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#same at the Russian Roulette scene

cyberstrangerballoon · 1 year

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8TH SYNASTRY CULTURE 🫀

When people read about the 8th house, the first thing that comes to mind is sex. And sorry to dampen your excitement, but that's not all this house is about.

The 8th house is a place of depth, taboos, traumas, death and fears. Is the house of transformation, of the occult, of what is not accepted by society.

Is deep bonding, deep sharing, and deep transformation. It is a person's most intimate and darkest place.

So when a planet falls in this house, you feel like your privacy has been violated. It's like if you let a stranger read your diary, let them go through your stuff and turn your life upside down.

It messes with your head, you no longer have control of your actions. You're blindfolded, and holding his hand in the dark.

You find yourself in Russian roulette. You trust that person with your eyes closed. And normally you don't trust anyone.

The person on the planet attracts like nobody else. It has a magnetic force that makes you want to be close to it. You feel naked next to this person.

Your morals are on the floor, you're doing things you never imagined yourself doing. He excites you, and intrigues you. But can we judge you? Who are we?

I was once the person of the house and the planet. Usually they are different situations, but in this case they are the same. You both have darkness inside you, secrets and fetishes that you don't tell anyone. You attract each other because deep down you know that if you stick together, you will turn darkness into light.

If any personal planet falls here, sun, moon or venus. You light up this house, all the pain, suffering and fear disappears when you are together. You complete each other.

And when you're far away, you can't stop thinking about each other. It's like the memories are tattooed on your minds. It's suffocating, and dangerous.

If poorly aspected, it can cause intense jealousy, and sometimes physical aggression. All that love can turn toxic if you're not careful. So if you're in one, leave now.

Do I really have to talk about the sex? We all know it's amazing.

Sex can be an out-of-body experience. It's so amazing that it feels like you've been to heaven and back.

If you're away from each other, masturbation can sometimes be even better lol, trust me I've been there. IT'S GREAT!!!

Now, the songs that I think describe the 8th house synastry.

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despair-nagito · 6 months

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Because some people need to understand it

I'm posting this because I'm bored of seeing people (including part of KmHn shippers) saying that KomaHina is "problematic", "abusive" or "toxic" and treating it like if it was canon while it isn't.

KomaHina isn't a "problematic" or "toxic" ship. Unlike some people are stating (probably due to their headcanons, misunderstanding or in result of completely ignoring Komaeda), Hinata and Komaeda's canon relationship wasn't abusive. Their canon relationship is complicated but not abusive. You're allowed to headcanon them as having an abusive/toxic relationship but stop pushing it down other shippers' throats because according to canon they had lots of misunderstandings towards each other AND they wanted to understand each other better. They both cared about each other. Seriously, a complicated relationship of two (or more) characters doesn't make it problematic in any way. Problematic is one thing and complicated is another (both can overlap but not always and their relationship is an example for a complicated but not problematic one).

KOMAEDA

Komaeda wasn't a yandere or dorodere. He didn't want Hinata exclusively for himself. He didn't hurt anyone Hinata was close to (oh, wait, he didn't have any friends, everyone was remembering Hinata when they wanted something from him or just were some programmed AI but still it doesn't change the fact he didn't try to separate Hinata from the rest). On the contrary. He asked Hinata to kill him so he would get a chance to escape. He never tried to make Hinata believe the same way as him. He wasn't selfish. Do you remember Komaeda telling Hinata that he's in love with him? Before the fourth class trial he tells Hinata: "why do I care about you?" His confession is the answer why he cared about him. (remember: FTEs are canon what is explicitly showed in the case of locking Imposter's last FTE until Island Mode and locking Komaeda's scenes if Hinata didn't spend time with him during the first day). Komaeda wasn't obsessive about Hinata, he simply wanted to help the one he loved. He said that just the fact of their eyes meeting was enough to make him happy.

His jokes shouldn't be taken seriously. He was literally making no idea that it could be taken as an offense while it wasn't his goal to offend anyone and he was making no idea when someone was offending him ("winning personality? Are you praising me?")

He will be happy

After completing the Final Dead Room, Komaeda says: "he will be happy! I was finally useful!" what obviously refers to Hinata. To it, he was shocked about learning that Hinata was a reserve course student.

You aren't the traitor, are you, Hinata-kun?

There's an optional interaction in Chapter 5 after Komaeda's announcement of staying at the restaurant. If you go back there and interact with him, he's surprised and then says: "people like you will be devoured by them" (not an exact quote) what could mean he learned about his actual identity as Kamukura and was warning him but there's also a possibility he remembered the situation from before the program of him and Kamukura talking (Kamukura is Hinata so he could easily match both appearances).

HINATA

Do you want Hinata's side? Here you are: Hinata never hated Komaeda. He even wanted to forgive him after learning about him being terminally ill (I'll go back to this part later in the post) and just was confused like everyone else but unlike the rest he knew the real Komaeda – that traumatized, terminally ill guy and the thing Hinata wanted was to understand him. In chapter 4 when Komaeda tells Hinata that he "played" Russian Roulette Hinata is worried and shouts: "you could die!" Later, in chapter 5 after they force-opened the doors Hinata was scared to the point he couldn't move and later he was refusing to accept the fact Komaeda was dead. During the investigation when Hinata for the first and only time enters Komaeda's cottage, "All Star Apologies" is playing in the background when Hinata wonders what Komaeda was thinking and doing when he was still alive – he never was so deep in thoughts after someone's death as after Komaeda's death.

In the morning after the trial when he's informed about Komaeda's last will he's full of determination what is seen only if you interact with Komaeda's cottage. In chapter 6 when Hinata is reading about hope he says to himself that Komaeda's hope was the real hope. He wouldn't think it if he hated Komaeda. The ultimate confirmation of Hinata not hating Komaeda is SDR2.5 that was written by Kodaka (I'm mentioning it because DR3 wasn't) and you can see Hinata doing everything to wake Komaeda up of comatose. In the ending there was a party on a ship and they weren't participating in it. They were standing together away from the rest.

Is Komaeda's ghost whispering to you?

It's possible you don't remember this part because it happened during the class trial. It shows perfectly that though Hinata was trying to deny the feelings he had to Komaeda, he couldn't stop thinking about his wish to understand him.

ISLAND MODE

It's also interesting to take a look at Island Mode that is an alternative plot. It's full of Hinata caring about Komaeda and shows him being interested in him in a romantic way. Just see Komaeda's ending. Hinata is kind of disappointed when Komaeda stops and asks: "will you be my friend?" but later they're holding hands and it's not the only time they were doing that. They were also hand-holding two times in SDR2.5 and in UTDP once. If there wasn't comphet, they would obviously become a couple in Komaeda's ending because their relationship was developing in the most natural way in comparison to the rest (they actually were attracted to each other and Komaeda was never forcing Hinata to anything, and vice versa).

WHICH "DERE" KOMAEDA IS?

Going back to the part about Komaeda being ill. He's the perfect example of byoukidere – a character who's usually sweet but suffers of an illness. Komaeda was very sweet to Hinata but there were moments when symptoms of him being sick were appearing, "twisting" him (do you remember when Komaeda started "rambling about hope" and when he snapped out he was making no idea what was going on?) There was also a very important moment during Chapter 3 where he almost died of despair disease. Without following his FTE you won't understand why was his condition so bad. It was also the moment when Hinata was openly worried about Komaeda. Komaeda is also an utsudere. He was traumatized, suicidal and was initially masking it (he was taking the mask off while talking to Hinata).

"IT'S NOT CANON AND NEVER WILL BE"

Them being a couple is heavily implied by canon but it doesn't make them a canon ship. Yet, there's something that IS canon. They were attracted to each other in a romantic way and seriously, you don't need them to kiss on screen. Look at the scene above. If there was nothing between them, they wouldn't spend time like that when the rest was throwing a party. In my opinion, this is the moment of them being the closest to each other in the whole series. Sure, Hinata looks nervous but it can be easily explained by the fact that he was next to someone he "liked" while knowing the other person "likes" him back and Komaeda… Well, Komaeda is Komaeda.

»Click here« to read an anonymous comment to the post.

Update: 7.12 2023

#danganronpa #danganronpa 2 #nagito komaeda #hajime hinata #komahina #hinakoma #spoilers #comship #proship #proshipper #danganronpa proship

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itwasrealtome · 4 months

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OLIVIA BENSON

[If you’d like to be tagged in the upcoming posts, please let me know in the comments or in my dm. It’s free and I don’t bite :) Also there’s a Google Forms]

One Shots:

Thin Ice: Detective Y/N, part of Olivia Benson’s SVU Unit, faces a life-threatening situation during a crime scene investigation, chasing a suspect who ultimately falls to his death. Injured but alive, Y/N finds herself in a hospital room, receiving stern words from Olivia about her reckless actions.

Take Your Shot: A visit to the morgue with Olivia and Casey leaves Y/n injured and prompts a tense struggle for her survival.

The Trauma Wheel: After receiving training in trauma management, Olivia Benson encourages the agents on her unit to do the same. But Y/N finds every excuse to avoid the training, not wanting to dwell on the past.

Russian Roulette: Caught up in a family conflict, Y/n ends up shooting her father in self-defense, which leads to her being taken into custody to determine her involvement in this tragic incident.

Runaway: During an investigation, Y/N, the youngest and most athletic detective of the unit, pursues a suspect who flees from them. But a collision with a car injures Y/N who finds solace in Olivia’s presence.

XXX

Taglist:

@electricboost @womenlovingwomen-imagines @hi-i-1 @emskisworld @sammi1642 @enjoytheentireworld @arie109 @marvelandotheruniversesloveradhd @philocalistwrites @wittygutsy @observeowl @ravennewlyn @tina-2005 @makkaroni221 @ssaaggwwaa @g1u2y @supercorpstan97 @youdontknowwhotfiamm @mmmmokdok

#olivia benson x reader #law and order svu #olivia benson x oc #olivia benson

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thatstroubling · 8 months

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Poll: What is, on average, the best Danganronpa chapter across the 3 mainline games?

AKA all Danganronpa murders are the same <3.

Parallels among the murders of the same chapter are listed below:

Chapter 1, AKA: "In a murder committed out of fear and panic, after dusk, in a location where the protagonist appeared shortly before, a strongly motivated individual, after taking initiative on their own, is murdered as a result of a betrayal by the protagonist's best ally, after which the corpse of the victim is found slumped on the floor and during the trial for which the blame is for a prolonged time placed on the protagonist or their ally (who was indeed involved, but ultimately is not the blackened)."

Chapter 2, AKA: "In an attempt to maintain allegiance to an important individual and to uphold a sense of honor for their Ultimate title, a capable classmate bludgeons to death the mentally strong yet physically weak (or mentally weak and physically strong) fan favorite (who therefore ends up dying too early) in a hands-on-hands physical confrontation, after which the placement of the corpse as well as the "perceived" crime scene is messed with to pin the blame on another person."

Chapter 3, AKA: "A-not-mentally-well-adjusted individual commits an immaculate and complicated double murder for a unthinkably irrational or amoral cause, which includes a body appearing at the crime scene out of nowhere in a seemingly impossible fashion, and in which one of the victims is the one who was lured out by the killer and willfully takes part in the action (but unknowing that it will result in their own murder) and in which the other victim ends up being the socially ostracized individual, simply because they happen to be at a wrong place at the wrong time."

Chapter 4, AKA: "Within a set-up for a locked room murder mystery, the good-hearted fan favorite becomes a part of a two-person life-and-death allegiance to perform a heroic act of self-sacrificial killing using an unknown murder method with the intention of getting themself killed so that everyone else may live, while one person is revealed to have had a deeper insight into the killing game for some time."

Chapter 5, AKA: "In an unsuccessful attempt to bring the killing game to its conclusion, the most malicious student of the class orchestrates an almost perfect, convoluted and seemingly unnecessarily but indeed intentionally violent murder (which serves as a way of mangling the corpse to a point where the murder method is concealed), whose solving hinges on the protagonist's new but trusted ally's confession about their not-really-consenting involvement."

Chapter 6, AKA: "After a retrospective investigation that brings to light new circumstances about the game's setting as well as its previous events, an existential crisis consumes the remaining survivors as the identity of the class and the killing game itself is revealed, during which Junko Enoshima appears (of course), and which ends with the true protagonist killing the mastermind in order to seek redemption, freedom and hope for their classmates.

P.S. This whole thing was primarily inspired to by my desire to prove Nagito's assumptions from chapter 4 wrong:

Most of these are fortunatelly not true when we also take V3 into account: while Rantaro was important, he wasn't stabbed; a serial killer was revealed in the third chapter, not the in the second; and I wouldn't exactly classify chapter 4 murder as a suicide in either sdr2 or v3 (though we DID have two people playing Russian roulette in the Funhouse, yikes). All in all, the murders wouldn't have been nearly as shocking if they correlated with what had been already pointed out in the second game before, so I'm not really surprised that there ended up being other similarities among the murders.

That's all, thank you for reading <3

#thank you in advance to anyone who voted #if you're unsure of what to pick just go based on vibes #surprisingly not too many researchers are waiting for the results of this scientific survey it's just for fun #the idea to compille all the parallels in the chapters of the same number has been occupying my head for a long time #so Im glad I was able to find quite a satisfying number of them Id say #really highlights how good dr's writing can be sometimes #chapter 4 is probably my favorite Id say on average it has produced the biggest amount of tears 🥲🥲🥲#sorry in advance for spamming the main character tags I'm not 100% sure whether this is fit to be main char tagged #txt #drv3 #sdr2 #danganronpa #kokichi ouma #nagito komaeda #shuichi saihara #hajime hinata #kaede akamatsu #mahiru koizumi #chihiro fujisaki #kirumi tojo #tsumugi shirogane #kaito momota #sakura oogami #gundham tanaka #tenko chabashira #angie yonaga #makoto naegi #kyoko kirigiri #leon kuwata #💜

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cheemscakecat · 2 months

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Funeral Medic [Schweigen] Analysis

Given the fact that smoke rises, Schweigen probably went down these stairs to look for a way out of the slaughterhouse.

Remember, he’s an alternate personality without the context that Fritz has. He doesn’t know who is responsible for the Russian Roulette scene.

The body truck falling and Soldier’s rocket launch were both loud enough that he could have heard them from further up the stairs. But the sound of Solly struggling against Stalingrad wouldn’t have carried that far. So for all he knows, Soldier is the only one causing destruction here.

He didn’t shoot to be evil, he shot because he thought poor Soldier was one of the bad guys. From his perspective, the man started yet another fire and caused an explosion underground. That could cause a cave in if it hit the wrong place, and Schweigen didn’t know that Heavy was there.

We don’t know how this version of Medic ended up in the casket, but I imagine that the plague doctor had something to do with it. Because Spy is talking into the microphone, Schweigen should be able to hear what he’s saying. And he’s saying that he has a colleague.

So Soldier laughed into the microphone and then Spy said “I apologize”, which means their speech isn’t going the way it was supposed to. But since Funeral Medic has no context, he may just think Solly is insane.

It isn’t until afterwards that the dark Medic hears about Ludwig being BLU’s scapegoat.

The Electric-Eye Medic managed to heal fatal bullet wounds earlier, which is why Schweigen knew that he could do it again after Roulette. But since it’s a brain injury instead of a chest injury, it would have been more difficult.

Electric must look the same as Fritz apart from his eyes, because the nightmare version of him is the one we see in the mirror. But healing Ludwig’s body made him regenerate with the glowing eyes initially.

Fritz’s nightmare version of Schweigen is the Plague doctor, which confirms that he appears in all black with the creepy dead-pan look normally. When he healed in the interrogation room, he regenerated to look like himself instead of Ludwig.

What’s interesting is that over the next few days, he continued to heal while driving, and ended up looking like the version of Fritz from Spy’s Disguise. And it already seems like Schweigen was the one in control during that appearance.

So not only is Spy being incredibly disrespectful; Schweigen is stressed out trying to heal Fritz fully and protect him from BLU’s wrath.

He only shot the mustache Scout after he opened fire. Everyone else fleeing the funeral was left unharmed. [Except the Manns]. Schweigen isn’t evil, he’s just trying to protect Fritz from any threats who crop up.

“Are you also a threat?”

[Fear, shock and concern] “Apparently not. I’m going to leave now, don’t prove me wrong.”

It isn’t until this moment that Soldier earns any of this personalities trust, and it’s not much. He can’t afford to blindly trust the wrong people.

It’s so tragic that he crashed the ambulance, because he was trying everything in his power to protect Ludwig. It happened because he stretched himself too thin and exhausted all his energy. But there wasn’t anywhere safe to stop with BLU looking for him.

#emesis blue #tf2 medic #emesis blue medic #emesis blue theory #emesis blue spoilers #Poor shadow man

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typellblog · 4 months

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Nisemonogatari - An Analysis

Being a siscon really did not help with this one.

With Kizu I could somewhat pretend that it was its own isolated arc despite the absurd length, but as the cast ever-expands it becomes more and more difficult to act as though I’m only writing about one character at a time here.

Indeed, we even have mini-scenes for each of our previous heroines. These are deeply oriented around fanservice, albeit in a way that actually also contributes to the characterisation of everyone spotlighted here. (Not that I can say the same for those involving his sisters, later.)

Hitagi gets to indulge her most sadistic impulses in a way I don’t think we ever see again beyond this point, Kaiki serving as both catalyst for her kidnapping Koyomi and catalyst for her changing in a more substantial way in the future.

The mystery of Hachikuji continuing to hang around is once again raised, along with ominous foreshadowing of what this might mean for her future. She starts to emerge as a surprisingly mature character, her gags more obviously deliberate, her advice surprisingly helpful.

Nadeko is given a chance to pursue her one-sided crush on Koyomi. Her techniques are childish but reveal a surprising amount of . . . cunning? Malice? Foreshadowing for her later arcs. In any case, Koyomi remains completely oblivious.

I think the most interesting part of Kanbaru’s scene here is an indication that she’s not as much of a pervert as she presents herself to Koyomi as, and indeed to Koyomi is the operative term here, because as we hear from Hanekawa when Koyomi tries doing impressions of his friends (great scene, shame it was cut in the anime), Koyomi might have quite a different impression of Kanbaru than others do.

Speaking of Hanekawa, she’s the only one that seems to be actually folded into the main plot this time, but simultaneously she feels like she’s growing more distant. She doesn’t get a directly horny treatment like the other characters, instead focusing on a gag about giving Koyomi permission to touch her boobs, but if he ever uses it she’ll hate him forever. Notably it establishes a completely different dynamic to her totally accepting attitude in Kizumonogatari.

Her character growth is significant, putting aside the stereotypical class president look in favour of a more ‘normal’ one, arguably something she’s wanted to do for a while. She had a sort of . . . lack of self-awareness of her own abnormality, before. Her role here is as a positive role model, I guess, for the entire set of Araragi siblings. If they’re fakes, she’s the real deal. If they need to be aware of their own weakness and inferiority, she needs to become conscious of her own strength.

This, of course, doesn’t really make sense until we take a proper look at our arc character.

Karen Bee

To be blunt I struggle to bring myself to like Karen. She feels fake to me.

I find myself in a similar position to Koyomi in some ways, the mentions of his sisters peppered into the Kizumonogatari novel triggering my own weird sense of jealousy/inferiority.

In theory, I should like Karen. She resembles nobody more closely than Emiya Shirou, probably my favourite protagonist of all time. Although, to avoid the risk of derailing into another Fate/Stay Night essay, I’ll make a different comparison. Someone who himself gets compared to Emiya Shirou all the time.

Koyomi Araragi.

How come I’m able to get invested into this guy’s story, his justice, his self-sacrificing nature, his stupid, corny, but sometimes really cool lines, and not do the same for his sister?

I think on one level the answer is simple - I’ve spent the past four books inhabiting his perspective. I don’t have any context, for Karen. Who is she trying to save, and why? What difficult decisions does she have to make along the way? The Fire Sisters’ escapades are treated as a gag, occasional mentions of them playing Russian roulette with the Mafia or getting into brawls with the police, but nothing solid. Karen’s trying to save the middle schoolers getting scammed by Kaiki, but I don’t care about them. I’m not given any reason to.

That’s just a matter of perspective, though. I don’t find it a particularly convincing argument, when Koyomi tells her that her justice is fake because she only acts on the behalf of others. Is that desire itself not beautiful? If you saw the same people suffering that she did, would you not want to help them, too?

I haven’t been shown any of those people, though. So I don’t get it.

But I’m wasting time with this. I can’t see these people, won’t see them, because I’m living in a different world from Karen. She’s still in middle school, and Koyomi is in high school. This is explicitly called out as being a point of change for him, one where he first began to close himself off to others on account of his self-worth evaporating as he realised the world was more difficult than he had thought.

Karen and Tsukihi don’t have that, yet. They’re missing the key element that’s driven Koyomi’s whole character progression over these previous four books - the fact that he doesn’t have any friends. Lol.

But I mean seriously, you see how the problems Koyomi is faced with operate on a completely different level than those the Fire Sisters try to deal with? They have an idea of a clear and simple evil, one that they’ll go to any ends to defeat.

In comparison - Koyomi isn’t fighting villains. He tries to help the victims of oddities, but they can only save themselves, or so we’re told, making Koyomi seem useless when it comes to the big action scenes. What he struggles to overcome is his vision of himself as a burden, someone whose helpfulness is an unwanted favour and selfishness is a destructive, vampiric urge.

Karen and Tsukihi never once consider the possibility of themselves being burdens. They go off to help people heedless of the potentially destructive consequences (which inevitably seem to result).

Karen’s ‘acting only on the behalf of others’ is fake to Koyomi because he’s already come to terms with his own selfishness. He couldn’t help Kiss-Shot, couldn’t do what she requested, because her request was to die, and he wanted her to live. The Fire Sisters haven’t yet been faced with such a difficult problem, haven’t yet been asked whether their self-sacrifice is really just self-satisfaction. Koyomi is scared of hurting people. All the time. He makes his decisions with that possibility in mind. That’s something he’s just had to accept. The Fire Sisters don’t seem to worry about that at all.

When Koyomi tells Karen that before being right, she must be strong, we initially assume he’s talking about physical strength - the ability to defeat one’s enemies. But looking over Koyomi’s past actions, we’ve seen physical strength prove of little use to him time and time again. What he means is the strength of will to not falter in the face of opposition or difficult choices. He may not have been right, when he chose to keep Kiss-Shot alive. But at least he had the balls to do it.

Hanekawa points out he’s really criticising himself with this one. After all, there are plenty of times where he’s failed to show strength, like his struggle to let the second snake go in Nadeko’s case. He couldn’t commit to one course of action or another and risked getting the worst of both worlds. Hanekawa, in contrast, always commits to the bit, never giving away in the slightest that she had feelings for Koyomi after he started dating Hitagi. She’s almost too strong, that was her problem according to Oshino, and indeed in doing so she ended up hurting herself as much as she helped other people.

She has to be aware of her own strength, not act as though everything she’s doing is perfectly normal, hold off on dragging everyone with her directly to the right answer.

In the same way that Koyomi has to be aware of his own weakness, to know he can’t solve everything on his own, and not be afraid to ask for help.

In the same way that Karen hasn’t quite internalized it, that evil and good aren’t always so obvious, that you need to be ready for getting your ass kicked, and maybe you should have asked a couple of people to come with you.

When Koyomi and Karen fight, he gets the shit beaten out of him, but he still clearly wins. Karen struggles to articulate her viewpoint when faced with an actual objection, and eventually gives in, reassured by Koyomi that he never thought what she was doing was wrong.

Hmmm. I notice that I haven’t discussed Karen’s associated oddity yet, the bee. Interestingly enough, it’s just not that important to her arc. It doesn’t influence her personality or behaviour at all, like many of the other characters’ oddities. It just makes her sick.

Oshino’s old adage proves true to an extent - the bee does appear for a reason, in the sense that Koyomi says it's her own damn fault, for going up against Kaiki alone. She gets what she deserves! A bit harsh, perhaps. It’s also her own fault in the sense that her overactive imagination is part of what stimulates its effects so much - the bee is a fake oddity, clinging to a fake person, someone who plays make-believe in such a way that they’re susceptible to a fake disease.

Obviously the fire association with the bee makes sense for her, especially in regard to how it becomes a fever, getting heated up because of justice leads to her pushing herself too hard and burning out. Blah blah blah whatever. The symbolism doesn’t interest me, because I think the far more important thing about the bee is that it’s not representative of a larger problem. Karen acts fairly similarly before and after being afflicted. She isn’t saved by anyone else, but you’d have to stretch to say she saved herself, either. Unlike Koyomi, she has friends. Unlike Hitagi, she doesn’t have difficulty reaching out to others. Unlike Kanbaru, she doesn’t have a hidden side to her, a wish that she can’t fulfill.

I said it already, but the Fire Sisters don’t have regrets. They don’t have any lingering trauma. They’re the ones causing problems for other people, supremely confident in their own righteousness. They may be fakes, but in a sense they’re a lot more real than the rest of the cast.

Tsukihi Phoenix

Well, at least that’s the case for Karen, whose outside image and inside personality are perfectly aligned. For Tsukihi, on the other hand, there’s a bit of a disjunction.

Alright, I guess we’re doing Tsukihi too. I wasn’t exactly planning on both at once when I started this, but I suppose at this rate I have enough room.

What, I haven’t talked about Kaiki yet? God, who cares. What do you want me to say, here. He’s a fake that’s accepted his fakeness in the same way Koyomi asks of Karen. A withered branch to Koyomi’s sapling, the third stage in the Araragi evolutionary tree. I don’t quite get it, how exactly this man is supposed to be Koyomi taken to his logical extent. He’s evil, but in a very deliberate way. He’s not convinced of his own justice, has no interest in promoting his position. He almost feels like he’s playing a character. I’ll get back to him in later arcs, but for now I think the important thing to note is something I mentioned last time - as a male character, his role is more about mirroring Koyomi than being someone Koyomi ought to forge a connection with. As an adult specialist, his arc is complete, so to speak. There’s nothing in him to change or that needs changing.

He’s the polar opposite of the Fire Sisters in that way. They’re too young to have changed yet, not quite mired in the coming-of-age plotline that ensnares this story’s main characters. Kaiki isn’t an arc character, doesn’t need to be won over by Koyomi, but neither does Karen, really.

Koyomi already has a deep enough relationship with his sisters - just look at their openings, the lyrics addressed to a vague listener that’s almost him but feels far too idealised, his image cropping up again and again in their visuals. In Platinum Disco, he overshadows Tsukihi from the background, closing his mouth over her and forcing her to dance headlessly. His influence over her is obvious, almost total. In Marshmallow Justice, he’s buffeted around by the currents of Karen’s flames, speaking to a more antagonistic relationship, her trying to insist on her righteousness to him.

This is an established, regular part of their dynamic. If anything, the biggest change to their relationship doesn’t happen in the arc where Karen is afflicted by an oddity, it’s the toothbrush scene at the start of Tsukihi Phoenix. (Which still baffles me in a lot of ways, but I really don’t want to get bogged down in it right now).

I said it already, but Karen’s oddity doesn’t really represent any deep-rooted psychological issues for her - it’s fake.

Unlike Karen, however, Tsukihi’s oddity is of immense significance to her. Not just in terms of its importance to this arc, but all the way down to its influence on her personality and behaviours. After all, Tsukihi herself is the oddity.

The Shide no Tori, an immortal oddity that adapts to its surroundings. It’s volatile, mercurial, constantly renewing itself. It’s also eternal. The core of the thing is that it has no core, no consistent personality, and as such must take cues from those around it. Tsukihi acts according to her whims, but in the end remains incredibly dependent on others, latching onto them to give her a purpose.

Her justice is fake in the sense that it’s been picked up from Karen and Koyomi. It’s not at the core of her being.

She doesn’t have the same drive for it that Karen does, and as such tends to follow her sister’s initiative.

But, similarly to Koyomi, she does have the ability to regenerate from fatal danger. Just as he would throw himself into danger to help his friends even without it, she’s said to have thrown herself off a building to help Karen without even knowing she has the ability.

In comparison to Koyomi’s selfish, half-assed vampirism, a healing ability that has him straddling life and death without really making progress in any fight, Tsukihi’s immortality is pure. Instant. Perfect. There are no consequences.

There are no consequences. She doesn’t regret because she isn’t given anything to regret. Learning about the supernatural would threaten the Shide no Tori’s position as a normal human, so the memories of being killed are wiped from her mind when she wakes up.

Of course she would throw herself into danger to save someone else. She doesn’t really have a ‘self’ to value in the first place. Everything important to her comes from other people. Koyomi faces immense self-loathing for a similar reason. Tsukihi doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, though. Perhaps she can’t be.

She knows her sense of justice is a bit different from her siblings, and she considers the possibility of the Fire Sisters breaking up. The possibility of Karen changing when she reaches highschool, in the same way Koyomi did. The implication being that Tsukihi would not, floating from hobby to hobby without ever forming a permanent attachment to anyone, constantly reinventing herself like a phoenix rising from the flames.

That’s the Shide no Tori. A clever fake that keeps itself from being noticed by imitating a normal human. Kaiki might say that a deliberate fake may have more value than the original, but even the deliberateness of it is carefully removed, not allowing the host awareness of anything related to their condition.

In that sense she’s not any more or less human than her siblings.

That is, I suppose, the main conflict of this arc. It’s centered on Tsukihi but doesn’t involve her - how can it, when her entire gimmick involves being unaware of what’s going on around her?

Koyomi is opposed by the exorcist sisters Ononoki and Kagenui. Just as Kaiki mirrors Koyomi, they mirror the Fire Sisters. The older, physically inclined, human. The younger, an oddity. And they claim to be defenders of justice.

This is the tricky part about justice, which Koyomi has been trying to impart to Karen. Most people think their actions are justified. Someone like Kaiki is an absurd exception. How can you insist on being right when your opponents also claim they’re on the side of justice? We’re not getting a good answer to that in this book.

Perhaps I’m starting to understand a little how Koyomi is like Kaiki, here. Because he doesn’t claim to be on the side of justice. He never even tries. He gives up that battle before it starts. He’s not on the side of humans. He’s not on the side of oddities. Like the time with Kiss-Shot, he’s nothing more or less than on the side of the person he chooses to protect.

Little sisters are more important than justice. A sentiment I can get behind.

In any case, there’s something a little bit off about Kagenui here. Part of her motivation is hoping to meet Oshino and in his absence she takes on a little of his role - viewing Koyomi as a human, rather than a monster.

Something must have set her off, Koyomi thinks, when she starts talking about him forcing his ideals on others. He might be fine with leaving Tsukihi alone, but what would Karen think? His parents? Tsukihi herself? Wouldn’t she become a real problem if she was aware of her true nature as an oddity?

He responds by saying he’s allowed to force things on his family. Once again, he’s okay with being a bit selfish, a bit of a burden. Koyomi’s sisters aren’t like the other girls he meets throughout the series. He doesn’t need to win them over, doesn’t need to break down the barriers between them and come to a complete understanding - he already does understand them.

Tsukihi being an oddity prompts realizations on his part, but nothing he didn’t already know. He already understands and accepts the entirety of her, in the same way they do for him. So he doesn’t need to worry about forcing something that can’t ever be repaid on her. He’d accept the same for her. They would, all three of them, happily die for each other, and they know it.

Something must have set Kagenui off, talking about this topic, and it seems to relate to her relationship with Ononoki. Are they real sisters, or fakes? Wouldn’t it be a real problem if an immortal oddity was aware of her true nature and tried to practice justice regardless? Kagenui argues that Tsukihi would be cruel and arrogant in the pursuit of it, having been freed from the constraints of human reason.

Koyomi thinks of the former Heart-Under-Blade, someone who was obscenely over-the-top and utterly inhuman. I think of Ononoki Yotsugi, quick to violence, quick to insults, saying she’d be fine if this entire world of fakes was destroyed.

Yep, Kagenui is definitely a bit off, here. Too concerned with matters we aren’t really privy to, at the moment. It’s like the fight with Karen all over again - Koyomi gets the shit kicked out of him, but in the end he’s still standing, and his opponent wavers a little. Finally learning “a lesson ten years in the making”.

She talks about the inherent nature of humanity, the doctrine of innate evil. If we suppose that people are born evil, then any good act requires putting on a fake persona. Like Hanekawa and Koyomi talked about in Kizu, self-sacrifice vs self-satisfaction. They both think of themselves as faking it, only acting like they’re truly ‘good’, but according to Kagenui’s proposal, there’s no such thing as being truly good. The truest good is in trying to be good, a deliberate imitation. A fake that has more value than the original.

So, where does that leave us? One really has to wonder about Koyomi’s decision to not tell Tsukihi (or even Karen) anything about the supernatural. Another selfish decision, in the vein of what he did to Kiss-Shot. It’s in character, at least.

I think it’s interesting how he describes it, after kissing her. There was a time where Koyomi was an only child. There was a time when he only had one sister. But for her entire life, there wasn’t a single moment where Tsukihi wasn’t the little sister of him and Karen. Nisemonogatari is about family, and family, for Tsukihi, is something that she can define herself in relation to. It’s a permanent attachment, created by the circumstances of her birth. Like a cuckoo, the Shide no Tori leaves its young in the nest of another family to prepare them for facing the world. Tsukihi isn’t ‘really’ from the Araragi family, in the same way that she doesn’t ‘really’ have a sense of justice like the other two. But in her deliberate attempt to adopt it- well, you know how it goes.

Koyomi doesn’t need to tell her about the supernatural, about the fact that she’s a phoenix, because in a meaningful sense she isn’t one. She’s his sister. She’s Karen’s sister. That’s good enough.

Koyomi’s last lines are strangely poignant, contradicting the usual epilogue format by occurring before he’s woken by his sisters the next morning. “I got way more involved than usual, but there was no point in staying there forever. For now, I’ll go back to my room and change.” I feel like it’s a comment on the blending of worlds that’s been going on here - he’s part of the backstage, as Hachikuji puts it. His sisters are at the front. He’s entering the adult world, while they’re still kids. There’s a sense that he shouldn’t get too involved in their incidents, and vice versa.

A hopeful reading would be that like Koyomi, they’ll also change. In their own time, at their own pace, in their own way.

But that’s all for now. I managed to be somewhat normal about Tsukihi. Somehow.

#monogatariposting #monogatari #araragi koyomi #araragi karen #araragi tsukihi #nisemonogatari

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archerofunspeakablelove · 3 months

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Russian Roulette update: Yassen's conversation with John towards the end of Командир (The Commander) genuinely made me tear up a bit. Y'all if I hadn't started shipping them at the start of Eagle Strike the first time I saw them interact this scene would've 100% convinced me because the way Yassen was so hesitant about working for Scopia at the start and had considered his other options, but now that John is tutoring him he desperately wants to prove his loyalty and competency. In the jungle John tells him he could leave if he wanted to, Scorpia had taught him enough about disguise - all this he had considered before himself, yet when John brings it up Yassen immediately shoots it down, becomes agitated. Why? Because he feels like John is questioning his competency. Remember what he said? "I can do this." John wants Yassen to not have to walk down the same path that he did, but ironically he is the reason Yassen even cares so much about succeeding in Scorpia in the first place. His cover worked a bit too well and now Yassen has a very fixed idea of who John is, and he will do anything to prove himself to his version of John.

You get it, right? The way they want completely different things out for each other, completely incompatible things, because they do not understand each other. These types of dynamics really just eat me up from the inside

#chaotic ramblings #alex rider #russian roulette #yassen gregorovich #john rider #man they really need a ship name i need SOMETHING to tag these posts with #the fact that yassen's relationship with john is very much personal to him even though he would never admit it #and it just so happens that to him john is basically an embodiment of scorpia #and he wants to impress john so by proxy he decides the best way to do that is to prove himself to scorpia #do you get it. do you get the dynamic #the tension in that scene was phenomenal i felt like i was reading fanfiction #which i suppose means that every fic author in this fandom does a wonderful job of capturing their relationship #just. the way yassen is so on edge whenever john says something about how he could still leave if he wanted to. before it's too late #the way he is so confused as to why john would bring this up because it doesnt fit with the very fixed idea he has in his mind about #who john is. the way he says “i killed some of them” as if to say see? i am like you. i can be like you. please give me a chance #his admiration for and attachment to john is so incredibly unhealthy which is unsurprising given that he has not had a normal #relationship of any sort since he was 14 and everyone he knew died #he wants so badly to be who he thinks john wants him to be. and that means that he will never be who he wants to be or who john wants him t #be or who he thinks john wants him to be. he is pursuing something that just doesn't exist #god i am so normal about these two

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salmonskinrolltf · 2 years

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Story Index

Original Stories

Anniversary Present Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 - a squabbling gay couple fall under the thrall of a time-traveling watch Ben Gay Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 - frat boys in a snowed-in cabin discover a mysterious ointment that makes any body part irresistibly ache for the touch of male flesh The Breeder Curse Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 - gay men are cursed to become were-straights Don't Read This! - a Tumblr curse turns a straight man into the last celebrity saved on his phone The Grind - While working from home, Todd finds himself drawn to the sounds of the skaters in the alley Grindr Roulette - A gay couple selects random Tribes for their profiles on Grindr to create a transformative hookup Happy Hour - A preppy couple celebrating their anniversary is annoyed by the partying frat bros at the bar Indian and in Love - Kyle becomes the perfect partner for his stoner friend Jack's New Roommate Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 - Jack's slobby roommate is improved upon Like a Light Switch - Charlie Puth becomes more like the slobby, lazy straight man he should be Nerdflix Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 - an athlete and his nerdy roommate swap lifestyles Shower Scene - Scream 2022's Wes Hicks is offered an unusual way to escape Ghostface Soulmates - Two boyfriends try to make each other perfect, one by changing the past and one by changing the future Soulmates 2 - Two roommates use the same method to try and make each other perfect Third - a couple has a threesome for their tenth anniversary, but which two of the three is the real couple?

Original Shorts

The Comments Section - a young man has a hairy experience on OnlyFans Heat Conservation - a magic beanie changes a young man's life Roll the Die Shorts - readers requested transformations and rolled the die. Roll a 6? Get exactly what you want. Roll a 1? Get the opposite. Everything in between? Well, we'll see.

Be Kind Rewind Shorts - New Roll the Die stories where readers get pulled into a movie/TV universe of their choice

Glee | Wolverine

Commissioned Stories

The American Way - a gay Frenchman becomes a conservative American El Bailarin - a gay ballet dancer discovers a passion for Latin dance and machismo Con-fidence - an office worker wishes to be more intimidating and gets exactly what he asks for Joining the Team Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 - an athletic training student ends up with baseball skills (and a fetish for facial hair) Light a Candle - a young man who fantasizes about swapping with a middle-aged daddy should be careful what he wishes for Magic Mustache Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 - a high school graduate buys a fake mustache to look older before college, and it might work too well Sir - an alpha jock applying for a job gets an unexpected offer that he can't refuse Under Construction - a smart college grad can't get a job at a tech company, but the construction department might have an opening Walk a Mile - a xenophobic Russian gets what's coming to him

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tobiasdrake · 7 months

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Alright. Ghosts exist. Let's take a moment to talk about that.

Tokuichi is a scumbag and his scene mostly serves to deliver exposition on Monaca. He reveals the connection between Monaca and Haiji; They're half-siblings, making Haiji and Tokuichi into the abusive family members in Monaca's background.

And just in case there was any doubt, Tokuichi makes absolutely clear that he's a monster and the world is better off for his death. He's very careful to clarify that so we don't start thinking we should be on his and Haiji's side.

So that's some important info that's dropped. But also, ghosts exist. Komaru mentioned back in chapter 3 that she can see and interact with ghosts. That's just a thing she has.

Which isn't counted as a Talent because superpowers and Talents are different things for some reason. Same reason Sayaka isn't the Ultimate Telepath.

I've heard people classify this moment as a bridge too far. That Ultra Despair Girls jumped the shark when Tokuichi's severed head began talking to Komaru. That this was a "grounded, realistic" series until that moment.

And. Like. Really?

A pop idol reads minds. A high school girl collapsed global civilization by being too sad. The Ultimate Analyst Talent. Teddy bear drones made from tech more complex than NASA. Multiple characters practicing anime-style martial arts. The entire Neo World Program. Yasuhiro definitely, provably can see the future. Nagito's Russian Roulette on hard mode and subsequent luck-driven suicide-roulette. Every single thing about Genocide Jack.

Calling this series grounded is like calling Ace Attorney grounded. Danganronpa has been balls-to-the-wall from the word go. I really don't think "Ghosts are real" is that much more fantastical than anything else that happens in this series.

Some people just have superpowers for no reason. That's just life, man.

#danganronpa #ultra despair girls #revisiting udg #komaru naegi

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embossross · 2 years

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From His Mind to Yours

Chapter 4 >> Chapter 5 >> masterlist

✣ Pairing: Hanma x AFAB fem!Reader

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

✣ Chapter CW: Hanma is serving unhinged this chapter be warned; Murder; Russian Roulette; PTV sex; Slapping, biting and overall violent sexual dynamic (reader to Hanma and it is situationally very appropriate) (I didn’t intend to make Hanma Switchy, but he is now very Switchy); Bad Therapeutic practice (both unethical and inaccurate); prescription of mood stabilizers; gambling; unsafe sex

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

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

✣ Word Count: ~9k

A man lies dead on the floor. He did not die peacefully.

The autopsy will probably credit blunt force trauma to the head, but it might have been a heart attack. The human heart can only withstand so much stress.

The room is dark, curtains drawn tight to block out the sun and prying eyes. There are signs of a struggle: defensive wounds on the deceased, furniture upturned, curtains ripped, TV broken on the ground. A stampede of destruction. A staging.

When the news breaks the story, they’ll float the theory of a burglary. The deceased, Tanigawa Ichigo, was a conscientious citizen with no connections to shady business. A likeable guy in the building, always sorted his recyclables, no different than you or me, except for a couple unwise habits. Neighbors will remember that they cautioned him to bolt his door as crime had been on the rise in the neighborhood; friends will lament that he was always too loud about his future inheritance, that any burglar would be tempted. The news writes itself.

Hanma flicks his cigarette. A trickle of ash rains down. It lands on the upper life of one Tanigawa Iwao, not-so-loving brother of the dearly departed.

The man’s nose twitches, face screwed up in concentration and restraint, but it’s no use. He sneezes away the ash. A little glob of snot lands on Hanma’s shoe. The same shoe that presses into the living Tanigawa’s chest.

They stand and lie respectively in the living room of the deceased’s two-bedroom apartment. Apart from the staged chaos, the room is homey with well-worn magazines on the table, a fraying couch, and mugs of half-drank coffee on the countertops. The living room opens into a small kitchen, where dishes from the night’s dinner sit stacked and unwashed in the sink. If the curtains weren’t closed, the windows would open out to a view of a quiet suburb, the kind with trees planted by the sidewalk and more bicycle traffic than cars.

“Try not to throw your DNA around, Tanigawa. This is a crime scene,” Hanma sighs.

Distantly, Hanma pities Tanigawa Ichigo. As Hanma slammed the man’s head into the wall over and over until the crack of bone and spill of detritus, Ichigo never once considered that his fate was not the result of mere bad fortune, a robbery gone wrong, but rather a deliberate murder. He never fathomed that his younger brother might put a hit out on him. That Toman might come to collect.

Tanigawa Iwao also never once considered that he would be brought to the crime scene to witness the hulking corpse that was once his brother, but Hanma does not feel bad for him. No, watching Tanigawa shiver and cry at the outcome of his own greed is rather funny.

Babbling out a few useless apologies, Tanigawa wipes Hanma’s shoe with his sleeves. Hanma grounds down harder with his foot. It kneads into the space between ribs. He is half-compelled to test Tanigawa’s self-control, dig until the pain trumps fear and the fool can’t resist begging for mercy. Not necessary at this point. He already has Tanigawa’s submission. A bit of fun.

Fun…Hanma remembers it fondly. For the past week, he has lived like a monk, peaceful, obedient, bored. Between you and Kisaki, he is a puppet merrily dancing along to whatever tune his masters demand sung. How much longer until he cuts the strings and becomes a real boy?

He can’t afford to piss off Kisaki, not when the prospect of Mikey is dangled before him. But you are afforded no such protections. This week, he pushed your session back to Saturday since all his focus was needed for his current assignments, but as the day draws near, his body thrums with excitement.

“What do you want?” Tanigawa weeps at Hanma’s feet, the same question he’s been panting for the last half hour.

Hanma squeezes the man’s shoulder reassuringly, and says, “No need for tears! You’re going to get everything you ever wanted. It’s only fair that you give us a little something in return.”

“Anything,” Tanigawa says.

A less intelligent man might interject that he already paid Toman handsomely for their services, but Tanigawa is a sly one. He sees the trap, how he sits in Hanma’s silken pockets. He is probably replaying in his mind the condemning footage Hanma showed him earlier. Footage that showed how involved Tanigawa was in his brother’s murder. Tanigawa is a bad brother but a good son. He can’t break his father’s heart.

“You have access to flight logs in and out of Tokyo-Narita. You’re going to look up a few names for me and share any flights they’ve taken in the last year,” Hanma says. “Not too bad, eh?”

“That’s not going to be…”

“Easy? Well, neither’s getting away with murder, but we do it all the time,” Hanma says.

Here then is the reason why Hanma is slumming it, doling out a hit on a nobody. Tanigawa is a senior IT executive at Tokyo-Narita. A useful pawn if deployed right.

Currently, Tanigawa is useless, breathing heavily and eyes rapidly shifting back and forth. He has been cresting the edge of an anxiety attack for half an hour now, and Hanma is fascinated. He wonders what will finally push the man over. Not that Hanma enjoys when his associates (read: victims) descend into a messy anxiety attack. Impossible to get anything out of them. But, it certainly is interesting.

Hanma’s never personally experienced an anxiety attack.

Loud beeping sounds from the burner in his pocket. Hanma answers when he sees it’s Hakkai calling.

“It’s loud in here. Might be hard to hear you,” Hakkai shouts over a throbbing roar of noise. “How’d things go on your end?”

Hanma tells him about Tanigawa. “I just gave him the list. Anyone who’s so much as breathed air in the same room as the Haitanis, hell anyone who’s heard of the Haitanis. We’ll know where they’ve been flying.”

“Assuming they flew out of Tokyo-Narita.”

“Assuming they didn’t take a fucking boat,” Hanma concedes.

Tanigawa peers up at Hanma with big, beseeching eyes, like he might parse some useful clues from this conversation. Irritated, Hanma kicks him in the ribs – a love tap though you wouldn’t know it by the way the idiot moans – and moves to the bathroom.

The mirror reflects the struggle of the last hour. His suit jacket is crumpled, a few scratches on his wrists from where Tanigawa-the-dead fought back, a bloody lip, and hair tangled in clumps. Tanigawa was a big guy and managed to head butt him before Hanma regained the upper hand. Hanma wets his gloved fingers and runs them through his hair, carefully styling the errant curls back into place. The building’s security cameras are all disabled, and he’s already wiped the scene of DNA evidence, but there’s no need to alarm the neighbors when he leaves.

“I found one of their accounts,” Hakkai tells him. “Only got a couple hundred million yen in there though, so definitely not all of it. Koko’s digging into where they could be laundering money. They have so many rich-boy contacts though, it might take a while.”

“I still say we grab the little one,” Hanma sighs. So much roundabout espionage when the simplest solution lay before them.

“Not even you could get them to talk,” Hakkai says, which is among the rudest comments ever directed his way. Hanma sees himself bristle in the bathroom mirror. “Honestly, we should have just brought them into Toman in the early days. Wouldn’t need all this running around now.”

“Kisaki doesn’t like them,” Hanma says.

A decade out from their delinquent days, the Haitanis remain a wildcard in Roppongi. Mikey almost extended an offer for them to join as executives, bringing their vast network of intel and experience into the fold, but Kisaki cautioned against it. To Mikey, he warned that the Haitanis would never bend the knee, would plot against him; to Hanma, he admitted that the Haitanis would accept Mikey as their king but would battle him for second place.

Forced out of the fold, the Haitanis can’t be classified as yakuza. They work freelance for the city’s elite with a small gang of hired help beneath them. Mostly bodyguard work for corporate bigwigs, silencing political dissidents, making problems disappear for spoiled trust fund brats. The older one, Ran, is stylish, charming, the kind of man who puts suits at ease and gets the job done. They accrued a small fortune sucking up to the already powerful.

Partnering with the HJK would be an out of character play on their part as it would risk the little empire they curated. Neither Haitani is that stupid…

…But it might be their only chance to come out on top of the criminal underworld once again, and Hanma doesn’t doubt they are tempted.

“Well, anyway, none of this would matter if that pisspot Sendo could keep his eyes on the pretty fuckers like he’s meant to,” Hakkai gripes.

“They’re good. Hard to tail,” Hanma says.

He doesn’t add that Sendo is torn between two jobs at the moment, answering to two masters. Earlier that day, Sendo called to let him know that he is failing just as miserably at bugging your apartment. Restricted by Hanma’s order not to break the door down, Sendo hasn’t been able to force his way in. And neither you nor your boyfriend are incautious enough to open the door to a stranger.

Frustrating, the not knowing how you spend your time when he isn’t there. At least Hanma expects a debrief about your boyfriend any day now. You act like you chose your boyfriend on a whim, as if you won him at a carnival and thought you might as well take him home. But still, there might be clues to unravelling you somewhere in his background.

Unravelling you would be fun. At night, Hanma sometimes falls asleep, imagining you are like a tangled clump of necklaces, the various strands tangling and overlapping. He imagines plucking each one, testing the tangle, pushing this way and that to see if there’s any give. Find the right strand, move it in the right direction, and the whole messy thing will unwind in his fingers.

Exiting the bathroom, Hanma spots Tanigawa bent over his brother’s corpse with a look of twisted interest. One hand hovers over the pulp of the softened skull.

Hanma rolls his eyes and covers the phone for a moment. “What did I tell you about throwing your DNA around?”

Tanigawa scrambles back and starts blathering promises to run the list through the airport database first thing in the morning. Hanma waves his hand dismissively, already halfway out the door. No neighbors spot him, which is convenient. He shoots a text to some of his men to revert the building cameras once Tanigawa leaves and exits out into the dry heat.

The sun beats down cruelly, unseasonably warm for a July day. The streets are empty. Everyone with a cool office or apartment has retreated inside to escape its rays. Hanma likes the heat, likes the hot soreness on the back of his neck as his skin begins to burn, likes staining his crisp suits with streaks of sweat for someone else to wash.

“Do you have plans on Saturday?” Hakkai asks.

Hanma swings one leg over his motorbike – parked several blocks away from the crime scene – revs the engine. “Why?”

A passing grandmother stares at the incongruous image he makes with his suit and motorcycle. He smiles blandly.

“I wanna try a new restaurant in Chiba. I’ll treat,” Hakkai says.

Frowning, Hanma says, “I’m busy.”

“Oh, okay, cool. Some other time then.”

Technically, Hanma isn’t lying. You and he have a date on Saturday. And it’s long overdue. The bike takes off, leaving the scene of the crime long behind him.

- - -

The sky is a serene blue, almost spotless. Despite the lack of shade, the humidity is manageable, and the sun is low. People flock to the streets to experience a perfect summer day. Maybe that’s why you texted him to move your appointment.

Rather than meet at your stuffy office, you told him to meet you in Fuchū, at the Tokyo Racecourse. It is the offseason, so no major races today, just low-grade horses and the low-grade losers who will bet on anything.

Normally, when he comes to the track, Hanma goes to one of Toman’s reserved boxes. Kisaki loves horses, loves the process of building one into a winner, and has had moderate success. One horse even placed in the Tenno Sho a few years back. The boxes are air conditioned with staff to serve food and party favors or take bets as needed.

You were not waiting in a private box. Hanma found you halfway up the main grandstand, precisely in the center. A spot that affords you the illusion of privacy as the closest patrons sit several rows away.

Directly below the viewstand, is the track. There is a grass course that stretches in an oblong for a mile and a quarter. Then, the slightly shorter dirt track for other races. You can see the finish line and the winner’s circle from your seats. The video screen – the largest not just in Tokyo but in the world – projects a horse stamping calmly toward the starting gates where a host of retainers wait to prep it.

For the last fifteen minutes, you both have been sharing impressions and opinions about Crime and Punishment. Hanma will not admit that the story is fresh in his mind, only finished last night in a feverish sprint to get his homework done before seeing you again. Better you think him a swot than too stupid to read a fucking book.

“Did you relate at all to the reason Raskolnikov killed the pawnbroker?” you ask him.

“Do I relate? I stayed in that sad-sack’s brain for hundreds of pages, and I don’t even know why he did it.”

“Does murder always have a logical motive?”

“Suppose you’re saying it’s for emotional reasons. You really are a shrink.”

Not that you look it today. You dressed for the track in all white, loose-fitting clothes, linen pants and cotton shirt. Something a tourist might wear to the beach. It is the most casual he has ever seen you.

With his eyes, he traces the lines of fabric, how they skate over and obscure your curves. He thinks it might be intentional, a pretense put on that you don’t even have a body. Nothing there for him to lust after. Your mistake as Hanma has a vivid imagination.

“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. Some people focus on Raskolnikov’s alienation from society, how miserable the city and his circumstances are. Some people focus on the psychological, on his belief in himself as special. Both are true to me, nature and nurture and all that,” you say.

The hollow at the base of your throat throbs and deepens as you speak. He might thrust his tongue into the little hole it creates, drink the sweat from the chalice of your skin, drift lower until he mouths fabric. Your outfit leaves no openings: shirt tucked into pants, sleeves tight at the wrist, neckline flat. No way to reach your skin without undressing you entirely, without tearing something open with his teeth.

Cold biting anger creeps into his stomach as his imagination encounters this obstacle. So much time and energy spent to deny himself when he should be using those resources to fulfill his desires. Anger at your continued paltry defenses against him.

“Fine then,” he bites out. “Did I relate to the reason? On the surface, sure. Stealing when you need money is as natural as eating when you’re hungry. To be fair, I wouldn’t need to murder some little old lady to get her money – people underestimate how much this is a skilled profession – but also, sure, if I had to kill her, why not? But all that garbage he spouted about Napoleon, about being above the law because you’re such a special boy who’s going to change the world? Bullshit.”

“You never justify your actions on the basis that you’re special?”

“I never bother to justify my actions at all! Why should I?” Hanma retorts. “The worst are those guys that run around talking about the strong versus the weak all the time. You see them a lot. They’re constantly talking about survival of the fittest. They might as well wear a sign: ‘I’m insecure. Please tell me how big and strong I am.’ It’s not about the strong versus the weak. The weakest motherfucker can get the jump on you. It’s just about…about want. Do what you want, what you choose. So long as you’re prepared to live with the consequences – and I mean real consequences, not those phantoms of guilt you see in the book – then the only human thing to do is act.”

You nod, piercing eyes digging into his own. They give so little away while demanding so much from him in return.

His cock twitches. Hanma can’t decide if your eyes will hold that same power when you are on your knees for him.

“Do you believe you’re special at all? Better than other people?” you ask.

“I guess I’m different, and I don’t like other people all that much. But I don’t walk around thinking how great I am all the time either. It doesn’t matter to me if other people think highly or lowly of me. I never wanted to be number one in Toman or Valhalla or school or anything else. I don’t need respect. Don’t believe I’m going to change the world. I don’t have many opinions about myself in general,” Hanma says.

“That’s surprising,” you frown. “It’s fairly uncommon for people diagnosed with ASPD to not also exhibit traits of narcissism.”

“It’s still narcissistic, isn’t it? I don’t care what others think of me. I don’t compare myself to them. Do you think God thinks highly of Himself? Because I doubt He bothers to think about Himself at all.”

“You think you’re like a god?”

An eastward breeze blows through the stands and ruffles your hair. The strands hover above your neck for only a moment before settling, but they don’t return to their previously pristine positions. There is disgust beneath your façade.

“You’re not listening, Doc. I don’t think much of myself in general,” Hanma chastises. “But I wonder if you can say the same. All that work you put into getting your fancy degree, into becoming independent, someone worthy of respect. I bet you think pretty highly of yourself.”

The way you dress, hold your shoulders at right angles, smile pleasantly with hands folded, these are all choices. You are a construction made up of an amalgamation of choices designed to project the right message, to bolster your status, to protect yourself from demons. Nothing is left to chance, to some inherent instinct at the core that is you. How could you not think highly of yourself when you had so purposefully chosen to be this thing you call yourself?

You shake your head vehemently, a strong reaction by your standards. “Not at all. You’ve got me all wrong. I don’t think I’m anything special. I’m boring, uninspiring even.”

“Oh, come on, sweetheart. You know you’re smarter than just about everyone here,” Hanma says, gesturing around to indicate the other patrons.

“What does that have to do with anything?” you say shortly. “I’m smarter than some people. Others are smarter than me.” And now it’s your turn to gesture around, first pointing to where a jockey is walking the track. “The jockeys are more athletic than me, better with animals. You’re stronger than me, better at…whatever it is you do. And, all these people, I bet most of them go home to loved ones at night, that they touch the lives of the people around them. They’ve known love all their lives and take it as a matter of course. But me? I’m a ghost. People see me, but I can never quite touch them. What’s so special about that?”

Boisterous laughter rises above the dull crest of chatter. Hanma identifies it as coming from a group of young men, university-aged but dressed like day laborers, probably coming together on a day off. They are seated not too far from you both, though he only takes real notice of them now.

Glancing around, Hanma eyes the other patrons that he didn’t bother to observe before. On a weekday, most of the track’s clientele are lone gamblers, addicts who chase after escape. On a Saturday, however, there is more companionship, more reminders that human beings are in fact social animals.

There is a father who’s brought his kids – probably a weekday addict with weekend visitation – bribing them with jelly candies to sit quietly through the race. There is a man dressed for a date, earnestly explaining how the betting cards work to a woman dressed for the office. There is a group of old men that take up an entire row, familiar with each other in a way that suggests decades of shared friendship, surviving marriage, divorce, children, hospitalization, and all the other vagaries of life. No matter how he tries, Hanma cannot picture you joining any one of these groups anymore than he can picture himself.

In short, you and Hanma are surrounded by lives that intertwine and touch each other, while your own lives stretch on in unmeeting parallel.

“I know what you mean,” Hanma says, and he intends it kindly. Neither of you feel quite of this bustling, happy world. It makes Hanma forget he half despises you. “You know, Hakkai asked me to get dinner with him recently.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. It’s not work related. Sometimes he just asks me to…hang out, I guess.”

“He enjoys your company. I remember how he spoke about you in our interviews,” you say.

“Yeah, but…I don’t know…it’s weird,” Hanma says finally.

“Why?”

As a child, Hanma spent most days in the company of kids his age, but only because the games and entertainment available to children so often required a group. With every passing year, he grew more independent, more reclusive. He liked having people around for fights, then for fucking, or to serve as an audience, the reasons were endless; but there was no need to form bonds with people to achieve those things. Today, if Hanma wants an audience or entertainment, he merely walks into a new bar and the audience casts itself with whoever’s there. The players are interchangeable.

Except.

“Hakkai’s not the first person to want to hang out with me just because, but he’s the first person that…I suppose I could almost…maybe see myself saying yes,” Hanma admits.

Something slimy slips through his guts. Immediate revulsion. Here he is making a confession of unearthed truths, and he didn’t even barter something of equal value from you in exchange. When did he relax around you enough to misstep so needlessly?

“Try it,” you recommend. The cool tone of your voice only exacerbates his growing fury. “Something new is worth exploring, right? At the very least it will be novel. Treat it like an experiment and take him up on the offer.”

Hanma crosses his arms because if he doesn’t, he is going to touch you. Whether that touch will make you cry with pain or pleasure he doesn’t know. No mistakes. He promised Kisaki.

“He only wants to get dinner or drinks or see a movie. I’ve done all that before, Doc.”

“But you’ve never done it with him.”

“So?”

“Doing something for the first time with a new person can change it completely,” you say.

“Ya know, Doc, this sounds an awful lot like more homework,” Hanma says, sly.

A slight dampening of his palms in excitement. Such restraint he showed in waiting to bridge this topic, in letting you relax into your false security as authority and professional. How kindly he allowed you to pretend you aren’t a dripping little slut beneath it all. You don’t show half so much restraint with him as you carelessly prod his buttons, and it’s time he tears yours off completely.

“Tell me,” Hanma purrs. “Were you a good girl this week? Did you do your homework and pet that pretty pussy for me?”

Your eyelashes graze the soft curve of your cheek as your eyes flutter closed. More defensive posturing, now your eyes can’t give you away.

Two points swell against the fabric of your shirt, nipples hard enough to show through your bra. They draw Hanma’s eyes like savory targets, sweet little gum drops for him to chew and suck.

It’s time for you to pony up.

“That’s now how this works between us, and you know it,” you say.

The loudspeakers blare as the start of the race grows near. Hanma didn’t think to place a bet before, and now he regrets it. The way things ‘work between you.’ It’s boring how you insist on repeating yourself, insist on making him repeat himself.

He opens his mouth to snarl at you, almost certain it will be a sincere threat for once, but you speak before he can.

“We’ll bet on it, same as we always do. You win, and I’ll tell you in detail. If I win, you agree to try a mood stabilizer for the next three months. It should soften the swing you experience between depression and mania. This isn’t an official diagnosis per se, but you meet the criteria for bipolar disorder, and I want to see how Lithium impacts your daily experience,” you say.

“Trying to turn me into a vegetable, Doc?”

“No, we’ll monitor closely for side effects. Acute fogginess or mood swings, and we’ll lower the dosage or remove you entirely. You’ll need regular lab work as well. None of which I’ll conduct. I don’t want to diminish you, Hanma. But I do want to give you the tools to lead a better life. I’ve done the research and patients with a diagnosis of ASPD and bipolar depression often benefit from mood stabilizers. I think this could really help you stave off the worst of the boredom and help you manage your impulsivity when you can’t.”

As Hanma considers your suggestion, he stares out at the track. The horses are corralled at the starting gate, blinders around their eyes to soothe their anxiety. Skittish creatures horses, starting at the smallest disruption and requiring protection from the caprices of the world.

He will not be the blind horse. He will not dull his senses and hide from his own interiority because the reality is too frightening, too stimulating.

Though, doesn’t he do just that by his own volition already? Every time he takes a bump or drowns himself in liquor or pussy, isn’t he doing his best to escape a world that doesn’t hold anything for him? If he were to view it as just another pill…

You are an object of fixation for Hanma, not meant to be a person worthy of real judgment or feeling. He shouldn’t care enough to hate you, but in that moment he does.

He despises you. Despises the way you analyze and ascribe meaning to everything he does. Despises the way you confront his passive existence and reveal it as something cold and wanting. Despises that you pretend that there is an alternative out there for him to feeling this way.

“I win and you answer in detail,” Hanma says, each word slow and deliberate. “And you give me your underwear.”

The fingers on your left-hand flex, a little tell, but then they unwind. “That seems fair given how big my prize is if I win.”

After all this time, you still keep him on his toes. He can never predict when you’re going to fight him and when you’re going to submit so perfectly. Your lingerie has also kept him guessing. Not obsessively. But vaguely, between other thoughts, he would wonder what you preferred under your work uniform. Were you the utilitarian, comfortable type? Did you prefer soft silky fabrics or revel in the naughty secret of lace, the thought of which taunted your patients and kept them up at night?

Somehow, he has become no better than the sex pests that frequent your office, clamoring for just a peak at your panties.

He really fucking despises you.

- - -

The stands are quiet now, chatter dying out as the time for the starting bell approaches. Hope is so often silent. It’s dread that deafens you with the noise, so it’s no wonder that your ears are ringing.

The bet is simple. You divide all the horses in the race between you. Whoever chooses the winner onto their roster wins.

Hanma accepts your terms without an argument, though you fear you spot a hint of malice in his eyes. A glint of gold that menaces you.

Prior to this week, you knew nothing about horse racing, but you prepared for this session, reviewing the history of every horse in the race and reading blogs to determine your best angle to victory. Hanma shows less circumspection in his draft, choosing mostly based on name. You almost chuckle when he picks a horse with terrible odds named Smooth Criminal. Typical.

From the stands, the horses appear tiny. The jumbo screen somehow equally fails to capture the size of the beasts and how they tower over the diminutive men that ride them. You saw a horse up close only once on a middle school field trip to a farm, and you remember your dreams of sweet ponies crashing down around you at their sheer scope.

Unlike the sturdy, passive farm horses you once saw, the racehorses are agitated. Preening primadonnas that stomp their hooves and crane their necks toward the crowd, as if they know all eyes are on them in the breathless moments before the race begins.

You fold your hands before your chin. It doesn’t matter now if Hanma can see your nerves. Of course, you’re nervous. You spent the better part of a week debating the best strategy to convince him to try lithium after spending the better part of two weeks consulting with experts about its likely efficacy for Hanma’s case. Your entire treatment strategy rides on the results of this bet.

Not to mention, you are pretty attached to your panties.

The moment before the race begins meanders, as if your nerves have frozen time, as if the few seconds have somehow gotten lost, but then they are off.

It amazes you how much anticipation is built for such a short race. The first furlong is finished in twelve seconds. Two horses draw slightly ahead of the pack. Both – Mezuki and Hiro’s Hero – belong to your team. Smooth Criminal trails not far behind in third place. The gap between the rest of the pack is small but substantial.

The horses thunder around the first turn, tilting precariously. It looks like the jockeys might slide off and be trampled underfoot.

You glance at Hanma. Repeatedly, he fiddles with his glasses, like he might zoom in for an even closer look at the action. His eyes are gleaming. Like, when he raced his car through town two weeks ago, though you could barely bear to open your eyes to look at him then. It is the same manic glee, life returned to a man who walks through the world like a zombie. The only other time you can remember him looking half so alive is when…

Muzzles bent low, the horses focus singularly on the track as it speeds by. Beneath their hooves, it looks like a treadmill cranked up to the highest level, like no animal should be able to move that quickly without the ground assisting underfoot.

Around the fourth furlong, Mezuki loses steam, slowing so that four horses can careen past him. Places three through eight swap constantly as the jockeys lay into their horses’ sides, and they release their last reserves of energy, but Hiro’s Hero remains stubbornly in first place with Smooth Criminal trailing him.

The horses round the last corner, drawing clearly into the crowd’s line of sight. Everyone forgets the jumbo screen with its artificial pixels to focus on the real thing happening before them.

So close to the finish line, and now Smooth Criminal gains a second wind. He gallops tight to the rails, reduces the gap with each bound. The jockey bounces wildly on the horse’s back as he all but flies forward. A hair’s breadth from overtaking Hiro’s Hero.

The excitement from earlier twists into anxiety. You are going to lose after all your thought and research. And then, you are going to burn from the inside out as you tell Hanma in detail just how often you dipped your fingers into your pussy this week, just how impossibly he haunted your fantasies, how tremendously the first orgasm shattered you and your tremulous grasp on ethics. All while you squirm in discomfort, your panties in his pocket.

You can’t. You can’t. You can’t.

Wildly, your hand seizes Hanma’s. Anything to anchor yourself. Cold rings bite into your fingers, and you retaliate by digging your neatly trimmed nails into his flesh. You both sit so close to victory or loss. He squeezes your hand.

And then…

The race is over. Hiro’s Hero crosses the finish line 0.7 seconds before Smooth Criminal comes in second place.

After that, all the other horses thunder past in a matter of seconds. The stadium is loud as people celebrate or bemoan their bad fortune. There will be another race in fifteen minutes, and all the hubbub will repeat itself, but for now, the event is over.

You breathe heavy. Your heart palpitates, not having gotten the message that you won. The deed is done, and you are victorious. Laughter sticks in your throat, no deeper, stuck in your soul. You pat the back of your neck and collarbones with a handkerchief. The residue of sweat isn’t removed so easily.

Only then do you realize you are still gripping Hanma’s hand and release him.

He is aglow with the same exhilaration. Despite his loss, his mouth is cut into a crooked line that you believe is his true smile, not the shark-like one with all teeth that he uses to intimidate.

This is why you chose to take Hanma to the track. While you admit that you are spiraling now, drawn into Hanma’s web and making terrible choices, there is professional justification for this at least. You determined that he needs to develop a roster of high adrenaline and high reward activities. Then, you can work on replacing his impulses, so that when he’s in the depths of depression, he chooses to bet on the horses rather than take it out on his fellow man. You should also work on lessening the intensity of his mania, not just its outlet.

But you must admit that in the depths of his mania you find Hanma the most beautiful.

The two of you stay for another hour. Hanma helps you place more bets – this time for money – on a number of horses, and you win a few thousand yen, enough for tomorrow’s lunch. Between races, you discuss the dosage, impact, and potential negative side-effects of lithium. Hanma listens to you carefully and without resistance; he lost after all. He is not pleased when you inform him that he will need to reduce and ideally cut out drinking and drugs altogether but does not argue.

While you discuss his treatment, he almost feels like a typical patient, albeit one you’ve met at a horse track. You start to relax into the role within which you spend almost all your time. You feel confident.

The day is still young when you exit the racecourse. Flimsy white clouds layer on top of one another like brushstrokes to block out the sun and paint the day in muted blue tones.

There is no reason not to take the subway home. In fact, it would likely be faster. Still, when Hanma offers you a ride, you accept gratefully. You wish to share a few more ideas about his treatment.

The Bentley from your hellish drag race is gone, and you are reminded at its absence that you vowed that day to never get in a car with this man again. Today, however, he is not planning to get behind the wheel. A sleek black town car pulls up to curb, complete with a driver.

You have never been in a car like this one. The back is partitioned for privacy and there are two rows of seats facing each other, almost like the car is a shrunken limo. You nestle contentedly onto one side as Hanma stretches out on the other. The space is cramped, and your knees knock together.

“I know you’re going to make fun of me for giving you more homework, but I would like you to do one more thing. This one’s critically important, actually. Start documenting how you feel on a scale of one to ten. I have a phone app you can use. If you could log it three times a day at least, but ideally, whenever you feel your mood shifting. Whenever you fall below a four, add a few notes about what is running through your mind. We want to start identifying what your thought patterns look like so that we can replace them with something more productive.”

You show him the app on your phone, and he obediently downloads and creates an account. He even agrees to friend you, so that you can check his log in real time.

“Sometimes people struggle with the number scale because they question their instincts about what number they should choose. So, why don’t we do a test round? Hanma-san, what number would you give yourself right now in terms of mood with ten being the best and one the worst?”

Hanma doesn’t take more than a second to answer. “A two.”

A little puff of air escapes you like a burst balloon. You were having fun, you realize. You were having fun and therefore assumed Hanma was as well.

“Only a two?”

“Of course, I’m in a foul mood,” Hanma confirms. His arms stretch out across the seat, taking up his entire side of the car like some enormous bird of prey. “You’re a fucking tease, aren’t you? Getting my hopes up and then crushing them. Didn’t even give me a sniff of your panties to give me a reason to live. Fucking soulless of you.”

Sometimes, when Hanma flirts with you, your insides squirm and dance with pleasure at the attention. Your pancreas becomes the giggling schoolgirl you never were in your youth, your liver a blushing bride, your kidneys twin whores for the sound of his voice. But now there is the threat of meanness behind his words, and you find little reason to delight.

“I’m sorry that you lost our bet, Hanma-san,” you get out through a tight throat. “If you’re struggling with losing, maybe we should play another game. Is there…is there another game you’d like to play?”

Wildly inappropriate, but you vow that you will not bet your underwear or details about how you touched yourself to the thought of him, regardless of what he suggests next. You’ll let him win something to assuage his ego. That’s all.

Hanma smiles, feral and far too happy, and then he does something that drains all the color from the lovely day you were having. Something that leaves you wondering how you could ever have been stupid enough to get in a car with this man.

He pulls out a gun.

“Actually, Doc, I know just the game,” Hanma singsongs. “One round of Russian Roulette for the lady!”

You have only seen a gun once in your life, and that was a smoking gun, just shot into a man’s skull by the very man before you. It may even be the same weapon, though he probably replaced it. How did they even get guns into the country? A stupid question. Your brain is simply spiraling. Anything to avoid confronting the weapon before you. To avoid cataloguing its details, like that it looks like a plastic toy, not the shiny metal you imagined at all. It has a long, straight nozzle – is that even the right term for it? – resembling a stapler that tapers into a fat handle. Your eyes train on the trigger, unable to look away.

There’s supposed to be a safety, right? To stop it from just firing? Was it on now? What did a safety even look like.

The car jolts over a pothole, and you almost vomit.

Hanma opens the chamber, dumping the bullets out before reloading just two. Two death sentences and ten possible pardons.

“You look like you aren’t familiar with the rules, Doc. No need to worry. It’s easy,” Hanma says. “Look, I’ll even go first.”

Before you can summon the strength to stop him, to protest, the gun rises to Hanma’s temple, the little nozzle slotting right into the flesh, and he pulls the trigger.

You don’t hear the click as the gun engages. The sound is drowned out by your strangled little gasp. An image of Hanma but not Hanma blurs before your vision. It is an un-head, a space where a head should be, blood and gore and shattered bone fragments unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.

And then, you’re blinking rapidly, and the image is gone, and it is a smiling Hanma before you. His skull is firmly intact, his handsome face unblemished.

It is not the face of a man but a demon. Only a demon could laugh so maliciously as you slump bloodless against your headrest. You fixate on the cold – the car is frigid, air-conditioning pelting against your numbed legs – anything to protect your fragile psyche from the reality of the demon in front of you.

“You know, this is the twelfth time I’ve played this game. I should be dead now. Maybe next time,” Hanma says.

You stay stubbornly silent. He can playact this little drama all by himself, you won’t give him the satisfaction. Not that you can stop him as he drinks up every quiver of your body with glee. Not that you could speak if you tried through a mouth made of sandpaper.

Hanma extends the gun toward you, but you don’t move.

Sighing, he kneels in front of you on the floor of the car. It rocks as he moves, and you worry again that the gun could misfire.

“Do you need some help, baby? I’ve got you.”

Strange, but you don’t resist as Hanma puts the gun in your hand. You don’t resist as he folds your fingers around the handle and then the trigger. You don’t resist as he draws the gun and hand alike up to your own temple, positioning it for a clean shot.

And, you don’t resist as he presses his finger against yours and the gun fires.

Nothing happens. A great stirring stillness. You didn’t even scream.

You could have died. You almost died.

The realization is building up with the promise of earth-shattering destruction. Had you died, your last thought would have been of nothing, brain too numbed for regrets or memories. No, or rather, you had no memories worth remembering. Your life was a vast desert with only loneliness and missed opportunity to keep you company. You might have died without ever having lied.

You could have died.

Time must have passed while your brain sat on pause because you suddenly become aware of your surroundings. You are now spread across Hanma’s lap, the man almost purring as he strokes your hair in a mockery of comfort.

You know you must be alive because the anger that courses through your veins is too powerful for a dead woman. You slap him with all your strength – not because you want to spare him the pain of a punch but because you can’t wait the half-second it would take to form a fist. No, instead, you are striking him everywhere with an open palm. Twice heavily on his chest, so that he jostles a little against his seat. But you crave skin, so you slap him across the face again and again as the rage possesses you.

“Get it all out, baby,” Hanma murmurs quietly.

He sounds unaffected, like all this means nothing! The answering anger drives you to twist about on his lap, so that your thighs straddle him. Now, you can draw back and put more forth behind your blows. Bright red blooms on his cheek at your next hit.

“Oh, yeah, do that again,” Hanma moans.

You do. Again and again. A little harder each time as Hanma makes little noises and writhes beneath you. Somewhere in your consciousness, you are aware of the way his hips buck a little at each hit, and how they strike like a bullet between your parted legs, but you can only consider where you will hit him next, how to make him hurt.

The next slap is aimed higher, lower on the palm as you target his glasses. You want to shatter them in his eyes, blind him forever. He doesn’t deserve to even look at you. The force knocks them askew, though they remain unbroken.

Completely disheveled with hair tangled in every direction, bright red cheeks, and glasses dangling off his nose, Hanma decides he’s had enough. The next slap is stopped by his much larger hand capturing your wrist. You immediately default to the other, but he stops that one as well. Your hands are effectively disarmed. You struggle wildly, thrashing from side to side and bucking your hips to unseat him, but Hanma weathers it all. He isn’t laughing anymore, but he doesn’t look angry either, at least not as you now understand anger to be a seething beast that can’t be stopped. No, he looks alight with something else.

Hanma can pin you down all he likes, your anger still demands to be fed. It will have blood.

You throw your whole torso forward, heads knocking clumsily. Your teeth find his lower lip easily, a tender piece of meat beneath your front teeth. They close tight around it.

Iron floods your mouth and spills over both your lips. Hanma’s mouth is parted as he grunts loudly, and the noise is swallowed up by your own mouth.

Hanma releases your pinned hands but makes no effort to dislodge you. Instead, they firmly grip your ass, pull you closer into his lap. You tug cruelly at his bleeding lip, and he kneads your flesh in return.

The beast of your anger howls in triumph at every pained breath that escapes Hanma’s lips, and as it sates itself on Hanma’s blood, more feeling returns to you. For example, you acknowledge fully how large and powerful the hands on your ass are, how much territory they cover with spread fingers. Then, there’s the way his hard thigh drives into the core of you, sinful as only a demon could be. And, the hard hot length of him is there, too, pressing into your stomach.

You don’t only hunger for his blood.

Hanma spanks your ass with both hands, hard enough that you release his lip on a shallow gasp. Free for a moment, he rips at your clothes. You instinctively lift your hips to help him, step out of your pants and panties as they slide off, and scramble at the buttons of your shirt so that it slips off your shoulders. You work together to make quick work of his belt.

Helpfully, you arch upwards as Hanma busies himself beneath you. The head of his cock smears across your cunt. It collects wetness you hadn’t realized pooled between your legs, cuts a path through the heat of you.

He is utterly focused on the feel of you, on the feel of his own cock, staring down in concentration. You are more focused on his face. Chin and mouth are covered in blood. The wound is still oozing from how deeply you bit him.

The rigid cock between your legs finds the opening of you and spears through. You aren’t prepped, and it hurts. Despite the inflexible ring of muscle fighting against him, Hanma makes it fit anyway.

The sting is sharp. You lean forward and take the other side of his lower lip between your teeth. It breaks beneath your bite just as easily, leaving him with a second wound like a set of piercings on either side. Hanma hisses at the pain, and you both hover still and pierced by the other.

When the pain in your belly lessens, you relax, and gravity does its job of sinking you lower on his cock. It is large just like everything else on this giant of a man. It doesn’t just not hurt. It feels good.

A shiver starts in your toes and vibrates up your entire body. Ringing pleasure in your nipples. Soothing comfort from the hands that again knead your ass.

You part from his mouth to lift your hips. Deliberately, you ride him in a slow grind that scrapes your clit along his navel and pushes his cock against your back walls.

He touches a place so deep inside you it feels like a secret just discovered.

“That’s it. Use it, baby. Use it however you like,” Hanma moans out.

You accept his offer. You gratefully grip his shoulders to support your slick grind in his lap. He doesn’t try to lead you at all, doesn’t try to encourage you to bounce on his cock. Let’s you shift back and forth until your stomach is squirming and your eyes are watering.

“Use that cock to cum,” Hanma encourages. His helpful hands are wandering now. They squeeze a tit dangling out of your open shirt, tickle your upper thighs, and caress your sensitive sides. “Cream all over me, baby.”

The walls of your pussy clench tight, shutting Hanma up, or at least, transforming his words into stuttering groans. The last thing you need right now is him telling you what to do. No, you’ll cum when you’re ready.

You’ll just sink your weight down fully, so that he spears that heavenly deep spot inside you and circle your hips a few times so that no part goes untouched, raise your hips on each upward grind, so that your clit is rubbed raw, and then…only then…

You cum.

You cum and it is annihilation and it is rebirth in one. Your hips twitch and your muscles tighten around a burst of pleasure that is almost agonizing in its strength. Tears spring to your eyes. You are cumming, and it feels a little bit like heaven might, only it isn’t heaven at all, because this is living. You are alive. There is blood coursing through your veins and nerves lighting up throughout your body because you are alive. And you will live to cum again, and again, and again, whether that be by tongue or cock or your own hand. And you are so unbelievably grateful for it.

Limp like a doll, you slump into Hanma’s arms. His cock is the first anchor, holding firm inside you, and his shoulder the second as you tuck your chin into the crook of him. Spasmodic flinches of pleasure dance through your pussy even as the orgasm ends. Your body is so worked up, and your brain is so very very tired. It is a fog, not so different than how you felt when Hanma pulled the trigger. You hum in contentment.

Hanma lifts your hips up, so strong you don’t fear he’ll drop you for a second and begins to thrust up into the slick of you. Warm, wet breath tickles your ear as Hanma pants through his thrusting. Now that it’s his turn, he uses you hard and fast. Each thrust is a punch that forces the air from your lungs. In other circumstances, it might hurt, but now you just sink into the weight of him inside you, and how that means you are wonderfully and truly alive.

To be stretched and used so thoroughly! To be touched by another person, greedy hands roaming your back, pinching and prodding at soft flesh!

Hanma grunts out what a good girl you are, how well you’re taking him, how hot you feel. It is a kind of lullaby.

A lullaby so soothing that as Hanma loses himself inside you, hot ropes of cum making their home in your body, you have already drifted off to sleep.

#hanma shuji #tokyo revengers smut #tokyo revengers x reader smut #hanma x reader #hanma smut #tokyo rev smut #from his mind to hers #this is a bad time to post but i'm doing it anyway #please heed the warnings #embossross masterlist

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restlesssinner · 1 year

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Things I noticed watching Bullet Train a second time at home so my family could see the movie too (spoilers):

Tangerine tells lemon to wear a vest to protect his chest and lemon says it gives people a false security cause you can still get shot in the neck; lemon gets shot in the chest and lives BUT LATER tangerine gets shot in the neck and dies

The first time I watched it my heart was shredded by Dominic Lewis’ cover of bubbles that plays when lemon finds tangerine’s “corpse” (I’m DL’s #1 Spotify listener, he also worked on OSTs for violent night and spirited this year) but the song also plays when the brothers are counting their kills in its original form and in a rock cover when they slow-no walk to find the thief

Ladybug has bad luck but not only does little prince constantly talk about good luck but her father does too, seeing how he keeps forcing and winning Russian roulette on his enemies

Ladybug has long hair and a beard, looks homeless and is forced to face all the misfortunes of the world so that others can rest in peace, and for once it’s nice to see a Jesus allegory that isn’t shoved in our faces by the movie

The elder and the white death both worked under the same boss, both lost their wives, both have two descendants one of which is affiliated with crime and another which is kidnapped to get to their parent; the prior spent most of the movie in the same scenes

“He shot my brother” “you shot my son” both of these where also caused by little prince manipulating the shooter into thinking they’re the victim

The nurse that kills the child’s assassin is in the background of every shot showing the assassin

Almost no one in the movie is known by their real names but by symbolic nicknames: even agent carver alludes to an assassin with butcher-like instincts

In the bottle flashback you can see lemon and tangerine changing clothes from their countdown scene to the ones they wear on the bullet train

First ladybug pretends to be tangerine’s twin and later lemon taunts him as not being a replacement to his brother

Lemon says Logan Lerman’s character looks like a “Percy” alluding to his famous PJO role

The wolf’s envelope is shown earlier when ladybug searches his coat for a gun and has to exes to represent cartoon dead eyes and two suspects that were at the wedding undercover: ladybug and hornet. The contrast between these two is shown by how one kills the conductor to steal their clothing whilst the other pays bisexual icon Channing Tatum to exchange clothes

I might be dumb but I realized that the Wild West stand off between hornet and ladybug was also her waiting to see if he succumbs to the poison in thirty seconds

Lemon tells an old lady she is fucking excused and ladybug later tells the same lady to eat a bag of dicks

Tangerine is at first suspicious of little prince because he knows all the seats were sold out by the white death but that knowledge dies with him

I still don’t know how the elder psychically knows his son is fine can someone please tell me if they know

I swear this is my favorite movie after EEAAO there’s so much rich detail even it has to remind the audiences by re-showing earlier scenes it literally made me forgive Brad Pitt for straight washing Troy I watched it in cinemas just cause I didn’t feel like waiting for the movie I went to watch without planning it and I hope this artistic masterpiece is never forgotten in the corridors of cinema history if there’s anything more you can think off feel free to add your thoughts

#bullet train #lemon and tangerine #ladybugs #brad Pitt #dominic lewis

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demetriandelibinaryboyfriends · 6 months

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@allvalleyskillschallenge

Prompt: Trick or Treat Pairing: YasMoon

***

I wanna hold ‘em like they do in Texas, please Fold ‘em, let ‘em hit me, raise it, baby, stay with me (I love it) Love game intuition, play the cards with spades to start And after she’s been hooked, I’ll play the one that’s on her heart

Oh, whoa, oh, oh I’ll get her hot, show her what I got Oh, whoa, oh, oh I’ll get her hot, show her what I got

Can’t read my, can’t read my No, she can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody) Can’t read my, can’t read my No, she can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody)

P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face

I wanna roll with her, a hard pair we will be A little gambling is fun when you’re with me (I love it) Russian roulette is not the same without a gun And baby, when it’s love, if it’s not rough, it isn’t fun

Oh, whoa, oh, oh I’ll get her hot, show her what I got Oh, whoa, oh, oh I’ll get her hot, show her what I got

Can’t read my, can’t read my No, she can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody) Can’t read my, can’t read my No, she can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody)

P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face

I won’t tell you that I love you, kiss or hug you ‘Cause I’m bluffin’ with my muffin I’m not lying, I’m just stunning with my love-glue-gunning

Just like a chick in the casino Take your bank before I pay you out I promise this, promise this Check this hand ‘cause I’m marvelous

Can’t read my, can’t read my No, she can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody) Can’t read my, can’t read my No, she can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody)

P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face

(She’s got me like nobody) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face

***

Poker Face-themed YasMoon moodboard I made to go with this drabble I wrote a while back!!! I actually made this months ago, but decided to post it this month since it's kinda themed around the S1 Halloween dance, and it fits this month's allvalleyskills prompt surprisingly well???

I've talked about it a little on my other posts, but Yasmine seems to have this detached, apathetic persona in S1. The only feeling she shows openly (prior to 1x09, anyways) is this snide contempt that kinda says "I'm so above all these ridiculous people that they're not worth a single ounce of my emotional energy". Basically the only time all season that we see her start to let her walls down a bit--and the only time she seems genuinely happy--is in the weed-smoking scene in Moon's car. And even then, her Catty Armor is back on immediately after Sam gets in the car! So we know she can let her authentic self out around Moon, but she can also crush it back down at a moment's notice to maintain her Coldhearted Ice Queen image.

I feel like this kind of up-and-down of being warm and sweet and unfiltered around Moon and cruel and ruthless around everyone else would eventually drive Moon crazy, like!!! Moon can't even get Yasmine's walls down herself sometimes, and so much of the time, she has no idea what Yasmine she's going to get: Her loyal, funny best friend, or the controlling queen bee who acts like she only keeps Moon around to maintain appearances.

And then when I layer in my headcanon that they were privately screwing around in S1, well. You can imagine things would get hairy. Poor Moon is down bad--she would do anything to prove herself to Yasmine, and she would follow her girlfriend best friend anywhere. She'd do anything Yasmine says, no matter how vile. And perhaps worst of all, Moon knows that Yasmine can be sweet. Can be an utter delight, even. But she never quite knows if Yasmine's being sincere, or if she's just yanking Moon's feelings around because she can. And Moon can't help but wonder if this whole confusing thing they have is, well...

Just a trick.

Meanwhile Yasmine really does care about Moon--probably more than anyone--but she absolutely will never admit this aloud because EWWWWW ADMITTING YOU GIVE A SHIT ABOUT PEOPLE IS EMBARRASSING SHE WOULD NEVER jalshdkbdfugjku

Also, just a reiteration of what I was rambling about in my OG drabble, but these girls were being outrageously fruity at the S1 Halloween dance??? Like neither of them visibly have a date, despite being popular and conventionally attractive enough to easily get one Sam's going with Kyler, so no logical reason why the alpha bitch and beta bitch of the school wouldn't have hot jocks on their arms. And in the background of some of the Sam-Kyler scenes, they are dancing??? MUCH closer together than they need to be??? Like is this really necessary???

I think so because they're horny lmao these poor home of sexuals cannot control their burning sapphic desire if they tried

And to again paraphrase from my OG drabble post: ANYWAYS I can totally imagine these two sapphic-ass Laker girls jamming out to Poker Face and Moon being like “wait a minute, why is Yasmine singing so passionately about playing with people’s hearts? And why am I hard relating to Lady Gaga’s many jilted lovers??? ...should I be concerned?”

BTW S1 YasMoon gives off huuuuge toxic codependent vibes, and that's what makes it FASCINATING <3 I love fucked up little dynamics!!! I devour them like junk food!!! Don't mind me, I'll be over here doing needlessly deep character studies on S1 Yasmine in all of her awfulness <3 <3 <3

Actually really like how this moodboard came out! I was going for kind of a grungy rave vibe, and accidentally made it very Bisexual Lighting heavy XD But I feel like that's thematically appropriate! And what can I say? The girls always look good in purple and pink <3

As always, pic credits available upon request!

#allvalleyskillschallenge #yasmoon #yasmine x moon #moon x yasmine #aesthetic #moodboard #yasmine cobra kai #moon cobra kai #cobra kai #cobra kai season 1 #femslash #wlw #sapphic #lesbian

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eoinmcgonigal · 4 months

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Re: your french guy post, i think that paddy was actually impressed that augustin DIDN'T play russian roulette with him and instead pushed back against it. He was still sad about epon's death but he recognised there was somethijg similar in augustin. There's no way that eoin would have played russian roullete with paddy or even let him do it. Augustin getting mad at him about it was probably kinda.... not nice, but sort of impressive or reassuring? Here was this guy who was unafraid to tell paddy (a man with a reputation for being rabid and dangerous) that he was being a fucking dumbass and that he should stop. After eoin died there was no one to hold paddy's leash and pull the dog back so that the poet could come to the surface again. By talking poetry with him and then showing that he was ready and willing to fight paddy over stupid decisions, augustin was showing that he was entirely capable of being that leash.

Idk if all that makes sense i just woke up

Oh yeah that makes sense, I see that scene as profoundly sad from a Paddy/Eoin point of view, as I've not got round to Paddy/Augustin yet (I've taken a slight detour into Johnny/Reg and Johnny/Bill that's taking longer than expected). I use the same details to lead to different 'conclusions' all the time so it's way more fun when there are different ways to look at something - thank you for sending me this because I really haven't meandered/looked at it that way yet!

#i made that post while watching the 't s elliot is dull' bit which is funny #i too have just woken up and it's the 2nd and there are EMAILS it's horrific #i'm too in pain to type out how i think eoin would have responded #i guess it's bc i think about how irl eoin pointed a gun at paddy and threatened to shoot him when he was out of control #i wanna watch this bit again #time to restart the whole show i guess XD

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partnersincrimesuau · 8 months

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★｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ So, back in July... I mentioned I had a PIC-related gift to share with you all. This is what I was talking about. It's an official playlist that I have had SO much fun filling for the past TWO YEARS.

Yes, I started making this playlist in April 2021. I have waited a LONG time to finally release this to the world. Of course, I don't own a single song (I'm very not good at making music LOL) BUT!!! Every song has a relation to Partners In Crime in my head somehow.

Let me explain.

EVERY SONG in this playlist is in it for a reason. This may because of a SINGLE line, a SINGLE quote, a SINGLE strange reference. OR, it may fit the story SO well that it encapsulates the events of an entire scene, chapter, or heck, the ENTIRE comic. And yes, there are one or two songs I put in there that I listened to and went; "... oh my goodness. This is literally the entire comic. I can animate this." And I have not gotten around to animating them yet, because I do not have an iPad, but I WILL ABSOLUTELY BE MAKING SOME AMVs IN THE FUTURE. I GUARANTEE YOU.

NOT EVERY SONG in this playlist is entirely accurate to the story. What I mean by this; there are some songs, like I mentioned, that only relate to PIC through one line of dialogue. This may allude to the fact that the rest of the song has no correlation to PIC AT ALL. But of course...

I WILL NOT SAY WHICH SONGS RELATE THE MOST TO THE STORY. That is for you to discover yourselves. <333

The reason for the addition of the first song... is a bit of a long story. The short version of the story is this; on the 7th of November, 2020, I was listening to that song at a friend's house... and the idea of the comic came to me. Technically, Partners In Crime by Set It Off is the main reason this comic exists. Does this mean the entire story relates to the storyline of that song? I can confirm that while there are similarities, NO. My comic will not end the same way that the song does. If you haven't heard it before, I highly recommend it XDDD

I STILL UPDATE THIS PLAYLIST REGULARLY!!! If I hear a song that somehow relates to PIC, I will not hesitate to add it. So check in every so often to see if it's grown bigger!

YES, SOME OF THESE SONGS MAY SEEM VERY RANDOM. I can assure you that by the end of the comic, most of them will make a lot of sense contextually. Like I said, every song is in it for a reason. But for spoiler reasons, I won’t be sharing why some of these songs are there – some of them MAY imply future events. That’s all I’ll say ^^

YES, I AM OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS!!! If anyone has a song recommendation for the playlist, I will review it myself and decide whether or not I will add it based on its relevance. Please note that I may turn some songs down, but I will appreciate each and every suggestion!!!

By making this public, I am allowing people to follow me on Spotify. I have a ton of other public playlists that you are free to peruse yourselves!!! Most are regular playlists, but there are some very goofy ones there too. I recommend my Ultimate Nerd Playlist (its like Russian Roulette but for your ears).

You may notice a few playlists titled “Works in Progress”. Those will be important later.

But yeah that’s about it!!! Feel free to look through the playlist, leave a heart on it if you like it, and follow me on Spotify to see what I listen to everyday XDDD

- Jinxy

#partners in crime #steven universe comic #stevinel #not partners in crime #update #announcements #why is every non pic page post on my blog an essay #Spotify

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