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springlocking-springtrapping · 14 days

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you said you had different versions of william in your head, are they all the same personality or are they different (it is okay to ask?)

Oh, thank you for this headcanon ask haha. I love talking about him in general so, uh, here you go! It's gonna be long! So here's a read more!

Youngish adult William (around the opening of the diner/his collaboration with Henry)---

Charismatic, bit of a showman, fresh faced and seemingly always full of energy. I'd even dare say that his optimism at the time (prior to Charlie's murder and the first bite) is genuine. He is extremely possessive over Henry, but good at hiding it at this time, having the general self awareness to do so.

He's a great performer and does excellently in the Spring Bonnie suit when he wears it, is actually a real hit with the kids, unironically. Cannot state enough how skilled he is in the entertainment department, could have probably made a name for himself eventually if he hadn't turned to his evil ways. Switches to a light southern American accent when performing as Spring Bonnie.

Generally a very up and at 'em guy, though he's mostly just putting on a good show, he's still very reserved in his personal life and his eyes don't quite match his enthusiasm.

Adult William (post Charlie and the bite, up to the MCI)--

Far more withdrawn, the franchise has lost its novelty and he finds himself married and having children. William in my mind distinctly did not want a conventional family, but due to his severe insecurities around appearing 'normal', he forced himself to start one. Especially after Henry had Charlie.

Sometimes I see him as obsessed with Henry in a possessive, dominating way and sometimes I see him as obsessed with Henry in a competitive, entitled way. YMMV.

He does care about his kids in a sense, but not the same way someone with a fuller sense of compassion would. He is particularly locked on Michael (not in a gross way just fyi) because Michael resembles him so much. William suffers from episodes of hating or loving Michael, because he essentially sees himself in his eldest son, and because he hates himself so damn much, he's prone to losing it on Michael.

Elizabeth is special to him because she looks almost nothing like him, but appears to share his general demeanor. William feels protective of her, and does spoil her a bit.

CC/Evan is the child he pays the least attention to. In truth, he can't stand the boy's sensitivity, and finds himself feeling disgusted and put off at how fearful and weepy CC is. Out of all of his kids, CC is the one he disdains the most and tends to neglect. (obvs CC is dead at this point though)

William at this stage is very unstable. He survives his first springlock failure at some point and becomes morbidly fascinated with it. He begins to experiment with self injury for gratification, and even begins to deprive himself of sleep and food in favor of working feverishly. Subconsciously, he is punishing himself without realizing it.

This is when he starts to feel an itch for more violence, generally speaking, to the point of obsession once more. He loses Elizabeth somewhere in this time period as well, and obviously it serves to further demolish whatever soul he had to begin with.

And, of course, he conducts the MCI. William finally gives in completely, his family has fallen apart but he doesn't feel particularly heartbroken about that so much as he does about his failure to be a normal human being. He feels helpless, powerless.....And so he breaks.

He lures the kids, he kills them, he feels in control again and powerful and, hell, even superior to everyone. In William's mind, he's like a god for just a moment, the taker of life, the blade of death. He gets to decide who lives and dies. And he stays like this, arrogant, even deranged, suffering from actual delusions and sadistic urges.

All the way up until he gets crushed in an agonize springlock failure!

Springtrap----

As Springtrap, William is angry, in near constant pain and pining for release in the form of shameless violence. He is still very clever, although his extremely traumatic death and subsequent 30 years of lapsing in and out of consciousness have eroded his sense of humanity almost entirely.

Depending on the AU he's in, this can go one of two ways.

The first version I imagine is an almost animalistic, violent, remorseless Springtrap that can and does play games with people, their feelings and their lives freely. He, like in the games, pretends to be a simple animatronic, limps or freezes in his victim's view, but is actually perfectly capable of very fast and fluid movement.

In other words, he pretends to be a slow, shambling zombie suit (think back to his skills in performance) in order to toy with whoever's unlucky enough to be there. Springtrap rarely engages in conversation with his victims either, so it's hard to tell what he is or if he's even aware at first.

This Springtrap is 100% sadistic, remorseless and brutal in every way possible. I consider him to be William basically fracturing into something bloodthirsty and lethal, William Afton hardly exists anymore.

The other version of him is a bit different.

After suffering the traumatic springlock failure and having the last 30 years to reflect while locked in the saferoom, he comes to his senses in a way, though he's still very jaded and angry. Springtrap is not as prone to immediate violence, although he generally has no qualms killing anyone that is making a fuss about his appearance/existence (think someone screaming and freaking out, his first instinct definitely isn't to comfort them.)

HOWEVER.....

Should anyone come along that talks to him like a human being, and treats him with a measure of respect, Springtrap will find himself slowly warming up to their presence. He starts to understand what actual, non-toxic connection feels like, though he still greatly struggles with jealousy and withdraws easily.

More or less he calms down, is still more than capable of killing but doesn't go out of his way to do so like he does in the other version. Patches his suit up a bit with the help of his new friend/partner, tinkers on himself and enjoys doing so, teaching his friend/partner a little bit about robotics as he goes.

Obviously, as his former crimes were horrific, whether or not he is ultimately forgiven by Charlie and the other kids is up to the person interpreting him. In this version of Springtrap, I, personally, do see an atonement of sorts happening. But it's bittersweet. The kids finally get to rest, and of course none of them forgive his actions (and he doesn't want them to either) but they do let go, leaving him to his shell of a life on Earth as a corpse in a springlock suit while they get to finally rest.

This Springtrap believes that he should remain stuck as he is, frozen in time where he suffered the first real consequence for his actions. He doesn't express it often, but he is in very much in constant pain and sees this as a suitable way to remind himself of his sins.

Dave Miller---

So in this universe, as Dave, William is a lot more unhinged, just like his counterpart in the novels. Dave is very obviously a bit underweight, sleep deprived and generally unwell health-wise. He has very little regard for his wellbeing, yet also has a severe god-complex where he believes he deserves to be served, if not outright worshipped.

Dave believes himself to be above everyone else, AND he's a huge coward. Like my baseline William, he's a very good performer and actor, but not because he ever wanted to be. It's because he has a crippling, visceral fear of how others perceive him. Even though he basks in the idea of being some powerful person lording over others, he has an almost compulsive need to be viewed positively.

No matter what he tells himself, he's very rejection sensitive. And he always needs to be in control. When Dave is alone and nothing is going on, he's very much drinking himself into a stupor, chain smoking and just generally being as miserable a lump as he can be. Not that he'd ever show or admit it.

Like in the novels, he uses Spring Bonnie as a sort of....armor. Like he puts on the mask, but it's more like taking off the mask for him, because he can become something more true to his ideal self. When wearing Spring Bonnie (even just the helmet), Dave feels empowered. This is because it also hides him, hides his shameful and frankly pathetic real self and covers it with a persona that can bypass his self consciousness.

Out of all of my personal Williams, Dave is probably the one I'm most affectionate for in the general sense, just because I understand his brand of insecurity very well. Also he's just so ugly he's hot???

Anyways, thank you again for the question! Feel free to ask more about these guys if you want!

#william afton #dave miller #springtrap #CW: self injury #CW: self neglect #cw: murder #cw: violence #cw: gore #sorry this is all over the place ugghh i just #have a LOT of thoughts

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esther-dot · 4 years

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Q: How do you explain the sudden change in Jon Snow in s8?

A: There was something different about Jon? You didn’t think Jon going from saving the Free Folk to defending the incineration of the population of KL believable? You didn’t think Jon killing his own man to save a civilian only to (in the next episode) adopt the view that when friends die you sometimes burn a city to the ground was natural character progression? You didn’t think that angry Jon Snow marching off to confront Dany about the slaughter of POWs was the clear precursor to his scene with Tyrion in which his stance seems to have changed to, “Oh, she wants to do this everywhere? Well, as long as she’s an equal opportunity mass murderer, we’re good!”

The truth is that what you are perceiving as a “sudden change” in Jon is not character progression or regression, it is simply the sad evidence that D&D didn’t give two shits, one shit, or even half a shit (do I have that right? I’m not fluent in shit currency) about Jon. Just about every character’s story was tanked in order to hide Dark Dany until the last possible second, which was pretty self-defeating as in order to hide it, they also damaged her story, but no one suffered more than Jon who only existed to do three things in s8: kick Dany’s paranoia into high gear by telling her about his parentage, make her feel abandoned by rejecting her sexual advances, kill her.

I’m not overstating how neglected Jon was because even while he completed his tasks, there was no consensus as to why. Was he wanting to avoid sex with his aunt or was he hoping to assume his “real name” without it causing political/personal problems for them? Was he grossed out by the incest with Dany or was he turned off by the fact that she killed his friend’s family/threatened his? Did he kill Dany for justice/out of duty or for love of the Starks? Other characters say what they think is going on with Jon, everyone in the audience had their opinion, but Jon doesn’t get the chance to clarify. Even his ending was a question mark. Whatever they thought the story was, what we saw simply doesn’t coalesce.

(This is ridiculously long so read below the cut or on AO3)

We’re told that Jon was thinking with his dick until he couldn’t put it in his aunt anymore (way to be a killjoy, Bran), so then he’s wandering around the s8 hellscape, incapable of thinking, until Tyrion, who led Jon into a trap by bringing him to Dragonstone under the misconception that they would be allies instead of telling him he was summoned to bend the knee, who had to talk Dany down from burning cities in the past, who witnessed Dany burn POWs alive and still defended her, that guy becomes the voice of moral authority in the finale and tells Jon where to put it. (The knife, not his dick.) If the story was that Jon was truly that useless, if he had lost all sense and morality, they needed to finish the job.

If Jon was really that far gone, in the finale, he should have fallen to his knees before his queen, incapable of killing her, incapable of saving his sisters, incapable of anything, only able to beg, “Dany, please.” Dany’s conquest of Westeros began with Drogo’s promise to take it for their son in a scene with Varys begging on his knees, so it could have worked well to have her conquest end in a scene that echoed it. And then Arya could have killed Dany so all her “I’m going to kill the queen” talk could come true (in a way). I mean, if the idea was to dismantle Jon’s hero status and bring him low, don’t let him save the day, commit to it. Make him fail. And then, with Dany dead, Jon has nothing left. He failed his people, he failed his family, and he had to watch while the person he gave it all away for dies—he failed his queen. That Jon might reject his punishment. He has no honor, he has nothing, why would he accept it? That Jon might just say “fuck it” and lose himself in the true North. But, that’s not what they did.

Is his story that, just like Dany, he became the thing he always tried not to be? Dany became her father (worse than!), and Jon discovers he isn’t a bastard by birth, but his actions damn him as one? He not only takes the crown when a trueborn Stark is sitting right there, knowing that a trueborn male Stark has returned to the North, he gives it to a Targaryen? That he is a man so controlled by lust he gives away his country and all his principles, refuses to hear reason, even after he knows the woman in question is his aunt? And then, after doing all of that, he betrays the woman he betrayed everything else for? If this is the story, I don’t think Jon would accept a happy ending (they made escaping with the Free Folk his desired end in 8x04). Due to his long-standing self-loathing and shame he would choose punishment, choose to stay at the Wall. But, that’s not what they did.

Going into s8 I thought our two options with Jon were that he knew what Dany was and was using her, or he didn’t know and genuinely believed in her. Tyrion knew what Dany was and Jon always argued for the same humane approach that Tyrion wanted, so I assumed the former. Of course, they also carefully kept Jon ignorant of certain things in s7, so they left the second option open. If Jon didn’t know what Dany was, they needed him to have a moment of realization. We didn’t get that. People argued with me that that’s what happened during the burning of KL, but I said he acted horrified, not shocked. And, now that we’ve seen parts of the script from 8x05, we know there was a deleted bit in which Jon tells Tyrion before they’ve attacked the city that Dany won’t allow a surrender. That’s why Kit wasn’t acting Jon as shocked when everything went to shit. Jon knew. He realized what Dany was capable of, and whether that was when she burned Varys, or when she threatened Sansa, or when she said she wanted to attack KL way back in s7, at some point, Jon knew. That exchange with Varys in which he says Jon knows what Dany will do wasn’t filler. He did, and he accepted it. We can’t pinpoint when he figured this out which is a problem, but since it seems he was open to giving her a pass for burning children alive, maybe that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that at some (unidentifiable) point, Jon knew, and unless this was about honoring his oath as he claimed, it means that Jon’s love for Dany overrode everything else. If that was Jon’s story, he should have been brought to trial in the finale and Bran should have sentenced him to the Wall for his wrongs (being the military leader during the sacking of KL) against the Westerosi as it is Bran’s job to seek justice for his people. And when Arya and Sansa protested, Bran should have looked at Jon and delivered a third three-eyed raven moment, “how about my queen,” indicating the extent of how far Jon’s wrongs ran, that he betrayed their trust and lied to them in order to drag the Northern armies South. Remember how it is Jon who tells Bran not to look away as his father beheads a man? If Jon’s end was about justice, Bran should have looked Jon in the eyes as he delivered his sentence, signaling that Bran is the one who will continue Ned’s legacy. But, that’s not what they did. When Jon kneels before Bran, there is no recrimination.

That’s baffling. Jon is not responsible for Dany’s actions, but he is responsible for his actions and his inaction. I thought he was terrified of her and trying to keep her pacified, trying to protect people, but it is a very different thing if we are meant to interpret him as a true believer, regardless of all the red flags. His motivation changes his actions, but he has barely any meaningful dialogue in s8, so all we can do is take a stance and argue it.

I was thinking about Longclaw. It’s a Mormont who gave Jon that sword, and it’s that man’s niece who tells off Stannis, who eventually follows Jon to war, who names Jon king and denounces him when he returns from Dragonstone. Think about the sound of Lyanna Mormont’s bones crunching as she dies. Jon betrayed her. She made him king and he gave her freedom away to a hated house after he acknowledged his people would never bow to a Southern ruler. Lyanna stood up and declared Jon her king until his last day, but on her last day, Jon was not her king. She had to die without her freedom, with the final words from him on the subject, it isn’t important. Jon betrayed the trust she put in him which was a follow-up to the trust her uncle put in him, and all we get from Jon is an inscrutable glance at Dany over her corpse in 8x04. Jorah wouldn’t take Longclaw from Jon because he was unworthy, but, during the last few minutes of the show, Jon picks up that sword, and he wears it, as if he is still deserving, even after he did that to Mormont’s niece. Even after he failed the people of Westeros by serving the one who brought fire and blood to KL. And yet, D&D don’t care.

They have Jon smile at the end of the finale to show that he’s at peace with what he did, but that’s because D&D were only thinking about his “crime” of killing Dany and ignoring everything else they made him do in s7-8 to get him to that point. Wouldn’t he think of Lyanna each time he picked up his sword? Each time he sits by a fire wouldn’t he hear the screams of Dany’s victims? Even after her death, the focus never truly shifted off of Dany, and we end s8 without any serious consideration given to Jon at all. He wasn’t just neglected by the final cut of s8, D&D did not have a real story for him at all, because while Jon fans bemoaned his behavior, thought his defense of mass murder was as tragic as watching him die, in the finale script, there is no intentional deconstruction of a hero. They even note how the Free Folk view Jon with trust as if he’s still worthy. D&D still believe that Jon is Jon which means that they thought the label of “hero” they stuck on his forehead was all the care he needed.

They gave us wildly divergent versions of Jon simultaneously and never bothered to reconcile it all which made s8 feel a bit like witnessing history and revisionist history at the same time. In 8x01 Sansa asks: Did you bend the knee to save the North or because you love her? Is Jon a self-sacrificing hero or a fool in love? I was told there was no way Jon could manipulate Dany because he’s too honorable, so how is he then manipulating Sansa/Sam/his people? So little consideration was given to keeping Jon consistent, I think he must have been written around what they were willing/unwilling to do regarding Dany’s story, because while they say Jon can’t lie, the story we’re given is one in which he is lying. When I think about s7-8, the most bizarre thing about what D&D did wasn’t how they portrayed Jon, but the fact that they didn’t expect us to take it seriously.

A contributing element to this debacle is that D&D really love surprises. They think that making characters incoherent is a reasonable tradeoff for a moment of shock, and then they offer rationalizations after the fact that don’t make sense (Arya/Sansa in s7). One of their surprises in s8 was Arya falling out of the sky to kill the Night King, right before which they revert her to scared little girl for maximum effect. Dany saves Westeros a few episodes before announcing she’s gonna burn it all. Jon defends Dany right before he kills her. Their form of dramatic tension is to go to one extreme and then the other. They also opt for acting rather than dialogue, but when characters are doing heel turns, we need the dialogue to explain.

But, the biggest factor in this mess might be that they allowed Dany + dragons to become the most important part of GoT financially, and then decided that the last season was about her, not the Stark kids, not Jon, not the North, not the fate of Westeros. Even after she goes bad, everything still revolves around Dany. The finale is written with the assumption that the audience would be mourning Dany, so even while we get the necessary “being a tyrant is bad” lip service, what D&D emotionally offered us was that the tragedy is Dany’s death, not what she chose to become.

I think this odd warping of everything around Dany was also influenced by the fact that Dany is a feminist icon and to have her die at the hands of her lover was brutal. As in, I knew she was going bad, I knew there was a good chance Jon would kill her, but I haven’t been able to rewatch the show since the finale because while Jon did have to kill Dany, romanticizing it, having him kiss her as they’re standing in the ashes of her victims, as he sticks the knife in, it’s really sick. Witnessing the meltdown among those who thought Dany was a hero, I can easily imagine a calculated decision was made to reduce Jon’s agency as it lessens his culpability in the audience’s eyes. Just think about how many of Jon’s conversations are abruptly cut off, how his dialogue is so repetitive throughout the season, how even in the finale, he is largely passive in his scenes with Tyrion. Hallowing him out was a season long endeavor, that had a lot more to do with optics than storytelling.

Now, as for what Jon’s story is? According to D&D Jon is a fool in love who is just kinda, pushed around by Sansa, Dany, and Tyrion. But, I’m personally very invested in wrong answers, and I have one! My tendency is to look back on previous seasons and find the recurring ideas because while characterization may be derailed as necessary for their twists, if it’s an embedded idea, a recurring theme, that means it is intentional which matters. GoT (when it reflects in a vague way what Martin is doing in ASOIAF) is like predictive text with foils and parallels all over the place paving the way for what’s going to happen.

Jaime is one of Jon’s foils, and this quote about his own struggle predicts Jon’s s8 pretty well:

“So many vows…they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Obey your father. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. And what if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocent? It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or another” (2x07).

Jon seems passive in s8, and yet, we still saw this play out. He verbally defends Dany to people all season (Sansa & Sam 8x01, Arya & Sansa 8x04, Varys 8x05, Tyrion 8x06). Jon tells Dany he will obey her in 8x04. Even though he doesn’t want to go South, even though Sansa despises Dany, Jon insists that he must because he swore himself to Dany. But then, Dany massacres the innocent. And she has it out for Sansa whom Jon had promised to protect. Whichever choice he made in the end, he was forsaking one vow or another.

The lines from the show are very similar to the passage from the book which includes two more that make this foreshadowing of Jon’s eventual struggle even more on the nose, “Keep his (the king’s) secrets” and “Love your sister” (Catelyn VII, A Clash of Kings).

Dany commanded Jon to keep his parentage a secret. And Jon agreed to keep it from everyone else, but he had to tell Arya and Sansa. And so, it all unravels. He doesn’t keep Dany’s (his) secret. When fighting in KL he stops, he can’t obey her. He chooses to protect and defend the innocent/weak instead, killing his own man to do so. Jon still doesn’t want to act against Dany, but he loves his sister(s), so he kills her.

Honor leading to downfall, strict adherence to codes rather than your own ethics leading to catastrophe, are interesting ideas because if you define yourself as good only if you follow those codes, doing the right thing feels wrong. It’s a shame they just shortchanged all of this with “he’s in love” when Jon is clearly torn and conflicted, we just don’t get it verbalized much. When the girls try to convince Jon not to go South in 8x04, his response is that he has to because he swore himself to Dany, which seems dismissive, even disingenuous knowing his secret relationship with Dany, but then he tells Tormund he would rather go with him ie Jon feels compelled to go South, against his own wishes, his own morals, but he must do his duty. He always, even when reclaiming Winterfell, is acting in the defense of life, to save someone, so him not wanting to go is understandable. Going to war for a throne is simply not a cause he believes in. Sansa’s emotional reaction to Jon going South reminded me of the despair that Cat felt when she tried to convince Ned not to go South in s1:

Ned: “I have no choice.”

Cat: “That’s what men always say when honor calls. That’s what you tell your families. Tell yourselves. You do have a choice. And you’ve made it.”

The dueling obligations between family and honor was not only Jon’s struggle in s8, or Ned’s in s1, or Jaime’s, it’s presented to Jon by Aemon with another quote that captures Jon’s struggle in the finale (talk about that here), and it all ties together with the burden that comes with making a choice when both outcomes are horrible. For most of season 8, Jon is caught, trapped by incompatible demands.

Jaime struggled with his actions so of course Jon is going to wrestle with his, and while I hated to see it, the idea that being a better man (Jon) may lead you to permit evil (burning KL) that a less moral man (Jaime) prevented is a pretty great way to bring home the point that doing the “right thing” (honoring an oath) can be worse than doing the “wrong thing” (breaking your oath). This breaks down the rigid dichotomy. Right and wrong are no longer distinct, distant things, they’re inextricably bound. You cannot do one without doing the other. The fact that both the Jaime and the Aemon quote foreshadowed everything Jon would face, that s8 is a repeat of s1 is no accident. Even if D&D wouldn’t commit to it, whether they, as with Robb substituted romantic love in the place of honor, or merely over-emphasized it to the exclusion of Jon’s multifaceted struggle, this is all still there. S7-8 Jon is basically answering the question: how can you do right when all you can do is wrong? Sadly, for Jon, there is no winning. Victory is defeat. I think that’s his story in s8.

As far as his characterization goes, they introduced and dropped elements of a different post-resurrection Jon that if consistent could have given him a compelling arc in s7-8. We had glimpses of a darker Jon, glimpses of a broken Jon, but I never felt that they committed to either. If they wanted darker Jon, we would need him to embrace violence in a way he hadn’t before, but instead, while he has two flashes of violence, he speaks openly about hating killing. If they had gone further with that, it could have led Jon to willingly participate in Dany’s conquest rather than the clearly uncomfortable but unbearably obedient version we had. Jon was certainly traumatized after his resurrection, but I thought we saw him recovering somewhat during s6-7. Initially when trying to gather support to retake the North Jon’s body language exudes his insecurity. He clearly still suffers and is in a hopeless state but reclaiming Winterfell matters. Becoming KitN matters. Jon asserts his authority as king over Sansa and then goes on to be belligerent to Dany in s7 because of what this means to him. Contrast Jon’s behavior in his first meeting with Dany with his behavior when talking to Glover or Lyanna in s6. He goes from being uncomfortable, sometimes not being able to look people in the eyes, to facing off with a conqueror who has dragons. You don’t bring him to that point and then try to say that Jon is now a weak/obedient servant. It doesn’t track.

And that’s the thing. Psychologically, emotionally, we are missing essential “triggers” for Jon to explain his actions. Imagine you don’t get to sit at the table with your brothers or even attend certain feasts because you’re a bastard, and then one day, the people who have always looked down on you declare you their king. To have the people who rejected you apologize and raise you up as the best of them, to choose you, to want to follow you, that burrows deep. It isn’t believable that the acceptance of people who don’t give a shit (Free Folk, Dany) hits Jon harder than people who do and yet put all that aside because you showed them that they were wrong, because they think you are worth it, because they respect you. I don’t think Jon was a broken man come s7, I think he was a desperate man. Since reuniting with Sansa, he is as close to being a Stark as he had ever been which is “the first thing I ever remember wanting.” And, it being Cat’s lookalike, the sister who didn’t have anything to do with him before, now embracing him, that has to have been a mindfuck in a good way. I think it would be harder for Jon to betray that newfound acceptance than it would for the Stark kids who had never been excluded in the first place. There is a despair in his love for the Starks that is heartbreaking, and I don’t see how that could ever be supplanted when falling in love with Ygritte didn’t alter his loyalty to the Watch/the North.

That’s why using a romantic relationship to suddenly be Jon’s motivating factor felt very off. We were told by the show that it wouldn’t. We even saw in s7-8 that his desire to protect the North and his family was greater than his love for Dany. But they simultaneously wanted us to believe that his devotion to Dany had superseded it, even though in order to imply that, they reduced him to standing around squinting and very much existing on screen. They turned Jon into negative space defined by a relationship not for the purpose of bringing him low (they refuse to let him be condemned), but as set up for us to wonder if he will stop Dany from killing his family after she’s massacred the people of KL. That’s a decision that will never make sense when either of those would be enough to motivate him to act which means the function of the relationship is a non-starter.

And even if the writers convinced themselves that that was a good idea, the specifics of how they wrote the relationship are off too. For instance, Jon meets Dany and says she’s better than Cersei because she hasn’t attacked KL, and then in the next episode, Jon finds out that Tyrion is the one talking Dany down, that Dany wants to. You can’t hold a character responsible for not knowing what the audience knows, but each interaction between Jon/Dany reinforced just how incompatible their priorities and goals are, and Jon reacts negatively consistently. I think the most glaring instance of this problem is that Jon loves his family more than anything (that fact is the climax of the entire series) and yet witnesses Dany threaten Tyrion’s family. From the audience’s perspective we think “Cersei’s evil—she had it coming.” But in-world? Jon’s people have no intention of kneeling. Jon’s family wants nothing to do with Targs. Hearing Dany tell her advisor, “My enemies? Your family” would scare the shit out of him. The failure of the relationship is dismissed as “lack of chemistry,” but it’s the writing that undermines the relationship more than anything, even more than Kit’s acting. I genuinely thought they were writing a one-sided romance with Jon realizing who Dany was because they were so consistent with exposing her hypocrisy to him from their first meeting in which she doesn’t want to be blamed for her father’s crimes but expects Jon to honor the oath of his forefather, to the fact that she takes his weapons and ships but refuses to admit he’s her prisoner, all the way to her bemoaning the fact that dragons had to be locked away in the Dragonpit even though Jorah had just explained it was for the safety of humans. Of course, seeing as how most fans didn’t find any of that an issue, I guess the writers decided to bank on the audience’s feelings for Dany rather than do the work themselves.

If we must have the relationship (it went from will they/wont they to “you can stop now this is creepy” really fast!), and they didn’t want Jon to be tarnished, they shouldn’t have acted like physical proximity dictated Jon’s loyalty. Jon fully capitulates everything he’s always been (loyal to the Starks/the North) for Dany, only for D&D to maintain that none of that really changed come s8. Instead of saying this is an either/or, he is loyal to Dany or the North, they should have done both/and. Jon remains loyal to the North and becomes increasingly loyal to Dany. Jon/Dany should have agreed to be allies with Dany coming North and then Jon going South in a quid pro quo arrangement. In s7 we had the repetition of “bend the knee,” in s8 “my queen,” which emphasized the power imbalance in the relationship to the detriment of the romance. If they’re allies, Jon doesn’t have to lie (I’m still not sure that he did or if it was a retcon) which would allow him to rigorously defend Dany to the Northern Lords, selling the relationship, his admiration, his loyalty to the audience as well as the characters which you must do if you want our reaction to be anything but “finally!” when he kills Dany. We can still have tension in the North because Dany is a Targ with dragons which makes them nervous, and their (seemingly) unfounded suspicion would emotionally push Jon further into Dany’s corner. Jon would identify with Dany because he knows what it is like to be viewed with unwarranted suspicion because of his father’s sin.

Doing the allies version would have meant that all their teasing of “dark Sansa” wasn’t just misdirection. Littlefinger planted the idea of a Jon/Dany marriage, and Sansa could have acted against Jon (who would have still been her king) because she didn’t want him to tie them to the Iron Throne with Dany on it. If Jon really was supposed to be blinded by love, then we deserved to see Sansa act against him, telling the audience implicitly that Sansa, not Jon, was the true protector of the North. The benefit of this is that there would have been legitimate grievances between Jon and Sansa. Sansa betraying Jon would explain why she wouldn’t pardon him, why he would resent the hell out of her, and why Arya yeets herself out of Westeros. Arya would be angry with Sansa and not want to stay in the North, angry with Bran for punishing Jon even though he saved the realm so not want to be in the South, but also sickened with Jon for siding with a mass murderer and therefore, not able to bear being near him. If the story was about Jon’s failure, we needed to see some sort of fallout from his choices.

Instead, in the show, the Northerners and Sansa are reasonably distrustful and angry, and Jon’s total disregard for their feelings makes no sense, especially when the only reason he was able to get Dany as an ally, the only reason they had any hope of stopping the Night King, was because Sansa understood the importance of securing the North. Jon may not lust after power, but his political position is what got him what they needed to survive, and he’s trailing around after a woman who is obsessed with a throne, so it’s a bizarre thing all around, particularly as Jon is the one who claimed his kingship was why Dany might listen to him back in s7. And, perhaps the most damning thing is that in the same episode that Jon is arguing that politics don’t matter, he is reunited with Arya. The moment Jon holds Arya in his arms again is Sansa’s victory, having a safe place for the siblings to return was one of the reasons she gave Jon for why they had to take back the North. Furthermore, it is Jon’s chosen queen who becomes a direct threat to the family, something that would haunt him, kicking off the whole cycle of Southern rulers being a threat to the Starks/the North all over again, the very thing Sansa was trying to protect them from.

Anyway, in spite of this absurdity, the writers still don’t turn on Jon which makes me think the knee bend had to happen for the love vs duty Aemon quote to make sense and the Jaime parallel, because the only narrative purpose it served was to make Dany Jon’s queen/duty in the finale. Of course, the knee bend also allows s8 to play like s1 in another way. In s1 Cat references the last time Ned went South and returned with Jon ie the last time he left her, he betrayed her. In s7 Jon leaves the North in Sansa’s keeping and comes home having given it to another woman. He betrayed her. Of course, Ned didn’t betray Cat, he was keeping a promise to his sister. And, I know, Jon is a dumbfuck blah blah blah, but in s8, he is re-living previously introduced struggles and ideas, taking on multiple roles simultaneously many of which are lost in the bloodbath of logic that was s8. For instance, Jon gets to be in Joffrey’s and Ned’s shoes. It is the revelation of his parentage (a la Joffrey) that sets off the drama, and he is the one to tell the queen the truth (a la Ned).

The seasons weirdly mimic each other. In s1, Sansa doesn’t want to leave Joffrey, in s8 she doesn’t want Jon to leave her, and in both seasons she goes to a Lannister she trusts to avoid being separated from a boy/man she loves. The men who divulge the secret parentage of Joffrey/Jon end up imprisoned (Ned/Jon) with Sansa intervening on their behalf, securing the fate for Jon she begged for Ned. Our main characters relived bits of their own and others’ lives, becoming composites of what we’ve seen before. The more I think about it, the more I’m amazed at how much effort went into giving us the story D&D weren’t telling, and how badly they wrote the one they said they were. No judging though, we all aspire to different things.

This replay of what we’ve seen before happened in S7 with Jon in Mance’s position as referenced in the Jon/Tormund dialogue beyond the Wall. Dany is in the Stannis role (they share certain tendencies--burn, baby, burn), and Jon even delivers Mance’s line to Stannis to her, “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come,” but Dany also has moments that duplicate a younger Jon. At the time, Jon thought Mance wouldn’t kneel because of his pride, and Dany makes the same accusation to Jon. Of course, since then, Jon has been chosen by his people to lead them, and he better understands the price of kneeling. Mance told him it would cost everything he’s worked for, so he doesn’t kneel. Jon does. He overrules the will of his people to save them as a Stark king did before him, just as he once told Mance to do, just as Tormund advised him beyond the Wall. The narrative doesn’t condemn Jon because he accepts the anger and distrust of his people to protect them. This brings me back to Jon and the Ned cosplay. Ned didn’t betray Cat, but that’s a secret he took with him to the grave. (Remember, I did warn you this was a wrong answer!)

We get a lot of incompatible ideas in s7-8, and while the way they chose to write it was nonsensical, there are definitely ideas being presented that are very interesting. Just as Jaime’s speech is about how wrong/right are sometimes impossible to unravel, Dany embodied that truth of good/evil. She saved the world; she was also a threat to it. In the finale script, they call her satanic and they also direct her to be framed as Jesus in The Pieta. You can’t properly address any of these more complex ideas when the goal is shock and awe, leaving a lot of very disconcerting tidbits carelessly sprinkled in, but Dany is Stannis taken to an extreme. They had their goals and sacrificed more and more of themselves until they reached them. They may not be monsters as we have come to expect them to be portrayed, but they behaved as them in the end. While they kept telling us Jon was Dany’s lapdog, Jon has always been a counterpoint to Dany. Dany is remorseless for her crimes; he is haunted by his failures. Obviously, how the two represent such different things is lost because they needed to hide the fact that Dany is a megalomaniac, but this idea resurfaces in Jon’s reaction to killing Dany. Dany thinks she is a god; Jon knows he is but a man. Instead of Dany’s “I know what is good” we have Jon’s tormented “was it right?”

The poignancy of that, the distinction between the two characters is totally destroyed when you think of the context for that question. That at that point Tyrion and Jon had been sitting in their cells for weeks (months?), smelling the scent of charred, decaying bodies, listening to the cries of those who were not fortunate enough to die quickly. If D&D had any interest in staying true to the anti-war theme they waved at a few times, they would have focused more on the victims rather than bemoaning the fact that their murderer was dead, but, if we ignore the pandering to a certain portion of the fanbase, if we look back to our pattern established by the boys, we remember, Jon’s “heroic” act is meant to be horrific. It is meant to be a tragedy as much as a victory. There’s no winning, only different versions of defeat.

Jaime could have told Jon that. Aemon tried to warn him. Ned felt it too. But, just because those men felt constrained by their obligations, endured the pain of their choices, doesn’t mean they weren’t struggling. When the character is the conduit for the audience, he can’t know things before the audience does, so Jon can’t verbally wrestle with anything satisfactorily or we would have known where this was going to end up. Choosing to make Jon’s identity struggle coincide with Dany’s destruction of KL was frustrating because the fate of the world just obliterates all the intimacy (and moral greyness) of what was transpiring. Jon was experiencing another one of his foil’s struggles:

Theon: “I’ve always wanted to the right thing. Be the right kind of person. But I never knew what that meant. It’s always seemed like there was an impossible choice I had to make. Stark or Greyjoy.”

Jon: “You don’t need to choose. You’re a Greyjoy. And you’re a Stark.”

But Jon’s aunt grants him no clemency, and Jon’s assurance to Dany that they and the Starks “can live together” is met with a demand. They kept forestalling any revelations about where Jon would fall so that it could all be blended up and Jon would be forced to chug it in the finale:

Theon: “an impossible choice”

Targaryen or Stark.

Tyrion: “you have to choose now.”

Queen or Family.

Aemon: “in every man’s life, there comes a day when it is not easy. A day when he must choose”

Duty or Love.

Aemon bemoans the fact that he didn’t have the option to save his family. Ned died not knowing what would become of his. Jaime’s children died, one by one. Theon saved Yara but died not knowing if he had saved Bran. Jon got the chance to save the girls, and he took it. Jon chose the Starks. Not to end this by taking a bridge too far, but it kinda seems like there was personal significance to parentage reveal, that some of our overarching ideas were meant to reach a conclusion, that perhaps the poignancy in Jon’s choice was not meant to be the morally dubious decision of stopping a remorseless mass murderer, but the fact that just as Jon could escape the shame of being a bastard, he assumed the role of cursed kinslayer, queenslayer, oathbreaker to protect his family.

It's almost like it was inevitable that people who want to be free will defy a conqueror, that Jon would choose to side with the Starks rather than Dany, that no matter how conflicted Jon would be, he would never allow anyone to harm Arya. It’s almost like it was a foregone conclusion that Jon would fulfill his promise to protect Sansa, that there was a reason they gave him a pavlovian response to perceived threats to her in s6-7. It’s almost like there was symbolism in the dragon and wolf imagery, that choosing to be a dragon only leads to destruction and death while choosing to be a wolf means protecting the pack, survival, life. It’s almost as if, everything we needed to know was told to us a long time ago, and the problem was that D&D thought that winking at it, instead of writing it, was a good way to tell the story. It’s almost as if, Jon has a great story, a tragic one rather than a pathetic one, but they did not want to write it. The only surprise in s8 was just how dedicated they were to their surprise, and what they were willing to do to Jon in service of it.

In the end, I think Jon didn’t change. He was just a casualty.

(Originally posted on Quora back in May)

#jon snow #game of thrones #anti jonerys #anti daenerys #anti daenerys targaryen #dark!dany #(trying to hit all the blacklists)#got thoughts #q

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reineyday · 3 years

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some feelings abt touya and bnha 302 in general! (long post)

jesus this whooooole chapter makes me so so so sad for touya, like he's canonically a crier and i just have all these images now of him crying off to the side while enji looks at his other kids and gives them the time of day. knowing that he was/is a frustrated crier makes the fact that dabi cant cry cuz of his burned tear ducts that much sadder ohhman

one of the things i cant get over is how touya was SO shunned by his dad that when he went to go tell enji about his fire turning from red to blue, he says "i might be as awesome as shouto sooner or later!" like?? this boy is 13 and shouto is 5 yet he's talking like the brother that's eight years younger than him is better than him and thar it's just a fact. the sky is blue, enji wants to beat all might one day, and shouto is better than the rest of his siblings. nevermind that he's only five and just wants to play with his siblings (and dont even mention to me how shouto says he wants to play with "touya and them" cuz im gonna fucking cry abt it. like even though touya's accepted he's bottom of the ladder in this family, shouto clearly wants some sort of acknowledgement from his older siblings and especially his older brother. IM FVCKN SOBBN). enji has made it clear in this family that shouto was what he was looking for and everyone else is not as important, and i knew this from shouto's pov but it's kinda wild to see it implied so casually in touya's words.

"you'll be glad you created me! i just know it!" HOLY SHIT. god my heart. oh my fuck. literally all enji had to do was show up to the fucking mountain, and he couldnt even do that? what the hell?? your son asks you to go to the mountain, you tell your wife not to let him go traim but she said she couldnt stop him, and instead of going yourself to make sure he's okay and BECAUSE HE ASKED YOU TO COME (and with an actually valid reason, no less! fire changing colour is kind of a big fucking deal!!!) you just?? let him go and let him stay there??? my god the amount of times touya must have burned himself and the trees with tears in his eyes. ahhhHHH!!!

what kills me (and touya too soon?) was that we thought before the back story started that enji forced touya to train till he burned up. then when 290 came out--and definitely after 301--we thought maybe touya overtrained himself and burned up. and sure, he was definitely overtraining, but to find out that the burns that "killed" him started just bc he was crying so much he lost control and didnt know how to ease up on his flames? he was upset and literally trying to get himself to stop crying, and then he just set himself aflame and burned up cuz of all his emotions??? that HURTS. holy fuck.

i cant believe natsuo's feeling lowkey guilty for not socking enji in the face like he wasnt EIGHT???? and let's be real, enji woukdnt have fucking listened to natsuo telling him to talk to touya--he already wasnt listening when touya would straight up say "look at me" and when even rei said touya just wanted enji to look at him and notice him. listen, i know sometimes miscommunications happen in families and children are embarrassed to admit they want attention and so their parents remain unaware that theyre not giving their kid something they want, but touya was as clear as can be on MANY occasions, and even rei agreed touya needed the attention and enji just wasnt listening.

also i know there was discourse abt touya being sexist by telling natsu that "the women in this house are good for nothing" and mb it was partly diff translations cuz i feel like saying "this house" makes it specific to rei and yumi instead of all women everywhere, but even disregarding that--i think it's a valid thought for him to have when rei wasnt standing up for him (where he could see, at least) and yumi admitted herself that she was too scared to interfere and so just tried to fix things and keep appearances. i feel like based on what touya's seen from them, it makes sense that he has that opinion. (also gonna mention that i think rei's and yumi's choices also make sense and i think they were valid, seeing as how they were afraid as well.)

and poor natsu being woken up in the middle of the night (what was implied to be often enough, esp cuz it seemed they share a room and their futons are close) bc of touya's pain. that's a lot of emotional responsibility for an eight year old, and it is also so sad that at 13, touya didnt have anyone else to turn to but his kid brother. at 13, i remember being fully aware of the distinction in maturity between an 8 year old and myself, and it sucks that touya couldnt go to anyone but a younger child with all his pain. i bet yumi being too scared to interfere translated to touya as "she wouldnt help me" and thats another reason he didnt go to the 2nd oldest when he needed to vent. (also not related to this but how the FUCK was natsuo so tall at 8 years old? wh a t)

this chapter. this fucking chapter. my heart aches for touya, and it's just such a huge fucking shame he didnt get the attention and validation and support he needed. there must have been workarounds so that touya could safely use his quirk. there weere DEFINITELY better ways to support your son through a self-destructive quirk, ways that involved actually being there and seeing him. i feel like if someone showed him the attention he needed and talked him through how to better control his emotions (and by extension, his flames) and a positive and healthy way, he could have been someone so great. and if he ever learned how to set aside the way he felt infefior to shouto and saw that shouto just wanted to play with his cool older siblings, it might have been really beneficial to see that there was someone there who thinks he's cool and gave him attention just bc he was an older brother, who needed him when everyone else in the househild didnt seem to need him.

and lastly, the fact that the chapter ends with rei saying that shouto is the family hero and that shouto will have to face dabi?? and it makes me angry that shouto has to take on that responsibility. that he was five and suffering for things he wasnt even a part of, couldnt be properly aware of, bc he was so young. he just saw that he was separated from his siblings and that his dad bullied his mom, then grew up shouldering enji's heavy goals and high expectations and abusive training alongside the barely-there memories of his older brother who died (i say barely there bc if natsu didnt even know shouto liked cold soba, shouto was definitely not around enough to have solid memories of touya before he "died"), and now he has to do the emotional labour of fighting his villain brother (who i bet shouto lowkey empathizes with when he thinks abt it late at night) as well as suffer the physical consequences of that agni kai. and it makes me angry that he has to do that, bc he's a Good Guy and he probably feels he has some sort of filial and familial responsibility. he's only 16. he just wanted to play with touya and them, and now he has to deal with this horse shit dabi's causing cuz his dad's an emotionally neglecting asshat who couldnt see past his dumb fucking ego until he saw shouto play with a bunch of kids during shou's remedial exam a decade after his eldest son burned himself to death. what the fuckety fuck.

lastly, since we saw touya burn uo the way he did... did he really just like... burn so much his jaw fell off, and that's how they found the jawbone? cuz holy hot (BURNING too soon???) damn that must have been painful as all hell. i wonder if next chapter we get to see if someone found touya at the park and helped him out and sorted out the jaw bone thing, or if we finally get to see if deku wakes up lol.

anyways this chapter hurt my heart big time, and i kinda wanna draw kid touya crying while being overlooked by his family to let out some of those feelings but we'll see.

and i still stand by my idealistic and naively optimistic hope that dabi gets redeemed and they soend some actually time together as a family (without enji. or at least, with an enji that has apologized to touya in seiza. like, forehead-to-floor apologize.)

does this hope sort out how dabi redeems himself, seeing as how he's murdered people in cold blood and shouldnt be excused for that bc those actions are also inarguably terrible? no. not sure how he could redeem himself for that kinda stuff honestly, but it doesnt mean i dont still somehow want the todoroki sibs to get along, cuz im weak for mending families.

also id like to send a huge kudos out into the world to rei todoroki for being firm for once and for also not running away from her mistakes like her asshole husband has been. i really admire and respect that. she was afraid and being abused, but now that she's been away from enji and has had time to heal, now that her and shouto are in the mend and she's seen that her eldest son is alive and a villain, she's a place where she can acknowledge that even though she was a victim too, she played a part in touya's emotional neglect and she's taking responsibility and that speaks to some incredible fucking strength. damn.

i hope one day that dabi realizes the same in regards to his mother and natsuo, who shouldered a lot of his emotional pain and suffered the consequences of his outbursts (even though his emotions are valid and his outbursts understandable, he still hurt rei and put a lot of pressure on natsu), and i also hope he sees that for all that he hates his father, his whole existence revolves around enji and it's a shitty place to be (and then he'll have ANGST abt it and that shit will be!! so good!!!)

yeah i think those were all my feelings. i had so many lol. their family situation is so difficult, i hope they all turn out okay and alive and healing.

oh i guess i also wanted to say that i kept calling enji an asshat and asshole cuz he was for sure, but i still think his redemption is valid and im glad he's taking those steps to be a better person by being a better father. i dont know if id want his family to forgive him for all that horrible shit he put them through (im personally hoping that no matter what anyone else does, natsuo will choose to to cooperate in the healing of his family as a unit but will never forgive enji) but i think it's good of people to try to be better than they were yesterday regardless of whether or not they get forgiveness. i dont personally like enji, but i dont hate that he's getting a redemption. i just hope it's a redemption that makes sense and forces him to put in the work, and isnt something like a death sacrifice for shouto or dabi. i want him to be alive and i want his redemption process to hurt like a fucking bitch while he forces himself to make better choices and be a better person, cuz redemption isnt supposed to be easy in the slightest. i GUESS all the crying he did in 302 was a good start.

anyways, if for some reason you read all the way down to the bottom--hello! and thanks for reading haha. cheers! :)))

#rei rambles #bnha #bnha 302 #todorokis #todoroki touya

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hidiingplace · 3 years

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TODD HEADCANON + PARENTAL FIGURES.

general. Todd has a variety of parental figures in his life. Many of which are no longer in his life, but have made a huge impact on him... mostly in the worst of ways. Todd in general has a very wary relationship with parents, but he is partial to his scepticism of mothers in particular. here’s why. (PS SORRY IT’S SO LONG.)

celine. She was Todd’s adoptive mother. She began as his foster mother when he was first given up for adoption at the very young age of 18 months. before this time, Todd suffered intense neglect, but he does not know that until much later in his life when he meets his maternal grandmother. Celine took Todd in and raised him up in her house hold as a single mother. She was quite wealthy, and just before Todd’s 4th birthday, she officially adopted him before moving to Paris with him to further her career in high fashion. Despite adopting him, she never changed his last name to her own. After the adoption, Todd’s personality became far more boisterous as he became comfortable with Celine as his mother and was becoming a growing young kid. He was made of trouble, and was considered to be a very exhausting, unpredictable, volatile little kid who had terrible separation anxiety, strange eating habits, and was just over all very difficult. Celine grows angry and eventually decides that Todd is not worth the effort. Despite adopting him, she leaves Todd at the edge of a farm in the France country side when he is 6 years old. Todd has very few memories of Celine, and most are shrouded with her disappointment, annoyance, and blatant abandonment.

1st foster family. Todd’s first foster family was an okay foster home, but it wasn’t great. The family wasn’t wealthy, and were the type of people who took children in in order to collect the checks from the government. It resulted in an overcrowded, under-maintained household in which the foster mother and foster father would often express their frustration towards the children. They were known for putting locks on doors to keep children locked up and quiet, making them share clothing, making them share beds. violence between children was not uncommon in this home, and more often than not the foster father would ignore it entirely, while the foster mother seemed to try a little harder. Todd went hungry a lot, and because of his smaller size, red hair, and freckles, was often teased brutally.

2nd foster home. after his first foster-home was shut down due to complaints, Todd moved on to another foster home that appeared much better. It was. Todd had clean clothes, a nice bed to sleep on, and was well cared for by a single foster mother. She was a woman who loved her biological children and who they had turned into, and wanted to have another child around to rear. However, the older siblings were not so kind and often abused Todd. When Todd fought back and defended himself, the foster mother would always blame Todd for being the ‘bad kid’ and often disciplined him but never the older siblings. While this foster mother appeared to care deeply for Todd and provide him lots of affection and attention, it was always a double edged sword. Todd’s behaviour eventually became very aggressive when he started to try and express his frustrations without knowing how to. He would break things, throw things, have tantrums, and yell at his foster mother for being unfair. It got so bad that at only the age of 7, Todd was checked into a group home for troubled kids.

1st group home. Todd was put into this group home as the youngest kid there. The conditions weren’t great when it came to care for the children, and acted more like a prison than anything else. The rooms had locks on them, the windows had bars on them, you had scheduled play time, scheduled amounts of chores, scheduled visits with friends. It was far too much structure for a child who had never experienced stability and structure. At only 7 he wasn’t able to handle it. The group home was run by two woman who often played on this role of ‘good cop and bad cop’ with the kids. They were never consistent, and often the children had no idea when they were the good guys or the bad guys. Todd was routinely punished. While he was never physically struct in this home, he was routinely restrained, locked in his room, forced to skip meals, given extra chores, and labeled as the kid who was easy to blame when things were stolen. Todd only remains at this group home for 4 months after he lashes out violently and pushes one of his fellow group-home kids down the stairs in a fit of rage.

2nd group home. This would be Todd’s worst group home, and his last. The conditions were similar to his first group home, but it was run by a woman who was far more strict and cruel than the other group home he had been at; at least the other woman were nice sometimes. While much of the rules were the same as before, violence was used on children who wouldn’t behave properly. Yelling, screaming, emotional abuse were the most common. Threats of violence were always used before actual violence, but it wasn’t uncommon to wake up to screaming fights between the kids in the group home or even the kids and the caretaker going at it. Todd was once again labeled the violent trouble maker and the thief. He often stole food, toys, clothes. He lied a lot, and about everything. He was able to start fights between two people without even throwing a punch or getting directly involved just by manipulating people the way he had seen previous caretakers and foster-siblings do. He was aggressive with other children as well, and the fellow group home kids made jokes that Todd was going to grow up to be a murderer all the time. Todd eventually leaves this group home by slowly filing the bars off his window and slipping out in the middle of the night.

avery rebane. Todd’s biological mother is technically the first mother he ever had. She raised him until he was 18 months old before giving him up for adoption after discovering that having a child and caring for it wasn’t fun after you couldn’t use him to manipulate your family members into giving you money any more. After giving him up for adoption, Avery spends the next 17 years using and manipulating, as well as abusing her romantic partners for her own gains (including her ex, Joey Hamilton, who she kept Todd’s birth a secret from while Joey was sobering up). When Todd officially turns 18, she quickly looks him up and is able to track him down as living in Paris. With the hope of using him for money (assuming that he was still raised by someone wealthy), she flies to Paris on the credit card she stole from her mother and ‘reconnects’ with Todd. Todd is just excited to have a seemingly good parental figure in his life. Avery tells Todd that giving him up was the worst mistake of her life and that she wants to live with him here in Paris and build a relationship. She manipulates Todd so friecely and with such boldness that he doesn’t even see it. Todd jumps at the chance to have someone in his life care for him like this. It isn’t until his girlfriend at the time informs Todd that she’s done some digging on Avery that Avery’s story beings to fall apart. It’s then that Todd tracks down his maternal grandmother to get some information on Avery, and what he learns shatters him. After his grandmother tells him the full story, Todd cuts Avery from his life and decides to move to Canada to be with his grandmother. Avery STILL routinely harasses both Todd and Joey for a variety of reasons, and Todd has an anger for Avery that is unparalleled. Both Todd and Joey have a restraining order on Avery, which he actively ignores. She’s a long-term drug addict and many of her rage fits and incidents happen when she is experiencing withdrawals and is desperate to get money for her addiction.

grandma faye. Todd’s connection with his grandmother is instant. When he speaks to her on the phone regarding Avery, she bursts into tears. She reveals to him that Avery used and abused him when he was first born, and that more often than not, Faye was taking care of him for those 18 months until Avery gave him up for adoption without telling her. She warns him of Avery’s habits, and Todd believes her. After moving to Canada, he quickly moves in with her and helps her. She’s dying, so he spends as much time with her as he can. He learns about his maternal grandfather who has passed away 5 years ago, and learns that his grandmother actually knows who Todd’s father is, but has kept it a secret all these years. A few weeks before she passes away, she gives Todd Joey’s name, but Todd decides at first that he doesn’t want to know the man. Todd becomes the benefactor of everything Grandma Faye owned (which wasn’t much), but it’s more money than he’s ever had in his life time. When his grandmother dies, he realizes its the first time he’s ever actually bonded with someone the way a child and parent should. It destroys him that she’s not around and in a last ditched effort to find that again he goes to Joey.

joey hamilton. Joey’s reaction to Todd is disbelief at first, and it isn’t until Todd begins to tell Joey the stories he heard from Grandma Faye that Joey begins to believe Todd is actually his son. The relationship is awkward at first, as Joey holds a lot of guilt over not being there for Todd. Todd keeps much of his past a secret from his father, not wanting to make the guilt worse. Eventually, Todd moves in with Joey after Todd helps settled his grandmother’s will and testament. They eventually become incredibly close and develop a real father-son relationship that Todd never imagined he would have. When his father starts dating Mickey, it only gets better.

step-mother. Mickey comes into Joey and Todd’s life about a year after Todd and Joey connect. Todd is actually very skeptical of Mickey at first. He doesn’t trust many people, and certainly not parental figures. She seems bubbly and kind, and actually reminds him at first of his second foster mother. However after a long few months of patience and Mickey simply being herself, Todd does a 180. After a certain breaking point where Avery returns to Joey and Todd’s life after hearing Joey has moved on to dating Mickey, Mickey proudly stands up for Joey and Todd in a way Todd has never experienced. Mickey defends them, and even goes as far as to call Todd her son rather than Avery’s. It’s this display that changes Todd’s mind about Mickey, and later that night she is actually the one who holds him while he gets tearful about not understanding why his biological mother was so awful to him and his father and didn’t want him. Mickey and Todd from that point on have a quickly bonded relationship. Todd will actually seek out comfort from Mickey before seeking it from Joey. He will also be more inclined to talk about his past and his emotions with Mickey than anyone else –– including his father, and step-sister.

#todd rebane ( general ).#todd rebane ( headcanon ).#abuse mention tw #foster care mention tw #neglect mention tw #drug addiction mention tw #violence mention tw

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liathgray · 4 years

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Anyways, here’s that essay

Please keep in kind this was not written to be consumed by people familiar with the source material, it was for a class. It’s focused on weird stuff and was meant to compare and contrast the Judas Contact storyline and season two of Titans.

Okay, here we go.

In 1984, a four-part story was published as an arc in Tales of the Teen Titans titled as The Judas Contract. Since, it has become one of the most influential and well-known stories to come out of the DC publishing company for its bold story choices and permanently changing characters who had been around for decades, as well as introducing death as something that can occur in the present, not just in the mechanics of a backstory. It garnered four separate adaptations, the most recent of which being the second season of Titans, a loose live-action version of the titular team. Between the two, there are many small plot and character details that do not line up, so for the sake of simplicity, pedantic plot elements will be removed from the comparison, instead focusing on individual motivation, the importance of the setting, and how characters are impacted and changed by the actions in the narrative.

The Judas Contract proper follows a team of pre-established young heroes being unknowingly spied on by their newest superpowered member, Tara Markov. She works alongside Slade Wilson, a mercenary and personal rogue of the Teen Titans, feeding him important information in order to fulfill his contract to kidnap them, hence the title of the arc; there is a Judas among them. The contract is almost completed until Slade’s son, Joey, enters the picture, determined to prevent any more death at hands of his father, emotionally conflicting Slade enough for Tara to feel betrayed and collapse the cavern they had been in, killing herself in the process. In the end, it is her story alongside the former Robin, Dick Grayson, who is inspired to take up a new vigilante identity as a result. Titans, has the same basic idea of there being a mole in the group and the evolution of Dick from Robin to Nightwing, but the surrounding plot and progression are entirely different. The Titans had existed previously, but broke up due to a series of events involving Slade, starting with the murder of a teammate, and ending in the death of Joey. There’s much grief and trauma surrounding this, so when years later Dick decides to reopen the team’s old headquarters to house and train new young heroes he stumbled across, his old friends are a mix of angry, re-traumatized, and reluctant, especially with the re-emergence of their aforementioned enemy. In the place of Tara, there is Rose. Daughter of Slade and, again, the spy on the team who, unlike Tara, has a change of heart and reveals her betrayal in an attempt to warn her newfound friends.

The most striking element of both is the use of character, and in what direction the agents go in, especially in light of the overarching themes that they share; that of redemption, recovery, guilt, and betrayal. In the comic, the focal point for all of this is Tara. She is continually treated well by her teammates whom remain compassionate to her, despite her brashness and tendency to get violent. They know little of her, yet still welcome her into their home and personal lives. It is revealed to the audience early on that Tara is working for Slade, which makes each interaction she has with those she is deceiving all the more upsetting, even distressing to watch. Tara’s particular flavor of trauma deals with abandonment, something she acquired after being forced out of her home country, which later developed into malignant narcissism. She becomes very attached to the idea of being in a position of power and finds comfort in the presence of Slade, as he was the first person to justify her being alive. Tara, in the end, fails to redeem herself, instead the illusion she had built of stability and power came crumbling down after she spends ally after ally until there is no one, and she has no power left. Though it’s somewhat cynical, the idea here is that these cycles of betrayal and neglect cannot always be broken, that’s the point of this character; sometimes people are just too dysfunctional and if they are not willing to put in the work to get better and heal, they just won’t.

Rose, Tara’s counterpart, goes through a very different metamorphosis, despite the setup being similar. Her initial motivation was revenge for the brother she never knew, having been told it was the Titans who killed him when in fact it had been Slade, though it wasn’t intentional. Slade, however, blamed the Titans, specifically Dick, thus Rose believed him and was willing to participate as a double agent. When she encounters them for the first time, she is met with sympathy and understanding, people who didn’t value her as a weapon, creating incongruity with the story she was fed of elite fighters and master manipulators. Upon learning the truth about the circumstances under which her brother died, and who exactly killed him, she backs out. Rose realized she was lied to and manipulated, almost immediately grasping the gravity of the situation and seeing how hard she was pushing people whose greatest crime was daring to care about the very person she thought she was avenging. Later, she tells her newly acquired love interest the truth, following it up by saying, “I’d take it all back if I could. But I can’t.” (Zhang). Where Tara failed, Rose succeeded; she got rid of the poison in her life and recognized that she was the bad guy, alongside seeing the humanity of those she attempted to sabotage.

The theme of redemption and recovery doesn’t stop with Rose. It is furthered by all the other existing characters, young and old. On the basis of new beginnings for the second generation, and moving past the collective trauma and fear associated with teamwork for the first. More so than anyone else, this idea is present in the journey of Dick Grayson. In the original story, he is motivated to save his friends from an ugly fate while in the throes of a very real identity crisis involving the title of Robin, which he had recently discarded, believing that it was time for him to grow past the role and create a legacy entirely his own. Which he does do; he rebrands himself as Nightwing, rising to the occasion and overcoming the difficulties of abandoning a role that represented his culminative childhood and heritage to do save the people he loves. It is very much about the conquering of his external obstacles.

This is not the case in Titans, it is largely about his spectacular fall from grace and the struggle of building himself back up from rock bottom. He had kept a secret from all his closest friends about the death of Joey; he told them Joey was murdered before he found him, when in fact, he wasn’t. Joey died trying to protect Dick from Slade, and Dick felt so much guilt and shame in having been partially responsible that he lied about it for years. When his teammates find out, his worst nightmare comes true: they leave him. He is with next to no support, devoid of the family he fought tooth and nail to keep together, and is left in the tomb of his last chance to remain stable. While Rose and Tara had to redeem themselves to other people, Dick’s story is a redemption to himself, not anyone else. He stops doing things for other people and imagines himself of deserving the loneliness of, in essence, being re-orphaned. In a desperate attempt to find forgiveness, he seeks out Slade who, instead of offering the sought after peace of mind, says, “I sentence you to live alone (…) Forever knowing that your Titans family lives and breathes somewhere out there in the world, but you can never be with them.” (Morales). His lowest point is monumentally more devastating than his comic counterpart; he isolates himself entirely, going as far as to get himself jailed to carry out the self-imposed punishment, expecting to be abused and killed alone in a prison, the prospect of death barely startling him. In moments like this, the tragedy of the character hurts so much more because the audience knows that if he gets knocked down, he may not get back up, he has every reason not to. Which is why it is so earnest and exhilarating when he does. Dick was broken down to his factory parts, every mistake and bad trait not only was put on display, but magnified. He was made to confront those things before being able to piece himself back together, only then could he take on a new identity as Nightwing. Seeing him fall again is tangibly damaging to the character, so seeing him climb his way back up, scratching, clawing, slipping up, and struggling all the way, it’s all the more satisfying when he reaches the top.

A large part of this fall and rise, or in the case of The Judas Contract, the lack off a fall, is to do with the setting. The comic has all their main characters living in relative harmony or with their own spaces. When they are not off stopping cults from destroying political landscapes or battling supervillains, they are at home, going about their daily lives as somewhat normal people with jobs and relationships. It exemplifies that they all have a decent grasp on who they are, and even if they don’t, they have a bed to go back to and a support system to rely on. This is an established team with a running headquarters, lovingly named Titans Tower, the scene is only a part of the narrative as the backdrop, as a story punching bag that ultimately doesn’t matter, and that is all it needs to be. The story is much more interested in the series of events taking place, otherwise known as the act. Everything that goes down becomes a spoiler because there are so many plot points to cover and twists to reveal, thus the scene becomes story fuel, which in turn fuels the act, fueling the actors. There is less of a fall because they all have a home to turn to; it is built around the idea that the primary agents are at least somewhat realized people, with lives of their own. They react to the world around them as it throws obstacles, and the idea is re-enforced by the irrelevance of where the action takes place, wholly opposing the priorities of its live-action adaptation.

Not to say that Titans doesn’t jump from place to place, in fact it shifts its characters around quite a lot, but those moves are reactions to and influenced by the primary setting. The Titans operate out of, again, Titans Tower, but instead of a home and safe place, it is a monument to their old team’s sins. A ghost town that continues to haunt them, bringing back their darkest times and motivating nearly every move they make. When they first arrive, it’s tense, they’re subconsciously expecting the worst and prepare to bail at the first signs of trouble, which they eventually do. It is their return that sparks the entire story moving forward, and the presence of a looming shadow built from mistakes colours their reactions and triggers a sort of trauma response. Conversely, it is a beacon of hope and rebirth for the younger members. It is the first place wherein they have been allowed to be themselves, even at their worst, then collectively learn to get better as a group, a family even. The motif of past and present, trauma and recovery, informs the presentation of Titans Tower, making the growth visible in ways it previously hadn’t been. Using the setting as story plays into how Titans is structured; it drip-feeds the audience information, allowing the plot to meander so each development can happen and be processed before the next major plot point kicks in, and if they lose the setting, their home, there’s nothing else, thus the consequences are much steeper.

Throughout its two seasons run, Titans has been unapologetically divisive; deeply flawed characters with a universe quite different from that of the comics. It was not designed to make audiences comfortable, often forcing them to look at the worst parts of characters they might have previously idolized and showing the amount of hard work that has to be put into self-betterment. It is highly character-driven, mostly following interpersonal relationships and intimate growth. Barely anyone feels self-assured, often scrambling for any sense of identity. Though everyone goes through their fair share of change, this is ultimately Dick’s redemption story to himself. It departs from the source material, which often showed readers the best parts of people, that the downfall of heroes comes from outside sources while overall making a cynical statement about the cycle of abuse regarding Tara. These are heroes who know who they are and have no problem in the actions they make, whereas in the adaptation, almost every conflict is generated internally by lies and secrecy. The adaptation removes the halo from these supposed heroes and allows the emotions to be a bit dirty and muddled, creating an equally satisfying but very different take on a classic comic story.

#titans #DC Universe #DC comics #tara markov #rose wilson #joey wilson #jericho wilson #slade wilson #deathstroke #robin #nightwing #dick grayson #titans dcu #ceces lengthy excretes

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morfinwen · 5 years

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🖊 + Lauren, 🖊 + Ian, 🖊 + Leah, 🖊 + whatever OC(s) you like.

🖊 + Lauren

Despite her short temper, she’s actually good at games like chess and Scrabble that require consideration and long-term planning. Those were the kinds of games Lauren saw her father playing with her oldest brother Jacob, so she had Jacob teach her so she could play with her dad. She never got as many games with her dad as she was hoping, but she got good enough to beat her brother, despite him being notably older.

🖊 + Ian

He’s the kind of guy to name his guitars. His current one is named Gladys. He doesn’t know why, he just thinks it looks like a Gladys. His last one was Kurt. Kurt was a good guitar, they just didn’t mesh.

Whenever the question ‘would you rather lose your sight or your hearing’ came up, he’d always pick sight, since he couldn’t fathom losing music. When he lost his sight, he felt that jittery relief you feel in a panic situation when he realized … at least it wasn’t his hearing.

🖊 + Leah

Most people think Nick Valentine is her best friend because they both remember the pre-War world (a pre-War detective had his brain scanned as part of a therapy treatment, and Nick is the synth who got those memories downloaded into his head). That’s part of it, but there’s another reason she doesn’t talk about much.

When Leah came out of the vault, into a terrifying new world that had brutally murdered and replaced the one she’d known just hours (to her) before, the first people she met needed her help. They used words she didn’t understand, and while they usually expressed sympathy for the loss of her husband and son, they had little to no advice for her on what to do next. Nick needed help too – he was currently being held prisoner by a mob boss – but he was the first person to offer concrete suggestions on what to do next, and the only person with any idea what it was like to keep going after everything and everyone you knew was gone.

She doesn’t bring it up much, because she doesn’t want her other friends feeling guilty about needing help or not immediately realizing how fish-out-of-water she was, but if it weren’t for Nick, the divide between pre-War Leah and post-War Leah would probably be greater, and much uglier.

🖊 + whatever OC(s) you like

Random list of the quality of OC’s parents, one of those things i sometimes find myself thinking about for reasons i do not know:

Top shelfReagan: Neither of her parents really knew their own parents, but they intended to do their best for their little girl. Unfortunately, she never really got to know them, either.Ash: His mother in particular, but his father did his best under the circumstances.To this day, Ash knows he can call either of them for any reason and they’ll do anything they can for him.Kira, Darcy, and Susanna: Parents and grandparents both.Ian: Not just for him, but they did their best to help Lauren too, where they could.

Generally recommendedAngie: Not all of her relatives were great, but most of them at least tried their best, and even the worst never laid a hand on her, neglected her, or intentionally made her feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.Connie: Certain parental failures in recent years have cast a dark shadow on the past, but he has no serious complaints from his childhood.Nate: His mother was absent a lot until he was ten, thanks to needing to work to keep her three kids fed, sheltered, and clothed. His stepdad kept them at arm’s length, but that was just because of a misguided fear of overstepping. Leah: Her father was a stoic man who didn’t show emotion, or like it when others did. Her mother was a neurotic woman who was frequently anxious, whether there was cause or not. But they raised her with love, even if it wasn’t always easy to see.Avery: In the immediate aftermath, Avery’s mother blamed her for the death of her little brother. It came from pain and shock, and she later apologized for it, but it left enough of an impact on Avery that she’s on this list rather than the one above.Lanzo: They provided him with everything medieval German nobles generally provided their children with, they treated their servants well, and they managed their estate well enough that he was able to let it manage itself (mostly) for decades. Lanzo doesn’t think or talk about them often, as it’s been several hundred years since they died, but he doesn’t have much bad to say about them.Niner: Not much info on them at present, but they’re probably fine. Most of Niner’s quirks are the result of her personality and werecat-ness, not bad parenting. Probably.

Improvement neededChris: His father abandoned his family when his children were seven (Marie) and three (Chris) years old. Chris has nothing good to say about him. His mother could have balanced her work/home life better, but both of her children were self-motivated enough that the effects of being left alone so much were nowhere near as bad as they could have been. And if he’s honest, Chris probably would have done many of the same things in her place.Reagan: Her aunt Jane meant well, but she let the pain of a hard childhood and the grief of losing her baby sister turn her into a woman who was too strict and unyielding, and she expected Reagan to be her mother (that is, Reagan’s mother, Jane’s sister) instead of her own person.Aidan: Given how little information Aidan has on his parents, it’s difficult to say what they should have done differently, if anything. That said, it would have been nice if his mother at least had tried to check in on them again, or left them some information. But in fairness, maybe that’s just how phoenixes are.Amanda: Jennifer took the kids with her after the divorce, and involved them in her work, encouraging them to stand up for what they believed in and speak out even when everyone else is being silent. Unfortunately, Jennifer also tended to extremes, getting worse as she got older, and her relationships with her children as adults is strained at best. Paul was a doting father when he was around, but he never had to do much more than visit a few times a year, call a few times a month, and send the support checks regularly, and he never really tried to do more. In fairness to him, he eventually realized that just being okay as a dad is not really a good thing, and has tried to make up for it.Elarin and Meaghan: Both grew up in the Jedi Temple. Neither of them have any serious grievances against the masters who raised and taught them, but the system is flawed at best.Lauren: Her parents both had to work, and had about two children more than they could manage. They were more interested in peace and quiet than giving their children what they actually needed, and interacted most with the kids they understood the best.

Go straight to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200Neal: Metaphorically, his father liked to start fires, and his mother poured gasoline on them. They had both wanted to leave their small town to pursue big goals, and blamed their failure to do so on everything and everyone but themselves. Sometimes they took it out on each other, but it was always easiest to take it out on Neal.Q: Technically, his mother’s sister was his guardian (he lost his parents as a baby), but his father’s (half-)brother and sister-in-law were the ones to have the biggest influence on his life. They paid for his education at expensive boarding schools, provided his wardrobe, gave him a spending allowance, and he often stayed with them in-between terms. While they never laid a hand on him, the only things Maitland and Chantal cared about were their money and their image, and they showed no mercy to anyone who threatened either of those things. Q learned from a young age that everything they offered came with strings attached.

Thanks for asking!

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cherrystreet · 7 years

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For @soulmatesandfate‘s 22nd year of life, a snippet (4k, i’m a joke) of the new fic. I love your sweet soul, have a beautiful day xx

It’s exactly the same as he remembered it to be.

The light yellow paint on the side of the home is peeling in all the same places, potentially a bit more weathered than his memory allowed. The shutters are still white, stark against the wood siding, and when a breeze picks up, the wind chimes ring, a sound he perks up at, suddenly recalling countless childhood memories with that very song playing in the background.

It’s a small cottage, just two bedrooms and one bathroom, the kitchen nothing to brag about, most in need of desperate updating, but it’s a place he has always felt at home, more than his actual home back in Massachusetts.

It’s been nearly ten years since the last time Louis stepped foot on his grandparents’ property on Great East Lake, but breathing in the air laced with the scent of pine trees and mulch, it feels like no time has passed at all.

He trudges up across the uneven stone walkway leading up to the main entrance, key in hand, suitcase dragging behind him. It’s the first time he’s ever taken the trip here alone - usually accompanied by a slew of siblings - and it feels strange to be able to hear the sound of the birds overhead, the water lapping at the dock several yards away, the creak of the floorboards beneath his feet once he reaches the front porch. But he came here for solidarity, to think, to decompress. He exhales loudly as he pulls open the screen door, the springs squeaking predictably, and he unlocks the front door behind it, heavy oak painted red, scuffed at the bottom.

He’s here. He’s home. The tension in his body dissipates the moment he steps across the threshold, like magic.

The perfect escape.

The inside of the house smells stale, like it hasn’t been aired out in ages, and Louis thinks that seems about right. His grandmother stopped coming here after his grandfather died three years ago, sans the occasional check in to make sure the property was still standing, and it shows. There’s a layer of dust covering most of the surfaces, the neglected plant in the corner is definitely a goner, and when he tries to turn on the kitchen light, nothing happens, the bulb apparently burned out.

Excellent.

He doesn’t do much about the dust, nor does he bother with the dead plant in the living room, but he does replace the bulbs with new ones he finds in a closet. Once the kitchen is illuminated, Louis can see the details he missed before in the muted light: his grandmother’s hand towels resting over the edge of the sink, a few faded family photos taped to the fridge, his heights over the years written in blue ink against the wall by the bathroom. Suddenly, the bit of grime and dirt doesn’t seem to feel so out of place. It feels like it always has.

He tiptoes around the property, almost as if he’s afraid to break the spell. It feels like reminiscing, even though there isn’t much here, even though the house is dead quiet sans the sound of his bare feet sticking to the tiled floor when he walks. Typically, he’s greeted at the door by his grandparents, Margaret fawning over him well into in his teenage years, making a big deal over how big the girls have gotten regardless of how much time has passed since their last visit. They’d all drop their luggage, stretching and groaning from the three hour drive, Louis’ younger siblings immediately making a mess of the living room and spare bedroom, claiming their beds, making sure their voices were heard. Everyone would ransack the refrigerator together, searching for snacks that were better than the crumbs at the bottom of the chip bag leftover in Jay’s car, and though Louis used to complain about the fuss, right now, he misses it. It’s a nice change of pace to be here alone, really, but he almost feels out of place trying to figure out what to do in the silence.

Ironic; silence is what he’s wanted for months, needed the chatter to stop to feel sane again.

It’s too early to go to bed, but he’s exhausted enough to layer the mattress in the master bedroom with the fresh sheets from the linen closet and lay down. The wood paneling on the ceiling makes the room darker than it should be at this hour, the sun not yet descending, and Louis’ eyelids feel heavy. He gives in, just for a minute, letting his eyes fall shut, jeans still on. The sound of the water rushing across the rocks just beyond the shore lulls him into steady, even breathing, and he doesn’t stir until dawn.

The first thing Louis thinks when he wakes up is that it’s hot. Too hot for typical late May weather in Maine. His t-shirt is stuck to the back of his neck, his throat dry no matter how many times he swallows, the fitted sheet beneath him too warm from body heat, making him squirm. He props himself up on his elbows, head pounding from the barely there sunrise peeking in through the sheer curtains. He squints to read the time on the clock on the nightstand. 5:49 AM. He groans, flopping back down onto the mattress, and kicks off his jeans, willing himself to cool off and fall back to sleep.

Louis’ eyes are closed for less than a second when a murderous sound comes from the water, an ear piercing shriek ricocheting across the lake. He nearly falls off the bed, his heart pounding in his chest.

“What the fuck is that,” he says out loud, scrambling out of bed, tripping over his suitcase on the floor at the end of the bed. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

The thing outside screams again, louder this time, and Louis grabs for his glasses before he sticks his head out the window. He’s prepared to find a fisher cat, maybe, one of the nastiest sounding mammals in New England, or maybe someone being bludgeoned with an actual pickaxe, bloody and painful. He looks around in the muted light, hazy and soft, and there on the dock in between his property and the neighbor’s, he sees the culprit.

It’s a man. A naked man.

His hair is pulled back into a bun, tendrils at the nape of his neck, his arms and chest and stomach covered with tattoos, most of which Louis can’t make out. The only one he can see clearly is a butterfly - a moth? - on his stomach. When he stretches, it makes it look like the insect is moving. And then Naked Man shrieks one more time. Louis jolts back and slams his head against the edge of the window.

“Son of a bitch,” he curses under his breath, rubbing his head, catching Naked Man run down the length of the dock before he dives into the lake, the still water breaking when he cuts through. He surfaces, yelping out, then continues on in a backstroke, swimming around as if he’s the only one on the entire Goddamn lake. And after a lap to the center and back, he hoists himself up, sluicing the water off of him, still loud, still naked.

Louis scoffs, slamming the window shut, muttering what an inconsiderate piece of shit that guy is for most likely waking up everyone within earshot, for acting like he’s king of the fucking world. He lays back down in bed, frustrated that now he’s not the slightest bit tired, the sheets somehow feeling warmer than before. The sun is brighter, his room slowly being lit up, and he needs coffee, or a cigarette, or both.

He wills himself to close his eyes, to exhale slowly, and a moment later, as if he can tell Louis is back in bed, Naked Man screams from outside again. The unmistakable sound of the water splashing closely follows.

Louis puts a pillow over his face and screams back.

The breeze is wonderful once Louis is situated outside on the back porch overlooking the water. The shared private beach for residents only is vacant, just a few lone towels laid out to dry draped over some adirondack chairs, and it feels nice just to breathe in, breathe out, let the afternoon sun wash over him as he picks at his leftover pizza from the drive up. He makes a mental note to stop at the grocery store. Three slices of pepperoni pizza certainly won’t hold him over until the end of August.

He doesn’t bother making the trip there, nor does he work on the inside of the house, still dusty and sad as ever. Instead, he spends the day doing nothing, and he welcomes the feeling that accompanies it. He’s spent the past six months moving, moving, moving as quickly as possible, never once stopping to settle and reflect. He needed to. It’s the reason he’s here. And it feels the way he needed it to. Settled.

The phone call with his mom is a short one. He gives her a ring sometime around three o’clock, just as an update, tells her that the house seems to be in somewhat decent shape considering, that the weather is nice, that it’s quiet. He leaves out his not-so-quiet morning wake up call, though, irritated all over again just thinking about it.

“Well, good, I’m glad,” she says through the phone. “How soon is too soon for us to make the trip up there?”

Louis laughs, dragging his fingers along the edge of the wooden picnic table. His skin catches on a raised piece of wood. “Give me a week to attempt to clean and get some food in the fridge and then everyone we know can stop by.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“A good one.”

Jay hums through the phone. “And you’re feeling better?”

He looks up at the sky, watching the way the clouds move. “It feels nice to be back here.”

“That’s not a yes or a no.”

“I know.”

“Louis…”

“No, I’m fine,” he argues. “Or. I will be.”

“If you need me to come up there, I will right now, just say the word and--”

“Mom.” Louis cuts her off, shaking his head, putting his cigarette out in the ashtray. “Please. I appreciate that but, like. I haven’t had the chance to be alone in months. Right now, it’s good. I’m good. The world is good.”

“I’m not too convinced.”

“That’s because you’re my mother and it’s your job to pry.”

He can’t see her but he knows she’s smiling. “No, it’s my job to be able to tell when you’re lying.”

Louis opens his mouth to say something, to counter that, but then out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone making their way toward Louis’ back porch, waving and smiling when he sees he has Louis’ attention. Louis squints, as if that’ll help, not sure who it is.

“Hey, Mom, I have to call you back. Someone’s here.”

“Oh, so much for being alone.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Love you, too.”

Louis rolls his eyes and mumbles the same words back, ending the phone call and looks at the stranger still approaching Louis’ porch. The guy waves again, nearly bouncing with every step, but Louis can’t place him for the life of him. He sits up straighter from his seat on the bench and holds his hand up over his eyes to shield the sun away.

“Can I help you with something?” he asks once they’re within earshot of each other.

He smiles and climbs up the back steps, holding his arm out to shake, gripping Louis’ hand tightly. “You’re not Margaret.”

Louis shakes briefly, then lets his grip go slack, beyond confused. “What gave me away?”

He laughs, taking a seat beside Louis. Bold. “Other than the fact that you’re not an elderly woman who calls everyone Dear, you’re not drinking peach iced tea or reading a book. The Margaret staples.”

“Wait.” He leans back, trying to get a good look at the guy beside him. “You, like, really know my grandmother.”

“I do. I mean, I’ve spent the past 28 summers of my life here, so she’s basically watched me grow up.”

Louis shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I’m going to need you to rewind. Who are you?”

“Harry Styles,” he laughs. “It’s been a while, I know.”

“Harry Styles,” Louis repeats, drawing a blank. Then. “Holy fucking shit. Harry Styles.”

Harry laughs again. “That’s me.”

“Christ.” His face splits into a grin. “How long has it been? Ten years?”

“About that, yeah.”

“Wow. I completely forgot about you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, not like that,” Louis says, shaking his head, but Harry is smirking. A decade is a long time and Harry has changed a lot since Louis saw him last. He used to be lanky with a head full of hair that refused to quit, his voice just starting to deepen, his shoulders narrow and waist even smaller. Now, he’s. More. “I just… Ten years.”

“I know.”

“Last time I saw you was at camp, wasn’t it? Or was it here when both of our families were vacationing?”

Harry nods, smile sideways and dimple visible on his right cheek, and that Louis remembers. “It was at camp. And you were the worst camper there, by the way.”

“Um.” Louis clutches at his chest, forcing an over the top gasp. “You wound me. I was excellent. Still am, by the way.”

“All you did was sneak around! And mock the counselors! You were a Goddamn menace!”

“I was interesting.”

“You were a pain in the ass.”

He laughs, because Harry isn’t wrong. “Didn’t stop you from following me around everywhere.”

Harry looks down, but Louis catches the blush creeping onto his cheeks. “Yeah, well.” He shrugs, unashamed.

Louis tucks his foot underneath his thigh, humming, thinking about camp, thinking about the way Harry was back when they were teens. He smiles, suddenly remembering Harry’s nickname, stolen from To Kill a Mockingbird. “If I call you Scout, will you still respond?”

He snorts, rolling his eyes. “Forgot you used to call me that.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Harry drags his fingers through his hair, getting caught in the tangles at the bottom. “Probably, yeah, I’d respond.”

“Good,” Louis says and smiles.

They’re quiet for a moment. Louis pays attention to the sound of the water lapping at the dock. It’s the same sound that lulled him to sleep throughout his entire childhood, every summer spent on the lake until he went off to college, his life hectic and his family’s even more so, a plethora of younger siblings to tend to at home. Trips to Maine were cut short then, and now, with the breeze and the sun and the creak of the porch swing behind him, he can’t for the life of him figure out why he didn’t fight for this. He swallows, looking up at Harry, who’s already staring back. He suddenly feels guilty for letting life get in the way, of not keeping in touch. It’s scary, almost, thinking about how quickly ten years have ripped by him.

“So,” Harry says eventually, cutting the silence short. “You taking over Margaret’s house for the summer?”

He shrugs. “I guess so. It hasn’t been used in a few years--”

“Since your grandfather passed away?”

“Yeah. She hasn’t wanted to come back as often. She moved in with my aunt at her place in New Hampshire.”

Harry nods. “Understandable.”

“Right. So it’s just me for the next few months. Rest of the family is too busy to make a whole summer of it.”

“Any particular reason for coming back? You haven’t been here in forever.”

Louis scratches mindlessly at his jaw. “Yeah, not since before college. Just thought it would be nice to get away from some stuff and this felt like the best place to do that.”

“Sounds nice,” Harry replies. The concentrated look he gives makes it obvious he knows Louis is leaving something out, but he doesn’t pry.

“It is,” Louis agrees after a moment, squinting as the clouds move from their position. It’s getting hotter. “And you’ve been here every summer since my family stopped coming up here? Weird that my grandmother never mentioned that.”

“Guess I’m forgettable to everyone in your family.”

He laughs. “Seems like it.”

Harry smirks, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “My uncle Peter still owns the house right next door,” he says, pointing to the house situated across the shared beach, “and usually my family takes turns throughout the summer spending a few weeks at a time up here. It’s always been that way. Except this summer, it’s all mine.”

“Where do you live the rest of the year?”

“Still down on the Cape.”

“Oh, I’m in Springfield now. Only a few hours apart.”

“All this lost time,” Harry says dramatically, and Louis snorts. “But anyway, I spent the last year or so traveling so I thought this would be a nice change of pace to spend the entire summer here instead of just a week or two. Peter handed it off to me no problem. And here I am.”

Louis raises a brow. “Where’ve you been traveling?”

“London, Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Dublin,” he says, ticking the places off on his fingers, “Madrid, Bangkok, Dubai, Sydney, Maui, Anchorage… I wanted to stop in parts of South America, too, but I ran out of funds.”

“Jesus,” Louis mutters, impressed. “Is that all?”

“I wanted to explore!”

“Yeah, I’ll say. Sounds incredible. And expensive.”

Harry shrugs. “You only have one life. Might as well make the best of it.”

“Who needs savings?”

He laughs. “That’s the spirit.”

Louis looks out at the water. A boat goes by with an inner tube trailing behind it. The girl appears to be holding on for dear life, screaming bloody murder. He shakes his head. “Definitely going to be an interesting summer without my family,” he says. “All of my memories here involve a lot of shrieking and fighting.”

“I remember. Didn’t get a lot of sleep once the Tomlinsons showed up.”

“Exactly.”

Harry grins, stretching. Louis watches as his shirt rides up. “Nowadays, it’s mostly quiet. Public access to the water got moved down. Now the beach between us is just accessible to your house and mine. No one else on these docks but us.”

“Oh, nice, shared beach,” he repeats, distracted. He’s blatantly staring at his tattooed stomach. What is that? That’s when it clicks. “Wait. Shut the fuck up.”

“Huh?”

“You were the prick that woke me up this morning when you went cannonballing into the lake like a lunatic at the crack of fucking dawn?!”

“Oh my God, you could hear me?!”

“Everyone could hear you, I’m sure. And see you! Nice ass, Styles!”

Harry blushes a deep shade of red, but he’s laughing. “Okay, to be fair, I didn’t think you were watching me. Otherwise I would have tried to be a little more decent.”

“Well, I never would have known you were out there had you not been screaming like you were under torture.”

“I was just enjoying the beautiful morning! Trying to make the best of my one life!”

“So you’ve said!”

Harry’s still laughing when he stands up to leave, rolling his eyes and yelling, “I’m done taking your abuse,” after Louis screams, “I should’ve known that was you! You went streaking every Goddamn day at Camp Vernon! I had that white ass memorized.”

Louis’ less irritated about his morning wake up call now that he knows who was behind it, now finds it funny. It feels simple, this, watching Harry walk back down the stairs and go back to his own house, as if he’s just spent the afternoon with a friend he sees regularly and not someone whom he hasn’t seen in a decade. It’s promising.

Harry turns and looks over his shoulder just before he steps on the sand. “You’ll be around, right?”

“I will,” Louis replies, holding his hand over his eyes as a shield from the sun.

“Good.” He continues walking back toward his house, but he yells out loud enough to be heard, “The lake missed you.”

He laughs, bites down on his bottom lip. “Thanks, Scout.”

Louis thinks about the shitty bunk beds they used to share at camp, rusty and creaky with every shift. He thinks about the out of control dares he would beg Harry to do, which he followed through with every time without fail. He thinks about the evenings spent together on the beach here at the lake after their month-long trip in the woods, their families blending together perfectly, swapping stories, trading laughs. He thinks about all the times he sat in this exact spot with Harry, playing cards on the picnic table long after everyone else had gone to sleep. He thinks about taking off with him first thing in the morning to fish before the boats made their way around the lake, making it too choppy for any real success. He thinks about the look on Harry’s face when he crept up onto Louis’ back porch just hours ago, his smile bright and his hair even wilder than Louis remembered it to be.

He thinks about a lot of things, but for the first time in a while, he doesn’t think about what’s back at home.

Before he slides into bed later that night, the sheets cold, the fan whirring overhead, he calls Jay again, his mood significantly better since their phone call earlier in the day.

“Did you know Harry Styles still stays up here?” he asks when she picks up. “Saw him today. He’ll be here all summer.”

“No way!” she exclaims. “Wow, we haven’t seen his family in years.”

“I know.”

“How is he?”

Louis sucks in his cheeks. “Tall.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Not, like. He’s.” He scrunches up his face. “Okay, time to go.”

Jay laughs. “I wasn’t implying anything.”

“Sure.”

“I’m surprised you two didn’t keep in contact after you went to college, to be completely honest,” she says, humor still in her voice. “He was one of the good kids.”

“He was,” Louis agrees. “I’m not even sure where he went to college, actually. Or if he did at all.”

“I’m sure he did. He was always going on about biology. Loved bugs and nature.”

“How do you remember that…”

“We spent every summer with them! And he’s chatty!”

He snorts. “Point taken.”

“Always felt so fortunate that we had such great neighbors whenever we were there. We lucked out in that department. And funny that Anne and I both started sending you boys to the same camp without even discussing it.”

“Great minds think alike, I suppose.”

“I should call her. Let her know her future son-in-law is a major kiss ass.”

“Oh my God,” he groans. “Do not call her. Then she’ll know I was talking about Harry.”

“I wonder if she has the same number…”

“Mom.”

“We have some catching up to do, too, you know.”

“Goodnight.”

Jay laughs again. “Sleep well.”

Louis peers out his bedroom window, out across the beach. If he squints hard enough, he can just barely make out a light still on at Harry’s. “Honestly, how am I supposed to now.”

#summer romance au #WIP #vale asked for a drabble for her birthday #and instead i posted half the fic #it's because she's a sweet peach and i have no self control and didn't know where to cut it #anyway #go to tell her happy birthday #and here's something that'll be out by the end of august #xxxxxx #my drabble #drabble

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diverdowns · 7 years

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♥ for Bruno's gang? :3

♥ - family headcanon

hell yeah, more vento aureo — this is gonna get really long, so i’ll probably throw most of it under a cut. characters are in order based on the order they joined passione! thanks for the fun req, hope you like it!

buccellati

bruno grows up an only child. he and his mother drift apart steadily and unavoidably after his parents’ divorce, and it hurts. even so, his father remains steadfast and loving, and bruno comes to respect him as he respects no one else. after he dies, bruno pours his energy into passione’s operations, trying to make his father proud.

he’s got no more family of his own, not really, not after his father is dead and his mother is gone in a sea of faces in a bustling city. so it doesn’t come as a surprise when bruno sees people like him — an unmoored ex-cop, a child genius with a dangerous temper — and thinks, i want to help. kindness has always been his foremost virtue (and his ultimate downfall). his gang grows and shifts and matures into a kind of home, if only because bruno is fiercely protective, providing a sense of belonging that all of them have been seeking.

leone laughs at it once, mirthlessly, making a dig at bruno’s tendency to pick up strays, and bruno had looked up with sad eyes, shaking his head and saying: “you’re family.”

abbacchio

leone’s never been close with his parents, least of all with his estranged sister. he takes to police work easily, led by his sense of justice, barely out of high school when he enters the police force. when his partner dies — because of him — he’s devastated with guilt: in the span of a week, he loses his partner, his badge, and his purpose.

leone’s the first to join directly under bruno. despite being bruno’s elder by a year, leone follows his orders with an almost robotic precision. leone comes into passione aimless, drifting from one mission to another with reckless disregard for his own safety: he may not be a good person, but he can, at least, be a good soldier. bruno treats him like more than that though — like leone’s still human, still someone worthy of redemption. it angers him, more than anything else, at first, but he realizes eventually that that’s just the kind of person bruno is: kind to a fault, always giving and giving as if he has nothing left to lose.

with bruno, leone feels at peace for the first time since his partner’s death, and it makes leone wonder if a person, rather than a place, can be a home. leone tells him this once, in a rare moment of vulnerability, and the soft smile bruno gives him in return is worth it all. when more fresh faces stream in, joining their ragtag team, leone’s exasperated at first, but he understands. that’s just the kind of person bruno is.

(and though he’ll never admit it: leone grows to be fond, in his own way, of the others. to him, they’re not family, like bruno would say, but they’re — they’re something close.)

fugo

fugo’s parents are one thing, and not much else: wealthy. fugo grows up a middle child, lauded as a prodigy, excelling in his studies and flaunted as more of a trophy piece than a son. he’s only thirteen and immature and a kid when he enters college, and his temper is ultimately his downfall. the minute he receives word that he’s been put on indefinite academic probation due to his unfortunate handling of his professor, his parents give him the cold shoulder, all but disowning him and setting him loose on the neapolitan streets.

he’s not dumb, not by a long shot, and he knows that it means for him. he has no real choices left when buccellati approaches him, and fugo’s intelligent enough, in a dangerous way, for him to worm his way into becoming bruno’s second-in-command for missions, to abbacchio’s quiet ire.

at first, he’s driven by the debt he owes. after the fact, he looks up to bruno in a strange mix of brother and father figure, more so than the family he’d known by blood. fugo’s not cruel, but he’s not kind, either, not like buccellati is — but he’s loyal, with a warm heart beneath his fiery exterior, and maybe that’s why he makes the split-second call to bring narancia in. maybe it’s because he sees something of himself in the boy, out on the streets and without a family — he knows how that feels.

he doesn’t want narancia to join passione, not when he still has other choices, but narancia does, and it fits, in a bizarre way, and fugo, without further prompting, starts thinking of his gang (his family, by choice if not by blood) as less buccellati and abbacchio and more buccellati and abbacchio and narancia.

narancia

narancia grows up with only fleeting memories of his mother’s love as a benchmark by which to define family. his father is neglectful at best, abusive at worst, and there’s a bitterness that makes its way into narancia’s heart and tries its best to make a home there. he’s naive enough to trust his friends, and that trust lands him in prison, where he contracts an infection too similar to the one that’d killed his mother.

he comes out of prison at 15 with no real hope, until a strange boy with ripped clothes and startlingly platinum hair drags him out of an alley and into a restaurant. there, he meets buccellati, who feeds him and puts him in a hospital bed. he wants to join them, and when fugo and buccellati both protest, it’s almost — comforting, despite their anger. narancia doesn’t know why, but for once, there are people who care about him and his well-being, not out of obligation or any ulterior motive, and the thought is nothing if not dizzying.

abbacchio calls him a stray, but narancia wears the title with an ironic pride. it’s true. he has no place to go, and he hangs onto buccellati’s every word with a dogged devotion. they might not be a conventional one, and bruno’s might be the one most devoted to it, but narancia’s the one who believes it the most, who sees each member of their gang and thinks, with every bit of his heart: family, family, family.

mista

mista grows up the youngest of three siblings, with two older sisters. his parents are separated on bad terms, and they spend early childhood being sent back and forth from one cramped home to another, their parents’ dislike of each other being taken out on them. his sisters get out of the house as soon as they’re able, and mista follows suit — he’s on his own by the time he’s 16, with nothing but pocket change, some clothes, and a carefree wanderlust to his name. he doesn’t think much of it — he’s just that kind of guy. he drifts from city to city, making some casual friends, making the most of what he’s got. it’s good, up until it’s not.

he shoots with a sudden, sure calm that surprises even him, but he doesn’t think about what he’s done until it’s over and he’s being sentenced to years in prison. he doesn’t even think of it as murder: it’d been simple self-defense. but no one believes him, up until buccellati shows up at his cell and bails him out. he owes the guy, right? so he joins passione, because it’s not like he’s got any better options.

the rest of bruno’s gang — to mista, they’re friends, partners. he wonders how his sisters are doing, sometimes, the only real family he’s got left, but he figures they’re probably doing fine. better than him, in any case. he’s got a good thing going here. it almost feels like a home of sorts, sometimes, if your idea of home comes with a catch of constant life-threatening danger and a side of supernatural enemies.

+ giorno

giorno doesn’t have the best grasp on what constitutes a normal family, with a neglectful mother and an abusive stepfather. (and that’s to say nothing of his biological father — fathers?) he has a feeling he’s not the only illegitimate child out there carrying dio’s blood in his veins, but other than a vague, dreading certainty, he has no proof of any other blood relatives — until jotaro contacts him after the end of it all, after the dust has settled and giorno’s re-emerged on top of passione, and giorno learns his own grisly origin story.

family. giorno’s not sure, at first, what it really means, but he’s determined to find out.

in the few days he has with buccellati’s gang, he sees something of it in their interactions with each other — there’s an ease to their interactions born not only of familiarity, but of sharing common backgrounds, common goals. it galvanizes giorno, adding fuel to his fire: buccellati’s gang further convinces him that his dream is just, that the gangster who’d brought him out of darkness all those years ago hadn’t been alone.

— above all, buccellati’s gang gives him hope.

#bruno buccellati #giorno giovanna #leone abbacchio #guido mista #pannacotta fugo #narancia ghirga #vento aureo #jjba headcanons

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years

Text

Bad Law Men: A Devil’s Half-Dozen Drug-Corrupted County Sheriffs - POLICE/PRISON

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/bad-law-men-corrupt-sheriffs/

Bad Law Men: A Devil’s Half-Dozen Drug-Corrupted County Sheriffs

(Stop The Drug War) Last week, the good citizens of Mississippi’s Tallahatchie County got a rude shock. The county’s top lawmen, Sheriff William Brewer, was at the courthouse, which was not unusual. This time, though, he was dressed not in his sheriff’s uniform but in an orange prisoner jumpsuit to face federal criminal drug trafficking charges.

Image via Stop the Drug War.

According to a federal indictment, over a period of 15 years, Sheriff Brewer had conspired with a local ne’er-do-well to have that person repeatedly rob drug dealers, give stolen cash to Brewer, sell the drugs, then give Brewer part of the proceeds. In return, that man got a free ride for his own methamphetamine trafficking activities. Well, until he started coming up with his own meth supply. When Brewer found out about that, he started demanding a $500 or $600 payment every week for the dealer to carry out his work unimpeded. The dealer eventually became an FBI informant and took his former partner down.

Brewer has now resigned as sheriff, and he has not yet been convicted of anything, but his arrest on drug and extortion charges is yet another disturbing example of the corrosive impact on law enforcement of enforcing drug prohibition.

County sheriffs are unique figures in the American law enforcement landscape. Unlike police chiefs or the heads of federal law enforcement agencies, they are typically elected, not appointed. They are subject to little effective oversight except from voters at the polling booth. They control policing not only of all county territory not handled by municipal police forces, but also the county jail and the policing of the courthouse. They control their own law enforcement fiefdoms.

And they sometimes turn to the dark side. For the past dozen years, Drug War Chronicle has covered drug prohibition-related law enforcement misbehavior in a recurring feature, “This Week’s Corrupt Cops Stories.” During that period, hundreds of police officers, DEA agents, FBI agents, Customs and Border Patrol agents, jail and prison guards, and sheriff’s deputies have gone down for one or more of the myriad forms of dirty drug policing.

Law enforcement misbehavior has run the gamut from planting drugs on innocent people to ripping off drug dealers and selling their stashes to sexual coercion to lying on search warrants to lying in court to pocketing cash from drug busts to embezzling asset forfeiture funds, and even stealing drugs from those drug dropoff boxes.

It’s bad enough when the people charged with enforcing the law flout it, but it’s arguably more disheartening and corrosive when the corrupt cops are the very people charged with heading law enforcement offices, such as county sheriffs. There are more than 3,000 of them, holding office in every state except Alaska (no county governments), Connecticut (replaced by State Marshals), and Hawaii (deputies serve in a division of the Department of Public Safety). The vast majority of them are honest law enforcement professionals.

But some are notoriously not. Each year, one or two or three county sheriffs find themselves on the wrong side of the law because of drugs, whether it’s stealing them, selling them, or gobbling them down themselves. And sometimes, when they break bad, they do so in a spectacular fashion. Here are a half-dozen of the most outrageous from the past decade alone:

Oklahoma’s Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess Burgess was hit in 2008 with a 35-count indictment charging him with coercing and bribing female inmates to participate in sex acts. He was hit with 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy, and five counts of bribery by a public official, among other charges. A federal lawsuit filed by 12 former inmates alleges that Burgess and his employees had them participate in wet T-shirt contests and gave cigarettes to inmates who would flash their breasts. Another prisoner alleged she was given trusty status after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused. After a jury trial, now former Sheriff Burgess was convicted of 13 felonies, including five counts of second-degree rape and three counts of bribery by a public official. Testimony included that of several former female inmates who testified they feared they would be sent to prison if they did not provide sexual favors to the sheriff, as well as two female drug court participants. Burgess sexually assaulted one of them in his patrol car after arresting her for a drug court violation. In March 2009, he was sentenced to 79 years in prison.

Texas’s Montague County Sheriff Bill Keating. Another badge-wearing pervert, Keating, 62, went down for a November 2008 drug raid at a home where the victim and her boyfriend lived. The boyfriend was arrested on outstanding warrants and removed by sheriff’s deputies, who then searched the house and found meth paraphernalia. Sheriff Keating shooed the remaining deputy out of the bedroom, closed the door, and told the victim, “You are about to be my new best friend.” He then threatened to arrest her on drug charges unless she “assisted” him by performing oral sex on him on multiple occasions and becoming a snitch for him. Keating pleaded guilty in that case in January 2009, but was then indicted along with nine jail guards — seven women and two men — for official oppression over allegations that the county jail was like Animal House. That indictment features multiple allegations of guards and inmates doing drugs and having sex with each other under Keatings’ watch. Keating was looking at up to 10 years in prison on the original charge when he died of a heart attack in July 2009. The federal charges against him were subsequently dismissed.

Illinois’s Gallatin County Sheriff Raymond Martin. Sheriff Martin found himself in hot water in 2009, when he was indicted on federal marijuana trafficking charges after being videotaped repeatedly providing pounds of marijuana to a local man, who would sell the weed and then give Martin the proceeds. That man became an informant for the DEA after Martin threatened him with death when he said he wanted out. It only got worse from there. While in jail awaiting trial, Martin, his wife, and their 20-year-old son were all arrested again, this time on solicitation of murder charges for plotting to knock off the guy who ratted them out. In September 2010, Martin was convicted of 15 counts in the drug trafficking and murder-for-hire scheme. He was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison in January 2011.

South Carolina’s Florence County Sheriff E.J. Melvin. The only black sheriff on this list, Melvin was indicted on dozens of federal charges along with 11 others in 2011 for a massive and complex cocaine trafficking conspiracy. He was accused of dealing cocaine from his official vehicle, extorting money from drug dealers for protection or to get reduced charges. State police agents testified that they give Melvin a list of possible drug dealers, only to have him tip them off and arrange to get payments from them to keep the agents away. In addition to the massive cocaine conspiracy, involving multiple kilograms of the drug over a multi-year period, he was also accused of ripping off $5,000 in victim assistance funds for personal use. He ended up convicted on 37 of 43 counts and is now serving a 17-year federal prison sentence.

Kentucky’s Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge. Hodge was indicted on both state and federal charges in 2011 for stealing around $350,000 over a seven-year period, including $100,000 he claimed was used in drug investigations. That wasn’t all: Hodge was also charged with ripping off drug dealers and then funneling them to a local attorney. He would get a $50,000 kickback, the department would get a $50,000 “donation,” and the dealers would get more lenient treatment. Oh, and he admitted to being strung out on pain pills. Hodge is now doing 15 years of federal time and 17 years of state time, and when he gets out, he has to pay back some $350,000.

Oklahoma’s Love County Sheriff Marion “Joe” Russell. Russell was arrested in 2016 on charges of corruption, neglect of duty, and housing a fugitive, but it gets hinkier than that. He was accused of turning a blind eye to meth dealing out of his own home by his adult son, covering up a missing person case where another family member is the main suspect. His son, Willie Russell, had already pleaded guilty to meth dealing. The fugitive, a young woman, was dating Willie and staying at the sheriff’s house even though she had four arrest warrants outstanding. Russell would remind her that she was in a “safe haven,” and when she left anyway, he arrested her and the man she moved in with — for harboring a fugitive. He was also accused of arresting drunken women in bikinis and taking them to his house instead of to jail. There, they were allegedly sexually assaulted and given meth. The missing persons case involves a young couple who were last seen in a car owned by Russell’s nephew. That couple, Molly Miller and Colt Haynes, are still missing, but Russell is now in the clear, having copped a plea deal that resulted in one year of probation and $370 in court costs.

Did This Big Pharma Company Bilk Recovering Drug Addicts?

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