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darsynia · 1 year

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Just Right | Ch 2

(Steve Rogers x F!Reader, post-Ultron Multichapter)

gif by @dailystevegifs

Summary:

You’ve been in love with Steve Rogers for at least a year, but he treats you the same way he treats every other member of the team– with respect, but nothing more. It takes an inter-dimensional mistake and a whole second, more assertive, actually interested Steve for you to realize that you don’t want just any version of Steve Rogers– you want the one you’ve been pining for all this time.

Length: 3,446

FIC MASTERLIST | LAST CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER

Dedicated to @ronearoundblindly who is the bestest

Excerpt:

“Starting out or just getting back?” Steve’s voice asks.

You smile without turning around. “Can’t you tell from the damp, bedraggled hair?”

“I would never think to comment on such a thing,” he says gallantly.

“A king among men,” you pronounce.

“If so, I’m an absent ruler.” His tone makes you turn to look over your shoulder. Steve’s looking down at the ground with a wistful look on his face. He’s wearing sweatpants and a tank top, and the hem of the latter is folded, giving you a glimpse of the jut of his hipbone above the low waistband of the sweats.

Your mouth goes dry before you turn back around, hoping he doesn’t mind if you have no idea what he just said.

Chapter Two

You stand there staring at Gold Steve for three whole seconds before your stomach growls loudly. Using the poker face Natasha taught you, you keep your expression and your gaze steady and get to watch as his attempt at ‘stoic’ starts to fracture.

“Go ahead,” you say, pressing your lips together to stop your own laughter. “It’s my own fault for waiting so long to eat.”

“I’m no hypocrite,” he says, backing up and bowing a hand toward the microwave. “I ate late, too. Got caught up with your Steve and Tony, trying to figure out the thought process that led Stark to invent the device that sent me here. They’ve got me a room and a badge for access, but until we get an inkling about how to reverse it, I’ll do what I can to help out your Steve.”

You clench your jaw ruthlessly to prevent a reaction to his repeated use of ‘your Steve,’ leaning to sniff your soup with the door of the microwave blocking his view of you. When you straighten back up, though, Gold Steve is standing there with oven mitts.

“It was pretty hot when I got mine out, and I’m guessing you don’t have any healing abilities.”

“Is that a fishing expedition, Rogers?”

He follows you out of the kitchen to a table, and hands you the spoon you forgot. “Well, you’re the only different thing I probably won’t risk unbalancing the universe to discover, so, yes.”

All of the previous heart-fluttering things he’s said to you suddenly lose all meaning. You choke out a weak-sounding “Oh,” and focus entirely on your soup, even though you’ve lost your appetite.

“I feel like I just watched a flower wilt in real time,” Gold Steve says, sitting down across from you. You desperately wish for a book you could hold up between you, anything to hide from the discerning look he’s giving you. Suddenly, he pulls in a sharp breath-- he’s just figured out why you’re upset. “That’s not what I--” Breaking off, he reaches his hand across the table, palm down, like a tiny little white flag begging for your attention.

You deliberately eat another spoonful of soup; you’re no one’s entertainment, least of all this oddly open version of the man you love. Infuriatingly, he doesn’t take the hint, but instead twiddles his fingers. It’s stubborn, ridiculous, and it works, damn him. You look up, but you refuse to smile.

“I implied you were an object of last resort.” You don’t let yourself move a muscle. He tips his head to the side slowly, sincerity arching his eyebrows as he says, “I promise you, that’s not the case.”

You’re suddenly possessed by some strange spirit of determined peacemaking. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? You have no way of knowing what you could alter! If your version of Stark can send you across universal lines, even a casual comment might give ours any number of ideas.”

He’s nodding. “I’ll admit I’ve been locked down pretty tight since I got here.”

For a few glorious seconds, his phrasing reminds you of the specific close cut of his uniform pants from the day before. You’d never have been able to get away with a design like that! Everyone would have figured out your feelings immediately.

“So you’ve watched your words with everyone but me?”

Gold Steve’s little frown of acquiescence is familiar and bittersweet. “I deserved that. What I mean to say is, I got lucky that the person who’s different is you.”

You’d snuck another spoonful of soup as he was talking, and now you choke on it a little bit. “Oh my god, did you, like, lose a bet and have to take a pick-up lines course from the Anthony Edward Stark School of Superheroes Who Can’t Date Good and Want To Learn How To Do Other Things Good Too?”

You’re not sure what you were expecting as a reaction to that, but it wasn’t this. Gold Steve’s body tenses up visibly and he looks down, a distinct look of regret gracing his features.

“That was out of line, I’m sorry,” you whisper, getting up and rushing toward the kitchen with your mostly-uneaten bowl. You find the ziploc bag it was in previously, snag a sharpie, and put your name on it, so it’s not wasted. The soup you’ve already eaten is being broken down by your peculiar mix of remorse, worry, and stomach acids. When you shut the freezer door, you see that Gold Steve is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a soft smile on his face.

“You didn’t need to run away. It was a good joke.”

“It was a harsh joke.”

“I deserved it,” he says, and when you scoff and move to rinse out your bowl, he elaborates. “I said I was sorry for making you uncomfortable, and then I did it again. You fought back. Seems fair to me.”

You mutter something about being a weirdo who can’t take a compliment, but he’s still Steve Rogers, so he pushes back on that, too.

“I’d ask you where you got the idea that it’s unusual or concerning for someone who looks like me to compliment you, but somehow I don’t think I need to,” he says gently.

“That’s gossip, and I have to get going,” you say. The expression on your face has to be forbidding, because Gold Steve moves out of the way and doesn’t stop you as you leave the kitchen.

Even though you have more time left for your break, you head toward your desk in the testing room. You feel a qualm of conscience, but the idea of talking about someone you care so deeply for behind his back, even with a version of himself… it makes you sick, truth or not.

You step into the darkened room, let the door fall shut, and lean up against the wall for a few minutes, letting your breathing patterns and anxious mind settle. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since Gold Steve walked into your universe, and you’re a mess. Sleep last night was restless, full of dreams you can’t remember except for the uneasy feeling you were left with when you woke up.

The unbalanced feeling just gets worse the more you talk to Gold Steve, and you’re terrified about what that means. Your feelings for Steve Rogers have increased steadily the longer you’ve known him, with no active encouragement. What does it mean that you are so disconcerted by his lookalike?

That thought will set your feet on another anxiety spiral, so you picture your favorite image of puppies and flick on the light.

Across the room, you see a tall figure leaning up against the wall. When the two of you make eye contact, he lifts his hand and does an embarrassed little wave.

“What the heck are you doing here in the dark, Rogers?” you ask, hoping like hell a) he’s the Steve from your universe, and b) if he isn’t, that you don’t have the power to somehow conjure a version of Steve just by thinking about him, because that could get really awkward really fast, especially at night.

“I had some time, thought I’d kill it making sure nothing comes walking through the walls in here again.”

“In the dark?”

He pushes off from the wall and shows you the cell phone in his hand. “Tony keeps giving me crap for not feeling entirely comfortable with these yet. Figured the dark might be disorienting for any intruder, at least until you came back.” You must look confused, because he adds, “I’d feel better if you weren’t alone in here, at least not until we make the room more secure.”

Your earlier concern prompts you to say, “Your counterpart let slip that they don’t have an Avengers Compound. Unless Stark was testing a dimensional portal in the middle of the woods in upstate New York, I doubt anyone else will pop up here.” Steve’s nodding, and impulsively, you add, “Given the number of security risks all over the world, we’d need to have about a million Captain Americas to cover them all!”

“That may be true, but I would want to go after a member of my team if they were lost like that,” he says, strolling to the middle of the room.

“And leave your universe without their Captain America?” you tease, settling in at your desk.

“I prefer to think of it as giving my teammate a better shot at getting back home. Speaking of which, Sam told me how you escorted him out, when the other guy showed up.”

Steve’s voice has gotten steadily closer, but you’ve been carefully arranging things at your desk as you listen, thus avoiding the look that’s probably on his face. Your desk faces the room instead of the wall, though, and he’s caught on. Steve walks over and stands directly in front of you, resting his hand on the object you were nervously adjusting. Your fingers are separated by barely a centimeter, and you realize you’re staring at their proximity when he clears his throat.

Reluctantly, you look up at him.

“You want to tell me why your first instinct was to get Sam out of there and handle things yourself?” His eyes are kind, and he does sound concerned, but he’s still questioning your judgment, and that raises your hackles a little.

Instead of just wishing he had more faith in your decision making process, you decide to show him why he should.

“Sam’s not a super soldier, and his armor isn’t stored in here, it’s in the armory. Following him over to the door got me close to the panic button without agitating the intruder,” you point out. “I imagine you watched the footage?” He nods thoughtfully, his posture straightening. “I walked straight from the door over to the lockers, where the prototypes are.” You leave it go at that, because you’re not trying to lecture him, just show you’re not trying to be a martyr.

He’s chuckling ruefully, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, point taken. I’m sorry I underestimated you.” The undercurrent of relief in his voice warms you.

“I don’t want a world without Sam Wilson any more than I’d want a world without Steve Rogers,” you say, just to twist the knife.

“Everyone’s contribution is important,” Steve emphasizes, and you avoid rolling your eyes. You were never one of the people worried about credit; every time something you made helps the person you made it for, that’s enough credit for you. “I’m sure he misses his team as much as they miss him. All of them,” he adds, nodding his chin in your direction as he backpedals to go stand with his back to the wall again.

“Not me,” you say breezily, pulling out a piece of sketch paper. Wanda Maximoff doesn’t have armor, and she probably doesn’t really want armor, but that doesn’t mean you can’t mock something up.

“‘Dine.” Steve sounds exasperated.

“I’m pulling your leg. He says I’m not in his universe.”

There’s silence for a long while, long enough that you look up from the spiky vest you’re idly sketching. Steve looks lost in thought, brows furrowed. You toy with the idea of trying to get him to leave, but decide against it. You’ve always wanted this space to feel like a comfortable, safe place to try new things. If Steve Rogers wants to guard you from an undetectable, unpreventable new threat, you’re fine with that.

That night you don’t have nightmares, but you do dream about Steve’s hands. It’s as if your brain has been hiding a photo album and is now excitedly showing you the result of a year’s work.

Steve running his hand along the chestpiece of the first armor you designed for him.

The crowbar that’s winched open your stuck elevator doors being replaced by Steve’s hands, which then wrench the doors wide with ease.

The moment when you realized you actually loved the man, as you stood nearby at a party and watched Steve run his hand through his hair, smiling at something Stark said.

Countless times when he’s gotten your attention with gentle fingers on the back of your hand, a knuckle tap on your desk, resting his hand next to yours on a railing, stretching his arm across the table to wiggle his fing--

You’d been laying in bed half-asleep, waiting for the alarm to go off, but now you’re wide awake-- because that last image? It’s Gold Steve.

“Absolutely not,” you say aloud. You draw the line at conflating the two. Groaning aloud, you realize what you’re going to have to do.

A week later, Stark’s pretty sure he’s onto something, which you only know about because Sam told you at the meeting you two had scheduled to finalize the changes to his gear. You’ve spent the whole week to yourself, not really on purpose, it just worked out that way. The feigned cold took care of a few days, and after that, you’d joked you were catching up on a tv series you’d been looking forward to. The strange part is, while you never really tried to see Steve every day, you usually did, and the longer it’s been, the more it feels like something’s missing.

Well, your minifridge is full of takeout leftovers, you’ve gotten two weeks’ worth of work done in half as much time, and your heart is full of stupid ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ bullshit, but at least you haven’t compromised your principles.

The weather today is supposed to be fantastic, so you get up early and lace up your trainers to take a dewy walk around the complex. You’re not a jogger per se, more of an ‘every three months, I forget why I’m not a jogger, and need a wheezing, limping reminder’ nature enthusiast.

You’re strolling along the back near the woods, reminding yourself how to breathe, when you see a figure jogging towards you. It doesn’t take long to recognize Steve in his typical work-out garb, those dark blue athletic pants and gray t-shirt. In full summer, he swaps to shorts (it’s around then that many of the compound staff find reasons to be outside around jogging time), but spring hasn’t quite shifted away from the bite of the winter wind yet.

Even though you’ve been deliberately avoiding the Steves, you slow your pace to prolong your moment of admiration. As it happens, he slows down too, and by the time you approach each other, your heart is full and your smile is genuine. It doesn’t hurt to be friendly to Gold Steve, and even though you hate to admit it, you do like the way he looks at you.

“Been awhile, Brigandine,” Gold Steve admonishes you, pulling up one leg behind himself to grab the foot and tug.

“Oh, I’m a slave to my stories,” you joke. When Stark had complained about your absences, Sam had told him which show you were knee-deep into, and ever since then, he’s been making soap opera jokes in texts and emails.

“Yeah, well, you’ve only got One Life To Live,” Gold Steve says seriously, and you both crack up. “You’re okay, though?” he asks once your giggles die down, and damn, there’s the longing again.

“Yeah, no worries,” you say. It isn’t until right now that you realize: it’s not like someone’s going to come get you when they figure out how to send this man home. “Had some things to think through, and this was a good time to do it.”

It’s the closest you’ve come to alluding to your feelings for ‘your Steve,’ and you feel like you can see understanding, if not full comprehension, in Gold Steve’s admiring expression. To deflect away from that potential awkwardness, you look around you, nodding toward the woods.

“I will completely lose my momentum if I stop now, but hey, enjoy this while you can, right? I was glad to hear from Sam that Stark might be close to a breakthrough. See ya!”

You smile and wave like a complete idiot, opting at the last minute for the steady jog for your ignoble exit, instead of trying to actually run. There’s a non-zero chance this man will turn around and see you fall against the wall after 200 feet and heroically come back to help, and at that point, you’ll be looking to invent an interdimensional portal to open up underneath your feet.

When you turn the corner, you allow yourself a single look back, and see to your surprise that Gold Steve is still in sight, having slowed to a light jog himself.

About twenty minutes later, you’ve done a whole circuit, and most of it has been at a pace faster than a slow walk. You grab the damp towel you’d left draped by the rear door and wipe off your face and neck. It feels great; it’s been resting in the shade, so the wetness is refreshing rather than gross.

Instead of heading right in, you enjoy the light breeze coming off the treeline and lean on the stone fence, letting its heat soak into you. The door opens behind you, and you hope like hell it’s not Nat; she caught you doing this once, last fall, and the routine she sent you through (‘come learn this with me, it’ll be fun’) taught you that you don’t have to know you have a muscle for it to hurt.

“Starting out or just getting back?” Steve’s voice asks.

You smile without turning around. “Can’t you tell from the damp, bedraggled hair?”

“I would never think to comment on such a thing,” he says gallantly.

“A king among men,” you pronounce.

Your mouth goes dry before you turn back around, hoping he doesn’t mind if you have no idea what he just said.

Steve mistakes your quick movement for unhappiness, it seems. “Sorry, it’s just-- I can’t help but imagine what they’re going through back there. Wondering where I am, inventing God knows what to get me back.”

Your entire blood volume crystalizes into ice at once, and you taste metal in your mouth. “What did you just say?”

Gold Steve (because, that’s who it is, there’s absolutely no doubt, which means… -!) comes over and leans a hip on the stone fence, facing you. “I know showing up here was an accident, but I feel responsible. There’s nothing I can do over here but take up space.” He looks down at his clothes and huffs out a frustrated breath. “Literally. I only fit into my own clothing.” He stops and leans over, slowly moving his hand back and forth about six inches away from your face. “Earth to Brigandine. You… do still call it ‘Earth’ here, right?”

“Very funny,” you say. “No, I’m-- I’m just… If just this once, my stupid he-- brain would shut up about the ways I’ve possibly screwed up, that would be great.” You widen your eyes and shrug, and the crinkled-eyes smile he offers in response makes that heart skip despite yourself. Which is the problem, the reason you were staying the heck away from these men. At least the words ‘head’ and ‘heart’ sound close enough that you haven’t given too much away. You hope. “Shit,” you sigh.

“Can I help?”

“Nope, not unless you want to tell me this is all a big prank involving you, yourself, and I, and I didn’t just mix the two of you up!” You pull the towel up from your shoulders and drape it over your face.

“Why would that be a--” Gold Steve falls silent. “Are you-- do you have feelings for him?”

You’d been hoping to avoid that question, but the thing that soothes it is that Gold Steve says ‘him.’ He knows that there are differences, he knows this isn’t his universe, and that’s how you know that there’s no trick. The Steve that you saw jogging earlier, the one who looked at you like someone beautiful? It was your Steve. The man you love.

Next chapter...

#steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fic #steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x f!reader #captain america x f!reader #captain america x reader #captain america #mcu #mcu fanfiction #marvel #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers x you #captain america x you #romance #pining #steve rogers x female reader

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stellaridegifs · 3 months

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Thoughts about the premiere for Chicago fire?

For me, it was “meh” after waiting so long, to be honest.

First things first, I hate unnecessary time jumps. The One Chicago Universe’s time jumps are unnecessary and only happen because the producers and writers want the shows to be set in real-time with the audience. It’s almost like life doesn’t exist during off-season. There are no benefits to the storylines.

Focusing only on the Stella/Kelly parts of the premiere ... I’m supposed to believe they haven’t truly talked about the issue six months after she supposedly handcuffed and dragged him back home? Was it really that bad? And if it was really that bad, you’d think they’d talk or yell or something instead of just letting it simmer to a boil. I thought we were past the mis/noncommunication part of their relationship.

My biggest issue though, isn’t the time jump. I have a problem with how much issue Stella is making it out to be. She did the exact same thing, did she not? I find this storyline to be repeated and puts Stella in a hypocrite light.

Also—Stella claiming to be proud of Kelly’s OFI work but disapproving of him doing it and closing with she loves him all in one sentence is a red flag to me. It’s a compliment sandwich. If a man told a woman she shouldn’t be doing something she loves and is good at because it makes him unhappy, people would be throwing hands. But because it’s the other way around, somehow that’s okay?

But also, why are the writers making Kelly choose between OFI and Stella? Do people at OFI not have lives outside of work? Do they not have families? Are they always on a case 24/7? Why is Kelly working OFI such a treat to Stella and their marriage? OFI has been a part of Kelly’s life and career for so damn long, why is it suddenly an issue now?? Why is this even a plotline???

Stella is one of my favorite characters, and I would like for the writers to keep it that way. But, based on pre-premiere interviews that have been released, it all sounds very tiring. I believe the exact quote from Andrea Newman was, “Stella Kidd is holding all the cards in the relationship.” I read that and immediately thought back to 10x20. The episode ended on a sour note with Kelly expressing he felt Stella always got her way whenever they’d disagree or fight. That’s not a trope I want for an OTP.

#answered

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tbyfandoms · 1 year

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I don’t know how gossip and stuff like that works in the hayden fandom (as I’m so new to it) but I just wanted to speak my mind on the whole rachel podcast thing because it’s been ruminating in my thoughts for a few days and I can’t move on LMAO

So, if you’re down for a little discussion, please feel free to read! If gossip or speculation and stuff isn’t your thing, no problem! Sexual topics will be talked about so keep that in mind in case that’s something you’re not too comfortable with! anyways, here we go…

Alright, so I know the podcast rachel did where she talked about her sexual experiences was literally two months ago but I just need to get my thoughts out on it rn

First of all I’m gonna say I’m 100% all for women being open and honest about their sexual experiences! Like we have a right to not feel shame in speaking about these things openly, but I’m gonna be honest, rachel talking about not having an org*sm (censoring bc idk how tumblr flags stuff and I don’t wanna get in trouble lmao) from penetrative sex until she was 38 lowkey gave me the ick

Like it’s so very obvious people are going to assume the fact she’s basically saying hayden never gave her any sexual satisfaction (correct me if this is a reach) and my jaw kinda drops at that realization??? Like you’re telling me over the ~10 year relationship you had with this man, he not once made you feel good? And the only way you were able to feel satisfied was by your own doing???

As I said, she’s obviously, obviously, entitled to her experiences and opinion like who’s to judge her for that??? But it’s the fact she’s said it now. It’s just kinda ironic to me that after all this time she brings this stuff up, coincidentally when hayden’s career is taking off again, as if the public and media won’t connect the dots on who she’s talking about

Like ya’ll idk maybe it’s me but imo that’s kind of petty to do 😭 like this man was with you for a very long time, he’s the father of your child, and yet you’re gonna make him out to be a guy that doesn’t know how to please his partner…

Maybe this is all such a reach so please take this all with a grain of salt, I’m really just rambling rn and maybe won’t even feel the same after I write this all out, but for now this is how I’m feeling!

It’s just all kinda spiraling in my mind because truly why would you say that (I’m more-so finding a problem with it because she did it so publicly and on a random podcast). And maybe this makes me a hypocrite because I literally just said women should be able to be honest about their sexual experiences LMAO BUT CMON???

Idk maybe it’s just me being defensive of hayden and the fact I literally don’t know this woman at all and this is the first impression I’m getting of her, but it just rubs me the wrong way. Like idk about ya’ll but I know if hayden christensen just looked at me, I’d lose my mind. So imagine being in a relationship with him, where I’m sure he can figure out how to make you feel good especially giving the duration of your relationship, just for you to then turn around and throw it all back in his face when it’s been literal years since you’ve been with him…(also same goes for that adam brody guy she dated in the early 2000s, like it’s not just hayden this reflects on!)

Also she talked about how she misses her ex bill hader (whom she coincidentally dated when she was 38) because of his um…big d!ck. So she’s also throwing into the mix that apparently the reason she couldn’t get off with hayden and adam is because they’re small???? IM SCREAMING DSKDJDH

But again maybe I’m taking this all out of context or not looking at it the right way or whatever, so sorry if this ramble of nonsense is giving you the ick, but so be it

I probably missed a lot of points I wanted to make so maybe I’ll come back to this later, we’ll see

The last thing I’ll say is, literally watch any of hayden’s movies where he’s in a romantic relationship with someone and genuinely tell me you think that man doesn’t know how to make someone feel good, specifically with penetrative sex (because that’s what rachel was talking about)??? It’s the way he’s acting and yet I can still feel the sexual tension and attraction through the screen. Just imagine him in real life. I shall leave some gifs below to further prove my point because…yeah I don’t understand

Exhibit A:

This scene from Awake literally has me screaming every time I watch it DKSJSH like the hand placement??? The kissing??? Yeah I GET IT, it’s not sex but just trust me on this ok

Exhibit B:

This scene from Factory Girl. Literally my most favorite piece of proof that goes hand in hand with the fact I cannot grasp the idea THIS man does not know how to please a woman I-

Really you guys just have to click on the account that posted these and look at the whole set because…I rest my case. Just look at the way he rolls his body on her *screams*

Ok sorry, bye that’s all I’ll say for now. I feel like none of this makes sense and I SWEAR I’m not trying to shame rachel, I just felt really put off by that little tidbit she decided to publicly share so yeah here’s my current thoughts on it. Please no one jump me, if this is truly an awful take I will delete it 🫣

#hayden christensen #xoxo gossip gal

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soreiya · 1 year

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Why can't people just ship and let others ship without calling each other pedophile or slurs?

They are the fandom equivalent of Chris Sonnenburg... Stalking, harassing, and telling other fans that they are wrong for not catering to someone else's personal preferences… It all reeks of entitlement and egoism.

I can't be the only one to see the parallels.

Many of these people are not even aware of how hypocritical they sound when they make these kinds of baseless accusations. It gives off the impression of “Do as I say, not as I do.”…

I’m open about liking Varipunzel. Canonically they have roughly a 4 year age gap. By the end of TtS Varian is 16 or 17. (Some people think season 3 was longer than a year.) So according to a few bossy people in the fandom, I should feel ashamed if I age him up a year or two for a post series plot? I’m also a terrible person if I enjoy the ship in AU’s where canon ages don’t apply to anyone. There is no winning here… People will look at me badly regardless of if my intent is pure or not... So why should I care? Why should I let them taint something that I enjoy?

So if we as a fandom can’t age Varian up to ship him in AU’s then... Hmm...

Boy do I have some bad news for Varigo shippers in this case. Hugo and Varian canonically have a 10 year age gap between their respective source materials. So the Vat7K AU would be deemed immoral based on the fandom’s self imposed shipping guidelines. I doubt they would take this well at all. Haha

All I gotta say is that people need to stop with these double standards. Feign obliviousness, make excuses all day, but don’t act righteous like some kind of saint. Since everyone is bound to like something that other people would deem weird or questionable in some way. You just might not be aware of it yet.

Even widely praised canon pairings like New Dream have glaring red flags. Things that wouldn’t fly very well IRL, but they work in fiction because you have transparency. Yes, I’m being serious… Think about how Rapunzel was fresh out of the tower and had no baseline on what healthy relationships with other people should be like. It would have been easy for her to get manipulated or taken advantage of. So when people say New Dream’s age gap is okay because Rapunzel is legal, they are ignoring the fact that she has less world experience than the average 18 year old. This is a common oversight in the community. I like New Dream and even I can admit that this is a bit sketchy.

The point I’m trying to make is that every single ship has faults. No pairing is going to be loved by everyone. We should cherish our individuality and learn to be more open minded and supportive. Even to those who think differently. I'm certain that with some patience we can come to some kind of understanding of one another.

So yeah, it’s perfectly reasonable to dislike something that doesn’t appeal to you for any reason. Go forth and write full on essays or analysis posts. Do some research to try to see if you are actually right, or simple vent your personal frustrations out into the void. Just don’t be mean or make ignorant assumptions about other fans who do not share your opinions. Since there is a fine line between being a critic and being a hater.

#ask answered #ignore me #I ramble on and on sometimes

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elvencantation · 2 years

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I’ve followed you for ages and I really hope you don’t mean anything by it but posting about Harry Potter is an instant red flag for trans people/trans allies given that JK has explicitly stated she considers people who still consume her work but don’t say anything as people who agree with her transphobia but are too afraid to say anything. Just wanted to let you know, in case you weren’t aware, that seeing Harry Potter stuff on a blog generally makes it seem unsafe to trans people :/

I'm sorry that you feel unsafe on my blog. In no way do I support any of the bigoted bullshit JKR hypocritically spouts.

Trans men are men, trans women are women; everyone deserves to have their identity respected and affirmed. I will call you what you want me to call you, you are whoever you say you are, after all, you know yourself best! I don’t care how you present or what pronouns you use, and if I mess up I’m sorry, I will not make a big deal of it and I will practice and do better.

I will not give her any of my money. And also, I will not stop reading and interacting with Harry Potter in fandom spaces because of how much these stories mean to me. It’s a personal choice and I understand if that makes you feel uncomfortable and you block me. Do whatever you need to to feel safe.

My watchword for stuff like this will almost always be 'consume critically'. I will not usually divorce the subject from the ideals of the author because often doing so would be to ignore the very bigoted undertones (present, for example, in Rita Skeeter and in the goblins). Uncritical consumption risks passing that on.

This is what I think happened with the goblins. I don't think JRK is actively antisemitic (though I might be wrong) but by consuming other media with harmful Jewish stereotypes, unknowingly she passed it onto her own stories and her own readers that aren't aware enough to realize the harm in it.

I can never forget how much Harry Potter was a safe haven for me when I was growing up. I didn't understand people very well. I always talked more easily to adults than kids my own age. The very first friend I ever made in school, when I was in middle school, we bonded over Harry Potter.

I acknowledge its considerable faults. I engage with fan works that don't provide the author any support and nourish the parts of myself that find joy and identity within the beloved stories of my formative years.

#anonymous #anti jkr #harry potter #blue answers #i hope this doesnt come off as arrogant or stuck up #i tried to answer as honestly as I could #im not that great at wording my emotions sometimes #but i will always support people however they need me to support them #unless its at the cost of my own mental health or safety #also there are many ways to deal with bigotry and one of them is reclamation

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nomnomdiary · 2 years

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Honestly I'm a little bit boring about the lookism fandom on Reddit lol. Maybe it's around 75%. I'm boring because too much the post about power level tier. Okay, the fandom in the subreddit is not as toxic as other social media. It's just me. But it's not the main problem. The problem is... something double standard by some member.

I mean, when I join the subreddit (actually not long ago lol), I'm amazed how the respect Jiho as the character with good character development. Unlike other social media which is too busy with SIMPing, shipping or judging the good and the bad things. There are so many arguments of the majority that I agree. Even though there are arguments that I don't agree with, I still feel at peace.

But there is a double standard when there is a discussion about Johan, Samuel or Crystal. Some members are judgmental the good and the bad things and it makes no different with other forums in other social media. But I see some double standard lately. When there is the post about Johan, Samuel, Crystal or unpopular opinion, there is some member who judgmental, like..

“Johan is so annoying, Jake Kim is better” “Crystal is so hypocrital, I never forgive her”. "I hate Samuel” (I know he has so many red flag lol)

I often see this type of comment like lately. Just imagine, people respecting Jiho and complaining so many fandom outside reddit who overhated jiho. But in the same time, they are hate that 3 characters just because they are… bad characters.

When I joined for the first time, I feel like the majority got annoyed with the fandom (outside reddit) who judging Johan because he ran away leaving his mom, unlike now. Or it just me..

Well I forgive them. I mean, every fan has the right to dislike on the characters. The wrong is that they are too obsessed with venting their hatred for the character and against other people who like the character they hate (just like what happened in facebook group. Like you know… about crystal and heather hatred lol). But so far they are not like that. They just express their opinion. No more.

And yeah, the member of the subreddit is not a little. It's unethical that I make the stereotype just because of the behavior of a few members. I just want to share my uncomfortable opinion (forgive me lol).

Yea in this case, I'm so naive. I thought reddit is the perfect forum without judgmental between the good and the bad things. I'm tired of so many fans who obsessed to spread the hatred.

Well, in the end, it just the opinion by random people.

I shouldn't think too much about it.

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loversgore · 25 days

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U didn’t even reblog but I’m doing it anyways. Ur red flag is that u have such a big brain, not even just like Fic ideas though those are amazing

Ur aesthetics are SO baller…

Ur second red flag is ur taste in men. Rich coming from me but it’s TRUE /jokes

Ily calico :3

addressing these points in numerical order because I love lists:

1. can’t turn on anon, forget to reblog ask games… I think my REAL red flag is forgetting buttons on this website Do Things!!!

2. hey. hey now. this is red flags, not the compliment calico hour (she says, hypocritically, after heaping praise upon you). for real though, I really appreciate it, and I appreciate you for always hyping me up!

3. wdym my aesthetics are baller? not even in a self-deprecating way, in a “i understood all those words separately” way. i’m very tired and I can’t tell if you’re talking about my blog theme, the photos i reblog, the moodboard phase i go through every six months, my dabbles in character design, or somethin else!! I’m legitimately curious (and no matter what you mean, I’m glad you think so; I’m such a sucker for a good aesthetic and I’m happy to know it bleeds through).

4. Joey has done Nothing Wrong, Ever, In His Life.* What the hell are you talking about. :P

[*this is, in layman’s terms, a Blatant Fucking Lie for comedic purposes, btw. In case this somehow finds an unfamiliar audience.]

5. love you too, birdy. (even more than I love lists) <3

#the cat speaks: asks answered #the cat speaks: with friends!

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brandonmcadory17 · 4 months

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I’m appalled and personally I’m disappointed that I went from having 87 to 86 subscribers on my YouTube channel, but it doesn’t come as a surprise because I can fully understand why anybody would unsubscribe to my channel on YouTube because I didn’t something to somebody, getting bored with my content and did something disrespect or whatever the case maybe, but when people start to unsubscribe just for personal reason because they just simply hate what’s given to me in sports and hate getting called out for simply being hypocritical about certain content like sexualized content in films, in games, on social media and on TV, it certainly raised a red flag and I find that to be a serious problem. I’m going to say and this is going to be the last time. I agree that children should be kept safe and like I said I don’t want to justify using sexualized content to go after innocent children and justify the abuse and the human and sex trafficking aspect of it, but I hate people who hate getting called out and not take responsibility for just simply being a hypocritical human being for simply watching exactly the same thing, so people need to simply mind their own damn business since they didn’t even want to have anything to do with me at all whatsoever and people need to stop lecturing me about society because it’s not actually children and society. Certain people on Instagram and YouTube don’t give a fuck about fairness, they just simply hate what I stand for and tactics like these are why certain people on social media have the audacity to show their true colors and I’m not going to stand for that. My message to certain people in Instagram and YouTube is stop making excuses, stop making about being fair when you’re not, stop making it seem like you’re helping people when you’re not, stop being a bitch, stop justifying everything, stop trying to make look like a pedophile and a pervert when I’m clearly not going after children while I’m just simply minding my own damn business, stop unfollowing me on Instagram and anywhere else because you hate what I stand for while you refuse to come to the table, stop unsubscribing to my YouTube channel because of personal reasons like sports or sexualized content for people 18 and over because at the end of the day it’s not for you and it’s simply your fault for simply pushing me away because of subjects that clearly have nothing to do with you and it’s certainly and clearly none of your business, stop controlling my life, stop telling me what to do, stop being hypocritical about what I do and what you don’t do when you’re clearly doing exactly the same thing and stop dictating about what content I’m not allowed to what I’m supposed to watch . STOP!!! Jesus Christ!!! It’s no wonder I can’t get anybody to find common ground. My God!!!

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mogaimagic · 7 months

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i have a genuine question about your stag coining post that i'll be respectful and willing to learn about, so please don't. like. idk. dismiss me easily or treat me as dumb?

but anyway, assuming it comes from the set of "doe/stag", can i ask why it's not exclusive to mspecs? the only reason i was always in favor of it being so is because those terms were coined directly in response to bisexuals being told we can't identify as butch or femme, and of course i'm in favor of bi+ people identifying as such due to the terms and history having always belonged to us too (i, myself, have claimed one of them) so this may well come across as hypocritical at first. i just feel like people who gatekept terms from us and told us to make our own instead would be wrong in also identifying with exactly the said terms that we came up with; not as a means of "giving them a taste of their own medicine" or being a petty exclusionist the way they are/were, but simply because it defeats the whole purpose. otherwise i would have absolutely no problem with, say, lesbians "stealing our terms" as many of them like to call it. so i'm curious as to why you designed stag flags for lesbians & gays as well, and am willing to read your perspective, but that's just my understood opinion as of now.

of course, i could also be wrong and maybe you meant it as something completely separate from the terms i know, but that's what i got from as similar of a definition as "a nonbinary/queer person who subverts or reclaims masculinity" so... correct me if that's not the case, i guess?

I’m sorry I think you’ve misunderstood, I didn’t create these flags and these flags weren’t for mspecs specifically, @nonbinary-culture created these flags back in 2018, I just redesigned them for fun, since I wanted to try making my own versions, and they’re not for like, any particular sexuality, the only requirement is that you’re nonbinary! Sorry for the confusion

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tehuti88-art · 2 years

Photo

9/30/22: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Erich Arzt, without cap (top drawing) and with cap (bottom drawing); he's also a physician, so he can also be called Dr. Arzt. Fun fact, "Arzt" means "doctor," so that would literally make him Doctor Doctor. He looks friendly but is definitely not a decent person. There'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.

Regarding his design, he's a Siberian husky. Um...I guess that's it.

I'll be going off theme for the next month to do Drawlloween, which I've been doing since SketchDaily introduced me to it in 2018.

TUMBLR EDIT: I think I went over quite a few details about Captain...Doctor?...Arzt in previous entries, maybe Trudi Detzer and Eva Heidenreich? Let me check...

All righty let's just do this entry by entry:

Vincenz Immerwahr: Arzt is all, "Why sure I'll join your weird threeway relationship, I got nothing better to do...except PLAN A MURDER HAHAHAHAHAHAURKH AKKH URKKHHKKH." *dies*

Trudi Detzer: Alllllll kinds of skeeze going on here. But the fullest picture of this character to date and URKH AKKH URKKHHKKH. *dies*

Stephen Gerhardt: Brief cameo appearance!

Eva Heidenreich: He's here! Now he's gone. Now he's back! And now URKH AKKH URKKHHKKH. *dies*

Hedy Rader: Wow, I forgot he shows up here. Just for one line. But a funny one. Incidentally, it's kind of weird Col. Heidenreich is contemplating writing SS smut, considering how much of a prude he is regarding DEGENERATE!! stuff, but well, he's a big ol' hypocrite anyway...

I think maybe that's it. I recommend checking Trudi's and Eva's entries for a decent picture which I could very well end up contradicting a bit at points here, though hopefully not too much.

I don't know much about Arzt's early life. I'm assuming he had a nice, normal childhood and adolescence, probably from a well-off family, probably did well in all his subjects and sports and such. Nothing you would call an obvious red flag. I don't know if he has siblings or not, usually I'd lean toward no but perhaps he does. He's one of my younger characters so he doesn't serve in the Great War, but becomes a physician for the Waffen-SS. (I'm assuming he sees a bit of combat before switching to just being a doctor.) He's highly intelligent, charming, good looking (not the typical Aryan looks since he has black hair, but he does have icy blue eyes), and very popular with both women and men. And yeah, I mean that socially, and otherwise. Unlike with Gen. Immerwahr, who's just so important and influential that he can get away with whatever he wants and nobody will bother him for it, Arzt isn't nearly as important, so he has to be more discreet. He definitely doesn't flaunt the fact that he goes both ways. But it's rather an open secret anyway; nobody has any actual PROOF of it (as Klemper's case shows, the SS doesn't even require proof, a rumor is enough), but there are stories. Arzt's discretion goes a long way toward protecting him, and his charming manner likely helps too. I mean who can't help but fall for the guy.

(This is probably the thing that rankles the SS more than his preferences, the fact that he remains a bachelor, and fathers no (known) children. Yeah, that kind of rankles them. But what can you do.)

Artz is actually a pretty good doctor, BTW. He isn't interested in any of the bizarre human experimentation his fellow SS officers engage in; he's interested in established medicine. This leads to a weird running-joke rivalry between him and Dr. Mengele in the story. They have a LOT in common (I feel like I have to point out Mengele is a side character to make it clear Arzt himself isn't directly based on him), but Arzt constantly disparages Mengele as a "quack" for the experiments he engages in as a camp doctor. (Mengele disparages him right back, though for different reasons.) Due to their professions they're often in close contact with each other and so have to tolerate each other's presence, and this leads to lots of catty comments. Unfortunately for Mengele, Arzt is a bit more quick witted with such things and so usually gets in the last insult, though Mengele is more well known, plus he survives the war, so, I guess there's that?

As mentioned in the other entries, Arzt is the one who leads to Lt. Gunter Hesse transferring to the Allgemeine-SS after he's injured serving in the Waffen-SS. He meets Gen. Immerwahr, Hesse's superior officer, while asking for a letter of recommendation for Hesse; Hesse is reluctant to do so himself, as he'd reported Immerwahr to...the Allgemeine-SS!--for inappropriate conduct! (Immerwahr made a move on Hesse and even though he backed off, Hesse didn't like that.) And now the Allgemeine-SS, which refused to follow through on the complaint, needs a letter of recommendation from the guy who had a complaint lodged against him, for the guy who did the complaining! Good times all around. Anyway, Arzt was the one to suggest the Allgemeine-SS as a new job, so he asks Immerwahr for the recommendation, and Immerwahr finds this all so hilarious he goes ahead and writes one. And hits on Arzt, because wow, this hot doctor who's like half his age just showed up at his place out of nowhere. Arzt isn't a homophobic prude like Hesse. He's like, sure why not, whenever you're free. And leaves with the letter. Hesse gets into the Allgemeine-SS though he's awfully confused about this all.

Arzt IS interested in ONE particular type of experimentation. He's quite curious about all types of sexuality, especially those regarded as degenerate by the Nazis (for this reason, Heidenreich dislikes him, probably even more than he dislikes him when later on Arzt and his wife become a thing), so he's willing to try out pretty much anything at least once. I think probably the best term to describe him is versatile, though even that is rather lacking. But anyway, he never turns down an unusual opportunity when it presents itself. This tendency earns him a reputation among women as kind of a playboy, and that's the idea of him that seems to spread the most, even though he's just the same with men. He doesn't deny this half-deserved reputation since it probably helps him keep out of trouble, too. Plus, given how popular and openminded he is, he's more than likely got the "patronage" of at least a few very influential people (Immerwahr, and later on Eva Heidenreich, among them), so that can't hurt. (Hesse, even though he works in intelligence, likely doesn't know the extent of Arzt's carryings-on, though he surely has an idea; but his experience with Immerwahr taught him to pick his battles.)

Arzt's intense curiosity, and willingness to try things out (including some risky things), are likely due to him being a high-functioning sociopath. He has very little fear of danger, and very easily gets bored, and doesn't even have to try to get people to hit on him, so his mindset is "May as well go along with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ " Men, women, dom, sub, sadist, masochist, anything in between, at least it gives him something to do.

Arzt accepts Immerwahr's invitation to his place and joins him for dinner. Immerwahr owns the biggest estate right in the middle of the city, and it's crammed to the gills with art and antiques, much of it DEGENERATE!! in nature, plus he illegally employs various "undesirables" such as Jews and lesbians (i. e., people unlikely to talk) for his household staff, so of course Arzt finds this quite intriguing. (The naughtier, the better.) Immerwahr is rather versatile too, though he's much more interested in men; his favorite ploy is to invite them back to his private quarters to admire "the view." The room really does have a nice view of the city square, though most time there is spent looking at other things. Of course Arzt goes along. Immerwahr likes him well enough, and Arzt finds Immerwahr interesting enough, that they make it into a semi-regular thing. When Arzt shows up one day and finds Immerwahr has invited along a third party, Waffen-SS captain Oskar Ettlinger, Arzt is all on board, though Ettlinger is a bit more skittish (he's married and in the closet) and needs some convincing. Well, Arzt is pretty convincing. The three of them become a casual item, and when not otherwise engaged, they like to pass the time relaxing on Immerwahr's balcony, smoking and sipping drinks and chatting. This is how visitors usually come across them, and it looks pretty normal and reasonable to those few not in the know.

Arzt likes social gatherings, as they give him the opportunity to meet interesting people, have interesting talks, make interesting connections. He knows all the best people, even if they don't know him very well. One kind of ironic incident, in light of later events, is a small gathering he attends at the country estate of Col. Rupprecht Heidenreich, the chief of SS intelligence. Some members of the Dobermann household, as well as Hesse (who often stays on their estate), are visiting too, and someone comes up with the idea of a friendly competition, a horse race--Heidenreich comes from a long tradition of horse breeding and wants to show off both his riding skills and his prize stallion, Blitzschlag. Also joining the competition are Hesse (with his mare, Gewitter), Insp. Dobermann (he's not terribly thrilled to be involved but whatever), Sgt. Stephen Gerhardt, and Arzt. (2nd Lt. Senta Werner would've liked to join in but she's just a woman so she merely observes, along with Adelina Dobermann, Eva, and Private Konrad Helmstadt, because Helmstadt doesn't really care to be involved and he's just there to keep an eye on the wimminz, too.) The race is a VERY close one, with Heidenreich, Dobermann, and Hesse almost neck-and-neck while Gerhardt and Arzt are very close behind, when Heidenreich pulls a nasty move that causes Gerhardt's horse to topple, taking him with it--Arzt immediately drops out to tend to him (his ankle is twisted), and Dobermann--the intended target of the dirty move--pulls back as well, while only Heidenreich and Hesse finish, Heidenreich winning by a hair. (Addy is disappointed that both her father and her close friend Hesse lost, and Senta is disgusted by the cheating, while Eva is quite smug, and she and her husband pretty much eat each other's face in front of everyone after he dismounts. DEGENERATE!!)

It's on Immerwahr's balcony, though, that Arzt retires to one evening to drink and get away from the buzz of his latest party; parties are nice, but he has a limit, and there isn't anything especially interesting going on. He's sitting at a small table just outside the doors, sipping on his wine, when the doors abruptly burst open and someone storms out. Arzt watches the tall blond woman in the flattering red dress stalk to the balcony edge and grip it until her knuckles turn white, then slump against it as if defeated. He pauses, then picks up the wine bottle and fills a second glass; the woman hears the wine pouring and stiffens before turning to see who else is out there. Upon noticing Arzt, she approaches, and he holds up the glass of wine, saying, "You look like you need it."

Of course he knows who Eva Heidenreich is. She doesn't know him quite as well, though she vaguely remembers him from that impromptu horse race on her husband's property quite a while back, and yes, she knows her husband cheated. She accepts the drink and joins Arzt, who is a very good listener. It turns out Heidenreich cheats at more than horse racing, and he cheats quite frequently--from the very start of their marriage, in fact. Eva has "overlooked" this as much as she can, but now there's a rumor that one of the numerous women he's had affairs with is a lowly entertainer in a nightclub--a half-Jewish woman. Eva can overlook plenty of things, but coming from her "morally upright" husband, the same guy in charge of ensuring the racial hygiene laws are followed, this is just a bridge too far. She refuses to let this one slide. Unfortunately, although she's quite influential, she's still an SS wife and that makes her secondary; Heidenreich is a lot more powerful than she is, and like Immerwahr, can do pretty much whatever he wants. Not only that, but he's more powerful physically as well, and the previous night when she refused him, he got what he wanted anyway. Tonight's party has proven to be almost overwhelming, with her wearing her slinkiest dress and walking around arm-in-arm with her husband, the two of them playing the adoring couple while she secretly wishes she could murder him. She stops just short of saying this last bit out loud, but Arzt gets the gist of it. Eva's hatred of her husband practically oozes from her. He knows something that might help take away some of the sting, though. Apparently offhand, he mentions a room full of decadent art Immerwahr keeps locked in one of the halls--the exact same kind of art Heidenreich always decries as DEGENERATE!!, and the key is kept in a vase outside the door. Maybe Eva would like to go look at that art. Maybe Arzt could join her after a tactful period of time. Eva doesn't need any further hinting. She finishes her drink and leaves. Arzt waits a brief while before finishing his own drink, heading back inside (he spots Heidenreich at the other side of the room, chatting away amiably with a group of people), then exiting out into the hallway. He finds Eva wandering around in the private art room, admiring the displays, and kisses her. She's pretty willing, this time around.

(A note. Heidenreich actually knows exactly what's going on. Eva had gone to him to excuse herself to go look at Immerwahr's collection, and since she's already been cheating on him in an attempt to get back at him (she hasn't had as much luck as he has, since most SS officers are too afraid of angering their boss Heidenreich to sleep with her more than once--Hesse, who actually believes in upholding SS ideals, outright refuses), he figures there's more behind her exit than a sudden interest in degenerate art. When he sees Arzt leave shortly after, he easily figures it out. None of these people are as stupid OR as subtle as they pretend to be.)

Arzt is clear with Eva from the start: He's willing to help her try to get her husband jealous, and/or provide a distraction from her troubles, but that's all it is, a distraction. There won't be any serious relationship and neither of them will be tied down. Eva agrees. It's a bit hard to keep this in mind, however, when Arzt invites her back to his place, a cozy cottage in the suburb, and Eva is surprised to find another woman already there, significantly younger, slim, pretty, and apparently quite at home in Arzt's house. This is Gertraud "Trudi" Detzer. Eva is a bit steamed; Arzt had said nothing about somebody else LIVING with him. Turns out he has a standing arrangement with Trudi; while tending to an injury she'd incurred (he just happened to be the closest doctor around), he was surprised to discover that the young woman was actually male, or more specifcally, intersex--Trudi was born biologically male but with both male and female sex characteristics, and decided to present herself as female. In addition to all this, she's lesbian. In short, she's all kinds of things the Nazis and SS despise, and if they were to find out about her, she'd likely be sent to a camp to be experimented on by somebody like Dr. Mengele. Arzt, however, has different plans. He might not like medical experiments, but he likes other kinds of experiments, and he finds Trudi incredibly interesting. He offers her a deal: He won't report her to the SS, if she agrees to live with him and lets him do basically whatever he wants to her. It sounds like a nasty arrangement that nobody in their right mind would agree to, but Trudi knows the alternative is far worse; she's much tougher and more practical than she looks, and figures, she can handle one man, compared to however many people she might have to handle if she's sent to a camp. She agrees, though with the added stipulation that Arzt's protection extend to her mother, as well. She moves into his house under the pretext of him treating her for a "medical condition," and that's the situation when Eva arrives to pass the time.

Trudi has no romantic or warm feelings for Arzt whatsoever--theirs is a purely transactional relationship, plus, although she's agreed to this arrangement, a few times he's stepped over her personal boundaries into outright force. So she and Eva have a few things in common, although Eva would never deign to admit it. She isn't jealous of Eva's presence, just curious--she can tell the two don't love each other, and wonders what sort of deal they might have going. Eva, well, she's jealous. Arzt's stipulation that this is not a relationship notwithstanding. When she and he retire to his private quarters she makes a point to be as raucous as possible in the hopes that Trudi can hear it. Arzt calls her out on this afterwards, asking if she's jealous of Trudi, and why; Eva is too embarrassed by her own insecurity to answer. She does decide to keep carrying on with him, however, because so far she hasn't been able to find any other guys with the chutzpah Arzt has. (Part of this is because Heidenreich isn't Arzt's boss--he's in charge of the Allgemeine-SS, not the Waffen-SS--though most of it is just Arzt's lack of fear. He finds risky situations like this stimulating.)

Trudi is polite to Eva but for the most part appears to ignore whatever this is she and Arzt have going on. Eva figures the young woman is harmless and spends occasional afternoons at Arzt's place while her husband is busy at work. It's enjoyable, at least. One day while they're lying together, she finally finishes the thought she'd left unsaid at their first meeting: "I wish my husband were dead." Arzt isn't frightened, but he's rational: He treads very carefully.

Arzt: "You surely don't mean that."

Eva (giving him a look): "And why wouldn't I? You think I'm a liar?"

Arzt: "I think people say things they don't mean when they're angry."

Eva: "You think I'm merely hysterical?"

Arzt: "I think you're angry. And for good reason. But it's not the best frame of mind in which to make big decisions."

Eva: "Big decisions?"

Arzt: "There's a reason you're confiding this to me, ja...?"

Yes actually, there is. Eva asks Arzt if he knows anything about poisons. The moment she found out he was a doctor, the gears in her head started spinning--it isn't just hopes of making her husband jealous that inspired her to carry on with Arzt. She's using Arzt, too. He knows that, and doesn't care. Yes, he knows about poisons, he says; "But it isn't poison you should be interested in." When Eva asks why not, he replies, "Because that'll be the very first thing they look for. And everyone knows, the one who wants to use poison the most is the angry wife." Eva's disappointment is obvious, but Arzt isn't finished: "You need to think like a man," he says. This is advice much similar to what Eva's mother gave her when she was younger; "And what would a man think right now?" she asks. "Right now?--something completely inappropriate," Arzt says; "But a man would also think about how to pin this on someone else." "And how would he do that?" Eva asks, to which he replies, "He would think of a bomb."

A resistance group known as the Diamond Network, led by a Jewish camp escapee named Josef Diamant, is active in the city; Heidenreich's SS are constantly investigating them, but they're very skilled at flying below the radar, and they have secret operatives everywhere--for example, the civilian chauffeur who drives members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (commandant, adjutant, guards) to and from the labor camp is a member who provides a steady stream of intel, directly from the mouths of the SS officers themselves, to Diamant. The Dobermann household, where Hesse often stays, is a literal way station of the Network, with most of the help staff being involved and even Dobermann himself being fully aware of this. (Poor Hesse has no idea.) Although killing is very low on their list of objectives, and they go out of their way to minimize harm to civilian parties, the Network is well known for its use of explosives targeting SS and Nazi officials. The Diamond Network, therefore, is the perfect scapegoat for the murder of Col. Heidenreich. Arzt's specialty may be poisons, but he also knows a little about bombs, and about the way the Network does things. If Eva is serious, if she's 100% SURE that this is what she wants, then he can help her. But she has to be sure. Eva says, "I go to sleep beside him at night, I wake up beside him in the morning, and all I can think is how much I want him gone. None of this is worth it anymore."

So, okay. She's sure.

Arzt instructs Eva to take some time to cool off first; he'll get working on the bomb, but she needs to approach this slowly and with a level head. In the meantime, they'll continue their current arrangement so they can keep each other updated. He suggests she try to put her husband at ease by asking him to take her on an outing, make it seem like old times. Eva and Heidenreich go on a weekend getaway by themselves, and though Heidenreich isn't easily fooled, the distraction proves helpful in getting him to let his guard down a little; he figures Eva's cooled off a bit since their last altercation. She's a very skilled actress--she despises every moment she's with him, but effectively hides it. Arzt, meanwhile, works on assembling a bomb that at least superficially resembles those used by the Diamond Network: Diamant used to be a jeweler and watch repairer, so most of his bombs feature elaborate clockwork components. Arzt mimics this the best he can, which isn't very good considering he's not a jeweler or watchmaker, but it'll suffice to mislead the Allgemeine-SS. He uses gears from his own pocket watch in making the device, and when it's finished he lets Eva know. He'll use an untraceable private courier to deliver the device to the Heidenreich estate, where it's fully expected that the guards will open and inspect it. Arzt has hidden the bomb in plain sight by not concealing its clockwork components; many of Diamant's bombs resemble toys, a sort of taunt to their victims, so Arzt made his bomb look like a toy horse with a glass belly, the gears visible within. (Recall that in addition to running the SS intelligence office, Heidenreich is a horse breeder.) The idea is that everyone will assume it's from the Diamond Network and try to figure out how to disarm it. Here's Arzt's twist: It'll already be disarmed, and harmless. The only way it can be made dangerous again is if someone re-arms it with a separate explosive component. That someone is Eva.

So, one day the package shows up at the Heidenreich estate, and the guards at the front gate intercept it. Open it up carefully and look over its contents. One especially lucky guard gets to gingerly pry it open and poke around inside--but literally all he can find is gears. It does look like a Diamant bomb, but either he forgot to arm it, or it's intended purely as a taunt. They figure it's the latter, but decide to give it to Heidenreich anyway, since he'll surely enjoy the irony of owning a Network bomb that looks like one of his beloved horses. As the guard is taking the package to Heidenreich's personal office, Eva intervenes; after expressing concern about the safety of the item and being informed it's harmless, she offers to take it to him herself, and the guard hands it off. Eva pauses outside her husband's office to open the device up and place within it the component that actually will make it explode (Arzt gave her very clear instructions how to do so). Closes it up again, takes it inside. She tells Heidenreich the guards deemed it safe, and hands it over, then excuses herself to go see to something else. Heidenreich opens the package and draws out the horse figurine, looking it over curiously; he smiles as he admires its clockwork innards, then pops open the little glass compartment. Something immediately starts ticking. Heidenreich's smile vanishes and he has a fraction of a second to realize what's about to happen before it does.

Eva is a good distance down the hallway and still walking when the explosion rattles the windows and startles her to a halt--she knew what was about to happen, too, but is stunned nonetheless. She turns and runs back. Several of the guards are arriving too; one holds her back while the others go through the ruined office door, get a look at the scene, then immediately back out and decide to call Allgemeine-SS headquarters. Headquarters calls Lt. Hesse, who's asleep at his apartment in the city because it's late at night; when he hears that there's some sort of emergency situation at Heidenreich's house, he promptly gets dressed, grabs one of the SS cars, and heads out. (Hesse doesn't just enforce racial hygiene laws, he also investigates alleged crimes involving other SS members; so that's why he's involved.) He arrives to find guards trying to console and restrain Eva, who's screaming and sobbing (like I said--good actress); the others lead him to Heidenreich's office and he sees not only the destruction of the big wooden desk and everything around it, but what's all over the walls and ceiling as well. Shaken, he orders the room roped off and kept off limits until a team of investigators can arrive. He questions the guards and Eva as soon as she calms down, getting the basics of what happened; Eva seems infuriated that a bomb got through even after the guards inspected it and declared it safe. She begs Hesse to find out who's responsible and he promises to do his best. The guards confirm that the bomb was unarmed when they inspected it; they can't figure it out. Hesse calls a few trusted colleagues to fill them in, arranges for them to come out and collect evidence in the morning, and heads back home to catch a bit more sleep since he knows this is going to be a long one.

Col. Heidenreich gets a HUGE funeral--closed casket, of course--and the head of the SS, delivering the eulogy, vows that the parties responsible will face swift and brutal punishment. They accordingly begin cracking down even harder on suspected Diamond Network operatives, because who else could it be. Hesse is a bit more circumspect--he believes the same thing everyone else does, but he needs to collect some proof, pin down a specific subject, before he can act.

Despite his assurances, the investigation doesn't get far, until he's approached by Sgt. Stephen Gerhardt, a Wehrmacht officer who also resides at the Dobermann estate. Hesse had given Gerhardt a few details of the case when he asked, and thought little more of it, assuming he was just curious. Gerhardt now posits a theory: Somebody within Heidenreich's household armed the bomb, AFTER it was examined at the gate. Hesse brushes him off--"You're not an investigator, Herr Gerhardt, perhaps you should stick with what you know"--but the suggestion niggles at him the more he thinks about it. After all, there's literally no other possibility. He returns to the Heidenreich estate to question the guards again, trying to pinpoint which one might have something against the colonel; he at last focuses his attention on the last one who had possession of the device and presumably brought it to Heidenreich's office. The young officer is still shaken by the event, and seems genuinely upset and willing to help; when Hesse asks him for details about what happened when he brought the package to Heidenreich, he starts to answer, then blinks and suddenly remembers that he didn't actually deliver the package himself--Eva Heidenreich intercepted it. She was the last one in possession of the bomb, before Heidenreich received it.

Hesse remembers Eva attempting to seduce him some time earlier, and his heart sinks. He requests that she be brought to headquarters for questioning. At first she's defiant, seeming offended that her husband's men would dare suspect her of such things, but when Hesse brings up not just her possession of the bomb but her and Heidenreich's numerous affairs--"You're not stupid, Frau Heidenreich, I know you know everyone was aware of what was going on, because that was the point"--she visibly relaxes and then, to his surprise, gets a rueful smile. Hesse had promised to solve her husband's murder, and he kept that promise. He knows Eva couldn't have pulled it off on her own, however, and asks who else was involved; "Only me," she insists, "you think I'm not smart enough?" "I think you know little about how to make a bomb," Hesse says, to which she simply replies, "And you think I can't learn?" This is before the Internet, of course--it's not like she could've just looked up "How to arm a bomb" on the Dark Web. Hesse tries to coax her into naming her accomplice(s), suggesting that her punishment won't be as bad, but she calls him out on that promptly--"You just said I'm not stupid, Herr Hesse, so don't lie to me now, we both know there's no way out of this for me," and he's forced to stop trying. He does ask why she didn't just divorce him, a question that rankles her: "And give up everything? Everything I worked for! Everything I sacrificed for, while he had everything handed to him, just because he's a man. Maybe you don't know but this is just how it is for us, Herr Hesse, we do all this work to get so far and it can disappear in an instant because some man simply decided so. He doesn't need a reason. Why do I need a reason? He was an a**hole, and I hated him. There's your reason." Hesse finally realizes the depth of the Heidenreichs' hatred for each other, and ends the interrogation; he knows he won't get the identity of the accomplice from Eva. He does suspect it's one of the men she's had an affair with...but that doesn't exactly narrow things down.

(Something of which Hesse isn't aware. Sgt. Gerhardt didn't just pull his theory out of nowhere. He got the idea from Josef Diamant himself. Gerhardt is a Jewish American spy in contact with the Diamond Network, and Diamant is offended that anyone would blame Heidenreich's murder on his people--the bomb is a good fake, but not good enough: "Only an SS idiot like Herr Hesse would even think I'd make such garbage!" As well, the Diamond Network doesn't target private residences for bombing like this person did. When Gerhardt gives Diamant the details Hesse gave him about the crime, Diamant pauses before suggesting Heidenreich's death is an inside job: "I don't like the thought of it, but nothing else makes sense. Somebody in there is trying to pin this on us. Do you think we'd be foolish enough to go after Herr Heidenreich?--it's suicide.")

Eva waives her right to a trial--knowing there's no way it could be fair, and there's no verdict possible other than guilty--and is brought to a public area set up outside the labor camp, where a scaffold has been erected. Diamant was right in saying that assassinating someone of Heidenreich's importance is an extremely reckless move with extreme consequences, and Eva's execution--for that's what the punishment is to be--is open for the public to see, as a warning. She refuses the hood--"I want everyone to see"--and when given the chance to explain herself to the crowd, she announces, "My husband was an a**hole, and anyone here would have done the exact same." The noose is placed around her neck, the trapdoor released; Eva plummets, kicks, falls still. She never gives up the names of any accomplices.

One of the many people watching is Capt. Arzt. He feels no sadness, no real regret; it was too bad Eva got caught, but she knew the risk. If she had named him, he wouldn't have bothered trying to hide or flee because those are things a coward does--but she didn't. He's a bit impressed by her defiance. Her loyalty, he doesn't care one way or the other since she was just an interesting diversion to him, but it's to his advantage that she didn't give him up; reasoning that if she'd wanted him to be punished along with her, she wouldn't have stayed silent, he stays silent too, and resumes going about his normal life without any further concern. She made her choice.

Not long after, though, while he's relaxing at Immerwahr's place with the general and Capt. Ettlinger, Lt. Hesse and one of his men come calling. Immerwahr invites the two to join them but Hesse declines. In Heidenreich's absence, he's assumed temporary command of SS intelligence (in another ironic career twist, Eva recommended he take her husband's position, as he was the only "truly honorable" SS member she knew of), and quietly continued the investigation into Heidenreich's murder. There's been a development: A tiny bent gear found in the rubble of Heidenreich's office has been traced back to a particular watchmaker, and the watchmaker's records state it was a custom pocket watch made for a member of the Waffen-SS. The name in the records is Erich Arzt. An insignificant little piece of metal did what Eva Heidenreich refused to do.

Arzt feigns surprise and ignorance at first, but as soon as Hesse mentions the watch gear, he knows it's over. He stands up, removes and sets his pistol, dagger, and sword on the table, and offers his wrists for Hesse's companion to shackle. He also offers a belated defense for Eva, explaining that her husband mistreated her, and this is why she turned to him for help; he assumes all responsibility for the bomb itself, and says no one else was involved. Aside from this, though, he expresses no remorse. He pauses to take a last sip of wine from his glass and leaves with the officer as Hesse confirms that neither Immerwahr nor Ettlinger were in on the plot; the other two Waffen-SS officers are as bewildered as anyone.

As they head out to the car, Arzt explains that a young patient of his named Trudi is staying at his house, and asks that she not be "molested" as she has no knowledge of the murder plot; he also gives the combination to his personal safe. Hesse looks rather perplexed and uneasy--wondering why Arzt is offering up this information--but says nothing, and they get Arzt settled in the back seat and depart. It's a warm lovely day, the sun shining and the birds singing, and Arzt looks up and briefly enjoys the breeze passing over the open-top car. Then bites down on the little cyanide capsule he took from his pocket and slipped into his mouth while removing his gun and taking a drink of his wine. He's still conscious enough to hear Hesse yell at his companion to stop the car when he starts seizing and bleeding/frothing from the mouth; but by the time they pull him out and lay him on the ground, he's too far gone to notice anything anymore. He dies within minutes. Hesse is so frustrated and infuriated that he screams and kicks him in the side. It doesn't matter, Arzt can't feel it.

Yep, Eva was right. Arzt knows poisons.

The only thing left to do is resume their trip to Arzt's place to search for further evidence in the murder plot. Trudi greets them, and is stunned to hear of Arzt's death. (They wrapped him in a tarp and placed him back in the car for the time being.) She lets them in his private study, which was off limits while he was alive, and stands aside while they search. They locate the safe and open it up to find some random things including Arzt's will; Hesse skims it, furrows his brow, then tells Trudi that Arzt left his house and most of his belongings to her. He assumes the two are lovers, but Trudi seems just as bewildered as Immerwahr and Ettlinger were--"We weren't lovers. We weren't even friends. Why would he leave it to me?" Hesse doesn't know, and by now he doesn't really care. They return their attention to the search while Trudi turns and quietly leaves. They find some sort of records related to a medical experiment and an esoteric organization known as the Thule Society, then they find Trudi's medical file. Hesse glances at it in mild curiosity, and is promptly confused--the name on the file is GERTRAUD DETZER, yet the name inside the file is GERWIN DETZER. He figures it's some sort of mixup and Trudi has a twin brother whom Arzt was also treating until he reads on a bit more, and gets even more and more confused. His companion sees the look on his face and asks what's wrong; Hesse stammers, "Fräulein Trudi--she--he's a boy?" That of course makes zero sense to his friend, they were just talking to Fräulein Trudi and obviously she's a girl. Hesse asks where she is and they finally notice she's no longer standing there; they quickly go through the rest of the house, and in Trudi's room they find that several dresser drawers have been pulled open and emptied, and the door leading to the side yard is unlocked. Trudi knew they would locate her medical file; she made a phone call, packed a few things, then hurried out to the car that arrived shortly after and got the hell out of there. Needless to say, Hesse is beyond pissed off, by now.

There are a few key details here that both Arzt and Hesse overlooked; if they hadn't been so singlemindedly focused on Heidenreich's death, they might have noticed what was amiss. The SS has been leaking intel like a sieve and Hesse can't pinpoint where it's coming from. It turns out Arzt was the main leak--though unwittingly. That's because Trudi is a member of the Diamond Network: She'd caught another of them in the act of breaking into Arzt's house, but allowed her to escape. Surmising that the young woman living with the SS captain could be a potential ally, Diamant recruited her; Arzt discovered this and threatened her, but clever Trudi simply turned herself into a double agent. She remained living under Arzt's protection, feeding him carefully selected bits of information given to her by the Diamond Network, while simultaneously reporting all of Arzt's activities--as well as anything he'd told her while they were alone together--to Diamant. She was always there, sitting in the other room, while Arzt and Eva Heidenreich met; meaning the Diamond Network had suspicions that Arzt and Eva were up to something before Gerhardt, Hesse, or anyone else did. And the car that she called to shuttle her away from Arzt's house and into Diamond Network custody?--is the same limo used to transport members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, chauffeured by the Diamond Network operative Andreas Cranz (the other big leak in the SS).

So in the end, only one person with knowledge of the Heidenreich plot--Eva Heidenreich herself--ever faces punishment for it, and Hesse is forced to end the investigation, highly disillusioned.

Arzt's role in the plot doesn't end with his death, however. Toward the end of the story, I haven't worked out all the details yet, but some of the characters have a run-in with a Waffen-SS panzer division whose members are strangely fanatical and seem to possess almost unlimited stamina. Of course it's assumed they're high on meth, but it soon becomes clear this is something even more than that. The good guys barely escape with their lives; the only thing that stops the panzer commander (an as-yet unnamed master sergeant I've mentioned before, he has some goofy earlier interactions with Master Sergeant Schulte wherein they yell vulgar slurs at each other and then trade chocolate and cigarettes) is a gunshot to the head. Literally nothing else works. The good guys can only surmise they're on some kind of SUPER meth and leave it at that. After their escape, however, a few details come to light: These Waffen-SS members apparently participated in Project Doomsday, the Nazi medical experiment that plays such a prominent role in the story. This doesn't seem to make sense, as the Doomsday serum--which confers immense strength, intelligence, stamina, and ability to withstand pain on successful test subjects--works only on people with a VERY rare blood type mutation, and successful subjects can be counted on the fingers of one hand with room to spare--all of them were in the rodent side of the experiment. (Remember there are two parallel storylines in the Trench Rats universe, a rodent one and a canine one.) This here was an ENTIRE PANZER DIVISION of seemingly successful test subjects. How is that possible? They couldn't all have the same very rare blood type AND blood mutation.

This plot point is left hanging at the end of the story but gets picked up in the epilogue story, Ultima Thule, which takes place a little while after the war has ended and everyone has started settling down. Rumor reaches the two sets of main characters that Project Doomsday, which was believed ended when its headquarters was raided and the doctor in charge was killed, is in fact still going strong. It's merely been renamed--Project Ultima Thule--and repurposed--rather than increasing strength and intelligence yadda yadda, now it's focusing on conferring immortality itself. Some Nazi doctors who managed to escape capture fled to the mountains and have been keeping the project going. It quickly becomes clear that the members of the Waffen-SS panzer division were involved in the early stages of this updated project (before the doctors fled)--updated, as in the serum now works on ALL blood types. (Fun fact, if the characters had had the chance to check out the arms of the SS members in the previous story, they might have confirmed something was amiss--many Waffen-SS members had their blood group tattooed on their arm.) The serum has been majorly tweaked, and not only has its main limitation been removed, but it's gained a new and much more sinister purpose.

How was this possible when the doctor in charge of the project, Dietmar Kammler, was killed before he could resolve this issue? It's yet another instance of the characters overlooking something right in front of them. I already mentioned the project was successful only in the rodent side of the story--nowhere in the plot, so far as I know, are there any successful canine test subjects. Most of the characters probably assumed the same thing I did, that Project Doomsday was limited to just the one side, and the canine Nazis never bothered with it. Welp! That's not correct. Communication between the two groups is quite limited, but at some point Kammler must have gotten in touch with the canine Nazi doctors and given them all the important information to tweak the serum, probably because he was having such s**tty luck himself. (Sabotage, in his case. But anyway.) Two of the doctors who just happened to gain access to this information were Mengele, and Arzt. Mengele, since he's the one most interested in weird experiments, did the bulk of the work fixing the serum, but Arzt played a pretty big role in spreading the word about it and securing further funding: He was either connected to or actually a member of the Thule Society, whose logo--a broken sun cross swastika (remember that?)--Trudi once spotted in his office without knowing what it was. As you can tell by the name, the Thule Society had a hand in Project Ultima Thule, and Arzt came up with the idea of testing out an early version of the updated serum on the panzer division, misleading them into thinking it was just some variant of the meth they were always being given. This was why they were so difficult to defeat earlier.

After Arzt's death, Mengele is the one left to take up the mantle of the project. He irons out the bugs and passes it on to the remaining doctors before going into hiding and eventually fleeing the country. (So he never plays a direct role in Ultima Thule, no; he's not among the doctors who presumably end up dead at the series conclusion. A-hole lives on into the 1970s in South America!) Among the rodent faction, the party left in charge of the project is SS Major Ludolf Jäger (who sports a nice big BROKEN SUN CROSS SWASTIKA tattoo on his shoulder--yep--he's a member of the Society); among the canine faction, I currently know of nobody in particular who is left in charge, though there's the group of Nazi doctors, and then among both factions, there are the experimental test subjects doing their bidding. On the rodent side, known test subjects include Lance Corporal Indigo Rat (killed by shrapnel in the previous story) and Jäger himself (a volunteer); on the canine side, they include PFC Konrad Helmstadt, and Lt. Hesse.

Notice that three of the four test subjects named here were killed in the previous story: Indigo by shrapnel, Helmstadt and Hesse by gunshot to the chest. Yet here they all are, alive again, though not quite themselves--in contrast to their standard uniforms, they're all (even Indigo) dressed in a weird white variant of the SS uniform, their eyes have an odd milky blue haze to them, and they all act like automatons, largely unaware/unaffected by what's going on around them. (Jäger is the lone exception to this last one--because he's the only one who took the serum voluntarily, while still alive.) They're also apparently unfazed by any attempts to injure or kill them, similar to the panzer division. Eventually, the Trench Rat surgeon, Burgundy Rat, discovers that the Nazi doctors also engineered a chemical that partly counteracts the serum by overriding its hypnotic effects (I don't know for sure yet, but perhaps Arzt came up with this as a failsafe--sounds more like something he'd do, rather than the gung-ho Mengele). Indigo is the first to get this tried out on him--he's jabbed with a needle of the counter-serum or whatever it is (they've located some within the Alpine Fortress where all this is taking place) while attacking his former comrades, and for the first time shows a reaction, yelling and dropping to the ground writhing in pain. After several moments, though, some of the milky haze clears from his eyes, he blinks, and starts recognizing everyone around him. He's literally been brought back from the dead. He has no memory of anything after getting hit by the shrapnel, except a vague impression of being somewhere else and meeting someone. (There are hints of an afterlife given in the story but it doesn't dwell on this, since I try to avoid overt religious themes.)

The Trench Rats share this discovery with the canine faction, and they get their hands on the chemical and manage to use it first on Hesse, then on Helmstadt. Hesse, who'd been killed by Diamant while attempting to take the Dobermanns into custody, is extremely confused to suddenly find himself in an icy area, dressed in white and surrounded by different people; as he learns more about what's going on, he decides to switch sides, since the Third Reich, the SS, even his loyal master sergeant Schulte and his lover Sophie are all gone and he has literally nothing left but to help his old friends the Dobermanns. Helmstadt's reaction is decidedly different--although initially confused (his last memory is about the same as Hesse's), he's as devoted to the fallen Nazi cause as ever, and continues actively attacking and working against the Allies. They make another interesting discovery: There's another means of counteracting Ultima Thule's subjects, and that involves putting a bullet in or otherwise destroying the brain--exactly what happened with the panzer commander. (This is also why characters like Schulte, who was shot in the head, aren't resurrected for use in Ultima Thule--only those who were killed by other means.) So this is the big weakness in the project, and the Allies determine they have to make use of it to end the combined efforts of Kammler, Mengele, Arzt, and the rest once and for all.

Of course there's more, but that's the extent of Arzt's part in it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Erich Arzt 2022 [‎Friday, ‎September ‎30, ‎2022, ‏‎3:00:06 AM]]

[Erich Arzt 2022 2 [‎Friday, ‎September ‎30, ‎2022, ‏‎3:00:22 AM]]

#artists on tumblr #ibisPaint x #SketchDaily #original characters

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aydinmaiden · 3 years

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Hello Aydin. You’re time is far too precious on this site to be pulling Jobeans chains and kissing her ass. She’s a backstabbing hypocrite who enjoys gossip and being a slutty hoe over a man that doesn’t even exist- actually, the WHOLE OF THE HBC ARE HOES AND YOU SHOULD AVOID THEM AND THEIR PETTY PATHETIC MEMBERS. Huge red flags. Unless you want to be one of those morons who ignore me too then soon enough you’ll see what I mean.

Hey hey hey! Back the fuck up for one second. Where did this even come from?

first of all, must be a tough day for you huh?

I’m not kissing any ass or “pulling chains” (whatever that means? 🧐) I’m here to enjoy fanfiction written by talented writers on this site such as the lovely @jobean12-blog and very many others. Excuse me if I got it wrong but isn’t that what it’s about? Supporting? Making mutuals? 🤔

Second of all, I will NEVER appreciate this kind of behaviour in my ask box. This is my safe space as it is for my friends and mutuals. I don’t appreciate the hate, I’m not a hateful myself and I know for sure @jobean12-blog isn’t hateful and full of red flags. You anon, are.

Please find something else to do with your time. Don’t come back here with more shit like this because I’ll just report and delete them from now.

So in case you didn’t understand what I’m saying; I’ll be the moron that ignores you.👌🏼

#get out of my inbox #hate anon spreading hate #it’s almost 1pm and I’m hangry

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scandalsavagefanfic · 3 years

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I can't understand how so many people can say that Urban Legends did Jason character justice?! It literally ruined it to prop out Bruce.

In the beginning, we were all swayed by Jason getting a kid and the fact that characters who are often the conscious/voice of reason in the batfamily were sympathetic to Jason/critical of Bruce (in this case, Alfred and Babs, only one missing is Dick). We were so excited by these scraps, that we were willing to forgive/look past the red flags being thrown up.

And to be honest, some people are so desperate for Bruce to be written like a fucking human being, that they care less about the batkids that might be thrown under the bus for that, than the fact that they're finally getting the version of Bruce they want.

I love Bruce and I also desperately want him to be written as a flawed man who tries his best. But I also like the batkids, and nothing bothers me more than when their characterization is sacrificed for Bruce's sake. Because at the end of the day, each batkid is a child that Bruce taught to be a vigilante, and while I think the "child soldier" angle is silly and that's where we, as readers, should suspend disbelief so that we aren't ruining the fun of comics, I also think that doesn't preclude writers from remembering that fact and giving the kids the benefit over Bruce.

And with Jason specifically, it's extra frustrating when they tone down Bruce's tendency towards ultraviolence and rage, and simultaneously shove it at Jason. Because Bruce's violence and rage issues aren't OOC. He's been written like that on and off (and mostly on) for over 30 years. Jason... hasn't. Not really. Not in any meaningful way. Because the instances where Jason is written like that fall into two categories. Morrison, or retcons to Robin!Jason. The first category consists of a grand total of 6 single issues (one of which, Jason is barely in). And the second category is, in it's entirety, an example of Jason's characterization being cannibalized to Bruce's benefit. It exists entirely to absolve Bruce of his part in Jason's death and excuse his immediate replacement of a murdered child sidekick with another child sidekick. It exists to try to place all the blame of Jason's death on Jason, the 15 year old kid who was just trying to find/help his mother, so that Bruce isn't a villain who trained a child to fight supervillains and was surprised when his luck ran out, so that Bruce isn't a hypocritical sociopath for letting Tim become Robin just a few months after Jason died.

So yes, I want Bruce written better, but if the choice is between one of the kids and Bruce, I'm gonna choose the kid.

That said, I'm not sure why I have to choose? These characters can be written without fucking one of them over. I almost said Chip Zdarsky is a better writer than this, but now that I'm thinking about it, I only know him as an artist. Sometimes, I feel like DC thinks that writing is easy, anyone can do it, so as long as the art is nice (for the most part... for characters they care about anyway), then the writing doesn't actually matter. It's frustrating as hell when the thing keeping you engaged with these characters is their potential for amazing stories.

I rarely buy a shitty story because the art is nice (though I have before and I'm doing it now, with Urban Legends, just to support Marcus To). But I buy comics despite the shitty art in the hopes that the story will be good all the fucking time. By the time I find out the story is also garbage, it's too late, I've already given DC my money.

I want DC to know that hope is what drives their sales, not quality. Because of the way the industry is set up, comics companies don't have a reliable way to judge their sales. They know how many copies comics shops purchase, but they don't know how many of those copies actually make it to readers. AND they have a tendency to consider a drop in sales representative of a drop in interest in the character, when in reality it's almost always because of bad storytelling.

Does DC even have group editors anymore? Is there anyone there who has actually read comics for the characters they're in charge of writing/wrangling?

Sometimes it really doesn't feel like it.

#jason todd #bruce wayne #batman urban legends #dc comics #meta #scandal's wild rambles #sorry #kinda went off on that one

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fallcolorspringrapid · 3 years

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in our series of “triggers and content warnings are a more complex and nuanced topic than you think”, let me present a real-life example: me

yesterday i watched the drunk lan zhan episode and i enjoyed it immensely. i also read a chapter of a fic in which lan zhan is black-out drunk. it was the best! the fic had a tag “drunk lan zhan”, the episode obviously didn’t warn me in any way. this was fine. i knew going in that it did no have content warnings, and i decided that i would watch it anyway, and i did, and i very much enjoyed drunk lan zhan...

...despite—or maybe because—having massive alcohol-related childhood trauma. in real life drunken people scare me. it creeps me out how people become someone else when black-out drunk, the way they behave like zombies, exactly like lan zhan did in that episode and in that fic. in any case, for reasons i don’t quite get, for me, drunk people in fiction are fine. more than fine. i seek out this stuff. i find it intriguing and oddly hot

also for reasons i don’t quite get, in contrast, i find fictional depictions of wholesome, safe, consensual, enthusiastic, happy, and mind-blowingly good sex icky at best, really triggering at worst

guess what the fic had in its second chapter? guess what it didn’t warn for?

it says “fluff” and “smut”, which together are a bit of a red flag for me, but the first chapter had fluff and it was fine, and smut could mean any kind of sex. it didn’t say “the sex is really awesome and easy”, “they negotiate it like pros”, “nothing goes wrong”, “no difficult feelings”, “wholesome and happy”

why these things are triggering to me doesn’t matter, that’s my business. and the point i’m trying to make here isn’t that the fic should’ve had all these tags, that the author should’ve somehow known these wholesome happy things could send someone into an anxiety spiral. no. that i read it was my choice and it’s my responsibility to deal with the consequenses of that choice. i just made a bad choice. i just got unlucky

what i am trying to say is that if wholesome fluffy smut can be triggering to me, every single thing you can find in a fic or other kind of art can be triggering to someone, and it’s frankly stupid to assume it’s the author’s job to know what content warnings their readers need. and it’s really fucking hypocritical to demand warnings for a long list of triggers you think are the most valid, to behave as if some forms of trauma are more real and more worthy of warning for than others

am i saying there shouldn’t be any warnings anywhere? no. you want to warn for stuff? great! some people benefit from that and that’s awesome. and some stuff is more likely to be triggering to more people, so i think it’s neat that e.g. AO3 has a short list of mandatory archive warnings—plus the option to tell people to proceed at their own risk, because sometimes even these topics are not clear-cut

but for fucks sake

anything can be a trigger. and one of the functions of art is to push our buttons, to make us feel things, and those things are not always nice nor should they be. the world is not always nice. existing is not always nice, and pain sucks, and it makes sense to try to avoid it, but to experience it doesn’t always mean something has gone horribly wrong and someone needs to be made responsible

it’s just like...sometimes there is pain. different people get hurt by different things. learning how to cope when you inevitably get hurt is more worth your while than trying to weed out all the possible sources of that pain, because pain is part of existence and you, fortunately or unfortunately, exist

phew. ok. in the space of a few hundred words i just went from “drunk lan zhan is nice!” to “what even is existence?” so.....you see what i mean by “complex and nuanced topic”?

#please feel free to ignore this #disk horse #i'm just dealing with my pain in the best way i know how #writing about it #giving it context #making something hopefully useful out of it #tagging #trigger warnings #fanfiction #personal stuff

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eliemo · 3 years

Text

Guilty Conscience

Summary: Patton knows he’s a hypocrite. Sometimes it’s just so much easier to care about someone else.

TWs: Mentions of past abuse

Notes: Something small and different to set up some upcoming angst. Sympathetic everyone. Taglist at the bottom

Learned Behavior Masterpost

Patton had always considered himself to be fairly observant. Oblivious sometimes, sure, and he definitely had a habit of trying to ignore the negatives, but he always saw more than he let on.

Apparently, he wasn’t as observant as he’d thought.

Everyone had told him not to dwell on it, Virgil especially, and he tried to take their advice. He really really tried.

And sometimes it worked. Sometimes he could put all his energy into the present, on making things better, on ensuring it never happened again. He could try to fix his mistakes, even if he had no right to be forgiven.

But there were times when he couldn’t help it, and he found himself sitting up in bed in the dark, replaying old memories over and over again in his head, thinking about everything he’d missed. Every warning sign, every red flag, every silent cry for help he’d been too blind to see.

Patton often thought about the first time Virgil had joined them for dinner, the night he’d revealed his name in an act of trust. Right after they’d stopped him from ducking out, disappearing completely.

Sometimes Patton let himself wonder what would have happened if they’d been too late. If they hadn’t even looked for Virgil. If Thomas hadn’t been so dysfunctional without him, he would have been left to fade away to the subconscious. He would have vanished from their lives forever, before they even got to really know him.

Virgil would have faded without ever experiencing a shred of true kindness. Virgil would disappear still thinking he was meant to be beaten and hated, knowing nothing but fear until the day he died. They would never have been able to show him otherwise, and they never would have known to regret it.

That first night he’d joined them as more than Anxiety, Virgil wouldn’t even step foot into the kitchen until the food was on the table- and even then he’d looked like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to be there.

Once they’d all gotten settled down, Virgil had been wide eyed and tense the entire time, watching them all warily like he expected them to poison him. It had taken Patton a moment to realize the anxious side hadn’t even picked up his fork, and another to work up the courage to ask him if something was wrong with the food.

“It’s fine- I’m ok,” Virgil had said quietly, but Patton had caught the slight tremble in his hands. “I just...sorry, I’m just not...are you actually ok with- with this? With me...eating?”

And of course, they’d all assumed it was just his anxiety about eating with them properly for the first time, still hesitant to believe they were actually willing to accept him, and Logan had gently assured Virgil that he was more than welcome to eat as much as he wanted.

Virgil hadn’t eaten very much that night. The same thing happened the next few meals he had with them, hesitant and tense, barely touching his food. Patton had decided not to push, letting Virgil take his time to settle in and get used to the changes.

He wondered what would have happened if he had pushed, if he’d realized that Virgil hadn’t been sure if he was allowed to eat, convinced he would be hurt if he didn’t ask permission for something so simple.

It wouldn’t have undone all of the hurt Virgil had already gone through, but Patton would have been able to reassure him sooner. He could have kept himself from lashing out like he had the first time he found out about the treatment Virgil considered normal.

But there had always been evidence of what had been happening behind the scenes, long before Virgil ever felt safe enough to tell them his name. Little things that had been easy to miss back then, but were so obvious now.

He’d always been closed off and quiet, but the light sides had just chalked that up to him being...Anxiety. Patton had always been careful to be polite, but now he knew he should have looked closer.

Virgil had always carefully kept his distance, unusually wary whenever someone would walk into the room, and Patton had seen him trembling a few times one of them got too close.

The long sleeves and baggy clothes, the times Patton had seen him with a little extra concealer on his face, the way he’d sometimes ask permission to leave the room even when they already saw so little of him.

Virgil had avoided the kitchen like the plague, too. (Even after they’d learned the real reason why, it still took months to convince him it was safe) Patton had once found him getting a snack in the middle of the night, greeting him with a tired, “Anxiety?”

Virgil had jumped, stumbling over his words as frantic apologies spilled from his lips, and Patton had been too tired to do much other than quickly reassure him and step away as Anxiety hurried back to his room.

Virgil hadn’t been able to look Patton in the eyes for a few days after that, always flinching away from any movement when he briefly appeared in the living room, leaving even quicker than usual. Patton had naively assumed he’d just been startled, and wanted some space like usual.

Patton had been an idiot. He should have seen Virgil was being hurt years ago, not when Virgil had been driven to ask why his new family wasn’t doing the same.

Patton was always so desperate to keep everyone from focusing on the bad things in life, he’d ended up turning a blind eye to suffering happening right in front of him. Suffering he could have stopped.

Virgil had only lashed out at them once, but Patton knew he hadn’t meant it. Not really. “You never bothered to talk to me until I was useful, anyway!”

Virgil had apologized over and over again, convinced he would be hurt for the outburst, but Patton almost wished he hadn’t apologized, that he’d stuck to what he said and believed it.

Because on nights like this- sitting alone in the dark of his room thinking about how things could have been different- he knew Virgil had been right.

They hadn’t gotten to know Virgil until they realized they needed him. They hadn’t bothered to look past the aggression drilled into him, never thought to wonder why he was so distant until it was almost too late.

They’d left him to endure the abuse on his own, when he could have been safe so much sooner if Patton had just looked a little closer.

Virgil didn’t blame him, no matter how much he should. Even after all this time, he still just seemed amazed he was being offered safety at all.

Patton was glad for that at least. It wouldn’t undo his mistakes, but at least he could hold Virgil close and listen to him breathing, reassuring himself that they hadn’t been too late. Virgil was alive and safe with them. He would never be hurt like that again.

It helped, but it didn’t do much on these nights. They were less common than they had been in the beginning, but Patton was familiar enough with the racing thoughts to know he wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.

He was never able to keep himself from crying, but he’d press his hands tightly over his mouth to muffle any sound. He couldn’t make anyone worry about him- not over this. He wasn’t the one who’d been hurt.

Patton sighed, the sound small and shaky, wiping at his soaked cheeks as he threw the covers back. There was no use staying in bed with no distractions. He’d get a drink to help his now raw throat, and then put on some hopefully calming music.

He knew it wouldn’t do much, but it was better than nothing.

Patton padded down the hallway, wrapped up in his cat hoodie and hiccuping softly from lingering sobs, but when he made it to the kitchen he quickly realized he wasn’t alone.

There was a single light turned on over the sink, casting the kitchen in a dim, golden glow. Janus was seated at the table with his hands folded in front of him, and even in the poor lighting Patton could see how exhausted he looked.

When he glanced up, mismatched eyes dull and pained, Patton thought he was looking in a mirror. It was hastily concealed in a second, but the guilt and shame held in his eyes was a perfect reflection of Patton’s own.

He knew Janus was being plagued with it too, bombarded by thoughts of everything they missed. All the signs had been right in front of them, and if they’d just thought to look they could have stopped it.

But instead they were here, kept awake by their own regret, weighed down by the irrational belief that they were the only people who could have ended the abuse.

“It’s late,” Janus said, too strained to be casual, and Patton knew he’d seen it too. “Do you plan on sleeping anytime soon?”

Patton smiled sadly, wiping away the residual tears as he made his way into the kitchen. “Not tonight. You...want some tea?”

Janus shook his head, going back to staring blankly at the table, and Patton didn’t try to change his mind as he silently bustled around the kitchen. He made himself a cup, but made sure there was enough hot water left if the other side changed his mind.

“Mind if I keep you company, kiddo?”

Janus scoffed like he usually did at the nickname, but he gestured vaguely at the empty chairs, so Patton took that as a yes.

He settled down in the seat next to Janus, watching the snake carefully as he sipped at his tea. Watching Deceit at least gave him a distraction from the tightness in his own chest.

But he knew that look far too well, knew Janus was getting lost in memories and what ifs, and he knew it was tearing him apart. It looked like he hadn’t slept properly in days.

He took a risk, setting his mug down to gently place his hand over Janus’s own, who eyed him warily in response. Patton smiled, squeezing gently like he did for Virgil.

“It wasn’t your fault, Janus.”

For a moment he couldn’t read Deceit’s expression, feeling abruptly vulnerable under his stare, and he was unwittingly reminded of the court case, of being picked apart and turned in circles until he was lost.

Janus tore his gaze away with a resigned sigh, but he didn’t pull his hand away. “Of course,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “I’ll believe that when you do.”

Patton winced, tightening his hold without thinking. “It wasn’t...we couldn’t have known. We couldn’t have known.”

It came out more desperate than he’d intended, like he needed Janus to agree, to reassure him, even if it was just a lie. Patton would settle for lies tonight.

“You couldn’t have known,” Janus corrected, and it only made Patton feel worse. “I...Patton, I watched him lie when he was hurt. I saw the change happen, I watched him close himself off and become...scared. I never knew he was so scared.”

“You couldn’t--”

“I ignored it,” Janus snapped. “He pushed me away and lied when he was hurt and I thought...I never thought...I should have gotten him out of there. I could have stopped it from getting that bad.”

Patton ran his thumb along Janus’s palm, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “He doesn’t blame you.”

“I know.” His voice came out more of a croak, and Janus scrubbed a hand over his face before continuing. “That just makes it so much better, doesn’t it?”

Janus was watching him again, eyes sharp like he was reading the moral side like an open book, and Patton resisted the urge to squirm away. He wondered why he could come up with a million reasons why Janus wasn’t to blame, but couldn’t do the same for himself.

“Maybe sometimes,” he admitted, choosing his words carefully. “But...it’s worth it. It means he feels safe here. With us. He’s...he’s letting us do better this time. You might not think you deserve it yet, but being a family means the world to him. He’ll learn to trust you.”

Janus wasn’t meeting his eyes anymore, pursing his lips as his free hand ran idly over his scales. “I won’t...there’s nothing I can do that can make up for what I let happen.”

Patton had gone through this before, back when the shock and hurt had been fresh. He’d had time now to mull it over, to process his guilt, and even after all this time it still popped back up on bad nights.

Janus had only just found out, still hurting and blaming himself before the people who had actually put their hands on Virgil.

“I don’t think he wants that,” Patton said. “I think he just...wants to be safe. He wants us all to be safe.”

He felt Janus tighten his hold, watched him take in a shaky breath as his eyes grew shiny from tears pooling in his eyes. He blinked them away before they could fall, and Patton felt his heart break.

“You can cry, Janus,” Patton said, but he knew it would fall on deaf ears. “You’re allowed to be hurt.”

“Nothing happened to me.”

“You weren’t hit,” Patton said. “But you’re hurting. And if Virgil knew, he’d want to help you as much as you want to help him. He’s not angry at us, and he doesn’t want you to go through this alone. No one does. You can...you can ask for help.”

Janus was quiet for a moment, the silence in the kitchen suddenly deafening. Patton glanced at his tea, wondering if it had gone cold by now. He hadn’t really planned on drinking it in the first place.

Janus gave a short laugh, sudden and humorless, looking up to meet Patton’s eyes once again. “You first, Morality.”

Ah. Well...Patton couldn’t argue with that, could he? Not when Janus was looking at him like that, like he could see every lost battle clear as day. Patton wasn’t the only one looking in a mirror tonight.

“I...suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite,” he admitted, offering a small smile. He always was when it came to things like this. “But I’m alright, Janus. I really am.”

Deceit sighed, raising his eyebrows in that way he did whenever he caught one of the sides in a lie. “Of course you are, Patton. And so am I.”

Touche.

That seemed to be the end of the conversation, the silence that fell no longer feeling quite so forced and heavy, but neither seemed particularly inclined to move.

Patton dropped his head on Janus’s shoulder before he could think to talk himself out of it, shutting his eyes against the sudden urge to curl up and cry, the weight on his chest close to unbearable.

Janus only tensed for a second before relaxing slightly, and he didn’t shove Patton away with an annoyed growl, so he figured it was alright if he stayed for a moment. Maybe the comfort would do them both some good.

At some point, Janus scooted his chair closer to drop his chin on top of Patton’s head, the two of them sitting silently at the kitchen table, letting themselves get buried in their guilt. It was easier to place blame in silence, anyway.

They stayed that way until the sun began to rise a couple hours later, bathing the kitchen in the pale light of dawn.

Taglist: @pukingdraws @thefivecalls@self-taught-mess @itawalrus @mygenderisidiot @a-very-gay-raccoon @dawnfire7 @cr4zyart @ray-does-stuff @whydoifeeltheneedtoorganizestuff @bunny222 @the-blue-recluse @bisexualdisaster106 @basilthefourth @snowtrashowl @thefingergunsgirl @trashtm @stubbornness-and-spite @kieraelieson @alias290 @darkch1ld @craz-ewaters @damy-02 @frogdog145 @gattonero17 @madamedraconis @stoicpanther @@love-to-read02 @that-spider-fan-over-there @thatoneloudowl @rich-flower-17 @demigodbookdragon @i-gobymanynames @wyvern-tales @spoopyseason66 @gaylotusthatexists @my-life-is-an-artistic-mess @that-one-fander @alias290 @yalltookmyurlideas @theantisocialghost @dark-strange-daughter @joylessnightsky @nova-galexa @luckymasie @stayarmy321 @starsinger @unhygienic-andy-the-anon @deathdarknessdevils @d-rizzle83 @spoonfullofcrofters @sarcasmremovedsoul @bananabread123443 @alpacadraws @nonbinaryemonugget @espepspes @awesome-and-unique-username @starshinemoonglow @honeybonesvirgil @fandertrash24 @tracingstarlight @sanders-fanders @heartwitchhouse @major-disaster-enby @a-poor-anxious-baby @franticfandomfanatic @the3rdpansexualpanda @a-flying-gay @hermitcreature @darkle-elkrad @coaltail121 @i-really-like-dragons @blagi @the-daydreamers-rebellion @alexxadontplaydespasito @coaltail121 @arrestjellyfish @sneaky-slytherin @ieatspinalcords @stormcloud-cos @genderfluxbadass @lizzy-lineart @teamplutoforlife @vitriolic-artist @bluestarfan10 @bookworm105616 @utter-queer-nightmare @bewildered-bullfrog @somegaybish

#sanders sides #learned behavior #abuse tw #food mention tw #ts patton #ts janus #moceit #platonic moceit #ts virgil #this is kinda just a new perspective thing #i was also just thinking about them and wanted to write something short #fanfiction #writing

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