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#its just like the times i have the wild theories about whos doing what behind my back

twopoppies · 2 years

Note

I usually don't comment on stuff like this, because I don't make a habit of pissing on people's parades, but some of the recent things people are using as "proof" (of bbg ending, of Larry communicating with us, etc) are really wild stretches.

And, I usually wouldn't let it bother me; I understand that people (especially newer larries) are just having fun. But, as someone who's been here for a long time and who was part of the fandom when "proof" really meant concrete, vetted, and consistent evidence, I think people are unaware of how creating, spreading, and encouraging these unsubstantiated stretches and theories only support the extremely damaging stereotype that larries are unhinged and that we can (and will) make a connection out of anything, if it suits our narrative. (Which is, literally, what hets and shippers do, so yeah, forgive me if I don't want to be lumped in with that crowd.)

When we talk about Larry signaling (through clothing, warnings, selfies, the bears, etc), I think it's really, really important to remember the context in which those things happened.

They were both banging on the glass closet and seemingly seeding a potential coming out. They were at the height of their 'enemies' narrative and banned from being seen interacting, even while they were living out of each other's pockets. They were restricted by extremely abusive public identities (homophobe and serial womanizer) and contract clauses. They were making music and money for oppressive management and labels, none of which was directly contributing to or even hinting at potential personal career growth outside One Direction. They were signaling not only because it's all they had in terms of connecting with their community, but as an act of extreme rebellion and as a means of winning over even an inch of personal freedom and self-expression. (Remember, Niall wasn't even allowed to keep his natural hair color.)

And, while yes, Harry and Louis are still heavily closeted and being made to participate in (especially in Louis' case) extremely vile and abusive stunts, the context, in terms of their need to be seen (whether it be as their own people, queer people, or as a couple), has actually changed. In terms of self-expression, they're both making music that resonates with their creative identities, that they have some level of control over, and that contribute to them, personally, as individual artists. This means they actually have a personal stake in whether or not their projects do well because its a direct indicator of whether they get to continue making music that they love. Taking that into consideration, its unlikely that they want to overshadow the soul of those projects by slipping in all these little clues about their relationship into their promo. They’ve also (thanks mostly to the fans) found other ways of connecting to the queer community (which is an entirely different objective from wanting people to know about their relationship, specifically.)

To be really honest, I think they’ve actually made a collective decision to work harder to protect the privacy of their relationship, even behind the scenes, for many reasons. (Harris Reed’s recent interview, where he mentioned not really knowing Harry all that well, but alluded to leaving space for his queerness is what swayed me the most.) Being older, and having a lot more at stake (personally and professionally), makes me think they’re now (maybe in the last four or so years) very, very selective about who they share this part of their life with, one, because they each have a lot more to lose now if they’re outed, but also because their relationship is their top priority, and as Harry has said (and no doubt learned), a relationship has never benefitted from being made public (and we have to remember that even “within the confines of the industry” is still very, very “public”).

But, I digress. My point is, they've been together for twelve years, they've written hundreds upon hundreds of love songs to each other, they have their love story tattooed all over their skin. I get if you, individually, need to read into every little clue to prove to yourself they're still together, but don’t confuse that with them needing us to know it.

Again, I'm not saying this to piss on anyone's parade. I love a Larry proof to death and god knows I believe in the real ones with my whole chest (Still the One still gives me chills, Princess Park is fucking perfection, ‘waiting to wrap your legs around me' and ‘tired eyes are the death of me’ are tattooed on my heart). What I'm saying is people need to take context into consideration to keep from devaluing and trivializing actual, solid, vetted Larry proof and signaling because the only people and reputations these stretches and theories are hurting are Larries’.

Anon, if I wasn’t already married, I would marry you. THANK YOU.

#fandom dynamics #for newbies #I was going to add some thoughts #but really you made such good points #I don’t even want to dilute it

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listen-to-the-inner-walrus · 10 months

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can you explain why you dont believe the titanic switch conspiracy theory? didnt they find a propeller with "olympic" written on it amongst the wreckage?

i feel like the phrase "you just activated my trap card" applies here but i have also never watched yu-gi-oh so dont fully know the correct use of that. anyway whats the text limit on a tumblr post because i think i might hit it with this response.

before we begin (if you wanna join me on this fucking journey), ill just drop some useful sources on the topic:

olympic & titanic - an analysis of the robin gardiner conspiracy theory dissertation by mark chirnside in july 2006

titanic or olympic: which ship sank? by steve hall and bruce beveridge

olympic & titanic: the truth behind the conspiracy by steve hall and bruce beveridge

with that shipkeeping housekeeping out of the way, lets jump into it after the cut

so hands up, how many people knew that this theory originated in a book from 1995?

yeah, its a pretty modern theory considering titanic sank in 1912. the theory originated in the riddle of the titanic by robin gardiner and dan van der dat.

and the theory argues that the ships were switched and titanic (actually olympic) was deliberately sank as part of an insurance scam. now they didnt do this at all for shits and giggles. instead, the theory posits that the navy enquiry that followed the 1911 collision between hms hawke and olympic was biased which meant white star line couldnt recover the costs of repair from lloyds (the insurance company), and therefore, they wrote olmpic off as too damaged to be repaired, lied about the amount of damage, switched the ships and sank olympic disguised as titanic to recover some costs.

far-fetched? oh definitely and it gets worse, but ill leave that til later in this gargantuan response because its really fucking funny.

(seriously, i recommend you read til the end or just skip to the part where i start talking about the sinking itself because fam, gardiners theory gets wild )

according to van der dat, who is a dutch journalist and naval history writer with an incredibly dutch name, gardiner had wrote the manuscript after researching the titanic for however many years and sent it to his literary agent. this agent had previously worked with van der dat and so sent it to him to double-check the information by going back to the original sources. he then rewrote the book with line-by-line consultation with gardiner.

and would you like to hear a quote from van der dat regarding the theory? i think you would:

"the publishers were disillusioned when the theory did not stand up"

he also, in correspondence with titanic author and researcher paul lee, called it "bilge" which is a fun ship joke alongside calling the theory bullshit.

anyway, the publishers went ahead with the book anyway because fuck integrity, i guess... thats kinda harsh considering this first book (oh yeah, theres more) was praised for stellar research and for being balanced, and the final chapter of the book literally acknowledges that the wreck has titanics shipyard number (401) on it, hence disproving the theory.

in 1997, it was published in the us under the name the titanic conspiracy - cover-ups and mysteries of the worlds most famous sea disaster, and it sold like sliced bread in 1928 because 1997 was titanic fever, baby!

unsurprisingly, gardiner's following books (titanic: the ship that never sank? in 1998; the history of the white star line in 2001; the great titanic conspiracy in 2010) were a lot less well-received and were not co-authored by van der dat.

"but wait, kai!" you might shout if youre up to date with issues of the times from 1914, "what about raymond asquith's comments? he was junior counsel for the board of trade at the sinking inquiry!"

and i would say, what about it? the letter asquith wrote to the times was a sarcastic letter in response to a prior stance taken by the paper.

yes, he said "the architect, the owner, and the captain to repair their desperate fortunes by sinking the ship and sharing the insurance money" but said letter also included the phrase "manipulating dummy icebergs".

if were taking sarcastic or satirical responses outside of their original contexts as serious quotes, then i guess i need to cancel my dropout subscription since the company holds the opinion that oj simpson is innocent.

and while were here, that single deathbed confession from james fenton is not evidence of anything. his name is not on any crew lists or survivor lists, and not a single payment was ever claimed by a crewman called james fenton. he was not on board the titanic and his claims hold no weight.

now, my go-to explanation as to why i dont believe the switch theory is that their insurance scam would have lost them money and they would know that it would have lost them money.

see, it cost white star (which was a subsidiary of the international mercantile marine) £1.5million/$7.5million to build titanic and they insured it by lloyds (you can check their records on their website) for £1million/$5million.

you dont have to be good at maths to see a problem here.

they didnt just not insure the rest; it was self-insured by imm's insurance fund, but that still means theyd have lost £500,000/$2.5million on the sunken ship.

this whole insurance thing was established by uh the united states senate inquiry report:

"the vessel fully equipped, cost £1,500,000 sterling, or about $7,500,000. at the time of the accident the vessel carried insurance of £1,000,000 sterling or about $5,000,000, the remaining risk being carried by the company's insurance fund."

oh and the £1,000,009 insurance was announced in the daily mirror on 16th april 1912

and the insurance scam seemingly thought up by someones whose first and only introduction to maths was golf isnt the only way white star would have lost money on this.

after the sinking, olympic was temporarily pulled from service to increase safety measures like adding more lifeboats. obviously, a logical move made by a company with a brand new, safer ship on their hands who were desperate for any money they can make.

white star also halted construction of britannic, titanics other sister ship, in order to alter the design and make it safer. this costs quite a bit of money and is, again, an odd choice for a company apparently desperate for money.

and hey, question for you guys: if you were alive in 1913 and needed to cross the atlantic, would you

a) choose the near identical sister ship of that ship that sank last year and was the deadliest sinking of a ship at that time

b) choose any other option such as the lusitania or the mauretania or the ss france or the ss imperator

personally id take my chances with option a, idk about you

yeah so the point im making here is that the sinking of the titanic was what the kids say

a marketing disaster

it was the loss of the newest flagship on its maiden fucking voyage and it had been touted as "practically unsinkable". maybe just maybe people wouldnt feel that comfortable getting on a white star line ship after that.

i dont have any figures for you because reading through a detailed account of white stars history just is not on my to-do list, but that doesnt even matter. what matters is that its clearly a massive risk and who the fuck is taking that risk?

as titanic author, senan molony states:

"one doesnt need to compare designs and count portholes - a moments serious consideration of the reputational risk involved - individually and collectively - is all that is required to end any entertainment of the notion"

anyway, you guys wanna compare designs and count portholes? yeah? okay, here we go!

may i present a non-exhaustive list of differences between the ships:

olympics wheelhouse was curved; titanics was flat

titanic was 4 inches longer

the porthole arrangements on shelter deck c were different

on b deck, olympic had a 1st class promenade; titanic had 2 private verandahs and suites (put a pin in this by the way, it comes back in the best of ways)

titanic had additional cabins on promenade deck a

olympics promenade was open all the way along; on titanic, the forward half of the 1st class promenade on a-deck was enclosed with retractable glass screens

on titanic, the forward bridge wings aft docking bridge on the stern extended over the ships side by a couple of feet; this would not be true for olympic until the 1912/13 refit

the officers deck house was pushed out more on titanic

the iron gates of the elevators were different between the ships and this is evident in the wreck itself

their propellers had different pitches and hence not interchangeable (pitch is a theoretical concept which is like the distance a propeller would move if it turned once through something solid, yeah i dont know either)

the wireless cabin had an outside window on olympic, but not titanic

further, it was placed on the port side of the officers deck house on olympic but amidship on titanic

they had different air vent arrangements around the funnels

white star line cut the ships names into the shell-plating at the bow and stern, four feet high and a ½ inch deep

now, please, close your eyes, take a deep breath and consider how much money it would cost to switch just the list above. now compare all of that to the -£500,000/$2.5million youre losing in the insurance scam.

truly, a spend less on candles situation.

and while we're here, shall we quickly talk about how much hush money white star would be paying to silence everyone about this since its apparently an illegal insurance scam.

not to make another non-exhaustive list but heres just who i can think of that youd have to silence:

the 15,000 workers employed directly by the shipyard

the 20,000+ workers in support services or sub contractors

any permanent or casual staff at the belfast dock and harbour comission

all of the officers and crew who came directly from olympic onto titanic such as the captain or stewardess violet jessop (puppet history fans rise up) who interestingly remarked on how improved titanic was compared to olympic

any staff at white star, imm and harland & wolff (where she was built) who would be in the know such as designers

passengers who had previously sailed on olympic who then sailed on titanic

just like anyone in belfast who walked past while the ships were docked together

olympics wreckers: thomas wards & sons who kept huge loose-leaf ledgers for each ships. the one for olympic was 72 pages long and funnily enough olympics yard number and builders I'd frequently appear in it, as seen below

bob ballard who was the one who found titanic. hes known as a very honest man and didnt even claim salvage rights on titanic because he assumed everyone else would also recognise it was a gravesite. he also said "i think it is the titanic at the bottom of the ocean"

every other explorer or researcher like james fucking cameron or us navy consultant and titanic wreck explorer, parks stephenson

its been estimated likely over 60,000 people were involved in just the building of titanic. this was ⅕ of belfasts population and ⅓ of the working population. heres a photo of them leaving olympic at the end of the day

now maybe im just a fool, but that looks like a lot of people you need to silence, and unless white star were blackmailing them or idk fucking killing them i guess, thats a lot of hush money just in the photo above.

i mean, theres also the claim, from noted liar james fenton, that the surviving crew were forced to sign the official secrets act of 1911, but that act was about espionage that benefits the enemy military so im not sure how this is relevant to the switch, and also, again, the guy was never on the ship.

are you perhaps starting to get the picture as to why i dont believe the conspiracy theory because im still going.

okay so as established, if the ships were switched, there would have clearly been a lot of work that would need to be done to switch the ships.

and i only mentioned some of the structural differences, i didnt get into the aesthetic differences like the floor tiles and carpeting being different colours, or how the lounge furniture in each ship having the ship name on them.

mind you, this is what titanic looked like (in the foreground) when olympic was first docked next to her:

this was taken around october 11. olympic docked next to titanic on october 7th for repairs after that whole catastrophic collision.

now how much time do you think it was before olympic sailed away? mind you, titanic has already been launched at this point and just needs to be fitted-out, and that normally takes around 4 to 6 months?

oh, what was that? 44 days? why, kid, youre going somewhere. it was 44 days exactly!

now, i dont think i need to get into the fact that the dock only had 1 crane (which you needed to install and uninstall funnels and machinery) that physically couldnt reach olympic unless she was moved or how olympic was painted white for her launch and then painted black and that the white paint would get exposed in rough weather so the same would have to be applied to titanic so it would look convincingly like olympic.

i mean, you have that information now, but im hoping just by the words "44 days", you might get how off the wall insane it is to suggest white star was able to switch the ships so well no one noticed for decades in 44 fucking days.

"wait kai, youre forgetting that they were docked together again!" you shout, "after olympic threw a propeller, they were docked together from march 1st to march 7th 1912"

and i dont know dude, im pretty sure white star cant warp space time so i really dont know what eight extra days is gonna do.

i hate to strawman but man, the late robin gardiner would have won a gold medal in scarecrow hide and seek.

lets also take a quick detour into the idea that olympics repairs were so expensive.

without getting into gardiners claims about the damage because theres no evidence of it and as mark chirnside states "there are no credible sources indicating that the damage to olympic was worse than reported at the time - and indeed ample sworn expert testimony to the contrary", lets just quickly go over some financial stuff.

during the case, it was unofficially estimated that the damage didnt exceed $125,000. imm, by including lost passenger receipts, wanted to claim for as high as $750,000, but they lost that case.

during the year 1911, imms surplus profit was $822,062. so weve got:

750,000 > 822,062

now as we might remember from key stage 1 maths, the bigger number eats the smaller number, aka, their surplus profit covered the costs of repair.

aka, no ill-advised insurance scam needed.

"thousands of people in belfast would have seen the switch operation - and yet there is not one word in the papers of reporters or photographers rushing out to find out what was happening."

-dr paul lee

so this is the section where i ask how did no one fucking notice?

no one on titanic, who had previously sailed on olympic, ever said anything about the switch other than one guy who was literally not on the ship at any point.

no one who has ever explored the wreck or done research on it has definitively stated it was olympic. rather, they have definitively stated otherwise.

for example, what remains of the base on the wheelhouse shows it to be straight and not curved, and as you might remember: titanics wheelhouse was heterosexual straight and olympics was curved.

(id be impressed if you did remember)

also, as parks stephenson has stated:

"weve got actual high def images of this wreck. ive seen with my own eyes. weve identified the name titanic on the port bow"

its difficult to make out but its there; the name is on the fucking ship.

also, as you might remember, titanics b-deck was different to olympics. the 2 suites there were nicknamed the "millionaire suites" and jim cameron has used rovs to go inside of them.

funnily enough, robin gardiner has gone on the record saying that these suites didnt exist so make of that what you will.

and further, no one noticed anything about olympic even though she sailed for 24 more years. theres no written record of anything, theres nothing in the board of trade reports, theres no photographic proof and theres not even fucking hearsay.

she served as a damn troopship in ww1, youd figure someone would figure it out as all of her fittings were ripped out.

but no, theres nothing.

as i mentioned above, olympic was scrapped in 1935, but some of her fittings were auctioned off and still exist today. and these have the number 400 on them because that was her shipyard number. titanics was 401 and the wreck reflects this also:

the wooden parts are from olympic; the other has been salvaged from titanics wreck.

theres even the famous myth that olympic or olympus as one person told me is written on the propeller at the bottom of the ocean. its not, but you can see the number 401 written on it:

and while were disproving myths about the name olympic being on the titanic, the story about olympic being engraved on titanics lifeboats is also false:

theres no written testimony, no sketches and no photographs of this.

white star didnt engrave names onto lifeboats, the names were on metal plates that were screwed on

do you really think they did all of this work but just didnt fucking swap the lifeboats? if theyre this stupid, how did it take until 1995 for someone to figure it out?

we can also discuss the stupid olympic room thing while were here. see theres a maritime superstition that changing the name on a ship is bad luck and obviously, if youre swapping the ships, youre changing the names.

so to... get around this? cheat luck? outsmart superstition? i dont fucking know, to take a detour to avoid this, white star named a room "the olympic room."

i cannot find any evidence at all that this room ever existed. its not in the design plans or the blueprints, and no passenger or crew has ever said it existed, so im pretty sure the room just didnt exist.

and even if it did exist, titanic was in the olympic class of ships. thats what olympic, titanic and britannic were. its not weird to have an olympic room on an olympic class ship. i mean it is weird in this case since the room didnt exist, but you get my point.

and heres some quickfire myths and falsehoods

the myth about the 14 vs 16 bow portholes is also a false. yes, titanic had 14 portholes on launch but an extra 2 were added before her maiden voyage so yes, the ship photographed departing southampton with 16 bow portholes is the titanic, and do you really think it would take 83 years to figure this out if it was this easy?

similarly, titanic did have evenly spaced b-deck windows on launch, but then the extra verandahs and suites were added so the window configuration was altered, so that photograph is off the titanic.

the idea that titanic had a 2 degree list to port like the olympic before her is evidence of the switch theory is, to borrow a word from dan van der dat, bilge. plenty of ships at the time and now have minor lists. the one on titanic was only recorded by 2 passengers and we know that the list was related to coal consumption. it means nothing.

jp morgan (owner of imm) did not cancel last minute. as mark baber points out on encyclopedia titanica, it was announced in the new york times that hed be in venice on april 23. at that time, transatlantic voyages took at least 5 days so it would at least be a 10 day round trip and likely not give him time to get to venice for the opening of a store of whatever it was.

also, j bruce ismays wife and kids also didnt cancel last minute. theyd already decided to go on holiday to wales rather than sail on titanic.

addendum to that point: if ismay knew it was going to be sank deliberately and so warned his wife, why would he get on board himself? further, why would harland and wolff designer thomas andrews (who did not survive by the way) get on board?

and we're finally at my favourite part of this entire mess: the sinking itself.

see, a deliberate sinking doesnt really make sense for titanic because the conditions under which she sank has led to the descriptor "freak sinking."

these are: a new moon meaning less light, unusually calm ocean that disallowed lookouts to watch for foam as waves hit any icebergs, ice having drifted further south than normal for that time of year, and a sideways glancing blow that breached more watertight compartments than the ship could handle and stay afloat.

and idk dude, is there not an easier way? like maybe some light arson. just call it an accidental fire that got out of control and led to the ship being a write-off, this isnt difficult.

but you see gardiner has an answer to this, and i am laughing as im typing this, he claims that:

titanic didnt hit an iceberg, it hit an imm rescue ship.

thats right, this guy fully says titanic didnt hit an iceberg. apparently it hit another ship and NO ONE FUCKING NOTICED

i mean we have testimony from survivors but fuck them i guess.

he claims that as titanic was apparently a "steel double-hulled vessel" so an iceberg simply couldnt inflict so much damage.

yeah titanic wasnt double-hulled. she had a double bottom, but it was only after titanic that shipbuilders were like ah maybe full double hulls arent an unnecessary expense after all.

theres also the issue of uh no evidence of this rescue ship ever existing? at all? i dont know where it came from, i dont know where it went, and who fucking knows, maybe it was called the rms cotton eyed joe.

yeah so weve got a theory riddled with problems and im just gonna introduce some more problems with this theory as gardiner has also alleged that:

the original plan was to open the seacocks and slowly flood the ship, but this was interrupted by titanic hitting another ship

1) titanic didnt have seacocks? and 2) was the rest of it a coincidence then? i think its meant to be a coincidence.

i believe his theory is alleging that the crew on titanic would open the seacocks that didnt exist to flood the ship slowly, and that the imm rescue ship that also didnt exist was in the area in advance to help evacuate passengers, alongside other ships such as the ss californian.

this is that ship that was like 10 miles away or something and didnt respond to titanics distress signals. according to gardiner, they were expecting a rendezvous with titanic according to the "original plan", but never received it.

instead, they saw the rockets of the fabled imm rescue ship and helped them instead.

this is fucking stupid.

i cant be charitable here, its a fucking stupid theory. i mean, that imm ship did not exist, and also californian is a ridiculous choice for a rescue ship. her capacity was 47 passengers and 55 crew; there were more than 2200 people on board titanic.

to counteract this argument, gardiner alleges carpathia was also in on the scheme as a rescue ship. she, at least, had capacity for the passengers, but theres also several problems with this too.

for one, it was fucking 50 miles away and famously arrived several hours after the sinking even though the captain had her running at top speed to get there.

for two, carpathia was owned by cunard, white stars rival. was their rival line in on the insurance scam??? how much money did they have to pay cunard for this????? why? just why?

do you understand why i dont believe it? please tell me you understand. i need you to understand. i need you to tell me that you understand that the guy who created this conspiracy claimed titanic didnt hit an iceberg.

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sirenjose · 5 months

Text

Kurt's Diary - Thoughts and Theories

(Including crack theory Naib didn't kill Murro)

1) Emily's (first aid kit?)

2) Wu Chang's umbrella is still here, and NE is making sure we know this. That means either Jose did leave but didn't bring the umbrella with him, or he didn't leave

If he did win, was he put into another game like Emma and Murro (Emma's letter did mention her being with others her 2nd time around)?

Orpheus did say he "treasured" the opportunity to include Jose in his experiments, which could mean he'd want to use him as long as he could?

* Michiko's mask is still here too.

3) The "guy" Murro would rather "freeze to death" than encounter can't be the Hullabaloo group (Murro the only survivor). Likely Naib, who's chasing Murro based on Naib's 1st letter (only other possible option is the manor owner)

4) HA! I WAS RIGHT! THERE WAS SOMETHING SECRET ABOUT THE FROG AND ITS GOLD BALL! (I'm sorry, I've been focused on that stupid thing since I first joined IDV and saw the diaries.) Question now is what it does... (secret exit?)

We know the gold ball was in Murro's room based on William's diary before he returned it to the statue. Maybe Murro knew its secret. But for what purpose? Did Murro hide something there, like how he used apple juice to write secret pages in his diary? Or something else?

5) Pretty sure the "explorer" isn't literally Kurt here. The one who "refused to trust his allies" and was "brutally slain by a wild beast" should be Murro, based on Murro's diary page Kurt finds, and Kurt may assume Bane killed Murro for now and thus Bane is the "beast"

Though considering the other letters, Naib is another option, but Kurt should have no reason to know that (if Naib did indeed kill Murro), so at least in this context Kurt says "wild best" to refer to Bane.

I've always had 2nd thoughts/doubts about the idea Naib wants to kill Murro. We know Naib works for Arthur Russel, who we know is a detective. Arthur is currently the one investigating both the Hullabaloo tragedy and Lakeside Village.

We know Arthur cares about his investigators as he pulls them out of the investigation when he believes a "crime syndicate" is involved with Lakeside. We haven't seen anything yet that implies Arthur also has his men do assassinations though...

Not saying that can't be the truth but I want more info before jumping to any conclusions, despite whatever the manor owner says, especially as we know even the manor owner isn't all-knowing (like with the people who only leave puddles behind, or Naib managing to disappear).

It's hard for me to say, but it is possible there were multiple sets of footprints belonging to more than 1 person, aka maybe Naib's was 1 of them (if not Bane's, if Bane only stays in his cabin in the forest).

Seem to be maybe 4 sets of footprints

1 set

2nd set

3rd set

4th set

But if Naib can disappear from the manor owner's sight, maybe he can also help other people to disappear too? If Arthur wanted to find the culprit of the Hullabaloo deaths and they discovered someone else from the circus had survived, they may have wanted to find him to help solve the mystery of the circus murders, which could be why Naib went after Murro as we saw in his 1st letter.

As an investigator, a new witness could be the key to solving the whole mystery (maybe that's just me as someone who reads/watches/plays too much detective stuff)

Naib obviously knows how to be stealthy/sneaky considering he has to do the same for himself to hide from the authorities, since Naib is a deserter, and desertion is a serious offense.

Murro's smart too considering the sort of invisible ink he uses.

So I think it's possible...

Maybe a good question to ask is “Why”? Why would Naib want to kill Murro? Mike is friendly with Murro, who Mike helped fake his death for, so he’s not the reason. And Naib isn’t just a brainless killer, since he deserted after refusing to kill his comrades, so he’d need a reason.

I guess you could say he might if he was paid to do so, but who’d ask to kill Murro? I doubt there are too many people that know too much about him enough to either hate him or have a reason to kill the person Bernard labeled as a “wild child” for his circus.

Different note, but the hole is gone in Servais' diary, but the boars are now in that same area that 1 set of footprints led to. It's also where Naib leaves the dead boar, which has a section of it torn open.

Still no idea what might've been inside.

Too many questions...

6) Info about Kurt's 2nd letter

"tree cave" = Murro's room

William and Kurt were awake in the evening due to the "awful weather". Nothing about sounds of "wild beasts"

Kurt thought they should do more than sit in their rooms, which is why he had Will help gather Naib and Murro. This was when Kurt went to look for Murro, found Murro not in his room + door locked, then went outside, where he saw footsteps, a (freshly dug?) hole, and Bane. He didn't see a "corpse", any heads being "bit off", or it being dragged off

Last thing Kurt says is to ask Naib to look at his new "work" based on his "experiences". This may be, at least in part, related to the work "Kurt Frank's Travels" from Kurt's 4th letter that he writes to Blackett Publications to get published. But nothing, at least from this yet, about telling Naib about seeing "a wild beast dragging his corpse into the shrubs. It bit off his head". Doesn't mean he didn't tell Naib this, but based on how much of the previous stuff was true, it's at least doubtful this is the full truth

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sroloc--elbisivni · 1 year

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Rating the Nonsense* I found doing queer historiography research

back in 2020 I was doing a project on queer historiography prior to the queer liberation movement. Since I needed a bunch of sources, my four criteria were:

had to be accessible online (early days of the pandemic)

had to be in English

had to have been identified by another researcher or archive as queer (because i didn't have time to make arguments for every single piece of evidence)

had to be from before 1969

so, as you can imagine, I found some wild stuff. I put this together for a powerpoint party last year and now I am sharing it with the world. enjoy. includes some nsfw text.

THREE CRITERIA RATING SCALE:

"Just Saying Shit" aka wow you didn't have to cite your sources at all did you "Sure?" aka I'll go ahead and integrate that into my belief system "Creativity" aka this FUCKS

*all of this nonsense is from the non-fiction. we're not getting into the Victorian 'girdle of cunts' gangbang erotica.

EXHIBIT 1: "The Chimp," ONE Magazine, 1954. Part of a series of cartoons satirizing gay bar attendees. Ink cartoon of a chimpanzee wearing glasses sitting on a chair, martini glass held by prehensile toes. One hand is holding a cigarette and the other hand is gesturing. Caption reads "For instance, in ancient Greece, it was considered the highest form of..."

Just Saying Shit: 2/10 I fully believe the artist absolutely knew a bunch of people like this, try harder. We are just getting started. Sure?: 2/10 they just don't make 'em like this anymore Creativity: 8/10 haha fursonas in the 50s

EXHIBIT 2: Gordon Rattray Taylor, part 1. Book quote reading "According to some accounts, the Devil is equipped with a forked penis so that he can commit both buggery and fornication at the same time."

there was a book about ‘the multiple roots of homosexuality’ and if I did the whole thing we’d be here all day. This guy wrote a chapter.

Just Saying Shit: 4/10, he’s quoting other sources but props for making it sound like it’s a factual thing about the Devil as a real person who exists. An extra point for not actually citing these sources. Sure?: 7/10 I hear hemipenes are a kink according to the scalies Creativity: 1/10 for Rattray Taylor who was quoting this but 9/10 for the original postulators.

EXHIBIT 3: Gordon Rattray Taylor, part 2. Book quote reading "As I have sought to show elsewhere (Rattray Taylor, 1954; Rattray Taylor, 1958), in societies that conceive of their deities as mother-figures, incest is regarded as the overwhelming danger and is hedged with taboos, whereas homosexuality has little importance. Conversely, in societies that conceive of their deities as father-figures, homosexuality is regarded as the overwhelming danger and is surrounded with taboos and condemnation; incest may also be tabooed but it falls far behind homosexuality in importance. I have proposed the terms matrist and patrist for those too patterns. (I do not regard "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" as satisfactory, for reasons that need not concern us here.)

Just Saying Shit: 8/10 now THAT’S what I’m talking about!! Hit me with your nonsense theories. Classic anthropology right here. Sure?: 3/10 I will regurgitate this occasionally but only because it’s kind of funny Creativity: 2/10 you did it! You broke gender essentialism down to its bare essentials and added gods!

EXHIBIT 4: Gordon Rattray Taylor, part 3. Book quote reading "The Acta Sanctorum includes accounts of "Brother Marinos," whom the other monks supposed to be a eunuch from his voice and beardlessness, who was even accused of seducing a local girl, and who turned out at death to be female; of frater Pelagius monachus et eunuchus, also a girl; of Marina, Margarita, and others. Other Instances noted by Delcourt (1961) include Athanasia of Antioch, Eugenia of Alexandria, Apollinaria, Papula of Gaul, and Hildegonde of Neuss."

Honestly i just put this one in here because it’s neat. Trans* rights.

Just Saying Shit: 0/10 you have actually clearly named your sources for once Sure?: 10/10 hey can we talk about ‘eunuch’ as not only a codified transgressive gender role but also as the rare gender&sexuality thing we can clearly translate across multiple societies– Creativity: 5/10 for not just stopping with Joan of Arc like 90% of ‘cross-dressing in the church!’ stuff

EXAMPLE 5: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 1. Book quote reading "Of a prevalence of female similisexualism we have no historic record, but its existence is beyond doubt. Earliest legislation took little or no control of the similisexual impulses and habits. In Egypt there seems to have been no period when men were not accustomed to give free course, as by natural right, to the passion. In all dynasties, in all classes, in the army, the priesthood, in civil life, it was well-known."

Love this bastard. He wrote a 600 page book all by his damn self in 1911 and cited absolutely nothing.

Just Saying Shit: 9/10 THIS is what we’re here for. All of Egypt was gay Because I Say So Sure?: 8/10 I will believe this as a treat for me Creativity: 4/10 this fucks but points off for using it to argue the Torah is homophobic

EXAMPLE 6: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 2. Book quote reading "The "Sexual Germ" in Friendships. Meantime, however displeasing to the reader, let it be affirmed that all real friendships between men have a sexual germ."

BEHOLD MY MOST ABSOLUTE FAVORITE QUOTE I PUT IN MY THESIS

Just Saying Shit: 12/10 absolute madlad fucking love it Sure?: 5/10 torn between ‘I want to believe’ and ‘dude i think that might just be you’ Creativity: 7/10 because I love it. The shippers were right.

EXAMPLE 7: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 3. Book quote reading "Socrates was similsexual. Not readily can we dismiss the idea that Christ was such--and saints may have been Uranians."

Just Saying Shit: 9/10. Look at him go. Elaborate on that??? (P-S: no.) (that’s a lie he goes on other places to explain his ship manifesto for Christ and John the Baptist) (CATHOLICS IN THE AUDIENCE DO NOT @ ME I KNOW THEY'RE COUSINS. ARGUE WITH THE DEAD GUY.) Sure?: 9/10 we’ve all seen Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) Creativity: 3/10 again. we’ve all seen Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

EXAMPLE 8: Edward Prime-Stevenson, part 4. Book quote reading "The Instant Hostility of the Roman Church; and of Mariolatry. This was not all. For the sentiment hostile to similisexual love, bent on making it the most depraved of instincts, increased just as the Catholic Church exaggerated its respect for the humble mother of the Redeemer. The new Faith made the worship of the Feminine-Abstract, the Blessed Lady the Immaculate Version, a mysterious, strenuous cult; even to displacing by it the just adoration of Christ. Woman, as typified by the Virgin, was held up as the ideal of the world-heart. Mariolatry, the fine flower of feminine concepts became the special policy of the Roman Church, in shrewd concession to human, aesthetic impulses, and in a perpetual combat of male sexualism. Just as Christianity had darkened existence with the gloom and gore of the cross, so the sentiment of Mary worship was to effeminize the social and sexual life of the male."

Was I just supposed to leave out him calling the entire Roman Catholic Church emasculated.

Just Saying Shit: 7/10 because he thinks he’s making a reasonable argument here Sure?: 4/10 my dude did you try to seduce a guy only for him to wax eloquent about the Virgin Mary Creativity: 2/10 I feel like this is just misogyny. Sorry people aren’t making religious statues of who you find hot

EXAMPLE 9: Walt Whitman's Anomaly--WC Rivers. Book quote reading "What really attracted him about manual labour was the picturesque male images it called up. "To be lean'd and to lean on," is quite an unfatiguing use of the seven-pound felling axe. Then there is his robust aspect. President Lincoln's exclamation on first seeing him-- "Well, he looks like a MAN!" --is much quoted by biographers."

Love this pamphlet. Just a dude in the 1910s going ‘I think Whitman was gay!’ with genuine delight and surprise. He a little confused but he got the spirit.

Just Saying Shit: 4/10 this is a very well documented quote but what a way to use it Sure?: 12/10 HEY ABE?? HEY ABE LINCOLN?? THIS IS UP THERE AS ONE OF THE GAYEST THINGS YOU EVER SAID Creativity: 7/10 for the circumstances in which this quote was employed namely in a chapter about possible objections to Whitman being gay

FINAL TALLY

-God I love history

-why can’t I Just Say Shit

-Go read Shel Silverstein’s Fire Island Playboy cartoons

#queer history #historyish #my research #i don't think i have a tag. uhhhh #thesis or death #there's some other stuff in there

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catchyhuh · 6 months

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You once told about crying, so let's talk about the happier scenario: LAUGHTER. We were shown them sharing it a lot in canon but maybe you have some additional thoughts? Who would have the most twisted, dark sense of humor? Or maybe the cringiest? Who would laugh his butt off while reading some stupid text on the birthday card on the local shop? Does any of them snort or hiccup while giggling? Are any of them ticklish on some unusual spot? Do they prank each other? And what do they do to actually cheer up the others? Those kind of headcanons!

oh my god. i want to hug you. you’re right we DO need to talk about this!! peace and love and joy on planet earth!!!! all of them laugh when they see a guy walk headfirst into a glass pane and only two of them sort of kind of feel bad about it

lupin:

it takes almost nothing to make lupin laugh. and he’s not even fucking with you either he just sincerely thinks THIS much is funny but he has more of a control over his giggles than people might assume. he CAN stop laughing but he knows its obnoxious to people so he DOESN’T

he knows how to weaponize levity. like, he really does have more emotional maturity than people give him credit for (not that he’s GREAT about it, just better than people give him credit for!) and it’s been shown multiple times that he tries to use laughter to pull people out of their emotional pits of despair. he exaggerates his gestures, he makes weird faces, and since he’s already such an animated person you wouldn’t even realize it’s an intentional thing unless you really knew him

lupin arguably pulls pranks every day, but not on his gang. at least, not the standard kind. it turns out people with nightmarishly fast reflexes have um. pretty wild kneejerk reactions if you pop out from behind a corner to try to scare them! usually he just replaces unimportant items for the hell of it. sour cream in the yogurt tub. pens replaced with black straws. shit that’s annoying but never WILD. he saves that for the heists

jigen:

jigen laughing is (like so many things) ENTIRELY dependent on his mood. if he’s grouchy it’s almost impossible to make him laugh, even if it’s something he normally finds hilarious, but if he’s easygoing on this particular day it’s not. i mean its a REASONABLE level. it’s reasonable. honestly a lot of it has to do with the person it’s coming from too so it’s like. there’s factors. there’s factors to what makes him laugh. and oddly enough none of it has to do with his sense of humor. although in THEORY he would be the pickiest. it’s not HIGHBROW good lord not highbrow humor by any means, but he’s like. unimpressed with absurdist meme humor. probably because so much WAY wackier shit happens to them organically every damn day BUT YOU KNOW HOW IT IS

jigen. is a very loud laugher, when he gets to that very sincere point. like if he’s outside checking the mail or whatever and you’re standing in a bedroom upstairs on the opposite side of the house, and he sees a squirrel fall out of a tree flailing wildly before it just lands on its feet, blinking in confusion… you’ll know. you’ll know he saw that. and so will any house that happens to be in a 1 mile radius of the hideout. full lung capacity, clutching his stomach, pointing and everything.

fujiko:

it is not impossible to get fujiko to laugh. difficult, but not impossible. especially because she’ll just do that laugh that indicates “that was funny/entertaining” but doesn’t actually like. turn into real laughter. but fujiko sincerely, fully breaking into a laughing fit is like a haley’s comet level rare, beautiful event in nature. i know i said she never CRY cries but her eyes water up almost immediately the minute she starts laughing laughing, and her face gets all red and streaky. it’s exceedingly undignified. it’s so great

fujiko does admittedly find things funny the most in a like. objective sense. she’ll watch a movie and grin and be like “that was funny�� and it’s like. ok then why aren’t you laughing? SHE JUST HAS A HIGHER COMEDY TOLERANCE. it’s not even one of those things she’s trained herself on. it’s just. being around these idiots for so long she has come to realize if she actually did start cracking up every time one of them did something stupid, intentional or not, she would have fractured a rib by now, and that’s just not super ideal for anybody really,

tied with jigen for the darkest sense of humor, easily. of course, again, unlike jigen, she won’t immediately start losing it, but her eyes will widen with this like flash of humor and she’ll just kind of smile tightly because she KNOWS she shouldn’t laugh at generic dead baby joke number 482938 but unlike jigen she cares at least a little about not seeming like a total ass. just a lil.

goemon:

less giggly than lupin, more giggly than jigen. goemon’s sense of humor is kind of hard to pinpoint, even for him. it could be something as simple as someone deliberately mispronouncing a word that gets his smile all twisted up, it could be a stupid pun, but he INSISTS he does NOT find others getting hurt funny. he insists. and then when lupin actually trips and eats shit and jigen immediately bursts out laughing goemon turns his head away like No No No it's not funny i will not laugh. i won’t BUT IT’S TOO LATE. WE’VE ALREADY LOST HIM. not above finding others’ misfortune funny in other ways though, he just (says) bodily harm isn’t funny. someone trying to step out of the rain and getting an entire awning’s worth of water dumped on them though, he will admit that shit is funny as hell

when goemon really REALLY starts laughing like, uncontrollably, can’t stop laughing, he just stops making noise. but he hates how stupid he must look with his mouth hanging open and no sound coming out, so he tucks his chin and halfway tries to cover his face, his shoulders just shaking the whole time. of course it takes a lot to get to that point like a LOT lot, so it’s amazing he’s as concerned about it as he is

zenigata:

zenigata WANTS to be like jigen in the “this is serious i'm mad at you. stop giggling” sense but he’s. not as sturdy in that department. he like draws his mouth super tight to stop from smiling and he’s like “this is not funny. stop. stop it. ITS NOT F--” and then he puts his head in his hands to try to stop laughing but it’s too late the dam has already broken

like with crying, he doesn’t ever really feel the need to stop himself from laughing outside of I’M SERIOUS CUT IT OUT type situations. like he gets giggly just when he’s in a good mood and nothing funny has even happened yet. and like with literally everything with him he’s loud. very loud. almost anything can get him to laugh, nothing is too stupid or juvenile despite what he insists. also sometimes laughs when he’s nervous, and it’s like, the only time he’s at a semi-average volume doing it. because he’s fearing for his life. it happens.

#i didn't get into it tooooo much cuz like you said it's pretty much spelled out for us just. IN canon. BUT WE LIKE TO HAVE FUN HERE #WE LIKE TO GET SILLY WITH IT. PART 2 LEVELS OF SILLY. MAYBE EVEN PART 3 LEVELS IF WE DARE TO DREAM #lupin iii #lupin the third #lupin #jigen #fujiko #goemon #zenigata #asks

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walkingstackofbooks · 1 year

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This scene has been living rent-free in my head for a month and I have thoughts

"The word you're looking for is unnatural, meaning, not from nature... Freak, or monster, would also be acceptable." (Dr Bashir, DS9 5x16)

I'm sure it's been said before, but the FEELS of this line-

To me, it sounds like Julian's reeling off a list of things he's been told he is. In any other situation, I'd assume he'd been bullied about his enhancements with these words and internalised them; but his enhancements were secret, so that doesn't fit here.

Which then made me think these are words Julian's collected from hearing about historical enhanced figures and then bullied himself with. Whether he heard them in a lesson, or in a friend's conversation, or even took it upon himself to research views of enhanced individuals, he seems to have learnt that genetically enhanced humans are freaks and monsters, and therefore so is he.

But I also looped back to the idea of his being bullied - (and I haven't watched past this episode so there may be something later to discourage this theory) - and I don't think it's too wild a guess to make that at some point he was. He's presented in the show as someone who just can't stop talking, who doesn't get social cues, who's "annoying"...it's not exactly a stretch to imagine a kid being bullied on those grounds.

(Nor is it a stretch to take these traits, among others, and headcanon that Julian Bashir is autistic. Many have, and it makes a lot of sense. And it works its way well into my little fiction.)

So as a kid, Julian is too smart and too loud and too eager. He has special interests coming out of his ears and learns everything he can about all of them, that's just the way his brain works. (That's what the teachers tell him, anyway, when some other kids call him names. They tell him lots of children are like him.)

((I can't decide if he's told he's autistic or not. On one hand, it's a convenient excuse for his parents to hide his extraordinary smarts behind. On the other, I cannot imagine them meeting the suggestion with anything but disdain and a snide "there's nothing wrong with our Jules", seeing as they're ableist af. But I imagine at the very least - with a little research and a couple of decent teachers - he must have had his own suspicions by the time he was a teen.))

I'm digressing - I apologise, at some point these thoughts became too long and meandering to be completely coherent. Right-

Too smart and too loud, his seemingly boundless knowledge is deemed as unnatural and freakish by his classmates. (When you're 7, any knowledge greater than your own seems pretty boundless.) And of course this was upsetting, and not easily forgotten. But as you grow, you do learn that people can be mean for little reason, and that whatever others think, it's perfectly okay for your brain to work differently.

Until you learn that it's not.

And here's where Julian Bashir realises that his childhood bullies were right about him. His academic abilities are unnatural and freakish (and, he will later learn, make him a monster). Because the line between "being able to learn everything that interests you because that's how your autistic brain works" and "being able to learn everything that interests you because that's how your genetically engineered brain works" is impossible to see. (Especially if your oh-so-caring parents take away the first option because "we made your brain perfect Jules, there's nothing wrong with you".)

Boy, that was a really long way of saying imagine if Julian was bullied for being autistic but ended up believing it was because of his augments and therefore that the bullies were right.

#julian bashir #autistic julian bashir #julian bashir headcanons #the bashirs' a++ parenting #ds9 #ds9 5x16 #dr bashir i presume #augment julian bashir #genetically enhanced julian bashir #star trek #my trek musings #WSB

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decepti-thots · 2 years

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an absolutely shocking number of people wanted me to talk about my thoughts on this post after i made it, lmao, so HERE WE GO, i'm gonna ramble in a very unstructured way about my dumbass theories regarding the development of… well actually a couple separate-but-linked subplots in MTMTE/LL. not about how they ended up, but about my theories as to what changed in the course of writing the comic and why.

specifically, what i have guessed might have changed in the development of rewind's subplot regarding finding agent 113 (dominus ambus in the final comic- we'll get to that below) and its overlap with the chromedome-prowl and DJD subplots.

big disclaimer: nothing i say here unless explicitly stated has been confirmed in any way by roberts, it's almost ALL wild theorising. i could easily be wrong about literally everything here, lmao, in fact i probably am! but ever since my second readthrough of the comic where my brain went 'wait, what was the motivation behind making rewind's dead husband minimus' brother when that connection never pays off??? roberts what???', combined with finding out that the cd-rw-prowl plot is one of the only ones confirmed to have dramatically changed from roberts' original plans, i have been. bizarrely obsessed with the whole mess of it. apologies in advance. but here we go.

first of all, the things that are confirmed, from jro directly:

the original plan for the chromedome-rewind-prowl stuff was that chromedome and prowl had been working together when chromedome met rewind; in this concept, prowl sent agent 113 to infiltrate the DJD and used chromedome as a plant at the relinquishment clinic to first shadowplay rewind into forgetting anything that could lead him to the truth, and then later to be a kind of 'minder' who followed rewind around and stop him finding out the truth. this is what prowl is referring to in the flashback scene prior to Overlord escaping where chromedome shadowplays him. the blackmail he was intended to be threatening to tell rewind there is that chromedome became his friend under prowl's orders, and false pretenses. the other major hint to this plan is the mention chromedome makes in issue #12 of rewind's supposed UV light allergy- this was originally chromedome making sure none of the marks were seen by medics. this plot is by word of god and the text of the comic itself a hundred percent gone in the final product. but it was not something roberts had committed to changing until AFTER the overlord arc, hence that infamous dangling thread that now has no clear explanation re: prowl's blackmail material.

relatedly, the original plan was for chromedome and rewind to just be friends for quite some time into roberts planning out the series' trajectory. even when actually writing the early issues, roberts was not sure if they would be romantic for a while, so he hedged his bets. (in the event hasbro said 'no' to his request to confirm cd/rw as married, he had a whole backup plan for tailgate and cyclonus.) in turn, it's generally assumed, though technically not confirmed, that e.g. this is also true of prowl and chromedome as partners, rewind and 113 as married, etc. it just logically follows. but yeah. all these original relationships were platonic or possibly, in one case, familial.

prior to writing the series, the first plan for agent 113/the person rewind was looking for was for him to be eject. it's not confirmed this was going to be eject as rewind's spark brother, but contextually, it seems pretty likely, since a) roberts has revisited the concept a few times, including with 113 once he's dominus, and b) the whole rewind/eject being near identitcal thing makes it an obvious approach- they're referred to in fan circles as 'twins' a lot the same as rumble and frenzy. at some point, late enough the notebooks covering "pre-production" outlines for MTMTE's first season do not mention him, Dominus Ambus becomes 113 instead.

so my big takeaway from thinking about this whole thing, to start off, is that the original plan probably involved agent 113 being vos. not the previous vos as we ended up with, but the vos we were introduced to as part of the DJD, the guy who turns into a sniper rifle and speaks in old cybertronian. there's some stuff early on when he's introduced that points to the idea that at the very least, the audience is supposed to consider this idea as plausible, namely:

agent 113 isn't first brought up in mtmte. he's first brought up as a mole the autobots have in the DJD in 'bullets', the prose story accompanying Last Stand of the Wreckers. first aid keeps an eye out for autobot badges on patients that have been shot because springer has told him that due to increasing paranoia about being caught as a spy, agent 113 insists on sending messages hidden in bullets shot at autobot soldiers, identifiable as his because they go very specifically through the right "eye" of his targets' autobrands. so 113 is a sniper/sharpshooter. and vos turns into a sniper rifle. one of the first times we see him is in a large spread where megatron is wielding him, in fact. this is then a significant plot point in mtmte later. (swerve and all that.)

vos has the quirk of only speaking "old cybertronian" that is unintelligble to many characters and the audience. the comic goes out of its way to make rewind knowing old cybertronian in mtmte a running gag early on (with the joke part being that he always gets the translation slightly wrong). not only is that a really specific link, but it feels totally plausible that the expected payoff is that only rewind recognises 113 when he speaks in old cybertronian, because he's heard it spoken before. (if 113 is originally eject, this makes a lot of sense; it relates to both of them being older than most of the cast, perhaps.)

dominus ambus is just. clearly not meant to be the pet as of when the pet and him are first designed in mtmte. lmao. and for that matter, minimus is clearly not designed to turn into a turbofox in his irreducible form. when we get the teeny tiny minimus reveal in RiL, it's really clear the idea is he looks very similar in both "forms"- same face, same colours, etc, but his irreducible form doesn't turn into anything. he has exposed ball joints like the internal 'skeletons' of TFs/toys and no kibble. the idea of 'he can't turn into anything, but he can wear armour to become whatever' is a pretty clear inference, right? (and was the dominant interpretation prior to the reveal dominus becomes a turbofox, ftr!) but to make dominus the pet, they have to design his internal form to look nothing like either his own armour OR minimus' internal form. that's… a pretty blatant retcon, imo! why is he a weird green colour when his armour is yellow? why does he have a fuckton of kibble and minimus is Nothing when in his irreducible form? retcon, baby.

so i really think that an early concept was that 113 was still an active spy in the DJD, and that this changed at some point, probably fairly early on but late enough the original seeds had been sown, with roberts doing a neat patch job to take the concept in another direction that still worked with his set up… but the question becomes WHY it changed. after all, none of the confirmed changes actually require altering that concept, so if i'm right, then why the hell would you change it?

my theory about why you'd have to change it relates to something else that has always confused me, which is where the really fun but kind of objectively batshit concept of 'rewind is making his new husband look for his dead husband he's still in love with, apparently has no idea why chromedome would be insecure about this' comes from. (it's great, i love it, but it doesn't strike me as an obvious storytelling beat to go for! it creates great storytelling opportunities because it's very… unintuitive for a love story, imo.)

which is that… they weren't originally married, which is kind of obvious in retrospect and ESPECIALLY now we know that 113 was originally eject! 'rewind doesn't realise chromedome might be insecure about his best friend looking for a guy from before they met he also cares for' is a way more obvious emotional beat when you think on it, imo! (plus it turning out to ACTUALLY be about chromedome's guilt because he knows where 113 is, ofc- there's the twist for the audience.) like. rewind thinking that is an ok thing to do with a friend is clearly the more intuitive plotline beat, versus 'rewind does this to his current husband who he is letting think he will replace'.

chromedome/rewind then winds up being romantic, and to match this, 113/rewind ALSO has to become romantic. right? otherwise, the then-still-a-misdirect of chromedome's jealousy makes no sense. why would chromedome be worried about a platonic friend replacing him as rewind's husband? so now, 113 is rewind's dead husband all of a sudden. (sidenote: this also makes the very bizarre backstory re: the wild power imbalance between dominus and rewind a lot more… understandable? if it was not envisioned as them getting married on the part of the author.)

maybe eject has already been replaced when this idea slots into place, or maybe dominus is conceived in part to allow for this element in a way that makes sense. you can't really tell in this theory. (in a similar way, puzzling out whether he's related to minimus because the idea was there for minimus to be a loadbearer and it created a way to make him 113 came first, or if it was the reverse, is hard to tell. ftr, when the magnus armour is referenced in the notebooks, it does NOT contain reference to minimus; magnus is just a small person who has been given augmented armour in those drafts.) (this has also always bugged me. WHY is rewind's dead husband also minimus' brother when the narrative doesn't do anything with that connection!!! wellll. that's one possibility. lmao.)

the original plan for chromedome to be in on it with prowl and 113- to have manipulated and lied to rewind, and for all of them to, essentially, have screwed him around- was changed by roberts because chromedome/rewind became romantic. he decided, imo completely rightly, that the subtext there with a romantic pairing was just wrong tonally and way too uncomfortable. you're getting into straight up gaslighting abuse, and for the first romantic couple of the series, and one of the first ever m/m pairings in TF, i mean… yeeeeah.

but this creates kind of a discrepency. because 113 is still fucking rewind over in this scenario. suddenly it goes from 'multiple friends of rewind turn out to have collectively been deceiving him' to 'both rewind's husbands have been deceiving him' to 'well rewind's NEW husband is completely innocent, he had nothing to worry about all along cause if they ever find dominus, he's the one who is a dick now' which like. that is not a satisfying conclusion to the conflicts set up wherein rewind proves that he is not so stuck in the past he won't choose chromedome over dominus if he has to, or where chromedome has to learn rewind really does unconditionally love him and he's not replaceable. right? it's a cheap get out of jail free card there.

and THAT'S why i would guess that if 113 was gonna be vos, it got changed. people have noted that dominus is easy to read as implicitly a bit of dick in mtmte when you think about it- he ran off without telling rewind, after all. but only when you think about it. this makes sense in the original concept. it doesn't really have a good option of payoff once chromedome is not nearly as bad himself. and in this theory, dominus doesn't so much get changed so he wasn't at all a dick about it, he just… gets moved out of focus with the "domestication" explanation. suddenly, instead of a potential confrontation between rewind, chromedome and 113 in dying of the light, to name one possible example, you have the revelation that dominus has been out of action this whole time, and now he can instead be a catalyst for a conclusion between chromedome and rewind. it's a little bit of sleight of hand. it means the audience isn't thinking about that in DotL. they're thinking about cd/rw, not dominus, even when he's right there. (a macguffin of a character til the end…)

and now you know the insane and completely unverifiable theory that has percolated in my brain to explain some of that whole plot's weirdness the past, oooh, 3 years or so. very good chance none of it's true but it's the best i have and it just drove me INSANE because i've reread everything relating to cdrw and minimus in mtmte SO much that the weird gaps nagged me constantly. this is what it's like being me. yes, it's annoying for me too. but for those who were wondering: here you go. 2200 words of this:

#meta #well. wild mass guessing bullshit anyway.#what else am i gonna tag it.#idw #rewind #dominus ambus #chromedome #cdrw

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avelera · 1 year

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Speaking of having headcanons for my own fic, but if or when (it’s when, obvs) Dream and Hob get around to actually getting their hands all over each other the way they want to in “Giving Sanctuary”, I don’t know why, but I’m 1000% certain about what they want to do to each other once they move past making love, tooth-rottingly sweet vanilla sex, and just cuddling for approximately one hundred consecutive years to make up for how touch starved they both are:

(VERY nsfw, bit of a behind the scenes piece)

Hob: wants to rim Dream until one of them cries. In Hob’s current state, it’s not a given that it will be Dream who cries first. Hob wants to get his hands all over Dream possibly more than he wants to breathe at this point and might even trade off if one gave him the opportunity at the other (it’s not as if he’d die). Hob wants to get his hands and ideally his mouth on every part of Dream he’s permitted to touch and would gladly remain there as long as he’s permitted too.

So: rimming. Hob is 1000% in my mind a champion at oral and beyond wild fantasies the first thing he’s going to be absolutely dying (ha) to do to Dream once they start getting creative is use his mouth on Dream for as long as possible without tilting him over the edge into coming, ideally until he has Dream screaming into a pillow.

Dream: prostate milking. Dunno why this is so clearly in my head, hell it’s not been necessarily a thing for me, but I have some theories why it’s very high up on Dream’s “first step up from vanilla but still nervous about scaring Hob off with how crazy Dreaming sex can be” escalation path.

1 ) The allure would be fascination with the capabilities of the human form and specifically Hob. Doing something that makes Hob feel good for an extended period but that allows Dream to watch Hob as he gets increasingly worked up and messy while Dream could remain relatively pristine and in control of himself. Seeing a part of Hob, like spend, leaking from him in copious amounts would have its own erotic fascination for Dream.

2 ) The effect Dream’s singular focus would have on Hob. Doing something that requires that attention to be focused specifically on Hob’s pleasure and body, particularly after Hob’s had such a terrible, debilitating century to his self esteem. Dream would like nothing more than to disabuse Hob (in 1689) of the notion of his own unworthiness in bed or undesirability by spending an absurd amount of time milking his prostate and bringing him to orgasm as many times as he could stand it. Dream wants to make Hob feel good after how good he’s made Dream feel with his generosity and regard towards Dream. Dream is a focused and relentless being. Watching Hob come apart over and over on his fingers while Dream whispers sweet words of his beauty and worthiness to him is a thought that would keep Dream very warm at night while the two of them are still fumbling their way to that sort of open and unselfconscious communication.

#1689 fic #giving sanctuary bts

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embossross · 2 years

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From His Mind to Hers

chapter 6 >> Chapter 7>> masterlist

✣ Pairing: Hanma x AFAB fem!Reader

✣ Warning: 18+, minors DNI; unhealthy relationships & dark content

✣ Chapter CW: stalking i guess, this chapter is shockingly tame

✣ Story CWs: patient/doctor relationships; smut (oral, ptv, pta, etc.), degradation, stalking, torture (not of y/n), murder, discussions of trauma and abuse, drug use, and more

✣ Synopsis: Forced into therapy, Hanma expects to waste his time and yours, but you’re not about to let the chance of a high-profile and higher paying patient slip through your grasp. The fact that you’re both attracted to each other doesn’t hurt either.

✣ Word Count: ~6.5k

As if directed by the wave of a conductor’s baton, the quiet of the hall crescendos into a symphony of howls. Twin squealers scratch at the apartment door. This big display of bravado is for Hanma’s benefit, a warning, a declaration, to protect home and country.

Dogs don’t bother Hanma in theory. A dog knows it’s a dog. There’s a nobility in that simplicity, something humans can’t claim.

Hanma remembers the little miniature schnauzer that adopted Mitsuya back in the day. Pretty for a street dog, grey fur when washed and a perpetual black eye, a press of black fur, smudgy and bold like an ink fingerprint. Mitsuya fed the thing once and after that, he was a permanent member of Toman’s second Division. Deceptively sized, the little runt could leap as high as Hanma’s waist, or several times its own height. Hanma thought it must have been powered through sheer will and a desire to lick every face it encountered.

No matter how he tries, Hanma can’t remember that little dog’s name or what happened to it after Mitsuya died.

Then, there was Big Devil, Peh-Yan’s Tosa Inu. Big Devil looked like a killer. Every step sent his muscles leaping beneath his skin, a display of pure power. For months, Peh took him everywhere, boasting how his dog would join the fray in their next fight. Hanma mostly remembered how the beast would snap his teeth at him, strain his leash to the fray, and Peh would reward Big Devil with a meaty bone.

Come the big fight, Big Devil cowered behind his master. Little sniffs and snorts. Wild, plaintive eyes as Peh gave the order to attack. Hanma isn’t sure what happened to Big Devil after that, but Peh stopped bragging to everyone about his killer dog at least. Of course, Peh is dead now, too.

Hanma strolls past the door – and its barking security system – to the final of three apartments on the eighth floor. Like Sendo reported, your apartment is warded by a mere cylinder lock with a pin tumbler. Weak defenses. You’d be safer with a dog.

There are no cameras or witnesses in the hallway as Hanma drops to his knees in front of your door. From his pocket, he draws a tension wrench and rake pick. He inserts the pick into the keyhole, scrubbing the rake pick back and forth through the chamber, feeling the break in tension as he resets the pins.

As he works, Hanma thinks about you, about how it’s foolish to get his hopes up time and time again. Who are you to suggest you might understand him, let alone help him? Just a jumped-up little tease, flaunting your pussy and mean little mouth to keep his attention. Always fleeing the scene the moment he starts to have fun.

It’s your fault his trousers are dusty as he kneels outside your apartment. He should be happily cozied into your office couch, but he woke to yet another cancellation email.

After he begged you last week! He playacted the penitent, played nice with your silly rules, and even let you watch him cum down another bitch’s throat. And how do you reward him? With yet another chase.

It is predictable. It is boring.

As he drove to your building, bypassed your lobby security, even now, Hanma did not plan. He doesn’t have a scheme or strategy to either placate you or cow you into submission. He figures he’ll let instinct guide him once he corners you inside. The nice guy act has grown stale.

The lock clicks open, and Hanma lets himself into your apartment. He steps right through the entryway, not bothering to remove his shoes. He breathes a chuckle at the dirty footprint he leaves on the wood panel floor of the hall. A calling card so you remember him.

There is a little thrum of excitement as he enters your domain. Here there is no hiding, no walls you can construct to keep him out. He studies everything with a critical eye, eager to stoke the fire in his belly that smolders at the opportunity to invade your privacy. You would be furious if you saw him now. You will be furious when you see him.

The entryway opens out into a hall decorated with framed photos: your several diplomas, a graduation photo (alone), a graduation photo of presumably Amari Takashi surrounded by a sizable family of celebrants, and lastly a photo of you together, arms linked as you pose on a pier, black waves crashing behind. Without thinking, Hanma removes Amari’s graduation photo from his frame to better study the young man. The man in the photo is serious, unsmiling eyes and a proud jaw, handsome in a styleless way, like he’s copy/pasted from a stock photo called “preppy, young finance guy.” He would look better with highlights. Hanma folds the photo in half and promptly forgets it in his jacket pocket.

There is a low hum of voices further inside. Hanma follows it, foregoing the door at the end of the hall and swinging a left into your kitchen and the attached living room. Just the TV. A pretty news anchor motions delicately at faux-clouds indicating a 30% chance of rain.

You are nowhere in sight, so Hanma returns to his inspection of your world. Your apartment is smaller than he expected given your combined income with Amari must be significant; still, it’s respectable, a good neighborhood with state-of-the-art-security. (Ha!)

The kitchen is all-white and utilitarian with all the modern appliances one would expect. The countertop serves as a boundary between the kitchen and living room. Barstools on the living room side turn it into a breakfast bar, and Hanma notices a coffee mug, long gone cold and sitting idle. The living room gets good sunlight through a south-facing window, revealing a stolid little room with a sofa facing the wall-mounted TV, a low table between them both, and only a few coasters as decoration.

Everything is clean but not the kind of cleanliness that suggests hard work. Rather, the room feels unlived in, like the news anchors on the TV are its only inhabitants. Or more like this room is nothing but a green screen, something to gesture towards like the fake rain clouds, but no more than a facsimile of the real thing. There are no obvious signs of life. No newspapers or receipts, no mail or adverts, no half-read books or sleeping laptop. If not for the dirty dishes crowding your sink, it could be a model apartment rather than a home.

The only color in the whole room comes from the bouquet of flowers he gifted you last week, which sits on the countertop. Hanma roots through the dirt until he finds the listening device he planted there still undiscovered. Listening in this past week has revealed nothing but the sound of pots and pans clanging while the radio plays jazz in the background. No wonder if you never spend time in this room.

Hanma retraces his steps into the hall and this time tries the door that must lead to your bedroom. His palms tingle. He can’t picture how your face will look when he confronts you. He wonders if you’ll shriek in fear, whether you’ll cry. The not knowing excites him.

The door groans, then bangs as it dents into the wall, but you don’t react. Buried beneath a mountain of blankets, all Hanma can see is a sliver of forehead and hair sticking in all directions. With the curtains to the balcony drawn closed and you still in bed, he almost checks his watch to confirm it’s really 11 AM.

In three strides, Hanma crosses the room and rips the covers halfway off your sleeping form.

Glassy, unfocused eyes peer right through him and back to the world of dreams you just inhabited. A thick layer of sweat is painted onto your forehead, dabbed above your upper lip. Exposed to the mild air of your apartment, you shudder, body buzzing like a bee, somehow cold despite the heavy nightgown you wear.

“I don’t feel good,” you mumble as if to no one but yourself. There is no reaction to his intrusion in your room as you fight a far graver battle with your own body.

Hanma swallows. He touches your forehead and feels the heat where the skin is overcooked. From the tight line of your mouth, he knows you are in pain. There are used tissues scattered about the bedspread and the glass of what was once water by your bedside table is long empty. If he touches the sheets, he knows his hands will come away wet.

He doesn’t like seeing you like this.

“You’re burning up, Doc. You should be in the hospital. What the fuck you thinking?” Hanma snaps.

“Just need a few hours…sleep…then, I’ll go back to work,” you whimper, and then looking at him with something approaching clarity, you add, “Free at six? Can reschedule for then. Just call office.”

Your speech is garbled. You don’t drop words entirely, so much as descend into a whisper out of nowhere as you speak, so that it’s hard to catch more than the gist of your words. The way your voice scratches around the simplest sentence, Hanma recognizes a sore throat in addition to fever. You are probably down with the summer flu that laid Inupi flat on his ass for a week in June. And you intend to reschedule your session with him for six.

“You best be joking,” Hanma growls.

“Just one more hour…let me sleep,” you plead, eyes already closing before the words fully emerge.

Those eyes fly open as Hanma drags you out of the shelter of your blankets and into the cradle of his arms. There is a moment of flailing limbs and squawks that would make a chicken sound like a songbird, before you are righted in his arms, wet coughing into the crook of his shoulder.

“You can sleep for another twelve hours for all I care. You’re not going anywhere. Call your office and tell them to cancel your appointments for the next three days,” Hanma orders.

“Can’t! Have a new patient starting–”

“Not my problem. Not yours either. If you won’t go to the hospital, we need to break this fever ourselves. Have you taken anything?”

“Tried to make tea, but too tired. ‘m out of medicine. Plan to walk to the store later.”

Clear as a picture, Hanma envisions the scene. Too tired to dress, you limp in your girlish nightgown out of your apartment to the elevators, where you lean heavily against the railing for a brief respite. No good once you reach the August heat. There’s a convenience store barely a block away, but the sun is unforgiving, and you can barely summon the strength to stand. You manage a few meters before your balance wavers, unable to walk a straight line. Maybe you lean on lamppost to catch your breath. Knowing you can’t rest there forever, you try again and fail, collapsing to the scorching pavement. All of this he sees in an instance.

You might be the most pathetic person he has ever encountered. And he wants to strangle you for it.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Hanma snarls.

You weigh next to nothing in his arms – how could you when he is accustomed to the deadweight of a grown man’s corpse? It is easy to maneuver you into the powder room, where he rests your boneless body on the tile.

“Where’s your cuck boyfriend anyway? Shouldn’t he be getting you medicine and kissing your boo boos?”

“Had work. Will be home late,” you say.

On the best day, Hanma wouldn’t mind pushing Amari Takashi into oncoming traffic, but hearing this, he wishes to be the one driving the car.

Hanma orders you to stay in the same tone Mitsuya used to use on his dog. Then, he enters the bathroom. First, he toggles the settings on the boiler control plate to just above room temperature. When he’s satisfied that the water is just right – only the suggestion of warmth – he retrieves you from the powder room.

You don’t fight him as he pulls your nightgown overhead and drops your panties to the floor. Despite fucking your little cunt once before, he has never seen you naked. The idea of your body is a source of abject fascination as he jerks his cock in the pre-dawn hours, but now, he hardly glances at you. You are too naked, not the naked of nudity, but the naked of vulnerability, and he doesn’t want to see the way your body shivers.

Hanma undresses quickly to join you in the shower. The water is too mild for his liking, but he aims the showerhead directly onto you, so the droplets only catch him where they rebound off your skin.

Tidy bath soaps and scrubs line the shower wall. His and hers. The first sign outside the pictures in the hallway that Amari Takashi exists outside your imagination.

Hanma sniffs a lavender body wash approvingly, pours a dollop into his palms, and runs the lather up and down your sides. He curves clinically around your breasts, dips into the creases of your armpits and knees, pats your inner thighs. Anywhere sweat and sick cling to you is washed clean under his hands. Then, he supplies the same treatment to your hair.

There is no nobility in your weakness, and he wants to rid it from you, the sooner the better. But, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy your breathy sighs as tension unwinds from your shoulders. Like a sunflower to the sun, you lean into him, seeking heat and solace. He allows it only so you don’t fight against the cool spray, only so that you don’t shake when the gooseflesh rises on your skin, and only so he can take his pleasure in beating this fever back for you.

Afterwards, as he towels your body, light reenters your dimmed eyes. There is a moue of confusion, almost like you just now realized he shouldn’t be here with you like this, but you are too dizzy to stand without support and the complaint dies on your lips.

“This place is like a mausoleum. I mean, I thought my apartment was bad, but at least I throw my clothes on the floor, so you know someone must live there,” Hanma says conversationally. “Have you ever thought about getting a dog?”

“Takashi’s allergic,” you say, “And besides, I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a dog.”

“Me neither, but I’ve known some real idiots who managed. Can’t be that hard,” Hanma snorts.

The conversation withers as he picks up a hairbrush. He holds a section of hair in place as he runs the comb through, enjoys watching the tangles pick apart under its teeth. There is nothing to stop him from running his fingers through after the comb, reveling at the texture, at the smell of your shampoo as he breathes you in. He has fucked you full but never imagined you would let him this close.

Too soon, your hair is brushed and the strange ritual over. Hanma would brush your hair again, but there is more to do. In the linen closet, he finds clean sheets to remake your bed. The kitchen is well-stocked. He is no chef, but he remembers the basic home remedies his mother would prepare well enough, and no one, no matter how kitchen illiterate, can bungle green tea anyway. He finds what he needs for okayu, throwing rice in the rice cooker, slaps some pickled plums on the stove under a low heat, and lastly brews a cup of green tea before rejoining you in the bedroom.

You gulp down the cup of tea faster than its temperature should allow. You are naked and clean and fresh now, even if the fever still burns behind your brow. The sight of you sets his neurons firing, similar to the immediate rush of a bump, instant pleasure, instant satisfaction. Now, the earlier vision of you collapsing onto the pavement brings him pleasure. He prevented that. He fixed you.

Smiling, he settles alongside you atop the comforter and asks, “Where would you be if I didn’t stop by, hmmm? Ya know, there’s a time to be stubborn, Doc, and then there’s a time to let people take care of you.”

Voice muffled into a pillow, you say, “It’s not about let. Someone would have to want to take care of me. Don’t have anyone. Just me.”

I like taking care of you.

The thought almost turns to words, but it would be like talking to a wall as you are already drifting off to sleep. Stroking the length of your back, he lies by your side. In sleep, you are every bit as interesting as when you bicker back and forth or twist him up in your paltry mind games. It is the contrast between your unfeeling eyes in wakefulness and your complete abandonment in sleep. He could watch the flickering movement behind your eyelids for hours, just wondering what you see there.

Eventually, the timer beeps on the rice cooker, and he creeps to the kitchen to season it with salt and green onion. Once plated with the plums, he dips out of the apartment altogether to pick up some final items from the convenience store: a fever reducer, sake for tamagozake, honey for your throat, and cough syrup.

His time in the fresh air breaks the spell of your sickroom. Beeping car horns, bleating songbirds, and the chatter of people going about their day are a shock to his system, a return to himself. There is work to be done, people to see, adventures to be had, and none of them involve you.

Back at your apartment, Hanma moves briskly now, no longer lingering to moon over your pretty face in sleep. He retrieves the vase of flowers with the listening device and places it on your dresser, where he will be sure to hear the goings on of your bedroom. He leaves the cooked food by your bedside with a massive glass of water that should last you a few hours, and lastly, he orders you to call in and cancel your appointments.

You shake your head, protesting about how your clients need you, but Hanma holds firm, literally holding the medicine above your head in threat until you capitulate. He watches you make the call, too, not trusting you for a second. Despite the drama of your protests, you sigh deeply in what may be relief when your schedule is officially clear.

“Good, now sleep it off, Doc, because if you cancel on me again, I’m gonna do something you regret,” Hanma warns.

You nod around the bottle of water. The energy it takes to talk has drained you, and he watches your body slide deeper into a cave of pillows, watches your eyes lid. It’s his cue to leave.

Just as he steps foot out the door, Hanma hears your voice croak one last time.

“Thanks, Shuji.”

He closes the door behind him.

To some, the Invincible Mikey is nothing but a folktale. He is no man but a ghost story, whispered in dark alleys to cower the criminal class. Some, who remember him, believe he is long dead. They have their reasons. Most of Toman’s early commanders have met their end by bullet or indictment. Others still believe Mikey has lapsed into paranoia. They say he still rules Toman, but not even his closest allies know where he is. They say if anyone is left in his confidences, it is Kisaki Tetta, who is just as paranoid, guarded at all times by ten men, all of whom owe him a life favor, willing slaves he’s collected over a lifetime of scheming.

They’re not quite wrong, but no one is more paranoid than Kokonoi.

The following day, Hanma makes the trek out to Minato ward at Kokonoi’s summons. The twelve-story building that functions as Toman’s headquarters is truly Koko’s castle, a deceptively normal skyscraper from the outside. Pedestrians passing would hardly glance at the stylish structure with its underground parking garage and sliding glass doors. Even if they made it inside, they might mistake the building as just another place of business, but there are few buildings as secure in all of Japan.

With his office located on the penultimate floor, Koko is protected by windows of reinforced glass. The elevators are booby-trapped to drop their passengers to a careening death at the push of a button. In the event of an attack, Koko can escape via helipad or, in the worst-case scenario, activate the zipline to the building next door. This escape only needed, of course, assuming the small army of security and their artillery somehow fail first.

Koko is money on legs, and anyone would be desperate to secure his powers to turn water into gold for themselves.

So, it is not surprise to Hanma when he finds Kokonoi, pacing and muttering to himself, shooting off texts and phone calls before he can so much as finish a thought. There has been a security breach.

“Hanma, fuck –” Kokonoi shouts when he sees Hanma enter the room. He barks out some English to whoever is on the phone and then hangs up. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! And where the fuck have you been? I called you an hour ago?”

“I was on the other side of town. And I had a loose end to tie up.”

The listening device Hanma planted in your apartment, intended to reveal your secrets and deprive you of your privacy, has become a baby monitor. Hanma wore his headphones all day and night, tuned into the flower vase, so he could hear your movements. The worst times were when you went to the bathroom. He couldn’t hear you there, and it would be so easy for you to grow dizzy, fall, hit your head. Amari would not find you for hours if that happened. More than enough time to bleed out. When he thinks about that possibility, a pressure headache starts behind his eyes.

Beyond a coughing fit around eight this morning, there has been nothing too alarming. Still, when Koko called, Hanma’s first action was to order Sendo onto babysitting duty. Knowing someone will hear if you go to the bathroom and never return alleviates the worst of the headache.

“Loose ends? I’ll give you a loose end. Someone hacked my computer, you four-eyed fuck! This unknown software could have been copying our files, our finances, our goddamn payroll. Do you have any idea what this could do to us?” Kokonoi screeches.

“Well, how the fuck did it happen? It’s your computer.”

“That’s what we need to find out!”

Hanma peers down on this temper tantrum from a nearly fifteen-centimeter advantage. Unimpressed, he decides to take a seat. “And you called me because of my legendary hacking skills? What do you want me to do about it? Probably just got a bug browsing foreign porn all day.”

“I don’t use my work computer to browse porn,” Koko bites out. He’s like a garden snake, hissing and threatening to strike but with a mouth too tiny to do any damage.

“Well, you need one of those – what do they call them? – a forensic analyst? You need one of those,” Hanma suggests.

Kokonoi slumps, finally, into the seat behind his desk. More worrying than his manic energy is the wall of TVs, always turned to the various financial channels so Kokonoi can track the world markets. Now, they are all black, powered down.

“I have a team working on it,” Koko admits, head in his hands. “But I think the software had to be downloaded onto my computer directly. Someone had to access my office.”

“You think we have a rat.”

“Heard my name!”

Hanma’s gun is halfway unholstered before he realizes the person who got the drop on them is just Smiley. He keeps one hand on his weapon just in case. It has been the better part of two years since he last saw the man.

“Like what you’ve done with the place. Those are great for stress,” Smiley says, pointing to the massive bonsai garden in the corner, a gift from Inupi who hoped that Koko might chill the fuck out with some help. Clearly it isn’t working.

“When did you get back in town?” Hanma asks.

The wattage of that fake smile somehow increases. “Oh, just two nights ago. The heat’s finally died down. Kisaki said I should come back.”

Smiley looks different than Hanma recalls. His garish orange afro is now flat, the hair a more muted blonde, freshly bleached. The smile is the same as ever though.

When Hanma first joined Kisaki in destroying the inner ranks of Toman, he pegged Smiley as one of the first dominoes to fall. To his surprise, years later, the smiling freak – and as a result, his brother – are somehow the last ones standing of the old guard. Every attempt to drive him out has failed. Smiley accepted the decrease of his responsibilities, limited to a few old protection rackets, while big money flowed into the hands of Kisaki’s men. He incapacitated his would-be assassins. And, most recently, he beat the charges Kisaki put on him, leaving the country for the last year and a half to wait out the statute of limitations. He’s not a rat. He’s a cockroach.

“Good to have you back,” Hanma lies. “Where were you again?”

“Singapore mostly,” Smiley answers.

“Can we fucking focus? Yes, good to have you back, whatever. Right now, I want to know who could have gotten into this room, let alone hacked my password,” Koko says.

“Probably one of your security guards,” Hanma shrugs.

“Aren’t all of your files encrypted anyway?” Smiley asks.

Koko sighs. “Yes, and that’s the only reason I’m not on a plane to a country without an extradition treaty right now.”

“My apartment in Singapore is empty. You’re welcome to it,” Smiley offers.

It’s one thing when Hanma banters back and makes light of the situation, but it’s an entirely different animal when Smiley plays the role of asshole and riles Koko up. Gritting his teeth, Hanma tunes the nuisance out, decides to take Koko’s problem seriously. Kokonoi may be high strung about things like shorts and commodities trading, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t right to be worried now. Hanma thinks.

The timing. Everything circles the timing. How convenient before such a major deal, when everyone’s meant to be on their best behavior, for there to be a bug, a mole. Yes, it could be some patient enemy, someone waiting within Toman’s ranks for the perfect moment to spring, but there are few people senior enough to access this building, let alone office. Hanma isn’t ready to point fingers at any of his fellow executives. Unlike him, they take loyalty to the organization seriously. No, it makes his brain itch, the timing. His pressure headache fades.

“I like Haitani for this,” Hanma says lowly, interrupting whatever petty quip lies on Smiley’s lips.

“The Haitanis?” Smiley repeats.

“We were already looking into them in preparation for that shit with the HKJ. And, we know the Haitanis’ biggest asset is their connection not mercenaries and security agencies. That’s all they do, right? High-end security. Maybe one of your guys wants a new job, figured bugging you would get him in good with the Haitanis,” Hanma speculates.

“Without proof, that’s just a nice story,” Koko says.

“Yeah, but better than no story,” Hanma argues.

The office is kept artificially quiet. Not so much as a clock ticks on the walls, no aircon to disturb Kokonoi on one of his genius brainstorms. In the silence, Kokonoi’s thoughts are somehow loud.

“I’ll…call Kisaki. See if he can’t look into trading out some of my guys, do some digging,” Kokonoi agrees finally. “I’ll need a new burner though. We all do. Can’t trust that there isn’t software on our phones, too.”

“I’ll handle that,” Hanma says. He would prefer to handle a lot more, deliver a shot to Haitani Ran’s kidneys, an elbow to the solar plexus.

“Right…ok. It’s good actually if it is the Haitanis,” Kokonoi says. “Better than the police. We think this is all about the HKJ, right? There are worse things. We can get ahead of it. Business as usual until we know more.”

The men all nod. They have faced more damning threats in their years together. Going to pieces is for rookies, and they are no longer that.

“Did you find any evidence of the Haitanis meeting up with the HKJ?” Koko asks.

“None yet. Poured through those logs, and it doesn’t look like either have left the country in the last year. No sign of the HKJ operatives entering either. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have sent a subordinate, but none of the usual suspects are showing up. Closest is Shion Madarame. He went to Korea in February. Could be something. But could just be a vacation.”

“We gonna pick him up?” Smiley asks.

Hanma weighs his options for a moment and then smiles. “Yeah, I think we will.”

Phone switched off and later dumped in Tokyo Bay, Hanma misses four calls. One a telemarketer, one from Hakkai, and still two others plus two additional texts from Sendo. The last of whom bothers to leave a voicemail letting him know that you are on the move, fever be damned.

Somewhere, across town, you sneeze. Mostly just wet particles, but they land inside your face mask, and now they’re trapped with you. Gross.

The laundromat is mostly empty at midday, so you have no competition in securing several machines: one for your bedding, another for towels, yet another for your sweat-drenched clothes. The bang of the door as you close the washer and set it to spin is cathartic. You hate the dirt and grime of illness and can’t wait to be clean again.

You set a timer on your phone to return in 45 minutes and head to a café next door. Taking a break is a nice idea in theory but the realities of a small business owner don’t allow for such extravagances. Someone needs to keep up with payroll.

The café is sunny and warm, completely unaware of the private war you just fought and survived with your own body. A little bell above the door rings charmingly when a new patron enters. The smell of the coffee – roasted on the premises – fills your nostrils, and you realize you must be through the worst of it, if smells can break through the barrier of mucus. When you stand up too fast, the dizzies knock you down, and you still suffer from an occasional burst of coughing, but you couldn’t stand to stay in bed another day.

Sickness has always been a time intense loneliness. When you were under the weather, your already distant mother would ward you off even more sternly, not letting you leave your room for anything but bathroom breaks until she was certain you weren’t contagious. With no phone or computer to wile away the hours, you would count backwards from 10,000, testing how far you could go before losing count, starting over each time you did.

How strange that this time you weren’t completely alone. Unless it was a very strange fever dream, Hanma helped you coalesce. If there were security cameras in your apartment, you would check the footage to confirm that he really cared for you so tenderly.

Sipping on green tea, you set to work on your payroll first, before moving onto rescheduling your appointments. You consider squeezing a few in tomorrow but decide against it. Hanma isn’t wrong that you should use this time to recover. Your hand still trembles when you lift your mug.

The little bell above the door rings a few times while you work, including twice for you when you slip in and out to flip your load. Each ding draws your eye reflexively, just a moment before your return to the task at hand. That is, until the sight of a familiar face draws you up short.

For a moment, you can’t place the well-dressed man who enters the café. He isn’t the kind of man you meet every day, or forget, however. Who but idols walk around with dyed violet hair? Then, you remember him. The gentleman from the strip club who bought you a water.

The half-stranger catches your eye, smiles, and heads for your table.

“What a coincidence,” he greets.

Throat constricting, you trigger a coughing fit, hacking into the crook of your elbow. Tears rise, but they are only half from the cough. This isn’t a coincidence. While this man may not be someone to forget, you certainly are. Especially now with your mask and sick-ashen face. This man who knew Hanma’s name has sought you ought. You wonder if you can make it to the door before he catches you.

“Can I help you?” you offer, feigned politeness as if your professional coolness might protect you.

“Do you mind if I sit?” the man asks, and then without waiting for an answer, takes up the stool beside you. The table where you work is directly in front of a window that stares out at a busy street. If he hurts you, someone will surely see. Whether someone will help is a different matter entirely.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but can I help you?” you repeat.

“Ah, this is awkward. I apologize. I should have introduced myself earlier. My name is Haitani Ran.”

There are a million pat responses – an apology for making things awkward, a nice-to-meet-you, your own name – but you temper your instinct. You need to think. This man found you somehow on a day when you obeyed no routine, no schedule, where no one knew where you were going. That can only mean he followed you, right? But how did he find your apartment in the first place? How long has he been stalking you?

You say nothing.

“I’ll speak directly. You seem to spend a lot of time with Hanma Shuji. More than anyone else outside his…organization. When we met before, I did some digging and realized you might be positioned to help me,” Haitani says.

“I see.”

“Yes, I think you might,” Haitani hums. “I’ve never gotten to really sit down and talk to Hanma. It’s funny because I’ve known him since he was in high school. Similar crowds, mutual acquaintances, you know how it is. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t wish him anything but good things, so you needn’t worry about that. I consider him something of a school friend.”

“And you want to…reconnect with your old school friend?” you wager.

“Not quite. I think my old school friend is looking to reconnect with me, actually. He’s been looking for me, talking to my friends, and it’s odd because I’m not hiding. Do you know what I mean?”

“It’s hard to say.”

The timer on your phone beeps, signaling your clothes should be dry, and you jolt, knocking it to the floor. Haitani bends down to pick it up, so tall that he need only bend at the waist for his arms to sweep the floor. Almost as tall as Hanma. A proprietary aggression churns your guts at the sight of this man holding what’s yours in his hands. You think he is a man comfortable with taking from others.

“I would love to know why Hanma is looking for me. It’s the kind of mystery that keeps a man up at night. And, I’d be willing to do a lot for a friend that would find out for me,” Ran explains.

“Have you considered asking him yourself? If you leave me your number, I can pass it along,” you suggest sweetly.

Haitani ignores this, continuing. “I’d be so grateful in fact that I might even put a price on it. Say…four million yen.”

Four million yen.

Heart thundering in your chest, neck sweaty but this time not with fever, you lock eyes with this stranger for the first time. They are sleepy, smiling eyes. This is (presumably) the third yakuza you have met in person – your interviews with Toman’s execs were all by phone – and all three men possess such different eyes. Kisaki’s piercing and cruel, Hanma’s laughing or dead in turns, Haitani’s masked and playful. What all three share in common is an arrogance. Each man knows they own you, and each man enjoys it.

“Excuse me, I’ve been down with a cold, so I’m not thinking very well right now,” you say because you need to say something and your only desire is to throw yourself slavishly at this man’s feet in the hopes that coins rain down from the sky.

“I’m sorry to hear that. You need to take good care of yourself. It’s always best to get out of the city in August. The heat isn’t good for a young woman. Maybe a holiday?”

With your four million yen goes unspoken.

“I can’t be certain that my…schedule…will allow it, but I would certainly like to take a vacation if the opportunity presents itself.”

“Yes, the opportunity is so important. You can’t force it,” Haitani agrees. “But if the opportunity did present itself, I’d love to know. If you were to call me with what you learned about your schedule, I could help you take your vacation.”

You flex and crack your knuckles held stiff throughout this coded exchange. Technically, you aren’t agreeing to anything, right? Just that you might make a phone call. That’s hardly criminal, hardly damning. You probably won’t even end up calling Haitani after this. It’s not like Hanma tells you much. He’s never mentioned Haitani at least. Yes, this is no devil’s bargain. You are merely telling Haitani what he wants to hear. Nothing more.

So, there is no reason to feel guilty when Haitani saves his number in your phone under the name Hirayama Riko.

No, when you return home with your laundry, you tell yourself there is no reason to feel guilty at all.

#hanma shuji #hanma x reader #hanma smut #tokyo revengers x reader smut #tokyo rev smut #tokyo revengers x reader #please heed the warnings

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honourablejester · 1 year

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Some thoughts for druid villains

So, dailyadventureprompts was asked recently about druid villains who aren’t just environmental extremists, and apparently I just have lots of thoughts on druids in general (which is odd, as they’re not really my favourite class, but apparently I really like the lore/themes behind them more than I want to play them), so I started musing about villainous druids.

I’ve had thoughts in this direction before, see Ylin Dos, my horrendous dustbowl extortionist of a druid, who likes to foul wells and blight crops and drop isolated villages into dire straits before showing up all innocent with goodberry and create/destroy water and purify food and drink and mold earth and asking how much would they pay for him to stay a while and help them through this hard time. Because I like the Pied Piper fairytale and the character of the snake-oil salesman in westerns and depression-era stories.

And I’ve had other thoughts in my urban druid musings above, about spymaster druids in cities, and slumlords/beggar lords/gang leader druids, who again leverage things like wildshape into urban animals and speak with animals to gather information in a city setting, as well as goodberry, again, to gain loyalty among the hungry of the city and either persuade or extort them into working for them. If you’re playing a city campaign or have a hub city, you could definitely turn that into a local villain, a slumlord who takes advantage of hungry urchins to be his eyes and ears, along with the rats and the starlings who watch from every gutter and eave. You could make a boogeyman doing that. The rats are watching! The rats are always watching. The Butcher Bird knows what you’re doing, sir. You’ve got to be careful, you know. He’ll get you. He knows where you sleep. But if you do what he says, if you bring him stuff, and don’t get in his way, sometimes he’ll make a berry in his hand, and he’ll let you have it, and it’ll feed you for a whole day.

And there’s a couple of historical characters/legends that could provide inspiration either. I was thinking about La Voisin, the famous 17th century French witch-slash-fortune teller who sold poisons and aphrodisiacs to the Parisian aristocracy. Possibly this is more of a herbalist than a druid, but I do feel like there’s potential there for an almost Rasputinian figure? The filthy hedge witch of a druid who, in flagrant defiance of her uncouth and distinctly uncharismatic manners, somehow has the ears (and wallets) of a court. Why? Because with the aid of a little plant growth and dedication, her poison garden in its little walled courtyard behind her townhouse blooms so beautifully.

And then, while I was thinking about French history and druids, I thought about the 18th century Beast of Gévaudan. Which was, in all likelihood, a pair or possibly pack of wolves who just developed a taste for human flesh, but was, unsurprisingly, the inspiration for a lot of theories about werewolves and also serial killers. And. If we’re thinking about werewolves and druids, obviously the place to go is moon druids. A circle. A circle of moon druids. Who believe in power and predation, and hunting the most dangerous game. So. Lets tie serial killers and werewolves and cannibals and cults in a bow, and say that the initiation ceremony for this particular moon druid circle, upon reaching second level and gaining wild shape, is to take the form of an animal and, while in that shape, murder someone and bring back some piece of their carcass to the circle as proof. And lets say they’ve been going for a while. So you have this … aura of fear around an area that’s been developing for years or maybe decades or centuries. An area that’s known for horrific animal attacks. Perhaps, like Gévaudan, people have been sent to try and figure out what’s happening here, to stop it, perhaps even royal agents, but the circle is smarter than that, established, and their bloody reign over the area continues unabated. Until, perhaps, the party.

And then. While I was thinking about werewolves and reigns of terror. I was looking at other signature elements of the druid class, and in particular one signature spell. Which is, of course, moonbeam. Because if you’re looking for horror in the druid spell list, ‘ghostly flames that cause searing pain’ does sort of fit the bill, just a little. And the thing I’ve always loved about moonbeam is this little extra effect: “A shapechanger makes its saving throw with disadvantage. If it fails, it also instantly reverts to its original form and can't assume a different form until it leaves the spell's light.”

Moonbeam targets shapeshifters specifically. It’s the spell for druid-on-druid violence. It’s also a great spell for werewolf hunters, and changeling hunters, and supernatural hunters in general. And if we’re setting a scene were moon druid shapeshifters terrorise a population, a close, claustrophobic, paranoid environment … then maybe we could also get our witchfinder general on. So. Let’s make a druid inquisition. Or at least a druid hunter organisation. A druid order or circle dedicated, perhaps fanatically so, to hunting other druids (though there’s room for ancients paladins to also be knocking around with this one). Think about Moonbeam as a witch trial. Questioning under the torture of ghostly flame. Beasts set alight to test if they are shapeshifters in disguise. People set alight to see if they are changelings in disguise. (While we’re talking about witch trials and the druid spell list, I might also mention heat metal as a … very evocative spell, here?)

If you wanted to have two mutually opposed villainous druid factions in a campaign, a little bit of law vs chaos on the evil end of the spectrum, and the moral dilemma of which is worse, or perhaps the need to champion a population desperately pinned between them, why not bring the Eyes of the Moon, the druid inquisition, to town to hunt down the brutal cannibalistic circle of serial killers who have terrorised the province for a decade?

The druid spell list, to be fair to it, is quite metal in places. And if you want to do folk horror, druids are a class of villains that gives you options. Heh.

I do like a villainous druid. And an urban druid. And just the worldbuilding inherent in the druid’s spell list and abilities. They are a fabulous class for lore and themes.

#d&d #ttrpgs #druids #villains #worldbuilding #folk horror #urban druids #boogeymen #poisoners #extortionists #cults #inquisition

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pupstim · 8 months

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Unhinged QSMP Theory #9

So this one is going to be wild but stick with me. I've been thinking a lot about the code and how it ties in with the eggs especially with recent evidence that the eggs themselves might be code instead of dragons. More under the cut because it is a LONG ONE.

Like I'm about 98% sure that some of the code are dead eggs at least the ones that have been disguising as eggs. THOSE Codes look different from the beginning Binary Entities that attack the eggs. Going back to when the first disguised eggs showed up the code entities look like this (I'll be calling these Disguised Codes)

While the beginning Binary Entites that attacked the Eggs looked like this (I'll be calling these Beginning Codes((I really need a good name for them because Beginning Code isn't good and Straight Code is... yea)))

In my mind that makes these TWO separate kinds of Codes especially with how the Disguised Codes I don't think have ever attacked the eggs or like just tried to kill the eggs. I think they've only gone after players from what little I've seen of them so feel free guys to set me straight and correct me.

There is a third kind of Code too that's come out more recently and I think this pic is pretty good at showing all three codes together.

Little scuffed but hopefully it shows what I mean. Mangled Codes are new and we haven't seen much of them. AFAIK the only other time I've seen a Mangled code is when a Code attacks I think Forever or Cellbit in a jungle before they found that strange Cube underground (which is a whole nother can of worms in itself)

And then Maximus does the wonderful of showing it even more.

Maximus and a Beginning Code and Disguised Code is shown and I think the Disguised Code is actually Trumpet but then who is that Beginning Code. And Then it gets even better

Max turned into a Mangled Code, SO We have Disguised Codes being potentially Dead Eggs, Mangled Codes being potentially infected players but where does that leave the Beginning Code.

This is the truly unhinged part. I think Beginning Codes are actually Eggs but in their true form. Or rather not being forced to be looking like the eggs, either having "hatched" or they just shed their Egg form.

Think about it! We've gotten significant evidence that the Disguised Codes could potentially be Dead Eggs and the Disguised Codes just look like the Beginning Codes but a bit more messed up... like the Beginning Code is healthier than the Disguised Codes.

We also had recent evidence from Cellbit about the Memories Egg (RIP Hope) about there being other Adoption Centers all over the server.

But these ones don't look recent, they look a lot like the buildings did when the islander's first came in so I don't think Memories Egg was for the current batch of players. It was for the past batch of previous players, ones who probably failed whatever experiment the Federation is doing with all this. And just in my mind, if there was one Adoption Center with one lonely egg there probably was more out there. Ones that would have been filled with different kinds of Eggs so potentially one of those Eggs could have escaped and made it out, maybe even learning the truth of the island and its why the Beginning Code was so against the eggs and players trying to kill the Eggs to prevent whatever the Federation is planning.

Now what the Federation is planning to be honest IDK, there seems to be a running theme with perfection. I do think the Eggs are codes and so they're gathering data the Federation is trying to use for something. Maybe trying to create the perfect being? OR find the perfect parent to raise something? Maybe there is some eggs that a Momma dragon left behind but the Federation wants to make sure that raising the eggs is perfect and so do all this convoluted shit instead of just being normal and buying parenting books like the rest of us. My personal theory is that the Federation is trying to make their own End Dragon for some reason but that might just be me. But yea...

tl;dr - I think Beginning Codes are what the eggs normally look like, Disguised Codes are Dead Eggs, Mangled Codes are infected players and this all ties in somehow to Federation and their quest for Perfection.

#unhinged qsmp theory #qsmp #qsmp theory #tw: child death #child death mention #Yea I cooked a lot with this one #the Federation Motives are still unknown but potentially could tie into my other unhinged theory about Cucurucho #Rucho is just trying to make the Federation Perfect and the Island Perfect but does so in absolutely unethical ways #These Characters scrungle my brain so much #actual blorbos

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amihyperfixatingagain · 1 year

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Lots of Campaign 3 Thoughts

There’s a lot here, and a lot of it probably doesn’t make sense, but I wanted to vomit out these ideas and see which ones stick.

I keep thinking about how Ludinus isn’t dumb and would be well aware of the insane risk it’d be to release Predathos. I think he’s trying to siphon power from Predathos instead (like he did the Luxon beacons) and kill the gods that way. Mortals can pass through the divine gate. Why not build the “Creator Hammer” and sneak in to kill them without actually releasing the god eater from its prison?

Plus if Predathos (according to the Vasselheim texts) consumes gods and leaves behind twisted creations, letting it out to eat the gods would in theory only result in twisted versions of said gods. Also Tharizdun has to be some kind of sick alien creation of Predathos right? It’s motives and imagery, even where it comes from, is nothing like the rest of the pantheon and fits the bill perfectly. Is Tharizdun a twisted version of a god from another planet? And it just followed Predathos and the rest of the Pantheon to Exandria? Could it be restored to a non-corrupted version of itself?

Judicators = god weapons? Could Ruidus Born folks also be god weapons? At least the “Exalted” ones? In the same way the Vestiges of Divergence and the Arms of the Betrayers can become exalted, are mortals capable of such a state too? Or at least some have been imbued with that ability? i.e. Imogen, Otohan, Lilliana, the Judicators and who knows how many more.

I had this thought pop into my head the other day, that the Bell’s Hells are all going to ascend into godhood by the end of this campaign. Could this be because the entire Pantheon might be destroyed by the end of the campaign? idk why my brain thought it, but I can’t stop thinking it.

I also had this thought that Ludinus is actually from Aeor, and was in one of those weird stasis bubbles when Aeor crashed. Maybe he was just a child at the time, and that’s how he still grew up in Molaesmyr? What if thats why destroying the gods is his goal? He’s trying to finish the job that the Mages he grew up around failed to do. Idk but it’s an interesting thought that really has no canon support.

ooo another wild thought. What if the Luxon Beacons already had mortal souls in them and they crashed on Exandria like meteors before the gods ever arrived? In the Genesis Ward in Aeor, Caleb found a book debating if the gods are a creation of mortal minds and imagination rather than the other way around. What if mortals appeared on Exandria via the Luxon and created the gods? Are Predathos and the Luxon the “true gods” of this universe and act as a sort of yin and yang? Did Predathos follow the beacons to balance out the imagination of mortals? If all of the Beacons are found and put near each other would the Luxon be revealed? Released? Maybe the Luxon is in a prison somewhere else, in the same way Predathos is here in Exandria, and used the beacons as a cry for help, or power, or to gain believers. Wow this thought is a rabbit hole.

If I have more wild and wacky thoughts pop into my brain, I’ll add them here.

#critical role #critical role theory #critical role spoilers #critical role thoughts #critical role campaign 3 #campaign 3 #bells hells #predathos #ludinus da'leth #the luxon #ruidus born #tharizdun

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catoscloves · 3 months

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Lucy Gray Baird - an innocent victim or a manipulator?

What's your first impression of Lucy Gray?

Do you think she loved Coriolanus in tbosas?

What do you think might have happened to Lucy Gray in the end?

What's your opinion about theories :

1. Greasy Sae as Lucy Gray.

2. Coin as a daughter or relative of Lucy Gray.

Thank you :)

@curiousnonny

ooh random but fun, i love this. i miss inbox interactions/asks btw since i haven't been getting those lately, if anyone ever wants to start a conversation with me about anything at all especially fandom related, feel free!

calling her a manipulator seems a little bit of a victim-blaming rhetoric in my opinion. she's an oppressed individual from a poor district who is forced to perform/kill children for the elite's entertainment, who was clearly struggling long before the games (parents died in the rebellion and left her an orphan, she had to sing and possibly sell herself to feed her cousin, her boyfriend cheats on her and then his mistress sends her to a death arena out of spite, etc). she had to "manipulate" the capitol by making them attached to her because this is literally a strategy to survive. lucy gray does not cause anyone harm on purpose unless they instigate a conflict or directly threaten her life, and because snow is extremely selfish and narrow-minded he sees this as her being manipulating and conniving when all he does is contribute to the issue of her feeling threatened. when left in peace she sings and spends time with the covey, and if provoked she will defend herself, so i don't know how that could be regarded as "manipulating" behavior.

i found lucy gray to be an incredibly interesting character. its been so long since i read thosas (eighth grade, so that was around 3-4 years ago) and i don't remember my exact first impression. i appreciated her characterization/what she brought to the storyline & lore of panem/her background, but coral was probably my favorite character at the time (as we all know i'm obsessed with murderous career tributes, especially those whose names start with c. just look at my url). when i saw rachel zegler cast as lucy gray and saw her performance, i was obsessed. rachel nailed the role perfectly and is literally so talented!!! and the brown girls representing is great :)

she's my favorite character and she absolutely deserved better but like... while i appreciate that suzanne kept up with the theme/lore behind her name origin and made lucy gray disappear like her namesake, never to be found, symbolically haunting snow for the rest of his life, if we look at it from a non-figurative point of view there is absolutely no way she didn't die. lucy gray can't hunt (or maybe she could- snow was very self-absorbed so he didn't know that much about her, but i honestly can't imagine that she would have hunted) so she couldn't survive in the wild. snow left a bullet wound in her, and lucy gray doesn't have medical experience. she couldn't return to district twelve for medical attention, since snow never told her about his promotion to d2 and she would have assumed he'd be back there ready to kill her or turn her in. also a lot of scary animals live in the woods at night, and for as much as lucy gray is clearly a survivor i don't think she'd have been much of a match for that. if she made it back to the cabin, injured as she was, i doubt there was much food there or any medical supplies sufficient enough to take care of a bullet wound. if she managed to survive past all of that, no one lives up to snow's age (late 80s?) hobbling around in the woods and living off the land, especially since lucy gray was already disadvantaged by being poor and hungry her entire life, so she must have been long dead by the time the 74th games rolled around. and no one knew about d13 still existing so lucy gray certainly wasn't heading over there.

greasy sae as lucy gray does theoretically line up with ages, but like snow made trips to d12 specifically to spook katniss, so i can't imagine that sae would just have the option of going into hiding. also lucy gray had no way of returning to twelve because she probably (assuming she survived the bullet wound) believed snow would be back there, ready to hunt her down, and i think after the stricter management of d12 post sejanus's hanging, people would've noticed some random woman popping back in.

once again, lucy gray had no way of knowing that d13 existed, she wasn't going to make it all the way to an obscure, obliterated district that everyone thought was long gone severely injured, and coin is white and too young to be lucy gray. also i don't imagine some random district twelve refugee that likes bright colors and singing is going to show up to a wasteland district and become its corrupt political leader.

edit: I forgot to answer the question about the snowbaird romance. while they were extremely fast burn, dysfunctional,with so many obvious red flags, i do believe that her feelings were real, especially given how their dynamic was in the movies. she had no way of knowing that coryo's internal monologue fixated on power/status/"owning" her (at least, until it was far too late), she flirted with him a lot, he saved her life, she wrote songs about him and sang them to him... no matter how it ended i do believe that while it wasn't healthy, pure, or stable/long lasting love, she felt something along that vein for him.

#anna answers #thanks so much for this! I'm sorry it got so long haha

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jess-moloney · 1 month

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It honestly makes me wonder why did Jess choose Jamie. From a stardom standpoint, he's not entirely a huge celebrity. Surely he's not a nobody either, he does have a good handful of connections. I can see that he would be a perfect candidate for her narcissism. But it really makes me wonder why did she choose to target him. It's very concerning, but that video that you recently posted. You can tell its a sick grin for sure too...

As others have mentioned (I didn't come up with this theory on my own but after looking at the evidence I agree with the theory):

--This is a long reply--

Summary: Jess never really wanted Jamie she wanted an up-and-coming artist similar to her previous obsession (MGK) that she could latch onto and ride their coattails to fame and fortune without having to do any work.

Jess clearly had an obsession with (or currently has an obsession with) Machine Gun Kelly. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of her IG she has countless pics of him that she's tagged everywhere (though it doesn't look like he ever recognized them or replied to them). There's not much acknowledgment from him (that is my point). It's clear she met him in some capacity enough that he follows her on IG and she follows him back. There's one photo of her in a photo booth with him at a party (along with a second guy) and another photo where she's suspiciously seated behind him at some fashion event. Oddly reminiscent of the photo of her sitting behind Jamie.

In her Beats Rewind interview, she talks about MGK like they are best friends (there's never been any proof of that). However, according to her story when she first heard about him he was "up and coming" and considering when these photos were taken with him that was true. He was around Jamie's follower count on IG maybe a little more but he was only just being discovered, which is when she'd have first met him and developed her obvious obsession with him. Did she sleep with him? Who knows. The point is that with how she refers to him, how she either lies or extremely exaggerates her relationship with him it's clear she had it bad for MGK (maybe still does). Did she really like his music? I don't know. Did she like his style? Maybe. I think she liked his lifestyle (clubbing, drinking, partying, drugs, glamour, attention) you name it.

Now if you look at Jamie around the time he was in his band there's a similar look/vibe there. Jamie also would have been "up and coming" in the music scene (though the band did break up). It seems that he must have caught her attention around this time when he did have a similar resemblance to MGK. I don't think she ever chose him because she liked him as a person, or really his music. What she liked was that at the time he had this perception of this wild, crazy party guy who was also a musician. On top of that he wasn't unknown (like MGK when she met him) but he wasn't huge. I think her plan was to get with him, he'd blow up either in film or music and she'd get to go along and claim I've been there since before he was famous (or something). Ride his coattails so to speak.

I think that she always wishes she could have gotten with MGK and basically be where Megan Fox is now (she's even changed her appearance quite a lot to attempt to look like Megan just failed kind of miserably at it). I think that she wants that life, the parties, the drinking, the drugs, the glamour, the paparazzi, the travel, and basically just to be "taken care of" while she goes along. She must have thought this was going to happen with Jamie. That she could manage his music career and make him big and/or that he would make it huge solo. Something along those lines. I think she underestimated greatly that Jamie isn't in any of this for the fame or the money. He obviously does music because he has a passion for it. He acts because he has a passion for it. He doesn't come across as driven for fame/money just doing what he likes because he likes it and whatever happens from it will happen. In the end, it was never really Jamie she wanted it was MGK and Jamie was the closest target that met all the markers that resembled that.

Jess likes to "get in on the ground floor" of things she thinks will "take off" and bring her along for the ride. We know this because of what she said in that interview and how she attached herself to Renell when she thought she found a cash cow even though she had no clue what the hell went into managing a photographer or a business like that. She basically admits she just likes money and she's going to get it however she needs to get it (implying that lying/manipulating/convincing people she knows what she's doing when she doesn't) is the key to her "success". We can also see how well that actually worked for her in both cases.

Jamie is/was a goalpost for her. Something she believed she was investing in and would see a huge return without having to put work into it. Just like Renell. The problem is that Jamie is the biggest trophy she's ever gotten, she clearly spent years of her life trying to get into just the right position to land him, and she's nothing without him. No job, her family's pushed to the wayside, and the friends it seems she used to have don't interact with her anymore (except that one girl). If Jamie drops her she's not going to have anything and a woman with nothing to lose is extremely dangerous. I hope Jamie knows what he's doing if he is leaving (or already has left) because Jess is definitely poised to take him down by any means necessary if she knows she's going to lose the object of her crazy obsession for so many years.

#jess moloney #jamie campbell bower #jamie bower #mail

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jenniferchaulam · 11 months

Text

/Notes: I was reading how mute/deaf people interact and noticed that most people say they "SPEAK sign", and found that really interesting. So if I ever wrote "speaking sign" or anything similar its because of that, no words where vocalized by the characters unless specificed.

Also, I not good at writing. This is just brain rot dump after reading the above fic haha- do check out for context tho

anws am thinking about alternate scenario for the fic where-

Legend felt guilty and tries to make Wild comfortable talking again.

In the only godsdamned way he knows.

If it was Legend who goaded Wild into this, then he will goad him out.

The group was hiking through Wild's Hyrule. Time is leading, discussing something on the map with Twilight. Wild is still silent, choosing to walk to the end of the group, next to Four, who is checking all the broken weapons. Champion would still smile or look up when he found a strange looking bug, laugh when Wind tells stories of his days on sea and in his New Hyrule, "There were trains and they made the funniest sounds!"- whatever a train was. Sometimes, he would run up to tap Hyrule's shoulder and point at some landmark, promising he would take him there.

Legend picked an oppoturnity when Wild is just by himself. The group chef is checking his photos, grinning silently.

"Hey Wild", Legend tapped his shoulder, "about yesterday's pumpkin soup- it tasted like shit"

Wild looked up in absolute shock. Sky turned back with an audible gasp. "Legend??"

"Yea no offence",he continued," it was under seasoned"

"Wait, why didn't you say anything yesterday?", asked the Captain

Legend lies without blinking. "Well, I was organizing my stuff and got distracted." He signed behind his back, making sure Wild wouldn't notice. "Trust."

Captain just shrugged it off.

The Vet continued. "The soup's was burnt! I don't know how the other's bowls were, but mine tasted like it was ash!". He turned to see Wild face looking scandalized.

Perfect.

Wild tugged his Slate to his side, and started signing aggresively. "How. Dare. You. Insult. My. Cooking." He made an effort to snap at each word he spoke in sign.

The Vet smirked. "I bet you didn't even know how to mash the pumpkins properly. My bowl still has bits of pumpkins, whole."

Wild pulled down his hood. He looks Proper Mad. "Well, at least I didn't try putting raw garlic into my soup!" Wild signed angrily.

"Well, at least I didn't try putting anything that resembles rotten flesh!" Legend snapped back.

"There is no way you tasted flesh in a pumpkin soup, it must be you who have a defective tounge" Wild signed.

"Maybe you should have checked if the pumpkins had bugs or worms, what kind of chef who doesn't check the quality of ingredients"

"Excuse me! If it was you I bet you'll give us literal twigs to eat!" Wild let out a small grunt while signing.

Everyone is looking now. While its pretty nice Wild isn't putting on his blank face he had when he was silent, the guy is stomping the ground, pointing fingers at Legend.

The Vet pretends to not notice. "Well, at least my bread wasn't under-kneaded"

Wild stared at him, yelling, "YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO MAKE BREAD!"

Time and Twilight, who was busy with the maps, turned back at the familiar voice they haven't heard for so long.

No one makes a comment on Wild speaking however, and they just looked at each other. Wild didn't care. Legend just smirked. "Well, want to test out that theory?"

"Oh, its a deal alright. When we have lunch you and I are having a bake off!"

Wild stormed off to the front, asking Time how long until their next destination is. He's still speaking sign, but he added words on top, and looked a lot more cheery than before.

Captain turned to Legend smiling. "I don't know how you did that, but good job, Veteran."

Okay, but for real. Legend doesn't know how to make bread. He frowned at the thought of losing to Wild... edit: added some lines to make it flow better-ish

#linked universe #linkeduniverse #fanfic #lu wild #lu fanfic #lu legend #the rest of the chain are here as well #angri chef #check og fic as well #fluff #check og fic its good #sign language

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