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secret-engima · 1 year

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*slaps table* hi. This is the post where I talk about, yet again, why Kishi is an idiot when it comes to the implications of his own worldbuilding. Point 1. being that Kishi’s insistence that peacetime is bad for shinobi business is hot garbage and point 2. being the implications of ANBU being Scary even to other shinobi. Because the show makes it clear that ANBU are supposed to be the Scary Ones, the Dark Ones who do messed up stuff. Many fics have already talked about this, but not *too* many I've seen actually explore the implications of what that actually MEANS when put in the context of a society who thinks it's A-okay to give a knives and bombs to literal kids and shoo them off to fight things. Buckle up I’m going to flex my logic center and start talking economics even tho I never studied economics outside casual worldbuilding interest.

Okay to start off with, I’m need to talk about Not Anbu for a hot minute and describe some of the few things we *do* know about Kishi’s “worldbuilding” of the shinobi villages and their history.

1. Literally everyone but Madara the Madman agrees that the villages are a Good Thing that happened, even the missing ninja never breathe a word about wanting to go back to the Warring States Era where everyone was in clans. The implications of this could honestly be it’s own entire rant but I will restrain myself and focus on the topic at hand for now.

2. Konoha and every village barring the trash fire that is pre-Boruto Kiri have a thriving enough economy to be literal *cities* of very decent size and decent quality of life, which the civilians have a major hand in I’m sure, but tellingly the shinobi *make enough income to get by* and seem to do so very easily. I will probably come back to this as I go on.

3. Ninja villages not only have a wide array of mission ranks (which I will also come back to) but they are the ones who set the prices for individual missions, not the employers. This is seen in the infamous Wave mission when the bridge builder fellow lied about the danger of the mission because he *could not afford to pay for a mission above a C-rank*, which I remind you is the second lowest mission ranking in the system.

Alright with those in mind I’m gonna talk about the “peacetime is bad for shinobi” garbage because that does actually relate directly to the worldbuilding implications of ANBU. Just. Just bear with me here and forgive me if this kinda rambles in multiple directions, talking about anything with Kishi makes my braincells run for the hills on a good day.

JUMPING IN WITH THE PEACETIME THING. This is stupid. This is one of the stupidest things to come out of Kishi’s mouth in my opinion barring the existence of the cannibal space aliens. Why? Because despite Kishi’s love of explosions and giant flashy fights shinobi are supposed. To be. STEALTHY. And the vast majority of them now live in villages, which means they need steady income.

Post the unification of the clans into villages, wars actually became too big and messy to be profitable because it’s during peacetime that people have money to spend on hiring ninja. And we see them spend it on incredibly frivolous things when it comes to shinobi. Just look at all the D-ranks we see or are referenced in the shows. Babysitting, pet retrieval, fence painting, carrying shopping bags for civilian ladies, house cleaning, the list goes on. And these pay well enough, are priced high enough by the village, that Might Dai, a single parent, was able to feed, shelter, and clothe both himself and an extremely energetic child while also having time to train himself and his son and walk Gai to and from school. And the price tag for missions only goes up from there. Higher ranked missions pay more according to risk, but peacetime is when people will be able to afford those kinds of missions. *Wartime*, as war is defined in the show post-village creation, are giant, messy affairs where a lot of manpower goes to maintaining front lines and countering enemy action, leaving far *less* manpower and time to take on these kinds of missions, and with the mass destruction of land and resources that these wars cause, people will have less money to throw at having the magic ninja men do things like escort caravans, deal with petty crime, retrieve stolen items, etc. And those examples are just C-rank/B-rank examples. Most wartime missions that we see in the show are actually missions assigned by the village itself, not from an outside client, which means the pay is coming from the Village coffers and not an external source, which can get messy very quickly if they do not have the manpower to take enough missions from outside clients to refill those coffers. Remember that I’m coming back to it later.

Wartime, for village ninja, is loud and messy and ugly. *Peacetime* on the other hand, is the playground of the rich, the powerful, and the *subtle*. Peacetime is when nobles pay top dollar to *flaunt* that they can afford to hire a ninja or three to escort them around in broad daylight regardless of any enemies they’ve made. Peacetime is when nobles have the money to pay for ninja to go in and spy on rivals or steal secrets. Peacetime is when the Daimyo and other elites hire shinobi to escort luxury goods at high risk of theft, to deal with underground human or drug trafficking that is inconveniencing them, or to spy on their neighboring lands for information that will become useful next time they meet up to flex on each other in a “you don’t want to make trouble with me I have and know X”.

More importantly, peacetime is when the *lower* classes can afford to pay for the magic ninja as well. If D-ranks are enough to support a single parent and his child, then C and B ranks are actually going to be the *backbone* of a ninja village’s economy, not the A or S ranks. C and B ranks are going to be the highest pay for the lowest risk, and those will predominantly come from the merchant and working class who have enough spare cash to have someone deal with the wild animals harming their livestock, take out budding trafficking rings and bandit gangs or escort people and goods.

I don’t think I’m emphasizing this one enough. Look at a map of the Elemental Nations, look at the size of those countries. Now we don’t get a lot of info on cities in those countries (because KISHI) but there are bound to be plenty of villages, towns, and cities dotting those countries, and all of them are going to be connected in some way to each other via trade routes and highways. You’re going to have Konoha’s own supply lines and the trade deals they have with their own merchant families bargaining for preferential treatment in exchange for setting up shop in a ninja village on top of all the other merchants from all over the Land of Fire who, during peacetime, have both money and incentive to hire the fire-chucking magic people to ensure *all* of their goods arrive *on time, every time*.

You’re going to have merchants who have supply lines through multiple countries. Glass products from the Land of Wind. Inks, fine paper, and flavored teas from Land of Fire. Fish, oyster, and pearl products from the coast (which is especially high risk in areas near the disaster fire that is Kiri). Each and every country is going to have luxury products or famous higher-quality raw materials (*points at Iwa and their rock obsession, points at every product made out of high quality stone, silver, gold, or iron ore*) that the other countries are all going to want, and consequently you will have merchants that are going to be willing to pay top dollar to ensure those products get where they are meant to go and do so undamaged and in a timely fashion despite bad roads/bad weather/bandits/rogue shinobi hired by a competitor/wild animals/freak acts of the local kami because you forgot to pay tribute to their shrine last week.

The technology of pre-Boruto era is also still stuck in the *horse and wagon* stage, meaning you have caravans of this stuff moving on very strict, long term schedules, which means these are jobs that the village can charge per day or week on the road on top of the base price estimated from the level of risk to the shinobi. You have merchants who are going to give preferential treatment to the village of their home nation if they can, both because you Don’t Insult The Local Fire Breathers/Rock Gougers/Storm Summoners/Etc but also because the villages themselves likely offer discounts for natives of their country, or even contracts that are essentially subscription deals for those who have multiple caravans going out at the same time, multiple times in a year. A “pay this much up front and we will ensure that several shinobi are always on standby to guard one of your caravans” kinda deal. It’s been implied multiple times in the shows that the majority of any shinobi village’s workforce are chuunin and that jounin’s are elite, and C/B-ranks are literally stated in the wiki to be usually given to teams of Chuunin or sometimes two genin teams and their jounin pairing up for a joint operation. Chuunin are going to make their careers on guarding caravans, dealing with bandits, clearing road hazards, etc. If Chuunin are the majority of your workforce, then missions that chuunin can take are going to be, by necessity, the largest cashflow coming into your village.

If a war between two or more countries is happening, all of that gets heavily restricted because of the risk of infiltration, heavily impeded from road destruction and wartime front lines, or straight up *shut down* from lack of money and manpower to take those missions.

Can you see what I’m getting at now when I say Kishi’s peacetime line is stupid.

And here comes another fun aspect of this. Because where the money flows, so does the cultural norms. Now a lot of fics I’ve seen emphasize the child soldier thing and also how D-ranks are very likely a way to acclimate the genin to mission work while also training civilians to see ninja as Friendly Safe Workers who happen to have magic powers and knives. But the thing is, all of that work on acclimating the civilians to view their local shinobi as Safe To Hire is going to go out the window if you remind them too often that these people are literal killers for hire. Merchants are not going to want to hire Infamous Killers because that says to their customers and their potential business partners that they themselves are shady and possibly approve of murder to get their way. Poking at D-ranks briefly, farmers aren’t going to want to hire potentially unhinged murderers to till their fields, and nobody is going to want to hire even the genin to *babysit their kids*.

So.

In order to attract reliable patronage from these low risk, well paying areas, the ninja villages had to *alter their public perception*. Assassination missions, kidnapping missions, extortion missions, all of those over time became short-term gain/long-term loss for the village. So they took them on less and less, and those kinds of missions became increasingly *socially unacceptable* even to the shinobi, because if the village doesn’t approve of it, it’s not a good thing. What assassination/sabotage missions we do see or hear referenced in canon are always, iirc, targeting someone that can the ninja can safely point at and say “this is a bad guy”. High ranking rogue shinobi from other villages or crime lords or despotic warlords being I think the majority (if not the entirety) of the few examples canon gives us. Those are people that, when civilians hear about them being assassinated, the civilians are going to say “good riddance” rather than “oh no!”. And if those missions are the only ones that the common shinobi hear about themselves or take on, then that’s what they are going to associate with those types of missions. A high risk job that is nonetheless seen as Morally Right, even if their moral compass hinges mostly on who is the friend or enemy of their home village.

I could also get into how this has really interesting implications for what the Warring State Era shinobi economics were like and how Hashirama and Madara making Konoha was basically inventing the concept of unionizing but I’m not going to side track to that because finally, FINALLY, we get to the ANBU Are Scary Thing.

Because this. This whole thing about how peacetime is actually where ninja villages make their bread and butter and how the push-pull of being Socially Acceptable for Money turning into Actual Moral Perception is where ANBU’s identity as the Scary Guys comes into play.

Now we don’t know when ANBU was actually founded in Konoha or any other village, but I’m going to ballpark and say it was *after* the First War because of a few key things we know about ANBU.

1. ANBU are Scary.

2. ANBU are known to specifically hunt other ninja (specifically Kiri has a Hunter-nin branch of ANBU but logically every village would have this).

3. ANBU work is extremely psychologically and physically grueling to their members and has a high fatality rate.

4. Whatever ANBU does is considered messed up even by ninja standards. An example that comes to mind is a filler flashback where Gai ends up running into Kakashi on an ANBU mission where Kakashi is basically putting down enemy ninja that are defeated and attempting to surrender and Gai is visibly distressed by this.

The First Shinobi World War likely rocked the Elemental Nations as badly or *worse* than WWI did for the real world, because this was the first time “war” was not defined as two or three noble lords throwing peasants with spears or the occasional ninja at each other or two or three shinobi clans having a protracted blood feud that they could only initiate when they weren’t busy trying to feed their own families. Assuming Konoha has the average number of shinobi clans that can be found in a shinobi village, that means we had somewhere upward of 55 clans from various countries throwing everything they had at each other on open battlefields, destroying large amounts of landscape, and causing shinobi and civilian casualties on a mass scale that even the most fire happy Uchiha could not have achieved on their worst day. This was also after Jinchuuriki became a thing, so this war was the first demonstration of what it’s like to essentially duct tape a nuke to an emotionally volatile child soldier and see what happens when you throw two or more of them into a battlefield.

The economy of the villages and their respective nations would have been in chaos after the war. Entire towns, roads, and bridges are straight up gone, chunks of landscape for miles around have been drastically rewritten, the death toll is high and the missing persons list is even higher and in the wake of this you’re going to have *every* would-be warlord and their grandfather getting uppity and trying to stake a claim on what they can of the wreckage. This includes Rogue Shinobi, likely the first real appearance of Rogue Shinobi in ninja history, at least on this scale. Lots of shinobi are going to be disillusioned from the war, exhausted, more than a few are mentally broken from the traumas, and all the ninja who have no moral compasses and dreams of power are looking at this and deciding “hey, now is a great time to become a warlord”. On top of all this, since most of the wartime missions were assigned by the villages themselves and not an outside client (with *very minimal* cash flow coming from the Daimyo himself since presumably the war was partially his idea, but even the royal coffers are not enough to run a military city the size of Konoha kthanks), the village coffers are likely hanging out somewhere between “Naruto’s childhood allowance” and “I can offer you lint”.

Obviously, these things need to be taken care of pronto, and with the villages scrambling to have the money to rebuild, the Kage in charge are going to be much more willing to take on dirty missions like assassinations, extortion, blackmail, *whatever* just to refill the village coffers. But. The ninja villages still need to keep their social acceptability in order to start getting their C and B ranks back, especially after the war opened everyone’s eyes to how destructive shinobi can really be in large numbers. They cannot afford to be seen killing left and right and the Rogue ninja are a huge stain on their village’s reputation, but openly advertising that “hey, if anyone leaves the village we’ll behead them” really isn’t going to do any favors for keeping the shinobi who are in the same mental space Tsunade was when she got fed up and left Konoha altogether.

And this, I think, is what gave rise to the existence of ANBU. The Kages picking their remaining highly skilled and most loyal followers, putting them in masks so that they cannot be easily identified by civilians, and sent out to quietly complete these high level, socially unacceptable missions. They were sent out to deal with Rogue shinobi and make them disappear without advertising to all the other traumatized village shinobi that their village is “serve or die” rather than the more patriotic “we fight for our home” that they were raised with. They were sent out to perform civilian assassinations, extortion, whatever they were offered in order to shore up the village’s shaky economy of the time and enable the Kage to pay their soldiers.

Then, after the economy stabilized, the ANBU just kinda … never left. Because by then the respective Kage had realized that being able to take on these kinds of missions with high pay and no loss of social acceptability was useful, and in the wake of the First War with everyone being simultaneously paranoid of their neighboring country but also on eggshells to not start another war, the anonymity of ANBU became a convenient way to keep an eye on each other and subtly attempt to sabotage the other when it looked like they were getting too powerful. The next two Great Shinobi Wars only solidified ANBU’s role in the hidden villages for those very same reasons, even though I would argue that they were ultimately a Bad Idea because they put too much power in the hands of the Kage without their village clans being able to hold them responsible, and that’s how we get stuff like Danzo™ and the crimes committed by Danzo™ and the Sandaime against the Uchiha. The existence of ANBU and the ability to “anonymously” jab at each other also just encouraged the animosity between the Great Shinobi Villages, and allowed warmongers (Danzo™) to ensure that an actual peace never fully settled in until the 4th Shinobi War happened.

And the peace post the 4th war, by the way, SHOULD have been a huge boom in the popularity and use of shinobi rather than the detriment that the Boruto manga/anime insists on for like- all the reasons stated in the economics part of this rant as well as the rise of CORPORATIONS that would happily pay a lot for shinobi in a host of different capacities and also people paying for shinobi to pretty please come help rebuild our destroyed homes and farmland with your fancy ninja powers.

It’s also canon that several shinobi retired and went into other professions in the wake of this peace and alliance, such as *acting*, which opens up an entire potential slew of missions geared specifically toward movie producers using their new technologies and their bigger budgets to hire shinobi as stuff like stunt doubles, live special effects artists (need to rehearse but the set isn’t done yet? No problem!! Just hire someone with *genjutsu* to make your actors the ultimate set/stage), *makeup artists* (hey those infiltration skills come in handy in a lot of ways), and more. And that’s just one “modern” profession off the top of my head that would adore having Magic Ninja People available for hire.

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of potential peace time jobs and economic implications because again, I only research this stuff in relation to worldbuilding fictional places. But there we go, I have just gone a 3k rant about ninja economics in order to explain why ANBU are Scary. I hope ya’ll enjoyed.

A side note I couldn’t find a good spot for in the actual rant but another factor in the shinobi villages having to change their behavior and seem Socially Acceptable is because of the rise of civilian-born shinobi in their genin/chuunin ranks. Because there’s no way a civilian family is going to *want* their child to become a murderous psychopath. A competent, magic wielding defender of your merchant uncle’s caravans on the other hand…

Other rants I need to do at some point when my braincells aren’t mush are:

1. My personal HCs on Konoha’s orphanage/foster system (aka Hi, Let Me Give You More Reasons To Hate Sarutobi Hiruzen)

2. Ninja Economics Two: Warring States Boogaloo (Edit: now available here!)

3. Why Cannibal Space Ninjas Are The Stupidest Idea of Multiple Stupid Options

4. Boruto Ninja Cults: What Kishi Could’ve Done Instead of the Garbage We Got

5. Genin Corps (Aka Reasons Kishi Could’ve Given for Why No One Thought Kabuto Was Suspicious But Didn’t. Aka Ninja Economics 3 Babyyyyyy)

#Secret Engima Rambles #SE rants #naruto worldbuilding #ninja economics #boruto #taking red string and thumbnails of logic to Kishi's hot nonsense

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ihopesocomic · 24 days

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You've probably gotten a lot of messages like this before but I wanted to just thank you guys for showing a form of abuse that isn't only physical and still calling it abuse and not hand waving it away. So many stories that include abuse tend to assume that it only counts as abuse if it's physical. They ignore mental and emotional abuse entirely and if they do acknowledge it, it's portrayed as not that bad and something you need to forgive your abusers for.

As someone who's still coming to terms with my own experience with a similar kind of abuse that Adamant and Hope faced, your comic makes me feel seen and validated in my feelings and especially in my choice to cut off the family that hurt me. Seeing Adamant and Hope leave and not be shunned for it was such a relief and breath of fresh air after so much media tells you to forgive people who hurt you, especially if they are family.

again, thank you. I'm forever thankful this comic exists. you two are fantastic and I can't wait to see where the story goes :)

Thank you so so much, anon. We feel mixed emotions when we get asks like this because it's nice to hear but it's also so hard to hear our readers dealing with what we've dealt with and it's also hard to articulate how much we hear you and how sorry we are.

What you're saying is such a good point. Emotional abuse is so often discounted and watered down and even disregarded as being hurtful. It also doesn't help that even physical abuse gets the same treatment. Especially when it's just dismissed as 'discipline' or a 'loss of control'. But going back to emotional abuse, this is one of the main things that we wanted to so desperately try and portray vs. how My Pride had portrayed it. The very idea that emotional abuse at the hands of your family isn't actually abuse because it's just them loving you and 'wanting what's best for you'.

Which is so ridiculous because overprotectiveness can very, very easily mutate into smothering and parents feeling that their children have zero agency or identity outside of themselves, especially if you're disabled. Parents like this don't deserve humanisation or sympathy. Their actions are possessive and unhealthy and may be a indication they're suffering from a form of abuse themselves.

My Pride could have tackled this with Powerstrike. She lost her mate and son. Her culture is heavily against her and her own sense of agency. However, the script is too busy highlighting how she feels 'weak' because her daughter is disabled and can seemingly do nothing to fulfil this unachievable image she has of her.

It's how you know the script was written by an able-bodied individual, somebody who will never know that this kind of thing makes you feel like utter dirt as somebody who isn't a "perfect" neurotypical, able-bodied individual.

Even if the creator is neurodivergent herself, this was such a huge ball to drop. Powerstrike saying 'whenever I look at you, I only see what you could have been' is very much a fucking Powerstrike problem and she deserves to rot for it. Being viewed under the lens of what you "could" be if you didn't have a physical disability or conditions that cause developmental delays like autism is downright devastating for those who have them and fuck that show for trying to humanise Powerstrike by having her spout such garbage.

There was nothing remotely sympathetic about that speech. It was just Powerstrike whining about having a disabled daughter and the context of the speech is that she was called out for not caring about her children and the creator somehow thinks that her child being disabled.... excuses that?

I apologise for going off on a rant, but Powerstrike's speech fits the bill exactly with what what you're talking about because MP fans have fallen for it hook, line and sinker and refused to see how gross it is because Powerstrike never physically abused Nothing like Quickmane did. Even though it is very obviously emotional abuse and manipulation.

It'd be great if we could just assume this is just superfans defending their favourite show's honour because god forbid something they enjoy is delivering problematic messages like how parents who have an ableist perception of their children deserve sympathy, but we've had people come to us and directly point to the show's writing as a reason for them failing to identify valid forms of abuse and therefore feel they cannot act upon it or seek help for it.

May not be what the creator intended because she was presumably high off her own fumes when she wrote speeches like Powerstrike's, but that's the reality and making excuses for it like MP fans have isn't going to make the issue get any better.

Doing this comic has allowed me to confront the same feelings you have also had to contend with, anon, and I'm very happy we have been able to share something together there. You and others like you also make me feel less alone and less angry about what I've experienced and I hope you never forget that. - RJ

#ask #ask us stuff #rj answers #my pride mention #comic praise #tw abuse

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altargarden · 16 days

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What is it like to worship Lucifer?

What sorts of things does he help with? What kind of impact has he had on your life so far? Is he easy to approach? Is he forgiving of beginner mistakes?

Sorry for all the questions! I'm new to this sort of thing.

this is going to be a deeply personal answer, potentially oversharing in some aspects, so warning for mentions of abuse and emotional neglect. i just want to be perfectly transparent.

lucifer may have been an angel who had forsaken god, but in comparison, i have never felt more love from a deity than i have with lucifer. to me, lucifer is god's love - even if he claims to have abandoned god, he still carries a divine love that to me, is unable to be compared.

he came into my life during a very vulnerable time - i had just gotten out of an emotionally abusive relationship, and the treatment of my parents was as awful as ever. for context, i am a disabled man living in the same house as my mother, who is chronically ill and thus tends to lash out due to her feeling like garbage most of the time, and i share this house with my father as well, who is both emotionally neglectful and emotionally abusive (it tends to swing rapidly from one extreme to another). my father had been like this since i was around 10, and my mother has been like this since i graduated high school, which was about 10 years ago.

when you ask me what lucifer is like, it is almost unfathomable to imagine just how kind he is towards those suffering. towards those who want or need him. i've been through christian high school and my mother is christian too, and i still have never found that sort of kindness, by humans or by spirits. i have lived my whole life without knowing what parental kindness was, i have been put in so many unfortunate positions by both of my parents that i never thought i would ever taste parental compassion - even the nicer days where i could smile, i knew something was deeply wrong.

but when he came into my life, that feeling diminished, little by little. it did not change the nature of how my parents treated me, but it gave me much needed support. i felt something so new, and so warm. he protected me as much as he could from my parents, he kept me company when i needed to cry - he encouraged me to seek out my passions, and to do what made me happy. he told me to stand up for myself when my abuser came back into my life, and he encouraged me to always do what was right. he made me smile, he made me laugh, he gave life vibrance and light.

he was the parent i never had - he was my first taste of what it meant to be loved; to be worth something more.

when i started contacting him, if i had a dollar for every mistake i made, i would be rich. and yet, he laughed as if it didn't matter, he told me to keep going, he encouraged me to explore with curiosity, an open mind, and most of all, bravery. i met many demons after i started working with lucifer, and i still made mistakes then, even with his company. but he was there, he supported me. he always supported me.

i want to say, whatever frightens you with lucifer, i have to tell you he is not god. there is no sin that will make him cast you out. there is no sin that he damns humanity over. there is no sin that makes him turn away, or frown, or curse you. there is no sin that he'll sacrifice his own son for, there is no sin that he will sacrifice you for, either.

i'm telling you that you're best to just dive in, and ask him as many questions as you're able. he will listen, and he will answer. he may help you with that feeling of missing out on love, just like he did with me. for lucifer loves the suffering, he loves those who endure, he loves those who are brave, but he also loves those who are broken, weak, sick, the list goes on.

there is no sin that will make him give up, not on you, not on humanity.

#bun talks #not putting this in tags bc it's kinda iffy but #i hope this convinces you it's okay anon <3 #abuse tw #neglect tw #ask to tag

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strawberryscorner · 1 year

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Forgotten Sins Chapter 1

Tags: Amnesia, Stockholm Syndrome, Drug Use (Bliss), Religious Cults, Fluff and Angst, Car Accidents, Family Member Death, Manipulation, Emotional Manipulation

Note: Hey, I just wanted to let you all know some things before reading this story, This is a reader-insert and it is written in the second person but she has/you have amnesia from the events in the first chapter so when asked your name, you can't respond with the "Y/N" answer so you'll get the name Dawn.

Also, I'm not from America so if British words slip in, forgive me because the character/you are meant to be American since it's Far Cry 5.

Other than that, have fun! (also, let me know if I missed something in the tags at any point of the story!)

Series Masterlist

Almost as soon as your dad drives past the Welcome to Hope County sign, the radio started playing a song about letting the water wash away your sins.

"What is this garbage?" he asked, going to turn the radio off but your mom smacked his hand away.

"It's what you need with that gambling addiction of yours," she said, returning to her phone, "no signal." She put the phone down and looked out the window.

"It's pretty cute here," you said, looking out your window.

"Pretty cute?" your dad asks. "There's nothing here!"

You roll your eyes and keep focusing on what's outside your window. Your dad always was a bit grumpy on these road trips, yet it was always him who insisted on taking them, good for family bonding. Now that you were an adult and had moved out long ago and your brother was going off to college, it was time for another road trip. While your dad and mom argued about the quickest way to your destination that your parents kept secret to add to the fun, you started humming along to the radio.

"Where even are we?" your mom asked.

"Holland Valley, well, just left it according to this sign," your dad said.

You see a shirtless man with the words greed and wrath tattooed on his torso running from a group of people, they're all shooting at each other.

"Is that real?" your brother asked, hearing the gunshots.

"Look away!" your dad yells at us as the shirtless man fell to the ground. You turn to look out the window on your brother's side but there were people with guns running towards the car, most likely to fight the people on the other side of your vehicle.

"Oh God, what is that?" your mother asked, pointing at a man with a beard and a red shirt that had been cut into a vest held up what looked like a rocket launcher, though you couldn't be too sure, you'd only ever seen them in video games. You see a rocket heading towards the car, no one has time to get out before it hits.

__________________

You wake up, one hand handcuffed to the railing of the bed you're laying on. The other hand goes up to touch your pounding head, only resulting in more pain so you quickly remove your hand. There isn't much in the room with you, just the bed you're laying on, a table and a chair.

"Ah good, you're finally awake," a man with long brown hair and a bushy beard said, pulling the chair closer to the bed before sitting down.

"Awake?" your throat was painfully dry and your voice came out weak, almost as a raspy whisper.

"You've been out for a while, a few weeks," he said, "weren't too sure you'd make it, no one else did."

"Made what? Who else?"

"What's your name?" he asked.

You thought about it for a while but couldn't remember, "I don't know," you answer honestly.

"Guess the accident messed with your brain more than we thought," he mumbled, "how about we call you Dawn?"

You don't know what to say, that's probably not close to whatever your name was but you couldn't remember so arguing against it seemed pointless. Eventually, you just nod your head, accepting your new name.

"Well, Dawn, you and what we assume to be your family were in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said. "You see, we got somewhat of a war going on here, a cult leader who calls himself The Father is trying to take over Hope County. Save us from what he calls The Collapse that he knows will happen because God told him. My people were captured by fucking Peggies - his followers. Now is the part that affects you, you and your family got in the crossfire between my people and the Peggies, well, they had a rocket launcher, fired it at you. We pulled you out of the car, but your family all died, your mom was already dead in the car, and your dad and brother died here later. I'm sorry."

You tried to remember it but you couldn't, you couldn't even remember your family, their names, faces, voices nothing.

"Why don't I remember?" you ask.

"You hit your head pretty hard, you might remember at some point but you may also never get your memory back," he shrugged.

"What's your name?" you ask.

"I'm Eli."

He stood up and took out a small key, "Am I right in assuming you won't be a danger?"

You nodded. While you had no memory to be sure, you didn't feel dangerous. He unlocked the handcuff.

"You can stay in here for a while, Hurk is right outside this door. Hurk get in here," a man with a beard and a red shirt walked in, he seemed familiar but you couldn't remember why.

"Do I know you?" you asked.

"No," Eli answered for the man, "but Hurk here will help you if you want to walk around."

With that, both men leave you alone in the room.

You stayed in bed for a while, thinking about everything Eli had told you, trying to remember anything from any point in your life but you couldn't. You were thankful you seemed to remember your language and how to talk. Now, you needed to see if you were strong enough to be able to walk. Don't fall flat on your face, you thought to yourself before sitting in the bed, your feet touching the ground. You closed your eyes and held your hands out in front of you as you slowly stood up, when you did instantly fall, you slowly opened your eyes. You take a deep breath before attempting to take your first step, it was wobbly, and you fall forward but you're able to catch yourself on the chair Eli was sitting on earlier. You thought about calling for Hurk to help you walk but you wanted to do it on your own, your legs just needed to wake up, Eli did say you were out for a few weeks, naturally, your legs would be weak like your voice was. After a few seconds, you dare try again, letting go of the chair and pushing it a bit in front of you so you can use it to catch yourself again if needed. Which you did.

"Shit," you say to yourself, but it comes out more of a whisper. "Hurk?" you call out as loud as you can but it doesn't come out very loud and he doesn't come in so it's safe to assume he couldn't hear you. Well, I can still stand, you thought before getting up from the chair and throwing it at the door.

"Dude, are you okay?" Hurk said, throwing the door open, holding a gun, "whoa, sorry about calling you dude, I don't want to assume nothin' but I call everyone dude so I don't mean no disrespect or nothin'-"

"I can't walk," you interrupt him, not really caring to hear more of this odd apology when you just want to walk.

"What do you mean you can't walk?" he asks. You take a step forward and fall, he catches you and helps you back to your feet.

You make it outside with Hurk's help, he's pointing to everyone who walks by, telling you their names, what they usually do around here and how fun they are to talk to on a scale of "better to talk to Monkey King than them to actually a good listener, they're fine" as you drink a glass of water.

"Where are we?" you ask.

"We're in Whitetail Mountains," he answers.

"Where are my family?" he looks to his feet when you ask that, "I know they're dead. Eli told me. But what happened to their bodies?"

"I'm not really sure," he scratched the back of his head, going quiet. You hadn't known him long at all but hadn't known him to do that.

"Well, what about the Pennys?"

"Pennys?" he looks confused for a while.

"The cult?"

Hurk laughs, "you mean Peggies."

"Yeah, Peggies."

"They're followers of the big guy, not Monkey King, the other big guy. You know, I almost joined 'em. They had guns, food, fine ass women, why wouldn't you join?" he paused, looking at you and when you didn't say anything, he continued. "Well, I didn't join because o' all these rules you have to follow, no partyin', no fornicatin' - that means fuckin', didn't sound so fun after that so I went home."

He was going to keep talking until a radio started making noise. He excused himself and took a few steps away.

"You want to know about the cult, sweetheart?" an older lady in jeans and a pink blouse asked.

"Yes," you said.

"I'm Adelaide, you are?"

"I'm Dawn," you said, remembering Eli's name for you.

"Well, Dawn, the cult has pretty much taken over Hope County, brainwashed everyone into believing the world is going to end and only Joseph Seed can save their souls. They take you in, make you confess your sins through torture then continue to torture you either by forcing you to make that Bliss shit until you lose your damn mind or by training you to be a soldier, ain't been many survivors to tell us how it goes but we can assume it's not pleasant."

"And people join willingly?" you ask, thinking back to what Hurk said.

"They do, some completely willingly, either with or without the knowledge of what the cult does, or some join willingly but after some tough persuasion.

And some join because they're idiots like my boy," she moves her head towards Hurk.

"You're Hurk's mother?"

"I am," she smiled.

"Come with me, we got a job," he said, interrupting our conversation.

"Me?" you asked, seeing him looking at you instead of his mother.

"Yeah, don't worry, it's not a big job, just collectin' some meat then droppin' it off," he got in a truck.

"Collecting meat? From where?"

"We're going huntin', you been huntin' before?"

"I don't know."

"I can teach you."

On the way to where he wanted to hunt, he spoke about his relationship with his father, it didn't sound like a very good one. It made you wonder what yours was like, maybe you'd remember one day. Instead, you smiled and hummed when it was appropriate. He didn't give you much time to speak.

"Here we are," he said, stopping the car and handing you a gun. "There's a lot of Caribou here?"

"Caribou?"

"You'll know it when you see it, they're hard to miss."

"Why are we hunting this thing?" you ask.

"For food, we gotta eat, don't we?" he laughed as you nodded.

You walk behind Hurk, he was telling you about the parts of the gun and how to shoot it. You had a hard time following what he was saying but he assured you it would come easy when you had to actually take the shot. You walked for a while without seeing anything more than trees but eventually, Hurk stopped you.

"There, see it?" he points towards a big animal with horns.

"That's a Caribou?" he nodded. "We're meant to kill that?" he nodded again. He really was crazy.

"Won't it attack us? With those horns?"

"What? Nah, 'course not. They ain't predators, they'll just run away."

You nodded, watching as he raised his gun. Part of you wanted to stop him from shooting the animal but he was right before, you do have to eat and you saw quite a lot of people to feed at the bunker. He shot the animal, but it didn't die.

"Shit, I missed," the animal ran off and Hurk chased it, not knowing what else to do, you ran after Hurk. Eventually, the Caribou slowed down near a lake. Hurk managed to kill it there.

"You stay here, I'll go get the truck." You turned your back to the animal, not wanting to see the corpse. The lake and trees were beautiful so you focused on them until you heard tires. You expected to see Hurk but were surprised to see three men with tattoos that said Wrath, Lust and Pride on each of them.

"What are you doing here, sinner?" One of the men asked, pulling his gun out but keeping it by his side.

"Nothing," you said, backing away, "hunting."

The men laugh at you but stop once you hear more tires, before anyone can react Hurk drives over the two men in front of you. One of the men flew over the truck while the other one is trapped underneath. The third man makes it back to his car and drove away. The man under the truck was probably already dead or at least it seemed that way since he wasn't moving or making any sound. The man who flew over the truck tries to get back up but is shot by Hurk.

"Alright, let's get that thing on the back and head off," Hurk said, lifting the animal. All you can do is watch. He just killed a man; sure he had a gun but you didn't expect Hurk to be so okay with killing two people. Even if he did kill the animal, that was different, that was to eat, this was for nothing?

"Why did you kill them?" you ask.

"Well, they're Peggies," he said, getting back into the truck after loading the corpse onto it. They're Peggies, that's the only reason. Based on what you had been told, it was Joseph that was bad, the Peggies were just brainwashed but apart from that, you hadn't heard much. What Hurk did seemed worse than just not partying or training. Adelaide did mention torture as well but if Hurk could kill a man so easily, maybe they weren't telling the whole truth or maybe they just weren't any better than the Peggies?

"You gettin' in or what?" Hurk called from the driver's seat. You didn't want to but felt you had no choice; you didn't want to be left out here.

"Where are we going?"

"Chad Wolanski, he's a cool guy but can't understand him for shit though," he said. He speeds there, explaining he doesn't want to bump into any more Peggies.

"We're here!" Hurk calls out, getting out of the truck and you hear a man grumbling. Hurk lifts the Caribou out of the truck, sort of dragging it around the house. "Hey Chad, got a new member with me."

Chad mumbles something that sounds like hello.

"Hello, I'm Dawn," it felt slightly less strange to call yourself Dawn this time.

Chad and Hurk started talking while helping each other with the meat. You weren't sure how Hurk understood what Chad was saying, only one word per sentence was said loud and semi-clear enough to make out and the rest was mumbled and jumbled together. You kept yourself preoccupied with looking at the scenery. The radio was on and started playing a song about letting the water wash away your sins, it felt familiar and you easily hummed along. It made Chad mumble something angrily to Hurk.

"I don't know, I never had the radio on," Hurk answered, also raising his voice at Chad.

"Hey," Hurk called for you, "how you know that song?"

"I don't know, it just sounds familiar somehow," you answered, unsure what the problem was, neither man said anything, just mumbled something to themselves.

"Let's head back," Hurk said, saying goodbye to Chad.

Hurk was awfully quiet while driving, you reached for the radio, tired of the silence and not knowing how to fill it. Before you could turn it on a car drove in front of yours, making Hurk have to hit the brakes.

"Whoa, shit," he said, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine, you?"

"Yeah," he took his belt off and picked up his gun, "fucking Peggies. Come on."

You got out of the car with him. You stayed crouching behind your open door, Hurk moving forward. It was going well for him until, "Hurk, behind you!" You yelled but he didn't react on time, a Peggie from behind him hit him on the back of his head with their gun, knocking him out. You notice it's the Peggie who escaped after Hurk ran his friends over.

"Are you going to come with us willing, sinner, or are we going to have to make you?" the one from earlier asked you.

"I'll go," you said, standing with your hands up, scared of what they'd do if you didn't go willingly since two of them had their guns pointed toward you.

"Good choice," he said, his friends putting their guns down.

#far cry 5 #john seed #joseph seed #jacob seed #faith seed #hurk drubman jr #adelaide #eli palmer #far cry 5 fanfiction #john seed x reader

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ohanny · 8 months

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dangerous romance: main couple mania ep. 1

so i love how sailom's instroduction is this is a budgeting king, in debt eating stolen rice porridge. he has a very pre-kinn broke ass porsche-chay dynamic with his brother (?) which is very sweet and also means it won't last five minutes.

oh okay so we get this ship sailing with a wall slam and a classic "do you understand my father funds your scholarship you poor piece of trash" and alksdflkfj

i know i am supposed to see sailom as the victim but he is like full on pete-ing this. he never breaks eye contact. he is like daring kanghan to escalate with his entire body and kanghan did not just go full "since you're my class mate i will be generous and forgive you if you get down on your knees" like that is a) spicy as fuck what the hell and b) going to backfire so hard

HE DID NOT JUST BOW 90 DEGREES JUST TO SPIT ON KANGHAN'S SHOES AND WALK AWAY WITH A SMIRK

he is puzzled by both sailom's actions and by what is happening inside his uniform shorts

honestly, kanghan is the villain here but i struggle to take him seriously as the bad guy because perth a) always looks like he is about five seconds away from bursting into tears and b) has bangs that form a literal heart. no matter how nasty kanghan tries to be - and he tries a lot - the inherent bitch baby-ness just shines through.

literal heart bangs what did i say

this entire car shop sequence is just pure gold for so many reasons. 1. kanghan shows up in his business leather pants looking like he walked off the set of enhypen's blessed-cursed music video and he's driving a mercedes. like honestly, with all that talk i was expecting a lamborghini. 2. sailom's boss actually like... needing some evidence instead of just bending over backwards to please a rich client 3. sailom fucking uno reversing that credit card sneak and humiliating kanghan with the smuggest lil good boy smile and THAT is why chimon is the ultimate snake-cat like he has a face made for scheming.

i am really loving sailom because he keeps his head, is really resourceful and will not take any shit. boy does not hesitate to drag this bastard for filth every chance he gets, beating kanghan in his own game without ever stepping down from the high road.

ooh, we are meeting kanghan's family and they are... both not as trash but also as trash as i expected? like i kinda thought more mafia vibes but if laws of attraction - and real life - has taught me anything it is that politicians are garbage.

on the surface his dad seems almost a jolly good fellow but the conversation with this random girl just confirmed there is something so much darker lurking under the surface. as much as it hurts to have a hyper critical parent, having one who has seemingly completely given up on you can be just as bad.

he's basically been called stupid twice in under five minutes. someone save him.

sailom will not be fooled by a shady ass phone call and neither will he leave a friend behind. this boy will not be distracted by tits with a side of toast. he is a man on a mission.

the way i gasped when i saw this court set up and i have so many questions. do the students just have a cardboard gotham in the basement or - based by the fact we see loose boxes and a shopping cart - did kanghan build this just to prove how big his dick is to sailom ???

chimon's acting is honestly a+ and he is carrying this show. the tension! the absolute rage that is bleeding through! the way he doesn't have to go big with gestures and expressions to convey everything sailom is feeling perfectly - and not just that. you know what sailom is feeling AND you can see his brain working.

kanghan, sweetie, you might want to take a moment and reflect on your obsession with getting this boy out of his clothes and making him kneel.

not gonna lie, i kinda saw this move coming because tropes but god was it satisfying :D the reactions of kanghan and sailom's friends are hilarious (10/10 i am evil tea, he totally ships it) and then the camera pans and you can see all these bystanders just standing stock still, filming giving major horror movie vibes and aaaaaaah

side notes:

i love how his best friend is just "auto." like his parents were "we are poor, naming the kid a vehicle will be fine. no need to bring brands into it."

auto's mom is an actual queen

the teachers are so fucking infuriating but also, that is kind of a sad truth? even when it's not like RICH rich people involved. like for too many adults, it is easier to it off as kids being kids and boys being boys over having to deal with the why and the parents and the drama of it all.

i was bullied in school so like this bubble tea waterboarding makes me feel some type of way? like some of the bullying is very oof-spicy-trope but a lot of it is actually cruel and i really wouldn't recommend this show to anyone who gets triggered by stuff like school violence.

#dangerous romance #dangerous romance ep 1 #kanghan x sailom #episode recap reaction whatever #this show is gonna become a guilty pleasure i can tell #can't wait to witness kanghan's journey into being pathetic

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machiot · 2 months

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✧ nachlophobia: the fear that your deepest connections with people are ultimately pretty shallow.

obscure sorrows | also asked by @twistedisciple cw: parental neglect engage spoilers!

You don't remember exactly when it happened, but one day you looked at one of your (many) brothers and thought to yourself, "I wish you were dead."

He hadn't done anything in particular that day to inspire this feeling, either. You had simply seen him lazing around as per usual and become overwhelmed with the feeling if you had even one less brother, your mother would have been more willing to look at you. If it hadn't been for them, she would open her eyes and realize how good you were at helping her. She would hold you in her arms and say, "How glad I am for you, Marni! You've done so well! Mama is wrong for not seeing it until now! I love you so much!" You would hug her back and forgive her. She had just gotten a little distracted, is all.

You didn't realize your mother had been thinking the same thing about you.

No, worse than dead, she didn't care about what happened to you at all. When she left you behind at that church, she hadn't turned around even once. Even as you had wailed and cried, priest clutching your shoulders ("Come now, child! Lord Sombron doesn't like children who cry!"), she had not once looked back. The second she let go of your hand, you had all but ceased to exist in her mind. To the woman who had carried you in her womb for nine months, you were as easily forgotten as yesterday's garbage.

But it's okay! You have a new family now and they're better than your old family ever was!

Zephia is better than your old mom in every way. She praises you and knows how to make the best use of your talents. You're stronger than other people and she knows it. You'll do anything if it means she'll tell you that you did a good job and she always does.

Griss and Mauvier are kind of like your older brothers. Mauvier is a bit of a stick in the mud and you don't really get Griss, but they're still way better than your old brothers. They aren't nearly as useless as your brothers and although you complain, you really don't mind being sent on missions with them. What's a little bickering between siblings, right?

The Four Hounds are a family.

Even if Mauvier gets kicked out for helping the Divine Dragon, didn't you always say you wanted one less brother, anyway? He was always a bore, so it's fine. You don't need him in your family. Your family can just be you, Griss, and Zephia.

You like being a Hound. You love having a family. Zephia welcomes you back with open arms even when you hesitate. You don't always get along, but that's okay, too. You have each other and that's what matters.

How, then, are you supposed to look at someone so desperately reaching for her own family and tear her hand away?

She isn't part of your family, much less someone you'd call your friend. You honestly don't even like her that much. You've even called her boring to her face before. But after hearing about her life, after seeing your own yearning reflected in her, isn't it just too cruel to rip away that happiness from her?

It is not a Hound's place to question their master, merely wag their tail and roll over on command, but a treasonous question passes your lips anyway: "Doesn't Lady Veyle deserve a family, too?"

(Even if you never said it out loud, did your mother also sense you were thinking such thoughts? Is that why she decided to get rid of you? If you hadn't gotten greedy, would she have been content to just ignore you within her home?)

How quickly you lose your place in this family. You must have a real talent for this, considering this is the second time it's happened to you.

Your "mother" leaves you to bleed out on the floor. She'll probably forget about you soon, just like last time.

Your "brother" stands back and lets it happen. You always did resent your brothers for never helping out.

And the only person who cradles your body as it goes cold is the very person you had ousted from your flimsy excuse of a family only minutes prior.

#🎀 drabbles #engage spoilers //#parental neglect cw //#//tossing me a brick and i throw it back twice as fast

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goddesspharo · 4 months

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Sugar's pregnancy cravings are batshit; luckily, crazy food provides her Bear fam with a perfect distraction from the equally insane task of living life.

[Send me the first sentence and a pairing and I'll write the next five.]

Sugar's pregnancy cravings are batshit, but since everyone else is either an experimental chef or a fucking Fak, only Richie seems to be concerned that there might be a serious nutritional deficiency causing them. Honestly, if Sugar hadn't shown him the sonogram last week when he found her crying in the bathroom over impending motherhood ("Natalie, if I can parent a kid without completely fucking her up, you're going to make it so that your kid overcomes Pete's genes and joins Mensa!"), Richie would've driven her to the hospital to get checked for pica right now in the middle of Sugar's tirade about how far up the ass Richie will have to take it from the health inspector if he tries to explain that they didn't hire professionals because "the mold wasn't that black or moldy."

Richie's not trying to judge a pregnant woman's right to eat whatever she wants. Tiff consumed so many bananas when she was pregnant with Eva that he's still mad at himself for not buying stock in Chiquita. She'd have them sliced with her morning oatmeal, baked into bread as a post-prenatal yoga snack, smashed into PB&B sandwiches for lunch, frozen and dipped in chocolate the weekend the AC crapped out while Fak was in Philly for a Fucking Fak Family Reunion, and once even flambéed when Richie made forgive me for missing the anatomy scan because Mikey was on a bender and about to hurl himself off the State Street Bridge apology dessert. At one point, Richie had to google if banana toxicity was a thing and then kept worrying even after Google said that it wasn't.

But there's a difference between eating tons of fruit and whatever the hell is happening with Sugar's taste buds right now. Richie decides that Carmy and Sydney are using her cravings to soft launch their chaos menu once Syd puts down a plate of pickled zucchini coated in Marcus' leftover birthday cake batter, deep fried in ghee, and dusted with confectioners' sugar.

"Bet that would taste so good dipped in Smuckers ice cream topping," Fak suggests because he doesn't need to be pregnant to have the palate of a garbage compactor.

"Please don't eat that with that," Richie begs when Natalie trades Fak a bottle of Pepto for the jar of fudge he just took out of the microwave.

"Fuck off, Richie," Sugar snaps with a glare that makes it clear that she's not above murdering him and pinning it on pregnancy hormones. "I'm growing a human being inside me!"

Debatable, he wants to say because he's not entirely sure that they're in Juno instead of Alien, but Richie bites his tongue because he really doesn't want to have to put his last twenty-dollar bill in the asshole jar again.

#ask me things #i lied when i said five sentences #the bear #population of one on this island of extremely niche interests #*#earnmysong

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ouatsnark · 1 year

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CORRECTION! Regina got the Walmart villain-to-hero Redemption Story

Welcome to another round of “what the hell did that Regina apologist just say?” where I go over a fan submitted biased piece of drivel and rip it point by point! And yes, I do know it’s fan submitted and is indeed from an Evil Regal as I had a shouting match with them on twitter.

I think my favorite part is where this fan says Regina was noble for not regretting anything because of Henry. That is some serious code for “everyone else’s lives don’t matter when it comes to a hot female character that committed mass murder, rape and child abuse!” Well done!

Also I apologize for how many times I use “child abuse” and “rape” and “mass murder”. But, hey, this is what Once Upon a Time gave us! It’s not my fault the villain rapist stans refuse to acknowledge that their favorites are just utter garbage.

In my opinion, their argument boils down to: Despite Regina & Hook both witnessing deaths of loved ones and committing the same acts of evil, the show explored Regina's evil past more thoroughly than Hook’s but Regina’s reasons for turning evil made more sense than Hook’s. And ultimately Regina’s redemption means more because she reached the point of no return multiple times but a love for a child made her fight harder to be a better person and look forward to a promising future. A parent-child love is the only way for a villain to find a valid redemption because unconditional love only exists between parent-child.

But feel free to read the entire post to see for yourself: Killian Jones was a Walmart version of Regina Mills

My Argument: Yes, Regina & Hook share similarities but only Killian Jones received a complete redemption. A parent-child love is not the only way to show a villain’s change of heart since we very much saw a true change in Killian Jones. We also saw that Killian’s love for Emma was unconditional. True love is unconditional love and the show gives us several true love couples whose love for each other was in fact unconditional. OUAT gave us two true love tests that prove Emma & Killian are true love and goes further by deliberately paralleling them with Snowing & The Princess Bride. Killian also shows unconditional love for Emma by how he handles finding out Neal is alive and stepping aside to give Henry a chance at having his parents together. He also exhibits unconditional love by forgiving Emma for turning him into the dark one and accepting her reasons for doing so. He chose to always see the best in her and her in him and that is the foundation of an unconditional love. So the premise that redemption can only happen through parent-child love is a false one and clearly done as a way to reject Killian’s redemption status.

Never mind that Killian Jones did find his path to redemption through the love of a child: Henry. His relationship with Henry was essential in becoming the man he wanted to be since it showed how much Killian had grown from the vengeful pirate Baelfire rejected to the more humble man teaching Henry how to sail. Furthermore, Killian Jones’ redemption is complete and far more relevant because he: owned his mistakes, faced victims, showed remorse, faced consequences for his actions, demonstrated a change of heart and sacrificed his life to rid the world of the darkness forever.

Whereas Regina did not face any victims, blamed others for her actions, did not sacrifice her life (in fact she let Snowing sacrifice for her), never came clean about Graham & Marian’s murders and always whined about her own happiness. She also never had a change of heart as we hear her say she hates doing good (5x23) and even after her redemption she continued to behave like she was better than others by constantly putting them down, dismissing their pain and ignoring their concerns. Also, we should reject the idea of Regina’s redemption happened because of her love for Henry due to the fact that she emotionally abused him by putting her curse and her needs before his welfare and her abuse of him was never addressed but simply brushed away. A fictional character can’t have redemption through someone they abused when that abuse is not acknowledged. That’s not character growth its just a retcon. Regina was retconned into a “good” mother in S3.

Regina vs Killian: Becoming a Villain

Blog Quote: “Despite these similarities, the show explored Regina's evil past more thoroughly than Hook’s”

Basically says Regina’s reasons for turning evil made more sense than Killian’s.

Did it really though? Yes, Regina’s past was tied into the main characters so of course the show “explored” or rather spent more time on her past than Killian’s. Everything she did was to take down Snow and she hurt many other people on that journey. That was pretty much the driving plot on why Emma became the savior.

But lets break the down differences:

Regina lived a privileged life as a princess (head canons of Cora abusing her during childhood is not supported by canon and thereby irrelevant here) who never had to want for anything. She even had a doting father who may have been a pacifist but he at least loved her.

Killian Jones was abandoned by his father who sold him into slavery when he was just a child. That is in fact child abuse. Neglect and abandonment. He was abandoned and left to face whatever cruelty at the hands of slavers. He was raised by them doing back breaking labor. Can you for a moment imagine what that life must have been like for a child?

Their backgrounds could not be anymore different. Which one do you think would be more likely to choose a dark path if we take only canon into consideration? Answer: Killian Jones since his childhood was filled with abuse, abandonment and betrayal. He’d only known evil for so long. Note: this should not be used as a generalization because criminals come from all kinds of backgrounds but statistically speaking odds were not in Killian’s favor.

Blog Quote: They both committed similar acts of evil…

Imagine thinking Killian Jones’ crimes were anywhere near the same level as Regina’s? Look how black Regina’s heart is. What did she do over the course of the series that could have possibly diminished that evil? Nothing. She did NOTHING except do good things EXPECTING to get her happy ending. Then admits in Season 5 that she hated doing it. That is more of an act of an anti-hero than a hero. Which you could argue she is an anti-hero.

So what similar acts of evil do Killian and Regina share?

Each killed one of Emma’s grandfathers

Their own fathers

Abused Belle

Murdered people

Ok so maybe there is some truth to that statement. However.

Regina is the mass murderer.

Regina is the rapist.

Regina is the child abuser and child murderer.

Regina essentially magically raped an entire kingdom in both mind and body. Her curse separated families and had people sleeping with others they wouldn’t have slept with if not for her curse. Basically, Regina’s curse removed their ability to consent much like a date rape drug which is why we say she raped Graham even in Storybrooke and her attempt to seduce David was actually an attempted sexual assault. Her curse was vile. It also gave people memories of two separate lives and the second life was not a happy one!

Jefferson: Then all we’ll do is both sit. Stuck. Two lives in our heads, cursed worse than ever. Two lives, forever at odds. Double the pain, double the suffering.

Most of the people in Storybrooke wanted to flee the bad memories the curse created. And because they were fearful of Regina. But the Evil Queen stans seem to overlook the mental anguish this curse caused people. They now have two lives in their heads and the life Regina forced them to lead is the one life they’re really ashamed of. But that life is now a part of them whether they like it or not.

So Regina filled up her heart with plenty of dark deeds, some so heinous that there really can’t be forgiveness. So trying to put Regina on the same level as Killian is just absurd and erases her more heinous crimes. While Killian Jones should arguably get life in prison… Regina Mills should have faced a firing squad or possibly even burned at the stake.

In short I believe: Killian becoming a villain makes a lot more sense and at least his revenge focused on the root causes for his misery whereas Regina decided to make an innocent child suffer. Regina also decided to take on the very life her mother was supposedly forcing her to take.

Regina vs Killian: a Path to Redemption

Blog Quote: “they both had similar moments of bravery...”

CHANEL VS WALMART Killian stepped up to the plate. Regina stepped back.

I am not going to say that Regina was never brave or didn’t have her moments. But. Come on guys. This was HER MOMENT to prove she was sorry for everything she’d put Snow and her kingdom through and she did not take it!

And lets remember that they had no idea what the serum Evil Queen was planning. For all they knew she was going to kill the Charmings on the spot. Therefore, this moment here knocks about 10 checks off Regina’s bravery/hero column. Especially since she uses her own heart later to defend Zelena against her more evil half.

I have heard others argue before “but Regina had become good by then and already made things right with Snowing and her life was worth more than Snowing’s because of Henry!” However, that’s just nonsense. Regina doesn’t even regret what she did to Snowing nor has she done anything to make up for the horrific things she did to them. She joined their side to get her happy ending not because she was sorry for what she did to them. Also, Snowing had Baby Neal. I guess Henry is more important than Baby Neal? Henry would still have Emma, his real mother, were he to lose Regina, the mother that abused him for 10+ years. And Regina needed to make a sacrifice for her victims (Snowing) and for the greater good (the town) in order to complete a redemption.

Meanwhile, Killian Jones actually sacrifices his life to save them all from the Dark Ones then goes on to be tortured and nearly throne into the River of Lost Souls because he refuses to betray them. Even refuses to betray Gold! This alone adds about 20 checks to his bravery/hero column!

I have heard people say “but this was also cleaning up his mess”! I’m sorry did I misunderstand the part where he said he did not want to become a dark one? I am pretty sure he said he didn’t want to live if it meant becoming a dark one. So I am pretty much going to lay the blame at the feet of the darkness because the darkness was pushing its own agenda. The dark ones were the ones manipulating and using him so they could return. Then Killian had found the strength to break free from their hold and with Emma’s help end the darkness forever. Or would have if not for Gold. So no, this wasn’t his mess. He gave his life to end the mess!

Now a Regina Apologist might say “but Regina was going to sacrifice herself in season 2!”

If Regina didn’t sacrifice herself to stop the kill switch then Henry would die and at that point her perceived happy ending would be gone anyway. Her curse was broken and now the child she illegally adopted and abused was in peril thanks to her actions. This might have been a brave moment but it didn’t happen because she had a change of heart. It was because her plans were thwarted and there wasn’t an alternative solution.

“but she begs to be remembered as Regina and not the evil queen!” - Regina apologists

So? She didn’t want the kid she illegally adopted and abused to see her as the monster she was. It doesn’t mean she wasn’t a monster. It doesn’t mean that moments later she would have let them all die if given the chance.

And just to be fair, I do not count Rumple giving his heart to Fook and destroying Fumple an act of heroism either. Rumple had put Henry in jeopardy for his quest to die and join Belle in the afterlife. We know everything Rumple has ever done, aside from kill his own father, has been an act of selfishness. Therefore, it is my opinion based on his past actions, that if Belle had been alive then it wouldn’t have happened.

Therefore, Killian’s bravery in Season 5 far outweighs anything Regina ever did. And Rumple cancelled out his own act of heroism in S3 by pulling all the crap he did afterwards. All hail the real Once Upon a Time Villain to Hero: Killian Jones!

Blog Quote:: “He was not as bad as Regina - not because she was eviler than him - but because he never got the chance.“

But didn’t this blogger just get done saying their crimes were similar? Never mind the idiocy of this. Imagine applying this to anything else?

“We can’t call this murderer more evil than this violent criminal because this violent criminal just didn’t get the chance to kill anyone like that murderer!” SAY WHAT? You judge them by what they’ve done not on “what they could have done”. Goodness! I swear where do Evil Regals pull this bullshit from?

Killian was 200-300 years old. I think he’d have found “the time” to be “eviler” if he really was. But he wasn’t. We’ve only witnessed a handful of Killian’s murders and some we haven’t seen he openly admits to. If the show wanted us to believe he was as evil as Regina and Rumple then his heart would have been as black as theirs.

Regina was in her late 40’s (https://oncepodcast.com/forums/topic/final-timeline-and-ages/) when the curse broke and her death tole rivaled Rumple’s who is also somewhere between 200-300 years old (Hades, S5). Regina had less time but did more evil on a far grander scale than Killian did in all 300 years of his existence. That alone makes her more evil.

So a little recap: Yes, they both killed their fathers. Yes, they both murdered one of Emma’s grandparents. Yes, their evil deeds were spurred by revenge. If you look at just the surface then the premise that Killian Jones is a male version of Regina Mills may be accurate. But if you look a little further you see there are not only significant differences but that Killian Jones comes out looking a hell of a lot better with a more complete character evolution.

Killian’s Change vs Regina’s

As I briefly mentioned in my opening, this is where the blogger pulls the “child-parent love is the only path to redemption” nonsense. Now, this blogger isn’t the first, or maybe they were the first, but I have heard this sentiment not only from Evil Regals but from the KnightRook fandom as well. Since they believe that Wish Hook abandoning his daughter to go get drunk and plot murder and rape (and none of that ever being addressed) is good enough to make him father of the year and claim his five second redemption complete.

It’s honestly 100% completely false.

The only things you need for a character redemption are:

Taking responsibility for your actions without blaming others

apologizing to your victim

showing a change of heart

learning from your mistakes

remedy the situation if possible

and in the terms of a fictional world where we’re talking about magic, murder and other heinous crimes the villain MUST:

Make a sacrifice for the greater good. That means something beyond the character’s immediate loved ones or something that would benefit them.

All of this can happen without the love of a child. Though I will say, love of some kind usually plays a part.

So between Regina and Killian, which one checked off all or most of this list? Killian Jones.

1. Taking Responsibility for your actions without blaming others

Regina blamed everyone else but herself! In fact, the evil queen becomes a separate entity to blame so Regina can become innocent of all wrong doings and get a happy ending. She may have admitted to “torture and unspeakable things” but the times she outright blames others for her actions without owning up outweighs maybe the two times she mentions it. Especially since when she mentions her deeds its when she’s crying about her happy ending. So, no, I am sorry, Regina never owned her mistakes, never had a moment where she expressed deep regret for her victims and never came to a realization that she really doesn’t deserve anything.

There isn’t a single time throughout the course of this show where Killian blames someone else for what he has done. He owned up to his part in taking Milah away from Rumple and their son. Blames himself for what Gold had him do. He has come clean about where his rings come from. It took him a moment to face his demons but he did come to the realization that he needed to face David. There was the phone call to Emma in s4. He doesn’t even blame Emma for his weakness at being unable to fight the darkness at first. He doesn’t even blame the darkness but his own weakness! There are times he might have been ashamed which is human but he never blames his deeds as if someone else was responsible.

Killian: 1

Regina: 0

2. Apologizing to your Victim

Killian Jones apologized to Ariel, Ursula, Belle, David, and Emma.

Regina’s serum half apologized to Snow but that was after some of the evil had been drained from her heart. And no, I do not count the time Regina apologized to Belle to get Belle to do something for her.

Killian: 2 Regina: 0

3. Remedy the situation

Killian Jones made things right with Ursula and then stood by Belle when she wanted refuge from Rumple. He dedicated time to help saving the fairies after he fell victim to Gold (something he blames himself for and not Gold). He also tried to make things right with Neal though Neal acted like a self-righteous ass just like his father. Sorry pal but he who sends underage girlfriend to jail for your crimes then yells at her when she didn’t immediately tell you you had a son puts you on my “asshole” list! Killian’s other victims were long since gone but we at least know he’d make amends if he could.

Regina still owns a whole vault full of hearts and I am going to once again say she let the Charmings sacrifice for her in S6! Did she ever even do anything for Maleficent? I don’t think she did! And she certainly never helped Belle. Maybe you could count the Season 3 curse she casts but really she had no other choice so I can’t in good conscious give that one to her. Nor the thing at the well in S2 since that was Henry’s doing. Really what did she remedy that wasn’t for her own personal gain?

Killian: 3 Regina: 0

4. Showing a change of heart

We have Killian Jones literally taking pages out of Emma’s book and a whole episode of him talking David out of revenge. He becomes a Dark One with all of this power yet he gives it up and never seeks it again. He is tortured in the Underworld and refuses to even write the name of his life long enemy. Gone are his wise cracks, sexual innuendo and much of his bravado. Past S4a we see a much more humble Killian Jones that is reluctant to even call himself a hero.

Regina does stop murdering people but I can’t give her this one either. Why you might ask? She says so herself that she hates doing good which to me means she has not had a true change of heart. She remains verbally abusive and looks down on others. She may no longer murder you if you tick her off but she does so figuratively with her words and actions.

Killian: 4 Regina: 0

5. Learning from your Mistakes

I think Killian shows that he has with the way he helps Emma and David. When Emma is angry with her parents over keeping the past from her, Killian is able to approach Emma in a way that portrays his familiarity with what they are feeling and knowing how to talk to Emma. Then you have his interactions with David in the S6 episode where David wants revenge on his father. Killian knows where seeking revenge leads you. And we know that he has learned enough to be very uncomfortable about keeping all of this from Emma.

Regina, Regina, Regina. Let me point right to Season 7 when she teaches Ivy dark magic and gives her mother’s evil book to Robyn. Its like she has literally learned nothing. But Regina really hasn’t had to learn from her mistakes because all of her mistakes were either erased (her abuse of Henry) or were blamed on others (Rumple, Snow, the book and the evil queen)

Killian: 5 Regina: 0

6. Making a Sacrifice for the Greater Good

Only Killian Jones sacrificed his life and was tortured to save everyone and the town by ending the darkness forever.

Killian: Hits every point. Regina: fell way behind.

Blog Quote: “Eventually, Regina became motivated to redeem herself because she wanted to. Even if she had nothing, she would still try to do the right thing. “

Why did she want to though? It wasn’t to “do the right thing”. She hated doing the right thing. Her motivation was to keep Henry and to get a happy ending. The moment she sent her lover and his “wife” across the town line she sought out to get what she felt she deserved: her story re-written. She didn’t even pause to consider that she in fact didn’t deserve that at all. And her goal was never to become a better person. It was not to make things right with her victims. It was for herself. This is evident because she keeps her vault of hearts and continues to treat all of the other characters as lesser than her. The character has no growth! Except to “stop murdering”. That was it!

Aside from sending the Hoods across the town line, I can’t think of another moment Regina “tried to do good even when she had nothing”? This blog gave no instances. Does the blogger mean at the town line in S3? When Regina had to or be cursed herself? Don’t care! When else? She didn’t do it when the Charmings were facing her serum half. She didn’t do the right thing in S4 when she was treating Emma like crap and blaming Emma for what she herself caused. So I am at a loss here.

Blog Quote: “we learned that Regina had other reasons for her villainy. One reason for Regina's evil actions developed after she became evil. The bigger villain Regina became, the more hopeless she felt.”

Honestly when? All of this is stated without an ounce of proof. Regina’s only motive was to kill Snow, destroy lives & get her own HEA. That’s it. Regina didn’t want to change. Not until all she had left was Henry and Henry rejected her. Regina straight out denied her evil past was her fault.

DEBUNKING RANDOM TALKING POINTS

aka stuff that isn’t backed up by any kind of evidence whatsoever that I found sprinkled through this article.

EXCUSING CHILD ABUSE

Blog quote: "Furthermore, Regina never regretted the terrible things she did, but for a unique, complex reason. She could not regret anything because she learned how to love again when she adopted her son, Henry."

That’s got the be the biggest puke worthy Regina Exemption Clause ever & it’s not what she said or showed.

Blog Quote: “He is a vital key component to Regina's complexity, demonstrating the lengths mothers go for their children.”

Sooo gaslighting them, isolating them & trying to murder their child’s loved ones is great lengths and a great showing of love? Really? That’s what we’re going with?

Using Fanon to excuse Regina

Blog Quote: “Regina's abuse rounded out her character & helped us understand her more. With Killian, the show writers may as well have never said anything because it barely made a difference.“

Killian was a CHILD SLAVE. Regina grew up a privileged princess. Did Cora abuse 26ish old Regina? Yes. Does that excuse what she became? No. Does that mean she was more developed? No. It doesn't. Regina is in fact not well rounded at all because we're simply told she is redeemed without her ever having to do anything to earn that redemption.

USING ALLEGED POPULARITY AS A MEASURING TOOL

Blog Quote: Regina was the highlight of OUAT. Many viewers and critics say that she carried the show on her back

So because some fan wrote some biased drivel on a fan submitted TV “news” site… it’s a fact? Articles from Screen Rant do not reflect the general audience.

Let’s follow with this fact: Regina had the most screen time from S4-S7ep12. The show was cancelled that first half of Season 7. Do the math.

If Regina carried it then she’s responsible for those numbers and could not keep the show afloat once CaptainSwan and Snowing were gone. The show FAILED with her as a lead.

Now maybe if Regina had left and CaptainSwan had stayed the same thing would have happened. But you can’t point to fan biased articles and loud obnoxious twitter users as being representative of live audience views. Did you poll the audience? I think not.

The fact is that CaptainSwan is still being talked about today. Long after the show has ended there are still articles being generated about Emma Swan and Killian Jones both separately and together. Most of these are also fan generated but some aren’t. It is my belief judging by the content we see being produced that general audiences tend to gravitate more towards real heroes like Emma Swan, good hearted pirates like Killian Jones and love stories like CaptainSwan that show how far two people are willing to go for each other. Emma Swan and Killian Jones were a much bigger draw for your average audience viewer than Regina who spent most of the time crying about her own happiness (which is disgusting when you think about the magnitudes of her crimes).

ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.

Blog Quote: He descended into darkness after watching Rumplestiltskin crush Milah's -- his true love -- heart

I already touched on his descent into darkness but I just had to come back to this glaring error.

I am sorry I missed the part where the show stated Milah was Killian’s true love? Or even Rumple’s?

Daniel wasn’t Regina’s either.

And this right here is probably why you can throw all of their opinions here into the trash. You can’t get that one thing right so what else did you get wrong?

WHO STRUGGLED THE MOSTEST!???

Blog quote: “We never saw him struggle with his choices.”

Yes, yes we did. Season 4 was an entire struggle for him. He also showed regret when he slipped (the phone call to Emma, him trying to free the fairies, his shame over not helping Ariel, regret over keeping the scissors in s6, shame over how he handled finding out he killed David’s father).

When did Regina struggle? Hell, she’d have re-killed Marian if she thought she could’ve gotten away with it! Whenever Regina does something wrong something or someone else always gets the blame for it.

BELIEVABLE? LIKABLE?

Blog Quote: “Regina Mills is a far more believable character than Killian Jones could ever be.“

She is 100% unlikable. She wasn’t believable as a redeemed hero. She never answered for Graham & continued to be a jerk…

This piece spends a whole lot of time on how quickly Killian & Emma fell in love… but makes no mention how fast the Charmings forgave the woman that ruined their lives? And all she had to do to earn that forgiveness was admit she’s a sociopath that didn’t regret anything! How is that believable? It isn't.

GET A NEW ARGUMENT ALREADY THIS ONE HAS BEEN DEBUNKED!

Blog Quote: “Killian admitted that he purposely intoxicates women to sleep with them.”

THAT WAS NEVER SAID! People need to stop inserting words into that moment. Emma didn’t take his line to mean he was a rapist. She didn’t even flinch. Furthermore, drinking with women isn’t a crime!

TOXIC FRIENDSHIP IS THE BESTEST!

Blog Quote: “Hook and Emma would have been a far more satisfying relationship if they had developed their friendship in between, the way Emma and Regina had.”

What friendship? Regina treated Emma like crap! And did this person miss all of S3? Emma calling Killian for help, their adventure to the past … etc. etc.

KILLIAN'S REDEMPTION DOES NOT COUNT BECAUSE IT WAS SUPPOSE TO BE ABOUT EMMA

The above occurred during the twitter conversation I had with the person who wrote the hit piece on Killian.

So because you think an arc was supposed to be about Emma you think you can just toss what happened aside? It doesn’t work like that. Whether you like what happened or not it still happened. And that right there is another prime example of why this piece is biased. You can’t toss out facts simply because you don’t like them then write some nonsense and say its all fact based. It clearly isn’t!

After saying everything I’ve said above I leave you with this final thought:

Between Regina and Killian, Killian was the only one to receive a complete redemption arc and possibly the only one that could since Regina’s crimes were beyond heinous. So the fact that the show tried to say she is redeemed without showing her redemption actually makes her the Walmart version of a villain to hero. Why is that? They thought she was too popular to kill off and killing her off was the only way for an unrepentant child abusing mass murdering rapist that never showed remorse or apologized and continued to be a bully gets any kind of redemption. She had to die for the greater good. But she didn’t.

#cs hate debunked #anti swanqueen #anti regina mills #killian jones #you come for killian jones i come for you #what the hell did that regina apologist just say

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hournites · 1 year

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Sick

Stargirl 3x12 reaction fic

~.~

“Maybe you should keep it on,” Yolanda had said, and then they had realized that Sylvester, for whatever reason, had manipulated Rick to keep it on. Worse, her mom was on a night shift in the middle of a surgery. Beth put her hand on Rick’s jittering knee when more tears squeezed out from the corners of his eyes. “Even if it stays on, it’s still harming him,” Beth said. She asked Yolanda to grab her bag and help her put her goggles on, not wanting to pull her hand away when Rick gripped onto it like a lifeline.

He said, “I don’t want this anymore.” His voice cracked through his words. He looks up at her, pleading, almost helpless. Beth knew he wasn’t talking about the pain, as much as he was suffering. It was the effect that the hourglass had on his decision-making, his mood. His behaviour. He was sick of it. Beth didn’t even need to hear him say so to see. It was the way he would yank on the chain like a yolked animal.

Mrs Whitmore draped her arm over Rick’s shoulder. “We know, sweetheart.”

Beth scanned Rick under her diagnostic mode and frowned, biting on her lip. “Can we try taking it off, just so we can see?”

Rick’s hand began to tremble around the base, sucking in a huge breath which immediately turned into a gag as he lifted it over his head.

“Court!” Barbara yelped. “Get a bucket!”

Yolanda and Beth jumped back at the way he crumpled to the floor, clutching his head in agony. Courtney had only just made it back, leaping over the coffee table with the plastic-lined garbage bin that she nabbed, shoving it under his chin. Beth dropped to her knees, supporting Rick’s sweat-soaked head by firmly holding onto his neck as he wretched.

“Put it back on!” she urged.

“What if we wait it out?” Courtney asked, whipping her head back and forth between Rick and her mom. “Maybe it’ll pass? Like a panic attack or something?”

“You think that’s a panic attack?” Yolanda cried. “He’s throwing up his entire guts!”

Rick screamed, his body convulsing from the withdrawal. He begged them to let him keep going, but Barbara had to haul him back onto the couch where he could only crawl into a ball and shake. Tears streamed down Beth’s cheeks as the stats from her goggles informed what was happening to him. His stomach, his brain, even his chest had edema. She grabbed the hourglass from his loosened grip and put it back around his neck. The girls watched, holding their breaths as the intensity of the attack tapered down, leaving Rick gasping for air.

“Oh, Rick,” Beth whispered, gutted at the way he cried. She swapped seats with Courtney on the couch, pulling Rick up to usher him into her arms to comfort him. He fell into her, face buried into the crook of her neck as he sobbed.

“Come girls. Let’s get him some pain killers and wait ten minutes. Then try again.” Barbara didn’t sound very happy about it, but they didn’t have many other options. Courtney and Yolanda’s mouths both stayed in grim lines, turning to leave Beth alone with him.

“Beth, I’m sorry,” Rick gasped, holding her tightly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Rick,” she whispered softly. “I forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t. I didn’t answer your calls. I was scared you hated me. Your parents…”

“Nobody hates you,” Beth said. She pulled back so that Rick could see her through his sick eyes. She brushed his hair back. “You are family. We love you.” She paused. “...I love you.”

“Beth, it hurts.”

She swallowed down hard, fighting more tears. “I know,” she said, and brought him closer to her again. “If I could make the pain go away, I would.”

Yolanda returned with the medicine and they helped Rick swallow it down. Barbara returned with a fresh bucket and a towel for Beth to use. She picked it up and dabbed at Rick’s forehead.

“You’re really good at that.” Courtney shrugged. “I kinda feel sick just from watching him.”

Beth turned her head over her shoulder. “I guess this is good practice for becoming team medic?”

“Yeah,” Rick mumbled weakly, head tilted back against the couch with his eyes closed. “I feel safe with you.”

Beth gave him a sad smile. “I’m glad.”

“Alright,” Barbara said with a sigh. “Let’s try it again.”

#stargirl #stargirl spoilers #s3 #hournite #rick tyler #beth chapel #yolanda montez #courtney whitmore #barbara whitmore #3x12 #hn fic #angst

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system-of-a-feather · 4 months

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(CW: Vent, CSA, grooming, blind trust / faith / following, physical abuse mention)

Honestly, some talk about our oldest sister, but I find it very very fucking satisfying to see how poorly her relationship with the rest of the family tanked the moment I realized the damage she did to us and refused to serve her anymore. Among many other things - much more nefarious and fucked up - she raised us to be her personal attack dog and to blindly defend her regardless and I kid you not, growing up - when she was there, when she WASNT there, when she was miles away and not doing herself any services - I spoke for and adovcated for and kept secrets for her to keep her image in our family clean, to counter the THREE times she had been disowned by our parents, to make sure our parents kept an open door for her. She did nothing to keep in good graces with the family other than sometimes playing nice with them but deadass told me the only reason she came to any of the parties was to be with me.

Which cute, wonderful and all, but the bitch fucking wanted that support from our family and its been like what? Two years or so? Since we cut ties with her? Stopped reporting our life to her every two weeks? Stopped keeping secrets of shit she did and said to keep her image clean? Stopped coming up with reasons and excuses for her behavior?

And what now? Our parents, who are the ever "good parents" tolerate her - barely and disgruntled? My middle sister acknowledges her as a right wing Amazon-working transphobic and possibly homophobic republican when my sister is MORE radical left in a number of areas than we are and what? She's now avoiding me and the family for holidays which makes our middle sister - who has BPD - take that as a massive slight and worsens that relationship? Increases the distance between her and the parents?

Good man. Good, stay away.

You aren't welcome here and I'm so fucking glad shes not coming that I was not even sardonic when my mom told me she actually decided to double back and just not come again.

Honestly, I don't have to wish her ill because honestly, she makes her own life horrible and ruins her relationships without me anyways and its been a never ending sense of schadenfreude to watch her ruin her own shit.

I also will say, I don't think I am over the sheer level of disrespect and realization as to how little respect and value she held to me when after YEARS and YEARS of fighting our family (both physically and verbally) for her, after being a blind loyal fucking dog to her for years, after being OK with all the garbage she exposed us to, handed us off to, and hurt us - she decided that she drew the line at me *checks notes* saying I need space for one holiday because *check notes* her husband who is / was ten years older than me when I was a minor was sending me *checks notes* a shit ton of pornography games when *checks notes* I was already a known grooming / CSA survivor that *checks notes* she at least enable and possibly *checks notes* facilitated.

Apparently, being her ride or die who blindly and faithfully believed anything she told us (even to the point of believing we had 2D vision and had special vision at age 14-16), APPARENTLY she wasn't sure if she would be able to still walk with me if I *checks notes* stated that I needed emotional space because I was processing CSA trauma and her husband - while not the main perpetrator - was enough of a part of that to the point it made me extremely uncomfortable.

I had literally made the decisions that I was aware she played a large role in that and made the decision that I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of my thousands of excuses and contexts that I used to get her out of shit with our parents, and say I would forgive her and that I understood despite her never ONCE apologizing. I was completely overlooking it and letting it fly for her role in it, all I needed was for ONE holiday that her creepy fucking weeb ass husband maybe DIDNT talk to me beyond basic pleasantries. And *that* was too much.

I'm honestly kind of thankful she drew that line (and then proceeded to DARVO and victim blame me) cause I really don't know if I could have ever taken the XIV part of my brain seriously about how much he hated her and how toxic she was because at the time, most of our system saw her as our only ally growing up.

XIV won that, and he was absolutely fucking right about her and well damn man, bless XIV being right.

But anyways, I had mentioned her in terms of Christmas and remembered its like the second anniversary of her completely being a total bitch about shit and TOTALLY dropping the ball on her blindly loyal attack dog and getting the fuck bit out of her.

Fucking angry bless hallelujah a fucking bitch ate shit.

Best thing she ever did was be such an idiot it made me realize she was a fucking toxic parasite that needed me far far far far far more than I need her.

Cause fuck her man. She can fucking sit in her castle of shit and cry about it as if she didn't build it herself.

#alter: fei #<- fused vent #alter: riku #alter: xiv #vent #oldest sister #christmas vent #csa tw #grooming tw #physical abuse tw

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chalkrevelations · 7 months

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OK, week four of 15 Minutes with KPTS, and this one will close us out of the first episode as we watch the jaws of the trap slowly closing on Porsche before they snap shut. The first thing we see is him arriving home – disheveled, bruised and breathless after his watery escape from Kinn, and you know, I just thought about the fact that not only does he get out of those rope bonds perfectly well in this episode, but he also manages to swim to safety, despite how he’ll struggle after he’s pushed into the pool for bodyguard training once he’s in the belly of the beast.

Anyway, Porsche arrives home, it’s full night outside, so apparently it took him a while to get home and he’s been gone a full 24 hours, the house is trashed, and Chay’s trying to clean things up. Porsche is all “WHAT DID KINN’S GOONS DO?” because he knows this is some Theerapanyakul bullshit, but Chay’s all “????” and we find out that Arthee’s creditors are kicking the shit of him in an alley as they speak (hmm, that’s some convenient timing). Porsche allows himself to be distracted by Chai jingling the keys, but with the benefit of re-watch hindsight, we know that this is actually some Theerapanyakul bullshit, which means that conveniently, Porsche is facing paying off $2 million baht in additional debt or else he (and Arthee, although Porsche is pretty done with him, at this point) end up dead. Tomorrow. And now Porsche needs a job that’s going to pay him big money. Immediately. How convenient for someone.

Once Chai and his goons are gone, Porsche yells at Arthee to stop bullshitting him (hah, like that’s going to happen) and to go away, despite the fact that Arthee apologizes and begs for forgiveness and never once mentions that this is Theerapanyakul bullshit, which he could maybe mention if he was serious about being sorry and wanting forgiveness, but there’s not a peep about any of the big reveals we’re gonna get, about 13 episodes from now.

Back at the trashed house, Chay feeds Porsche leftover pizza, they have a heart-to-heart, and Chay picks up the photo of the two of them that’s been knocked over and battered and bent; he doesn’t realize it’s a metaphor for how their relationship is going to go from here on out. We learn further about how Porsche has been overly-parentalized by taking on their parents’ wish that Chay get a good education. He specifically says he doesn’t want to disappoint their parents if he doesn’t provide a good education, a degree and appropriate friends for Chay, which – given he was what? 10 years old when they died? - is a hell of a lot for a kid to be carrying by himself already and for this long. Also, guess what, Porsche – by the end of all this, Chay is going to be lined up to achieve none of that, having literally thrown his college application into the garbage and broken his heart over a mafia princeling (how’s that for appropriate friends), so the Theerapanyakuls are not only going to crush your dreams but also the life’s mission you took on from your parents when you were 10. I mean, the irony of this is only just hitting me – everything Porsche explicitly says in this episode that he wants to accomplish for Chay by selling himself into indentured servitude to the Theerapanyakuls is going to be ruined by the Theerapanyakuls.

Chay begs Porsche to run away to a smaller house and open a beachside bar like he’s always dreamed of, but Porsche loves this house and doesn’t want to go anywhere else, and we can practically hear the organ notes of doom in the background, because there’s another house that’s getting ready to swallow you up, Porsche, and you’re never going to be able to truly go home again. Porsche seems pretty aware of that, as gives Chay a hug and a forehead kiss that’s clearly a goodbye, cruises through the house taking everything in one last time, then going up to Chay’s room to cover him up and sit at the foot of his bed like a guard dog. Smashcut to the next morning, when Chay wakes up and goes to look for him, only to find a letter full of bullshit about a great bartending opportunity – off the grid, of course – that will wipe out their debt and pay for Chay’s tuition but also will mean they can’t communicate. Ever. Chay, because he’s not dumb and he realizes he’s not being told something, literally turns over the sheet of paper the letter is written on when he gets to the end, because there has GOT to be more to this story, but nope. See ya, kid.

One of the things that really struck me in this section of the ep, that was particularly noticeable because of that hard cut from night in the house to day in the house, was the lighting. Porsche and Chay at home together, even when the house is trashed, are lit in soft warm yellows – like they’ve been this whole time – and fairy lights (the fairy lights of bl!). In the daylight section when Porsche has gone, Chay is literally left alone in the cold light of day – brighter, whiter, colder, with blue undertones. We also get an interesting contrast when we cut to Porsche following Big and Ken deeper into the main family compound, deeper into the grey-blue hallways, into the prison and the belly of the beast, there’s a moment when Porsche pauses as his left side lights up with warm yellow light, and he looks that way, and it really looks like he’s seeing light through a window, but then we see it’s not a window that looks outside, it’s a window that overlooks that fancy chandelier, the one that looks like shimmering golden beads strung on multiple threads – an upscale, expensive version of the homely fairy lights that warmed Porsche’s home with Chay, and istg, I think we see Porsche’s face fall just the tiniest bit.

Anyway, Porsche’s voiceover reads the letter to Chay as we follow Big and Ken deeper into the compound, and they finally come into Kinn’s sitting room, where he’s – surprise, surprise – having a drink and dramatically posed with his back to them. Porsche’s first words are “Don’t forget our deal,” and Kinn responds that Porsche shouldn’t forget that his life is Kinn’s now, and all of this re-emphasizes this idea we’ve seen threaded all through the episode, that Porsche makes his money with his body, from sleeping with women who tip well at the bar, to using his sex appeal to get ahead in his job, to street fighting for money, to trading himself to the Theerapanyakuls to pay off his debts and cover Chay’s tuition and other expenses. Kinn explicitly tells him he’s taking ownership of him, and when Porsche tries to insist that his life is his own, Kinn tells him “You’ll find out.” Because that’s not ominous at all.

We also have a final meeting in the ep with Korn, which only re-emphasizes this whole underlying idea of Porsche selling himself to and now being owned by the Theerapanyakuls. Korn says he’d love for Porsche to be happy with them, even though he didn’t even want to be there – 1) do you say the same thing to his mom in her garrett? and 2) if you really wanted him to be happy, maybe you could have done something about covering all those debts while he and Chay were growing up, hmm? Everyone who isn’t Korn is clearly uncomfortable during all this – including Kinn, who starts to make some kind of protest that Korn ignores in favor of smiling in delight at how well his plans have worked out to trap this latest fly in his web. We close out the episode with Korn upping the creepy ante by sending everyone away so he can rest, by which he means make Chan play chess with him while he gloats in satisfaction over how all the pieces are now in place so they can start. But sure, he’s just an old man in poor health. Uh-huh.

Close on Ep 1 at 59 minutes.

#porsche pachara #porsche kittisawasd #chay kittisawasd #kinn theerapanyakul #korn theerapanyakul #theerapanyakul a++ parenting #kinnporsche #kp 15m #kp 15m ep 1

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