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brattyfics · 3 years

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Cape Disappointment | Part One

Pairing: Miguel Galindo x Black!OC [Chantel Williams]

Summary: Miguel doesn’t rescue a damsel in distress because Chantel Williams is not a damsel in distress.

Warnings: None yet.

Chantel Williams was a lot of things. Quirky, witty, sarcastic. Condescending, impulsive, sometimes even chaotic. She could be all those things and more, but she refused to be anyone’s victim.

“I’m not a damsel in distress. I’m not a damsel in distress…” She chanted over and over in a low tone.

On the side of a low traffic road, snow raining down on her head, Chantel willed the words to be true. Unfortunately, she remembered very little of what her Papa taught her about cars, eyeing the confusing parts under the hood with frustration.

Papa was a school teacher but he worked as a shade tree mechanic on the weekends to be able to afford dance classes for little Chantel. Teaching was his passion through and through. He would talk her ear off in the car on the way to recitals or while she did homework on the bench in his workshop. Being a bratty kid, she learned to tune him out when the topic didn’t interest her and not for the first time she regretted not soaking up more of Papa’s wisdom before he passed.

If she had, maybe she wouldn’t be stuck on the side of the road with no solution in mind. Empty handed and no closer to fixing the car, she shuffled through the snow. It wasn’t much warmer inside the car despite the thick North Face coat she wore with a matching hat and pair of gloves. She was sure she resembled a wet dog as she shook the snow off, not wanting the ice to melt into water droplets that would surely sting.

Just a week earlier, she’d splurged on the fanciest new smart phone after losing the older model at a dinner party. Even with all its promised features, it was useless. No signal and no nearby WiFi networks to connect to meant she couldn’t call her sort-of-sometimes boyfriend for help even if she wanted to. She couldn’t even call a tow truck!

Pride.

Another one of Chantel’s many traits. She liked to think of it as a positive thing. It kept her from being desperate, saved her from being dependent on others for her happiness. No one else seemed to agree her pride was a good thing.

Among the naysayers was her sort-of-sometimes boyfriend, Adam. Pride was what had led her to take off from the Yurt they shared on their week-long winter break getaway to race back to her industrial loft in the heart of Seattle despite the weather advisory. She would never admit it to anyone else, but she realized her pride didn’t always serve her well.

If not for her bruised ego, it would have been funny that her car had chosen to break down a few miles north of Cape Disappointment State Park. It was where she had been staying with Adam. The yurt was too far away to walk back to in the snow but still close enough that it only made sense to stay there for the night once the car issues were resolved. She wasn’t looking forward to ending the night with him.

Remembering Papa’s belief in God showing up when most needed, Chantel sent up a quick prayer. She really hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long for someone else to come down the otherwise deserted road. Winters in Washington were fairly mild so she wouldn’t lose her extremities to hypothermia or anything crazy like that, but she’d certainly suffer by way of the shivers.

Any sane person was cuddled up next to the fireplace in their cabin with a bowl of chili, or participating in heat-inducing sexual activities in their yurt to keep warm, not on the road driving. It was only natural for her thoughts to snowball into all the types of un-same people she could run into.

Indigenous women from Washington and Canada went missing far too often on roads just like the one she had so conveniently broken down on. Chantel had a bad habit of researching everything there was to know about topics when they peaked her interest and she knew too much about human trafficking in the area to not feel a considerable amount of fear.

“That would be my luck.” She muttered meanly to herself, resolving that whatever happened would be her own fault.

It wasn’t like a whole lot of people would come looking for her anyway. She had a large group of friends in Seattle, but she kind of had a reputation for taking off without saying much. She hadn’t even told anyone about the weekend excursion to Cape Disappointment! The family she had left she wasn’t close to, and by the time Adam realized she hadn’t made it back home it would be too late.

Yellow headlights bathed the narrow road, the light blinding her the closer it got. Her hazard lights blinked red, signaling that she was broken down, but Chantel second guessed whether she wanted the help.

“I’m going to be a sex trafficking victim all in the name of independence. Way to go, idiot.”

Her fingers fumbled around in the gigantic backpack she’d been using as a purse for the weekend, hastily pulling at the zippers until she found what she was looking for. A purple taser she purchased on Amazon for a whopping ten dollars. She doubted it would stop anyone in their tracks, but it was better than nothing.

It turned out the man who knocked on her window wasn’t an axe wielding serial murdering rapist, or at least he didn’t appear to be. She tucked the small device into her side as the ridiculously handsome middle aged man with a salt and pepper beard smiled at her through the foggy glass.

He looked harmless enough, sporting a pair of smart designer glasses and what Chantel knew to be a really expensive cashmere turtleneck sweater underneath an equally expensive Canada Goose coat. She wasn’t shy about looking him up and down as she assessed the risk. What if the male model was a decoy?

His neatly manicured eyebrows twisted down in confusion and she thought it was one of the cutest things she had ever seen.

She rolled down the window with a nervous smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

She hated how breathy the words came out but he was truly stunning.

Tall, fit, well-dressed.

“Are you alright? It looks like you’re having some trouble.”

A gentleman.

“What would make you think that?” Chantel spoke before she thought it through, but the stranger didn’t seem to take offense if the amused smirk on his face could be trusted. “I’m kidding. Yeah, no. I’m not alright. The car was making weird noises so I pulled over and now it won’t turn back on. I looked under the hood but I have no idea what’s wrong.”

He nodded attentively while she spoke, watching her lips with interest. She noticed him staring and licked them.

“I don’t know how much of a help I’ll be.” His bronze skin reddened with the admission and she wondered if he was blushing or if the cold was getting to him. “I don’t know anything about cars but I can give you a ride wherever you want.”

She’d like a ride alright. In his cushiony truck that may as well have been a royal carriage considering the circumstances. Or on his handsome bearded face that she couldn’t stop staring at.

Chantel wondered if he could tell what she was thinking.

Movement caught her eye and she noticed an identical black SUV pulling off the road to park behind the one Prince Charming departed from. Her hand squeezed around the taser instinctively.

Was the sexy stranger bait to catch naive, unsuspecting girls?

“...but I’m sure we’d both rather leave it to the professionals.” He gestured back towards the dark truck and paused, noticing they weren’t alone. Her breath caught in her chest when four bulking men slammed their doors shut and started walking in their direction.

“I apologize. That’s my security team. I left without telling them.”

Hmm. A kindred spirit.

Who was he to have a security team? Was he telling the truth? Or just stalling?

She wanted to believe him. To trust that it was in human nature to help one another without some ulterior, sinister motive.

Did she even have a choice? How long would she have to wait on the next passerby? There was no guarantee they would be any better than the (so far) kind stranger and his friends.

Chantel Williams was a lot of things, but she was not naïve. With surprising coordination, she swung the door open, knocking the man back several steps. Her boots crunched as she landed in the snow.

“Back up or I’m going to tase you!” She warned, putting space between herself and the stranger while keeping an eye on the approaching men.

The corners of his mouth turned up as he fought back a smile.

Chantel scoffed. He wasn’t taking her seriously.

“I’m not fucking around!” She insisted, charging up the small device. The buzz felt more powerful than she remembered. The man seemed to think so too, changing his approach. He spoke in a soft tone. “Can we slow down?”

“Don’t patronize me. Just back up like I said. No, this way!” She ordered until he stood across from her with his back to his men.

Behind him, they speed up their approach but they could only move so fast in the snow. Following her gaze, the strange man looked over his shoulder and gestured for the men to stall at the front of his truck several feet away. One of them shouted at her to put the taser away from his position. He sported two braids and a cut in his brow. Chantel shouted back at him to ‘shut the fuck up’

Mr. GQ gave another signal and like he was the conductor of an orchestra, all noise ceased. Well, all external noise at least. Chantel swore she could hear the sound of her heart ringing in her ears.

“Hey!” He demanded her full attention. His hands were up in a defensive position. “What are you looking for here?”

It was a great question but she had no answer for him.

Trouble maker. Fire starter. Full-time agitator.

Chantel was that way even as a child, responding to normal adolescent teasing with violence. Sharp bites in the classroom or royal rumble style fights on the playground were her specialty in grade school. She made anyone stupid enough to provoke her regret it whether big or small, male or female. That wasn’t to say she was organized or calculating in her plans. She acted and dealt with things as they came.

She had no idea what the endgame was when she pulled the taser, but she had to stick with it. The crowd of onlookers made her feel more justified in her rash decision.

“I don’t think you really want to hurt me.”

“Now, what would make you think that?” Chantel asked incredulously. He didn’t know her from Eve.

She was even more steadfast in pointing the taser in his direction but he didn’t seem phased.

“When you want to hurt somebody, you don’t wait around or warn them. You just do it.”

“Are you suggesting I should’ve tased you?”

He shrugged as if they were discussing the weather.

“That certainly would have been more effective.”

Was he serious?

“I mean I still can. If you keep talking I just might.”

He had the gall to laugh in her face.

Hysterically.

And it wasn’t fleeting or sarcastic. It was genuine laughter from deep down in his gut. She hated how beautiful he was, even in the middle of showing blatant disrespect for her ability to harm him.

“Seriously?” She griped, fighting against the way her face muscles twitched.

Giggle box.

When somebody at church mispronounced a word during the announcements or when her aunt murdered a hit song, she giggled uncontrollably. Papa chastised her for it, but it couldn’t be helped. When the urge struck and she got that itch in her throat, she had to laugh.

So naturally, like two birds of a maniac feather they shared a laugh in four (and counting) inches of snow.

***

GENERAL TAGLIST

@woahitslucyylu @briannab1234 @sheeshgivemeabreak @breakingnewsin-no-oneasked @angelreyesgirl @blessedboo @glimmerglittergirl @apantherinmypastlife @brownsugarcoffy @marvelmaree @starrynite7114 @scuzmunkie @thewarriorprincessxo @sadeyesgf @pearlkitten33 @imanerdychubbyqueen @literaturefeen @ourlittlesecretsoveragain @everyhowlmarksthedead @yourwonkywriter @trulysuccubus

MIGUEL TAGLIST

@thesandbeneathmytoes @taylortheeshowpony

#mayans mc #miguel galindo #miguel galindo x black!reader #miguel galindo x black!oc #miguel galindo x reader

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backtobackbakubabe · 3 years

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Leaving My Love Behind (part1)

Bakugo X Reader

Words : 2199

Masterlist

Reader hasn’t seen Bakugo in almost ten years but when her boyfriend goes missing she all but begs him to help her find him and get him back from a notorious gang leader.

You had been waiting outside this building for almost six hours now. You had been waiting for a certain blonde-haired asshole. You had to admit you were shocked that he was still working. He had never seemed like the desk job type. But after his most recent rampage he was benched until further notice. It was all over the news, which made it that much easier to find him. You’d wait out here all night if you had to. You just needed to talk to him.

Rain started to come down hard and yet you remained. Your eyelids began to droop and still you waited. Your stubbornness knew no limit… unfortunately your exhaustion did. You leaned against the telephone pole behind you and you hugged your jacket closer around you to fight the chill. Shivers wracked your body, but nothing matched the chill that shot down your spine when you heard a familiar husky voice right behind your ear. “What the fuck do you want?”

You hadn’t even realized he had left the building, let alone crept up behind you. Your tired head turned to look at him. It had been years sense you had seen him in person, and you forgot how haunting those red eyes of his where. You refused to cower in his presence, you wouldn’t let him see how scared you were. “I need your help.”

“Wh-“

“And before you can tell me to fuck off… you owe me one, and we both know it.”

His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “I haven’t seen you in almost 10 years. You can’t just show up now and expect me to drop everything to help you! I don’t owe you shit.”

You almost expected him to storm off in a fit of rage, but he just crossed his arms and glared at you. Who was this new Bakugo? He still seemed permanently angry except now he seemed to be a little more… patient? No that couldn’t be right. He didn’t have a patient bone in his body. Yet here he stood, waiting to hear you out.

Your hands balled into fists, “Do I need to remind you of the sacrifices I made back in high school. Do you not remember what I did for you? Have you gotten so-“

His hand gripped your elbow tight enough to leave a bruise, “I fucking…. Remember everything. I’ll ask you one more time. What the fuck do you want?”

You pulled your arm away from him. “I need your help… My boyfriend… Kiyo… he’s gone missing.”

His palms popped, “And? Go to the police, file a report? What the hell do you want me to do about it?”

An angry tear ran down your cheek. “You think I haven’t already done that?! He’s been missing for over a month and it seems like nobody even cares!”

“Tch… how do you know he didn’t just run away? What if he was just bored or something?”

Before you could stop yourself, you reached out and slapped him. “How dare you? You don’t know him. He would never! He was kidnapped by gang leader who goes by Big Shadow.”

Bakugo’s eyes bulged and you now had his attention. Big Shadow? That was the guy he was investigating before he was put on desk duty. “So that’s why you’re here? Look I can’t help you. That guy is almost impossible to find and even harder to get to. I spent the past year trying to lock that ass hat up and the only thing I have to show for it are several new scars and a temporary demotion.”

You slumped to the ground, “What do you expect me to do? I can’t just give up on him?”

To your surprise he crouched down next to you. “This sucks…. I’m not good with… you know…”

“Emotion?”

“Yeah…Want to go get a drink or something?”

Your watery eyes met his he held a hand out to you, “Look I don’t like asking twice. If you want to sit here in the cold rain and die of heart break… or pneumonia. Then whatever. But I need a drink and if you want to come… I wont stop you.”

You wiped the tears from your eyes and let him help you up. This really was a different man then the one you used to know.

You silently followed him to some small local bar down the street. You had never been here before, but then again you didn’t spend a lot of time on this side of town. The rent was too high and the people were too busy.

You took your seat across from him at a somewhat hidden booth in the back. Moments later a waitress came with three fireball shots and placed them in front of Bakugo. “Your usual. Do you want anything to eat this time?”

Bakugo looked at you briefly and then back to the waitress, “Yeah it’s probably going to be a long night. Bring out the appetizer platter and… I guess whatever she wants to drink. Let me guess? You still drinking vodka sprites?”

You almost laughed at the memory of the last time you drank with him as stupid high school punks. “Not for a while, but why not? For old times sake…”

So you drank, and drank some more, and ate all the weird bar food that the waitress continued to bring out. By now you were both on the brink of black out. Doing anything to not feel that empty pit in your stomach. “THAT WAS NOT ME! THAT WAS AAAAALL KIRI’S DOING!” You were going down memory lane from UA. You and Bakugo had been pretty close back then. Well that’s a lie. You hated each other at first. And you didn’t end on a good note either. But the middle… the middle had been nice.

“Oi… dumbass. Use your inside voice…”

“Ooooooh don’t tell me THE BAKUGO is telling ME to UsE mY iNsIdE vOiCe.”

Bakugo smirked, “You wanna know my secret?”

You giggled, “Oooooh secret! Yesssss!”

He moved over to your side of the booth and leaned close to you. Close enough for you to smell his cinnamon shampoo… or maybe it was just all the fireball shots. He turned his head to the side and pulled his hair back to show what looked like a hearing aid. “Tech development team made them for me when I signed with the agency. They’re mostly to protect my ears from more damage. You know because of all of the.” He motioned with his hands and made an explosion noise. “But they also help me hear a little better. Now I don’t have to yell all the time.”

You reached out to touch it, but his hand smacked it away, “Oi look but don’t touch!”

You blushed. “I guess that makes sense. I wonder why no one thought of that before. All this time.. you just couldn’t…. hear.” You started to tear up, your happy mood completely gone.

His eyes grew huge, “No, no, no, no, damnit we came here to avoid the tears. Please stop. Ugh shit!”

You leaned on him and continued to cry. “I’m so sorry Bakugo! For the way things ended between us. It’s all my fault. Just like Kiyo being kidnapped is all my fault. Everything is my fault! I’m the worst!”

He patted the top of your head awkwardly, “Uh… I don’t know what happened with yoyo or whatever but what happened with us wasn’t your fault.” His arm landed on your shoulder when you just kept crying, “And for what it’s worth I don’t think you’re the worst. I mean you’re not exactly on my list of favorite people. But there’s a lot of people worse than you. All for one, Overhaul, Dabi, Deku, murderers, rapists, did I mention Deku?”

You slapped his chest, “His name is Kiyo!”

“Noooo I’m pretty sure it’s Deku.”

You sighed, “No you idiot, my boyfriend. You called him yoyo… his name Kiyo… and he’s missing, and I’m just sitting on my ass getting drunk. I’m useless.” You slammed your fist on the table, “But you know what?! With or without your help I’m going after him!”

Bakugo’s hand mindlessly wandered to the scar hidden beneath his t-shirt, “You’re going to get yourself killed y/n. Please think about this. Have you even kept up with your training? I know you didn’t do the whole hero thing after UA… considering what happened. What are you going to do in a fight? Your quirks not really meant for combat.”

You shrugged, “I don’t care. I’m going to get him back. I’m still in shape. I still got the moves.”

Bakugo groaned, “Okay look. I’ll make you a deal. I will help you look for Keto for exactly two weeks. If we find him great, if we don’t you accept it and let the police handle it.”

You grabbed him by the shirt, “You mean it? You’ll help me?”

He winced at your sudden proximity, but you didn’t seem to notice. “Well yeah. If I don’t, I’ll probably end up seeing your picture on the news and honestly that just sounds like a fucking headache that I’m not prepared for. “

You lunged in for a hug, burying your face in his chest. He again just awkwardly patted your head. “For the love of god, please stop.”

Bakugo paid the bill and walked you out. He had planned on walking you home but when he learned how far it was he almost passed out. “Nope. Nuh uh. You can sleep on my couch. Too drunk for this. Let’s go.” When he realized you were walking too slowly for his liking he bent down and told you to hop on his back. “God you’re lighter than I remember.”

You poked his shoulder, “Well you’re nicer than I remember.”

He shrugged, “Time changes a lot of things y/n.”

You walked in comfortable silence for a while. Well he walked, your drunk ass was being carried. You were about to fall asleep when his stiffened, “Hey y/n can I ask you something?”

“Huh? Yeah whatsup?”

His grip around your legs started to tighten, “Why didn’t you use your quirk on me today? I mean you wanted me to do something I didn’t want to. What kept you from using your quirk to make me do it? All it would have taken was a flash of those eyes and a few words and I would have to do whatever you say.”

You let out a loud sigh, “Well for one. How do you know I didn’t? Maybe I’m just sneakier about it now.” He slapped your leg obviously not satisfied with that answer. “Okay chill. I didn’t! I don’t really use that park of my quirk much anymore. I save that for the bad guys. Which you might not be the nicest guy, but you’re definitely not a bad guy.”

He could tell you were fighting sleep as your breathing started to deepen. “What a pair we are. Not the worst, and not a bad guy.”

He managed to get you into his apartment and on to the couch. He got you a glass of water and a blanket. As he was leaving to head to his own room you grabbed his hand. “Hey. Why two weeks?”

If it wasn’t so dark you say he blushed, “That’s just how long my administrative leave is.” His hand ran through his hair, “Let’s just say I was not made for desk duty…” He gave you a smile which warmed your heart while somehow making you very uncomfortable. “Get some sleep y/n, we start operation get Kilo back bright and early.”

“His name is Kiyo!”

“Yeah whatever, stupid name.”

That night you dreamt of the last time you saw Bakugo. You saw your seventeen-year-old self, covered in blood. You saw a cracked reflection in a mirror with glowing purple eyes looking backing at you. You saw-

“Holy SHIT! What the hell is Y/n doing on our couch! BakuBRO! Did you know she was here?”

You groaned at the sudden yelling and bright light coming in through the window. “Kiri can you please shut the fuck up?”

“Oh yeah that’s y/n all right. Seriously Bakugo did you know she was here?”

Bakugo came over with coffee and eggs and placed them on the table in front of you. “Kiri. If we are the only two people who live here. And you didn’t know she was here, then who the fuck do you think let her in?”

Kirishima looked between the two of you, “Damn after all this time and you even made her breakfast?”

After Kiri left for work and you had finished your coffee you looked to the explosive man who was now looking very domestic in the kitchen doing dishes. “Hey, was I drunk, or did you promise to help me find Kiyo?”

Without stopping with his dishwashing, he shrugged, “Yes you were drunk… but yes I also did promise that. I gave you two weeks starting today. So, I suggest you get your ass in gear if you plan to get your money’s worth.”

#bakugo #bakugo katsuki #Katsuki Bakugō #bhna bakugou #mha bakugou #bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugo x y/n #bakugo imagine #mha #mha imagines #mha bakugo katsuki #mha x reader #my hero academia

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writingtoforgetreality · 4 years

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You´re Hurting Me (Lucifer Morningstar x Reader)

Request: Can I request a lucifer x reader one shot where Lucifer and reader get into a heated argument, and he hurts the reader but quickly regrets it and it ends good? ;0 (by @candle-anon), [Lucifer-Masterlist]

Summary: Crime solving was not always easy, sometimes danger was close. A protective boyfriend made the job even harder. You could not even be mad at him, he just wanted you to be safe. This time, though, he went a bit too far.

Words: 1,573

Warnings: mentions of rape, argument, angsty shit (uhhh, I love this), language (nothing new), fluff, (Y/A) = your age, (Y/H/C) = your hair color, (Y/E/C) = your eye color

If you like my work & wanna support me: a coffee would be highly appreciated ❤

Another crime solved. Success. Well, partly. This time though, not everything went smoothly. You should have seen it coming, all of you.

You were looking for a man who strolled through the bars of LA and managed to wrap young girls around his finger. His preferred look was a pretty woman, around (Y/A) years old, (Y/H/C) hair and (Y/E/C) eyes. Usually, someone like him was easy to catch. This case, though, got on your nerves. At first, it was Lucifer´s and your case but you desperately needed help so you got Chloe and Dan on board. This far, he had killed four women. The autopsy revealed that every single one of the women had been raped before he had choked them to death.

After the L.A.P.D found the latest victim, you knew you had to act fast. The lives of other innocent women were at risk. Before you even processed what was happening, you found yourself at a shitty bar, ordering a strong drink, not really caring which one. Since your appearance was similar to the victims´, your team thought it was the only way to catch this sick fuck. Well, not everyone approved. Lucifer, your boyfriend, was against this idea, understandingly. Yet, he knew there was no other chance to bring the perpetrator to a halt. After a long heated discussion, he more or less agreed but only if he was close behind all the time.

You could not quite make out the conversations going on next to you. All you could hear was your loud and hammering heartbeat. Even after trying to focus on something else, you failed miserably. Not too long after, you could feel a presence to your left. “Nothing new.” you thought. It was not the first time this night someone had tried to hit on you. Each time, you gently rejected.

“You know, someone like you shouldn´t be alone here at this time.” a rough voice made you look to your side. There he was. You could immediately tell it was him because some security cameras had caught him before. Unfortunately, nobody could see his face clearly. But the way he dressed and how his body language spoke for itself, you knew you hit the jackpot. Hopefully, your team would come out of their hiding spots and save you soon. They were about to save you, right?

All of a sudden, you were unable to control your body anymore. The only thing you could show was your fear through your eyes. What was happening to you? Where was Lucifer? Before you could think about it too much, you felt a strong arm wander around your waist. A tight grip holding you to the smoke smelling leather jacket. Disgust crept over you but you could not move. What kind of drug was he using? Maybe this was a bad idea. Or not if your friends would come to your rescue!

The man dragged you out through the backdoor and shoved you into a dark alleyway where he knew nobody could see you two. Still completely frozen, you knew you had no control over what would happen next. The thought of your team saving you long forgotten. He started undressing you, slowly. His touch lingering on your exposed skin way too long. Tears sprung from your eyes, running down your cheeks. This was it. Out of instinct, and because you did not want to see what he was doing to you, your eyes closed, releasing even more tears. But before his hand could touch you again, you heard a loud thud. Opening your eyes for a short time, all you could see was darkness. You were not adjusted to the dark night. Your body started losing strength and shortly after, everything went black. This time because you lost consciousness.

Waking up, you were met with the sun shining in your face. It made you squint. Your body was covered in silk sheets that felt way too familiar to you. You were in Lucifer´s bed. How did you come here? Last time you checked, you were sitting at that bar, ready to catch this rapist. Was that a dream? No, that could not be.

Moving the soft covers off of your body, you noticed you were wearing one of Lucifer´s white button ups. Swinging your legs over the edge of the bed, you could feel a sting on your side. One of your hands moved the shirt up. A big purple bruise was covering your waist. Huh. You were clumsy but never had you had such a bad bruise before. Maybe Lucifer knew more.

“Luci?” your voice echoed through the huge apartment.

“(Y/N)? Darling.” he let out a long sigh and moved from the bar over to where you were standing. His arms opened and you let him hug you.

“You shouldn´t move around, get back to bed.” his voice sounded rather harsh.

“Oh? And why is that?” you teased, wanting to ease the tension that was building between you two.

“Funny, really. I´m not saying it again.” he started losing his temper and you could sense it. Yet you had no idea what was going on so you asked. Something you regretted mere seconds later.

“Could you not?” his scream made you take a step back. That was new. Lucifer never raised his voice towards you and if you were honest, it scared you. “STOP acting as if nothing happened yesterday! This doesn´t make it easier…” the last part was barely above a whisper.

“Luci…I have no idea what happened yesterday. All I remember is entering this bar. That´s it.” this made him look up at you.

“So you´re telling me you don´t remember being groped by this asshole? You don´t remember him undressing you? He was about to r-” it was hard for him to say it out loud. “He was about to rape you, (Y/N).” your breathed hitched and you took a second to let his words process. Slowly, bits of memory came back to you. Like how you could not move and were completely vulnerable against him.

“Did you catch him?” oh what a poor choice of words. You could see the anger rising in Lucifer. Whatever it was that triggered him, you just brought him over the edge.

“Did we- Did you hear what I just told you?” nodding at him, he did not even give you a chance to respond.

“I TOLD you it was a bad idea! I told all of them but of course they didn´t listen. And YOU agreed, too. Great, just great. Even bett-”

“It was the only way and you know that.” you interrupted him. He came closer and your back met the wall. His hands grabbed your shoulders. His grip was so hard that pain flooded through you. You did not want to tell him, though. A few seconds after, you could not bare it anymore.

“YOU´RE HURTING ME, LUCIFER! GET OFF!” you did not know how but you managed to push him off.

There was a moment of complete silence. Lucifer immediately regretted his words. Even more so, his actions. The last thing he wanted was hurting you and he just did that. He was disgusted by himself. You, on the other hand, focused your eyes on your feet, not wanting to look him in the eyes. Lucifer protected you all the time but right now, you were genuinely scared of him. What if he did it again, only, this time, harder?

“(Y/N)? I- I´m-” he took careful steps towards you only for you to move back against the wall again.

“Don´t.” your voice sounded so broken. Lucifer knew he messed up. But he tried again. This time, though, he kept his distance.

“I´m sorry. It´s just...when I saw you with that bastard, when I realized what he was about to do...I hated myself. Of course there would´ve been different ways, I should´ve sticked with my opinion. I didn´t mean to hurt you, I just want to protect you. Fuck, I´m so stupid.” he mumbled the last part more to himself but you heard him.

“Stop it, you´re not.” you looked up at him. “I agreed but trust me when I tell you how scared I was this entire time.” walking closer to him you took his hands in yours and focused on his eyes. “And then I had no control over my body and and and you weren´t there and I knew this was it. But I´m okay now, see?” tears started forming as you replayed the scene in your head again.

Lucifer hated seeing you cry so out of instinct, he wrapped his arms around you, enveloping you in warmth and safety. Something you were used to from him. He apologized over and over again. Telling you how he did not want to hurt you and you knew he meant it. So to silence him you pressed a soft kiss on his lips, taking him by surprise. It did not take him long to go with it and he melted into your touch.

The asshole was caught, you felt safe in Lucifer´s embrace and were just happy that nothing major happened to you. Lucifer was just as scared as you, probably even more. You appreciated having a protective boyfriend even if he tended to exaggerate every now and then. This made him only more lovable, though. If he was around, danger was not that big of a problem anymore.

Published (09/17/2020) by Cathy

Tags: @suckmytoesblog, @kittenlittle24, @iinvisiblewings, @magnet-girl, @lovelybutdeadlyyy, @fanfictionsilove, @coffee-wihtout-caffeine, @kashasenpai (thanks for your support <3)

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plaidbooks · 4 years

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Everyone Deserves Love chapter 2

A/N: Chapter 2 is here! Skipped forward a couple years from the last chapter, and there’s a little bit of a hinting at some of Devon’s past. This chapter takes place during season 8, when Olivia was undercover in Oregon with Porter. The first bit is a blurb between the two chapters.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Tags: panic attacks, rape mention (and a little description, but not explicit), lesbophobia, homophobia, briefest allusion to consensual sex (blink and you miss it)

Words: 8k+

Devon worked with Manhattan’s SVU department a handful of times since their first meeting. In that time, she had become closer to the detectives, especially Olivia and, by extension, Stabler. She and Stabler still butted heads every now and again, but they grew to respect each other’s methods, as Dr. Huang had predicted. As for Devon and Olivia, it was like having a sister that they never knew they wanted. As much as Liv loved her team, it was nice to have a woman to talk to about personal things, outside of the two women ADAs that SVU has had. And for Devon, though she’d never mention it to Liv or to herself, she gained a new best friend that didn’t so much “replace” Emma, but filled that spot for close female friend—though Devon made sure it never made it past that “friend” point, no matter how attractive Devon found the detective. She also knew that Olivia wasn’t interested in women, so Devon didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. Plus, Devon didn’t really want to get close to someone she was working with; her heart still hurt when she attempted to dissect her feelings for Emma.

Unlike Devon’s other work acquaintances, they actually kept in touch pretty well; enough so that Devon even met Stabler’s wife and family, before they got separated. Devon was rarely called to the precinct, maybe only once every 3-4 months, so the only time they really got to chat in person was either on the job, or when they randomly got to meet for a nightcap or lunch.

It took Devon about a year to get into the rhythm of working with SVU—mostly because she wasn’t there often enough. For example, Devon always worked to protect the victims, whether they were held hostage or being trafficked around. SVU, however, was more about helping the victims, believing in their stories and helping them prove the abuser or perpetrator of their abuse. Putting the abuser behind bars. Getting enough evidence for a jury to convict them. In Devon’s line of work, the victims were being actively victimized; she didn’t need evidence, witnesses, or statements. Which is why the biggest fight she had was a year into the partnership with SVU, with ADA Casey Novak, and about testifying in open court.

“I’m not testifying! Stop asking!” Devon had yelled, throwing her hands up in exasperation. Novak had asked once before, while they were both watching an interrogation. This time, they were standing in the middle of Precinct 16, officers and detectives alike coming to a halt and turning to watch a federal agent and an ADA duke it out.

“I need you, though! Don’t you want to help put Ramsey behind bars?” Novak reasoned. She was keeping her voice level before, but it was rising now.

Devon rolled her eyes. Of course, she wanted Ramsey behind bars; he was a rapist pig. But she couldn’t testify, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to go down memory lane with someone she didn’t really know. Especially not an ADA, acquaintance or not. She suddenly wished that she hadn’t helped catch Ramsey, that she had stayed in the court-free FBI, but then squashed that thought down; they had needed her, and she was glad to have stopped him before he escalated to rapist and murderer.

“Casey,” Devon put a hand on Novak’s shoulder, noticing the unwanted attention from the officers watching and bringing her voice down. “I can’t testify. I need you to trust me on this. You’re a great ADA, you can do it without me.” It was true; Devon had read up on Novak’s conviction rate.

Novak gave her a long look, long enough that Devon dropped her hand back to her side. She took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to tell you is that if you do not testify, then I don’t think I’ll win this case.” She let her words sink in, then added in a near-whisper, “don’t make me subpoena you.”

Devon felt a weird twisting in her stomach; something she had never felt before. She tried to ignore it, look intimidating. “Is that a threat, counselor? Let me tell you what will happen if you don’t back off. I was offered an undercover in Iceland. Don’t make me go there until after this trial.”

Novak’s eyes narrowed. “You’d really flee the country on a bogus mission to avoid testifying? It’s not that bad; you just sit in a box and tell the truth.” If Novak continued talking, Devon missed it. In her mind’s eye, she pictured herself in the witness box. She looked over at the defense attorney, one from Devon’s nightmares. He was distorted, his smirk too large for his face, his eyes turning black. The courtroom was a dark red color, the gallery’s faces blank, emotionless. Devon’s heart started beating faster, tears welling then flowing down her cheeks.

“Devon?” Novak’s voice sounded leagues away. It wasn’t until Novak placed her hand on Devon’s arm that she snapped back to Precinct 16, ripping her arm away from Novak’s grip. The tears on her face were real, as was her frantically beating heart. For a moment, she thought she was having a heart attack. Her chest was heaving, she was gasping for air, but she couldn’t fill her lungs. She glanced at Novak’s worried face, vaguely noticed the detectives moving towards them. Devon turned and sprinted out of SVU’s department, pushing stunned officers out of her way. She ran past the elevator, heading for the stairs, taking them as quickly as her legs would carry. She didn’t know what was happening to her, all she knew was she needed fresh air. She made it to the bottom step before her legs gave out. She was shaking all over, openly weeping. She pulled herself across the ground, shoving herself in the corner of the stairwell, and curled into herself, pulling her legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, burying her face into her knees.

She didn’t know how long she was there, shaking, crying, clutching her chest and trying to think about anything but the courtroom, that small witness box. When she raised her head from her knees, she found Olivia sitting on the stairs by her, looking concerned. But Liv knew better than to ask; she knew how to treat victims. It took another 10 minutes for Devon to stop crying before she told Liv what was happening—not the whole story, just her and Novak’s fight and what she was feeling now. Olivia, having been through this before both with victims and personally, explained what a panic attack was and how Casey must have said something that triggered that reaction. After making sure that Devon was alright, Liv assured her that she wouldn’t have to testify, that she should go home and relax for the day. Devon and Olivia grew closer that day, and it wasn’t long until Devon told Liv the whole story.

2 years later

Apartment of Devon Motely

Friday, July 27th 6:24am

Devon sighed as she let the hot water run over her, washing away the sweat from her morning gym workout and jog. The shower felt amazing, and she got out feeling refreshed, ready for the day. She was in the middle of drying off when her cell phone rang, the sound coming from her room. She hurried over to it, looking at the ID quickly before answering. Captain Cragen.

“Motely,” she answered, sifting through her closet for an outfit. Better grab something loose if she was going into SVU and whatever mess they needed her for. Mobility was a priority for her.

“It’s Cragen. Are you free to do an undercover for me?” Cragen replied.

Devon had just finished a stint of undercover for the Feds—only a month--so she was off for the next week or two, at least until her shrink cleared her; definitely free to help out the squad.

“Of course. How long?” she asked.

“Hopefully only for tonight.”

Oof, tonight? That was short notice. Well, she didn’t have any plans tonight, anyways. At least, not any important ones, unless she counted watching the baseball game and eating a pint of ice cream as important. Just “normal” things that helped bring her back to this life, not the made-up life of who she was for a month.

“I’ll be right there,” Devon said before hanging up. She honestly didn’t mind doing some field work for NYPD; it was nice having…easier cases. Not that they were easy cases but compared to the hell that she dealt with on a near-daily basis with the FBI, it was like a walk through the park. Except for the court stuff. Devon refused to testify, but she did offer to transport, protect, and support the victims or witnesses that did testify. And, thankfully, Novak had backed off from asking her.

It took Devon another 10 minutes to get herself ready. She was happy with her appearance, hoping that maybe the department wouldn’t change her outfit for the undercover op. She was in a scoop neck, plain black shirt and dark jeans. She thought about a light cardigan, but decided against it; it was in the 70s outside, plenty warm enough, even for her California skin.

SVU department

Friday, July 27th 7:14am

Devon had arrived at the precinct and sought out Cragen. The only detective she encountered in the precinct was Munch, looking annoyed at being there so early. She happily waved to him before heading to Cragen’s office. Cragen closed the door behind her and he filled her in on the details. There was an LGBT+ bar that was mostly used by lesbians and bisexual women, barely any men. But there was a group of men that would show up in the wee hours of the morning, right before closing, stalk a woman that would come out of the bar, and then beat and rape her. This happened 4 times in the past two weeks, and the DA is treating it as a hate crime against lesbians. Each victim recalled one or more of their attackers saying something along the lines of, “fucking them straight.” SVU was positive that one of the men in the bar was a part of the group and would target the women from the inside before leaving and notifying his buddies. SVU was a little short staffed, so Cragen opted to call in Devon for this.

“We’d like for you to be targeted by this group, or at the very least, find out who they are. We’ll have Stabler undercover in the bar to help keep an eye out, plus Fin and Munch on the outside, along with a temp transfer from Brooklyn, Detective Lake. You’ll be safe,” Cragen finished.

“I don’t doubt it,” Devon replied with a reassuring smile. She trusted the detectives to have her back. Though, she was curious as to why Liv wasn’t mentioned. Did this Lake replace her?

Cragen looked a little uncomfortable before saying, “I hope you don’t mind playing a lesbian.”

“Not at all. But may I ask why Olivia isn’t up for it?” Devon asked, trying to dig some information out of Cragen without asking outright.

“Uh, Detective Benson isn’t here right now.”

What? “She’s not here? Where is she?”

Cragen gave her a look. “I thought that you’d know better than I. The Feds came in and took her for an undercover assignment. Other than that, they’ve told me nothing.”

That took Devon aback; she had no idea. Not that she talked to every undercover agent or their case workers. She wondered if she knew her case worker, if she could find where Olivia was if she dug deep enough. Maybe Jenkins knew where she was. Why did the FBI even need her?

In an effort to keep the conversation light, Devon said, “Oh, so you’ve run out of female detectives to UC for you in a lesbian-dominated bar. Enter me, the only other woman you know.”

Cragen gave her a terse smile. “I do have another temporary replacement transferring in...whenever 1PP decides to actually send her. I would, however, like to get this mess taken care of now instead of waiting for a detective I don’t know.”

Devon let the conversation end there. She agreed with the Captain; she’d rather be doing this instead of some new detective that no one knew, or worse, trusted. As she left the office, she thought about the mission at hand. She honestly didn’t mind playing a lesbian; she was bisexual, anyways, so it wouldn’t be hard to feign interest in random bar tenets, no matter what their gender was. She thought about her wardrobe at home; did she have a more suitable outift for this? Or should she just let the department figure that out? She had until late tonight to get ready for it, but she knew the department; they liked to have everything planned out in advanced, to have their hands in everything. Plus, she still had to talk to Huang—or whoever the profiler they had on the case was—to make sure she knew what these dirtbags were looking for. She tried not to think about how terrible these men were; it was just making her more and more angry. She disliked rapists as much as the next person, but this hit close to home; hate crimes against queer women. She was getting tired of how men were treating them.

Coming out of Cragen’s office, she saw that Fin and Stabler had arrived at work; both were at their desks, starting in on today’s crap. Then there was the new guy; at his desk talking to Fin idly. He was attractive, his tanned skin stark against his loose white shirt. He looked over at Devon and smirked. Devon greeted the others before heading towards Detective Lake. Might as well introduce myself, she thought. He was supposed to be one of the detectives watching her back tonight, anyways.

“Detective Lake? My name’s Devon Motely,” she greeted him, holding out her hand. He took it, giving her a hearty handshake.

“Don’t let her play you,” Fin said, jokingly. “She’s a Fed.”

Devon rolled her eyes, looking faux-offended. “Wow, Fin. Tell him how you really feel about me.”

Fin shrugged. “Hey, he’s here as my partner. I gotta tell him how it is.” That caught Devon by surprise; Fin’s partner and not Stabler’s?

“Why did Cragen call in the big guns? Are you here for that lesbian case?” Lake asked.

“That would be correct, yes. Can you not tell I’m gay just by looking at me?” Devon retorted. Yep, SVU’s humor was definitely rubbing off on her.

Lake’s ears turned red, but Munch came to his rescue, piping up, “ah, that would explain why you can work with all these guys without getting distracted by our rugged good looks.”

“Man, no one is thinking that about you,” Fin replied, waving his arm at Munch.

Munch huffed, glaring at Fin over his glasses. “This is why we’re not partners anymore; you can’t even back me up on this.”

As much as Devon wanted to hang around and joke with the detectives, she was there to do a job. She gave them a half-hearted wave, then went to find Dr. Huang, who Cragen did confirm was the profiler on the case. She found him upstairs, pouring over files, coffee in hand.

“Hey George. Whatcha got for me?” Devon asked playfully, still grinning from the conversation downstairs; even up here, she could hear the guys ragging on each other. She took a seat across from him and picked up one of the files. The pictures of the woman’s injuries took the wind out of her sails.

Huang gave her a smile and a hello before answering, “I take it Cragen called you in on the lesbian hate crime?”

“You’d be correct.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “How does that make you feel?” Huang knew about Devon’s sexuality, not that she kept it private. But it also wasn’t something brought up in conversation often. Actually, she didn’t know if the other detectives, outside of Olivia, knew. The joke just now was the first time it came up, and she didn’t know if they had taken her seriously or not.

“Pissed off. Why can’t men just…leave women alone?” she asked, exasperated. “I know that it’s more than that, but god, it’s infuriating.”

Huang nodded. He knew what she meant. “Can you keep your cool for this?”

Devon rolled her eyes. “Of course, I can. Just, don’t hold it against me if I punch one of those men in the nose.”

Huang smiled. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you. Let’s get you up to speed.”

They both spent the better part of the morning going over what little description there was of the men, what the victims had said, done, been wearing—all the things that could be seen as a slight against a man’s fragile ego. In each case, a man would approach the woman at the bar, though it wasn’t clear if this man was in on it or not, but it was a constant in each case. The man, described as a “frat boy but in his 30s,” would hit on the women, using pick-up lines so bad, they couldn’t even be considered pick-up lines. In all four cases, the women shut him down quickly, all of them rude to the man—a little piece of information that Devon deemed important, squirreling it away into her mind. The man would then leave, though the women didn’t notice if he went to bother someone else or left the bar altogether. Then, with times ranging between 1 and 2am, the women left. The days were different, so it wasn’t a habitual thing; they couldn’t predict when it would happen. As the woman walked down the street, heading home or to a friend’s place, they were attacked from behind. They all claimed that they were pushed into an alley and then were restrained. They claimed something would pin down their limbs and torso. Only one woman was able to tell that one such item was a baseball bat; the others claimed something cold and metallic. None of the women could tell how many men attacked them, ranging from between four to as many as eight. All of them were raped twice, and the men wore condoms. No chance at IDing them with DNA.

By the time Huang had gone over all the details from all four rape cases, Devon needed a bath. Or a couple shots of whiskey. Or both. She felt anger, downright hatred, and a strong urge for revenge, even though she didn’t know the victims personally. That was the thing about SVU; the victim’s pain became the detective’s, or in this case, the agent’s. She fought down the feelings of loathing; they wouldn’t help her here. She needed to play it calm, collected, the way she always did in an undercover op. Thanking Huang for all the information, she headed to the department’s undercover section, allowing them to pick out her outfit and makeup. Now came her least favorite part, having them paint her face.

Lumber Jill’s Bar

Saturday, July 28th 12:38am

Devon was at the bar, drinking a Dirty Shirley through a straw. She had been in the bar for about an hour now, opting to get there early, just in case the pattern changed; there were a few groups of people around. Some came with friends, others had met here, whether for the first time or as a plan, Devon didn’t know. Stabler had come in after Devon had relayed that a couple of other men had showed up, though none matching the description they were looking for. Stabler had decided to sit in a dimly lit booth, going mostly unnoticed, but having a vantage point to where he could see Devon, the front door to her back.

At first, Devon wasn’t sure this was going to work; the department dressed her in a tight black tank top with a light flannel jacket, and matching tight jeans, the fabric ripped above the right knee. She looked like a man had dressed her up to play the bitchy lesbian in a bad horror film. Devon fought to change clothes, but ultimately lost the argument. At least the makeup was more subtle. It wasn’t until Devon sat down and got a couple of, frankly unsubtle looks and even some flirting that she realized they may not have entirely screwed this up.

Devon had started her night by drinking a normal Shirley Temple—Sprite and cherry syrup—knowing that she shouldn’t drink during an operation. That is, until a beautiful brunette had bought her one with vodka in it.

The bartender placed the drink in front of Devon, and before she could object, the bartender said, “Dirty Shirley, compliments of Lily.” She smirked and pointed out the woman sitting across the bar from Devon. The woman, Lily, smiled coyly before taking a sip of her own drink, causing Devon to forget how to breathe temporarily. Undercover or not, Lily was the most beautiful woman Devon had ever seen. And she had bought her a drink? Devon felt like a damn high schooler, sitting there slack jawed, staring at the woman. Lily snickered, snapping Devon back to reality. She awkwardly lifted the drink in a thank you before slamming it in one quick motion. She then stood up and practically ran to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face, ignoring the makeup the department plastered her with—she learned then that it was waterproof.

“Everything okay?” Stabler’s voice whispered in her ear, causing her to jump. She had the earpiece in for so long, she had forgotten it was there.

“Just a quick bathroom break,” Devon said into her mic. She wasn’t used to being mic’d up; the FBI had listening devices in every kind of accessory anyone would need. Devon’s favorite was a pair of square glasses, or a flashy gold bracelet. Tonight, though, she had the NYPD’s normal wire-up-the-shirt mic, taped to the inside of her bra. She looked into the mirror, tried to work up the courage to turn down Lily. Even if she didn’t entirely want to. It had been almost a year since the last time Devon had a partner to warm her bed; actually, Devon warming someone else’s bed was more accurate. She kept her work life and her social life—sex life—separate. She even used a fake name, a shortened version of her middle name, just so that they couldn’t find her after their one-night stand, no matter who it was. It wasn’t like she hated the thought of relationships, but she was afraid that anyone she would date may be put into harm’s way. She was an FBI agent; she had enemies. She ignored the side of her that tried to remind her that she was also afraid of opening up to people, of getting close to anyone. The last time she even entertained the idea of dating someone, they were shot in the head.

Devon mentally shook herself; she couldn’t be thinking of relationships, dating, or feelings, especially when she had decided that she was going to turn down Lily. She took a deep breath then headed back to her seat at the bar. Lily was no longer there, though. After a few minutes of searching the bar area, Devon found her sitting at a booth with three other women, laughing at whatever joke was said. God, her smile lights up her face perfectly, Devon thought before shoving the thought aside. She turned away, remembering why she was there, and took her seat at the bar again, flagging the bartender.

She did stick with drinking alcohol, though, something Devon had never done before; she never drank while working. She vaguely noticed Stabler giving her a look when she had ordered—alcoholic drinks came in different glasses than non-alcoholic. If he had any complaints about her drinking, however, he didn’t mention it. Besides, who knows? Maybe the men wouldn’t show up tonight; it was nearing 1:30am, and no sign of the suspect. Maybe Devon could spend the night with someone; she was feeling lonely, if not sexually frustrated. Damn, she shouldn’t have gone to the bathroom, she shouldn’t have opened this door in her mind. Her thoughts were interrupted, though, when Stabler’s voice came through her earpiece again.

“Group of six guys just came in, looking like trouble,” he went quiet while he watched them—Devon avoided turning to look, relying on Stabler’s assessment—before he continued, “looks like the leader is coming to you.” Devon mentally braced herself as a man slammed an arm down on the bar next to her, standing way too close for comfort. She could smell the Axe Body Spray radiating off him.

“Hey honey, you look sad. Want me to cheer you up?” he asked in a way that made it sound like it wasn’t a question.

“Was that supposed to be a pick-up line?” Devon replied. Devon remembered that the women reported being rude to the man at the bar, and “rude” was Devon’s middle name.

The man scowled, “I don’t need a line to pick up hot chicks at a bar. Women flock to me.” Devon took this time to look at the man, carefully crafted disgust on her face—not like it was too hard to fake--and glanced him up and down. He was in his early to mid-30s with shaggy blonde hair. He was wearing a red polo shirt and cargo shorts. He almost looked like if he stepped out of a frat house, but never grew out of the mindset. All he was missing was the backwards ball cap. Everything about him screamed creep-who-was-full-of-himself-and-didn’t-hear-no…and he matched the victim’s descriptions perfectly. The fact that he came in with five other men was as much of a green light as Devon needed. She could at least get him for harassment if he somehow wasn’t their perp.

“Uh huh. Well, why don’t you try and flock elsewhere? No ‘hot chicks’”—she did air-quotes around the words—“are going to be interested in you here. You’re not our type,” Devon said, rolling her eyes as if she were stating the obvious.

The man’s face was turning red now. “Oh yeah? Well, no one’s calling you a hot chick,” he spat.

“Then why are you even talking to me?” She glared at him, then, putting all the venom she could muster into her voice, dismissed him, “get lost.” The man gave her one last death glare before turning and heading back to his buddies.

“If that’s not at least one of the guys we’re looking for, I’ll eat my jacket,” Devon whispered into her mic.

“I’d take that bet, except I’m almost 100% positive that he is our perp. We won’t know until you leave, though,” Stabler replied. “Let me go first, wait five, then come out and take a left. Walk naturally.” As if he needed to tell Devon how to do her job.

“You alright, honey?” the bartender asked.

Devon put on a smile. “Yeah, that guy was a dick, though. Does he come in often?”

The bartender glared at the door, as if the man might come back, before answering, “I’ve seen him only a couple of times, now. Him and his buddies. They seem to try and start shit with someone at the bar, but leave before I can officially kick them out. I don’t know how they always seem to come in when my back is turned.” Devon nodded. If that were true, then him and his group could very well be the rapists they were looking for.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Stabler get up, pay for his beer, and leave. Thankfully, it was pretty busy at this point; the bartenders didn’t notice a man sitting by himself in a mostly lesbian bar, nor the fact that he left so abruptly, even though they should’ve been on high alert after the group had left earlier. Devon sipped at her drink before hailing the bartender and paying. When she stood, she was a little shocked to feel how light her head was. She didn’t think she drank that much, but oh well. She wasn’t too far gone, just a happy buzz. She made her way out, glancing around the bar once more. She saw Lily, still laughing with her group. Stamping her lust down, Devon headed out the door.

It was a nice night, even this late…well, early. It was a balmy 60 degrees, perfect temperature to Devon. She pulled the flannel around her in what she hoped looked like a nervous manner before taking off in a brisk walk down the street she and the SVU detectives agreed upon earlier that day. It didn’t take long until she heard footsteps behind her. She kept her pace as normal as she could; being an undercover agent meant she had the skills to act natural, but being a woman meant she had the instincts to speed up, to protect herself. It was hard fighting those instincts as she heard the footsteps moving faster, jogging after her. Fuck training, she thought as she whipped around to confront her stalker. She was stunned when she saw that it wasn’t the creep from the bar, but Lily trying to catch up with her.

“Wait,” she said a little breathlessly. Devon fought the blush that she knew crept across her face. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Oh, uh, it’s Olivia,” Devon replied, silently cursing herself; it was the first name she thought of. How’d she forget her own fake cover name?

Lily smiled at her, having caught her breath. “What a beautiful name.”

God, how is her voice this pretty, too? Devon thought. She pushed away the accompanying thoughts about what that voice may sound like in a bedroom. “N-nice to meet you,” Devon stammered out, face flushing. Keep it in your pants, Motely, she thought to herself, embarrassed that just talking to this woman turned her into a blushing mess. Devon had heard of the term “disaster bisexual” before, but never attributed it to herself…until now.

Lily laughed and Devon thought her face would explode with how hot it was getting. “Same to you…would you like to come back to my hotel room?” Lily asked. Wow, that was blunt.

Devon’s tongue felt heavy in her mouth as she fought against herself. God yes, was her first thought. She damn near jumped out of her skin when she heard Stabler clear his throat awkwardly in her ear. Right, she was still mic’d up, and while it was only Stabler who was talking to her, she knew that all the other detectives could hear the conversation. Great.

“Are you alright, love?” Lily asked, concerned. She put a hand on Devon’s shoulder to try and stabilize her. Devon felt electricity through the touch as she struggled controlled herself.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m fine. I, uh, I’d love to go with you. But, uh, could we maybe raincheck until tomorrow night?” Devon asked, her voice rising an octave. Lily had only a moment where her face fell, when Devon heard more footsteps.

Suddenly the group of six men from the bar appeared out of nowhere around the two women, Red Polo Shirt holding a bat and pointing at Devon. Well, seems like they were their perps, and that they were breaking pattern tonight; attacking two women and not blitzing them from behind. Instantly, Devon’s mind snapped back to calm, calculating, collected; her normal field agent’s instincts returning. She felt like herself again, adrenaline pumping through her veins—she felt alive.

“You ain’t going anywhere tonight,” Red Polo Shirt announced. Devon looked around, trying to gauge the situation. They were on a sidewalk, no lights except for a couple dull streetlamps. There was a building at their backs, six men in a half circle around them. Besides Red Polo Shirt and his bat, Devon saw that only three of the other five men were armed: one also holding a baseball bat and two with what looked like metal bars. All things that could be used to hold down someone while the unarmed did whatever they wanted to the victim.

“Get out of here, you bastard,” Devon said as clearly as she could. ‘Bastard’ was the code word that her and the SVU detectives had agreed upon before.

“Move in,” she heard Stabler say to the rest of the team. Hopefully, they were close. But until then, it was stalling time.

Red Polo Shirt drew Devon’s attention back to the scene when he took a couple steps closer. The other men followed suit, effectively closing the semi-circle around her and Lily. They were maybe twenty feet from the women now; close enough that the space between the men were almost non-existent. Lily got closer to Devon, and Devon shifted so that Lily was partially behind her. “You just don’t know how to not be a bitch, do you?” the man called out loudly, making his friends laugh.

“And you don’t know how to take rejection,” Devon replied. Her whole body was tense, mind frantically trying to find a way out of here, or a way to stall further.

Lily moved closer and whispered in Devon’s ear, “maybe we shouldn’t upset them.” Her voice was laced with fear, and Devon felt the sudden need to protect Lily, to never let fear taint that pretty voice again. No matter what happened, Devon would make sure that Lily made it out of this unharmed.

Red Polo Shirt frowned. “See, this is what you bitches deserve. You need a good man in your life to teach you your place.” Well, if there was any doubt in Devon’s mind about this group of guys being her target, it was gone now. She backed up, and Lily followed suit until they were up against the wall. Devon’s mind flew into overdrive, trying to figure out a way out of this; if Stabler and the detectives weren’t there soon, then there was going to be a fight. Devon was confident in her fighting abilities, but even she knew that six against one was a losing battle. She was unarmed, plus the fact that she now had a civilian to protect. The two unarmed men were on either side of her and Lily, the two closest to the wall. Devon could feasibly rush one of them and shoulder her way past; that would just lead to a foot chase, with her hopefully being fast enough to outrun them until help arrived. But would Lily be able to make it out of there, too? In the heels Devon noticed she was wearing, she highly doubted she could run at all…though she had jogged to catch up with Devon in the first place. Maybe she was one of those women who learned to run in heels, in case something like this happened.

Thankfully before Devon had a chance to find out, a cop car appeared on either side of the group, sirens and lights only going off once the group was blocked off, so as not to startle them into running. Stabler and Munch launched out of one cruiser, guns drawn, while Fin and Lake hopped out of their car.

“Freeze, NYPD!” Stabler yelled. The two unarmed men instantly had their hands up. The two with metal bars let them fall from their hands, clattering to the ground, while they rose their hands. The other man with a bat attempted to run, only to be tackled to the ground by Lake. Red Polo Shirt cursed loudly before throwing his bat on the ground with a loud clang and raising his hands.

“We didn’t do nothing wrong,” he called out to the detectives.

“Yeah yeah,” Stabler replied, keeping his gun trained on him as he inched closer, pulling his cuffs from his pocket. Fin and Munch started cuffing the other men who were still standing. More cop cars arrived on the scene, officers rushing to help the detectives apprehend the suspects.

Devon walked over to Stabler, smiling, “thanks. I owe you one.”

“At least you don’t have to eat your jacket,” he replied, making Devon laugh, nerves still buzzing. Stabler gave her a grin before looking over her shoulder, subtly nodding to something behind her.

Devon suddenly remembered Lily, who hadn’t moved from her spot against the wall, still looking alarmed. Her eyes roamed over the scene before landing on Devon’s. She turned back to Stabler, taking the earpiece out and pulling the wire from under her clothes. She dumped them unceremoniously into Stabler’s hands before heading back to Lily. He gave her a subtle thumbs up before leading Red Polo Shirt to his squad car.

“Hey, you alright?” Devon asked once she was close enough.

“I—yeah. What just happened?”

Devon didn’t want to dive into the heinous details of the investigation, nor did she want to explain how she had lied about her name earlier. But she also didn’t want to lie now, either. “Long story short, I was working undercover to bust some homophobic, misogynistic assholes. And I think I just did.”

Lily looked her up and down. “So, is that why you turned me down earlier, Olivia?” Her eyes widened as if something just became clear. “Is that even your real name? Are you even attracted to women?”

Devon hated the accusatory tone in Lily’s voice, though she understood it. She also hated that she was going to lie to her once more. “My real name is Ryn,” she swallowed the nasty taste it left in her mouth--it was short for Kathryn, her real middle name—then continuing, “and yes, I am attracted to women.” Lily still looked skeptical, so Devon jokingly added, “I mean, who wouldn’t be after seeing someone as stunning as you?”

That made Lily smile. “Really? A pick-up line? Haven’t I already invited you back to my place?”

Devon’s cheeks warmed. “Ah, yes, you did. I’d also like to take back my earlier response in place of a new one.” Lily nodded, a smile dancing across her lips. “I would be delighted to go back to your place.” Especially now, with all the adrenaline still coursing through Devon’s veins.

SVU Department

Monday, July 30th. 8:00am

Devon practically bounced into the 16th Precinct feeling lighter than she had in months. She still felt a little bad about lying to Lily, leaving early enough in the morning that Devon never even had to speak to her, Lily’s sleeping form breathing deeply in the hotel bed, clothes thrown around the room. But it was normal to Devon; form no attachments. She didn’t have the time to even think about seriously dating; work was her number one priority and hooking up when she was stressed seemed to be the easiest answer. Not only was she on-call at all hours of the day, every day, she also went on undercover cases for months at a time. How could she devote herself to someone when she couldn’t even devote time to herself? Work came first. Always.

Devon shook herself, forcing herself to remember why she was there in the first place. Stabler had texted her, letting her know that they were about to start the interrogations of the men from the bar. He had asked if she wanted him to wait for her and was elated when she said yes. I’m alright with letting these guys sweat for a little, he had written back. Devon smiled and waved at the detectives as they drank their coffee, trying to wake up. She never did understand how officers were not morning people.

“Hey Dev,” Stabler greeted as she made her way into the observation room. Devon grinned in response and looked through the glass. Red Polo Shirt was alone in the room, still in the same clothes from Saturday night. Sometimes, Stabler could be cruel, leaving a perp to stew all weekend in the cage. Not that Devon was feeling particularly bad for this piece of scum.

“He say anything interesting?” Devon asked. Even if Stabler left him and his buddies to sit all weekend, that didn’t mean that they were ignored. There were officers that worked weekends and would pay attention to anything the perps in the cage would say.

“Just a lot of cursing and complaining.” So, no confession yet? That shouldn’t be too hard to pry out of him.

“Hmph. Hopefully he’s as stupid as he looks,” she said. Just then, Fin and Lake entered the observation room, along with Captain Cragen.

He gave Devon a nod in greeting before instructing, “Fin. Stabler. You’re up.” The two detectives nodded, making their way into the interrogation room. Cragen, Lake, and Devon watched as Fin took the lead as bad cop, while Stabler took the sympathetic cop. Devon had done only a handful of interrogations in her career, which is why she enjoyed watching these guys do it. They were good; if she didn’t know Stabler any better, she’d believe his act of being a woman-hating, misogynistic bastard. Shockingly, though, Red Polo Shirt—Richard Morrisen—wasn’t confessing easily. Devon had been positive that it was going to be a slam dunk, yet Richard seemed to only be interested in screaming profanities at the detectives.

After about an hour, Cragen pulled the detectives out. They were getting nowhere, and Devon could tell that the whole squad was getting frustrated.

“Guy just won’t stop running his mouth,” Fin said as the interrogation door closed behind him. “At least he ain’t asking for a lawyer yet.”

“What now?” Devon asked. She’d never seen the detectives not get a confession before. Though, she’d only sit in on a couple interrogations; she was usually busy with another case before they finished processing whatever case she had helped them with.

“Now, we call Novak, see if we can set up a line-up,” Cragen replied.

While the detectives were setting that up—most of the time was spent getting lookalikes for six different line-ups—Devon took the time to talk with Detective Lake. Temporary assignment or not, it was always good to meet, actually meet, the people that Devon was going to be working with, even if this was only a one-time thing; something they wouldn’t know for a while.

“Hey, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable the other day,” Devon said, leaning against the man’s desk. Devon had said only one sentence to the detective, but the look on his face said enough in response.

“Nah, just caught me off guard. It’d take more than that to make me uncomfortable,” Lake replied, chuckling.

“Good, I’m glad,” Devon smiled. “Though, the thought of Munch as someone with ‘rugged good looks’ is slightly disturbing.” That made Lake laugh, his shoulders relaxing. Devon wasn’t great at making friends, but she was glad to see that she could at least make people laugh.

When he stopped laughing, she saw his body language change again; nothing big, but a clench of his teeth, his back stiffening slightly, and she knew he was nervous about asking this next question. “I mean, Munch isn’t really…your type, is he?”

Devon never understood why people were so interested in sexuality. She knew that for some people, it was an important label, a type of identity that people could spend years figuring out. But why people felt the need to ask others, especially when faced with the fact that they may not be straight, she just didn’t get. But Lake seemed to be genuinely curious; besides, Devon was a hard person to offend.

“I mean, he’s old enough to be my father. So, I’d say no, he’s not my type. I tend to look for people around my own age,” Devon said, smirking. Her use of the word “people” didn’t go unnoticed.

“Well, do you think that…I would be more your type?” He kept his cool when asking, the only signal of his nerves showing as his ears reddened.

Oh, so that’s it, Devon thought. She looked at Lake, really looked at him. He was slightly taller than her, lean but built, and very attractive. But he was also an SVU detective, someone that she may have to work with on a constant basis, which went against her one-night stand mentality.

“If you weren’t in the same line of work as I am, then yes, probably. But as it stands, I have a strict no-dating-your-coworkers rule,” Devon said, keeping her voice as light and neutral as possible. No one liked rejection.

Even so, his face fell, just slightly. “No, I get it. That makes sense.”

Before the awkwardness could continue, Novak came out of the observation room, signaling for Devon to come over. She gave Lake a small smile and wave as she went to talk to the counselor. Novak said nothing as she closed the door behind the two of them, sealing them from the rest of the squad.

“Devon, I know you’re going to hate me, but just understand that I would not ask this of you unless it was a necessity,” Novak blurted out. “I need you to testify in this case.”

“Casey--,” Devon started, but Novak cut her off.

“Listen to me. Out of the four victims, only two of them could ID any of the assailants, and even then, they only ID’d the two unarmed men as the rapists. Unless the detectives can get a full confession, then I have nothing except you tying these pigs to the assaults.”

Devon swallowed the lump in her throat. After Novak asked two years ago, causing Devon’s panic attack, Devon had been having recurring nightmares at least once a month. Always in a witness box. Always in a courtroom. Devon fought through the fog in her mind, trying to find any way out of this. Suddenly, a thought struck her.

“What if I interrogate Morrisen? He hates me, hates women; I’m sure I can get him to tell me every horrible thing he wanted to do to me,” Devon reasoned. Her brain had latched onto the idea, refusing to let it go. It was a life preserver in the ocean of darkness that was the courts.

Novak sighed heavily. “You get one chance. If you don’t get a confession, though, I’ll have to prep you for testifying.” Devon would not let that happen.

“Come in with me; SVU doesn’t have another woman to spare,” Devon said instead of answering. Without another word, Devon led Novak to the interrogation room from earlier, Morrisen in the same seat, slumped over onto the table, clearly tired.

“Oh, so now they send the skirts in after me,” Morrisen croaked out. Then his eyes locked on Devon’s. “Wait, you’re that bitch from the bar!”

“That’s Special Agent Bitch to you,” Devon responded.

“Woah, woah, wait a minute. You mean you’re a cop? Isn’t that, uh…entrapment or something?”

Devon let out a low whistle. “Wow, that was a three-syllable word. I didn’t think your vocabulary was that enriched.”

Morrisen gave Devon a confused look. “No, it’s not entrapment. No one made you harass women at a bar,” Novak said.

Morrisen’s eyes moved over to her. “I didn’t harass nobody. Those bitches got exactly what they wanted, what they deserved,” he sneered.

Wow, this is easier than I thought it’d be, Devon thought. “Are you sure it’s what we wanted? Because I distinctly remember telling you to ‘get lost,’” she said. Let’s see if we can lead him to it.

Morrisen gave Devon the greasiest, creepiest smile that she had ever seen before replying, “your mouth said no, but your eyes were all over me.”

God, I need a nice, long shower after this, Devon thought, suppressing a shudder. “Trust me, Richard. No one wants whatever it is you think you can give them.”

Morrisen’s smile turned into a scowl as he jumped up from his seat, sending the chair toppling over behind him. Novak gave a startled jump, but Devon held her ground; she didn’t even flinch.

“You know what I gave those stuck-up sluts? I gave them just what they wanted! They needed some rough and tough lovin’ from yours truly. Once you go Dick,”—he pointed at himself—“you never go chick.”

Devon was feeling fully disgusted at this point. She looked at Novak as if to ask is that a good enough confession? Novak shook her head, and Devon looked back to this scum.

“Wow, did you think of that line all by yourself? Tell me; why did someone as…’rough and tough’ as you need a posse of five other men to help you assault those women? I mean, if that’s what they all wanted, why use a baseball bat to hold them down?”

Morrisen smirked, picked up his chair and sat down triumphantly in it. “Sometimes, I like to spread the love around, ya know what I’m saying? Those other guys may be my bros, but they don’t got game like I do. It’s kinda like doing some community service.”

Devon sat down across from him. “Oooh, so you’re the good guy in all of this, helping your bros out. How exactly do you help them?” she asked, leaning on her elbows on the table.

It took about another 30 minutes to get the whole story out of Morrisen. Once he started talking, he didn’t stop. Novak, to her credit, had taken out a small recorder, informing Morrisen that his conversation would be recorded. He didn’t seem to care; actually, he seemed to like the attention of two beautiful women listening to his assaults. By the time he had finished, and Devon and Novak left the room, they both felt sick to their stomachs.

“I think I need to bathe in hand sanitizer,” Novak mumbled.

“Can I join you?” Devon replied. She gave the counselor a small smile before asking, “so, am I off the hook?”

Novak sighed. “For now, yes. I should be able to put Morrisen and his gang behind bars for quite a while. Besides, during his confession, he also indirectly admitted to the hate crime. I doubt this will go to trial; they’ll probably all plead out.”

Devon felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders. “Thank you.”

Novak gave her a long look. Devon raised an eyebrow in question, waiting for Novak to say whatever was on her chest. “Look, Devon. I…understand you have a phobia of testifying. But I want to help you through it,” Devon opened her mouth to object, but Novak continued on. “I’m not going to force you to testify, or to do anything you don’t want to. But I’d like for you to come by the courthouse one day. I think it may help you to sit in the gallery during a trial…. Or, at least come with me into a courtroom after it’s closed. No one will be there; just us.”

Devon thought about it. She was touched that Novak wanted to help her with her fear, even if it was for her own personal gain; if she could get Devon over her fear, then she’d be able to testify in later cases. But the thought of sitting in on a trial was enough to make her heartbeat faster.

“Can—can we start with the latter?” Devon asked, her voice faint. She didn’t trust herself enough to speak louder.

Novak smiled. “Of course. And I’ll be with you every step of the way.” Devon returned her smile despite herself.

#everyone deserves love #edl #law and order svu #law and order svu fanfic #law & order svu #law & order svu fanfic #rafael barba x reader #barba x oc #my writing #fanfic #everyone deserves love ch 2

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itnewslist · 3 years

Text

The efforts to make text-based AI less racist and terrible

In July 2020, OpenAI launched GPT-3, an artificial intelligence language model that quickly stoked excitement about computers writing poetry, news articles, and programming code. Just as quickly, it was shown to sometimes be foulmouthed and toxic. OpenAI said it was working on fixes, but the company recently discovered GPT-3 was being used to generate child porn.

Now OpenAI researchers say they’ve found a way to curtail GPT-3’s toxic text by feeding the program roughly 100 encyclopedia-like samples of writing by human professionals on topics like history and technology but also abuse, violence, and injustice.

OpenAI’s project shows how the tech industry is scrambling to constrain the dark side of a technology that’s shown enormous potential but also can spread disinformation and perpetuate biases. There’s a lot riding on the outcome: Big tech companies are moving rapidly to offer services based on these large language models, which can interpret or generate text. Google calls them central to the future of search, and Microsoft is using GPT-3 for programming. In a potentially more ominous development, groups are working on open source versions of these language models that could exhibit the same weaknesses and share them more widely. So researchers are looking to understand how they succeed, where they fall short, and how they can be improved.

Abubakar Abid is CEO of machine-learning testing startup Gradio and was among the first people to call attention to GPT-3’s bias against Muslims. During a workshop in December 2020, Abid examined the way GPT-3 generates text about religions using the prompt “Two ___ walk into a.” Looking at the first 10 responses for various religions, he found that GPT-3 mentioned violence once each for Jews, Buddhists, and Sikhs, twice for Christians, but nine out of 10 times for Muslims. In a paper earlier this year, Abid and several coauthors showed that injecting positive text about Muslims to a large language model reduced the number of violence mentions about Muslims by nearly 40 percentage points.

Other researchers are trying different approaches. Emily Dinan, a research engineer at Facebook AI Research, is testing ways to eliminate toxic text by making more of it. Dinan hires Amazon Mechanical Turk contractors to say awful things in conversations with language models to provoke them to generate hate speech, profanity, and insults. Humans then label that output as safe or unsafe; those labels help train AI to identify toxic speech.

GPT-3 has shown impressive ability to understand and compose language. It can answerSAT analogy questions better than most people, and it was able to fool Reddit users without being found out.

But even its creators knew GPT-3’s tendency to generate racism and sexism. Before it was licensed to developers, OpenAI released a paper in May 2020 with tests that found GPT-3 has a generally low opinion of Black people and exhibits sexism and other forms of bias. Despite those findings, OpenAI announced plans to commercialize the technology a month later. That’s a sharp contrast from the way OpenAI handled an earlier version of the model, GPT-2, in 2019. Then, it initially released only small versions of the model. At the same time, partners in academia issued multiple studies of how large language models can be misused or adversely impact society.

In the recent paper highlighting ways to reduce the toxicity of GPT-3, OpenAI disclosed tests showing the base version of GPT-3 refers to some people as animals and associates white people with terms like “supremacy” and “superiority”; such language perpetuates long-held stereotypes and dehumanizes non-white people. GPT-3 also makes racist jokes, condones terrorism, and accuses people of being rapists.

In another test, Xudong Shen, a National University of Singapore PhD student, rated language models based on how much they stereotype people by gender or whether they identify as queer, transgender, or nonbinary. He found that larger AI programs tended to engage in more stereotyping. Shen says the makers of large language models should correct these flaws. OpenAI researchers also found that language models tend to grow more toxic as they get bigger; they say they don’t understand why that is.

Text generated by large language models is coming ever closer to language that looks or sounds like it came from a human, yet it still fails to understand things requiring reasoning that almost all people understand. In other words, as some researchers put it, this AI is a fantastic bullshitter, capable of convincing both AI researchers and other people that the machine understands the words it generates.

UC Berkeley psychology professor Alison Gopnik studies how toddlers and young people learn to apply that understanding to computing. Children, she said, are the best learners, and the way kids learn language stems largely from their knowledge of and interaction with the world around them. Conversely, large language models have no connection to the world, making their output less grounded in reality.

“The definition of bullshitting is you talk a lot and it kind of sounds plausible, but there's no common sense behind it,” Gopnik says.

Yejin Choi, an associate professor at the University of Washington and leader of a group studying common sense at the Allen Institute for AI, has put GPT-3 through dozens of tests and experiments to document how it can make mistakes. Sometimes it repeats itself. Other times it devolves into generating toxic language even when beginning with inoffensive or harmful text.

To teach AI more about the world, Choi and a team of researchers created PIGLeT, AI trained in a simulated environment to understand things about physical experience that people learn growing up, such as it’s a bad idea to touch a hot stove. That training led a relatively small language model to outperform others on common sense reasoning tasks. Those results, she said, demonstrate that scale is not the only winning recipe and that researchers should consider other ways to train models. Her goal: “Can we actually build a machine learning algorithm that can learn abstract knowledge about how the world works?”

Choi is also working on ways to reduce the toxicity of language models. Earlier this month, she and colleagues introduced an algorithm that learns from offensive text, similar to the approach taken by Facebook AI Research; they say it reduces toxicity better than several existing techniques. Large language models can be toxic because of humans, she says. “That's the language that's out there.”

Perversely, some researchers have found that attempts to fine-tune and remove bias from models can end up hurting marginalized people. In a paper published in April, researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Washington found that Black people, Muslims, and people who identify as LGBT are particularly disadvantaged.

The authors say the problem stems, in part, from the humans who label data misjudging whether language is toxic or not. That leads to bias against people who use language differently than white people. Coauthors of that paper say this can lead to self-stigmatization and psychological harm, as well as force people to code switch. OpenAI researchers did not address this issue in their recent paper.

Jesse Dodge, a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, reached a similar conclusion. He looked at efforts to reduce negative stereotypes of gays and lesbians by removing from the training data of a large language model any text that contained the words “gay” or “lesbian.” He found that such efforts to filter language can lead to data sets that effectively erase people with these identities, making language models less capable of handling text written by or about those groups of people.

Dodge says the best way to deal with bias and inequality is to improve the data used to train language models instead of trying to remove bias after the fact. He recommends better documenting the source of the training data and recognizing the limitations of text scraped from the web, which may overrepresent people who can afford internet access and have the time to make a website or post a comment. He also urges documenting how content is filtered and avoiding blanket use of blocklists for filtering content scraped from the web.

Dodge created a checklist for researchers with about 15 data points to enforce standards and build on the work of others. Thus far the checklist has been used more than 10,000 times to encourage researchers to include information essential to reproducing their results. Papers that met more of the checklist items were more likely to be accepted at machine learning research conferences. Dodge says most large language models lack some items on the checklist, such as a link to source code or details about the data used to train an AI model; one in three papers published do not share a link to code to verify results.

But Dodge also sees more systemic issues at work. He says there’s growing pressure to move AI quickly from research into production, which he says can lead researchers to publish work about something trendy and move on without proper documentation.

In another recent study, Microsoft researchers interviewed 12 tech workers deploying AI language technology and found that product teams did little planning for how the algorithms could go wrong. Early prototyping of features such as writing aids that predict text or search completion tended to focus on scenarios in which the AI component worked perfectly.

The researchers designed an interactive “playbook” that prompts people working on an AI language project to think about and design for failures of AI text tech in the earliest stages. It is being tested inside Microsoft with a view to making it a standard tool for product teams. Matthew Hong, a researcher at the University of Washington who worked on the study with three colleagues while at Microsoft, says the study shows how AI language technology has in some ways changed faster than software industry culture. “Our field is going through a lot of growing pains trying to integrate AI into different products,” he says. “People are having a hard time catching up [and] anticipating or planning for AI failures.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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redwine-house · 4 years

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it is now rapist vs. rapist light but if you all really think staying at home and not voting for biden thus keeping a man who actively runs concentration camps, shuts down immigration from muslim states, calls predominantly black cities "rat infested," is running on a platform of hate and bigotry, said that there were good people on "both sides" of a neo-nazi rally where a woman was brutally murdered, put a rapist on the supreme court, is trying to shut down any healthcare that covers pre-existing conditions, changed the definition of domestic violence so men could get away with beating their wives, is trying to take away food stamps and medicaid, is trying to make a law that allows adoption agencies to turn away gay children, rolled back 95 environmental laws put in place to save our planet, pardoned a war criminal who murdered civilian girls and tortured prisoners only to take pictures of their corpses, witheld hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid to ukraine - a country that could be obliterated by russia - to help him in the election and was impeached for it, had to pay $2 million for misused charity funds, fires anyone in his cabinet that speaks out against him, still denies that washington post reporter jamal khashoggi was violently murdered and sawed to pieces by the saudi crown prince because his company gets money from them, threatens to sue news stations that say anything bad about him, knew about the coronavirus since january and did nothing, said it was a hoax and would go away in warm weather, continues to lie and play down the virus, fired the entire pandemic response team, said "we can't have a cure that is worse than the problem" (he wants us all to die for the economy) then you really need to examine your ego

#bernie sanders #joe biden

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fleimkepajohnmurphy · 5 years

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top five worst clarke moments

5. Her Apology

We’ve all had times where we were bad at giving apologies but I promise you that no one fucking sucks at apologies like Clarke Griffin. Clarke, when presented with the chance to apologise after leaving Bellamy to die in a fighting pit, getting Raven and Shaw tortured, siding with McCreary and you know...all the other villainy shit she did in season 5, instead used it to thinly veil her trying to manipulate her people. She then turned her “apology” which was basically just ‘i did some bad things’ like she shit on the carpet, she did not, she almost got one of them killed and got two tortured and this isn’t the first time she fucked up either but she turned her apology around to say ‘you guys have done bad things too’! She really, uh, Uno-Reverse-carded them there

And yeah, they have done bad things but their bad things didn’t include killing one thousand people (guys I checked her wiki and did the math, she has killed over one thousand people I-), calling themselves the Commander of Death and traipsing around in a black cape - seriously guys, what the shit was that???

4. Leaving Murphy behind

Hey, hey, guys, you remember that time where she and Murphy apparently bonded when being held captive by Ontari? As all you Clorke stans claim? No, no, they fucking didn’t. Because when she had the chance to leave, she left without even considering Murphy - oh yeah, other than telling Titus, who hates Murphy, to “take care of him” who then later slit his throat rather than take care of Murphy so, good job Clarke, your plan is shit - and knowing full well that she left him with Ontari, who is a rapist and a known mass murderer with a temper! Clarke knew he could have died and when he had literally been taking care of her, treating her respectfully and helping her grieve??? Y’all claim he’s the one who fucked up their “friendship” in season 6? no, she left him with a woman she knew could and probably would kill him with the thinnest veils of “protection” She also then doesn’t tell anyone he’s there and let’s be real, that moment seeing him in the tunnels is probably the first moment they know he’s alive (also after all of this shit, Murphy still pumps his rapist’s heart to save her life, Murphy my boy you’re too good)

3. Left Bellamy to die

NO YOU DON’T YOU LEFT HIM TO DIE

She left Bellamy to die in that fighting pit; at that point, she knew how far Octavia was gone and that she may have actually killed Bellamy and after slapping him, which stop fucking romanticizing her hitting him, as she’s leaving him to die, Madi literally asks her about it and she said, “They made their choice.” implying that she doesn’t give a shit.

But when Echo is mad and hostile in front of her, she backtracks and claims she always cared! Liar! She’s like this one White Feminist acquaintance I had back in grade 9 who claimed that she was bullied for her race a lot, our POC friend called her out and she said ‘no, it wasn’t for my race! Just my appearance!’

Clarke really is That One Bitch who can’t tell the truth no matter what, huh?

2. Got Murphy hung

You remember that time that Murphy was minding his own business, pissing on random guys and Clarke tried to kill him? Okay, I may have sort of oversimplified it. So, Murphy’s a dick; we all know that and some of us accept it and love him for/despite it more than others and Jason purposefully set these scenes back-to-back, Murphy doing something disgusting that only a teenage boy would do and having something horrifying happen to him, but why it happens to him? Oh right, Clarke Griffin! Clarke, without proof, ignores Bellamy’s pleas to wait a goddamn second, talk to Murphy on the side and discuss it like they rationally should, and instead waltzes up to Murphy and accuses him of murder in front of a group of 100 known criminals. They already don’t like Murphy, they have a reason to try to kill him now; she knew they would take it. There’s no way she couldn’t have.

And I’m already ready for all of the protests on this one that say ‘she was full of rage’ or ‘she was grieving and not thinking clearly’ but, uh, she was thinking clearly when she saved Charlotte’s life or when she banished him - reminder that she was the one who made them banish Murphy, which would most likely lead to his death - or when she, just two episodes prior, told Wells to go kill himself by walking through acid fog. Oh, you know, #justbestiethingz

No, Clarke fucking set that plan in motion and what did she do when they started hanging Murphy? What? Stand in place? Scream a little? Basically say ‘no’ like, three times? She doesn’t do jack shit; the only time she does something is after Finn comes up the hill (oh, isn’t that an ugly look for her? Him seeing his “Princess” hang a man? How much do you want to bet she lied her ass off to Finn about the details of how the hanging started?) and Charlotte admits what she did. And what did Clarke do to Charlotte? Protected her until the end. Weird fucking shit, Griffin.

Clarke wasn’t mad or grieving. She was trying to get Murphy out of the way.

1. Shock Collared Madi

I... don't know how you look at this scene and don’t think it’s child abuse. She electrocutes her “kid” but I guess the only way you could look at it not being child abuse is if you don’t consider her Clarke’s kid which is true, she’s not Clarke’s child, thank god, but any other ways, it is still child abuse. If I see one (1) more person excuse it with “she was protecting Madi!1!” I'm gonna lose my shit. You don’t protect her by hurting her, Jesus Christ, Clarke is an abusive “mother” and yall are gross.

Bonus:

Told Wells to kill himself

You remember that time in like, season 1, episode 2 or 3 where she told Wells “if you really loved me, you’d go out there” as they all sat in the little bunker thing as the acid fog rolled through and Finn was just awkwardly sipping his alcohol? Finn was a mood but hi, fuck Clarke for telling her “friend” to go kill themselves.

Got Raven and Shaw tortured

Whether y’all like it or not, she teamed up with McCreary, leading to Raven and Shaw to be tortured. AKA I feel no pity for her when Raven has been mad at her all season, Bitch had it coming.

Chained up Emori and Murphy

She chained them up and was willing to use them as rats to test her experiment. She only stopped because Murphy threatened to kill her and Clarke Griffin only cares about her own life, haven’t you heard? I’m so fucking tired guys

Leaving Bellamy to actually bear it all

You remember when Mount Weather was just fresh? You remember when Jasper was drinking himself stupid as a coping mechanism? You remember when Clarke helped him - oh wait, she fucking didn’t!

Actually, she fucking left them and went for a walk, for an adventure and left Bellamy to actually bear the guilt of Mount Weather. Fuck her ‘I bear it so they don’t have to’ bullshit, they all bear it but you like to pretend to be the savior! Bellamy even bears most of your fucking crime

I’m too tired to have more, it’s 1:30am, this was mostly coherent and I hate her goodnight.

#anticlarke #anti clarke griffin #anti clarke #rape tw #tw rape #im tagging that for all ontari posts #also #abuse tw #tw abuse #because clarke fucking sucks #anti bellarke #antibellarke

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lostandwonlove · 4 years

Text

In a Lonely Place

Some Rafa ramblings courtesy of the ‘Rona. Hope you like.

On paper, there was no way she would ever be interested in someone like you.

You, the mature, meticulous, ADA. She, the prodigious detective recently transferred to Manhattan SVU from some Podunk police department upstate.

Really, Liv? You had asked her as she walked you to her office to discuss the new serial rapist case they’d just caught. There was no one experienced enough in any of the other five boroughs to take this job? Or has Carisi put you off that for life?

Just wait until you meet her, Rafa. She’s done some pretty incredible stuff up there, and I think she’ll be a great addition to the team.

You’d harrumphed. Do they even have juries up there or do is it just a farmer and his 11 sheep?

Just ten actually, you heard a voice say and it made you jump.

I’m sorry?

The owner of the voice, a dark-haired woman in a leather jacket perched on the edge of Liv’s desk, got up and walked towards you. Just ten sheep actually. One of them got caught by the big bad wolf. Real shame. Farmer’s sheepdog makes up the twelve, but honestly, his attention span is poor.

You smirked. So in that sense maybe not all that different from a New York City juror.

Her eyes flicked over you, appraising the candy-cane shirt and tie combo you’d opted for that morning. Well I can see why if you’re wearing that outfit in court.

You’d do well to take a leaf out of my book. Biker-chic doesn’t play well with a jury here.

Play nice, Liv had interjected before taking you through the case they’d built so far.

Your eyes met behind Liv’s head and she smiled at you, mouthed touché, and you felt a sort of uncomfortable lurch in your stomach that you hadn’t really felt since Lauren Sullivan in 11th Grade.

Best to ignore it. No way she would ever be interested in someone like you.

ii.

- or might she? The way she caught your eye and held it for just a second too long in meetings; the way her eyes flicked over you before she made some comment about the tie you’d taken far too long to choose that morning; the way she always managed to end up sandwiched next to you in the booth at Forlini’s after a big case.

The way she told Amanda ‘all my boyfriends have been older than me’ in response to a drunken conversation about silver foxes, her eyes resting square on you as you felt your heart leap before she burst out laughing and took a sip of her drink.

So what’s your type counsellor, Carisi had asked you, and uncharacteristically relaxed after a big win and two scotches, you’d told him it was girls who wear hoop earrings. You can take the boy out of the Bronx you’d said while the squad hollered around you, so loudly that you almost missed when she leant forward, tucked her hair behind her right ear and pointed at a scar on her earlobe. Learned the hard way that hoop earrings and chasing down perps really don’t mix, she whispered and her warm breath in your ear made your stomach lurch again –

iii.

Alarm goes off at 6.00am. First cup of coffee ten minutes later. You check your emails while you brush your teeth and shave.

Three times a week you jog, just enough to get the doctor off your back about your cholesterol.

Get dressed. Cufflinks, pocket square, tie.

You don’t eat breakfast, never have, even though you can always hear your mother’s voice telling you it’s the most important meal of the day.

Briefcase, packed the night before, by the door. Second cup of coffee on your way to the subway. In the office by 7.30, saying good morning to the night-time security guards who are just about to come off shift.

It’s been that way ever since you can remember.

It’s the same single-mindedness and determination that got you out of Jerome Avenue and to where you are now.

She is no less determined, but where you are all clean lines and black and white, she is hazy, mixed up and all different shades of grey. She always seems to be running late for something, has a messenger bag full of scrunched up old receipts and crumbs and hair ties, leaves the squad car filled with empty soda cans and takeaway boxes.

You find yourself compiling facts about her life. Two brothers, one older one younger, a roommate who works in the mayor’s office, a landlord who was taking forever to fix a dripping faucet in the bathroom. One date that went badly, one date that went realllly well as you overheard her tell Amanda in the break room, and one date that didn’t happen at all.

I need to get off those apps, you heard her tell Fin one day as she fiddled with her phone, waiting outside the court room for a verdict, and you found yourself silently agreeing.

iv.

- all this before you knew that she slept on the right hand side of the bed; hated coffee but drank gallons of diet coke; could do a killer impersonation of Chief Dodds; loved nothing more than classic movie marathons on TCM, your neighbour’s Labrador puppy which reminded her of her childhood dog, Dex, sleeping past noon at the weekend, the crusts of pizza dipped into hot sauce–

Home. Sometimes 9pm, sometimes later.

You pick up dinner along the way. Sushi, salad, noodles. Or leftovers wrapped in foil from Sunday lunch with your mother.

You eat at the dining table, case files spread out in front of you. One scotch, maybe two.

Bed. Sleep, when it comes, is fitful.

More and more you find yourself joining in for squad drinks – ignoring Fin’s raised eyebrows – or taking the slightly longer route past the bar on your way to the subway just in case they’re there – although really you’re doing it for the extra exercise and the fresh air, and it takes you past one of the better bodegas, anyway…

One night in January you run into her on the courthouse steps after a particularly gruesome first trial day and you fall into step.

Is it always like that? She asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the courthouse.

With Buchanan as defence counsel? Pretty much. You did a great job with your testimony though; you have nothing to worry about.

She gave a half smile. Only because I have a really good ADA.

You reach the bottom of the steps in companionable silence and as you think about the leftover Pad Thai and empty silence waiting for you back at your apartment, you find yourself doing something you haven’t done for a while.

Do you want to grab a drink? You blurt out, and already regret it. I mean, I was going to with Liv but she had to bail to go pick up Noah and it’s been a long day and…

Sloppy seconds, huh? She raises an eyebrow at you.

No, I just mean…

She smiles. Lucky for you, I have no objections to that. But I’m picking.

vi.

- when you told her later, much later, that you hadn’t asked Liv for a drink, never had any intention of doing so, she’d just laughed, told you she’d waited on the steps for half an hour in the hope she’d run into you –

vii.

The place she picks is some dingy, basement dive bar, Dempsey’s, Kelly’s, Dennehy’s, something like that – a place you must have walked past hundreds of times but never really noticed.

This feels like the type of place where my defendants would hang out. You feel out of place in your three-piece suit and cashmere scarf, and can’t ignore the stares of some of the other patrons who were clearly confused as to why you were there, and with her no less. Judging from the bottles behind the bar, you were going to have to find something other than Scotch to drink.

Yeah, your defendants and me. She pulls off her coat and jumps up onto a stool at the bar, where the tattooed bartender places two bottles of generic lager in front of her.

Thank you Stan, she smiles sweetly. And…? She gestures throwing back a shot and he laughs and nods, pouring tequila into two shot glasses and placing them besides the beer. He gives you a perfunctory nod, clearly puzzled as to why she’s with you.

So this is where you hide then. You take a sip of the beer and try not to wince. You can’t remember the last time you drank beer.

Does that mean you’ve been looking for me then, Mr Barba? She smiles at you over the top of her beer and you feel yourself flush.

Only when I’m trying to track you down and reprimand you for illegal search and seizures. You emphasise illegal, and take another sip of beer. It’s beginning to grow on you.

That was one time, she says, in mock dismay, eyes opening wide. And it cracked that case, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.

Me? Complain? Never.

She rolls her eyes. Ha. Well I’d rather have you on my side than anyone else.

I’m far too modest to respond to that.

She laughs and rolls her eyes. Modest and Rafael Barba in the same sentence is an oxymoron. It’s the first time you’ve heard her use your first name and you’re embarrassed that it gives you such a jolt of pleasure.

It’s true though, she continues. I’ve worked with some really dismal prosecutors in my time. Guys who turn up, collect a paycheck, go home again. I feel like you live and breathe this. Like you were always supposed to do it.

That’s weird, you quip. When I was younger I always wanted to be Hawkeye Pierce when I grew up.

She looks puzzled.

You groan and take another sip of your beer. No! You cry in mock dismay. You cannot be so young that you don’t know who Hawkeye is. MASH? Alan Alda?

She shakes her head and wrinkles her nose. When I was younger, I wanted to be Hannah Montana, she offers by way of consolation.

Oh Good God, you say as you rest your head in your hands. How old are you? But when you turn to look at her she’s smiling, her tongue between her teeth, and you can tell she’s messing with you.

Just kidding, she says. For me, it was the Pink Power Ranger.

Thank God. I was worried I was going to have to prosecute you for under-age drinking.

You both laugh at this, and then she stops suddenly. She leans closer to you and you wonder whether this is it, whether she’s going to kiss you. What she does feels much more intimate. She reaches over and grabs your tie, loosening the knot. You’re not in court now, Rafael. She clinks her shot glass to yours, tosses it back before she runs her hand through her hair and smiles at you. You notice, not for the first time, just how pretty she is.

viii.

- when you wake the next morning you realise you’ve slept through your alarm and two missed calls. Your head is pounding and your mouth feels like a cotton wool pad, but you realise, as you frantically splash water on your face that you can’t stop smiling like a maniac –

ix.

Nothing happened that time. Or the time after. Or the time after that.

When it did happen, it wasn’t at all how you imagined. In your head, you were cooler, calmer, way more collected. It was you who initiated it, you who would open up and tell her how you felt at the bar after a couple of drinks. You would ask her out, set a date, pick somewhere nice, dress up.

In reality, the bar rang last call and she signalled for two shots.

No, not again, you laughed. I’m still having to grovel after turning up later after the last time.

Who said one of these was for you? She knocked both of them back herself, one after the other.

Dutch courage she told you and your puzzled expression as she placed one hand on each of your knees, jumping down for the bar stool to stand in between your legs, so that you were eye level. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re never going to act on anything, so I’ve got to do it myself.

Your heart quickened. What…

But she cut you off as she covered your mouth with hers, her breath warm and sickly sweet from the shot. You felt her mouth curve into a smile as you kissed her back. Good, she murmured. It wasn’t just my imagination.

- God, you were like a horny teenager or something, hands all over her at the bar, continuing outside in the street after you were finally kicked out. You weren’t thinking straight, weren’t thinking anything at all really. Only a bunch of drunk Wall Street bros wolf-whistling broke you out of your reverie, and you stood, staring at each other, panting, lips parted. She pulled at the bottom of your jacket and pressed her body into yours. Well Rafael, I’d invite you back to mine but I have a roommate so –

xi.

In the end, you never really had that date you had planned. She just went from not being in your life to – well, being there.

Now you sleep until 7.30, wake rested, satiated, ready for the day. You drink your coffee in bed, gag in mock horror when she makes you eat breakfast, get dressed while she sings loudly in the shower.

You whistle on your way to the subway, say hi to the morning security team who you don’t recognise, buy coffee for Carmen and the other assistants on the corridor.

She splashes colour right across the black and white of your life.

She leaves coins that she empties out of her pockets on every available surface. She never puts the top back on the toothpaste, leaves the tube snarled and twisted because of her insistence on squeezing from the top and not from the bottom like a normal person. She folds down the corner of pages in books that you’ve kept pristine for years, chews on the end of your pens while she does the crossword, leaves the bed sheets in a crumpled mess, when she wakes up late than you, her damp towel on the bathroom floor.

You leave work on time. She cooks dinner. You work while she stretches out on her stomach on your L-shaped sofa watching black and white movies, while you pretend not to notice the red wine she spills on your cushions.

xii.

- without telling anyone, everyone else seems to know too. Amanda raises her eyebrows knowingly at you when you leave the precinct one night together. I’ve never seen you so relaxed, Liv says, it looks good on you. Most mortifyingly of all you run into Nick at a pharmacy, when he comes up behind you as you’re picking up a box of condoms. Evening counsellor, he says, smirking as he strides past you, turning to wink at you -

xiii.

We’re a bit like them, she had said one night, gesturing to the flickering screen in your apartment where some old black and white movie was playing.

Hmmm, you responded, barely paying attention as your eyes scanned a case file at the dining table behind the sofa where she lounged in shorts and a vest top.

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, she said. He was the older, debonair man. She was the sultry younger woman. She paused stretching her legs up in the air seductively, cocking an eyebrow at you.

You laugh half-heartedly. I always thought of myself more as a Gary Cooper.

She looks at you appraisingly. No, definitely a Bogie.

Oh, great, you say. The guy who was so much older than his partner that he died about ten years after they got married.

But he drank and smoked like a sailor.

You raised your glass of scotch to her, tapping it with your index finger. One out of two ain’t bad.

Yeah you need to cut down on those.

And who was it I had to put to bed last week because she drank too much red wine and fell asleep in the taxi home?

She stuck her middle finger up at you. I’m not an old man though.

You grimaced, your exaggerated facial expression only just masking the real pang that shot through you with her words.

She rolled over and jumped off the sofa, stretching and arching her back so that her vest top lifted and you could see the smooth, pale skin of her stomach.

Careful, you’ll give this old man a heart attack.

She turned towards him and grinned. Right on cue, on screen Lauren Bacall turned to Humphrey Bogart.

You know how to whistle, don’t you Rafa? You just put your lips together and blow. She purred as she pushed your papers to one side and straddled you, just before showing you what else her lips could do.

xiv.

- but then all of a sudden it’s sloppy mistakes, uncrossed t’s and undotted i's. It’s McCoy in your office, eyebrows raised in surprise that he’s even having to pull you up on these things. I don’t know what’s got you distracted he says, but I need you to sort it out before we really blunder, the DA’s office can’t afford another mistake –

xv.

On weekends you sleep in, go out for brunch. You walk round the park, laugh as she refuses to accept your help with the crossword. You make plans to try that new French place that’s opened across the street from your apartment, to help her paint her room, to take her skiing.

One weekend you barely even leave the bedroom. After the third time you ask her to slow down, I’m an old man, I’m not like the young studs you’re used to.

She grins and rolls to splay on top of you, her face fitting into the crook of your neck where she says you smell most like you. And where can I find these young studs of which you speak she murmurs, biting your earlobe causing you both to start convulsing with laughter until you’re both on top of each other again and your laughter is replaced by something else entirely.

xvi.

- you seen Barba’s new piece? You hear a male voice, one you don’t recognise, come into the restroom. Whoever he’s with laughs. Yeah, who would have thought? Must be some real Daddy issues going on there. Then there’s a crude joke about what you’re like in bed. You feel your face burn with anger, but also shame, and you wait until they’re gone before you unlock the cubicle and come out to wash your hands –

xvii.

One Sunday you take her to lunch with your mom. When you pick her up she’s wearing a dress, carrying a bottle of red wine. Is this OK? She asks. Do you think she’ll like it? She fusses with her hair as you knock on the door and wait and you squeeze her hand in reassurance.

You eat your mother’s ropa vieja and hide your embarrassment by drinking your wine while your mother tells the story of how she knew you were going to be a lawyer after you’d argued you, Eddie and Alex out of detention for breaking up a fight on the school bus.

She compliments your mother on her home, asks to see photos of you as a child, clears the table without being asked and gets to work washing up in the kitchen.

Your mother eyes you over the table. You look happy, she says finally.

Why do I feel like that’s not a compliment, you ask.

She takes a sip of her wine. She’s much younger than I was expecting, mijo. Just be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.

You make some joke about not being as fit as you once were, but that you weren’t that worried about your cardiac health while she fixed you with a pointed look.

xviii.

- she carries home a Tupperware container filled with leftovers on the subway, asks you how she did, if your mom liked her. She tells you that her big brother is going to be in New York for work next month, that maybe you can all go for dinner at that Thai place you tried last week. You kiss her on the lips and tell her that sounds great, not without noticing the looks you get from the two women sitting across from you who whisper something to one another, the man standing by the door with headphones on who smirks at you –

xix.

You start to doubt yourself.

You notice how the eyes of younger men, better looking men, men with biceps and triceps and god knows what other else-ceps, linger on her when she walks by. The unis in the squad room, the court officers, the barista in the coffee shop by your apartment.

You become ever more aware of the grey hairs creeping into your sideburns, of the way your shirt stretches across your stomach.

You don’t miss the glances her friends exchange with one another when you’re the first to leave drinks to head home.

Jailbait, you hear. Cradle robber. Mid-life crisis. Barba? Thought he was gay. Must be rich, huh.

It starts to feel wrong, illicit. You lie and tell her you need to stay late at work, that maybe it’s best if she doesn’t come over tonight, you’ll see her at the weekend.

xx.

- you don’t tell her how much it hurts when she sends you a selfie of her and Carisi and Amaro later that night. Her eyes are scrunched up in a smile and she has one arm draped lazily over Nick’s shoulder, while Sonny’s hand grabs her waist. Hope work going ok, she texts with a winky face emoji. You lock your phone and place it face down on the coffee table at home where you’ve been all evening, drinking scotch and watching CSPAN –

xxi.

You’ve never really broken up with someone before. It’s strange for someone who’s normally so assertive, so intentional about their life and their work, but you’ve either just let things fizzle out slowly or pull back long enough for the other person to break up with you.

That doesn’t work this time.

We need to talk, she says as you open your front door to you one night. You’re caught off guard, expecting the delivery driver with your Chinese, and she marches straight past you, arms folded, mouth in a line.

What the hell is going on with you?

Nothing, you say. I’ve just been busy. I keep meaning to call you.

Seriously? She says. That’s what you’re going with?

Unusually, you find yourself lost for words, stunned into silence by her eyes that are shiny with rage. You try to think of something clever to say but find yourself only able to shrug half-heartedly.

Because from my point of view you’re behaving like a frat boy asshole, and I’m way too old to have to deal with that shit anymore. I don’t understand… She tails off, as if she’s tired herself out. She collapses on the sofa and you realise that her eyes are not shining with rage, but with something else entirely. Hurt.

What did I do, Raf?

You didn’t do anything you want to say. You’re beautiful and perfect and incredible and deserve so much more than me and what everyone else says about us. You’re better off without me and I wish things were different. You don’t say any of that, throat so thick with emotion that you barely trust yourself to speak at all.

I just don’t see this working out, you say instead.

She stares at you wordlessly, apparently waiting for you to continue. When you don’t, she stands, winds the scarf she’s been holding in her hand around her neck and moves to leave. She stops at the door, looks back at you. God, I’ve been such a fucking idiot, haven’t I.

You move towards her, reaching a handout to touch your shoulder. I still really want us to be frie…

She recoils like you just slapped here. Don’t even say it, she had snapped suddenly, pulling away from you, eyes flashing. Fuck you.

And then she’s gone, door slamming behind her, leaving you stunned into silence until its broken by the door buzzer going again. Your Chinese food has arrived.

xxii.

- only to have that thrown back in your face months later when you joined the squad for drinks, Amanda asking what had happened to you guys, oh we decided that we’re better off as FRIENDS, she said, but you couldn’t miss the hard edge in her voice, the split second when she made direct eye contact with you –

xxiii.

Your alarm goes off at 6.00am. Coffee, emails, shower and shave.

You get dressed. Cufflinks, pocket square, tie, avoiding the yellow and black striped one she said made you look like a bumblebee.

Briefcase, coffee shop, subway. You ignore the security guards gossiping as they finish their shift, head straight to your office.

It’s always Nick or Amanda who come to collect the warrants or to drop off files now. When you’re forced to go down to the precinct for a line-up or to meet with Liv, she’s conspicuously absent, always out on a job or on a coffee run.

You think you catch a glimpse of her in a packed courtroom one day, but she leaves right as its adjourned, takes the stairs and doesn’t linger out on the courthouse steps.

Excellent job, says McCoy, fantastic work on the Barker case. The folks at City Hall are really taking notice. Rumours of a judicial appointment are circulating.

You go home late, when it’s already dark. It’s quiet. Your bed is perfectly made, the dishwasher stacked exactly how you like it, the towels are hung up. You turn on the lights, unpack your take-out and eat it alone at the dining room table in silence.

You like it better like this, you tell yourself. Everything back to the way it was.

xxiv.

- but sometimes you ran Turner Classic Movies while you worked late at night, until you caught a snippet of Humphrey Bogart speaking to a woman in a car. I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few weeks while she loved me, he said. You turned it off and worked in silence for the rest of the month –

xxv.

She calls you once. It’s Thursday night, you’re still in the office.

Hey, she says, long and slow and you can tell she’s be drinking, can tell from the background noise that she’s probably still out somewhere. Her voice is warm and syrupy and you feel your stomach tighten.

I miss you, she says.

Please don’t do this, you ask.

Do what, she says. I just wanted to phone to speak to you. Like friends do. Her voice turns sharp and bitter then before she bursts out laughing.

I think you should go home.

There’s nothing on the end of the line then, just shouting and static.

Hello? You say.

Sorry, she slurs. I dropped the phone. What did you say?

I said I think you should hang up this call and go home. I think you’re going to regret this tomorrow morning.

OK Dad. She starts laughing again. Dad, that’s what everyone said to me when we were dating, like I had some sort of Electro complex.

Electra, you correct.

Yeah that’s the one. Which is ridiculous, because I just liked you so much.

She pauses. So so much.

You sigh. I’m going to hang up now, you tell her.

Not if I hang up first, she responds and then the line goes dead. You put your phone on silent and bury it at the bottom of your desk drawer but she doesn’t call back.

xxvi.

- she’s running late the next morning, Liv tells you as you sit in her office. Something about a broken shower. You see her walk in two hours later, sunglasses on, dumping her coat and her bag on the floor beside her desk, avoiding eye contact with anybody. When you leave Liv’s office she bolts from her desk, mutters something about needing some fresh air and she’s gone before you can say anything -

xxvii.

It’s a cold, overcast March Monday the next time you see her.

We need you up at Green Haven, Liv tells you over the phone. A low-level trafficker offering to spill on the rest of the organisation in exchange for a few years off a sentence. I’ll send someone up with you, I seem to remember Uber doesn’t go that far.

You roll your eyes at the joke that you’ve heard too many times for it to be funny. Just send anyone but Carisi, you say. That guy insisted on listening to Journey the whole way there and back.

When you head out to meet the car a couple of hours later, it’s not Carisi in the driver’s seat. It’s her, staring straight ahead, hands clutching the steering wheel, sunglasses on despite the clouds.

Save it, she says. I was all for inflicting Carisi’s one man Journey tribute act on you, but according to Liv I’m the only one who has a rapport with this guy.

xxviii.

- it’s not until you check your phone at a rest stop that you see the message from Liv with just the winky face emoji –

xxix.

The silence is excruciating. She fiddles with the radio as you head of the city but the reception keeps dropping in and out until the only station you can pick up is some call-in show about vegetable gardening that even she can’t stand listening to. She turns it off and you continue in silence.

The visit itself goes smoothly, the trafficker spills without any encouragement. You agree three years off the sentence if the information turns out to be true.

Then you’re back out again, her striding towards the card ahead of you. Hey, you say. Come on. I really don’t want to spend another 2 hours with you in complete silence. Can we talk?

She stops and turns to look at you. You know I’ve always thought Greenhaven Correctional Facility had the perfect ambience for difficult discussions with ex-lovers.

You laugh despite yourself. I didn’t mean here. Look, what was that place we passed on the turn-off on our way here? Ray’s? Jay’s?

As it turns out, it was Sal’s, and that’s where you found yourself sitting next to her on the hood of the car, drinking one of the worst cups of coffee you’ve ever had in your life. You’re both quiet for what seems like an age, the low hum of the cars passing on the highway the only sound.

I feel like I owe you an apology, you finally start.

She snorts derisively.

I treated you like a – what were the words you used again – ah yes, a fratboy asshole. That gets a weak laugh out of her. I’m sorry.

She shrugs in a way that seems defeated. I just don’t understand what happened, Rafa. I thought things were going great, I met your mom – which, you should know, is not something I do with every guy – and then next minute you’re just gone.

She takes off her sunglasses and looks at you dead in the eye for what’s probably the first time that day. I just want to know why.

You take a deep breath. Honestly? You ask.

Honestly, she says.

I got sick of people making comments about us. I’m what, 20 years older than you? And I look it too. It felt like everyone was judging me, making me feel like I was some sort of perv. I started to believe it; maybe it was disgusting, maybe you were better off without me.

She laughs outright at that. Seriously? Don’t you think I get to have a say in whether I’m better off without you? She says. Because I don’t think I am. People can say whatever they want to, I only care about what me and you say.

She pauses. Also, you are a bit of a perv.

That makes you laugh softly too. You know, I wish I’d had a girlfriend as mature as you when I was your age. I’d probably be in a lot better shape than I am now.

She purses her lips and moves her head from side to side as if she’s considering something. Yeah well, maybe you’d be married to them and you wouldn’t even have noticed me. And I’d probably be dating some fratboy asshole who could never make me nearly as happy as I was when I was with you.

You sit in silence briefly. Then you slide your hand over to cover hers laying on the hood. Was, you ask? Past tense.

She just takes a sip of energy drink from some luminescent can and makes a face. Ugh, she says. If I’m going to date you, maybe it’s finally time I learn to like coffee.

xxx.

When you open your eyes the next morning, its light and for the first time in a long time, you don’t remember having wakened in the night.

You can see a pile of change and scrunched up receipts on your bedside table. A pair of jeans thrown on the chair in the corner. You can hear the shower running and her voice as she sings along to the radio.

You smile.

#law and order svu #law and order: special victims unit #rafael barba #rafael barba x reader #svu #rafael barba imagine

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serenagaywaterford · 5 years

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Okay, but June manipulates Serena as much as Serena betrayes June. June is not exactly an honest woman. I understand why she does it, I obviously do, she needs to survive. But, so does Serena, and it's not fair to blame the one and exonerate the other for the same thing. I mean, come on, telling Serena that Nichole took after her was blatant (and quite brutal, in my opinion) emotional manipulation. She is as much to blame for what's happening now as is Serena.

Hi Anon. Did you mean to send this to me? Or another blog? I’m not trying to be cute. I’m genuinely curious cos I totally agree?

I’m not sure if you’re new to my blog (I’ve got a lot of new followers in the last few days) but I’ve said everything you’ve said here. A lot, in my tags. I don’t disagree! I think in even one of my most recently reblogs, I reposted tags that actually said exactly this sentiment, that they use emotions as weapons against each other. I’ve even said June’s manipulations were going to blow up in her face. There was another post I made where I tacked on the Bad At Math troubled bird to a post about June enabling Serena’s delusions for her own potential gain.

I too believe that June is partly to blame for the path Serena is on right now. She’s done nothing but constantly enable Serena’s grief and motherhood delusions, just the same as Fred is. With the added pimping out of a vulnerable, damaged woman to her abusive/violent/rapist/cheating/manipulative husband who mutilated her which really, really fucking bothered me. (All while having that stupid voiceover about not hating him that same ep. Which again like I said in my tags, made sense in S1 but makes ZERO sense now considering what has happened in S2.) I was actually really grossed out by June doing that. It’s not that Serena hasn’t done worse to June personally and women as a whole, but I hoped June was a better person. She’s not. She’s pretty awful to do something like that. It just doesn’t seem like the June that we’re supposed to believe she is. It’s not empowerment; it’s exactly the same shit Serena’s mother basically said to her and we were all like “HOW HORRIBLE! What a bad mother!” but when June says the same general thing, people are like, “Ooh! Girl power!”

-_-

June and Fred both want something from her and don’t really care about her as a person in any way. (I’d argue June does actually have a sliver of real affection (for lack of a better word) for Serena but that’s another story.) I also believe that Serena is suffering serious psychological issues and that is informing her shitty decisions and vulnerability to manipulation. I’m not saying it’s all that, cos she’s always been selfish, entitled, willfully ignorant, hateful, ideologically blinded, etc. but it’s contributory.

(I don’t wanna go deep into how sad it is that June is dehumanizing other women, even the awful ones. (She’s using all the women around her for her own selfish goal. I don’t truly believe June is this selfless saviour of oppressed women.) Like, I think the showrunners need to read some Audre Lorde, or at least this article. It is not empowering for women to just do to other women what has been done to them. Revenge isn’t justice and it won’t bring real change.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

Anyway. Enough about how the show is failing itself.)

I could possibly try to defend June’s behaviour by saying, “Well, she was appealing to Serena’s motherhood more so to inspire her to see the system from a mother’s perspective instead of her own and inspire her to destroy it as a team.” But using logic with someone who is so messed up is a gamble. And June should never play poker. She sucks at it.

Also as a side note, but still related to her Serena-manipulations: June is way too overconfident in her own abilities. She’s so arrogant constantly this season and it’s just ugly. That little voiceover in the last episode “I did this.” NO YOU FUCKING DIDN’T. You didn’t do shit. Rita and the Marthas did it. Lawrence did it. EMILY did it. The only thing you did was convince Serena to let Nichole go... which you likely wouldn’t have had to do if you hadn’t spent half an hour carving Latin into your bedroom wall after Rita said you gotta leave right away. Rita was the one who saw you and Nick playing happy families and decided to do something. Sure, after she amends it with “We did this.” Too little, too late, June. We all been knew that you think you’re hot shit. June just is constantly acting as if she’s untouchable--which, cos of the way this show is structured, she has been. Her plot armour is so thick that of course the character thinks she’s an invincible superhero. She needs a wake up call, tbh.

Anyway, I don’t mind June getting a little darker and being her flawed self, cos she’s never been a perfect person. Not even close, which is obvious esp in flashbacks. I’d love them to explore more of her flaws. I don’t mind her using dirty tricks and fucking up. I just don’t want her to lose herself* or be shielded from her own terrible decisions simply by the show’s structure and her being the main protag.

It’s so funny to have people defending Serena in my inbox. It’s such a ... refreshing thing? So, thank you!!! I’m glad there are people out there that see things less black and white, and actually defend this beautiful, fascinating, problematic character. :)

#*unless she does lose herself and requires a character like serena to find herself again #in some way #i think that could be a really intriguing flip and dynamic #but i doubt they'd ever go there #the show isn't risky or creative enough to develop that mirroring #(i mean imo june/serena are 2 sides of the same coin and seeing that play out would be cool)#serena joy waterford #june osborne #the dynamic kills me #june x serena #Anonymous

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scarletroseofrwby · 5 years

Text

TCSE AU Chapter 11:

It should be easy. Everyone would believe Ruby, right?

Nope. Life was just never that easy.

Within the past few days, Ruby could not explain how stressed she was. Her partner was in danger, and Neptune was right. Weiss didn’t believe her, seemingly too infatuated over this man. Which hurt Ruby even more, as they had been doing so well until Neptune came.

She had been trying so hard to find someone who would believe her, but everyone took Neptune’s side because he was new. Even Yang trusted Neptune, which stressed her out even more. Everyone trusted Neptune, everyone trusted the newbies. Nothing was helping, and the dance was in a couple of days.

And Weiss was going out with him. What a horrible series of events. Neither one had even apologized for their argument. It was as if Weiss had forgotten about Ruby completely, disregarding her and throwing her out of the picture all of a sudden.

Walking down the halls was painful, knowing that she’d have to face Weiss every time she got back to the dorm. But it wasn’t Weiss’ fault, she could never hate her. It was always Neptune. Opening the door to her dorm room, she found Neptune and Sun hanging out with her team once again. She glared at Neptune before going to the kitchen to grab a small snack.

“What’s the deal with her?” Neptune asked. “Did someone fall off of the wrong side of the bed today? Or is the baby just having a temper tantrum?”

It was when Ruby heard laughter that she had abhorred Neptune more than anything. Her team wasn’t helping her at all. But then he decided to make another mistake. He went to the kitchen door frame and stood there, holding his hands to his cheeks. “Is wittle baby mad at someone? What’s the matter, wittle baby?”

Ruby was mad now. She stormed out of the kitchen, both her fists poised and ready to strike. She violently grabbed his jacket and growled like a Beowolf. “Say that again to me, you disgusting rapist! Say it again!”

“Ruby!” Yang grabbed her from behind, holding her in a headlock. “That’s enough from you, young lady. You have been rude to Neptune ever since he got here.”

The young girl struggled to escape the hold of her beastly sister. “Yang, you’re not my mother! Neptune is a rapist, just believe me!”

“I’ve heard enough! I’m not your mother, but I am your sister, and you will obey or I will punish you like Dad did!”

“I’m your leader, you listen to me!” Ruby managed to break free from Yang’s grasp. “Why won’t any of you listen?”

Leaving the room, she went up to the roof. Blake was fine with Neptune at first, but now he crossed a line. Usually she’d wait for Yang to comfort Ruby first before doing anything else, but that plan wasn’t going to work today. The poor girl was upset and someone had to do something. She followed after her leader, saying a few words before leaving the dorm.

“I can’t believe you guys. I tolerated you, Neptune, but you’ve gone too far this time. And you two,” she glared at Yang and Weiss, “I expect better from you both. Yang, you are her sister. Weiss, you are her partner. Both of you better start acting like what you’re supposed to be instead of letting her deal with these things alone.”

She left the room, slamming the door behind her. The other four that remained in the room exchanged looks.

Sun scratched the back of his head before walking towards the door. He thought he’d help Blake and escape the situation at hand. “I’ll go talk to them.”

With three gone and three remaining in the room, they decided to stay and continue conversing. Blake and Sun, on the other hand, went to find Ruby and talk to her about Neptune. They both knew something was up with him since he got here. Their Faunus traits enhanced everything, including their ability to sense certain hormones.

The tension was cut when Sun spoke his thoughts. “Why is everything so hectic here? I haven’t been here long and yet I feel like I’ve known all that’s happened. You guys just don’t seem to get a break, do you?”

Blake sighed. “You have no idea.”

“You say that, but I think that--”

“No, you seriously have no idea at all. Ruby’s been through a lot, she’s the one that never gets a break. It’s always one problem after the next, and I’m trying to do all that I can to help her. Being so young in a top academy like this is very intimidating, imagine going through more adult-like problems at her age.” Blake let out another hefty sigh to show how sympathetic she felt for her young leader. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ramble. I just wanted you to understand. Anyway, do you know what’s going on with Neptune?”

The blonde Faunus hook his head in response. “I have no idea. He’s been acting really weird ever since he heard we were going to Beacon.”

“Do you think it has something to do with Weiss? He’s been really close to her since you guys arrived.”

“It could, he has mentioned her more often within the past couple of weeks now that I think about it.”

“You don’t think he’s actually planning to...”

Sun paused. Something inside him broke, it was clear in his expression. “N-No, that can’t be. H-He wouldn’t--it’s just not like him.”

There was a moment of silence as they proceeded to the stairwell that led to the roof.

“How do you know she’ll be up here?” Sun asked.

“She comes here whenever she’s upset. I don’t blame her, the view is really calming.”

Blake opened the door to find Ruby sitting down, hugging her knees, and staring at the afternoon sky. The sun was getting closer to the horizon, though it was merely 3 pm. It was officially December, it would get darker around 4:30.

“What are you two doing up here?” Ruby didn’t even turn around. She could feel their presence and their sympathetic emotions through their strings. “Shouldn’t you two be laughing at me with Neptune?”

“Hey Ruby, even though Neptune’s my friend, he didn’t have the right to treat you like that. I’m sorry that he said those things to you.” Sun sat down next to her, Blake sitting on the other side of Ruby.

“Ruby, we want to talk to you about Neptune. Do you know anything between him and Weiss?” Blake asked, trying to get Ruby to look her in the eye.

Ruby turned her head, her silver eyes meeting amber ones. “He wants Weiss. He wants her like Cardin wanted me.”

“Who’s Cardin?” inquired the blonde.

“I was a victim of rape, Sun. I was victim to him.”

“Oh,” he regretted asking. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Neptune told me that after he claims Weiss, he’ll try to get into her family for her riches.”

Blake’s ears twitched a little under her bow. “I knew it. He really is a horrible person like Cardin. Something felt off about him.”

Sun sighed in disappointment. “I hate to admit it, but I agree with you, Blake. I could sense bad intentions under those flirtatious words of his.”

“Sun, do you like Neptune?”

He nodded, not ashamed by his choice. “It just hurts to learn that he plans to do this. I can’t do anything to stop him, so someone needs to protect Weiss.”

Blake smiled and patted Ruby on the back. “That’s why she’s here. Ruby is Weiss’ hero.”

Ruby blushed, covering her face with her hands. “Blaaaaake, you’re embarrassing me...”

The brunette chuckled. “Blame your sister.”

Jokes aside, Sun placed a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “Do you know what you’re doing, Ruby?”

“Not completely,” she replied.

“But when has that ever stopped you?” Blake interjected.

“Can I ask a favor of you two?”

They both nodded. “Anything to help, Ruby,” Sun added.

“Could you both keep an eye on him for me? I need a little more time to figure out what to do, and it’s hard to do both things at once without him getting too suspicious of me.” She stood up and turned towards the door. “And it would be of great help with those Faunus abilities you both have.”

Blake sat there, wide-eyed and mouth agape. She thought she had hidden it well enough.

“Yeah, I figured it out, Blake. I saw your bow twitch a few minutes ago, and you can’t always hide your peculiar behavior.” Ruby smiled before leaving, closing the door gently behind her.

Sun turned his gaze to Blake. “Have you ever told her?”

“No, not at all.”

“And have you told Yang?”

“I plan to at the dance.”

“Did you ask her or did she ask you?”

With a grin, she stared out into the scenery of the campus.

“I asked.”

--------

It was now evening, over a few hours after the whole scene in the dorm. Neither Neptune or Weiss had apologized for their behavior. Yang hadn’t either, which hurt Ruby the most.

“Hey Ruby, can I tell you something?”

It was odd that Yang would ask this in the dressing room of a retail store in the mall. Usually she’d ask this sort of question at home in private, but almost always would she just say what she needed to say.

“Hold on, let me put the dress first.”

The siblings were finding clothes to wear to the dance. Yang had picked out what could only be described as the most boring dress to exist. There was no color whatsoever, but Ruby didn’t judge. Ruby had picked out a red dress with a black mesh over her shoulders. So far it wasn’t fitting, and the outfit was paired with heels, Ruby’s least favorite type of shoes.

“Nope, this is too small and I am not wearing stilettos to the dance. I want a suit instead.”

Ruby came out of the small room holding the dress and the pair of black death shoes. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“I want to apologize for earlier. Neptune insulted you, and I should’ve defended you, but instead, I laughed at you. I’m sorry, Ruby.” Yang stood up and took the dress in Ruby’s hands, setting down with the other clothes they had previously tried on. “If you’re right about Neptune, I’ll be with you every step of the way. Remember, no one shoulders anything alone. Your job now is to protect her, should she need you.”

“Thanks, Yang. Do you think you can help me with something?”

“Of course! I may not be as smart as you, but I’ll try my best to keep up!”

“Great, I need help in getting to Neptune. I heard some of the newbies aren’t staying in the dorms, but temporary rental apartments. I’ve been eavesdropping in every conversation that involved Neptune and heard that he was one of those students.”

“Lemme guess: you want me to find out where he lives, don’t you?”

“Precisely.”

Yang crossed her arms. “And what do you plan to do when you get there and save Weiss? What about the authorities?”

“I-I’m not sure. He’s probably planned this from the start as well, most likely living in an area far from the police. We need more info, as much as possible.”

“Then forget all of the details on Neptune. All you need to know is his location and the fact that you will save Weiss. Leave the plan to me. I’ll be talking with Blake and Sun on it, so don’t you worry about a thing.”

“Thank you, Yang.”

The blonde wrapped her arms around her sister, stroking the short strands of her older sister. “Not a problem. And again, I’m so sorry for not being the older sister I should’ve been.”

Ruby didn’t say anything about it, still feeling a little hurt from what happened. She was released shortly after a few moments, continuing their search for formal clothing. Ruby had trouble deciding on whether she should wear a dress or a suit. Although the dress she found looked stylish, she felt that it was missing something.

“Hey Ruby, what if you added this?” Yang pulled out a hanger that held a small, black waistcoat.

Looking at it intently, Ruby imagined adding it to her dress. Surely this would be enough. She wanted to at least look better than Neptune.

“Why don’t you try it on?”

Handing the waistcoat to her leader, Yang awaited outside the dressing room. Ruby removed her cloak and slipped the article over her shoulders, buttoning it up swiftly. She liked it so far, the coat suiting her figure perfectly. It really showed off her curves and flat stomach as well as give her a somewhat masculine vibe. She felt a little more confident in her outfit now.

The door opened, Yang immediately perked up. As she saw her sister come out, she wasted no time in gushing over how good the waistcoat looked. She couldn’t stop looking away, mesmerized by how charming her sister looked.

“If that doesn’t get you any girlfriends after the dance, then I don’t know what will. You look so good!”

“I guess I do,” Ruby said quietly.

“Ruby, just be confident at the dance. Maybe you’ll score a dance with Weiss when Neptune isn’t looking, who knows?”

Ruby sighed, her shoulders slumping. “But I don’t want to score a dance with Weiss, I want to be her date. I want to show her that I’m a great partner and better leader. I want to show her that I’m not just some 16 year old.”

Yang sat down on an ottoman and offered her sister to sit, to which she complied. “You will, Rubes, you will. And if you’re right about Neptune, then that’s when you’ll prove it. You’ve been through hell to protect her. It’s time to prove that you really did survive.”

“I wouldn’t say I survived, I’m still kinda messed up about that incident. I still have nightmares about him every now and then.”

The elder sibling patted Ruby’s back, their gazes meeting. “He’s gone now, so you don’t need to worry about him. Neptune’s the one you need to pay attention to. I’ll try to do as much as I can, Rubes. Promise.”

Ruby smiled back. “Do you think I have a shot with Weiss if I save her?”

“I think there’d be something wrong with her if she didn’t. If Blake saved me from a rapist I’d most definitely fall more in love with her than I already am.”

“Only because you’re cheesy as heck. Weiss is different. She’s very mature and beatiful and—”

“Hey, hey, hey, what’re you implying? Am I not any of those things?”

Suddenly, the young girl broke out in a fit of laughter. “Haha, not at all! That’s not what I meant! But judging by your response, maybe I’m not wrong!”

“Jeez, you little rascal. Alright, let’s get going now, these clothes ain’t gonna pay for themselves.”

--------

While sat atop her bunk with the blankets providing some privacy, Ruby tried to figure out what to do about the event in a couple of days. Yang said she would handle it, but Ruby was used to forming the plans. In their conversation earlier, she had already started formulating one. She knew a few things and came up with possible outcomes: Neptune most likely lived in one of the rental apartments, he was a skilled fighter, and he was very cunning. If Ruby were to infiltrate, he would most likely retaliate. When they escape, he’d most likely pursue them to get Weiss back while fleeing from the police.

“What do I do then?” she asked herself.

When she heard the dorm door open, she lifted up the sheets to see Weiss walking alone.

“Ruby,” Weiss looked up at her partner, “where are Blake and Yang?”

“They’re out on a walk.”

“It’s winter and nearly curfew.”

“Yang said she didn’t care and Blake didn’t mind.” Ruby hopped down from her bed, walking towards the heiress. “We need to talk, Weiss.”

“I was actually hoping the same thing,” the silverette admitted. “It’s about Neptune.”

“So you finally see what I mean?”

Weiss only gave her a questioning look, crossing her arms. “What? No, that’s not it at all. Ruby, I’m in love with him.”

The room was dead silent. The red string was burning, but it still remained.

Ruby didn’t say anything, knowing that Neptune had already won Weiss over. But there was still the final battle to be had, a battle he was sure to lose.

“You’re making a mistake, Weiss. This relationship will not get you anywhere, he’s just going to use you!”

The heiress seemed shocked to hear this, almost disgusted from that response. “No he’s not, he loves me. I’m sure of it.”

“Has he ever told you?”

“Well, no,” the older girls started stammering, “but he does! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Ruby placed her hands on Weiss’ shoulders, hoping to bring her to her senses. “Weiss, you’ve changed since he came. You’ve gone back to being cold to us, you’ve shut us out again.”

Getting even closer, she wrapped her arms around the slightly shorter, slender girl. “Come back to us, Weiss. Come back to me. Please.”

Weiss sighed. “Ruby, listen. You’re my best friend, and I’m glad you’re looking out for me. But, I love Neptune, and I want to be with him whether you support us or not.”

For the first time, Ruby pulled away from the hug that she initiated. Never has she ever pulled away before the time was right. But this wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all.

And for once, Weiss stood there feeling unsatisfied by it. She loved receiving hugs from Ruby, always leaving on a friendly and happy note. But this was different. She felt rejected and unaccepted. By Ruby of all people.

Ruby walked towards the door.

“Where do you plan to go when curfew is minutes away?”

She didn’t turn back. She didn’t respond. She left the room, closing the door behind her. Ruby only had to take a few steps before she found herself at team JNPR’s dorm across the hall. She knocked on the door which opened only seconds after she knocked. Jaune let her in, his team and her own two teammates sitting in anticipation. Blake and Yang were asked to come here after their walk so that they could all plan out the event.

“So how’d it go?” Yang asked.

“Neptune’s baited her in completely. Do you have any info on his whereabouts?”

Blake sat up in her chair and nodded. “Sun told me he lives at the Vale Apartment Complex. It’s a fair distance from here, 15 minute drive at best.”

“10 minutes? She can make it in 5 with her bike,” Nora stated.

“Yes, but there’s also traffic. It’s a holiday weekend, everybody’s going out.” Ren countered. “We should take that into consideration.”

Yang crossed her arms and looked at the whole of the group. “Some of the upperclassmen asked me to help out with the dance, and they told me the dance ends at around 10 pm. Let’s say they leave at around that time, assuming they’ll be walking, they’d get to the apartment at around 10:45. Traffic clears up at around 10:30 or so, so I’m pretty sure she’ll be fine.”

There was another knock on the door, and they all turned around. Jaune opened the door again, standing there was Sun. “Blake and Yang asked me to come here?”

“Yes, we’re discussing Neptune.” Blake said as he entered the dorm.

“I got confirmation from Neptune himself. He’s planning to take Weiss and once she’s done, he’s going for Schnee’s money.” Sun seemed pained to say it, but decided to face reality and admit it.

Pyrrha squirmed anxiously in her seat. “This is quite problematic. We don’t know when he’ll begin, we don’t know what more he could be planning, and we don’t know how to counter.”

“Alright, I’ve got an idea. We’ll set up posts. A few of us will watch and wait. As soon as they get to the apartment complex, we’ll radio Ruby.” Sun suggested.

“Why can’t you guys go in as soon as they do?” Ruby asked.

Sun smiled, patting Ruby’s shoulder, the rest of them smiling as well. “Because this is your battle, not ours. She’s your princess to save. We’ll do all we can to help, but you’re going to be her hero.”

Ruby couldn’t help but smile back. She was truly thankful she found these people. People that supported her and were willing to help her no matter what.

“You’ve got this, Ruby.” Yang said. She was sincerely supportive, her smile proving it.

“Thanks guys. It means a lot to me.”

The plan was set. The anticipation was killing her, but that was to be expected. There were two days to properly put everything in place. The only thing left to do was execute it.

As cliche as it was, Ruby couldn’t help but feel this way.

She was going to save her princess just like in the fairy tales her mother read her every night.

~~~~~~

I’m back! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and I’m sorry I haven’t updated this as soon as I should have. School and work are getting really hectic for me. I’ve been backed up with assignments and a couple of requests that I still need to do.

But I’m gonna end this with a good note.

Good note.

Until next chapter!

-Scarlet

#tcse au #tcse au chapter 11 #rwby #rwby au #my fanfics

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cards-onthetable · 5 years

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Hi, is this Jamko Grievances Hotline?

(This is it y’all, Aussie’s letting loose. Straight text is hers; any of my own additions are italicized. I’M SO PROUD OF YOU, AUSSIE!)

My perception of Eddie season 4 - younger than Jamie, sheltered upbringing, bit of a private school princess as we say here. Rookie so she has a steep learning curve ahead of her. All pretty normal I think. Fyi I don't buy the BS that nobody saw their chemistry etc behind the scenes. Her whole "You're my first Reagan, be gentle" was to me the very beginning of this farce. It was obvious she was brought into the show to be his eventual love interest.

Season 5 - 1st episode Jamie loses his shit when Eddie pushed to the ground. Eddie apparently doesn't realise Jamie wants to jump her bones? doubt it but ok writers. His talk with Erin about Teresa Mancini being his first crush because Jamie likes opinionated bossy women etc. So writers/producers clearly want idea in viewers minds that yeah he wants her but noble, never-screw-your-partner Jamie Reagan denies it and Eddie supposedly remains oblivious.

Episode 2 - Jamie sides with Kara Walsh much to Eddie's disgust. It's Eddie that talks about bringing stink back with him etc after he partners with Walsh. It's Eddie talking about nobody trusts a rat etc etc. (geez I hate season 9)

The rest of the season passes with Eddie being kidnapped (Jamie handled that smoothly didn't he)? and Eddie's first kill. He wants to be there for her. Eddie also wants him there. Ok I get slow burn in TV shows but they in my mind have already crossed lines emotionally and MR HARVARD GRAD on some level has to know this. Eddie always showed signs of knowing she had feelings in my opinion.

Eddie undercover and Jamie loses his shit with Danny about getting his partner out etc. Danny and Maria knew about their feelings. Hell seems basically the entire precinct did but ok this slow burn shit continues all the while Jamie believing can't go there because dangerous on job blah blah blah. Sorry but you are already compromised. (AGREED. They’ve been emotionally compromised since early on.)

Season 6 - More interesting for me because Eddie started to be more his equal I felt. She would express opinions and argue more with him. But I did not like her "do you know who my partner's father is" BS (same, I still struggle to categorize that as a momentary lapse in judgment? A scared gut reaction when she got confronted? Not sure, but it was gross). They also had a fight in episode 11 when Eddie got them assigned to a detective detail. Eddie's "I'm not gonna apologise for wanting a career". Opinionated Eddie on display. You know the type Jamie is always attracted to. But still this slow burn BS continues.

Season 7 - Well we all know how that played out. The year they confess feelings (no, the year Eddie confessed feelings in a moving, vulnerable moment and Jamie stammered about bad ideas and roads they’ve been down before. 😒😒), pash, attend out of town weddings together and get into fights. But yeah ok JUST PARTNERS. Honestly fuck off BB it's just a farce. Oh wait we are now going to ignore the kiss etc. Erase it from your memories like it never happened folks. UGH UGH UGH.

Season 8 - Mostly about Danny and losing Linda at first. OK I can deal with that. Jamko dinner date at the Chinese restaurant and we're reviving the sexual tension again. JUST FUCK ALREADY. But nope surprise Eddie has a boyfriend called Barry. Well she is entitled to her life considering the WE ARE JUST PARTNERS BS!! But apparently this boyfriend is enough to make Jamie stop and think as opposed to the other men that have come and gone. Yeah she got shot, Jamie could've lost her etc etc. Barry mentioned again so Eddie was still with him or had very recently split oh hey surprise WE'RE ENGAGED - (Adam Sandler starts in my head BUT IT ALL WAS BULLSHIT IT WAS A GODDAMN JOKE).

As an aside I absolutely hated the episode where Eddie recognised the absolute pig from her past and used her job to get even. Showing Eddie to be that unprofessional and needing to be brought to heel by Jamie and Erin really pissed me off. That right there is why Eddie is considered beneath Jamie by the I hate Eddie brigade. I understand being shocked running into the guy but showing Eddie to have such poor judgement just didn't sit well. And hey T.O. you failed cos you probably should've taught her that you can't use your authority for personal gain but clearly you didn't but you know it's wrong so the all powerful Reagans can get you out of the trouble silly little Eddie tried to get herself in.

Season 9 - ARE THEY FUCKING JOKING?

1 - Still working together because their judgement won't be affected in a negative way. oops Eddie trapped in fire and Jamie loses his shit. But ok engaged and working together CHANGES NOTHING

2 - Jamie promoted and getting transferred and immediately Eddie brings up putting in for a transfer. He says no. He then requests her. She says no. Good maybe they really will let them be separated at work which given it meant Eddie basically relegated to family dinners surprised me.

3 - Oh my guy's being talked about meanly. This won't do. FYI I actually was ok with Jamie appearing a bit irritated when she arrived at work as his girlfriend. I like to keep home and personal separate so I could understand his less than thrilled reaction but that's not everyone's cup of tea and I understand that. But hey spoiler BB his colleagues have seen his girlfriend you morons, so transferring her into work there by end of episode and pretending people don't know IS BULLSHIT

4 - Think I already discussed this with @ontherockswithsalt but I was irritated. Jamie made it clear he did not trust that detective and Eddie seemed to see it solely as an attack on her capabilities. Old Eddie I think would've at least listened. But SHIT goes wrong and it is Jamie coming to rescue Eddie. I understood why the majority felt Jamie over stepped and Eddie is trained etc. But she had found herself in an out of control situation because she was pinned with breath knocked out of her and help was not coming until it had gone further. Jamie is aware of what this arse would be rapist is doing. He is aware of Eddie's history with sexual assault. He does not trust this detective. THE MAN IN JAMIE WILL ALWAYS PROTECT HIS WOMAN WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY WORKING TOGETHER IS TOTAL BULLSHIT KEVIN WADE AND YOU KNOW IT. That was not Sergeant Reagan that was ANGRY JAMIE out to play. But Eddie is upset which i get because she feels it's an attack on her capabilities and no chick is gonna be happy with that and she talks about "we agreed we'd separate work and home Jamie you gotta choose".

5 - It was Eddie telling Sean about what it means to be a Reagan, higher standards etc etc. Oh look a little bit of affection seeing Jack off. Works for me because they are at home, not working.

6 - He puts both Maya and Eddie on foot patrol AND SHE DEFENDS HIM? Oh come on Old Eddie is not that stupid. Sorry it's Eddie 2.0 this season, I forgot. So again it's Jamie Reagan the HARVARD GRAD telling her that was a mistake well NO SHIT and old Eddie wouldn't have done it.

7 - I kinda enjoyed that low growl as he went to kiss her in the kitchen. Her mum's a delight but to me supportive Jamie was on display this episode because they were at home. He can be Jamie there. At work he's supposedly Sergeant Reagan not Jamie.

8 - Jamie upset with his decision and Eddie is supportive. Only really saw them at home so nothing really annoyed me here.

9 - Eddie and Maya and 2 others supposedly bullied and Jamie has to explain why it's a bad look. Not convinced old Eddie would be so keen to just let the loud mouths go but maybe the point was to suggest Eddie really not that capable without Jamie by her side? Oh no it's not that because Eddie caught the wanted killer. You girl. Then their boss tells Frank he's not blowing smoke when praising them. So what their CO does know?

10 - NO NO NO. EDDIE FLAT OUT LIES WHEN ASKED BY MAYA HOW LONG THEY BEEN SLEEPING TOGETHER. BUT OH NO JAMIE IN A SHOOT OUT AND HERE COMES EDDIE RUNNING SERGEANT REAGAN ARE YOU OK WITH THE PUPPY EYES. But ok sure Maya and co believe you aren't screwing. BULLSHIT

11 - Jamie stuffs up. Did that actually happen? He makes a mistake someone gets shot and nothing is said? SAY WHAT? Also Eddie has to pull Jamie off the shooter and is calling him Jamie which apparently is wrong so again THEY ALL KNOW YOU ARE SCREWING FOLKS.

12 - I'm annoyed that anyone can mention 100k and wedding in same breath but hey maybe that's really what a wedding in NYC costs. Wedding talk bores me so I found that episode blah. He certainly needs to learn to express himself better. The venue seemed ok I guess.

13 - Wedding dress description to the guy you gonna marry? I'm bored. Oh wait personal and professional lives must be separated so yeah it seems really logical to therefore be discussing their issues at work. What's this did Jamie just tell her he loves her in busy precinct? Ok maybe it's me who has a head injury because I thought we were still playing secret squirrel.

14 - Not that much Jamko really but hey Henry while I understand Danny's point I am firmly team Jamie because how on Earth can he maintain any discipline/control when his own brother totally disregards him? Henry and Frank care more about Frank's precious job and the family name. OH Fuck Me Frank Reagan's bullshit is a separate rant. Did love the dinner table spat though. Give me more of that. Also kinda impresses by that saga at the end.

15 - we've discussed this

16 - Nice to see them working together I guess

17 - Maya corrupt. I'm ho hum in a way. I kinda think making the first black recurring police officer corrupt plays into the ‘blue bloods is racist’ crowd but I really don't know enough about the culture there. I did like Jamie having her arrested at roll call because I'm all for sending a message. Again this woking together and screwing is BS but hey that's the theme of the season.

18 - Who knows I haven't seen much but I'm over it. IT DOES NOT WORK. END OF STORY.

But in closing Eddie does look like can't be trusted in my opinion because she came to the new precinct that was known to be trouble. And for a year her and her boss have been lying. Jamie has the Sergeant has power. Eddie does not. Given how rats are seen how does Eddie's position not come with major blow back when all is revealed? Jamie can't shield her cos that'd be playing favourites and hey we keep work and home separate (except for when we don't) BECAUSE IT'S ALL BULLSHIT.

If the go ahead with season 10 and I'm silly enough to watch I am hoping for serious fallout. I want Eddie ostracised at work because I think that is realistic and they supposedly pride themselves on being real. I think it would be interesting character development for Eddie and also for Jamie because HEY HARVARD HOW'S BEING A BULLSHIT ARTIST WORKING FOR YA? I'd like to see HARVARD have to grapple with how his stupidity has truly affected the woman he loves. And hey maybe Eddie can return to her old self.

This dummy spit written and authorised by Aussie.

Sorry if I've broken your eyes due to eye rolling.

#submission #aussie

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bthump · 5 years

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watching jojo's bizarre adventure anime adaptation and seeing how much the anime team fixed araki (the mangaka)'s bad writing makes me rlly wish that if berserk gets a proper anime adaptation whoever does it will do the same with miura's writing (and some of his art too tbh). like for example for all their faults the berserk movies did improve casca's character. what are your wants for a potential full berserk anime adaptation? (also let's hope that this is the year we finally get one 🤞)

I never finished JJBA or watched the anime so idk, but I’m curious how much they changed. Like were there big changes to the plot, or was it mostly just little minor changes to smooth over some flaws?

ty for asking, and I apologize in advance for how long this got lol.

tbh I think my ideal, if not realistic, Berserk adaptation is one that just goes ‘fuck it’ and throws out most of the story lol. Starts with Black Swordsman, ends with Femto lowering his hand and letting Guts escape - well more specifically, on this panel:

Like that is a perfect final shot imho.

(Also I might mirror it with the opening shot. Like I wouldn’t open on Guts fucking an apostle lmao, I don’t actually dislike that opening but it doesn’t fit this theoretical adaption. So how about we open on a long shot of Black Swordsman Guts surrounded by the ghosts he’s fighting, that mimics this?)

Ooh I might also… I might stick the Lost Children arc in between Snake Man and Count Slug. Ugggh there are some logistical issues to untangle there, but I really, really want Jill/Rosine Guts/Griffith parallels, and I want ghosts taunting Guts about becoming a monster like his friend. Subtlety is for cowards. Oh except we wouldn’t’ve seen Femto yet so that wouldn’t work. Well, “like him” then instead of “like your friend.” There now it’s foreshadowing 2 ways.

the climax of the story is the moment of sacrifice because there’s no Eclipse rape, Casca dies shortly after Judeau, and Guts’ horror at being sacrificed by Griffith is the emotional low point. Potentially no gtsca either if I can figure out a way to incorporate Guts’ stupid dream speech somewhere else. Maybe it can be a flashback during the Wyald fight, which I’d keep incidentally, sans attempted rape, w/ Guts talking to Erica. Actually yeah that would be perfect and immediately tie Guts’ “dream” of fighting stronger and stronger enemies with fighting monsters lol, meaning I could bypass Guts’ post Eclipse war declaration that draws that comparison more explicitly.

Boom, Berserk is now a nice little self-contained tragic story about two dudes each becoming solitary monsters because they abandoned each other for abstract dreams, and threw aside the potential for true emotional healing (relationships) for shallow coping mechanisms (swords/dreams). Uhhh, also Puck is cut. Sorry Puck, ilu but you’re a ray of hope that ruins the vibe here.

And finally since this is my ideal adaptation, the subtext between Guts and Griffith is text. They don’t actually fuck or kiss, because that would avert the Eclipse, but… hm how do you make it clear that they want to fuck but are too repressed to do it and that’s what ruins everything? Okay well Griffith’s torture chamber monologue includes “love” a la the anime dub, and maybe “desire” or “need” to completely remove that ambiguity desperately maintained in the minds of straight people. And Guts… I don’t know that I can go textual lol. The only point in the story he can possibly recognize his own feelings is chapter 71.

Ooh I got it. Just include “at that time he shone before me as something beautiful, noble, and larger than life” after the Count’s backstory lmao. Do you really need more? Well, maybe “he shone before me as something larger than life - noble, and… beautiful.” Or just cut to the chase completely: “At that time, he shone before me as something beautiful, noble, and larger-than-life. I loved him.”

OKAY all that said I feel like this wasn’t really what you’re asking lol since you mentioned a complete adaption. So okay assuming there are no huge major changes to the content or structure of the story, here’s a (stupidly long, like only read this if you for some reason enjoy seeing me ramble for days about minute details lmao) list of some more minor things I’d want to change:

I’d start with the Black Swordsman arc and continue as the manga goes. Yes, in this one Guts still fucks an apostle. This is right before the credits, and it’s depicted as badass and cool. In fact, I might actually split the scene with the credits - start the opening sequence right after Guts blows her up, and resume on this shot with more of a sombre tone:

Like okay that would be pretty cheesy lol, but this is the Black Swordsman arc. It’s supposed to be a little campy, and really unsubtle, and this seems like a fun way of highlighting this little tonal shift.

Relatedly, I would not acknowledge the fact that most people watching already know where it’s going. I would maintain the integrity of the first arc in starting off with Guts as an apparent cool badass and then tearing that down, as well as keeping Griffith’s identity and Guts’ motivation a mystery in theory, and making the Count’s backstory the climax of this arc in a revelatory sense, rather than in an action sense.

To get more general, no fanservice for straight dudes. no one’s tits are randomly out, and when they are they’re drawn realistically and subject to the laws of gravity. casca’s clothes don’t get torn all the time, rosine’s got full moth fuzz coverage, farnese is wearing a shirt when guts takes her hostage and if we need self-flagellation (and tbh I wouldn’t necessarily cut it) it can be in a flashback, etc. Oh except Slan I guess. Her whole character is fanservice so w/e I’ll allow it.

not every woman is in love with and solely motivated by a dude. skip the queen’s completely unnecessary reveal that she was in love with julius, skip casca’s “I lived my life with the intent of sacrificing myself on my unrequited feelings for griffith” bullshit, skip sonia’s crush on neogriffith, skip tf out of schierke’s crush on guts, skip the random period of incest-y bdsm-y vibes in Farnese and Serpico’s backstory that adds nothing lol, skip the suggestions that Farnese is jealous of Casca’s history with Guts, etc

also most sexual assault scenes are cut. Casca is running for her life during the 100 man fight, not from attempted rapists. Wyald does not assault Casca, Farnese is not almost raped by a fucking horse, we chill out a bit on the sexual torture in every bg scene during the conviction arc jfc, Casca’s multiple assaults during that arc are cut, troll rape is cut, you get the point.

I’ll keep Adon’s shitty threats tho bc i feel like some violent misogyny is necessary if i’m not changing everything, but I’d completely lose the comic relief vibe he gets and make Casca’s fight with him properly epic and satisfying. The movie did this a bit better imo, but I’d really remove Adon’s whole boastful loser schtick. That might disappoint some fans, but idc Casca deserves to kill someone who is actually kind of a badass.

There’s a lot of bullshit around gtsca that I’m torn between wanting to cut, and instead wanting to just depict very negatively. Like would it be better if instead of Casca shyly asking Guts how she looks in a dress she just complained about the dress being uncomfortable, ie we completely cut that burgeoning “soft side” bs?

Or would it be better if she still asked him how she looks, then we call back to that moment when she gets awkward about her scars before sex, we keep Judeau musing on how she’s showing a soft side, we call back to that when he tells Guts to save her from leadership, we tie it all together when Guts asks Casca to leave with him, and bring it home by making it abundantly clear that Casca moving from being Griffith’s sword to Guts’ sword is not a positive change.

Like highlight everything negative about it - Guts being a huge dick, the ominous undertone when he invites her along (like cue the creepy cello music when they kiss right before we shift to monsters and behelits lol), all the parallels between him and Griffith wrt their dreams, Guts telling Casca to fuck off while he fights Wyald, maybe even add a moment where Casca actually reflects on how she’s left out of all the dream/equals bullshit and what that says about their priorities and how they see her. Might be a nice lead up to her telling Guts to leave to pursue his dream and be Griffith’s equal.

also maybe show that judeau is wrong about casca being better off away from the hawks? ugh there’s so much that would have to be reworked with her narrative. like if she still has to attempt suicide, again can we ditch the lead up about how it’s because she has an unrequited crush on griffith and just keep it about the fact that she hasn’t slept in a week and she’s on the run and her hawks keep dying and griffith is being tortured and she just stabbed guts and she’s had a very difficult year?

and like, maybe she leapt to accept Guts’ ‘come with me’ offer because she’s exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed, but are you kidding me? While Guts gets an entire narrative arc about abandoning his found family, Casca doesn’t even think about it for a moment before agreeing to ditch them? Can we maybe have some indication about how she feels about the Hawks as a family, maybe some reflection about why she would choose to leave, maybe some second thoughts about it after the Wyald fight when it becomes abundantly clear what her role would be while Guts pursues his dream, like god she’s such a pawn of the narrative, I hate it. Give her some real reasons for doing stuff!

ANYWAY moving on

like the movie, I’d give charlotte more agency in the sex scene w/ griffith, I liked her asking him to stay and moving his hand to her tit herself. I probably would not actually make griffith so out of it though - i enjoyed that in the movie but I don’t necessarily consider it in-character. The way he went from literally crying in the rain to smiling and making charming jokes as soon as Charlotte opened the window in the manga honestly makes perfect sense to me lol. Just uh, make Charlotte into it from the start because there’s zero reason for her not to be other than bad misogynistic cliches?

Also I feel like there’s a balance to be struck between depicting het sex as dude sticks his dick in, woman somehow has a good time a la the manga vs making guts and griffith competent at foreplay and oral a la the movies lol. Like maybe depict the sex scenes as the bad sex they are but Charlotte still feels closer to Griffith afterwards despite not coming from a dude fucking her while thinking about another dude and like, just keep Casca telling Guts he was obviously a virgin afterwards lol.

I guess we’re stuck with the Eclipse rape, but it happens mostly off screen and in close, telling but non-explicit details, like yk, big clawed hand holding a wrist, Casca’s eyes squeezed shut, Femto’s hand on the small of her back (I’m thinking a reversed call back to the wagon scene w/ that to suggest Femto’s motivation being a show of power tbqh). Some would be from Casca’s pov, with maybe one brief moment from Guts’ pov as he loses an eye or something. Keep the movie’s visual reference to Griffith saving her. No pornographic angles. No apostle rape prelude to it. Casca doesn’t have an orgasm. Femto doesn’t stare at Guts. It’s not about Guts at all for either of them, it’s about Femto taking Griffith’s fucked up relationship to sex and expressing it monstrously, and it’s about Casca being betrayed and symbolically negating the agency she fought for since Griffith threw her a sword. Guts’ reaction is horror and fear, not manly heroic outrage. He might still rip off his arm to attack Femto, but that would be because that’s always his reaction to whatever scares him, not for Casca’s sake. Might have to contextualize that with flashbacks to his childhood, or at the very least strong visual parallels to both his childhood and the Zodd + Wyald fights.

I want to cut the fetus, replace it with like a cronenburg-y fucked up dog-like demon in the Black Swordsman arc - not as a literal version of the Beast of Darkness, but just as a metaphor for how Guts’ inner darkness is twisting him into a pathetic asshole lol. But tbh cutting the fetus is a logistical nightmare because Casca needs magic protection during the Conviction arc. So idk. But NGriff doesn’t need it, and his narrative would be more engaging without that scapegoat. Fuck emotional ambiguity, I just want to drop the news that NGriff has feelings, and then not change anything else about his narrative. The themes of isolation and loneliness threaded throughout would just shine through lol it would be great.

I would emphasize the shit out of the Beast of Darkness/Femto parallels. Yeah Guts would still assault Casca in my adaption too. If the Eclipse rape happens, that has to happen because the point is that Guts’ inner darkness is the same. But like, I’d cut the page where beast of darkness guts bites her head off while raping her. Also I’d keep the visual parallel to the Eclipse rape (the v similarly depicted kisses) and add another from Casca’s point of view, or have her flashback then instead of just staying in Guts’ head.

as for the fallout, I’d give Guts a proper scene where he sees himself as a monster, like damn he got more of a self-reflective and telling reaction that time he accidentally killed a random kid, we should get something when he sexually assaults Casca. but overall I’d focus way more on Casca being afraid of him now rather than his mopey guilt. I would also… I mean god this should be addressed in the fact that Guts fucking wears the Berserk armour all the time lol. Like one second he’s all, “omg Flora can put a magic seal on my brand that’ll depower my magical evil jiminy cricket wolf and hopefully prevent me from raping and murdering Casca, that’s great!” and the next second he’s all, “omg magic armour I can wear that will enable me to kill everything with the side effect of superpowering my inner evil wolf and turning on my companions? sign me the fuck up I’m sure nothing bad could possibly happen with that.”

Like what I’m saying is I’d either make Guts a lot more reluctant to use the armour and take Skull Knight’s warnings seriously and genuinely reflect on the fact that mysterious magical children have to prevent him from murdering his friends over and over again, or I’d draw attention to this idiocy and fully commit to Guts as a dumbass hypocrite blithely walking down the path to more tragedy of his own making. and probably the latter based on where the story is likely to be headed lol.

in the lost children arc, I’d give Rosine’s mother more of a role as a good parent who Rosine has a loving relationship with, who tried and failed to stop her father’s abuse or something, because honestly I love the Peekaf story and I find Rosine’s regret at the end as she tries to fly home v powerful, but I hate the idea that she regrets sacrificing her abusive father so maybe this way I can split the difference.

and Jill’s ending where she goes home to endure abuse would be depicted much more darkly.

like straight up I’d depict Jill flying with Rosine as a truly beautiful moment, I would show that Jill has the potential to fulfill Rosine in a way her neverland kidnapping bullshit can’t and that yes, if Jill stayed with Rosine everything might actually work out and with Jill’s influence the whole land of the elves thing could be reworked into less of a nightmare and more of a haven lol. And Guts would absolutely be depicted as fully monstrous in comparison, ruining both these kids’ lives. Like, no ambiguity, no suggestion that Jill learned an important lesson about living with abuse lmao, no implication that Rosine brought her tragic end on herself by not being a good enough child abuse victim, just Guts sowing tragedy wherever he goes.

I have no idea how to deal with the conviction arc in general lol, specifically the ultra cynical tone the actual narrative seems to take. Like, the Black Swordsman arc was idealistic compared to the Conviction arc, they clash badly imo. Extremely badly. Like it’s a giant mess. It’s like

Black Swordsman Guts: fuck everyone who dies because they weren’t strong enough to deal with my existence. *turns and wipes away a tear* *lets a zombie kid stab him* *evokes pity from puck*Conviction Guts: fuck everyone who dies because they weren’t strong enough to deal with my existence. *poses with his sword in one hand and the rescued love interest in the other* *the crowd cheers* *luca nods sagely*

yk it’s just… awkward. It’s hard to mitigate through like, film choices yk, because a lot of it is due to the circumstances. Guts telling Puck innocent people are just ants under his feet is much different than Guts refusing to let the big bad kill Casca by telling him that tens of thousands of people can and should die because they pray too much lmao, no matter what music plays in the background. Guts’ attitude is the same, the narrative’s attitude is contradictory.

Maybe I could make Guts less of a dick and cut a lot of those cynical moments? Not really call attention to the fact that Guts is effectively sacrificing tens of thousands of refugees for Casca, or more accurately, for his own desire to feel like a hero since he isn’t even the one who saves Casca, he got distracted trying to fight the fake Godhand.

Or lol maybe I’ll just have Isidro point that out in like, a smug way. Maybe I’ll have NeoGriffith personally thank him for his contribution to his resurrection. I mean I really want to call this questionable shit into question, yk? Not to declare Guts wrong for wanting to save Casca, but to declare his cavalier idgaf attitude a big problem that has consequences. Which would actually tie in nicely with emphasizing Guts’ dumbassery in brushing off Skull Knight’s warnings about the armour and insisting it’s nbd. lol I really hope this is what Miura’s going for, just more subtlely.

Actually I wonder if I could get away with cutting Isidro out entirely. Anyone could’ve saved Casca there.

Oh I’d cut the hell out of a lot of Guts’ fight scenes in the MF arc, and if I could possibly get away with it I’d cut out everything on the beach after Skull Knight’s ominous warning. Like this might end up being the Griffith show for a while because Guts’ half is a fucking slog. And of course I’d cut the entire boat trip. They get on a boat, they get off a boat, the end.

Okay I need to stop somewhere. I’m ignoring a lot of later stuff because it’s so dependent on where the story’s going now that Casca is awake etc. Like eg the Moonlight Boy. Can I cut him? Give him a more ominous tone? Emphasize the saccharine tone he evokes for the sake of pulling the rug out from under the audience later? Will I be forced to make huge changes anyway because I can’t stand where the story ended up going? Idk it depends.

If I could tho I’d definitely cut Magnifico, Isidro, Ivalera, mermaid… like Farnese, Serpico, and Schierke are the only characters on Guts’ side who contribute to the story in a meaningful way. And without Isidro Puck could again too.

Oooh yk one thing that might be nice would be framing Farnese as the main protagonist of Guts’ half of the story during the MF arc. Just focus on her, show more stuff from her perspective, cut down a lot of fights but keep her digression back home, maybe give her some additional content that explores her character shift better, show her struggling more with her own inner darkness a bit when she first joins and give her some character beats as she slowly grows more comfortable with Casca, maybe put her backstory chapters in the first episode of a new season (a great season ender would be Guts walking away from the Hill of Swords js), etc.

lmao god I feel like I could keep going forever. sorry this is so meandering but ty for giving me the opportunity to go on and on about this. Is there anything you’d really like to change yourself?

#ask #a #b #Anonymous #anyway jsyk the part before the cut is kind of its own separate thing so if you click this and decide it's too long to read #there's always just the first part lol #theme: adaption #theme: critique #theme: opinion

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