#and the final chorus | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zmediaoutlet · 9 months

Text

soon or never

for @wincestwednesdays - choices

A hand on Sam's shoulder. Hard at first, making him jerk like waking up from a coma, and then softer. "Hey, hey." He blinks, sniffs, wipes his own hand hard over his face. Takes a few seconds to see: the sun sliding toward setting, over a long low motel, with a nearly-empty lot, in which the Impala's parked in front of room number eleven, the engine off and Sam pulled out of a dead sleep with Dean, yes, still holding his shoulder. Warm through his spare jacket.

"Where," he says. Croaks. Jeez.

"Boise," Dean says, and Sam frowns. That's—three hours from Grangeville, the way Dean drives. He thought they'd be a lot closer to home before they stopped for the night. He squints over the seat and Dean's mouth goes thin, and then he shrugs, and takes his hand off Sam's shoulder. "You were moaning in your sleep. Not the fun kind."

Room eleven is blue carpet, blue thick curtains, blue blankets on the two queen beds. Two. Sam's still kind of dizzy. Not enough sleep and too much bloodloss. Dean brings in all the bags himself, moving around where Sam's pinned in the entryway, and then he says, "You planning on taking up work as the human statue?" and so Sam moves—to the table, with its blue-upholstered chair. He tries not to flinch when he sits but that's a lost cause. He keeps holding the bandage on his side. Even with all the stitches it feels like his guts might just spill out, everywhere. Ruin all this blue.

"Dude, you are out of it," Dean says. A thin kind of jocular. Somehow when Sam wasn't paying attention he lost his jacket, his boots. Rolling up his bright-red sleeves. "You getting your weird antibiotic thing again?"

Could be. A little dizzy, a little off. His stomach warm, partway to queasy. There's a hole in it, so. Queasy isn't so bad, as these things go. "Guess that means you're not gonna want the hot & sour I just ordered, huh," Dean says. Sam wrinkles his nose and Dean huffs. "You're gonna have to use your words at some point, buddy-boy."

"I'm not your buddy, pal," Sam says. Throat crackly again but he tries to smile.

"I'm not your pal, champ," Dean says, eyes crinkling at the corners, but he's hardly smiling at all.

Dean brings Sam a glass of cool water from the tap. Sam sips, careful. He's watched for a second, for what Sam doesn't know—in case the glass explodes and cuts him to ribbons, in case he chokes on water and suffocates on dry land—but then Dean seems satisfied that he won't immediately expire and goes to dig in his bag, set on the bed closer to the door. The room full of light, suffusing gold against the sea of blue, and it's good just to sit and look at his brother. The tips of his hair backlit amber. That red shirt, which somehow escaped the day without bloodstains. His square capable hands, tugging out pajama pants, and his forearms ringed in bruises, and his face the familiar set of—just getting to the next thing, and the next thing after that. Like if he sits down he won't ever get up.

"Why am I always the one getting hurt?" Sam says. Dean jerks. "Hole in my gut, last night. My arm, last year. Basically in a coma the year before that. When's it your turn?"

Dean leans one thigh against the bed, pajama pants held up against his stomach. After a second just looking at his bag, he says: "Broke my leg, back when that Levi nearly caught us at Bobby's."

"That when I went into a coma the first time?" Sam says, bright, and Dean snorts and says, "Don't think that was the first time, Sammy," but he says it a little more relaxed.

The water did help, and the sitting up in the light, and just—Dean. Here, and not somewhere with a monster where Sam didn't know what he was doing. If he was okay. Sam takes another moment to drink him in, until Dean finally looks up from his bag and meets his eyes, and Sam smiles again and Dean—Sam doesn't know what that expression is, but Dean's here instead of in some black pit in his head and so that's good enough for Sam.

It's hard to take his jacket off sitting down, strains his gut. "Don't pull your stitches," Dean says. "Hey, don't roll your eyes. That's some high quality fake insurance paying for those stitches."

"Doctor would've done it for free," Sam says. A grunt. He gets free of the second sleeve and drops it on the table. Boots then, but—

"Oh, this is pathetic," Dean says, but soft, and Sam stops toeing at the heel when Dean's suddenly there, on his knees on the blue carpet. His hand sure, dragging down the back of Sam's calf, and Sam picks his foot up obediently when Dean taps the heel and lets Dean tug it off. He makes a face and—yeah, that's not great. He sets the one boot down, though, and Sam gives him the other foot and Dean pulls him clear, and then just—holds Sam's foot, braced against his thigh. Fine with Sam, who wiggles his toes inside his socks. "Don't try to fumigate the room, man," Dean says, nose wrinkled. "Swear, you could've just waved these things at the werewolves and they woulda gone down, quick."

"You love it," Sam says. Dean licks his lips, and presses them together. His eyes some other place.

Dean's fingers flex around his ankle. Sam presses down with his toes, rocks a little, and when Dean looks up Sam raises his eyebrows. Dean shakes his head, but he slides his hands up Sam's shin, and then go around the back of his knee, up the back of his thigh. Squeeze there, hard. Hard enough it hurts, but then the muscle shocks into softness, and Sam sighs, and so then back down to his calf, Dean's fingers moving in hard firm circles. To the tendons in his ankle, squeezing, so that Sam scoots down further into the chair, his body turning slowly to jelly. "Oh, yeah?" Dean says, quiet, and picks up Sam's other foot to set on his other thigh, and repeats the whole process—not making it sleazy, or like he's trying to get Sam going, but just—making all the parts of Sam that are sore as hell after nearly two days in the dark hunted woods back into something that feels like his again. Or like Dean's again. Hard to tell anymore where the line between those lies. These days Sam isn't looking that hard.

When Dean's finished with the left leg he slides his hand back up Sam's calf, hooking there behind his knee. Quiet on his knees, and quiet in the room, too. Not even the sound of traffic outside. Just the two of them breathing, in all this blue. Dean's bruised forearms, and his throat ringed in murky purple, too, and dark under his eyes. The doctor, after stitching up the bullet hole but before she gave Sam the bottle of antibiotics, telling him to look out for his brother.

He lets his feet slide off to the outside of Dean's thighs, and reaches out a hand. Dean ignores it but lifts up on his knees, between Sam's legs, and Sam touches the corner of his scabbed eye and his jaw with too-thick stubble and drags a thumb down the column of his throat. Feels how it bobs. Waits, then, relaxed in the chair, while Dean unbuttons his flannel shirt, and lifts his undershirt, and touches the bandage. Running his fingers along the tape.

"Gonna rip some hair out when we gotta change that," Dean says. His eyes tight at the corners. "Free wax day at the spa."

"Lucky me," Sam says, dry, and watches the air go out of Dean.

He could ask. Right now, he could ask and he'd get the truth. Only—what's the point of asking a question you already know the answer to?

"Hey, Dean," he says, soft. Dean's eyes meet his. Everything in them, unsaid. Sam smiles, small. "When we get home, am I getting another massage?"

Dean scoffs. Stands up using Sam's thighs to brace—"Oof," Sam says, gamely—and Dean says, "You're gonna be lucky to get any at all, if you don't shower off all that werewolf stank." Sam smiles bigger and Dean rolls his eyes. "Oh, yeah, you're adorable."

A knock on the motel room door, then—the Chinese delivery—and before Dean goes Sam catches his forearm, squeezes. Dean takes a deep breath. "Yeah," he says, quiet.

Sam watches him take the delivery, tip the kid in cash. The room filling immediately with the smell of fried wontons because Dean always asks for a triple serving. "You eating, or what?" Dean says, dumping the bags on the table, and Sam sits up straight, ignoring the strain on his gut. "I'm eating," he says, and Dean sets the carton of soup firmly in front of him, and Sam thinks—if he hadn't made it back in time—

But he did, and Dean's alive and sitting here, bitching about how they put in way more broccoli than beef, so there's no more call to think about it. He eats his soup, and steals Dean's wontons.

#wincest #wincest wednesday #my writing #if someone tags this gen/weirdcest they get soup in their shoes #have listened to this song about 30 times on repeat while writing #the final chorus is the purest expression of yearning love ever #highly recommend

89 notes · View notes

thinkin-bout-milgram · 8 months

Text

Purge March: Initial Thoughts

Hello everybody! Sorry this took so long to get out, I got more distracted by real-life stuff than I expected since the drop. I made the decision back on the night of the Amane drop to wait for the audio drama and give myself time to think, and I'm glad I did, because in my opinion, Amane's case is really complicated.

I used the audio drama translation done by @/muu_kusunoki on twitter, which I'll link here, I'll also be doing a lot of referencing both the Purge March (PM) MV and the Magic MV. This is still going in as my Initial Thoughts rather than a synthesis theory, but it'll definitely be closer to synthesis than normal.

As usual, I'll be making bolded claims and then discussing them. Let's get started!

TW: Many kinds of abuse, indoctrination, murder, animal death suicide

The person Amane healed WAS actually a cat.

Truly insane. I'd assumed the whole time that the orange cat was symbolic for a human, but it's actually genuinely just a cat. That sort of throws out the whole theory from Magic that Riyone didn't have a role listed because their role related to the falling stage light, meaning that the injury on the cat was staged.

...Wait.

I think it still makes sense that the cat's injury was staged. Rather than being staged because the cat did something inherently wrong, though, I think it's more likely that the cat was staged to test Amane's belief of cult doctrine. She knows she's not supposed to heal using medicine, but here's an injured cat, just waiting for you. Amane takes the bait and heals the cat (the good thing to do), and as a result, she gets punished. Tased, it seems.

Riyone is the one responsible for electric torture. Because of that, I'm going to make the claim that Riyone was the one with the taser in the MV.

I've seen a couple different posts floating around say that they believe this is Amane's mother. The most convincing piece of evidence I've seen is from this alleged picture of the storyboards, but I have no idea how this was procured or if it's legit.

I think Riyone being Amane's mother makes a lot of sense, though. I mentioned earlier how Riyone doesn't have a listed role at intro like everyone else; that's probably because, to Amane, the role is just "mom." We know Amane's dad is frequently gone, so this probably isn't him. Additionally, it seems like Amane may live in this house we see in the MV, and as soon as she gets home, this other person is there. It would make the most sense if this person was her mother.

So, based on that, Amane's mother (Riyone) would have placed an injured cat right outside of their house to see what Amane would do. Amane heals the cat, and that results in Amane being punished for it. Punished, in this case, for interfering with divine will by using medicine to counteract fate.

Being the flag associated with destiny, it makes sense if Riyone is the one upholding the torture related to the cat. The cat seems to be dead and gone later, too, so it's likely that Riyone "fixed" destiny by killing it. But, in that case, who's that other guy?

Gozake is responsible for the water torture.

Safe enough claim. It's right there.

Anyways, the important thing is that means the hand you can see here is Gozake's.

This seems like it's in the same house as before, which I've theorized as Amane's house. If I'm right, that means that either Gozake is her dad, Gozake has access to her house despite not living there (the most plausible imo), or that all the cult leaders actually live here and it's more of a shared housing situation. In any case, what's important is that Gozake was in Amane's living space and tortured her there.

For what, though?

If I'm right that Riyone was the one handling torture related to the cat, that means Gozake was focused on something else. Let's check out those flags.

"Discard vulgarity" just kinda sounds like not swearing at first glance. However, vulgarity is defined as a more general lack of sophistication. I take this one to mean something like, "Behave in a way that is befitting of the cult."

Gozake seems to be in control of the cult's image and what they say to the public or something like that. So, to me, I think this means that Gozake punished Amane for outwardly doing something that the cult didn't approve of. Could also be the cat, could be something else. From Gachata flicking Amane at the beginning, it seems like the torture wasn't limited to "big mistakes" in the cult's eyes. Anything she did wrong could result in intense punishment.

Gozake is the one she killed.

If it's one, anyways. I'm still not fully convinced that she only killed one cult leader, but that's doesn't matter at the moment. Right now, my job is to convince you that Gozake is extremely dead.

The biggest point against him is the fact that Amane's prisoner card in UNDERCOVER shows that her murder took place in the shower.

It's kind of hard to see, but that's a bathroom. Based on the other prisoners' cards, it seems like the location on the cards is the location that their murder/related death incident occurred. Because Gozake was the one who tortured Amane in the shower specifically, that's a pretty bad look for him.

There's also plenty of reason to believe that at least one of the cult leaders is the one who died. All of Amane's lyrics about how she was sorry, but now the roles are reversed, makes total sense if a previous abuser of hers was begging for her mercy against being killed. Plus, there's the scene towards the end of Purge March where she's twirling her baton. It goes from clean to bloody at around 2:17.

Notably, this shot is taken from between times it shows the four cult leaders up on the cloud. We never see them again after this. (That's part of why I believe all four could possibly be dead, but I honestly don't consider it very relevant.)

We already know that Amane's murder weapon is a pole of some kind based on her kill shot of Es in UNDERCOVER.

She also uses her magic wand in Magic similarly. The point is, we know that Amane killed someone via whacking them with a pole. That's what we see in the end shot of Purge March.

That person? That's Amane's victim. Or, one of them, anyways.

Amane may have had multiple victims.

Again, I don't know how much it really matters, but it's definitely possible. That person looks like they're killed in the bedroom or something, right? And there's the light on in the bathroom.

I've seen some people say that they just think the person (Gozake) crawled from the bathroom to the bedroom before Amane finished them off. However... why?

What situation would that help in? I'm under the impression that the door out of the house is the other way, so if the victim crawled to escape, they'd likely head the other way. Additionally, Amane is still a twelve year old girl. If there were a prolonged fight, it seems like it would favor the grown ass man. So, this would have to mean that Amane would partially damage him before he crawled, out of the bathroom but AWAY from the front door. That doesn't make sense to me.

There's also the question of what Amane's murder weapon is. Let's look at that shower scene again.

A clothes washer (I think), a sink, some sort of pole thing (is that part of the clothes washer? Or is it more of a vacuum or something?), and some conspicuous bleach.

A big question for me is what that pole thing is. Could that be Amane's murder weapon? Is it detachable enough to bring to the bedroom? That's really relevant.

Basically, I think there's two options based on this.

The pole is detachable. Amane hits the guy's face with bleach and he tries to crawl away, but can't see where he's going. She then carries the pole over to the bedroom and finishes him off there.

Amane uses the bleach to kill him in the bathroom, leaving him there with the light on. Then, Amane uses either that pole or a different one and heads to the bedroom, killing whoever else is there (probably Riyone, if I had to guess).

I'm honestly kind of partial to 1 now that I've written it out. However, there is also this:

This is Amane's associated image from UNDERCOVER. We don't know what it relates to, exactly; we just know that it's something to do with her.

I would... assume that this is someone in the shower, based on the water torture. However, when I first saw it (and I know this is true for others, too), I thought it was rain. The way the water drops fall looks more like rain to me. And, based on what we saw, Amane was kneeling on the shower floor. That means that it should be Gozake in the shower, thus invalidating the theory that Gozake crawled out of the shower before getting finished off in the bedroom.

Except, what if it is rain?

If it is rain, that makes this matter a hell of a lot more. Because, if that isn't in the shower, that means that someone ended up on the ground like that outside of that house. Possibly someone who never entered the house, possibly someone who never entered the cult. Who knows!

...Possibly the little girl with the balloon?

Obviously if that's the case, it's someone related to the cult. Still, the sky is clearly the same sky, at least. There's the same rainbow despite the same clouds. Plus, we see the little girl's balloon wander off later in the MV. Maybe something happened to her?

I don't know what her involvement is otherwise. I don't know why she's important enough to be depicted. Interestingly, I believe Amane is the only one who hasn't gotten the reveal of someone important's actual face in the second round. We've seen a LOT of people with impact on her life, but none of them have been singled out with actual facial detail. Unless you count the swarm of Amanes, I guess.

Amane has or expects to take over a cult leader role.

She sees herself leading the Purge March. She seems to place herself in a position of authority. This, I'm sure, also relates to a very complex self image she likely possesses, but the fact of the matter is, she's the one leading it.

If she killed at least one cult leader (likely, Gozake is so dead), she might believe that she'd be the one to replace them. We don't know if this is true or not; Mu doesn't know what happened to her surrounding any legal punishments or authorities or anything, so it's possible that Amane doesn't actually know what the aftermath of her murder would end up being.

Still, it's something to consider. If Amane, unchanged, returned to the world, she could very believably recruit others into the cult and continue the cycle.

Amane wants to be innocent, but she has changed the meaning of what an innocent verdict is.

Amane is pulling a Trial 1 Kotoko. She's offered Es a deal surrounding verdicts. That makes it much harder for us to communicate with Amane, because she changed what the verdict means.

Much like Kotoko in Trial 1, Amane's Trial 2 audio drama is her guiding Es through the discussion she wants to happen. She tells Es that she wants Milgram's forgiveness so she can turn it into the ideal world for her cult.

That means that, if we vote Amane innocent, she likely will take it as Es approving Milgram for her cult. That's obviously bad, but the other prisoners (other than maybe like Haruka) are hopefully not impressionable enough for it to be a problem?

However, I still do believe Amane wants to be innocent. She asks Es to remember her pleas for forgiveness at the end of the Purge March MV. We all forgive Amane; the question is how to tell Amane that we forgive her disobedience and we're sorry for the situation she grew up in without approving the cult's beliefs.

It's wrong to torture a child in order to get them to conform to your beliefs.

This is what Amane's story is about. The cult leaders tortured Amane until she was brainwashed into their beliefs. Amane insists that, just because her beliefs aren't the norm, that doesn't make them wrong.

Arguably, a guilty verdict could be seen as doing the exact same thing. We'd be subjecting Amane to audio torture, at least, given that we know guilty prisoners are bombarded nonstop with the reasons why people voted them guilty. She would also be restrained, and due to Kotoko's attacks, we know it's at least hypothetically possible she could get physically injured from it to.

That's obviously not cool. Don't like that part.

Amane wants to kill Shidou.

Amane warned us that Shidou's actions (saving Mahiru's life and healing up Futa) disobey with her beliefs, and if we don't do something about it, she'll have to take action. It's not entirely clear whether that means she'll punish Shidou as she was punished, or if she'll attack Mahiru to kill her as God intended.

Either way, it's bad news for Mahiru if that happens. It's been directly stated that Mahiru is in a critical condition, and it's possible that the removal of Shidou as her doctor could kill her even if she doesn't get hurt again. If Amane killed Shidou, it could mean both of them could die.

However, Kazui has also promised that, if he gets an innocent verdict, he'll protect anyone he can from harm. Kazui could take Amane in a fight (I forget where but somewhere it's established that Kazui is the strongest in a fight, plus he beat Kotoko who I assume could easily beat Amane), so hopefully Kazui will be able to protect Shidou.

That also opens up the door for a weird possibility, though, which is the case of Haruka. Given that, in this case, Kazui would be focused on protecting Shidou and/or Mahiru from Amane, that means that Kazui would likely not have time to look after other prisoners, such as Haruka, who's threatened suicide if we voted Mu guilty. Which we did.

So, basically, the whole thing's a mess and voting Amane innocent makes it much more likely that someone dies, whether that someone is Shidou, Mahiru, Haruka or some combination.

VERDICT: ???

If you couldn't tell, the last four sections are me deliberating on which verdict to give her. In my opinion, there are a lot of arguments in both directions, which makes it difficult to decide. If I was ignoring meta voting, I'd obviously vote innocent, given that Amane is a highly traumatized child and she killed her abuser(s). That's forgivable. However, given other circumstances surrounding the dynamics of her vote, I have doubts on if it's really the "right" move.

I think that with Amane, there's no good option. To be clear, I don't regret the Trial 1 guilty verdict. I've seen a lot of people saying that this state of no good options is a result of stupid people thinking guilty was right last trial. I think that an innocent verdict would just mean that she'd be like Kotoko is right now, believing that she's right without a shadow of a doubt. Milgram is mean, intentionally. They weren't going to give us good options either way.

As a result, given that I can tell a lot of people have WAY stronger opinions on this one than I do, I'm currently not actually voting. If the margin gets close enough, I'll probably commit to a direction, but for now, I'm letting the rest of the fanbase steer the verdict. I was fully team guilty when I was worried about Kazui getting a guilty verdict. With Kazui innocent, I'm much more open to the possibility of forgiving Amane, because that verdict hopefully won't cost Shidou and/or Mahiru's lives.

If you have a convincing theory or argument in either the innocent or guilty direction, please let me know! If I'm ever convinced enough, I'll probably start voting, but for right now, I'm honestly neutral on the verdict.

NOTE: don't yell at anyone. Do not insult anyone else or get aggressive when pushing for a verdict. This is a fan blog for a fictional series that exists to have fun solving mysteries and calmly discussing ethics. Please, have fun and don't take this too seriously.

#milgram #ミルグラム #admin venus #amane momose #milgram theory #sorry this one is WAY late #i know i said that earlier #i'm glad i waited though i feel like i was able to get a lot better ideas in #i used to be a hardcore amane guilty truther #now i'm just kinda fine either way #it is what it is baby #anyways please enjoy #also they like SUPER changed the chorus lyric translation #if you go back to the song teasers the lyrics are very different #like “i will destroy you a distorted vision needs to be purged” instead of “i disavow you eyes corrupted must be crushed”#i guess it's largely the same thing but the intensity of the violence got lessened for the final version if anyone's curious

56 notes · View notes