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foulcrownkryptonite · 3 years

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Tracing Constellations

A storm rages through the 104th's wooded training quarters, leaving a long hike for Jean and Marco to fix a water-logged issue... the time alone making for some unexpected discoveries.

(for the sake of the fic + levels of maturity I am achieving with this story, everyone will be legal adults!)

Chapter One: An Obscurity.

“I’ll kill them all! Just you wait and see!!” The dining hall had been relatively calm, the tranquil buzz of steady conversation and cutlery clinking against plates mixed to create a pleasant hum. It was one of those rare nights their usual starchy glop was exchanged for a more sustainable, hearty potato soup, paired with a cheap but effective booze. A good night to say the least. A good night until Eren (Dumbass) Jaeger opened his obnoxious mouth. The young man’s tired phrase reverberated throughout the hall, pitching obnoxiously off the high ember ceiling. God, I’m too sober for this…

Eren’s endless prattling of ‘I’ll save the world’ or ‘I have more passion than anyone here’ had gotten old fast. It bugged the ever-loving shit out of him, and with the current daggers-for-eyes and under-the-breath-scoffs Jaeger was getting, the sentiment was well shared.

“Don’t give me that Mikasa, I mean it! I’m going to kill every last one of those-'' Eren was promptly cut off by Jean’s hands smacking the table in front of him, causing a nearby fork to clink to the ground. Jean rose from his seat with an overly dramatic flare, making a show out of swooping his hair back. If the entire dining hall weren’t already watching the pair with dreadful, tired looks, they certainly were now. Some hushed whispers and exasperated groans sprinkled about the room as Jean assumed his stance towering over Eren.

“Well, all hail King Jaeger, eh? Oh don’t worry my friends, the man who can’t balance on his ODM gear will stop the incoming apocalypse!” he taunted, voice oozing with that special kind of ridicule Jean knew got Eren’s blood boiling. He was up and out of his seat before Mikasa had a chance to pull him back. Jean snorted loudly.

“Eager are we? Well then Jaeger, fight me like the man you’re always claiming to be.”

“Says the fucking horse face”

“Oh how original”

“Foal!”

“Jackass!”

The surrounding cadets watched with jaded faces, sighing at the scene unfolding for at least the third time that week. It was no longer entertaining, or really worth wasting any time or energy on, so they returned their attention to their much more exciting dinners and side banters.

The ever arrogant duo stepped to the center of the room, assuming, of course, all focus to be on them. Sharing dissent and ill-bred sneers, they theatrically assumed their fighting position. Guess I’ll just have to put him back in his pla-

“Nope. Okay-hah, we’re done here.” Marco interrupted, their foolish behavior striking his last nerve, the last nerve of the entire collective dining hall for that matter. Sighs of relief and annoyance sounded around them as Marco marched over and grabbed at Jean’s jacket, pulling him out from the table and towards the door.

“‘Ey, what’re you doin-” Marco wordlessly dragged the half pissed, half confused and positively tipsy Jean across the room, the grip on his jacket unwavering. A small chuckle escaped Jean’s mouth at Marco's unexpectedly forceful behavior. Damn, those muscles aren’t just for show, huh?

Marco sighed as he led him towards the door, a poorly concealed smile creeping its way onto his features. “Bedtime.” Marco concluded, biting back his smile in need of a more threatening look. Jean didn’t fight it. Instead, he bristled as he caught Conny’s snide face before the door to the dining hall was shut by Marco’s boot. The low lit lantern illuminated the two in a soft orange glow and the thick wooden door effectively drowned out the murmurs coming from behind it.

The change in air was drastic, shifting from a crowded and loud mess hall to the peaceful sounds of an autumn night and Marco’s freckled face incandescent under that old lantern. Marco’s hand remained firm in the layers of his jacket yet neither made motions to move. Jean was in a weird sort of trance and yeah he should move and unblock the way for Marco but for some reason he didn't. It wasn’t as if the other had really given him a chance to, what with him still holding onto the front of Jean’s coat.. A couple still moments passed and Marco had a strange, almost calculating look on his face.

Jean couldn't remember how long he had been standing there, the alcohol starting to intoxicate his body and the sheer closeness of Marco starting to intoxicate his brain. But if the loosening grip on his chest and Marco’s suddenly flushing face said anything, whatever this was had gone on a bit too long. The last thing Jean wanted was to make his good friend uncomfortable- No matter how nice just standing there in the cool breeze with Marco’s hand on his chest… Nope. Backtrack on that line of thinking. Immediately.

Things were getting awkward fast and Marco looked like he was going to say something and shit he probably shouldn’t have chugged that last bit of his drink, huh? To clear the sudden tension caused by his inability not to fucking gawk at Marco, Jean did the only thing his dumb tipsy brain could think of: make a drunken escape.

“Betcha can’t catch me.” he blurted before breaking out of Marco’s loose hold, running towards their quarters in a less than put together fashion. Was Jean literally running away from whatever moment just passed between the two? Why yes, indeed he was. But Marco’s eventual breathy laugh and quickening footsteps enclosing in on him told Jean everything was fine. Well consider that a job well done.

The two then stupidly ran around the camp, Jean hiding behind every tree and supply wagon trying to scare Marco, and Marco doing everything in his power to tackle the other. After a particularly bone crushing embrace and a loud laughing fit quickly admonished by Shadis, the inebriated pair walked the rest of the way to their dorm, the air around them now whimsy and casual.

They trudged through the wooded path, torches lighting the ground every few yards. They sprung into sporadic fits of giggles over absolutely nothing, both of the men now feeling the full effects of dinner’ mead, and Marco no longer playing the role of the responsible sober friend.

The cadets had been training in the woods for a week now, the goal being to get them used to ODM gear and combat in a dense forest. It was a welcome change of scenery from the usual parching desert and brutal heat. Being surrounded by rich greens and active rivers somehow made the strenuous drilling and long hours somewhat enjoyable.

Though navigating the dark forested path whilst drunk proved to be more than a little difficult. His attempts at walking straight in the dense woods were apparently remarkably entertaining, as when Jean confidently waltzed straight into a tree the slightly less drunk Marco lost his absolute mind, laughing himself into a puddle on the ground.

With minimal bumps and bruises, they eventually made it to their quarters. Marco plopped himself dramatically onto an old shipping barrel and started to squirm his way out of his jacket. Ok, perhaps the other was drunker than Jean thought.

Chuckling to himself, he walked over to help his struggling friend out of the confines of the fabric. Marco stopped squirming and tried to accommodate for Jeans helping hands, flushing slightly when his eyes met Jeans. He quickly averted his gaze, turning to eye the door as Jean finished struggling with the last button.

With the jacket discarded, Marco straightened his gaze to look up at Jean, who seemed to tower over him. A couple heated seconds passed in silence until Marco started… shaking? Before concern could settle in, sporadic chuckles started to escape from the man underneath him, evolving into a full on belly laugh. Jean took a small step back and looked down at him in bewilderment but Marco just shook his head, words be damned in his current state.

“Sorry, I just-” he began to topple over himself, a fit of laughter bubbling in his stomach. “I don’t know why I’m laughing honestly-” he spat out through giggles. He was fluctuating between attempting to catch his breath and then losing it all over again. It was utterly ridiculous, but Jean couldn’t hold back his own ugly laugh at the scene. Every couple of seconds Marco would try to stop and speak through the laughter but to no avail, making Jean slump to the ground in front of Marco, clutching his stomach as his body heaved with mirth.

Marco was snorting at that point and on anyone else he would’ve been annoyed at the sheer volume. Say, if Eren was sitting on that barrel losing his damn mind over nothing at all he would’ve slapped the sense back into him. But something about Marco’s water filled eyes and big loud smile just made him feel warm. Or.. perhaps that was just the alcohol.

He grinned as he looked only at the mad man sitting in front of him. From this distance he could see each little freckle adorning his nose and cheeks and the way his nose would scrunch in between sets of giggles. It was an endearing sight, cute even, though Jean would never admit that aloud.

Too caught up in their snickering, the two almost didn’t notice their comrades briskly stumbling in, Ymir being the one who pushed the two large wooden doors hurriedly. “In.” she commanded, and stepped back as everyone else dashed inside. Jean startled and Marco’s laughter alleviated as Ymir eyed them, her face contorted so it was impressively indecipherable. She had quite the poker face, though some general annoyance seemed to seep out as usual.

“What’s the damn ruckus about?” Jean demanded more than he asked, his filter coming back down hard now that more people were around. Ymir looked at Jean with a face that basically read as, ‘Shut the fuck up you’re the one making a dopey ruckus.’ Instead of voicing any of that though, she shut and locked the door as the final cadets made their way inside.

“Massive storm coming in, it’ll do some damage” she stated plainly before her eyes went back to Marco. “Maybe you two lovebirds would’ve noticed if you weren’t screaming like damn hyenas.” she joked dryly, her arms coming to a close across her chest. Marco snorted slightly at the tease but Jean stood up defensively, though perhaps a bit wobbly.

Before he could say a word, Ymir cut in with a raised brow. “Whoaaa relax there horsey, I’m kidding. Mostly. Just go lock the windows in the other rooms before they blow out in the middle of the night.” he nodded hesitantly in response and gave Marco a floppy wave of sorts. He still looked like he was glowing, as if somehow the light from the torches outside still reflected in his pale brown eyes. A sneer from Ymir brought his attention back to… what exactly? Oh right, the windows. Jean quickly left without another word, cursing the alcohol slightly under his breath. The rest of the cadets shuffled about, fulfilling whatever it was their makeshift Captain Ymir ordered.

Not without a scoff and an eye roll, she turned back to Marco. “Just us,” she demanded. “Help me with the rest of the rooms.”

__________

(MARCO POV)

After a solid half hour of flood-proofing the place to the best of their ability, as well as general clean up, Ymir poured the two of them a small whisky to top off the night. Marco relaxed into the sole couch of the common room and Ymir slumped herself into a chair by the window.

The living space was dusky and growing winds pounded the windows, putting them slightly on edge. Nevertheless, Ymir seemed to have something to say to him. She gulped down her drink and tossed the empty glass onto the ground, Marco’s eyes widening in both awe and intimidation. He steeled his nerves as he prepared for whatever it was Ymir needed out of him.

She looked at him like a scientist to a specimen, searching for something upon Marco’s features. Marco squirmed under the intense stare, and it was then that Ymir asked the burning question, cutting right to the chase.

“Do you like Jean?” she probed. Marco sucked in a quick breath at this question. The answer was yes, but why was she asking in the first place? Not knowing exactly what angle she was getting at, he tried to answer in the simplest, most non revealing way.

“Yeah I mean we’re definitely good friends.” he said apprehensively. Not wanting to look Ymir in the eyes, his gaze fell back to the rather pretty glass in his hands, thumbs tracing the engraved pattern.

Ymir smirked at this reaction and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees in a carefree ‘Ymir’ kinda way. “Marco. You know what I'm asking.” her voice was laced with mirth and her sneering face told him she probably already knew his answer. Damn her perceptiveness. Marco had hoped he wasn’t too obvious in his… feelings. But he supposes after tonight's less than subtle antics, e.g., grabbing a laughing Jean into an animalistic embrace and holding it for much longer than necessary, people would start suspecting something.

His eyes still didn’t meet hers as he sighed shakily, knowing there was little to no backing away from this conversation. “Please just… Don’t tell him?” he pleaded, looking back to the girl sitting across from him. Her previous visible mockery and inevitable taunt had faded, her features setting into something akin to understanding.

“Sure, you can trust me.” she said casually, taking a swig of the remaining whisky straight from the bottle. “We’re the same in that way if ya catch my drift.” Although compared to, say Christa, Ymir’s words would seem invasive and rude, they were sweet in their own way. And although Marco wouldn’t say this wasn’t invasive, he appreciated the kindness nonetheless.

Regardless, Marco definitely “caught her drift”. He looked at her with a sort of twinkle in his eyes, pleased to know there was at least one other person in the 104th that wasn’t straight. He chuckled, still embarrassed despite the genuinely accepting nature of their conversation thus far. “God, what gave it away?”

“Oh, I dunno,” she sighed dramatically, “Maybe the way he was looking at you. Maybe the way you were looking at him… Or maybe just a hunch I happened to get right.” Marco laughed at the sentiment before a frown crept onto his face. “Does anyone else…”

“Know?” she finished. Marco nodded. “No, they don’t. It seems only I had the misfortune of seeing you two ogle each other all the damn time. Awful luck on my part. But don’t ya worry, your dirty little secret’s safe with me.”

He snickered as he raised his glass to his lips, downing the rest of the liquid inside. Ymir gave him a curious glance, and Marco softly set the drink down to his side, hands reaching up to grab at his warming face.

“God, what do I even do about it?” he mumbled through the palms of his hands, and Ymir could taste the desperation from where she sat.

Resting her chin between her fingers, she spoke. “Look, hear me out before you interrupt and tell me I’m wrong - but he likes you too.” Marco lifted his head to speak but Ymir cut him off with a glance. “I said, listen. I see the way he looks at you. I saw the way he looked at you tonight. He wasn’t just glancing at his friend… He was admiring you, Marco, your features. Now to me, that’s pretty telling.” Marco contemplated what she was saying, tried to really think about it before he shot it down entirely.

Is that really true? Is it even possible that the oh so straight Mr. ladies man Jean could… Feel the same way about him? It’s true they had some… moments tonight. Hell they’ve been having “moments” for as long as they've known each other. Though Jean did end up speeding away from one of those so called moments just over an hour ago… Was he being too hopeful? Oh god was he coming on too strong?

Ymir groaned at Marco's crestfallen face and stood up, closing the distance between the seats and plopping herself next to Marco. He gave her a curious glance, and in turn she gave a patient smile, well it was really closer to a grimace but still, it was the principle of it all.

He sat quietly, picking his lips with his bottom teeth. Ymir let him wallow in his worry for a whopping three seconds before kicking his ankle with her boot.

“Ow!” Marco pouted. An unspoken question of ‘The hell was that for?’ being shut down before it could be voiced.

“Oh shut it you were visibly spiraling.”

Ymir sunk into the back of the couch, pondering a moment before speaking again.

“You know, Jean isn’t going to initiate anything. Seeing as you’re more in tune with your emotions than that knucklehead is, you need to drop your damn balls and make a move.” Marco scoffed, shaking his head with a slight smile at Ymir’s bluntness.

“I know, I know… You’re right.” Marco finally begrudged, causing Ymir’s ‘Of course I'm right’ smile to appear. “But we never get alone time - we’re always interrupted before he can fully open up to me…”

“Yes!” Ymir exclaimed. “You see it now. Sure it might seem tricky, but if Christa and I can find a way, you can too.” she winked and Marco damn near choked.

“You- and- I had no idea I mean-“ he stuttered before she kicked him again.

“Shut up. And don’t tell a soul.” She smiled cheekily. He nodded intently.

“Course, Ymir.” She playfully punched him, standing up from the sunken couch.

“Good luck, Marco.” she whispered.

He beamed, his chest gleaming with a soft gratitude. “Thank you.”

When Marco turned in for the night, his mind raced with endless possibilities, ranging from transcendent to nightmarish. Wishful thoughts flashed through his mind; Jean getting impossibly close, feather light touches of hands, his head resting in the crook of Jean’s neck, Marco being told he was wanted, telling Jean he wanted him. He bit his cheek, smiling stupidly at the fantasies before he felt a deep sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Jean could easily not feel the same. Jean could easily have never entertained the same idyllic fantasies as Marco was now.

Great, now it hurt.

Plagued with a new sense of guilt, he tossed and turned in the seasoned cot, praying for sleep to take him away from the build up of emotions in his chest. He pondered the possibility of similar thoughts dancing in Jean’s mind…

__________

(Jean POV)

Jean didn’t “wake up”, he just was up. That damned storm last night had kept him awake practically all night. What first was an occasional gust quickly turned into a rampaging wind-demon set out to prevent him and apparently only him from sleeping soundly. Someone had cursed him. Probably that damn Jaeger out for revenge due to Jean always winning their feuds. Typical.

The little sleep he did get consisted of repeated unsolicited scenarios about… Well that didn’t matter now.

It was the morning after a ferocious storm and he was reluctant to see the wreckage he knew he had to help out with. He groaned, rolling out of his bed in an overly dramatic pout. Sure he was acting a bit like a child but right now he just needed sleep so damn everything else, he’s going to throw his little fit. He caught Marco looking at him out of the corner of his eye, his hair ruffled and looking extra fluffy. He was giggling at Jean’s stubborn theatrics, a sweater-hooded hand loosely covering his mouth. Cute. Jean felt a bit more energized after that and he didn't bother to question why.

Once dressed, he headed out to meet the rest of the trainees outside the sleeping quarters. Holy hell, the damage was bad: shingles of the roof scattered the grass, trash was knocked down, even some large trees had fallen in the distance.

Eren rolled his eyes before their commander could even step close. “God, can’t we make someone else clea-” the brat began before getting hit softly by Armin.

“Eren! One day of cleanup doesn’t equate to the fall of humanity.” he sharply retorted. Jean chuckled at this exchange, overjoyed to see the prick put in his place by his own best friend. Speaking of which, he couldn’t seem to spot Marco…

“ATTENTION CADETS.” their Commander roared as he marched toward the gathered crowd.

“YES SIR!” They yelled back in unison, fists crossing chests in an assertive salute.

“Deep woods ODM training is put on hold for today due to the storm. I will be assigning you each in groups of two or three to aid in cleaning this mess.” Jean scanned the surrounding area nervously, where was Marco? “Proceed to the front to get your duty from me before you grab a cold meal.” the Commander directed. Pairs of people made their way to get their job of the day, but Jean stayed behind, unable to spot Marco. Nerves crept up his spine as the line got shorter, indicating he would have to grab a job with someone he possibly couldn’t stand - especially after such a shitty sleep.

A few moments later and the remaining crowd was scant, still no Marco to be seen. “Jean, you’re on running water. I need you to go up to the creek and find the source stopping the water from running back to us. We have enough for the day, but this cannot go on. You will need a partner…” Shadis trailed off, finding only Annie and some guy Jean barely could remember the name of. Tomas? Tobiaus? Timothious?

He sighed, knowing nothing but complaints would come from either cadets if forced to spend an entire day with him. Jean crossed his arms, awaiting a choice of partner from his boss while he dreaded the inevitably long journey stuck with either insufferable silence or annoying small talk.

“Commander sir, I can go with Jean.” A pleasant voice chirped in from behind. And with those few words: salvation. Jean subconsciously uncrossed his arms and smirked as the Commander let out a sigh of relief upon seeing Marco approach.

“Thank Heavens, the one person who can stand him.” he murmured, Marco frowning at the not so quiet comment as he walked up to Jean's side. “That is fine, pack plentiful in case you get stuck for a night, we are not sure how much wreckage is up there, nor how long the journey on foot will take. There’s a shed around there you could set up in for the night. Do not come back today if you do not have ample time before sundown. Now get moving!” he ordered, his last words reverberating in a loud squawk.

“Yes sir!” They saluted before Jean met eyes with Marco. “Where the hell were you?” he questioned. Marco playfully rolled his eyes.

“Worried, hmm?” he chuckled, “Don’t worry, I was just helping Ymir with something.” he replied brightly. Ymir? That seems random… But he decided to not question it.

The two went back to their rooms to pack for their lengthy and no doubt strenuous trip up the mountain. Jean found himself not only not dreading the excursion, but actively looking forward to it. He felt a bit like a hyperactive kid as genuine excitement coursed through his veins. Should he bring his comb? Nah he probably won't need it. But what if they do end up having to spend the night and Jean turns too much in his sleep and his hair gets all messy and floofy and Marco looks at him with damned bed head and then probably giggles to himself and makes a dumb but cute comment about it because its Marco and somehow he always manages to make what Jean is insecure about into something he can actually like about himself just like when he’d said Jean’s eyes were pretty like a brown hibiscus and he stopped hating the way his eyes looked when he saw his reflection looking back at him and- Jean grabbed the stupid hairbrush and threw it into his bag.

Once sufficiently supplied, they scarfed a crummy cold meal before heading out as quickly they could manage.

Marco seemed awfully giddy as they started down a gravely path lined with fern. Though cheerful he often was, Marco was struggling to hide a smile. It wasn’t a bad sight at all, though Jean was curious. “What’s got you so damn happy today?” he questioned. Marco shrugged.

“I think I made a new friend - always a nice feeling, yknow?” Jean would say he’s surprised, but everyone in the 104th loved Marco, even the stoic ones, and he had a sneaking suspicion of who exactly his new friend was.

“Ymir?” he asked plainly. Marco nodded, a soft smile finding its way onto his face.

“Yeah. Y’know, she may seem edgy but she can be really kind.” he expressed, eyes a bit starry and thoughtful. He clearly didn’t hear how the words sounded to Jean.

Jean bit back the bitter remark already forming as envy crept its way into his mind. Why was it bothering him? He’s still his friend. His best friend even. Gah, not a big deal, keep it together. He told himself before rephrasing whatever edgy comment he was going to sneer into a hopefully harmless question.

“You like her?” he ended up asking, false humor falling from his tongue.

Marco looked visibly confused. “What? No I’m- not my type. She just has a good head on her.” he surmised. Why won’t Marco ever admit attraction? Does he not trust Jean? Jean had no problem divulging about those he found hot, so why wouldn’t Marco do the same?

The next few hours were spent bullshitting around as they walked; sharing stupid jokes about who in their class was most likely to get kicked out, a stupid conversation about Ymir that probably shouldn’t have peeved him so much, Jean going on a long winded rant about how justified he is in smacking Eren atop the head, Marco stopping to pick up random bird feathers exclaiming each time that, “No Jean, you don’t get it, this one is rare.” and eventually, as the sun started its descent towards the horizon, their casual banter shifted into their hopes for the future.

“Eh, I don’t wanna get married. Who wants to be stuck with a chick forever?!” Jean quipped. At his words Marco chuckled nervously, his gaze diverting to the coarse dirt beneath him.

“Yeah, me too. I don’t wanna get married. I’m fine living a life alone with me and my hobbies.” he said flippantly, fiddling with the strap of his backpack. Jean found the tone of his voice had changed into something more sullen and somber, and a glance over at his friend did not yield him any better results. Jean must do something about this.

He lightly elbowed his friend. “Well, if ya change your mind, I think you’d make a great husband some day.” Jean said honestly, no lick of sarcasm to his voice. Marco’s knees wobbled for a moment before he corrected them, clearing his throat to cover his obvious nerves.

“Thanks, Jean. You too.” he replied, biting his cheek. Another glance towards his friend showed a soft smile and a flushed face. Jean succeeded. Though now he too felt a bit hot in the face. He once again decided not to unpack that.

As they hiked, they spotted a would-be stream leading down to their base. Taking note of the lack of obvious running water, they were certain something rather large had blocked it. “Guess it’ll be a chore huh.” Marco pointed out. Jean began flexing dramatically, his tight muscles showing slightly through the thin white tunic.

“Pfft, your ol’ buddy Jean here will fix it right up for us, eh?” he joked, Marco eyeing him with a raised eyebrow followed with a hearty laugh. Sure, he wasn’t helping Jean’s ego, but he didn’t care.

The more they conversed alone, the more Jean felt his social facade fade, ending up losing whatever filter he had in place for other people all together. He wasn’t sure why this was the case, only knew that it made him feel relaxed and just genuinely, all around good. Perhaps it was the lack of a crowd - or Eren Jaeger. Either way, he was loosening up and took joy in seeing Marco enjoy himself on this trip as well.

“This is nice,” Jean said, smiling at the open air and lack of obvious walls. It felt open here, almost free. Hell, for the most part, they’ve forgotten completely about life inside the walls. Marco looked over and followed his friend's gaze to the sky, basking in the comfortable feeling.

“It is…” he began, sneaking another glance at Jean. “Really nice.”.

PART 2!!!

https://foulcrownkryptonite.tumblr.com/post/663166809268224000/tracing-constellations-pt2

#JeanMarco #jean kirstein #jean kirschtein fanfiction #marco bott #marco bodt #jean x marco #fluff #kissing #making out #spicy #marco x jean #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #our second fic ever #please be nice #and gentle #slow burn #slow build #cute

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ginkgomoon · 3 years

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Gavin's 'Falling Slowly' and Film 'Once'- Analysis

Since the beginning, I’ve wanted to do an analysis on the song Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, but since it was only mentioned twice (in Mark Date and Gavin’s Music and the Past Call), I thought it was going to be left at that. But because of the mention again in @cheri-translates' post, perhaps... there could be more to it. Because this song was made for the film Once, I had actually watched it earlier this year. I wasn’t going to post this analysis originally, but the trailer literally made me cry. After watching it with the knowledge from my first viewing, the trailer had a bigger impact on me that I didn’t expect. This allowed me to push on. Rewatching the film for this helped me realise some parallels between the film and Gavin’s history with MC, along with its song Falling Slowly. For me, the film was so heartfelt, vulnerable, honest and real. Just like the side that Gavin shows MC. It also had super hilarious moments that made me laugh so much while crying over the sad bits. Highly recommend this movie (if you don’t mind some occasional cursing!) Now I can say I’ve watched Once twice.

Below contains spoilers for Gavin's CN content (referring to Cheri's translations) and on the film.

“Your performance… was a miracle to me.” -Gavin

youtube

Once is a 2007 Irish romantic drama about two struggling artists in Dublin, Ireland. The film was turned into a musical and won various awards, with Falling Slowly winning at the Critics’ Choice Awards and the 2008 Academy Award for Best Original Song. This was on top of receiving a Grammy nomination. Once only had a budget of only $150,000 USD.

In an Interview with Glen Hansard (male lead), he stated that during the scene of Falling Slowly in the music store, director John Carney wanted this shot to be the centrepiece- just two musicians connecting through music. This scene where the actors first got together to perform and sing in harmony allowed the crew to maintain the perseverance needed to finish the film despite various major setbacks. (People kept buying the same piano in the music store featured because of this film LOL)

“The closest a non-musician will ever get to feeling what it feels like to write the song… or to discover… it was the most moving scenes of the film.” -The Interviewer

The first impression some viewers may have upon watching would be criticising the shakiness of the handheld cameras. However, the actual intention (from the ex-film student perspective that I had) was to give it a sense of realism. This film aims to depict more of real-life from the perspective of the main characters. Even the characters' names weren't disclosed as they were literally 'unknown artists' in everyday life. It was ultimately based on Carney’s own personal experience, while Hansard, wrote the music for the film.

“The movie is sad, funny, real, everything that life is and it gives you hope. It's about a moment that happens in life that may not come by again or may not last forever, but it just might have the greatest impact on you. I know I'll be watching "Once" again.” -A fellow Once viewer.

We are introduced to the male lead (Guy), playing the guitar and wanting to make it big with his music, who also fixes vacuums with his father for a living. He meets the female lead (Girl) and she bugs him into fixing her vacuum. In the beginning, he’s cold and doesn’t want to associate with her (especially after when she gives him 10 cents for his busking).

Look how grateful he looks-

Even when Gavin and MC met again after their separation, Gavin puts up a fragile guard in front of MC while protecting her from a distance, like in high school. And just like how Joe Zieja stated in his MLQC interview-

“Gavin is a really interesting character, especially when we first started out before he and the producer really had a relationship… Gavin’s very cold. He’s very business-like, he just wants to get stuff done. But it’s really neat to see Gavin’s shell melt over time as he develops a relationship with the producer.”

In the film, Guy finds out that Girl can play the piano, who learned it from her father before he passed. Turns out, Guy is heartbroken from his ex (who’s currently in London) who cheated on him. Girl tries to convince him to get her back with his songs.

Similarly, Gavin discovers MC’s music during his fall shown Campus Date, in the moments where he received his Evol. Gavin devotes his life to protect her.

(I also did a timeline of MC and Gavin’s high school history together here that also references these parts.)

*Casually dragging vacuum*

Together, they go to a music store and she plays Mendelssohn for him. Then finally, at 15:42 of the film, they start to play Falling Slowly.

(So good! So good!! When they start harmonising!!! No fancy editing or cuts- it’s just two artists and pure music.)

Through music, they connect with each other’s souls. Just like how MC saves Gavin with her music that fateful day. And soon enough, Gavin comes across MC playing another song in the music room.

That song was Falling Slowly. He doesn’t know the name of the song though, only remembering the melody. Later, he learns how to play the guitar because he liked it and thought that perhaps he could perform it to his special someone one day. Such moments had inspired Gavin to write and make his own songs then record them onto his CDs so that maybe one day she could listen to them.

A thought I had was that did Gavin hear the piano and decide to make a guitar version, only to figure out that he was the missing piece?

Even the music store owner was very impressed-

Just like how Gavin slowly begins to soften up to MC, in the film, the instrumental of Falling Slowly plays when Guy and Girl start to bond. Guy tries to talk to her more but she states that she “has responsibilities”. It’s revealed that she has a daughter at home and a husband still in the Czech Republic. Even so, together, they write and record songs for his journey to London- back to his ex and to pursue his dreams as a musician.

Later, they go out for a spin on his father’s motorbike- he even prepared another helmet for her (SPARKY 2.0??). He asks her to teach him how to say “how much do you love him?” in Czech when they talk about her husband upon finding out that she’s married. She replies with, “it is you I love” in Czech. But he has no idea what she said. (*Grips heart*)

He wants her to go to London with him, start a band, and sell out shows. But she can’t. The song they recorded together “When your mind’s made up” (I have this song on repeat) plays in the car as they drive to the beach before he leaves for London the next morning.

So, if you want something And you call, call Then I'll come running To fight and I'll be at your door When there's nothing worth running for

The music producer is clearly so impressed-

Together, they schedule a time to meet up just before he leaves for the airport. Guy waited all night till morning for her.

But she still doesn’t come. And that was the last time he ever saw her. Just like how MC wasn't able to see Gavin who waited the whole day before he left. This was shown in Old Days Date that I did a heart-gripping analysis on here.

Guy’s father had said, “make your Ma proud.” (*Cries upon remembering Gavin’s loving mother*)

In the end, still unable to reach her, Guy gifts Girl a piano. In the beginning, they had a conversation where they spoke about pianos being too expensive, hence why she kept going to the music store in order to be able to play. Even though they are both short on money, he still manages to buy her a piano- the same one they played Falling Slowly together.

And while the film comes to an end, Falling Slowly plays in the background while Guy is off to the airport.

*Dramatic power-walking*

This was a heartbreaking ending for the viewers because not only that they didn’t end up together, they weren’t able to see each other before he left. And it wasn’t disclosed why she couldn’t make it.

Nothing too fancy happens because again, this was to show a slice of real life, and this proves it to be more tragic and beautiful. It can’t really be described unless it’s experienced. And I had the chance of viewing it not once, but twice.

This film (and song) is important for Gavin and MC because, despite their complicated history of misunderstandings, he always wants to put their relationship first and make the most out of what they have now together. Girl had helped Guy achieve his record deal and pursue his dreams. She had done her part on his journey to becoming an artist and both had to part ways. Without her, he wouldn’t have been able to record his songs and leave. Likewise, without MC, Gavin wouldn’t be the man he is today (hence, Winter World). Gavin is very vocal about this as well.

Gavin lowers his head, and the light follows his movement, descending onto the scrapbook, illuminating every word he writes- “I’m very happy to have met you in the past.” -CN Mark Date

“It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. What matters is every moment I spend with you now.” -Sugar Figurine Phone Call

“Seeing you again is the best present I could hope for.” -The Best Gift Phone Call

"Even though I'm curious about the future as well... I care more about the present. For me, it's good enough to seize the day. As long as you're here. The next second will be everything I need. Protecting what I have now, is the best plan for the future." -School Legend ASMR

With Falling Slowly, it’s quite a straightforward, romantic song. Originally in the film, Guy wrote it about his ex-girlfriend so it does has some sad lyrics. MC didn't know how Gavin knew about it.

Teacher Zheng: Just now, MC mentioned that you play the guitar and bass incredibly. Could you let me hear it? It’d be best if the two of you could play together. I haven’t heard my Orchestra Leader play the piano in a very long time.

To be honest, this is not a “request” at all. If Teacher Zheng wants to hear it, I’ll definitely be willing to play for her. But Gavin…

I cast Gavin a probing glance, wondering if there’s a need to persuade him. To my surprise, he nods.

Gavin: I could, but I’m really not as skilled as she says.

Teacher Zheng: Haha that’s all right. I just want you to use your heart when performing. What’s important isn’t how good it sounds, but the heart.

Gavin: Could I borrow the guitar over there?

Teacher Zheng: Of course.

Basically shown in Mark Date, Gavin’s been preparing for this moment all this time. He already knows what song to play. And what’s so amazing is that the first instrument we hear is the guitar which leads the piano. Therefore, once Gavin plays his piece, MC would know what song it is and then join in with her piano. AND THEY WOULD SING TOGETHER.

Maybe it’s just my misperception, or the sunlight just happened to fall onto his eyes, but I keep feeling as though his eyes are even brighter than usual. It’s as though they are flashing with light.

This is a slightly melancholic song, but the moving light and wind seem to make it refreshing and clear.

🎶 Lyrics 🎶

It's a slower song to help listeners slowly take in the emotions, lyrics and main dueting instruments of piano and guitar with the occasional violin in the back. It's so simple, and yet so powerful.

The guitar has its solos and the piano appears more prominent in the chorus. In the beginning, it's just the guitar, with the piano joining in after.

[GUY & GIRL] I don't know you but I want you All the more for that Words fall through me and always fool me And I can't react And games that never amount To more than they're meant Will play themselves out

Gavin never got the chance to be close to MC in high school, so he showed his affection through other methods. He walked 10 metres behind her after school and was her silent guardian against those who had negative intentions towards her. In the library, he had tried to introduce himself to her, but she had already dashed off.

Before waiting for him to say the introduction he had rehearsed countless times in his heart, the girl had already uttered a “thank you” and hurriedly fled. -CN Tilted Time Rumours and Secrets

Gavin couldn't help but develop this softer side for her and didn’t know how to control it or express it other than doing things such as leaving strawberry milk on the piano and learning guitar in hopes of playing it for her one day.

Those "games" he's referring to were those things they did, such as MC smiling at him when crossing each others' paths in the hallways, and Gavin buying her hot drinks and only looking at her among the snowball fight chaos at school in the Winter. Gavin has no power over how everything will turn out, nor does he try to have complete control over it either.

"... I believe that some things are destined. Like..." -Gacha and Destiny Phone Call

[GUY & GIRL] Take this sinking boat and point it home We've still got time

This "sinking boat" of the relationship is what they're both trying to save. For Gavin, this could be suggested to be about himself.

In a split second, the noise ceases abruptly. After a moment of silence, whispers surface in the crowd. Vaguely, I can catch a few phrases.

“Bad.” “Fighting.” “Misfit.” -CN Mark Date

Gavin had a tough time in high school being the outcast, but MC kept him going, fighting in the name of justice. And had quite literally saved his life. She was his lighthouse when he was battling the rough waters back home. And MC- she was also his home.

“As he clenched his fists, a power deep down within awakened. It was a rapture of rebirth. A declaration of the end of darkness and the advent of the light.” -Campus Date

[GUY & GIRL] Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice You've made it now

Gavin wants her to realise his feelings, be around and talk to him more- and say "yes". But even so, he still gives her a choice not to, and would have to live with that. Gavin thought she already had when he departed and spent years thinking that her absence showed all of what had to be said.

[GUY & GIRL] Falling slowly, eyes that know me And I can't go back

Gavin's falling slowly for MC (compared to when he fell really fast before MC saved him LOL). Once he starts, he can and would never go back. He hopes that MC would see him the way he truly is.

MC: “I have one more thing to tell you. MC is a bit slow. She is not as good as you think, and will also be blinded by rumours…”

Gavin: “She’s a very nice person. What she thinks of me has nothing to do with anyone else." -Old Days Date

[GUY & GIRL] Moods that take me and erase me And I'm painted black

Gavin can't handle his feelings. (*Cries*)

After being in a daze in the piano room, he’d be in a daze in the library, continuously staring at the empty seat where MC used to sit, and I have no idea what he’s thinking about.

But I really didn't expect a person who sleeps in class to be in a daze in the library for an entire afternoon... Did Bro Gavin and MC have a fight recently? -CN Minor's Memos

[GUY] You have suffered enough And warred with yourself It's time that you won

He states that he understands that the girl had it rough, but if she was to be with him, she wouldn't get hurt. Gavin wants to be the one for her.

"MC, I want to make you happy forever. If... I hope that person is me." -First Year In-Game Birthday Visit

[GUY & GIRL] Take this sinking boat and point it home We've still got time Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice You've made it now

[GUY & GIRL] Falling slowly, sing your melody I'll sing it loud

Gavin recognises MC's "melody", and urges her to sing (her presence) and Gavin will listen and follow, singing his one, too. Together they will harmonise.

[GUY] Take it all Oh, I played the cards too late Now it's gone

The song finally ends with both the guitar and piano, whereas at the beginning it was just the guitar.

This part is the most powerful and heartbreaking. Gavin regretted not giving the farewell letter to MC directly- from "playing the cards too late", then suffers the loss of her, her presence, and her melody.

But fortunately, in the end, Gavin successfully returned home- to MC.

"Want to play for a while tonight? I haven’t heard you playing the piano in a long time too.

If possible, I’d like to make a song request.

How about “Falling Slowly”?

We could sit by the window and play it together again." -CN Gavin’s Weekly Text - Piano Concert

Somewhere, Gavin is happily playing Falling Slowly with MC.

#When your mind's made up #I actually learnt this on guitar a while back #Best feeling is when you remember something that could support your point and then find it #mlqc #mr love queens choice #mlqc analysis #mlqc Gavin #love and producer #恋与制作人 #mlqc cn #Youtube

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thatlassinquarantine · 3 years

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hey i love your take on aisha's enchantix could you explain how the other winx got their enchantix and explain how any other fairy can get enchantix and can you explain lovix and sophix

Oh my god thank you! I am glad you enjoy my explanation behind it, it always used to bug me as a kid.

Now for Stella I want to keep the concept and add a tad more gravity. Stella earns her Enchantix but loses something in return. Her scepter practically falls apart beneath her fingers as she defends her father. That thing is a thousand year old relic and her heirloom, that thing is to her the most precious thing that she owns (and it’s also very fashionable and cool).

And I also want it to be like a symbolic thing, showing that Stella has turned into a fullfleged Fairy and that she is no longer ‘just a princess’. Maybe Brandon could go and try to fix it and use it to propose or maybe as a gift for her coronation, that would be cute. AND it could look a little different, to symbolize that Stella is the new ruler of Solária and it's the start of a new era.

Musa should be pretty much the same, though I think it would be nice if we could see some more bonding between Musa and Galatea, to get a better idea of why Musa would sacrifice herself for her other than her just being a royal from Melody and them having a one conversation earlier that the same day.

Perhaps she could go there not as a student but in order to check out if Alfea would be the right school for her and Musa would get to look after her for that period of time and they have time to bond.

With Flora I’ll do some small changes. Miele should definitely be introduced sooner at least a little bit, I could also see her be a little older than in the original and I could see her want to try to get into Alfea once she is old enough. Meaning she would probably get into a lot of trouble in order to show off her power. I could see Flora have enough with her nonsense and out fear for her well being actually sends her away, maybe even snaps a little.

Her sacrifice would showcase that she really does love her little sister and would be willing to give her life for hers. And we could have a really adorable scene when they reconcile.

Tecna’s earning of Enchantix is probably one of the most emotional moments in the entirety of Winx Club and I don’t really think any big changes are necessary here, I believe that it was executed really well. And thanks to the fact that Andros and Zenith are on the same planet in my work and therefore even if the Omega portal is near Andros, its collapse would affect both.

AND not only that BUT that would mean she saves all the other Realms as well. I am thinking of adding some background conflict in Zenith but that is for me to know for now.

Bloom kind of troubles me. She broke the mold and gained Enchantix through sheer force of will. And while it is stated that her Enchantix is incomplete, I never understood how or why and what exactly happened. I need to think about this one for a while because I want to get her earning of Enchantix correctly.

I am thinking of going for something along the lines of ‘sacrificing her life with her family and friends, knowing she will never see them again if she doesn’t earn her Enchantix’ but I am not really sure. I need to listen to some depressing fantasy sounding music to get the inspiration juice.

I want to keep the original reasoning behind Enchantix - sacrifice. Now there are two types of this:

Life sacrifice - Fae literally dying for someone else (case: Stella dying while defending her father, featured above)

Sacrifice of a life - leaving behind a life Fae once had (case: Aisha sacrificing her sight in order to save her aunt, featured here)

Out of the two, life sacrifice tends to be more common.

And now, the two transformations I completely forgot about:

Isbrix (Lovix) - created in the vast cold landscape of the Arctic, Isbrix is the Northern variation of Believix. The only way to achieve it is alongside the other two Gifts of Destiny. It gives the Fae who have earned it resistance against natural and magical cold alongside with some mix of powers over ice and snow. The Fae’s wings tend to be of the creatures living in polar regions. This transformation variation lasts half less than the Fae’s Believix would.

Silvix (Sophix) - made within the depths of the Amazonian rainforest, Silvix is the Southern variation of Believix. It can only be achieved in the same way as Isbrix. The Fae who has managed to earn it will be given abilities connected to all sorts of plant matter and resistance towards any poisons found in the natural world of both Earth and Vathrú. The wings tend to be of creatures living in tropical regions. Just like its sisterly transformation it lasts half less than the Fae’s Believix would.

Welp I hope you find this to be of interest and thank you again for asking.

#winx club #winx aisha #winx stella #winx musa #winx flora #winx tecna #winx bloom #transformation #enchantix #isbrix #silvix #ask #wcr2

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coping-via-clint-eastwood · 3 years

Text

4x12 - GSR fix-it fic

youtube

(A/N: What the motherfuck- TUMBLR HAS A TEXT BLOCK LIMIT?!!!! UUUGGGHHH!!!! I guess this is gonna have to be in two parts. But, I guess...this whole thing is pushing 9000 words, so I'll split it 4500-4500. Yeah. I'm as tired as Gil now. I'm gonna go sleep with him. I was inspired to write this after watching that video. Anyways, they're actually together in this one. Aka when Gil FINALLY goes home, he can rest his forehead on Sara's and reassure himself that she's actually still okay, and that she's actually still right there, with him. Because I crave this for them. So, there are many and heavy contextual changes. Fyi, I'm not writing out every single piece of dialogue/action, hell no. I'm just writing whatever's relevant to GSR. Oh and, warning - canon-typical ns/fw

{I'm sorry about the formatting but I would like to give} Special thanks to @addictedtostorytelling for...basically saving my ass with all the details of this fic. Thank you for answering my questions, no matter how inane, dumb, unnecessary, or worse. And of course @stokes-theorem got me out of a panic attack; it is much appreciated 🙏)

Gil walked through the house of the 419 of the night, having had to put protective coverings over his shoes so that he did not disturb any evidence he might accidentally step on. He had to keep his back to the wall and walk sideways as well. (The sound of his footsteps were adorable.) As he passed the spare bedroom, he noticed that the victim possessed a collection of butterfly-resembling trinkets, all displayed nicely on her shelf. He made it to the area of event at last, squatting down to take a closer look at the body.

His eyebrows jumped up in shock - the victim had a strong resemblance to Sara. For a few moments longer, he stared at his (secret) girlfriend's image, a dozen thoughts swirling around in his head but never aligning themselves. It was his unfailing sense of duty that allowed him to literally get his head upright and get back to his team, who was waiting outside. But when he opened the door, the very person in his line of sight was Sara; again he stared, this time at her actual self. Inside, there was a dead body, who looked so like her, but here she was, living, breathing and- turning her head to stare right back at him. But the one's gaze held such a different meaning from the other's.

Jim, who was past Sara in Grissom's line of sight, thought that he was the one the team leader wanted to see, so he stepped between the scientists. "Ready for us?"

"For now, no one enters this house except CSI."

[CUE THE INTRO]

Gil assigned Warrick to the car, but he assigned Sara to the perimeter, to which she shook her head in disbelief and questioned, "What? You just did a one hour walk-through. The perimeter cannot be a priority." On 'not', she shrugged and laughed wryly.

His gaze immediately turned beseeching. "I need you to work the outside. Catherine and I will be inside." He momentarily shifted his eyes in the direction of the door at the last bit but immediately looked back at her, his eyes even more pleading. Sara gave him an 'alright, fine' smile and went to do as he said.

Gil did not examine the car, but there was a fair chance that it would yield a fair amount of evidence. However, he had, as Sara remarked, gone over the perimeter, so he knew that Sara's scouring of it would bear no fruit. He deliberately did this; he wanted to dissociate Sara from the case as much as possible, in his own little way.

While Catherine went to interrogate the victim's friend, Gil took the opportunity to go back and stare the body for a bit longer. He was (understandably) haunted that the 419 looked like the love of his life.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he did not hear Catherine walk in behind him; his head flinched to the side when she spoke, "One thing I can never get over with this job: anything can happen to anybody."

Gil clicked his tongue and responded, "That's why we're here," before going back to looking over the corpse.

Soon enough, Sara was let in a little more on the action when she had to crawl under the house and unscrew a pipe running from the bathroom to get the water that had been drained into it, as well as process the actual pipe. However, Gil insisted that she was to return to the laboratory and test just those pieces of evidences as soon as she was done; his intent was that she would be occupied with something appertaining to the case but not in such a major capacity, thus satisfying her curiosity if only on a temporal basis. Gil and Sara did not know it, but when she looked up into the pipe, Gil happened to be spraying luminol onto it on the other side. (A/N: Can I just take a moment to appreciate the cinematography here? As well as the music <3)

The bugs helped the bug man out again; flies swarmed the dustbins that had pieces of corpse inside them.

After those were sent back to Al and David, Gil went back inside the house. This time, he examined the victim's collection of synthetic butterflies. He was turning over one that was blue, translucent, and had a base so that it could stand, a thoughtful frown on his forehead. If Sara had been there to see him, she would have kissed it away. He put the butterfly down and picked up a framed picture of Debbie. With her arms straight up in the air and an open-mouthed smile that showed her top row of teeth, it was evident that she had been jubilant at the time of photography. Gil shook his head; not because he pitied the loss of her joy, but because he was once again struck by her likeness to the greatest joy in his own life. He tore his eyes away from the photo and looked at himself in the mirror, trying to collect himself.

But the adverse was achieved, because the bed was visible in the mirror, and he envisioned the victim sitting on it facing away from him, alive and well. She then looked over her shoulder at him; the image was replaced with that of Sara.

Grissom clenched his jaw. He stiffly tilted his head to one side, his gaze at himself hardening. All in an reinforced effort to steel himself.

He was forcibly yanked out of his thoughts when his phone rang; his head flinched a little way in its direction while his eyes flickered down to it. He picked it up and manage to announce in his normal voice, "Grissom."

"Hey!" came the voice of the very woman who plagued him so, her voice cheery; she had dismissed any offence she had felt earlier from her mind and forgiven him, just being happy to hear from her man.

But her voice made him drop his mouth open in shock. Restraining the last of his resolve from flying out the window, he said, "Sara. Uuuuhhh listen I'm in a bad area, I'll call you back." He deliberately raised his voice a little to make his lie more believable.

Even though he could not see her, she gave a little nod; physical embodiment of her acknowledgment. She responded by raising her voice just as he did when he next spoke. "I got a skin tag off the bathroom drain pipe."

"Skin tag. That's great. Uh, give it to Greg."

"Yeah I did. Hey do you want me to come over there and give you a hand?"

"No I'm-I'm-I'm fine," he stuttered, his free hand moving up then down again, as if he was physically dismissing (his emotions besides) her offer. "I'll-i'll-i'll- uh...I'll talk to you back at the lab." He immediately hung up after that. He raised his head to glare at himself; he needed to force himself to push whatever emotions he had aside so that he could focus on the case.

As for Sara, she frowned in concern, but went on brushing what she put down as his typical eccentricity aside and went to help Warrick out with Michael Clark's car. A third party would have enjoyed watching them work, especially with John M. Keane's music.

After that, Sara and Warrick convened with Catherine in the break room to go over the course of the physical events of the murder. Grissom joined remotely by holding his pager to his ear with one hand, while the break room's table had a speaker that his phone was tapped into; it was certainly much easier to communicate with Sara remotely and in a group where he could avoid speaking directly to her instead of communing in private where he literally had to face her. Since Grissom was at the house, he walked through it himself in accordance with his team's narration. When Sara spoke, he had to tilt his phone away from his ear, catching himself tripping again. Since he was at the scene of the crime, he narrated how the deed was done. As always, he had been envisioning the actual events, so it was difficult for him to picture such a thing happening Sara's likeness, but he pulled through; he did pause for extremely brief moments, and those could be put down perfectly as him taking time to think.

Sara, Catherine and Warrick finally went home after one and a half shifts. As Sara approached the door to her and Gil's place, she could hear Hank scratching at it. She smiled and opened the door. "Hey!" she called at the same time that Hank barked. Hank then stepped behind her and sniffed the air. "He's not here," Sara told him, gently pushing him inside with one hand and holding her kit with the other. She sat on the couch and directed him to sit next to her. She took her phone out of her pocket and showed it to him. "We'll call him, huh?" Hank had come to understand that that little slab of plastic with an area that would light up was something that humans used to communicate with each other. There were frequent occasions when one of his humans was away, and the other would hold this object in between him and them. Then, when the human pressed some things that made beeping sounds, there would be a certain tone for a while until the other human's voice could be heard from it; this was one such occasion.

Sometimes however, the other human's voice would not be heard. In those cases, he and the human would just bark or speak into the slab by themselves. After several hours, the slab would start up with a ringing sound, and when the human made a beep, the other human's voice could be heard. He would always bark joyfully then and wag his tail.

So Hank smiled at Sara, tongue hanging out as he panted eagerly. He watched and listened as she made the slab beep, and a tone followed. Not too long after, the tone ended, and was replaced with a, "Grissom." He had had to turn away from the area of wall he was swabbing and take the phone out of his inner breast pocket.

Hank immediately started barking into the object, letting his human know that he was excited to hear from him and missed him. Both humans giggled. (At least Hank managed to cheer Gil up for a little bit.) Sara absentmindedly ran her other hand down his ear as she waited for him to stop barking so that she could have her turn at speaking. The dog was aware of this, and let his mother have her turn in due time. "We miss you," she smiled.

He sounded forlorn as he answered, "I know... I miss you too...but I have to finish this." He was frowning sadly, and his shoulders were slumped. Sara thought that he was sad because he regretted not being able to come home to her. While this was true, he had another reason: that he had to deal with...this. And it was not that he had to deal with it; it was something that he had taken upon himself to. All he wanted was to protect his Sara, even if it meant hiding (fortunately minor) details of the case from her, and foregoing sleep altogether.

"Why not come home? Take a break. And you can continue tomorrow," she tried to coax him.

He shook his head even though she could not see him. "No. You go ahead without me," he said woefully.

She frowned in concern. "We gotta stop doing this." She was referring to the fact that they often stayed up for the whole day to work on cases instead of getting sleep.

"I know, I know," he sighed, his free hand squeezing his temples. "I promise I'll get more sleep after this case, okay?"

There was a period of silence when Sara nodded. "Okay," she said genially.

She heard her boyfriend huff a sigh; he dipped his head defeatedly when he did that. "Look, I-i-i'm sorry," he stuttered for the second phone call from her in a row.

She shook her head, "Don't be. It's alright. I'm guilty of the same thing." As well as she could hear that he was in dire need of sleep, she would not force him to since he did not want to. Plus, there was no way she could get Gil to come home without people questioning as to how she managed to get through to the stubborn workaholic; suspicion would be raised as to the true extent of their relationship. He was at a loss as to what to say. So, she rescued him as usual, "I'll see you back at the lab?"

He felt as if there were chains around his body that had just been loosened. Finally, something he could answer honestly! He felt as if he was ripping them off as he answered, "I don't think so. I still have to process the carpet-"

"The carpet?! Gil, that thing runs over every inch of floor!!!" Hank, who had been contently resting his head on Sara's lap, jerked his head up at the sudden interjection.

"I know," he groaned slightly, the vocalisation coming more naturally now that he was free. The boxer lay his head back down. "It has to be done though."

She nodded before saying, "I know. Don't run yourself into the ground, okay? I mean," here he could hear her snicker, "no more than you usually do."

For the first time in over a day, he smiled. A small but genuine smile that made the corners of his storm blue eyes crinkle endearingly; if Sara was there to see it, she would have kissed him. "I'll try not to." And, ah, how nice - she could hear the amusement in his voice.

"Take care of yourself. Remember to eat at least. I love you."

"I'll try. I love you too. I love you Hank!" His head jerked up again and enthusiastic barking ensued. The humans followed suit with more giggling before they hung up. With his spirits lifted anew from his conversation with Sara, he pocketed his phone and got back to work with a little more energy than he had before.

As for Sara, she put a hand on Hank's head and said, "Well boy, let's go and eat some breakfast huh?" He gave a cheery bark and jumped off the couch. Sara closed and locked the door, carried her kit and followed him down the stairs. She hurried to put her kit away and then popped back to the kitchen to set out Hank's food, and then get herself food. They ate, went for a walk, and returned. Sara took a shower, and put on Gil's shirt after. When it came time for bed, Sara asked Hank to lie on the bed with her, and cuddled him. "Since Gil isn't here, I'll hold you tonight," she smiled. He seemed to understand as he nuzzled her face and lay his head back down.

A little after the phone call, Gil did go and eat. He shed himself of his coveralls, put them in his car, got in himself, and drove to the nearest diner. He ate there and then took away a second meal for his lunch, which he ate at the appropriate time. Sara went to the laboratory at nine o' clock that night, wanting to do all she could to help her boyfriend. She went to check on Warrick's progress. Upon finding him sifting through the contents of the victim's vacuum cleaner with a pair of tweezers and coughing profusely, she teased, "He-he-heyyy. Blacklung."

"Ah...I've been sifting through this trash for about six hours." That meant that he had been working for the entirety of the swing shift. "You come here to rescue me or make fun of me?" the poor man retorted.

"I am just looking, relax." She pointed to one of the petri dishes Warrick had set out to sort the evidence. "What are these white fibres here?"

"They must be from the spare bedroom, because all the other carpets are green."

Sara looked at the plan drawing of the house. "Spare bedroom wasn't on his entrance or exit path."

"Look, all I know is that they were near the top of the bag, so it must've been one of the last things he vacuumed." Sara gave small nods of acknowledgment.

"I did manage to find this butterfly pendant..." Warrick moved his tweezers to the petri dish where it was and picked it up, "...with some white fibres in it. Looks like it's from a necklace, or a bracelet. And it has this link, which has snapped so I'm thinking...sign of struggle?" He straightened up a little bit to raise his point.

"Killer was in that spare bedroom."

Gil's panicky obsessiveness was certainly affecting a fair few of his teammates. Catherine went to the scene of the crime at the same time as Sara returned to the laboratory. She knew that Gil was very stressed out about the victim looking so much like their dear friend, and so she wanted to help him.

(Poor Gil...he did not realise that when he worried, his team family worried too and would do whatever they could for him; he did not realise that they could love him as much as he loved them. He had such heavy doubt about his own lovability, so much so that he even almost rejected Sara when she first asked him out.)

Catherine walked in to see Gil processing the carpet (to the amazing soundtrack). During the conference, he had mentioned that he had processed the carpet on the threshold of the bathroom, and at present he was processing the area of carpet just beyond that. Her work-wife face on, she said to him, "Don't tell me you never went home."

Gil looked up at her, one hand still on the carpet and the other holding his filter paper. "Okay." Since she did not want to hear anything to that effect, he decided to water it down by saying, "I just got started in here. I haven't even got into any of the rooms yet."

"You know you lose your edge after sixteen hours, and you're into your third shift. She brought her forearms out to her sides. "I mean I'm all for overtime but, this is just plain greedy."

He shook his head tiredly before reassuring her, "My knees can't take this anymore." As fuelled as he was from his food, it still physically hurt to remain on one's knees for an extended period of time.

"Have you eaten anything?"

"Yes."

"Ah," she nodded approvingly. "Then, how about a shower?" Gil shook his head. Catherine raised an eyebrow in turn. At Gil's look of horror, she clarified, "I mean at your place. You need to go home."

"As soon as we find some evidence, I promise."

"With fresh eyes you won't miss it."

Her work-husband groaned as he stood up, his knees creaking. "Just talk it through with me will ya? What do we know?"

Catherine's eyes shifted to the side in thought. "Alright." She inhaled deeply before continuing, "The bathroom is where things got started. Candles, oils...steam shower...cleaned up, oiled up...sexed up."

"Let's go back to the bedroom," Gil voiced, moving his head a little way in the direction of the bedroom. They got their UV-protective goggles out of their kits, with Catherine taking the torchlight as well. Cath shone the light on the topmost bedsheet, but nothing showed up under the fluorescence. "No, nothing on this sheet," Gil noted. He lifted that sheet to expose the one underneath, to yield the same result; he gently cocked his head to one side in acknowledgement (which was cute).

"She changed her sheets for her date; I would," Catherine remarked.

Since there was nothing to be found on the top surface of the bed, Gil let his gaze wander to the side of the bed. A ring embedded into the mattress caught his eye with a loop red cloth threaded through it with the rest stuffed under the mattress caught his eye; this time his head jerked a little to the side in vigilance. He squatted down and pulled it out, passing hand over hand. When it was completely free and he could see what it was, he transferred it to one hand so that he could take off his goggles with the other. He then looked up at his colleague with an uncomfortable expression and called, "Hey Cath..." When she looked at him, he held the thing up as if he was holding a dead rat and continued, "...got silk?" His eyes shifted to the object as he asked that. What he meant by that was if there was an identical finding on her side.

She looked down at her side of the mattress, and opened her mouth at the discovery and looked back at him. Gil kept an inquiring gaze on her and took the opportunity to stand up. She bent to her side while reaching an arm down and fished the cloth out. "Why yes I do." Gil looked back at the one in his own hand and shook it to see if anything would fall out; he was still disconcerted and frowning though. His unease was turned into scepticism when Catherine said, "Iiii don't mean to embarrass you but um...some guys need leverage," as she stepped towards the foot of the bed and removed the sheets to uncover the barrier.

"They do?" He was frowning a little bit harder; Sara certainly never complained.

Grinning in the hopes of finding something, Catherine gave a nod before saying, "I'll dust for prints."

While she did that, Gil's phone rang again. He took his phone out from the same place he had when Sara called. "Grissom." He stuffed the hand not holding his phone comfortably into his pocket.

"It's Warrick. I have somethin' for you - I found a butterfly link. With some white fibres in it."

Grissom started walking to the other bedroom. "Butterfly where?"

"In the vacuum bag. You check all the rooms?"

"Lemme look again, and I'll get back to you."

"Alright." Grissom had reached the spare bedroom by then, so he put his phone away and got up to the shelf where the victim's butterfly collection was, a smile gracing his face at the sight of insects. He shone his (regular) torchlight on the contents of the shelf. When came across some more photos of Debbie, he drew himself back slightly, but quickly tore his gaze away from them; this was not the time to dwell on his feelings. His gaze averted to a blue jewellery box next to them, decorated with even more images of butterflies. He opened it; inside, there was an assortment of accessories, all butterfly-themed. He carefully used a finger to move them about, pushing them aside to see if there were any broken-off pieces. He did find one near the top right of the box.

In the meantime, Catherine had successfully made a print show up. She tape-lifted it with a triumphant smile and proudly brought it to show Grissom. "Hang one. Toe print. I'll have Sara compare it against both victims."

"Good." Sara was the only unoccupied person. "Warrick found a butterfly charm in the vacuum bag...I think I just found a piece from the same chain in this box." He pointed to it.

"Butterfly huh?" Catherine mused, her eyes moving to look over the rest of the trinkets.

"She had a collection." He seemed quite happy to announce that, and it was no wonder why.

"Gifts? From her...gentleman callers?"

"Maybe the killer was taking his gift back. As in, leave no trace. Maybe he finally ran out of patience and got sloppy." At the last sentence, his voice deepened, as if he was challenging the unseen and unknown perpetrator. Upon shining his torch on the shelf below, he found a strand of hair. Short and white, as would come from an elderly man. He squatted, with Catherine following suit, and picked it up with his tweezers. "And this is why I didn't leave." His voice was soft with excitement and victory. Catherine left to bring the hair and toe print back to the laboratory, giving the print to Sara and the hair to Greg. Gil got back to Warrick and informed him of the matching butterfly.

Sara went to take the lower ten cards of both victims. Having finally gotten the chance to look at Debbie, she moved the swivel chair she was sitting on to draw herself up beside the victim's face. She stared down at it. And suddenly, she understood. She understood Gil's skittishness, understood why he had been reluctant to let her in on the case. And she was, of course, haunted; it could very well have been her on Al's slab. She glanced about, not knowing what to think; she could not articulate her emotions even in her own head. Eventually, they settled on one person: Gil. Gil, her protector; the person who had been 'protecting' her from this case at any rate. She would speak to him to clear her head; she could always talk to him, and he would never turn her away. Well...he used to. But that was when his feelings towards her were even more of a mess than they currently were. He had progressed a lot with her help.

With that temporary comfort, she finished up and went to run the prints through AFIS. That took several hours. By the time that day shift roller around, both Debbie Marlin and Michael Clark were ruled out. She then went to find Gil. Or Catherine; whichever she found first. She went to the shift supervisor's office; nobody was there. And nobody was in the assistant shift supervisor's office either. But after some wandering around, she found Catherine in the locker room, sitting on a bench and changing her shoes. "Hey," Sara called, trying to seem cheery, "you seen Grissom?"

"He's still at the crime scene," Catherine responded, glancing at her as she did.

Sara nodded to signify her acknowledgment before reporting, "I eliminated both victims from the print you pulled off the bed."

"Well we know she was fishing off the company pier..." Sara responded with a look and a nod. "You uh, seen Debbie?" Catherine looked at her properly, wanting to gauge her reaction.

"Yeah," she said laconically, not wanting to give anything away.

"And?" Catherine enquired.

"Yeah I compared her...toe prints," she avoided still, her expression hardening.

Seeing as that would lead nowhere, Catherine decided to comment, "If I didn't know better I'd think that it was you on that table."

"I didn't really...look at her face," Sara denied. Noticing Sara seemed sad somehow, Catherine relented and just gave her a knowing look. Sara let her face fall, and allowed herself to sound as pleading as she really was when she asked, "If you see Grissom will you tell him?" Catherine nodded sincerely. Sara just walked off after that. The assistant shift supervisor convened with Jim and they went to Desert Palm print samples. They did find a match; Dr. Tripton. Catherine phoned Gil and informed him of it.

#Youtube #csi #gsr #4x12 #gil grissom #sara sidle #billy petersen #william petersen #jorja fox #c-v-c-e fic

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spartanguard · 4 years

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even death won’t part us now (2/?)

Summary: Two covens, both alike in dignity, / In fair New York, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; / Whole misadventured piteous overthrows / Do with their death bury their sires’ strife. (Captain Swan + West Side Story + vampires. But not as sad. Probably.)

rated M | part 1 | AO3 | 3.9k words

A/N: I was going to post this update yesterday but *life*. We really get into the story, though—I hope you enjoy it! Thanks again to @optomisticgirl for being an awesome beta; to @thesschesthair for her amazing art; and to @kmomof4 and @cssns for putting this event on and pushing me to continue this story!

say what you will about Glee, but Darren Criss’s version of this song is amazing

part two— the air is humming, and something great is coming...

2020

The sun was setting on another day, just like it had for the last 5000-plus. At least, Emma figured the number was up there; she’d stopped counting around day 4,588. Which was really an absurdly long time to count considering her days were no longer numbered, but old habits died hard, even if she never would.

She’d accepted that fact somewhere around day 4,040, which ironically was her 40th birthday. But instead of dealing with gray hairs and wrinkles and aching joints, she was still in her 28-year-old body, fairly spry and with exactly one white hair blended into her blonde. (Not that she could see it in the mirror anymore—or, you know, anything—but she knew it was there and that was all that mattered.)

She knew she’d finally settled into her new life when she was looking forward to drinking the deer blood she had at home and not longing for chocolate cake like she had the past several birthdays. Well, she still wished she could eat it—real food didn’t digest properly anymore—but the blood sounded just as good.

“It probably took me about that long to come to terms with it, too. Longer for your dad,” her mom had told her about the revelation.

That had been another epiphany: that the kindly undead couple she’d somehow ended up on the doorstep of—David and Snow Nolan—were her parents. Her actual birth parents. You know, the ones she’d been looking for her entire mortal life? (Had once dreamed would save her from one shitty foster home after another until she finally gave up hope, and instead turned to counting the days until she moved again?)

As it turned out, they’d been attacked and turned shortly after she’d been born—which apparently had been in a backwoods cottage in Maine that her grandparents had owned—and were taking her to the hospital for checkup after the fact. They didn’t trust themselves to face their new reality while also in charge of an infant (an infant with delicious-smelling blood, no less—creepy, but true) and so finished the journey to the hospital, but left her there alone.

Coming to terms with that had taken 1,187 days. There would have been lots of tears, were any of them able to cry; but instead, there was just a lot of emotion, which Emma had never dealt well with. But she was getting better. Who knew the kind of personal growth one could achieve after death? And it was a good lesson in how to handle (or not handle) things should the son she herself gave up ever manage to track her down.

(She looked—once, before she was turned. All she’d been able to find out was that he ended up in the foster system, too. She just hoped he was having a better time of it than she did. Well, had—he’d be an adult by now, wouldn’t he? Damn.)

So. Anyways. Sunset. Which Emma was watching from the roof of their building, which had become something of a refuge for her over the past 15 years. She had her own bedroom, but after so long on her own, being an adult suddenly under the same roof as her parents (who, despite being physically younger than her, still acted like her parents) was a bit stifling at times.

It wasn’t much, but it was her own space: she’d cobbled together a tent with some reclaimed tarps, filled with gently-used cushions, and on nice nights, would bring out a sleeping bag and let the lights and sounds of the city wash over her. It had been overwhelming at first—she kind of envied that her parents only had to deal with forest smells when they turned, and not the incredible everything of New York—but it had dulled over time, which she probably should have expected; it had only taken her a week or so to get used to the smell the first time, right?

That’s to say—the overwhelmingness did; she learned to tune things out and let them fall to the background. But her senses themselves were the sharpest they’d ever been, consequently making her even better at her job than she’d been pre-death. Having ethereal beauty compared to a mere mortal easily drew in most of her targets; her preternatural sight, hearing, and strength made it pretty simple to track them down and subdue them (she loved it when they ran); and she’d found out they were extra willing to comply with her demands when they were down a bit of blood. (It probably was connected to the whole your-sire-can-control-you thing but it didn’t last once they’d recovered from the blood loss and it kept her from murdering random ne'er-do-wells on the street; the lower a body count a vampire kept, the better.)

On a normal night, she’d be getting ready to catch another skip: either gussying up for a honeytrap, revving up her old Bug for a stakeout, or trying to track them down on Tinder while binging Netflix in the background (they kept up on technology...for the most part; she still wasn’t sure what a TikTok was). One thing a lot of the stories leave out is that it takes a long time to build up the kind of wealth and decadence you see with old vampires; even Emma’s parents still had to work, 40-odd years into this thing (David was an after-hours vet and Snow taught night school) and their townhouse was not rent-controlled.

Of all the vampire media out there, their existence was far more What We Do In The Shadows than Twilight.

(Emma had always preferred comedy anyways.)

God, she was really getting sidetracked tonight. Anyways. No one was working because it was the anniversary of her being turned—her rebirthday, so to speak—and her mom was very much Leslie Knope when it came to anniversaries, but especially this one, given that it marked them finally coming together as a family.

That, and they were all going to get drunk.

“My class is a bunch of assholes this semester—I need this,” Snow had gushed earlier that week, grading papers behind their blackout curtains. (Vampires didn’t sparkle, thank god—at least, not without the help of glitter—but they were dangerously susceptible to sunburns, so the whole pale thing was accurate.) “And David—you’ve worked every weekend the last month; they can definitely operate without you for one night.”

“I put in for it a month ago, dear,” he tutted as he gathered the laundry, placing a kiss on her cheek as he went.

They were definitely one of those nauseatingly cute couples, so it was a good thing Emma’s gag reflex was dormant. And, though she’d never admit it, she was a bit jealous that they’d been able to find—and keep—something that had evaded her her entire mortal life, and likely would for her afterlife, too.

Every now and then, a flash of blue eyes blinked into her vision; the same pair she’d seen on the night she transitioned. She still wasn’t sure they were real, and her parents genuinely knew nothing when she’d asked, so she never did again. The fact that she hadn’t ever seen them again, despite knowing just about all the vampires in this part of town (for better or worse), had her pretty convinced it was a mania-induced hallucination. But damn, was it a good one.

“Emma, are you ready?” Snow’s voice pulled Emma from her daydreams (nightdreams?). “It’s time to go,” she shouted—not loud enough to annoy the neighbors, but enough for Emma to hear.

“Coming,” she replied, then took one last glance at the night sky. Maybe there was something different in the stars? She didn’t know; she just had this feeling that something was going to change tonight.

She brushed her hands down the skirt of her light pink dress; it wasn’t what she’d usually wear, but since this wasn’t her typical honey trap, she’d borrowed a dress from Snow. It was definitely sweeter than her taste, with its pastel color and A-line skirt, but just cut low enough to not be demure. Her high ponytail fell somewhere in between. Her fangs would probably take it in another direction, but it’s not like she was going to pose for photos—she only just showed up in those.

In a moment, she was back in the house, grabbing her purse and joining her parents (who equally straddled the line of sweet and seductive; it was a vampire thing).

Out of nowhere, a flash of light blinded her. “Seriously?” she cursed, blinking away the temporary blindness, only to see her mother holding a Polaroid camera. That was the one thing that could document them; thank god the hipsters over in Greenwich Village had clung to them.

Snow just grinned and shook the picture while David lectured, “It’s not like we got to see you off to prom or anything.”

“Yeah, but are you going to do this every year?”

“Yes,” Snow stated matter-of-factly, smiling at the photo before setting it aside. “Now come on; there’s a bloody mary calling my name.”

“Where are we going?”

“That new underground club at 43rd and 10th. Figured we should try it, and it should be trouble-free.”

‘Trouble’ meaning the Aurum coven. Emma still hadn’t figured out the reason for this centuries-long blood feud, but she did know that she’d been dragged in on the side of Coroza, under a woman named Cora; turns out Walsh had been one of her cronies. And it normally wouldn’t affect her, save for the fact that her parents were turned by someone in Aurum (led by the mysteriously mononymed Gold) and that had dangerous implications, not to mention the rising tensions between the two groups as they began to encroach on each other (and each other’s feeding grounds) on the Upper West Side.

“You sure? That’s awfully close.” 43rd had become an arbitrary border between the two factions, and there had been more than a few skirmishes while people were on the prowl for a midnight snack. She’d had a couple close calls of her own while tracking down skips in the part of town, but had somehow managed to evade notice.

“It’s on our side of the street,” her mom shrugged in response and grabbed her purse.

(Why one side couldn’t just move to another part of town, Emma didn’t know, but she was definitely aware of how stubborn vampires could be. And she wasn’t going to move; there’s no way they’d be able to get a place like this anywhere else for a reasonable price.)

She’d hardly gotten out the door when a familiar scent caught her nose—and not necessarily a welcome one: Graham.

“Uh, hi, Emma,” he stammered, while giving her a shy yet adorable grin.

“Hey,” she answered back, not meeting his eyes—and instead finding Snow’s, who was intently studying the sky. Snow had been trying to get the two of them together for at least 10 years, and while Graham was a great guy, a good friend, and handsome to boot, Emma had never been attracted to him like that. A fact that seemed to keep falling silent on Snow’s ears despite her enhanced hearing.

(His blue eyes were pretty, but they weren’t the pair that kept haunting her.)

Given the sudden awkwardness that settled over the group—because that was apparently something you had to deal with whether you were dead or alive—it was up to Emma to break it. Not that she had any skill in that department.

“Alright, uh, let’s go,” she said with little confidence, and set off towards the club, with the others falling in behind her; Graham stayed close and if she wasn’t mistaken, attempted to put an arm around her, but she walked a bit faster to avoid his reach. The bar was only a few blocks away, which they could normally cover in less than a minute, but they had decided to blend in with the crowd tonight; it was nice to be normal every now and then.

But still—every now and then, the hairs on the back of Emma’s neck rose, and it had nothing to do with Graham’s proximity. Something was coming; she just didn’t know what.

That wasn’t for her to worry about tonight, though. Tonight was for fun and drinks and dancing. And once they got to the darkly-lit club, that’s what she focused on for the next hour or so—

—Until her gaze locked with the blue eyes from her dreams.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

Killian took a deep breath as soon as he exited the jetway—and immediately regretted it. He didn’t know why he expected LaGuardia to have changed at all in the past 15 years. Despite all the reconstruction, it still smelled the same: of old coffee, questionable sushi, and stale humans. (The latter was a double-edged sword: despite eating shortly before he got to Heathrow, there had been a few delays before takeoff and he was feeling rather peckish now, although nothing here seemed appetizing. Which was probably something he had in common with mortals at the moment.)

He didn’t know why he’d assumed that he might have been routed through JFK this time—why would he think Gold would care enough to properly welcome home his best operative from abroad after 15 years?—but he tried to push that ire to the back of his mind as he summoned an Uber.

At least the delays meant he landed just as the sun was setting; his previous plan had been to hang around the terminal until dusk, so at least this prevented any awkward encounters with some overtalkative Midwesterner on their way back to Cleveland. Signs pointed him to the ride share lot, and a gentleman named Marco was waiting to take him home.

On the ride into the city, he marveled at how New York always seemed like a living, breathing thing, constantly evolving and changing. He could still sharply remember the dusty bustle of the town more than 200 years ago, the sound of carriages running over dirt and cobbled streets. He’d watched as the city grew, sprawling both across and beyond the Manhattan island and up into the sky, the smell of horses and people and sweat replaced by the acrid stench of exhaust (although, even his extra-sensitive nose had gotten used to it in short order).

So it was both surprising and not to see how much the city had changed even in the last 15 years, most noticeably in the skyline: the Twin Towers were still fresh in everyone’s memory when he’d left, so to see the new One World Trade Center in their place was a bit jarring. But the sun still glinted golden off the skyscrapers the same way; pedestrians still hardly waited for the crossing signals to give the okay to go; and though he wasn’t in a yellow cab, a language barrier still lay between him and his driver.

Cash tips were understandable to all, though, which Killian handed over once they’d arrived at his apartment building on 34th—the Chelsea side. He’d owned his flat since the building was constructed, which was fairly impressive, but did require him to occasionally change the name on the paperwork lest anyone notice anything suspicious.

(Someone had figured out at some point that it was helpful to have an ally in both the Social Security office and the DMV; Archie and Jefferson traded off every 20 years or so in order to help create revolving identities for the members of the vampire community. The name on his ID at the moment was Kyle Johnson, and during the past 100 or so years since he’d been required to have one, he’d also been Killian James, Ian Joseph, and—though he had to admit, he’d picked this one just to see if he could get away with it—James Hook.)

And thankfully, he’d had a reliable roommate for the past 80 years. “Honey, I’m home,” he called out after braving the still-shaky lift to the top floor.

“About bloody time,” Robin called back from the couch. “You know I had dinner ready for you before you left?”

“Ha,” Killian answered. “I’d hate to see what that looks like after all this time.”

“Oh, I let him go. And good thing, too—he ended up writing Hamilton.”

Killian had barely poked his head into his musty bedroom before he returned to the living room. “You didn’t actually have Lin-Manuel Miranda in here, did you?” To most people’s surprise, Killian was a bit of a theater nerd; the West End was great, but he was looking forward to catching up on Broadway again.

“No. But maybe that’s a good strategy if we want to get tickets.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

His stomach grumbled in agreement.

Robin chuckled. “There’s a bottle in the fridge you can have; figured you’d be hungry when you got back.”

Killian tossed his luggage in his room and emerged again. “Have I ever mentioned that I love you?”

“Maybe a few times over the past several decades.”

He downed the bottle quickly; the black blood market never gave the best stuff—considering the type of mortals who would be willing to sell their blood for money and didn’t qualify to sell plasma—but it hit the spot in a pinch, and every now and then had something good. This definitely wasn’t, but it sated his thirst long enough to take a shower and wash the airplane off of him.

As he stared at the fogged mirror with nothing looking back at him, rubbing his palm over his permanently well-trimmed scruff, he realized he hadn’t yet checked in with Gold. Even if he’d spent the last decade-plus doing the man’s bidding from abroad, it was still easy to forget about him.

Well, mostly—until he glanced back down at his blunted left wrist. Then it just brought ancient memories to the surface, as fresh as the day they’d happened, no matter how many centuries had intervened.

Which reminded him: he was still missing something. He shot off a quick missive to Gold as he pulled some clothes out of his depressingly dated closet (having left anything more modern in a consignment shop in London), managing to put together something vaguely timeless. But before he dressed, he turned his attention on the nightstand drawer.

He slowly pulled it open, though he knew what would be inside: his hook, as sturdy and sharp as ever, with its well-worn leather brace. Sure, he had a fairly modern prosthetic hand—one that TSA didn’t mind so much—but the hook had come first, and was definitely his preferred artificial appendage. He hadn’t meant to go so long without it, but then again, he hadn’t expected his London assignment to take so long.

(Although, 15 years to him was roughly the same as 2 or 3 to the average mortal.)

Slipping on the soft leather was like greeting an old friend (well, another one, albeit he’d known this one longer than Robin). And snapping in the hook settled a part of him that he hadn’t realized had been adrift all these years. It didn’t fully still the odd sense of anticipation he’d had ever since he landed, but he definitely felt more at ease.

With that settled, he finished dressing and then headed back to the living room and flopped on the sofa next to Robin. “When did we get a new couch?” he asked indignantly, inspecting the unfamiliar upholstery.

“As soon as you left.”

“And what was so wrong with the previous one?”

“It was from the 70s! It was hideous and uncomfortable and you know it.”

Killian could only sigh; Robin was completely right.

“Anyways,” Robin continued. “We’ve plenty of time to argue about furniture but very little to decide what we’re doing tonight.”

“Why? What’s tonight?”

“You arrive back in North America for the first time in a decade and a half and you think that’s not a reason to celebrate?”

“Well, I was in Toronto a few years ago.”

“Still the Commonwealth. Doesn’t count. What do you want to do? There are quite a few people anxious to see you.”

Well that’s good for them, he thought, but he wasn’t so sure of the same. The time away in the UK had definitely made him reconsider some of his connections back here in the States; getting away from the drama with Coroza had made him realize how petty he found it all. Though he’d never be completely extricated given that Gold was his sire, he’d definitely be alright with staying distant from the other frivolous disputes.

(And after spending a bit too much time in Brighton—particularly with some headstones bearing the name Jones and some rather divy taverns that were still somehow open all these centuries later—he wished more than ever to be free of Gold’s influence. Alas.)

He supposed he could placate them for one night, though; it’s not like he was going to sleep anyway. “Are there any new clubs to check out?”

“For you—plenty. For all of us...aye, there’s one that’s just opened up about...10 blocks away? Ish?”

“In which direction?”

“Up, but kind of midtown so it should be in the clear.” Meaning no one from Coroza would be there.

“Sounds fine, then,” he replied; after so many years, every club started to feel the same, but he was willing to give it a shot.

It wasn’t long before he found himself dressed in a waistcoat and slacks that were trendy a decade ago, hoping his hair was styled appropriately (he stopped caring about 130 years ago), and waiting outside the apartment building of Robin’s girlfriend Regina.

“Jones, it’s the 21st century; why do you still have a fish hook on the end of that arm?” she greeted when she emerged from the tower, with a young vampire behind her.

“It’s nice to see you too, Regina,” he tossed back. They’d known each other for well over a couple hundred years and this was just how they communicated. Nodding at the young man, he continued, “Who’s this?”

“This is Henry; he’s new.” The statement was matter-of-fact enough that Killian knew she wouldn’t say anything else. But he seemed friendly, albeit nervous, and Gold never complained about new vampires on their side—just Coroza.

It didn't take much for him to immediately think of Emma. His thoughts had drifted to her more than he cared to admit over the past years, wondering if she’d acclimated or if she’d burned out. It was definitely odd that such a brief encounter had left such a lasting impression, but at the same time, it had taken him well over 250 years to get over his first love; he was a romantic at heart, even if that heart no longer beat.

He of course said nothing about it as they continued on; if no one had discovered what he’d done that night by now, he was content to leave it that way. There were other ways of him finding out if she was still around, such as—

—Such as the green eyes staring at him from the other side of the club, barely a minute after he’d entered it, freezing him in place.

★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★・・・・・・★

thanks for reading, friends! let me know if you want/don’t want a tag! @kat2609 @xpumpkindumplingx @shipsxahoy @amortentia-on-the-rocks @mryddinwilt @cocohook38 @annytecture @shireness-says @ohmightydevviepuu @profdanglaisstuff @wingedlioness @word-bug @distant-rose @wellhellotragic @welllpthisishappening @let-it-raines @pirateherokillian @bleebug @its-imperator-furiosa @fergus80 @killianmesmalls @sherlockianwhovian @ineffablecolors @laschatzi @ive-always-been-a-pirate @nfbagelperson @stubblesandwich @lenfaz @phiralovesloki @athenascarlet @ilovemesomekillianjones @whimsicallyenchantedrose @snowbellewells @idristardis @scientificapricot @searchingwardrobes @donteattheappleshook @lfh1226-linda

#cs ff #cssns20 #cs vampire au #even death won't part us now #my ff #cssns 2020

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buddha-in-disguise · 4 years

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Weariness and cynicism is deadly.

When we were growing up, I remember my paternal grandfather once said to me: Weariness and cynicism is deadly.

At the time I didn't really understand the comment, but as I got older, it was something that I've kept in the back of my mind, in part because I would hate for me to become weary & cynical in life.

The last few episodes of Supergirl have had this line come roaring to the forefront with me.

Right now, weariness and cynicism within the Supergirl fandom (and not just a ship), has now shown in ratings.

You could argue as to why the ratings have dropped, and there are certainly going to be a few reasons for it. After all, in any season of a show you get peaks and troughs on the figures.

With Supergirl though, it has been a steep hit, then a steady decline afterwards.

I've been writing this over a few days, and yesterday the synopsis for 5.19 dropped.

Now you can tell this was written before they planned on merging some of 5.20 into 5.19 and it became the finale, and this is given away by the 'penultimate episode,' wording. That is true, so knowing elements of 5.20 will be merged into it, means there is likely a divergence to this synopsis on some level. If there is, once again the marketing has failed to adapt with these changes.

However, the synopsis also has people absolutely at the end of their tether over Kara and Lena. Why? The 1st segment:

'Supergirl (Melissa Benoist) realizes that in order to stop Lex (guest star Jon Cryer) and Leviathan she must work with the one person she never thought she’d trust again – Lena (Katie McGrath).'

I have issue with this for more than one reason, but the biggest for me is simply this.

Honestly the situation should be sorted by now in far better ways. If this goes on through to S6 unresolved, then it is beyond a joke.

19 episodes of this is utterly unacceptable. Even if they'd carried on resolution into the 20th episode, that's still far too long.

I can't speak for other fans, but personally I was hoping (& expecting) that once Crisis was over, Kara and Lena would actually begin to talk. If not Lena and Kara, Lena and Alex. Because remember how Lena spoke to Alex when Alex asked for her help during Crisis? Here are the lines most relevant (I'm including the clip for the whole interaction).

"I am sorry that I lied to you. And not just me. Not just Kara. J'onn, and Brainy, and Nia."

"You know, you actually had me believe that you hated Supergirl."

"I wasn't pretending about that, but that is a long story."

This was 10 episodes ago once 5.19 hits, & has never been broached again, nor looks likely to be. Why even bring it up if you're going to ignore it? Lena & Alex were friends by S4 end. If Kara couldn't talk to Lena, why hasn't Alex tried? Or Brainy? Nia. Even Kelly, who genuinely hadn't lied to Lena - although that could've been awkward if Lena said it was about Kara lying being Supergirl and Kelly didn't know. But you know, I would've loved to have seen it play out that way, because Kelly's surprise wouldn't be faked, and Lena, despite it all, would probably recognise that.

Have Lena working with Lex, but also using Kelly to help her with the lenses, to placate Lex, but to be actively working with the Superfriends (Kelly as the intermediary) to bring Lex down. That way, Kelly gets screen time she deserves, Lena slowly works through her issues, even if it isn't directly with Kara yet. Alex really uses the Tower to investigate and help Kelly and Lena. But we have had nothing of note.

Out of the two Winn episodes, we had one episode of Winn's own psychopathic father getting his redemption, (which sorry, was too far fetched for me). What was the purpose of this? It apparently serves none. This episode should've been a redemption arc starting for Lena in my opinion, even if Kara wasn't involved (so the 100th still could've gone ahead as planned). It could've been Brainy for example tentatively reaching out to Lena. Or as I say, Lena seeing how Lex was working, and reaching out to Kelly. It wouldn't have to be a noticable or big thing, but the beginnings of some reconciliation with someone.

Yet Lena, who time and time again has tried to do the right thing, has been lied to, has been abused by her family since she was 4, has been left to her own devices for 19 episodes! By people who say they are her friends. This is more than about Kara. This is about a whole group of people who seemingly have washed their hands of Lena. That sure as hell isn't any kind of friendship I know, or agree with.

This is why as a general audience people are now weary and cynical. When the hard core fans, not ship fans, but the ones who tune in religiously, are screaming enough, then a more general audience will simply drift away. Sadly the viewing figures suggest this is exactly what has happened.

If they're suddenly best friends again from 5.19, then it will be as bad because nothing is talked about! Even if they carry on the redemption arc into S6, will the general audience - or even the main hard core group of fans - wait potentially 9 to 12 months before it starts again, not knowing if they plan to maintain the push and pull between Lena, Kara and the Superfriends, or actually are going to rebuild the friendships?

We also have the question of why did Kara find the tape that Mxyzptlk left? I'm including a screen capture for this.

There were a couple of things at the time that I wondered about.

Why make it so obvious that was the video tape left? It then immediately led off to Kara confronting Lena, which while harsh wasn't really too OOC until that last line. No, she didn't call Lena a villain (ugh also continuity in 5.17, hello Kara, you didn't call her a villain). But Kara knows that Lena has always wanted to be seen as being different to her family, but especially Lex. Instead of going to Lena as Supergirl, go to her as Kara! Make her see the person not the cape. Of course being Supergirl is important to Kara, but knowing that Lena has always had a more volatile relationship with Supergirl, it seems utterly inconceivable to me that at some stage Kara wouldn't go to try and talk to her simply as Kara. Or was it Mxy as Supergirl, who hesitated moving from the balcony because he needed to be invited inside by Lena? Supergirl took a step forward, but doesn't appear to actually enter Lena's apartment.

So yes. That whole scene has always bugged me.

I also always questioned why did Mxy hang around watching through Kara's loft window? What was it he needed to see? By all accounts his mission there was accomplished. Why hang around?

So it begs the question, are we seeing how the tape plays out? Is this the 'nothing is as it seems' and the 'Black mirror season,' they touted before the season began. If this refers to how Lex has played his part, then that is nowhere near good enough.

If it is because of Mxy, it is just an awful way to go about it. It has left most fans weary, jaded and honestly not trusting of how they will carry on writing for the show.

Let's not forget, Kara told the whole world her identity to save Lena.

Lena tried to save Kara from the Kryptonite in the air, but failed because she was too far away in Metropolis.

Lena took to heart the pleas from Kara not to use Kryptonite, and so devised another way to subdue Reign, only to die in Kara's arms (and remember Kara literally crumpled as Lena fell into her arms. This is a Kryptonian with Super human strength, but her knees gave way).

The only time Lena did turn evil was when Supergirl didn't save her. But even then, watch her face carefully as she hits with Kara with the Kryptonite. That stotic mask falls just fractionally.

However this plays out in the last two episodes, quite honestly I can't see how it is going to be enough to pacify the distrust and anger over vast aspects of the season. How a lot of what has gone on can only be called queerbaiting, and if (& it's a big if) they even lent into Supercorp (I highly doubt it), then it needed to come far quicker. When you lose the trust of a big part of your audience, it is extremely difficult to get that trust back. When you have to try and achieve that with only 2 episodes left? Pretty much impossible.

When that weariness and cynicism has months to fester in a fandom, it is deadly.

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep12

First things first, I’ve finally gotten around to getting a subscription to AnimeLab so I’m not just pirating everything I watch each season, so that’s cool, lol. I can’t really justify getting multiple streaming service subscriptions, though, so I’ll still probably pirate anything that this site isn’t streaming. But thankfully they’re streaming this series, so I can watch it guilt-free.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

I honestly wasn’t expecting them to continue following Minagoroshi in an almost 1:1 manner since we’re getting so close to the end of this arc, but the fact that there’s only one episode left before the next arc starts makes it pretty obvious that we’re going to get some real curveballs and a sudden ending in the next episode..

I think that in the original anime’s version of Minagoroshi, there were like three episodes left in the arc after what this one covered, so there’s no real way for them to actually cover all of that. But obviously this isn’t trying to faithfully adapt Minagoroshi from start to finish, so it’s just been a matter of time until things change.

Honestly, I feel like this episode is another example of how Gou has been functionally more of a remake than a lot of people probably want it to be. I’ve been seeing lots of people complaining about how the show’s been really boring because like 90% of it has been going over stuff from the VN, and that just really goes to show that they weren’t kidding about this being accessible for newcomers, and probably aimed at them first, and old fans second.

I also think it’s totally fine that they’ve really toned down the horror aspect of the series. I never really liked that the blood and gore became the big defining part of it’s cultural legacy and how people remember it, so I’m glad that Gou is more faithful to the focus on mystery and drama in the VN. There isn’t the same sort of slow-burn dread and paranoia, but that’s just something that a 24-episode anime split into 5-ish arcs fundamentally can’t do properly, so they’re going for a different sort of pacing and atmosphere that works more naturally here.

Anyway, since this episode was almost 1:1 with this part of Minagoroshi, there isn’t a whole lot to say there, but I still spent the whole episode being worried that everyone in the main crew was two seconds away from murdering everyone in the village council, lol. It didn’t help that my memory of Minagoroshi is really fuzzy, so I couldn’t remember if everyone was acting this way originally, but I think it was all pretty faithful to the VN.

There are still a few notable differences from the VN, though, like Ooishi just randomly showing up at the meeting to creepily observe Keiichi, which I think is original to Gou. Considering that he also had that ominous final scene in the last episode, I’m really suspicious of what the hell’s going on with him in this arc. I thought maybe he’d show up here to stop Keiichi’s plans to save Satoko, or to reveal something about what’s going on with her and Teppei, but he didn’t really do anything. He also seemed like he was maybe supportive of Keiichi’s whole plan to rally the village, so I just have no idea what he’s thinking at this point, lol.

I also think the first scene with the damaged shrine might be original, and I don’t really know what to make of it. It might have just been there so we could see some random villagers talk about how everyone secretly thinks that Satoko and Teppei will be the victims of the curse this year, but I feel like there must be more to it. For one thing, I’m skeptical that it was actually Teppei who did it in the first place, but I also think the symbolism of a desecrated shrine is pretty heavy for a story like this.

Part of me’s still convinced that Teppei might already be dead, but honestly I’m less certain about that after how this episode went. We also didn’t even see Satoko at all, which is kinda worrying. Maybe she’ll wind up dead, but I’m not sure.

I guess the bottom line is that there’s only one episode left to this arc, so there’s only so much they could do at this point, and it’ll have to happen pretty quickly. So I at least think that part of the big divergence in this arc will involve the outcome of the village rallying together for Satoko. I thought at first that maybe this time around they’d fail in getting Oryo’s support, and the whole plan would fall apart, but things played out the same as the VN with her, so if something’s going to screw up the plan, it’s probably something else. And since Ooishi seemed kinda supportive of Keiichi here, maybe he’ll sit back and let them continue their protesting like in the VN, instead of breaking it up this time.

But other than that the obvious guess for how this will all fall apart at the last minute would be if we find out that Satoko and/or Teppei are already dead, which would immediately invalidate the entire protest.

Though I’m still also thinking that maybe they actually WILL succeed in saving Satoko, and it’ll lead to a deceptively happy ending where everything just falls apart afterwards due to some other reason, like in Minagoroshi. I doubt it’d be the exact same thing, though.

I guess a more or less happy ending could still happen with the Satoko situation if Teppei alone winds up dead, and Satoko just gets to go back to living with Rika afterward. Which would probably at least take less time to deal with than having the whole process of getting Satoko to speak out against Teppei and provide evidence of abuse to the CWS.

I still like my theory that all the main characters will survive this arc, and that this will lead to the future where teenage Rika gets murdered, but I’m not entirely confident about that at this point.

One thing that’s still bugging me, and is making it hard to predict exactly what’s going on, is that I can’t tell exactly what’s going through Rika’s head, and what she actually thinks is going on. She’s continuing to apparently remember and quote stuff Keiichi said in Minagoroshi, but even in the VN they established that she can’t remember that arc at all. There’s also the scene early in the episode that seems to imply that she’s suspicious of Takano, but the idea of her knowing about Takano being evil still feels really strange to me.

For one thing, it feels like in every arc thus far she’s done absolutely nothing to try and stop Takano’s plans, but it also feels like Rika is doing the exact same thing she did in Minagoroshi originally, where she assumes that in this type of arc the only thing they need to do to achieve a happy ending is save Satoko. But in Minagoroshi the whole point was that she *didn’t* know about Takano, so she didn’t realize until it was too late that saving Satoko wasn’t enough. But this time around it seems like even though she’s maybe aware that Takano’s evil, she’s still going with the idea that saving Satoko is all they need to do to achieve a happy ending. And she isn’t even saying anything to her friends to make them aware of what’s going on with Takano so they could at least prepare for it in advance instead of being caught off-guard by her.

Maybe this is just bad writing, but I still prefer to think that she doesn’t actually remember or know anything about Takano, and the show’s just been misleading old fans into assuming that she does. Which is why I came up with my theory that Gou’s whole story is an in-universe fictional story written by someone like Featherine that involves a fictional version of Rika who basically branches off from the level of knowledge and development she had around Tsumihoroboshi, before she learned about Takano. And that the happy future she told Hanyuu about isn’t actually Matsuribayashi, but an arc in Gou where we get a seemingly happy ending but Rika dies as a teenager anyway.

Either way, I’m still at least going with the theory that Takano isn’t the big obstacle this time around. If only just from a meta perspective of how it’d be the biggest way to change things up compared to the VN’s story, and how there’s just not really enough time to actually cover all the stuff that happened with her in the VN. There’s still the question of why she still seems to be the exact same person as in the VN, including having the name that she got after being adopted by her grandfather, but I still think a lot of this could be explained by having Gou be a fictionalized version of the Higurashi gameboard where the surface level of Takano’s character is the same, but her backstory has basically been retconned, either intentionally or because the person writing this doesn’t know about what’s going on with her.

And on the note of Takano, I still think this arc should end up providing more clues about what’s going on with her and Tomitake in each arc. They haven’t really done anything in this arc yet, but it’d be weird if we don’t get some more clues about them before the question arcs end and we start getting answers.

But we haven’t even gotten to the festival yet, and there’s only one episode left, so who even knows if we’ll get far enough in the timeline for anything to happen with them in the first place.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking more about all the different theories of what’s going on this time around, and where this is all going to go in the long run, and even though it’s too early for me to really be confident in anything, one idea I’ve been messing with is that, at least in the first two arcs, Keiichi was a lot more involved in the different murders than we’ve been lead to believe. Basically I just thought about the fact that he almost definitely hallucinated most of his fight with Rena, and I tried to see if I could really go wild with that sort of storytelling logic and apply it to anything else that’s happened.

This is mostly just me trying to see how far I can stretch this whole theory, so this is kind of a reach, but to begin with, it’s possible that Keiichi is the one who murdered Rika in the first two arcs. Maybe in Onidamashi he killed Rena and then remembered how Rika convinced him to trust her, and in his L5 state he decided that she must have been trying to get him killed, so he took the kitchen knife and went over and killed Rika [with Satoko being caught in the cross-fire].

My theory for him being potentially responsible for her death in Watadamashi ties into my similar idea that maybe in that arc, if not also in Onidamashi, he killed Takano and Tomitake. And then later in Watadamashi, Rika went full Bernkastel at him and revealed that she knew about Takano and Tomitake being dead, and he ended up snapping and killing her. One thing that’s been nagging at me about that whole sequence is that that episode ended with Satoko inviting him to play dodgeball with her and the other kids, but then at the start of the next episode she’s being suspicious of him and asking about if he was with Rika when she disappeared. Which might have just been Satoko lying, but there were other kids involved who could have vouched for Keiichi if he was with Satoko the whole time, so I think that they just lead us into assuming that he took up her dodgeball invitation, when in actuality he didn’t, and he went off and killed Rika in secret, which is why Satoko acted like she didn’t know what he was up to.

But going back earlier in Watadamashi, I think that after everyone left the Saiguden, what actually happened might have been that Keiichi succumbed to paranoia and attacked Takano and Tomitake off-screen, and then later on Mion called him on the phone pretending to be Shion, and got him to agree to a fake alibi that she made up to cover up what he did.

This might also shine more light on what happened behind the scenes with Mion and Shion after the festival, if what actually happened was that the village elders all more or less figured out that Keiichi killed Takano and Tomitake, and Mion snapped and murdered everyone after they started to suggest that he should get punished for it.

It always seemed a bit weird to me that multiple characters pressed Keiichi for info about if he was with not just Shion but also Takano and Tomitake at the festival, and that Mion/Shion was getting him to confirm that he met everyone on the shrine steps at the festival even though they all should have remembered that. So it might explain a lot of stuff if Keiichi was actually involved in their disappearances, and people started getting suspicious of him, while Mion worked to make up an alibi for him. The whole story of them fleeing the village might have also been made up by Mion as part of the alibi to explain why they disappeared.

I still think Rena killed them in Onidamashi because she thought Keiichi found out about her murders and that he’d ratted her out to them, but part of me’s still kinda suspicious of how Keiichi walks up to them at the festival but then just stops and walks away before actually talking to them, while Rena stares at him in the background. It makes me wonder if the way the scene was depicted wasn’t actually true.

In general I wonder how much Gou might be willing to intentionally depict false information to the audience about Keiichi’s POV. There’s a few scenes where he obviously hallucinates stuff, but maybe it extends more than that.

Looking at it from an Umineko perspective, Keiichi might be the viewpoint character in Gou, but that doesn’t necessarily make him the detective, so it’s possible that his perspective is sometimes just straight up misleading.

If we’re willing to doubt Keiichi’s perspective on things, I also think this raises a lot of questions about the Yamainu’s potential involvement in things. If he was the one who killed Rika and Satoko in Onidamashi, then maybe in that entire arc they didn’t actually do anything at all. And maybe in Watadamashi Rika didn’t even talk to a construction worker at all, and that was just Mion covering for Keiichi. He might have also hallucinated seeing them on the security camera footage due to being suspicious of them by that point, but it’s also possible that what he saw was just some random construction workers doing work near the Sonozaki property, and in his paranoid state he interpreted them as being evil and coming to murder them all. I don’t think he was directly involved in Mion and Satoko’s deaths, but I wonder if maybe the Yamainu weren’t involved either, and it really was more of a murder-suicide. The gun looked like it had been swapped out, but maybe someone other than the Yamainu did it, like Ooishi.

A lot of this is a big stretch, but this ties into a lot of little things that have been bugging me, including the fact that Keiichi has felt almost strangely ‘innocent’ in each arc thus far, compared to how he was in the VN. And looking at this from the perspective of Gou being an accessible mystery to new fans, it makes me think that maybe a lot of these mysterious incidents aren’t being caused by effectively unknown third parties, but by Keiichi himself.

It might be a bit cheap, but I think the first two arcs at least provided very understandable motives for why he’d kill Rika, which even new fans could catch onto. In Onidamashi she basically tried to gaslight him into trusting Rena which lead to him nearly getting murdered, and in Watadamashi she straight up started talking about Takano and Tomitake’s deaths while acting like she has a creepy amount of knowledge about everything going on. On a similar note, it’s starting to kinda worry me that there’s been several instances in Tataridamashi of him noticing that Rika keeps talking about stuff that he apparently said to her, that he has no memory of. It just feels like in every arc she keeps doing and saying stuff to him that from his perspective would be extremely suspicious.

I think Watadamashi also provided enough evidence for how he might have snapped and killed Takano and Tomitake off-screen, since he was acting weirdly hostile toward Takano during the entire Saiguden scene, and then freaked out at Shion/Mion when she talked about what Keiichi was up to at the festival and provided the cover story of him just hanging out with everyone on the steps. Even when Ooishi questioned him about what he was up to, he got defensive about it and complained about how everyone keeps asking him about his involvement with them.

It’d at least be a pretty simple way to have Takano and Tomitake be red herrings this time around, if we find out that they just keep getting killed by people who get suspicious about them.

Along these same lines, I have to wonder if maybe Teppei’s going to wind up dead because Keiichi killed him off-screen in some kind of paranoid fugue state that he might not even remember. But we’ll see how it goes.

One thing that I like about this theory, at least, is that it would play into how Gou seems to be designed specifically to mess with Rika’s preconceptions, and having Keiichi be responsible for a lot of what’s going on would really fuck with her, especially with how she’s acting in this arc. Honestly, I started thinking about the “Keiichi culprit theory” after how it started seeming like blatant dramatic irony that Rika was talking over and over again about trusting Keiichi. In basically each arc thus far she acts under the assumption that things will play out a certain way, and then they don’t, and in this arc the main thing she’s done has been trust Keiichi and assume that he’s going to resolve everything with Teppei peacefully and lead everyone to a happy ending.

Anyway this got a lot longer than I wanted it to, so I’ll stop there, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #I know I made the 'we poppin the BIGGEST bottles next week :)' joke last week but I feel like it still applies here lol

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real-jaune-isms · 3 years

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RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 8 Review/Remix

RWBY finally comes back from a 2 month break, and what does it do? It scares us all half to death and then obliterates the other half with insane new story concepts and body horror imagery. Gods I missed this show~...

We return to this chaotic mess with the scene you might be expecting the least, Qrow and Robyn in their prison cells. Qrow is awoken by the sound of ships and explosions outside, and find that his three block mates are similarly left sleepless. Jacques is particularly nervous, probably because he assumed Whitley would be here to bail him out by now. Qrow picks up on an incoming sound that sounds... different, and indeed a wall is blown down in a fiery explosions that starts sending down rubble. One section of the Hard Light cell walls have been taken down, but before anyone has time to act Robyn notices a crow vehemently cawing at her before some rubble comes down above her. And... that’s the last we see of Robyn or Qrow this episode. He transformed to be a smaller target for debris and she might not have made it out quickly enough even with his disguised possible warnings.

Back to more pressing matters, we take the perspective of... the Dragonborn in the opening of Skyrim?? Wait, no, it’s just Nora regaining consciousness to see Klein has given her an IV and is saying she’ll be on the mend real quick. So that’s some good news after a few months of worry, and hey! The fan theory was wrong, she didn’t go blind from the lightning! Before we can even dwell on her wellbeing for too long, Blake opens the door for Ruby Weiss and Whitley to carry in Penny’s unconscious body. As Blake points out, Penny is leaking a green fluid most likely comparable to blood. They set her down on a cot near Nora, and Whitley is pissed about getting his clothes stained again in the span of 48 hours. But I think robot fuel/blood is at least easier to wash out than red wine. Ruby of course wants to know if Klein can help Penny as well as he has Nora, but his wheelhouse of expertise does not cover advanced robotics. The saving grace is that Pietro made her so close to human so Klein has some idea what can actually be fixed, starting with sewing up the gash in her abdomen. A thunderous rumble is heard in the distance, and suddenly the lights go out. Whitely complains about this too, but it is rather valid. Nothing quite seems to be going right, even Atlas’ power grid is against them... Ruby gets a call from May, and we learn they parted ways so May could go regroup with the Happy Huntresses and save her city. They compare notes and it’s made clear a bombing run took out part of the city’s power, though less clear is who was doing that bombing, Atlas or the Grimm? Ruby apologizes for their current inaction while they tend to Penny, but May reassures her that this may end up being more productive than trying to find something worth doing outside the city. Great googly moogly, it’s all gone to shit, and there’s very little difference a few more huntresses can make to the Mantle efforts. Ruby is left in overwhelmed despair, there’s so many problems and she doesn’t know how to solve all of them. Klein butts in with a sneeze to say she should take it one problem at a time, focus on the most immediate and possible to achieve and work outwards. For one thing, it’d help a lot of they had lights and power.

Willow surprises everyone by showing up in the doorway to let them know about a backup generator on the edge of the estate property. She’s still the lady of this house, and she has enough self respect to not lie around getting drunk in the dark. Whitley greets her with a mix of disinterest and distain, and she notices Klein has returned to the manor and offers an off guard greeting. Weiss backs up her mom’s info drop with the fact that SDC executive members indeed have access to backup power sources if the city ever suffered a power outage like this. She doesn’t like that they have that kind of privilege while other folks suffer, but it’s for the greater good this time. This gets Whitley thinking, and my boy has a full Jimmy Neutron BRAIN BLAST! Since Jacques made him heir to the company, and the man himself is possibly dead under rubble, Whitely has full access to the Schnee Dust Company and all its resources. Since Ironwood put down the Dust embargo in Volume 4, their fleet of cargo ships are sitting empty and ready for use in a hangar. As we saw earlier this very chapter, there are automated drones that answer to the SDC rather than the Atlas military. They can use those ships and drone soldiers to give all the people stuck in Mantle a way out to fly away safely. Fantastic work, young man! You make your family proud... well, the family members who don’t commit war crimes for profit. But to do that they need the power back on so he can use Jacques’ computer, so that’s what Ruby and Blake set out to do. Getting inside the small building outside of the mansion is easy enough, and its just the flip of a switch to get the generator booting back up. In the meantime, the two share a genuinely sweet conversation. Blake reassures Ruby that the fact she’s trying to make things happen is all the world could ask of her, and an optimistic attitude like that is hard to stick with for long in this harsh world. Life in the White Fang and with Adam robbed Blake of her own similar mindset, but she truly admires and looks up to Ruby for how great a woman she is. Sadly, like most things, this moment is ruined by a Grimm. While all the lights are coming back on and Whitley gets to work, a bolt of lightning reveals that the Hound is just outside the window behind Ruby... Willow and Klein are casually sitting around waiting I guess, when they hear the loud crash of glass breaking and Willow reflexively reaches for her bottle of vodka. Weiss checks in on her teammates over comms and they tell her they need some help so she makes sure Whitley will have the business handled before she rushes out to save her friends. Ruby is getting tossed through a fresh hole in the wall, and Blake’s attempt to attack it while she regains her footing is just batted away. Blake assures Ruby that it’s just a Grimm, they can handle it as long as she can stay focused. Blake goes on the offensive again while Ruby tries to get her Silver Eyes going, but the Hound swats the Faunus girl away and tackles Ruby before sprouting its wings again with her in its clutches Blake uses the ribbon on her weapon to do what Ren had earlier in the Volume, though she anchors the other end in the ground as a tether rather than ride along as it leaves.

Weiss finally arrives at the scene of this chaos and reports the Grimm sighting back to Klein. Hearing the news of this beastly intruder leaves Willow so shaken she drops the bottle and glass she was pouring herself. Klein tries to reassure and calm her, but she’s too overwhelmed and runs out of the room... just as Penny reactivates with red eyes. Full on hacked now, and Klein gets shoved to the floor for all his concerns about her being on her feet again. But she barely takes two steps before the real Penny resurfaces and tries to fight back for control of her own body. The struggle is deep enough to summon a whirling wind around her much like Fria had last Volume, but this one is green because Penny. Back outside, Weiss is about to summon something when a couple Centinels burrow up behind her and tear through it. From the looks of it, I think it was going to be the Nevermore from all the way back in Volume 1, so that’s a pretty cool callback to how important that fight was, and the imagery of glowing wings behind her was beautiful while it lasted. The Hound breaks free of Blake’s tether and is about to soar away, much to her dismay, when it sees a bright green glow coming from in the manor, clearly Penny going through her identity crisis. Ruby puts two and two together and realizes why the Hound has been saying “Take the Girl.” The girl is Penny, whose blood is still on Ruby’s clothes so it got a little confused while tracking. She warns her teammates, but the Hound chooses that time to drop her like a sack of potatoes and there goes the last of her Aura. Blake tells Weiss to go back inside and stop the Hound while she handles the Centinels out here, and they split up, but before Blake can reach her leader a new creature erupts from the ground and it’s bigger and more gross than the last bugs. It spits acid that comes up through a tube along its belly, and I’m confident in calling it an Alpha Centinel. Back in the eye of the storm, Klein tries to reassure Penny that she’s okay, which is phrased a little but I assume he means as “you’re in a safe place and your injuries have been treated, you don’t need to defend yourself like this”. The man is just a butler, he doesn’t know what we do about her internal struggle against antagonistic programming and her wrestling with her sense of self. Whatever new orders Watts has given her, she really doesn’t want to follow them. Luckily, there’s someone at her side to comfort her and hold her hand, and that’s Nora. Passing along the comforting words she got from Blake earlier this Volume, she tells Penny she doesn’t have to just be and do what other people expect of her. She may feel like a part of her is making her do what she doesn’t want to, but don’t forget about the rest. She’s more than just that one part of her mind or persona. It’s nowhere near the same situation as Nora’s own identity crisis earlier, but the words have the same positive effect. Penny gains control again and the wind barrier subsides. Weiss reports in that the Hound is heading inside and she’s on her way to intercept, and gets the bad news that Willow fled the room to go who knows where. Well, we know now cuz we see it, she went to what I assume is her own bedroom (god forbid she and Jacques still share a bed after 8 years of the most sour their marriage has been). On her vanity there’s another bottle or two of booze, and her Scroll. She wants to retreat to what she knows best, but hesitates and then gets spooked by the shattering sound of the Hound breaking in through the window above the front door.

It picks up on Penny’s scent from the blood stained on the floor, but by the time Weiss charges in through the front door it’s gone. The next five minutes of the episode have major horror movie vibes, and I love it. Weiss slowly looks around the foyer for any sign of the beast, when Willow screams over her Scroll to look out above her and indeed the Hound drops down to backhand her into a piano. Instead of staying to attack her, it goes to follow Penny’s scent again and leaves Weiss to check in with her mom after that sudden warning. Biggest triumph thus far, Willow threw her bottle against a wall and instead pulled up the feed from her series of surveillance cameras around the manor on her Scroll to track the Hound. It’s near Winter’s old bedroom, and Willow doesn’t seem to understand that it’s tracking a scent like a bloodhound. Maybe she just doesn’t encounter Grimm a lot or they’re just usually not this competent and singularly focused. She recognizes the direction it’s heading next with great horror, and what we see next gives us that same dread. Whitley still has blood on his clothes, and he dismisses Willow’s warning cuz he probably doesn’t think she has anything to say worth hearing after his years of dealing with her drunken state. He’s almost done setting up the automated orders, when he hears the door starting to open and angrily snaps at what he assumes is Willow coming to check on him since he didn’t answer the call. But he is dead wrong and hides behind the desk immediately, because it is indeed the Hound come to potentially kill him. He’s doing his best to hide, but it expands its vocabulary to tell him it knows he’s here. Just as it’s about to round the corner, an Alpha Boarbatusk charges in and pins it to the wall. Weiss isn’t the only Schnee in the house who can summon, and Willow will not let her son die this day. He’s about to bolt out of the room while it’s preoccupied with the summon, but turns back to hit Yes on the computer and get the evacuation plans started. Good job kid, you did more to save Mantle than your father and Ironwood combined. The two sprint down the hall with the Hound in hot pursuit, but get some respite from an ice wall forming between them and the Grimm thanks to Weiss arriving from the opposite direction. She’s out of breath, but assures them she didn’t forget about either of them, most likely as a callback to the conversation she and Willow had last Volume about Whitley being left behind when Weiss and Winter sought independence. The unarmed Schnees express their gratitude and retreat from that wing of the house, and Weiss prepares her summons for combat with the beast breaking through the ice.

Back outside, Blake is struggling with the Alpha Centinel and complains about how gross it is. She avoids its scythe blade-like arms with some clever use of elementally charged shadow clones and begs for Ruby to wake up and give her some backup. But that can’t last forever and eventually it holds her by the neck ready to slice. Before it can, though, Ruby wakes up and bisects it first. She laughs weakly and tells Blake she heard what she was saying. They hear a scream coming from inside the mansion and head inside to meet up with the others. Weiss and the Hound hear it too, and the Hound stops doing its best “Here’s Johnny” impression through the hole in the ice to go chase down this new sound. We see the source of it, and it is in fact Penny losing control of herself again to the new programming. The red eyes stay this time, and she shoves Klein aside once again to stiffly and mechanically walk out to the foyer. As fate would have it, Willow and Whitely are there too, and they naturally question the fact that she’s emotionlessly walking past them when last they saw she was bleeding and unconscious. She responds that she’s going to open the vault, and then apparently self destruct. Not to state the obvious, but we really can’t let that happen so lets hope the power of love will break through to her. Before Penny can even get down the stairs, the Hound arrives to try and grab her and she catches his hand effortlessly, and then the other, so they’re stuck in a shoving match stalemate. The Hound solves this problem by growing a new arm out of its back and using it to grab Penny by the head. It slams her around like a ragdoll, still repeating “Take the Girl”, and holds a claw up to her throat when RWB arrive at the bottom of the stairs. Blake and Weiss are unsure how to intervene, but Ruby goes stone cold serious telling it that’s enough. In the literal blink of her eye, a Silver Eyed blast blinds it and sends it falling out the window behind it leaving Penny to tumble down the stairs unconscious again. They hope and pray the threat is over as they check her body, but the real horror starts now.

The Hound claws his way back up through the window, and part of his head has been blasted away to reveal a dog faunus with one intact silver eye. In a voice likely not used in a long time, he continues to repeat his orders to “Take the Girl...” Ruby is mortified and shell shocked to see a living person within the frame of this beast unlike any she’s known prior, and I’m sure the wheels in her mind are turning to wonder if Summer Rose suffered a similar undying fate at Salem’s hands... and if that’s what will happen to her if she is captured? He begins shambling towards them and they try to carry Penny away from him but end up cornered. Whitley gets an idea and he and Willow start pushing on the knight statue nearest to them. Just as the Hound, whose human portion I have been inspired by a podcast to call Johnny, is about to grab the girls the statue falls down and crushes him to death. A choir chants in Latin as the Grimm fades away... and for the first time leaves behind a skeleton. Ruby seems shaken to her core as she confirms to the others that that was in fact a person they saw in there.

Ending that side of the story entirely for the week, we go back to the rubble in the jail cell to see Cinder has found Watts and the two make a flying get away. So that’s fun, we’ll have to see if they make it back in time to intercept JRY trying to sneak through Monstra. Until then, I’m gonna sleep like the dead. Ciao!

#rwby reviews #qrow branwen #robyn hill #arthur watts #jacques schnee #nora valkyrie #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #penny polendina #klein sieben #whitley schnee #willow schnee #the hound #tw: body horror #horror elements

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trying-write-fanfics · 4 years

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Shouji Mezo X Reader Remember part 10

Kirishima was one of the students who didn’t have much of a relationship built with Y/n, but he knew she had a lot going on. He also wanted to know why she bugged Bakugo so much.

“So your father called you? Are you guys close?” Kiri asked.

“Not really, I bet you he just found out that I wasn’t home.” Y/n told him.

“Wait why would it take this long?”

“Campaign stuff has him traveling all the time.” Y/n said. “He’s got an image to keep.”

“Oh that’s gotta suck. Are you nervous?”

“No, he’s more chill than my mom. When I was in the hospital after Aizawa messed my shoulder up, she didn’t even go in to see me. I had no idea she was dealing with my case until he told me.” Y/n explained.

“What! That’s insane!” Kirishima couldn’t believe it. “You don’t even know how long you’re gonna be here do you?”

“Do you? I think it’s all conditional, like till something big happens. Like I mess up or the case reopens”

“I hope nothing else bad happens, we already had that attack on the USJ.”

“You guys didn’t catch the main guy though, you think they’ll give up?” Y/b asked

“Well we’ve been preparing if he doesn’t!” Kirishima told her before she got to the front office.

Y/n was hesitant to pick up the phone. Her and her father had to of known the call would be recorded, but what was off limits. Everything she knew was isolated, she didn’t know what information was completely public. Her dad has to know why she was here? He does have the number.

“Hi dad! You miss me?” She asked cheerfully.

“Y/n, it’s so good to hear your voice. I got home yesterday and noticed you weren’t there. I thought you were out with friends, but you never answered your phone. I was so worried. You mother filled me in.” He told her.

“Are you upset?” She asked.

“No, no. I figured each of my kids would have a scandal at some point.” He joked. “I could yell at you to be more careful or to stop what you’re doing, but I figured out heroes are doing that already.”

“Is mom in denial about it?”

“You’re a good kid, worrying about your parents, but we’ll be okay. I still have to tell your siblings. They’re all over the board.”

“They won’t care too much I bet. I don’t think we’re gonna watch fireworks this year.” Y/n said.

“Ha, Ha, that’s your big concern right now?”

“Yeah, that’s when you guys let me scream all I want.” She told him.

“We’ll all watch fireworks again, I promise.”

“Do you think you can tell mom to send me some of her homemade painkillers? I’ve been quirk training.”

That's when the mood of the call changed.

“Y/n I thought we told you to not use your quirk! You don’t have to listen to every single thing these people tell you! Don’t they see the side effects?”

“I have a bit of a hard time using it, sometimes it just goes off.”

��Y/n you have controlled that before. You just have to try harder to suppress it. What were you doing when we were gone and you were home alone?”

She test drived anything in the house ranging from alcohol, mislabeled medication in the cabinet, to website mixes on things to relieve pain. She thought alcohol could help because all the tv shows had drunk people drunk to “not feel anything.”

“I would try to sleep it off, but I can’t do that here.” She put in a white little lie.

“Your mother doesn’t make drugs, don’t say such silly things. I called to check on you and you seem fine other than the teachers forcing you to use your quirk.” Was her father’s goodbye.

No “love you”, she didn’t even get to say bye. Y/n walked and saw the secretary perk up to try and pretend they didn’t witness such an awkward phone call. The gloomy cloud formed as the conversation set in. Outside the front office, she felt too far away from her dorm. She wanted to be hidden.

What kept her strong for so long was though she knew her parents weren’t perfect, no one was. They loved her though. They just had bad ways of showing it. The worse thing they did to her wasn’t because of a punishment, but to further their dreams and ideals. They were confident they could achieve it through their children and Y/n was their last hope. Her body wasn’t strong enough, though they failed, Y/n did too. They did their best to accommodate Y/n’s life with her body weakening. They tried to redeem themselves, to protect their daughter.

Students flood the halls as their classes were done for the day. She was holding the tears back. Her parents were two people who had dreams, who thought they could handle parenting and their goals at the same time, merging them. They could try again if she could manage her quirk. Find a bathroom, no one will be in there. However in the fret of looking for one, her face crashed into someone. She pulled back quickly, before realizing who it was she was already apologizing.

“Sorry….I’m so sorry I’m just-“ her voice shook as she was still looking around.

“Are you okay?”

Looking up, it was Shouji. Why did it have to be a class 1-A student? She already knew what her face looked like. She had so many lonely nights that she couldn’t help to look in the mirror and how her face would break into a sob. She was doing her best not to shatter yet, not in front of the school.

“Yeah, you saw me kick Iida’s ass.” She tried proving her case.

“I thought you said you shouldn’t compare yourself to others.”

“You got me there!” She fought against the tears harder. If she could smile they wouldn’t leak out.

“Do you have to go back to the classroom?” He asked her.

Probably.

“Yeah, I just figured I’d take the long way.”

“How was the phone call with your father?”

Right in the weak spot. He wasn’t playing games. Straight to the point.

“It was good enough, you know how dads can be.”

“I didn’t think they were all the same.”

“Well he’s a normal guy nothing weird.” She told him trying to walk away.

“You’re going the wrong way.” He told her.

Fuck! She was going towards the bathroom.

“Well have to pee.” She lied.

Going into the bathroom she found no one. It was just like when she was in school. No one goes to the bathroom at the end of the day. She took the paper towel and let her eyes tear up and flow out. She held the sobs back. If everyone wanted to be a hero and heard her cry they’d be nosy and want to know what’s wrong. Today she couldn’t rationalize her dad’s words. Maybe he was just trying to protect her, but he didn’t listen. When she went for lunch the quirk activated on her foot pushing her forward down the stairs. She had to use her hands to save herself. It wasn’t shocking to her or the family she had poor control over it, but everyone thought it was easier than it was to constantly hold back. The painkillers lessen the effects of power. Instead of bleeding, sometimes it would bruise. The breathing problems would have blood. The pills would make her more tired, but numb so of the effects. She wanted them if they were gonna make her use her quirk.

Looking into the mirror her eyes weren’t ass puffy, and she didn’t look too bad. No tear streaks. Y/n felt good about that at least.

“You never cease to amaze me, body!” She told herself.

Y/n opened the door and found Shouji there, waiting.

“What are you doing!” She yelled at him.

“I didn’t know if you used your quirk or not, you could have fainted in the bathroom and no one would know.” He told her.

“What a sweet hero you are. Now I’m fine, so no more worries!” She told him.

“I don’t know enough about you to trust you won’t faint.”

“Fine, follow me!” She yelled. She really did lose her right to privacy!

He probably used his ear hands to ease drop. He wasn’t saying much as they walked back to the classroom. The silence was the worst. Were dots being connected? Could his ears listen to her thoughts and read her mind?

“I wanna go to the grocery store so bad, I need a self care day after sitting in a classroom all day so damn much. It’s too much of a change being around so many damn people. You might feel the same having so many ears and noses! You probably get overstimulated and stuff!” Y/n rambled, hoping to throw his thoughts somewhere else.

“Yeah it gets like that.”he said being vague as possible, only furthering her frustrations.

“How are you so chill about it! If I get slightly uncomfortable I make a scene!” Y/n said loudly.

“You tried hiding.”

“That doesn’t count! If I was with my family I’d tell them I threw up somewhere in the house and forgot where!” Y/n said. “This one time when I was like 6 since my parents were gone all the time my older brother got a dog and a cat because they didn’t notice for two years. Once they found out they couldn’t do anything because we had gotten away with it so long and we were hella responsible.”

“How was the phone call with your father.” Aizawa asked because they got to the class, hoping he would not have to hear more about Y/n’s secret cat as a child.

“Oh why tell you! You’ll be listening to it anyway! And look, your gold star student escorted me all the way back here!” She pointed at Shouji.

“Thank you Shouji.” Aizawa said. “You probably have some studying you want to get to.”

“I’ll get going.” Shouji bowed.

Y/n’s nerves were calming down as she was helping Aizawa with paper work. He had already listened to the phone call. The phone call didn’t have enough evidence that Y/n’s parents have experimented on her, and even if they did it can’t be proven how harsh it was. Testing has happened to save lives. Her family could have lessened her quirk to save her life. Doubt it, but still a possibility. Aizawa already filled the holes in himself. The isolation tactic was to silence her from reaching out to anyone.

“If you need something to take care of the pain, I can take you to the pharmacy or a doctor to run some tests.” Aizawa told her.

Her general provider was a doctor who worked for her mother. The numbers couldn’t have been all real.

“It’s fine. I’ve managed my quirk this long.”

“Poorly.”

The emotions were boiling over. Everyone has always been so quick to judge, so quick to label. Why was she being singled out? Was it because of her crimes? Everyone breaks the law sometime! Aizawa has probably made a mountain of mistakes surely!

“What do you even know? All you have is a faux file.” She growled. “My parents love me and want what’s best for me. That’s why I’ve been following your stupid rules and not escaping so they don’t have to worry anymore.”

It was silly when she heard it out loud. Why did she commit crimes in the first place? If she cared about her parent’s concern, why then?

#shoji mezo #shouji mezou #xreader #bnha fanfiction #bnha #shouji mezo #series #shoji x reader #bnha shoji #bnha x reader #mezo x reader

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askthewitchlady · 4 years

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Cagaster of an Insect Cage Review

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

So first things first yes this is one of the many CG animated anime that’s been popping up a lot lately, no its not good. Yes the occasional segments of 2D is much better.

With that out of the way.

This has a neat premise. Essentially at some point in the near future humans begin to suffer from a sudden onset illness that turns them into giant man eating bugs.

These people refereed to as Cagasters take 20 minutes to fully turn into bugs, during that time they can be killed but must be beheaded because the neck remains the weakest point of the body.

Interesting right? But that's all we get because this story isn't about bugs, or fighting the bugs or surviving against the bugs as much as the first few episodes with their episodic type story lines would lead you to believe.

The story focuses on 14 year old Ilie, a young girl who survives a bug attack witnessed by a merchant and his friend our exterminator protagonist 17 year old Kidow. Let me point out never in the show is his age stated I learned that from the wiki.

Why is this important? Because in one scene in Kidows back story he's sexually taken advantage of by an older woman while grieving the death of a father figure, then a little later (in the show not in his history) he proceeds to try and force himself on Ilie to cope with his grief. It's more then uncomfortable especially when you go in thinking he's gotta be in his early twenties like I did.

Anyway Ilie loses consciousness but is protected by her father who suffers a mortal wound. He begs Kidow to take Ilie to her mother Tanya.

Ilie wakes up as they prepare to leave and in horror and desperation to save her father tries to run back to the truck only for Kidow to smack her.

What a hero...

This show would have been in no way effected if Ilie had been 16, or better 18. It would have made their relationship a lot less uncomfortable.

The story goes for a few light hearted episodes (Well as light hearted as you can be with grisly murders happening.) With vague hints to a deeper plot. By episode six the show jumps the shark into WTFville

Ilie is a Cagaster Queen. Ilies mom Tanya was born from a woman who had a 'Cagaster outbreak' while pregnant making her a queen, Tanya was also in a desperate one sided incestuous relationship with her (not blood related) brother. Ilies father (Tanyas adopted brother) is a sociopath who believes he died in place of his father and his body was possessed by his fathers soul, he uses Tanyas love for him to achieve his goals but does have a distorted affection he doesn't understand. Ilies mother Tanya had been used to try and make more 'Queens' resulting in the creation of asset 8 her cloned 'twin' considered a failure because he was boy. His half bug breeding is manifested in literally having a half bug half human body.

There’s a general who wants to rid the world of bugs by using the Queens to see who has Cagaster potential and kill them hoping to eventually wipe them all out a plan that causes the destruction of two major human settlements.

That's not even all of it. Cagaster outbreaks are never explained, all we know is a queen can see it and trigger it if she wants. Anyone under 15 also will never suffer an outbreak though its never said why. We don't know what else triggers it because obviously there aren't a bunch of Queens walking around.

Ilie and Kidows relationship is weird and a little out of left feild especially after she gets her memory back and goes full on tsundere on him. The fact it's a major case of hero worship and that she's 14 makes it sqicky i know Kidows 17 so its only a 3 year age gap but what 17 year old gets the hots for a 14 year old, the mental maturity alone is hugely different.

A lot of things are left unexplained about the bugs, we gets hints that they are the next step in human evolution... Riiiight

The climax of the show lasts 5 episodes... in a 12 episode show, that’s bad.

That being said there are some good things

The bug concept was neat and the idea of a human queen that can sense and control it is cool to.

There are some complex character relationships and the scenes with Ilie growing up with the man she thinks is her father are adorable.

Mario is awesome, moar Mario, a prequel about Mario, something.

The setting is never actually stated but judging by fashions and terms its its likely its someplace in the middle east which is cool.

Final thoughts?

This show held my attention till the end, but, it's flaws make it one I'll probably not watch again. It's not terrible and I am sure some people will really like it, there where parts I really liked but unfortunately the problems and the very very slow ending that felt akin to a DBZ or Naruto fight mean it hasn't got a lot of rewatch value.

See it once but I doubt you'll want to watch it again.

#cagaster of an insect cage #cagaster #anime #anime review #Netflix #netflix review #spoilers #Ilie #Kidow #Mario #Mario is best

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aforgottenballad · 4 years

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Feelings on Sally Face Episode 5

Under a read more for obvious reasons, includes heavy spoilers and potentially triggering subjects.

Disclaimer: I might miss-remember some parts of the story or have missed a piece of lore that would settle minor complaints. I am however disappointed in the ending as a whole and in some of the very harmful tropes included in it. But I’m also just some dude online with an opinion, and you can stop reading at any time.

Rant under cut.

Alright ya’ll. I’ve had a couple days to digest the ending to Sally Face. While playing, I genuinely enjoyed some elements of the game. The chapter started on a dark but nearly hopeful note. Neil and Ash were still working to bring the cult down. It seemed likely Sal would be resurrected. Todd had apparently escaped the hospital, and that had potential to be either a very very good or very very bad thing. Maple was possessed by whatever fucked up the souls of the other apartment tenants, but hey! At least her and Neil weren’t in on the cult like so many fans predicted. Unfortunately, this series has a way of getting darker and darker as it progresses. First thing that bugged me was the lore drop about how the cult was founded. A Native American tribe. Right. Because why wouldn’t Indigenous peoples be in a story without being part of some mystical occult backstory, portrayed as mysterious historical props who worshiped something dark and evil instead of being portrayed as human beings.

But I continued. I really enjoyed playing as Ashley and getting some insight into her character. I enjoyed the task of planting the C4 in the temple... catacomb... thing. We get to see Travis again! I was excited that a lot of us were right about him being indoctrinated but also working to fight the cult from the inside. We knew he had some good in him after all.

When Ash tries to resurrect Sal, we get even more insight into her character, and unfortunately a lot of it is “Grieving, distraught, and full of self-blame”. I want to hug her. Sal’s spirit is apparently revived by those pyramids, and he can dimension warp. We meet Jim, or what’s left of him, and he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore but agrees to help Sal anyway. This is, narratively speaking, weird as hell. His entire character arc for four episodes was “Loved his family so much he sacrificed himself to save them”, and suddenly he’s just some glowy dude attached to Magic Spirit Tubes who doesn’t give half a shit. I guess it makes sense as a way to wrap up why he’s been able to drift between worlds but... if he doesn’t care about any of that anymore why help Sal? And what about Rosenberg? Is she like Jim, or do we just have to assume she’s magical because her family helped found the cult? (Explained in an easter egg later on, because this game doesn’t just drop its lore. Not even the CRUCIAL lore. You have to achievement hunt for it.) Sal can enter various doors in the House In The Void to step into alternate realities, and this was my favorite aspect of the game. Each door has a different art style, and I really liked seeing these alternate realities. Steve probably worked the hardest and longest on drawing out and coding these scenes. I genuinely applaud the man for the work put into this endeavor I’m assuming all by himself.

Meanwhile, Ash tries to unbind Larry’s soul from the tree house he died in, which doesn’t work. Did we ever find out why his body was never found? No? Ok that seems important.

After each puzzle, Sal’s body is restored a little bit at a time, but even after turning on all the pyramids and solving the mysteries behind all three doors, he can’t make it back to the “real” world. So Ashley kills herself. Or tries to. Because apparently that’s the only way to complete the ritual, and also because she feels really bad about not unbinding Larry’s soul and about not fixing Sal. Again, I want to hug her, but I have to watch her hurt herself instead, cause Steve doesn’t let us have nice things.

Okay, so this is a gorey game. We know. But one of the BIGGEST no-nos suicide prevention networks will tell you when consulting them about mental illness and suicide in media is NOT to show a graphic suicide in progress. Steve is aware a lot of his fans are A) Young teens to young adults B) Struggling with mental illness.

His main character suffers from depression and anxiety and this fact has resonated with hundreds of fans. It’s irresponsible to purposefully include a graphic suicide attempt, but he did it last chapter, showing a gunshot suicide’s aftermath, then he did it again with Ashley. Call me a wiener if you like, point out the graphic scenes from earlier in the game and call me a hypocrite for not being upset by that, but you have to admit the Spongebob-close-up-shot look to those scenes have a totally different feel. Speaking as someone who actually has a pretty thick skin, but is concerned about the fans who might be in a worse place or who could be as young as 12, that was fucked up.

Anyway, Ash’s attempt doesn’t take, because she’s struck by magic lightning, which infuses Sal’s soul into her. Now her arm is one of those stretchy sticky hands, but with bio luminescence and the ability to kick cultist ass. I actually thought this part was really cool, and was super ready to go on a cultist smacking spree. But again, we can’t have nice things and before we get to do anything badass we have to look at gruesome imagery again.

You get to see Void Larry, who is now old and a wizard or something, but first...

Surprise! Maple and Neil are dead! Not just dead, but hung up from hooks covered in blood! And naked!

Hey?? Hey Steve????? You know how they’re both POC?? And that lynching imagery is EXTREMELY NOT GOOD?!!????

“Two white people are hung up with them” YEAH? WELL WE’VE NEVER SEEN THOSE CHARACTERS BEFORE. THEY’RE JUST RANDOM PEOPLE.

I’ve seen people arguing “The white characters go through terrible things too” but it’s still really fucked up that by the end of the game, every. Single. Person of color. In the game. Has died. Gruesomely. It’s a gorey, dark, bleak game, and white characters die as well, gruesomely; but not all of them. None of them that are named are shown strung up, naked. That’s fucked up. That isn’t okay.

There are also a total of three gay characters in this game. One is Todd, who goes through the standard “bad bad stuff” the game is used to, is the white one, and he survives. One is Neil, one of the aforementioned people of color who died horribly and who only really existed to be Todd’s boyfriend and therefore a source of angst for Todd when he dies. The third is Travis, another man of color, and an abuse victim, who dies to fulfill his character arc as an abuse victim, which is also really shitty to see over and over again as an abuse survivor.

Look, I know Steve pulled a lot of inspiration from old TV shows and horror series that probably weren’t all “politically correct”. I know it’s always been kind of an edgy and dark game. I know Steve probably didn’t think about the repercussions of all his narrative choices. But I also know he actively ignored some people offering to educate him on issues he has no experience with. I know he worked hard on this game, by himself, but we as fans have paid him and waited for years and it isn’t selfish or ungrateful to be hurt and disappointed. He knows his audience is diverse, he knows a lot of us were attracted to the game because of a gender nonconforming main character, a main character who struggles with mental illness, a cast that isn’t 100% white and conventionally attractive. Of course he didn’t need to change the plot for us! It’s his game, his vision, but the least he could have done is research how to not actively hurt and alienate a good portion of us. I don’t think anyone is bad or racist for still finding solace in the characters and in what the story was before this, I’m not attacking you personally, whoever is reading this. I, personally, still have loads of Sally Face art in my queue, I still have active role plays going on, my Sal wig is sitting like 8 feet away waiting for the next time my friends want to take cosplay pictures. I still enjoyed playing the game for the most part. Without this game I wouldn’t even know most of my current friends. It’s just really shitty how it ended like this, and a lot of people I talk to daily either feel too sick to even talk about the game anymore after seeing people like them treated like trash by the narrative or try to focus on the good things they got out of just being part of the fandom but don’t feel comfortable supporting the developer anymore.

Even if there wasn’t all these hurtful tropes packed into the game, and yes, even after unlocking the epilogue, the game just feels cold. It feels rushed, probably because of how much time went into the alternate dimension gimmick. I wish Steve had at least consulted people over the script. It felt like not only did he pour all his work into experimenting with the mixed media, he also just took whatever expectations the fans had and went somewhere completely different just to have his story be “unpredictable”. That isn’t always a good thing. Plot twists, downer endings, dark and scary imagery, all of these things can be done beautifully, but in this case it felt like he just wanted the series to end. The game didn’t subvert expectations, it fed into the harmful stereotypes and tropes all the fans were so hopeful it wouldn’t.

...On top of not making any sense unless you’re able to 100% all the puzzles. And even when you do, it feels like all the bad stuff happened for no reason. The ending doesn’t conclude anything. Even when you unlock the epilogue, all it tells you is that a third of the world has died and that the main cast haven’t accomplished much besides “Trying to help”. Sal and Todd have powers now, but that isn’t elaborated on much. Larry’s spirit is missing, if he even exists in any plane at all anymore. It doesn’t even mention what’s going on with Ash. It just feels like nothing mattered.

#sally face #long post #analysis #sally face spoilers #chapter 5 spoilers

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