#also for the record idk why i went from his perspective to hers after the shakes hc but here we are Welcome To My Twisted Mind

[ihavenoideamanokay]

okay I've given up I'm gonna rant about the blue beetle movie because OH MY GOD

I wanna watch it again but I don't wanna go back to the theater I just wanna buy it already so I can watch it over and over and over

IT WAS SO GOOD

spoilers ofc so be prepared (also this is gonna be really long)

my one complaint. is khaji having a feminine robot voice. because I'm used to young justice where they were just a slightly more murderous sounding jaime which I think is perfect. idk it just feels too much like a marvel movie with the female robot suit. IT WAS BETTER THAN A MARVEL MOVIE THOUGH HAHAHAHA-

(for the record I usually say they/them for khaji bc they are a bug robot thing I don't think they understand or care about human gender but I'm stuck between that and that one venom post where they say venom uses he/him sometimes to match eddie's gender BECAUSE I FEEL LIKE KHAJI WOULD DO THAT 💀💀)

anyway I loved the movie soooooooo much and I love boostle being gay (and wasn't prepared for ted having a wife) so I was worried that ted had a daughter but she was AWESOME I LOVE HER SO MUCH

I especially love how nice she was???? her only surviving family member is a complete jerk and it never rubbed off on her, no matter how done with it she was and all that

I have a family member who, like vIcKy, is just mean to everyone for no reason (okay victoria kinda had a reason I'll get to all that later) and if I'm around her for too long I start wanting to match her energy. like yell back. I'M A HORRIBLE PERSON? LOOK WHO'S TALKING! that kinda stuff. but JENNY DOESN'T DO THAT I mean she still stands her ground and all that BUT she never sinks to victoria's level and that's amazing.

anyway on victoria's reasoning yeah I get it, it totally sucks that you helped create the company and it never got passed down to you, and I'm not trying to invalidate that in any way, I'm just saying, think about it from a different perspective. she could've been a psycho from the beginning. creating weapons will probably make you feel horrible and depressed because you're killing people! I just think we don't know if she cracked because of that and that's when she started seeing people as expendable, or if she was born like that, or if she became like that because of the sexism! I was just thinking about it and I feel like there's a possibility that their grandpa thought she was being a little too aggressive or something and that's why he gave the company to ted. of course, I'm not saying that's what happened, just that that's an interesting thought I had.

NEXT this is dumb but I'm too bi for that movie I saw the main couple and went IVHVAJBKSBEJV THEY'RE BOTH SO PRETTY WHAT 😭😭😭 (well it was more like I went yeah the guy who plays jaime (I'm sorry idk any actors) is pretty and then jenny came on and I just. oh no. then they flirted and I was like NO WHAT-

okay I love the family relationships in this movie because they're all so different. I mean you have jenny and her mom who she didn't really know (because she died), then her dad being distant, then her and her aunt constantly hating each other but being too scared to do anything about it. of course they didn't wanna kill each other because ✨lawsuits✨ but they wanted to get rid of each other because victoria was doing horrible things and jenny was getting in her way. then you have jaime's family which is a disaster in the best way possible. I love how we didn't see them that much but could still tell exactly what was going on there. you get that they're all super close (you even get that there's no privacy💀) and they're all like best friends. I feel like his mom should've gotten a bit more characterization, but whatever. I mean her husband died?? and we barely see her???? idk. I just like how drastically different it is from the kords like I think it's cool.

I realized after the movie that. his grandma never saw him transform the first time. and she probably saw the hole in the roof and, knowing her, did not care. then when he comes back they saw khaji attached to him and she was probably filled in, but. we never saw her reaction. I think it was a good decision not to show it, because she'd probably react in some way that mentioned her fighting people in the past and all that.

okay this is another cursed thought but what happened to jenny's motorcycle at the end? she drove it over but then jaime flew her away. did she leave it there and just make him pick her up later to get it? did he go back and fly it to her?? motorcycles are heavy man I don't think that would be fun. did he drive it to her???? did he just leave it there??????? did he fly her everywhere after that??????????? people will guess your secret identity man. also did milagro steal it because that is totally a milagro thing to do-

OH YEAH let's talk about how they all hated jenny when jaime transformed because as funny as that was. guys. she literally told him not to open it. (honestly I feel like it's an insult to khaji's intelligence that they thought they couldn't get out of a fast food box but that's just me.) and I totally get that they hated her because she was a kord and victoria was being horrible but like THEY JUSTIFIED IT AS "YOU DID THIS TO HIM" AND I FEEL LIKE OUT OF EVERY COMPLAINT THEY HAVE WITH HER THAT'S THE WORST ONE TO USE. SHE KINDA GOT JAIME AND MILAGRO FIRED AS WELL although that's also because milagro was breaking rules and jaime's just too good of a person to not yell at victoria. WAIT WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHE SAID "PROTECT IT WITH YOUR LIFE" KNOWING FULL WELL HE COULD ACTUALLY DIE THAT'S A GOOD COMPLAINT but like we can excuse that bc we love her here

okay so yes the scene where he talked to his dead dad was fine and all like I like it but. PLEASE. THE CGI WAS SO BAD IN THAT ONE PART. like the rest of the movie was fine BUT SERIOUSLY COME ON GUYS but in other news I love that scene because anything that has khaji just. vibing. is the best. and then having jaime accept them and stuff.

I just realized this movie could totally be a queer metaphor because of the whole acceptance theme?? I mean it's not like THE QUEER METAPHOR MOVIE EVER it's more like hey self acceptance. I mean you have to come out to yourself before you come out to others so idk that's just random

anything that has khaji da and jaime being best friends is automatically amazing. so my favorite arc in young justice is the reach arc (because I'm a sucker for possession and it was just totally well done) and my absolute favorite part of the arc + favorite blue beetle moment + possibly favorite part of the whole show??? is when khaji says the "then you haven't learned anything from our time together" line (that jaime says like an episode or so before I think) and every time I rewatch that I'm just like 😭😭😭😭😭 because they're besties your honor (or in love idk that ship isn't my first choice but I don't have a problem with it) and it's so so so good

I was so worried the movie was gonna be bad because I've only seen one recent dc movie (okay it was half of one) and I'm going to be honest I was not engaged at all I was kinda bored (I don't wanna say what movie it was because it's a very very hot take) and I was like oh no what if this movie does it too. nope. I also was really really hoping that they'd actually be like yeah the scarab's name is khaji da AND THEY DID I WAS SO HAPPY

oh my god I was looking at the cast and they listed victoria's assistant scientist guy as dr. sanchez. NOW I'M NOT THE SMARTEST BUT I'M PRETTY SURE THAT'S NOT HIS NAME- WASN'T THAT A WHOLE PLOT POINT 😭😭😭

that's all I have to say for now, there will probably be more later

#spoilers for the blue beetle movie #blue beetle #the movie this time not just the character(s) #blue beetle movie #blue beetle 2023 #jaime reyes #khaji da #jenny kord #ted kord #michael jon carter #booster gold #milagro reyes #rudy reyes #victoria kord #this post is so long watch out

[our-reality]

python 10, 11, 12

10. do they have any regrets?

i don't know. does he 🙂

AGH THIS QUESTION HURT ME SO MUCH . it's. hard to really say whether or not it regrets leaving skylight. for sure he regrets not taking swift with him to earth, even if sky definitely wouldn't have been as enthusiastic about it as he was, because him abandoning her caused so many problems for them that he should have seen coming before it left. he just. so wishes it could've saved them all the trouble and heartache sky went through

but like. what if she just refused to go. even if he offered to take sky with him. what if he had to choose. is it worth making rest of his life hell just to spare her from that? is it selfish to not want that? and. yeah it struggles with this point a lot. and i must stress how throroughly python does not miss being a god and how much it loves being a human. how much he's learned from others about himself and the world that it would've never learned if he'd stayed as a god. but all of that is at the cost of his best friend's health and the problem just. eats away at it. and it takes him more than a while to fully grapple with the fact that he just. couldn't've won no matter what it did.

of course it gets better when the plot kicks off and he actually has a chance to reconcile with swift, but it also kinda just. puts into perspective just how much he ruined sky by doing what it did. and it sucks ass for him. and he understands why both it and swift couldn't have been humans but how was it supposed to choose? the only reason he even chose to go through with becoming human was because it and swift had an argument over the subject and it made a hasty decision. without that, it's hard to say whether or not it would've ever made the hard decision, just letting it consume him over his years, like everything else has.

and. you know. i could look at all of that and go "yeah that's enough torment for one post" but what if i made it worse. what if i talk about whether or not he regrets the murders. what then

uh. yeah idk if i've mentioned this before but vysel is not. the only person it's killed. vysel was the first person, yes (and he was also the last that's crazy it's like poetry it rhymes or wtv), but that whole Ordeal kinda starts it on a track record of um. murder! basically anyone he didn't like got an axe to their face. and like. he does regret that because it basically had to relearn all of its morals after that and it caused him sooooooo many issues forever.

and it puts a lot of the blame on the vysel incident for this because. well. not only was it the first ever time he intentionally killed someone, but it actually did do exactly what he wanted it to do. without going into too many details by the time the vysel shit happened it kinda felt wildly out of control of his life with how often he was forced to move becase it made too many enemies in one area, or because he was worried its old parents would find him, or anything like that. so that was basically its wait of saying "fuck it this is MY life and i'm not gonna let you ruin my life". and then after that he kinda got the idea that like "oh i don't feel in control of my life? just fucking kill people!!" and. it caused him to do some fucky wucky things to say the least

i could say even more but i will actually die if i write about this anymore so i'll shelve this topic for another post but uh tl;dr girls when they have to make a decision with seemingly no right answer that will deeply affect them for the rest of their lives ❤❤❤❤❤

11. do they have any addictions?

he has a smoking addiction and has had one for the past. 300ish years? his lungs are basically coal dust at this point. he coughs up ash at regular intervals and everyone just sort of rolls with it. at one point ruby's like. hey python do you think you should see someone about your lungs. and he's like if a doctor looked at me they'd have a stroke and die on the spot. and she's like ???? okay. he has no intention of stopping and has no motivation to cuz it can't die by human means and it smells like cigarette smoke literally all the time i hate him

12. do they have any sense of style? regardless of the answer do they believe they have a sense of style?

i mean. he literally wears the exact same thing every damn day. and it's not like the other human characters where i draw them with the same outfit all the time but in universe they wear different shit every day. nah he wears the exact same ratty ass coat and fucked up . shirt that's basically a crop top at this point and shredded to hell and back pants and shoes with soles that flap whenever it takes a step. and it just lives like that. it's kinda hard to get him new clothes too because literally everything is too small on it. he's an actual fucking beanpole

so because it hasn't had new clothes for so long he's just like yeah idk how to dress but i don't care so it's okay 😁 so if he was put in front of a bunch of clothes i think it just. wouldn't know what to do at first . but after a while he starts leaning more and more into it and suddenly it has like 27 well put together outfits and he's like. damn okay . so yeah i think he'd really like fashion and have a good sense of style but it just. doesn't have the self confidence for it <///3 sad!

#python #no impactful ending for this one sorry ! #sorry for taking 5 dayz on this one too . agonies

[kalyri]

suddenly reminded of my second creative writing class in college--i took it after taking intro to creative writing that spring semester.  and the professor for fiction writing 1 was the head of the creative writing department, i was like “cool, i can learn something from a teacher rather than just dealing with the grad students.  which i didn’t mind, i actually liked the grad student assigned to my group of like 10 students out of like the 150 or so that were there...

anyway.  the thing that i suddenly remembered because the professor was just... not good.  especially with the content of the story i was writing for the class.  and he started with the very typical “no genre writing” which confused the hell out of me, because then what the fuck was I supposed to write?  all writing, to me, is genre writing.  because you’re writing in a genre.  if it’s fiction without supernatural, scifi, fantasy, whatever, then it’s like historical or realistic or romance, etc.  there’s always a genre.  so that was the first thing i didn’t like.

but the content of the story i was writing specifically for this class was queer in nature.  at the time, i had a friend who’d solidified their gender as non-binary, and we’d decided to try dating, either before the summer started or just after the summer started.  and so i decided to write something about about a relationship between a lesbian and a non-binary person.  and i used they/them pronouns throughout the story and named the character Alexandre.  and that reverse -re is what brought the memory on, because i’m reading a book written by a NZ author who does that for words like kilometre.

anyway, the guy didn’t like this--and he tried so hard to frame it as grammatical.  but it was worse than that because he was so up in arms about how to pronounce Alexandre, without referencing the fact that words like kilometre are said like kilometer.  I’d only intended the Alexandre as like a cross between Alexandra and Alexander--this was the name the character had chosen.  And Alex as a nickname was no ambiguous, it worked.  And for most of the story, Alexandre went by just Alex.  The entire like summer semester that I was in this online class--and it was all online.  He recorded videos of himself reviewing these writing pieces--and we were also reviewed by classmates for like the pseudo-midterms or whatever, and the only issues some of them had were like my mention of what kind of car I decided to use for the part of the story in the mechanic shop where the lesbian worked, or things of that nature. Things that could improve the content.

This guy literally couldn’t hide his queerphobia enough behind his stink about grammatical “mistakes”.  I literally fixed that one issue with changing Themself to Theirself, because theirself was in the dictionary at the time as an actual word, whereas Themself was not.  As if language isn’t changing and we can’t make up words for our *fictional* works.

Anyway, at the end of the class he asked us to write some sort of review of the whole thing, and I dragged him through the dirt.  Because the entire time he was ripping me apart for my choice in words and content but not actually helping me structure the story the way he was supposed to.  Tell me when I’m switching tenses, tell them i’m typing run on sentences without realizing; hell, tell me I’m using way too many damn commas.  but don’t tell me that my story doesn’t make sense because you don’t know how to say Alexandre, and themself isn’t a word. 

So i told him all of this in a 3rd person perspective, because he asked us to write it not to him, but to “the professor”.  Idk.  And he was apparently confused about why i was so angry...

just remembered all of that today and then immediately got pissed off because i went into fiction writing 2 that fall and used the same story as my last long form writing assignment.  and you wanna know what the class and the professor wanted me to change?  the shit that didn’t make sense, like a 13 year old living on her own with her two fathers living in new york and her mother living in a different part of the same city, and no one asking questions about it.  asking me to delve further into the lesbian’s background because it was all mentioned, but nothing was ever shown--only some of Alex’s background, due to the short length of the story at the time; and then add in more to the final scene of the story that rounded it out.  Shit that *actually* helped.

anyway... i hope he had a small rock--not much bigger than a grain of sand--stuck in his shoe during any classes he taught this week.  so he can be as annoyed as i was during that summer.

#kaly's being a dumbass #writing stuff

[smokingasters]

Idk if you have seen the most recent TomoSeki interview but this is what he basically says(DeepL translated but comments said pretty much the same thing so I’m assuming it’s not incorrect):

1.He doesn’t think Kougami should have a lukewarm(I assume he means somewhat hopeful?)ending.Instead of being happy with someone else he wants Kougami to be executed by Akane or he wants Akane to find his dead body.This is how he envisions Kougami’s definitive ending scenario.Apparently he also discussed it with the director,Shiotani before PPP started recording and Shiotani was very surprised by Seki’s vision.(not sure why?maybe he’d a different vision or something?)He also wants Akane to think long and hard before shutting down Sybil system.

2.He says he doesn’t think Kougami shouldn’t be happy but he should never have a normal life that means peace,regular day to day life or family.I don’t exactly understand what he said but it has to do with burden of sins or something.He probably means after what Kougami has done he shouldn’t be allowed to have that.

3.It also does seem like Seki kind of thought Kougami as an ideal man(who lives and dies in the battlefield for his honour)but writing team just wanted him to be a regular man(?!)

I know this is the voice actor’s vision and everyone has their own vision of how the charecters should end up being.But all these overwhelming negativity surrounding Kougami’s character is starting to irritate me a bit?It’s constantly about how he should die/obsessed with death.If he wanted to die there’s no reason to bring him back in case 3?What’s the point of him coming back to Japan again?He could have easily died in the 5 years he’s in battlefield,off screen.If he wants to die by Akane’s hands now what’s the point?Except traumatising Akane who’s literally suffered more than anyone in the narrative also respects and looks up to him more than anyone?There’s no glory in this way of death.Like I said everyone is allowed to have their own vision but this isn’t what the story is about.Kougami constantly going around with his obsession with death is repetitive and tiring.Of course they might be postponing his death until the last moment because he’s arguably the most popular character.If death is what’s in store for him he should get killed obscurely.That’s how death is.No grand gestures just obscurity.

First off, I apologise, Anon, for the late response. I’m inactive on Tumblr these days. Also, I haven’t read the interview, I’ll look for it later.

I suppose Seki-san wants to make it as depressing as possible. I don’t agree with his view that Kogami should die, especially at Akane’s hands. If he dies protecting her and she’s unable to do anything, that would be a disrespect to Kogami’s and Akane’s character.

I agree that Kogami is becoming a bit repetitive. From a dynamic character, he’s become very static at least in anime perspective. I believe that his inner evolution is more important now, It would be a nice change if they depicted Kogami’s personal relationships, outside the field of work. We’ve seen the dynamic between Gino and Sugo, but nothing much about Gino and Kogami’s strained dynamic. Akane and Kogami have stuff to sort through as well.

Frankly even I don’t see much of a point if it ends with his death, considering that it would be a weird end, Akane and Gino would blame themselves and it wouldn’t be the same. I think the biggest surprise would be if his Crime Coefficient went back to normal. There are a few lines in PP-Case 3 translated novel (kindly translated by @temporarilyunstable) that captured my heart, and it makes me think Kogami won't die an ignoble death and he’ll make a different choice. Kogami's inner monologue with Makishima under the moonlight:

Kogami's reflection as he leaves Tenzing:

Kogami’s purpose in the story that brings him back to where he starts, with Akane and Gino. I believe that Kogami regrets abandoning them, and that is why he’s back to stand by their side and help change the Psycho Pass world.

So, I still have some hope for him ❤️ Sorry, Seki-san, maybe he’s tired of voicing Kogami?

#kougami shinya #psycho pass #kogami shinya #🌸 ask box

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

[cococrim]

what's your absolute favorite little detail about each character in the series? canon or headcanons work hehe :)

Anon, ily. Thank you for this positive distraction!

(this is all I got rn, but I might do a part 2 with the more minor characters)

Seth- KttDP reveals that he has his own little hiding spot on the roof of his old Elementary school.

Kendra- We stan a Jane Austen lover. (this is canon. Dragonwatch 1, the stable chapter when meeting Glory about to head to Terabelle)

Bracken- In @aerinsfables Always, (the engagement chapter) the Brackendra goddess revels that his favorite dessert is cream tarts. He doesn’t eat them often, but saves them for special occasions. This headcanon has stuck with me for YEARS, and is still my favorite one to date.

Warren- Remember that “introduction“ in SotDS? Yeah.… Snorkeling? When has this man ever had time to go snorkeling? Imagine him trying in the naiad pond when he was like 8 and Lena having to save him.

Tanu- I wouldn’t call this a favorite detail. But when he tells Seth and Kendra about his dad trying to spike him with a love potion. This has never sat well with me…

Vanessa- NIGHTVISION SHADES!!!!

Raxtus- He likes drive up movies? He likes action movies and pretends to be the main hero? (I also adore the perspective @fairyqueenofthedragons gave in her *Star Bright, Shine Bright Tonight???* [idk the name] fanfic of Raxtus and Kendra‘s relationship even if I’m glad canon wasn’t like that.)

Ronodin- Orange and black color scheme? “you look like the logo to a band”. Classic.

Ruth- I was obsessed with @fairykam ’s art with the chick-fil-a sign for years. I’m talking like it was my screensaver on my Nook. I headcanon that she’s never been able to eat chicken or eggs after that. Just nope.

Stan- Has a legit fairy skull in his office?? Like, why? Does he have to hide it from Bracken? I don’t see him being cool with that.

Lena- Made swimming records that haven’t been broken yet (I think it was in England, but not sure). I also love how she didn’t sit around moping after Patton died. She had every reason to, but instead went and lived her own life before returning home.

Patton- Avocado toast in the null box?? That’s some teenager ingenuity right there. Food is the priority on a dangerous mission to a LITERAL DRAGON SANCTUARY?

Gavarog- Sent Kendra a photo of a dragon? Just casually? Who says this boy didn’t have feelings for her (no matter how sick and twisted the intentions might have been)?

Coulter- I want to be the cat that bit the tip of his ring finger off….

Celebrant- Canonically needs a breath mint.

Marshal Burgess- He was the real villain of the series. I hope he died a cruel and painful death.

#anon #this anon plz stay #fablehaven #brandon mull #dragonwatch #fhdw

[mercuryonparklane]

I seriously debated keeping this one in the drafts...

Okay, I felt compelled to analyze the timeline of all of Taylor’s rumored/alleged boyfriends (barring any that she supposedly dated pre-fame) and why I believe they could have been fake/pr setups...

Disclaimer: this is all speculative and is just my opinion. No one has to agree... we don’t all have to agree because really the only people who know the truth are Taylor and those she has shared it with. I do have a very skeptical view of the entertainment industry and pr, so that is a bias I will own up to. I especially think Taylor, for a very long time, was willing to play along with the pr side of things, but eventually reached a breaking point (as any normal human under that amount of pressure and scrutiny likely would). Whether that means she has faked all of her public relationships or some of them or just aspects of them... I can’t really, truly know that. So, just keep in mind that this is one little, insignificant person’s view of Taylor’s public relationships and that I do not personally know any of the people involved...

Don’t take this too seriously, peeps... I’ll even tag it as crack theory...

Joe J.: June/July-September/October 2008

If nothing else this feels like a typical pr setup of two young stars. He had Camp Rock, a Jonas Bros’ album and a tour and concert film to promote. Camp Rock came out on 6/20/2008. The Jonas Bros’ third album, A Little Bit Longer, was released on 8/12/2008. In August, Taylor joined the band on stage during the filming for a concert movie that would be released in February 2009. 

Taylor had an album that was released just weeks after their alleged breakup. An album which contained a few songs that would be attributed to Joe J. due to the publicity surrounding their relationship. Hmm... what a great way to drum up interest in an album that includes quite a few heartbreak songs. Not saying I know that is the case, but they both had a lot to promote between June and November 2008.

Lucas T.: March-April/May 2009

He was in the Hannah Montana movie, which was released 4/10/2009. Taylor had a cameo in that movie and also wrote a song for the soundtrack. Lucas also played Taylor’s love interest in the mv for YBWM, which premiered 5/2/2009 on CMT. He was in one of her Myspace vlogs in April 2009. IMO, this was a setup to promote the Hannah Montana movie and the YBWM mv, but it didn’t really take off. Lucas later said they dated briefly, but he realized that he just saw her as a friend...

Taylor L.: August-December 2009

 They played a couple in Valentine’s Day. In September, just days after the VMAs where KW interrupted Taylor on stage as Taylor L. stood a few feet away, Taylor went to an Owl City concert at the Bowery Ballroom where she met the man who would supposedly inspire “Enchanted”. Umm... “please don’t be in love with someone else”... even though I am currently dating Taylor L. and he is my forever crush, but like, I am totally crushing on you actually. I have no clue if any Swifties have ever picked up on that discrepancy.  

Oh, and Taylor L. also “dated” Selena in early 2009 and I doubt Taylor would go there, even if they ended on good terms. I mean, it’s possible, but idk it seems unlikely to me. 

John M.: December 2009-February 2010

I think Taylor admired him as a musician (this seems to have been mutual with John praising her talent multiple times) and she may have seen him as a mentor at first. I do not believe that anything happened between them beyond that. I think he was so thrown off by “Dear John” because of that. He was already tweeting in the spring of 2009, hinting at wanting to collaborate with Taylor. The album their duet was on came out in November 2009, right before they started “dating”. Although it wasn’t released as a single until June 2010.

Besides, Liz (friend or otherwise) has remained a fan of John and even went to his concert a few years back. So, either she didn’t care that he screwed one of her supposed good friends over or it didn’t go down how people were led to believe it did.

Jake G.: October 2010-December/January 2011

Unless this relationship started much earlier than everyone has been led to believe, it is very unlikely that ATW is about him. It certainly seems to have been written prior to the maple latte/scarf/sister’s house articles that were abundant after that pap walk. Either Taylor used him as a scapegoat for a song that wasn’t about him or he was a willing participant in a pr scheme to make sure people thought the song was about him. 

He couldn’t have been setup with his costar, Anne H., because she was already in a long term, committed relationship. At the time Taylor was still good pr since she was still known as a kind of girl next door, all American type with genuine talent. 

I’m not saying I know for a fact it was fake. I’m saying there are plenty of reasons why I think it was. Everyone has different perspectives... mine is that this was purely a pr setup.

Will A.: sometime in 2010 and/or mid or fall 2011-January 2012 or May (?) 2012

They were likely just friends, but people did think they were dating back then. The songs that people think he wrote about Taylor (”White Dress” and “Kiss Me Slowly”) were recorded in 2010. So, if she started dating him in September 2011, which people think because the dress she wore to his May 2012 birthday party was the one she is wearing on the “Begin Again” cover art, then those songs aren’t about her. About the party dress...  Sarah B., who took the picture, was also friends with the Parchute guys, so maybe the photoshoot that the picture on that cover art came from happened earlier that day. 

He was friends with Liz’s ex Jason and one of his best friends is still to this day very close friends with Liz, so that’s probably how he met Taylor. I think Taylor hung out with that crew a bit back then. AND those times Will and Taylor were seen hanging out in late fall/early winter 2011, Jason and/or the other friend were there. Yes, I am saying that Taylor was hanging out with Jason in November/December 2011, just a few months after he and Liz supposedly broke up. She was also still hanging out with Liz a lot at that time and after, though, so I think it was all good.

Conor K.: July 2012-September/October 2012

This was Taylor’s worst pr. If it was a real relationship... it is borderline predatory. If it is fake... still a big yikes... I don’t have much to say about this one. I think it was fake and an attempt at making him the muse for “Starlight” (how cute, this song she wrote about his grandparents sort of became about them), “Begin Again” (nevermind that the copyright record say the song was written in 2011), and EHC (nevermind that the song was written in May 2012). It would have been great pr, though, if he was a couple years older. Taylor should have fired Paula after this one... (because the public should have never known about it, real or fake).

Harry S.: November 2012-January 2013

Similar to all the others before (and after), there were “random” sightings, including a birthday trip to “the lakes” and blatant pr (go on and wear that fox sweater and paper airplane necklace, Taylor...). That NYE kiss, though...

Calvin: February 2015-May/June 2016

Taylor finally dropped her old publicist and brought on Tree. First step, was to erase the “boy crazy”/“man eater” label (and possibly the “professional beard” label) and become an independent woman who just wants to have fun with her gal pals. It got a bit gayer than expected (whether Kaylor was really a thing to some degree or not is irrelevant to the point). The gay rumors were actually catching on even faster and people were like “oh, that’s why she couldn’t keep a man” (sexist/homophobic as all of this is/was, ofc). 

Enter Calvin... a playboy DJ who some might deem “tall and handsome as hell” (peeps, I am not really the best judge of a man’s attractiveness, so this is just how I think people see him). He seems sooo straight. I don’t know how else to say it. All of her other supposed boyfriends had gay rumors, whether or not those rumors were just people gossiping or had some basis in reality... I think he is the only one that doesn’t have them, that I know of anyway. 

I know a lot of people think they were really together, but I think this was an attempt to have her in a more serious, long term relationship to counteract both the gay rumors (not necessarily as a cover for a woman because I don’t think all of the guys have been or need to have been covers for a secret relationship with a woman, it’s about appearing straight) and the “can’t keep a man” narrative that had followed her around. Even if they were in some sort of situationship (not what I think, just theorizing here), it wouldn’t have been a steady thing and they seemed to not like each other very much when all was said and done.

I still laugh that he said Taylor was the opposite of his type (and specified that he likes brunettes) in November 2014 and then he allegedly dated her for almost a year and a half, starting literally a few months after he made that comment. If that was a real relationship, he was either playing it cool when he said that or he misjudged her or Taylor was determined to date him because it was a challenge.

Either way, it seems like her team controlled the public narrative and maybe Calvin was okay with that at first, but over time it seemed like he wasn’t a big fan of that. Maybe that visit to the strip mall massage parlor was a bit of a rebellion... 

At least they both got some royalties out of it...

Joe A.: September 2016-Present

Taylor’s team absolutely has control of the public narrative and he seems okay with that. He is a literal mirrorball. He is whatever Taylor supposedly says he is in her songs/whatever Swifties want him to be.

He likes to drop fun facts like how his family jumps into a freezing pond at Christmas or that he worked at a yogurt shop as a teenager. Whether they are real or not... he seems to be playing into the pr. Dropping little bits of information that will tie him to her songs... it is very “maple latte”/“paper airplane necklace”/dark jeans and Nikes... OR Taylor is just taking the few facts people know about him and using it to pin songs on him.

If he is a beard (which imo he likely is), I think he gets along with Taylor and doesn’t mind the minimal pr of it all.

I don’t think he is WB, either way...

Again this is just my view of things. This has no bearing on which women Taylor may have dated. I could do a separate post on what I think that timeline might look like.

One point I will reiterate is that I do not think that a beard would always be a cover for a secret relationship with a woman. I think it sometimes is, but it can be more of a general cover for someone who is gay. So many people think Taylor is the straightest person who has ever lived simply because of her public dating record. I mean, heteronormativity and homophobia also play a big part in that...

Edit: I completely skipped Tom lol. I just don’t buy that one either. Maybe he thought it would be good publicity or maybe he was led on to think it was more real than it was or maybe he was just having fun. Idk. All kinds of articles written about them at the time included some caveat about how they seemed fake or were maybe filming something...

#gaylor crack theory

[flying-nightwing]

Double Cross (Jason Todd)

Hi people! So this is my little project I was talking about. A sudden blurb of inspiration led me to this and uh. Here it is! Once again, this is super experimental so yeah idk about its potential. You’ll be the judge of that I guess

This time I worked on time jumps back and forth and perspectives, so let me know how it turned out!

Masterlist in bio/pinned!

Pairing: Jason Todd x gender neutral!reader

Word count: 6937

Warnings: swearing, uhhh idk it’s dc so you know what you’re into 

-- 36 hours ago --

Your heart was beating hard against your ribcage as you flew down Washington DC's streets. Your motorcycle was burning under you, and you had a feeling you were on the clock to get off of this ticking time bomb before it exploded and brought you down with it. The bullet holes broke the black paint, decorating your bike in a way that flagged unwanted attention. About six blocks ago, unmarked cars had joined your fast paced parade across the city.

A terrible mistake, all of this was. That was certain. 

You took a sharp right, your knee scraping on the asphalt on the way. An infernal noise came out of your bike, but you still willed it to accelerate on the straight alley. You shot back on the main roads like a bullet, swerving around the black police car that had tried to cut you off. But soon enough, you saw the blockade on the street in front of you. You could never jump it with your bike so in disarray, and there were no viable alleys to sneak into. You shut your eyes tight for a moment, then exhaled.

"I'm sorry Jason" You muttered to yourself. "But you left me no choice"

With a firm grip, you pressed the brakes and came to a stop a fair distance from the blockade. You turned off your bike and kicked the foot to hold it up, slowly getting off and pulling your hands up. Shouts erupted around you as the police mobilised themselves in tight formations, guns up and ready to shoot. With one hand up, you undid your tinted black helmet and let it fall to the ground. 

"On your knees!" An officer shouted as he approached. "Keep your hands where I can see them"

You complied.

-- Now --

The white of the neons glaring down on you made your already tired eyes hurt, saturating your vision with a harsh and constant flash of light. You were left alone with a room temperature glass of water on your left and your own reflection on your right. You couldn’t hear them, but you knew they were there, observing you. Instead, all you could see was the dark bags under your eyes and your messy greasy hair. 

You perked up when two men in suits came in by the door in front of you, thin files in their hands and calculating glances. They were nicely dressed, one with a gray suit and the other, black. Both suits were obviously tailored to them. They sat down in front of you and observed you before the one in the gray suit spoke. Dark hair, blue eyes, taller than the other, maybe around six feet.

“Good morning, Agent”

You only nodded, looking down to the table. 

“My name is Agent Baker,” He said. “My colleague here is Agent Tanev. We will proceed to your debriefing”

“Sure” You nodded again.

Agent Baker set a recording device on the desk and turned it on. “Please tell us again why you are here today”

“I am--” You paused, clearing your throat. “I am here today to deliver crucial information on a wanted criminal in exchange for a pardon” 

“Which wanted criminal should that be?”

“The Red Hood” You said, meeting his eyes. “I have names of associates, safe houses locations, frequent territories of operation as well as his specific m.o.”

“How come you know all of this?” He asked, his voice neutral. “No seasoned agent has ever managed to get this close to him, let alone a rookie. We want to know how you gained his trust, start from the beginning, spare no details. Leave nothing out”

“I met the Red Hood during operation 7381 in northern Lithuania” You began as Agent Tanev started to take notes. “I was in the back up team for the extraction of General Kradiev from a local opposant group. I wasn’t supposed to even see action, as it should have been simple enough against an untrained mob, but when is it ever…”

They had known you were coming. A whole grab and go operation had been compromised by the feeling of invincibility of the CIA, that looked down so much on whoever they went against that they never stopped to think that maybe--maybe--they were prepared.

So when the Alpha team stormed the country house where the General was supposed to be kept and found it empty, all action plans were thrown out the window. The Beta team was mobilised to close off all the roads surrounding the area and to search for the hostage. You were ordered to search a single decaying house in between two pine trees because the structure was so old, so  nobody could have ever been hiding in its debris. However, as you were leaving, you heard whimpers coming from the cellar a few feet away from the foundations. Carefully, you made your way to the wooden doors on the ground, and after making sure your magazine was full and the safe of your semi automatic off, you kicked the doors open and raced down the stairs.

“Don’t move or I’ll blow your head off” You yelled, pointing your gun at the first person you saw. It was clearly a man, wearing a bright red helmet that shone under the single lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling. He slowly held up his hands, but he didn’t seem so bothered. Your eyes found another man next, tied to a chair and wearing a bag on his head. The military uniform was a dead giveaway of his identity, so you returned your full attention to the red helmet guy. “You’re going to back up and face the wall now”

“Or what?” He challenged. “You’ll ‘blow my head off’?”

“Shut up!” You barked, taking a step forward. Your firearm was ready to shoot. “Do as I fucking say”

“You’re CIA uh?” He changed the subject, looking down at your marked bulletproof vest and not listening to you. In fact, he didn’t seem worried at all by the situation he was in. “Should have known. You guys have never cared who lived or died. What fucking difference does it make, as long as they’re good pals with the good ol’ US of A right?”

“God would you just fucking shut up and back up” You were getting impatient, but also nervous. You were alone without backup, with a guy in a red helmet who was clearly taunting you, and you had never shot anyone before. It was your first oversea mission, and already it was fucking catastrophic.

“See, that’s the thing” He held a finger up. “You’re pointing a gun at me like I’m the bad guy, while you are trying to rescue the scum of humanity. You’re going to extract him, give him a nice long life on Florida’s golf courses with the taxpayers' money and wipe out from History the mass graves in the woods two miles away”

You remained silent.

“Oh, did you not know about the mass graves?” He asked rhetorically in a mocking tone. “Your friend here decided he wanted to test the new shipment of automatic weapons, because their bullets per minute capacity had been expanded. And what better targets than the group of students that opposed the american military presence in the country? The youngest was 16 and her name was Vera Beliskava. Isn’t that right, Kradiev?”

He pulled the hood from the general to reveal his bloodied and bruised face. He had been gagged and beaten, that was obvious. He looked at you, pleading. 

“You’re the only one who saw” The man in red said, softer this time. “You don’t have to save that piece of trash. Just say your search came up empty and I’ll make him disappear from the Earth's face permanently without leaving so much as a trace. Nobody else will know, and you will go to sleep knowing you made the world a better place”

You took a breath, a million thoughts running into your head. Who was that guy? Why was he here? Why did he not attack you, while he clearly had a handgun strapped on his thigh? Could he be right about Kradiev? You knew he didn’t have the cleanest record concerning human rights, but mass graves? 

“Beta team, report”

You both froze as your comm broke the silence. He gave you a challenging look as you were still debating. You wanted to do good, that’s why you went into the secret services. Being complicit in mass murder wasn’t something you signed up on. 

“Nothing to report on the north road”

“Clear in the valley”

“Farmer’s house empty”

“No traffic on the south road”

You knew it was your turn now. Slowly, you reached for your comm, not breaking eye contact.

“Pinetree house’s clear” You spoke in a flat line, decided and direct as you lowered your gun. You shut down your comm and glanced at Kradiev, whose relief morphed into fear once again as your decision registered. You averted your eyes. 

“You made the right choice”

“I hope so, or I’m dead” You mumbled. “I’m going back now. Don’t make me regret my decision”

“You won’t”

“So just to be clear,” Agent Baker frowned. “You just… Believed him? And you let General Kradiev in his hands?”

“When I left, I went to check, and the graves were there. Kradiev was guilty”

“That was not your decision to make” He pointed out.

“I know” You sighed. “That was my first mistake. I-- I lost it for a moment. He mentioned the graves and the victims and there were so many people the same age as them I could think about and I decided with my feelings rather than my judgement. And I’m paying the price today”

“Alright” He mumbled, passing a hand on his face like he was already done with this debriefing. “When did you cross paths with him again?”

“We were back in America” You continued. “By that time, I was no longer on training wheels. It was a little more than a year later, in Newport Oregon during operation 9004. We were busting a trans pacific drug dealer on the docks when we got unexpected company…”

You were running as well as you could through the maze of freight containers on the docks, trying to push back the pain of the bullet in your leg. You had drawn the fire of the hired gang so your colleagues could proceed, but things went down the drain when you were met with heavier fire than the briefing stated. Outnumbered and outran, you stopped in your tracks and closed your eyes, taking a deep breath. You wouldn’t go out as a coward, that was certain. If you went down, you’d take as many of them as you could with you. 

You reopened your eyes and checked the magazine of your gun, letting it drop on the ground and pushing a full one in. You loaded and clicked the safe off, flexing your fingers on the handle as footsteps surrounded you. You spun around and pulled the trigger, but before the bullet even reached your target, two men dropped on his side. 

You weren’t the only shooter. 

Thinking it was backup from your team, you allowed yourself to back up against a container, trying to stop the bleeding. You were starting to feel light headed, but you still had a bit more fight in you. Soon enough, all hostiles were down, and you were in for a surprise. Instead of the black uniform of your colleagues, you looked up to a red bat, a leather jacket and a familiar red helmet. You squinted your eyes and let out a chuckle of disbelief.

“Do I even wanna know?” You asked.

“I owed you one” He shrugged. “You okay?”

You looked down to your leg, your pants soaked in blood that was already cooling, then back up again. “Peachy” You gave him a thumbs up. “You were right about Kradiev. He was a fucking trash bag”

“It’s often the case” He said as he rested his hands on his hips. 

“You here for Hiko?”

“Yep” He nodded, then snorted derisively. “Any tips?”

Ever since Kradiev, you have developed a habit of researching your target better. Most of the time, it was a capture or an execution on site, so it didn’t matter the extent of their crimes. But there were moments when you were extracting the package without knowing what came next, and those times usually meant they’ll make them disappear under a new identity, without giving them any repercussion for their actions. This one, Hiko, was the later case, without any plan revealed for when you get him back. He was a known drug trafficker, but he was also rumored to smuggle people back and forth between Asia and North America through the docks he owned. The Red Hood’s appearance was well timed, to say the least. 

“Sneak past the squad through the east” You panted. “If you can move on top of the containers without being seen or heard, you’ll cut them off with about two minutes to spare. Make sure you’re gone with Hiko when they bust through the door, or neither of us will ever find him again”

He paused, studying you. “Thanks…” He trailed off. “Why are you telling me this again?”

“Well, you said it yourself” You managed to smirk. “If I can go to sleep knowing I made the world a better place”

He didn’t answer with anything else but a quick nod before he climbed the containers and disappeared from your field of vision. You sighed, then reached for your comm. “Alpha 003 to central, I’m down and need medical attention, Northwest entry of the docks”

“So if I understand correctly, not only you let him go again,” Baker exhaled, looking bewildered. “But you told him how to get there first? You realize those are becoming serious crimes right?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t” You snapped, before recomposing yourself. Both agents had backed away just a little at your outburst. You sighed, running a hand through your hair. “Sorry. I’m just tired, it’s been a crazy last two days” 

“Did he offer you any medical help then?” Baker returned on topic. 

“No, I called the medics and I was extracted with the chopper” You replied. “I knew he was there for Hiko, not for me. It was a coincidence we crossed paths, and at that point I thought it was the last time I’d see him. I mean, what are the chances, right? But you see, that here was my second mistake”

“How so?”

“The CIA goes after threats to national security, but so does he, in his own way” You said, locking eyes with Baker. “The guy’s everywhere, even where we don’t go. And he’s at least three steps ahead of us at any turn. He has good funds, good intel and exceptional skills. You don’t find him, he finds you. And that’s what he did”

“He contacted you after the affair on the docks?” He raised an eyebrow.

“We could say that...”

You finished washing your tea cup when you heard a thud coming in from your living room. Slowly, you grabbed the gun hidden in your cupboard and held it up, quietly making your way to the next room. You rounded the corner and pointed your gun to the man standing with his back to you, registering his identity as he turned around. You must have been a sight in your baby pink pajama shorts and mismatching turquoise tank top, pointing your handgun to a man in a shiny red helmet. 

You scoffed and lowered your gun, clicking the safe back on and putting the firearm on the lamp table. “Breaking and entering, really?”

“Wouldn’t be the worst crime I’ve committed” He shrugged, and you could just imagine him rolling his eyes, whoever he was under that helmet. 

“What are you doing here?” You asked, crossing your arms against your chest. “How did you find me?”

“Like I find anyone” He answered like it was the simplest of evidence. You waited for him to continue, but he seemed to have no intention to reveal his methods. This time, you rolled your eyes. “And I’m here because I wanted to check on your leg”

“No you’re not” You snorted. He would have come months ago if it was about that, and even then, the little you knew about him told you he was not the kind to just check upon people who didn’t mean anything to him. “But I’m doing fine, thanks”

“You’re welcome” He nodded. “And you’re right. I need something from you”

“Well, go ahead, since you’re already in” You gestured at him to go on.

“Wait wait wait” Baker held his hand up. “He broke into your house and you just let him? You put your gun down and didn’t call anyone?”

“Yeah, that’s what I just said” You replied slowly. 

“And it never occured to you that he was dangerous?”

You paused, thinking your answer over. “No, it didn’t. I mean, if he wanted to get rid of me, he would have done it on the docks where I was an easy target”

“Fair point” Tanev muttered under his breath, earning him a glare from Baker. 

“Now do you want to know what happened or not?” You said, annoyed at the interruption.

“Please, go ahead”

He reached inside his jacket and handed you a file. You took it and opened it, staring at the picture and the description beside it. “This is Ian Markstrom, he has been suspected to kidnap young women, mostly tourists, to sell them on the sex trafficking market” He began. “Not only is he friends with your big bosses, but those who were brave enough to try and get him locked up never got anything to stick, and that was the best case scenario. The others either disappeared or ended up dead, so I’m assuming someone in this government does not want Markstrom to stop”

You nodded. “What can I do for you?”

“There’s a secret auction strictly reserved for the elite, Markstrom will sell his best teenagers there” He explained, a hint of disgust in his voice. “The CIA chief of operation received an invitation. I want to know what it says on the card”

“I’m not sure I’m good enough to reach anywhere near it” You mumbled. “But sure, I’ll try”

“No, I believe in you” He said, and he seemed pretty sure of himself. You raised an eyebrow to hide your surprise at his compliment. “What I’m wondering though, is why you’re not asking questions”

“Well, you are two in two so far about targeting the bad guy” You said after a moment. “You seem qualified to spot ‘em, and you’d be real twisted to to make up that scenario for a petty revenge, so I’m guessing you’re on the mark again”

“Huh. You might just be the only smart CIA agent I’ve ever met”

You snorted. “Well, the more it goes the more I’m questioning the integrity of my employer”

“You keep impressing me” 

“With what I saw, I believe the bar was pretty low to start with”

“Keep talking like this and I might need a cold shower”

“You’re an ass, you know that?” 

He let out a short bark of laughter. “If only you knew”

“I’ll do my best for the invitation” You brought him back on topic, closing the file and putting it beside your handgun. “How can I contact you if I get it?”

He paused, then took a step forward and grabbed your wrist. He fetched a pen from his jacket and wrote a number. “This is a burner phone, which I will destroy after this whole deal. Don’t try and trace me with that, it won’t end well for you”

“Yeah yeah” You rolled your eyes, pulling back your arm when he was done. You cleared your throat, trying to ignore his overwhelming proximity. “I gave you two fast passes just to trick you into seeking my help to finally bag you, I’m busted”

“Hey, listen” He backed up, holding his hand in surrender. “I make that threat to everyone. It’s only a disclosure thing, I didn’t doubt your motivation”

“To each their own I guess” You shrugged. “Alright. If this is all, please get out of my apartment”

“Oop, sure”

Baker blinked slowly. “And did you? Communicate him the details?”

“Yeah” You nodded. “I managed to get into the chief of operation’s office, break into his safe, memorize the date, time and place of the auction and communicate it to Red”

“Red?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Short for Red Hood” Tanev clarified, and judging by yet another glare from Baker, he wouldn’t speak anytime soon.  

“He kept it on the quiet, but after that the chief of operation did seem a changed man” You smirked, before dropping it instantly. “And I didn’t hear anything from Markstrom, it was like he disappeared for good, which he most likely did. So I guess the Red Hood succeeded in taking him down”

“Jesus Christ” He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Why do I have the feeling it wasn’t the last law you broke?”

“Because it wasn’t”

“Are you going to make a habit out of dropping out of nowhere to ask me for favors?”

This time, you knew who had broken into your property without even looking. You put the keys into your car and turned the engine on, trying to warm yourself. The Red Hood pulled himself upright from your backseat, shaking his head.

“Your car is very comfortable,” He declared. “You have good taste”

“So that means yes”

“Back at it again with your superior deduction skills” 

“What do you want?” You went straight to the point, but you were just a little amused. You could have a worst stalker. 

“I’ve been thinking this through,” He began, moved his legs so he was properly seated on the backseat. “You are skilled and you’ve got balls of steel. I could use your help more often. A partnership, if you might”

“Why do I have the feeling it took a lot to admit that and reach out?” 

“Because I don’t just trust people” He said plainly. “They disappoint me, among other things”

“So why me?”

“Like I said, skills and balls of steel” He repeated. “You went against the fucking CIA not once, not twice but thrice to do the right thing. That’s enough of a test of will for me. And besides, your job would be an advantage that is hard to turn away”

“Makes sense” You mumbled as you put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot. He buckled his belt like it was a reflex. “Will this partnership imply me shooting bad guys?”

“If that’s what you wish for” He shrugged, leaning forward in the space between the two front seats. “I won’t be the one to limit you”

“Okay, yeah” You nodded. “Where do we start?”

Baker was looking into nothing, processing your words. He shook his head slowly in disbelief before he met your glance. “I shouldn’t be surprised” He spoke after a moment. “But this is Everest high levels of stupid”

“At that time it did seem like a good idea” 

“Yeah, might as well jump off of a bridge…” He trailed off, eying you suspiciously. “Did you do that too?”

“Well, if we consider the time when--”

“You know what, don’t tell me” He cut you off. “Please go on”

“Alright” You held your hands up in surrender. “So, where was I?”

You and the Red Hood operated on the field like a well oiled machine. Your expertise and contacts with the CIA helped him get into places way more easily than alone, and your somewhat reckless ways were compatible with his mode of operation. You knew who he was as well, you found out after he nonchalantly took off his helmet after a stakeout. You had not been prepared for what you saw then, when you were faced with what you could qualify with the most beautiful man you had ever seen. 

“Hey, you okay?” He waved a hand in your face, making you snap out your daze. You blinked a few times, shaking it off.

“Yeah” You replied. “I just wasn’t expecting this”

“Expecting what?”

“I mean, the helmet did give disfiguration vibes… Obviously I was wrong” 

“So you think I’m hot then?” He snorted derisively.

“I do” 

His head did a whiplash. “Huh?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable” You backed away. “Sometimes my filter doesn’t work”

“No it’s--” He tried to find his words, then sighed. “I’m just not used to that, I guess”

“What’s the point of this?” Baker groaned, his head in his hands. 

“It’s a turning point that brought me here today” You explained, turning your palm up briefly. “You asked for details, I’m giving you details”

“I kinda wanna know what went down, to be honest” Tanev added sheepishly.

“Tanev, I’m going to drive you through the mirror if you do not shut up”

“Jeez sorry” He mumbled.

“As I was saying”

That day was the moment things changed in your relationship. There was this tension that hadn’t been there before, the little brushes of hands when you were side by side, the staring at the other while they weren’t looking, the unspoken invitations to stay a moment longer after a mission for a cigarette and a good conversation. He was one of a kind, you had to give that to him. He was passionate, driven, smart in a way that told you he never really had it easy but always made it work somehow; the way he always thought of the less obvious way to do things, how even his messes seemed calculated. 

It was raining in Chicago and the air was crisp. Your muscles ached from the fight in that warehouse against drug lords that enrolled kids in their schemes, that and from the unforgiving cold of January. You had one too many whiskeys back in that little studio flat he rented under a false name, and it led you straight to his bed. Trying to find warmth, trying to find a connection, it didn’t matter why, as long as you were as close as humanly possible to him. 

And it didn’t stop there. The night after, and the night after that, always in his company past the business hours. Your chemistry translated way beyond the field, for you found him in a partner in more ways than one. You grew quickly to feel love for him, more than you had ever felt for anyone. The number of times you woke up naked and tangled with him--

“Okay I don’t need to know this-- I do NOT need to know this” Baker yelled. If he could have flipped shit from the table, you’re sure he would have. 

“You told me to spare no details!” You argued. “This is a detail. I’m being as thorough as I can”

“You know what-- Forget it” He brushed his hand in the air aggressively. “Just get to the part we have interest in, for God’s sake please just skip to that”

“Okay, okay” You muttered, rolled your eyes. “It went well for the first months or so, it was great. Nothing to say on that front, I was happy and fulfilled in this new englobing partnership we had going on. That was my third mistake, to get into that kind of involvement with him. Because then, like all good things must come to an end, mine slowly began crumbling down in my hands”

“Okay” He sighed, half in relief. “Tell me more about that”

“Well, he started to show his true colors” You admitted, pulling your hands under the table. “Sometimes, he became something else. Something dark. And sometimes became most of the time, but I was too in love to see it. He became manipulative, controlling. He was everywhere, in everything I did. It’s like I didn’t even have control on my life anymore…”

“Where do you wanna eat?”

You looked away from the car window, your feet comfortably up on the dash. You took a deep breath and shrugged. “Dunno, where do you wanna eat?”

“Don’t really care” He shrugged too. “You decide”

“What about chipotle?”

“Sure” He nodded. “Chipotle sounds good”

Tanev shook his head sympathetically. “He wouldn’t even let you choose a restaurant?”

“Never” You looked down, sadness weighing your voice. 

“I’m so sorry you had to live through that”

“Thank you” 

“Alright, moving on” Baker broke the moment. “What happened next?”

“Next? Next came what comes every time in screwed up relationships” You answered, returning your hands on the table and crossing your fingers. “We burned like a meteorite as it tears through the atmosphere, falling to our demise to high velocity and taking everything in our wake”

“That was poetic” He pointed out sarcastically. “What the fuck does it mean?”

You raised an eyebrow. “We got dangerous for real, Agent Baker” You paused to take a reserved sip of the water. “If you thought I was reckless before, you’ll need to reevaluate your scale. I was in for real. I was his battle horse, his wildcard, his whatever that he needed to succeed. And I was good at it. The worst was, I didn’t even realize he used me as a smoke screen. He put me more and more often in fucked up situations that were way more dangerous for me than him, and I was naive enough to think it was love”

“No. This is not up for discussion”

You stared at him in disbelief. “You said you would let me choose--”

“I said I would let you choose, not let yourself get killed” He interrupted, slightly raising his voice. “This plan of yours is stupid dangerous. If it backfires, you are almost guaranteed of not making it out free, or alive for that matter. I’m not allowing you to take that risk. Not for me.”

“Again, ‘if’ being the keyword” You insisted, following him as he stomped out of the storage room. “I am capable of executing it flawlessly. I know I am, you’ve always told me I am”

He halted his steps, hesitantly turning to face you. His eyes softened as he sighed, taking your hand. “I know you can, it’s not about that” His voice was back down, even lower than his usual volume. “I can’t lose you. I won’t lose you for something I dragged you into in the first place, I would never forgive myself”

You closed your eyes and rested your forehead on his. “Okay” You finally said, nodding lightly. “We’ll find another way. Another plan. But we’re hitting that ball out of the park either way, I won’t let Preston get away with it”

He smiled. “Oh no, we won't indeed” He kissed the top of your head. “We’ll get him one way or another, I promise”

“I almost feel sorry for you now, Agent” Baker gulped. “I cannot begin to imagine what terrible things the Red Hood forced you to do under his manipulation. We however must continue this debriefing”

“Of course” You nodded quickly, breathing deeply. “So we planned our next move, but he wouldn’t tell me the final target. I found it weird, he always told me the targets. I don’t know, maybe he sensed I was trying to find a way out”

“And that plan was…”

“Yes” You didn’t have to let him finish his trailing thoughts, you knew what he was getting at. “So this brings us to 36 hours ago”

“Be as thorough as you can” 

“So the Red Hood gave me those instructions to follow” You began. “I was to draw the attention of the authorities to me in a city wide chase. Now, I am rather good with a bike, that I won’t hide, but outrunning police and secret services? That was impossible. I still don’t know how they got there, but it saved me. He would have never dared to come into the melee to get me back, and risk getting caught”

“Was he not afraid you’d talk to us?” Baker asked. “That was a pretty big gamble”

“He thought I wouldn’t talk I guess, probably for the same reasons I stayed with him for all this time” You said, biting the inside of your cheek until it bled. You hated to think about these words. “Because I believed I loved him”

“I guess that wouldn’t be too far fetched” He hummed. “Wouldn’t be the first time we saw it happen”

You nodded, remaining silent. Baker made eye contact with Tanev, then looked into the reflecting glass. He took a deep breath and returned his attention to you. 

“We are going to get you back to the holding cell while we process this information” He said. “But once we do that, you’ll be free, and with a new identity if you wish, as your agreement states”

“Thank you” 

“Just one more thing before we wrap this debriefing” He leaned forward. “You must know his name"

“Of course” 

“Then what is it?” He asked. “What is the Red Hood’s name?”

You looked down, taking a deep breath, then back again, locking eyes with Baker. Then, you spoke. 

-- 36 hours later --

The sunset over the valley was gorgeous. The mixes of pink and orange on the yellowed sky was straight out of a fantasy world, and Jason couldn’t help but appreciate the scenery. It was soothing, like it could swallow up his anxiety at least for a minute or two. He leaned on the wooden ramp, the sightseeing roadside station seeming not so cheesy at the moment.

He only tore his eyes from the burning sun when he heard a motorcycle approach from behind. He pushed himself off the ramp and faced the sleek black bike--the lack of use on it showing him it was brand new--then, the driver with a black tinted visor. 

You took off your helmet and smiled at Jason’s stern expression, whose eyes showed relief anyway. You turned off your bike and parked it, then got off and walked to him. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” 

You walked past him and leaned on the ramp he had been on moments ago, and he joined you. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered you one. He lit up both with his lighter, and you took a long draft before speaking. 

“A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice” You smirked, bumping your shoulder to his. “I did save your sweet ass, after all”

“I thought we agreed not to do that” He glanced at you sideways. His annoyance was also mixed with playful disbelief, like he both wanted to throw you off the cliff you were admiring the view from and do celebratory shots with you. 

“We did” You nodded, chuckling. “But circumstances changed. You weren’t out by the time I reached the monument, so I had to draw them away from you, or we would not be having this conversation. ”

“Still” He tilted his head to the side, before his head snapped in your direction. “Wait, did you call the secret services after yourself?”

You shrugged half heartedly. “Mayhaps” Your lips curved upward, while he shook his head. “I mean, it kinda was my fault too. I misplaced the bomb and it barely detonated. I had to flip to plan B, then they shot my bike. They had me surrounded, and my it was running low on life, so I skipped directly to plan fuck this”

“So you gave yourself up”

"Played the victim, pretended I wanted to exchange information on you for my freedom” You sighed, taking a drag of your cigarette. “None of which was relevant enough for them to even get close to you, worry not”

“They must have asked for a name” He hummed, now turning his full body toward you. “What did you tell them?”

“My grandpa’s name” You snorted. “He died two decades ago. Let me tell you, when they found out the last update on him was in the necrology of the 2001 Sunday paper, they were not happy campers”

“Then how did you get out?” He squinted his eyes.

“Oh, do not underestimate me, sweetheart” You grinned. “I’ve spent my whole career getting to know the buildings and the procedures for people like me. It was a piece of cake”

You were escorted out the interrogation room and into the small, yet cozy holding cell. You were on the clock, because the lies you’ve slipped into your story would unravel pretty quickly once they discovered that the name you gave them was a farce. Then, you wouldn’t be put in a minimal security room, but probably somewhere way less fun. 

“Hey wait” You called after the guard before he could close the cell door behind you. He paused his actions, waiting for you to speak up. “This wasn’t there last time”

He frowned and took a few steps into the cell, trying to spot over your shoulder whatever you were talking about. When he didn’t see it, he got closer and closer until he was all the way into the cell. “What wasn’t there before?” He asked, annoyed. 

You smiled. “You” 

With a quick jab of your elbow behind his head, he fell down unconscious on the floor. You grabbed his keycard and exited the cell, locking the guard in. You winked at the camera on the upper left corner of the hallway and made your way down to the garages as the alarms blared through the whole building. That meant it entered lockdown, closing all the escape routes. But you had your own fool proof plan.

Agent Baker began swearing when the hallway was plunged into the red glow of the lockdown alert. It hadn’t taken long for him to figure out you had led them in circles, and he had appeared a fool in front of his colleagues when he proudly revealed the name of a long deceased old man instead of anything tangible. He had been on his way to your cell when he realized the depth of this foolery, understanding you had been stalling them for this opportunity. 

“Sir, we are reporting engine noises in the garages”

“Fuck” Baker shouted, pushing the other man aside. Tanev was a step behind, his weapon drawn. They had stored your bike there, you must have gone back for it. “All units report to the garage, we’re having a break out. I repeat, all units to the garages”

They all flocked to the lower levels, ready to enforce the barrages at the doors and trap you with no exit. It was an excellent execution of emergency measures, but they definitely weren’t prepared for what came next. As they kicked the storage unit of your motorcycle, they came face to face with the bullet ridden bike with no driver in sight. Baker lowered his gun, squinting his eyes. Then, they widened comically as the dark smoke coming out of it and the strong smell of gasoline registered in his brain.

“Motherfucker” He spat. “Everybody out!” 

Seconds later, it exploded.

“You’re unbelievable” Jason scoffed, shaking his head. However, he now had a full blown grin to match yours. “I gotta give it to you though, blowing up your bike as a distraction was smart. Balls of fucking steel”

“Of course it was!” You replied, then reached in your pocket for your phone. “And it’s not even the best part, look”

You unlocked your phone and passed it to him, showing him your most recent picture of the CIA’s chief of operation dead with a letter opener through his neck. His eyes widened. “You got Preston?”

You turned around from your position, now leaning back on the ramp with your elbows resting on it. “The bike opened a window big enough for me to get the target” You said, finishing your cigarette and disposing of it in the ash bin on your right. “And with all those idiots guarding an empty garage, t’was easy enough”

“After all this time, you’re still impressing me” He nodded, holding up his fist. “Good fucking job”

You bumped your fist sideway with his, laughing at his baffled expression. The sky was getting darker and darker by the minute, but the air was still warm. You could hear the crickets in the high grass, and the silence was a peaceful one. You could admit that you had cut it close this time, that this gamble could have very well turned to shit, so you just took a moment to let the pressure slip away from your muscles, at least for now. You had the time to smoke another cigarette before you spoke.

“So now what?” You hummed, looking up to the bright stars above your head. “Markstrom’s ring is no more, and I’m pretty sure I not only lost my job by pulling that stunt, but also bought myself a ticket on at least three intelligence services’ most wanted list”

“Well, that’s nothing a good ol’ fake death can’t fix” He shrugged. “But until we find the right moment for your tragic public demise, I’m sure we can manage to find on our own some domestic assholes to beat up. What do you say?”

You met eyes with him, then raised your eyebrows. “I say let’s get to it”

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd fic #red hood x reader #red hood x you #jason todd imagine #red hood #red hood imagine #dc #dcu #dc universe #dc imagine #dcu imagine #dc universe imagine #batfam #batfam imagine #imagine #jason todd x you #outlaws

[drkineildwicks]

So I had a BH6 dream last night/this morning

Good things

Basically I dreamed that BH6 got a new TV show that wasn’t Baymax!

It’s nice to have a dream

Anyway more under the cut, cut included because some of the sketchy-sketches are a bit creepy (such as that one with the severed arm ew):

Dream opened with me and Mom in the living room, her flipping through channels as she does, flipped past this show and I went “wait go back I don’t remember that episode”

TURNS OUT IT WAS BECAUSE IT WAS A NEW SHOW

Done in the same vein and art style as BH6: the Series with the same music

Only it also acted as a soft reboot because it was ignoring the show past City of Monsters

But basically it was a workaround of the “3 season rule” and in the vein of HTTYD with “Riders of Berk” and then “Defenders of Berk”

One of the Amaras (probably Di) was back and trying to get her monsters working again but this time with no preexisting revenue

It was going…questionably

Also everything was green-tinged in this show

Hiro and the gang, meantime, were working in this sort of…like repair shop in/near Good Luck Alley

I think as an undercover thing over the summer

I know Barb from High Voltage was there

(Baymax and Mochi were in the dream too but I forgot where or why)

Fred brought his Gameboy Advance SP and copy of Pokémon Ruby in so Wasabi could fix them X’D

(which, for the record, mood)

And there was a raid and some guy who looked like Finch from Person of Interest got arrested?

Also there were a lot of OCs and I could not tell you anything about any of them because, and I quote my thought process at the time, I don’t care about these guys where are the BH6 characters are they trying to phase them out and use them as legacy characters???

Although I would like to know what this guy’s damage was

I felt like there was a parade of OCs but this is the guy that stuck out IDK why

But there were definitely more than a few undercover monsters scurrying around that could shift to something bigger

And I don’t know if it was because in the dream we caught it after it started or if it started in media res, but Tadashi???  Was there???  Alive???

The team was interacting with him, no one—Hiro included—was freaking out, and yet this was post-CoM???

Which reminds me, I need to work on Safe In Brother’s Wings

Which is worth mentioning because I TOLD MYSELF THAT IN THE DREAM

My work ethic haunts me

I do recall—or maybe it was waking self trying to sort this out—that they weren’t telling Aunt Cass about him yet, hence working at this shady place

But there was also a sus element

Especially when he went to take the trash out and one of the little incognito monsters interacted with him and he had this expression

So I’m left thinking that maybe he’s a clone or a robot or some other explanation and ???

Like yeah Di’s back and making monsters but I could sense that this was the big hook for the show

And then when the show block ended and a new episode started (or maybe it was a commercial???  The dream had commercials) the logo for the show popped up

It was called Big Hero 6 2: Legacies

And let me tell you I was VERY UPSET when I woke up and realized my mind had made this whole thing up because DANGIT I WAS EXCITED FOR A BH6TS SEQUEL AIRING ON DISNEY XD

I hate it when my dreams make up new shows because it formats it like something I find while scrolling through the TV

Because I am always salty when I wake up to find no, it’s not on the TiVo

But this time it had to go the extra mile and get dream-Mom involved

I mean yeah I could tell it was a dream halfway through because perspective shifted from my living room to into the show but dangit I was INVESTED

So hopefully my very unhelpful brain will give me more on this soon but in the meantime share in my disappointment when I woke up and found that I had been given a glimpse into a universe where this existed but my TiVo had not :(

(also anyone wants cleaned-up versions of the sketches I might add that to my to-do list)

#bh6 #big hero 6 #big hero 6 the series #big hero six #big hero six the series #big hero 6 2: legacies #dream au #I was very upset with myself when I woke up and realized it didn't exist :(

[heresyourramen]

Seo Changbin - Green Eyed Monster

Halloween was ages ago but I still wanted to post this one. 

Changbin x female reader insert (Heavily tattooed y/n, she’s strong too since her job is a personnel trainer, idk whatever)

5.9 K Words

It does contain SMUT/EXPLICT CONTENT

Warnings: A horror house, a lot of angst, pretty vanilla sex some light oral, jealousy, some fluff. 

"Its charming!" your voice echoed through the cold night air. 

The old mansion or at least what was left of it was probably anything but, though like anything if you looked hard enough you'd find the quirks. the gothic architecture had fallen apart, the steel spires and some old grey, rotten wood all that remained its steel spires and a  very creaky weather vane  that's rooster shape became somewhat ominous in the darkness of the night, well that and the sounds of people screaming inside every now and again probably also didn't help. 

"It's probably haunted and we're all going to die," Changbin's monotonous voice  came from beside you and you saw Felix clutch onto your boyfriends arm tighter and you half wished your love for all things spooky had remained a secret so that you could be the whiny baby  but alas, Changbin had met  you on a day you were wearing your favourite oversized Freddie Kruger t-shirt and therefor that was an impossible feat from the start. Han was clinging to your puffer jacket sleeve,  Minho stood beside you his face impassive  as he also stared ahead, out of the corner of your eye you saw Hyunjin sneak up on him from behind, he breathed down the back of Minhos neck, you've never seen someone go so pale so quickly but as soon as Minho turned around Hyunjins own fear was prevelant on his face as he flinched away from Minho who nearly put him in a choke hold.

 You let out a small sigh, when you thought touring the haunted house would be a  fun little activity for pre-Halloween festivities but when the boys thought they'd be able to manage wandering with you they'd obviously forgotten the last time they let you pick the movie for the designated movie night.  Your hope of cuddling with Changbin had been thrown out the window at the first jump scare, Felix claiming a spot on his lap instead and Han clinging onto you like a koala, his flailing had caused you to miss half of the movie itself. Chan had sat quietly enduring the movie his hand sneaking to hold Jeongins hand in his own for comfort, Hyunjin and Minho had clung onto each other  desperately and Jeongin had watched with the same level of interest as you and Changbin.  Chan was stuck recording  with Seungmin and Jeongin on a new vocal unit  track, keeping them away from tonight's little adventure and leaving and your boyfriend as the only two who might actually enjoy this horror show.

"Thanks sunshine." You rolled your eyes, you loved him but sometimes he was insufferable. You stepped forward walking through the crooked iron gate along the path lined with different carved pumpkin lanterns, Han either to scared to let go or too busy looking around for the  monsters his imagination was conjuring followed after you. You were a few steps in and the other shuffled through as well, following in your wake. 

The massive door lay  turned in against the wall and if it wasn't  for the small lights decorating the tickets table it would've looked like a big mouth of darkness waiting to swallow you whole and the entryway was deserted only some graffiti and stupid kids names carved into the ancient walls. You felt Han shiver most probably because of the breeze but you took his hand and gave it a gentle and what you hoped was a centring squeeze, not wanting the activity to induce a panic attack for him although that might be impossible because of what could be waiting around every corner. When you looked back  to check that no one had tripped over some old sticks and trash  that was blown onto the porch, your eyes immediately met Changbins his face was as impassive as ever but his brow had a small furrow to them as it moved from your face to your hands now hidden by Jisungs sweater paw and you turned your head back not really feeling guilty about it. 

Changbin was a naturally cuddly person with his members but for some reason he had kept PDA and clinginess with you to a minimum , rarely even holding your hand and only ever giving you a hug as a greeting in front of his members. Of course as the relationship progressed the boys saw you often enough to be comfortable with you as well, they'd be affectionate in a friendly way but often the affection you received from the younger boys felt more than that, that Changbin would show you. 

In private it was like his hands were glued to your body, always touching you in some way, hand resting on your thigh if he was busy otherwise he'd be cuddling you and peppering you with kisses 90 percent of the time. It hurt you that he didn't want to do the same for you in person but you'd left it alone knowing he would have good reason but it also meant in your perspective he had to accept that  being affectionate was part of your nature, and babying the boys was part of your natural trait as 'the mom' friend.  Han squeezed your hand as you passed under a not so stable looking archway and into a room with an old fire place following the neon arrows taped to the floor. Suddenly Minho- and Hyunjin's petrified screeches came from behind you and you saw a white hand come from underneath a table clutching onto Hyunjins ankle Minho screeching because Hyunjin nearly tackled him to the ground in his dramatics.  Hans other arm wrapped around the one holding his hand as he suctioned himself onto you, Felix also practically now being carried by Changbin. 

When you turned to lead the way into the new room a clown towered over all of you in the middle of the entryway, its plastic hatchet raised and a terrible grin with sharp teeth painted on the mask, your eyes widened and you couldn't help but giggle this however was inaudible thanks to the howls the boys sent up at the sudden shock. You lead Han around the clown, the actor in the suit only allowed to turn as he follows you with his scary smile as you walked passed. 

This was how the rest of the evening continued a jump scare coaxing wails and terrified screams from everybody but you who simple giggled at the outrageous costumes and Changbin who's expression remained mostly passive. When you exited the massive doors Felix and Han was practically dragging you and your boyfriend out and into the cold night air again.  When you all piled into your car Han having called shotgun the boys immediately started rambling loudly over the pop hits that played on the radio. When they mentioned they should do it every year you rolled your eyes at the outrageous suggestion. 

"Hey Noona, why do you like scary stuff so much." Han inquired eyes wide as everyone's attention shifted towards yourself and everyone else in the car went quite as you scanned the street to park so you could get ice cream, you sighed and parked at the end of the street.

"Because it's fun." the truth is that it had become a comfort much like getting piercings or tattoo's had, the pain, the adrenaline rush, they all clouded your brain in a new way that your sadness didn't and since then each of those items had become associated with feeling better, and even though your mental state had changed since a few years back it didn't change the fact that it was important to you. Changbin new this was the real reason, dammit it was one of the first conversations you had when you started dating and that's when he noticed you awkwardly shifting around the smiley with your tongue as you smiled uncomfortably he announced that he really wanted ice cream and diverted the attention away from you successfully. You got out and made sure the car was locked as you started walking until suddenly you felt someone jump on you, you heard Felix giggle and you grinned hooking your arms under his thighs as you carried him on your back an easy feat thanks to the hard work you put in the gym on the daily the few meters to the front of the late night ice cream shops entrance, conveniently located on the same block as their apartment. You've spent many nights here, post date night, post gym, heck even post sex but it didn't matter because it was Changbin who had made this place one of those things that help you feel better, but it was probably because he made you feel better.  Felix hopped off and you looked over to your boyfriend eyeing the two of you with that same look he had given Han clinging to your side, before directing everyone to the counter. 

You all sat happily eating the ice cream, laughing at the boys making fun of each others expressions when they got scared. You giggled along with them your legs resting on Han's lap who had claimed the seat beside you in the booth before any one could give it a second thought, you licked at your own ice cream the metal of your tongue ring against the creaminess a sensation you'd never get used to yourself.  At first you were confused when Changbin had approached in the gym at what seemed to be the end of a session with Chan, your friends who had used to train with you telling you that you often looked more than intimidating when doing your workouts, which you understood, you were the definition of the modern post break up stereotype, hair dyed nearly white except for your dark roots, tatted from your neck to your fingertips, pierced and hitting the gym nearly two hours a day with thigs big enough to crush skulls in between them, except your last break up had been two years ago and you hadn't felt the need to date again. Well, until Changbin who had nervously shifted himself from side to side and asked you to go for coffee with him, you had barely answered your eyes scanning at the veins that lined his big arms, looking bigger thanks to the pump from working out. You swore some drool had escaped your mouth as you ogled him and quickly said yes, truth be you had admired him plenty of times from across the weight section, I mean who didn't, he was beautiful. Point is you were beyond out of place with the sunshinyness of the boys, only ever somewhat looking like you could maybe fit in when you stood next to Bang Chan and Changbin with their monotonous outfits of black. But they had all warmly accepted you, with zero reservations,  as if the piercings and tattoos barely even existed, something you appreciated in a culture it was so seriously frowned, them treating you not like an outsider meant the world to you. 

But you thanked whatever deity existed everyday for all of them, no matter what, because for now you could say you wouldn't be getting new piercings or tattoo's soon at least not for the reasons you were used to getting them. When you were done, saying good bye to each of the boys, with soft pecks on the forehead from Felix and Jisung and a timid wave directed at them as they walked away, you released a deep breath the air foggy as it left your nose. 

Changbin taking your hand, hooking his pinky with yours as he walked with you back towards the car, it wasn't unusual for him to go home with you after a day out. When you got in the car instead of your usual comfortable silences after busyness of a day there was an uneasiness to it, you shifted in your seat uncomfortably before driving to your place only a few blocks away.  Changbin sat looking out the passenger side window not even trying to change the music on the radio like he usually would and you swallowed hard. It's been a long time since your previous relationships and they almost always ended in a week of this type of suffocating silence, with a goodbye and a 'I've found someone else', your knuckles turned white  gripping the steering wheel hard as you nibbled your bottom lip, but you felt your body relax as his hand softly rested on your thigh. The warmth a comfort to your anxiety, his thumb rubbing slow circles easing away all the bad with each rotation. 

 He got out and patiently waited for you to grab your gym bag from the back of the old SUV before making your way back towards him. He wrapped his arm around your shoulder and tucked you into his side as much as your thick puffer jackets would allow.  Your apartment wasn't big but it had a loft that allowed a little bit of separation and when you made your way upstairs your anxiety sparked once more when Changbin didn't follow you up and immediately flop down on your queen sized bed like he usually would. 

Changing out of your jeans and into some leggings and one of his old fluffy pink sweaters you slowly made your way back downstairs, despite your intense and obviously intimidating appearance you hated conflict and honestly you wished your anxiety would vanish so you wouldn't have to worry about talking about whatever it was that caused this uncomfortable silence. As you set about rinsing all your shake mixers in hot water while some water boiled so you could make coffee you felt his intense gaze on your back from where he sat at the small counter that separated your kitchen and living room area. When he cleared his throat you froze, hands still half in the soapy water as you waited.

"Y/n we can't avoid this conversation." you sighed audibly tongue poking at your smiley as you turned around again.

"Changbin I'm avoiding it because I don't even know what the conversation is going to be about." your tongue pokes at the side of your cheek irritation bubbling inside you for some reason and you fold your arms over your chest but quickly let them fall to your sides trying to stop yourself from creating a defensive wall. Changbin's jaw flexes visibly as he bites down in frustration, this wouldn't be your first argument and you had a feeling it probably wouldn't be your last but it still didn't mean it was something you wanted to do at almost midnight after a long day. Your arms automatically crossed across your chest as you leaned against the sink and Changbin stood up from his seat to stand right in front of you his hands resting on your biceps tenderly.

"I don't like seeing the guys so affectionate with you, and before you say something-", he held up a pointed finger as you prepared yourself to interrupt him mouth already open but shutting quickly at his gesture, " - I know that's something I'll have to discuss with them and not you but I wanted to tell you how I felt." 

"Well Binnie it would help if you didn't give them any space to do so." Your brows furrowed as you looked up at his only slightly taller figure, his eyes scanned your face confused a silent question asking what you meant by that. You huffed eyes diverting to the ground and away from his gaze, your hands cupping your elbows instead of defensive you came across scared.

"You don't show affection towards me around them." You mumble and quickly look at him his gaze still confused but he didn't step away his hands were still softly gripping your arms.

"Binnie you cuddle them and let them cuddle you all the time when I'm around, there's no space for me to initiate any type of PDA between us and besides I wouldn't initiate it because they're your friends and I don't want you or them to feel uncomfortable. " His grip on your arms tighten for a second before his touch leaves you completely,  Changbin takes a step back and crosses his arms. 

"You're right I don't want them feeling uncomfortable, that's why I don't do it Y/n, you are a lot to take in and we need to give them time to get used it." You felt a pang in your chest he's never once said anything negative about your appearance, never even hinted that it bothered him and him using it as an excuse made a different kind of anger bubble inside you.

"Well I'm pretty sure they've warmed up to me by now judging by how you're getting jealous ." You didn't even try to keep your tone neutral every word dripping with sarcasm a you stared him down, hard. "Jealous?" he rolls his eyes up exasperated and chuckles and places a hand on his chest, " I'm not jealous."

"Oh? Then what are you?" you quirk a brow a smirk tugging at your lips. this was exactly why you avoided conflict, you knew yourself, and you knew you didn't fight fair. 

"I'm tired of my girlfriend hanging on my members like she isn't already in a relationship and acting like she'd rather be having them fuck her into the mattress." Your gaze darkened and your face turned into an ugly snarl.

"Changbin, listen to yourself." Your tone was low and an obvious warning, he didn't know much about your previous relationships, but he knew how you felt about cheating.  He ignored it, taking a step back into your personal space.

"Gee I bet that'd be nice, huh? Dating two famous stars at the same time." Your eyes that had been screwed shut as soon as he'd stepped closer shot open wide. Never once had you ever said anything about dating him because he's famous or done something to actively make his life even more difficult as an idol sure you were active in the industry you were a fucking dietician and personal trainer for a variety of stars but he knew how you felt about mixing your personal life with your work. 

"What . The. Fuck. Changbin?" you two both stood glaring at each other you never thought you'd see the day that jealousy could turn the man in front of you this ugly. You were looking for something in his eyes in the form of remorse or even a little bit of guilt but nothing but anger and something you could describe as jealousy darkening his gaze and staring your figure down. 

"You better give me a very good reason as to why I should still let you stay the night and not  make you get a taxi right now."  Your eyes lowered into a glare a hungry and angry fire in the pit of your stomach as you pointed in the direction of the door.  When he crashed his lips onto yours it was hard and messy and you mumbled inaudible protests into his mouth that was still devouring your lips.  Your brain went static when his one hand laced through your hair and the other your waist and in other scenarios you wouldn't have minded but now you hated it, he'd hurt you, and you were mad but his kisses had the ability to slowly melt your fury into lust a weakness he seemed to exploit.

 His lips detached from yours, messy and swollen red from his harsh biting and you gasped finally breathing, as he planted open mouth kisses past your jaw and down your neck, you can't remember when your hands had gone to his chest but you didn't mind your hands sliding down and under his t shirt finger grazing over his hard abs and back to his hard pecks. The way he moaned against your neck set off a bunch of butterflies in your stomach, and you smiled dumb. His hands roamed across your body and finally found resting place under your ass that he tapped softly ordering you to jump, and you did so legs wrapping around his waist out of habit his lips back on yours furiously devouring you once again.  He only did so until he reached the stairs, pulling back to make sure he wouldn't fall on your way to the bed, you took this as ample opportunity to strip, as you tugged off the sweatshirt leaving you bare and Changbin paused his ascent with a pretty whine, before placed a tender kiss in between your boobs right on top of the blackout rose tattoo on your sternum, before biting at the same space and you bit down hard on your bottom lip to suppress your own whine.  

He continued making his way up, knee's almost buckling when you sucked and nibbled at the space on his neck right under his ear. When he got up the stairs he put you down softly before adjusting you roughly so your head was on the pillows and he was removing the tights and panties at the same time, he quickly took his shirt off after but before you could reach out and touch him his arms immediately went to your hips as he hooked them under your legs the only part of him in reach, his head.

 He started biting and nibbling down the inside of each of your thighs soothing each new little bruise with an open mouth kiss getting teasingly close to your dripping core before suddenly pressing his tongue flat against your clit and suckling on it your moan tore through the room and replaced your pants as he continued sucking and softly nibbling on it slowly pumping two fingers in and out of your wet pussy. 

Gripping at his hair hard in an attempt to ground yourself you nearly tugged his head hard enough you thought you might've pulled out strands, when he curled his fingers inside you as you unleashed a whine, but he only groaned deep in his chest the vibrations through your clit causing a different wave of pleasure to move  through you. The way your walls clenched around his fingers almost sucking the digits he was scissoring in deeper, as you came closer to your release he detached himself from your clit and pulled his fingers out abruptly.

 The snarl you unleashed as your head whipped up made him smirk, you knew exactly what he was doing, Changbin was a motherfucking tease and after arguments he seemed to enjoy it even more as he wound you up till you were nearly teetering off the edge, dragging you further and further away from your orgasm until it'd suddenly crash into you , and crash over you hard. Using your hold on his hair you pulled him up so his face was hovering over yours again and you had to work hard to repress the shiver running up your spine at how absolutely breath taking he looked, swollen lips pulled in a smirk and dripping with the evidence of your arousal, his full cheeks covered in it, half lidded eyes looking down on you pleased with himself and the hard hold you had on his dark tresses. You were debating flipping him over, fucking him stupid and then leaving him high and dry like he often tries to do with you but he stopped all thoughts of doing so when you heard a belt buckle and a zip as Changbin pulled back to stand and take off his pants and boxers your grip loosened on his hair at the implication of the sounds. He made his way back over you, the same lazy smirk still on his face some part of the fuzziness started fade and you lowered your gaze into a glare.

"The silent treatment?" he said quirking a brow, as he reached over to your bedside drawer and took out a condom your eyes following his actions and your hands resting next to you on the sheets, fisted them hard in an attempt to contain your body's neediness. 

"It's okay baby, you wont stay like that for long." as soon as the condom was on he was positioned between your legs and he was pushing inside you slowly, inch by inch. You bit down on your lips hard enough to draw blood as you tried to contain your whine as you clutched the bed sheets beneath you, no matter how many times Changbin's size was always almost too much to handle but the pain always became a brief memory as soon as you adjusted. 

"Shhh baby," he cooed softly in your ear as he brushed sweaty strands of hair out of your neck as placed more opened mouth kisses down where his fingers had softly grazed before, his breathing heavy at the tightness around him as he waited for you to signal that he could move. When he pulled back your eyes fluttered open and you gave him a stern look and you felt him pull almost all the way out before thrusting back into you slowly.

 The pace made it feel like he was never ending but eventually his hips was once again flush against yours his head poking at a specific spot inside you that had you shuddering a moan escaping through your lips your eyes screwing shut. This time he pulled out thrusting back in hard and your lips went wide open in a silent moan as his finger directed your chin so you faced him, your eyes fluttering open.

"Come on baby, I want you to say my name..." his voice is deep and raspy in your ear as his fingers gripped your jaw trapping your head so you could only look up.

"I want to make sure you know who's making you feel," he thrusts into you hard and your back arches so your chest is pressed against his.

"...this..." another hard thrust and your moaning, borderline screaming, loud enough you know your neighbours will be complaining the next day.

"...good." this thrust felt so deep you were sure if you looked down you'd see him poking through  your stomach and your hands flew nails digging into his back and legs wrapping around his waist in encouragement. He starts a relentless pace his hips slapping against you harshly as he hits continuously hits the spot that has you moaning, tears welling up in your eyes that are screwed shut and your hands move to desperately clutch at his hair again, his grunts and own moans right by your ears making you keen, he shifts his arm hooking under your knee pushing it up and almost against your chest and suddenly he's deeper.

"Binnieeee!" your scream echoes of the walls off your otherwise silent apartment your back arching as stars start to enter in your peripheral and your moans become louder. 

"See baby," he mumbles, panting against your exposed neck as you toss your head back in sheer pleasure as he continues his relentless pace, "that wasn't so difficult." he planted open mouth kisses on your neck, nibbling at already bruised and marked skin, purple over the blue ink that decorated your throat. His high was approaching even faster as he watched you fall apart beneath him and by the way your walls were fluttering he knew your own orgasm wasn't far away. 

His arm unhooked from underneath your  leg but you were to far gone too even notice, your brain had gone blank your vision white as he brushed his fingers against your clit. You came hard, shuddering and Changbin felt himself cumming as your walls squeezed him dry as he rode out both your orgasms.  He pulled out of you and you whimpered at your own sensitivity, he discarded the condom and came back pecking your forehead.

"Go get ready for bed baby, I'll change the sheets." His voice was gentle and as you grabbed something to sleep in you felt a heavy weight settle on your chest, your fuzzy and tired brain not quite comprehending it as you cleaned yourself and got under the clean sheets. Even as Changbin came back from his shower his front pressed to your back arms squeezing you tightly against him, his lips kissing the back of your neck goodnight before cuddling you till you fell asleep the weight didn't go away. 

You had woken up sore but not nearly as sore as you thought you'd be, when your alarm went off at 5 a.m. you had quickly switched it off, Changbin's snores the only sign he was indeed alive and not a corpse, with the way he was able to sleep through anything you often ended up checking his breathing on days he didn't even make a sound. You peeled yourself out of bed grateful that you had showered after your promiscuous activities, albeit half-assed and sleepy. You jumped up an down as you pulled up the teal coloured yoga pants and slipped a big black hoodie over the matching sports bra. You busied yourself with your usual routine, making your breakfast, blending the protein shake and then making your coffee and leaving Changbin's on the bedside table just before you left. 

It wasn't unusual for you to leave him alone at your place after he stayed the night it was rare that you didn't have a client in the early mornings but you felt that nothing was resolved. In fact as you drove to the gym you felt that frustration bubble again, you were hurt and mad that Changbin had gotten his way when he had no right too.  After your session with your first client you felt somewhat better, the endorphins from working out helping you feel better even if it was only a little. 

The days that followed allowed for numbing routine to push your unease to the back of your head Changbin had mentioned they'd be busy the days that followed your weekend but you thought you'd at least be able to spot them in the gym, better you didn't because you wouldn't know how to act. When you got an invitation for dinner at their apartment for tomorrow you were half surprised and half relieved, it had been five days of silence and work, not completely unusual but he'd at least send an 'I love you' or an 'I miss you' text when he was super busy. 

Only when you drove to his place after getting ready after work did the nervous jitters set in and you tapped away at the steering wheel before pulling into the underground parking lot. The lift ride felt like an eternity and you couldn't decide if it was unnaturally cold because of air conditioning or because it was winter and you wondered if the fluorescents were always that bright? You took a centring breath and lightly tapped the door, you heard heavy foot falls on the other side and then the door swung open and Felix was tugging you inside he'd helped you take off your jacket while you slipped off your sneakers and gave you quick side hug before having you follow him into the living room. It was dark all the curtains drawn and some red fairy lights were strung up alongside some fake cobwebs, some bat cut outs and what looked like skeletons you'd find in a biology class room, on the floor was a pile of blankets and cushions Jeongin, Minho, Hyunjin and Han sat on the floor in front of the tv different bowls of Halloween themed candy in front of them as they chatted away, Felix who had left you came back out with cookies decorated in orange and black icing and Seungmin following with two big bowls of popcorn. 

You heard Changbin and Chan's familiar giggles as they made their way from their room you assumed and your shoulders dropped the tension disappearing at the fact that Changbins smile remained even when he saw you. He made his way over to you and he tugged you into a tight hug tilting his head back and pecking your lips tenderly. Your brain stopped working for a second, his lips like a pause button for your thoughts and you couldn't help but melt as all your senses  became filled by Changbin, his cologne filled the air around you and his arms created a safety bubble around you, when he pulled away and you felt the red rush to your face you realised what he'd done. He took your hand pulling you to sit on the couch next to Chan and Felix, when he tugged you down you nearly fell into his lap and when you tried moving away he pouted and tucked you into his side as he looked down at you, the other boys chatting away without a care in the world.

"What's going on?" you whispered blinking confused and eyes wide. 

"We're celebrating Halloween and you get to pick the scary movie." Changbin said and handed you the remote. 

Your brain was still trying to focus on the fact that he was being affectionate in front of everyone else and you quickly selected Scream, not too scary and a movie you watched religiously every year for the holiday. 

Seungmin sat back and handed you one of the big popcorn bowls and immediately Felix, Chan and Changbin greedily stuffed their hands into the bowl as the movie started. For the most part the boys remained in their own seats allowing you and Changbin to cuddle in peace him lying on the couch with his back on the arm rest and you draped between his legs, head resting on his chest, there was still flailing about and screaming loudly at the murders and jump scares, but seeing as Felix  was seated next to Chan he got to Koala someone  else and Seungmin and Jeongin acting as the calm for the others antics. It was nearing the  end of the movie, the build up featuring an array of dramatics and Han turned facing the two of you his hand grabbing yours that was dangling down the side of the couch past Changbins waist and trying to hide behind it. You smiled sweetly but your eyes went wide as Changbins arms wrapped around you and he sat up slightly.

"Yah, this is my girlfriend hold your boyfriends hand." he said in an aegyo like tone his chin nodding jokingly in the direction of Minho, Han giggled and turned to face the screen but didn't let go of your hand and you looked up at Changbin who sat smiling at the screen and you had to contain your giddyness, nuzzling your face back into his chest as you smiled like an idiot. When the movie ended and the boys started talking animatedly about their favourite parts and getting up to fetch more snacks for the next one you felt Changbin shift. 

"Y/n?" Changbin says and hum looking up at him, he looked extremely uncomfortable and you could see how he forced himself to look you in the eyes.

"I'm sorry, I know this doesn't make up for what I did or how I made you feel, I had no right too, I know I manipulated the situation. Jealousy just got the best of me, but I'll do better for you." His voice sounded pained, every word laced with regret and you adjusted so you could hold his face between your hands squishing his cheeks, almost surprised that he let you but his neediness to be babied obviously cancelled out his anxiety.

"You're right what you did wasn't fair, but lucky for you I can't stay mad at you for long." his shoulders relaxed and you pecked him softly on his lips and when you pulled back you could've sworn you saw the galaxy in his eyes.

#stray kids #stray kids imagines #stray kids smut #skz smut #stray kids changbin #seo changbin #skz fluff #halloween #skz angst #skz Felix #skz chan #skz minho #skz lee know #skz hyunjin #skz seungmin #changbin smut #binnie

[fabdante]

The Vergil and Kat Post

So um. This like idk essay, analysis, rant thing took took like five attempts to write because I would not stop rambling and it’s still like just barely five pages long. And that’s after I cut it down from like 11 pages.

The short version is: Kat and Vergil are really interesting and complex as we view their relationship usually from an outside perspective which leaves much up to interpretation. If you’ve been on my blog for a while you probably know the interpretation I have of them because I eat up tragedy like candy, but that’s not the only one. 

The (very) long version is beneath the cut. And unfortunately this time there are no pictures. There’s some analysis but also just a lot of rambling. If Kat and Vergil, in any form, are not your cup of tea, this is probably not a post for you which is chill!

I’m going to start with the end. Vergil’s Downfall.

Recap, when Vergil encounters Hollow Vergil in his personal trip to his personal hell and all, Hollow Vergil eventually asks ‘but what would you do if you had another chance’. Vergil doesn’t answer. But since he’s the player character, we get access to his thoughts. And we get a montage of Kat. At first one might think this is about how the plan went wrong. Vergil’s regretting the plan. Then it becomes increasingly more apparent the thread that ties all the scenes together isn’t the plan, isn’t the plans failings. It’s Kat. Not Dante and Kat. Not the plan. Just Kat. The scene ends with a scene from mission 2, a moment from the end of the only cutscene Vergil and the real Kat share alone. There’s this little moment that seems to exist to show how pretty Kat is.

This is his last thought. Not the plan. Not how Kat relates to the plan. Not how he mistreated Kat in service to the plan. It’s just Kat.

Act one of Vergil’s Downfall is all about Vergil and Kat. The whole things a reenactment, just somewhat twisted, of how they met. Kat in Limbo, in danger from a demon, and Vergil doing what he can to help. He doesn’t hesitate either. He hears Kat call for him, call for help, and he runs. Except in Downfall the threat is with them, something he can fight and slay head on. So he does. But everything is wrong now. ‘Kat’ berates him. She tells him what Vergil must think she’s thinking. That she feels used, that she thinks Dante’s better, and all that. And Vergil tries to explain, he tries to justify himself, even if this ‘Kat’ is not his Kat. He wants her to understand, though. Because she’s Kat after all.

He needs to hurt her to proceed, of course. But he can’t. He can’t until she turns into a physical monster. Not until this fake Kat becomes something entirely unKat can he actually hurt her and proceed.

The Hollows represent aspects of Vergil that he needs to kill to gain power, as well as his insecurities and the people he cares about and more. Kat represents his humanity. So I suppose, in a way, it’s not surprising that she’s the hardest for him to kill and the one who receives the least of his cruelty that we see later in the game. But, the point still remains. He faces Hollow Kat first. And he begs her to understand him, longs for things to go back in what way they can.

(Also, an aside, it’s interesting to think about how Kat is not only humanity, but Vergil’s humanity. The implication being that Kat in a sense grounds him. A foil to how inhuman Vergil is.)

Downfall takes the scraps that the game gives and gives them a revamped, strengthened context for Kat and Vergil and their true feelings and intentions. The first game doesn’t give us much and why should it? They are built in a show don’t tell philosophy because, well, Dante can’t tell us about Vergil and Kat. He can only see. So we only see. But Downfall, we are explicitly told that yes, Vergil cared for Kat. She is important. And she is his one regret.

So, Downfall proposes that Vergil genuinely cared for Kat. And the base game proposes that Kat genuinely cared for Vergil. And it’s hard for me not to talk ramble when I talk about them because there’s…a lot of little moments between them that I love, little things that I find interesting to pick apart and wonder about (and have over the past 8 years). I’m going to try not to do that, though. Try being the operative word (I have failed all five write ups preceding this one).

Kat is often described as naïve because of her relationship with Vergil. But I think this is an inaccurate description. We never see her blindly trust anyone in the game. She doesn’t trust Dante because she just believes in him. We know this because she’s immensely skeptical of him and if he’s going to be helpful up until after the succubus boss fight. And we know she’s skeptical of him because she questions Vergil about it and she remains skeptical, keeping Dante an arm’s length away. She is not naïve. She trusts Vergil because he’s earned that trust.

It’s hard not to see how he managed to do that. He helped her kill her foster father and escape a bad situation, but it’s what happened after that solidifies this deep connection between the two. Kat tells Dante how Vergil helped her afterwards while she coped with the trauma and it’s something she mentions more then once. Kat’s trust and loyalty to Vergil is because he’s earned it. Because he has seen her at her worst and did not run. He stayed. He helped her through it. And still he stays now. It’s easy to imagine this going both ways, that seeing Kat ‘raw’ as he says makes Vergil vulnerable right back.

Plus, Vergil compares Kat when he first met her to Dante (‘He’s raw. Just like you were when I found you.’).  I think one would be hard pressed to refer to reboot Dante, the one with self proclaimed trust issues, as naïve.

So, we have a relationship of deep trust between the two over what is implied to be a long time. The sort of trust and intimacy you get when someone sees all of you and knows all of you. At least, I think that’s Kat’s end. When it comes to Vergil…well, opinions are complicated.

There are the three options of how Vergil feels about Kat if we simplify it down. One, he was using her and this was all to use her and get the plan finished. Two, he was using her but grew to care for her over time. Three, he was never using her and this was all real. I’m three all the way but one and two aren’t really contradicted anymore than three is. Which is an issue when talking about Kat and Vergil and trying to be all inclusive but also concise. There’s no one answer. There are just different opinions on what the answer is.

For me, it’s hard to reconcile the idea that he did not care for her with what we see in Vergil’s Downfall. Or when we have moments like his genuine joy that she’s alive in the server room. It’s hard for me to reconcile the idea of Vergil using her this whole time when it feels like a lot of work to keep her at his side when she can’t even control her powers. It’s hard for me to reconcile the deep connection I see between them.

For other people, the opposite is hard. Seeing what happened in the server room, seeing Vergil write off Kat entirely, seeing him call her useful and referring to humans as subjects, cannot be reconciled with the idea that he genuinely cared for and about her. Or how one could get a very loyal side kick the way he goes about this, saving her and giving her a home and purpose and everything. It’s an easy way into getting a loyal assistant.

All that I can tell you is how I see it. And what I see is two people with a deep intimacy with each other. The relationship may be messy and complicated and not perfect, but that’s what I see. That’s not what everyone sees, and that’s ok. That’s just what I see and that’s what this post is about.

I think its notable to about how important this relationship is because Vergil actually gets like, jealous about it. I get side tracked for too long when I go on about this so, in keeping things short, we see Vergil in the background get frustrated with things Dante says to Kat (namely the ‘I like it rough’) and we see him get kind of jealous in the game. But we really see it in Downfall. And sure, there are things he’s jealous about that pertain to Dante that aren’t Kat related. But there are things that do relate to that. We mostly see this, again, with Hollow Kat. She pisses him off when she mentions Dante being a real man. There’s of course stoking at Vergil’s insecurities since he’s lost to his twin and he already seems to feel envious about how easy things are for Dante and everything. But there’s also the fact it’s Kat saying it. It’s Kat who’s telling him she prefers Dante. That stings Vergil, this idea Kat cares about Dante more than him.

Part of this I think is from the fear that Kat will run off to Dante because of their similar backgrounds. They both have similar childhoods, something Vergil didn’t experience. Which, going back to what I said, a person who must pride himself on how well he knows Kat (and how well she knows him) must find that kind of threatening. 

There’s this scene added in the Definitive Edition. Before that we were left to assume Kat wandered the tower and that’s how she mapped it for the twins, but the Definitive Edition makes it clear canon. This makes the scene where Mundus records himself with Kat as a threat to the twins the only time we see Kat out of body in the game. During this experience, she assumedly betrays Vergil’s name to Mundus. Before the Definitive Edition scene, I always just kind of wrote off that moment. Kat’s under extreme duress, she’s just saying whatever at this point. I thought this for years after, to.

But then one day, after replaying the game for the umpteenth time, a thought came into my head. She’s out of body, in Limbo, surrounded by demons. She says his name because Kat is looking for him. She say’s his name because despite what happened in the server room, she still trusts Vergil. She doesn’t say Dante’s name, she doesn’t call for anyone else. She calls for Vergil. Because who else would she call for if not Vergil, the person she’s closest to and the person who saved her before?

It’s this sort of thing that makes the betrayal hurt as badly as it does for well, everyone. Us, Kat, Vergil, Dante. But focusing on Kat and Vergil, it’s the trust. It’s this deep bond between the two of them that’s suddenly shattered. What do you do when this person you think you know so well doesn’t do what you expect? When they do the exact opposite, actually? When they suddenly don’t understand you at all? It’s such a foundational relationship for the two of them to, it’s earth shattering to go from knowing a person so truly and deeply to looking at a stranger. This is all kinda true for Vergil who must have expected Kat to understand even if he may have thought she’d get upset. But this is all extremely true for Kat

It’s kind of a double sided betrayal. While I’m not really going to say Kat betrayed Vergil, because she didn’t she stayed true to her word and what she thought they were fighting for and everything, Vergil feels betrayed to, just like Kat and Dante. And oh does Kat feel betrayed. One of my favorite like, animation, character moments is like the pure disbelief, anguish and betrayal on Kat’s face at the betrayal it’s so well done. Like even the little look she does out over the city then back to Vergil like it’s just its good but not important back to topic. Kat thought they were fighting to free humanity. And Vergil seems to truly think this is for the best, if humanity is under his rule.

While one can argue Vergil’s goal was power, I feel like Vergil’s goal was the same he had from the start. Vergil wanted to free humans. He’s not even wrong, really. If Dante and Vergil do not put someone on the throne to replace Mundus, a new demon will take his place. Without someone controlling the demons, the demons will wreck havoc uncontrolled. However his wording could use some work. That said do I think Vergil is susceptible to power corrupting him. Absolute power corrupts absolutely sort of deal. I feel like him and Dante are similar in this regard, neither I think is quite equipped to rule with the amount of power that Vergil proposes they get. I also think Vergil didn’t think he’d get to this part, I don’t think he really thought about what happens after Mundus. Not the specifics. He ended up with this conclusion later in the game, and as a result never floated it by anyone. And to be fair, no one asked.

Kat always seems so full of hope at the end, right after she get’s Dante to stop killing Vergil and everything. She’s got these big Kat eyes, like she expects now things will go back. Vergil will say this was a joke and he’ll come back and things will be normal and she will have her best friend and the world will be safe. But that’s not what happens. Vergil leaves, of course (not after him and Kat have a long extended stare where they must be wondering mutually if the other will change their mind, if she will follow or he will stay). The whole ending in general from start to finish we get a lot with Kat and Vergil subtext. How she manages to get him to listen for a moment, even if Dante ends up getting him too angry to listen by the end. How Kat goes out on a limb to save Vergil, even if she didn’t have to.

She must be wondering, to, how real it all was. Dante’s answer I think is that it wasn’t. From what he saw, from his limited scope, it wasn’t. He cannot reconcile it, and why should he? He was thrown into their lives and resistance group with no context and he ends with little more. But Kat’s left wondering, and Vergil’s left regretting, and I’m left lamenting about the very large lack of post game Vergil/Kat content. 

I don’t know. I could keep going. At just over four Microsoft Word pages, this is the shortest attempt I’ve made at this. And I will surely write up some more analysis on them, I didn’t even get to talk about fun stuff like Kat’s theme (or the comics but I left those out on purpose I have…complicated opinions on the comic), or like more about the whole divine/human angle here. I could keep going on and on and on like analyze every little microsecond and sound like this:

Which, to clarify, I will 100 percent do if prompted lmao. But I guess the short of it is, in my biased opinion, I think Kat and Vergil are in love. I think it was real. I think Vergil found her and he helped her because she needed help. I think they know each other better than anyone else. I think some things may have gotten muddled in the mists of being in a rebellion and saving the world and that rebellion was their priority. I think going into the DmC: Devil May Cry post game must be complicated for them, unable to let go of the other but unable to come back. It’s the sort of complicated relationship and tragedy I find fun to write and to read. That’s how I see it, anyway.

Also I mean idk if we are to believe Vergil’s bigger dick comment as truth, who else saw both Dante and Vergil’s dicks? Who except Kat? Who else had this info? Who else would Vergil believe? Just saying. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.  

(edit: also I spelled hollow wrong like multiple times in this essay forgive me it should be fixed now lmao)

#dmc devil may cry #dmc reboot #devil may cry reboot #vergil/kat #vergilxkat #fab talks meta #can you tell i started a really long fan fic about kat and vergil that i never finished or posted #because thats 100 percent what i did they live rent free in my brain 24/7 #long post

[interestsofabookwormbitch]

Season 1 Episode 5

Watching the next episode of Roswell

Wait wait wait! I just looked at the episode titles now, are they song titles! OMG I love that! Smells Like Teen Spirit is the episode after this one (that's how I figured it out) and it makes me so happy. I love Nirvana.

Ok, so here's the thing after the recap I just wanted to say. "After all I'm the one who killed those girls" but not Rosa... just saying.

Also, I know this was his thought process, two good lives compared to his shitty one, who do they ruin? Easy answer. The whole shebang. But I always hate that. Like not really but it makes me feel bad and I hate that mindset, love it from a storytelling perspective.

Ok back to this episode of which I have no idea why Isobel is out here alone. Love the crop circles though

See I like this argument though. Like genuinely Michael shouldn't be confessing because he matters too, but you know, with his mindset I doubt he cares. Making him aware of the dangers it poses to his family is more likely to work.

Sidenote: I mean technically speaking they should all confess since you know people died and all that, but I don't really care about those people, so....

Ok, so she went missing, and they're horrible at on the spot lies. Do I need to say "wonder what's up there?" I don't think I do.

Did he BUY that!? Oh my god

Oh he's speechless.🙄 I'm sorry. I know it's rude. And I like Kyle, I do, I just don't ship them. I mean, it's not gonna end up working, so why would I even bother trying.

I can't believe his mom knew all this and his it. I don't like that. Kyle's mom is kinda iffy at times. I get why she would (I think) but still.

Ok, that's gonna be important, but Idk what that thing is.

Kyle being shady. I do trust him now, but why does he have to keep secrets from Liz?

Oh! It's a recorder. Of some kind

Oh my. We have to talk with the conspiracy theorist. I don't mind that. It could be interesting.

She just cuts right to things.

So he's definitely too scared to talk, which I mean, fair enough. Also how did he disappear? Like she wasn't far behind him.

Cabin.

Alex! I missed him last episode. Also, sidenote, why is Kyle's second thought to break the window instead of, oh idk, scoping it out to see if anything is left open?

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't actually remember Noah's name until he introduced himself there. This really is a small town with everyone running into each other all the time.

Dude, Kyle's dad was so fucking shady omg. Like idk why he's connecting to these people, and just has so much hidden stuff. Weird dude (obviously on a less funny note he's extremely gross for getting with Rosa)

What's with the gun? Ah America. Lmao

Wait wait wait. Ok, unpacking this. A) blackouts, right around the end of high school, B) talk of Rosa as stressor, C) she doesn't know what happened. So like, am I reading too much into this or did Isobel kill Rosa? Cause I think she did. Accidentally by the sound of it, but tbh I wouldn't expect her to do that intentionally.

I was about to say I like seeing old friendships, but then things a turn. Oof. Bullying, homophobia, this is not good childhood memories like I thought we were gonna get. This cabin just got awkward

I love when someone asks "how much longer?" And it's immediately followed by something happening.

Fucking, guy who believes everything is normal, "don't open that. Bad things." Guy who knows about aliens and the existence of creatures outside of what we know and also experiments and government conspiracies "ah nothing bad could possibly be down there."

So why does Isobel blackout but the other two apparently don't?

And there's a big bed. Why, idk, but it's here.

First of all, poor Alex, literally life had to suck so hard for him, I can't imagine living life with no one real loved ones. Like I have 6 siblings, you know, hard to not have one of them be attached to you.

But anyways, see, now Alex is arguing if Kyle's dad was a good guy, and like, it pulls into questions which way this story is gonna go. With this it looks like it's gonna go he's not bad, but then what's withthe letter? Wasn't it a love letter? I'm confused

Girl just broke in! Was there no other way? Why does everyone resort to breaking windows in this town?

Yeah, I saw him being there coming. That was obvious after she went to unplug

Ok, was it not a love letter? Is that why it's possible this was just a detoxt?

Confetti gun, cause even if you can't legally own a gun in America you still need to have one

Ok, these three feel so much like siblings here, and I always have to stop to appreciate it cause so many things get siblings wrong.

This time! And truth comes out😬.

😲 why did I not see this twist coming! I'm quite literally speechless rn

Holy shit! I was pausing to say something and the gu went off. Another good twist! Why are there so many twists!? Help this show is actually good. So far I think this is my favourite episode.

How does she know what gun he has?

Oh back to the three of them. That's bad. I thought she was like investigating Rosa or something back then too, that's why they made her leave, but it was literally just cause Max liked her. Like I'm sorry, but that crosses boundaries. Making life changing decisions without the people who's lives your changing.

Fhskfhdskhd. Ok, they gonna be feeling guilty though. Like man, seeing his reaction hearing him be so broken, must hurt knowing you caused someone you love all that pain.

Also, finding her, yes please! She's kinda in danger rn.

Lmao, the gun! I hate that I laugh at it.

Holy shit that's that guy! Is that family bad guys? Omg I'm so confused help

Look, we love a girl who will fight, but tbh, not the best idea. Kinda sucks though cause I can't think of anything better, so A for effort

IS HE PLANNING ON BURNING HER ALIVE! Bitch why!? Like you could've just shot her. This is way too brutal, thank God she won't actually get hurt

Ok, I thought Max was gonna end up saving her and I was low-key rolling my eyes at damsel in distress, but the fact that she got out on her own? 👌 Also Wyatt is dumb. How do you mess up murder that badly?

Ok, so Kyle's dad good apparently. Yay

Anyways. Alex's dad? He fucking disgusts me. He can choke

Aw Kyle, I like that. I hope they can get over that bad phase, cause I'm really digging this friendship. And also I want to hug Alex rn. He kinda needs it

Yeah, he was gonna be dead

Symbolism! Shot in the same spot she was, by the same guy too! Ok ok ok. Um, I was thinking somethings gonna happen and he'll be fine, then I remembered the picture thing I mentioned earlier with Max being see through and now I'm terrified.

Ambulance is here. It's ok. He can be saved. I'm freaking out guys, this episode doesn't stop (unless I pause it of course) it's been an hour and a half and I still half 10 minutes. The episode is 40 minutes.

Ok it's all good. He's safe. Now a moment for him and Liz.

Oh, Noah's confronting her. I mean, fair enough, he's been worried all day.

Well shit. I didn't think it'd get to this point. Like I thought it was gonna be just "where were you? What's going on?" But I should have known we weren't pulling punches today. Things are coming to a head with these two too, the bottles, the lies. Isobel, I feel like you have to tell him.

I feel so bad for her. Like I get why he's doing this. A relationship can't work if there's lies, but she feels she has to lie. It sucks

Ok, yeah, digging into your dead father's history can do that. Also did the actor for Kyle play someone named Tyler? Cause every now and then I want to call him Tyler. Not as much as I want to call Alex Caleb (not even close) but still

What is Alex finding right now? Ajdgkszosysk that's the alien tech omg! He's finding out too!

Aw! I just need Max and Liz to get together right now. Of course it always comes back to Rosa

Yes! Tell people. Michael's right.

Uh, there's one more secret

Shit! Liz has put it all together! Omg I was right it was Isobel! Yes! And no, because like it sucks for her. But yay I'm right!

Fuck me! Ok! Hands down my favourite episode thus far! Like easily. Anyways, it makes me mad that I need to sleep. I want to just keep watching.

#rnm liveblog #roswell new mexico

[youcantfiremebecauseiquit]

idk if u care but crispin gray recently had an interview about his entire career and it kind of changed my perspective of queenadreena…idk if for better or for worse lol. it was weird to see him so dismissive of a lot of his catalogue w katie except for ‘love your money’ just because that was the only remotely chart successful song. i get you want to be able to sustain yourself but jeez him and katie really had a weird back and forth relationship

Sorry i'm replying late, i've seen the interview pop up on Youtube but honestly i was too invested in university shit recently & generally not in the good mood for that but i'm planning to watch. How did it change your view on Queen Adreena, did he say something mean specifically on QA or Katie? I mean i gotta watch it but honestly? Not surprised in the slightest. A few years ago he was asked to describe fave songs he recorded throughout the years and he listed more of Daisy Chainsaw ones than anything else, with Love Your Money as number 1. The differences in their points of view are real something, Katie Jane absolutely HATED Love Your Money, same as Daisy Chainsaw. Kinda apparent he wanted bigger fame but DC dropped fast and QA failed to live up to their predictions.

i had a time when i liked to dig up old Queen Adreena interviews that are lost in the old internet & generally not available for years (which i planned to post on is-she-suffering but my investment in that site is... varied in its intensity). Also that was back in the days when i wrote Queen Adreena book during manic phase and tried to sell it but lost motivation Well since i don't do anything with that knowledge anyway i'll put what i know here as i love fan discussions

So they sure had/have odd back and forth love-hate relationship & that's the reason why their career went how it went. There's been a huge tension between them at some point. I'm sure you know she had a major mental breakdown (probably schizophrenic episode) after Daisy Chainsaw, or even beginning before her leaving, and then she went into isolation and lived with an old woman in Lake District for awhile. She left Daisy Chainsaw cause Crispin didn't want her to come up with her own songs (all of DC was by Crispin except for Lovely ugly brutal world by KJ).

They almost split up as Queen Adreena after Drink Me. The material for The Butcher and The Butterfly was written at different times, originally it was meant to be called Atom Bomb at Bikini but it was constantly delaying and they eventually recorded everything they've got live. So that's obvious right? But i was surprised to find out they were writing songs separately. Some of them (i forgot which though) were written by Katie Jane and Pete Howard's sons band (they're even credited) + some with Melanie Garside, Richard Adams + some other musician. Katie Jane didn't like it. They intended it to be their last album at the time. She also hated live at ICA show but they released it cause they were broke

But that's a digression. I just wanna say that at this point they were done with each other but kept pushing it. Katie had her own art projects and stuff, Crispin started Dogbones with Nomi and i just remember how vaguely pissed at Katie he waas in the interviews. Like he stressed that Dogbones is his number one priority and if Katie wants to do something with Queenadreena, she must wait til Dogbones have a break first or something, and it sounded oddly bitter.

RaCH and Djinn era are just so weird, they had opportunities but let them go in a way. I don't think many people know but they were huge demand in Japan. They entered album charts and were interviewed by 11 magazines and 6 (!)TV stations there (wtf happened to that material i want to know???). But they only played 5 times or less.

Katie said she considers the band dead but they decided they can try to play for a couple more months. But aside from that she 100% lost the interest in the band around Djinn. There's an interview where she says "the overall image is Crispin but the shape will change again at rehearsals". And you can hear it, it’s more blues rock than anything. IMO it's their worst production wise. Instruments are fine but Katie's voice is so badly produced that sometimes i find some songs fucking irritating, cause they didn’t cut out her breaths and the vocals are TOO LOUD, to the point of distorting. As if she stands too close to the mic. The album is fine but it feels unfinished.

And here we come back to Crispin... here's what he said after the QA split:

Why the Dogbones started? “I needed to work more than the previous band I was in was working, the previous band who shall remain nameless, haha… um… Queenadreena. I wanted to work more than the singer of Queenadreena wanted to work… so that’s why it started. Fine by me… but I really like to be in a band, I’m not a solo project kind of guy. The last album (‘Djin’) did come out in the UK, but it was so low key because Katie kind of disappeared so there was little point in promoting it. Personally it’s my favourite by far so it was a shame but there you go… So here are Dogbones, it’s not been an easy ride but we are trying very hard.

Ok so the bitterness is kinda apparent isn't it. I think there were two reasons why they argued so much, first musical differences. Katie at some point lost interest in loud rock music for some years and went the folk way in Ruby Throat. I have a theory that Taxidermy and Drink Me are more influenced by Katie Jane and Butcher and Djinn are more Crispin. During first albums i think Katie more actively took part in music composition and choosing arrangements. She wrote lyrics, melodies but also composed a lot of songs on some little electronic keyboard thing and 4 track (Heavenly Surrender, Pray for me, My Silent Undoing, all Lalleshwari +more). Plus she wanted more peaceful/dreamy sound on Taxidermy than full on rock, Crispin complained about it in some 00's interview, that he'd like it to be more rock. Then there are 2 versions of Drink Me, the original has rough and alt versions of songs (it was sold by Katie and it's leaked on FB and probably YT). Crispin Gray apparently really hated the final Drink Me. Now next album is The Butcher & The Butterfly and it's more standard blues rock, no more crazy dreamy things of previous albums etc., Djinn is even more blues rock but darker. Djinn was his favourite at some point while KJ hated Butcher, not sure about Djinn. So i think they had different views on where they should go, Katie made her weird simplistic creepy tunes (like Lalleshwari) and folk melodies adding that strange things to noise rock. Crispin probably wanted blues & rock.

Other than that, i’m convinced they are bitter exes, lol. There’s been rumours about them dating during Daisy Chainsaw for years, plus Katie had a history of dating band members. Crispin wrote X-ing off the days about her. I don’t know if they dated again in Queen Adreena. Then there’s this interview, timeline is unclear, either The butcher & the butterfly or later:

„Katie writes all the songs herself and often looks for melodies and structure with the drummer. With Crispin - her husband or ex-husband, which is not entirely clear to me - for almost three years she has no longer been in a room. "Sometimes we send him a letter with a new song and that's all we can do. All we have are our lungs and our musical talent and we have to do with it. It is repugnant difficult life, I know most of the time how I should deal with it." But Queenadreena will still remain even exist? "I think so, we are now pretty busy and I see where the ship aground.”

I always wondered what exactly happened after Djinn, i’ve seen Katie Jane say „i think they gave up on me” while others said she disappeared. Other times CG said there’s no bad blood between them but at the same time there’s been some weird tension.  As of recent i thought they reconnected somehow through the internet and had a good relation but who really knows.s

I get why Crispin gets irritated when people compare everything he does to „stealing from KJ” but honestly, he gave them good reasons, at least in the 90’s. I can believe Starsha Lee singer isn’t copying Katie cause she’s from Brazil or something and she didn’t know Queen Adreena before. But everything else… Crispin’s problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants. He spent 90’s chasing something, tried singing himself, had girl singer replacements and even one KJ copy. Dogbones was ironically his most original non-Katie band, even with all their grunge influences. In a way he wants to be a frontman and at the same time doesn’t. Idk if he’s very controlling, but Daisy Chainsaw shows he valued his songs/lyrics first & in Queen Adreena he had to step back a lot, cause Katie’s condition was she would be in charge of the lyrics. I don’t think he realizes how strongly Daisy Chainsaw issues affected Katie, i mean from her own words you can read that aside from media attention/hate, her being unable to write lyrics had a role in her breakdown. I think she now let go but for years she hated remembering Daisy Chainsaw and she felt kind of worthless cause she was only somebody else’s mouthpiece. I’m not trying to say he’s cruel or anything, but i firmly believe rock lyrics writers should sing their own songs or else there are problems.

They both were writers-composers with different vision and i have impression they struggled a lot while shaping their songs, cause they both stuck to their ideas. Hence 2 versions of Princess Carwash maybe. Katie once said that he „gets terribly upset with her” cause she writes her songs on a simple wind organ and uses a few chord buttons only. Clash of writer ways/personalities/egos and at some point they had to let go.

Maybe he prefers music/bands where he was 100% in control including lyrics (note he wrote/sang some lyrics in Dogbones too). Daisy Chainsaw achieved bigger success US and UK wise as they were offered to play Top of The Pops, and they’re more well liked/remembered by „general alt public”. Queen Adreena however is way more valued as a cult band, with cult following and admiration in UK & France. Most people think Pretty Like Drugs and other QA songs are his best work and he probably finds it irritating cause truth is, he never managed to be more successful than Daisy Chainsaw/Queenadreena. Love Your Money is ironically the least Crispin Gray/DC/QA sounding song in my opinion. I kinda find it irritating that he downplays Queen Adreena cause it was probably his best work in this band but whatever

So yeah sorry for the word spill, that’s what i can think of it right now but as i said, i haven’t watched the interview yet, it’s just this kind of treatment is in a way consistent for him

#asks

[yourpakichic]

Episode 19 thoughts

- I love the boys vs. girls scenes! The similarly layered conversations that occur are an absolute delite to watch!

- Engin making Serkan PANIC over Eda finding another man! Like he really didn’t think so until at this point! But also, Melo trying to make her eniste really panic!

- Selin really trying to play house with Serkan.... *eye roll*

- Their individual monologues caused me pain. They want each other so bad. To only be each other’s. To only look and smile at each other. And yet, those words only remain in their hearts, unable to find escape into this world, held back by the circumstances they are currently entangled in. As true and bright as the day but hidden in the darkness of the night deep within their hearts.

- AIDAN PLAYING CUPID FOR EDSER? I begged for this and I’m actually receiving it? I’m shook.

- Ferit suspecting Efe? I was taken back by it, didn’t see that coming!

- KIDS IN LOVE, they are literal children in love! Their sarcastic responses give me life!

- The tension at that breakfast table would cause me so much anxiety!

- HE CUT THE BREAD FOR HER OUT OF HABIT....I literally can’t deal with them! They cause me too much pain!

- He’s gonna name that horse Eda. I just know it. And I’m gonna fall to pieces.

- My heart broke for Aidan after listening to the story. Her guilt toward the loss of her elder son was so strong and powerful that it caged her in her home. A mother’s pain is incomparable. It’s understandable how Aidan may have blamed herself for being missing in her son’s life and why she tries to be involved in Serkan’s. She wants to be involved and stay connected with her Serkan in a way she wasn’t able to for his brother. But by sending Serkan away at a young age by himself, she distanced herself from him. It’s not his fault he doesn’t trust anyone because the two people who he was supposed to trust in life abandoned him in trying to deal with their own pain while neglecting his needs. I’m not blaming Aidan/Alptekin because it’s his easy to judge from the outside. It’s such a deep and realistic way that these characters represent the dynamics and struggles of a traumatic event and the aftermath. Serkan’s inability to trust and fear of abandonment is real and justified based on his past. Aidan’s fear of leaving the house is justified due to the circumstances in which Alp died. Alptekin’s strictness toward Serkan can be explained by the fact that he lost his elder son (who he clearly named after himself) due to an illness and he fears he might lose Serkan too. Which also makes me think, did Serkan really have an illness in the past? I means he’s a bit of a hypochondriac but I’m thinking maybe just because of his brothers illness, Serkan got conditioned to thinking and living a certain healthy way to protect himself.

- I’m glad Aidan told Eda this because I think it might make Eda open her eyes a bit more. I’m not expecting Eda to forgive and forget but I think it might explain to her why Serkan is the way he is.

- If you ask me, Serkan was pretty fair in asking Efe to claim his mistake in front of the team. Serkan built and has lead this team to such a great standard and Efe ruined that in minutes. They rightfully deserved an apology. And Engin being pissed and backing up Serkan as the BEST FRIEND HE IS.

- Serkan being honest about his feelings and wanting to improve things with Eda was such a good thing to see. It may have taken him some time to get there but I’m glad that he’s come to terms with the fact that he can’t be without her. More so, he doesn’t want her to be with anyone else. Serkan is hopeful about their relationship and I think that’s the first time since their breakup. He isn’t trying to convince himself or anyone that they are over with completely. And I think what Engin said really resonated with him. If they can overcome the truth, it’s true love. If not, it’s over.

- His seriousness went out the window as soon as he realized the flowers were for Eda, HAHAHAH! He said burn the flowers! He’s such an idiot

- HE REALLY DRAGGED HER FROM THE CHAIR, I’M DEAD! freaking children behavior!

- Serkan is really trying to keep the truth from reaching Eda from anyone but him but everything really seems to be going against him! Let me tell you, my heart broke when Serkan mentioned his fathers mistake taking away Eda from him. He cannot catch a break!

- Aidan burning Alptekin’s clothes was so funny!

- Why is Selin trying to dig! Let my man Serkan handle this!

- Efe doesn’t know.... did I read that scene right?

- He’s gonna record their conversation! EFE, YOU SNAKE!

- SO IT IS THE GRANDMOTHER AMD SHE DID SENT EFE FOR REVENGE. But it seems like she wasn’t sure but sent Efe to investigate. She’s gonna use that recording to kill Serkan’s career! IT IS GOING TO BE NON-STOP DRAMA.

- Eda making Serkan jealous like that was hilarious! She really created a whole jealousy scene with that man!

- Eda and Aidan play off each other so well at this dinner, it’s hilarious! The way they are setting these ladies straight!

- The way his eyes lit up when she said she’s in love with him still! It’s like he can’t actually believe that! Idk but I found it weird how Eda didn’t want to even listen to Serkan as he tried to talk to her. I mean up until now, all she’s wanted is for him to talk and open up and now that he’s spent the whole day trying to do so, she just ignored his calls or runs away when the opportunity is there. It’s so not like Eda! I get that she’s given him chances before and he’s missed them and she probably doesn’t want to waste any more time giving him empty chances but I feel like Eda used to understand Serkan’s tone and words but it’s like... she just doesn’t recognize in his tone how much he really wants to talk to her. It seems like a character downplay to me for Eda.

- I’m not that invested in Ferit/Ceren, but that was cute, mostly because I want Ceren to be happy! But I swear, this whole Selin/Ferit crap ruins everything! My girl Ceren deserves better!

- He loves her so much, he’s just playing along with her! He’s so in love with her!he really just said have fun, but don’t dance with anyone! And THAT CONFESSION. He said everything with his whole chest. And she didn’t hear! They will be the death of me!

- He took the bottle! Lol bruh, you gonna need at least 2 bottles to get over this mess!

- Selin really trying to come on to Serkan while he’s drunk and he just straight up says, I need Eda. How does she not get the message!

- YES CEREN! YOU TELL HIM GIRL! I mean for real, what did he expect! But I will say I appreciate that Ferit was honest and didn’t lead Ceren on any further and just came out with it.

- HE IS SO DRUNK, I LOVE IT! Eda is fascinated by his drunk state, he’s so cute, she can’t help but melt! That was such a cute way of involving the title of the show! And that scene is sooo cute!

- Her carrying him up the stairs and complaining that he’s heavy. Him being wasted out of his mind and saying off the wall stuff. I LIVED FOR THIS SCENE. PURE COMDEY. PURE EDSER. I WANT MORE.

- THE SHOWER SCENE. That’s it? That’s all we get? I’M SOOO PISSED! The trailer made it seem like such a scene and then they give us this? The frack? That is unacceptable! That was such a wasted opportunity! THEY WOULD’VE KILLED THAT SCENE! AND HONESTLY IT WOULD’VE SAVED THE EPISODE! Ughhhhhhhhhh

- AHHHH SHIT! She got her hands on Eda’s family, that’s it. It’s over.

- See what I mean. Somehow, Eda didn’t understand Serkan. Serkan never really had a good way of putting with words but Eda understood and didn’t completely twist it around. I honestly think Eda’s jealousy of Selin really makes her so paranoid that she’s able to twist around to justify her insecurity in regards to Selin. Which I just don’t get. I mean Eda did have that kind of dynamic with Selin but she was never super jealous or anything. She always had a way fighting back against Selin and still being confident. I just can’t seem to understand where all of the sudden, it’s turned into this.

- It’s out. The secret is out. But definitely not how it should have been. It should not have been from Selin. Selin seems remorseful about it but I don’t buy it. And Serkan looks like his whole world just shattered. And bless Eda. She’s about to really go through it. The last scene was sooooo well acted! I loved the tension, the angst, the anger!

- One thing that I really need to see happen is Eda/Serkan working on their communication skills. Because they suck at it. They are both indirect and never really say what they want and mean straight up. Since the beginning both of them expect each other to understand with signs or by indirect words and it was cute at first but now it’s annoying. Like two people in love should be able to tell each other anything and SHOULD tell each other everything as it is, free from judgement. I don’t want an argument and then they make up in one of their houses. I want them to talk out their issues, their perspectives! Because both of them have quite opposite views and beliefs so it’s very important for them to say everything out loud to each other. Otherwise, their chemistry and relationship is just gonna be for a show and not hold real value and show and realistic aspect to it.

Overall: A really good episode even though some parts did feel lagged. So the big explosion (one of them) has happened. Now we wait to see the aftermath. Honestly at first I used to think that I would know how certain characters would react but now I don’t know. It’s not easy to say where they will take the characters or the storyline so we’ll see! Tbh, Hande and Kerem are really carrying this show with their scenes and acting so I would love to see them get justice with their scenes! The show at some parts feels like random and misplaced but it’s still enjoyable! Like there’s no need for all these side character storylines right now, like give Eda/Serkan their full scenes in full cut and let it play out! Once everything is more wrapped up, you can add the side storylines! It’s still an enjoyable and fun show and definitely makes me laugh and keep me on the edge of my seat but there’s just some moments when the magic seems missing!

#edser #hande erçel #sen cal kapimi #serkan bolat #eda x serkan #kerem bürsin #knock on my door #eda yildiz #sen cal kapımı #eda ve serkan #sen çal kapımı #eda yıldız

[elytrafemme]

SO EMBARASSIN

AKSKWLA THE WAY SHE WAS SO CASUAL AND KNEW THE WEBSITE HELP I WOUPDVE JUMPED SO FAR FROM MY SEAT

IT DOES SUCK BLEH!! but it’s alright. yeah it’s the same here, i was talking to one of my online friends but like we live in the same region so i assumed our breaks wud be in sync and i was v confused when it wasn’t. christmas break is usually 2 or 3 weeks i think? so feels like enough time :D tests come after break tho bleh

YEAHH ZIE LECTURE!!!1! yeah no yeah that’s fair me too, i have these bouts where i’m silent for like 6 hours and then i enter a call and everything just. spills. and i’m like constantly going “blah blah blah– are u listening?” “yes” “r u lying?��� “no” “okay, blah blah blah—“

i also sometimes do this thing where i go “blah blah blah– wait. i don’t want to talk anymore” and i just stop and it’s a little funny. also sobs i have no idea how writing styles work holy fuck

i like psychology but sometimes it feels too smart for me to understand so i play it in the background and go “wow i totally understand their motive (lies)”. holy fuck i had to a fur trade presentation and it was a PARTNER PROJECT TOO rrrr it was annoying but it was last year so i’m over it smile

IDK HOW SHE KNEW IT LIKE. SHAKES HER SHOULDERS. WHY DO U KNOW AO3. she's in her genshin kick now so she's probably been on the site semi recently but that's strictly some theorizing.

my friend from turkey seemed very confused at the prospect that i had a fall break yesterday which reminds me i should probably text him and ask what his questions were about it. it's also been just complete hell trying to coordinate with my sibling in another state right now at college HAHA

KJFDHJKFSD FAIRS!!! ABSOLUTELY FAIR

for the record i'm not really that knowledgeable in writing styles either, i just have put some thought independently (as in i haven't thoroughly researched into it but have put a pin in that topic for later, though i have picked up some knowledge from the writing camp i went to last summer) in how different mediums and approaches to writing can really aid the story. like i think you can grasp a lot out of a character just by how the prose of them is written-- even the small technical pieces can draw the perspective closer or further from the protagonist (and in some cases it is definitely better to be further from the main POV for narrative reasoning but you get what i mean). and also like some stories use certain formatting (such as letters, entries, strictly dialogue, no dialogue, etc.) which can ALSO do wonders so like. things like that. i think there are a lot of things in stories that are purposeful even if they don't even occur to the author initially but they later look more into it. i just think it's a really neat thing in like any overall medium, be it like a story or a video game (GOD video games do this SO WELL) or even movies, though admittedly i'm a little less well versed in actual film analysis and with films i'm moreso just interested in like lighting/shots/music and how things like that play into the actual theme itself? like i was really obsessed with that when i was learning about macbeth and watching scenes from the movie because the differences in lighting could convey SO MUCH even if it was just 'done for aesthetics' like it really tied into different things, but all in all i'm not super great with films.

in hindsight it appears we've unlocked a topic that i could do a presentation on. Oops.

anyway NO THATS FAIR i say that i know a lot about psychology but i. Really Don't. and im glad that this was last year i was a little worried this was a current presentaion u had i was gonna feel. so incredibly sorry for u JHFDHJDF

#nightmare.ask #mayzier #that was an unintended ramble by the way #i was going to stop at the first sentence but i proceeded to Not

[monkberries]

Hi, it’s the songwriting credit anon again. I’d just like to apologize for my last ask. Although I still feel the same about what I said before, I shouldn’t have been so confrontational about it. This is your blog and you’re entitled to expressing your thoughts however you want. I just felt a little defensive on Paul’s behalf (he’s my fav, who’da thought?) because of all the second-class songwriter/composer gossip crap he’s had to hear about deal with over the years... (1/5)

(whatever the second part of this was did not come through, send it again if you like)

...When push came to shove, at least during that time period, didn’t Paul usually capitulate to John? I know they both got the same credit as far as money is concerned, they were equal. But the fact still remains that it DOES matter whose name came first in the credits. If it didn’t matter then why was John keen to have it switched? If it didn’t matter then why wouldn’t Yoko let Paul switch the credits on his own Beatles songs - the ones he wrote -to McCartney-Lennon?... (3/5)

...I know I sound like a broken record because I brought this up last time, but obviously, even if just for visual standards, people want to see their names first in credits when they participate in creating something, especially if they did the bulk of the work. If you wrote 95% of a fanfic with another person, you’d really be ok with their name being credited first on the fic? If you were doing a group project with three other people and you did most of the work... (4/5)

you’d be ok with your name being written last on the project report? Am I in the wrong for saying, yes, I’d want my name to be first? Anyway, I’ve already taken up too much space in your asks, but I just wanted to try to put things into perspective as to why I do think the credits thing is a big deal. Older Paul has a right to feel taken advantage of at such a young age, even if he didn’t think much of it at the time. His band turned out to be The Beatles, the biggest band on the planet... (5/6)

And he realized in his later years that the songwriting credit order meant a lot to him when it came to his own songs. And maybe in his later years he also resented being talked out of the original official credit order by his best friend and manager. Sorry for rambling! It’s not meant to change your mind on the subject! Just trying to show things from a different perspective. Sorry again for jumping the gun and being kind of asshole-ish in my original ask! (6/6) This went from 5 to 6 asks, oops

It’s fine, no harm no foul. We all get defensive at times, it’s all about trying to recognize that and trying to see through your bias.

1) Idk, maybe it mattered to them at the time, but Paul honest to god didn’t seem all that bothered by it (until he tried to get it switched with Yesterday); evidence being that he says very clearly that the stipulation was it could be switched whenever, and they never bothered to switch it. And John wasn’t bothered by it either, at least by 1976, when Paul switched the credits on Wings Over America and John never said boo about it. If it was a power move by John, it was a pretty weak one since it wasn’t even binding, and it didn’t really get him anything except perhaps Paul’s temporary annoyance. He did all the “Paul was a second-rate partner” work much later and it had nothing to do with the credit order.

2) Who knows why the fuck Yoko does anything, honestly. It was a dumb fight for her to pick. She probably should’ve let it happen, since again, they didn’t care when he did it in 1976. But she’s petty when it comes to Paul, always has been.

3) I wouldn’t care about that, and never have. Why would I? I did dozens of group projects when I was in school, some of them with me doing a lot of the work, and I never once thought about this. I have also written fic with a partner and without looking I could not tell you who’s ao3 name is listed first. Because it doesn’t matter.

4) Maybe it’s true that he became more resentful of it later, after a lot of people maligned him unfairly in the press for being second-rate and that’s why he tried to get it changed. I can empathize with that, absolutely. But I still think it’s petty and doesn’t matter and isn’t a big deal. He’s a multimillionaire, everyone knows who he is. Everyone knows he wrote Yesterday. It’s fine. Take your own advice, Paul, let it be.

#mclennon #yoko #brian #Anonymous