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bluebunnyears-08 · 1 year

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Why Nine Is Loved So Much Already

Just watched Sonic Prime and it is AMAZING! It has stellar animation, unforgettable characters, and an engaging and exciting plot.

Among all of that, however, one character stood out to me more than all of the others: Nine. The "edgy, emo" Tails from the first Shatterverse. He's already a prevalent character, praised for his design, nature, and fantastic acting by Ashleigh Bell. He's just an excellent character in general, being complex and complicated.

He has a snarky, distant, and almost broken personality, from what I've seen, he IS almost broken. He's nearly broken because of what drives him in the first batch of episodes: Hope.

Hope can be an excellent thing. It can help you overcome obstacles, it can help you move forward, and it can help you win. However, what that hope exactly is and how you achieve it determines your character and morals.

What Nine HOPES for is a better future for himself. That is a good thing, however, the way he tries to achieve it is morally grey. It is a selfish hope that can potentially hurt others. Nine KNOWS it's selfish, he just doesn't care, the world treated him like dirt, and EVERYONE on it treated him like dirt, why should he care about how it affects it?

One more thing to note is how he acts around the others, Sonic specifically. He is curt, snarky, aloof, and strictly business with them, seeing no personal value in them other than using them due to how the world around him is.

Sonic, however, he's softer and opens slightly up. Sonic is open, kind, and patient toward the kit, something Nine never got to experience. He likes Sonic but doesn't know how to feel about it. He doesn't show trust in the blue blur. He likes him, but he isn't sure if he can truly trust him. But despite that, through out the series, the only time he genuinely smiles is with Sonic, no one else.

That's why he wanted Sonic to join him to live in The Grim with him.

Sonic makes him feel good, he makes him genuinely happy. He never thought about getting Sonic home, he only thought about getting the hedgehog to HIS idea of a true home.

One where it's just the two, where nobody can ever hurt them again. To him, it'd be the perfect world, a place where it's just him and the person he's close to.

But then Sonic tells him it's not going to work out. The worst part?

He's right.

Not just because of the problems with the Shatterverse, but also because it really isn't going to work out for them. While it's never outright stated if looked closer you can see that Sonic likes TAILS, not NINE. He cares for Nine BECAUSE he is a version of his brother, not because he cares for the separate person he is.

Nine is NOT Tails. Not just because he is different from Tails, but because he just isn't. Compared to Sonic, Nine isn't much better either. He DOES like Sonic and WHO he IS, but it's because of what Sonic can GIVE him that he does.

To Nine, Sonic can bring him EVERYTHING he ever wanted: A home, love, care, companionship, and family. To Nine, Sonic is his HOPE. If he loses that, he's back to square one, and that is what he desperately DOESN'T want.

It's heartbreakingly tragic and horribly unfair to both of them.

Another thing is his backstory. It wasn't over the top, it was what everyone EXPECTED to happen. Because Sonic wasn't there he was bullied relentlessly and became cold and resentful of the world. It's simple and not over-exaggerated and I appreciate that. It's not annoyingly complicated or trying hard to make you cry, it's just a simple statement of what happened. And that's the part that hurts, that we were RIGHT.

Because we were already close and emotionally invested in Tails, it was easy for us to sympathize with Nine. This was a character we loved, and looked up to, only to become cold and emotionally exhausted towards everything around him.

But the part that is great about him is that we don't know what his arc is going to be. Is he the character that opens up more and makes friends, is he the character that remains neutral, or is he going to be the true villain? We can't figure it out.

He's complicated and confusing but it's BECAUSE of that that we love him so much.

The final reason is the fact that he's just THAT character you WANT to win. He's so heart-wrenchingly tragic you just want him to achieve his goal of being happy, no matter HOW he achieves it. Even if he becomes the true antagonist I KNOW that all of us would root for him anyway because he DESERVES to win because he LOST so MUCH.

And that's why he's quite possibly going to be the greatest character ever written (not that he wasn't already in my opinion) in the Sonic universe.

#sonic prime #miles nine prower #nine sonic prime #sonic the hedgehog #sonic fandom #sonic prime spoilers #tails nine #nine needs a hug #happinessforNine #more sonic prime!#i love him so much #i want to hug him #he made me cry #nine DESERVES to win no matter what #get this fox some therapy #he just wants to be loved #Sonic just wants to go home #this isn't going to end well is it?#this is how a villain arc starts everyone

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dms-a-jem · 4 months

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Depeche Mode - Interview with Alan and Martin

International Musician and Recording World - Nov. 1984

Leaving their beginnings as wide-eyed Popsters behind them, Depeche Mode have become masters of the art of noise and the science of the studio. Adrian Deevoy had a rewarding chat with the Basildon-to-Berlin boys, Les Drennan took some great pictures.

Somewhere, off one of the corporate corridors in the labyrinthine complex we affectionately term Broadcasting House, a woman sits alone. Her job is to create emotion, tension and atmosphere. Her key to this process is a PPG system. Although this is heartbreakingly unromantic it is the ultimate argument for machines in the Machine vs Human debate. It’s also quite a nice little story.

Depeche Mode like this story.

“All the sounds for Life Of Earth,” declares Alan Wilder.

“All those little animals,” beams Martin Gore.

After four years Depeche Mode are pretty bogged off with being told that they make inhuman music. They quite rightly believe this accusation to be untrue. They might accept that their first two albums weren’t cataclysmic – catchy, melody blip-bops if you like your lager warm but nothing to telex home about – but they remain adamant that last year’s LP, Construction Time Again, this years singles People Are People and Master And Servant, and their latest album Some Great Reward are anything less than stirring. For in the last 18 months Depeche Mode have discovered, embraced and subsequently immersed themselves in sound. With the aid of producer Daniel Miller’s matchmaking Synclavier a strange love affair has developed between the band and sampled noise.

Alan Wilder and Martin Gore, the songwriters, seemed most smitten to a meeting between themselves, and a micro-Walkman was promptly arranged in a horrendously loud video wine bar where they both bawled unashamedly of their love for sound.

“I’ll take you through all the sounds on People Are People,” says Martin, eyes glazed, sparing the machine no blushes. “The bass drum at the beginning was just an acoustic bass drum sampled into a Synclavier then we added a piece of metal to that – just a sampled anvil type sound – to give it a slight click and make it sound a bit different. That’s the beauty of the Synclavier, you can edit sounds together to make what we call combination sounds. The main synth sound is the actual ‘synth’ sound on the Synclavier, that’s the one that plays the bass riff. But the bass sound is a combination sound too with part of it being an acoustic guitar plucked with a coin, which sounds very interesting when the two sounds are sequenced together.”

“There’s very little playing going on in People,” adds Alan, “virtually everything is sampled into the Synclavier. With the guitar sounds we altered them slightly once they were in the Synclavier because you sample in one note and then you can alter the length and dynamic of every note in the sequence for the guitar part so it will give expression, but it will still be completely in time. You can justify all the rhythms, you see, so that you can have articulation but it’s all in time.”

Getting back to the People Are People breakdown Martin unveils a short sampling anecdote: Love on a plane.

“I took a stereo Walkman when I was going on a plane from England to somewhere,” he begins. “I originally brought it along to take the takeoff but while the air hostess was doing her safety speech at the start of the flight I decided I’d tape that as well. But as she was telling everyone to ‘Check the instruction cards under your seat,’ the door flew open and all this air rushed in which made a real loud noise and everyone laughed. Anyway I looped the end of what she was saying and the laughter so it goes, ‘…tion cards ha ha ha ha …tion cards ha ha ha ha,’ which sounds funny but I used it in conjunction with a choir sound and it added a really nice texture to the bridge on People.”

“There’s a Synclavier harp sound in the verses,” contributes Alan, “and an ARP sequencer playing very fast in the chorus and there’s some Emulator sounds that we used for adding a few frills here and there.”

The three throaty clunks at the end of each chorus is in fact Martin’s throat.

“That was a combination sound,” says Alan. “First of all we sampled Martin going, ‘Unk Unk Unk,’ with his throat then we added a bell sound and a timpani to give it depth.”

“I felt a bit of a berk doing that,” admits Martin. But love’s a bit like that.

The vocal line, “It’s a lot… like life,” at the beginning of Master and Servant was yet more fodder for the Synclavier. As Alan explains.

“Firstly we got a lot of people singing the high, ‘It’s a lot,’ and then a low, ‘Like life.’ You don’t have to play one slower or faster than the other to get the octave either because you make a patch on the Synclavier keyboard for each part and then you play the parts in their natural pitches and both at the same speed which is very handy.”

The lead vocals on People Are People and Master and Servant (or M&S as us Depechies call it) on the 7” mixes at least, were pretty well the only sounds that weren’t sampled.

“The vocals,” explains Alan, “were recorded in a big room. That is the vocals were sent down through a PA into a big, live room so we could not only get a great big sound but so we could put effects on the vocal while it was being recorded and afterwards on the disk.

“Although we sample all the snare sounds,” he adds as an afterthought on live rooms, “we always record the initial sound in an ambient space. We like to vary the snare sounds a lot so we record all different acoustic snares in various rooms and we close mike them or mike them from a distance depending on the width of the sound that we require. Simmons pads? No, I don’t like them. After you’ve done all that fiddling around to get away from that factory preset sound you might as well have got a really good sound on the Synclavier. Simmons pads just remind me too much of that Howard Jones factory preset and Drumulator syndrome. Really boring ‘synth’ sounds. They’re just not interesting, they sort of scream ‘DX7!’ and ‘JP8!’ at you.”

The latest Depeche album boasts a myriad of sounds, less overtly metallic than the socialist sentiments that they reflected on Construction Time Again but just as fascinating. Love is all about contrasts.

“We don’t think that we overdid the metal-beating idea on Construction Time,” says Martin, “but we wanted to make this one less obviously metal sounds. We wanted a little more subtlety…”

So instead of belting skips they belted concrete.

“Yeah, on one of the tracks on the album, Blasphemous Rumours,” elaborates Alan, “we sampled some concrete being hit for what turned out to be the snare sound. All that entailed was us hitting a big lump of concrete with a sampling hammer…”

“…I’m sure they’re not actually called sampling hammers,” interjects Martin giggling.

“Anyway,” continues Alan, “the engineer / producer we use, Gareth Jones, has got this brilliant little recorder called a Stellavox which we use with two stereo mikes and it’s as good as any standard 30ips reel-to-real but this is very small and therefore very portable. So we just took the Stellavox out into the middle of this big, ambient space and miked up the ground and hit it with a big metal hammer. The sound was… like concrete being hit. I can’t really put it any other way.”

“Professional Walkmans are good for sampling too,” claims Martin. “Gareth has always got his out. On trains… at home. They’re good because they get a very impure sound that can often be really interesting. But if we want a very pure sound then we’ll take the thing, say a bit of scaffolding, into the studio and mike it up in the proper conditions and get a clean sound.”

If an equipment list had been included in the mentions on Some Great Reward, apart from pavements, buildings, bottles and old people being stapled together it would have incorporated a long list of toy instruments which Martin divulged as he became more intoxicated; by love of course.

“One morning me and Andy (Fletcher) went down to Hamleys, the toy shop in London, and bought as many toy instruments as we could find. Pianos, saxophones, xylophones and we took them all back to the studio and sampled them. One we used a lot was a Marina (?), a toy one, very strange, but after we’d sampled it, it was great. It sounded pretty terrible as a toy but when we took it down a couple of octaves it sounded really good.”

“People tend to think that if you’re using toy instruments then they have to sound whacky,” complains Alan, “but we put some to very good use because as soon as you sample them they take on a whole new quality and when you transpose them it puts them in a completely new context. Like the noises Martin was making with his throat, we only took those down a tone and it was unrecognisable as someone going, ‘Unk’, with their throat.”

But sampling, like love, isn’t all happiness and although Depeche have learnt to take the rough with the smooth, they found out the hard way. Alan breaks off in the middle of another ‘good combination sound’ story to tell how they were stitched up by a sussed, sampling percussionist.

“We were doing this combination with Martin doing his Indian voice combined with a bassoon type sound.”

“It was pretty ethnic,” says Martin launching into his Indian voice.

Alan ignores him. He has something on his mind that he’s not sure if he should tell us.

“I’m not sure I should tell you this,” he tells us, “but we got this percussionist in for the afternoon to sample his drums and the different techniques of playing them. We didn’t try to hide the fact that we were sampling him. We said, ‘We hope you don’t feel r*ped,’ and he agreed to be sampled literally just hitting one drum, once at a time. Anyway we sampled all his drums once, maybe twice. Now, the Musicians Union haven’t really caught up with sampling and this bloke had obviously contacted them when he got home because he gave us this bill for about 50 different sessions, plus sampling time plus a consultation fee. It was enormous and the stupid thing was that most of the sounds weren’t even as good as that (bangs two pint glasses together) and we only used about two for maybe two seconds each on a couple of songs.”

Another problem came when the band had to divide their recording time between Music Works in England and the 56-track, Solid State luxury of Hansa Mischraum in Berlin.

“There were all these builders in next door at Music Works,” moans Martin, “and we’d have the track running with us hitting skips and concrete and they’d be next door tearing a wall down and we couldn’t tell which was which. It was very confusing at times.”

Like love and marriage, sampling and timing tend to go together like the proverbial horse and jockey.

“Although it makes the whole process even longer, when you get into one you can’t really help but get into the other,” says Alan. “You can’t help, after you’ve been involved with sequencing for a while, noticing three millisecond or five millisecond discrepancies. So you end up time-shifting every sequence until it’s perfect. Then we got into consciously putting things slightly out of time. Like, for example, the choir sound on People again we used a combination sound of different choir sounds on different synths and then put them slightly out of time with each other. Like we took one sound from the Synclavier, one from the PPG and one was on the Emulator. Are you familiar with the Friendchip? It’s a time code reading clock that can monitor every single click output from all your drum machines and all your synths so when everything is going via the Friendchip you can adjust the feel by pulling something, say five or six milliseconds in one direction.

“The thing is so many things can’t play in perfect time anyway,” reveals Alan, “the Linn isn’t in time when it’s meant to be playing ‘drum machine’ perfect time without human error programmed in. It can go out by 20 milliseconds. We set an oscilloscope on several things to see how well they kept time. The one that came out best was the TR808 which only as a two millisecond shift. That’s better than the Synclavier. Rotten sounds though. But we actually ended up triggering stuff from the 808 just because it’s so tight within itself.”

“We always thought the 808 had a good feel,” chips in Martin before adding a bitchy, “even though Alan has a grade eight piano his playing is still incredibly out of time compared to the Synclavier sequencer… and even that’s out!”

All this and the Emulator II?

“Yeah,” admits Martin realising that his love has almost turned him into a technocrat, “the sampling time is about 17 seconds now, I think, and you can get more sampling across the keyboard, it gives better quality than the Fairlight and it only costs about seven grand which is a lot but it will be a big help to us live.”

And there’s a pianillow ballad, Somebody, to be sung love. Martin promises some. Kinda wonderful.

“We’re going to go for a completely human feel on that one. Just a piano played by Alan and Dave singing and Andy playing tapes on the Fostex X15. It’ll be very different.”

So the love for sound can take you backwards but what of the future?

“I don’t know,” confesses Martin, “the Synclavier can already go further than your imagination and they’re thinking of getting new software for that. Then there’s re-synthesis which might happen in a couple of years where you can take a sampled sound and change just tiny parts of it. It’s really impossible to say. Maybe we’ll just get the guitars out and make a Rock ’n’ Roll album. Who knows?”

…and somewhere, within the folds of Auntie Beeb’s ageing skin, a woman sits alone wrestling with a similar emotional predicament. Is she really in love with her PPG system is has it been David Attenborough all along?

Adrian Deevoy, November 1984 (some of the text is hard to read so transcribed to the best of my ability. Apologies for any typos)

#depeche mode #alan wilder #martin gore #my passionate little synth nerds🤓

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murderouswidowsmatter · 1 year

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Obsessed with the choice to have Jamie completely deadfaced while all the other boys cry during You've Got Mail. It's a movie that's in a lot of ways about isolation-emotional, communal, romantic- and the complacency that perpetuates it, which is such a good overlap with Jamie this episode withdrawing from the team (see him downplaying his contributions to the team at the press conference) and struggling for emotional support.

Jamie breaks down twice in the episode before this scene and both moments are pretty comedic. His face during the movie though is completely serious and heartbreakingly disconnected. The close up framing on his face leaves no room for anything else-no background shenanigans or little jokes- just his empty expression. They've managed to show how not expressing emotions can be more revealing of pain than anything else, a throughline of this episode.

Jamie only feels better whenever he is fully able to share with them. Where he tries to laugh off or shut down his emotions with Keeley and Roy, he openly seeks out and shares with his mom. And he is able to move forward in the game after Ted pushes him to admit the full complexity and duality of his feelings for his dad. Jamie seeks and needs emotional vulnerability and seeing that struggle reflected in the movie just sort of breaks him. It's no wonder that after he decides to go to his mom's and he is finally willing to let Roy and Keeley in

#i know its a comedy but i was surprised by how much the show treated jamie breaking down as a joke at first #but then i saw this scene and was like #oh #i get it #its about jamie seeing his own emotions as a joke #literally saying he doesnt know whats happening to him but that hes just tired to bruch it aoff at first #and then telling keeley hes better than ever #only to realize he has to be vulnerable to be happy #ted lasso #jamie tartt #keeley jones #roy kent

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redhead-batgal · 1 year

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can you write more angst with vigilante!reader x jason? thank you so much!

Type: One-shot

Pairing: Fem! and Vigilante! Reader x Jason Todd/ Red Hood

Content: Violence, flashbacks, ~Tragic backstory~, feelings, implications of many kinds, gang lord Jason, yearning, pining and so much angst.

Word Count: 2,812

{P.S. Sorry if this isn't what you wanted, I didn't know if you wanted a whole new one-shot or for me to continue something else. If this isn't it, let me know and I'll do that as well :)}

\P.P.S Prepare to feel the pain. >:3\

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emotions are complex things, fierce and lasting things that always seemed to rage at the wrong moments. Emotions were tricky far trickier then they seemed, especially since they shifted so fluidly and quickly. Changing from calm coolness to a raging inferno of anger.

It made you question how you were able to become a vigilante in the first place.

It was a calm night, so calm even the comms was quiet. A strange and unnatural occurrence... though it might have to do with Catwoman being spotted and Batman chasing after her.

It was going to be a quiet night, he had said. There's no need for back up. But you had begged. Begged to be let back on patrol, it had been weeks... months actually almost two full months since you had been injured.

Much to your surprise he had agreed. You could come along, but no one else. Tim needed to sleep, Damian and Duke had school tomorrow and Dick really needed to get back to his life in Bludhaven. Cass was off on a ballet trip and a broken leg took away any chance Steph had of even being considered.

So, reluctantly he had allowed you to come back. To come out into the open and cool night air once again. The city was quiet... well quiet for Gotham and you were almost enjoying yourself.

Perched by the Gargoyles- nestled against one actually, you watched as the night life of the city hummed and buzzed. A gentle sound for such a place of violence- it was nice. Peaceful and... calming.

Part of you whispered this new calm had to do with a crime boss rising up. The bane of the underworld, the rumors called him. You would just call him Jay-

No, no you wouldn't... no, you couldn't think about this. About him, it never ended well for you. No, it never, ever did.

Looking down at your hands you could still see the lines- the scars the rope made and the thin reminder of the fire that claimed so many lives dancing up the base of your wrists.

"Do they still hurt when it rains?" A voice asked, a deadly familiar voice.

A laugh escaped you and you replied before you fully realized what was happening, "Only if it's really pouring."

Just as the words left your lips, you found yourself freeze as the realization hit you. Only one person knew about that joke, and only one person had that voice. That heartbreakingly comforting voice that still haunted your nightmares.

Looking up you found a man, a man in a red helmet and strange looking armor with a peculiar red bat symbol across his chest. A brown leather jacket clung to his arms as he crouched near you.

Your mouth was a gap as your mask clad eyes began to water and for a brief moment you heard an alarm of sorts going off from the comms. Frantic voices cracked over the line before it finally fell into the staticky sound of snow.

Swallowing, your body flinched slamming against the gargoyle which shuttered and twitched. Sliding along the edge you tried so hard to get far enough away you could get back onto the roof and fight him. After all, there was no reason for him to be here. No reason for him to want to talk to you unless- unless he was trying to distract you from some crime or-or something bad that was happening.

Rolling under the gargoyle's arms, you safely made it onto the roof and whipped out some batarangs as your breath went still.

Jas- no, Red Hood held up his hands as he rose to his full height shaking his head. You felt your body trembling as you glared at him. Something in you beginning to shift and slide, fighting to come back into the light.

"I'm not gonna fight you, Mouse."

Locking your jaw, you swallowed again and raised your head before sliding your free hand towards the bar that pressed into your side. Of course he had to use that damned nickname.

"That's unfortunate because I sure as hell am going to fight you."

Snapping the bar out, the long chain tail- flail swirled out jumping forwards and causing J-Red Hood to lurch backwards. The tiny spikes that clung to the tip chain glimmered and glinted of death in the moonlight.

Narrowing your eyes, you twisted before swinging the flail at him. His body dropped as he dodged the swinging chain.

"Y/N, stop. I don't want to fight you."

A snarl escaped you as you pulled, sending the chain whirling in his direction, "Funny, because I don't remember asking you!"

He let out a grunt before the flail slammed into his arm, sending him towards the concrete.

"Is this really how you treat your friends, Mouse?"

"Only the former ones."

He sputtered out a laugh and you heard him cough. Part of you burst with worry. What if you hit him too hard? What if he's badly injured and coughing up blood? What if he dies?

"Former? Come on, don't I deserve a little more credit then that? I did save your life after all."

You forced yourself to roll your eyes as his words slammed into your gut. Whispers of the past drummed in your ears, and you shook your head.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

Red Hood froze for a moment, and you yanked the chain of your flail back. It skittered by him for just a moment before he was suddenly lunging towards it. His hands were wrapped around it before you could even think to stop him. He pulled on the chain and you, as he wrapped the chain around himself.

"Do you not remember? Remember how we'd sneak the wallets out of pedestrians and would spend hours in the library reading to each other?"

"I do!" You hissed trying to pull the flail's chain from his hands as memories slammed against your vision, "I REMEMBER EVERYTHING, DO YOU?"

"What in the hell is that supposed to mean?"

You looked at him, tears forming in your eyes before you squeezed them shut and let out a breath.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- It was a dark and dreary day when you first met Jason Peter Todd. Rifling through garbage cans wasn't the most sanitary thing to do, but it was your only option. You were too clumsy and noticeable to pick pockets and weren't exactly what the madams and pimps were looking for. After all, you were only seven.

You were halfway through the reeking trash when you felt a presence. Rising out of the can, you narrowed your eyes to see a boy around your age stand just behind you. He wrinkled his nose before shaking his head.

"You're rat, right?"

You let out a hiss and the boy blinked before snorting slightly, though his eyes shined of fear, he didn't run away.

"I think I understand the nickname now, though Oscar the grouch would be more appropriate."

You glared at him, and he nervously looked you up and down before sighing.

"I'll give you food if you help me dump some drugs."

You blinked, tilting your head to the side you raised an eyebrow and the boy blushed ever so slightly.

"I heard that you're good at it and need to get rid of some."

Shimming a bit, you looked him over before letting out a sigh. It had been a while since you got a good meal. Rising more, you hopped out of the trash can and nodded slowly.

The boy blinked and you tilted your head again. He swallowed nervously the said, "You'll do it?"

A sigh of relief escaped him, and he offered out his hand to you. You narrowed your eyes, blinking before giving him a look. Did he really want to shake hands with you?

"Come on," He tried weakly, "I don't bite."

Hesitantly, you moved forwards before pressing your grime covered hand in his.

"Jason." He said with a smile.

You swallowed as one of the very few words you knew sprang to mind. Your own name. But- you didn't know how to say it really. Just how it looked.

"Do you have a name?" Jason asked his brows furrowed.

You nodded and Jason's furrow grew deeper, "Do you not want to tell me then?"

You shook your head rapidly and Jason sighed before tilting his own head.

"Do you know your name?"

You nodded again before raising a hand towards your face. How to tell him? Oh, OH! Yes.

Pressing a finger against your mouth you shook your head. Jason hesitated for a moment before blinking.

"Oh, you can't speak?"

You shook your head once more and Jason tried again.

"You don't know how to say it?"

You nodded and Jason placed his hands on his hips shaking his head before sighing again.

"Okay, I guess. Come on, we have to go back to my house to get the stuff."

Jason began to walk, and you quickly followed, there was food after all. It didn't take long before you arrived at a apartment complex, you went up to a modest door and Jason knocked. A few seconds later the door opened, and a blonde woman poked her head out. She blinked before sighing.

"Jason, what are you doing- wait... is that a little girl with you?"

Jason nodded, pushing the door open and pulling you into the apartment. The woman closed and locked the door behind her.

"Yup, she was on the street and helped me out, so I offered her some food in return."

The woman looked you over before shaking her head.

"Alright, but please don't do this again... Also, what's her name? What's your name dear?"

"She can't really speak. But everyone calls her rat."

"Rat? My goodness that's an awful name. Come on now. I'm going to get her washed up. Why don't you find something for her to eat jay?"

"Course mom."

Mom? This was his mother? The woman gently took you by the arm and guided you towards a room just away from the front door. Not long later, she had you in a tub of warm water and was spraying water across your face, "How in the world did you end up so dirty?"

You didn't reply, instead you blinked up at her and she smiled softly at you. Sweet smelling substances were rubbed across your body and hair and then washed away before you were pulled out of the now black water and wrapped in a towel.

Not long later, Jason walked into the room holding bundle in his arms. His mom looked over her should before turning back to you a smile on her face. "Hmm, I don't know jaybird. She doesn't really look like a rat, does she?"

"No, not really."

"I think she looks more like a mouse! A cute little fluffy mouse. Ooo, we should call her that!"

Jason snorted as your face flushed red. The soft and fluffy towel wrapped around your frame. Then suddenly, there was a loud banging on the door. Jason's mom went still before a drowsy smile stretched across her face. She patted your head and began walking towards the door.

"Stay here and until I come and get you two alright?"

You nodded and she closed the door as she left. Jason let out a soft string of curse words before passing a bundle of clothes to you.

"These are some of my old things, they will probably fit best."

You smiled at him, and he paused for a moment before turning away.

"Just get dressed please. I still need your help."

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

"I'm really sorry about your mom Jay." You whispered, leaning against his shoulder.

He sighed before shrugging, "Don't be too sorry. It's not your fault after all."

Punching his side you scowled at him, and he finally looked you in the eyes. They were red and you could see the remnants of tears on his face.

"It doesn't matter Y/N. It- it's been almost a year."

"And? It doesn't change the fact that I just found out and she's- was your mom!"

Jason pushed you back and you head butted him causing him to laugh.

"Ouch Mouse, did you really have to do that?"

You nodded, "Yes. One your are being stupid trying to be stoic and two I know you're keeping something from me."

"Aww, full sentences I'm so proud."

You elbowed him again and he winced before rubbing the back of his neck. Your face fell as you looked him over.

"Jaybird?"

"Bruce Wayne is adopting me."

Everything went quiet for a moment, and you forced a breath out.

"Oh, OH. I- sorry. I should be congratulating you. Congrats, you're finally getting out of here."

"Yeah," Jason began turning towards you, "without you."

"Don't worry about me I'll be fine."

"Mouse, I've been worried about you since we first met. You don't have the best track record."

"And you do?"

Jason froze before a small smile appeared on his face, "Touche."

Laying your head on his shoulder you sighed, "I'll be fine. Don't worry too much. And if you feel like you really need to, you are always welcome to visit."

"Really?"

"Course Jaybird."

"Thanks, Mouse."

Swallowing the bitter feeling rising in your throat you gave him a sharp nod and a soft smile.

"Always, Jay."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It felt as though you had swallowed live coals. Burning hot and strong, they scorched your throat as the heavy rain poured and slammed into the ground.

The sky- oh god the sky was grey and dark. The world was dark and you- you couldn't even function.

Dead. He was dead.

A car accident, they said. Halfway across the world. And now- now you were alone because he was gone.

Your mouth felt so dry and yet, the tears never seemed to stop. Not when your hair was drenched and skin soaked, not when the rain seemed ready to swallow you up but never spit you out. No, the tears almost seemed as if they could out last the rain.

After all they filled the now hollow shell that you were. You couldn't even hear or feel your own heartbeat anymore. Breathing- oh hell breathing was forced at best. Why- why should you keep going if he was gone?

Gone. Gone like everyone else you had ever cared about, ever. Was it you? Were you the cause for this? Why did he have to die? Why did he have to be so far away when it happened, why couldn't he have been close?

Why didn't you get to say goodbye?

Or was- was it because whatever want to say goodbye was now gone too?

______________________________________________________________

Something sharp brought you back to reality. Blinking you found a spike digging into your hand and drawing blood. Looking at him you swallowed. Two months, it had been two months since you discovered he was alive and nearly died in your fit of frustration.

Shaking your head, you fought off the memories that tried to surface. The others were bad enough you didn't need more to make it worse. "Why?" he whispered causing you to look at him.

"Why what?"

"Why can't things just go back to the way they used to be?"

It was hard to breathe, with him so close- so desperate, "Because you left me! You- you always do!"

Your reply was sputtered, and halfhearted. Jason shook his head and leaned in closer to you his voice becoming clearer.

"What?"

"I'm-i'm not the same as I used to be."

"I don't care. You'll always be Y/N to me." His voice cracked and part of you began to crumble.

Why- why couldn't you just ignore these stupid and pounding feelings? These things that pulsed and jumped at his touched and danced, screaming at the sound that broken tone; why couldn't you just ignore them?

Tears, hot and fierce flushed against your eyes, "But- you changed too."

"No, no I'm-no!" Jason shook his head again and you could swear you could see his pleading expression through the mask, "I'm the same as I've always been. I'm your jaybird and you're my mouse. Always will be."

"No-no I'm not." You whispered as that rainy day flooded your mind.

"Why not?" Jason asked pulling you in even closer and causing all of your emotions to come bubbling out.

"BECAUSE YOU DIED. AND- AND WHEN YOU DIED, I-"

Jason pulled you in closed, close enough that you can hear his breathing, "You what?"

"I DIED WITH YOU!"

His grip went slack, and you yanked the flail from his grasps your body trembling. Why couldn't you just shut up?

"What?"

You looked back towards him feeling tears now spilling down your face. Closing your eyes for just a moment you raised your head.

"WHEN YOU DIED, I DIED WITH YOU."

Tag List:

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#batfamily #batboy x y/n #batboys x reader #red hood x reader #red hood #red hood x y/n #jason todd x reader #reader x jason todd #jason todd x y/n #y/n x jason todd #batboys x y/n #y/n #reader #request #angst #vigilante! reader

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theinquisitxor · 11 months

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Why You Should Read: The Age of Darkness series by Katy Rose Pool

The basic premise of this series is that the End of the World is coming, and the Last Prophet is the only one who can potentially stop it

Set in a Mediterranean inspired fantasy world with cultures that remind me of North Africa, Middle East, Greek, and Slavic cultures

Super diverse and inclusive fantasy world. Reading books like these are such a breathe of fresh air

This book follows the pov of 5 characters who all get thrown together to possibly save (or destroy) the world

We have:

An assassin and her undead sister

An exiled Prince trying to save his people

Captain Jude Weatherborn, Keeper of the Word and leader of the Order of the Last Light, A stoic swordsman

A disaster gay running from his past

Other fantastic side characters

There’s a Hierophant and religious fanatics

As well as a secret order of Paladins charged with keeping the secrets of the last prophecy

The Gays will save the world

gods and secrets and lore

People in this world have ‘graces’ that lend them unique abilities (reminds me a bit of Grisha)

There’s lots of action but this is very much a character driven series. The characters are so complex and their relationships are so complicated it’s great

The purest and most heartbreakingly sweet romance

I’m surprised this series isn’t more popular, it checks the boxes for a lot of what is currently popular, but also feels fresh and new and unique

#pleaseee read this it’s good #there will come a darkness #Katy rose pool #age of darkness #fantasy books #ya fantasy #lgbt fantasy #books #bookblr #why you shouls read #book recs #book recommendations #my post

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intermundia · 10 months

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heyy i was wondering if you have an opinion on the role the jedi order plays in the republic? on a political level I mean :D

so, my thoughts on the jedi order are largely shaped by george lucas, and that means my answer to this question may not be as politically nuanced as you may hope (aka the political things i write about in my fanfics are genre-bent reinterpretations of the core lore of the saga). the nature of the jedi's participation in politics is pretty simple, in the way that myths are simple.

it would probably be easier for me to share and explain some of my notes i took while reading the sw prequels archives and comment of them. i transcribed a lot of the book in the process of trying to understand it, so the following are quotes from george unless otherwise noted. this is the book i mean:

oh sw archives my beloved. anyway.

first, and most importantly, the jedi are not a real political organization that exists in the world, but rather their design is to further george's narrative. he is not writing a political thriller, but rather an emotional and philosophical one. they're more like symbols for moral quandaries than a real organization.

the jedi are space wizards, and also the most moral agents possible. this is not realism, but rather they are agents in a spiritual morality play, where they are an explicitly defined white-hat good guys, who are in combat with black-hat selfish bad guys. he's telling a mythic story, so you have to reframe the jedi out of history and into myth.

he wants to tell a story about how it is not enough to rule by fear. fear is not a sufficient mechanism to keep society civil. you need something else, something 'supernatural' in his words in order to encourage mutual flourishing, some way to overcome our tribal limitations and fears and live in a unified and diverse world.

the jedi are his idea of how to show that force of compassion in a narrative, the idea of people with power motivated by the right reasons, working for the good of everyone. the jedi are the embodiment of the archetype of the true public servant, the ones we want to have ruling over us. this is not a class of people that actually exist in reality, but also nobody here has space magic either.

so his design is that the jedi order are warrior-monks who keep the peace, ambassadors more than cops, the most moral people in the galaxy, because they are monks.

they've chosen to serve, and been given both duty and oversight from the galactic senate. they do not create the world order, but they do their best to encourage peace and civilization whenever and wherever they can. there aren't that many of them, but they are extremely powerful people, who are by narrative design the most moral people in the galaxy (just.. not anakin at the end there).

ultimately, they exist to be trapped into a bind, the morality of always doing the right thing vs the morality of always seeking the best outcome. there is no clean answer to that, it's a perennial tension in the history of philosophy, so the jedi are emblematic of that, you know? in the end, they're literary figures more than real world political ones, and exist so that we can interrogate our own values.

i realize this is a take that might be unpopular with segments of the fanbase who really enjoy analyzing star wars through the lens of realpolitik and making it gritty and adult and complex. my answer is that star wars is heartbreakingly simple. they're an embodiment of our better natures, locked in a fight against our worst. the politics stuff is all pretty superficial storytelling on top of that.

#could i play historian and try to pretend there's enough there to #write about it like history?#absolutely. i do that in fanfic #but i think it's really important to keep in mind #the genre and the message of the stories #which is moral and emotional. they're heroes in a bind #sw #long post

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belit0 · 9 months

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Killer - TobiIzu (part 2)

Okay, so a comment from EyesofNeptune8004 on my ao3 collection made me re-read chapter 28, and I decided it was way too good as to finish it there.

My past self, the one who created this shi, was rly rly gone when she did it, so im not sure about having the yandere-psyco-crazy touch anymore, but i wanted to try cause this one is truly interesting.

ao3 collection - chap 28

Madara knocks on the door of Izuna's apartment for the tenth time, standing in the complex's corridor and carrying a bag of groceries in his hand. He brings with him a little bit of everything, food, cleaning products, bathroom essentials. He has seen his little brother a couple of times since he was found in that cheap motel, and is worried about the state of mind he might be in.

The scene was heartbreakingly clear, and he blames himself for not paying attention. Izuna has been in the field for a while, working in the trenches and with hard cases, but throwing him in headfirst to deal with the worst serial killer they'd had in years wasn't the wisest thing to do on his part.

He thought he was ready to take on a case as important as that one, and had no hope of getting any breakthroughs on it. The only thing police knew about the murderer was his name, and only because he allowed them to find it out, serving it to them on a silver platter.

Tobirama had appeared overnight and did not take long to make them understand he would keep on acting until they found him, but the crime scenes he left behind him were so clean, immaculate, no evidence could be extracted beyond what could be seen with the naked eye.

Victims of any age, children and adults, men and women, all marked by 3 red cuts on the face, and a note on the chest with a word written on it, "Tobirama". They suspected it might not even be his real name, having searched the database a million times without coming up with a match. Or maybe the man was so meticulous to the point of having wiped himself off the face of the earth, eliminating his persona to operate at ease.

The officers nicknamed him "the white demon," based on the few testimonies they had collected of his multiple acts, all reporting a white-haired man near the scene prior to the attack.

Whatever they were dealing with, Madara had no hope of solving it soon or even finding anything to help them move forward. Bodies continued to turn up everywhere in the city, and police hope was dwindling.

His younger brother had been complaining to him for months because Madara only assigned him simple situations, small kidnappings way too easy to solve, overly obvious murders, stupid robberies, so he thought giving Izuna an unsolvable case would be just what he needed.

He wanted a challenge? He would give him a challenge.

Madara saw far too many cases less serious than this one being shelved for lack of evidence and figured he'd assign it to him just to make his brother feel important.

Big mistake.

He knocks on the apartment door again, and raises his voice to break through the piece of wood separating them "Izuna... I don't want to have to use the key, please." Sure, his brother left him a copy when he moved out of the house, an emergency key in case he lost his, but Madara tries to assess the situation differently.

If the younger Uchiha manages to get out of bed and open the door for him, not everything is lost. He has visited him since that night, but he can never get this one to get up.

"I'm coming in..." he whispers more to himself than anything else, taking the key out of his pocket and opening the door. All the windows are closed, curtains covering the glass, and it looks like there hasn't been sunlight in the place for weeks.

Several empty food containers are visible from the entrance, scattered all over the floor and reaching into the room. Izuna is probably still in bed, not having gotten up except to go to the bathroom or eat.

Madara makes his way through all the trash surrounding the floor, kicking things to get to the kitchen in order to leave the groceries he bought for his brother in the fridge. When he opens it, puffing in distress, he is greeted by a terrible stench, something probably rotten that has been there for a good few days.

There are tears in his eyes, and he doesn't know if it's because of the strong smell or because of the image that rotten meat brings to his mind. Izuna told him, a few days before everything happened, he would prepare a special dinner for him as a celebration for having solved one of the most controversial cases of recent times, that of the red-eyed assassin. Madara, in charge of the investigation department of the police, had been working with all his concentration on catching the ruffian who was terrorizing the local park, and perhaps that was what made him stop paying attention to what his younger brother was doing with the white demon's case.

He didn't even know about the special clue Izuna received.

He holds his nose and tries to close the refrigerator tightly, the door jamming with the trash on the floor and unable to close all the way. He ends up slamming the appliance, venting the anger he feels about the whole situation and wipes his wet eyes with the back of his hand.

This is his fault. He could have prevented it if he hadn't underestimated the situation, if he had paid attention to his brother's wanderings.

It's his job, to coordinate all the detectives in the department and make sure they do a good job, but he lost sight of the one he most cared about, and threw him into the lion's den without knowing it.

The white demon had broken his modus operandi with Izuna, tracked and investigated him, marked him, and took him where he wanted and how he wanted. He had complete control of the situation from start to finish, and made the Uchiha act as he wanted, handling him like a puppet. He guided him to a secluded place, using clever words and manipulating him not to alert anyone.

Lacking experience, Izuna fell for his scheme. He’s lucky to be alive.

Why is he alive?

He had been found passed out in a motel room, his pants off and his shirt unbuttoned, his face red and wet from what appeared to be tears. The position in which his body was discovered denoted sexual abuse at first glance, with marks all over his rear area and even some blood between his legs.

The policemen who first arrived at the scene did not dare to go in until Madara was there, and it was he who came face to face with the image, covering the exposed body of his younger brother with his jacket, and carrying him in his arms to his own car.

The examination at the hospital was the most difficult part, and the younger Uchiha had to be sedated so as not to attack the nurses trying to conduct the abuse assessment. Izuna was unconscious for the next 24 hours, resting at Madara's house, but upon regaining awareness, he demanded to return home.

The way he cried to go back to his apartment, the violence with which he insisted his older brother listen, the urgency with which he communicated his need to get there, was unnatural. He would not allow anyone to touch him, nor would he allow them to take his cell phone to investigate possible breaches in the system, ways in which the killer could have gotten to him. Madara didn't have the heart to contradict him, feeling too guilty to deny him anything, letting him keep the phone and going home.

From then on, Izuna refused to leave his apartment, taking refuge within the four walls of his house and seeking comfort in solitude, not getting out of bed and having trouble eating. He began to forego mundane tasks, necessary for human functioning, and the older Uchiha had to assist him with the simplest of things. Bathing, combing his hair, eating. Between his long work shifts and the demands of an entire department, Madara tries to find time to visit him, to help him, but life doesn't wait. Doctors gave him a barrage of medications for his mental state, but he refused to take even one.

Izuna withdrew into himself.

Consumed by anger and resignation, he walks through the garbage to get to his brother's room. It pains him to see the mess his home has become, and he can't help but remember the pristine state in which he kept his place before this happened. Izuna was always a man of neatness and tidiness, always groomed and well dressed, perfumed, ready to conquer whomever he wanted. The state in which his apartment is at the moment only reflects the inside of his head.

Now everything seems to have changed, and if someone were to see the situation without knowing its background, they would probably think it was the home of a hoarder. Where once there were beautiful decorations and family photos, now there are only empty soda cans and unlit cigarettes. The floor adorned by a beautiful carpet now lies covered with dirty clothes and empty food containers, a few full trash bags here and there.

Heartbreaking.

On the bed, an amorphous figure is visible under several quilts and blankets, and a head of matted hair peeks above the mess. Madara approaches slowly, not wanting to startle him, not knowing if he is asleep or awake, "Zuna...? Are you-" he jumps back in surprise, raising his fists reflexively as his younger brother lunges at him with a knife.

He brings him down before he can hurt him, trapping him under his arms on the bed and disarming him with experienced movements. Izuna was always the more agile of the two, but the one who least evaluates his moves before executing them.

"IZUNA! IT'S ME!" Exorbitant eyes stare at him intently, and he knows his younger brother must be trapped in a terrible loop of flashbacks and bad memories, horrible enough to sleep with a knife under his pillow. He concentrates his gaze on Izuna and can appreciate how different moods and reactions travel across his countenance, ending in heavy tears.

The younger Uchiha was never one to cry, but it seems to be the only thing he can do lately.

He disarms beneath him, freeing his hands and turning on the mattress, covering his face and refusing to confront him, "I'm sorry" is all he dares to say, repeating it over and over again like a mantra.

"It's okay, it's okay, you're safe..." He helps him up and hugs him tightly, hoping his arms can give him comfort, some sense of relief, his perfume helping him out of this horrible mental place he finds himself in.

Between words of encouragement and caresses on his back, Madara manages to lead him to the shower, preparing the water to a nice warm temperature, going to look for a bottle of his favorite shampoo among the groceries he bought for him. Helping him undress as one would assist a small child, he can't help but tear up inside at the fragility of his younger brother.

Izuna is just a hint of his former self, pale and consumed by anguish, skinny to an unhealthy level.

Once underwater, Madara estimates he has about forty minutes of productivity, using the time to clean up the mess all over the apartment. He bags piles and piles of garbage, mostly cans and plastic, clearing the floor at least enough for him to walk without stepping on objects as he goes.

He wipes down those shelves full of cigarettes, washes the dishes, and picks up a thousand trays of food scattered on the ground. He even has time to swipe a damp cloth on the mirror the younger Uchiha likes to use to dress himself.

Izuna finishes with the bath just as his older brother attends to changing his sheets, entering the room already clothed and with a towel wrapped around his hair. "Are you done? Need help with that?" The police chief points to the abandoned comb on the dresser, and when the other nods wordlessly, takes it and attacks the tangle he's had in his hair for days.

Madara likes to imagine each knot he manages to untangle is one step closer to getting his little brother back, working the hair patiently and restoring it to the neat look he enjoyed wearing.

"Look at you, all nice and tidy..." There is no reaction under his hands, and he knows not even the smallest gestures will be able to pull him out of the hole he fell into. No matter how much he helps, his efforts seem to be in vain. "I was wondering about taking your phone for investigation now...? I brought you a new one, new number and all, just to be safe."

Madara still hoped his brother would eventually come to his senses, regain his innate police thinking and understand it was necessary to hand over the device for research. There's a chance it could be the biggest breakthrough in the whole case, but the elder Uchiha didn't want to impose his rank and seize it without permission.

Maybe he should have, because days go by and Izuna doesn't hand it over, yet this is his younger brother, not just any victim.

There is no way of knowing if the white demon infiltrated his life through technology, not knowing Tobirama's age and capabilities. The biggest possibility is that he tracked him by his cell phone, intruding into his private life without the detective even knowing.

"No." Is all he replies, not moving from the spot despite Madara being done with his hair. The police chief snorts with indignation, but refuses to give up the fight so easily. "I got the contact information from that therapist Itachi used when he needed it, remember? He's a great guy, they say he's really good at what he does... I made an appointment for you to see him." He grabs the phone he brought for his brother as a replacement for the one that might be tapped, and hands it to him.

Izuna, unmoving, doesn't even look up, nor does he hold the device when it is passed to him.

"His name is Hashirama and... where is it, Izuna?" He asks looking in all directions, searching with his eyes for the phone. and remembering not seeing it when he tidied the room. "Where did you hide it-" A buzzing sounds in the bed, and the pillow lights up slightly. Having changed the sheets, the Uchiha is surprised he didn't notice it, and as he opens the cover, he tries to understand why his brother is so stubborn about keeping that damn phone with him.

An unbecoming attitude of Izuna, it seems he is trying to hide the device, not to see it.

The Uchiha, like any young adult, finds that smartphone a must-have, always carrying it with him everywhere he goes and never letting the battery run out. The typical person who takes thirty pictures of food before eating, now keeps the phone buried in the bed, as if trying to ignore it or make it disappear.

It doesn't make sense.

The screen lights up again when he finds it between the pillow stuffing, with 10% battery remaining and a message from an unknown number just delivered to his inbox. He can't read the contents of it since the system doesn't recognize his facial structure, but something doesn't sit right with him about the situation.

"I don't need any therapist or any medication I-"

"I'm not asking you, I'm simply informing you. You will go, it's a fact, this can't go on like this. Why did you hide it there? What are you not telling me?" Madara gives no room for argument, taking the old phone and stashing it in his coat. He doesn't bother with an evidence bag, having broken the usual protocol since he found Izuna at the motel.

"If you check it, there's no going back Aniki." He replies slowly, in an almost imperceptible tone of voice, not daring to look at him. There is something in his words that unnerves him and puts him on alert, as if his younger brother is premonishing something.

"Maybe it will allow us to move on. I'm going to catch him, Zuna, promise. I brought you food, please eat something." He assumes it's about his trauma, reliving that terrible moment once the team manages to discover information on his phone and finally have material to track him down. Madara is convinced this little device has everything he needs to stop the assassin, and he will not rest until he has sentenced him to death.

Izuna does not answer, but seems to want to say something. He looks up and appears to deeply admire him, as if he wanted to engrave the image of his older brother in his memory. He is about to speak, but Madara's personal cell phone buzzes, the ringtone flooding the room.

He looks at the screen before answering, "Obito" reflecting back on the phone, and gives him a kiss on the crown of his head before leaving. "I have to get back to the station, but call me if you need anything, yes?" he strokes his wet hair, and whispers a small " I love you" to which he receives no reply. He makes sure to lock the door once outside and carries in his hands all the garbage bags he gathered in the apartment.

That's the last time he sees his brother before everything goes to hell.

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winterlovesong1 · 10 months

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Let’s talk about that last Nace scene (4x05)…

Beginning as two people wanting different things, two humans moving in different directions…

I can’t go back…

I can’t go forward…

Because of belief, because of a notion that the path they see, the path they are on, is the right one, and how could the other not envision how this could work, how if they just pick this as the correct resolution, they could walk together…

It’s emphasized as the scene continues, that the reasoning for diverging was never about questioning the love they carry for one another.

(I never doubted that…)

The gravity of that love has always rested heavily in both their hearts, but in this era of the curse, it’s how they define that love that has gotten rewritten. What was so succinct – three words that never needed further explanation or exposition, suddenly now are followed by desperate digression, by straggling reasoning, by endless deviations…

I love you detours toward complexity.

I love you is not so simple as it once was.

Ace explains that his love is now defined as sacrificial – that his I love you is found in selfishness, the outskirts of that definition his insecurities, but at the center his purpose that he’s come to find through being alongside her.

And he can’t lose that. He can’t lose her.

Nancy’s love is more defined as growth – as progress and advancement as a person and how someone can help you move beyond yourself and into a more truthful version of yourself.

And she can’t lose that. She can’t lose him.

And as the scene ends, it’s two people accepting each other’s definition – accepting each other’s paths, two humans moving in different directions and waving affectionately, longingly as they pass each other in the roundabout…

One day, a long time from now, I hope that we both can find another great love.

After you, I would accept nothing less.

They wave to each other, calmly, heartbreakingly so, finding peace in a goodbye neither of them wants to give, but knowing, however devastated, they have to let go…

(for now)

#this isn't a happy meta is it?#but it's the way they said goodbye and let go (for now) that I just find so beautiful #cause there was no ressentiment #it was always about love #nace #tv: nancy drew #nancy drew spoilers #winter's meta tag

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meatcinema · 1 year

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Battle Royale (2000) Dir. Kinji Fukasaku

Trigger warning for: Violence, Suicide, Sexual Assault, Murder

I first watched Battle Royale in high school, on my laptop, curled up in bed, at some secret hour of the night when I should have been asleep. I probably had school in the morning. I won't lie to you and say I was immediately swept off my feet, my head was still full of YA fantasy novels and what kissing must feel like and what it must be like to really date a vampire and still figuring out the logistics of periods and why I could never seem to insert a tampon correctly even though all my friends used tampons. I really liked it, but I sort of really liked everything back then.

In college one of my very good friends asked me if I had ever read the book. I hadn't. He described the poetic language, the fluid grip of each page, and heartbreakingly, a moment I could scarcely remember from the film, two young lovers who take each other's hand and step off a cliff together. I would eventually read the book, my own printed grid of all the faces and numbers of the students acting as my bookmark. I would cross out their faces every time one of them perished. A sick game of bingo. I devoured all 627 pages in a little over 3 days. And it stuck.

I have watched Battle Royale many times since. I think every time I watch it, I hold it more and more dearly to my heart. If you're not familiar, Battle Royale revolves around a class of middle schoolers with explosive collars strapped to their necks, who have been selected to participate in the government sanctioned Battle Royale where they are tasked with killing each other until only one remains. It is a spectacle of bloodshed, darkly comedic at times, and deeply heartbreaking.

(Spoilers below)

The film is constantly swelling with strings, operatic in its death and destruction, bloodstained uniforms and lush greenery, the constant churning of waves against the cliffside, it is as beautiful as it is violent. But where Battle Royale really strikes is in the quiet moments, after the screaming stops. There is a tenderness in the quiet, where minimalistic dialogue shines through. Chigusa lays dying in her crush's arms, understanding that he may never love her in the way she wanted, but this closeness, maybe it's not the worst way to die. She asks "God, can I say one more thing?" She tells him "You look really cool, Hiroki," and he responds "You too. You're the coolest girl in the world." They are no older than 14 or 15. The camera pushes out, framing them as part of the landscape, swaddled in crawling green, the light gold, the air still. There is such a sweetness in the words, such simple phrasing for such complex emotions, all the sincerity of a child confessing her love in the way she knows how, all the comfort of a boy who said he'd always have her back, forever, he promised. It is the quietest death in the film.

The film is intercut with moments like this, black screens of text, sometimes narrated by one of the characters, sometimes completely silent. There are also flashbacks, continually going back to the shared blurry golden memory of a basketball game, the entire class cheering and clapping, together in a moment of joy. Our protagonist Shuya remembers bunking with his best friend Nobu, the light melting through the window warm and comforting. Nobu is one of the first to die, his throat exploding as he reaches out to Shuya, and Shuya out to him. They scream for each other.

Sometimes the film is unimaginably cruel. One of the students holds a megaphone to his victim so her dying screams can be heard across the island. Mitsuko, one of the film's primary antagonists, revels in her own cruelty, delighting in the bloodshed. "What's wrong with killing? Everyone's got their reasons," she says pointing a gun at one of her friends. Not all memories are golden, Mitsuko proves. We are given a snippet of her childhood, her mother passed out on the kitchen table after selling her daughter to a strange man for the next few hours. During her first kill, Mitsuko tells her victim about a couple hanging from a tree outside. "Not my scene!" she declares, "I'll never die like THAT!" Some of these students have been surviving long before the game started. And for all her viciousness, all her mercilessness, Mitsuko delivers perhaps one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the film. She is shot. She gets back up. She is shot again. She gets back up. She is shot again. She doesn't get back up. It is in this moment that her desperation to survive is at its most apparent, she is flailing, screaming, covered in her own blood, but she will not give up. She has to survive, she always has. But she doesn't. Her body floats limply, her voice lays sadly across the frame "I just didn't want to be a loser anymore."

The film delivers some of it's most brutal dialogue in the moments of silence, often swallowing the students in scenery, framing them as part of the landscape. It's beautiful to behold, large sweeping grassy cliffs and the endless blue ocean and dripping green forests and dark deserted buildings in ruins. Hiroki lies dying after being shot by his crush who unknowingly perceived him as a threat. His chest bleeds as he confesses "I've been in love with you, Kotohiki, for a long, long time." He dies, his face half submerged in the dirty water flooding the floor of the abandoned building. One wonders what a "long, long time" must mean to someone who has lived such a short life. The water is red now. In many ways, the students seem to meld into the scenery, their bodies finishing the composition as if they were always meant to be there, as if there was never a way for them to escape.

The movie is brutal, grand, horrifying. It is as stark in its savagery as it is in its poetics. Below the mind-scrambling depictions of murder and death and the chaotic spiral of madness, lies a true tenderness for life, for friendship, for humanity. Towards the end of the film, the screen reads "At the end, I'm glad I found a true friend." There is such a ferocity for life in this film, for survival, that even in the bleakest of moments we can "RUN!" What is your life worth? Is it worth it to spend your dying moments in the arms of your best friend, to sacrifice yourself so your friends can survive, to tell the person you love that you loved them for a long, long time. Is it worth it to kill everyone you ever knew, if it meant you could go on, you could survive like you've always done. Is it worth it, just to know that you found a true friend. Through all the blood, all the guts, there is beauty to be found. There is something to run towards, just as there is something to run away from. Chigusa's memory unfolds as she runs through the forest, Hiroki close on her heels on a bicycle.

"Chigusa, how far are you planning to run?"

"Ahead of you, forever!"

"I'll watch your back forever."

"Promise?"

#battle royale #fob movie guide #meatcinema #film review #kinji fukasaku

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gunnerkriggcritical · 2 years

Text

I’ll share my personal story here in condensed form. I started reading the comic about 10 years ago and quickly became obsessed. I’d say at this point I’ve reread the entire thing… I don’t know, let’s say 5 or 6 times. At its peak, no other webcomic can match Gunnerkrigg for art, for story, or for character. What a stunning, spooky, subtle, complex, and deeply moving comic—and at times hilarious as well. All centered around Annie, one of the most heartbreakingly relatable characters I’ve ever encountered.

My personal turning point was The Tree. I feel like this is where some other fans would put their turning points, too. Anthony’s return brought the comic to a point I feel like it still hasn’t recovered from. Something happened at that point which slowly but surely made GKC a chore to read and keep up with, rather than a pleasure. The story now proceeds in awkward leaps and lurches rather than the patient, unfolding pace we were accustomed to for the first decade.

Nowadays, there’s no slow, careful unfolding of story. Major plot threads get resolved—or introduced and then immediately resolved (see the two Annies)—in ways that feel nowhere near satisfying or even coherent. New arcs are introduced that feel weird and tacked-on and, at worst, annoyingly unwelcome (Loup, who has never quite felt integrated into the story of the comic). The story is telling rather than showing 99.9% of the time. It’s ALL exposition. It’s like Tom is racing at full tilt towards the finish line so he can start working on something else he’s more passionate about. And worst of all, Annie Carver herself now feels like a side character in her own story. She displays few moments of autonomy or personality. She’s just kind of “girl who is there.” I don’t feel like we know her anymore. And for such an incredibly nuanced protagonist, that’s the worst crime of all.

But I might still be reading if not for two particular incidents. I usually can stay loyal to something I’ve loved despite its declining quality, but I never quite came back from the chapter where Tom seems to address reader criticism of Tony, Annie’s deadbeat-at-best dad, by having an entire chapter dedicated to how Tony is excused from being a deadbeat, actually, because he has an ambiguous mental illness of some sort, and ending with Annie looking directly at the viewer to tell us she doesn’t care and loves him anyway and she’s fine and we should all stop worrying, and then having Jones, the literal impartial observer character, agree with her.

That was my last straw. The comic was done for me after that. All my goodwill was gone. I’m honestly still enraged even though this happened more than a year ago; I could talk about it for paragraphs in another post, and I probably will. But for whatever reason I kept reading, morbid curiosity I guess?

Until I reached the point where Lana is almost sexually assaulted by elf kids. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, for so many reasons. GKC has gone so very far off the rails. I realized I was actively dreading each new page and I didn’t want to read at all anymore. I’m done, and I’ve only periodically checked in with the comic since then, each time discovering it’s gone even further off the rails than before.

It really feels like the author has clocked out. The art is no longer stunning (IMO), and the story no longer has any passion in it. It’s not unique or charming or heartbreaking or funny the way it once was. It’s just… random stuff happening. A story about robots, told robotically. At turns, unfortunately, it’s even actively offensive and bad. And for a comic that was once so special, that sucks especially much.

#gunnerkrigg court #gunnerkrigg #please excuse any typos I wrote this in notes app lol #antimony carver #kat donlan

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sneezemonster15 · 2 years

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Okay but like WHY would SNS think Kishimoto is homophobic? Some fans do and I wanna ask them Why???

What's wrong with you?

Writing the trials and tribulations of gay people in a conservative homophobic society, portraying a closeted homosexual person in a conservative heteronormative society (Naruto is, whose own homophobia so obviously stems from his closetedness, which is a very logical and realistic portrayal of homosexuality, like please watch other gay media for fuck's sake), and writing a careful, respectful, and freaking Shakespearan gay love story in a shounen fucking manga while consciously deviating from the highly problematic tropes that so many of his contemporaries use where they treat homosexuality as offensive or a joke, DOES NOT make Kishimoto homophobic.

It actually makes him empathetic to homosexuality. He actually understands homosexuality and the struggles of a gay person living in a traditional heteronormative society. He treats the subject with sensitivity and a deep sense of pathos. It couldn't be clearer that this man knows what he is writing about.

A hell lot of creators who create homosexual media, especially in mainstream media, end up cheaply fetishizing or exploiting homosexuality the same way heterosexual media has been treated, by writing insincere, common tropey cookie cutter bullshit because it sells. Because a majority of the audience doesn't care about or even begin to understand complex narrative or visual nuances. But if you have seen enough gay media, you can easily tell who is being sincere about storytelling and characters and who is just after making some easy dough.

Stories about homosexuality in mainstream cinema were very rare and scattered earlier. During the eighties and especially nineties, most creators who wrote homosexual characters and narratives used to make it offensive or to facilitate cheap comedy. We have all seen Friends, haven't we? The sitcom.

Enter Wong Kar Wai. When his film 'Happy Together' was released in 1997, so many fans in the gay community were immensely grateful to him. It was like a milestone in Asian gay media. Because finally gay community had a realistic, respectful and honest to God portrayal of a gay couple in cinema. There was no unnecessary exploitation of the subject, just a straightforward story about love. Between two people. Only in this case, they happened to be men. This was the kind of representation the Asian gay community at the time was looking for but didn't get it because the heteronormative film industries didn't cater to their interests.

My gay film maker friend was in his early twenties when he saw this film in a special screening in the city. And he was transported. And so overwhelmed. It was like a spiritual experience for him. Because he had never seen such a sincere portrayal of homosexuality and gay love in media ever. He still remembers everything in such detail, he couldn't help but cry and he wasn't the only one crying in that hall. He felt seen for the very first time in media. He could relate. And his resolve of making sincere and honest films got even stronger. He has won a lot of accolades and awards since.

That's the power of storytelling and meaningful representation.

And I can say the same thing about Kishi. He broke the mould. He wrote a realistic gay love story with a gay protagonist in love with a gay anti hero and made them kiss, never been done in the history of shounen before.

His hands were tied so he couldn't write it all that explicitly but seriously, he didn't need to. It actually ended up making this story even more nuanced and heartbreakingly beautiful.

So how does that make him homophobic? Do you even understand what homophobia means?

By your logic, Spielberg making a movie about Nazi atrocities makes him a Nazi? Or Spike Lee making films about the struggles of black people in America makes him racist? Wtf?? What's even your logic?

You admit Sasuke and Naruto, the two mainest characters, the hero and the anti hero, are gay and in love with each other and you ship them because their story is so heart touching and splendidly beautiful. But the person who wrote them that way with such immense effort in his Magnum opus is a homophobe?? Do you not see how contradictory that is?

Seriously, please think for ONE second before you say things. You are accusing an amazing writer of something grave, that he is the opposite of.

Yes, I have heard and read worse things in this fandom. But seriously, I don't want to expect something like this out of the SNS fandom. Use your head, it's not just for show.

#sns fandom #sns #naruto #kishimoto #uzumaki naruto #uchiha sasuke #sasunaru #narusasu #wong kar wai #happy together

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lottiecrabie · 9 months

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if galatea take 1 was actually real, what songs do you think matty wrote about her looking at his current discography?

this is all assuming we are ignoring Eras and Timeline where he could have realistically written them because he obviously meets her after some of these songs would have been put out In The Real World.

well first of all, most obviously and heartbreakingly, be my mistake. i don’t think i have to explain that one since it’s, you know, about comparing two women and the difference in feelings you have for them. ‘you do make me hard, but she makes me weak’ yeah this makes it Worse. especially since the only way we at least know for sure matty liked her was physical.

going to the other obvious with TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME since it’s Another cheating song. i think this one is even sadder in some way since it doesn’t address galatea, but delilah. this would mean that while she was imagining this deep, profound love story and connection, he was justifying it in his head as only sometimes, as unimportant. :(

i can see undo too, especially if we imagine that post-galatea canon they have some complex, messy, drawn-out situationship still. once again, ‘i could hear you giving her head, she said’ is extremely galatea coded, but also the affirmation that they are Not doing it again, and wanting to see her even if she’s not yours.

in a less angsty route, inside your mind feels pretty gto coded to me. the fact that he’s so desperate to get a look into her sketchbook, something she likens to cracking her skull open and showing him her insides, is pretty similar to the concept of inside your mind. there’s also the whole idea that by helping her produce and write, he’s attempting to truly understand her, get under her skin and see her brain. once again, she qualified making an album as ‘breaking your ribcage open.’ it reminds me of how articulately and carefully he tries to decode the meaning of her lyrics. this song is a lot more romantic, so it implies deeper, realer feelings. much more sweet!

these are the first ones that came to my mind let me know if you guys had thought of some more😋 i would be so curious to know

#i love these questions like thank u for letting me Rant #galatea take one #ask

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department-shoe-stud · 1 year

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goncharov

Ohhhhhh ho ho ho, Buddy, this is a can of worms you DON’T wanna open.

Okay, ik ik ik I’m gonna sound like such an English major but THE CLOCK MOTIFS??? And how they’re worked into the soundtrack??? I’m SHAKING.

And all of the color theories!!! Andrey’s blue!! Goncharov’s red!! KATYA’S ICONIC WHITE DRESS????? I’m SHAKING.

And Ice Pick Joe… my God, Ice Pick Joe. He’s just so complex, and the ice pick symbolism is so so SO important to him and his character and his EFFECT ON GONCHAROV!!! I’m, you guessed it, SHAKING.

I just can’t stop thinking about this stupid fucking Scorsese movie. I know it’s a Scorsese movie, but it’s the ONE time Martin makes a strong and compelling female lead and Cybill fucking RAN with it. Every scene with her and Sofia, her and KITTY!!!! The FRIENDSHIP BRACELET are you KIDDING ME!!!

And… the bridge scene… don’t fucking LOOK at me, the bridge scene… Cybill gave it her all, and di Niro’s heartbreakingly gentle “Katya… you don’t mean this.” And her fucking SILENT TEAR JFC I’M EATING GLASS AS WE SPEAK

But yeah, I’m loving this renaissance. It’s a really iconic and I love it and I’m making everyone love it with me.

#jmax why would you do this #do you know what you’re doing?#you’re encouraging me #you’re ENABLING me #god bless #but this was a bad idea #loving it tho #goncharov #unreality #goncharov (1973)#robert di niro #al pacino

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darthkvznblogs · 2 months

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What are your thoughts on Sailor Moon and its characters? I'm personally still surprised over how ahead of its time it was and how much it holds up in today's media.

I was going to answer this ask while I watched Promise of the Rose last night but it’s not available where I watch it 😭 this is devastating…

Anyhoo, I have a LOT of thoughts re:Sailor Moon! I'll list them below, rapid-fire style, in no particular order. I also have no idea what the consensus is so there may be some hot takes I’m just not aware of haha :P

I had no idea how much of a little shithead Usagi was! I guess seeing gifs and images from her I had a very different concept of what she'd be like, but I really love how much of a gremlin she can be.

For such a romance-obsessed series (which I don't mind and actually quite enjoy most of the time) they don't actually show you much of the actual relationships, which I think is a shame. You've already sold me on Usagi and Mamoru, but I need more meat on those bones! Show me them going on cute dates! Show me arguments that last longer than two lines (and are often motivated by magical destiny BS)! You're telling me about a love that has managed to survive through death and the thousands of years in between their past and present lives, now show me it!

I'm such a sucker for the premise of S1. The sense of love and duty persisting through death and reincarnation, the struggle to regain the memories of a past life while keeping your footing in the modern world, the classic balancing act between being a teenager and having the weight of the world on your shoulders as a superhero, the engaging dynamics between the members of the Dark Kingdom and, of course, the bonds between the Sailor Scouts...

...and that finale, goddamn. What a freakin' sucker punch. It's one thing to allude to the fact that death is a very real possibility when facing the enemy throughout the series, but the show hadn't done much more than flirt with it a bit here and there. Seeing that flashback to the Silver Millennium and realizing that not only is it possible for them to die in the line of duty, but that it's actually a very likely prospect...and then following through with it! That sequence, as each of the Guardians sacrifices themselves to clear the way for Sailor Moon, with Usagi going through pretty much every stage of grief in a mere few minutes, had me slack-jawed the whole way through. And Usagi finally fully embracing her identity as Princess Serenity and sacrificing herself as her mother once did, wishing for something as simple (as understandably selfish, as heartbreakingly yearning) as giving herself and her beloved friends their normal lives back, free of their burden. Genuinely perfect ending.

I think the only part that doesn't work for me about the S1 finale is that the monsters that kill the Guardians aren't shown to be special in any way, just volunteers from Beryl's monster hordes. I wish they'd been her elite royal guard that never left her side or something, otherwise why wait to deploy what are clearly your most powerful mooks? It makes the lieutenants lesser by comparison.

The bespoke animations for each of the signature attacks (and the transformation sequences, of course) are great, but there's like...no fighting in this show, which is disappointing, ngl. I know this isn't a shonen and I'm not asking for complex fight coreography, but trading a few blows, damaging the environment, just generally showcasing that the Guardians aren't just soundbites and elemental ranged attacks would be much appreciated.

I regret to inform you all I've become a Sailor Earth truther. NARU DESERVES BETTER (or at least, she deserves to have superpowers so she doesn't get her life force drained every other episode, jfc)

S2 had kind of atrocious pacing - I didn't mind it having two distinct arcs, but the Ail and An arc dragged on for too long and too much time was spent with Rubeus relative to the other Black Moon clan members, so it really robbed them of their impact. I felt great satisfaction when Rubeus was defeated, but the others...eh. I did love the Spectre Sisters and their decision to become normal humans, and Wiseman/Death Phantom (though he kinda came outta nowhere) was super cool. Never underestimate the stark image of a bleached human skull and a cool voice haha.

I feel like most people probably find Chibiusa really annoying (and I was right there with them a few times, admittedly), but remembering that she's a terrified, traumatized child really helped. It was utterly bizarre of Usagi (and the show, to some extent) to consider her any sort of rival for Mamoru's love, that was uncomfortable and ridiculous. The reveal that it's her fault that Crystal Tokyo went to shit was great, I loved that (and generally the implication that the Black Moon Clan is only a problem because they were excluded from utopia as part of Silver Millennium 2.0 for very vague reasons felt like a very intriguing detail, like Neo-Queen Serenity might've also made a huge mistake there.)

Just generally speaking, I wish the Sailor Scouts were a bit more consistent in battle; they're either utterly dominating or getting absolutely destroyed within moments of arriving.

The drip (as the kids say) in this show is impeccable lol everyone always looks amazing

I could go on but you get the idea! I just started Sailor Moon S yesterday so I'm still trucking along. If there's anything I didn't mention that you want my opinion on feel free to hit me with another ask!

#ask box #anon ask #sailor moon #the best thing i can say about sailor moon is that i've never been bored by it #usagi's too much of a gremlin for that lol

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vaguekiwi · 2 years

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For the Ao3 card deck, 10 of hearts please?

♥️ 10 of Hearts: “Fake Dating”

Send me a prompt!

The boy was afraid, and the man was menacing.

That much was obvious, heartbreakingly so. After all, Tony thought as he stood up with a flourish and buttoned his vest back into place, this club was upscale enough to keep a better eye on its patrons.

The boy at the bar, with his shoulders hunched and arms crossed, his chin tucked down as he turned away from the man, was obviously not having a good time.

Which was simply absurd, in Tony’s opinion, because at an $85 cover charge everyone there deserved to feel safe and comfortable.

The man shifted on his feet and the boy flinched, almost twisting away with how hard the movement jerked his body. The man rolled his eyes.

Tony could almost hear them now.

“… Being melodramatic.”

“I d-don’t want—”

“Just come home—”

The boy’s voice cracked, “How did you even find me anyway?” It was sharp enough to make Tony and the man wince, but everyone else in the club ignored them. Which was really unfair because that meant a waiter and at least four other patrons had ignored the transparent cry for help.

What was it they said about the bystander effect?

“Hey, what’s going on?” Tony strode up behind the boy and fixed a smile on the man towering over him. “Can we help you?”

The man’s lips curved into a sneer — an extremely unpleasant one.

“You’re together?” His voice dripped with disbelief.

Tony quirked an eyebrow and was about to correct no, they were just friends; he had no business dating someone so young — and neither did the man in front of him. But then the little one latched onto his arm,

“Yes!” He gushed, pressing himself into Tony’s side, “This is my boyfriend, Quentin, so, you should just leave.”

Tony put his arm around the boy’s shoulders a little too easily. He beamed at Quentin and said,

“What can I say? I’m a lucky man.”

The boy was trembling against him, and it made a fire flicker in Tony’s gut, suddenly all the more protective of him. Desperate to protect shy brown eyes and the pale grip of the boy’s fingers around Tony’s suit jacket.

“Puh-leeze,” Quentin’s tongue rolled over his distaste, spilling vitriol. Tony thought he didn’t blame the kid for not wanting to be near this guy. “You two don’t know each other,” He growled, his chest almost seemed to swell when he took in a breath.

Like the big bad wolf, Tony thought, I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll —

“Yes, we do know each other! And I’m not going anywhere with you.” The boy’s voice was thick with courage that couldn’t support him. But even if his legs were shaking, he had Tony to hang onto. Tony shifted, planting his feet more squarely, covering the boy’s hand in his, not letting him fall.

Quentin scoffed and nearly spat his next words, “If you two are so close, what’s his name, Peter?”

Peter blinked back at Quentin. He leaned his head on Tony’s shoulder and purred,

“Daddy.”

Tony fought to stay as utterly neutral as possible, then he thought better of it and decided to smile instead, as if pleased with the situation. Quentin’s eyes bulged, clearly not expecting Peter to throw out something so intimate with a complete stranger in an unfamiliar bar.

But clearly Peter had known that. After all, that’s why he’d said it.

Cute and smart. A smirk traced Tony’s lips and nudged the edge of his eyes. He’d never taken to that particular kink — complex feelings around his own father, not to mention Morgan — but if that’s what this kid needed from him to feel safe tonight?

“Good boy,” Tony murmured, loud enough for Quentin to hear. He pressed his lips to the top of Peter’s head, admiring the dust of pink on the tips of the boy’s ears.

“Let’s say we go find the others?” Tony suggested, turning Peter away from Quentin and toward a hall of private rooms in the back of the club. He wanted to get the boy to a more secluded space — let him vent or cry or call the police or whatever he needed to do where the decibel level was below 90.

And while he was doing that, Tony would get this Quentin blacklisted at every club in the tristate area.

He straightened his vest as he led Peter away.

After all, that was the least a daddy could do for his little boy.

#starker #tony stark x peter parker #stark-enigma #fake dating #grace writes a little #ask game #fandom card deck

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