#i have an entire post to myself but here i am hiding in the tags

[arachine]

— ❝on this fateful night...two hearts danced.❞ ˚₊✩‧₊

ᥫ᭡ pairing :: neteyam sully x human! reader

ᥫ᭡ synopsis :: in omaticayan culture, a young na’vi male does not yet become a full fledged adult until he passes one of two rites of passage: 1) choosing an ikran, and 2) carving a bow from the wood of Hometree (and/or choosing a woman). reader is now 20, and the only man she’s ever loved is expected to choose a wife soon. one day when she overhears a rumor concerning neteyam and the first woman in line to betroth him, reader is struck with grief, ultimately venturing off deep into the forest where she knows nobody will follow her—somewhere forbidden. however, unbeknownst to her, a certain someone follows her trail…

ᥫ᭡ genre :: mature

ᥫ᭡ general tags :: 18+ (explicit sexual content, explicit language), angst, fluff

ᥫ᭡ content warnings :: characters aged up to 20, use of alcohol, inebriation, size kink (kinda), vaginal fingering, oral sex (f receiving), male masturbation, overstimulation, riding (no penetration), m/f ejaculation, squirting…i took some things out but i think that’s it?

ᥫ᭡ notes :: what a long week this has been…but we made it! i cannot believe the first thing i post after being on hiatus for months is blue alien sex. anyway, i hope you all enjoy. also, be mindful that the dialogue switches between formal and casual. it’s something that i noticed neteyam and kiri do a lot in the movie. for what reason? idk…but the big font after the read more is intentional bc ik some ppl complain that the small font hurts their eyes :3

ᥫ᭡ word count :: 7.2k

— playlist :: spotify link

“You have been wandering off by yourself a lot lately…” 

There goes that attentiveness, you could never put anything past her—Kiri, that is. She was just too good (to a fault), and though her keen eye and emotional intelligence were extremely useful, they were also the most aggravating traits about her. 

Now, you could just tell her the truth about the place you’re always wandering off to, and you also could confide in her about the thing that’s been plaguing your mind recently—but you don’t, because you know better.  

For a split second, though, you hesitate telling her. The lean girl tilts her head, eyes flitting between your face and the satchel in your hands. Smoothly, you pull the satchel across your body and shift it to rest behind you—out of sight. 

Kiri seems to notice your apprehension, and so, she peels her eyes from the bag, offering you her full attention by resuming eye contact once again. If she has even the slightest hunch that you’re hiding something, she doesn’t voice her suspicions.

“Well, I won’t pry, sister. You know that I am always here to listen,” she reassured, reaching out a gentle hand towards your face. You let the tips of her fingers graze your cheek, the warmth of her hand providing transitory comfort. 

The two of you exchange sweet smiles before you pull away. It was getting dark, and the longer you stayed here, the harder it’d be to avoid the very thing you were trying to get away from—the very person you were trying to get away from. 

“I know, Kiri,” you grabbed her hand, encasing it between your own, “I know…but—I have to go. I promise I’m alright. I’ve just…been doing some thinking, and I think I gotta sort some things out with myself before I can be around the rest of you, you know?” 

There’s a silence between the two of you, and you’re not exactly sure if she’s taken offense to what you’ve just said, or if she’s carefully choosing her words. You decide on the latter though, because the last thing you want to do is make her feel as if she’s done something wrong, or if anyone has done something wrong. This was entirely on you; you and your stupid, selfish human heart. 

“Yes, I know what you mean,” she replies, squinting her eyes. Again, there’s a silence, but you can tell she still has something to say, like she’s mulling it over. “Will you at least be here tonight? You know, for the big feast? Everyone will be here, even Neteyam,” the girl tsks playfully, shaking her head as she walks circles around you. 

Immediately your body stiffens, and she responds to this by teasing you, “Or, I could just save you something…or maybe i’ll ask Neteyam to save you something since he’ll be the most important man tonight.”

“And why would you do that?” the words leave your tongue before you have the chance to process them. It reads rather defensively, but you ignore it. “I mean, why—why ask Neteyam?” 

“Because he’s your friend…” kiri pokes you, “because you love him,” she whispers, only this time her voice is a lot more serious, a lot quieter—a whisper. This is when you get that feeling again. 

That weird, achy feeling that leaves your stomach in knots and your throat all puffy. The sensation is debilitating—suffocating, and the only way you know how to ease it is by doing what you had set out to do in the first place (though, you were swiftly interrupted).

“Don’t be silly, Kiri,” your smile drops solemnly, “we’re…friends, just friends. Besides, he’s going to be spoken for soon. There are a lot of Na’vi women who would make fine mates…” Your voice decrescendos into the forest night air, the conversation lasting a lot longer than you’d anticipated. To stop your solemn mood from being expressed outwardly, you quickly turn around, looking back once to speak.

“Anyway, I have to go now. I’ll see you later.” Kiri nods and waves bye, her eyes watching as your small frame disappears out of her family’s tent. 

A cacophony of voices and music fall on deaf ears as you make your way through the village. The preparation is beginning, but all you can think about is him. Him, him, him. 

And ever since you overheard a rumor that Neytiri and Mo’at had chosen the next in line to become tsahik after Neytiri, your heart stopped beating…because you knew. You knew exactly what this meant—the end.

Neteyam was to be a future olo’eyktan, after all. And in Na’vi culture, the future head of the clan and the future spiritual representative were to be betrothed. You knew that, and yet, you couldn’t fathom it. Because then it’d be the end. 

The end of your late night rendezvous, the end of your special talks, the end of your banter, and your clandestine glances—your whispers. The ones that were quiet, and innocent…the ones that tingled the shell of your ears. Meant for him and you only. 

It was selfish, really. Stupid. You knew the day would come when he’d have to grow up and fulfill his duties as a Na’vi male. Just not this soon though, you wanted to hold onto him a little longer. And if drinking your pain away to preserve those precious memories could do that, then you’d do it. 

Lost in your train of thought, you don’t register that you’ve walked yourself right into the heart of a crowd until you bump into a young na’vi child. Apologizing, you then attempt to squeeze through the sea of bodies, tapping lightly on people’s legs until you reach the front. The people were cheering, celebrating the hunters’ return and the game that the Great Mother had graciously given them. 

Slowly, hunters had begun pooling in from the forest on direhorseback. Then, they started coming in clusters, all ululating, and pumping their fists in the air while holding their dead game in the other. Your head turned in awe as each hunter rode past you, the energy of the people so contagious that your sour mood was starting to dissipate, even if just a little. 

Thinking that was the last of the riders, you begin walking again, but the sound of heavy hooves striking the ground halt your movements. Turning your head back to the trees, you see something moving behind the shrubbery, and then enters none other than the man of the hour: Neteyam. If the people weren’t cheering before, they were definitely cheering now—especially since he’d managed to catch an adult sturmbeest (which was a difficult feat). 

The direhorse strides slowly through the crowd, and stops in the centre on Neteyam’s command. Nobody can take their eyes off of him, and neither can you. He just looks so strong, and masculine—like his father, even though he’s the spitting image of his mother. Neteyam puts his hand into the air before he dismounts his horse and ushers the people to settle down, and eventually, they do. 

He points to the sturmbeest that his direhorse is carrying back to be prepared. “Tonight, my brothers and sisters…” a pause, “we dance! we sing! we feast!” His words excite the villagers again, uluations so loud that your ears begin to ring. Just as you’re about to turn away, his eyes meet yours—he smiles. And there it is. That achy feeling in your chest. 

He wants to say something, reaches his arm out to you as if he were silently telling you to wait up, but then a girl strikes up a conversation with him. At first, you’re not entirely sure who it is—and you shouldn’t even care—but then you do a double take and your heart sinks a little more. It was Tsimandi, the girl rumored to be his betrothed. 

From this distance, you can’t hear what they’re talking about, so you watch intently. He’s got his head thrown back in hearty laughter, and she’s touching him—actually touching him, her hands wrapped around his forearm in an attempt to pull him further away. 

You think if you stay a second longer you’ll actually become a pile of liquid where you stand, so you take this opportunity to slip away while he’s preoccupied. 

When Neteyam looks back, he notices your absence. Squinting, he looks around in search of you, and then he sees what looks like a person disappearing into the thick of the forest. Just what is she doing?

“I apologize, Tsimandi, but I must do something,” he begins backing away, a genuine expression etched onto his face, “I will see you tonight, at the feast!” 

“Oh, o-okay,” she mutters but he’s already run off. Neteyam calls for his direhorse and waits at the edge of the forest until it comes running towards him. Before he can mount it and follow you, someone calls out to him. 

“And where are you going?” the voice queries, tone laced with suspicion. He recognizes who it belongs to and sighs. 

“Nowhere, sir,” he dismounts, meeting his father’s eyes, his mother also accompanying him. 

“Yeah, I’d hope so. The people are throwing this feast for you, or have you forgotten?” Jake gives him a once over, eyes still boring into his son. 

“No, sir. I have not forgotten,” the boy lowers his gaze in embarrassment. 

“Good. Go get ready, knucklehead.”

With each trudge through the forest, you were losing more and more sunlight. You’d walked about halfway to your destination when you remembered the bottle sloshing around in your satchel. 

Usually, you waited to drink the liquid there, but you decided given today’s strenuous events, you’d have some now. A reward, you tell yourself. Taking the bottle out of the bag, you lift your mask from your face briefly, twisting open the top and taking a big swig. 

No matter how many times you did it, the taste always made you gag. Bourbon—is what they called it. It was equal parts bitter and pungent but it did the trick. Helped you to relax, to forget. The first time you came across it, it was by pure accident. 

You’d been somewhere you shouldn’t have been, doing things you shouldn’t have been doing. But one thing led to another, and soon enough, you were inebriated for the first time. 

By the time you drink half of your weight in liquor, you reach your destination. The old shack. After what happened with the Sky People, Jake’s first rule as olo’eyktan was to prohibit anyone from entering. 

Even being somewhere remotely around the area was forbidden. But you were no stranger to disobedience, you’d come here once with Lo’ak (which was your first time actually). 

Though, you didn’t get to explore much because Tuk had spoiled your fun by telling Jake. That day was one of your favorite memories, you think. Jake couldn’t stop yelling at the two of you, but all you could do was laugh. Nothing was really even funny, but you couldn’t help it. Seeing Jake’s eye twitch at your outburst only exacerbated it. 

Lo’ak was getting the worst of it, and Neteyam fell victim to Jake’s nagging too for not ‘being there’. After a while, he’d dismissed the bunch of you from his tent and as soon as you were out of earshot, the three of you went into a frenzy of laughter. You think back fondly on those memories, all the ones that include Neteyam, that is. 

“God, there isn’t a second when I’m not thinking of you…” you sigh in exhaustion, extending an arm out to open the shack’s door. Reaching in your satchel, you pull out two jars full of glow worms (you’ve found that two jars are enough to light up the shack). Ambling over to your favorite spot, you open a cabinet and reach for another bottle of that bitter liquid you willingly put into your body. 

It’s still a wonder to you how well preserved these bottles remained over the years, and you’re pretty sure you’ve heard Norm or someone mention that the older the liquor, the better it tastes (which was a lie, but alas, you down another shot). 

“Wooo,” a cough erupts from your throat, “yep, still nasty.” 

At this point, the liquor is starting to take effect. Warmth radiates throughout your entire body, and you can feel your limbs gradually getting heavier. Being drunk had to be one of your top three favorite feelings. 

It either made you: sad, tired, or giggly (maybe even all at once). But now? Now you were feeling sleepy, so you groggily trudge over to one of the beds in the shack. 

As soon as your body hits the plush, a cloud of dust filters through the air. It was incredibly disgusting, but you’d slept in worse places. For now, you would lay here…succumbing to a sweet slumber. 

Neteyam had gone home without fuss as promised. Go and get ready. Well, he was doing exactly that now, exchanging his previous attire for that of something more formal. He rolled his eyes and huffed. Sometimes his father could just be a…

“Son of a bitch,” the boy snapped, his frustration reaching its peak. He’d been standing in the tent for about 10 minutes trying to figure out this headpiece his mother had laid out for him, but could not for the life of him figure it out. 

Giving up, he throws it to the ground and takes a seat with his head in his hands. Kiri slips in shortly after his outburst, bending to the ground to retrieve the item. Hesitantly, she walks over to her brother. 

“If you needed some help, you could have called, brother.” Neteyam lifts his head up from his hands to see Kiri towering over him, his eyes breaking contact with hers as she sits down next to him. There’s a pregnant pause, but it doesn’t last for long because Kiri is already opening her mouth to speak.

“What is troubling you?” She asks, forcing Neteyam to turn his back to her so that she can place the headpiece onto him properly. He inhales deeply, then exhales.

“I do not know…I saw (your name) earlier and…” Kiri hums, encouraging him to continue, “and—she had this strange look on her face.” 

“Look? What do you mean? Was she angry? Sad?” 

“I have never seen it before, sister. She usually looks happy when she sees me…but this look was different,” his voice is almost inaudible when he finishes. Kiri ponders for a bit, tilting her head as if she were mentally putting the puzzle pieces together. 

“How come you did not speak to her?” Kiri makes her final adjustments to the headpiece, ushering Neteyam to meet her eyes. 

“I was going to…I tried to, but Tsimandi found me before I could,” he fiddles with his fingers. Kiri takes note of his disposition, and she frowns empathetically. Clearly, whatever was going on with you two was something you had to work out together. This wasn’t like either of you! 

“But it was not just today either,” he continues, “she has been distancing herself for awhile, have you noticed?” She laughs at this, nodding her head.

“Yes, she has been acting a little strange lately. I think I might know what is troubling her, brother,” the girl takes his hand into her own. “But I cannot tell you. This is something that concerns only she and you…”

Neteyam squints his eyes in confusion, muttering a ‘what’. His mouth opens to speak but he is swiftly interrupted upon Jake and Neytiri’s arrival. He looks to Kiri for some clarification but all she says is: ‘go, go, you have a feast to attend’, followed with a, ‘find her later’.

“Well? Come on, the people won’t wait for your blue ass all day will they?” Jake teases. Neytiri slaps his arm, scolding him playfully. 

“Ah, my son, my beautiful son,” she pads to where he stands, taking his face into her hands. “It is time to go, we must celebrate you.”

Jake nods, flashing a quick wink of approval. Together, they all walk out of the tent and through the village where they’re instantly greeted with colorful luminescence, loud music, and food. All things that have been so generously prepared for him. By the time they make it down to the Tree of Souls, everyone halts their cheering to hear what Jake has to say.

“Tonight we eat,” a pause, “in honor of Neteyam’s mighty victory!” Jake grabs his eldest son’s hand, raising it in the air. “He led his first attack against the Sky People and made it back without any casualties!” A sudden roar of praise erupts from the crowd. 

Everyone is chanting his name, and clapping, but even amidst all this praise, he can’t help but to think about you. What does all of this matter if you’re not here to celebrate with him? 

You’ve been by his side since the two of you could walk, so where are you now? The thought saddens him, but he can’t wear his heart on his sleeve tonight. Not when there’s so many people here just for him. 

“For the past 20 years, my son has always been just a boy to me. But now I realize…he is a man—and he has proven himself in front of the eyes of Eywa,” The former marine glances down at his son, eyeing him in admiration. “Enough talking, let us feast!”

Laughter and songs fill the warm, breezy nighttime air. It’s been about two hours since the celebration commenced, and Neteyam has just about made his rounds to every important family. 

He smiles warmly as he looks at the scene in front of him: children playing and dancing by the fireside, putting on elaborate performances for the adults still filling their bellies full of food. Everyone is lively—happy, a testament to tonight’s success. 

Mo’at is pleased by this especially, she tells him that ‘this is what the people needed’—you know, to boost morale. At some point, when nobody is watching, he slips away from the party to walk around. Unbeknownst to him, someone has seen him. 

“Getting tired?” a voice questions from the shadows. Out comes Kiri, revealing herself from behind a leaf. 

“Yes, exhausted actually,” he jokes, disconnecting his braid from his direhorse. “No, but I need to find (your name). She has not come back and it is dark.”

“I figured you would leave early, that’s why I covered your ass and told Dad you were not feeling well,” the feline-like girl smirks. 

“Do you have an idea where she might be?” 

Kiri takes a moment before answering, “I’m not sure…but for some reason, I have a hunch that she’s at the old shack,” Neteyam furrows his brows in confusion. 

“Why do you think she’s there?” he queries, “I mean, it is forbidden.” Kiri offers him a shrug.

“I don’t know but if you’re going to find her, do it now while dad still thinks you’re not feeling well.”

With that, he thanks her for the intel and mounts his horse, disappearing into the thick of the forest. On the way there, his mind conjures up just about every possible scenario that might explain your absence. 

Were you upset with him? Did he do something or say something that you didn’t like? He wishes he could just read your thoughts because right now, his heart is pounding so rapidly within the confines of his chest, that he thinks it’ll explode. 

This wasn’t like you two, everything was always so easygoing. Being with you was easy, like breathing. But this? His heart couldn’t handle this. Yeah, there’s been some distance between the two of you recently but not due to his own volition—it was duty. If he could spend every second of his life by your side, just being kids, laughing with you, playing with you, he would. 

He’s trying to recount these last few days, weeks—months. Trying to pinpoint when exactly things got like this between you…pinpoint when you stopped smiling at him with that smile that made his head all fuzzy, and his heart race like a kid running for the first time. 

“Ah, everything’s going to shit, buddy,” he sighs, rubbing the side of his horse, “I don’t know what is wrong.” His mammalian companion grunts empathetically, stopping in its tracks at the edge of the forest when it sees the abandoned link shack. Neteyam doesn’t bother scolding her, because even the animals know that this place is forbidden. 

“Alright, I will see you later, okay? Stay here,” he pats her, disconnecting the bond. From this distance, he can see that there seems to be some sort of light illuminating from inside the shack. 

That alone already confirms Kiri’s hunch. The closer he gets, the more his stomach feels uneasy. He doesn’t even know why he’s nervous, but he attempts to ease his mind (and body) by telling himself that it’s only you. He’s talked to you one on one hundreds of times, so what’s the difference now?

Noises in the distance rouse you from your ephemeral repose. When you stand up, your head spins with the room, causing you to instinctively reach out for the nearest surface available. Whatever was outside had better be non-threatening, because you were not in the condition to be fighting—let alone standing. When you were drunk like this, you couldn’t even hurt a fly. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna have the worst headache soon,” you huff quietly, still aware that there might be someone or something outside. The noise is getting closer, and you’re running out of time to find a hiding spot. 

Quickly, you grab the closest thing you can to defend yourself (which is literally a jar of glow worms), and crouch down below the window. When you lift your head just enough to see outside, the makings of a silhouette cloud your vision. 

“Shit, shit, shit,” you whisper-yell, tightening your hold on the jar. Lifting your head up again, you notice that the figure is not in the spot it was previously. Then, the knob to the shack twists, and now it’s opening, and—

“(Your name)?” 

You pause your attack, slowly dropping your hand (that’s holding the jar) to your side. A flood of relief washes over you once you register who the voice belongs to. Rising from the ground, you open the door fully to see Neteyam standing in the doorway. 

“I almost killed you, you know!” you raise the jar, pulling him inside of the shack. 

“I think it would take more than a jar of worms to kill me,” he teases. Rolling your eyes, you continue ushering him further inside, leading him to an area where you can sit and talk. 

“What…what are you doing here?” you finally ask, folding your arms across your chest. Neteyam towers over you from this height, so he accommodates you by dropping to his haunches. 

“I was worried about you,” the boy confesses, “what are you doing here? Why were you not at the feast?” Suddenly, you don’t really feel like talking anymore. Even though the adrenaline from before was still pumping through your veins, so was the alcohol in your system. You’re not so sure you’d be able to keep your composure long enough to answer without exposing your truest feelings. So, you decide on deflecting. 

“Aren’t you the man of the hour? I think you should go back to the party before daddy throws a fit. We both know how he gets when his perfect little son isn’t at his every beck and call…” As soon as the words spill from your tongue, you wince. It came out meaner than you meant, and the last thing you wanted was to give him shit for being a caring friend. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t mean that,” you apologize, sitting down on the bed. All he does is sigh, but he takes this opportunity to enter your space, gets all close until his body is nestled between your legs. 

“I know…I know, but I want you to tell me what’s wrong, hm?” his fingers lift your chin, “so I can fix it.” 

“Can’t fix this, ‘Teyam,” a saltine droplet ribbons down your face. Your head is tilted up with his fingers, but you can’t even force yourself to meet his gaze. God, how pathetic did you look right now? 

Here you were, inside an abandoned shack, drinking your body weight in liquor…all while a celebration was being thrown in your best friend’s honor. And for what? Because you were jealous? Because you liked him—loved him? 

You knew that eventually your relationship would shift. That he’d take on his duties as the future olo’eyktan, and you’d just be his human friend he hangs with from time to time. How stupid could you be to think things would stay like this forever?

“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothes, both hands now cupping your cheeks, “don’t do that. Do not shut me out. We’re not like this, (your name), you used to always talk to me about things.”

Things. You’d talk about things. But those things were not like these things. And if he knew what things you were thinking about, the things that involved him…then you two would never talk about things again. 

You’re curious, though. What if you just told him? Just told him about all the days you’ve loved him, all the nights you’ve stayed up thinking of him—all the stars you counted wishing for him? At least then, the burden of keeping such a secret would stop weighing so heavy on your heart. 

“I..” a breath, “I heard a rumor.” The boy hums, encouraging you to continue. “I heard your mother has chosen her successor.”

“Is that what this is about? Why does this bother you?”

“Because you know what this means! We both know what this means, don’t be dense, ’Teyam,” you droop your head in sorrow, coaxing him to just lift it back up. Only this time, his hold on your face is a lot firmer. His eyes are fiercer.

“No. I don’t, so just tell me.”

“You’re gonna be the future olo’eyktan, and we both know that the future clan leader and the chosen tsahik are to be betrothed,” you start, “there will be no time for me! No more late night talks, no more exploring, no more secret whispers…I mean, I get it, you have duties to fulfill but…I wanna be selfish a little longer. Can’t I be selfish a little longer?”

You say the last line while meeting his gaze. You’re teary eyed and shaking, but you try your best to keep any semblance of composure you have left intact (though, it’s failing). His expression is indiscernible. 

It makes you nervous. Sick. And now you’re forcing yourself not to throw up because…the realization that you just told someone your deepest, truest, most vulnerable feelings makes you physically ill. 

“Oh, god, I’m sorry. Forget what I jus—“

“Are you serious? You don’t get it do you?” Neteyam’s head falls forward, a little chuckle slipping past his lips. His hands leave your head and slither down to your hands. He takes them into his own, eyeing you while kissing the knuckles of each. 

The act is incredibly intimate, sends white-hot electricity down the column of your spine. Renders you speechless. All you can do is sit there, too scared that if you move or speak, you’ll shatter into a million little pieces. 

“I have duties, yes…but my heart is already spoken for. Always has been.” 

“What are you saying, ’Teyam,” your head snuggles into the warmth of his hand. You know exactly what he’s saying, but you want to hear him say—

“I see you,” he whispers in your ear, “you are my most beloved.” The warmth of his breath tingles the shell of your ear, it takes the strength of a thousand men to not scream. 

But in this moment? In this moment you want to kiss him. You want to kiss him silly, actually, but you quickly remember the thing on your face preventing your lips from connecting with his. There are truly evil forces conspiring against you.

“I want to kiss you,” you admit solemnly. 

“Oh, you don’t know how many nights I’ve spent dreaming about kissing you. Too many,” he jokes, “but I’m afraid if we remove this, you’ll die.” 

“Then you don’t have to kiss my lips,” a silence, “you can kiss me anywhere you’d like. Anywhere.” 

His green eyes flitter between your face and your body, and then his hands are on you, forcing you to lay back against the bed. You lift your head up and lean back onto your elbows, watching through lust-filled eyes as he begins his ministrations. 

He starts from the bottom, works his way up real slowly—too slowly. He’s showing restraint, and while you appreciate the fact that he’s worshiping your body like a devoted follower worships their deity, you want him to ravage you. To eat you up until there’s nothing left but bones. 

“’Teyam, please…” you breathe out impatiently. Like the cocky-brat he is, he ignores your pleas, only laughing into your skin. 

“Shh, be calm.” The plush of his lips trail up the plains and pastures of your body, up your calves, your thighs (he spends the most time there), and then comes to a stop at the crest of your breasts. His fingers fiddle with the cloth covering your chest, lightly tracing the edges that rest just beneath your mounds. 

A tease is what he is. And you didn’t have the time for a tease, so you figured you’d help speed up the process by removing it. Sitting up, you untie the makeshift top and let it fall to your lap, smirking deviously as if you’ve done something so naughty. 

“Thought I’d help you,” you grin, wrapping your hands around his neck, “Please, no more going slow…I think we’ve been going slow for twenty years, don’t you think?” 

And he gets the hint, once again resuming his assault on your body, but this time with more fervor. More urgency. He’s kissing you everywhere, licking wet stripes over your chest, and leaving love bites in the places where he’s kissed you. Right now he’s acting on his most basic, primal instincts—he’s claiming you as his mate—in the only way he knows how to. 

The feeling of his hands on your neck, back, thighs and waist send you into oblivion. But then his hands are creeping up to your tits, deft fingers twisting and kneading, and oh god, you’re seeing stars. The addition of his mouth doesn’t help either.

“You’re so,” a kiss, “beautiful,” a suck, “perfect.” Neteyam kneads one breast while his mouth works on another. He plops down onto a pert nipple, using his tongue to draw circles around the area, his saliva acting as a salve. 

A moan (that comes out more like a disgruntled sigh) vacates your throat, and his eyes widen in excitement. The sight of his tail swaying in the background makes you giggle. Cute, you think. 

Even though what the two of you were doing wasn’t innocent, you couldn’t help but to feel all giddy. Reaching a hand out, you place a gentle palm on the side of his face. 

You trace the contours of his nose, his cheekbones, smooth over his jaw, and then stop at his lips. Your thumb grazes them, first the top, then the bottom—learning. Committing them to memory, how they look, feel, and move under your thumb. 

Neteyam is unmoving while you continue to run your finger across his lips—save for his hand, which slowly begins traveling south to your thighs. Experimentally, you push your thumb inside of his mouth, pressing the digit down on his tongue before tracing his cat-like canines. This moment is particularly special, because now it’s you who’s doing the admiring. 

The free hand that’s not inching towards your core, skillfully removes the loin cloth around your hips. Immediately, he’s met with your bare sex. It’s smooth—wet, so incredibly wet that it has his cock twitching, and his hands eager to touch you. He wants to taste you. Feel you, all of you. 

“I—,” a slender finger rubs your slit, “mmf, see you,” you mewl, cupping his cheek. Neteyam’s eyes widen, he wants to hear you make that sound again…and again, and again, and—

The boy repeats the action. Watches your abs flex and tremble from the touch, and your thighs close in on his arm. Using the other hand, he gently pulls them apart and leaves three open-mouthed kisses: one on your inner thigh, one on another, and then a final one at the top of your mound. The heat from his nostrils make you full body shiver; suddenly, being the only one completely bare is slightly bothering you. 

“Do not cover yourself. I want to see you,” his hand finds your cunt again, a long finger pushing into you ever so slowly, “…want to hear those sweet sounds again.” 

A soft sigh leaves your lips as you watch his digit push further into you, the drag of a knuckle against your slick walls aiding in the pleasure. You can’t help but to wince at the intrusion, because shit, this was a lot more than what you were used to—using your fingers, that is. 

You also suppose penetration would be off the table considering humans and Na’vi were never meant to mate, but it doesn’t prevent you from fantasizing about it anyway. How big was it? Did he touch himself? Use his hands and picture yours? 

The thought of him hunching over, rubbing one out, all slick with sweat and pre has your head all dizzy. Your mouth is practically salivating at the mental image you’ve conjured up in your head of him fucking your face, but you know it would never fit. There really are evil forces conspiring against you…

Neteyam’s finger reaching the hilt brings you back down to reality. A forceful thrust that coaxes you to gasp sharply and grab his forearm. After patiently waiting for you to adjust to his size, he begins to move. He sets a steady rhythm, pulling out slowly, then pushing back into you with the same velocity. 

Eventually, his movements become less hesitated, and more calculated. Instead of steady and slow, he begins increasing the pace of his thrusts, then graduates from speed to incorporating force. 

Every delve of his finger, every deliberate drag and prod has fire pooling in the depths of your belly. Squelches and whimpers ricochet off of the metal walls, and fuck, his dick won’t stop twitching. 

It’s grown considerably harder in these past few minutes, and all from just hearing you vocalize your pleasure. When the stretch stops feeling like a stretch, and starts feeling like a ‘give me more’, that’s when you encourage him to add another. And of course, he indulges you. 

The same time he pushes another finger in, is the same time he starts rubbing himself. He’s not even really aware of it at first, it’s mindless. He’s just so entranced by you, and the sounds you’re making, the things you’re saying, the way your cunt’s sucking in his fingers—

Fuck. He just finished all over himself. He doesn’t let that deter him though, keeps fingering you through his post-orgasm, taking care of you until you come undone on his fingers. 

And the sight is amazing, he can’t stop gawking at the way your hole flutters around him, and the nectar-like liquid that drips down the length of his fingers and onto the bed. He wants to taste it. 

“Can I taste you?” he asks. You’re in such a daze that the question doesn’t even register, suddenly too preoccupied with breathing like you’ve forgotten how to. 

“Huh? Wha—ohhhh.” His tongue licks a long stripe up your slit. He concentrates the tip at the bottom, lapping at the essence that leaks from there, and then circles back to your puffy bud. Experimentally, he prods it with his fingers, rubbing it in tantalizingly slow circles. 

The combination of his tongue and his fingers almost feel overwhelming, you feel like a puppet on a marionette with the way he’s maneuvering your legs around for better access. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was a starved man. 

His mouth is slick with drool, and his hands are pressing down so firmly onto your thighs, that you’re sure a handprint will be there for you to discover in the morning. His tongue feels so good on you, so nasty. 

The picture is obscene, unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed before. But the thing that’s really getting to you are the sounds he’s making. Grunts and groans, expletives and mumbles. ‘So good’, ‘perfect’, ‘beautiful’…it has your head spinning and your fists gripping for the sheets beneath you. 

There’s a knot in your abdomen pulled taut like a string of twine. You can feel it twisting and pulling, ready to come undone at the drop of a pin. The more he works on your slit, the more the temperature rises in the shack. 

Was the room always spinning? Did your body always run this hot? It feels like you’ve been thrown into a furnace, and the only source of coolness is the wetness that his tongue provides. 

“‘M gonna, mmf, ’s too much!” you jab at his hand in an attempt to push him away. He’s relentless though, still sucking harshly, and teasing, ramming his thick fingers up against your gummy walls. 

It feels different than when you touch yourself, more intense. Like something’s sitting heavy on your bladder. Then, snap. The string in your abdomen unravels, bringing forth a flood of ecstasy. 

“’Teyam!” you sob, back arching to the ceiling. When he pulls his fingers out, a stream of clear liquid seeps from your cunt. He’s awestruck, staring in admiration as your sweat kissed chest rises and falls rhythmically. 

“Look, your legs are shaking,” he points, biting down a laugh, “why are they shaking?” 

“Oh my god, shut up!” you feign offense, pushing him backwards with a chuckle. He pretends to be wounded, rubbing his back dramatically, ‘oohing’ and ‘owing’ as he does so. When you finally sit up, your eyes naturally fall to his loincloth, a wet ringlet contrasting starkly against the beige textile. 

“Hey…” your voice is hesitant, but teetering on the edge of curiosity, “Can I try something?” 

The boy silently nods his approval, shifting his position on the ground when you amble over to him. A look of confusion molds onto his face following the events that involve you plopping down onto his lap and laying him down. He goes to speak but you interrupt him. 

“Your turn, right? Can’t put it in, but…I can still make you feel good,” you say, tugging on the piece of fabric that separates your sex from his. Eagerly, he removes it for you and lets the item fall haphazardly to the ground. 

It’s big, so big—and pretty too. A beautiful blue hue that matches the rest of his body, paired along with a blushing teal tip that’s oozing pre. You want to know what he tastes like on your tongue…

“So pretty.”

Heat rises to his cheeks, and his tail takes an aquiline form, quivering in rapid movements. His usual, over-confident disposition was slowly dissipating under your intense gaze, and you reveled in it by mocking his bashfulness. 

“Awe, the little kitty’s shy,” you mock, tickling his side. 

“Stop it, I don’t look like those Earth things,” he laughs, pushing your hand away, but to no avail. You continue to dodge his attempts to stop you, tickling him here and there until he accidentally bucks and pulls you down against him. Embarrassingly, you let a whine fall from your lips…still too sensitive down there, you guess. 

There’s a shit-eating grin plastered on his face now, you hate it. “Who’s making noises like a kitty now, huh?” With this, he takes the liberty to do it again, pressing you down hard against his length. 

The feeling of your bare cunt against him is electrifying, probably (definitely) not better than him being inside you, but the next best thing. This was supposed to be your thanks to him. But now he’s taken full charge—maneuvering you back and forth, gripping and kneading—it’s cruel.  

For someone who’s never mated with anyone in his life, he’s sure moving you around like he has. His hands are all over you—thighs, hips, waist, breasts, it’s almost overwhelming. Every touch, addled with the buck of hips, brings forth a new sensation that is better than the last. You think this would be a good way to go out, right on his cock. One last hurrah before the morbid inevitable. 

“You f-feel so good, (your name),” his voice is breathy, “r-really good.” Neteyam’s grip on your arms is vice, partly because he can feel his climax approaching, but mostly because he can tell you’re growing tired. 

Swiftly, he changes your positions to where you’re laying on your back and he’s crouching over you. The tip of his head smoothes over your folds when he pushes up, and before he draws back, you can see just about where his dick would rest if he were inside of you. 

“I’d be all the way up here,” he presses down just beneath your breastbone, “you’re so tiny.” It sounds so dirty, but you know ultimately he’s just making an observation—regardless, the comment has your stomach churning in excitement. 

The both of you watch in fascination as he sheathes himself up and over your cunt, moaning in unison when the tip of his mushroomy head catches against your bud. Euphoric, he thinks. He never imagined that something could feel this good, let alone without connecting bonds. 

Still sensitive from earlier, it doesn’t take too long for you to reach your peak. Neteyam knows that your arrhythmic breathing is a tell-tale sign, and he helps you get there by cooing words of encouragement. 

He goes back and forth between ’I got you’s and ‘it’s okay’s, leaving trails of kisses down your body in his wake. The second you finish, you’re pulling him down onto you tight. Moaning and whining into his ear, whispering those same words of encouragement that he whispered to you prior.

“So good, ‘Teyam,” you claw at his back, “keep going, want you to feel good too.” And he does. Unrelenting in his attack against your sex, he comes with a few more pistons. 

You eagerly welcome him into your arms when he drops from exhaustion, and hold him there until your erratic breaths synchronize. The both of you are disgustingly sweaty and sticky, but even so, you feel at peace. 

You bask in the tranquil quietness of the night, just staring at each other. Soft caresses and soothing hums. Then, Neteyam speaks. 

“On this fateful night, two hearts danced…” he whispers, grabbing your hand to hold it over his heart. 

“What does this mean?” you smile at him. He ponders over it and then explains. 

“My songcord…I want to tell this story,” he starts, “the night when two hearts became one.” 

A crystal droplet cascades down your face, “that sounds beautiful.”

© arachine 2022

#neteyam x reader #neteyam sully x reader #neteyam x reader smut #neteyam sully x reader smut #lo’ak x reader #lo’ak x reader smut #avatar x reader #avatar x reader smut #neteyam smut #avatar the way of water #atwow #awow #avatar smut #avatar the way of water smut

[justporo]

Even more fluffy relationship headcanons for Astarion and Tav

Listen guys, I'm not done yet. For now, as soon as I get one idea out, three more pop up in my mind and since you guys seem to really like these (it's seriously and positively insane to me), I'll happily provide you more as long as I am able to. So, let's-a go: more headcanons and little ideas about them being together!

(Gif from here!)

You love when Astarion smiles at you - just openly and full of joy; the sort of smile you've rarely seen from him during your adventures but they keep getting more and more, also they make him look just so young and carefree and beautiful and your heart just... melts

When Astarion quickly notices how you basically faint whenever he does this, he starts employing it to work his charms on you when he needs it - not the real big and joyous smiles though because they are so real and cherished to him he wouldn't dare use it to tease or manipulate you - they're only reserved to make you happy

Charming you is like breathing to Astarion though, you are just so helpless against his flattery and flirting because why would you resist if you could just give him everything that makes him happy?

When you mention once though that you'd hope to gain some immunity to it some time, Astarion is insulted: "No, love, making you blush is my favourite thing in the world. You are so beautiful with your cheeks all flushed. As long as I have a say in it, we will never stop!"

Tav likes teasing him just as much as Astarion enjoys it the other the way around: "You know if you would stop drawing your brows together all the time, it'd take fifty years off your face immediately." Moments of silence in which Astarion is just utterly shocked by your burn, then: "Who taught you to be this brutal, darling?" You raise an eyebrow at him, he helplessly lifts his arms: "Yeah right, I have only myself to blame."

Also, Astarion and Tav are definitely the kind of power couple that throw each other meaningful sassy looks when they're with other people and those are talking shit or something

Also, afterwards they will most definitely discuss and gossip over everything they experienced

Astarion is definitely the kind of man that would shower Tav with gifts, from coming home with a single beautiful flower that "reminded me of you, my beautiful blossom" ("How cheesy..." "Ah, so rather a gouda next time?") or a nice bottle of wine to share to bigger gestures like jewelry or expensive dresses ("When am I ever gonna wear this, Astarion?" "I don't know, we'll just make an opportunity!")

Tav loves all of his gifts but probably the small ones or the hand-crafted ones the most, she's happy with the little things but Astarion insists she deserves the big ones just as much

One time though, Astarion comes home with something else entirely; it's pouring outside and he's completely drenched and hiding something in his doublet jacket; "What do you have there, Astarion, a wheel of cheese?" Astarion carefully opens up his jacket to reveal a small white kitten that is just as drenched as him and is desperately trying to cling to the vampire's chest. "I found her all alone in a dark alleyway, cold and completely soaked, I thought maybe we could take care of her and she could be friends with Scratch?", he says while he carefully lifts up the small ball of fluff with an incredible softness in his eyes. Your heart is thoroughly melting as you walk over to them and you give Astarion the most loving of kisses

Well, the last one would almost be a drabble on it's own, I saw a similar post that made me think of this (I will find and tag them later!) Hope you enjoyed and I'm late for work now, whoops...

This is the post I mentioned before, by @mushy6902 (I hope it's okay I wrote a somewhat similar idea, thanks for inspiring me!)

#astarion #fanfiction #astarion ancunin #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #baldurs gate #bg3 spoilers #astarion x mc #astarion x oc #astarion x reader #astarion headcanons #headcanons #fluff #domestic fluff #also kittens #poro headcanons

[phoenixyfriend]

I try not to make a lot of original posts on topics I don't actually have any expertise on, but I haven't seen a whole lot of posts going around that actually... explain what happened and why? Like, the actual order of events, the history, and so on. I want to reblog reference posts and explanations by people who actually know what they're talking about, but I haven't seen anything that hits the buttons I need to actually get a political situation... but I have seen some stuff on other platforms.

So here are some videos I've personally found useful in understanding Israel-Palestine, because that's the format I've found most useful in processing information of this nature:

Why Israel was Originally Attacked from RealLifeLore (explains the decades of political dynamics, internal demographic tensions, and power shifts leading up to the current conflict; notably the best I've seen at actually explaining what 'Israeli Occupation' actually means)

Israel-Hamas War: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (commentary on the actual current situation in terms of who's getting attacked, why, and what the international ramifications so far are)

What's Happening in Israel and Why with Nathan Thrall from Adam Conover, series Factually (a discussion with an on-the-ground journalist about what life was like on the ground for Palestinian people in the areas under Israeli control during the last few years, just up to the attacks themselves)

I'm not going to claim these are comprehensive or completely unbiased (there are a few moments where I'm not entirely sure of the bias levels myself), but for people like myself who came into all this unsure of what the actual situation even is, I think these are a solid set to build up an basic understanding from which to put together opinions on future information.

I can't tell anyone what to think about how or why any of this is happening. I can only really tell you that what's going on right now is a crime on the level of attempted genocide, and that the years leading up to that have been an absolute mess on almost all fronts.

Again, I have no expertise on this subject. I just know what kind of video essay, political commentary, and interview style makes things understandable to me, personally, and might work for others. Please be courteous and kind in the comments and tags, as I am only sharing this because I haven't seen such a resource making the rounds yet, not actually trying to sway anyone in a particular direction beyond "the mass death needs to stop."

If you know of similar, relatively unbiased* resources, feel free to share.

* By 'relatively unbaised,' I don't mean taking or not taking a side; I just mean that it doesn't try to hide some information or other in favor of pushing a narrative, doesn't try to generalize a population, or doesn't seem to be trying to use emotional gut reactions to get readers or viewers to jump past reason or compassion.

#israel #palestine #israel palestine conflict #palestine israel conflict #not fandom #politics #current events #resources #information #video essays #interviews #political commentary #I'm not even sure how to tag this #I'm not even sure I should be making this post because it's not really my place. But. IDK it feels like 'hour long video essay' etc #is a much better resource to explain things than the usual 2 minute videos I see circulating #and the 2minute videos have a purpose! But. they're not really explaining everything #I didn't know that Israeli Occupation applied to regions outside the original Sykes Picot agreement until I read an article a few weeks ago #and I didn't UNDERSTAND it until the RealLifeLore video

[kaus-quietis]

BSD Fyodor Dostoyevsky: an in-depth character analysis

“Человек есть тайна. Ее надо разгадать, и ежели будешь ее разгадывать всю жизнь, то не говори, что потерял время; я занимаюсь этой тайной, ибо хочу быть человеком.” / “Man is an enigma. It must be unravelled, and if you will unravel it your entire life, then do not say that you have wasted time; I occupy myself with that enigma, because I want to be human.” – the writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, in a letter to his older brother, Mikhail (St. Petersburg, 16 August 1839)

The purpose of this post is to present and analyse information related to Bungou Stray Dogs’ Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s personality and methodology. Softer than shadow, unsolved and endless, Fyodor may as well “hide” his soul under our very eyes and we still would not know if that is the “real” him. This is my promised Fedya essay, an info-gathering analysis masterpost I hope you will enjoy and find useful for contemplating and coming to understand his complex character a little bit better.

Warning: merciless BSD manga spoilers. Literally spoiling everything. Also, this is an unbelievably long post (20200+ words). Have some lovely tea, listen to Rachmaninoff, and read in serene leisure or endlessly curious passion.

Last update: November 2022. 20.200+ words. The BSD manga reached ch105, the BSD anime completed season 3, while season 4 is announced for January 2023. Please refer to my original post (this one) in the future, as I could add updates periodically when new chapters release (or so I hope). Please note that I am using the official English translations for chapters 1-94 unless stated otherwise. I am eternally grateful for all fan translations. Lastly, please note that in this essay I will not focus on: 1) connections to F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment or other literary works; 2) connections to F.M. Dostoyevsky’s biography / personal life; 3) possibilities of what Fyodor’s ability could be; 4) the philosophical and ethical side of Fyodor’s motives. All these would require vast separate posts entirely (who knows, I might write them too one day). My intention is to offer guidance in decyphering what Fyodor’s personality is truly like, as well as how his methods and tactics play a role into shaping said personality or BSD’s plot. Last note: in this essay, quite frequently, I am making references to other beautiful posts written by BSD fans, tagging them and linking to their posts. If you are tagged and want me to remove the tag, please send me a message via ask box and I will edit the tag out.

Sections:

A. Let the hand of God guide you: Fyodor and hand / arm symbolism

B. He understands human nature deeply, if not perfectly

C. He values independence and (most probably) his co-workers

D. No confirmation yet that he is brainwashing others and why this is relevant

E. He loves and lives for entertainment

F. Humble, not arrogant. Self-proclaimed god or servant of God?

G. A strange divergence inside Fyodor. Is he a singularity?

H. Soft, discreet, graceful, yet playfully dramatic. His body language in the manga, in comparison to the anime

A. Let the hand of God guide you: Fyodor and hand / arm symbolism

When it comes to Fyodor’s character, even choosing a starting point for our discussion about him might prove challenging. For all we know so far, he is a Russian man with a completely unknown past, he appears to be in his 20s, just a pinch shorter than Dazai (as @kaikaikitanmp3​​ showed here), elegant, alluring and ambiguously sickly (see section H for more on his self-proclaimed anemia and overall physique). Until we get more canon manga information on his personal profile, I propose we start from something that already has numerous ties to Fyodor’s character, a symbol we can present the many meanings of, only to abandon us to our roaming thoughts later. This symbol is that of the hand, and, before that, the closely-related symbol of the arm.

Embrace of all. A symbol of both power and protection, the human arm represents the instrument to apply justice and punishment, to rule and to guide. Not only that, but as a symbol of a human’s strength and capacity to act, its image becomes that of vitality itself. To open one’s arms is an act of invocation, raising them to the sky – an act of calling for divine blessing, but this welcoming gesture also renders a person wide-open and vulnerable, receptive and embracing. A certain humbleness and vulnerability is involved in this gesture, because only then one can wholly accept what stands before or above them, let them in, understand and feel them. This willingness to embrace alterity, when represented in art or various media, can be of different nuances, thus triggering different responses in the viewer: it can be soothing, heartwarming, comforting, just as it can be unnerving, constraining, intrusive even for even just suggesting such embrace. It is no wonder we see this gesture in how Ango apparently imagines Fyodor (ch78). While his arms are covered by his coat, his open hands, as of darkness, extend towards the viewer. This image appears as Ango concluded that Atsushi getting shot by Nathaniel, later falling unconscious in Anne’s room, was part of Fyodor’s plan. How this plan covered and embraced that outcome is portrayed as unsettling, therefore making good use of the negative values of such body language and symbols. Together with the ch63 panel where Fyodor’s faceless silhouette is shown with his open hands turned towards his chest, each finger pulling a thin string, this example, too, suggests the idea of Fyodor’s influence and interference being disturbingly omnipresent, this time with the hand gesture emphasizing the hidden character of his plans. A different example, of Fyodor conveying openness through body language, specifically showing his palms to someone while even opening his arms in a welcoming manner, is when he was negotiating with Mushitaro in ch55, offering to end his imprisonment in exchange for Mushitaro playing a role in Fyodor’s Cannibalistic Mutual Destruction operation. At that moment, Fyodor’s gesture conveyed the sincere character of his offer, made more impactful by being accompanied by much gesticulation on Fyodor’s part during the whole scene (more on Fyodor’s rhetorical use of expressive gestures in section H).

Honesty and harmlessness. The symbol of the hand also represents human ability to act, putting a start or an end to action, as well as having the freedom to act. Just like the arm, the hand is a symbol of power, justice and dominance, as well as guidance and bestowing blessings. Open palms, much like open arms, convey the message of having no ill will, no hidden secrets, thus presenting oneself in an open, vulnerable position, but also one allowing reception of the other, and, in the case of the open hands, showing willingness to share, as the hand’s different “powers” are almost as numerous as human actions themselves: to contain, to take away, to keep hidden, to harm, to mend, to unite, to divide, to guide, to give. The meanings of these, melted together, would all still accurately be applicable to Fyodor’s character, who, in the most general sense, just like Dazai’s character or even more so, represents the complexity of human nature, so rich in paradoxes, so ultimately impenetrable. Now, showing your hands, and especially showing your palms or inner part of your arms (interior side of the wrists and upper arms, for example), means showing you have no ill intent (based on how, for example, since ancient times, such a posture simply showed the other that you do not carry any weapons). Hence, in this line of thought, we can approach the scene where Fyodor showed his fragile hand and wrist to Ace in ch42. It has a double meaning in this scenario: firstly, Fyodor is indeed honest and open, he does not have an ill intent, because his hidden purpose, in itself, addresses the greater good of humanity; secondly, Fyodor’s intent becomes “ill” only when related to Ace himself, who saw Fyodor as a threat and was ready to deny Fyodor his personhood, as he did with all his subordinates, who became his slaves or, rather, his disposeable objects and instruments. In so many of BSD’s events and organisational dynamics, it is evident how relativity rules the verdict we as readers can give to various groups or characters. BSD features excellent examples of grey morality everywhere, and the problem of whether Fyodor is good or evil is no exception. It is all relative to a past and a future we do not know yet, while still maintaing a certain unnerving, dark side that undeniably accompanies Fyodor’s character at each step. The reader is then immediately reminded of this dark, threatening side of Fyodor’s, as he concluded the ennumeration of his physical and circumstational disadvantages with the abrupt “So how about this? I’ll kill you instead”.  And while I did call this subsection “honesty and harmlessness”, everyone is conscious of Fyodor’s potential to harm at any time, most characters living in anticipation of being harmed by him, and yet we still have no clear idea how he applies physical harm (including death), despite having valuable depictions of how subtly he can exert mental and emotional harm, or simply influence, on others (more on that in the following sections). That being said, despite Fyodor calling humans sinful and foolish and expressing his desire to “purify” them (ch46, Fyodor: “Man is sinful and foolish. Even if they know it is all an artifice, they cannot help but kill each other. Someone must purify them for those sins”), we never see him acting like he hates or is disgusted by humans, nor like he forcefully wants to change how they behave. The latter reminds us of the thin line between plain manipulation (a thing Fyodor does when necessary for his larger strategic moves, as he has done in ch47 with fake Pushkin and the children or in ch75 with Sigma) and exerting oppressive corrective behaviour upon others (a thing we never see Fyodor doing, as he never changes the people he interacts with, who they are and what they value; see sections B and C). In fact, his openness to human nature in general is highlighted, for instance, in his interactions with Nikolai and in the way he talks about Sigma (see section C). Opposite traits blend perfectly into Fyodor’s character in most subtle ways, as I intend to prove by the end of this essay, so let us continue gathering such examples on the way, across all sections.

Bestowing blessings. In the manga, Fyodor was shown using a very specific hand gesture when using his ability on Karma, thus openly depicted only in ch42 so far. The same gesture, prepared but changed into one of covering Mushitaro’s head with its palm, appeared in ch56 in a hallucination, when Mushitaro was forced into a corner by Ranpo’s blackmailing, which for Mushitaro triggered images of Fyodor (more on this below). To me, this peculiar hand gesture is like a mixture of different acts I witnessed or experienced in religious contexts (to clarify my background, I’m slavic, Orthodox, and Eastern European, no “expert” in religions but fascinated by sacred rituals), and by this I mean specifically acts of blessing and chrismation done by priests. 1) Blessing marks bestowing holiness or invoking the divine will and protection upon a person (but also places, objects etc.), and is done in several ways: when one-handed and by a (consecrated) priest, using the right hand, with the finger positions spelling out the letters “IC XC” (for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Jesus Christ in Greek), the same sign being done with both hands when the gesture is two-handed; when one-handed and by a secular (also done between regular people occasionally), making the sign of the cross over someone or something using the thumb and index + middle finger stretched outwards, similar to the finger positions when making the sign of the cross on oneself. Fyodor’s hand position is most similar to the latter in this case, albeit with a sinister twist: Fyodor seems to use his left hand for the gesture. A different gesture for blessing, in this specific meaning mostly starting with the New Testament, is putting one’s hands over someone. There, this gesture is closely linked to the miraculous healings bestowed by Christ (as in Luke, 13, 13), and, after His ascension, keeping its relation to healing and bestowing the Holy Spirit, to the duty quite literally left in the hands of the apostles (as in Acts, 8, 17). 2) Chrismation is a Christian sacrament, where, in short, the priest anoints another person with the holy chrism, a ritualic ointment, while making the sign of the cross over specific body parts, each being a symbol of something, starting with the forehead (where the blessing of the mind is bestowed). Chrism itself, a common element in Mediterrean and Middle-East religious practices since ancient times, gained a particularly important role in Christianity, being used very often, in both baptismal and funeral rites, as well as sacraments (chrismation and acts of consecration). It symbolizes divine benediction, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but also bestowing power and glory (in the context of coronations or such). Each time the author of the benediction is considered to be the divinity, whereas the one who applies the chrism on the other is a mediator between the earthly and the holy. Notably, this use in baptisms and funerals marks an associations with beginnings and endings, life and death. To me, Fyodor’s hand gesture when using his ability, particularly the gentle touch of another’s forehead, always looked similar to the act of anointing someone with chrism (though it is not usually done directly with the fingers, but with a little brush or one half of the ointment’s recipient), and in line with his canon dialogues, we could say what he bestows is “the great silence”, “the salvation of death”, which can turn into the blessing of a meaningful, peaceful death, bone-chilling nonetheless, such as in Karma’s case (ch42, see section B where I expand upon this). This gesture links Fyodor’s character to the image of a mediator, the role of “the right hand of God”, carrying out a mission that can be regarded as holy (based on Fyodor’s use of religious vocabulary), although we still lack canon material to fully establish whether that is only a trait of his way of speech or indeed a hint for his motives’ origins (see section F).

Threat and manipulation, relative examples. Later, in ch56, Ranpo hit Mushitaro’s most profound, personal weakspot by adopting Fyodor’s type of manipulation, in the form of a one-time bargain with emotional pressure, an offer he could not refuse (Ranpo would have releaved a truth Mushitaro did not want to make public if Mushitaro did not accept Ranpo’s terms; see also @looking-for-stray-dogs ’s post here). However, given that we already saw Fyodor offering Mushitaro a deal in ch55, there is a noticeable difference between Fyodor’s and Ranpo’s deal here, which, in my opinion, shows that Ranpo cannot immitate Fyodor completely (or refuses to) while he also imagines him as a much worse person than Fyodor can be deduced to be, in fact, strictly based on his interaction with Mushitaro. In ch55, it is shown that Fyodor simply offered to free Mushitaro from the basement he was locked in, in exchange for Mushitaro using his ability serving Fyodor’s Mutual Destruction plan once. This deal was fulfilled and their interactions ceased. I would call this a case of pragmatic manipulation, because Fyodor did not profit of Mushitaro’s feelings or past, he only offered freedom from Mushitaro’s cell. By contrast, Ranpo, assuming Fyodor works only (and especially) with emotional manipulation, simply blackmailed Mushitaro into turning himself in. Of course, Fyodor is capable of emotional manipulation (as in Sigma’s and Nikolai’s cases, see section B, but also section H below), but he can also manipulate others not even bringing their emotions into the discussion (as in Mushitaro’s case). By limiting his assumptions to emotional manipulation, Ranpo may be walking down a dangerous path, disregarding the full spectre of Fyodor’s methods. Assuming Fyodor is “the worst person possible” by default could also prove to be a wrong approach, as it is easier and convenient to conclude on that for others, but assumes too much about Fyodor and adds a rigid label on him, one that Fyodor can exploit later. In fact, we saw he already did once, by giving the worst relationship advice on purpose in ch64, in Meursault, when Dazai asked for said advice within Fyodor’s “All-smiles Problem-solving Roooooundtable” (and yet, this, together with Dazai’s lines, were shaped that way for the purpose of establishing the terms of their secret code, as I shall argue below, in section C). Meursault guards are portrayed monitoring Fyodor and Dazai, whom they consider “demons” of crime, expecting them to be exactly the worst souless manipulator and the worst flirtacious lunatic respectively. I would like to thank Eliott @stories-from-saint-petersburg for discussing this scene with me in-depth and putting this aspect of it into very fitting words I shall copy below. Besides the ideas presented here, see also section C for this brilliant scene’s actual meaning, according to what I could deduce further.

Eliott: “But also, they know they are filmed and that people are listening to them. So it would make sense to give answers that are more far from their characters, to confuse or not to give too much info to their jailors. Just like they switch to code when speaking about more serious things. That’d make sense in a strategy where you have to deceive your opponent, the opponent being Meursault. If they both give shit answers (and the answers that are expected from them), then the way they make up their plans will be still more difficult to find out by the prison.”

There is more to be inspected in Mushitaro’s ch56 hallucination of Fyodor covering his head with his palm. For this, I shall leave a different discussion I had with Eliott below:

Lav: “One difference is that Karma (ch42) actually experiences that touch. He sees Fedya's hand, he feels the touch of his fingers. It happened as an event in his life. In comparison, Mushi (ch56) sees this image when Ranpo blackmails him into turning himself in, as Ranpo makes a speech about using the methods of a demon to reach his goal (debatable, I will expand on this when the time is right). Apparently, Ranpo's speech triggers an emotional reaction in Mushi, who then imagines Fedya reaching towards him, making the same gesture he did to Karma, and the panels are white, while the end of this vision (Fedya placing his whole hand over Mushi's head) is in black.” Eliott: “Can’t it simply show the effect Fedya had on Mushi? A feeling of being oppressed and trapped, or something akin to control from a mind that’s greater than his? To me it looks like an allegory of manipulation, but not especially like an ability or something akin to it.” Eliott: “If Mushi saw Fedya use his ability, then he knows his touch means death. Anyway, he knows Fedya is dangerous. Touching someone’s head is a common symbol for either intimacy, fondness or manipulation. Mushi probably knows he can end up killed, and this is a fear that can explain this imagery, and even the manipulation he’s subjected to. The fear of dying is a good motivation for someone. Furthermore, he is still traumatized by the death of his dear friend, so it’d make sense this is very impactful for him, either death or being near / in danger of it? Also, Fedya here looks like how his friend is depicted graphically.” Eliott: “<So,> he doesn’t have to <have experienced this physically before>! Imagining someone threatening touch you is frightening, even if you don’t know they can kill you with one touch. And when speaking of being trapped / manipulated, it’s quite logical to imagine the person that has you trapped touching you, it’s an oppressive image either way.” Lav: “True. (…) One detail that supports this <that Mushi only hallucinated without previously witnessing Fedya’s gesture> is how in Karma’s case Fedya stretched out two fingers (index and middle) to his forehead, much like in a blessing gesture, while Mushi imagines a hand with all fingers fully extended towards his forehead. Also the death touch to Mushi is done with the right hand, while for Karma it’s the left hand??” Eliott: “I still don’t understand that gkflg, I’m wondering if the artist just forgot to draw one right hand ahah”.

Important unexplained details. Everyone’s ability in Dead Apple has an ability gem located on their forehead except: Atsushi’s tiger (nape), Akutagawa’s Rashomon (inside its chest), arguably Dazai’s No Longer Human (inside his chest), and most importantly here Fyodor’s Crime and Punishment (the back of his right hand). Another note, out of all the abilities, only Mori’s Elise, Fukuzawa’s All Men Are Equal and Fyodor’s Crime and Punishment are able to talk or heard talking. One detail unique to Fyodor’s ability and Mori’s ability, though, is that they each have real eyes with irises and pupils, as if they are human, and not just an ability with empty, glowing yellow eyes like in all the other cases, except Atsushi’s tiger. One could surely speculate on why exactly Crime and Punishment has its ability gem placed on its hand, but I want to move on to other topics in this essay. Lastly, on Fyodor’s motto, “Let the hand of God guide you”, see section G.

B. He understands human nature deeply, if not perfectly

Contrary to the popular opinion that Fyodor does not have an ounce of humanity in him or that he cannot understand nor feel human emotions, the canon presents evidence that Fyodor understands other humans and their emotions profoundly. Let us keep in mind the definition of empathy (“the ability to understand other people’s feelings and problems”), as well as the fact that there are different types of empathy, such as affective empathy or cognitive empathy (the latter applying to Fyodor the best). Instead of speculating that Fyodor completely lacks empathy (a lack psychopaths share, and Fyodor’s case proves to be much too complex to simply throw into that spectrum and call it a day; see @tecchous-thicc-buttocks​​ ’s post here, where OP not only has a great post, but also a smashing username AND a superb N.V. Gogol reference in their blog description to laugh your heart out to), I invite you to explore exactly the opposite, namely the idea that he has capacity for perfect empathy and uses it instrumentally to make it suitable for his plans. The canon material showed us many situations that support this (too), as we shall see below.

Fyodor “connects” with others mentally, emotionally and / or spiritually in such an accurate way, that this skill of his is portrayed as bone-chillingly sinister, in scenarios holding starkly contrasting ideas. It is not just about analytically deducing what a person would do next or what would objectively motivate that person, Fyodor knows the depths of people’s hearts, as can be seen in his discussions with Karma, Shibusawa, Nikolai, and the way Fyodor talks about Sigma. I shall present each case in detail in what follows, made into a list of people whose problems Fyodor saw through and responded to adequately.

Karma’s problem was of intellectual nature: to die a slave or a free man, and how those are mutually-exclusive conditions, in regard to which Karma recognized himself trapped in the first condition (slave), but was later “transported” into the second condition (free man) by the circumtances and type of death Fyodor “granted” him. Frequently rationalizing each situation in his inner monologues, pondering each factor and possible outcome analytically and in admirable control of his emotions (as seen throughout the entire ch42), Karma explored, so to say, the “syllogisms” behind what was happening to him too: I want to be saved + I am a bad person + saviours do not save bad persons => I will never be saved; OR I am a bad person + I am not a free person + a saviour can free me by saving me + saviours do not save bad persons => I will never be a free person. Even if the concepts belong to morality discourse, Karma’s approach is straightforward and logical, therefore there is no scene of him begging Fyodor for help, freedom or vengeance, as well as no scene of him even running away from Fyodor: despite being frightened, he was able to withstand his irrational reaction and sought knowledge and clarifications through conversation even in the face of the Demon. Karma was a person who rationalized and accepted his personal condition, and he was all the more shocked that this “slave” condition was dissolved by the events caused by Fyodor. Although Karma had to be killed so that no trace was left by Fyodor, what deserves attention is, on one hand, the fulfillment on Karma’s dying face (dying as a free man), and, on the other hand, how Fyodor gave him privacy when he gave his last breath, as Fyodor is portrayed looking directly at Karma only after he passed away. The fact that Fyodor is portrayed as looking at Karma’s lifeless body afterwards at all can be interpreted as Fyodor contemplating Karma’s end, especially given how in ch42 all background elements vanish in this particular panel, deepening the solemnity of the moment (as @linkspooky​ noted too, together with Fyodor’s understanding and acknowledgement of Karma as a person, worthy of sharing knowledge with, here). And yet the anime (S3ep4) did not insist on this manga panel at all, skipping it entirely. The prayer that Fyodor offered for Karma at the end (“May your soul find salvation… released from the yoke of sin”), while facing him (unlike in the anime, where Fyodor does not look at Karma at all) was the conclusion of Fyodor’s solemn meditation, and I find it a shame that the anime did not linger on this aspect. This scene blends a merciful death with a necessary crime, such contrasts being typical to Fyodor’s character. This prayer for Karma may in fact not be the only one Fyodor offered to those he led to their death by necessity: indeed, Fyodor’s cello recital in front of a captured Katsura in ch47 may have served the same purpose. Given that Fyodor informed fake Pushkin about Atsushi and Kunikida’s arrival, via the telephone, in real-time, we can assume Fyodor knew exactly when the two Agency members clashed with the armed children and when the little girl triggered the detonation of her grenades. After replying to Katsura’s remark, meeting Katsura with the impenetrable grin typical to both him and Dazai, Fyodor recommenced playing with closed eyes and no smile (thus fully immersed), unlike in the anime (S3ep9), where Fyodor never stopped playing in order to talk with Katsura, yet him stopping to play the cello just for that is, in my opinion, very important, as I will try to show here. Fyodor’s cello recital ended with him offering a prayer, which at its end addressed specifically all children of the world (ch47, “Joy to the world… and blessings to all its children”). Therefore, the cello scene carries solemnity, thoughtfulness and emotion, contrasting with the violent sight of the dead children breaking Kunikida’s spirit, and in this light Fyodor’s recital (which Katsura himself did not understand the purpose of, as he was clueless about what was happening outside) becomes a musical prayer for the sacrificed souls. Once again, despite being terribly beautiful in animation and sound indeed, it is a pity the anime depicted this scene in a weirdly ecstatic and stereotypically evil way, giving Fyodor a demonic gaze and grin, as well as making Fyodor face Katsura while playing, despite Fyodor not being turned towards Katsura at all in the manga (ch47), given how he looked at Katsura over his right shoulder (Fyodor’s body position further supports the idea that the recital was not meant for Katsura). As a closing note here, the anime added a specific detail at the scene’s end, one I personally would consider mischaracterization: in the anime, Fyodor broke his cello after the recital, and yet this never happened in the manga, and now we can guess why (Fyodor prays for his innocent victims). See section H for more on Fyodor’s overall gentleness, as well as my previous post about the cello scene here.

Sigma’s problem is of emotional nature: for a man without a past, lacking life itself before he found himself “existing” directly as a young adult (I assume he is a young adult), he was most desperate to fulfill his most basic and primary emotional needs, i.e. having a safe place to call his “home” and belonging to people whom he can call “family”. These are exactly the things Fyodor offered to Sigma right from the start, as if anticipating his arrival in that state, but Fyodor also praised and described Sigma for Dazai (ch75) in a very positive, heartfelt way that also implies Fyodor’s admiration for Sigma, as well as acknowledges a certain superiority Sigma has, even compared to Fyodor and Dazai themselves. Depending on the true nature of Fyodor’s relation to Sigma, as well as Sigma’s true nature in itself, I assume this point here will change in nuance in the future, but in the present the canon tells Fyodor has read Sigma’s heart like an open book. I refrain from adding more to this paragraph until new chapters give me new ground for it.

Nikolai’s problem is of philosophical and spiritual nature: the very fact that Fyodor could understand Nikolai’s core problem, his central existential dilemma, not to mention how quickly Fyodor grasped it, is something that both elevated and destabilized Nikolai. Fyodor rightfully explained that Nikolai fights God “in order to lose sight of himself” (ch78), which, theologically-speaking, is very much accurate from a Christian perspective: a human’s highest and final goal is to “see God”, to return to where man was exiled from (heaven, the Fatherland or patria in Latin, the future heavenly Jerusalem etc.) and, once there, to contemplate God eternally, finally reunited with their Creator and seeing “face to face” (see 1 Corinthians 13:12). That is, because there is where man’s real nature lies, where it came from and belongs to, but also man being created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:26), together with a Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical legacy, led to a tradition of interpretations (part of our overall cultural heritage) where man’s divine part (or God himself) resides deep within the human soul: therefore, introspection or contemplating one’s own self holds incredible importance. Nikolai fighting God “in order to lose sight of himself” is a very well-chosen line for Fyodor and a great way of presenting (a glimpse of) the depth of Nikolai’s soul to the readers, one that opens many possible interpretations, not just the one offered above. Nonetheless, Fyodor’s response is particularly disturbing, because he calmly stated what frightens and enrages Nikolai the most: the fact that the sight of God is, in the end, the sight of himself, his true self, and “fighting against God” inevitably becomes “fighting against himself” too. So what is left when Nikolai fights against this truth? What is left must be what is unique to Nikolai as a being, if there is anything like that at all. So far in the manga, it seems Nikolai struggles desperately with the concept of the “omniscient God”, who possesses knowledge of past, present and future as well, which opens the particular Pandora’s box of “predetermination vs human free will”, a monstruous philosophical problem as old as time (or at least heavily discussed ever since Ancient Greek philosophy and Early Christianity too). One must note that, by answering like this, Fyodor essentially denied Nikolai the success of his mission, but granted him the rare gift or rare curse of being fully understood by someone else. One truth too much, the resulting emotional impact on Nikolai was disastruous, as Nikolai appears to be a person of high sensitivity, very susceptible to the power of words and how they plant ideas in his mind. Even if Fyodor’s response is not malicious in words (see, however, section H, about the meaning of the tilt of his head and how this scene is an example of intentional emotional manipulation), this interaction was profoundly unhealthy and destabilizing for Nikolai, which I would argue is well in the spirit of N.V. Gogol’s characters, having their spirits frequently broken by the most mundane things which nonetheless go beyond what they are capable to live with (read The Overcoat, Nevsky Prospekt first half, even Diary of a Madman).

Shibusawa’s problem was of personal nature, linked to his past: not only the Mayoi cards, but also the entirety of the Dead Apple movie make it clear that Shibusawa and Fyodor were long-time acquaintances before the fog incident in Yokohama happened. The most objective proof on this are Shibusawa’s words themselves, when telling Fyodor (in the Draconia room, in Dazai’s presence) that it was thanks to Fyodor selling information to Shibusawa that the fog incidents could happen, and in Yokohama too at such an impresive scale. Since Shibusawa told Dazai he did not find “having friends” necessary (since everyone was like a open book to him), I will refrain from calling the personal relationship between Fyodor and Shibusawa “friendship”. Now then, later on, despite being surprised by the ability-gathering Dragon event triggering after he approached Dazai’s “ability gem”, Shibusawa was not angry nor shocked when Fyodor cut his throat: Shibusawa immediately realized he found his most important personal memory as a consequence of Fyodor killing him or, rather, Fyodor “granting” him death once again. Here, too, two contrasting images combine: 1) Fyodor offering “death” as a “gift” or “blessing” that gives Shibusawa exactly what he needed most, and 2) Fyodor essentially killing his old acquaintance, but with the twist that Fyodor was aware Shibusawa would not die yet, quite the contrary – as a result of Fyodor putting a fragment of the crystal that gathers all abilities on the skull’s forehead (as a “small gift”, as Fyodor called it), Shibusawa was revived and enjoyed one last “epic battle” and then died a truly fulfilled person. In fact, Dazai predicted this outcome in the very first scene with the three of them at the table in Dead Apple, telling Shibusawa he is the one in need of “salvation”: Shibusawa then asked Dazai “And exactly who do you propose could save me?”, to which Dazai answered “Who knows? An angel, perhaps? Or, maybe, a demon” (then Fyodor enters the scene; note that I cite the dub version and that, at the end of Shibusawa’s and Atsushi’s battle, Shibusawa’s last words to Atsushi were “(…) The meaning of that man’s <Fyodor’s> words. I understand all of it now. It’s you! You must be the angel who has come to save me”). Anyway, the movie leaves several interesting questions unaswered: could Fyodor have granted death to Shibusawa, and therefore give him his most important memory back, at any time, or was the whole Yokohama setting necessary? If the latter, was it necessary for Shibusawa or necessary for Fyodor, and Fyodor acted only when their distinct goals aligned? In any case, allow me to expose something very intriguing in the next lines. After Fyodor granted Shibusawa death by cutting his throat in a single swift knife attack, the moment Shibusawa’s memory of his first death returned overlapped with the moment Atsushi’s memory of the same event returned to him as well. In the flashback, Shibusawa stated that he conducted those ability extraction experiments on Atsushi – specifically, Shibusawa pressed the switch – because “a Russian man” told him Atsushi’s “power was coveted by every gifted in the world”. Later, Shibusawa added “the Russian’s name was Fyodor”. This makes all events align in such a way that one could speculate Fyodor was leading Shibusawa and everyone involved with him (Ango and the government) down that precise path we see reach its end in the Dead Apple movie. This makes Fyodor’s words from ch42 all the more relevant: “People can be so simple… They truly believe they are thinking for themselves. (…) They don’t want to think they’re being led by the nose”; or, in S3ep4’s dub: “People are eager to believe that they are acting with free will, that they know best. (…) We all loathe to believe we can be controlled”. One last thing to note and analyse here: as Fyodor walked away alone on the hallway and the Dragon got unleashed, he had a “conversation” with Shibusawa’s skull:

Fyodor (sub): “I’ll tell you an interesting fact, in celebration of you finding a friend in me.” Fyodor (dub): “In thanks of our newfound friendship, I’ll offer you a bite from the apple of knowledge.”

Fyodor and his ability then delivered their famous “I am crime. I am punishment” dialogue. While there are significant wording differences between the versions cited above, how Fyodor referred to “friendship” here is mocking and ironic, so the nature of the bond between him and Shibusawa (beyond that of “informant and information buyer”) remains debatable. It is beautiful how the dub version of the line offers a splendid example of godly and demonic imagery blending in the character of Fyodor. In a Christian cultural context, two precise ideas come to mind simultaneously when hearing Fyodor’s line: 1) it was God who created everything, including the first humans (Adam, then Eve) in Eden, amongst all the fruit-bearing trees, giving them rules as to what they could consume or not (the power and authority “to offer” something rightfully was God’s, being the one to give and take away, to reference  Job, 1, 21), but also 2) it was the Devil who “offered” Eve such a bite, tempting her through suggesting she should eat from the forbidden fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (the infamous “suggestion” was the Devil’s, making a forbidden “offer” that was actually a transgression). It is unclear to which of these two ideas Fyodor is closer, and it may as well be possible he is equally close to both, further encompasing contradicting traits. Nonetheless, given that Karma himself introduced the yet unresolved theme of “transcending human nature” and “transcending good and evil” in relation to Fyodor’s character (ch42, Karma: “Ace was evil, but this guy isn’t even that. He’s some kind of nirvana. Something that transcends mankind itself…”), this particular line from Dead Apple supports Karma’s observations and how Fyodor’s character combines the ideas of creator and destroyer, like @looking-for-stray-dogs put into beautiful words here. This only becomes more interesting when we consider the archetype or role of the “servant of God”, which Fyodor consciously claims to fulfill (see section F below).

Kunikida: Yes, you read that correctly. While Ivan and Nathaniel are, as of now, total wildcards and I do not have enough information as to objectively describe their situation or how Fyodor won them over or “read their souls”, Kunikida’s case is the perfect example of Fyodor’s understanding of a person being so deep and accurate that he knew exactly what actions would cause them to break and render them useless for a significant period of time. Moreover, Kunikida’s case becomes even more intriguing if we remember that Fyodor successfully read his nature without even meeting him. Well, that would be the introduction to this minisection about Kunikida, but frankly I did not have enough time nor energy to dig deeper into this as of now. Perhaps in the future I will update this part with information and links to several great analysis posts I am sure Kunikida fans wrote out already, with their whole heart in them.

These examples share the fact that Fyodor accurately reads the intellectual (Karma), emotional (Sigma), philosophical and spiritual (Nikolai) layers of the human heart, as well as is capable of perfectly adapting to one’s personal baggage on the long term (Shibusawa). This means he posseses an extraordinary capacity for empathy, but, as he never loses his composure (except for small instances of surprise or adrenaline rush, like in ch46 and ch53), his willpower controls every single gesture and reaction he makes, which makes him a terrifying foe who has complete control over himself, never overreacts and thus seems soulless (ch42). His understanding of human nature fiels his skill to deduce future actions and thoughts of other people, which in turn may deepen Fyodor’s individualism or trigger his eventual alienation (paired with perceiving humans as “boring” because they are predictable, to which Dazai disagreed in ch77, albeit it must be noted that this is only an assumption Dazai made about Fyodor, that is not entirely supported by the canon dialogues; see section E), as well as encourage Fyodor to use others as predictable (and therefore reliable) pawns in his plans. Again, Fyodor’s character combines two very contrasting yet interdependent things in his strategies: acknowledging others as humans (with individual problems) firstly, and using them as instruments when necessary, on that basis (as Fyodor becomes their problem-solver). This shows both how versatile and accepting Fyodor is as a thinker and leader (see also section C). Theoretically speaking, could Fyodor use Dazai as a pawn, if Dazai is completely alien from being human? But that would open another massive collective essay on what is going on inside Dazai’s soul and mind, as the fandom so often and so admirably tried to figure out already. Personally, I am a firm believer in Dazai’s humanity, and if Fyodor can indeed understand it all the way to its core, then one may wonder if Dazai’s humanity will be his downfall.

C. He values independence and (most probably) his co-workers

Continuing on the previous paragraph’s line of thought, here’s the catch: it is important to keep in mind that Fyodor nevertheless seems to treat certain “pawns” differently, perhaps considering them closer to him in some regard. People Fyodor refers to as “his staff” (and, in ch64, the faces of Ivan and Pushkin appear as examples) may be a matter of genuine concern to him, enough so that Fyodor asks Dazai how to make his subordinates less dependent on Fyodor: “My staff show no independence. All they do is wait for orders. How can I make them into good workers who take the initiative?” (ch64). To me, this question, even just as a light-hearted example for the sake of their shared prison mindgames, is plain shocking coming from someone always thought of as using people like tools and discarding them like broken puppets. As a first thought, to my stupefaction, Fyodor really took into consideration the independence of even his lower-ranking “pawns” as something worthy of a question, and valuable enough as to lament its lack. However, on later inspection I came to understand that Fyodor’s entire “roooooundtable” session from ch64 is in fact more like an icosahedron with razor-sharp edges (I mean, complex and slick), and can be taken both or either literally (like in this section I took Fyodor’s words literally) or figuratively, assuming Fyodor and Dazai’s answers as being each a substitution for something else entirely. Until I reach that point further down this section, there are more examples that refer to Fyodor’s perception of his co-workers (note: for the manga, my points of reference are the official English translations):

1) in Dead Apple, Fyodor celebrated what he called the “newfound friendship” between him and Shibusawa in Dead Apple, thus calling Shibusawa a “friend”, which is further supported if we take into consideration certain BSD Mayoi card descriptions (“Dragon Head Feud” card description, or “Bundled up” card quote: “Oh my, it seems that Dazai-kun and Nakajima Atsushi-kun have managed to evade us today. Well, if Shibusawa-kun is happy, then I'm happy. I'm his friend, after all.”); however, if put back in the larger context, the benevolent character of this statement is debatable (see section B);

2) in ch42, Fyodor told Ace “My friends have taken over the outside corridors”, thus directly referring to his Rats in the House of the Dead as “friends”, even if the fact itself was a lie to pressure Ace towards his suicide;

3) in ch95.5, silently agreed to considering Nikolai a friend when Dazai complimented Nikolai’s prison game idea. There are two instances where Dazai mocked Fyodor about having a nice friend in Nikolai, both of them in this chapter, and only in the second one Fyodor played along, agreeing to Dazai’s claim, but one has to bear in mind that the two could have been mocking each other in both instances:

Nikolai, ch95.5 (fan translation): “The wish to save my friend is indeed very difficult to falter. That’s why I need to shatter this determination, such to prove the free will of homo sapiens!” Dazai: “Seems like… you have a nice friend…” Fyodor: “…” – Nikolai (after a few lines): “From now on, you two will be participating in a jail break duel!” Dazai: “You indeed have a very good friend.” Fyodor: “I know, right?”

Leaving the debate open as to whether Fyodor is genuine when using the term “friend” overall (see also bsd-bibliophile’s post here, further inspecting Fyodor and Nikolai’s interactions, as well as mentioning one instance of the term “friend”, used by Fyodor for Pushkin, being present in the fan translation, but not in the original Japanese text per se), all this information nonetheless supports the fact that Fyodor himself may not be oppressive towards others, and that his methods rather rely on communication, negotiation and manipulation. Indeed, strangely enough, for example when approaching someone new with the intent to work with them, Fyodor’s ways are all “clean talk”: no torture, no physical abuse, no threats, no intimidation or humiliation, no blood as of now (on the possibility of brainwashing, see section D below). Instead, Fyodor becomes the ideal smooth-talker and deal-maker when first recruiting others, perfectly reading into their soul and appealing to their most intimate desires (see section B above, as well as @gold-pavilion​​ / akai-koutei ’s post here /oldhere, and there was a beautiful addition by @/goddessesofeverything here, but all reblogs of the original post were deleted and I cry). When approaching a clear target, however, there can be freshly spilt blood, for example 1) Mori getting stabbed (ch46), 2) Katai getting shot (ch49), and 3) Shibusawa getting his throat cut open (Dead Apple), in each case the action being done directly by Fyodor (firing the gun or holding the respective knives with his own hands). Lastly, if we take into consideration how Fyodor played along with Nikolai’s puns in vol.14’s omake, and how highly and affectionately he spoke about Sigma in ch74 and ch75, Fyodor’s actual dynamics with his subordinates or fellow Decay of the Angel members could potentially surprise the reader in future updates, because his polite and discreet nature do not seem to be a mere façade.

Another point needs to be addressed here, and it is whether or not we can safely use the word “care” to sum up Fyodor’s relationship towards his close co-workers (thank you, Sel @oddeyesight​​, for your questions that led me towards considering this aspect in more detail). First of all, one needs to acknowledge there are persons Fyodor worked with and then disposed of in the most indubitable way, like the mafioso he forced information from in ch51, indirectly all children in ch47 and directly the little girl with the grenades, whom he talked to via telephone prior to the events. Secondly, compared to them, there are characters that are closer to Fyodor, which Fyodor refers to as “friends” (so far, this applies to Pushkin, Ivan, Nathaniel, and indirectly consenting to calling Nikolai a friend; see the paragraph above). Looking at definitions of the noun “care” – “the process of looking after someone” and “the process of doing things to keep something in good condition and working correctly” (Longman dictionary) – the first definition I give as an example here can imply affection, whereas the second definition does not, and refers to an impartial instrumental approach. So far, from what I gathered, there is no canon basis to claim Fyodor cares about someone else in the first definition’s sense, only in the second. Until future manga chapters may or may not change this, I propose looking at Fyodor from another viewpoint: in relation to the antonym of “care” (neglect), and a closely-related noun, indifference. For this task I propose starting with the following scene from ch74, when Dazai deduced the Sky Casino’s origin and purpose:

Dazai: “It was made for two goals. As a base for the next terror attack and as “payment” for the use of Sigma’s skill. …Never waste a thing, do you?” Fyodor: “Our boss does hate to be wasteful.”

By saying “Never waste a thing, do you?”, Dazai implied that Fyodor executed all the steps he deduced, yet Fyodor shaked this claim off, directing Dazai’s remark toward someone Fyodor called “our boss”. We, as readers, naturally think of Fukuchi, who is the leader of the Decay of the Angel in title, but I dare say the entire fandom does not buy this, as in everything else Fyodor still acts like the puppeteer determining the actions of all the group’s members, whether they know it (Nikolai and Sigma) or not (Fukuchi probably and Bram). Fyodor humbling himself and downplaying his importance is a recurring behaviour of his, in varying depictions such as in ch46 (Fyodor to Dazai: “I will not be the one who will bring down your two groups. It will be you yourselves”), in ch73’s cover artwork of Sigma holding cards (where Fyodor is not an Ace, not even a King, he is but a Jack of Spades), in ch77 (Fyodor to Dazai: “Me? I didn’t do anything. I just sat here and prayed… and those prayers were answered”; see section F for more). This aside, hiding the identity of Fyodor’s “boss” had at least two purposes: 1) keeping Fukuchi’s double identity hidden (both the Hunting Dogs leader and the Decay of the Angel leader) and 2) redirecting not only Dazai’s, but our attention too. Since Fyodor and Dazai imagine their actions as if within a mental game of chess, let us reconsider the fates of Fyodor’s pieces so far, which include both the Decay of the Angel members and the Rats in the House of the Dead:

1) Pushkin was apparently captured and eliminated from the “chess game” (lost piece, used and then captured by the enemy in ch53), and yet he is alive and well, even shamelessly spilling information to Ranpo to save his own skin, while being interrogated (ch54), providing him with the lead on Mushitaro. Despite leaking information, so far nobody was sent to “clean” Pushkin off the table (as in Mushitaro’s case, whom Nikolai said he was assigned to kill off at the end of ch56). Pushkin leaking information may be intentional as part of Fyodor’s plans, which means Pushkin’s role likely did not meet its end yet.

2) Ivan was apparently captured and eliminated from the “chess game” (lost piece, used and then captured by the enemy in ch53), and yet Ivan survived and is probably held somewhere alive; also, Ivan’s loyalty and “happiness” never wavered, not even when in Rashomon’s tight grip (ch53), which means his trust in Fyodor remained unchanged and he did not abandon his role of Fyodor’s servant and “head chamberlain” (ch52).

3) Mushitaro was, most probably, really supposed to die (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: died in an exploding car after Nikolai’s surprise attack in ch56), yet he is still alive, last seen (iirc) safe in Poe’s mansion in ch78.5 (vol.18 bonus chapter at the end). Since Fyodor sent Nikolai to dispose of Mushitaro, it is rather clear Fyodor was not indifferent to Mushitaro staying alive, and now this is a loose end, one where Mushitaro survived and we do not know if this scenario has already been integrated in one of Fyodor’s larger schemes or if it will serve against Fyodor somehow later.

4) Nikolai was apparently supposed to die (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: sawed in half in ch58), and yet he is very much alive and already influenced the current events of the manga drastically. Furthermore, in ch95.5, when Nikolai started explaining his prison game, Fyodor replied “So that’s what you’re planning”, as if the two already agreed upon Nikolai doing “something”, and apparently that “something” remained a surprise to Fyodor, hence his reply was phrased as a conclusion. Note how Nikolai’s action remaining a surprise reinforce Nikolai’s freedom and agency, and Fyodor allowed this and played along, despite how accurate to his character it would be to have deduced Nikolai’s possible actions already. Then again, it could be that Fyodor knew that Nikolai had to hear precisely that kind of reaction, in order to continue playing a role Fyodor secretly predicted for him. Later, in ch98, after Nikolai’s prison game started, when Fyodor was waiting for Chuuya to arrive, Nikolai asked him “It’s been five minutes since the game started. You aren’t gonna move? Can I take that to assume… your pieces are already moving?”. If Nikolai’s prison game is an independent consequence of him independently choosing not to die, then why would Nikolai smile as if in agreement with Fyodor, supposing that everything went as planned? The problem of free will remains unresolved and tightly knit into Nikolai’s character even in the current events.

5) Sigma was apparently supposed to die (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: shot by Nathaniel in ch76), and just like Nikolai he is very much alive and playing a crucial role still unknown to us (in a conversation with Alex @vampireonastick​​ I suggested that Sigma being on Dazai’s side of the prison game might be a well-disguised infiltration strategy already planned out by Fyodor, with whom Nikolai cooperates on this, despite Nikolai’s “sidequest” to kill Fyodor); we have an important hint as to how Sigma’s death was never required by Fyodor’s plan: the “roooooundtable” from ch64. It is indeed highly probable that the entire “all-smiles problem-solving rooooundtable” session proposed and moderated by Fyodor was his masked suggestion (masked from the guards!) of creating a unique substitution code that only he and Dazai would be able to communicate in, as @fantastic-rambles analysed more in-depth here. And just like @mydearestt​​ noticed in this post here that, through his reply, Dazai in fact referred to his plan to make the Agency move, the same can be assumed in Fyodor’s case. To remember the dialogue, I shall copy the revelant part here below:

Dazai: “Me next. “I tried asking the café waitress out, but she won’t bend an inch. What should I do?” Fyodor: “Make her lose her job and home, trick her family into disowning her and she’s bound to come crawling to you.”

I propose reading this sequence as referring to Sigma entirely, because: 1) Sigma, much like a waitress, was contained and bound to his workplace, the casino, unwilling to leave once there, no matter who asked; 2) Fyodor set up the entire scenario of making Sigma lose his job AND home in the most literal sense by completely destabilizing the casino; 3) by doing unbecoming irreversible actions, Sigma secured his own family rejecting him, and all ties were cut with Sigma’s “death”, yet Sigma survived – equally destabilized, he ended up in a situation where, if Fyodor would have granted him another wish, Sigma would not have refused, naturally seeking the one person who may still have power to grant wishes as grand and Sigma’s, and that is still Fyodor, who both gave and took Sigma’s home. This being said, like Alex @vampireonastick​ theorized in their post here, I strongly believe Dazai strategically manipulates Sigma in the prison game, “shaping” him to defy Fyodor, the person he would otherwise “crawl back to”. However, since Fyodor chooses his words with utmost care all the time, no matter if truthful or deceiving, I personally doubt Fyodor would carelessly share his strategy (disguised as the grimest relationship advice) without it already being implemented into a larger scheme, in which Dazai acts upon the words he hears from Fyodor (and Dazai already did so twice in this arc, firstly by choosing Sigma, secondly by “building up” Sigma for his eventual refusal of Fyodor). What Dazai perhaps does not expect is the fact that Fyodor himself already talked to Sigma in ways that reinforce Sigma’s agency: for example, in ch73, Fyodor directly told Sigma that, should the Hunting Dogs attack the casino, Sigma should run as he would have no chance of winning; Sigma, on the contrary, remembering Fyodor’s words – not once, but twice in the chapter –, was pushed only more vehemently to defending his casino, thus acting on his own and defying Fyodor already, a reaction Fyodor most likely anticipated when making Sigma hear his “advice as a co-worker” (in Fyodor’s own words, ch73). In the end, regardless of the content of Fyodor’s words, it seems his kidnapper from ch42 offered honest advice to Karma: “Watch out… If you talk to him, he’ll pluck your mind out”. Despite how there is no proof of an actual “plucking of the mind” action yet (see section D), Fyodor’s words (often, if not always) twist the minds of those around him in a way that, paradoxically, both acknowledges and denies them their free will, encouraging decisions that seem free to the agent, but are already predicted and known to Fyodor (and in this, I must admit, Fyodor bears a resemblance to an omniscient god; however, his canon dialogues often convey a different role, a tension I discus in section F). In this light, I wonder if Dazai had this behaviour before too and acted upon words he heard from Fyodor in previous instances, such as the Mutual Destruction arc.

6) Nathaniel was apparently eliminated from the “chess game” entirely (sacrificed piece, used and then disposed of: captured in Anne’s room of no return in ch76), yet this does not imply he is dead, which begs the question if Anne’s room, the Agency’s only true safe space, is now compromised, as me and Alex wondered here (see also the reblogs and replies to their post).

One thing I want to remark here is that, despite how clear it is that Fyodor “moved” all these “chess pieces” already (only number 3 to 6 are relevant in this case), in ch76, right after Nathaniel got captured, as Atsushi and Lucy were celebrating their victory, Ango explained to them how the events at the casino were no victory, and how instead everything played as Fyodor has planned, claiming that Fyodor has not made any move yet:

Ango, ch76: “We lost because you let Sigma die. Now we have no leads to the Page. And… the Hunting Dogs saw us try to rescue him. In their eyes, that likely looked like the Detective Agency helping their terrorist allies. Our plan failed and we’ve only sowed more doubt. This is likely exactly as Dostoyevsky planned. Frankly… I can’t stop shaking. Until now, he moved none of his pawns and gave us no room to deal with him. (…)”

As I shall leave Ango analysis to Alex @vampireonastick​ like in this post here, I will return to the fact that so far the only true “chess piece” that Fyodor ever truly let die was Shibusawa. Then, to sum up, when his co-workers fulfilled their purpose and no use nor entertainment can be obtained from them anymore, Fyodor’s pattern seems to be leaving said co-workers with apparent indifference to their well-being, often abandoning them in a state or situation that is destructive to them (Shibusawa is the clearest example, but it applies to all other aforementioned characters as well). However, the twist is that none of these characters did reach the end of their assigned roles yet (and we may wonder if they will ever do that), given that Pushkin, Ivan, Nikolai, Sigma, Nathaniel and even Mushitaro are all alive and healthy. Consindering all this, the way BSD is narrated becomes even more interesting, because the reader would naturally project treating others as expendable on Fyodor, where in fact it is more accurate to Dazai’s character to act this way (and he did and does act that way, as @linkspooky​ pointed out in detail in their post here). Back to Fyodor’s “our boss does hate to be wasteful” line, while still just an interpretation, it would make sense that Fyodor refers to himself or his ability (if it’s a separate conscious being, see section G) as “our boss”, because all this information suggests that Fyodor himself hates to be wasteful, and that, excepting Shibusawa, Fyodor never wasted even a single pawn of his. That means Fyodor never neglects his co-workers (whom he calls friends!) and is never truly indifferent to them, albeit in an instrumental way, given that there is no proof yet that Fyodor’s care towards his co-workers is affectionate in nature. Let us close this section with a treat, though: in ch51 and ch53, there are two panels of a teacup with three teaspoons to its left. Differing greatly from the anime, albeit delivering the same subtle deception, these three teaspoons help in fooling the reader into thinking that Ivan poured tea in Fyodor’s cup, placed the teacup in front of him and then Fyodor consumed that tea, together with the jam that filled all three teaspoons at first (ch51). Given that 1) Ivan prepared the tea with three teaspoons of jam and 2) at the restaurant, Fyodor drank his tea exactly like that, with three teaspoons of jam, from this we can deduce Ivan is very familiar with Fyodor’s tea-drinking habits, which in turn leads us to the very likely idea that Fyodor and Ivan (if not also together with other members of the Rats in the House of the Dead) frequently had tea together, or Ivan prepared tea for Fyodor often enough to memorize his precise habits. The latter would support Ivan’s self-proclaimed status as Fyodor’s “head chamberlain” (ch52), suggesting that their group lived as family and / or nobility in the same house, if the definition of “chamberlain” is taken into consideration (Longman Dictionary: “chamberlain, an important official who managed the house of a king or queen in the past”).

D. No confirmation yet that he is brainwashing others and why this is relevant

Speaking of his methods of acquiring new collaborators, so far, it is most certain that Fyodor is not brainwashing people: not Fukuchi, not Nikolai, not Sigma, not Karma, not Pushkin, and certainly not the little girl with the grenades, even though the anime depicted the scene differently (in the manga’s ch47, a flashback appears where Fyodor talks to the little girl via telephone, thus he does not simply appear in her clouded mind like in the anime’s S3ep9).

But two characters Fyodor works with are in a very ambiguous position as of now: Ivan and Nathaniel. To begin with, Ivan’s case is very tricky at the moment. In ch53, he openly told Akutagawa that “my master cut out all the parts of his brain that feel unhappiness”. What can I say except our dear Vanya here is a lil’ crazy. I find his replies rather unreliable at the moment, because he is the only Fyodor-subordinate who is behaving like an intoxicated bacchant for now. While the ch53 quote is singular and, therefore, I cannot make anything of it, there is another thing that needs to be considered: in ch52, as he was walking away from Akutagawa and Atsushi, Ivan told them “I will not forget you. …No… You will now serve as part of my master’s joyful order”, but immediately after that he added “after 10 more steps, I will most likely forget your faces”. Apparent self-contradiction aside, whether he meant “forget your faces” literally or not, Nathaniel, too, went through an apparent mind-reset, as he did not recognize Akutagawa in ch46 and appears to have lost his entire personality except for his devotion to Margaret Mitchell and his determination to save her life. Now, mind-resetting and brainwashing are not the same, and removing a part of one’s brain or mind that is responsible for a specific emotion is, likewise, something entirely different. The manga did not give us further examples of similar things that Fyodor apparently had a role to play in, so I cannot present anything new here, only speculation. We also do not know if these effects are caused by Fyodor himself (without using his ability at all, much like he could simply talk Ace into his own suicide in ch42) or Fyodor’s ability specifically. This simply limits my current analysis of Fyodor’s methods to the beforementioned “communication, negotiation, manipulation” trio, which is not dependent nor related to his ability, and I will update these parts if the manga later reveals that Fyodor did indeed mold the conscience or minds of other people into whatever shape or state he desired. Until then, he is literally just a genius smooth-talker, and I refrain from making rash affirmations or going into more speculation here.

E. He loves and lives for entertainment

So many canon lines convey Fyodor’s love for entertainment. It is more specifically entertainment in a “good literature” sense, meaning conflict, tension, intensity of will and emotions, devotion, despair and generally human beings fighting for their needs or to solve their problems of many different, often opposing kinds. Let us take Fyodor’s own words as references. First of all, at the beginning of the Dead Apple movie, as younger Chuuya destroyes the entire building in which he and Dazai found Shibusawa the first time, Fyodor watched the scene from a safe distance, on top of a building. All he did was “absorb” the whole event with utter satisfaction, concluding the scene with his line “This is too much fun”. The motif is repeated several times in the Dead Apple movie, linking his own enjoyment of whatever chaos unfolds to “fun” and “entertainment”, so this line is not the sole evidence that entertainment is greatly valued by Fyodor, as it is the thing opposed to boredom, which constantly eats away at his and Dazai’s hearts because of their superhuman intellect. As Fyodor was getting the two most important ability gems ready for his and Dazai’s plan, Fyodor tells Dazai “Would you not agree that the more entertainment there is, the better?” (dub); moreover, at the end of the movie, his lines highlight the privileged spot of “entertainment” in his understanding of the world around him again:

Fyodor (sub): “Everything is but entertainment. But in order to end this world, rife with crime and punishment, I do need that book. The blank novel sleeping in this town.” Fyodor (dub):“Everything is just entertainment. However, this world is so rife with crime and punishment… In order to finally end it, I do need that novel. This special book that sleeps somewhere within this city.”

However, paying close attention to his words, we need to consider the possibility that in this instance Dead Apple either contradicts or deceives the watcher greatly, because in the manga Fyodor’s goal is clearly referring to “saving the world”, not “ending the world” (see also section G, near the end, for more on Fyodor’s possible motivation).

Now, in the manga (ch63), Fyodor stated that he openly refused to devise a perfect plan (as demanded by another Decay of the Angel member, possibly Fukuchi) because perfection is boring (Fyodor, ch63: “A Decay comrade asked me for the perfect plan… but perfect is so boring. I won’t be able to view the karma of humanity like this”). While at first glance one could be surprised by this statement, especially considering that “God prefers perfection and harmony”, in Fyodor’s own words from ch77 (see section G where I expand on this specifically), both lines (perfection is boring + God favours perfection) could potentially be extremely deceiving: since the Agency knows Fyodor is involved in crafting the Decay of the Angel’s plan, it is probably this implication that leads, for example, Kyouka in ch63 to tell Atsushi that their plan is “extensive and flawless”, and Atsushi’s inner monologue, as a response, appears together with a panel of a faceless Fyodor pulling strained strings in the darkness. If everyone expects Fyodor to be perfect and to create flawless strategies, an opponent like Dazai could include unpredictable, irrational or impulsive actions in his own strategies to outsmart him, as Dazai describes his appreciative acknowledgement of this behaviour he finds in other people (Dazai to Fyodor, ch77: “What’s driving the world are those in the storm of accidental events who scream, run and spill blood. Faced with their souls, you and I should be petrified with fear”; more on this specific dialogue in the next paragraph). But knowing this reaction would be triggered, Fyodor could always integrate imperfections in his plans, leaving his opponents with the impression that they act in the right way, on their free will, when in fact nothing they do has not been already considered by Fyodor (holding true to his lines from ch42). Personality-wise, the “perfection is boring” line becomes relevant if (and only if) Fyodor really, truly means it literally, and 1) does not say it just to tell what his opponent(s) (or the reader themselves) would want or expect to hear, without meaning it, or 2) does not say it as some kind of reverse-psychology, without personal attachment, to trigger predictable reactions in his opponent(s) (again, see section G for a continuation of this particular discussion). As a last example to support the idea of Fyodor loving entertainment, finding both fun and beauty in it, when a very shocked Dazai was asking Fyodor about the reason (“for what?”) for his stupefying strategic moves (the coin bombs, staging the casino as the battleground etc.), Fyodor only replied “Isn’t it more beautiful that way?”.

Now, ch77 presents us with a dialogue between Fyodor and Dazai which seems easy to understand at first, but becomes increasingly complex the more one dwells on it. To remember the full context clearly again, I shall sum it up and add the full relevant quote here: after Fyodor told Dazai that “God favours perfection and harmony”, after which it is confirmed that the Page was also used for changing all the world’s police and investigative agencies not to act upon evidence of someone framing the Agency, a parallel is shown with Tachihara who, inside his heart, decided to finally identify fully as part of the Port Mafia, exiting the inner state of being a Hunting Dog (military police force), thus existing the Page’s influence. Tachihara’s situation exemplifies what Dazai then explains to Fyodor:

Dazai, ch77: “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Siding with God sure didn’t teach you much!” Fyodor: “…Let’s hear it.” Dazai: “‘Perfection and harmony’? To God, those amount to a hill of beans. I saw it many times. All HE offers is happenstance and absurdity. A weakness… shared by the two of us… For all our ingenious plans, in the end we’ve wound up here, in a deep-level prison. What’s driving the world are those in the storm of accidental events who scream, run and spill blood. Faced with their souls, you and I should be petrified with fear. (after POV change to Tachihara) You’re right. People are sinful and foolish. But… they aren’t as boring as you think they are.”

In Dazai’s dialogue, I put in bold two quotes that need to be inspected. The first one refers to Dazai pointing out a weakness the two geniuses share, which refers to the primacy of the accidental in reality, as opposed to the predictability both Fyodor and Dazai operate with in all their plans, which can make the world seem trapped in an inescapable causality rationally-accesible to those with an intellect such as theirs. Dazai “bets” against Fyodor on this cruel primacy of “happenstance and absurdity”, where reason fails to follow the exact consequences of each event or human action, and yet the nuances and risks of this “bet” I already exposed in the paragraph above. In this context, Dazai seems indeed to talk about this weakness in an admirative, even hopeful tone, despite the fact that he shares it; for a brilliant exposition on Dazai (both the author and his BSD counterpart) in relation to sin and weakness, I wholeheartedly recommend reading Kat’s (@pompompurin1028​​) essay here. When Dazai stated this, a flashback to Odasaku’s fight with André Gide is shown, which can be interpreted as that one time Dazai’s predictions held true, yet still Odasaku chose to fight Gide, fully aware of the end, driven only by what I would call here human subjective drive. Such human subjective drive, independent from reason and logic, is what awakened in Tachihara as well: if Odasaku served as an example of “defeating” Dazai by exploiting his vulnerability to the (uncontrollable) accidental, then Tachihara served as an example of “defeating” Fyodor’s precautious plans by unexpectedly exiting the Page’s influence. In the end, this parallel can become unbalanced if Fyodor already included this kind of variables in his plans and works not ignoring, but embracing human individuality and spontaneity, which I would argue is (paradoxically) more likely the case, for what I exposed in sections B and C. 

As for the second quote I put in bold, there are at least the following examples that render Dazai’s assumption (that Fyodor considers people boring) untrue: 1) in ch75, Fyodor openly praised Sigma, carefully examining his personal torment, placing him not only above the Hunting Dogs, but also above Dazai and himself, as well as “all of creation” ; 2) in ch78, in a flashback, as a reaction to (presumably listening to) Nikolai’s inner struggle, Fyodor replied “That’s wonderful”, smiling and tilting his head (see section B, as well as H for the significance of the tilt of the head); 3) in ch80, Fyodor described the Agency “as beautiful as the evening sunlight (…)”. If people are indeed boring to Fyodor, he would not find their struggles and states worthy of deeper consideration, lengthy speeches of praise or expressive, poetic comparisons (admittedly with a dash of pity and sarcasm towards the fate of the Agency). So far, Fyodor is never shown expressing boredom in the presence of other people, quite the contrary: he is shown expressing sincere interest, as if each human is a case study, an enigma to be unravelled, much like Fyodor himself is to me, and to us within the BSD community (therefore I chose that specific fragment from F.M. Dostoyevsky’s letters to start my essay with, as a motto; there is much more to be said about that, but I reserve that for another possible future essay, where it would be necessary to discuss Fyodor’s character in light of his corresponding author’s biography, personality and literary works as a whole). And so, I would argue that to Fyodor humans are not boring, but providers of entertainment worthy of attention and inspection, even more so when they play a role in his plans (and it seems everybody is playing on a stage set by Fyodor so far).

Fyodor is also quite fond of not only perceiving events or circumstances as games (like his mental chess game with Dazai in prison, starting in ch63, always mirroring the course of everyone’s actions outside), but also proposing this approach to others (his rooooundtable in ch64 and his card guessing contest with Ace in ch42), albeit not carelessly, as each time such – yeah, I cannot avoid it at this point, I’m a gamer myself, here it comes *inhales deeply* – each time such gamer approach has a multifaceted utility and never strays from serving Fyodor’s two main purposes, achieving his plan to cleanse the world of abilities, and having fun (yes). Killing boredom via playing games, especially when in the company of a person on the same level, seems to be the first move Fyodor does when faced with monotony (even in vol. 20’scredit page, where Fyodor said “I’m bored. Let’s play twenty questions”, even if Dazai immediately delivers the final answer “Snow White”, and thus Fyodor retracted his idea with “Actually let’s not”, as Dazai’s superhuman intellect killed the fun too fast).

To look into two examples just a bit more, in ch64, during his roooooundtable with Dazai, Fyodor suggested “Next, let’s ask a question at the same time”, which appeared to be innocently fun, because it challenges two persons, in this case a native and a non-native speaker of Japanese, to coordinate their spelling just for the amusement of simultaneity; then, in ch97, as Nikolai’s deadly prison game was about to start, Fyodor lamented the outcome he was confidently foreseeing: “Yet losing a chess opponent in the next 30 minutes is still quite sad”, saying this teasingly, still talking as if in the context of his and Dazai’s mental chess game. On a last, entertaining note, because why not, this entire section might as well serve as proof that Fyodor is cat-coded, just like Dazai (see @wintertaurus​​ ’s post here, where they scientifically prove this, I don’t make the rules), despite being the leader of the Rats in the House of the Dead, and so one more fine example of a fictional INTJ further strengthens the definition of INTJs as “human cats”.

F. Humble, not arrogant. Self-proclaimed god or servant of God?

Starting with the latter half of this section’s title, that is a very tricky subject, in fact, because we as manga readers can observe both 1) one line that established a connection early-on between Fyodor and calling himself “a god” if God is dead and 2) many lines by which Fyodor is actually displaying behaviour and speech akin to a self-aware servant of God. Let us begin with the first one. So, in the first chapter dedicated to showing Fyodor to the readers in more detail (ch42), and only in the original Japanese version and the fan translation, the first page of the chapter together with the last page feature a quote from F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Demons. The quote put together is “If God does not exist, I am a god”, which is part of a dialogue by the character Alexei Nilych Kirilov (“Если нет бога, то я бог”, see Part Three, chapter VI, II). Perhaps a beautiful coincidence, but in this exact wording that the fan translation chose, the quote also appears in Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, chapter “Absurd Creation”, subchapter “Kirilov”, where the French author discusses F.M. Dostoyevsky’s Demons and the mentioned character, Alexei Nilych Kirilov. There, Camus calls that line “Kirilov’s premise”. In retrospect, this is a very puzzling line to appear associated with Fyodor, or rather appear as spoken or thought by him, giving the ambiguity of the quote’s placement on the pages. It is also puzzling because until now BSD gave us a character who seems like a better candidate for using that quote or being a reference to Kirilov, and by that I mean of course Nikolai. Moreover, the way Fyodor talks about or mentions God in dialogues that are clearly spoken by him later (I shall discuss examples in the paragraphs and sections below) very much conveys the message that Fyodor does not think God is dead, invoking him over and over (whether he is referring to the Judeo-Christian God or simply “a god” is not yet addressed in the manga). Still, the most striking information about this quote remains the fact that it is not featured in the official English translation at all. For comparison, I shall put an image with the last page in both versions below, and you can see the scan of the Japanese first page of ch42 here.

As we are walking on quicksand with this one, let us move on to the second point I mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph, about Fyodor as a servant of God. Because of his mission, of which he speaks as if it is of a higher calling, of divine nature, Fyodor also appears to see himself as a servant, namely a servant of God (servus Dei). He has the mind and the skill to carry out a mission of divine proportions (for us readers still an ambiguous goal: Fyodor, ch46: “And I will use that Book to make a world free of sin and skill users”, where “skill” means the same as “ability” and “gift”, as the fandom is used to these terms more). This, in turn, could have made him develop a strong sense of responsibility and a feeling of authority. As we are currently following the “servant” train of thought, these (sense of responsibility and authority) are not to be confused with what is called a “god-complex”, a slang expression which loosely corresponds to different actual psychological disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder, a thing Fyodor does not display core traits of. As of now, Fyodor remains surprisingly humble, discreet and respectfully formal both in speech (see @looking-for-stray-dogs’s posts here and here) and in gestures (see section H, on Fyodor’s body language), he acknowledges the possibility of imperfections and even welcomes them (ch63), he was never portrayed as becoming irritated at others (except his eyes expressing either anger or furious determination, as Dazai attempts to drown him and Chuuya in ch101), he is not a show-off and is indifferent to being adored or agreed with, and he knows how to take criticism elegantly when Dazai holds different opinions or outwits him. It is true that his grandiose “divine” goal, his frequent use of manipulation, and his apparent omnisciency and unbreakable composure give enough space to speculate regarding an underlying “god-complex” in his character (together with the ambiguous use of the quote discussed in the paragraph above), but the reader must acknowledge that, in all his replies, Fyodor refers to himself as if to a servant of God par excellence, as is the most evident in his ch77 reply to Dazai: “Me? I didn’t do anything. I just sat here and prayed… and those prayers were answered”. 

This direct self-characterization, too, plays against him having an actual “god-complex”. I would say that, by building on the humble yet powerful servus Dei image, if at all intentional, Asagiri presents us a far more complex character in Fyodor. For example, one of the many important subjects in Biblical exegesis, since the beginning centuries of Christianity, was how Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon himself the role of servant of God (see Philippians, 2, 6-7), but also of all humans (see the Washing of the Feet), and so humility and divine power become two closely tied ideas. In the manga’s context, Fyodor’s own humility can also have an added disturbing effect on the reader because of the implied power that coexists with it.

On the topic of the “arrogant villain” stereotype, I myself cannot find instances where Fyodor is, per se, arrogant. Longman Dictionary defines “arrogant” as “behaving in an unpleasant or rude way because you think you are more important than other people”, but we know for a fact that Fyodor behaves far from rude and unpleasant to others. Quite the contrary, he is humble and considerate, as can be deduced from his way of using the Japanese language (see the references linked in the paragraph above). He is never portrayed denigrating, humiliating or belittling someone else thus far. What is true is that Fyodor considers his goal (and not necessarily himself unless the manga reveals the opposite in the future) superior to anyone and anything on Earth, and this accentuates his heavy use of smooth manipulation instead of inflating his ego, actually hiding his true self behind more and more layers of words and actions he uses out of necessity to reach his higher goal. If we speculate that Fyodor is indeed (Orthodox) Christian and familiar with this doctrine, then it would be no surprise why Fyodor would cultivate humility instead of pride in general, as pride (superbia) is the beginning of all sin (Sirach, 10, 15) and when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom (Proverbs, 11, 3). To sum up, I cannot find any manga panel where Fyodor is acting in an arrogant way, so I reached the conclusion that anything related to his arrogance, his stubbornness, his rudeness or, by extension, his superiority-complex is headcanon-territory at least for now. Only in chess did Dazai mention the “maliciousness” of Fyodor’s move while playing mental chess with him (ch72), and this malicious trait can refer to the bold and shocking way in which Fyodor attacks by directly using his King instead of other chess pieces (for a detail exposition of their chess moves, see @blackandwhitemusician​ ’s post here). Interestingly, Fyodor does indeed reply with “Malice is the greatest fruit God ever gave to man”, yet from what I gathered so far we still have yet to see a true act of malice from Fyodor, that is, an malicious action done for the sake of malice itself, and not for the sake of his higher goal demanding sacrifices or attacks on rival organizations. Lastly, from the current content one can safely deduce Fyodor is individualistic (in contrast to Dazai who seems to learn to rely on others, but once again I shall point to @linkspooky​’s post here to underline how, as they said, “Dazai doesn’t work together with others, he manipulates for the greater good”, emphasis in bold mine), but it would take more manga updates to make a step further and pinpoint Fyodor’s egoism or narcissism if he has any of these traits at all in himself, and not in how others portray him when they think about him (how Atsushi imagines him in ch63, or Ango in ch77, or Ranpo in ch95). Not only does Fyodor break antagonist stereotypes with these traits, but – still keeping the quote analyzed in the beginning of this section in mind – he continues to embody shockingly contrasting ideas all within himself, which takes us to the next section of this essay.

G. A strange divergence inside Fyodor. Is he a singularity?

Before I reach the point I want to present here, I suggest we reflect once more upon that unforgettable scene. Continuing in the atmosphere of the ideas from the paragraphs before, it is also important to remember how, in Dead Apple, Fyodor said “I am crime”, whereas his ability said “I am punishment”, and none of these imply Fyodor is seeing himself as a god incarnate who applies punishment, only that there is an open possibility that his ability, if it is an independent being/soul, might see itself as such, i.e. a force to punish others and/or to punish Fyodor himself. This would assign Fyodor himself the role of an agent serving someone or something else (presumably his own ability). About this, a quick note must be made here: since this is a piece of Japanese media, the word “god” can end up referring to something else rather than the Judeo-Christian God (whose name I always capitalize in this post, to emphasize the difference). We do not really know to what god Fyodor refers to all the time, who or what it is, or if said god’s identity remains the same throughout the manga. In this post, I chose to work with the assumption that Fyodor is Orthodox and refers to the Judeo-Christian God. Despite this assumption, I find the relationship between him and his ability truly intriguing, even more so if we put this discussion in the context of “singularities”, also known as “self-contradictory-ability-types”. Now, so far there are two clear instances where self-contradictions are implied in his dialogue, one of them being this scene from Dead Apple, the other one becoming evident when we connect Fyodor’s replies in ch63 (left) and ch77 (right).

Fyodor, ch63: “A Decay comrade asked me for the perfect plan… but perfect is so boring. I won’t be able to view the karma of humanity like this.” Fyodor, ch77: “You pulled the strings of conspiracy yourself, no? But God prefers perfection and harmony. Thus, I followed the heart of God and added one line to the page.”

By openly giving contradictory information, to me this is exactly an occurrence of a stark divergence within Fyodor, so let us give it our complete attention in what follows. Firstly, there is the possibility that Fyodor could choose to say something intentionally if he would directly benefit from the receiver hearing those exact words, even if Fyodor’s own belief lies somewhere else entirely (so the question to that remains open: what does Fyodor truly think about perfection, imperfection and God?). Secondly, in Dead Apple, we see Fyodor and his ability merge back together, from two bodies back into one single body, and this action seems completely voluntary on their part, thus opening the possibility that Fyodor and his ability could manifest separately when they will it. This makes me wonder if each of them can take over their shared body (in turns) when they will it, so that one of the lines reflects Fyodor’s way of thinking, and the other line reflects his ability’s way of thinking, thus the two statements are made in separate frames, resulting in no contradictions being made if, and only if, Fyodor and his ability control the shared body in turns. Even so, because they coexist, the ingredients for a singularity are already there within Fyodor, given this example and the Dead Apple scene, because Fyodor and his ability each identify with a term that contradicts the other (“crime” and “punishment”), with a possible implied superiority or “victory” on his ability’s part (the “punishment” bringing the “crime” to an end, lastly “killing” it on a conceptual level, in a succession that implies a linear flow of time). It would be all the more logical, in this context, for Fyodor to desire victory over his own ability at all costs. How his goal is worded in the Dead Apple Official Guidebook, as pointed out by @aja154ever​​ here, could also indicate a suspicious tension between Fyodor and his ability: “To create a world without Abilities is his desire, and it is a mystery if this has any connection to his Crime and Punishment Ability” (see the quote’s full paragraph on his ability in their other post here). For important references from the light novels on what singularities are, how they come into being and how they can manifest, as well as a wonderful theory on the possibility of Dazai being a singularity himself, see @beans-beneath-moonlight​​ ‘s post here. To close this chain of ideas, indeed on the open possibility of Fyodor being a singularity too, I want to mention what @beans-beneath-moonlight​​ observed in their post too, namely that in the BSD light novel 55 Minutes, there is also “Gab”, Jules Verne's ability that took over and killed him, continuing to live on its own as a separate being, so abilities existing separetely from their user’s bodies, as well as malicious abilities that can turn against their users, both can exist in the BSD universe. Lastly, I put just one useful, but short reference below, on a singularity’s cause and terminology:

Professor N in the BSD light novel Storm Bringer: “By causing a logical conflict with your own ability instead of with someone else’s ability, you can create a singularity,” as he said that Professor N raised his index finger and twirled it around. “That sort of ability. The German researchers who first discovered this, had named it ‘self-contradictory-ability-type’.

There is one last relevant dialogue I want to analyze here. Below are all of Fyodor’s words from his first appearance in ch12:

Official translation – Fyodor, ch12: “It’s all as I predicted. No matter what happens, we reserve the right to do as we please. Just as the hand of God and demon wills it…” Fan translation – Fyodor, ch12: “Everything is going as expected. In any case... you are now given free reign... as indicated by the right hand of God and the demons.”

Notice how the official translation says “the hand of God and demon” (demon is singular), while the fan translation says “the (right) hand of God and the demons” (demons is plural). I asked @popopretty​ for their advice as to how to understand this line better and, according to them, the Japanese quote allows for the noun “demon” to be translated either way. I shall put their answer below:

@popopretty​: (…) according to the Japanese version I have, the original phrase for that last sentence is “神と悪霊の右手が示しす通りに”, which directly translates to “as the right hand of God and demons show/point to”. There is no word to indicate that the word demon is singular or plural, but looking at the context, I think it is safe to assume that its plural. It says “right hand” here, which I believe because the phrase “right hand of God” is used a lot in Bible. It doesn’t make much different compared to the “hand of God” though, so I think the translation you quoted is close enough.

I agree that the chapter’s context, as well as the two coated shadows behind Fyodor, allow for an undertanding where “demons”, in plural, refers to Fyodor’s co-workers within his organization, Rats in the House of the Dead. However, since the official translation opted for “demon” in singular, I want to explore the other possibility here: what would it imply if “demon” is indeed meant to be singular here? I would connect this to what is stated to be Fyodor’s motto in the Dead Apple Official Guidebook “Mist Records”: “Follow the guidance of God’s hand”, as translated by @looking-for-stray-dogs here, or “Let the hand of God guide you”, according to the BSD wiki. It seems Fyodor’s character is connected once again to the symbol of the hand, specifically the manus Dei or dextera Dei, which, in art history, indicates divine intervention, divine approval, divine acceptance, as well as God’s – the Creator’s – omnipotence (see, for example, Acts, 7, 50: “nonne manus mea fecit haec omnia?” – “was it not my hand that created all these <things>?”). The hand of God can not only refer to God (the Father) himself, but also to God (the Son), appointing him to his right hand’s side (as prophecized), which means divinely appointing him as both his “representative” and “equal” (“sede a dextris meis donec ponam inimicos tuos scabillum pedum tuorum”, which, mot-a-mot, would go something like this: “sit to my right hand’s side until I put your enemies as the footstool of your feet”, which is Psalm 109, 1 in the Biblia Vulgata, a verse invoked by Christ himself in Matthew, 22, 44, marking a fascinating continuity between the Old and the New Testament). So, considering this information, the expression “the hand of God and demon”, referring to the subject or entity who “wills” whatever it wills, establishes not only a connection, but a shocking equality between the nouns “God” and “demon”, as the hand belongs to both of them. By definition, the two nouns cannot be synonyms, under no condition, thus the subject of the action makes no valid sense and cannot be an actual conceivable “being” without an external reader’s interpretation (like this one I am trying to unfold). Following on that, what can exist or be conceived in the human mind is someone or something whose “being” implies the contradictory yet inseparable coexistence of someone / something that possesses godly traits and someone / something that possesses demonic traits. Therefore, I interpret the expression “the hand of God and demon” as referring to Fyodor himself, or, more precisely, Fyodor’s existence, which implies him and his ability together, where one represents the “god” and the other the “demon”, although it is still unclear which is which. Given all this, I propose the theory that Fyodor is a singularity, just like Dazai (continuing in the spirit of @beans-beneath-moonlight​​ ‘s theory post I referenced before).

Moving on from the singularity discussion, based on Dead Apple’s “I am crime. I am punishment” scene once again, one can only be certain that the link between “sin”, “ability” and “punishment” becomes even stronger, but apparently so does the link between “human” and “crime”. It is no surprise that the famous nouns of the literary work are used for this scene, nouns that can refer to both the active and the passive component of the implied action (commiting a crime vs being the victim of a crime; applying punishment vs receiving punishment). This begs the questions: would freeing the world of abilities also liberate Fyodor of his own punishment (whatever it is, if it exists at all)? does “freeing” the world of abilities even imply “killing” the gifted, and if yes, would that lead Fyodor to a final act of self-sacrifice (or, closer to the etimology of the word “sacrifice”, an act of making the offered thing sacred – himself in this scenario, together with all the gifted)? If we take into account how Fyodor concluded that he and newly “scouted” member Nathaniel Hawthrone “will cover this land in the blood of the sinners” (ch37), together with what Fyodor said as he and Karma looked at Ace’s hanged corpse (ch42, Fyodor: “Thinking is a crime. Breathing is a crime”, or, in the anime’s dub, S3ep4, “Crime starts with thought. As natural as breathing”, emphasizing the naturality of whatever Fyodor identified as humanity’s “crime”), as well as what Nathaniel chanted as he was on his assassination jobs (ch46, to Fukuzawa: “Death! Death! Death to the skill users! An eternal underground sleep with no awakening!”, as well as ch46, to Akutagawa: “Death! Death! Death to the skill users! … To revive my beloved, I must execute the contract of death”), then we have canon ground to believe the death of all gifted is necessary after all, yet Fyodor never uses such expression. It is always “freeing”, “offering the salvation of death to the evil” (note how he does not say “the gifted”), “granting the great silence”, like in how Fyodor talks to Karma in S3ep4: “All evils that plague this world will receive the mercy of death”, “I will do you the honour of granting you the great silence”, “May you be free from the shackles of your crimes, and your soul be salvaged”. This raises another problem: Fyodor himself, as he says, applies cleansing, purification, salvation, liberation, but his ability clearly refers to these acts as “punishment” instead, which is a completely different concept in a religious context as well. So far, once again, this marks a divergence between Fyodor and his ability, another clear moment when the ability seems to behave like a different entity than its user, with a different perception of what the ability itself does (one possibility being, what to Fyodor is “freeing”, to his ability is “punishment”, or that his ability’s “punishment” is a “cleansing” or “freeing” in a corrupted sense of the words). As a closing remark regarding Fyodor’s goal in general, there is still a lot of room to speculate on its true nature if we consider the possibility of Fyodor opposing not the Agency, nor the Port Mafia, but first and foremost the military and different governments who 1) already have a bloody history of using ability users in the war (as implied by Yosano’s backstory and the bits of Fukuchi’s backstory), 2) had (and might still have) special laboratories researching and even artificially creating ability users or researching ways to exploit singularities (BSD Storm Bringer), 3) may have massproduced abilities of specific destructive types, according to one war story of Fukuchi’s past merits (ch82, when we are told he led an operation to eliminate 100.000 “skill-based ‘werewolf’ test subjects”, with Teruko and Jouno visible alongside Fukuchi in the panel describing this – one hundred thousand “test subjects”! for what?), 4) was aware of or working according to an entire skill doctrine, already developed and, I assume, generally-known at the time Mori used Yosano, a mere child, as his slave to achieve his Immortal Regiment plan, meant to prove that abilities are indeed suitable for use in war (ch65). In relation to this, we could take into account the possibility of Fyodor being repulsed by Ace’s behaviour in ch42 (as suggested by certain expressions of Fyodor in the manga), given that Ace represented the perfect example of someone using other people without any consideration of the weight of their lives, their personhood and their inner world. If this is the “evil” that Fyodor wants to purge from this world, and if making abilities disappear, one way or another, would make him accomplish this “greater good” (ending the use and abuse of ability users worldwide), then we are all the more justified in weighing the morality of anyone involved in this large scheme, starting with those implied in Natsume’s Tripartite Framework, supposed to maintain peace in Yokohama (the Armed Detective Agency, the Port Mafia, and the Special Division for Special Powers together with the military police). Besides this, how he phrased his goal in ch46 draws attention to how he identifies at least two different “sins” in current mankind: 1) that they consciously ignore the fact that they are controlled, and 2) that they keep killing each other regardless of said knowledge (ch46, Fyodor: “Man is sinful and foolish. Even if they know it is all an artifice, they cannot help but kill each other. Someone must purify them for those sins”). Based on this, one can assume he wants to stop people from killing each other, by itself a noble goal, but a backstory is much needed to understand the real nature of it before applying judgement. Personally, based on the current status of the manga, I am neutral on this while keeping it in mind, because Fyodor’s higher goal is still ambiguous, and one should not sugarcoat him, nor paint him as a pure demon just yet. After all, all BSD characters are extremely nuanced, and tastefully so. If we also take into consideration his profile page from the BSD Season 3 guidebook (see @ahli-stuff​​ ’s post here) and how he considers his strength “wishing for world happiness” and his favorite type of person “someone who loves all humanity equally”, we can further wonder if Fyodor will be revealed as a character who genuinely cares the most about all of humanity, with a love that may or may not have become dark till present time, or a love that demanded and still demands the cruelest sacrifices.

H. Soft, discreet, graceful, yet playfully dramatic. His body language in the manga, in comparison to the anime

There are many differences between the manga representation and the anime representation of Fyodor’s body language, not to mention the representation of his character overall. I suggest we treat the manga and the anime (this includes Dead Apple) separately and leave the creation of a clear list of the converging and diverging points for another potential post. I shall begin this section with the following statement, in hope of leading anime-only BSD fans to the truth: soft Fedya is real, because canon Fedya is soft. In the manga, Fyodor’s postures and gestures convey gentleness, discreetness, grace and fragility, in multiple instances I shall present below, in a random order.

MANGA. Being considerate. Speaking of discreetness and being considerate, let’s list a few examples of that. In ch42, when Fyodor’s ability activated to kill Karma, causing blood to shoot from Karma’s face, Fyodor did not look at the dying child, turning to face him only after he died, which can be interpreted as an act of respect for Karma’s intimacy during his final moments (see section B for a more in-depth analysis of Karma’s demise). Another occasion when Fyodor’s consideration was evident is in ch49 and how he took off his shoes and coat when entering Katai’s house (basic common manners, even though we must admit this is still bizzare in the context of breaking into a house to shoot someone, but read on), while the anime portrayed him fully-clothed, with his boots on (S3ep10), thus (what can I even say) disrespectful and uncaring of the cleanness of the (nonetheless wild and messy) house of his intended victim (in the end, not too surprising coming from the man who calls even his vampire slave with honorifics, “Chuuya-san”, in ch101, but also his abducted prisoner “Katsura-san” in ch47; for BSD uses of honorifics and nicknames, check this post here, but keep in mind that it covers info till ch87). His consideration of cleanness is also supported by the fact that Fyodor hid his ushanka in a clean, empty wooden box during his mission to stab Mori and infect him with Pushkin’s virus (ch46), yet the anime replaced the wooden box with a dumpster (S3ep8), setting the fandom down a cursed path of tasteless spamjokes basically.

Gentle touch of minimum intrusiveness. In the manga, the hand position when Fyodor is about to use his ability on someone also conveys gentleness and minimum intrusiveness (barely touching the forehead, using the tips of his index and middle fingers). Even the movement towards the forehead appears slow and elegant, thus even more sinister (for more on this hand gesture and its meanings, see section A). In the anime, however, this hand gesture is replaced by one that makes more physical contact with the other person, obstructing their view and breathing while being uncharacteristically intrusive: instead of Fyodor discreetly touching Karma’s forehead like in ch42, in S3ep4 Karma’s face is fully covered by Fyodor’s palm, which looks uncomfortable, unnatural and oppressive. Another revelant portrayal here, one that also conveys Fyodor’s overall gentleness in gestures, is present in ch64’s cover art: in contrast to Dazai, who holds his white pawn between his thumb and index + middle finger, Fyodor holds his black pawn between his thumb and middle + ringfinger, which, if reenacted, distinguishes itself by how Fyodor is using the least amount of pressure possible to lift the chess piece (thus very graceful), and so we have Dazai, who “takes” the piece and moves it insisting on a more secure grip, contrasting with Fyodor who “guides” the piece, letting it gently hang between his fingers as it is swayed following Fyodor’s movements.

High physical endurance. Despite his frail body, we can safely assume Fyodor has high endurance and vitality, given how he did not even flinch when Ace smashed a full wine bottle in his head (ch42) and how he let himself get captured and be kept in harsh prison conditions at least twice (ch42, ch54) before ending up in Meursault. There is also how he ran away from Mori and Elise (ch46) without gasping or showing fatigue afterwards. More canon material is still needed in order to establish how accurate or severe his self-proclaimed anemic condition is (ch42, “My body is weak and anemic”) or his low blood pressure (BSD Season 3 guidebook, but I only had access to this info via this post here and would greatly appreciate someone confirming this).

Oratory skills and expressive hand gestures. In the manga, Fyodor is always highly expressive in what regards his hand gestures during speeches, yet in a practical and elegant way, implying he has great oratory skills or training, besides excellent communication and manipulation skills (discussed in section C and pretty much all others). In ch42: Fyodor clapped as his card game with Ace ended, thus expressing joy through words and action; Fyodor pretended to be taken aback by Ace having listened to his and Karma’s talk, scratching his head in a wide-open gesture, conveying surprise and acknowledgement of Ace’s skills; Fyodor put a hand to his chest when telling Ace he has trained himself for “battles of starvation”, this gesture emphasizing the personal aspect of the information he offered, which this gesture implies is wholehearted and sincere. In ch46, while explaining his strategy and his way of thinking to Dazai, Fyodor uses various hand gestures to illustrate his phrases as well: extended arm explaining; hand pointing towards Dazai; explaining his higher goal with open palms in front of him, but close to his body, suggesting solemnity and confessed determination; sadly, all these gestures were replaced in the anime with Fyodor just holding his ushanka to his chest, conveying the same type of message as when he held his hand to his chest in front of Ace in ch42, as I described a few phrases above; still, at least in S3ep4 anime Fyodor gesticulated a lot while talking to Ace before the latter’s suicide, following ch42 pretty closely). In ch55, after entering Mushitaro’s basement prison cell, as Fyodor was revealing his intention behind freeing Mushitaro, he raised both hands to his chest, his fingers resting on each side of his heart, a gesture meant to suggest utmost sincerity. After that, still in ch55, when informing Mushitaro on the change of his condition (Mushitaro was captive, “but that ends today”, as Fyodor said), he held his right index finger to his lips, in a mischievous display of secrecy and child-like playfulness. This same gesture can have sinister undertones as well, given how it already appeared in ch47 in this way, where it is suggested, in a flashback background, that Fyodor did the same gesture when asking fake Pushkin to convey the “No changing the rules” message to the Agency, and they found this out after the death of the children. Lastly, these oratory skills can be used in playfully dramatic ways too, like in ch64, when Fyodor switched to the discourse of an overly-expressive, lively host of a (talk)show, as he suggested Dazai to participate in his “All-smiles Problem-solving Roooooundtable, hosted by yours truly, Dostoyevsky”, tilting his head further and further to his right as Dazai expressed growing confusion at first. About Fyodor tilting his head and what it means, see the paragraph below. So, all these scenes point to the fact that Fyodor gesticulates a lot, especially for emphasis and expressiveness during speeches or conversations, or for the fun of the dramatic effect.

Curiosity and tilt of the head. In conversational circumstances, we often see Fyodor tilting his head to his side. In his case, this is an expression of curiosity, in the sense of being (or wanting to appear to be) genuinely interested in the other person’s answers. Note that the simple tilt of the head to one’s side can also express endearment towards the thing one looks at (in genuine concern or admiration of something beautiful or dear, for example), but, combined with oratory skills – which Fyodor possesses as a master of communication – this can be a very effective tool that translates into non-verbal emotional manipulation. To give a few examples, Fyodor tilted his head 1) when he asked Sigma if he wished for a home (ch75), 2) when he replied to Nikolai capturing the essence of his inner conflict (ch78), 3) when greeting (and even bowing to) Mushitaro in the basement, just before offering him a deal to escape (ch55). In all these cases, the persons Fyodor was conversing with were already in a vulnerable situation (Sigma wandering in desperation, Nikolai presenting his inner struggle, Mushitaro being held captive), and thus Fyodor made sure to bind each of them to himself, planting the seeds of dependency by offering them validation and emotional response. Moreover, as a gesture of (apparent) trust, if someone tilts their head to the side, they present themselves in a vulnerable position (the neck area is open), subtly conveying the message that the other person is in a position of superiority, deepening the trap that, in Fyodor’s case, ends with the other people becoming dependent on him as the “benign” manipulator. Still, because of the display of vulnerability, the tilt of the head in itself is a gentle, humbling gesture, very fitting for Fyodor, whose character presence builds on the inexplicable tension between the terror and apprehension brought by his vast intellect and unknown powers, and the humility and gentleness of his speech and body language. The fact that, as of now, we still cannot draw a firm line and say from where to which point Fyodor’s gestures and words are genuinely benevolent or actually malevolent, so he remains beyond good and evil, and fascinatingly so, until more of his character or backstory is revealed. As a last example of Fyodor tilting not his head, but his entire body as an expression of curiosity, in ch42, finding Ace’s vault, Fyodor did exactly that and approached it together with a curious look (eyes opened wider, eyebrows raised), asking Karma something to which Fyodor already knew the answer probably anyway (“Oh, is this it? The vault where ace holds his jewels temporarily, to prevent a price collapse?”) and still Fyodor asked Karma because, I assume, having a conversation made the discovery simply more fun for the moment.

Biting his fingertips and nails. In ch42, Fyodor is seen biting his fingertips in three different panels, and yet the anime (S3ep4) never shows him doing this. Later on, we never see him biting his fingertips “on screen”, but “behind the scenes” he has been continuously doing so even up to the most recent chapter. Looking closely, you can see how his fingertips and nails are damaged and rough even at Meursault, for example, in ch95, when Fyodor is passing Dazai the salt, or in ch101, when Fyodor is inputting security codes to unlock prison doors. Of course, among other things, this habit indicates a Crime and Punishment novel reference, which should be discussed in a different post, and has in fact been discussed in nice posts by other BSD fans already. This aside, unlike his depiction in Dead Apple, manga Fyodor consistently keeps his hands ungloved.

Surprise and adrenaline rush. Other than the moments when his face shows curiosity, in the manga Fyodor’s composure appears to break rather often to express surprise, usually when 1) an brilliant move was made by an adversary team or someone else, but more recently also when 2) the enemy team made a move faster than Fyodor expected. In several of these occasions, his shock is accompanied by what seems to be delight, and I would interpret this as Fyodor enjoying the adrenaline rush of near-death situations (Nikolai’s prison game, introduced in ch95.5 / ch96, to which both Fyodor and Dazai reacted in a grimly ecstatic way) or general “end of the road” scenarios (Dazai and Fitzgerald “catching” him in ch53, although Mushitaro revealed that Fyodor’s capture was intentional in ch54: “And I… can never be forced to reveal the reason Dostoyevsky let them capture him!”). Now, for the second type of surprise, the clearest examples are Fyodor’s ch101 reactions to being cornered by Dazai and the prison room starting to get filled by heavy water. His expressions there do betray true shock, as much as his stare at the end of ch101 expresses true boiling anger and determination, but one must note that, despite letting his composure break, Fyodor may have already anticipated Dazai’s moves, and the true source of his surprise was Dazai executing said moves sooner than anticipated by Fyodor (for example, when the code input device explodes in front of Fyodor’s face, after an initial shocked expression, his eyes regain a look of steel, rationalizing “he got the circuit already”). In any case, for most insight on the whole ch101 situation and the in-context implications of this “already”, I recommend checking out @videogamelover99​​ ’s post here on, well, basically Dazai being too Dazai for his own good, or @vampireonastick​​ ’s post here for more discussion on the whole ch101 situation).

ANIME. The anime went with a different characterization of Fyodor entirely so far (as of now, November 2022, the anime has 3 completed seasons, and the trailer for January 2023’s season 4 revealed enough to see the anime’s characterization for Fyodor has not changed at all). In the anime, instead of being soft and discreet, Fyodor is confident, audacious and, I would say, stereotypically evil and creepy, whereas in the manga his sinister side comes to the reader’s eyes as a result of all the subtleties his behaviour and schemes imply, as well as a result of the contrast between his gentle appearance and his unnerving actions and plans, as I already wrote above. For example, in S3ep8, anime Fyodor smirked daringly at Mori after he stabbed the Mafia boss, seemingly enjoying it, yet in the manga Fyodor kept a blank face. Since various other differences between the manga and the anime were already discussed before this point of my essay, I propose an analysis of Fyodor’s body language in Dead Apple specifically, which goes hand in hand with his portrayal in the anime, and therefore differs significantly from the soft Fyodor we get to know in the manga.

Secrecy. In Dead Apple, in the first scene that reunites Shibusawa, Dazai and Fyodor, we see Fyodor approaching their table with confident steps and hands in what appears a rather tight grip, as opposed to letting his fingers comfortably open on each side of his body. This could express repressed or hidden intentions, as his fingers, in a fist, cover his palms and do not allow a completely relaxed stance. Next, unlike Dazai, Fyodor does not cross his legs when at the table, he instead positions both his feet firmly and perpendicularly on the ground, which conveys confidence as well, and is meant to assert total control of the room. When putting his arms on the table, he intertwines his fingers and rests his chin on his joined hands. This is a meditative position, suggesting a serious thought process going on behind his puzzling smile (again, suggesting confidence), as well as careful planning, or simply waiting for things to happen as he planned beforehand. His closed eyes shut down the world outside him, we could interpret this as logical in this situation if Fyodor has already predicted and planned everything through, which the movie suggests was indeed the case. The outside world is not as necessary to see in that case, plus he is surrounded by people who will not act impuslively and threaten each other out of the blue, so a sense of blind trust stays between the three strategists. One last thing to note about this scene is the fact that only Shibusawa and Fyodor are facing each other, while Dazai is facing no one, which may subtly suggest the personal bond between Shibusawa and Fyodor, one that Dazai does not share with anyone in the room, or (arguably) anyone at all after Odasaku’s death.

Confidence. In Dead Apple, Fyodor’s pose conveys confidence when Shibusawa shows Dazai the Draconia room (Fyodor is seen with his left hand on his waist, in contrapposto); Fyodor’s pose conveys having hidden motives when he and Dazai entered the Draconia room in secret (Fyodor has his back turner to both Dazai and the viewers, with his hands in his coat’s pockets; Fyodor’s pose conveys confidence AND having hidden motives when Shibusawa surprisingly stabs Dazai, followed by Dazai asking Fyodor “Didn’t you lock the door?” (Fyodor has his hands in his pockets, but also smirks and chuckles at Dazai while looking down to him, with Fyodor’s chin slightly raised).

A playful mind. As to what regards Fyodor’s playful mind, it is made more or less evident through Fyodor’s play of words and sharp, intelligent replies (see section E for his love for entertainment specifically). In Dead Apple, as the singularity event unfolds, Fyodor told a shocked Shibusawa that he will “fill in all the blanks” for him: Fyodor added “I’ll even tell you what was cut out”, proceeding to cut Shibusawa’s throat immediately after. This is a splendid play of word and action, coordinating them in a twisted sense of playfulness, indulging michievously in living a life entertaining for himself. But seriously, for more on Fyodor and his sense of entertainment, see section E above, it would be superfluous to repeat ideas here.

– – –

11 November 2022. At last, we arrived at the end of this essay. The end for now at least, as I could technically add more analysis and external references in the future, if my irl schedule allows it. Since January 2022 I’ve been working on this “thing” I jokingly called “marriage proposal PhD”, because why not, this is an accurate example of how an ENTP proposes to an INTJ, where understanding the other (or continuously trying to) is peak intimacy and love. I guess. However, I “yeeted” my emotions out while I was writing this, because nothing would have angered me more than my appreciation of this character clouding my judgement or making me err in my pursuit of the many subtleties that lead to his many paradoxical traits. Whether I will update this post or not in the future, I cannot promise. This post is intended to be my last contribution to the BSD fandom, but my ask box remains open for futher discussions on BSD or other media analysis. I doubt fans will read everything I wrote, and I am certain the fandom will perpetuate the cycle of Fedya’s mischaracterization despite my best efforts to bring many canon scenes showing different sides of him into the spotlight. 

Yes... Despite everything, I am at peace. I thought no media could revive my passion for analysis anymore, no character could make me draw fanart again, and yet... and yet!... Fedya is exactly the type of character one can analyze ad infinitum and feel thrilled at each discovery, at each little possible implication of a word or gesture. No matter how tranquil he may seem, no matter how certain we may be at first of his exterior serenity, for everything his character encapsulates, for everything we know and don’t know about him thus far, Fyodor’s soul is likely vessel to an incredible inner tension, origin of his determination. As I was writing more and more, I discovered he is intense, so truly intense, and that intensity has brought me… and brings me... and will bring me

boundless bliss.

Happy birthday, радость моя.

#bsd #bsd fyodor #bsd fyodor dostoevsky #bsd analysis #bsd meta #bungou stray dogs #bsd fyodor dostoyevsky #bungou stray dogs fyodor #bsd fyodor analysis #fyodor bsd #bungou stray dogs analysis #bsd character analysis #character analysis #analysis #unsolved and endless #beauties and gentlebeauties this is Lav's Fedya essay #please note that with a single reveal in the manga Fedya could make this entire thing come crashing down and I love this possibility #truly in-character till the end #Nov2022: my only regret is that I still had 100+ bsd analysis posts saved to read through and perhaps add more in-fandom refs to this #even when my and OP's analysis align only regarding 1 idea or 2 I find it highly valuable to cross-reference and communicate #I've seen both crueler takes and softer takes on Fedya's character - and some takes that have no solid canon ground as well #I value them all because discussion is important and it builds our minds - but mischaracterization should be recognized as such #I hope that in the future I can update this essay with more references to express my gratitude towards the analysis part of the fandom too #till then I hope the readers of this enjoyed it and know that I am open for discussion in the replies or ask box #even if it will take me a while to answer

[alice-after-dark]

So...the falling out (ft. why Vox is in Hell)

(Getting this out of the way, I have VERY mixed feelings about Valentino. On one hand, he is a great character. On the other had, he is an absolutely horrible person and I just can't bring myself to like him the way I love Vox and Velvette. I am very interested in seeing what the show does with him and how he is handled, considering the concept is all about redemption and the dude has done some pretty heinous shit)

But ultimately this post is about Alastor and Vox and their falling out and what - or rather who - caused it.

TW for implied sexual abuse, abusive relationships, gaslighting, manipulation, and other canon-typical triggers. Also gonna put homophobia with the disclaimer that Alastor doesn't actually mean it that way, but that's how Vox hears it. Perceived homophobia is more accurate. This also technically contains StaticMoth but I'm not tagging it because it's not exactly in favor of the relationship and I don't want to dump it into the tag of people who enjoy the ship.

See, while Alastor may be a serial killer, we see that he has his own twisted moral compass, so someone like Valentino rubs him in all the wrong ways. He greatly dislikes the moth and detests the idea of any association with him.

Vox on the other hand, well, scumbags are a dime a dozen in his industry. From his perspective, it's just something that comes with the territory, a necessary evil. You want to succeed in this industry? You put up with some nasty behavior. So when he sees Valentino rising to power and creating his own empire, he only sees the business potential. His industry has already well trained him to turn a blind eye to things like Valentino's unsavory nature for the sake of progress and his own success. How he feels about things on a personal level doesn't matter. The industry doesn't care about your sensitive little morals (will probably expand on this further in a different post, but I do believe that Vox learned the hard way that no one cares and you have to do what you have to do to get ahead).

So when Vox initially proposes an official partnership, Alastor is actually down...until he learns Valentino will be a part of the package. This leads to them arguing, Alastor basically telling Vox he has to choose between them, the first time Alastor calls Vox a "pathetic sell out," and the Radio Demon flat out accusing him of whoring himself out to Valentino for a business deal (this one particularly hurts because, again, the idea of sleeping with someone to get a better deal is just par the course for Vox. He's learned to push down those feeling of self-disgust and now here Alastor is dragging them out into the spotlight and shaming him for it). Alastor utterly refuses to be associated with Valentino and is disgusted that Vox would even entertain the thought and this ultimately ends with a fight and them parting ways, both feeling self-righteous, betrayed, and offended by the other.

And Valentino, having witnessed the entire thing and ever one to take advantage of a situation, gets his claws deep into a VERY insecure and hurt Vox by just reinforcing that Alastor never cared about him and was just using him for entertainment.

"But don't worry, Voxxy. I care about you..."

And now Vox, who has spent his entire human life hiding that his attraction extended to men as well as women and is desperately looking for comfort after losing someone he allowed himself to care very deeply about, falls right into the moth's trap, ironically getting himself into one of those situations he always turned a blind eye to (it is Hell after all and what is Hell without ironic suffering?).

Meanwhile Alastor has lost one of the few demons he viewed as a true ally and friend and to make it sting all the more he lost them to someone like Valentino. The very idea that Vox picked a disgusting creature like Valentino over him is crushing. He feels used, discarded, and worthless (which is a state ripe for some bad deal making, wouldn't you say?).

Tis all for now. Would love to hear people's thoughts on this!

#radiostatic #vox hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel vox #hazbin hotel #hazbin headcanons #valentino hazbin hotel

[kitcatttt]

Serious post.

Hi guys. I know you guys are probably surprised to hear from me considering my last post, and no, I’m not back permanently, but there is something I feel I need to make a post about.

Disclaimer: Do not harass the user mentioned in this post, I do not wish any harm onto them.

If you have been in the TPC community since January of this year, you know about the drama involving the user Cintagonisupset. If you’ve been keeping up with his blog (only reason I have is because I do 100% expect him to make another post about me and/or my friends) you would have seen one, or both of these posts.

Now, you might be wondering, why am I bringing these up? Both of these situations are extremely unfortunate, and they would be, if he wasn’t lying.

I know that it’s a bold claim to make, but it isn’t inaccurate. I may not have concrete confirmation of him lying, but I have more than enough evidence.

For the first image, he legit just- didn’t leave tumblr. He just pinned that post and kept on tumblr like normal. For the ENTIRE time he was supposedly gone, he was still reblogging posts, just putting in tags that he was “still gone”. After about,, maybe a week or so his pinned post was back to the usual one and he was posting like normal. Not to mention, a little ways through that whole leaving tumblr bs he had changed the pinned post to this. “I hope y’all bitches burn in hell” (actual picture to be added once I fucking find it AUGH)

(UPDATE I GOT IT) And the second image? He claimed. To have to be sent to a mental hospital because of a mental breakdown. That is EXTREMELY serious. Do you know how in need of help you need to be to be admitted to a mental hospital? Do you know how horrid that would be to fake? Now, I haven’t been to a mental hospital myself, but I have several friends who have. Hell, I even have a IRL friend who has been to one AND has written a 10 page research paper on them. They have all stated to me that they wouldn’t let a patient keep their phone, and my IRL has stated that the wait times there would most likely keep them in the hospital for longer than they supposedly were in there.

All of this alone isn’t enough for me to claim that he faked it, seeing as he is in Canada and I’m in the US, and they most likely operate different than here. But you know what is? The fact that he has deleted EVERY SINGLE POST HE HAS MADE ABOUT HIM BEING IN THE HOSPITAL. Sure, he could’ve gotten out early, but why delete all of the posts about it, and not at the very least make an update post on his condition? I know for a fact that there are still people that care about him, and not making a post about his condition when he CLEARLY has the ability to be on tumblr seeing as he deleted all his posts mentioning the hospital is extremely suspicious, and basically proves that he has ulterior motives for making these posts.

What do I think these motives are? Well, I believe that he is trying to make anyone who checks his blog that was involved in the drama against him think that he’s gone, so that they stop checking his blog for good. Then he gets rid of or hides/buries the posts and goes on with life like nothing happened. I honestly don’t blame him for trying this, as trying to get out of drama with desperate tactics isn’t that surprising and is not that odd of a response. BUT LYING ABOUT GETTING SENT TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL??? YOU REALLY COULDN’T THINK OF ANYTHING BETTER??? Honestly, it makes me sick. Seeing someone fake something as SERIOUS as that. Makes me sick.

I do not wish harm on him. I wish for him to heal. I wish for him to get the help that he needs. From his repeated behavior, there appears to be something wrong with him mentally. While I do not enjoy claiming this, it’s the most logical explanation seeing as he’s been doing shit like this FOR OVER 4 YEARS. He genuinely needs professional help, and I pray that he gets it. But for now, all we can do is defend ourselves if he decides he wants to attack us yet again.

And a personal message to Cintagonisupset, if he just so happens to be reading this. Your actions severely upset me. This post has not been made to wish ill will onto you, but to bring to light something that you have done wrong, that is genuinely disgusting in my opinion. You have made callout posts for way less. Again, I do not wish any harm onto you, so do not wish any harm onto me. Or do. It’s just more evidence against you.

If anyone has read this far, thank you. Once again, do not harass Cintagonisupset, that is not the purpose of this post. Thank you, and have a wonderful rest of your day.

#cintagonisupset #drama

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Have You No Idea That You’re In Deep? [Chapter 6: You Are In Battle]

Aemond is a fearless, enigmatic prince and the most renowned dragonrider of the Greens. You are a daughter of House Mormont and a lady-in-waiting to Princess Helaena. You can’t ignore each other, even though you probably should. In fact, you might have found a love worth killing for.

A/N: Hi all!! Thank you so much for your friendship, encouragement, emotional ranting, humor, compliments, questions, and love throughout this fic’s short lifetime. You better believe that EVERY! SINGLE! reblog/tag/ask/comment/etc I receive lights up my life like dragonfire. I also wanted to let you know in advance that the last 2 chapters of this fic will have a LOT going on, so it might take me a little longer than usual to get them published. I appreciate your patience! Hopefully they will be worth the wait. 💜

Song inspiration: “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys.

Chapter warnings: Language, violence, some sexual content, witchcraft (per usual), drama at brunch, Axel being a sore loser, Larys being a snake, Helaena being prophetic, Aegon being Aegon, time skips, childbirth, dragons, extreme fluff, extreme angst, y’all know I cannot help myself I am an angst monster and I will not apologize!!!

Word count: 7.1k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

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He must be in agony, but he doesn’t show it; and hasn’t that been true all his life?

He declines offers of milk of the poppy. His right arm has been set—the bone snapped back into place with a wet, jolting click—and now the maester is sewing the wound closed. This serrated scar will join all the others he carries, scars of the flesh, scars of the soul. You sit to Aemond’s left, on his blind side, only so he can drape his arm around the back of your chair while the other is being repaired. There is a strange, hushed tranquility that has settled over you both here in Aemond’s chambers. He wears a ghost of a smile, soft yet victorious. No one can take you away from him now. No one can untangle all the strings that bind you together. With a damp cloth, you clean the viscous half-dried blood from his nose, his mouth, his cheeks, his forehead. His face is already bruising, mottled with shades of violet and blue. You remove his eyepatch so you can—with the most careful hands—wipe the crimson from the mangled remnants of his eyelid. He is perfectly at ease as you do this. He entrusts himself entirely to you.

“This is a gruesome task, princess,” the maester says as he stitches, and it takes you a moment to realize he is speaking to you. He is the first person to call you princess, but that’s what you are now; you are openly and legally married to a prince. “You need not subject yourself to such unpleasantness, especially in your…condition.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I can manage. My place is here.”

“She is a Mormont by birth, Maester Ordwulf,” Aemond says. Pride radiates from his voice like heat from a dragon’s scales. “She does not hide herself away from grisly things.”

There is a thunder of footsteps outside. Axel Hightower bursts through the door. He is red-faced and panting. You and Aemond look at him, but you do not rise, and you don’t say anything either. You do not grant him the dignity of a greeting. The silence is thick and laden and awkward. The maester pauses, then resumes his stitching.

“You will regret this,” Axel tells Aemond.

“You have lost, Lord Hightower. Go back to the Reach and do not return unless you find yourself in need of having your head separated from your body.”

“It is you who has lost,” Axel rages. “The great houses of Westeros will not forgive this slight. You will have to crawl on your knees begging them to support you in what comes next.” And of course, you know what he means, everybody does: the war against Rhaenyra and Daemon, the war of succession. It is the uneasy, swelling background music of every courtyard sparring match, every feast, every marriage negotiation, every piece of purred gossip, every candle lit in the sept. “You have damaged the Greens irreparably with your selfish, short-sighted lust, your notorious pride. You have ruined your family. You have signed your own death sentence.”

“Hm.” Aemond chuckles, low and contemptuous. He lifts your hand and kisses the back of it.

“But I will do you a courtesy,” Axel says. He steps closer. “I will make my offer one final time. Give her back to me of your own volition, and I will take her to Oldtown and never speak of this ugliness again. Then you will be free to marry someone who will be an asset when the time for armies and battles comes.”

“She is an asset.”

“She is a nobody!” Axel shouts, and he touches you. It is not malicious, it is not painful, it is not even especially intrusive; he simply rests a palm on your shoulder. Instantly, Aemond is on his feet. By the time his upended chair clatters against the floor, he has Axel pinned to the wall: his left hand closed around Axel’s throat, the right holding the point of your dagger to his throbbing jugular. The blade is still coated with Ivar Kellington’s blood. Axel, wheezing and croaking, gropes for the hilt of his own sword.

“Go on, do it,” Aemond seethes, his blue eye blazing maniacally, his sapphire gleaming. He is grinning. Blood drips from his swollen, half-stitched arm. The needle swings from the length of thread like a man from a noose. “Do it, Lord Hightower. Draw your sword. Give me an excuse to bury you. I have already killed one man today. I’d be happy to double that number.”

“Please…” Axel chokes out, flailing.

The prince’s grin widens. “Do it.”

“Aemond!” Otto Hightower roars as he strides through the doorway. Aemond steps back and twirls your dagger before tucking it away into his belt.

“Come fetch your kinsman, Grandsire. If you want him to live.”

“Go,” Otto commands Axel, shoving him. “Your reason to be in King’s Landing has expired. Leave immediately, before I lose interest in protecting you.”

Axel points at Aemond. “It is you who has lost,” he says again—darkly, ominously—and then storms out of the room. The prince returns to his seat so the maester can finish stitching his arm.

Otto sighs and rubs his forehead. “Aemond…” And for the second time in the span of a few short moments, a man speaks the truth about your lineage. “She is a nobody,” Otto says, almost apologetically, like he wishes he could change it.

“I have met my match in her. I will have no other.”

“This is supremely unwise.”

“It cannot be undone.”

Otto frowns at him. “You are lucky that Alicent has another son for us to barter with.”

“Lucky?” Aemond says, incredulous, furious, though he keeps his arm still for the maester. “You are lucky that I have brought to your side Vhagar, and swordsmanship, and wit, and this excruciatingly heavy, inborn burden of duty that Aegon so obviously lacks. I have never asked you for anything. I have never sought to build a future for myself that diverges from the ambitions of this family. This is the one thing I must have for myself. She is my restitution. She is a gift from the gods.”

“So there is no point in trying to negotiate with you.”

“No. None.”

“Very well.” Otto Hightower casts you a glare—dismissive, indignant—and departs.

As the maester mends Aemond’s arm, you dab at the streaks of blood drying on his temples, his jawline, his palms that are crisscrossed with lines of fortune. You can feel your throat tightening, scalding tears brimming up in your eyes. They escape down your cheeks when you try to blink them away. “I’m sorry that I’ve caused you so much suffering.”

“No, no,” Aemond murmurs. He whisks your tears away with his left thumb. It is rough and calloused, expert, practiced, precise. “You have not caused it. You have cured it.”

The maester applies plaster to the prince’s right forearm to keep it immobilized until the break heals. Aemond gives you a knowing glance, and you nod; tonight he will bathe in water cloudy with leaves of foxglove and sorrel and mint, ground cinnamon, crumbled snakeskin, crushed bloodstone, swirls of glittering clear quartz, pungent black tar rum, and blood taken from a living bull…courtesy of Sir Criston Cole. When the maester’s work is finished and he takes his leave, Aemond locks the door behind him. Then he stands in front of you wearing a hungry, mischievous smirk that tells you exactly what he wants.

“You must be in terrible pain,” you say.

“Oh yes. And desperately in need of a distraction.”

You grab his belt and pull him towards you. He drops to his knees and burrows under the layers of your bloodstained moonstone gown as you laugh wildly, and then gasp, and then writhe and moan as your fingers snag in his hair. You start in the chair, and then move to the bed; you start light and frivolous and giggling and then turn somber, intense. It is a reunion that in an only slightly different world would never have happened. You’ve both tasted the possibility of losing each other; you’ve both tasted the salt of spilled tears and sweat and blood. It is a long time before Aemond gets his fill of you. He tumbles headfirst into sleep with his hand resting on your belly; exhausted and satisfied, whole, you gaze up at the ceiling and wonder how it is possible to be so fortunate.

Aemond is still dozing when night falls, and you slink away quietly so he can rest. Beneath the heart tree, you light a blue candle, pulverize the dry ingredients, and mix them into a pitcher containing the rum and still-warm bull’s blood. Again, there is that intangible, menacing sensation of being watched. Again, you cannot find any proof of an eavesdropper. You do not mention this to Aemond. There is no sense in worrying him. You have afflicted him with enough worries already.

You tell the servants to prepare a hot bath and they listen, bowing low and addressing you as princess. As your husband soaks and steam fills the room, you sit on the rim of the tub and braid his long silver hair, tell him stories of your childhood on Bear Island, watch the violet-indigo bruises evaporate from his skin like puddles of rain beneath the sun.

“I’ll have to get an egg,” he says distantly, as if half-asleep. The bathwater that engulfs him is a sea of shimmering red. “A dragon egg. The most perfect egg there is.”

You are mystified. “Why?”

He smiles at you, a dreamy, content smile. “For the baby.”

When he wakes in the morning, his pain has vanished.

Within a month, and to the court’s amazement, his arm is completely healed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Larys is waiting when Queen Alicent retires to her chambers for the evening. He lives in the shadows like a nocturnal animal, a bat or a shadowcat or an owl with its talons hooked to a twisted branch. He collects secrets the way some people collect seashells from the shore, pieces of lives fragmented and in a million different colors. This particular secret is one that can benefit the queen greatly. Aemond’s bride has been a princess for several months now, and yet still the court yammers noxiously about her. They mock her family, her bloodline, Bear Island. They think her arrogant to have climbed so high above her station. They call her Lady Mormont and pretend it is an accident, just an old habit, just a harmless reflex. They claim she conceived a child too quickly for it to have happened within wedlock. They gossip about her “true” husband Axel Hightower, who is shamed and miserable in Oldtown; he has tried in vain to procure a replacement wife, only to be turned down again and again out of concern that the union would be deemed bigamy by half the realm. All in all, the marriage is considered quite the oddity, quite the failure. Alicent does not have the heart to deny her child—her favorite child—this woman who has brought him such happiness; but if circumstances transpired that compelled the removal of the much-maligned princess, surely Alicent would be relieved, would be…indebted to whoever had orchestrated it.

The queen has just come from visiting her husband. She smells of death and decay. Her eyes are rheumy. Her shoulders hang low and limply, as if they are broken. The room is illuminated only by the sickly ochre glow of candlelight. The way the flames dance across her skin is magnificent, tempting. Larys wonders if in a different world he could have been her husband. He wonders how sweet it must taste to own something so beautiful.

“Oh,” Alicent says when she spots him, and that’s all. She clutches at herself with her own arms; they wrap around her like a constricting snake. She stares at him, too depleted to be wary. Around her neck hangs a large, golden, seven-pointed star.

Larys will not give away everything he knows at once; he never does. He will bait her with the who and the what, but he will save the details—those essential steps of the how—until payment has been made. Some men deal in money or gems or land or power. Larys’ preferred currency is flesh. “I have discovered concerning information about someone very close to you.”

Alicent sighs. “Not now, Lord Larys.”

“But—”

“Not now,” she insists. “Please, just…just…” Tears begin to slither from her eyes. She holds up one hand as if barring an intruder. Her voice is a threadbare, shaky whimper. “Just leave me. Please.”

Larys bows. “As you wish.”

He disguises his panic and frustration in the same way he once disguised his lust for her. Now there is no need for masquerading; that particular secret is one that he unveiled long ago. He skulks through the hallways of the Red Keep and ponders the heart tree, a tower built by gods instead of men: the moon-white bark, the blood-red leaves, the mournful face carved into the trunk, the roots dotted with traces of candlewax. He examines it each day and keeps meticulous notes. He lurks in the shadows most nights in case the princess makes an appearance. He compiles evidence like a raven constructing a nest of stolen twigs, piece by piece by piece.

Have patience, he tells himself. The time will come very soon. Soon, soon, soon.

~~~~~~~~~~

You are beginning to show. Your gowns have high, generous waistlines and plenty of room for letting out as the weeks rolls by like waves, like wheels. The gardens of the Red Keep hum with bees and dragonflies and swooping, ungainly beetles. Butterflies like airborne jewels—rubies, emeralds, diamonds, turquoises, amethysts, opals, sapphires, moonstones—flutter before landing on leaves or blossoms. Some even land on Princess Helaena.

“Ah!” she sighs elatedly as she acquires another one; it clings to her hand like a living ring. “Look, Grandsire, look.”

Otto Hightower beams as he slices his ham. “Wonderful, my dear.”

“How far along are you now, darling?” Alicent asks you, nibbling on a strawberry muffin. Sir Criston Cole sits beside her and dutifully passes the queen butter or sugar or tea whenever she requires it. He looks at her in a way that makes you think of septons marveling at statues of the Mother or the Warrior or the Smith, gods they can speak to as often as they like but never meet. There is something hopeless and yet worshipful about it. There is something sacred.

“Four months,” Aemond answers before you can. You are between him and Helaena, on Aemond’s good side, the side where he can easily see you. He touches you often, almost absentmindedly—resting his arm on the back of your chair, grazing your cheek with the backs of his fingers, twirling stray locks of your hair, placing a palm on your thigh—as if to make sure you’re still there.

“And you are feeling quite well?” Alicent says. “I remember being horribly sick with Helaena. It lasted all the way through, right up until she was born. It was much worse than my pregnancies with the boys. That was the only trouble she’s ever caused me.”

“I’m very well,” you reply. “I was ill at first, practically bedridden, but…” You exchange a wily glance with Aemond. “Thank the gods, I recovered.”

Aegon appears, swaying and bleary-eyed. He pulls out the chair opposite of you and plops down. He winces and shields his eyes from the late-morning sunlight, groaning.

“You’re late,” Otto snaps.

“I’m here now, aren’t I? Don’t schedule things before noon if you’re so concerned with my punctuality.”

“Aemond was on time. Even his Mormont wife was on time.” Otto Hightower brings up the unimpressive house of your birth at least thrice per day; it is a ceaseless torment to him. He is not openly vindictive, and he does not exclude you from family gatherings like this one, but he has yet to cultivate any fondness for you. Perhaps he never will. You suppose that is a small price to pay for everything fortune has gifted you.

“Was she?” Aegon squints at you. “Are your people familiar with the concept of timekeeping? Don’t they all live in caves?”

You smile. He smiles back, then pours himself a cup of wine until it overflows onto the table. You drink your pomegranate juice; you have become rather obsessed with it.

“At least she turned out to be fertile,” Otto consoles himself as he chews his ham. And then, to Aemond: “I suppose you’re praying for a son. Any man would. But if not this time, surely many more children will follow.”

“Actually, I’m praying for a swift and easy delivery of whatever variety of child it is.”

“That’s a chivalrous thing to say, but you can’t mean it.” Otto butters a thick slice of toast. “I have sons. Viserys has sons. Aegon has sons. Rhaenyra has more sons than she’ll know what to do with once they come of age. I think I know you well enough to be certain you would feel cheated without your own.”

Helaena murmurs to her butterfly: “He waits in the lagoon, coiled, red.”

“Then again,” Otto adds, looking at Aegon. “Sons are not always such a comfort.”

“You are welcome to disown me, Grandsire,” Aegon says cheerfully. “I’ve always thought that I would make a wonderful brothel keeper. I have already acquired such extensive relevant experience.”

Otto snorts, disgusted. Aemond only drinks his tea and drums his fingers on the table. He tells you that he is not preoccupied with whether his firstborn is a male, but you aren’t sure if you believe him. Perhaps he is only trying to spare your feelings, like when he thought you could not bear children at all. You become anxious when you think too much about this. You are desperately afraid to disappoint him. He has already sacrificed so much to keep you.

Through the gardens comes an unexpected guest. Otto grumbles audibly. Helaena’s butterfly takes flight and deserts her. Aegon guzzles his wine; it runs in scarlet tendrils down his chin.

“Lord Larys,” Alicent greets him charitably. “How are you this morning?”

“Very well, my queen.”

Larys waits for an invitation to sit down. Everyone else waits for him to leave. At last, Alicent admits defeat. “Lord Larys, won’t you join us for breakfast? The servants can bring another place setting.”

“Yes!” Otto says with sudden enthusiasm. “Right next to Prince Aegon.” He grins at Aegon toothily. Aegon glares back, his face half-buried in his wine cup. The servants deliver the requisite materials in a flurry and Larys takes his seat. He helps himself to a few miniature muffins, but he doesn’t seem to have much interest in eating. He must have other motivations to stay.

Helaena is painstakingly cutting an apple into paper-thin slivers. “Moon on the water, fire in the sky, moon on the water…”

“Have you something to share with us, Lord Larys?” Alicent inquires.

“I do.” He chooses his words meticulously. “Her Majesty has been so…overtaxed lately. I have had great difficulty finding the opportunity.”

“The king,” Alicent offers in explanation, and cannot elaborate further. Sir Criston extends his hand towards her. She squeezes it as if grasping a precipice that juts out over an abyss.

“Indeed, indeed,” Larys says. “You have my deepest sympathies. And yet, it must be said…I fear that in the king’s absence, there has been a lapse in discipline here at court. A lapse in…morals.”

“How do you mean?” Alicent asks, perplexed.

Otto glowers at Aegon. “What have you done now?”

“No, no, no, my apologies, I am not referring to the prince.” Larys clasps his hands together, debating how to proceed. “This act that I have uncovered, this immoral practice, it is not a crime against men. It is more serious than that, more dire. It is a crime against the gods.”

Aemond—who up until now had been paying Larys no attention whatsoever—looks up at the Master of Whisperers. His blue eye widens, sharpens. Aegon catches this, his drunken brains wrestling over what it means; then it collides with him. There is a cold sweat breaking out on your skin. You can feel your gown sticking to the icy dampness along your ribs, your spine, your rounded belly. Larys Strong knows. He knows, he knows, he knows.

Alicent is bewildered still. “To whom are you referring, Lord Larys?”

Aegon knocks over his cup with a sweep of his hand, spilling red wine all over the table. “Oh no, oh dear, so clumsy, my mistake.”

“Aegon!” Alicent cries. Sir Criston begins mopping up the mess with cloth napkins.

Larys begins: “In fact—”

Aegon reaches for the wine pitcher, fumbles with it, and deposits the entirety of the contents onto Lord Larys. “Oh, there I go again. You should retire to clean yourself up, Lord Larys. And perhaps get lost if you attempt to return to us.”

“Enough!” Otto Hightower shouts, and the table settles. He turns to a dripping Larys. “What exactly are you trying to say?”

Larys’ eyes flick to you. “It seems…there is evidence that…the princess may have engaged in…well, a very forbidden practice. Witchcraft.”

Aemond stands and draws his sword. Otto’s mouth falls open; his eyes are not just shocked but skeptical, confounded. Helaena covers her face with both hands as if she can wish herself away from this place, this life. Aegon’s fist closes around his fork. But before anyone can move—before any violence can be committed, before further accusations can be made—Alicent speaks.

“I do not wish to hear of it,” the queen says. She is more resolved, more commanding than you have ever heard her before. “She is kind to my daughter, she carries my grandchild, she makes my son happy. And yet still people whisper spitefully about Axel Hightower and conjure up ways by which to banish her from our city, our family. It sickens me, this cynicism, this profound lack of empathy. I will not hear any further slanders against her. And that is exactly what these words are, Lord Larys. Slander. You mean well, about that I have no doubts. You have been an invaluable friend and ally since my youth. But tread carefully when you speak of my children. I count her as one of them now.”

Everyone watches Alicent. There is no sound but the wind and the leaves and the buzzing insects. Wine dribbles from Larys’ hair.

“How many…” Alicent’s voice breaks, and she pauses to compose herself. “How many of us must be compelled into marriages that strengthen our families, our treasuries, our armies but destroy our souls? How many of us must trade away our contentment for the sake of honor? Can the two never coexist? Can our humanity never emerge unscathed, or is that the true price we must pay for greatness?” Sir Criston’s dark eyes are shining, pained. “No, I think that love—uncomplicated, undutiful, unambitious love—can be allowed to prevail this once. If only this once.”

She stares at Lord Larys, daring him to contradict her. Soon everyone else is staring at Larys too, even Helaena. The quiet grows very loud. The Master of Whisperers yields, showing both of his palms in surrender. “Of course. I sincerely apologize. I collect secrets in service to the crown, but not all of them are equally trustworthy. I must have been mistaken. I will not broach the subject again.”

“Good,” Alicent says. Lord Larys stands, bows, and retreats from the table. Aemond sheaths his sword and sits back down. Aegon exhales noisily. Helaena catches a dragonfly on her wrist.

“That fucking ferret,” Otto mutters, shaking his head; and you find yourself able to laugh when everyone else does.

As breakfast concludes and servants begin clearing the table, you and Aemond leave to walk through the gardens. You find the trellis tunnel grown thick with ivy and roses and jasmine and wisteria, and you disappear inside, invisible to the sun and the court and maybe even the gods as well.

“I don’t think Larys will try that again anytime soon,” Aemond says. “Still, we must use your talent sparingly. If Larys Strong learned of it, so can others. And my mother cannot silence them all.” He threads your moonstone pendant through his hand, touches his forehead to yours. His voice is low and adoring. “I assume you have a protection spell in mind for yourself. For when our child is due to be born.”

“There is a particular spell for childbirth, but the way I was taught it requires blue winter roses. As far as I know, they only grow in the North.”

Aemond nods, placing his palm on your belly. “I’ll send a raven to Winterfell and have some brought to King’s Landing. When do you need them?”

“Shortly before I deliver. As close to the labor as possible. At the start of my eighth month, I’d say.”

“Alright. I’ll see that you have them.”

You hesitate, not wanting to offend him. He is the epitome of a Targaryen…minus the illustrious, silver-haired, incestuous wife, of course. “Can I ask you for one favor?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“It’s not that I don’t care for your brother, but…can we please not name our baby Aegon?”

He smiles. “I think Westeros has more than enough Aegons already. Our child doesn’t need the name of a great warrior. They will be one no matter what we call them.”

Them, you think. Not him. Aemond didn’t say him.

In the darkness, in the stillness, you kiss and taste the unabated craving on each other’s lips.

~~~~~~~~~~

“What troubles you, Silver?”

You are on Bearstone sharing a picnic of meats, cheeses, breads, honey cakes, wine, and—your personal favorite—pomegranate juice. The ocean is sparkling and serene, the wind calm, the grass thick and soft beneath you. The sun is hot, but you have taken refuge in the shade of a grove of crooked laurel trees. They remind you of your mother—they share her name—and that once caused you pain like the nick of a blade. Increasingly, you find solace in it.

Aemond peers solemnly out over the waves, his arms linked around his bent knees. You have difficulty touching your knees at all these days; Aegon jokes that your belly is the Eighth Kingdom. “They haven’t arrived yet.”

“What hasn’t?”

“The blue winter roses,” he says. “I haven’t heard anything from Winterfell. Perhaps the raven went astray, perhaps the message was lost. It is an arduous journey, after all. No matter the circumstances, the outcome is the same. You need them, and you don’t have them.”

“Has it been eight months already?”

“Yes.” He’s amused now. “Haven’t you been keeping count?”

“Not as well as you, apparently.”

He studies you. “I’ll go myself,” he decides.

“What, to Winterfell?!”

“Yes, on Vhagar. With stops for meals and rest, it’s about three days each way. I’ll be back within a week. There are plenty of noble houses willing to host me along the route. In fact, they’ll be delighted. They’ll probably start shoving their marriageable daughters at me.”

“Perhaps that’s what Vhagar can eat. Wealthy, yearning maidens.”

He chuckles, then strokes your cheek tenderly, reverently. “I don’t want to wait any longer. I don’t want to risk you not having every advantage available to you.”

“Are you afraid?” you ask, and then immediately you regret putting it into words. You don’t want to give this fear life. You don’t want to give it power.

“No,” Aemond replies; and you cannot tell if he is lying.

~~~~~~~~~~

You are pacing through the gardens when he finds you. Helaena and her handmaidens are chasing her children around the butterfly bushes—Jaehaera, Jaehaerys, and little Maelor too, who is now old enough to toddle around on unsteady legs—but you can’t summon up the stamina for that today. Your swollen feet ache when they touch the cobblestones. Your lower back is knotted with pain: it tightens, loosens, tightens again, and each time you think it could twist no tighter it proves you wrong. You hurt in too many places to number. It would be like trying to count stars or blades of grass.

Aegon gestures to Helaena. “How is she?” He is drunk, but only moderately. He sits down on the rim of a fountain and you join him.

“Thriving. Jovial. You could ask her yourself, you know.”

“That’s not how we do things.” He stares at his wife, his children, but always from a distance. He ponders them the way other people might observe foreign strangers in a crowded marketplace: a little fascinated, a little puzzled. “It’s not her fault that I don’t desire her. It is my shortcoming, in fact. It is a betrayal to my heritage to be repulsed by the act. It is just one in my long litany of failures.” He discards his gloominess abruptly. “But how are you today?”

“Awful. Everything hurts, especially my back. Walking helps some.”

“Let’s walk then.” Aegon stands and loops his arm through yours. His steps are off-balance and lurching. “And just think, you have another full month of this to look forward to. You don’t have a supernatural remedy for the discomfort?”

“I have one for childbirth. But an essential ingredient is currently in transit.”

“Oh, right. Aemond must be soaring over the Riverlands by now.”

You think of the prince, still two or three days away from King’s Landing, and how he is like two souls in one. When he is alone with you, he is kind and gentle and at peace. He is a better husband than King Viserys ever was, already a better father. And yet…when he spars with Sir Criston, when he hears Otto Hightower speak of alliances and armies, when he reads books about tactics of warfare, when he is threatened with losing you…you can see the red glimmer of wrath, of vengeance in his eye. You can see the egregiously wronged boy he once was. “Sometimes I fear I’m losing him to the past instead of joining him in the future”

“You are his future. You, and the baby, and this family. The Greens. That’s all that exists to him.”

“But he cannot conspire against Rhaenyra without remembering what she and her sons did to him. Each time he thinks of it, I watch the hatred boil up inside him.” You look at Aegon. He looks back with perplexed, dark-ringed eyes. “You have to promise that if anything happens to me, you’ll help him. You’ll support him, you’ll guide him. Otto will coax him towards blind revenge, but you must help him rise above that. You must be a good king, a good leader. You must become better than you are now.”

“What could possibly happen to you?”

You glace up at the clouds, at the heavens. “My mother died in childbirth.”

“That’s very sad, but you aren’t going to.”

“Women die in childbirth all the time. You only exist because Aemma Targaryen did.”

“She didn’t just die,” Aegon says with a sort of morbid intrigue. “When all hope was lost, my father had her cut open so they could try to save his son. You could hear the screams all through the Red Keep. Bloodcurdling, I’ve been told. The bed looked like a massacre had taken place there. And in the end, the boy died anyway. So he tortured his beloved wife for nothing.”

“That’s horrifying.”

“Oh,” he realizes, noting your face. “Perhaps I should not have told you that.”

“Your timing could have been better,” you say. “Do you promise?”

He sighs. “I don’t think I have it in me to be a good anything.”

“You do. I know you do. I can see it.”

“Oh, is there a spell for that?” he teases. “Flaying me alive until all my secrets are spilled?”

“Owww.” You stop dead and grab your lower back, squeezing your eyes shut. “Owwww…”

Aegon reaches for you uncertainly. “Are you alright? Are you sure this is normal—?”

There is a sudden gush of liquid that drenches the ground beneath your feet. There is a panicked look that flies between you and Aegon, colored with the knowledge that Aemond is still hopelessly far from King’s Landing. And then, when a new wave of twisting agony pierces through your spine, there are screams. It feels like jagged metal strings are tangled up inside you, shredding muscle, scraping bone. It feels like you are being ripped apart by iron claws. There is sharpness and pressure and tension all at once. There is no escaping it.

Helaena helps you to your bedroom and calls for the maesters and midwives. By the time they arrive, you are on the floor sobbing, gasping for air, trembling all over. Helaena cools your face with wet cloths and promises that you will have relief between contractions, but you don’t feel any break in the pain: it is bad, and then it is worse, and then it is unbearable, but it never vanishes from you. The midwives check you again and again, and although they speak to you soothingly and encouragingly you can see the bleak dread in the glances they pass each other like whispers.

Helaena does not leave your side except when she collapses—curled up on a couch in the corner of the room—to catch a few hours of fractured sleep. Aegon sits in the hallway outside and drinks, worries, drinks some more. Queen Alicent arrives every few hours to offer praise and advice, to assess your progress. Her face grows more grave with each visit. She consults with the maesters and midwives, positing suggestion after suggestion, positions and herbs and drinks and prayers. Nothing helps you. Nothing brings the child out of you, and after a while you can no longer feel them moving. I’ve killed them, you think to yourself. And now it’s my turn to die too.

At first, you fight to live. You are petrified by the knowledge that your mother died exactly like this, afraid and suffering and utterly defenseless despite her gift of magic. Perhaps she was not able to cast the spell for protection in childbirth before her labor began. Perhaps it simply didn’t work. Perhaps the Old Gods heard her pleas and denied them, silenced them, determined that her hourglass had run out. You don’t want to die. You don’t want to leave Aemond, Helaena, Aegon, Alicent, Sir Criston, this city, this world. You don’t want to abandon Aemond to descend into merciless, mindless fury. You don’t want to die, you don’t want to die, you don’t want to die.

As the hours pass, as the days pass, the fight bleeds out of you. Death would be an end to the pain. Death would be cold, silent nothingness. And, most vitally, death in this particular circumstance seems to be inevitable.

When the midwives announce with renewed exuberance that at last you are dilated enough to deliver, you don’t have any strength left. You cannot keep down food or water; you vomit up every drop of liquid they pour down your throat, raw from screaming and retching. You have not slept. You lie in the same bed where Aemond made love to you on your wedding night and let the contractions shred through you one after the other, accomplishing nothing, afflicting futile violence. You have nothing left. You are as empty as open hands.

When Vhagar is spotted flying into King’s Landing, Aegon sprints out to the beach to meet his brother. Aemond climbs down from the netting wearing a triumphant grin; in the satchel slung over his shoulder are twenty-seven blue winter roses, still relatively fresh. His smile dies when he sees Aegon, when he reads his face, when he smells the wine and sweat and desperation on him.

“It’s too late for that,” Aegon says. His words are strangled. His cheeks are ruddy and wet with tears. “But you might still have time to say goodbye.”

You know the instant Aemond enters the room; he changes it just like he always does. The floor shifts, the walls expand, the daylight grows brighter. “I’m here,” he tells you, kneeling at your bedside. “Shh, I’m here, I’m here. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I’m here now.”

Your voice is less than a whisper. “I don’t want to die like my mother.”

“You are not dying. Look at me, look at me…” He grabs your face roughly with both hands. “You are not dying, I promise you that you’re not. You are in battle, but you are winning.”

Your eyes roll to his, glassy and vacant, wanting to believe him. Helaena sobs on the other side of the room. Alicent embraces her, comforts her, prepares her.

“I’ll help you,” Aemond says. “Alright? We’ll do this together. I’ll help you. I won’t leave you for a second. I won’t leave until it’s over.”

Until it’s over, he said. Not until our child is born. Because no one believes the baby is still alive. “Alright,” you agree faintly, the words of a ghost.

Aemond climbs onto the bed, sits behind you, rests his chin in the dip of your collarbone. When the midwives tell you to push, he kisses your temple and entwines his hands with yours and reminds you that you are almost there, nearly done, winning. In the midst of a contraction that feels like razors, and then crushing pressure, and then fire, the baby is born. And while sounds erupt through the room—cheers and chatter and gasps of relief—there is no cry. You expect this. You barely feel the grief at all. Later you will, surely, but not now.

“I’m sorry,” you tell Aemond, barely conscious, the room dimming to black. Blood flows in a torrent from your life-robbing womb.

“No,” he replies. You can feel the dampness of tears on his right cheek. “It’s not your fault. You have nothing to be sorry—”

And then there is a noise, a fragile little squeak as the midwives jostle her, your tiny wrinkled newborn daughter; and a reedy little cry follows. Alicent bursts into jubilant tears. Helaena rushes over to hold the baby. You fade away, away, away.

You sink into a deep, pitch-black sleep with no dreams. You deliver the afterbirth and the midwives massage your belly, and you are barely aware of these facts. You surface momentarily when you are given morsels of food or drink or milk of the poppy. You are cleaned and dressed and scrupulously monitored. A wetnurse is found for the baby; you could not nurse even if it was customary for a princess to do so, as your milk had not yet come in before your too-soon labor. You drift in the darkness. You gather strength; you heal. Aemond brushes the tangles from your hair and speaks to you in High Valyrian and waits for you to rejoin him in the land of the living.

After three full days, you are well enough for visitors. You lie in bed in a regal, celebratory golden gown and accept congratulations as your daughter is passed around, careful arms eagerly enfolding her: Otto, Alicent, Helaena, Sir Criston, various Hightowers, maesters, the highest-ranking nobles currently at court, Aemond always hovering nearby and impatient to take her back. Oddly enough, nobody seems disappointed that she is not a son, least of all your husband. Aegon bypasses all the cooing and admiring and sits down beside you on the bed, one brimming cup in each hand.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hi. I brought you some pomegranate juice.” He hands you a cup.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have much interest in this. Are you here to see the baby?”

“No.” He touches your forehead—feeling for fever—and then your cheeks. “You scared me.”

“Not as much as I scared myself, I assure you.”

“Don’t do that again.”

“He’s so in love with her, I think we’ll have to have twenty children.”

“That would be a new record, surely.”

“Why, do you only have nineteen?”

“You fucking bitch,” he says, smiling enormously, and clinks his cup against yours.

Otto Hightower parades your daughter around the room. She is obviously asleep, but he narrates every feature to her anyway: here’s the history of that tapestry, there’s the rug brought to the Red Keep from some exotic corner of the world. “What will you call her?” he asks Aemond. “Visenya? Alyssa? Alysanne?”

Aemond turns to you. “I think we should name her after your mother.”

“Yes,” you reply as you clasp your pendent. You had not considered it, but it’s perfect. It suits her. It breathes new life into something that was stolen from you.

“Laurel.” You love the way Aemond says it: hushed like a sigh, gentle like his hands.

“Laurel?!” Otto exclaims. “That’s not a Targaryen name!”

“Perhaps you will recall, Grandsire, that she is also half-Mormont.”

“Well…I suppose it cannot be helped at this point,” Otto concedes. Everything about him—voice, posture, eyes—softens as he gazes down at his great-granddaughter. You had thought that only Helaena was capable of having that effect on him. “She is a fine child. She looks like a Targaryen, at least.” And she does: she has your skin and your eyes, but her dusting of short, wispy hair is pure silver.

When you are able to walk long distances again, Aemond insists that there is one last introduction that still needs to be made. The three of you venture down to an abandoned stretch of rocky beach—Aemond carrying Laurel, stepping slowly and cautiously—where Vhagar is slumbering like an earthquake waiting to split the land. She unfurls when she hears you approaching, flares her nostrils, blinks sluggishly with those savage, muddy eyes.

“Fire,” Aemond says, laying his bare palm to Vhagar’s flesh. Then he smooths his hand over your daughter’s sparse, downy hair. “And blood.” The egg in her cradle is a pale, shimmering, off-white color with silver flecks. The feeling in your chest is nothing but open, fearless, shadowless joy.

Exactly eight weeks later—seeking to secure Lucerys Targaryen’s claim to Driftmark—Rhaenyra and Daemon set sail from Dragonstone, bound for the flourishing, golden shores of King’s Landing.

#aemond x reader #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond imagine #aemond x you #aemond targaryen imagine #hotd imagine #hotd fanfic #aemond fic

[freeuselandonorris]

i am literally dying at you speaking to james barclay after writing d/s rpf fic of him😭😭😭 would love to know more details

hahahaha oh god so i’ve posted about this before but god knows what i tagged it with to find it again.

due to a series of genuine misunderstandings and being stood in the right place at the wrong time, at the london eprix last year myself @zeraparker and @lost-decade were mistaken for employees of jaguar land rover and taken on a group tour of the pitlane and jaguar garage, with an introductory talk by james barclay. we did not realise we had been assimilated into the group of actual employees until it was too late. it was one of the funniest and most stressful experiences of my entire life. thankfully mitch and sam didn’t appear too or i would have fully died on the spot.

@formulatrash, who was also in the pitlane for actual legitimate reasons and was very confused to see us there, took some incredible photos of us trying to hide in the back of a group photo that we had no right to be in and could not access as it was posted to some sort of internal JLR whatsapp group. i won’t post those (funny as they are) because there’s lots of people’s faces but here’s a photo of mitch’s car half-naked instead

#answered

[no-psi-nan]

In my post-canon fic series, Akechi becomes friends with Kusuke in adulthood, often visiting his lab to hang out and play games and chat. (This happens well past what I've posted so far though lol)

Akechi is openly non-binary, and makes a bet with Kusuke over a game, like they usually do, for custom hormone replacement treatment as a prize. Akechi wins and Kusuke studies pharmaceuticals and stuff to make him a course of hormones that will give him more feminine features while still keeping a lot of his masculine features.

Anyways I ended up writing this character introspective moment between Akechi and Kusuke that I thought was neat:

Akechi's quarterly physical is a boring regular affair on the couch at Kusuke's lab. It's just a simple checkup to see how well Kusuke's custom blend of sex hormones was working to give Akechi the perfectly ambiguously gendered figure of his dreams.

But for Akechi, undressing - even just to the waist - is always a grand production.

Off comes his suit jacket, and he takes the time to hang it up neatly to avoid wrinkles.

Then he unhooks his suspenders from the back, pulling the straps forward to tie in a neat little bow to keep them out of the way without having to remove them entirely.

The way he unbuttons his dress shirt is always so prim and practiced too, each twist of his wrists at once mechanical and dramatic.

Akechi's bright gaze meets Kusuke's then.

"It used to be that I only considered mirrors to be utilitarian things," he says, "useful for ensuring that my clothes were tidy and my hair neat, or occasionally for a closer perspective on some blemish or bruise. But lately, whenever I catch sight of myself in the mirror, I smile, and it's this unintentional, unbidden outburst of joy – a wild thing that I would never have considered possible at such a mundane occurrence. Had I felt 'wrong' in my old body? Certainly not– I was reasonably satisfied with it at the time. But these latest developments have, in a sense, elevated my everyday experience, increased the background baseline of my mood. And for that, I am truly thankful, Kusuke. We both know that our gambling antes are farcical, more of an excuse to share in an experience than a true wager. And yet you've granted me such an enormous boon, at no little cost of your own. I have some idea of how much time you spent studying human biology and pharmaceuticals in order to prepare this treatment regimen for me. Time you could have perhaps better spent developing your own inventions and theorems. Yet you have been nothing but professional and attentive with me throughout these years. I would like to thank you wholeheartedly for everything."

And of course, Kusuke would have complicated feelings about his closest and practically only friend, so...

Kusuke looks away from Akechi to the other side of his couch, uselessly hiding his expression from someone who knows his emotions better than himself.

"No problem," he says. "It's fun."

"You want more," Akechi states simply, no judgment in his tone.

Kusuke frowns.

It's true.

As much as he enjoys Akechi's company, and the time they spend fiddling with Kusuke's machines and playing crazy little games for mostly meaningless antes, there's something missing.

Kusuke doesn't know what it is, but he feels it in his chest when Akechi bounces into his lab like he's in his own home. He feels it when Akechi whips up a bizarre new treat as if his lab was a kitchen and offers Kusuke a bite right out of his fingers. He feels it when Akechi stays the night, snoring away on the couch while Kusuke silently writes journal papers and grant proposals.

Akechi's gaze is kind enough to hurt.

Anyways from here I wrote a fic where they settle into a friends-with-benefits kind of relationship but because Kusuke is still a big weirdo no matter how much he's calmed down, the resulting fic is extremely unhinged.

(The full fic is rated E and easy to find, but mind the tags, it's truly the wildest thing I've posted so far lol)

But I figured some people might enjoy reading the premise so here it is <3 This lore was actually explained previously in an Aikechi mini-comic but I think most people missed the punchlines so hopefully this is a clearer version of Nopsi's Trans Enby Akechi Lore!

#akechi touma #saiki kusuke #kusuke saiki #saiki kuusuke #<-why he gotta have so many tags #tousuke #nopsi fic #fli(psi)deverse

[oh-my-damn]

Chris and Alba are messy we discuss it’s not a big deal, if people don’t like it, then don’t visit the blog. Also anons like to hide and try to tag you, that’s lame and that blogger needs to stop posting things in the freaking hashtag I hate when people do that. //

I got an ask with more than this in it, but I figured it would be a good intro to what I'm about to post. I keep receipts and I was not aware this was still going on today. That happened last night (for me) and I was blocked quite early on so I was not aware of what this person was doing all day.

So here is a timeline for y'all. With receipts.

Here is the original post that I responded to and my response:

Here is what I responded to her response, a response from an anon on her blog, and the post she made directly tagging me:

I was blocked after this. Now, people came to my defense when they saw this, and no, I did not "call on them" despite contrary belief. I was already following most of those blogs bc of their opinion on Chris but I was not aware they were mutuals of mine until responses started pouring in.

What other people choose to do is not on me. I am grateful people came to my defense, and even more grateful that they continue to do so. It is not on me that they chose to do that, they are their own people and I certainly did not "call on them". We are not the mafia. And my blog isn't even a Chris gossip blog, believe it or not, I'm on here because I'm a writer. So it's not even like that.

Anyway, here is what has been posted about me where either she or her anons directly tagged me, after I was blocked. I did not know this was going on, obviously, since I was blocked, and she knew that the entire time she was posting these.

That last one doesn't mention me specifically but is most likely about me since I study law. Also thank you, anon, for trying to put down something I work tremendously hard on and that is very sacred to me. I share that with my followers, it's not like it's in my bio, and to bring that into context is just mean.

Now, y'all may have your own opinions on what's going on, I am sharing this merely to clarify what happened from my perspective. I don't think it's okay to allow this kind of talk of other people (unprovoked) on your blog, even if anons are sending it in, which is why I came to Maddy's (or her friends) defense in the first place.

The fact that she would continue to allow these posts about me after blocking me, knowing I wouldn't be able to see it, is just low and unnecessary.

I am done with this shit. We are grown ass people and most of us even agree on the topic of Chris in general. There was no reason it had to turn into this, it is absolutely ridiculous, but I will not allow people to speak on my name without me even getting a chance to defend myself.

There's a reason I'm in law school (as that anon loved to point out) and it's because I don't tolerate injustice when I see it.

This is over.

#a timeline #with receipts #for all of this fuckey happening around me #I am done with this shit #mandy rants

[impunkster-syndrome]

my reply on that post was about the idea that the fandom would be unwelcoming to plural folk. i basically said that i myself am plural and that while we cannot control the actions of the fandom, we absolutely curate bad behavior in the fancord where we can catch it, and obviously do not discourage sch fictives considering *i* am a clown with fictives.

but i will add since im here that kitty blocking you is not because you Dared to criticize kit. it's because all of the dogpiling and negativity was unbelievably stressful, you all behave as if there is no person behind the screen, or that she is trying to hide behind trauma as an 'excuse.' that is Not the case. kitty blocked, and will continue to block, every single person involved with those blogs just because again, it was so stressful as a traumatized individual. so much toxicity buried any potentially Good criticisms. we Hear yall on the issues like barry not being drawn as fat as he usee to be anymore, or polly missing their cane, we Will rectify actual issues like that.

we welcome issues being brought up and have listened many times before. the fact of the matter is is that no one was going about it constructively at all.

While I do interact with some criticism blogs, I legitimately don't care for some of the criticism from blogs and approach the media as someone entirely new to it. Media analysis is my hobby, and I see so much potential in Sparklecare plus the related media like the therapy spinoff as someone who has dealt with stuff like systemic ableism and interpersonal ableism. I think some of the criticism blogs don't exactly focus on the bigger issues at hand- the lack of nuance, pacing, the high barrier of entry to being able to understand the media through expecting readers to have done hours of scrolling through social media for lore, the problems of not having page numbers on the site visible and not being able to easily skip to specific pages, etc. However, you do not help yourself here by clearly never having actually read and understood my posts. In fact, I do see some staff acting like trauma makes the media immune to criticism, when trauma can make beautiful art that can speak to people at a core level like Alice: Madness Returns. It just can't get that good without people actually being able to point out things that can be fixed and improved upon. The timing for being blocked despite never actually interacting with the main sparklecare blog plus the posts about how people shouldn't take it as anything other than vent art despite the site's about page itself claiming it is a social commentary tell me that it was about my posts and critique of the media as what it claims itself to be. I had never seen anyone else talk about it in that way in the tags, which was astounding to me as someone that reads social commentary like Discworld and is currently working through Lolita so I can write about the objectification of CSA survivors and erasure of our stories and identities by abusers. If it was never meant to be seen as social commentary, that needs to be removed from the site.

I approach it less like a disappointed fan and more like a creative because I've been in Kittycorn's position at about the same age- 15. I wanted to make a twine game about my trauma and abuse I was still undergoing because I wanted to know why I was being abused and it was a cry for someone to help me. There were also many other projects, and some that I have refined over time. I have OCs I talk about and I use them to explore parts of myself. This is my disability blog too, and I'm going to have opinions on disability-related media and representation in it.

I honestly suggest you read over the posts I have written about Sparklecare and then reevaluate if you think I am coming from a malicious place like you seem to think I am.

As for the alterhuman thing, I will say that it was from publicly available information at the time. I'm not going to be in a fandom discord when I have stuff like a job to worry about and the whole media is a migraine risk to me.

Also- I've seen some staff literally tokenize Kittycorn and act like kits schizophrenia is what makes kit excused from all critique. The holding up of kit as a bully victim and not a 23 year old person able to handle kits own issues is infantilizing to disabled people. We can handle our own shit. You personally need to learn the line between bullying and publicly discussing media that was made public, as someone who got extensively bullied in school for years. It's not the same thing here. Kittycorn is a person behind the screen- but so are the people you proclaim as bullies and dehumanize by acting like all criticism is unfounded or coming from "bad people."

#the blackbox askbox #sparklecare critical #sparklecare hospital #sparklecare

[agender-witchery]

I'm putting this one under a cut just so people read the first damn paragraph.

I am playing through Outer Wilds for the first time, I've beaten the base game and I'm now going through the DLC. I do not want ANY information whatsoever, spoiler or not. I want to learn everything by myself. The questions and observations I make are for me to think about and answer, not you. If you post a reply or reblog with tags that go against these wishes, you will be blocked immediately.

If you saw my last post, you know that I sum up what I know and what I want to learn after each play session and send that to my friend who's watching me play through the game. If you didn't see my last post, well now you know. I've actually had two sessions since my last post - I just never got a chance to do a full write up of the former of the two. I'll do my best to put some of it here though.

Alright so. The Strangers came from their star system to ours, presumably in search of the Eye after seeing its echo. I think that they showed up prior to the Nomai, given that they only activated the Stranger's cloaking mechanism after reaching our star system, they appear to have been killed by ghost matter, and the Nomai have no writings about the Stranger. It doesn't seem like they can return, given the fact that they seemed grief stricken when looking at slides of their home world and the fact that they're still here. I initially thought that the way their eyes go empty and their mouths split in an... unsettling manner was something the Eye caused somehow, but it turns out that empty eyes and slit mouths are just... things they do, though it's often portrayed in a sinister way. I... don't think their motives are sinister though. I think that's just how I interpret those expressions. After receiving the vision of the Eye destroying everything, they turned on it. They seemed to hold it in reverence similar to the Nomai at first, but now they seem to despise it. They're upset, they're angry, and I think that's worth respecting. Once they turned against the Eye, they went into hiding, and... I don't think they want to be found, given their reactions when I do run into them. I feel like I'm intruding, like I'm doing something wrong for reasons I don't even understand yet. I have a path to unlocking the vault, but... it almost feels irresponsible not to have an idea of why it was locked in the first place. They made it, they want it closed, and I'm not welcome. Of course, they never truly hurt me, but maybe they can't hurt me, not in a dream. I can test it, by hurting myself, so I'll do that.

I am... almost convinced that there's a living Stranger still around due to the empty bed in the Cinder Isle dream chamber. And if they're alive... they'd be underwater, to avoid the ghost matter. Perhaps a living Stranger might have a way to communicate, and perhaps they'd be more amenable to my presence than the dreaming Strangers. They might have information, and as always, I have all the time in the world to search for them.

Of course... there is the matter that there's more info to be found for me in two of the dream regions. I could blindly dive around to try and find a living Stranger, but I think searching the dream world will be more productive.

In the base game, I felt a connection to the Nomai. I could understand them and their motives entirely, and I knew I wanted to find the Eye very early on. I was working with and alongside the Nomai, carrying on their legacy, and considered a friend by Solanum. With the Strangers, I feel disconnected and adversarial. Currently, I feel like I am working against them, and the intentionally eerie atmosphere definitely enhances this feeling. I feel at unease when I'm viewing their history, more so when I'm experiencing their dream, and especially so when I've disturbed them. The information I gather is via their slides, many of which are heavily damaged, and even their visions provide little insight into why they act the way they do. There's a lot I don't understand. And I think I need to understand before I try and violate their wishes.

Questions:

Why do the Strangers act the way they do?

What is in the vault?

If there is a living Stranger, where are they?

I still don't know why the sun doesn't activate their devices, or why their fires burn green. Notably, the candles in the dream world DON'T burn green, so green is special in some way.

#my nonsense #outer wilds #outer wilds spoilers #echoes of the eye #echoes of the eye spoilers

[dragon-queen21]

hey :) ! I saw your kuma bear agere edits a while ago when I was browsing through the kb tag and thought, “huh. That’s pretty cool” and didn’t think much of it. After some weeks, I would be thinking about it again and go to search for it. I felt strangely happy? Like, yeah, this makes sense. Yuna would probably do that cause of everything that has happened. So, now I’m asking this after pondering it for a couple months. The point of all this is: do you mind sharing some hcs you have about kuma bear? Or some edits. Anything really, it can even be about someone other than Yuna or about her relationships with anyone else. I just feel really happy when I see someone else enjoying kb and making edits and stuff. If not, thanks for posting your kb edits :). I really like them! Have a nice day ^^

dbsjbdjdbksnsi You have no idea how long I have waited for the chance to ramble about Kuma bear :D I know theoretically I could have done so at anytime without prompting but still

This ask is so dear to me you have no idea, thank you so much, this made my whole week! Anyways!

Regressor Yuna headcanons

~~~

~You can’t tell me that Yuna wouldn’t have severe trauma considering she’s been on her own for so many years and her parents genuinely just didn’t care where she was or what was happening to her.

~Yuna probably would have regressed a couple times before she got summoned to the other world but never actually knew what it meant. Probably vent regressing when she got too lonely. Maybe she researched a couple things online and found the term age regression and just brushed it off because, “well that couldn’t be me, I don’t have childhood trauma I must just be over tired.”

~Then when she meets Fina and her family and everyone else it just suddenly hits her like “oh. I had a really bad childhood huh? This is what a loving family’s supposed to be like.”

~After that she has a harder time not regressing whenever she gets back from a mission just from the overwhelming feeling of love and safety

~So Yuna gains the ability to turn Kumayuru and Kumakyuu into cubs. I forgot what she does to earn this power so I’ll instead share the idea that has been rotating around my head. She gains the power due to accepting her own regression.

~Yuna carrying around her bear cubs everywhere with her when she's small like they’re stuffed animals.

~Making childhood snacks like pudding and needing someone to tell her when regressed to stop eating desserts or she’s going to make herself sick

~The shyest little cub whenever she’s regressed. I feel like she’d trust Fina if she tried to coax Yuna out of her room but otherwise she just hides away.

~Fina doing her best to watch over Yuna when she’s small. She'd would definitely know how to look after her considering she took care of Shiri for years. And if Yuna gets really embarrassed she just tells her that it’s her way of making it up to her for all of the things she’s done. (Also Fina would probably be a regressor too but that’s for another post entirely)

~Probably made a bunch of little gear for herself but is 90% of the time too embarrassed to use it and even less so around anyone.

~Fina and Noa being very proud at being the “older siblings” whenever Yuna is small.

~Cliff is 100% father figure material for Yuna while she's small. Noa probably mentioning something about Yuna regressing and Cliff just going into protective father mode.

I have a lot more thoughts for this series (lot of found family material tbh) but I am going to cut myself off here before this post gets any longer than it already is <3

#mayliz rambles #age regression #fandom agere #sfw agere #age regression headcanons #anime agere #kuma kuma kuma bear #kuma kuma kuma bear agere #this series is everything to me #in case you couldn't tell by the sheer amount I can info dump about it >.< #I really need to make more content for it

[shivunin]

Fic Writer Bingo

Thanks for the tag @greypetrel c: I am basically a pro at having figured out how to edit these things now. Totally. hahaha

So:

My original account was one I used when I was 12/13 and it was horrible oh man. The writing (I was just a kid) but also people were super cruel if they didn't like it. I didn't write anything for fun for a very, very long time afterward because I assumed people would hate it and be awful to me about it.

I have only ever had a beta for the Big Bang thing. Everything else is edited entirely by me---and though I do enjoy editing and making things fit together a little better, I do get this horrible rush of self-consciousness every time I post a new piece. I usually hide my phone from myself because it makes me so anxious.

I have mixed feelings about research, because I tend to get so fixated on being accurate that I no longer want to write the story afterward. So I try to mix just enough research in the pre-writing stages with finding character-related things that I enjoy so it stays balanced. Similarly, my outlines tend to be sort of general or I lose interest in the story and abandon it. I need a series of goalposts, but if I work out all the details in advance there's nothing fun for me to discover.

I have unfinished/unpublished fic like you wouldn't believe. Also. I realized just now that the "has a fic that deserves more attention" square is not intended to be a "you should probably finish it, huh?" thing and was likely supposed to be about feedback/recognition. Whoops.

I am only a multifandom writer in the sense that I have also written Mass Effect fic that's just...not quite polished enough for me to work up the nerve to post it haha. It's what I am fiddling with in the background at the moment.

So I kind of have a Bingo c: I half-erased that very last one and put it back a couple times. It mostly counts, I think.

Here's the original! I am trying to grab most of my writing moots, but sorry if I miss anyone, of course. Tagging: @scribbledquillz @heniareth @idolsgf @transprincecaspian @gaysebastianvael @ndostairlyrium and YE

#listen. i posted a thing yesterday and i was seized by the most horrible sense of self-consciousness. I almost deleted it immediately #i am a work in progress lol #oh! and roleplaying. i run a dnd group but i used to be in forums and such a billion years ago. and boy did i See Some Shit #tag game #dixeram

[lemonhemlock]

So then, maybe a weird ask, how would you write or explore Lucemond?

So, a couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled upon this lucemond fic that completely rearranged my chakras. Thing is I tried to find it recently but couldn't, so perhaps the author deleted it, which is such a pity because it was truly spectacular. I don't remember a whole lot bc it was late at night when I read it (thinking I would come back to it later), but it was very much surreal poetry body horror. I am not a gore girly at all, but the language was mesmerising. I happen to have sent my bf a few snippets for shock value (also not a gore enjoyer), so I can share the little of it I saved:

The tender jelly of Lucerys’ eye bursts like a ripe grape between teeth, climbing, sheer white, up Aemond’s blade, as if it were dripping wax.

Its viscous liquidity leaving no gruesome trophy or good-luck charm to pickle in vinegar and make a gift of, Aemond decides to lick the mucoid fluid from the metal and impel it through his own flesh. When he puts the blade to his tongue no taste but that of his own blood stains the quivering muscle.

If the author of this fic happens upon this post, I'd just want to let you know your talent with words was very appreciated. 🙏

Returning to the topic, I would definitely keep this element and lean into the horror aspect. I'd keep some background jace/luke as vibes, with aegond on the opposing side to make it as spicy and convoluted as possible. (It took me ages to remember I have a jaceluke tag since I hid it so well from team black I ended up hiding it from myself, too. Updated my tags list with this occasion lest we forget!)

Readers of my blog will know by now that I sometimes go on rants about The Magnus Archives, but, bear with me, I think we could borrow some elements to make lucemond really extra fucky. So, within the TMA universe, there are several entities that govern different sets of fears and the one I like the most and the one I think fits really well here is The Beholding - so lots of eye imagery, the fear of being perceived, of secrets being revealed, of forbidden/awful knowledge, of knowledge that would destroy you, of being exposed or shamed or judged. The problem I have with Luke (which permeates a lot into lucemond fics) is that he's so fucking boring and milquetoast & doesn't really react / isn't affected enough by the events surrounding him, so much so that it kind of turns him borderline sociopathic, just in the most boring way possible. So let's give him some internal conflict!

I would give Luke a serious case of scopophobia, basically turn him into the perfect victim for the Beholding. Make him realise deep down that he's a bastard and how much danger he's in because of his mother's lies and gaslighting. Make him terrified of becoming Lord of Driftmark, like actively paranoid some Velaryon cousin is going to slash his throat in his sleep or something (maybe even Rhaena??) Have that intensify after Vaemond's execution, because now the blacks have already spilled first blood in his name. Have him feel increasingly isolated from his family because they feel like he's exaggerating and don't really grasp the gravity of the situation - in addition to more gentle gaslighting done by Rhaenyra, who thinks this is the proper way to assuage his fears (even ridiculous stuff like how he shares blood with Borros Baratheon via Rhaenys), and more violent type of suppression by Jace, who absolutely does not want to hear about how they're bastards and everybody knows about it. So the fear of being perceived, of his "secrets" being revealed, only worse, because they're already out in the open, so what he really fears is shame and judgment, which could come at any minute. Any person could at any time start pointing out what an obvious bastard he is and the entire foundation of his life would start cracking.

This intense fear of judgment would be where lucemond comes into play. Aemond as a person he actively harmed, an act that he did his best to sweep under the rug, absolutely horrified to face him, because that would mean facing his actual crimes; the punishment/retribution for that would have to be immense and he's not in a proper headspace to handle that. When he finally sees Aemond again, fighting fit and ready to go, all those feelings of inadequacy would come crashing down. Aemond casting his single eye of furious judgment on Luke, painfully aware of each and every one of Luke's flaws and planning his wrathful comeuppance!

In TMA, I really enjoyed the statements where The Eye would terrorize their victim* because I personally found it hilarious, so I think I'd try to recreate that dynamic a bit between Aemond and Luke. Whether it veers into body horror and violence or remains at the promise of violence and psychological torment, I think there's a lot to explore in a funky, novel way that doesn't involve this unearned Romeo and Juliet binomial.

If you're really intent on turning this sexual, I think an under-discussed aspect of the eye-gouging is how Luke essentially gave Aemond a huge disadvantage when it comes to participating in traditional masculinity, something that we know Aemond cares a lot about - being a model Targaryen prince, having the depth perception necessary to ride his dragon, his martial prowess, even him being suitably attractive to the opposite sex. It wouldn't be outrageous to presume all of these new issues halted Aemond's sexual and social development and that it would make him feel Some Kind of Vengeful Way about it that would maybe manifest itself not in a very socially-appropriate way. Like, mayhaps, wanting Luke to undergo similar pains? ☠

For Aemond's side, I stumbled on this tik tok once that really encapsulates the kind of vibes I think would be really fun to play with. A corruption arc, being consumed by vengeance, allowing yourself to give into your worst impulses, contemplating the nature of justice etc.

For the aegond bit mentioned above, I really like this idea. Luke pondering which is worse: facing Aemond directly or being decimated by his big brother, who he himself once looked up to.

___________________________________________________________

*Here is an example if anyone is interested in the vibe I'm going for. I bookmarked the clip for when the statement begins, because the rest of the episode is filled with the metaplot: MAG 193 A Stern Look,

Some quotes from the transcripts!

He recognises those eyes. He’s seen them all his life, watching him, judging him, cutting through him so no part of him was secret or safe. They peel away the armour, his carefree smile and practiced shrugs. 

His mind races. He can’t tell the truth, obviously. Elias can’t look this man in the face, and tell him that he is what scares him. That his eyes, the curiosity and judgement that pulses out of them, they terrify him in a way he can’t put into words. He feels that prickly panic building in the back of his skull, that worry that spills through: he knows. 

A cough from over the desk breaks his train of thought. His interviewer is staring at him, and all at once he’s back with himself, burning with embarrassment. Those eyes stare, impassive and stern as ever, but… is that a twinkle of satisfaction? As though he has been given him an answer he likes.

He stops. Those eyes. They know. They can see right through all his bullshit, right to the core of him. They know what he really thinks.

#ask #anon #jaceluke tag #based lucemond #greenpilled lucegon #some very disjointed thoughts but there you have it

[rmd-writes]

22, 39, and 51 for the writing asks!

29. What’s your revision or editing process like?

I tend to edit as I write - most often, when I open a doc I edit what is already there before I start writing again which means that the beginnings of my fics have been edited several times compared to the endings.

About half the time, I send my fics to a trusted friend to beta for me. I always intend to do this more often, because my writing is always better for having that feedback but sometimes I get impatient, or I don't want to bug my friends (which I know is silly because when I get asked to beta things my answer is almost always *grabby hands* unless I really don't have time).

If I've had a fic beta'd then I go through the suggested edits, review the entire doc again myself and then post it. And then, because I tend to post fics right before I go to sleep, I open the fic in the morning and find a bunch of things I've missed after it's been up on ao3 for a whole night 😅

39. Share a snippet from a WIP

I'm sharing something from a wip that I'm writing with @welcometololaland that is currently on pause while we fight with our current wips! I am fairly certain that I'm the one that wrote this section, Lola pls tell me if I'm wrong, but we've gotten to the point where we can't remember who wrote what in some parts of this!

“What are you even doing here, Mom? You never come to these things.”

“I had a meeting upstairs, thought I’d come and see if you actually turned up,” Gwyn explains. 

TK glares at her. He hopes no one else can hear this conversation, because it’s embarrassing. The fact that he works for his mother isn’t exactly a secret, but he usually tries to maintain some level of professionalism when they interact in public. Sometimes it’s impossible. 

“You know the whole point of these events is that you talk to new people, develop new relationships, not hide in the corner with your best friend and gossip.”

TK glances at Nancy who is studiously ignoring him. “Of course, Gwyn. We were just discussing our plan of attack when you came over,” Nancy fibs. 

Gwyn looks at them both sceptically. “Mmhmm. See that he actually talks to someone new tonight, will you Nancy? TK, Nancy’s in charge tonight, she’s your superior after all.”

Nancy grins at that and TK rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“And TK, honey, do up another button, this is a networking event, not a bar.” This time Gwyn does reach out and to brush some imaginary lint off his shoulder. 

“Didn’t you meet Enzo at one of these things?” TK retorts, even as he follows his mother’s instructions and does up one of his buttons. He can see Nancy trying to hold in her laughter next to him as she mutters, “this is the best thing that’s happened today,” under her breath. 

“I did. Doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want my son representing my firm at an event looking like he’s trying to pick up.” Gwyn takes a sip of her wine and makes a face. “I can’t drink this. Don’t forget we have brunch plans on Sunday, TK. Nancy, you’re welcome to join us if you’re free,” Gwyn says as she spins on one Louboutin-clad foot and strides away. 

51. What’s your total AO3 word count?

Officially, 434,572 but that includes a bunch of collaborations so I think the actual number is somewhere closer to 340-360kk

PS. I have snippet sunday tags from @iboatedhere @strandnreyes @liminalmemories21 @reyesstrand pls consider this my snippet sunday post too!

#rmd answers #get to know your fic writer #snippet sunday #(un)professional services