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scintillyyy · 5 months

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the steph brown conundrum aka the problem with steph being a character with hugely divergent doylist and watsonian readings

okay, so like. there is always a part of me that feels that to this day, didio kind of won when it came to the destruction of steph's character. like she wasn't a toxic character like he thought before he got his hands on her, but since he did & there was fallout from it, it has completely destroyed dc's desire to do anything potentially interesting with her, even as they've brought her back. like. she will always just kind of be a shell of her former self, doomed to stay uncontroversial and in the background. because when it comes to steph, and the problem with utilizing steph as a character now, you have to acknowledge two things

steph from an editorial and out of universe perspective was treated horrifically. the nonsensical and terrible things they made her do to move along the plot of post-crisis are awful and excessively reckless to the point of intentional character assassination & it was all done to justify her fridging for bruce's (and tim's) manpain which is awful

but the things that steph did as a result of the above are extremely load-bearing and important on plot and character dynamics and motivations from war games all the way to reborn era & to try and remove or minimize things that happened as a result of those actions just because they were arguably out of character from her has the unfortunate result of completely and intentionally warping the characterization of everyone who interacts with her to the point where it negatively affects almost every single other character instead.

so in order to show this we need to start at war games, talk about what happened, & go into how this affects things & why her character assassination is not as easy to fix as cass's or leslie's

so war games. ah war games. you know, having recently reread it, war games is frustrating because it's arguably a semi good event for most everyone except steph and leslie (especially leslie--now that was character assassination.). so let's get into the bare bones of what exactly happens in war games (war games being the three main events of this time: war drums (the prequal), war games proper, & war crimes (the follow up & worst part of the event)) (and i'm not saying i necessarily agree with this, just. this is what we have to consider.)

war drums:

this event has two main stories - the bruce & leslie story and the steph becomes robin story

in the bruce & leslie story (which is definitely racist), we have a young teenage pregnant girl who shows up at leslie's clinic having been shot. leslie attempts to save the girl and baby, but is left in a precarious situation where only one can be saved. she reluctantly calls bruce for help finding the girl's family, who finds out that the girl in question is popstar l'shea's sister--the popstar and her entourage in question kidnap leslie & the girl & bruce finds them, where it's revealed the girl is actually l'shea's daughter (like i said. racist.). l'shea makes the decision to save the baby, which kills the girl. leslie tries to get bruce to see that he can't save everyone, and ultimately gets upset about the cycle of violence she feels he perpetuates when he goes to take mr. freeze back in. she later comes to talk to bruce & it ends on a positive note fairly consistent with the bruce & leslie relationship--one in which leslie wishes he could devote himself to saving lives nonviolently & hoping he could see her as an example. my only quibble is that bruce responds as "ha-ha" leslie when if you compare to the batman chronicles #18, bruce absolutely counts on her to challenge his worldview & be a shining example of what he cannot be.

we do start to see the seeds of character assassination for leslie here imo, though this part is the best understanding of her by far--she's always been a foil to bruce as far as her pacifism and her determination to try and show him that there are other ways than his crusade, but traditionally she's always been defined as well by her immense love for him & he for her. she fundamentally disagrees with his crusade, but she's going to be there for him because she knows there's good in him that's worth saving--because to leslie, every life, including bruce's, is worth saving. anyways, read the batman chronicles #18, where she's determined to use O- blood on zsasz because of her firm commitment to the belief that every life is precious & she and bruce talk about their differences in opinion but how she's determined to keep showing him there's another way & he wants her to do so. this leslie who has, up until this event, been troubled by his crusade--but has decided it's tireless, but worth it to show him the good in people, suddenly seems a lot more, hm. overtly hateful of how batman operates & the fact that he puts criminals back in prison just for them to break out and the cycle to continue & has a sudden desire to not work with him if at all possible because of her total disagreement with his methods. which is. hm. somewhat but not entirely consistent with leslie's motivation. leslie would have no problem asking bruce for help if it meant saving an innocent & the fact that he believes in the redemption of criminals is something she inherently believes in. anyways i digress-

the other main story is, as we all know, the steph becomes robin story. and while you do not have to agree with how it is written wrt stephanie, the barebones of what exactly transpires is thus: tim has quit robin for his dad. he is attempting to live a normal life--go to school, hang out with friends, & not do the vigilante thing even when he sees people in need. he meets up with steph, who tells him of her determination to return to spoiler now that her broken leg has healed & he tells her that it's very hard for him to leave the house on account of jack always being suspicious that he's going out to be robin & be involved in anything vigilante again (it is implied that this is the first time he had been able to get out in a while because of his dad, as he didn't know she got her cast off). one day, when tim is at school, darla aquista, who has a crush on him, kisses him out of the blue. this happens to be seen by steph, who is now officially active again & chooses to be active during the day as a result of wanting to avoid batman as she doesn't have his approval, has gone over to tim's school to check on him because she's suspicious he's hiding something from her other than he's basically under house arrest from his dad atm since it had been so long since she had seen him. it, of course, looks terrible to her and she flounces off--deciding that she's going to become robin. bruce agrees, which everyone--alfred, barbara, eventually tim, etc completely understands to be a scheme to lure tim back. steph proceeds to completely ghost tim for the next two months--he calls and leaves messages, and she never calls back or comes to see him at all--she is completely radio silent & avoiding him and he doesn't know why but he is worried. bruce tells stephanie that she will not be privy to any secrets & the minute she disobeys an order she's out (a double standard, yes, but completely consistent in that he, again, is using her basically only to lure tim back). meanwhile, scarab is hunting tim, killing boys in his age range with dark hair and their families in an attempt to kill robin as there is a contract out for his life. tim then finds out through the newspaper that the reason steph has been avoiding him is because she became robin & calls the batcave to finally talk to steph & ask her to meet so they can finally talk in perso. about what exactly happened and how on earth steph became robin. cassandra comes instead--steph doesn't show up because batman and robin are busy hunting scarab who is trying to kill tim/previous robin & tim needs to be put under protection. steph gets a tracking device on scarab. day 49, bruce and steph go to get scarab, bruce goes in while steph is let behind for support in the batplane, bruce gets blinded, steph disobeys bruce and comes in to help, steph gets caught by scarab, scarab gets away in the batplane because steph forgot to arm the security system. steph officially gets fired 3 weeks later for disobeying an order on day 71.

yea, it's something. but it is what it is.

war games:

so we get to war games proper. overnight, a gang war has erupted & set the city ablaze and into chaos after a letter was sent out calling all the crime bosses to the harbor where a firefight breaks out on account of the main player who was supposed to be there if those letters were sent out, matches malone, not showing up. since tensions are high, it's easy for then to start shooting and killing each other & in doing so creates an immediate and widespread vacuum of power in the criminal underworld of gotham that people leap to try to fill & wipe out their competition in the meantime. innocent people are caught in the crosshairs.

nightwing (who is already having a terrible time) shows up to help (with tarantula) & is personally dealing with the emotional fallout of letting tarantula kill blockbuster amongst other things.

barbara is doing her best to help out and triage people to help, but there's really only batman, batgirl, nightwing, tarantula, & orpheus against a whole city. and at this point, tarantula has taken over a gang under batman's command to try and control things and can't overtly help & orpheus was already in control of a gang under batman's command in an attempt to protect women & children and exert some control over the criminal underbelly of gotham and also cannot overtly help out.

stuff with hush is happening in gotham knights but i don't care aj lieberman, by god, i do not care.

tim is doing his best to go about his day and keep his promise to his dad and not go out to help despite the fact that the city is falling apart. this becomes harder when a rival gang comes to kill his friend darla aquista at their high school, on account of her father being a mob boss. the kids are panicked and run into the school for sanctuary and safety, but are followed in and darla is shot.

what happens next is that tim's school is taken over by gangsters--the ones who came to kill darla, and the ones who see the opportunity to kill the ones who are trying to kill darla--and the kids are trapped in there with them, doing their best to hide, but some are taken hostage & are at the mercy of their captives (kids are killed). tim shelters in the nurses's office & does his best to go out and help who he can bring to safety, alone with getting a lay of the school (which gang is where).

meanwhile, bruce, cass, & dick have been informed that tim's school is taken over and kids are dying. along with all their other current trauma, they have to go find tim in an active shooter zone where he could very well be dead. dick gets to be the one who finds him (such a traumatic time for dick btw), and he's thankfully okay. they get control back of the school and free the kids. batman comes out on live television holding darla's body--she's not dead yet, but she's close.

we find out where steph is. selina finds her and we finally find out why this happened: upset at getting fired and frustrated that she's never been able to truly land their approval, steph lashed out & stole a plan designed to unite the crime families in gotham under batman's control hoping that if she was able to set off a plan for batman & it worked he would take her back and she'd finally have his approval. however, the main man didn't show up and it fell to pieces--doomed to fail. and the reason that this all happened is because steph was never told that batman is matches malone. there's actually a ton of 'bruce what have you done' here. catwoman shelters steph & tells her to stay put. steph does not do so, she leaves so she can try to find orpheus & help get the situation under control because she knows he's key to the plan.

tim, unable to stand by any longer despite his promise to his dad after the thing at the school, returns to the manor where he is greeted by alfred & returns to being robin.

batman finally also realizes that what happened is his war game contigency plan/hypothetical/thought experiment just as a citywide blackout hits--a plan he never intended to implement, it was one of his hypotheticals. & they also start looking for orpheus, as he's the key because they need to keep him alive as the plan was for the criminal underworld to reform united under his, and therefore batman's, rule.. steph finds him first, just in time to see his throat slit--by black mask.

steph gets into a one v one altercation with black mask and is overpowered and at his mercy. he tortures her. it's gross, we all know.

tim tells his dad he's returned to being robin. we get what is probably some of the best jack drake charactetization. tim meets jack and dana so they can go help out at leslie's clinic to help the injured.

steph, eventually, after being tortured, finally tells black mask that the plan required orpheus and is now obsolete because orpheus is dead.

cass is looking for steph because she's probably the only one aware that steph is out as spoiler & she knows that the last time she saw steph steph was lying to her about something

leslie is currently acting extremely out of character. and she's kind of a jerk to cass when cass comes looking for steph & is downright hateful about his mission. (which. is ooc for leslie--while she's never agreed with bruce's mission she's always, always, loved and respected them all--consider her in NML vs here. she wants to end his crusade and him to do something better, but she's always looking to be a beacon of hope that there is another way. every disagreement should be steeped in her love for them).

hush is still here for some reason and will tell black mask where the batcave is

catwoman is concerned about steph--who has passed out from the torture--calling her "the kid you messed up so badly she started this whole mess"

batman takes over oracle's & the police's system by force. we're really in it now. steph wakes up, determined to get to batman to tell him about orpheus's death.

black mask, however, has taken over orpheus's identity and is contacting batman, ostensibly to continue the "plan". and darla officially dies, meaning her father is out for revenge and wants everyone killed.

batman meets up with black mask as orpheus & figures out spoiler was there, but he assumes she fought zeiss. he leaves, black mask is planning...something as orpheus.

batman has barbara take over the police waves once more. barbara is getting really sick if this shit.

gotham city is starting to rail against vigilantes as a result of the widespread chaos of war games, calling for them to turn themselves in.

batman has orpheus call a grand meeting. ostensibly to end things and ensure peace in gotham with everything unified under orpheus's commands. orpheus is, however, dead. black mask uses the meeting to set everything ablaze again & barbaba has to call off the vigilantes from helping to protect the gcpd to go help batman--this is the straw that breaks the camel's back of this causes an official break in the uneasy alliance between vigilante & gcpd and comissioner akins gives the order to shoot to kill vigilantes on sight (as also, as a result of the plan failing due to orpheus's murder it seems as if batman et al are on the side of the villains causing mayhem)

at this point the game it out of control & they have to focus on stopping it. cass finally has a chance to talk to batman and tell him her suspicions that steph was the one who set the entire thing into motion, which he has now figured out (on account of him finding traces of spoilers's at orpheus's)

dick gets shot in the leg by the police while fighting firefly

tim meanwhile is happy to return to robin, and actually has bunch of nice things to say about steph's time as robin--that she kept things light for bruce, that he's not too proud to learn from her--even if he did admittedly resent her a little bit for how it all went down. he's also currently in the middle of a breakdown over darla's death and is pretending everything's okay by just go go going.

steph has freed herself from her bonds and gets into it with black mask, finally overpowering him when she realizes "this isn't a game". she gets a gun to his head & wants to pull the trigger and end him for good, but can't--as that would mean betraying everything she's been taught. the hesitation costs her and black mask gets the gun and shoots her in the shoulder & kicks her down the stairs & leaves

she manages to get herself up despite her extensive injuries and escapes by rooftop, where she's finally found by batman, who brings her to leslie and begs her to save steph. he then tells her she did good & that she did everything she could & that the city owes her after everything she went through.

and black mask is still causing trouble--hush supposedly told him the location of the batcave & he plans to solidify his reign as the undisputed crime lord of gotham by sending everyone there--it's not the batcave, however--it's the clocktower. all the criminals are now converging on and headed for directly for barbara. they get in and make it past all her defenses and invade her safe space, black mask making it to her control room & taking her hostage. the gcpd also descend upon the clocktower.

batman goes ham and almost kills black mask, saying it'd be worth it to end everything that's transpired. tim creates a diversion by lying saying they'll turn themselves into the police. barbara blows up her clocktower so that bruce has to make the decision between saving her & killing black mask. bruce chooses to save her & it's over. bruce gets called to leslie's clinic, where it turns out steph had too much internal damage to save her. steph tells him that she started it all, and bruce says he knows but that they took care of it. he tells her that tim isn't mad at her and that the baby she had won't want for anything ever. he lies and says that taking her on as robin wasn't just to bring tim back, that she was really robin & that he'll be watching over her. she dies. black mask takes over as the new criminal overlord of gotham city.

as a result of all of the above, we get the following: gotham is no longer safe for vigilantes to operate. tim has been set in motion on the path of loss from darla to steph to his dad in another event that will eventually lead him to the mental space he needs to be in to become red robin and leaves for bludhaven. cass follows in her grief of all that transpired. dick is out of commission due to his gunshot wound & dealing with the fallout of working with bruce while feeling like he doesn't deserve to, but is also the only one left to work with bruce. barbara, whose safe haven was trampled upon and destroyed, feels gotham to go be with the birds of prey in another city. bruce is operating all but alone, save for a couple of other distant vigilantes.

we find out that bruce didn't--couldn't--tell tim steph had died until hours after the fact, and that's when tim was finally able to hear the whole story as to how steph became robin all the way to how the gang war got started. this is also when dick finds out the whole story as well.

and thus, war games ends

war crimes:

so we make our way to the epilogue of this storyline. the very aptly named war crimes

the public is still railing against vigilantes. it comes out publicly that stephanie brown was spoiler, then robin, and that her injuries were not thus that should have killed her. batman finds out and goes to leslie's to find out who leaked stephanie's information, only to find out leslie has resigned and her chief resident left with her. batman finds the resident, murdered in a clear attempt to set batman up. (it's black mask setting him up). a man named aaron black is railing against black mask, batman, & the gcpd for the gang war

we find out that treatment was deliberately withheld from stephanie and she was purposely left to die. we find out aaron black is the not so dead arthur brown. & we find out that crystal knows something and is prepared to spill it all. black mask comes dressed as batman to attack crystal brown on live tv. we find out the joker is after black mask for killing robin. the joker gets arrested, black mask gets arrested (and escapes), a tv reporter gets indicted, the leader of the odessa mob gets indicted, commissioner akins and athur brown don't get indicted, and batman has finally figured out who killed stephanie and goes to africa where she fled to.

in, quite possibly, the greatest moment of character assassination in this entire gd event we find out it was leslie who let stephanie die because she was tired of batman's crusade, destroying everything she once stood for just to prove a point to bruce about the senselessness of it all and to try and put an end to it. congrats to dc for this horrific epilogue.

so there it is--the entire event. it certainly is a thing that happened. and that's the problem--it happened. and it was very, very much intended as a personal fuck you and goodbye to the characters of stephanie brown and leslie thompkins. and that's terrible on so many levels. but unfortunately the fact of the matter is, despite that and regardless of any personal feelings about it, war games became a load-bearing event to batman canon.

because war games had so much influence on fundamentally upheaving and changing the status quo of the characters involved and storylines following this could not happen without war ganes existing. without war games, tim does not become the tim that will eventually become red robin. without war games, dick is not injured and out of commission and does not flee to new york and the mob, leaving bludhaven for tim and cass and on his passively suicidal mission that will eventually lead to infinite crisis and the one year boat ride. without war games, barbara does not leave gotham because she needs to leave it behind, only to return during the reborn era & all the tension that entails. without war games, bruce doesn't end up alone & isolated as needed for the red hood storyline. without war games, stephanie is not killed and thus can't be evolved into batgirl as an apology for the way she was treated. the dynamics caused by war games are essential to the stories that come after it. and then you're left with two very, very uncomfortable truths:

one, war games was a horrific fuck you and. fridging to a female character solely because of the evil sexism present at dc editorial at the time and of course you want to delete anything that had such awful intentions behind it

two, war games happening is essential to the trajectory of every single bat characters' story that comes after it including hers. and so it had to happen. and the thing with war games is that steph, while not completely to blame for it transpiring, was humongous part of it transpiring no matter what. because we end up with what it seems to me, the grand circle of blame. it goes as follows: war games never would have happened if bruce hadn't made his contingency plan to begin with -> yes, but. even if it is one of bruce's toxic traits to do that, he never intended for the contingency to go into effect and it was more of a hypothetical than anything and the only reason it ever saw the light of day was because steph stole it and put it into action -> yes, but. if bruce had been less of an asshole and told steph the basic information of matches malone is batman she wouldn't have made the mistake -> yes, but. to completely blame bruce is to remove any and all agency from steph, because nobody put a gun to her head and forced her to implement the plan, that was entirely her decision. and as much as we would have liked her to have decided she no longer needed batman's approval, the fact of the matter is she did want it and she did make the decision to send those letters -> yes but, if bruce hadn't had a contigency to begin with she wouldn't have had such an awful plan to steal -> yes, but having contigencies for plans that will never come to fruition is honestly a normal thing for them and bruce planning out a hypothetical is just another tuesday, and it was steph who set it into motion -> yes, but... and so on and so forth endlessly until the end of time. like, whether things were out of character or whatnot is a valid discussion (though all comics characters are doomed for stories where they're out of character), but putting that aside: the fact is, for every character's trajectory into the reborn era, war games had to happen. and for war games to have ever seen the light of day and happened, steph had to make the decision to send those letters.

and so we're left with this. steph made those decisions because of horrificly sexist behind the scenes decisions. if steph didn't make those decisions, then no other character trajectory makes sense. and that's how we end up with a steph conundrum that is so much harder to fix than any other character assasination of the time. because cass's was easy to retcon as brainwashing, it makes sense for slade being involved. leslie was easy to retcon as faking steph's death, that removes her intent to kill a child and restores her original characterization of every life is sacrosanct. but war games? war games does not and can not happen unless stephanie decides to send those letters. things with tim and barbara and cass and even through steph becoming batgirl don't happen unless steph sends those letters. and when she sends those letters, hundreds of innocent people die and even though bruce is largely to blame (and is blamed, by the narrative), there is a culpability of steph's active decision in the entire mess that exists.

and if that culpability exists, if she sent those letters and war games happened, and innocent people died and barbara had to blow up her home and tim had to do cpr with darla's blood pouring over his hands and dick got shot in the knee and had to find tim in an active massacre, and cass lost herself to grief, then from an in-universe perspective while it's easy to for them to blame bruce for the majority of it, it also is true that every single one of those people has the right to question whether she is capable of making good judgements because of the extremely bad one she made that had so many in-universe consequences & they were all victims of it. from an out of universe perspective, it is so, so, so hard to put that kind of culpability on her, though, because of the sexism involved in deciding to make her make those decisions.

(as an aside. you also get this same issue that occurs as a part of the last arc of the robin series--wherein in order to justify steph no longer being spoiler and graduate her to batgirl, they need her to make a mistake so bad it would justify the idea that spoiler is a tainted mantle & she can't go back to it--so they decide that she needs to hire assassins to try and kill tim under batman's orders. now this is stupid & nonsensical, and she makes a mistake like that due to writer sexism thinking that that was the way to go. but her making that mistake and hiring those assassins is essential to the overall self isolation of tim & him being unable to trust her amongst everyone else that he needs to be in the headspace to kick of red robin & steph needs to have made a mistake that taints the spoiler mantle & makes people not want her to be it otherwise why would she become batgirl... it's messy. very messy.)

but because of all the horrific sexism out of universe behind the decision to write her to do these things, you're left with. hm. it is hard to want to make her have any culpability because that would just be entrenching the sexist writing she's had & she was the biggest victim, but to just completely throw it out is to make every other character appear completely irrational and unreasonable when it comes to dealing with steph. and that's truly hard for dc--who, once they make her a headlining character in her own right as batgirl, now has to be a lot more careful when dealing with steph. because if any other character does have reasonable concerns about steph continuing to exist as a vigilante after the decisions she made that sparked off war games, or hire assassins for tim, or etc etc etc then you risk people being like "no, maybe these people have a point. maybe these people shouldn't have to work with her if they feel at all uncomfortable by decisions she made that resulted in truly terrible times for them."

so you end up. dc finally has to do something grand, something triumphant for stephanie's character to make up for the completely atrocious way she was treated before. and you get batgirl 2009, which is a triumph for her character, it's the approval she's always deserved but never given, she finally gets to show all her naysayers that she's worth it--that they were all wrong about her and she deserves to be there just as much as them. and she does deserve a big doylist apology--she was treated terribly & cruelly & it wasn't right for dc editorial to do so. but you run into. hm. this problem of in order to make this big doylist apology work, you need everything that came before it to have happened. because it's a big doylist apology you can't actually have it that those things to have happened because if steph has to prove herself to the naysayers, the naysayers have to be completely wrong about her.

and that's hard given we're in reborn era and bruce is "dead". because in that case, steph's naysayers have to be barbara, tim, & dick. and while steph shouldn't have to prostrate herself for forgiveness & they shouldn't blame her for everything ever (they've all had their own issues where they've made mistakes, some with tragic consequences, and therefore can't call the kettle black), the problem with having to make them her naysayers is that you have to make them unreasonable about her & that's hard to do when they were all victims of something that occurred in part due to a decision she made. you have barbara, who should be able to have reasonable concerns about whether steph is fit for the job because she had to blow up her own sace space because steph sent those letters. but you can't acknowledge that because that would be entrenching the sexism behind that decision. so you make it so barbara is the one in the wrong about her. you have dick, who should not be able to look at stephanie without remembering his little brother calling him, wanting to commit suicide over everything that's happened, without remembering the tim at the edge of the pit, without remembering getting the call-code 619-and realizing that tim's at the site of a massacre occurring at his school and could be dead, and he gets to realize he was completely wrong about her with no consideration to what complicated personal feelings he may have about her on account of his own most precious relationships. you have tim, who does have things to apologize to her about, to be sure, but has to be cast as completely in the wrong despite the things she did having to have happened such as hire assassins & everything he had to endure as a result of her sending those letters. and that's not to say that any of this means that she shouldn't be a vigilante of course, you can't have a double standard where male characters are allowed to make mistakes and continue on regardless of mistakes made and not afford that same grace to female characters. but at the same time, it's uncomfortable to cast barbaba, dick, and tim in the role of naysayers to be overcome because that erases their victimization by the events that had to have happened in order to make it to this point. and again, they don't have to blame her to feel like it's her fault to have reasonable discomfort because discomfort =/= blame, necessarily.

and you get into this entire mess solely because of the decisions didio made because he hated her character and was determined to destroy it. and it's gross! we hate didio! but like. way back to my original thought, in a way, he did succeed a little. because of the horrific things that happened to her due to cruel and gross out of universe editorial decisions, you do have to be extra delicate with the character. you've lost the ability to show steph making any sort of mistake that has significant ramifications because to do so is to go back to war games & all the baggage that that entails. you need to play it incredibly safe with her. she can't be shown to be in the wrong because of the horrific way she was treated. at the same time, you need things to have happened, but you need things to not have happened. it's just a lot of baggage for a character, and there's probably a reason why they still play it safe by sticking her with tim (until they broke up) and now cass. it's uncontroversial after everything she's been put through. idk. i think current continuity is the best chance to finally really do something interesting with her again given that the mistakes of the past are so softened and don't need to be forefront to the character anymore because we are in an era ripe for things happened but they didn't happen, but will they? i don't know.

#anywho this is probably super incoherent #but this is also the thing i rotate in my mind when i think about steph #this is why i like to envision steph as an unreliable narrator of bg #because then you have more space for the fact that others were also victims and they're not necessarily unreasonable #but since steph is also extremely traumatized and a victim of horrific things she has to not thing about the ramifications of her decisions #or something idk

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arabaka · 11 months

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˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ miguel o'hara x spidey!fem!reader. CONTENT WARNINGS: oops, all berries (i.e. angst) no smut but minors/ageless blogs go away. depictions of traumatic events. insinuations of anxiety and ptsd. WORD COUNT: 1.4K PSD CREDIT!!! ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ love note from the author: this is PART 2 to PURGATORY but you can read this by itself ig... i'm not your mom ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay, let’s actually try to get through this, shall we?

My name is – Actually, not important.

I was bitten by a radioactive spider… But something tells me you already knew that. Wait, how many of these have you sat through? Holy shit– that many?!

But can any of those guys say they’ve been through space and time, universe after universe, only to get stranded in a total vacuum void?

You try to bang your head in exasperation but with nothing to cushion you, you end up pulling enough full-body revolutions to make an Olympic acrobat jealous.

Cut to a stretch of groaning that follows you around like a white flag.

Because it sure as hell feels like it’s high time to give up. He always did say you never knew when to quit. You didn’t see it as a bad thing then but now… With a little zero-gravity perspective…

No, no, no– the last thing you want is to give him the satisfaction of being right.

This phase comes and goes. You call it the I-can’t-not-hate-you-you-sent-me-here-in-the-first-place stage.

Grief is fluid, okay?

You despise it all the same. Because when you’re like this, all you can think about is him. Him and the last time you looked into those jaded crimson eyes.

There’s the silver lining you were looking for when it comes to your multiverse communicator finally giving out.

At least you never have to see how heartbroken he looked ever again, perfectly recreated pixel-by-fucking-pixel.

Now if only your actual memory would degrade the same way.

Because you still see it when you close your eyes, you see it all. The strike of terror flashing like lightning in the reflection of his dilated pupils, having come as a harbinger of a terrible, terrible, irreversible decision. The taut coiling of the fists he keeps at his sides, his claws coming in– not because he can’t help it but because he feels he deserves it.

“Miguel !!!! What the fuck?! How could you do this to me!?” You wail, lungs rotted with rage as you punch haplessly against the cocoon swiftly crystalizing around you. Panicked and like a caged animal, your eyes frantically scour the ceiling for an escape but you can only see your wild desperation repeated back to you in the many rubied eyes of the Going-Home-Machine.

I knew that was a stupid fucking name for you.

You never thought you would be on the other end of this wretched thing, be the little fly caught in its web and when you look at Miguel, eyes wrought with a pain too much for even Spider-Woman to bear, you look pitiful like prey too. Your chest spasms with a choked, “I…” Your fists, weak with emotion, unfurl and give way to open palms. Your breath ragged, when you pick your head back up at Miguel you let him have it.

“I loved you.” You say it with canines bared with poisoned malice, rage finally boiling over into heated rivets of tears down your cheeks.

And Miguel, he’s never looked more destroyed.

You swallow a sob, gulping so hard it rocks your chest. Your bottom lip warbles. You’re not good at this tough guy routine.

You never were.

“You can’t let it get to you.” Miguel’s voice, direct and to the point, precedes him in echoes as he makes his way to the high corner you’ve wedged yourself in.

Angling your body away from him, you avoid your superior’s gaze. Superior, because right now he’s not your boyfriend. He’s your commander.

“You’re terrible at comforting, has anyone ever told you that?” You call back, deadpan tone as good a deterrent as any. You sniffle, your throat clenching when you try to stuff the remainder of your cries down. When you finally wad up all your feelings for later, you turn back to face him with a mock look of happiness on your mask. “Who said I’m letting it get to me? I’m not letting it get to me. Sounds like you’re projecting.”

And because he’s your boss right now, not your lover, he sighs in frustration. “Mierda... I’m trying to help you.” He says with two fingers pinching the skin between his knitted brows after his headgear dematerializes. “You’re going to get burnt out at this rate. You know we can’t save them all. We’ve been through this.”

Your body coils into itself, trying to self soothe but it’s not working. Miguel’s voice starts to fade into the background, the cacophony of architecture collapsing and screaming, my god the screaming, overtaking your everything just then.

“You need to get past this–”

“Fucking hell, Miguel– Could you stop acting like my boss for one fucking minute and just be my boyfriend?!” There’s no denying how savagely ragged the last mission made you now that you’ve ripped your mask off. Your eyes are red and puffy, swollen from the tears you thought were safe to shed. Your lips are littered with little slivers of cuts from biting down too hard when you first tried to keep the devastation from bubbling up to the surface.

His body stills, as does yours.

You’d never seen Miguel cry. Not until that day.

It wasn’t bawling. It wasn’t even whimpering. It was a single drop that ran down one cheek, you saw it for a fleeting second before he rushed over to hug you, his hulking body cradling yours in what you thought was love.

But you’ve realized since then that it wasn’t out of love. It was out of grief. Grief because he had to let you go. You weren’t strong enough for this.

And he wasn’t strong enough to watch you go through it again.

Or so he thought. But no, true agony was watching you now, jailed in a prison of his making.

True agony would be spending a lifetime away from you.

“Stop the machine!” Miguel’s order rasps in his throat, a prominent vein down its column bulging and only worsening when Margo doesn’t move as fast as he would like. Frustrated and scared, Miguel rushes to the maze of computer mainframes, his hands a blur as he hopes just one, any one will abort a process already…

94% of the way in.

“Miguel!” Margo’s voice finally comes into focus, “Miguel, you have to stop– the machine–”

“You can either help me or get out of the way.”

Margo stops but that isn’t good enough either.

Big hands, far too roughly, grab at her shoulders and toss her aside in a frenzy. He can fix this. He can.

“Miguel!”

Even the whites in his eyes are splotched red when he turns back to you but finds you weren’t even looking at him.

Your face to face with a machine on the fritz, the massive technological arachnid drawing too many strands from too many places, mixing timelines to override another– corrupting the chrysalis it had nearly finished making.

“I can fix this, Miguel but you have to– Miguel, stop!” Margo’s screams are devastating, shrill and choked as she tries to remedy the situation but her fingers go limp. Limp because she knows.

There’s no fixing this.

The spider’s arms start jerking sporadically, its long limbs with metal claws ripping the timelines it just crossed. The connected strands start to glitch, the bot’s failsafe commands trying to pull through but it can’t fix what it can’t stop.

You watch in horror, too scared to move much less breathe, as the glowing lines stretch and tear, their dimensions ultimately being warped by…

A black hole.

“Miguel, wait–”

Your hand instinctively reaches out, memories of all the times he’s caught you just like this flashing in your mind like a flipbook animation. Only, he can’t save you this time.

No one can.

Thaaaaattt’s enough emo for one day, I think.

You tuck your knees in, slowly folding into yourself as your spin cycle finally comes to an end. Your chest is wound up tight, your heart drumming so loud you feel it in your eardrums. You just want this to end.

A sob creeps up the column of your throat, your eyes already seared red with the tears you refuse to cry. In a rush of emotions, far too many for you to isolate, you rip off the communicator band around your wrist and send it flying to nowhere.

At least, that’s what should have happened.

Instead, your accessory’s open-ended trajectory, well–

Meets an end.

A black hole appears from what looks like a ripped stitch, its growth unstable and its edges weathered. You have to investigate, it’s the first anomaly you’ve seen in this vapid world and possibly your only way back home.

Home.

You imagine Miguel.

So you dive, not knowing where this will take you but…

The bad thing’s already happened. How much worse can it get?

#miguel x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel x you #miguel o'hara #astv x reader #astv miguel #astv fanfic #miguel angst #miguel o'hara angst #.˚₊ ੈ ʚ 🍰 ɞ ₊˚. ꒰ a little treat for miguel. ꒱

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misteria247 · 2 years

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Y'all wanna know something kinda sad?

Like Rottmnt Leo is such a goofball and a jokester and he can be a little egotistical but he's also pretty laid back and relaxed with everything and he's playful and funny and a huge nerd and it suits him really well. But like the only reason he's able to be like this is because he's not the leader.

Raph's the leader in his universe.

Leo is able to basically be a teenager and relax and have fun because he's not shouldering the responsibilities that come with being a leader. He's not burdened by the fears of possibly getting his brothers hurt or killed and he's not really in charge of making those huge decisions that would put pressure on him if he was the leader. Like sure in the show he does have his moments where he steps up in Raph's place as the leader or supplies his brothers with a plan to save their asses but it's all temporary. As soon as the danger is over he can give the role back to Raph because it's not his responsibility.

However in the other variations of the turtles Leo's the one who handles that responsibility of being the leader. From the 80s to the 90s to the early to late 2000s, it's always been Leo who's the leader. And from those variations we can see how Leo's much more mature than his Rise variation. He's calm and serious and wise and he rarely gets to just relax because even a moment of it could possibly end up with his family being destroyed. He's level headed and the tough choices fall to him and whenever things settle down he can't hand over the leader responsiblity like Rise Leo can. Because he's the leader permanently.

Like we see glimpses of Leo's more teenage side whenever he makes the rare joke or whenever he watches his favorite shows or whenever he's truly certain that things are safe for his family and friends and even then he's still guarded and ready for everything to hit the fan. In a way he's restricted from being a teenager and having fun because the responsibilities of being the oldest and the leader has been weighing down on him for nearly his entire life. He never gets to really do anything normal people his age get to do.

But then Rottmnt comes along and we get to see Leo but without the burdens that have been with him since the very beginning. We see Leo having fun and being a teenager and just enjoying life to the fullest because he's not the responsible sibling for a change. Instead he's the sibling that can finally let loose and have fun in a way that he's never had before. Rise Leo is basically the Leo that we the fans might have had if he wasn't the oldest brother and the beloved leader in blue we all know and love.

Rise Leo is the Leo who's free from the burdens and traumas and consequences of being the leader. Free to be himself completely knowing that someone else has that role that's been his for nearly the entire franchise. In a somewhat terrible, heartbreaking way Leo is more free in the Rottmnt than he's ever been ever.

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lucianalight · 6 months

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A Glorious Culmination

Let's talk about that perfect ending with its beautiful scenes and epic soundtrack, shall we? Here's all the reasons why I loved it:

The ending answered the question "what makes a Loki, Loki?"

"Authority, independence, style". Sure, but that's not all of it. And it's not the real answer.

So who is Loki? A villain? A loser? What defines Loki?

There are many characteristics that define Loki but one of the main ones that truly sets him apart imo is that he is a catalyst for change. Loki when faced with options he doesn't like, or a problem that looks like doesn't have a solution, makes a new way, creates a new solution, chooses an option that didn't exist before.

He has the power to destroy, like the mythological tale of Ragnarok.

And to give life. Like how the Ragnarok he brings, means the beginning of a new cycle in Norse mythology.

-"Yeah it was the best character development. Loki went from wanting a throne to..."

Let me stop you there.

Loki went from not wanting a throne but thinking he must have it to be considered worthy and an equal to Thor, to taking a throne despite not wanting it, because it was the right thing to do.

The fact that Loki sacrificed himself once again for the people he loved and cared about, wasn't a new character development. In the movies Loki risks and sacrifices himself every time when it matters. For Thor, for Asgard, for the world. The only development here was that this time he sacrificed himself for every universe there is.

And his sacrifice wasn't treated as sth he deserved by the narrative because of every terrible things he'd done. On the contrary the narrative acknowledges that this is the last thing Loki deserves. That he is paying for others' mistakes and wrongs. He spends centuries to save the timelines. He spends a long time trying to stop Sylvie without harming her. And when everything seems lost, he makes a decision to save everyone but himself, he creates a different path. He faces his deepest fear, to not hurt the people he loves.

If there is any character development, it's for the narrative and the audience that finally recognized who Loki actually is.

The Symbolism

I have to say my first reaction to the new Loki costume was:" This is the worst Loki costume ever :))))" also me two days later: "I'm gonna set it as my wallpaper." But I loved the symbolism. The biggest horns Loki's ever worn to show the weight of the crown. His cape that was connected to timelines, to show the burden of a throne. The simplicity in his clothes in contrast with his other outfits. Because this wasn't about the recognition Loki always wanted and deserved. This was about the responsibility Loki decided to literally put on his shoulders and feeling the gravity of it.

His shoes though :)))) I mean

Either let him be bare footed or give him boots you cowards :D

The Parallels

The fact that how the ending parallels the first Thor movie and everything came back full circle.

How Thor and Loki destroyed sth at the cost of themselves losing the people they cared about.

Loki doing sth not because of a desperation for acceptance, not because he thought it was sth someone else wanted.

Knowing if he chose the easier way, no one could have fault him for it because it seemed there was no other way.

He did it because he knew it was the right thing to do, because he knew who he wanted to be.

Loki not giving up, not letting go, not falling down from a broken bridge, but ascending, holding on as he fixes what's broken.

He holds and carries the whole universe on his back. It's not only a beautiful Atlassian tragedy, but also parallels Norse mythology in more than one way. Yggdrasil, the tree of life in Norse mythology, the one that Loki holds in his hands in the finale, wasn't the only parallel in the ending.

There's a subtle and beautiful nod to Norse mythology. The tale of Loki being bound till Ragnarok. The myth that says when Loki gets freed, the end of the world begins.

What a marvelous tragedy. And what a glorious culmination.

It's not all tragic though

Loki now is literally the most powerful and heroic character in MCU. He's holding the universe in his hands and keeping it alive. You can't top that.

And it makes his portrayal in the recent movies in which he was unfairly underpowered, even more ridiculous than before and that makes me happy :D

There is also a possibility to see Loki again and I'm not talking about the other variants. Marvel now has the best dues ex machina through Loki. He might be able to appear in any universe as an illusion to warn about dangers or help the characters. He might figure out a way to keep the tree alive without being there himself. That way he can find Thor in the sacred timeline. Or maybe the Loki who survived Thanos and is still in the sacred timeline finds Thor. Maybe there's still hope for a good reconciliation and a good story for Asgardian siblings.

So to sump up this was an epic, symbolic, beautiful and tragic ending. And yet hopeful. I loved it💚

#anyone else was reminded of Elsa when Loki created those stairs? :D #loki never wanted a throne #had to include it because everyone's going with this take and it starts to get on my nerves #just look through the tag if you disagree with me #a lot of people has written metas about it #loki 2x06 #loki s02e06 #loki #loki series #loki tv show #loki s2 positivity #loki gif #thor #thor1 #norse mythology #yggdrasil

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spacexseven · 1 year

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Tuna, messed up idea, but imagine thriller buddy cop comedy turned full blown yandere horror with: scapegoat! Darling based on the serial killer au. Darling just has terrible luck and gets pinned all the murders and worse thing? they wake up one day, covered in blood, in a strange place with the cold corpse of a red headed man. It takes a while for the implications of what happened to hit them and they later find out they now have mutiple abilities. Abilities they never had before. Or! maybe, this is a crappy isekai au with bad end! serial killer reader. sigma 🤝 isekai scapegoat darling - 🦄 (im thinking about random ideas too much while i should be finishing other wips and ideas.)

manga spoilers below regarding the unknown doa members and a future part of the doa's plan :) i took liberties with the extent of the book's abilities so. don't question it hfhfh

in the same universe as sk reader, but this time, reader is a stranger who has been brought into the bsd world as a pawn in fyodor's new plan. here, fyodor has broken out of meursault already. fyodor centric but implied sigma x reader and nikolai x reader

cw: murder, dark isekai, death, start of an obsession, manipulation, kind of dehumanization of reader, fyodor is Evil.

let's say things were not going according to plan. the hunting dogs had found the coin bombs in the casino, and now all eyes were on sigma and the associated members, mushitarou was out and working with ango and the ada, and the port mafia had seemingly come to help the ada too. it would only be a matter of time before kamui's identity was revealed, and that would destroy everything he's worked for thus far.

it would be easy to do as kamui says and unleash bram's infection across the population; it would only take weeks, if not days, for the virus to spread with kamui's ability in hand. but fyodor disagreed with his decision. no, there was a better way to do things. all he needed was time to distract the public and get everything back on track. if kamui's identity was revealed now...it would throw the world into chaos, yes, but not the kind he needed.

this called for his last resort.

though he hadn't told anyone, there was a little more than a side of a page left blank in the book. on the written side, he had intentionally left a very part blank on the offchance that things would stop going his way. kamui was unaware. of course, but that was for the best.

the first order of business was to ensure ango sakaguchi was dead.

his ability would prove to be too much of a hindrance since he could use it to find kamui and the others. with the information he had, he could somewhat be certain of where ango was and what he would be doing.

under the moonlight, he writes, ango sakaguchi walks down the alleyway, believing himself to be alone. suddenly, there's a strange sensation at the back of his neck; he considers turning around to face his pursuer and slowly reaches for his gun. but it's too late. the minute his hand reaches for the handle, something pierces his chest...

he can almost feel the words coming to life, twisting reality. fyodor smiles to himself as he finishes writing the last line; besides the corpse of ango sakaguchi, a person awakens. in their hand is a gun, the bullets of which match the ones inside ango. he writes about the blood splattered newcomer methodically cleaning up the scene and disposing of the body and evidence.

this person's ability allows them to take the ability 'discourse on decadence' for themselves.

it's a little bit harder to alter history, to make it so that the deaths of numerous ability users before were a result of his new subordinate's work, and give you all the power you need to be useful to him. he has to write down all the details about the deceased users so that there are no discrepancies, has to ensure the crime scenes are cleaned up but with enough clues so the implication is clear. there is a serial killer loose in yokohama, one that has been targeting ability users for almost a decade now.

the special division wouldn't be surprised that ango had become a victim; it made sense because he had been strongly involved in the case for a while now, but this also made it a priority. files about the sky casino were put on hold, and now the terrorists of the armed detective agency and the serial killer were the priority of the government.

it's funny; the special division thinks that the serial killer is working with the ada, which is why you were not caught despite the agency being aware of your presence all this time, and the ada believes you to be working with the doa. they would all be running in circles, chasing their own beliefs, with no consideration of fyodor's involvement.

nikolai brings him updates; his pawn is in a constant state of confusion and shock, and still unable to use your ability as it was intended. you're plagued by nightmares, too, and still afraid of everyone. he chides fyodor for not writing you to be a calm, composed person, so you would continue your work as fyodor intended you to, but he only had so much space. besides, he tells nikolai, pawns can be trained, too; like pets. all he needs is to offer you a home, an identity, and a life—just like he offered sigma—and you'd be eating out of his hand. what did it matter to you, after that, if a few more lives were lost as long as it guaranteed your own survival?

he arranges for documents to be made; for you to have your own job and home so that there's no suspicion about your identity, arranges for nikolai to surveil you closely and watch out for the eyes of god, lest you're caught by fitzgerald, and for sigma to gain your trust. he himself comes to let you know about all the abilities you have and helps you wield them easily

it's a shame. on paper, you were the perfect pawn—but you're too weak to act on your own yet. he doesn't mind the extra time spent, however, and he coaxes you into targeting mushitarou, whose ability would be extremely useful, but your hands still shake even when he places his over yours and directs the gun for you, and you still cry when you see the blood pooling out of mushitarou, folding in on yourself with shallow breaths. you still tremble when he asks you to use your newest ability.

you're still sniffling when he pets your head and suggests you clean up, and though you go quiet, he can tell you're still haunted by your actions when he looks at the glossy emptiness of your eyes. even after all this time, you still look conflicted when he praises you for a job well done.

it doesn't matter what you feel right now, anyway. fyodor smiles to himself when he catches sight of you slumped up against sigma, watching the other go through his customer files, because he would never let you leave. you don't have anywhere else to go, or anyone else to turn to. nobody would accept you like they have, and you knew that; even if you were so terrified that your hands froze over the trigger or you can't pull the knife out, you'd still force yourself to do it if he asks.

truly, you make for a perfect pet.

#its not really yandere Yet fyodor might become obsessed w reader later #yandere bsd #this is so sad poor reader ill save you #yandere fyodor x reader #fyodor x reader #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #bungo stray dogs x reader #yandere bungou stray dogs #dark isekai #isekai au 🐟#bungo stray dogs isekai #sk reader au 🐟#ask 🐟#anon 🐟#fyodor 🐟#nikolai 🐟#sigma 🐟#bsd 🐟#🦄 anon 🐟

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joltyflare · 2 months

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(Sun and Moon Show Theory # 1: Ruin Still Does Have Another AI Inside His Body)

I've done a few rants now...time for my first theory post!!

So, Ruin is one of the most mysterious characters in the entire series. When he first appeared, he was a maniac who just wanted to torture and kill everyone in sadistic ways.

Or so he seemed.

It was then revealed that the Creator of his universe inflicted all the animatronics with a virus that made them all evil and sadistic and that Ruin was one of these many animatronics.

Or so he seemed.

When he banished Sun and Moon to Ruin's dimension, they managed to get a cure, return to their home, inject Ruin with it, and possibly cure him.

Ahem... Or so it seemed...

After this, he was always a little suspicious but he at least seemed different from his former maniac self. He was no longer seeking out others to play insane "games" that were very sadistic in nature and usually involved some sort of physical suffering. He seemed meek and shy as well as terribly clumsy as well as a little eccentric and, let's face it...not the brightest.

But there always was still that doubt that he wasn't fully cured and that he was behind the return of the infamous Eclipse. Or, if he was cured, still had some plans going on in the background. After all, not much was known about Eclipse other than that he was the fusion of his Sun and Moon and that he came from a dimension destroyed by the Creator there. It would make sense for him to still have motives that would cause him to do strange things. He was also proven to be a good actor more than once. The fandom was split in half on the decision of whether or not to believe that he was innocent but it has been proven that he was indeed NOT innocent.

Yet the common consensus was that he was faking not being cured or that he was cured and was just pretending he didn't bring Eclipse back and wasn't doing anything wrong. Nobody really thought about the possibility that he had also been pretending to have the virus all along and never really had it! Yet he claims that was the case and that he had simply been a carrier, stating that his whole manic behaviour was all an act to get rid of Sun and Moon so that he could use their home to start prepping his plans to get rid of the Creator Council.

So, it seems that Ruin is a very, very good actor. Most of what he has done has been an act. His manic, sadistic, chaos-loving "virus self" and his shy, clumsy, frankly adorable self were simply personas.

But one thing that has remained consistent is the prospect of him having another entity trapped within his body, one that he's possibly blocking from having control somehow. We've seen this happen quite a few times with characters in this series at this point so it's obviously possible.

There have been a few hints to this being the case, such as when he rescued Foxy (before beating him to a pulp lol), was interrogated the first time, and after Moon and Solar went through his memories. The second instance could quite easily be an act and it would make sense if it was. However...why would he have done so when rescuing Foxy or when waking up after having had his mind scrubbed? These instances also take place in both his virus persona and innocent persona phases.

When he saved Foxy in that one MGAFS episode and beat him up (which I may make a post on itself), another personality seemed to interrupt him beating up Foxy and apologized profusely for what was going on. There was the implication that this personality was his good side and was trapped in his body and couldn't control it, with Ruin somehow suppressing it. Everyone assumed this was his non-virus-afflicted self but in recent episodes, he said he was just actin like he had a virus. Still, this scene is very odd. He seemed to genuinely be losing control and, yes, he is a VERY GOOD ACTOR and all but why would he have done that? Was it because he himself felt bad and he felt so guilty he wanted to act out that second personality apologizing? Was it because he wanted to really hammer in the story that he was under the influence of a virus to the point where he'd pretend his non-virus self came out at that moment to convince Foxy too?

It just struck me as odd, you know? This personality didn't have the accent (though I assumed this could be a retcon at first and it still could be even if my theory is correct). I'm not sure why but I just feel like this was a genuine moment.

But what really made me think someone else is being suppressed in Ruin's mind is when Moon scrubbed his mind and Ruin woke up and said "our head is spinning." When Moon questioned his use of the word "our", Ruin seemed to get quite defensive. For all he acting that he does, I don't think he would incriminate himself by saying something like this on purpose. I believe this was a genuine slip-up on his behalf like there was someone else there he was referring to. After all, he was doing his best to make it so that Moon was not suspicious of him in any way. As far as Ruin was concerned, his innocent persona had no secret side. There would have been no benefit for him to have pretended it did have another personality in it.

He also seemed to be muttering something to himself about someone being free soon during that episode where he reveals himself to Sun and waits for Moon to show up. Sure, he could have been referring to the dimensions that are being saved by the Creator Council's downfall being freed from their grasp, but it's still an odd word choice if that is the case.

It's the mind-scrubbing episode mixed with the Foxy episode that does it for me though. My theory is that there is someone else stuck in his head who doesn't agree with the methods Ruin has for ending the Creator Council. Someone who is a lot more peaceful than he is and who doesn't like that others have to suffer for this goal to be achieved. I think Ruin is suppressing this side of himself but I think he interacts with him from time to time. We know that this is something that can happen.

I think that this is the side of him that has the "sweet Sun voice", as others have called it in the past when wondering why it had an accent and "cured Ruin" doesn't. But just who is it? According to what Ruin said in his backstory episode, his Sun and Moon merged and ended up as him. They weren't separate and became one entity, right? But, with the way the episode ends, he doesn't exactly say much about how the process went or what happened after. Did something go wrong? Did another entity get involved and, perhaps, Moon got merged with them by accident instead of with Sun? (I say Moon due to the non-British voice I mentioned being Sun, meaning it would've had to have been Moon to have been merged or lost had something gone wrong) Could something have gone wrong later down the line, perhaps when the Creator made Ruin into a carrier of the virus? Had he experimented on Ruin and tampered with him, causing something to occur and possibly create a new personality entirely in the process?

I feel like it's really possible that the Creator could have done something that created Ruin as we know it, introducing another new personality to the singular body. Ruin hates the Creators, all of them, with a passion. He clearly has something personal against them on top of the knowledge they will destroy as many universes as they can with their antics.

When telling Moon he should go mourn the loss of Solar with the rest of the family, Ruin also mentions that he knows what it's like to grieve with others. Ruin has obviously gone through a lot... I mean, yes, we knew he went through a lot after what his dimension went through and all but there's a lot more he isn't telling us. I want to know everything about Ruin!

My theory is something tragic caused Ruin to become the way we know him as today and that he does indeed have another personality within him. While I don't think Ruin himself is evil or anything, I do believe whoever's inside his head is a lot more peaceful and doesn't agree with the way he's going about things. I'd assume if there's someone else within him then he is pretty traumatized from the things he's seen Ruin do at this point. We don't know the details of what happened after Sun and Moon merged. Ruin was very vague. For all I know, it's possible the Moon half of him got destroyed entirely at some point.

Hopefully, we learn more about him soon. He is really, really good at hiding things from everyone but it seems like he's willing to reveal everything soon. I just think he's sharing a body with someone. I don't think he hates this other being but I do think he suppresses him because he doesn't want whoever it is getting in his way of stopping the Creators.

Anyway, I doubt he'll die soon. He mystery plot armour!

I wouldn't say I articulated my thoughts the greatest here and I mostly rambled but I'll post it anyway.

#tsams #sun and moon show #sams #tsams ruin #sams ruin #ruin tsams #tsams theory #sams theory #sun and moon show ruin #sun and moon show theory #rambles #idk

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canonmisogynyvictimstournament · 8 months

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PROPAGANDA

ALLURA (VOLTRON: LEGENDARY DEFENDER)

1.) Okay so, they really wanted Allura to be a #girlpower icon, but the way that came about is that they basically stripped her from having emotions. She only cries once in the whole show, and it was in the first season (when the show was actually good.) After her one cry she basically becomes a leader figure who doesn’t get to bond much with the other characters. They then decided to pass her around as a romantic interest to three different men. The first one was only set up, but she ends up dating two of them within the show’s short run. The second character they set her up with turns out to have enslaved her people. The third character they set her up with has been shown to be interested in her through the shows run. Despite Allura’s consistent lack of interest, she ends up being pressured into going on a date with him. Despite it being a terrible date (in my opinion) they decide to peruse a relationship. The relationship is terrible and they really only spend time together to rant about their problems. At the end of the season, the very same one where this relationship started, Allura sacrifices herself to save the universe. This stupid fucking decision not only came out of nowhere in terms of in-universe logic, but also that her death is treated as sad because the guy lost his girlfriend. Most of the other characters don’t really morn her, and the guy she was dating just becomes sadly obsessed with the idea of her for the rest of his life. Not really the nice send-off for the #girlboss.

2.) She was given plenty character, but not a lot of things to do narratively speaking.

She wanted to free the Galaxy from tyranny. She's the leader even though she doesn't pilot the black lion. She's can talk to mice. She's kind, and she's among the the last of her kind. Her home planet was destroyed. She kept going even when things looked horrendous. She had to wait 10,000 in stasis sleep before she could fight to protect others. Because her father wanted to protect her and made the wrong decision in not fighting the Galra with Voltron. She had to destroy the AI of her father when he was corrupted in season 1. She had to deal with her Dad dying twice.

She had cool powers like shapeshifting but didn't get to use them often. She starts piloting the blue lion, at season 3. Her father worked with the big bad Zarkon and she is portrayed just to hate him. When it was more like she was completely betrayed by him.

She didn't get alot of interactions with the other cool female characters. Even Pidge who was on her team, which can only form Voltron through teamwork. 8 seasons and they never talk about how how much they miss their families. Pidge's main motivation is finding her father and brother. It would have been perfect. The only time they hangout is to get Allura ready for a date.

She was distrusting of all Galra since there empire wiped out her kingdom. But when she got an arc about learning to not distrust all Galra. It functionally ended with Prince Lotor of the Galra making people batteries out of the survivor's of her kingdom.

Then she was basically relegated to her relationship with Lance's interaction wise. She didn't get many interactions with anyone else she was close to in the season she died. Not even with Coran, the guy put in stasis with her.

For the finale she dies sacrificing herself to restore all realites. She had to give up her new family and her people. She would do that, I just don't think the writers had earned doing that. She deserved a happy ending. She never gets to see that her sacrifice even brought back her planet.

3.) season 8. Season 8. SEASON 8. Allura deserved so much better than an out of nowhere romance arc with Lance and then dying without being able to say goodbye to Coran (her royal advisor, closest friend, and last remaining member of her family and her planet). AND they had her give Altean marks to Lance right before dying, leaving him with a constant reminder of her for the rest of his life!! Why!!!!!!!!! AND THEN THE LIONS FLY BACK INTO SPACE TOWARDS A NEBULA SHAPED LIKE HER, LIKE THE WHOLE FINALE WAS SATISFYING AND NOT A MASTERCLASS IN UNSATISFYING CHARACTER ENDINGS!!!!!! Allura you will always be the confident princess and leader of the rebellion in my heart i am so so sorry season 8 happened to you

MIKAELA BANES (TRANSFORMERS)

1.) mikaela's case is so egregious that i struggle to really properly word any propaganda beyond 'just look at the movie. look at it.' but congrats to mikaela banes for getting in! was thinking of submitting her along with my arcee but couldn't even like. begin to describe it. agh.

best i can really say for her right now is 'open her tfwiki article, open sam's, look at the pictures, compare how they frame the two, you will see what i mean then and there.' but i might do a rewatch of the bayverse transformers movies just to be able to get all my more complex thoughts in order to actually submit a breakdown of her. which is not something i want to do, but if anyone deserves it it's mikaela. she deserved so much better.

2.) She was the female character played by Megan Fox, and Michael Bay wanted to make sure everyone watching knew this was a woman played by megan fox. She is the quintessential "not like other girls" (in fact, this is the second sentence of her wikipedia page - "She is differentiated from "typical" women in her age group, having inherited mechanical skills from her father") who has guy interests, but is still hot and wears crop tops and jean shorts. I remember two things from that movie, Bumblebee and the scene where she is working on the car ~sexily~, which today genuinely seems like a parody, but was included entirely earnestly (I wasn't going to add a picture from this scene, but it was literally the first and third pictures that showed up when i googled her)

3.) Mikaela is so sexualized it's unreal. Like, I feel I really just need to submit this screenshot:

Look at the way she's posed, the way she's dressed, the fact her head isn't in the shot. It's pure objectification, like the kind that should be in textbooks as easy examples. The way it emphasizes both her butt and her boobs but also shows her stomach is just astonishing. God it doesn't even show her FACE. This shot really amazes me, just good god.

And then there's also this famous shot:

It's so aggressively sexy, so much a pose and not at all a way a real human would position themselves. The way her ass is popped out, the way her hair is flipped, jesus christ. Someone needs to put Michael Bay in misogyny jail.

#polls #round 1 #week 2 #new

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rebeccadumaurier · 11 months

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will martha wells dare to imagine the end of capitalism? and other thoughts on system collapse (and the rest of the murderbot diaries)

I'm writing this post because the wait for System Collapse is killing me and I need something to do. These are not so much predictions of specific, concrete events—I am terrible at predictions and bad with plot—so much as exploring existing thematic arcs in the series and tracing them to what I think are their natural ends. (Also, this post uses "bot" and "construct" interchangeably because I'm lazy. Sorry, MB.)

Some points I think the rest of the series (SC and onwards) may hit on:

Further development, and let's say "stress testing," of ART and Murderbot's relationship, and bot/construct relationships in general

Every day I go insane about this conversation MB has with ART early in Artificial Condition, which is not very subtle foreshadowing:

[ART said], My crew always considers me trustworthy. I shouldn’t have let it watch all those episodes of Worldhoppers. “I’m not your crew. I’m not a human. I’m a construct. Constructs and bots can’t trust each other.” It was quiet for ten precious seconds, though I could tell from the spike in its feed activity it was doing something. I realized it must be searching its databases, looking for a way to refute my statement. Then it said, Why not? I had spent so much time pretending to be patient with humans asking stupid questions. I should have more self-control than this. “Because we both have to follow human orders. A human could tell you to purge my memory. A human could tell me to destroy your systems.” I thought it would argue that I couldn’t possibly hurt it, which would derail the whole conversation. But it said, There are no humans here now.

But in the future there will be humans who could tell ART to do something undesirable to MB (technically, NE already did this to some extent, but it didn't fully address the issue). Artificial Condition in fact explicitly notes ART doesn't have a refutation to that particular argument, and that's why they can't trust each other. We get some initial glimpses in Network Effect of this—ART makes its own decision to save Murderbot, and thankfully its crew agrees with the plan, but we can't expect ART and its crew to be in agreement forever.

Frankly, a lot of ART's plans seem to rely on either (1) its humans / the people in charge of it agreeing with it or (2) them not being around to disagree, which is going to be a problem sooner or later, especially as Murderbot's view of humans is not as ... positive as ART's. Network Effect dances around this problem because both the Preservation people and ART's crew are good people who largely support ART and MB in their decisions, but I don't think that will always be the case.

(Side note: I am once again thinking of Murderbot's surprise that Don Abene allowed Miki to override her orders in Rogue Protocol, and the bot spectrum of "cannot disobey orders literally ever" (like SecUnits) to "can disobey orders in the right circumstances" (like Miki) to "can mostly just do whatever but ultimately bots still have their programming" and how MB views ART's place on that spectrum. Also I am once again begging Murderbot to please reflect more on Miki's death, but given its current level of emotional repression, I am not optimistic about this.)

Leading me to my next point—

The question of ownership, independence, and property in the Murderbot universe

As Murderbot has mentioned various times, the people of Preservation call themselves "guardians" of bots rather than owners, but it's still very much ownership (and MB is right to point this out and express discomfort about it). MB knows it's fortunate that its owner—sorry, guardian, Mensah, allows it a ton of freedom, but legally, MB is still Mensah's property. Mensah's approach is a single, individual band-aid in that it may (for now) allow MB to live a life more or less of its choosing, but it doesn't address the larger systematic issue that actually, owning these bots is fucked up and many people exploit the bots they own, including people who think that they're already being incredibly generous and goodhearted simply by not abusing bots. (I'd need to go back and review, but I got the latter vibe from many of the Preservation bot owners in Fugitive Telemetry.)

Martha Wells seems like she will address this larger issue later. I don't know how, but I'm sure "Murderbot gets dragged into it and has to *gasp* talk about its feelings" will happen somehow, since that recurs frequently.

What healing from trauma looks like for a bot/construct

Dr. Bharadwaj has already suggested that Murderbot could use therapy ("trauma treatment" but like ... sounds like it's therapy combined with some other self care / community care strategies), and Murderbot is not subtle about its whole "I have been through many horrific things but I will pretend it's totally fine and not a big deal" coping strategy. I'd be interested to see what role ART plays in this—it's quite scarred from the events of Network Effect, will need to heal, and is unlikely to do the "yeah whatever that's just what my life is like" strategy MB adopted, because that's not what its life is like.

(Side note: in NE, MB says being taken over by targetControlSystem "would be like having a governor module again. No, not again. Never again." To MB, the loss of control ART experienced is similar to what MB's life was like every day until it hacked its module. I'M SO. ��)

But therapy for a bot would look very different from therapy for a human, and I'm doubtful there's any therapists out there equipped to handle it. The "nicest" humans, if you will, seem to be the PreservationAux citizens, and they still have a long way to go on their understanding of bots. Also, much like in real life, therapy is not a cure-all for everything and there's a lot of terrible therapists, issues with psychiatry, etc. I will not get into—so I'm not actually saying that Bhadwaraj's idea of "trauma treatment" is the specific route MB will take to heal, I'm just curious what it's gonna take to get it to open up and be willingly emotionally vulnerable.

Who is Murderbot outside its day job? (aka its hypercompetence with regard to security)

One of Murderbot's defining traits is that it's an incredibly competent person, even when (often especially when) surrounded by much less competent people. The Goodreads blurb for System Collapse implies this won't always be the case:

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

My first reaction is: "hey, why is Murderbot the only one who has to figure that out?!" (Not that I think ART or the humans are jerks who don't care about its problems or don't want to help; I think Murderbot has trouble asking for help or even imagining people want to help it, e.g. its assumption in NE everyone just left it behind to die when it was captured.) The inherent question with characters who define themselves through their hypercompetence at something is: who do they become when they can no longer rely on that? (For example, who is a star athlete when they get a permanent injury? Who is a brilliant painter when they go blind? etc.)

ART already had to grapple with that to some extent when it lost control of itself in NE and couldn't rely on itself or its crew, so it resorted to kidnapping MB to fix the problem. But that doesn't deal with the larger identity crisis / struggle for self-definition at play, which is essentially: Who is Murderbot when it's not useful, when it's not able to do what it was created to do?

Speaking of which, this is very relevant to my title question—

Will we see Martha Wells envision the end of capitalism???

The Murderbot Diaries is the story of a single bot and its friends / enemies / etc., and I'm perfectly happy if it stays that way and focuses on MB's internal journey. But Martha Wells seems like an ambitious enough author to imagine wider solutions to the problems that plague the Murderbot universe, which is namely that corporations are evil. If corporations were not so evil, we wouldn't have our corporation-hating traumatized-by-corporations created-by-a-corporation-and-struggling-with-it protagonist. There's indentured servants in Rogue Protocol. There is literally a space version of the Underground Railroad in Fugitive Telemetry. It is impossible to understand this series without understanding that it is a very, very vicious critique of capitalism, and without this critique laying out its foundations, we would not have most of its characters, including Murderbot itself. Preservation is already a first step in that it seems to be some sort of utopian commune devoid of corporations or privatization—which is a huge step in itself, that Wells envisions a world devoid of capitalism—but it's one small (and still imperfect, re: earlier discussion of treatment of bots) planet in a large, dysfunctional universe.

So far the series has been Murderbot dealing with individual evil corporations (GrayCris, Barish-Estranza, etc), but mainly in the context of one crisis at a time, with regard to saving only its friends / clients. (It's fine with leaving Eletra to Barish-Estranza in NE, for example.) I do not think Murderbot will singlehandedly destroy capitalism or that its goal is to do so—it's not a fix-everything save-everyone hero, no one is, one of the points of the series is that you should not attempt everything alone—but this series has done plenty of exploration of the evils of capitalism; I would like to see Martha Wells explore how we could end it.

#murderbot #murderbot diaries #meta #ange.book #this post ended up just being really abstract and high level and many rhetorical questions #(some of which i have my own answers to in what i'd like to see but i'm not that confident in anything and i think martha wells has a #more interesting imagination than i do anyway)#(i want HER answers)

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bracketsoffear · 11 months

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Maureen Miller (TAZ: Balance) "I saw beyond the omniverse

far past the places we should see

but for my vision I was cursed

torn from my home and family

lost to my Crystal Kingdom"

"Maureen was a scientist who attempted to view the entirety of the planar system simultaneously, but the knowledge of what she saw destroyed her mind and killed her. Even her ghost was not immune to the cosmic madness that the vision imposed on her, though she was able to suppress it for brief periods."

Jadis (Kill Six Billion Demons) "Jadis was born into a family of philosopher royalty who saw the Shape of the Universe as an experiment to study and dissect; they wasted ten generations in their efforts to witness the Shape (something that boiled a goddess’ eyes to see) and obtain all the secrets of Creation, a task she was prophecised to complete. She successfully saw the Shape, but it proved to be a thing beyond mortal ken and Jadis was shattered in both mind and body. She now exists inside a block of glass, a decaying, unmoving corpse, whispering prophecies with her perfect, terrible knowledge and worshipped by a cult devoted to recording and intepreting her whispers (and occasionally mis-interpreting them) while keeping their God-Queen alive. Book 5 demonstrates that, like the author has said, “Jadis knows the most, in fact. Of anyone. Ever”…and it has utterly destroyed her. Her perfect knowledge left her a deeply jaded, nihilistic woman who feels her actions, choices, and even her own identity (and everyone else's) are rendered completely moot when compared to the full shape of the universe. As someone who is ignorant of nothing, Jadis' limits are absolute and she is incapable of anything she hasn't already predicted will happen. She can't choose to do anything, because her decisions and their outcomes are already known to her. The alt text and some of her lines in her section of Breaker of Infinites discuss how if you can see everything, anything in it just becomes meaningless, unidentifiable noise in the infinite detail of it all: “When you see everything, there’s only one color left.” Jadis straight-up tells Allison that she, Jadis, does not exist in any meaningful sense because she can't tell where the lines between the Shape of the Universe and even her own mind are anymore. Consequently, Jadis tries to convince Allison to stop her mission to stop the destruction of the multiverse because she’s convinced that fighting is futile and meaningless in the end, so she should surrender instead of choosing more suffering. She takes Allison to see the machine that showed her the Shape, tells her the exact time from then she will die, comments on a personal detail of Allison’s past, and says what she’s doing before she does it (to make it creepier, her predictions were in the alt text several pages before). She then shows Allison the Shape and gives her a breaking speech to try and convince her to give up, and eventually talks Allison into accepting futility for months before she gets her shit together. Allison eventually realizes that Jadis is unable to change or recover from the traumas of her past because she no longer has a past - her perfect knowledge of everything that ever is, was, and will be means that she is constantly, continually reliving the complete and total despair that hit her when she saw the Shape and realized the futility of everything, and will do so for as long as she exists. Jadis wanted to know, believing that she could use her wisdom for the greater good, but the horrible knowledge she gained by seeing literally everything ever destroyed her so completely that she cannot comprehend being a person or making choices anymore--she has thus trapped herself in nihilistic certainty that she knows what’s going to happen and therefore nothing matters, and she wants to impress that mindset onto the only person she can even share her omniscience with anymore."

#eye poll #the magnus archives #the eye #poll #the adventure zone #taz: balance #kill six billion demons

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aita-blorbos · 2 months

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Am I the asshole for calling out my friend extremely publically for personal problems?

Title sounds bad but hear me out. So I (39m) have had this friend, F (39m), for a very long time. Like most of our lives long. We went to high school together, never lost touch, ended up moving in together while we were both in college, yada yada yada. I was a writing major at a pretty prestigious university, and F was a music major at an INSANELY prestigious music conservatory. F spent two years in the military right after high school, so I had already been in New York City, where both of our schools were, for two years by the time he got there, but as soon as he was released from service he moved in. Pretty soon after that, we decided to combine our talents and turn to writing musicals. I did the scripts and lyrics, and F composed the music.

He has a gift. He's truly the greatest, most insanely talented composer I've ever heard. When F writes music, it's like he'd distilling emotion and humanity down into something that can be heard. When we started to work together, we were working on a passion project that started as a draft of a play I had written that had inspired him so much he pitched turning it into a musical. We spent years on this thing, writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. We auditioned it for a few producers and never got anywhere, but we refused to give up on it.

After a few years of that, we were "discovered," I guess you could say, by a big Broadway producer, J, who liked our music but not our show. He and his wife, G, had an idea for a different show they wanted us to do the music for, specifically so that G could have her big break and become a Broadway star. F was immediately all for it, but I took a lot more convincing. He did eventually convince me, partially because, at that point, I had a wife and a kid and another kid on the way, and I needed the money, and partially because I trusted F. It also helped that our other best friend, M, agreed that doing one show for J and G to get our careers off the ground was a good idea. So we did it. And it was a massive success, the kind of success that I still have savings from ten years later. J told us on opening night that if we wrote another musical, he would produce it. The catch was that it had to be another musical like this one, all flash and spectacle and no substance. I agreed to do one more, but then I wanted to go back to writing passion projects, creating art I actually cared about.

That was where the problems started between F and me. I watched from the sidelines as he brushed me off, constantly, and made so many poor decisions it was excruciating to be his friend. He cheated on his wonderful wife with G, did such a bad job of hiding it that we all had to convince him that he should just give up custody of his kid and accept the child support agreement because otherwise he would have lost (somehow) even more in the divorce. M and I could see that G was terrible for him, but every time we thought we'd gotten through to him how much she was using him for fame and how miserable she was making him, she'd pop back up and reel him back in. F slowly became more and more like her, wanting nothing more than fame and fortune and getting less and less subtle about it. G left J for F, which destroyed J's life (last I heard the divorce left him so penniless and depressed he was calling G to beg for money on a semi-regular basis), and F and G got married.

That brings us to the situation where I think I might be an asshole. I swear it wasn't on purpose, I truly think I had some kind of mental breakdown, but I called F out on everything going on with him extremely publically. Like national television publically. M had arranged an interview with us on NBC to talk about the project we were still (theoretically) working on, the original music that used to mean to much to both of us and now was starting to feel like a solo project. M's idea was that if I could get F to commit to the musical publically, he wouldn't be able to back out, and we'd be able to use that commitment to spend more time with him again and get him to see our side of what was going on. Instead, I found out literally seconds before going live on camera that, without talking to me about despite the fact we were supposedly still writing partners, F had signed a three-movie deal as a Hollywood producer, which would take him out of NYC for months at a time. Honestly, it wasn't even the fact that he signed the deal that got to me so badly, though I was pretty upset about it. It was that I found out because the person interviewing us already knew. And I didn't. From the person who was supposed to be not only my business partner but also my oldest, dearest, and closest friend. A man who all four of my kids call uncle. A man who has had a key to every place I've lived since I was 20 years old. A man who knows me better than absolutely anyone save maybe my wife and M. And a newcaster knew about this massive personal and professional development before I did.

So I kind of lost it. Honestly, I barely remember half of what I said. I think the first question I answered was something along the lines of "how do you two work together" and suddenly I was ranting about how working with him means constant interruptions and barely any work, and then I was getting emotional and talking about how I feel like he's completely abandoned our friendship, not even mentioning how I feel about the potential he's throwing away by giving up on music, and I ended it all by pretty much just saying that I thought he cared about money more than anything else in the world. And you know what? I don't think I was lying or wrong about any of it. I wish I had said it all in a much more private conversation, sure, but I don't think I would take most of it back. Maybe word it a little better. I don't know.

So, AITA?

#aita #am i the asshole #unreality

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meher-sumedha · 1 year

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Gwynriel something maybe?

Azriel was never the one to indulge himself in the enigma that his brothers called "love". He felt that it was a waste of time, and instead of falling in love there were so many other things you could do.

You could fuck a different girl every weekend. Drink as much as you want without giving a fuck about your liver. You could probably kill yourself and absolutely no one would care.

Maybe the last part wasn't that appealing. Maybe it was what kept him up at night. That no one in this world truly loves him, not in the way he wanted anyways.

He had an amazing family. Though they were not connected by blood, they were connected in every way that mattered.

He was currently in his last year of residency. At the moment he was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about 'how it could have been if he too had found someone he loved.'

But he had found someone whom he loved, terribly and deeply.

He knew he had fallen in love with her the moment she gave him his first friendship bracelet. Knew that if he had not run way, they would still be together. They might even be engaged. If only he had stayed and worked hard enough towards their relationship when things got tough instead of destroying it completely so that no remnants of it remained.

But those remnants never erased themselves. Not now. Not 2 years later after breaking her heart so that she would never return to him and live her own life happily.

But he knew that was not what he desired. It was just the whiskey in his blood speaking. He was not an alcoholic persay. Neither did he like to cry or punch walls to express his emotions. He simply needed an outlet every once in a while and found that whiskey was his gateway to heaven.

He knew he shouldn't have drunk so much and that he'd regret it in his family lunch tomorrow. The lunch at which Cassian would announce his engagement to Nesta officially. He'd regret it when he won't be able to fake his way through his day because he just didn't have the energy.

Aside from the times he was drunk, Azriel never regretted his decisions. His decision to focus on himself and his education because he believed that a relationship was not more important than his degree.

But what if it was?

What if she was the key to making him happy? Of giving him that happiness of simply being in her presence, something he hadn't felt at all in the past few years.

Azriel shook his head and got up from his bed. He immediately regretted his decision of getting up too fast as the world around him rotated. He reminded himself that he had graduated at the top of his class, he was an emergency surgeon in the Columbia University Medical Centre, and he worked damn hard for it too.

What if she's there too? A part of his mind whispered.

The thought of seeing Gwyn there brought a smile to his face, even when he didn't like it. He knew that she had only become more intelligent, smart, kind, beautiful.

Stop it. He reminded himself.

He didn't need anyone in his life. He was perfectly content. Working all day long so that he'd be so tired till night came, that he wouldn't have the energy to think about anything else.

Especially not her.

So Azriel went to the washroom and washed his face. He took of all his clothes and went to sleep, dreaming about the only woman who managed to plague his mind.

....

"Azriel," someone shook him. "Azriel," someone said again. "AZRIEL," someone threw him on the floor.

Azriel got up with a groan and his head pounding. He blinked against the bright light of his room and saw a figure standing in the middle of it.

"Cassian?" He asked, trying to cover his eyes.

"Rise and Shine sunshine because WE'RE ALREADY LATE TO MY ENGAGEMENT LUNCH AND YOU STILL AREN'T READY!" Cassian said throwing Azriel's suit at him

Engagement? Cassian? Wait what day was it.

oh. fuck.

Azriel immediately started wearing his 2 piece suit and Cassian tied his tie, all the while telling him in a hundred different ways of how Nesta would have him by his balls if they were even a second late.

They got in the car and Cassian started driving away before muttering another word.

finally some silence.

"Are you drunk?" the dipshit spoke again.

just one moment of silence. that's all I need. maybe i'll answer him and he won't ask me anything again.

"no. I'm hungover, there's a difference, " he replied.

there was a beat of silence before cassian spoke again, "Is it because of her?" a small grin on his face.

yes.

"No." Azriel replied, pronouncing each syllable.

They arrived to their destination in 30 minutes, with exactly one minute to spare.

After greeting everyone, Azriel thought he'd finally find some solace, as he took his seat besides emerie, giving her a small smile.

But the smile she returned was nothing sort of amused. She then looked somewhere else and Azriel followed her gaze to his ex currently sitting in front of him conversing with the girl because of whom they broke up.

oh fuck.

#gwynriel #gwynriel hc #is this fandom still alive?

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haeva · 2 years

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“I miss them” from the angsty prompts with Wanda x reader

(also I PROMISE I will write that ask from a few weeks ago, I’ve just been a professional procrastinator)

It's not the same as it was

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Pairing: Wanda x Reader

Words: 1k

Summary: After Wanda comes back from the Snap, she isn't the same. You break up with her and under the influence of the Darkhold, she goes to drastic measures to try and be with you again.

Author's note: So I'm pretty sure this probably wasn't what you were expecting from the prompt, but it got me writing immediately so yay! Goal achieved! (Also don't worry about the ask, you'll get to it when you get to it 💖)

You had not spoken to Wanda in months. Ever since she’d come back from the Snap, she had been acting differently. You could feel her distancing herself from you. She wasn’t the Wanda you knew before, the one that you had mourned these five years; the one that you had hoped would return to you. You hardly recognised this new person.

You tried bringing it up to her, but every time you wanted to talk, she shut down. Eventually, you stopped trying to get her to open up to you about her feelings, but you just couldn’t let it go. It felt as though you were living a lie. As much as you had loved the person that Wanda had been before, you had no feelings for the one that she had become.

You felt awful about it, of course. Clearly, Wanda had been going through something terrible and all you wanted to do was be there for her. A good partner would be there for her, you often thought to yourself. But you had tried and she had not responded to it. There was no use in trying to help someone who did not want to be helped. Wanda deserved to be happy, but so did you and this relationship was only making you miserable. You knew you had to end things with her, as much as it pained you to admit it.

“So, you want to break up?” Wanda asked quietly, after you told her that you needed space. She must have seen it coming with the way you had built up to it. You kept putting it off, changing the subject, trying to ease her into it. Wanda was clever, she must have figured it out on her own before you’d even said the words.

“Yes.” You nearly choked on it. But Wanda deserved an explanation, so you kept talking. “I’m just not happy in this relationship anymore. The old Wanda, I miss her. You’ve changed too much…”

“So now this is my fault?” Wanda snapped. She made a face. “I see how it is. Leave then, if you want to so badly. Don’t wait on my account.” She turned around and walked away.

“Wanda, please listen…” you tried, but she was already gone.

That night, you couldn’t sleep; all you did was cry. A part of you had instantly regretted your decision, but you also knew that you did what you had to do. The two of you couldn’t have gone on living like that, it would have destroyed you in the end regardless.

You weren’t ready to see other people yet, but after weeks of mourning your relationship the single life had finally started to treat you well. You were happy to be on your own and had gotten yourself a cat to keep you company. You regularly went out with your friends and all in all things were good.

Until one day the Sorcerer Supreme showed up at your doorstep, asking for your help to save a young girl.

“Wanda won’t listen to reason, you are the only person that might be able to get through to her,” Strange explained. The girl, America was staring at you expectantly. Her life was in danger and Wanda was the reason. You didn’t want to believe it, but Strange wouldn’t lie to you. You felt guilty, wondering if it had been your breakup that had caused something inside of Wanda to snap. So, you agreed to help.

You were taken to Kamar-Taj, where all the sorcerers were preparing for Wanda to attack. It seemed unreal and yet it wasn’t. If there hadn’t been so much at stake you probably would have broken down and cried. But you knew that you had to remain calm for America and for Wanda. Everyone could still walk away from this unharmed.

When Wanda showed up, she did not see you immediately. Strange flew up to meet her.

“Hand over the girl and no one else needs to get hurt,” Wanda said in a tone that made your stomach churn. She didn’t sound the least bit remorseful.

“Wanda, if you won’t listen to me, then perhaps you’ll listen to someone else.” That was your cue to go outside.

To say Wanda was surprised to see you was an understatement. The look on her face was one of pure shock. However, there was something else in there too: Longing. Even after all this time, after what you did, she still loved you.

“Hi, Wanda,” you started, unsure how to proceed. There had been no time to practice for some sort of big speech. “Wanda, please don’t do this,” you begged her. “Why are you even doing this anyway?”

Wanda swallowed, clearly holding back tears. “For us,” she almost whispered. “I’m doing this for us.”

Out of all the reasons that you tried to come up with, this one had never even crossed your mind. It sounded absurd; what did taking the power of an innocent child have to do with the two of you?

“How on Earth can this,” you gestured around you,”be for us, Wanda? I don’t want this. Why would I want this?” You sounded upset, because, well, you were. This was now your fault somehow, so you had every right to feel hurt or angry.

“You left me.” Wanda’s voice was shaking. “And I couldn’t live without you. I learned about the other worlds…how we see them in our dreams. I dream about you, about us, every night. We’re so happy. We’re happy in every universe but this one…” Wanda gasped for air. “We have a family…” she trailed off.

You let her words sink in. The two of you were together in every universe except this one? Because you broke it off in this one, because you left her and didn’t fight for her. All the other versions of you must have fought for her, for what you had together. Or was Wanda the problem this time? Were all the other Wandas able to let you in? You would never know, you wanted to find out.

“What if you don’t need to go somewhere else to be happy?” You weren’t sure of your decision, yet it sounded more like a statement than a question. “What if you could be happy here, with me?”

There were tears streaming down Wanda’s face as a sob escaped her mouth. “We can do that?”

You smiled at her in an attempt to offer her comfort. “Yes, my love, we can do that.”

#wanda maximoff #wanda x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff fanfiction #my fic #I wrote this in what? an hour? I hope it doesn't suck too hard it's 1 AM

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hellfiremaniac · 1 year

Text

A Broken Bond -- Sefikura Soulmate AU

Going to preface this by saying that this was written as a joke because I had a random thought and shared it with some friends that encouraged it, so not everything in it will be accurate to the games. Also based this off of the FFVII Remake because I hadn’t played Crisis Core at the time that this was written.

Oh, and this is angst. No fluff to be found. Good luck!

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

"We'll meet again, Cloud. I'll keep coming back -- as long as you are who you are."

The words on his wrist stung terribly, waking him from his latest dream with a hiss of pain. His right hand gripped the words that he hated so much, the last words someone's soulmate would say to them before they died.

He used to wonder who his soulmate would be. Part of him hoped he'd never find out -- but that hope was destroyed when he killed his supposed soulmate with his own two hands.

It had to have been some cruel trick the universe was playing on him, deciding that the rest of his life wasn't a nightmare enough.

His hallucinations of the man had been growing stronger lately, as had his nightmares that featured him. He couldn't remember the last time he had a good night's rest, let alone managing to go a day without hearing the voice of the man he hated so much.

Try as he did, he could never escape his reality, the truth of his soulmate's identity; for his destined was Sephiroth, the one-winged angel that had destroyed his hometown.

Nobody else knew. Nobody had managed to figure it out, not even Tifa. The thought gave him a sense of relief, knowing that he didn't have to directly lie to his best friend. He had managed to form a fragile sense of comradery with the members of Avalanche, and with a local florist named Aerith, and he didn't want this secret destroying that.

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

Unfortunately for him, all good things in his life came to an end sooner or later. And this time it happened to come when he infiltrated the Shinra building to save Aerith.

He saw his soulmate in his nightmares. He saw him when he was awake, but the figure always faded quickly, and nobody else acknowledged those hallucinations.

So then, why were his friends able to see the man now?

Sephiroth, standing at the end of the metal pathway they were on. Smirking at him, like always.

His breath caught in his throat, his feet moving forward without him consciously making the decision to do so.

"Is it..." he hesitated, a burning sensation in his chest making the words difficult to say. "Is it really you?"

The man before him reacted with a simple smile and a slight, almost unnoticeable nod of his head.

The burning grew worse with the confirmation. He vaguely knew what it was, having heard stories when he was younger about the pain of a broken soulmate bond. Something in him knew the undeniable truth, and it wanted him to suffer for rejecting it.

Sephiroth picked up on this, reaching out a hand to him. "Don't deny me."

Cloud felt a scream bubble up in his throat, gripping his buster sword in both hands and lunging at the man he hated -- the man the universe said he was supposed to love -- with every ounce of disgust he felt for the man.

Sephiroth easily blocked the blow. Cloud was standing close enough that he could see the vibrant turquoise colour that the mako had turned all SOLDIERs eyes too, except this was deeper. Prettier, in a way. He wanted to hit himself for even thinking the word.

A gentle wind, an exhaled breath, hit his face, pushing his hair back slightly. It smelled like peppermint.

"Embrace me," the man before him whispered, the look of adoration on his face only feeding Cloud's anger.

He jumped back, moving in for another blow but failing as Sephiroth destroyed the path beneath his feet, watching with satisfaction as the younger SOLDIER fell into the darkness.

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

When he came to, he couldn't help but feel like his heart had been torn from his chest -- the same feeling he experienced after he had killed Sephiroth.

But his soulmate was back. Against all odds he was somehow alive. And Cloud wanted nothing more than to put an end to him once more.

So then, why did the thought of harming him cause such an ache in his chest? Why did his hands hesitate to strike a blow before? Why did he feel so hollow?

He couldn't figure out an answer, sitting numbly until his limbs finally decided to co-operate. He couldn't be alone for too long -- he had to find the others.

Barret was as easy to locate as always, his battle cries leading Cloud right to him, though it was Red XIII that he had first located.

The rush of battles that followed passed by in a blur. His heart was aching terribly, a feeling that he thought he left behind long ago. He didn't even notice the concerned looks Aerith was giving him, nor had he noticed her gasp when she saw him near Sephiroth earlier.

For Aerith was an Ancient, and Ancients knew when soulmates were near each other. It was how she knew that Tifa was her own soulmate -- not that she had told the other girl yet. She was too worried about how the information would be received.

But for Cloud to be Sephiroth's soulmate? She never would've guessed it if she hadn't felt their connection light up the air around her in the other room. It was unfathomable, but it was also undeniable. She wondered if the others had noticed the loving looks their enemy was giving the mercenary, but it seemed that neither Tifa nor Barret had.

Red, however, was keeping a closer eye on the mercenary now, and Aerith felt that he knew. When she connected with Red, she gave him some of her knowledge. Evidently, that was enough for him to recognise the bond that they had witnessed before.

She felt guilty as she watched her silent friend keep moving, keep protecting them, knowing where their path was leading.

Knowing that she'd have to watch the pair be broken apart once more.

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

Cloud didn't like how Aerith kept looking at him. He could feel her eyes on the back of his head, but he tried to ignore it, along with the sense that she knew. She had no way of knowing. Unless being an Ancient somehow let her know.

He couldn't help but look back at her, being met by the sad gaze she had rested on him since they reunited after the confrontation with Sephiroth.

"What?" He knew his voice was blunt. He knew it was always like that. He figured he was too far gone for it to ever be normal again.

"Are you okay?" Her words struck him like a knife to the chest as his breath abandoned him. She knew.

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

"Yes, you do." Normally, this was endearing, the way that she wouldn't let him dodge her questions.

Now, he just found it infuriating.

"It's none of your business." He tried to keep walking, to catch up to the others, but she grabbed his arm.

"Cloud, it's okay to hurt. Broken bonds are painful, especially when they break twice."

He completely froze, unsure how to proceed now that she had acknowledged that she knew. Was the world spinning, or was he? It didn't take long before the headaches came, always accompanying the thoughts of his soulmate.

"I don't..." he didn't have the strength to keep denying it to her, as pathetic as that fact made him feel. Aerith reached out to clasp her other hand in his, helping to ground him when his mind tried to slip away, when he started seeing black feathers hit the ground.

"It's okay to be scared. I don't know what I'd do if I had to hurt Tifa, even if it was to save others."

Cloud's mouth opened as he processed that information. Yes, Aerith now knew his secret, but she had offered up a similar one in return. Tifa and Aerith are soulmates.

He wanted to be happy for them, to be happy that two of his closest friends were destined for each other. But he couldn't help the resentment that crept into his chest.

Why do they get a happy life together? Why was Cloud's soulmate bond doomed to fail from the moment he discovered it?

That thought wasn't entirely true. He had felt something for the man he used to admire long before he discovered their bond, but he had always written it off as some childish infatuation with his hero. He never thought that the older SOLDIER's smiles had a hidden meaning to them... not until his dying breaths, when he smiled that wretched smile that has been burnt into Cloud's mind ever since, and uttered the words that were permanently placed on his left wrist.

He felt a part of him die that day. The small part that had loved the hero he used to admire -- the part that had once hopelessly waited for a soulmate that he could confide in.

Sephiroth was nothing to him, he had told himself repeatedly since that day. The day his heart shriveled up and died alongside the man that destiny said he was meant to be with.

What a cruel twist of fate.

"You can talk to me about it, Cloud. I won't judge you for what destiny decided for you." She smiled at him in a way that would've convinced him in normal circumstances.

But this wasn't normal, and there was no way that he could even begin to unravel the threads of his soulmate bond to another person. Just the thought of it seemed wrong. He'd hidden it for so long that his head throbbed when he thought about how she knew now.

"Aerith? Cloud? You guys coming?" Tifa called back, smiling gently at them as she saw Aerith's enthusiastic nod. Cloud watched her run to catch up to others, trailing along behind her, and saw the pure joy on Tifa's face when Aerith grabbed her hand to walk with her.

He knew she didn't intend it in a malicious way, but the gesture felt like salt on the wound of his recent encounter with Sephiroth. He wished he could just shake it off, forget about it until they were away from Shinra, but he couldn't get the visual of his eyes out of his head.

He took his left wrist in his right hand, glaring down at the metal band that he knew covered the words. Part of him longed to see them. He scoffed, dropping his wrist and raising his head to keep looking ahead as his little group continued on their quest to find a way out of the Shinra building.

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

Everything passed by quickly enough that he had almost forgotten about his recent encounter with the man he wished he would never see again.

That was, until Aerith looked directly at him during her speech on their destiny. "We have to take down Sephiroth. I know that we can do it if we work together." She offered him a small smile while he was internally torn apart.

It didn't hurt this much to kill him the first time. Why did it hurt so much now?

He couldn't focus on it, his vision blurring as his logical want to kill Sephiroth battled the pull of the soulmate bond. But he found himself nodding, putting his hand together with the others, and walking straight into Destiny's Crossroads.

It felt like he had been plunged into a tub of ice-cold water and then sent through an inferno of fire, but he soon found himself standing in a warped version of the normal world. It was like the road before them had been destroyed and sent flying through the sky, unlike anything he had ever seen before.

He was separated from the others, and fought his way back to them, feeling a sense of relief as he saw that they were all unharmed.

Together, they took down the Whisperer Harbinger, destroying the destiny that had been ordained for them. But they barely had a moment to celebrate before the sky turned into a swirling purple vortex, and Cloud's heart dropped to his stomach as he saw the silhoutte of Sephiroth through it all.

It hurt worse when his figure was properly revealed, and when he lunged at him in another attempt to kill him. He had fought many people in his life, more often recently, but no injury he had gotten during those fights compared to the raging fire that boiled his blood more with every clash of his sword against Masamune.

He was the one to place the final blow upon his soulmate's skin, but the pain he felt suddenly disappeared as the grey-haired man smirked at him. Then reality warped, and he fell through the sky and suddenly woke up on a blackened rock surrounded by nothing but space.

He tried to sit up, but his headaches flared once more. He gripped his head with his right hand, closing his eyes and hoping the pain would fade. It didn't, not until he felt a gentle grip on his wrist. His pain seemed to evaporate and he slowly opened his eyes, expecting to see Tifa or Aerith.

He jolted backwards as he instead saw Sephiroth, with another stupid look on his face -- a look as if Cloud was the only thing that mattered in the world. He smiled.

"Careful now. That which lies ahead does not yet exist." Cloud's head was swimming, a mixture of hatred and rage and a terrible feeling of content that he despised so much all mixing together and confusing him further. Sephiroth let go of his wrist, gesturing to the colourful explosions scattered throughout the darkness of space that surrounded them. "Our world will become part of it... one day. But I... will not end." He looked at Cloud, his bright eyes full of so much meaning. "Nor will I have you end."

Cloud looked around, not fully comprehending what he was seeing. "This is...?"

"The edge of creation," Sephiroth responded. He stood from his crouch, reaching his hand out to the still confused man. "Cloud, lend me your strength. Let us defy destiny... together." The words were spoken in almost a whisper, and Cloud almost reached out to him. He stopped his hand midway, anger flaring at the movement that he hadn't allowed.

"Never." He made himself utter, believing the word and yet doubting it at the same time.

Sephiroth just kept smiling, though it felt hollower than before. "Not yet." He looked around. "Seven seconds till the end. Enough time for you, perhaps. But what will you do with it? Let's see."

Sephiroth vanished in the blind of an eye. Cloud dropped onto his knees as his body felt like it was lit ablaze, trying desperately to fight it off. Then everything turned white, and his thoughts fizzled down to nothing.

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

This time, he woke up in a familiar field that had a view of Midgar off in the distance, although he couldn't quite place why it was familiar to him. Barret, Tifa, Aerith, and Red were all waiting for him to wake up.

He stood with them, looking out at the city they had all called home for so long. Not him. He hadn't known a home for a long time.

"So, what now?" Tifa's question broke the silence that had fallen across the group, and Cloud grabbed hold of his left wrist once more.

"Sephiroth..." Aerith looked concerned as he muttered the name, but he quickly raised his head once more. "Long as he's still out there, I..."

Barret cut him off, his face scrunched up in confusion. "I thought you beat him."

"We can! We will." Aerith promised, smiling at Cloud to show her support.

"Count me in!" Tifa announced, grabbing hold of Aerith's hand once more. Barret and Red followed suit with similar declarations, and Cloud almost smiled before the rain began to fall on them. They set off towards a world away from Midgar, from Shinra.

Towards a world where they'd be hunting his soulmate down, ensuring that he stayed dead this time. He could almost hear his voice, echoing through his brain. It made him more determined than ever to put a stop to him.

"We'll meet again, Cloud." Like a promise whispered on the wind.

#final fantasy vii #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #ff7 #cloud strife #sephiroth #sefikura #cloud x sephiroth #cloud strife x sephiroth #ffvii remake

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