#destruction of the upper class | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stobinesque · 11 months

Text

talking could, if we'd just dare (you know that i'll forgive you), pt. 1

@steddie-week day 6: misunderstandings / "You Lookin' at Me Lookin' at You" by Ozzy Osbourne | ~5.5k words | G or T inspired by this post from @inklessletter!

If Eddie was being honest, he’d never actually paid that much attention to Steve Harrington. Sure, it was impossible not to know of him. But for most of his life it had simply been…unimportant, to know about the various goings on of the Class of ‘85’s royal court. Harrington was rich, a bit of a bitch, and kept company with other rich bitches, and so Eddie neatly categorized him with all the other pretty, rich jocks, and went about his day. Life was easier when there was an order to such things. Keep the smalltown, upper-middle class heroes to one side, and the freaks and degenerates to the other, and everyone could live in an uneasy sort of harmony until they walked the stage and left this rathole behind.

Of course, repeating senior year thrice had put a wrench in that plan.

Meanwhile, Dustin Henderson had thrown the whole damn toolbox into the whole not-paying-attention-to-one-Steven-MiddleName-Harrington plan.

And whatever the fuck was going on now had just blown everything out of the water.

(Or into the water, as the case may be—except the freaky parallel hellscape they’d all dove into seemed to be utterly devoid of the substance, so maybe the original metaphor worked just fine.)

So now he had to contend with the fact that Steve Harrington was a) a pretty nice dude to recent victims of smalltown witch-hunts who had just been thrust into what was apparently a years-long government conspiracy involving monsters and mind-controlling wizards, b) a bit of a dork, c) friends with a whole bunch of dorks, most of whom were four or five years younger than him, d) admirably—though perhaps self-destructively—protective of said dorks, e) just as much of a badass as Henderson claimed, and, most distressingly: f) extremely hot while doing so.

The being a protective badass part, not all the other ones.

(The other parts Eddie was retroactively filing under “adorable,” and “cute.”)

The expression Steve got on his face when Eddie lobbed his battle vest at him was also priceless, so at that point Eddie figured, fuck it. What did he have to lose from some harmless flirting? The chances of him making it out the other side of this both alive and un-incarcerated were dwindling by the second, and it’s not like he ran any risk of things going anywhere. (Harrington might be a good dude, and alternate dimensions and monsters and superpowers apparently existed, but Steve Harrington being anything other than a straight man with Traditional American Values™ strained credulity—and the Munson Doctrine—far past any acceptable limit.)

After all, if there was one thing that Eddie had actually learned from D&D, it was that a little bit of flirting and fun could take the sting out of any TPK.

🦇🦇🦇

If Steve was being honest with himself—which he’d been making a concerted effort to try to do since fall of ‘84—he could admit that his…jealousy…of Munson predated Dustin joining Hellfire. His whole climbing-on-cafeteria-tables schtick was kind of obnoxious, sure. But up until he’d wound up flunking his first try at senior year, Eddie'd had this sort of dorky-but-cool aura that Steve wished he was apathetic enough about other people’s opinions to achieve.

For a man who seemed to genuinely believe he was a coward, Eddie Munson was so…loudly and unapologetically himself. In Hawkins, Indiana—a place that quite literally wanted to kill him for how much of a freak he was. And, sure, some of that came down to the whole wanted-for-murder thing. But the man had also spent the better part of the past twelve hours flirting with a former jock—whom Eddie himself admitted to thinking was a douche up until a couple days ago!—so Steve had the sneaking suspicion that there was probably a corner of the town that already had it out for Munson long before Chrissy Cunningham’s body was found in his trailer.

And it wasn’t that Steve wanted to get into metal, or that Dragons game, or start wearing hand-printed t-shirts and attaching his wallet to a chain. He just wished that even after all the years of monsters, and government threats, and Russian torture, he didn’t still feel the need to hold himself to standards set by other people.

If anyone was a coward, it was Steve.

And there was something kind of…nice—reassuring, even—about the fact that Eddie seemed to feel the same way—but in reverse—about him. Like together maybe they could take the bravest parts of the other and make them their own.

And underneath it all, Steve could admit, was the fact that Eddie was…pretty.

So. Steve was having a bit of a crisis

“Robin, I’m having a crisis.”

“We’re all having a crisis, dingus,” she shot back, slapping at his shoulder with the back of her hand.

“No— no, not that.” Steve started emptying one of the bottles of vodka they’d procured into the half-dead grass. “I’m talking about the whole—” Steve waved a hand over towards where Eddie and Dustin were horsing around. “The Eddie thing.”

“Oh, you mean the fact that he’s been blatantly flirting with you since you got eaten by bats?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yes, Robin, I’m talking about the blatant flirting.”

“And…why is that causing a crisis?”

Steve fish-mouthed at her. “B-because…” He leaned forward with a finger held aloft, ready to waggle it in her face. He paused. Frowned. “Well, because…” Steve threw up his hands. “I don’t know! A few days ago the man thought I was a douche. Literally just yesterday he was, like, hot-and-cold trying to throw me at Nancy, while also ogling my chest hair, and now he’s calling me ‘big boy’ and trying to get into my personal space? It doesn’t make sense, Robin!”

“Welcome to the club, buddy.” She raised her brows at him pointedly. And, yeah, that was fair, he guessed.

“And,” He started again, “And– I’ve also got Henderson insisting that I win Nancy back—he does seem to have finally dropped the whole are-you-secretly-dating-Robin thing, though, which—”

“Oh, thank god.”

“Yeah. But, on top of that Nancy has also been making eyes at me, but she’s still with Jonathan so I don’t know what to do about that. And it’s all just a mess, Robs! I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, well, that’s been true for ages, Stevie.”

“Thanks, Robin. That’s very helpful.”

“What? I’m just saying, if you’re going to tell me that I’ve got to ‘be myself,’ and put myself out on a limb with Vickie, while you’re out gallivanting with Helen or Jackie or whoever—”

“Heidi—”

“Whatever.” Robin waved her hand dismissively. “My point is: you keep throwing yourself at all of these girls who only know the old you—even if you’re trying to give them the new-and-improved model—and you haven’t even tried to go after a guy, and I think we both know why. And now you’ve hit the jackpot of what every tragic gay teenager in smalltown America can only dream of: you’ve got someone blatantly, and undeniably into you, who you also like back, and you’re telling me that you’re having a crisis? Need I remind you of the tableau we were treated to back at The War Zone?”

Steve sighed. “I know, Robs. You’re right.” Steve jammed a funnel into the neck of the bottle he was working on, and the two of them kept building molotov cocktails in the dying evening light, as Steve tried to reassure Robin that she still had a chance with Vickie—which she did, and Robin took his mind off his own impending disaster. But, if Steve had even a shadow of a chance of getting to hook up with a guy, Robin deserved to have a romance of her own. As much as Robin was afraid to see it, Steve was pretty sure he recognized that conflicted look Vickie’d had in her eyes when she’d spotted Robin in the store. There was something there, he was sure of it.

But maybe Vickie was like him. Maybe she’d only just learned this new thing about herself. Robin—and presumably Eddie—had had at least a couple of years to sit with this knowledge about themselves and come to terms with it. But for Steve (and Vickie?) it was still so scarily and terribly new. With girls, Steve knew how to play the field. He knew what was expected of him—what role he had to fill. But with Eddie a guy, all the rules went out the window; all of his scripts: useless. He’d have to start from scratch, and build something completely different from anything he’d been taught to want or expect before.

Maybe he was getting ahead of himself, though. Because Robin was right: they had more important things—end-of-the-world shaped things—to worry about. His love life could wait. Eddie could wait.

They all just needed to make it out of there alive.

🎸🎸🎸

Eddie survived.

They won.

Eddie survived, and so did everyone else, and they won.

Eddie kept repeating it to himself, because he couldn’t quite believe it.

He couldn’t make heads or tails of the fact that in the end running away was exactly what he needed to do to make sure they all made it out in one piece—more or less.

He’d walked right out of hell with nothing more to show for it than a few scratches up his sides, and a ring of bruises ‘round his neck. In the end, Steve was the only person other than Red who needed a hospital stay of any kind, because what would have been manageable wounds on day one, had become life-threatening after days of infection and improper care.

A future in a state penitentiary also seemed to be out of the cards. There was probably nothing any of them could say or do to convince the general Hawkins populace of his innocence, but Dr. Owens and his ilk had crafted a cover story believable enough to win over Powell and Callahan, at least. More to the point, though: all charges had officially been dropped, and the case was closed.

Now there was just the mortifying process of figuring out how to move on. Or at least forward.

That was the part you didn’t see in movies. No one showed the recovery. Because what was so interesting about watching someone pull their life and body back together? As though healing wasn’t just as much a part of the story as the falling apart.

Eddie wasn't ashamed to admit that it was driving him a bit mad. Because these kids all seemed to be seasoned veterans at it. They hadn't just snapped back to their relatively-easy-going-but-bitchy baselines by any means—Lucas and Dustin especially seemed incredibly subdued in response to the extent of Max's and Steve's injuries, respectively—but they moved around one another with a care and familiarity that spoke to years of experience.

“How did you do this?” Eddie scrubbed a hand through his hair, yanking at the roots. He and Robin were posted by Steve's bedside—he still spent most of his days semi- to unconscious. And while Eddie didn’t necessarily think it made a whole lot of sense for him to be spending more time at Steve’s bedside than the kids did, Robin was only ever dragged away from him kicking and screaming, and as the newest member of the apocalypse posse above the age of twelve, he was in desperate need of her guidance.

“How’d I do what?” Her typically-raspy voice sounded paper thin, and there were deep, dark circles under both eyes.

“I don’t know—!” Eddie flapped a frantic hand around, like he could manifest words and meaning into being. Something about it made the corners of Robin’s mouth twitch up. “Any of it? You–you dealt with a flesh monster, apparently, and you’re just...walking around on two feet, probably ready to graduate—which is more than I could guarantee for myself—”

“Hey, you will—”

“Not the point, Buckley! The point is, up until this new bout of freaky shit popped into existence, you seemed like you were walking around Hawkins without a care in the world. So how’d you do it? What’s your secret?”

Robin scoffed. “If you think I was walking around without being terrified every day, you either weren’t paying attention, or you’re a lot less smart than I gave you credit for, Munson.”

Eddie grimaced. “Sorry, sorry. That’s not what I meant, I just…you seem like you managed to pull yourself back together—whereas I feel seconds away from total collapse.”

“Yeah, that’s not just a you thing.” Robin twisted one of her rings around her finger. “But you wanna know what kept me upright? It was Steve. I don’t think I would have made it through the last eight months without him. And I know he’s gonna be alright, but I am still terrified that something will happen and he’ll get ripped away from me.”

Eddie frowned. He didn’t think he’d been picking up on those kinds of vibes between Harrington and Buckley, but the way she spoke about him… “Are the two of you, like, a thing?”

Robin barked out a laugh. “No! Not at all. I mean, he is the most important person in my life, and I would both kill and die for him. But, like, in a normal, platonic way.”

“...I’ll take you at your word for the ‘platonic’ part, but there is absolutely nothing normal about what you just said. You two are freaky for each other.”

Robin giggle-snorted, and it scrunched her nose up in a way that filled Eddie with warmth. Despite everything about his…everything, he’d never been short on friends—but it always felt nice to find another one. “Yeah, yeah I guess we are.”

“Mmm…Bobbie? ‘Zat you?” The beeping of Steve’s heart monitor picked up a little speed, and the man in question’s eyelids fluttered open. Robin immediately unraveled from the folded-up position she’d adopted in the hospital chair, and reached out to take his hand into her own.

“Yeah, Stevie, it’s me.”

Steve squeezed her hand, before his eyes started scanning the room—going wide when they landed on Eddie. “Oh. Eddie.” A light pink flush broke over his face, and he averted his gaze almost as quickly as he met Eddie’s. That kept happening whenever Steve woke up, and Eddie didn’t know what to make of it, but it always left him off-kilter in a way he didn’t want or know how to put a name to. He always took it as his cue to leave.

“Well,” he started, with forced cheer, and a shit-eating grin. He pushed himself up from the chair and dusted off his knees. “I’m gonna leave you two lovebirds to catch up,”

“Not lovebirds—” Steve slurred, at the same time Robin exclaimed, “Ew, Munson!”

Eddie just cackled and sauntered off with a jaunty salute.

🦇🦇🦇

Steve felt like he was losing his mind.

He'd been out of the hospital for a few weeks now, but he almost wished he was back there, because every waking second was just a never ending parade of pain and confusion.

Fuck, why did almost dying always hurt so much?

The upside of being awake and ambulatory, was that Eddie had finally stopped running out of the room whenever Steve was awake for longer than two seconds. The down side—which was unfortunately directly connected to the aforementioned upside—was that Eddie was being weird.

And, okay, Steve had an admittedly shallow pool of evidence from which to draw his comparisons from. But the fact remained that Eddie’s behavior towards him pre- and post-Vecna-slaying were worlds’ apart. And he didn’t know how to fix it. He’d tried everything: playing coy, bringing him small gifts, finding excuses to talk to him one-on-one when the rest of the group was gathered together. But none of it seemed to work.

What Steve wanted was to just be able to rock up to the trailer with a bouquet of flowers and ask him out to a night at Enzo’s. But even without the whole recently-wanted-for-murder thing, the two of them going out on what was obviously a date in Hawkins was not only a bad idea, but actively dangerous. And without his typical romance rituals to fall back on, Steve was at a loss as to how to proceed, when the object of his affection was acting so damnably fickle.

“I just don’t get it, Rob. One minute he’s calling me ‘big boy’ and getting all up close and personal, and the next he’s looking like I killed his cat!”

“You have got to stop using other people’s trauma as analogies for your love life, babe.”

Steve waved a hand. “Mrs. Henderson’s not here.”

Robin threw up her hands. “And that makes it okay?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Fine, whatever.” Robin ruffled her hair in frustration. “Maybe he’s just nervous!”

“Nervous! Why would he be nervous?”

“I don’t know, Steve. Why are you nervous?”

“Because I like him, and I don’t want to get hurt again!” Steve shouted, startling himself by the force with which the words came tumbling out.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Steve sighed. “I mean, it’s not just that, though, it’s…” Steve waved a hand into the open air between them. “I don’t know how to do this, you know? If this was a girl, I’d be thinking ‘oh, she’s playing hard to get—’”

“I can’t believe that’s a real thing people do,” Robin deadpanned.

“I mean, sometimes it really is just that they don’t like you—except that then they don’t keep trying to, like, hang out and joke with you—which Eddie does, he’s just hopelessly awkward about it.”

“Steve. Eddie is a hopelessly awkward person. It’s like a defining character trait.”

“Well he wasn’t with me.” Steve wiped a hand over his face and groaned. “I’m just nervous I misread the whole thing, you know? And if I did, and I ask him the wrong thing in the wrong way…what if he doesn’t want to see me again? Like, at all?”

Robin reached out and took his hand. “I hate that you have to know what that feels like,” she said, soft and careful. “But even in the wild event that Eddie is either a: entirely straight, or b: just not into you, I don’t think there’s any version of him that wouldn’t want to talk to you at all. So you should ask him out.”

“Okay, Rob,” Steve sighed. “Only on one condition, though.”

“Oh, no. Ohhhh, no you don’t—”

“You’ve gotta ask out Vickie,” Steve finished, holding out his hand with a smirk.

“Uggggh, fine. Deal.”

🎸🎸🎸

Steve was acting weird.

He’d been acting weird since getting discharged from the hospital—acting all shy and blushy one second, and then turning around and bringing him a new set of dice the next—but it’d really been cranked up to eleven for the past week.

And, look, Eddie knew he was new to the monsters-are-real crew. He knew that in order to make space for him they had to alter whatever their established dynamics were to fit him into them. But that didn’t account for the fact that all of a sudden Steve seemed to be completely unable to string two sentences together in front of him.

Maybe the two of them weren’t quite friends yet, but he missed the ease with which they’d been able to talk and be honest with each other only a couple of weeks ago. Hell, they’d had more chemistry together down in the Upside Down.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

Maybe that had been the problem all along. Maybe Steve had finally clocked his doomsday-flirting for what it was, and was trying to establish boundaries. Eddie thought he’d pulled back since they'd all crawled out of hell—broken, but alive. As soon as the danger was clear there was no reason to play the bit anymore, right? It’s not like his flirtation attempts had ever been more than a way to liven up what had been an unmitigated shitstain of an experience. Sure, Harrington was pretty, and nice—and there was clearly more to him than met the eye. Eddie had really enjoyed getting to know him over the course of the past few weeks. He wouldn’t mind getting to know him better, if he was being honest. But it looked like the door was closing on that chance if he didn’t straighten things out.

“Hey, Harrington?”

“I thought I told you to call me Steve, Munson.”

Eddie smiled his ‘malicious compliance’ smile and clasped his hands behind his back, rocking onto his heels as he said. “Alright: Steeeve.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but there was a little smile on his face that belied the general bitchiness of the rest of his demeanor. “What do you want, Eddie?”

Eddie spread his hands out in front of him like he was unfurling a map into the air between them. “Just figured I ought to clear the air.”

Steve frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You know—the whole reason you’ve been all weird around me lately? I figured it’d be best if I put all of my cards on the table.”

The frown dropped off of Steve’s face—replaced by an expression that Eddie couldn’t decipher. It wasn’t…bad? There was no apprehension to be found there. Steve looked almost expectant. Hopeful, maybe. Which didn’t make a whole lot of sense—but Harrington didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so maybe Eddie was just misreading whatever he was seeing there.

“You know it was all just in good fun, right? That it didn’t mean anything?”

The frown returned. “What are you talking about?”

“Back in the Upside Down. You know I was just messing with you, right, man? Just a bit of good ol’ fashioned I’m-about-to-die flirting, you know? Nothing to get all worked up about.” Eddie kept a wide smile fixed in place, tried to really lean into the whole ‘non-threatening gay guy’ vibe—an uphill battle for him, specifically on one of his best days. He’d do jazz hands if it’d help sell the performance any better. But each word out of his mouth felt more like a lie than the one before.

A thin fissure appeared on Steve’s face—a crack that Eddie could almost see through, but not enough to be able to make any sense of what was on the other side. “Oh,” Steve said. His voice was shaking and Eddie couldn’t figure out why. It set off alarms in the part of his brain that was always primed to run at the first sign of danger. “So you’re…not gay?”

Eddie frowned in confusion. Of all the ways he thought Steve might react, that was not one of them. So Eddie forced a laugh, trying to disarm the question. “Oh no, I am a flaming homosexual. I just want to make sure you know that doesn’t mean I’m interested in you.”

The frown slid off of Steve’s face, and the fissure smoothed itself away like it’d never been there. The Steve standing before him was blank-faced as a statue, and it made Eddie want to puke. In all his worrying about Steve being uncomfortable with the idea that Eddie was hitting on him, specifically, he’d entirely forgotten to be worried about Steve being straight up homophobic. At least he wasn’t throwing punches. That was something, right? But Steve was looking at him with such a totalizing coldness behind his eyes that Eddie felt like he’d been left out to sea.

Steve gave a stiff nod. “Right, of course not,” he said, but the words came out wooden. He threw a thumb over one shoulder and twisted on his heel, back toward the beemer. “I’ll just…I gotta go.”

And then Harrington turned his back to him, and walked away.

Eddie didn’t have a crush on Steve.

So why did it hurt so much to watch him leave?

⛵⛵⛵

Robin sped down the stairs when she heard the banging at the door. There weren’t many people who would bother turning up on her doorstep unannounced. Even fewer who would make such a concerted effort to try to knock it down with the force of their pounding fists.

She swung the door open to find a tear-stained Steve standing before her.

“What happened?” She gasped out. Was it back? It couldn’t be back. El and Will had both sworn on pain of death that it was over. Maybe there was a new horror in town? Maybe Nancy had gone missing? Or Dustin? One of the other kids? Maybe Eddie?

Steve cut off the racing of her thoughts with a sobbing gasp. “Nothing, Robs.” Somehow, he looked worse than he had after the Russians. His head was hung low, and Robin could swear there was a shadow of phantom-bruising around his eyes. Like he’d been emotionally decked in the face. He took a step forward to come inside at the same moment that she took him by the wrist and yanked him across the threshold.

“What do you need?”

“Bathroom,” was all he said. And then Steve swapped his-wrist-in-hers for her-wrist-in-his and he pulled her further into her own house, toward the second-floor bathroom. When they reached it, Robin plopped down on the floor with her back against the tub while Steve took up his position with his back pressed up against the toilet bowl.

“What happened?” She whispered.

Steve was silent for a long stretch of time. He turned his head to the side, as though he was trying to look out of the small frosted window high up on the wall beside him. “He doesn’t want me.”

“Who? What? What are you talking about, Steve?”

Steve turned back to face her. “Eddie. He doesn’t want me.” Steve no longer sounded sad—he sounded vacant.

Robin’s nose scrunched up like she’d smelled something wrong, because that didn’t make sense. Robin might not be good at clocking other gay people—she wasn’t that good at reading people, period—but it’s not like Eddie’s flirting with Steve had been subtle. And even beyond that, he was always looking at Steve while he was asleep in the hospital bed, in a way that Robin thought meant something… There was just no way that Eddie didn’t have at least a little bit of a crush on Steve, right? So what had he said to make Steve so certain about that he didn’t? “How d’you know that?”

Steve laughed, half-hysterical, as he tipped his head back onto the lid of the toilet. “He said it didn’t mean anything—the flirting.” Steve wiped a hand clear across the length of his face—chin to forehead—before digging his fingers into his hair. He laughed again. Or—it was more a puff of air, than anything else. And there was definitely no humor behind it. Just a bitter kind of resignation. “And then—he said—he told me he was gay, but that he just wanted me to know that it doesn’t mean he’s interested in me.” Steve covered his face with both hands and let out a broken sob. “God, he and Nance should compare notes.”

Robin could feel the lines carving an angry space between her eyebrows, and a fire in her heart. How dare he? Maybe Robin had misread Eddie's whole vibe toward Steve—but how dare he just trample all over and discard his heart like that? It didn’t make sense—but it was happening, and she had to fix it, because no one was allowed to break her other half.

“Hey Stevie?” She asked, trying to keep her tone light.

“Yeah?”

“Where do you keep your little nail bat nowadays?”

🎸🎸🎸

Let it not be said that Eddie Munson didn’t know how to pull off a top-tier wallow. Ozzy’s pleading vocals were pouring out the speakers, while Eddie was laid star-fished out on the mattress, staring at the ceiling like it might give him answers, and torturing himself with the memory of Steve Harrington biting into the tail of a hell-bat.

Is it me or is it you?

Things are so much different now

But nothing lasts forever

He really should have known that whatever kind of rapport he and Harrington had going was too good to be true. Once a rich dickhead jock, always a rich dickhead jock, right? He almost felt bad thinking that. But what else was he supposed to think? The second Steve Harrinton had found out he was gay he’d turned his back on him. That was pretty cut and dry.

A loud banging at the trailer door cut through his thoughts and over the sound of Ozzy singing looks and glances can't repair, talking could if we'd just dare.

Eddie had half a mind to just ignore it, but there were even odds that it was one of the UD Crew as it was a member of Hawkins’ resident angry mob. So Eddie peeled himself off the bed, leaving Ozzy blaring behind him, and yanked open the door. “What—?” He started, but came up short when he registered an absolutely livid Robin Buckley staring back at him.

Eddie hadn’t thought to take into consideration the idea that the person at the door might be a UD Crew member taking up the role of angry mob members. But Robin Buckley was standing on his stoop looking half-ready to commit a murder. The second the door was open, she shoved past him and into the trailer.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Munson?”

“Wh-what are you talking about, Buckley?” Covering his face with a piece of hair wasn’t enough—he wanted to melt into the floor. Had Steve really sent Robin to beat him up for being gay? That was some next level gymnastics in avoiding making physical contact with another man so that you don't seem gay.

Robin yanked at her hair and started pacing around the common area, glaring daggers into the floor (but thankfully not at him). “What am I talking about, he asks! You really are a medical grade idiot, aren’t you?”

“I—”

“No, shut up, I don’t want to hear it.” Robin abruptly swung around on her heel to rush at him and jab a finger into his chest. “You broke Steve’s heart. And I don’t care if you were never into him—because I know that you can’t help who you like, or love—but you had no right to be so fucking cruel about it!”

A penny dropped.

“Robin. What are you talking about?”

Steve was heartbroken? That didn’t make any sense. He should have been relieved, he should have—

Robin laughed, hysterical, and threw her hands into the air. “I am talking about the fact that you told my best friend who has been pining over you for fucking weeks that all of the very obvious flirting you’ve been doing ‘didn’t mean anything,’ and that you just had to let him know that you weren’t interested in him specifically.” Robin paused to take a deep breath and kept barreling on. “And I get not wanting to lead someone on, Eddie—but even I know that was the least tactful way you could have gone about letting him down.”

Eddie shook his head, backing up toward the nearest wall like a cornered animal, because what Robin was saying didn’t make any sense. “I— I don’t—I mean, I do like him. I thought he didn’t like me! I thought he was straight!”

That brought Robin up short. Her shoulders remained set into a tense line, and her brow was still furrowed in distrust, but some of the unrelenting ire slipped away. “You didn’t—? Did he not—? What the fuck, Stevie!” The last part Robin muttered under her breath.

“Did he not, what, Buckley?”

“He didn’t ask you out?”

“No. What? Was he planning to?”

“Yes, numb nuts! Steve’s been trying to ask you out for weeks! I mean I guess mostly this past week—but that’s because before then he’d just been trying to beam the knowledge directly into your head through your thick skull.”

“Oh, shit.” Eddie’s heart dropped into his stomach as the full ramifications of what he’d said caught up to him.

“Yeah, ‘oh, shit,’ Munson.”

“Buckley—” Eddie rushed over to clap both of his hands onto Robin’s shoulders. “Robin. I’ve gotta fix this.”

Robin rolled her eyes. They were still creased at the corners, but the rest of her seemed to have softened a bit. “Yeah, you do,” she said—all low and serious. “You’re gonna have to fucking grovel.”

Eddie nodded. “Can you help me?”

Robin narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But let me make one thing fucking clear, Munson: I am doing this for Steve, not you, capiche? You put one toe out of line and I’ll go to the Wheeler house and grab one of Nancy’s guns.”

Eddie held up his hands in placating surrender. “Message received, loud and clear.”

Robin nodded, satisfied.

Eddie grinned back. “Let’s go get my man.”

there is now a part two!

#stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #steddie #steddie week #steddieweek2023 #steve harrington #eddie munson #(albeit a couple hours past mignight my time but that's just been my pattern thus far)#I don't want to put a steddie fic in the robin or st/bin tags but please know that robin is central to all things in steve's life #including this fic #for everyone who wanted a part two: it now exists #read writes

626 notes · View notes

mightyflamethrower · 8 months

Text

In the last 20 years, the Left has boasted that it has gained control of most of America institutions of power and influence—the corporate boardroom, media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the administrative state, academia, foundations, social media, entertainment, professional sports, and Hollywood.

With such support, between 2009-17, Barack Obama was empowered to transform the Democratic Party from its middle-class roots and class concerns into the party of the bicoastal rich and subsidized poor—obsessions with big money, race, a new intolerant green religion, and dividing the country into a binary of oppressors and oppressed.

The Obamas entered the presidency spouting the usual leftwing boilerplate (“spread the wealth,” “just downright mean country,” “get in their face,” “first time I’ve been proud of my country”) as upper-middle-class, former community activists, hurt that their genius and talents had not yet been sufficiently monetized.

After getting elected through temporarily pivoting to racial ecumenicalism and pseudo-calls for unity, they reverted to form and governed by dividing the country. And then the two left the White House as soon-to-be mansion living, mega-rich elites, cashing in on the fears they had inculcated over the prior eight years.

To push through the accompanying unpopular agendas of an open border, mandatory wind and solar energy, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of the state, Obama had begun demonizing his opponents and the country in general: America was an unexceptional place. Cops were racist. “Clingers” of the Midwest were hopelessly ignorant and prejudiced. Only fundamental socialist transformation could salvage a historically oppressive, immoral, and racist nation.

The people finally rebelled at such preposterousness. Obama lost his party some 1,400 local and state offices during his tenure, along with both houses of Congress. His presidency was characterized by his own polarizing mediocrity. His one legacy was Obamacare, the veritable destruction of the entire system of a once workable health insurance, of the hallowed doctor-patient relationship, and of former easy access to competent specialists.

Yet Obama’s unfufilled ambitions set the stage for the Biden administration—staffed heavily with Obama veterans—to complete the revolutionary transformation of the Democratic Party and country.

It was ironic that while Obama was acknowledged as young and charismatic, nonetheless a cognitively challenged, past plagiarist, fabulist, and utterly corrupt Joe Biden was far more effective in ramming through a socialist woke agenda and altering the very way Americans vote and conduct their legal system.

Stranger still, Biden accomplished this subversion of traditional America while debilitated and often mentally inert—along with being mired in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that may ultimately confirm that he easily was the most corrupt president to hold office in U.S. history.

How was all this possible?

Covid had allowed the unwell Biden to run a surrogate campaign from his basement as he outsourced his politicking to a corrupt media.

Senility proved a godsend for Biden. His cognitive disabilities masked his newfound radicalism and long-accustomed incompetence. Unlike his past failed campaigns, the lockdowns allowed Biden to be rarely seen or heard—and thus as much liked in the abstract as he had previously been disliked in the concrete.

His handlers, the Obamas, and the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren radical Democrats, saw Biden’s half-century pretense as a gladhander—good ole Joe Biden from Scranton—as the perfect delivery system to funnel their own otherwise-unpopular leftwing agendas. In sum, via the listless Biden, they sought to change the very way America used to work.

And what a revolution Biden’s puppeteers have unleashed in less than three years.

They launched a base attack on the American legal system. Supreme Court judges are libeled, their houses swarmed, and their lives threatened with impunity. The Left promised to pack the court or to ignore any decision it resents. The media runs hit pieces on any conservative justice deemed too influential. The prior Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer whipped up a mob outside the court’s doors, and threatened two justices by name. As Schumer presciently put it, they would soon “reap the whirlwind” of what they supposedly had sowed and thus would have no idea what was about to “hit” them.

Under the pretense of Covid fears, balloting went from 70 percent participation on election day in most states to a mere 30 percent. Yet the rates of properly rejected illegal or improper ballots often dived by a magnitude of ten.

Assaults now followed on hallowed processes, laws, customs, and institutions—the Senate filibuster, the 50-state union, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, Election Day, and voter IDs.

Under Biden, the revolution had institutionalized first-term impeachment, the trial of an ex-president while a private citizen, and the indictment of a chief political rival and ex-president on trumped up charges by local and federal prosecutors—all to destroy a political rival and alter the 2024 election cycle.

Biden destroyed the southern border—literally. Eight million entered illegally—no background checks, no green cards, no proof of vaccinations. America will be dealing with the consequences for decades. Mexico was delighted, receiving some $60 million in annual remittances, while the cartels were empowered to ship enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans a year.

“Modern monetary theory,” the Leftist absurdity that printing money ensures prosperity, followed. It has nearly bankrupted the country, unleashed wild inflation, and resulted in the highest interest rates in a quarter-century. Middle-class wages fell further behind as a doddering Biden praised his disastrous “Bidenomics.”

Biden warred on fossil fuels, cancelling federal leases and pipelines, jawboning lending agencies to defund fracking, demonizing state-of-the-art, clean-burning cars, and putting vast areas of oil- and gas-rich federals lands off-limits to drilling.

When gas prices predictably doubled under Biden and the 2022 midterms approached, he tried temporarily to lease out a few new fields, to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and to beg the Saudis, and our enemies, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and the Russians, to pump more oil and gas that Biden himself would not. All this was a pathetic ruse to temporarily lower gas prices before the mid-term elections.

Biden abandoned Afghanistan, leaving the largest trove of military equipment behind in U.S. military history, along with thousands of loyal Afghans and pro-American contractors.

Biden insulted the parents of the 13 Marines blown up in this worst U.S. military debacle since Pearl Harbor. He lied to the parents of the dead that he too lost a son in the Iraq war, and when among them later impatiently checked his watch as he seemed bored with the commemoration of the fallen—and made no effort to hide his sense that the ceremony was tedious to him.

Vladimir Putin summed up the Afghan debacle—and Biden’s nonchalant remark that he wouldn’t react strongly to a “minor” invasion of Ukraine if it were minor—as a green light to invade Ukraine.

When Biden did awaken, his first reaction was an offer to fly the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the country as soon as possible. What has followed proved the greatest European killing ground since the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge, albeit one that has now fossilized into a Verdun-like quagmire that is draining American military supply stocks and killing a half-million Ukrainians and Russians.

Suddenly, there are three genders, not two. Women’s sports have been wrecked by biological men competing as women, destroying a half-century of female athletic achievement. Young girls in locker rooms, co-eds in sororities, and women in prison must dress and shower with biological men transitioning to women by assertion.

There is no longer a commitment to free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union is a woke, intolerant group trying to ban free expression under the pretense of fighting “hate” speech and “disinformation.”

The Left has revived McCarthyite loyal oaths straight out of the 1950s, forcing professors, job applicants, and students applying for college to pledge their commitment to “diversity” as a requisite for hiring, admittance, or promotion. Diversity is our era’s version of the Jacobins’ “Cult of Reason.”

Race relations hit a 50-year nadir. Joe Biden has a long history of racist insults and putdowns. And now as apparent penance, he has reinvented himself as a reverse racial provocateur, spouting nonsense about white supremacy, exploiting shootings or hyping racial tensions to ensure that an increasingly disgusted black electorate does not leave the new Democratic Party.

The military has adopted wokeism, oblivious that it has eroded meritocracy in the ranks and slashed military recruitment. It is underfunded, wracked by internal suspicion, loss of morale and ginned up racial and gender animosity. Its supply stocks are drained. Arms productions is snail-like, and generalship is seen as a revolving door to corporate defense contractor board riches.

Big-city Democratic district attorneys subverted the criminal justice system, destroyed law enforcement deterrence, and unleashed a record crime wave. Did they wish to create anarchy as protest against the normal, or were they Jokerist nihilists who delighted in sowing ruin for ruin’s sake?

Radical racial activists, with Democrat endorsement, demand polarizing racial reparations. The louder the demands, the quieter they remain about smash-and-grab looting, carjacking, and the swarming of malls by disproportionally black teens—even as black-on-black urban murders reach record proportions.

In response, Biden tried to exploit the growing tensions by spouting lies that “white supremacy” and “white privilege” fuel such racial unrest—even as his ill-gotten gains, past record of racist demagoguery and resulting lucre and mansions appear the epitome of his own so-called white privilege.

This litany of disasters could be vastly expanded, but more interesting is the why of it all?

What we are witnessing seems to be utter nihilism. The border is not porous but nonexistent. Mass looting and carjackings are not poorly punished, but simply exempt from all and any consequences. Our downtowns are reduced to a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” where the strong dictate to the weak and the latter adjust as they must. The streets of our major cities in just a few years have become precivilizational—there are more human feces on the sidewalks of San Francisco than were in the gutters of Medieval London.

The FBI and DOJ are not simply wayward and weaponized, but corrupt and renegade. Apparently the perquisite now for an FBI director is the ability either to lie while under oath or better to mask such lying by claiming amnesia or ignorance.

Immigration is akin to the vast unchecked influxes of the late Roman Empire across the Danube and Rhine that helped to finish off a millennium-old civilization that had lost all confidence in its culture and thus had no need for borders.

In other words, the revolution is not so much political as anarchist. Nothing escapes it—not ceiling fans, not natural gas cooktops, not parents at school board meetings, not Christian bakeries, not champion female swimmers, not dutiful policemen, not hard-working oil drillers, not privates and corporals in the armed forces, not teens applying on their merits to college, not anyone, anywhere, anytime.

The operating principle is either to allow or to engineer things to become so atrocious in everyday American life—the inability to afford food and fuel, the inability to walk safely in daylight in our major cities, the inability to afford to drive as one pleases, the inability to obtain or pay back a high interest loan—that the government can absorb the private sector and begin regimenting the masses along elite dictates. The more the people tire of the leftist agenda, the more its architects furiously seek to implement it, hoping that their institutional and cultural control can do what ballots cannot.

We could variously characterize their efforts as destroying the nation to save it, or burning it down to start over, or fundamentally transforming America into something never envisioned by the Founders.

Will their upheaval succeed? All the levers of the power and money are on the side of the revolutionaries. The people are not. And they are starting to wake to the notion if they do not stop the madness in their midst they very soon won’t have a country.

A perfect metaphor for what the progressives have done to America.

356 notes · View notes

lesbian-disaster-academic · 3 months

Text

Since there's been some discussion of this on a prior post I made, let's address

Neurodivergent Skill-Regression: What is it & Why Does it Happen?

Content Warning! This post will make brief mention of various topics, including: childhood abuse (not explicit), depression, suicidal ideation, car accidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, and throwing up.

Okay, let's begin with a quick preface. I'm writing from the Global North, in a capitalist economy, and in a country founded on (ongoing!) systems of colonialism. Therefore, that's how I'll be situating this discussion (just because it's what I know best). Neurodivergence and Capitalist Exploitation Under capitalism, productivity and extraction in the name of profit become of the utmost importance. Extraction can take place in the form of extracting physical resources (think fracking on Turtle Island), extracting labour, etc. Ultimately, neurodivergence itself is not an ill-formed or "bad" mind. It is only conceptualized and coded as such because capitalism and various other interlocking systems of oppression are actively hostile to minds that, in some way, subvert capitalist and colonial ideals. (however, this is not to negate, invalidate, or trivialize the fact that adhd/asd/ocd/bpd/etc. are disabilities. by their very nature, they impede and disrupt functioning. what is considered "functional", however, is determined by this capitalist/colonialist state and the things it values. this is all simply to say that we would be able to more easily exist and thrive within a society that doesn't reward self-destruction in the name of accumulating capital for the upper class) Of course, living in a system that is not built for you is going to be exhausting—it takes a toll on you, both physically and mentally. This can be further compounded if you are marginalized in other ways; for instance, if you're a person of colour, working class, a woman, 2SLGBTQ+, an immigrant, or a combination of these.

Masking and Burnout Many neurodivergent folx are forced into positions in which they have to mask. For the sake of clarity, "masking", in this case, involves concealing one's neurodivergent traits. For me, that might look like suppressing compulsions, consciously regulating my facial expressions, working longer and harder to accomplish tasks because I can't focus, or scripting conversations before I have them. These manifestations are often invisible to outsiders, but they take a heavy toll on us, and can often result in neurodivergent burnout. This is where the skill-regression comes in. An Example... Let me give you a personal example of what neurodivergent skill-regression can look like! Prior to the pandemic, I was a highly productive person. I was designated "gifted" (whatever that means) and was top of my class in every single class. I was participating in (and running) multiple clubs, working a steady job, volunteering within the community, and learning new instruments and languages. I was a skilled pianist and painter, and also very athletic. From the outside looking in, I appeared successful: I had a massive scholarship lined up at the most prestigious university in the country. I was generally well-liked. I was creative and skilled in both the humanities and STEM (mostly humanities lol), etcetera etcetera. But I was in no way okay. I was incredibly depressed and suicidal. I had multiple undiagnosed anxiety disorders and neurodivergencies. I was experiencing relentless abuse at home. I was throwing up every few days out of pure fear and stress. I was constantly sick, crying (in secret, and then later too numb to cry), overwhelmed, exhausted, and apathetic. And yet I refused to stop pushing my body and mind to their limit because I had this ingrained belief surrounding my productivity—if I slowed down, would I be worth anything? At the time, to my mind, the answer was a staunch no (even though I didn't apply this thinking to anyone but myself lol). So I repressed everything. I pushed it all to the side and kept moving forward. To put it in perspective, I got hit by a truck at one point, but I was so scared of being late to a thing and disappointing my parents that I just apologized and kept going. This kind of behaviour went on for close to a decade. And then the pandemic hit. And I was forced to stop. I was made to (by virtue of my relative privilege) take a moment to sit down, look around, and actually feel things. And it hit me like a ton of bricks: All the weight of the anger and fear and everything that I had been repressing for the sake of survival came RUSHING in. Now? You want to know what I'm like now? I am very burnt out and incredibly unproductive. I have the attention span of a gnat. Where I used to be able push through exhaustion or else tamp it down with consistently high levels of adrenaline, I now almost ALWAYS feel tired, to the point where I have to lay down. I used to be able to toss together an essay in the span of a couple hours. And, yes, while I can still put an essay together quickly, it’s not going to necessarily be good. Likewise, where I used to be able to mask my neurodivergent traits, I'm now hyperaware of how exhausting it all is, which makes it more difficult to appear neurotypical in public.

The thing is, when you have something like adhd as well as an anxiety disorder, the anxiety can pretty effectively mask the adhd. But once I started medication and more intense therapy, I got a hold on my anxiety and alllll of my coping mechanisms fell away. I no longer had that constant, vibrating fear to force me to maintain attention, and push myself to the breaking point.

It’s like not aging for 80 years and then suddenly having decades collapse into you in the span of moments. So Where Does This Leave Us? Okay, that was a loooong tangent, sorry. Returning to the original point. As the infinitely cool and talented @revenantscholar mentioned in a previous post of mine, when you exist in an unsafe environment (or one which is generally not built with you in mind), it's difficult to hold onto the skills you once had. Your body goes into survival mode and prioritizes keeping you alive. Once you have returned to a space where you can unmask and be physically/emotionally/mentally SAFE, you have the capacity to relearn some of those skills. Not all of them, necessarily, and not all at once. But these things do return—and even if they don't (listen to me, this is important), that doesn't make you stupid/bad/worthless. You are living in a world that is not built for people like you and I, and it sucks, and it's painful and scary, and we will continue to fight for a better future. In the meantime, it's important to remember that you are worthy of care, compassion, empathy, and support regardless of what you can contribute/do. You are incredibly important and I'm so glad you're here. (Thank you for listening. I'm drawing on my human rights knowledge from my degree, and also my own personal experience. However, feel free to correct me or ask any questions you might have! I'm also happy to provide resources/citations if needed. Now go drink water and rest if you need to! Ily!)

86 notes · View notes

princess-nobody · 2 months

Text

Avatar Rant: Two Avatar takes that bother me

(Pssst! This was originally posted on reddit, but I liked it so much I decided to post it onto my this account! Here's a link to the original if you'd rather read it there!)

So, I saw a semi-viral tweet a while back that bothered me because it not only felt like a complete misunderstanding of the point of Avatar as a film franchise, but also just a very childish view of how societies and different communities function. I can't find it though (I didn't interact with it and it has since been buried) so I apologize for not being able to give the best context.

It was your typical RDA sympathizing humanity first take (makes sense, the account that tweeted it was a walking red flag) that claimed that the na'vi were stupid for not accepting human advancement and technology, that humanity should always put its preservation first, and that the RDA were simply prioritizing the well being of their people whilst the na'vi wanted them gone. I want to start by addressing the latter take(s).

The first and second movies make it very clear that the RDA are NOT prioritizing the survival of Earth or humanity. They are a money hungry organization that want to monetize pandoran resources to their dying people in hopes to squeeze out whatever little money they have left. The people of Earth are said to be protesting them for that very reason, every solution to their planet's problems that they have discovered is insanely expensive and inaccessible to anyone below the upper class one percent. The RDA don't care about humanity, they care about profit, which is the exact reason why their actions are so callous in the films.

There are certainly humans that want to preserve humanity, but I truly cannot wrap my head around how you can watch either film and come to the conclusion that it is the RDA that wants the best for humanity. Avatar is not a "human bad" movie, it is a "corporate greed bad" movie, which is reflective of real life environmental issues. The individual is green, the individual recycles and doesn't litter, the individual cleans their local rivers and sea shores. However, the powerplants continue to polute our air, the corporations continue to flood our oceans with plastic, the rich continue to cut corners and burn the air with private jets.

I truly believe the reading of Avatar as an anti-humanity movie is what has lead to people thinking the RDA are the "good guys". It is because they actually believe the RDA are supposed to represent humanity and their will to keep surviving (and that James Cameron is portraying them as wrong for that), when it is clear they are a representation of the corporate greed that leads to environmental damage and the destruction of humanity.

As for the belief that the na'vi are hostile and somehow wrong for not caring to "advance" in the way humanity did, that is just flat out wrong. When it came to the respectful, peaceful humans such as Grace and her team, the na'vi were incredibly welcoming. I mean, Grace built an entire school for them and taught them human language and other human academics, so clearly they aren't against learning from humans. Again, Avatar is clear about the fact that humans as a collective aren't bad, corporate greed is.

However, why should the na'vi "advance" when there is no need to? Innovation is built on the back of necessity, and in a world where there is no need for certain technological advancements, why should the na'vi chase it? Why do they need phones and tablets and video games and McDonalds? They are living just fine without it. This idea that every society needs to be "modernized", even when they function just fine without said modernization has always driven me up a wall.

This entitlement from the western world is what leads colonial brained weirdos to try and go to indigenous islands and force religion or their world view upon them, because they believe that if a society doesn't function like the "modern" world, it is wrong. The na'vi don't need currency, or modern tech, or modern trends or fast food. They aren't perfect, but they also aren't in a desperate situation that would call for innovation or some sort of technological evolution. They are fine, they don't need nor even want it, and it is strange to believe humanity is in their right to force it upon them.

I'll stop this here because it's getting too long, I would love to hear your thoughts. Last time I made a post in this vein I got some really interesting responses, I couldn't reply to all but I'll try and reblog if that means anything!

62 notes · View notes

pianostrings · 4 months

Text

Rebel Moon Novelization

Some interesting parts from the novelization! Contains potential spoilers for Rebel Moon under the cut.

The novelization opens with the destruction of King Heron's world, as punishment for aiding the Bloodaxes. Noble forces Heron's son, Aris, to kill his father with the bone staff to protect his family before he is conscripted into the army. Noble beats the rest of his family to death anyway.

Kora's sex scene with Den is fleshed out (wink). Inwardly, she admits to liking Gunnar, despite his shyness, but has issues with intimacy and the idea of starting a family.

Hagen, a villager whose wife and daughter died, was the one who found Kora and took her in. He is something of a father figure to her.

Slightly longer dialogue scene with Sam & Jimmy. Features Jimmy's line from the trailer that a 'A king is a man, and a man can fail or betray. But a myth is indestructible.' He mentions that Balisarius had the Jimmies separated from Princess Issa, despite their vow to protect her, and that most of them had never set foot on the Motherworld.

Sam thanks Aris for saving her (❁´◡`❁)

Den takes over as the village leader after Sindri and his wife are bone staffed to death 😓

Before Kora leaves, she asks Hagen to task Private Aris to fix the guns on the dropship she crash-landed on Veldt in.

In Kora's flashback scene, we learn Kora's family lived above the tea shop they owned. She had two older siblings. They are killed by Imperium soldiers while she is upstairs packing.

Kora's scene with Balisarius has dialogue. He introduces himself. She tells him her name is Kora. She believes he is impressed she had the guts to pull the trigger. He renames her on the spot 😒 and takes her as a 'a gift to himself and his legacy' 😒 because 'every leader had an heir'.

Kora's life on the ship is briefly detailed. Balisarius brings her to a surrendering planet and makes her watch the soldiers open fire on its people. She is sent to train at the Imperium military academy and doesn't see Balisarius for years. Before she leaves, he tells her she can't tell anyone about her past or where she came from. She graduates with top marks and her final test is orchestrated by Balisarius: it involves her executing a man without question.

More scenes in the village. Aris keeps his Imperium uniform to keep up appearances for transmissions to the Motherworld.

While trying to fix the ship, Aris and Sam share how their parents died. It's giving young love over shared trauma 🥰 They wake to find there is a deer with antlers removed (important!) roasted on a spit and the ship has been repaired. Aris guesses it was Jimmy who did it.

We hear from Jimmy's perspective that he ran to save Sam because he felt the same connection and loyalty to her as he did Princess Issa (interesting). He decides to make his own choices, carves his own staff, cloaks himself with a robe, and a pair of fashionable deer antlers to go into the wilderness.

Hickman hints at Tarak's backstory-- he says Tarak runs when given the chance and that he let his own people die at the hands of the realm.

Cassius takes a call from someone who makes him more uneasy than Noble, a high scribe named Enoch with abilities that defy logic. Cassius finds Noble predictable in his brutality.

We learn more about Cassius: he doesn't have the implants the realm's upper classes and high-ranking officials make to their bodies because it would leave him open in ways he didn't want. Cassius's family isn't native to Moa (the Motherworld) but had been there for generations and became affluent. His mother's penchant for opulence mounted debts for his father, a senator, and her modifications revealed their circumstances to another senator who blackmails them. Cassius's father trades him to serve with the priests who tells him that silence and observation are powerful tools (interesting).

Sexy scene with Noble and the Octopus, called the Twins. They were gifted to him by a warlord and are one of the few things he actually likes. Not shockingly, he is really into tentacle shit and BDSM. Cassius interrupts and Noble offers to let him go a round with the Twins. Cassius, grossed the eff out, politely declines. It's TMI, even for him.

More Cassius backstory: his career in the priesthood doesn't work out; after his family is ruined and executed, he joins the military order where he meets Noble, who confirms his father was responsible for Cassius's family's downfall & execution. In the academy, Cassius sees Noble's cruelty up close. He thinks of Noble as someone charming and cruel, surrounding himself with slightly smarter but less ambitious people. Good at working his way into the right circles.

Daggus is known throughout the galaxy for its cobalt mines. The land was leveled and indigenous life died out. Workers, mostly refugees, move there with the promise of wealth only to be exploited and live in poor conditions.

Kora offers to help Nemesis with Harmada, but she declines. She says: 'Harmada has grown accustomed to the pain of her grief. I know her rage intimately. We are not enemies.'

After watching Gunnar save the child, Kora thinks that even though he isn't a seasoned warrior, he has the heart of one. She's catching feelings.

In a flashback scene, she watches Princess Issa play in the snow at the winter castle. There is a frozen lake with giant fish and creatures swimming underneath (important later).

Kora witnesses Issa bring the bird back to life and warns her not to show anyone her power. Issa recounts that when she was born she almost killed her mother but when she was placed in her arms, the Queen was miraculously healed. Everyone present was sworn to secrecy. Unbeknownst to them, the King watches this scene from the castle window.

The King approaches her later and tells Kora that Issa likes having her as a guard and expresses his happiness at her new role. He asks if she misses her homeworld, but Kora doesn't respond. Balisarius told the King that Kora was abandoned as a child.

King Levitica agreed to help the Bloodaxes because he finds the Imperium's notion of 'homogeneous purity vile' and because 'they neither respect nor value anything that doesn't serve them at the expense of their own lives.' His comfort and kindness remind Kora of Hagen, her father figure on Veldt.

While waiting for the Bloodaxes, Tarak tells the others of how the people of his home, the Samandrai system, were killed or enslaved by the Imperium. Kora asks why he wasn't taken and conscripted to be made an example of. When he doesn't respond, she surmises he left before that could happen. Kai calls him a coward and ribs the other men. He and Titus almost get into a fight. Gunnar tells Kora he thinks Kai is a dick.

Darrian tells Devra that "people need a revolution they can see". When he refers to not allowing another world to fall in their name, he is presumably referring to King Heron's world at the beginning of the book.

A dying King Levitica tells Noble that "goodness will return to the universe. Endless war and needless death will end in the universe., There will be one to bring it back." So sad to see the end of his squidgy face.

Kora and Tarak speak; Tarak doesnt trust Kai, but she brushes it off. Girl, there are SO many alarm bells ringing.

Kai's betrayal reminds Kora of the "first monumental betrayal in her life."

There is more dialogue between Noble and the team as they are bound and about to be transported. Noble mocks Nemesis's dead children (seriously, fuck this guy!!!). The spine machines are meant to paralyse them for transport.

Noble asks if Gunnar will be a problem being transported unbound but Kai laughs it off, saying Gunnar is a coward. Oop. That was a bad read.

The fight sequence actually has them fighting together. Titus acknowledges Nemesis saving his life. Tarak and Titus fight happily side by side.

Darrian's death scene is vague; it says his body 'shut[s] down like the hunk of metal he clung to' while screaming 'Death to the Motherworld! Death to the Realm! For Shasu!' while hysterically laughing.

More dialogue when Noble and Kora fight. When she looks over his (presumably) dead body, she wishes it was Balisarius instead and is sad to know that she'll likely never be able to confront him in person.

There's a "who's going to fly this thing" moment with Kai's freighter. A crime this was left out. (Also, they don't answer this; the freighter apparently just lands itself when they arrive back in Providence.)

Back on Veldt, Sam invites Aris to stay in her home. She loves sewing and quilting, which she learned from her grandmother. Aris likes the quilts, which is good because she has so many.

After the company arrive in the village, they are followed by two Hawkshaws at a distance. They are watched, in turn, by Jimmy.

Devra commands her ships return to 'Base One'.

The astral plane setting where Noble meets Balisarius is confirmed to be the winter gardens of the royal palace where the Princess Issa scene was set.

Balisarius' face is noted to have been kept young with 'fortune and science' (yeah, and bad CGI 😐)

It's explicitly confirmed that Kora is responsible for the assassination of the royal family, or at least is being blamed for it. Noble says: 'I have found her. The hated other who murdered in cold blood that which we held most dear.' He also calls her 'the ethnic impurity, the monster, the Scargiver, the enemy of us all.' Balisarius says Arthelais is the 'assassin of the royal family, she who killed the king and queen, as well as her charge, the Princess Issa.' - From Rebel Moon Part One - A Child of Fire: The Official Movie Novelization by V. Castro Other interesting parts:

The scribes extract the teeth of their victims and put them on their masks in front of an image of Princess Issa to 'honour her.' The effect is, not surprisingly, extremely horrifying.

While Kora is living on the ship, she sees a Kali in a giant metal encasement with 'thick tubes of red and blue energy' and 'something alive in there'. She feels sorry for it, and thinks it is the only other thing on the ship who understands the feeling of being trapped.

Kora's off-worlder status is being made a big deal of, and I'm still not sure why. Balisarius apparently gets no heat for raising the assassin that murders the royal family?

Cassius is given way too much backstory for him to just be a random henchman. I suspect he may be collecting information to overthrow Noble at some point.

I am outing myself as a Sam is Princess Issa truther, even if it doesn't make any sense at all. But I think it's neat.

Sam and Aris ❤

Jimmy ❤

#rebel moon #rebel moon spoilers #a child of fire #rebel moon novelization #kora #gunnar #tarak #atticus noble #cassius #balisarius #Princess Issa #sorry if there’s typos! I will not be bothering to spellcheck this

72 notes · View notes

thee-horny-thicky · 2 months

Text

Consequences

So a while back, I wrote what was supposed to be the beginning of another fic, about Suguru losing his girl to Satoru. However, I never picked it back up. With Savior concluded, I'll probably start working on it soon. Until then, enjoy this snippet :)

Every little choice you make has the potential to affect the very course of your future. Asking someone how they’re doing may prevent them from ending their own life. Deciding to ask a stranger for directions can lead to meeting your soulmate. Waking up too late can save you from being a victim of a brutal attack. Accepting a drink from a stranger can lead to you being kidnapped and sold. Driving your car just a little too fast can result in you dying a fiery death.

Making little choices that alter your life and that of those around you is the very basis of the butterfly effect. Your actions always have consequences, after all.

Suguru Geto was now learning this the hard way. Not answering a few texts, rejecting some invitations to hang out, and missing a few days of school seemed like minor choices. He hadn’t been in the right headspace for the past few weeks. Riko’s death had impacted him, and every day, he regretted not allowing Satoru to slaughter those fucking twisted cultists.

Their applause continued to echo through his head, the memory of the way they rejoiced at the death of an innocent girl never failing to sicken him.

He’d thought nothing of taking time to himself to cope and intended to make it up to every single one of his friends. You, most especially. He’d begun to long for the feeling of you in his arms and planned to treat you to a date night to apologize for his absence.

But actions have consequences, and the consequence for his was seeing Satoru flaunt you around the school. Unlike him, the heir of the Gojo clan had no reservations about showing you off to the world.

And why wouldn’t he? You were so quick-witted, a living challenge to the idea that pretty girls couldn’t be intelligent or capable. Your cursed energy could turn explosive, and he delighted in seeing the sadistic smile on your gorgeous face as you blew up 1st-grade curses with ease. You weren’t from a major clan, but you were from an upper-middle-class family of sorcerers that’d traveled the world, making you miles more experienced than most of your peers.

Your knowledge was something he loved about you, and your technique was something he admired about you. He adored seeing you high off adrenaline and caught up in a battle, how light your laugh sounded, the way your pretty eyes gleamed. The nature of your technique made you destructive, and you embraced that wholeheartedly.

You’d been the yin to his yang, and he allowed you to slip through his fingers.

Suguru hadn’t wanted to broadcast your relationship, not ready to fully commit to you. He was a part of the strongest duo, and that came with a lot of responsibility, which allowed little room for love.

Or, so it had seemed, as Satoru seemed to be juggling the two just fine. Because unlike him, Satoru had taken Riko’s death as a testament to how short life was and didn’t hesitate to take his chance with you.

He regretted not adhering to your pleas to publicly claim you, and anger would flare inside of him every time he wondered how long you held feelings for Satoru. Surely, his time away from you wasn’t enough for your feeling to fade away.

But either you were a damned good actress, or you’d truly fallen out of love with him, and transferred your feeling to his white-haired friend. The two of you were caught up in your own little world, giggling as Shoko looked at you and Satoru in disgust. Watching the two of you was sickeningly sweet, and whereas the brunette seemed repulsed by your bountiful PDA, it only made Suguru bitter.

It should be him holding you, not Satoru. The man already had everything, being blessed in every way imaginable. He had looks, money, power, and a stupidly large personality. Surely, it wouldn’t be too much to let Suguru have you? If anything, you should be his reward for all he’s gone through, not another thing he’s lost.

Satoru brushed his lips over yours, and though the kiss was chaste, it was too much for Suguru to bear. Were you trying to make him jealous, allowing your ex’s friend to be so handsy with you?

As Shoko faked a gag, Suguru shot from his seat. His friends look at him in confusion, while you merely rolled your eyes. When you look at him, there was no bitterness or satisfaction in your gaze. No, it was worse with that, as your eyes held no discernable feelings for him. It was a far cry from the way you looked at Satoru, so full of affection, the same you way used to look at him.

“You good, bro?” Satoru questioned; his arm wrapped around your shoulders.

No, he wasn’t, and his best friend was part of the reason why. He never gave much thought to the flirty comments Satoru aimed your way, because that’s just who Satoru is, a flirt. He thought it was just playful banter, not that he was expressing his true feelings for you.

How wrong he’d been.

“I’m fine,” he gritted out, gathering his things.

He could tell none of you believed him, but he didn’t care. He needed to get away from you and Satoru before he did something he’d regret.

“Where are you going?” Shoko asked, twirling the stick she kept in her mouth.

To find a curse to brutally kill. He needed a way to release his jealous rage.

“I have something to do.”

“Oh, wait, before you go, we’re going out tonight,” Satoru revealed, gently stroking your back as you leaned against him. “Wanna come?”

And see you all dolled up, wrapped around Satoru, and pretending he didn’t exist? He’d have to pass.

“I’ll see.”

“Oh, c’mon,” you whined, finally acknowledging him. “We haven’t hung out in so long!”

He had to hold back a scoff at your faux concern. If you really did care, you would’ve waited for him until he was ready to come back to you.

“…I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll text you the deets,” you said, ignoring his hesitance as you pulled your phone from your pocket.

Nodding, he began to walk away, stopping when his phone buzzed. His eyes widened at your message.

You: Stop being a little bitch and text Satoru back. He misses you.

You: I know you’ve seen them.

He quickly put his phone away, worried he’d throw the device if he stared at your texts much longer. Of course, you didn’t miss him. No, you were only concerned about Satoru.

Turning back, he shot you a glare, but your focus was again on Satoru. Not even Shoko noticed him, too concerned about making fun of you two.

Not bothering to hide his soured expression, he stomped away. Maybe he would go out tonight, just to put a damper on yours. Perhaps, he’d find a pretty thing to cuddle up with as you had with his best friend, though he doubted he’d elicit a reaction from you. Regardless, he needed some way to get the bitterness out of his system, and fucking it out might just be the best release possible.

So, as he stomped away, he fired off a text to Satoru to let him know he’d be in attendance.

46 notes · View notes

acartonofnothing · 4 months

Text

In my opinion this scene is all about class.

Taigen grew up poor. I know what it's like to live in the chaos that is poverty. I understand worrying about affording to survive, whilst watching the upper class be oblivious, or straight up denying your suffering, it sucks. Sometimes when I watch my family fight with the government for benefits. I think of the beauty of a 9 to 5 office job. The dream of so many of us lower class people (especially immigrants), the goal even. Akemi can't relate to that. Although it's a prison It promises the security of happiness and peace. As the world around him burns, Taigen doesn't see it cause he doesn't want to be great. He doesn't want to break the regime. He wants to live a life that I'd what he views as "great." (Financial stability lol)

However although I understand taigen, I'm with Akemi to truly be happy, you have to be "great." You have to fight you're oppressor. The destruction Perfectly symbolised by the burning in Akemis background. Simultaneously symbolising her rage and why it's impossible to be happy.

#blue eye samurai #blue eye samurai taigen #blue eye samurai akemi #taigen #akemi #taigen x akemi #eat the rich #eat the fucking rich #tax the rich

56 notes · View notes

handkinkbis · 7 months

Text

My desperate attempt to slow down these gifs enough so we can see what's actually happening in them.

Episode 13-16 speculation after the cut.

Hongjo sees flashbacks of herself as Aengcho trapped in a well with spells securing her prison. It's nighttime and Mujin has come to her aid. Did Na Jungbeom's (Creepy Gardener's) past self trap her in there after attacking her? He practices black magic/the darker side of shamanism, so he would have the skill and probably the motive (to stop his love interest (?) from escaping). Has he cursed Aengcho with something?

Aengcho exits a cabin wearing the same outfit with the same wounds on her face, presumably the next morning. She looks devastated/in pain. Is Mujin in the cabin? Did Aengcho run away from Mujin? Or did they agree to meet later? Is she holding something (other than her injuries)?

Eunwol: "You already know. Before your life ends, nothing ends." Either her own curse or a spell she has cast will not end before she dies.

Mujin follows with a look of resolve and a new wound on his face that wasn't there in the well scene. He looks like he's been crying for some time, or like he's stayed up all night.

Mujin catches up to Aengcho. We know he kills her soon after and "the karma" from this murder will curse his family line.

Things we know about Aengcho:

Aengcho was a reincarnation without a name until Mujin named her after the flower, primrose.

Presumably Aengcho has been reborn at least once before, as has Eunwol.

Aengcho could see the future of others, but not her own.

She was carried to an elderly shaman woman's house as a child, the shaman possibly being present day Eunwol. Perhaps Aengcho's parents were killed by the same illness that made her sick?

Aengcho was a lower level shaman who developed a "new skill" in adulthood. Hong Jo in present day has been using spells from Aengcho's spell book successfully (love spell, fair skin spell, disease curing spell, others?), so she retains her shaman skills.

Things we know about Mujin:

Mujin was their town's governor's son, so from a wealthy upper class family.

He may have taken the state exam to become a (legal?) scholar out of his father's wish/command, although he talked about joining the military and was told (or lied to) by Aengcho that he would "work his way up" there. Mujin took the military service exam and served the king according to Shin Yu. (ep 7).

Was Mujin betrothed to someone else in the past, like present day Shin Yu was?

Mujin was either the person to bury Aengcho's spell books underneath the shrine at Mount Onju, or Aengcho told him where they were buried. After killing Aengcho he requested in a note or a will that his family preserve the shrine for generations (so that Hong Jo could find the spell books in the future).

Mujin asked Aengcho to run away with him at the fireworks bridge, so that they could be together.

One other person was supposed to remember the past along with Eunwol, Shin Yu and Hong Jo. Presumably that's Na Jungbeom, the modern day gardener. Na Jungbeom left a love destruction spell (the doll) by the Mount Onju shrine in present day. He was seeking to destroy his love for Hong Jo (her stolen pyjamas) and to curse Shin Yu for dating her. In an earlier episode he claims to have drunk Hong Jo's love spell water, so he might be under Hong Jo's spell. He cursed Shin Yu again with the help of Nayeon who delivered a plant with a spell into Shin Yu's office. After that Shin Yu could feel Aengcho's hand again and Shin Yu collapsed in the elevator.

Eunwol mentioned in episode 8 that there was an honest and strong man by Hong Jo's side who was a reincarnation of a eunuch. Past life Hong Jo had tried falling in love with the eunuch after she couldn't be together with the king (again, class differences). The eunuch could be a reference to Jaekyung, who doesn't seem to remember his past lifes.

Will the two shamans face off in a future episode? What was Aengcho's new skill? Possession?

What's clear is that everything up until now has been kismet, including Hong Jo's transferral to the park department allowing her to meet Shin Yu, and Shin Yu favoring his left hand due to his curse leading him to drinking Hong Jo's love potion. It's been unavoidable. They cannot go against their destiny together.

#destined with you #not really spoilers but ehhh some heavy speculating that might spoil someone #so spoiler tag just in case :)#dwu spoilers #also feel free to chip in with any theories #i haven't seen the twitter/x theories so i'm curious to hear about them #**#my gifs

93 notes · View notes

thenewgothictwice · 5 months

Text

From Jehad Abusalim: "I've known Refaat Alareer (@itranslate123) since I was 17. He taught me my first English writing course. More than a teacher, he was a mentor, a friend, and he truly cared about his students beyond the classroom. His passion was the English language, but he didn't teach it as a means of disassociating from society, as is common among many English-speaking upper and middle classes in the third world. For Refaat, English was a tool of liberation, a way to break free from Gaza's prolonged siege, a teleportation device that defied Israel's fences and the intellectual, academic, and cultural blockade of Gaza.

When Refaat taught English to me and my friends, he ensured we read Malcolm X, or el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, as he often reminded us to call him. He emphasized that learning a language requires understanding its culture and being critical and mindful that language is not free from questions of power and representation.

Refaat's journey in learning and teaching was filled with struggles. His life was challenging, marked by significant family losses. Yet, he persevered, fought back, and wrote back. One day, many of us, as Refaat's students, will share parts of his story. However, today, let's remember that Refaat has a family in Gaza mourning a loving father and husband. If we owe Refaat anything, it is to continue our fight until a ceasefire is achieved, until the destruction in Gaza ceases. So, #CeasefireNOW! (In the picture, Refaat, @YousefAljamal, and I on the Staten Island Ferry, a moment from Refaat's @GazaWritesBack book tour in the United States in 2014.)"

#refaat alareer #gaza #palestine

71 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 18 days

Text

You cannot understand the failure of Conservative rule unless you accept that we are living with the failure of honestly held Conservative beliefs. The UK is in crisis, not because Tories are criminals or charlatans or fools, although they can be all of these things, but because they tried to govern according to their sincerely held beliefs and sent us into a deep crisis.

I accept that this is a hard concession for the government’s opponents to make. They like to think of Conservatives as crooks. And they are right in part. The Tory administration from 2010 to the present, which offers peerages for £3 million to passing bidders, has been the most corrupt government of the modern era.

Why, then, pay these crooks the courtesy of taking them seriously?

Meanwhile, those of us brought up in the British class system have a second reason for refusing to offer Conservatives the smallest mercy.

David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and, for a while, their Liberal sidekick Nick Clegg, fit our resentful image of dilettantish public-school boys: foppish wreckers, who do not care about the damage they inflict as long as they can stay at the top of the heap.

I have lost count of the number of times anti-Tory columnists have reached for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lines from the Great Gatsby to describe our rulers.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

There is a terrific piece in the current edition of the New Yorker on fin de regime UK by Sam Knight. Without endorsing the notion that we have been ruined by dilettantes, his interviewees provide plenty of evidence to support it.

“It’s all about constantly drawing dividing lines,” a former Conservative party strategist told him. “That’s all you need. It’s not about big ideological debates or policies or anything.”

“He is not a Brexiteer,” George Osborne said of Boris Johnson. “I really would go to my grave saying, deep down, Boris Johnson did not want to leave the E.U”.

Knight himself, while never losing sight of the suffering austerity brought, says that the best way to think about the ruling politics of the past 14 years is to see it as a “psychodrama enacted, for the most part, by a small group of middle-aged men who went to élite private schools, studied at the University of Oxford, and have been climbing and chucking one another off the ladder of British public life” ever since.

Clearly, there is truth in this. But we will not save the country merely by replacing upper-class chancers with middle-class moralists.

However satisfying a rhetorical tactic, dismissing you opponents as liars and crooks misses that they can be far more dangerous when they are wholly in earnest. As the Conservatives were when they were at their most destructive.

The damage austerity caused to schools, local authorities, the criminal justice system and national defence (a subject, incidentally, we should worry more about given Russia’s aggression) flowed from the authentic Conservative belief that lower rates of taxation produced economic growth.

There is a strong link between Liz Truss and George Osborne.

The 2010 Cameron government cold-bloodedly refused to take advantage of a once-in-300-years opportunity to borrow to invest in infrastructure at next-to-zero interest rates.

Instead, it paid off the debt accrued in the finance crisis by cutting public expenditure rather than raising taxes.

Do not underestimate the extremism that followed.

The Office for Budget Responsibility said of the period up to 2018

“In the 12 years from the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2007-08 the UK public finances will have suffered their largest peacetime shock in living memory, followed – on current policy – by one of the biggest deficit reduction programmes seen in any advanced economy since World War II.”

From Osborne to Truss, Conservatives genuinely believed that low taxes would produce economic growth, and they have never had a programme to turn to when their strategy failed.

As we can now see.

Knight cites some horrendous figures.

Between 2010 and 2018, funding for police forces in England fell by up to a quarter. Officers stopped investigating burglaries. Only four per cent now end in prosecution. In 2021, the median time between a rape offense and the completion of a trial reached more than two and a half years. In 2023, hundreds of school buildings had to be closed for emergency repairs, because the country’s school-construction budget had been cut by forty-six per cent between 2009 and 2022.

I could go on. But the point worth noticing is that at all times between 2010 and 2016 Osborne’s austerity programme had the full support of the Tory press, Tory donors and Tory MPs, and many of them went on to support Liz Truss in 2022.

There is an effort underway to rewrite the Conservatives' time in power. The period from 2010 to 2016 is presented as an era of moderate conservatism ruined by the aberrations of Johnson and Truss. In truth, the continuity is more striking than the change.

The result of 14-years of Conservative rule is the wrecking of the public sector combined with the highest taxes the UK has experienced since 1945.

As policy wonks now joke in their rip-roaring way, the British used to want American levels of taxes and European levels of public service. Now they have American levels of public service with European levels of tax.

The fiscal room for manoeuvre of the next Labour government has already been curtailed. It will not have pots of money to bail out local authorities, universities and the court system, to pick just three of the many deserving cases.

It will have to encourage growth

Economically, the quickest way to do it is to rejoin the EU. But politically it is a nightmare, I agree with George Osborne that Boris Johnson didn’t believe in Brexit. I wrote in 2016 that going with the Brexit campaign was the smart move for a charlatan on the make.

But fascinating though the speculations about the court politics of the 2010s are, they have no relevance to the urgent need to halt the UK’s decline by rejoining the EU.

We can’t because of the tyranny of the anti-European minority, which unlike Boris Johnson, has an authentic belief in Brexit.

Indeed, so great is the minority’s power, British politics does not even talk about Brexit. It is as if, as George Osborne says, we are in the old Soviet Union and essential questions cannot be debated for fear of offending the ruling ideology.

Most people now regard Brexit as a mistake. But then there are the Brexit diehards, who so resemble 20th century communists when they insist that Brexit has not failed, but simply has not been properly tried yet. Beyond them, are those who think that Brexit went fine, or who don’t want to reopen the question, or don’t care about our economic fortunes.

Under our electoral system, a dedicated minority can have real power. The majority of Labour voters support rejoining the EU, but they will vote Labour whatever European policy the party puts forward. A minority of pro-Brexit voters may even now turn away from Labour if it supports Europe, however, and lose them seats in the north of England. (Or at least that is what the party believes.)

Labour politicians feel they must wait until an overwhelming majority of the population realise that Brexit was a monumental blunder.

If only the Tories had just been a bunch of crooks. They would have stolen some money but that would have been the end of it.

As it is, it will take us years to recover from their sincerely held beliefs. Assuming, that is, we recover at all.

36 notes · View notes

lets-try-some-writing · 1 year

Note

Okay, so, what would happen if Megatron met the sparkling kiddos? Thought of this before the posts of the sparklings growth spurts (maybe this ask could be set after their growths? Or when the team is rested enough so they don't pass out cold) and them being stolen by MECH. Also, that and the fact Starscream playing Uncle to Miko in the growth spurts post is funny.

I also think Optimus would use the kids Cybertronain names, honestly.

Well to keep with the timeline, I will set this little scenario after the sparkling's initial growth spurts and their run in with MECH. And yeah, I think he would use their Cybertronian names, and I would honestly like to start implementing them in my writing. But for the sake of keeping everyone on the same page, I have been using the sparkling's human names.

Of course if you lovely people would like me to start using their Cybertronian names instead, then I will gladly begin doing so.

Megatron and the Sparklings

After seeing Optimus completely toss any and all morals out the window during the MECH incident, Megatron was incredibly wary of going anywhere near the Autobots little ones. The closest analogy he could come up with for what would happen if he even tried was a situation the humans had. That being going near a mother bear and her cubs, which allegedly tended to leave more humans dead than alive. After witnessing what happened to the agents of MECH, Megatron found himself largely in agreement with the analogy.

As such he steered as clear as he could from the sparklings whenever they managed to get through a groundbridge or appeared out on the ground. There was an unspoken rule between him and the Autobots. He never touched the sparklings, and in turn Optimus didn't shred him and then crush him like a soda can. However due to a series of events Megatron couldn't even fathom, he ended up with the sparklings in his care after the Autobots were scattered in a groundbridge accident.

Unable to contact them due to the Autobots being scattered across the globe, Megatron was left with three very unhappy sparklings. As such he took the sparklings back to the nemesis for safekeeping while he hurriedly began hunting down the Autobots before Prime decided murder was the best option available to him. However since the Autobots were so far apart, Megatron found himself with the sparklings for over a week, a fact that he came to hate very quickly. He would never dare to touch the sparklings, not after what he saw with MECH... but Primus, did he want to strangle each of them after less than an hour.

Miko was the most irritating, her first response being to scream like a banshee and shred everything in sight. Megatron was half tempted to throw her off the nemesis in rage, but he controlled the urge by dragging Starscream over to deal with her instead. And while it did stop her from screaming, it did not stop her reign of destruction. If anything, Starscream being given the task of watching over her only served to make it worse. She and Starscream went about causing disaster after disaster, including but not limited to: An explosion in the reactor room because they were trying to play hide and seek and got carried away. A ship wide rebellion over the lack of guard rails on board after Miko fell off a ledge and got a dent in her plating. And the complete vandalization of the upper decks during a class in mural painting for Miko.

Oh the urge to blow them both to bits was strong, but Megatron restrained himself. They were irritating, but they were not outright harming him. It was fine, besides, it kept Starscream from trying to kill him for more than a day.

Jack however was by no means so easily placated. He was a warframe, built specifically for combat and physically incapable of controlling himself at such a young age without his Sire or other relatives. And as the only other warframe on board, Megatron was left with the task of handling Jack, a task that was not at all enjoyable. Jack didn't trust him at all, and that in turn meant that at every opportunity the little monster tried to attack, bite, kick, or otherwise harm Megatron. It didn't really hurt so Megatron mostly just let Jack chomp on his legs while growling, often dragging the sparkling behind him as he walked. Eventually Megatron put Jack in a box to keep him from breaking his denta, and through that method he got a solid hour of piece before the sound of shredding metal reached him.

When he looked at the box he had placed Jack in, there was a hole in the side and no sparkling to be seen. But evidently Jack only cared about attacking him since the first thing the sparkling did was chomp down on Megatron's leg as soon as he crouched down to examine the situation. From that point on there was no escape for long. No matter where he put Jack, the sparkling found a way out, often at the cost of the sparkling's plating, claws, and fangs. More than once he had to take Jack to Knockout, only to watch with fury as Jack only hissed at the medic and then proceeded to return to molesting Megatron the moment the repairs were complete.

Megatron: Why are you like this?

Jack: *gnawing on his arm and hissing*

Megatron: Ah yes, I almost forgot that you are Optimus's spawn.

Rafael in comparison was infinitely easier to see to... if it weren't for the sparkling taking all of Soundwave's attention. Rafael cried, refused to fuel, and screamed himself into recharge whenever Soundwave wasn't around. This when combined with Soundwave's increadible loneliness and desire to care for cassettes led the spymaster to be completely enraptured with the newspark. And this in turn meant that suddenly Soundwave's loyalty was questionable as the spymaster threw everything unrelated to Rafael onto the backburner. Soundwave grew to be extra aggressive, attacking anyone who came too close on sight, only begrudgingly allowing Megatron near. He even bodily threw a Vehicon that caused Rafael marginal distress across the hall. Megatron had not feared Soundwave since the days when they fought in the pits... but with his spymaster in a state of protectiveness, Megatron watched his steps.

The week that Megatron spent hunting down the Autobots and convincing them that "no he did not harm their sparklings, please put the blaster down" was hell. Without Soundwave to run everything, with Starscream and Miko destroying everything, and Jack being an every present irritant, Megatron wanted to drop dead by the end of it all. He very nearly cried tears of relief when the Autobots finally regrouped and he practically threw the sparklings at them. Of course Soundwave was very reluctant to hand over his charge, but after having a hushed conversation with Optimus, he did so (much to the relief of literally every Decepticon).

Silently Megatron swore that day that never again would he take care of the little abominations. He thought about it and decided that if there was a next time, he would risk being shredded by Optimus rather than take the sparklings with him. Besides, he was fairly certain the feral little monstrosities could fend for themselves if their chaotic abilities were any indicator.

Optimus: Thank you Megatron. This deed will not be forgotten.

Megatron: *having flashbacks to his week of pain* Next time I will kill the little vermin.

Megatron avoided the sparkling like the plague after that incident and tried not to think too hard on it when both his second in command and his spymaster vanished at times and returned covered in stickers.

#maccadam #transformers #transformers prime #tfp kids as sparklings #megatron #soundwave #starscream #decepticons #megatron aint ever having sparklings of his own now #the fear of the autobot's sparklings had rendered him incapable of caring for small things #he probably was so tired he didn't even buffer out all of Jack's bite marks until like a week later

253 notes · View notes