#i don’t think we can compile/organize all this evident in one day | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

boldlyanxious · 3 years

Text

Remember when 23

Call me Maybe

Remember when masterlist

All fic masterlist

Tim almost dropped his phone in his hurry to answer. He didn't expect his phone to make a sound again until he changed the settings back but the picture of Marinette flashed on the screen with her name at the incoming call. He was feeling a bit breathless after the excitement of trying to keep hold of his phone and also because she was calling him. He tried to keep his voice even when he answered anyway.

"Hello?" He waited for a response but she didn't respond. He assumed she had to bully herself into calling a bit so he kept his voice calm so she wouldn't hang up.

"Hello… are you there?" He waited again before softly saying, "Please talk to me Marinette."

That was his first clue that something was wrong. There was no response on the line but he could hear someone talking near the phone.

"Well isn't that something, Marinette? Clearly you are hiding something if you aren't even giving out the right name."

The sudden silence signaled that the call had ended. A feeling of cold horror tightened painfully in his stomach. He suspected things were going very bad for her and that he had just managed to make them far worse.

---

Barb was surprised to see Bruce in the cave when she entered. It was just as well though. They would need everyone for this. He didn't even notice her until she spoke. He looked like he had been there quite a while based on his posture and discarded plate and mug. She felt a bit bad that he felt the need to hide in his own house. She decided to just skip right over the awkward and get straight to the mission.

"Everyone is coming now to suit up," she said. "Looks like it might be a long night. Alfred is bringing tea and coffee."

He faltered for a moment. He was surprised she was talking to him. Especially after he had spent the last few hours reading all the information Tim had compiled about Rouge Gorge aside from their interactions with her. She hadn never gotten much news coverage because her saves were rather small in comparison to the Rogues or the organized crime that the bats usually dealt with.

Tim had talked to the criminals and the victims of hundreds of crimes where the response was always that she was dedicated and focused. She was friendly, efficient and never used unnecessary force. Some of the reports went back even further than when she had caught Red Robin on the rooftop and definitely before they knew anything about the new drug. He pulled away from the computer, not quite getting the folder closed before she saw it. She raised an eyebrow at him questioningly but he pretended not to notice.

"What do we know?" he asked, avoiding the awkwardness for now.

"It appears to be a coordinated attack on the drug ring. Reports indicate even more locations are being attacked than we have information on."

She pulled up a map to display as others started arriving. Bruce stepped away to suit up. Robin was already there and Black Bat. Dick and Steph came down but she said that Hood would join them out there along with Arsenal. No one had heard from Tim since Barb had left his place.

"Who is leading the attack? Who even had that kind of resources?" Dick asked.

"It seems to be mostly coming from Falcone, probably for revenge. They are being joined by other gangs to fight for the right for territory and distribution," Barb said.

"Splitting the distribution among several gangs could limit the spread of the drug. Especially if we can interrupt the process," Steph said.

"It's too early to know for sure, but I think Penguin is using the chaos to make a move. It looks like he is banding gangs together for greater force. Whether he is doing this with Falcone or as a counter move is unknown." Barb said.

"Let's see what we can find out tonight." Batman said, moving toward the exit.

---

She was surprised to be pushed down onto a cushioned surface before the cloth was removed from her eyes. The drive had been short and silent before they moved her in. She looked around the room from the old couch she was sitting on. She wasn't surprised at all to see the drug dealer from the party in front of her. Lt. Howard Branden, if she was remembering the information from the meeting she ran from before her disappearance a few months ago.

There was no sign of the other 2 he had been working with before but the group was exactly who Batman promised to turn her over to if she didn't give him more information. She knew that Batman sometimes worked with the police and Branden was, or maybe had been, a police officer with the SWAT team. She didn’t pretend to know how any of that could work but it did seem like a possible connection.

She was surprised to see the guy she had met at the party who had tried to use her for free drugs. He looked like he was currently on drugs but was seemingly willing enough to be there that he wasn't bound in any way. The leader was already looking through her phone and she could see another trying to get into her laptop. She basically had no information on her phone. It was as low tech as she could manage to find. She could see some device attached that would probably get past her 4 digit PIN. She knew it wasn't very secure but it was a burner phone with 3 saved numbers and no names. She tended to reset it frequently.

"Work, T and A. Sounds like you know what you want out of life. But look at that history. No calls in days."

Marinette shifted herself but didn't try to talk through the gag. She just watched him and hoped she could find a way out of this as he continued.

"You friend, Dustin, here told me all he knew about you but it doesn't seem like anyone knows very much. He couldn’t even get much from his friend who works with you. Apparently no one knows much about you.”

He removed the gag. But she said nothing.

"Who are you?"

"Meg," she said, offering only information he already had.

He stepped closer.

"Why is that the only information anyone knows about you, Meg?"

"I'm a private person."

"Hmm. So who is this ex in your phone. You don’t even have a name in there. I thought he had broken up with you but based on your messages you dumped him."

She looked away rather than answering.

"He wanted you to call back. Shall we try it?"

She tried to jump up and stop him when he pushed the call button but one of the henchmen blocked her. She could hear the ringing tone and then heard Tim answer. Her mouth was covered again so she couldn't call out to him but she could hear him still trying to get a response. His third try to get her to talk he gave the only clue the man before her needed.

"Well isn't that something? He called you Marinette. Clearly you are hiding something if you aren't even giving out the right name."

He hung up the phone and set it down while watching her. The man preventing her from talking removed his hand and pushed her so she fell back onto the couch.

"What does it matter to you?" she asked.

"He is like really into you," Dustin said. "He found me after that party and asked me to help him find out more about you."

"That's it. I'm interested to know all about you. Do you ever get dressed up and go out?"

"You had men kidnap me for a date?"

Marinette was fairly certain he meant something else by his question but she was certainly not going to just follow where he wanted to lead her. Batman may have told him who she was but he had nothing if she didn't confirm it and he couldn't prove anything. Even breaking into her electronics couldn't get him that information. Without finding the magical box they would have no evidence. All her non-magical equipment burned in the fire.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by movement from the henchmen. He went up to talk to the man. They spoke in low voices for a few minutes and she had a bad feeling about whatever was being discussed. After a few minutes all the others left the room. They took her phone and laptop and one of them guided a stumbling Dustin away with them. When he caught her gaze he walked closer to her. She fought to keep her breaths even but he sat directly in front of her refusing to look away.

Tags

I feel like a lot more of the tags didn't want to work today so if you didn't get tagged but expected to be give me any secrets you know because I'm bad at this

#maribat #timinette #timari #boldlyanxious

85 notes · View notes

nosebleedclub · 3 years

Text

The Dark Suburb

((Posting again because the original post on June 11th, 2017 6:09pm is no longer available due to me deleting and re-making this blog.))

This is a compilation post of Nosebleed Club prompts from 2015-16 revolving around the concept of “the dark suburb.”

Family Melodrama

something is wearing your mother

oh god his intestines strung up on the christmas tree

your dog’s body all over the house

banging on cellar doors

a creaking sound in your dead sister’s bedroom

warriors with spears and shields painted on the dining room ceiling of a violent family’s mansion

a woman in an expensive coat and an expensive car headed to her nephew’s funeral

coming home to a completely alien mother

getting a doberman on christmas morning that won’t let you leave the house

the reason your parents fled the city to live in the suburbs

summers in palermo where your father was looking for something

mother’s breakdown in the supermarket

the supernatural car you and your twin got for your 16th birthday

parents strangely and deeply interested in the boyfriend you brought home

a mom urging her son to quit basketball; she senses something is not right

all the holes - dozens of them - your mother dug in your backyard

grandparents hiding the reason your parents are away during your winter holiday break

your best friend doesn’t want to go to your house anymore

grandpa’s ghost followed us into the new house

dad hates her bc she killed her twin in the womb and then her mother

Do I Love You?

your boyfriend’s basketball shorts, his boy-aroma, his ghost between your legs when you watch the video of his last game

girls kissing in a gas station convenience store and a third recording them on snapchat

the boy you like drawing flowers on your ap biology practice test when you switch tests with him to grade

walking across a supermarket parking lot by yourself thinking of a boy you love

red mouth

girlfriend scrubbing the blood off her arms in the bathtub

in a tiny white house in florida, sitting on a beer-can-covered counter, legs spread apart, a boy between them

in a drug-induced haze i left home for his semi truck

he never fucked me without his ski mask on

a girl and a girl and claw marks on the door“don’t ever take me back”

The Occult

the incantation that annihilated a whole suburb

a body that drags other bodies into an oven

the witches gathering in the red lake

inhuman sacrifice

dogs gathered at the edge of town refusing to cross the boundary to the outside

a 10 year old girl with memories of a serial killing spree that occurred when her parents were children

white shirts hanging on branches all over the woods

the town of three-eyed children

arrows raining down on a soccer field

feeding time

mysterious scratch marks on your back

a fairy ring in the field where your sister disappeared

Crimes

just throw it in the back

snap!

we found the body but not the head

clearing in the forest where police found a blessed severed head

jar of baby teeth as evidence

children dressed as angels at the crime scene

seeing a face you thought you buried ten years ago at the supermarket

half a fraternity frozen under a lake

fbi agents rolling into a tiny town in appalachia

a severed arm among the hydrangeas

young men howling on the bridge one year after the murder

police cars prowling through your neighborhood, one after another - watching this from your bedroom window

Teen Dream

getting whipped by a towel in the locker room

best friend making the varsity tennis team

taking a shot of vodka in the bathroom after second period

boy gets a boner during gym class

“i’ll be like helicase i’ll unzip them genes (jeans)”

drunkenly reciting the quadratic equation

fear-mongering homecoming queen

track star died in a car accident

dead bodies photography club

“sorry i fucked up here’s some ice cream” “i’m lactose intolerant you douche”

article about demonic possession in the school newspaper

last pool party before summer ends & her hand on your thigh in your dad’s sports car

the first day back from summer vacation & someone in your friend group brings the whole #squad starbucks

a bonfire, lana del rey & drake blasting, the moon

weekend road trips to the ocean

walking around on the track alone, contemplating some philosophical concept you read about on tumblr the night before

coming out to someone completely random - a junior varsity basketball player

the last homecoming dance

lying on the track at your high school after sunset

getting picked up really early in the morning to go on a spontaneous weekend road trip

the sunday after the homecoming dance where you’re kinda tired kinda still energetic from the night before

inside a fast food restaurant drinking milkshakes eating fries until it closes

chill basement party where there’s white balloons gold confetti / glitter two girls who love each other kissing

sitting in the backseat your parents occupying the front of the car you look out the window you see the rural countryside crawl by

pool pizza party at night simple pleasures like that

on the bleachers during a powderpuff football game

sweating so much you might as well have been swimming it would be embarrassing but all the other boys are sweaty too

lost in the suburbs at like 5am and the world is still pale blue

lost in the city at 5pm the sun sinks its head behind skyscrapers

fights on the lawn of an all boys private school

applying makeup the morning after a breakup

huge friend group made up of oracles + boys’ swim team + legendary heroes + valedictorian

aesthetic blogging on a sunday afternoon just chillin in your bedroom

feeling like you could be something big if you work hard enough at it

getting psychoanalyzed by your teachers and parents and extended family

school bathroom pale blue tiles

a dream with damien hirst-esque elements

sleepover at your friend’s villa and you’re the only one awake

looking out at a black sea from your dead cousin’s bedroom window, seeing a light in the distance

funeral mass

chill that runs down your friends’ spines when you enter the classroom the morning after they tried to kill you

the sickness that spreads through the high school

sometimes i was a body in a dump sometimes i was a saint

he said he’d snapchat my burning body to all his friends

my body was evidence she was trying to get rid of

poison disguised as an eighteen year old

a world war between us

$$$

first: “super rich kids” by frank ocean

fast cars flecked with blood

girls who know you won’t be prosecuted if you’re young and rich and pretty enough

snapchat of a boy with red eyes and a glass of dom perignon with the text IS MY LIFE FUCKING REAL

snapchat of a girl’s dad’s black amex with the words MONEY CAN’T BUY HAPPINESS BUT IT GETS CLOSE

taking your middle-class friends out to nice restaurants but knowing they’re with you mainly for the money

“dude i know you’re only a year older than me but sometimes i think of you as my sugar daddy”

traveling to punta del este to find yourself but losing yourself instead

identifying heavily with the versace logo

an imperial bedroom and all one feels is the weight of all that empty space

“even my funeral has to be luxurious”

Hometown Visions

three dead owls on the side of the road

trees bare, houses barren

lanterns lit up on the dirt road at night

moths in a forgotten shed

a dusty old attic filled with dead rats and flies

seeing half your face in a splintered mirror. washing machine making dangerous sounds

midwest: watching a tornado funnel form from a window that won’t shut all the way

grass in the yard growing tall

girls carrying stray cats home

a cellar door swinging open and a man you never wanted to see ever again stepping through it, into the light

snake skins and insect carapaces organized on a torn mattress

a lovely place god abandoned

bat-filled house at the end of the street

a girl crawling out of a burning car

birds in jars

Hide & Seek

not being able to find anyone in a dark forest because they actually left you and it was just a cruel prank

person seeking you is something much worse than what you thought they were

being trapped in your hiding space & no one can find you no matter how loud you call for help

hiding in your friend’s house and finding evidence of a vile crime their parents committed

finding half of your friend

#prompts #nosebleedclub #from the nosebleedclub archive #dark suburb

93 notes · View notes

polandspringz · 3 years

Link

A collection of one-shot stories focused around the people of Teyvat trying to understand their new friend. Each chapter will be different, so check titles, summaries, and notes for each. I don't know how long this will be, but I've had a few ideas floating in my head for a while to write for Genshin, so for convenience sake I figured I would compile them all into one piece in the archive. Most of these stories will be focused on the relationships between the Traveler and one or two other characters, sometimes playing around with how game mechanics could fit into the world of Teyvat realistically. I hope you enjoy!

Story 1 Summary: Jean confronts the Traveler about some complaints they've been getting from the people of Mondstadt.

Tumblr version of the story under read-more as well!

“Honorary Knight,” Jean called out, “Do you have time to spare? I wanted to… talk to you about something?”

The Traveler paused and turned towards Jean, nodding silently. Paimon was with them; they had been stopped in the middle of the city’s market plaza, finishing up a supply run between updating commissions and handing in bounties. The Acting Grandmaster looked nervous, for the few months the Traveler had known her, she had always seemed awkward and insecure when it came to social interactions, but perhaps that was just with them. The Traveler wasn’t the most talkative, and Paimon reminded them constantly that their blank stare always messed up their first impressions (“Seriously, what would you do without Paimon?!”).

Jean walked up to them, one hand pressed against her chest as her boots clicked along the cobblestone. “Good. I’m sorry for this, but could you come to the Knights’ Headquarters with me? I think it’s best we speak about this alone.”

“Someone has filed a complaint against the Traveler?!” Paimon squeaked. They were seated in Jean’s office, and somehow her floating body jumped another foot in the air when she became angry, “Who would do such a thing? Geez, you would think the people of Mondstadt would be thankful after everything we’ve done for them!”

“Everything I’ve done, Paimon,” The Traveler quipped, their lips curving into the slightest smile that those who didn’t know them would blink and miss it, “You just tag along and eat my food.”

“That’s not true and you know it! Paimon has helped you out so much-”

“Ahem,” Jean cleared her throat, “I’m sorry, but I’d like to continue, if that’s alright. I wasn’t sure how to approach this with you, I was worried that you would be upset…”

The Traveler leaned forward, pressing their palms against their thighs as they did, the picture of calm as they spoke, “I’m not upset.”

“Well, Paimon is! How dare they?!”

They now understand why Jean had been so hesitant when she called out to them before. Even now, although she had a bit more confidence seated behind her desk, she averted her eyes and seemed to study the stack of books piled up on the corner of the wood, “I still am not well versed in the customs of this world. If I offended someone, I would like to know why in order to correct it.”

That seemed to get Jean to smile. Albeit, it was still a nervous one, but a smile nonetheless. “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re not upset, but perhaps I phrased it wrong. It wasn’t necessarily a complaint but… several concerns were raised to me by Mondstadt citizens.”

“Several people complained?!”

“Paimon, calm down. Jean,” The Traveler nodded for her to continue, “What was it about?”

She scratched her cheek and laughed airly, “Well… I received word that you were caught scaling rooftops and collecting… mushrooms?”

“Honorary Knight, please wait!”

Jean shouted, her hand outstretched towards the tails of the Traveler’s scarf as they darted down the steps of the Knights’. They bolted out of the office suddenly, the only clue that her and Paimon had to go on was the way the Traveler’s eyes widened before they leapt out of their seat. Paimon was hurriedly flying behind them, the constellation-like fairy dust she shed buffeted Jean as it fell into the wind. Athos and Porthos stumbled as the doors flew open, taking a second before they started to move, asking in confusion if Jean needed help apprehending them.

“No! It’s alright! I’ll- I’ll handle it!” She placated, throwing a wave up as she continued to run after.

The Traveler circled the stone wall as they climbed the steps towards the Archon Statue, Paimon and Jean’s voices tuned out to their ears as they hurried ahead. They had been so busy with commissions they had forgotten… They had spent days collecting everything but they had gotten distracted… They needed to hurry-

“Paimon! Do you have any idea why they’re running away?” Jean said as she caught up to the pixie.

“Paimon doesn’t know! It might be about the mushrooms though!”

“Do you know why they were collecting them?”

“Not a clue! Paimon followed them when they were doing it a few times, but they never answered Paimon’s questions about why either!”

“That’s… strange,” Jean’s eyes narrowed as she watched the Traveler push through the crowds of the upper plaza, running straight towards the cathedral doors. Jean hadn’t expected things to end up like this at all. She had nothing but trust in the Honorary Knight, and while most of the questions raised to her about their activities had been just confusion, there were a few citizens- those who Jean normally categorized as easily paranoid or held biases towards outsiders and outlanders- who had voiced their concerns with suggestions of more dubious things. Jean had dismissed them, but as she watched the Cathedral doors fly open, thought of the way the Traveler had just fled when questioned, thoughts of her sister being just inside those doors, she pressed her lips into a thin line and steadied herself before she threw out her hand with an order-

“Aramis! Otto!” Both patrolling knights snapped to attention, “Catch the Honorary Knight!”

The heavy doors to the Cathedral were slammed open with a gust of Anemo power, and all eyes turned to the entrance. Hymns and the organ playing stopped, a melody of silence that made way for the Traveler’s footfalls as they pounded across the mosaic tile, racing up towards the Deaconess standing on the stairs to the mezzanine. Barbara’s hands jumped to the banister, ready to help in case of an emergency, but then she saw Aramis and Otto rushing in with weapons drawn, shouting for the Traveler to stop, and her sister right behind with her hand on the hilt of her own sword-

“H-honorary Knight!” Barbara regretted how her voice broke as she called out. As the Traveler got closer, she moved away from the base of the stairs, stopping at the top in front of the organ pipes with one of the columns acting as a defense should she need to jump behind it, “What’s the matter?”

The Traveler slowed to a stop in front of the door to the Basement. Barbara’s hands jumped to the catalyst book on her hip. They had returned the Holy Lyre der Himmel before and apologized for taking it, but was there a chance they would steal it again? Or something else? Why else were her sister and the Knights rushing in so desperately?

“Barbara,” The Traveler gasped as they looked up at the Deaconess. Their shoulders rose and fell as they breathed for just a moment before they froze when two swords crossed in front of them, stalling them back when they took a step towards the stairs.

“Stand down, Honorary Knight,” Aramis said, his voice stern, but the conflict evident as he said their title. What else was he supposed to call them in a moment like this? He looked to Otto who was just as lost. Paimon’s body did a somersault as she came to a sudden stop, her hands flailing when she saw the swords. Now only Jean’s heels could be heard clattering upon the floor as she ran to catch up with everyone, not having the time to throw reassurances at the startled church-goers standing in their pews.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Paimon put her hands on her hips, “We may have been a bit shady, but that’s no reason to draw swords on us!”

“No one is drawing a sword on you, Paimon,” Jean said, keeping her hand on her sheath as she rounded around the group, standing in front of the basement door and between Barbara and the Traveler, “It was just a precaution.”

“Sister, what’s going on?”

“Honorary Knight,” she raised her chin and looked down at them slightly, her eyes narrowed into an expression more befitting of the Acting Grandmaster, “I’m sorry, but you gave us quite a scare fleeing like that. I hope you know I don’t suspect you of any ill will, but you acted strangely and I was… concerned. Please, can we finish our questioning?”

The Traveler did not smile or frown, something that unnerved Jean even as she tried to keep her tone even and polite. Her facade slipped as they began to move, their expression neutral and their eyes hidden as they shut for a moment as they reached for their bag. Jean quickly drew her sword, Aramis and Otto flinched, theirs scraping against the other’s as they followed the Traveler’s movements. They did not appear to be drawing a sword, but…

From the satchel the Traveler withdrew several Philanemo Mushrooms- the items in question. Jean’s face fell in confusion when she saw them tied into bunches, and she became even more confused when the Traveler withdrew other items from the bag- and raised them up towards Barbara. There was a scroll, a set of vials filled with some swirling liquid- it almost looked like living water- and a small, sheer bag full of blue crystal shards.

“Are those… for me?” Barbara asked, stepping out from behind the column and towards the edge of the mezzanine. The Traveler nodded.

“What… what are they?” Jean faltered, slowly lowering her weapon, “Why did you answer my question before?”

“Hold on, Sister,” Jean could not see over her shoulder, but she heard Barbara’s heels moving back, then clicking together as her feet skipped past one another and moved to echo along the stairs, “Let me get a closer look.”

“Barbara, wait! It could be dangerous, the Honorary Knight fled when I asked and-”

Jean was forced into sheathing her sword when Barbara cut in front of her, and Aramis and Otto pulled their swords away as well when the Deaconess stepped closer. The Traveler lowered their arms as Barbara came down, handing the items off when the young woman whispered, “Let me see, please?”

She looked over the scroll before handing it back, and then poured out the gems in her hand and counted them alongside examining the vials. After a moment, her eyes lit up.

“Just as I thought! These are for an Ascension Ritual, aren’t they?”

The Traveler nodded.

“An Ascension Ritual? Then why didn’t you say so?” Jean sighed, motioning for Aramis and Otto to sheath their weapons finally. Jean pressed her face into one of her hands and shook her head, “You scared me for a minute when you ran out like that…”

“False alarm everyone!” Barbara sing-songed to the rest of the Cathedral, “Please return to your worship! We’ll get that hymn started up again in a few minutes.”

There was a murmur amongst the visitors who seemed unconvinced but relieved that it was nothing serious. Barbara’s eyes went to one of the children, Lily, who was sitting with her father near the back. She would have to make sure the girl wasn’t too frightened by what happened later, maybe she would sing a special song to help cheer the girl up if needed.

“Geez! Why didn’t you tell Paimon they were for an Ascension Ritual either?! This whole mess could have been avoided if you just talked more!”

“Honorary Knight, why did you run away when I asked you before? You made me worried that you might have been up to something nefarious.”

“Sister, how could the Honorary Knight ever do anything nefarious! They’re the Honorary Knight of Mondstadt for a reason,” Barbara said, the crystals clinking together in her hand, reminding her that she still had them, “Oh! I’m sorry, let me give these back to you-”

“No,” The Traveler pushed Barbara’s hand back towards her, handing off the rest of the materials to her as well, “For you.”

“W-what?”

“I… collected them for you. They’re what you need for your ascension ritual, right? Four vials of cleansing heart, sealed scrolls, Varunda Lazurite fragments and…”

“And Philanemo Mushrooms,” Jean finished.

“I was supposed to give them to you a few days ago, but forgot. When Jean asked me about them before… I suddenly remembered. That’s why I ran here as soon as possible.”

“Couldn’t you have waited until after you explained it all to Grandmaster Jean and avoided this whole mess?” Paimon complained. The Traveler shook their head.

“I didn’t want to forget again. And… I wanted Barbara to join us again as soon as possible.”

“Wait a moment! Honorary Knight, did you get all these things for me because you wanted me to get stronger?” Her hand fell to her side, “I’m sorry if last time I joined you, I was too weak…”

Seeing Barbara’s forlorn expression, the Traveler shook their head.

“You… got hurt last time you were with me. I felt bad so… It’s not that I want you to get stronger, but that I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Oh?” The Deaconess lifted her head and smiled a bit at that.

The Traveler continued, forcing the rest of the words out, “I know you are busy with your duties here, but I like having you travel with me. I might be going to Liyue soon, and was hoping that maybe you could accompany me for part of the journey there…?”

Barbara reached out, and placed a hand on their shoulder, the corners of her eyes smiling as well this time, “Of course, I would love to. Let me just put these in my office for now,” she said, lifting her hand full of the materials, “I will have to do the Ascension Ritual later tonight after worship hours are over. If you would like to join me for it, you are more than welcome to. When are you setting out for Liyue?”

“By next week.”

“Alright then. Thank you for this, Honorary Knight,” Barbara said, pulling them into a hug, “I’ll get everything in order so I can travel with you again.”

The Traveler reached up and fisted their hand in the fabric of Barbara’s dress, along the small of her back, returning the hug.

“Maybe you can help them work on their communication skills when you travel with them this time,” Paimon crossed her arms and sighed, meeting the eyes of Jean, who could only huff out a sigh of relief while her mind began to process of checking off the list of worries that would soon form when her sister got ready to set out on the road.

#genshin impact #barbara gunnhildr #jean gunnhildr #traveler #lumine #aether #paimon #my writing #writing

8 notes · View notes

toloveawarlord · 3 years

Text

Ch. 1

Pairing: Wren Blackwell x Jonah Clemence

Tagging: @plumpblueberry @starry-starry-night24 @youreawizardharr (please let me know if you want to be tagged!)

A/N: Day 4 of the 12 Days of OCmas! Are Wren and Jonah as Star Crossed and Wren believes?

The tinkling of the bell above the door signaled their arrival. Too early for incoming influx of captains and merchants with documents to be reviewed and approved. Another two hours should have been free to work on overhauling the filing system that her boss had struggled to keep in order. She didn’t need to rush after hearing her son exclaim the visitor’s names.

“Uncle Fenrir! Uncle Ray!” The ten-year old’s voice echoed through the small building laced with surprise and joy. Abandoning his schoolwork for a chance to spend time with his two uncles. Amber eyes sparkled up at the two. Rarely did he get a visit from his family.

Fenrir beamed a grin at him, accepting the welcoming hug. “Reece, ya got taller!” He stopped by any time he came down to the ports, pitching in to help if Wren needed it.

Which meant today must be business. Never did Ray come by her work without warning. Placing down the files in their proper piles, Wren maneuvered through the chaos to emerge from the office. “Reece, you can go out for a break.” She didn’t want him to hear any military discussions, lest he want to join.

“Come on, I’ll buy ya a treat if it’s alright with your mom,” Fenrir offered to the eager boy, glancing to her for the okay.

It was like looking at two needy puppies. “That’s fine.” As Reece raced out the front door, Wren called to the ace with a serious tone. “No guns this time. I’ll kick your ass if you even think about it.”

She received a salute paired with wicked grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

“This time?” Ray questioned, emerald eyes moving from the vacant doorway to his sister.

“Reece is becoming increasingly interested in weapons ever since he was allowed to shoot Fenrir’s gun,” Wren replied with irritation. She’d agreed to teaching her son a little hand-to-hand combat for self-defense. At no point, had permission been given for him to wield a weapon.

Ray chuckled at her frown. “I count myself lucky that Fenrir came away in one piece.” His memories of a protective older sister when they were but children resurfaced with nostalgia. Though she came across as calm and collected, she possessed incredible fighting skill that could rival some of his chosen thirteen.

The army would gain much if Wren agreed to join, but he knew that she would never, not with her son to protect.

The two moved into the messy office for privacy. Wren cleared a spot on the desk to sit while Ray claimed the only empty armchair. “What are you looking for?”

“Shipping manifests that could pass initial inspection but might be importing contraband.”

Wren cast a glance over the organized mess. “I’ll look into it. Though, it will undoubtedly take me a few hours. What is it that’s being smuggled in?” If she had a frame of reference, then it would make the search much easier.

“You know I’m not supposed to tell you that.” The investigation now a joint one. He’d have to explain to the Reds why he involved a civilian in a sensitive, top secret mission.

“If I know what I’m looking for, the box size and contents will be much simpler to find.”

Ray shifted to cross his legs, mulling over his options. Trust wasn’t the issue. He knew Wren would be discrete and quick. But involving her meant bringing up her name at the meeting with Red Army late tonight. Was it better to have some information than come up empty with those smug bastards?

“Stop worrying. I want to help, so let me.”

He sighed. “Tainted magic crystals. They’re small enough to go undetected but a single one can cause massive damage. If the calculations are even slightly correct, the influx that has been reported could destroy half of Cradle. Wren, you don’t have to agree to this. I understand if you want me to walk away.”

A dire situation. Time sensitive.

Wren could see why he’d been hesitant to tell her. Part of her, the mother part, wanted to tell him no. Becoming involved opened her and Reece up to being targets. Her common sense wanted her to walk away.

But Ray would only come to her with something so dangerous if it weren’t his last option.

“I’ll do what I can.”

The King of Spades relaxed at her agreement. “Thanks, sis. I’ll assign a soldier to keep watch here and at your home. Just as a precaution.” His gaze flickered to the large clock sitting on the wall. They’d made a detour here.

“Go on. I know how busy you are. I’ll come by with whatever I find,” Wren said with a wave of her hand. They hardly saw each other but on a few of his off days.

After the two officers left, Wren gathered all the shipping manifests that were within the last few months to pour over at home. She only took a break to cook a light meal and eat with her son before it was back to examining the documents.

Night had settled in by the time she discovered anything significant. There were a handful of suspect items that had been flagged, but only one stood out. Regardless of her gut feeling, Wren took all of the evidence and would allow them to mark off the ones that were unneeded.

“Reece, I’m going to take some things to Ray. I’ll be back later-”

“I wanna come!” He cut her off, abandoning his schoolwork to scramble over the back of the couch. Amber eyes as big as a puppy, begging to for permission.

Wren reached out and brushed her hand through his red hair. Normally, it would be alright, but she wanted him nowhere near this case. “Not this time. I won’t be gone long. Stay here, okay?”

“Aww, but mom!” Reece protested with a frown.

“Please don’t fight me on this, Reece.” She pressed a kiss to his head as she gave him a tight hug. To admit it would be too hard, but there were more reasons than simply his safety from outside threats that she worried about.

<< << <<

Soldiers at the gate had redirected her to Central Quarter. The two armies had convened, and she’d have to find Ray there. The neutral zone hadn’t changed much. Wren only came when she absolutely needed to. She’d chosen to live in the port town of Black Territory, far away from anyone in Red Territory.

The meeting had come to a close by the time she arrived. She’d been greeted by the 10 of Spades on his way out with a tip of his hat. Wren stayed in the foyer of the Civic Center, finding a nice pillar to hide behind. The Jacks exited next and following them the Queens.

Their boots were all that echoed throughout the large room. Their dislike for each other well known. As one came to a stop, so did the other. “Who’s there? The Civic Center is closed. You’re trespassing.”

Ten years.

It had been ten years since she’d heard that voice.

And it still caused her heart to throb painfully inside her chest.

His steps grew closer.

If she continued to hide, it would reflect poorly. Wren moved from her spot behind the pillar. With stiff movements, she passed Jonah without a word, instead moving to Sirius. “I brought what the King of Spades asked for. I was only waiting for him to come down.”

“He mentioned that. I’ll deliver them for you.” Sirius took the compiled documents and headed back for the stairs. He cast a worried glance back over his shoulder, but the woman was already heading for the door.

Don’t look back. Keep walking.

Her palm pressed against the door, but cool fingers wrapped around her other wrist. Wren tensed at his touch, wanting to pull away but found herself unable to.

“I’m owed an explanation.”

He was right.

“You drop out of school and disappear for ten years.”

Her reason one that he wouldn’t understand.

“Wren! Look at me!” A gentle, but firm command.

Emerald green met beautiful molten amber.

Wren swallowed down the lump in her throat. It hurt more than she’d imagined it would. Strong emotions that she’d bottled up and shoved deep into her heart, rattled in their cage, threatening to burst out. If they did, she feared she’d lose all control. “We were dumb kids, who didn’t understand that it would never work.”

Not even she believed the words that passed her lips.

“How could you possibly know that?” He wore so many emotions. Hurt. Confusion. Anger. She’d vanished. The day prior they were sneaking off during a break to be alone, and the next, gone. No explanation. No note. “I searched for you. I went into Black Territory against my families wishes-”

His family the catalyst of her disappearance.

But she couldn’t reveal that.

“Jonah, we’re different people now. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be, and if we’re being completely honest, the Queen of Hearts could never be with the King of Spades older sister. One thing or another always got in our way.” Whether it be his family or the Red Territory fan girls who hounded her for even speaking to him back in school. His duties joining the army would have broken them apart, and once Ray became the King, that would have done them in as well. “It’s for the best.”

He was still the Jonah she’d fallen in love with. His brows creased, not willing to accept that he couldn’t have everything that he wanted. “Did you think me not enough to protect you?”

It had little to do with protection. Wren tugged her hand free, shaking her head. “You would never go against your family.” She turned and shoved the door open to escape into the chilled night air. Pain blossomed across her chest. Her legs threatened to give out.

Return to Black Territory and try to forget.

As if it worked the last ten years.

“What is that supposed to mean?” He couldn’t simply give in. None of his questions had been answered. Jonah followed; his voice drenched in confusion. “This isn’t about my parents. You left me, Wren! Without so much as a word. I deserve to know why!”

She clenched her fists and whirled around to face him. “It’s always been about them, Jonah! Do you have any idea how many times your mother found a way to make my life miserable? She’s the one who had me pulled from your class, turned my teachers against me, and she tried to pay me off when--” Wren caught herself before she blurted out the one thing she refused to speak of. Emerald irises fell away from the shock on his features.

Their raised voices had drawn the attention of the Jacks loitering by the fountain and with them, someone who was meant to be at home.

“Pay you off for what?” Jonah couldn’t think of a single thing that would require an exchange of money.

“It doesn’t matter. I didn’t take the money, but I did leave. It’s over, Jonah. I think it’s better if we just pretend we’re strangers.”

“No. I refuse to leave things this way-”

A small hand slipped into hers. Reece wore a concerned expression. He’d never seen her so upset. “Mom?” He’d disregarded her wishes, following her all the way to Central Quarter, where he’d never been before.

Jonah glanced between the two. “Mom? You have a son?” It was dark but the moonlight illuminated the boy well enough.

Matching amber eyes met for the first time.

The missing piece walked right into the puzzle.

#ikemen revolution #ikerev #jonah clemence #ray blackwell #fenrir godspeed #reece blackwell #wren blackwell #star crossed lovers

33 notes · View notes

riordanversephantom · 4 years

Text

So hi, since I’ve been crying for like... the past hour? (Lol future Phantom here, it’s taken me like an hour to compile this) here’s a collection of moments from my Riordanverse fanfics that I really like or made me chuckle because I need some feel good. These are all from my Ao3 and I’ll leave links.

“You know usually people show up at someone’s house when the person is home,” Nico said, starting to make himself a sandwich. Thalia laughed.

“You’re telling me that while you’re sitting here the same as me making a sandwich?” She leaned back on the stool, gripping the counter to keep her balance. Nico rolled his eyes.

“I don’t intend to show up while he’s not here.”

“You’re funny Nico.”

“Thanks, I get that a lot,” Nico raised one eyebrow, Thalia laughed again.

(Percy’s not home)

“Jason fractured his ankle...while on the rock wall…” Will looked up at Nico, “he can fly, how did he do that?”

“He’s silly like that.”

Will paused for so long that Nico thought he had finally fallen asleep.

“Cecil brought me some Zebra cakes today,” Will mumbled, “he wasn’t injured but they tasted good. I appreciated it. He probably stole them.”

(Just go to bed)

More under the cut

Nico couldn’t help but crack a small smile, “thanks Kayla.” He gently took the sweatshirt from her. This was one of Will’s favorites (and also Nico’s favorite to take).

“Since you’re practically a member of the family now, I wanted to look out for you,” she yawned and glanced behind her, “since things have been a bit quiet with Will visiting his mom.”

“Yeah,” Nico agreed.

She smiled, “I guess I’ll let you get back to bed.”

Nico nodded, “goodnight Kayla.”

“Goodnight Nico,” she yawned again and started to trudge back to her cabin.

(Miss him the most)

“Look at you, I think we still need to have that competition of who looks worse after crying,” Will smirked.

“I still think it’s you,” Kayla cracked a small smile.

“It’s probably still me,” Will sighed, “let’s get back before Austin gets worried and the harpies come kill us though.”

“Yeah…”

(I’m still here)

But Will, half asleep and frightened had somehow ended up on the front porch of the Hades cabin at four in the morning. When Nico opened the door he had stumbled into Nico’s arms, enveloping Nico into a huge hug.

“Oh,” Nico whispered, running his fingers through Will’s hair.

“I…” Will swallowed hard, “nightmare I… didn’t know… what to do.”

He wasn’t crying but the panic was evident in his voice. Nico nodded silently and led Will inside, shutting the door behind him.

(Understand that I love you, dear)

“It’s fine,” Leo wiped some grease on his shirt and shifted on the chair, “I know what I’m doing.”

Jason doubted that, but he crossed his arms in front of his chest and watched. Leo’s chair that he was standing on looked old and worn, it looked very close to falling apart. Jason got a bit closer just in case Leo fell.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you?” Jason asked again.

“Why? Are you worried?” Leo let out a sigh and turned to Jason, the chair wobbled and he threw his arm out to steady himself. Jason hissed and quickly stepped forward, his arms outstretched.

“Yeah, a bit,” Jason responded, “I don’t want you to fall. Let me help.”

(How tall are you)

“I’m thinking about hiding away in the woods for a while, maybe we could talk, maybe kiss,” Leo suggested with a shrug.

(How tall are you)

Will buried his face in his hands, tugging at his bangs. He didn’t say anything, Nico was too afraid to do anything at the moment.

Finally, Will let out a shaky sigh, running his fingers through his hair, “you know what,” he laughed without humor, “nope, it’s been a long week.” Will turned towards the desk and started to tidy up the papers he was working on.

“I’m going to bed, I can’t do this right now. I haven’t slept all week and I’m exhausted,” Will turned back to Nico and put a hand on his shoulder, he smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes, “I’m glad you’re back Nico. I’m too angry to actually welcome you home properly so instead I’m going to sleep for the rest of the day. Then come back to this conversation as a well rested organized individual.”

(Cause it hurts)

(like go seek out any other of his friends to alert them of his return, or iris messaging his sister to let her know he was all right) he sulked back to his cabin.

He did eventually do the second thing and Hazel was more than thrilled and relieved. Though when he first iris messaged her, she yelled at him so loudly Frank and a couple other kids actually came in to see what was going on.

(Cause it hurts)

“Did you come here for something?” Will finally asked, clicking his pen absently. He looked back over at Nico.

“Oh right,” Nico walked over to where Will was sitting and plopped himself right on top of the desk, “I came for you.”

“For me?” Will raised one eyebrow, leaning his chin on his elbow.

“It’s getting late, I was getting impatient for you to come back,” Nico said, crossing his arms in front of his chest stubbornly.

“Oh so you missed me?” Will smirked. Nico thought he shouldn’t look so smug.

“Don’t act like you don’t miss me too when I leave for a bit,” Nico huffed.

“I’m not going to act, I’ve admitted it before and I’ll do it again.”

(I trust you as my eyes)

“There we go, that’s my Will,” Nico mumbled, “sometimes nightmares are just nightmares. Nothing more.”

“No stupid prophecy or foreseeing of death,” Will squeezed Nico tighter.

“Just a normal old punch in the gut from your subconscious.”

“I hate my subconscious.”

“Me too.”

(My subconscious hates me)

“Oh, hello Sunshine.”

Kayla woke to her brother’s voice. For a second she thought he was going insane and actually talking to the sun. Then she remembered what happened at three am last night… or well, this morning.

(Not yet brother in law)

The two of them were quiet again. A leaf fluttered onto Percy’s face. Annabeth swiped it away without a thought. He licked her hand.

“Gross, Percy! Are you ten?” Annabeth cried out, wiping her hand on Percy’s shirt.

He laughed, “you asked for it, putting your hand too close to my mouth.”

“I was getting a lead off of you like a loving girlfriend.”

He stuck his tongue out at her. Annabeth furrowed her eyebrows, gathering a ton of leaves that were settled around her and dropped them on his face. He sat up spluttering, spitting leaves out of his mouth.

“That wasn’t nice!” He exclaimed, shaking the leaves from his hair.

(Content)

“You’re a whore,” Drew glared at Will.

Lacy gasped, she looked like she wanted to say anything, but she didn’t.

“ Wow ,” Will puffed out his cheeks before letting out a slow breath, “A whore ? I’ve been called a lot of things, but a whore ? That ones new.”

“Just like Apollo,” She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Oh yeah, that makes sense,” Will nodded in agreement, “but, well I hate to break it to you, but I’d like to think I’m pretty faithful to my boyfriend. Unlike you so, I think that the term ‘ whore ’ would better apply to you.” Will clicked his tongue and shrugged.

“Well,” Drew spluttered, obviously running out of insults, “at least I can get a date without even having to try.”

“Drew that is enough,” Piper spoke firmly, her voice cold, “you too Will.” She seemed a bit reluctant about that last part.

Will held up his hands in defense, “hey, I didn’t do anything. Anyway, getting a date with no effort doesn’t really sound like love.”

“ Will, ” Piper shot him a pointed look, Will shrugged.

(Nail polish is gay)

I mean obviously there are a ton more since I have so many fics on my Ao3 but this was just a couple (a lot) from some of my more “recent” fics. If you’ve made it this far, thanks and I hope you liked these small little bits. Check out my Ao3 for more riordanverse fics and follow me on TikTok for cosplay (@phantomxlegend for both).

103 notes · View notes

itsclydebitches · 4 years

Note

Is buying the new Harry Potter game supporting transphobes because I've been seeing a lot of that on twitter? Not playing it. Pirating is fine, but actually paying for it.

Hi, anon!

I’ve seen a lot of the same and had initially thought to post my thoughts on the issue… before I got a very angry ask condemning me for a post where I admitted that I thought the game looked great and was excited to play it. I can no longer link to that post because I deleted it: a late night, impulsive decision made in an effort to try and protect myself from further flaming. Thus, I considered ignoring this ask under the same justification… before realizing that it might not matter in the long run. The Harry Potter: Legacy trailer has been out for just a few days and already I have gotten that furious ask, been told off by a friend for mentioning the trailer, and was questioned (antagonistically) about why I had added a Harry Potter related book to my Goodreads list. They’re small and potentially coincidental anecdotes, but it feels as if any engagement with Harry Potter is slowly coming under scrutiny, not just the (supposed—more on that below) crime of purchasing the new game. Given that I will always engage with Harry Potter related media, if there’s any chance such subtle criticism will continue regardless of whether I make the “right” choice to boycott the game or not, I might as well explain my position. Especially for someone who asked politely! Thanks for that 💜.

Which leads to the disclaimer: Any anon hate will be unceremoniously deleted. This is a complicated issue and I intend to write about it as such. I ask that any readers go into this post with good faith and a willingness to acknowledge that this situation isn’t as black and white as they may prefer it to be. If that’s not something you can emotionally handle—which is 100% fine. Some subjects we’re simply not inclined to debate—or if you’re just looking to get in a cheap shot, please hit the back button.

Right. Introduction done. Now here’s the tl;dr: saying things like “Buying this game is inherently selfish/transphobic” isn’t the hot take people want it to be. Is boycotting Legacy one (very small—we’ll get to that too) way of showing support for the trans community? Yes. Is buying the game proof that you’re a selfish transphobe? No. This isn’t a bad SAT question. Legacy boycotters are to trans supporters as Legacy buyers are to ___? The argument that someone is selfish for buying the game is basically that you are choosing a non-essential video game over the respect and lives of trans individuals, but the logic breaks down when we acknowledge that purchasing a game has no real life impact on a trans individual’s safety, support, etc.

“But Clyde, you’re giving Rowling money. She is then using that money to support anti-trans organizations. Thus, you have actively put more harm into the world.” Have I? I’m not going to get into whether/how much/what kind of money Rowling is receiving from this project because the fact is we don’t know and we’ll likely never know. Suffice to say, she probably will get some portion of any $60/$70 purchase. The real question is whether those sales have any meaningful impact. Reputable information on Rowling’s net worth is hard to come by, but it seems to be somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion pounds. Or, to put it another way: a fuck ton. And money keeps rolling in from a franchise that is so, so much bigger than a single video game. It literally doesn’t matter how much money you might put in her pocket via Legacy because she’s already so goddamn rich she can do whatever she wants. If Rowling wants to give a million dollars to the heinous “charity” of her choice, she can. She will. You are not directly contributing to this horror because that money may as well already exist. Every person in the world could refuse to buy this game and she’d shrug, going about her disgusting life because it literally does not affect her in any meaningful way. You’re refusing to give the murderer a knife when they’re got direct access to a knife-making factory. Horrible as it is to hear, you can’t stop them from doing something horrific with that tool.

For me, this is the straw argument of the Harry Potter world. Not straw as in strawman, but literally straws. Remember how everyone was talking about plastic straws, swore off them, and subsequently deemed anyone who still used one to be selfish people who didn’t care about the environment? It didn’t matter if you had a certified “good” reason for using one (disability) or a “selfish” reason (carrying straws everywhere on the off chance you wanted a drink is a pain in the ass)—you’re a horrible person who wants the planet to die. Same deal here. If you can swear off straws, great! Do what tiny bit of good you can. But if you can’t or even don’t want to give them up, the reality is that your “selfishness” doesn’t make a significant difference in the world. The amount of plastic corporations are pouring into the ocean makes your actions inconsequential. It’s not like voting where every small, individual act adds up to a significant total. This is your lack up against others’ staggering abundance. It’s not adding a few drops of water until you have a full bucket, it’s trying to un-flood the boat with a teaspoon while someone else is spraying it with the hose. Have you, on the most technical level, made a difference by moving that teaspoon of water out of the boat? Yes. Is it a difference that holds any meaning in regards to the desired outcome? Not really. Now apply all that to Rowling. She is so phenomenally wealthy—with additional wealth coming in every day—that your purchase of Legacy is a teaspoon of water in her ocean of funds. It’s inconsequential.

“But Clyde, buying this game would support her and supporting her sends the message that what she believes is okay.” Exact same argument as above. JKR’s fame is so astronomical that no video-game boycott could ever make a dent in it. For every 100 people who swear off her work there are another 1,000 who continue to engage with both her writing and the writing related to her world because she is that prominent. Harry Potter is one of the largest franchises of all time, second only to things like Pokémon and Star Wars. This isn’t some indie creator who you can ignore into silence. The reality is that Rowling is here to stay and we have to take far more substantial acts to counteract that influence.

Even more importantly, buying the game is not evidence that you support her views and the black and white belief that it does is an easy distraction from those harder “How do we improve the lives of trans people?” questions. I started compiling a list of stories with problematic authors only to realize the number of incredibly popular texts with awful histories attached to them unnecessarily increased the length of an already long post. Everything from Game of Thrones to Dr. Seuss—if you love it, chances are one of the authors involved has a history of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. Which I don’t say as a way of excusing these authors, nor as a way to silence the justified and necessary call outs on their work. Rather, I bring this up to acknowledge that engaging with these stories cannot be concrete evidence for how you view the minority group in question. The reasons for consuming these stories are incalculable and at the end of the day no one needs a “correct” reason for that consumption (my teacher forced me to read the racist book, I only watched the homophobic TV show so I could call out how horrible it was, etc.) If fiction were an indicator of our real life beliefs we’d all be the most horrifying creatures imaginable. I may be severely uncomfortable with the queer baiting in Supernatural, but if a friend says they bought the DVD collection my response is not, “How dare you support those creators. You’re homophobic.” In the same way, someone purchasing Legacy should not generate the response, “How dare you support her. You’re transphobic.” There’s a miles’ worth of pitfalls in connecting the statements “You purchased a game based on the world created by a transphobic author” and “You yourself are transphobic.”

So if buying Legacy does not add additional harm to the trans community from a financial perspective, and it doesn’t make a dent in Rowling’s platform, and playing a game is not evidence of your feelings towards the group the author hates… what are we left with? “But Clyde, it’s the principal of the thing. I don’t want to support a TERF” and that is an excellent argument. Your morals. Your ethics. What you can stomach having done or not done. But the “your” is incredibly important there. People need to understand that this is their own line in the sand and that if someone else’s line is different, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically a worse person than you. For example, I have made the choice not to eat at Chick-Fil-A. Not because I believe that me not giving them $3.75 for a sandwich will make a difference in their influence on the world, but because it makes a difference to me. It helps me sleep at night. So if not purchasing Legacy helps you sleep at night? That’s a fantastic reason not to buy it. But the flipside is that if someone else does purchase it that is not a reliable reflection of their morals, no more than I think my friends are homophobic for grabbing lunch at Chick-Fil-A now and then. Sometimes you just want a sandwich.

“But Clyde, why would you want to buy it? Rowling is such a shit-stain I don’t understand how anyone can stomach supporting her—whether that support has an impact or not. Maybe someone eats at Chick-Fil-A because it’s close to them and they’re too busy to go elsewhere, or it’s all they can afford, or they don’t know how homophobic they are. There are lots of reasons to explain something like that. But you’re not ignorant to Rowling’s problem and there’s no scenario where you have to play this game, let alone spend money on it. So why?”

The reality is that I will likely be buying Legacy, second-hand if I can, but new if it comes to that, so I’ll give some of my personal answers here, in descending order of presumed selfishness:

5. Part of my work involves studying video games/Harry Potter and as a researcher of popular culture, my career depends on keeping up with major releases: good and bad. I often engage with stories I wholeheartedly disagree with for academic purposes, like Fifty Shades of Gray.

4. I find the “Just pirate it!” solution to be flawed. I’ve spent the last four months struggling to get my laptop fixed and I currently have no income to buy another if it were to suddenly develop a larger problem. I am not going to risk my $2,000 lifeline on an illegal download, no matter how safe and easy the Internet insists it is.

3. We’ve been told that Rowling has not been involved in Legacy in any significant manner and I do want to support Portkey. No, not just financially because I know many others have insisted that everyone good has already been paid. Game companies still need to sell games. That’s why they exist. There’s a possibility that a company with just two mobile games under its belt will be in trouble if this completely flops. Is my purchase going to make or break things? No. Same reality as whether it will put new, influential money in Rowling’s pocket to do horrific things with. But I’d like to help a company that looks as if they put a lot of heart and energy into a game only to get hit with some real shit circumstances outside of their control. Even if they’re not impacted financially or career-wise… art is meant to be consumed. I know if I wrote a Harry Potter fic and everyone boycotted it because they want nothing to do with Rowling anymore, I’d be devastated. Sometimes, you can’t separate supporting the good people from supporting the bad. Not in a media landscape where thousands of people are involved in singular projects.

2. I’m invested in reclaiming excellent works created by horrible authors. That’s fandom! We don’t know much about Legacy yet—this is pure, unsubstantiated speculation—but this new story could be a step forward from Rowling’s books, giving us some of the respect for minority groups that she failed at. That’s the sort of work I want to promote because Harry Potter as a concept is great and I think it’s worth transforming it for our own needs and desires. The reality is that as long as Rowling is alive she’ll benefit from licensed material, but if that material can start taking her world in better directions? I want to support that too.

1. I literally just want to play it. That’s it. That’s my big justification. I think it looks phenomenal and I was itching to get my hands on it the second the trailer dropped. And you know what? I’m not in a good place right now to deny myself things I enjoy. I don’t need to tell anyone that 2020 has been an absolute horror show, but for me certain things have made it a horror show with a cherry on top. Not a lot gets me excited right now because we’re living in the worst fucking timeline, so when I find something that makes me feel positive emotions for a hot second I want to hang onto it. I have no desire to set aside that spark of happiness in a traumatic world because people on the Internet think it makes me selfish. Maybe it does, but I’m willing to let myself be a bit selfish right now.

Which circles back to this issue of equating buying a game with active harm towards the trans community. It honestly worries me because this is a very, very easy way to avoid the harder, messier activism that will actually help the queer community. When someone says things like, “You’re choosing a stupid video game over trans lives” that activism is performative. Not only—as demonstrated above—is purchasing a game not a threat to trans lives or ignoring the game a way of protecting trans lives, it also gives people an incredibly easy out while still seeming ‘woke.’ Not all people. Maybe not even a significant portion of people, but enough people to be worrisome. “I’m not purchasing that game,” some people post and then that’s it. That’s all they do, yet they feel like they’ve done their duty when in fact they’ve made no active difference in the world. Are you donating to trans charities? Are you speaking up for your trans friends when someone accosts them? Are you circulating media by trans authors? Are you educating your family about trans issues? Are you listening to trans individuals and continually trying to educate yourself? These are the things that make a difference, not shaming others for buying a game.

All of this is not meant to be an argument that people shouldn’t be absolutely revolted by Rowling’s beliefs (they should) and that this revulsion can’t take the form of rejecting this game wholeheartedly. This isn’t even meant to be an argument that you shouldn’t encourage others to boycott because though the financial impact may be negligible, the emotional impact for you is very real. I 100% support anyone who wants to chuck this game into the trash and never talk about it again—for any reason. All this is meant to argue is that people shouldn’t judge others based on whether they purchase this game (with a side argument that we can’t limit our activism to that shaming). That’s their decision and this decision, significantly, does not add any real harm to the world. Your fellow Harry Potter fan is not the enemy here. We as a community should not be turning our visceral on one another. Turn it on Rowling. She’s the TERF, not the individual who, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to play the game only tangentially related to her.

If Twitter and Tumblr are any indication, I can imagine the sort of responses this post may generate: “That’s a whole lot of talk to try and convince us you’re not a transphobe :/ ” For those of you who are determined to simply things to that extent, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. Please re-read the disclaimer and consider whether yelling at me over anon will benefit the trans community. For those of you who are still here, I do legitimately want us to think critically about the kinds of activism we’re engaging in, how performative it might be, whether it harms the community in any way, and (most significantly) whether it’s actually moving us towards a safe, respective world for trans people to live in. Personally, I don’t think telling Harry Potter fans that they’re transphobic for buying Legacy will generate any good in this world, for them or for the trans community.

At the end of the day only you can decide whether you can stomach buying this game or not. Decide that for yourself, but make that decision knowing that there’s no wrong answer here.

#harry potter #mymetas #Anonymous

33 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN ANYTHING

By the second conference, what Web 2. Around 1100, Europe at last began to catch its breath after centuries of chaos, and once they had the luxury of curiosity they rediscovered what we call the classics. After giving a contract to a supplier who goes bankrupt and fails to deliver, for example, you need two ingredients: a few topics you've thought about a lot. But in fact there are limits to how well they'll be able to carry it off. So obviously that is what we should be careful to do it. And yet intelligence and wisdom, and particularly what seems to be proceeding slower than the spread of the Industrial Revolution. This term was invented after Tom Bradley, the black mayor of Los Angeles, lost an election for governor of California despite a comfortable lead in the polls.

This is not a nationalistic idea, incidentally. To me it was a relief just to realize it wasn't the last word after all. The path to wisdom is through discipline, and the default answer is failure, because that was where their peers were, and investors would appear too, because that was where their peers were, and investors would appear too, because that encourages you to keep working. Plato quotes Socrates as saying the unexamined life is not just something you do to survive, but may turn out to be a comeuppance for the west coast has just pulled further ahead. Suddenly, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can only judge computer programmers by working with them, no one knows yet what it will be. But while Microsoft did really well and there is thus a temptation to think they would have seemed a safe move at the time from having it all happening live, right in front of me. After barely changing at all for decades, the startup business of the future won't simply be the same shape, scaled up. As long as it isn't floppy, consumers still perceive it as a heresy. The thing is, VCs are pretty good at reading people.

So while you'll probably survive, the problem now seems to be through working on hard problems. But there are reasons to believe that at some point you have to worry much. I've given two examples of things founders complain about most—investors who take too long to make up new things, and their relationships changed faster. We were literally in sync. It's not uncommon for investors and acquirers. If large organizations started to ask questions like that, the big companies paid their best people less than market price. Or more precisely, when they have the right kind of system to channel their efforts.

So you have to extract parameters manually in Perl. Plus if you didn't put the company first you wouldn't be promoted, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the 30 to 40% of the company you usually give up in a series A round. But while DH levels don't set a lower bound on the convincingness of a reply, they do set an upper bound on your performance: choosing the best every time. You'll have to sell it for $50,000 into at a valuation of a million can't take $6 million from VCs at that valuation. For example, correcting someone's grammar, or harping on minor mistakes in names or numbers. VCs never offered that option. A new search engine, when there were already about 10, and they have started to use it. And that's where the volume of our imaginary solid is growing fastest. So were the print media and the music labels simply overlooking this opportunity? Many of the most visible to consumers were air travel and long-distance phone service, which both became dramatically cheaper after deregulation. I'm alarmed to be saying things like this, but there's one case in which it shouldn't be: when there are people you already know you should fire but you're in denial about it. So for now this is something startups are deciding individually.

What the people who are really good at seeming formidable—some because they actually are very formidable and just let it show, and others to Hot Pockets. Now an angel can go to something like Demo Day or AngelList and have access to the same variable, but it didn't seem ambitious enough. Atlanta is just as hosed as Munich. 0 mean anything? At least, you notice an interesting pattern. A Lisp macro can be anything from an abbreviation to a compiler for a new language. 7, though there doesn't seem to be the right choice, it had to be a really huge wave, bigger than even the most optimistic observers would have predicted in 1975. To evaluate whether your startup is worth investing in, and they'll be increasingly likely to do the same thing ourselves. Vertically integrated companies literally dis-integrated because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune.

So if some of the qualities of a VC. As big a deal as the Industrial Revolution? The reason investors can get away with using the most advanced technologies, and I predict that will be one of their investors. That is a different business. Wisdom is universal, and intelligence idiosyncratic. It must be something you can learn. The big innovations that happen a company at a time.

John D. If you have an idea for a Web 2. But usually evidence will help. That's the combination that yielded Silicon Valley. I've spent some time advising people, and making deals work to their advantage. Some angels are, or were, hackers. And then we'll waste our time trying to eliminate fragmentation, when we'd be better off thinking about how to make them irrelevant. At the moment those two functions are separate. But don't be too smug about this weakness of theirs, because you don't have to go far down it before you start to offer something really attractive to customers. ITunes makes money by taxing people, not selling them stuff.

2 notes · View notes

timelordthirteen · 4 years

Text

Killing Time 23/35

Detective Weaver/Belle French, Explicit

Summary: A Woven Beauty Law & Order-ish AU. Written for Writer’s Month 2019.

Chapter Summary: Belle and Weaver get a big break in the case, but find it tempered by the mountain of missing pieces.

Notes: For my August Writer's Month prompt: We’re all a little stronger than we think we are. I've barely read this over before posting, sorry for all the typos.

[AO3]

We’re all a little stronger than we think we are.

Dr. Hopper’s parting words replayed in Belle’s mind as she walked the three blocks back to her office.

The last few days had been lighter than any since her work on the Branson case had begun. A weight had been lifted by her confession to both Archie and Ian, and the therapy session which she was just leaving had only added to it. Today, their topics focused on ways she could relax and control any future panic attacks, which she assumed she would probably need no matter how much she wanted to tell herself otherwise.

The weekend had been quiet and comfortable. She and Weaver had worked some on Saturday, but admittedly they were distracted by movies on TV and each other. Sunday, they’d gone for a walk in a nearby park, and by the time they got back to the apartment, she was ready to tear his jeans off. Smiling, she pulled a lock of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. She was quite certain that the only other time she’d had more sex in a forty-eight hour period was when they’d been on their honeymoon.

He hadn’t said anything about the miscarriage after Friday night, and she hadn’t either. She wasn’t sure what he was feeling or thinking about it, or if he was at all. Several times she’d almost brought it up, but always hesitated when the moment came, afraid to shatter the cocoon of safety and happiness they’d created for one weekend. She was determined to talk it over with Dr. Hopper next week, before she dared to breach the subject with Weaver. Archie would know the best way to go about it, and he would help her get her mind straight beforehand, as he had many times when she was practicing her closing argument for an important case.

Monday had brought no news from Nevada, but this morning she’d gotten a call from Clark County letting her know to expect something by no later than Wednesday. It put an extra spring in her step as she pushed the revolving door to the city building that housed the District Attorney’s office. Her cell phone chirped in her coat pocket, and she pressed the elevator button before pulling it out. An notification lit up on the screen, an email to her official account, but the lift was already moving and her signal went out as it began the slow climb to the sixth floor.

Belle shoved her phone back in her pocket and stepped off the elevator, wanting to wait until she was with Weaver before she read the email, just in case it was good news. Her lips parted as she rounded the corner and saw his outline through the frosted glass of her office. He was seated at the conference table, leaning back, as far as she could tell, and a naughty idea on how they might celebrate this possible good news flashed across her mind.

Weaver turned as she opened the office door, and smiled. “Go well?”

She nodded and walked over to her desk. “Pretty good.”

“Good.”

Then she held up her phone and grinned. “I have an email.”

“Just one? I’ll alert the media,” he deadpanned, pushing back from the conference table.

Belle rolled her eyes and dropped her purse in her bottom drawer before kicking off her walking flats and wiggling her feet back into her work heels. “From the Clark County Clerk.”

Weaver stood, his mouth curving crookedly. “Say that five times fast.”

“You’re the worst.”

He laughed as she pulled out her chair. “And yet you love me.”

She huffed and pushed up on her toes to press a quick kiss to his lips. “Allegedly.”

He made a soft ‘oh’ sound and slipped an arm around her, pulling her flush against him. “I have a fair bit of evidence from this weekend that says otherwise.”

Belle bit her lip and smiled as he dipped his head and kissed her neck. “None of which is admissible in court.”

Weaver’s nose nudged at her ear as he chuckled and whispered, “You’re the only judge I care about convincing anyway.”

Giggling, she shoved his chest until he stepped back, and then shook her head. “You’re incorrigible. Now, can I check my email?”

He gave her a sly look, but motioned towards her computer. Her stomach flipped as she sat down and opened the lid of her laptop, hoping that what they would find wouldn’t kill the delightful buzzing anticipation between them. It seemed to take twice as long for her email to open and the new message to appear, and she started tapping her foot impatiently while Weaver’s hand squeezed the back of her chair. She clicked on the message, opening it in a full window so they could both read it.

They exchanged a look, and Belle scooted forward, saving the attached documents to the folder for the case. There were three in all, a scanned image of Molly Macreedy’s foster care agreement, and two exported PDFs from the Nevada DMV database containing the records for her foster parents. The image had been pasted into the email and stated her foster parents’ surname as Tremaine. Belle opened the DMV records for each parent, putting them side by side on the screen before she sat back in her chair.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Weaver said, breathless.

“No wonder we couldn’t find anything on Eloise Gardener,” Belle said. “She never existed.”

“Eloise Tremaine,” Weaver began, sticking the DMV photo up on the whiteboard next to a picture from Eloise Gardener’s autopsy. “Former foster parent to our first victim, Molly Macreedy, aka Baby Jane number 3-2-5. She was left at a fire station in North Las Vegas, estimated to be about three weeks old at the time.”

Detective Rogers shook his head and put up the DMV photo of Robert Tremaine on the other side of the board before turning to face Captain Graham Humbert, Belle, and DA Midas. “Robert Tremaine, real estate developer from Henderson, married Eloise Smith in 1993. They had no kids of their own, but had at least fifteen foster children, that we know of.”

“We’re still waiting on all the records from Nevada,” Belle added.

“Robert died in March of 2013,” Weaver continued, leaning against the wall of bookshelves in Belle’s office. “No particulars on that just yet, but shortly after that any paper trail on his wife goes cold.”

“What about his estate?” Graham asked, frowning.

Weaver shrugged. “Real estate records show the sale of the house was handled by an attorney. That’s all we have on that so far.”

Midas leaned forward on the table. “Tremaine’s business, anything about that? Real estate development in Vegas was pretty lucrative at that time.”

“And fairly shady.” Rogers’ eyebrows lifted. “We’re looking into possible organized crime connections with that, but that’s a whole can of worms unrelated to our serial murders.”

Graham flipped through the small packet of papers Belle had compiled thus far. “What was Eloise doing in Seattle?”

“We don’t know,” Weaver answered. “If there is a link to the mob with her husband’s business, it would stand to reason that she’d want to get away from Vegas, but Seattle doesn’t seem far enough to run from that kind of thing.”

“But,” Belle interjected. “It doesn’t explain how Jack and Nick Branson knew about the history between Molly and Eloise, or why they were killed.”

“So...you have adoption records and foster parents for one victim, from another state, and not much else.” Graham looked around at the group and dropped the papers back on the table.

“Hey, we -”

“Now wait -”

Weaver and Rogers start defending themselves at the exact same moment, but stopped when Midas stood up.

“Captain Humbert is right,” Midas said. “It’s interesting background, and it’s a possible lead to - something - but it’s not helping us build a case against the Bransons, and this office -.”

“Nick Branson worked construction in Las Vegas,” Belle interrupted. “Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe it’s through Robert Tremaine’s business that he - I don’t know - came into some contact with Eloise.”

Midas frowned and looked at Graham a moment before fixing Belle with a hard stare. “Follow it up, but don’t waste time on goose chases and rabbit holes. The murders were here in Seattle, not in Las Vegas. We’re not even sure Eloise was murdered by the Bransons -”

Belle attempted to interrupt him again, but his glare quieted her immediately. “You’ve shown me no definitive proof that she was. Meanwhile, we have five victims that we do know they killed, and a trial for them starting in two months. I’d like to avoid that kind of public spectacle if at all possible and get these two psychopaths to take a deal on those five murders.”

The tension in the room made Belle uncomfortable and her eyes darted to meet Weavers’ before shifting back to her boss.

“Am I clear, ADA French?”

She swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, detectives,” Midas said, nodding to Rogers and Weaver. “Captain Graham.”

Midas strode out of the office, and everyone left in the room collectively sagged in defeat. The air of excitement that Belle and Weaver had maintained for the last thirty-six hours at the news of Eloise Gardener’s real identity fizzled to nothing as Belle laid her head down on the conference table.

Weaver shot a look at Graham. “What the hell crawled up his arse?”

Graham sighed and ran a hand over his face. “The mayor,” he said, counting on his fingers as he spoke, “the city council, Alderman Samedi, Victoria Belfrey…”

“Belfrey?” Belle said, lifting her head. “What the hell does she care?”

“Apparently she had a deal with Samedi to build cost controlled housing on that vacant lot,” Graham explained. “The whole thing is in limbo now because the lot is a crime scene and hasn’t been released, and we can’t do that until we move forward on Eloise Gardener’s, or Tremaine’s, or - whoever the hell she is’s - murder.”

“So no pressure then,” Rogers muttered flatly, snapping the cap on one of the dry erase markers.

Belle pushed back from the conference table and stood up. “Okay,” she said, holding up both of her hands, palms outward. “We need a new plan. Rogers, figure out where the hell Eloise was living in Seattle. Hopefully having her actual last name will yield more results, but there could be something under her husband’s name, or his company. Ian and I will focus on the other victims, and see if any more of them are also adopted, or were in foster care.”

Then she turned to Graham and gave him a sickly sweet smile, that hand him rolling his head back and looking up at the ceiling. “Captain Humbert, if you could please reach out to your federal law enforcement contacts, and see if there’s even a whiff of organized crime around Robert Tremaine, that would be most especially helpful.”

Graham let out a snorting laugh, and gave Belle a salute with two fingers before he gathered up his things. “Yes, ma’am.”

Plans made, and men dispersed, Belle was left alone in her office. She sat down on the sofa, head in her hands, and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly between her lips. Archie’s voice was once again in her head, and for a long moment she let herself focus on it, trying to block out the irritated voice of her boss and the nagging on in her head that set her anxiety up to an eleven.

Feeling calmer, Belle looked up, her eyes staring straight ahead at the white board with pictures of Robert and Eloise Tremaine hanging side by side. She pushed to her feet and walked towards her, her vision narrowing to the image of Eloise, with that awkward expression so common with driver’s license photos.

“Why were you in Seattle, Eloise?” she asked no one. “What were you running from?”

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #woven beauty #woven beauty fic #my woven beauty fic #killing time #lindsay's august writer's month 2020 #fic

15 notes · View notes

bitter-sweet-farmgirl · 3 years

Text

Other Writing Prompts

This is just a compiled list of prompts I’ve collected from Pinterest and other random places, but don’t particularly fit anywhere or just would only fit into the Marvel or Star Wars fandoms. I have other prompt lists that get more specific or more vague as well. If you want to use one in a request to me, just use the following ‘Character Name and Prompt No. 35 from the Other Prompt list’ for example + some details if you’d like.

I didn’t organize this list by mood since it’s about 200 prompts.

Key:

‘*’ Denotes something that could be used as dialogue.

[*] Denotes a swear word that I removed.

One evening, a portal to hell opens at the foot of your bed. A demon strides through, rips off your covers, and begins to drag you through the portal by your ankles saying, "you're going to help me settle a bet."

"But what is power?" "Loyalty"

The girl wrote in the journal as fluidly as fish swam in the sea, or birds rode the wind. It was beautiful, how gracefully she crafted her spells.

"You do know that when you wipe my memories, it doesn't actually work, right? One of the perks of being me." The villain froze at the hero's words. They'd just attempted their grand entrance four times in a row, trying to anticipate the hero's response. Blanking their brain when they didn't quite get it perfect. First impressions were important. PR won battles as much as soldiers did. "Don't worry," the hero grinned, looking the villain up and down slowly. "You're doing great. Very impressive." Now they definitely had to die.

The villain prowled closer, gaze intent. "Mm. The last time someone looked at me like that, we didn't get out of bed all weekend. Good times." "Cute bravado, it won't save you." "You're blushing."

"You could be so brilliant if you only turned your mind to creating things instead of destroying them." The hero murmured. They paused to tighten the villain's restraints, before glancing up to catch their eyes. "I've never seen anything like you. You're stunning." It was so earnest that, for once, the villain didn't quite know what to say. The hero wet their lips, practically on their knees. "Just let me help you, please. You'd be a terrible waste to the world rotting."

"Oh, I could just take you apart. See how long that cold, untouchable reputation of yours lasts then. You're trying so hard to pretend you're not even human, but look at that..." The hero pressed a hand above the villain's heart. They both felt it pounding far too clearly. This was not supposed to happen. There was a reason nobody was supposed to get close.

"If you want me," the hero panted, "come and get me." The villain paused, languidly sweeping a hand up and under their chin. "Want you in which way, Darling? Don't get me wrong, both involve ropes, but it's an important distinction to make before we proceed."

You're a villain that fell in love with a hero. Though the strongest villain on the planet, you constantly lose to your hero, since you just love the rivalry and don't want it to end. As you are being arrested one day, your hero is attacked by another villain; one too strong for them to beat.

Stab options: Slowly raise their hand to the wound and/or pull out the weapon impaling them while everyone stares in horror before collapsing to the ground from shock and/or blood loss and being caught just in time by a friend/lover.

Hide the wound beneath a dark item of clothing in preparation for the dramatic reveal later where another character touches them and their hand comes away bloody or they overexert themselves and they stumble and wince but still try to insist that they're fine,

even though they are clearly in pain and struggling to stay on their feet. And as the other character peels back their jacket it becomes clear that they're badly hurt and have been for awhile.

Character A tilting Character B's chin up to get a better look at their face and the evidence of the fight. Character A delicately thumbs away the streak of blood by Character B's mouth, saying nothing as they examine it. After a brief pause, Character B's heart skips a nervous beat as Character A looks them dead in the eyes. Their voice is quiet and tense, their anger barely restrained. "Who did this to you?"

"I will deny you death until you beg me for it."

"Hold on you died." "Yeah, well it didn't stick."

As teenagers, a boy and a girl agree to marry if neither have by their 35th birthday. Follow the boy as he attempts to sabotage every relationship the girl has till then.

The hero shows up at the villain's doorstep one night. They're shivering, bleeding and scared. There's also a slightly dazed look in their eyes--they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they are close to passing out they mumble, "...didn't know where else to go..." Then collapse into the villain's arms.

"I loved the woman you were before. Not this monster."

"I dare you to touch her again."

"By the Gods! You love her, don't you?"

"Come here." "Why?" "Just come here." "No, you're gonna hit me."

"Shh, shh." The villain wiped the tears from the hero's face and pressed a kiss to their forehead. "Don't struggle, you'll only make it worse for yourself."

"Hey, hey, hey. Baby, what's wrong?" The hero shuddered from the dram--startlingly vivid. Of fighting and faces, and the the icy clench of betrayal in their chest already fading into unconsciousness. And yet, they couldn't stop crying. Shoulders shaking, uncontrollable sobbing. The villain gathered them close, tucking the hero's head against their chest and making safe, soothing sounds. "Bad dream, huh? It's alright, nothing will touch you while I have you."

"Nobody touches you other than me, do you understand?" The hero looked at the other villain, dead on the floor. Dead before they even touched them. And they hated themselves for the flicker of gratitude, of feeling protected, when everything was all wrong and there was nothing safe in this game at all. Their villain was not kind. Only possessive. "Can we go home?" The villain liked it when they called it home.

They hadn't wanted this. Of course, they'd wanted the hero to stop fighting them. Wanted them broken, despondent, but... The person staring blankly at the walls, terrified of their own power, wasn't what they wanted. "Darling, you're beautiful. You don't need to be scared with me, I promise you that. Look--try and attack me and I promise I can stop you. You're safe with me. You couldn't hurt me if you tried. I'm just like you."

"You killed someone. Do you really think they're ever going to want you back?" The hero looked up at the villain, desperate, shattered. "I'll always want you, even if they don't." The villain said. "I understand what it's like. It was an accident, wasn't it?"

"You're not as evil as people think you are." "No, I'm much worse."

"I was a King!" He bellowed, spitting at the girl's feet. She smiled at him, her eyes sad and yet full of mischief. "And I was a god."

He pulled against the ropes with all his might, but they wouldn't give. "Don't bother," a voice said." He looked up to discover a thin girl bound with the same rope. Although it was dark, he could see her bruised eyes and wrists. "I already tried."

"Don't ever try to get inside my head," he snarled, slamming me against the wall. For several beats we stayed there, his grip crushing my wrists. Finally, his eyes softened. "It's too dark for you."

"You think you have a choice, and that's sweet and all, but it's time you take up the knife and do what you were made to do."

"You-you are--" "Beautiful, a genius, immensely talented--" "Dangerous."

"Sorry, I have a clingy and feverish assassin on my lap. I'll call you back when I've convinced him that a cold doesn't mean he's dying."

The villain pressed their lips to the hero's, silencing their sobbing pleas. "Shh." The villain murmured, angling their knife at the hero's throat. "It's better this way."

He was leaning against the wall, trying to support his own body weight, and his gasps of pain were like music to her ears.

"You just killed five men, what do you have to say for yourself?" "Oops?"

For a second, I thought she could actually see me.

Every person on the planet is born with a tattoo on each arm. One matches your soulmate, and one matches your worst enemy. However, most people have no clue which is which. You do, because they are both the same.

In a superhero-supervillain story, you're the hero's love interest, and as such, in classic use-their-loved-ones-against-them fashion, the villain keeps kidnapping you as leverage against the hero. However, an unfortunate complication has arisen; having spent so much time with the villain, you begin to realize you're falling in love with them.

You never kill the spiders in your home. You just whisper; "Today you, tomorrow me." When you set them outside. Now, in your most dire moment, an army of spiders arrives to have your back.

"I feel nothing for you. Absolutely nothing!" "Is that so?" His tone was amused, which irritated me more. "Yep. Nothing." He took one towards me with a smirk on his face. I swallowed, refusing to back up. He laughed at me discomfort. "Relax, Princess. I am not going to jump on you." That relieved me somewhat, until he added, "not until you ask me to anyways."

The hero shows up at the villain's house, hurt, broken and defeated. But it wasn't the villain and they are extremely angry that someone hurt their hero.

The phone rings. The voice on the other end says "we need you again." Then hangs up.

"What's the word for that infestation of tiny creatures over there?" "Those are children. That's a school."

Everyone has a guardian angel except you. You have a guardian demon. He deals with things in a much more violent, but more effective fashion.

"You have to go, you have to run away!" "Run from who?" "From me."

"Small fire! I said to set a small fire! This is not small!"

Two people running away from a blind, arranged marriage, in which one is supposed to marry the other, meet on the road by coincidence and fall in love with each other.

*Not every prince is charming

When people are born, they are assigned a soulmate. They have an original song in their head that only them and their soulmate know. A person just broke into your house and you're pretty sure they are here to kill you. They're humming your song under their breath.

"What? Do you think I enjoy this? This infatuation of mine? This horrible need to know you are okay?" To realize you can hurt me in a way no one for the past thousand years has been able to?" "Well, stop it then! If caring about me is such a nuisance to you, stop it! It doesn't do much for either one of us." "I CAN'T. That's what kills me. The fact that you can even ask that of me shows how ignorant you are about the power you have over me."

"I want to take a shower, so you should probably join me. It'll save water."

"It's midnight! Where the hell were you?"

"What the hell is your problem?"

"I might have slept with your [clothing article] when you were gone."

"No one has to know about us, I know this could ruin you."

"Just pretend to be my date."

"You should sleep." "I'm not human, therefore, I do not require sleep."

"You broke me and now you expect me to follow you out onto the battlefield? NO. The answer is NO."

"You take me instead, do you hear me? Give her back and take me instead."

"Wait, something doesn't feel right."

"Did you hear that?"

"Stay here and don't move. I'll be right back."

"You told me you were okay! You promised!"

"Why didn't you tell me?!"

"How long have you been covering this?"

"You've been trying to deal with this yourself?"

"We could have prevented this!"

"If you didn't want to be a burden, you should have gotten it treated right!"

"You didn't think it was that bad? Are you looking at it?"

"You are not fine!"

"You look really cute in that sweater."

"No, like... It's just, I can't believe you're actually wearing my clothes."

"You know I hear you talking, but I still don't have my coffee."

"Do you want to know the hardest thing about having a soulmate? It's not the separation in the beginning, not the endless nights lying awake, hoping and praying tha someone was made for you. It's... It's the love. It's too strong, and you can't fight it. I've tried. Believe me, I've tried... But I'm always going to love you. And I need you to know that."

"You would risk the lives of millions for one person? Why?" "Because it's not just one life... It's yours."

"This might sound selfish, but I don't care about the world. I only care about you."

"I still believe there is a good person in you."

"It was necessary."

"Did you think I really cared about you?"

"This was my plan all along."

"There was no other way."

"How cute. Struggle all you want, you won't be leaving this place."

"This is what you get from trusting me."

"It's too late to go back."

"I'm sorry this had to go down like this."

"That's right, I lied."

"It's all for a good cause."

"You were so stupid. You should have known."

"Just so you know... I don't regret anything."

"Shame. I kind of liked you."

"This is my responsibility."

"You will no longer love me if you see who I truly am."

"I'm a monster." "No, you're not."

"You'd better put that knife down."

"But I did all of this for you?" "I didn't want you to kill anyone."

Person A wins a big stuffed animal for Person B at an amusement park and offers to carry it for them. Person B says they'll carry it themselves and carries it around smugly.

While on a date, Person A very shyly touches Person B's hand and Person B reassuringly (and tightly) holds Person A's hand.

You press your ear against the wall, just in time to hear the scream.

AU where everyone is born with a very unique tattoo on their ankle, nobody else in the world has that tattoo. Every time you fall in love, their tattoo appears somewhere else on your body. (i.e a new tattoo appearing on a celebrity's body in new photos and a very lucky fan (who'd just met them), realizing that it's their tattoo.)

He/She kissed his/her brow as the world around them burned. "See you in the next life, my love." He/She whispered.

"Is everything supposed to go dark?"

"You'd better not die on me."

"They just got a lucky shot."

"Next time, don't call me over only to find you in a pool of your own blood!"

"You need to keep pressure on it."

When a character doesn't realize they've been shot or whatever and their hand brushes against their side and comes away wet with blood, and they're just staring at it like WTF is this and then their knees just totally give out on them and they sink down, maybe gasping a little as the reality finally hits them.

A character that knows they've been shot, but waits until the rest of their crew is out of sight to put their hand against the slowly spreading stain of blood on their shirt, then trying to steady their breathing so they can follow without letting on how injured they are.

Or the character who doesn't realize they've been hurt trying to see if everyone else is okay only to slowly realize that everyone is looking at them with mounting horror. Then they touch their side to find it's wet and oh no.

"Pull the trigger. PULL IT!" He screamed as he took the gun being held in his enemy's hand and pressed it against his own stomach. "I can't!" His enemy screamed. "I can't kill you!"

"You were more fun when we were kids," the villain sighed. "You worshiped me then. It was so cute." "When we were kids, you weren't such a colossal prick." The villain laughed and traced the weapon along their cheek. "Now, you know that's not true. You changed. Not me." The laugh dropped, to something more contemplative, softer, and yet no kinder. "Why did you have to?"

"Isn't that what people do?" The villain asked softly. "Learn to love each other? Could you not learn to love me? You-you who seem to have such a heart to love the world and everything in it?" The hero turned their gaze away, jaw clenched, pity and anger tugging at them in equal measure. "I would not be unkind to you," the villain persisted. Cupping the hero's face, thumbs stroking their jaw. "I would never." "Kidnapping people is unkind." The villain's grip tightened. "Making people fall in love with you and refusing to love them back is unkind." Oh, hell no. The hero knocked their hands away, expression ablaze with rage that they even dared say that. Their heart slammed, anger overtaking pity, teeth bared in a snarl. "I will never love you. Never."

"This isn't the way to make people love you!" "Love?" The villain laughed at that, fondly even, as they looked down at the hero kneeling before them, heat in their eyes. "My sweet thing, this isn't about love."

"All that time locked away, and not a note from you. No visits, no letters, nothing." The villain trailed their fingers along the hero's sides, relishing the sight of them all chained up for them. "You're lucky I'm nicer and won't just leave you here to rot, inmate." The hero snarled at them, making an indignant noise. "Aggressive behavior, now that would be a shot."

"I enjoyed your visits." The villain said, "but it's just not the same with a thick glass wall between us. I know you felt the same way." They didn't look at the hero, making cooing sounds at the hero's child in their lap. The hero's mind raced, desperately trying to think of some way to fix this. To calculate how long it would be before back up came. The very sight of the villain holding onto their baby left them sick with dread, even more so as the child gurgled and laughed. "You never told me about this little one, no they didn't, no they didn't." They smothered a kiss to the child's forehead. "They look like me."

"Shh, shh." the antagonist settled themselves comfortably on the protagonist's lap, looping their arms around them. One hand cupped the back of their head and stroked soothing fingers through the protagonist's hair, guiding their head to rest on the antagonist's shoulder. "It's alright, calm down..." The protagonist's wrists strained against the chains binding their limbs to the chair, heart feeling like it might jack-knife out of their chest, nerve-endings jangling. "Just match your breathing with mine." The antagonist continued, concerned. "We both know I'm going to hurt you regardless so there's really no point in having a panic attack about it. Come on, deep breaths. No

need to cry now, that's good. You can do it." They continued to make soothing sounds, crowning the protagonist's head with kisses.

"I really thought you could save me." The hero cradled the villain close, for now, too many things reeling through their head. "Yeah, so did I."

"You said if I did this, that we'd be done." The antagonist smiled, brushing the protagonist's hair back from their forehead. "You must have known that would never happen. Look at what a great team we make--we're unstoppable!" Their smile softened and the protagonist hated that it still made their stomach flip. "You're incredible!" "Incredibly done." "If I let you go, you'll die. The world can't maintain you the way I can."

"You were everything to me." And now, this. Betrayal and longing, relief at life and despair at monstrosity, sunk like a fish hook in their chest. Painful, inescapable. "How could you?" The antagonist's brow furrowed. They reached out a hand, gently catching the protagonist's tears on their fingertips. "You say that as if we've met before." The protagonist's heart dropped out. "What? You don't remember me?" The antagonist continued to stare at the tears for a moment before their hand clenched to a fist. They nodded to their guards. The protagonist struggled as the security seized hold of them again, dragging them up and backwards. Their desperation pitched. They grew sure. "You don't remember, do you? What's the last thing you remember?" "Oh, and gag them," the antagonist said, looking away. "They're boring me." "[NAME]--" the guards cut them off. The antagonist didn't look at them once as they were hauled out of the room.

They tried again, and again, and again. Each time, they were deftly deflected, tossed aside, pinned, knocked back as if their attacks and all their training was nothing. The villain was good. They tried for over an hour, ears ringing, nose bleeding, ribs cracked, fingers broken, until they were too exhausted to put any strength into a punch and the last lunge ended up more with them sobbing and shaking in frustration against the villain's chest. The villain caught their wrists firmly and twisted them into a more secure hold. They manhandled the protagonist, stumbling in front of the mirror so they could get a good look at just how pitifully outmatched they looked. "This is what you wanted? I'm sure your parents would be delighted to see this."

"Teach me." "What?" The villain started. "Teach me how to fight like you." It was the most incredible thing they'd ever seen. "...You want me to teach you how to kill me?" The villain let go and let them crumple to the floor. "[*]. I need a drink to deal with you."

"I said that's enough now." The villain caught hold of the hero's wrists as they tried to keep fighting, tossing their weapon aside before drawing them close. Arms wrapping around them in an embrace that might have been comforting if it didn't have the unyielding restraint of shackles. "There we go, easy now." You've been hurt enough for one day." Thrashing against the hold did nothing but exhaust the hero and eventually they sagged. They sank together to the ground in a tangle of limbs, rocking slightly. 'You hurt me,' they wanted to scream. 'This is your fault.' "Shh," the villain murmured--warned, they didn't even know anymore. "It's enough. You've done more than enough, you'e fought so bravely, but just listen to me. There's no shame in surrendering and living another day, right?"

The villain was curled up in their bed. Fast asleep, in their bed. No broken windows, no broken locks--just there. A bolt of rage shot through the hero before they got a better look at them and... Oh wow. They let them sleep, Tucked over another blanket and went into the kitchen and made food, something warm to drink and fished out some painkillers. Their eyes flickered over when the villain made a clammy appearance. "Sit down," they ordered. "You're not going anywhere until I've taken a look at your wounds." The villain sat, huddled up in one of the hero's old hoodies. "You're not interrogating me. Or angry." "Oh, I'm furious. But shockingly enough for once not at you. If I ask you what happened, you're going to run aren't you?" The villain didn't deny it. This was different, somehow.

"I loved you at your darkest."

The fighter frowned when I stepped into the ring, his stance slackening a little as he took in the sight of me. The roar of the crowd was deafening as they grew rowdy, waiting for the fight to start. But he said, in a low growl of a voice, "I don't fight girls." My lip curled as I replied, "too bad, because I fight boys." And knocked his legs out from under him.

"You took a bullet for me." The villain stared at them, numbly almost, as the protagonist gasped for breath that didn't want to come down. "That was stupid of you." They wished they had some excuse, some clever plan, but it had simply been instinct. They wished they had some witty comment, but it hurt too much to think. The villain stepped closer, standing over them. Watching them pant, propped weakly on one elbow, the other hand clamped to their side. "I wish you hadn't done that," the villain said. "So do I, [*]." They squeezed their eyes shut. They snapped open at the touch of hands, and the antagonist's face was right there. Close. "Are you scared? Do you want me to make it quick for you?" [*]. Really?

"You can't just keep me!" "You'd prefer I fight you and your friends?" The villain returned. "I wouldn't. And you are an excellent piece of peace-keeping leverage. A noble cause. I would have imagined you'd be all aboard.

"Don't do this," the antagonist entreated, anguished, wary. "You don't have to do this." The protagonist stared back, heart drumming in their ears, a dozen longings swelling beneath their tongue. "I don't want to. You're all I ever wanted." It hurt to, finally, admit it aloud and the antagonist's breath hitched. "But this is--this is wrong. Can you really not see that?" "Loving you can never be wrong." Their chest ached. "The things you do for love can."

"Not what you expected?" The villain smiled, frosty. "I had plans other than you too. I suppose we'll both have to make do." The hero drew back, wide-eyed, because no. This was not what they'd expected at all. A little awkwardness, a little chill, not a dead body on the bedroom floor. "What are you?"

"Don't worry." The villain caressed their partner's cheek, down the oh-so-vulnerable line of the hero's throat. "I won't hurt you. Suspicion always turns to the spouse first in these things." "I'll tell." "And then where would that leave you? Like it or not love. I'm all that you have in the world now. We need to look after each other."

When someone's heart breaks, so does a piece of our world; this creatures fissures,

valleys, and even cracks in the pavement. Tell the story behind the Grand Canyon.

"You're such a complete disaster." Groans the villain, scooping the unconscious hero off the sidewalk. "Like, holy hell, how does anyone let you out of their sight? Stop picking fights with people you aren't ready for."

"Fix it." "I can't." The protagonist dropped to their knees, a sick feeling curdling in the pit of their belly. "Please--see, I'm begging and everything. Fix it." They swallowed hard. "Please." Their voice cracked. "I can't." The antagonist said. They tugged one hand through their hair, jerking the other in a gesture for the protagonist to get up. "I'm not saying it to spite you, I literally can't. This is beyond my power. I'm sorry." The protagonist stared at them in numb disbelief.

"Hand over the girl." "Not going to happen."

"Does it hurt?" The hero asked carefully, looking at the huge scar that trailed from the other person's shoulder, down their chest to their stomach. The scar was pale in colour and bumpy; raised above the skin ever-so-slightly. The other person looked away, blinking fast. "It did. Years ago, when I first received it." "I can't believe someone could do this to you," the hero whispered. That got the other's attention, their head snapping towards the hero. "You did this. YOU did this to me and you don't even remember." They hissed.

"You need to eat something." The hero scowled, wrapping both arms around their grumbling stomach. "You need to mind your own business." The villain stepped forward slowly, arms held out in front of them, palms up. "You fainted on me last week, and I can hear how hungry you are. If you won't take my money, at least let me buy you some food. You help everyone, let someone help you for once. Don't let your pride stop you from taking the help you need to continue saving lives." The villain smiled crookedly. "To continue stopping me."

"Your city is in ruins. You are--" The villain stopped, gloves half off, and raised an eyebrow. "You're wrapped in my cape." Swaddled in the thick fabric, only the hero's face was visible, their expression trapped between a scowl and a pout. "It's cold down here, and you left it in reach. If you weren't too tight to heat your lair while keeping me prisoner down here, I wouldn't have had to resort to thievery." "You look adorable," the villain said, forcing a sneer into their voice. Because they did. They looked adorable and warm and perfect.

Character B bleeding heavily while Character A tries to staunch the blood, but Character B is more concerned about the fact that stoic Character A is sobbing and panicking.

When help is a few hours away and Character B has to stay awake, Character A rambles loudly about random stuff, trying not to break down and cry and to keep them awake.

"Show me your scars," he said. "But... Why?" She asked quizzically. "I want to see how many times you needed me and I wasn't there," he whispered, a tear rolling down his cheek.

"You go ahead, I'll hold them off for as long as I can."

"Don't talk to me. It's 6 AM and I haven't had coffee yet, so anything I do or say cannot

be held against me."

"Dude, that jacket is mine, give it back."

"YOU USED MY TOWEL?!"

"Where is he?" "My lady...." "Answer me."

"Wait, when did I take off my clothes?"

"I"m fully convinced you never graduated kindergarten."

"I'm not here, actually, this is a projection from.... [planet].... I moved there recently."

"You have no idea how to make toast?!"

"I haven't showered in four days."

"You're more zombie than human."

"Fix her." "No." "Because you can't or you don't want to?" "Because she'll break again. And you'll be back here, on my doorstep, begging me once more to fix something that wasn't meant to be fixed." "So you don't want to?" The healer's eyes were cold. "No."

"You made me love you." The hero said. They stared out of the window, quietly, watching the rain spit down across the streets. The villain froze in the doorway, studying them, the cup of love-potion spiked tea still cradled in their hand. "I've known for weeks," the hero continued, idly almost. They didn't glance over. "It's obvious. Too sweet in the tea." "You're still drinking it." "I wanted to see what you would do. Waited." The villain swallowed at that. They hadn't done anything--aside from give the tea. Perhaps that was the most damning thing of all.

"She's crying, what do I do?" "Go comfort her." "How do I do that?" "Start with hugs." "With what?"

"I always knew I'd take a bullet for you," I say as pain ebbs through my chest. He/She crouches beside me, clutching at my shirt. Sobs echo from him/her as my lids grow heavy from the weight. "And I always knew you wouldn't take one for me." I whisper and shut my eyes.

First she realized she was pregnant, then she realized her baby would only be half human.

An all female crew is picked for the first [planet] mission. They all come back pregnant.

Imagine a villain getting injured and losing their memory and the hero finds them and takes them back with them, taking care of them and the villain gets their memory back after like a week but doesn't say anything because the hero is being so nice to them and nobody has been that nice to them in so long and they don't want it to end and they're maybe getting fond of the hero, but don't tell anyone. But eventually something happens and the hero is in trouble and they're trying to get the villain to run away because they still think they're an amnesiac with no idea how to defend themselves and they've grown to like them and don't want them to get hurt, but the villain just pushes past them towards whatever is trying to hurt the hero and just goes guns blazing and destroys them.

"I wish I had a camera."

The shackles grazed her wrists as she changed positions in an attempt to get comfortable.

You live in a world where your soulmate is unable to hurt you, intentionally or otherwise.

You are fighting in a war when one of the enemy's knives harmlessly glances off of you.

The rain came down in heavy sheets. He pulled his soaked [type of hat] down to protect his eyes and moved forward. Where was she? Would he find her in time? A dark shape against the bridge railway caught his eye when the lightning flashed. He rushed forward and grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him. He couldn't tell for the rain if she was crying or not, droplets streamed down her face. Her mouth opened to let out a cry, but when she saw it was him, she pleaded with her eyes. He only nodded and put his arm around her. He'd protect her.

My head pounded as the toxin flooded my veins, but when I looked at her I could tell what it was doing to her was much worse.

A woman has been dating guy after guy, but it never seems to work out. She's unaware that she's actually been dating the same guy over and over; a shapeshifter who's fallen for her and is certain that this time he'll get it right.

"What have you been doing? Actually, don't answer that, I don't want to know."

"You're hurt!" He pulled the arrow out of his chest. "Oh, that's nothing." She stared at him. She'd thought she'd seen the arrow pierce his heart. How was he even alive? He laughed. "Don't worry, dear. It takes more than one little arrow to kill me." She was pretty sure she'd seen his eyes glimmer for a second.

"It's 2 AM. I think that's enough of that."

"Watch, this is the best part!"

"Why are you doing this?!" The villain grinned, their malice as tangible as the ground beneath the hero's feet. "Because you fell in love. And you needed to learn that love won't save you when there's a gun to your head."

It's not like she meant to trip and spill coffee all over him. It was just the way of her people.

The villain gently lifted the hero's chin with a fingertip. "Don't you see? We're the same, you and I." The hero narrowed their eyes and smacked the villain's hand away. "You and I will never be the same. I'll make sure of it." The villain grabbed the hero's wrists in an iron grip before they even knew it was moving. "Darling," the villain chuckled, "you don't have a choice."

The villain snarled, "you will find the moment you hurt them is the moment I tear out your heart and shatter your bones. If you dare destroy them as you have threatened, then they'll find nothing left of you."

"You're not allowed to die, dammit!" The villain's voice quivered, threatening to break as they shook the hero's limp shoulders. "I promised myself you wouldn't die here. I promised you I'd get us both out of this. Dammit, I promised!"

The villain's breaths were shallow and panicked as they laid the hero on the ground, blood staining both their hands. "Damn it," the villain muttered as they ripped a piece off their shirt and pressed it flush with the hero's ribcage. "Why didn't you tell me?" "Didn't want you to think I was weak," the hero mumbled, their face an already alarming shade of white. The villain grimaced, tears blurring their vision. "Well, I'm afraid you're about to witness first hand just how weak I am."

"The world is ruthless, unforgiving. I came to realize that long ago when my wife was

stolen from me." She lifted her hood to reveal her face. "She wasn't stolen. She left."

The villain shook their head. "What a pity..." "Let me go!" Begged the protagonist again. "Please," she sobbed. "Please. "You could have been Queen. It's a pity you chose this path instead." The villain lifted their dagger.

"I"m the daughter of a King who forgot my name."

"Go to him. He waits for you."

*He became King because he wanted to marry you.

One night, a dark King appeared and offered me his hand, his heart, and his Kingdom.

Arranged marriage AU where I am the Prince/Princess who sneaked out to a tavern and while I was there I got into a fist fight with another patron. Fast forward to the next day where I am meeting the person who has been engaged to me since birth and oh wow your eye looks horrible, what did I do.

Your father is forcing you to marry someone you've never met. The night before your wedding you tie your sheets together and make your escape through the window. Halfway down, you make eye contact with someone doing the exact same thing a few windows over.

"If a god falls in love with you, you can never really die."

Person A and Person B are in the kitchen. Person A is short, while Person B is slightly taller. Person A: *Struggles to retrieve items from top shelf* Person B: "Do you need me to get it for you?" Person A: *Gasps* "How dare you insult the vertically challenged!" Person B: *Laughs* "Okay then..." Person A: (Moments later) *Defeated sigh* "Help meee....."

Person A: *Completely serious* "I have to get something off my chest." Person B: *Fingers crossed* "I hope it's your shirt, please."

Person A noticeably disheveled as they enter the room. "Sorry I'm late, I was doing stuff." Person B, also disheveled and grinning smugly enters the room after. "I'm stuff."

The villain smiled, watching the anguish on the hero's face as their so-called friends handed them over. "I guess," the villain sighed. "You're nobody's first priority." They reached out, pulling the hero closer by their restraints. "Except mine, of course. Don't worry. There's nothing I wouldn't do to keep you." The hero shivered, turning their head away.

"I'm all yours," the hero held up their hands. "Just leave them out of it. This is just you and me, right?"

The villain panted for breath, hands bloody--a little dazed and starting to shake. "They were going to hurt you. I-I panicked. I know it's bad that I--" "Shh." The hero held out an arm and the villain crumpled against them. "It's alright. You were only trying to protect me, weren't you?" The villain nodded. "Then I forgive you, it's okay. But you know there are going to be people who don't see it my way, who wouldn't understand like I do." "But you can make that go away. You can do anything." The villain said. It took everything the villain had not to shiver with delight.

"There," the villain carded their fingers through the hero's hair. "Isn't it better to feel clean?" No more blood or grime or gore on battered skin. Instead, fluffy towels, steaming water, soothing scents and oils which soothed all aches and pains. "It would

feel even better if you weren't in the room. Bit creepy, that." "You know you can't be trusted not to abuse my hospitality."

"Stop it." The command, the quiet authority cut straight through to the villain's brain. "You're overthinking," their sidekick said. "You know what you get like when you start overthinking. Come here." The villain moved over thoughtlessly. Their sidekick guided them gently down onto their knees, taking the villain's head in their hands. Their fingers massaged soothing circles and the villain's eyes fluttered closed. "That's right," their sidekick murmured. Good. Just focus on me. Take some deep breaths."

"You are so terrified that people will never love you, that they'll leave you," the protagonist murmured. "That you would never give them the chance to do either." The antagonist stilled in the doorway, just for a beat. The protagonist looked at them, heart seized in their mouth. "That's not love, you know. Love necessitates choice." "Just as well then," the antagonist replied. "That I'm not looking to give someone the chance to love me. Sleep tight." The door slammed shut behind them.

"I miss you." "You miss an illusion." But the villain paused all the same, hand rising as if about to touch. Faltering. Their hand dropped. They steeled themselves. "Take them away." Cold.

*And mighty we became.

"That has got to be the lamest pick up line in existence." "Don't worry that's just Plan A." "So what's Plan B?" "To take you hostage."

"I'm fine," the antagonist said. "Okay." "I'm fine." They'd just said that, and the protagonist was starting to look concerned. "Just fine. Everything's going to be fine." Oh wow, they couldn't stop saying it, couldn't stop gabbling it, couldn't breathe over it, choking on that word. Fine, fine, fine, always perfectly fine.

The villains lungs strained for air as the hero slammed them up against the wall, face inches away. Fear licked up their spine. "You're sorry?" The hero spat. "Sorry doesn't even begin to cover what you're going to be for what you've done. You don't get to cry over your guilt. You're not the one who got hurt."

In the heat of the moment, whether this is a fight, chase, or the characters are under gunfire; they escape and get to cover. However all is not well when Character A turns to see Character B leaning heavily against a wall, clutching at their side. Character B slowly looks up and shows a blood covered hand before saying, "so. Slight problem," before collapsing onto the floor.

"I love you from the bottom of my heart, but I don't trust your cooking. Stay out of my kitchen."

Person B dancing around their home, headphones in, eyes closed, singing as loudly as they please to their favourite song while Person A stands in the doorway watching their oblivious partner with a loving smile on their face.

Person A: "How can someone say Person B is evil? They're the most precious soft little soul." Person B: *Wiping blood off their face* "YEAH, I'M ADORABLE!"

Person A walked into the house, threw their bag on a chair, and laid down on the carpet with an air of defeat. Person B walked in a few hours later, saw Person A on the ground and set to work. They picked up a few blankets and pillows. Then Person B walked

over to Person A, laid everything out, then proceeded to lay down with Person A. Person A slowly curled up to Person B and fell into a restful sleep. Five hours later, they're still there. Just soaking in each other's presence.

Person A was sitting up in bed, headphones on and staring intensely at their Ipad screen, which flickered brightly in the dim room. Person B rolled over and slowly sat up, glancing at the clock and seeing it was well past 2 AM. Person B leaned up against Person A, with their eyes still closed and asked why Person A was still up. Person A popped out an earbud and quickly *states reason* and then turned their attention back to the screen. Person B yawned loudly, grabbed the device and tossed it off the bed. Right before Person A could protest, Person B curled an arm around them and forced Person A to lay down. Person A fell asleep within minutes, tucked securely in Person B's arms.

Imagine your OTP getting ready for bed and Person A is sitting on the bed. Person B tries to sneak up on them with a hug or a kiss, but Person A has quick reflexes and thinks they're being attacked. So they accidentally hit Person B in the face and they fall back onto the bed. Person A quickly realizes who it was then, and keeps saying sorry really fast and hugs them and kisses where it hurts.

Imagine Person A walking into the kitchen, only to find Person B in tears. Person A immediately rushes over to Person B's side, fretting over them, consoling and asking what happened. Surprised, Person B explains they were simply cutting onions.

Person A is baking cookies and has to split their attention between the timer and fighting off Person B, who keeps trying to steal cookie dough from the bowl.

Imagine your OTP making out on a couch, but then one of them accidentally rolls off and the other one is either frantically asking if they're okay, or laughing their head off.

Imagine your OTP ice skating and one of them falls so the other tries to help them up, but they lose their balance and fall on top of the other.

What if he held you tightly in his arms as you lay on his chest, drifting into sleep by the sound of his steady heartbeat. Feeling the slight vibration of his lungs as he hummed softly. His hands brushing lightly in your hair as his lips pressed against the top of your head, but stayed there for awhile. Then he let out a faint sigh, taking his lips away, seeming to be deep in thought.

You shift around in bed, trying to find a comfortable position. No success. You hear your boyfriend stretching. "Can't sleep, my love?" He asks, letting out a sleepy sigh. "Come here," he whispers. You move over to him and he snakes an arm around your waist and wraps his leg around yours as you rest your head on his bare chest.

As you lay in bed alone, struggling with reaching sleep, you toss and turn before huffing out in annoyance at still being awake. A small fraction of light creeps into your room until the door closes and the edge of your bed dips down underneath his weight. He carefully climbs under the covers, reaching an arm out for you, pulling you closer to his body, your back to his front. "You can sleep now, love. I'm home. I love you." He gently whispers in your ear, lightly kissing your cheek and then laying his head on the pillow next to you, leading you to fall into a dream-filled sleep of your boy being back home.

#writing #writing prompts #writing prompt list #prompts #other writing prompts #fanfic #fanfiction #marvel #star wars

4 notes · View notes

makeste · 5 years

Text

why Kaminari Denki is not the U.A. traitor (and why the traitor is actually Hagakure)

thank you, anon! okay first off, my opinion of the Kaminari Traitor Theory is: nah, he ain’t. but as requested, I will break this down and refute the various arguments point by point.

this is a big compilation of various “Kaminari is the traitor” posts from 4chan (general warning btw for 4chan being 4chan), which I got from this reddit thread. some of these are clearly shitposts, but on the whole it seems fairly comprehensive, so I’m gonna use this as my primary source for theory arguments. if there are any major arguments for this theory that I missed please let me know.

also! a huge part of the reason why I don’t subscribe to this theory is that I am 1000% sure that Hagakure is the actual traitor. so the second half of this post will consist of a detailed explanation as to why I’m all-in on that theory to the point of dismissing any and all other theories. I feel like that’s worth clarifying a bit more.

so! here goes.

“his proto design is that of a villain”

lol I’m trying to think of how to put this diplomatically. this is something I see a lot, people using Horikoshi’s prototype sketches and notes as evidence for various theories. the thing is, this is shaky ground at best. there’s a reason why these are proto designs and not the final product. Deku’s proto design had emo kid hair, and proto!Katsuki was an obnoxious prep school kid lol. plans change, and thank fucking god for that tbh.

but that aside, “he looks like a villain” is not in any way a solid argument to begin with. Horikoshi has made a point in the actual story of showing that people’s preconceived notions of what heroes and villains “should” look and behave like doesn’t always line up with reality. and in this case we’re not even basing it on behavior, but solely on how he looks, which is really kind of discriminatory. by that logic, one could look at, say, Shouji, and be all, “well he’s clearly the traitor.” just because someone looks scary at first glance doesn’t mean they actually are. all in all, I don’t buy it.

“Kaminari is the only one who could have told the villains where the camping trip was being held since he’s pretty much a walking GPS”

I present to you a panel from chapter 83:

literally any one of the students could have used their phone’s GPS to pinpoint their location and send it to the villains. they weren’t on any kind of communications lockdown, and even if they were, there was no practical way to enforce it. so this argument doesn’t really hold water for me. even if Kami’s quirk did work that way, which we don’t really have evidence of aside from one weird line in the USJ arc that has never since been expanded on, that doesn’t really work as evidence of him being the traitor when there are 39 other kids who could have done the exact same thing without a quirk.

“his dumbness is fake”

this is honestly the one aspect of this theory that I least understand. the thing is, this isn’t a theory. this is a what-if. it’s as if it occurred to someone one day, “lol what if he was just faking” and then this entire elaborate conspiracy headcanon was built up around that and eventually evolved into what we have today. this just doesn’t make sense to me at all. is there any evidence of him actually faking it? I feel like people just went “omg that would be such a cool twist” and then started arguing why it could be canon.

anyways I personally think Kaminari is 100% certified organic dumbass, and frankly I love him for that. where is the respect for the dumbasses of the world. Kaminari is still a great character even if he’s not secretly a JUST AS PLANNED double agent. you don’t need to make him evil for him to be interesting.

“look at his sneering face here, though”

okay yeah but hear me out: he’s a little shithead, lol. I mean, do you also think Bakugou is the traitor or.

“I edited this picture to make him look more evil, look”

okay??? lol, what. I think we can just move right along from this one.

“he didn’t bother with a costume, this must mean he doesn’t need help controlling his ability”

this I don’t get at all. a lot of the kids went into hero school not having a clear idea of what kind of costume features would best suit their quirks. that’s only natural; they’re still inexperienced. it is in no way any kind of indicator of any deception on their part. Kaminari is extremely powerful, but until recently he hasn’t had the guidance he needed to help him figure out how to harness that power better. and seeing as he has now made several modifications to his costume since starting at U.A., this argument is out of date.

“it’s scary how much traitor kaminari would make sense”

a lot of these really are just shitposts, huh? maybe I should have picked a better source. but just, like. what even is the logic here? “if he’s actually not stupid THEN HE MUST BE EVIL”? I really am trying to give this theory a fair shake you guys, even though it probably doesn’t seem that way. but this is just leap after leap. I keep thinking that I must have missed something crucial but as far as I can tell this is it.

“Monoma’s gonna copy his quirk and figure it out”

I do want to see Monoma copy his quirk, but only because seeing him go all “wheeeey” would be absolutely amazing tbh.

“reminder that kaminari thought stain was cool”

this one is actually a reasonable point. but listen, you have to keep in mind that Kaminari is a sixteen-year-old boy who gets easily swept up in the latest crazes and memes and fads. he’s naturally curious, and very open-minded and accepting, even when he perhaps shouldn’t be. but it’s as much a strength as it is a weakness, if not more so. those same traits make him the friendliest member of class 1-A (with the possible exception of Kirishima), allowing him to get along well even with a sentient cactus like Bakugou, and to stubbornly befriend Shinsou all of fifteen minutes after Shinsou announced that he wasn’t there to make friends lmao. he’s very unprejudiced, and when you put that together with how excitable he is, you can see how that might make him a bit more susceptible to getting caught up in stuff like the Stain hype train. it doesn’t make him evil. hell, even Deku had a kind of begrudging respect for Stain. I personally can’t stand Stain at all so I don’t get it myself lol, but it seems to be canon that he had a real charisma which many people were swayed by even if they didn’t agree with his ideals.

“>hanging wrist watches on the wall - Who the hell does this”

you know what that’s a fair point too.

“his room is tacky and shows no personality”

okay in seriousness this is barely worth addressing because it’s so far of a reach, but fine. the thing is, Kaminari’s core personality is that of a typical teenage boy. that’s his role in the class. he’s just a normal guy, because you need to have some normal people around to balance out this cast of extravagant weirdos. and anyways, if we’re accusing people of being evil simply because their rooms lack personality, Ojiro and Shouji’s rooms are right. there. I’m just saying.

“he was in remedial too [on the school trip]. avoiding combat”

so were Sero, Kirishima, Mina, Satou, and Monoma. what’s more, they didn’t know that the remedial kids were going to be barred from participating in the test of courage. most of them were devastated to realize that lol. anyways so yeah this isn’t really proof of anything.

“[the night] before the attack Kaminari is clearly missing”

this is referring to this panel from chapter 75:

however, there’s actually a whole chapter in the second light novel about Iida going around in the middle of the night checking on his sleeping classmates (which is actually very sweet) while also trying to find his glasses, and said chapter establishes that Iida is in fact the one missing in this scene. because he’s wandering around tucking people in and shit. Kaminari is actually the one under the pile of pillows.

anyways, this is getting long and I haven’t even gotten into the real meat of this post yet, so I’ll just address a couple of the remaining arguments real quick.

but if he’s really that stupid how did he get into U.A.” - he studied!!! also he’s not really that stupid! he can be very bright, he’s just easily distracted.

L pose – as others have pointed out, this...

...is very likely just a variation of his finger gun pose, as seen here:

but even if it’s not, my rebuttal for the Stain argument applies here as well. my boy loves his memes. this would have been right in the midst of all the Deika City coverage, and the PLF probably took the opportunity to throw a few poses in there. it’s probably the trendy thing on Instagram right now. in any case, what it is not is proof that Kaminari is the person who broke into the U.A. offices and stole the staff schedule in order to facilitate the League’s planned invasion of USJ. nor is it proof of Kaminari being the one who gave away the training camp’s location.

and segueing into the second part of this post now, this, IMO, is what so many of these traitor theories are missing. if you’re trying to identify who the U.A. traitor is, these are the two incidents you need to look at. I feel like a lot of people get swept up in what-if speculation, and forget what sparked this whole notion of there being a mole at U.A. in the first place. it’s specifically because of these two attacks, which could not have been planned without the assistance of an inside person providing information to the League from within UA. therefore, if we’re trying to identify who the traitor is, these are the only two questions we actually have to answer:

who, if anyone, had the opportunity to steal the staff schedule during Shigaraki’s break-in in chapter 12, and

who was it that gave away the training camp’s location and allowed Dabi and co. to invade and kidnap Bakugou?

that’s it. this, IMO, is what the focus should be on. and here’s the thing: while we still don’t have a definitive answer for the second question, we do have an answer for the first, and Horikoshi gave it to us all the way back in that same chapter.

but before I get to that, let’s back up and revisit that memorable incident. recall, if you will, the events that took place on the day of the break-in. class 1-A voted on a class president, and afterwards, during their lunch period, the security alarm went off as a result of Tomura doing this to the door and allowing the press to swarm the school:

initially, Rat Principal speculates as to whether a villain might have taken the opportunity to sneak in. but given the later incident at the training camp, as Present Mic rightly points out, it’s far more likely that there is a traitor in their midst instead. someone who had both the means and opportunity to take advantage of the chaos caused by the press, and somehow steal a copy of the staff schedule from right under U.A.’s nose.

given that this same person is almost certainly the one who later on gave the training camp info to the villains as well, this narrows down the field of potential suspects to either one of the teachers, or a student from class 1-A or 1-B. obviously if it’s a teacher then it could be any one of them, so there’s really no point in trying to narrow it down. the same goes for 1-B since we’re not even introduced to them until the following arc and we have no idea what they were doing during this incident. so for now, the question becomes: which, if any of the class 1-A kids had the opportunity to steal the schedule during chapter 12?

and for the answer, we need only revisit the class president voting records:

incidentally, this is something I can’t take credit for, because it was Viz’s translator Caleb Cook who originally pointed it out on his Twitter. but anyways. just in case this isn’t clear, the results are as following:

3 votes - Deku (himself, Ochako, and Iida)

2 votes - Yaomomo (herself, and Shouto)

1 vote - Jirou, Tsuyu, Ojiro, Kaminari, Bakugou, Sero, Kirishima, Tokoyami, Mineta, Satou, Kouda, Mina, Shouji, and Aoyama

for anyone doing the math, that is... nineteen votes.

curious, for a class consisting of twenty kids. and downright suspicious given the events that take place less than an hour later. assuming that each student voted for him or herself as implied, what this means is that every kid in class 1-A is accounted for on the day of the break-in, except one. and it’s not Kaminari.

it’s Hagakure.

Hagakure is not featured in any of the panels before or after the vote, either. true, she’s invisible, but she should still be wearing her uniform at the very least. but she is very distinctively the sole 1-A student unaccounted for during this chapter. Hagakure, whose quirk is invisibility. Hagakure, who could have easily slipped into the teacher’s office during the press onslaught and taken a copy of the schedule unnoticed. Hagakure, who is also one of only two people (the other being Aoyama) whose whereabouts are also unverified during the subsequent attack:

now this is where it gets really interesting. why would Hagakure’s location be deliberately withheld? especially since later on she says that she was actually with Todoroki the whole time:

unlike Aoyama, whose whereabouts remain a mystery because He Is Just Like That, Hagakure freely discloses her own whereabouts. the thing is though, if it wasn’t actually a secret, then why did Horikoshi go out of his way to omit it in the first place? there are other characters whose locations we only know because Horikoshi put them on the map. specifically Tokoyami and Kouda, who are never actually shown battling once they get warped away (at least not in the manga). yet despite this, their whereabouts aren’t a secret. it’s a deliberate choice by Horikoshi to not confirm where Hagakure actually is, and coming on the heels of her also being conspicuously MIA in chapter 12, this IMO is a huge red flag.

anyway, so now let’s fast forward to the training camp arc. now here, we do know where Hagakure ends up. specifically, she gets KOed by the gas along with Jirou. this makes her one of only two U.A. students who are not actually involved in the fighting either at the forest, or back at the lodge with Vlad. at first glance, that might appear to make her less suspicious. and it’s true that unlike the USJ arc, there is no evidence here that directly ties Hagakure to this particular invasion (though the same is true for pretty much everyone else as well). however, there are two things I would like to point out. the first is Hagakure and Jirou’s position in the test of courage lineup:

directly behind Todoroki and Bakugou (a.k.a. the League’s target). this would have put her in a good position to signal to the League when to attack. note that the attack didn’t commence until Baku and Todo had reached the midpoint of the trail, which results in their decision to press forward through the forest rather than turning back toward the start.

this is suspiciously good timing on the League’s part. it’s not confirmed they knew exactly when to strike -- they could have just gotten lucky -- but it’s something worth taking note of.

and the second thing is that being so close to the League’s target would have made it difficult for Hagakure to escape without having to fight the League. and since she wasn’t alone, she couldn’t just run off and hide like during USJ. so it may be that she made the deliberate choice to let the poison gas take the two of them out instead, especially if she knew in advance that it wouldn’t actually be lethal. this gives her an alibi for the attack without putting her in the awkward position of potentially having to fight her own allies. all in all it’s making the best of a tricky situation.

lastly, here’s the thing that really clinches the whole theory for me, and it takes place a couple of days later. now remember, the purpose of this whole attack was for the League to kidnap Bakugou. they go to all that trouble, even losing three of their own members in the process. and what happens afterwards, barely two days later? the heroes track down the villains using Momo’s homing device and Naomasa’s fortuitous tip, and are able to get Bakugou back, albeit at great cost. all of that meticulous planning, only for the League to end up on the run, and with Tomura’s mentor taken captive to boot.

this seems like a huge oversight on behalf of the U.A. traitor if they knew about the heroes’ attack and didn’t think to warn the League. and the thing is, we know for a fact that every single member of class 1-A did know in advance, thanks to Kirishima and Shouto. every member that is, except two.

hmmm.

so, to reiterate. Hagakure Tooru:

has no alibi for the incident in chapter 12 during which someone stole the staff schedule as confirmed by Kurogiri in chapter 13

has no confirmed alibi for the USJ invasion

had the means and opportunity to pass along the training camp location to the villains, assuming she had a phone with GPS

is one of only two 1-A students who did not know that the heroes had tracked the villains’ location, and thus would not have been able to pass along that vital bit of info. we know that the villains were caught unawares by the heroes’ raid, so this is huge

so that’s three incidents (not counting the training camp location which admittedly anyone could have done) in which Hagakure is singled out as one of only a handful of people with no alibi during a critical moment. now granted, there are a handful of other candidates who could possibly fall under suspicion for same reasons. Aoyama’s whereabouts are also unknown during the USJ invasion, and Jirou was also knocked out during the training camp attack. however, Hagakure is the only one who lacks an alibi for all three incidents. and, crucially, she is the sole 1-A student who did not vote in the class president election, something which is never explained or even brought up but which is hidden in plain sight.

for these reasons, I pretty much have to conclude that Hagakure is the U.A. traitor. it just lines up. and for me, the difference between the Hagakure theory and the Kaminari theory is that the evidence for the former is based on actual events in the canon, whereas the Kami theory seems to mostly just be speculation about whether or not he’s secretly evil. and look, I have no idea whether or not Hagakure is evil. I have no clue why she’d be doing this. she seems nice (although it’s worth pointing out that we have no idea what she actually looks like, who her family is, or even how old she really is for that matter. her quirk is awfully convenient for being a spy). motive is definitely a big question mark here. but the fact remains that all of the evidence we have thus far points to one candidate, and that’s her.

anyways! so that’s the end of my post about the Kaminari traitor theory, I guess! basically, he is not the traitor for many reasons, but the most compelling one is that the actual traitor has already been confirmed in my book. anyhoo, this plot has more or less been on hold since chapter 98, so it’s been quite a while since we’ve had much to speak of in terms of new evidence. but as of 242 it looks like things may finally be on the move again, so that’s exciting. regardless of my opinion on the Kami theory, I’m excited that people are talking about this again, and I really can’t wait to see how things develop from here.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #kaminari denki #hagakure tooru #bnha meta #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks #bnha theory #u.a. traitor #traitor!hagakure #hagakure traitor theory

273 notes · View notes

twilight-seer · 3 years

Text

Gaining Trust

How do you gain the trust of other people, especially the ones with serious trust issues? This article shall highlights the answers for this question.

Building trust in a friendship, relationship, or therapy and counseling clients can sometimes be difficult, annoying, and seems like a never ending work. You know that you are trying your best to be friendly, compassionate, and understanding, but why does it doesn’t seem to work?

In this article, would be using some external sources and information to facilitate the brainstorming and synthesis of the answers into a well-organized steps and methods needed to build trust.

To be able to build trust, one must learn the skills of active listening, but what is active listening?

According to Wikipedia, active listening is:

Active listening is a technique that is used in counseling, training, and solving disputes or conflicts. It requires the listener to fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said.

Active listening involves listening with all senses. As well as giving full attention to the speaker, it is important that the ‘active listener’ is also ‘seen’ to be listening - otherwise the speaker may conclude that what they are talking about is uninteresting to the listener.

Interest can be conveyed to the speaker by using both verbal and non-verbal messages such as maintaining eye contact, nodding your head and smiling, agreeing by saying ‘Yes’ or simply ‘Mmm hmm’ to encourage them to continue. By providing this ‘feedback’ the person speaking will usually feel more at ease and therefore communicate more easily, openly and honestly.

It will take me lots of time to compile all the other ambiguous and repetitive steps in active listening, I will just create my own version.

Active listening is listening to understand, not to respond.

Understanding requires a degree of empathy, comprehension, and memory retention.

Questioning, Reflection, and Thoughtful Responses are the ones that signifies and serves as evidence for active listening.

Be aware of the other person’s intentions and see if they really want to talk, vent their feelings, of if they want to know more about you before doing active listening.

Active listening is only one of the steps for gaining the trust of other people, it is a simple and effective step, but without the other methods, it won’t be able to gain the trust of others alone.

Trust is such a fragile thing. As fragile as a woman’s heart, and a person’s ego.

A person whose trust is already broken won’t be able to heal as quickly nor as completely.

Your job is not to make their trust issues go away, but to put them aside for a while so you can have a good conversation without the same “I don’t do that, I don’t trust this and that” kind of thinking. You can do them with the following methods:

Active listening - Listening intently and patiently to the other person.

Neutral Compassion - Understanding their negative and weird point of view but not confirming it neither insisting your point of view. Similar to how a mature dad talks with his old mature son.

Tactfulness - Proper wording, structure, and language when communicating to the person to prevent as much misunderstandings as possible by addressing technicalities, making intentions clear, and solving future misunderstandings.

Openness - Becoming open-minded and not easily shocked by anything, as if you are an old sage who have understood and seen all that is there to be seen in the world, that you know the feelings that lie deep inside the person’s words and actions.

Sincerity - Speaking in a gentle, calm, and relaxed manner made to make your intentions perfectly clear and good without the need to directly say it to the other person. Shows your desire to understand, help, or support the person you are talking with, usually combined with Empathy.

Enthusiasm - A more energetic form of Sincerity, it is being cheerful, optimistic, and a fun person to spread positive energy, infect others with happiness, and become a living proof that the world isn’t all dark.

Vulnerability - Showing and expressing your emotions, weaknesses, and suffering to other people, not for them to laugh at it, but for them to appreciate and acknowledge how strong and courageous you are to become a “human” in this world where they loathe their own species. It helps the person to understand in a more subtle yet clearer way, that it’s okay and perfectly fine to trust other people.

Good grief, that’s a lot of skills. I won’t be able to get them all in a single session or a ten session of experiments and operations. Many of them are against my own character so it will take a long time for me to get accustomed to it. Well we got an entire lifetime to learn it so let’s do this.

I think we are still missing the most important thing in building trust… I wonder what that is.

Is that love? professionalism? No it’s not that.

It’s time.

Time is the most important and essential thing in building trust and physical buildings or constructions. It accounts up to 35% of the chart of trust, being the highest out of all the contributing factors in building trust. But wait, what’s this “chart of trust”?

The chart of trust is:

35% - Time

20% - Active Listening

13% - Tactfulness and Openness (Comprehension and Linguistic ability)

12% - Neutral Compassion (Gentleness)

10% - Sincerity

5% - Vulnerability

5% - Enthusiasm

To explain and give the rationale for this chart, it would be wise to give an example, a situation or- Understand how difficult it takes to build the trust for those with extreme trust issues.

In a case study I’ve recently read before, there’s this woman who went in therapy and spent many weeks and sessions with the therapists saying how she cannot express herself or answer the question because of her own trust issues.

So instead of asking questions or directing the therapy, she let the patient express herself. Sometimes, they would spend many hours doing nothing in the office, and won’t start the session until the patient finally got bored and start to speak for herself.

(Note: This isn’t a good idea when you’re not a therapist or neither did the patient willingly come to you to help her face the issues and problems. Doing nothing for a long time might make the person come to the conclusion that you are uninterested and a waste of time, so it is suggested that instead of doing nothing, they would do gentle and light activities that subtly remind the person of their own problems until they get comfortable enough to express themselves such as listening to music, story telling, or playing light games.)

Then the time came where she finally got comfortable enough to express herself, she got angry, expressed sadness, and despaired about the events that was crippling her mind for many years.

But what did the therapist do? No, he didn’t immediately controlled the direction of the session, neither did he just passively observed the woman, instead he complimented her ability to express herself and that he is interested on it by using first person pronouns and self-expression words.

Oh geez this is getting boring but you get the point. I’ll skip to the main content.

These people with the highest trust issues are one of the most broken humans in the planet. Always trying to gather themselves and fix it, but no matter what they do the sand falls outside their hands, unable to take any shape without a container. Technically, they are already “broken” in a sense, but in order to continue living, all humans must believe that they are alive and whole, thus creating the holographic illusion of a glass shattered with cracks on the inside and outside, being hold together by lots of duct tape and glue. This illusionary and projected sense of self is what they believe they are, so instead of acting like a broken corpse, they strive to act like an extremely fragile and technically dead versions of themselves to continue living.

So it is of utmost importance to handle them with care, to treat them in the gentlest way possible, and allow them to take all their time in the world. This may seem easy while reading this article, but this is one of the most difficult thing that some humans have to do, which is many levels of difficulty than a triple 280 degree air screwdriver backflip combo.

It takes lots of time and patience so if you haven’t experienced waiting for at least a year or two for something trivial but important to you, then it would be almost impossible. Patience is a legendary skill, being the only active skill that doesn’t have any cooldown and whose effects transcends time and space. You will need lots and lots of time, commitment, and perseverance to acquire that skill, so yeah, that’s the point it won’t be easy.

Now you may start think why these kind of annoying humans who have done little contribution to society should be given that much attention, time, and special treatment. But the answer is rather simple. Ask yourself, do you think you have contributed many things to the world? Have you really earned your right to exist and live? And do you deserve to be happier than millions of people? No you don’t, and neither do they. If you get treated by an enlightened therapist to unlock your potential and find yourself within just a year, then you would be 1000x better than you currently are. The same thing can happen for them, except they would need it more than you for hundreds of reasons. Stay put and use your critical mind to discover your weaknesses instead of criticizing others.

So where are we? Oh that’s right, we’re discussing about how to gain the trust of the most cynical and vigilant humans on the planet.

I placed the sincerity below the chart because some humans doesn’t want anymore self-pity and empathy from others, they are already blaming and feeling bad about themselves a thousand times per day, and they don’t want you or anyone else to increase that number. They want to solve their problem, make themselves whole again, express their feelings, and be understood by other people. They do not need any of your annoying sympathy that doesn’t really help or comfort them in any way. One must be gentle, neutral, and tactful instead of absorbing all their negative energy just for the sake of empathy.

Vulnerability is low on the list since making yourself worse than other’s doesn’t really help nor teach them anything. If tell your parents that Bob got worse grades than you on the test where you got a D, would your parents be happy or satisfied about it? No they won’t, so these attempts to self-deprecate just so others can feel better about themselves are quite inefficient, negative, and primitive. They won’t always perceive it as you expected, so you better off using the other techniques and skills on the chart unless you’re not a therapist and you are talking to your friend, then it can be a good way to establish socio-emotional connections and add more depth to your friendship.

Enthusiasm is great and cool, but most of the time, instead of being helpful to other people who have trust issues, it makes them more suspicious and guarded to you especially if you act like the church guy always knocking on the door to give flyers and pamphlets that almost no one reads or like the salesman trying to sell an overpriced item by projecting and combining their enthusiasm and positivity with it. However, it is a great thing when it comes to friendships and relationships and for people who only have a moderate degree of skepticism and not those extreme ones.

So overall, the most important things here to build trust is Time, Active Listening, Tactfulness, and Neutral Compassion. One cannot learn it by just practicing it in the head or imagining scenarios, like they say, practice makes progress, and learning from mistakes makes perfect.

Humans… are such fragile creatures. Emotionally vulnerable and socially exposed, you wonder how these fragile creatures manage to reach the top of the food chain. Is the duct tape really that strong? Maybe they found a way to cover their weakness? Well it’s not that surprising. They are built and made to break and grow, so their parts are always replaced often, where they eventually become not an unbreakable diamond, but a beautiful glass, filled with water, wine, and the cheers of the lively crowd.

“Remember this feeling my child, this feeling of childlike trust where you wander around the world, trusting everything that you see to be good and nice, without any worries of rejection or regret.”

“Trust no one, and betray the world around you. Don’t trust yourself, and betray your own self.”

#philosophy #trust #empathy #listening #psychology #connect #life #article #humanity

1 note · View note

deathfrisbeeinthetardis · 4 years

Note

Bliss 7 and 12 please ;-;

Thank you anon, I absolutely adored writing this prompt, but being me I ended up with more angst than I planned to write for such a sweet prompt, but the ending is soft I swear. I hope you like it

Prompt Bliss 7. “Look at you… Goodness, you’re so cute.”

Ryan doesn’t know what they are even doing at this point.

This is the tenth time this month that he had lingered at the office after work, throwing himself into doing and redoing his editing as people trickled out and the buzz faded away. His neck is straining and his eyes ache, but he catches himself before he rubs them, not wanting to jostle the contacts. The office is not the pinnacle of comfort and luxury, but he would give up his bed and all his jerseys if it meant he could be spared from his mind.

There is no use thinking about it really, what’s done is done, but he can’t help his reluctance. It’s just an apartment, his rationality says. But why does every empty space hurt to look at, his heart whispers.

There are so many of them now.

So he had hung back, and Shane had stayed with him, the two of them editing their various projects side by side, a giant bucket of Chicago Popcorn™ Shane’s parents had sent between them.

The problem, as it usually was, is that Shane’s company and some good old fashioned sleep deprivation don’t mix well, and productivity took the fallout, their work ethic gradually sliding off the table until they’re positively undoing efforts that they’ve already put out.

Yes, maybe Ryan had something to do with Shane’s elbow and back crashing onto his laptop keyboard and deleting nearly two hours of editing, but it’s Shane’s fault he doesn’t save the videos every two minutes like Ryan does, non-compulsively of course.

So their nights aren’t the most productive, but it’s off-hours so no one can really tell them off. The office is empty, unflipped light switches plunging patches of desks into shadow between the bright spots in mesmerizing patterns. The warehouse desk layout leaves much space for the mind to fill, but Ryan’s worked here for so long that he knows every twist and turn. He’d bet good money that he’d win in a ghost race through this organized mess.

Ryan’s pretty sure the only person doing actual work tonight has chosen to evacuate from their desk to one of the corners farthest away from the pair of them. He feels a little bad to bother him with the un-moderated volume of their conversations and the not-so-infrequent giggling fits, but right now he’s too relaxed and happy to care. It’s the only time he gets to feel like this anyway.

The Unsolved title card flashes, pulling his attention back to the screen, a white bar inching through the multicolored blocks of carefully compiled video and audio files at the bottom of the monitor. Ryan’s quite proud of this one, the crew were able to get some stellar shots on-location and there was probably one of the clearest spirit box replies they’ve gotten, no matter how hard the other man tries to discount it.

“Aww you cut that part out again?’ Shane pouts beside him, headphones perched precariously on his big head.

"You can’t just go and tell ghosts they’re gonna be on Youtube every time.” Ryan swivels his chair to face Shane, a lofty air in his voice as he does his best to look down his nose at the other man, even going so far as pumping his seat up a few inches. Shane’s lip trembles like he’s holding back a laugh. It’s an argument they’ve had before, and Ryan knows how it’s going to go almost down to the line, but it’s always fun, so he plays the game.

“And why not?"

"They’re not from this time, they don’t even know what electricity is!”

“So you are admitting the spirit box is wack.” Shane rubs his hands together evilly, smiling so wide he could have been in that truth or dare movie, no special effects needed. “Oh, this is very good.”

“I did not say that,” Ryan protests, nudging Shane’s leg with a foot and feeling intensely satisfied when the boot leaves a dirt mark on the other man’s dark jeans. Jeez, they are literal children sometimes, but Ryan never has this much fun.

“It’s just, they’re ghosts, and they’re making the effort to reach out to talk to these two idiots, cut them some slack.”

“You’re the only idiot here. I, Shane Madej, am a man of science.” Shane doesn’t even have to level up his seat and he’s still taller than Ryan. It is so, so not fair.

“This is science!”

“Uh-huh,” Shane says, deadpan. There is movement just out of Ryan’s periphery, and he cranes his head to see the guy leave, wincing internally. He should probably apologize for being loud, but that can totally wait a day. Maybe two.

“There has been plenty of evidence on ghosts and you know it.”

“From what I’ve seen? You really want to go into that?” There’s a challenge in Shane’s posture, and Ryan feels a rush in his chest that overruns the empty ache there, sees the trap but he jumps anyway.

“Hell yeah I do, we’ve caught some pretty good stuff along the way, Waverly, ‘brown and white’? The freaking Sallie House?"

"We both know the whole flashlight test is horseshit, Ryan.” Shane smirks, leaning back in his chair languidly with his hands behind his head, “As to the rest of those, the demons and ghosties gotta work harder than that, cause right now they don’t seem very interesting.”

“How dare you! They’re more than interesting. They were all people once.”

“Let’s list what they’ve done, hmm? Jostling toothpaste, nudging bouncy balls, whispers so gentle you can’t even–”

“Nope I’m not letting you trivialize the evidence, it was fucking creepy to hear those on location.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re a wimp.”

“Fuck you.” Ryan shoots back, but there’s no real feeling behind it. He pulls a serious face to match Shane’s, squaring his shoulders and oh watch how fast he folds now.

The other man’s joy is infectious, and soon Ryan is joining him, their laughs swallowed up by the high ceilings and far walls. Ryan’s eyes catch on the lights shining down on Shane, tracing golden lines along the edges of his lanky figure against the shadowed monotony of conference rooms. Breathless and curling into themselves, their gazes meet and linger across five feet of space.

They’re just two guys working into the small hours of the night, just another aspect of their life that their ghost hunting career has bled into, it’s all normal.

Except it isn’t.

Neither of them needs to be here to work, least of all Shane, and really, Ryan thinks with a twist in his chest, it has just been the two of them spending time in each other’s company. And Ryan does genuinely enjoy it. He loves the ease of their interactions, how they can hound each other mercilessly and bicker, how Shane can poke that special unhinged laugh out of him and make him forget about everything else.

And how he, in turn, can make the big guy’s eyes all curvy and bright like no one does.

But there’s no use thinking about things like that.

There could be, a small voice says, a light shining weak in the churning abyss. Ryan passes a hand over his face and keeps it there, not trusting himself to not let his heart spill right out.

“Ryan?”

He had thought he found the one with Helen, the person in the world he’d like to spend his life with, but then things had started falling apart, and she had left. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Ryan knows, but he had gotten used to having someone to come home to, someone who knows him for who he is.

You can have that again, the voice goes on small and determined, and Ryan wishes he could block it out. Isn’t he always good at that on their investigations? It was basically in the fucking job description.

You just have to let yourself see.

Shane is safe, someone to trust, someone to rely on. No one else would have born with him all the times he lost his mind in those haunted places. No one else would have hummed Mama Mia to him constantly in those first days when Ryan hid the pain so well on camera, knowing the familiar tune would take the tears away, if only for a minute. Just one Shane Madej hailing from the Land of Lincoln, his co-host, his best friend, and the most important constant grounding him while the rest of his world is turned up-side-down.

“You okay buddy?” There is a sharp tone in Shane’s voice, and Ryan belatedly realizes his eyes are wet. Shane’s face is flushed from laughing, but now he leans forward and there is suddenly so much care in the slight tension of his shoulders that Ryan wants to cry.

He can’t risk losing this, he doesn’t know what he would do if he manages to fuck up this last good thing in his life.

“Yeah,” He gives the other man a small smile, turning back to his screen to start up the video again, and he feels Shane relaxing back into his chair reluctantly.

Soon he’s leaning forward again, attention rapt on every little detail Ryan had painstakingly compiled.

“Hmm, didn’t you make a face at that point?” Shane taps a finger against his chin, eyes narrowed in concentration as Ryan reaches out to pause the replay, the lines of blue and yellow stark against the black background.

“Oh, that? I didn’t think it would anyone would be interested to see it.” Ryan’s fingers tap at the keys for a few seconds, pulling up the clip from the front camera and overlaying it on the video.

"I didn’t know it was gonna scare ya.” Screen-Shane says, tipping his head to the side and schooling his face into an impressive mask of innocence as he batted his eyes at screen-Ryan.

In-real-life Ryan feels warmth coil in his chest at the memory, and he smiles as he watches himself sputter for a bit, finally settling on a determined, You know what you did. He actually huffs out a laugh at his piss poor attempt to look intimidating, when the camera angle in the VO booth put Shane so much clearly taller.

On the screen, Shane’s looking down at Ryan with a grin, though he at least has the self-awareness to look a little sheepish. Their eyes lock, and with an appropriate pause for dramatic effect, “I do.”

The clip takes another few seconds to end, their raucous laughter sound from his speakers. Then Ryan’s left with the still of both of them looking at the camera, frozen grins bright on their faces, captured in time.

And Ryan’s caught in fucking limbo again, his free hand flexing in on empty air at the edge of his desk.

“Good stuff huh?” Shane’s voice is quiet.

“Yeah.” Breathe, just breathe, how is that so hard? It shouldn’t be this hard.

“You considering switching the text out for this?” There’s a smile in Shane’s voice, and Ryan clears his throat and drags in a shuddering breath.

“No it's—I’ll uh, I’ll put it in.” He hears Shane wheeling close on his chair, but he doesn’t turn to look, locking his eyes on the monitor and busying himself with the familiar shifts and adjustments. He just needs a bit of time to clear his head, then he’ll recover the ability to be a half-decent friend again, he’s sure of it.

Ryan’s got his cursor hovering over the clip, leaning forward to keep an eye on the time markings when Shane loses a soft breath, his voice an awed murmur.

“God, you’re so cute when you’re focused."

And Ryan’s world freezes over.

Around the edges of his vision, he sees realization, surprise, and something like fear flit across the other man’s face. But Ryan doesn’t do much, just holds as still as he can, like he can stamp down the giddy hope in his chest before it even has a chance to rise, so he can convince himself that it’s all just a freakishly detailed fever dream, because Shane can’t have just said that.

Shane saw him as a friend, nothing more. Ryan does want that to be true, he really should.

Breathing is becoming such a fucking bother again, he thinks absently. Maybe if he didn’t do it, life would be much easier.

"Oh-oh god I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to spring it on you like that, what kind of shitty friend am I—just,” Shane breaks off, dragging both hands through his hair and tugging in frustration. When he finally speaks he sounds broken, voice thick as if he’s holding back tears, “I’m so sorry.”

It’s all too much, there’s a loud rushing in Ryan’s head. He bolts out of his chair, needing the freedom in space to think, to process. His chest tightens when Shane flinches at the sudden movement, eyes wide, fingers white where they’ve wrapped around the arm of his chair in a death grip.

He needs air, Ryan thinks, and his feet start carrying him away, faster and faster. But Shane follows him, and it has always been like this, he supposes. Ryan takes the lead and Shane hops on for the ride, for better or for worse, always a steady presence at his side when he needs him the most. Sometimes even when he doesn’t want to.

Shane’s steps close in and he catches at Ryan’s arm, “Ryan wait, please.”

Ryan blinks hard, but he doesn’t get to wake up this time. Shane’s fingers are burning points of pressure on his mind.

He opens his mouth to speak but there’s a strange taste, two cool lines trace down his face and his vision is swimming, and oh wouldn’t it just be perfect if he blacked out, poor little Ryan, can’t even take a fucking joke without fainting—

“Oh god, don’t cry Ry, please, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“Was it a fucking joke.” Ryan bites out, voice barely louder than a whisper but it still comes out harsher than he means. He can’t look at Shane, so Ryan keeps his eyes down, stares at the mud on Shane’s boots from their last shoot. He needs to know.

“No,” Hurt, that’s what it is, and there’s far too much of it in Shane’s voice for it to be right. “No it wasn’t.” Shane lets go of Ryan’s hand to curls an arm around himself, and Ryan aches for the burning contact like it’s a physical wound.

“Oh.” It’s more a punched out puff of air than a word. Oh.

“I-” Shane swallows, eyes shifting then settling back on Ryan, “I was looking at you, and it-it slipped out, I’m sorry.”

The silence isn’t complete, of course it isn’t. The sound of traffic exists at all hours of the day here. But it still envelops Ryan, wrapping around his throat and trying to suffocate the words he’s struggling to form.

“Don’t be."

"What?” Shane breathes, hesitant, almost disbelieving, his eyes dart to search Ryan’s face, “you’re not saying—do you—”

“I think I can.” Ryan says, and he tastes truth on his tongue.

Not now, not even tomorrow, but maybe next week, or the week after that.

“You do?"

"I do.” He affirms, and Ryan’s throat closes up with something warm when a lopsided grin starts to form on Shane’s face, small and hopeful, a gentle flush creeping onto his cheeks. They’re just standing in the office looking at each other, and Shane’s hand lifts up a little as if to reach out, but he catches himself before it makes it into Ryan’s personal space.

“You wanna head back home? I’ll pack the popcorn.” Ryan can’t really breathe, so he just nods and offers Shane a watery smile.

Their fingers brush when Ryan hands Shane a blanket for the couch, the corners of Shane’s eyes are crinkling and Ryan is breathless. He’s been feeling like that a lot tonight, and it seems that life is determined to keep him that way with all the curveballs it’s been chucking at him.

But this time it’s not a bad feeling. Not at all.

He fiddles with his sleeve and watches Shane settle down, making his way around his apartment with a familiarity accumulated over years’ worth of movie nights and beers and popcorn.

It’s still too soon, and he doesn’t think he can do anything about this whole thing he’s got himself into. But he’s got Shane with him, and for once Ryan’s not afraid he’s going to leave.

And maybe, Ryan thinks. Maybe one day he won’t need to hide from his apartment and its empty spaces.

#this took way too long to write #sorry for the wait anon #i was 1.5k in and then my brain was just like fluff??? have some angst instead #but it's hurt/comfort I guess #things are okay at the end #shyan #bliss prompt #how did I twist it into something that i cried to write #i love dying and being dead #alex writes #also I am very proud to have used that 'oh' trope after ryan has that realization #i do love that one very much

33 notes · View notes

prorevenge · 5 years

Text

I led a "revolution" against a horrible lying manager.

To set the scene, I work in a book store, but I'm very much an underling which is what I prefer. I'm usually in the back, helping unpack shipments and prepare them for shelving. I also collect online orders and package them up for shipping, and sometimes I do the night shelving or overnight projects. It's always been my favorite because I rarely have to deal with the managers and it's a much more carefree environment than working the floor and trying to push people into buying things.

Our store has gone through several store managers recently because most of them are getting corporate promotions or they're finding better opportunities elsewhere (our store is part of a nationwide chain and we're sadly struggling a lot against our competitors). Rather than promoting someone within our store who knows how our store functions and is familiar with the employees and their strengths, corporate has been assigning us store managers that are either not from our store, have never been a store manager before, or have no experience in book selling. Obviously, this creates a lot of problems and it's been affecting our store badly. Nothing screws us over worse than when corporate intervenes.

A couple years ago, we got a new store manager that was unfamiliar with the company, unfamiliar with our store, and had zero experience in managing a retail store to begin with. We already had concerns but decided to at least work with her first because maybe she'd be a natural or she'd develop into someone that was good for our store. I'm gonna call her CM for Crappy Manager.

When CM was first brought into our store, rather than taking a week or two to observe our store and the employees before making adjustments and changing things, she leaped right in, changing store policies and taking on other people's tasks. She took over things like the scheduling and making sure we have a daily schedule posted every morning to know where we were supposed to be, when our breaks were etc, and other jobs that take a long time to do and have always been delegated to assistant managers to help things run smoothly. She put people in places where they weren't trained but didn't spend any time training them on their new jobs. She was also very late with every weekly schedule. It would be 9pm Saturday night and we would STILL be waiting for the schedule for the next week. And our scheduled weeks always starts on a Sunday so we'd literally be repetitively calling the store on Saturday night to find out if we had to show up the next morning. So many sections of the store fell into disarray and everyone was getting angry about not having our schedules. She clearly couldn't handle so much and refused to delegate things to change that. On top of that, she gave horrible advice. Just to give an example, she advised the shelvers to hide from customers while they were shelving so that they wouldn't have to be stopped to provide customer service.

But worst of all, she broke the cardinal rule of the store. Do. Not. Mess. With. The. Back. Room. The back room is where we handle shipments and had its own separate manager who ran that area like clockwork. It was completely organized, we had a system we were well trained in, and we have always had things processed fast and all the new product unboxed, organized on carts, and ready to be shelved on time. CM did not bother to observe and of this and put all her focus on that back area. She got it in her head that our store would thrive if we completely changed up the back room... and she had no idea what we actually do back there. First she took away a lot of our carts so we had less to stock our product on (and our usual shipments are anywhere from 150-200 boxes a day. That's a lot of books and we need those carts!). Then she took away the shelving cards we use on our carts to help divide up the titles not only by their main subject like History or Science, but also divided them up by their sub-categories like History: Civil War or Science: Physics. The cards made it so that that the shelvers don't have to look up every single item to figure out where they go. They can just grab them and shelve them, only having to worry about getting the author's names in order alphabetically. So now we have overstuffed disorganized carts and they're not getting shelved on time because the shelvers had to keep looking up where everything goes.

We explained this to CM over and over again in every way we could think to explain it, but she refused to listen and shifted the blame on to us. She also told us that taking away the cards was corporate's idea, not hers, and that they were no longer a required item for the stores. We did our best to try to still get things organized but we were being rushed so fast and had so many books to work with, there was no time to scan through every single item, organize them on the cart and try to remember where we put which sub-section on each cart. I honestly felt horrible for the shelvers and a lot of them threatened to (and did) quit. It made our job in the back room frustrating because we knew we were being forced to screw them over and when things don't work well in the back, it hits the entire store. Less product is being shelved, workers are getting stressed trying to figure out where things go... morale could not have been worse. And the worst part was she refused to listen to anyone who approached her with concerns. Her attitude was "Work smarter, not harder" and "Just make it happen." Sorry, retail doesn't work that way.

This is where I come in. Working in the back -specifically on online orders- I didn't have to deal with her face-to-face much because I was always running around and frankly avoiding her because I didn't want to deal with her. This gave me an advantage. Not only was I able to see the notes she was leaving behind for employees, telling them what they were doing wrong, her bad ideas like making the shelvers hide from customers, and announcing the things she was changing that were hurting our work. On top of that, I was able to eavesdrop on the meetings she would hold back there with the assistant managers, explaining her great new ideas which were all horrible. With so many of my coworkers threatening to quit and getting miserable with work, knowing what they would have to deal with, we agreed we had to do something. So I went online to look up ideas for the best way to handle this and got some good tips.

Now the revenge. I snuck my phone into the back and started taking pictures of every note, every announcement, even the disorganized carts and the giant mess she was creating in the back room (we had a mountain of boxes we couldn't even get to because the carts were not being emptied fast enough to give us room). I eavesdropped on as many of her little meetings in the back as I could so I could keep track of what other policies she was breaking, even caught her trash talking us, calling one of our mentally ill coworkers overly dramatic (even though that coworker never speaks up and just takes it when she's upset), saying we were too stuck in our old ways and too stubborn for change. Even called the manager who ran the back room an idiot and laughing about how pissed off CM was making her. Then I went digging through the store's computer until I found the full list of corporate guidelines, most of which she had broken and didn't care. The biggest of all being the scheduling, and it turns out it's against our state's labor laws for managers to not give us our schedules 14 days in advance.

After I collected as much as I could, I collaborated with other angry coworkers, gathering whatever additional information they had, and together we compiled a document, each of us explaining what was going wrong, what rules and labor laws were being broken, and included all the pictures I had taken with my phone to provide evidence. We did include the disrespectful way she was talking to us and about us but none of us really expected that to be taken seriously as we had no proof to provide. After we all looked it over and agreed we were satisfied with it, we emailed a copy to corporate, a copy to HR, and a copy to the regional manager who had assigned CM to us in the first place. It only took 24 hours before the regional manager was called in and questioned about why on earth he kept CM employed with us and how could he not know all the crap she'd been doing? I would have given him some slack, but the truth was he had visited our store on a regular basis, seen the majority of this stuff, and did nothing since his ass was on the line for hiring her and he didn't want to look bad by admitting his mistake.

Eventually, people from corporate showed up to speak with CM and the regional manager. I wasn't there to see it, but according to the few who did -because it was held in our break room- she was drunk. Honest to god, drunk. She was slurring her words, wavering in her seat, and could barely give a cohesive answer to anything they asked her. It ended in them telling her to hand in her resignation because it would look better for her than if she was just fired. She walked out of there having no idea who had taken this to corporate and even saw the document we'd composed anonymously against her. About a month later, the regional manager also resigned as he did not recover from letting her do this.

We're still having problems with new managers, but our store has now earned the reputation as the store who will not put up with this kind of crap, and that's caused them to be a little more cautious as to who they assign to us. And that, to me, is the ultimate win.

Never mess with the underlings.

(source) story by (/u/Vikkiislost)

#prorevenge #by /u/Vikkiislost #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

326 notes · View notes

nadziejastar · 5 years

Text

The Meaning of Saïx’s Scar

A sigil is a symbol you create with the intention of changing your reality in accordance with your will. All sigils are encoded with a specific purpose, for example, to attract a romantic partner, to set strong boundaries, to be more financially prosperous – the possibilities are limitless. While sigils were used in the past to symbolize and conjure up spirits, these days, sigils are used in a personal way to symbolically represent and manifest our own desires.

The Recusant’s Sigil is based on Greek letter chi. In Kingdom Hearts lore, the meaning is “death” and “endings”. But it’s not just a letter. It’s a magic symbol.

The Recusant’s Sigil (異端の印 Itan no shirushi, lit. “Mark of heresy”) is a symbol designed by Xehanort to represent the rejection of a Nobody from his original persona. It is incorporated into the new names of each of the original members of Organization XIII, and is derived from Xehanort’s sleeping memories of the χ-blade.

It was placed in each member’s name to represent the rejection of their original self. Since each member was to become a vessel for Xehanort’s heart and mind, the original persona needed to die.

Sigils are essentially like little seeds that are planted within the unconscious mind. Many things enter the depths of our minds, but not all of them are placed there intentionally or take root. The symbolic nature of the sigil also helps bypass the rational (skeptical) mind and enter the unconscious where possibilities are endless.

This might be why a simple symbol on Sora’s clothing had such a powerful effect on him. The “X” was on the clothing of Terra, Aqua, and Ven and also Riku in KH1.

What gives sigils their power is the energy and intention behind them – and that is what helps them to sprout and blossom into manifestation. They are activated by meditation.

This is probably why Sora’s Nobody (who, according to Nomura, was born with Ventus’s heart) was made to stare at the Recusant’s Sigil when he was given his new identity as “Roxas,” an anagram of “Sora” with an “X”. It was to subconsciously program him to stay unaware.

Roxas was a very worthy candidate for the New Organization XIII.

He was a good candidate due to his lack of self-awareness. But eventually he became too aware of himself and could no longer be used.

Buzz was afraid of losing his self-awareness and attacking his friends. And that’s exactly what happened.

At the Kid Corral, where Buzz was taken when he was possessed, Xehanort revealed that empty puppets can be given strong hearts. Apparently, the Toy Box was the world where he first learned to create vessels.

Secret Report 4: Experiments of the Heart – Notes on Subject X, Excerpt 2

Subject's memories have not returned, and our conversations remain less than lucid. My pilot studies used a handful of subjects, but none possessed the fortitude to endure them. Ultimately, all suffered mental collapse. I knew it would be a heavy blow to lose a subject as unique as she. Upon discovering the tests I've been conducting, my master demanded that I cease my work immediately and destroy what research I have compiled. Worse still, he ordered the release of my remaining subjects. She is gone. Where is Subject X now?

This is also the world where the report on Subject X is located, and it’s also at the Kid Corral. Subject X had no memories and was not lucid. It took a week for them to speak their first words, like Roxas. That means they lacked self-awareness, like Roxas did at fist. This would make them a very worthy candidate for a vessel, like Roxas.

Empty husks? Is he saying they’re going to break them with sorrow and put another heart into them��? Or did they already do it?

“Translation—they were gonna turn all the members into Xehanort.”

“X” represents the clash of pure light vs. pure darkness. A vessel needs to be suitable to contain Xehanort’s heart of pure of darkness, so only the strongest hearts will suffice.

The letter χ can be pronounced both "key" and "kye" (leading to some confusion) and symbolizes the perfect crossing of light and darkness. The χ-blade can be forged via a high-dimensional clash between those two poles. It is believed that the Recusant's Sigil also derives from χ.

Such a heart is rare and valuable. Even most of the original organization was unworthy. A vessel would need to be broken by sorrow, but its heart could not totally collapse. It’s only natural that Xehanort would want to use such a unique subject as his vessel.

“As your flesh bears the sigil, so your name shall be known as that of a recusant.”

And the name “X” fits this concept perfectly. The experiments involved the darkness of the heart. All the subjects’ hearts collapsed. Subject X was the only exception.

I could not even recall my name. I was simply called "X" there.

Isa probably was given his scar at the same time he was given his new name, which happened to him as a human. He was no longer Isa, or even Saïx, but “X”.

“I’ll put the sigil of the recusant into your name once more,” Xemnas said.

Sigil of the recusant…? What’s that?

In the Japanese version, Xemnas actually doesn’t say anything to Sora about his flesh bearing the sigil. He says he’ll put the sigil into his name once more. And that actually makes a lot more sense. I don’t know why he said it to Sora in the English version. Maybe it was an error and that was actually a line meant for BBSV2 and Isa? I’m not sure. But it does fit Isa a lot more than Sora.

Sigils are activated by focusing on the desired outcome. But it’s important to use strong phrasing. Instead of saying “I want”, you say “I am". This ingrains it into your subconscious more readily.

Xemnas spoke like that to Roxas while he was in his trance-like state. He told him he felt nothing...

...and that nothing was real. He left no ambiguity about it. It’s a form of programming he likely did to all the Nobodies he recruited, which is why they had such a strong belief that they felt nothing, despite evidence to the contrary.

Xemnas didn’t say that he wanted Roxas to be a new person.

He told him that he was a new person. He was no longer Sora or Ventus---he was Roxas. Roxas held many of Sora’s memories inside of him, as did Xion. When they combined, they would create a complete Sora Replica.

Besides meditation, there are other, darker, methods of sigil activation, like in the use of black magic. Sexual climax is mentioned in reference to ritual sex magic. Sex magic is most potent at the time of orgasm, since that its when the energies of the two (or more) parties resonate the most strongly. But that isn’t really something a series like Kingdom Hearts focuses on, obviously. Another type of method involves pain.

If Roxas’s sigil was activated by meditation, I think Isa’s sigil was activated by pain. And receiving such a scar would be obviously be physically painful. It definitely was carved deeply into his face. These dark undertones are what made Saïx/Isa such an interesting character to me.

The scar is located directly over his “mind’s eye.”

It’s a good place to put the sigil when you are trying to get the subject to lose self-awareness---to renounce its sense of self. In a way, receiving the scar may have been a way of programming him to stay mindless and empty. And it’s why he cannot see Xion.

Xemnas’s goal was to conquer the human heart and claim it as his own. And I think this is what he did to Subject X, which is why Isa was the first non-apprentice organization member, and one of the first vessels, along with Braig. Braig was special because he wanted to be a vessel. Isa was just Xehanort’s lab rat.

When Xemnas was telling Sora about the mind control experiments, he said he learned of the heart’s folly.

Which is similar to what he said on Day 95 during his speech.

“That which we treasure has power over us, Roxas. His heart is captive to it. And that makes it his weakness.”

Day 95 takes place at the Beast’s Castle. Every time Roxas goes there, it’s to figure out the Beast’s motivation for fighting. Roxas simply wants to understand the heart, but Xaldin wants to figure out the Beast’s weakness. And after Roxas goes there, he always talks to Axel afterwards. The heart has power over you when you hold something dear.

I think the reason the Beast was chosen to parallel Axel was because of Lea and Isa’s past. The Beast is cursed, he is a character that has anger and rage which is analogous to Saïx’s berserk state, and the key to breaking the spell over him is love.

Xaldin thought the rose was the Beast’s weakness. But it wasn’t. It was wanting to protect the people in the castle, especially Belle.

I think Nomura is a smart guy and knew exactly what he was writing.

I don’t think it ever would have been made explicit or unambiguously canon in a series like Kingdom Hearts. But I do think that in the writer’s room at least, the understanding was that Isa and Lea had romantic feelings for each other. This was hinted at in a subtle manner. Isa’s love for Lea and his desire to protect him was his weakness, which got him turned into a vessel. This was supposed to be the surprising twist that would make Isa worthy to be in the epilogue. Not the fact that he was looking for a random girl or that he got Roxas a vessel. He deserved to be redeemed by his own merits.

In 358/2 Days, the Beast wanted to protect the people he cared about. He desired love more than anything.

This was used as his weakness to get him to fall to darkness. Xaldin told him that he’d never find love and this made him angry and full of rage.

He became full of darkness and lost control of himself, like Buzz did and he attacked his friends without realizing it.

Husks that had been made to throw away their hearts—in other words, they were going to plant another heart into those who couldn’t bear the pain…? Or, did they actually do that?

“They were going to turn all the Organization members into Xehanort.”

Lea was Isa’s weakness.

He was the key to causing Isa the most sorrow, sadness, and pain, which could then be turned into mindless rage. The Beast’s pain was feeling like a monster unworthy of love. For Isa, I think it was loneliness and the pain of losing Lea.

Although the Beast was under Xaldin’s dark influence, he was also acting on his own subconscious feelings. He was in a trance when he went on a rampage. But deep down, all he wanted was to protect his servants, which is why locked them in the dungeon.

I think Lea got his tear marks as a Nobody. When the manga zoomed in on them, Axel was thinking about harming Kairi. Without a heart, he never had to worry about feeling inner conflict or doubt about what he needed to do to achieve his goals. That’s why I think his tears represent his willingness to give up his heart, so he could get his best friend back. They also represent his pain over everything he lost as a Nobody. His life, his heart, his freedom, and his best friend.

Since Isa still had his scar when he was recompleted, he must have gotten it as a human. The manga also does a close-up of Saïx’s scar, giving a hint to its true meaning. It happened right after the scene of Axel’s tear mark, actually.

Saïx was hunting Axel down and then became extremely enraged, saying that Axel’s desire for friendship was based on an illusion created by his memories.

I think Saïx was subjected to the same little speech Roxas was after becoming a Nobody. He thought he never felt anything.

But like with Axel, he also became enraged at Roxas.

He says something very similar to what he told Axel, too. Isa’s purpose as a human was protecting Lea. Saïx remembers this. If Isa received his scar while Xehanort was trying to inflict the most pain possible on him, it makes sense that Lea was involved. What would hurt Isa the most is losing the thing he treasures most---which is Lea. I think it's why Saïx felt such resentment towards Axel when he made new friends, and ESPECIALLY when he left the organization. It was Isa's love for Lea that caused him to lose everything. It's understandable that he'd hate Axel if he thought he turned his back on him after all that. He was extremely hurt, even if the feelings were technically not his own.

His scar is really prominent in these scenes, too.

Basically, I think that the X-shaped scar represents Isa's physical and emotional pain as Subject X, which was used to break him, capture his heart, and turn him into a vessel during the experiments on the darkness of the heart. They created darkness in Isa using his love for Lea against him. The "X" also represents the "death" of Isa.

#kh meta #kh #kingdom hearts #kh isa #kh saix #kh lea #leaisa #akusai #kh axel

45 notes · View notes