#i just want him to be the same manipulative liar who’s an expert at thinking twenty steps ahead but like he’s not kira

[greensaplinggrace]

honestly light is the fakest fuck ever, and I find myself thoroughly rebuffed by any interpretation of him, memory or no, where he isn’t constantly putting on an act that only L is constantly calling him out on

#light yagami #death note #l lawliet #lawlight #ahskshsj anyways I love yotsuba light but also… it is frustrating #also fics where he turns into the softest uwu baby ever if he’s not Kira :/ #like you cannot convince me a non Kira light wouldn’t still notice the cameras or play mind games with L or be suspiciously good at acting #I’m half convinced he’d still try to con raye into showing identity even WITHOUT being kira #just to know who his stalker is and if he’s dangerous #i just want more fics where non Kira light is still just as cunning #him not being Kira but being suspected by L and acting the EXACT SAME WAY HE DOES IN THE SHOW is honestly something I can see happening #like UGH I want it so bad #anyways I discovered a fic recently where he’s still very smart after losing his memories and convinces the task force L may have framed him #and it was such good fuckng food #i just want him to be the same manipulative liar who’s an expert at thinking twenty steps ahead but like he’s not kira #myramblings

[moonah-rose]

"Dutch never cared, Dutch never loved them." No hate if you believe that but, for me, the reason Dutch is so fascinating is because (imo) he did care. Because he did have a heart. Because he wasn't just a monster.

Does that still make him a liar and manipulator? Hell yes. To the point that he himself bought into every bit of bullshit he said. When he says this man who is only eight years younger than him is his son, he believes that. When he says he would give his life for any of his gang in Colter, in the moment he believes that. But acting on what he believes is another story. I think Dutch is an expert at disassociating from reality. What do you mean he "ran away" and left Arthur for death, of course not, he did no such thing - or so he will convince himself as much as the others. What do you mean he didn't have a plan to rescue John from jail, of course he did....He just hadn't thought of it yet and they were only "talking" of hanging him so it's not that big of a deal - again, so he convinces himself. Even years later when John is confronting him, he still deflects with putting it on his son or how he "didn't have a choice." Dutch convinces himself that he has no active role in the awful things that happen to those he cares about. It doesn't mean he wouldn't want to save them...but he just doesn't.

Just like how Mary talks about Arthur being a good man wrestling with a giant, Dutch is wrestling with a coward and the coward wins more as the story progresses. I think this is what is meant more when he tells John that all he ever did, all his life, was fight but he can't fight his own nature, again deflecting the responsibility of his actions. Sure he kills people in terrible ways but the worst sins that weigh on him are his inability to act for those he loves. His failure to save Hosea even though the robbery wasn't his idea he does it still, his failure to do anything but run away when his sons needed saving. He even tries to run from the grief itself when his partner of over twenty years dies and it contributes to his mental instability (see the chess scene like in Lakay, c'mon, dude is clearly not with it).

This isn't me defending Dutch in any way, I just finished a second playthrough and spent every second he was on screen cursing at the tv again. But I do think he was a man who genuinely did believe in his philosophy, who tried to be a better leader to his gang than someone like Colm - a father even - and I do believe he loved Hosea, Arthur, John, Jack, Tilly, Sean, Lenny and maybe some others. The scenes with "the old guard" laughing, fishing and reminiscing seem pointless without there being a real foundation there. The scenes in chapter six where Arthur and Micah are positioned like an angel and devil either side of Dutch as opposed to just Dutch and Micah on the same side all the time, as well as the performance itself, show Dutch being pulled and struggling to decide what is right, he just always picks the wrong one. Dutch's broken reaction to Arthur's final words only make sense if you believe there's a heart in there to be broken, if there's a man inside who is aware - even just partly - that he's done wrong and failed. The only reason he'd have to kill Micah and leave John the money is if there was some part of him that has spent the last seven years being haunted by his actions and wanted to find some way to make up for them. A truly evil, heartless person would have killed John there and then and taken the money. All of this only works if there was love in the first place.

The problem is, and to quote His Dark Materials, love isn't always enough. It's not enough to fight against an obvious mental illness, it's not enough to stop you being a coward and letting those you love suffer for the sake of your own survival. Dutch is obviously a narcissist but narcissists are not incapable of love, it's just their view of the world is very inward, and those that they love are seen as extensions of themselves (often parents with children). The reason Arthur could win his internal struggle is because he was able to see a world beyond his own life and needs; Dutch couldn't, as much as he probably liked to believe he could be capable of doing so even if just to be the hero the gang saw him as. He wanted faith but I don't think he truly had any in himself as much as the rest of the gang did by the final chapter, and with Arthur's death it breaks any last delusions he had about himself, to the point that seven years later he can no longer give a big long speech to justify himself, he just "ain't got much to say no more". If those aren't the words of a broken man then I don't know what is.

(Please don't confuse "broken man" with "poor little meow meow", tumblr, I see you).

#rdr2 meta #dutch van der linde #rdr2 character study #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2

[nyhti]

I feel like Jervis and Hugo would make each other normal (they would literally make each other so much worse)

I'm literally writing a fic right now about them making each other normal (worse). They would fuel each other's fucked up kinks <3 But honestly, at the same time they would make each other better in some ways as well. I love that cute shit <33

And this is where I could have ended this response, but because I love these two so much and think about them all the time, I wrote all this:

It depends on the writer just how ”aware” Jervis is. Some writers like to write him permanently stuck in Wonderland and in some versions (mostly Pre-Crisis) it's like he's never even been there. I prefer the versions somewhere in between; the ones where he's lucid most of the time, but slips back into Wonderland under stress. And I especially like the versions where, at times, it is unclear whether he is actually in Wonderland or just faking it to get out off a situation (think Gotham Central #19-22).

I'm saying all this, because Jervis' awareness is very key to how I write this relationship. Aside from those moments when he is genuinely in Wonderland and genuinely disconnected from reality, he is very aware and has a very keen eye in my verse. This comes from the whole hypnotist and general Mind Games World Champion thing. I think as a hypnotist Jervis needs to be very good at reading people to know exactly what to say and do to put people under his spell. And given that he is an expert in mind games himself, it is impossible to play mind games with him. In general, I love the contradiction of a character who pretends to not even be here mentally most of the time, being actually incredibly keen eyed, smart and fucking with people's heads. They think he's lost his mind, but they're the ones who are about to lose their minds. He might seem like he doesn't understand what's going on at all, and sometimes that really is the case, but most of the time he knows exactly what's happening – even better than most people.

How this relates to Hugo is that he basically has immunity to Hugo's bullshit. You cannot play mind games with him, because he knows every trick in the book. He was there when mind games were invented. My Jervis is like a human lie detector, if lie detectors actually worked and Hugo, as we know, is a big fat liar. I love it, I love it, I love it. Hugo cannot stop lying, it's so second nature to him that he lies even when he doesn't necessarily need to and every time, every time Jervis catches him on it. This is where it's at for me. Hugo has been Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlbossing his way though life for 52 years and suddenly there's this 150cm tall 48-year-old man who finally tells him to shut the fuck up. I love it. Immovable object, unstoppable force. I love it.

I just love the frustration that it ignites in Hugo when he cannot lie to get what he wants, when someone is forcing him to be genuine for the first time in over 50 years. I think it would remind Hugo of being young. See, he wasn't born a Girlboss, he had to learn how to Gaslight, how to Gatekeep. He was always shitty and was trying to manipulate and control others from a young age, but it was hard. He made mistakes and things didn't always work out and it left him frustrated. And it's all happening again now, his bullshit doesn't work on Jervis and it makes him feel frustrated, angry and finally depressed. But ultimately, it is all for the better.

I think it's evident reading Pre-Crisis Hugo issues, that he wanted people around him and not just as his little minions that he would dispose of when they weren't of use to him anymore. He has those too, of course, but I'm saying he wouldn't have made sure Magda wasn't defenseless if worse came to pass, had he not truly cared for her, he wouldn't have healed Bruce's wounds and ”died” to protect his secret, had he not cared for him. He wanted people around him and he deeply cared for the few people he was close with. All of his relationships are fucked up, because he is fucked up, but it is clear to me that this man both wanted to love others and was capable of loving others.

He wants people around, but I think it's very difficult for him to let anyone that close. Even though in my verse Jervis is the one person next to Batman (and mayyyybe Joker) that he respects, I don't think that he would ever even consider letting Jervis close, letting Jervis see behind the lies. But that's just the thing, Jervis saw thought them anyway. It was like he was forced to let Jervis close, because he couldn't keep him away. And as stated, it makes him frustrated, angry and even depressed, but ultimately, it is for the better. It does him good to be genuine around someone for once. To stop lying for two seconds and just be himself. It does actually make him more normal.

For example, if Hugo was upset over something, his first response would be to lie that he wasn't, as to not seem weak. Think of when Thorne had him kidnapped and beaten by thugs and Hugo was still going on about how: ”Threats mean nothing to Hugo Strange! You mean nothing to Hugo Strange!” Yet, after he had faked his death, he spent so much time and effort on getting his revenge on Thorne – TWICE. This man had to avenge what he suffered in Thorne's hands TWICE. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure the torture did mean something to Hugo Strange. Plus, we have seen countless times the way he responds to his plans not working out: faking his own death. Seriously, the tiniest thing goes wrong and he's out there faking his death again. This man CANNOT handle setbacks.

Imagine now if Jervis caught him on that first lie, when he pretends to not be upset. Imagine he was forced to face the fact that he very much is upset. Imagine he had go through that emotion, instead of running away from it (to his ”grave”). If he actually sat through that emotion, he would find it isn't the end. It wasn't that bad. Life goes on. Jervis could never fix him, but I do think that he could make him more normal.

And what does Jervis get out of all this? Well, he gets to play with Hugo's nice round ass <3

#hugo strange #jervis tetch

[chronurgy]

10 characters, 10 fandoms

Thanks for the tag @rowanisawriter!

Tagging: @weavewithshadow, @bhaalsbabe, anyone else who wants to play!

Oooo this is going to be hard because I tend to get really into multiple characters from the same thing, but let's go! In no particular order:

1. Essek Thelyss - Critical Role

He's a war criminal. He's a prodigy. He's a traitor. He's a time and gravity wizard. He's a heretic in a theocracy where his mother is a living saint. He floats everywhere instead of walking. When the gang asks if they're going to have to kill him, he laughs and says "I'd like to see you try". He crushes someone to death with gravity simply by closing his fist. "My reasons [for treason] weren't good, but they were important". He goes from not having cared about anyone in 120 years to caring so much about a bunch of weirdos in like, 6 weeks. He made his father so mad during an argument that the guy stormed off and died. What's not to love? He makes me so insane.

Honorable mention: Caleb Widogast

2. Anders - Dragon Age

My favorite chaotic bisexual disaster man. The contrast between awakening anders and da2 anders is so fascinating for me. He's this carefree guy, except he isn't really that carefree, is he? He escapes over and over and over, swimming across the lake even. He hates the circle and hates the Templars just as much, he's just funnier about it. When you start adding up the year in solitary, Karl, the fact that he must have seen all the injuries in the circle as a spirit healer, it starts becoming very clear why he is the way he is. He also sucks! He's petty, he's mean, and he's so up his own ass about how right he thinks he is about everything. But he also runs a clinic for the poorest of the poor, dodging Templars and freeing mages all the while. He does the excellent wizard hubris thing of taking the future into his own hands, even if it kills people (suck my nuts elthina). He loves a romanced Hawke so much, even as he experiences this greater calling. Plus Grey wardens are cool as hell and he loves cats.

Honorable mention: mage!Hawke

3. Merlin - BBC Merlin

This show manages to be both ridiculous and sad. Merlin is such a happy go lucky, cheerful character at the beginning, then we watch as things just keep getting worse. He cannot seem to win. By the end, that cheerfulness seems much closer to a mask he's desperately clinging to than anything else. He's an expert liar and manipulator, he's a killer, and he's so, so alone. If he ever tells anyone that he's a sorcerer, he'll be executed. And he lives in the shadow of that for years, unable to be himself even with the people he's closest to. Also characters who have their eyes change colors when using their powers my beloved.

4. Daenerys Targaryen - ASOIAF

I love her chapters - there's so much interesting and human depth to her struggles (even when her struggles are fantastical). She struggles to know how to rule, and rule well. She takes hostages but loves them too much to kill them. She struggles to create and maintain a peace for her people even as that peace asks things of her she cannot bear. She worries what it says about her that her children are monsters and she both loves and fears them. She desperately wants a simple, loving life but is also so, so doomed to never have that. She's a queen and a dragon rider and a young woman trying to understand the world. She's great. (I don't care about the tv show I'm talking books here)

Honorable mentions: Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister

5. Gale Dekarios - Baldur’s Gate

Oh yeah, another hubris wizard. He's funny and has this easy, good natured charm that makes it possible to ignore that he's an absolute FREAK. He's got one of my favorite wizard traits - a strong ends justify the means streak. He points, very genteelly, at all the ways power and knowledge drive and corrupt. He's a sweetheart but he brags all the time. Except it isn't bragging, because he can back it up. He can really, genuinely, become a god. His relationship with the dark urge also makes me insane, because I think in some ways he's both the clearest eyed about what will happen to them and the one most willing to meet them where they are and also desperately wants to believe they're a good person, even when it's clear that they aren't. His line about how their life is no longer theirs to lead, only to follow to a dark urge who embraces Bhaal is incredible. The diverging paths of who he can become over the course of the game are fascinating and there's so much depth to him. He's great. Oh, he also excuses his cat's crimes. Love that in a man.

Honorable mentions: Enver Gortash, The Dark Urge

6. Camilla Hect - The Locked Tomb

She's the most composed, controlled, meticulous batshit fucking crazy woman in the world. Unstoppable force vibes. Instead of moving on after her necromancers death she pieced together tiny fragments of his skull and then shared her body with him. She's a genius and she can't let go of her insanely codependent relationship, even when it kills her (but honestly Paul seems pretty cool and I'm excited to learn more about them)

Honorable mention: Palamedes Sextus

7. The Jovial Contrarian - Fallen London

A little more niche, this one! I sometimes find that characters in fallen london can sort of pale in interest compared to the overall lore and happenings, but the Jovial Contrarian is one of my favorites. He loves arguing and will argue with anyone about anything at any time. If you have regular debating lessons with him, people will hide behind couches rather than face you. He's part of the calendar council and hates the masters but also wants a solution that isn't the liberation of the night. Anytime his name is mentioned you know you're about to read something ridiculous. Fun guy!

Honorable mentions: Poor Edward (incredibly narsty. great villain), The Eagle, Ascendant (they have like, 3 lines of lore and they're all fantastic)

8. Midna - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I remember playing twilight princess for the first time and I just immediately fell in love with Midna. She's snarky, she's mean, her design is cool as hell, and I really loved her arc as she grew to really care about people over the course of the game. She remains firmly the best Zelda companion in my mind.

9. Elim Garak - Star Trek

You always knew it was going to be a great episode when Garak showed up. He always feels 30 seconds from chewing on the scenery and it is fantastic. He's an exiled spy and maybe a little bit of a monster and he never pretends otherwise. His lines to Sisko in "In the Pale Moonlight," telling him that he must have known what Garak would do, and that if the price of winning the war is Sisko's self respect then he'd call that a bargain are some of my favorite in an episode that already has a lot of really good lines. Aw man I wanna watch DS9 now.

Honorable mentions: Julian Bashir, Captain Picard, Tasha Yar (but wasn't she lame and poorly written? Yes. But young me was extremely taken with this aggressive short-haired woman for reasons I could not articulate at the time 🥴)

10. Morgan Yu - Prey (2017)

Okay so if you haven't played Prey stop reading right now and go buy it. Don't look up any spoilers or plot or anything just do it. If you liked dishonored or deathloop you'll love it. Now: who IS Morgan Yu? Who WAS Morgan Yu? Are they even the same person any more? How culpable are they? How culpable were they? Part of the reason Morgan is so endlessly fascinating to me is because we'll never know. How integral are memories to the continuity of the self? Why did you do what you did? Did you, the person standing here right now, even do it? The game just delivers gut punch after gut punch to Morgan and I love it and I love them (whoever they might have been).

Overall honorable mentions: the outsider from dishonored, garrus from mass effect, vimes and vetinari from discworld, and all my dnd characters (shout out especially to Hermès Montclair who fucked a dragon, died (unrelated to said dragon fucking), then came back wrong and fucked the dragon again! No one's doing it like you baby)

#Ask games #Thanks for tagging me I had a lot of fun! #Picking just one character from each thing was soooooooo hard

[beheadeddemon]

Aight so I’ve been thinking long and hard about Talias fighting style thanks to a prompt from the homie @hadariwizard and I think I have enough figured out to finally write something on it

It’s a bit difficult for me to figure out power scaling. I don’t want to say that she should be stronger or better than another character because I could be totally wrong about it. But I think she should be on par with Batman when it comes to her capabilities as a fighter. I think she could be easily compared to characters like Black Widow or Gamora from Marvel comics.

Like for one just look at them real quick

Then compare the fact that they’re both trained from young ages RELENTLESSLY to be basically living weapons. They’re both experts at various forms of combat, mastery over various weapons from melee to firearms, expert tacticians with a mind made for battle, like I can literally keep going.

And now Gamora and Talia

Gamora is raised by the mad Titan Thanos. Talia is raised by The demon Ra’s Al Ghul. These men manipulate their daughters into aiding in their evil plans, and for the most part these two women desperately want to make their fathers proud. Raised and trained to be weapons for their fathers, occasionally shown affection and love to keep them on their side. Not to mention them both having a sister who’s tried to kill them.

As for her comparisons to Batman, that just seems clear. Talia has more training than him, and has trained for a longer time. They both receive training from the same/similar people. From what I’ve seen, she’s not really seen as a person who fights frequently, so people tend to underestimate her capabilities. In reality, it just makes her seem stronger in my eyes.

Talia knows when a fight is needed and when she can get her way with WORDS. She’s clever, and a master manipulator. Like I’m talking Azula level liar. She can use her wit to get her way without ever having to lift a finger, but when she DOES fight she is a DEMON. Come on now!! I think as annoying as it is to be underestimated, it also has a very clear advantage, and Talia uses that effectively. Never let your enemy know the full extent of your power.

One fighting scene I keep imagining in my head is her in this long flowing dress with a slit down the side. She’s got one hand behind her back and the other holds a chalice of red wine. Three thugs move to attack her and she uses her legs to swiftly take them down, never spilling a drop, looking down at them and taking a sip from her drink.

Another is one where she’s fighting alongside Batman and has promised to not kill anyone so she’s taking down these armed guards and dismantling their weapons at the same time, then using the pieces as a blunt object. That sort of stuff has been done before I just think it’s fun. Like she can definitely take a gun apart blindfolded and put it back together in 30 seconds.

[totentnz]

for the alternate love intrest ask game: athras and iron bull? >:)

Send me an OC + an alternate love interest for them and I’ll tell you what I think of the idea

ok let me preface this by saying i have NEVER played the iron bull romance and did i just watch a video to get a grip of it? absolutely (side note: i hated hearing the inquisitors voice again bc athras! does! not! sound! like! that!) but anyway: (this turned into somewhat of a liveblog so i'm putting it under a cut lmao

my initial thoughts before watching it are: i cant see a romance happen, i have never had bull high up on my approval list but they might fuck casually (she would totally peg him) HOWEVER

ok after watching it (and clearly losing my mind and track a few times) the answer is basically the same: romance? no. casual sex? maybe

this was a fun thing to do!! thank you so much for asking bunny 💜💜💜

i have always appreciated it when bull pulls the inquisitor to the side and shows them what the soldiers think of them and athras would appreciate that as well (not that she would ever admit to it)

the tavern scene after the dragon fight? hell to the nah, i enjoy that scene personally but it always frustrated me because athras would not act like any of the options lmao but you know she might take the first sip and after that? who knows! winky face

ok the scene on the battlegrounds? where you hit him with the stick? she'd indulge him at first but would be dismissive towards the end (not good for romance is it?) she understands people deal with their fears differently but that whole scene has a weird (to me) sexual undertone (even before the flirtation) and i don't vibe with that (though "you like it rough huh? only from you" is pretty s tier i gotta admit and athras would like it)

being introduced to the chargers? love that (like many lavellan players it annoys me to hell and back that bull tries to explain the dalish to me, but that's not really his fault) she also appreciates that he took a dalish in after they were cast out (funfact: dalish and athras have the same vallaslin ingame (my hc is that each clan has different ones but dirthamen yes) i also love that interaction with stitches, athras is a self proclaimed potion expert so they would get along (or they would hate each other - her and the guy where you brew potions at the start of the game had a bit of a feud going on bc she thought he didn't know shit about potions) "it's a poltice, ser, you're not supposed to drink it" is ENGRAVED into my memory (ok now im just talking about athras instead of the romance, i apologise lmao)

sidenote: since bull keeps talking about redheads, athras has a sister (also with the inquisition) who is a redhead so that's actually pretty funny to me and i have never thought of it before

SO the dreadnought huh? ofc athras saves the chargers - she's not as loyal to the inquisition as she should be but she never wanted the position as inquisitor anyway (much like she didnt want to be first and eventually keeper to her clan) also hissrad meaning keeper of illusions/ liar and athras having dirthamen (god of secrets) vallaslin??? iconic maybe i do need this romance in my life lmao

god that fucking fight on the battlements?? where bull gets poisoned? another memory that's drilled into my skull, very iconic also that scene made me realise that maybe solas and bull aren't all that different (we know this but sometimes it's good to experience it again)

ok i see we are getting to the actual interesting parts that i never got to see lets gooo OH BOY OH BOY we don't like that one LMAO "you don't know what you are asking for" and him being all dominant? athras is not into that but we will see, we will see 👀

OH NO not legit admitting to manipulate people (i know what he means and this is all flirty but bad vibes bad vibes (don't get me wrong im into it personally but athras sure as shit isn't (yes as a solasmancer i'm putting on my clown makeup right now)))

i do like the setting rules and a safeword interaction though HOWEVER if it ever got to that point athras would laugh in his face ("don't quote the old magic to me, i was there when it was written")

OH I LOVE that dragon tooth thing, that's cute

BRO DID HE JUST-- i like that sneaky romance and so does athras but BOY does she hate pda

CULLEN i remember this from back in the day, athras loves bullying him so this is amazing all of their reactions are so fun i love it I SEE YOU JOSIE BUT YOU ARE TAKEN (by fisara, athras' sister, which makes this even more awkward lmao) OH THE BOSSINESS FROM THE INQUISITOR i am stanning so hard right now

also this fucking portrait has me cackling

NAH BRO NAH BRO not kadan meaning "my heart"

YES YES YES BALCONY SCENE HERE WE COME ok that scene was kinda underwhelming but i guess that scene was always better in my mind

i will never get over the fact that at the end of the game you are actually on the balcony with your LI like AAAA can you imagine my face when replayed it for the cullen romance (i dont wanna talk about it) ??? complete and utter shock

ok that scene was good, the lovebite? the compliments? chefs kiss (though athras wouldnt be into being "marked" like that she's usually the one marking others)

oh god it's trespasser time oh no

oh i always liked the dragon skull scene and i gotta admit it works better with the romance! but again.... athras would be even worse at this than the lets her be

bro not the exchange of "i love yous" in the face of uncertainty!! im gonna combust (once again not athras style, she'd rather leave things unsaid than say them in a situation like that)

god im so glad they didn't show solas in this video, i would have gone insane

he kept the necklace! ofc he did but that's still a good thing :) sure hope he won't betray us or hasn't betrayed us before :)

#sammy says shit #asks #holy shit that was a rollercoaster #if anyone read all of this? i love you #if not thats also fine lmao i get it #also if you think i proofread this think again

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Prompt idea: Geralt gets a contract for a monster that has been sighted nearby. When he tracks it down, he is surprised to find mothman!Jaskier who (much like actual mothman) has an ass that won’t quit.

?

I just want you to know that Mothskier now lives in my head rent free 24/7. I love him. I would die for him. This is my new favorite emotional support au.

2k-ish words - please feel free to shove comments through the bars of my enclosure, I would really like that

art by the ever-wonderful @mawbwehownets, whose drawing of Mothskier made me legit cry.

tw: mild injury, brief blood mention, strangers to lovers

---

“So what you’re saying,” Geralt raises an eyebrow slowly, curious, “Is that you need me to catch a monster that’s half man and half moth?”

“Yup.”

“Alright,” Geralt pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and pointer finger. The frustrated Witcher takes a slow breath to calm and center himself, before he ends up botching the entire contract-writing process. Humans tend to grow attached to the strangest monsters sometimes, and apparently this mysterious local being was no different. “Let me get this totally straight, so there are no mistakes or misunderstandings. You want me to capture this man-moth and get it out of your woods, but you don’t want me to kill it?”

“He’s called the Mothman, and he’s pretty damn stubborn about sticking around,” the aging farmer corrects Geralt with a little frown. Then his expression shifts and he smiles in a way that seems almost apologetic. “We were hoping you could find a way to relocate him without hurting or killing him, Master Witcher.”

“That’s completely possible, if he isn’t attached to this specific patch trees by any magical or biological means. You said his natural habitat is just… the forest?”

“As long as there's an abundance of pine around he seems pretty happy. Before he came to live with us, Mothman lived in a heavily forested area up the coast; or at least that’s what the historical records and local mythology seem to indicate.”

“That’s actually pretty helpful information to have on hand, I’m impressed,” Geralt nods. “Alright, Mr. Stevens. I promise to relocate the poor thing without killing or maiming him, and I’ll be sure to take him somewhere far enough away that your crops won’t be in danger. Thanks for calling me first instead of just going straight to an extermination service.”

“Honestly, Master Witcher,” the farmer sighs and readjusts his dirty baseball hat, “If it weren’t for the mischief he’s been getting into lately, we would have let him stick around until spring. I hate to admit it to a man as strong and stern-faced as yourself, but the poor creature is almost… adorable at times.”

“Well that’s a first,” Geralt chuckles, honestly amused by the situation he’s found himself in. “A monster being referred to as ‘adorable’ rather than ‘terrifying’. I’ve never heard such a thing in my many years of life.”

“Then you’d better prepare yourself, Sir Geralt. He’s got a pair of big blue puppy-dog eyes that’ll knock you on your ass if you aren’t careful. And that’s coming from a man who raised three daughters with dimples.”

“Hmm. Fuck.”

---

Geralt knows enough about moths to come up with a plan he thinks will work.

Before he heads into the woods to find and capture the poor wandering creature, the Witcher takes a detour through the lighting section of the nearest Lowe’s.

---

Unfortunately for Geralt, the farmer was right about the power of Mothman’s puppy dog eyes, which are big and blue and begin to water as soon as the Witcher’s net knocks him to the ground. The creature lies in a whimpering tangle of limbs beneath the heavy, magically enhanced restraints. Geralt takes an opportunity to look at what the locals called "a cryptid".

Mothman has a long, lithe body that's covered in a light layer of grey-brown fur, but his hair resembles that of a human’s, falling over those enormous blue eyes in a lovely chestnut fringe. When Mothman sees the swords on Geralt’s back he cries out in panicked recognition and tries to pull his arms up far enough to shield his face. The lamp Geralt used to lure him into the clearing is still bathing him in a pool of yellow light; it’s almost pretty for a monster, Geralt notes.

As the Witcher takes a step forward, the cryptid squeaks and buries his face against his own shoulder. His entire frame is trembling.

“Hey there, shhhhh,” the Witcher murmurs quietly. He drops into a squat and holds both hands up to show Mothman that they’re weapon free. Tears are now falling freely down the creature’s surprisingly human face; whoever or whatever this is, they are likely some kind of Fae. “I’m not here to hurt you, I just want to get you back through the veil.”

“Liar,” Mothman huffs. His voice has a surprisingly musical quality to it and Geralt is now sure of his Fae parentage (or grand-parentage).

“I promise I’m not lying,” Geralt reassures him, slowly crawling forward. When he reaches for the nearest corner of the net, he feels all of Mothman’s muscles go tense. “I’m going to lift this up and I am going to restrain you, but I swear that I’m not going to kill you. I wish to cause as little distress as possible. Is that alright, Mothman?”

The creature hisses and yanks his foot back away from where Geralt’s hand had nearly touched it. “Jaskier.”

“Hmm?” Geralt glances up, raising an eyebrow.

“My name is Jaskier,” the Fae repeats, glaring up from between the sections of woven rope that make up the heavy net. “Not Mothman.”

“My apologies, Jaskier,” Geralt bows his head. He words his introduction carefully, in case this thing can manipulate his name like others of his kind: “You may refer to me as Geralt.”

“That’s your real name,” Jaskier states. The Witcher’s head snaps up.

“How did you know?”

“Hmm,” Jaskier sticks his tongue out as he mimics the sound Geralt made earlier. “Not telli-AH! Stop! Oh go- gods, stop! Please!”

Geralt drops the short section of rope he’s trying untangle from around Jaskier’s ankle and snaps his eyes upwards, already searching for damage. “What’s wrong!?”

“My wing!” Jaskier bawls. His scent spikes out through the clearing, sharp with panic and pain. The creature’s chest begins to shake more violently than before, his shoulders shuddering with the rising force of his sobs, “It’s t-t-torn! Oh gods, my wing! Sir Witcher, p-please!”

Geralt freezes, his gaze settling on the torn section of Jaskier’s large, furry wing. It’s a nasty wound near one of the joints, a faint trickle of barely-luminescent blood has already dried around the edges. Jaskier tries to flutter it a little and screams in agony when the muscles shift too suddenly, shrilly enough that Geralt needs to cover his hypersensitive ears. The Witcher's heart crashes down into his boots; based on the way the shivering Fae has gone pale and silent, the pain is too much for him to process. He’s gone into shock.

A torn wing is exactly the kind of thing Geralt had promised the farmer (and the collective of townspeople he represented) wouldn’t happen to the peaceful moth creature if they hired a Witcher instead of an exterminator. He sighs and gives the strange being another once-over. “Everything's alright, Jaskier. You’re going to be alright. I’m so, so sorry that you've been wounded. We’ll get you out of this net and get you something for the pain, but it’s going to hurt a little to untangle you. Stay still, don’t struggle, and it’ll be over soon.”

“J-Just kill me,” Jaskier pants. He’s continuing to hyperventilate and Geralt needs him to calm down before he passes out. The Fae reaches a hand for the dagger at Geralt's waist and the Witcher twists out of reach with a frown. Jaskier sobs again, fingers still seeking, “I might n-n-never fly a-again so just k-kill me!”

“Breathe with me, Jaskier,” the Witcher instructs, forgoing patience and cutting through the net with that same dagger. He scoops Jaskier up into his arms, ignoring the keening sound at the back of Jaskier’s throat when his wing is jostled, and rushes the Fae to his truck, tucking him into the passenger’s seat and wrapping him in a large, fluffy blanket. “I’m taking you to my friend. She’s an expert at healing magical creatures and I'm certain that she'll get your wing fixed in no time.”

Jaskier doesn’t give an answer. When Geralt looks up into the creature’s face again, the injured Fae has already passed out.

---

Jaskier moves with all the grace of a newborn foal as he explores the room Geralt has provided for him. His wing has been inspected, treated, and bandaged by a rather scary sorceress named Yennefer, who glared at the Witcher the entire time she was caring for him. She had also taken one of Geralt’s old t-shirts and cut an enormous hole in the back for Jaskier’s wings to fit through. The shirt’s bottom hem falls to the middle of his thighs and the thick black material is softer than anything he’d ever felt before.

He hears a knock on the door and calls out, “It’s open!”

Geralt enters slowly, bearing a pair of pajama bottoms and a mug of tea. “I brought you some last minute supplies and - uh… I brought you some tea. Yen always likes some before she goes to sleep and I figured since this was a new place and new places can be scary that I should-”

“Thank you,” Jaskier interrupts, smiling shyly. His antennae twitch happily as he takes the offerings from Geralt's hands and the Witcher watches them with wide eyes. Jaskier carefully sets the pajamas and the tea on the nightstand before turning back to look at Geralt. “I will… see you tomorrow?”

Geralt gives one sharp nod. “Hmm.”

“Goodnight,” Jaskier sing-songs, taking a seat on the edge of the bed as Geralt exits.

From the other side of the closed door, Jaskier’s superior hearing picks up the Witcher’s final whisper: “Goodnight, Jaskier. I will always be sorry for causing you pain.”

The next morning he meets Geralt at the breakfast table, refreshed and ready to learn about the human world. He’s summoned a glamour in order to hide his more Moth-like traits, the only things that remain of his true nature are his wings and antennae; his fur is gone and he’s dressed in a pair of sweatpants and that same old shirt. The Witcher offers him a bowl of fruit and mug of something sweet-smelling. Jaskier glares into the mug with a slight pout to his lips before finally asking, “What is this?”

“Hot chocolate.”

Jaskier takes a sip and his antennae flutter, twitching happily as he swallows the best drink he’s ever had in his long life. He eats a strawberry from the bowl and slowly works his way through the hot chocolate, eyeing Geralt warily as the Witcher moves through the familiar kitchen to make his own breakfast.

“Where is Yennefer?”

“She went home,” Geralt shrugs.

“She isn’t your mate?”

“N-No,” Geralt sputters, turning to stare at the nervous young Fae. “Why would you think that?”

“You smell like each other.”

“We spend a lot of time together,” Geralt shrugs again. “Good friends, that’s all.”

“Hmm,” Jaskier mimics his host for a second time. Rather effectively by the annoyed twitch at the corner of Geralt’s mouth. “Just wondering.”

“Anything else you’re curious about?”

“Why don’t you have more lights?”

“Huh?”

“Lights,” Jaskier gestures around the minimalistic layout of Geralt’s open-concept kitchen/living room and its distinctive lack of lamps. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans forward against the dark marble countertop. The pout has gone from 'slight' to 'full-bore' and Geralt is clinging desperately to his braincell with how cute it looks. “It’s no fun.”

“You really like lamps, don’t you?” the Witcher replies, mouth dry. Jaskier huffs and takes another sip of his hot chocolate, antennae flickering back and forth in irritation. Geralt bites his lip to hide a smile; it’s too fucking cute, which is an odd thought for a Witcher to have.

“So what if I do enjoy a nice lamp or five in my living space?” Jaskier argues. "I'm a Moth of taste."

“No matter,” Geralt laughs quietly. “Finish your drink before it gets cold.”

---

Jaskier stays with Geralt for a few weeks while his wing heals, and for a creature whose sole interest seems to be fancy light fixtures, the Fae becomes a source of light in Geralt's own world. They go to a nonhuman friendly second-hand store to find Jaskier some more clothes and Geralt discovers the cryptid's love for oddly patterned shirts in bright colors. Jaskier chooses several to fill out his closet, as well as a sweater two-sizes too large in deep black (Geralt tries his best not to attach any meaning to this choice), a few pairs of pants, and a jean jacket that he declares, "Can be altered."

They watch movies together and make food together - Jaskier is always incredibly impressed by the way the automatic coffee maker works, and how easily Geralt can control the flames of the stove. Jaskier also follows the Witcher along on less dangerous hunts and helps bandage him up after worse ones, always there with a smile and a little kiss over the cleaned-up wound.

“It really is magic,” Jaskier always insists, lips pink and shining from licking them as he concentrates. "It makes you heal faster."

Geralt realizes one night - two weeks into Jaskier’s stay, as he leans against the doorframe and watches the strange creature’s even breathing - that he has gone and done the stupidest thing a Witcher can do: fall in love with a pretty, temperamental young Fae. Head over fuckin’ heels, actually.

So he makes a decision.

---

The next evening, after the dinner dishes have been cleaned and put away, Geralt herds Jaskier down the hall to the guest room. Those entrancing blue eyes blink up at him in obvious confusion. “Bedtime already?”

“No, not quite. I just- I made you… uh…”

“Do you have a surprise for me?” Jaskier asks, used to the Witcher's issues with verbalizing.

Geralt nods, relieved and thankful for the Fae’s steadfast understanding. “Do you want to cover your eyes or should I just open the door and show you?”

“I’ll close my eyes,” Jaskier smiles, covering his eyes with both hands. Geralt finds it adorable, as Jaskier always is, and allows himself a matching grin as he swings the door open. The ceiling light is off but Geralt has built a blanket fort at the center of the room and surrounded it with fairy lights of all colors and sizes. Inside the blanket fort is a mass of blankets and pillows; Jaskier has the odd habit of building nests - Geralt jokingly calls them cocoons - and sleeping in those on the floor instead of on the very comfortable mattress the Witcher has provided.

“Open them,” Geralt urges.

Jaskier pulls his hands away and Geralt watches as his pupils go huge and wide. Jaskier's face breaks out in the sunniest, most blindingly happy smile Geralt has ever seen. He turns and throws his arms around the Witcher, his wings fluttering behind him and his antennae twitching and flicking above his head. He tries desperately to speak but only manages a half-snuffled little “I’m-” before bursting into tears of joy.

Geralt just holds him, letting his arms fold carefully around Jaskier’s waist, just beneath his wings.

"I just wanted you to know that, if you wanted to stay, there would be room for you. Your room, if you want it."

"I do," Jaskier smiles, burying his face in the Witcher's neck. "I'd love to stay. I'd love nothing more than to spend my days going on adventures with you."

"Well then," Geralt gathers all of his courage and presses a soft kiss to the crown of Jaskier's head. He's met with happy spasms from the antennae so he does it again. And again. Moving from the top of the Fae's head to his cheeks and then his mouth - pretty and pink and pouting and so worth the trouble. "I suppose we can get started on our next adventure tomorrow."

#mothskier #mothman jaskier #cryptid jaskier #creature jaskier #witcher geralt #the witcher netflix #geraskier #geraskier ficlet #geraskier fic #geraskier fluff #bouncey's endless getting together fics #bouncey's endless au collection #LYSSA WHY #WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME #art and fic #collab sorta #prompt fill #geraskier prompt fill #bouncey answers #ahhhhhhhh #mothskier!!!!

[dreamwritesimagines]

Burn The Witch 15 - Liar Liar [Bucky Barnes x Reader]

A.N: Thank you so much for your wonderful support and feedback my loves ! ❤ Here’s the next chapter, I hope you like it as well and please let me know what you think! ❤ Thank you! ❤❤❤

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Warnings: Enemies to lovers, fake dating, mentions of blood, sex, violence, death, manipulation, language, guns, knives.

Summary: Dishonesty requires practice.

Series Masterlist

Every spy knew things could go downhill on a mission. Considering how your last mission had ended with your ex, you weren’t exactly unfamiliar with the idea of your cover being blown but—

None of the targets were as dangerous as this one.

For a moment, you thought about pushing that button on your wristwatch and calling your whole team here because there was no way you could take down the legendary Winter Soldier in a fight, but through the haze of panic, a voice in your head told you not to.

It was just a mission.

As long as you kept your calm, you could fix this.

“Bucky,” you heard yourself say, “I can explain.”

He stared at you and the gun in his hand, then raised his brows.

“Okay,” he said, “Yeah, please explain why you have a gun.”

God damn it.

Okay, you had to think. Your cover was the naïve sweet civilian girl so any sentence you formed had to fit the description. The spy in you was already trying to come up with something, you had been taught to lie without even blinking but somehow it felt almost—

Wrong.

You tried to pull yourself together, shaking your head.

“I—it’s—“ you took a deep breath, “Yeah I have a gun.”

“I can see that,” he said drily, “Why?”

Good question.

Why would the small town sweetheart have a gun?

The cover story didn’t have anything like that, so you had to come up with a believable lie based on—

Oh. Bingo.

“I was going to tell you,” you said. “I’ve actually—I’ve had it for weeks.”

“For weeks?” he repeated, “Why?”

You ran a hand over your eyes, then crossed your arms and shrugged.

“I’m going to need more than that, Y/N.”

You gritted your teeth and raised your glances to look up at him. “After I got mugged,” you started, “I told one of my friends back home about what happened and she’s—she came up with this idea that I should maybe buy a gun because I—I don’t know. I don’t know why I bought it, I just bought it.”

“You bought a gun because your friend told you to?”

You tilted your head, “No Bucky, I bought a gun because I got mugged and got shot within the first month of moving here.”

His gaze on you was fixed, as if he was trying to see whether you were lying or not but now that panic wasn’t taking over you, you could think straight.

Bucky was a legend among the espionage world and he was unstoppable and you probably didn’t stand a chance against him yes, but you had one advantage.

Bucky was a soldier, not a spy.

Spies were different. Bucky had the physical training to go after a target, but he never, ever had to manipulate them emotionally. You were one step ahead on that and if there was anything that could get you out of this mess, that was it.

“Listen I know that you’re concerned, but you have nothing to worry about,” you waved a dismissive hand, “The guy at the shop was very helpful, he even gave me his number—”

His head shot up, “What?”

“Yeah in case I needed anything with the gun. Or if I had any questions.”

A shadow crossed his eyes and he scoffed, shaking his head.

“Did he now?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, “And besides, I watched a bunch of tutorials so I think I got it. I’m a very quick learner.”  

“Tutorials?”

“Yeah, videos.”

He blinked a couple of times, and looked down at the gun before looking up at you.

“You watched videos.”

“Mm hm. One of the guys even had a deer head mounted on the wall behind him, it’s very clear he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to himself and you had to remind yourself not to smile.

“And I know how to take the safety off,” you added, “After that point it’s basically point and pull the trigger, that’s what the video said.”

“I don’t even know where to begin— sweetheart,” he turned to you, “Forget what the video said, I can teach you if you want, but for what it’s worth, I think it’s a terrible idea.”

Hook, line and sinker.

“I hate guns,” you insisted, “It’s just that—Stacey said it’s a big city and after I got shot… I don’t know. I know I should’ve told you, I just didn’t want you to think I’m some kind of a paranoid person.”

He heaved a sigh and reached out to tug you by the hand so that he could pull you closer.

“I don’t think you’re paranoid,” he said. “I just think that you could hurt yourself or someone if you don’t have any training.”

“The guy made it sound pretty easy.”

“Yeah, I don’t think selling it was the only thing he wanted.”

You rolled your eyes at him, “Now who’s being paranoid?”

“I’m just being observant.”

“Jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” he said and you scrunched up your nose

“Right,” you said, “Of course you’re not.”

“So is there anything I should know about?” he changed the subject, “Anything at all? I won’t judge, I swear.”

You pressed your lips together as you looked up at him. What could you say to that?

I’ve been manipulating you all along.

I’m working for the same government that is looking for you to slip and make a mistake.

When this is over, I’m probably going to hate myself much more than you hate me.

Yeah. There was absolutely nothing you could say.

“Nothing I can think of right now,” you shrugged your shoulders, “So, can we go now?”

                                    ***

You could barely remember the last time you had been to a funfair. It didn’t even matter that you already knew where you were going, you were still quite excited despite the earlier panic you had gone through. Thankfully, Bucky seemed to have bought into your story but it didn’t mean you weren’t taking mental notes about what to do by the time the date was over.

Or when you were out of his sight, whichever.

“Thank you!” you said what it felt for the hundredth time as you put a piece of cotton candy into your mouth, enjoying the sweet taste melting in your mouth and Bucky smiled at you fondly.

“No problem darling.”

“No seriously, I haven’t been to a funfair in…I don’t know, forever!” you said, “Wait, so it was a thing back then?”

“Hm?”

“Bringing your date to a funfair?”

He nodded, walking beside you, “Yeah. There wasn’t much to do and you know, lots of people.”

“So no gossip?”

“Lots of gossip,” he corrected you, “But at least—“

“No one’s virtue got damaged.”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Nope,” you grinned at him and gasped when something caught your eye, making him turn his head.

“What?”

“Oh my God!” you pointed at the huge neon sign and he followed your gaze, then scoffed a laughter.

“Seriously?”

“I want to try it.”

“Shoot The Ducks.” He read out loud, “You know what, let’s see how good you are if you watched that many videos.”

“I’m going to get that teddy bear,” you pointed at the biggest teddy bear sitting on the top shelf while he looked like he was fighting a laugh.

“Are you sure you can carry that?”

“You’re going to carry it for me,” you said as you handed him the cotton candy, your nose in the air and tugged him by the wrist to lead him to the shooting range. You took a look at the paper ducks with bullseye on them, then turned to the man behind the counter.

“Excuse me, how many of those should I shoot to get that?” you asked, motioning at the teddy bear and the man looked up.

“3 sets, all bullseye.”

“Okay,” you said and reached for your purse but Bucky had already paid the man by the time you could get your wallet out. He gave you the toy rifle and you had to remind yourself you were supposed to be terrible at it no matter how much you wanted that goddamn plushie.

The good thing about being an expert sniper was that you knew exactly how to miss and look like an amateur. So you pointed the rifle slightly to the right and took your shot, and as expected you missed.

“No!” you whined and Bucky stifled a chuckle, but adapted a look of seriousness as soon as you turned around to look at him with your eyes narrowed.

“I said nothing.”

“That was just bad luck,” you insisted, then took your shot again, deliberately missing once more. You lowered the rifle, pouting.

“I’m pretty sure this is rigged.”

“Or maybe the guy with the deer head on his wall had no idea what he was talking about,” Bucky pointed out, “Almost like watching videos isn’t enough to figure out how to shoot, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”

“On the contrary, I am a little terrified now that I know you have a gun," he taunted you, “And seeing this…”

You glared at him and took your shot, missing again and you heaved a sigh, lowering the rifle again.

“Better luck next time miss,” the man said and you offered him a small smile. Bucky heaved a sigh as if he was fighting himself.

“Which one did you say you wanted again?” he asked and you pulled your brows together, then pointed at the huge teddy bear. He nodded at the guy and handed him some cash after giving you your cotton candy back, then grabbed the toy rifle from the man and in only a couple of seconds, he had hit every single bullseye, making your jaw drop.

Okay.

You were so screwed.

You knew that he was a great super soldier but seeing it was something else. A shiver ran down your spine as what you had read on his file flashed before your eyes. You were right earlier, you had to make sure to avoid any kind of combat with him by the time this whole mission was over.

“Y/N?”

Your head shot up and you tried to pull yourself together, letting out a breath.

“Wow,” you managed to say and the man behind the counter gawked between you two.

“Um— that one please?” you said and he blinked a couple of times, then reached out to take the teddy bear down to put it into your arms. You let out a small squeal of glee, then beamed at Bucky.

“Thank you!” you said, trying to keep your nervousness hidden and he smiled.

“No problem,” he motioned at you and you gave the teddy to him so that you could hold your cotton candy better. You shook your head slightly, distracting yourself with the sweetness on your tongue but a small laughter escaped from your lips when you took a look at the sight beside you.

The scary Winter Soldier holding a huge teddy bear in his arms.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you managed to say, “I’m going to name him Bucky.”

“No you’re not.”

“Fine, I’m going to name him Grumpy,” you said, “Same deal.”

“Hey!” he protested and you giggled, then looked around.

“Come on,” you said, grabbing his hand, “Let’s go to the Ring Toss!”

                                ***

It was as if the time was going faster on your every single date with Bucky. Even after spending hours in that funfair until midnight, you were still quite giddy when you and Bucky reached your building. You let out a giggle as you turned around and took the huge teddy bear from him, hugging it tight.

“Thank you,” you said, looking up at him, “Really. I…I think it was the best that I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!” you said, “And now I have to find something equally amazing for a modern date, so no pressure.”

He chuckled, “You don’t have to find anything,” he said, “I’d be happy just being with you, not doing anything.”

Warmth filled your insides and you smiled.

“Really?”

“Really,” he nodded and you put the teddy bear down, then stood on your tiptoes to pull him down to a kiss.

His arm wrapped around your waist and you found yourself sighing as his other hand cupped your cheek. A fire – a very, very familiar fire started burning at the pit of your stomach as you felt yourself melt at his touch, every single doubt about the mission and the strategies and everything else wiping out of your mind until desire was the only thing left. He brushed your hair behind your ear as you pulled back and looked up at him, the same fire burning in his eyes but he was better than you at hiding it so a gentle smile pulled at his lips.

Fuck what the strategy report says.

“Um—“ you took a deep breath, “Would you want to come upstairs for...a cup of coffee or something?”

He looked almost surprised at the suggestion but for what it was worth, he overcame that quite fast. His gaze stopped on you for a moment before he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah I’d love to.”

A nervous laughter escaped from you and you nodded,

“Okay—“ you started but before you could say anything, his phone started ringing. He closed his eyes for a moment and took it out of his pocket to answer it.

“This is not a good time man,” he said, but his frown deepened as he listened to the other line, “Right now? Are you serious?”

You tilted your head and he heaved a deep sigh while the person told him something you couldn’t hear.

“Fine,” he muttered, “I’ll be there.”

Oh God damn it.

“Let me guess,” you said when he hung up, “Change of plans?”

He ran a hand over his eyes and nodded.

“Sam says there’s this group of people in need of help…” he grumbled, putting the phone into his pocket, “But somebody better be dying because if not, I can fix that really fast.”

You let out a laugh, “Don’t be like that,” you said, “It’s fine. I told you, I’m not going anywhere. Go save lives.”

“I’m really sorry darling.”

“It’s fine,” you repeated with a smile and pecked him on the lips before picking up the huge teddy bear. “But be careful, you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am,” he saluted and you blew him a kiss before walking into the building. You took the elevator, still holding the teddy tight and as soon as you got to your floor you stepped out.

“What the hell is that?” Keith’s voice reached you and you tilted your head to look around the teddy’s arm to see him by his door, as if he was just leaving.

“It’s a teddy bear,” you said, walking to your door to open it, Keith following you into the apartment.

“What’s in it?” he asked, “Weapons? Guns? Knives?”

“…Fiber.”

“Y/N—” he started but you put it on the floor and took a step back.

“Where are you going?”

“General gave me a mission,” he said, “You seriously want me to believe you just got a teddy bear just because?”

“I was on a date.”

“Oh,” he said, “Romantic. It would be a great way to hide weapons though, even you have to admit—”

“Bucky found my gun.”

Keith stopped talking and stared at you for a couple of seconds, “I beg your pardon?”

You rubbed at your eyes, “You heard me. He found my gun.”

“Why the hell did you not alert me?”

“There was no need.”

Keith threw his head back, “Are you serious right now?” he asked you, “This is the freaking Winter Soldier we’re talking about, you’re not supposed to take any chances! For God’s sake, I live next door for a reason!”

“My cover wasn’t blown,” you insisted, “If you or the team got here, all this would’ve been for nothing. I handled it.”

He crossed his arms, “Still an unnecessary risk to take,” he insisted, “Anything could’ve happened, Y/N. You’ve read his file.”

You nodded, “I handled it,” you said, “You should go by the way. You’re going to be late, the General hates that.”

“Do you want me to say anything to him?”

You thought for a moment and shook your head.

“No,” you said, “Good luck.”

“We will talk about this when I came back.” he pointed at you and left your apartment. You took a look at the teddy bear, then grabbed your phone to touch Chloe’s name.

“Hey there!” she answered on the first ring, “How was the funfair?”

“It was good,” you said, “Listen, I need you to make sure my background is solid.”

“What?” she asked, “It is, I made sure of that—“

“Bucky found my gun,” you said, “Earlier.”

She took in a sharp breath, “God damn it.”

“No it’s fine, I came up with this story of buying it from a shop after the mugging, but…”

“You need a document just in case,” she completed your sentence, “Got it. Do you think he would check?”

“No,” you said, “But Wilson might, he and Bucky are pretty close. It would be much harder to trick him.”

“Got it,” she said, “I’ll get the document ready, maybe some footage… And I’ll go over your social media just in case.”

“Great.”

“But are you okay?”

You paused only for a moment,

“Sure,” you said, “I’m fine, I handled it. It’s all going according to plan.”

“Alright,” she said, “I’d better get to it. Be careful!”

“You too,” you said and hung up, then went to the kitchen to grab a couple of knives before going back to the living room.

“Sorry about this Bucky number two,” you murmured as you turned it around, stuck the knife into it and started ripping it, “But you really would make a good place to hide weapons.”

Chapter 16

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x you

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Lila Rossi: I’d Say She’s a Good Villain, but Then I’d Be Lying (300 Follower Special)

Deception and cunning are easily two of the most important traits an antagonist could have. It shows that even if they don't have the strength to overcome obstacles, their wit is more than enough. This kind of trait is why characters like Lex Luthor, David Xanatos, and Princess Azula are so beloved, simply because of how intelligent they can be as villains and pose a real threat to the heroes.

It's clear that the Miraculous Ladybug writers want Lila to be seen as this, but the writing seriously fails to back that claim up.

Easily one of the most controversial characters in Miraculous Ladybug is Lila, mainly for the writing surrounding her. But there was a time where she was actually more of an ambiguous character, mainly for the lack of screentime she had until Season 3. But unfortunately, the more appearances she's had have painted a very poor portrait of an antagonist.

Lila's Tragic and Sympathetic Motivation for Hating Ladybug

Lila's first appearance was at the tail end of Season 1, “Volpina”. She was a new transfer student from Italy, and quickly made friends with a lot of her classmates for the lies she told, including being friends with Ladybug (which Alya blindly believed without doing any research like any excellent journalist). But because of how close she was getting to Adrien, Marinette, in a rare act of selfishness, transforms into Ladybug just to chew out Lila for lying about knowing her, humiliating her in front of Adrien. And this is the only motivation we get for what Lila does afterwards.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for Lila to get upset at Ladybug for doing this, and I like the moment of weakness Marinette has, but this is literally the only explanation we get for Lila deciding to side with Hawkmoth, a literal terrorist. As much as I hated the way the arc turned out, I could still understand Chloe siding with Hawkmoth, as it was clear that Hawkmoth was manipulating her and taking advantage of her ego. Lila? Ladybug's mean to her one time, and that inspires her to conspire with a complete stranger who brainwashes people to attack the city, which endangers innocent people and causes God knows how much in collateral damage if not for Miraculous Ladybug fixing everything.

I just don't get how a single negative interaction with someone is enough to conspire with a literal supervillain. Even in Season 3, when Marinette and Lila truly became enemies, it was because she risked exposing all the lies she told, which could damage her reputation. Sure, it's petty, but it makes sense for Lila to want to keep up the illusion. If she was simply an antagonist to Marinette in her civilian life like Chloe was before “Miracle Queen” , I'd be fine with that, but the writers clearly want her to be seen as on the same level of evil as Hawkmoth. I'll get into why that doesn't work later on.

Why Lila is an Excellent Liar

In my Master Fu analysis, I had pointed out that despite all the flaws he had, the narrative insisted on portraying him as an incredibly wise mentor. The same problem applies for Lila as well. We're supposed to see Lila as an expert manipulator and liar, but her lies are insultingly obvious. She always claims to be friends with celebrities and does all these awesome things, and in an age where we can have almost any question answered thanks to the internet, nobody ever stops to question her.

It's even more frustrating when you hear Lila talk about saving Jagged Stone's cat, when Jagged Stone is established to be very fond of Marinette (evidentially more than his own daughter), and nobody ever points that out. I think if Lila's lies were more stories about her travels around the world than outright lies about real people, it could have worked. It'd still be hard to believe, but it's something.

But this is a problem with writing shows aimed at children. As much as we hate writers who need to spell out things to kids, sometimes, they just don't understand some of the media they consume. Seriously, I never got this joke in SpongeBob as a kid, and I can't believe Nickelodeon actually approved this.

So the dilemma when writing a show with children in mind is finding that sweet spot between assuming your audience can figure it out, but not being too vague in your details. It's even harder when you need to find a way to convey the fact that someone is lying without being too obvious. Unfortunately, the show clearly fails to do that

Okay, this is going to sound like an incredibly weird thing to cite, and I only know about it because I used to know someone who was a huge fan of the franchise, but the movie Monster High: Friday Night Frights does a better job of subtly explaining to the audience that a character is lying. Please, just hear me out.

The movie follows the main characters competing in their high school's roller derby for the season after everyone on the usual team gets injured, and the championship match is against another school whose team tends to cheat to win matches. How they manage to do this without getting caught is anyone's guess. While the main characters are practicing, their coach, Clawd, notices a spy for the enemy team taking video of them to study their moves. In response, he calls over one of the athletes, Operetta, to chew her out for her showboating attitude. In reality, he's alerting her to the spy. Only using facial expressions, he clues her, and by extension, the audience, in on the fact that they know what the opposing team is trying to do.

This soon leads to Operetta pretending to tell the enemy team about their secret plan for the championship match, which was really an attempt to outsmart them to gain the advantage in the final stretch. The brilliance of this is how the audience is informed of this with no dialogue, and there's no scene afterwards spelling it out for those who don't get it. It manages to convey deception without being too obvious that Clawd and Operetta are being deceitful.

I think if there were more subtle hints to show the audience Lila was lying, she would be seen in a better light. As it is, Lila's lies are just pathetic, and it's ridiculous that everyone believes her. Which leads me to...

Lila, the Master Manipulator

I once read a Star Trek: Voyager fanfic that poked fun at the series by claiming that the reason a lot of the dumber episodes like “Threshold” and “Twisted” happened was because one of the crew members was an alien who unintentionally produced mood altering pheromones, with Captain Janeway actually realizing they were all high because of said pheromones, while two of the unaffected crew members were wondering what the hell they were doing before they found out the cause. Why do I bring this up? Sometimes, it feels like Lila is an unintentional parallel to the alien in that story.

Like so many characters, it's clear the show desperately wants the audience to view Lila in a certain way, but her actions do very little to actually back up that claim. When she's not using lies to tell stories about so many famous people she knows like her uncle who works for Nintendo, Lila is using strategies to manipulate everyone that are so obviously deceptive, the Thermians could pick up on them. Everyone and their mother knows how ridiculous a lot of what Lila does in episodes like “Chameleon” and “Ladybug” are, and I've talked about them before, so I'll try to be quick.

First off, as someone who had access to accommodations through high school and has had assistance in college so far, there is no way in hell that Ms. Bustier should take Lila's tinnitus at face value in “Chameleon”. If a student has a disability that could interfere with the education process, physical or developmental, not only does the school have to evaluate their performance, and determine if they're eligible for an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, but her teachers would have to be notified in the first place. As her primary educator, Ms. Bustier would be part of the team to oversee Lila's IEP and determine what accommodations she needs to help her learn better with her tinnitus and arthritis. But because the writers don't know what Google is, they just ignore it,  assume that Lila can just say she has a disability, and have everyone believe it. Even when Eric Cartman pretended to be disabled to compete in the Special Olympics, he put in more effort to look the part, even if he looked like a caricature.

Then there's the fact that that in “Chameleon”, everyone just believes Lila when she says Marinette stole her grandmother's necklace when not only is said necklace from the Agreste line of jewelry, but Alya, who is Rena Rouge, can't pick up on the fact that it's a fake. All she does to justify these lies is come up with a sob story about how nobody believes her, yet nobody ever tries to defend Marinette except Alya one time, and it was after she got expelled.

Or what about in “Oni-Chan”, where Lila thinks having Kagami kill Ladybug while claiming she'll back away from Adrien is a good idea? Let's say Oni-Chan does kill Ladybug or at least take away her Miraculous, what then? We know Lila wouldn't go through with this promise, and as soon as Kagami sees her harassing Adrien, she'll be ripe for akumatization again. Overall, not a great plan.

And yet somehow, this last example is what made her worthy enough to become one of Hawkmoth's most trusted agents. I'm just going to say it: Lila is not a good fit for the power of illusion. Whenever she's Volpina or Chameleon, she always goes out of her way to make a big show instead of being subtle with her deceptions. “Chameleon” is the worst offender, as even though Lila gets the power to shapeshift into someone else, instead of being discreet and cornering people into kissing them and gaining their appearance, she just runs around to get Ladybug's attention instead of being subtle. Even Felix had the bright idea to pretend to be Adrien to catch Ladybug off guard. How do you lose to something that happened in “Felix”?

Despite all of these screw-ups, we're still supposed to see her as this master of deception worthy of allying with Hawkmoth in both his supervillain and civilian form, when really, she's a terrible liar on the schoolyard and on the battlefield.

Why Lila is an Important Character

In the grand scheme of things, Lila just isn't as important of a character that the show loves to parade her around as. She's nothing more than a plot device used to raise the stakes in an episode, given how much reality seems to bend over just to accommodate for her lies. Even when the show alludes to her being part of bigger things, like her deal with Adrien, or her rivalry with Marinette, they don't even go anywhere.

She just feels pointless when you remember Astruc's brilliant idea to force Chloe into being the final Akuma for the season while Lila isn't even mentioned once. She only really makes appearances whenever the writers feel like it, which is why it’s hard to take her seriously. Why should I take this character seriously as a threat if the writers refuse to take her seriously as a threat? Why build Lila up as a big threat and not give her a major role in the finale? Why even include her in the show in the first place when you could show Chloe being more manipulative to fill in the plots Lila plays a big part in?

As of the time I am writing this analysis, four episodes of Season 4 have aired, three of them have been about lies or deception, and Lila hasn't been mentioned at all. It honestly seems like she won't appear unless the writers need a easy way to drive up the conflict, so they can justify it by saying that Lila's “superpower” of lying is more powerful than the common sense of everyone else.

I'm sorry this post was shorter than the last one, but compared to Master Fu, there's not that much to say about Lila that I haven't already said. Even the show barely gives her any attention, so it's hard for me to really find a lot to talk about.

#immaturity of thomas astruc #iota #thomas astruc #thomas astruc salt #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug salt #lila rossi #volpina #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #adrien agreste #cat noir #chat noir #gabriel agreste #hawkmoth #hawk moth #shadowmoth #shadow moth #alya cesaire #rena rouge #kagami tsurugi #ryuuko #ryuko #riposte #oni chan #onichan #caline bustier #zombizou

[astralinax]

To be worthy - ML - C3

Chapter 3: 

Last time: I walked into the lobby into a scene of pure chaos. 

When I walked into the lobby I thought I would see the traditional high-end entrance that all expensive hotels seem to have. What I actually saw was the opposite of that. 

Standing, sobbing great big crocodile tears, surrounded by a horde of overprotective teenagers was... you guessed it! Lila Rossi. I had no clue what she had said to get everyone in the lobby on high alert but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Alya was standing in front of her rather aggressively, yelling at someone who - oh. Heeh! I tried and failed to keep a straight face. Alya - the supposed ‘superhero expert’ - was yelling at Captain America! I tried hard to supress giggles at the sight and judging by the way my bag was quivering, Tikki was the same. 

One of the people, agents from the look of him, spotted me and called out, “She’s here now. Or at least, I think she is.” Oh, that’s what they’re fighting about! They realised that I was missing and Lila must have started an argument to get attention somehow. From what I heard from Alya’s yelling, Mr Rodgers had asked where I was and seeing as no-one but me spoke English, Lila told them that he was insulting her for being ‘a slutty no-good rich brat.’ I almost snorted at that again. If only!

Realising that I should probably try to diffuse the situation before Alya got put in prison for assaulting a superhero, I moved to intervene. 

Steve Rodgers/Captain America POV:

What on earth is up with this french class? I was just walking by when I saw that Miss Walters (the receptionist) was looking quite panicked. It turned out she was missing a student so I turned and asked her class because, you know, missing person, ask the locals. And then one of them smirks then bursts into tears wailing about something or other in french and another one starts yelling in my face. I mean, how do you get that from a perfectly reasonable question? 

Anyway, one of the agents sitting in the lounge, looking rather tense, I noticed, called out that he thought the missing girl was here. I turned to see the tiniest girl you will ever see walk out of the shadow of the doors straight towards me, murmur something in french to the (rather incompetent) teacher then head towards me. 

“I’m so sorry about my class Sir. They don’t understand English at all and one of them, I should probably warn you, lies for attention. They all believe her so whatever they said, I’m sorry if it offended you.” The mini frenchie apologised in perfect english, though a frown marred her face when she spoke about the liar. 

“And you don’t believe her?” I asked, wanting to find out more. What had Stark let in our building? 

She winced. “No, but everyone else does. She lies about quite a few things that i know aren’t true about quite a few people. I’m sure a couple of the agents watching can understand french and will let you know what’s been said.”

Huh, smart. “Thank you, Miss...”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, sir.”

Ah, so this is the girl who wrote the essay. “Of course. If you and your class will follow Miss Walters, she will show you to your rooms then tell you what the plans are for today.”

“Erm... do you have anyone here who speaks french who can tell my class that?” Seeing my frown, she explained, “I would do it myself but Lila’s lied about me quite a lot so none of them trust me anymore. Except Chloe.” She gestured to the blonde who was sitting down  checking her nails, narrow eyes glaring at the class. 

Hmmm... bullies and a manipulator - this class just gets better and better. 

@buginetye

#miraculous ladybug #magicmari #chloe redemption #alya salt #adrien salt #class salt #mjolnir #avengers #marvel #marinette deserves better #marinette is worthy #tobeworthy #ml #ml salt #fanfiction

[beautyofthend]

Kate Fleming - A Character Study

There were many things that annoyed me about the series finale of Series 6, I could talk about it for days on end. But the one thing that perhaps annoyed me the most was the way in which Kate went through massive character development throughout Episodes 1-6 and then that got all but dropped by Episode 7. Dropped in the sense that every piece of character development within Kate through those first episodes had been obvious, explicit; we can see very clearly that Kate had changed in the time she had left AC-12 and joined MIT, but as we got to Episode 7 this character development dropped to mere subtext and having to read between the lines just to understand Kate’s motives. 

I’m going to be exploring that and finding the best possible explanation for Kate’s character because I feel as though it would be very easy to misjudge her without explanation. 

To start I just want to say that this is all my opinion, I’ll try to back up my points as best I can but it is just my interpretation of how I’ve seen Kate as a character. Enjoy. 

Character development is crucial in shows that have multiple series, more so when it’s main characters are prevalent throughout. We, as the audience, need to see these characters go through change, they can’t stay as the same person the whole time. They can have certain characteristics and arcs that remain as we watch their journey but when characters go through situations, like real life, they don’t come out the other side as who they were before. We as humans change everyday, I am not the same person I was last week. Of course, not in a drastic way but events change us, we develop. So when we watch programmes we expect to see similar changes in characters. 

And we do. Throughout Line of Duty we see our main characters, Kate, Steve and Ted, put through many events, some major, some not so. They are often put in danger or will be witness to catastrophic moments: Kate and Steve were present when Tony ended his life, Kate was present when Dot got shot, she was also present when Danny got shot. I could go on but you get the point. We’ve seen our characters go through a lot so we should expect to see their development. I shouldn’t expect to see that Kate remains fairly the same between Series 1-5. 

But let’s dig into that more. Kate is a strong, steely, kick-ass character. She doesn’t put up with things and isn’t afraid to tell someone when they’re in the wrong - she has quite happily pulled Ted up on his wrongdoings over the years. We see Kate in numerous undercover operations, we know that she is an expert at hiding her true feelings as a result of that. She can manipulate people into giving her information and she’s very good at playing on their emotions - but this only occurs under the guise of being a UCO. 

Kate follows a set guide when she becomes a UCO and we see this throughout. I find that she is pushy, never letting her questions up when she hasn’t been given the answer she wanted. She earns their trust by offering her support and being emotionally available for them (some more than others). One particular thing that she always does without fail is slate AC-12 as a means of gaining trust. Everyone she goes undercover for are under the watchful eye of AC-12 so she must show that she has nothing to do with them, that her aliases: Flynn, Foster, Francis, do not side/agree with the actions of AC-12 - this is excluding the first series where we see her using her real name Kate Fleming but she still sticks to the idea of bad-mouthing AC-12 to earn trust. Some examples over the show being: 

“AC-12, they’re robots them lot. They don’t get the difference between a corrupt officer and a decent one who made a mistake.” - To Tony Gates in S1E3

“AC-12, they twist everything and make everyone look guilty.” - To Lindsay Denton in S2E2

“You know what they’re (AC-12) like, fishing for inconsistencies. Anything they can pounce on.” - To Jackie Brickford in S3E3

“AC-12 leaving with their tail between their legs.” - To Roz Huntley in S4E2 - this is more telling as this scene actually takes place in front of Steve and in E3 she does it again, going as far to call Steve a “wanker” in front of everyone. 

The only time we don’t see her using this tactic is in S5, because she has no reason to - she’s not undercover at any point so she doesn’t need to gain anyone’s trust - and in S6 where in which she actually uses her knowledge of AC-12 to reassure Jo. 

“I know the kinds of cases that AC-12 are into, boss.” - In S6E2. She’s not trying to distance herself from AC-12 she’s trying to show Jo that she doesn’t have to worry about anything since “It’s just the way AC-12 operate.” - You could argue that she has no need to bad mouth AC-12 since Jo is fully aware of Kate’s connections to anti-corruption though. (She does also mention that she got “fed up of nicking coppers,” but this is in relation to her own personal feelings rather than AC-12 itself). 

But that doesn’t mean to say she doesn’t slate AC-12 at any point during S6, it’s just that she does this directly to Steve, “You spend too much time on anti-corruption, it starts to change the way you see things.” This shows that despite, in a way, defending AC-12 to Jo she doesn’t particularly side with them and feels very strongly about her reasons for leaving them in the first place.

All this is proof that Kate will go to a number of lengths to keep her cover, appearing to hate AC-12 and people that she trusts just to get close to the people she’s investigating. And she does this fairly successfully, she manages to pull the wool over their eyes - to an extent - and proves that she is a good officer, she is good at cutting off her emotions for the sake of the job. As Dot says to her in S3E2 “You’re a brilliant liar that’s all. Kind of unsettled me,” and Lindsay says something very similar to her in S2.

Kate is a master manipulator when it comes to her undercover operations, okay she isn’t always successful and has had her cover blown a number of times but they’ve always ended up being worthwhile and they manage to bring down the person that they were investigating. It shows that she is very good at her job. And her ability to control her emotions so well, really go against this stereotypical idea that women aren’t in control of their emotions, which isn’t a bad thing. 

We instead see this trope throughout Steve’s character - and Ted to an extent. Where Kate can take control of a situation and push her emotions to the side, Steve isn’t as successful in that department. He is an extremely emotional person and often lets those emotions get in the way of his job. For example, his anger and frustrations towards Tony Gates in Series 1 meant that his vision was clouded and he couldn’t see the wood for the trees, similar to his dealings with Dot -  both occasions needed Kate with her lack of emotions and clear vision to help him. 

Whilst I think it’s good that Jed is challenging these stereotypes and telling us that men can be just as emotional as women, and women can be closed off and cold - even the fact that Kate is a mother and she remains so steely is very telling - I don’t think it always works. I love that Kate is the resident heroine in Line of Duty, she’s always there to save the day and that’s great. But that doesn’t mean she can’t show emotion and that doesn’t mean she has to be so closed off all the time. We see in glimpses that this emotional side to Kate does exist however, after she hears Ted slate Dryden for having an affair with Lindsay (it’s an unknowing attack on her own situation), when she gets locked out of her house and most notably during S6E6 - there is a lot of emotions at play so there is a lot to talk about for that particular episode. 

With that being said, Series 6 does delve into this emotional side to Kate - with Jo being integral in bringing about that development. Unlike the previous series, this one perhaps focuses on Kate the most, showing her in a different setting through MIT and showing her making genuine connections with people outside of AC-12. 

When we have seen Kate outside of the realms of AC-12 it’s only been through her undercover operations, where she is having to pretend to be another person to get information out of others. But finally, in Series 6 we see her perhaps being her most true self. This is shown through the change in her wardrobe, she’s wearing clothes that she hasn’t necessarily worn before. I could go deeper but people have already done that and could explain that much better than I can. But to put it into simple terms, her wardrobe for Series 6 is vastly different from her wardrobe throughout Series 1-5, right down to the shoes. 

(Won’t go off on a tangent too much but one thing I did notice was the fact that throughout Series 1-5 Kate, most of the time, wears heeled boots - on occasion she can be seen sporting trainers or flat pumps but it’s rare - but in Series 6 she starts wearing flat, doc-style boots and can be seen wearing them, along with other flat shoes through the series. Up until that meeting between her and Jo and she’s wearing her heeled boots again - no doubt symbolising how the events of this meeting cause Kate to almost cut ties with Jo as she returns back to AC-12. She continues to wear these heeled boots through the next couple of scenes but returns to the flat ones she’s been wearing this whole time when she goes to save Jo - symbolising that yes she’s letting Jo go but she’s still on her side despite everything.)

Series 6 Kate stands out from what we’ve seen of her from the other series - she seems genuinely happy. She’s able to be herself, not having to pretend. Not having to manipulate others for information or form false friendships. Instead, she forms a close, emotional bond with Jo Davidson and there are many indicators that this is real and genuine and not Kate “pretending” as Jo so aptly put it. 

From the first episode it is very clear that Jo and Kate are close, the first time we see Kate in this episode the two of them are flirting with each other - in front of their team as well. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice DI Fleming skulking in last minute like the dirty stop-out.” 

“Don’t go there, boss, glass houses.” 

It’s showing that Kate has settled into this new team and new dynamic and is very comfortable. Further pushing this sense of casualness that has been set up between Kate and Jo is in a later scene when Kate comes into Jo’s office and Kate is leaning on the back of the chair next to Jo’s desk.  

When we usually see Kate in a scene with a senior officer she can be seen doing the typical ‘stand to attention’ and the fact that she isn’t here is very telling. She also goes on to say in this scene “I haven’t shared this with anyone else, boss.” Telling us that there is a level of trust that has already been set up between these two - Kate doesn’t need to earn Jo’s trust, she already has it. 

This is very different to how we’ve previously seen Kate, she usually has to earn people’s trust: 

“I just want to help sir,” “Just give me the chance to prove myself to you,” “I’m here if you need to talk,” “If you need my help, just ask,” “I could make it disappear.” - Various phrases she said to Tony Gates throughout S1.

“Anything I can do boss?” Along with telling Lindsay that she’ll say that she was with her the night Lindsay’s neighbour alleged Lindsay attacked her during S2 and turning up to Lindsay’s apartment with a bottle of wine - trying to form a friendship. 

“Thanks for letting me in on this, ma’am. Look, I know we’ve had our differences but, for what it’s worth, I don’t think they’d have replaced you as SIO if you were a bloke,” to Roz Huntley in S4 - she’s also very good at working out how to get to people. She knows that the lack of female diversity and patriarchy is a weakness for Roz so Kate plays up to that (although how much of that is Kate pretending is another story but will get into that later.)

The only time she doesn’t use this ‘buddying up’ tactic is in S3 where she takes on a whole different approach with the ‘MOB.’ Where she had been previously seen, with Tony and Lindsay, to play nice to the people she’s investigating, to earn their trust, in S3 she almost aggravates them. She’s straight in there with questioning them and probing them so that they’ll crack - but I think she also knows that they’re weak, they don’t have that close a bond so if she pokes them enough someone will break away. 

But we don’t see this set up between Kate and Jo, we are thrown into an already established and trusted connection which is done on purpose to show that Kate and Jo have been close for a while prior to the events of S6. Further emphasising this, is Farida’s accusation that Kate and Jo are having an affair - it’s not said without reason. We see repeatedly throughout the time that Farida is in MIT, she is keeping a watchful eye on the interactions between Kate and Jo and it’s enough for her to suspect a relationship/affair. 

What is most interesting however, is the fact that this is the first genuine female connection that Kate has had on-screen. Of course, we became aware of her friendship with Jayne Akers but Kate was also sleeping with Richard, Jayne’s husband, so it couldn’t have been that close of a friendship. We also see a glimpse of a friendship between Maneet and Kate but it’s never delved into enough to make it relevant. 

This is the first time we’ve seen Kate work alongside a fellow female officer and have their connection be something that is real rather than faked - I think this also plays into a lot of Kate’s confusion surrounding her feelings towards Jo. Is her connection with Jo related to the fact that they’re both women who have had to work their socks off to get to the top or is it the fact that there is something deeper bubbling under the surface between them? 

Whatever it may be, there is a strong level of trust between Kate and Jo that sets them apart from all of Kate’s previous UCO interactions. Where she would normally have to dig for information from people, asking leading questions etc, Jo gives Kate information freely (obviously this is done on purpose on Jo’s part since we later find out that Jo wanted Kate on the team to solve the case and henceforth free Jo from the clutches of the OCG). All Kate has to do is ask if Jo is okay and boom, Jo opens up - not totally, but enough to emphasise the trust. 

This is a completely new dynamic for Kate, yes she’s close to Ted and Steve but even then there’s a professional distance set between all three of them. They know hints about each others lives but they don’t know everything; it wasn’t until Mark phoned Steve in S2 did he find out about Kate’s situation. And it isn’t until the last episode of S6 that Kate finally learns about Steve’s painkiller misuse. They are friends and they are close but there’s a small wall between them. But Jo is the one to break that wall and invites herself into Kate’s personal life via the small dates we see them on and Kate wanting to see Jo at the weekend outside of work. 

It’s not just a new dynamic for Kate but also a new dynamic for the audience. The only consistent friend Kate has had across the show is Steve, we see them leaning on each other in a sense and going out to the pub or for takeaways. We see that they’re close (even if they don’t necessarily reveal everything about themselves) and now all of a sudden, we are seeing Kate meeting up with someone else. Talking to someone else, having a friendship with someone else. And it’s nice. Kate deserves to have someone else outside of Steve and outside of AC-12, it hints that she’s able to have a life outside of her work. 

Note: Steve’s “Do you see a life for yourself outside the job?” In S2. Jo is proof to Kate that she can exist outside of her work. 

But now that this trust has been set up between Kate and Jo, we then delve into the moral dilemma that Kate is thrown into once Steve asks her to become a CHIS on behalf of AC-12. 

“Great. So either I’m accused of being a traitor or I become one to avoid being accused?” 

She doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle because she has loyalties to both parties. The trust formed between herself and Jo showing that she wants to stick by her but there’s still trust between her and Steve despite there being distance - this is told through her clothing later on (as pointed out by wecantseeyou here) and also by the fact she doesn’t strictly tell Steve she won’t do it, rather that she will think about it.  

Returning to Kate’s relationship with Jo and what solidifies the bond that has been set up between them is that scene that takes place at the end of the first episode. We see Kate watching as Buckells is laying into Jo about her decision to not charge Terry Boyle. Kate appears to be the only one watching, or at least the only one that cares enough - shown by the fact she follows Jo out when she leaves the room. If this was undercover Kate this would be something we expect to see, she would use this as an opportunity to swoop in and provide emotional support. But Kate isn’t undercover, she’s going after Jo because she genuinely wants to see if Jo is okay. 

She doesn’t ask Jo about what Buckells had been having a go at her about, she only asks “Boss, you okay?” - that’s the first one and Jo delves into the reason she had become so upset/why Buckells was having a go. This wasn’t something Kate asked about but she lets Jo talk and get it off her chest. As Jo goes to leave Kate then asks again, “Boss, is everything okay?” She wants to know how Jo is feeling within herself, why else would she ask twice? Kate is interested in the welfare of Jo, not in finding out the gossip of what was said in that room. 

What happens next is monumental and this is where Kate’s confusion really begins. Everything that happened between Kate and Jo before (dirty stop-out scene, talking at the same time etc) could all be passed off as them having a close friendship, nothing more. But there is a shift in this scene that pushes their relationship in a different direction - the music playing in the background only emphasising this.

Kate’s reaction to this moment is very telling, the way she looks down at their joined hands, she knows how it would look if someone seen them now; it’s not exactly how colleagues act around each other is it? We’ve not seen her form a romantic connection with a colleague (you could maybe argue Dot but it wasn’t set up in the way Kate and Jo have been set up) let alone a woman so this is all new territory for her but it is definitely romantic and this is the shift towards that. Kate’s panicked look towards Jo as Jo is leaving, she knows that something deeper is going on between them from this point on.  

Before I continue with Kate and Jo’s relationship I have to talk about that scene between Jo and Buckells and why it’s so important that Kate is the one watching that interaction and why she is the one to comfort Jo. I have said in a previous post about how there are many parallels/similarities between S4 and S6. I also said that it wasn’t necessarily related to Kate’s character but it absolutely is the more that I think about it. 

Series 4 heavily plays on inequality within the police force, how women are at a disadvantage to men when it comes to getting promotions and what not. This is portrayed through Roz Huntley, her frustrations being that she is now having to work extra hard to prove herself after returning to work from being a mum - this coincides with Hilton blackmailing her and putting the pressure on her to close the case. 

Now although Kate goes undercover to investigate Roz, they do bond over one thing: they are both women who are striving to be the best. Kate throughout S4 is persistently undermined by Ted, yes she gets a promotion to DS - something that Steve gets rather jealous over - but even after passing her inspectors exam and being more than capable of being a DI, Ted still turns her down, telling her that it was more than likely going to go to Steve since he has more experience. 

Kate is visibly hurt by this but does well to hide it. This moment in particular we can see that Kate is feeling isolated, she’s put on her own in the lift, pushed to the back of the frame, she holds herself - a visual representation of how women often feel in a male dominated workplace. This is no dig at Steve (it is, sorry) but Kate is a much more capable detective than Steve. Kate even swiftly points out how Steve’s attempt at an undercover operation had landed them in court. He’s not a bad detective, he is an extremely good one and does the job well but in comparison to Kate, he doesn’t match up. But simply because Steve is a man he gets a better chance of promotion before Kate - or at least that is how it appears. 

This brings me back to my earlier point of when Kate uses something Roz feels strongly towards and sides with her to gain her trust. But I don’t think this is Kate necessarily pretending, it’s convenient to have the topic come up but I do think it’s also something Kate feels strongly about. She’s just experienced first hand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of inequality and in a way, despite being there to investigate Roz, she does share her feelings on this issue. 

There is a defensiveness to Kate’s tone in this scene between her and Steve:

“It’s a crucial item and any irregularity…”

“Is something to throw in Huntley’s face?” 

“This isn’t personal. She’s at the centre of everything, I just want to get the truth.” 

Obviously Kate’s opinion on Roz does turn back to believing/knowing Roz is guilty but for a brief moment it appears she takes the view that AC-12 might just be investigating Roz simply because she is woman who made a couple of mistakes. We also go on to see Roz and Kate having a confrontation and sexism comes into play, with Roz lowkey telling Kate that she is worth more: 

“How old are you Kate?” 

“31.”

“I’ll tell you about my road to 31. I’d been a DI two years already. Then, I made life choices in the best interest of others. Not in my best interests, at all, as it turned out. And from what I know, you won’t make that mistake. You’d give up anything to get to the top. But despite all your ambition, you find yourself on the wrong side of the line.”

“What do you know?” 

“That you’ve got a son you barely see. Hardly holier than thou.” 

(Remember Roz’s “You’d give up anything to get to the top,” it’ll be important later).  

These words get to Kate because she knows they’re true. She is an ambitious woman who keeps getting knocked down simply because she is a woman. And the fact that she has given up her life with her son in order to pave the way for her career and yet it still hasn’t paid off clearly annoys her. She might not like Roz but they do agree on this. 

Something else that Roz brings up in her series is something that was mentioned briefly by Steve, Kate and is later mentioned by Jo - bringing in the link there. The something being The Masons. We first hear it in S3 in reference to Ted Hastings and Patrick Fairbank. And since Fairbank ends up being corrupt I think it’s fair to say that The Masons now = a form of corruption. In the same series Kate goes to meet a female AC-3 officer in order to request permission for an undercover operation, said officer goes on to say “Because I’m a woman, I can’t be a Mason,” this further solidifies that The Masons are synonymous with corruption. I mean, they are an organisation that exclude women from high ranking positions and get away with it. The fact that Kate seeks authority from a different, female officer because she knows that The Masons are technically a corrupt organisation is very telling of how she feels towards them. 

Roz accuses Ted of being a Mason and henceforth explaining that that is why he is always more interested in investigating female officers and why there is a lack of diversity within AC-12. This is a play on Kate since she had just been turned down the DI role in favour of Steve - and I think it’s fair to assume that Ted then only gave that position to Kate later because of what Roz revealed in that interview, and if he didn’t put a female officer in a high ranking role after what he had just been accused of, it would’ve looked bad on him. Which is really rather annoying to be honest, Kate should’ve got that role because she makes a good DI not because Ted got called out on his bullshit, but we move. 

In S6E3 Jo says to Kate about Buckells employing Ryan: 

“Family friend or something, probably got a nudge down at the Masonic Lodge.”

Now that one line was enough for Kate to know, at the time, that Jo wasn’t ‘bent,’ since she had just spoken out against a form of corruption. Jo had shown a dislike towards the idea that Ryan got a job on merit for simply being a man and that gives Kate ammunition to go after Buckells and find the evidence that would prove Buckells is corrupt. The fact he does end up being ‘The Fourth Man’ further pushes the idea that The Masons = Corruption. 

So Kate witnessing Buckells laying into Jo is another reason for Kate and Jo to share a bond; they’re both women in a very male dominated workplace who are more likely to be subjected to bullying by fellow male colleagues. If we do get another series I wouldn’t be surprised if it digs into The Masons and that form of corruption. 

In summary, Kate feels very strongly about inequality within the workplace since she is always undermined by her male colleagues and it wouldn’t surprise me that if half the reason why Kate feels so comfortable within MIT is because she’s working alongside a woman and she isn’t undermined nearly half as much. 

See: Jo’s constant, “That’s a good point, Kate,” “You’re right, Kate,” as opposed to Ted’s constant, “Steve’s right, Kate.” 

Back to Kate and Jo’s relationship. The shift in their relationship post that corridor scene becomes more obvious as it is from that point on where Kate starts to defend Jo to Steve:

“For Christ’s sake Steve, she’s my gaffer, you want me to rat on her?” 

And that moral dilemma comes into play again as Kate warns Jo that AC-12 are going to storm MIT and seize files. Kate isn't happy with what she’s done, you can see that from a mile off but she knows that she needed to do it since her loyalty now lies with MIT and she needs to protect the case she and her team are working on.  

I also think it has something to do with what she previously says to Steve:

“You know what it’s like being ex-anticorruption. I’ve had to work my bollocks off with them lot.” 

She knew that if she didn’t warn Jo about AC-12 then her whole team would turn on her and accuse her of being undercover/colluding with AC-12 when she isn’t (necessarily). And we’re back to the point she raises to Steve about her being seen as a possible traitor. 

We later see the first ‘date’ scene between Kate and Jo and much like how we were thrown into Kate and Jo’s relationship/closeness, we are thrown into this scene. We assume they’ve been there for a while and they’re in the middle of a conversation when we join them. And Jo is leading the conversation, she is talking freely whilst Kate is listening - once again, there’s a lot of trust between them. 

What is striking in this scene however is the parallels to a similar scenario between Kate and Tony in the first series. Context is different since that meeting is arranged as a means for Kate to dig for information from Tony whereas with Jo, it’s a chance for Kate to be a ‘sounding board’ as she puts it, she’s being emotionally available for Jo. But there is something that really stood out:  

Kate’s reaction to both being very different. With Tony she makes light of the situation whilst with Jo she doesn’t say anything, just simply nods her head. It’s all explained when given the context, she’s undercover with Tony and rule number one is to not form too close a relationship with the person you’re investigating as it could jeopardise the case she’s working on, so she has to keep it impersonal. But she puts it in a way that shuts down the allusion but doesn’t give anything away. 

Her reaction to Jo, on the other hand, is striking. She nods, not saying a word. She wants to call her Jo, she wants to cross that boundary and there is nothing stopping her from doing that so she can agree to it.

But whilst we’ve brought up this parallel we might as well look into other parallels concerning Kate’s relationship with both Tony and Jo. Tartan grey suits aside, Tony and Jo are quite similar, they were both groomed by Tommy Hunter - Jo in a much deeper and longer way but the point still stands. Tony was the one to introduce Tommy into the show and Jo was the one to take him out - not in a literal sense but she revealed the most information that would shut down the era that could be deemed as Tommy Hunter’s era. Both Tony and Jo form a close relationship with Kate, Jo’s being more genuine whereas Tony’s is faked and all smoke and mirrors. 

The proof is in the pudding here:

It’s awkward and unwelcome. Vastly different to this scene: 

Jo and Tony are perhaps the only two of the ‘bent coppers’ we see that don’t really do anything - at least nothing drastic like murder anyway. Out of all the ‘bent coppers’ they’re the most innocent. The fact that they both have connections to Ryan Pilkington as well is very telling. But I won’t go into it too much since this is about Kate. 

The difference between Kate’s relationship with Tony and her relationship with Jo is that it is made very obvious that she doesn’t like Tony. She shows no sympathy towards him at all when talking to Steve in private - once again proving how good of a liar she is since that isn’t given away in the slightest during her scenes with Tony. Jo, on the other hand, she is very fond of, even after Jo lures her to the lorry park to be murdered Kate is still defensive of the woman and still, in a small way, takes her side. 

That being said, of both relationships there are assumptions made. Nigel makes the dig “Her cover wasn’t the only thing she blew, ask Tony,” and Farida’s “Smart money’s on Kate Fleming,” to which Jo replies, “Kate and I have been shagging on the sly for months.” 

Now what would’ve made a REALLY good parallel between S1 and S6 would’ve been this conversation between Steve and Kate:

“He saved my life.”

“He put you in danger in the first place.”

A wasted opportunity there considering how many parallels there have been between these two series with all the callbacks to old characters and little references that have been made. It would’ve made the parallels between Tony and Jo even greater; Tony lured Steve to be murdered (note how Ryan is present there also) but ended up saving him and Jo lured Kate to be murdered but ended up saving her by taking the blame for Ryan’s death. It would’ve made for a very good reference. 

Moving back to the ‘date’ scene between Kate and Jo, I think I’m pointing out the obvious when I say that it has clear romantic undertones, from the lighting to the music that plays underneath - notably increasing as Kate says “Nah, not really my type.” The close up shot of this moment making it even more intimate. 

Then we move onto Kate being the one to ask Jo around for the weekend, which Jo initially turns down and Kate adds, “Yeah, no pressure,” before initiating the hug that then changes Jo’s mind. We have not seen Kate in this situation before at all. Not in a heavily loaded romantic scene anyway, not even with Richard Akers. There was a sense of a deeper connection with Richard, they were sleeping with each other after all, but it also felt impersonal. Kate would turn up to his house, they’d sleep together, they might have a small scene together afterwards and then Kate would leave. We didn’t even see them kiss. They were just two lonely people, stuck in a loveless marriage wanting to feel something that they were both missing in their relationships.  

But there’s an intimacy that’s been set up between Kate and Jo, this is more than just a friendship and it’s coming from both parties, with Kate being much more explicit about it than Jo; offering drinks, seeming happy that Jo turned the two men down and then asking to see Jo more - this is all Kate. But it’s not in the pushy way we have seen with her when it comes to her UCO’s. She’s not digging for information from Jo she just wants to love her. 

They also reveal their relationship status to each other in this moment, “It’s Mark’s turn to have Josh this weekend,” “I’ve just come out of a long term relationship.” If that isn’t screaming that what is happening between Kate and Jo isn’t just friendship then I don’t know what is. 

We then have Kate watching Jo as she leaves, there’s a pensive look on her face. She’s just crossed that boundary, she’s all but asked to spend the weekend with Jo and then followed it up with a hug. She’s made the first move and is clearly nervous about it. The romantic music continues under this and it sounds hopeful/happy. A stark contrast to how the show usually feels so the fact it’s playing up to this and taking the time to set Kate and Jo up shows that it’s important - the show doesn’t focus too much on personal lives. And because of that, it only signifies more, how annoying it is that these two got dropped to subtext after having it be so obvious. 

And with such focus on Kate in this moment it show it’s integral. Kate is finding herself in a position that she has never been in before and because she knows that AC-12 are now investigating Jo, it only worries her more. She might think that AC-12 are wrongly investigating Jo but there’s always that chance they could be right and if they are, then her professional integrity is going to be questioned for the first time. She’s finding herself in a position that is usually filled by Steve. And Kate is highly judgemental of Steve in that department. 

Then we have this scene in the third episode: 

This is their first sort of argument and Jo has pulled Kate up on her interviewing techniques, telling her that she was too harsh and that she’s “gotten used to nicking coppers.” It bothers Kate, she taps her foot, ponders for a moment and then follows behind Jo. She knows Jo’s right and we know this because she says to Steve in the next episode “You spend too much time on anti-corruption, it starts to change the way you see things.” 

She’s actually taken something that someone has said to her on board. This is rather unusual for Kate, who is extremely stubborn and isn’t a fan of people criticising her (but will happily criticise others - Kate really is the epitome of AC-12 isn’t she?) But the fact she listens to what Jo has to say and it changes her in a sense just goes to show how much she really likes Jo and she wants Jo to like her and also shows how much change Kate has gone through in just the first three episodes of S6. 

I am still trying to figure out why Kate made the decision to follow the patrol car but then I suppose it can be easily explained if you think of the fact that Kate will never be free of AC-12, no matter how hard she tries. Kate is AC-12 through and through, she is so deeply embedded in it she will never get out - it’s a stark parallel to how Jo is in a similar position in regards to the OCG. Going to be ~controversial~ here and say that I don’t think AC-12 makes Kate happy. It’s her home, it’s where she feels safe but it isn’t what makes her happy. S6 is, perhaps, the happiest that we have seen Kate. There were small hints throughout S5 that Kate no longer enjoyed working as a UCO/for AC-12, a number of quotes alluding to that, S5E1: 

“She couldn’t stop the hijack but the best she could do was limit the loss of life.” 

“Oh Christ I’ve been there. The lies, the fear. Got only knows what she’s going through.”

S5E2:

“Look Kate…Corbett’s embedded in a group of hardened criminals who’d execute him if they discover his true identity.” 

“I’ve been there, it’s not nice.”

S5E2 again:

“(About UCO’s) Ask her. She was undercover. Perfect job for a selfish arsehole that don’t give a toss about his own family.”  

“Look what Corbett’s missus said about undercover work, that was never you.”

“Thanks Steve, but she was right.” 

All that does is hint that it wasn’t just Ted’s betrayal that pushed Kate to leave AC-12, rather it being the last straw and it giving her an actual reason to want out. 

She does, however, go back to AC-12 in the end because she has nowhere else to go and her job is her life. She’d rather sacrifice her happiness to keep her job and to keep doing what she’s doing.

When she returns to AC-12, for the first time this series, she hits us with the “My first duty as a police officer is preservation of life, sir. That’s why I’m here.” Her job always comes first, above everything else (it’s half the reason why her marriage broke down). Other examples of this include this moment from S2E6:

“I was undercover with Denton, and I blew it. And now we’re blowing the whole case. I need to close this, Steve, or I’ve got nothing.” 

And in S5E6:

“I’m just calling it as I see it, Steve. The truth comes first…I’m not going to sit around and wait for a kicking off the gaffer or Carmichael when there’s police work to be done.”

Kate is highly committed to her work and will stop at nothing so she can complete it; no matter who she might be investigating/building a case upon. This causes her to come across as callous and cold but this is Kate. Her job is her life. And honestly, out of all three of the main characters, Kate is probably the straightest. The only thing coming to mind about this not being the case would be the concealment of her relationship with Richard Akers but even then, it wouldn’t have effected the case too much since Jayne and Kate never had that phone call. This idea that Kate is the straightest out of all three of them does change in S6 however, since she is the one to shoot Ryan and she lets Jo take the blame for it. But despite that, Kate still continues with her holier than thou attitude which we’ll delve into more later. 

I know I keep switching back and forth between Kate and Jo’s relationship but Jo really is integral to this development in Kate that I can’t not talk about it. There’s further proof that Kate is more interested in the welfare of Jo rather than wanting information out of her shown via this scene:  

Kate can be seen listening to the conversation between Jo and Steve but it isn’t until she hears Jo’s voice falter after hearing about Farida in prison does she then turn to look over at Jo. It peaks her interest and it explains why she brings up the topic of Farida at their next ‘date.’ 

“Look boss, I, uh, don’t want to speak out of term but…well, (Farida) claims that you two were close.” 

She’s not asking Jo a question here which is interesting. UCO!Kate would ask the question, she knows how to work people to get information out of them if she needed to. But she leaves this opened ended sentence that gives Jo the option to answer if she wants to (you could argue that since she knows how to work people then this is her way of working Jo but it doesn’t ever come across that way in my opinion). And she doesn’t, but this doesn’t necessarily bother Kate, at least not enough for her to push another question on Jo. 

“I imagine everyone’s got off on that little scenario. No life of their own so they pick holes in someone else’s. Especially if you’re a single woman.” 

“Yeah tell me about it, all it takes is a short haircut.”

Typical Kate to make a joke in this situation, it’s very much in character (made me think of her making a joke about putting Lindsay’s cat Bella into an evidence bag). The light joke doesn’t go down well with Jo and it causes her to back off. But we must remember that this is Kate’s first proper female friendship, we’ve only seen her in male dominated groups and she’s used to their way of making jokes. Prime example of that being half the jokes made by Dot and Nige during the first series, hardly stuff you want to hear but unfortunately it’s true to life. Being used to that sense of humour meant that Kate didn’t see much wrong with what she said until after she notices that Jo closes herself off: 

“Whatever you’ve heard Kate, it’s wrong. Farida’s a liar. That’s not me.”

“Okay.” 

Kate knows it’s a lie but doesn’t push it. Her obvious confusion is pointed out when Jo leaves the room: 

I can’t tell you what’s going on in Kate’s head but it’s probably a mixture of wondering why Jo had gone so cold on her suddenly, if she had said anything wrong and if everything that has happened between them in the past three episodes has been all in her head? 

But what happens in this scene and what is spoken about isn’t necessarily subtext. Okay they don’t actually say the word ‘lesbian’ or ‘bisexual’ it’s more alluded to. But this is a very obvious and deliberate conversation about Jo’s sexuality/Kate trying to figure out her own and wanting confirmation from Jo that she hasn’t just been imagining it. It’s done on purpose because they’re setting Kate and Jo up to go on that route - and once again, this is what makes it so annoying that they did get dropped to subtext by E7. They had painted a very clear picture in the first couple of episodes - Kate and Jo are falling in love with each other, it’s a doomed love story but it’s still a love story. 

Despite Jo being hurt by Kate’s not very well thought-out joke, she still carries a lot of trust in Kate by the fact she leaves her belongings on her seat. This seems minimal and unimportant but it rules out the idea that Kate was asking about Jo’s relationship with Farida for more information, from a case POV. If she had been and if she was interested in finding out if Jo really was as bent as AC-12 are making out then she would’ve seized that opportunity to take a look through Jo’s bag (we see her debate that opportunity when Tony leaves his phone behind after their drink at the pub in S1, but before she has chance to he’s already noticed he’s forgotten it and takes it back). But Kate is too busy wondering why Jo had lied to her, once again showing that she’s interested in Jo from a relationship standpoint. 

One thing I do love though and just from this alone we know that Kate and Jo are genuine is the fact that they bond over their hatred for Ian ‘what a twat’ Buckells: 

“I hope he’s going to give credit where it’s due.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“You brought Ryan onto the team, boss.”

“Not me. That was Buckells’ idea.”

I’m not going to underestimate Kate in this moment however because she does pull a very clever move. She doesn’t ask outright but she is able to get an answer to a question she might have been asking. Steve made a dig earlier on in the episode about how Jo may have employed Ryan onto MIT herself, allowing Ryan to interfere with the Gail Vella files. Kate doesn’t play up to that accusation but you can see that she keeps in mind, she doesn’t want to believe that Jo picked Ryan on purpose but there is always the chance that she has. So, she uses this opportunity to find out if that was the case. Knowing now that it wasn’t, she’s reassured and she feels more confident in defending Jo as we see in later episodes. 

And as previously discussed, Kate starts looking into Buckells after Jo’s quip about the Masonic Lodge. And once she gets all the information she needed she then takes it to Jo and we get this line: 

“I knew you’d come through for me.” 

There’s a perspective change, we’ve seen before how Kate actively pushes how she will be able to do something for someone in order to gain their trust, “I’ll make it disappear,” in S1 and once again, telling Lindsay that she’ll say she was there that night of the ‘alleged’ attack on Lindsay’s neighbour. But she doesn’t investigate Buckells on Jo’s behalf, or because she wants to gain Jo’s trust. It’s quite ironic really isn’t it? She’s always tried to gain trust from these ‘bent coppers’ by offering to cover their crimes - which they never take her up on to be honest - and then the one time she does something off her own back and without any of those intentions, she does - sort of - cover for a ‘bent copper.’ But as we know, Buckells does end up being bent so Kate wasn’t in the wrong to look into him, just a shame they never clicked on to his deeper corruption sooner. 

And then Jo follows up with the line: 

“I needed someone on my team I could trust completely. Someone with no chance of being bent. Who better than an ex-anticorruption officer?” 

Oh if Kate only knew the deeper meaning of that line at the time. But in the same way as The Mason dig Jo makes, this is confirmation to Kate that Jo isn’t bent and AC-12 have got it wrong. If Jo was bent, why would she encourage Kate to flush out the corruption? 

It isn’t until Episode 4 where we actually learn more about Kate’s reasonings for leaving AC-12 and it comes at no surprise that it is due to Ted’s indiscretions during S5. But what is surprising about Ted and Kate’s conversation is that Kate doesn’t hide her true feelings and tells Ted the truth: 

“You made your choice to move on, and I know that the disciplinary action against me was definitely a factor. It put you and Steve in a really difficult position.” 

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie.”  

But considering that Kate isn’t all that shy being honest in front of Ted it’s not that surprising. But given it is a tender, emotional topic for Kate I suppose you’d normally expect her to hide away her feelings but it’s quite nice that she doesn’t. She wants Ted to know that she hasn’t totally forgiven him for what he’s ‘alleged’ (at the time) to have done. 

And then we get the conversation between Kate and Steve and we get Kate’s second defence of Jo. And this time it is said with more confidence because she’s witnessed key moments first hand that have confirmed to her that Jo couldn’t be bent: 

“Without Jo we wouldn’t have got Buckells. Look, you haven’t seen the change in her I have. Now that Buckells is off her back, she’s on the Vella case 100 percent.” 

Typical love is blind moment there, ‘you don’t know them like I do.’ And the fact that she mentions that Buckells has been on Jo’s back for most of the case, is pulling it back to my previous mention of how Kate witnessing the argument between Buckells and Jo is so important - she’s now using it as an excuse to Steve about why Jo may have been lacking in her investigation into Gail Vella’s murder. 

(Just want to drop in and check that you’ve had drink or something, this is about halfway through I think so...continue).

Later on in the episode she’s seen defending Jo again: 

“He’s watching her.”

“Or meeting with her.”

“You got evidence of that?” 

We know why Kate is so defensive, she’s falling in love with Jo and she trusts her completely. But even still, it’s very interesting since she has never defended anyone quite so fiercely - at least not in private to Ted and Steve. 

In S1E5 Steve and Kate have this conversation about Tony Gates: 

“He didn’t kill her.”

“No?” 

It’s short and simple but enough to prove that no matter how much it appeared on the surface that Kate liked Tony it was all faked and she didn’t trust him in the slightest, going as far to say that he was capable of murder. 

We also see in this scene that Steve grows suspicious of Kate’s closeness to Jo (or at least that’s what it appeared to look like at the time and maybe if Kate and Jo’s relationship was acknowledged by Steve then this moment would’ve made more sense): 

There is also another paralleling conversation that Kate and Steve could’ve had in S6 from S1. And once again, this is in reference to Kate’s relationship with Tony: 

“Something happened between you two.” 

“Like what?” 

“Nothing, forget it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I shouldn’t have asked, it’s private.”

“Yeah, it is.” 

It’s very interesting that all the ‘moments’ between Kate and Tony were all faked on the basis of Kate wanting information between him but because of one comment from Nigel, Steve decided to pull Kate up on that accusation. Yet in S6, despite appearing suspicious of Kate and Jo’s relationship he never once brought it up? You could argue that Steve knows Kate better than anyone and he has learnt not to push her on those topics because she will just tell him to piss off, but, how many times has Kate slated Steve for getting involved with witnesses/suspects? That would’ve been Steve’s perfect opportunity to tear a strip off Kate and say that she is no angel and she’s not protected from falling in love with the wrong people. But alas Jed Mercurio would rather have focused on a straight relationship where one half only appeared in a handful of scenes <3

But back to the ‘You got evidence of that?’ Moment before I get too annoyed, the fact that Kate wants to reveal to Jo about Ryan’s movements is very telling. She wants to protect Jo and she genuinely believes that Jo is a good person/isn’t bent. We see that this trust runs even deeper when she goes ahead and tells Jo anyway despite Ted telling her not to - but she’s clever enough to not mention any collusion she has with AC-12.

“I need to talk to you in private.”

“Something wrong?”

“It’s not personal. It’s work.”

This is the first use of the word ‘personal’ from Kate and the fact she feels the need to state that what she wants to talk to Jo about isn’t to do with them and their relationship is…interesting. A few people have pointed about how the use of personal within Line of Duty could be argued to allude to relationships/love interests - Farida left for ‘personal reasons’ after all - for Kate to use it here and to make that separation between personal and professional shows that Kate and Jo’s relationship runs deeper than being just colleagues. We know that already from how they’ve acted around each other but now we’ve had it explicitly confirmed. 

Ironically though, this is the moment Jo starts taking a step back from Kate in order to protect her. She now knows that Ryan is watching her and if Ryan is watching her then he will be able to see what’s forming between herself and Kate and that puts Kate at the centre of danger. Look what happened to Farida, she was in a relationship with Jo and then she ended up in prison. Worse could’ve happened but Jo did what she could to protect Farida - she used harsh words to hurt Farida and push her away (a similar tactic used by Tony Gates to his wife), but because Farida kept pushing and ended up ratting on Jo, Jo had to take drastic action by planting those burner phones. 

And now it’s happening to Kate but she knows that Kate isn’t Farida and she won’t cave as easily - as we go on to see later on. 

That being said, Kate does give Jo a confidence boost. She tries to get rid of Ryan. But Kate’s support isn’t enough, it’s too late for Jo. But just the fact that one word from Kate gives her enough to stand up goes to show how much Jo has come to rely on Kate and how much she trusts her. 

But as we know, Jo gets threatened by Ryan so Jo does the only thing she knows how to do and that’s to push Kate away. 

She tells Kate to drop her issues with Ryan otherwise she’ll request a transfer for Kate. Kate mouths the word ‘ma’am’ completely unable to use her voice. She’s annoyed and evidently so. But she isn’t just annoyed at the fact Jo has told her that she would get rid of her if it came down to it. She’s annoyed because, in her eyes, Jo doesn’t know the danger she’s putting herself in by keeping Ryan on the team. (Of course we know that Jo knows Ryan and his connections but Kate doesn’t, she’s been defending Jo to high heaven and truly believes that Jo is innocent). Kate has seen firsthand the sorts of things Ryan has been involved in - she doesn’t learn just how much he’s involved until later on but she did see some of things he got up to as a kid and knows that he could be just as dangerous now as he was then. 

You could argue that she’s also annoyed at the fact that she went against AC-12 and people she inherently trusts in order to protect Jo and now she’s just got that thrown back in her face.

And then we move on to the big episodes. What happened at the end of E4 clearly created a rift between Kate and Jo, we see Kate trying to pull Jo to one side but gets rejected, and she’s hurt by that.  

Kate expresses her hurt to AC-12 in the following scene: 

“Jo’s become cold and distant towards me, I don’t know what’s going on in the background.” 

Shows that there’s a distance between them now but Kate is still sympathetic towards her. She doesn’t like that Jo is pushing her out and I think this is when it really starts to click for Kate that something isn’t right. She gets those suspicions evidently confirmed when Steve reveals that Jo’s DNA was found at Farida’s house and henceforth that she’s related to Tommy Hunter. (Also the fact that Kate is using ‘Jo’ here and not ‘Davidson’ as you would expect her to reveals her personal relationship with Jo).

Despite that distance, Kate is still defensive of Jo and still trusts her: 

“You’ve put Jo under surveillance, why?” 

“Our in-depth forensic examination of Farida Jatri’s home detected Davidson’s DNA.”   

Her face the moment she finds out that Jo lied to her about her relationship with Farida is heartbreaking but I think the fact that we see Chloe and Ted’s reaction to this also, is so important. They’re very clearly aware of the feelings between Kate and Jo even if it is never said, and we’re back to being annoyed that Kate and Jo’s relationship wasn’t acknowledged in E7. Everyone was aware of it so why wasn’t it mentioned?!

“Davidson’s DNA is a partial match for Tommy Hunter.” 

…

“I know, from Steve, that you’ve formed the view that Davidson isn’t bent, Kate. But I’m sorry, it appears that she’s pulled the wool over your eyes.” 

And then there’s the explicit confirmation that Steve is aware of Kate’s feelings towards Jo.  

She’s just been bombarded with a lot of information, information that goes against everything that she has believed in/defended for the past couple of episodes. She’s conflicted and doesn’t know what to think. Kate Fleming, who is usually calm and collected and in control of her emotions is now finding herself caught in a moment that she usually isn’t in. And now she’s wondering why she couldn’t see it, why she couldn’t see that something wasn’t right. She’s usually so sharp, quick to pick up on corruption - she spotted Dots pretty early on. But she knows, deep down, she knows and I think that scares her more. 

Kate has always pulled Steve up on his lack of integrity, for getting himself stuck in situations that would cloud his vision and now suddenly the tables have turned. It’s her getting in that situation. It’s her having her vision blurred because of her relationship with someone and she doesn’t know what to do. 

That being said, her trust in Jo is still very much there. It’s why she formulates the plan. She wants to prove that Steve and AC-12 are wrong about Jo, that just because she’s related to the OCG overlord doesn’t mean that she herself is corrupt. But she also needs to prove it to herself, she needs to know that she didn’t get it wrong. That she didn’t let a corrupt officer slip through her fingers because she fell in love. She’s an ex-anticorruption officer, she should be able to spot when a police officer is bent, more so than anyone else. 

She later reveals what her plan had been to prove Jo’s innocence to Ted and Steve, she wants to shout it from the rooftops that she was right about Jo and they were wrong: 

“Only one site was disclosed to MIT officers. However, I took the decision to inform DSU Davidson of all three possible sites.” 

“It’s a big call, Kate.” 

“Well, I believed it paid off, sir. You said yourself the information on Jo’s family history strongly suggests she’s colluding with organised crime, but that doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen first hand. We needed to know one way or another. She had plenty of time to tip off the OCG and she didn’t. As far as I’m concerned that’s proof she isn’t bent.” 

It’s the fourth defence of Jo and is said with even more confidence because now she has evidence to back it up. She knows for definite that Jo isn’t bent and her conscience had been appeased; she didn’t get it wrong.  

And even after all that, after everything Kate does, Ted still hits her with the “Steve’s right, Kate.” She’s undermined yet again. She wants Ted and Steve to trust and like Jo as much as she does because she loves Jo. 

And then we get another hostile scene between Kate and Jo but Kate is still trying to let Jo know that she is on her side, that she has her back, that she has spent months defending Jo’s arse to AC-12 and Steve: 

“I’m telling you the truth, Jo, because I trust you with it.” 

Jo fires back by telling Kate to request a transfer but this has come after a warning look from Ryan. Jo knows what’s going to happen next and she wants to get Kate out of the way before she’s asked the unforgivable, she evens mentions that AC-12 would take her back in the hopes that that would be enough to turn Kate. 

“You’ve been distant with me for days, is this personal?” 

“I’m your senior officer, I should be distant.” 

“I thought we were friends, what’s happening here?”

“So you can tell AC-12?”

“No, I wouldn’t tell them personal stuff.”

And there’s the ‘personal’ again, twice. They’re talking about their relationship, Kate is making it about their relationship. She’s trying to tell Jo that the reason she trusts her so much is because she loves her and that’s something she wouldn’t tell AC-12 because it doesn’t concern them. 

“And as for requesting a transfer, I respectfully decline. I’m not leaving.”  

That is very much in character for Kate, sticking to her true stubborn self there. But she’s angry at Jo because she won’t let Kate help her. Jo is angry because Kate doesn’t realise the danger she’s putting herself in - a nice parallel to the other conversation they shared where the roles are reversed and Jo was trying to help Kate by getting her to drop the subject of Ryan and Kate was annoyed because Jo was blind to the danger she was in. 

Kate’s ‘I’m not leaving,’ does have much more meaning to it than we first realise however. After shooting Ryan, she runs off with Jo - she has no reason to, she was lawfully carrying a firearm and serving her duty as an officer. But she gives Jo the chance to tell her everything, she doesn’t leave her side and does everything she can to protect Jo i.e the car chase scene. She takes Jo’s side despite everything and sticks to her words of ‘I’m not leaving.’

Later on, Jo manipulates Kate, playing on the one thing Kate wants to address, “The personal issues we discussed,” she knows that’s the only way Kate will come out with her (at least, that’s what she thinks). Kate is desperate to explore whatever is going on between them and Jo plays on that.  

And judging by Kate’s hopeful face, it seems to do the trick. Kate’s hopeful face being that she thinks Jo might actually open up to her and tell her the truth, and invite Kate into whatever is going on in her life/head. Poor Kate.  

She knows deep down that something isn’t right but she goes along with it because she trusts Jo so much and I think she truly believes that she’s gotten through to her. 

There is a dilemma going on within Kate here, she wants to trust Jo but knows deep down she can’t because of the AC-12 officer that is embedded in her (Ted’s ‘That’s my officer out there,’ coming into play here). She keeps the gun on her person which shows despite her constant defence, she’s still suspicious. However, she doesn’t phone Steve until after she’s arrived at the address showing that the trust for Jo is still there. Obviously that changes when she realises that the location is dodgier than she probably first thought. 

“Let’s not hang around here Jo, we’d rather be inside with a glass of wine.”

Sticking to her character once again here, trying to be hopeful, trying to be right about Jo’s character. 

“Jo wanted to give you a way out.” 

This line from Ryan is crucial for Kate’s trust in Jo. It may get lost amongst the other, more pressing events, but even just hearing first that Jo tried to save her probably brings her some reassurance in the long run. From this line alone she knows that Jo never intended to kill her and was coerced into setting the scene up. 

“I’ve done my bit. I don’t have to stay here and watch.” 

Jo was only told to ‘get rid’ of Kate. She was never told to kill her. She was the one to entrap Kate but she was never going to be the one to kill her, that was on Ryan. This is another crucial moment adding to the reason why Kate would run away with Jo and give her the chance to talk. 

E6 opens up with Kate being her typical self and taking control of the situation. But even so, she’s struggling. As I’ve mentioned a lot throughout this, Kate is normally calm and collected, she very rarely lets her emotions get in the way of what she wants to do. But there’s no room for her to hide from her emotions here, she hasn’t had the time to compartmentalise them, she hasn’t had the time to process and understand them. And that unsettles her, she wants to take control - and she does as best as she can - but she’s faltering. The person who she loves has just lured her to her death and she doesn’t know what to do with that information.

“You lured me there to be murdered.” 

Confirms that she knows that Jo wasn’t going to be the one that actually murdered her, just that she was the one to lure her. 

“Kate.”

“Didn’t you?”

She cuts Jo off, she’s angry and understandably so. But because she hasn’t had time to process her emotions she isn’t being as cool as she normally would be in a high-stress situation.  

She is really struggling and it’s understandable of course. And then we have that scene:

“I always worried you were pretending.” 

“Pretending?” 

“You know what I mean…to lure me into trusting you.” 

Kate’s ‘pretending?’ Is more offence at the fact Jo felt she had to suggest it - Kate was far from pretending, her behaviour across the series is enough to prove that she is in love with Jo. I also think it’s to do with the fact that Jo had the audacity to ask the question now, of all situations to bring up the topic, Jo could’ve picked a better moment. But Jo doesn’t let up, using Kate’s preferred tactic of getting information out of people:

“You still won’t answer, were you lying to me Kate?”

“This is about you Jo, not me.” 

Deflecting the question that she has every right to deflect, given the circumstances. But she neither confirms nor denies said question - she’s trying to keep control of the situation, she’s trying not to let her emotions get in the way of what she needs to do. She needs to find out the truth, she needs Jo to tell her everything before the law inevitably catches up with them. 

She turns the question back to Jo, asking if she was the one lying, that maybe she didn’t want Kate on the team at all. She then goes on to reveal that she knows Jo lied about her relationship with Farida. It’s coming from a place of anger and frustration and like I said, Kate is well within her rights to feel like that.  

Then we have Kate doing something surprising, she drives away as she hears police sirens. I’ve been trying to place why she was so determined to keep Jo away from the police, to give Jo that chance to explain herself but then all of a sudden, Kate hanging the phone up on Carmichael made it all make sense. 

The moment Steve told Kate that the observations on Jo and Ryan had been pulled as a result of Osbourne and Carmichael, she knew that something bigger was at play here. If Osbourne is the real H/The Fourth Man (extremely bloody likely) and Buckells was just the messenger, then it’s fair to say that it was actually Osbourne who ordered Kate’s death. And if that is the case then it makes sense he would pull the observations off, meaning that there would be no witnesses to the murder. But Kate’s not a stupid woman, she’s worked for AC-12 for God knows how long and she’s been part of the investigation into H/The Fourth man for just as long. She knows it’s someone higher up in the force and that information from Steve told her that something was going to happen at the meeting. 

But upon hearing that Jo tried to give her a way out, she knows that she can trust Jo, that she is just another pawn in this sick game, that she’s vulnerable and in need of protecting/saving. She must guess pretty early on, that it is The Fourth Man that is manipulating Jo and she knows that Jo isn’t going to reveal that in an interview, especially if it is someone high up. So that’s why she takes Jo out of the situation, that’s why she sacrifices her credibility and her integrity, as Ted said Ryan is a ‘sprat’ - he’s not important - she can get more information about the top man from Jo. Kate gives Jo that chance to talk and to prove herself before she is silenced by Osbourne and Carmichael. It helps that Jo trusts Kate and wants to tell Kate the truth. 

And then we have the emotion, oh the emotion:

“Jesus Christ, Steve’s in on it.”

She’s lost control of the situation, she’s lost control of her emotions and everything has just come tumbling down on her. And for a brief moment she feels as though everyone has turned on her: Jo, Steve, Ted, everyone she trusts most in the world and she can’t bear it. I can’t even begin to imagine how utterly alone she must’ve felt in that moment.  

“You bastard, Steve!”

“Stay there, Kate.”

…

“You gave me up! You told them!”

“Kate, I give you my word, I didn’t.”

“That’s bullshit.”  

“I promise you, I’ll get you to safety. Both of you.”

Kate doesn’t comply until after she’s assured that Steve will protect both her and Jo - shows that despite everything she still has a loyalty to Jo and she still wants to protect her. Despite what’s happened she can see that Jo is vulnerable and has been used her entire life, she gets that impression just from the little bit that Jo reveals to her. She feels for Jo, sort of in the same way she felt for Dot but this is on a much deeper level and to be fair, Dot did worse things than Jo. Kate might be an expert at compartmentalising her emotions but she still has a heart - we see it in glimpses across the whole show but it comes in tenfolds where Jo is concerned, as a result of how they’ve been set up. As much as she’s angry and upset and how much she feels betrayed by Jo, Kate still wants her to be safe and protected. Kate knows that Jo has been trying to get out of the clutches of the OCG i.e employing Kate in the first place. Jo holding the gun and taking the blame gives Kate enough assurance that Jo is being true to her word when she says she wanted out/didn’t want to kill Kate. That’s why she wants Jo safe, because she believes in her. 

Being put in that cell on her own now gives Kate the chance to compartmentalise her emotions, she has time to think over the events of the night. She has time to think about her feelings for Jo, the love, the loss, the betrayal. We see that this works, later on when Patricia tells her that Jo had taken the blame for Ryan’s death.   

She’s back to her usual stoic self, emotions cut off. She can’t allow herself to react about what Patricia has told her because it would give too much away, if she reacted then it would make it even more obvious that Jo wasn’t the one who shot Ryan. She can’t even show that she’s relieved or grateful that Jo had taken such sacrifice for her/kept to her word. 

“Are you sure you’re okay? I know nobody’s coming after you over Ryan Pilkington’s shooting, but if you ever need to talk about it.” 

That is not the face of someone who is fine. She’s very clearly trying desperately to push her emotions down, put them to one side because she has a job to do. Jo has given her this chance to solve the case and she sure as hell isn’t going to let her down. 

“Did she say anything about her family history? She told me her dad was a police officer.” 

“No. Never even gave us that much.” 

Proving my earlier point that Jo inherently trusts Kate and was willing to give her more details before they were interrupted. 

“She’s scared, Steve. After what happened to Tommy, Dot, Lakewell, never mind John Corbett.”

“That’s why we’ve got her on the VPU at Brentiss, security cameras monitoring access to her cell.” 

Even now, after everything Jo put her through, Kate is still defending her. She still has Jo’s back and it just makes it even more annoying that Steve doesn’t bring up the Jo conversation to Kate. He has seen Kate defend her this whole series, he knows that Jo lured Kate to her death and now he’s there, listening to Kate defending Jo and worrying over the fact that she’s scared and vulnerable. I know at this point there’s a sense of trust between Jo and Steve (as a result of Kate) and Steve is much more aware of the situation Jo has been in her whole life, he does feel for her and understands Kate’s defence of her. But the fact that he’s not even suspicious of how Kate’s opinion hasn’t changed despite learning of Jo’s collusion with the OCG and almost being killed, just highlights how Jed was so quick to drop Kate’s development, pushing it to the side for the sake of making a political point. 

And here comes the complete reversal of all the development Kate has had across this series, and more to the point, the memory loss she seems to go through. 

“The stuff he’s hiding. I never thought I’d look at the gaffer like this.” 

But she did? In S5 when they were only suspecting that Ted may have ratted John Corbett out to the OCG. She was willing to report it, that was how much she believed it. And now she’s acting as if that never happened? 

“Maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie.” 

“Come off it Steve. How many times have we criticised coppers that’ve took retirement to dodge disciplinary action?”

It’s a valid point and strengthens my previous mention of how she might be the ‘straightest’ out of all three of them. She is the embodiment of AC-12, truth and integrity - or at least she likes to believe that she is. Kate often sits in a place of judgement and thinks of herself as an innocent being that could do no wrong. This is hardly the case, she has made plenty of mistakes and although she hasn’t got herself into the vast number of predicaments that Steve has found himself in, she isn’t exactly free from this sense of ‘corruption.’ It does get pointed out to her on two occasions, the first from Richard Akers, “Holier than thou doesn’t suit you Kate,” and the second from Roz Huntley, “Hardly holier than thou.” 

The fact it’s mentioned twice and is very much the same quote shows that this attitude Kate upholds, is a part of her character. And we see it again with this moment: 

“She’s got a right to know what happened to her husband.” 

“Maybe she already does. She might be blackmailing the gaffer.” 

“Steph? No.” 

“You seem pretty sure…what?” 

“We’ve become…”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Steve.” 

Before I get into the main issue, I think it’s made pretty obvious in this scene that Jo isn’t the only one Kate is being cold towards, it’s everyone. She’s coming across as very cynical and unsympathetic. But you could argue that this is Kate, she’s almost the stereotypical ice-queen who has no emotions and doesn’t care who she hurts which, if this was pre-S6 Kate I would say is very much in character. 

But this isn’t pre-S6 Kate. S6 has shown the more emotional side to Kate, it’s seen her with her walls broken down, she’s opened up, fallen in love. And I know the events of the previous episode would be enough for her to put those walls up again but surely, if you are going to go to the effort of developing a character you could at least show the change that this development has had on her? 

I would’ve fully expected her to shrink away after what happened, I think that’s a completely normal reaction, even more so where Kate is involved. But given how she has gone through things in this series that she hasn’t gone through before, I would expect a different reaction from her? More emotional or more obvious that she’s trying to hold herself together. But I don’t see that, I just see her back as her S1-5, AC-12 self. 

It’s so hard because it makes total sense for Kate to revert back to her old self, she’s been burned and she’s hurting. But like I said, if she’s gone through this development over the course of S6, it’s set up in a way to make you think that she’s not going to handle this situation as she normally would but she ends up doing exactly that - any development Jed has put her through has now been reversed. 

But my main issue with this scene between Kate and Steve brings me back to my earlier point. Steve is shown to be aware of the possible thing that’s happening between Kate and Jo - little looks when Kate is defending Jo, the fact that Ted mentioned how Steve had been talking to him about Kate’s trust for Jo. 

Now Kate, throughout the entirety of show, has consistently berated Steve on his lack of control when it comes to women. She has torn a strip off him at every opportunity, when the situation with Lindsay occurred, she was so unbelievably angry and annoyed with him, that he had just quite possibly ruined the entire case because “Steve can’t keep it in his pants,” (thank you Lindsay Denton for summarising that up perfectly). 

This would’ve been the PERFECT opportunity for Steve to turn it back around on Kate. He’s aware of the situation and he would finally be able to pull Kate up on something that he is known for doing and something Kate never stops short to criticise him on. He could’ve taken that opportunity to humble Kate and make her aware of the fact that she’s not innocent and she’s certainly not free from falling/being interested/getting involved with the wrong person. A simple “What and Jo’s different?” From Steve would’ve sufficed. We don’t even need a verbal reaction from Kate, just a look that one, would’ve acknowledged Kate and Jo’s relationship and two, would’ve put Kate in her place and make her realise that she should be the last person to pass judgment on Steve since she has now found herself in a very similar position.

What’s more, and I have mentioned this before and it’s what makes E7 so frustrating, Kate and Jo have been constantly paralleled to Steph and Steve throughout the series, all the romantic scenes, alluding to relationships bubbling for our two main characters. So that scene is where I would expect the parallel to occur again but it doesn’t? And I just have to ask, why on earth would you parallel these relationships, show their romantic scenes side by side, have their development evolve in similar ways just to then only focus on one relationship? 

Okay the possibility of a relationship occurring between Kate and Jo went out of the window the moment we knew Jo was colluding with the OCG but Jed still took the time to explore it, to delve into it. So for it to not even be mentioned or acknowledged, I just think, why waste our time if it’s going to end up not being relevant? I mean the fact that a heterosexual relationship where one half got barely any screen time took precedence and verbal acknowledgment (aka not subtext) over a queer relationship occurring between two of the main characters of the series? I don’t even need to say it. 

But if subtext was all we’re going to get for Kate and Jo in E7 then I’ll just get back to analysing and reading between the lines because Jed can’t stick to and acknowledge storylines that he has spent the entire series building up and I need to make sense of it for some peace of mind. 

I’m going to call this outfit the ‘Proving Jo Davidson is innocent’ outfit since Kate wears it when she hatches her plan to prove just that and again, when she’s gathering evidence that would mean Jo would be able to get witness protection.   

I promise you that these are separate scenes but honestly the fact that we have the same shot with Kate sitting in the same place, from the same angle only just emphasises my point even more. This was Kate on her proving Jo is innocent mission that she never let slip. Her goal hasn’t changed since E5, but perhaps now she is even more determined because she now knows that it’s what Jo wants. Jo got Kate on the team for a reason and now that is what Kate is doing. 

And because I’ve *briefly* touched on the fact that Kate/Jo are always paralleled to Steve/Steph I think it’s only right that I point out how in both of the scenes shown above, there is a Steve/Steph scene paralleled to it, either before or after. Both the Steve/Steph scenes taking place in Steve’s car with Steph on the phone/over voicemail with the scenes showing that Steve is unsure about his relationship with Steph - which you could argue is the exact opposite to Kate and Jo. Kate might be unsure of her feelings and how deep they go but she is sure of one thing and that Jo is innocent and will do everything she can to prove it. 

We go on to next to see AC-12 discussing new messages that have come through entailing The Fourth Man’s plans for Jo. Kate refers to her as “Davidson” a stark contrast to how she has previously referred to her in the presence of Steve and Ted but this is most likely to do with the fact that has had to cut her feelings off for the sake of saving Jo so she is trying to make it as impersonal as possible. 

I won’t even talk about how easy it could’ve been to include a scene between Kate and Jo in that ambush scene. Before or even after, if Jed wanted to keep that element of surprise that AC-12 had managed to intercept before the ambush could take place. A simple moment where Kate went into the van and said “You alright?” would’ve sufficed. 

“You’re safe now Jo.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean really safe. To apply for witness protection. All my notes, all my records will show that you acted under the control and coercion of others. You can live the life you should’ve lived. Be free to be the person that you really are.” 

I have spoken about this before but will briefly go into it again. ‘The person’ that Kate is referring to is the person Kate has been defending for this whole series. Kate was the only person to see through Jo’s walls and glimpse the person that existed outside of the clutches of the OCG. Jo could be herself around Kate, probably felt liberated and had moments where she realised that Kate is something she could’ve had if she wasn’t stuck in that life, so it’s only right that Kate was the one to set her free - even if it’s at the expense of her own feelings but we’ll get into that now.

Although Kate is coming across as ‘cold’ during this scene, she isn’t unsympathetic. Everything she is saying to Jo is coming from a compassionate place. It’s vastly different from the previous scenes shared by Kate and Jo so it feels more harsh but Kate is having to cut her feelings off to provide the protection for Jo and to henceforth save her. She still cares deeply for Jo but she’s not allowed to show that, and it’s more for her own sake than anything. 

If Kate allows herself, for even a moment, to let that emotion escape then it’s all going to come out. Everything she has have ever felt for Jo will be free and then she won’t be able to let Jo go because then it will be even harder. She can’t let herself come to terms over what she feels for Jo because she has to set Jo free, she can’t be selfish, it’s either her feelings or it’s Jo’s freedom. And considering she has spent so long defending Jo it’s obvious what option she favours. 

Then she gets straight back to the point, not allowing her facade to drop:

“If you tell us who the top man is.” 

Now remember how I said to remember Roz’s quote because it will be important later? Here’s why it’s important, “You’d give up anything to get to the top.” ‘Top’ in the context of Roz and Kate’s conversation is referring to Kate wanting to better her career but ‘Top’ could also refer to the fact that Kate, along with AC-12, have spent years digging into institutionalised corruption to find out who the orchestrator behind it all is, and now she’s so close to finding out who the ‘top’ man is, because of Jo. 

You could argue that this idea completely reverses the points I’ve just made and offers the alternative that Kate only cut her emotions off in order to get to the top - which is what Roz’s quote alludes to. But I do think that both standpoints can coincide with one another. She cuts her feelings off for Jo so she can save her, but because she has had to do that, that makes her able to dig for information and solve the case and hence find out who the top man is. 

And therein is the last scene that Kate and Jo share and to quote Kate Fleming on this one “Thanks for making me feel like shit.”   

But Kate’s story isn’t over just yet so we will continue. 

“Sir, during an unlawful search an item was found that relates to the sum of £50,000. You’re not under caution so anything you say to us at this time can’t be used in evidence. That’s loyalty right there.”

I know she’s having a dig at Ted’s previous comment about loyalty to Steve whilst he simultaneously reveals Steve’s issues from across the series to Kate, but I also like to think it’s a dig at the fact that despite Ted continuously undermining Kate, she has still stuck by him and still fought his corner - to an extent. But the fact she does stand up to Ted and isn’t afraid to do so is something I have to give her, she is staying very true to her character there. 

I think this has been pointed out before and although it probably is a reach but this is Kate’s reaction after Ted says “…of a woman I cared deeply about…” 

I do think that this is a moment where we’re meant to assume that Kate could be thinking about Jo as a result of Ted’s words. The focus is on Kate’s reactions rather than Steve’s so I think it’s a fair assumption/association to make and it’s not out of the realms of possibilities. 

“If I decide to come back.”

“Will you?”

“Well someone’s got to keep you lot in line.” 

She just can’t stay away from it, no matter how hard she tries. AC-12 will always pull her back. 

“You don��t realise what you’ve got until it’s gone.”

It’s a loaded statement from Kate and comes with many meanings to it, her missing AC-12 ( to an extent) and wanting back in, her missing her friendship with Steve and now losing Jo without having the chance to tell her how she really feels/that she wasn’t pretending. 

“You just going to stick to the one drink?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Still early enough to drive up to Liverpool.” 

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to keep seeing Steph.”

“But you want to?”

“Yeah. But what chance has it got?”

“You wanna be careful mate, you’re going to end up on your own.”

Having to read between the lines here again but Kate is encouraging Steve to go for Steph because she can’t go for Jo. It makes sense when you consider how much those two relationships have been paralleled against each other, one was doomed from the beginning but at least the other has a chance to *be* something. And this conversation could’ve been spun differently to acknowledge Kate and Jo’s relationship also:

“But what chance has it got?”

“More chance than me and Jo.”

It’s really that simple. I’m fine with subtext, it works sometimes. Not everything has to be said. But across the whole series Kate and Jo have been everything but. Everything that has happened between them has been obvious and deliberate. So the fact it got dropped to subtext in the last episode doesn’t make sense? If their relationship from the beginning had been pure subtext then fine it works, but like I said, it hasn’t. Kate and Jo’s relationship needed to be addressed and acknowledged, otherwise why the set up if you’re never going to bring it up properly? 

Okay, you can argue that it dropping to subtext and having to read between the lines is a representation for how Kate is having to suppress her feelings for Jo but your audience deserve better than that Jed. And not to sound like a stuck record but you don’t have your character go through massive development for her just to end up as the exact same person she was before she went through said development. She has to change, even if it’s just a little bit. No one stays the same after what Kate has been through. 

 Which brings us to the therapy scene. 

“Me and my partner are separated.” 

I have also already spoken about the vagueness of this line so won’t go into it too much but, subtext again, she could also be referring to Jo. I would just like to point out as well that music that underplays the moment in which she talks about Steve is very different to the music that underplays the date scenes between Kate and Jo and the scenes between Steph and Steve so you could say that that rules out any allusion to a possible romance between Kate and Steve (and honestly thank God because there’s more sexual tension between two planks of wood than there are between Kate and Steve and if they EVER went down that route, another type of anger would escape my body because, just let women and men be friends without it being a *thing* please).

She looks so washed out and unhappy in this scene - a striking comparison to how she looked during E2. 

She looks drained but it’s understandable considering that this is the first time that’s properly opened up and given way to accepting her emotions and feelings - even if she isn’t addressing the elephant in the room. So, you could argue that this scene is that small change we have from Kate as a result of her development from across the series. But given that this scene, at a push, lasts 30 seconds, it’s not enough. I’m not expecting a half an hour scene of Kate opening up about everything but something a bit more than a nod to her kid and husband that she has only mentioned once throughout the entire series - along with a couple of text messages in the first episode. It just felt as though this scene was chucked in because they couldn’t show Steve going to therapy without showing Kate going as well, considering that they’ve both been through similar ordeals. 

But I’ll take it because it’s still part of Kate’s development, in a sense.

Digging into it more, it’s very obvious that Kate has lost the happiness we seen her with at the beginning of the series, she’s lost her warmth - a warmth that was depicted via Jo through clothing and scenes they shared together. There is a warm light in that scene but it’s situated behind Kate, a visual representation of how Jo is in her past now and how the loss of warmth in her life has left her cold and miserable - which further explains how she comes across in this episode. 

I’m going to return my earlier point of Kate not necessarily being happy at AC-12 here. I’ve mentioned throughout how Kate is AC-12 through and through and she will never truly escape it. She goes back to AC-12 in the end because it’s her home, it’s where she feels safe and comfortable but that doesn’t mean to say it makes her happy. And I think the fact that when we see her at the end of this episode and we see that she is the most unhappy she has been this entire series, it’s meant to signify that (and like I mentioned before, there were a few moments throughout S5 & S6 that emphasise how she might feel that undercover work/being in anti-corruption might just not be for her anymore). 

Kate set Jo free from the OCG but who’s going to set Kate free from AC-12? Jo did for some time, made Kate realise the life she could have outside of anti-corruption but that got ripped away from her and now she’s gone back to them, tail between her legs and probably feeling even worse than she had when she left in the first place.

Questions I wanted to address throughout this piece, is Kate Fleming a master manipulator?

Yes, to an extent. She knows how to use people and their feelings to her advantage. She knows how to get information out of people, we have seen that time and time again across the show, but it’s only ever under the guise of being a UCO and half the time I don’t think she enjoys it all that much (as we see in S5 with her allusions to that there). Outside of being undercover Kate is a genuine person, we see that via the connection she makes with Jo. She never pushed Jo for information, they built up trust between them and shared a bond. Jo worries that Kate would go running back to AC-12 with all the dirt on Jo but Kate reassures her, “I would never tell them personal stuff.” And she doesn’t. We know that she could, we see her do it with Tony Gates the moment she finds out the extent of his relationship with Jackie Laverty. But the fact she doesn’t, is telling us that outside of being undercover, Kate, despite what people might think, is an authentic person who can form relationships without it being faked for beneficial reasons.

Are her motives clear?

Not always. On the surface she is quite a hard person to read but once you pick her apart and piece everything together, you realise that she is an incredibly smart woman who, despite holding her cards close to her chest, plays them very well. She doesn’t reveal things easily which is testament to her being a good undercover officer but when you dig into it, I think her motives can be clear. She’s very career-driven, often putting that above everything else. She always want to get the job done and to the best of her ability. As I’ve mentioned throughout, she is the embodiment of AC-12, integrity and truth. She very much holds up the law. 

That doesn’t make her innocent and doesn’t mean she doesn’t bend the truth/law to her all the time either. But I do think that’s Jeds way of saying that no matter how hard you try to be good, you’re always going to end up in tricky situations that you have to worm your way out of, as depicted by Steve’s quote in S2 “Maybe there are some people out there who always tell the truth and ones who always lie. The rest of us choose our moments.” 

How has Kate been developed across the show? 

In short, she hasn’t been developed all that much and where she has been developed it’s been reversed by the end of it. From S1-5 she remains pretty much the same person, not much bothers her or effects her. Partly think that’s because of her burying her emotions and her trauma but I don’t want to give Jed too much credit where it isn’t due. 

S6 was where we seen the most development from Kate. We seen a whole new side to her, we seen her experiencing things for the first time, having feelings that have never been delved into where Kate has been concerned. S6 Kate felt miles apart from S1-5 Kate, or at least she did until E7. Kate had the potential to be fleshed out and to be shown that not even Line of Duty’s resident heroine is free from trauma and emotions but that, like I’ve said, got scrapped for the sake of a political point. We needed more than a 30 second therapy scene to address the issues and dilemmas going on in Kate’s head. We needed the relationship that she had been involved in, that had been set up, to be acknowledged and addressed. That relationship with Jo was so integral and important to Kate’s development, it needed to be brought up, even if it was just in relation to Kate’s development and Kate’s character. 

Jo and Kate were never going to end up in a relationship, it was doomed from the beginning but it still brought about a change in Kate and her character deserved to have that tied up and acknowledged to an extent, at the very least. We, as an audience, deserved that also. Kate went through so much in this series and the fact that all we got was a 30 second scene therapy scene to address it is, quite frankly, insulting.

I don’t care that Buckells was H, looking back on it’s obvious. I understood the political point of it and Jed was making a good point, in a sense. But with shows like Line of Duty, where it’s main characters remain constant throughout you have a due diligence to develop them and flesh them out into 3D characters who have good sides and bad sides - and that goes for ALL of them, Kate included. And she is but to an extent because she isn’t explored enough. Jed will start it, pave ways she could go and then forgets about it. As much as we all follow along for the plot and wanting to find out who these corrupt officers are, we also become invested in the characters, we want to know more about them. We want to see them go through things, we want to be able to relate to them and go on journeys with them. 

As much as we watch for the plot, we’re also watching for the characters. Like come on how many of us shouted “Oh God Steve, watch your back!” When the van toppled over and not “Oh shit they’re about to be ambushed!” I could go on but you get my point. The main plot is interesting and well thought out but we’re also watching the characters and we want to see them be developed with justice. 

Kate Fleming is a complex character and she deserved to be fully developed throughout S6 (and the whole show considering, you know, she’s a main character) and didn’t deserve to have that development fizzled out for political point scoring.  

And if you made it this far, well done. Have a drink. 

#line of duty #lod #kate fleming #long post #oh christ #this is 17k words of utter nonsense #but if you read it thank you <3 #line of duty spoilers #lod spoilers #analysis

[howtowhumpyourhiccup]

Could you elaborate more on your Dark!Hiccup AU? I really like it so far

@evilwriter37 @jettara @we-becca89 

Oofs, I wasn’t expecting such a reception to this idea and I know it's been a couple of days, but I'll try to explain what I was thinking when I thought of this dark-but-not-really!Hiccup concept.

So I’ve mentioned that this Hiccup is basically the same as canon movie Hiccup. He's still Berk's hero and dragon expert, he's still on the side of what he feels is good and right. He still helps people and rescues dragons everywhere.

There are just a few key differences here and there that make him a tad bit darker than what canon Hiccup is actually like.

1. love is conditional.

This is immediately a big difference compared to canon!Hiccup because he feels like he believes in the existence of unconditional love. So that's a difference with this version of Dark!Hiccup. Or like, Greyish!Hiccup, if you will.

One of the things that he’s been lead to believe growing up is that love is good and nice to have and give, but that it’s very much a thing based on conditions. At least when it comes to humans due to him first needing to fit in or have his unconventional ways be perceived as useful before he received any sort of acceptance.

In this AU, he doesn't come home to Berk after the Red Death with the belief "I'm finally accepted for who I am", but more with "I'm finally useful as I am." Which are two very different mindsets. One is definitely healthier than the other.

The latter has lead him to believe that his dad’s love for him, his Riders’ love for him, and even Astrid’s love for him will fade the second he’s out of this perceived grace and can’t fulfill this role of hero they’ve put him in after the defeat of the Red Death.

He doesn't know that this isn't true and that they do love him to death and beyond. And that while his love for them is still that strong as well. This is actually a mindset that makes how much he loves them hurtful to him in a way because of this perceived belief that they don't feel as strongly for him.

This is also true when he's together with Astrid. He loves her, enjoys his time with her "while he still can". It's a very stressful existence. (Or the OT6 if you prefer. ;D)

This excludes the dragons, especially Toothless, as they didn't need him to prove himself as worthy first. He just needed to not kill or hurt them, which is really the bare minimum.

2. He's kind of two-faced.

The usually cheery and overly enthusiastic Hiccup that the Dragon Riders know and love isn't quite as real as they think. He's kind of two-faced on that matter, acting a certain way and hiding behind a façade of naivety. You can't tell that he's always overthinking most things if he doesn't look like it. Works great on enemies, too, who often take him at face value at first before he and the Dragon Riders show them what they are really like.

In reality, Greyish!Hiccup is quite aloof and keeps to himself more, quite introverted. Being around the Riders is quite draining, though he hides this as well as he can.

Which, again, doesn't mean he doesn't truly appreciate and love his Riders. He just really feels like he needs to keep up this act and be this persona.

3. Hiding secrets and is actually good at lying.

This is also where I kinda want to fit my "Hiccup's right leg was also severely burned" headcanon into. So I'm going to use that as an example.

Basically, the idea I had was that only Stoick, Gothi, and Gobber know that both of Hiccup's legs were in bad shape with one ending up partially amputated.

Hiccup, believing that "love is conditional" thing, keeps the bad shape of his right leg to himself and keeps that he's keeping it to himself to himself. Gothi has no reason to talk about possible issues with his scars with anyone other than Hiccup. And Gobber doesn't exactly regularly bring them up in conversation either, so it works. And with the limp from his left leg, it's easier to write off issues with his right leg as "oof, just my stump acting up again, you guys!"

Basically, he keeps things about himself secret that he thinks others, not even his friends, don't need to know. Anything that he fears may make him seem weak in the eyes of his village.

He's also a fairly good liar and this is where the "kinda two-faced" part comes in again. Because the Riders and the people of Berk are of the opinion that Hiccup's a bad liar. They just don't know that's a specially crafted lie, too.

4. Kind of a hypocrite.

Still kind and compassionate, however, he insists that his loved ones come to him for stuff no matter how small, including when he finds out the Riders are hiding injuries from him like during RttE. Which is hypocritical of him since he's been hiding things such as a terribly burned leg from them for 3 years already at that point.

And he's still all "feelings are important" while either completely disregarding his own or hiding them.

4. Get them before they get you.

Something he's actually learned from Viggo. He believes Berk will one day turn on him like they have when he was very little and like they have turned on Toothless and the other dragons a few times because of the word and manipulation of one old and bitter man.

This Hiccup takes a little more to Viggo. He still doesn't like Viggo, but he does take his lessons to heart in a different way than canon!Hiccup does. When Viggo teaches him to be a few steps ahead of his foe, Hiccup decides to be a few steps ahead of Berk.

He knows the dragons, save for the few who's bond is strong with their human, will leave Berk if he and Toothless were to ever leave permanently.

Or he rides his hopes on this, at least. He'll play the roles Berk wants him to, he'll be their hero, the one who fixes things, and then one day he'll be their chief for however long that will last. But if Berk ever turns on him again, he plans on leaving and taking the dragons, and all the advantages that comes with having them around, with him.

He's certain that day will come and he’s put a fail-safe in place in case that happens. But until then, he does enjoy the pleasures of living in a human community.

5. Doesn't mind hurting people.

He doesn't prefer it either, but if he has to get his hands dirty, he’s more likely to do it than canon!Hiccup. He's more subtle about it from ages 15-20, but when he has to take over from his father as chief, that becomes just a bit more obvious because he feels like it's more necessary then.

6. Holds grudges more easily.

He's not as easy to forgive. When Alvin "makes up" with Stoick, he doesn't trust him and that brings their truce in danger when he becomes chief. When Dagur switches sides, it's Toothless who convinces him to give him a second chance, but the trust doesn't take a mere few weeks or months to come.

He's not as easy to forgive and betrayal makes it worse.

7. Everything is a ploy.

Whether he realizes it himself or not, at some point, everything revolves around a ploy of some kind. Whether it's which side of his personality he chooses to show, the secrets he keeps, the lies he spreads, at some point, everything comes down to a ploy. And it's purely because he feels like it's necessary.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Long story short, basically just canon Hiccup, except he's a little more hurt and more calculated then he is in canon. It’s a very exhausting existence and in the end it hurts him more than it actually helps.

And boy, won’t the Riders be hurt when they eventually find out.

I got that sorta figured out, too. Hiccup basically gets himself in trouble by stepping into a relationship that eventually becomes physical. Which means it’s only a matter of time until the burn scars the other person (or people) had no idea about are eventually revealed.

Sorry for the long wait for my reply and for the length of my reply.

#long post #asks #anonymous #au #whump au #alternate universe #hiccup haddock #greyish!hiccup au

[nonamenotitles]

HELLO, IN THIS ESSAY I WILL TALK ABOUT RIDDLER AND DO A COMPARISION WITH A POP CULTURE BRAZILIAN CHARACTER AS WELL.

.

RIDDLER is a fascinating character. He can be portrayed as silly, or menancing. A gentleman with finesse and complex schemes or a completely mess who doesn’t really know what to do, but hey here’s 10 dolars for solving my riddle! Also Spandex! And Question Marks!

My Favorite Edward is the one from @askarkham. There’s  lot of thing I like about him, but the one that resonates with me the most is this:

Ronnie, how dare you give me feels!

Because I’ve been there, my anxiety sometimes fills my head with so many things it’s overwhelming.

I am a lot better know with therapy and stuff.

But before treatment I too, soo many times, cried the same phrase.

That really touched me

Sooo

That’s why I’d like to talk about my fave villain who is very similar of another beloved character here in Brazil, who shaped every childhood here. (And I do get a little pride at showing my people’s comics, they’re great!)

A lot of other characters reminds me of the riddler. Like Wheatley!

@canadian-riddler made an wonderful analysis of the two characters.

I’ll poorly describe them: Polite and condescending, friendly enough until he get’s high advanced technology. Then he wants to put you through puzzles and puzzles and if you keep getting it right he will try to murder you with one of them.

But the character that reminds me of Riddler the most is:

Jimmy Five (English) Cebolinha (little onion) Cebola (onion) from Monica’s Gang/ Turma da Mônica

His main traits is his ingenuity, his five pointed hair and his dysdalia (pronounces R as L)

@drdeath​ did na wonderful analysis of Riddler and he’s motivations, and both these characters personality and motives matches a lot.

Cebolinha is a kid who gets in lot of trouble. He’s a very smart and clever kid, always bragging about he’s superior intellect, and creating “infallible plans” (who always fail) to defeat Mônica and earn the title of “owner of the street”.

Cebolinha also messes with Mônica to get her attention and for fun, calling her names ( he has a little crush on her, and in Turma da Mônica Jovem they’re dating) and he has almost a compulsive desire to knot the ears of her rabbit plushie.

Mônica’s main way to deal with the boys name calling is hitting them with her blue rabbit plushie (though the also gives them advice and uses other ways) which hurts a lot because she has super strengh!

Even though he has been beated numeours times Ceblinha never gives up. Believing he deserves the title of Owner of the Street, yet a lot of he’s plans fail because he understimates Monica’s own cleverness.

Despite everything the two kid’s consider themselves friends, and don’t hesitate to protect each other. We have a movie about the group of kids helping cebolinha to find his dog, floquinho.

A lhasa apso that for some reason is GREEN.

Turma da Mônica Jovem.

These comics are about the characters as teenagers. Cebola grew to be na expert with comouters, games and technology, he went to a professional and now only speaks L intstead os R when his nervous.

Batman notices it (but it’s another comic for another time)

Now he wants to take over the world to make it a better place.

He’s cleverness and plans saves his friends through the many and dangerous adventures they get themselves in.

Yet he’s been called out on his manipulations.

One of the earlie sagas was about the ID Mosters, the physical manifestations of the group worst traits and impulses.

They manifested because it’s in the teenager years that kids start to get more emotional changes, and start to be aware of their impuses and control them better than when as kids by developing their emotional intelligence.

Cebola’s mosters is a Liar and master manipulator who uses his charms and skills to get whatever he wants. And the kid had to deal with his shame and realise he is and can be a better person than in he was in the past.

Maybe Arkham should try the “fight the physical manifestation of your Id” it seems to work.

Important scene in the Saga.

Here Red Monica is Monica’s ID monster disguised. Humilliating Cebola. Later the Real Monica confronts him, thinking he’s sending fake messages  to make her look bad. So he feels he’s being gaslighted.

THEN HE BEGS HER TO BEAT HIM.

C: Mônica...No... I will do anything...I

Cellphone*Sending to all contacts*

RM: Tomorrow you will make another  sign, and will do my homework too! Or else... I will send your other love notes so everyone will laugh at you.

C: I thought that we...

I thought that...

I thought that you liked me!

RM: And I Like! I like when you do what I SAY!

M: CEBOLA!

Speak now! What nonsense is this!

Why are you saying such things about me. Did you decide to go back to the old plans?

Why are you lying,Cebola?

C: BEAT ME UP!

Go on, Mônica! Beat me up already! It was better when you beat me up!

C: Because being beated up by you doesn’t hurt s much...

As what you’ve being doing...

NOW! Of course emotional manipulation hurts more than being punched.

And what was the blackmail: Humilliation

Tying it with the Riddler: Edward surely feels that being beaten up by Batman hurts much less than the humiliation of being defeated. That’s also why he goes on and on with puzzles and plans even though if he fails he will physically hurt.

Because he’s already hurt! He already feels humilliated! And that’s the worst pain he’s ever endured and is still going on.  

Back To the comics.

Later in the comics, He and Mônica confessed his feeling to each other, but Cebola explained he can only date her after defeating her.

He does get called out on it in later editions.

C: Mônica...I...

M: Why illusions of grandeur, Cebola? Why do you believe you need to be superior than me?

C: Superior? I don’t want to be above you, Mônica!

I want to be equal! Sice childhood you’ve been strong... confident...the leader...

While I always was the changing-letters kid who got beaten up at the end.

Okay, Edward Nigma wants to be above Batman. But most of the feelings is the same.

Eddy sees Batman as strong, and confident and a leader. While he’s the one who’s humiliated and beaten up.

C: You don’t realize it, right? You have no idea how hard it is to stand at your side...

Without feeling small.

I think I’m giving a little fuel to batriddle shippers... oh well.

As you can see, like Riddler, Cebola feels that he needs to prove himself, needs to prove he’s worth, to the point of delaying everything else in his life until heachieves it.

So my analysis is complete. BEHOLD!

HEADCANONS

I found a fic that I still wanna read called “Dinner at Wayne Mansion”, I get Riddler made the highest bidding in Bruce Wayne at the Bachelor Auction.

It reminded me of that comic where Eddie tried to trick Batman into dining with him.

I think this universe riddler would totally do the auction thing just to talk all night long with Bruce Wayne, and his projects and stuff. All happy and giddy. “Oh Bruce, how are the kids doing?”

Edward lowkeys wants Bruce Wayne to adopt him.

Come on DC! Give us na alternative universe where after his first crime and Batman finding out about he’s abusive household, Bruce decides “Okay I’m gonna raise this young man”.

Stephanie LOVES her Big Brother Eddie! He beat up her abusive dad (Cluemaster) and humilliated him with trivia knowledge and stuff.

I think one thing that should be explores is Riddler as na expert magician, he is a master escapist because he loves houdini, and magic employs cleverness and illusion.

He’s a geek for magic tricks.

He shows them to Harley and Jervis who look bright eyed and “Oooooooh”

Firefly asks if he knows fire tricks

He does and promplity shows off his skill.

Then John has to clean out the entire hideout because Edward fell for it and now Garfield knows there are flammable chemicals here.  

Final Thought.

Well, there’s ANOTHER brazilian character that he reminds me of.

Visconde de Sabugosa  (Viscount of Corncob) from  The Yellow Woodpecker Farm

Ginger like lots of adaptations

Soul patch

Green tux

He’s main trait is his intelligence

differences

HE IS A LIVING DOLL MADE OF CORNCOB!

@jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear​

@weyoun​

@askarkham

@drdeath​

@frommylack​

@praprikat

#riddler #batman #turma da monica #monica's gang #turma da mônica jovem #tmj #cebolinha #brazil #brazilian comics #the yellow woodpecker farm #visconde de sabugosa #edward nigma #edward nygma

[elylandon]

Part 1 - Chapter 3: Resolve

Summary: You’re running for your life when you cross paths with an ex-bounty hunter and his small, green companion. You never thought you’d find someone throughout the whole galaxy who was as lost as you.

Pairing: The Mandalorian/Din Djarin x Female Reader

Word Count: 4,382

Rating/Warnings: M for mature content. Swearing, violence, physical and verbal abuse, [eventual smut], etc.

Chapter 2 | Chapter 4

Note: (Slight AU - Slow Burn) Thanks for all the kind words and support. ❤

—

The thing about most blaster wounds is that they’re almost always instantly cauterized on impact. For a wound like yours, where nothing vital was hit, that was great. Except you weren’t exactly trying to survive this trek back to the hangar, or even the inevitable encounter with Thasar.  

With the child safe, you were now back to the I-am-not-going-back-with-Thasar-no-matter-what-happens-to-me plan. You thrashed and wriggled against Meck and Gurn’s tight grips, hoping to agitate the wound enough for it to reopen. But it didn’t do any good, and it caused you to momentarily blackout twice from pain. When you had succumbed to one of those debilitating moments, you had been just outside the hangar. When your focus returned, Meck and Gurn were coming to a halt in what looked like a large workshop that was either within the hangar itself, or somewhere near it.

The terror you had been holding back while first in the cage now gripped your entire body. Standing there, on a slightly raised workspace, staring out a north-facing window, was Thasar. His back was to you, his hands clasped lightly behind him. Anyone that didn’t know Thasar would see this casual pose and believe him at ease.

But you knew better. You could feel his rage boiling beneath the surface.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve played this little game of yours, Y/N,” he said.

Thasar’s voice wasn’t loud, or menacing. He spoke evenly, almost emotionlessly, always the dignified man. He was always so cool and collected, never seeming to outwardly show his emotions. When he did, you knew then that you should be afraid. For now, there was only an inflection to the way he spoke that was as cold and sharp as a shard of ice. You shuddered.

“Far too many times for my liking,” Thasar continued. “It ends today.”

Yes, you thought. I suppose it does.

Thasar turned away from the window to face you. You had never really known what he was. He looked like a human male, a handsome one even, with pale skin and dark black hair that fell to his collarbone… but he also had striking, eerie yellow eyes.

Those eyes softened to a contemplative sadness, and as if you weren’t already on edge, your entire body tensed.

Fake.

“I just don’t understand, Y/N,“ Thasar said, sounding heartbroken and wounded.

False.

“I’ve given you everything.”

Liar.

“I found you.”

You bought me.

“I’ve given you luxurious clothes, jewels, and trinkets. I’ve fed you nothing but the finest.”

Bribes.

“I’ve hired you the best tutors.”

I only learned what you wanted me to learn.

“I gave you a family.”

Bastard. Fake, lying, manipulative bastard.

“I treated you like my own daughter.” Thasar sighed and closed his eyes, as if pained. His next words would be his final blow in this charade. The words that used to drive the wedge of guilt you felt every time you defied him in so deep, you actually started to consider that you were the one who was wrong. That you could forgive him.

“I believed you my own daughter.”

“Fuck you,” you hissed through clenched teeth, trembling no longer from fear, but from rage. It was so easy to feel this way now, to understand his game like you did now after all this time. Because it had taken you years to realize he was playing you. Years.

That’s why you were so terrified of him. You had been so desperate for so long to finally belong somewhere. To be something to someone. To not feel so lost. And he knew it. Like he’d said, he had given you all these wonderful things so you wouldn’t look too hard at the things he made you do, at how things really were. He created a smokescreen of family and love, and made you feel needed. But it was all surface level, to distract you from the reality of it all.

And any time you started to question it, any time you started to poke at that flimsy surface, he would put on this act as if you had hurt him and disregarded his kindness, rejected his so-called love. For a while, you felt so, so guilty…

But no one should ever be made to feel guilty for wanting more, for wanting what is best for themselves.

When that act started to not work as much anymore, Thasar tried other methods. Consequences for actions, much like any other healthy teaching method a parent would use on their child. Only, Thasar’s punishments were not healthy, or even of an equal response to your rebellions. And they escalated exponentially over the years.

Thinking about that now only made that rage in you boil hotter, and you jerked against Meck and Gurn’s hold on your arms, anticipating that those punishments were soon coming. However, as Thasar’s yellow eyes steeled over at your words, seeing that his once so easily accepted tricks weren’t going to work this time, you knew he was about to start saying things that did much worse damage to you than make you feel guilty.

But you were prepared this time. You knew what was coming. Just like his false proclamations of love and family, you could see past his next words…

Thasar’s eyes flickered over towards Rhet.

“Did you hear anything more on the Mandalorian?”

Your heartbeat staggered and you flinched. Damn it! Of course he knew about the Mandalorian. Rhet must have informed him of the situation during their trek back to the hangar while you were busy screaming curses and thrashing about. It was such a deliberate question too. You knew that, and you had still reacted. And Thasar noticed.

He noticed everything.

“One of your men sent word that he had boarded his ship and took off about ten minutes ago, boss,” Rhet responded.

He’s gone.

“No,” you silently breathed to yourself, quelling the familiar empty feeling that tickled at the edges of your own rational thoughts. You were relieved he was gone. That’s what you wanted, for the kid to get away, to not fall into the same fate as yours. You were glad that the Mandalorian had taken him away from here, away from Thasar.

You gave yourself a moment to breathe, to reach back for that anger towards Thasar. That’s what you needed your mind to focus on, not cleaving itself in two, separating your anxious thoughts from your rational ones. That was how he won.

But Thasar was an expert at tearing you apart.

“It seems you were right then, Rhet. He really wasn’t going to risk coming after my dear Y/N.”

You reeled backwards as if his words had slapped you, breath escaping you.

No! Don’t let him get to you-

The Mandalorian didn’t even think twice, did he?

NO! This is what Thasar wants. Don’t fall for it!

He left. He didn’t even hesitate.

It was too late…

Think about it rationally. He had to leave. He’s protecting that child. That is his priority. You are a stranger to him.

But you helped him. You helped save his child. Why couldn’t he have helped you in return?

It would have risked the child being taken again. You know that.

You started to pant, and clutched your eyes shut, sweat trickling down from your temples. You tried so hard to mend your thoughts back together again. But all it had taken was a few deliberate words to send yourself at war with your own worst enemy.

Yourself.

He’s a Mandalorian.

Don’t do this. You’re just giving Thasar what he wants.

He could have helped you, so easily.

Stop it!

And he left you behind. Just like everyone else.

As if he could read your anxious thoughts, Thasar’s voice cut its way into your storming mind.

“You risked your own escape to help him. Did you think, perhaps, that he would help you in return?”

How deluded were you to think that he would?

I didn’t!

“My poor, misguided Y/N. Don’t you know why he never would have even considered such a thing?”

You know why.

No, stop this! Stop feeding into his game!

“Because you are nothing.”

Suddenly, there was a harrowing silence, save for the echo of his words, both in his voice, and the voice of your own anxious thoughts, endlessly fading into the void of darkness that had become your mind.

You are nothing.

You are nothing.

You are nothing.

Thasar never had to lay a hand on you to hurt you. Granted, he did cause physical damage, but usually not with his own hands. However, he knew that wounds healed. Perhaps some wounds left scars, but those could be covered. He learned soon enough that you could bounce back from the physical pain.

But this? He knew exactly how to sap the fight out of you, and no matter how prepared you thought you were, it worked. Every time. You felt all your strength leave you and Meck and Gurn allowed you to fall to your knees, staring at the ground before you, seeing nothing.

This is why you had rather die than go back to him.

“You are nothing to him, Y/N,” Thasar continued, and you vaguely heard him step off the workspace, thudding footfalls heading towards you. He’d already won. But you had caused him a lot of trouble this time. He was going to make you suffer for it.

“Without me, you are nothing at all. You were being abandoned by family after family until I found you. Without me, your existence is meaningless. Insignificant. And yet, you continue to run from everything I have so graciously given you?”

Thasar’s fingers brushed gently under your chin, and he lifted your hollow gaze to meet his piercing, venomous yellow stare.

“This ends today, Y/N”

You didn’t argue. You couldn’t think anymore. Couldn’t comprehend his words anymore. All you could hear, over and over, was-

You are nothing.

“Rhet,” Thasar said, and dropped his hold on your chin. You breifly caught the motion of Thasar tossing something behind you in Rhet’s direction. You knew what it was. And yet, despite that, you couldn’t bring yourself to care, to anticipate and prepare for the pain that was coming.

“Double, I think,” Thasar ordered. You heard the familiar sound of a long strip unwinding, of its concentrated leathery tip lightly brushing against the ground. Meck and Gurn each grabbed at your shirt and gave sharp yanks, ripping it to reveal your back. A canvas for new scars to join the ones already crisscrossing their way down your skin, interrupted only by the band covering your chest.  

“You’re going to count them this time, Y/N. Or every time you miss one, we’ll start over.”

Maybe, if you didn’t count the lashings, Thasar would make Rhet keep going until you were dead.

“And when it’s finished, Rhet,” Thasar added as a final instruction, stepping back to watch the punishment unfold. “Break her ankles.”

What?

Some semblance of self came back to you at those words, slammed into you even. Your head shot back up to meet Thasar’s expression, and you saw that his anger had sharpened into a stone-faced resolution.

“Shatter them, so that even when they heal, it won’t be possible for her to run again.”

You felt the smallest moment of shock and horror as everything around you fell silent. And then, some kind of tether deep inside snapped, the sounds of everything– or perhaps it was just your own voice screaming– crashed upon you, drowning out the echo of, “You are nothing.” Some kind of force rushed out of you and all four men flew back, Thasar more than the others, hitting the window behind him so hard it vibrated and cracked.

You instantly felt weak, knowing you had just expended a great deal of energy, but you didn’t care. Everything was in convergence within you. The fear, rage, loneliness, emptiness, despair, everything.

“W-what is this,” Thasar asked, struggling to right himself, but finding he was unable to. The pressure of whatever power you were using on him was crushing him against that window.

You could feel that force in you wavering, so you threw up your left hand, hoping somehow that would hold it. You didn’t care if you had to expend every ounce of energy you had. Thasar had said this was all going to end today, so you were going to make sure that it did. 

Because as deep as Thasar’s words always seemed to cleave, as much as you feared that they were true and you sank into that darkness of self doubt, something deep, deep inside you always screamed, and fought, and raged that he was wrong. 

You were not nothing, and you owed it to yourself to spend your life proving it. 

Out of the corner of your eye you saw Rhet recover and steady himself for an offensive attack. You threw up your right hand, side screaming at the motion. You willed that power to come to your aid again, but it seemed as if you were spending it all on holding Thasar. Rhet lunged before you could come up with a backup plan and-

He disintegrated. Your eyes widened. One second he was flying at you, the next he was nothing more than a pile of clothes and ash. You heard as both Meck and Gurn exclaimed in alarm, just as bewildered as you were. However, you weren’t exactly complaining. 

You barely had time to register your long time hunter’s abrupt demise when, in your shock and confusion, you felt your power slip, then release entirely. You spun back towards Thasar to see him fall forward. You glanced right first to face Gurn, but he too was suddenly vaporized in the blink of an eye. You knew that it wasn’t your power doing this, and quite frankly, you didn’t care if the fire raining down on you was friendly or not. You just had to get to Thasar. 

You turned left towards Meck to see him take aim at you with his blaster. Zekir’s training caused your instincts to kick in again and you swung your arm up and wide, catching his wrist and breaking his aim. Holding onto that wrist you rushed into his personal space, using your momentum to smash your elbow into his face. Your side protested, loudly. But you ignored it, and once again, you brought up your knee. This time you aimed a little bit lower than his stomach, and hit him twice. Always two times.

He fell with a shout of pain and dropped his blaster. You dived, snatched it up, and rose in time to see Meck take a large, orange blaster shot to the back and disintegrate into nothing like his two companions.  

Only Thasar remained. You trained the blaster on him, only to see that he had gotten to his feet and made a run for you. He pulled up short when he realized you were aiming at him, and met your eyes. For a moment, his yellow eyes became contemplative as they jumped between you and the blaster. But when you went several seconds without shooting him, the corner of his lip twitched, and he was smirking. 

Your heart hammered and your grip tightened, but you knew he had caught the slight tremor in your hand. 

“Are you going to kill me, Y/N?”

You waited. You weren’t sure why. You had wanted this for so long; to be free from the things Thasar made you do, from the things he said to keep you tame. To be free from Thasar entirely. But you hesitated. Perhaps you thought he might grovel for his life. That you’d see him as a coward for once, and not the terrifying bastard that earned his arrogance, his control of everything. 

But there was no fear in his eyes. Just a sense of knowing. 

“Ah, I don’t think you will,” he said, straightening now. You followed his every movement with the blaster. He eyed you for another moment before glancing over towards where Meck had been standing only moments before. He nodded towards his remains. 

“I must admit, that was a rather impressive display. I hadn’t realized just how much Zekir had taught you. Fighting, and how to use that blaster I’m sure.”

You visibly started at that, and Thasar’s smirk grew. 

“Oh yes, I know about you and Zekir. Granted, I didn’t know until you left him a bloody mess in my landing bay. The two of you were very sneaky, indeed. He tried to play it off, as if he had tried to stop you but you had gotten the better of him. I’m sure that was what you had intended to happen by leaving him alive. That he could keep his cover and appear as if he had never helped you escape. You did owe him that much, after all.”

More pointed words. The things he said were always so deliberate. You tried to keep your hand from shaking harder.  

“He even offered to go after you. I didn’t doubt that he’d bring you back, perhaps thinking that putting you back where you didn’t want to be a suitable punishment for your betrayal. But I had been suspicious of him for quite some time. Finding him bested by a feeble, little Earthling in the loading bay? That only solidified my thoughts. So I took him in for some questioning. Didn’t take much. He told me everything, save for all the places we could find you. He knew I’d keep him alive longer if he only revealed parts of your escape route at a time. I played along, until we found you here. I had planned to have you kill him when we returned, but alas, I got word on my way here that he had managed to slip away.”

That made your breath catch. Zekir was out there somewhere? Free from Thasar and hell-bent on repaying you for your betrayal, you had no doubt. You knew Thasar wouldn’t care enough about Zekir’s escape to do anything more than throw a bounty on his head, and Zekir had been the one to teach you how to avoid bounty hunters. Even if you could free yourself from Thasar now, you would still have to watch your back for someone who wanted you perhaps just as badly. 

Again, Thasar seemed so in tune with your thoughts, he sneered as he continued. 

“You knew you were painting another target on your back when you left Zekir alive. But you just didn’t have it in you to kill him. Just like you don’t have it in you kill me now.”

You released a shuddering breath, stepping away from him, hands still shaking.

“You’ve had so many opportunities in the last decade to finish me, Y/N, but you could never bring yourself to do it. Even now, I am the simplest target you could ask for, and yet, here we stand. You couldn’t kill Zekir, and now, you can’t kill me. Why do you think that is?”

There it was again. That all-knowing tone in his voice. It was like hearing a weapon charging to fire. You steeled your spine, gritted your teeth, and hardened your grip so tight, your knuckles were turning white against the blaster. 

“No matter what you might think of me, you won’t kill me. Because, deep down, you know the truth. You know that you are nothing without-”

You shot him. 

Thasar staggered back a step, mouth gaping, and finally, finally, you saw fear and disbelief flicker in those cold, merciless eyes. He slowly glanced down at the smoking hole in his chest. Before he fell, he met your eyes, and this time they were filled with a sense of wonder. Maybe even admiration. 

You screwed up your face at the pang that look sent through your chest and shot him again. 

He toppled like a statue, and as you saw the light leave his eyes you resolutely said, “I am everything without you.”

You stared at Thasar’s lifeless form for several long minutes, not really sure if you felt happy, sad, angry, or just tired. Maybe all of those at once. But you stifled whatever aftermath those emotions could wage on you, remembering that you had a guest. 

You turned slowly, and were met by the Mandalorian standing beside a pillar off to the right. He held a rifle in his hands, standing ready behind you in case you needed the backup. Just like he had provided against Rhet, Gurn, and Meck. A weapon that could vaporize your enemies? You saw firsthand just how handy a weapon like that could be in his line of work.

For a moment, you were hesitant to address him. As soon as Gurn went down and you had realized that it wasn’t you turning Thasar’s thugs into dust, a part of you had hoped it was him. But you had shut that thought down amidst all the other chaos swimming in your brain because you knew he wouldn’t have risked the child or himself to rescue a stranger. And yet, here he was, and you weren’t quite sure you could trust his reason why. 

“They said you’d left,” you murmured carefully. 

The Mandalorian nodded once, clipped the rifle to his back, and took a few steps to close the distance between you. You resisted the urge to step back. 

“I needed them to think I wasn’t doubling back for you,” was all he said in explanation. 

“Why did you double back?” You were afraid of the answer. You knew from Zekir that help of this magnitude came with a price. 

The Mandalorian stopped just a few feet in front of you, head tilting slightly, as if the answer was obvious. You held the feeling of his gaze through his visor. 

“You risked your life to help the kid escape. Then again when you were shot at. And again when we were cornered and you negotiated our getaway. That’s three life debts. You asked me for a favor. Figured this was it,” he finished, mildly gesturing at the mess around you. 

You sighed in relief. He wasn’t asking for a price for his help. He was repaying the price of yours. You could understand that. 

“It wasn’t initially,” you replied, and forced a small, fatigued smile. “But it will do. You took down those three, so I think that makes us even.”

He paused, as if he was tempted to accept that and leave it be. But then he glanced over to where Meck last stood. 

“The last one didn’t count. You took care of him. I only made sure he wouldn’t get back up.” 

You had to laugh at that. Gods, it was such a morbid thing to laugh at, but you couldn’t help it. Sure, he had stolen a child and accrued a debt he seemed hell-bent on not paying. But he seemed honorable in paying the debts that mattered. You’d make it easy on him, though. You could really use an escort back to your ship, just in case you passed out on your way. 

Whatever power you used today had drained you. That physical exhaustion, plus the emotional exhaustion that came from facing and killing Thasar had nearly taken everything you had. There was also the fact that you had finally tore at the injury on your side. Figures you’d start to bleed when you didn’t want to. 

All that said, you were sure you also looked like a haggard mess. Your side bleeding, your shirt torn, holding onto you by your sleeves to cover your front, but leaving your back bare for all to see. Your face and hair were still a mess too, from the role you had been playing the last few days. There were probably many other signs of visible wear and tear on you as well. 

Just as you were about to ask the Mandalorion to take you back to your ship without anyone noticing, you glanced around him, remembering the kid and hoping you would get to see him one last time. 

“Where’s the child, by the way?”

You met his gaze again, unable to fight the smile at the thought of seeing him. This was probably not the best environment to bring him into, but you were sure that the Mandalorian’s protection, even while fighting, was better than leaving him on the ship by himself. 

The Mandalorian’s delay in answering was so palpable, you could just imagine a pair of eyes shifting to the side under that helmet. You jerked upright in realization, a motion that surprisingly shot a dull pain from to top of your head to the tips of your toes in a staggering wave. 

“You left him on the ship again, didn’t you?”

You took a step forward, impetuously meaning to get in his face and give him shit for making the same mistake as before. You realized then that you were not stable. Your vision tunneled, and the room spun, the Mandalorian moving with it. But you didn’t care that you were dead on your feet, or that he had the ability to turn you to ash if he felt crossed. You just couldn’t believe that he’d done this, again. 

“You idiot,” you swayed. “You’re not supposed to-” your voice faltered. “-to leave a child-” you could feel yourself teetering. “-alone like that…”

The Mandalorian stepped forward and caught you as you fell. You didn’t quite pass out, but the room was coming in and out of focus, and behind your outrage at this stupid man, you could tell that you wouldn’t be getting up any time soon. 

The Mandalorian sighed heavily as he seemed to realize this too. He reached up and unclipped his cape before awkwardly wrapping it around your back with one hand, while his other held you up in a semi-reclined position. Then, with that arm still on your back, he hooked the other under your knees and hoisted you up, carrying you out of the workshop. You were too exhausted to fight it. 

“Come on. Let’s see about that last favor and get you patched up.”

---

Tag List: @sirianfromsixties,  @doubtedbus409,  @shadowfoxey, @knockbeforeyouspeak, @ispilledmyink, @sinon36,  @whenthestarsfalldowntonight, @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11, @imaginebeinlovedbyme

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#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x reader #baby yoda #Al's Sharing Corner

[dillydedalus]

january reading

why does january always feel like it’s 3 months long. anyway here’s what i read in january, feat. poison experts with ocd, ants in your brain, old bolsheviks getting purged, and mountweazels. 

city of lies, sam hawke (poison wars #1) this is a perfectly nice fantasy novel about jovan, who serves as essentially a secret guard against poisoning for his city state’s heir and is forced to step up when his uncle (also a secret poison guard) and the ruler are both killed by an unknown poison AND also the city is suddenly under a very creepy siege (are these events related? who knows!) this is all very fine & entertaining & there are some fun ideas, but also... the main character has ocd and SAME HAT SAME HAT. also like the idea of having a very important, secret and potentially fatal job that requires you to painstakingly test everything the ruler/heir is consuming WHILE HAVING OCD is like... such a deliciously sadistic concept. amazing. 3/5

my heart hemmed in, marie ndiaye (translated from french by jordan stump) a strange horror-ish tale in which two married teachers, bastions of upper-middle-class respectability and taste, suddenly find themselves utterly despised by everyone around them, escalating until the husband is seriously injured. through several very unexpected twists, it becomes clear that the couple’s own contempt for anyone not fitting into their world and especially nadia’s hostility and shame about her (implied to be northern african) ancestry is the reason for their pariah status. disturbing, surprising, FUCKED UP IF TRUE (looking back, i no longer really know what i mean by that). 4/5

xenogenesis trilogy (dawn/adulthood rites/imago), octavia e. butler octavia butler is incapable of writing anything uninteresting and while i don’t always completely vibe with her stuff, it’s always fascinating & thought-provoking. this series combines some of her favourite topics (genetic manipulation, alien/human reproduction, what is humanity) into a tale of an alien species, the oankali, saving some human survivors from the apocalypse and beginning a gene-trading project with them, integrating them into their reproductive system and creating mixed/’construct’ generations with traits from both species. and like, to me, this was uncomfortably into the biology = destiny thing & didn’t really question the oankali assertion that humans were genetically doomed to hierarchical behaviour & aggression (& also weirdly straight for a book about an alien species with 3 genders that engages in 5-partner-reproduction with humans), so that angle fell flat for me for the most part, altho i suppose i do agree that embracing change, even change that comes at a cost, is better than clinging to an unsustainable (& potentially destructive) purity. where i think the series is most interesting is in its exploration of consent and in how far consent is possible in extremely one-sided power dynamics (curiously, while the oankali condemn and seem to lack the human drive for hierarchy, they find it very easy to abuse their position of power & violate boundaries & never question the morality of this. in this, the first book, focusing on a human survivor first encountering the oankali and learning of their project, is the most interesting, as lilith as a human most explicitly struggles with her position - would her consent be meaningful? can she even consent when there is a kind of biochemical dependence between humans and their alien mates? the other two books, told from the perspectives of lilith’s constructed/mixed children, continue discussing themes of consent, autonomy and power dynamics, but i found them less interesting the further they moved from human perspectives. on the whole: 2.5/5

love & other thought experiments, sophie ward man, we love a pierre menard reference. anyway. this is a novel in stories, each based (loosely) on a thought experiment, about (loosely) a lesbian couple and their son arthur, illness and grief, parenthood, love, consciousness and perception, alternative universes, and having an ant in your brain. it is thoroughly delightful & clever, but goes for warmth and humanity (or ant-ity) over intellectual games (surprising given that it is all about thought experiments - but while they are a nice structuring device i don’t think they add all that much). i haven’t entirely worked out my feelings about the ending and it’s hard to discuss anyway given the twists and turns this takes, but it's a whole lot of fun. 4/5

a general theory of oblivion, josé eduardo agualusa (tr. from portuguese by daniel hahn) interesting little novel(la) set in angola during and after the struggle for independence, in which a portuguese woman, ludo, with extreme agoraphobia walls herself into her apartment to avoid the violence and chaos (but also just... bc she has agoraphobia) with a involving a bunch of much more active characters and how they are connected to her to various degrees. i didn’t like the sideplot quite as much as ludo’s isolation in her walled-in flat with her dog, catching pigeons on the balcony and writing on the walls. 3/5

cassandra at the wedding, dorothy baker phd student cassandra returns home attend (sabotage) her twin sister judith’s wedding to a young doctor whose name she refuses to remember, believing that her sister secretly wants out. cass is a mess, and as a shift to judith’s perspective reveals, definitely wrong about what judith wants and maybe a little delusional, but also a ridiculously compelling narrator, the brilliant but troubled contrast to judith’s safer conventionality. on the whole, cassandra’s narrative voice is the strongest feature of a book i otherwise found a bit slow & a bit heavy on the quirky family. fav line is when cass, post-character-development, plans to “take a quick look at [her] dumb thesis and see if it might lead to something less smooth and more revolting, or at least satisfying more than the requirements of the University”. 3/5

the office of historical corrections, danielle evans a very solid collection of realist short stories (+ the titular novella), mainly dealing with racism, (black) womanhood, relationships between women, and anticolonial/antiracist historiography. while i thought all the stories were well-done and none stood out as weak or an unnecessary inclusion, there also weren’t any that really stood out to me. 3/5

sonnenfinsternis, arthur koestler (english title: darkness at noon) (audio) you know what’s cool about this book? when i added it to my goodreads tbr in 2012, i would have had to read it in translation as the german original was lost during koestler’s escape from the nazis, but since then, the original has been rediscovered and republished. yet another proof that leaving books on your tbr for ages is a good thing actually. anyway. this is a story about the stalinist purges, told thru old bolshevik rubashov, who, after serving the Party loyally for years & doing his fair share of selling people out for the Party, is arrested for ~oppositional activities. in jail and during his interrogations, rubashov reflects on the course the Party has taken and his own part (and guilt) in that, and the way totalitarianism has eaten up and poisoned even the most commendable ideals the Party once held (and still holds?), the course of history and at what point the end no longer justifies the means. it’s brilliant, rubashov is brilliant and despicable, i’m very happy it was rediscovered. 5/5

heads of the colored people, nafissa thompson-spires another really solid short story collection, also focused on the experiences of black people in america (particularly the black upper-middle class), black womanhood and black relationships, altho with a somewhat more satirical tone than danielle evans’s collection. standouts for me were the story in letters between the mothers of the only black girls at a private school, a story about a family of fruitarians, and a story about a girl who fetishises her disabled boyfriend(s). 3.5/5

pedro páramo, juan rulfo (gernan transl. by dagmar ploetz) mexican classic about a rich and abusive landowner (the titular pedro paramo) and the ghost town he leaves behind - quite literally, as, when his son tries to find his father, the town is full of people, quite ready to talk shit about pedro, but they are all dead. it’s an interesting setting with occasionally vivid writing, but the skips in time and character were kind of confusing and i lost my place a lot. i’d be interested in reading rulfo’s other major work, el llano en llamas. 2.5/5

verse für zeitgenossen, mascha kaléko short collection of the poems kaléko, a jewish german poet, wrote while in exile in the united states in the 30-40s, as well as some poems written after the end of ww2. kaléko’s voice is witty, but at turns also melancholy or satirical. as expected i preferred the pieces that directly addressed the experience of exile (”sozusagen ein mailied” is one of my favourite exillyrik pieces). 3/5

the harpy, megan hunter yeah this was boooooooring. the cover is really cool & the premise sounded intriguing (women gets cheated on, makes deal with husband that she is allowed to hurt him three times in revenge, women is also obsessed with harpies: female revenge & female monsters is my jam) but it’s literally so dull & trying so hard to be deep. 1.5/5

the liar’s dictionary, eley williams this is such a delightful book, from the design (those marbled endpapers? yes) to the preface (all about what a dictionary is/could be), to the chapter headings (A-Z words, mostly relating to lies, dishonesty, etc in some way or another, containing at least one fictitious entry), to the dual plots (intern at new edition of a dictionary in contemporary england checking the incomplete old dictionary for mountweazels vs 1899 london with the guy putting the mountweazels in), to williams’s clear joy about words and playing with them. there were so many lines that made me think about how to translate them, which is always a fun exercise. 3.5/5

catherine the great & the small, olja knežević (tr. from montenegrin by ellen elias-bursać, paula gordon) coming-of-age-ish novel about katarina from montenegro, who grows up in  titograd/podgorica and belgrad in the 70s/80s, eventually moving to london as an adult. to be honest while there are some interesting aspects in how this portrays yugoslavia and conflicts between the different parts of yugoslavia, i mostly found this a pretty sloggy slog of misery without much to emotionally connect to, which is sad bc i was p excited for it :(. 2/5

the decameron project: 29 new stories from the pandemic, anthology a collection of short stories written during covid lockdown (and mostly about covid/lockdown in some way). they got a bunch of cool authors, including margaret atwood, edwidge danticat, rachel kushner ... it’s an interesting project and the stories are mostly pretty good, but there wasn’t one that really stood out to me as amazing. i also kinda wish more of the stories had diverged more from covid/lockdown thematically bc it got a lil repetitive tbh. 2/5

#the books i read #long post #sonnenfinsternis is so good the audiobook nearly made me cry in the supermarket

[mysterious-foxes]

TW: Death, Drugs, Emotional manipulation/gaslighting

I don’t want to go back and edit anything, but this took way longer than I thought it would while trying to write it out. This is for documentation purposes and some entertainment if you want to hear about a psychotic woman that came into my life. Here ya go:

Okay, now that I’m home, I’ve eaten, given both dogs love (and bf took them on a walk), and I have New Girl on in the background, I’m ready to write out this crazy rant. Feel free to skip if you don’t want to read this LONG story or for whatever other reason you wouldn’t want to read it. I’ll add a ‘read more’ so that this doesn’t take up everyone’s timeline. I will say this though, if someone had told me this was going to happen a year ago, I never would have believed them, but everything I’m writing is 100% true.

If you are here to read my crazy rant about this fucking insane lady, welcome! I hope you find this as funny/interesting as I am currently. This is also a very emotional subject for me so while I might be thinking it’s funny now before I write it, I may go through a range of emotions while writing this. Such as anger, sadness, bewilderment, confusion, etc. 

A little bit of a background. I am the youngest of 6 kids. I have 2 sisters and 3 brothers. I’m going to give them all code names using the color of the rainbow. Oldest to youngest is Red (f), Orange (f), Yellow (m), Green (m), Blue (m). Red and all 3 brothers are married (Yellow has been with her girlfriend for 3+ years).  Blue only just got married a couple of months ago. I have 4 nephews (2 from Yellow and his wife, 2 from Green and his wife) and 2 nieces (both from Red and her husband). My mom and dad were married for over 30 years. They would never show much (if any) form of PDA in front of us kids and I never once saw them fight. My dad has always been quiet and never talked much. And he never really built a good relationship with us kids, especially those of us who have left the religion he believes in which is 4 1/2 out of 6 (I’m still unsure of Blue’s complete views and I don’t think he even knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if him and his wife left the religion within the next few years, even if it’s just secretly). My mom passed away a year and just a few days ago (on Green’s birthday). I miss her more than anything.

A little about my mom (again, for background). She was a great lady. She was also religious. She was extremely involved in the community, her church community, volunteered a ton (served on the local softball board for 17 years and did anything and everything for my high school’s theatre even after I was gone). She put everyone ahead of herself (especially us kids). She also pushed through any pain she had. About 2 years ago, she realized she was really sick and needed help. Doctors could not figure out for the life of them what was wrong with her. They took out her gall bladder. They put her on diets. I honestly don’t even know what else. About 6 months later, they found the problem and delivered the news. She had pancreatic cancer and it was severe. They gave her 6 months to live. We made the most of those 6 months. I was going out to my family’s a lot more than I had in a while. Red flew out and stayed for a few months. All of my siblings were there when she passed. Oof, I got a lot more into that than I meant to, but I feel like it gives a pretty good background about her. I told you this would be long.

Okay, so now we’re to where I can start talking about this insane lady. So for obvious reasons, my dad was very lonely. In May, my dad gives me a call and tells me he’s been talking to a woman (we’ll call her Ethel). Well, it felt soon, but I was happy my dad was finding comfort. He met her (get this) on an LDS widow and widowers facebook page. She lived in Oregon and he was going out to meet her in person and spend time with her for a week or 2. Awesome! Way to go Dad! Live your best life and make yourself happy!

He comes back and we start talking about when she’ll come to visit. Well Ethel has a sister (who lives in a city about an hour from my dad’s house) needs to have heart surgery Ethel needs to watch her cat. So Ethel comes to Utah and stays at my dad’s house for a couple of days. A few of us kids go out and have dinner with them to meet her. I was the first one there. Upon first meeting her, she talked, A LOT. She talked the majority of the time. It didn’t take long to realize that she had something to say about EVERYTHING and she seemed like she though she was the expert in EVERYTHING. For example one of the most recent times I talked to her, she was talking to me about the theatre I work at (which is a $31 billion theatre, super high tech and honestly they do pretty well). When I mean she was talking to me, I mean SHE was talking (she doesn’t let other people talk very much if at all. Only for “I’m sorry, that must be hard” or “I agree with you”). Well, she hasn’t been to the theatre I work at, but she’s been to their location in another nearby city which puts on a lot smaller productions and doesn’t have even 1/10th the amount of tech. They don’t put on nearly as good of productions. Well, Ethel tells me, “I’ve never been to a Broadway show, but I think that they’re as good as Broadway.” Like what?! HAHAHAHA. How can you even say that? You know absolutely nothing about it and you’re saying that!

Now, we’ve all met her, but she doesn’t really know the first thing about any of us kids. She asked me one question and then took over the conversation as soon as I got 2 words in. She did ask us all in a group about my mom (which was super awkward). We mentioned my mom was very charitable and she goes, “Oh I’m charitable person!” Who the fuck says that? And comparing herself to my deceased mother (who both her and my dad have “reassured” us time and time again that she’s not trying to replace). She constantly says how much like my mom she is or what she’s done better than my mom. HUGE RED FLAG. How desperate do you have to be to try to one up a dead person?! 

In Ethel’s constant talking, she talks about her children and family members a lot. She talks a lot about how her husband passed and her brother passed and someone else passed all pretty quickly. She talks about her brother passing basically every time I talk to her. Now you might think it’s sweet she talks about her family, but it’s not. She doesn’t talk good things about any of her family. She talks about all the mental illnesses they all have. Her children refuse to meet my dad (or so she claims). And she doesn’t talk to any of her 3 children at this point. Another huge red flag.

So Ethel was here to take care of her sister and her sister’s cat while she was in the hospital. Well, turns out her doctor couldn’t do it the day they had planned, so it got pushed back. Then her sister desperately needed to go shopping so she had to push back her HEART surgery again. And I think one time she couldn’t go because her feet hurt from diabetes? There were a few different things. So Ethel is staying at my dad’s house this entire time. My dad’s very religious and so they’re not having sex, sleeping in the same bed, or even sleeping on the same floor. My dad is staying downstairs while she sleeps in his room. Finally, a month later, her sister goes in for surgery. Ethel is gone from my dad’s house for 2 days. To be fair, my dad wasn’t feeling good and had an infection in his tooth so was in a lot of pain. So yes, I get why she wanted to come support her new boyfriend, but also, my dad had plenty of children close enough to take care of him and she was supposed to be taking care of her sister’s cat. She stays at my dad’s house for another 3-4 days before going back to her sister’s. She gets back and to her surprise (but nobody else’s), the cat is missing. I also would have ran away if I thought I was abandoned and needed to scavenge for my own food since I haven’t been fed in days. 

Finally, Ethel is going back to Oregon. Orange and my dad take her to the airport. On the way home, my dad mentions to Orange that they’re talking about getting married. Wow! Less than 9 months since my dad’s wife of 30+ years passed and he’s already ready to get married to another woman. What the fuck?! How is he over my mom already? I get wanting companionship, but holy fuck that’s quick! So I call my dad. My Aunt J had already chewed out my dad telling him that he’s moving too quick and not thinking about us kids (which is not wrong). And I guess she told him just to have sex and get it over with. I know my sisters also called my dad just before me. I called my dad and told him I was uncomfortable with how quick they were moving and I didn’t understand why they felt the need to move so quick. He just kept saying that it’s different when you’re older....I told him the 2 reasons that I could think that they were moving so quick is that she’s a gold digger or that they wanted to have sex (which come to find out that she claims she never had sex with her deceased husband and hated sex when she had it with her ex but I don’t know if she ever told my dad that because some of the things he has said to her is questionable). He assured me that was neither. Sure Dad...

I know I’m kinda all over the place here, but bear with me. So my Aunt J reached out to Ethel’s children. Only the oldest daughter responded (which Ethel claims is a liar and manipulative and basically the worst person on earth). So at this point, for I feel like pretty obvious reasons, I don’t trust much of what Ethel says and will most likely take her daughter’s word over hers. My aunt didn’t want to say everything and wanted us to reach out to the daughter personally, but she did tell us that the first thing that Ethel told her children when she met my dad was that she met a guy with a 401k. Who the fuck talks about that first?! Not even his name or where he’s from, but that he has money...So Orange ends up reaching out to Ethel’s oldest daughter. Ethel has said that her oldest daughter is a liar and manipulator and is basically the worst person in the world. I don’t know how someone can say that about their own child that they claim to love so much. Anyways, so Orange is pretty level headed and took everything that the daughter said with a grain of salt. But the daughter said some nice things and honestly made us feel better about Ethel all around. One of the things that Ethel has said on multiple occasions is that her children refuse to meet my dad. Well, when Orange talked to the daughter, she said that she was more than happy to meet my dad and talk to him about Ethel. But again, overall, she did make us feel better and that Ethel actually had feelings for my dad and wasn’t going to gaslight him (turns out that wasn’t accurate). We wanted to be upfront with my dad so Orange told him about the conversation and told him that it made her feel better. My dad told Ethel (including that Orange took what the daughter had to say with a grain of salt and that the daughter made her feel better) that Orange talked to her daughter and Ethel says, “I can’t believe that Orange would believe her lies!” First of all, I trust anything that her daughter says over her in the first place, but that just reaffirmed that. Second, that’s extreme gaslighting and my dad believes it.

Okay, so this has been a lot to write out and a lot more exhausting than I thought it would be. I’ve taken week long breaks (if not more) at a time, so I don’t know if I’ll forget to say something or if I’ll go in a different direction than I was originally planning for the next paragraphs but hopefully this is all entertaining enough. It won’t be all in chronological order, but I’m doing my best.

So after all of this, my dad tells us that we should go through my mom’s stuff that’s in the house that we want. Until you’ve done that shortly after the death of a loved one, you don’t know how exhausting it is. The first time was on a weekend that almost all of my siblings were able to be there. We video chatted my sister who couldn’t be there since she lives across the country. So we split up all of the big stuff. There’s some big furniture that people couldn’t currently take. Like I live in a tiny 1 bed apt and I couldn’t fit a piano, dresser, and vanity all in my apartment (let alone just one of them). So those are staying there until I can buy a house (which hopefully will be across the country). I was going out every Sunday to go through everything. I was a little petty and at one point was going through a box that had a bunch of church stuff in it right in front of my dad and kept asking him if he wanted the church things. My dad said we had plenty of time to go through things and take what we wanted so we were only doing what we felt was necessary and then would take our time from there.

One of the things that my dad and Ethel claimed was that their deceased spouses were trying to get them together...if anyone knows my mom, that’s definitely not true. I don’t know how my dad doesn’t see my mom would have hated Ethel. Her, Green’s wife, and myself would be gossiping so much about Ethel. Plus, one of my mom’s wishes when she passed was that if my dad got remarried then all of us kids would like his new wife. Not a single one of us like her. So not only is my dad completely oblivious to the fact my mom wouldn’t like her, he doesn’t uphold to one of her dying wishes.

So Ethel comes back to Utah. I don’t remember quite why. But she stayed at my dad’s. It was supposed to be temporary and she was supposed to stay somewhere else for most of the time she was here. Then she kept making excuses as to why she wasn’t leaving Utah and not staying somewhere else. There was one point where she was supposed to drive back to Oregon, but her car “broke down” about 7 (I think) hours from my dad’s house, but probably somewhere in the middle of the drive. So my dad being the good guy that he is drove out to pick her up and brought her back to his house. Where she has stayed ever since. The only time she’s left since was for their honeymoon. She had come back a couple of months before they were even technically engaged. 

Oh my god! I just remembered something I forgot to mention earlier! Ethel and my dad do a LOT of PDA. My parents rarely showed affection in front of us. They rarely kissed in front of us. The most they would do was hold hands. Well Ethel and my dad are full on cuddling in front of us. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if that wasn’t the first thing I ever saw of her when we first met and if they didn’t do it so much in front of us at the beginning and if my parents showed any form of PDA. They also called each other pet names which my parents never did. All in all, it was really weird. AND my dad made a dirty joke which he has never done so to his kids in the 34 years he’s had any of us. I was very taken aback. So they ended up getting officially engaged and wanting to get married ASAP. Blue had been engaged for several months before. We told my dad to not even get engaged before Blue got married...well, they were talking about having a small ceremony in Oregon and inviting only a couple of her friends. No....my dad is not getting married without a single one of his friends or family members. I think enough of us spoke up about that so the idea was quickly shot down. But my dad was talking about getting married within maybe even weeks. We all knew Blue didn’t want him to and that would be taking away from him. So we convinced my dad not to get married before Blue’s wedding. He was unhappy about it, but he waited.

So leading up to their wedding, Ethel kept pushing us to get things out of the house. When we talked to my dad, he would always say that we could take as much time as we need and Ethel would say she never pushed us at all. And whenever I’d come out, I hated being around Ethel and would always go hide in the basement “doing things” until the rest of my siblings came. When I was forced to talk to her by myself, she would just keep talking and talking and not letting me get a word in. I live with my boyfriend and I’m not married so she thinks I just live in sin. She asked me about him once just so that she could say that she has family in the city he grew up in and so on and so forth. She also won’t talk about my sister’s girlfriend. Probably because they live in sin too...anyway, Orange, Green’s wife and myself planned a bridal shower for Blue’s (at the time) fiancée. She didn’t want Ethel there, but it was being hosted at my dad’s and Ethel never left so we couldn’t get around it. Speaking of Blue and his wedding, Blue was supposed to have brunch with his fiancée’s parents and my dad. Before my dad was actually engaged, he brought Ethel along. And Ethel doesn’t even ask, but tells them all that she’ll take care of the ties. Then she goes out and buys some samples before even knowing what the wedding colors are! Blue didn’t want her going to the wedding, let alone doing anything for the wedding. When I get married, Ethel will not be doing anything for my wedding. 

Blue’s wedding happens. This is the first time Ethel meets my boyfriend. I don’t think they even said one word. This is also the first time that Yellow and his wife have met Ethel. Now Yellow’s wife got her degree in psychology and is a therapist. She said that Ethel crossed off almost all of the signs of a narcissist. Ethel still hasn’t even met Red and her husband in person (even to this day). Now we’re a month away from my dad’s and Ethel’s wedding...unfortunately. My dad asks me to put together a playlist for their wedding. No thanks, but I’ll do it for my dad. He specifically requested a song by Chicago for her walking down the aisle. Chicago was my mom and dad’s band so I was very upset that my dad would have a song with another woman from the band that him and my mom loved so much. I begrudgingly put together the playlist and added that. However, I didn’t add any other Chicago songs (even though he suggested that). And I made sure any songs I used didn’t mention forever or only love or anything like that. I might be a little petty.

Day of their wedding, I find out that all the decorations Ethel asked for from Green’s wife were from Blue’s rehearsal dinner. She didn’t even ask Blue or his (now) wife if she could use them. She asked Green’s wife...and then when she told Ethel she would have to ask Blue, Ethel said something along the lines “Well his dad paid for them so I can use them.” I don’t think it was quite as snarky as I put it, but that was the message she was trying to get across. My siblings are all hanging out at the dining table before the ceremony. Even though they’re both religious, they were just having a civil wedding in the backyard because if they were to marry in their temple, she would have to divorce her deceased husband (but my dad would be able to be married to multiple women for eternity...not misogynistic at all right? /sarcasm). My dad’s bishop comes in all bright and cheery. He knows quite a bit of my family so he comes and says hi. I don’t think it took long for him to realize we weren’t happy about the wedding. Ethel claims she invited her children (I really don’t think she did). She had a few of her family and friends come to the wedding, but none of her children. We’re pretty sure one of the couples that came was her daughter’s ex husband and his new wife (whom she has said she is closer with her daughter’s ex than her actual daughter).

Okay, so I’m now at the point where I’m going to give information that I don’t 100% remember fits where. Some of it was before their wedding, some of it before they even got engaged, some of it after their wedding. This may just be a bunch of word vomit, so I hope it all makes sense and anyone who happens to still be reading this doesn’t get lost. BTW, if you happen to still be reading this, congratulations on making it this far! I told you this would be a long post.

One of the first times we met Ethel when she was out here the first time we were doing a family dinner. I don’t remember everything we did for the dinner. Green’s wife cooked the main meal. Orange was supposed to be in charge of the Au Gratin Potatoes and something else. Well, I had asked what I could do and had the choice of rolls or salad. In our family group chat, my dad said Ethel wanted to contribute and asked what she could do. I told him I would do the salad and asked if she could do the rolls. Apparently that wasn’t good enough and she wanted to do more so she ended up doing the au gratin potatoes. We specifically wanted our family recipe for the potatoes and Orange had already bought the ingredients for it so she let Ethel know where to find the ingredients. Before I get into what actually happened, one of the things that Ethel boasts about all the time is that she grew up helping her mom with catering and so she knows how to cook really well (I have liked very few of the things she’s cooked). So Ethel doesn’t use our recipe and uses her own for the potatoes...they weren’t very good. And the rolls she brought were terrible store bought rolls. Like, if she doesn’t want to make rolls, whatever, but at least buy decent rolls. Also, rolls are a really easy thing to make to show off to a family you’re trying to impress. I seriously just get the frozen Rhode’s Rolls and then after cooking them melt butter on top of them. Super easy and people are always super impressed with how good they are. So not only does she not use the recipe for potatoes we wanted, her recipe is meh, AND she gets shitty store bought rolls.

At one point, Green’s wife and I were going through the small room upstairs cleaning it out and trying to make sure my sibling’s belongings got in a box for each of them. This is the room that my mom died in. All of my siblings were in this room with her. It is painted dark blue and along the middle of the wall around the room is a trim of wallpaper covered in whales. Ethel and my dad are wanting to turn this room into his home office (especially with how much he’s been working at home due to Covid-19). Which is whatever, they can do what they want. While Green’s wife and I are in there cleaning out the room, Ethel comes in and starts using some sort of tool on the wallpaper that tore small holes in it. She said it was so they could take down the wallpaper easier.  I don’t know why she had to do that while we were in there cleaning. It has been a few months since then and she hasn’t done anything else to that room (including taking down the wallpaper). Green’s wife believes she did that while we were in there just to be mean. She actually believes Ethel just likes being mean and does things just to be mean. It’s hard to disagree with that considering everything else.

I don’t know why I didn’t say something about this earlier when I was writing about how Orange and my Aunt J had spoken to Ethel’s daughter. There were some things that they talked about that were huge red flags. Ethel’s daughter said that Ethel was a gold digger and just looking for someone to take care of her. Also that from Ethel’s first marriage, she got $60,000 from her ex husband and she blew it all within just a few months. Ethel has been filed for bankruptcy multiple times and just overall isn’t great with money. All of her children have tried to help her and she has burned every bridge because she just sells the cars they would buy for her or do other stupid things because she never had any money. I mentioned before that Ethel’s children refused to meet my dad. They said that it was way too soon after her last husband passed (their step dad) for them to meet my dad (yes, it had been like 7 months). So since they refused to meet my dad right away, Ethel told them that they wouldn’t be a part of her life anymore. Of course my dad doesn’t believe any of this, but like I said earlier, I trust Ethel’s daughter way more than I trust her.

When my dad was talking about getting married to Ethel, one of the things we pushed for was a prenup. My dad reluctantly agreed that he would look into it. It turns out that in my state, if they hadn’t gotten a prenup stating otherwise, when my dad died (if Ethel was still alive) then everything would go to her and then once she died everything would go to her children and nothing would go to my dad’s kids. So he did go through with the prenup (which also covered if they got a divorce he wouldn’t have to give her money or anything). His lawyer actually gave him some really good advice and I hope that my dad was more open to his lawyer about those things than he was with us even though we said the same things. And luckily, control of the trust and everything else is still in the hands of my oldest siblings when my dad passes (even if Ethel is still alive).

So Green has 2 kids. One that they’re fostering and hoping to adopt, the other has some cognitive disabilities. Even so, he is the smartest kid I know. At 3 years old he could name all of the planets in the solar system. I’m 24 and I can’t do that. He just retains knowledge really really well. Well, Ethel likes to call him her “special little buddy”...which is extremely ableist to say the least. He doesn’t really like her and he can tell that we all don’t like her (he’s 6 and he can see that better than my dad). Green’s wife absolutely hates it when Ethel calls him that too. Green’s wife is probably the one that stands up for all of us the most. But she’s also super nervous of the inevitable time that she pisses Ethel off. Ethel has called CPS on her own daughter because her preteen grandson was moody and didn’t talk to her while she was at lunch with him. If she calls CPS on Green and his wife, then they take their foster child out of the home immediately and who knows what that’ll do to their chances of adopting him. When Ethel calls CPS on any of my siblings, if I haven’t already done it for other reasons, I will tell my dad that I want to be a part of his life, but our relationship can’t include Ethel. I know my siblings and they do not do a single thing that would concern CPS.

So when Blue got married, I’m not sure exactly when it was, but I know that Ethel talked to Blue’s new sister-in-law for a bit. And she was talking about Blue’s wife’s anxiety, which Blue’s wife has never said a thing to Ethel about. And Ethel just went on and on about Blue’s wife’s anxiety and how hard it must be and that’s why Blue’s wife is like this and so on and so forth....I’m curious to know what Ethel thinks my mental illness is and tells people about.

I’m writing this one right now because it just happened and I don’t want to forget the details. So my dad’s house has 6 bedrooms and 2 family rooms. It was a good size for my family while we were growing up, but now it’s just the two of them in a 6 bedroom home. They’re planning on redoing a lot of things and we’ve been doing a lot to clean out the house and split up my mom’s stuff. So in the smallest bedroom in the house, there was a lot of baby stuff and when we didn’t know where to put things, a lot of it would go in there. Well, on multiple occasions, they’ve told us that we can take as much time as we need to go through the house and that there was no rush. Ethel has been pushing to get everything out when my dad isn’t around, but now even my dad has pushed to get things out a little bit. They decide that anything we haven’t gone through and they’re not sure what we want, they’ll put in a storage unit for us to go through when we can. I thought that was a great compromise. Well, Ethel ended up taking a picture of the small room and posting it on Facebook talking about how messy we are and how terrible of step children we are. How we were supposed to get it out by the time they got back from their honeymoon so on and so forth. Yellow and his wife see this before Ethel ends up deleting it off of Facebook. Yellow calls my dad (which I’m so grateful because so far it’s just been the girls making any sort of fuss) and is really upset about it while talking to my dad. My dad puts him on speaker and talks to Yellow and Ethel together. Ethel says she accidentally posted it on Facebook and it was supposed to be just for her aunt. How do you accidentally post something on Facebook? And if you’re talking shit and posting it to a private audience, you sure as hell aren’t going to make the mistake of posting it publicly. But also, she was talking shit about my dad’s kids and he defended her. How can he take her side on that one?

The anniversary of my mom’s death is on the same day as Green’s birthday. Well, the day was coming up and in our family group chat Ethel asks how we want to celebrate the birthday and remember my mom. Not my dad, ETHEL asks...that is not her place in the slightest. If my dad had asked, then I would have been more than happy to talk about it, but Ethel doesn’t get to be the one to try to see how we want to celebrate. Green’s family, Yellow’s family, and myself and my boyfriend ended up going to an amusement park for that day. Then we went out to my dad’s that night for pizza (hawaiian especially to remember my mom) and to watch a destructo show (because my mom LOVED those). Yellow and his family were staying at my dad’s. Well, Ethel told Yellow and his wife to make themselves at home and to eat whatever and drink whatever. When Yellow was telling me about this, I thought it was so funny because 1 he said he felt like “yeah, of course I’ll make myself at home, this is my house, not yours! and 2 my mom would get so annoyed with him for when he visited opening up a bag of chips without asking for permission or things like that. Like small things that didn’t matter in the scheme of things, but he would do with my mom, of course he’s not going to care what Ethel thinks about it. The other thing that Ethel talked to Yellow and his wife about was getting rid of all the sippy cups and only keeping one in the house per grandchild with their name on it. She said that she would always find 5 sippy cups full of milk laying around the house, but she wasn’t saying that because of Yellow’s family. So that means she was saying it because of Green’s family. Which, the younger one never leaves his sippy cup behind and the older one doesn’t drink milk (he used to be allergic and now just doesn’t like it).

One of the things that bugs Green’s wife a lot is that Ethel will always message her and say passive aggressive shit or ask her to tell my family about something or talking to her about getting everything cleaned out of the house, etc. At one point she asked Green’s wife to choose what toys they wanted to keep in the house. My mom bought way too many toys for the grandchildren, but she loved them. She would end up putting a bunch in storage and rotating them out when the kids stopped playing with some toys because they were bored of them (genius really). But it sounded like Ethel was wanting to get rid of basically all of the toys, which the point of having them there and not at my siblings’ house was so that the kids had toys to play with there and only got to play with them at my dad’s house. I think one of the reasons for getting rid of them or at least downsizing is that she always claims that the toys don’t get put away. They do though. I have been there when my siblings are putting their kids mess away. I’ve helped clean the toys up. They always get cleaned up.

Oh my god!! I can’t believe it has taken me this long to mention this one. So while my dad and Ethel were on their honeymoon, we were going through the house and trying to clean out as much as possible. Well, while doing so, we found a TON of different medications. Some were for her, some her deceased husband, and some were for somebody named “Gale Friend”. But there were probably at least 40 different bottles of pills (if not more). And at one point, Green’s wife was downstairs cleaning out of of the bedrooms. In one of the vanities (that is either mine or Orange’s, not even my dad’s let alone Ethel’s), there were some more bottles of pills and LOOSE PILLS in the drawer. This is an area that my nephews are unsupervised a LOT. Imagine if one of them opened the drawer and ate one of them! Yellow’s wife thinks that it’s too sloppy for an addict and that Ethel was trying to get us to say something to my dad so that she could play the innocent victim and that his kids just hate her and it’s her and him against the world.

Speaking of playing the victim, she does that with my dad a lot. She has literally told him before that it’s him and her against the world. She has talked bad to him about every single one of his kids (except my oldest sister that I know of). She has been trying to cut him off from his family. He can’t talk to anyone of us or even his sister alone. Also, when we’re around, she talks to my dad in a baby voice. I’m sure she does it when we’re not there too, but just trying to act like she’s this innocent helpless little girl and my dad has fallen for it. I’m sooo scared that he is finding himself to be miserable and feels like he has nobody there to help him. I hope he knows that any one of his kids would help him if he said anything. He’s such a good guy and deserves happiness. I hope that soon, he is able to realize that she’s not happiness.

Wow, this was incredibly long. I’m 100% sure there are things that I missed/forgot about. And I’m 100% sure there are things that will happen later and I will be back here writing it down to keep record and if anyone actually was interested in knowing. If you are here reading this, you seriously deserve a medal for being able to get through this entire thing. Thanks for bearing with my scattered brain and I hope it at least made you laugh at the insanity if nothing else.

#long post #tw death #death #tw gaslighting #tw emotional manipulation #tw drugs #psychopath #insane #insanity #i miss my mom #i hate this woman #why did you do this dad?