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owl-with-a-pen · 3 years

Note

We didn’t get much insight on nias breakup with brainy, like how nia was feeling through the whole thing! It was pretty upsetting. So how about an almost rewrite of reality bytes where Yvette takes nia out to a party to loosen her up, she gets drunk, and brainy comes to the rescue? Like takes her home, stays with her when she gets sick and takes care of her kinda thing. Thanks!

- Okay the word count speaks for itself but this one really got away from me. But I had to throw in all the angst I possibly could. Thank you for the prompt! x

Working under the oppressive eye of Lex Luthor grew worse by the day.

Brainy had always been a master at multitasking, and so he had never assumed it would be exactly there that he would struggle the most.

And yet, here he was. Trying his hardest to focus on Lex’s latest tedious task to keep him in check. After all, Lex Luthor may have very well believed Brainy’s impassive charade, but that did not buy trust. Only time and a one hundred per cent success rate would accomplish that.

To achieve it, distractions had to be eradicated. He had already made his excuses time and time again for not attending one of Kara’s famed game nights, and despite Alex’s insistence, he had not given in to any other form of group activity, either – especially those involving Al’s Bar. He needed to maintain a clear head, to do as his doppelganger had instructed; to protect his friends and their future, he had to rid his mind of them. All of them. It was imperative to success.

And yet, the moment his phone buzzed with an incoming call, Brainy’s heart leapt into his throat.

It was Nia’s name that popped up on his screen. Nia’s face. So jovial, so care-free. In the photograph, her arm was wrapped around Brainy’s shoulders where she had pulled him in for a last-minute selfie. She’d kissed his cheek just seconds after it had been taken, insisting it’d be an awesome couple photo.

He had meant to change that. Why had he not…?

He swallowed hard, focusing instead on his computer screens, relaying information back and forth between them. It was without passion, meaningless data that could be shifted anywhere whilst maintaining the same result. But, it still served a purpose, keeping him from his intestinal inclination, that gut instinct to reach for his phone and answer without a moment’s hesitation.

When was the last time he had heard her voice?

He had been keeping his distance where he could, maintaining a professional formality with her whenever he caught her in the field as Dreamer. He knew it hurt her, every time it hurt her, but he could not avoid his duties in as much the same way she could not avoid hers.

They were in effect destined to bump into each other. The only way Brainy could lessen that hurt was by avoiding conversation as much as possible, throwing up every wall he could think of, even if he had to stumble over his words to do so.

When Nia’s face disappeared, Brainy released the breath he’d been holding, letting it dust across his screens.

Then, his phone buzzed twice more.

Voicemail.

Nia never left voicemails. Not since he had ended things with her so abruptly, walking out of her apartment, refusing to elaborate, to offer her any kind of closure.

It was a calculated hurt powerful enough for her to abstain from asking questions; a necessary evil, and one Brainy would never forgive himself for causing.

He shouldn’t be doing this, his mind warned, but his thoughts were racing, derailing from all twelve tracks at once.

His hand was already poised over his phone. Before he could think better of it, Brainy snatched it up, connecting to his most recent voice message. He pressed it to his ear, pursing his lips in anticipation.

“You suck, you know that?”

Brainy flinched, the phone nearly slipping right from his hand. Nia’s voice was harsh, anger tinged with upset, but it was her voice. It could have been filled with all the fury in the world and Brainy would have still listened just as eagerly, if only for the chance to hear her again.

As the voicemail continued to play, Brainy realised that Nia’s words were slightly obscured by the heavy beats of music playing in the background, not to mention the loud chatting and whooping of people he certainly did not recognise. Brainy frowned. She must have been at some kind of party. Although, none of the voices present sounded as though they were talking to her specifically.

A nightclub, perhaps?

Nia wasn’t usually one for clubbing. So, why would she-?

“And y’know what?” Nia’s voicemail continued out just as harshly, cutting off Brainy’s train of thought. “Yvette’s so right, I deserve better than some guy who’s gonna leave me hanging, who leaves with zero explanation, and I- oh crap, sorry-” There was a scuffle, one caused by Nia knocking into a fellow patron if her apology was anything to go by. The slur in her voice was very evident, which led Brainy to conclude that she had been drinking heavily that night, enough to pick up the courage to call him.

His stomach lurched when he heard another voice in the background.

“Girl, what are you doing?” It was Yvette. Of course Yvette would have been the mastermind behind this apparent night out, likely with the well-minded intent of assisting with Nia’s mood.

Yvette’s voice grew louder as she came closer. “What are you- wait, are you calling him? No, no, you get off the phone right now, that’s messy as hell!”

Brainy was inclined to agree. Nia, however, seemed to have other ideas.

“It’s fine,” she insisted. “I-”

Before Brainy could hear anything more, the message cut off.

Brainy squeezed his eyes shut, clenching and unclenching his jaw methodically.

He shouldn’t do it. He shouldn’t be giving into gut instinct, not now, not-not ever. Not with so much at stake. He was supposed to be monitoring Lex’s movements, doing everything he could to keep a step ahead of whatever he was planning. So far, he had failed at that. And, if he continued to lose sight of his objective, he would only slip further still.

But, if there was one thing he could count on now more than ever, it was the Big Brain. Perhaps it was not that his skill at multitasking had been limited as of late, but more-so that he was not utilising it to its fullest extent. He could easily keep a thought track open for any updates on Lex’s data entry, could even continue development on the bug he was planning to slip into Lex’s private servers. For the moment, they were obstructed by a firewall even he was having difficulty breaching. But, with time…

Brainy’s fingers curled together, winding tightly around his phone. He had the room to deviate from his plans for one night. Besides, it would take mere seconds to get a lock on Nia’s GPS…

He had been trying so hard to keep out of her private business these last few weeks. The little he did know were only of her recent exploits as Dreamer that had been plastered all over the news. But, even knowing what she’d accomplished in such a short time, how capable she had become as a hero, it could not stop the worry that clogged so suddenly inside his throat.

He just had to know where she was, he rationalised. He just had to know that she was safe.

The moment her co-ordinates flashed in his mind, Brainy’s chest caught, lips parting. She was close-by, an estimated three minutes by flight from his current location.

He shouldn’t be doing this.

Brainy’s eyes scanned empty air, but beyond that he saw everything. The security for the club was rudimentary at best, and far too easy to hack. Nia’s most recent location had pointed her somewhere near to the club doors, which was only confirmed when Brainy linked up to the cameras out front, pinpointing her almost immediately.

Yvette was with her, holding up her weight as Nia slumped precariously into her side, nearly tripping down the club’s steps in an effort to remain upright. If it hadn’t been for Yvette’s guiding hand, she likely would have.

Brainy gritted his teeth. Just how much had she had to drink? He had never known Nia to drink so excessively, especially with how rigorously she had been training as of late. This was new behaviour for her, but not unpredictable. Brainy was more than aware of the many coping mechanisms one might find themselves adopting in times of emotional distress.

He had caused this.

He could fix this…

But he couldn’t, couldn’t - no matter how much his heart insisted otherwise, he could not give in. Nia wanted nothing to do with him, that much was clear from her message. And… Yvette was with her. Yvette would get her home safely.

But Yvette had clearly been drinking, also. What if something were to occur between the club and their apartment? Nia was disorientated, vulnerable, and with alcohol marring her judgement, her reaction timing would never match that of a clear-minded foe.

Brainy stood from his desk all at once, nearly toppling his chair in his haste. Fortunately, he was in a private office. Another upgrade from Lex. He swallowed down the bitter taste in his mouth; at least he could use this particular gift to his advantage.

He needed to get to Nia undetected. Immediately.

Brainy’s calculations had been - as expected - totally correct. He reached the club in no less than three minutes, giving himself ample distance to land so that no drunk bystanders might notice his arrival. Not that their likelihood of remembering any of this come morning was very high, but it was best not to push those odds.

The moment he saw her, Brainy’s world stopped moving.

Nia and Yvette were sat together on the club’s steps. It appeared Yvette had not been successful getting Nia all the way down them. Now, she was stubbornly trying to encourage Nia to drink from a water bottle she’d had stashed in her bag. Nia only turned away from her with a grimace, pushing her face firmly into her hands. Her cheeks were rosy from alcohol consumption, her dark hair beginning to thicken and frizz from the humidity of the club. The dress she wore danced with row upon row of sequins, glinting in purple and pink tones beneath the streetlight.

She was so beautiful it nearly caused a physical ache inside of Brainy’s chest.

Never had he wanted to go to her so ardently, to scoop her into his arms, hold her close and never let go.

But, he couldn’t. He was bound by his decision and, what’s more, he was the very cause for this entire situation in the first place. Nia was only in this position because of what he had put her through, and he couldn’t take that back. So long as Leviathan was a threat, he could not give up this ruse, he could not tell her the truth.

Even if he did… the acidic tone in Nia’s voicemail told him all he needed to know. That he may have well lost her for good by doing this. And he could barely stand to think it.

Again, a distant part of his mind queried why he was even here? Was this not already traipsing on incredibly dangerous territory? If Lex found any reason to distrust him, this logical and distant image Brainy had been parading would’ve all been for naught, and his Earth would meet the same fate as his female doppelganger’s.

No, no. Regardless of his decisions, the side he had been forced to take, he was still himself. In which case, there was nothing wrong with helping those that required his assistance, even if they hadn’t exactly asked for it. In that way, he could at least be there for Nia. If she would even allow it at all.

He hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but when Yvette recognised him from halfway across the club grounds, the look she gave him was practically poisonous.

“You,” Yvette sneered, wrapping an arm protectively around Nia’s shoulders. Nia only groaned, digging her fingers against her face. Yvette’s eyes narrowed distrustfully. “Voicemail didn’t cut it, hm? You know you broke her heart, right?”

“I’m… aware,” Brainy said tightly, trying his hardest to maintain the same collected calm he’d been offering the rest of his friends. Any slip-ups now could be the end of this ruse once and for all.

Nia had yet to lift her head, and so Brainy took that as his opportunity to remove his phone from his pocket, very clearly displaying the Uber app on his screen, making his intentions clear. “I can help get her home.”

Yvette snorted derisively, tightening her hold around Nia. “Uh-uh, there is no way I’m leaving Nia alone with your cheating ass.”

Brainy’s face fell. Cheating? Was that what Nia had told her? Or… or had that been Yvette’s own assumption of events? “I didn’t cheat on her,” he said, a little defensively.

“Please,” Yvette scoffed. “No one’s feelings magically change overnight unless there’s another woman involved.” She gave him a snide once-over. “She can do better than you.”

Brainy’s stomach sank, his eyes flickering to Nia, capturing every inch of her. “I… I have no doubt.”

It took some back and forth, but eventually, Yvette agreed to his help on the condition she came back to the apartment with them. Brainy understood that she hadn’t wanted to cut her own night short, but Nia’s health came first. At least on that, they could both agree.

Regardless, it was a very awkward Uber journey back to the apartment.

Nia didn’t speak the whole car ride, and Brainy began to wonder if she was lucid enough to understand her surroundings at all. She didn’t look up from her hands, and more than once Brainy considered that she might be doing it purposely, far too aware of who she was currently sharing a car with.

Although, the steadily worsening pallor of her skin pointed towards another, far likelier, possibility.

Which was confirmed the second they got into the apartment’s elevator.

The juddering motions of the small space was all it took for Nia to break her silence, cupping a hand desperately over her mouth.

“I feel sick,” she murmured into her palm.

“Hold off,” Yvette said gently, rubbing Nia’s shoulders. “We’ll be home any second.”

Brainy wished it could be him to offer Nia comfort like that, but he’d practically backed himself into the furthest corner of the elevator, acting as nothing more than a passive shadow to the night’s unfolding events. He dug his hands into his pockets, clenching them tightly to keep from reaching out to her, watching with worried eyes as Nia grabbed suddenly for the elevator’s rail with her free hand, swallowing thickly.

The moment the doors opened, Nia stumbled out, nearly tripping in her haste to exit. Brainy maintained his distance while Yvette helped Nia down the hallway, waiting awkwardly with his arms folded as she fumbled with the keys to the door. He hovered hesitantly outside the doorway when Nia broke from Yvette, rushing into the bathroom, although he noticed that Yvette was wary to follow her in.

When he caught her eye, Yvette grimaced, shaking her head. “I- I can’t, I’m a sympathetic vomiter,” she explained weakly. “If she hurls, I hurl.”

Brainy nodded his understanding, reviewing the door’s entrance as though it might swallow him whole. After a long moment, he ducked his head, stepping inside. “I can stay with her, if you would like,” he offered, quirking a brow. “After all, you are in need of rest as well.”

Yvette pulled a face, staring at him suspiciously. “You really don’t quit, do you?”

Brainy only shrugged.

“I’m keeping my eye on you,” Yvette said, which at first Brainy didn’t understand as an invitation. That was, until, she stepped aside, waving her hand in the direction of the apartment’s bathroom.

Brainy didn’t waste any time. He barely managed a breathy thank you before he headed the way Nia had disappeared.

Nia was curled around the toilet when Brainy pushed the door open, her hands pressed firmly against the rim. She hadn't appeared to have thrown up yet, but she was pale and shivering, her jaw clenched tight with discomfort.

The moment he was close enough, Brainy dropped to his knees, reaching out a hand hesitantly towards her, gauging her reaction. When none came, Brainy carefully rested the flat of his palm across her back. She didn’t try to move away from his touch; instead, with a shaky sigh, she relaxed against him, eyes fluttering shut.

And so, Brainy continued, boldly enough to massage his fingers gently and precisely around her spine, quickly finding a pattern that she seemed to appreciate. He rubbed her back in large, repetitive circles, filling the silence with the quiet crunch of sequins as they rolled lethargically beneath his palm.

It wasn’t long before Nia’s shoulders tensed up. Her chest convulsed and she groaned out, throwing her head over the toilet just in time before she vomited into the bowl. As expected, the contents of her stomach appeared to mostly be liquid, which certainly explained the dangerous level of her intoxication. Brainy remained exactly where he was, holding her back steady with one hand whilst studiously bunching Nia’s hair behind her shoulders with the other, tugging away loose strands that had caught across her lips. No sooner had he done so, Nia gagged again, squeezing her eyes shut as round two commenced.

Brainy continued to rub her back, murmuring soft comforts at her side, slipping between both English and Coluan. Nia had certainly picked up some of his native language in the months they had been together, but not enough for her to realise in that moment the weight of what he was telling her. Or, rather, what he wished he could be telling her - in a language she might recognise.

When Nia was reduced to dry heaving over the bowl, Brainy realised that her mascara had begun to run, bleeding black streaks down her face. The strain of vomiting could certainly cause such a reaction, but something in his heart told him that this was more than that.

He wished he could brush those tears away as tenderly as he once had, that he could reassure her that everything would be okay.

But how could he when he knew the probability of their relationship rekindling once the dust had cleared? How could he when said relationship was already in shambles, pushing them apart even while they were sat so closely together on the bathroom tile?

“Here.”

Brainy blinked out of his thoughts, turning his head to find Yvette stood in the doorway, trying very hard to keep her eyes away from Nia’s current condition. She held a glass of water outstretched towards him.

Brainy took it gratefully, lowering his head into a sincere bow. “Thank you.”

“You’re still so weird,” Yvette said, although for just a moment, he thought he caught a fondness in her tone. Then, she cleared her throat. “This doesn’t mean I like you,” she said quickly, heading back out into the hall. “Remember, I am one room over. You try anything, and I’ll-”

Her words were cut off by the slam of her door, but Brainy understood well enough the threat she had posed. He nearly smiled. If anything, he was glad Nia had a friend and roommate as protective as Yvette. She had been there for Nia in a way that Brainy had not been able to for far too long, offering her a shoulder to cry on, and a party to draw her mind away from the pain, if only for an evening.

Perhaps it hadn’t worked as Yvette had wanted, but Brainy hoped that even for a little while, Nia might have experienced something other than heartache that night.

When there was nothing but bile left in Nia’s stomach, Brainy took her shoulder, offering the water glass out to her. “Nia,” he said gently. “You must try to drink this. It’ll help-”

Before he could finish, Nia shot to life, slapping away his hand so hard that the glass’s contents sloshed down Brainy’s arm, drenching his sleeve.

“No!” Nia cried out weakly. “No, get off me, you jerk!”

Brainy let go of her immediately, shuffling away from her forlornly. He watched instead as Nia folded her arms angrily across the toilet bowl, pressing her forehead against the rim.

For a while, only her harsh breathing echoed around the small space. Then, Nia stopped, arms clenching as she squeezed her hands into fists. “Why’re you even here?” she croaked.

“You… called.”

Nia snorted. “That’s never stopped you from ignoring me before.”

Brainy’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. “You were in need of assistance,” he said instead, trying his hardest to keep his voice from crackling.

“What is this, Brainy?” Nia asked exhaustedly. She lifted her head, dark hair curtaining her face, but Brainy could see that her eyes were trained downwards, seeing nothing. “Why’re you doing this to me?”

“Nia—”

“No, no, you go radio silent on me for weeks. You don’t give me any explanation, you don’t talk to me, you act like I don’t exist. And you think you can just turn up now and- what? What do you want?”

Brainy’s eyes were beginning to burn. He blinked quickly, doubling down on the same toneless voice he’d perfected over the last few weeks. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Nia laughed, although it sounded more like a sob. She spat into the toilet, lips twisting sourly. “Well,” she muttered darkly. “I’m not. You broke my heart. And you can’t fix that.”

Brainy’s own heart felt as though it might shatter in his chest. He opened his mouth, only to close it again when he realised there was nothing he could say that might absolve him. He didn’t want to be absolved. Nia was right. No matter what he said, even if he folded and told her everything right that second, wouldn’t fix what he had already broken.

He didn’t try to touch her again. Instead, he simply knelt there, watching as she picked up the water he’d left out for her, drinking the half that hadn’t spilt over his sleeve.

When Nia didn’t appear to be in danger of vomiting again, Brainy walked her to the bedroom. He stayed a respectable distance from her the whole while, enough that he could steady her should she decide to fall. At the last few steps before her door, she did stumble slightly, and Brainy held his arm out to her on reflex. Begrudgingly, Nia took it, staggering the final distance down the hall.

Nia let go of him the moment her bed was in sight, practically falling against the mattress, uncaring of the uncomfortable and clearly not bedroom-appropriate attire she was still wearing. Instead, she curled up quickly beneath the comforter, hugging her knees close to her stomach.

Silently, Brainy set about placing a fresh glass of water on her nightstand, as well as retrieving a trash can from the bathroom, tucking it within easy reaching distance of the bed. When he was done, he stood there a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of Nia’s back, wondering briefly if she may have fallen asleep.

“You know the way out.”

Her voice was devoid of any care, and yet it was still sharp enough to cut a hole through his heart. She sounded so empty and drained, exhausted by the night’s events.

But, worse yet, she had been exhausted by him.

Brainy closed his eyes, a million and one apologies budding on his tongue, desperate to leave him in a fierce burst, to explain everything, to beg for her forgiveness in every language he knew.

But as always, logic won out. No matter how much he wished he could tell her, he couldn’t. Not unless he wanted to put his family’s lives in mortal danger.

And so, it was upon Nia’s instruction that he left her without another word.

It wasn’t until he was out the front door, halfway back towards the elevator, that Brainy’s chest hitched, his breathing jerking harshly outside of his control. He stumbled into the wall, baring his teeth as the first of his tears began to flow.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured to nothing. To no one. After all, he knew in his heart that those words would never be enough; no words would ever be enough.

The longer he kept this up, the more he knew with one hundred per cent certainty that Nia would never forgive him.

And that hurt more profoundly than any words she left on his voicemail ever could.

#supergirl #brainia #dreamdox #nia nal #brainiac 5 #supergirl: yvette #brainy #querl dox #my prompts #my asks #anon #my writing #this really. REALLY. got away from me.#but i really wanted to go more in depth about how the two of them were feeling throughout season 5 #supergirl fanfiction #vomit tw

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mishasminion360 · 3 years

Text

Here Comes the Boom

Pairing: Javier Peña x Fem!Reader

Warning: Language

Notes: This is a sequel to my fic “This Feeling Has a Name”. That fic was supposed to be a one shot, but I received some very positive feedback inquiring about more, so I figured ‘what the heck!’ I hope you enjoy this installment as much as the first. Thank you for all your likes, love, and support. Also, stay tuned because I have a major Mandalorian fic in the works.

Since the night you ended your relationship (such as it was) you’d avoided Javier Peña like the plague. Not an easy thing to do considering you worked in the same building. Anytime the two of you made eye contact, you’d quickly duck out of the room or strike up a conversation with some poor, unsuspecting co-worker before Javi could corner you.

You’d gone as far as to request a transfer, but the powers that be were dragging their feet through the sea of paperwork. For now you’d just have to grin and bare it to the best of your ability.

You reassured yourself over and over again that putting some much needed distance between you and Peña was the wisest move; you repeated it like a mantra in your head. You practically meditated on the thought, like the fucking Buddha.

Your brain was firmly planted in reality, but your heart, God damn it, still needed a little more convincing. It was still nestled comfortably in Javier’s hands.

When you were certain he wasn’t looking, your eyes would lock onto him across the room. They would gaze. They would linger. And you would yearn. You’d walk past his empty desk and your fingers would unconsciously reach out to graze the smooth leather of his jacket draped over the back of his chair. The same jacket he’d once wrapped around your shoulders.

It was undeniable: you’d been bitten by the proverbial love bug and were sick as hell, and there was no cure. You worked in the same room as some of the most brilliant, tactful minds on the planet, so you knew there was no hiding your condition for long. And, of course, Steve Murphy was the first to figure it out.

“What the hell did Javi do now?” he asked you point blank, cornering you at the water cooler.

“What do you mean?” you asked, trying to feign ignorance and failing miserably.

“Well, he’s been more of a bastard than usual and I figured it had something to do with you. And if something did happen between you two, because it’s always the safe bet, I could only imagine that Javi fucked up royally. So, I ask again: what did he do?”

You gulped down your water, wishing it was something stronger, and tossed the cup.

“Why do you assume his bullshit has anything to do with me?”

A ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of Murphy’s mouth.

“Because nothing gets him more worked up than you.”

You knew it was meant as a compliment, but you tried desperately not to see it that way.

“We’re hunting Pablo fucking Escobar, darlin’. One of the most dangerous criminal, dare I say masterminds, in all of Colombia, potentially the world. But not even this motherfucker has been able to get under Javi’s skin the way you have. And don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Of course Steve noticed. Because you were so damn obvious. You were ashamed and embarrassed of your unprofessionalism, but you couldn’t blame that on Javier Peña. Your feelings and the resulting behaviors of said feelings were your own.

“The relationship had run its course, Steve, so I ended it. That’s it. We’re adults, adults break up. If Javi is insisting on taking it like a child, that’s on him.”

You return to your desk and attempt to lose yourself in paperwork. You know Steve wants to say more; the silence that follows is pregnant with his unvoiced questions, thoughts and opinions. Fortunately for you he’s wise enough to keep them all to himself.

“Hang in there,” he mumbles, patting your shoulder in a brief gesture of support before striding off.

***

You finish drying your hands and you’re about to exit the ladies room when suddenly the door flies open and in storms Javier.

“Shit!” you exclaim, both startled and a bit disgusted at the lengths he would go to just to confront you.

“We need to talk,” he grumbles, standing between you and the door.

“We have nothing to talk about, Javier, and certainly not here of all places!”

Just then one of the receptionists attempts to enter the restroom, doing a double take when she notices Javier.

“Go find another bathroom,” he barks at the wide eyed young woman.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Peña?” she snaps.

“OUT!” he roars. She doesn’t need to be told twice.

For good measure he locks the door behind her, and the two of you are officially alone. Even in the enclosed space, you try to put as much distance between the two of you as physically possible.

Javier let’s out a frustrated breath as he runs a hand over his face and through his hair.

“I know it’s the last thing you want to do, but I need you to listen to me. Just listen to me. Okay?”

Your heart is thudding in your ears but you attempt to play it cool by crossing your arms and leaning back against the sink.

“I’m listening.”

Javi took a deep breath then began again.

“You know I’m not the best at showing emotion-“

You cut him off with a laugh.

“You just screamed a poor woman out of this bathroom and you say you’re no good at showing emotion?”

You could see the anger boiling up inside him once again, but he closed his eyes, took a breath, tamped it down, and continued.

“I don’t typically get close to people, alright? I don’t usually do relationships, friendly or otherwise. What you and I have...”

You shot him a pointed look at the same instant he caught his mistake.

“Had ,” he corrected. “That’s usually the extent of my emotional attachment.”

You snickered a bit. “I sure as hell hope Steve is enjoying it while it lasts, then.”

“God dammit, I’m trying to be serious here!”

“Now you want to get serious?”

That may have been a poor choice of words. Actually, goading him on while he was obviously upset may have been one big bad idea on your part, because in a flash Javier was crushing his body to yours and shackling your wrists in his hands. He was so close that you could feel the heat from his skin burning your own. Or maybe that was your own.

He took a second to recollect himself, but he didn’t release his grip on you. In that moment you didn’t mind.

“Just who the hell said I didn’t love you, huh?”

His entire body was like an angry storm: his pounding heart was thunder, and his words struck you like lightening. But his eyes, just like that of any other tempest, were calm. And as you gazed into them your fear was washed away, as if by rain.

“You did,” you whispered. “You told me, Javi, that love wasn’t your thing. You warned me when we first started seeing each other, and you just said it again now. Don’t you even hear yourself when you talk?”

He didn’t say anything, only swallowed painfully over the lump in his throat.

“I get it, Javier, okay? This is not my first time being with someone like you. I know there are people out there who just can’t stand the idea of love and relationships, and there’s nothing wrong with that. To each their own right?”

He seemed frozen so you took the opportunity to release yourself from his grasp and lower his arms to his sides.

“That doesn’t make you a bad guy, Javier. You don’t have to apologize for being who you are. You don’t ever have to apologize for that.”

You looked away as angry, self conscious tears filled your eyes.

“I’m the one who should be sorry, Javier. I’m sorry that I wasn’t more careful. I’m sorry I didn’t take your warning to heart.”

Before you even realized what you were doing, you brought your hand gently to his face. This could, would, be the last time you ever touched him, and because he probably understood that all too well he reached up and placed his hand atop yours, pressing it harder against his cheek.

“I’m sorry I fell in love with you, Javi.”

You saw his eyes go painfully wide as you slipped from his hold and made your way around him, not sparing a single look back as you left the restroom. You didn’t see him punch the mirror, but you heard the glass shatter from the other side of the door.

Wiping angrily at your eyes, you hastily retrieved your jacket and purse from your desk and tapped Steve on the shoulder on your way out.

“Tell the boss I’m leaving early,” you said, and if Steve was going to protest you didn’t give him the chance. You were as good as gone.

***

The next day you called in sick. For one day, just one lousy fucking day, you wanted to be alone to drown your thoughts under a stack of paperwork a mile high. You told the boss not to call and bother you unless your transfer request had gone through.

But as luck would have it, you picked the wrong fucking day to stay home.

One second you were skimming page after page of Escobar’s dossier, the next the pages were fluttering in the air like confidential snowflakes, launched skyward by the force of the explosion that rocked your apartment and the shops below.

@mamacitapascal @obsessivelysearching

#pedro pascal #Javier Peña #narcos #fanfics

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mkstrigidae · 3 years

Note

Okay so I'm making my way through your masterlist and I'm in love?? Like let's start off with Winter's Child- a masterpiece. You make Sansa a loving and relatable character and interweave the powers into cannon in a way that actually makes cannon make more sense (preconceived biases and such). Jon and Sansa's relationship is SO SWEET and they way they bonded was absolutely adorable (and the backstory with the houses and the powers they have make so much sense) 1/3

(2/3) Neon Rain literally the best Cyberpunk AU! I've ever read. Like what you did with the world building?? The stark class differences (haha see what I did there?), the choices in SOUND, and I could FEEL myself there! I love the family dynamics between the Starks and I'm loving the little details you're dropping with the Greyjoy's , Jon's parentage, and all of the medical procedures. Jon is dramatic af and I love it and Sansa is a bamf AS SHE SHOULD. Nothing but love for this

(3/3) A Past Worth Having has a special place in my heart. You build up this setting like a tapestry, just seeing more richness and depth the longer you look. I'm proud of Sansa for holding her composure, just FEELING in the angst that the older Starks feel at her return, and loving the relationships with Robin and the rest of the Starks + Jon Arryn. The detail that you're putting into the investigation/Oberyn is awe inspiring and I can't wait to see what you do next with the trial + Jonsa

Haha thank you so much!!! This is such a sweet ask to get! My response is under a cut, because this might get kind of long! (lots of my own meta below, bc i accidentally had a lot to say, haha)

With ‘Winter’s Child’ I’ve really enjoyed weaving in fantasy elements to the world because I like to look at stories and pick at loose threads until they unravel and asking ‘what if?’. I thought it would be a super interesting concept to take a character like Sansa, who in ASOIAF is exactly what she is supposed to be as a noblewoman of her class and conforms very well in that role, and put her in a position where she was essentially a societal outcast in a lot of ways! In WC, Sansa has a lot of similar coping mechanisms to ASOIAF Sansa, in that she sort of romanticizes society to avoid thinking about how absolutely awful it is. In ASOIAF, Sansa holds tight to the notion of knights and chivalry and courtly love to cope with the fact that she essentially has no control over her future and, as a woman, is basically property. In WC, I have her really struggling to make herself into that perfect lady and using that as a sort of shield to the fact that, without a gift, there isn’t anything she can do to improve her lot in life. Sansa has these ideas about becoming a perfect lady and hoping that being perfect in other areas will ‘make up’ for what society perceives as deficient about her, but is more jaded than ASOIAF Sansa due to her age and her earlier exposure to the ills of society. So you get a Sansa who gets along better with Arya and Jon as a result, in part because she’s had that exposure to what it’s like to be an outcast in society. I think that the best fantasy has a really strong emotional backdrop (a really great example is ‘Fruits Basket’ which starts by hooking you with this wacky, fun premise about people in a family turning into animals when hugged by a member of the opposite sex, and slowly builds into a point where you can see that the family ‘curse’ is a representation of generational and familial abuse- of bonds that should be broken, and of bonds that may kill us even as we cling to them- it’s extremely complex and rich and if you haven’t read or watched it, I can’t recommend it highly enough), and so while I really love writing about the fantasy aspects, and writing scenes where Sansa does really cool things with her ice powers, the core of the story is really about Sansa coming into her own, and learning that she was a person who was worth something even without any sort of gift. Sort of overcoming societal stigma and realizing your worth and forcing others to see it. It’s so much fun to write, but i’m stuck at the moment, because i need to reread the books, and my roommate is borrowing them right now haha!

God, APWH is like, indulging my inner world-building suspense-narrative loving writer persona. It’s literally my all time favorite trope- which is of someone growing up to find out that they’re a long-lost somebody or have family they never knew about- combined with a lot of research on trauma (which i’ve been doing for academic and other reasons for a while) and a lot of slowly growing psychological horror courtesy of Petyr Baelish (trust me, it’s going to get WAY more intense). There are so many pieces of media that I love, but I think that GRRM has so many characters and such a well fleshed out world that it’s very fun to dive into his worlds and create something there. Inherently, I love a slowly unraveling mystery and morally gray characters, and this is allowing me to indulge in both!!! World-building is my favorite, because i tend to be fairly detail oriented, and i’ve been laying bread crumbs in so many places throughout the story to hopefully build up to a decent conclusion! I know sort of how it ends, and I think people are going to absolutely lose their minds if I execute it correctly. We have a few chapters to go until we get to anything in the semblance of a trial- there’s some more emotional aspects that I think need to get addressed first, and so I’m so grateful that people are so supportive of being willing to wait for the Jonsa, because they really start spending a lot of time with each other during the trial and prior to the trial (i’m a big believer in bonding via long car rides and so there’s a lot of that!). I’m just so humbled and awed by the response to it- I never dreamed that people would enjoy the story this much- when I started it, I was writing a light-hearted family piece that wouldn’t be too long, and, uh, it kind of evolved from there. Clearly, I am not good at keeping things concise haha.

I left Neon Rain for last, because your comments on this one really made me smile! Of all of my stories, oddly enough, Neon Rain is actually the most deeply personal for me, and I’m just so flattered at your kind words! I spend a lot of my time thinking about the flaws inherent in our society, and without getting too detailed, Sansa’s experience with a family member struggling in the medical system is not unfamiliar to me. There’s a weight that comes with the realization that a system that is supposed to care for people is based on capitalistic ideals of profit maximization, and as someone who has experience working in the healthcare system- no matter how bad you think it is in the US, I can promise you it’s actually worse.

Neon Rain actually just started out as a series of mental images from listening to music that I had to get down on paper, and evolved from there. I actually really love the ‘soulmates’ and ‘class differences’ and ‘mastermind art thief’ tropes, but am incapable of writing fun stories without thinking about the reality of those tropes (see APWH for another extreme example of this haha), and so as I was writing and trying to capture this mental image, the rest of the world began unfolding around me. Jon is different because of a different upbringing here, and so is Sansa, and to see the formerly idealistic Sansa become so jaded by the time she meets her soulmate is just catnip for me. You have this interesting dynamic between them, because Jon wants nothing more than to have Sansa in his life, and give her everything she wants and needs, but where the old Sansa (who was arguably middle-class and somewhat naive, as financially secure teenagers understandably tend to be) would have swooned over that, the Sansa who meets Jon when the story begins is seeing the world and all the unfair and unequal systems in it. She can’t just live happily ever after with him right away- there’s a sense of guilt there, of sansa not feeling like she deserves nice things, and there’s also Sansa’s deep sense of compassion and kindness that won’t allow her to just live life as the well taken-care-of girlfriend of a wealthy man, because she isn’t able to just put on blinders and pretend that all the injustice in the world around her doesn’t exist, simply because it wouldn’t affect her that way anymore.

I think that the core to writing Sansa, for me, in any universe, is that she is a kind and compassionate person who is capable of feeling sympathy towards even the people who have done horrific things to her and her family- that emotional awareness and empathy is a harsh thing to have in a world like Neon Rain, and in our own world, honestly. I’m so glad that you appreciate Sansa’s BAMF-ness in the story- I think that her chapters demonstrate that she is capable of doing extraordinary things when she’s doing them for people she cares for, to be kind (The scene where Alayne helps Robin down from the eyrie is most indicative of this I think), and so in this world, I just love having Sansa be a complete badass out of necessity. Also, it’s fanfiction, and I really wanted to give Sansa a cool motorcyle, because no one else was gonna do it!!!

Also, my characters like to run away with me, and before I knew it, Rodrik Greyjoy had a huge adorable crush on Sansa in the story that I immensely enjoy writing. The Greyjoys are fun because they’re all absolutely insane, and i’m a total sucker for ‘gruff dangerous character is completely a sucker for the kind sunshine-y character’ trope.

God, this accidentally got really long??? I’m sorry- thank you so much for such a kind ask!!! I love hearing what people think of my stories, and this was so sweet :)

#my writing #joanofarkansass #ask answers

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prince-toffee · 4 years

Text

Infinity

“Well, that concludes our meeting,” Queen Angella clapped her hands together and rose up from her throne, “I only hope our next session will be as efficient as today’s one. We’re making great progress.” Angella’s words were genuine, she was impressed how fast things were moving. All the kingdoms working hand in hand to repair the damage done by Prime’s invasion.

The rest of the Princesses gathered around the war table rose up with her and bowed in respect. Angella saw a few tense faces. Some were still getting used to the fact she came back from the dead. Both Alliance and Horde states shook hands and left, now that Hordak, Weaver and Prime were presumed dead, all the kingdom states previously supported by the Horde economy, usually poorer lands, fell on their knees and reached out to BrightMoon for aid.

All of Etheria united against a common threat, defeated it together and through that realisation the bonds grew stronger. Funny to think a mere thirty years ago, before the Horde, the Princesses couldn’t stand each other, leaping at each other’s throats.

It was amazing how well her and Hordak’s deal worked out.

Sure her temporary death, was a set back, so was the arrival of Horde Prime. Hordak reassured her that the portal had no possibility of working with the lack of advanced materials on the planet. However, the two of them didn’t count on the unpredictable variable that was, Entrapta of Dryl. Or that Angella’s disappearance due to the crisis engaged by Catra, would led her daughter Glimmer to guide Prime directly to the shadow dimension.

Luckily, Hordak and Entrapta managed to bring her back. And with the help of Shadow Weaver they managed to imprison Prime, out of sight. Through dark magic Weaver found out about the deal struck and so inserted herself into the equation, always looking for a seat of power. Hordak of course brought Entrapta into the fold, being the hopeless romantic that he was. He also recommended for Catra to play apart in all of it. He said she was smart, a fast learner, a strategist and deep down, he knew she was a better person than any of them. Angella begrudgingly accepted, but in turn decided to advocate for her own addition, Glimmer. In Angella’s absence, her daughter became a quite capable general. None had objections.

And so there were six.

Angella made her way to her throne room and ordered her throne guards to leave and allow no one in, no matter the clearance level. And she locked the doors behind them. She sat down on her throne, pressing her palm against the chair arm, which scanned and verified that it was her. The floor under Angella opened and the throne descended down.

The angel queen made her way through the dark sub-level corridor. It wasn’t even on the castle schematics for safety and security. Where she was greeted by a disembodied voice from the shadows, “Meeting ran late?”

“Don’t be absurd, I’m only five minutes, twenty-three seconds late... Why are you not waiting in the sub-level conference room with the others?” Angella asked the hovering Shadow Weaver, who simply shrugged.

“Call me paranoid. I wish, simply, to enter with the great Queen Angella, making sure none of you set a trap for me. Remember, I cou-” Weaver was interrupted by Angella.

“We know. No trap. Now, come on.” Angella knew that Shadow Weaver had the ability to undo the entire secrecy of their group. Being the powerful sorceress that she was, she could’ve simply revealed them in the minds of every person on the planet. But working from behind the curtain was what made them successful, so they had to keep a close eye on the witch. Well, she had an eye on every member.

Angella pushed open a pair of doors and revealed the other four members already in their chairs. The war table paralleling the one multiple levels above them, the one Angella was just in. Hordak and Entrapta didn’t even notice them walk in, the two partners simply continued with their theory sharing. Opposite them Glimmer and Catra bowed for Angella’s presence, side eyeing Shadow Weaver as she sat across from Angella on the other end.

“Alright everyone! If I may have your attention!” She didn’t ask as much as she ordered it. All the heads faced her in focus. Angella began, “Thank you, I suppose this is in a way the first true meeting of this... team, I suppose we can call it. You were all chosen to sit here, because you have showcased virtues and qualities befitting of a leader, if necessary... a mastermind. Hordak and Shadow Weaver presumed dead, and the rest viewed as war heroes - the public trusts us. Let us keep it that way. We sit here today, because we are the ones going to forge tomorrow, from behind the stage, for better... or for worse. That’s on us... Hordak.”

She turned her head to the alien and nodded as a sign for him to start his brief, “First order of business and highest priority is that of my brother. And his trial. This council will decide his fate. At the moment Horde Prime is kept on Beast Island under the influence of the island and further imprisonment of the Obtainment Spell, curtesy of Shadow Weaver.”

Weaver smiled under her mask, proud of her magical capabilities, folding her arms across her chest. Entrapta shared the cheerfulness, happy she was allowed to study the properties of the island and ultimately control it.

“I say we leave him there. Sounds to fine to me.” Catra was quick to make her decision known.

“Death. The safer option.” Glimmer stated countering Catra’s solution aggressively. She had no patience for Prime, knowing that Etheria could’ve been another world subjugated by his galactic empire, and she was partly to blame for his arrival. “Just let Adora hack his head off, problem solved.”

“She-Ra isn’t apart of this council.” Angella stated.

“Well, maybe she should be. I mean come on, it’s Adora! Where are you gonna find a better, more pure-hearted, person in the universe? Being good is sort of her whole deal.” Catra agreed with Glimmer’s proposal of bring their girlfriend into the fold.

“Adora is busy enough being the face of Etheria. A face the people can trust. Let’s not give the world a reason to loose that faith... And the girl can’t keep a secret to save her life.” Shadow Weaver dismissed the possibility of that option.

Angella followed on, “And killing Prime might not be the best decision either.”

Hordak returned to his holo-pad, which he wired to the war table. With a swipe of his finger upwards on the screen, the hologram display on the table lit up. A strange image came up, they didn’t know what they were looking at, “It is true. We might need to question him, see if he has any kind of knowledge or insight about these... objects. Since Entrapta and me cannot figure this out.”

Entrapta waved off dismissively at the idea with her hair, “Oh, please, we don’t need his help! We got it covered! He’s an idiot! And we’re a team! He doesn’t have the answers, I bet he couldn’t figure out the precise value of pi if it bit him in the hair!”

“You can figure out what pie is?” Catra arched her brow in confusion.

“What are they... Rune Stones? They look smaller.” Glimmer questioned, looking at the holo-display.

“Possibly of the same origin, that being the First Ones, but they are infinitely more powerful. Any bounds or limitations are yet unknown to us. Whatever these... gems are, they’re more powerful than any weapon I have encountered across my voyages throughout the universe.” Hordak claimed as multiple notes and graphs appeared on the display, most of which didn’t make any sense to the others.

“So what’s the plan?” Glimmer asked.

“The plan is there’s six of us.” Angella stated as she pressed one of her earrings, which lit up, simultaneously a silver briefcase immerged from the underneath Angella’ s seat. The other five exchanged looks between each other. Shadow Weaver and Entrapta seemed more enthusiastic and on board, whereas the girls and Hordak became more worried.

With two clicks the case opened, revealing inside six different coloured stones. Afterwards, none of them quite remembered or understood what happened. But each member proceeded to take a stone, almost as if the stones themselves spoke to each of them, mesmerised, hypnotised them. The gems guided the hands of their future wielders.

Angella reached for the Time Stone.

Hordak took the Reality Stone.

Entrapta received the Space Stone.

Shadow Weaver was given the Mind Stone.

Catra acquired the Power Stone.

Glimmer grasped the Soul Stone.

“Now what?” The magicat asked, firmly holding the ingot of Power.

Angella answered, “We safeguard it. Destroy it, if necessary, but ultimately, for now, let us see what good we may do behind the scenes.”

Hordak pocketed away his stone into one of his compartments in his new suit, “...Then we should have a code in case of emergencies... Since I have been studying the history logs from Horde Prime’s capital, learning about my people’s culture - I feel like I found a word to incapsulate our council. An ancient term, roughly translating to ‘one who is illusive, and enlightened’:

Illuminati.”

#spop #she ra #angella #hordak #entrapta #shadow weaver #catra #glimmer #infinity stones #short fic #idk thought it was fun

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

Text

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.13

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

…Okay, since this is the very last post of the main storyline, admittedly this spoiler warning has become completely moot at this point. But, you know. Tradition!

Last time as we got even closer to the end of trial 6, the audience literally murdered Keebo in the most pointlessly gratuitous death in the entire game, the narrative tried to insist this was necessary in order for Shuichi to both realise he needs to change their minds and actually be able to do so (but it wasn’t), Shuichi was adorably inspired by Kaito to make the impossible possible and Maki adorably agreed that a sidekick of Kaito’s could do that, I had A Lot Of Feelings, ones very personal to me (thanks to Kaito!), about Shuichi’s sentiment of how fiction can change the world… and then things abruptly mood-whiplashed into the worst Argument Armament both gameplay-wise and in terms of how it should have been literally actually impossible for Shuichi to change any of this asshole audience’s minds, even though things really could have been written such that it wasn’t if this audience had just been reacting to all this like actual human beings.

(…I did it! I found a reason to mention Kaito in every one of this chapter’s summary bits! Okay, admittedly I had to kind of shoehorn it a few times – though not remotely all of the times, mind you – but shush, Kaito deserves it, I have no regrets.)

Anyway, with the Argument Armament over and Shuichi having achieved the literal impossible, we’re about to go to the “vote”.

Monokuma: “Puhuhu… I think hopeful Keebo should vote for despairing Tsumugi, without a doubt!”

My god, Monokuma is so transparently just trying to keep things on script and pander to the Danganronpa buzzwords when it doesn’t even make any sense. When at any point during this trial has Tsumugi herself ever seemed to be in despair? And Keebo has hardly been advocating hope recently – Monokuma’s just desperately trying to make it sound like that’s totally still his character. Plus, he’s Monokuma! He’s supposed to be the poster bear for despair! He’s not supposed to want anyone to be voting against despair!

Monokuma: “Cuz that’s what the outside world wants to see!”

Since they’re in control of Keebo now, the outside world is already going to vote for what they want to see and shouldn’t have needed Monokuma to tell them what they supposedly want. Someone’s getting worried. (He really shouldn’t be, because what just happened should not have been possible, but.)

It’s pretty neat how it turns out that the real reason the game made you do the vote yourself the whole time is for the purpose of this bit in which you don’t vote. Though I guess technically they still didn’t need to do that and could just leave you to assume that Shuichi didn’t vote.

(If you do vote here, regardless of who for, there’s just a very brief game over in which Shuichi laments that he was a coward after all.)

Maki: “If she had cast one vote for Keebo then it would be a tie, but—”

Tsumugi: “Oh, there’s no need to worry about that. I didn’t vote either.”

Maki: “…What?”

Shuichi: “Just as I thought… You wanted hope to win.”

Of course she wanted hope to win, but then… why couldn’t she have just voted for herself, just in case Keebo’s body didn’t vote? I suppose this could be a sign that she actually does care about what the outside world wants and would be willing to accept it if they didn’t want the “hope” ending after all, rather than forcing it on them against their will anyway. But the rest of her behaviour a bit later when she realises they didn’t vote doesn’t really add up with that, so, eh?

Also it’s interesting how Maki seems particularly surprised to realise this. I guess she really was taken in by Tsumugi’s manipulative argument earlier that she’d want to be the lone survivor because she’s the big bad evil mastermind, and that Maki’s desire to not vote was all part of her plan.

(It’s okay, Maki! You were right to believe in your own feelings and stand with Shuichi after all!)

Tsumugi: “No matter who he voted for, the only one who survives is Keebo… So in other words, the winner is hope.”

I was going to question whether it’d really be the same even if the audience voted for “despair” to win, which should mean Keebo’d be executed after all and we’ll get the boring everybody-dies ending anyway. But actually he’d just be “punished”, aka being put into a new killing game, so no, that would end up the same as the “hope” ending in which he sacrificed himself to that fate, wouldn’t it.

Tsumugi: “He’ll be participating in the next killing game.”

Maki: “Hold it! Why are you punishing Keebo? If Keebo survives, then there’s no need for him to be sacrif—”

Maki, I appreciate your desire to try and protect your friend, but Keebo is already dead. She’ll just be “punishing” his empty shell.

…Actually, that’s a good question. What would she have done to put Keebo’s empty shell in a new killing game? Would he have gotten a new personality? Would it be the same as his old one with his memories erased, or a different character? Or would the audience have been in complete control of him like they are now? That would have been… disconcerting to his fellow students, to say the least.

Himiko: “Th-That’s not fair! Are you twisting the rules again?”

Tsumugi: “It’s fine, cuz this is all fiction. Maybe it’s a bit forced… but that’s fiction for you, right?”

Ha. Haha. There sure have been a few forced bits in this fiction here and there, both in terms of things Tsumugi did in-universe, and also in an out-universe sense.

Not that this is an excuse. Writers should be trying to make the best fictions they can, not writing off their mistakes and problems with “oh but it’s fiction so it doesn’t matter, right”, as if that’s an excuse to not even try in the first place. This is more of Tsumugi’s mindset of seeing fiction as enjoyable but ultimately meaningless because it’s “just” fiction.

Tsumugi: “And how about this for the next plotline? Hope has won but the lone survivor, Keebo, remains trapped… Now he’ll challenge the killing game anew. Will he be able to grasp true hope…? Yeah, an ending like that can work, right?”

My god, Tsumugi, you are a terrible writer and I hope you’re starting to realise this yourself. All of Keebo’s friends are dead and now he’s forced into a second killing game? That’s not hope winning! That’s the most despair ending if ever I saw one! And what the hell does “grasp true hope” even mean? She’s definitely not talking about “true hope” in the sense of the actual meaning of the word, so it’s clearly just a superlative to refer to an even more hopey kind of hope than the hope he already supposedly has. This “plotline” is so dumb, and at least this has got to be out-universely on purpose.

Maki: “What? This is the worst possible ending.”

Himiko: “But… this is bad. At this rate, our deaths will be meaningless!”

Shuichi: “…”

Shuichi is smiling, and he’s been silent for most of this, because he somehow has confidence in the literal impossibility he just pulled off when he really shouldn’t. I wish I could enjoy this final moment of Shuichi being a hero and living up to Kaito’s words as much as the narrative wants me to, but it just falls flat and I hate that it does that.

Shuichi: “Phew… I’m relieved.”

This is Shuichi after the voting results showed that the audience also didn’t vote. I’m glad he was at least a little nervous that he might not have been able to do this, because he should not have been able to do this.

Tsumugi: “Danganronpa is going to end? This killing game full of tense standoffs and backstabbings amongst friends…”

Oh, that’s what Danganronpa is to you and the audience? I thought it was meaningless yelling about hope being better than despair and people getting gratuitously killed because executions are fun or something.

Seeing the audience’s faces disappear from the trial background as they all switch off and stop watching is a satisfying moment all on its own. I just wish the buildup to it had been as good as it should have been to make it feel like this was actually happening for an organic, meaningful reason.

Shuichi: “You never appreciated us… And it looks like you didn’t appreciate the power of fiction!”

I still love hearing Shuichi talk about the power of fiction, even if his use of it here was so, so badly executed. If this audience had actually understood the power of fiction and appreciated these characters like a decent audience should, then things would never have needed to happen in this nonsensical way!

Shuichi: “No one wants to hear your sick, twisted stories anymore!”

This is veering a little bit into making it sound like even the existence of Danganronpa as a work of fiction in the out-universe has been bad simply because it involves people killing each other. But if it really is fiction and no real people are getting hurt, it’s still perfectly okay for stories to have bad things happen to their characters – that’s one of the things that makes stories compelling, after all.

Of course, since fiction can affect reality, people have to be mindful of the messages that their stories give off. But just because a story contains murder, that doesn’t mean the narrative condones it. The message of Danganronpa has never been “killing your classmates is totally okay if you don’t get caught”, nor has it been “being executed if you do get caught killing someone is totally deserved”, regardless of what this nonsensical audience may have seemed to think.

Himiko: “So what are we going to do now? Now that it’s over, there’s no need for any punishments.”

There really isn’t! Now that the outside world has already shown they don’t want the killing games any more, it’s already done. Shuichi and friends have no need to get themselves killed to try and give them a disappointing ending, or to try and make their point about how determined they are to end this.

Tsumugi: “No, it needs to end with a punishment… at the very least.”

Geez, Tsumugi! This is possibly the most sick and twisted decision she ever makes. With everything else, she at least believed she was delivering what her audience wanted. But this, she’s doing purely for her own satisfaction because she still wants there to be horrible executions, even though nobody else does any more.

Shuichi: “Now… if we… continue to live after this… the choice we made won’t really matter. The people will just want another killing game, so…”

No, they won’t! You already (somehow) changed everyone’s minds partly by showing that you would have been willing to die if necessary, but now that their minds have been changed, it isn’t necessary! They’re not all suddenly going to change their minds back just because you didn’t actually die!

This bit of writing does rather awkwardly reek of the out-universe writers desperately wanting to give themselves an excuse for one final execution scene so it can end with something of a bang. Out-universe writers, why are you behaving like Tsumugi.

Tsumugi: “I never expected an ending like that, so I don’t have a punishment ready…”

Don’t you? Not even for the possibility that the blackened wins and everyone else dies? I guess they really never do expect the blackened to ever win, do they. But even then, wouldn’t they have individual punishments ready for every character in case they become the blackened? They could just go through those one by one; that’s always what I imagined would happen in the eventuality that a blackened got away with it. I suppose doing it like that wouldn’t be exciting enough when she wants to kill them all at once for a grand finale. (Have I mentioned it’s fucked-up that she still wants to do this.)

Tsumugi: “I worked so hard to keep this going for 53 seasons and now it’s all over.”

No, you didn’t, what the hell, stop giving yourself way more credit than you deserve. Tsumugi is a teenager, or at least she’s young enough to pass as one. We saw from that one comment that there’d been three years between this season and season 52. Even if the usual gap is shorter than that, that’s still probably something like at least fifty years this franchise has been around. Tsumugi was born into a world that already loved Danganronpa, and she’d have only been working on it herself for the last few seasons at most.

(Plot twist: Tsumugi’s actually like eighty years old, but because she’s a literal fucking shapeshifter, she constantly assumes the appearance of a high school student as her “default” form. Yeah, no, somehow I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to be getting from this.)

Tsumugi: “Well, that’s fine… If this is a world without killing games now… I don’t want to be a part of it.”

It seems, perhaps, that the main reason Tsumugi is insisting on a final execution is because she wants to basically commit suicide over there being no more killing-real-people-for-entertainment any more? Which is extremely fucked up in its own right, but even more so that she’s then selfishly insisting on dragging the other three into it when they have no reason to die any more.

Maki: “But now, it’s all over. We’re the last ones to suffer from the killing games…”

Yes! Whether you die or not, that’s still true, at least. That’s worth it.

Shuichi: “Come on, everyone! We should be proud! We were able to change the world in the end.”

You were! Somehow. I really wish it was easier to get behind this and be proud of Shuichi and friends for doing this. I really wish it had felt possible.

(The writers are the ones who didn’t make the impossible possible here and I am very disappointed in them.)

Tsumugi: “My plan was such a flawless copy, it even failed right at the end… So I should be able to hold my head up high as a cosplaycat criminal, right?”

Shuichi: “A ‘cosplaycat criminal’?”

Shuichi has some… odd deductions based on this statement in the epilogue, which we’ll get to soon enough. But just looking at it right here at face value, all it seems to be is that Tsumugi is trying to look on the bright side of her failure. She’s trying to tell herself that this is just like how Junko’s plan failed right at the end, so she can be happy because it’s like she really was cosplaying Junko and copying one of her favourite characters down to the letter. She calls herself a cosplaycat criminal, meaning she was copying a fictional crime!

I like how Tsumugi keeps trying to be happy about her Junko-ness during the execution by cosplaying her and copying Junko’s final grin… but she’s not Junko, and she’s not happy about this at all. Which is good, because she doesn’t deserve to be. Only Kaito gets to smile in death.

After even more destruction of the Academy, Keebo’s empty shell sees the rubble shifting, indicating that the other three are still alive under there. (Please imagine them huddling together with Maki using her body to shield Shuichi and Himiko as best she can. You know she would.) And the Keebo-shell just leaves them alone, because the outside world doesn’t want to kill them any more. Them not being visible means there’s plausible deniability that makes it look like he sure tried to kill them good and dead and totally didn’t know they were still alive at the end. Not that I’m entirely sure why he’d need to hide it, since right now, Keebo is the outside world, and they all want them to survive, so it shouldn’t need to be a secret. Maybe they’re just trying to give them some privacy and to let them live in relative secret when they escape. That would sure be far more empathy and decency than this audience ever seemed to have any capacity for, but then, Shuichi did a magic, so, whatever.

…Was this button that was in plain sight and easily accessible on Keebo’s stomach seriously his self-destruct button this whole time? Geez, can you imagine if someone had pressed it accidentally?

This execution music still has the usual “wa-wa-wa-wa, wa-wa-ooh” vocal part that they all have. Here, it plays as Keebo flies towards the wall to blow it open, and it’s in the usual lower key… but it shouldn’t be! This isn’t a killing blow, it’s a victory, again! This is allowed to be in the higher key just like it was for Kaito’s!

Based on the power Keebo’s laser gun displays, I’m still convinced that he could have just used the laser gun to blow a hole in the wall and didn’t need to straight-up self-destruct into it. The audience probably only made him do that because his body is a useless empty shell now anyway.

(Did Shuichi’s magic impossible miracle also make them feel bad for pointlessly murdering Keebo? It better have done. Maybe somewhere in the Team Danganronpa HQ there’s backups of his personality and he could possibly hypothetically be saved? Though he’d need a new body as well now.)

(…But then again, there’s backups of everyone’s personality if you use Flashback Lights, yet I can’t imagine Shuichi and co would be comfortable with creating what would awkwardly just be like copies of their dead friends.)

The credits listing the characters’ names are neat. They were all real people who contributed to this work of fiction, after all, right? …Though that idea sort of falls apart after it goes through the V3 cast and starts listing the DR1 and 2 characters, who were not real in this universe, and then characters like Kaito’s grandparents and such who had lines in certain flashbacks but were also not real.

I also like how the credits are being shown on the screen of a cinema, in which we can see people in the audience gradually getting up and leaving. Danganronpa’s over now! They’ll just go and find something else to watch.

It’s neat that it puts you back to what seems like the title screen before cutting to the epilogue. This isn’t a part of “Danganronpa V3” any more!

I’m glad the epilogue exists to show for certain that Shuichi, Maki and Himiko survived. It would have been incredibly frustrating if they’d just left us with some ambiguous moving rubble and nothing more than that. I’d have headcanoned the hell out of their survival anyway, but it’s nice to know for certain that they’re okay and that I’m not just desperately believing something that might not be the truth.

(That hole in the wall is very high up and I am not sure how they’re going to climb up there to get out of it. Awkward. Maybe it’s cracked enough that eventually the whole thing will shatter.)

Himiko: “To the outside world, huh? I wonder what kind of world it is.”

Maki: “A peaceful world with no fighting and no despair. That’s what Tsumugi said, right?”

It’s still a world where, until literally just now, the majority of the population was quite happy to watch real people kill each other for entertainment. That’s pretty fucked-up in its own right.

Really, though, the first thing the three of them should be doing before they even think about leaving is finding whichever rooms in the dormitory are still reasonably intact and getting some fucking sleep. They haven’t slept since before Kaito’s trial. (And Maki probably didn’t even get much sleep the night before that trial either.) Then they had the full day of that case and trial, including some very emotionally traumatic experiences, investigated through the whole night rather than sleep, then had this trial in the morning for several more hours, including yet more emotional trauma. They should be exhausted, both physically and mentally.

But the main thing about the epilogue is Shuichi’s odd theories about Tsumugi’s final words.

Shuichi: “She said ‘copy’… That means she must have been copying someone, right?”

…

Shuichi: “Perhaps Hope’s Peak Academy and the Remnants of Despair really exist. Maybe Tsumugi was just basing her performance on them.”

No? Tsumugi’s words were not any kind of indication of that at all? It is at least equally likely that she meant she was copying Junko’s fictional plan - more likely, in fact, since she called herself a cosplaycat, not a copycat, and she was always very insistent about not “cosplaying” real people, regardless of whether or not the cospox thing was bullshit.

Shuichi: “She might have been lying when she said ‘copy’. But if she were telling the truth, then… it would make sense that that was a lie.”

Himiko: “What do you mean, ‘that’?”

Shuichi: “What Tsumugi showed us… The way we were when… we first arrived.”

She doesn’t need to have been lying about the word “copy” for it to still mean that Hope’s Peak was fictional, what the hell, Shuichi. You can copy fictional things.

And by “what Tsumugi showed us”, Shuichi is talking not about the audition videos, but about the flashback of their pregame selves in the prologue being excited upon realising they were chosen. Which means that Tsumugi very explicitly did show them a video of that. Such a video cannot possibly have been faked. Tsumugi may have been a shapeshifter, but she was only one person. So that definitely happened, then! This is just even more proof that it was the truth!

Shuichi: “I still don’t believe it. I can’t believe that any of us would volunteer for this.”

Because those people weren’t you, Shuichi! And as soon as you realise that, it doesn’t matter what you would have done in their place because you’re different people! It’s kind of frustrating to me that after Shuichi was willingly accepting that he’s a “fictional character” back in the trial, that he was “created” out of Flashback Lights and fake backstory, he still apparently doesn’t get that this makes him a completely separate person from the moron who used to inhabit his body.

Shuichi: “Even if we were obsessed with this killing game, I still can’t believe we would participate in it. I just… I don’t believe it.”

Because you and your friends here are decent people who would never willingly choose to put yourselves through the terrible ordeal you’ve just been through. Of course you wouldn’t be able to or want to understand the viewpoint of these kinds of one-dimensional assholes from the outside world who apparently couldn’t even accept that people dying and suffering is bad until you magically yelled at them.

(And, like I’ve mentioned, it does seem that the people who chose to audition were specifically people who kind of hated their own lives and therefore wouldn’t mind dying if it meant they got to be in Danganronpa.)

Shuichi: “Ah, but… I don’t really have any logic behind that…”

Himiko: “One of Kaito’s hunches, huh?”

I would be annoyed that they’re attaching Kaito’s name to this obviously-flawed assumption… but to be fair I do think Kaito would also have trouble comprehending the idea that anyone would want to do this. This is a fair thing to want to believe, and I’m glad that at least Shuichi acknowledges that he has no proof at all for this part. (And I do like Himiko just bringing Kaito up like that. They’re going to be mentioning him and quoting his inspiring lines all the time in their new life outside and that makes me happy.)

This whole bit is my problem with the epilogue. I’m glad we have the epilogue itself to show that the three of them survived, but I hate the way it then tries to undermine everything we just spent the whole trial on by making flimsy, completely unconvincing arguments for how ooh maybe it isn’t true after all, look, ambiguity~! Despite their attempts to make it seem that way, it’s still not remotely ambiguous to me.

Even disregarding all evidence pointing or not pointing towards it, think about what it would mean if Hope’s Peak and all those characters really did exist in this world. If Tsumugi was lying about everything being fictional… why? What on earth would be the point of telling such a massively elaborate lie? There has to be some motivation to lie, especially when the lie is this huge. She’d have had to deliberately set up all of the of subtle clues that led to Shuichi figuring things out (yes, Tsumugi ultimately told them it was fiction in the end, but Shuichi had deduced himself most of the way there before she did so), and come up with all of the details about “Danganronpa” and its many many series that would all have been completely made up out of thin air. I literally cannot think of any conceivable reason why Tsumugi would have wanted to go so far to lie about this. She indisputably had some kind of audience she was trying to please, but why the hell would pretending that actual history was just a fictional franchise please any of them, if all that stuff really was actual history? And why would they have played along with that lie in their comments?

But aside from the fact that it being a lie simply wouldn’t make any sense, all of the evidence that I’ve discussed throughout this commentary overwhelmingly points towards the fiction thing being the truth of this story. Clues that point away from it are both far less frequent and generally a lot more ambiguous and unconvincing (which definitely includes this one here in the epilogue).

And ultimately, I really believe that the fiction thing being the truth is a better story.

See, the reveal of everything being “fictional” during the trial could be seen as having undermined the entire rest of the story by acting like none of it mattered. But that is not remotely the case. Shuichi goes on to reaffirm that even if their characters were created from Flashback Lights, everything that happened in this killing game still happened, and they still really suffered and died. The story up until this trial still mattered just as much as it ever did – the only thing that was truly revealed to not have mattered was the backstory about the Gofer Project, which was really never that important to the actual killing game in the first place.

But if we’re supposed to believe this claim in the epilogue that actually nothing was fictional at all and Tsumugi was just telling nothing but lies for the entire second half of the trial? Then that really does just mean that none of this trial we just had mattered. And if that’s the case, then why the hell did we even spend several hours on it only for it all to be literally completely meaningless? That is not how to write a story.

Clearly the out-universe writers knew, when they decided to make the final chapter and big reveal of their story be this whole fiction deal, that it would be divisive and controversial. But even then, they had the guts to go and do it anyway, having a whole trial confidently establishing that that’s what the story was about, plus many subtle hints of it throughout the rest of the story that you can pick up on a replay and that I’ve been talking about here. It’s a really interesting, unique premise for a story; I’m glad they went and did it! …And then in this epilogue, after all their conviction, they suddenly get cold feet and go “uhhh actually guys if you didn’t like that story we just told you then here’s a free pass to pretend it didn’t really happen after all, please don’t be mad at us”.

No! You told everyone that story even though you knew it might turn heads, you should be sticking to the fact that that really was the story! Stick to your convictions! Come on, you guys wrote Kaito, you should know what’s up!

That’s what this part of the epilogue reads as to me – not as any kind of remotely convincing indication that this actually is the truth of the story that the writers had in mind all along, but the writers suddenly being cowards right at the end, and it’s disappointing.

The other likely reason the writers threw this in at the last minute is in an effort to make their narrative point about how lies are ambiguous and sometimes you never know what the truth is. It’s that same point they made at the end of Kokichi’s storyline that was apparently half the reason his character was even here. But man, is this an incredibly half-assed last-ditch effort at this that doesn’t really work at all… and while I’m annoyed that they even tried it in the first place, I’m glad that it doesn’t work.

Shuichi’s final observation on Kokichi back in chapter 5 tried to make it seem like his whole character was completely ambiguous; ooh who knows whether he was even telling the truth about hating the killing game, or maybe he really was just full-on evil after all~? But… Kokichi really isn’t that much of an impenetrable mystery. You have to look for it, but if you do, the evidence overwhelmingly points to him being a coward with massive trust issues who did what he did for the sake of petty, selfish revenge, out of no particular evil but also no particular good. The only part of him that actually manages to be ambiguous, purely because there’s never any mention of it at all, is what happened in his past to make him this way. I complained about that part of his character being ambiguous, and I’m glad the rest of him isn’t, because then at least I can appreciate the character that’s here.

Related to this, there’s the plan in case 5, which was designed to seem as though it was completely ambiguous as to who the victim and the killer were. Except there was a very, very easy way to prove that for certain, by opening the Exisal and finding Kaito inside. And there was a less easy but still ultimately convincing way to be sure enough of it, by paying close attention to the way Exisal Kokichi had been acting to realise that actually it was very clearly Kaito in there. Things were not nearly as truly ambiguous as Kokichi had been trying to make them seem.

As for this entire story in general and the whole fiction aspect of it… well, there probably could have been a way to make it truly ambiguous such that it really is impossible to know for sure what the truth is – it would need a lot of rewriting, but I imagine it could hypothetically be done. But that wouldn’t be a good thing, to me, because I don’t think I’d be able to enjoy the story very much at all that way. If we couldn’t ever know for sure what the truth of the story was, it’d mean there’d be no actual truth of the story to grab hold of and enjoy. There’d just be a wobbly ambiguous blob on the surface that’s trying so hard to be multiple possible stories at once that it ultimately isn’t any story at all.

I love subtlety in stories – obviously, or I wouldn’t have done this whole ridiculously long commentary talking about all the subtle bits! But I only love subtlety when there’s actually something deliberate and meaningful that it points to once you take the time to look. And that’s what this story actually is: something with a concrete truth to it, even if some of the evidence pointing towards the truth is subtle and hidden and you have to look for it. It just… also has some extra twiddly bits that are desperately trying to make things seem ambiguous for the sake of making a narrative point about lies, but they really don’t truly throw the core of the story into question at all, because if they did then everything would fall apart.

The writers apparently want one of the messages of this story to be “sometimes things are just ambiguous and you’ll never be able to know what the truth is”. But… the message I’m actually ultimately getting from it, thinking about it here, is that despite how ambiguous things may seem on the surface, there is always a truth, and you can always find it if you look hard enough.

Shuichi: “If lies can change the world just as well as the truth can… Then lies… are just another way of telling the truth.”

Um, no? Having a tangible impact on the world does not stop something untrue from being untrue. Shuichi, why are you the one saying this? You’re supposed to have more sense than that. Apparently the writers are just trying to get him to to wax lyrical about their intended theme of this story even in ways that don’t make any sense for him.

Himiko: “I guess it’s not important whether it’s a truth or a lie. Just what it leads to…”

Shuichi: “Yeah. That’s what I believe.”

That’s a better way of putting this! Some lies or fictions can have a positive impact on people, sure, and maybe you can argue that that’s what really matters. But that doesn’t magically make them true.

(If it did, then, welp, I guess that means Kaito is real you guys, you heard it here first.)

They’re also still not properly distinguishing between deliberately-deceptive lies and wilfully-bought-into fiction, which I wish they had done. There is a meaningful difference between the two.

The training spot is still intact, despite everything! Obviously they’ll hardly be able to use it any more once they get out of here, but still. I am glad it is okay. And leaving it miraculously intact even seems pretty deliberate by the out-universe writers, because man is everything around it nothing but rubble. It is good that they understand how important the training spot is. There are precious memories of Kaito there.

Shuichi: (Was this lie able to change something? Was this lie able to change someone? If it was able to change even the smallest thing…)

Yes, Shuichi! It was! It really, really was.

---

[Chapter-end bonus ramble] [Commentary-end bonus ramble] [Bonus content posts]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 6 #class trial #epilogue #commentary

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tremendouspeachduck · 4 years

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Psychopaths walk among us. Here's how to resist their evilness.

How do the Dems try to manipulate?

The psychopath patient believes military is nothing more than a strong-arm to subjugate other countries or peoples. They don’t get that we defend what we’re proud of.

Our country cheered yet another stellar jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And unlike the sluggish expansion of the Obama years, the lion’s share of this labor market strength benefits middle-income and previously ignored workers. For example, non-managerial wages accelerated at a 12-month rate of 2.7 percent, the highest in a decade. The jobless rate for non-college graduates fell to the lowest level since 2001. Even for those who did not complete high school, good news abounds, as the jobless rate for that working-class, underdog population has now been below 6 percent for the each of the past five months… .

They use ways to convince. "Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic that can be described in different variations of three words: 'That didn't happen,' 'You imagined it,' and 'Are you crazy?'" Therapist explains. "Gaslighting is perhaps one of the most insidious manipulative tactics out there because it works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment."

How can you fight back? "Ground yourself in your own reality--sometimes writing things down as they happened, telling a friend, or reiterating your experience to a support network can help to counteract the gaslighting effect,"

The psychopath patient believes military costs too much money. How can they put a price on reforms?

With Pres. Trump all the minorities are gaining. These reforms represent a particularly powerful tailwind for Hispanics, statistically by far the most entrepreneurial demographic in America. Speaking of Hispanics, the labor market news for them has been stellar. In U.S. history, there are only eight months where Hispanics report a jobless rate below 5 percent, and an incredible seven of those eight months have been in the last year alone under Trump’s growth agenda. The news is similarly strong for blacks, where the gap between black and white unemployment shrank to the smallest disparity on record. If President Trump is a racist, as his media critics constantly (and unfairly) allege, then he is remarkably bad at it!

They use ways to convince. You know when toxic people claim all the nastiness that surrounds them is not their fault, but yours? That's called projection. We all do it a little, but the narcissist and psychopath do it a lot. "Projection is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility of one's negative behavior and traits by attributing them to someone else," notes the therapist.

The solution? "Don't 'project' your own sense of compassion or empathy onto a toxic person and don't own any of the toxic person's projections either," The therapist recommends. "Projecting our own conscience and value system onto others has the potential consequence of being met with further exploitation."

The psychopath patient has conspiracy beliefs. Example. It can be said that a co-worker sometimes fails to consider the long-term ramifications of certain financial decisions. The office psychopath claims you called him "a loose cannon." You noted the deal could possibly go south if X, Y, and Z conditions occur. Your narcissistic colleague tells the boss you said the deal is "a disaster."

What's going on? It's not just that your nemesis didn't understand what you said. It's that he or she had no interest in understanding.

"The malignant narcissist isn’t always an intellectual mastermind--many of them are intellectually lazy. Rather than taking the time to carefully consider a different perspective, they generalize anything and everything you say, making blanket statements that don't acknowledge the nuances in your argument or take into account the multiple perspectives you've paid homage to," The therapist says, summing up this behavior.

To counter it, "hold onto your truth and resist generalizing statements by realizing that they are in fact forms of black and white illogical thinking."

The psychopath and Dems want to take it all away with tax hikes. But Pres. Trump keeps delivering in spite of not one media good report.

The psychopath patient doesn't like the military since it acts as an arm of the U.S. government in other countries where the immediate benefit to the U.S. is not always evident. They believe the military needs to stay at home and let the other countries deal with their own problems.

"The abusive narcissist and sociopath employ a logical fallacy known as 'moving the goalposts' in order to ensure that they have every reason to be perpetually dissatisfied with you. This is when, even after you've provided all the evidence in the world to validate your argument or taken an action to meet their request, they set up another expectation of you or demand more proof," says the therapist.

Don't play that game. "Validate and approve of yourself. Know that you are enough and you don't have to be made to feel constantly deficient or unworthy in some way," The therapist advises.

The DEMS want all nations to stand down - to let the UN run the world - this can never happen, right?

Healing Horses

The psychopath patient sees the armed forces as destroying the environment with pollution, chemicals and products of the nuclear age.

Switching conversational topics sounds innocent enough, but in the hands of a master manipulator, a change of subject becomes a means to avoid accountability. "The narcissist doesn't want you to be on the topic of holding them accountable for anything, so they will reroute discussions to benefit them," the therapist notes.

This sort of thing can go on forever if you let it, making it impossible to actually engage on the relevant issue. Try "the "broken record method" to fight back: "Continue stating the facts without giving in to their distractions. Redirect their redirection by saying, 'That's not what I am talking about. Let's stay focused on the real issue.' If they're not interested, disengage and spend your energy on something more constructive."

The psychopath patient sees the armed forces as those types that have joined the military, but have become disenchanted for some reason or another. They may not have gotten the position or training they wanted, didn't like the structured environment or got into trouble. These are the men and women who lived it for awhile, but couldn't adapt, so they become fanatically anti military.

There are other ways a psychopath can manipulate:

Smear - "When toxic types can't control the way you see yourself, they start to control how others see you; they play the martyr while you're labeled the toxic one. A smear campaign is a preemptive strike to sabotage your reputation and slander your name," the therapist explains.

Sometimes true evil geniuses will even divide and conquer, pitting two people or groups against each other. Don't let them succeed. "Document any form of harassment," the therapist advises, and make sure not to rise to the bait and let the person's horribleness provoke you into behaving in just the sort of negative ways they've falsely attributed to you.

Devalue - Beware when a colleague seems to love you while aggressively denigrating the last person who held your position. "Narcissistic abusers do this all the time--they devalue their exes to their new partners, and eventually the new partner starts to receive the same sort of mistreatment as the narcissist's ex-partner," the therapist says. But this dynamic can happen in the professional realm as well as the personal one.

Simple awareness of the phenomenon is the first step to countering it. "Be wary of the fact that how a person treats or speaks about someone else could potentially translate into the way they will treat you in the future," the therapist cautions.

mean jokes- The problem isn't your sense of humor, it's the hidden intention of that cutting joke. "The covert narcissist enjoys making malicious remarks at your expense. These are usually dressed up as 'just jokes' so that they can get away with saying appalling things while still maintaining an innocent, cool demeanor. Yet any time you are outraged at an insensitive, harsh remark, you are accused of having no sense of humor," the therapist says.

Don't let the office abuser gaslight you into thinking it was all innocent fun--it wasn't.

Triangulation - One of the smartest ways truly toxic people distract you from their nastiness is by focusing your attention on the supposed threat of another person. This is called triangulation. "The narcissist loves to 'report back' falsehoods about what others say about you," the therapist warns. To resist the tactic, realize that the third party in the drama is being manipulated as well--he or she is another victim, not your enemy.

You can also try "reverse triangulation," or "gaining support from a third party that is not under the narcissist's influence."

Please leave message below, then Go To top, nav to previous or next

#politics #military #manipulation #psychopath

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screamingatanemptyroom · 5 years

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Erin/Gerald Arc 2 Part 14

Next part here! Got excited and stayed up late to write these scenes! Hope you guys like it. (Thanks again everyone for your comments and messages! Seeing everyone’s reaction to the story as it continues is the best part of my day!)

Master post linked here

Erin stood behind Isabelle, feeling frozen inside.

She watched the other girl panic as she looked around for the source of her voice. She had cast an illusion spell. The normally difficult magic was flowing easily for her as she convinced her target that she couldn’t see her.

Strange. Erin thought calmly. I thought Aunt Elsinore said that illusion magic was connected to emotion. It’s so simple right now, but I feel nothing.

She raised her hand, tearing reality around her. The world shifted around Isabelle. She lay on the ground, covering her head, moaning with fear.

Reaching forward, Erin grasped the young woman’s ankle, stabilizing it between both hands before reinforcing her strength with magic and carefully pulling it out of joint. She screamed in pain, grasping her foot and backing away until her back was against a tree, her panicked breaths had whimpers of fear mixed in, her eyes darting around constantly as if trying to peer through the forest around her.

Still she saw nothing.

Erin took a long knife from her belt, her eyes cold, and plunged it into the girl’s shoulder, pinning her to the tree.

“COWARD!” Isabelle shouted, her eyes wide with pain, sobbing uncontrollably. “YOU ATTACK FROM A HIDING PLACE BUT YOU’RE TOO AFRAID TO FACE ME?!”

Her other arm was broken easily, Isabelle screamed in pain and fear. “WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU?!”

Erin dropped the illusion, instead coating herself in flames. She reached out with a burning hand and grasped the girl by the neck, lifting her off the ground. The knife remained in her shoulder and pulled out of the tree with her. The skin of the girl’s throat underneath her hand blistered, the hair singing with the heat and curling away. Isabelle couldn’t talk, couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. She could finally see her attacker, but it was not a girl... it was a creature from her nightmares, made of nothing but flames and hatred.

“You’re right.” Erin replied calmly, the crackle of flames surrounding her, consuming her, but still she felt nothing but coldness. “I am a monster. You shouldn’t have touched me and mine.” Her hand started to tighten on her neck.

“ERIN WAIT!!!!”

The girl on fire paused in her motions, looking up at the loud cry of alarm. It was Catherine, running quickly, her face pale. “Don’t kill her!”

Erin stared at the older girl, trying to understand her words. “She hurt him. She might have killed him.” The flames rose higher around her, and Isabelle let out a strangled shriek of fear.

“She’s not the mastermind! This is not her type of scheme! Politics, yes! Gossip, definitely. But poisoning and sabotage? Someone is using her.”

“…” Erin was hesitating; fighting the strong desire within her to simply close her hand, end the girl’s life.

She’s a threat. A voice whispered within her. She’ll hurt me, kill those I love.

“Erin… please.”

Better to end her now.

“Please, put her down… for Gerald, so we can catch who really was behind this.”

At his name her eyes wavered, Erin for the first time felt a sharp pain in her chest, a sliver of warmth in the ice that had settled within her since she saw him fall. Slowly, she let the girl down, the flames sputtering and dying around her until it was just Erin standing there, her eyes still full of the promise of death.

“Don’t let her kill me!” Isabelle cried out, trying to back away from the other girl despite her severe injuries.

“Talk.” Catherine demanded, her voice uncaring. “Or I’ll give you back to Erin to finish off.”

“You think you can…”

“Talk.” It was only a whisper, but as Erin spoke up, Isabelle whimpered with fear and fell silent before slowly trying to explain.

“It was… it was the men that Richard meets with.”

“Who?” Catherine knelt down next to the girl, watching her closely.

“I don’t know who they are!” The girl slammed the ground beside her with her non-broken arm, irritated. “Men in black cloaks and masks. He always makes me go away when he meets with them, he doesn’t trust me.” She sniffed. “Gerald used to trust me when we were engaged.”

Isabelle’s voice broke off with a strangled gurgle as water started to fill her mouth. Erin watched her struggle, her face calm but her eyes burning with rage. “Say his name again.” She whispered, continuing to activate her water magic as the other girl drowned. “Just try.”

“Erin!” Catherine called out shortly.

Sighing, Erin gestured lightly, pulling the liquid from Isabelle’s lungs.

“YOU MANIAC!” She sputtered. “You could have killed me!”

“That was the point.” Erin’s voice was empty of emotion, causing the other two girls to shiver. “Now do you have anything else useful to say?”

“The masked men approached me! It’s not my fault!” Isabelle cried out, leaning away from the violence oozing from Erin’s every pore. “They gave me that silver artifact, and I left it outside his sister’s room, since… I knew he wouldn’t accept it from me. But I never meant to hurt him!”

Catherine narrowed her eyes. “What did they tell you that it would do?”

“…” Isabelle looked at the ground, avoiding the other two’s gaze.

“ What. Did. They. Tell. You?” Catherine repeated slowly.

“Tha- that it would make him see me in a new light.” She stared intently at her hands. “Take me back.”

“Brainwash him.”

“No! I mean… ugh, it sounds so twisted and dirty when you say it like that!” The girl was crying again. “I might have left him for Richard, but that was because I thought it would give me a better chance of being queen, but the king and queen just hate me now. It would be best if I could just turn things back the way they were.”

“And now you might have killed him.” Erin sighed, sitting on the ground, then looked up at Gerald’s sister with a tired expression. “You should have just let me eliminate her.”

“Don’t tempt me.” Catherine stared at the girl in disgust. “Where does Richard meet these masked men?”

“… In the abandoned seventh tower, at midnight.”

“Every night?”

“No, but they were supposed to meet tonight. He told me to stay away.”

Erin stood up, walking towards the palace.

“I’ll follow the lead.”

Catherine also jumped to her feet, startled by the change in attitude. “What about…”

Erin kept walking. “Take her back, make her confess, or don’t. Punish her however. Just make sure she never enters my sight again.” Erin paused, looking at the girl with a gaze filled with pain and grief. “Next time, it won’t matter how many people are protecting you…”

Isabelle shivered, her eyes wide.

“I will kill you… and I will take my time doing it.” It was spoken with the absolute confidence of one experienced with pain and death. Once she was sure they understood, Erin turned, and walked into the forest.

She was gone.

Gerald woke up in his bed, surrounded by worried people. He sat up, groaning as he ached from multiple places. Sensing the anxious atmosphere, he put on a goofy smile, and asked.

“Did I win?”

Everyone groaned, looking off in different directions.

“You got squashed, man.” Frederick laughed. “It was pretty horrendous.”

“By Richard?” Gerald groaned, holding his head in his hands. “Man, I don’t think I’ve ever lost to him in non-magic combat. How embarrassing.”

“…” Everyone acted even more awkwardly.

“What?”

Again it was Frederick to answer. “Well… Good news is, you probably would have won under normal circumstances. Bad news is that you were under the influence of an evil artifact and completely got destroyed in front of everyone.”

“An artifact…? But how…” He hesitated. “Oh no, the bracelet.”

A small body threw itself on to the bed, almost knocking him over with a storm of regretful tears.

“I’M SO SORRY!” Maddie cried. “I didn’t know it would be bad!”

Gerald hugged her tightly “It’s okay, Mads! I’m fine! Look!” He grinned and spread his arms widely. “All in one piece!”

She sniffed, wiping her tears back “You promise? You’re not mad?”

“ I promise!” He ruffled her hair, causing her to giggle. He then looked around, a concerned expression taking over his face.

“Guys… where’s Erin?”

“Everyone out.” It was Catherine. “I need to talk to him.”

Slowly, uncomfortably, the crowd of people shuffled out, leaving only the two siblings behind. Catherine quietly took a seat next to the bed, and stared at him closely. “Are you okay?”

“Sis, I’m fine…” His face was growing panicked. “I-is Erin okay? Please tell me she’s okay, you’re really scaring me here.”

“She’s fine… physically.” Catherine hesitated, tilting her head as she thought over her next words.

“You may want to find another girl to marry.”

Gerald sat up, enraged. “What do you mean?!”

“I mean…” She rubbed her eyes, looking tired. “I mean she’s a broken person, Gerald. Not the kind of broken you can fix.” She stood up, pacing slowly back in forth in the room. “She cares about you… deeply. When she thought you might die…” Catherine swallowed. “She would have killed Isabelle, and she wouldn’t have hesitated.”

“Why Isabelle?”

“She was behind it, partly.” Briefly she explained what had happened, what Isabelle had revealed.

“Richard’s a traitor? Working with the terrorists who attacked the opening ceremony?” Gerald’s face turned pale. “And you let her go alone to face them? What if she gets hurt?” He tried to struggle up out of bed, only to be pushed back down by his sister.

“I couldn’t have stopped her if I tried, and she wasn’t in the mood for company.” Shaking her head slowly, she continued. “Gerald… you can’t… I mean, if you marry someone like her, and someone hurts you, I don’t know what she’ll do. I have a feeling she’s more powerful than she looks, forget taking out the perpetrators, she might destroy the whole country.”

“You might be right.” Gerald’s smile was sad. “She probably could… and would do that.”

“So you’ll think about what I said?”

“No.” His face was impassive.

She sighed. “Why?”

“Because I love her just as much. Because if someone hurt her…” He shook. “I can’t think about it. You don’t know her. You’ve just met the normal mask she wears. You’re right that’s she’s broken, but she’s so much more…” He ran his hands through his hair, trying to find the words to explain. “She had only known me for a few days, the first time she saved my life. A stupid duel, a surprise attack, but she didn’t even hesitate to be burned for my sake.”

“I didn’t-“ Catherine tried to interrupt but he wouldn’t let her.

“She was broken by the people who should have protected her, betrayed and hurt until there was almost nothing left.” He stared at his hands, his eyes haunted. “But she rose beyond that. Her best friend betrayed her, and less than an hour later Erin almost threw her own life away to save that girl. I’ve seen her break her hand to nothing but bits of skin and bones, been broken, beaten and dying and not even shed a tear.” He smiled sadly, tears in in own eyes. “But she did cry… when she realized she was starting to care for me. It scared her that much to depend on someone, to have someone that loves her. And I do… I love her. I can’t be without her. So before asking me to leave her just because she’s broken, you have to stop and consider … I might just be broken too.”

“…” There was silence as each solemnly stared at the other.

“You love her that much?” She whispered.

“So much more than that.” He moved restlessly, wincing with pain as his body complained with the action. “When can I see her?”

“Recover first. I’ll make sure she’s okay. What are you going to do about the magical control competition? It’s tomorrow.”

The next segment of the competition was on magical control, using an elemental magic, the competitors had to complete given tasks with finesse.

Gerald thought back to the water sculpture he had made for Erin weeks ago and smiled softly. That had been one of the few times she smiled honestly at him. The first time she had kissed him.

“I’ll compete. I’ll be ready.” He grabbed her hand. “Just make sure she stays safe. She means everything.”

“… I promise.”

Erin hid herself in the empty seventh tower, casting an illusion spell to blend herself in with the back wall. She sat on the floor, holding her knees, quietly waiting for midnight to come. Reaching a shaking hand into the collar of her uniform, she pulled out the artifact that Gerald had given her. Holding it in her hand, she smiled as it found his location. It was in the general direction of the living quarters. He was in his room.

He’s still alive. She sighed silently with relief. He’s not hurt enough to be taken to a healer’s building. Olivia saved him, he’s okay. Clutching it tightly for a moment, she pressed the stone to her lips lightly before returning it under her uniform. Erin then settled down patiently, to wait.

Hours later, the door opened, and five men walked in, quickly closing the doors behind them. The magical artifact lights were activated, illuminated those standing within the room. Four of the men were wearing black robes and masks that covered half their faces, very similar to the men who had attacked during the opening ceremony. The fifth one, however, wore no disguise, and was easily recognizable.

“Care to explain what happened today?” Richard asked with an icy tone.

“We neutralized your brother during the competition, as agreed.” The masked man in the front spoke for the others, unconcerned by the prince’s anger.

“I was supposed to win!” He slammed his fist on the nearby desk. “Why did I lose to the over-muscled military academy brat?!”

“Your highness may remember, our deal was to ensure that you defeated your brother. Any other battle’s outcomes were solely up to your own ability.”

“Insolent!” Richard snapped, before sitting down at the desk with a sigh. His chair scooted backwards, almost hitting Erin’s boots. She pulled her legs back, hoping to avoid detection. “Forget about it. Fortunately the plan worked in taking my brother down. Unfortunately, that foolish girl who follows him around got him a healer too quickly, he might even make it to tomorrow’s competition.” He grasped his chin, thinking deeply.

“I’m just glad we were able to remove the bracelet from him in the commotion, it cannot be used as evidence.”

The masked man seemed unconcerned. “Indeed.”

“That girl interfered with my plans… plus my parents approve of her. If she’s strong enough, she could upset the power balance here.” He hesitated, then swallowed, looking up at the men with a determined expression. “Could you arrange to have her… disappear?”

“Kill her?”

“…Yes.”

“No.” The man smiled, but the expression was cold. “The master has plans for her. She will not marry your brother, rest assured.”

Richard looked slightly uncomfortable, but nodded. “Well then, I guess it’s alright.”

“Now, we need the border’s patrol schedules for the next week. Do you have them?”

“They’ve changed them, after the attack here. More troops were pulled into the capital.” He handed them a stack of papers. The masked man studied it quietly for a moment, then handed it to the man behind him.

“They may change again, after tomorrow. We will trust you to keep abreast of any shifts in the movements of the royal guards.”

“Why are you so concerned about the border?” Richards eyes darted back and forth, he looked guilty.

“That is not for you to know.” The man chuckled. “Just stay clear of the stage in the final round of the magical control competition.”

“I wasn’t chosen to be one of the representatives for that one, so it shouldn’t be a problem.” Richard laughed quietly. “Gerald though… he probably will make it to the final round knowing him.”

The two men nodded at each other, both smiling for different reasons. After a few more comments, Richard stood up, and they left.

Erin was alone in the dark. She continued to sit there silently, her whole body a picture of stillness. But clearly behind her eyes… a storm was brewing.

#writing #Erin/Gerald #violence #revenge #Serious feelings here #big plots afoot #but they have to deal with erin first #poor them

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momestuck · 5 years

Text

Epilogues: Candy, ch 39-40 (Epilogue 8) and Postscript

We’re at the final stretch.

At this point it may just be that I’m hungry and have been reviewing this thing all day, but I’m certainly ready for it to end.

...though after reading it, I was not in fact ready for any of this.

Chapter 39

Dave and Jade, on the frontier of the Resistance - a dead-end position Karkat put them in to keep them out of harms way and avoid any possibility of Heroic death. Shitty liberties are back.

OK so this chapter goes places I was not even ready for. What the fuck V!?

Barack Obama is in this chapter. As a hologram AI or something. Oh god, was this an element of that godawful horrible alternate-history that Hussie wrote that one time?

Obama here is playing the role of like, noble old wise dude giving wisdom to the hero. Which is kind of something... Obama has been rather demythologised these days as people point to things like ‘record numbers of deportations’ and ‘weekly signing off on a list of assassination targets’ and ‘never actually closing Guantanomo’ as parts of his legacy (to list just a few that spring to mind!) but anyway here he’s basically King Arthur or something.

We learn that Obama stumbled on a lab with a transporter pad and went to the Medium and a whole bunch of shit and died a Heroic death and god this is far too late to be revealing all this!!

it just goes on... heavily implying that Dirk and Obama fucked, for example. as a device to drop some ‘wisdom’ about like, gender and sexuality are what we make of them, it’s.................. fucking something

so... and I have a kind of pained expression just typing this... Obama makes Dave absorb his ‘ultimate self’ into one body, all the possible timelines, which kills him... but then takes his ‘ascended essence’ and places it into a robot body, containing (I guess) all possible permutations of Dave, without any of the doubts.

literally what, V

literally what

Chapter 40

This better be good for making me sit through all this bullshit lol

So we get back to alt-Calliope, who explains a little about how this inconsequential world is being held up only by her own supply of gravity or something.

JADE: what you’ve described is a state of empirical ennui resulting from the material circumstances here.

JADE: but the material circumstances of this world have no objective existential value.

JADE: this world, unlike the canonical horrors from which it is hermetically insulated, will always fail to meet the combined criteria for truth, relevance, and essentiality that would endow this realm with any real gravity.

JADE: its own naturally occurring supply of gravity, rather than the artificial supply i have given it.

JADE: as such, what transpires here is characterized by experiential frivolity.

JADE: physically, it is cordoned off by the black hole’s event horizon. it is safe. untouchable.

JADE: inescapable.

ARADIA: that sounds ominous

JADE: it cannot be ominous because it cannot truly be anything with tangible significance.

JADE: one could describe it as a phantasmal projection confined within my horizon.

JADE: it was created by a choice that made it possible for that horizon to expand infinitely, to consume infinitely.

JADE: and since that choice could not coexist with canon events, this place manifested to here to support its consequences.

JADE: if this world were capable of anything either essential, relevant, or true in some stable combination, then it would perpetuate a corrosive paradox.

JADE: as such, insulation from what is out there, and the inescapable well it rests in, is what protects all it holds inside.

The ‘choice’ must then be John’s choice of ‘Candy’, which meant the black hole would never stop growing, because LE would never be defeated? Which like, would have made Earth paradoxical, but instead Earth C got tucked into a little protected pocket artificially upheld by Calliope? Something like that fuck

Anyway, the ‘Prince’ that Calliope was so worried about is not Caliborn (who I now recall was a Lord), but Dirk (who is after all Prince of Hope). Dirk apparently ‘removed himself from this reality’ in order to ‘consolidate his power’; he ‘cannot threaten this world’ but, I guess, threatens something else... or in fact ‘the entire canvas of reality over a given cosmic span’.

To explain this, Calliope attempts to explain the nature of stories. She presents the same story - a very condensed story of the Signless, i.e. ‘a martyr died and said fuck’, in two different ways. This is presented as: in her dialogue colour (fixed width font, red), and in the narration font (black serif font).

Calliope’s point seems to be: we interpret a story very differently when it’s told to us with the neutral voice of narrative authority, and as a specific voice that might represent ‘an agenda’. Once a story comes to be seen being a ‘voiced’ rather than ‘voiceless’ story, she maintains that it becomes corrupted - it throws the rest of the story in a more doubtful light, I guess.

So trying to connect this back... it seems that, if Dirk (who’s still dead?) can make the story seem not so much authoritative as written with an agenda, he can in effect be destroying it? If he assumes control, and makes it a ‘voiced’ story? Though how the hell is he to accomplish that?

What the fuck did the Obama chapter have to do with anything in that case? There’s no room to explore the implications of these massive declarations?

And also on an extra-narrative level: this story that we’re reading is very obviously ‘voiced’, and has been from the beginning. Like Brechtian theatre, it’s constantly drawing attention to its artificiality. I’m never not conscious of Hussie, of V, of Cephied, etc. ... what is there to undermine, here?

Well, we just have a postscript left. No sense waiting I guess?

Postscript

What we have here is... the mysterious fembot that Dirk was building, ironing his ‘anime’ god tier uniform, on a spaceship far away from Earth C...

She’s not his maid - just bored. And she’s someone who rode on the meteor, apparently. So who does that leave...

Whoever it is, her body is on the wall. It’s beaming her consciousness out from the sleeping body to control the robot.

The mysterious woman turns out to be... ‘Rosebot’. Which means the Rose who was left behind on Earth C, who featured throughout the plot, lost her connection to the broader ‘meta Rose’ because... she’s not the same Rose anymore? She’s a different Rose? I’m so confused.

We have a sleeper!Rose on the ship, Rosebot who is being controlled by sleeper!Rose, and also EarthC!Rose who’s living a happy life with Kanaya, notwithstanding the genocidal war she’s embroiled in.

Rose and Dirk are planning to... settle a new planet, in order to create a new SBurb session. To what end? Well, uh.

To what end????

I don’t fucking know, because that right there is the end of Candy!

That’s the Epilogue? That’s like the first book in an entire new trilogy. How in the heck is Meat supposed to bring all this to some kind of ‘satisfying’ conclusion............

conclusion

honestly what did i just read lol. still a little overwhelmed

whatever it is, I think it absolutely deserves the dubious honour of being ‘more Homestuck’... with all that entails

not quite sure I was ready for Dirk to become the scheming anime mastermind behind the whole plot, but here we go

i’ve done enough of this for today. some day soon (tomorrow perhaps!), we’ll get to the ‘meat’ of the story...

#momestuck

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ask-svt-hearteu · 6 years

Text

Mafia! Woozi

Anon requested: “ since it’s our jihoonie’s birthday today, can i request a mafia!au for out vobo? hehe i just saw that requests are open & i got rly excited !! 💗💗 — daydreaming anon (hbd woozi i love you sO MUCH) “

Word Count: 3679

you never thought you’d be here

3:58am on a Saturday in one of the most heavily protected buildings in the entire city

hooking up your sad $535 laptop and praying to whoever runs the universe

that you’ll be able to go home and eat breakfast in time

as is the life of a hacker

a professional top-of-the-line hacker for hire

too bad the government hasn’t noticed your talent yet

or you would be working for the good guys

but you’re working for whoever helps pay the rent now

and if you take down some corrupt businesses while you’re working for the mob

who cares

that’s enough vigilante justice for you

honestly you’d think that one of the most powerful companies in the city would know better than to have such weak protection for their systems

you shake your head as you smirk and carefully unplug your laptop

done

easiest $30,000 dollars of your life

the company had been known to “donate” a percentage of their revenue back into the city

things like feeding and housing the homeless

or ensuring kids go to school and aren’t on the streets

but in reality they were pocketing all of it

and come morning

you would have just exposed their asses

climbing back out the vent you came through

you shouldered the backpack with your laptop

and crawled until you reached the building’s service entrance

dropping down you were fully intending to walk casually straight out the building

until you felt your arm jerk as you were roughly pulled behind a wall

“What the fu-“

the person who did it covered your mouth roughly

and your eyes widened as you saw one of the guards walk by

you silently cursed at yourself for not monitoring the CCTV system

you had assumed hacking into it was fine

but you forgot to check the guard’s positioning

after he passed you turned back to the person who had just saved your ass

“Thanks I guess.”

he didn’t say anything but gave you a sideways glance and shrugged as he pulled out a definitely more expensive and way better laptop than yours

as he connected it to one of the computers in the room

“Who are you btw?” You asked eyeing him suspiciously

he smirked

“What’s it to you?” he replied quietly

it almost sounded like he was teasing you

“Sorry if you got offended at me trying to be polite.” You scoff annoyed

who was this guy?

he had jet black hair

and was not super tall from what you could see

but when he turned back to look at you

your breath caught in your throat

“You broke into a high security building to clumsily hack into a system and expose their lies, I don’t think manners are our top priority right now.” he answered looking straight into your eyes

you stared blankly in shock

“How did you...?” how did he know?

“Regardless I’m here to undo it.”

you watched as he clicked shut his laptop and faced you

“The fuck! I’m getting paid, what am I supposed to tell my client?” you said

he smirked again as he packed up his laptop

“There are better ways to expose this company.”

and with that he disappeared

like legit

gone poof

he walked found his escape route before you even had time to process what he meant

you blinked and he was gone

when you finally returned to your apartment when the sun came up

and clicked on the tv

the news was playing

“-donates half of their entire yearly revenue to creating shelters for the homeless...”

your jaw dropped

while you had wanted to expose to the media this company’s lies

whoever that guy was last night

had transferred over half of the entire company’s revenue

in the five minutes he had spent saving you from lifetime in prison

who the fuck was he?

his name was Lee Jihoon

and honestly did he ever think he’d have to deal with other hackers even close to his caliber?

nope

but you had broken through into the company’s servers in record times

he was intrigued

and more than a bit competitive

“Jeonghan, you think you could look up someone for me?” he asked walking into Svt’s main meeting room

Jeonghan was hunched over some papers planning the next job no doubt

without looking up, Jeonghan said

“That’s like asking if I like taking naps Jihoon, who do you think I am? All I need is a name-”

“I don’t have her name yet.”

Jeonghan raised an eyebrow swiveling in his chair to face Jihoon

his blue prints and detailed plans fluttering at the sudden movement

“Her?” Jeonghan questioned, teasing smile on his lips

“I can’t work with you.” Jihoon rolled his eyes while walking off to find Seungcheol

“WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘HER’?!?!?” Jeonghan yelled after him smiling

Jihoon had joined Seungcheol’s team a while ago

one of the original members

but the others didn’t really know about him at first

because he kept to himself

usually tinkering with gadgets in his own office in the Svt complex

overlooking the city

overlooking their territory

he also may have held up a gun to Soonyoung’s head when Soonyoung tried to touch him

jokingly

or so everyone would like to think XD

one time Seungkwan had lost a bet to the others

and was dared to go into Jihoon’s office

-just to try to learn more about this teammate they didn’t see much of

but they got caught

and Seungcheol was scolding them until Jihoon walked out and told them to just order dinner and call it done

and tbh although this cold mafia hacker didn’t easily trust people

that one night where he got to sit down with the whole gang for a meal finally

and although he would never admit it

after being around the whole gang for years

he trusted them with his life

one of the best hackers hands down

sometimes jokingly gets called the cyber shadow

bc he’s Svt’s hidden member

doesn’t go out in the field for most missions

but has a hand in planning, masterminding, and orchestrating the whole thing

didn’t like going out for any jobs anyway

that is until he had the proper motivation to

you quietly slunk through the security room

attaching your USB to the main computer

uploading the code that would shut off alarms for an hour or until you turned it back on

this job was easy

stop the security system long enough to allow your client to rob the facility

once the system was down you called the client

“Yea the systems are down.”

and you leaned back in your chair to monitor the camera systems as your client gang snuck into the facility

“Honestly thought you’d be some social justice warrior but it looks like you’re in this for money.”

you nearly fell out of the chair at the sound of that voice

one you’d never forget

“You!” You pointed at the guy you met that night

he had entered the security room quietly behind you and was leaning against the wall

“Yep it’s me.” He smirked setting down a bag

his black hair tousled lightly and hidden behind his hoodie

he might be considered cute or good looking maybe

ahem even though he’s totally not your type

“I mean I do what I do for money too, but I’m surprised you play dirty also.” He laughed taking out a laptop

“What are you doing here?” You say cutting straight to the point

“While you’re helping this small gang live for another day, I’m helping kings grow an empire.”

his smirk was really starting to make your heart flutter annoy you

“and so you’re here because...?” you ask rolling your eyes

“There’s access to the servers from this security room since the facility houses both companies.”

you snort

“You’re trying to hack the credit loan company next door?” You try to hold back giggles

what kind of kings, please you think sarcastically

here you were stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars and he was trying to hack a credit loan company

“Information is much more valuable than money sometimes, a big drug smuggler wired money through this place and I want to know how much.” He shrugs

“Speaking of information...” he says turning to walk right up to your chair

you’re taken back as he walks right up in your face

“What’s your name?” He asks placing a hand on either side of your chair

his weight being balanced on his hands resting on the arm rests of your chair

his eyes inches from yours

“I don’t kiss and tell.” you say not backing down from his stare

it was hard breathing with him so close

he smiled

“Let’s trade info then.” He laughed, “a name for a name.”

“How can I trust you?” You saying tilting your head

he steps back from you finally giving you room to breathe again

“You can’t trust me, but I promise that I actually do keep my word... sometimes”

you looked at him trying to decipher his words

he looked like that joking smirk was forever an aspect of his face

but in his eyes

you thought you saw something genuine

curiosity maybe

or something else

“Fine, my name is y/n.” You give in, “but maybe I’m lying or maybe I’m not.”

“I’m Lee Jihoon.” He said breaking out into a smile before continuing his hacking

at that moment your phone vibrated indicating your clients were done with the job

Jihoon was still bent over his laptop typing away

you thought about his adorable smirk and how it made your heart skip a beat

and you blushed, flustered that he showed you up last time

but this time you’d be the last one laughing

you unhooked your USB that had been preventing the alarms from going off and ignored the warning window

and that was when the security room’s alarms started blaring making Jihoon jump

“Well hate to run while we were having so much fun,” you smirk, “but good luck explaining this to the cops.”

you ran out the room right as the doors locked behind you

as you looked back at him after getting into the car

rather than angry he looked exasperated

and slightly impressed maybe?

you drove off before the police really did appear

“SHE AHAHAHAHA SHE AHAHAHA LOCKED THE ROOM AHAHAHAHA.” Mingyu was dying on the ground laughing

“I swear I might actually shoot you.” Jihoon said blushing

“You have to admit she got you.” Joshua said bringing Jihoon a cup of cola and hiding a smile

“SHE FREAKING LOCKED HIM IN THE SECURITY ROOM!” Mingyu howled

“Wow she must be something.” Jeonghan chuckled, “When was the last time you were caught off-guard, Jihoon? I can’t remember that ever happening.”

“Luckily you got out before the cops showed.” Seungcheol smiled patting Jihoon on the back

they were all having a tad bit too much with the situation

“She must not know who she’s messing with.” Minghao said before getting up

“So tell me her name.” Jeonghan snickered

“Y/n.” Jihoon said done with everyone

“I’ll have her file to you by midnight.” with that the gang dispersed, leaving Jihoon to wonder

what kind of person are you?

you had a lot more run-ins with “Lee Jihoon” after that night in the security room

whether you were out doing little jobs or big ones

he always seemed to know where you were

“Are you following me?” you asked him one night

the both of you were at city hall

you were trying to get into the mayor’s financial plans, info that would sell

and he was connecting to the police line

“Why would I do that?” he retorted

it was dark so you didn’t see him blushing

but he had indeed followed you here

he wasn’t sure what it was

but you had not only intrigued him and caught his attention

but Jeonghan had been unable to dig up anything on you

which was almost impossible

Jeonghan knew how to get anything on anyone

and so Jihoon was here to find out info the old fashion way

talking

“You seem too smart of a person to be a criminal.” he began looking over your shoulder at the laptop you were working on

“So do you.” you respond ducking out from next to him to continue working

“I’m not a genius, but I think that if you’re not the best at something, you’ll always put more effort into it.” he shrugged

you clicked your laptop shut

“Wanna go get coffee?” you said suddenly

he looked up in surprise

“What?!”

“It’s almost 5am, and from running into you consistently these past few days, I realized I never thanked you for saving me from that guard. I’m not sorry about the security room thing though, that was funny.” you laughed, “but I’m going to go get coffee and if you want I’ll buy you a cup too, that way we’re even.”

“I don’t see how coffee makes us even.” he snorted

“Fine I’m leaving then.” you briskly turned around and started walking

you hear him jog to catch up to you and fall into step next to you

“Coffee is better than nothing i suppose.”

over a cup of coffee the two of you talked a bit

“So where did you learn how to hack?” you ask

“Are we close enough to be asking those kinds of questions?” he responded taking a sip of his coffee

“I suppose not.” you looked down disappointed

you weren’t sure about Jihoon

you two had met under dangerous circumstances

and you didn’t know enough about the guy to suddenly start liking him

but every time his eyes met yours

or whenever you watched him swiftly hacking into something

fingers flying over the keyboard the way a pianist’s fingers played the piano

you couldn’t help the feeling of awe and curiosity

who was he?

Jihoon coughed

“How about we start with what we do for a living?” he laughed, “I think that’s enough for now.”

so you told him a bit about being a hacker for hire

nothing really interesting

besides living

that’s all there was to it

you were just living your life one job at a time

he sighed

“I think I understand.” he looked out the window

“I was like that too until I found the others.” he stirred his cup before downing it

“Others?” you ask

“My friends, I guess you’d call them.”

you pursed your lips

“Don’t you know what friends are?” you asked in return

“I don’t really trust people you know, occupational hazard.” he chuckled

you understood

people too often stab you in the back when you’re doing this kind of job

it was hard to find anyone to trust

his phone buzzed

and you watched as he picked it up

“Looks like I gotta go.” he smiled, “It was actually kind of fun to see how normal people live out of the shadows.”

you nodded in agreement

“It was also nice talking to you.” you said reaching out to shake his hand, “Hopefully our next few run-ins can be on more friendly terms.” you laugh

he reaches for your hand

gently, as his hand takes yours

and as he pulls you closer to him

“Stay safe.” he says gently into your ear

and then he’s gone

you sit frozen in your spot at what just happened and look over at his empty cup

on the cup are nine letters scrambled up

you stare at it recalling him writing it on his cup when he was talking with you

and you realized

it’s his number

you pick up the cup, unconsciously smiling

and go home

you don’t see him the next few nights

heck for the whole week you don’t

you half-expected him to melt out of the shadows with a smirk on his face and some teasing comment about your hacking abilities

but he wasn’t around

it was more than a bit worrying

you had his number and you were tempted to call

but could you?

you shook your head as you made your way out that night for your next job

the client had been a bit of a mystery

they called using a disposable phone which wasn’t uncommon

except they also used voice modulation

suspicious perhaps but you were getting paid

you walked up to the address they had left

a small office building

and climbed in through a window

gently setting your things down you were about to begin when

the whole world went dark

and suddenly the smell of chloroform made the world feel dizzying as you slowly closed your eyes

when you woke up

your head hurt and everything felt upside down

but more than that

what greeted your vision first

was the appearance of a gun

pointed right at you

“You’re up.”

the voice was rough and you felt like throwing up at the sound of it

“Yea I’m up you freaking asses, what the fuck do you want?”

“We require your services.”

“Then go through the proper channels and pay me you pricks.” you said trying to keep clam

the gun was raised

“Is this enough payment?’ the voice said indicating the gun

“Whatever, let’s just get this done.” you took deep breaths

not that this hasn’t happened before

but you had never had a gun so close in your face

and it was terrifying to think you might not see the sun rise today

you pulled up to the desk of the room the men were in

and turned on the computer as they watched you

whoever had programmed the firewall for the servers knew what they were doing

you were nearly stumped

until you remembered something Jihoon had done that night in the security room

why did he come up in your thoughts now?

you remembered him telling you to stay safe

and looking at the guys with bullets ready to be fired at you

your eyes started tearing up

you know how these things go

as soon as you were done, you were dead

“Hurry it up.”

you opened the files on the computer and looked through some of it

a lot were mainly book stuff

how much this group was getting paid and when the latest orders for weapons were coming in

you assumed that whoever you were hacking, they must be a competing gang to the men currently holding you captive

you looked deeper into the files until you stumbled across a peculiar file

in it were names

“Yoon Jeonghan” you read to yourself

“likes napping and stealing my cola mostly, overall a good person to talk to”

“Hong Jisoo” you read the next file

“quiet and also not quiet, good listener.” you were curious

what kind of files were these?

and then one file popped up

“Y/n L/n.” you held your breath

“likes coffee at five am in the morning”

you knew who the computer belonged to

a bang on the door jolted you from the files

“Fuck!” the men scrambled to brace themselves as the door blew open

you took cover under the desk as you heard bullets going off and yelling

maybe this was all just a bad nightmare

you closed your eyes and silently listed off numbers

a hand gently took yours and you opened your eyes

Jihoon was there with the most adorable and relieved smile on his face

“Well, had I know you were coming to visit me today, I would have bought coffee.” he pulled you up into his arms and gently walked you out the room

“Don’t mind the guns and stuff, I’m sure you’re not all too curious about the guys that tried to kill you.” he said

you heard an edge to his voice but didn’t look at your surroundings until he had lead you to a separate room with a couch

sitting down with you, it finally hit you

you’re not dying today

you were shaking as he gently placed his arms around you

“I’m surprised you broke through my firewall, guess I have to fix that as soon as possible.” he chuckled wrapping you up in his arms

“The frick Jihoon.” you laughed smacking his arm, “I almost died and exposed your identity and you’re concerned about your firewall?”

“Well yea.” he smiled, “And I’m trying not to bash their heads in but Seungcheol said that would require a lot of clean up in the morning and I’m not down for that.”

you weren’t sure if he was joking or not

“Kidding, kidding, they’re all ok and currently being dropped off at the police station with a note that says ‘courtesy of your friendly neighborhood mafia’.”

“I still have no idea if you’re joking or not Jihoon.”

“Let’s just pretend I’m serious then.” he said as you both started laughing

“I’m just glad you’re safe.” you said blushing at hearing your own words

“Why wouldn’t I be, you were the one in trouble here y/n”

“I could have taken them.”

“Sure sure.” he smiled

“Listen, I’m not letting you out of my sight again. I genuinely thought that perhaps it’d be safer for you without interacting with me, but this situation only proved that I can’t let you go anywhere by yourself.” he said turning to face you

“So stay here with me will you?” his eyes looked gently into yours

“I-”

“We have high speed internet and netflix.” he laughed “If you’re interested.”

“So I’d have to live with the mafia?” you asked raising an eyebrow

“No you’re just living in our territory and that way I can see you more often.” he shrugged

“Ok but only if the netflix thing is for sure.” you laugh

and you’re surprised as he gently presses his lips against yours

the scent of something floral and citrusy warming you as his gentle lips kissed yours

“As long as you’re here with me.” he said

MASTERLIST

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Can No Time to Die Break the Final James Bond Movie Curse?

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Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond is coming to an end. This truth has been known ever since it was announced that Craig would reprise the role in No Time to Die, his fifth outing as 007. And yet, given the litany of delays that movie has endured largely due to the pandemic—remember when No Time to Die was slated for November 2019?—the reality of his leaving feels like it’s been almost taken for granted.

The curtain really is coming down this month for UK fans, and the No Time to Die marketing team is now making folks aware of that again with the recent viral clip of Craig’s teary eyed farewell speech from the day production wrapped on the Bond movie. After wearing Bond’s tuxedo for 15 years, Craig closes the book on a run that’s lasted longer than any other Bond actor’s, and with almost as many films as any thespian who’s ever called themselves James Bond. (Sean Connery still has six canonical James Bond movies under his belt, and Roger Moore holds the record with seven.)

So now that the movie is truly here, it’s worth wondering one of the quiet bits out loud: Will Craig do something almost no other Bond actor has done to date and finish his run on a high note? Because when you sit down and think about it, nearly every actor who’s ordered a shaken martini before him has signed off with the worst Bond movie of their tenure.

There are exceptions, of course: George Lazenby only played 007 once, and in a good movie too. But if one wanted to be glib, they could say On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) was then both his best and worst Bond entry. Beyond Lazenby’s solitary adventure, however, each Bond actor has ended on a sour note, which puts all the more pressure on No Time to Die to buck this trend…

Sean Connery Goes Bust in Diamonds Are Forever

This phenomenon began with the first and (in this writer’s opinion) best actor to ever purr, “The name’s Bond, James Bond.” As the man who helped invent much of the iconography we associate with the 007 character—imprinting a boyish insolence and brutal physicality to the role that author Ian Fleming arguably did not intend—Sean Connery played Bond in the character’s heyday. And unlike every actor who would follow (again excluding Lazenby), Connery got to enjoy the role at a time when Bond didn’t feel out of step with the zeitgeist and didn’t need to justify his existence. During the glory years of Bondmania, Connery and the producers were shaping pop culture instead of responding to it.

Yet that wasn’t quite true for the last time Connery put on the hairpiece. His initial run in the role included five back-to-back franchise classics in Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), and You Only Live Twice (1967). Admittedly, the first three of those movies have aged far better in the last 60 years than the final two, but all were well received in their moment and helped make an actor Fleming once described as “a ditch digger” into a global superstar who’d eventually be knighted by Her Majesty. Still, after five template-setting adventures, Connery was done—his frustrations over how he was paid for the movies didn’t help.

If Connery had ended his run with You Only Live Twice, his tenure would be seen as glittering as Goldfinger’s house paint. However, after Lazenby elected not to come back for a second outing as 007, and after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service closed out the 1960s as the lowest grossing Bond movie since Connery’s first two installments, producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman shipped a small fortune Connery’s way to convince him to return for Diamonds are Forever (1971), which I would charitably suggest is the worst Bond movie ever made.

To be sure, there are flashier targets that could hold that title, many of which do not include actors as generally beloved in the role as Connery. But Diamonds Are Forever featured a tired and bored looking performance from Connery, as well as a script and direction that retreated from the tragic cliffhanger ending of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in favor of something far more generic. Essentially a reworking of Connery’s previously most outrageous Bond films, Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever ups the camp factor as Bond again battles SPECTRE mastermind Blofeld (now played at his worst by Charles Gray). There’s some harebrained plot in which Blofeld is using South African diamonds to power a satellite’s laser that will lead to him holding the world’s nuclear arsenals hostage.

But really it’s just an excuse for Bond to go through the motions as he travels around Las Vegas and the larger American southwest. It then ends Connery’s run by letting 007 have a laugh as Blofeld, ostensibly the man who killed Bond’s wife (though she’s never mentioned in this film), gets away. James then kills two henchmen coded as gay with maximum homophobia while enjoying a cruise. It’s a film that already had one foot in the land of Austin Powers parody.

Technically, Connery would play Bond one more time in the non-Eon produced remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again (1983), but that’s not exactly a classic either…

Roger Moore’s Tired View to a Kill

There’s a lot that can be said about Roger Moore’s final 007 adventure, A View to a Kill (1985), but anything positive comes almost exclusively from the absolute banging Duran Duran song. That plus the movie’s less flattering qualities which appeal to connoisseurs of bad movie kitsch. Yes, Christopher Walken really does look high as a kite as he plays ‘80s yuppie supervillain Max Zorin, and Grace Jones as henchwoman May Day appears as though she’ll snap Moore in half.

But therein lies one of the film’s many problems: By the time Moore got to his seventh Bond movie, the actor was pushing 60 and looked it. By his own admission, he realized he stayed with the role too long when he met the mother of his leading lady, Tanya Roberts, and discovered she was younger than him. But the geriatric quality of Moore here is just one of a cacophony of woes, which when combined suggested that the series had become long in the tooth.

At his height of popularity, Moore had perfected his jovial gentleman charm offensives, playing a spy more inclined to disarm a situation with a well-placed punchline than a punch. This is exhibited in Moore’s best Bond adventure, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), a classic that plays as much like a romantic comedy as a typical 007 flick… even with the fate of the world hanging in the balance as a megalomaniac attempts to nuke the planet.

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For Your Eyes Only Was Not Supposed to Star Roger Moore

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After that high bar though, much of the Moore era chased the campy thrills of that movie to far lesser results. The one exception is For Your Eyes Only (1981), an underrated gem in the series which for the most part resembles a genuine Cold War adventure with the occasional concession to Bond formulae. Following that picture, Moore considered hanging up the Walther PPK, but was persuaded to come back for Octopussy (1983) and then A View to a Kill.

It is arguable Moore made worse Bond movies than AVTAK. For sheer camp spectacle, nothing outdoes the outrageousness of Moonraker (1979), and we’d argue Octopussy is one of the more forgettable Bond movies ever made. Yet it is the haggard, over-the-hill quality which makes A View to a Kill come off as faintly desperate, and a little bit sad as the franchise again dregs up the plot of Goldfinger and attempts to redress it with a limited Hollywood understanding of 1980s Silicon Valley, plus more violence and sex. It seemed dated even in ’85. If the Bond franchise is a series of peaks and valleys, Moore ended his run close to sea level.

Timothy Dalton Goes After Scarface in License to Kill

Timothy Dalton is the Bond actor that time has been kindest too. While his aggressive and perpetually angry version of the character was somewhat rejected by late ‘80s audiences who still had Moore’s interpretation fresh in mind—plus the media fiasco of Pierce Brosnan being cast as Bond and then forced to drop out—Dalton’s popularity has grown among diehard fans who enjoyed his underplayed bluntness. It’s an interpretation that looks ahead of its time, too, given the eventual popularity of Craig’s take on the role.

All that being said, I would argue Dalton never starred in a great Bond movie. His first outing, The Living Daylights (1987), has its moments and is another one of the rare Bond films that feels like an actual espionage thriller, even as it lacks the tension of From Russia With Love or the charm and terrific climax of For Your Eyes Only. It was then followed up by License to Kill (1989), a Bond picture that in spite of online chatter to the contrary is not some lost hidden gem.

In truth, License to Kill is one of those middling type of Bond movies that jump on the pop culture bandwagons of their day. In the era of Moore, that meant some uncomfortably tone deaf riffs on Blaxploitation in Live and Let Die (1973) and aping Star Wars in Moonraker. With License to Kill, it meant Bond imitating popular television series Miami Vice and some of the harder edged action movies and crime thrillers of the 1980s, particularly Lethal Weapon (1987) and Scarface (1983). The problem, however, is that License to Kill is still a Bond movie produced by Cubby Broccoli, who’d been with the series since the beginning, and directed by John Glen, who’d helmed the last four Bond movies, including A View to a Kill.

Whereas the R-rated violence and traumatic cynicism of Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon felt startlingly edgy in the ‘80s, License to Kill looks a bit like the aging hipster who’s still trying to fit in at the nightclub. And seeing Bond go on a vendetta against a South American drug dealer right out of the Tony Montana playbook looked neutered when compared to the actual Tony Montana. Which is a shame, as Bond out on a personal mission of revenge seems like an appealing narrative prompt that the Bond franchise has never quite gotten right. Diamonds Are Forever ignored Bond’s need for retribution following the death of his wife Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Craig’s later rampage movie, Quantum of Solace (2008), squandered the potential left by Casino Royale’s tragic ending two years earlier. Instead Quantum also became distracted by the conventions of its decade, in this case by copying the Jason Bourne movies.

So we see Dalton’s grumpy 007 given a reason to really pout after Felix Leiter has his legs fed to sharks on his wedding night, and Bond then finds the bride murdered the next morning. It’s a grisly but potent setup. Hence the disappointment when you realize the most memorable thing about its third act is the bizarre cameo by Wayne Newton as an evil televangelist.

Pierce Brosnan’s Run Needed to Die Another Day

Probably the most notorious final Bond film is Pierce Brosnan’s swan song in Die Another Day (2002). Given the mostly deserved vitriol that movie now receives, it’s hard to remember it was the most successful Bond film ever when it came out (when left unadjusted for inflation). Big and gaudy, the critics mostly accepted it, and it was no deal breaker for Quentin Tarantino who dreamed of working with Brosnan as Bond afterward in a ‘60s-set Casino Royale movie that never materialized.

Of course after the post-40th anniversary haze faded away, fans were left with a pretty lousy flick, which looks all the stranger when you remember the first act is actually pretty solid. The movie starts with Bond double crossed and left to spend 18 months in a prisoner camp in North Korea. In this way, it was the first Bond movie to incorporate the opening title sequence into its narrative, with the naked silhouettes of women being delirious visions Bond has while being tortured. His subsequent escape as a shaggy caveman into Hong Kong high society and then doing Connery-esque low-fi spy work in Cuba is also energetic, frothy fun.

Few folks recall any of this though because the film nosedives into the realm of the wretched and the damned at about the halfway mark. Inexplicably, director Lee Tamahori and the producers decided to celebrate Bond’s 40th by emulating the worst excesses of the Moore years, and even the banality of Diamonds Are Forever’s plot with diamonds and space lasers. It’s just as bad the second time around, but in Die Another Day’s case this also means invisible cars and terrible early 2000s CGI effects as a cartoon version of Brosnan surfs on glaciers and digital waves.

It’s bad, and it undermines Brosnan’s overall tenure. While Brosnan only starred in one great Bond movie, GoldenEye (1995), we’d argue both Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World Is Not Enough (1999) are pretty good. The former has aged like wine with its evil news baron that’s obviously a caricature of Rupert Murdoch. To better launch his cable news network, the fiend even manufactures a global crisis that risks lives. Huh. The World Is Not Enough, meanwhile, has one of the best pre-titles action sequences in the whole franchise and one of its best villains. In fact, Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King remains the only female lead who’s also the main vaillain.

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Together, all three form a solid enough trilogy in which Brosnan plays a Bond forced to find his place in the changing, destabilized world of the 1990s. The Cold War is over, and the World on Terror is yet to come. In this strange, supposed “end of history” moment, Brosnan’s Bond spent three movies renegotiating the character’s place in a world of upheaval, oblivious to the horrors to come. So Bond faces the threats borne out of a destabilized eastern European bloc, and misleading mass media forces shaping the world for the worst, all of which now looks like prophecy.

While we wish Brosnan had a better fourth film to hang his hat on than Die Another Day, if he’d simply stopped at three, his little ‘90s-specific trilogy would look a lot better.

Can No Time to Die Break the Pattern?

In the end, we won’t know the answer to the above question until we see the movie, however there are many reasons to be hopeful. Unlike three of the four movies at the center of this article, No Time to Die is not a Bond film from a franchise veteran director, who might be happy to go through the usual paces. In fact, one of the most appealing things about Craig’s whole tenure in 007 is how much more willing producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are to take risks.

After Sam Mendes helmed the one-two punch of Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), to admittedly uneven results, Eon Productions is doubling down on auteur talent by tapping Cary Joji Fukunaga to direct Craig’s final Bond movie. A sometimes overlooked visualist, Fukunaga has style to spare in films like Jane Eyre (2011) and Beasts of No Nation (2015). But even more than his cinematic output, his standing as one of the first filmmakers to prove television can truly be a director’s medium in the first season of True Detective and Netflix’s Maniac suggests he can bring a renewed hunger to making a classic Bond epic that stands apart. The various No Time to Die trailers all seem to suggest this will be one of the chicest looking Bond movies to date.

Additionally, the film benefits from being the grand finale of Craig’s oeuvre. As really the first actor to have an evolving and complex continuity throughout his installments in the franchise, Craig has taken 007 on an emotional journey across the previous four movies. The quality of the films might vary, but Craig’s through-line has been consistently strong, and with No Time to Die the performer and filmmakers know they need to stick a landing that says something resounding about this version of the character. And lastly, the cast for this movie, from returning faces like Ralph Fiennes, Jeffrey Wright, and Léa Seydoux, to new ones, such as Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, and Rami Malek as a mysterious villain named Safin, suggests this might very well be the best ensemble ever brought together for a Bond movie.

So here’s to hoping Craig can beat the curse and shake things up one more time.

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opedguy · 3 years

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Media Blows Smoke About Transition

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Nov. 16, 2020.--Pressuring 74-year-old President Donald Trump to concede and start the official transition to 77-year-old President-elect Joe Biden, the media warns that delaying the transition could hurt U.S. National Security. Some former national security officials think that if the transition happened more smoothly in 2000, the U.S. might have been more prepared of Sept. 11. While that’s pure speculation, the issue of intelligence briefings for the President-elect and 56-year-old Vice President-elect Kamala Harris offers nothing certain about what happens when those intel briefings are delayed. “We learned a valuable lesson,” said former President George W. Bush Chief of Staff Andy Card. “Obviously, the years 2001, after George W. Bush became president included Sept 11, 2001, and the attacks on the World Trade Centers, the Pentagon and that plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pa . . . “ Card recalled.

Card suggest that had “W” had better intel briefings during the transition that they somehow could have prevented Sept. 11. While hindsight’s always 20/20, there was nothing on the radar during the transition that would have tipped off federal law enforcement before the Sept. 11, 2000 attacks by mastermind Osama bin Laden. “The 9/11 Commission, when they reviewed everything that had happened up to that attack and what contributed to it, they actually cited that the transition should have been allowed to have more time and more information shared with the incoming president so that he could be prepared,” Card said. Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans would like Trump to formally concede and engage the incoming Biden administration in an orderly transition, including intel briefings. If the Senate Intelligence Committee had no advance warning about Sept. 11, no one did.

Card’s statement cited by CBS News was supposed pressure Trump into conceding and supplying briefings to Biden and Harris. While it sounds ominous about not having a usual transition, an incoming President-elect can get all NSA briefings he wants from the Senate Intelligence Committee. Since Biden was former President Barack Obam’s VP for eight years, he’s well aware of where to get his intelligence briefings if he can’t get them right now from Trump’s National Security Agency. “It’s critically important, and John Podesta and I agreed, that the government get ready for a transition to make sure the next president is fully prepared to take the baton and deal with the challenge,” Card said. All the talk by the media about dangers of not having a smooth transition is designed to get Trump to cooperate at the earliest possible time, including making plans to leave the White House.

When it comes to Covid-19, Biden’s already appointed his own 12-member team advising him on what to do after the inauguration Jan. 20, 2021. If you listened to Biden and Harris on the campaign trail or even today, you’d believe that they had other pressing plans what to do differently than Trump about Covid-19. Biden and Harris laid out their new strategic plan today with regard to Covid-19 and the economy, amounting to no plan at all just more campaign rhetoric. “It’s unfortunate that they’re seeing a democracy that is having a hard time transitioning,” said Card, exaggerating for the anti-Trump press all the reasons to hold a smooth transition. Citing former Bush-43’s Republican Chief of Staff Card is designed to send the strongest possible message to push Trump into conceding or at the very least starting the formal transition. In reality, the transition has begun with thousands of “deep state” bureaucrats.

Transfer of power is a myth because everyone knows that Trump will be moving out unless he gets a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court to re-run the Nov. 3 presidential election in battleground states. Since that’s not going to happen, Trump will be out by Jan. 20, 2021, whether he agrees to a media-friendly transition or attends Biden’s inauguration. With Trump believing that he was cheated out of the election, don’t expect him to have a smile on his face about the transition or attending Biden’s inauguration. No one, now or in the future, will convince Trump that Biden won the election fair-and-square. Like the Russian hoax that dogged his presidency from Day 1, Trump won’t ever believe that Democrats didn’t cheat their way to the White House. Biden and Harris can easily get briefed by all the “deep state” bureaucrats in the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, may of whom spied on Trump.

Citing Bush-43’s former Chief of Staff is like citing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Ut.), part of the vast Never Trump Republicans that joined Democrats in the 2020 election to defeat Trump. Without any presumption of fraud, universal mail-in ballots gave Biden a numerical advantage, polling more Democrat and independent registered voters. Whether there was any significant fraud or not hasn’t been proven by Trump or anyone else. Whether Trump holds a smooth transition or not, Biden has access to all the intel he needs for when he’s inaugurated on Day 1. “We do not want our adversaries to take advantage of the disruption that is cause by an uncooperative transition period for a sitting president of the United States, when the next president is ready to be prepared,” Card said, ignoring the fact that Biden has everything he needs without Trump. Card and the media talk about unlikely hypotheticals.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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ganymedesclock · 7 years

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Could operation Kuron be a project that Shiro has ALWAYS been a part of? And that when he was re-captured the Galra continued where they left off? It's easy to forget that Shiro seems to remember things in small doses with the right triggers instead of everything in one go. Being back in captivity may have been the trigger to the memory he needs in order understand he's not 100% okay and he needs to fix it,

I mean that’s sure a thought, isn’t it? The tone and implication would suggest those are things that all happened between s2e13 and s3e5 but we don’t know if they necessarily all were. They could easily be older flashbacks jogged loose from being in the same facility again.

People have been talking about the difference between the prisoner number the computer addresses Shiro by in s1e10 and the “specimen” number used in s3e5′s flashbacks but that could be accounted for different levels of clearance- if Shiro existed in the main prison systems and Kuron simultaneously but not everyone knows about Kuron. That would necessitate two different serials for the same person, for security purposes- using the same one just makes it very transparent they’re talking about the same person.

It’d reflect how, once again, back in s1e11 Haggar talks Shiro up as the empire's potential greatest weapon when Sendak, just looking at Shiro’s prosthetic- the only obvious modification we were aware of at that point- wasn’t impressed. It’d suggest that Haggar knows something Sendak didn’t.

Narratively, if Kuron is gonna spell trouble in our future- and it’s certainly framed ominously- this could also be the whole point behind Shiro’s enduring amnesia- because in the past, he might’ve had warnings about what they were planning to do with him, but right now he can’t remember them- so he’s only partially aware of the danger.

That there’s also a specific reference to different phases of it makes me wonder if maybe “Phase one”, whatever that was, happened during Shiro’s initial missing year. If one of the first things Shiro did (the whole Champion thing) got him a huge amount of attention, and Haggar has no particular reason or inclination to hold back, Shiro does seem awfully..... untouched, again, if he got away with just the arm considering, once again, he was in captivity for an entire year. I doubt Haggar’s schedule is that busy because we don’t really see her act very busy in the present and she has a lot of subordinates at her disposal.

And we still have the glaring unknown of how the empire got hold of Shiro again. Keith airs the theory that Zarkon may have influenced Black to send him there, but that seems like a level of forethought and careful planning that doesn’t... really strike me as Zarkon’s style.

He’s stubborn and arrogant and “The Black Lion is the only thing that matters” and acknowledging Shiro as a threat they need to tread lightly around and use evasive tactics towards would require Zarkon to rethink his strategy in a way that I would think would be very difficult for him in the frame of mind he was in late season 2- especially because at that time, Zarkon’s patience for, and cooperation with Haggar was at an all-time low.

I find it hard to believe Zarkon at that juncture would swallow his pride and rethink his tactics, in regards to an enemy he has some very personal beef with now (s2e7? You bet your butt he didn’t forget that in a hurry) and step back and let Haggar take his revenge for him at a point when he’s really not communicating with her well.

Especially because we have zero implication of them discussing that beforehand or even alluding to it, which would suggest Zarkon, in the middle of a godzilla-sized ego trip mecha, in the process of being stabbed, wouldn’t have just had to suddenly angle for more of a strategy than “punch Voltron in the face” but he’d have to have pulled that strategy entirely out of his ass.

Lotor I could see bullshitting a tactical move like that because games of improv are Lotor’s thing. But honestly establishing Lotor as a speed chess antagonist in the middle of writers and characters alike rapidly pressing the idea that Lotor and Zarkon are radically different people, makes me even more skeptical of Zarkon’s ostensible strategic brilliance.

Haggar’s comparison of the two is both incredibly patronizing and suggests a profound disconnect between Haggar and Lotor- because she clearly doesn’t really believe that Lotor and Zarkon are alike or she wouldn’t be assuming she can just boss Lotor around as much as she feels like because Zarkon is absurdly, bull-headedly tenacious.

Getting back on topic here: I don’t think it was Zarkon that grabbed Shiro. Potential candidates I have in mind:

1. Haggar

Haggar’s the most likely mastermind behind the Kuron project, especially with the aforementioned dodgy mention in s1e11. She clearly knows something she either did to Shiro or was planning to do to him that she asserts has made him powerful, and acts like he should be grateful to her for.

It does raise a pretty big question of why Haggar, who worries so much about Zarkon and specifically was quite worried about him donning that armor at all, wouldn’t have grabbed Shiro earlier in the fight but then again Shiro wasn’t the only thing she had to focus on.

And unlike with Zarkon, we wouldn’t necessarily see Zarkon and Haggar planning it out beforehand if Haggar was responsible. Because as I mentioned, Haggar and Zarkon were not communicating well at that point. Zarkon wasn’t listening to her or her plans. He wanted to take victory personally and his growing vendetta against Shiro would make him even less likely to accept something that takes Shiro out temporarily.

It could also be that Shiro wasn’t really Haggar’s target, and she only really remembered her project and went after him when the situation turned desperate and it was very clear Zarkon was not going to win that fight. Haggar’s just as haughty as Zarkon is, and both of them are rather self-assured in their own presumed omnipotence. Haggar may have been content to throw Shiro away... until it looked like her husband was going to die, forcing her to try and grapple with whatever hold she had on him.

2. Misunderstanding or exploitation of the Black Lion

Neither Keith nor Shiro have answers, but, that their conversation prominently featured the Black Lion would suggest we’re at least supposed to regard her as a likely culprit- however, as Shiro points out, why would the benevolent, compassionate Black Lion, who would be in the position to understand best what it means if the empire retakes Shiro, send him back to his torturers?

Zarkon’s influence doesn’t seem likely as I’ve discussed. It’s possible whatever Haggar did may have attacked the Black Lion in an already vulnerable state.

Either way, it’s possible Black may have sent Shiro away to try and protect him. We know she’s ejected him before when her systems were in danger of falling under hostile control.

Of course, I can see a few possibilities.

First, Black’s understanding of safe places in the universe is ten thousand years old and since then Zarkon has conquered a lot. It’s possible Black launched Shiro into galra captivity because she tried to send him to a safe, allied planet that she knew of only to realize too late that planet was no longer safe or allied- and might’ve been under imperial control.

Second, it could be that Black did send Shiro somewhere safe but that ‘somewhere safe’ was compromised because, again, she might’ve been warring for control with Haggar at the time- so Haggar might have either read that destination from Black’s mind or changed the destination to something more convenient for her.

...If that is the case, Black’s lack of response to Shiro might actually have very little to do with what happened to him in his absence- and it might more be she’s walling him off because of guilt. Because if Black feels at least partially responsible for Shiro’s recapture, again, she’s the one who would most poignantly understand that as Shiro’s personal worst-case scenario.

And it’d be the second time enemy forces used her to hurt him.

It’d explain why Black lets him in the cockpit no problem, but doesn’t move- he’s still her beloved paladin, but rather than not trusting him, she’s not trusting herself with him. Quite possibly, trying to tell him to stay in the castle where it’s safe and the empire can’t get to him- especially if she’s aware of whatever lurking hazard Kuron provides.

(I mean, I stand by, whatever Kuron is, nobody is in more danger from it than Shiro himself.)

3. An unknown

It’s worth noting that a lot of significant factions in the story were relatively unforeshadowed. Consider the Blade, and Lotor’s team. Now I’m not accusing either of them of what happened to Shiro- but it stands that there might be somebody else invested in this conflict that showed their hand there as a villainous version of Thace’s intervention in s1e11.

A group that might’ve been content to stay in the shadows, and stay hidden, but when it looks like Zarkon’s actually going to lose- they needed some way to force the team to retreat.

...Quite possibly, a group aligned with or composed of the dark creatures from the rift- who, while I doubt they’re controlling Zarkon at present, they’d definitely have a vested interest in getting Zarkon to open another rift. That’s their only way into this reality, after all.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Shiro #Haggar #Zarkon #Black Lion #readmore #Anonymous

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wiredeception · 6 years

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➜ INDIGO BERTRAND | HEADCANONS

indigo was born in august 12th, 1993 in marseille, france, to pierre and ophelia bertrand. she’s the second child of four, also being the second girl of two. within her memory, her childhood is more of a hazy dream than actual reality. there’s something a lot like the literature classics about it, something almost romanticized about the recollections, farther from what most people experienced and deemed as reality. albeit her mother’s career taking off when she was only six years old and her father being what most would deem as a workaholic, indigo couldn’t consider them absent parents ; whenever she ( or brielle ) needed them, they were right there to grant all the support and warmth and love she could possibly need. when there were business trips, they did their best to take their kids with them or, at least, one of them would stay behind to look after them and be present in their daily basis. holidays were spent together, christmas being the one particular season of the year where everyone would gather around in grandma camile’s vineyard and celebrate together.

with her mother skyrocketing to the utmost success and her father inheriting the family’s business with the death of grandmother camile when she was around fourteen, life took its turns. despite her parents best efforts to glue the family together at all the times, it was unavoidable they’d have to disintegrate — with her mother moving to los angeles and her father staying behind in between paris and marseille. from fourteen to sixteen, indigo lived with her father in marseille but with her love for the same industry that had taken hold of her mother’s heart and the intent of expanding horizons, she moved in with her mother, spending the year before college in los angeles, where she finished school. she moved to new york city a couple months before turning eighteen in order to attend parsons where she has resided up until now.

◼ FAMILY

indigo comes from a upper class french family. both her mother’s family and her father’s are known families within france, with her mother’s family, in specific, being rather powerful with its connections with the government and due to being aristocrats.

pierre anton bertrand

pierre was born on march 16th, 1964, to camile and sebastién bertrand, in provence, france. he’s the only child and, thus, the heir of a fortune of millions and a family business with over 200 years that placed them, year after year, on the lists of most powerful people in the world of luxury wine and the drinks business. despite being a social-economist, he is the ceo of the bertrand group which, besides the wine business, owns a group of luxury hotels across the world and stakes on over fifty companies — from luxury clubs to luxury fashion brands, amongst the most various businesses.

ophelia amelie bertrand

ophelia was the second born to a family of six — two boys and four girls. she was born on july 28th, 1963, in bordeaux, france, to jeanne and vincent deneuve. her mother was a screenwriter and film director while her father, vincent, was a french diplomat. jeanne was the one who urged her daughter to take the first steps into fashion, granting her the chance of making the customs to some of the screenplays she directed while vincent was the mastermind behind ophelia’s career, in the beginning. aubert and claude — her two brothers — followed the footsteps of their father, engaging in politics, while julie and marlène pursued careers as an actress and journalist, respectively. her older sister, clémence, passed away in a plane crash when she was thirty. ophelia has attended central saint martins, graduating from her degree with honors, which granted her a position as a teacher the first two years. since then, ophelia has taught at ifm paris and parsons school of design, she has worked with various luxury brands, from louis vuitton to chanel, and has styled a great number of celebrities. nowadays, she does selective styling work for some close friends and long-time customers, as well as collaborate with fashion museums across the world.

brielle clémence bertrand

brielle is the first born to the bertrand’s and, thus, indigo’s older sister. she was born on january 14th, 1991 in marseille, france, and she currently resides in tokyo, japan. much like indigo, brielle stayed with their father in france, even as their mother was forced to move away to los angeles, but as soon as she turned eighteen, she’s moved to birmingham to attend university where she graduated in international business with language. upon finishing the degree and with the expansion of the family’s group, brielle took a position as CBDO, operating from tokyo and controlling the asian operations and market.

jean-claude bertrand

jean-claude is the older of the bertrand boys and the third in birth order. he was born on september 2nd, 1999 in paris, france, and he, currently, resides in marseille with his parents and younger brother — whilst taking a gap year from school before starting university in august 2018. graduating at the top of his class, he was invited to join harvard university, where he’s meant to study economics and compete in NCAA for harvard crimson’s basketball team.

christian guillaume bertrand

christian is the youngest of the bertrand’s. he was born may 30th, 2001 in paris, france, and he, currently, resides in marseille with his parents and older brother. following more of indigo’s and their mother’s steps, and less of their father’s and siblings, christian has taken a love for the arts industry, making it a goal of doing a little bit of everything instead of restraining himself to one thing only. he’s done some jobs as a model and has taken a few steps into the music industry — mostly on production and songwriting department. he’s supposed to move to new york the following year where he’ll finish school while continuing his work as a model and, hopefully, begin taking the first steps into acting. he plans to major in something like film studies or some multimedia related degree.

◼ FACTS

indigo and her remaining family have diplomatic immunity due to her mother’s family.

indigo has obtained dual citizenship last year, following eight years of living in the united states, meaning she has both american and french nationalities.

christian was supposed to move in with indigo next year but following the opening of one of the family’s hotels in miami and the purchase of a vineyard in the hamptons, he’s going to stay with his parents who plan on staying in new york until the business is settled.

the death of camile has taken a massive toll on indigo for she was incredibly attached to the women and, to this day, christmas and most holidays still feel nostalgic and hold a certain melancholy, even when spent in family and following the tradition of going to the vineyard.

indigo hasn’t seen her sister brielle in three years, not face to face anyway, but in lieu of drifting apart, the distance has brought them close together.

each of the bertrand kids have a trust fund which they’re allowed to manage once they hit eighteen. atop of the trust funds, when passing away, camile left each of her grandchildren around 25 million € ( approx. 29 million dollars ), and the deneuve’s have bank accounts in the name of each of their grandchildren — which they’re only allowed to touch when vincent and jeanne have passed away.

indigo has declined all the offers for higher positions and the help of family when starting her career, for she wanted to build her career on her own rather than relying on her family’s privilege for it.

ever since hitting eighteen, and with the help of her father and brielle, indigo has bought stakeholders on some fashion companies and has invested some of her money on reliable companies — she has doubled her fortune ever since.

◼ POSSESSIONS

pierre and ophelia

vineyard in provence, france : ref ● ref ● ref ● ref ophelia’s family mansion in bordeaux, france : here family mansion in marseille, france : here family house in paris, france : here family house in los angeles, california : here family house in malibu, california : here family house in miami, florida : here apartment in new york city, new york : here family house in bridgehampton, new york : here

siblings

brielle’s tokyo penthouse : here brielle’s paris apartment : here jean-claude’s boston house : here

indigo

house in los angeles, california : here house in london, england : here penthouse in new york city, new york : here ● here apartment in paris, france : here

#✰. —– indigo •「 HEADCANON. 」❜

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astarion · 7 years

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I finished Fire Emblem Fates a while back, meaning Revelation and the extra plot-related DLCs. In short, I enjoyed them a lot, though the final plot portions for Revelation do fall kinda flat by the end. The Hidden Truths and Heirs of Fate DLC sets improve those points a little bit, and as stand-alone maps they are very challenging and fun (Hidden Truths 2 and Heirs of Fate 5 and 6 are my favorites in those sets) but one shouldn’t have to pay for extra DLC for knowledge that should’ve been in the main game (maybe should’ve had Hidden Truths just be available after beating Revelation? Heirs of Fate was something fully new though.)

Been wanting to make a post on it for a while since I had made some earlier while going through the games, and I want to wrap it up properly. One of the things I didn’t like seeing as I took my time playing was seeing people I follow go full-on into it, and then come out disappointed in the end. Having finished it, I can see and agree with a lot of those points, but at the same time I still enjoyed the game very much and had a great time. But I can’t deny that the plot and extra details that should’ve been there that makes the series so wonderful... didn’t live up to the potential its announcement had me get hype for (though overhyping was my own fault definitely). Getting into heavy spoilers after the break, of course.

As a whole, the things I liked most about the game were the music, gameplay, and overall presentation. The soundtrack is stellar the whole way through, and the gameplay changeup with the weapon types still held strong. I like they way they used the weapon triangle to have tomes/bows/knives in the mix along with the usual sword/lance/axe group, and it continues to do well in Heroes, I’m finding! And the final boss fights are exquisite. Birthright feels lesser than Conquest and Revelation, but only because Birthright’s is so... normal compared to the other two.

Now it’s time for the bad parts. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but Corrin and company really should’ve held off on having kids until the war ended. So many childhoods lost in time. (The kids themselves are alright characters though.) Also,

Now, for real, issues with the game, starting with the plot: As was shown all the way back when it launched, it all centered around “the choice”. Hoshido, Nohr, or neither, as had been made apparent since game was announced. This ends up being the first major problem. But it’s not in the nature of the choice itself. All three do have the major effect that sets the game into the specific paths. Birthright and Conquest proceed logically enough: Side with Hoshido, and while the Nohrian siblings are shocked and saddened, they ultimately pull their punches because they know that they are on the wrong side, but being royalty they can’t abandon their country. Side with Nohr, and Hoshido is legitimately outraged and hold nothing back, but seeing Corrin’s determination and actions in battle is able to convince them to take a chance on them; not that they have many options after being defeated and invaded. Revelation... uses some contrivances to keep everyone from joining up immediately. I mean, it would be too much to have everyone drop their arms just because Corrin pleads with them to stop because they love them all, but the brothers all get very hostile, and then there’s the whole curse things that comes up... it’s a bit of a mess but manageable.

But the choice never really lives up to its hype. The routes are pretty similar in context, just that the kingdoms you’re fighting are mostly turned around. And even then, there really seems to be a main order in how it should be played, just by how the escalation happens along with plot reveals: “Birthright -> Conquest -> Revelation -> DLC”.

One of my biggest issues though, is that by the end of the game they simply don’t go far enough with the consequences of the different path splits. The fates of Nohr and Hoshido at large are given, but other than that, nothing is really said about the losing side or the other areas of the world after the war, despite the whole conflict being a world war. For each path, none of the “every-route” characters really have anything different about them despite your route. You’d think Mozu and Kaze would at least have some reservations about fighting for Nohr in Conquest. Likewise, Jakob, Felicia, and Silas having to fight against their homeland in Birthright. Only Azura seems to have different thoughts about the routes, which is expected, as she is a vitally important main character. More annoying than that though, is that you don’t get epilogues for the characters of the other side that may have survived.

One example of this: In Chapter 23 of Birthright, during the fight against Camilla, Elise’s retainers, Arthur and Effie, are on the field as enemy units. If Corrin is able to bring Elise (who’s helping them and is hiding in their shadow or something) to talk to them, they join up as green units, who you can protect through the fight. Do so, and they survive and wish Elise well (as Elise sends you away to prevent you from actually getting any of them as units.) Elise then dies a plotline death in Chapter 26 trying to stop Xander and Corrin from fighting. However, even though you could save them, Arthur and Effie, and any possible reaction to their liege’s death, is never seen. And if, like me, you played Conquest first this is extremely jarring! There’s other characters who can be fought as enemies or ignored in their final fight, but nothing comes out of sparing them. How are we supposed to really feel the consequences of our actions if we don’t see their effects!?

Another major issue with the plot of this game is its worldbuilding. By the end, you know very little about the world and the people who live in it, only the most basic of knowledge for any of the nations, minus any details found in supports of course. Some of my gripes:

With the game starting as it is and how Chapter 3 goes down, you’d think that everything west of the Bottomless Canyon is Nohr, and everything to the east is Hoshido. Nope! Turns out that there’s many other nations which don’t really amount to much plot significance outside of their chapter.

What happens to Izumo after Izana’s death in Revelation?

The celestial event that happens in Chapters 16-17 of Revelation is pretty striking, the skies over the nations changing like that. Why does this literally not happen in the other routes despite the game taking the same amount of time generally?

Takumi’s disappearance. You don’t find out about it in Conquest, but apparently he was taken to the Bottomless Canyon in Birthright and Conquest so that he could be possessed and become the final boss of Conquest. He’s also disappeared in Revelation, but apparently was just chilling in Izumo? Despite it taking longer for the team to find him?

What doesn’t Felicia know about hers and Flora’s situation with Corrin that Flora doesn’t want to talk about? This actually is answered, but only in a special case. If you didn’t make a female Corrin on Conquest so that Jakob could fight her in Chapter 8, you will never know the whole truth.

Hoping for those ancient texts in the MyCastle Library to be translated after getting far enough in the game? Nope! It’s a cryptoquote puzzle with the last text as the cipher. Either solve it or check the internet. (It has some spoilers though.)

In the end of Revelation, Corrin liberates the secret kingdom of Valla from Anankos’ rule and becomes its new monarch. Is there even anyone left there that’s alive after the whole possession/Faceless mutation/curse powers that Anankos was doing?

Who was that unamed knight who visited the rainbow sage? He’s mentioned when you visit him but it is never followed up on.

The worst though, is that the final big reveal of the game, the identity of the mastermind and why they’re trying to destroy the world? It is the ancient Dragon God Anankos, who’s doing this do so because his primal impulses of his biology took over and made him madbecause he lived for too long.

That’s... really weak and disappointing.

And that’s all you learn about Anankos... in Revelation, that is. Revelation has next to nothing about him, in no small part because he created a curse that would evaporate anyone who spoke of him or the kingdom of Valla outside of the Kingdom of Valla (even across dimensions!), and then acts like it’s humanity’s fault that they forgot him.

However, the DLC fills in some much-needed details. From Hidden Truths, it was revealed that Anankos was able to see into the future and knew this would happen to him eventually, but loved humanity so much that he didn’t want to abandon them, so he also came up with ways to try and counter this issue. They ended up failing, of course. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if those visions contributed to him raging in the first place, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then after being abandoned and sealed up save for his closest human friend, he ends up killing him when his rage takes hold again, and ends up ripping out his soul because he couldn’t live with himself. Now being minus a soul, of course his actions are going to be nonsensical and apathetic to anything around him. And then Heirs of Fate shows his actual true plan in his madness after finishing the destruction of the world: go through the astral planes to find a reality where he didn’t go insane and destroy everything, so that he could get back to his beloved kingdom. The thing his, because he’s still insane, he still sees humanity as a problem, and because his descent into insanity was inevitable, by this point there is no alternate reality where he didn’t go insane and kill/enslave everyone in Valla. I still think the whole Biology!RAGE thing is bullshit as this wasn’t an issue for dragons in the other Fire Emblem games I’ve played, but these details do give something to his character where there was nothing before.

Back to Revelation though, the real heavy villain turns out to actually be Gunter, taking Takumi’s place from Conquest as a possessed living puppet of Anankos. Although he’s somewhat underpowered, he has motivation, is an awesome character story-wise, (mainly if you took the chance to get his supports in Conquest and respect the guy first), and has a delicious irony of Anankos exploiting his motives for revenge against Garon, to end up serving the same monster that butchered his wife, child, and hometown. (Because from what the game tells about the real Garon, it could only have been the slime-puppet who would’ve ordered such a thing). It sets it up pretty well... if it didn’t also spoil it by preventing you from supporting with Gunter at all on that route. Way to spoil the Chapter 26 twist all the way back in Chapter 7/8, when hints are supposed to be dropped around Chapter 25... I guess it makes sense, since Corrin or Jakob might’ve noticed something was wrong with him if they engaged him on a more personal level, but after you release him from Anankos’ control you still can’t support with him then.

So... that’s pretty much it. I enjoyed this game a lot but it was dragged on for way too long, and didn’t fully deliver on its premise. I am very hopeful for Echoes though. Having to write only 1 re-imagined story that already mostly exists instead of 3 and not having to deal with dating pool support groups hopefully means the story and writing will be a bit tighter like some of the previous games. Plus that snippet of an in-game cutscene looked more expressive than most of Fates’, which just used default character combat actions. Already signs of improvement I hope!

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem fates spoilers #revelation spoilers #thoughts and stuff

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