CW: this is a pretty extreme fantasy involving kidnapping & cnc. please read with care!!
In some dark, dingy basement, there's a large cell where i now lay. Escape being impossible punctuated best by the steel anklet i wear attached to a large chain bolted into the wall opposite to the cell bars. If i tried, i could not reach them, and if i did, there's no way through them. In this cell there were few necessary amenities. A small lump of blankets i used for sleeping, a tap that produced water that tasted a little funny, but hadn't made me sick yet, and a toilet.. then there was one thing that felt incredibly out of place.
At the end of my reach with the chain, there was a piano. A beautiful baby grand. The same model i had growing up. It was the only part of the basement that had dim lighting. At first, i thought it was completely in my imagination. i thought that because piano had always been a safe place for me, that my mind was putting it there as some sort of bleak comfort for my new situation. That piano specifically holds a very special place in my heart. There's no way my new, cruel captor would ever care to know that... would they?
i slept in the opposite corner to this piano.. this illusion, terrified that if i did get attached, if i did find out it was real it would just be one last thing i can hold on to.. which means one last thing they can take away from me. i had everything stripped from me. my clothes, belongings, my personhood.. i was reduced to nothing, so now i couldn't afford to have something, especially something so kind..
..i thought... until i touched it for the first time. It had been what i'd assume was weeks of torment. Being taken out of my cell, ordered around, trained, used, whatever my captor desired. Disobedience was immediately met with strict punishments, so i learned very quickly never to deny them anything. Back in my cell, i felt numb. i wasn't me anymore, i was just a shade who does what she's told, then waits in her cell until the next time she was needed. It reminded me of how i felt when i was younger.. and how i would cope with the lack of feeling.
i started walking slowly to the piano, terrified it would vanish forever if i got too close. The truth was, even though i constantly told myself i couldn't be, i was already attached. It was one of the few bits of kindness in my life since becoming a captive. i stopped in front of it and slowly reached out my hand and touched it... it was real. This basement always felt cold, but it felt.. warm? i couldn't explain it, so i just stood, stared and gently caressed the top of the piano, until i heard a noise that broke me out of the trance and sent me scurrying back to my corner.
Over the next few days i started to notice some things. Once my captor had me back in the basement after a session, they were nothing but kind to me. They would first take me to the bath and softly clean me off while cooing sweet affirmations in my ear of how well i did, and how happy they are to have me. Before i could only process these words as terrifying, patronizing words to manipulate me, but they slowly wore on me.
Where they.. actually trying to make me feel safe, and wanted? i thought i was only an object to them. Something they possess, and own. Do they actually care for me?
That day after being left alone again, i went back to the piano. This time i sat at the bench and gently felt the keys without pressing them too hard. This.. was my safe space.. just like it always had been. Pianos were the way i got to express myself, like i'm talking to an old friend, but with sounds instead of words. It was the place i allowed myself to feel when i was numb. The place that made me feel safe when i was scared.. and it was here... my captor left it here for me.
i slowly started playing my favorite song quietly.. one that i'd wrote years ago out of so much strife. it surprisingly sounded beautiful in this dark, dingy basement. i got bolder and bolder until i was letting out the whole medley i had built up in my mind into the piano. This was still my safe space. It always had been.
i moved all my bedding so i could curl up under my new, protective friend, and had the most peaceful sleep i'd had since i was taken.
The next day, my captor didn't say anything about finding me sleeping under the piano, or the music coming from the basement. Just had a slight, unusual smile on their lips. They had me perform my duties as usual. No worse, and no easier. Then they brought me down to the basement for the usual aftercare. This time it felt like the words they were saying actually sunk in. Yes, the world is full of hate, malice, and bigotry. Yes, it's a busy place for people like me who just want to serve. Yes i am happy my new captor keeps me safe from all the chaos and noise. i'm happy they accept and want me for who i am & now i don't have to worry about feeling lonely or wanted. i'm always wanted here.. i'm always safe here. the things i'm made to do may be depraved, but they're not for me.. that's my service to another.. i'm their safe place, and the piano they gave me is mine.
For the first time during one of these aftercare sessions i spoke. Without thinking, i let out a soft "thank you" while they were brushing my soft hair. my heart started racing when they immediately stopped moving the brush midway through. i thought for sure i would be in for one of my owner's awful punishments, but no. Just a simple "you're welcome darling" and continued on brushing.
As the days went on, i started falling into things more. i started to actually enjoy my service to my owner, and in turn they started being even more gentle with me during aftercare. They'd let me be as affectionate as i needed to be, and stayed extra time with me when i wanted them to. Sometimes when i'd be playing the piano, my captor would come down and sit in a comfy chair outside my cell and listen silently as i played. In my now safe cell it was still for me, but it did feel nice to have their appreciation.
Eventually they offered to tune the piano. A skill they explained they picked up before taking me, knowing i loved piano. i asked them to tune it a little softer. i really like muted, almost melancholic sounding pianos, and they did it perfectly. They did this for me... they learned to tune a piano so they would never have to risk my safety by bringing some unknown person in to tune it for me when it got out of sorts.. it was so kind.
Things just became happier and happier after that. my captor made me a custom mattress to put under the piano so i wouldn't have as much back pain sleeping there. i started to ask them if they had any songs they'd like me to learn.. because well, even though piano was for me, i found i really did enjoy making them proud & happy. They seemed surprised.. which would mark the first time i was genuinely able to surprise them, but happy to take me up on the offer. They got me new music of beautiful songs to learn & perform for them.
In this dark basement, i was their captive pianist who played sweet songs for them, and i was happy & safe.
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@photographs-and-push-knives
Ultimately, he had to go home. He always, always had to go home, because where the hell else would he go?
It had been three days since he'd left for work and not returned. Two days since he'd managed - barely, after getting caught a second time by a fake Lieutenant Ross - to get to a phone he knew was safe and tell Roy everything before promptly dropping off the face of the Earth.
And finally, finally he'd lost the bastards chasing him. He trusted Roy and his team to handle everything from here - he was no flame alchemist or sharpshooter or comms expert and he certainly didn't trust his own subordinates like Roy seemed to trust his - so that he could get home and get help.
Hospitals weren't an option, because they'd definitely ask his name. That was another good thing about going home: Gracia was almost a nurse in her own right. He'd done what he could on his own from where he'd been hiding, which consisted of gritting his teeth and packing fabric into his shoulder before tying his jacket around it and just saying "fuck it" about the small wounds.
They weren't really causing massive blood loss like the one he'd tended to. By the time his shoulder slowed to a stop, though, he was lightheaded, which unfortunately delayed his travels. Hopefully Gracia wouldn't be too upset with him. Three days was an awfully long time for her to be alone taking care of everything by herself.
By the time he reached their front door, it was just before sunrise Thursday morning (he'd last been home on Monday). He fumbled with the keys to the door, hoping Elicia was asleep. A three year old should not be seeing another human in the state Maes was in right now: sleep deprived, injured, and halfway out of breath.
He got himself inside, found his wife asleep on the couch, and breathed a sigh of relief. He was home safe, and soon enough he could sleep too.
Maes sat next to the couch, nudged Gracia like always when she stayed up waiting for him, and was instantly met with her clinging to him. "Don't leave me alone again," she said.
Fair enough. He wrapped his good arm around her, grateful at the extremely dim lighting for not allowing her to be startled at what he was positive was a terrible appearance. It didn't take away the guilt for leaving her or the emotional stab that was hearing her voice be so upset like that.
"I'm sorry," he replied. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I didn't want to."
When Maes hadn’t come home that first night, Gracia had done as she usually did, and slept on the couch, waiting for him to come home. She had started out reading, fallen asleep, and had expected, as usual, to be woken by him when he got home, and for the two of them to head to bed some time after that.
She hadn’t expected to wake up on the couch the next morning, her book on the ground, and no sign of her husband anywhere. She had checked to make sure that Elicia was still sleeping, and then called his office. She found out that no one had seen him since the night before but that blood had been found.
Gracia’s heart had picked up at that, but she had carefully controlled her panic. The next call she had made had been to Roy. Gracia wasn’t exactly sure what it was that Roy and Maes were working on together and she wasn’t going to ask, but she knew that they called each other for more than just chatting as friends. Gracia was no dummy. She knew there was something afoot there. That meant that if Maes had been in trouble, he likely would have tried to contact Roy.
Roy hadn’t heard from him either, but he promised to keep his ears open. He didn’t promise to let her know if he found out anything, but Gracia had expected that. Her husband did some dangerous things, even if he never told her what they were. He didn’t have to. She knew that there were things that she was better off not knowing. But just knowing that Roy was going to be watching was helpful.
Maes still hadn’t been located the next night, and Gracia had gotten no word from anyone. When darkness fell and he hadn’t returned home, Gracia once again took up her vigil on the couch. Only this time, just in case, she also had the little revolver that Riza Hawkeye had taught her to shoot. Gracia wasn’t stupid. If something had happened to Maes, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone would try to bring that trouble to her or Elicia. Still, morning came, and there was nothing.
She had done her best not to let how out of her mind with worry she was show to Elicia. The little girl kept asking about her father, and all Gracia could tell her was that Daddy had gotten a little bit lost while he was traveling, but his friend were looking for him, so hopefully he’d be home soon. She wasn’t going to tell her daughter that Maes was fine, only for the opposite to be true. This, though, seemed to satisfy the girl, even if she did still pick up on some of her mother’s worry.
So when, on this night, she had found herself nudged awake and saw her husband’s face, she had thrown her arms around him and said the first thing that was on her mind.
"Don't leave me alone again!”
Was she talking about these past three days? Was she referencing when he had been deployed to Ishval? Was she talking of her fears that he had been killed? Even she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she didn’t want to go through that again.
He hugged her back, apologizing to her, and that was when her sleep-addled brain finally woke up. He was only hugging her with one arm, and she could pick up the scent of blood. Blood had been found somewhere near his offices, hadn’t it? He had been missing for three days--he was hurt, and here she was, hugging him like a ninny instead of seeing what was wrong with him.
In a flash, she was maneuvering them around to where he was sitting on the couch, concern all over her face. “Maes, what happened?” she asked him. “And where are you hurt? Is it bad? I’ll need to see what kind of supplies I need to clean you up.”
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What was your 9/11 sona
God, I wish I remembered. Unfortunately, while the whole mess is absolutely hilarious in hindsight, back in the day I just thought it was incredibly tasteless and an insult to the people who actually lost loved ones that day (which it absolutely was!), so I was mortified to have to participate in it. But I didn't want to argue the point, cause with how subjective English is, getting on the teachers bad side will just obliterate your grade, and I'd always been in the high 90's for english so I wasn't about to break that streak over a stupid insensitive writing assignment. So I grit my teeth, wrote some shitty, generic OC, gave them a tasteless, non-offensive eulogy, then tore up the paper and threw it out the second I got the marked assignment back.
And that was about a decade ago now, so I can't remember any details about my tragically deceased 9/11sona - all I can really remember about grade 9 english is the 9/11 stuff, the teacher being really weird about demanding we say 'zed' instead of 'zee' because we're Canadian, and the look of absolute shock on her face when she informed me that I'd gotten a perfect 100% on the reading comp part of the PAT exam (still lowkey proud of that lmao). Moral of the story, don't throw out really embarrassing school writing assignments; they might be hilarious in hindsight.
...The real punchline of all this is that while I went to all that effort to avoid pissing off my teacher and tanking my marks in grade 9, in grade 10 I hit that exact problem literally before my first class had started. I had english in the second semester that year, and my older sibling had given me the book version of Les Miserables as a christmas gift that year, and I was still working on it when school started back up. So I made the terrible mistake of walking into english class about ten minutes early, cracked open my book to pass the time... and then after a few minutes of watching some punk teenager casually reading les mis, the teacher got up, asked me to step out into the hall, then led me into the classroom next door to introduce me to the AP english teacher, and inform him that I was probably better suited for his class. I had to hastily clarify that no the fuck I was not, I had three core classes that semester and a mixup with my one elective meant I was stuck in the goddamn grade 12 band class, so if I didn't have one class I didn't need to put effort into, I would die of stress. Grade 10 english teacher tried to pressure me into taking the AP class anyways, and after I kept refusing, she eventually was like "fine, you can stay in my class, but I'm going to grade you like you're an AP student the whole time."
And for the entire semester, she refused to mark any of my work higher than an 80%. Can you tell I'm still angry about that, because I'm still really fucking angry about it.
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As a fellow Dovewing lover, it's frustrating how the fandom watered her down into a whiny brat who never cared about Ivypool. I mean, seriously? Not only did Dovewing care about her sister (reacting in horror when Lionblaze, her own mentor and Jayfeather are willing to potentially sacrifice Ivypool's safety by employing her as her spy instead of trying to get her out of the Dark Forest's clutches, hiding a thorn in her nest to cover for her scarring from her training).
Heck, even the scene where she tries to feed Ivypool her catch during a hunting patrol was demonized because 'she was trying to make Ivypool break the code like SHE does, as if it doesn't matter' and because she got upset when Ivypool started arguing with her! But you guys said she didn't care, right? Plus, people act like being forced into a prophecy is something you should be grateful for, as if it didn't irreparably change her close relationship with her sister? As if Lionblaze and Jayfeather didn't still keep her out of the loop (and for all the fussing they made about keeping it a secret, Lionblaze confesses his power to Cinderheart and Jayfeather doesn't even care).
Meanwhile Nightheart is angry he isn't orange and hates his mom for being exiled and the whole world has to stop for him. 🤪 And Bramblestar is simply so tortured by having an evil father, the only choice is to train with him and his evil half-brother and hide this from his wife! (But remember, it's bad when that witch Squirrelflight hides the parentage of the three from him, even when Blackstar and Leopardstar were still around after being complicit in the torture and killing of halfclan cats.) Why are these male characters sympathized with, even when they actively harm people (Nightheart forcing himself into Sunbeam's life by lying to everyone about being her mate without even asking her if she would be fine with that beforehand), Bramblestar (we all know what he does), but when Dovewing or any other female character is upset, people freak out and call them whiny brats or abusive for (checks notes) asking her partner if he loves her anymore after they argued multiple times in a book. Really makes you think! (Sorry this is so long, you just have based opinions!)
dovewing being characterized as this flighty airheaded vain popular girl stereotype in fanon is like. one of those biggest "we didnt actually read the books" things in the fandom. like theres so much fanart where shes grinning and giggling over the prophecy and shes besties with the trio and shes got preferential treatment, and then in the actual books shes basically the autistic kid no one actually likes. people really, REALLY overexaggerate that one scene where she snaps at ivypaw and brags. (and i dont wanna shit on amvs but i am forever side eying how the animation community handled dove back in the day. more than one person animated her getting murdered. normal.)
i do think its gotten better recently at least. but wow does it feel like at least one person on the writing team has a bone to pick
(also awww thank you <3 no need to be sorry i love getting stuff in my inbox)
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that pnf poll you reblogged the other day…i haven’t watched the show in YEARS but i’ve been relistening to a couple of songs and i’ve forgotten how much they slap
(tying this to srmthg, “i’m me” is such a nova-coded song. also hot take krinkle is basically doofenshmirtz if he went off the deep end)
the songs are SO GOOD ikr???
i also think doof and krinkle are pretty emblematic of the theses of their two shows. weird ass essay infodump-type shit incoming.
krinkle comes from a background of cruelty. implied child neglect from his mom to the point where he had to build a new one. a dead end job where he can be fired on a whim by a boss who doesn't care.
for reasons that stem from, but are not directly caused by, krinkle's trauma, he is a horrific person. i've mentioned how krinkle is supposed to be a lesson in stranger danger to the little kids watching the show, but krinkle's behavior towards chiro is EERILY similar to how actual, real-world groomers interact with their victims. like, to the point where the more i think about it, the more justified i feel in thinking the team was in the right to effectively kill him on ranger 7. i could honestly write a whole other infodump post about how well krinkle works as an analogue to actual real-world abusers, but this was a funny silly post and i'm not going to go into that sort of detail on someone else's ask.
the reason i say all of this stuff about how horrible of a person krinkle is, is srmthfg is a show about the fundamental battle of good versus evil. chiro attempts to placate krinkle at first, being polite yet firm with the grown adult who could very easily be trying to hurt him. yet when krinkle actively causes chiro physical harm, the only thing to really do is fight back any way you can; because sometimes, against true evil, violence is the only answer.
phineas and ferb is a different show, though. there aren't any real villains, outside of i guess second dimension doofenshmirtz. every other bad guy is either shown to have redeemable qualities or is so benign that they don't even matter. doof's parents are horrible people, but they've stayed away from him in the show proper. monogram's kind of an asshole to his employees, but he's ultimately fighting on the side of good.
and doofenshmirtz? he's evil, sure, but that's a very petty sort of evil. hardly ever does he have a plan that will cause serious physical harm to anyone. he has a moral code. thematically relevant to this analysis, he is normal around children (and is a wonderful father to boot).
krinkle and doof both come from tragic pasts and work on evil science and engineering experiments in their free time. their differences come from the attitudes of their universes. krinkle is from a universe where evil can and does exist, and if it comes for you or your loved ones, sometimes you have to do anything it takes to stop it. doof is from a universe where true evil does not exist at all.
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