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so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site · 1 year

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Part 6: “I reject your reality, and substitute my own”: Maybe There is Hope After All

Note: this is a part of my essay "The Awkward Meta-Tragedy of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman", see [here] for the masterpost of all links, reading order, and content warnings.

Well, despite everything the author might have possibly intended, I still do care about Morpheus and his fate. To paraphrase Ludo’s 2008 album title, “He’s awful, I love him.”

And that’s part of why the most common interpretation of his ending—as both a fully planned suicide and a tragedy—disturbed me so much. At best I could metaphorically “scoot” it around to interpret it as a traditional tragedy where his fatal flaw was his inability to seek help/treatment or cope with his issues, and thus the warning to the audience is a positive one to seek help if you’re struggling. Once again, though, given the way depression sometimes works, that still feels vaguely close to victim-blaming.

Another way to get around the unfortunate implications would be if his death was not, in fact, a carefully planned suicide. Maybe he just fucked up enough that eventually the various things he fucked up all stacked properly to be his downfall without any intent involved? But, that does raise the huge question of who got Loki to kidnap Daniel, provoking Lyta and thus causing the rest of the dominoes to topple. In the suicide interpretation it’s implied to be Morpheus himself who intentionally set the situation in place; without that explanation that’s an odd open thread left. But still, an accidental buildup of issues rather than intentional suicide would make things a lot less uncomfortable. Somehow, “you can do everything you can to change and still have negative and destructive consequences come your way” or “you can try your best and still fail” feels more reassuring than the alternative of “he did change, but he still decided to die—in the end, it didn’t even matter.”

Totally replacing a dead loved one still feels weird, regardless of their manner of death; I don’t think there’s any way around that. But, at least if it was not a suicide, then it doesn’t validate the “my family would be better off without me” sentiments that might be present in suicidal ideation.

And then, there’s the theories about how Morpheus might not be dead—at least not completely—and that he might have found peace and happiness outside of oblivion after all.

One major factor is the fact that Hob dreams about seeing Morpheus and Destruction together after the events of The Wake. While Hob himself dismisses it as “just a dream,” there’s the fact that both Morpheus in-universe and Neil Gaiman out-of-universe both insist that dreams in this series are never “just a dream.” Combine that with what I pointed out about “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and how the story is meant to let the fae live on despite leaving Earth, and it paints an interesting possible picture.

Maybe Morpheus did find a way to leave his job after all. To live on as something else, as Morpheus rather than Dream of the Endless, as a dream or a story or a memory or a friendship, but no matter what, separate from the responsibilities that so stressed him—and with a responsible and eager successor to take up the reins in his place. Maybe Hob’s example of living through everything even showed him that changing with the times is possible. Just walking away like Destruction did wasn’t an option for him, and not just because Morpheus felt he couldn’t abandon his realm without leaving someone to be responsible. He also couldn’t just walk away because, probably, it wouldn’t be dramatic enough!

Come on, Morpheus is a (possibly literal) Drama King; of course he’s not going to quit quietly. Plus, he knows from Destruction’s example that just leaving also leaves open an eternity of the other universal powers trying to nag you into going back. What’s more dramatic, and conveniently going to prevent anyone from coming after you, than making sure everyone thinks you’re dead?

Or, well, actually dying. Sort of. I have no doubt that some aspect of Morpheus died. Perhaps the aspect that was Dream of the Endless, died, but, as I mentioned, left Morpheus to live on separately in some other form. “You cannot kill an idea” can go both ways; it can mean that we’re not supposed to care that Morpheus is dead, or it can mean that Morpheus lives on. He, as an independent identity, with a specific name he has chosen, is also an idea. If the question is “change or die,” it obscures the fact that this is also a universe where people can change by death.

Heck, there’s even an example in this series of people deciding to finally live upon finding themselves post-life. Chapter 4 of Season of Mists introduces the Dead Boy Detectives. At first, much like “Façade,” this chapter seems to have little to do with the overarching story; besides showing how bad it is to have the formerly hell-bound dead returning to Earth and featuring a cameo by Death, there’s little to connect it to the primary narrative. The majority of it is just about two random boys dealing with supernatural bullies, and both ending up having been murdered by the bullies at the end. But, the story ends on the fact that they choose to “make the most of their afterlives.” They leave behind the crappy situation assigned to them by their circumstances by living on in a new form (in the boys’ case, ghosts). If two random kids can do it, why can’t Morpheus do the same?

Actually, there’s a whole lot of events in Season of Mists that I’ve seen propped up as evidence that Morpheus was settling his circumstances to prepare for his suicide, but I believe can just as easily be interpreted otherwise. It could either be him setting up backup plans in case of his accidental imprisonment or death, or even intentional preparations for a successor to take over for him when he dramatically retires rather than straight-up dies. I could fill an entire other essay with that evidence; I planned to include it here but my page count is already far exceeding what I intended, so I’ll save that for a possible later time. If anyone reading made it this far, let me know if you’d like to read that!

So, do I believe in these more optimistic interpretations of the ending? In terms of authorial intent, I’m not sure. I think there’s certainly a reason everything seemed so shockingly pessimistic at first read, and possibly that was the intent. The books were written at a different time, when the author was at a different place in his life. But stories are also about belief. And when the author straight up says that it’s open to interpretation, well… I’d rather choose to believe that this grand, sweeping, thought-provoking narrative isn’t about an irredeemable depressed asshole being rewarded for suicide, with the reader being scolded for caring.

Perhaps asking whether or not that’s “true” is missing the point.

#the sandman #the sandman comics #the sandman spoilers #the sandman comics spoilers #neil gaiman's sandman #the sandman comics meta #the sandman comics analysis #literary analysis #my writing #sandman essay

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tswwwit · 1 year

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Hiya! I'm a bit of a newbie to writing billdip and I struggle the most with dialogue and generally Bills character. I really admire your writing and was wondering if you have any pieces of advice for writing Bill.

I am highly unqualified to give advice on this subject! But here's a few things that come to mind when I think of how I write Bill!

Bill kinda has three main settings: Disinterested, Excited, and Angry. Think of them like levels on a sound mixer, while also being very Impulsive and having an Easily Shifting Mood.

Bored but willing to keep up a conversation because it *could* get interesting. Engaged in the talk he's having, but annoyed enough to insult the person he's talking to at any chance. Furious and excited enough to start making really creative threats!

Dialogue-wise, he's either dismissive, upbeat, or pissed off. He loves mocking people, displaying his superiority, and implication and wordplay. If there's a way to slide in a jab he'll often take it! Puns are not off the table, especially if they'll get a disgusted look or groan. And if he's making a metaphor or comparison he'll often reach for something obscure or downright bizarre.

He's also very manipulative, and convincing. He's got charm to him and can use it - but he also tends to throw in double-talk while he's doing it. (think the 'All I want is a puppet!' scene from the show)

Another point: Talking directly about himself (unless it's to brag) is basically Not A Thing. He might drop hints, but you need a heavy-duty crowbar to drag out anything even slightly beyond surface level.

And that guy's never going to admit when he's having a negative emotion that isn't anger! The best you can manage - if you know him well - is to realize when he's projecting like a motherfucker.

I have also violated all of these vague rules multiple times and will again! So take my suggestions with several grains of salt.

#This is not a character study just some thoughts I had #My brain is so poisoned with my own variant of this blorbo that this is not one size fits all #So definitely a big couple of salt cubes thrown in there #My brain is very bad and dumb #answers #Confusion is also a fun emotion on Bill but it rarely happens #It generally denatures into excitement at New Thing or annoyed at Hey That's Not Cool!!#When he's baffled he comes to a decision quickly whether it's right or not #Another tip for Bill because he's an asshole: Let him fail!!#Everyone likes seeing assholes fail #And Bill fucking up out of his own hubris is the best thing #That's not a character tip it's just a good tip for writing likeable assholes #If you want him full unlikable make him absolutely unassailable #Everyone hates a bully who always wins but everyone loves the jerk who tries to jerk then steps on a rake and gets hit in the face #Narrative dynamics at play

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archive-of-note · 5 months

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Florida man hasn't completed any fic in a hot minute... returns with a different fandom and POV style...

Astarion x Dark Urge OC (Markus) a bit that sprouted off from a different fic attempt but felt too different to stay in the other doc... so here it is now, on its own.

no real... anything really, just an interaction as i try and hammer out their whole deal, so two traumatized men who's whole lives have been defined and shaped by violence, trying to figure out how to interact with each other and the rest of the world.

some tweaks to the Durge backstory, and whole deal really. the way the game treats the Urges is... odd, almost like they're a separate thing from your character's thought process at times

oh, implied past Gortash x Durge, but even he isn't completely sure what the exact nature of their relationship used to be.

I'm terrible at naming fics btw, that hasn't changed, suggestions welcome

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We need to talk.”

Markus breathes in, the fact Astarion is initiating heavy conversation is enough of a warning that he shouldn’t try and put this off.

“Okay.”

Markus just keeps scrubbing his clothes, waiting.

“Are you going to even look at me?”

Markus doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t know what to expect, but the waiver in Astarion’s voice, that sliver of fear, it supersedes his own.

Astarion’s shoulders relax just a bit when Markus turns, and the elf takes a few steps forward until he’s standing next to the tiefling.

Markus wrings out his clothes and waits.

“What are we? To you.”

Markus almost giggles, the same words he’s asked the elf a few too many times, to the point Astarion has had to preemptively reassure Markus that yes, what they are is something important and special to him.

“I—“ Markus sighs, dunking his robes in the wash basin, more so a fidget than actual cleaning.

“You, you make me happy, and I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy like this, and that scares the shit out of me.” The admission makes Markus feel raw, like an exposed nerve.

Astarion huffs, and if Markus didn’t know better he’d be hurt by how dismissive it sounds.

“Aroused certainly, annoyed definitely, but happy?” Astarion sounds almost disgusted with the word, “Not usually the feeling people associate with me darling.”

The thing is Markus isn’t even completely certain if what he’s feeling is happiness. Before his memories decided to rush back into place, before Gortash went ahead and talked about their history with vague fondness and some deep tonal implications, he was quite certain what Astarion had him feeling was happy.

But now? Now he has bits and pieces, choppy and half formed but coherent enough to paint a picture.

What he feels with Astarion is good, but it’s nothing like what he knows to be happy.

Happy for Markus is being elbow deep in viscera, the terrified whimpers of someone desperately trying to keep silent, wide eyes collapsing as all hope is lost and they beg for some sort of mercy.

That’s happy.

Markus presses his face into Astarion’s hip to think.

Astarion jumps at the sudden press of the tiefling’s face into his side, but after a few seconds he places a hand between Markus’s horns.

Markus inhales, brandy, bergamot, rosemary, and beneath that, the subtle saltiness of sweat and leather.

How many times has he blindly followed that smell? How many times has he pressed his face into the dips and creases of Astarion’s skin, using his scent as an anchor?

Safe.

It’s some small part of him that had been crushed and muffled since his father claimed him. The scared child he was when he opened his eyes to bloody hands and flesh filled teeth, the people he called parents dead and decorating the walls of their small home for his nameday.

Gods, when was the last time he thought about his parents? When was the last time he could think about his parents?

Astarion presses his thumb to the base of one of Markus’s horns, it’s that spot that sends a tickle down the scar Orin left down the side of his nose.

“Let me in?”

Markus presses his face a bit deeper into Astarion’s side, some delight wiggling it’s way into his crowded mind when he realizes the elf actually has some give, a touch of softness where his waist turns into hip.

“It’s a mess.”

Astarion scoffs, “The only one of us messier than you is Karlach, at least you have the excuse of drama worthy amnesia.”

Markus snorts.

“You’ve seen my messes, helped me clean them even, let me return the favor?”

Markus stiffens, but before he can say anything Astarion continues.

“Because I want to, darling. Not because I think I owe you.”

Markus sighs, shoulders dropping when he feels the bit of insistence from Astarion trying to probe his mind.

He opens the connection a crack, and he can feel Astarion brush past the confusion, the worry, the few memories of Gortash he was able to cobble together.

“The way he spoke, I assumed you’d been sharing more than world domination plans.”

“I still don’t know if we did.”

Most of the memories are factual, no real emotions come with them, deaths he’s caused, tortures committed, he isn’t numb to them, but the only emotions he feels are the ones he has to them now.

The few that flood him with emotion, all have to do with his father.

The truth of his lineage, the first day Sceleritas appeared before him, the first mass he lead in his father’s name.

Those come with fondness, warmth, pride. He has a feeling those emotions are not entirely, if at all, his own.

“Red is a lovely color on you dear, but I must say, even this is a bit much.”

Markus snorts, letting that starburst of fondness in his chest bleed over into Astarion’s awareness.

“I’m quite certain most of the memories I had returned were ones my father felt were necessary, if I recall anything else, it is by sheer happenstance.”

Astarion hums in distaste, “Quite telling, don’t you think, that Bhaal would have to censor your memory.”

Markus… Markus hadn’t considered that.

Astarion taps Markus with his foot, a silent instruction for the tiefling to make space for the vampire to sit.

Markus does just that.

“Try and remember something, anything, that has nothing to do with him.”

Markus opens his mouth to argue, his entire being, his very person hood, was a facet of his father, that was the intention.

“Cazador tried to break me, he intended to break me.”

Markus’s mouth clicks shut.

“I did not break, I bent and I bowed, but I did not break.”

Flashes, moments, bits and pieces of hunger pangs and broken fingernails. Rotten rats and the burn of an ill handled blade. Condescending coos and obviously false promises, disrespect and degradation.

They all come with emotions, disgust, fear, exhaustion, but there is a constant.

Rage.

The true depths of which were kept under wraps, the flairs and bursts Cazador saw only fractions of what the younger elf truly contained.

“You were not helpless without Bhaal’s guidance, and I doubt that was something that just suddenly came to you.”

Markus can feel Astarion shuffling through memories, tossing aside bloody images and and terrified screams, looking for something that has nothing to do with Markus’s divine inheritance.

“Well hello.”

It takes Markus a moment to orient his mind to what Astarion has found.

It’s her.

Heat rises to Markus’s cheeks before he really knows why.

“Now I do believe daddy dearest had nothing to do with this.”

The memories are haphazard, choppy.

The swish of a tail, the supple curve of a thigh, the drag of claws beneath his chin.

Vanilla and pine covering the electrified ozone that comes with high magic use.

Astarion’s eyes widen, his hands cupping Markus’s cheeks as he digs around for memories of the woman that once drove the tiefling mad.

“Oh darling, I knew you had taste, but my oh my, I’m surprised they’re so refined.”

Markus doesn’t know how to take that, but before he can say anything a new memory emerges, a dagger at his throat.

Not when he first met Astarion, no, the dagger in his memory is sharpened to a delicate but lethal edge, a smooth curve and jeweled pommel.

“It seems you have a type.”

Markus feels a chuckle forming, but it stalls in his throat.

The memory of her flirtatious smile turns horrified, a thick line of blood dripping down her brow, the smell of burning fabric and the sting of electricity beneath his skin.

Anger, fear, disgust, regret.

The message is clear, “You have no time for such needless distractions.”

Markus grabs Astarion’s wrist as he pushes the elf from his mind, desperate for some comfort but also scared for his safety.

No wonder he believed Sceleritas so quickly, he’d tried to kill someone he cared about before. Had succeeded in the case of his parents in name.

“I…” Markus feels a trembling in his chest. Fear, promising placations, promises that his lapses in judgment were long term plans, that his lack of bloodshed wasn’t stalling, it was all part of a plan.

The Plan.

His head pounds as his mind scrambles, fragments of answers to even more fragmented questions.

Desperate calls for silence, the singing of blood, a moment's respite from the violent flesh craving, desperation and fractions of perfect quiet moments.

His nose is bleeding.

“No need to let that go to waste.”

A cool callused finger wipes his lip.

Markus… Markus wants to sleep.

“Are you hungry?”

Astarion understands.

Astarion understands and Markus knows whatever he had with Gortash didn’t have this. A silent knowing, intrinsic understanding. They had been made rotten by circumstance but Gortash just made Markus’s rot worse.

Gortash saw him a feral lap dog, something kept on a leash and appeased with random bursts of praise and the occasional treat.

Astarion may have started by playing a similar hand, but even his calculated approvals were more heartfelt than the admitted drivel Gortash would randomly lob his way.

Astarion smiles, sultry and playful, the vulnerability being hidden away for another time, another night.

“Oh darling, I thought you’d never ask.”

Markus smiles, his own playful deflections returning as he stands, barely remembering the wet robe that’s been soaking in the wash basin.

He presses his forehead to Astarion’s, a moment of unfettered affection and relief, warmth and understanding, those soft mushy feelings neither of them know how to articulate.

“Don’t keep me waiting.”

Markus nudges forward, just enough for the bridges of their noses to press against each other before standing entirely, tail swaying behind him in an exaggerated tease.

#astarion ancunin #astarion #astarion romance #astarion bg3 #astarion x dark urge #baldurs gate astarion #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate #bg3 #astarion x oc #astarion fanfiction #astarion fanfic #astarion imagine #bg3 spoilers #baldurs gate iii #baldurs gate 3 spoilers #dark urge spoilers

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maleyanderecafe · 2 years

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Restart Heart (Visual Novel)

Created by: QueenLilithPrime

Genre: Romance/Horror

This one is another r18 visual novel game that's going around, and it has a promising start. There's not a whole ton of things going on so far, but I will do my best to do a review on it. I'm sure there will be many fun things later, so I will be checking in on it when I can. They have a tumblr blog called @restartheartvn if you are more interested in what's going on with the characters and games.

From what I can tell, the MC's default name is Sugar, so I will refer to them as such.

The story starts out with Sugar waking up after a drunken and disastrous night. They meet up with their roommate Chris who helps make them breakfast and tries to talk about last night, offering his sympathy. Sugar dismisses it and goes to work at a chocolate store. While there, a couple other acquaintances come over to hang out with them: Blaire, the more daring/sexy girl, Sammy, the shy one and Ezra, the flirty one. After hanging out, Sugar is invited to hang out with them to get to know them more. If Sugar agrees, they hang out, learning more about Ezra's job (vaguely). Afterwards, the group goes out to eat and walk on the beach. There Ezra tries to talk about the events of the Sugar's drunk night: specifically that their lover cheated on them with their sister. Sugar is a bit shocked that Ezra knows this and can either freak out or ask about it, to which the answer he states is that he learned of it off of social media (which is a... fair answer, I suppose). Sugar can decide to rebound with him and have sex if they wish and that's where the demo ends.

The story itself is very simple, it seems like more or less Sugar rebounding with one of the characters to get over their breakup with Ezra happening to be the yandere. It seems that you can date pretty much any character with a character sprite and can actually date multiple people in the final version ( I wonder how that will bode with Ezra, hm.) It's not really explicitly stated what happened while Sugar was drunk, but assumedly they broke up with their lover and did something that was large enough to be on social media and concerning enough that people would start messaging them. I find it... strange that Sugar doesn't really have a bond with any of these characters initially, even their own roommate, whom cooks for them. Considering the way they act with each other, I would have assumed they were a bit closer, since even people hanging out you during work I would still consider someone a bit closer than just strangers. Maybe that's just my perspective since I would still consider most of these people my friends since they hang out with Sugar quite a bit. I am curious how Sugar's sister will be dragged into this later.

As for yandere things, there isn't a ton of things going on with Ezra as of lately. This is something that I've noticed with a lot of proclaimed yandere r18 games which is that there is very little to no actual yanderesque content at least in the demo. While I do understand it's not easy making these kinds of games, I do kind of wish there was a better showcasing of the yandere qualities in the demo, instead of just having it proclaimed on a blog somewhere. Again, I understand a demo is subjected to change and are simply the first showing of what a game is about, but many yandere demos are able to show the qualities of ones, and it feels really strange to me that so many r18 ones fail to do so. I think the one that is able to do this the best that I've played is 14 Days with You, since in other games, I would have to guess that there was one in there. In Restart Heart, the only real big quality of Ezra that indicates to me that he's a yandere is that he knows about the MC's break up and that their lover dated their sister instead. That and perhaps he has a couple of stray romantic lines and the implication that he has been stalking the MC for a while. However, many of these are not obvious and are dismissed very easily. Personally, while I don't think it's always necessary to have very obvious yanderes, I do think it should be something that arouses more suspicion or at least feels more like something is off. Ezra has been apparently cleaning the Sugar's apartment and stalking them, but there is very little indication of it. But then again, maybe that's something the creator is going for, where the content is much more subtitle when it comes to yandere actions, so who am I to say.

As of now, there's not much I can really say specifically about the demo, mostly because there's nothing really going on to talk extensively about. There is more information on their tumblr if you are interested in this game, however, I did wish there was more yandere content in this demo. I will be playing it when the full game comes out so I will be watching over it patiently until it comes out.

#male yandere #yandere #yandere boy #recommendations #visual novel #ongoing #restart heart

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buffintruder · 2 years

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Some thoughts on Barok van Zieks’ racism

Before I get into this, mild spoiler warning for gaa 1 and 2 regarding van Zieks’ motivations and interactions with Ryunosuke, as well as some vague references to the direction of his character arc, but nothing specific is mentioned regarding his backstory.

Additionally, I am Japanese American and that plays a big part in how I see van Zieks and his story line, but I do not speak for everyone of Japanese descent and definitely not for all poc, just for myself. I would be interested in hearing other people’s thoughts (Japanese or otherwise).

There are many parts of van Zieks’ character that appeal to me, and I have tried very hard to like him, but I’m not a fan of the way the racism in the game and especially his storyline was written. To me, it comes off as a really shallow depiction. This makes sense; the story was not written for me, but for and by Japanese people who mostly have not had the same lifelong experiences with structural racism that I have had. I don’t say this to dismiss or excuse any flaws these games have with their handling of race, but just to understand it. Overall, this post is me trying to explain why I think he was written as he was but why it didn’t work for me.

Why doesn’t it work for me?

First of all, I feel like van Zieks' racism being so directed specifically towards the Japanese is kind of... very self centered in a meta way?? Like Japanese people are the ones making the games, so of course they won’t even mention other people who are also affected by that racism. Do characters like van Zieks and Jezaille only look down on and hate Japanese people and not other races? Probably not, but we never know. There's like a couple ambiguously brown side characters but that's it. No single story can cover every aspect of race dynamics, and that isn’t at all what Ace Attorney is trying to do, but it still feels a bit disingenuous to focus so exclusively on such a narrow aspect. It's all about the Japanese, which is its own kind of racism.

But even the anti-Japanese stuff in this game feels very surface-level and unsatisfying to me. Sure by the end of the games, van Zieks’ assumptions about Japanese people have been proven wrong, but it feels like that’s it. We never really have to think about the structural implications of having someone with such high power and such open biases. Not to say that there’s zero consideration about the broader effects of racism. Van Zieks was totally ready to have Natsume die by prosecuting him because he was Japanese and Jezaille was unfairly protected by the British government, but despite those things being mentioned, none of that is ever really examined in more depth. To me, it doesn’t feel like enough. Over all, it’s such a surface level handling of racism, narrowing it down to “this person does mean things to x people” without going much deeper.

You can see this in the way that Ryunosuke and Susato react to van Zieks. At one point, Ryunosuke is like "yeah that's fair that you'd hate all Japanese people after one did bad stuff". First of all, that is absolutely not a reasonable assumption because one person can’t represent a whole group of people like that unless you see that group as inhumanly uniform.

But also like. I think that very much comes from the writers and the target audience being nationally and ethnically Japanese. If you're part of the ethnic majority in the place you live, even if you visit or live in a racist area for a short period, I feel you only really come away with a skin-deep understanding and concern about it. Especially since Japanese people generally are not the biggest targets of racism in most times and places these days.* So for Ryunosuke and probably to the writers and intended audience, van Zieks does suck, but all in all, it's just some mean comments, whatever. It’s easier to forgive and not look too hard into. Unless you make an active effort to study it, I feel like you have to live with it for awhile or grow up in it to get that racism runs much more deeply than that.

*Obviously this depends on a lot of factors and I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s experiences. I’ve definitely experienced a lot of microaggressions growing up in the 00s and 10s on the west coast, but I haven’t experienced anything like the harrassment my mom faced as an international college student to the midwest in the 90s.

It's not that I think this writing is particularly unrealistic. I don’t know the exact experiences and opinions of Japanese students visiting Britain during this period were, nor what the experiences of the writers are. But Ryunosuke is of the majority ethnicity in the place he grew up in, and from a class that is high enough for him to go to university in a period where a vast majority of people did not. He probably grew up aware that globally, Japan was viewed as inferior to lots of other countries like Britain and that Japan felt they need to catch up and prove themselves, but being seen as lesser probably wasn’t something he faced directly on a day-to-day basis. When he visits London, yes some people make rude comments or are unnecessarily hostile to him, but ah well, you just have to power through and be polite about it. It’s not that van Zieks is correct in his racism, but simply that given the time and place it’s to be expected, especially when he has a tragic backstory connected to it.

So it makes sense for him to be so understanding van Zieks, and it makes sense that the people writing this probably expect the audience to think of van Zieks like pretty much every other prosecutor; an asshole who you grow to like over the course of the game who turns out not to actually be that bad.

And I guess i don't really blame them? Or for any of the western audiences that like van Zieks (unless you support or excuse his racism).

Like, there are a lot of genuinely interesting things about him! The whole ‘everyone he prosecutes against dies’ is such a cool concept and I really enjoy seeing the ways he deals with it and reacts to public perception of it. In many ways, he is a really funny person and I’m a fan of his sense of drama. I like that he is more on the side of justice than prosecuting for his own personal prestige and that he doesn’t physically assault the defense. In my liveblog of the game to a friend, there were many times where I went “okay he’s not as bad as I thought” “he gets one right because he isn’t a total asshole”. He didn’t bug me as much as I expected, and I really did want to like him!

But even though I think his character concept is pretty cool and that he's kind of fascinating, I honestly can't forgive him like Ryunosuke can.

For me, he’s a louder and more obvious version of a lot of people I have and will continue to encounter in my life. Even if he can be redeemed (and I do believe he has a lot of potential for growth and change after the end of the games), it’s not particularly a story I’m am interested in seeing because of that personal factor. Maybe if canon had done a better job of writing racism in a way that appealed to me, things would be different, but I can’t know.

I think how much you like him really is a question of how much you’re willing to see past his bad actions because of his faulty reasoning and his implied future of becoming a better person. This is a thing that will vary. The lines for what a character can do before you stop liking them is different for each person, and I’m not going to draw those lines for other people. Like him or don’t like him, but be respectful to the people who are uncomfortable by his racism.

So then how could the games have done it better?

I get that this is a silly law game and the problems it’s interested in tackling are way more related to concepts like justice than race. I wouldn’t expect a super in-depth handling of what is a very complicated and layered topic, and especially not a moralizing message. (Japanese kids don’t really need to be taught to stop being racist towards Japanese people, after all.) But racism is still an issue, so it would have been nice if even a little more consideration and depth had been shown. Honestly, there wouldn’t even have to be a lot of changes to make the game better. It still wouldn’t be revolutionary or anything, just alright, but I don’t think every piece of media has to say something brilliant about every single topic.

Here are my proposed fixes:

1. Acknowledge the fact that more than white and Japanese people exist. Ideally at least one person in the main cast would be outside of these groups (preferably more). This isn’t a story about race, so I wouldn’t expect much depth about how these character interact with a racist justice system, but there should be acknowledgement that they’re in a disadvantaged position (like Naruhodo, Susato, and the other Japanese characters who go to Britain), and enough research to make sure to avoid racist portrayals.

2. Don’t show most of the main characters to be so sympathetic to van Zieks’s hatred of Japanese people. Like I totally get if Ryunosuke still says “hey I understand why you hate us”, like he is a polite and non-confrontational person from a polite and non-confrontational culture. But also allow him to be angrier at van Zieks, especially in his inner thoughts or to Susato. Let him feel down about how someone he clearly respects to some degree blaming him for something someone completely unrelated did and struggling how disconcerting it is to be viewed by people as a representative of an entire country when you’re just some guy

3. Make it so that van Zieks actually learns something from this experience that isn’t just “oh I guess Japanese people aren’t evil after all.” Give some indication that he wants to put in the work to examine his biases and his place in the system. Even if Ryunosuke and Susato weren’t such good and clever people, even if they didn’t beat him and uncover the truth and prove his assumptions about Japanese people, neither they nor Japanese people as a whole deserve the derision van Zieks has for them. The problem with van Zieks is far deeper than him just judging a couple people too harshly, so make sure he realizes that.

In conclusion, this game wasn’t made for me so I do get it, but I still wish they had done a better job at portraying racism as a deep-rooted and complicated problem instead of the rather self-centered and one-dimensional issue it appears as in the game

#white people can reblog but if you clown on this you're getting blocked #also it's been a few months since i've played these games so sorry if some details are off #the great ace attorney #gaa #dai gyatuken saiban #dgs #barok van zieks #ryunosuke naruhodo #naruhodo ryunosuke #my post

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andypantsx3 · 3 years

Text

statistically significant | 5 | bakugou/reader

length: 23,490 words | 7 chapters

summary: You’re the scientist who developed a neural net to model the value of assists. Now that your work is feeding into the hero rankings, pro hero Ground Zero has a bone to pick with your results.

tags: romance, enemies to lovers, sexual tension, reader-insert

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut, m/f threats of violence, problematic behavior

The next few weeks were a blur of activity.

When he wasn’t off on patrol or a mission, Mina and Kaminari kept Bakugou busy with dozens of team exercises, all of which needed your analysis. They ran him through any and every scenario that entered their brains, and after the first few rounds, Bakugou seemed to resign himself to their ministrations, his explosions no longer rattling the windows of the training room in displeasure. You’d reviewed footage of the first couple of rounds all together, the trio of heroes jammed into the tiny surveillance room with you, grimy with the ashy residue of Bakugou’s explosions, someone or another’s shirt partly melted off, and all of them looking exhausted but pleased.

Eventually, though, it became difficult for you to spare time in between your meetings with the other agency heroes. Bakugou was not helping matters by kicking the door down in the middle of your meetings and attempting to bodily remove anyone you were in conversation with whenever he wanted an update. You were dedicating almost as much time to breaking up fights and rescheduling appointments as you were to having the actual meetings themselves.

In the interest of maintaining the peace--and health and safety the Miruko agency employees--you wrote a quick script that monitored the training room footage and automatically ran your analysis program any time it keyed in on Bakugou, Mina, and Kaminari together on screen. It forwarded the results to their phones so that Bakugou wouldn’t come stalking in and making any more enemies than he already had.

That seemed to pacify him for a couple of days, and you managed almost twenty blissful meetings uninterrupted, until a Friday morning when no sooner had you flipped the lights on in the surveillance room than Bakugou was ripping the door open after you.

“Enough slacking off, nerd,” he growled, stalking over to loom over you in a vaguely menacing manner. It was early but he looked wide awake, maybe a little mussed like he'd already been training, the same combination of annoyingly handsome and intimidating as always. He was also dressed in some variation of his usual training set, dark fabric clinging to his chest, arms bare. The sight was really way too much for this early in the morning.

His sudden entrance startled you out of a yawn, and you just barely managed to catch your laptop before it slipped through your fingers.

“Good morning?” you hedged, looking up at him in apprehension.

He made an angry, dismissive noise. Before you could dredge up enough energy for a proper eye roll, something small and warm was thrust unceremoniously into your chest, briefly winding you.

You looked down at the item he was attempting to fracture your sternum with and found yourself staring at a white takeout cup.

You looked up at him in confusion but he just glared passively until you looked down again.

“....what is this?” you asked. Your hands raised automatically to take the cup from him.

“Battery acid,” Bakugou said.

You stopped, gaping at him, and he rolled his eyes. “The fuck do you think it is, idiot?” he demanded, gesturing at it forcefully.

You looked down at the cup again, a soft swirl of steam issuing from the opening in the cap. You brought it hesitantly to your face. A cursory sniff revealed very little in the way of poison--not that you had much expertise on the subject--but it did smell suspiciously like the house blend from the nice bakery down the street.

You stared at Bakugou with misgiving. “What is this, actually?”

He made a disbelieving noise. “You spend all this time acting like such a smartass and you don’t even know what a fucking coffee is? The fuck do you think you drink every morning?”

You couldn’t help but stare at him. There was absolutely no way Bakugou Katsuki was bringing you coffee. This had to be some kind of trick.

His threats from a few weeks ago floated to the forefront of your mind. I’m going to win the bet, he’d said, and then you’re in for it. Was this part of "in for it"? What was “it”, exactly, and was it likely that “it” entailed poisoning you in broad daylight in the middle of a hero agency?

The offing you in broad daylight seemed very much his style, but poison seemed a roundabout way to do it. No, if he was going to settle a score with you, it was going to be something much more immediate, and probably obnoxiously flashy.

You brought the cup to your mouth, taking a tentative sip. No acid tang of poison met your tongue, only the rich, buttery taste of the coffee. Though arsenic was said to be flavorless... Damn that was good, though.

Bakugou hovered impatiently, like he was waiting for something, wearing a strangely blank expression. You watched him nervously. Was the poison slow acting or something?

His scarlet gaze locked onto yours, and it suddenly hit you what he must be doing. You almost dropped the coffee. Was he...waiting for a thank you? As in, he was aware of and actively acknowledging that he’d just done something for you?

You decided to test the waters. “Thank you, Bakugou.”

He made an impatient clicking noise. “Fucking took you long enough.”

You frantically schooled your features into a mask that betrayed nothing of your shock. Christ, he was serious. He’d actually brought you a coffee, and he knew it was a nice thing to do? There was no way he was doing this just to do this. He had to want something from you.

“...So, what is it that you’re bribing me for?” you asked.

Bakugou’s face went dark, the tips of his ears strangely pink. “Fuck you. I don’t need to fucking bribe you for shit, with your obvious little crush on me.” He took a threatening step closer, and that familiar scent of gunpowder and caramel filled your nose.

You felt your face heat, your heart jumping into your mouth. Not this shit again.

So, it was absolutely true that you had a lot of trouble detaching your eyes from the width of his biceps, and that your brain ran wild loops every time he was close. But just because you had difficulty looking anywhere else when he was in a room, didn't mean you had a crush on him. He was way too much of a brat and it was exhausting trying to keep up with his weirdly intense personality. Just because he was pretty did not mean you had a thing for him...

“Why are you like this?” you complained, edging away from him as he moved nearer.

He smirked knowingly, taking another step closer. A small, traitorous shiver went up your spine at the thrill of a man so close. To your eternal embarrassment, Bakugou’s keen gaze seemed to catch it, a darker smile curling his mouth.

You opened your mouth to make some kind of excuse--though what you would have come up with was completely beyond you--when a head of wild pink curls poked itself through the door.

The intruder let out a quiet gasp, but that was enough to break the moment. Bakugou whirled on her, red eyes glaring.

“Raccoon, do you ever mind your own fucking business?” he demanded, in the tones of someone interrogating a war criminal.

Mina’s dark eyes widened innocently. “What? How was I supposed to know this is where you’d gone?” she asked. There was note of something gloating in her voice, however, and you got the feeling that she’d been hoping to catch you in some kind of act.

Your face went hotter. Why did everyone think there was a thing with you and Bakugou, including, apparently, Bakugou?

“Anyway, I’m not here for you,” Mina informed him briskly, derailing your wandering train of thought. “I was gonna ask stats girl to give us a hand this morning.”

She turned to you, her smile slightly predatory. “Blasty’s better at sticking close now, so we started focusing team exercises on victim evaluation. Any chance you can play civilian? Denki was for a bit but he started getting too into it.” A grimace flitted over her pretty features. “I almost lost an arm trying to stop Katsuki from blasting him clear into the stratosphere.”

You looked at Bakugou, but an irritated twitch of a blonde eyebrow was all you got by way of an explanation.

Your thoughts turned inward, wondering if this was a good idea. You’d been hoping to use the morning to get a little work done on a prototype of a productionized model, seeing as you had fewer meetings than usual today. And you hadn’t really come prepared for a potential roll around in the dirt and dust of the city simulation training spaces.

As if sensing your hesitation, Mina chirped, “I’ll let you a spare set of my training clothes so yours don’t get dirty! And you would probably be saving Denki’s life here--don’t you owe him one from the Hero Awards?”

Your gaze cut back to Bakugou without any direction from your brain. Bakugou appeared to be making no attempt to look apologetic about the incident at the Awards. He raised an eyebrow in challenge when your look lingered too long for his liking, red eyes narrowing in on you with a sudden heat. “The fuck are you looking at, nerd?”

“He means please,” Mina said, her voice going honeyed and wheedling. “Plus, it will be fun! I promise you I won’t melt any of your body parts off. Just Blasty’s, I swear.”

You couldn’t help the way your eyes stayed firmly attached to Bakugou’s face. His mouth twitched in obvious irritation at the implication that he would ever say please, but he made no move to correct Mina, limbs drawn in tight, defensive.

You looked down at the cup in your hand, sighing. He’d brought you a coffee and was doing minimal yelling. He appeared to be making some kind of effort here--though to what end you weren’t sure--and you supposed contributing to his training was ultimately your goal here, anyway. You could reward him for behaving himself as well as he knew how, and work towards your promotion at the same time.

“Fine,” you allowed, watching as Mina startled wiggling in obvious delight. “Let me finish this coffee and then I’ll help out.”

Mina clapped her rosy palms together. “Ahh! This is going to be so fun! You’ll see.”

Mina’s definition of fun was any civilian’s definition of fucking terrifying.

It was one thing to see the three heroes using their powers on screen, or safely tucked away behind a meter of quirk-enforced glass. It was another thing entirely to be in the center of the action, acid sizzling mere inches from your feet.

“You said you wouldn’t melt anything off!” you shouted, stumbling away from Mina.

She’d accused Kaminari of getting too into playing civilian--whatever that meant--but you thought she was way too into playing villain herself. A hard look passed over her pretty features, sending a chill down your spine. With that dark look, those unusual eyes and twisted horns took on a more sinister nuance. She looked almost like an alien, and moved like one too, stalking you through the twisting alleys of the training cityscape.

“Accidents happen,” she cooed, almost happily. She threw up a twisting fistful of acid that hardened into a warped wall in front of you. You skidded wildly on the gravel to avoid it. “Now stay still, you’re supposed to be a hostage.”

A choked little noise escaped you. Honestly, thank god this woman was a hero. You might have trouble sleeping at night if you knew a villain like this was stalking the streets, unchecked and unbound by social mores. You’d probably still have trouble getting to sleep tonight, even after she went back to smiling and bouncing all over the place.

“Actually, maybe Kaminari should take over again,” you managed, stepping back from her. “Not really sure if I’m cut out for this.”

A loud boom drowned out her reply, an office front a few blocks away crumbling under the force of the blast. You gaped at the force that shook the street, even blocks away.

Mina used your distraction to her advantage, grabbing the back of your shirt to haul you towards her. “He’s so obvious, my god--how he got to be number eight is beyond me. Now come over here and do your best to look injured. He needs practice evacuating people instead of coming in blasting.”

She fumbled with something on her belt, pulling out several bright red bands that proclaimed various types of injuries in blocky white font. Then she leaned over you, shoving a band up your arm that announced SEVERE BURNS, and another on your left ankle, proclaiming a DISLOCATION.

She clicked her tongue, looking you over. “Would more be overkill? This is enough that he should at least hesitate before trying to blow me sky high…” She seemed to decide against more, shoving the rest back into her belt. Then she gently pressed you down to the ground at her feet.

“This is the part where I get to monologue,” she said, winking down at you. “Do your best to look helpless and make sure your severe burns thing is showing. I wanna see if he can prioritize rescuing you over my trash talk.”

A soft groan escaped you. Fat chance. Bakugou was the most foul tempered little shit you had ever met, and while it was true that his single-minded focus on winning the bet meant he was tolerant enough to be doing this exercise in the first place, you highly doubted he was going to hesitate if Mina was pushing his buttons as expertly as she usually did.

The chance to find out came soon enough. There was a strangled kind of yelp and a crackle of lightning followed a thunderous boom a few blocks away as Bakugou presumably rendered Kaminari’s perimeter defense useless. Then with another screaming explosion, he was rocketing over the buildings separating you, barrelling straight down on Mina.

Mina threw up another acid shield that hardened into a defensive wall. Bakugou’s first attack cracked it but didn’t manage to penetrate. There was barely a breath between the cracking and another explosion, however, and then the wall exploded inwards in a crackling shower of fizzing pieces. Mina crouched over you, breathing excitedly, “This is the fun part!”

Whatever reply you might have given her was drowned out by an angry series of hissing snaps from Bakugou’s palm as he stalked closer to you. The right half of his shirt had been singed off by lightning, it looked like, and a fine veneer of dust layered in his hair and on patches of his skin. It was just a training simulation, but he looked half-wild, teeth bared and eyes bright over the ash on his face. If he looked nearly this intense in real life situations, it was a wonder that anyone would agree to be evacuated by him at all.

Maybe that’s why he sucked at rescues.

“It’s fucking over, raccoon eyes,” he said. “Hand her over.”

Mina laughed, a delicate sound like bells. “Not another step closer, hero, or I’ll melt a hole straight through her pretty neck.”

You twitched away from her minutely. God she was terrifying.

“Quit it with the fucking villain act, fuckwad, or I’ll blow you all the way to hell,” Bakugou growled.

Mina reached for your arm, pulling you up next to her. “Hmm, then I hope your aim is good. She’s already got one set of severe burns.”

Bakugou’s crimson gaze cut down to your shoulder and the displeased twist to his mouth deepened. “Fucking--of course you got yourself fucking injured. Fucking idiot.”

“Hey,” you protested, shifting against the band. “I’m not actually.”

Mina kicked you. “Moments to live, this one. Unless you can pull a healing quirk out of those glorious buttcheeks of yours.”

You choked on your own spit while Bakugou snarled. “I’m gonna fucking remember this, you strawberry fuck.”

“Maybe. But she won’t,” Mina said, and suddenly there was a rosy palm in front of your face, dripping acid. A drop landed deliberately on the fold of the training pants she’d lent you, searing straight through with a loud hiss. Your heartbeat spiked in violent alarm. You reeled back, but Mina was still crouched over you, and you banged into her collarbone.

In the next second, everything went to shit. Something searing hot blazed just over your shoulder and Mina swore, jerking back from you in the blink of an eye. There was a deafening crack and a rush of burning air over you as Bakugou let loose an explosion at the same time he seized your ankle and pulled you straight underneath where he’d aimed the blast, missing you by inches.

“What the fuck,” you gasped. Bakugou grunted, and yanked harder, pulling you straight to him.

“Quit being such a fucking princess,” he growled, shifting an arm underneath you. You froze, suddenly wishing that his explosion had managed to hit you, searing off every nerve ending.

“What are you doing?” you demanded, sputtering in alarm when he hoisted you against him. You could feel every place your body touched his, and smell the sharp gunpowder and sugar scent of his sweat. He hooked his arm firmly around your waist, glaring down at you with one baleful red eye.

“Fuckstick gave you a dislocated ankle so I would have to fight her off with one fucking arm and carry you with the other,” he bit out, whirling when a stream of acid came hissing your way.

You gripped at his shirt, swearing. “Oh my god. What the hell is she doing, aiming for me? This is a simulation! Also, I can walk.”

He grunted. “You can shut the fuck up is what you can do.”

He executed another agile dodge, pulling you with him. “Now hold on, princess, this is gonna be a rough ride with one arm.”

You didn’t have time to ask him what the hell he was on about. He aimed a shot over your shoulder, the heat simmering and boiling in the air next to your ear, and you heard the impact of Mina hitting the pavement behind you. In the next second, Bakugou tightened his arm around you, and aimed a palm for the ground.

The next thing you were aware of was a strangled screaming sound. It took a second for you to realize the mortifying noise was coming from you. But in your defense, Bakugou had literally blasted the two of you clear above the alleyway. You could see the wreckage from Bakugou’s scuffle with Kaminari, and Mina scrambling to her feet, much smaller and further away that you were comfortable with. Your hands fisted in his shirt and you nearly decapitated him with the force with which you shoved your face into his shoulder.

Even with your eyes closed, you could tell Bakugou hadn’t been kidding about the rough ride. Another blast from his palm jerked you sharply to the right, and he uttered a soft swear.

“Hold tight, nerd,” he said in your ear. There was a series of more explosions and you spun violently in the opposite direction. You went careening over a low roof top to land heavily on the pavement, Bakugou twisting at the last second to take the initial impact to his shoulder, rolling over you to distribute the momentum.

You rolled twice more, eventually stopping with his hard body under yours, your face jammed unpleasantly into his shoulder, his arms bracketing your sides. One of his hands was fisted in the back of your shirt, and a tuft of blonde hair brushed your cheek.

He let out a huff. “If you ever let her put the fucking dislocation band on you again, I’ll melt your damn laptop.”

You pulled back from him, hissing into his face. “If you dare, I'll--”

“The fuck you gonna do, nerd?” he demanded, sitting up. Straight into you.

You gripped his shirt so as not to fall right off of him, widening your knees for balance. Then you froze when you realized he was pressed against you everywhere, hard muscle and the heat of his skin bleeding through your training clothes. He was hot like a furnace, ashy and dust-streaked like one too, and his eyes glowed like banked coals. He gazed back at you, his mouth setting with some kind of a challenge.

Then those red eyes trailed slowly and deliberately down your face, stopping right on your mouth. His fingers tightened in the back of your shirt.

You couldn’t help your sharp inhale. Holy shit, was he...going to kiss you?

You sat frozen, locked in place, neither willing or able to move away, like you were being pulled towards him like some kind of magnet. Was he really going to do it? Was he really going to kiss you? Or, no...were you going to kiss him?

You could, you thought hysterically. That’s what it felt like, watching him breathe shallowly, eyes fixed on your mouth. You could kiss him and he would let you.

Had that been what all the your little crush on me shit had been about? Had he been torturing you not because he’d noted the way your eyes lingered over him, but because it was something he’d wanted to happen? Had that been what all the threats were for, what the crowding you against walls and the frigging coffee had been about? When Mina had said he’d been fixated on you, did she actually mean it less like revenge and more like actual attraction?

You let out a shaky breath. Only one way to find out, you thought wildly, leaning forward with your pulse singing in your veins.

And then an explosion rocked the foundations of the building, throwing you forward against Bakugou’s chest. You gasped, the breath knocked out of you, and whipped around to glare at his free hand in accusation. Bakugou pulled you back, however, a hard looking passing over his face.

It was only seconds before Mina and Kaminari came scrambling out of the maze of training buildings, looking worried. Kaminari was already crackling with static, agitated whips of lighting zipping across his skin. Bakugou's palm started to grow hotter against your back.

His next words threw the situation into sharp clarity.

“That wasn’t from a training room.”

#bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugou katsuki x reader #bnha x reader #my hero academia #bnha #katsuki bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou

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sweetestlamb · 3 years

Text

You’ve Got a Friend in Me

Summary: You deserve to be my brother.

Author’s Note: I won’t go on a rant here many of you have already done so and much more eloquently than I can, Han Seo deserved to live and I think it would have been so much more original and refreshing if they didn’t kill the victimized character who was finally getting a second lease on life with his new family. If any of you read BMTL you know that I have a weak spot for abused characters and when they are treated this way I can’t stand for it. So join me here in this alternate reality where puppy does not die and instead he gets the love and rebirth that he deserves.

Everything is white hot pain, and he wonders if this is what death feels like and if so why must this suffering follow him even into death? When will he finally be free from agony if not now? There are a flurry of sounds surrounding him but nothing decipherable until he hears, “Clear!” a voice shouts in the distance but he doesn’t know who that is, where exactly would someone like him go after death? Surely he hasn’t atoned enough for his sin of compliance to be granted a passage to pearly gates or a gracious omnipresent presence, there is only one place for someone like him. Hell.

It doesn’t scare him, not with the life that he has lived. His hell started a long time ago, with a father that couldn’t be bothered with him no matter how many bruises and cuts littered his prepubescent body. Those very marks put there by the one person he desperately wanted to please, his hyung. That has been hell, a long enduring and never-ending hell and almost demonically poetic that was the cause of his very demise. The bullet through his ribs was nothing compared to every day of his life, up until he met Vincenzo and saw what living was supposed to be like. He had never truly lived before and the very moment he had started that had been snatched from his bloody hands.

Fuck it all. He was ready to go.

But regardless of his acceptance the pain sears on and he can see the ghastly face of Vincenzo peering down at him, eyes red rimmed and those words that he had longed to hear since he was born into his world and realized that there was someone whom he was supposed to call brother.

You deserve to be my brother.

“We’re losing him! Let’s do it again, clear!”

Electricity floods his body and its nothing like anything he has ever felt before and he can feel his consciousness fading away, his thoughts drifting away until there is nothing left behind, just silence and regrets.

Beep...Beep....Beep....Beep....

The constant sound jars him from his slumber and once again pain resurges in his body winding him before he can even bring himself to peel his heavy eyelids open, that battle almost enough to defeat him but he can feel a presence beside him and an unexplainable desperation forces him to see who it is. It feels like his very life depends on it.

Little by little, he starts to peer his eyes open feeling the strain as he tenses and squirms under the pressure and finally they are open and his vision swirls unfocused and dizzy, staring at a painfully white ceiling and one single yellow tinted light. His brain supplies his location, the hospital. And then it takes a longer moment to realize the implications of his whereabouts, but after a moment’s pause he gasps feeling the dryness of his tongue and the cracks on his lips. Everything hurts, every fiber of his being is in insufferable agony but he almost weeps because that only means he’s alive. Somehow he had survived.

With the minor strength he has he turns his head towards the figure next to him and his breath comes out in a shocked huff when he sees the dark figure in the chair, they had said their final goodbyes already and he had accepted that the only true brother that he’d had was taken from him, punishment for being born in this family. Yet, Vincenzo sits there sleeping looking pained even in his slumber a grimace across his face and his brows furrowed in distress. immediately he thinks about Ms. Hong, the blood staining her shirt and her body crumpling to the ground as she took a bullet for the man she loved. If Vincenzo was here with him looking like that did that mean she was...?

No. It couldn’t be. His brother had already taken away Vincenzo’s mother he couldn’t have stolen the woman he loved too. That was simply too cruel a fate for the man. But why else would the man be here? This thought drives him to move, only able to move his hand but it’s enough to knock the consigliere from his peace less rest, he wakes as if he was not sleeping in the first place eyes immediately blinking open and hyper focused. He vaguely wonders if that is a survival skill of all members of the Mafia?

They stare wordlessly at each other and before he can say a word Vincenzo is reaching across the small space and embracing him, his arms are ever gentle as they pull him in and his head is stuffed into the other man’s neck. He lays frozen unprepared for the sudden show of affection and still not used to hands on his body without the purpose of harming him but then his brain swirls to life and he pushes past the pain to reach up and clutch at the smooth material of Vincenzo’s suit jacket. At the first press of his fingers the other man grips him tighter, almost crushing him into his chest and it hurts, puts too much pressure on his wound but he won’t say anything doesn’t dare. This is the first time someone has hurt him because they cared about him. He wants to hold on to this precious moment forever.

“I’m so happy you’re okay. You lost so much blood and I really thought--”

“How’s Miss Hong? She is....Is that why you’re here? Please don’t tell me he really did it...Did he really kill her?”

He starts shaking at the notion, tears pooling in his eyes imagining the woman’s dead cold body.

It should have been me instead.

As carefully he held him Vincenzo releases him, those large gentle hands warm and soothing on his trembling shoulders.

“She’s fine. She’s in the room next to you. It’s all thanks to you, I can never thank you enough.”

Relief washes over him like a wave, he’s too weak to do anything but fall back into the plush bed beneath him.

She was okay. Thank goodness.

“What are you doing here? You should be with her. Go now, I’m not as important.” He means every word, he has never been anyone’s priority, no that’s for others he is nothing more than a nuisance and a punching bag.

“What are you saying? Do you remember what I said to you before you fainted?

He does. How could he forget? But that was merely something said in the heat of the moment. Or so he had thought but that thought was enough for him to welcome the hands of death.

“I see you remember. You are important to me. You’re my brother Han Seo-ah.”

He can’t fight the smile that tentatively crawls across his face, “You meant it? it wasn’t just because I was dying?” He asks sheepishly and he squeaks in pain when a finger flicks his across the nose, looking up affronted but giddy with the possibilities.

“I wouldn’t lie to someone on their death bed, I have principles you know.” Vincenzo huffs at him, striding across the room to pour a glass of water and he watches the liquid earnestly. When the older man pushes the tempting beverage in his direction he desperately wants to grab it but he finds that he can’t his body refusing to move.

“Can you help me drink it?” He watches the older man stare back at him, an eyebrow raised as he looks at him and peers back helplessly, “Please Hyung,” and surprisingly enough that’s all it takes for the Vincenzo to carefully cup his head and tilt the glass on his mouth, allowing the glorious nectar to soothe his parched throat. A dribble leaks out of the side of his mouth and he’s further floored when the other man wipes it away with a napkin, guiding him back against his pillows.

He tries to school his face into something less pathethic and pitiful but he knows that he’s not doing a great job, he can’t help it there has never been anyone like this for him. Never anyone who cared about him as Han Seo, not a pawn or someone to use or abuse, it’d enough to make everything he has gone through worth while.

He can’t contain his joy watching his brother tug up his sheet and tell him to get some rest, he’s never fallen asleep so easily and without a care in the world. He has nothing to fear, now that he has Vincenzo.

He gets more visitors.

People from the plaza that used to look at him with distrustful eyes, now they bring him food and one time when he needs to use the bathroom the lady from the pawnshop singlehandedly lifts him and carries him to the toilet, his cheeks hurt from blushing and he makes everyone in the room promise to never mention it again.

They mention it at least four times a visit.

Sometimes even re-enacting it for the people who weren’t there on the day.

Ms. Hong laughs the loudly, ignoring Vincenzo’s helicoptering and warnings of her opening her wound, none of it stops her and he watches with soft eyes as the woman easily rests her head on his shoulder when she starts to feel lightheaded.

They are so sickening obvious sometimes.

He gets used to the company so days later when he finds himself alone, his insecurities rear their ugly heads. Telling him that they’ve forgotten him and they were only being kind because of Vincenzo and Ms. Hong, they didn’t really care about him or like him and those thoughts muffle his awareness preventing him from hearing the door slide open or the almost unperceivable footsteps that follow.

“You look better than I expected.”

He freezes at the voice, staring at his fingers because he’s not yet ready to face her.

He tried not to notice that she never came with the others, but that was futile and the hole in his chest stretched wider and wider each time they would show up and her glowing figure was missing.

“Did you hurt your mouth?”

He smarts at the comment, hurt by her seemingly dismissive attitude to him laying in a hospital bed.

“Like you care. You never visited before.”

Instantly he regrets the comment, she owes him nothing. They are nothing after all, barely even acquaintances. This crush is unrequited and he has no right taking out his frustrations on her, he was being too greedy.

He opens his mouth to apologize.

“I....... don’t like hospitals. They feel too much like the end.”

He stills at her chilling words, mouth slightly gaped.

Was she worried about him? Enough so that seeing him in a hospital bed was too jarring?

That couldn’t be it.

Could it?

“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier. I always asked about you.”

A frown is etched into her pretty face and he can’t stand it so much that he blurts out, “ The pawn shop lady carried me to the bathroom once! I have never been so embarrassed, why is she so strong?!”

She stares at him blankly before a beatific smile dances across her pale pink lips, and he hears her laughter for the first time.

It is melodic, like keys ringing on a piano and the sound is captivating enough to fill his entire room and he wishes he could bottle it up and listen to it whenever he wanted to.

She stays.

Longer than he expected and he tries not to smile too large but it’s hard when she’s shooting him that contagious smile. They watch game shows on a laptop that she pulls out of thin air and he laughs nervously as she explains how she once hacked and ruined the life of a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer when she was a waitress at a bar.

She’s scary, like most people at the plaza but he’s dangerously attracted to her like a fly to a light.

He doesn’t recall falling asleep but he mumbles contentedly when he feels her tuck the blanket tighter around his body, soft deft fingers running across his fringe before he succumbs to the pull of unconsciousness.

“Good night puppy.”

He doesn’t mean to overhear, wasn’t trying to eavesdrop at all but he saw the light on in Miss Hong’s room and immediately the worst came to mind.

Han Seok is here to finish the job.

So he races to the door, ready to defend her by any means even if that means putting his life at risk, again. His hand is on the door knob twisting and silently he pushes the door open, stepping in before realizing there is no danger.

At least not to them, he can’t say the same for the victims of his brother.

Vincenzo looks tired, achingly so.

He feels a pang in his own chest watching the sunken face of the other man as he watches Miss Hong, her eyelashes fluttering wildly in her sleep. He makes to exit the room but the low rumble of Vincenzo’s voice halts him in his track, he has never heard the other man sound so forlorn.

“This is all my fault. You would have been safe if you never met me.”

He blinks, taken back at the heartbreaking confession.

Did Vincenzo truly believe that? That they would have been safer without him? It’s the biggest lie he’s ever heard and he has to bite his tongue to stop himself from responding to the fallacy.

“You deserve better than me. I am a scum and you....you’re different Cha-young ah.”

He has never heard the older man call her that before.

“I should just disappear out of your life, that’s the best gift I could give to you. Leaving you alone and letting you live your life.”

No. He wants to scream listening to this and he realizes that these words remind him of someone, someone who has had all these thoughts before.

I am useless. Nobody wants me. It would be better if I disappeared.

Vincenzo sounds like all of his darkest thoughts, said aloud. He has to grip the door to stop himself from running over to the man and pulling him into a tight hug. He can feel his pain all the way across the room.

“That would be best for you. But I can’t,” his voice cracks, “Every time I think about leaving you, it hurts. It hurts Cha-young. I want to stay with you. I want to be the one who makes you smile,” He watches his brother gently pick up her limp hand, sandwiching it between both of his. It’s such a tender moment, he should leave.

“Everyone I loves dies, that’s my fate. My punishment. I had accepted that...before you and Han Seo and my...mom. Now I’m greedy and I don’t want to lose anyone. I don’t want to lose you, please...stay with me.” Vincenzo crumples at the side of the bed, his ungelled hair blocking his eyes now as he lays his head on Ms. Hong’s hand pleading with her and finally he pulls the door open and steps back into the hallway, he doesn’t realize he’s crying until he slips back into his bed.

When the knock sounds at his door, he calls out with no idea of who could be visiting him, a certain pretty pianist flashes in his mind but he pushes that desire to the back of his mind.

He sits up at the sight of Ms. Hong shakily entering his room, Vincenzo’s disapproving face flashing in his mind.

“Ms. Hong you shouldn’t be moving around, hyung would be upset if he saw you.”

She stares at him with wide eyes and he stares back placidly before realizing what he just said. He slaps a hand over his mouth, remorseful and ashamed. He has never called Vincenzo that in front of anyone else, too embarrassed to see the question on their face and terrified that the other man would deny him in front of others. Maybe Vincenzo wanted to keep this as a secret? Why would he want a needy idiot like him following him around and embarrassing him? His cheeks burn and he brings his gaze to the floor.

“Don’t. Whatever you’re thinking stop. He calls you his brother too, you are brothers now. Don’t doubt that Vincenzo always keeps his word.”

He feels naked beneath her stare, shocked at how easily she can see through him. Was he really that obvious?

“I wanted to talk to you.”

He gulps nervously, watching at the older women wobbles across the room before gracelessly falling into the chair beside his bed, he reaches out to help her smiling back when she grins at him, he tries not to blush when she pats his cheek in gratitude, the movement all too motherly.

“What did I do wrong?” He replies, and there is deafening silence before she answers, “You poor thing. Life must have been so hard before, you must have struggled so much.”

He is completely and utterly unprepared for the words and he cannot stop the tears that well up and collapse at her genuine concern.

“It's okay. You have us now and we’ll never let him hurt you again.”

He cries, harder than he ever has before. Longer than he has ever allowed himself to cry, he cries for his youth, for his innocence, for the young Han Seo who just wanted to be loved. His body shakes from the tremors of his sorrow, liquid pain streaming down his face.

“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t deserve any of it. You did well, you did so well. I am so proud of you.”

When she runs a tentative hand across his brow, he chokes on his tears sinking deeper into the bed.

“I wanted you to know that you are my family too. You saved us both and I can never thank you enough, I would be honored if you considered me a sister too.”

He lays in disbelief, unable to fathom how he has gained a brother and a sister in such a short expanse of time. There are no words, he nods quickly. Letting his tears continue to fall.

She lets him cry, a serene smile on her face as he shakes apart in front of her. Softly whispering, “You did so well. I’m so proud of you.” Over and over again, tattooing it into his skin.

Words he has never heard before.

Words he has longed for all his life.

Time ticks by and before he knows it, it is nearing midnight. They had simply sat together in solace for hours.

“You should go get some rest,” he states quietly and for once she doesn’t argue nodding in agreement before squeezing his hand and standing up, only a little wobbly this time.

“You too. Sleep well Han Seo-ah.” He nods, watching her retreating form as she nears the door and impulsively he calls out, “Noona!” and it feels strange on his tongue, even newer than hyung but his heart warms at the brilliant smile she sends his way, turning back at his outcry, “Hmm?” she replies tilting her head curiously at him.

“You know don’t you?”

She stares, head tilting further and he knows she knows exactly what he means.

“You weren’t sleeping. You heard everything.”

She doesn’t bother looking surprised, he’s grateful for the lack of charades.

“You know how he feels. You feel the same. Why won’t you confront him?”

She stares at the ceiling before locking eyes with him again, “He’s been hurt before, he had a brother once before you know. He tried to kill him.”

He didn’t know. it’s too familiar. It's the last thing he wished they had in common.

“He doesn’t let people in because it’s too scary when they leave. You two aren’t so different, he just does a better job of hiding it.”

He has no comment, there are so many different layers to Vincenzo and he doubts he will never truly understand the enigmatic man.

“So this is enough for you? You don’t want more?”

He thinks of Miri and all the baggage that he’s carrying, he has no right to place that on her. It’s better if he stops this thing before it starts right? He has no idea what he can give to another person, is he even capable of love?

“Yes. This is enough. He is enough, every moment with him is enough.”

The wind stutters from his lungs, this is the second time he has heard a confession meant for another.

“What about me? Do you think I can be enough for someone too? Could I someday find someone who cares for me like you care for hyung?” He doesn’t know what has come over him but he waits anxiously for her response, every atom of his body shivering in anticipation.

“Silly boy,” his heart drops, “You already have someone like that. She comes to see you everyday even though she’s terrified of hospitals.”

“Wha--what?” He stutters out feeling all the blood race to his face, she only smiles broadly in reply mimicking fingers dancing across a piano before sauntering out of his room with a loud chuckle.

This isn’t over yet. Han Seok is still at large and more people could get hurt but he has never felt safer in his life. He has a family now, one that he fought for with more passion that he thought he had and he has no plans of letting that go, for anyone.

#vincenzo #jang han seo #vincenzo cassano #hong cha young #fix it #this is now my canon #I rebuke everything else #Miseo the crack ship I accidentally jumped on #this is where I live now #not edited yet so just ignore any typos for now

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dr3amofagame · 3 years

Note

the amount of angst in the post-prison writing you did just gave me massive post-prison dream brainrot and i'm just. sitting here thinking about how sam dealt with the curious looks and glances and having to face what's he's done as a warden. and everyone else's reaction to everything because hey, maybe the prison WAS a torture chamber that nobody deserves to be locked in to be treated like utter trash.

(btw i love your writing and analysis! they give me so much life :DD)

thank you anon!! this universe is ,, Fun ,, im ngl -> have this continuation of it, w/ sapnap and sam!! it’s a bit messy but oh well

(edit: i added these two asks as well bc they fit and i thought it’d be a bit redundant to rewrite this scene lmao -> the implication that dream’s admissions abt exile mightve been the result of ,, torture is. uh. yikes.)

(This one is DARK, please heed the warnings)

TW: PHYSICAL/EMOTIONAL ABUSE (heavy warning for this one), starvation, toxic relationship, manipulation, references to the prison and exile, c!sam/warden!sam critical, violence, blood, dark themes, emotional distress, child abuse, torture

“Be honest,” Sapnap starts, quiet. “What did you do?”

Sam opens his mouth - hesitates, looks away. He should’ve known that his vague words and half-explanations that had been enough to push away most of the crowd - or at least, postpone the conversation for later - wouldn’t have been nearly enough to convince the man standing in front of him, but a part of him must’ve hoped, anyway. He’s not ready to speak, not ready to admit anything to himself, never mind someone else entirely - but ‘ready’ doesn’t matter, not when Sapnap is right here, waiting.

(He ignores how ‘ready’ didn’t matter for Dream when Sam had gone in, that first time, pick in hand and nothing but questions and rage spinning in an endless cycle in his mind, whirling together into something incomprehensible, insatiable, vicious - he’s not thinking about it.

He can’t think about it.)

“Well?” Sapnap’s voice raises, impatience coloring his tone, and it’s almost enough to draw a chuckle to Sam’s lips - he’d always been a little overeager, not doing well with silence, waiting, even as a kid. It’s part of the reason why he got along with Dream so well, Dream jumping at the chance to spend time with someone that didn’t shut him down for rambling and Sapnap simply excited at the chance to have someone that would join him on his hare-brained schemes instead of dismissing him as a dumb kid- and oh. Right.

The scrunch of his face is the same, Sam realizes, absently, as the expression Sapnap had when he was little; it’s the same crease between his eyebrows, the same slight jut to his bottom lip. Even with a new scar decorating his left jaw and the shadows under his eyes and collection of faint wrinkles belying his stress, he doesn’t look all that different - still looks young, a kid playing dress up in armor too big and too war-torn to belong to him. It’s easy to forget, but even after all the wars they’ve fought, even with all of the combat experience he’s had, Sapnap’s still barely twenty - only a few weeks out of being a teenager.

(He crushes the thought of what that makes Dream - he’s not. Thinking. About. It.)

“Hello? Earth to Sam?” Sapnap snaps his fingers in front of his face, and Sam blinks away the memories, the guilt, boxing it up and filing it neatly away to deal with - later. Never, ideally.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

Only later is now, there’s no escaping this conversation, and Sam. Really doesn’t want to be talking about this, right now. Sapnap fidgets, leaning on his right foot and then his left and then rocking back again - the feeling is mutual, then, but he knows the look in the younger’s eye well enough to know that neither of them are leaving without an explanation leaving Sam’s lips.

(Netherite and iron and smoke, bloodstained pickaxe tipping up a gaunt face, hand reaching around a too-prominent jawline with bruising force - are you going to answer my question, prisoner? Or are we going to have to do this again?

He’s not-

He can’t-)

“I-,” guilt, thick and heavy, circles his throat, chokes the words rising in his mouth. What can he even say? Can words really capture the sweat-slick desperation, the bubbling lava and heat and smoke stealing away all breath and thought, leaving nothing but a humming buzz of rage burning, hissing, begging for release? Can he really describe the endless darkness and weight settling on his shoulders, the hard edges and jagged fear taking anything soft, anything kind? Words swim in the back of his throat, try to reach his teeth, fall short; bloodstained memories haunt the back of his eyelids every time he blinks; there is so much, too much, to say, and yet nothing at all.

How does he even start?

There is no sympathy on Sapnap’s face when Sam looks, but there isn’t any cruelty either, just dark, watching eyes, lips thin and pressed together, jaw clamped shut, tense. Indifference, or a pale imitation of it, meant to hide the mess of his hair, the tremble in his hands, the helpless, desperate thing growing in his pupils. Sam understands and wishes he doesn’t; regrets, and wonders if he has the right, anymore.

“It- started, as an interrogation,” Sam stumbles over his words, stares at his hands because looking at Sapnap’s face will be too much, is too much. “I was angry. The prisoner- Dream- was desperate. That cell-” he shakes his head, remembers obsidian in his hands, remembers tearing away carpet, paintings, plants, remembers leaving the box bareboned, desolate, a cage and nothing more, “It messes with you. Screws with your head. I knew it, he knew it, but I guess we didn’t realize- I guess I didn’t realize-”

(Blood and crunching bone and shrill screams - tell me what you did to him-)

“I needed information. He wasn’t talking. I got- heated, and he laughed, and something- snapped, I guess.”

(I’ll tell you I’m sorry please please sam stop please)

“All I had on me was a pickaxe. He wasn’t talking, I was desperate - angry - I needed to know. I didn’t-”

(I just knew I needed to drag him away, he was ruining everything, he was destroying everything, I just needed him to leave before he brought down the whole damn server with him - the tnt was supposed to be a one time thing)

“It was supposed to be- one time. Was never supposed to happen, at all. But I guess I got mad - for me? For Tommy? I don’t- I don’t know, and it was- easy, you know? Take away the clock, one day. Give him less potatoes the next.”

(It was easy to do it again, I guess, mess with his invitations a little, take some of his stuff. There was nobody around but me and him and he’d ruined so much, he’d messed everything up - I thought that maybe if I took away his armor enough, he wouldn’t be able to go back. He wouldn’t ruin everything.)

“He’d done- so much. He was so awful to Tommy, to everyone- I thought I could prevent that. I thought maybe if I broke him enough, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone again. I renamed the pickaxe Will Breaker, to remind me, to remind him, I don’t know. I-”

Sam laughs, tired, poisonous, ignoring the way Sapnap whispers, stricken, looking at his hands and seeing nothing but red. Dream’s face, bruised, bloody, but glimmering with something almost like satisfaction comes to mind - and oh. Oh.

(Bloodstained teeth twisted in a bitter smile - Sam, I thought I had to.)

He gets it now. He wishes he didn't.

“I thought- ha-” His hand comes up to his face - he’s crying. When did he start crying? ”I thought I had to.”

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theopolis · 3 years

Text

Extremely long, extremely salty Kindred criticism post

Yk the thing about the Kindred storyline is that it failed at being everything it was trying to be.

It wanted to be like DeMatteis' Goblin Junior arc while simultaneously inverting every concept from that arc. Harry is a gentle soul going down a dark path and hurting not only others but himself in the process? No, he's the comically evil mastermind who would throw his friends - Gwen and MJ, who even by his own standards have done him no wrong - under the bus to get revenge! Norman is the looming influence that follows Harry and motivates him to bend himself into who his father wanted him to be? No, he's the repentant, permanently dewey eyed reformed Norman who we're supposed to feel bad for when he gets dismissed and punched around by evil Harry/his demonic clone vessels/whatever the fuck. Peter is the best friend who, despite of course feeling angry and betrayed, believes in Harry's softness and their love and wants the best for him? No, he's immediately and with zero explanation ready to believe Harry is a literal demon all of a sudden and, I quote, "through with helping him". And I don't even think this (later clumsily backpedaled on) change of mind in Peter isn't justified in-universe - Kindred did uh, dig up the skeletons of Peter's loved ones and put party city wigs on them and also smash him with a big rock a couple of times, so there's that. But that's exactly the problem - Spencer set the stage for a story that doesn't actually involve Peter, or Harry, or Norman. He created mostly completely different dynamics between mostly completely different characters, and decided to project that on the the three of them. While also periodically inserting hamfisted callbacks to the DeMatteis stories, as if he didn't just take a giant dump on everything they established.

And here's the thing, even if I did enjoy the idea of Harry forgiving Norman, or the idea of Harry returning to villainy, or the idea of Norman becoming a character we're supposed to root for - which I cannot stress enough how much I don't - the execution of all these ideas was perhaps the worst it could have possibly been. Rushed, convoluted, and hollow.

Norman's sudden goodness is the result of a supernatural, vague process that apparently "freed him of his sin", whatever that means. Like, how do you quantify sin? How can you take it out of a person when it's their moral ideology and conscious choices that make them sinful/bad/evil? What happened to Norman simply reads like brainwashing to me. He is aware he's done something really bad, but he hasn't actually learned anything, and that impression is only backed by the way he talks about his past actions. It's always "oh it's my fault you're like this Harry" and "oh I can never make it up to you" etc etc but does he ever actually recognize his mistakes for what they were? Recognize where the errors of his past convictions lie? Of course not, because Spencer has zero reading comprehension and therefore no clue about the intricacies of Norman's character, his abuse of Harry, or what motivated it, or what he demanded of his son. It's funny how these four panels from a recent What If issue managed to paint a more compelling, if brief, picture of Norman as an apologetic father than Spencer has in a year worth of comics:

Harry's sudden villainy and the way it evolved throughout this story is just a train wreck. He has not had a substantial role in the comics for a long time now, but suddenly he's back AND he's evil! Who cares about complexity? Who cares about how Harry's feeling? Why he's doing what he does other than some extremely vague idea of revenge on apparently both Peter and Norman? Even though he was neck deep in denial about Norman being a horrible father and person at the time he supposedly launched the whole (checks notes) "create clones from Norman's and Gwen's DNA to stick it to his old man AND Peter in the future" plan, which he concocted because he somehow (????) knew his father wasn't gonna stay dead, which begs the question why he was so torn up about it in the first place, and- Look I could sit here all day trying to decipher the whole Gabriel and Sarah Stacy twist. It's impressive what an inconsistent, incomprehensible mess it is considering it was only introduced two issues ago. ASM 74 sort of hinted that Harry was being piloted by Mephisto when he created the clones so they could later become his hellish lackeys? I uhm, think? It's impossible to tell because no part of that retcon makes any sense to begin with. It doesn’t want to make sense because it was written - most likely on a whim - with the sole intent to garner good will for undoing Sins Past. Harry, for this entire arc, was not a character but merely a tool to bait us with an OMD reversal and ultimately do a Sins Past one. And of course, there's the fact that post OMD Harry - one of the only good things to come out of OMD in the first place - was just a clone all along, putting into question how valid all the amazing and inspiring development he went through since his revival was. Thanks a lot.

Lastly, I don't think I have to say how insulting it is to not just use Harry's character as a cheap plot device, but eventually force him to sacrifice his life for the very man who ruined it in every way. The man who abused him since birth, betrayed him on every level, attacked and murdered so many people Harry loves, including almost getting Harry's son killed. Why? Because he’s had a suspicious sudden onset of goodness that Harry has no context for? Norman and clone!Harry have not even interacted for this entire arc, but the sole act of Norman offering himself up to the rabid Kindred twins makes Harry instantly forgive everything he’s ever done. There was no build up to this whatsoever. It’s bad writing. And I don't think the abuse apologism implications of all this are intentional, I think Spencer just thought up the groundbreakingly subversive concept of "what if Norman good and Harry bad" and ran with that. But those implications are there nonetheless, because Harry and Norman's relationship has pretty much always been about abuse, about being mistreated by your parents, about not feeling good enough for them and eventually realizing that you were wronged and you don't owe them anything.

Spencer had Harry, a man who fought for years to rise to his best, most authentic self and fully turn his back on Norman and his legacy, die to save the father who never valued him for that self. And to add insult to injury, paralleled that with Harry dying after saving his best friend who loved him unconditionally. The latter mentioned death being a direct consequence of the actions Harry took to fit the expectations said abusive father had drilled into his head. I feel like that ending explains everything about this plotline.

#Harry Osborn #theopolispost #I'm tired #long post

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ajaxwrites · 3 years

Text

GENSHIN IMPACT FANFIC REC LIST II

(previous: part i)

Seaglass by Aevas

There was more to the contract than a gnosis and test of Liyue. It seemed like a simple deal five hundred years ago: so long as Morax never had a soulmate, the Tsaritsa would never harm Liyue and she would not get his gnosis. But the moment he gained a soulmate, all that belonged to him was forfeit. He thought the deal left Liyue safe—he'd lived thousands of years without a soulmate. The Tsaritsa would be dead and gone by the time she'd have a chance to collect.

Five hundred years later, Childe appears in Liyue, Zhongli gains a soulmate mark, and everything falls apart.

(The obligatory soulmate AU, featuring a Zhongli with PTSD, an oblivious Childe, and demon-worshipping cultists.)

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: I CANNOT BELIEVE I SLEPT ON THIS FIC FOR SO LONG. Read it and I mean it! I admitted initially steered clear of this fic because I wasn’t comforted with a soulmate tartali fic pre-Osial but this fic is actually post-Ostial *facepalm* The writing is phenomenal and Aevas does some beautiful worldbuilding that you typically don’t see in Genshin Impact fics. I love the dynamic between Childe and Zhongli here and the angst is real. The author writes the two as very human characters who makes mistakes, etc. and notably Zhongli struggles with the concept of Childe as his soulmate (who understandably is upset by the rejection when he realizes). They get better though. Also very plotty. A+ writing.

it's a hard rock life for us by reptilianraven

“Ah, no need to worry about that,” Azhdaha waves a dismissive hand. “There is no real Kun Jun. He’s dead.”

A leaf blows past and plaps onto Aether’s face.

“You killed him???” Paimon screeches.

“No,” Azhdaha scrunches his eyebrows. “He was dead when I found him.”

“And you just decided to wear his corpse?” Aether says, leaf still on his face.

He shrugs. “It was free real estate.”

“Azhdaha...” Morax says, sounding vaguely pained.

Or the one where Historia Antiqua Chapter II: No Mere Stone goes a little bit different and Azhdaha gets more time.

He ultimately uses that time to bully Morax into confronting his immortal neuroses, to make Aether and Paimon suffer, and to figure out how to get that ginger boy Morax has his eye on to make a move already.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe, Past Azhdaha/Zhongli

Notes: Very lighthearted, humor-filled fic. Love how Azhdaha is so flippant. Interactions with Zhongli and Childe are pure gold.

if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes by moonlight_mist

Childe has a Weapon problem- specifically, that he can't keep one.

He's too reckless, too wild, and too keen on pushing his Weapon partners past their limits. He's just about ready to give up when he meets Zhongli, a Weapon who just might be the solution- so long as Childe can manage to keep his dick in his pants.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: This is a Soul Eater AU with some college/university AU vibes (?) but you don’t really need to know much about the anime. It’s a cute AU and I love the premise. Light angst but otherwise, it’s a pretty semi-plotty fic. Easter egg Kaeya and Diluc though.

To Kill A God by IlluminanceinTales

In Snezhnaya, they call them sansis—lost souls that have no guidance but themselves. It’s an apt description, given that most of the time, wannabe-Archons have to go through dozens of tests with nothing as their reference, relying solely on their wit and strength and hoping it would be enough. At least, until they survive the end of the whole game—and they might not have to undergo a painful reincarnation which feels like a hundred bones being stitched together again.

On his seventh game, Childe Tartaglia reincarnates this time in the body of a young man.

Damn, he thinks, looking down at his thin body, his slightly calloused fingers. This won’t be good when facing the other Hydro Decisions.

In a world where an Archon's position is not chosen but fought for in games, Childe Tartaglia is a Hydro Decision who's poised to become the next Hydro Archon. Of course, that's only if he survives his seventh reincarnation. All would be so much easier if it weren't for a certain Geo Archon interfering with every possible chance he gets.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Think Hunger Games meet Political Intrigue meet Genshin Impact. Love the premise and world building that’s done. Features overprotective Zhongli and lots of Childe whump. Has one or two supplementary OCs that aren’t really important outside of plot device reasons. Warning for character death tho lmao.

Three's a Family by IlluminanceinTales

Childe finds a kid that looks just like him.

Of course Zhongli wants to keep him.

Or: How a harbinger and an archon accidentally become fathers. The kid is their wingman

Ships: Childe/Zhongli (?)

Notes: Your everyday cute AF kid fic. Fluffy as hell and super cute. Zhongli and Childe get domestic pretty quickly. Xiao gets dubbed a grandfather and begrudgingly plays along. Super wholesome.

in pitch dark i go walking in your landscape by snowbrigade

He glanced down at him, at the silvery scars peeking out from beneath his robe, and at his eyes, properly now. They were the bright blue of high quality noctilucous jade, but he could see it, an underlying darkness.

Zhongli wondered what his eyes betrayed about himself. --

Rex Lapis is dead. Zhongli, formerly known as triad leader Rex Lapis, is a detective investigating his own "death." Childe, also known as Tartaglia of the Fatui mafia, is undercover as an escort looking to kill Rex Lapis- until someone beats him to it, and he wants to know who. Goals intersecting, they form a partnership of ulterior motives.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: There’s like one scene that skews NSFW but otherwise surprisingly not explicit. Really fun AU. Like how the author addresses Childe’s reaction to being stuck with the undercover escort stuff and how the dynamic between the two develops. Pretty plotty so far.

Phantom Lines by iskendaris

“It’s a measure of one’s self, Mr Zhongli.” Childe says. “Maybe you don’t understand it since you work as a consultant, but as an ambassador from the Tsaritsa, as one who fights in her name— this is how I learn to know the measure of myself.” “I understand,” Zhongli says thoughtfully. “It is a warrior’s way, to test one’s strength against the incomparable. To find where one falls short. To find where one has risen to the challenge.”

In which Childe has insomnia, vandalizes public property and runs into a mysterious funeral consultant on his first night in Liyue.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: THE FEELS. I can only describe this as the fic where Zhongli pays Best Boyfriend Ever only to FUCK UP big time (via Gnosis deception). Poor, poor Childe. Look, he gave the boy feelings and then broke him. You can really feel Childe fall in love in this love. He also does mental swooning a lot lmao.

adventitious by Anonymous

It's said the Ley Lines remember all things that happen in this world, from the surface down to the deepest depths... But in the hidden corners where the Gods' gaze does not fall, there are those who dream of dreaming.

There's a dormant bud where Kaeya's eye once was. One day, it will bloom. (Never forget: memory is untrustworthy.)

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: I don’t even know where to start. This is very headcanony and lore-focused. Very much concentrated on Khaenri'ah. The implications of this story is grotesque to say the least (according to this fic, Visions are the literal eyes of the people of Khaenri'ah). Warnings for eye and body horror.

Without Those Dark Memories by StrangeDiamond

Diluc awakens in Stormterror’s Lair with no memories of the past five years. Kaeya is on the trail of a rogue alchemist, with a habit of testing his chemicals on unwilling human subjects. Now, in addition to capturing the criminal, Kaeya has to shake him down for an antidote . . . and deal with an amnesiac Diluc who acts exactly like he did before their brotherhood fell apart. (Standalone Fic.)

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: This is sort of a classic amnesia fic. I particularly really liked the way that Kaeya was written in this. I feel like the author did a really good job nailing his character and they have a way of capturing the subtle things.

Through the warmth, through the cold by strikedawn

“It’s you!” Paimon shouted with a twirl in mid-air.

“…Excuse me?"

They were drunk. Were they drunk? Was he drunk? Because Kaeya had the feeling his guests had been talking to him for a while now, but none of their words had made any sense whatsoever.

That was, until Venti stepped firmly in front of Kaeya’s desk and set his hands on the top, the better to lean over towards Kaeya and say: “For the end of the Windblume festival, Sir Kaeya Alberich, we’re going to auction a date with you.”

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Shortword, Kaeya gets auctioned off. Diluc makes impulsive (but good) decisions and scores himself a Date but displays an inability to do Date Planning. Venti deserves a pat on the back. Very sweet.

Hide and Seek by Kiri_Kaitou_Clover

Childe did not expect regaining his memories would bring him such frustration.

He makes the best of the situation by messing with one amber eyed consultant in anyway he can.

A reincarnated storm god wades through life in Liyue, all while screaming about one dragon god's incompetency at being human.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Features Childe as Osial’s very exasperated reincarnation, who gets the joy of discovering that his rival/enemy Morax is not only an idiot but also broke AF. He still falls in love anyway. Contains this golden line:

"Did... did that complete blockhead really use my money in order to get me a gift that basically says that he is proposing to me?!"

(Osial was screaming. When had the other god become like this?! Had he always been like this?!)

Getting that Bread by tzitzimeme

Concubine AU where Zhongli is Emperor, Xiao is an assassin sent to kill him while disguised as a woman in his imperial harem, and the only reason he doesn't actually do it is because he pities Zhongli for being so catastrophically stupid (also Xiao falls in love).

Ships: Zhongli/Xiao

Notes: Like Xiao says, Zhongli is an idiot. Fluff and humor filled. Xiao spends a good 95% of this exasperated by Zhongli’s bullshit.

prayers for a boy by Recluse

The only way to reconciliation is fierce combat!

Hm... Come to think of it, there will be a lot of interesting news to be heard the next time we gather for drinks. Filling in the blanks.

Ships: N/A

Notes: I...don’t really know where to begin with this? It’s exactly what the summary implies...but more? I was tempted to describe this as the fic where Zhongli puts his foot in his mouth but...that’s not exactly write? I feel like this was more of a character study. It explores the aftermath of the Osial Incident and how Zhongli and Childe reconnect. Platonically...though I guess it can be read romantically.

one kind of longing, two places of sorrow by lady_peony

Zhongli's hands rest behind his back, both gloved hands clasping one another. His fingers tighten around one another for the merest moment, before he relaxes his grip.

"There is a tradition in Liyue," Zhongli says, his back still to Childe standing behind him, "of inviting out a companion to a last meal before a farewell."

A pause.

"A tradition?" Childe echoes.

"Yes."

"With a companion?"

"Yes."

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: The fic where neither of the two communicate about jackshit but go on a quiet, sad not-date before Childe leaves for Snezhnaya. Childe pulls (? on accident or on purpose, I can not tell) the equivalent of leaving the jacket in the car post-date to get date to call for the second date. Also, the author has a gift for like...writing angst...without writing angst? Like the whole fic is like brimming with everything that the characters aren’t saying but the thoughts aren’t necessarily written out BUT YOU KNOW THOSE DUMBFUCKS ARE JUST LIKE. BRIMMING WITH FEELS?

The People of Liyue by queer_occurrences

But Zhongli whispers, his low voice rooted in the back of Childe’s mind. “Changsun, the merchant, who is never too Mora-enthralled to turn away a needy child. There’s Tiantian—she will allow anyone to join the Adventurer’s Guild—she knows what it is to be desperate.”

Childe ducks away from them and hurries out over the bridge. It’s a warm, sunny day, the kind he would have complained about, whining about his delicate Snezhnayan skin. “It’ll burn, or worse, freckle. Would you still like me if I was freckled?”

Then Zhongli would say, “The people of Liyue will remember your sacrifice.” And he would wrinkle his nose.

Or: after it all goes down, Childe takes a walk.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: The author has a way with perfectly balancing angst with humor in a way that makes you cackle. There’s a lot of feels in this one. Zhongli tries communicating--Childe runs away a lot. There’s a lot of love for Liyue in this one.

cold blooded, warm blooded, hearts all the same by reptilianraven

Teyvat Petting Zoo @tyvtpettingzoo

Well would you look at that! Zhongli, our resident spinytail iguana, has gotten quite cozy with Childe, our new (and very feisty) ginger ferret! Aren’t they adorable all cuddled together like this? 😍😍😍

[Attached image shows a brown spinytail iguana curled up against a ginger ferret. The iguana’s head is nuzzled under the snout of the ferret.]

At the Teyvat Petting Zoo, Zhongli and Childe fall in love.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: ...I promise I’m not weird. This is just super cute. Cross-species love affair? Childe the ferret is very besotted. The internet is confused and the zoo keepers are just done.

a geo archon's guide to the modern era by Erina

“Morax,” Xiao says after Zhongli finishes his retelling of the incident. “He thinks you’re a weirdo.”

“No, don’t say that,” Barbatos snickers. “You’ll give him hope that this is salvageable.” He lowers his voice. “Morax, he thinks you’re a boomer.”

(In which Zhongli hibernates for centuries and wakes up in the modern world)

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: This took me, I shit you not, FIVE SEPARATE ATTEMPTS to read. Not because it was bad but BECAUSE THE SECOND HAND EMBARRASSMENT WAS REAL. Like, omg, just reading about Zhongli’s introduction to modernity made me want to dig a hole and die. Super funny though. Do not read in public or you will look like a lunatic. Has a...parallel (?) fic in the same series called buy two get one archon free where Zhongli gets reversed isekai’d into an anime convention.

time flies like an arrow by Erina

He’s tired, tired of the unbreakable loop of watching his loved ones pass on, tired of getting attached only for the connection to be violently ripped away from him. He wonders if the real victors during the Archon War were those who perished, who died long before their godhood turned into a curse that chained them to the land that they were fighting for.

But that is not a problem for Childe to worry about. That is Zhongli’s burden to bear, delivered to him in a pretty package years ago in the form of a gnosis.

His very first contract.

(Zhongli and Childe, across many lifetimes)

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: This is a quiet fic. It’s this kind of slice-of-life fic colored by this overpowering sense of love and loss as Zhongli remains immortal and Childe dies and lives and dies and lives for hundreds of lifetimes, but always finds his way back to his geo archon. It’s so lovely but also unbearably sad.

Tartaglia’s Favorite Professor by GreyLiliy

The famed hitman Tartaglia of the Fatui Syndicate spends his days as the charming college student Childe. The two lives remain as separate as possible in order to maintain a flawless cover to keep the authorities off his back and to better serve the Tsaritsa.

However, new intel about a rival syndicate intersects his two lives in a way he could never have predicted.

Ships: Zhongli/Childe

Notes: Mafia AU meet College AU. Childe is somehow both a horny AF college student and murderous hitman. Zhongli gives off major DILF vibes. GreyLily somehow makes this work while also avoiding cringe. Highly recommended!

like a handprint on my heart by fallingintodivinity

“Strictly off-the-record,” Jean says, with a small smile, “I’m really happy to see you and Captain Kaeya getting along again, Master Diluc.”

“We’re not – we’re not getting along,” Diluc tells her, indignant. “We’re working together. Unwillingly, I might add.”

“Yes – oh, yes, of course.”

Diluc stares at Jean suspiciously. “Are you laughing at me?”

Jean clears her throat primly. “I would never.”

Ships: Diluc/Kaeya

Notes: Super, super cute! Sort of reads like a first date fic except genshin impact style? Writing style is very refreshing!

#genshin impact #genshin impact fanfic #fanfic rec #rec list #zhongli/childe #childe/zhongli #tartali #chili #diluc./kaeya #luckae #fanfiction #took a while but i have been steadily reading my way through the fandom #still not all my recs #but you can check my ao3 for what i'm reading lmao

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thosewickedlovelies · 3 years

Text

AND THEY WERE WALLMATES: Banana Bread (part 1)

Pairing: Javier Peña x F!Reader

Rating: probably T for mature themes (implications of sexy times and violence). It will go up later ;)

Summary: You share an apartment wall with Javier Peña, but that doesn’t make it any easier to get to know him. You didn’t think your baking would be the catalyst (read: Javi is jealous that Connie gets all the extras).

Tags: Mention of blood; super vague description of wound care; alcohol; TW for Javi: you have FEELINGS bby

Word count: 2,791

A/N: I guess technically this starts at the beginning of season 1, but I don’t plan on referencing the events of the show, so imagine they’re working on things less intense than trying to catch Escobar. I found Javier really tricky to write for, so I hope this reads okay! I’m so excited about the future chapters I have outlined for this lol pls get hype.

Masterlist

---

You had only been living in your new place for about a month when you got new neighbors. You were glad for the company- the four-apartment building was fairly new, and didn’t feel very lived-in. You did your best to add some personal flair to your apartment, but it still had the effect of reminding you of your own newness to this place, your lack of any deep personal connections.

Your other neighbor didn’t exactly help with that. Javier Peña had lived here for awhile before you moved in, but that was all you knew about him; you didn’t speak much beyond your neighborly greetings and his insinuating smiles. He never hides his lingering glances, but nor does he make any other moves- you sense he’s a safe type, all bark and no bite (without consent). So you always amusedly but politely ignore the invitation implicit in your exchanges. They don’t seem to have a lot of depth anyway, as if he’s just trying for the sake of trying. Granted, he probably never has to do much more than that- you’re very aware of how attractive your neighbor is on the surface. You just prefer to feel a connection slightly deeper than surface level before going home with someone.

You learn more about him from Connie, who tells you that he works at the embassy with her husband, Steve. In “janitorial services.” You raise a bemused eyebrow at that, but respect your neighbors’ privacy and don’t ask further questions. You help Connie get a job at a hospital a few blocks away from the one you’re a nurse at and promise to help her practice Spanish.

The building feels more lively now, and you’re happy to have a confidant upstairs, especially one who’s more privy to the life of your enigmatic hall-mate. You don’t know if it’s the neighborly care you feel for your new friend or if there’s some other unconscious change, but you begin to keep an ear out for Javier. You do share an apartment wall, although you don’t glean much through it. Some standard kitchen rummaging, television noise, the occasional bedroom guest (whose enterprises you try not to listen to, but damn if the man doesn’t have a perfect voice for after-dark activities). The most noticeable thing about him is the odd hours he keeps: sometimes in tandem with Steve’s schedule and sometimes not, you can never predict when he’ll be in or out.

Little do you know, you’re not the only one paying attention. Javier has spent many an evening alone with only whiskey and the television for company, but now there are other things to stimulate his senses. The smell of your baking filtering through the wall, even lingering in the hallway the next morning. The sound of you singing to the radio while clattering about the kitchen. Sometimes he turns the tv down to listen and imagines there being no wall between your two homes. What would his life be like with someone to infuse that kind of sweetness and light into it?

He doesn’t mean you specifically, necessarily. If, once or twice, your face jumps to mind while he’s taking care of himself in bed, he thinks nothing of it. You’re his beautiful neighbor- it’s a fantasy begging to be played out.

But damn if he hasn’t been tempted to make it a reality. He gets to taste your baking sometimes when you leave extras with Connie, and one day she catches his brow creased in a frown, distracted halfway through a slice of walnut banana bread.

“Javi,” Connie repeats, trying to get his attention.

“Yeah.” Javier snaps out of it, looking up.

“You’ve been staring at that piece of banana bread for a full two minutes. Is it gonna do a trick?”

He decides to lean into it, see what Connie’s reaction might be. “Only if the trick is getting me out of my pants. I don’t know a man alive who could resist the shit she makes.” He scoops another forkful into his mouth to prove his point, letting the rich, nutty flavor remind him of other places. Homes. Real homes, made of people, not the solitary kind he lives in now.

She rolls her eyes at his crudeness, but agrees. “You’re right about that. I don’t know where she gets the energy to do this after hospital shifts.”

Javier hides his next thought with another forkful of bread and a noncommittal noise. Wonder if she’d have as much energy for it if she had a man to tire her out. It was automatic, a question he couldn’t help debating with himself. Surely no one who spent that much time in the kitchen could have energy to spare on…other pursuits.

Connie is regarding him shrewdly. He avoids her gaze, focusing on finishing his plate in large mouthfuls to avoid the questions he can feel brewing. But he’s not quick enough. “Has she always brought you extras too?” she asks. Too casually, idling with her fork.

“No,” Javier says dismissively, and it’s not quite a scoff. “She wasn’t here long before you showed up. We’re not as close as you two.” Understatement. Did he sound sour about the fact?

Before Connie can ask any more questions he rises from his seat. “Well, don’t let me keep you. Tell Steve what I said.” With a nod of farewell, he turns and strides out the door.

One night you’re awoken with a start from where you’d fallen asleep on the couch. Heart pounding, you sit up, listening intently. You’d never felt unsafe here, but you’re aware of the potential dangers. What had woken you?

You hear a swear from the hall, and your muscles relax as you recognize Javier’s low voice. There’s a beat of silence, then a scraping, clinking sound. He must have dropped his keys. But then he grunts, and concern sweeps over you. You’re a nurse- you recognize the sound of a man stifling his pain.

There are long delays before each new noise that indicates an action. The doorknob twists as he grunts again, but it’s a moment before the key turns in the lock. It seems to take an age for him to get through the door; his motions sound clumsy before he closes it. Safe in the privacy of his home, so he thinks, he lets out a longer sigh, the pain and exhaustion now obvious in the sound. But you can hear his fumbling through the wall, and you worry your lip between your teeth. It is your place to go see if he’s alright?

Finally you decide that it is. You’re his neighbor and a healthcare professional, and it is your professional opinion that he sounded in-pain enough to warrant a check-up. Plus, you heard him that way before he got inside, you reason. So it’s not as if you were just being snoopy through the wall.

Just in case, though, you grab some muffins you made earlier as a backup excuse (once again mentally thanking whoever left the cookbook in your apartment). 11:30 isn’t too late for a friendly drop-by, right?

You knock softly on his door. “Javier? It’s me.” Nervous energy taps in your fingers. You’re never even been on his side of the hallway before.

There’s a shuffling sound, and the door unlatches. A narrow gap opens, into which Javier plants himself, and you immediately zero in on where he keeps one leg wedged behind the door. He leans into the elbow propped against the doorjamb above his head, while his other hand already holds a glass of what you can smell is whiskey. He looks like he would rather be anywhere but here at this moment. “Neighbor,” he greets dryly, a neutral expression on his face.

“Uhh.” You’ve never been this close to him before, and his appearance catches you off-guard. His usually combed hair is messy, waves tangling over his forehead, and he’s sweaty, the open collar of his shirt damp and the exposed skin gleaming with moisture.

Javier raises an eyebrow expectantly, taking a sip of his drink. His glances down at the plate in your hands, and it prompts you to speak.

“Hi, Javier. Uh, sorry, I know it’s late, but I thought I’d bring you some of these-“ you lift the dish “-before they come with me to work tomorrow. They’re banana bread muffins.” Your voice falters with your confidence. Your eyes can’t help but flicker over his face and chest, taking in the smear of dust on his jaw, the redness of the knuckles wrapped around his glass. Mostly you’re trying not to look at the leg he’s definitely hiding, which you can tell he’s keeping his weight off of.

Javier stares at you, not buying it for a second. His lips purse for lack of a cigarette to wrap around. He shifts the weight he has on his arm- damn, his leg hurts- and wonders what could have possibly prompted you to start bringing him baked goods now of all moments. “Why aren’t you bring those to Connie’s?” Like usual.

“Um, well-“ He sees your gaze finally drop to the leg he’s kept out of view, and too late remembers who got Connie the hospital job.

“I heard you drop your keys, and it sounded like you were in pain,” you confess. “I’m a nurse, Javier. I can help if you need it.” Though apologetic, your tone is firm, face sincere as you offer him aid. Him, your grumpy neighbor who does nothing but leer at you.

Well, he isn’t that proud. Javier sighs, and opens the door further. Your eyes widen as you see the long slice in his pant leg, blood still damp around the wound beneath. “Shit, Javier, what happened? It doesn’t matter, shit, sit down.” You surge forward without waiting for permission, tucking yourself under the arm of his uninjured side and steering him toward a dining room chair. Where he’d been about to sit down down and tend to the cut himself. He supposes your apartments mirror each other, but your familiar reaction to the layout still surprises him.

“Whoa, hey, watch the whiskey,” he exclaims, flailing out the arm holding the glass, taken aback by your sudden manhandling. With one hand still occupied by the muffins, you direct him solely with an around his waist and your shoulder propped under his armpit. He couldn’t have resisted if he tried. If it weren’t for the fiery pain in his leg, your hold would have him feeling a very different kind of heat.

You give him a look that says you won’t be fooled by his blustering as you deposit him onto the chair and the plate on the table. “May I?” you ask, kneeling, hands hovering above his wound.

“Oh, now you’re asking permission?” He scoffs in disbelief but waves a hand in consent, leaning back in the seat.

You scoff right back at him. “Look, I see blood, I make the macho men sit, okay? Why didn’t you go to a hospital with this?”

Javier studies you as you carefully lift the denim to peer at the cut on his thigh. He takes a sip of whiskey to buy time (as well as dull the stinging pain). You’ve put on a robe over what looks like pajamas, but you seem too alert to have just dragged yourself from bed. And yet...was that a pillow mark on your cheek? Just there, arcing from your temple to your jaw…

“Javier?" you're looking up at him, a touch of confusion on your face.

“Did I wake you up?” he hears himself asking.

Her gaze drops again. “No,” you answer. “Well, yes, but I fell asleep on the couch, so it was a good thing.”

Ah, that explained the pillow mark.

Finally you stand. Your hands rest on your hips, heedless of your fingertips smudged red with his blood. “It doesn’t actually look too bad. I have enough supplies here to fix you up. You stay here, take off your pants if you can manage it by yourself, and I’ll be right back.” And with that you whisk away, robe swishing through his front door.

Javier remains where he is, a bit stunned by this turn of events, your sudden insertion into his life. He shakes his head. Maybe whiskey and blood loss shouldn’t go together. He tosses back the rest of his glass anyway in order to wrangle off his jeans.

By the time you return, he feels more composed, if rather uncomfortably vulnerable, sitting in just his boxers with a bloody slice across his thigh. He watches silently as you arrange various medical supplies on the table and pull up a chair across from him. You perch on the edge of it and look at him before doing anything else. “Are you gonna tell me how you got this?”

He’s not about to tell you it was a fluke accident during one of Carillo's interrogations. Somehow, while his back was turned, the guy got free and tried to escape, swinging a knife wildly as he hurled past Javier. The cut was long, ugly, but shallow. He’d live. He couldn’t say the same for the man who delivered it.

Javier considers his answer. “Can’t,” he says. “It’s better if you don’t know.” His gaze skitters away as he speaks.

He works for the government with a poker face like that? “Janitorial work, huh?” you say dryly. Sighing, you reach for the antiseptic. “At least tell me what made it. So I can treat it properly.” You look at him steadily.

Javier looks back for a long moment. “A knife,” he says at last.

You nod, and rip open a packet of gauze. He sucks air through his teeth as the antiseptic sears the wound clean, but otherwise doesn’t speak while you work. Which is fine. You notice he’s drained his glass, and you empathize. Frankly you wish you had a drink yourself right now.

Once you’ve cleaned the cut it’s easier to see the damage. Which is minimal, thankfully. Most of the blood was probably from him moving around when it happened. You explain what you’re doing as you seal the wound closed. Only when you’re almost finished does he speak.

“Why don’t you ever bake me anything?”

It’s so unexpected that your hands still. You stare at him in astonishment, waiting for him to elaborate.

“What I mean is…christ,” Javier mutters. The unflattering fluorescent light overhead highlights the dark circles under his eyes as he scrubs a hand over his face. “You always leave extras of stuff at Steve and Connie’s. Never here.” With me.

You resume your work on his thigh, surprised to feel a tinge of guilt. “You didn’t seem like a baked goods kind of guy,” you reply, hoping you don’t sound too defensive. It was true, after all. Though you never got a sense of threat from Javier, neither did he seem the type who would appreciate domestic gestures of friendship.

He didn’t look offended, however. I’ll try anything once,” he says, the ghost of a familiar smirk suggesting he’s feeling better. But then he leans forward, all traces of smirk vanishing. “And your lemon drizzle cake was incredible.” Javier looks at you seriously. His face is too close for your level of acquaintanceship, but you don’t move away.

Surprised, you assess him anew, wondering if you’re catching a glimpse of the man beneath all the masculine posturing. He’s nicer-looking this way, you muse. His face softer, brown eyes wide and sincere. You hide just how pleased you are at this insight (which you’re sure he has no idea he’s giving you) beyond allowing yourself a small smile.

“Well, maybe next time I’ll bring you some.”

Javier can’t quite find another quippy response, so he just gives a small nod, finding it hard to draw back even after you break his gaze. He tries not to fidget as you place a final strip of tape over the gauze bandage.

“There,” you declare, your work complete. “That should hold you for tonight.” You stand and gather up your supplies, giving him care instructions as you go. “Got it?” You seem much more relaxed than when you first arrived, confidence in your work squaring your shoulders. It’s…compelling, much more so than your usual reserved smiles in the hall.

“Yes ma’am.” Javier nods, not having heard a word. “…Thank you,” he adds, begrudgingly grateful.

You smile wryly at him. “Goodnight, Javier.”

You’ve nearly reached the door when he speaks again. “Javi.”

“Hm?” Pausing, you turn back to him.

He clears his throat. “You…you can call me Javi.”

Your smile is much warmer this time, brightening your eyes, and Javier feels his heart pound. “Goodnight, Javi.”

#javier peña x reader #javier peña x you #narcos fic #narcos #javier peña #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters

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princesssarisa · 3 years

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Some more “Little Women” remarks: the problem of Beth

I honestly think most commentary I’ve read about Beth’s character is bad, both academic and from casual readers.

I understand why. She’s a difficult character. Modern readers who love Little Women and want to celebrate it as a proto-feminist work need to contend with the presence of this thoroughly domestic, shy, sweetly self-effacing character, seemingly the opposite of everything a feminist heroine should be. Meanwhile, other readers who despise Little Women and consider it anti-feminist cite Beth as the embodiment of its supposedly outdated morals. Then there’s the fact that she’s based on Louisa May Alcott’s actual sister, Lizzie Alcott, and does show hints of the real young woman’s complexity, and yet she’s much more idealized than the other sisters, which often makes readers view her as more of a symbol (of what they disagree, but definitely a symbol) than a real person.

But even though the various bad takes on her character are understandable, they’re still obnoxious, and in my humble opinion, not founded in the text.

Here are my views on some of the critics’ opinions I least agree with.

“She’s nothing but a bland, boring model of feminine virtue.”

Of course it’s fair to find her bland and boring. Everyone is entitled to feel how they feel about any character. But she’s not just a cardboard cutout of 19th century feminine virtue. So many people seem to dismiss her shyness as just the maidenly modesty that conduct books used to encourage. But it seems blatantly obvious to me that it’s more than just that. Beth’s crippling shyness is actively portrayed as her “burden,” just like Jo’s temper or Meg and Amy’s vanity and materialism. She struggles with it. Her parents have homeschooled her because her anxiety made the classroom unbearable for her – no conduct book has ever encouraged that! In Part 1, she has a character arc of overcoming enough of her shyness to make new friends like Mr. Laurence and Frank Vaughn. Then, in Part 2, she has the arc of struggling to accept her impending death: she doesn’t face it with pure serenity, but goes through a long journey of both physical and emotional pain before she finds peace in the end. Her character arcs might be quieter and subtler than her sisters’, but she’s not the static figure she’s often misremembered as being.

‘She needs to die because her life has no meaning outside of her family and the domestic sphere.”

In all fairness, Beth believes this herself: she says she was “never meant” to live long because she’s just “stupid little Beth,” with no plans for the future and of no use to anyone outside the home. But for readers to agree with that assessment has massive unfortunate implications! The world is full of both women and men who – whether because of physical or mental illness, disability, autism, Down Syndrome, or some other reason – can’t attend regular school, don’t make friends easily, are always “young for their age,” don’t get married or have romantic relationships, aren’t able to hold a regular job, never live apart from their families, and lead quiet, introverted, home-based lives. Should we look at those real people and think they all need to die? I don’t think so! Besides, it seems to me that the book actively refutes Beth’s self-deprecation. During both of her illnesses, it’s made clear how many people love her and how many people’s lives her quiet kindness has touched – not just her family and few close friends, but the neighbors, the Hummels (of course), the local tradespeople she interacts with, and the children she sews gifts for who write her letters of gratitude. Then there’s the last passage written from her viewpoint before her death, where she finds Jo’s poem that describes what a positive influence her memory will always be, and realizes that her short, quiet life hasn’t been the waste she thought it was. How anyone can read that passage and still come away viewing her life as meaningless is beyond me.

“She needs to die because she symbolizes a weak, outdated model of femininity.”

SparkNotes takes this interpretation of Beth and it annoys me to think of how many young readers that study guide has probably taught to view her this way. No matter how feisty and unconventional Louisa May Alcott was, and no mater how much she personally rebelled against passive, domestic femininity, would she really have portrayed her beloved sister Lizzie as “needing to die” because she was “too weak to survive in the modern world”? Would she really have turned Lizzie’s tragic death into a symbol of a toxic old archetype’s welcome death? But even if Beth were a purely fictional character and not based on the author’s sister, within the text she’s much too beloved and too positive an influence on everyone around her for this interpretation to feel right. This seems less like a valid reading of her character and more like wishful thinking on the part of some feminist scholars.

“She's a symbol of pure goodness who needs to die because she’s Too Good For This Sinful Earth™.”

Enough with the reasons why Beth “needs to die”! At least this one isn’t insulting. But I don’t think it’s really supported by the text either. If she were a symbol of goodness too pure for this world, then she wouldn’t forget to feed her pet bird for a week and lose him to starvation. She wouldn’t get snappish when she’s bored, even if she does only vent her frustration on her doll. She wouldn’t struggle with social anxiety, or dislike washing dishes, or be explicitly described as “not an angel” by the narrator because she can’t help but long for a better piano than the one she has. Now of course those flaws (except for accidentally letting her bird die) are minute compared to her sisters’. It’s fair to say that only “lip service” is paid to Beth’s humanity in an otherwise angelic portrayal. But it seems clear that Alcott did try to make her more human than other saintly, doomed young girls from the literature of her day: she’s certainly much more real than little Eva from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example.

“She’s destroyed by the oppressive model of femininity she adheres to.”

This argument holds that because Beth’s selfless care for others causes her illness, her story’s purpose is to condemn the expectation that women toil endlessly to serve others. But if Alcott meant to convey that message, I’d think she would have had Beth get sick by doing some unnecessary selfless deed. Helping a desperately poor, single immigrant mother take care of her sick children isn’t unnecessary. That’s not the kind of selflessness to file under “things feminists should rebel against.”

“She’s a symbol of ideal 19th century femininity, whom all three of her sisters – and implicitly all young female readers – are portrayed as needing to learn to be like.”

Whether people take this view positively (e.g. 19th and early 20th century parents who held up Beth as the model of sweet docility they wanted from their daughters) or negatively (e.g. feminists who can’t forgive Alcott for “remaking Jo in Beth’s image” by the end), I honestly think they’re misreading the book. I’ve already outlined the ways in which Beth struggles and grows just like her sisters do. If any character is portrayed as the ideal woman whom our young heroines all need to learn to be like, it’s not Beth, it’s Marmee. She combines aspects of all her daughters’ best selves (Meg and Beth’s nurturing, Jo’s strong will and Amy’s dignity) and she’s their chief source of wise advice and moral support. Yet none of her daughters become exactly like her either. They all maintain their distinct personalties, even as they grow. Admittedly, Beth’s sisters do sometimes put her on a pedestal as the person they should emulate – i.e. Amy during Beth’s first illness and Jo in the months directly after her death. But in both of those cases, their grief-inspired efforts are short-lived and they eventually go back to their natural boldness and ambitions. They just combine them with more of Beth’s kindness and unselfishness than before.

“She wills her own death.”

Of all these interpretations, this one is possibly the most blatantly contradicted by the text. Just because Beth’s fatal illness is vague and undefined beyond “she never recovered her strength after her scarlet fever” doesn’t mean it's caused by a lack of “will to live”; just because she interprets her lack of future plans or desire to leave home to mean that she’s “not meant to live long” doesn’t mean she’s so afraid to grow up that she wants to die. It’s made very clear that Beth wants to get well. Even though she tries to hide her deep depression from her family and face death willingly, she’s still distraught to have her happy life cut short.

I’ll admit that I’m probably biased, because as as a person on the autism spectrum who’s also struggled with social anxiety and led an introverted, home-based life, I personally relate to Beth. If I didn’t find her relatable, these interpretations would probably annoy me less. But I still think they’re based on a shallow overview of Beth’s character, combined with disdain for girls who don’t fit either the tomboyish “Jo” model or the sparkling “Amy” model of lively, outgoing young womanhood, rather than a close reading of the book.

#little women #beth march #meta #literary criticism

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ejzah · 3 years

Text

A/N: Back by semi-popular request, an additional part of the Russian and the Hippy, requested by @mashmaiden I believe. As with the other stories, this kind of ignores recent events with Anna or assumes that they’re completely resolved.

***

The Russian and The Hippy, Part 3

“This is so awkward,” Deeks hissed under his breath to Kensi. She roughly nudged him under the table-some might even go so far as to call it a kick-and smiled pleasantly at Anna who was talking about the non-for-profit she had recently started working with.

She was seated across from them with Callen on her other side. Arkady and Roberta were, much to Deeks’ distaste, sitting next to him. He was trying to control himself, but seeing his mom and Arkady hold hands and giggle together was fairly nauseating.

“That’s really great, Anna,” Kensi said, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. “Maybe Deeks and I can come volunteer next week.”

“Yeah, we’d love to,” Deeks agreed. “I bet I could get some guys from my surfing group to come too.”

“We can always use help,” Anna said. “I’ll let you know when would be a good time.”

The waiter brought their food and there was a peaceful lull in conversation as they ate.

“So Martin, Roberta tells me that you and Kensi are starting a family,” Arkady declared abruptly a few minutes later.

“Arkady!” Anna hissed at the same time that Roberta smacked his arm and said,

“I told you not to say anything about that!”

“What, it is nothing to be ashamed of.” Arkady looked between Roberta and his daughter, apparently affronted by their objections.

“I told you, they’re squeamish about it,” Roberta added, with a tone that suggested they were being ridiculous. She caught Deeks’ eye, shaking her head. “God only knows why.”

Grabbing her hand, Arkady pressed it to his lips, gazing at Roberta with a look Deeks hoped never to see again. After a few seconds, she smacked his arm again, but this time with a little smirk.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” she murmured, leaning forward to kiss the tip of his nose.

Callen made a choked sound, pressing his fist to his mouth. After second, Deeks realized he was unsuccessfully trying to hold back a laugh.

“Did she just-?” Kensi said, sounding vaguely disturbed as she watched Roberta and Arkady continue to flirt.

“Yup, my mom just totally melted under the effects of Arkady Kolcheck’s charms,” Deeks confirmed.

“I’m sorry about him,” Anna apologized with an exasperated glance at Arkady, who was finally distracted from Roberta.

“Don’t apologize for me Anna,” he said, wagging his finger in her direction. “There is nothing to be ashamed of. Love is a beautiful thing. So are children. They are one of the greatest pleasures of life.”

Anna rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath, but loud enough to reach Deeks.

“Because you were such a devoted father.”

“Nothing gives me greater joy than knowing that soon Martin and Kensi will be part of this family too,” he continued grandly, ignoring her.

“You don’t even like me that much,” Deeks reminded him, ignoring the implication that they would be related in the near future. Arkady dismissed his comment with a shrug.

“Oh Marty, that’s not true,” his mom insisted. “Ary loves you.”

“It is work in progress.” Arkady shrugged again as Callen lost control and started openly chuckling.

“This is the best triple date I’ve ever been on,” he sighed happily.

“Do you two have any plans for children?” Roberta asked, turning to Callen, who froze mid-laugh. Anna looked absolutely horrified. “I bet you two would make some beautiful babies.”

“Um-“

“Yeah, Callen, didn’t you say you wanted 2 or 3 little ones running around?” Deeks prompted innocently.

“Of course, they’re going to have a large family.” This came from Arkady, who reached across the table, to slap Callen’s back, fairly menacingly.

“Dad, we really didn’t-”

“I can give you some of my old pregnancy stuff,” Roberta interrupted eagerly. “I think I still have a box of maternity clothes.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Deeks.” Anna grimaced and then glared at Callen who was busy trying to fend off his future father-in-law’s increasingly aggressive questions.

“That was mean,” Kensi muttered to Deeks, shaking her head.

“I know, but least the focus is off us.”

“True.”

“And now it’s officially my favorite triple date night ever,” Deeks decided as Callen tried to catch his eye, looking increasingly desperate.

#ncis la fanfiction #marty deeks #kensi blye #densi #arkady kolcheck #anna kolcheck #roberta deeks #Callen #the Russian and the Hippy #ejzah fanfiction

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mittensmorgul · 3 years

Note

Hey, so I'm a staunch "the finale was clearly a djinn dream and didn't happen" supporter. But I'm just curious about something that happened in that djinn dream. And that is, when Bobby says "well Cas helped," are we actually supposed to assume that Cas was resurrected? Or were we supposed to assume that, since Jack was only able to become god and fix heaven thru Cas' help, Bobby was just acknowledging the role that Cas played? And Cas is still in the Empty? I know I shouldn't care about the writer's intentions -- and I typically don't. But in this particular instance, I'm just curious. Because I want to know if, after that trainwreck of a finale, if the writers were trying to a) give us one last "fuck you" by not actually bringing Cas back, or were they b) actually trying to give us something in telling us "yes, Cas was resurrected even tho we couldn't/wouldn't show it." Idk if this ask makes sense. I guess I'm just trying to determine how much we were fucked over lol. And I've just been thinking about Cas recently and was wondering about this. Anyway, hope you have a good day 🙃😁

Hello anon friendo! I’ll start by offering the socially distanced high five your stance on the finale merits. :’D

I’m gonna start off by saying that I am also irked that they failed to make even this vague, offscreen potential redemption for Cas clearly and textually canon. LIke, if the intent was for us to understand that Cas was saved from the Empty, they kinda... failed on every level to deliver that. I mean, I personally have chosen to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they intended for it to be proof that Cas was no longer in the Empty, but that’s only because I am so personally horrified by the fact that the way they did address it in canon makes it equally plausible that Cas remained in the Empty forever, and that’s... that’s just too awful to contemplate at all.

Except... I know with my brain that if that was actually their intent, to make it clear to us that Cas was saved from the Empty, it literally would’ve taken one more line to confirm that, and they decided not to do that.

“Cas helped.”

versus

“Cas helped. He’s around here somewhere.”

“Cas helped. He’s helping with a lot of stuff up here now.”

“Cas helped. He’ll probably drop by to see you soon enough.”

but like... any of that implies that Dean will see Cas again, and I guess they couldn’t even allow the implication that Dean might reciprocate his feelings, even post-canon in Heaven when they’re all dead and there’s no actual consequences.

So like... I both give them the benefit of the doubt, AND simultaneously hold the whole thing in contempt. It was the most infuriating and unsatisfying ending in the history of endings, except for maybe Sam’s wig. Like... if anything confirms that Cas couldn’t even be acknowledged from having been saved from what is canonically the worst possible fate, the eternal torment of suicidal depression incarnate, lest Destiel be undeniably confirmed canon, then like... there you go.

But you’re right. This whole finale was Chuck’s djinn dream. Like maybe as a human he was so desperate for power that he went and sought out a djinn and deliberately sacrificed himself to it in exchange for having this one final pathetic dream of an episode. Because that’s what the entire finale felt like. Chuck’s terrible and disjointed worst case scenario win. Depressing all around.

For my own personal mental health, in order to engage with the episode at all (even just to yell about how bad it was), I have to assume that Cas was saved, because the alternative is just too sickening to contemplate. And makes every other character (and especially Jack) into a villain. If Jack had the power to save Cas, then I don’t think for a second he would’ve been able to let him languish in the Empty forever, since the only reason he was there in the first place was sacrificing himself to save Jack... fair is fair, and I don’t think Jack as a character could’ve left him there. Cas had always been the one who believed in him, sacrificed himself multiple times for Jack. And Jack unwittingly saved Cas once from the Empty. It’s unimaginable to me that he wouldn’t have done it again, on purpose this time.

I also find it equally implausible that if Jack did save Cas from the Empty that Cas wouldn’t have returned to Earth, either. So there’s another plot hole for us to consider. There’s just... when you look at the finale as a whole, none of it actually makes sense. So honestly, for anyone with two brain cells to rub together, the best approach is to not think about it too hard and dismiss it via whatever alternative headcanon suits your personal preferences instead. I guarantee whatever fic version of the finale you can come up with will be better than what actually aired. >.>

#spn 15.20 #Anonymous

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porthecrawl-witness · 3 years

Text

Deleted Scene

Hello, everyone! I’ve been doing some more edits today, which ended up in me deleting a scene or two. I thought you might like a glimpse! Many things have been redacted, so it’s basically been rendered completely nonsensical, but ehh...it’s been cut from the final version, but this way you get to see it before it disappears into obscurity.

If you’d like to completely and utterly avoid any hint of spoilers, I’d suggest not reading this, but I believe it’s vague enough. This is a scene from chap 11, exclusive to a particular route if certain choices were made.

(this picks up after MC’s phone rings)

It's Staci.

*if (staci_flirt >= 5)

"Hey there, ${firstname}." The way ${staci_she} says your name reminds you of warm mornings, and your eyes roll spitefully toward the overhanging clouds. "REDACTED (reason). I was hoping to catch you."

*goto behavior_route2

*else

"Hey there, ${firstname}." There's a note of exhaustion in ${staci_her} voice that sounds as if every effort is being made to disguise it. "REDACTED. I was hoping to catch you."

*goto behavior_route2

*label behavior_route2

"I've got to leave," you reply, "Or soon, anyway. They’re waiting on me."

"I'm not far away. I, well, I found something of yours at the house. In kind of a strange place to tell the truth. I - we thought we ought to come drop it off."

A second voice, garbled beneath Staci's, says something you can't quite make out.

"That'd be Amsler," explains Staci before you can ask. "Be there in a tick."

The call ends just in time for you to spot the gleam of a dark fender cresting the knoll about a mile up the road.

*choice

#Good. Company will keep your mind busy.

*set Contemplative -1

You're not going to linger on the night ahead. You're not going to linger on much of anything, come to think of it. The less time you spend alone with your thoughts these days, the better. You watch as the approaching vehicle turns up the drive.

#Why can't people leave you alone? You have your own problems.

*set Empathy -1

*set Warm -1

It's a good thing nobody hears the way you shove your phone back into your pocket. With a frown, you watch as the vehicle turns up the drive.

#You can't quite ignore the creeping feeling of unease.

*set Contemplative +1

You don't recall REDACTED. At least nothing important enough that you've missed it the last few days.

So, why then, does this feel so…peculiar? You frown and watch as the vehicle turns up the drive.

#A part of you is curious, you admit.

REDACTED. What might you have forgotten that they're bringing by now? Unless this is just a poorly disguised ploy to check-in on you.

You watch as the vehicle turns up the drive and suspect that your theory might very well be correct.

As it nears, you recognize it as Talbot's all too conspicuous G-Wagen, but before long, you are able to make out a head of thick red hair behind the wheel, as well as a slimmer, darker form in the passenger seat. Pushing yourself up from cool wood of the porch steps, you crane your neck for a better look, but as far as you can tell, the two are alone. The 4x4 swings onto the grass beside your car, its taillights going dim, and a second later, both Staci and Quinn step out.

Folding your arms over your chest to ward off the cold a while longer, you wait until they are standing at the bottom steps. "This is a surprise."

But before either can speak, your eyes fall to Staci's hand and the object held within it. With just a cursory glance, you're tempted to dismiss it, but as you look closer, you find yourself on the receiving end of an unpleasant bolt of recognition.

"Where did you get that?" you ask, stepping down to meet them.

*if (style_casual)

As if on reflex, Staci raises ${staci_her} hand, fingers opening slightly to reveal the cuffed gray beanie. It's neutral, practical, and wouldn't stand out in a casual outfit — you know, because it's yours.

*goto behavior_route3

*if (style_dark)

As if on reflex, Staci raises ${staci_her} hand, fingers opening slightly to reveal the dark, shaggy fabric of a well-loved scarf. Easily layered, it would keep the cold out from any outfit — you know, because it's yours.

*goto behavior_route3

*if (style_classic)

As if on reflex, Staci raises ${staci_her} hand, fingers opening slightly to unfold the bulk of a beige peacoat. It's neutral, stylish, and more expensive than an ordinary columnist could perhaps justify — you know, because it's yours.

*goto behavior_route3

*if (style_cool)

As if on reflex, Staci raises ${staci_her} hand, fingers opening slightly to unfold the bulk of a black and white jersey bomber. It's new, only barely worn, and too urban a style to be seen often in these parts — you know, because it's yours.

*goto behavior_route3

*if (style_eccentric)

As if on reflex, Staci raises ${staci_her} hand, fingers opening slightly to reveal a multicolored, hand-knit hat. It's a ridiculous hat by most standards, more sentimental and eclectic than anything — you know, because it's yours.

*goto behavior_route3

*label behavior_route3

REDACTED. The pair share a look.

Quinn is the first to speak. "It's yours, if I'm not mistaken?"

With a contrarian snort, Staci steps forward to hand off the garment to you. You take it, fingers smoothing over the fabric as you try to recall the last time you had seen this particular item.

Staci says, "I keep telling ${quinn_him} you weren't wearin' this that night."

[i]Did I wear this?[/i] The more you think back, the less certain you are. In fact, you're almost positive this particular piece of clothing was one you habitually kept in the backseat of your car for one of those 'just in case' scenarios Aunt Elle so frequently warned you about.

"I…I don't know," you say. "Where did you find it?"

"The cellar," replies Quinn. At this the doctor's lip curls in distaste and ${quinn_he} directs another frown in Staci's direction. Even Staci looks consternated now that the location of the discovery has been disclosed. $!{staci_she} blows out a breath that mists in the cold air.

*if (REDACTED)

That bit of information sends an almost preternatural cold dancing down your spine. It's not that you REDACTED.

*goto behavior_route4

*else

* goto behavior_route4

*label behavior_route4

MANY REDACTED THINGS

*label behavior_route5

*choice (REDACTED)

"This behavior is becoming tiresome." Coming from Quinn, the word ‘behavior’ is so said so pointedly it may as well be an expletive and you feel yourself begin to chafe beneath the implication. Staci, however, appears to swallow a grimace. In the momentary lull, you are able to see just how exhausted the ${staci_woman} really looks. $!{staci_her} eyes shine starkly out from bruised sockets, looking all the paler. The normally sunny complexion has taken on an ashen cast so severe, it hardly seems due entirely to the dull skies overhead.

REDACTED

$!{staci_she} must notice your appraisal, because ${staci_she} makes a point to look away when ${staci_she} at last speaks. "We didn't come here to argue about this on your front porch. You got things to do, we know that. REDACTED?"

‘Things to do.’ It’s a polite way of suggesting that you have secrets to keep.

*page_break

Regardless, it isn't the most elegant handling of a topic change that you've witnessed, but given that the pair seemed seconds from breaking into what would have undoubtedly been another of their volatile arguments, you can't say that you aren't grateful. Still, you find yourself sighing.

"There’s not much I can say, but..."

End scene

Thanks as always!

I’ll be back around in the next day or two to answer a few asks and messages.

Best to you all!

#spoilers #deleted scene #staci #quinn

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