#i felt to some extent that we would have to do this as fans

[carpe-mamilia]

Ghosts’ Larry Rickard Explains Why They Chose the Captain’s First Name

Photo: Monumental,Guido Mandozzi

It couldn’t be a joke. That was one rule laid down by the Ghosts creators when it came to choosing a first name for Willbond’s character. Until series five, the WWII ghost had been known only as The Captain – a mystery seized upon by fans of the show.

“It was the question we got asked more than anything. His name,” actor and writer Larry Rickard tells Den of Geek. “Once we got to series three, you could see that we were deliberately cutting away and deliberately avoiding it. We were fuelling the fire because we knew at some point we’d tell them.”

In “Carpe Diem”, the episode written by Rickard and Ben Willbond that finally reveals The Captain’s death story, they did tell us. After years of guessing, clue-spotting and debate, Ghosts revealed that The Captain’s first name is James. At the same time, we also learned that James’ colleague Lieutenant Havers’ first name was Anthony.

The ordinariness of those two names, says Rickard, is the point.

“The only thing we were really clear about is that we didn’t want one of those names that only exists in tellyland. It shouldn’t be ‘Cormoran’ or ‘Endeavour’. They should just be some men’s names and they’re important to them. The point was that they were everyday.”

Choosing first names for The Captain and Havers was a long process not unlike naming a baby, Rickard agrees. “It almost comes down to looking at the faces of the characters and saying, what’s right?”

“We talked for ages. For a long time I kept thinking ‘Duncan and James’, and then I was like ah no! That would have turned it into a gag and been awful!” Inescapably in the minds of a certain generation, Duncan James is a member of noughties boyband Blue. “Maybe with Anthony I was thinking of Anthony Costa!” Rickard says in mock horror, referencing another member of the band.

Lieutenant Havers wasn’t just The Captain’s second in command while stationed at Button House; he was also the man James loved. Because homosexuality was criminalised in England during James’ lifetime, he was forced to hide his feelings for Anthony from society, and to some extent even from himself.

In “Carpe Diem”, the ghosts (mistakenly) prepare for the last day of their afterlives, prompting The Captain to finally tell his story. Though not explicit about his sexual identity, the others understand and accept what he tells them – and led by Lady Button, all agree that he’s a brave man.

Getting the balance right of what The Captain does and doesn’t say was key to the episode. “It wasn’t just a personal choice of his to go ‘I’m going to remain in the closet’,” explains Rickard. “There wasn’t an option there to explore the things that either of them felt. That couldn’t be done back then – there are so many stories which have come out since the War about the dangers of doing that.

“We wanted to tell his personal story but also try to ensure that there was a level at which you understood why they couldn’t be open, that even in this moment where he’s finally telling the other ghosts his story, he never comes out and says it overtly because that would be too much for him as a character from that time.

“He says enough for them to know, and enough for him to feel unburdened but it’s in the fact that they’re using their first names which militarily they would never have done, and in the literal passing of the baton”.

The baton is a bonus reveal when fans learned that The Captain’s military stick wasn’t a memento of his career, but of Havers. As James suffers a fatal heart attack during a VE day celebration at Button House, Anthony rushes to his side and the stick passes from one to the other as they share a moment of tragic understanding.

“From really early on, we had the idea that anything you’re holding [when you die] stays with you. So it wasn’t just your clothes you were wearing, we had the stuff with Thomas’ letter reappearing in his pocket and so on. And the assumption being that it was something The Captain couldn’t put down, it felt so nice to be able to say it was something he didn’t want to put down.”

Rickard lists “Carpe Diem”, co-written with Ben Willbond, among his series five highlights. He’s pleased with the end result, praises Willbond’s performance, and loved being on set to see Button House dressed for the 1940s. He’s particularly pleased that a checklist of moments they wanted to land with the audience all managed to be included. “Normally something’s fallen by the wayside just because of the way TV’s made, it’s always imperfect or it’s slightly rushed, but it feels like it’s all there.”

Rickard and Willbond also knew by this point in the show’s lifetime, that they could trust Ghosts fans to pick up on small details. “Nothing is missed,” he says. “Early on, you’re always thinking, is that going to get across? But once we got to series five, there are little tiny things within corners of shots and you know that’s going to be spotted. Particularly in that very short exchange between Havers and the Captain. We worried less about the minutiae of it because you go, that’s going to be rewound and rewatched, nothing will be missed.”

The team were also grateful they’d resisted the temptation to tell The Captain’s story sooner. “We’d talked about it every series since series two, whether or not now was the time, but because he’s such a hard and starchy character in a lot of ways you needed the time to understand his softer side I think before you had that final honest beat from him.”

“What a ridiculously normal name to have so much weight put on it for five years,” laughs Rickard fondly. “Good old James.”

From Den of Geek

#bbc ghosts #bless you larry for doing all these den of geek interviews #I wonder if they just did one marathon session with him #inside ghosts was kind of disappointing this week #I guess Ben just wants to let the episode speak for itself and you're like yes but I would like to hear you talk about every detail #trust me we will be interested #long post #I really thought they loved the joke of nearly saying the Captain’s name so much that they'd never reveal it #so it's so lovely that they were like no this is not a joke name; he's a real man with an ordinary name #and we are going to tell you that in the most devastatingly romantic way #I am eating my words and they are delicious with that spread on top #also 'that's going to be rewound and rewatched' = 'I know you people are loopy so here is content specifically for you' #bbc ghosts spoilers

[heesdreamer]

skin on skin p2

PAIRING ➩ jake x reader

WARNINGS ➩ mentions of abuse and religious topics in a negative light, smut lol, NOT PROOFREAD AT ALL LOL

WC ➩ 11.1k

AUTHORS NOTE ➩ honestly i rlly loved skin on skin and never planned to write a sequel but since it was heavily requested i tried! im not a huge fan of it and it’s a bit slow and boring at times but hopefully you enjoy and it answers some of the questions you had about what happens to them afterwards! if you want more specifics feel free to leave me an ask but there won’t be a part 3 so plz don’t request one lol. happy holidays everybody

Despite spending almost all of your formative years day dreaming what it would be like to be away from home, how the outside world would feel fresh and new and beautiful, you weren’t fully prepared for just how different it could possibly be.

It hadn’t been long now since you’d left, evident by Jake’s lip still cracking and bleeding every time he managed to smile too wide.

Still, he was managing far better than you and you were almost a little jealous considering his ability to socialize and adapt to your surroundings every new place you ended up in.

Taking now as a prime example as you observed your surroundings with a slight frown on your face. You were sat in an old diner with lights that made a low buzzing noise and windows fogged up by the cold that settled in with the night. Your hands were nervously playing with the paper from your straw, anxiously ripping it into smaller and smaller pieces so you had something to keep you occupied.

Jake was a few feet away, sat on a stool at the bar and leaning over it with a bright smile on his face, chatting animatedly with the older women behind the counter and shoving his finger against the map out in front of him every few seconds as he was trying to understand the directions she was helping him with.

You thought it was interesting how much he seemed to fit in out here.

The town you were currently in wasn’t far from where you’d grown up but it was almost triple in size, actual buildings and businesses just outside the diner and small crowds of people wandering around in suits and modern clothing. It felt like a new world and your head was hurting from the constant buzz of noise and movements.

All your life you’d longed for something interesting, for any moment to catch your attention long enough to help you forget where you were and now you finally had a steady stream of these distractions and you didn’t quite know what to do with them.

You looked back up towards Jake and saw him already watching you, a worried expression on his bruised face that slowly melted into a smile as he gave you an encouraging thumbs up.

Your lips curled up slightly and you gave him a small nod of approval back.

Despite your constant worrying and doubt about leaving home, or more literally running away from home, the one thing you hadn’t second thought was who you were doing it with.

Feeling an ice cold hand placed on your arm, you whipped your body around in defense and laid with your back pressed firmly against the mud, hands raised in preparation to fight off whoever had approached you in the field.

You dropped your hands with a cry when you saw it was just Jake standing over you, his eyes wide in fear and hands raised in surrender and an attempt to soothe your sudden panic. He relaxed at the sight of your relieved eyes but then immediately tensed up again when you started to sob.

You sat up to look at him closer, cupping his injured face in your shaking hands and frowning deeply.

He’d never seen you this vulnerable or lost and he felt a deep pit settle into his stomach at the way you shook your head in denial and cried looking at him. He wasn’t quite sure what the full extent of his injuries were but he imagined they couldn’t be pleasant judging by your extreme reaction.

“We have to go.” He was whispering and you kept shaking your head, looking at him in confusion and caressing his face with your cold thumbs.

“Go where Jake?” You said in bewilderment, looking around the area you were in and shrugging. “We have no where to go, and nothing with us.”

He was kneeling down into the mud so he could be closer to you, not minding the way it squished and soaked into, what was now, his only pair of jeans.

“You have me.” His voice was stern and sincere, needing you to trust and understand that what he was saying was the truth. It wasn’t safe to stay where you were and you’d have to take your chances elsewhere to avoid what was coming your way.

“They followed me out of the house.” He was continuing and although you had suspected as much, knowing there was no way he had talked himself out of that situation, your stomach still clenched in fear. “It’ll be worse when they find us.”

You weren’t sure how it could be worse considering the current state of him. Jake’s face was swollen and already starting to bruise, his lip busted with blood dripping down onto his sweater.

Despite a few days passing now and healing the most extreme of his injuries, you still cringed at the memory and your face pulled into a grimace as you looked back down at your hands.

“We get people like you in here all the time.” A sudden voice was snapping you out of your thoughts and your head shot up to see a boy around your age with an apron on his waist. He was standing next to your table and looking over at Jake, the same way you were.

“Excuse me?” Your tone was harsh and he glanced at you for a second before sliding into the booth across from you.

“Hey, relax. I didn’t mean anything bad.” His voice was hushed and casual, spiking irritation in you. You wondered if this is how all teenage boys spoke in the real world. “That’s my mom over there. We live above the diner.”

He lifted a hand over his shoulder to point at the woman Jake was talking to, who apparently was the owner on top of being a waitress. You looked back at the boy and your eyes went to his name tag.

“Bob?” You questioned him with a raised eyebrow and he let out a laugh at your deadpan expression.

“It’s actually Heeseung.” He explained and when you looked more confused he continued. “Bob’s sick so I’m filling in.”

You didn’t say anything after that, just humming in understanding and avoiding looking at him. You were mentally willing that Jake would hurry back so he could take over the social interaction.

“I really didn’t meant to offend you. I just meant that we see kids from the villages all the time.” He was speaking in a kinder tone now but you looked back up in surprise at his words.

“You can tell?” You whispered and leaned forward with your elbows on the table, looking around slightly in panic. It was already alarming enough to think you were radiating runaway vibes but it also didn’t help to think about all the kids before you that had ended up at this same place.

“Not really.” He rushed to assure and his big eyes widened in alarm at your sudden change of demeanor. “I just heard your boyfriend asking about the bus stop.”

You nodded at his explanation, relaxing slightly at his words but being a bit awkward at the label he had applied to Jake. He seemed to notice and his eyebrow quirked up.

“Not boyfriend then.” You couldn’t tell what his tone was implying but you furrowed your eyebrows into a glare and watched him carefully.

Thankfully Jake was finally heading over then, you could see him approaching from over Heeseung’s shoulder and he froze for a second when he realized you weren’t sitting alone anymore.

Heeseung was sat where he’d been sitting so he slid into the seat next to you, pressing close so your thighs and shoulders were touching each other. He didn’t look too worried at the sudden appearance of the boy despite your own hesitance.

“I’m Jake.” He greeted casually and he stuck his hand out across the table. Heeseung looked down at it for a second in surprise and you suddenly realized how aged the two of you might seem compared to normal teenagers. Still, the strange boy shook Jake’s hand happily and smiled across the table.

“Nice to meet you dude.” He grinned and looked over at you, making you realize you hadn’t offered your name to him at any point. You mumbled it and he nodded appreciatively.

“His mom, the owner, said they have a place for kids who leave the neighboring towns to stay overnight.” Jake was speaking in a calm tone from next to you and you glanced over at him with widened eyes.

Despite your annoyance with the boy across from you, it suddenly made sense why he had approached you in the first place.

“She told me all about the bus stops like we needed but I figured it’d be good to have somewhere to sleep for a few days that wasn’t a bench.” He looked nervous as he spoke like he was worried you’d scold him for making his own version of a plan.

Heeseung on the other hand looked awkward for other reasons, the mention of your homelessness saddening him.

“That sounds great Jake.” You smiled warmly at him, eyes tired as you placed a reassuring hand on his bouncing knee. “Thank you.”

“My mom lets people who stay with us work in the diner if they’d like.” Heeseung was talking again, more sheepish this time. “You don’t have to but she’ll pay you, then you’ll be able to travel easier.”

For the first time since leaving home you felt a small surge of hope as the two boys spoke and you almost welled up in tears at the kindness you were experiencing. You felt happy that other people like you and Jake had found this place and you felt sadness that some might not have.

You harbored these thoughts for the rest of the evening, even after Heeseung’s mom was done with her shift and flipping off the open sign on the diner window. She ushered the three of you into a back hallway with a warm smile and you followed in contemplative silence down it and up the staircase at the end, giving Jake small nods every time he glanced back to make sure you were okay.

The apartment wasn’t large but it was nice and home like, comfortable seatings in every corner and pots and pans sprawled about the kitchen like they’d left in a hurry after breakfast.

She showed you that the couch pulled into a springy bed for you and Jake to sleep on and you almost smiled at the slight blush that brought to his cheeks. She gave you a knowing glance and you faltered away from her gaze.

You were making the bed with the blankets she’d lent you, Jake and Heeseung off in his room after he excitedly exclaimed he had something to show Jake that he just couldn’t miss out on.

“Are you settling in okay?��� Ms. Lee’s voice was startling you and you looked up at her from where she stood in the doorway, adorned in pajamas and a robe.

You briefly considered the fact you’d never once seen your own mother in such a casual state, although there was hundreds of obvious differences between the two.

Not fully trusting yourself to speak still, you nodded your head at her appreciatively and smoothed out the final blanket you had just laid down.

“Come here and I’ll make you some hot chocolate.” She was instructing kindly and you awkwardly followed her a few feet away into the connected kitchen, sitting down at the small table as she started to rummage through the cupboards. “I’m sure this must all be so overwhelming.”

“A bit.” You answered her after a few seconds of hesitation, your voice quiet and not quite sounding like yourself.

“You’ve made it this far.” She was continuing and you cocked your head at her although she wasn’t facing you and couldn’t see. She seemed to anticipate your reaction however and went on to explain. “Leaving is the hardest part.”

“When did you leave?”

She was turning around in surprise at your question but she didn’t look upset or offended that you had somehow managed to realize she also was from one of the villages. After her look of surprise faded away she gave you a small proud smile and sat at the table across from you.

“All these years I’ve been doing this and you’re the first person to figure me out.” She had a small teasing tone and you managed to smile at her.

“19 years ago I left.” She said it slowly like she was waiting for you to piece it together and you did immediately, parting your lips in surprise.

Your eyes shot to the fridge briefly, seeing photos of her and a small baby then more of the two of them as Heeseung continued to grow and she continued to age.

“I fell inlove,” She began hesitantly, like she hadn’t spoken it aloud before. “And then I found out I was pregnant. I could only hide it for so long of course and by the time they found out it was too late. But my father told me I would have the baby and then they’d give him away, we’d never tell anybody.”

You were nodding as she spoke, watching her as she stood up again at the sound of the water filter stopping and she began to pour your drinks while continuing her story.

“I said okay, of course. I was young and didn’t think there was anywhere to go but then I saw him.” She shrugged with a sad laugh and paused in her motions, taking a second to breathe. “I held him for three seconds before they took him away but that was all I needed.”

When she turned back towards you she gave you a smile and you returned it, graciously accepting the warm mug she was handing you as she sat back down.

She didn’t continue and you didn’t ask her any questions or pry for more specifics, details on how she managed to get out with Heeseung. You imagined that was where the story got ugly for most people, including yourself.

You thought back to the bruises on Jake’s face and body and you wondered what she thought when she saw him. Did it phase her or did most runaways come through looking how he did, or maybe even worse off. How many kids got to this point and then turned around, accepting the fate of returning home?

Echoes of Jake’s voice carried down the hallway, his laughter and teasing tone as he joked back and forth with Heeseung and you felt yourself tear up at how carefree and happy he sounded.

You weren’t sure he’d ever felt like that before but even worse, if he would again for a long time.

“You should go and check on him.” Ms. Lee was whispering and patting your hand, a knowing look on her face when you glanced up at her with wet eyes. You nodded and went to stand up before hesitating.

“Thank you.” You whispered back to her with full sincerity, voice cracking around the word and she didn’t reply verbally, giving you a smile and a nod.

Your heart was pounding as you walked down the hallway. There was only two doors at the end and one of them was open with bright lights pouring out so you assumed that was the one they were currently in. When you turned the corner into the doorway, you froze for a few seconds.

The boys were sat on Heeseung’s carpeted floor with something in between them, laughing so hard their breaths were catching in their throats and you watched Jake give him a playful shove on the shoulder at something the other boy was saying.

Heeseung’s room was basically a cluster of all sorts of games and media, things you didn’t recognize but you could imagine were well known considering the sheer amount of merchandise he had.

You could see colorful superhero’s and toy cars, a bookshelf overflowing with books and more little knick knacks. You thought back to your room, grey and barren other than the bible on your nightstand and your stomach turned.

Then Heeseung’s eyes were bouncing up towards you and he faltered as he noticed your sudden appearance. “Oh hey.”

Jake was looking over his shoulder in confusion and his smile dropped when he saw you, eyebrows furrowing in worry as he stood from the carpet and approached you in a hurry. His hands went to your crossed arms, holding you delicately and peering down at you.

“What’s wrong?” He whispered and you shook your head, confused when you realized you were crying.

You tried to tell him that it was nothing and reassure him he could go back to hanging out with Heeseung, who was cautiously watching the two of you, but your voice made no noise so you just parted your mouth in muted silence.

Jake was frowning and petting your hair gently. “Hey let’s finish up tomorrow.”

You felt guilty as you heard Heeseung agree and bid the two of you goodnight, only getting worse when Jake started to lead you down the hallway and back out into the living room with gentle hands.

Ms. Lee was already out of the kitchen and the mugs were cleaned up, small circles of left over hot chocolate residue being the only evidence of your talk.

Jake helped you into bed and pulled the covers over you before walking around to the other side and crawling in next to you. He tugged his sweater off, leaving him in a white t-shirt, and laid down on his side so he could face you.

“What happened?” He whispered and you let out a small sob, laying on your back so you didn’t have to look at him. “Y/N, what happened?”

“I don’t know.” You whispered and you genuinely meant it. You weren’t sure when or why you’d started to cry, before this week it was extremely rare you’d get to such a point of emotion. “How are you so good at this?”

He let out a soft laugh and you glanced at him finally, frowning at his gentle expression and shifting your body so you could be closer to him.

“Are you kidding? This is terrifying.” He was scooting forward with you, pressed against your side now and whispering next to your ear.

You smiled through your tears at his statement, rolling on your side so you could face him better. You cupped his face when you turned, thumb rubbing softly over his bruise cheek.

“Doesn’t hurt anymore.” He whispered and you nodded softly despite not fully believing him. You saw the way he tongued at the cut on his lip and winced every time he got dressed in the morning. You couldn’t believe somebody could ever want to hurt a person like Jake.

Even now as you leaned up to kiss him, you could hear the slight hiss of pain at the feeling of your lips pressed onto his. He ignored it and surged forward into you, happily accepting the pain that came along with being close to you again.

You hadn’t had any down time since leaving, sometimes holding hands while you waited at bus stops or pecking him goodnight before you curled into each other and slept close to remain warm.

But kissing him now felt different in the same ways it felt familiar and you leaned into him again desperately at the sudden comfort that washed over you. Despite the absolute mess of a week you were having and your entire life being flipped upside down, Jake was here and he understood exactly what you felt.

He’d come with you instead of taking his punishment and staying home. It wasn’t safe there but neither was what you were doing, living from place to place with no steady food source or warm bed to sleep in as the winter approached rapidly.

Yet he was still here with you and still doing things that were strange and confusing for him. Just like you, Jake had never had to work, never taken a bus or been in a city with more than 700 people. He was waking up each day and holding more conversations than he’d had his entire life and trying to figure out the safest option for the both of you.

You wanted him to understand you were beyond thankful for him and everything he was doing although you had a habit of falling short on words.

One of his hands went to your hair, keeping you pressed against him and you felt a small spark of satisfaction in your stomach at the reminder of who exactly you were kissing. Less than two weeks ago he hadn’t even been able to hold your hand and now he was frantically keeping you tugged against him.

Your hands went around his back and you bunched up his thin shirt in a tight fist, shuffling even closer to him as you took a deep breath and kept kissing.

He was sitting up just a bit so he could lean over you and you heard a soft whine escape his throat as he tried to deepen the kiss. You stopped and tapped him on his back which caused him to immediately pull away with a frown.

“We can’t baby.” You shook your head and his frown deepened. You felt his hand that was in your hair twitch like he was going to instinctively curl it up before remembering it’s placement.

“I can keep quiet.” His voice had taken a soft pleading tone and you felt him lowering himself again, although this time he was half way on top of your body. He leaned back in to kiss you and you accepted habitually.

This kiss was deep from the start, your heads turning and pulling each other in with a fever that only time could bring. You let yourself lick into his mouth just to hear his soft little gasp before pulling back again.

“Please.” He was whispering into your mouth before you could reject him again and your resolve faltered slightly.

You hummed as you considered your current situation and what he was asking. Heeseung and his mom were quite a bit away, all the way out of the living and kitchen and down the long hallway. But the apartment was still small and you were guest.

“What do you want baby?” You questioned him gently, touching his face again and he immediately was pushing against your hand and letting out a shaky breath.

“Please.” He didn’t say anything else for a second and you almost told him to word it clearly before you realized he was completely lowering himself now so you could feel him against you.

Your mouth parted in understanding at the hardness that was now pressed against your stomach and he flushed bright red, hiding his face in your neck in a familiar position. Your hand that was still on his back, gripping his shirt, rubbed it softly and he groaned in embarrassment.

For a moment you wanted to tease him, make him feel more humiliated for getting hard after barely kissing you. But then he was picking up his head with red cheeks and anticipation in his eyes and you couldn’t help yourself from leaning into him.

He made a small surprised noise at the sudden kiss but happily accepted it.

Your hand went under his shirt to continue rubbing his back and you were suddenly reminded how rare it was you actually felt each others skin. Not to mention you’d only ever seen him without pants, always remaining fully dressed.

He seemed to be having a similar line of thoughts because he was impatiently reaching down in an attempt to tug his shirt off, stopping when you swatted at his hands.

You didn’t want to be in too damning of a position in case Ms. Lee decided she needed a late night glass of water, and you were content with the feeling of his warm skin under your hand as you rubbed his back.

Jake let out a little whine however at your refusal and you licked into his mouth as an apology, knowing he liked that part of kissing the most.

This was evident by the way he immediately bucked against your hip, a soft gasp coming out of his mouth again as he started to hump against you slowly. You lifted your leg slightly so you could push his body over, centering him so he was grinding with you directly and not just your hip.

“You’re so cute.” You mumbled into the kiss when his whole body twitched at the switch of position, freezing for a moment at the feeling. “You’d let me have you right here, wouldn’t you?”

He was nodding quickly and pulling back to look at you more clearly, trying to determine if you were serious with hooded eyes and swollen lips. The smile on your face told him you were just teasing and he groaned.

“We can’t baby I’m sorry.” You were mock pouting at him and caressing his bruised cheek. “What if Heeseung heard?”

He froze at the mention of the other teenage boy and you were intrigued by his extreme reaction. You’d just been explaining casually but he seemed to have already considered this judging by the way he awkwardly avoided your gaze now.

At first you wondered if he was jealous at the idea of it, curious if he had a possessive side to him at all. But then you were shifting underneath him and you suddenly realized he was throbbing as he was pressed against you, his face flushed with embarrassment.

“Would you like that?” You whispered and he winced, still not looking at you. “You want him to hear?”

He didn’t say anything but you knew you were right, he was just too ashamed to admit. Maybe he wasn’t able to read your tone and was worried that was a line you didn’t want to cross, a bad thing to suggest.

You attempted to reassure him silently by rubbing his back again and shifted your hips so he would lower himself onto you once more, guiding him by doing that until he was finally moving again. He took a stuttered breath as he continued to grind against you.

“Would you let him touch me or just watch?” You were suddenly whispering and he looked flustered at the fact you were bringing it up again.

“N-no touching.” He sounded pained at the thought and you almost laughed, answering your previous question about possessiveness.

You hummed and kissed him again and he happily accepted. Your leg was coming up to wrap around his waist so he was pressing against you more and you almost let out a sound of your own at the feeling. For a moment you considered indulging his earlier request and letting him touch you.

“Only you can touch me right?” He was nodding and kissing against your mouth desperately as you spoke, making it difficult to get the words out. “But he can watch.”

He paused again to look at you, breathing hard as he kept rubbing himself against you and trying to hold in his noises. He glanced down the hallway towards Heeseung’s room and another wave of interest washed over you. You weren’t sure if it was being watched that he liked or specifically by his new friend.

“You like him?” You whispered in question, pushing his shirt up off his back and waiting for him to get the hint and pull it over his head. You wanted to sit back and look at him now that he was shirtless but you kept eye contact as you waited for him to answer.

He shrugged and blushed. “No, I don’t know. He called you pretty earlier and it made me think.”

“Do you think I’m pretty?” You quirked up an eyebrow and he nodded immediately, eyes shooting down to your lips briefly.

“So pretty.” His voice was a whisper like he hadn’t even meant to say it and you smiled at him and the way he was looking around at all the features on your face. He had stopped moving against you to look at you but neither of you noticed. “I just wanted to like… I don’t know.”

“Show him that you got me?” You tried to finish his sentence since he obviously had no clue how to describe the thoughts he was having and he looked relieved as you put it into words, nodding his head and leaning back down so he could kiss you again.

The kiss was slower and more sweet, taking little breaks and drinking in being close to each other. Your hand on his back moving suddenly reminded you that he was shirtless and you paused.

He watched you in confusion when you pulled back from the kiss, tugging the blankets up slightly so you could get a better look at him on top of you.

You knew Jake was fit considering his wide build and legs, assuming his dad had put him to some type of labored work back at his village, but it didn’t make it any less surprising to see all of his chest and stomach bare and pressed against you.

“God you’re pretty too.” You groaned softly and he looked a little unnerved at you using that word, still adjusting to losing his faith. He quickly forgot about it as you spoke again. “I want you to fuck me so bad.”

A deep whine escaped his throat and he dropped his head into your neck again, biting against it to stop himself from crying out as he started to hump you again.

“Do you remember how wet I felt on your fingers?” You were panting as he rocked against you, throbbing in your sweatpants and desperately holding onto his back. “Want you to think about your cock inside me.”

He let out a soft cry into your ear and started to buck into you harder, you were clenching around nothing at the feeling of him, wishing so desperately you were alone so you could finally show him what it felt like to actually feel you.

“It’s so tight and warm Jake.” You kept whispering in his ear despite the fact it was riling him up too much, his noises getting far too loud for the quiet room you were in. “You won’t last two seconds, my poor baby.”

He was suddenly kissing you in an attempt to shut you up and simultaneously mute his own sounds, the thought of stopping because of an interruption making him feel sick to his stomach. He’d never needed you so desperately and your countless attempts to provoke him weren’t helping.

You were surprised at his sudden bold actions but accepted it happily, a small knowing smile on your lips and you kissed him back.

He kept fucking into you, so desperate for relief that he didn’t even realize you clawing against his back, the stinging of your nails hidden underneath the pure pleasure rushing through his veins. You were licking into his mouth desperately and he felt a surge of pride at the fact you were as needy as he always felt.

It wasn’t long after that before he was coming undone on top of you, biting onto your collarbone in an attempt to hold back his deep moans that were barely muffled against your hot skin.

He was collapsing on top of you and you nearly cried out at the sudden loss of contact, tapping his back desperately and waiting for him to pick his head back up and look at you in concern.

“Touch me.” You urged and he looked frightened and confused before nodding and waiting for you to guide him. You took his large hand in yours and pushed it down under the covers, gliding over your panting stomach and into your pants where he was met with your wet and aching core.

He gasped softly and looked at you with wide eyes, not quite understanding why you were suddenly on board with being touched. You realized quickly Jake didn’t understand what it meant for you to cum too, only just doing it for the first time for himself some weeks ago.

You rocked your hips against his hand and he shifted so he could access you more comfortably, laying on his side as he nervously pressed his hand firmly against you.

Humming in approval, you gripped his wrist and helped him move it properly, letting out small whines at the feeling of his thumb on your clit like it had been back in the field. Your free hand was touching him as he laid next to you, rubbing his stomach and chest and drinking in all the bare skin.

He was addicting to touch and be touched by and you wished again, for the dozenth time that night that you were in the position for him to take you fully.

“Put one inside me.” You were gasping out and he looked thrown off by the request, shaking his head softly and watching you in bewilderment. He wasn’t sure what you were exactly referring to but you shifted your hips and spread your legs a bit more so he could feel you and understand.

His mouth was parting in shock as his fingertip was now pressing against your hole and you waited for him to meet your gaze, nodding your head in confirmation.

He trusted you blindly and slowly pressed a finger into you, gasping softly at the feeling of it while you did the same. You always knew his hands were particularly large but you weren’t prepared for how heavy and thick they’d feel on you.

“Oh fuck.” You muttered out and he froze, waiting to see if it was a good exclamation or a negative one. The roll of your hips let him know which and he kept pressing into you, leaning forward so he could kiss you during.

“Be quiet.” He whispered against your lips and another flash of heat passed over you at the command. His voice was genuine when he said it but the slight change of his demeanor made you feel crazy.

You let yourself be slightly distracted by the kiss as he kept pressing his finger into you and moving it experimentally, trying not to panic at the loss of control you were experiencing. You needed to remind yourself that your plan to control and ruin Jake was long over and this was a mutual relationship now.

His free hand was going to your hip that was rocking and moving to try and get him to finger you deeper, holding it down against the bed and giving himself more time to touch you and explore the feeling.

“Spit.” You were whispering into his mouth and he pulled back slightly to look at you in confusion before remembering that day back in his bedroom. He was waiting for you to confirm and you nodded desperately, opening your mouth wide and sticking your tongue out for him to fully get the message.

He sat up a bit more, looking hesitant and awkward but he fulfilled your request and let himself spit into your open mouth. He watched with wide curious eyes as it hit your tongue and a low moan rumbled through your chest, leaning up to kiss him again.

Between the constant feverish kissing, him pressing against you so desperately, and now what was happening now, you knew you were close.

Before you could even manage to warn him, you were finishing around his hands and you vaguely heard him make a soft startled sound, freezing like he was worried he had hurt you somehow. You laughed at his concerned expression through your pants as you tried to catch your breath.

“Are you okay?” He was whispering and you laughed again, closing your eyes and nodding.

He laid down flat on his back next to you and you both fell into silence for a few minutes, falling back to reality. You briefly wondered what he was thinking about during the moments after you did something to this extent and you rolled onto your side so you could wrap an arm across his stomach.

“I should get dressed.” He murmured although he made no attempt at moving. His cheeks were red as he took in his half nudity.

“We need showers.” You scrunched up your nose and he smiled at the expression, only slightly relaxing at your joking tone. “Boys sleep shirtless.” You offered to him.

“Normal boys you mean.” He whispered back after a few seconds of silence and you frowned at him.

“You are normal Jake.” You shook your head and laid it against his chest. You didn’t fully believe your own words but you wanted him to at least hear it. “Anything different about us isn’t our fault.”

“Heeseung’s normal.” He was spitting and despite knowing his anger wasn’t directed towards you, you were still taken back by his tone. He seemed to realize and he sighed.

You felt guilty that you hadn’t realize how much it was bothering him to be around somebody his own age, something who lived a different life.

“Nobody’s normal Jake.” Your tone was stern but not scolding and you felt him take another deep breath. Your hand was resting on his side and taping the warm skin softly. “Everybody has their shit.”

He didn’t say anything after that and you let the conversation die, hoping some part of what you said had stuck with him. If you were going to stay here for a few days you didn’t want him overthinking the entire time and driving himself crazy with insecurities.

Eventually you felt his breathing slow underneath your cheek as he fell asleep. You nuzzled into his chest contently before quickly following his lead.

——

By the time you woke up, Jake was gone and the blankets were pulled up tight around you. You felt panicked for a few seconds, jolting upright with a gasp before your eyes landed on a surprised Heeseung who was stood in the kitchen.

He was frozen in his pajamas, fuzzy pants with a yellow bear printed all over them, holding a bowl of cereal. He had paused mid bite at your sudden movements and you groaned and rubbed your eyes.

“Where is he?” You murmured, voice groggy with sleep.

He didn’t ask for any clarification, automatically knowing who you were referencing. “He helped my mom open this morning.”

You nodded and didn’t say anything else, pulling Jake’s discarded sweater over your head and climbing out of bed. Heeseung continued to eat his cereal in the kitchen as you moved until he noticed you staring at the couch bed in confusion.

“I’ll put it away until tonight.” He assured and you glanced back at him. “Go on and head down.”

You wanted to thank him, maybe engage in conversation about Jake and find a way to let him know your concerns. Despite your lack of trust initially, you had a good feeling about Heeseung and his mom and you imagined he’d be willing to tone it down for Jake’s adjustment.

Instead of doing any of that, you only managed to hum in appreciate. He smiled at you knowingly and you shyed away from it, heading down the stairs swiftly.

When you made your way down into the diner you were greeted with a few people sat around the shop, one or two families filling up the tables and some singular men at the counter drinking coffee.

You stood in the doorway for a moment when you spotted Jake, watching him swiftly make his way around the area in a white apron. He was smiling at the kids eating as he delivered them a plate full of pancakes, refilling the parents mugs casually after. He looked natural doing something so foreign to him and you felt more pride than jealously this time.

Eventually he noticed you observing him and he gave you a soft smile, flushing bright red after a few seconds like he was remembering parts of last night.

You weren’t exactly sure what part he was more embarrassed by but you liked the pink tint to his face.

“Did you want to help him?” Heeseung’s mom was suddenly appearing behind you and you jumped at the sound of her voice, shooting out of the doorway and awkwardly letting her walk pass.

“Oh I.. I’m not sure.” You hesitantly shuffled in place and she glanced at you with a warm look that gave you a weird pit in your stomach.

“I could use some help in the kitchen.” She was putting away something underneath the counter as she spoke but you could tell she was being purposefully casual in her offer, not wanting you to think she was pitying you for your obvious lack of social skills.

Despite the initial urge to scowl at her, to explode with anger at the fact she was offering you something so gentle and kind, you managed to accept.

Three days passed like that, you helping out in the kitchen while Jake (and occasionally Heeseung when he got bored) tended to customers and the register.

At night you’d all eat together, drinking hot chocolate and you’d sit back and smile silently at the way the boys laughed and teased each other. Then you and Jake would tuck into bed and talk about your days, sleeping against his chest like you were two regular people living regular lives.

On the fourth day, you woke up and did the same routine but you knew it was different. The others seemed to notice it too and everybody was unusually silent, moving around each other like it was habit now but not laughing and talking anymore.

You went through the day with the silent knowledge that it would be your last with the Lee’s. They’d been beyond generous and you almost denied the amount Ms. Lee was offering you and Jake for the work you were doing.

You knew it was probably more than she’d pay an actual employee but she pushed it into your hand and cupped them in hers softly while you shook your head with watery eyes.

Heeseung was approaching you before the last shift ended and you tried not to focus in on his shaking hands and furrowed eyebrows. You set down the rag you were wiping the counter with and gave him your full attention.

“I’ve been through this enough times to know you guys are leaving.” He was starting in a low voice and you felt a weird turn in your stomach.

You hadn’t considered much how many connections he made throughout his life that didn’t last. You wondered at what age he started to realize that the people that stayed with them were never going to last, you felt a fondness building at the fact he was still so willing to bond with you and Jake despite this.

“I just wanted to let you know that if things don’t work out, or they get too hard out there, you can come back here.” His words were quiet but sincere. You knew Jake was listening in from a few feet away and you saw him hang his head out of the corner of your eye. “You can always come back here.”

“We will.” You were whispering back and he looked at you finally. “I promise we will.”

“And we will call you whenever we get to where we are going.” Jake was speaking suddenly but Heeseung didn’t look surprised at the fact he was listening, just nodding his head.

You were rounding the counter before you even processed your feet were moving, pulling Heeseung in by his shoulder and hugging him tightly. He accepted it immediately, letting out a shuttered breath and patting your back.

You didn’t want to cry so you pulled away quickly, letting Jake hug him as soon as you finished.

The day finished up quickly after that and before you even registered what was happening, you and Jake were stood at the bus stop with the Lee’s who offered you a ride last minute. You both had gifted backpacks on your shoulders and your body felt heavier than usual.

Ms. Lee was hugging you goodbye when she whispered in your ear softly. “The hardest parts over.”

You hesitated as you pulled away from her, giving her a close lipped smile and a nod, knowing if you spoke you’d burst into tears.

Neither of you said anything as you got on the bus, moving in silence as Jake took your bags and placed them in the cubby underneath your seats. He watched you as you sat down next to the window before taking his spot beside you. His hand was coming up to grab yours and you shakily took it, trying to ignore the fact Heeseung was standing outside on the platform as he watched you go.

“Are we doing the right thing?” You eventually whispered to him, a few hours into the drive. His head was laid on your shoulder and for a moment you were worried he had fallen asleep.

“I don’t know.” His answer was honest and you were glad, not in the mood for any false hope.

“I imagine we got lucky this time.” His voice was low and you felt his hand come up to rest on your knee. “But we are going to try our best.”

You hummed in agreement and put your hand on top of his, squeezing it affectionately and shifting so you could rest your head onto his. You were suddenly exhausted and coming to the realization that most of the other passengers were already asleep.

You briefly wondered where they were all heading to, if anybody was feeling as confused and lost as you were or if they knew exactly what to do once they got off the bus.

Most were probably heading home for the holidays, something you’d been trying to avoid thinking about ever since you left despite the cold weather serving as a constant reminder to what time of year it was.

Like always you waited for Jake to fall asleep first, listening for his breaths to shallow out and for his chest to slowly rise and fall. It was, for some reason, easier for you when he drifted off first. Maybe it gave you some time to think about things without the guilt of checking out of conversations or maybe it was just easier for you to focus when you knew he was safe and not going anywhere.

After you were sure he was asleep you slowly managed to follow him into a deep dreamless night.

By the time you woke up, it was still dark outside the bus windows but you could see it slowly lightening as the sun started to rise. People around you were shuffling off exhaustion in their seats and preparing to deboard.

You looked over at Jake to see him already awake, eyes puffy from sleep as he looked out the window with a melancholy expression. You were tapping his arm instinctively and he glanced at you, face widening into a soft smile at your tired expression.

“Only like ten more minutes he said.” His voice was low but you nodded at him, tugging your sleeves down and preparing to go back out into the cold.

Once you got off the bus you felt a bit disoriented. Your previous stop was bigger than home but definitely manageable, still considered a small town to most people in the world and home like. Now you were definitely branched out and this city was large and bustling like nothing you’d ever seen.

Because the cold bite to the weather, you and Jake had mutually agreed to put some of the money you earned into a long stay hotel.

You felt slightly sick handing over money to the woman behind the check in desk, only worsening when she gave you a curious expression and asked if you wanted one bed or two.

You didn’t look back at Jake as you mumbled to her you only needed one, holding onto the straps of your backpack awkwardly for the rest of the interaction and as you made your way down the hallway.

“Home sweet home.” You muttered with a sigh as you propped the door open, tossing your backpack over onto the chair in the corner and sitting on the bed with a bounce. It squeaked underneath you as you jumped slightly and Jake smiled at you.

“It’s not that bad.” He reasoned and you weren’t sure if he was serious or just trying to cheer you up.

You laid back onto the bed completely, crawling up so you could be against the pillows and sighing again as your back cracked uncomfortably from the bus ride. Jake was getting the memo and pulling the blinds closed, kicking off his shoes and joining you in the bed.

Your body was feeling slight resistance at the fact you were back in bed so early in the morning but you pushed your routined mind to quiet down as you tried to rest again.

“When we wake up I say we go for a celebratory dinner.” Jake’s tone was hushed but you could tell he was smiling.

You didn’t say anything but you laid flat on your back and scooted closer to him. He was laying on his side and watching you with a careful expression, like he was still cautious of your reactions sometimes.

Taking his hand softly, you wrapped it around your stomach so he could hold onto you and you nuzzled into his chest with your side. He looked pleasantly surprised at your sudden incline in affection and squeezed your side appreciatively.

“We have three weeks here before we need to pay any more. I think we can find work before then.” He was whispering now that you were pressed up against him, his chest vibrating your shoulder as he talked in a low tone.

“So we are staying here?” You hadn’t really considered settling down anywhere for some reason and the thought threw you.

It was like your mind was still thinking this was all temporary, that at the end of this trip you’d return back home and back to your miserable lives.

He was shrugging against you and you glanced at him, seeing his hesitant and awkward expression. You felt guilty that he was still so cautious around you and you wanted to tell him that’s not what you meant, you weren’t trying to scold him for his suggestion.

Instead, words always falling short for you, you leaned down to press him into a kiss.

He was taken back for a few seconds, not at all expecting you to move let alone touch him, but then he was immediately pushing back into you and accepting your sudden kiss. You kissed for a few dozen seconds, slow and innocent until he instinctively squeezed his hand that was around your side.

You pulled back to look at him and his eyes were shooting all around you face, breathing slightly hard as you watched him sink back into that familiar headspace.

“Take your shirt off.” It wasn’t worded as a question but you raised your eyebrow so he would understand he could say no, this was his chance to deny you.

Of course he didn’t, shooting up immediately and tugging his hoodie and shirt over his head. His fluffy hair was left a mess from his haste to remove them and you glanced down at his chest for a while before saying anything.

Then you were shifting slightly and following suit, pulling your sweater off and trying hard to not flush at the sudden widening of his eyes and mouth. He was looking at you intensely and then looking away like he wasn’t sure he was supposed to be seeing you shirtless. You almost laughed at him as his hands started to shake from their place on the bed.

“Kiss me.” You instructed and after a few seconds of bewildered hesitance he was following your orders.

Your hands went around his back, his warm skin under your palms getting goosebumps at the feeling of your icy hands. He wasn’t touching you at first, hesitating and hovering over parts of your body like he’d burn up if he touched any part of your skin.

Eventually he was resting them on your hips, touching your pant waistline instead of your shirtless top half and you almost scolded him before deciding against it.

You led his body so he’d lay back down with you, placing him on his back and crawling over him so your body was sprawled on his. He groaned slightly into your mouth as you pressed your weight down on top of him and it sent an ache to your core.

He’d stopped kissing you to try and process the feeling of your bare chest pressed tightly on his and you frowned slightly, kissing his parted lips and trying to get him focused back on you. Slowly but surely he was out of his trance and aggressively connecting your lips again, a hand coming up to your hair as he cupped the back of your head.

“Jake.” You gasped into his mouth and he tensed for a few seconds before humming in question. “Please touch me.”

He was pulling back in confusion, hesitance on his face when he glanced down at your bodies and tried to understand what part of yours you were referring to. You laughed softly at his expression and gestured to your exposed skin as an answer.

His pretty face was flushing bright red as he nodded with a suddenly determined look on his face, you found it cute he was seemingly preparing himself to touch you.

You kissed him again to try and keep his mind off of it for now, letting him push back into you and turn his head slightly so you could kiss deeper and deeper. Jake’s movements were quick and eager, desperate for you to keep going even when he wasn’t quite sure where you were planning to take things during times like this.

His blind trust in you felt good and you felt a sick sense of satisfaction at the knowledge he’d do anything you asked with little to no question.

His big warm hands were touching you finally now, spread against your back in a stiff position as he tried to get used to being with you like this. You could tell he wasn’t focusing on kissing anymore and just mindlessly following along as he started to rub your skin with a new found fascination.

“Quit being so cute.” You mumbled against his mouth and he breathed a laugh.

“Can’t help it.” He teased back and he was pleased when you chuckled softly, rarely laughing in general let alone at one of his jokes. “I could do this forever.”

His sudden confession stumped you and you tried to not visibly show the affect him saying that had on you, a soft blush rising to your cheeks. He didn’t even seem to register what he was saying, mindlessly speaking in a content tone as the two of you laid close together.

“Forevers a long time.” You whispered back eventually and you kissed him again briefly, shifting on top of him so he could breathe a little. He wasn’t complaining about your weight on him at all, liking the feeling of being underneath you.

“Not nearly long enough if you ask me.” He was blushing too now and you were sure the pair of you looked like any regular couple on vacation, in love with no responsibilities and naive to the world around you.

“Do you mean that?” A wave of insecurity hit you when you asked and he looked at you incredulously, like he couldn’t fathom why you wouldn’t believe him.

He was kissing your forehead in a manner far sweeter than what you were just doing, a hand leaving your back to brush your hair from your face gently and cup your cheek. It was strange being on the receiving end of movements you normally did to him, tensing slightly as he touched you. “Why wouldn’t I mean that?”

“I don’t know.” You shrugged and mumbled although you certainly did have an idea of where your thought process was stemming from. You remembered who he was briefly, the knowledge you could tell him and he wouldn’t judge you or get upset resurfacing. “I’m the only one you’ve even been with.”

“So you think I picked you because you were there and taught me stuff?” He whispered in an understanding tone, trying to make sense of what you were implying without being accusatory.

You nodded hesitantly and he frowned, caressing your cheek. It was strange to be so vulnerable for you and you hoped he wasn’t too thrown off by your change of demeanor, feeling stupid suddenly for pausing your actions to bring this up.

He was kissing you again, quickly like he was trying to ground you back to reality and you met his gaze.

“I’d choose you no matter the circumstances.” He finally said and your eyes softened at his firm voice that left no room for question. “If we met 100 years from now I would have chose you.”

“That’s dramatic.” You smiled down at him and his thumb was wiping high up on your cheekbone, making you realize you’d been teary eyed. “What if you were married?”

He pretended to think for a few seconds, raising an eyebrow in contemplation before smiling and flipping you over so he was on top of you now. You were laughing as you turned, a big toothy grin on your face at his antics and he steadied himself over you.

“If I was married,” He started and you nodded in anticipation, biting your lip to stop from smiling at him. “Well I wouldn’t marry anybody but you.”

You groaned at his cop out answer and he leaned down to kiss your nose as it scrunched up. “That’s cheating, answer like you’re married.”

“Tell me what you’d do.” You rolled your eyes as he changed the subject onto you but you still genuinely thought it over, watching him with a careful expression.

He was still leaning over you with a smile on his face, his cheeks slightly red from blushing earlier or maybe the cold. His hair was flopping into his forehead and you briefly wondered if he’d ever worn his hair like this before you met, before you left home.

“I’d only marry you too.” You were whispering and his smile fell slightly as he looked at the serious expression on your face. Then it was coming back and he was attacking your face with his lips causing you to squeal and move around frantically underneath him.

After his attack he was kissing you normally and you took in a deep breath, wrapping your arms around his back and hugging him tight against you.

You kissed like that for a while longer, weirdly slow and sweet unlike every time previously and you felt slightly giddy at the innocence of just wanting to be close to each other despite being the most naked you’d ever been together.

“Let’s go get dinner.” You were saying into a kiss after a bit had passed and he nodded his head, kissing you one more time before sitting up and helping you do the same.

He didn’t look at you as you moved from under him and stood beside the bed, trying to find your discarded shirt that got lost somewhere in the covers. You watched him avoid your side of the room with a half smirk, wondering if he had looked at you at all this entire time.

The two of you finished getting dressed, wrapping your scarf tightly around Jake’s neck before you went, and found your way back outside.

The city was busy and you awkwardly joined into the flow of foot traffic, trying to look casual and not totally out yourself as lost tourist. Eventually you got the hang of the pacing and you locked your arm in Jake’s, keeping him pulled tight to you so you didn’t separate.

You made it a few blocks before you were stopping in front of a random restaurant and you glanced at Jake who had been uncharacteristically silent the entire time. He offered you a soft nod of approval and you squeezed his arm in reassurance, assuming he was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the complete change in atmosphere.

He didn’t say anything but he gave you a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and the two of you braved it into the restaurant.

He relaxed after you ordered and were able to eat, enjoying a meal and talking about your day and complaining about the travel time like you were regular people who had just gotten home for the holidays. You wondered if anybody sitting around you could overhear, if they’d be able to tell what you’d been through or piece together the bruises on Jake’s face.

After you ate you decided not to go back to the hotel just yet, exploring more of the city and stopping to enjoy views and sights you’d never seen before.

“There’s so many people.” Jake was remarking from the bench you were sitting on. It was on the outskirts of a small park that had a good view of the city and lots of other couples and families were sat around you enjoying the same thing.

“It’s kind of nice right? Nobody is paying any attention to us.” You were fidgeting with your scarf that he was wearing as you spoke and he nodded softly. “Maybe we can call Heeseung tonight.”

He glanced at you with excited eyes and you smiled affectionately at him, patting his cheek softly and avoiding the bruising.

You sat there for a while longer before the cold settled in even more as it got dark, so you stood slowly and pulled him up with you. The two of you made your way back to the hotel and you felt a lot more content than you had when you originally arrived, more familiar with the area and pacing now that you’d had time to explore and take it all in.

When you got back inside and took off your shoes and jackets, Jake was racing to the hotel phone and dialing in the Lee’s number.

He sat there holding his breath as it dialed and you watched him from the bed, knowing when his eyes widened and a bright smile broke out on his face that somebody had picked up on the other side.

You went and took a shower while they talked animatedly and by the time you came out they were still going, although when he caught sight of you draped in towels, Jake was thrusting the phone in your direction with a grin as he awkwardly avoiding looking at you.

“Hello?” You hesitantly spoke into the phone, something you weren’t quite used to considering the fact you didn’t really have anybody you needed to call back home, most people being less than a ten minute bike ride away from you at all times.

“Hey Y/N.” Heeseung’s low voice was cracking through the phone speaker and you smiled softly although he couldn’t see it. “I just wanted to see how you were doing, I didn’t expect you guys to actually call honestly.”

“Of course we’d call.” You shook your head and sat down on the bed next to Jake who tensed slightly because of your bare skin.

“Yeah that’s what Jake said.” He let out a breathy laugh and you could hear him fidgeting with something like he was nervous. “So um, my mom said that if you wanted and if the trip wasn’t too bad maybe you guys could come back here for Christmas?”

You didn’t say anything and the phone line went silent, the low buzzing of static being the only noise you could hear other than your heart beating quickly. He cleared his throat on the other side like he was worried you hadn’t heard him.

“Like,” Your voice cracked and you felt Jake’s hand on your knee. “Spend Christmas with you guys?”

“Well yeah but only if you want to and if you found a job by then my mom can help you look for housing in your price range, she’s really good at that, then you wouldn’t need to stay in hotel anymore. Not that there’s anything wrong with staying in a hotel, Jake said there might even be a pool which is super cool, but you know just so-“

“Heeseung.” You cut him off and he sucked in a deep breath, falling off into a mumble after he realized he had been rambling nonstop. “I think that’d be really great.”

You felt Jake sway against your side, leaning into you and you gave him a small smile, feeling a lot better now that you had a place to go for the holidays.

Heeseung and you talked for a few minutes longer, Jake listening in from beside you and occasionally adding his own comments as he tiredly rubbed his eyes and yawned a few times. You eventually said goodnight and the two of you promised you’d call again as soon as things were settled, hanging up the phone and crawling back into bed.

“Are you not going to get dressed?”

Jake was mumbling with a small blush on his face and you were shrugging, hearing the pillow crinkle under your movements.

“Do I need to get dressed?” You whispered back, raising an eyebrow in his direction and drinking in the way his eyes shot down to your towel and then back up to your face quickly like he hadn’t meant to do it.

He didn’t say anything but he was moving over towards you on the bed, climbing over you so he could hover there as he leaned down to kiss you urgently. You laughed against his lips at his sudden movements and you felt him poke your side because of your teasing.

It was easy to forget where you were in that moment, how uncertain things were and how much harder they’d get once this night was passed and you needed to start getting your life together on your own for the first time. You didn’t think about how far you were from home or the consequences of getting caught.

You laid there in bed, kissing a boy who had given up his faith for you and he warmed you even as the snow started to fall just outside the hotel window.

It’d never felt so easy to have skin on skin.

#enhypen #enhypen drabbles #enhypen fanfiction #heeseung #jake enhypen #jake x reader #Jake smut #jake fanfic #jake fluff #jake fics #enhypen smut #jake fanfiction #skin on skin

[sunnybyler]

i’ve been sitting on my thoughts for so long but i just have to get this off my chest. i don’t like to yuck ppls yum so if you like e/riel pls scroll away nd keep having your fun it’s not my problem. however some of y’all can get mean as HELL and as an elucien i have to get this off my chest. (also warning for gwynriels i’m with y’all i defend y’all here however i do go in a bit on az in this so fair warning). i truly have no idea why e/riels cling so hard to the azriel bonus chapter in acosf because that chapter, more than literally anything else in the series, proved to me that e/riel is absolutely NOT going to be endgame. let me explain:

1. it is explicitly stated that azriel did not think of his relationship with elain outside of a sexual nature. i think some ppl get kinda annoyingly puritanical when trying to make this point when it’s like 100% certain lucien had sexual thoughts of elain too. the point isn’t the thoughts themselves. the difference here is the explicit mention that he didn’t consider anything with her outside of that.

2. the point above ^ is further exacerbated by the fact that az did not give a flying fuck if he killed elain’s MATE. even if elain hasn’t accepted the bond, it would still be extremely painful for her based on what we’ve seen with rhys, feyre, and even rhys’s parents (who weren’t good for each other, yet we saw how rhys’s dad lost it when she died). now of course us lucien lovers know damn well he would never in a million years call a blood duel to try to claim elain (and fuck u rhys for saying that, i usually have your back but come ON you are not the only male who can respect their mate’s autonomy). but az doesn’t know that!? in fact seems to agree with rhys that he could. ppl argue on who would win that fight — my opinion hinges 100% on if powers are fully unleashed but that’s not the point at all. no matter WHO wins, elain is going to feel responsible for someone’s death. of course it wouldn’t be her fault if men decided to be fucking stupid, but with the little we know about elain shows that she would feel so guilty if that happened. but azriel doesn’t seem to give af that anyone fighting to the death over her is the last thing she would ever want. not only did az not think of elain outside his fantasies and therefore not fully care for her, but he doesn’t seem to even KNOW elain in this chapter. now, i could go in on this in acosf as a whole. but i’m keeping it to this chapter alone.

3. and further on THAT point, az doesn’t really give any reasoning on his interest in elain outside of this insane “three brothers/three sisters” thing he fully pulled out of his ass. tbh i almost thing this is sjm’s way of addressing the fan theories on that. now i get it to some extent from az’s pov — seeing his brothers happy with these sisters must fuck with your head after you’d all been bachelors together for 500 years. especially considering how he’s felt unworthy of love his whole life and this seems to support that insecurity of his. i get that it makes him feel ostracized from them, and that he’s now an outlier not being with an archeron. i get that. i do. i sympathize with him here. however that does not change the fact that he isn’t speaking of elain like she’s her own individual here — hell he fully calls her “the other”. i think part of this conversation was him being frazzled, i give him a bit more grace than some do (tho he pissed me off BAD in this scene), but we were fully in this man’s head. did he give us a full reason why he liked elain besides his brother’s mates and his sexual thoughts?? they would’ve at least crossed his mind when rhys was grilling them if sjm was trying to set up her next romance here. as it is, we have literally nothing to imply azriel actually likes elain herself and not the idea of being closer with his brothers.

4. az has kinda a habit of ignoring the reality of the women he’s attracted to in some way. he has his own version of them in his head that he puts on a pedestal. now i could do a whole psych eval on this man and how he thinks he’s unworthy of love and therefore only allows himself to have feelings for women he knows/thinks he can’t have. but to focus on this chapter alone, my points above ^ about how he doesn’t really think of elain outside his fantasies/bringing him closer to his brothers and not really understanding her pretty much wraps it up there. i mean he even talks about how he thinks his scarred hands don’t belong on her because she’s so perfect in his eyes. that’s not love, that’s obsession and it’s unhealthy. he clearly thinks himself below elain and ignores that she has her own flaws too.

5. aaaand i saved the biggest for (almost) last….. GWYN. this is a genuine GENUINE question. why in the fucking hell. would sjm make half the chapter focusing on az & gwyn if she was teasing e/riel. like that makes no sense. not to be annoying and mention chekhov's gun but that idea applies to relationships too. i’m sorry but she couldn’t be more explicit about her future romances. you could argue “oh well it’s because there’s gonna be a love triangle”. y’all. elain has. elain has a mate. there already IS a love triangle. there was absolutely no reason for her to bring gwyn into this chapter other than her preparing us for a future relationship, literally none. especially with all the romantic subtext (hell not even subtext, just TEXT). gwyn getting him to talk about himself so easily when he’s so quiet usually, him taking the idea of making her happy and he “buried the image down deep, where it GLOWED QUIETLY” (which SCREAMS mating bond to me but even if it’s not it’s clearly something he cherishes deeply), the SHADOWSINGERS SHADOWS SANG FOR HER!?

6. the fucking necklace regifting. oh it’s bad. OHHH ITS BAD. when the girls realize it’s gonna be SO messy but im hoping sjm doesn’t go the stupid cat fight route bc neither of them did anything wrong. az did. i’m sorry i’m dunking on him so much in this post i rlly don’t hate him i just think he needs like decades of therapy (which tbf don’t we all) which i unfortunately don’t think sjm is going to give him before giving him his romance. but even the biggest azriel lovers have to admit that this was insanity. a few points on it here. first, if it’s so easily regiftable then it couldn’t have been that well thought out in regards to elain. say what you will about lucien’s gifts, even argue that he gave her jewelry too. but elain was actually shown wearing pearls. az’s gift seemed shallow to me — it was something pretty, and elain’s pretty, and it had a flower, and elain gardens. it’s clear lucien put SO much more thought into his gifts, whether he succeeded or not (which i need to remind y’all — we still don’t know. maybe she liked the gifts maybe she didn’t, but regardless she acted the way she did bc of her feelings about the bond, not the gift). and azriel has spent so much more time with elain than lucien has. if that necklace really felt like elain to him, he could’ve kept it or returned it. but nope. buddy gave it to a whole other girl bc he could easily associate it with someone else. he clearly felt some special pull towards gwyn too, going out of his way to give it to her. he had ONE meaningful conversation with her. i already discussed the quote earlier that makes me think mating bond personally. but no matter what, him giving her the same gift he gave someone he was pursuing romantically is a clear sign of what’s to come (and probably a setup for some sort of drama that i don’t think im mentally ready for).

so there we have it! why i think that the bonus chapter thoroughly proves that e/riel is not going to be endgame. i honestly think it’s possible they might be a thing for a minute (tho i could also see this being the closing of that chapter), but i don’t think it’s going to last. sjm just gave us too many blatant hints that elain and az would NOT work together long term, and that azriel in particular is more suited for someone else. i might’ve missed some points bc there is SO much that goes down in this tiny chapter so lmk if there’s other stuff you picked up on!

#elucien #gwynriel #acotar #acosf #acosf bonus chapter #elain archeron #pro elucien #pro gwynriel #gwyneth berdara #azriel #anti e/riel #lucien vanserra #elain x lucien #gwyn x azriel

[utilitycaster]

Do you think that Laura and Marisha are deliberately making their relationship somewhat toxic and unsustainable or do you think they see the relationship as healthy? It is just so different from all of the other relationships they have been a part of and not really in a good way. Would love to get your perspective on it if you have one

I am honestly unsure. I would like to say it's deliberate. Prior to it becoming canon, in fact, I, and a lot of other people who were less than enthused by Imogen and Laudna's romance and weren't entirely sold from the start, made the case that we expected they would be talking to each other and would put together a compelling story, not the dull fluff so common in fanon. While whether it's compelling is a subjective judgment, we know for a fact they didn't talk to each other. We know for a fact Marisha was surprised by the question of "Can I kiss you," and Laura was surprised by the answer. We know from a 4SD not long after (4SD #16, Kiss and Tell) that several episodes later they still hadn't talked. We know that Marisha perceives Laudna as holding Imogen back (and that Laudna perceives herself as doing so) from the Rose City Q&A. We know that from 4SD #20 (Episode Twenty) that Laura doesn't like conflict in narrative and Marisha does, and that Laura was thrown by Laudna's regression following Ashton's attempt to absorb the shard (4SD #19, Shard Candy).

I don't know if it's deliberate or not; I don't have any extra insight that isn't public knowledge any fan can easily access. But man, it doesn't feel like these are two actors on the same page about what's going on.

I've touched on this before but mostly in tags or whisper posts but I've always felt ill at ease with a number of for lack of a better term "fandom-approved opinions" and one of the ones that has baffled me the most is this idea that Marisha and Laura have exceptional chemistry. I watched Campaign 1 knowing the endgame ships but deliberately avoiding the fandom, and Vex and Keyleth did not even once occur to me as a thing. I watched the first year of Campaign 2 without a ton of fandom interaction because I was avoiding additional C1 spoilers and it seemed crystal clear that the obvious ship was Beau and Yasha; it felt like Beau and Jester only even had enough potential for me to multiship it as my general "whomever Jester picks" for like, 30 episodes. And yet people - people who didn't even ship either of the above ships and in some cases disliked them- would just say "oh man I can't wait until we get to a campaign where we can finally explore Marisha and Laura's incredible chemistry!" and it's like. I feel like I'm the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes on this! I understand that chemistry is to an extent a matter of taste and subjectivity, but it just increasingly feels like people looked at two campaigns of tables where Ashley was frequently absent and said "well, if I want an F/F ship that's between two of the women in the cast, I guess this is what I have to work with" and repeated to themselves that a flat pamplemousse La Croix was a Piña Colada until they started to believe it. I mean if someone wants to explain it to me in good faith I suppose be my guest and I will try to take it in, but it feels like people just treat this as incontrovertible fact and if you doubt it they're like "don't you have eyes" and it's like, well, pretend I don't. Explain like I'm eyeless and five because I have never understood this. They both have more chemistry with every single other cast member; it's not all romantic but man, I didn't even buy Laudna and Imogen as platonic best friends of two years. I have never had this problem with any other pre-existing character relationships Marisha and Laura have played, platonic or otherwise. It's literally just them. I just never feel like they're quite on the same page.

Back to the relationship between Imogen and Laudna onscreen, this was easily the best conversation since the start of the gnarlrock fight, and it is my hope it doesn't fizzle out the way that did. You can't keep kissing Laudna whenever she fears she's lost forever to Delilah, Imogen. Or you can, but that won't fix the problem. Again: are you disgusted? Do you feel betrayed? If you're not, why did you say that? If you are, how will you move past it? Do you want to be with someone who never feels like they're good enough for you? Laudna, do you want to be with someone who, no matter what they say, you feel you're holding back?

Early in the campaign, my feeling was that of our current situation, switched - Imogen felt her powers were a burden and a curse and Laudna kept referring to them and to her glowingly. It's just...ships passing in the night, no pun intended here. I hope it's on purpose and whatever comes from it is a good story - and either a tragedy or a happy story could be a good one. But I have a nagging sensation that Laudna wants out but is afraid to say no, and Imogen is afraid to let go, and I honestly don't know if the actors have realized this impasse and how the characters might resolve it, one way or another, besides the insufficient bandaid of a kiss whenever the conversation gets too uncomfortable.

#answered #minxie-the-sabertooth-kitty #really the mission statement of this blog is I am the kid in the Emperor's New Clothes #also i know i keep relying on food metaphors sorry i really like food and feel it's fairly universally accessible to understand #anyway. i am sure some will not believe me here but I think I and most people who agree with me desperately wish we liked this ship #i do not think most people who dislike it are actively hoping it crashes and burns it's just #it feels so fundamentally disconnected and lifeless. at least the conflict shocks it into something vaguely animated #the vindication i was right about this lack of chemistry is still ultimately a consolation prize. i promise you i'd rather be proven wrong #i'd rather be wowed by a brilliant dynamic ship i didn't expect to like. but here we are. #cr spoilers #long post

[missmielyhoran]

Amore, how do you think Y/N would react to those pics of harry and olivia's yacht? Even though I agreed to the stunt at first, I think I would go crazy and want to kill harry after seeing those pictures all over the place

Oh see would be pissed...

Warning- Angst, argument, accusation of cheating, crying, swearing, mention of pandemic, Olivia Wilde, Grammatical errors, fluff.

Not proof read sorry.

*****

Normally Y/N was a very chill person considering she was a teacher dealing with kids everyday she had a lot of patience.

But everyone has their limits and hers has been running thin for a while. You see it started when Harry got the role of Jack Chambers in movie Don't worry darling. He was happy, excited and so were you, it was a challenging role and that's why he loved it.

The filming started but due to the pandemic it shut down. It was the time when y/n and Flo became good friends. Both of them would cook, bake and try all type of different recipes together and sometimes even Harry would join.

Then the film resumed in few weeks, everyone tested and safe. She always had to keep an eye on the director though, it wasn't first soemone tried to flirt with him. Her boyfriend was the most beautiful man ever and that came with it's disadvantages.

Movie already had enough publicity by having Harry. His fans were going crazy about the role and set pictures.

She knew what the role was and how the plot went, well the originial one ofcourse cause as the filming went you started to see changes. The oh so lovely director decided to add herself in the movie which wasn't in the plot first but what's for you? It was her movie and it wasn't hurting Harry so you let it be.

But then one day the meeting and boy oh boy she wished she never went to that meeting.

You thought it was typical pr meeting called by Olivia and Jeff and to some extent it was but then.

"I think we should make a pr relationship" Mark, Olivia's manager said. Both you and Harry were confused cause Flo was engaged and Harry was in relationship with Y/N so who was it going to be?

"We have discussed it and came up with Harry and Olivia to get into a relationship" Jeff said looking at Harry. It felt like Y/N wasn't even there by the way he was talking.

"She's married Jeff what the fuck?" Harry said angrily.

"We are getting divorced and separated for a month" Olivia shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal.

"Doesn't matter. I already have a girlfriend" Harry said as a matter of fact trying to end that conversation right there.

First time since she went there Jeff looked at her, with annoyed expression. Rolling his eyes he sat up straight.

"Harry it will be good for the movie. Your fans love to talk and this will give them reason to talk, beautiful and older. It wilk eat it up" Jeff tried to convince Harry, "Also it wasn't like they know about Y/N anyway" He sat back.

And that was enough for her to run out of the room.

She thought maybe Harry would disagree but no, he agreed. Telling her it was just for show and when the movie is done he will tell everyone about them.

Now here she was months later sitting on their couch going through her private instagram when she saw the pics. Pics of them holding each other a lot closer than she would have liked but that was nothing compared to seeing him kissing her on yacht, the same one they went on the date.

When Harry told Y/N he was going to Italy to record she didn't think she would be there too.

Y/N felt like went through all the stages of and got stuck at Anger. She rarely got angry and mostly calmed herself down but that was unacceptable. She was seething as angry fat tears rolled down her face.

The door to the house opened Harry entering with big smile, hands filled with bags his put down near the door and took off his jacket. "Baby I'm home" He said walking inside only for his smile to disappear and get replaced with concerned frown.

You were sitting on couch, legs to your chest supporting your head as you cried. You lips were bitting red almost on brink of bleeding.

"Baby what happened" He quickly rushed to you sitting down in front of you. He brought his hand up to look at you and check if you have hurted yourself but you fliched and sat back.

Millions of thoughts went through Y/N's in between of Harry getting home and her finding the pictures and seeing him in front of her with concered sad eyes felt like a sick joke.

"Get off" she sat up putting her feet on floor. Harry stood up and sat in the loveseat. His brain realizing what had happened.

"You saw it" he mumbled quietly as if confessing crime.

"Ofcourse I saw it asshole. Was it not what you wanted?" Y/N screamed angrily. She stood up pacing around the room back and forth while Harry sat there like a child getting yelled.

He was feeling guilty a lot guilty. She trusted him with her everything and he broke it and now the love of his life was crying in front of him because of him.

"Baby Jeff said-" "I can't give a flying fuck about what Jeff said. Jeff is not my boyfriend you are" Y/N cut him off. Harry was stunned seeing her curse like that. He never saw you get mad so this was certainly new.

"If you wanted her you should have told me sooner Harry. I would have left, it would have broken my heart but you didn't have to cheat on me and break my trust" She stood there sobbing, her whole body felt weak, she felt like she would faint.

Harry's eyes widened when he realized you weren't mad about pics but you thought he cheated. Oh he was fucked.

"Oh no no. Baby I swear I didn't cheat" Harry quickly ran up to you and sat you down on the couch as you looked weak. He held you close as you sobbed on his tshirt.

"I wod never omg please don't think that" Harry held her tighter as if it woumd convince her.

Y/N felt relief of sort knowing he didn't cheat but still the whole in her heart wasn't filled. She was aching, her whole body, her heart. She was tired of giving, giving and giving there wasn't anything left to give now.

"Harry" She called.

"Yeah babe" He kissed her forehead making her shudder.

"I love you" she looked up at him with wet eyelashes. He smiled softly holding her face watching her melt into him.

"I love you too baby" He said pressing his forehead against his.

"But I can't do this" she said pulling away. Harry looked at her confused but also knowing where this was going.

"I can't see another photos of her with you or anyone as matter of fact. I can't be okay with sharing who I love with someone else" she stood up. Y/N wiped the tears off her face knowing her makeup was probably ruined.

"No no Y/N baby please" Harry begged, "It's just few months the contract will end and then there will be no one else but you and me" He held onto her legs, his face digging into her stomach.

She looked up to control her tears but to no avail. She ran her fingers through his hair and then pushed him back. His eyes were matching hers, red, puffy and filled with tears.

"Please" Harry whispered.

"I'm sorry"

And with that she left.

7 hours later

Harry spent most time crying on the couch where she left him. Holding onto himself, he cried his beart out knowing he was the reason she left.

Then he spent half hour breaking most things and punching hole in wall.

And when the sun went down along with his mood and adrenaline he sat on the kitchen island and drank away his misery.

6 hours later

Harry woke up feeling his body stiff and his head pounding. Be was sleeping on a hard surface that sure wasn't his comfortable bed. Opening his eyes was hard as the lights from windows were hurting his eyes.

"Y/N" He groaned, "Baby please close the drapes" He tried to roll over on his stomach only to fall down on floor. He groaned in pain and sat up slowly. That's when he realized he fell asleep in the kitchen last night with bottle scattered everywhere and the reason he was there was cause of you have left him.

He heard his phone ringing and he groaned not wanting to talk to anyone.

He picked his phone which was on tiled floor beside him. There were multiple miss calls and messages.

15 missed calls from Mum.

5 missed calls from Jeff.

1 missed call from Olivia Wilde.

But none from you. He opened his message thinking you might have texted him but no nothing. Only a single text from Olivia.

Olivia Wilde

Want to go to coffee? I saw a nice cafe near your house :)

He felt like he was going to be sick and he did. He stood up quickly and threw up in kitchen sink. He cleaned his mouth and decied to call his mum.

"Harry Edward Styles" Anne yelled from the other side, "I was worried about you!"

"Mum" He croaked out, "I fucked up"

3 hours later

Y/N was miserable to say the least. Harry was love of her life and now she had lost him just cause she was selfish.

But that wasn't true wanting partner all to herself wasn't selfish so she threw that thought away.

She was at a hotel drowning herself in wine and pity. She was just ending second season of AHS when there was a knock on her door. She did order pizza so she stood up on her wobbly feet and covered herself as much as could in a gown as she didn't have anything to sleep in and opened the door.

"Thanks for this I was dying starving" She chuckled. She looked up and saw the green eyes and that died down.

"What are you doing here?" She asked crossing her arms on her chest.

"Want to talk" He said softly, "Please" He insisted.

Y/N sighed too weak for him and his puppy eyes. She stood aside and let him in locking the door behind.

"These are for you" Harry said giving her favorite blue hydrangeas flower to her. She smiled taking the flowers from him and putting them down on table.

"How did you know I was here?" She finally asked.

"You used our joint account card while paying for this" He shrugged shifting awkwardly. She palmed herself in head for her stupidity.

"That's beside the point baby I just want to say sorry" He said moving closer to her. Y/N looked up seeing sincerity in his eyes.

"I called to Jeff and told him the contract was off, I don't care if they kick me out of movie I just want you with me. Please, I can live without that stupid movie but you, a few hours without you felt like hell" He said. Y/N was bitting her lips so she wouldn't cry cause she didn't want Harry to lose this film he worked hard.

"Harry I-" Sh goes to talk but Harry juat holds her and shakes his head.

"I know but I just want to know that I want you and if you will have my stupid ass back, I assure you I will try not to do something idiotic and hurt you" He pleaded, he was desperate if that point she asked him to get on his knees and beg he would.

"But if you don't want to that's fine. I will not bother you again" He goes to pull from her but she doesn't let him.

"First of all don't even speak over me when I'm trying to speak" she said cocking her hesd to the side, "And second, you're an idiot. A stupid dumbass." Harry forwns at her words.

"But you're my dumbass and I love you a lot so you're lucky" Y/N completes her sentence with smile.

He picks her up pushing his lips on hers, kissing her like a thirsty man finding water in desert. Their lips moved in sync, he ushered her to wrap her legs around him. After a while they pulled apart, heaving for air. Their lips glossy, swollen, stretched in widest smile.

"Might have to make up a bit more though" Y/n said pecking his lips. She squealed as he threw her on the bed.

"Oh I will do the making up just fine"

*****

Let me know what you think. If you want to request more or talk to me do it here♡

#harry styles x reader #harry styles #harry styles fluff #harry styles writing #harry styles smut #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles one shot #harry styles angst #harry styles x y/n #harry styles fanfic #angst harry #argument #boyfriend harry

[spotty-bee]

Hazbin Hotel Headcannon

I've been thinking a lot about Adam, Lute, Vaggie and the exorcists. How they all work and everything that we've learned over the course of the show about them. After looking over the pictures of them without their masks and all the back dealings with heaven I was kinda starting to think...

What if their all related?

Adam and Vaggie have the same skin colour. Lute has Adam's nose. They all have golden pupils (Though Vaggie's sclera is red, many have head cannoned that being from living in hell.) Vaggie and Lute both have white hair. Theres a lot of similarities between these characters physically and while that can be due to the art style, I do start to wonder.

However WHY would Lute , Vaggie and possibly all the exorcists be Adam's daughters? Well it starts to make sense when you remember that Sera wanted to keep the Exterminations under wraps. If you have Heaven Born or Saint (Dead humans who got into Heaven) warriors doing the exterminations, word would eventually get out. These people have lives outside of their work and all it would take is talking to a spouse or one of them feeling guilty before news spreads. IF you have warriors who's entire life was Exterminations, then they would A- be less likely to tell anyone and B- Be less likely to feel guilty if they weren't taught anything else.

As for where all these woman came from, my guess would be cloning. We know for a FACT that Heaven has Science.

A good way to get warriors that won't have outside influence/ loose lips is if they don't have any parents that will be wondering whats going on. Cloning would also ensure that warriors will walk off the assembly line fully grown and ready to train. Adam likely used his DNA and then mixed it with donated DNA from other Heavenly Residents . All he then had to do was train his army.

OF course this opens up some rather dark things to consider. There are at least 100 Exterminators. All of them are female. The likelihood of that happening by happenstance is extremely low. Adam had to have chosen to only have woman in his army, and when you factor in Adam's misogynist, narcissistic attitude, that dose not paint a pretty picture. We also need to consider that Adam was left to train/educate these woman with almost no outside interference. Sera made it clear she wanted as little to do with the Extermination business as possible and she maybe one of the few who knew about the army's creation. IN FACT I know she had nothing to do with the army because, apparently, Adam got to name these girls and nobody, and I mean NOBODY, stopped him from naming Vaggie after female anatomy. (I wouldn't be surprised if Vaggie is a nickname and she's actually just named Vagina.)

They seem to have lived a life of constant training and battle. Its also heavily implied that Vaggie (and Lute to a lesser extent) were taught to view themselves as disposable. Worthless if they didn't have someone to serve. We see it when Vaggie tries to lead the trust exercises, when she beats herself up for not making a proper commercial for the hotel, in fact she seems to have little personal life unless its training or Charlie is involved. Lute herself rips off her own arm just to try and help Adam. If Adam did raise/train them, then these are some pretty bad signs.

These are just some things I was thinking about looking over the show. I am also not making this to bash anyone who ships Adam and Lute. This is all speculation and personal interpretation. I've just never felt anything romantic between Lute and Adam, but they were clearly close. I took that last, tearful goodbye in the finally as a distant, estranged Father- Daughter relationship.

Anyway, what do you think? Its highly unlikely this is true, but could make for a fun, dark fan fiction or Au!

#hazbin hotel #hazbin vaggie #vaggie #hazbin hotel lute #hazbin lute #lute #adam hazbin hotel #head cannon #hazbin hotel vaggie

[ethereal-engene]

promise you | donghyuck

pairing: bf!haechan x fem!reader

genre: angst, fluff, and comfort  // warnings: mentions of death threats & cuss words

summary: The first and last time your boyfriend answers a call from a sasaeng who keeps calling your phone. // word count: 1695

note: I am in my delulu era per usual and apparently he said this once and ... this is my take on it "Ah, you really don't know when you should be scared. I'm going to sue you. I'm going to hang up."

Honestly there are a few things that one can expect when they’re dating a k-pop idol. However, nothing could have ever prepared you for dealing with your boyfriend sasaengs.

It was a big deal too because he didn’t want you getting hurt because of them since he knew he had many of them. It’s too bad that he couldn’t control them but he tried his best to keep them from you. Nonetheless, the extent to which some sasaengs were willing to go were farther than his power and influence could reach.

This just so happened to be another incident where he wasn’t able to protect you from it. A couple weeks ago, you kept on getting text messages from an unknown number. As one would do in this situation, you blocked them but of course they would just have another number to text you with.

These messages at first didn’t seem like much until they escalated with messages of threatening to kill you and to stay away from Hyuck. You still ignored a good chunk of them even if they did make your heart rate go crazy. To be fair, if they were serious about this, they would have already done it.

You would have brought it up to your boyfriend but you slightly felt bad to have tell him about it since you knew he would feel bad about you being hurt. When in reality, he shouldn’t be sorry and if they were his true fans then they would be happy for him. It’s just the unfortunate nature and conditions that come with dating an idol. Plus, the bare minimum here would also be fans respecting their idol’s privacy.

Even though you had not brought this up to your boyfriend, he definitely picked up on how your phone notifications would go off more than usual these past few weeks. You brush it off as it’s just your friend texting you about the drama happening at work.

But we both know that’s a lie and haechan knows one when he hears one. Especially when you sometimes pick up your phone and a small wince or sigh leaves your mouth as you read what’s on the screen. He decides to leave it alone for now because he believes that you will eventually tell him.

One night when you’re staying over with him at the dorms, you’re chilling on his bed as he plays. Your phone starts to ring and you forgot to take a look at the contact number before picking it up.

“Hello?” You ask. Haechan hears you on the phone so he tries to make less noise, but he also quiets down to hear who might be calling you this late into the night.

“Bitch, if you don’t leave Haechan tonight, I will literally kill you tomorrow so you will never see him again. I’ve told you multiple times to leave him but you still haven’t. This isn’t a threat, it’s a promise. Now take your things and go. And as always. Do. Not. Tell. Him.” The voice responds and you end the phone call. You quickly block this number and try to make your heart stop racing so fast.

Placing your hand over your heart and attempting to pace your breathing. Haechan can hear your slightly heavy breathing. His eyes leave the screen to look at you. You are clearly not in the best condition as you were a few moments ago.

“Jeno-ya, I’ll be gone for a few minutes. Make sure I don’t get killed this round, I’ve gotta go check on my girl.” As soon as he says that, he rushes to the bed where you are.

“Hey baby? I’m right here and if you don’t mind me asking, who called you earlier?” Haechan’s hands search for yours and when he feels them, he squeezes them to let you know he’s there.

Shaking your head left and right to let him know it was no one, he frees up one hand to tilt your head so you’re only looking at him. When he does it, he sees that your pupils are dilated. His immediate reaction is to figure out what the hell happened and how to comfort you.

No one in the world should ever make you feel this way. Haechan brings your figure closer to his. Wrapping you up in his arms and giving you small kisses. “Baby, I’ve got you. I am begging you to tell me who called you and what did they say? And don’t try to lie. You’re a really bad liar ya know?”

You’re too scared to tell him now because of how he’ll react. Scared to hear him tell you about how you’re supposed to go and tell him about these things because you’re in danger. Scared to hear him tell you that you shouldn’t have kept this a secret for so long. Scared to hear him tell you that this is all of his fault and that he doesn’t deserve you.

Silence fills the air. It starts to feel so stuffy and you want to escape it so badly. But he won’t let you go until you tell him. Right before, he’s about to say something else; the phone rings again. You’re quick to end the call before he gets a chance to see it.

But the phone just keeps on ringing and ringing after you click the decline button. With the way you react to decline the call quickly and your phone lights up with more messages. Haechan’s eyes skim over them and he pieces together what’s been going on.

You might have a death grip on your phone but you forget that Hyuck’s strength heightens when he’s frustrated like right now. The next time, they call. He snatches it before you can even try to grab it back.

“Oh, so glad you learned your lesson and picked up the phone again you bitch. Now as I said, if you don’t leave Haechan tonight. I will kill you. If you think I’m kidding, I’m really not. I have everything ready for you. Your choice.”

Haechan removes you from him in the best way he can without hurting you. Along with holding you back as you continue to try to get the phone back, even though you know you can’t win. All he sees is red but he composes himself to answer back.

“I’m not sure who you’re calling bitch unless you’re talking about yourself. If you know what’s good for you. You should stop contacting this number.” A laugh is heard in the background of the call on the other side.

“Oh my god Haechan!! I didn’t know that you were going to pick up. I’m so sorry but your girlfriend deserves to die because she’s not good enough for you.”

A ‘tsk’ leaves his mouth and continues with "Ah, you really don't know when you should be scared. I'm going to sue you. I'm going to hang up." And with that, he ends the call.

A long huff and puff is heard from him. He’s going through so many emotions right now. You look at him in the eyes and wonder what he’s thinking about saying next.

“I’m sorry, hyuck. I’m sorry for not telling you about this earlier. I don’t want you to blame yourself for this and please don’t hate me or yourself because of this.” You can’t help but start to let it all out. It would be a big lie to say that all of this wasn’t scary to deal with and it wasn’t painful.

Some of their comments were as if your insecurities started to come to life and taunting you about not being good enough or worse. You tilt your head down to look at the floor because you’re too embarrassed to look at him right now. Your eyes are all puffy and your nose is starting to leak.

After a few minutes of rubbing your eyes dry on your shirt and snot with a tissue away, he finally says something. At first, it’s not you. It's to Jeno telling him that something happened and he’s done for tonight.

Then he walks over to you and cups your face with his hands. Wiping away the falling and dried tears from your eyes. They’re bloodshot red and his heart hurts all over again.

He just keeps eye contact with you with his hands cupping your face. Haechan can’t help but laugh a little at your face when it’s all squished like this. “Y/n-ie. You are the love of my life. Without a doubt, you are one of the many people in my life that I love so much and couldn’t live life without”, Planting a forehead kiss and making sure that you’re still looking at him.

“I am not going to lie and say that you I’m not a tad bit angry or upset that you didn’t tell me about this. Because frankly, I am because it involves your safety and wellbeing.” You nod in agreement.

”You are right about me somewhat blaming myself for this. You are not responsible for my feelings and neither am I responsible for yours. From the bottom of my heart, I am truly sorry you had to go through this alone but I promise you that I’ll always be there. God forbid this ever happen again but if it does. Please tell me so I can do my best to make you feel safe and loved again. I promise.” Haechan finally un-cups your face to hold you in his arms. You whisper another apology and I love you too as you take in his warmth & comfort.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re one strong woman and I couldn’t be happier to call you mine. Just remember that you don’t have to be strong all of the time.”

You two fall asleep afterwards and the next day involves him getting you a new phone number along with the paperwork required to file a lawsuit. When all that is said and done, this phone call remains the first and last time he ever picks up a call from a sasaeng on your phone.

... another fic I’ll probably re-visit b/c this could be longer but for now, enjoy this! man, the # of sasaengs he has is 😔 

as always please do give me feedback by reblogging this with your thoughts in the tag or leaving a note or even dming/sending an ask. it’s all that I ask for. please take care until next time

signing off

- ash 

#kflixnet #haechan x reader #nct x reader #nct angst #nct fluff #donghyuck x reader #hyuck x reader #nct dream x reader #nct 127 x reader #lee haechan x reader #lee haechan x y/n #nct imagines #nct x female reader #donghyuck imagines #donghyuck scenarios #donghyuck x you #ash and queue

[tempestgnostic]

Cultivating Authenticity in the Community Garden

A whole world of possibility opened up for me years ago when I realized that alterhuman/nonhuman identity isn’t solely one experience. You don’t have to believe in past lives. You don’t need to go through shifts. If you don’t have a visual representation of your alt/non identity, that’s alright. Our experiences are broader than that, and we need to encourage others to understand and affirm this, so we can encourage authenticity and learn about different paths to this identity that still hold the core of what it means to be alt/non.

I believe conceptkin truly changed the game for our community in a profound way. Here we see folks who possess very strong and impactful connections to abstract concepts, to the extent that they are these concepts, just as I am the archetypal werewolf. I see little difference between our experiences in general. I don’t personally believe my identity comes from a past life, and I only have the fuzziest ideas about what I would look like if I could physically represent myself accurately. This isn’t uncommon in the broader alt/non community, but it seems to be an experience shared by many conceptkin in particular.

Archetropes are another excellent example. We’re constantly pushing the boundaries of what being alt/non is for us, in order to explain ourselves more accurately and hopefully pave the way for others to do the same. Our community thrives when we take the anthropological approach: we start from the assumption that others want to represent their beliefs and experiences honestly. We keep in mind the limitations of language, as well as the accepted norms of our community that often dissuade ‘fringe’ belief. The truth is that our experiences are fundamentally real and ultimately valuable to understanding who we are.

If we want to truly encourage authenticity in the alt/non community, we must cultivate a hungry curiosity. We must learn to parse out what is truth and what is trolling, but also to give that initial benefit of the doubt, however briefly. We must recognize that we don’t all speak the same language, nor do we all agree on which terms mean what, and many of us have only been exposed to bits and pieces of the whole. We all make mistakes that require prompt correction, but we should approach that correction with some level of grace. Community-wide understanding is not instantaneous—far from it. Our work must be painfully collaborative.

None of what I’m saying here is new or revolutionary, by any stretch. Our community has decades of history, kept alive and accessible by amazing community members who have dedicated an incredible amount of time and energy to doing so. I repeat these sentiments because they bear repeating. I’m a big fan of the “Holy shit! Two cakes!” philosophy, and if my perspective can offer something insightful, then I’m happy to share it. (Hell, I’ll share it anyways.)

I have been welcomed into this community with open arms (and open limbs and wings of all kinds). I’ve had the pleasure of meeting fellow community members offline, and discussing our alt/non identities in meatspace has been a joy that’s wholly indescribable. I’ve never felt so seen, so profoundly understood, and I consider it a fine blessing to have found my way here.

#alterhuman community #nonhuman community #alt/non community #otherkin #therian #conceptkin #archetrope #fictionkin #there are probably more i could list but these were the ones that came to mind and could be relevant #alt/non

[kerrikins]

Jin and the video

Or, a plot-line I think the writers may have misjudged.

In the most recent episode, we had Jin confessing to Phee that he posted the video. To most this was validation of what they already believed, to others it was confusing as there have been some contradicting clips that show Jin with a computer that was a different colour, as well as the screen flipping back and forth from night and day mode.

While this debate still continues a bit, particularly since we already knew that Jin probably thinks he must have posted it, I think the renewed reaction has cemented for me my thoughts that I think that this is a plotline the writers misjudged.

See I still - at least at this point, with the caveat that I could be proven wrong as this is horror/thriller - believe that Jin is intended to be a character that people can somewhat empathize with. He's not like Top, Por, or Tee, who are shown to be cruel and dismissive to Non. Though people deny it and talk around it, Jin is the one character that showed empathy to Non, he stood up for him, etc.

But the audience mostly doesn't empathize with Jin at all, and I think this is because the writers miscalculated.

People were already frustrated with his character even before the video incident, but the video really pushed it over the top and now Jin is the most despised character on the show.

However, I'm not sure whether the writers actually anticipated this reaction properly. The way that the show has handled it makes it seem like they haven't, because the video hasn't been touched on all that much, at least not to the extent I might have expected if the intention was 'yes, this is the worst thing done in the show, Jin is the villain who you should all hate and want to die'. We have other characters fitting that bill - Tee's uncle, Top, even Por to some extent.

Yes, the video has been mentioned, but only briefly. It doesn't hold the weight in the discussions about what happened to Non that I would expect it to if I thought the writers felt that this was the worst of the worst in the story they're constructing. (Again, it's possible that something will happen in the next two episodes that will counter this.)

And then there's the fact that people are still questioning whether or not Jin posted the video, given the different colour computers and different colour scheme. Personally I'm inclined to just go with what Jin said at this point, but at this point that's mostly because I feel like it's not going to matter.

I don't want a reveal because it's not going to make a difference. It's not something I have any excitement for, though I originally did, and it's because I know that for most viewers it's not going to land, it's not going to have the intended impact. Reveals usually are supposed to have an effect on the emotion of the audience, to make them view a character a different way, or perhaps empathize with them (or hate them more).

Though I will briefly add that of course it's possible that (if this is included) the writers anticipated this and are thinking more about the impact to the character who would be at fault, which is certainly a possibility. But if they have any intention at all for it to be a change in how the viewer looks at Jin, it's not going to land. Most fans aren't going to care, they aren't going to change their minds.

The only acceptable ending to most at this point is for Jin to die.

So with that in mind I think that the writers made a mistake with this plotline IF their intention is to write Jin as a character the audience could empathize with, because most do not. He's not coming across as grey, he's not coming across as someone people can understand or empathize with.

The act of filming and/or posting the video is, for the audience, making Jin the ultimate villain and if the show gives them anything other than validation of this thought, they are going to be unhappy.

Time will tell.

#dead friend forever #dff the series #dff: the series #dff jin

[sumiez]

so.. hear me out.. you know how kurt says he’s “all about love” on his stream? how about reader is almost as unhinged as he is, showing up to every stream and viewing every video. they understand and worship the lesson. now that he’s all about love reader is too and tries to get him to love them back

- n.e

paparazzi | kurt kunkle

warnings: typical spree stuff, obsessions, hit and runs, makeout sessions

a/n: first kurt request.. i hope i did him justice!! love the idea btw i love when readers are just as cuckoo as him

to call yourself obsessed with kurtsworld96 is a grave understatement. you weren't sure exactly how you discovered such an obscure influencer, it was likely youtube's algorithm being generous, but it was one of the best things to ever happen to you.

every video of his would receive a like from you. every stream would result in you two chatting about anything and everything before it inevitably ends with his mom calling him down for dinner. but that was the extent of your relationship—a fan and content creator.

you're enamoured with the idea of becoming his number one fan, his ride or die, his most loyal follower. every time he greets you on stream your heart soars.

once he began the lesson, however, you became determined to meet him. a real, genuine meeting, and you were going to win him over for good. you worship the lesson, it's not staged prank content like his friend bobby, it's real. it's gritty. and, in your opinion, incredibly attractive.

who cares about the people you left behind to travel all the way to outside LA. kurt is all that matters in your lovesick state.

opening the gogo app, you frantically search for kurt's description. according to his stream, he should be searching for unlucky victims right about now, despite spree being suspended.

you're about to grow frustrated until you see your saviour's profile appear. you couldn't possibly be happier.

immediately requesting a ride, you fish out your handcrafted, shoddily made kurtsworld hat and drop it onto the top of your head. you cannot wait to see the look on his face when he catches you adorning it.

after a few minutes of listening to him ramble to the camera about how he's surprised no passengers have recognized him, you hear him announce that he thinks he has his eyes on the prize—you.

you enter the stolen vehicle with a skip in your step, except this time you find comfort in the passenger seat.

"whoa whoa w—hey, wait, is that a..?" he stammers out, initially apprehensive at your choice of seating but you see him ease up once he notices your headwear.

"yes, kurt, i'm literally your biggest fan," you answer breathlessly, showing off your hat to the camera. "i loved watching you kill all those jerks, but now that you're all about love it's even better, you know? i've been watch—"

you're interrupted by kurt laughing out of pure glee. he's never felt this loved before. "holy shit you guys, we actually ... we have a real fan in the house," he trips over his own words out of unfiltered excitement. he made it. fuck his other tens of thousands of viewers, this person, this angel, is all that matters.

the two of you spend what feels like an eternity chatting, just like old times.

"what's your favourite video i've made?" he asks, and if your vision isn't deceiving you, he's blushing. hard.

"gotta be your horror movie reviews. i liked you before the lesson too. but your water bottle tutorial was really useful too, i know a few people who really need to drink one." you reply instantly, as if you planned out the whole conversation.

in truth, you did rehearse your answers to certain questions, you're infatuated with your plan to impress kurt and win him over. some may call you unhinged, but you're the kind of person who'd do anything for love.

the chat isn't too fond of your friendly behaviour with each other. they're begging for something gory to happen, and honestly, a death at kurt's hand isn't something you'd hate that much.

he listens for their pleas to start driving and places his hands on the wheel. "you want to go to the...construction site, right...?" he asks with a raised brow.

"yeah! i loved the gummy bear part of the stream, i'd love to check the place out myself." a smile graces his features in response to your words. he's still shocked that someone actually likes his content enough to spend time with him.

as you drive down the bumpy road, he pipes up. "so, like, what's your handle? i'll follow you back,"

"we've been mutuals for years, kurt."

"wait, you're—" he repeats your username, the one person other than bobby who continuously tunes into his content. "damn. that's so cool. it was always...neat seeing you pop in,"

you perk up as your face grows warm, "you really think so? it means a lot."

"of... of course i think so. i couldn't have done it without... well, you..."

as he steers, you embrace the boldness kurt gives you and you peck him on the cheek. the skin is flushed beneath your lips, and he nearly crashes at the contact.

"i... oh god, you just.. i really... i really want to.."

"look! some dumbass is crossing the street! hit them, hit them!" you jump out of your seat and point towards a middle aged man, and kurt speeds up.

he's so flustered that he's still registering the kiss, but he complies, hitting the pedestrian with a bone—chilling thump.

his viewers are growing every second, the chat congratulating him for getting some action, while others toss insults at the life you two just ended.

"our first kill," you say as you two lock eyes and he has the giddiest grin on his face.

finally reaching your destination, he opens the driver side door and does a loop around the car to open yours. such a gentleman.

with his clammy hand in yours, you step out.

"sooo, this is the spot where i ran that douchebag over," he points around the area, shuffling his feet. "i can... show you the junkyard with the dogs too, if you want."

you nod enthusiastically, "i'd love to see that."

"great, great. uhh.." as he thinks of what to say next, you approach him. draping your arms around his neck, you press a kiss to his chapped lips. he can't help but groan at your touch, never having kissed anybody like this before.

he instinctively pulls you off.

"i... that was..."

"nice?"

"yeah. nice. do you wanna take this to my...back to my car, or something?" nodding again at his words, you reach for his hand again and stroll to the vehicle with him.

you crawl inside and kurt immediately gets comfortable on top of you, shoving his face into yours. you can tell he's inexperienced when it comes to kissing, but you return the touches, fingers finding refuge in his tufts of hair. his kisses are sloppy but passionate, his longing to be loved presenting itself in each action.

"i've always wanted to..." he mutters as he pulls away for air. "...kiss someone like that. i'm glad it was a fan and not some jerk at one of bobby's parties,"

your heart hammers in your chest as you respond with another breathless kiss. you're actually kissing your idol, and his entire stream is watching. kinda forgot about that.

without warning, a police car skids into the lot, and you and kurt exchange glances of horror.

he rushes to the driver's seat, yelling at you to put on a seatbelt as he preps for blastoff.

he peels out of the area, driving to god knows where.

"well, my little... partner in crime... do you wanna finish what we started somewhere else?"

"of course."

#kurt kunkle x reader #kurt kunkle #kurt kunkle imagine

[starsomens]

okay we talk about jealous Noah a lot, but jealous wife. Like some girl at the bar is just non stop hitting on him, he’s pointed out his ring a couple times. Trying to be polite and it just isn’t sinking in. The way I would climb that man to prove a point about not touching what doesn’t belong to you

A/N: OH MY GOD AAANNOOONNNNN YWS

Warnings: language.

Cheers and drinks we’re going all around after another successful tour. You had tagged along this time around and it was amazing! But now all you wanted to do was go home with your husband and get some well deserved rest

“Y/N I think you should come on every tour with us, you gave us some really good luck” jolly pointed out

“As fun as that sounds I rlly miss my bed. You know one that isn’t constantly moving” you smile

“Our bed” Noah chimes in wrapping his arm around you

“Hehehe yes our bed baby” you peck his lips. You hear the guys whine like a bunch of little kids telling you both to get a room.

“Oh shut up” you fire back with a smile knowing neither of you would stop soon “if it wasn’t for me kissing your singer here, he wouldn’t have such great shows” you bragged

Which in some ways were true, getting kisses before, between and after the shows honestly gave Noah a lot of energy. Speaking of energy you for some reason felt eyes on you? Looking around you see some girl on the opposite end of the bar. She was looking at Noah but would glare at you from time to time.

Well that’s weird, you thought to yourself. You were never the jealous or worried type knowing Noah like the back of your hand. But the staring made you a hit uncomfortable . Feeling the need to use the bathroom and gather yourself.

“Ima go to the bathroom real quick guys I’ll be back” you said getting out of the booth

“Need me to walk you princess?” Noah offered but you shook your head

“I got it, stay here and enjoy”

“Oh Y/N, we’ll be moving to the pool table in case we aren’t here when you get back” Folio filled you in. You gave him a thumbs up and walked into the rest room. You take the empty stall and as sit to take care of business the other two stall empty. As they wash their hands you couldn’t help but hear the conversation

“Oh my god that guy with all the tattoos is so hot”

“The really tall one right?!” The other asked “Their show was really good tonight too”

“Mhm! I’ve been looking at him all night, but their like assistant or whatever keeps getting in the way” he groaned

“Oh well, I’m gonna go and get his number” the first one spoke as she dried her hands. Your eyebrows furrowed as you figured out she was talking about Noah. Didn’t she know he was married ?? You though to yourself, Ugh, great...you've dealt with some head over heels fans but never to this extent. Were they even fans or did they just find him hot?? Maybe you were over thinking it, Noah wouldn't let that slide....he wouldn't....right? oh shit that was the door!

You finish up in the bathroom and open the door quickly. You round the bend. Your booth was empty aside from Jolly and Matt, which meant the rest were at the pool table. You spin around and follow the sound of pool balls striking each other and laughter. You see your very tall husband take his shot and come up to stand straight, he jumps a bit surprised by the girl standing there, seeming to have appeared out of thin air.

Her smile was big, almost looked too forced, she had even adjusted her shirt to show off more cleavage. Noah had given her a nod and stood next to her while her friend snapped a picture.

okay, maybe they just wanted a picture and you were overthinning it. Now that would be the case if she just left afterwards but next thing you know she turns to him and continues with her exaggerated smile. Your heart was racing and you could feel yourself becoming uncomfortable. He continues with the game seeming very uninterested with what she was saying. She leans on the pool table flutters her eyes and you roll yours.

She then makes a move to touch his arm and come closer to her and you feel your heart drop into your stomach. You felt something in your throat as if you wanted to throw up, cry and scream. Why was she touching him??

Noah pulls back and raises his hand between him and the girl. He points to the silver hoop around his finger, clearly stating

"I'm married"

You start walking before your head could think, as you get closer you can hear her whining like a teenager

"She doesn't have to know" she crosses her arms "besides I don't see her around, come on." you felt your blood boil, you wanted to punch her and yank at her hair

"Well I don't care, I have my wife I wouldn't hook up with you even if I wasn't married to her," he shrugged her shoulder, he was already fed up at this point

"What's one night going to do?" she attempts to reach for his arm again but before she could you slide under his arm and cling to his side.

"Babe, who is this?" you ask looking up at your husband making sure to rest your hand on his chest to showcase your ring.

"Oh just a fan," he answers coming down to kiss your head but you move to capture his lips instead. His hands wrap around you to grab at your ass as he kissed you. Your eye opens to look the girl up and down and smirk into the kiss. You hear her huff and practically stomp away.

"Even at the bar you two? At least wait until we leave" Nick groans as he stood there waiting for Noah to finish with you.

"Sorry guys," you smile at nick, still stay close to Noah, he then bends down slightly to ask

"Are you perhaps" he leans in closer "Jealous princess?" He asked

"What?! No I'm Not!" you defend "I saw you needed help so I stepped in as your wife" he pointed out. Which was actually true but...were you? You were married, he loved you and you him, and you saw how he clearly told her she was married. But looking at him you knew he could have anyone he wanted easily ....you felt a pang in your heart knowing that it was true, maybe you were jealous. Jealous of her speaking with him, touching him, and just pushing for him to go with her.....

Noah saw how you were deep in thought and held your chin in his hand gently and kissed your forehead

"Don't worry baby, you're the only one for me" 「✨Taglist✨」 @lilhobgobbler @cncohshit @vir-tual @tdopomymind @concretenoah @misspygmypie @fvckmeorchokeme @lust-for-sacher @thescarlettvvitch @cind6547 @itsmrsfuentes @purple-lili @ima1986

#noah sebastian x reader #bad omens #bad omens cult #noah sebastian #bad omens fanfiction #star’s anons✨ #noahsebastian

[mimymomo]

It’s truly astounding how the people belittling Fearne’s feelings and growth the most are Fearne fans themselves.

Fearne/Ashley made it explicitly clear that she didn’t want the shard. She stated that it multiple times and went even further to explain that it scared her and TOLD ASHTON that she believed they should take it. They willingly went along with Ashton’s plan because she believed it was the right thing to do but as time went on, she grew more and more concerned but still believed in Ashton who kept telling her it it would be okay, downplayed the consequences (saying his death would be a funny story to tell and that’s all as if them dying wouldn’t be horrible and affect Fearne/the others because they genuinely can’t believe that his life is worth that pain) and said that she promised him.

Fearne said multiple times that Ashton didn’t manipulate her. Ashton wasn’t hiding their intentions from her — he told her the plan, they knew (some of) the risks and Fearne said she went aligns to hit because she thought it was the right move. You’d think Ashton had a gun to her head by the way the fandom is talking about the whole thing!

Yes Ashton was pushing and they never should have kept Fearne from telling the group the truth but she made her choice and it was a bad one out of love and care (and no Ashton did not manipulate her feelings/attraction to them to convince her: Ashton did not and still does not know the full extent of what Fearne felt towards them and when he kissed her, she had already agreed to the ritual and the kiss only made her really second guess).

Now am I saying that she’s equally culpable as Ashton? NO!

Am I saying she owes Ashton an apology? GOD NO! And thank god Ashton told her she didn’t owe them anything, he put her in such a bad situation and that was 95% on them. THEY FUCKED UP BAD AND DESERVED ALL THE TONGUE LASHINGS THEY GOT!

But the way the fandom presents the issue is as if Ashton was this maniacal, evil manipulator who preyed on Fearne solely because she was too good to say no instead of viewing the whole situation as it really is: a man who is fucked up asking someone they trust to join in on their stupidity without fully realizing how much danger, trauma and suffering he is going to put her through.

We can acknowledge that Fearne made a mistake by being complicit and used Ashton plans with the shard to justify (run from) her not having to take it due to her own personal beliefs and fears and use that acknowledgment to further show her growth as a person who will never let herself get thrusted back into that position again. That she can’t blindly trust and follow someone’s self destructive path if it’s gonna lead to her being hurt. This is a good thing! Let Fearne learn and grow from this! That’s what the whole Chetney discussion is about: no one’s blaming her, Ashley’s not dodging anything or protecting Taliesin/Ashton — this is Fearne being honest, taking agency, calling out her actions and growing.

Fearne messed up and was complicit in going along with the plan AND she has every right to be upset with Ashton for what they did and she deserved her apology are two statements that can (and should) coexist!

I’m so tired of people vilifying Ashton and making him come off as this terrible and evil individual when that’s not what this was. They aren’t. And then saying that he was throwing a pity party when in reality they’re coming to the realization that his behavior is his own fault and they can’t keep running and blaming others for the actions he takes and then apologizing and taking responsibility and ownership for what happened and saying they want to be better in the future.

The same fandom that worships the ground Percy steps on despite all the bs he put VM through, actually tried to argue that Essek — a character who due to his own hubris stole a priceless and ancient artifact that was essential to his country’s religious identity and nearly started a whole ass war — wasn’t a war criminal because the Geneva Conventions didn’t exist in Exandria (yes this actually happened to me at one point), seems to be unable to handle Ashton without any sort of empathy or understanding. A character who has been mentioned to be broken (physically mentally and emotionally) with crippling self worth issues who needs to be better in not only how they show they care, but in loving and caring for himself.

These past 2 episodes were so good but gosh some of the reactions have been aggravating

(Maybe I would accept people saying Ashton was manipulative more if they weren’t demonizing him in the same breath and acting as if they’re only only questionable bad egg in Bells Hells…)

#critical role #critical role spoilers #critical role campaign 3 #critical role c3 #ashton greymoore #fearne calloway #I’ve been holding back this rant all night and being on twitter was only making it worse #I love Fearne! pls don’t think I don’t #but the way ppl are talking about Ashton and saying that they manipulated her is grinding my gears #this fandom can not handle characters that are the slightest shade darker of the lightest morally grey

[smellygorilla]

Hello! Today I will be ranting about why shipping the bullies and delinquents is wrong. Let’s get into it!

I don’t even know why this ship is a thing. I don’t understand the love for enimes to lovers. Like why would you go a date someone you hate so much?

I’m gonna give some context on the groups and the backstory to get my point across more clearly.

The Bullies:

The Bullies are a group of preppy girls known for gossiping and spreading rumours. They’re the reason the delinquents are who they are today (More on that later) I love the bullies, their design really projects who they are. If I saw them I really life I would think of them as mean girls,gossip girls, etc.

Group members:

Musume Ronshaku (Leader, Blue sweater)

Kashiko Murasaki (Purple sweater)

Kokoro Momoiro (Pink sweater)

Hoshiko Mizudori (Green sweater)

Hana Daidaiyama (Yellow sweater)

The Delinquents:

The Delinquents are a group of guff, aggressive boys who carry around blunt weapons for self defence. I’m not a fan of the delinquents designs solely because of their spikey hair, but that’s kinda their thing so I won’t judge. (Yes I will)

Group members:

Umeji Kizuguchi (Substitute Leader, Yellow shirt)

Hokuto Furukizu (Purple Shirt)

Gaku Hikitsuri (Red Shirt)

Dairoku Surikizu (Blue shirt)

Hayanari Tsumeato (Black shirt)

The Delinquents weren’t always “The Delinquents” Theh were bully victims. They would be like this if the counsellor took action when the bullying reports were being made. (Hate to drop her in like that but she said it herself 🤷)

Gaku was bullied for having a broken arm, he was seen as weak and vulnerable.

Hayanari was bullied for showing signs of a receding hairline.

Hokuto was bullied for his feminine mannerisms and standing up for Hayanari. (Hayanari felt so bad for this he developed a smoking habit)

Dairoku was bullied for being quiet.

Umeji’s profile doesn’t specify what he was bullied for but based his design I’m gonna say he was a very shy and timid student.

It was rumoured they were going to start a suicide pact, but overlooked because there was no concrete evidence.

On day, a girl named Osoro Shidesu was approached by a group of students from another school. She disrespected them, and they weren’t going to have that. Their plan was that they were going to beat her up, little did they know she was gonna take them all down, alone.

It’s unknown how she managed to accomplish this, but all stories end the same with Osoro covered in blood and taking the jacket of on of the students and drapping over her shoulders as “trophy”.

The delinquents were present for this event. They idolized her for it. They wanted to be like her. They were hopeful this could stop the bullying, they started following her around like ducklings. They dyed their hair blonde like her’s, they spiked their hair to be seen as relentless punks, they became more aggressive,rude and more disrespectful of faculty, and they started carrying around blunt weapons with them everywhere. This did stop the bullying, but students started to refer to them as “The Delinquents”. Students started to fear and even hate them, but maybe this is what they wanted. Maybe it was better to be feared and hated then bullied.

You see, they changed their personality and appearance just to avoid being bullied. Do you think they would really go on a date someone that traumatized them to this extent?

“But smelly._gorilla, smelly._gorilla! How can we be sure the bullies were the ones that caused all this?”

Really? First of all, the bullies are called “The Bullies” because they bully people! Second of all look at this photo.

This is Umeji’s reaction (Along with the other delinquents) to a bullies corpse or you stabbing a bully directly infront of them. Oh yeah totally perfect couple. (I’m being sarcastic)

I’m all for canon stuff in lore and I hate ships unless it canon or like Taro x Ayano. Seeing videos of bullies x delinquent shivers my timbers. This ship is extremely toxic. The lore behind the delinquents is so deep, and you’re will to throw it all away just because they look cute together? That sucks, you shouldn’t do that.

Anyways, I hate this ship and I have my reasons. If you ship them that’s kinda werid. (Sorry 😬) Thanks for reading of you did!

Bye ♥️♥️

#ayano aishi #yandere simulator #umeji kizuguchi #gaku hikitsuri #hokuto furukizu #osoro shidesu #dairoku surikizu #hayanari tsumeato #musume ronshaku #hana daidaiyama #kashiko murasaki #kokoro momoiro #hoshiko mizudori #midori gurin #the delinquents #the bullies #lore #bad ships #I hate Yandere dev

[chloepleasestopdying]

Ideas for an "After The Storm" game with the save bae ending?

If I had control to make ‘After the Storm’ it would probably be pretty damn close to The Girls Who Broke the World by GeneralIrritation over on AO3. It’s one of my favorite LiS fics and my favorite fic for exploring the cause of Max’s powers. I’ll expand on my reasons under the cut but if you haven’t read it and don’t want to be spoiled go read it! It’s great !!

it’s full sequel the setting HAS to be Arcadia Bay. The OG game is just too connected to the town itself to not be set there. Pulling Max and Chloe completely out of there just feels… wrong. One of the best things about LiS is that they knew how to set the vibes of all the areas so well.

‘Ah but I asked for After the Storm with Save the Bae’ yes you did anon- the game should NOT be set in the same exact timeline that the player been able to play in. This 1) keeps the game from making a single choice canon (which they’ve been trying to keep from doing) and 2) keeps the players on their toes.

In keeping with the idea of being in the same setting- the vibe has to be similar. A lot of post canon fics tend to go mores the sci-fi part because of Max’s powers (which can be pretty cool) but LiS is a mystery with some horror. Rachel’s disappearance lingers over the entire game as does Kate’s attempted suicide and Chloe’s repeated brushs with death. Just because there is a lot of cute moments and kinda cringe dialogue doesn’t mean we should forget that vibe.

I brought up The Girls Who Broke the World for a lot of reasons and one of the biggest is because it takes a very similar vibe- if not one that’s a bit more … I wouldn’t quite say mature but perhaps more adult. It’s a straight up murder mystery instead of Chloe and Max’s flat refusal of treating Rachel’s disappearance as such. There’s more death and drugs - though never anything too outrageous for the setting.

And keeping the bay also keeps the characters. LiS has GREAT characters. All the minor characters are just great. Any sequel has to at least try and bring back as many as possible and keeping the setting helps with that.

Max can’t have her powers. I love Max’s powers and I’m a HUGE fan of her keeping them post canon but her powers are op as all fuck if the game actually let you use them to the extent they should be able to.

But if I know I would want to explore the cause of her powers. Later LiS games clearly go with the theme of the characters getting them just because but that never worked with me with Max. Alex’s powers felt like a part of her, they’re something she’s been dealing with and have been growing stronger while Max’s just kinda appeared ?

So basically in TGWBTW (such a long title lol) Max doesn’t have her powers. The fic is from Chloe’s point of view and set a few years post canon with them having spilt up at some point after ‘canon’. Chloe has become something like a fixer with minor drug dealers in Arcadia Bay and gets mixed in with a murder mystery. It takes awhile for the reader to start putting together the pieces on what happened: Max used the picture to travel to the bathroom and instead of letting Chloe died Max jumped in front of the gun. Max’s powers end up not really being ‘hers’ and the last fic expands on some of the dropped hints like the Prescotts.

I think something like that- where you play as Chloe who has no memory of Hell week while Max does is really cool.



#life is strange #chloe price #max caulfield #pricefield #I love that fic btw #it has some of my favorite fandom bits #it has impacted my view of LiS so much that there was a good minute I forgot Kate’s last name #I still sometimes think Kate’s last name isn’t Marsh

[gingerylangylang1979]

This shit is not new

This is in response to the multiple posts right now about the recent articles that have come out and just general angst about this ship in the media.

This really isn't new. It's not unique to The Bear. It's not unique to Carmy x Sydney. It's not unique to slow burns.

I do think Mulder x Scully is the best example. Why? They are the ship that modernized shipping. The terms shipping, noromo, etc. come from that ship. They pioneered the modern "why can't men and women just be friends", "platonic soulmate", "it would cheapen the show", "the show isn't about romance" arguments.

Syd x Carmy are like Mulder x Scully 2.0 (with a slightly different flavor that I will get to). The X-Files was a huge sleeper hit with a cult following. From the first episode there was speculation about romance and people raging against it. The question was brought up in every interview and denied by the show runner. The intensity kept developing until finally they went canon. And then, only then, did the show runner change tune. Shippers felt they were being persecuted for even mentioning the ship. It was super intense.

I watched the show as a teen. I low key did ship them but wasn't involved in fandom so I wasn't aware of the shenanigans. But I know all of this from first hand accounts.

And here's receipts from media:

So, I know a big element is missing in this comparison. The race element is at play here. I'm not denying that. But I will say, I started with this example just to show it isn't just interracial couples that get this backlash. I could also mention Ted x Rebecca, but I don't think I need to go into them because they are current. Mulder x Scully started this and history is important.

I do think there is a special flavor of dislike for this ship because of race. I've spoken on it. The unwarranted hate for Sydney can't be ignored. The same has happened with Richonne, Ichabbie, etc. No denial here. But if you look at the overall history of shipping what we are seeing specific to media denial, media scrutiny, antis, denial of the ship until the very end, gaslighting, etc. is slow burn and shipping war 101.

There is no agenda from cast and crew to stick it to us. Their agenda is to maintain the element of surprise and tell the story they want to tell. There is no agenda from the media to do anything but get a story that gets clicks. There is no special denial of a romance unique to this one.

This is just how a slow burn plays out.

There are no slow burns that went canon and the show runner said, oh yeah, this is the plan before the end. If there is tell me, and I'll gladly correct. But, that just isn't reality. They will say the same thing every season until it happens, no matter what happens on screen in the meantime. And there is always some lame statement made about why they "suddenly" decided to make it a thing or a lame admission that it was planned. So basically, they lie. The lies may seem cruel but it's not personal. It's not some secret agenda to deny your fave romance and happiness. It's just showbiz.

All of this can feel personal in relation to the extent a fan is personally invested. And I think that's up to each person to decide if their investment is creating too high an expectation and too much drama for regarding fictional characters on a tv show. That's not on media. It's not on the actor, creators, journalists, etc. to determine and protect a fan's level of investment or engagement. Nobody has to read the articles. Nobody has to devote their time to fandom. It's a choice. And part of that, may be understanding that all of the media around a ship isn't going to cater to what you want or see and making decisions on what you see is the healthiest, most enjoyable way to engage or not.

Because feelings have been hurt, arguments have raged, lies have been told in fandom and media and it's not new, it's not personal. It just is what it is.

Mulder x Scully walked so Carmy x Sydney can run.

#the x files #mulder x scully #carmy x sydney #syd x carmen #chefs kiss #shipping discourse

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs and Heteromorphobia (Arc XXI-B + Conclusion, Final War-B: The Hospital Attack)

To preface before I start documenting these final four chapters, there’s been a lot said (not least by me) about how wildly out of touch the resolution to this plotline is.  While I didn't set out to rehash all of that again, it turns out I can't actually talk about how the series portrays heteromorphobia without talking about how it resolves it—if I'd wanted to do that, the place to stop would have been with the last post. This whole piece is also destined for AO3 eventually, so it needs to be readable for those who don't follow me on tumblr. Therefore, if you've been following my #heteromorph discrimination plot posts for a while, there are portions of this post that will be pretty familiar territory!

If you're new and want my full breakdowns, you can find them in my Chapter Thoughts posts or in this pair of posts rounding up the asks I’d gotten on the topic.  Here, I will simply say that I don’t think Horikoshi’s fumbling of the plot can be read to mean that all the stuff I’ve documented thus far was just me reaching too hard, reading stuff into the manga where nothing was intended.  While I’m sure some of it is—I definitely went out on a few limbs!—I think the main answer to, “How can heteromorphobia be such a well-thought-out depiction of a logically foreseeable form of discrimination while also having such a terrible resolution?” is, “Because the mainstream opinion about how best to handle discrimination is wildly different in Japan than it is in progressive American circles.”

That doesn’t mean I’m willing to wave the wand of Cultural Differences over this resolution and forgive everything—there were plenty of Japanese fans critiquing it as well![1]—but it does somewhat modulate my feelings about it.  In any case, let’s get to it.

1: Most of what I saw was on Twitter, but there’s a Japanese site called bookmeter that’s kinda goodreads-esque, and which had several critical reviews posted for the volume, including one that felt like every point laid out was something I’d complained about as well.  Super validating, but a shame it was necessary!

(I'll be changing up my formatting just a bit in hopes that I can find a way to present sub-sub-bullet points that tumblr won't choke on in this 13K post. Pray for me.)

Chapter 370: 

O We open with a scene which we’re led to believe is about Spinner but which the end of the chapter will reveal to be about Shouji.  It’s shockingly open about the extent of the discrimination Shouji faced, and there’s worse yet to come, but here we find people throwing stones at him, telling him to die, saying he has dirty blood that will defile the land, that he should stay inside the house, and that no matter how much time passes,[2] they will never accept “his kind.”

2: Viz renders this as “no matter how much society progresses,” but the word jidai means something more like “the times”/”the age,” and the progression term used can mean improvement, but in the circumstances, probably just means forward movement.  I think the intention is more like, “No matter how much the times march on,” if only because it would be very odd for the people yelling this vitriol to frame it as themselves resisting progression.  After all, bigots don’t typically think of themselves as “regressive” compared to everyone else’s progressiveness; they think of themselves as normal or valuing tradition compared to everyone else’s moral laxity/perversity.

So, remember how I talked about the spiritual/religious charge to the language the CRC used to talk about their “sanctuary” and the League/Spinner’s presence in it?  Here’s the full scope of that.  It’s about kegare, a Shinto concept of uncleanliness associated particularly with blood and death, and while that’s normally something that can be purified simply by undergoing the proper ritual cleansings, when something is, in itself, intrinsically unclean, no amount of purification will fix it; you can only keep it sealed away.  Hence the yelling at Shouji not to leave the house.

The spirituality-based discrimination calls to mind the burakumin, originally an outcaste group of people who made their living working with all the aspects of life Shinto considered kegare—butchers, tanners, executioners and the like.   They were made to dress and cut their hair in ways that identified them on sight, barred from entering temples or schools, and lived in their own villages.  The laws mandating much of this were abolished in 1871[3] and urban sprawl gradually rolled over burakumin villages, turning them into slum areas.  While today it’s not uncommon for people to not even know they’re descended from burakumin lineage unless they’re specifically told,[4] more subtle discrimination does endure.  While it’s clearly not the only inspiration, there’s a lot about anti-burakumin bias that’s reflected in heteromorphobia.

3: Albeit not without considerable and violent protests against the liberation of the burakumin/the idea that they were henceforth to be allowed to hold other occupations and become ordinary citizens.  Arson, destruction of villages, attacks and deaths—all things considered, the anti-Kaihourei riots are probably a decent place to look for inspiration on the historical massacres Spinner’s #2 will be talking about shortly.

4: Or find out because someone who knows the significance of those old neighborhoods finds out first and they’re suddenly on the bad end of some discriminatory act or another.

O We find out that the group Spinner’s leading consists of fifteen thousand people, that number split between PLF remnants and ordinary civilians who support the PLF’s cause.  It’s unknown exactly how that split breaks down, but based on how the rest of the attack goes, I think it’s probable that the group is mostly civilians—if it were more PLF, it probably wouldn’t be so wholly defanged by Shouji’s big plea for peace.  So that’s what we might call a “bad look,” that fifteen thousand ordinary civilians feel so incredibly hard done-by that they not only flock to join a known terrorist, but that they do so for the purpose of attacking a hospital.

O They’re opposed by about two hundred police and heroes, the relevant of whom for our purposes are Present Mic, Rock Lock, Officer Gori, Shouji, and Koda.  With the exception of Present Mic, who will in any case be heading inside very shortly, they’re all minorities of some sort, with Rock Lock being very visibly, obviously Black, and the others being heteromorphs.  None of them are immediately thinking about the composition of the crowd, but rather about how difficult the crowd is being to handle.

O Rock Lock yells out that the rioters are too organized to be some random mob, a dismissiveness that gets him shouted at by the Spinner fanboys—tragically their only appearance in all of this!—that, “Folks with human faces just don’t get it!”  I have to assume that putting Rock Lock in this scene is no accident, but rather is there to make the rioters come off as short-sighted, so deep in their own pain that they lash out at someone who, if HeroAca!Japan is anything like present day Japan, almost certainly understands better than they think!

The phrasing, in any case, points towards the dehumanization that heteromorphs, especially animal-associated ones, are subject to.  After all, as Re-Destro might point out, in the post-Advent world, isn’t it the case that any given heteromorphic human’s face, no matter how strange it may be, is de facto a “human face”?  Yet the vitriol from the Spinner fans clearly reflects how internalized it’s become for them, that they don’t look “human,” despite the fact that “looking human” means nothing at all in the time of quirks.

O Koda gets called a traitor by an elderly beaked heteromorph from, apparently, a rural area, underscoring what’s been alluded to a few times prior to this, and which will be laid out explicitly in a few pages, that heteromorphobia is far, far worse in the countryside than it is in the cities.  Mr. Beak assumes—correctly, it seems[5]—that Koda’s a city kid, because why else other than ignorance would a fellow heteromorph stand against them?

5: Koda’s from Iwate Prefecture, which is only above Hokkaido in terms of population density; a bit of research suggests that its largest city, Morioka, is considered to be a mid-sized city.  So that’s definitely the hard upper limit on exactly how “big city” Koda could reasonably be.  That said, Shouji also identifies Koda as someone who grew up in a city, for which I assume he must have at least some basis.

O Spinner’s #2 fulfills the promise of his early shorthanded characterization of being a fiery, well-spoken zealot by standing on top of a building over the mob and exhorting them onward with revolutionary, inflammatory rhetoric.  And boy, does he bring up a lot to talk about!    

Demagoguery for Fun & Profit

O Quirk counselling and quirk education?  Phony nonsense, he says.  That’s a fairly confusing grievance to bring up in this context, so let’s consider what he might have in mind.

• For quirk education, I would contend that BNHA has shown very little of it, in spite of having Academia right there in the title.  The academics in question are about Heroics, after all, not quirks in and of themselves.  Here’s the complete list of what I would say the reader has seen that could be qualified as actual education about quirks:

Aizawa telling the kids(/low tier villains at USJ) some broad generalities, things like a very basic explanation of how quirks work on the genetic level or how they’re classified.  Most of this is delivered in the context of how his quirk works; the only outlier that immediately comes to mind for me is his explanation of how quirks are like muscles, and can be strengthened via training.    

Mirio and Tamaki’s middle school class doing “quirk training,” which is framed as a P.E. class and is specifically aimed at finding ways for each kid to be “useful to society,” not about them learning anything about quirks in a broader sense.    

Endeavor’s recent reference to Nedzu’s alleged “quirk morality education,” about which I have already registered my skepticism.    

The bit in Re-Destro’s monologue to Shigaraki where he mentions he was taught not to judge others by their quirks.  It’s hard to judge how applicable this is to normal society because Re-Destro was raised in a cult, and the book shown during this sequence was released by Curious’s publisher.

So of those options, what is #2 talking about?  I’d say the last one is probably closest to what he means: don’t judge others by their quirks.  But of course, people judge others by their quirks all the time.  Family, classmates, teachers, people in the same neighborhood, heroes and police—we see examples from literally the first page of characters who are being judged by their quirks or lack thereof.  While that judgement doesn’t apply only to heteromorphs, they are, by dint of their visibility, going to face it everywhere they go, regardless of whether any given situation—say, going to the grocery store or on a date—involves quirks or not.  So, whatever lessons people in this society are getting about quirks and judgement, they clearly aren’t absorbing them.

It also bears pointing out, of course, that #2’s personal affiliation is with the Metahuman Liberation Army, and he definitely shows signs—as I’ll get to in a bit—of the quirk supremacism that group is so unanimously painted with in the endgame.  So while the supremacy he’s preaching is about heteromorphs rather than quirks more generally, he could well be saying quirk education is phony because he’s all for judging people on their quirks!  However, his criteria for that judgement differs from both forms of judgement taught by the society he’s railing against—what they practice and what they preach.

• Then there’s quirk counseling, a practice the story most prominently associates with Toga, who’s barely a twitch of the needle away from baseline (though her abuse is not wholly without reference to her appearance, in that her natural smile is repeatedly branded as scary or deviant).  So why bring it up in association with heteromorphs?  My suspicion is that a heteromorph—especially a heteromorph with an animal-associated quirk!—being visibly “different” in some way makes the people around them hyper-sensitive to behavioral “deviations.”

For a start, you see that hyper-sensitivity brought to bear against Toga.  Curious contends that Toga’s sense of “admiration” was a perfectly normal thing, but it was the tie to blood that made it wholly unacceptable.  It’s notable that, before she snapped, Toga was never shown to actually want to hurt people: the bird was already injured when she found it, her friend got a scrape the way any child might, Saito was involved in a fight Toga had no hand in.  She hurts people now because a lifetime of rejection and dehumanization, but Toga’s admiration of blood was not intrinsically indicative that she’d grow up to be violent; people treated it that way because of cultural attitudes towards blood and blood-attraction.

So, might the same sort of thing be true of e.g. animal-associated heteromorphs?  That they might exhibit behaviors which would, in different circumstances, be totally fine, but which they’re judged for unduly harshly because of cultural beliefs about the animal they resemble?  Let me just spitball a few possibilities:

A cat heteromorph who, as a child, showed affection by nuzzling.  That’s fine when a literal kitten is doing it, and funny and cute when a baseline child sees a cat doing it and imitates it for fun, but when the cat heteromorph does it, he makes people uncomfortable, makes them wonder if he lacks self-control, comes off as weird and too-forward.  So his parents rebuke him and bring him to a quirk counsellor to break him of the habit, leading him to feel ashamed and alienated from a harmless natural impulse.    

A snake-headed girl is the first heteromorph in her family line and the way she stares at people so fixedly, never blinking, creeps them out, makes them feel like she’s dangerous.  She isn’t and has no intention of being so, but she’s sent to quirk counselling anyway and the lesson she learns is to just never look people in the eye at all.    

A condor heteromorph develops a morbid interest in corpses in middle school.  He doesn’t want to eat them, he’s not some kind of cannibalistic animal—at least that’s what he told himself before quirk counselling, where his counsellor, like his teachers, assumed that his interest had to be tied to animal instincts.  He wanted to be a mortician, or join the police and get into crime scene investigation, but when he told people that they just looked at him like he was already holding a fork and knife.  (He ends up getting into photography, and just has to live with the fact that now people have two excuses to call him a vulture.)    

Two children—one with a plant-based emitter quirk, the other an eight-eyed spider heteromorph—are caught in the act of killing some insects by a local police officer.  It’s the sort of innocent childhood cruelty you might find anywhere, and, indeed, when the officer calls their school about it, that’s what gets decided about the emitter—he was just a child who didn’t know any better.  But the heteromorph gets recommended for quirk counselling instead—after all, spiders kill insects.  What if this is an early warning sign for instincts towards predatory behavior?  It’s important to nip these things in the bud.

That’s all off the top of my head or taken from some conversation with friends on the topic, and maybe it’s a reach, but it’s also a very plausible explanation for why a heteromorphic idealogue might bring up quirk counselling as a specific grievance—because, like the Villain-designation for criminals, it’s unevenly and unfairly applied.

O The next point #2 makes, and definitely the one that made the biggest splash in fandom at the time, is his invocation of a pair of historical incidents, possibly both but at least one of which was a mass murder targeting heteromorphs, carried out by a bunch of baseline types.  He names them as the 6/6 Incident and the Great Jeda Purge.  These are both stealth Star Wars references, though the former is disguised a bit better by being in the same format that Japan sometimes uses for naming events like attempted coups.[6]  Given the image we see, it’s fair to assume the event in BNHA was similar.

6: See for example the May 15 Incident or the February 26 Incident, called the 5・15 Incident and the 2・26 Incident respectively in Japan. You see this in China as well, with the Tiananmen Square massacre being referred to there as the 6/4 Incident.

Notice that the perpetrators here are mostly holding weapons.  Were they quirkless themselves, or were they avoiding using quirks such that they couldn’t be branded as Villains?  Knowing the answer to that would give us a timeframe for this.

He goes on to declaim, on the basis of these events, that the history of the paranormal is one of persecution and oppression of those with “differing forms.”[7] The term in Japanese there is kotonaru katachi, 異なる形, which uses a different reading of the kanji in igyou (異形) and muscles in a verb conjugation, which has the effect of softening the harshness of 異 somewhat.[8]  This would be a great catch-all term for those with heteromorphic bodies who might or might not have heteromorphic quirks[9] if it weren’t for the fact that literally the only person we ever hear using it is an anti-social zealot.  No one on Team Hero ever makes this kind of distinguishment.

In any case, #2 is obviously over-simplifying to play to his audience—recall the baseline woman we saw back in that shot of Persecuted Early Quirk-Havers back in Chapter 59—but, as I’ve discussed extensively, being more visible does make one a more ready target.  Also, of course, the presence of the CRC in the story lays the groundwork for this sort of historical horror story even long after the worst days of the Advent.

7: I provide my own translation here because the Viz one, “those who don’t fit the mold,” is vague to the point of uselessness.

8: The koto reading, as best I can tell, seems to be pretty rare, often tagged as archaic in words including it.  The i reading is far more common, in words that denote wrongness, divergence, abnormality, and so on.  But it may be less about the reading and more about the fact that adding the verb conjugation makes the term more of a descriptive phrase than a direct noun.  As ever, take my talk about Japanese language minutiae with a grain of salt.

9: “Differing forms” is broad enough, however, that it could also be read as covering, say, people with amputations, congenital anomalies, or other sorts of non-quirk-related disfigurements from accidents or disease.  As in real life, navigating the linguistic space between specificity and Othering can be tricky.

O Next, #2 rhetorically demands what excuse was given by those who perpetrated these slaughters?  He answers his own question with the quote, “They give me the creeps.” Note how this ties in with my earlier suppositions about the likelihood of discrimination worsening the farther one is from baseline, as well as those about the necessity of putting up a good, positive, appealing front.  It’s a perfectly intuitive leap, that more extreme variants of heteromorphy, or those who evoke negative associations—animals tied to rot or bad luck, people made wholly out of green ooze—are going to be more likely to be found “creepy” than those who look like e.g. sexy bunny girls or straight-laced guys who just happen to have pipes jutting out of their calves.  Of course, that’s on something of a sliding scale; the more biased an area is against heteromorphs in general, the easier it will be to find oneself on the wrong side of that line.

O #2 presents the idea that society has reflected on their actions and made amends, or at least that’s how society’s narrative goes.  Illustrating this, we see two of the three heteromorphs in the police force, as well as Nedzu.  Interestingly, the panel does not include any heteromorphic heroes!  I might guess that this is because heroes are meant to use their quirks to serve others; they’re really just enforcement tools, lacking any particular authority beyond a quirk-use license and some admittedly broad soft power courtesy of the social contract.[10] Conversely, a school principal and a police chief (Gori remaining the outlier here) have actual authority, such that the average heteromorphobia-denier can point to them as evidence that heteromorphobia doesn’t exist anymore.

10: Which is to say, I don’t get the impression civilians are required to take orders from heroes, such that they would actually get in legal trouble for disobeying.  The fact that people do typically follow those orders speaks more to the power heroes wield via their association with the police force, as well as the general tendency of people to assume that someone in a uniform giving orders during an emergency is probably a professional whose orders it would be safe and wise to follow.

In the same panel, we also see a baseline guy palling around with a vaguely murine heteromorph dude (he looks more like a mascot suit mouse than an actual mouse, but he’s certainly nowhere close to baseline!), illustrating another way society wants to pretend it’s moved past heteromorphic discrimination.  I can’t help but note, in regards to this specific pair, that the manga uses faces the readers know to illustrate the point about heteromorphs in positions of authority, whereas to make the point about baseline/heteromorph friendships, it has to make up a new pair to show us because the series hasn’t made the time to actually build any (heroic) relationships that actually look like that!

Now, one could argue that using familiar faces to underscore #2’s speech would imply that he’s aware of those faces, and while that’s fine for figures of authority, there’s no reason for him to be aware of e.g. Natsuo and his mousey girlfriend.  However, the same would apply to anyone placed to demonstrate a random urban friendship crossing the “differing forms” line, including those two strangers.  Who are those two, after all, that #2 is any more familiar with them than he would be of Natsuo and mouse gal?

Honestly, I think the best relationship candidate we have—a pair who would both communicate what the panel needs to communicate to the reader and who would feasibly be enough in the public eye to get pointed at for rhetorical purposes by an in-universe speaker—would be Kamui Woods and Mount Lady.  Unfortunately, they don’t work because Horikoshi has never seen fit to actually reveal Kamui Woods’ real face, so they’re much less visibly “a baseline person being emotionally close with a heteromorph” than the random two Horikoshi made up.

O The oratory continues into discussing the divide between city versus rural views on heteromorphs, and this is, to me, the first clear sign that the series is beginning to lose the thread of this plot.  Taking #2 at his word asks us to concede the heteromorphobia has been completely wiped out in cities, eradicated with that wonderful antidote called “education.”  But discrimination very much does exist in cities!  It may be less violent, less extreme, less vocal, but in the form of things like law enforcement bias, housing discrimination, microaggressions, the quirk counselling #2 himself brought up, it’s very much still there!  Now, it could be that he’s just downplaying that discrimination to focus on the really ugly stuff you don’t see in cities, but I don’t know what his reasons for doing so would be?  Not when there’s so much else he could say that would be equally inflammatory without alienating urban heteromorphs by dismissing their still very much present, modern suffering.

O He then brings up the talk of “light”—echoing Skeptic’s earlier rhetoric—and it not reaching those gathered at the hospital, so they must make their own, for people who’ve never once regretted the quirks they were born with can never be their heroes.  What this primarily puts me in mind of is Hawks’s background with heroes prior to his father’s arrest—that heroes were only on TV, not present to save him in his actual life.  Keep that in mind for Shouji’s response later on.

O Towards the end, #2’s speech finally tips over the line from what could plausibly be read as protesting unequal treatment to an outright call for supremacy.  Notably, he doesn’t call for quirk supremacy, but rather for heteromorph supremacy—for the tables to be turned, the cards reversed, for them to not merely be equal, but rather to be superior.

It’s unclear how much of this he’s sincere about and how much is just convenient rhetoric disguising views that are more quirk supremacist in actuality.  For many reasons, I want to read him in good faith: because the MLA originally struck me as being written in good faith throughout MVA and the first war arc; because #2 never once uses his quirk in this mini-arc, casting doubt on him having such an amazing quirk that he’d benefit overmuch from quirk supremacy anyway; and especially because it would be incredibly bad faith on Horikoshi’s part to make a character delivering a speech like this a total bad faith, manipulative outsider.  Unfortunately, #2’s inner monologue in later chapters will make a good faith read all but impossible to sustain.    

O Halfway through his speech, #2 unmasks himself, revealing both his face—dominated by four pairs of pedipalp-esque mouthparts, though the markings on his head are pretty eye-catching, too—and his scar.  We’re never told how he got it, but the implication is certainly that he was attacked for his appearance.  That may just be a conclusion it serves him to let people make, given his bad faith elsewhere, but thankfully the manga doesn’t go so far as to say that explicitly.  In any case, his deliberate reveal turns his wound into a form of performance art, drawing attention to it, forcing it to be a part of the conversation—the polar opposite of Shouji covering his scars because he doesn’t want them to be a part of the conversation about him, and those scars being revealed because his mask is torn off against his will.[11]

11: This also fits a larger pattern of villains, by and large, choosing their expressions of vulnerability, making deliberate shows of agency in how their weakness is perceived by the broader world—Shigaraki taking his hand off for the first time, Dabi’s video, Toga approaching heroes with genuine questions, and so on.  There are certainly exceptions, but generally if a villain shows his “true face,” it’s because they’re making a conscious decision to do so, and may be actively manipulating how that reveal is going to land.  Conversely, heroes want to present a powerful, confident, untarnished image to the public, so their shows of vulnerability all have to be forced out of them after pitched battles or acts of violence.  Heroes don’t make themselves vulnerable to the public on purpose, which feeds into the way the public then treats them when they are forced into vulnerable positions.

O Spinner’s a mess at this point, and the reason he’s a mess is all tied up in his faith in/desire to help Shigaraki.  It’s not explicitly about heteromorphobia, but on the other hand, given that the thing that drove Spinner to be here at all was his horrifically low self-esteem caused by heteromorphobia, maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.  It may have taken Spinner longer than the Tenkos, Touyas, and Chisaki Kais of the world to reach the “fall victim to a dark influence due to the neglect and abuse you faced at the hands of Hero Society” plot, but he certainly got there in the end![12]

12: I call this The Sekoto Peak Problem, and it’s a big criticism of mine about how the final arc is framing all these conflicts as being solely brought about because Bad Faith Villain Men like AFO are scooping up vulnerable people and driving them towards violence, without acknowledging the much worse circumstances those vulnerable people might be in if they were just left to their fates.  Touya, for example, if not for AFO’s timely rescue, would likely have simply died on the mountain long before Endeavor was able to find him.

O Shouji takes the mob to task for attacking a hospital without ensuring the safety of the uninvolved innocents within, a laughable bit of sophistry[13] that accurately foreshadows how disastrous his reasoning will be throughout the rest of these chapters.

13: It’s laughable sophistry firstly because the heroes knew this mob was coming but chose to leave Kurogiri at a hospital anyway; one can mount a very reasonable argument that Kurogiri’s teleportation power qualifies him as a military objective, which would make stashing him at a hospital an actual war crime in an international conflict, as well as negating the hospital’s protected status as a civilian object.  It’s laughable sophistry secondly because it criticizes a Villain-led mob for failing to evacuate the building, as if said mob had exactly the same social cachet possessed by heroes, that they could freely walk in the front door of a hospital and start shouting evacuation orders with reasonable confidence that they’d be obeyed.  Finally, it’s laughable sophistry because Shouji is quite simply wrong about the order of the actions he’s describing—the heroes’ evacuation of Ujiko’s hospital was concurrent with their invasion of said hospital, not precedent to it.

   

Chapter 371: 

O Shouji accuses Spinner of taking actions that will set them back thirty years, which is just a really egregiously victim blamey sort of thing to say, placing the responsibility on heteromorphs for the crimes of those who hate them.

O Koda’s perspective gives us a flashback to Shouji telling his classmates about his history—his town and his scars and his reason for wanting to be a hero.  It’s all material that works in the context of all the set-up we’ve gotten—the CRC and the religious inflection of their specific brand of hatred, the rural heteromorphobia, the hints about Shouji’s own discrimination, the attack on the Ordinary Woman, and so on—but that would have been far better served to have been integrated into the story more naturally.  Koda has no specifically established relationship with Shouji (seriously, there is absolutely nothing; it’s shocking how out of nowhere his sudden deep dedication to Shouji is), nor does the scene he remembers have any specific flags for when it might take place,[14] leaving the memory feeling less like a natural extension of their arc than it is a graceless sequence muscled in to attempt to rouse some emotion in the audience when Koda has a quirk awakening he is not otherwise remotely in dire enough straits to have rightfully earned.[15]

14: Shouto and Bakugou being missing might suggest that they’re off at their remedial license course, which would put the scene somewhere in late September up through December (stretching from the aftermath of Overhaul to the introduction of the MLA), save that there are several other students missing as well—Sero, Iida, Sato, and Aoyama, none of whom where in the remedial course.

15: Nearly every other inarguable quirk awakening[※] we know of in the series has as a chief component serious physical injury: Bakugou, Ochaco, Toga.  Geten’s is the only exception, and his is tied to the strength of his feelings for Re-Destro, which are clearly and overridingly his most significant character trait!  Shouji is not anywhere near that central to Koda’s life, and he sure as hell isn’t injured enough to have gotten it that way.

※: By which measure I exclude stuff like the change in Shigaraki’s Decay or Mina’s acid attack against Gigantomachia.  Shigaraki was explicitly just breaking through a mental block to access power he already had.  Meanwhile, if Mina’s Plus Ultra moment had been a sudden quirk evolution, she wouldn’t already have an attack name picked out for it, nor would her horns have gone back to normal after it.  Acidman: ALMA is an Ultimate Move, not Mina having a quirk awakening.

O The flashback itself calls for another subsection.    

Ignoring the Difference Between the Personal and the Systemic for Fun & Profit

O The big thing here the description of the whole town coming out for a “blood cleansing” whenever Shouji touched someone.  This is depicted as Shouji, probably a preteen in this sequence,[16] being savagely attacked with farming tools, the most visible of which is a pitchfork.  This visual, as well as #2’s invocation of historical slaughters, is the darkest heart of heteromorphobia: a child being ritualistically assaulted in the open street as a matter of course, as a consequence for touching someone.  This is the image you should hold in your mind as The Problem through all of the potential answers and responses that get trotted out through the rest of these chapters.

16: Visibly older/bigger than, say, Kouta, but also visibly younger/smaller than middle school Deku.

Before moving on, I do want to examine this image in just a bit more depth.

This is, firstly, the moment that Shouji got those scars, and it’s very important to note that what we’re being shown is likely not a random, representative sample of what the town “coming out in force for a blood cleansing” looks like.  The strong implication is that this is in the immediate aftermath of the sequence we’ll see shortly of Shouji saving the girl from the river: he’s wearing the same clothes and shoes,[17] he’s the same size, and there’s a spray of blood from where he’s being struck across the mouth where he didn’t have his distinctive scars when he saved the girl.  Does that mean the blood cleansings were typically not this violent?  That’s hard to say.  On the one hand, we don’t see any other scars on Shouji, and he wears his arms pretty bare!  On the other hand, we never see any part of his body bare except his neck and arms, and since he can regrow his arms,[18] they’re not exactly conclusive evidence that he’s never been scarred there.  Also, he does say talk about his situation—the scars he bears—as something other children in the country have to bear, suggesting that the norm is rather worse than a little symbolic gash across the palm or something!     17: In fairness, he may not own very much different, as I’ll discuss shortly.     18: The duplicated ones, at least.  I seem to recall reading once that he could regrow the base set as well, but I’m still working on tracking down a citation on that.    

Secondly, as was the case with the image of the historical massacres, the adults here are using tools/weapons in the assault, not quirks.  As I mentioned in a footnote last time, them not using quirks to carry out this attack makes them merely criminals, not Villains, and therefore not nominally a Hero’s job to deal with.  While I can’t imagine any Hero in the manga these days would stand back and let this go on, the absence still stands out—no Hero is participating in this, nor observing from the sidelines, nor trying to intervene.  Heroes simply don’t figure into this picture at all.    

Thirdly, we can see a few children in the background, both there with adults, I assume their parents.  The child on the right is a passive observer, clinging close to their mother and simply watching; their father has one hand supportively on their shoulder.  Neither parent seems distressed, insomuch as we can tell from their somewhat indistinct features and rather clearer body language.  The child on the left is being actively held back by their mother, who’s standing with her back to the violence, her body interposed between it and her child.  The kid is reaching out towards the scene, but it’s unclear what the intent is.  Are they trying to intervene or do they want to join in?     Neither child appears to be the little girl Shouji saved—the one on the right is dark-haired, and the one on the left—the more likely prospect just going by the body language!—is wearing a long, dark T-shirt instead of the little girl’s overalls.  I suppose the left one could be the little girl if we assume she was hustled out of what she’d been wearing by her parents, eager to get her out of now-tainted (and also soaking wet) clothes and into something dry and warm and, in more ways than one, clean.  However, that seems like the sort of thing that would take longer than what looks to have been a pretty impromptu, disorganized bloodletting, unless everyone just held off on assaulting Shouji right out on the street until the “victim” could be present.    

Finally, there’s the pair of adults right at the center of the background.  If anyone in this picture is actually related to Shouji, I’d put money on them being here, watching but not attempting to intercede.  I don’t think it’s conclusive, though; the woman is thin and hunched, making her look older—I’d guess Shouji’s grandmother before Shouji’s mother.  That hunched posture and her hands being raised to her mouth do give her the most obviously distressed appearance of any of the adult, though, to the extent that the person with her is focused on supporting her rather than watching what’s going on in the foreground—and forward attention is what I’d expect if the dark-haired figure is related to Shouji.

So that’s the image we have of the crowd—actively taking part or observing with varying degrees of reaction running from distress to indifference to, potentially, enthusiasm.

O Next, let’s talk about Shouji’s parents.  He implies they were baseline—at the least they were significantly more baseline than Shouji himself, as they lacked arms “like his.”  That makes it quite telling that Shouji’s parents are nowhere to be seen in his story beyond the simple mention of how they were different than him.

Now, I don’t want to suggest here that Shouji’s parents are completely irredeemable people.  While I would imagine that—at least initially—they shared their town’s bigotry, having a heteromorphic child themselves would have exponentially increased the hardship of their own lives.  In a town like that, I’m sure that many if not all of their neighbors must have come to regard them with suspicion of wrongdoing or transgression—recall the first page of the last chapter, where Shouji is accused of tricking the town in his having brought dirty blood to it.  Hie parents almost certainly lost friends and likely became ostracized themselves, and ostracization in a small Japanese town can be a horrifying thing to deal with.

And yet, even with all that being the case, they didn’t abandon Shouji or give him up; they didn’t commit family suicide with him.[19]  Assuming he wasn’t removed from their custody after the incident, they’re presumably paying his school and living costs;[20] likewise, unless he just ran away from home or is carrying out an incredibly elaborate deception about what school he’s attending, they almost had to support his desire to attend a hero school to begin with.  In his situation, parents who support his desire to be a Hero is a big fucking deal.  After all, between the winning and the saving, heroes will de facto be touching people all the time!  If Shouji’s parents still live in his hometown, how do you think those people will take it when someone first realizes the Shouji family sent their kegare-riddled monster off to be a Hero?

19: The history of honorable suicide in Japan casts a very long shadow, and when it’s combined with the meiwaku culture, you get an underreported epidemic of things like parents who can’t see their way out of a bad situation taking their lives and their children’s as well, so as not to leave messy loose ends that others will have to bear the burden of dealing with.

20: I won’t get into whether or not the U.A. students’ parents are paying for any given thing on the following list, but here are some potential costs to consider, assuming that Shouji, like Uraraka, was commuting from an apartment prior to the dorms being implemented: tuition, school uniforms, textbooks, school supplies, school meal plan, food not served at school (e.g. breakfast and dinner or meals when the school is on break), non-uniform attire, personal care and hygiene, housing and transportation costs, a measure of spending money for unanticipated expenses or culturally expected gift-giving, etc.

All that being said, it’s obviously not a glowingly loving relationship, either.  Think back to Shouji’s absolutely barren room in Chapter 99 and consider it in the context of the information we get in this chapter.  Is he really so ascetic by inclination, or is he just used to making do with as little as possible?  After all, it goes without saying that if him coming into contact with someone called for blood purification, anything he himself was in regular contact with was also to be considered incredibly impure.  That includes his clothes, personal belongings and living space; even setting aside his parents’ view on it, who in his hometown would even want to provide or sell things to the family that they think will go to the child with the dirty blood that’s defiling their land?

Shouji’s parents’ absence is also glaring in other ways.  For example:

They’re either not in the beating scene image above at all or they’re that central background couple hanging back and just watching; whichever is the case, what they’re assuredly not doing while their son is being beaten so badly he will still have glaringly visible scars years later is “trying to stop the violence or take the blows themselves.”    

Shouji says he has one single good memory about his body, but his parents are nowhere to be found in that memory.  Ergo, his parents have not given him a single moment of positivity about his heteromorphic form.    

Parents of U.A. students were evacuated to U.A.—not just the ones near it, but even ones like Uraraka’s parents, who live at least a two hour drive away, in a wholly different prefecture with a third prefecture in between them and U.A.  Every student we see in the departure scene in Chapter 342 is shown with their parents except Shouji.

To sum all that up, Shouji’s family situation is not maximally bad, but it’s certainly proximally bad.

O Next, we get Shouji alleging ignorance on the part of heteromorphs raised in cities, that there are still parts of the country in the modern day where stories like his happen.[21]  It’s a milder version of the same assertions made by #2 and the beaky heteromorph last chapter, in that Shouji doesn’t suggest heteromorphobia doesn’t exist at all in cities, simply that there are extremes of violence that can only be found in the country.  It still feels off, however, to suggest that absolutely no one else in Shouji’s class might ever have heard of this through any channel at all: being from similarly small towns, reading about an attack in the news, reading about factors that impact the public approval ratings for Heroes, going through a morbid phase in middle school and researching it, being talked to about it by their parents, etc.

21: The suggestion of the Viz translation of this suggests that city-raised heteromorphs do know this, but only because they’re read about it in textbooks.  My sister-in-law, who does professional translation, tells me this was a subtle mistranslation of the original text, however; the textbook framing is supposed to imply a remove of time, not merely of distance.

It’s not as unrealistic a story beat here as it would be in an American comic, as Japan does tend more towards using silence as a weapon against bigotry—children won’t learn what they aren’t taught, and similar reasoning.  Still, to portray the class as so unanimously ignorant reflects a deep incuriosity, be that in the kids themselves about the world around them or in their author about how the knowledge/perpetuation of discrimination spreads.

This is particularly the case when you consider the story’s handling of the Ordinary Woman—attacked in her own town because people were suspicious of a heteromorph out after dark, turned away from multiple shelters because of her heteromorph status.  It’s certainly true that things got worse for heteromorphs after the first war arc, but for discrimination in that specific form to emerge, there needed to be something for it to draw on.  The fear of villains and the association of villains with heteromorphs are the foundation for the upswelling in anti-heteromorph sentiments in cities.

O Mina’s reaction to all this is one of rather theatrical anger.  That is, no one around her takes her broad declarations—that the world would be better off without the people who hurt Shouji—as anything more serious than hyperbole.  This is, it would seem, the only sort of anger that’s acceptable to show in response to hearing a story like Shouji’s—empathy to the wronged, sure, but no real intent to confront the wrongdoers.

O Mineta stares into space for a second before emphatically apologizing for calling Shouji an octopus once—a call all the way back to his microaggression in Chapter 6!—and asserting that it wasn’t his intention to say Shouji was gross or anything.  Shouji responds gracefully, saying it’s “only natural” that his arms would make people think of octopus.

He doesn’t go on to say, “But that doesn’t mean people have to say it out loud,” but it’s possible that Mineta’s apology is meant to suggest that regardless.  At least, one certainly hopes this isn’t the author’s way of quietly absolving his more popular characters of all the times they’ve done the same thing!  It’s notable, however, that none of the other Class 1-A kids that have done this are in the scene.  Shouto and Bakugou, who have both used that kind of language in anger (and in the latter’s case, also just with no provocation whatsoever) are the missing elephants in the room, and even Sero, who was the actual person to call Shouji an octopus, is, in his absence, Sir Letting The Gag Character Handle This Apology So I A More Serious Character Don’t Have To.

O Shouji brings up the Heroes Who Look Like Villains rankings.  We know the Number 1 on that list is actually Endeavor, per a movie bonus booklet, but bringing it up in this context does implicitly confirm that said rankings have an unseemly slant towards heteromorphs, and what did Skeptic say about Villains and heteromorphs again…?

O Shouji says he wears the mask because he knows that if people see his scars, they’ll wonder about them, and fear he’s out for revenge.  He doesn’t want people to think that, so he covers them up.  He’s praised for this by Tokoyami, and the narrative pretty clearly also thinks it’s admirable and cool.  I have serious issues with this—chiefly that it’s prioritizing the oblivious comfort of the baseline citizens over the fellow feeling and affirmation of other persecuted heteromorphs—but I’m also curious to see if the mask will come back now that its meta-narrative purpose of hiding Shouji’s scars from the reader has been fulfilled.  I note, for example, that Shouji is not wearing the mask in the color spread for Chapter 394, and the color art does have some precedent for being an early predictor of stuff in the body of the manga.[22]

Incidentally, while I’m talking about Shouji’s mask, I do wonder how effective it would even be for him to cover his scars up?  I have my doubts for two reasons.  First and most obviously, heroes are such celebrities, all over the news all the time, such that if Shouji really does get as popular as he intends to, there will be people who want to know what he looks like.[23]

22: The big one is Aizawa’s eyepatch.  It showed up in two pieces of color art (the popularity poll results spread for Chapter 293 and the new art announcing the BNHA Drawing Smash Exhibition) before it was revealed in the manga.  Both pieces released within days of each other in early December, 2020, three months after Shigaraki raked his hand down Aizawa’s face during the war and almost two months before the latter showed up in bandages in the hospital, with another two months to go beyond that before the eyepatch itself made it to the manga in late March.  In a more stealth spoiler, the same popularity spread revealed Shigaraki’s blackened, burned face-hand two chapters prior to Spinner digging it out of Shigaraki’s pants.  The 394 spread is also my basis for asserting that Mina’s horns have gone back to normal after her attack against Gigantomachia, compared to Shouji lacking his mask and Koda having his new horn in the same spread.

23: Edgeshot’s character profile page notes that his fans are split into two factions: those who’re mad to see his real face and those who think the mask is what makes him cool.

O More importantly, though, heroes have to be licensed, and Hero Licenses are photo IDs.  Photo IDs don’t typically allow face coverage because not being able to provide a visual reference to what the bearer looks like defeats the whole purpose.  While we don’t know what full-fledged hero licenses look like to say if they’re taken in or out of costume, we do know the provisional licenses the students carry showed them in their school uniforms, despite the fact that they definitely had working costumes by then:

Pardon the sudden screenshot. The manga has this shot, too, but the anime fills in the details of the text a bit more.

It seems probable to me that the photo on a Hero License must show the bearer’s face, so that if they’re tooling around a crime scene and a cop who hasn’t seen them around before asks for their license, it can reliably be used as a form of identification.  (I wonder how Hagakure manages?)

Also, think back to the press conferences we’ve seen in the story, most recently the one post-war: at every one, the heroes are in serious, solemn black suits, not their costumes.  So at any press conferences Shouji ever has to speak at in the future, he’ll have to show his face there, as well.

O We see a direct flashback to Shouji saving a little girl from drowning in a choppy, swift-flowing river as he says in voiceover that he’d rather cling to the single good memory related to his body than dwell on the bad memories.  He very much uses his quirk to do it, with his right set of limbs used to hold onto the bank while his left ones reach out to the girl, extending out another few “nodes” of arm-length when he at first can’t keep hold of her fingers.  As they sit and catch their breath afterward, the girl clings to one of his tentacles and cries.  This is not quite what his entry in the Ultra Analysis databook was hinting at[24] when it said he wears the mask due to his scary face making a little girl cry; that’ll be next chapter.

24: My apologies for not bringing this up before; it’ll be covered on AO3.  The gist is as detailed above; the databook came out circa the Endeavor Agency arc, so this was a known factoid about Shouji by the time this chapter came out three years later.

O Wrapping up the flashback, we’re left with Koda’s memory of Shouji saying that he knows it’ll take longer than a generation to tear down a wall that’s stood for over a century, so, just as previous generations have done, he’ll keep paying it forward, being the coolest hero the world’s ever seen, “to give good memories to generations to come.”  Which sounds really nice when he says it that way, as opposed to the broader implication that people whose children have been or are in danger of being maimed by bigots should just keep their heads down and “keep paying it forward.”

The whole “be a cool hero and give good memories” bit is particularly egregious to my eye, for a few reasons.

How much good did cool heroes do for Takami Keigo when they were just on TV?  Which is where Shouji will be, because in order to be “the coolest hero the world’s ever seen,” he’s going to have to be at the top of the rankings, and being at the top of the rankings means prioritizing cities, which means all those heteromorphs out in rural areas are never going to see him in person.  And anyway, what’s stopping all those bigots from just changing the channel or going on a rant about Woke Mutie Agendas every time a heteromorphic hero crops up on TV?    

How much did the visibility of previous generations’ cool heroes do for Spinner?  Does Shouji think Spinner was super inspired and uplifted by seeing e.g. Gang Orca on TV using the emitter-like hypersonic waves his quirk gives him to beat up Villains, an undue percentage of whom are also heteromorphs?

It’s certainly nice that Shouji was inspired enough by heroes on TV to want to emulate them, but he is demonstrably not the norm when it comes to wildly disadvantaged and victimized heteromorphs.  Also, I have to wonder how much his admiration of TV heroes would have done him if he’d gotten to the girl just a little later—say, in time to get her out of the river, but too late to be able to save her life without knowing CPR.  As bad as it was for him when he saved a little girl but had to touch her to do it, can you imagine how much worse it would have been if he’d touched her and then failed to save her, being found or having to walk back into town with her body?

I realize that's incredibly dark, but it's the kind of question that presents itself when the story is so insistent on Shouji's exemplary behavior being the model for heteromorphs to follow in their own lives.

   

O Exiting the flashback, when Shouji calls out to the heteromorphs, we finally get a straight-out look at how disastrous this conclusion is going to be in the way he shouts that no, the people who hurt them weren’t justified, but that there has to be a better way, that they should think about how to use their rage—but offers exactly zero suggestions himself for what that better way might be, or what they should be using their rage to do instead.[25]

25: I have seen the argument put forth that Shouji is one (1) teenager, and one (1) teenager cannot fairly be asked to Solve Bigotry.  To this, I would counter that if Shouji doesn’t have even one (1) single idea to offer, why is the camera lens holding him up as the hero who quelled a fifteen-thousand-strong mob with only words?  He doesn’t have to Solve Bigotry, but if he’s going to be used as a counter for other peoples’ misguided but at least active attempts to address the problem, he needed to be better than a mere white knight for the status quo.

Spinner’s #2 calls Shouji out on this directly, saying that if the situation were that easy to resolve, it wouldn’t have come down to this, and accusing Shouji of having no feasible solution to offer, just childish and naïve egotism.  And call me a hopeless MLA Stan and you’d be right, but truly, where’s the lie?

His efforts in this regard, however, wind up pushing Koda to what certainly has all the markings of a quirk awakening because it upsets Koda to see Shouji being “mocked.”  Man, sure is a good thing quirk awakenings are just a dime a dozen and definitely don’t require life-threatening injuries and/or incredibly severe emotional distress over someone who means more to you than your own life, right?

O In a last little stroke of ugliness for the chapter, Spinner calls Shouji gross.  Just to, you know, make it really obvious that the villains are all totally bad faith representation for this cause and thus can be safely dismissed.  (Christ, I hate these chapters.)

   

Chapter 372: 

O We get the flashback of Shouji and Koda asking All Might to assign them to the hospital defense group.  Points of note:

Neither Shouji nor All Might can be bothered to use the Ordinary Woman’s real name, instead just referring to her by her size.  Seriously, I get the intent behind insisting that she’s just an ordinary woman, that there’s nothing in particular stand-out about her in the current age; it’s pretty much the same deal as Shinomori saying that OFA can no longer be wielded by an “ordinary” person, with that phrasing being used to ironically emphasize that quirks are now seen as ordinary, while those without quirks are the unusual ones.  However, it obviously wouldn’t work in-universe for characters trying to specify who they’re talking about to say, “That ordinary woman,” with the end result being that they have to grab for what stands out about her if they want to be understood—in this case, her obviously unusual height.  In trying to emphasize that she’s normal, Horikoshi forces his characters to define her by what makes her stand out.    

Koda says that if Shouji’s going, he is too, a moment that would really land much better if they’d had literally any interactions of note at literally any point prior to this exact moment.  Frankly, even last chapter’s flashback is pretty thin on that front, since Koda is not one of the students who gets speaking lines when cuddling up to Shouji to comfort him.  (I’m not even convinced it’s very in character for Koda to be one of the kids diving in for cuddles—he’s usually pretty shy!)    

Shouji says that he could never call himself a hero if he were to stand back while the hospital attack plays out, implicitly emphasizing the role his reaction to his own oppression plays in his heroic motivation.

O Another flashback[26] gives us Koda’s mother discussing the possibility that he might get horns like hers someday, and what those horns can do, as well as mentioning that she used to have to put up with considerable mistreatment herself, and, lastly, telling her son to grow up into a man who gets angry when people mock those dear to him.

26: The sheer number of them crammed into this mini-arc really says a lot for how rushed it is, but complaining about the structural problems of the last few arcs would be a different essay.

Breaking those down, we’ve got:

The fact that Koda’s mom says he might grow in horns like hers suggests to me pretty strongly that her own horns are a quirk evolution she just doesn’t have the language to name as such.  If it were just a matter of maturation, something that came in with puberty, there’d be no “maybe” about it.  Given what we know about the context of quirk evolutions elsewhere, this in turn suggests that she did not exactly get her horns under peaceful, wholesome, uplifting circumstances!    

This is backed up by her mention of the “real cruelty” she faced.  Interestingly, this kind of raises some questions in relation to Shouji’s assertion last chapter that people like Koda who grew up in cities lack an understanding of the extremes of heteromorphobic violence that endure elsewhere.  Did Koda’s parents move to the city from the country at some point when Koda was young/before he was born, and the “real cruelty” was out in the country?  That might track with the overalls she was wearing.  And of course, Koda’s mother was a younger woman then, so maybe it’s just the fact that heteromorphic discrimination was worse at the time.  Either way, Koda’s mother is clearly open with him about the fact that she was mistreated because of her appearance, though she may have downplayed the severity of it.    

The idea of Shouji being “dear to Koda” is immensely frustrating for how utterly groundless it is, based on absolutely no prior grounding within the story other than the general bond among the 1-A students.  That’s just me complaining, though—more pertinent for this essay is the problem with how this moment frames anger.  Like, the whole mini-arc has the same problem, but this chapter is particularly rotten with it.  To preview: Koda’s anger is portrayed as righteous, as was his father’s, because their anger is about protection, about defensive reaction, about intervening with harm currently in progress—basically all the stuff Heroes are supposed to do.  It is notably not about action based on past harm or proactive attempts to prevent future harm.

O Koda’s bird attack knocks Spinner’s #2 off the roof in one of the most egregious examples of, “I can’t come up with an actual counterpoint for his arguments, so I’ll just shut him up through force,” I’ve ever seen.  Sure, there’s something to be said for not engaging bad faith parties in good faith arguments, but like…  That guy already had a platform of his arguments—he was standing on the roof of a tall building!  The author gave him several pages to make his pitch; the argument’s already out there in the readers’ minds!  The only thing getting rid of him does is guarantee that the person the taciturn Shouji actually has to argue with is…Spinner.  Who is not exactly a born orator at the best of times, and he’s very far from even that level here.

Now, #2 will get a few more lines next chapter, but they’re against one of the people on his own side.  No heroic character has to argue #2 down; instead, they get to match wits with the literally drooling Spin-zilla.  Which is a bit like stepping into the wrestling ring with someone who’s had a bag thrown over his head and his hands zip-tied behind his back.

This confrontation is, woefully, not the only place in the endgame where a heroic character gets all the time and freedom in the world to make their big pronunciations while their opponent gets shut down by some outside factor—interference from other villains, psychological decay, literal possession—but it’s in particularly stark relief here.

O Shouji contends that the crowd is letting their pain be exploited, which is a fair cop, but will become difficult to square with his praise of them next chapter.

O He says that these peoples’ children might be the next targets, presumably because of their actions here today.  This is particularly maddening because it’s coming from someone who was, himself, already targeted as a child!  Not because of anything his parents did, and certainly not because of anything bad he did, but simply because of the bigoted, backwards views of his town.  Children already and still are being targeted!  Shouji’s backstory is all wrong for this stand, and there’ll be another angle on that next chapter as well.

O Here we finally fulfill the promise of Shouji’s databook entry and see the Little Girl Crying Because His Face Was Scary.  She wasn’t crying because she was just scared of his face in isolation, but rather because she sees his face being scary as her fault, directly correlating his wounds to her rescue.[27] Those wounds stand in marked contrast to what happens when other people save small helpless children from danger, and underlines the biggest problem with this whole resolution: the idea that simply Being An Hero will create change.

27: My big question is, “Given that him being in contact with her was so bad it got him scarred for life, how did she even sneak out to see him again to give him this tearful apology?  Did young Shouji even want this apology, or would he have preferred she not risk the two of them being seen together again for both their sakes?

Now, it’s certainly likely in Horikoshi’s world that this little girl will, herself, grow up to be different from the people around her, that she won’t think heteromorphs are tainted.  And like, that’s at least one less person being awful, right?  And doesn’t every one count?

Sure, of course—but what happens when she runs up against that prejudice herself?  Will she try to intervene the next time she sees a blood cleansing?  Will she simply abstain from such action and teach equality in her own household without trying to change the village around her?  Will she simply move away and leave her hometown worse for her absence?  If she does stay in that town, will she herself become an outcast for her views—a form of silent, passive harassment that can be absolutely life-wrecking in those small Japanese villages?  If she gets married and has children, will her husband have her back in trying to raise those kids free of hatred?

For that matter, isn’t there a chance that, being surrounded in people who think heteromorphs are tainted, that she’ll just internalize something like, “It was my carelessness that got that poor heteromorph boy beaten so badly.  He was trying to help, and it only got us both hurt—him for the beatings, me for being in contact with his filth.”  Like, she’s so young in that scene; she’s got a whole lotta years of having the anti-heteromorph narrative reaffirmed at her before she’s old enough to do anything different herself.  It feels to me like the kind of thing that she could easily fall back into as she grows up, only to have a huge spiritual crisis about it once she hits her late teens to early twenties.

In any case, it's just a lot to put on a single child—on her and Shouji both!

O Spinner rallies enough to yell out a message of his own, but it’s just a quote of what he told his followers when he first sent out the call, not anything new to rally them, nor tailored to respond to what Shouji’s saying.  This has been the danger of the plotline all along, and here it comes to fruition: in putting bad faith villains with ulterior motives[28] up against an underdeveloped character who’s hidden the evidence of his mistreatment from Day 1, someone with no apparent intention to ever speak up for others like himself, no one comes out looking good.  Truly, heteromorphs deserve better rep.

28: #2 is the obvious one, but Spinner’s here in bad faith, too.  While I’m sure he’s not totally indifferent to the matter of heteromorph rights, it’s self-admittedly not his current priority.

O That said, if what Spinner says is old hat to the crowd, it is new to the audience, and it serves to sharply up the ante on from what we knew previously about the persecution he faced in his hometown!

But it would have gotten better if he’d just put on a mask and dealt with it, amirite?

Recall that Spinner has previously only said that people in his town called him names—this is self-evidently many steps worse.  Note, though, that it’s another example of the violence heteromorphs face not involving anyone using quirks—that is to say, nothing that’s a hero’s jurisdiction to deal with.  That being the case, how much could Spinner get away with fighting back or running before the “it’s okay to use quirks in self-defense” stops holding?  After all, is it still self-defense if biased cops[29] can accuse him of “escalating” the conflict?  How far away can he get by climbing on walls before it becomes, to some small-town local Hero, unlicensed public quirk use?

29: If policing in HeroAca Japan still works basically the same as it does in IRL Japan, then in truly backwater areas, ones too small to afford the upkeep of a police department, an officer would be sent in from another area to live in a home attached to the police box.  That being the case, it’s not a given that the officer would share the locals’ bigotry.  That’s where we come back to the whole “what percentage of Villain-designated criminals are heteromorphs” statement and what it implies about bias in the law enforcement system.  Also too, building a strong relationship with the community is absolutely essential to rural policing, and there are, oh, so many stories about what happens when someone new in a small Japanese town gets between the inhabitants and their “traditional spiritual practices.”

O Pig Nose Guy starts making an impression by noticing the doctors—most prominently Dr. Yoshi, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a baseline nurse—forming a human chain in front of the hallway leading to the Inpatient Ward.  This drama is undercut on both fronts by the fact that Spinner is not looking for the Inpatient Ward, and in fact barrels right on past that hallway without even glancing in its direction.  So, the mob stops because they’re struck to hesitation by a group of people protecting a part of the hospital that the mob was not even intending to assault in the first place.

O As part of stopping, Pig Nose Guy seems to have some sort of flashback to a time he saw Dr. Toad caring for an elderly baseline man.  This raises a lot of questions to my by-this-time hyper-critical eyes.

What past circumstance brought Pig Nose Guy—presumably fairly rural, as most of this crowd is implied to be—to Central Hospital, the most technologically advanced hospital in the entire country?    •  If Pig Nose Guy is not rural, but was still so fired up about heteromorphobia that he joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital, wouldn’t that suggest that a lot of people in the story have been misleading us about the extent of anti-heteromorph sentiment in cities?    

If the person in the bed is someone related to Pig Nose Guy—perhaps someone with a rare illness that requires specialized treatment?—why is the guy entirely baseline?  If it’s just a friend, then they must be very close, given that PNG was willing to take a trip to the Tokyo metropolitan area to visit him.  But if PNG is that close to a baseline guy, why did he ever believe that baseline folks are such a lost cause that he, again, joined a terrorist-led mob to attack a hospital?    

Why is this important, impactful memory one of a heteromorph in a caretaker role instead of being taken care of?  To elaborate on why that question matters, a common issue you’ll see minority groups raise when talking about representation in media is the role any given minority character performs in their narrative—the gay best friend there to give the straight female lead advice, the Black person there to help a white person self-actualize, that sort of thing.  This is not so much a critique of any given, specific character as it is criticizing the restrictions on of what demographics are allowed to be portrayed as full, rounded individuals in popular media versus which are relegated to stock stereotypes or supporting cast.     This isn’t something BNHA addresses explicitly, but I do think we have some precedent for suspecting heteromorphs in this world have similar problems—think of the image for Class B’s play in Chapter 173, Gang Orca playing the Villain at the license exam, and, most egregiously, the Hug Me Corporation and its all-baseline-all-the-time image of bystanders and victims.  That being the case, it really gets to me that Pig Nose Guy’s memory here has the man in the hospital bed being baseline while it’s the doctor who’s the heteromorph.     Like, what does that communicate about his mindset, exactly?  “Oh, I remember this time I saw a heteromorph who’d managed to actually kind of Make It in society and he was nice to the baseline guy in his care.  But the spider guy leading us, he didn’t sound like he wanted us to be very nice at all.  Is that what I am?  Not nice?”  On the other hand, if the whole point of this memory is to remind PNG that there can be peace and support between heteromorphs and “people with human faces,” why in heaven’s name isn’t this a memory of a heteromorph being cared for and supported by a baseline person?  Why does the person doing the labor in this picture have to be of the oppressed class?

I hate this panel so much.

   

Chapter 373: 

O The last conversation plays out between Pig Nose Guy, #2, and Shouji, revealing #2 to be a bad faith idealogue who thinks of Shouji with microaggressions and his followers as meatshield patsies.  It’s real bad.

O Shouji says that the feelings that led the mob to come today are neither useless nor wrong, and that their willingness to keep thinking about everything makes them look like a bright and shining light to his eyes.  However, he carefully does not engage with the fact that those feelings, which were previously aimless and directionless, were only stirred up and stoked to the point of “coming today” by the villains.  It’s the same sort of thing the villains always get told, really—you may have a point, you have suffered, but when you act on that point, that suffering, then you’ve gone too far.  All you’re really supposed to do with that pain is—what, exactly?  Thinka bout it and choose to Nobly Endure?

O The last little bit of insult to this chapter, to my eye, is #2 getting an apology from some anonymous hero we’ve never seen in our lives, who says, “We’ve heard your voices loud and clear today.  Sorry for not realizing sooner.”

Remember the bit where the person who apologizes to Shouji for the octopus comment is Mineta, the gag character, instead of Sero, the serious character who brought it up in the first place?  Remember the conspicuous absence of Bakugou and Todoroki, who have actually used that language with conscious demeaning intent?  This apology is the systemic version of that absolute unwillingness on Horikoshi’s part to let his sympathetic/popular/important characters look bad.  It’s the same thing that led to none of the heroes who retired after the war being heroes the readers know and care about, the same thing behind the total collapse of the series’ critique of All Might.  Heroes are allowed to be ignorant, but they are not allowed to be complicit.

Notice, too, what this random hero does not say, what Shouji does not offer, the absence that damns this resolution: any promises of concrete change.  We’ve finally gotten to the crux of Horikoshi’s point, as delivered by Shouji, and it really does all boil down to this:

And I can’t overstate enough what a terrible resolution this is, especially given how Shouji’s own experience puts the lie to it.  Remember, Shouji saved a child from drowning, one of the absolute most prototypical actions someone can do and get called a Hero by the bystanders/victims/evening news.  The only thing he could have done that would have been more stereotyped would have been saving her from a burning building!  He saved that little girl from drowning and the townsfolk attacked him with farming tools for it.

How much more heroic would he have needed to be?  How much more of a shining light could he possibly have been?  In what universe could someone with that backstory possibly think that the answer to systemic bigotry—violence that goes wholly accepted by the community and wholly unpunished by the broader society—could be this Model Minority bullshit?

Ultimately, for Shouji’s backstory to realistically have given him the motivation he professes, his actions needed to have changed the people in his village for the better.  If the reader is meant to believe that Shouji’s “answer”—the premise that selfless heroism can change the hearts of bigots—then we have to see it.  And, you know, even if that had been what we got, there would still be grounds to criticize it!  It would still be a perhaps-too-idealistic depiction of fighting oppression; it would still put too much responsibility on the victims!  But at least it would justify Shouji’s own stance.

As it is, we have Shouji choosing to believe in the changeability of people who specifically shouted while throwing rocks at him that, no matter how much the times advanced, they would never accept him.  His answer does not entail a single non-heteromorph working to bring heteromorphs living in the darkness a light; it entails them kindling their own.  As with Pig Nose Guy shutting down in the face of a memory of a heteromorph doctor, this resolution asserts the life-changing power of…being told that heteromorphs have to do all the work to make baseline people feel better.

   

Conclusion

Do I think that this terrible resolution means heteromorphobia was poorly set up or retconned?  No, I don’t.  I just think it means that Horikoshi is a Japanese man writing a Japanese story from a position of demographic privilege in Japanese society.  I think he’s fully capable of setting up a detailed, intelligent, thoughtful discrimination allegory, a logical, internally consistent extension of the discrimination in the world around him to the alternate future he’s created—and then coming to a completely different resolution than I would because his context led him to different answers than I wanted or found acceptable.  Compared to the U.S., Japan as a culture is more communal, more collectivist; they have less history with successful protest movements, more history with protest movements turning violently extremist or just being ignored by those in power.  The idea of “not making trouble for others” is an incredibly deeply engrained value.

I have a decent idea why this resolution is what it is.  I can try to make myself view it through the more generous, forgiving lens of Cultural Differences; I can fail to do so and instead conclude that this is portrayal is much less about Cultural Differences than it is yet another in a long chain of Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Author Writes Discrimination Allegory, Fucks It All Up Because of His Well-Meaning Majority-Culture Centrism.  That doesn’t mean I believe heteromorphobia came out of nowhere, and I hope this essay has at least demonstrated that much, whatever you might think of its resolution.

——————————

Thank you so much for taking this journey with me, all! At 42,000 words and 93 pages in Word, there's definitely more I'd like to do with this, chiefly taking a spin through the Vigilantes spinoff, which I've always found to be very good at grappling with practical questions and concerns BNHA Core largely ignores. The character of Kamayan is particularly relevant to this topic.

However, for now, I'm going to take a break on this subject and turn my attention to something else. I'm not sure what it'll be quite yet, but meta projects that have moved towards the top of my list concern the ridiculous series of nerfs Toga has been subjected to in this endgame, arc thoughts on everything I hate about the stupid, stupid All Mech fight, and an organized argument for the endgame being chock-full of retcons that are obvious if you look at them for more than the five minutes it takes to read a chapter each week.

You may notice that all of those are pretty negative-sounding, and you would be right. Given that the whole reason I stopped doing my chapter posts is that I was weary of the constant negativity, the actual next thing I do will probably be to get back to one of my neglected MLA fanfic projects.

'Til next time, all!

#bnha #bnha meta #bnha worldbuilding #heteromorph discrimination plot #octolad #plf advisors #my writing #preview for Vigilantes: #Kamayan is a crank and that distracts everyone #from realizing that Kamayan is also right