage, and double-down every time he is challenged? And what precisely is the danger such a person poses if he also happens to be the leader of the free world, during a crisis in which thousands of people are dying every day, with no letup in sight?

The first answer is that we must understand exactly who we’re dealing with, and we have not, because what motivates Trump’s behavior is so far from our own inner experience that it leaves us feeling forever flummoxed.

In July 2016, shortly before Trump became the Republican nominee for president, I was interviewed by Jane Mayer for an article in The New Yorker that was eventually titled “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All.” Mayer described my experience with Trump over the 18 months it took me to write The Art of the Deal. During that time, I spent hundreds of hours with him.

Like many other Trump critics, I believed that he was driven by an insatiable narcissistic hunger to be loved, accepted, admired, and praised. That remains prima facie true, but it deflects attention from what drives Trump more deeply: the need to dominate. His primary goal is to win at any cost and the end always justifies the means. Ultimately, he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks or feels. For Trump, the choice between dominating and being loved — saving himself or saving others — is no contest.

The catalyst for my shift came after a friend sent me a long paper written by Vince Greenwood, a Washington, D.C.-based psychologist. Greenwood makes a detailed clinical case that Trump is a psychopath, a term that is now used nearly interchangeably with sociopath. Psychologists continue to debate whether it’s legitimate to diagnose anyone from a distance without the benefit of a clinical interview. In Trump’s case, his life history is so well documented that a thorough assessment does seem possible. As I once did up close, we can observe every day which psychopathic traits Trump manifests in his behavior. The highly regarded Hare Psychopathy Checklist enumerates 20 of them. By my count Trump clearly demonstrates 16 of the traits and his overall score is far higher than the average prison inmate.

The trait that most distinguishes psychopaths is the utter absence of conscience — the capacity to lie, cheat, steal, and inflict pain to achieve their ends without a scintilla of guilt or shame, as Trump so demonstrably does. What Trump’s words and behavior make clear is that he feels no more guilt about hurting others than a lion does about killing a giraffe.

“Let’s face it,” actor and Trump supporter James Woods tweeted recently, “Donald Trump is a rough individual. He is vain, insensitive, and raw,” to which Trump blithely responded: “I think that’s a wonderful compliment. Thanks James.” Absence of conscience gives Trump the license to invent his own rules, define his own reality, declare victory in any competition, and insist on his superior expertise on subjects about which he knows almost nothing.

What makes Trump’s behavior challenging to fathom is that our minds are not wired to understand human beings who live far outside the norms, rules, laws, and values that the vast majority of us take for granted. Conscience, empathy, and concern for the welfare of others are all essential to the social contract. Conscience itself reflects an inner sense of obligation to behave with honesty, fairness, and care for others, along with a willingness to express contrition if we fall short of those ideals, and especially when we harm others.

Repentance for one’s sins is a basic tenet of every major religion, but Trump adamantly resists seeking forgiveness from anyone for anything he’s done. “I have a very great relationship with God,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper during the 2016 presidential campaign. “I like to be good. I don’t like to ask for forgiveness. And I am good. I don’t do a lot of things that are bad. I try to do nothing that is bad.”

So long as we seek to understand Trump’s motivations and behaviors through our own lens, we will feel forever at sea. Viewing Trump through his lens helps clarify that his behavior is completely predictable, and why it has become more extreme during each year of his presidency. “When somebody’s president,” Trump declared on April 13, “the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be. It’s total. It’s total.” When it became clear to Trump that total authority also meant personal responsibility, he backed off that claim. But Trump is akin to a battering ram. He just keeps coming at you. The only limitation on his behavior is whether he believes he can get away with whatever it is he’s trying to do.

“People with a strong sense of conscience speak truth to power,” Greenwood explains. “Trump speaks power to truth.” Since his election in 2016, Trump has told more than 18,000 lies without acknowledging or apologizing for any of them. The frequency of his lies has risen from five per day in the first year of his presidency, to more than 23 a day during 2020. For Trump, lying is second nature. Facts are simply are obstacles to be batted away when they contradict his preferred fictions.

It is a fact, for example, that Trump has been a defendant in nearly 1,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — by government agencies seeking to collect unpaid taxes on his properties, contractors trying to get paid for services rendered to him and his companies, and women charging him with sexual assault. As far back as 1973, Trump and his father Fred were sued by the U.S. government for refusing to rent to African Americans in Trump Village, a housing project built by his father Fred. The two Trumps fought the charges for two years but eventually signed a consent order that included agreeing to take a series of actions to end their discrimination.

In 2015, Trump settled two class-action lawsuits charging him with defrauding students at Trump University by paying $25 million in penalties, and agreeing to close down the business. In 2018, in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general against Trump and his three oldest children alleging “persistently illegal conduct,” the Trumps agreed to shut the phony foundation, and to allow its remaining assets to be directed to charities chosen by the court.

The second quality that sets Trump apart is his lack of empathy. In the face of a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, we expect leaders to feel our pain, and to respond with expressions of compassion and comfort. Not Trump. In 13 hours of comments he made over a recent three-week period, The Washington Post reported that he spent a total of two hours attacking others, including the media, 45 minutes praising himself and his administration, and a total of just 4.5 minutes expressing rote condolences for Covid-19 victims and front line workers.

Trump doesn’t appear to make heartfelt connections with anyone, nor to value relationships beyond the extent to which they serve his immediate self-interest. Turnover in his administration — 85% in the first 32 months — dwarfs that of his five most recent predecessors for their entire first terms. Trump treats even his relationships with family members as transactional. Consider the way he describes his relationship with his father, arguably the most important influence in his life. “I was never intimidated by my father, the way other people were,” he explained to me for The Art of the Deal. “I stood up to him and he respected that. We had a relationship that was almost businesslike. I sometimes wonder if we’d have gotten along so well if I hadn’t been as business oriented as I am.”

Ivanka is the one child Trump has often praised, including for being “voluptuous and having the best body.” When she was 26, Trump told hosts of The View that “If Ivanka wasn’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” Trump’s most emphatic declaration of love during the past four years has been directed at North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, one of the most ruthless dictators in the world. “I was being really tough and so was he,” Trump said in 2018. “And we would go back and forth and then we fell in love. He wrote me beautiful letters. They were great letters, and then we fell in love.” What Trump especially admires in authoritarian leaders, among them Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, and Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro — all of whom he has lavishly praised — is their ability to exercise absolute power. “I wouldn’t mind a little bow,” Trump once said. “In Japan they bow. I love it. Only thing I love about Japan.”

Trump expects and demands loyalty, but it only goes in one direction. His mentor, Roy Cohn, served dutifully as his attorney for many years. “Roy was brutal, but he was a very loyal guy,” Trump told biographer Tim O’Brien. “He brutalized for you.” For The Art of the Deal, Trump described Cohn to me as “the sort of guy who’d be there at your hospital bed… literally standing by you to the death, long after everyone else had bailed out”

As for Cohn, he referred to Trump not just as his client, but also as one of his closest friends. Still, when Cohn was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984, Trump effectively ended the relationship. “Donald found out about it and dropped him like a hot potato,” explained Cohn’s longtime secretary, Susan Bell. “It was like night and day.” According to Bell, Cohn wasn’t surprised. “Donald pisses ice water,” he told her ruefully.

The third trait that most characterizes Trump is his need for dominance, and the evident pleasure he takes in exercising it. “I love getting even when I get screwed by someone,” he explains in his book Think Big and Kick Ass. “Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back 15 times harder.” In the absence of a conscience to shape and limit his behavior, Trump defaults to a more primitive and predatory impulse. Life for him is a zero-sum game. He either wins or he loses, dominates or submits. This explains why Trump felt no compunction about lashing out this week at a frequent critic, Joe Scarborough, by falsely accusing him of murder, even in the absence of a shred of evidence to support his claim. Cruelty is second nature to Trump.

Perhaps nowhere is Trump’s need for dominance more evident than in his relationship with women, captured most vividly in his comments to Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood tape. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]. I just start kissing them,” he bragged. “It’s like a magnet. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” More than 20 women have now publicly accused Trump of sexual assault.

Another tactic that Trump employs to assert his authority is declaring his unique expertise on virtually any subject. He instinctively disdains and dismisses the knowledge of experts, including scientists, and instead casts himself as the leading expert on anything and everything. Topics that Trump has claimed to “know more about than anyone” include ISIS, dr drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, environmental impact statements, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, income, money, and the economy. In fact, because he can never focus his attention for long, his knowledge about any subject tends to be superficial and severely limited. Trump has even felt free to contradict the health care professionals on his own team during the Covid-19 crisis, most notably in describing the potential healing power of injecting disinfectants into the body. “Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” he explained. “Maybe I have a natural ability.”

In order to protect our democracy and our shared humanity, it’s critical to push back, calmly and persistently

So what does all this tell us about how we can expect Trump to behave going forward? The simple answer is worse. His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became president, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way.

In the end, Trump does what he does because he is who he is, immutably. The research now strongly suggests that the absence of conscience has a strong hereditary basis, even as it may also be activated by adverse childhood experiences. The genetic abnormality itself manifests in the limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in the processing of emotions. People without a conscience, it turns out, often have an undersized or under-active amygdala and less gray matter in the limbic area of the brain.

For four years, along with millions of other Trump critics, I have wrestled with the best way to respond to a president who is incapable of shame or empathy and cares only about his self-interest. There is no effective treatment for a person with these traits, and Trump wouldn’t seek one if there was, because he genuinely doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with him. The horrifying truth is that it’s precisely what he’s missing that gives him a permanent advantage over the vast majority of us who are guided by a conscience and concern for others.

Trump revels in attention, domination, and cruelty. “The sociopath wants to manipulate and control you,” explains Martha Stout, “and so you are rewarding and encouraging him each and every time you allow him to see your anger, confusion or your hurt.” Even so, in order to protect our democracy and our shared humanity, it’s critical to push back, calmly and persistently, against every single lie Trump tells, and every legal and moral boundary he violates. We must resist what Hanna Arendt has called “the banality of evil” — the numbness and normalizing that so easily sets in when unconscionable acts become commonplace. “Under conditions of terror, most people will comply,” Arendt has written, “but some people will not.”

Understanding what we’re truly up against — the reign of terror that Trump will almost surely wage the moment he believes he can completely prevail — makes the upcoming presidential election a true Armageddon.

Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.

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