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weirdlizard26 · 2 years

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The (Incomplete) Injury Log of the ROTTMNT Movie (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Image ID: Image is a low-resolution screenshot from Rise of the TMNT movie. It takes place during the sequence where the turtles try and fail to interrogate Casey Jones Junior. It depicts Donnie lying comically on the floor, seemingly unconscious after accidentally activating Junior’s grappling hook and being knocked out by it. End ID.

salutations fellow turtle analysts! I am currently (very slowly) working on a fanfic that takes place immediately after [ROTTMNT MOVIE SPOILERS!] Leo gets rescued and, although I know it’s largely unnecessary, I wanted to be as accurate as possible about the various injuries everyone had sustained in the movie. for this, I have gone through the movie yet again and wrote down all the notable occasions of the main crew getting hit or being visibly injured and/or in pain for unclear reasons.

some clarifications and warnings before I jump into the readmore

[MORE ROTTMNT MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD]

1. this log does not contain potential injuries sustained during the first fight with the Krang, EXCEPT for Raph. my reasoning: everyone but Raph got to go home in the escape pods and had a chance to recover somewhat. I think it’s best demonstrated by Splinter - he was majorly hurt during the fight, but seemed to be doing well when Leo and the others left to look for Raph. it could’ve been done to ease on the pressure, for comedic effect, it could just be that the escape pods provide some sort of first aid OR he simply had enough time to recover on his own. and while I don’t think it’s sufficient enough evidence, I choose to believe everyone but Raph did a “reset” so to speak in that scene. if you have counter-arguments regarding this, feel free to dm me about it and I’ll see if I agree and whether I should amend my statement!

2. I tried to keep my notes purely observational in nature, so in some cases I do not state specifically that there is an injury present, but rather describe the character’s expression or gestures and what they might imply (such as, someone holding onto their head or the glowing cracks caused by Mikey’s gateway)

3. feel free to dm me or reply to this post if you think I missed anything! as I’ve said, this log is incomplete, simply because I’m just one guy and can only notice so much on my own. although I don’t promise to amend this post in every case

4. my notes contain some light swearing and take on a more conversational tone in some parts

5. I mean this goes without saying, but there are descriptions of physical injuries, sometimes near-fatal. so take that into account if you decide to read through

6. slightly off-topic, but if there is something wrong with how I did the image ID’s or if there are general issues with accessibility, please let me know! i don’t know if i’ll be able to fix all of my errors, because I spent the entire day working on this post instead of preparing for my entrance exams, but I’d like to at least try

with all that out of the way, I present to you: The (Incomplete) Injury Log of the Rise of the TMNT Movie! (under the cut because it is ridiculously long)

Image ID: Image is a high-resolution screenshot from Rise of the TMNT movie. It depicts, from left to right, Leo, Mikey, Raph, and Donnie looking at the photoraph that Casey Jones Junior had brought from the future. The Key is drawn on the flip-side of the photograph, but the turtles haven’t seen it just yet. Mikey and Donnie are peaking at it from behind Raph’s back and Leo is standing at a slight distance from the three of them. End ID.

characters are presented in order of first sustained injury (i.e. Raph was the first one to receive notable damage in the movie, so he is the first on the list, while Mikey’s first potential injury didn’t happen until more than halfway through the movie, so he is last)

if you found this useful or interesting, consider reblogging so that more people can see it :-)

RAPH

- got that giant concrete plate dropped on him during the first fight with the Krang. looked very bad off at first. potentially internal damage? he couldn’t have gotten any chance to treat the injury until the end of the invasion

- well everyone knows both his carapace and plastron got pierced,,, and just looking at that scene again, his shoulder DEFINITELY got hit as well so there would be a wound there too

- GOT HIS BRAIN FUCKING PROBED???? DUDE

- the possession sounded very painful :-(

- when still possessed and strangling Leo, he summons a Krang-ified sai on his left hand and when the blades come out, a bit of black ooze sprinkles out. potentially blood? unclear

- holds onto his right eye, visibly in pain, when Leo gets through to him during their fight at the Technodrome. and then literally rips the Krang bits off of it

- when Leo sends him off to save Donnie and Mikey, he stands up on his LEFT leg and falls before he can lift his right leg. he seems pained at this. then starts running with his right leg first

- he does land shell first into the ground when saving Donnie and Mikey. but considering his hologram was activated, it might’ve considerably cushioned the fall

- holds on to his head after landing in Staten Island

- but THEN when he tries to get up, he starts with his RIGHT leg and it fails him. and then he proceeds to half-crouch, putting the weight on his left leg and resting the right

- orange cracks spread around his left arm as he helps Mikey with the portal. they reach up to his face. EDIT: was rewatching the movie and noticed that the cracks spread around his right arm as well!

DONNIE

- got his battle shell shattered by the Krang train. he touches his soft shell seemingly in minor pain?.. but I can’t be sure

- got kicked off of a pretty high spot and fell flat on his face in the Technodrome

- unclear if fusing with the krang ship was painful or just gross, but writing it down just in case

- then he gets ripped away from the console by Krang 1? one could assume it’s at least somewhat painful, at least judging by how the ship's bits literally bore into his shell and skin

- seemingly in the process of being possessed and/or crushed to death by Krang 1, (when Leo is trying to help Raph fight the possession), but it could also just be the Krang’s restraining tool, considering Krang 1′s bits are not the same color as his brother’s

- hits his back against a floating building, but his battle shell is in place so supposedly that did not deal much damage

- in all fairness he DOES get hit right in the face and the general front area by krang, although it must’ve been somewhat cushioned by the mystic shield he was trying to summon

- orange cracks spread around his right arm as he helps Mikey with the portal. they reach up to his shoulder

APRIL

- fell on her right side when Krang 2 kicked her off the motorcycle

- unsure if it caused any damage, but she got some Krang gunk on her face when being attacked by Krang 2

- gets hit directly into the stomach area by possessed Raph. then falls on her back and doesnt get up. Donnie checks up on her and looks concerned

- gets blown away by the shock wave caused by Krang 2's mech suit landing

LEO

- smashes into a wall with his carapace when trying to escape the krang train and seems pained

- after falling through the floor, holds onto his left side, mirroring future!Leo's wound. he tries to get up but the wound stops him and he is visibly in a lot of pain and he keeps holding onto his side for the duration of the scene. he even looks over at his hand, I assume, expecting to see blood, although there is none. he also has scratches all over his shoulders, head and face

- got kicked in the face BAD by possessed Raph. holds onto his head in pain after landing

- smashed into the floor and walls of the Krang ship by possessed Raph repeatedly. EDIT: on one occasion, falls from up high headfirst into the floor at a high speed

- LITERALLY was being strangled by possessed Raph

- seemingly in the process of being possessed and/or crushed to death by Krang 1, (when trying to help Raph fight the possession), but it could also just be the Krang’s restraining tool, considering Krang 1′s bits are not the same color as his brother’s

- gets smashed into a wall REALLY badly when they’re all fighting Krang 1 together :[

- tries to get up when left alone with Krang 1, using his swords as levers, but falls to his knees as soon as he stops leaning on the swords and begins to lean on his left leg

- gets thrown into the floor by krang and then crushed by Krang's mech leg, which causes him to spit out a LOT of blood

- continues being crushed in Krang's claw. and there’s a LOT of quite upsetting crunching noises

- gets hit HARD in the left side of his head by krang, TWICE in a row

- hits his back against the floor and a wall when landing in the prison dimension

- gets slapped in the Right side of his head by krang which causes him to spit out some more blood

- 3 consecutive punches by krang follow, but we don’t see how they affect Leo

- then gets hit by Both of Krang's hands so fucking hard that the floor shatters and he goes flying through it

- receives a hit by krang that is not shown on screen, but is so powerful that it shatters an entire giant orb of compressed rubble and sends Leo flying out at incredible speed

CASEY JUNIOR

- was buried under heavy rubble after falling through the floor. doesn’t seem injured though? maybe the genius built armor has some sort of mechanism protecting him from damage

- gets blown away by a shock wave caused by Krang 2's mech suit landing

- gets hit considerably by Krang 2′s mech suit

SPLINTER

- gets hit in the face by possessed Raph

- gets blown away by a shock wave caused by Krang 2's mech suit landing

- gets hit considerably by the Krang mech suit

MIKEY

- got kicked off of a pretty high spot and fell flat on his face in the Technodrome

- hits the back of his neck against a floating wall. holds on to his head afterwards, eyes closed (this is right before he and Donnie gets thrown off the floating platform by Krang)

- his hands begin "cracking" with orange light when he starts opening the gateway. the cracks reach up to his shoulders and stop where Donnie and Raph’s hands hold on to him, continuing to spread over their arms

#wl26 #rotmnt #rottmnt #rottmnt spoilers #rottmnt movie spoilers #idk if theres any point to this gkdjfgd #i just thought maybe someone would find this post helpful for fanfics theories or analysis #i cant believe i forgot this but pr*shippers and tc*st supporters do NOT interact i will GET you #turtleposting

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self-loving-vampire · 1 year

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I find it kind of funny how, at least from my point of view, a lot of my NPD symptoms are either simply rational behavior or a plain acceptance of the reality I live in.

Though there are also other symptoms that don’t present in the expected ways.

Let’s go through the DSM-5 criteria (only 5/9 are needed to qualify, so people with NPD may not have every symptom and may have all kinds of combinations).

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. - exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

I absolutely have a sense of grandiosity, but I don’t feel the need to exaggerate anything (and in fact prefer to gather evidence for things I do or experience even if just to assist my own memory).

The most notable thing is that my sense that I am Just Better than other people is abstracted and separate from any of my actual traits and I know this. I don’t need to have a concrete reason to feel superior, I just do.

As a result, I don’t need to invent anything in order to feel that way.

Hence why I’m more like this instead:

I am on that level of narcissism.

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

This is exactly the kind of fantasy that my grandiose taste in music is built to facilitate.

youtube

Still, I was not content to merely fantasize about the success of my designs. I planned for and mitigated potential setbacks as well and stuck with it until I got what I really wanted (which turned out to be really ordinary, but even something as small as that seemed distant to me once since I was just treated as property).

I am currently very happy with where my life is and would not trade my loved ones for anything.

3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

It is no secret that I am autistic and find it much easier and more enjoyable to interact with other autistic people with similar traits and outlooks. I also kept my distance from all the students at every academic institution I have ever gone to for a variety of reasons and most people just don’t interest me and even feel kind of “dead” somehow.

It’s not really a matter of snobby status judgment so much as a neutral evaluation of mental compatibility though, and I remain polite regardless.

4. Requires excessive admiration

I wouldn’t say this one is entirely true. As long as master is pleased, so am I. His opinions (as well as my own and those of a small handful of people I respect) are the only ones that really matter to me beyond purely instrumental advantages.

In fact, there are certain people that I would be slightly ashamed to be praised by in at least some ways due to extreme differences in terminal values. I think being disliked by such people only adds to my greatness if anything.

5. Has a sense of entitlement (i.e. - unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).

I don’t think I do. It is true that if I can get away with it I avoid following rules that make no sense to me (such as the dress code at my high school), however I don’t think this is something that should have been special treatment reserved only for me. I think meaningless rules like that should simply not exist for anyone else either.

Similarly, I often note inadequacies in various systemic issues that affect me, but rather than just wanting to get a unique pass over those issues I would prefer if the issues just didn’t exist to begin with.

6. Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e. - takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).

I mean, famously so. I have mentioned before how I manipulated my way out of an abusive household and how this was basically my life’s work and most important character arc.

I don’t actually enjoy lying or manipulating people and I prefer not doing it. I found it stressful, and having to do it for so long in order to survive was an obstacle to my ability to form bonds with people. It’s a huge relief to just be honest.

However, I am still proud of it and feel completely guilt-free about doing it. I’m also just pleased about how people who learn about my tragic backstory come out of it simply being impressed by my actions rather than pitying me.

When facing abusers who hold every single advantage over you, you must be able to defeat them before even declaring war.

This requires you to lie to them. It requires you to take a distanced approach to yourself and master your own appearance, to make your face malleable for the sake of playing multiple roles and concealing your intentions. It requires you to smile at your enemies, to speak against your true feelings.

This is what I did, and I would absolutely do it again if I had to.

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

I do lack empathy, but specifically affective empathy.

I do recognize other people’s emotions, I just don’t share them, am not directly affected by them, and sometimes don’t know exactly why they are feeling them.

The interesting part is that my lack of empathy only started around 6 years ago, but I was still very much narcissistic even before then. I wonder why it suddenly vanished like that.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

This is possibly the funniest symptom on the list because I do not merely believe that others are envious of me, I know it because they keep telling me that they envy me.

People have told me that they envy everything from my breast sensitivity and my hair to things like my ability to write thousands of words a day several days in a row or my ability to simply enjoy life and find love despite my disabilities.

Even back in school, people used to envy things like my ability to ace exams without studying or making any effort. It really highlighted how much actual work other people had to do just to even approach what I was capable of just doing naturally and effortlessly despite not bothering with class.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

I mean, yeah. Have you seen the URL? I think I’m pretty great and I express this openly.

At my college orientation I even wore my usual lab coat and introduced myself as an enemy of the gods with absolutely no shame (plus plenty of posing) because I’m just so high on myself.

#about me #npd

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c4rdsharp · 1 year

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GABRIEL & JULIANO BARSOTTI. ( @closedcoffins )

“We feel like we’ve entered the fox den,” Juliano mumbles under their breath, a slight distaste evident in their voice. Though it’s entirely possible Luck had heard it, they don’t seem completely concerned—though their twin shoots them a look as if to say ‘And why have I seen fit to complain to the fox?’ Said twin is, of course, remarkably more composed. No matter how much the two of them try to be one mind in two bodies, there are always unfortunate and noticeable differences.

“We apologize for my inappropriate mumbling,” Gabriel says, face as expressionless as if it were made of stone. They’re wearing the same expression as their brother, but their tone is notably different. “We’re here on the behest of nobody but ourselves. …How should we carry on?”

“We’ll take care of it. We’ll be blunt: me and us have been looking for Cazze. Me is concerned he might’ve run off around here.” Juliano explains concisely, and Gabriel butts in, “I’m not accusing you of anything, nor do we expect your intervention. The truth of the matter is that Carzelio is just a flighty child. If you or your men see him, know that the Runorata family at large has little to do with his presence. That is all. Ourselves and I are working on resolving the situation promptly.”

Through the tense and hard exterior, there are cracks which betray nervousness. Gabriel can see them on Juliano and Juliano on Gabriel. It’s likely Luck could see them on either identical face.

carzelio runorata . . . Luck's eyes narrowed at the name -- not from displeasure, though it was easy to mistake, but from recollection. He recalled that name. Yes, that was the Runorata family heir, was it not? Don Bartolo's grandson, a young child who's no bigger than an adolescent. Luck's been told a few things about him, but nothing concrete -- after all, any don worth his salt would go out of the way to ensure his heir is well - protected from potential assailants. The less information they knew, the better. All Luck could go off of were rumors, hearsay, and what the Daily Days was willing to provide ( even with their special circumstances, Luck knew there was information even they weren't willing to disclose ). Still, the way they spoke of the young man . . . yes, that did sound rather like him, didn't it? Not that Luck really needed to check if they were lying -- several years of picking out cheaters & scrutinizing those tortured had left Luck with enough experience to tell the difference between signs of nervousness. Anxiety for lying had slightly different tells than anxiety for circumstance. In this case, it was very much the latter. Some men speak more freely than they should ( like Mr. Juliano ), and others spoke less than was helpful ( like Mr. Gabriel ). It would take an untrained eye to surmise they weren't fidgeting under the collar. Being on known enemy territory tends to do that to a man. He'd probably be more incensed if they had entered with confidence. However, they're clearly uncomfortable demeanor & Gabriel's more respectful tone had eased Luck's agitation. For whatever reason, stated or otherwise, they clearly weren't looking for a fight. Luck considered, momentarily, putting more pressure on them. However, he decided against it. It may incite them to reach for their guns ; Luck wasn't fool enough to not recognize the 'Mad Dogs' themselves. It would put more of his men at risk than necessary. They had saw fit to come see him directly to ensure their young master didn't come to any harm ; he should respect that, to some degree. " the young master Carzelio Runorata, hm? " He murmured with an indifferent air, his face filled with only a passing curiosity. " i wonder how he had gotten so far as to be on our turf . . . ah, i am not accusing any one of you for negligence. i am sure you've done your utmost to keep him well in - check. children can be rather . . . slippery when you least expect it. " Luck chuckled, his odd smile carrying a weight of reminiscence. " as much as i would give you . . . my well wishes in finding him, " after all we don't stoop to the level of kidnapping our enemies' children, " i do not think i am capable of letting you seek Mr. Carzelio on our turf without an escort of sorts. do not mistake that as me disbelieving you ; it is only a precaution. supposing you're not here for some sort of reconnaissance, i doubt you would mind? " His smile regained its sharpened edge. " you must understand : we just cannot let members of another syndicate be seen throwing weight around our turf without our involvement. it'd give the wrong impression, wouldn't you say? "

#( in character. ) nemo me impune lacessit #( thread. ) juliano & gabriel barsotti / closedcoffins ; 001 #( main. ) if there was any difference at all it was just one thing: they were villains.#// dw about formatting btw #// i was gonna do the same but my brain would not let me #// 100% do whatever you feel is right tho!

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slashbitch2 · 3 years

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Extra Complications PT3

Previous Chapter

"Don't bother coming back into work tomorrow."

Her words had been replaying in your mind since the final encounter, bouncing round like a taunting echo. It'd only been a week since you'd stopped working at Alchemex, yet had felt like a lifetime of boredom and fatigue. With no job or persistent villain to chase after, if you could even call Liv a villain anymore, there was no reason to get out of bed in the morning, nothing to stop you from moping around your apartment. The days blended into what felt like one long sick day, disregarding the occasional break to rescue a cat stuck in a tree.

Although, your only sickness was of the mind. Whenever you attempted to get some rest, your thoughts would inevitably drift to Liv; the cold, distanced tone to her voice, the look of betrayal in her eyes, how empty the week had felt without her. By the third night plagued with insomnia, you were starting to accept that your feelings towards her may be more than a simple crush. On the eighth night, you decided you ought to do something about it and began to formulate a plan.

Entering the building like you were still an employee would be almost impossible since anyone who left their job was rarely welcomed back with open arms. It'd also be better to avoid the security and CCTV cameras, which you'd learnt used face recognition technology. And finally, locating a security card would pose a potential problem, as walking round the facility until you happened to stumble across a janitor to steal from was unfortunately no longer a possibility. So, what was the solution to all your problems? Vents.

Which is how you found yourself scouring over blueprints like a cliched protagonist from a bygone age movie, but at least the irony hadn't escaped you, and thankfully laboratories generally required a great deal of ventilation, so you had multiple routes memorised by the time the bus had arrived at Alchemex. You'd spent the entire journey on edge, fearful that any fellow passenger might accost you for looking so suspicious. But apparently an agitated figure buried beneath a pile of blueprints wearing a spider-suit underneath a jumper was normal enough to be ignored.

Nonetheless, stepping onto the concrete ground of the car park was a relief which inspired a tad more optimism. Moreover, leaving the burdening stacks of blueprints behind further alleviated some of your anxiety. It felt like a final confirmation that this was your one and only chance, and you weren't about to mess it up. Even as the building loomed over you casting a shadow of uncertainty, nothing could discourage your determination.

There was the remarkable sense that you didn't belong here, though it was a familiar sensation. One that persuaded you to tug the mask over your head before darting toward the edge of the car park. It was your belief that as long as you stuck to the outskirts of the facility, few would pay you any attention while you were out in the open. Therefore allowing you to manoeuvre into position and take the quickest passage straight to Liv's office. Which is exactly what you did.

The first stretch of the vent system was a straight drop, a narrow plunge that went on for longer than anticipated. Like a slide with no angle of inclination and a lot less fun. You hit the metal base with an ungraceful clang, certain that your legs would've buckled upon impact had it not been for the lack of space to do so. Overall an uncomfortable start. The remainder of the journey was a lot of crawling and muscle cramps, your only incentive being the occasional grate to peer down which reassured you that your destination was drawing nearer. Everything was going to plan.

Until you heard her.

Olivia's voice rung clear as if from a dream. It stood out from the general ruckus, initially leading you to believe you were hallucinating, that it was some kind of audible mirage. Yet you refocused your senses and it didn't go away. She was almost directly below you, separated simply by a thin layer of metal. With renewed ambition, you crawled toward the nearest grate as quickly and quietly as possible, frantically lowering your head to find the perfect angle, all just to catch a glimpse of her.

"What do you mean the program hasn't worked?" Liv pinched the bridge of her nose, her words laced with an an uncharacteristic anger. You'd never known her to be an irritable person, she loved her job and every challenge that came with it. Was she uptight? Sure. Passionate? Undeniably. But never angry.

"I've tried rerunning and rewriting parts of the code. And it just doesn't work!" Some poor employee (Mark, if you remembered correctly) was fighting for his dignity below. You could see he was flushing, wildly flailing his hands around as he tried to justify his mistake.

"You've rewritten part of it?!" She repeated, volume rising in frustration.

"I- I thought I knew how to fix it."

"I told you not to mess with my work." She growled, stepping closer.

"With all due respect," He didn't back down, clearly caught off guard and unsure how to deal with an irritated Liv. "it's actually Y/N's work."

Upon hearing your name, you ducked out of view as if you'd been seen. Although, it was evident that this was not the case, so slowly you edged forward to peer down at them once more.

Liv's face had dropped at the mention of your name. But by the time you'd settled back in place, anger was already seeping into her expression, then was suddenly smoothed into disturbingly sweet smile. "Well, Y/N isn't here anymore. So I suggest you keep your incompetent hands off of things you don't understand."

Judging by her vague wording, you guessed she hadn't told anyone the real reason you'd been fired. A fond appreciation flooded your mind. Despite everything that had happened, she still respected your secret enough to keep it. You begun to consider that maybe Liv cared about you as much as you did her. Why else would she lie on your behalf?

Mark muttered an ashamed. "Ok." Then left to try and atone for his mistake.

Liv stayed where she was for another minute before taking a deep breath, shaking off her annoyance, and setting a determined path. You assumed she was heading for her office and were about to follow, but then paused. Was this really the best time for a reunion? She obviously wasn't in the best mood, and if you had to guess, it was likely due to your betrayal. Was it too soon to reappear in her life? You'd arrived here with the intention to apologise and make amends, however, you had no idea how Liv would react or what would happen after. If there would even be an after. She could attack you on first sight for all you knew.

No. You'd come too far to turn around now. You continued along the vent before you could overthink the decision. It would be foolish to turn around now: the end was in sight, and rapidly growing closer.

Reaching the final grate, you were greeted with the familiar yet new aerial view of Liv's office. It'd remained mainly the same since your departure. She hadn't even bothered to remove your lab coat, which was still carelessly thrown over the chair you'd frequented everyday. And Liv herself hadn't changed much either, disregarding the seemingly permanent anger lines upon her face. She was sitting at her desk, head in hand, mindlessly flipping through a folder. It occurred to you at that moment that she didn't look irritated, rather sad. Another unexpected emotion for her to display.

After a minute, she sighed, tossing the papers to one side and bringing her other hand up to crash forward into. She looked defeated, seeing her this way felt wrong. You honestly preferred the anger because it showed she'd maintained at least some of her usual intensity.

You sighed. It was time to fix this. With unsteady hands you delicately unscrewed the bolts holding the grate in place, careful to make as little noise as possible. It was as you were removing the final screw that you realised something: you had no idea what to say to her. No planned speech or prepared apology, you'd resigned to hoping for a spontaneous burst of thoughtfulness in the moment. You sat there for a minute, fidgeting with one of the screws while attempting to come up with what you would say. Should you start by apologising for breaking in, or for lying to her, or for applying to the job in the first place? You had a lot of things to apologise for.

And unfortunately, the chance to think it through any further was taken from you as the screw slipped out of your hand. You gasped watching it fall, hitting the ground with an faint thud. Although quiet enough for most people to ignore, you knew Liv was too thorough to not investigate. And as expected, following your sharp intake of breath was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, then footsteps gradually approaching.

Liv appeared below you, bending down to inspect the screw before glancing up. Her eyes locked with yours through the mask and widened in shock.

"Hey." The casual tone to your voice sounded forced and you grimaced. But rather than dwelling on it, you dropped from the exposed hiding place and pulled off your mask. You smiled awkwardly, eyes scanning and overanalysing her reaction.

Liv stepped back to lean on the desk for support. Her mouth was agape, but otherwise her face was worryingly blank.

"If this is a bad time I can come back later."

Still no response. The room was drowning in a tense silence.

"Well, actually I probably can't come back." With no social cues to interact with, you began to ramble aimlessly. "I'm guessing you'll find a way to patch that particular security breach." You gestured up to the gap in the ceiling and laughed lightly. "Sorry about that. I didn't know how else to-"

You're cut off as Liv moves impossibly fast, grabbing your shoulders and shoving you backwards against the wall. A thousand different thoughts run through your mind at once, all wondering what she's about to do. The majority are focused on the possibility that she's going to hurt you in some way, although, even if she did have the intention to cause harm, you wouldn't fight back. You were tired of conflict, especially when it involved Liv.

She was standing close, breathing heavily and saying nothing. You couldn't help but let your eyes flicker down to her lips, the temptation to kiss her becoming increasingly vehement. So instead you forced your attention up to her eyes, which held an air of confusion.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was deep, full of unvoiced emotions.

You licked your lips, glancing at her mouth one last time. "I came here to apologise. I didn't mean for any of this to go so far."

"You're lying." She backed away slightly and you immediately missed the proximity.

"I'm not! I just-" You stuttered, then admitted in a quieter voice. "I never meant to hurt you."

She inhaled shakily and swallowed, your eyes tracing the movement of her throat. "And?"

"And because I care about you too much to let you think I did any of this on purpose." You lowered your head, her invasive glare becoming overwhelming.

Soft fingers firmly gripped your chin, compelling you to look up. Her eyes displayed distrust, confusion which you suddenly feel the need to wipe away. You wanted to make your affection for her clear, but found yourself annoyingly speechless. All the recurring thoughts and confined confessions that had been plaguing you for a week suddenly gone from your mind. You were infuriatingly at a loss for words. Although, the warmth of her fingers against your skin reminded you that actions speak louder than words.

You leant in slowly, giving her sufficient time to stop you. She didn't move so you kissed her lightly at first, searingly next. Your arm shifted to wrap around her back tentatively and she moaned faintly in response. Although, it wasn't until you allowed her to take control that any remaining anger dissipated. At that point the kiss became bruising, her hold on you tightening as a wave of shared desperation rolled over the both of you. Before the desperation could reach its peak, however, you separated from her.

Liv was almost panting, her cheeks tinged pink and hair a mess. She promptly attempted to kiss you again, though you dodged the advance and she whined. Her mouth latched onto your neck, sucking at the skin there.

Your head fell back against the wall, dizzy from lust. "Does this mean I can have my job back?" You quipped, running a hand through your hair.

"Depends." She murmured in between kisses. "Do you have anymore secrets?"

"None that I can think of." You smiled, the prospect of returning to what you'd come to consider as normality was an appealing one. Of course there were things you would need to work through with Liv, and many, many extra complications alongside having a relationship with your boss. But nothing easy was ever worthwhile, and Liv was living proof of that.

"Alright. You're hired."

#olivia octavius x reader

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ravenbrenna09 · 4 years

Text

Jij Verliest - Chapter Five: Clip 4

master list previous

...

Dinsdag 19:12

When Robbe had messaged Thomas about meeting up, he had chosen a restaurant as the location.

It was one of Thomas’s favorite restaurants near his apartment—and, to Robbe’s relief, within a few minutes walk from the train station. But it had also been the setting of a handful of their dates. For Thomas’s birthday, their six-month anniversary, and a few other occasions, they had celebrated here.

In typical Thomas fashion, he was late.

Robbe wasn’t surprised. In all honesty, he had done his best to prevent Thomas’s lateness. He had told Thomas an hour earlier than the time that Robbe and Jens actually arrived at the restaurant. But still, it was over an hour past the time—around the time that Thomas should be arriving—and he still wasn’t here. Even though there were at least three more trains, Robbe was nervous that they would somehow miss the last one.

But Robbe knew that Jens would drag him away before that happened.

“Robbe, quit it, you’re pacing,” Jens said. Pausing mid-stride, Robbe turned. Jens was leaning against the brick wall of the restaurant. The strap of his duffle bag was across his chest and the bag was wedged between him and the bricks. His hands were buried deep in his pockets. There was a concerned look on his face. “You okay?”

Robbe shook his head, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “No, not until this is over.”

Jens nodded, understanding written all over his features. He leaned back against the wall and let out a sigh. Robbe knew that Jens didn’t want to see Thomas—and, going a step further, didn’t want Robbe to see Thomas—but Robbe was thankful that Jens had come with him.

Even though Senne had offered, Robbe didn’t want to think about coming with him. If Robbe knew Senne as well as he thought he did, he would deck Thomas the second that Robbe was interrupted. As much as Robbe sometimes wanted to do it—especially recently—he didn’t want to see Senne in an intense match between lawyers for the next three months or more.

“Well,” Jens said, crossing his arms across his chest. “Hopefully, we won’t be here much longer and it will all be over soon.” When Robbe sent him a confused look, Jens nodded curtly in Robbe’s direction and announced with disdain, “Look who finally decided to show up.”

Robbe pivoted to find Thomas walking up to them. There was a confused look plastered on his face as he glanced between Robbe and Jens. Thomas was dressed in his typical work suit, this time a black one, with a bright purple tie wrapped around his neck. Robbe felt his eyes linger on the tie. He recognized it—how could he not; Robbe had bought it for Thomas—and Thomas only wore it on certain occasions. When he wanted something.

Thomas glanced over Robbe’s shoulder. “Hey, Jens.”

“Sup,” Jens said, popping the ‘p.’

Thomas nodded, turning to face Robbe completely. Even as the two of them stood in silence, staring at each other, Robbe could see the question forming deep in Thomas’s eyes. Before he could get the question out, Robbe pulled the silver watch from where he had buried it deep in his pocket. There was a moment where Thomas simply stared at it and Robbe bit down on his lip, trying to figure out what to say.

Letting out a steadying breath, Robbe held the piece of jewelry out to him. “Here,” Robbe said. “I told you that I didn’t want it.”

Thomas blinked. “And I told you to think about it.”

Robbe sighed. “I did. I still don’t want it.” He dropped the watch into Thomas’s waiting hand, making sure their skin didn’t touch in the process. Once the watch was gone, Robbe shoved his hands into his pockets and swayed on his feet. Thomas held the watch in his hands, gripping it tightly, and Robbe waited for the pin to drop.

It always happened.

The long stretch of silence that preceded an argument was familiar to Robbe. In the last few months of their relationship, Robbe had become strikingly aware of it and increased his efforts in avoiding it altogether. He would cater to Thomas’s every need, knowing that it was likely a stressful by-product of his apprenticeship, and put aside his own discomfort or problems to try and lift Thomas’s mood. It was exhausting, draining, and Robbe had burdened it all.

Not anymore.

“I don’t understand,” Thomas spoke up, pulling Robbe from his thoughts. Robbe blinked up at him, taking in the confused look on his face as he clung to the watch. “Why did you want to meet up in person if you were just going to give the watch back?”

“I wanted to meet in person…” Robbe trailed off, biting his lip. Robbe knew that he didn’t want to be together with Thomas anymore. Now that he knew the type of love that Sander gave, it was hard to want to go back to tense conversations and awkward silences. Robbe deserved better. He knew it. But that didn’t make the prospect of potentially breaking Thomas’s heart any easier.

Letting out a sigh, Robbe continued, “I wanted you to know that I mean it when I said I don’t want to get back together with you.”

Somewhere behind him, Jens made a surprised noise.

Thankfully, Thomas didn’t seem to hear him. For a second, he stared at Robbe, a confused and dazed look on his features. Once it slipped away, it was replaced with his lips turned up in a smile, borderline amused, as though it was all some big joke. Crossing his arms, Thomas asked, light-heartedly, “Why?”

Somehow, it roused the anger in Robbe’s stomach.

“Because it’s not fair!”

As soon as the words slipped from Robbe’s mouth, Thomas’s smile faltered and he opened his mouth to talk. But Robbe was speaking again before he had the chance. “You go and break up with me because you were unhappy. But then, you spend three months ‘moving on’ and you drag me around like some easy second option that you want just in case. Then I am finally able to move on and now you want to get back together again? It’s not fair, Thomas, and I’m sick of it. I don’t want a relationship with you anymore. End of story.”

Thomas stood in front of him, blinking wildly. Then he snickered and said, “Are you serious, Robbe? Is this because of that guy?” Robbe rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. “I saw you guys together on Friday. Come on, Robbe. You know as well as I do, nothing beats what we have.”

“Had,” Robbe corrected quickly.

“Huh?”

“Had,” Robbe said, emphasizing the word. “Whatever we had ended when you broke up with me, Thomas. You wanted to break up, not me. If there was a chance that you would change your mind, you shouldn’t have broken up with me in the first place.” Thomas’s face was twisted in shock—and maybe a little bit of anger. “And for the record, it has nothing to do with him. I’m choosing this for me. I don’t deserve to be dragged along and treated that way. Goodbye, Thomas.”

Robbe went to leave, grab Jens and haul ass to the train station. But he noticed Jens pushing himself up off the wall. In one slow motion moment, Jens grabbed Robbe by the wrist and pulled him behind his back, making Robbe stumble along the way. Once Robbe corrected his balance, he realized that Jens had blocked off Thomas, who had his arm held up, frozen in mid air.

Now, Thomas looked angry. “Move.”

“No,” Jens said. Unlike Thomas, who wore every emotion on his face, Jens masked his anger behind his chilled-out look. Their long years of friendship had allowed Robbe to pinpoint the microexpressions in his features. If Robbe had brought Senne, Thomas definitely would’ve been lying unconscious on the concrete by now. “Robbe said what he wanted to say. Goodbye, Thomas.”

Wrapping an arm around Robbe’s shoulder, Jens headed away from the restaurant and toward the train station. As they moved away, Robbe could hear Thomas’s footsteps. But it was his plea that made Robbe feel instantly guilty. “Come on, Robbe.”

Robbe stopped walking. For a second, Jens turned to him, a look of disbelief evident in his eyes. But Robbe swallowed the guilt in his throat and turned towards Thomas. While Thomas looked sad and beaten, like a dog that got scolded, Robbe could pinpoint the triumphant look buried in his eyes. It was a look Robbe was familiar with—even if he had been blind to it before. Thomas loved to feel the euphoric high of winning and Robbe was tired of playing his games.

Steeling his nerves, Robbe swallowed again before he managed to say, evenly, “If you show up at the flatshare again, I will call the cops on you. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore and I’m done looking over my shoulder.” Thomas simply stared at him, a defeated look on his face. It was as though Robbe had injured his being and the guilt manifested again. Swallowing it down, Robbe added, “Goodbye, Thomas.”

Leaving Thomas behind, defeated and in shock, Robbe marched on to the train station with Jens right behind him.

…

Dinsdag 19:25

As the two of them had marched away, Robbe was worried that Thomas was going to follow them, get on the train, and tag along on their vacation. Even after Robbe saw Thomas heading away from the restaurant, away from them, his stomach wouldn’t ease up and continued performing its makeshift dance against his insides. Once they got to the station, Robbe hoped the churning in his stomach would disappear or, at the very least, ease up. But it didn’t.

Even as Robbe settled down into the uncomfortable cushion of the train’s carriage, across from Jens, his stomach continued to turn. It increased in intensity as the seconds drew on, turning slowly into the minutes that followed. Robbe’s foot shook nervously as he stared out the window. He was searching for signs of Thomas, on the platform or obscured by the shadows, afraid that he would appear, unable to take no for an answer.

Jens was staring at him, but he kept quiet.

Once the doors locked and the train started to move, Robbe’s stomach tightened. As quick as it started, the surge of pain dissolved in his stomach, tingling behind his belly button. As the train pulled out of the station, and with no Thomas standing on the platform, Robbe sunk into his seat. His shoulders relaxed, releasing the weight that had been on his shoulders since Thomas showed up, and his body slumped into the soft cushion of the booth.

Robbe could’ve fallen asleep, but Jens kicked his foot, slightly jarring him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jens asked.

Robbe shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about Thomas,” Robbe said.

“Not about that,” Jens said, annoyed. Robbe glanced over at him, peeking through his eyelashes. The look of annoyance quickly turned into a knowing grin. “I’m talking about the guy Thomas mentioned. The one he saw you with on Friday. Is he the reason that you didn’t come to the party on Friday night?”

Robbe knew that he could lie about it. It would be easy to slip in a lie about how he went home to relax in the darkness of his bedroom or to recover from exams. But it would never work. Jens had known him far too long to fall for it. Even in moments where Robbe desperately wanted to be on his own, Jens would see through it. Sometimes, he would maintain his distance. Other times, he wouldn’t.

But Robbe didn’t want to lie to Jens.

Especially about Sander.

Avoiding Jens’ curious eyes, Robbe nodded. “Yeah, we met up after I finished my last exam,” he said. “Once we finished eating, we headed back to his apartment. We spent most of the evening playing video games and drinking beer.”

Jens chuckled. “Is this the guy that had you all smiley in the bar two weeks ago?”

Biting his lip, Robbe nodded and Jens grinned brightly with a knowing glint in his eye. “Yeah, it’s the same guy. Because of exams and studying, we hadn’t really had a chance to talk about him again,” Robbe said, shrugging. “Mostly, we’ve been texting because of the exams and stuff. But we hung out a couple of times between studying and stuff.”

“He makes you happy.”

It wasn’t a question.

It was a statement.

Feeling his cheeks darken a little, Robbe nodded.

Jens grinned. “Good. You deserve someone better than Thomas Martens.”

Rolling his eyes, Robbe leaned back into the cushion of his seat. He could hear Jens tapping away on his phone, likely texting Lucas—or his mom—that they had made it on the train. Letting out a breath to collect his nerves, Robbe added, “If I bring him around sometime next week, do you promise that you’ll go easy on him?”

Even with his eyes closed, Robbe could tell that Jens was smiling, “If he makes you happy like that, Robbe, you don’t have to worry about me not liking him.”

…

Dinsdag 20:04

Before he and Jens arrived at the beach house, Robbe could hear the familiar sound of Moyo’s music.

As Robbe and Jens approached the house, the rapping tones were turned up loud and booming with a bass that could shake the entire coast. Over the roof, Robbe could see a large wafting cloud of smoke descending closer and closer to the sky. As they headed to the house, Robbe spotted Jens sending him a knowing glance out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t the first time they had all been to the beach together before and somehow, it felt like nothing had changed.

Once they stepped around the corner and out of the shadows, they found all five of their companions surrounding the blazing fire. Moyo was talking with Kes, who had an arm thrown over Lucas’s shoulder without a care in the world. Across the fire, Aaron and Jayden were sharing a joint, holding s’mores in their free hands. At the sight of Jens and Robbe, they all shouted unintelligibly.

From his spot beside Kes, Lucas twisted out of his arm and leapt to his feet. Like the others, he was dressed in a short sleeve button-up shirt and a pair of shorts. Despite the minimum amount of lighting, he had a pair of sunglasses on the top of his head and nearly half of the buttons of his shirt were undone. Jens barely had a chance to observe his boyfriend’s appearance before their lips slotted together, quickly and briefly.

Robbe rolled his eyes, tossing his bag outside the door. “Really? Is it going to be like this all weekend?”

Once their lips disconnected, Jens sent him a ‘Try me’ look. As Kes and Moyo stood from the fire, leaving Aaron and Jayden with their s’mores, Lucas pulled Jens’ duffel bag from his shoulder. With one calculated toss, it landed on Robbe’s bag and tumbled off a few seconds later. Kes appeared over Lucas’s shoulder and Robbe welcomed Kes’s hug. Moyo patted Robbe’s shoulder and high-fived Jens over his head.

“How did it go with Thomas?” Lucas asked.

“As good as it could’ve gone,” Robbe said. Jens wrapped an arm around Lucas’s shoulder, pulling him against his chest. Robbe poked him in the shoulder. “You should’ve seen him. For a second, I thought that Jens was going to punch him.”

“Oh, really?” Lucas asked, turning to Jens, who shrugged.

“We managed to get to the station without him following us,” Jens said, ignoring Robbe’s comment. Lucas glanced over at Robbe, who raised his eyebrows. “About ten minutes into the train ride, Thomas started texting Robbe again, begging for his forgiveness and to give him a second chance.” Lucas rolled his eyes and Moyo scoffed. “Robbe only opened the messages to block him.”

Lucas turned to Robbe. “Do you think he’ll show up at the flatshare again?”

Robbe shrugged. “I don’t think so, but you never know. I told him I would call the cops if he showed up at the flatshare again. And I texted Milan and Zoë to let them know, so if he decided to show up, they would feel okay with actually doing it.”

“Good,” Lucas said. Aaron stepped in the spot between Jens and Robbe, nodding over to him.

“Yeah,” Kes spoke up. In the year Robbe had known him, he had never seen Kes look so serious. His smile was gone from his face and a protective look had replaced it. Jayden appeared over his shoulder, a joint hanging from his lips, and leaned against him. But Kes didn’t shift beneath his weight. “From what Luc’s told me, it basically seems like he’s been harassing you. You deserve better than someone who changes his mind.”

“Thanks, Kes.”

“It can only get better from here.”

“It’s too sad,” Aaron spoke up.

“Aaron.”

“No, I’m serious,” Aaron insisted. “We came to the beach to have a few days away after we finished finals! We are supposed to be having fun and here we are, talking about Robbe’s shitty ex who won’t leave him alone or listen to him. No offense.” Robbe nodded but made a point of rolling his eyes. Looking serious, Aaron pointed at all of them. “And you all know that I’m right.”

For a second, they were all quiet, standing in a circle outside the beach house. Robbe shifted his weight between his feet and Jens reached out to stabilize him, nearly smacking Aaron on the nose in the process. Then, Moyo grinned wolfishly from ear-to-ear. “I have an idea.”

“What?” Aaron asked.

Moyo grinned. “Sacrifice Robbe to the ocean!”

“What?!”

As quickly as he had shouted it, Moyo wrapped his arms around Robbe. His arms were pinned beneath Moyo’s surefire grip. Even though he was stuck, Robbe was still laughing. He tried to kick at his friends but Jens stepped forward, seizing one foot, then the other. He locked his ankles in place, wedged between his arm and his side. As Jens and Moyo lifted Robbe from the ground, Aaron grabbed at his knees to steady him and followed the path of his friends to the beach. Robbe struggled in their grasp, laughs escaping as he tried to wiggle free, and the other three trailed behind, laughing loudly.

Arriving at the edge of the water, Moyo and Jens stopped. The water lapped at their knees, soaking their shoes and the bottom of their pants. Swinging Robbe back and forth, the two of them counted down until they sent Robbe flying into the ocean water. They hadn’t thrown him far enough for it to be a deep drop, but Robbe was completely submerged. It didn’t take him long to surface, spinning around to find his friends.

Moyo was laughing loudly, beaming from ear-to-ear with the rest of their friends, and Robbe couldn’t blame him because his own cheeks hurt from laughing. However, it didn’t stop him from shooting the biggest wave of water towards him. Moyo yelped in surprise as Robbe waded out of the water. Once he was close enough, Robbe lunged toward Jens, climbing on his back and covering him with water, as Jens shouted in shock.

Later, after Robbe changed into a fresh pair of clothes and was in the midst of wringing out the excess seawater from the cloth, he realized that he hadn’t been the only one to go swimming. His phone had too. And it was absolutely ruined.

...

Dinsdag 22:34

#wtfock #wtfam #jij verliest fic #sobbe #sobbe fanfic #jij verliest #robbe ijzermans #sander driesen #rosander #twitch streamer!robbe #twitch streamer robbe #tattoo artist sander #tattoo artist!sander #multi clip #text: sander

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sti1es · 4 years

Text

Killing Stalking.... but make it steo. I read this manga in early 2017 and since its becoming popular again, i had the inspiration to write this. I don’t agree with a lot of the gross, disturbing stuff in the story - it’s a horror, not a romance, and i definitely don’t ship sangwoo and yoon. that’s why i changed a lot of the details in this fic, but the relationship in later chapters is going to get very, very, unhealthy. The abusive, toxic behaviours portrayed here should NEVER be considered okay in real life. SO MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR THAT!

•

Stiles watches silently as Theo’s truck leaves the driveway. He emerges from his hiding place - a corner of the garden, cast in shadow by looming trees - and checks the time. Based on Theo’s usual routine, he should be gone for at least a couple hours. That gives Stiles abundant time to inspect the house. If the other boy is keeping anything secret, a thorough search should make it evident. Something about knowing Theo’s habits weirds Stiles out a little. He’s becoming quite the stalker. His intentions are good, though, and the police do it all the time, so he concludes that this is normal and not a result of incessant paranoia.

Casually, Stiles treads through neatly trimmed grass and stands in front of the door. It’s a decently sized home, the suburban dream for any nuclear family. Everything, down to the wooden planks of the porch and popcorn textured walls, is perfect - which is exactly why Stiles doesn’t trust it. Theo arrived like a miracle. A clever, charming, strong werewolf; the ideal pack mate. He’s buried his past deep underground, and Stiles is determined to uproot it.

He punches the security code into an electronic lock. 270804. At first, these were just meaningless numbers Stiles caught a glimpse of Theo entering, but after looking through medical records, researching family history, and overall obsessively indulging himself into this case, Stiles realised what it was. The date of Tara Raeken’s death.

Pushing aside whatever embarrassment would ensue if he were wrong about Theo, as well as the general fear of being caught, Stiles turns the door handle experimentally. The keypad chimes, a melodic buzz which enables Stiles to finally fucking breathe. He shoves the door open completely, a newfound rush of adrenaline and excitement clouding his mind, before entering the house.

It’s... normal. The entrance is decorated with antique furniature and various knickknacks. Picture frames line the walls, some depicting Theo and Tara, but none his whole family. The ones containing his parents look newer. Their smiles look strained, and Stiles could’ve sworn Ms. Raeken didn’t have dimples before. Him and Theo used to hang out after school a lot, and Ms. Raeken would always come pick her son up. The photos of her that adorn this interior just seem... different. Off. Before Stiles has the chance to contemplate any further, he’s distracted by a noise coming from downstairs. At the end of the hall, there’s a door - presumably leading to the basement - which has been left slightly ajar. A strange, muffled slapping sound travels through it.

Stiles’s heart beat spikes. He knew something was off about Theo, but to be presented something so obviously suspicious seems... well, suspicious. He quickly crosses the corridor and flicks on the light at the end of it. The basement is illuminated, which causes the slapping to increase. His stomach turns at the idea of something sentinent and scared being down there. Whatever shit Theo is hiding may be a lot more disturbing than he prepared for.

Swallowing nervously, Stiles decends the staircase and his worst fears are immediately confirmed. A girl lies on the cold floor, naked and tied up. Her wrists and ankles are bound, and a gag has been painfully jammed into her mouth. The source of the slapping was her legs beating against the concrete, most likely a frantic signal for a potential rescuer’s attention.

This has to be a joke. There’s no way Theo is this fucking sick. To kidnap someone is one thing, but to humilate them and leave them in this scared state was a level of cruelty Stiles finds difficult to imagine. He races downwards, and instantly recognises the terrified captive’s face. This is Tracy Stewart. Her photos have been plastered all over the news ever since she went missing a couple weeks ago. Stiles feels his gut twist in horror and disgust. There’s no goddamn way this is happening. It’s ironic, really, the fact that he was expecting to find something incriminating but can hardly believe it when he does.

Tracy’s struggles become even more desperate at this glimpse of salvation. Her eyes widen, and she starts shouting through the gag.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry... I-I’m gonna get you out of here. You’re safe,” Stiles begins to undo the ropes which restrain her hands, but the knot won’t give. Why the hell did Theo have to be so cautious? The thought of what he’s done to poor Tracy so far turns Stiles’s attempts to free her even more rapid. He picks at the rope with his nails, a fruitless attempt, really. As his frustration rises, he resorts to picking Tracy up in the state she’s in. He’d much rather get the hell out of here as fast as possible. Stiles places his hand under her knees, and goes to wrap his arm around her shoulders, when she starts to violently trash. He drops her instantly, worried that he provoked one of her potential injuries. But the thrashing continues, and she’s screaming around the cloth in her mouth. Stiles’s heart sinks as he realises her eyes aren’t focused on him.

They’re fixed behind his head.

He jerks around wildly, and sure enough, standing in the doorway is Theo Raeken. His eyes are narrowed in annoyance and his lips are quirked in a dark smirk. Fuck. Stiles feels like a caged animal, cornered by a predator that could easily overpower him.

“You’re smart, Stiles,” He chuckles, like this is all a twisted game. To Theo, it probably is. “You just aren’t smarter than me”.

Shit. Stiles’s mind is moving at a mile a minute, trying to think of any possible escape. There isn’t one. But he’s been through worse than a teenage werewolf. He can get through this. He has to.

Still, his heart is gripped by fear. He feels like there’s fingers at his neck, squeezing, constricting his oxygen until he’s gasping for breath. Breathe. Breathe. He stands no chance against Theo if he has a panic attack.

Then again, does he stand a chance in the first place?

Theo dawdles down the stairs, slowly dropping his feet in front of him, one step after another. Stiles’s lungs are on fire. His ribs are being crushed. Breathe. Breathe. You can trick him. Run past him. Just get a fucking grip.

“You really thought I wouldn’t notice-” Theo’s barely ten feet away, “That you’ve been following me?” He laughs humourlessly once again. “It’s funny how I considered stalking you, but you took it upon yourself to waltz right into the lion’s den with no help.”

Stiles barely register’s Theo’s words as the human lunges forward, past his legs. Caught off guard, Theo doesn’t have time to grab him as he practically scrambles up the stairs. But of-fucking-course Stiles has to look back, and when his eyes meet Tracy’s, he freezes to the spot. He can’t just leave her here.

That gives Theo’s reflexes ample time to set in. He makes a grab for Stiles’s hoodie sleeve and shoves him backwards. The brunet would’ve been grappling at the air if he had time to. Instead, he simply falls all the way down the stairs, back to the basement floor. Instead of everything occurring in the typical slow-mo montage they show in cliche movies, the moment passed so fast Stiles couldn’t even register it. One second he was almost free, the next he was lying on hard, cold stone, his head and legs throbbing. The human supposes he broke his legs. They’re mostly numb, but twisted grotesquely. He’s never been so thankful about nerve damage in his life. The real issue is his slowly blurring vision. He wants to throw up - from fear or pain, he doesn’t know.

“You’re the sheriff’s son,” Theo drawls, stupidly calm for a situation where Stiles feels as though he’s being drowned in anxiety. “So you surely understand why I can’t have any witnesses.”

“Why are you doing this?” He blurts out. “You’re killing her, and you’re gonna kill me too? At least have some sort of motive, serial murderers who ‘do it for the thrill’ are becoming pretty old.”

If there’s one thing Stiles learnt during his years of engtanglement with supernatural enemies, it’s that distraction buys you time. No matter how scared you are, a simple quip or provoking remark works wonders for stalling. All he has to do is snark Theo until the werewolf gets bored, or agitated, or anything else that buys him a bit of time. Stiles’s heart jumps against his ribcage as he glares at Theo as heatedly as possible, trying to conceal his trembling hands.

“You think I don’t have any motives?” Theo scoffs, clearly falling for Stiles’s blow to his ego. “Her father is a pretty powerful man. A lawyer who tried to get me thrown in fucking prison. This is his payback,” The werewolf shrugs, but Stiles doesn’t miss the edge of anger in his voice. He strides forward, then curls a hand around Stiles’s chin. The teen’s head is jerked upwards, so he’s forced to stare into cold, evil blue eyes. “And you’re going to rat me out to your daddy. Simple as that. There isn’t enough space in this basement for both of you.”

“So you’re a butthurt little boy who has to take his emotions out on defenesless humans?” Stiles grits out, and Theo’s grip on his chin tightens, “- real classy.”

That’s when Theo snaps. He backhands him across the faсe.

Stiles attempts to crawl away, his cheek stinging with what’s probably a fresh bruise. He pushes up against the ground, only to find that his knees buckle when he stands. So he was right about the broken legs. Normally, falling down the stairs wouldn’t injure someone this badly, but with the forceful thrust of a werewolf’s supernatural strength? Stiles doesn’t doubt it. Though his limbs are far too damaged to hurt, the mere pressure being put onto his bones makes him feel like he’s folding in on himself.

Stiles is helpless. He might as well be restrained like Tracy, it wouldn’t make a difference. Theo sighs in a way that conveys amusement, as though he’s watching a newborn deer struggle to walk. I’m gonna die.

What will his dad think when he doesn’t return home? What will his friends think? Scott, Malia, Lydia - Stiles will never see them again. His chest aches with the thought of Theo carrying through with whatever plans he has for the pack. All he can do is hope that his disappearance makes them suspicious enough not to trust the werewolf.

Theo hovers over him, face darkened by shadows in a threatening contrast against the blaring ceiling lights above. He crouches down, pressing his knees deliberately against Stiles’s legs in a way that makes the human cry out. He catches a glimpse of Tracy: she has tears running down her face, but looks somewhat resigned... as if Stiles is already dead. Theo clutches the brunet’s wrists and pins them to either side of his head. “If you’re planning on killing me, better do it quick. You wouldn’t want to be late for school,” the image of Theo’s charming smile, forever deceiving, lingers in his mind’s eye. A wave of annoyance washes over him, and he kicks upwards with the last of his rapidly draining perseverance. Theo doesn’t even budge.

The werewolf leans down, his breath ghosting over Stiles’s ear. “Kill you? Honestly, when this is over, you’ll be wishing I did.”

Everything goes black, but before he loses consciousness, Stiles is sure he caught a glimpse of a silver metal hammer.

#steo #idk i kinda feel uncomfy writing this kinda stuff bc im worried yall might have trauma similar to it #please tell me if you think its not okay!!#its meant to develop into something stockholme syndromy #since thats what happens in the original and it feels like it fits with both their characters #also #i refer to theo as a werewolf bc its from stiles’s perspective #and he hasnt found out about chimeras yet

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flightfoot · 3 years

Text

Scarlet Fever analysis 3 - Luka

AO3

Note: This analysis contains spoilers for all of Scarlet Fever by @chronicallylatetotheparty. I advise you read that first if you don’t want to get spoiled.

------

I was really surprised when I reread Scarlet Fever and realized that Luka actually has a pretty compelling character arc playing out in the background - or at least the potential for one, though it’s hindered by only having snippets of his POV, which limits how much the reader can get in his head and see exactly how his thoughts and opinions change with the events of the book.

First of all, having him fall victim to the dust was a genius move. (The dust in general was, really). One of the issues with Luka canonically is how little he expresses negative emotions, even when it would make sense to feel upset, sad, or angry. By coating him with Princess Justice’s dust Loganlight gave an excuse for why Luka would show more emotion, be more free with what he really thought without negating his prior characterization in canon.

He starts out shocked and upset that Marinette of all people got akumatized, wanting desperately to know what could have gotten her so upset that she couldn’t fend off an akuma.

"He didn't tell me," Luka corrected, staring with watery eyes at the Guardian. "Marinette did. I don't know who you are but apparently you're in charge. So, tell me what happened that would make Marinette of all people fall victim to Papillon's akuma!" He barely restrained himself from shouting. (Chapter 6)

Adrien volunteers the reason, at least as he sees it.

"I thought if she didn't antagonize Lila she'd be fine. Th-that Marinette would be safe. I-I thought... that if you didn't draw attention to yourself... They wouldn't- They wouldn't-" He couldn't say anything he didn't think was true. It bubbled up from where he'd pushed it down. "They wouldn't hurt you!" he finished in a rush. "I thought Lila was like Father... If I don't disappoint him... he doesn't punish me... If Marinette didn't... I thought she'd be safe. I thought Marinette would be safe. I d-didn't want Lila to come after Marinette if she was akumatized. I... I told h-her not to s-say anything..." (Chapter 6)

Adrien’s actions make a lot of sense, considering the angle he’s approaching from, especially since he didn’t know that Lila had threatened Marinette before this. But he still feels absolutely TERRIBLE about what happened, since well… Marinette ended up getting hurt.

Luka’s furious and actually makes to punch Adrien, though others do intervene and he thinks better of it.

Here, he thinks the worst of Adrien that he ever has. He liked Adrien before, even thought of him as a friend (albeit not a particularly close one), but now? Right now he’s thinking of him as being a coward who through his actions got Marinette hurt.

Which is an understandable perspective, but not really a fair one. Especially since Adrien explained why he did what he did. But while Luka has been told why Adrien gave the advice he did, he doesn’t truly UNDERSTAND it - not yet.

The conversation he has with Kagami after Adrien leaves the room is particularly important, as it’s the start of his change in perspective.

Luka kept silent as Kagami kept her back to him. He needed to control himself but his rage flared up and... "I thought Marinette was your friend?"

"She is," Kagami confirmed. She felt her emotions surge forth despite her efforts and wondered if this was another effect of the dust. "So is Adrien."

"He hurt her!" Luka snapped.

"No, Lila did," Kagami corrected.

"How can you defend him?" He asked.

"How can you condemn him?" She countered.

"Just because he didn't have the guts to talk back to his old man-"

"I envy the people who have never been afraid of disagreeing with their parent."

"Everyone fights."

"Yes." Kagami hissed. "But not everyone is afraid of being placed under house arrest for voicing the wrong opinion. Not everyone worries the next less-than-perfect grade will result in their limited freedom being restricted! Not everyone needs an appointment to have a conversation with their own-" She cut herself off and took deep breaths to calm herself. (Chapter 6)

Luka’s still thinking of this as if HE was in the position Adrien was. If he told Anarka off, it’s doubtful that anything bad would happen to either himself or anyone he cared about as a consequence. If Luka’d been the one giving that advice, his reasoning would had to have been different because he doesn’t have to fear punishment the way Adrien does, and in his mind standing up to a parent, fighting with a parent, isn’t that big a deal, because for Luka it isn’t.

But Kagami takes the first step in breaking him out of that perspective, in opening his eyes to the fact that a lot of people, including herself and Adrien, don’t have such understanding parents, to check his privilege in that regard.

When Luka and Adrien meet up after they’ve both had chances to calm down, Luka’s still upset, but he’s calmer.

Adrien cleared his throat. "I... When Lila came back to school. I asked her to stop lying. She was akumatized immediately and the first thing she did was go after me. I didn't want the same thing to happen to Marinette... That's why I told her not to say anything." He turned his gaze to Sabine. "I was trying... to protect her the best way I knew how."

"You still could've said something to your friends," Luka muttered before he could restrain himself.

"Yes, thank you, Luka. I hadn't thought of that. Not like I've been beating myself up about it or anything," he snapped. (Chapter 6)

Luka has a point. It IS possible that this might’ve been avoided if Adrien had quietly talked to his friends about the Lila situation. Though they might not have been persuaded then either, not without firmer evidence to support his conviction that Lila was out-and-out lying. And that was the only thing he knew she was doing wrong; just that she was being untruthful, not that she was doing anything particularly malicious (not that he could say without sounding like he was blaming someone for getting akumatized at any rate).

In any case, they bury the hatchet for now and concentrate on solving the problem at hand: restoring Marinette back to her old self.

Their plans are thrown for a loop though when Gorizilla attacks, leading to a similar situation as the first time he attacked, with Adrien falling to the ground, unable to transform for fear of his identity being outed.

Adrien tumbled through the air, approaching the ground at breakneck speed. He resisted the urge to call for his transformation where the akumatized could see him. The unyielding concrete raced closer and-

A cyan blur caught Adrien before he hit the pavement. He quickly wrapped his arms around his rescuer. "... Please tell me you didn't use Second Chance?"

Viperion merely gripped him tighter.

Adrien swallowed. "Oh... I really hate dying."

Viperion landed on a rooftop and set Adrien down behind a chimney. "... Then why do you keep trading yourself for Ladybug?"

Adrien wasn't sure why the question irritated him so much. "I don't 'trade myself' for Ladybug. I 'trade myself' for Paris." (Chapter 7)

I really wish we had Luka’s perspective here, especially with him being the only person who experienced the earlier timeline before the Second Chance, the one where Adrien rammed into the sidewalk.

Luka’d just chastised him for supposedly being a coward, for not doing more for Marinette… and then almost immediately afterwards witnessed him die brutally in order to keep his secret, even though he had a chance to save himself, even though he was terrified. It serves as a stark reminder that NO, Adrien is definitely NOT a coward.

Side note: Luka really needs therapy after seeing that. That should really be mandatory for Snake users in general.

The bit about Adrien being annoyed with Luka saying he trades himself for Ladybug was a nice insight as well. Luka keeps on thinking of everything in terms of what Adrien can do for Marinette, for Ladybug - and to be fair Adrien DOES care about her a lot.

But he’s also a hero in his own right, and not everything he does is solely motivated by her. Nor does he only have value because of what he can do for Ladybug; as Chat Noir, one of his roles may be to protect her at all costs, but that doesn’t make him any less a Hero of Paris than Ladybug is.

I think this is another important perspective check for Luka. I mean, he asked Adrien why he keeps trading himself for Ladybug if he hates dying so much. It seems like he wasn’t really thinking about it in terms of it being a necessary thing that Chat does, but was thinking of it as more as just a duty, one that he wouldn’t be troubled by nor that deserves a second thought.

Which isn’t too different from earlier, with how Luka was thinking almost entirely in terms of the ultimate outcome of Lila’s efforts against Marinette, blaming Adrien without really thinking about what HE was going through.

But after seeing Adrien plummet to the ground and die, after holding him in his arms and seeing and hearing how Adrien’s scared of the prospect yet will do so willingly anyway, Luka would recalibrate his worldview I think.

Before he was just thinking of Adrien as existing for Marinette’s sake, was frustrated when he was afraid of putting himself in danger.

Now he seems to truly realize the kind of pain and suffering he goes through, puts himself through, and that it’s not something to just write off as Chat being a sacrifice, that… that he’s a person, a KID who’s scared and does it anyway.

That he needs to put himself in Adrien’s head more, to think about his emotional state, that he’s had it just as rough, even rougher, than Marinette has.

And then Luka finds out who Adrien’s father - the man he’d initially castigated Adrien for being afraid to go up against, who’d been the reason why Adrien thought it would be safer for Marinette to leave Lila alone rather than to go after her, because that’s how he’s survived living with his father - he finds out who he REALLY is.

That he’s more of a threat, a danger, than he’d ever imagined - that he was in fact the ultimate CAUSE of Marinette being akumatized, which was the event that caused him to be so pissed at Adrien in the first place.

Now Luka doesn’t actually get to react that much to the revelation - everyone else in the room, from Sabine to Nino to Kagami to Adrien, have closer ties to Adrien and more insight into just how horrible this revelation makes Gabriel, than he does.

But any conception that Adrien is in any way a coward or unreasonable for keeping his head down around his father? For fearing him, and carrying that fear, those survival mechanisms to other, at least vaguely similar situations? Would be gone now. It’s fortunate that Adrien’s managed as well as he has, with the situation he’s in.

And just to twist the screws, Viperion gets a taste of Princess Justice’s whip later on, forcing him to FEEL just what Adrien (along with many others) were feeling, as if he needed anything more to cement that Adrien’s feeling were valid, that they MATTERED.

Pain!

So much pain Viperion fell to his knees.

Despair sapped the conviction from his heart. Jealousy clouded his reason. Shame burned him!

Luka curled into a ball.

Not good enough! The emotions screeched. Never good enough!

A torrent of confusion, heartbreak and longing came from Marinette. Concern for him, suffocating and pervasive, rose from Juleka and his maman. Disappointment and anger, Kagami's, cut like her blade. Self-deprecation, self-doubt, self-loathing roared over the others from Adrien.

How does he stand it!?

Love and admiration and joy also surged forth with the waves of their feeling.

But they gave Luka no reprieve; merely added to the chaos of so many people weighing down on him.

Viperion clutched his head as the foreign sensations flooded him. (Chapter 11)

On top of feeling what Adrien’s going through, he later found out what had happened after he was incapacitated: that even though Adrien was struck with the whip too, even though Adrien’s got so much emotional baggage, so much trauma already - heck, maybe even BECAUSE he’s been through so much trauma that he’s used to it - Adrien STILL fights through it, defeating his father and saving his partner.

Luka ends up giving an acknowledgement of his misjudgement of Adrien in the understatement of the century:

"... My bro's really good at seeing the best in other people." It's himself Adrien has trouble with. "But hey, if I have to remind him how awesome he is every now and then that's cool." Nino shrugged with his arms. Helping out his bro wasn't a big deal.

"He's... more complicated than I thought." Luka felt embarrassment color his cheeks. (Chapter 15)

More privately he admitted that how he’d acted with Adrien right after finding out about Marinette’s akumatization was wrong.

Luka tried not to look at Marinette's hurt expression. Focusing instead on the approving look Kagami gave him... When did Kagami's opinion become important to him? Probably when she pointed out you were being a jerk. (Chapter 15)

I also appreciated a few smaller snippets of Luka’s character that slipped in, like Luka centering himself after he got upset with Adrien near the beginning, as if he’d had to do that many times before and was used to having to get himself under control (though usually doing that wasn’t so hard, since he wasn’t usually under the effects of an akuma), or in the last chapter, when he forces himself to think about what’s best for HIM, rather than what he thinks other people want - something that he’s evidently not used to.

Luka bit his lip, fingers itching for strings to play. Did he want this? Helping out a few times was different than a full time commitment. He looked at Marinette. Even the best of them could be overwhelmed.

He shook his head, attempting to clear it. Marinette said they could think on it. Did he want to do this for himself or for Marinette? That's what he needed to know. "Let me get back to you."

Spotting Kagami's elbow coming for his ribs Luka moved out of range. "It's a lot to process! I, um, need to decide for me." (Chapter 15)

I’m wondering whether this plays into how he seemed to think of Adrien as just existing as Marinette’s support before, without considering Adrien’s own mindset or feelings, because that’s the role that Luka usually occupies - a mindset that Kagami’s trying to help him to break out of.

Luka’s worldview seems to have expanded and turned on its head many times over the course of the story, and I just think it’s an impressive little character arc with a lot of potential, even with it being a fairly minor plotline running in the background.

#scarlet fever #luka couffaine #ml fanfic analysis

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burn-in-the-dawn · 3 years

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"CURSED" Characters' Age Breakdown (per the book)

Squirrel: 10 years old

Iris: 11 years old

Pym: 16

Nimue: 16

Gawain: 23 (see discussion below)

Uther Pendragon: 26

Arthur: age unspecified, likely 25-26 (see discussion below)

Lancelot: age unspecified, presumably same age range as Gawain & Arthur & Uther (to be discussed in more detail at a later date)

Morgana: age unspecified, likely 21-24 (she's stated in the book by Arthur to be 2 years younger than him, but he's an unreliable narrator about his past so that might be unreliable as well...see discussion below)

DISCUSSION/Explanation of Questionable and/or Speculated Ages

Gawain: Okay, so, the book expressly states him to be "7 years older" than Nimue & have left Dewdenn "at age 14", specifying his departure as having been 9 years before the story itself takes place (Nimue is confirmed several times in the book to be 16 - almost 17). And despite the fact that actor Matt Stokoe (29-30 at time of filming) does not pull off passing for early-mid 20s the way his costars do (IRL he's a few years younger than Daniel Sharman who played The Weeping Monk / Lancelot & only two years older than Devon Terrell who played Arthur), that's something I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on & mentally compartmentalize as "world-weariness & war have taken a toll & 'aged' him beyond his years". In part because, looking back at some of his roles several years ago, the actor looked damn near 30 when he was 23. My own ex looked at age 24 (when I met him) older than Stokoe does now, I've got a friend who looked mid-30s at age 19, I have old photos of my mother at age 13 where she looked completely indistinguishable from her wedding pictures at 23 or her nursing school graduation pictures at 27 & I myself was consistently mistaken for my mid-20s by the time I was 14. The classic "Gawain" hairstyle also does him no favors; there's a scene very early on in his introduction, when he & Nimue are alone in one of the caverns discussing the Sword & Merlin, where he's freshly clean shaven with his hair pulled back away from his face in a ponytail & while he still doesn't look 23 he does look considerably younger than in any other scene in the series. (I genuinely think that production was just kind of oblivious - with 34 year old Daniel Sharman so easily passing for a decade younger - to the fact Matt Stokoe was not 'reading' early-mid 20s the way his costars do). But more pointedly, in the context of 'Cursed', Arthur's fear of loosing Nimue to Gawain is played out only as jealousy directed at a perceived rival for her affection. Regardless of which one's responses & behaviors to other situations present as mature vs childish, they very expressly interact with eachother behaviorally as rivals & contemporaries, NOT like a youth vs an older adult (in fact, Gawain behaves markedly immaturely around/toward Arthur - on pretty much every level - up until Moycraig). They even choreographed the majority of Gawain's/Arthur's postures & movements to mirror eachother from their 2nd scene together onward, to draw a cinematic visual parallel between them from the very beginning. I think if Gawain being considerably older had been an intentional/conscious change on the part of the show, the dynamic of their relationship wouldn't have been staged so specifically to mirror eachother to such an extent.

Arthur: Now, that being said, even though the book doesn't specify I strongly suspect book-Arthur himself to be canonically no younger than 25. Reason being, in the Arthuriana Tradition, Arthur unknowingly being a Pendragon bastard or secret offspring is one of the single most consistent themes throughout centuries of varying lore, hand in hand with the magic Sword, for his claim to the throne. And the book does have him expressly introduce Morgana as his younger half-sister, which not only suggests same mother with different father but also that despite Arthur having been raised by him they know he's not biologically Sir Tor's (although Arthur thinks of him as such). Now, 'Cursed' is obviously forgoing the traditional lore of Arthur being Uther's illegitimate son, because no matter how you slice it Uther's too young to have fathered him even if you aged show-Uther up a decade+ from the book's specified 26 years old & aged Arthur down a bit. But beyond that, they've thrown in the added touch of Uther himself - having been secretly switched at birth for Queen Lunette's still-born son - not in fact being the previous king's true-born heir. Once the Sword passes eventually to Arthur, even with legends about "he who wields the sword will be the true king", Man Blood society will require more than prophecy to recognize/legitimize a his rulership. Though strictly speculation, if I had to make a prediction about Book/Season 2, it would be on Merlin or someone else uncovering evidence that Arthur's actually the previous king's illegitimate biological son rather than his "father" Sir Tor's - conceived shortly before the old king's death sometime during Queen Lunette's pregnancy - at a guess that evidence coming from either Arthur's aunt or uncle. I figure that evidence will wind up being publicly recognized/acknowledged as part of the climax of a redemption/growth arch for Uther, naming Arthur his "brother/heir", prior to his own death - giving Arthur a legitimate claim on the Pendragon throne that supercedes Cumber's claim as a Pendragon cousin. If I'm right in that prediction, since the old King had died by the time Uther was born, Arthur can be no more than 9 months younger than 26 year old Uther, making him at least 25. (It's debated within the fandom that he doesn't look or act like the character is out of his late teens, but considering the actor himself is 28, I'm really not sure how that's defined? Appearance-wise he's got more chest hair on display with his doublet on than Lancelot does with shirt off & his immature avoidance of responsibility seems from the book to be more reflective of subconsciously modeling Tor's example than an age indicator but he's old enough he's spent several years already as a sword-for-hire mercenary. So, while I do allow my theory in his parentage & age is speculation which Book/Season 2 may prive me completely wrong able - not ratified canon - I do stand by that theory for my fic-verse; how old someone "looks" is really subjective & debatable, plus if "maturity level" was meant to be any kind of concrete age indicator in the Cursed-verse then King Uther wouldn't spend the entire series & book acting like a spoiled 6 year old.)

[The following doesn't change anything about how old I think Arthur himself is, but creates some potential flexibility regarding Morgana's age: When Arthur's reflecting on memories of childhood - even via internal monolog - he's consistently inconsistent regarding what age he claims to have been for key noted childhood events (at one point in his thoughts he recalls being 16 with his living mother away tending to a sick relative when Tor died, but later on in the book he reflects that he'd been 10 when Morgana was sent away to Yvoire Convent after he inherited all of Sir Tor's debt with presumably no living mother around to prevent it; alternatively, the show specified he was age 12 when Tor died & Morgana was sent away). At first I thought it was a total screw-up in the writing, but then I reread Morgana's repeated characterization of him as inconsistent & flighty & self-serving & utterly full of shit, paired with Arthur's own characterization of Tor (who again, I don't think was his biological father but was certainly his most formative male role-model) as quite literally talking out of his ass about his imaginary exploits pretty much 100% of the time & Arthur himself repeatedly bending the truth to get what he wants as an ingrained survival habit consistently seen via interaction with people like Bors & Druuna. Again, this is purely speculation, but I think it his written contradictory self-reflections were probably very much on purpose to intentionally establish him as a starting off a significantly "unreliable narrator" the same way he recalls Tor being, to the point of lying to himself rather than deal with painful memories or take accountability/responsibility for uncomfortable personal flaws & faults. I suspect that him overcoming that tendency that he learned from Tor's example - with actions like admitting to Nimue he was in the wrong going after the first man he ever killed (mistakenly believing him to be one of those responsible for Tor's death) shaming his father's memory & like coming back to fight with/for the Fey - are going to be a driving feature within his growth/redemption arch in Book/Season 2.]

Morgana: The book specifies Arthur telling Nimue that Morgana is 2 years his junior; however, he establishes himself as such an unreliable narrator that I feel like anything he says about him & Morgana that's not directly corroborated by Morgana herself is suspect, even their age difference, so I'll allow for the possibility of the age gap potentially being up to 4 years instead of 2. If my guess (see above) about Arthur's paternity - therefore his age - is correct, that puts Morgana herself somewhere between 21 -24. Per societal norms of the period, that actually puts her into "old maid" territory, but contextually to the historical era, she would have been able to get away with dodging societal pressure of being married off against her wishes by that age - up until leaving the abbey at least - because of having been at convent (in contrast to 16 year old Pym, who in both the book & the show says her mother's trying to force her into an unwanted marriage to "Stinky Aaron" the human fish-wife's son).

(note: I compiled this mostly as a quick reference citation I can direct myself or my fic readers back to for my 'canon' logic on the ages I've assigned characters in my stories. I went with the ages listed in the book for my fic-verse because of the express lack of clarification of most of them given in the show & am speculating on the others based on lore-related theory, so yes the potentially problematic age difference is present. I don't intend to villainize Arthur over having pursued her, partially because even though the readers know she's 16 there's nothing in the book & only one brief comment from Gawain in the show which isn't followed up on - Ector calling her a child doesn't count because he dismisses all of them as children - to indicate that Arthur knows she's that young & many contextual reasons for him to have assumed she was older. I apologize if that offends, but it's not meant as an endorsement of it; as the story outline/concept for this fic-verse stands I have no plans on romantically pairing Nimue with anyone & no plans for Pym so soon after Dof's death to be seriously looking at anyone in that capacity until much later in the story.)

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actuallyrandomperson · 5 years

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Alternate theory to Virgil being a Dark Side.

Virgil clearly has a history with Deceit- we’ve seen that through their interactions with each other in various videos. But the theory that this means Virgil was/is a Dark Side has never sat right with me, and the release of Selfishness vs Selflessness (combined with the information in previous vids) lead me to a new theory.

To begin with, Romans line in Accepting Anxiety of “you’re nothing compared to the others” initially seemed to suggest he knew Virgil was a Dark Side (aka ‘you’re nothing compared to the other Dark Sides, you have positive aspects that I am now aware of’). However, in Selfishness vs Selflessness, Deceit implies Virgil’s hiding something from everybody, not just Thomas, through the line “So you’ve never been reluctant to share anything with the group, then”. Because of this, I believe Roman was more going ‘hey, at least you’re not a Dark Side lol those guys suck and even though you're not my favourite side I prefer you over those four.’

But what would Virgil be hiding then? My belief is that each ‘good’ side has the potential within them to ‘go dark’, and that Virgil was approached by Deceit and the other Dark Sides at some point before Accepting Anxiety.

Thomas has said/implied in previous videos that he does not have an anxiety disorder (mostly in Accepting Anxiety when he’s talking about the Yerkes-Dodson curve), and that instead his anxiety is just ‘a little heightened’. However, although certain people have a genetic predisposition towards mental illness, it is possible for everyone to develop one, and I believe that if Virgil ‘went dark’ this would manifest in an anxiety disorder.

In this version of events, Deceit approaches Virgil back near the beginning, when he was less accepted by the group. He does what he does best, and lies to Virgil in an attempt to sway him, by telling him that going dark means having more control, and that the others will never accept him so going dark will just show them that they should’ve treated him better.

Initially Virgil considers it, but is hesitant as he’s developing a more positive relationship with Patton and Logan, and even though Roman is still pretty against him, Virgil has had at least one decent moment with him (at the end of The Dark Side of Disney). He eventually declines the offer, and Deceit/the as yet unknown Dark Sides flip out on him, acting aggressive and telling him that it doesn’t matter because he’s basically dark anyway.

He believes this, especially since it took the rest of the sides so long to warm up to him in the beginning, and pulls back from the group completely. We see the after effects of this in Accepting Anxiety, but the others manage to show him that although he seems negative he isn’t a Dark Side.

Now, this brings about other interesting ideas as well. One of the major issues I’ve had with the ‘Virgil is a Dark Side’ theory is that he’s not really the ‘opposite’ of any of the sides. Most people cast him as the Dark Side of Roman, but him and Roman are ‘opposites’ in the way Logan and Patton are, not in the way Patton and Deceit are.

But the possibility of each of the ‘good’ sides ‘going dark’ means there are 2 Dark Sides for each ‘good’ side, the one currently in existence and the one that the ‘good’ side has the potential to turn into.

For Patton, I believe this potential Dark Side would be Depression. We’ve seen him go through depressive periods before (mostly in Moving On), but there’s a very big difference between clinical depression and a depressive period. In Moving On, Thomas (and consequently Patton) was experiencing a depressive period triggered by his break up with his ex. I believe that if they had not managed to snap out of that depressive period, Patton would have eventually turned into Depression, and as a result Thomas would’ve had clinical depression and needed to deal with the situation in a more professional setting (eg therapy).

When I initially disagreed with the concept of Virgil being a Dark Side, I spent a little bit of time considering the three possibilities of the 3 we don’t know yet, and came up with a whole lotta nothing. Almost. The one person I was fairly certain I had a strong idea for was Roman, and that idea was Hubris.

Hubris is an Ancient Greek concept referring to foolish/reckless pride to such an extent that the person felt they were greater than the gods. Looking at it now, in the context of this new theory, I believe that rather than that being Roman’s current Dark Side counterpart, it’s the Dark Side he can turn into if he takes too much pride in his work/achievements. Instead, his current Dark Side is more likely to be something relating to either perfectionism or anger/aggression.

I’ve already stated that I believe that Virgil has the potential to turn into an Anxiety Disorder. My ideas about his current Dark Side are a lot less concrete, but I believe they could be linked to either feelings of inferiority or (like Roman) perfectionism, but more in the sense of ‘if it’s not perfect then everyone will hate it’ (rather than ‘it needs to be perfect because I hold myself to an impossibly high standard’)

Now for Logan... I really have absolutely no clue. His potential Dark Side is probably something to do with getting too analytical or robotic, and his counterpart is possibly to do with flawed logic, but those are both a lot more vague than my thoughts for the other sides (sorry).

I have a long text post from back when Can Lying Be Good came out detailing why I didn’t believe Virgil was a Dark Side, and the tldr of that was essentially that it felt like a disservice to his character arc to lump him into a category of sides that are the embodiment of the darker and less good aspects of Thomas’ personality, especially after Accepting Anxiety. However, at the time the theory felt unfinished, as we weren’t really dealing with enough information about Deceit or his and Virgil’s relationship.

I mean, at the beginning of Sanders Sides Virgil seemed like a not so great dude, and for all we know Deceit will end up with a similar character arc (he probably won’t or if he does it’ll be to a lesser extent, but only time will tell). Obviously lying to the extent that’d he’s been attempting to convince Thomas to so far isn’t good, but being completely open and frank with people all the time isn’t good either. There needs to be a balance, and it’s possible that in the future Deceit will calm down a bit or there’ll be an episode on white lies and when they’re acceptable.

However, I feel like this idea of Virgil being offered a place as a Dark Side fills a lot of the gaps in my initial ‘theory’, and honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if they keep on leaving clues that could allude to Virgil being a Dark Side AND him being offered a place as a Dark Side to keep most people certain they’ve worked it all out when actually they’re paying attention to the wrong things. Or I could be full of shit, who’s to say.

A final note to do with Virgil not being dark that didn’t really fit anywhere else in this post- a lot of people point to the sudden appearance (rather than rising up) of both Virgil and Deceit as evidence of them both being dark. In Selfishness vs Selflessness, Deceit rises up when he’s pretending to be Logan (although looking back it’s a bit weirdly done), which I doubt was just them forgetting he just appeared originally given the amount of effort put into these vids. And when popped up in Can Lying Be Good he was just... there in the frame suddenly.

Virgil, on the other hand, often has some sort of movement when he appears, like a little hop (however not in all vids so it could be unintentional), and even without that movement his appearances have a different ‘vibe’ (for a lack of a better word) than Deceit’s do. Also, Virgil appearing without rising up always felt like a symbolic way of showing how anxiety often just appears in your mind without prior warning, rather than a sign of anything more sinister.

TLDR: I believe the ‘good’ sides have the potential to turn dark and that Virgil almost did pre Accepting Anxiety and that's why him and Deceit seem to have a history.

@thatsthat24

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darks-ink · 5 years

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Disinterred CH.9

Chapter 9: But Now I Tell A Single Truth

“I really am sorry,” he reiterated, moving slightly closer to her, as if he wanted to console her. “For all it matters, I really do appreciate you coming to me to talk, instead of, I dunno. Trying to shoot the information out of me.”

(click here for author notes/previous chapters/fic summary/content warnings/mirror links to AO3 and FFnet)

It was a stupid idea. A profoundly, incredibly, unbelievably stupid idea.

But Valerie had always been a little too reckless. A little too quick to act. It was one of those traits that made her a good ghost hunter, to be able to act quickly and without hesitation.

Nevertheless, going out looking for Phantom was a stupid idea. Sure, the ghost always insisted that he was a good ghost, that he didn’t want to fight her. And the whole situation with the body that the police found in the woods was just too bizarre, had caught her attention even before the rumors that had captivated Casper High.

But, even if it likely involved ghosts, and even if Phantom knew anything about it… How likely was it that the ghost would talk to her about it?

Hell, the ghost only ever seemed to show up to fight other ghosts, and usually fled the moment he saw her. How was she even going to talk with him in the first place? Let alone bring up sketchy topics like this one? She could just imagine flying up to him while he was distracted, approaching him before going “hey, you know anything about that dead body in the woods?” Nah, he would probably just think that she was blaming him.

Which, to be fair, she probably would’ve. She still wasn’t sure about Phantom, about his goals and methods. But it seemed that the body predated Phantom’s stay in the city, and while he could have killed that person before anyone had ever seen him… It didn’t seem like his MO.

Besides, if Phantom was secretly a killer, well. He probably would’ve killed more people since then, no? Especially now, while the majority of Amity celebrated him as a hero who can do no wrong. Hell, he could probably blame it on another ghost and most people would believe him.

So no, Valerie didn’t think Phantom was responsible for this. But still, it likely involved ghosts, so Phantom might know more. At the very least, he might’ve gotten curious and spied on the police. He certainly could’ve done so more easily than Valerie, thanks to his innate ability to turn invisible.

Which had led to her current plan of finding Phantom and talking with him. Which was more easily said than done. Really, she should’ve realized so sooner, but, well. She wasn’t always the best at planning ahead.

Finally, however, a stroke of good luck happened upon her. Her ghostly scanner went off, alerting her to a fairly weak ghost nearby. And then, almost immediately, a second ghost appeared right next to the first. Valerie had already turned her hoverboard into the right direction before she checked the signatures of the ghosts. Her scanner told her what she had already expected: the Box Ghost and Phantom.

She sped over there, making it just in time to see Phantom cap his thermos and hook it on his belt. She forcibly relaxed her posture, to make herself look less threatening. And then she called over to him.

“Hey, Phantom!”

The ghost started, whirling around faster than humanly possible. When he saw her, he tensed up. Against her expectations, however, he made no move to leave. Instead, he quirked an eyebrow at her. “Hey Red… No weapons today?”

“Nah,” she answered, leaning back a little in the hopes of looking casual. If he saw her nerves and struck… Well, her new suit might respond to her thoughts, but summoning a weapon still takes time. “Actually, I was hoping that we could… talk?”

“Huh?” was his eloquent response, as Phantom dropped his tense posture again. His eyes had gone big, mouth hanging open slightly. Really, a picture-perfect depiction of bafflement. “Really? After 2 years of non-stop hunting, you want to talk? About what, exactly?”

“About that corpse the police found in the woods. I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with ghosts, which means that you probably know more about it, no?”

Phantom tensed up again, slightly. He crossed his arms over his chest, eyes guarded. Uh oh, looks like she messed up somehow. Did he think she was blaming him?

“And you’re what, blaming me?” Yep, he definitely thought she was blaming him.

“No,” she said, voice straining as she tried to keep herself from snapping at him. “But you do know a lot about ghosts. More than me, at least, and probably more than the Fentons.”

“Oh,” was all he offered in return. His glare had softened slightly, more calculative and thoughtful now. “I guess you have a good point there. And you’re right.”

“About?” She was right! Her hunch was correct! She wasn’t quite sure what about, yet, but she would find out. For now, she would take this win.

“Well, about both of those things, I guess.” Phantom shrugged at her. “I do know more about ghosts than anyone else in this town. But I meant that you were right about suspecting a ghostly element.”

Valerie grinned, not that Phantom could see it while she was wearing her helmet. This whole thing was going way better than planned! “So, was a ghost responsible?”

“Uh, well,” Phantom spluttered, before snapping his mouth shut. He shifted around a little, and Valerie tensed up, expecting him to suddenly shoot off.

But then Phantom settled down again, raising his hand to scratch the back of his neck. “I kinda… can’t tell you?”

“What?” Valerie snapped. Was this ghost for real? “Why not?”

“I, uh. I told the police everything I knew about the situation, helped them out a little, you know? So I’m not allowed to talk about the uh, the whole thing.” He was still rubbing the back of his neck, a green blush creeping up. Oh lord, he was serious about this? Must be, because you can’t fake embarrassment like that, not even as a ghost.

“So… there’s nothing you can tell me?” She fought to keep the longing out of her voice, but couldn’t stop the frustration from seeping through instead. She was so close!

“No. Sorry, Red.” And he looked genuinely sorry, damn him! He dropped the hand again, giving her a sheepish smile instead. Unbelievable! The bastard always found a way to make her life hell, without even trying!

But she couldn’t deny that he had a point, if he wasn’t lying about this. And he didn’t seem to be, despite ghosts being prone to doing so.

So she sighed. “That’s fine, I guess. Can’t be helped.”

“For all the good it did me,” she grumbled, but she had to admit, Phantom had a point. It had been pretty nice to just… talk with him. And he really was right, he likely knew more about ghosts than she did. Knowledge she could use to hunt other ghosts, more dangerous ghosts.

But he was still a random element, a potential danger just lurking around. She couldn’t trust him.

“I’ll see you around, Phantom. Don’t cause any trouble.” She pointed at her eyes and then him, a movement clearly recognizable as the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture, despite the fact that she was wearing a helmet. And then she turned around and flew off.

So, she hadn’t learned everything that she had hoped to. But now she did know that ghosts were involved. And that, in turn, gave the rumors of Casper High just that bit of proof that they needed.

She didn’t want the rumors to be true, of course. Danny Fenton was a sweet boy. Hell, she had even dated him for a while!

But the rumors weren’t based on nothing. There was already a surprising amount of proof gathered, and, well. Valerie had the means of confirming the rumor. No matter how little she wanted it to be true.

And sure, there were things that didn’t make sense about it. After all, Danny’s parents were ghost hunters! Surely they couldn’t have a ghost for a son?

But, well. The Fentons aren’t great ghost hunters, at all. So she wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they had a ghost living under their roof without ever knowing.

So, no, there was nothing concrete to strike the rumor down. Nothing to prove it wrong. So Valerie had to figure it out herself. Find the evidence she needed.

Now she just had to wait until the right moment to strike.

And, that Monday, Valerie saw the opportunity she was waiting for. It was lunch, the hallways were deserted, and she had just returned from a ghost fight. She wasn’t expecting to run into anybody, let alone the guy that she was hoping to talk to.

But there he was, alone in the hallways. Danny Fenton, for once without Sam or Tucker by his side.

It was not only the perfect opportunity, but one that she wouldn’t get again. Sure, she wasn’t sure why Danny was alone in the corridors of the school, without his friends by his side, but it didn’t matter. She had more important questions to answer.

She pulled out a ghost scanner, an old one from her first suit. It might not be quite as good as her current one, but it wasn’t recognizable as belonging to the Red Huntress. And, while it might not be able to read ecto-signatures, she just needed to tell if Danny was a ghost or not.

Twisting the dial to the highest sensitivity, she saw a dot light up on the display. Located right where Danny was standing.

She straightened out her posture, squaring her shoulders in an attempt to make her look more confident than she felt. And then she stepped forward, approaching the boy she liked. The one person she still considered a close friend.

The boy that had probably been a ghost the whole time.

“Hey, Danny!”

The boy in question jerked, visibly startled by the sudden call. With a loud thump the backpack in his hands dropped to the floor, a metallic clang emitting from it.

When he turned around and saw Valerie, he relaxed again, a relieved grin on his face. “Oh, hey Val. Wasn’t, uh, expecting to see anyone here.”

“Yeah, same,” she admitted. The ghost scanner was pressed against her leg, its display hidden from the boy in front of her. “Kinda convenient, though. I kinda… needed to talk to you.”

“Oh?” God, he looked so innocent, with those big blue eyes. Even if he was a ghost, and he probably was, she couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone. “What about?”

Uh oh, she hadn’t thought of a good way to bring up this topic… Dammit, Valerie, she cursed herself, should’ve thought ahead for once. When will you learn?

“It’s… about those rumors going around.”

“Oh, those,” he grumbled, as he crouched to pick up his backpack. “Surely you don’t believe stupid rumors like that? I mean, can you imagine that? Me, a ghost?” He barked out a laugh, sharp and cutting.

Valerie hummed in response. “Kinda do, actually.”

Danny stiffened, still crouched. Then he turned to look at her, a frown on his face. “Really? Why?”

“Well,” she started, as she turned the ghost scanner in her hand so that Danny could see its display. “This is kinda convincing.”

The boy grabbed it out of her hand, and she let him. Danny looked it over for a moment. Then he sighed, shoulders drooping. “Guess I should’ve known that you would figure it out.”

“So… You are?” She paused, before speaking again. “A ghost, I mean?”

“Yeah,” he sighed, finally standing up again, backpack in his hands. “Since the start of freshman year.”

She knew already, of course. But to hear him admitting it… It made it more real, somehow. And it didn’t help that this was someone she knew.

Because, sure, ghosts are dead people. Everyone knows that. But you don’t really think about it, not as a ghost hunter. Then they’re just enemies, powerful beings from a different dimension.

Not this kid that you’ve known for years. Who still lives with his parents. Who went out of his way to befriend you, after you lost your old ‘friends’.

“So, now what?” Danny asked, and Valerie snapped back to reality.

“What do you mean?” she asked, eloquently. Smooth, Valerie, she chided herself.

Danny rolled his eyes, swinging his backpack around so it hung off of his shoulder. “What comes now? What are you going to do next?” He offered her the ghost scanner.

Valerie frowned at him, taking the gadget back. “You mean… because of our friendship? You’re worried that I won’t be friends anymore?”

He snorted. “Honestly, Val, you ending our friendship is one of the least scary things you could do to me.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, before her thoughts ground to a halt. Wait a minute, what did he mean by that? Because, sure, he was right. As a ghost hunter, she was always carrying around ghost hunting equipment, including weapons.

But he didn’t know that, did he?

He must’ve correctly read her expression, because he shrugged and offered her a sheepish grin. “Yes, I know about your ghost hunting. Have known pretty much from the start.”

“What- How?” she bit out. Her suit started buzzing in the back of her head, ready to form to protect her.

Danny, however, simply raised his hand and started rubbing the back of his neck. God, how could he still look so innocent? “You kinda ran into me and Sam in the park, when you first started. We recognized your voice.”

He was right. She remembered that. She had encountered Phantom in the park, playing with that stupid dog of his. She had chased him, but he had thrown her off, and instead she came across Danny and Sam kissing in the bushes. She couldn’t remember what, exactly, she had said to them. But she knew for a fact that she had spoken to them.

God dammit, how was she this much of an idiot? Spoiling her secret identity so easily, and not even knowing about it? Because if Danny and Sam both knew, then surely Tucker did as well.

She grunted, angrily, resisting the urge to punch the wall she was standing next to.

A cold hand landed on her shoulder, and instinct drove her to swing a punch into its direction.

Danny flinched back, but her fist swung clean through him. The feeling was bizarre, but one she recognized.

He had turned intangible. Like a ghost.

Because he was a ghost. God dammit, more proof she didn’t need. Didn’t want.

“Hey, calm down. Please?” Danny had his hands raised, as if trying to calm down a wild animal. The thought was kinda ironic to Valerie, that the ‘dangerous’ ghost was trying to calm down the ghost hunter.

She chuckled at the thought, and Danny offered her a hesitant grin in return.

“Sorry,” she finally managed, loosely folding her arms over each other. “I kinda… freaked out on you, didn’t I?”

“Eh,” he simply answered, shrugging. “That’s okay. Totally to be expected, considered the circumstances.” Then he looked her over, a somewhat guilty glint in his eyes. “Are you okay now?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think so. I just… I tried so hard to keep it secret, y’know? And now I find out that you’ve know this whole time. You, and Sam and Tucker… And who knows who else too?”

“Ah.” He grimaced. “I know how much that sucks, yeah. But, if it makes you feel any better, we haven’t told anybody. Sam, Tucker, and I, that is. And I don’t think anybody else knows.” He winked at her. “They’re not too great at discovering really obvious secrets around here.”

She snorted, allowing herself to calm down. He was right. If the people of Amity Park couldn’t figure out that Danny was a ghost, then surely they didn’t know that she was the Red Huntress.

And as for Danny… Well, he might be a ghost, but he didn’t seem to be an evil one. Despite everyone always saying that every ghost was evil… She just couldn’t imagine it from Danny.

And yes, sure, he lied. To her, and to everybody else. But he kept her secret too, without her even knowing about it. Hell, he had even dated her, despite knowing that she was a ghost hunter.

No, Danny hadn’t done anything wrong. As overwhelming as this all was, as much as she needed time to process everything… She knew that much, at least.

“Danny...” she started, before trailing off. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Danny, thanks for telling me. I- It must’ve been hard to tell me.”

He made a face, but nodded. “Yeah, kinda. Which is why I put it off until I couldn’t deny it anymore.”

She hummed her agreement. “I’m… gonna need time to- to process this. To work through it.” He flinched, and she quickly added, “But I’m not upset! It’s just… a little much, you know?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I get it. I’ll leave you alone so you can think.” He turned around to walk away, but then stopped. He looked at her again. “But, Valerie. If you ever need to talk, or something… You know where to find me, yeah?”

And then he trotted off, and Valerie was left in the hallway alone with her thoughts.

#danny phantom #phanfic #phanfiction #dp fanficti #dp fanfic #danny fenton #valerie gray #dark writes #disinterred #what are the chances that this will get buried in the pocalyse? eh #today is update day one way or another

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kitaryu · 6 years

Text

an open letter @osavior

firstly, i want to make it very clear that my intention in this post is not to attack daisy, also known as the popular mercy blog osavior (previously valkiriya, and serenidae before that), but rather to spread the truth. the intention of this post isn’t to hurt her, but to increase the awareness of people who have no idea what she’s done and decide for themselves what to do from there. all urls, names, discord tags, and aliases shown here are done so with permission - those that requested anonymity were blocked out. colors remain consistent with people throughout all screencaps, so as not to confuse anyone. in this post ill be discussing how daisy has directly catfished mun photos, lied about being a med student, potentially lied about her age, potentially lied about having cancer, manipulated several people and tried to turn multiple unaffiliated people against each other.

before i get into the details, i want to establish that i considered myself very close friends with daisy some time ago (here is proof, if you need it. there are posts upon posts upon posts of interaction both ic and ooc between us in which we both make our affiliation with each other very clear). therefore, none of this is shown out of any sort of petty jealousy towards her, but rather as a way to open peoples’ eyes. whether you choose to continue interacting with her or not is up to you, but please at least keep this post in mind. with that being said, let’s continue:

catfishing

beginning with the most concrete claim, multiple people have said that daisy has posted fake images of herself. in fact, she took it from specific sources, which i will provide in a moment. while i couldnt find any posts of her putting up her “mun pictures” (i believe she deleted them after people mentioned it), many who there at the time can confirm that she did post pictures. for those of you that remember, here is @beijide (andy) finding the source she took her pictures from:

andy isn’t the only person who saw them, however. multiple people mentioned it:

we’ll come back to the last screenshot later, but here are four people specifically who remember her using the photos from this instagram and this pinterest, run by the same person. you can ask any of the three of us who have opted out of anonymity if you want to confirm that she posted those photos, or anyone else who remembers it. “but, wait,” you might say. “what if daisy really is the person who runs this blog?”

at first, it’s easy to say that she is. after all, her area of living, according to her old skype account, is the same as this woman’s. however, the owner of mod med blog’s real name is mary ella wood, very publicly announced. it’s no secret. daisy’s real name, however, is leonie - a name she used to go by, back when i first met her in october of 2016 (she gave herself an alias after a little while and then changed it multiple times afterward). what’s more, daisy claims to be a medical student. what kind of medical student has enough time to run a popular instagram, pinterest, and on top of that, a very powerful roleplay blog for tumblr? i think i’ve made my case for this part.

lying about education and potentially age

well, just because she lied about her photos doesn’t mean she lied about being a medical student - but there is evidence to support this, as well.

a year ago, when i spoke to daisy on a daily basis, she said that she was six years into med school:

only a little while before this, she claimed to be graduating in about a year:

please note the date on this screencap. october 20, 2016, she says she has about a year left. at the time of posting this, it is november 10, 2017, and her rules, which have only recently been updated (as she just remade her blog within the past few days) claim that she is still a full-time college student:

the text on this is very small, but it says: “gonna make this short and simple.

i’m a full time college student. i will not always be active !”

she also claims to be 20 years old at the time, so 21 now:

however, if daisy was in med school for 6 years as of the time she sent these messages, that means that she started med school when she was fourteen years old...which is literally impossible. so, how old is she?

honestly speaking, i don’t know how old she is. however, she has given some unintentional hints.

in the last screencap, daisy is talking about her mom asking when she’ll get married. so, we know that her older half sister is 20, so she can’t be any older than that, which proves that she can’t possibly be a med student in her 6th year of college.

but just because she isn’t in her 6th year doesn’t mean she’s not a med student at all. however, her work ethic doesn’t at all match what is required out of a med student:

but, wait, that doesn’t sound right. typically, med students are known for being hard workers - and there’s a reason for that.

remember where she said that her gpa and grades were terrible? yeah. i dont have any way to specifically disprove her being a med student (though she can’t be in her sixth year) but at this point, it’s very doubtful.

manipulation and hypocrisy

now that i’ve proven the basics about her, let’s move on. there is so much to talk about here, and honestly speaking, this section and the last are the main points of the whole post - because the body count of daisy’s grasp is terribly large, to the point where i have counted 9 personal victims, including myself, and that’s just who i know about.

so, let’s begin with her direct manipulation:

she was talking about playing heroes of the storm here, because oni genji had just been released, back when he was a promotional event exclusive. this is pretty direct, honestly, because it’s so passive aggressive it hurts - but i had just gotten home from a marching band competition. i was really tired.

don’t get me wrong, wanting attention and nice comments once in a while is fine. there’s nothing wrong with that. but getting upset because you specifically asked for compliments? baiting me to send you compliments? what’s even worse is that multiple people sent things, and were often ignored:

i would send things, too. i sent a lot of nice things, and she would ignore them and then say that no one sent anything.

i poured so much love into my relationship with daisy. i absolutely adored her, and i told her that all the time, over skype, over asks, anon and not. i wrote with her every day, i spoke to her every day, i talked about headcanons and life stuff and shared my joy and pain with her, because i loved daisy. she was one of my best friends for a long time, and as much as i would like to say that maybe, she was just venting to me, she made her feelings very personal. so...

...how in the world did she get this idea? why did she think it was okay to make this personal? it definitely seems like she was trying to get me to talk to her more, or maybe even to only talk to her. i dont know.

she had been baiting me to ask what was wrong for about five minutes if i remember correctly, and then in an effort to respect her privacy, i let her be, and offered my support in case she needed it, where she instantly took the opportunity to complain about how little i spoke to her despite the fact that i spoke to her on a daily basis. whats more, a large portion of my inactivity when it came to speaking to people was that i was constantly exhausted because of marching band, and also because i had so little time outside of it.

i’ll address it more in the next section, but this mercy (we’ll call them red) was constantly under daisy’s scrutiny. on top of that, she was very subtly hinting two things - the first being that i shouldnt even so much as think about complimenting another mercy, and the second being that i should give her compliments, instead.

why is she trying to act like i’m some sort of popular jock here? daisy has always been a more popular blog than me. and that never really bothered me, because i liked her, at the time, but i still have no idea what sorts of “things i was included into,” because there really wasn’t...anything. i’d play overwatch a lot with my friends, but that was genuinely about it, and was more due to the fact that i played the game every day, with or without people to play with me.

as for the shipping, i never even had that many ships. i had one with her, one with bibi, one with michael, and before she deleted her widow, one with tay...and thats really it. she shipped a lot more often than i did, but she would drop her ships and blame it on the other person (which i’ll get to here soon). daisy has been through tons of ships and i spoke to a good amount of people she used to ship with when gathering information for this post. they were the ones abandoned.

not only does this imply that she’s a perfect angel who is wronged for no reason, but it also shoves the idea that you dont have the right to unfollow people for whatever you wish. you are under no obligation to keep following people. even if there is no reason at all to unfollow someone, that is your choice. you do not have to follow anyone you dont want to follow.

this was honestly one of the most direct and passive aggressive things she ever sent to me. i was tired, i had just woken up from about an hour (i think) accidental nap after a stressful day of marching band (which was always very tiring), i was very groggy, and she had the gall to say this right to my face.

its still so strange to me. i remember being confused when she said this, but i didnt say anything...but i have never heard anyone say anything like this. more often, youre asked how you cant like children, or told its different when theyre your own, or told that you will learn to like them and change your mind.

this is still confusing considering the fact that daisy has been arguably the most popular blog in the fandom for a very long time. tons of people liked her, and i know i, at least, absolutely adored her. plus, no one, from my knowledge, has ever called her crazy. no one has called her deranged.

probably the most ironic thing she ever said to me? this. because, i dont know how many of you are aware of this, but daisy dropped me. she quite directly replaced me for another genji blog because i “wasnt active” even though i actually was on this blog, slowly coming back to it with some lowered amounts of replies because i was a week from graduating high school and my focus was more on that than on doing my drafts. and she didn’t just do this to me - she did it to multiple people, as i’ll touch on later in this post. here is what it looked like when daisy dropped me:

considering daisy was always going on about how she didnt want people to replace her, this is pretty obviously hypocritical.

she was talking about people who had dropped me as mains before, here. she says here that i was the longest friend she had and her favorite and her number one (while dropping me? lmao) but after this conversation, she talked to me exactly once, one message, and she never spoke to me again. she never tried. she deleted me off of skype (i never deleted her, so while i cant message her on skype, i still have access to everything we said over it) and we unfollowed each other on tumblr after some time and we never spoke again.

this is the one and only time ill say this publicly: daisy was the reason i went on an indefinite hiatus. i was tired of being dropped (it was the third time i had been dropped so that someone could main another genji, or at least it seemed that way at the time) and it hurt me a lot. i was tired of it. i was tired of getting replaced over and over again.

daisy was talking about how she didnt ever have a real relationship (romantically) and when i tried to explain to her that romance is glorified and she shouldnt value herself based on that, she turned my words completely around. my mom used to do this all the time when i lived with her. it is extremely manipulative.

the funny thing about her trying to convince me to send her stuff here is that i basically liked every one of her starter calls. i would send her almost every meme. i would give her anons and talk to her all the time. she would constantly get things from other people and ignore them:

and then she would complain about people not sending things.

she only apologized for things she said to me when looking for attention for it, or at least it seemed that way. she would purposely say shes not okay vaguely so that i would ask her what was wrong and comfort her, which is the same problem im currently having with someone else - but that’s a different situation.

daisy used her illness as an excuse all the time. she would blame anything toxic or manipulative that she was called out for on her bpd, and the only time she apologized for anything, it was extremely self-deprecating - she clearly wanted me to pity her, despite the fact that she had just fucked me over.

and then there’s this. daisy spoke about this a lot - basically, any d.va ship was considered borderline pedophilia to her. she wanted people to tag their ships with large age gaps, but really, considering she was okay with around a 20-30 year age gap between mercy and soldier but not with a 7 year age gap between d.va and lucio, it was less about age gaps and more about d.va specifically. in fact, she specifically mentioned in her rules that she wanted any and all d.va ships tagged, but didnt specify anything else at all. and considering she claims to be only a year older than d.va? considering daisy was talking to an eighteen-year-old? d.va is a fully matured adult, whether she still occasionally acts immaturely or not. ffs she is in the south korean military. she has a career, and one that requires a lot of mental preparation, at that.

before her mental illness is used as a shield for her, however, whether by her or anyone else, please read this post and this post.

potentially lying about cancer

daisy never spoke often about this, so i’m not entirely certain, but there are definitely things that dont add up here. remember the mention of skin cancer earlier?

well, i always felt it too personal to ask her more about cancer, but out of everything she told me of her own volition, daisy did tell me a few things that didn’t quite make sense.

she is pretty clearly saying that she’s had chemotherapy here. she says she had cancer.

i dont know about most people, but when i had a benign tumor in my brain and needed neurosurgery to remove it (a pituitary adenoma, for those of you who know what that is. my case was apparently extremely rare because it was a tumor inside of a cystic mass, but it was necrotic and not cancerous), i was not okay with tumor jokes. it took a year and a half, maybe two years, for my parents to stop joking about it, and i wasn’t okay with them making humor out of something like that. but, what really doesn’t make sense is this:

she says here, november 23, 2016, that she has only been in remission a month.

but she says here, 5 days earlier, that she is donating blood (and has donated multiple times before), that she is healthy.

i dont know what the specific requirements are, but i know that despite me being physically healthy now (at least as far as illnesses and whatnot are concerned), i was never allowed to donate blood (or plasma) because i took hormone regulation pills as a result of my tumor. if blood drives wont accept someone who takes a hormone regulation pill to stabilize their prolactin levels, why would they accept blood from someone who literally had chemotherapy? someone who supposedly had skin cancer?

im not the only one, either, though. one of the people she claimed replaced her (again, other way around) found out that she was faking cancer, too, and their friend apparently had evidence, though they didnt think people would believe them - which is understandable, considering daisy is an extremely influential figure in the overwatch rp community.

turning people against each other

here is quite possibly the part most directly affecting people. on multiple occasions, daisy would turn people who were completely unaffiliated against each other. people who had never met, or at least never spoke much.

i was talking to @beijide about the upper screenshot, because when daisy dropped andy for another widowmaker, she vague posted about andy (who, mind you, has a hard time speaking with people personally, though they found it understandably easier to jump into a group conversation) the whole time. andy summed up their situation pretty well when i showed them what daisy said to me - though it’s only a guess, and she may not have been talking to me about andy specifically.

and then, later:

she pretty clearly says here that this person (ill call them orange, for the sake of this post) replaced her. i didn’t know orange at all, but with this, daisy convinced me to avoid them. i was under the impression for a year that orange dropped daisy - but in reality, when i spoke to them, they explained the truth:

daisy ostracized people from the entire fandom on multiple occasions - not just once or twice, but all the time, because she found someone better or because they werent active or just because they played the wrong character.

at first, i wasnt going to say anything about this situation. i wasnt going to talk to anyone about what she did to me, even though it hurt, because i thought that the only thing she did was replace me - just a problem to do with me, nothing to hurt other people. i didnt realize just how detailed everything she did was.

and i’m not the first to make a post, either. red (remember when i mentioned them earlier?) tried to make a callout for her before over the same things and was written off as a jealous mercy who faked evidence to make daisy look bad:

this was after daisy had already turned me against red early in our friendship by convincing me that red had stolen headcanons from her:

i’ll come back to this last bit shortly.

she convinced me that red was stealing her headcanons - even though these headcanons are fairly common for mercy players, since she has a certain air about her. i tried to find red to ask them about the truth of the situation, but was unable to find their blog. from my knowledge, they have since left the overwatch community.

later, she sent messages which very intentionally ostracized red:

and then, regarding the callout red made:

but red is hardly the only person who got turned against as a result of her. she also turned against @climxtologist, who was originally her friend, when talking about red:

when i spoke to nicole, however, she told me the truth of what happened.

even if it had only been orange, red, and nicole who had been ostracized by daisy, it would be far too many - but unfortunately, her body count doesn’t end there.

i don’t know specifically who she was talking about here, because there were many stories she told that sounded like that, but i had an idea when i was speaking to orange. i started speaking to nikki about everything daisy did, and though he wasnt directly victimized by her, he felt the affects of having friends who were, as well as being a mercy when daisy made sure that other mercy players would never get so much attention:

daisy, despite saying that she wouldnt keep people from rping or interacting with other mercy players, subtly kept them from ever talking to them. in fact, i was talking about it on discord, too:

i didnt want to upset daisy by talking to other mercy players, and i know that i wasnt the only one who felt this way. she was extremely possessive of her mains:

yet, although she would get upset when anyone else talked to another mercy, she spoke or interacted with other versions of someones muse all the time. so why was she allowed to talk to other genji players when i couldnt talk to other mercys?

she even got extremely nasty about people who i used to main who i had thought dropped me (the circumstances were a bit different when i actually got around to talking to them about it, so my disposition here is pretty gross as well, admittedly, and i dont have any excuses for it):

she was extremely rude about red, who she had never actually held a conversation with. she directly called red a trashbag, called all of their friends trashbags, and claimed no one liked them or their blog, as well as calling it irrelevant. that’s nasty.

but possibly the worst is when she tried to turn me against one of my mains, and closest friends:

i really should have stood up for bibi here, but i was too scared to upset daisy about it. when i spoke to bibi about it, they said this:

yes, she said that void was in the wrong for what they did - but she also spoke about them like what they said to bibi wasnt that bad. and that isn’t okay.

conclusion

daisy pretty explicitly manipulated and lied about a lot of things, including things that would actively harm other people. i am not telling anyone to stop interacting with daisy, but i want people to be aware of everything shes done, because she is actively harming other people, and if anyone decides to break off contact and interaction with me about this, i understand completely. please do not attack or send hate to daisy, as that is not the intention of this post. it is not created for retribution. it is not made for revenge. it was made to protect people and give them the knowledge to make their own decisions.

also this was really funny to me:

#osavior #callout #drama #[ ooc. ] ⁽ ᵒᶰˡʸ ᵃ ᶰᶤᵏᶤᵗᵃ ᶜᵃᶰ ᶜᵒᶰᵗʳᵒˡ ᵗʰᵉ ᵈʳᵃᵍᵒᶰˢˑ ⁾

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michiganprelawland · 3 years

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Presidential Pardoning Power And Why It’s Controversial

By Tristan Sirls, University of Michigan Class of 2022

January 8, 2021

American presidents have had, and exercised, the power to issue pardons for as long as the United States has existed. This tradition of the executive having pardon power is inspired by the English monarchs of the 1700s, who had the power to grant legal clemency to criminals.1 Alexander Hamilton argued that a similar power should be given to the president since, “a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth”2. Consequently, the framers included Article II of the Constitution, which gives the president “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment”3. And presidents have historically taken advantage of this power by sifting through large piles of clemency applications, and pardoning or commuting the sentences of individual criminals who they felt deserved clemency. During Andrew Johnson’s presidency, this power was used even more liberally to pardon most confederates after the end of the American Civil War1.Given the debate about President Trump’s current use of pardons, and importantly his potential pardoning of himself, how much power does the presidential pardon carry?

One simple answer is that: “in 1866, the Supreme Court declared that the power conferred by the Pardon Clause is unlimited” and this was confirmed again five years later4. However, there is much more nuance to this than it may seem, and more will be said about this later. First, a little on how the presidential pardon actually works. There are four ways that the president can use their pardon power, and these apply to only federal crimes: “they may issue a pardon that wipes out the crime entirely, shorten or do away with a criminal sentence with a commutation, release a person from a legal obligation like a fine with a remission, or put off a person’s sentence for a period of time, known as respite”1. Traditionally, criminals would apply for pardons, and have some sort of endorsement of these applications by the attorney general or judge. Today, there is a Pardon Attorney that assists the president in taking applications for pardons5. From the office’s website says that for post-conviction pardons, “the correctness of the underlying conviction is assumed, and the question of guilt or innocence is not generally at issue” and “the Department's regulations require a petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a pardon application”5. So while the president’s pardoning power may be unlimited, this doesn’t necessarily mean that anyone can immediately apply for a pardon and be fully exonerated, and it doesn’t mean that the person wasn’t previously guilty of the crime they’re being pardoned for. If someone doesn’t want to wait for five years after their conviction to receive clemency, then the president has to find out about and choose to issue a pardon to that individual without the application process.

On to what exactly unlimited pardon power means. Already, there are ways in which the presidential pardon isn’t as easily accessible as it might otherwise seem: federal criminals need to wait 5 years to apply. However, there is debate around what checks are placed on the pardoning power by the Constitution. In one sense, “apart from the qualification that cases must be against the United States, meaning federal offenses, and the exception of cases of impeachment, there are no built-in checks to this power”6. And built-in checks seem to mean here that there are no other parts of the constitution that explicitly restrict presidential pardoning power in some way. In fact, some of the framers of the constitution might have considered power of presidential impeachment enough of a “check” on presidential pardoning power4. Beyond this, the president’s pardoning power is only restricted in the sense that it “may not offend other portions of the Constitution, but it is generally immune from congressional constraints”7. So any attempt for congress to attempt to regulate presidential pardoning power would be unconstitutional, and all of these previously presented facts and checks about pardoning power are generally agreed upon.

The debate about presidential pardoning power instead takes place around the extent to which other portions of the constitution do constrain presidential power, and given there are no explicit checks on pardoning power, they would only constrain it in an implicit way. Starting with the power for a president to issue a self-pardon, one vital piece of this debate surrounds the idea that no person may judge their own case, which was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme court in 1798. “In Calder v. Bull, the Supreme Court said that ‘a law that makes a man a Judge in his own cause’ is “contrary to the great first principles of the social compact’”4 (p. 10). The idea that no person may judge their own case is considered so fundamental to legal processes, that it is called a principle of natural justice. Although this is a fundamental principle of the judicial system, there is nothing in the constitution that explicitly says the president can’t pardon themselves, and in a sense, judge their own case. For some legal scholars, this is enough for them to conclude that the president can therefore pardon themselves: “scholars who maintain the President may pardon himself typically note that the language of the pardon clause is unqualified; they assert that the Framers would not have left an exception to implication”4(p. 10). However, other scholars rely on another part of the constitution in Article II that “requires the President to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’”4 (p. 13). They argue that for a president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, they must ensure that no one judges their own case. In that sense, if a president were to pardon themselves, they would be judging their own case, which would go against what the framers clearly intended to prevent in the Take Care Clause. This would make the self-pardon unconstitutional. Nevertheless, this is something that wouldn’t be decided until a president actually attempts to pardon themselves4 (p. 15).

One other important debate surrounding pardoning power is the potential use of it to obstruct justice. “In April 2019, President Trump reportedly told the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection to expect a pardon if he were jailed for blocking asylum seekers from entering the United States. The President soon tweeted a denial”4 (p. 6). According to these allegations, the President might have strategically promised pardons to individuals as a way of assuring them that they won’t be prosecuted, should they break the law according to his wishes. While there is no conclusive evidence of this, it serves as an example as to how a president could abuse their pardoning power. Importantly, a president can’t issue a pardon for a future crime, but even promising to issue a pardon for that crime is actually prosecutable: “a President who offered to pardon a future crime (and wasn’t kidding) would be guilty of the crime as an accomplice if someone who received his offer carried it out4 (p. 7). However, there are protections against prosecuting a president during their presidency, and so that president could only be prosecuted for using pardons to obstruct justice after the end of their presidency. This is extremely important, because if the president can only be prosecuted for abusing their pardon power after the end of their presidency, and it is ultimately decided that the president can pardon themselves, then the only avenue for deterring a president from abusing their pardon power would be impeachment.

In more concrete terms, why is this a problem? Take Roger Stone, a previous political campaign adviser to President Trump. Stone was indited on charges of lying during his congressional trial, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice8. He was consequently sentenced to a 40-month prison sentence. Except, it was also found in The Muller Report “that President Trump had indicated to several potential witnesses (particularly Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Michael Cohen) that their noncooperation with the Special Counsel and other prosecutors would lead to pardons”4 (p. 15). The stakes of Stone’s truthful testimony were high: they might have incriminated Trump of at least committing perjury during the investigation. In broad and hypothetical terms, if President Trump did commit perjury, and if his promise to pardon Stone led to Stone committing perjury in order to protect President Trump, then it seems like President Trump used the promise of pardoning Stone to obstruct justice. He could be prosecuted for this after his Presidency. While it’s unlikely that he would actually be prosecuted, given the divisive nature of prosecuting a former President who has many supporters, if President Trump was to pardon himself, it would take away any ability to prosecute him for obstructing justice whether or not he did commit the crime4. These are some of the stakes of why there is major debate around presidential pardoning power, and whether a president can pardon themselves.

With these considerations in mind, it is clear that the president’s pardon power is largely unrestricted, and debatable in terms of whether or not they can pardon themselves. Even if the president was found to be obstructing justice using their pardoning power, the only possible response to this action would be impeachment or prosecution of them after their presidency. Since congress can’t constitutionally limit pardoning power in any other way, it then seems like the only clear way to regulate pardoning power during a presidency, if it should be regulated, would be to take drastic action and make amendments to the constitution itself.

______________________________________________________________

1. Blakemore, E. (2020, December 4). The contentious history of U.S. presidential pardons—From the Whiskey Rebellion to Watergate. History & Culture. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/12/controversial-history-presidential-pardons-from-watergate-to-whiskey-rebellion/

2. Hamilton, A. (n.d.). The Avalon Project: Federalist No 74. Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed74.asp

3. The 2nd Article of the U.S. Constitution. (n.d.). National Constitution Center – The 2nd Article of the U.S. Constitution. Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/article/article-ii

4. Alschuler, Albert W., The Corruption of the Pardon Power: What are the Limits? (November 20, 2020). U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 756, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3734588

5. Standards for Consideration of Clemency Petitioners. (2015, January 12). https://www.justice.gov/pardon/about-office-0

6. Ulrich, S. (n.d.). The Power of Mercy: An Examination of Presidential Pardon Patterns. 54.

7. Davidson, D. M. J. (2020). The President’s Pardon Power. MILITARY REVIEW, 11.

8. Kelly, A., Lucas, R., & Romo, V. (n.d.). Trump Pardons Roger Stone, Paul Manafort And Charles Kushner. NPR.Org. Retrieved December 29, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2020/12/23/949820820/trump-pardons-roger-stone-paul-manafort-and-charles-kushner

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years

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The Stone Knight

Part 1/? - Two Statues Part 2/? - A Curious Interview Part 3/? - John Doe Part 4/? - Escape Attempt Part 5/? - Making the News Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - More Impossible Part 8/? - The Shield Thieves Part 9/? - Reality Sinks In Part 10/? - Preparing a Quest Part 11/? - The Marvelous History of Sir Stephen Part 12/? - Uninvited Guests Part 13/? - So That’s What It Does Part 14/? - The What and the Where Part 15/? - Gearing Up Part 16/? - Just Passing Through Part 17/? - Dinner with Druids Part 18/? - Kracness Henge Part 19/? - A Task Interrupted Part 20/? - The Red Death

The bad guys make their case.

Natasha glanced back at her companions. They all knew they were in trouble. Without a word, she unzipped her bag and began handing out weapons. A rifle for herself, one for Sam, one for Sharon – and under the circumstances, one for Rushman didn’t seem like too terrible of an idea. When she handed him the weapon, though, he balked.

“I can’t use one of those,” he said, holding up his hands.

“You said you could shoot,” Natasha reminded him. “Duck hunting!”

“Yeah, but that’s a…” he pointed at the rifle in her hands. “That’s not for hunting! I’ve never used one of those!”

“It’s not hard, just point and click,” said Nat. She put it in his hands, and then loaded and checked her own before assuming a crouched position with her back to the wall.

They waited in the closest thing to silence that Flotta’s ferocious winds would allow, eyes darting back and forth as they all waited. They all knew that taking the first shot would give away their position, but their position was pretty obvious anyway, and gunfire would keep the bad guys away for a while at least. The real problem was that the small area enclosed by the ruined walls and the Red Death’s superior numbers would mean they’d soon be surrounded. Why hadn’t they decided better safe than sorry, and gone back to the boat?

Sharon was the first to stand up – but when she did, she left the rifle Nat had given her on the ground, and instead showed the three approaching men her badge and service revolver.

“Stand down!” she ordered. “I’m Officer Carter of the Orkney County Police!” Her badge would say Inverness Shire, but hopefully they wouldn’t look that close. “I’m here on behalf of Historic Scotland to arrest you for unauthorized access to a scheduled historic monument!”

If her intention were to confuse the men closing in on her hiding place, she succeeded. There were four of them, in black uniforms with a white logo on the shoulder – a skull and tentacles. Natasha had seen that before, but only in pictures during her training, and it belonged to an organization that was supposed to be long-extinct. What were these guys doing wearing that? Who were they?

The mooks exchanged some glances, and then one of them made up his mind and shot Sharon directly in the chest. She staggered backwards and fell over.

That was too much for both Sir Stephen and for Sam. Sir Stephen leaped to his feet, and while the men stared in shock at this nightmare figure in his medieval chain mail and Adidas sneakers, he charged and ran one of them through. Meanwhile, Sam ran to Sharon’s side and tore her coat open – then sat back with a groan of relief when he saw what was underneath.

Nat did the same. Of course. Sharon was a cop, and she’d known they were potentially headed into a gunfight. She had a bullet-proof vest on, invisible under her thick winter clothing. The moment of panic now over, Nat stood up, fitted her rifle to her shoulder, and fired.

She took down three more men by shooting them, hopefully non-lethally, in the legs – if they made it out of this she wanted to stand a chance of questioning one of them, and she couldn’t do that if they were dead. She had thought she might need to provide some cover for Sir Stephen, who had only short-range weapons himself, but he was holding his own. Bullets bounced right off his magic shield, and the men he’d attacked were already trying to run from the crazy man with the sword. Sam had by now picked up the gun Natasha had given him and joined in the fight, and in all the chaos Pierce and the Red Death had somehow disappeared. Had they gotten back in the helicopters? No, she spotted them – they were heading up the slope towards the stone circle, with a group of other men.

Well, whatever the hell they were doing was what she had to stop. Nat ducked down behind the wall to re-load before she followed them, wondering as she did whether the Red Death would have the same magical ability to recover from gunshots as Sir Stephen did. They’d stopped listening to the romance before it had gotten into his backstory.

As she set down her box of ammunition, two men came running around the edge of the wall, entering through the place where the building had once had a door. They would have to be dealt with first. One turned towards Nat, raising his rifle at point blank range. She calmly hit him in the crotch with the butt end of her rifle, and he collapsed – right on top of her. It took her a moment to shove him off, and when she did she found the other, together with a third, dragging Rushman to his feet. The older man was making no effort whatsoever to defend himself. All he’d done was raise his hands, his rifle lying forgotten at his feet.

Nat bounced up and hit one of the men in the small of the back. He fell down, but before she could attack the second, somebody grabbed her around the legs. It was the man she’d just hit in the crotch. He pulled her off her feet and pushed her face into the gritty, stony soil. Somebody else, possibly the other man who’d been threatening Rushman, hit her in the back of the head with something. She saw stars.

Several people pulled her roughly to her feet. Although spots were dancing in front of her eyes, Natasha could see Rushman just standing there watching in helpless horror, his hands held up as if to do something but frozen in mid-motion. Nat glared at him. If he really thought he was her father, shouldn’t he be doing something, or at least shouting at the men to leave her alone? Yet he remained mute, and marched along with his head down as the men dragged him and Natasha out of the ruins and put handcuffs on them.

Sam had done his best to defend himself, but had been distracted by keeping an eye on Sharon, who’d been winded by being shot – her vest would have kept her from a penetrating injury, but she might still have bruises or even cracked ribs. Both of them had now also been captured. That just left Sir Stephen, who was on his feet, moving his shield to block bullets with almost superhuman reflexes and charging anyone who shot at him. He’d already wounded or killed several people, with not a mark on him.

He ran at another mook, but this one had apparently had time to prepare – he pulled out a taser and shot Sir Stephen in the face with it. One of the electrodes hit the nose guard of his helmet, the other the curtain of chainmail that hung down behind it. As both were iron, that was enough, and electricity surged through his head and neck. Poor Sir Stephen couldn’t even brace for it – like the guns, he had no idea what this weapon did. He hit the ground face-first and twitching.

Four people were required to drag him to his feet and get the handcuffs on him. His sword and daggers were tossed into Natasha’s bag with the rifles, and the man in the lead carried his shield like a trophy as all five of them were marched up the hill to where the Red Death was waiting.

While the firefight was going on in the ruins, the rest of the Red Death’s men had been busy at the top of the slope. They’d propped up the fallen stone with some flat-pack scaffolding, but rather than digging underneath it, they were pouring gravel and concrete into the hole that had allowed it to topple, and piling earth up behind it so it couldn’t fall that way, either. Surveying equipment had been set up to make sure everything matched the conjectured layout from Lau’s map. The Red Death was watching, while Pierce shouted orders and made gestures, trying to look important.

Another prisoner was also waiting there for them: the Red Death’s men had captured the Sea Dog, and he was now handcuffed to the chain link fence. Nat gave him an apologetic look. He hadn’t asked to be a art of anything this serious. All he’d done was give some weird Southerners a boat ride.

“Mr. Totenkopf!” the man carrying the shield called out.

The Red Death turned around, and smiled when he saw the captives. He looked much more at ease in his modern clothing than Sir Stephen ever had, and held himself like a man who was used to being listened to – and one who could dispense terrible consequences to the disobedient. He looked over the others quickly, but the one he approached was Sir Stephen, who’d been forced to his knees on the ground with cuffs around his ankles as well as his wrists. The Red Death took Sir Stephen’s helmet off him to get a look at his face, then reached out and ran a leather-gloved finger down the bald patch in his hair, the only remaining evidence of where, a few days earlier, he’d had his face split open with a medieval battleaxe.

Sir Stephen glared up at him, then spat at the Red Death’s feet. The other man glanced down and scraped the little blob of saliva aside with his shoe, before stepping back and straightening up to address not Sir Stephen, but the rest of his prisoners.

“I am forever astonished by this man’s ability to attract followers regardless of the circumstances he finds them in!” the Red Death said. “He has a true gift, one I must confess my envy of!”

He was going to try to argue with them, Nat thought. He was going to try to convince them that he, not Sir Stephen, was in the right. She was all right with that – it would buy her time to think and escape.

“I don’t know what it is he has said to you,” the Red Death went on, “but I do know that Sir Stephen of Rogsey is a noble man, a true warrior, and loyal to the last. I also know that the world we have both awakened on is a troubled one.” He stood up a little straighter. “I’ve been ‘watching the news,’ as you say, since Mr. Pierce was kind enough to awaken me. I’ve seen the terrible wars, the hunger, the poverty, the nations ruled by the whims of the rabble. The very earth itself is falling to pieces all around you, burdened by the weight of too many millions. If your people continue as you are, it will be to your own destruction! Is it not time to end this madness?”

This was a familiar tune to Natasha. It had been the philosophy of many a dictator throughout history – the only way to improve the world was to subjugate it. That did explain the red logo.

“Histories remember the Holy Grail as a mere cup,” the Red Death said, “but it is infinitely more. It is not san-gréal but sang real, the blood of the Old Gods. It is the very force of creation, and he who possesses it can re-make the world as he sees fit.”

Sir Stephen apparently couldn’t tolerate that kind of talk. “Only God can create!” he said.

“Then His is a poor creation!” the Red Death countered. “What loving father would make a world of such pain and disorder, in which his children torture and murder and starve one another? With the Grail, I shall make a better one.”

“You cannot make men better by taking away their free will,” Sir Stephen said. “You only make them slaves.”

“Is it not better to be a happy slave than a wretched free man?” the Red Death asked.

“No man can be happy who knows he is a slave,” said Sir Stephen.

“And that is why we do not tell them,” the Red Death shook his head and spoke to the rest of the group again. “Why do you follow this man? You can have no quarrel with Wilhelm the Bastard – he is long dead. You’d likely never heard of me until he told you his tale. What has Sir Stephen offered you to secure your loyalty?”

That was a difficult question to answer. Sir Stephen hadn’t offered them anything. They’d been drawn one by one into this bizarre situation that seemed like somebody ought to do something about it, and now they were in too deep to go back. The only person who spoke up was the Sea Dog.

“I just do what I’m paid to, mate,” he said.

The Red Death seemed surprised by that. “Really? Money? Is that all?”

“There’s also the fact that he doesn’t go around calling himself The Red Death,” said Sam. “I dunno about anybody else but that just screams Bond Villain to me”

“And he doesn’t hang out with Nazis,” said Natasha.

This statement surprised her own companions as well as startling the Red Death, who cocked his head as if unsure what the word meant. “Nazis?” he asked.

“We’re not Nazis!” Pierce protested indignantly.

“Yes, you are!” Natasha informed him. “Your soldiers have a HYDRA logo on their uniforms! HYDRA was an organization created by the Third Reich, kind of like a Nazi X-Files. They thought they could give Hitler supreme power by finding things from folklore, like the Ark of the Covenant or a tunnel to the centre of the earth. I should have figured it out earlier, what with you going on about how awesome the Vikings were and the whole Holy Grail thing!” In hindsight, it was blindingly obvious.

“The Nazis did not create HYDRA!” Pierce huffed. “HYDRA created the Nazis!”

“Chickens and eggs!” said Nat. “We’ll stick with the guy who doesn’t think he can solve the world’s problems by gassing people to death!”

“Are you claiming moral superiority as an American?” Pierce sneered. “You’re the only country ever to drop a nuke!”

“We will not heal the world by poisonous vapours or ‘nuclear bombs’,” said the Red Death. “Its evils must be cleansed so that they never existed in the first place. It’s no use in arguing the point further,” he added, to Pierce. “Their minds are set.”

“Maybe they’ll change when they see the Grail,” Pierce suggested.

“If not, we shall change their minds for them,” said the Red Death. “Bring them along. I would like for Rogsey to see what he has sought for so long.”

#fanfic #natasha romanov #black widow #steve rogers #captain america #sam wilson #falcon #sharon carter #agent 13

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stephenjaymorrisblog · 4 years

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Disclaimer: All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Larceny Incorporated

February 15, 2020

By Stephen Jay Morris c/w Pamela Amodeo-Morris

Moving is a nightmare, as many of you know. Try moving across the country. You do what you can to cut corners and save money. However, the axiom rings true: you get what you pay for. In this conservative era of laissez-faire idiocy, there are dishonest hucksters hiding in the back offices of hundreds of warehouses. Pamela and I were victims of one.

When we walked away from our home in Oregon, we ended up living in mobile homes in the Southern California desert for six and a half years. Living in a mobile home is a heartbeat from homelessness. Many mobile home parks are ghettos for poor white people. I pity the poor, but some of them are damaged people who get on my nerves.

Our first home was not in a park, per se, but was on a residential street of a small city. The coach, as park managers and owners reference these homes, was situated on a large, privately owned, corner lot. Its street was near a major intersection, where police and emergency vehicles’ sirens screamed day and night. Druggies and drunks would walk past our walled yard all hours of the night, shouting threats at each other, and dark figures in old cars would frequently park just outside our bedroom window late at night, engine idling and gangsta rap blasting from their sound systems. Unlike most mobile homes in the desert, which are primarily landscaped with small rocks and concrete, this one was heavily planted with fruit trees, rose bushes, shrubs and plants. The landlord, who was an elderly man, was a great collector of native and non-native plants and trees. He paid a neighbor to come and water the property twice weekly, and more during the intense summers. It usually took the guy about three hours to complete the task. We finally moved from there when the landlord wanted to reoccupy his property.

Since 2012, our primary goal had been to move to New York. We wanted to be near Pamela’s family and within driving distance of New York City. But, with tight finances again dictating our fate, we rented a second mobile home in the same town. (Just before this move, we got sidetracked a bit and almost moved to Texas, to be near Pamie’s sister. In hindsight, though, everything worked out for the better.)

Unlike the first rental, this mobile home was situated in a large, beautiful, well-managed park, tailored for the 50+ community. It was a great improvement over the latter: spacious, insulated from the downsides of city-life, and owned by a responsive, absentee landlady. However, the homes here were situated very close to one another on small, leased lots. With our focus steadfastly fixed on New York, we unpacked only our basic living necessities. The vast majority of our belongings remained boxed and stored inside the home, in a large, unused area apparently intended as a recreation room. As such, it resembled a warehouse.

The neighbor to the right of us was a loud mouth, Trump supporter. Every morning, he sat on his front porch, cell phone to his mouth, loudly berating the ills and failures of the Obama Administration and the country’s “nanny state.” He initially tried to hustle me in his efforts to find customers for his “car repair business.” He soon got the message that I was not interested in his business or his company. Lord, have mercy!

This move was supposed to be temporary, but we ended up living there for three and a half years. I had my heart attack in the small backyard at the end of our second year there. My beloved Golden Retriever passed away there 14 months later.

All the while, Pamela searched relentlessly for a New York home. She worked with several realtors and finance brokers via phone and email. She even flew east twice to look at potential houses. Finally, when a move looked imminent, Pamela searched found a long-distance moving company that quoted us a price at about 50% below the competition! I’ll call them “L.A. Bowel Movers.” The salesman, or “move coordinator,” called himself Jeremiah. I immediately thought that Mormons owned the company. Like Howard Hughes, I trusted Mormons. Well, I later came to learn that this was no Mormon outfit. We trusted Jeremiah. We sent him a deposit and booked a move.

However, as time went on, potential new home deals fell through. We spent loads of money on required house inspections. But one house after another, something would go awry. We canceled and rebooked our move with Jeremiah at least five times, and each time, he promptly and without incident, inked a new date for us. Jeremiah was a charming guy, affable and easy-going. Usually, that would be a red flag for me. However, anxious to buy our very own home in New York, I was suckered in.

Switch and bait: One thing I found odd was that this company hadn’t sent anyone to give us an on site estimate. Jeremiah had provided it by phone and email, based on details Pamela gave of our current home’s size and the gross weight of our belongings recorded in past moves. That was yet another red flag we ignored.

Cut to moving day. We were aware of the company’s policy: No goods loaded until 50% of the total move balance was handed over. Payment could only be made by cash, cashier’s check, or postal money order. Another red flag we overlooked. Pamela had already obtained a cashier’s check in the required amount.

The movers showed up 30 minutes late. The truck they brought was 26 feet long, much smaller than we’d expected. We soon learned that it was intended only to accommodate the total cubic footage and weight on which the original phone estimate was based, with room to spare. Our entire load would later be transferred onto a contracted mover’s semi-truck. Well, the moving team’s lead man, Jose, surveyed our entire household’s possessions. He then informed us that more space would be required on the truck to accommodate everything; approximately 546 more cubic feet. This, of course, translated to additional costs of over $3,100. We panicked; we didn’t have the extra funds! They had us over a barrel! After several phone calls were made between Jose, his boss, Jeremiah and us, Pamela and I discussed our dilemma in private. We were stuck. We had no choice but to pay up and get the truck loaded. Our new home was scheduled to close in six days, we had a plane to catch, our lease was up, and we had a team of people depending on us! After some protests, we obtained an option to request a discount. The lead man’s boss accepted it, we agreed for the move to proceed, and we handed the cashier’s check to Jose. During this entire ordeal, five workers sat in front of the house, waiting for their orders. It seemed as though they’d been through this before. Funny, the movers ultimately managed to load all of our stuff onto every cubic inch of the small truck. Go wonder.

Cash only: Fast forward: we successfully arrived in New York and, after several hotel stays, we were invited to be guests at our realtor’s home while awaiting the closing of our new home and arrival of the moving truck. This home’s very remote location left us with no cell service, which was the sole means by which the mover (driver), Don, could reach us. Fortunately, there was a land line we could use while there. We phoned the mover and, with great difficulty, we provided that phone number to him. Immediately, a communication problem with the mover became evident, as he spoke with a heavy mid-Eastern accent in very broken English; his comprehension was even less. He informed us he would be arriving in five days.

Two nights before the expected arrival date, Don phoned to inform us that he would be arriving the next morning, between 7 and 10 a.m. This meant we had to hustle, get to bed early, and arrive at the house in time to meet him. Well, we arrived at 7:15 a.m. and waited. After almost two and a half hours, we decided to leave, figuring he wasn’t going to show up. Just before we got into our rental vehicle, we saw this semi-truck coming up the road. They arrived at 10:30.

To our astonishment, there were only two guys to complete the delivery: Don and his partner. Just the two were going to move our voluminous amount of stuff from the truck and into our new home! Don, the leader, was an unctuous dude who was short in stature with the biggest Napoleonic complex I had ever witnessed! As we came to soon find out, he also had a persecution complex and argued with us several times in his broken English. Pamela would instruct him how to set up furnishings and he would either ignore her or angrily dispute it. It was below 30 degrees out, but he insisted that we turn off the heat and leave all of the doors open the entire time!

The other major hurdle was the requirement for the means of payment. Total due was over $5,200. We had been instructed, only after we’d left our former home and place of banking, that the driver would only accept cash or postal money order. We had neither, and had no easy access to our funds. We were limited by our credit union to withdraw no more than $2500 a day. We’d already obtained that amount the previous Friday, after great effort and a long drive in the snow and rain, from and to our remote guest house. But, now, while the move delivery was in progress, we had to leave the movers alone at the house to travel again to areas unfamiliar to us. Finally, we were finally successful in purchasing the remaining funds at a post office in the form of postal money orders. We returned and paid the funds to the mover, obtained his receipts, and painfully endured the project through its finish at 9:30 p.m. We were so frustrated, defeated, and exhausted that we told the movers to simply leave us to finish assembling the furnishings that were still lying in pieces on the floor.

When it was all over, I was pissed off and Pamela was exhausted. As time went on, we found damage to some of our furnishings. We opened boxes and found more damaged goods. When it finally came time to use our clothes washer, it made a terrible banging sound. We ended up going to the laundromat twice. A repairman later found it had been damaged during the move.

Not only did the movers fuck us over, but our vehicle transport company also ripped us off. I won’t get into that right now. If you are telling me that capitalism is superior to socialism, I will reply that that is similar to comparing Scarlet Fever to cancer. Both diseases should be cured.

Unless I become a millionaire, I will never move again.

#moving #consumer rip off #autobiography #poets of tumblr #Stephenjaymorris

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