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bokutoslittlebird · 3 years

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The Perfect Family

Alpha!Bokuto x Beta!reader x Beta!Akaashi

Author’s Note : If you’ve read the little drabbles and asks with the fluffy BokuAka family, then you’re in for a surprise. Those were not canon to the actual works I created, it was just something nice to write and think about. This will not start off fluffy at all. This will also include the pregnancy process, so be warned of that ; This is a sequel to my Kinktober piece, Threesome with Bokuto and Akaashi ; I’m so sorry it took for fucking ever

Warnings: Omegaverse, noncon/dubcon (explicit use of the word r*pe), gun play, choking, water torture (attempted drowning), gaslighting, manipulation, watersports (briefly, kind of), mindbreak, dumbification, pregnancy, creampie(s), asphyxiation, lactation, knotting, breeding (technically), degradation

Kōtarō’s rut had finally ended, pumping you full and fucking you into a stupor, all while Keiji made sure to have him give you a break. It was the week for you and Kōtarō to catch up, after all. You were bonded to Kōtarō and Keiji now, you were their mate, so you had to be taken care of. With the stinging pain on your shoulder from Kōtarō’s mark, you were only missing the legal document to bind you to Keiji the normal, Beta way. Keiji was currently thinking about which ring to get you, since Kōtarō had already decided on his “proposal” gift. Keiji figured you’d need time to adjust, however, as he was laying on the couch with Kōtarō’s arms wrapped around him, you missing. There was a cute show that they were watching, Keiji was sure you’d like it. You weren’t allowed out of the bedroom yet, so he would have to show it to you another time.

Once Kōtarō had been satisfied and Keiji had recovered, both got to work on making your stay permanent. You attempted to leave, but Keiji was quick to cuff you. Kōtarō held you down, forcing you to struggle until there was nothing left to do except lay there. Kōtarō had to go back to Osaka soon, so he was trying to enjoy his last few days in Tokyo.

“That was a fun show. Cute, too,” his yawning interrupted his sentence, cutting it short. Keiji nodded in response, snuggling closer to Kōtarō. The Alpha was warm and comfortable, it gave him a sense of home. “I gotta go back tomorrow, Akaashi,”

“I know, Bokuto-san,” Keiji sighs, knowing he’d have to work on their new pet by themselves. It was going to be a struggle. At the beginning of the week, you were so pliant and easily coerced into things. Now, you wouldn’t look or talk to them. Kōtarō threw a fit yesterday, screaming and crying because you weren’t the same person, you were much more distant. It’s the same when it comes to Keiji, however. You only looked at him with betrayal and sadness, even then only looking at him briefly. You exhausted yourself, but you were fighting them. Distancing yourself and giving them the silent treatment. It made Kōtarō not want to leave, you being so upset at him, but he didn’t have a choice.

Kōtarō needed to find a new place for everyone to live, of course. With the high probability of you becoming pregnant, you couldn’t be living in Tokyo, hours away from your alpha. Knowing you would be carrying his pups without him around had Kōtarō growling, Keiji gently patting his arm. Kōtarō calmed down at that, indulging in the calming scent of Keiji. Keiji has already been bonded to him, so it wouldn’t be as stressful if he wasn’t bonded — you were both his mates and therefore, you could be trusted in Keiji’s care. It was still hard to go. He didn’t want to leave with the state you were in.

“What place were you thinking about?” Keiji mused, running his finger in a pattern on Kōtarō’s arm. Just something to do as he mentally planned for the upcoming weeks. The type of house would determine how long those weeks would be.

“Some place big, but close by the gym and practice gym. Maybe traditional? I’ve always wanted to live in a traditional, zen kind of house,” Kōtarō’s eyes lit up as he talked, images and scenes of a large house full of his lovers and his children, playing volleyball in the yard. Keiji smiles at that, knowing it would be at least a month. Enough time to have you positively pregnant and to get you settled into your new role. It’d take effort, of course it would, but he could do it.

“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Bokuto-san,”

“Ya know, we really gotta get used to calling each other by our given names. You’re gonna be a Bokuto, aren’t’cha?”

“Well, of course I am. Just like [Y/N]. We’ll be the Bokuto family,” he sighs, closing his eyes as the name settles in his mind. The Bokuto family has a nice ring to it, he thinks.

Kōtarō spends his last night cuddling you to sleep. You want no part of it, lying stiff as a board as he presses kisses to your neck and rubs his hand over your stomach. It’s a sickening thought, the possibility of getting pregnant. If you really had been ovulating during the rut, you most likely were pregnant. It’s not like you’d know or not, you barely leave the bed to urinate. It’s disgusting to have to deal with, but even when you do get the bathe and do your business, Keiji is right next to you, ready to intervene if necessary. Although Kōtarō is often in there with you, lathering up your body as his touches become less innocent, Keiji’s stone-cold gaze forces you to not attempt anything silly.

When the morning comes, Kōtarō is desperate to keep something of yours until he can see you again. In order to keep him happy, you acquiesce to his demands and let him take your used clothes, yet to be washed. As if the lingering scent of the morning sex isn’t still clinging to his skin. You can’t smell it, nor Keiji, but you know it’s there as you watch him dress himself, tucking himself away as he rambles on about his plans for the future. Three kids for him, two for Keiji, a nice big house, just the ideal lifestyle for anyone. It’ll never happen, though. His delusions will soon shatter when you stay distant and refuse to love him or Keiji.

Keiji waves goodbye to you, saying he’ll come back when he’s done with work. He plans on taking Kōtarō to the train station and then going to work, so you’ll be stuck for the next few hours. Until dinner time, that is. After an hour, you hear a ping from your phone and reach over to look at it. You can still use your phone, of course, but any possibility of calling for help is useless. In this society, nobody would help you. Not only that, your phone is bugged and linked to Keiji’s. He knows when you unlock your phone, what you do at what time, and how long you’re on it. You’re almost positive he can shut it off if he wants to.

The noise is a message from Kōtarō, telling you he misses you already. A roll of the eyes as you lock it, setting it beside you again. You’re able to barely reach the table beside the bed, but none of the drawers. One hand is secured to the headboard, wooden and strong enough to withstand Kōtarō’s ruthless rut. You feel restless as the day has only begun, the next time you will be able to move out of the bed, if at all, will be when Keiji comes home.

The doorknob to the apartment jiggles, making you jump. Keiji should’ve gone to work, so the sudden noise was unexpected. When it finally turns, you expect to see the familiar hair of your former friend, the tousled raven hair and the broad build. Although the man has the proper stature, the hoodie covering his head and the cheap-looking mask covering his face prevent you from properly identifying him. You can’t tell if he’s smirking or not, the intense feeling that he’s giving off tells you he is. With your hand secured to the bed, you really don’t have much in the way of options. The phone is still an option, but you doubt you could get to it in time.

The man lunges towards you, spurring you to attempt to grab the phone. Your fingers brush the metal device before your arm is forcefully gripped and twisted. You scream as your body twists, attempting to lessen the pain. It’s useless, but you still try. When your mouth opens, he quickly shoves something round and hard in it, your tongue pressed against the barrel of the gun.

“Don’t move a muscle,” his voice was low and hoarse, as if he was adjusting it to hide his identity. It was still unfamiliar to you, your brain unable to register what was going on. The man easily overpowers you, using his weight to keep you pinned to the bed. Fear prickles your skin, the chill setting in deep into your bones despite the lingering warmth of the fading Summer heat. It’s a horrible feeling, frozen in fear as your mind races, unable to do anything except stay still. It’s horrible, the fact you listen to the stranger’s demands despite wishing you were dead and out of Kōtarō and Keiji’s grasps. The gun is removed from your mouth, but the knowledge of it being in his possession is enough to keep you compliant, barely acknowledging the man’s hands moving to slip under the dress you were kindly given.

To keep yourself ready and easily accessible to both Keiji and Kōtarō until they had to part, it was best to slip you into a plain and simple white sundress. It was a present from Kōtarō, a small way of saying you were his now. With the lack of panties or other undergarment, you were essentially naked to the intruder as he sat on his heels, dark eyes scanning over your form. You were shaking from the fear, the unknown, but you weren’t attempting to move or thrash about. It was so easy to take advantage of you, you already nice and wet for him, too. The slick buildup from the morning session with Kōtarō lingers, as well as the creamy substance of his seed fucked into you. Unless the intruder was an Alpha, he couldn’t do much damage, but the thought of leaving you alone without a touch, a taste, was too unbearable.

It didn’t take long for the feeling of something hard and thick to push against your folds, collecting slick and teasing, your sensitivity making you whimper at the touch. It was a sudden plunge, forcing himself deep into your cunt as he groaned, your walls clenching around him. You thought the groan sounded familiar, but there was no more time to think on it when he put his hand on your throat, effectively shutting off proper access to your lungs. Your walls tighten again around him, him finding it hard to retract his hips but thrusting back in. His pace isn’t too fast, but his thrusts are brutal as he continues to drive his cock into your sensitive and abused pussy. He’s not an Alpha, you can tell by the lack of an inflating knot, but it still remains that you’re being violated by an unknown man. The whimpers coming from your throat are all you can release, barely sucking in air to stay conscious. When your vision starts to fade, the man and the walls of the room slowly blurring together, you start to panic.

The gun is still beside you, but it’s not your concern. The bullet in the chamber can’t threaten you unless the barrel’s against your head, but the hand currently cutting off oxygen is threatening your life. Attempting to dig your nails into the fabric of the hoodie is useless, his work gloves keeping his hands from getting any marks, either. Your lungs burn from lack of air and your vision slowly fades to black, a heat and chill settling over your body at the same time as you continue to feel his body pinning you down. The brutal fucking is the only sensation you still have, the stinging of your skin as he snaps his hips to meet yours and the squelching sounds from your sloppy pussy, cum and slick spurting and coating his cock as he chases his own high. You don’t know if he finished inside, your sensations dying out as you slip into unconsciousness.

When you wake up, your lungs ache and your face feels wet. When you flutter your eyes open, you’re faced with the creamy beige walls of Keiji’s bedroom, the lamp and phone on the bedside table. A presence is beside you, a large hand gently brushing your hair. Your eyes widen as you jolt, Keiji gently shushing you as he holds you. It’s comforting, someone familiar beside you after the experience you just had. You don’t know what happened after everything went black, but the smell of Keiji’s morning coffee and his cologne calm you down, tears spilling out as your fists bunch up the fabric of his shirt.

“I had a bad feeling, so I immediately came back home. I didn’t expect you to be completely unconscious, what did you do?” He asked, oblivious to what had really transpired. It was painful to recall, the fear from before rising again as you remember the man’s stature, looming over you as he pinned you to the bed. Another fit of tears come, the droplets soaking the white of Keiji’s shirt. “Darling, you need to tell me what’s wrong. What-“

“A stranger,” a hiccup interrupted you, red and tired eyes looking to his face. He looks confused, so you need to press on. “He broke in. Violated me. He— he ra-“

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. If I had known something so horrible would happen, I wouldn’t have left you all alone. You could’ve come with me, but you’ve been so naughty, you know,” his voice is gentle, but there’s a certain chill in his voice that has your fear spiking. His hands are warm, caressing your back as he speaks. “But, you know, you cheated on Bokuto-san and I. I have to punish you,”

“I— I didn’t do it on purpose!” Why were you defending yourself? Your mind had to momentarily adjust itself, the feeling of helplessness from earlier now back. Once the cuff had released the headboard, it was nothing for Keiji to force you into the bathroom. No amount of strength you had could compare to him, nor height. He wasn’t afraid to hurt you either, almost smashing your fingers in the door frame because you wouldn’t let go. “Akaashi, stop!!”

“Akaashi? Now, we can’t have that. You should address me properly, dear,” he grips your face, smushing your cheeks together as you find yourself practically flung into the tub. It’s already full of hot water, almost scalding, as he holds your head under. Struggling once more, it’s futile. His strength far surpasses yours, stature looming over you. Under the water, his image is distorted, but the way he looks down at you feels familiar. Before that thought can continue, you feel your lungs burning as you thrash again, thoughts only focused on surviving. When your head is pulled up, you gulp air as you cough, water sputtering as you do. “You need to be punished.”

“Let me go, I didn’t do anythi-“ your head is once more under the water, nails digging into the flesh of Keiji’s arms as he holds you still. You didn’t get a good gulp of air, so you’re quickly back at the previous feeling of helplessness as your lungs burn, vision blurring. Before everything goes black, you’re once more pulled from the water. Your face is hot, either from lack of air or the heat of the bathroom and water, you’re not too sure. But Keiji is sure of one thing and that’s the way you’re clinging to him. You were digging your nails into him, squirming and attempting to leave, but now your nails were digging into his as your grip tightened around his forearm. You were clinging to him, unconsciously seeing him as your savior, as he was the one who controlled your ability to breathe, therefore your life. He could drown you if he wanted to, but Kōtarō wouldn’t like that. No, he just needed you to depend on him, change your stance on how you saw your lovers.

Keiji also couldn’t help how delicious you looked, drenched as steam rose from the water, your white dress floating around you as if you were an ethereal being. You looked angelic and untainted... an urge to corrupt you washed over him, compelling his body into the steaming water. It was a tight fit, but he managed. With his sweatpants on, it was easy for him to simply push down the waistband and pull out his cock. “Now I have to cover up that man’s scent, or do you want everyone to know you’re a whore?”

“Akaashi, enough, this isn’t any diff-“

“Are you saying I’m a rapist? That’s what you’re implying, right? If you really think that, then I’ll be that. I would never purposefully hurt you,” his words contradict his actions, his hard cock pressing into your walls as he speaks. Sensitivity still lingers, your legs twitching as he sinks down to the hilt. “You’re saying I’m the bad guy, aren’t you? Well, how about I be the bad guy? Let’s recreate the scenario,”

“Akaashi, please, stop!” You cry out, weak limbs attempting to push him off. Hot, fat tears stream down your cheeks as Keiji licks them away, kissing their trails as you continue to sob at the feeling. It was a horrible feeling, being helpless, but a part of you knew you were safe. Keiji wouldn’t let you die, the only thing that prevented you from putting more effort in. Even with the splashing water, he kept one hand on the back of your head to prevent you from going under. Keiji’s pace is always the same — slow strokes, but deep and meaningful as he rocks his hips into yours and makes sure to roll his hips. It’s a completely opposite of Kōtarō’s, brutal and relentless, but Kōtarō fils you out more. Keiji has to make sure you feel every ridge, every vein, every pulse from his cock and have it completely engraved into your mind.

When Keiji gets close, he holds you closer to him, kissing your neck as your hands grasp at the tub’s edges, mind reeling from the force of your orgasms. Your nerves are on fire, your walls constantly clamping around Keiji’s cock like a vice, all while he rides out his own high. He presses a sweet kiss to the mark on your neck, where it meets your shoulder, right where he sports a matching mark on his own skin. It’s Kōtarō’s bond, what links him to the two of you forever. With a final thrust, Keiji spills deep inside you as he kisses you deeply, forcing you to swallow his moan of pleasure as he swallows your mewls. You’re still tight around him, walls fluttering pathetically around his girth as he relishes in the way you feel, keeping his seed locked inside you.

When he breaks the kiss, you’re both panting heavily, chests heaving for different reasons. “There. Now he’s gone,” a gentle kiss on your temple. With those words, a silence settles over the room. Although the stranger may be gone, in his place stands Akaashi Keiji.

The next day, Keiji is home.

“Just a precaution, dear,” he had said. “So nothing else bad will happen to you when I’m not here. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” With those words, he convinced you of his intentions. The previous day’s events had you rattled, the fear of being alone subconsciously rooted into your mind. A small whimper of Keiji’s name, his given name, had him smiling and cooing at you, taking you anywhere in the apartment you wanted to go. It was nice to finally leave the bedroom and bathroom sections, seeing the front room and kitchen, able to hear and see people outside the windows. You dare not let your eyes linger too long on the windows, covered completely with only shadows passing by, nor on the door. The door which had a recently newly installed lock, to take extra precautions. A passing thought of how it seemed to be so quickly enforced comes by, leaving as you become hyper aware of the blank gaze Keiji gives you. It’s not blank, per se. It looks blank to many bystanders, but to you, you know he’s focusing. He’s watching you and analyzing what you do. It’s a test.

A test you seem to have passed, when he calls you back for a bath. He doesn’t guide you there, no threats, just a simple “Come along,” as he walks towards the same bathroom he almost drowned and violated you in. The fear and anxiety of going back has your flight or fight response kicking in, the seemingly easy option of flinging the door open and leaving has your legs moving. But Keiji is quicker, stronger, and smarter than you. Before your fingertips can even graze the lock, your face is slammed into the floor.

“You were doing so well, too,” his feet are planted on either side of you, one moving to plant itself on your back. With a bit of force, you’re screaming as he has his heel pushing into your spine. “You deserve to be punished.”

“Fuck you, Akaashi!” You spit, squirming and wriggling to get him off. When his foot moves, you attempt to get up, but soon he drops down and fists your hair in one hand, the other pushing your cheeks together.

“I should wash that dirty mouth of yours,” he growls, shoving your face against the floor. By shoving, he essentially drops you into the floor. With a burning sensation in your nose, you feel a vaguely familiar liquid trickling out, a small red dot beneath you. He does it once more, making sure to keep his hand on your head to prevent you from getting up. “I trusted you to listen to me, [Y/N],”

“I’ll never listen to you,” you declare, hands balling into fists beside you. “I’ll never forgive you and Bokuto for what you did. I’ll never forgive or forget how you raped me, either!”

“I did no such thing. You enjoyed it, whore. You clamped around me like a vice last night, just as you probably did the stranger that violated you. Can it be consider violation if you were wet? What about when you started to enjoy it?”

“How would you know that, unless-“

“I know how much of a slut you can be, sleeping around with Alphas in high school and other Betas. You probably got off on being raped,” He sneers, putting more force in his hand, making it uncomfortable as your cheek is smushed against the floor.

“Fuck you,”

“I’ll take that as a yes. As a punishment, you won’t be leaving that bedroom for some time,” he finally lets you free, a large breath of air inhaled as you realize he was putting his weight on your lungs. “Come here,”

Wrenched from the ground, you find yourself dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the bedroom where Keiji cuffs you to the headboard. He’s huffing, but he manages to get both wrists cuffed to the headboard. Back to square one, with you refusing to acknowledge him while he tries to talk. Well, he does talk, you’re forced to listen.

When dinner time comes around, you expect some plain chicken broth or maybe even water, but instead you’re given nothing. Keiji doesn’t come in the room at all. The water running let’s you know he’s washing dishes, but where’s your meal? When his humming enters the room, you know he’s coming down. When he opens the door, in his hand lays a plate with bread crust and crumbs, along with some pocky sticks. Just two, however. Barely considered a meal. “Dinner!”

“You’re kidding me,”

“Dear, you know I don’t joke around easily. You were naughty this afternoon, so you’re going to eat my leftovers. Bread crust and some stale pocky sticks is the only thing on your menu,”

“I’ll starve instead,” a glare sent his way does frazzle him one bit, instead almost makes him... chippier. As if you’re falling for his well hidden trap. A nod and he’s gone, your only source of food with him. He won’t enter to room again until nighttime, so you’re left to wallow in your own solitude, something you used to take for granted.

When Keiji does finally come into the room, you’re excited to see him before remembering you don’t like him. Instead of taking the key and releasing your restraints to sleep, he grabs his pillow, his blanket, and his phone charger. “Where are you going?”

“Well, since you obviously hate me, I thought it’d be best that I leave you alone. After all, that is what you wanted, yes?” A small smirk is on his face as your eyes widen, thoughts running through your head as he takes his leave. Without a bid goodnight, Keiji leaves you alone in the room. With no possible entertainment except your mind, you feel uneasy. Unsteady. The world is suddenly dropping you off in an empty room with nothing and you can’t think of anything to keep yourself entertained. The television set buzzes to life outside, while the popping of popcorn fills your ears along with the melted butter smell. An urge to move flits around, but you decide it is best to not.

The next day, it’s a similar situation. Within three days of Kōtarō’s leave, you’ve found yourself craving his company more than ever. Keiji is ruthless and merciless, entering the bedroom for clothes and then leaving for work. He doesn’t talk to you, he doesn’t look at you, he barely enters the room anymore. You feel your stomach grumble at the thought of food, your mouth dry from the lack of fluids in your system. A pathetic way to die, one would think. With the lack of nutrition, your body will eventually decay or fall into an unstable state. Keiji isn’t a dunce, he knows this — at least, he should. Why then, you wonder, is he allowing this? Not only are you completely attached to the bed, but you haven’t been able to get up at all, even for bathroom use. The urine has stained the sheets, turning the pristine white cotton into a grimy yellow color, the ammonia stench covering the entire bedroom. You felt like a helpless child, in dire need of your parents to come home.

In a way, that’s what it was. You were helpless and needed someone else’s help. You need Keiji’s help. You can only go so long before you end up breaking, and you’ve reached a limit. The disgusting liquid under you was the final thread, the squelching and squeezing every time your hips move to a different area to attempt to leave the spot resulting in a failed attempt. The white dress was soaked, first from the bathroom incident and now it was dyed yellow due to your own fluids. Kōtarō wouldn’t be happy with those results.

When Keiji finally comes home, you hear him. You hear the door close and a sigh. Waiting for him to enter the room is quickly disregarded as you call for him. With no hesitation, he arrives at the room, looking at you. “You called, darling?”

“Keiji, please. I’m sorry I was bad. I need you, please don’t leave me,” you cry out, pulling on the cuffs. Shushing you, he quickly attends to your wrists, red and raw from the tugging, pulling, and twisting you’ve done over the past day. Once one hand is free from the restraint, he’s happy to feel it grabbing his shoulder, a silent beg to not leave. “Kei-“

“I know, I know. I won’t hurt you,” his words calm you down, sobs turning into hiccups as he guides you off the bed. Your legs are weak, unstable from lack of use, so he bridal carries you into the bathroom, not caring about the urine. After setting you on the toilet, he strips you of your dress and starts the bath. Trusting you to not move, he leaves. Another test, to see if you’ve really shaped up after the last attempt.

Keiji stands in the bedroom, pulling the sheets off the bed and removing the pad. He puts them aside, but waits. No movement from the bathroom, not even the toilet seat squeaking or the shutting off of the water. Continuing to put the sheets and dress away, he picks out a set of panties — new and clean, a treat for being good — to go with the pastel pink sundress. It looks exactly like the other one, except the color. After getting a towel and a change of clothes himself, he leaves.

You’re still sitting on the toilet, looking at him as he enters. Perking up, you push into the hand the caresses your head, brushing the tangled hair. He stops the water, guiding you into the tub. Once you’re settled, he strips down and joins you.

“You’re not going to hurt me?” You ask, voice dull.

“Of course not. When have I ever done that?”

The next day is such an improvement, Keiji can’t help but let Kōtarō know how well you’ve adjusted. You’re compliant out of fear rather than love, but Kōtarō doesn’t know that. He’s so excited to see a picture of you cooking in the kitchen, he probably wouldn’t care. The picture doesn’t capture the longing look at the knives, the fleeting glances at the door, the rigidness of your body as Keiji wraps his arms around you. It’s small gestures, but you never move to accomplish the action. Your finger might twitch, a gulp as you see the unlocked door, but you continue on. You make the noodles, you bring the tray to Keiji, you sit in his lap and allow the arms to secure your place. The food is something you’re ever thankful for, the lack of food spurring your resilience into breaking. With a gentle blow, Keiji feeds you the ramen you dutifully prepared for the both of you all day.

You never looked at the door again. You never looked at the knives unless you were cutting something. Even with Keiji breathing down your neck, eyes focused on your hands, you didn’t twitch or move to hurt him. You went to the bathroom and didn’t complain when he joined you. Even when he had to do his little daily checkup, you didn’t complain. The first time, you mentioned it tickled and questioned what he was doing, sticking his nose between your legs as he pried them open. He just smiled and said he needed to know if you were healthy, to which your questions easily stopped. Although he occasionally swept his tongue over your still wet folds, you never told him to go away and leave you alone. Even when he went further and had put you on the bathroom’s countertop before diving between your legs once more, your fingers thread themselves through his hair as you moaned.

When the news of Kōtarō coming back reached your ears, you didn’t know how to feel. Keiji was the one to help you, give you comfort, so you didn’t feel too excited to see Kōtarō. Keiji knew this would cause problems, as Kōtarō was expecting you to be as loving to him as you were to Keiji. After an explanation of the situation, you promised to perform appropriately for Kōtarō. With a whispered threat of locking you up again, you easily complied with everything you were asked to do. When Kōtarō came through the door, he was easily able to catch you as you jumped on him. “Welcome back!”

“Aw, [Y/N]! I’m glad to be back!” He nuzzled into your neck, indulging in your scent. You could easily pretend to be in love with Kōtarō, but your scent would tell him if you were feeling off. With his superior senses, you had to be forced into a mindset where you did love Kōtarō. Threats and memories of the past had could nodding along, situating yourself into his life easily. “I missed you, a lot,”

“Well, we won’t have to be gone for so long again, right?” You ask, a pout forming. “Or are you going to leave me?”

“Oh, no! You’re gonna live with me,” he grins, a closed eye smile. Your eyes widen as the information is processing, Keiji coming from the kitchen.

“It was a surprise for you. We’ll be moving to Osaka to be close to Bokuto-san,” he’s drying a knife, one he recently finished washing, but it’s also a silent threat. Kōtarō didn’t see the horrified look on your face, but he sure did.

“O-Oh. Okay! I can’t wait, when are we.. when do we move?” Twiddling your fingers, Kōtarō wraps his arms around you once more, effectively picking you up. No hesitating, your legs wrap around his waist as he looks up at your face, love flooding his eyes.

“You’ll move in with me tomorrow. Once Akaashi’s boxed everything up, he’ll join us. Our room is all set up, and there’s lots of rooms for kids. Speaking of-!”

“Another time, Bokuto-san,” Keiji harshly whispered, Kōtarō’s eyes widening before smiling, nodding. You didn’t know what that was, but you then focused on Kōtarō moving to the couch.

“Let’s eat, I’m starving! Maybe I can have something special for dessert, if you know what I mean,” with an added eyebrow wiggle, you shyly smile and nod. It’s what Keiji told you would please Kōtarō. It’s what Keiji told you that you need to do.

The dinner itself is fine, but when you ask to use the restroom, Kōtarō points out the red splotches on your white dress. Panicking, you attempt to locate the spot as your face heats up in embarrassment. Keiji then points out the bit of blood on Kōtarō’s pants, making you think your cycle has started. At that mention, Kōtarō’s growling in anger as you seize up in fear, unsure of what to do. Keiji tells you to change while he deals with Kōtarō, you immediately obeying and going to the bedroom.

“I thought ovulating meant she would get pregnant. Why isn’t she pregnant? Were you wrong?” Kōtarō asks, still angry. He knows he scared you, your lingering scent of fear in the room and around him. He thought he could smell another scent on you, but he didn’t know what it could be.

“Bokuto-san, I know this is frustrating but it’s possible she didn’t get pregnant. However, spotting is a sign of pregnancy. It was only a few drops. If she has anymore blood leakage that gets heavy tonight, we’ll know,” Keiji is able to calm down Kōtarō, who rolls his shoulders back and lies against the back of the couch. “Do you want to change your jeans?”

“Nah, it’s barely noticeable. Plus,” a thumb runs over the denim, Kōtarō licking his lips as his eyes darken, “this is like she’s claiming me, right?”

Kōtarō does not force himself on you that evening. Instead, he just cuddles you that night. It’s a differing touch than Keiji’s, who ends up rolling to the other side of the bed in the night. Kōtarō holds you close and tightly all night, snuggling closer to you, as if it was possible, and nudging his nose in your neck. It’s sweet, you think, as he caresses you like you’re made of glass.

The next morning, Kōtarō has you properly dressed to leave with him. A set of panties, sweatpants, t-shirt, and a hoodie. It’s a casual set of clothes, but they are all you came to Keiji’s house in a week and a half ago. Kōtarō says he’ll get you better clothes once you’re settled in, but you feel uneasy as you bid goodbye to Keiji. He worries about your mental state once you’re alone with Kōtarō, but he just has to hope you’re able to seem stable enough for a day.

In Osaka, you feel like your life is beginning anew. It’s not much different from Tokyo, but as Kōtarō guides you through the streets, it becomes known that Osaka has a lot more greenery. It’s very beautiful, in your opinion. When he stops in front of an old house, you glance at him. “Our new home, sweetheart!” He cheers, kissing your cheek as he picks you up. Carrying you inside the house, you notice the security. The gate is only opened via pin entry, which the gate itself is roughly 2 meters tall. Even the door to the house requires thumbprint access, a very modern and technological touch in an older, traditional house.

He shows you to your room, which is also his room, but yours too. It has its modern touch, with the remaining aspect of futons to lay on. The cameras in the hallway also are in your view, the one in the bedroom and the hallway. Looking into each room, you notice they are containing cameras, but one room is different. “What’s this?”

“Oh? This is our nursery! So, when you have a baby, it’ll be in here,” he chirps, pointing out things in the room. Scanning the room, you notice the lack of camera secured.

“Where’s the camera?”

“What— what camera?” Rubbing the back of his neck, he fakes confusion. You see right through it.

“I noticed the other cameras. There’s not one here,”

“Oh, well, that’s because this room has baby monitors!” He gestures to the white device. A nod of understanding has the tour moving on. Showing you to the kitchen, you notice the pantry and fridge are stocked. “Would you make me dinner?”

“Of course. What do you want?”

“You, served hot and steaming in the bath,” he grins. Eyes widen as you realize what he wants, you sheepishly laughing as you acquiesce.

Kōtarō is much rougher than Keiji, you knew that, but the way he fucks you with fervor as he hasn’t seen you in almost five days is something akin to his rut. Sinking his teeth into your skin, remarking his territory as he spurs you into your first orgasm of the night. Your nails are digging into his broad shoulders, the only thing you can use to keep yourself grounded. The setting wasn’t in the bathroom, but rather the bedroom where he claimed he wanted to “seal the deal” of you coming home. Legs tighten around his waist, back arching as he continues to drive his cock into you and litter your neck with less painful marks, claiming already claimed territory. As he presses a wet, sloppy kiss against your lips, you scream as you tighten your walls, feeling his knot force its way inside you.

A warm hand rubs the side of your body as your walls convulse around him, squeezing as he pumps you full of his cum. It’s a memory to you, but it feels so warm and fulfilling, you immediately relax in his hold as he continues to pepper kisses along your body. It’s a comforting feeling, being praised and cared for, a drastic difference from the way Keiji treated you a few days ago. Well, how you think he treated you a few days ago. He said he never did it, but your body said differently. With Kōtarō’s eyes of love looking down on you, you didn’t think it mattered. That was in the past, this was the present. You felt comfortable here, that was what mattered.

When Keiji arrived with a bunch of boxes, you were told to make them lunch so they could eat when they were done. Kōtarō said he didn’t want you straining yourself after last night, so you agree to his demands. Deciding to make some udon for lunch, you get to work as they lug in the boxes. The boxes aren’t large nor heavy, but watching Kōtarō easily lift three of them with no effort, while Keiji brings in two at most with also no effort, you feel yourself get wet at the thought of them hot and sweaty afterwards. With a possible treat in mind, you work more diligently, mentally preparing yourself to ask them.

Keiji mentioned he’d be looking for another job while Kōtarō was at the gym. It would be the first time you would be alone and free to roam. You begged Keiji to not leave for too long, hands grasping at the fabric of his shirt as he pried your hands off. Kōtarō gave you a sweet kiss before he left, telling you he’d try to hurry back, but you knew Keiji would get back first. Sitting in the large house, you didn’t know what to do except cook and sleep. Your phone screen lit up with a message from Kōtarō, a picture of him blowing you a kiss with a message of ‘I miss you!’ under it. You smile at that, sending back a message that you miss him, too.

Before you lock your phone, you look at the many games you have on it. There’s one game you don’t remember being on it, it looks like a tracker app. Clicking on it, it welcomes you and it shows how far along you are in.. pregnancy? First reaction is to panic, how do you know if you’re pregnant? Going into the internet app, you search up symptoms of pregnancy. One that jumps out to you is the spotting, only a little bit of blood as the sperm fertilizes the egg. It is most likely what you did on Kōtarō’s lap, the day he came to Tokyo. Another surge of panic comes as you think of your lovers, your mates. With Keiji looking for a new job and Kōtarō being busy with being a professional athlete, they don’t have time to take care of you and a baby. You decide to not tell them.

Although you decide to not tell them, the next week is excuses of your recent symptoms. You find yourself more exhausted than usual, not even getting out of bed to bid goodbye to Kōtarō and Keiji. Not only that, you end up in the bathroom as you feel sick, but only half of the times does something come up. It’s when you have another episode of morning sickness does Keiji pop the question. “Should I get a pregnancy test?”

“N-No! I’m not pregnant, just some bad sushi!” When Keiji’s grip on your arm gets tighter, you whimper. “Keiji, stop hurting me,”

“I’m not hurting you, I just need you to tell me the tru-“ the door shutting cuts him off, his attention to the door of the bathroom where Kōtarō is, panting.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it? I could sense it,”

“I’m just a bit sick-“ “She’s pregnant-“ You both speak at the same time. Your eyes widen as Keiji looks at you.

“Pregnant? Now? Really?” Kōtarō is ecstatic, but you don’t take it that way.

“I’m not, I promise! I’m sorry!” You beg. Kōtarō’s mood turns sour, the anger directed towards you. Keiji stands back, but he doesn’t interfere.

“Why are you lying to me? If Keiji says you are, then you are! I know you’re lying!” He kneels on the ground and grabs your shoulders, digging his meaty fingers into the flesh. You yelp in pain, attempting to get him off. “Why are you doing this?! You were doing so well!”

“Stop, Kō-chan, stop! You’re hurting me!” A call out of his childhood nickname has his rage quelling, as you brush his hands off and rub the stinging skin. “I don’t want to be pregnant,”

“This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what we want, do you understand that?” Keiji speaks, voice low and threatening. You quickly nod your head, attempting to explain yourself.

“I- I thought that you wouldn’t want a baby because you’re both busy! I don’t- I don’t want to burden you more than I do,” with your words, the anger and rage suddenly evaporates as they understand.

“Burden us? Baby, we love you and do everything for you. You’re going to be carrying my pups and Keiji’s babies, we want this. This is all I ever hoped for,” Kōtarō coos, taking your hands and pressing a kiss to them. A fit of sobs escape as you wrap your arms around him, hiccuping into his chest. Keiji sits and smiles, knowing you have completely adjusted into the proper role.

With the news of your pregnancy, Kōtarō is able to get off a lot more to be there for you. You’re no omega, so it’s not as if he has to take off for 9 months, and Keiji is there to take care of you. Keiji takes care of any appointments you need to do, signing you into a private hospital nearby where Kōtarō’s teammate’s omega gave birth. A list of what was normal was given to you and Keiji and what would be a cause for concern, so you made sure to drill into your head about the possible problems. It was vital that you were able to give birth, being able to give Kōtarō and Keiji what they wanted all you needed to take care of yourself. Keiji prepared your meals, making sure you were eating properly even before the bump showed.

When the bump became prominent, you were glad that your wardrobe consisted of dresses. The dresses you had were all loose-fitting and easy to move around in. With the upcoming winter months, you had lots of blankets and an oversized jacket, bearing Kōtarō’s MSBY number and logo. Kōtarō couldn’t keep his hands off of you, always rubbing your bump and pinching the extra fat you were putting on. Worry over the added weight was a brief concept that quickly evaporated as Kōtarō voiced how much he loves the extra meat to fondle and love, tickling you as you giggle afterwards. Keiji couldn’t say he disagreed with Kōtarō, the added weight adding to your cuteness charm as you did the most basic and minuscule things. He could disagree with Kōtarō on the obsession with the pregnancy milk, however.

Lactation was painful, the way your boobs ached as they were full of creamy milk. Although they ache, Kōtarō encouraged you to let him drink from them. Hesitation was in the beginning, but once his lips had secured themselves on your nipple and started sucking, it was quite relaxing. The tender ache in your breasts were gone as Kōtarō drank from them, but he often had to drink from both of them due to Keiji’s aversion. He didn’t see the appeal, he rather enjoyed teasing your nipples when the sexual appetite of yours had risen, but he didn’t see the appeal in drinking the milk. Keiji did oblige Kōtarō, however, in looking into lactation cookies, which would increase milk production and could even make it taste better. It was worth a try, as it would help the children to develop as you breastfed them.

The lactation cookies Keiji made looked awful, but tasted amazing. You would have eaten all of them had it not been for Keiji stopping you. Kōtarō seemed excited, immediately begging for another go. He’d have to wait until nighttime, since he often took naps after you breastfed him during the day.

At night, you often slept completely naked, able to easily feed Kōtarō if he woke up in the middle of the night. Your sex drive had risen exponentially in your second trimester, to the point Kōtarō had to request off to take care of you. He made sure to keep his promise, stuffing you with his thick cock and plugging you up with his cum or lapping at your folds until your fluids splashed against his face. With the third trimester underway, your libido has decreased while your milk had increased, but that didn’t deter Kōtarō from getting frisky. Even as Keiji bathed away from you two, he couldn’t help but touch himself to your whines and mewls.

Kōtarō has been riding a cloud since your pregnancy came about. Even before the milk, he found it hard to resist fucking you, especially with the added sensitivity. Your breasts were larger now, bouncing with every thrusts as he tweaks the nipples, watching the cream dribble from them. He can’t help himself, really, as he goes to attach himself to one of your perky buds. When Keiji enters the room, he chuckles at the sight.

“Should we worry that there won’t be enough milk for you and the baby?” He muses, sitting on the futon next to you. Your hand grasps at his silk shirt, bringing him down to give you a kiss. Even as Kōtarō drills into you, you want more. A wet pop resounds around the room as Kōtarō laughs, groaning in your ear as he plugs you with his knot, pumping you full.

“The pup can have those bottles, and with help of those miracle cookies, we should be fine. You sure you don’t want to at least try a bit? It feels nice for her, doesn’t it, my little Beta?” He coos, pressing kisses to your cheeks as you come down from your high, walls fluttering around Kōtarō’s cock.

“It relieves some pain, I’ll admit that,” you smile at Keiji. “You can try,”

“Well, how can I say no to that?” He smiles back at you, brushing hair out of your face. Kōtarō massages your breast, holding it so Keiji can attach his lips to the nipple. His eyes focus on the creamy liquid dripping from the bud, only to become transparent as it follows gravity. When he does get a taste, he knows he’s in trouble. It’s as delicious as Kōtarō said, creamy and full that makes you want more. As he sucks with fervor, you giggle and Keiji is joined by his other lover, suckling any milk he left behind. It’s such a strange thing to happen, both grown men sucking on your chest as if they had been born only recently. With the swell of your stomach, you knew they’d have to share their milky mine.

As your due date drew near, you found yourself unable to do anything alone. Kōtarō was off completely until you delivered and Keiji was no longer looking for a job, as it was decided Kōtarō made enough for everyone to live comfortably. He knew he’d have to find another job soon, as more children were born and needed to be fed, but that was a well ways off, at least 9 more months.

What started as a normal day soon turned to chaos as preparations for delivery expedited when your water broke. The hospital had your room prepared already, but it was for your week stay as you were three days away from your date. Kōtarō was in a frenzy, unsure of what to do but desperate to do something. Keiji has to drive to the hospital, while you were doing breathing exercises with Kōtarō in the back seat. It was the birth of their first child, so even Keiji was panicking, but he was also excited.

Once settled into the room, the nurses had to check to see how far along you were dilated. Kōtarō was anxious, his scent permeating the room as he started to pace. The doctor had come in, spurring him into a fighting mentality because the doctor was another Alpha. Keiji and a nurse had to get him out of the room, with a promise he could see the children once they were born, but he would have to wait in the waiting room. Weakly calling out his name and telling him you were fine, he obliged as he left, punching the wall once as he felt his emotions boil over. Keiji was by your side, holding your hand as you squeeze it, pushing when the doctor told you to.

When the room was filled with screaming, the clock chiming as 12:15 had arrived, signaling the date of birth of your first born son. With his stubby arms and legs, you laughed as you held him, Keiji getting the honor of cutting the cord. The baby still needed to be cleaned and checked over, so the doctor and nurses took him while Keiji went to get Kōtarō. By the time Kōtarō and Keiji has come back, you were holding a small, but still big, baby boy swaddled in a thick blanket. Kōtarō immediately raced over to look over both of you, his scent out of control as his emotions mingled together. He didn’t know what to think.

“It looks like it’s yours, Kōtarō,” Keiji says, hand resting on Kōtarō’s shoulder. He smiles in response, looking at the baby’s golden eyes blinking open at him.

“Sure does, Keiji. I guess the next thing we should work on is proper marriage, right?” He watches as the baby grasps his finger, the small hand even smaller compared to his large one.

“A proper marriage, yes. The ring, the dress, the ceremony, you would like that, wouldn’t you dear?”

“Of course Keiji. Anything you want.” As you look up to him, he sees nothing but love in your eyes. He smiles, nodding in agreement.

“Well, as well as making sure the next one’s mine. We should start on that as soon as possible, don’t you think?”

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silenceinternalmonologue · 3 years

Text

A Review of Loki (2021)

[The following is an exact transcription of Twitter user @/diolesbian ‘s thread linked here . They gave me permission to cross-post their thread on my Tumblr. Keep in mind that this review is fairly long and quite critical of the series. I agree with this review wholeheartedly, and would be welcome to discuss it with anyone else.]

Loki is a character who has died many times, but his own series may be his most brutal character assassination yet.

1. Loki’s role in the series. Instead of tackling Loki's most villainous state of mind in Avengers 1, the series literally speedran through his development in the subsequent films, after which they almost entirely halted his character progression.

Because this series was set right after Avengers 1 it had the responsibility of developing Loki further in place of The Dark World and Ragnarok. In Episode 1, this development was kicked off by having Loki watch a reel of some of his defining moments in the MCU, allowing him to see his future all the way up to his death in Infinity War. Sadly, this scene ended up being the most development he received in the entire series. And arguably, this isn’t even true development but more like a speedrun of his character up until that point, serving as a simple tactic to explain why he wouldn’t be acting all dictatorial and murderous during his own series. As soon as he had been made “good” (read: docile) enough to follow along with the plot, his agency was completely thrown out. From that point on, the series wasn’t about Loki making things happen but about things happening to Loki.

Loki was supposed to be the main character, but he wasn't the protagonist in this story. In fact, he was more of a side character than we’ve ever seen him be in the MCU before, perhaps excepting IW and Endgame.

A protagonist is by definition someone whose important decisions affect the plot, whose development is followed most closely by the audience, and who is opposed by an antagonist. Loki exhibited none of these traits in this series. Especially the latter half of the story, he was reduced to simply reacting to the revelations around him, such as the reveal that the TVA members were all variants and that Kang was the true mastermind behind everything. He never truly involved himself or acted based on any of these plot points, and hardly played a key role in what was supposed to be his own story. Even in the films, where Loki is a side character, he makes choices which impact the plot to a larger extent. He almost seems more like a background character in the role of protagonist than in the parts he plays in the films.

2. The antagonist. The TVA could have worked as the perfect setting for Loki to have a new arc. It’s a thematic antithesis to who we know Loki to be. But when this Loki turns out to not be who the audience thought he was the TVA’s thematic significance falls apart as well.

In Episode 1, the TVA’s Agent Mobius enlists the help of Loki the Variant to pin down a greater foe who we are told is another, more malicious version of Loki. Order and chaos meeting in the middle, teaming up to take down an enemy, who even happens to be the protagonists’ literal evil self: that works, it sounds promising. But this dynamic is soon undermined when Loki leaves with Sylvie. Still, the benefit of the doubt is easy to grant here: a story about tricksters is bound to contain twists. But by Episode 3 the series is halfway done and the TVA has been appointed as the main antagonist again: we’ve now established villains three different times. And then the Cloud Monster At The End Of Time is introduced, and finally Kang. In other words, the Loki series has no consistent antagonist, no one to pit its main character against. And this is where we once again miss out on an enormous aspect of Loki’s potential characterization.

Protagonists are always defined by an antagonist, whether a purple Titan, a flat tire, or themself. Loki is not given anything to define his morals, motivations, or development in opposition to and this is a huge oversight. Especially given the fact that Loki has taken on the villain’s role in the past: how is the audience supposed to know that the “bad guy” is now a “good guy” if there’s no “even worse guy” to stand up against?

3. The plot. A plot should show off its MC’s strengths and match their personality. The Loki plot hardly relied on his presence at all, he didn't play a key role. The story had so little to do with Loki that it seemed as though he has barely any impact on “his” narrative.

One of the most central conflicts in the Loki series doesn’t involve him at all: it’s between Sylvie and the TVA. This plotline was a good concept overall, but its main problem is that it’s practically the only conflict in the series. Loki himself, as mentioned before, isn’t set in opposition to anything or anyone. And thanks to his relationships with Sylvie and Mobius being weakened by conflicting storytelling devices, he appears to be in a bubble by himself away from the rest of the cast for much of the story. First he follows Mobius around, then Sylvie, then he wanders aimlessly in the void before following Sylvie once again and learning that Kang is a Really Bad Guy who he should be opposed to even though by this point he has interacted so little with the story unfolding around him that the audience doesn’t even understand why he should be choosing to play the hero.

The plot and the characters both suffer by being so incredibly unrelated to each other. A series, especially an MCU one, should tell an overarching narrative through the perspective of its main character.

In the beginning of the series, when Loki was still getting his bearings in the TVA, this lack of decision-making was more understandable, especially since some of his skills were still being shown-- he discovered Sylvie was hiding in nexus events, and he made the choice to leave Mobius and follow her. But by the latter half of the series he still hasn’t had much impact on the story or taken any actions of his own, and simply allows plot points to happen to him. Just because the Loki series had to introduce the TVA and Kang didn’t mean it had to forgo telling a story about its protagonist. If Loki’s story had been intrinsically tied to the overarching plot points, if his choices had been some of the primary factors determining how events ended up taking place, the series would have succeeded in every aspect. But instead Loki is pushed aside by the plot of his own series, a plot which subsequently ends up coming across as largely hollow and pointless due to its lack of character drive.

4. Loki’s arc. One of the main reasons MCU Loki is loved is for his excellent character development across his films. TVA Loki was extremely lacking in that aspect and chances to take his character in interesting new self-aware directions were thrown away without much thought.

Throughout the MCU, Loki is on a journey with many highs and lows. He goes from a bitter and disheartened prince standing in the shadow of his brother, to a self-loathing Jotun bent on destroying his own people in a desperate attempt to win his father’s love, to a half-mad partially mind-controlled dictator with delusions of grandeur fueled by his own insecurity, to a prisoner wondering what there is left for him to lose, to a savior of Asgard’s people finally coming to accept his place in what is left of his family, to a tragic sacrificial victim who knew he had to die so the true hero might live on. That’s a hell of a journey, incidentally shown in less than TWO HOURS of screen time, and the prospect of TVA Loki embarking on an equally stimulating one, this time told over the course of over four hours and shown from his own perspective the entire way through, was exciting. But as it turned out, this relatively simple expectation went completely unmet.

For a story trying to say so much about individuality and self-acceptance, the Loki series seemed to pass by every obvious opportunity to tackle those questions.

Sylvie’s introduction seemed like a good idea at first: Loki would be able to literally bond with himself and learn to accept who he is that way, and forays could be made to explore what Loki’s personality could have been like if he grew up under different circumstances! But aside from a scene or two in Episode 3, this was not how things ended up going. Loki didn’t come to any grand or important conclusions about his identity, he didn’t choose to act differently, all that happened was a vaguely-worded confession of pseudo-romantic feelings which was cut off in the middle, made no sense, and weakened the narrative in a whole host of other ways explained elsewhere. Loki’s encounter with other versions of themself in the Void was similarly meaningless: Loki didn’t end up expressing or demonstrating a single thing he learned from meeting all of those alternate selves, despite the fact that there was potential for massive self-discovery there.

Less than 2 hours of MCU screen time portrayed Loki more coherently than this entire series. Loki is loved because of how much he changes, and it felt like he didn’t in this series. He started off lost and stayed that way throughout the entire plot.

By the end of the series, it was impossible to identify who Loki had become. He said he didn’t want a throne, but it was not obvious why not. He looked sad to be betrayed by Sylvie, but never expressed what that meant to him. He seemed afraid once Kang was unleashed, but why? Why did he care about the Sacred Timeline? What were his motivations? Throughout the series the answers to these questions became less and less obvious, culminating in the final episode which ended without a single moment of reflection or explanation as to who Loki had become. He wasn’t a villain, but only because he wasn’t murdering people. He was in some capacity a hero, for… being against Kang, probably, but once again with no explanation as to why Loki had decided to feel that way. He never seemed self-assured in his heroism, as if he hadn’t chosen the role for himself. Again, making one’s own choices that shape the narrative are what differentiates a protagonist from a side character, but Loki did not do that in this series.

5. Loki and Sylvie’s relationship. Loki and Sylvie had the potential to be a powerful duo representing the process of self-acceptance but instead they were reduced to a strange pseudo-romance.

Despite Loki’s many developments in the films, he never truly liked himself. He has been known to act extremely confident and self-righteous at times, but this is merely the opposite side of the coin containing his self-loathing and insecurity. Having him literally meet and subsequently befriend himself in Episode 3 was a move towards developing this aspect of him and potentially teaching him to finally accept himself as he truly is, but this buildup was all shattered in Episode 4 when the relationship is portrayed to have romantic undertones. Instead of a powerful struggle to accept oneself, the relationship between Loki and Sylvie becomes a twisted thing which is memeable at best (selfcest LOL amirite?) and outright damaging to both characters and the very concept of loving oneself at worst.

Ultimately, Loki and Sylvie's relationship didn’t add anything to either character’s development and actively detracted from what could have been a touching story.

Romantic love is extremely different from self love; romantic love has connotations including dating conventions and sexuality which are impossible to ignore and in this case serve as a distraction. And on top of ruining a potentially powerful storyline, this strange relationship makes both Loki and Sylvie seem out of character. Loki is once again one thousand years old and he has never even had a true friend, so why would he possibly fall for someone after knowing them for only two days? Meanwhile in Sylvie’s case, Loki’s “feelings” for her cause the audience to pay more attention to her romantic life and gestures rather than her actual character and motivations.

6. Loki’s Sexuality and Gender Fluidity. Loki’s sexuality and gender has been shown in several comic runs, and the series was advertised as featuring this representation as well. But due to several fundamental errors and problematic storytelling this also fell flat.

Sylvie’s introduction filled many fans with hope regarding the portrayal of Loki’s identity. In the MCU neither of their LGBT identities had ever been touched upon, while the series introduced a female variant of Loki and explicitly stated their sexuality. But this portrayal soon unraveled, most notably in Episode 5, in which many other Loki variants were shown but not a single one besides Sylvie was non-male. On top of that, when TVA Loki mentioned Sylvie and referred to her as “a woman Variant of us”, the other Lokis agreed that that sounded “terrifying”. Why should a genderfluid being be afraid of a version of themselves presenting as a different gender? It read as both fluidphobic not to mention strangely sexist.

The pseudo-romance between Loki and Sylvie only aggravated the situation. Not only did the nature of the “relationship” seem to follow heteronormative storytelling tropes (falling in love after a couple days of knowing each other, one party being reduced to a love interest, valuing romantic love above any other type, etc) but it also seemed distressing and offensive to many genderfluid people. A romance between a male and a female Loki, one of which doesn’t even call herself by that name, seems to be implying that an individual becomes someone else when merely presenting as a different gender, which of course isn’t at all the case. The writing wasn’t necessarily malicious here, but it was certainly ignorant and potentially even harmful. The opportunity was there to translate Loki’s powerful comic representation into the framework of the MCU, but this attempt did not succeed.

7. Loki’s characterization. Loki is a chameleon, but there are certain traits fundamental to his character. These traits were either ignored or actively mocked in the series. The audience already knew “what makes a Loki a Loki", but the series threw that knowledge away.

Episode 1’s premise of stripping Loki of everything he is used to was an intriguing setup to ensure the discovery of the core of who Loki truly is. The only problem was that this truth didn’t end up being found at all. Mobius made fun of Loki’s most defining traits, such as his habits of lying to manipulate people and acting out of a place of insecurity, which seemed to be a signal for the narrative to forbid Loki from exhibiting any of those traits from that point on in any way. This reduction in Loki’s character was reflected in everything, from his lack of humor (in the films he’s even funny while he’s taking over the world!), the underpowered way in which he fought against Sylvie (he’ll use magic to dry his clothes, but fight with a damn vacuum cleaner?) to the way that he wore the same boring outfit in every single episode-- it may sound shallow, but clothes are important when presenting a character. Every one of Loki’s looks in the films said something about him and his state of mind, and sadly that bland TVA outfit seemed to convey that Loki really was nothing more than a subservient pawn in what was supposed to be his own story. Ironically, the writing stripped Loki of everything that made him Loki, and left us with nothing but a Jotun-shaped void to be swayed by the whims and wills of the characters and plot devices surrounding him.

8. Loki’s past and abilities. This series could have elaborated on aspects of his character which had been teased at in the films and theorized about by fans, but ended up being a disappointment in this aspect as well.

Aside from Loki’s characterization and development, something else the series ignores is much of his canon story in the films. Since Thor 1, a truth that always overshadowed Loki was his Jotun heritage. He struggled with it up until the time of his death, clearly visible in his relationship with his foster family. It’s understandable that Loki was supposed to be independent from Thor in his series, but that’s no excuse for completely ignoring this central part of who Loki is. It doesn’t matter how much he goes through or how much his circumstances change, this feeling of unbelonging sits deep in Loki’s core and should have been both explored and explicitly discussed in the series. A series all about Loki was the perfect opportunity for him to finally confront and explain his relationship with his heritage, and potentially come to terms with it as well. And this isn’t even to say how cool some more insight on Loki’s Jotun inheritance could have been-- hypotheticals aren’t the point of this review, but it would have been fascinating to see Loki reacting adversely to heat like he has been hinted to in the past or even using his ice powers like he did in Thor 1.

Loki's magic was tragically underused. It felt like he was stripped of all of his magical powers even after his TVA chains had been removed, and this was never explained.

A second huge oversight is his magic. His powers are all over the place in this series. They were always a bit vague in the films, but this series was the opportunity to set that right and explain exactly what Loki was capable of as a sorcerer, especially now that the MCU has embraced magic more than it had ten years ago. But instead, Loki showcased an inexplicable lack of magic use-- again, the vacuum cleaner fight can be presented as evidence. There is a single scene in which Loki says that he learned his magic from Frigga, but no information is given as to how much he learned or why he doesn’t always favor spells. His power levels are incredibly inconsistent (he forgoes using magic when first confronted by the TVA, but is later shown using telekinesis to save himself from being literally crushed to death). And, strangest of all, there is a scene in which he tells Sylvie that he “can’t” enchant living beings. Loki, the millennium year old Trickster sorcerer god, who can hold an Infinity Stone with his bare hands, reanimate Surtur in the Eternal Flame, and trick the average person using illusions with ease, can’t cast a little enchantment? And if so, why not? The series offered precious few explanations concerning Loki’s magical abilities and instead only raised more questions. And in this way, Loki is once again relegated into the background and left with not a single shred of any new characterization or development.

Loki contains multitudes, but the series reduced him to two dimensions.

This isn’t to mention every other facet of Loki’s story that could have potentially been explored to great success in this series-- his torture and subsequent partial mental influence at the hands of Thanos just before the events of Avengers 1 is one obvious example, as is his youth on Asgard, as are his suicidal tendencies (people don’t tend to survive falling off the Bifrost, and he knew that when he threw himself off of it), plus infinite other facets of him. Of course, it was both necessary and more interesting for this series to be its own story rather than one which lingered on past films-- but that’s not to say that none of these plot points should have come back, at least subtly, to play a role in this story. Plot points exist to be brought back later, not completely ignored. Otherwise a story may as well be written about a completely original character.

#loki #loki 2021 #loki disney+#loki discussion #loki discourse #loki spoilers #lokius #loki x mobius #loki x sylvie #sylki #marvel #marvel discourse #loki review #mcu loki #loki series #loki season finale #loki season 1 #loki ship

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ch3m1cally1mbalanc3d · 3 years

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Nightmare Room

Authors note: Inspired by @sleepyvirgilprompts this post

Warning(s): Nightmares, cursing/language, slight unsympathetic Patton, Logan, and Roman in flashbacks (before Virgil was accepted), some angst

Ship(s): Platonic/romantic prinxiety (you decide)

Authors note: The flashbacks (italics) take place right after Virgil moved in with the light sides, so no one knows his name and he goes by 'Anxiety.' Present time (normal text) takes place after he's been accepted and told them his name.

- 3/17/21

*Virgil/Anxiety's pov*

I hate my fucking room. Well, I actually love it up until I have to sleep, then I hate it. See the thing is, my room just happens to have this really amazing feature that causes horrible nightmares. Every. Single. Night. You can't escape it. I mean, you can just not sleep ever but that's pretty much impossible.

See, my room back with the dark sides didn't do this, but it did some other really bad things that I'm thankful I don't have to experience anymore. I would rather just have nightmares than all that other stuff. Ugh, it gives me shivers just thinking about it.

Now, after I first moved in I believed that my room had changed. Once I started getting nightmares every night I brushed it off as them just occurring because I'm Anxiety, but that changed when I fell asleep in the commons one night.

-Flashback-

I'd gotten woken up by Patton at around 7:30 am. "Hey kiddo, don't you think it would be better if you slept in your room?" He questioned, sitting beside me as I sat up and started to wake up.

"U-uh yeah I g-guess so," I stuttered out, rubbing the back of my neck in embarrassment that I'd accidentally fallen asleep on the couch. "It was an accident, I swear I didn't mean to. I was on my phone and I must've fallen asleep, sorry. I'll go up to my room," I stood up, grabbing my phone from the floor where it must've fallen, and walked over to the stairs.

"It's alright kiddo!" Patton flashed a smile at me that wasn't completely honest, but I sent him a small one back in return so he didn't get angry or sad or anything. I can tell they all don't like it when I'm down there so of course, they wouldn't like me sleeping down there.

Once in my room, I realized that I hadn't had a nightmare, making me very confused. Every other night I had one so why didn't I last night? Then I connected the dots. Every time I fell asleep in my room I get a nightmare. I fell asleep on the couch last night and didn't have one, meaning, my room makes you have nightmares. Great.

-Present time-

Since I figured out about my room I've attempted to fall asleep in the commons multiple times. Sometimes I was successful about sleeping down there the whole night until someone woke me up and gave me shit about being down there.

-Yet another flashback around the same time period as the other-

One night I decided that I'd try to sleep in the common room. I'd carefully waited until I was sure that everyone else had gone to their rooms and fallen asleep. After I was sure of that I grabbed a blanket from my bed and quietly snuck downstairs, trying to make as little noise as possible. I laid down on the couch, snuggling up in the blanket, and fell asleep shortly thereafter.

—

I was rudely woken up by Roman standing over me and shaking me back and forth. I slapped his hands away and stretched.

"What?" I asked, morning delusion clear.

Roman scoffed, "What do you mean what? You were asleep on the couch when we came down this morning!" I looked at him, confusion clear on my face, not quite picking up on the memo that he didn't want me downstairs.

"So what?" I asked, wanting to know what his issue was. He scoffed yet again, putting his hand on his hip dramatically.

"You sleep in your room. That's why it's there. You don't sleep down here on the couch! Plus, I'm sure your room is way more comfortable than this couch," Roman motioned to the couch and he wasn't even trying to cover up the annoyance in his voice. If only he knew.

Logan looked up from his book where he was sat on one of the chairs and stated, "Roman's right. Your room would be a much more comfortable resting place than the couch. Sleeping in your room would also decrease the amount that you influence Thomas."

Ouch, that last part stung. My eyes widened slightly in the realization of what they were trying to tell me. 'Go away Anxiety, we don't want you around.'

I hesitated on telling them about my room but I knew it wouldn't do any good as they didn't care one bit. I switched my eyes between Roman, Logan, and then Patton who was in the kitchen, looking out and obviously hearing our conversation.

Sighing, I stretched once more before saying, "Sorry, I'll leave," I got up and grabbed my blanket, and made my way to the stairs. All three of them watched me in silence as I trudged up the stairs to my room, holding my head down and the blanket close to my chest the whole time.

-Present time-

*Roman's pov*

I walk downstairs and see the emo sat on the couch, scrolling through something on his phone. Looking around I see that no one else is down here.

"Good evening, Virgil," I say before walking into the kitchen. I hear a muffled reply and I see him flop down on his side, attention still attached to his phone. I get a snack and open it, starting to eat when I get an idea.

Walking back into the living room I state my suggestion, "Hey, V?" He looks up from his phone and shoots me a questioning eyebrow. "Do you wanna watch some Disney movies with me?"

Virgil thinks about it for a second, turning off his phone and sit up, placing his elbows on his knees and resting his head in his hands. "Only if we can watch Tim Burton movies too." I let out a sigh, although giving away that I don't actually care what movie we watch with my smile.

I walk towards Virgil until I'm standing exactly in front of him before pulling him off the couch, and he lets out a squeak in surprise. "W-what are you doing, Princey?" He asks as I drag him upstairs, practically carrying him. I don't answer but instead, open the door to his room and close it with my foot before walking over to where all of his movies are.

Virgil just stands there for a second before going to sit on his bed. "What do we start with?" I ask, turning to face him from where I'm crouched by his shelves holding his movies. He had propped up some pillows behind him, leaning back against them with one leg up and the other lying down. He just shrugs so I decide myself, "Corpse Bride it is then," I state as I grab the movie, put it in the blue-ray player, grab the remote, and lay down next to Virgil on his bed.

We get comfortable, pillows behind us and only one of his bedside lamps on. The movie plays through, and I have to admit, it's really cute watching him get all excited and happy. He's adorable. Virgil lets me pick the next movie, I can only assume because he gave me another shrug as an answer. I picked Brave and didn't hesitate to sing along to some of the songs dramatically, causing Virgil to giggle and I could tell he was trying to hide his blush with his hands.

Next thing I know we've watched four movies and it's inching towards midnight. I can tell that Virgil's getting sleepy by his eyes drooping, and I can't blame him, I'm quite tired myself. I didn't notice that he fell asleep until Cinderella was almost over. He had gone lax against his black comforter, and he just looks so cute when he's sleeping I couldn't help myself from staring with a small smile on my face.

The movie ends a few minutes later and I don't notice until I hear the end credits rolling. I walk back over to his movies and put Cinderella away, turning off his tv and returning his remote in the process. I hesitate as I walk towards the door, turning around to see Virgil still fast asleep on his bed. I sigh, out of tiredness or happiness I couldn't tell you, and I make my way over to his bed.

I delicately pick him up bridal style, pulling back his comforter and purple sheets, arranging the pillow so he's comfortable before lying him down and pulling the covers back over him. I walk over to the other side of his bed, reaching to turn off his bedside lamp before I get an idea. Surely he won't mind if I sleep with him for one night, right?

Snapping my fingers I change into gray sweatpants and a plain red shirt before carefully pulling back the covers and sliding in. I reach over and turn off the lamp, leaving the room in complete darkness. Damn, it sure is creepy in here. I guess it suits him as he is "dark and edgy."

I curl up next to him, slowly wrapping my arms around his waist, encasing him in a hug. I come to a stop when he starts to shift, but he only hugs me back, resting his head in the crook of my neck. I would be so embarrassed right now if the room wasn't pitch black because I'm sure my face is as red as the apple Snow White ate. Gradually, I drift off to sleep with Virgil in my arms.

I jolt awake, fear rushing through my body. Wait, I thought Virgil was the anxious trait? Oh right! I slept in his room last night. Turning in the bed as I hear shuffling only to find Virgil slowly waking up himself.

Maybe I should tell him. Or not, it might freak him out and I would never want to do that.

The strange thing is, I had horrible nightmares last night. And when I say horrible, I mean horrible. They were nothing like I'd ever experienced before. Yes, I've had my fair share of nightmares over the years but they've never been this bad! They were so disturbing and gory it makes me want to cry and puke at the same time just thinking about them.

Virgil turns his body so he's laying on his side facing me before slowly opening his eyes and mumbling out, "Morning, Princey."

"Good morning, princess. How did you sleep?" I asked, trying to see if our dilemmas were the same.

He yawned before answering, "Oh, same as usual." He rubbed his eyes, closing them again and snuggling into the blanket. Holy shit he's adorable!

I nodded my head, not knowing how to respond. I might as well ask him. What harm will it do? "Hey, V?" I ask, getting a hum in response. "Um, I uh had some pretty horrific nightmares last night and I have no clue as to why I did."

Virgil's eyes shot open, looking at me in fear. "Are you okay?" He asked, panicked.

I laughed, "Oh yes I'm quite alright just it was unusual that's all."

He sighed, "Yeah I'm really sorry about that." I shot him a confused look, quirking my eyebrow.

"Why would you be sorry? It isn't your fault, it happens to everyone." I assure him.

"No, Princey, you don't understand," Virgil looked me in the eyes before continuing, "It is my fault. My room does this all the time. You literally could not sleep in here without having nightmares. It's impossible, I've tried. Trust me on this, I've been sleeping in here for a few years."

My eyes widen in realization. Do you mean that all these years he's had to suffer? He's had to deal with nightmares every night and none of us knew? Oh my goodness, my poor baby. That's probably why he refuses to sleep or gets very little of it and why he's always tired! Or- holy shit.

This is why he was always trying to sleep downstairs in the commons. I already feel so guilty about being mean to him for the longest time but now I feel even worse knowing what he had to go through. And we drove him out! Virgil tried sleeping down there multiple times but we always told him not to and to go away and he did. He went back to his room to have nightmares. Oh my god, what have I done?

I look him in the eyes and apologize, "Virgil I'm so sorry! I had no idea and I kept driving you out for years! I always told you to leave and not sleep downstairs not knowing that you'd have to go to your room and suffer if you tried to sleep! I'm so sorry!" Virgil was making hard eye contact with me and I could tell he was searching my face for a lie or sarcasm. "I'm serious, Virge. I truly am sorry. You don't need to forgive me, I understand."

I reach my arms out to give him a hug. He hesitates for a second before giving in and I wrap my arms around him tight. He slides his arms around my chest and squeezes me. "It's alright Ro, you didn't know and you didn't really like me back then. Plus, I should've told you so it's my fault," He said, muffled by my chest.

I pull back from the hug, looking down at him as he looks up at me. "Oh no sweetie, you don't need to be sorry. This isn't your fault at all," I bring him back into the hug and he mumbles out an 'okay.'

We snuggle for a bit before I get an idea and suggest it. "Hey, do you want to talk to Logan about this? I'm sure he can find a way to fix it for you."

Virgil thinks for a minute before nodding, "Yeah, but only if you do it with me."

I let out a light laugh, "Of course, my emo." We snuggle for a while before getting breakfast and continuing on with our day.

Virgil and I talk to Logan and he fixes Virgil's room for him so there are no more nightmares. After both he and Patton find out they both apologize immensely for what they did in the past. Virgil forgives us all, Patton bringing us all into a group hug.

I make sure to drill into Virgil's brain that if he ever feels scared or doesn't want to sleep in his room, he's always welcome to sleep in mine. I also just offer my room to him at any other point in the day, making sure he feels loved and safe.

God, if only I knew.

(2463 words) I posted this on my wattpad too (@/virgilstarantula) on my Sanders Sides oneshot book but wanted to post it here so that @sleepyvirgilprompts could see it. I hope you like it! rawr xD

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renee-writer · 3 years

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The Diary of Life Chapter 28 Healing the Past

A03

A/N

Dear gentle reader, I live in Scotland and have never been to North Caroline except to drive thru it. Some of the locations maybe off a little. Ok I am a trained American Nurse. HIPPA may apply here. But most of the birth and death records from that time would be on computer. Also, not sure of North Carolina law about moving bodies. Please be kind. From @ladymeraud

He woke to the feel of Claire in his arms. It is something he will never tire of. In no hurry to leave his comfy nest, he wakes his wife with kisses and they slowly make love. Only then to they get up and join the others.

Over breakfast, they discuss plans for the day. “As I don’t have business with Ian until tomorrow, how would you like to come with me to find my relative?”

“Where do we begin?”

“At a hospital called Brougham. That is where she died. They may know where she is buried.”

“Let’s go.”

They borrow one of the SUV’s and head out. Jamie lowers the windows and enjoy the wonderful southern air, so much warmer then that in Scotland.

The hospital looks like an old colonial home, probably it’s first use. Jamie steps out and opens the door for her and they walk into together. Approaching the desk, Jamie tells the lass standing there, “I am seeking information on a relative of mine that died here in the late 1700’s.”

“That was quite awhile ago. What is the name?” The lass, who’s name tag reads, *Leery” asks.

“Janet Murray.” She nods and enters it in the computer.

“Date of birth?”

“Unknown but she we as in Boone Co and came from Scotland.”

“Found her. Janet Murray, late of Boone County, late of Lally..” she frowns.

“Lallybroch.” He spells it out for her.

“That is it. Seems she thought evil spirits were after her, something about a sister-in-law. She died of pneumonia.”

“Does it say where she is buried!”

“She was buried on the grounds.”

“Wonderful. Can we get a copy of her records?”

“Yes, just need to sign a release and I will need to see your ID.” He presents his Scottish drivers license and passport and then signs. Leery prints out a copy and hands it to him. “Let me know if there is anything else you need.”

Claire, not liking her tone answers, “ Thank you. My husband and I will.” The lass curtly nods and hurries back into the office behind the desk. Jamie misses the whole exchange, busy with the papers he had been handed.

‘Janet Murray, admitted with delusions. Claims to be tormented by evil spirits. She refuses all nourishment. She will be held as a danger to herself.

‘Mrs. Murray is excepting food and water but still refuses to talk about the source of her torment. Still claiming it to be ‘spirits from auld Lucifer, himself.

“A breakthrough with Mrs. Murray. She claims her sister-in-law is a witch that put a spell on her Brother. “Sent him tae jail after he assaulted the English” She spit at this. That is all she would say this day.

‘’Mrs. Murray talked more about her family today. Her son moved here and after her husband’s death and ‘that evil woman turned my brother into a devil” she came here to join him. More trouble came when he married a Quaker lady named Rachael.. “A heretic who allowed Indians on the land” A fight with her son brought her to us. She claims her troubles come from a spell her sister-in-law placed on her.

‘Mrs. Murray has taken ill. A fever, congestion of her chest, and she can’t tolerate food and barely is drinking.

‘’Mrs. Murray died today. A sad occasion. She had been our guest for almost two years. With no family willing to claim her, we contacted her son but he wishes nothing to do with her, we believe her brother to be in Paris but with no name, she will be buried on the grounds.

Mrs. Janet Murray

Admitted March 7, 1770

Discharged due to death March 23, 1772

Buried Lot 17 Row 7.

“So sad. She really hated her brother’s wife.” Claire softly says.

“Aye. Hate controlled her. That was her true evil spirits. Hate and the inability to forgive. I pray she can find peace at Lallybroch. If we can even move her.”

“I guess we need to ask Leery.”

They head back to the desk. “We would like to take her back to Lallybroch and bury her beside her husband. Is that doable?”

“I don’t know. Let me call the administrator down.” They are soon sitting in his office.

Jamie explains the situation. *We believe she would rest easier there. I would like a priest present at the dis- intermittent and we will have a ceremony there when she is re-interned. I’ve a private plane so it would be no problem to transfer her remains home.”

“What you wish to do for your relative is wonderful. As this a state run facility under the dept. of health, we can bypass the court order that would normally be needed. You will just need to sign some papers and tell us when you want her.”

“My wife and I will be here for two weeks. At the end of that time. I will call you with the exact date and information on the priest that will be here to bless her bones.” He fills out the paperwork and shakes his hand.

“Would you like to visit her grave?”

“Yes thank you.”

It is a small stone with Janet Murray 1772 on it. Jamie stands, holding his wife’s hand, and prays over it. “You are coming home Janet. Finally.”

He calls Ian as they leave. “We have found her. Can you find a local priest to bless her bones at the dis-internment?”

“Our parish priest will. I will give him a call.”

“Thank you.” He then calls his dad. He explains all. “Will you see a grave dug next to Ian’s and arrange for a full Catholic burial service?”

“I will.it is a good thing you are doing son.”

“Thank you dad. I just pray it starts to heal the past.”

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anxiousnerdwritings · 4 years

Note

ISA family will be distraught if their platonic obsession is died, but what if the reader faked their death with help of others and escaped the family through this mean and lives peacefully elsewhere? How will ISA parents and kids react and do if they found out the truth?

They all are going to be on varying levels of betrayal and rage. How could you do something like that to them? They mourned you, they cried over you and you were alive the whole time!?!?!

Jordan is betrayed, enraged, and also relieved all in that order. He was so heartbroken when you had 'died' but now he knows you're alive!! He'll take sometime to gather himself so he's not too emotional when he comes for you. He doesn't want to scare you, cause there is no way you willingly left him and Cam, right? I'm a little conflicted cause I feel like he could be very delusional in this situation but I also feel like he'd be more aware of the truth behind your 'death's. Hell, he's probably conflicted too. He would be messed up just like he was with Christine's death, it'll only push him to achieve his goal all more. I think that may be where the delusion comes into play, he may honestly believe that someone, probably the JSA, put you up to faking your death.

Cameron is beyond relieved when he finds out your alive it almost takes away from the fact that you faked your death, almost. He wants to go get you right away, to bring you home and hold you in his arms. He's missed you so much you have no idea what he, what they, went through without you. He'll be attached to your side once you're brought home. Jordan will probably send Cam into where you're living now cause there's no way you could be angry or hostile towards Cameron. He'll get you home quicker and in a much more gentle way then Jordan.

Brainwave would be beyond pissed when he found out you faked your death, you'll have a lot to deal with when he brings you home. And he WILL being you home. He won't give you the chance to put up s fight or to try and explain yourself, you list whatever empathy he had for you when you 'died'. You'll have to start over all your progress with him. You'll be monitored the second you step foot in the King house. You may as well be treated like Yolanda was with her family in regards to punishments. No phone, no contact with anyone besides him and Jr, and absolutely no leaving the house without either of them and that depends on if you get back in Brainwave's good graces.

Henry is going to be so happy when he hears your alive, but when he finds out you purposely faked your death then he'll be upset. He'll cry, scream, lose control of his powers, whatever way he can convey his feelings, he'll do it. You were his support in his time of need and then you 'died', he thought he had lost everything only to find out you're very much alive and living a life away from him. Hell, he won't even drag you back home, he may even fake his own death just so he can come live with you. He would have ran away with you if you had told him your plan. I also feel like Henry would be a little delusional to whole situation, maybe thinking or you telling him that you did it to get away from Brainwave, he would probably believe it even if your thoughts said other wise.

Paula and Larry are going to be enraged when they find out, but they're also very relieved. They don't really care for the reason why you did it (yes they do but that'll come up when they get you home) they much rather prefer that you're alive and healthy. Have you been sticking to your workout regimen and protein shakes. They brought you one and a protein bar for the road back home. They'll completely dismiss the whole faked death thing until they get you back home, that's when they start to show their anger and hurt. How could you just leav them like that and to fake your death, too?? How cruel are you?? Can't you see that you hurt them?? As much as they're happy you're back, there will be yelling and restrictions. But they'll act like life is back to the way it was before you 'died', acting like the whole thing never happened. I also feel like they would be pretty delusional about the situation too, believing that someone made you fake your death and abandon them. Hell, that could be your excuse for everything and they may just believe it.

Artemis probably shutdown after you 'death's, you were the only real person she was close to. She probably doesn't even believe her parents when they tell her you're very alive and well living a few states away, you wouldn't have done something like falling your death just to get away from them, right? She's definitely hurt and feels betrayed but she is happy that you aren't really dead. She won't leave your side once you're home, she'll watch you like a hawk. Anywhere you go, she's right there. The Crock's all together wouldn't leave you another chance to get away from them again.

I feel like Dragon King wouldn't be very surprised or shocked finding out you aren't dead. He may even feel a sense of pride about how well you did getting away with it but that doesn't take away from his rage. You had made him believe that you were gone, even if it was for a brief period of time, he's still very upset. He may even send Cindy to bring you home just so you can get a taste of what he's had to deal with sense you 'died'. You will be brought back home though, he'll drag back himself if he has to. You'll be tortured and 'reformed' to the point you don't want to leave your oh so loving 'father' and 'sister' again.

Cindy basically lost her shit when you 'died'. She was heartbroken, mourning you all day everyday. She was angry when she found out you faked your death. She's happy your alive and moving but her anger outweighs that relief. How could you just leave her when she needed you most? The two of you were supposed to be as thick as thieves, you didn't have to abandon her, especially not by faking your death. She won't trust you for a long while, she'll watch your every move. You'll even wake up to her just staring down at you, both to make sure you're still there and alive but also to make sure you know just how fucked you are if you ever try to do something like that again.

William would be heartbroken, he thought you were finally taking to the family. Your 'death' will hit even harder if this is after Joey's death, finding out you faked it would be even more heartwrenching to him and Denise. William would do everything in his power to bring you home. You won't be let out of either of their sights, you'll be monitored 24/7. They both will coddle you, holding you close all the time, especially at night. You're all they have after Joey, they aren't going to lose another child, not again.

Joey would be utterly heartbroken, he's just glad you're really alive and okay. He'll hold you really close, not letting you go once William William brings you back. He'll follow you around like a lost puppy. He'll even perform little magic tricks to make you feel better about being back with the family. Joey would definitely sleep in your room with you once you're back. He and his parents slept in it when you were gone. He'll make you feel guilty for abandoning him and his family, whether he means to or not.

Anaya would be so relieved when she finds out your alive. She's still angry about you faking your death but her relief outweighs all her anger and sadness. She's elated to bring you home again, home to her and Isaac. You'll have to gain all your privileges back but she'll shower you in love and affection while you go about doing that. She's just so happy your safe and sound back in her arms, she and Isacc missed you so much. You have no idea what it was like with you gone.

Side note; Could you imagine faking your death with the JSA only so you can join the ISA???

#anxious answers #yandere stargirl concept #yandere isa concept

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swimyghost · 3 years

Text

Roses

Hey, I’m super tired but here’s a (possibly) non-canon story about @self-insert-nonsense‘s MHA OC’s mother, Sonaka. I really hope you enjoy.

---

She had double- no, triple checked everything. Every important item was wrapped and placed carefully into one of the two suitcases the sat on her bed. Sonaka knew if she carried any more people would get suspicious.

As if a gray-skinned woman and her equally pale child wouldn't arise suspicion.

"Mama?"

Sonaka perked up at that sound. She turned her head and saw her little girl innocently glancing up at her. Although she was visibly struggling to carry her suitcase, Sonaka's pride and joy wasn't going to let a minor inconvenience get in the way of impressing her mother. Sonaka bent down to her daughter's level.

"Nusuma, are you sure everything is packed?"

"Yes, Mama!"

Sonaka frowned. "Are you sure? We can't come back once we leave."

Sonaka watched as Nusuma's face scrunched up into as close to serious as a six-year-old could get. "I'm sure!"

Sonaka chuckled and ruffled her hair. "Alright, let's get moving, shall we? The train will-"

A knock at the door set Sonaka into a panic. No one knocked on her door unless it was... Them.

Sonaka frantically shoved her suitcases under her bed before thrusting Nusuma out, slamming the door shut behind her. Nusuma watched with a curious gaze as her mother paced her newly barren apartment.

"Mama?" She called, growing weary at the sight of her mother's panic.

"M-Mama's fine, honey. Mama just-"

The knocking grew louder. Nusuma whimpered and buried her face into her mother's brown skirt. The suitcase fell from her grasp with a resounding thud. Without a second to spare, Sonaka tossed it onto her bed's stripped bed and closed that door as well. Sonaka pulled her daughter in close.

"Honey, you can't tell anyone we're leaving. Understand?" she whispered.

"But... You said lying is wrong."

"I know, but this is to keep you safe, okay? You know Mama just wants to keep you safe, right?" Sonaka prayed her daughter wouldn't ask any more questions.

"Okay..." Nusuma murmured back.

With a deep breath, Sonaka made the treacherous journey to her front door. She took an even deep breath once she made it. Shakily, she swung it open and was met with four pairs of glowing red eyes.

A tall figure with luscious purple hair that fell to her waist stood at Sonaka's doorstep. Her eyes were constantly shifting, yet all eight of them held an aura of concern. Her hands (if you could even call them that) were two thick pieces of carapace with their "fingers" just being individual pieces of the shell.

"Joro." Sonaka let out a sigh of relief.

"Auntie Tsuchigumo!" Nusuma cried with joy.

The young woman scooped up the child and tickled her stomach. While Nusuma laughed and giggled at the touch, Joro cooed. "How's my favorite ghost? Huh? How is she?"

"Great! Me and Mama are gonna stay home all day!"

Sonaka winced. She loved her daughter, honestly.

But she's a horrible liar.

Joro easily saw through Nusuma's lies. Her red eyes showed everything Sonaka to know.

"Honey, can you go to your room and play with your toys?" Sonaka said, taking her daughter from the spider woman's grasp.

Nusuma looked up confused. "But-"

"Now, Nusuma."

Sonaka placed her on the floor. Nusuma didn't even look back as she scurried to her room and closed the door behind her. Sonaka turned her attention back to Joro who was taking in the apartment. She crossed her arms and glanced at Sonaka. Not with anger, but with clear pain.

"You're leaving, aren't you?"

Sonaka couldn't even try to deny her friend. The lifeless apartment was all the proof she needed. The to-bursting bookshelves had been stripped of their occupants. The vases that held the most beautiful array of flowers had been sold and the flowers buried under a mountain of trash. All the pictures that had ordained the walls had been removed from their frames, which also had been tossed, and placed in the suitcases. The same suitcases that were at the forefront of Sonaka's mind.

Sonaka couldn't hold it anymore. Without asking, she rushed over to her friend and buried her face into her purple sweater. Tears flowed freely at the same time as her sobs. Sonaka tried to speak, but her throat was closed. Each sob was wracked with grief. Joro, instead of pushing her away, pulled her in closer.

"It's okay, I already knew."

Her friend didn't seem phased by her words so Joro just chose to gently stroke her head. Sonaka was too busy thinking about all the wrongs that she had caused throughout her life. The same wrongs that could easily affect Nusuma.

"I can't let her get hurt, Joro. I can't. This life of villainy and evil isn't for her." Sonaka sputtered.

"We're not-"

"Don't try to say we're not because we are!" Sonaka shouted.

Joro blinked. She didn't even flinch at her friend's anger. Instead, all she did was stand Sonaka up straight. Joro forced her to look into her eyes.

"We're villains, yes. We weren't evil, however, not until he took over."

Joro was talking about Bladespinner, the current king of their villain syndicate and a powerful mutant Quirk bearer. After the previous leader stepped down, Bladespinner naturally took the position unopposed, with people either unwilling or too frightened to fight him. His saw arms were infamous for slicing through objects and people alike. He was one of the many reasons Sonaka couldn't live the life anymore.

"He'll kill her, Joro," Sonaka said, fear seeping into her voice. "Maybe not personally, but he'd send her into Hell if it meant fulfilling his twisted goals."

"I know. And that's why I'm here to help."

Sonaka was shocked. Yes, Joro and her were friends for years now, long before Nusuma came into her life. But Joro was completely submerged in the life of villains. Joro noticed her surprised and raised one carapace finger.

"I'm not going to be joining you. I will help you out of the country, however."

Sonaka blinked. "Wha- I was just going to go North!"

Joro let out a sad chuckle. "You really think it'll be that easy? Bladespinner will be furious when he discovers one of his one deserted. No, you need to go away. Far away."

Sonaka's brain was still spinning with the realization of it all. This was happening. This was really happening. "But... Where will I go."

Joro thought about it for a moment. "Korea. There's a former villain there that specializes in forgery. She'll help you get all the necessary paperwork. Tell her that Tsuchigumo-hubae sent you and she won't ask any questions."

"Korea?" Sonaka repeated. "But I don't speak-"

"Do you want a better life for Nusuma or not?!"

Sonaka flinched at Joro's tone. She knew the villainess was right, but it still hurt to know she was leaving everything behind. Joro gripped both of Sonaka's shoulders and squeezed tightly.

"Do this not just for her, but for you. You deserve a real job, real life, a real man who isn't-"

"Don't you dare mention his name! I don't care wherever he ran off to or whatever he does, whether it be picking turnips in Russian or being a stripper in the States, he's more than dead to me."

Joro raised her hands. "Fine, I won't say it. But you should tell Nusuma when both of you are ready."

The mother sighed but nodded anyway. There would be a time Nusuma would learn about her father, but today was not that day. Suddenly, Sonaka realized something.

"You wouldn't come here just to help me. I know you better than that."

Joro's tough demeanor fell she awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck. "Bladespinner requires us to come to fight with him."

Sonaka snorted. "Can't he do it himself?"

Joro shook her head. "It's not that simple. A bunch of his lesser lackeys wanted to prove themselves to him so they started attacking the city."

"This includes us why?"

"Bladespinner was just going to let them captured but realized only one hero and his interns showed up to the fight. He thinks we can make a name for ourselves if we cause some real damage."

Sonaka frowned. "I just told you I wanted to leave the life. You told me you'd help me accomplish that goal. Now you want me to throw it all away just because some hotheaded dumbass wants to stroke his ego?"

"It won't only help him support his superiority complex," Joro explained. "It'll also keep him distracted on his victory, giving us enough time to help you two escape."

Sonaka knew Joro was right. Bladespinner was not only a ruthless demon-like man but an egomaniac who lived to support his delusions of grandeur. If this battle was a success, he'd be too busy basking in the light of "his" glory to notice one of his minions had gone missing.

But what about Nusuma?

Nusuma, her pride, and joy, the reason Sonaka got up every morning, the catalyst for this entire escape attempt, still had no idea of her mother's day job. Sonaka did everything in her power to make sure Nusuma wouldn't become a target for Heroes or other villains. Joro was the only exception since she still had some honor still left in her (plus she was a great babysitter). Nusuma, despite her young age, was already growing suspicious of her mother's activities.

"Why are you always hurt?" Nusuma asked one day after Sonaka returned home from an intense battle with some Heroes. The previous head of her syndicate believed that attacking a known meeting spot for heroes would weaken both them and society's moral. It failed miserably with many villains in critical condition or spent to Tartarus.

"Mommy got into a little trouble at work, sweetie. That's all." It was a weak explanation, but Sonaka hoped it'd placate her.

It didn't as Nusuma scrunched up her nose. "You're lying! You and Mrs. Nakamura always say lying is wrong."

Sonaka let out a silent curse to herself and her daughter's kindergarten teacher.

"Well, I'm not lying," Sonaka struggled to think of what to say next. "Only telling... A half-truth."

"Half-truth?" Nusuma questioned.

"It means I'm not lying, just not telling the full story. To protect you." Sonaka explained.

"But you're always protecting me! Why can't I protect you?" Nusuma whined.

Sonaka chuckled. "Because you're five."

"But I already have my Quirk!"

Sonaka winced at that. Nusuma's Quirk had shown itself early and was similar to her father's. Too similar. It was why Sonaka had to pull her daughter out of kindergarten after the aquarium incident. Possessing a child like that would only lead to skepticism amongst her peers and adults.

"You will protect me. Just let me do it first. That's my job."

"So that's your real job!" Nusuma gasped with joy, tackling her mother.

Sonaka sucked in a yelp of pain as Nusuma leaped onto her bruised legs. She put on a fake smile and rustled her hair. "Oh no! You found me out!"

"Sonaka?"

Sonaka snapped back into reality. Joro was nearly pressing her face into Sonaka's. She jolted backward in surprise. Joro genuinely looked hurt as Sonaka tried to regain her bearings.

"Sorry, I just-" she took a deep breath. "My costume is in the wastebasket. Over there in the corner."

Joro went to place a hand on Sonaka's shoulder. "Are you oka-"

"I'm fine." Sonaka backed away. "Let's just go before Bladespinner throws a fit."

The villain looked over her shoulder and called out. "Nusuma, dear, can you come here."

It took a few moments, but the little girl shyly opened the door. She was clutching a toy figure of a Hero. Once she saw her mother's shining face, she ran over and gave her a tight hug. Sonaka ran her fingers through her hair.

"Mama's got to go out one last time, okay?"

Nusuma looked worried. "But... What about-"

"Everything will be okay. Mama just has to go do this one thing and we're gonna go to a magical land called 'Korea'."

"Koreena?" Nusuma attempted to sound out.

Joro snickered at mispronunciation, causing Sonaka to glare at her. "Korea. We'll have a new life."

"But I like it here!" Nusuma pouted.

Sonaka sighed. "You'll understand when you're older."

"Sonaka," Joro warned, glancing down at the phone she produced from her skirt pocket.

The mother bit her bottom lip. Nusuma was still looking bitter about the whole arrangement. She couldn't ask Joro to stay, knowing Bladespinner's temperament but she couldn't just leave her.

"Tell you what," Sonaka said with an attempt at a smile. "What if I get you something while I got out. Would you like that?"

Nusuma rocked back and forth on her heels, pondering the question. A smile broke out on her face. "A rose!"

Both Joro and Sonaka looked at her confused. "A rose?" Sonaka muttered.

"Yeah! I watched a movie where there was a magical rose and a princess and a beast but the beast was a good guy and the rose helped them fall in love!" Nusuma looked up with a Cheshire grin. "I wanna have you fall in love!"

Her heart tore at that statement. Joro could clearly tell that this the time to step in. "Your mama and I have to go now. Please be a good girl and stay in the house. Do not open the door for anyone. Do you understand?"

"And Nusuma," Sonaka dropped to her level. "I'll be home after this, I promise. Do you understand?"

Nusuma dipped her head. "Yes, Mama. Yes, Auntie Tsuchigumo."

Sonaka planted a kiss on her daughter's head before exiting the apartment. Noticing Joro's black car in the parking lot, she turned to her friend and saw her costume in her arms.

"I got it when you were dealing with Nusuma," Joro explained, seeing her friend's perplexed face.

She thanked Joro and, once she got into the back seat, began changing. Joro smirked. "Shouldn't I be paying for this?"

"Shut up!" Sonaka shouted, but the playfulness in her tone wasn't lost on Joro. "At least my costume is decent! With yours, nothing is lost to the imagination."

Joro shrugged, turning the car on. The engine purred as she spoke. "Hey, my gift to the world is showing off my greatest assets." She motioned towards her breasts and rear.

Sonaka rolled her eyes.

Just before they were to drive towards their destination, Sonaka gripped her comrade's shoulder. "Make sure I get home. For Nusuma's sake."

Joro nodded in agreement. "For Nusuma."

---

For someone who spent almost two decades battling Heroes, Sonaka knew when a battle was starting to get rough and this battle was it.

The Hero that swooped in to save the day, some hotshot named Fantastic Devil (a red-skinned twenty-something with horns, a tail, and fire-breathing. Your standard edgy hero-style), and his four interns. Bladespinner's lackeys were barely keeping up with the Heroes before Joro (codenamed Spinneret) and Sonaka (codenamed Wraith) showed up.

Weaving into and out of the fray, the ghost-like villain pop out of the wispy form to slash at her enemies. She noticed a couple of Sidekicks showed up to attempt to defeat the villains, but she wasn't worried. They were novices compared to a master of concealed weaponry. Currently, she was dealing with an intern with some sort of speed Quirk. He dashed back and forth like a child on a sugar rush. He attempted to land some square hits on her, but Wraith used her Quirk, Phase, to simply turn into a puff of gray smoke.

Suddenly, the speedy intern landed a strong jab right in between her ribs then a swift kick to her right arm. Her blade was launched from her grasp. Cockiness must've taken hold of him because he tried to unleash another attack. But, as a concealed master, Wraith always had something up her sleeve. In this case, literally. Sliding out a blade from its hidden sheath, she let out a yell as she dug it straight into the man's orange helmet. It's pale yellow screen cracked due to the force. The intern was too stunned to block Wraith's second attack. She side-kicked the helmet, causing both the wearer and it to drop to the ground. She was about to turn away when she noticed something.

A round young face, mousy brown hair, as he laid gasping she could see braces. The most damning evidence was the giant UA logo on the back of his hero costume.

"You're... A student?"

Before he could reply, a shot of web stuck to the kid's back. He was whipped into the air and slammed into the ground several feet away from Wraith. The attacker was Joro, Spinneret, donning her infamous costume. A black mask shielded her identity, but not her vision. Even from far away, Wraith could see the intensity in her eyes. Her costume was a tight latex with a cobweb type shirt and boots. Two latex pieces were barely holding up her breasts. Wraith would've said she was beautiful, had she not slashed the throat of the student with her long carapaces.

Wraith wanted to scream but her throat had closed up. The sounds around her became muffled as the realization hit her. These were just regular interns. They were students. Children.

She backed away from Joro, no, Spinneret, as her former friend basked in the glory of her kill. As she backed up, she felt her heel step onto something. Something squishy. Wraith (could she still call herself that?) Turned and nearly throw up.

It was another student. Her costume was torn to bits but she could make out that it had something to do with constellations. A mask, probably hers, laid broken against the pavement. Sonaka leaned in to meet the girl's eyes. They were a teal. Sonaka could imagine how bright they were when this girl was told she entered the Hero Academy.

"Please..." the girl noticed Sonaka and weakly reached out for her. "Please... Help."

Sonaka choked by a sob. This was someone's daughter. No, this may potentially be her daughter.

"I'm sorry." Sonaka managed to say, grasping the girl's hand. "I'm so... So sorry."

The girl didn't say anything. She couldn't. Her eyes were dull, one of the key depictions of death. Sonaka let her hand fall back to the pavement without another word.

The world around her was crumbling, both physically and mentally. A burning piece of a car crashed landed next to her but she didn't even move. Not even All Might himself could get her to move from this position. The girl was young, sixteen or seventeen at the most. Black hair with specks of white. But despite her physical differences, all Sonaka could see was a teenaged Nusuma. Laying like that in the middle of some pointless battle.

"Who did this?" Sonaka murmured. She placed the girl on her side a gasped.

Her stomach was completely torn up. It was like a pack of wolves that had chewed through her organs. Blood was pooled all over the front of her costume and the pavement. Sonaka gagged when she noticed the chunks of meat. And all of it red. So much red.

Like a rose.

Sonaka reluctantly traced her fingers over the wound. It wasn't as messy of a cut as she once believed. It was crude, yes, but done with a clear purpose. Like it was made by a tool.

"Bladespinner!" shouted Sonaka to no one in particular. She needed to stop him. Fast.

Nusuma, I'm sorry. But I have to do this.

Sonaka's costume flowed elegantly behind her even as she threw herself into the chaos. Quirks were flying all over the place. That Fantastic Devil guy was hanging off the side of a building breathing fire onto the villains below. Mountains of debris loomed threatening around her. Sonaka could see in her peripheral another villain pounce at a sidekick. The sidekick bounced away and disappeared in a shimmery flash before appearing behind him. Normal Sonaka would've floated up to save her comrade. But that wasn't her comrade and, right now, she wasn't her normal self.

She shifted into her Wraith form to move past the burning rubble and blood spatters.

"I wanna have you fall in love!"

Sonaka dodged another flying piece of debris when she saw a familiar muscular form.

Bladespinner.

His silver was caked in blood and, most horrifying, skin. His villain outfit, a silver and black skintight costume with a saw symbol on the front and back was mostly torn, revealing his muscles and machine parts. His arms, if you could even call them that, were giant mechanical wonders. A mixture of organic and machine parts with two razor-sharp saws at the end of it. He was currently locked in battle with a pink-haired- correction, pink petaled girl. Her pink eyes were filled with terror, yet determination. Next to her was the body of another student, most likely one of her classmates.

Another intern!

Sonaka's body moved on her own. She couldn't watch another death. She was tired of it all. The fighting. The lack of trust. The hatred from society. The reality that you'd never know if you'd make it home or not.

For Nusuma

"Kaori!" Sonaka screamed over everything.

Bladespinner, before landing the final blow, angrily spun around to glare at Sonaka. The girl managed to scurry away as Bladespinner drew closer to a frozen Sonaka.

"What... Did you say?"

"Kaori... Goto... You need to stop." Sonaka waved her hands to motions towards the environment. "Look at this! Look at you! Look at what you almost did."

"I was about to defeat our enemy," Bladespinner bared his teeth. "Are you questioning my decision, Mimoto?"

Sonaka stiffened but stood her ground. "I'm questioning the fact you're about to murder a child!"

"A child!?" Bladespinner scoffed. "That's our future enemy! The ones that might kill us! It's better to strangle the weeds before they overrun the garden!"

"This isn't one of your stupid analogies, Kaori! These are innocent lives!"

"You have no right to call me that!" he snarled. "If you wanna protect them so much, you can die with them!"

Bladespinner had raised his arm to strike, but Sonaka already had disappeared in a poof of smoke. She reappeared just above him. She swiftly tapped her ankles together and two blades shot out from the back of her boot's heels. She raised her left leg. She struck down, but Bladespinner managed to just barely dodge. Still, she managed to graze his cheek. A trail of blood dripped down and onto the ground.

A rose?

Sonaka snapped back into reality when Bladespinner used the back of their arm to bat her away. She wheezed as all the arm was forced out of her. She went tumbling across the ground, hitting several mounds of rubble. She was sure his attack at least cracked a rib or two was cracked but she needed to move. Like a raging bull, Bladespinner began to charge. Just before he made it towards her, she managed to disappear and poof back into existence right in front of him. She just managed to dig a knife right across his chest and popped out of the way.

I'm going to get a serious migraine after all this Quirk usage she groaned, already developing a headache.

"Stay... STILL!"

Bladespinner tried to punch her but she already was gone. Before he could blink, his throat was already slit. He choked out blood with it splattered on a broken pile of bricks. Before he could even get another word out, another knife was planted in his back. Then another. Then three more.

All Sonaka could see was red. Both figuratively and literally. Bladespinner had hit the ground several seconds ago, let she just kept stabbing. All the pent up rage she had built over the years were being unleashed on the body of her murderous boss. Was she just as bad as him? Probably, but she just needed to be free.

Free.

Nusuma!

Struggling to stand due to her shaking legs, Sonaka started to shuffle her way back towards an alleyway. Maybe she just shed her costume and make it back to her apartment just before nightfall. The last train left at eleven in the evening, she cod make it. She had to.

The sounds of fighting and over the top Quirks were dulled by the memories of her child. Nusuma's birth was a painful, lonely, yet beautiful experience. Her first words 'up, Mama' might've been small to everyone else but the world to her. Her smile was so precious. Her laugh was music to her ears. Her first ever A was on a math test; basic, but God did she almost cry at seeing her child succeed.

Succeed. Nusuma would succeed.

Nusuma, Mama's coming. Don't worry.

"You!"

Bladespinner? No, it was a feminine voice. Joro? No, too young.

Sonaka turned around. She wasn't prepared for the thick piece of wood going straight through her chest. Sonaka let out a deep wheeze. It pierced her lung, she could feel it. Her attacker? That same pink-petaled intern/student from before. Except her eyes were now a green, a green that reminded Sonaka of the grass at the park she always took Nusuma to. Although rage was pouring out of those emerald eyes, Sonaka also detected loss and hurt. Sonaka couldn't blame her. She was a child pretending to be a great Hero. This was probably her first experience with death, at least death that involved her friends and Hero's life as a whole. She wanted to tell her that she was sorry, but the girl raised another arm. It was covered in wood like a thick armor plating. Her hand, although covered, managed to sprout another tree branch.

"I-"

Sonaka couldn't finish. Her heart was immediately struck and everything slowed. She always thought death was supposed to be painful but she just felt tired and, in a twisted way, peace. All the stress dissolved at the moment of impact. The girl's face was still morphed due to all the suffering she was struggling with. Sonaka wanted to give her peace to her. But she couldn't.

She was falling.

Darker and colder was the only place she was heading and she embraced it with open arms. Sonaka let out a tear; it was her final regret.

Nusuma, I'm sorry. I didn't keep my promise.

#oc #ocs #mha oc #bnha oc #fanfiction #fanfic #ficlet #body horror tw #body horror #gore tw #gore #major character death #backstory #my hero academia #boku no hero academia

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Dark Knight: Why Heath Ledger’s Joker is Still Scary Today

https://ift.tt/2MFoX6l

It’s one of the great villain introductions in cinema history. Standing with a slight hunch at the center of a massive 70mm image, Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker not so much dominates the frame as he commandeers it. He seduces the IMAX camera, which is still capturing vast amounts of Chicago’s cityscape around him, and draws it closer to his sphere of influence, and by extension us. Before this moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, the director’s Gotham City functioned with clocklike precision. Even its greatest villains were slaves to the need of rationalizing everything in cold, utilitarian logic.

Not the Joker.

Within our first breath next to Ledger’s clown, one senses a malevolent spirit has been summoned, and he’s chosen to manifest out of thin air at this exact moment, on this exact street corner. He’s come to claim Gotham’s collective soul, but he’ll settle for any individual with delusions of virtue who crosses his path—including you.

This is of course just a fleeting moment in The Dark Knight; a brisk tease before Ledger’s shown his makeup-encrusted face or uttered even a word. In fact, Nolan and the actor dole out the character with impressive restraint: first as a masked Mephistopheles who is primarily a sing-song-y voice until he unmasks at the end of a bravura bank robbery. Later he becomes an actual narrative presence when he shows up again more than 20 minutes into the film, demonstrating for Gotham’s criminal underworld how to perform a magic trick.

As an isolated performance, there’s an argument to be made that none has ever been finer in the realm of superhero movies. Sure, there’ve been showy turns before and since in comic book blockbusters; there have even been great interpretations of the Joker before and after Ledger. Yet what the actor was able to do in 2008 transfixed audiences because he, like the character, had the freedom to bend the film to his will—even as Nolan prevented the movie from simply becoming merely a showcase for the performance.

With the grungy strung out hair of an addict who hasn’t showered in three months, greasy self-applied pancake makeup, and a grisly Glasgow smile that’s as unnerving as it is uneven (suggesting perhaps half of it was self-inflicted to make a matching set of scars), Ledger’s anarchist supervillain was a long way from Jack Nicholson’s hammy version of the same character in 1989. For audiences, and even comic book fans baying for something darker than Nicholson, it was abrasive in its time—and electrifying, like a punk rocker leaping into the mosh pit. Indeed, Ledger reportedly based the character’s appearance in part on the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten, and there is more than a hint of Tom Waits’ gravel in Ledger’s cadence whenever the clown growls.

But more than aesthetic culture shock, the enduring horror (and not-so-secret appeal) of Ledger’s Joker lies in the effect he has on the film, both in terms of its narrative storytelling and its enduring pop culture standing. Speaking strictly about this Joker as a character, the villain is off screen for far more of The Dark Knight’s running time than he’s on it. Appearing in only 33 minutes of The Dark Knight’s epic 152-minute running time, the average length of a Hollywood spectacle passes without the Joker on screen. Yet he’s omnipresent in the film, a shadow that hangs over each of Nolan’s three relatively equal protagonists: vigilante Batman (Christian Bale), police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), and district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Nolan and his brother and co-screenwriter, Jonathan Nolan, have admitted the setup is somewhat inspired by another quintessential blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. In both films, three disparate, combative male authority figures band together for a mythic battle against a presence so malignant and evil, it transcends being simply a shark or a madman in makeup—or even a comic book supervillain. Like that beast, Joker has no arc, no psychological growth, he’s a force of primal evil unbounded. And as the heroes’ battle against him creeps on, it seems like the sanity of their entire community is being dragged into the abyss.

This framing allows Ledger’s Joker to functionally be a catch-all stand-in for many of the social anxieties that kept American audiences up at night during the Bush years. Some of them still do today. There are of course obvious implications to the Joker being the terrorist, the non-state actor who cannot be negotiated with, and who doesn’t play by preconceived rules or notions of fairness. There is also shading of the lone wolf, the usually male gunman who inexplicably pulls the trigger. Most of all though, the Joker represents the hole in which much of humanity’s irrational predilections toward violence is collectively stored and ignored by our cultural memory… until it can’t be.

As Michael Caine’s Alfred Pennyworth famously reasons, “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” That summation of staring into irrational, needless cruelty is what gives The Dark Knight bite. And what a sharp bite it is in moments like when Ledger’s Joker laughs manically at the Batman, our ostensible hero who’s resorted to pummeling (or torturing) the villain in an interrogation room. The clown gloats, “You have nothing to threaten me with, nothing to do with all your strength.”

This is why the Joker is such an effective villain for The Dark Knight’s parable about how best to use moral power in immoral (i.e. irrational) times—and perhaps why the thrill of Ledger’s performance was so strong on first glance that it powered him all the way to a posthumous Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category seven months after the film’s release.

Still, Ledger’s Joker, more than any other movie villain in recent memory, continues to haunt well after that Oscar night. The mental image of the character slipping his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, like a cobra, and licking his scars—a tic Ledger invented to keep his prosthetics in place while upping the creep factor—has stayed with us like a subconscious boogeyman. Thirteen years on from The Dark Knight’s release, Ledger’s depiction of the Clown Prince of Crime has gone down in the annals of cinema alongside Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or, well, that shark in Jaws again. He’s an enigmatic and mysterious persona who is barely seen in his film, yet unmistakably casts a pall of evil over the whole proceeding.

We don’t know why Ledger’s Joker actually became the way he is, or what made him so obsessed with the Batman—to the point where he was inspired to put on “war paint” and declare his love for the Caped Crusader by saying, “You complete me!” The Joker gives multiple versions of his origin story in The Dark Knight, telling one mobster played by Michael Jai White that he’s a victim of an abusive father while later recounting to Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that he scarred his own face to cheer up his similarly disfigured wife. Both tales are of course lies, transparent manipulations intended to prey upon perceived vulnerabilities in his victims. This touch was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke where the comic book Joker provides the reader with a sob story flashback, and then confesses he probably made it up.

“If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice,” he says on the page.

Movies

Joker: 6 Actors Who Have Played the Clown Prince of Crime

By David Crow

Movies

The Dark Knight, The Joker, and Game Theory

By Ryan Lambie

The Nolan brothers understand the horror of this, and they keep the Joker a manipulative and inscrutable evil. Beyond obvious sociopathic tendencies, we know nothing about his inner-psychology and barely can ferret out his real motives beyond an odd devotion to maintaining Batman’s attention. He claims to be an agent of chaos who wants to “just do things,” yet his meticulously planned attacks belie this claim. In the end, he sees himself in a battle for “Gotham’s soul.” Like Amity Island’s Great White Leviathan, or the original incomprehensible nature of Thomas Harris’ cannibal serial killer in the earliest books, we never know the truth about why he is, and how he’s able to do what he does.

That mystery makes him live on in our own heads for years after the story ends and the credits roll.

It’s interesting to consider that effect now, after years of pop culture storytelling going in the completely opposite direction, particularly in comic book movies and other fanboy-driven media. Rather than find satisfaction in the inexplicability of evil, or standalone visions, we like to rationalize it and sympathize with it, even while glorifying it. Most of all, however, we insatiably seem to simply want more.

The need for endless content being generated by intellectual property has led to prequels, sequels, and even spinoffs that explore and too often redeem villains. Even the Joker himself is not wholly immune to this.

Since 2008, there have been two big screen versions of the Joker. Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix both had the unenviable task of stepping into Ledger’s shadow, with at least one of them being dwarfed by it. Leto’s attempts at “method acting” stunts on the set of Suicide Squad shows what can go wrong when scenery-chewing is mistaken with Strasberg.

Phoenix obviously fared better in his own Joker movie two years ago, making the actor the second performer to win an Oscar for playing the comic book villain. However, his film’s interpretation is diametrically opposed to Ledger’s enigma. Instead Phoenix’s film attempts to rationalize everything about the character, depicting the Joker as a mentally ill sad sack whose motivations are borrowed from other iconic movie screen villains and anti-heroes like the mother-obsessed Norman Bates (Psycho) and ticking time bomb Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver).

It still makes for a fascinating (if unoriginal) portrait, but one divorced from the terror of the unknown. We understand who Phoenix’s Joker is and why he is. Society, man. Phoenix’s Joker even outright states it before murdering not-Johnny Carson (Robert De Niro). “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you fucking deserve!”

Technically, Phoenix’s Joker appears closer to our reality and our daily horrors. With clown makeup inspired by real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy and preening self-pity parties resembling the manifestos of so many mass murderers, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is modeled as much off nightly news nightmares as comic book panels. Writer-director Todd Phillips is inelegantly blatant about it.

Nevertheless, whatever ugly truth there may be in that approach, it’s not as haunting, or exhilarating, to witness as what Ledger did in his own rock star interpretation of evil. Save for a blink-and-you-miss-it insert shot, we never see Ledger with the makeup off. And while he might indulge in mocking “society,” he is a character who says more by basking in the chaos of a city in terror, literally sticking his head out of a stolen police car like a dog with the wind in his hair and our horror on his face. It’s a more enduring image than a didactic conversation about insecurities with a father figure. Thirteen years later, Ledger’s version of the character continues to confound, horrify, and ultimately thrill. He still has the last laugh.

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The post The Dark Knight: Why Heath Ledger’s Joker is Still Scary Today appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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illquill · 4 years

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It Can’t Be Helped (leopika. tw: character death)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13528978/1/It-Can-t-Be-Helped

It can't be helped.

Leorio pulled another cigarette from the cheap pack he bought at the corner store nearest to the cemetery. He looked at the thin white pain-go-away stick with such focus he might have been able to light it with his mind. He lay on the grey gloomy grass, the harsh texture of the plant life somewhat soothing to the emotions running through his body. Four inches away from his feet layed a tombstone.

When he limply pulled out the lighter from his usual dress pants pocket and lit the holy stick of happiness, he took a long, savory puff, and sighed, the smoke he exhaled the exact duplication of his current soul's state in chemical format.

It can't be helped.

The day was sunny, and the skies were of a golden-pinkish hue. The sun was setting, the warm winds retreating back to their homes in the obliviousness and confines of the other side. It was times like this when Leorio wondered if that was how God retreated. If that was how easily the good lord left him when Kurapika died. What does it matter? It's not like he ever believed in such a higher power in the first place. But for a moment, for just a little piece in time, the now forever resting blond made him feel like maybe there could be such a thing. At least, he made him feel a higher power must have intervened in their lives to make their time together so blissful.

Oh god. The memories. There were oh, so many, he couldn't possibly have counted them all. Tears streamed down Leorio's face as the flashbacks returned. Happiness. Sadness. Anger. Fear. With Kurapika in the equation he had felt them all with an intensity that could turn the world inside out. Leorio sat up, and locked eyes with the blurry name of his dead lover, carved into stone so lovely it was cruel. He couldn't help but think in that moment that it should have been his name etched into it instead.

It can't be helped.

When he heard of the terminal cancer prognosis Leorio went into a state of mania. Poor soul gathered all the information he could about the disease to no avail. He knew there was no current cure that could help him. But he damn sure wanted to try and make one up himself. He still remembered driving Kurapika to the emergency room, standing there with Gon and Killua while they watched their dear friend enter the sea of afterlife. Holding his hand while he took his very last breath in that dirty blue hospital bed. Leorio shook his head at the memory, laughing cynically into the now evening abyss of sky, his pain dispersing into the atoms of the air around him.

It couldn't be helped.

He walked back to the car he rented for the night, not bothering to look back even once. Each lonely step he took gave him the delusion that he would never see this spot again, like some random occurrence would happen that would suddenly make Kurapika's spot in the cemetery disappear, his tombstone vanishing into thin air. He was afraid that if he looked back, it would already be gone. He sped off in his black car, leaving no sign that life had visited this grim reminder of dark immanence. He sped off, but not before leaving his trace of life, the photo frame of the best friend quartet a gift he hoped would reach Kurapika's soul in Heaven, if God hadn't already held it hostage in his prolonged, selfish and unjustified vacation.

#hxh fanfic #hxh #leopika #leorio #kurapika #Hunter X Hunter #hunter x 2011 #killugon #fanfic #oneshot #drabble

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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/21/2019: TERROR IN THE WOODS

I consider this to be the second Slender Man movie that I viewed this blogtober season. Previously, I wrote about THE TALL MAN, a twisty 2012 thriller by Pascal Laugier, the writer-director of 2008′s MARTYRS, which is coincidentally about a pair of traumatized young women who are driven to violence by the belief that they must placate a monstrous supernatural entity. THE TALL MAN does not share that similarity with the Slender Man mythos, but it makes a familiar proposal: A tall shadowy male figure emerges from the forest to abscond with children, for reasons that may be either murderous, or that may instead offer lonely and dejected little kids an escape into a sort of gothic Neverland. This odd killer-savior dichotomy reflects the pathos at the heart of Slender Man fandom, an obsession that thousands of ordinary young people shared with juvenile attempted murderers Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier. Their story is so well-known that it feels a little embarrassing to explain that the eerie Slender Man is the fictitious product of an online Photoshop contest. His first appearance, surrounded by young victims and/or acolytes, was captioned thusly:

“We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time… “

The images’ combination of spooky shit and childhood innocence would have felt pretty cliche even in 2009, but the conflation of victimization with salvation is a potent one. It evokes both the escapist bent that is so pronounced in children, and also the death drive--the psychoanalytic idea that people are subconsciously attracted to their own inevitable and perhaps cathartic conclusions. Maybe someone has already named this form of suicidal ideation that represents both the desire for everything to stop, and the hopeful fantasy that death could be the beginning of something else; If so, I would love to read about it. For want of that, we have the sadly overexposed yet still poorly understood story of 12 year olds Moran Geyser and Anissa Weier attempting to make a sacrifice of their supposed friend Payton Leutner to the Slender Man. A thinly-veiled version of this story is articulated successfully in the Lifetime original movie TERROR IN THE WOODS.

The generic title gives no hint of what this well-acted and psychologically realistic production is like. While no names are named, including the Slender Man’s, Ella West Jerrier and Sophie Grace play extraordinarily convincing stand-ins for Geyser and Weier, as the awkward, isolated little girls who become increasingly obsessed with a Creepy Pasta-like website where they find out about a demonic creature called the Suzerain. Like the Slender Man, the terms of one’s relationship with the Suzerain are complicated. Once you have its attention, you have to make a blood sacrifice, or else it will annihilate your family. However, making the sacrifice brings the strange reward of being accepted into the Suzerain’s remote mansion, where you live forever as his slave. That might not sound too good to just anybody, but an unhappy, confused, and powerless person sees in it an escape from the ravages of the mundane world, and also a relief from the painful burden of personal responsibility, as the Suzerain becomes your ultimate and eternal authority. This is where the Payton Leutner character comes in (played perfectly by Skylar Morgan Jones), an even more naive and immature classmate who was being edged out of girls’ triangle before the Suzerain “chose” her for sacrifice.

While I feel concerned about some of the oversimplified causes that TERROR IN THE WOODS seems to identify--chiefly, well-meaning but absent parents who are too concerned with their personal dramas to notice the murder plot hatching under their noses--the movie nails perpetrator’s personalities, keeping the focus appropriately on their emotional turmoil and complex delusions. Minus the acerbic comedy, TERROR sometimes feels like a Todd Solondz picture, with true to life characters rendered in agonizing detail, especially Skylar Morgan Jones, who is as unlikable as she is undeserving. Their vulnerability, their tackiness, and their juvenile pretensions are all beautifully fleshed-out. One rarely sees an honest, warts-and-all portrayal of young children in anything besides obnoxiously arty, explicit indie dramas, and this quality puts Lifetime ahead of the curve (as they often are) in terms of a certain kind of domestic realism. Even the attempted murder scene pulls no punches, graphically depicting the savage stabbing of a little girl who ends up drenched in blood and rolled in forest floor detritus.

As I just suggested, I object somewhat to the easy-out presented here, that all of this could have been prevented if only the parents were more attentive to their children’s internet activity, and more suspicious of their perceived emotional states. Today I watched the two hour 20/20 special about the crime, in which a lot of professional adults say a lot of incredibly stupid things about the “obvious” problems with Geyser and Meier. “Is ‘I want to die’ a normal thing for a child to write?” blusters one expert rhetorically about a diary entry, at which I nearly screamed “OF COURSE IT IS!” Anyone who never experienced such exaggerated feelings of emotional exhaustion as a young teen would have to be either extremely sheltered, or sort of a psychopath themselves. Throughout the special, grownups who think Apple Jacks should taste like apples spar over whether Geyser and Morgan are just fundamentally bad people, completely ignoring the complex and detailed psychology laid out in the Slender Man literature itself. On one hand is the threat of family annihilation by this creature in whom the two girls manifestly deeply believed. On the other hand, respite from a continued life of bullying and rejection from all of their peers. Fear, sadness, alienation, and actual mental illness permeate this tragic story. In fact, the girls were ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia and shared psychosis, respectively. However, even with all that on the table, some individuals remain happy to go on TV post-trial speculating frothily that these kids just wanted to know what it felt like to commit murder, and that maybe in this story we have discovered “that rarest of things--an evil 12 year old!”

It isn’t that I don’t think evil 12 year olds can exist. I don’t believe in the patent innocence of children any more than I believe that parents are completely capable of knowing (and changing) their child’s every thought and feeling, down to the ability to determine that something as outrageous as a blood sacrifice is a real life possibility and not just a relatively normal morbid musing for a normally emo-y kid. Trying to imagine that level of domestic detective work reminds me of the superior documentary DEPROGRAMMED, which details how the filmmaker’s rebellious brother had his life ruined by parents who convinced themselves that he was a legitimate and dangerous devil worshipper. Life just isn’t that simple, and this urge to find simplistic causes and solutions for unpredictable events is no more rational or mature than the urge to find solace in an imaginary kingdom with no parents and no homework. At this point, I feel like I should apologize for failing to address this movie, which I really liked a lot, as much as I addressed the story of the Slender Man stabbing. TERROR IN THE WOODS is roundly well-acted, appropriately sympathetic to all parties, and soberly told. It’s just hard for me to separate the story from the movie, as both have potent things to say about how we underestimate the psychological complexity of childhood. I don’t have solutions to propose, except that I think a good place to start would be with responsible adults relinquishing their own shallow certainty about what can happen and what we can do.

#terror in the woods #blogtober #sophie grace #ella west jerrier #skylar morgan dunbar #angela kinsey #drew powell #true crime #slender man #urban legend #creepy pasta #thriller #drama #horror #dj viola #amber benson

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kilyra · 5 years

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I Swear to You

Special Agent Ben Poindexter/Bullseye (Daredevil) One-Shot

A/N: I received a request from love-n-sprinkles @love-n-sprinkles-deactivated201 (Well dang, seeing this person’s blog is deactivated makes me sad, hopefully she still sees this!) for a scenario where Dex is working for Fisk but finds a new Northstar and leaves it all behind to be with the reader.

Warning: Season 2 spoilers, but no other warning.

If you want to be on a taglist (all or a specific character) just let me know.

It had been a normal day at work. Perfectly average in every way actually, which suited you fine since it meant no stress. But unfortunately, that fell apart once you opened the door to the apartment you shared with Dex.

It was completely trashed.

Immediately, your heart was pounding and your mind raced through the possibilities. Break-in? A struggle? Was Dex okay?

As you reached for your phone, Dex came rushing out of the bedroom, crossing into the living room. Spotting you, he froze. “Y/n, good. Come inside and shut the door.”

Whatever relief you saw from seeing him was quickly squashed when you saw his red eyes, wrinkled clothes and dishevelled hair. “W-what’s going on, Dex?”

Blinking rapidly, he started taking steps towards the entrance. “Now, Y/n. I need you to get inside now. Please.”

Swallowing heavily, you forced your feet forward, fighting the urge to back further down the hall. Closing the door behind you, you moved by the kitchen counter, not going any closer. “Seriously. What’s going on? Were we robbed?”

Stiffly, he shot you a wide smile. You assumed it was to comfort you, but your stomach knotted. “No. No, we weren’t robbed. I did this.”

Why?

It was the only question silently bouncing through your mind as you looked over the destroyed apartment. Everything on the shelves was dumped onto the floor and almost every piece of furniture was flipped over. The couch was left upright, but all the cushions were ripped open with the stuffing pulled out. And that was just the damage you could see from where you stood.

His eyes narrowed as his smile dropped. “Okay, I see how this looks and I can explain. I will explain. Everything. But right now, I need you to pack your things.”

“What?” You breathed out the word in a quiet whoosh of air.

Moving forward until he was directly in front of you, he brought his hands together like he was about to pray. There was a slight waver in his otherwise controlled tone. "Please. Y/n. I need you to listen to me and start packing."

You continued to survey the room when you spotted a knife sticking out from the wall. Suddenly, you found your voice again. “Pack? Pack for what? Why is there a knife stabbed into the wall? What the hell is going on here?”

“Y/n, please.” You jumped as he practically shouted.

Squeezing your eyes closed, you took a sharp inhale, trying to stay calm. “You say you know how this looks, but honestly? To me, this just looks like you forgot to-”

“Take my meds?” There was no trace of insult to his tone at your implication.

You glanced to the side but didn't try to explain yourself.

Watching you intently, his eyebrows rose as he continued. “I can see how you might think that, but I haven't. I'm taking my meds and I've even been listening to my tapes. A lot. I'm handling this poorly, I realize that, but I promise you I've thought this through."

Sighing, you reached over and set your hands on top of his. “But if I'm going to pack a bag, Dex, I need to know why.”

Mirroring your sigh, he let out a long exhale. The tension in his face relaxed slightly as he continued to breathe in sync with you. His fingers lifted to wrap around yours, clasping your hands tightly and when he spoke again, his tone was calmer. "How many North Stars are in the sky at night?"

The muscles in your jaw slacked and your mouth wordlessly opened for a moment. “...W-what?”

His throat worked as he swallowed. “One. There's only one. That's you, Y/n. And my boss...he's not going to like that.”

“I have no idea what th-...Your boss? At the FBI?” You seemed to help him find his centre, but you were drowning.

Swaying back a step, his entire chest heaved as he scoffed. “The FB..No, no not the FBI.”

When he tried to pull away, you clamped your fingers tight through his, stopping him. “Then who?”

“Fisk.” He spoke with the quiet, calm confidence of a man getting something off his chest and not the agitated ramble of someone with a delusion. But it made no sense.

It was you who backed away, pulling your hands from his as you put space between you. His eyebrows furrowed as his eyes darted to your hands. “No, no, Y/n, I'm telling you the truth. You have to believe me.”

Words were getting stuck in your suddenly dry mouth. “I do. But...how...?”

“H-he's got people on the inside. Turns out getting that convict into prison didn't do much to stop him. He just had to pull some different strings first.”

“And that was you? You're...you're a string?”

“No. Well...yes. I-I don't know,” he said haltingly as he started tapping his thumb against the counter. “He pulled bigger strings than me. But, Y/n, I got in deep. Really deep. And the further I go with him, the further away I am from you. And I can't...I can't do that.”

The bit of calmness you managed to bring to the situation was already coming unravelled as his thumb tapping sped up.

“Judging by this place, I assume you can't just quit then.”

A sad smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he glanced over the room. “No, I can't. Fisk...he doesn't go at people straight he...he goes after family and loved ones. If he suspects I'm pulling out, I'm worried it will put you at risk.”

Your heart hammered against your rib cage as the confusion melted away. Being confused felt better. Slowly, you crossed your arms over your chest, tightly hugging yourself as you broke eye contact.

“This is sudden and it must be difficult for you, I get that. But I don't know who I can trust or how far this goes at the FBI. I've reached out to old contacts I served with before the bureau and I can get us out of state tonight. Maybe even out of the country. If I make it look like there was some sort of fight here, it will throw everyone off the trail and give us some breathing room.”

“S-so you expect me to just leave everything behind and disappear with you?”

Rushing forward, he squeezed his hands on your shoulders. Firmly, he rubbed his thumbs over the fabric of your jacket as he stared into your eyes. “Y/n, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. You deserve better than to be dragged into this. But if you don't come with me, right now, I think Fisk will try to have you killed.”

The desperation had returned to his eyes, which were pleading with you even louder than he was. You didn’t know much about Fisk, but if you were on his radar, you knew you had to run.

Forcing a hard exhale through your nose, you nodded. As soon as you accepted the situation, it felt like a curtain dropped over you and a numbness removed you from your growing panic. It was replaced with cold determination. There would be time for feelings and details later. “What do I pack?”

A faint smile flickered over his lips before he nodded. “As little as possible. We can't let it look like we packed our bags and left.”

Nodding, you pulled away to get to it. Not letting go, he moved closer and slid his arms towards your back, pulling you against his chest. You caught the crisp, familiar scent of his aftershave as you relaxed against his shoulder. Uncrossing your arms, you wrapped them around him, enjoying the short-lived moment.

His chest rumbled as he spoke softly. “I'm going to fix this, Y/n. I swear to you, I'm going to fix this.”

Taglist: @ladysprinkles18 @fiction-is-the-new-reality @foreverfaeries @flower-two @getlostinyourparadise @natsukitakama

#benjamin poindexter x reader #dex x reader #bullseye x reader #daredevil

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animebw · 5 years

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Binge-Watching: Monster, Episodes 11-14

In which we learn more about Johann’s origins, Tenma becomes an unexpected dad, and tomorrow will be a good day.

511 Kinderheim

And so, the next bit of the mystery surrounding Johann Liebert comes into focus, as Tenma’s journeys bring him to East Berlin, where the Monster lived before that fateful day he crossed the border. As it turns out, he was one of many orphans housed in the Communist regime’s orphanages; specifically, the infamous 511 Kinderheim, a direct branch of the government itself. This particular orphanage was home to the children of political opponents, criminals, and enemies of the state, and its purpose was to brainwash and experiment on them, rubbing away their humanity until they became perfect, emotionless soldiers. It was a laboratory with the explicit purpose of creating psychopaths, but in reality, it was an unfocused, poorly run disaster that was undone with just a little prodding from the one child who was already far more of a monster than 511 could ever have hoped to produce. All Johann needed to do was inflame the jealousy, hatred and greed that were already stewing among the victims and researchers alike, and they all tore each other apart while he watched, relishing in the feeling of being the last living being in a dying world.

It’s one hell of a dark chapter for Tenma to encounter, and it raises some serious questions about the nature of the monster he’s fighting. 511′s last surviving officer believes that the moral development of a child depends on the adult who raises him, and he’s still carrying on the lab’s abusive practices on his adopted son Dieter. But Johann was already broken long before 511 got their claws into him, and even the officer acknowledges that there was no way they could’ve created something like him. He’s acting in desperation, trying to turn Dieter into his first successful experiment to prove some nebulous point about the nature of the world. He needs to believe that Johann’s kind of emotionless psycopathy is the only true strength in a dark, hopeless world, not realizing that he’s the only part of this equation that’s actively making the world dark and hopeless. He’s kind of the perfect encapsulation of why I so often detest stories with cynical outlooks; whenever someone tries to tell me that the world’s a shitty place and the only way to survive in it is to be shitty and rough yourself, it always comes off like an excuse to justify why that guy’s an asshole. The world isn’t shitty, you’re just trying to convince me it is because that’s the only way you can justify what a rotten person you are. Yeah, this last surviving officer is that guy, and the damage he causes to Dieter thanks to that delusion is a biting condemnation on that philosophy’s abusive, destructive true nature.

Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day

Thankfully, Kenma doesn’t agree with this resident asshole at all, and neither does Monster as a whole. Kenma’s certainly seen his share of reasons to despair, and it’s definitely had an effect on him; it’s kinda sad how prepared he is for the guy to turn out evil, like his faith in humanity is so shaken that it doesn’t even surprise him anymore. But that’s only made him all the more determined to prove that line of thinking wrong. He’s met plenty of good people among his travels, people who look out for each other like the small-town doctor and his patients, or the owner of the other orphanage who actually looks after her kids. She actually agrees that kids’ development is dependent on how they’re raised, but instead of taking that as an excuse to be monstrous to them to “toughen them up,” she takes it as a responsibility to treat them with respect and kindness, to build them into people who can reject the world’s darkness with ease. Sure, things can look bleak at times, but as he imparts to Dieter, there’s always a chance for things to get better. As long as you’re willing to fight for it, tomorrow will be a good day.

And Dieter takes this advice to heart, leaving his abuser behind and deciding to try out hope with the man who granted it to him. I was not expecting Tenma to get dragged into surrogate dadhood, but I’m not complaining now that we’ve gone this route, because Dieter’s such an amusingly cheeky little shit (”Hey mister, how come your face is red?”) that I can’t wait to spend more time with him. Tenma’s still got a dark-as-hell path ahead of him, a man who’s life he needs to end before he can go back to saving lives once more. And having a beacon of light like Dieter by his side might just be the reminder he needs to not lose himself in the process of pursuing such a difficult end goal. Cynicism dies in the light, after all, and if Dieter can keep Tenma believing that tomorrow will be a good day no matter how dark the horizon looks, I think they’ll be okay.

Odds and Ends

-”She raised me, so what’s left for her to do?” Wow, rude.

-Good fucking god, he is a stone cold beast. Gun in his face? Just keep on surgery like nothing’s wrong.

-”I thought it was him because he was Asian.” Okay, I know he’s lying to keep Tenma safe, but this line really cracks me up.

-You know, as smart a guy as Lunge is, I sincerely doubt “Tenma is Tyler Durder” is gonna be what’s really going on here.

-ffs Lunge you are a garbage family man

-”Are you trying to say I’m a good person?” lol, even she knows it.

-”You are truly a sad and lonely woman.” I can’t even be that mad at Eva, she’s just too pathetic to hate.

And on we go. See you next time!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #naoki urasawa's monster #monster

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bladekindeyewear · 5 years

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Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 13 - Candy Page 23

==>

This is going well, despite all the weirdness... it might not be so bad by the time I get to the end of all this. Maybe my stomach can stop clenching as much from the Meat poisoning.

Then again, that’s what I thought when I was up to four-fifths through Meat and thought things were going to be resolved before the end.

So.

Anyway. Reading.

In fact, all she did was tip her head at him and blink a few times, her long eyelashes catching the light, making her eyes look like mirrors. It was disconcerting for reasons that he couldn’t put his finger on. It’s not like Roxy had ever been argumentative, exactly. He just seems to remember someone from his youth who was somewhat more contrarian in spirit than this person he’s married to now.

God damnit... hypnotized, basically dead Roxy is worst Roxy. I need that fucking explanation soon.

If she doesn’t get upset after what he’s about to pull today, then...

John doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Gosh that’s horrible. I wish I didn’t have to go back to Meat if I ever wanted any more Real Roxy again... please, PLEASE, if NOTHING ELSE gets fixed in this stupid fucking Candy arc, PLEASE HAVE ROXY BACK TO NORMAL BEFORE THE END

That... that would be just the fucking icing on the cake, wouldn’t it? I was already upset about Dirk not getting his due. I was traumatized over how Jane, Jade, and Rose were left. But ROXY was fine. Roxy, pretty much my favorite character next to maybe Jade, or a good number of the others. If this timeline gives me an alternate cliffhanger to lean on that spares the others to leave HER to shit, then I’d basically be left with nothing to stand on! It’d be fucking worthless almost.

My stomach isn’t clenching YET, but I’m starting to fill with dread.

JOHN: harry anderson, don’t tell your mother but... JOHN: we’re getting a new addition to the family today!

Pfffff

serious kidnapping

And who said John was just a blank slate with no will of his own?? Fuck you, Dirk. You knew about this timeline and you STILL said it.

Dave and Jade materialize behind everyone, he in a pressed red suit, she in a glittering Space dress. They’re both holding gifts wrapped in spare printer paper.

Look, you two looking cute is just rubbing salt in the wound of the relationship you fucked over, Jade. You should have waited to make sure Dave and Karkat FINALLY ACCEPTED THEIR FUCKING RELATIONSHIP before moving in and potentially pushing one of them out, WHICH HAPPENED.

Oooh, smart human babby Tavvy. ...He isn’t going to want to leave his family situation, is he. John’s off the mark isn’t he.

Dave ruffles Harry Anderson’s hair. It’s nice that Dave is so woke and great with kids, but that really does invite the question of why he and Jade don’t have any yet. There’s still something sad and wistful about Dave at the moment, as he pointedly avoids letting Jade take his hand while they’re led into the game room.

GAAAAHHHHH

Could we at least BE ALLOWED TO PRETEND THERE’S A POSSIBLE FUTURE WHERE THESE PEOPLE’S RELATIONSHIPS ARENT THOROUGHLY FUCKING MESSED UP?????

I KNOW THESE CHARACTERS ARE MESSED UP BUT YOU HAVE TO AT LEAST GIVE US HOPE

AND WHERE’S THE HAPPY POTENTIAL PAIRING FOR JADE??? IT SEEMS LIKE THERE’S NO POTENTIAL FOR REAL MUTUAL HAPPINESS FOR HER BESIDES JADE X COMA!!!!!!!!!!

God damn it Jane can be creepy.

She gained his affection the same way she gains everyone’s affection: she fucking bought it.

UUuuuuuuggghhhhh

...pff stars vs enemies of the state

John, stop making this so stranger-danger.

JOHN: are you ACTUALLY happy about it? JOHN: about... everything going on here? TAVROS: I suppose,,, TAVROS: My mother tends to get displeased when i’m unhappy, so,,,

uuuugughghghuhh

TAVROS: It just seems like a thing that would eventually happen to me, does it not?

Oh wow, callback to Dirkbro abuse. THAT��S gonna set John off.

Oh wow, Tavros knows his situation is bad enough that he’s willing to GO for it. All he’s worried about is the security. YEAH John!! Do your Breathy thing and get him out of here!!!

Tavros takes in a sharp breath before spinning on his heel and stumbling toward his closet. John catches the ghost of a smile on his face before he turns and that’s all it takes to turn the pounding of his heart from terrified to thrilled.

AAaaaaAAAAAH THIS IS ADORABLE SOMEHOW

She twitches her dog-ears and raises her face. Her mouth is a neutral line, but her eyes are burning furiously.

OH NOOOOOOO

FUCK, Jade don’t stop it!!! She’s... she’s gonna put her foot down and stop this just so everything can be all candy-coated and good on the SURFACE without hurting people OPENLY even if she and Jane and all the others are DEEPLY hurting everyone else under the surface!!!! D:

JOHN: jade, i don’t know where you’ve been these past few years, but i don’t think things CAN get any worse!

Yes exactly

JOHN: but there isn’t one, because everyone’s been all... brainwashed by marriage, or whatever the hell happened over the last few years that made things be this way!

Hmmmmmm

JOHN: well, you’re nothing like the jade i used to know either!

Alright, huge blowup. Let’s air out some feelings.

JANE: I let go! I was actually RELIEVED to hear he died!!! ROXY: uhh ROXY: janey wut

HAhahahaah YES let’s get all that dirty laundry OUT IN THE OPEN

......Okay that didn’t end as well as expected. Or... well I guess I KNEW it wouldn’t end well, but I’d hoped otherwise.

==>

Wait, so Terezi and John’s conversation is “in the dream bubbles”? Is that just because he’s talking to her while she’s skirting the edge of the storm in the Void rocketways, or because John’s from a somehow doomed/irrelevant/side timeline?

(Why does Terezi always have to be dying. She figured herself out and how awesome she is. Stop dying. And I don’t mean like the sad walking off in Meat, though I guess that kind of counts.)

JOHN: if she cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn’t have fucked off like this forever.

YES JOHN

LAY

THE

TRUTH

(Ghost!Vriska is the only one who really deserves to matter anymore. This “alpha” Vriska just sank deeper into her problems and delusions beyond being able to really redeem herself or recognize them. That diatribe she gave her ghost self was horrible back when.)

Wait, wait hold on

JOHN: if she cared about you as much as you care about her, she wouldn’t have fucked off like this forever. JOHN: driving you crazy with doubt and uncertainty, making you chase her through infinite nothingness until you almost starve to death... JOHN: she would have at least given you the courtesy of closure!

Is... is Andrew talking about the comic here and his relationship with the readers

is this some sort of apology for not giving this closure, like, as if he were the vriska that launched himself into the sun over his own artistic ideals or

hmm

JADE: doomed is not a word i would use to describe the condition of those on this world. JADE: even if my work is unsuccessful, the stakes for everyone here have nothing to do with the issue of mortality. JADE: to frame the matter that way would be misleading. JADE: to the extent that it is my naturally endowed duty to defend the innocent from wanton acts of destruction, from degradation and dissolution, JADE: it is also my duty to tell the truth to those i protect. JADE: and the simplest statement of truth for all of you to know is this: JADE: we are the lucky ones.

Calliope lets out a long, thin sigh from between the teeth of Jade’s corpse. It’s more for effect than anything, as corpses don’t actually need to breathe.

JADE: we are the ones fortunate enough to live in a reality that is beyond the influence of the prince.

Geez, it’s like escape from Lord English’s influence all over again.

They won only for everything to just fucking start over, everything they struggled to stop? That sucks!!! >:(

Anyway, still reading... god damnit Terezi don’t fly off and die for no fucking reason.

JOHN: then what DID you want?! TEREZI: L3TS S4Y... TEREZI: 1 JUST W4NT3D TO G1V3 YOU TH3 COURT3SY OF CLOSUR3

Fuck. Yeah, let’s just keep fucking over Terezi, another one of my favorite characters. Yes she lives and goes to fuck off somewhere in Meat with the villain of the week, but FUCK, couldn’t we get a SLIGHTLY clearer picture of her potential happiness than just THAT?????

It’s like the whole purpose of these epilogues was just to remind us that these characters were too fucked up to ever be happy!!!!

Couldn’t we have at least been left to IMAGINE OTHERWISE?!?????

JADE: not until i am able to deal with the prince myself. ARADIA: and when will that be

The meteor is passing beyond the fall of night. Dead-Jade, standing half in light, half in darkness, looks up at the sky.

JADE: not soon enough.

Ahh. I’m getting an idea of the Postscript’s circumstances, then. That was alt!Callie in this black-hole-powered Jade body going from THIS Candy timeline to go chase after Dirk and help stop him like everyone else, giving her a more powerful card to play than just the adult Jade she was having guide the others. (Maybe she could have that adult Jade FUCKING WAKE UP AND ABLE TO HELP instead of keeping her in a coma. That would be a pretty fucking nice change of pace. Too bad we have to just IMAGINE IT without any reassurance that she’ll be awake or okay for YEARS TO COME, HUH.)

Also that means that resistance fighting is gonna break out with artillery and stuff because Jane is apparently a dunpass in both timelines. Fuck.

==>

Swifer, can you stop swifing?

KARKAT: HOW THE HELL DO YOU TWO TOLERATE EACH OTHER? KANAYA: Quite Thoroughly Enthusiastically And Often

Pffffff :D

...Oh my God MEENAH landed here??? All ring-of-lifeways from the other timeline? I guess the Furthest Ring was outside the scope of those timeilnes so she could’ve fallen in any of them... huh. Heck, maybe the same Terezi who experienced those conversations eventually met the John from the Meat side of the timeline too. And she said John smelled younger than she thought he was, oh my GOD, it WAS that. It was that exactly. The Terezi we’re hearing was the same across both Epilogue-halves. That’s actually fucking fantastic!!!

MEENAH: capisces?

Fuck that pun

(Also Meenah is talking about how they lost, but she was knocked away before she saw the conclusion of the fight, so.)

...Holy SHIT Meenah is really taking to this!!! This is adorable. :D

==>

John’s having some canon/existential ditherthoughts, hm.

He’s been contemplating this melodramatically for maybe ten minutes when the sky rips opens above him and flashes violent waves of red and green across the landscape.

Hm. So do the black hole wormholes have some tie to the cherubic portal device from Hiveswap?

It’s his father’s car.

Mhmm, that confirms all of it, really. Same Terezi in both stories.

A vast cry of sorts. :(

Heading out for a while; gonna start from Page 27 in the next post. I feel pretty good, somehow. The way these two timelines tied together with Terezi outside them makes it feel like it all may have ultimately meant something.

#Homestuck #Homestuck Epilogue #Upd8 #Homestuck Liveblog #bladekindeyewear #BlastYoBoots

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