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ijustwant2write · 3 years

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Fight or Flight-Anthony Bridgerton x Reader

(GIF credit to @ladycolinbridgerton)

Requested by anonymous: ‘Hiii,Love your writings! Could you do something Bridgerton, Anthony x reader where the reader tries to stop the duel and gets hurt? Angst/fluff?!’

Characters: Anthony Bridgerton x Reader, Daphne Bridgerton x Reader (sister-in-law), Collin Bridgerton x Reader (brother-in-law)

Meanings: (Y/N)=Your name

Warnings: Duel (guns, mention of death), injuries, angst, fluff

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Collin and I laughed as we both carried Violet through the foyer of the home, clearly someone had too much to drink. My mother-in-law continued to deny this through her giggling.

“Of course not, you are completely sober.” Collin joked as we made it to the stairs.

“And I’m sober enough to know when you’re being impertinent.” Violet said to her son, still holding my hand.“Good night dears.”

“Good night mother.”

“Good night.”

Collin and I shared a look as she went upstairs, failing to hold in our laughter. We both doubled over as we laughed, until we heard someone call us. Turning to our left, we saw Anthony and Benedict in the doorway.

“Come here.” Anthony hissed.

“Good God. Did someone die?” Collin whined.

“What? What’s happened?” I asked, suddenly panicking.

“Collin, get here, now.” Anthony instructed, his younger brother complying.

I followed.“Anthony, what’s wrong? Is someone hurt? Are you in trouble?” I didn’t mean for all the questions but I loved him too much for something to happen to him.

He shoved Collin inside, stepping out and shutting the door behind him.“It doesn’t concern you darling. Just go up to bed.”

“Wait,” I grabbed onto his arm before he could get away,“Anthony, please don’t shut me out.”

“This isn’t for women’s ears. Please, do as I say.”

Anthony kissed my forehead tenderly, before he quickly ripped his arm away, looking sympathetic as he did so. The door shut, and although I was tempted to burst in there, I knew this was something out of my league. Sighing, I reluctantly walked away, slipping off my heels before slowly making my way upstairs.

As I prepared for bed, my mind was distant. I couldn’t stop wondering what their meeting was about. Anthony looked stressed (even more than usual), and the fact that the eldest brothers were together meant this business was serious. Once my maids were finished and gone, I sat up in bed, having left some candles lit. At first I thought reading might take my mind off things, but the romantic novel only made me think of my husband more. I was tired from the ball, feet throbbing from dancing, which made me believe I could fall asleep. I wasn’t able to fool myself, unfortunately stuck awake again. Groaning in frustration, I stood, making my way to the door. I hesitated, wondering if I should really go storming downstairs when Anthony told me otherwise. No, I had to check on my love.

Opening the door, I heard someone else do the same. Poking my head out, I looked down the hall, seeing Daphne also awake. She rushed towards me, grabbing my hand without a word and dragging me out of my room.

“Woah, Daphne, woah, slow down!” I exclaimed quietly, stopping her at the top of the stairs.“Why are you rushing downstairs? What’s wrong?”

“My brother is doing something terribly stupid, and I cannot stand by doing nothing.” She said, tugging on my arm as she continued her route.

That made my heart beat even greater, terrified for what my husband could be a part of. I kept up with her, still tightly holding her hand until we burst into the room the men had their meeting in. Collin was the only one in there, looking alarmed when he saw us.

“Where have they gone?” Daphne demanded to know.

Collin sighed.“Daph-”

“Tell me where this duel takes place.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Duel?! Anthony has gone to a duel?! With who?!” I exclaimed.

“So that I may prevent it from happening.” Daphne continued.

“Hastings has done you a grave dishonour.”

“Can someone please explain what is happening?” I stood beside them, though neither took any notice.“What does the Duke of Hastings have to do with any of this?”

“Surely you wish to see him pay?”

“Not with his life.” Daphne snapped back.

“Anthony is dueling with Hastings?! What if they kill each other?”

“It will not come to that.” Collin finally addressed me.“The Duke will remember his honour once he finds himself on the deadly end of a pistol.”

“And if he does not?” Daphne said.

“They will both do the gentlemanly thing and fire their pistols wide. Now allow them to bring this ugly business to a conclusion themselves.”

Daphne groaned as I began pacing around the room.“Do you know how many times I’ve heard that said? Myself and (Y/N)? That we should leave the men to their business and to not concern ourselves with such weighty affairs? Whose affairs, right now, are my future, my family.”

“This isn’t going to end well, you know it Collin.” I stopped walking around, crossing my arms over my chest in frustration.

“(Y/N) is right. Anthony is too angry to fire wide and Simon is too stubborn to yield. You did not see them in that garden.”

“No, I did not, and neither did anyone else. You should be happy that no one saw anything.” Collin pointed out.

So something dishonourable happened in the gardens of the party. Something that has cause my husband to want to duel an old friend. Part of me felt slightly angered towards Daphne, she had been playing with fire around the Duke, it’s all Anthony went on about for the last few weeks.

“Only someone did see.” Daphne realised.

Collin and I stared at her wide eyed.

“Cressida Cowper. Collin, you must tell me where they’ve gone.”

“I’m coming with you.” I declared.

“Neither of you are going, Anthony will have my head-”

“Collin.” I stood in front of him, putting on the angriest face I could.“My husband may be about to lose his life and I knew nothing about it. Believe me, he will be reprimanded for that, but if you do not tell us where these stupid men are right now, it will be me having your head, not Anthony!”

After pressuring Collin to reveal where the men were, we raced to the stables, both Daphne and I still in our nightgowns, with only a cloak to cover us from the wind whipping against us as we rode. Our poor horses were not expecting this early call, using what energy they had to gallop as fast as possible. My throat was dry, heart racing and mind drowning with thoughts about what could be happening right now. Had they even started? Were the shots fired?

We rode out of the country and into large fields. It seemed that we would never reach them in time. I kept my eye out for any signs of people or horses, praying that my husband wouldn’t be bleeding out on the ground. Why hadn’t he told me? He hadn’t even said goodbye. All I got was a simple kiss on the forehead, nothing other than that. Even if he did survive, he would have to leave this place, but was he going to leave without me?

“There they are!” Daphne shouted to us, speeding her horse ahead.

“Daphne! Wait!” I yelled after her, but she was too far away.

There were multiple bodies up ahead, and it looked like the duel had only just started, they were taking their steps already. I urged my horse to go faster, screaming Anthony’s name, but he couldn’t hear me. The men turned, ready to aim and fire. Tears started falling down my cheeks, quickly drying from the wind hitting my face. I was getting so close, but it still wasn’t enough. Daphne had somehow made it to them, but as the gunshots echoed out, she was caught in the middle of it, her horse rearing up and throwing her off.

As she landed on the ground, my horse also got spooked, rearing up as hers did, though I managed to stay on. However, it went hurtling forwards, and I couldn’t regain any control. I screamed as I tried to grab the rein again, feeling my balance slip away. One minute I was managing to stay upright on the horse, the next I had fallen off to my left, with my foot still hooked onto the stirrup. My head hit the ground harshly, and I was dragged through the dirt and grass as my horse continued to gallop. I couldn’t make out where I was, or what was right or left. Suddenly, the horse started slowing down, the dragging finally stopping. As I figured out where I was, my head still spinning, I felt someone lift my leg out of the stirrup and slowly onto the floor.

“(Y/N), (Y/N) can you hear me?” Anthony gently held my face in his hands, kneeling beside me.

“My head...” I moaned.

“It’s alright, my dear.” an older man appeared, and I only just realised he was also kneeling beside me.“You’ve hit your head quite hard, you’ll likely have bruises along your back, and your leg will ache. But it’s nothing rest won’t fix. If you have severe headaches, you should call upon me again to give you something for it. For now, I shall forget I ever saw any of this, just as we agreed.”

“Thank you doctor.” Anthony breathed out, helping me sit up as the doctor walked away.

I clung onto his arm, using my other hand to pull his face closer to mine. I kissed him hard, relieved that he was still alive and unharmed. He seemed to be feeling the same way as me, until I pulled away and slapped him round the face. His mouth was open in shock.

“That’s for going to a duel without telling me.”

“(Y/N), I...what?”

“I can’t believe you thought you could just go and get shot, or shoot someone and leave me behind! What would happen to me? I couldn’t bear it if you died, or left, either way, I am furious with you!”

“Darling, I had to do it. He dishonoured Daphne, therefore, dishonouring our name.”

I tried to stand by myself, though felt dizzy, annoyed that I had to have Anthony to help me. He kept his arms around me, and although I loved the feeling, knowing he was safe, I had a hatred for him in that moment.

“But why wouldn’t you tell me?” I looked up at him, ignoring the throbbing in my head.

“We would have to leave society, make a life as...I don’t know what but we wouldn’t be allowed here anymore.”

“So? Do you really think I regard myself so highly that I would diminish my love for you to remain in society?”

“What?”

“Anthony, I would rather leave all of this behind, and be with you wherever you go in the world. That fact that you think I would prefer to live without you hurts me.”

“(Y/N), I didn’t mean-”

I slipped out of his hold, hopefully stable now.“I don’t want to speak of this right now. I’m finished with this topic of conversation.”

Anthony knew there was no point trying to reason with me in that moment. It was also no time to argue when there were more pressing matters at hand. He huffed, only walking away from me once Collin approached, letting me loop my arm through his for support. I watched as he glared at Simon, who was in a deep discussion with Daphne.

“We must resume before someone should find us.” he said to Simon before taking a pistol from Benedict again.

“There will be no need to resume.” Daphne spoke up. We all looked at her, wondering how she was going to stop the duel.“The Duke and I are to be married.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

We had all ensured we were home before any of the staff could see us, slipping out of our dirty clothes and stuffing them under the bed. I had struggled, feeling nauseous as I rushed. But as I lay down in bed, my headache suddenly returning and my back aching, I heard the door lock. Anthony threw the key onto his desk in the room, hands on his hips as he paced.

“Anthony.” I tried to stop him.“Anthony, please don’t do that.”

“I’m thinking (Y/N).” he mumbled.

“Then why don’t you think in your office? You’re making me dizzy. And nervous.”

“Do not speak to me like that. You do realise how this might tarnish our name?”

“They’re getting married, it will be fine Anthony.”

“It does not matter, he still dishonoured her, I saw it myself.”

“And you have not done that yourself in the past?”

That made him stop in his tracks. His head turned to me so quickly I though his neck would snap off.“They were not eligible ladies.”

“And that makes a difference? Anthony, I need to rest, please leave me.” I turned onto my side, pulling the covers higher so they almost covered my face.

He groaned, and I instantly regretted what I had said. His footsteps were loud as he made his way to the door, but I never heard it being unlocked. He sounded like he was now approaching the bed, and I found out I was right when the bed dipped in front of me me. I opened my eyes to see Anthony shuffling around, and I heard two light thumps on the floor from taking off his boots, before he lifted and covers; he shuffled in towards me, gently putting his arm under my pillow, moving as close as he could to me.

“You are right.” his voice was quieter now.“I, along with many men, have...done things in the past. Those women are, were meant for those things, but as soon as I saw you in the room, I knew I had to approach you. I remember that beautiful blue dress you were wearing, and how well you held yourself. But you were still so enticing, I found you to be so interesting, yet you only spoke with me for five minutes. You danced so elegantly, yet I still thought I could keep up with you.”

“If you are trying to make me swoon so I forget all about earlier, it isn’t working. You use the same story every time.” I said.

“Because it’s one of the best ones. I could retale about the time I saw you first promenading, the balls and social events we coincidentally went to, how I called upon your house-”

“Anthony, you may stop.” I tried not to giggle, but my smile was evident.“I am still angry at you for putting yourself in such an idiotic and dangerous situation. However, I deeply admire your love for your family, I know you would do anything for them. Just...if you ever do anything like that again, you are to inform me of your plans. I go wherever you go.”

“I promise. I was stupid to think I could do that to you. I just wanted to make sure you would still have a good life.”

“The only way I would have a good life is by being with you.”

Anthony smiled, tenderly kissing me.“You should rest darling. You’re hurt.”

“As long as you stay here with me.”

“I promise.”

#anthony bridgerton #anthony bridgerton imagine #anthony bridgerton imagines #anthony bridgerton one shot #anthony bridgerton x reader #anthony bridgerton fanfiction #anthony bridgerton fan fiction #anthony bridgerton fanfic #anthony bridgerton fan fic #bridgerton #bridgerton imagine #bridgerton imagines #bridgerton one shot #bridgerton x reader #bridgerton fanfiction #bridgerton fan fiction #bridgerton fanfic #bridgerton fan fic

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gascon-en-exil · 3 years

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If we try and remove Byleth from Three Houses, who would likely be their replacement/s in the storyline? In AM, it will obviously be Dedue. But, what about in the other routes?

There's no easy answer that works for all the routes, because while removing Byleth completely undoubtedly would have made the overall writing of Three Houses stronger it would have also required a different focus and some extensive rewriting, especially where Sothis and Rhea are concerned. It'd also need the house leaders to become full PoV characters and also likely controllable in exploration, although that would have benefitted all three of them. Even if Byleth loses their self-insert status (and probably gender variability, in that case) and becomes a recruitable teacher like Hanneman and Manuela who only becomes central to the plot in Silver Snow, that would still require quite a bit of reworking...and would have lost the fans of Avatar dating sims, which has apparently been the most lucrative demographic of FE players for the last decade.

Azure Moon does indeed fare the best without Byleth, helped greatly by it being the most traditional FE story and the one that trims a lot of the fat in Three Houses's undercooked story elements, ex. the Agarthans and the mystery surrounding who and what Byleth is. It's already got the best pacing, the clearest arc for its protagonist, the best relationship between its hero and villain, and the best sense of dramatic payoff in ending where it does. The Byleth-free version would be all about power couple Dimidue, with added focus on Dimilix as a second relationship that begins roughly but develops into one of equal significance. Dedue and Felix would grow into a dynamic comparable to August and Dorias toward Leif in FE5, or Soren and Titania toward Ike in FE9: a pair of advisors with vastly different views of the world and who care for their leader in very different ways and so are forced to come to an understanding. They'd be fully integrated into the plot, allowing them to participate in story moments like Rodrigue's death and the resolution of the Duscur mystery much more organically than they do in canon, not to mention be the ones along with Gilbert and Rodrigue to help Dimitri through his darkest moments. The golden ending is an orgy.

Would IS ever write that? Absolutely not. It'd be too overtly gay, even if the relationships were still only kept to subtext, and there's no plot-relevant waifu bait to be had. Fandom would decry that AM as even more misogynistic than Echoes, and not progressive enough because with no Avatar S ranks Dimitri's queer relationships wouldn't be "canon." They'd be no homo'ed just like Ike/Soren is...which they are now, only it'd be more prominent with no Dimileth taking up such a large portion of Dimitri's fanbase.

I have no idea how this reworked Three Houses would handle the Eagles route split, so it'd probably be better off without one. Silver Snow would follow Byleth as they (she? he? The former allows for a second female lead, the latter delves into magical genderqueer territory with Byleth as the incarnation of a goddess) teach the Eagles and gradually uncover Edelgard's nefarious plans only too late to stop them. Apart from Byleth now having a definite gender, voice, and personality - quite a lot, I know - not much of the actual substance of SS would necessarily need to change. It would certainly benefit from a second pass in the writers' room, Byleth or not, like handling the Gronder rematch in a less awkward way, actually working to develop the antagonism between Byleth and Edelgard outside of two cutscenes, and making the final chapter make any kind of sense and not just "Rhea succumbs to dragon degeneration because you need to fight a final boss, Seteth handwaves the whole thing with a line referencing something that got referenced once back in like Chapter 2." Just...some kind of effort there would be nice.

At any rate SS with Byleth as an actual character would be more strongly-written for it, allowing them to function as a genuine protagonist. (Alternatively, make Ferdinand the protagonist...but that would resolve in him and Hubert putting on an elaborately-staged musical where they work through their feelings in the middle of fighting on opposite sides of a war. You know what? Give me that version of SS instead. Way more interesting.)

For Crimson Flower, drop the pretense right from the start. Edelgard's your PoV character, she knows she's the Flame Emperor and what she's doing throughout the school year, and Part 1 is about her trying to maintain the façade of a normal student while she's planning a war on the DL. If they insist on keeping some of the mystery, that wouldn't be impossible as it's obvious Hubert is the brains of their operation and he keeps most of what he does hidden from Edelgard anyway. I'm not really sure how to work the waifu hot for teacher angle into a PoV version of Edelgard; as much as I enjoy it from the comedic standpoint of Hubert never getting any because his lady never looks at him twice I think CF would be stronger if Byleth stayed with Rhea and the route didn't bother with working out their relationship to the Nabateans. Just genocide 'em all as Edelgard conquers the continent and convinces herself it's all for the best. She can shed a tear over Byleth's corpse while Hubert brandishes a cleaver with even more relish than usual to extract that valuable Crest stone. The ending is basically the same minus the Edeleth, with it being even more obvious that the shadow war against the Agarthans is going to resolve in Hubert taking his place as the real Manfroy of this story.

And as for Verdant Wind, the whole route would need a rewrite, to give it a more distinct identity from SS and to make it work with a protagonist whose personality and arc revolve around revealing very little about himself to anyone else. Players would undoubtedly find out much more about Claude that way than they do in canon VW, and it'd probably work better if it kept Edelgard's war to the background and refocused hard on the worldbuilding discoveries and how they play into Claude's growing understanding of Fódlan. With or without Byleth, a better-written VW would be vastly different from the canon version.

So aside from the house leaders taking over Byleth's role as PoV characters and exploration avatars I don't see anyone else assuming their exact role in supporting said leaders. Dimitri has an abundance of male love and camaraderie, Edelgard gets all worked up over Byleth but is still completely willing to step over them to achieve her goals (also Hubert is there), Claude would likely see his background and beliefs teased out of him gradually by all the Deer in their own ways, and Byleth as an actual character could make SS all about their Nabatean family and the bonds, magically incestuous or otherwise, they can form with the surviving dragons.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

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dreamsmp-au-ideas · 3 years

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Fire emblem AU

The third and final house is The Red Ravens House, where those from The Badlands Kingdom reside! (Also the route with the best exclusive boss music we get freaking dubstep in our medical fantasy game. Three house’s ost is so good oh my gosh)

The Badlands was the first to break away from the SMP, albeit in a more peaceful manner. Badland’s territory connects to the foreign nation of Errata and the two nations have had many clashes at their border. However, something odd is happening in Badlands. Mysterious red vines have started covering small villages and wiping out crops. It’s being kept secret by the king so that Badlands doesn’t appear weak. The Kingdom only has so much land however and the problem can’t be ignored forever. The Raven is chosen because of its cunning and willingness to do whatever is needed to survive. This years Red Ravens consist of the following

Bad-Bad is the prince of The Badlands and set to be its next king. Bad’s father is a decent king but his main flaw is his refusal to work with Errata due to them being enemies for a very very long time. Bad hopes that when he becomes king he can end the fighting between Badlands and Errata. He knows that their Kingdom needs help because of the new vines problem. Bad is seen by his father and royal court as too much of a softie and they hope he will toughen up at the monastery. Bad is one of the nicest people at the monastery and he is considered a bit of an oddball, such as his dislike of any swearing. Despite this, Bad is not to be underestimated. While he’d rather have a peaceful outcome to problems, he’s still willing to fight to protect his kingdom. Bad has strengths in bows, riding and flying. He has a weakness in axes. Bad has one crest

Skeppy- Skeppy is Bads retainer and best friend. However, it didn’t start out that way. Skeppy was an orphan commoner who was forced to do crime to survive. He would go from village to village and steal from the richest people there. One day, Skeppy was hired to steal a rare book from the royal families castle. While he really didn’t want to, winter was coming and he needed the money to survive. Long story short he gets caught by the king who is about to kick him out. That is, until Bad happens to spot him and asks his father if Skeppy can stick around because he looks hungry and needs a friend. Skeppy works as a servant in the castle for years and he becomes the best friend of Bad. It helps that Skeppy now has a place to stay and three whole meals everyday. Eventually, Bad asks if Skeppy is willing to train to be his retainer and Skeppy says yes. Despite Skeppy messing with Bad a lot, they’re still best friends and Skeppy does feel he owes him a lot. As a result of this, Skeppy is very loyal to Bad and doesn’t like hearing what all the adults are saying about him. He hopes that when Bad becomes king he won’t change too much. Skeppy is the biggest prankster and has a love of making puzzles. Skeppy has strengths in bows and swords. He has a weakness in heavy armor. He has no crest

Sam- Sam is a minor noble whose family is famous for scientific discoveries. It was his grandfather who invented a device that determined what crests people had. Before, people had to be put in dangerous combat for the crest to activate. Sam studies magic so that he can invent new spells to make lives better. He was raised by his grandfather and feels he has big shoes to fill. Sam is considered a dad friend among his classmates and is good friends with Puffy. He’s that guy who won’t directly give you the answers to homework but will help you with it. Collects texts that the church has deemed inappropriate. Sam has strengths in reason(lighting) and riding. He has a weakness in faith. He has one crest

Ant-Ant is a minor noble who lived in a small village close to the border. A couple of months ago, his village was one of the first to be overtaken by the vines. Many of the people of his village mysteriously disappeared after they claimed that the vine were to be worshipped. Ant is at the monastery so that he can hopefully find a cure for the vines. He worries that he has been infected and doesn’t know it yet. Ant is a more distant type and appears to have dislike for Bad. This is due to bitterness at Bad’s father for not wanting to confront the problem and being more focused on fighting Errata. He also thinks Bad is just pretending to be nice at first. Ant does eventually warm up to Bad, but he’s still the most likely to challenge him if he feels he is making a bad decision. Ant has strengths in bows,riding,and faith. He has a weakness in flying. Ant has one crest

Punz- Punz is a part of a mercenary group. His goal is to be the next leader of the group. Leaders are chosen by beating the current leader in a sparring match. Punz is at the Monastery so that he can get the best training possible. Punz is well known for being the one who trains a lot. He’s also known for being willing to do almost anything for some cash. He’s the guy you go to if you want to buy a homework assignment. While some of his classmates fear he would sell them out for the right amount of money, his true friends know that...well, if you’re a friend he won’t sell you out but otherwise ehhh. Basically, Punz was raised by his mercenary family to not trust easily. Once someone proves they are trustworthy, make sure to repay that trust tenfold. That’s the mercenary way. Punz has a strength in swords and heavy armor. Weakness in bows. He has no crest

Purpled- Purpled belongs to a family of merchants. Him and Punz actually knew each other before going to the monastery because their two families work together when traveling to protect each other. Purpled’s family is also unique in another way. Their family lived in the foreign nation of Loxbor and have only recently come to Carmine. This is because Carmine is considered to have more variety in resources. Purpled is smart and very business savvy. He’s at the monastery mostly to make new connections, hopefully with nobles. While he was a bit annoying with the nobles in his class at first, he eventually learned that the best way to get allies is to just treat them like normal people. Purpled does look up to Punz and Punz in turn teaches him some of his sword techniques. Purpled also sometimes get his family’s products in the mail and will advertise it to the students. Purpled is a nice and smart guy even if he can act a bit callously. Purpled has strengths in reason and axes. He has a weakness in faith. He has no crest

If Karl teaches The Red Ravens, the main plot is les s focused on winning the war and more focused on taking care of the the whole egg situation. Probably more lighthearted than the other routes.

There are 21 chapters in this route. In the 18th chapter there’s a decoy egg that is set. What the group thinks is that a certain spell needs to be performed by two people, one of whom has to have whatever Bad’s crest is called. So, that chapters mission is getting Bad and one other Red Raven(besides Karl but other than him whoever you send over there) to the decoy egg and doing the spell. Then, it is revealed that it is a trap! The spell actually causes Bad and the other person become overtaken by the egg.

19th chapter is when the person decided by you is saved by destroying an egg that is near them. That person vaguely remembers where Bad went and so the army goes after him.

20th chapter is rescuing Bad, which basically means you have to defeat him and the egg that is with him (which would be a pain gameplay wise probably). So, Bad is knocked out and when he wakes up he knows where the main egg is located.

The 21st chapter actually starts when the Red Ravens have broken into the main egg and have to fight whatever is inside it and ready to hatch out. Honestly, I think it would be really cool gameplay wise to have the final battle set in the egg. You can do a lot with that visually.

Also in that chapter where TWSITD send javelins of light (nukes) on Fort Mercues, it’s instead this huge seed that comes down on the fort and completely covers it in red vines in like a minute or two.

After seeing this Bad gives everyone permission to say one swear word right then and there.

There’s also a point where Bad helps Errata with the egg and they in turn send soldiers and supplies. So, yay peace!

So yeah that’s all houses done! Now, what’s next I wonder?

Holy hell. Okay. That’s great. That’s honestly great.

This is the arc I would be playing the most if it were a game and that’s solely because of the characters and everything.

Love all the little things in here too!

As for what’s next, well, assuming that it isn’t a rhetorical question, then uh...I don’t know why and it’s highly impossible but now I’m just thinking of trying to find a way where I can get everyone to be happy.

Fuck. I love all of them too much and now I’m attached to them all.

#dream smp #dream smp au #smp three houses au #badboyhalo #skeppy #awesamdude #antfrost #punz #purpled #karl jacobs #ask #tack-tick #long post

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passable-talent · 3 years

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self indulgent niche hayden christensen character x male reader has returned!!!

this time, featuring Jacob from Outcast (2014). it was a bad movie. I loved it so much.

dedicated, as always, to @haydens-moles - i know this wasn’t the one u asked for but i hope its close enough. i did try to showcase what he’s been doing before getting into the x reader stuff. this popped into my head and i had to write it. im sorry about it and ily 🥺

i did not expect this to be THIS long. its not awful but like. long, for what i usually do

tw: war, homophobia (briefly in the beginning), scars, wounds, sword fighting, death of unnamed characters, arrow wound

All this death.

All this death surrounded you, you welcomed it into your home. Your mother, the honorable queen, had opened the palace grounds to the war-torn soldiers, and you, their noble prince, walked among them.

You spoke to the soldiers about the war, thanked them for their sacrifice. You walked among them, empathizing with their pain, fetching them water or food or a nurse when they asked.

Your heart broke for them, every one of them. They clearly believed in the crusade, believed in the mission of their king and their god... their hearts would break in turn if they discovered you believed in neither.

How could a bloody, violent, evil war be fought for a benevolent god? How could a fair king order his men to their deaths?

You adjusted the crown you wore and walked from the main-hall-turned-medical-bay, hoping to find your father. He had grown weary with you in the recent years, your unwillingness to find a princess and your disapproval of his politics, but maybe he’d listen to you about the safety of your people. Maybe, he’d realize that you took your crown seriously, even if you didn’t intend to wear it the way that he wanted you to. After all, you were his only suitable heir- he was well into his old age, and if he intended to replace you with your brother, he’d have to wait years until the toddler was old enough to rule. You were his only choice.

You neared the entrance into your father’s throne room, but heard his voice echoing without it, and so paused just beyond the doorframe to listen.

“I will have no soft-hearted, peace-mongering pansy on my throne! That will not be my legacy!”

You knew your father’s opinions of you. You never, until this moment, realized how deeply they ran.

This war, this country. Even if one day you could gain control and stop it all, they would still never respect you. Never. You saw it now- and you saw what you needed to do.

The thought of running away was not a new one. You had, for years, considered it, weighed the likeliness. You knew you’d survive, being trained in hunting, combat, all of it, by Gallain, a noble knight. You had been trained alongside Jacob, who was both your personal knight and your best friend.

And, something more.

You often went to him whenever you felt like running away, and he always convinced you to stay, assuring you of your nobility and royalty. But Jacob disappeared years ago, without even a goodbye, so on that day you had no such guidance.

With your sword, your bow and arrow, and as much gold as you could carry, you disappeared with your horse into the countryside.

“Something must be done,” said a nobleman, a lord, commanding the center of a tavern.

“I agree,” said another, portly belly pressing against the table in front of him, “But he’s bested my guards. What can be done?”

“He’s a thieving, murderous boy who takes more than he can carry. Surely he can be bested by just a few more guards.”

“No, Estevan- he cuts through men like no knight I’ve ever seen. He’s terrifying. My wife is worried for our children, should he return.”

Jacob wasn’t one to push into conversations to which he wasn’t invited, but this did seem to be his specialty. He was still a nomad, still an outcast, but now his tavern interests were less opium and more noble assistance to those who needed it.

“Excuse me,” he said, looking up from the booth he’d been seated in, “but who might be causing you lot so much trouble?” The collection of noblemen looked at him, various expressions of disbelief and incredulousness gracing their faces.

“You don’t know of the Dark Prince?”

Jacob let his eyes narrow briefly as he considered the nickname against all he’d known as a knight, as well as all he’d learned as an outcast.

“I don’t.”

The man who had been referred to as ‘Estevan’ let out an obnoxious laugh.

“Boy, come along, to my estate,” he said, giving his friends little cheeky glances. “I’ve strengthened my guard, as I’m expecting an attempt at a thievery tonight. If you best him, I’ll pay you handsomely.”

Clearly, these idiotic men had never heard of Jacob, the Outcast.

Well, Jacob the Outcast had never heard of you.

In the three years since you’d fled your kingdom, you’d created quite a name for yourself. Your first move had been taking some of the money you swiped from your father and commissioning a crown- one made of black tungsten, with none of the engravings or jewels that had once been your royal right. You wanted smooth, reflective metal, curling around your temples and into short, sharp spikes.

You wore it whenever you weren’t alone, which was nearly all the time. You wore it when you travelled, even under your large hood; you wore it when you fought. And yes, you wore it when you stole.

Jacob followed Estevan to his estate and watched from afar while the guards he’d hired stood watch. He was hidden, and kept watch over the whole of the estate, wondering if he’d catch a glimpse of this Dark Prince.

He was glad he’d chosen to hide, as the skies opened up upon the earth, and he kept semi-dry underneath the leaves of the tree he’d perched within. The guards, walking the length of an exterior wall, had no such refuge from the storm.

He did not notice the black-cloaked figure until it was illuminated by the torchlight. You had no sword drawn to catch the light until you were upon the guards, and the two of them fell to you without so much as a sound.

Jacob, curious, kept his eyes on you as you broke through the wall, having made a hole between the guards’ patrols. He knew that he could easily take you down with a single arrow, but he wanted to see how this would end.

Would you cut through guards, as one of the noblemen had suggested? Why were you attempting this theft when you had to have known you were expected here? Would you succeed?

You entered the home silently, taking stock of your location. You’d received a bit of insider information from one of Estevan’s servants as to the location of his gold, and made a direct route to it.

Gold, as you well know, is one of the heaviest substances on earth. But you were much stronger than you’d been as a prince only trained out of tradition, and not for any true purpose. You were strong enough to carry enough gold to buy a kingdom, and still fight your way out of here.

Today, you would be modest. You only needed to feed a village, a few pounds was plenty. Why take what you didn’t need?

The guards were none the wiser until you made your escape, attempting to break once again through their wall to flee into the surrounding forest. You brought the whole lot of them down upon you, and Jacob relaxed against the tree, assured that you would certainly be brought to justice by the ten guards that you now face.

Yet, you weren’t. You weren’t even harmed. Large hood still hiding your crown and your face, you bled through them, some receiving a strike to the legs to put them on the ground, others struck over the head with the hilt of your sword. You had gone through the whole of them without much of an issue, and walked at not much of a worried pace toward the forest.

Well, if there was a time for Jacob to intervene, now was it. Nothing else stood in your way.

He pulled an arrow and notched it to the drawstring, lifting it to his face. Even in the rain, at this distance, he would make the shot.

No more than three seconds later, you took an arrow to the shoulder.

There was pain, yes. It shocked you into stumbling forward, the sudden motion throwing your hood back and exposing your face. But you’d had your fair share of pain, and more pressing was the confusion- Estevan Perrero hired no archers. There shouldn’t have been any on his property, let alone one who could hit you at this range.

Against your better judgement, you turned, glancing back at the estate you had just removed a few pounds of gold from, and scanned its walls. There were no archers in sight, so you righted your hood and hurried on, disappearing into the forest, showing little care for the arrow you now carried in your shoulder. You knew better than to attempt to remove it.

Jacob threw himself from the tree and gave chase. He couldn’t let you get far- it would be hard to track you in this rain, and he needed to find you.

He had to find this Dark Prince- because it couldn’t possibly be the young prince he’d once loved and protected, all that time ago. It had to have been a trick of the light, or the rain, it couldn’t- this hardened, scarred, skilled thief couldn’t possibly be the compassionate prince whose nightmares he’d once soothed.

He followed you through the forests, to a trade road that lead to a nearby village. You traveled in the rain all through the night until you reached a village, just before dawn, and he followed, far enough behind that you didn’t notice him.

Then, you carefully removed your bag from your shoulder, avoiding the arrow. You distributed the gold among the people, and though they thanked you tremendously, you waved away their offers of repayment upon the condition that you were given somewhere to sleep, and heal.

You were allowed a room in a tavern, the biggest one available. Only once the door had closed did you allow yourself to rest, letting your shoulders fall, your eyes close.

You were so tired.

With one hand, you removed your black crown, regarding it with sorrow-filled eyes. Then, you reached over your shoulder and let your fingers frame the arrow; it was wedged deep into your flesh, and all of the surrounding fabric was soaked through with blood. It needed to be removed, but you couldn’t get a good angle on it, not one comfortable enough to yank it out cleanly. And a clean yank was instrumental- if the arrowhead was left behind, you’d all but lose the arm.

You felt a little bit of panic grip your stomach, as you didn’t know how you’d remove it, and once one emotion broke through to your mind, many followed. You felt your throat close up, fighting against the past you’d left behind, the people you’ve abandoned, all of the killing and the stealing.

“Need help with that?” said a voice behind you, and you quickly sucked up your emotions to whirl around. Had you really forgotten to lock the door?

Any number of quips and comebacks came to mind, but as quickly as they appeared, they faded- you didn’t realize the man who’d regarded you was Jacob.

A thousand feelings flittered through you at the sight of him. He was just as beautiful as you remembered, and he looked at you just as kindly. But you couldn’t push aside how he’d abandoned you without as much as a goodbye. And now- what was he doing here?

Still, you could trust his hands. So you nodded, wordlessly, and turned, gripping onto the table in front of you to make sure your muscles would stay in place as he pulled.

He approached you carefully, as though advancing toward a wild animal, you could hear it in his gait on the squeaky floorboards. He took one hand to the center of your back, then sliding it to the side to frame the arrow with two fingers on either side. He made a small noise as he touched you- you wondered if he was worried for the wound, or surprised by the muscle that had never been there when he’d known you.

“Don’t tense,” he said, and you gave a little scoff. Obviously, you thought to yourself, but that was certainly easier said than done. Without warning he pulled, tearing the arrow from your flesh. You let out a roar, your body falling forward, your uninjured arm barely keeping you from falling flat onto the table. Heaving, agonized breaths took control of your body until the pain ebbed, and you swallowed hard.

“Sorry,” Jacob said, glad he had used a light arrowhead that hadn’t gone deep, and was fairly easy to remove, “I wouldn’t have shot if I knew it was you.” You turned to him, surprised, narrowing your eyes.

“It was you?” You repeated, then turned your eyes to the floor, weighing what that revelation meant. “So then- you followed me? What, have you been hired to arrest me? These people need that gold, you can’t take it back from them!” Jacob shook his head with the slightest of a smile, holding up a hand.

“No, nothing like that,” he said, “I was supposed to stop a theft, but when I saw you-” His gaze raked down your body and back up again. “I never expected to see you so far from home. And so different.” Maybe it was meant to be sweet, but it still stung your heart that he had left you, when he disappeared to wherever he’d gone, some five years ago. Any fondness you felt for him was soured by that.

“I wasn’t too much different, until you shot me,” you said dryly, ”Make it up to me, Jacob, help me dress the wound. That’ll be your first step.” You turned from him and began shedding layers, blood soaked as they were, and laying them over the single chair in the room.

“My first step toward what?” He asked, and you paused, your last layer halfway up your torso, looking away from him.

“Toward letting me forgive you.” With your grim tone, he dropped his queries, waiting for you to completely bare your torso. He searched into his own bag to find a roll of bandage.

You waited, looking over your shoulder at him as he dug through his belongings, and then turned his attention to you. You looked away when he grew closer, closing your eyes against his touch. His hands were exactly as you remembered them- calloused, rough, warm. For a moment before he began giving attention to your renewed wound, he let his fingers trace over the scars that littered you.

“I used to know your body better than any map,” he breathed, running the pad of his finger down the long scar you’d received when your path crossed with an overzealous Mongol, “but it seems like you’ve carved yourself an entirely new terrain.” You swallowed hard as he began wrapping the bandage around your shoulder and torso, gathering your wits to make a response.

“Well, such a thing does happen, when you disappear for five years.” You let him guide your limbs as he dressed the wound, your gaze low, breathing as evenly as you could force yourself to.

“Where have you been?” you asked him, and if you hadn’t known him since childhood, you wouldn’t have picked up on it- but with his little exhale, you heard him smile.

“I spent a few years in the far east, in an opium-stupor,” he said, his fingers just as gentle as they’d ever been, at least when he handled you. “But after Gallain died, I’ve been travelling the world, offering my services anywhere I thought I could do some good. That was why I thought I’d be stopping a theft today.” There was so much to take in, but you couldn’t help but think of your old mentor.

“I’d heard Gallain passed. I’m sorry.” Jacob stiffened, just for a moment, and regardless of the brevity, you felt him do it. No matter how you tried to convince yourself you were holding him away from you, your heart still ached at the thought of the grief he must have felt.

“What’s happened to you, all this time?” He asked, pulling the attention away from himself as he tucked the length of the bandage under itself, your wound completely covered.

You had known the question was coming- it was inevitable. And still, you had to think about your answer. You didn’t want to admit the awful things you’d done, not to him.

“My father was never going to let me be king,” you said with a bit of a pitiful smile, pulling your tunic over yourself again, “You knew that, didn’t you?” Jacob let out a heavy breath, shaking his head.

“I knew he didn’t approve of your politics,” he said, and bit his lip before he added “of us.” You shut your eyes briefly, knowing it was better than seeing whatever expression he had at those two words. Did he miss you? Did he regret being with you? Did he regret leaving you?

“But I never thought he’d cast you out.”

“He didn’t,” you corrected him, lifting your chin before opening your eyes. “I didn’t give him the chance. I left.” Jacob narrowed his eyes briefly, considering what you were saying, and you took the break in the conversation to take a seat on the bed.

“How long ago?”

You caught his eye, and now that he stood above you, you felt almost ashamed of your actions, of the consequences they must’ve had on the people you cared about. Your poor little brother.

“Three years.”

Jacob shook his head, but didn’t say anything. Neither of you looked at the other, and neither said a thing. You looked out the window, seeing the sky grow lighter with the early morning.

“Jacob, I need-” you swallowed harshly, “I have to sleep.” He only let out a laugh, a smile sprouting on his face again.

“Me too,” he said, and after a moment of deep thinking, turned toward the door of the room.

“Jacob,” you said, making him pause, and turn back to you. Now that you had his attention, you couldn’t back down- but you took an instant longer to gather your courage. “You can stay,” you said, and it took you right back to when you’d said those very same words to him for the first time, when he was your knight, before he was a crusader, and you just a young teenaged prince.

If you could assume from the fondness, affection, and longing that warmed his face, he was remembering the same thing.

-🦌 Roe

#jacob #outcast #outcast 2014 #jacob outcast #hayden christensen #nicholas cage #anakin skywalker #x reader #jacob x reader #jacob outcast x reader #jacob x male!reader #x male!reader

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soveryanon · 4 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG183!

- I’m not sure I can manage to put it into words quite right but: sounds-wise, this episode’s domain didn’t feel mind-blowingly new, it wasn’t something that felt “Oh! I’ve never heard something like this before!”? But the echoes, grinding and scratching were timed so well, giving so much strength and gravitas to the conversations, that it perfectly scratched an itch. I could hear that there was something close to Jon and Martin, that it was big, and mostly deserted, that it stood eerily in the overall wasteland, that they were two people alone against a whole world, a whole machine with gears and a mechanism ready to crush anyone?

- I LIVE for artist!Martin giving his commentary and overall throwing shade at the Fears’ taking of artistic licence liberties:

(MAG183) MARTIN: Oh, bugger off! ARCHIVIST: Everything all right? MARTIN: Oh, no, what e–, what e–, what even is that? It, it’s like Escher ate a bad cathedral and threw up everywhere.

He had shown interest in the Stranger’s carousel upon learning that the statements had been a poem, but shots fired for that tower, uh.

- Jon and Martin were so cute starting the episode! Their quick banter was adorable!

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: It’s a building. A tower. … In a sense. MARTIN: Oh yeah? A–and what sense might that be? ARCHIVIST: [FAINTLY OMINOUS] … The Tarot sense. MARTIN: [SPLUTTERS WITH LAUGHTER] Really? ARCHIVIST: Wha–? No? Sorry, it… felt like a good line…! MARTIN: No, no, it was, I just… I dunno, I… [FOND EXHALE] You did the look, and…! It’s fine, sorry.

Martin being IN LOVE and appreciating Jon’s cuteness! The return of Jon showing that he’s an occult/horror nerd! We had seen in season 2 that he was generally very knowledgeable about anything related to the supernatural, and in season 4 that he was into Neil Lagorio’s movies, I’m happy to get another trace of it!

(MAG076) MELANIE: So I came here to dig a bit deeper. ARCHIVIST: Really? Our… our library is extensive, but it’s hardly focused on the Second World War. MELANIE: No, but the most detailed description of the crash that I could find came from the report of a man called William W. Hay. And later in life William Hay… ARCHIVIST: Became a noted occultist, whose memoirs and researches were only ever published in a heavily edited form. And we have unexpurgated copies. MELANIE: Exactly.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Statement ends. Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPER RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

But SOB x2 since:

* Tower-in-the-tarot-sense meaning ominous stuff… and change. (While Jon knew they would soon come face to face with the choice to take the route through Martin’s domain.)

* Crying over the fact that we’ve seen and learned quite a few outside-of-the-job aspects of Jon this season, comparatively to the previous ones? He’s cute! He’s making jokes! He mentioned his student days a bit in MAG165, and visiting Upton House as a kid in MAG180! And this is happening when the world has been forked over and Jon&Martin certainly won’t survive together past MAG200, which means they have at most seventeen episodes together remaining. Martin, and we alongside him, are seeing so many different, more casual aspects of Jon, and it’s at the end of things…

- I really like how information bounced around in this episode? It felt even more dynamic than usual, quickly shifting depending on some reaction, or going from an association to another:

(MAG183) MARTIN: What, what’s the deal, though? Parts of it almost look like– ARCHIVIST: The Institute. MARTIN: Yeah…! ARCHIVIST: Yes. [INHALE] It makes sense, after all it was… built on the ruins of what Robert Smirke constructed…! MARTIN: Smirke? … What, no! But, but, surely he’s– ARCHIVIST: Dead, yeah, I mean, yes. [CHUCKLING] Very much so! This place is… an homage, shall we say. A monument. To him, and those like him, who tried to… categorise the world with themselves at the centre. In so doing, constructed the architecture of its suffering…!

Ohohoh about Martin feeling like the tower looked a bit like the Institute, and Jon drawing similarities through Smirke – the Institute being built on the ruins of a Smirke building, and the current domain being dedicated to people like him. The Institute is coming closer and weighing on their minds, isn’t it? I really like that Martin immediately worried about Smirke potentially being alive-ish, since:

(MAG138) MARTIN: “The Eye has marked me for something, of this I have no doubt. My… humble hope is that it may be a swift death, an accidental effect of your own researches, which I once again implore you to abandon. It is likely too late for me, but I will not…” [PAPER RUSTLE] Uh… [INHALE] The, hum… The letter ends there. Uh… Ap–apparently Robert Smirke was found collapsed in his study that evening, dead of, uh… [FLIPPING THROUGH PAPERS] Apoplexy. Mm. I–I don’t know how the letter reached the Archives, I mean… Well, I can guess, but…

… he had read Smirke’s last words before he died. (But Martin has seen enough by now to know that there is always a risk for people to not have actually died; on that front, we’re safe, Jon confirmed! Loving Jon’s chuckle: ah yeah, no, Smirke, “very much so” dead from Jonah.)

(Also loved the “[those] who tried to categorise the world with themselves at the centre” shade: yep! That’s West-Eurocentrism and Smirke’s little gang for you!)

- About the way the world works now since the Change, I’m curious about Jon’s wording as “the architecture of [the world’s] suffering”, since it’s echoing the title of Smirke’s statement, “The Architecture of Fear”: my understanding is that right now, the world is mostly running on a loop of people’s fears => feeding and shaping the landscape => which hurts people by turning those realised fears against them => squeezing the fear out of them => feeding the landscape, etc.

What is quite curious is the status of Smirke’s taxonomy in the current world. Jon went off on a rant about how Smirke and people who attempted to classify had been wrong all along because it was meant to fail… while he himself has persistently been using the very same classifications during this very season:

(MAG166) ARCHIVIST: Look, we can talk about it later, we’re– coming to a… “domain of The Buried”, and [STATIC RISES] I would really rather… […] God, I hate The Buried. [DEEP BREATHS] … End recording.

(MAG172) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] “Knowing”, “seeing”… i–it’s not the same thing as… understanding. Every time I try to know what The Web’s plan is, if it can even be called a plan, I see… a hundred thousand events and causes and links, an impossibly intricate pattern of consequences and subtle nudges, but I–I can’t…! … I can’t hold them all in my head at the same time. There’s no way to see the “whole”, the, the point of it all. I can see all the details, but it doesn’t… provide… context or… intention. I suppose The Web doesn’t work in knowledge, not in the same way.

(MAG173) MARTIN: That’s the avatar for this place? ARCHIVIST: Callum Brodie, thirteen years old. He guides the children through their fears of The Dark.

(MAG174) ARCHIVIST: I’m not entirely sure what you were expecting, it’s The Vast. The clue is in the name! MARTIN: Yes, all right…!

(MAG176) MARTIN: … Besides, I thought The Hunt was meant to make you go faster. ARCHIVIST: Depends on the type of pursuit. [INHALE] Besides, the chase isn’t… really the point of this particular place.

(MAG177) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Bad therapists. Let’s just say it’s the fear of bad therapists, filtered through The Spiral. BASIRA: That’s… a lot more nuance than I’ve gotten used to since everything went wrong. ARCHIVIST: Yes, well. The Spiral is nothing if not insidious. […] You just heard what The Spiral does to people, you can’t… trust her.

“constructed the architecture of [the world’s] suffering” kind of implies that they did manage something, even if it doomed the world? Is it specifically about Jonah using the division into 14 in his incantation? We’ve seen that that one had limitations, since The Extinction also got there anyway… But at the same time, true that at this point, we would still force-apply Smirke’s labels to anything anyway.

- Loved Jon sounding awfully pedantic and (fake-)poetic at the same time:

(MAG183) MARTIN: [SIGH] Bit of a mouthful. ARCHIVIST: Would you prefer I described it as a… “cascading recursion of shifting arrogance and hubristic dead-ends”? [STATIC RISES] [THE DOOR CREAKS OPEN] [CONSTANT HIGH-PITCHED FREQUENCY] HELEN: I would. [FOOTSTEPS] [THE DOOR SHUTS] [STATIC FADES] MARTIN: [SIGH] Hello, Helen.

AND HELEN HAVING THE BEST ENTRANCES. It also cleared up something for me (unless I had already realised it and forgot about it since then): the high-pitched sound we hear when she’s around is the mark of Helen and Michael, not of the corridors – if the door is open or characters are inside of the hallways, we’ll hear some of the usual crackling static, but we heard it rise when Helen arrived and fade when the door shut behind her (and same thing with her departure, it was briefly heard when she opened the door).

- Shots fired, MARTIN PLEASE:

(MAG183) MARTIN: [SIGH] Hello, Helen. Might have guessed you’d be into weird architecture. Very much your area of expertise, no? HELEN: Hmm, depends! Would you describe “petulant poet” as your area of expertise? I am weird architecture.

And Helen went equally incisive on that one, but also UUUUUH WAS IT A SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO PETER’S COMMENT ABOUT MARTIN…

(MAG158) MARTIN: I’m… saying no. I refuse! Game over. [KNIFE CLATTERING ON THE GROUND] PETER: Martin, this is not the time for petulance; there are bigger things at stake, here.

This was the only time someone referred to Martin as (acting) petulant… I mean, Helen not missing one second of MAG158 wouldn’t be surprising (she did tell Jon at the end of MAG157 that she would be enjoying the show), but ;; Little chilling when remembering Elias-Peter-Martin in the Panopticon and Martin refusing to kill Jonah there…

- I was right to suspect that Helen might have been unable to know where Jon&Martin were over their stay at Upton House, and that she wouldn’t be pleased about it!

(MAG183) HELEN: Anyway, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you, but you both just vanished. ARCHIVIST: Aaah… Right, I see…! HELEN: I was so looking forward to catching up after that whole Basira and Daisy thing, but then, pfft! You both disappear. I’d be very keen to know how you managed that little trick. MARTIN: Why, it caught us by surprise too, I mean, we, we actually ended– ARCHIVIST: [FIRMLY] We found somewhere to rest. That’s all. MARTIN: … Oh, yeah. Ah, yes, hm. HELEN: Fine. Be like that. I can appreciate the particular pleasure of a kept secret. ARCHIVIST: I’m sure you can.

* Salesa’s zone seems to be protected as long as you don’t physically find it? I wonder how Annabelle managed to find it, still, since Jon only become aware of that blind spot when they arrived nearby; how did she become aware of it in the first place? Did it feel like a hole in the world’s web?

* Awww for Jon keeping the secret and conveying to Martin that they should keep quiet about it ;w;

* AHAHAHHAHA for Jon’s “aaah”, which was absolutely a mischievous grandpa sound. Jon ready to cause trouble, with a smug smile on his face.

- … I love how Helen could observe that the dynamic of the exchange was slipping out of her control (Jon&Martin knew something that she didn’t, didn’t feel threatened by her, and Jon was amused to keep it out of her reach) and immediately tried to go for the throat again:

(MAG183) HELEN: Anyway. Such a shame about Basira and Daisy. I was really rooting for them to make up. MARTIN: [SPLUTTERS] Since when? What happened to– I mean, how did you put it… a, “a quick shot to the back of her head, and then back in time for tea”, or whatever?

Martin: Forgive and forget? NO, RESENT AND REMEMBER AHAHAHAHAH.

Direct reference to the fact that Helen indeed ~offered her door to Basira~ to quickly get to Daisy and execute her:

(MAG177) HELEN: I can offer a shortcut. Take you right to that murder machine you call a partner. MARTIN: Basira… Jon can’t go through Helen’s doors, we, we couldn’t come with you. HELEN: Basira is a strong, independent woman. She doesn’t need you two holding her hand. Anyway, it’ll be dead quick. Two minutes, door-to-door, quick shot to the back of Daisy’s head, and we’ll be home before you know it!

Laughing that Martin added the tea mention (Martin, you single-track minded tea-aficionado), but I’m glad that he remembered it full well to throw it in her face; it wasn’t even a personal attack towards Martin, it was something Helen tried to do to Basira, I’m glad that Martin is still absolutely offended about it ;w;

- I felt like Jon and Helen had two definitions of “what we want”: Helen potentially talking about quick, short-term wants (even if they turn out to be self-destructive), while Jon was more about well-thought decisions and choices?

(MAG183) HELEN: [EXASPERATED SIGH] Oh, give over. I was obviously just prodding her, trying to make a point. She didn’t want to kill her. ARCHIVIST: What we want doesn’t matter much these days. HELEN: Oh, [RASPBERRY NOISE], nonsense. What we want is the only thing that matters these days. And Basira wanted to join Daisy. ARCHIVIST: She made her choice. HELEN: With your assistance. ARCHIVIST: It was still her choice. HELEN: [SIGH] What a waste. ARCHIVIST: No. [INHALE] It wasn’t.

There have been a lot of discussions about “choices” and “wants” throughout the series (with big moments in MAG092, MAG117 and MAG147), so it felt a bit nice that Jon seems to have reached a point where he could draw a line between both? Jon, Martin and Basira didn’t want this world, don’t want the way it operates and what it inflicts on them; it doesn’t mean they can’t weigh options and make specific decisions – Basira, to honour her promise to Daisy and kill the monster she had become; Jon, to not smite for revenge (and Martin, to face his own domain).

I LOVE HOW JON WAS FIRM ABOUT BASIRA’S CHOICE MATTERING ;w; It once again reminds me of Martin’s line to Simon: “I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.” (MAG151); the little things, the individual existences and choices, their own stories, still having value in the expanse of the universe…

- Martin! It’s a delight to see him so firm, having faith in Basira although he’s been so worried for her:

(MAG179) ARCHIVIST: Martin, this is what she needs. MARTIN: No, no! I–it’s…! BASIRA: It’ll… MARTIN: It’s completely– […] … We’re not doing this. BASIRA: [SOFTLY] Martin. Please. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … [SIGH] You’d better look after yourself. BASIRA: I will.

(MAG180) ARCHIVIST: How are you doing? About… MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I’m… I don’t know. I’m–I’m not sure how to feel; just… pressing on, you know? ARCHIVIST: I do. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Do you think she’ll be okay without us? ARCHIVIST: Oh, she’s made it this far. MARTIN: … Yeah. I just worry.

(MAG183) MARTIN: Basira is… She’s going to be okay.

And then pointing out that he was involved in the discussion too and that he wanted to know what the other two knew already and not be kept out of the loop:

(MAG183) HELEN: Oh. Is she? Do you want me to tell you what she’s been up to while you were “resting”? Where she is right now? ARCHIVIST: You don’t need to. I already know. MARTIN: I don’t. [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: She’s currently moving through, uh… “The Void.” [STATIC FADES] Hungry shadows drifting in the dark. She’s been there a long time now, struggling to find the path. MARTIN: But she will? ARCHIVIST: I think so. HELEN: Yeah, she does always seem to manage, doesn’t she? It’s impressive. Although a little bit… tempting at times.

I’m not absoooolutely sure about Basira’s status: is “the void” a space between domains, or is it a Dark domain that Basira is having trouble finding the exit of, since unlike Jon, she can’t just “know” the paths? I suspect the latter but I’m not 100% certain. If it’s indeed The Dark, that’s a close to home one for her, since she had a few brushes with it over the course of the show – the Section 31 expedition to save Callum Brodie, leading to Rayner’s death and Basira’s decision to quit the police, her research to find out more about the People’s Church of the Divine Host (as shown in season 3) and her overall worry about them, which allowed Elias to convince her that they would attempt another ritual in Ny-Ålesund, leading to her discovering what “Rayner” was and travelling there with Jon, finding Manuela and the Dark Sun mid-season 4…

;ww; for Jon having faith in Basira, too… And the fact that once again, Basira has it a bit rougher than Jon&Martin (Jon had already told Martin that it had been a difficult journey for her, before they reunited). Helen does have a point that Basira seems to manage to find her way out in general: she had successfully escaped The Unknowing on her own, she had survived The Flesh’s attack on the Institute, she had pursued Daisy in the apocalypse… Basira has already gone through Helen’s corridors (offscreen at the end of MAG143, to return to the Institute), I’m YIKES about Helen implying that it would be “tempting” to grab her. (… But at the same time, why hasn’t she done it already, if she is capable of doing it? It might be a bit more complicated than that?)

- … I love Martin, I love that he was RIGHT to point out that Helen had just waltzed in to try and steer chaos:

(MAG183) MARTIN: Look, Helen, what do you even want? Okay, you keep turning up like a bad penny and, honestly, it, it seems like it’s… it’s just to be a dick! HELEN: Gasp! I am trying to be friends, Martin. Forever is a long time. And I occasionally like to have some company that isn’t… screaming. MARTIN: … What do you even think friendship is? HELEN: I dunno, do I? The only personhood I have is from someone I ate.

It feels like Helen has REALLY tried hard to make up for the weeks(?) she couldn’t find Jon and Martin? She went extra-hard on them: first with Basira, then implying to Jon that he had manipulated her into killing Daisy, then pointing out that Basira was not safe at the moment and still at risk of falling prey to other Fears (including herself), then trying to mock Martin about his domain, trying to guilt-trip Jon for not having told him about it yet, and when she finally managed to get Martin shocked and upset… job done, byebye.

Is it that she’s trying to get Jon so riled up he ends her? “Helen” used to like Jon and to turn to him (MAG101: “Helen liked you so… there’s a lot to consider. But I will help you leave.” / MAG115: “Before, talking to you made Helen feel better.”), before she was absolutely Down With Doors And Murders (MAG146: “We do what we need to do when it comes to feeding, don’t we? … Don’t we, Archivist?”), is it a remnant of that? Or is it really just an attempt at confusing Jon and Martin further, feeding from them Spiral-style?

- More about Martin’s domain later, but the reveal was BRUTAL, and yet not coming out of nowhere; we knew he had one, we knew he had almost been trapped in the Lonely house in MAG170 and the question was whether or not it had been (/was still) his domain once Martin got freed from it, but there was also the question of how Martin was able to walk in the apocalypse unharmed (was it due to Jon’s proximity, Martin’s connection to The Eye as an assistant, etc.), and Basira’s own status after Daisy’s death… so, yay! Answers and clarifications, and as usual, nothing feeling like a plot-twist, just things that make sense, and that we already had most of the information about!

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: Martin… MARTIN: Are there people, Jon? ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: Are there people in my domain? ARCHIVIST: Not many. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Do you need to do your… your thing? Make a statement about whatever’s going on in there? … I could use a moment to think. ARCHIVIST: Sure thing. Yeah, I–I’ll… [INHALE] Yeah. [EXHALE] [BAG JOSTLING] [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS]

Sobbing a bit about Martin’s priorities (“Are there people, Jon?”) and Martin asking for a quick me-time. It wasn’t ice-cold, Martin turned it into something useful for both of them (expecting that Jon would have to give his statement anyway), but aouch, he sounded absolutely shattered inside while blank on the surface…

- Yes, yes, yes, reminder that Smirke’s categorisation is arbitrary and just like the Doctor’s theory, sometimes just doesn’t work, because it’s trying to force-apply rules and a classification over something that resists it (and because the classification is not perfect from the start), but hey, that’s most theories and classifications out there anyway, so: Escher reference, the functioning of the Tower reminding me of the Great Twisting, and the reasonings sometimes reminding me of Gabriel’s work (MAG126), plus Helen popping by – it was Spiral stuff, right?

Well! I felt like it looks like Spiral, but the Doctor’s fears by themselves:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: “But it is not the fall that terrifies him, not the pain of the impacts, but the fact that none of them should be there. That it doesn’t make sense, and it must make sense, there must be a system, there must be, because if there isn’t– [THE BODY LANDS WETLY] He lands with a heavy smack onto rough limestone, and lies still, his body twisted and broken. He knows it will knit itself back together, slowly, painfully, as it always has before. But the thought of starting over, of composing yet another theory, fills him with a deep dread.”

… are more something I would identify as Eye (fear of a truth) and Hunt (fear of having to return to the start, to have to elaborate a new theory from scratch, again and again, of being trapped forever)?

It was really reminiscent of Smirke thinking back over his life, his hubris and the pride of being the one who would have found the answer, to the point where he would reject reality if it didn’t match his taxonomy (refusing to, well… do what you do with a theory: change, or evolve and perfect it when its flaws are pointed out):

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any ‘secret book’ can claim. And if, as I came to believe, the Dread Powers were themselves places of a sort, then surely with the right space, the right architecture, they could be contained. Channelled. Harnessed. So yes. Hubris. Not simply in that, I suppose, but in believing that those I brought into my confidence shared my lofty goals. […] Would you have me separate The Corruption between insects, dirt and disease? To, to divide the fungal bloom from the maggot? No. No, I… stand by my work. And thus, we must conclude that the only explanation is a new Power, created from what was once others, yet also distinct. And if such change is possible, how then can any “true balance” be achieved through immutable, unchanging stone…?”

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: “If they are feeling very confident, they may lean down and stretch a curious tongue beyond their chipped teeth and rotten gums, desperate to add another sense to their observances – more evidence to support their declaration of what the world must be. […] They must simply study and learn, if they are to escape the labyrinth. They will be the first to escape. The one who sits in the central chamber cannot remember his name. But he knows that people called him “doctor”. He made sure of that; to ignore it would have been the greatest disrespect, and he will not be disrespected. […] He knows, for a fact, that this is the central chamber because he is the one sat here. […] They’ll all remember him forever, the first to escape the Monument. His name will be hallowed with the greats: Doctor, uh… Doctor…”

Same old pride, Leitner knew that well too (MAG080: “But I think, in my heart, I dreamed of my work becoming known. That ‘The Library of Jurgen Leitner’ would stand as a symbol of courage and protection. Hubris.”) and Gerry didn’t have many nice things to say about it (MAG111: “Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner. Idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing.”). Loved how the statements came for Smirke’s life and was absolutely ruthless about it – but maayyybe a bit too ruthless, even? Jon didn’t express much sympathy for “fools like Smirke” either, and this is a rare case in season 5 where I find that the statement was a bit lacking in empathy for… people who were technically victims. I mean! Insufferable pedantic academics sure are a type, they’re really not having the worst life out there, but it makes me feel a bit weird, with season 5’s overall tone, that the episode had that vibe of “serves them well, they’re insufferable” about people who were technically still trapped in a domain and suffering from it?

… I still laughed a lot about the Doctor vs. Professor rivalry and how they solved their argument:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: “The doctor that lies on the floor has recovered, just enough to laugh. ‘You’re still working on mineral theory? How painfully outdated.’ A flash of genuine fear crosses the face of the professor at this dismissal, before he picks up his chunk of granite, and begins to smash the doctor’s head in, yet again.” [SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PEER REVIEW]

Academia unleashed.

(- OKAY, I HAVE TO CONFESS that when the character could only remember his title as “Doctor”, with Smirke having been mentioned earlier, my mind just jumped to Doctor Fanshawe… ;; He had left a strong impression on me, okay.)

- ;w; Over the fact that Martin got his me-time and that it was enough: he was clearly tense, but he came back with direct questions and knew what he wanted cleared up…

(MAG183) MARTIN: Finished? ARCHIVIST: Yes. MARTIN: Good. … I need you to explain something to me. ARCHIVIST: All right.

- I can’t believe that Martin Global Heartthrob Blackwood made The Eye FALL FOR HIM too:

(MAG183) MARTIN: How do I have a domain? That doesn’t make any sense. ARCHIVIST: It’s like I said. [INHALE] Everything here is either watcher, or watched. MARTIN: [SIGH] Subject or object, yes, I know, we’ve been over this. ARCHIVIST: Well, you’re a watcher, Martin. You worked for the Institute, you read statements, The Eye is… fond of you. You’re not getting thrown into your own personal hell, which means…

Jane, Peter, Simon, Elias, Salesa, Annabelle, now Beholding – do you have any limit, Martin.

!! I’m excited over the fact that Martin’s entanglement with Beholding stuff was acknowledged! Comparatively, Melanie had read 2 statements (MAG086, MAG106) and Basira 1 (MAG112). Meanwhile, Martin had read 12; plus, although Tim, Melanie, Martin and Basira had taken (… or tried to take) one live statement each in MAG100, Martin had also taken 3 additional full statements:

MAG084, Adrian Weiss (Corruption) MAG088, Enrique MacMillan (Buried) MAG090, Ross Davenport (Flesh) MAG095, Luca Moretti (Slaughter) MAG098, Doctor Algernon Moss (Dark) MAG100 (live), Lynne Hammond (Desolation) MAG104 (live), Tim Stoker (Stranger) MAG108, Adonis Biros (Lonely) MAG110, Alexia Crawley (Web) MAG134, Adelard Dekker (Extinction) MAG138, Robert Smirke (Eye) MAG142 (live), Jess Tyrell (Buried, Eye) MAG144, Gary Boylan (Extinction) MAG149, Judith O’Neill (Extinction) MAG151 (live), Simon Fairchild (Vast) MAG156, Adelard Dekker (Extinction)

With Simon highlighting that Beholding had compelled him through Martin:

(MAG151) SIMON: Hm! No wonder I’m so sympathetic to The Lonely. You know: this really is a place for self-discovery, isn’t it? [CHUCKLE] “Statement ends”, I suppose! MARTIN: Uh… I’m sorry? SIMON: Oh! Nothing, just my own hubris. I should have known. When I came here, I said to myself: “Simon,” I said, “you’re going to answer this young man’s questions, but you’re not going to give The Watcher a statement. You’re better than that.” But it’s a hard one to resist, isn’t it? You get in the flow of talking about yourself, and it all just… tumbles out. MARTIN: Mm, does seem like it.

Elias might have been eyeing him as back-up Archivist, too (although since then, we’ve learned of his bet with Peter which would have already been running at the time – it might have been that Elias mostly wanted to ensure that Martin wouldn’t die during the Unknowing because he’d be needing him afterwards):

(MAG116) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] What about Martin? MARTIN: What about me? ARCHIVIST: He should stay behind. MARTIN: What?! ELIAS: Really. MARTIN: Why? ARCHIVIST: Too many people might attract attention. MARTIN: No, no, I can help, I’ve been reading the statements! ELIAS: … Quite right, er, probably best he does stay behind. BASIRA: What, so you have a backup if Jon doesn’t make it? ELIAS: I’m sure that won’t be necessary.

Martin did a lot of research, read these statements aloud, took live statements, was hinted as a potential replacement; tape recorders have spawned around him like they do with Jon, even outside of statements, and Martin had been exceptionally kind towards them on multiple occasions; there had been that little moment of Martin somehow knowing that Jon was alive back in season 3 (MAG088: “It’s the not knowing, you know? I mean, Jon’s still alive. Not sure why, but I’m sure of that. But Sasha, I…”), shortly before we had learned about Jon’s own Knowing powers developing; we don’t know why and whether that was Beholding or The Web or something else, but Martin had been able to know how to get Jon out of the Coffin in season 4:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from. PETER: You should watch out for that. Could be something dangerous. MARTIN: Sure.

… And Peter’s whole plan relied on the fact that Martin was initially touched by Beholding:

(MAG134) PETER: [BREATHES] I’m still working out some of the kinks. But I believe I have a plan. However, it requires this place, and it requires someone touched by The Beholding. Elias was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unwilling to help.

(MAG158) PETER: It’s quite simple, really…! I want to use the powers of this place to learn about The Extinction: what it’s doing, where it’s manifesting. Then we can stop it. MARTIN: And you need me for this? PETER: Correct! Without a connection to The Eye, any attempt to use it would likely end… very messily indeed! But thankfully, it just so happens that you hold such a connection. MARTIN: So that’s it… Both “lonely” and “watching”. PETER: You must admit you’re the perfect candidate. MARTIN: I suppose I am.

Beholding baby!! Now coming in an additional Lonely flavour.

- Mmmmmmmm… The way Jon put it, it seems that Beholding is consciously rewarding its servant and:

* It could be Jon trying to make sense of something else, that he doesn’t understand? Gertrude didn’t think that the Fears were able to “think” at all (MAG145: “Sometimes, I think They understand us as… little as we understand Them. We don’t think like They do.” “I’m not actually convinced they “think” at all.”); reward&affection could be primitive enough feelings for a blob of terrors to work out (Martin fed Beholding as an assistant by reading statements => Beholding grants him things in the hope of getting fed even more?), but I don’t know, I can’t help but wonder if this is just Jon humanising the Fears a bit too much? It’s curious that Beholding got “fond” of Martin precisely when Jon himself fell in love with him – could Jon’s feelings have influenced Martin’s position in the apocalypse, could Jon be having a bit more power over the landscape than he realises?

* … If Beholding is rewarding its servants, that doesn’t bode well for Elias. WELL, no, I mean: it might mean that Elias is having a Great Time as a Beholding acolyte, which means it doesn’t bode well for my desire to see Elias get absolutely wrecked and wrong about being the “king of a ruined world”. I want him to have miscalculated, damnit! x’D

- I’m having so many feelings over Martin himself being unsure of what he wants, whether it’s better to know or to remain ignorant…

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: It’s like I said. [INHALE] Everything here is either watcher, or watched. MARTIN: [SIGH] Subject or object, yes, I know, we’ve been over this. ARCHIVIST: Well, you’re a watcher, Martin. You worked for the Institute, you read statements, The Eye is… fond of you. You’re not getting thrown into your own personal hell, which means… MARTIN: [QUIETLY] That one of them belongs to me. But that’s… Ho–how can I be a “Watcher”? I, I didn’t even know it existed! ARCHIVIST: But you’ve suspected for a while now, haven’t you? MARTIN: Maybe? But that’s not “watching”! ARCHIVIST: Do you want me to tell you about it? MARTIN: No. … Yes. N–no, no, I don’t know, I don’t know. [SIGH]

Is it a remnant of his discussions with Tim in season 3? He’s basically gone the reverse of Tim about it:

(MAG098) MARTIN: Y’know, I think he thinks that the distance keeps us safe, you know? Like, like, if he just makes sure that we’re not involved, we’re somehow fine. TIM: He’s an idiot. Look, we didn’t know what that door was, and it still trapped us. Ignorance isn’t going to save anyone. MARTIN: No, I mean, you’re right, I guess.

Martin has seen enough to know now that ignorance doesn’t protect anyone, but also that knowledge can be used as a weapon – that the horrors are just made to hurt. I feel like, in his situation, noping out of Jon’s statements was one of his only ways to assert his boundaries (which had been denied from him — and from others — for a long time)? But here, the situation is different; it’s about Martin’s own involvement, he knew the knowledge would hurt anyway… but it’s also his load to bear? To at least face what is happening, since he’s benefitting from it, since he’s been made complicit (without ever wanting to)? It still goes perfectly with the exploration of exploitative and oppressive systems: Martin, unknowingly and unwillingly inflicting hurt, still being in a better situation than others… while not being directly responsible for it, not wanting to benefit from it. It really makes me want to see Jon&Martin find a way to reverse or improve things, to get people out of the domains or giving them the keys to escape them, and I don’t know if I can even hope something about this ;; (On the Jon&Martin front, things are so good; but it still feels so unfair for… everyone else.)

- Martin having a domain and being classified as a “watcher” finally explains why he hadn’t been impacted by the apocalypse since the Change! He had been able to get out of the domains’ grasp even when he wasn’t around Jon (he had fallen behind at the end of MAG163, he wandered around in the Web’s theatre, he left Jon alone for most of the statements), and there was still the question of… how he was still surviving without eating, and at the same time wasn’t (at least as far as we knew) trapped in a domain:

(MAG161) MARTIN: [MIRTHLESS HUFF] What about food? ARCHIVIST: What about it? When’s the last time you thought to eat, o–or even felt hungry? MARTIN: [FAINT] What…? Wha… Uh… I don’t know. ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever is sustaining us now doesn’t need us to eat. MARTIN: That… that can’t be possible– ARCHIVIST: It’s a new world, Martin, the natural laws are whatever they want them to be. And I suspect they don’t much care to keep humanity fed and watered.

I was wondering if it was Jon’s influence, or Martin being “trapped” in Jon’s domain, and Jon had also alluded to the possibility that they were themselves trapped in their quest towards the Panopticon:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “Free” doesn’t really exist in this place. MARTIN: Apart from us. ARCHIVIST: I suppose. I–in a sense, though… [CHUCKLING] how much of that is because we are trapped in our own quest to– MARTIN: Okay, let’s, let’s not dive into another… ontological debate right now, not here. ARCHIVIST: Fair enough.

And Jon had even specifically told Martin that he had a domain, shortly before Martin got almost imprisoned in the Lonely house:

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: We all have a domain here, Martin. The place that feeds us. MARTIN: Oh. [PAUSE] Where’s yours? ARCHIVIST: [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE] I mean, we’re… traveling towards it. MARTIN: Oh! Right, obviously. [CHUCKLING] Duh. Hum… What about me? ARCHIVIST: … Would you… like me to… ? MARTIN: No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. ARCHIVIST: … Okay!

(MAG170) ARCHIVIST: I, I didn’t want to… look too ha–, I–I–I promised I wouldn’t… know you, and, and with the fog in all–all the rooms, I’ll, I just, I lost y–, I… I–I’m sorry. MARTIN: It’s okay. ARCHIVIST: … No, I… I tried to use the… to know where you were, but… it was… You–you were faint. It was so strange, i–it took me so long just to find you…! [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: Jon, it’s… okay. I promise it’s okay. This place tried, it really did, and honestly I… I wanted to believe it. But I didn’t. ARCHIVIST: This… “place”, i–it… [STATIC] My god…! […] I, I just… I wanted to make sure that you knew what this place was. MARTIN: It’s The Lonely, Jon. It’s me. ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Not anymore. MARTIN: Hm! No. [LONG INHALE, EXHALE] No…! Not anymore.

And alright, that finally answers it: the Lonely house wasn’t his domain, wasn’t meant to be (but he was susceptible to it, got almost trapped in it as a “watched” although he eventually managed to reject and break free from it). His own domain was elsewhere, and Martin himself was amongst the “watchers” all along; Martin is living a bit like Helen in this apocalypse, having a fixed domain, but able to navigate elsewhere.

Aouch for Martin, since he had been encouraging Jon to smite domains’ rulers as soon as he discovered that Jon could do it; it was already murky territory for Jon himself (if the “avatars” and “monsters” just deserve to die, what about Jon?), it was awful with Callum (Martin himself drew the line at smiting a kid)… but now, we know it was directly including him, too, and that he had been fed through people’s pain all along. No wonder Helen had encouraged the smiting so hard, if she already knew they were kind of neighbours…

… Double-aouch for Jon, because he had offered twice the option for Martin to stay elsewhere, permanently:

(MAG170) ARCHIVIST: M–Martin, if you… did; i–if you wanted to forget… a–all of it, stay here and just… escape. I… I would understand. MARTIN: … N–no…! It’s comforting here, leaving all those… painful memories behind, but… It’s not a good comfort, it’s… I–it’s the kind that makes you fade, makes you… dim and… distant.

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I… It would have been nice to stay. MARTIN: [WISTFULLY] Yeah… I’d almost forgotten what it was like, you know? A bit of peace, eh! ARCHIVIST: I mean, you could have… MARTIN: No, don’t say it, Jon. You know I never would. I–I can’t just “forget” about all the people out here! Besides, I’d rather be trapped in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with you than spend one more moment in paradise with her.

And Jon probably didn’t know what Martin’s domain was exactly, back then, since we heard the knowing static kick in when he described the domain in this episode? But he probably knew, already, that Martin having a domain didn’t mean that he belonged to it as a victim, but as a ruler, and that it would hurt Martin so much. (“No one gets what they deserve. Not in this place. They just get whatever hurts them the most! … Even me.”, indeed ;;)

- I AM HAVING SO MANY FEELINGS OVER THE DESCRIPTION OF MARTIN’S DOMAIN…

(MAG183) [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: It’s a small domain. A swirling mix of The Eye and The Lonely. Inhabited by a few lost souls whose fear is not of their isolation or their agonies, but that no-one… will ever know of them. That they shall suffer in silence, and be mourned by nobody. That’s why you can’t really see it. It’s why even if we do travel through it, you won’t be able to see… any of the people trapped there.

… It reminds me so much of what Martin probably experienced in his own flat, when Prentiss besieged him for two weeks and Martin was unable to contact anyone, and nobody came to check on him? Did Martin’s domain grow from his own old fears…?

It also reminds me a bit of Naomi’s brush with The Lonely:

(MAG013) NAOMI: The fog seemed to follow me as went and seemed to swirl around with a strange, deliberate motion. You’ll probably think me an idiot, but it felt almost malicious. I don’t know what it wanted, but somehow I was sure it wanted something. There was no presence to it, though, it wasn’t as though another person was there, it was… It made me feel utterly forsaken.

Overall, the description is extremely… typical from what we’ve seen of The Lonely: there was Naomi’s misadventure, Ethan disappeared and nobody even claimed his backpack (MAG048), Yetunde Uthman had “disappeared a year ago. And nobody noticed” (MAG150)…

(But from that description alone, it doesn’t sound very Beholding, despite what Jon said? I’m curious about the Eye aspect of it…)

- Can’t believe that Martin canonically turns out to be the Lonely Eyes love(hate)child, gdi. It really was a custody battle in MAG158.

- Extra-sad that Jon warned Martin that there was meaning in the fact that Martin didn’t know anything about his domain, and wouldn’t even be able to see people in there… It’s just so cruel, both for them, and for Martin, to learn that he’s been unknowingly contributing to their misery (because they fed him and he didn’t even know about them)?

Pretty sure that Martin will stay with Jon to hear that statement, at the very least ;; (Or could he ask for something more? We’ve seen Jon extracting Breekon’s statement in MAG128, I wonder if he could put something into someone’s head like Elias had done, allowing Martin to give that statement himself…)

- I’m wondering about Jon’s own domain, too, now! He said they were heading towards it, so it’s either the Panopticon, the Institute or the Archives, or a mix of those… or something close to it, on their way to it. If Martin’s domain is a mix of Lonely&Eye, is Jon’s pure Eye? A mix of the 14/15? A Web&Eye mix, given Jon’s own personal fears?

I know that Jonny (lovingly) called out the obsessive classification in this episode through Jon, who went off on a rant about the “neat little boxes”, but he’s still using the Smirke classification this season:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: It’s a small domain. A swirling mix of The Eye and The Lonely.

(AND IN THIS VERY EPISODE… Jon…)

- On the one hand: feeling directly called out by Jon’s rant about how the divisions between avatars/monsters/humans/victims wasn’t and isn’t working, that reality escapes that division because it’s much more complicated than this:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: [HEATED] Avatar isn’t a thing, Martin, it’s not–! It’s just a word. A word used by… fools like Smirke to try and sort everything into neat little boxes, to reduce the messy spray of human fear into a checklist: Human, avatar, monster, victim. Only now, now, there’s a binary. There’s finally a clear dividing line and… [SIGH] Well. I’m sorry you’re not happy with which side you’ve ended up on.

(It felt especially relevant with Callum Brodie: could we really tell that he was an “avatar” when he was still a freshly wounded kid, even if a tormentor himself?)

On the other hand, well, that was still a useful distinction to have to identify servants, and mostly, I’m not extremely convinced by Jon arguing that there is now a Clear BinaryTM in the new world, between the “watchers” and the “watched”, since:

1°) Helen herself explained the dichotomy to Martin (MAG166: “And so, there are now exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: the watcher, and the watched. Subject, and object. Those who are feared, and those who are afraid.”). Given that she mostly tries to confuse them… that’s a red flag.

2°) Despite Jon defending that binary, we’ve run into plenty of examples of things… not fitting into that new classification. He himself acknowledged that Basira’s status wasn’t established yet; we’ve seen Salesa, protected by his camera from the chaos; Jon has been unable to know about Georgie and Melanie, only hypothesising that they might in what-used-to-be-London; Martin, a watcher, could still have fallen prey to another domain… That’s already a lot of special cases around that “clear dividing line”…

3°) Somethingsomethingsomething about how it’s in Beholding’s best interest that Jon believes in a clear, unchangeable, dividing line which serves Beholding’s own interests. If things feel fixed and unchangeable, then there is no point trying to fight against it or find a loophole, right?

Given that a Watcher can get trapped in another domain… does that mean that it could be the case for Jon, too? We got a threat of it in MAG172, when Jon began to give the statement of the following act – if Martin hadn’t interrupted him, would Jon have ever been able to stop?

- Confirmation that Daisy had “trapped” Basira in her Hunt! I was suspecting it since Jon’s first wording:

(MAG164) MARTIN: Is Basira alive? ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] MARTIN: Is she… in… o–one of these places? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: She’s alive. Out there, not… trapped in a–a hellscape, but… moving. [STATIC DECREASES] Hunting. She’s… she’s looking for Daisy. She’s a few steps behind.

(MAG183) MARTIN: … What about Daisy? Or Basira? ARCHIVIST: Daisy carved through the domains of others. Basira… well… In a very real way she was a sufferer in Daisy’s domain. Maybe the only one. Hunting, following, hurting. Now Daisy’s dead, she’s… free. Sort of. She’s inherited something of Daisy’s ability to move through the other domains. For now, she’ll… feed off what she sees in them. As to whether the Eye ultimately gives her a domain of her own… I don’t know yet.

* And now, Basira seems to have a peculiar status… Is it because she killed Daisy? Is it because she killed the ruler of her domain? Jon explained that a ruler’s death didn’t change much for the domain itself, but maybe it operates differently if a victim kills a ruler (… they become the new ruler?)

* Another reminder that Jon cannot see the future.

* Big Eyeball didn’t immediately give Basira a domain, but Martin got one. I see that favouritism, uh. (Joke, it does make sense given how Martin recorded a lot of statements and had worked at the Institute for years and years.)

- I love how Jon managed to explain why he hadn’t told Martin everything, and how Martin… indeed agreed that Jon had been mostly trying to respect his wishes about not knowing ;; It’s true that Martin had been adamant about not hearing much of the horror:

(MAG163) MARTIN: J–Jon, enough! Enough! [STATIC FADES] … Please don’t tell me these things. ARCHIVIST: I… I’m sorry, I– There’s just so much! There’s so much, Martin, and I know all of it, I can see all of it, and I– It’s filling me up, I need to let it out! MARTIN: I’m sorry, but tough. Okay? Tha–that’s not what I’m here for. [VOICE IN THE DISTANCE: “No… No!”] MARTIN: I can’t be that for you, I–I just can’t.

(MAG167) MARTIN: Oh! Right, obviously. [CHUCKLING] Duh. Hum… What about me? ARCHIVIST: … Would you… like me to… ? MARTIN: No, no. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. ARCHIVIST: … Okay!

(MAG183) MARTIN: You didn’t tell her any of that. ARCHIVIST: I didn’t think the metaphysics of her place in the fear ecosystem was something she’d be particularly interested in at that moment. MARTIN: Fair. But you seem very reluctant to tell anyone any of this stuff. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I did try, right at the start, but y–you didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I didn’t push it. It’s hard, I have so much knowledge but… how do I decide what people want me to share, and what they never want to know?. MARTIN: I guess that makes sense.

But Martin seems to acknowledge that indeed, Jon had been trying his best about it…

(And now, I wonder if there is still other stuff that Jon hadn’t told Martin, in the same vein…)

- First choice for Martin:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I was going to bring it up at the crossroads. Inside. I only just realised we would be going this way. […] MARTIN: I guess that makes sense. … So what did you mean about the crossroads? When you were talking to Helen. ARCHIVIST: It’s a maze in there, something between a, a Rubik’s Cube and a Magic Eye picture. I can find us the way through easily enough but… well. For us, there are two ways out. Two paths to London. MARTIN: What are the choices? ARCHIVIST: One would be a long, winding route, we’d see a lot of horrors, but remain… personally untouched. MARTIN: And the other is my domain. ARCHIVIST: Eventually. It’s a shorter path, with faces we know along the way. Including Helen. MARTIN: I thought Helen was her domain, wi–with all the doors and that? ARCHIVIST: She is, but she has a… position within this pseudo-landscape, like any other. MARTIN: O–okay. [INHALE] So, so, I mean, I suppose we’ve got to do that one, right? ARCHIVIST: We don’t have to, w–we–we could just– MARTIN: What, what? We could, we could dodge around it? Take the path of denial? I guess, but… what is it you keep harping on about? “The journey will be the journey”? [SIGH] I mean… It’s pretty obvious that this one is my journey.

! Glad that Martin didn’t hesitate and immediately understood what it was about – that it mattered to do it that way, that Martin had to face it, that this is how this world works. No hesitation about it. He got a demonstration with Basira, but still, he was quick to accept it.

I’m expecting a few episodes before Martin’s domain, so… with the overall rhythm of the season, they might reach the Institute by MAG189? And Hill Top Road during Act III?

- Since Jon mentioned that the path Martin ended up choosing had:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: Eventually. It’s a shorter path, with faces we know along the way. Including Helen.

I wonder about those “faces we know”, since we’re running super-low on ~avatars~. Different options:

* Institute staff. Rosiiiie?

* Melanie&Georgie. A bit unlikely, given that Jon had trouble knowing what was the deal with them, I feel?

* Since Helen will be there, people who gave live statements to Jon and were trapped in his nightmare zoo. I’m mostly thinking about this one, especially since Jon’s “No one gets what they deserve. Not in this place. They just get whatever hurts them the most! … Even me.”… (And if it’s about an internal and metaphorical journey, I feel like having to face people that Jon hurt, first unaware (he didn’t know about the nightmare zoo when he signed to become the Head Archivist), then partially unwilling but still doing it (he felt guilty about it but still hid it, still chose self-preservation instead of warning the others about it), would have its place…)

- In the same fashion, who is trapped in Martin’s domain? Unrelated people? Live statement-givers? (;; I’m thinking of Jess, who had the misfortune of being compelled by Jon and of giving a statement to Martin…)

… Given that it’s confirmed to be a “journey” for Martin too, I can’t help but squint at Jon’s wording, because. “Faces we know”. The only thing we know of Martin’s father is the fact that he looks like Martin… (MAG118: “The thing is, though, Martin: if you ever do want to know exactly what your father looked like… all you have to do is look in a mirror~ The resemblance is quite uncanny. The face of the man she hates, who destroyed her life, watching over her, feeding her, cleaning her, looking down on her with such pity–”)

- I’ll be having Annabelle’s words stuck in my head (ha) for a long time but:

(MAG181) ANNABELLE: Don’t worry, Martin. We’ll meet again. Hopefully when you’re feeling a little bit more… open-minded…! MARTIN: I wouldn’t count on it. ANNABELLE: I would. MARTIN: [SIGH]

… Was it a reference to Martin learning about his own domain and about how the world operates, his place in it? I think that Martin might be even more resolved to turn the world back at whatever cost, now that he knows that he is himself sustained by fear…

(LISTEN, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY HOW WEB!MARTIN CAN STILL WI–)

- !! Footage of Martin saying “I love you” for the first time ;w; I love how it was the thing he was certain about, both a slight decompressing joke and a true statement, a reminder that he has faith in Jon, that he has something to cling to?

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: If you’re sure. MARTIN: … I’m sure I love you. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: I love you too. [FABRIC RUSTLES] Let’s go.

(He had mentioned that he was “in love” in MAG170, I’m happy to hear him telling Jon, too!) And the fabric RUSTLED, SO LONG AND SO HARD, AND AT LEAST TWICE!! I love how the tension from right before and after the statement had faded by the end of the episode ;w; Rollercoaster of little emotions…

MAG184’s makes me think of something Leitner had said (more lore about the Fearpocalypse?), and of Vast and Corruption… with very different vibes. If Corruption, and keeping in mind that Jon has announced that they will be encountering “faces [they] know along the way”, it cooould contain Jordan Kennedy, the exterminator from Pest Control…? Especially given that both Jon and Martin had met him (Jon took his live statement, and Martin pleaded offscreen for him to get them the jar of Prentiss’s ashes to comfort Jon).

(Yessss, I am absolutely aware of the irony of still using Smirke’s categorisation after another episode in which we were told again that it is bollocks, but if Jon himself still occasionally labels the domain as one of the 15, so can I ♥)

#long post/#tma liveblog #mag183 #tma season 5 #the magnus archives #tma spoilers/

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aotopmha · 4 years

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I'm really starting to disagree with the reaction I see around Mikasa's indecisiveness.

At first I got it and I still get it a little bit - the phrasing is mostly used as a proxy for Mikasa getting little to do, but I also don't agree with the interpretations of her character that sometimes come out of those complaints.

Mikasa never was this super proactive Battle Goddess to me. She was always what you call a "reactive character".

Conflict came to her and she dealt with it, rather than jumping into everything herself.

Since she lost her first one, her purpose in life was to protect her family - people even now reduce it down to her just being protective of Eren, I and many others have always thought it's more complicated than that, but now I personally think there is even more to it than that.

At this point her not just being protective of Eren actually is also a pretty common perspective around, too.

I think it's about stuff past that - the specific way she cares and why.

The people around her are the ones who give her meaning and direction and thus she acts depending on how they do.

Where they go, she goes.

Her moment of proactivity in Trost was her way of releasing tension; a reaction to trauma, not her "taking action" and again and again I see this cited as some super cool moment.

She was actually falling apart on the inside and her ultimate resolve was still to go on living for those she loved - in that case, Eren's memory.

She is someone who unconditionally lives for others and to me the contradictions around the criticism of her character start here.

People want her to grow to be more independent, but because of the nature of her trauma, her journey to independence will inevitabily contain a period of indecisiveness.

That's just how this kind of trauma works.

Eren is a constant, her friends are a constant. Tearing her away from that safety will naturally lead to indecision and she will have to do work to find another reason to act that doesn't involve them.

If you are torn away from the people you live for, you are going to be indecisive.

People don't want the resolution to be that she just cuts herself away from her connections and kills Eren, either because that might come across as her story just being about suffering and going through pain over and over again.

But for her to grow more proactive and "learn to be more decisive" as Armin roughly puts it, she has to go through a separation.

She can't learn to be more proactive when she is in state of mind where her only purpose for living is living for others.

So it's a catch 22 situation, where the solution to both is separation, but separation will lead to indecisiveness.

Which is then called meekness and what people usually call "sexist writing" because it involves the female character growing passive, but these are actually two very different things.

Meekness is delibrate passiveness and not even wanting to do anything, indecision is confusion and not knowing what to do.

Mikasa wants to do something, she just doesn't know what to do.

"What should I do?" she asks.

"What could I have done to prevent this?" she asks.

Naturally, what is meant by meekness is also a lack of retorts. She doesn't go around disturbing or questioning the chain of command or escalating situations for the worse with her remarks post-timeskip anymore like she did with Rico and Ian during Trost, with Kitz Weilman (the "my speciality is slicing flesh" situation), Levi in the forest (she got his ankle sprained), the "I have no heart to spare" when chasing Eren or even standing against Levi in the serumbowl.

This kind of "meekness" is actually something basically everyone in this story is going through right now, but for some reason people just mostly keep pointing at Mikasa as if she's the only character that way, but I get it, cold and sharp-tongued Mikasa is probably better written for some because well, maybe it just has more personality for some.

Character development isn't good when it "takes away" stuff you like the character for in the first place and people like the sharp tongue of the single-minded teenage Mikasa.

I'm really happy this chapter actively made her indecision as part of her character, before I might've thought Isayama just didn't know what to do with her at points - I can definitely see that complaint for the Uprising arc, especially, but now it's clear her indecisiveness is the point and Mikasa has a new thing going that's not just about her relationship with Eren. She will have to find a purpose to act and goal to strive towards when everyone she personally cares about is gone and I think we might've just seen that purpose when she called out Eren for causing so much harm to others.

She would live so no child would have to suffer like she has and could live a happy life.

This chapter actually made me kind of tear up for her.

I'm not even sure I like Armin calling her out for not being The Independent Woman Who Needs No Man because everyone she cares about is being split apart from her and relationships with other people are everything to her. Taken in a certain way, it could be just read as "stop having feelings".

Sasha died and she was sitting by her grave, holding her head because of a headache, experiencing the same pain she did all over again as she did with her parents, Eren's parents, as with Eren back in Trost and Armin in Shiganshina.

But now that everyone she cares about is going their own direction, she is helpless.

So, as said, her arc is about her finding direction again and learning to stand on her own feet and I think she will.

That... or we'll go the negative character arc route and she'll go insane from loss and isolation, which I don't think feels like the direction the story is going.

Oh, but Levi is like her and he doesn't have such an extreme reaction!

Well yeah, but Levi's principles are different and his arc is different.

I'd even argue that Levi doesn't even have an arc - we just learn how his principles developed, which is prioritizing survival at all cost (which he learned to do in the underground city) and don't regret your decisions (which according to No Regrets is from Erwin). Maybe he softened up a little bit, but even then we saw he already had a "soft side" the moment he was introduced.

Levi could've developed a unhealthy relationship with Erwin given more time, but his childhood was never defined by trauma and living for other people. It was trying to stay alive. The youngest we saw him, he was malnourished and taken in by a serial killer. A different arc.

Here you could argue why Isayama just didn't make Levi the same character, in which case you could bring up the good old sexism word, but also that he wanted to write each character differently.

Mikasa is the only female or male character that values the relationships she has that much except for, well, at this point, Eren. Whose perspective is deeply ingrained in experiencing loss just like Mikasa's. He wants to genocide the whole world so his friends could live.

Mikasa's arc is specifically *about* the trauma of losing someone dear to you and what it can do to a person and why it does that.

Those she loves are Mikasa's safety blanket and now they're all basically gone.

Sasha is dead and Historia is isolated from this incident.

Armin is panicked and stuck in his mind between all the possibilities, so he runs off on his own to get something done in his mind - Connie, Annie. It's all swirling together in his mind, in panic, when Mikasa is looking for support.

Connie ran off on his own because of his own trauma.

Jean is probably the most grounded right now, but stuck with a lunatic extremist and paralysed into indecision himself.

Hange and Levi are also off somewhere else.

This is the first time Mikasa is truly standing on her own and isolated and it made me sad.

I guess you could call me sexist, but I feel like her not knowing what to do in this situation is pretty human and delibrately good writing.

It just makes sense to me and I don't see this apparent "meek" turn Mikasa's character has taken, when she has always been a reactive character.

The "no heart to spare" teenager Mikasa is the better character for some because her character gives the illusion of "agency" because of her assertive, sharp dialog, but she's never been to actively go and do something that doesn't involve what she cares about.

But it's kind of hard to do that when the people you actually say these things for either told you they hated you or are preoccupied with their own issues and scatter off on their own.

For who will you go on a suicidal rampage, use your "speciality to cut flesh" for and to which enemy will you "spare no heart" when you have nobody left to fight for?

Man, writing this made me sad. All Mikasa wants to do is to be with those she loves.

Once again my full chapter thoughts will be out once the CR version/other versions are out.

There was also some nice juicy Annie stuff, which I'm looking forward to digging into.

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #Mikasa #Mikasa Ackerman #AoT #SnK

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notbecauseofvictories · 4 years

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Theoretically, this should be a very long, involved meta and the title would be “Kentucky Route Zero and the End of the Road” or something equally ridiculous. I imagine I’d quote Wendell Berry liberally. However, I am not particularly good at meta, and definitely not about video games---so instead you get this, an elegy for the one and only video game I love and how I am somehow both furious with it and think it did a good thing.

As a bit of background: I don’t like....games. I’m just not a fan of cards, dice, boards, joysticks, or any and all permutations of sportsball, war, and antitrust violations. However, there are two games that serve as the exception to the rule: my annual scrabble match with my grandmother and Kentucky Route Zero, a point-and-click from Cardboard Company.

It counts as a video game only in the technical sense that it uses “video” and is sort of a “game.” Otherwise, it is mostly poetry and ruminations about rural American life, journeys, transience, and debt.

I love it an unreasonable amount.

[ spoilers for Act V ahead ]

Going into Act V, I admit there were things I wanted. I wanted Conway back. I wanted Johnny and Junebug to de facto adopt one (1) human child and one (1) giant eagle who is inexplicably the human child’s brother. I wanted Shannon to have closure with Weaver. If Consolidated Power Co. was somehow razed to the ground and everyone’s debts erased and liminal, magical realist Kentucky freed from the looming specter of corporate interest, you wouldn’t hear me complaining. I wanted, to be blunt about it, resolution.

Act V gave me exactly none of the above.

And so, my first reaction was a kind of aggrieved fury. How dare Cardboard Company not give me (and these characters, who they made me love and want nice things for) a proper ending? Am I just supposed to let Conway drift away into debt and servitude? Am I supposed to forget that Junebug and Johnny are a bit ambivalent about bringing someone new into their dynamic? Shannon is just supposed to---supposed to what, go on? Not knowing what happened to Weaver? Not seeing justice done for her parents, or anything more than a memorial floating in Echo River?

Even worse, playing the game with all the spliced-in extras makes me care about Emily, Ben, and Bob, Ron and Rita, and all the residents of that place where the roads don’t go and the ghost of a girl haunts the public access studio. All those people whose entire lives are washed away in the course of a night, forced to decide whether to stay and rebuild what can’t be entirely reconstructed or leave for some other, equally strange place.

None of it is goddamn fair, and when “THE END” showed in that white serif font I was so unutterably angry that I had to stand up and pace around my apartment until the emotion wore away.

But beyond that first shock, I’m not sure where Kentucky Route Zero ended up is...actually bad. When I first played through Acts I-III, I described it as a game “about things that are Gone, and things that are Gone-but-still-with-us, like families and history and debt.” I don’t think that’s incorrect---if anything, Act V reaffirmed this as a central theme. Act V said, very clearly, that things change, people leave, debt is sold, towns give up the ghost (or are already occupied by them) and survival is definitely more fraught and complicated than you might imagine. However...things very rarely go. Even the Neighbors don’t leave, when they are memorialized and the inhabitants of a nameless town (living and dead) come together to mourn their passing.

It’s not death but it is also, still, death, because change (things going away, other things coming into being in their place) is always a sort of death.

Which unfortunately means I was right. At the heart of Kentucky Route Zero is transience and memory. refracted through a hundred different lenses---some good, some bad. You have the Museum of Dwellings taking people’s homes out of context and “remembering” them, the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces kicking out the congregation to turn a cathedral into office space, and neatly removing the center of gravity from their world. (Doolittle laughs about how Consolidated Power cheated Earl out of his beehives.) On the other hand: Will is the living embodiment of the Echo’s history, recipient of unknown persons’ first memories. Every time she encounters someone who also remembers Weaver, Shannon melts. Conway remembers Ira and Charlie and the truck, the furniture shed, even if Lysette doesn’t. Memorials---everything from official monuments to discarded trash and gravestones, signs, and broadcasts---play a significant role in the unfolding arc of the story.

Things that are gone, but not gone.

Which means that while I might feel deprived of a happy ending, an easy ending, the ending I was given was...right. Watching June and Johnny go back and forth about Ezra, as Shannon and Emily waver about whether to stay or go was real, and honest. Knowing that nothing could be done, really, to save Conway from the debt he incurred and the job he consented to, other than finish his delivery was right. There is nothing to be done for the Pueblo de Nada, for the Neighbors or the dead or the Gone, other than to recognize that they were there first. Other than to remember them, in their fullness.

(I kept thinking about the folktale, about how Solomon in his wisdom was asked for those words that would make a grieving man happy, and a joyous man sad. According to legend, he sent the ring engraved with the phrase: "And this, too, shall pass away.")

At the end of Act V, our heroes gather in a house that is not a house, which looks both forwards and backwards, and is full of music, or maybe a workshop, and they watch the sun set. And it wasn’t the ending that I wanted, but maybe it was the one deserved.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

#this is....kind of my feelings? trying to figure out how I could be so incredibly moved by something that also made me angry #but I've read too many articles about dying midwestern towns not to recognize what was happening there #not to hope (as johnny and june hope as shannon hopes as those who choose to stay hope) that memory and renewal is enough #kentucky route zero #spoilers herein

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naussensei · 4 years

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King of Conquerors: The Rise of a King

XianKar

Summary: Join Waver in his journey to Alexanders’s past before becoming Alexander the Great, meeting the Ionian Hetairoi, facing wars for power and a new enemy that will lead us closer to the Root.

Note that his is an interactive fic; you choose the ending. Choices start in Chapter 19.

Tags: Time travel, Ancient Greece AU, Historical Fantasy, Adventure Romance, Politics and War, Ionioi Hetairoi, Childhood Friends, Slow burn, Bromance, Bromance to Romance, Some references to ancient gods and lore.

Fandoms: Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night, Fate/Grand Order, Lord El-Melloi Case Files. (Although can be read without much previous knowledge of fate universes)

Characters: Waver Velvet/Lord El-Melloi II, Alexander/Iskander, Hephaestion (OC), Hephaestion (faker), Merlin. Other original characters based on historical characters.

Words: 63.535

Chapters:19/20+

Schedule: Weekly update

Link to entire work: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17737967?view_full_work=true

Keep reading for chapter update below

Chapter 19 : In the Front Line

Notes:

There are two routes from here, each one with also different endings to choose from. This is the first choice you can make. Please comment with your preferred option. The option with more votes will be posted first, however, both will be posted.

The desert was calm and silent under the light of the stars. A warm wind blowing against the endless dunes; the sand burying the remains of the corpses left by the crows.

But the heat of the desert did not reach the comfort of Waver’s tent, where he rested after a long battle. He was lying on the carpet that served as his bed. After a long yawn and a stretch, he sat on the carpet, his eyes catching his own reflection on a silver tray by his bed. He barely recognized the man in front of him. He had gotten so used to having his hair tied, he had not noticed it had grown past his shoulders. His skin had also gotten some color under the sun.

He smiled, briefly, pleased by the image in front of him, then skillfully dressed himself in his favorite robe to join his friends outside.

“There he is!” Said Alexander, rising a cup when he saw Waver coming out of his tent. “Come join us!”

Macedonian soldiers chanted and laughed, drank and cheered. Waver walked among them, finding a place on the ground between Alexander and Hephaestion. Ptolemy joined them, handing Waver a golden cup full of wine.

“You did well today!” Alexander praised his soldiers, energetically. “Another great victory for the Macedonian army!”

The men cheered and clapped.

“Especially Waver!” Added Ptolemy. “I was surprised. You have become a fine soldier”

“I barely managed to raise a barrier to protect us”. Waver denied. He stared at his wine, hesitant.

“Drink!” Alexander ordered, wrapping an arm around Waver’s neck with clumsiness.

“You are drunk.” Noticed Waver, a strong scent of alcohol on Alexander’s mouth.

“Nonsense!” He said with a smile, bringing his cup to Waver’s lips.

“I’m not a baby! I can drink by myself!” He yelled, slightly annoyed. He took the cup away from him and had a sip of wine.

“Baby Waver.” Alexander chuckled, delighted, pinching one of Waver’s cheeks.

“Stop it”. Waver grabbed his hands. Alexander lost his balance and fell forward. The wine spilled all over them.

Ptolemy grabbed Alexander by his clothes and lifted him in the air, barely able to stand straight himself.

“Look what you have done,” He said, “Now he needs another one”.

“You are both drunk…” Waver sighed. “Hephaestion, say something…”

But Hephaestion was already passed out on the ground.

“How the hell did you all get so drunk while I was away?!” He yelled in frustration. “How long did I sleep?!”

“Come on, Waver”, Ptolemy, ignored him, pouring more wine into Waver’s cup. “We’ve been in this Zeus-forsaken desert for months now. We have finally taken the advantage and made the Persians fall back! It is time to celebrate!”

“The Persians!” Suddenly yelled Hephaestion as he heard that word.

“No, you dumb drunk,” Alexander smacked him softly on the head, “They are already gone”.

“Who are you calling dumb, you idiot?”

Hephaestion pushed him. Alexander hit his back against Ptolemy, whose cup slipped his hands, spilling the wine again.

“Alright that’s it…” Ptolemy turned to hit Alexander but got Hephaestion instead.

Waver took a deep breath, ready to witness another pointless fight between the three of them.

“Here we go…” He said, rolling his eyes. This time he poured himself some wine.

“Alexandros,” Parmenion interrupted them. “A letter from your mother”

The three of them instantly stopped and turn to Parmenion. Alexander sobered up a little to read the letter.

Waver and the rest studied the prince’s face, slowly brightening as he read it.

“And?” Asked Waver, impatient.

“She is doing well in Epirus,” he said as he rolled back the paper. “Her brother’s troops are taking over in the northern front. It seems like they have stopped the Persians over there as well.”

Alexander paused to pour himself more wine.

“The good news is that my mother said we will meet in Pella very soon”.

“That’s great news!” Observed Waver.

“Finally!” Hephaestion said, lying down on the ground, “I miss my bed”.

“I’m sure Cleo will be the happiest to see us, right Ptolemy?” Alexander’s eyebrows raised and fell several times watching Ptolemy’s joy on his face.

“R-right”. He said, suddenly serious. “She will be happy to see us. All of us”.

Alexander and Hephaestion exchanged looks and smirked at Ptolemy in a suggestive way.

“What are you looking at?!” He asked, aggressively.

Waver giggled, and so did they.

Alexander now got on his feet. He stood tall, cup in hand, turning to his soldiers.

“The war has finally come to an end!” He announced. Everyone turned to him.

“You have fought bravely! And those who have perished, may their souls watch over us from the stars, among Orion and the heroes, and grant us a safe journey home!”

The men clamored with enthusiasm, chanting Alexander’s name.

“But this victory we owe to every single one of you!” He continued.

“To Ptolemy, the wise and cautious, we owe our impeccable defense!”

He paused to appreciate the round of applause. Ptolemy scratched his head nervously, slightly blushing, then smirked.

“Hephaestion’s bravery for bringing us our greatest offense!” He grabbed Hephaestion’s wrist and lifted his hand. Hephaestion smiled humbly.

“And Parmenion’s experience, guiding us with the right strategy”. He raised his cup towards the man, who answered with a nod of acknowledgement.

“And last but not least…”

Alexander lowered his voice, slowly turning to Waver.

“Waver’s kindness and perseverance, whose compassion for the needed will always be remembered”.

Waver’s heart suddenly stopped, feeling all the eyes on him at once. Alexander gave him a warm smile.

Waver looked around him. Dozens of gentle faces of gratitude moved him to tears.

“Cheers!” They all said in unison, clashing their cups, splashing wine everywhere. Everyone drank, except Waver, who subtly put his cup down. He smiled and wiped his tears of joy.

But the smile quickly faded. Something begun to bother him.

“I think I’m a little drunk,” He excused himself, getting up. “I’ll call it a night”.

“Huh?” Alexander turned to him, disappointed. “So early?” He grabbed his hand with clumsiness.

Waver smiled at him.

“Thank you”. He said, gently letting go of his hand. Then slowly headed back to his tent.

With his head against the pillow, Alexander’s words kept echoing in Waver’s mind.

“…Waver’s kindness and perseverance, whose compassion for the needed will always be remembered”.

He wondered how many people would actually remember him years from now.

He turned to his side, giving it some more thought.

He thought of how many people had helped him in the past, and how he remembered every single one of them. He thought of the old couple in Japan, waiting for him to write them a letter. Mister… what was his name?

He closed his eyes, thinking so hard had made him suddenly tired.

Waver…

Someone called. The voice of a man, soft yet playful. Like a childish melody. A sudden scent of flowers in his nose.

You need to go back…

“Back where?” Waver wondered.

The memory of the Clock Tower appeared in his mind.

“I NEED TO GO BACK!” He suddenly jumped from the carpet; eyes opened wide.

The past few months he had been so focused on surviving the war against the Persians that he had completely forgotten about finding a way to return to the present. He had gotten used to his new life in ancient Greece, nearly forgetting about the comfort of the modern days.

He panicked for a moment.

He was never supposed to help in this war that much. Even if he had not been using his magic against the Persian soldiers. He was never meant to be remembered by these people. He was probably not even supposed to stay in a different time for that long. He recalled his deceased professor Lord El-Melloi’s words in his first lessons.

“…Not only will you affect the past with your interactions, but also your entire being. If you alter something from the past, even your existence may never occur in the future…”

A cold sweat ran down his face.

He tried to remember his life in London. He pictured his apartment, the classroom, the Clock Tower. Everything still fresh in his mind after thinking hard. But… what had he been doing before that?

His thoughts were all jumbled. He shook his head a couple of times. What was he doing in Japan back then? Why couldn’t he remember that old couple’s names?

The image of a grail and the clash of swords flashed through his memories.

Then, a horse. A chariot. A red cape. And golden chains.

“Rider”. He whispered. The blurry image of a man haunted his memories. His face remained in the shadows.

“This is bad…” He told himself. “I need to get out of here, soon.”

He took a moment to gather his thoughts. But something else was disturbing him now.

“Help!”

He heard people screaming outside.

“Somebody! Help!”

Indistinct cries in the distance.

Little by little, soft lights appeared from different directions around the tent. Waver felt suddenly hot.

“A fire?” He thought, wiping the sweat from his forehead. His eyes caught on his wrist, where his bracelet glowed bright blue.

“I need to find Alexander!”

He rushed out of the tent. A strong smell of smoke and gunpowder. Fire arrows falling from the sky, like shooting stars. The Macedonians ran around the burning tents in circles, food and war loot already reduced to ashes.

“Alexander!” Waver looked for him, but the smoke made it hard for him to see.

He rushed to the place they were gathering a moment ago, but there was nobody there.

“Alexander!” He called again, sore throat, eyes itchy. “Hephaestion! Ptolemy! Parmenion! Where are you?!”

He looked around but could only see Macedonians wandering erratically. A few horses ran loose in different direction. He hid under a broken chariot, fearing for the Persians to find him.

“Wait a moment”, he realized. “I don’t see any Persians”.

He looked again. He could only see men in Macedonian armors. He glanced down at his bracelet; the blue gleam was still there.

“This can’t be anything good”, he feared.

Another blueish gleam caught his eye from the other side of the camp.

“Alexander!”

He could distinguish the prince’s silhouette behind the screen of smoke. He rushed towards him.

A second shape appeared as the wind blew away the smoke. A Macedonian soldier held a spear through Alexander’s leg.

The prince fell, blood pouring onto the ground.

Waver ran even faster.

He watched the soldier lift his spear one more time.

Waver searched for Alexander’s dagger on the ground beside him. Without thinking, his body moved, picking up the sword to slam it with all his strength against the spear. His arms were shaking; he could feel the vibration of the clashing metals down to his elbows.

The soldier stepped back. Eyes golden and gray staring at him with an empty expression.

The soldier pointed the spear at him; Waver charged again. This time the soldier blocked Waver’s blow in a single movement, sending him several meters away.

“Waver…” Alexander called, helpless, half conscious from the ground.

But the soldier was fast.

Before he could even see anything, Waver felt a sharp blade in the middle of his chest.

“Waver!” Cried Alexander, watching him bleed with a dagger in his chest. He tried to get up, but the soldier now ran to Alexander, holding him against the ground.

Waver remained still, like frozen in time. A magical pentagram appeared underneath Waver’s feet, and a hand materialized around the dagger.

Alexander could not see well with the soldier holding his head against the ground, but he glanced at the shadow that now held Waver in its arms.

“It’s the creature…” He feared the worst. “It’s Zurvan…”

Tears of rage clouded his eyes.

“Why?!” The prince yelled, struggling in vain. “A Macedonian…. How could you do this to your own people?!”

“My own people?” A female voice reached his ear. He saw the soldier remove her helmet, letting her purple locks fall to her shoulder.

“My own people tried to kill me”, she whispered to his hear, still holding him against the ground. “They thought I was a monster, cursed by the gods. Your people”.

“Who are you?”

“Anonumos”. She used the Greek word for “nameless”.

“I was never given a name” She continued. “Raised to become a shadow, with no will of my own.”

“What do you want? Revenge?”

What did she want indeed? The girl had no answer.

To her surprise, Alexander grabbed her hand.

“Let me help you…” He said, panting, “I am sorry for what you have suffered- But, please, do not let my friends suffer”.

“Help?” She wondered. What did he mean by that? The touch of his hand had a certain warmth she had never felt before. She reached for his hand, hesitant.

Her thoughts were disrupted by an arrow piercing her shoulder.

“Get away from him!”

Hephaestion’s voice gave Alexander hope.

“Waver…”, Hephaestion turned to him, gasping with horror at the image of Waver being consumed by a shadow. He shot an arrow at it, and the creature vanished before it could materialize completely.

Waver fell on the ground, unconscious, the magical circle still active underneath him.

“No…” Anonumos let go of Alexander for a moment, turning to Hephaestion.

He recognized the slave girl’s distinctive eyes, even in the Macedonian uniform she was wearing.

“You?” He said, pointing an arrow at her.

The girl heard Alexander move behind her. Without turning, she threw her spear at Alexander’s other leg to pin him to the ground. Alexander cried in pain, nearly fainting. His head became lighter as he felt the blood leaving his body.

“Hephaestion”. The girl whispered. Her words traveled to Hephaestion’s brain, as fast and stinging as poison.

An intense headache forced Hephaestion to drop his bow.

His knees week, his blood boiling. He was losing control of his own body. A loud beeping in his ears was driving him insane.

“What are you doing to me?!” He twitched in the ground, covering his ears. A burning fever taking over him.

“Do it”.

“Get out of my head!”

He looked up; eyes as black as the night. A deep groan escaped his throat, like a wild beast.

“You and I are the same, Hephaestion”. The girl whispered, walking closer to him. “Is this what you really want?”

Hephaestion got on his feet. His body shivered, yet he managed to pick up his bow. He struggled to tense the string to point an arrow at her.

She stared at him. A hypnotizing glare. Hephaestion’s body did not respond to him anymore.

I’ve looked deep into your heart. This is what you truly want. We are the same; I am your blood. Whatever you want, I want it too.

He heard her speak these words in his head.

No…

He opened his mouth but only a loud growl came out.

The beeping in his ears became louder, now unable to hear anything else. His sight faded to black.

Anonumos’ glare slowly shifted towards Waver.

Hephaestion’s eyes followed hers, his hands shaking as they slowly moved to point at Waver.

Hephaestion: A. Breaks free from Anonumos’ control B. Loses control and is consumed by darkness

Notes 2: I would like to thank all the readers and supporters that have followed this story, and especially thank the people who have commented and expressed their preferences and/or possible endings. Thank you for your patience, now the time has come!

#waver velvet #Fate Grand Order #lord el melloi ii case files #Fate zero #rider iskandar #waver rider #alexander fgo #fate stay night #fgo #fgo oc #fate fanfic #fgo fics

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kendrixtermina · 5 years

Text

An Alternate Take on The Prologue

It seems to have been almost universally accepted that the events in the prologue were an assassination attempt meant to remove Dimitri and Claude so that the war would go smoother later on. I’d like to present an alternative possibility.

I have no solid 100% certain proof I’m not even going to pretend that this is anything other than my own interpretation that’s no more valid than the other one. It’s just a possibility.

Thus it is ultimately an opinion that I wouldn’t base further conclusions on. We don’t know for a fact that her goal wasn’t, in fact, assassination.

Still I think because there’s quite a lot of interesting stuff going on in that scene that ppl seem to miss, that I want to dissect here regardless of wether you agree with my thesis or not

Significant Clues:

The Actual Motive

I’m not sure if it was Seteth or a random Monk, but I think more than one character goes on about how the Church’s reputation that they worked for so many years would have been tarnished if anything happened to the heirs. Especially when you consider there aren’t that many Blaiddyds left and even less Riegans and that both are expected to solve/end the dire chaos in their respective factions.

Now who would benefit from making the Church look bad? Someone who plans to declare war on them maybe?

They wouldn’t put that sort of dialogue there if we weren’t supposed to conclude something from it.

This might be less obvious if you haven’t played her route (though even then, you still get her speech in all of them don’t you?) but her declaration of war was strictly against the Church and their allies. She hands out papers everywhere, exposing the Church’s wrongdoings and asking all the rulers to choose sides. Petra mentions getting one such letter.

She knew full well that most of the Kingdom and Alliance would side with the Church (and keep fighting even after Rhea’s taken out) and that there would probably be calvacades of collateral damage, after all the Church indoctrinates the ruling elites at the Academy and thanks to the phony “crests are divine gifts” story the nobles depend on the Church for legitimacy as rulers - but every lord who doesn’t support the Church is one whose army she doesn’t have to fight.

When she declares war, she wants as many people as possible to either stand down or join her. Painting the church as incompetent (or, in her mind, “highlighting” their incompetence) to safeguard the precious heirs might have increased that number, if Byleth’s heroic intervention and subsequent appointment as a professor hadn’t overshadowed the whole thing.

Also note that for this to cause a scandal, Dimitri and Claude don’t need to be dead.

Essentially ordering a hit on herself is certainly in line with Edelgard’s other... as Claude put it, “gutsy moves” (Such as not evacuating Enbarr in GD knowing full well that Claude was not going to tear through the civilians, effectively restricting his movements) but looking at literally any other action she’s ever taken, she always goes out of her way to give people the option to surrender., consistently, all the time, all throughout her route (and even many of her engage quotes in the other routes - She offers to let Claude and Byleth go at Gronder, for example)

She even gets this whole rant before you go to fight Claude about how she wishes people would just stand down peacefully instead of starting fights they can’t win. (which is perhaps why she tells Byleth to just go ahead and finish her once she realizes that she’s beaten in the other routes)

She’ll mow you down if you oppose her alright but first she’ll make sure that both you (and her allies all of whom get the chance to opt out) are all there because you want to be/ are actually choosing to oppose her. It’s not like her to just kill people without giving them an explanation or a choice.

But smears and coverups? That’s another matter. There’s her whole secret identity/secret faustian Bargain thing, that time only Hubert, Byleth and Lysithea knew which fortress they’d be attacking, and how she pinned the Javelins of light on the church. That’s totally something she’d do, (which might’ve backfired on the credibility of her pamphlets; PR and negotiation are simply not her greatest strengths)

Which makes her less truthful than, say, Dimitri (I think the only time he ever remotely lied to an ally was to hide his investigations of Arundel from Dedue), but overall still not as deceptive as Claude or the Church , since these are all “tactical” lies for concrete short-term goals, nothing relating to their goals.

Everyone on Edelgard’s side knows that she wants to abolish hereditary rule and create an equal society, even if that means making enemies; Claude tells no one what he’s planning until the very end even though the knights might not follow him if he’d told them that he means to diminish the Church’s influence on society, kinda hoping that everyone will come around on their own - He does this even with Byleth to an extent.

(Though when it comes to the Church we must really differentiate between the Chuch as a whole established by Rhea and Seteth individually, who I’d rate as significantly more truthful than Edelgard since he only lies out of very justified self-protection and loyalty to Rhea (who is his sister, and about whose wrongdoings he only knows the tip of the iceberg), and even urges her to come clean in the end.)

Ferdinand finds it strange that they just so ran into a bunch of mercenaries and wonders if one of the house leaders knew that there were mercenaries.

As before, that Dialogue is there for a reason. One of them probably did know.

So who is it? Probably not Dimitri he can’t pokerface worth a damn.

That leaves Edelgard or Claude.

Edelgard might’ve know that there were mercenaries nearby and expected them to intervene if things went south. Or it could be Claude, and that’s why he ran off.

We know that he’s got great survival instincts, grew up in a warrior culture of sorts, and makes a habit of carefully observing his surroundings. Perhaps he just spotted a large amount of hoofprints or beaten muddy footpaths, and deduced that there might be help to be had in that direction.

For now I’ll say that Claude is the most likely option.

I mean it’s really like him to be a spanner in the works before he even known anything is up - also, he’s the one who ran. It’s because of HIM that the trio went that direction, not because of anything Edelgard did.

Leave it to Claude to look like he’s bailing when he’s actually looking for help. (but also taking a bit of a risk since he didn’t know for certain that he would find help). Also he says something like “Ain’t it great the gods of fortune sent us your way?” which is something Claude would only say ironically.

Kostas didn’t know there would be knights

As far as he knew he was just supposed to “kill some noble pipsqueaks”

But actually, our trio wasn’t supposed to be alone - it was an exercise with Alois and bunch of knights, the elite knights of Seiros, mind you, who are renowed throughout the land. (as Edelgard herself tells you after the fight)

Meaning that Edelgard probably didn’t expect them to be beaten by a bunch of bandits.

Of course beating Claude and Dimitri themselves on their own might be another matter, at least if they’re outnumbered. Still, she must’ve known that Dimitri had seen actual war before and was aware of Claude’s suspicious arrival.

Since she was with them one could think that she maybe lured them away from the group... except that the situation ultimately depended on at least two unpredictable factors:

- The guy who was supposed to get Byleth’s job bolted. He was supposed to be with the trio and presumably semi-competent.

I’m surprised that he didn’t show up as an antagonist afterwards or something. We never find out anything about this guy or why he ran though it coulve been simple cowardice.

Well, unless he too was a plant who meant to run off so Jeritza (who definitely was an imperial plant) could take his job - Didn’t someone say something about expecting Jeritza to get the job Byleth got? I think it was Felix.

- Claude ran for it, and Dimitri chased after him

Now that’s something that Edelgard really couldn’t have predicted. It’s just Claude being Claude, and Dimitri being Dimitri and hence, heroically charging after him to help him out.

If Claude hadn’t run off, the trio would have stayed with the knights who could presumably handle a bunch of bandits. If Dimitri hadn’t charged after him to save him, Claude’s plan would have worked without a hitch and he would have returned with allies - he was just one person, he’s the fastest/stealthiest and the least valuable target so he might’ve escaped by himself.

But Dimitri and Claude running off? Let alone all three? That’s all the most valuable targets on a platter so the thieves went after them. Dimitri, bless his heart, of course thought that Claude was acting as a decoy and counting on himto come after him. (consider how he eventually really DOES expect Dimitri to bail him out at the end of Dimitri’s route)

I’d like to stress that Dimitri’s genuine, unpremeditated and unplanned action with no ulterior motive besides helping out proved to be as much of a spanner here as Claude’s clever foresight and chaotic action, and that neither of the other two had been expecting it.

Dimitri and Claude explicitly tell us that the other two got separated from the group because they chased after Claude. (Again, if she just wanted to kill them, why not just stick with the knights and let them run to their deaths? She’d get a bonus alibi. Indeed she might’ve gone after them because she hadn’t meant for this to end lethally - though it’s fully possible that she just followed without thinking and didn’t intend to get separated)

Something to appreciate here is that while Edelgard is competent and had been planning this for a while, she’s still relatively young and inexperienced and she can only defy or constrain TWSITD so much until she gets the throne.

She has clearly been amassing allies of her own (she marches in with a bunch of relatively young, handpicked generals such as Randolph, Jeritza and Ladislava, and cuts a deal with some from the old regime such as Caspar’s and Linhardt’s dads... though how he goes out in the Church and Alliance routes suggests that Caspar’s dad had some redeeming qualities) , but even with all this and some tentative assent from Arundel and co. she still needed to make an unnanounced surprise visit to actually get her hands on the crown.

She’s not exactly in over her head, but she’s attempting to control a very volatile situation while essentially making a deal with a loose-canon devil she can just barely keep in check.

A microcosm of what’s to come

The central tragedy of the game is that though the faction leaders were ultimately good people who had the same enemies, they wind up fighting each other before they get at the real bad guys because they’re all acting on information that other other’s don’t have and hence don’t know the other’s situation.

In a way the introduction scene is kinda like a miniature version of that.

Each of their individual plans/decisions might have worked, but not all three at once.

If you think about it the way they would’ve died without Byleth’s intervention foreshadows each of their “bad” endings - Edelgard finds herself surrounded and outnumbered after he plans backfire and goes down fighting as no one else has a clue what she’s really doing, Dimitri rushes head-first into an unwinnable fight because he puts honor before reason, misjudged someone’s intentions and doesn’t consider his own role, and Claude would’ve either bailed, or gotten himself killed when one of his plans didn’t quite turn out like he wanted.

Too bad you can only pick one :(

The other two stay that way.

#fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #edelgard von hresvelg #Claude von Riegan #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd

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iamfitzwilliamdarcy · 4 years

Text

Title: His Father’s Heart

Characters: Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne (some), and OCs

Summary: A priest must have a father's heart, and Fr. Todd has had a good example. Or, the one in which Jason is a priest and starts a school. (a03)

Note: -shows up 4 months late with Starbucks and too many epigraphs- Happy (extremely belated) birthday to @catie-does-things!!! I finally finished this fic and have 9 pages of a google doc to give you <3 We discussed this once and then I just Ran with it (this fic is also how i learned there is no midnight Angelus???)

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction....

-James 1:27

“Without confidence and love, there can be no true education. If you want to be loved…you must love yourselves, and make your children feel that you love them.”

“The school was not the end; it was rather the instrumental means for improving the way of life.”

-St. John Bosco

The school that never was supposed to be started with three boys.

Many would say it was Fr. Todd, who worked tirelessly for the crime, addiction, poverty ravished community he served. But Fr. Todd knew, and he knew God knew as well.

The school started with three boys, huddling behind the dumpster in the alley adjacent to St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church.

It was, when Fr. Todd reflected on it, the Hand of God, pushing them where they needed to be, beyond where they thought they ought to be. He was, after all, a diocosean priest, not of a teaching order, and kept plenty busy by the daily happenings of parish life. He had no room in his life for a school.

He was, though, also very much his father’s son.

And his father was not the kind of man to leave three, shivering boys in an alley because he was busy. Neither was the Lord, Jason reminded himself, who was in the least of these.

So he squatted down beside them, enough of a distance they didn’t feel cornered but close enough that he was a presence. And said, “Good evening.”

They were clearly brothers, with the same almond eyes and thick black hair. Even the one whose was curly fit in the set. Hunger made their faces gaunt, but beneath it, if one knew how to look, one could see the same jawline, the same off center nose.

The oldest one shifted to be in front of his brothers, glaring at Fr. Todd. “Go ‘way,” he said. “I know what you collar people do my momma told me and I say go way.”

Fr. Todd frowned, but kept his face and voice soft. “I promise,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you. My momma warned me about dangerous men too.”

The boy continued to glare, not convinced. “I have food,” Fr. Todd offered, and the younger boys shifted behind him. Even the oldest betrayed himself with longing in his eyes, though he quickly masked it. “And a warm bed.”

The little ones were sold, but the oldest was smarter. He clearly wanted the food and the bed, but he didn’t trust a stranger.

Smart enough, Jason thought. He himself hadn’t trusted Batman when they’d first met.

Better the evil you know, right?

Jason rocked back on his heels, thinking. “Stay here,” he told them. “I’ll be right back.”

He got up and quickly returned to the rectory. He called the Bishop, waking him up in the middle of the night. Jason, who had requested the exorcist more than any priest in the entire state, had earned that privilege.

“Almost time for the Angelus,” he said cheerfully, before the bishop warned him about the optics of three boys staying in a priest’s rectory, then added a small lesson of what the Lord would do, contrary to the optics.

He made a few sandwiches, snagged a couple of water bottles, dumped Fr. Dominic’s hot chocolate from the stove into a thermos, grabbed a blanket, pocketed his cellphone, and made his way back to the alley.

He sat down, cross-legged, still enough distance the boys didn’t feel trapped. “Here’s the deal,” he said, handing out the sandwiches; the oldest boy didn’t stop the younger ones, but he still eyed the bread and meat in his hand like it was poisoned. “You can let me help you or I’m going to have to call someone else who can.

“The cops?” asked the littlest one, and Jason nodded. “I can’t leave you out here. It’s going to drop below freezing tonight. I have a contact with GCPD, but I won’t lie to you, if we go that route, likely you’ll end up in a group home and the foster system, if they can’t find your mom or she isn’t able to take care of you.”

“She’s dead,” the oldest said abruptly.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said. He knew what that was like, to find your mother dead, to have nobody else. After a pause, he added, “When my mom died, my adopted father caught me stealing the hubcaps off his car.”

The middle one laughed a little and Jason smiled at him. “It was pretty scary, but he turned out to be a good man. He’ll help you, too, if you let him.”

“We don’t need help,” the oldest boy asserted. The sandwich seemed to give him strength and he glowered at Jason again. “I told you.”

“That’s not one of the choices,” Jason said.

“Who’s your dad?” the middle one piped up.

The older boy threw him a dirty look, but Jason answered, “Bruce Wayne.”

The little one leaned forward, eyes wide, and whispered, “He knows Batman.”

Jason whispered conspiratorially back, “So do I.”

That, more than anything, sold the younger two. Even the older, still wary, agreed to come back to the rectory with him.

Fr. Dominic was awake, grading papers at the table. He eyed the three small boys, smiled, and said, “I was so sure my hot chocolate went to a good cause and looks like I was right. Who do we have here?”

The oldest boy gave his younger brother’s a stern look, one that looked out of place on his young face, but they ignored him. The littlest piped up that his name was Joey and Liam was the middle and his biggest brother was Tucker. Dominic shook each of their hands solemnly, even Tucker’s, and then let Jason slip away to make a phone call.

Dominic was still awake when Bruce Wayne showed up in Lululemon joggers and a henley at the rectory and deposited a sleeping nephew into Jason’s arms.

“Since I’m a good Catholic and all,” Dominic said, “I won’t say there are too many kids. Just seems like a lot for a rectory at 1am.”

“We’re night people,” Jason said apologetically, raising his eyebrows at Bruce.

“Dick’s sick,” Bruce explained as Johnny snuggled his head into the crook of Jason’s shoulder. “And Barbara’s out of town. I couldn’t get out of the Mansion without this one tagging along.”

He held up a bag and said, “It should be enough clothes for a couple of days. I swung through the store and got some toothbrushes too.”

“You’re a blessing,” Jason said, stepping back to let Bruce in.

Bruce grunted in acknowledgement. Then muttered something about needing a throat blessing before he caught whatever illness Dick had come down with. It was, apparently, hitting him hard.

“St. Blaise’s Feast Day isn’t for a few months, but I think I know a guy who could hook you up,” Jason teased, shutting the door and following him towards the kitchen.

Dominic had gone ahead of them, and his grading had turned into discussing the religion test questions with the younger two boys while their brother watched from his place leaned against the counter.

Tucker eyed Jason and Bruce as they came into the room, and Tommy in Jason’s arms. “Who’s that?” he demanded.

“Nephew,” Jason told him. Jerked his head at Bruce as an introduction, but Bruce beat him to it, holding out a large hand and saying “Bruce Wayne.”

Tucker did not shake it, eyeing Bruce suspiciously. As Bruce dropped his hand, the kid said, abruptly, “My momma used to work for you. ‘Fore she got sick.”

It was the most he’d said after telling Jason to go away, and it was the type of thing Bruce would take personally.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t help her,” Bruce said after a moment. “I would like to help you now.”

When the boy didn’t answer, Jason gestured to the bag and said, “Bruce brought some clothes for you to change into after you clean up. You can take my room for the night, the bathroom’s attached.”

Tucker eyed them like he was waiting for the catch, but when none came, he abruptly moved away from the counter to usher Liam away from Dominic and snatch up Joey’s hand. He glared at the adults as he shut the door to Jason’s room behind them, as if daring any of them to try anything.

“You were that defensive,” Bruce reminded him quietly, so that Dominic couldn’t hear. “When we first met.”

Jason knew. He’d been cocky and brash, but it had never really covered up the fact that he’d been a distrustful 11 year old who didn’t really know how to look out for himself.

“I got ahold of Jim,” Bruce continued, louder. “Said he’d send a social worker in the morning but odds were in my favor of being able to foster while they sort it out.”

“Gordon can’t decide that,” Jason muttered, with a head shake, but the way Gotham rolled, the commissioner did have a lot of influence.

“Do you need me to stay?” Bruce asked. He glanced at Dominic, then took a step forward and settled his hand on Jason’s shoulder.

Jason smiled at him. “I think I can survive on a couch for one night.”

“He slept on a cafeteria floor at last year’s high school retreat,” Dominic piped up.

“Kid forgot his sleeping bag,” Jason said with a shrug, shifting his nephew’s weight. Johnny had crashed since getting here and was dead weight in Jason’s arms, drooling slightly on his shoulder.

Jason caught Bruce’s eye, who smiled a little. They both knew Jason had slept on harder than a cafeteria floor before.

“I’ll come back in the morning,” Bruce said.

Jason raised his eyebrows higher. “For Mass,” Bruce agreed. He paused, and added, “Alfred will send food I’m sure.”

“Yes,” Dominic cheered quietly, raising a hand in victory.

He rose to lay his hands on Bruce and Johnny with Jason, to offer them a blessing before they left.

“You know,” Dominic said thoughtfully, after they were gone, watching the closed door of Jason’s room, behind which the shower was still running, “those kids are smart. Think Bruce would enroll them at St. Xavier?”

Jason frowned. “It’s far from Wayne Manor. He’d do it, but I don’t know how the kids would like that commute.”

“Far from here too,” Dominic agreed. He yawned and stretched as if to prove his point. “Speaking of, I should get some sleep. Take my bed, I’ll take the couch.”

But Jason shook his head. “I want them to be able to find me if they need to.”

***************

It took a long time for the boys to settle in with Bruce as a foster; the younger two settled better They’d had to switch out of their public schools because they were not districted there anymore. They hadn’t been to school in a while anyway, Jason gathered.

There was plenty of catching up for them to do, Dominic somehow found time to tutor them in between his own papers and gradings and other priestly duties.

The boys, like the rest of Jason’s family, became a semi-permanent fixture at the rectory.

***************

That was how it started. There was Dominic’s numerous mentions of St. Xavier being too far away, of the boys’ intelligence, the need for a more individualized approach that private school would afford.

There was the lady at the parish who sobbed to Fr. Todd one morning that she could not afford Catholic school and her district was not a good place for her children--no education, she said, just violence. She was scared they’d join a gang or start using drugs. St. Xaxier had scholarships to offer, but it wasn’t enough, and she had no way of getting her kids to school so far away.

“St. Maria Goretti parish has always been in the thick of the throes of poverty,” Fr. Paul, the pastor, had said gravely when Jason had mentioned it to him later.

There was the altar boy who tarried too long at the church after Mass, following Fr. Todd like a duckling, asking theological questions. He never wanted to go home and sometimes sat on the church steps doing math homework until Jason let him inside to pray.

There was the 17-year-old drug dealer Officer Grayson picked up off the streets; Dick got him set up with a WE program but conditionally that he stop dealing and earn a high school degree, but going back to high school hadn’t put him in the best environment, and he was dealing again within the year.

There was child after child, and family after family, who needed something more.

***************

Cardinal Tolan was the one who first brought up the school. Fr. Paul was retiring, and Jason appointed pastor in his leave.

“The Nashville Dominican sisters are looking in this area to open a school,” the cardinal said. “I think maybe St. Maria Goretti parish could be benefited by that.”

Jason nodded. “A boys school,” he said, as way of agreement. “We’ll need one for the girls as well. The Sisters will know what to do.”

“We have a donor,” Cardinal Tolan added, thoughtfully. “I’m sure he has enough for two.”

“And boarding,” Jason said, thinking hard. “We’ll need housing for some of them. Students need to feel like it’s home.”

Cardinal Tolan looked at him a long time, then said, “Truly, you have a heart after the Father’s.”

“I had a good example,” Jason replied, flushing a little.

***************

It was another two years before the school was built. The sisters moved in, Fr. Todd was appointed chaplain, and the first year saw only 15 students from 9-12th grade, Tucker among them.

He’d been the most resistant to Bruce and Fr. Todd over the years, though Jason accepted that he loved as best he could. His brothers adored them, more than Jason anticipated. They’d become altar boys at St. Maria Goretti’s as soon as they’d been able, and had cried when CPS had finally tracked down an aunt nearby to take them in.

They stayed in contact throughout the years. They continued in their service as altar boys, and had dinner at least twice a month with Bruce. Jason usually joined, when obligations allowed him.

When the school opened, their aunt enrolled Tucker, the only one high school aged, right away. Full scholarship, she’d told a bewildered Jason, who knew the diocese hadn’t been able to set up any scholarships yet.

Leave it to Bruce, he thought ruefully.

***************

By the time the schools were ready to open younger grades, Joey and Liam were ready for high school, and they joined Tucker, now a senior, at Maria Goretti’s. The younger ones were still rambunctious, but Tucker had grown into a rather solemn young man. He frequently did his homework at Jason’s kitchen table, mouthing quietly to himself or asking Fr. Dominic to read over his papers, while the younger boys played sports or just waited for their aunt to be off work and pick them up.

He graduated salutatorian with a full ride to Catholic University in DC.

Jason, handing out diplomas at his graduation while the school secretary announced names, didn’t cry a bit when Tucker shook his hand, and then leaned in to whisper, “thank you.”

He did look out and find Bruce, caught his gaze, and smile.

Bruce understood.

***************

Two years later and new Masters degree to join the one he already had, Fr. Todd was appointed principal and chaplain of the school. He’d been involved from the start, as the parish pastor, but now he took even more responsibility.

“Should’ve been a Salesian,” the cardinal teased, when he told Jason.

Fr. Todd laughed and shook his head, “Maybe a Domican at that. But God saw fit to use a simple parish priest.”

***************

Four years later, Tucker sat in his rectory, a month out from his college graduation.

Bruce had been over for dinner but Tucker declined a ride home to his aunt’s. There had been something on his mind all night, Jason knew. He’d danced around the issue of a post-graduate career, awkwardly steered the conversation away from a Wayne Enterprise job waiting for him as soon as he said the word.

It wasn’t until Bruce left, after exchanging a significant look with Jason, and Jason had poured them a rather heavy nightcap, that Tucker blurted out, cheeks flaming in embarrassment, “Will you wrote me a recommendation for seminary?”

Fr. Todd lowered his glass and blinked at the boy in front of him. Now 22, Jason could still see the small defiant, malnourished boy that had huddled in his alleyway. Something like pride and warmth rose up in his chest. Had this been how Bruce felt, all those years ago, when Jason himself had given up the red hood for a white collar?

After a long pause, Fr. Todd managed, “For here or for Mount St. Mary’s?”

Tucker looked up, surprised. “Here,” he said firmly. And still too much of a hooligan, finished what could have stayed unspoken, “obviously.”

Jason said, “Of course.”

He took a sip of his scotch, suddenly feeling the prick of tears at his eyes, and looking at the young man before him, remembered a little boy hiding behind a dumpster on a cold winter night, and then a little boy stealing hubcaps off the Batmobile, and then man God had sent him to save his life.

#jason todd #bruce wayne #Fr. Todd AU #fanfic tag #my fic #batfam #katie's adventures in writing

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combust-catalyst · 5 years

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Conflicted Feelings: I love you!

[ Main Idea: A second part of Conflicted Feelings where the reader now has to figure out their feelings while avoiding the very source of them. But how long with that last? ]

[ Notes: I decided to go on ahead and do a second part to the story. Again, I hope you guys like it. Again, I apologize if Bakugou or any other characters involve go OOC. Warning for lengthy. I apologize for any bad grammar. This was almost challenging than I thought considering Bakugou’s character. I had a fun time writing this though! Of course, do be warned for swearing. ]

After the massive embarrassment and complete break down, you had made it a mission to avoid the ash-blond head at any cost. Coming to school through the gates and happen to see him near, quick make a long route to class! It may get your teacher upset at you, but it was worth to avoid any potential attention. Going to lunch and seeing him? Pass on lunch. You would go for a vending machine snack! That would last you until time to go home! Any where he was, you was gone without so much as a hesitation.. It was flight response after all. Any way to avoid anyone that could and would recognize you.

Of course who could forget a person who was acting bashful and staring at Bakugou. Most would just be glaring at him from his attitude, but that wasn’t you. You just had to find him. . . interesting? He was cute? He smelled nice? Nice? Does burnt sugar count as a nice smell? People found gasoline smelled nice, so that probably wasn’t worth putting into question. He was on your mind. Every second of the day. Every tiny thing that reminded you of him. And at UA was almost Bakugou all the time. Given that at school, you still had classwork, so you couldn’t ignore that.

But that didn’t make it better for you. You was suffocating. And he wasn’t even doing anything! It made no sense! These feelings made no sense! What were you even feeling at this point? It was nervousness being around him or even staring at him. Your heart was racing when you got caught staring at him. You felt like you was on fire and it wasn’t even literal! You would unconsciously smile at him from a distance as if he was the only thing you could see!

“No,” you shrieked as you slapped your cheeks. “Ow.”

That wasn’t smart. Now everyone was going to be concerned with why you had just hit yourself. Luckily, no one was around. You had just survived Mission: Impossible and it’s code name was Bakugou. You sighed, “I’m gonna be late to class again.” Even with all these escapes, it was becoming tiresome. Classmates were clearly speechless as you would do anything to avoid the boy. Yet, you didn’t complain. If it gave you a calm and peaceful mind for even a moment, you would take it.

But it was only short lived because you was certain karma was out to kill you.

“Can’t this be arranged anoth---?” you pleaded.

“No,” Aizawa immediately rejected.

“I don’t feel too well and I th---.” you excused.

“If you have enough time to make excuses,” Aizawa interrupted again, “you have enough time to gear up.”

With that, Aizawa left you along with your entire class, who had already left to get changed. Out of any the times you wish you was a ghost, this was a good time! Hell, getting sick sounded better than this! Your teacher had called in saying they would be arriving late and arrange a two class teaching! This was ridiculous! Aizawa was already known for sometimes having a rowdy class, with somewhat good control over them. But with two classes under one teacher until the other one came? That was a lot! You couldn’t even understand how this was such a good idea to begin with. Added to the even worse problem now, there was no escape from impending explosion.

“I’m sooooo dooooom!” you screamed not caring whoever would hear you. You yanked your case containing your outfit and headed off into changing.

You was quick to leave out of changing room as you did going in. But that didn’t leave you free from the curiosity of your classmates. Some were excited to be on the same class as 1-A. Some were finding it annoying as if worried to be used as training dummies to them. With how Bakugou had considered everyone to be a stepping stone to him, you didn’t find these reactions to be the tiniest bit surprising.

Suddenly, there was a tap on your shoulder, “Pst, you must be excited right?”

“Huh,” you deadpanned.

“Not a chance,” another classmate declined. “Did you see how that Bakugou guy was yelling at them.” They huffed clearly displeased. “I’d say more scared than excited.”

“Nah,” the first one denied. “I saw them looking at him all the time! Someone whose scared doesn’t always stare for over an hour at a single person out of fear! Especially with dreamy eyes like theirs!”

“Hah!” the second one barked back.”Not a chance! He’s selfish ass of a classmate! He’s only got two things good for him! And that’s the damn attitude and quirk!”

Another student nodded, “I mean he was the very first one to get the highest score in the practical entrance exam.”

“Yeah,” one more joined in.

“See!” the second one spoke again. “What is so great about someone wanting to be a hero if he’s flaunting like he’s better than everyone?!”

“Stop it!” you screamed which caught everyone off guard.

This wasn’t what needed to be heard. This was all too harsh! And it was as if you was going to break down! This needed to stop. Glaring at the second classmate, you stomped your way to them. Whether it was pure emotions fueling your actions or the anger you felt at that very moment. Nothing seem to matter. Not even the fear your classmates was giving you.

Nothing except the phrase: That’s not it!

It wasn’t it. You may not have interacted with the ash-blond a lot and had a bad first impression of him. And his attitude was fuel on confidence with straightforward goals. His actions were rash and full on power. The respect he gave was rare and one that had meaning. He wasn’t one to half ass things like he always said. If he was going to do something, he was going to do it. Yes, he was loud and swearing, but it was better than being quiet and low voiced like a mouse! But even then under all those things, he was still human. And humans still think, feel, even if it was selfish feeling maybe, say, and do things.

But you still found him interesting. Life never felt dull. You knew this from first meeting him and from earlier. He was amazing to you. Amazing? No! Cool! Maybe. Yet, you still felt as if you wasn’t say enough. Interesting? If he was interesting, you wouldn’t be defending him. Did that even make any sense? You didn’t know.

Your classmate was backing at the entry door as you stomped closed to them.

“Uh,” they hesitated.

“It’s true.” you admit which confused everyone. “He’s not the greatest at being a nice person. But I’ve always found him so. . . cute? Nice?” You folded up your hand into a fist. “Yeah, he’s rude! But when you have goal and fears biting at you everywhere you go, what would you do? Huh!” At this point, your classmate had fallen through the door and onto the floor clearly confused and still with fear at you. You stomped your feet down in between their legs. “He’s tries and works hard like everyone else here! He got in here through, didn’t he?! So what if he’s got a great quirk?! Every quirk has a downside and he’s no different, but he doesn’t let that hinder him! He’s aware of it, I bet! With a quirk like that, and everyone else here, it takes a lot of patience and understand to make the best use of it!” Breathing in one last breath, you closed your eyes and stared down. ‘Wait!’

But it was too late.

“And that’s why I love Katsuki Bakugou!” you declared as you stared at your classmate with tears down your eyes.

‘Don’t do it.’ you thought, but your mouth kept moving.

“I love everything about him! Every bad flaw he has, I’m not gonna deny about, but damn it! I love those about him AND his good points!” you added.

You slowly huffed as if a burden had been thrown off your chest. It felt. . . great! You said what you felt. And you was truly sincere. You. . . was in love.

With Bakugou.

“Um,” a random voice called out to you and your classmates.

You looked to your side and to say embarrassed was a sheer understatement at what you saw. It was the rest of class 1-A. If all their expression of pure shock and confusion was one thing. Leave it to the fact a few had quite a few “I hear what you said” cheeky smirks. Even Bakugou, the person you had been making it a mission to avoid, had over heard everything. You glanced away clearly not wanting to see his expression. Why would you? You just basically humiliated him in front of everyone.

‘He must hate me now.’ you thought as tears started to fall down your face more.

You rushed to try and wipe the tears away from your face, but only more came. You looked like a mess. A disgusting mess. And now a possible laughing stock to everyone around you.

“Hey,” one of your classmates went to comfort you along with one of the girls from 1-A.

Instead of taking their generous concern, you just acted on instinct again. What was the point of being here? You just found out NOW how you feel and confessed in front of everyone INCLUDING your now called crush! Slipping away, you dashed off again. The only sound of angry yelling and pleads coming your way, but they were drowned out by the distance between and your sobbing voice.

You had made it to Recovery Girl’s infirmary. Lucky enough, she was generous and allowed you inside as you was red from tears and slightly in pain. She offered to heal you as she was probably concerned if you had been sore in some place. You shook your head at the offer. It may fix the painful eyes, but it wouldn’t fix your broken heart. Instead, you pleaded with her to allow you to stay and rest. Besides, your heart needed the rest and some place quiet sounded really nice right now.

“Alright,” Recovery Girl agreed. “I can see what you need most right now is time.”

“Thank you,” you smiled.

“But,” she interjected.

You blinked confused at the sudden “but”.

Recovery Girl’s face smiled, “Time is short. If you live in regret and fear, you won’t be able to move forward in life. Take risk and chances, they may end up being the best and cherished moments of your life.”

You didn’t quite understand what she was getting at. She shook her head claiming you’ll see. She slowly made a walk to the door, “I’ll be going out to talk to Aizawa about your arrival and see what he has to say on it. That includes your teacher as well. I’ll be leaving my door open in case you choose you are comfortable again and ready to leave.”

“Thank you so much Recovery Girl,” you smiled wider; almost making your cheeks hurt.

With that, she had left you to yourself to think. Time? What time? You had a lot of time. Although, you weren’t immortal. And what’s wrong with fear, it’s natural to be afraid. Sometimes you had accept some things. Even if it hurts. . . Very badly. What risk was there to take? If it was about Bakugou, that was long gone now. How could he like you even--much more even love you? That was too much a dream. Especially after the staring and that sudden speech!

You cuddle up in the bed sheets wishing you hadn’t even thought of him because now you was burning up again.

“I love him.” you mumbled as a smile came across your cheeks. “I love. . . Bakugou Katsuki.” You gave the sheets a tight squeeze. It felt so nice to say it.

You wondered if you could keep saying it over and over again.

Too bad, that didn’t last long.

“Damn it,” a voice growled.

“Dude,” another one called out, “you gotta chill.”

“Yeah,” a third joined in, “they couldn’t have THAT gotten far.”

That voice! Was that Bakugou? What was he doing here? And he wasn’t alone. There was two others as well.

“Why the fuck are you two following me?” Bakugou barked. “Get lost!”

“Do you have to be so mean to us?” the third one asked. “We’re only trying to help. Besides, you probably scared them off again if they see you.”

“You---,” he growled.

“What Denki means to say is they was really surprised!” the second spoke up as if to ease the tension.

You glanced at the door from the infirmary. That was Bakugou alright, but the other two you could remember somewhat well. If you recall them from the Sport Festival; Kirishima and Kaminari. They had been known to be around Bakugou a lot along with some other people you had heard about.

“What are they doing searching for me?” you questioned as you peeked from behind the curtain.

Only it was your mistake to. As you noticed their silhouettes, you found it kind of cute how Bakugou was still goofy with how expressive his silhouette that still showed irritation. The other two looked to be backing off. Not in fear, but more to calm the explosive boy down. It was then when you got distracted a red-eye had locked into your own from a small peek from outside the infirmary door.. You shrieked before hiding in the sheets.

“IfuckedupIfuckedupIfuckedupIfuckedupIfuckedup!” you lowly shrieked.

“Did you hear that,” Kirishima asked.

“It’s coming from in Recovery Girl’s infirmary.” Kaminari deduced.

‘Oh no,’ you worried as you squinted your eyes.

“Get going,” Bakugou ordered lowly as if his voice was more calm than usual.

“Oh come on!” Kaminari whined.

“I’m only gonna say this once,” Bakugou warned. “I don’t need your help. Get lost.”

“You c---.” Kaminari protested.

“Okay,” Kirishima nodded.

“Kirishima, you can not be serious!” Kaminari argued.

“Right now,” Kirishima sighed, “this is Bakugou’s own personal battle. Were rooting for ya, bud!”

“Tch,” Bakugou hissed.

It soon remained silent. And for a second you felt at ease. As you slipped out of the sheets to sigh a relief, the curtain was ripped, metaphorically, open to reveal a pissed off Bakugou.

“Found you,” he grinned.

“Ahhhh,” you screamed as you rushed into hiding again.

“Not that shit again,” the ash-blond hissed as he pulled the sheet to reveal your swollen eyes and blushing face.

You glanced again to avoid any more eye contact. Your heart was racing again. You wanted to shift away. Besides, Bakugou was probably grossed out by how you looked. Anyone would be. Your muscles wouldn’t move. You couldn’t shift further away. You was. . . cornered? There was literally no other escape out of this now.

“You look like shit.” he responded.

“I know,” you only admitted a bit soured though.

It was silent for awhile. You could hear the sound of a chair being shifted near you. Was he really not going to leave?

“Say it again,” he demanded.

“What?” you asked glancing only to glance away when you noticed his eyebrow twitched.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” he growled.

“Huh,” you still didn’t understand.

Until it clicked.

“Oh!,” you realized, “you mean. . . that.” Your face was burning up again.

“Well, duh,” Bakugou said. “What the fuck did you think I meant?”

“I don’t know.” you spoke sadly. “About how you’re rude and abrasive, but I still lov----.”

“You. Are.Doing. It. AGAIN!” Bakugou barked his patience running low.

“I LOVE YOU!” you screamed in nervousness.

It was happening again. The tears was running down your sore cheeks. You only made hiccup noises as you wanted to rub your eyes. Sadly, you felt the stinging in your eyes, so rubbing was a definite no go. You heard a sigh from the ash-blond. You wasn’t sure, but you was surely scared from his silence.

“Quit crying,” he mumbled. “You’re only making it worse.”

“Eh,” you glanced up.

To your surprised, the sudden anger that was there was no longer tense. The air felt. . . awkward? Bakugou was scratching his head as he too was looking away. The redness a bit faint on his ears. Was he. . . nervous? This was a rather extremely rare moment for you to see the explosive student of 1-A, Bakugou Katsuki, being red and nervous.

“Damn it,” he swore. “What you said earlier. . . that, uh, was a confession wasn’t it, right? That whole “love” shit. Fuck.”

You was a bit lost for words as you was witnessing your crush literally struggling to say anything. Why did it feel so. . . adorable? It was as if the sudden anger and all things you heard from rumors feel flat to what you was literally witnessing right in front of you. Right now, the pain in your eyes was an afterthought, because right now, right in front of you, your crush, the person you was in love with, looked so different. As if, Bakugou was having his own problems.

He glared you, his face once again the usual pissed off, but it felt as if the redness had spread even faster. “ANSWER ME!”

“YES,” you squeaked as redness of your own showed up. “I mean,” you swallowed a lump in your throat, “yes, it was a confession, I think?”

“You think,” he deadpanned. “Then all that shit you said about me earlier was just you sprouting nonsense bull crap, huh?”

“No,” you denied. “I meant it, but it came out really stupid probably even grossed you out.”

“And so what?” he said.

You blinked, “What?”

“You said exactly what you fucking felt and held true to your shit on those feelings.” he complimented. “You stood up to that bastard you was yelling at earlier, didn’t you? And saying all that emotional shit. Heh, that takes some fucking guts to sprout all that.”

You remained speechless at his words. Was this a compliment and a “good job”? Was he praising you for confessing or standing up for what you felt? Did he not know it was about him? No, he should have know from the whole “I love Katsuki Bakugou” part.

He continued, “I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to give you some answer, huh?” He was scratching his head harder.

‘He’s a lot more cuter when he’s struggling.’ you externally smiled. ‘It’s like he’s still not sure what to do with his own feelings to answer mine.’

His red-eyes locked with your own again. “Quit smiling at me, damn it!”

“Sorry,” you apologize smiling even harder. “It’s just you look cute when confused? Like even people like you have a hard time when it comes to feelings of the heart.”

“C-cute,” his eye twitched at a lost at the word coming from you.

Was that too soon?

“I don’t mean to insult!” you defended.

“Tsk,” he scoffed, “listen well then, dumbass!”

You nervously nodded.

“As of right now,” he grinned, “I’ll accept these stupid feeling or some shit.”

You felt your heart was being lifted. Was he saying to go out? Was this a date? You didn’t deny, you felt amazing that your feelings was being acknowledged, but how he was doing it was confusing you more than ever.

“Under one condition,” he demanded.

“Eh,” you asked a bit worried now.

“Show me,” he ordered. “Show me exactly how you feel! Words can mean a lot of shit, but if you really do love me as you claim then show me! Don’t hold back! Don’t half-ass it! And don’t go soft on me either! Just because you got some feelings for me shouldn’t hold you back! You love me, right?! Then come at me with all you got!”

You was going to say something, but before you got the chance to even put your own cent in it, Bakugou was already pulling away from your bed and scooting the chair back in the place it was before. Was he leaving?

“Wait, please, don’t leave,” you pleaded as you grabbed onto hand.

“Huh?” he paused taking notice of the tight grip you had on his hand.

“Please,” your red embarrassment and redness from tears still there. “Stay with me. Here. Please.” you swallowed. “I’ll show you how much I feel because no one has impacted me so hard as you do, Bakugou! Just this once though, could you hold my hand and keep me company! Please! I know it’s asking a lot after all that has happen and you mu---.”

“Alright, geez,” Bakugou groaned. “Will you stop with the pleases?! Fucking hell!” He placed the seat back where he had it previously as he never let go of your hand--almost matching the grip of tightness. “Now gets some fucking rest, alright!”

You nodded almost about to cry again as you smiled, “MHM!”

“And stop crying!” he barked. “You act like I’m going to disappear or something!”

“I’m just,” you said as you snuggled into the sheets again, but a bit closer to Bakugou as you let your other hand encase his one hand he gave you, “I’m so happy! Can you blame me? It feels like a dream right now. . .” The tiresomeness from earlier was now starting to settling down on you. Your eyes slowing drifting off to close. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled looking away.

“And Bakugou,” you called grabbing the boy’s attention again.

“I said get some rest and quit ta--,” he stopped.

A joyous smile on your face as you stared at the boy, “I love you, Bakugou Katsuki.”

You was certain you saw more red on his face. Or was that his eyes? You was losing vision and sound started to fade. Yet, you was at ease. Everything was moving slower now and just having him near; right now. You felt as if you truly was comfortable. Truly safe. Truly. . .

Complete. And in love. In love with Bakugou Katsuki and even if it was only accepted. That was enough for you because you wasn’t alone anymore.

#Bakugou x Reader #Katsuki Bakugou x Reader #Reader Insert #Katsuki x Reader

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kalinara · 5 years

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Rip Week #1 The Many Faces of Rip

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything positive about Legends of Tomorrow. However, it’s Rip Hunter Appreciation Week, which is a time meant for positivity! At one point this show, and this character, had me blogging meta on a daily basis for almost two and a half years and introduced me to some great people! And I will always be grateful for that.

So the topic for Day 1 of Rip Hunter Appreciation Week: The Many Faces of Rip Hunter.

One thing that still fascinates me about Rip as a character is that, even though he’d only been a central character on the show for 1.5 seasons, we’ve gotten to see so many different sides of the character. He’s been deconstructed so thoroughly and so fascinatingly, allowing us to really appreciate what makes the character tick.

Let’s start with Rip himself, the baseline number. The guy who kidnapped a bunch of assholes, brought them to the roof of a tall building (and I still wonder how the stringy little bastard actually managed that) and gave them a sales pitch of a lifetime.

From the opening scene of the pilot, to Rip’s almost goodbye into the sun in Legendary, season one was first and foremost the story of a man broken by grief and betrayal, who slowly, and reluctantly found a reason to go on, and people to share it with. Rip spent season one a raw, open wound, ugly in his pain and rage. He tried very hard not to stay focused on his goal. He tried very hard not to care about his team.

He failed pretty much on day one, when he saved Martin Stein’s marriage. He failed again not too long after that when he abandoned the closest thing he had to a working plan to get Carter’s body back for Kendra. And he kept failing over and over again.

And they saved him. They challenged him. They forced him to look outside of his single-focused obsession and look at the people that they could save around them. They forced him to take a long hard look at what he was doing when he started to go too far. And he very clearly and very obviously loved them for it.

I still can’t believe that fandom still tries to claim that Rip didn’t care about his team, when we saw how broken he was after each major loss: Carter, Leonard, even Jax (almost). That’s not a man who is unfeeling.

We saw Rip as a child: a tiny savage creature who, even when warm and fed, was still ready to stab the nearest adult who threatened him. It gave a new, fascinating insight to the tension Rip had with both Leonard Snart and Mick Rory. As well as possibly another reason that he’d bonded with Sara so strongly. Rip is someone who understands what it means to become a monster in order to survive, and what it means to have to live with that afterward. It likely does make it difficult when face to face with people who represented the worst of that time (and that’s not even touching on how child Rip probably met a number of people who looked and acted similar to our lovable Rogues, and it likely would not have ended well.)

We’ve never really seen the man Rip was before he was broken. Except perhaps for a giddy romantic moment with Miranda and that horrible humiliation when they were caught. We’ve heard a bit more: from that pirate in Marooned, from Magister Druce and Jonah Hex. We can draw inferences: a man who was capable and skilled (though perhaps not as skilled as his wife :-)), who never the less was a rulebreaker at heart. Someone who fell in love with the idea of heroism to the point where he almost left the Time Masters entirely. Someone who, while loyal, wasn’t quite willing to trust his masters with the tool to unmake reality. But at the same time, someone whose fundamental trust in INDIVIDUALS like Mary Xavier and Magister Druce, survived even when his world fell apart.

At the end of season 1, we got a Rip Hunter who was ready to finally move past his grief, and it will forever be something of a disappointment to me that the series decided to give us a time jump instead of actually showing us Rip learning to be part of a real team.

But season 2 did give us a truly fascinating deconstruction of Rip Hunter as an individual.

One very common plot in almost every superhero’s story is the depowerment story arc. Who is our hero when he doesn’t have what makes him a hero? It’s most common for men like Superman of course, but we even get it for folks like Batman or Green Arrow. What are these men without their money, or their physicality?

What is Rip Hunter without his knowledge, his memories, or his time machine?

Well, we saw him. And he was adorable! Phil Gasmer was a hilarious story beat, but unlike maybe certain other storyline elements that we see in later seasons, there was also a point to Phil Gasmer. Phil Gasmer showed us the kind of man that Rip Hunter is deep down.

He’s creative. He’s clever. He’s determined. He’s a little whiny. And definitely high. Rip is a man who would benefit from a little unofficial pharmaceutical help. He’s a man who, when the world suddenly goes sideways, will first attempt to protect his friend. He’s a man who, when face to face with a stranger with scary abilities, will try to hit him with a script. He’s a man who loves his team so much that even when he has no conscious recollection of them, he made them the basis of his movie. And he’s a man who walked out to face the Legion to save a bunch of strangers who kidnapped him, because it was the right thing to do.

I’d like to think in another universe, Phil didn’t get kidnapped by Eobard Thawne there, but instead made it back on the ship, where the crew actually got the chance to get to know Rip without all the baggage. I think they’d have gotten along.

And then there’s evil Rip.

“Teammate goes evil” storylines are a dime a dozen, in superhero lore, but there’s a reason for that. When done well, they can be amazing. And ultimately, I think the evil Rip storyline was done very well.

One of the things that I always liked about the evil Rip storyline is how it utterly destroyed that pervasive (and wrong!) fan idea that Rip never cared about his team. Because they showed us a Rip who didn’t care about his team, and he was a fucking scary son of a bitch.

He also showed us how Rip’s best worst enemy was always going to be himself. Because holy shit, Rip is competent when he’s not tripping himself up. Turncoat was terrifying in all the best ways, and even that opening of Land of the Lost was amazing. It’s still very amusing to me that the most effective member of the Legion of Doom was the one Eobard brainwashed into it.

One thing I always found fascinating about evil Rip is that, for all that he lacks Rip’s compassion, empathy and love, he didn’t go the usual scenery chewing sadist route. He’s a monster, of course. He was perfectly happy to murder Sara, to carve the spear piece out of McNider, and brainwash the entire knights of Camelot. But it was always a measured sort of evil.

Evil Rip had a goal, and evil Rip pursued his goal. And if he could get what he wanted in a relatively non-disruptive and non-violent way, he was willing to try it. He had no interest in terrorizing the Waverider crew once he had the spear piece from them, even when he saw that Sara had survived her murder. He tried to trick McNider, only resorting to violence when McNider saw through it. When he had control of the knights, he just had them stand there, much to Darhk’s boredom, rather than playacting some farce for his amusement as some of the others might have done.

Evil Rip was our chance to appreciate how truly formidable Rip could actually be, and also appreciate those qualities that kept him from turning into that monster again.

My biggest disappointment in this story arc was how little we got to see Rip interact with the other members of the Legion. His interactions with Eobard and Darhk, in what little we had, were very entertaining. But we never saw him interact with Malcolm at all (I admit to being intrigued by this, because I thought Malcolm had actually had the most interesting dynamic with Phil in Legion of Doom), and we never saw Eobard react to his capture. Missed opportunities or food for fanfic?

I don’t know if Doomworld Rip really counts, but I have to admit that, compared to some of Rip’s other coping mechanisms, baking cakes to deal with a year of solitary confinement (Gideon sort of counts, but she’s just a voice at this point), is pretty good for him. I hope he actually got a chance to eat them.

The idea behind Rip at the Time Bureau really was a good one. The idea that Rip would have created this organization, but specifically designed it to be the antithesis of the Time Masters: open, transparent, and accountable, is a good one. But unfortunately, season 3 never really explored that to the extent I would have liked.

It’s hard to imagine the Rip who recruited Sara before she could die with her sister to Damien Darhk would be okay with leaving Zari in a prison without a very good reason. But we never got that reason. Of course, maybe he wasn’t. He wasn’t in that episode. We know from Ava that he didn’t want her chasing the Legends, and wanted them given “lenience”. But if he’s not on board with that, how much of the Time Bureau is actually under his control?

Considering that Return of the Mack told us that Rip allowing Darhk to be resurrected in order to confront him with agents was a “sanctioned” plan (that Rip still ends up in prison for, because Rip is just that good with people), that implies a certain level of oversight. His and Bennett’s dynamic seemed just shy of outright antagonistic. And certainly Rip seemed a lot more blase about seeing Bennett meet a grisly end than seems warranted. This is a man who dismantled the team after Leonard Snart died.

I mean, trying to work out coherent characterization for ANYONE in season 3 is a bit of a problem, but I feel like if the Time Bureau had gotten the same level of focus that it gets much later, perhaps some of these things could actually work. If, for example, there are multiple factions within the Bureau with their own ideas on what the Bureau is supposed to do, (perhaps tied with the oversight that Rip specifically put in place, because there’s nothing more Rip Hunter than getting hoisted up by his own petard), then a lot of the more confused behavior by the organization could make more sense.

In the end though, Rip is still a secretive, scheming bastard who cares very deeply for his team, and I wouldn't give up that wonderful, almost baggage free friendship with Wally for anything. So it does have its good points.

Ultimately, I think that all of these facets make Rip one of the most well-developed and defined characters in the CW-verse, even when compared with others who have had years and years of screentime. It’s fun to poke around and explore all of these layers and see how they fit. And it definitely is food for some great fanfic. I’m told some other Rip fans will be writing some great fic for #RipWeek. You should go check them out!

#rip hunter #legends of tomorrow #RipWeek #Rip Hunter Appreciation Week

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