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your-astro-mami · 3 years

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North Node - your character development

North Node in Aries (South Node in Libra)

From someone who is afraid of conflict, being sincere and hurting people, staying passive and letting others decide for you, you transform into a determined, straightforward and opinionated person who isn’t afraid to take action. You become driven, ambitious and more competitive. From people pleaser you grow into a person who isn’t afraid to make decisions and doesn’t need to rely on others.

North Node in Taurus(South Node in Scorpio)

From an emotional soul who has suffered throughout life because of others and may have shown his dark side - loving chaos and revenge, manipulation, been cautious of every new person, kept their secrets and actions to themselves, been overly possessive of lovers, partners and friends. Your time on Earth transforms you into a more patient and reliable person who welcomes others with an open heart. You grow to appreciate peace and your comfort, trusting others and letting go of past trauma.

North Node in Gemini(South Node in Sagittarius)

From an impatient, sometimes childish person who couldn’t concentrate and put their attention into anything, lacked responsibility and had a hard time committing you turn into a more articulate person, who is more focused on the current time rather than the future. You pay more attention to other people’s ideas with an open-mind and you remember useful information. Your curiosity grows and you mature.

North Node in Cancer(South Node in Capricorn)

From a negative, materialistic person who lacked senstivity and empathy, was always cautious with people and paid more attention to ambition and personal achievements than relationships, family and self-care, you become a more caring, soft-spoken person, who shows gratitude, affection and kindness to others. You start to appreciate your home and family, you become more romantic and generous to your loved ones. People with this placement were raised to be disciplined, organized and ambitious and aren’t responsible for growing to have these qualities.

North Node in Leo(South Node in Aquarius)

From being raised as opinionated and logical person, who has always felt different from others, isolated and misunderstood you become a more outgoing, courageous person, who is more expressive of themselves and their opinions, focuses on themselves, show generosity and affection. On the other hand, these people can be labeled as selfish and egocentric, inauthentic and attention-seeking.

North Node in Virgo(South Node in Pisces)

From a dreamer to an achiever. You were always very shy, isolated and dependant on others. You trust others and rely on them. With time you learn how to be more thoughtful, practical and reasonable. Your addictive and escapist traits are replaced by rationality and productivity. Your creativity is now expressed better with words.

North Node in Libra(South Node in Aries)

From a harsh, selfish person, who never listened to anyone or followed advice you become a more patient, diplomatic person who always tries to do the right things, admits when they are wrong and needs harmony and peace in their personal and professional relationships. You start to appreciate the beauty of life and the joy of having good relationships and avoiding conflict and stress.

North Node in Scorpio(South Node in Taurus)

From being passive, lazy and comfortable being in the same spot, you become more curious about life and its mysteries. You want experience, you want to pursue things. You want to find your inner power, you want to find the things that will bring out the intense emotions in you. You become more passionate and ambitious about the things you do and your relationships. Your materialistic indulgence turns into emotional and mental one. You aren’t afraid of change anymore.

North Node in Sagittarius(South Node in Gemini)

From someone with bad tendencies like gossip, deceit and inconsistency in relationships, hobbies and other aspects in your life you turn into a person who learns and grows. You seek adventure, you want to travel and explore, you are curious about philosophy and religion and are willing to learn every peace of information, you want to become the free willed and spirited person you were meant to be. Curious child to a wise old man.

North Node in Capricorn(South Node in Cancer)

You grow out of your comfort zone and depenency to home and family. You become more motivated to achieve and secure your future with your own hands. You become hardworking and disciplined. You commit to your goals. You become more responsible for yourself and don’t need the care and nurture like you did before. You know that you can be strong by yourself.

North Node in Aquarius(South Node in Leo)

You stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about others, your community and bigger causes. You want to help and do good for humanity. You realize that if everyone thought only about themselves, we wouldn’t survive as a whole on this earth. On the other hand, people with this placement might do things regarding of what others think. They might be misunderstood or do things that the public opposes. They can be ahead of their time.

North Node in Pisces(South Node in Virgo)

From emotionally closed off and rational person, you start to allow yourself to be more expressive with your feelings and creative with your thoughts. You empathize more with others and grow out of the habit of critique. You start trusting your intuition rather than logic. You become more easygoing, generous and positive. You stop being hard so hard on yourself.

#astrology #north node #aries #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces #south node #zodiac signs

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sairenharia · 3 years

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Sentimonster Adrien Theory 2

Spoilers for all of Season 4 as of 8/31/21

For my previous thoughts, and the validity of at least SOMEONE on the cast being a Sentimonster, refer to: Here

As a note, my previous theory was written after Ladybug and BEFORE Chat Blanc, and Felix. I will be retreading ground for Adrien specifically, but basic belief in there being a sentimonster is there.

Something I just want to say, I don’t think Adrien being a Sentimonster negates the abuse Gabriel inflicted on him. What it does is explain why GABRIEL is able to justify it, but seeing where someone is coming from does not excuse them of their actions. Gabriel has to repent. The fact is Adrien is a person even if Senti!Adrien is true, and that doesn’t change just because he’s not human. Treating someone who can think and feel cruelly is never a good thing.

That being said, evidence and why I think Adrien really might not be human.

A: The Wish

We know Emilie is in the basement. She is in some kind of stasis. We know the Wish involves her.

We do not know Gabriel’s wish. We very deliberately do not know Gabriel’s wish, because we, the audience, hear him talk about it a lot, but only in vague terms. He wants his wish, he wants to change time, he wants to achieve a goal.

But he’s never said he wants to wake Emilie up, fix her, bring her back. He wants to do something for her sake, but its not the most obvious thing.

So its NOT the most obvious thing. There is no reason to be vague about this unless its to elude to a deeper meaning. The obvious wish is too obvious to be obtuse.

And more importantly, we know Emilie and Gabriel wanted something fifteen years ago thanks to the Shanghai special. Something to do with the human virtues, potentially.

We know Marinette is fourteen now. So Adrien’s birthday in Bubbler was his fourteenth birthday.

The want for something started around the time Adrien should have been conceived.

B: Ask for Forgiveness, not Permission.

Adrien doesn’t like to ask his father for things. We see this over and over again with him sneaking out to things like the Startrain, or say he’s going to fencing with Kagami, and other excuses. Sometimes he does try to do things in the straight forward way, but when there are things he really wants to go to, things he doesn’t want to have to accept a no, he sneaks out.

Like the class trip. Like going to see his mother’s movie.

And when Adrien is told directly ‘no,’ he will often listen. For Adrien. Chat Noir, however, is a different entity, and he often uses it for a reason for why he can go out. Chat can, Adrien can’t.

To date, the only time Adrien has gone against a direct order from Gabriel is in regards to going to school.

And Chat Blanc.

I’ll get to Chat Blanc.

Adrien was told he could not attend school, and he accepted that. Until he became Chat Noir and only then did he rebel. Interestingly, when he was pulled from school after the book incident, he didn’t plan to just run away again. We know he was willing to disobey to attend, so why did the ban take this time?

Perhaps because Gabriel made it a thing that was allowed. It wasn’t an outright rebellion, it was a thing earned and then lost.

C: What Is The Amok?

Its the rings.

Not ring.

Its BOTH RINGS.

Which may or may not be magic items in of themselves, but there is not enough information for that.

When Gabriel transforms, there is a distinctive beep. When we first see the basement, we hear that beep again. We we see the rings in Felix, we hear that beep yet again. This beep is a sound cue of significance in regards to Gabriel and Emilie.

And here is the thing. If Adrien is a Sentimonster, he’s meant to be their child. Which comes into some questionable things, ethically speaking, for his free will. They don’t want Adrien to know he’s a Sentimonster. They could tell him to always hold onto his Amok, but he’s the son of very wealthy people. Even without being a model, there is every chance his Amok could be stolen because he’d be a target for theft.

But just having the Amok sitting somewhere is dangerous.

And what if it gets broken?

The only way to keep Adrien’s Amok safe is for one of his parents to have it....or both.

Crocoduel has shown us an item can be Akumatized and taken apart at the moment of enchantment and exist as two separate things. And a bonus, the item has to be put together and THEN broken to break the magic.

And here are the twin rings that are perfect copies of each other and get clean together really nice and maybe they attach a little bit? Having two rings stay together that well while cleaning is quite the party trick if there isn’t something to that. But visually speaking, it tells us, the audience, these are two halves of the same whole.

And it allows a little bit in the form of free will. Because if someone does not possess BOTH rings, they cannot control Adrien completely. Its still incredibly hard for Adrien to resist, but he IS capable of disagreeing at the very least.

Of course, when combined with the home atmosphere, his ability to resist doesn’t account for much without extreme circumstances, but still.

We can see this with Sentibubbler. The moment Ladybug had the coffee cup, he changed tracks without a sign of hesitation or confusion. Because he just had the one item. Even though Ladybug was ordering him with more autonomy then Shadow Moth. (I will also get into that.)

This is also why in Felix, Gabriel immediately goes to retrieve Emilie’s ring to wear. Sure, accusing Felix of stealing the ring gets into a whole legal lawsuit that makes it complicated and would make it difficult to retrieve the ring. Its a whole hassle, but it doesn’t explain why he needs to wear Emilie’s ring.

Except Felix has the ring that is one half of Adrien’s Amok.

Gabriel HAS to wear the ring, because Emilie cannot influence Adrien in any way, but Felix can. Gabriel has to balance out whatever Felix may do to Adrien, so he takes his wife ring. And its why he can’t get into the legal battle because he has to wear the ring to protect ADRIEN, and if they see him with the ring, there will be questions he can’t answer.

This also may explain Gabriel seems even more harsh to Adrien after Emilie’s disappearance despite some oddities.

Adrien wasn’t allowed to go to school while Emilie was around. But Gabriel granted it. When Adrien wants for things he wasn’t allowed before and is willing to fight for it, Gabriel grants it.

I don’t think Gabriel’s authoritative nature has truly changed that much. I think what changed was Adrien’s PERSPECTIVE of it. Because before, Emilie was a constant counter to his need to obey. Now he doesn’t have that, so being told what to do feels more absolute. I think the thing that truly changed was how much time and affection Gabriel was willing to show Adrien in his pain, not how much he restricted him.

Which still ain’t great.

Though that is a thought. Maybe Gabriel avoids Adrien because he knows he’s a commanding sort and he’s trying to not do overly much. Which is why most of his time around Adrien is when he can critique him, because it gives him a focus for orders? It would be a twist.

D: What About Chat Blanc? Or rather, what about Plagg.

So I’ve heard people say Chat Blanc disproves this theory because that is certainly a time to command Adrien to obey with his Amok! Which true, except for two things.

One, the end of Felix has little reason to change in the new timeline. Adrien and Marinette dated for at least a little while which was shortly before Felix happened. Felix still visited.

What might have changed was what kind of terrorizing Felix did on Adrien.

What has no reason to change is Felix stealing the ring.

Which means Gabriel DIDN’T have the means to absolutely command Adrien to do anything, we only had half the Amok.

And the fact the Amok was in two pieces is why Chat Blanc didn’t destroy himself if Gabriel’s ring was still capable of being destroyed while he was transformed, and if London still got wrecked. We saw in Crocoduel the item has to be COMBINED and THEN destroyed. Destroying both at once doesn’t count.

And it would explain something in Chat Blanc.

We know the move he TRIED to do was kill himself. He engulfed himself in the power before it went out of control.

We also know, officially of Guilt Trip, that cataclysm DOESN’T KILL SENTIMONSTERS. It makes it so the Amok doesn’t control them, usually go crazy. We saw Chat Noir get Cataclysm’d in Miraculer, but he didn’t turn to ash. We don’t even know if he truly died. He was suffering, to be sure, and we see Sentimonsters take damage. He could have been damaged.

But Chat Blance is a Sentimonster AND an Akuma, so he was able to take the damage more and went absolutely off the rails instead, and instead of blaming Gabriel, like he should have...

He blamed Ladybug.

Because he was no longer connected to what gave Gabriel control over him. The only ‘control’ over himself he recognized was Ladybug’s influence and his own love.

And then there’s Plagg’s influence, which ties into Cataclysm. Sentimonsters cannot be killed by Plagg’s magic, but they can be FREED of control thanks to his magic. As I said in my first post, the one time we see Adrien disobey as direct order, its after he meets Plagg and goes to school. He uses Chat Noir as a means to disobey all the time.

In being bonded to Plagg, Adrien is given genuine free will and freedom, over the manufactured version that his parents made with a split Amok. He is able to decide things on his own, because he has the chaos magic that grants him the ability to SAY NO. To develop his own means of rebelling.

Ask for forgiveness over permission. And sometimes, learning to say no anyway.

This doesn’t change the conditioning Adrien has been through. He’s obedient to a fault because that is all he’s ever known. Its just instead of fear and gaslighting having trained this into him, it was magic. His parents never NEEDED to be cruel, Emilie COULD be as kind as Adrien says, because they never needed to use negative reinforcement on him.

They had magic.

And that was able to do the job just as well.

Plagg is able to naturally counter the magic. And he’s giving Adrien the unconditional love and support to help him learn, but Adrien is still a person, still has a personality. And the mental bars he has around his head are just as effective as the magic ones were.

E. Shadow Moth vs Mayura

There is something I’ve noticed between how Shadow Moth and Mayura operate.

Mayura made Sentmonsters for others, but she did make one for herself: Ladybug. But here is the thing about Sentibug, she gave her orders. Gave her a general guideline. And then she let Sentibug take those orders and just go.

Shadow Moth, when he makes an Amok, does not do this. He allows others to control Sentimonsters as they will, and often Sentimonsters are just given general guidelines, but not Shadow Moth’s Sentimonsters. Sentibubbler, SentiNino, SentiAlec are Sentimonsters Shadow Moth made.

And he didn’t give them orders. He didn’t give them guidelines.

They were Literal Puppets.

He controlled their movements. He SPOKE THEIR WORDS FOR THEM.

Out of all the Sentimonsters, Gabriel is literally the only one who has used his Sentimonster this way.

And I think there’s a good reason for it. I don’t think Gabriel is capable of making an entity that can act on its own, but is still a complete slave to his will and be okay with it.

Because what does that say about Adrien?

Akumas are fine because those are PEOPLE. People he manipulated and coerced, people he threatened, but they are still people. They can still refuse him and he knows it.

Puppets are find because that’s all they are, puppets.

But this middle ground that Sentimonsters are, that is what Adrien is. And Gabriel is unable to cope with that because it means seeing his son as a tool and despite how much of a genuinely terrible person Gabriel is, that is not something he’s willing to see in himself.

So he hyper controls the Sentimonsters and Does Not Think About It.

F. Wishmaker.

Listen, its valid to have a wish as a child to be what your parents wanted to be. Depending on parents, it could be a perfectly healthy wish.

Here’s the thing.

Everytime Wishmaker granted a wish, we saw people at the age they wanted that wish granted. They were children when they had this wish.

ADRIEN WAS AN INFANT.

And here’s the thing.

Infants don’t think of others. Infants are a bundle of vulnerability that is very curious about the world and don’t want to die and is trying to figure out how to make its wants known. Infants are selfish beings because they are just trying to survive in this world they’ve shown up in.

An infant doesn’t think about what its parents want.

Adrien should not have been CAPABLE of having that wish as an INFANT.

Not unless he wasn’t human.

A Sentimonster sure does want to do what its Amok holder wants.

And what his parents wanted was a son. What they wanted was Adrien.

So that’s why Adrien appears as Adrien for the wish, because for all he has doubts, the Sentimonster in him knows that is what they wanted.

F2. Gabriel and Emilie’s eyes.

....idk, fam. The fact their eye colors were switched FEELS important and we’ve supposedly seen Emilie at seventeen with green eyes and her sister has green eyes, so what’s up with that is wei-

F2. GABRIEL AND EMILIE’S EYES, A THOUGHT I LITERALLY HAD RIGHT NOW.

The Amok is both rings. Gabriel and Emilie have their own rings. The rings they have always worn as their own.

Felix, with green eyes, has Gabriel’s ring.

Gabriel, with blue eyes, has Emilie’s ring.

The reason the eyes are switched in Adrien’s memory is because he associates the eyes with the ring and the current holder of the specific ring have THOSE EYES. He knows the faces they SHOULD be, but the eyes are DIFFERENT because the holders are DIFFERENT.

G. Allergies.

Its still funny if a boy made out of a feather has a feather allergy. It may also be a defense mechanism put in. Logically, any peacock user will have feathers. Maybe he’s allergic in case they ever lose the peacock, he’ll avoid the holder while they’re transformed at least. Maybe it could even distract the holder from noticing anything off about him.

H. Obedience.

Adrien is obedient. Which is one of the reasons he’s a suspect Sentimonster. I won’t go into this because I already talked about his Permission versus Forgiveness thing.

I. Taking Charge

I talked about before about Adrien taking charge and struggling with it, but I also have another point about it.

The thing is, we see Adrien excel at second in command....but also when he’s Chat Noir.

Adrien did BADLY as Mister Bug and as Aspik. But the thing is, Plagg wasn’t there at the time. As Mister Bug, Plagg was with Marinette. As Aspik, the ring is in the weird pocket dimension things are bamf’d away and while Plagg is around, his power isn’t bonded to Adrien.

Adrien has proven able to figure out Ladybug’s plans with minimal instructions. The fact Mister Bug couldn’t even get to step one is weird.

He tried being Aspik for months and was unable to figure out what he needed to do, focused solely on the objective of protect Ladybug. Unable to step back and think beyond his goal. Three months is a long time to not come up with ANYTHING.

Its like Adrien’s ability to decide things on his own was compromised. Like his free will was stripped away, hindered by the rings that control him. He could try to focus on protecting Ladybug, but he couldn’t figure out a good way to take down the enemy on his own.

His father didn’t want him to.

We do see Adrien can lead well. When he wanted to talk to Juleka in Guilt Trip, HE was the one making the right decision. But he was unable to overtake Marinette’s charisma, so even if he could think of what to do, how to handle the situation, he doesn’t have the force of personality to overtake a true leader.

We see Chat Noir have plans and direct a crowd.

With Plagg granting him agency, he’s able to make good decisions, good calls, able to use that brain of his well. Its when he loses Plagg he struggles the most.

J. The Need To Be Useful

Adrien thinks he needs to be useful. He needs to be good and perfect. And yes, this is reinforced by Gabriel’s treatment of him, always criticizing him, but it is a kind of curious fear.

Adrien has two great fears.

The fear of trapped isolation and the fear of rejection.

The fear of trapped isolation is the one Gabriel has reinforced. Adrien has only shown a fear of his father rejecting him once, during Christmas, when he was frustrated in the idea Gabriel would not spend time with him, and even then, Adrien chose to make it a reality on his own first.

And its very likely Gabriel was affectionate when he was younger.

I think the fear of rejection from Gabriel is a newer one that Adrien is aware of. After Gabriel has refused to be around Adrien.

But I think the fear was ALWAYS there. Because he is an Sentimonster. If a Sentimonster isn’t useful, then they have no reason to exist. And the thing is, while Adrien fears this, there is also a strong part of him that is RESIGNED to it.

Which makes it even weirder in that Gabriel’s behavior should make this a NEWER fear...unless it was part of Adrien’s natural existence. One of a Sentimonster. He’s afraid of it, because he wants people, he loves people, but there is a part of him that just....accepts it as a natural consequence.

One that isn’t worth fighting.

Like he isn’t in season four right now.

K. Memories

Adrien couldn’t remember having childhood dreams. We know he used to play with Chloe and...that’s it. There’s even implication his modeling is a Newer Thing instead of being a child model.

We know he didn’t have a childhood dream. He never had a childhood wish. Which is weird because Adrien is the biggest romantic dreamer of the series save for ROSE. He never thought about being a charming knight, a magical girl, even just being a superhero? He was all on board with being a superhero when offered, like he’s thought about it a lot!

But it wasn’t something he called a childhood dream.

But you know who probably did have being a superhero as a childhood dream?

Chloe.

If Adrien has two Amoks to make a facsimile of free will, it may have been impossible for him to truly ‘dream’ in the sense Wishmaker was talking about. It was too deep of a want for him to truly conceptualize enough to count.

But he played games with Chloe, he still saw the wishes and dreams and fantasies that he could enjoy with her as a proxy.

Perhaps that is why they were such good friends. Chloe wanted things so fiercely that for Adrien, who struggled to want, he was able to figure out how to do it with her influence. Not enough for a childhood dream, but enough to know how to want enough that it gave him a love for people. A need for more in his life beyond the perfect son.

L. Emotions.

Adrien is the heart of the Ladybug and Chat Noir duo. The Peacock is the Miraculous of Emotions. Adrien has shown a difficulty at controlling his own feelings. He can control his REACTIONS, but its hard for him to figure out what to do about his feelings beyond ‘conceal, don’t feel.’

Which is weird, because he’s extremely empathetic. He’s very good at judging others emotions (save for Marinette ‘Just A Friend’ Dupain-Cheng.) He can offer comfort and figure out is they need space or help. The fact he struggles with his own says maybe his are just too strong.

Like he’s a being Made Of Emotions.

M. Narrative Foreshadowing.

Just saying it again.

It comes up a lot with Adrien becoming some kind of puppet, copy, impostor. It happens so much. SO MUCH.

Also he was the first one to think Sentibug was a Real Person.

Then there is the end of Mega Leech.

Could it just be another example of Adrien being emotionally abused? Sure.

However, considering how often this series genuinely glosses over abuse (Adrien, Chloe, Kagami, even Zoe to an extent), its weird to just throw that in at the end of an episode that, frankly, barely involves Adrien’s emotions.

Save one.

Adrien was told it was a perfume commercial. He was Lied To. He was told One Thing was Another.

And there is the framing. There is the double focus on the ring, the focus on the words. There is so much focus on this being a command that could not be denied, and that doesn’t need to involve the ring AT ALL if it was abuse.

Unless, of course, the ring was an Amok.

Then the visual cues make a whole lot more sense.

N. The Wild Mass Guessing.

Now what is the wish.

Clearly Emilie’s use of the peacock is what made her sick and it made her sick for years. Now whether the peacock was ALREADY BROKEN or Emilie broke it is up in the air. Either way, we know she used the peacock longterm. Since there is no talk of supervillains or previous superheroes, it seems highly unlikely she was granting people super powered monsters.

So, her use was for a Sentimonster. Perhaps trying to split the Amok broke the peacock. Perhaps that one use was enough to make her sick, but because it was just the one time, it took years for the magical sickness to take her down. That is all up in the air.

What we do know, the crux of the wish is fifteen years ago. Which means it involves Adrien’s existence in some way. It likely involves rewriting time a bit.

And here is the thing.

Gabriel loves Adrien. He does. He’s a trash person, he’s toxic at best, abusive at worst, but HE LOVES ADRIEN.

What if the peacock was broken when they found it. What is Emilie DIDN’T break it?

‘I wish the Peacock was never broken.’

Fifteen years ago, Gabriel and Emilie were trying to have a baby. But they were unable to conceive. Amelie had her own baby boy, and he’s beautiful, and Emilie and Gabriel just hurt more at their inability to have a child.

(This is why adoption should be seen as more valid, folks, but that’s neither here nor there.)

But Emilie’s family knows of magic. Because let’s be fair, there is something truly suspicious about that lot and it screams they know magic stuff. Emilie has heard of grand artifacts and magics and maybe there is away around this limitation.

They explore the world, research magic artifacts, until they finally find the Peacock and Butterfly Miraculous. They are able to learn what they can do, either from Nooroo and Duusu. Clearly an Akuma does nothing for them, but a Sentimonster?

That had possibilities.

But the Peacock is broken.

Emilie doesn’t care.

They experiment. She uses the Peacock more and more, but she figures out the trick. She figures out how to make a child, how to make him SAFE.

Adrien is created, using the sign of their union, and the Miraculous are locked away.

But Emilie is still sick from figuring out how to create Adrien. And the years go by and she doesn’t get better, but she doesn’t care. She has her son. A son both her and Gabriel love, but they have to be careful. He’s not human, after all, just a little off.

Let him meet Chloe, because the Bourgeios are hardly normal. Slowly socialize him. Keep him inside so no one sees how odd he is. Keep him safe. He grows, happy enough, independent ENOUGH to believe.

Then Emilie collapses.

And doesn’t get up.

Gabriel is the only one with active control. He keeps Emilie’s ring on her finger and hides her away, but now, he’s the only one who can order his son. He doesn’t want to destroy what independent thought Adrien has achieved, doesn’t want to destroy HIS SON, so he keeps his distance. He only interacts in ways where he can be silent, or criticize what he has always criticized. Doesn’t even dare to get him a gift for his birthday because what if that becomes far too important?

As Adrien shows a rebellious streak, does things for himself, asks for things HE wants, things that Gabriel will sometimes give if its deemed safe, and Gabriel tentatively shows a little more attention. Goes to a few events, goes on a few trips. Not for long, brief amounts of time, hoping that Adrien keeps being Himself.

Because he can’t take off the ring.

Taking off the ring means leaving Adrien vulnerable.

And he fights Ladybug and Chat Noir for his wish.

If the Peacock wasn’t broken/didn’t break, then Emilie wouldn’t have gotten sick. She would wake up and Adrien wouldn’t be erased by his sole control. Maybe if he’s bold enough, he can just make sure Adrien was never at risk of being a puppet again. Take the Amok’s out of the equation, make his son real.

And if time is altered then....then it doesn’t MATTER if Adrien is hurt NOW. If he hates being alone. If Gabriel fails, at least he doesn’t erase what little will his son has left. If Gabriel wins, then literally nothing done matters!

Sometimes he forgets that. He sees Adrien in danger, and he feels that fear, that need to save his son.

Sometimes he remembers, tells himself if he wins, then any harm he caused Adrien with Riposte, with Style Queen, WITH CHAT BLANC, will no longer matter. He just had to win, he has to win, he has to win because it will return Emilie, and it will ensure his son is never lost in the magic that makes his soul.

It doesn’t matter who he hurts. It doesn’t matter how villainous he becomes. None of it matters as long as he achieves his end.

Once, he even thinks of explaining it to Adrien. Tell him he’s Hawk Moth. Tell him he’s a Sentimonster. He knows the distance hurts his son, but if he knew why, then Adrien would understand just how much he loves Adrien.

He keeps his distance so he doesn’t accidentally change Adrien.

He’s Hawk Moth so he can save Emilie and Adrien.

He will fix everything once he wins, and he regrets how often he had hurt Adrien until then.

And then Adrien talks about how he’s noticed Gabriel and Nathalie becoming closer and Nathalie has the Peacock. Adrien is switching his loyalty from Emilie to Nathalie, he’s changing due to MAGIC and Gabriel is furious because he’s been too lax, been too kind, he needs to WIN.

When the Peacock will no longer hurt, when Nathalie will stop fighting him on him using it, he takes it. To keep Adrien from changing more due to magic.

There are times where Gabriel’s heart remind him of his love. He can’t hurt his son then.

There are times where he remembers his goal. If he wins, whatever harm he caused Adrien doesn’t matter, and he HAS to win.

And he throws himself more and more and more into the fight, into winning because if he can win, then he can save everyone important to him.

What does it matter if Adrien suffers now as long as its undone?

#ml-spoilers #adrien agreste #gabriel agreste #nathalie sancoeur #emilie agreste #sentimonster #sentimonster theory #senti!adrien #ml season 4 #cw: child abuse #cw: toxic relationship

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zsocca55 · 3 years

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this might be a weird question, but do you have any opinions on Hungary's characterization or anything that annoys you about her character/anything you find fitting about her character?

Thank you for the question!

I thought about it and wondered if you meant Hidekaz’s characterization or the fandom characterization, so in the end I collected a few thoughts on both. (I’m a history teacher graduate by the way so I feel like I have more insight than an average person but my opinion is still just an opinion and not something that should be taken too seriously.)

Hidekaz’s characterization of Hungary: I find this approach quite appropriate. The whole story about ‘Hungary thinking she was a boy and then found out she is in fact not’ works surprisingly well with the way our historians describe how Hungary used to be a serious power in Central Europe until the second half of Middle Ages came and she somehow got stuck behind. Simply put, the male countries around her grew stronger as puberty hit, haha.

But from a historian point of view, Hungary is considered a very masculine nation in characteristics, even today. And this is shown in the series too.

Also her emotional, easy to anger and aggressive nature fits Hungarians quite well. One thing is slightly off though: Hungarians are not this happy-go-lucky on a daily basis. In the series she is shown as somewhat an optimist with a bright smile on her face all the time. Meanwhile in reality, even we admit is, we are pessimistic, hard to approach, borderline gloomy, and we complain a lot. You could say an average Hungarian is whiny. Bad habit, and we often call ourselves out for it. We have a harsh tongue and we critique ourselves a lot. (And other nations too if they hurt us in some way. Oh and we hold grudges forever. We don’t forget. We will bring it up. Again and again.)

Hungary’s realtionship with other nations is also an interesting thing in the series. Historically, we have very little to do with Prussia. Germany is an other case, as Hungarians tend to worship germans for some reason (if something is german-made it surely is the best etc.) and we show unique respect towards them when they visit our country.

Poland is a beloved nation, our best friend, as we have often fought for each other and refused to attack the other during world wars. But this isn’t shown in the series at all. I miss this, as Hungarian-Polish interactions happen on a daily basis, especially in the online world. This missed opportunity is the biggest disappointment I find regarding Hungary’s interactions.

Lets not forget Austria too, as he deserves a spot in our history books....yeah, he takes a lot of pages. Here is another little mischaracterization in our relationship: Hungarians and Austrians had a love-hate thing with each other. Austria was controlling, Hungary was rebellious. But in the end, when Austria was in trouble, we would dive headfirst into battle and save him, or just intentionally miss opportunities to backstab him. Hungary wanted her freedom but she also never wanted to quit his Empire. It’s....complicated? We are fascinated with him, though. One could say an average Hungarian envies an average Austrian and wishes they could live there. We also call them “in-laws” for being family. They call us their “favorite neighbours” and sometimes refer to us as family too.

That thing about generally not liking Romanians is true as well. Ugly things happen even nowadays. It’s all because of Transylvania. It’s a touchy topic.

So yeah, all in all, her character and her relationships are more or less on spot.

Fandom characterization of Hungary: The palette is broad, so I try to point out the most prominent trends I’ve noticed.

Aside from the fact that her gender role is all over the place, people like to think in extremes so she is either written as the girliest girl or an overconfident tomboy. In my opinion she is neither. She has embraced her femininity but she also knows her strength and isn’t afraid to show it. No need to overthink that.

As for historical accuracy, I noticed that an average fan usually doesn’t do enough background check when writing her character. It’s not like I say someone’s required to read a whole history book just to get her character right, but at least her correct name (which is one of the sore points for me) and the main national traumas should be kept in mind before writing Hungary. These are the things that had shaped her way of thinking and these are what make her tick. Even today, Hungarians are quick to get offended when their national traumas get ignored or disrespected. These traumas are: Ottomans (Turkey), Habsburgs (Austria), Soviets (Russia) and the worst of all Trianon. So when writing interactions with her and these characters listed, one should thread carefully and do some research.

Otherwise, I find the slightly mischievous, soul of the party characterization of her appealing and on point. Hungarians aren’t all that bad, we know how to get some fun afterall! :D

But again, everything is up to interpretation and there is some place for author’s creativity too! I hope I answered your question! :)

#aph #hws #hetalia #hetalia hungary #aph hungary #hws hungary #writing and characterization #canon and fanon #my opinion #written from a hungarian perspective #my thoughts #q&a #zsocca #zsocca55

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lovee-infected · 4 years

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hi hi!!! i love your vil analysis post!! just wondering though...why does vil force epel to do traditionally “cute, feminine” things. i get that it’s, like, to counter neige for the vdc, but it kind of goes against vil’s ideology? like, how i see it, vil advocates for people to express themselves how they want without being bound by gender roles. i feel like if epel tried forcing his manliness ideology onto other people, he’d be justified in his “forcing epel to do cute things” plan, but i don’t think epel has ever shamed feminine guys? he just wants to be manly himself. could this be an allusion to how the evil queen turned ugly just to fulfill her goals? vil going against his core ideals and becoming “ugly” just to win?

Glad you enjoyed it dear! As for your question, I believe that'll be better if I go into details because I've seen many asking similar questions regarding chapter 5, and I guess that's causing some misunderstandings towards both Vil and Epel. Well, we're soon getting the rest of the Pomefiore Chapter, so I guess it's the best time for an analysis on Epel and Vil's relationship and how Chapter 5 has been going so far

First off, let me state something really really important about the Pomefiore chapter, this arc has got pretty wild spirits that are quite new compared to the previous chapters. We've got Neige, the first RSA character to appear as a real rival of a NRC student, Vil and Epel's rough relationship, Ace and Deuce joining MC on the new adventure once again and finally, the VDC: an event with is potentially important to not only the whole NRC but also Twisted Wonderland!

While all fans are surely excited to see what we'll be going through next, there are quite a few of misunderstandings and wrong interpretations that are considerably important regarding the Pomefiore chapter. In order to avoid possible dramas and more misinterpretions between the fans, let's try to take a better look at this Chapter and important Pomefiore hints that we've got so far:

(1)Epel's feelings; the most important element of chapter 5

One of the quite brilliant facts about Chapter 5, is the unique presence of characters and their roles in the story. This might seem quite unrecognizable, but right now Epel's appearance is effecting the audience way more than Vil's! This arc is mainly focusing on making the audience feel his pain and hard time, and I can say that they're doing it pretty well! We'll talk about how his feelings are being presented in part (6). Now, you may wonder why his feelings are so important in the Pomefiore arc? Isn't it supposed to be mostly about Vil? Well of course, the story is most likely leading us to Vil's overblot so he's the heart of this chapter, but the important thing is too see how crucial Epel's role is here. Watching how Epel is in pain, silenty crying and forced into doing something that he doesn't want to by Vil is savagely effecting this fandom's interpretation of Vil, some are commenting on how he's the worst or how horrible he is or hundreds of not really friendly critiques which is awfully frustrating... We'd continue to talk about this point in part (5)!

(2) Epel's relationship with Vil

Let's review what we've got through the side stories. To begin with, Epel obviously doesn't really like Vil, (I'm trying to cooperate and not say that he hates him) he didn't appreciate having him as the dorm leader from the very beginning. But he's got some strong reasons to dislike Vil so we can't really blame him:

1)Vil slapped him all of a sudden just because of his poor posture at the dinner table 2)Vil almost crashed Epels head between his hands while teaching him some manners 3)Vil's idealistic are just the opposite of Epel's 4)Vil is trying to change Epel, especially during chaptet 5. It sometimes feels like Vil is treating Epel like his puppet and Epel doesn't appreciate this all.

At the end of his SR lab story Epel stated how he's going to study his hardest in magic and potions, so maybe at some point he'd beat Vil, which goes to prove that he considers Vil a rival.

"Why is it so though? Isn't this pretty risky for Epel to challenge Vil, especially as Vil is a dorm leader and Epel's just a first year who's still an amateur at magic?"

Farewell, let me mention something about Epel, he's got a really strong will to the point of not giving up until proving everyone wrong. He's often looked down on, is called to be useless and dumb, and is sometimes insulted for being innocent and naïve. True, he still has a lot he needs to learn and he's aware, but he won't take being underestimated easily.

Just look at him! He's been raised in a farm and he still found his way to this school filled with stunning students coming from noble families while Epel is a simple country boy! He proved the point to us once again in his lab coat story where Crewel gave him an impossible task just to push him into giving up and coming to apologize afterwards. When Epel realized that he was just tricked by Crewel, he felt quite frustrated and started to cry, yet he didn't give up and used his personal experiments and what he'd learned back in his farm life and paved his road to success and impressing everyone including Crewel!

This is why he isn't backing up now, he doesn't want and isn't going to lose to Vil. Another important reason might be how Vil seems to have control over Epel, his manners, his attitude, the way he looks and basically, the person Epel is. Epel has indirectly said that Vil may be currently bounding his actions and life, but someday this will change. He mentioned similar lines several times and you can see he really has a strong will to prove everyone, especially Vil, that he's not a cute apple boy to sit still and look pretty. And if he's been waiting for the right time to stand against Vil, chapter 5 has got it. In part (7) you'll see why.

(3)What is happening in chapter 5?

Okay before we continue, let's just focus on what we've got in Pomefiore chapter: This year's vocal and dance championship has an unbelievable amount of media focused on it , because two of the world-famous influencers,Vil Schoenheit & Neige Leblanche, are joining. Both are great influencers and talented designers, but recently Neige has been getting really popular through the social media and TV, thus Vil realizes that the time to face his well-known rival, Neige, has come.

The VDC is no joke to him because hundreds of people are coming to watch this competition between two Celebrities, and his career is surely at risk. If the VDC doesn't go as well as he's planned, that'll be an end to his fame and clout, possibly his whole career! Therefore he has to make sure that nothing is going to ruin his plans for the big day, and that's why he is going to use his ultimate weapon, the red poisoned apple. Note that this isn't just about Vil, it's about protecting NRC's clout against RSA as well, so losing the VDC would seriously effect NRC's picture throughout the whole twisted wonderland. So a really important part of NRC's future is relying on Vil's hands right now.

Look, unlike the previous chapters, Vil's story is about nothing fictional or exaggerated; it's something that's pretty normal to see in real life! Two famous fashion designers joining a competition, both are giving in their best, aren't planning to lose, are going to be awfully strict towards training their models and making sure that nothing would be messed up, and are SERIOUS about winning because losing it to the other side would end in losing their clout and having the reports of their unfortunate fall-down spread worldwide.

Unlike the previous overblots, Vil's strictness and seriousness has NOTHING to do with being evil or crazy, he's just doing what he's supposed to be doing, working his hardest to defend his career. Anyone else who were in Vil's shoes would've done the same, and nothing about it chaotic, heartless or mad. His being pretty strict towards Epel because he's his main hope, Epel is the perfect beauty material and is definitely capable of achieving all the best through the VDC, that's why Vil's counting on him. Just as a fashion designer is strict with training their model, Vil is all serious with his way of couching Epel. And it's just about being professional, not being evil!

(4) It's not about Vil, it's about Epel

This is more of a continuation to part (3), but let's talk seriously about how wrong chapter 5 is being interpreted. "Vil is the worst! Can't he see that Epel doesn't want this?" or "Ew gross! People like Vil who use others for their very own benefits are just horrible" are some of the aggressive comments I've recently heard about how Vil is doing in Chapter 5, which is mainly because of Epel. I mentioned that Epel's feelings are most important element of chapter 5 and this is why!! Vil isn't doing anything that savage or mean but his actions seem to be a lot more appealing to fans due to how Epel's frustration and pain is being focused on. It's not because of Vil, it's because of Epel. Vil had been just the same with Leona back in the fairy gala event and most of the fans considered the story to be much of a comedy, but when Vil's treating Epel just the same way it sounds mean, cruel, harsh and heartless. See what I meant? Epel's presence was crucial to give Vil an evil perspective and make him seem just as bad as Azul or Leona.

I'm not defending his action since Epel as well is surely under a serious pressure. He doesn't even want to be joining the VDC, let alone having to follow all these strict rules that Vil's been teaching him so far. But since Epel forcedly made the deal with Vil and promised to help him for the VDC, there's no turning back now. Vil is counting on him as his very last hope and is putting his hardest of work and effort into training Epel, just like any professional fashion designer would've done.

(5)Vil is NOT the Evil Queen!

As for Vil's biggest difference with the Evil Queen, I must say that Vil does really work his hardest for what he desires. Evil Queen simply wanted Snow White dead while we've got Vil, working his ass off preparing everything for the VDC. He isn't just going to get mad and envies of Neige because his becoming popular, he doesn't want Neige dead either. All Vil has been doing so far was working and working and working and getting to be called cruel and heartless in return, I mean can't you just feel the amount of effort and nerve he's giving into work?

See, a considerable majority of the fandom is exaggerating the story of chapter 5 while Vil hasn't even shown a simple sign of having any ill intentions or evil plans in mind! We don't know what is going to happen i the next episodes but let's say that he hasn't done a single evil thing so far.

Just take a look at previous chapters! Leona was openly planning to unfairly harm and injure other students and Azul fooled nearly 200 students, took away their magic and forced them to work for him in Mostrolounge until they graduate from the very beginning. Heartslabyul and Scarabia weren't as severe as these two but they still did have some sort of a visibly unhealthy aura. Vil's current impression as the villain of chapter 5 is high-kay normal and chill compared to the previous chapters as he literally has done nothing evil so far, NOTHING. Most of the fandom is currently giving him the malicious aura that he doesn't have, or at least he doesn't yet have. Look, Vil's just doing his job. This doesn't even have anything to do with the Evil Queen! Also, Vil's rival ship with Neige has nothing to do with beauty, it's about fame, net-worth and popularity.

We don't know if he'd come up with any ill plans or serious intentions to harm Neige or anyone else in the new episodes, but his current impression in nothing more than going hard on Epel as his coach which is just being overly exaggerated by the fandom. A real life fashion designer would've done JUST the same thing! I know that this story is most likely going to end in Vil's overblot and him revealing his inner villain but come on, he hasn't done anything horrible so far!

(6)How Epel is being presented through Chapter 5

This point is the cause of many misunderstandings and confusions regarding Chapter 5, many find the context of Epel being forced to do what he doesn't like so cruel, some on the other hand are confused becaused Vil has clearly stated that his terms of beauty are gender neutral, so why would he force Epel to do these in the first place? As I said before, it's because of Epel, not Vil.

When it comes to perspectives on beauty, Epel's idealistics are just the opposite of Vil's. Look, Epel hates being mistaken with a girl or being considered soft and cute, this is something that has been bothering him for quite a long time. Being misgendered because of his appearance all over his life has had some negative effects on his perspective toward anything cute or feminine, as it just reminds him as how he often gets misunderstood because of his unwanted appearance and cuteness. Epel is awfully similar to Deuce and wants nothing more than getting to reveal the manliness he's holding within, through not only tastes but also abilities.

This is why he's been feeling quite uncomfortable in chapter 5 because Vil's basically pushing him into doing what he hates the most, looking cute and, well, something that Epel would consider feminine. The thing is, Vil does not consider stuff like 'Being able to sing beautifully, performing eye-catching movements voice, wearing stunning clothes and applying makeup' feminine at all, to Vil these are gender neutral terms of beauty and he doesn't get why Epel might consider them girlish or feminine either. Epel's comment on not wanting to do girlish things sounded naïve and low key rude to Vil because beauty isn't bound to being male or female, and he doesn't appreciate the idea of these works being called girlish at all.

This is neither Epel nor Vil's fault, it's just the difference in idealistics.

(7) Vil's on thin ice right now

Let me tell you a secret, 'choosing Epel to become the red poisoned apple wasn't an accidental act AT ALL'. Vil has been watching over Epel ever since he entered NRC and this is why he was so strict about changing this "Mudded potato" into a well-behaved Pomefiore student. Vil knew Epel's name and had discussed his case with Rook right at Epel's first day, and this is why he treated Epel so harshly at the dinner table because his plan to turn Epel into his red poisoned apple had already begun. He was preparing Epel from the very beginning and was just expecting the big day to arrive, the day he'd need Epel to defeat his rival, Neige.

Remember that I said how Epel's been waiting for a chance to stand against Vil and how Chapter 5 would be his BEST opportunity to do this? Before we explain this point, let's have a review on how Vil has been effecting and changing him so far. During his first days in NRC, Epel was more comfortable with shouting, fighting and opposing to other students including Vil. He used to disagree until Vil slapped him but now in Chapter 5, he doesn't even say a word when Vil tells him to do something, he just silently obeys as tears fall from his eyes. He no longer fights back as much as he used to.

But right now, Vil's career, status and future is bound to Epel. Vil has been working harder than ever trying to turn him into the Red poisoned Apple he's been expecting him to become, and if Epel backs up or decides to ruin the show and stop letting Vil have control over him, that'll seriously make Vil explode. And if you think that Vil deserves to be hurt like this, I gotta say that he doesn't, he seriously doesn't deserve this after all he's been going through. Just imagine being on Gil's shoes, how would you feel about having the result of all that hard work and effort you've given into work for YEARS ruined like this? Look, we need to judge this situation nonetheless, even is you don't really like Vil it's important to realize the unfairness of this possible future to the story.

Epel now has the opportunity to BREAK Vil like no one has ever done, after all Vil has been going through to coach Epel, teach him manners, change his nature and prepare him for the VDC this would certainly be the worst thing that may happen to him and it'll make him mad, like really really mad. The Vil we've seen through the story so far was nothing more than Vil's normal calm self so we can't even imagine how it might be to see him mad. At this point he won't be bound to any manners or consderations, and keep this in mind: "We won't like it when Vil is evil, and we can't imagine how evil he can be,"

I'm honestly so excited and terrified at the same time to see what we'll get to see in the rest of the Pomefiore chapter, the atmosphere is so nerve-wrecking right now and I can't help but to pray that the rest of this story doesn't traumatize us as much as it can- “Yana please, have mercy on us”

#Twst #twisted wonderland #Twst x reader #twisted Wonderland x reader #vil Schoenheit #Vil Schoenheit x reader #epel felmier #epel felmier x reader #rook hunt #Pomefiore #character analysis

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psycheshorror · 3 years

Text

“Shut Up”

pairing: MCU!Brock Rumlow x reader

summary: smutty smut smut with tons of cursing. rough sex.

authors note: I’m new to the whole writing scene, critiques appreciated!

part two

God, Brock was so pretty when he finally shut the fuck up.

It started off small. Working as an assistant for Maria Hill meant you had to schedule debriefing meetings, hunt down agents for completed mission reports, and occasionally make small talk with the big guys - Captain Rogers and you were on first name basis and sometimes he even brought you coffee when turning in his reports. Neatly written, filled out properly, never a second late and somehow the coffee always tasted like it was just brewed.

But Brock Rumlow was something else.

Always wearing a shit-eating grin when he saw you, brown eyes full of amusement as he watched you disdainfully pluck the report out of his large hands. Messy as fuck handwriting as per usual, and no matter how many times you told him to remember to be thorough, there was always a detail missing that didn’t line up with the rest of his teammates. And no matter how small it was, it meant the process had to start all over again.

You tried to remain professional, but you were at your wits end. You wanted to be like Maria. Maria never gets her feathers ruffled, and sure as hell doesn’t over paperwork, but goddamn if it didn’t require a miracle for Brock’s report to be correct the first time around.

“Hey honey,” he said, mouth curling up into a catlike grin.

“Rumlow,” you acknowledged, trying desperately to keep your eyes fixated on your computer screen, almost effectively ignoring the flutter in your chest at the pet name. You reached for your coffee mug and frowned when the now-cold liquid hit your lips.

Licking your bottom lip when a stray drop threatened to dribble down your chin, you swore you heard the 6”4 man purr.

A shuffle in your peripheral vision and your desk creaking, you couldn’t help but to now look into the eyes of the absolute brick house of a man.

Both large hands placed flat against the edges of your desk, leaning down, he was only a few inches away from your face now. You could feel his breath on your lips and much to your embarrassment, felt a familiar stirring in your core.

“Do you wanna fuck?”

“Wh- what-“

All of a sudden he was chuckling, head bowing down to look at the floor and you could almost see a shyness you’ve never seen the agent express - ever. But then when he looked back at you, pupils blown wide and a different kind of smirk, you knew at that moment you were a goner.

Brock Rumlow was a wolf and you were a sitting duck, waiting to be eaten.

And eaten you were.

Brock currently had his face in between your legs, tongue mercilessly working your clit as his large fingers pumped into you. Threading your fingers in his hair, you cried out as the coil in your core wrapped so tight that you thought you were gonna die. Just a few more seconds and -

Brock’s head popped up and his fingers slid out to slap your pussy and you almost sobbed. “Brock!!” you whined, embarrassed at the desperation in your voice.

“Did I fucking say you could cum?” he gritted out, hands on your hips and fingers digging so hard in the flesh you knew there would be bruises the next day.

“You motherfucker-“ you yelped when you were suddenly face down into the mattress. Brock’s strength was insane on the field - you knew from

his bio that he built a reputation as being a huge asset to S.H.I.E.L.D., but you never expected it to creep into bed with him as well.

Well, you never expected to be in bed with him in general, but life is full of happy surprises, isn’t it?

You could feel Brock rutting against your ass, cock hard in his tactical pants. One hand firmly placed on the small of your back to hold you down, the other finding it’s way in your hair, tugging firmly. Nothing could have prepared you for how goddamn hot that was.

“Name calling ain’t nice, sweetheart,” he said, breath quickening as his hips rolled into your ass at a brutish pace.

“You’re gonna have to pay the price,” he whispered in your ear before licking the shell of it. You shivered, arousal completely dominating your mind and body. Fuck, you shouldn’t be wet for Brock Rumlow. You felt a tinge of guilt for Steve. You should be in bed with the guy that brought you coffee, not the one who couldn’t file a report properly because he simply didn’t care to.

A harsh slap on your bare ass brought you back to the situation at hand. You moaned as the hand in your hair switched to pinching your right nipple. Twisting hard, your eyes fluttered shut at the new feeling. You’ve never had it rough like this, but damn you were missing out.

You could feel your core starting to coil once more, on the precipice of orgasm just from Brock manhandling you and his covered cock rubbing against your cheeks.

“You like it rough, you little slut?” Another harsh slap from his right hand almost sent you over the edge. You moaned as his cock twitched in his pants, and knew how desperate he was for his own orgasm.

“I asked you a fuckin’ question,” he grunted, hands leaving your body to undo his belt and zipper. Your pussy quaked with the promise of being thoroughly fucked.

“Yes,” you moaned. “Now shut the fuck up and fuck me, Rumlow.”

You could feel the smile against your neck before he bit you, the full length of his cock slipping in until he completely buried himself in your core. You both almost keeled from pleasure.

“Oh fuck, sweetheart, you feel so good around my cock,” he groaned, dark eyelashes fluttering closed as he experimentally thrusted into you, almost savoring the sensation.

“Gotta let me fuck you all the time, I don’t know if I can get enough.” Finally slamming into you, you knew what true pleasure felt like.

“Rumlow,” you cried, tears prickling out the corners of your eyes as you angled yourself against him to feel his cock hit that perfect, magic spot in your pussy that made you see stars. He was merciless with his pace, his large hands digging into your hips once more, forcing you to take his full length and force at once.

The sound of his skin slapping against yours should have made you feel embarrassed. You weren’t supposed to be playing hanky panky with any of your coworkers, nonetheless an agent, but how were you supposed to resist his advances with his pretty brown eyes and that sultry smile?

And now with his cock buried so deeply inside of you, how could you ever stop?

He angled his hips upwards and you felt the underside of his shaft brush against your clit thrice and you were sent into one of the most powerful orgasms you have ever had.

Brock moaned feeling your walls close in on his cock and tugged your hair as you rode the waves of your orgasm. You cried when he slapped your ass, hard, and kept thrusting into you like his life depended on it. Your hands were shaking and you could barely keep your legs open, your orgasm turning you into a throbbing, helpless mess.

He came after a minute of reckless thrusting, the kind that said “I’m drunk off of sex” without anyone explicitly having to say it out loud. Spilling hot cum inside of you, you could feel him moan and a wave of pride washed over you. You could get used to hearing this more often.

Brock sighed and he gently kissed the dark marks he left on your neck, caressing your back and hushing your whimpers when he pulled out of your aching pussy.

Lips barely ghosting the angry red marks his hands left on your ass, he gingerly massaged your hips where he could see the bruises already forming.

After soft touches and tender kisses, he flipped you over, this time slowly as if you were the most valuable thing he’s ever laid his eyes on.

You could feel your heart swelling with affection when you saw his eyes were now full of pure satisfaction. Hush now, feelings.

It was just good, rough sex. No need to make it anything other than that.

“Gotta say, honey,” he said, voice still coated with lust as he tucked his body against yours, pulling the sheets over both of you.

“I’m glad I can finally stop fucking up mission reports.”

“You bastard!” you exclaimed, laughing wildly as he curled a forearm around your waist. “I can’t count how many times I’ve had to make you redo your reports.”

“Well, I tried to get your attention, but you were all business,” he chuckled, nose nuzzling in your hair.

“So I figured, I’m just gonna ask. And I didn’t think you were gonna say yes.”

“Ask and you shall receive,” you yawned, feeling the fatigue of the wild sex start to creep into your bones. Eyes almost fluttering closed, you basked in the warmth of the big, muscly body behind you.

“Well, since you mentioned it... can I get an extension on this next report?”

“Not a chance.” You grinned, just before dozing off.

#brock rumlow #brock rumlow x reader #brock rumlow fanfiction #brock rumlow / reader #fanfic #marvel

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therovingstar · 3 years

Text

I was peeking through random folks’ “ask me about a character” meme responses and saw a good one for Hien that was rather critical of him, and it made me wish (once again) that he was at least a little more popular and his character was explored more cuz there’s so much meat there, and a lot of it is ripe for critique. I’ve talked once or twice about Odzaya not liking him much when they first met on the Steppe; partly because her nerves were already amped from being home again after so long away and her admittedly taking that out on him, but also largely because of the admittedly arrogant and even flippant way Hien approached the Steppedwellers with this idea of recruiting them for his war efforts. His attitude toward them left a bit to be desired; while he was overall respectful toward them (at least toward the Mol), he also approached them in a way that lowkey smacked of...well, him being a prince and a noble, and therefore kinda full of bullshit. Say what you will about Magnai, but he had every right to call Hien out on his mockery of the Oronir’s ways; the latter’s words were obviously meant to shallowly appease and appeal to them, but the way he put it forth was so blatantly brown-nosing you could smell it a malm away lol. I think it speaks to Hien ultimately having a similar mentality to the Steppedwellers as the rest of Othard and the world: that they’re ridiculously strong, yes, but also simple, primitive, and subsequently easy to manipulate. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Hien wasn’t exactly looking for allies or comrades on the Steppe, so much as he was looking for soldiers and glorified cannon fodder, harsh as that may sound. Note that outside of the WoL gaining the status as the technical leader of the Xaela, there were no Xaela representatives present when plans for the siege of Doma Castle were laid out and discussed, despite them making up the bulk of the army and having a pivotal role in the operation’s success. Odzaya fixes this by way of being a Steppedweller herself, but with any WoL who isn’t, there’s a distinct lack of representation.

And Odzaya saw all of that; it’s one of the reasons she doesn’t like nobility or royalty by default, and why it took so much time for her to warm up to Hien. Not only does she find the idea of power and privilege inherited through birth to be ridiculous, she also can’t stand the sense of superiority that all of them seem to carry with them, conscious or otherwise. Hien may be a good bit different from most; he was a prince, but it was a nominal positional, with no real power attached to it thanks to the Garlean occupation, and he was largely raised by someone outside the royal family. And there’s credit to be given there; Hien’s about the most down-to-earth noble/royal you’ll meet, and he has a genuine compassion for people, regardless of their social station.

But he was still raised to see himself as a future king, and that colors his perception of himself, as well as his treatment of others. If Gosetsu, a Doman retainer with close relation to the king, had to be put in his place with regards to being so dismissive of Steppe culture (in his case, religion), it makes sense that Hien, future Doman king and Gosetsu’s ward, had to be, as well (enter Magnai, Sadu, and Odzaya lol). Think about the way our group kept referring to the Naadam as a simple “contest” (when it’s obviously anything but) as well as never once thinking about the long-term consequences of upending what was clearly a sacred tradition and taking power through it; the khagun is an incredibly powerful title to have, and comes not only with huge privileges, but huge responsibilities, as well. That title going to a non-Steppedweller is side-eye-worthy already (and the potential consequences of that really should’ve been explored more), let alone to someone who’s sole use of that power consisted of ordering a bunch of their people (again, who they have no actual relation to) to fight and die for the reinstatement of a foreign nation they have nothing to do with.

Now a lot of this could be attributed to Stormblood’s overall lack of consistently solid storytelling; the Steppe quests alone could use an overhaul, because everything we achieved there was attained far too easily and treated far too lightly, in my opinion, given the complexities of the situation and circumstances. Again, it’s not quite so bad if your WoL is Steppe-raised, but that shouldn’t have been a deciding factor given that most WoLs aren’t. But a solid amount of the critiques here also fall in Hien’s lap, in ways that make it clear he’s not simply your handsome, down-to-earth, supposedly “himbo” Doman Lord. He’s got faults and he’s got complexities, he can be cunning and manipulative and flippant and arrogant, and I love the idea of exploring all that more as someone who loves his character.

#hien rijin #hien rijin critical #lord fire walker #idk i just got to thinking about it all again #and how fun it would be to dig into him #but he's not popular enough lol #sorry if this is rambly i just started typing and didn't stop

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yandere-daydreams · 4 years

Note

omg requests are open yay! can we get a yan!Bully todobaku that have known the reader since childhood and constantly torment her and at some point kidnap her? everyone just seems to not give two shits about the reader so that leads to them giving her the excuse of “no one else cares about you but us” thanks babe ❤️❤️

If by childhood, you mean the first-year of UA, you’re in luck. I’m nothing if not a lover of spoiled, rich brats turning into Yanderes who don’t understand why their Darlings don’t love them, and I can’t say these two don’t fit the role.

Title: Attention Deficit.

TW: Kidnapping, Mentions of Bullying, Mentions of Physical Abuse, and Slight Stockholm Syndrome.

You’d never really liked thinking of Shoto as a bully.

With Katsuki, it made sense. He was hot-headed, volatile, aggressive, and you were an underclassman in the Support Class with a bad habit of hesitating before you spoke and too much going on to deal with two students with too much time on their hands. It aligned with his track-record, his disposition, but Shoto didn’t have the same tells. The first time you’d met him, he’d let you borrow a pencil and didn’t meet your eye when you thanked him. The second, he’d tripped you in the hall and called you a name you'd rather not repeat. It wasn’t a subtle change, it was barely even a change. One morning, he was sweet, and by the next, he wasn’t. There wasn’t a transition, there wasn’t development, he was just different. He was worse when he was around you, but that couldn’t be your fault. It just... it didn’t make sense.

You guessed that didn’t matter, though. Whatever his motivations were, he was still a bully. Both of them were.

Well, kidnappers might be a more appropriate term, now.

Katsuki’s grin was as mocking as he always was, wide and toothy and awful as he dragged you into his lap, his legs crossed underneath him as he made himself comfortable on the meager cot you called a bed. They’d explain that this - the bland, bleached thing that was your current bedroom - was a transitionary precaution, that eventually you’d settle down and be able to sleep with one of them, and they hadn’t taken it kindly when you told them you’d rather spend the rest of your life in a glorified prison cell. But, that’d been weeks ago, and Katsuki didn’t seem to have a problem with the way you glared as his arm looped around your waist, anymore, limiting your squirming while his free hand rose to pinch at your cheek, the gesture less playful and more threatening than it should’ve been. “The brat’s sulking, today,” He chuckled, choosing to ignore the way your nails dug into his forearm. “What happened while I was gone, Icy Hot?”

Shoto’s redeeming features were few and far between, something you’d learned the hard way during your captivity, but you were grateful for his stand-offishness, the way he always kept himself at arm’s length when Katsuki was around. Whereas Katsuki never hesitated to harass you in front of your friends, cornering you between classes and tormenting you in public, Shoto preferred his privacy, even if that meant dragging you into supply closets and following you on your walk home. There wasn’t any need for that here, in the seclusion of his own home, but he still seemed reluctant to act unless the two of you were alone. It might’ve been the only reason you tolerated Katsuki. His touch repulsed you and he was never gentle, but you savored every moment Shoto wasn’t draining the warmth from your body, wasn’t burning your skin just to see how much heat it took to leave a scar. At least his gaze was the only thing that could harm you, when he was so determined to stand-guard against your bedroom door.

“Everything was fine until you barged in,” Shoto countered, his voice as frozen as his demeanor. All crossed arms and stiff silence, lacking Katsuki’s bristling heat, but never managing to balance it out. “You should be more careful. (Y/n)’s still adjusting, you can’t expect them to improve if you’re not patient.”

It was a hypocritical sentiment, considering his patience often came to an end as soon as Katsuki wasn’t there to critique him, but Katsuki only huffed, letting out a low, lazy sigh as his grip around you tightened. You winced at the sudden pressure, attempting to push yourself away from his chest, but if Katsuki noticed your futile attempts to free yourself, he didn’t seem to care. “Angel, is that true? Do you think I’m not being patient enough?” He didn’t give you time to answer, not before his fingertips were digging into your jaw, forcing you to tilt your head back and meet his eyes as he spoke, even if his attention was still idly flitting between you and his stoic companion. “Patience is something they’re gonna have to earn, if they want it. Teaching them a lesson now will be easier than lettin’ them think they can get away with anything they want. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t spend three years putting this off just to spend another day holding myself back.”

Shoto opened his mouth, but you were talking before you could hold yourself back, if only to remind your captors that you still had a voice. They tended to forget, when you went quiet for too long. “I don’t have to earn anything. If you two think I want any of this, you’re both insane.” You paused, forcing yourself to take a breath. To calm down before you told them something they really didn’t want to hear. “Someone’s going to come for me, and they will get me out of here. I’m not staying a second longer than I have to.”

Shoto and Katsuki exchanged a glance, quick and fleeting, but a glance all the same. There was a moment of silence, of tense, thick silence, and then, Shoto’s neutral expression broke into a smile and Katsuki laughed.

You’d always hated it when he laughed.

“Isn’t that so cute,” He cooed, pulling you closer. This time, Shoto took a step forward, then another, perching himself delicately on the edge of your bed, his lips just barely tilted upward at the corners. He extended a hand, cupping your chin as his thumb traced over your cheek, and you didn’t try to hide the way you shuddered. Judging by the sparks of amused flickering in his eyes, he didn’t seem to care. “You think all your little friends are still out there lookin’ for you.”

You stiffed, squaring your shoulders defensively. “They are.”

“They’re not.” Shoto’s declaration was crueler than Katsuki’s, if only because of how casually he said it, how little it seemed to affect him. As if it was just another fact you hadn’t known. As if he wasn’t saying it to hurt you. “I mean, think about it. You weren’t going to be a Hero, just a sidekick, and you weren’t even that, yet. It’s not like anyone’s going to notice you’re gone.”

“And if anyone does, I doubt they’re gonna drop everything to come to your rescue.” You had to grit your teeth to keep quiet, not to scream for him to stop. You knew what he was going to say, you knew you wouldn’t like it, but Katsuki didn’t seem to care about that. He’d never cared before, and you weren’t sure why he’d start making an effort now. “Remember how long it took for someone to report us? We got away with our bullshit for months, and even then, it’s not like we got in trouble. The big guy’s daddy could get him out of murder, if he wanted to.” Shoto narrowed his eyes, but Katsuki’s brushed him off, continuing as he pushed a slow, lingering kiss into your hair. “Everyone who cares about you is already here. There’s no point in leaving, not when we’re the best you’re gonna get.”

“That’s too harsh,” Shoto protested, but he didn’t move to comfort you, didn’t try to deny it, didn’t even stop touching you like he had any right to your affection. Katsuki only laughed as he went on, running a hand through your hair, his hold on you loosening absent-mindedly. Recklessly. Carelessly. He was talking, but you’d stopped listening. You didn’t want to listen. You didn’t want him get to you, and you didn’t this.

And yet, you didn’t try to get away. Not as Katsuki sneered, and not as Shoto grew more brazen, his hand dipping from your face to your shoulder, eventually falling to your collarbone to fiddle with the collar of your shirt. You didn’t like it, but... they were right, in a way.

You didn’t know if anyone else would care enough to make you this miserable.

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fadedflame · 3 years

Text

Ghosts in the Machine Day 13

Detroit: Become Human Prompt Challenge from @connor-sent-by-cyberlife

Day thirteen-Seven digital sins

Words-1109

Connor and Markus paint.

Ao3 or

“I believe I find it… unsettling,” Connor said eventually. It was an honest opinion, he had no reason to lie to his friend. Markus had made it clear that he wanted an actual critique of his latest work, not blind praise. “The technique is good as always, but it makes me feel uncomfortable.”

Markus wiped his hands on a towel, ridding them of excess paint. “That’s the point,” he said with a smile.

Connor turned to him in confusion. “You intended to make the piece unsettling?”

He walked towards Connor, setting the cleaning rag on the table nearby. His father, Carl, had been letting Markus use his studio for the last few months. He suspected that the man wanted the deviant leader to have a reason to step away from his duties at New Jericho and unwind, a sentiment that Connor fully supported. Why Markus had extended the invitation to him, he had yet to decipher.

“Art isn’t just there to make you feel good,” Markus explained. “It is supposed to make you think. Question. Feel, even if those feelings are unsettling.”

Connor looked back at the painting. Wrath, he had named it. The first in his series depicting the seven deadly sins. The bold strokes in harsh coppers and reds certainly accomplished what Markus had intended. “I suppose my understanding of art needs to be expanded,” he reasoned.

Markus laughed, putting an affectionate hand on his shoulder. He always seemed more relaxed when he was out of the public eye. Connor preferred this side of him to the calm and collected diplomat. “Well, maybe I can help with that.”

Before Connor could register what was happening, Markus was guiding him to a blank canvas and handing him a paintbrush. “I… what?” Connor stammered out, not sure what to make of this turn of events.

“The best way to learn is through doing,” Markus insisted, guiding hand still present and blocking him from stepping away. “Go on, give it a try.”

Connor stared at the field of white before him. It was such a vague instruction, he had no idea where to start. How was he supposed to complete the assigned task without adequate direction? “What do you want me to paint?” He asked.

“Whatever you feel like,” Markus offered, unhelpfully.

Those were not proper parameters. What he felt right now was confusion, distress, borderline panic. He was sure that none of that was what Markus was looking for.

The hand on his shoulder squeezed gently and Markus’s expression filled with soft understanding. “There are no wrong answers here, Connor,” he told him. “Just paint anything. I promise, whatever you make will be perfect in its own way.”

He appreciated Markus’s assurances, but it didn’t exactly help with his indecision. Evidently, that was all he was getting though. One more pat on the shoulder and he left Connor to figure it out, telling him he was there if he needed anything.

What he needed was direction. Something concrete, not a vague idea of what was expected of him.

But, Connor was nothing if not determined to do as he was told.

His eyes fell on Markus’s painting. It was still unsettling, but there was something compelling about it too. Maybe that’s what he had meant. Perhaps he could portray his own version of the feeling. He moved to the paint pallet, to ready himself to try his hand at the activity.

“Are you… Connor, you’re not supposed to eat it!” Markus called to him from across the room as he began running his sample.

Apparently, he could do it wrong. “I’m not eating it,” Connor insisted. “I’m sampling the chemical components in the paint so as to understand them better.”

Markus looked baffled by the concept. He didn’t have the sensors that Connor did, so he supposed that was understandable. “Alright,” he said at last. “Just, don’t damage yourself.”

Connor nodded and assured him that it was well within his designed functions. Based off of his analysis, he chose the paints he believed best represented his own version of Markus’s concept.

“Connor,” Markus breathed in disbelief hours later once he deemed the painting completed. “This is incredible.”

“Is it?” Connor didn’t think it was anything special. He’d just attempted to replicate the emotion Markus had done before from his own point of view.

“It really is,” he said, awe still lacing his voice and bleeding into downright excitement. “Your color choices are so unexpected, yet they work! And the motif! Connor, this is phenomenal.”

It made him feel good that Markus liked it, but it was hardly worth the level of praise he was receiving. “I believe you are overstating it,” he argued. “The concept was yours, and you did it much better.”

Markus put his arm around his shoulder, turning so both his and Connor’s paintings were in their line of sight. “I didn’t do it better, Connor. I did it differently. That’s one of the beauties of art, everyone has a different perspective.”

Connor looked at both of the pieces, trying to fully understand what his friend was saying. “So, my perspective, it’s ok?”

“It’s more than ok,” he insisted. He turned, facing Connor and taking one of his hands, requesting a brief interface. Connor felt the sincerity through the connection and it calmed him.

He smiled, glancing back at his own work. In reflection, he had enjoyed painting it. It was relaxing, despite the volatile subject matter. Almost meditative. “If that’s the case, perhaps I should do more in the future.”

“You could do more now,” Markus suggested. He gestured to the stack of blank canvases beside them. “If you would like… this was just one of the series. You could do them with me. As a collaboration.”

“But, your series is meant to be submitted to a gallery,” Connor frowned.

“Yes,” Markus agreed. “Yours will be submitted alongside mine. Two perspectives of each concept.”

He shook his head. “I’m not an artist, Markus.”

Markus laughed, his hand going once again to Connor’s shoulder. “Could have fooled me.” His smile was warm and encouraging. “Come on, Connor. It will be great, I promise. I would love to work with you on this.”

Hank was always saying he needed more hobbies and this seemed to fit that request. The hopeful look on Markus’s face only solidified the decision. “Alright. But I can’t promise you will be pleased with any future paintings. This isn’t part of my programming.”

“I’m sure they will be wonderful,” he praised. It amazed Connor how excited his friend could get over something like this. “Come on, I have more paints you can try.”

#dbh markus #dbh connor #detroit become human #d:bh #dbh prompt challenge #dbhghostsinthemachine #dbh fanart #dbh fanfic

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callous-and-misunderstood · 3 years

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Marlos 44 or 117 for the ask game?!

Thank you so much!

Marlos, and 117: “Can I do your hair?”

This got a little sappy, but I love to write a vulnerable Mal...so here’s an angst/fluff one-shot!

It was Saturday. Saturday was Mal’s favorite day of the week because it was the start of the weekend, and breakfast on Saturday was always pancakes, which she always topped with strawberries and whipped cream. She even woke up early to get a full plate, though she often went back to bed after she’d eaten.

But it was now noon, so breakfast was over. And Mal was still in bed with no pancakes or strawberries.

Mal was in a very, very bad mood.

It had been brewing all week, a slowly growing storm her friends had been eyeing nervously. Mal’s bad moods were notoriously destructive, though when her friends worked together they were able to keep her somewhat docile.

But this weekend, only Carlos was on campus. Evie had left the night before to spend the weekend with Snow White and ‘bond’, whatever that meant. The tourney team had a game in Sherwood Forest, and the cheer team had gone with, meaning Jay, Ben, Lonnie, and Jane were also gone. So, just Carlos and Mal were wandering the mostly empty halls of Auradon Prep.

Normally, Mal would relish the quiet on campus, especially since Audrey and Chad were in Sherwood Forest with the tourney and cheer teams. But after her last class on Friday, she’d crawled into her bed, pulled the covers over her head, and hadn’t moved since.

Carlos rapped on her door firmly, unsurprised by the lack of response. He pulled out the spare key Evie had given him and Jay, and let himself into the room.

“Ugh,” Carlos wrinkled his nose as he took in the state of Mal’s side of the room. She hadn’t picked up anything all week, so dirty socks, crumpled papers, and half-eaten granola bars littered the floor.

“Go AWAY!” Mal grumbled from her cocoon of blankets.

“I have strawberries,” Carlos countered, pulling a full carton out from his bag.

Mal paused, then stuck a hand out from her nest.

“Give them.”

“Nope, you gotta get out of bed if you want them,” Carlos said.

Mal groaned loudly.

“M, come on,” Carlos coaxed, waving the strawberries near her, trying to use the scent to lure her out of bed.

It sort of worked. Mal pulled herself up into a sitting position, keeping herself wrapped in the blankets so only her face was visible.

Mal did not look like Mal. Her skin was washed out in grey, her eyes dull and unfocused. This was not just a bad mood. Something big was bugging her.

“Hey, dragon,” Carlos said softly with a smile, keeping his worry out of his voice.

“Hi,” Mal muttered, itching her nose. “Can I have those strawberries now?”

Carlos relented and handed her the carton, which she tucked into eagerly. A bit of warmth came back to her face as she ate her favorite food. Carlos made himself comfortable at her desk, gingerly throwing out a rotting orange and moving aside a stack of assignments that hadn’t been done.

“So,” Carlos said once the strawberries were mostly gone. “What’s up?”

“What’d you mean?” Mal asked nonchalantly, well aware why he was asking.

Carlos gave her a look, which Mal turned away from.

“Come on, dragon. You’ve been grumpier than the actual Grumpy this week, and you didn’t even get out of bed for pancakes this morning. What’s up?”

Mal grumbled, sinking further into her blanket pile. Even after nearly a year in Auradon, she still hated actually talking about her feelings. With Jay and Evie, she could play it off, but Carlos…he always knew. No matter how much she hid it, he would find her with a raised eyebrow and something that soothed her into talking through the issue.

But strawberries weren’t enough to bring her out of her slump this time. This was more than just a bad grade on a test or an art critique that was too harsh or being bullied by a fellow student.

Carlos watched Mal for a moment, taking in her withdrawn energy and the scattered mess in the room. Then he stood, and wandered towards Evie’s side of the room, finding the hairbrush with purple hair wrapped in it on Evie’s vanity rather than Mal’s.

“Can I do your hair?”

Mal looked at Carlos directly for the first time, her eyes watering a bit. That…sounded nice.

Mal wasn’t a fan of physical affection, but her earliest memory was Maleficent brushing her hair to soothe her tears about…something. She didn’t remember why she was upset, but she did remember how loved she felt while Maleficent ran the broken hairbrush through her short hair, humming a song that sounded like something she’d heard in a dream. Of course, as she’d gotten older that feeling of love had died, but. Yeah. Carlos brushing her hair sounded really nice.

“Sure,” she agreed, and let her blanket-hood fall.

Carlos climbed on to the bed, perching on his knees as he assessed the damage. She obviously hadn’t brushed it in a few days, judging by the size of the knot at the back of her head. But it wasn’t anything Carlos couldn’t work through—he’d brushed Cruella’s hair enough to know what was beyond repair.

Gently, he took the brush and began to comb through Mal’s hair.

“It’s so much longer now,” he commented.

“Well, no one’s going to grab it in a fight anymore,” Mal shot back, though there was no malice in her retort, as they both knew that was the actual reason she’d kept her hair so short.

“Hmmm,” Carlos agreed, gently detangling the purple knots.

Long hair on the Isle wasn’t smart. Jay and Evie had been inconvenienced many a time in a fight by someone grabbing their hair, but they both refused to do anything about it. Mal had her hair length used against her once, and ever since then it had never grown past her chin. But now, it was trailing well below her shoulders.

Mal sighed, letting herself relax into Carlos’ comforting touch. They spent a few more moments in silence, Carlos moving slowly through the rat’s nest in the back to avoid hurting Mal.

“It’s just…” Mal began, then stopped.

Carlos said nothing, knowing that Mal needed space to sort through her thoughts before she spoke.

“I don’t feel like me,” she whispered after a long pause.

“How so?” Carlos asked just as quietly.

“I dunno, it’s just. We spent so long trying to…survive. And I spent so long trying to be my mom, or at least please her. And I know I’m supposed to be all good now, and all Auradon-perfect, but I just. Can’t forget what I spent my whole life being.”

Carlos hummed, setting down the hairbrush once the knots had been detangled. He deftly began to plait her hair into two braids.

“Like. Am I just a pretty pink princess from now on? Not someone from the Isle? I mean, even the other kids have stopped acting like we’re scary. I can’t even get Jane to jump when I say ‘boo’ anymore,” Mal pulled her knees tightly to her chest, letting a few tears fall from her eyes. “I just. Don’t know what is me, and what is someone else telling me who to be.”

Carlos tied off the braids then turned Mal to face him. She looked into his dark brown eyes and saw herself reflected in them.

“Mal, I know I haven’t known you as long as Jay, or even Evie, but I know that we will always be part of two vastly different worlds. We will always be trying to figure out what we actually want, us, not what everyone else wants us to want. We can’t avoid that. I mean, even if we spent our whole lives on the Isle, it wouldn’t be perfect. We would be trying to live up to impossible expectations. It’s the same here, because we can’t just forget where we came from. I can’t forget what Cruella did to me, anymore than you can forget what your mom wanted from you. But now, we have a real chance to figure out who we are, what we want. Yeah, Auradon isn’t the fairy-tale they pretend it is. But we have room to grow, to make our own way. And I’ll be with you the whole time, whoever you end up being.”

Mal was weeping openly now, and Carlos pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. He rocked her slightly, letting Mal cry herself out.

She should have talked to Carlos sooner, she realized. He had had the hardest time adjusting out of any of them; a year later and he still woke up screaming from nightmares about Cruella. He would never be fully Auradon, no matter how much therapy and medication he did. And neither would Evie and Jay, though they were so good at fitting in. But just because Jay was the school’s star athlete and Evie was running an incredibly successful fashion business did not mean they weren’t from the Isle.

No matter how well they adapted, that was one thing they could never get rid of. The past didn’t just disappear, even though Mal often wished it would.

“What’s that saying, from Mogwli’s human family?” Mal sniffed against Carlos’s chest.

“What?”

“You know, the boy from the jungle, but who’s still a human boy.”

“Ohhh, I see someone was paying attention in history class.”

“Shut up,” Mal headbutted Carlos softly.

“Mm, you can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the boy?”

“Yes. But it’s us and the Isle.”

“Exactly,” Carlos pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head. “You can’t take the Isle out of us, but that doesn’t mean it defines us.”

#my fanfic writing #descedants #descendant fanfic #one shot #marlos #mal and carlos #prompt ask #thank u so much this really helped me get into a groove !#carlos de vil #mal descendants #this is basically just d2 'girl talk'#but i love the notion of them just having identity crisis after identity criss #*crisis #so!

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czenzo · 2 years

Text

Misdial - Chapter V

[ao3] chapter links: [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ Epilogue ]

summary: Lucy, a newly-enrolled fine arts student at a London university, accidentally calls the wrong number and ends up getting to know a business student who also happens to be in the same city. Slowly but surely, they realise their lives are intertwined more than they initially thought, and soon they find their friendship may be evolving into something more. Or: After a chance phone call, Lucy and Lockwood spend the next few months pining after one another.

rating: G words: 2607

note: ladies and gentlemen... Florence Bonnard.

Lucy’s sitting on the settee in her flat watching messages appear on the project group chat as her other group members discuss the work. Occasionally she sends a short, vague message just to make sure she gets her minimal participation in, but doesn’t commit to anything more.

It’s two days before her group is due to meet and gather all ten of their pieces together to allow each of them to critique, edit, and alter them as a group, and Lucy’s nerves are close to being fried.

Back at the studio sits her two pieces, the second of which she had only just finished the day before—though if it weren’t for being distracted by her phone, she’d have probably finished it sooner. The first, her favourite, is a drawing of a cat resting on a headstone in a graveyard, and she had been particularly pleased with how she combined pencil and charcoal to create it. The second, the piece with which she wanted to push herself, is a clay sculpture of a skull, with various plants and weeds she’d collected snaking around the clay bone. She’s happy enough with her interpretation of the group’s theme, but clay has never been her strong point. One side of the skull looks more sunken than the other, the eye-sockets aren’t quite even, and the jaw is a bit lopsided, but hopefully her group isn’t too harsh with the criticisms.

Who is she kidding? Lucy lets her head flop back to rest against the back of the settee, and she finally switches off the phone screen, realising that watching the group chat like a hawk isn’t helping her at all.

“Are you okay, Lucy?” Holly asks from near the front door, rifling through her handbag.

“‘m fine,” she replies, closing her eyes.

“Is the project still bothering you?” Even without looking at her, Lucy knows Holly’s neatly plucked eyebrows are moving to create a look of concern—or pity; it’s hard to tell with her flatmate sometimes.

“A bit. But it’s fine.” She firmly places her phone to the side of her, screen down. Skull takes this as an invitation to jump up and sit on her lap, though he makes a point of facing away from her. She absent-mindedly strokes the back of his neck.

“You need to take your mind off of it,” Holly says, picking up her handbag. She’s dolled up today, all neat and tidy and perfect in preparation for her photoshoot session. Not that she’s the one modelling—Holly’s in her third year of fashion design at UAL, the same university Lucy attends, and her first big project of the year is to create a small themed collection of outfits (similar to Lucy’s own current project, except Holly has the privilege of getting to do it alone) and have someone model them. It isn't meant to be a big flashy photoshoot, but if Lucy knows anything about Holly Munro, she’ll be going all-out. She’d even mentioned that one of their university’s journalism students wanted to do an article on the collection.

“Good luck with the shoot,” Lucy says, ignoring Holly’s last comment.

“Oh!” Her flatmate perks up, and the hand that was reaching for the doorknob drops. “Come to lunch with me, after the shoot.”

“Lunch?”

“Annie”—one of Holly’s tutors—“told me about this cosy little cafe not far from our studio. Flora’s, or Florence’s, or something along those lines… I’ll have to double-check with her. We could pop in there and grab a bite together, take your mind off your project. What do you think?”

Lucy hesitates for a second, then shrugs, deciding there’s no harm in going. “Alright.”

“Great! I’ll text you the studio address and let you know when we’re close to wrapping up. See you in a bit!”

With a gust of sweet perfume and a flick of her styled hair, Holly is out the door.

Skull chirps from Lucy’s lap.

“I know,” she sighs, scratching behind his ear. “I hope the cafe’s not some healthy vegan place.”

When Lucy enters the address Holly had sent her over text, she’s surprised to see it’s rather quiet. She’d half been expecting to be greeted with people rushing about, fabric and clothes being quickly exchanged between hands, bright lights and countless cameras… but, as she walks into the spacious room, she remembers that Holly is a student, and then the single camera, one set of lights, and lone model makes sense.

But wow, the model looks incredible.

It’s clear the mini shoot has just finished, and the model—a tall, elegant woman with waves of dark hair wrapped neatly into a bun, currently dressed in a silky black number—glides over to the other side of the room where a closed-off changing area lies. A photography student from their university is quickly going through some of the pictures, and to the side of him stands who Lucy assumes to be the journalism student Holly had mentioned, if the notebook full of neat writing in her hand is anything to go by.

“Lucy!” Holly walks over with a large smile. It must have been a successful shoot then, Lucy thinks.

“Hey. Everything go okay?”

“It was wonderful. I’m so excited to present it all to Annie. I hope she loves it.”

“I’m sure she will,” Lucy says, voice trailing off ever so slightly as she catches the eye of the journalism student. She’s tall, though not so much as the model, and pencil-thin. A sharp-cut blonde bob frames her long face, and she gives off a sense of condescending elegance as she holds out a hand for Lucy to shake.

Which she does, after a moment’s hesitation. It feels oddly formal.

“Kat Godwin,” the journalist says.

“Lucy Carlyle,” is Lucy’s reply, though it comes out as more of a question than a statement.

“Kat, this is my flatmate, Lucy. Lucy, this is Kat—she’s the one writing an article on my work—and Bobby, the student photographer.”

Bobby gives her a silent smile and turns back to the camera.

“Nice… to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Kat turns on her heel and moves to inspect the pictures over Bobby’s shoulder. Bobby visibly shrinks away from her.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Holly catches Lucy’s attention. She can’t tell if she’s being serious or not.

“Do you want me to go wait somewhere, or…?”

“Oh, no, we’re almost done. Bobby won’t take long to pack up, and I’m sure Jess is almost changed now… Oh! Speak of the devil.”

The model emerges from the changing area wearing considerably more casual clothes. Lucy’s never seen jeans fit someone so well.

“This is my incredible model, Jessica L—”

“Holly! Come over here for a second.” Kat calls. Holly gives an apologetic smile to Lucy and her new companion before scuttling off.

“Hello,” Jessica smiles, displaying perfectly aligned teeth.

It takes Lucy a moment to think of a response; the woman in front of her seems almost ethereal.

“Hi,” she forces out eventually. “I’m Lucy. Holly’s flatmate.”

“Ah, she’s spoken about you before.”

“All good things, I hope?”

“Of course.”

“You looked incredible in that dress, by the way,” Lucy says after a short pause.

“Oh,” Jessica covers her heart with her hand, “thank you.” It sounds genuine and heartfelt; Lucy can’t help but smile.

“Alright, everything is done and dusted,” Holly says as she reapproaches.

“Am I free to go?”

“Of course,” she nods at Jessica, “I sincerely hope I get the opportunity to work with you again. You were incredible.”

“And so were you,” Jessica winks, and leaves a faint trail of fresh-smelling perfume behind her as she leaves.

“She’s the loveliest,” Holly gushes, though Lucy notices she’s no longer looking at where Jessica was standing. She’s looking the other way.

After a few more minutes of packing up and saying goodbye to Kat and Bobby, they leave the studio and follow the directions given to Holly by her tutor.

“Annie said it’s a lovely place,” Holly says, glancing down at her phone to check they’re going in the right direction.

“Do they do non-veggie things there?”

“I can’t make any promises. Annie didn’t say much, other than ‘make sure you’re polite to the barista’. ”

“Obviously,” Lucy scoffs.

As Holly’s phone announces that they are at their destination, Lucy looks up to see a sign reading ‘FLO’S’ in large letters. From the outside, it looks like a very squashed building, as if tightly slotted in there years after the ones surrounding it were built. If she were Holly, she’d say it makes it charming, but she’s not, so Lucy can’t help but think it looks a bit odd.

Inside, the cafe is roomy, just like she’d expected, and there’s only a small handful of tables. In the far corner is a counter, on which lies a glass display case of various cakes, and Lucy thanks all deities looking down on her when she sees that every single one sounds familiar, and most of all, tasty. Behind the counter are various shelves full of coffees, teas, syrups, and everything else a cafe requires to serve its customers, but with the small size of the place, she can’t help but wonder just how much of it all actually gets used.

Stood between the counter and back wall is a woman who can’t be much older than Lucy. The first thing she notices is the tresses of golden hair trailing down and around her, framing not only her face but also her torso. There’s a casual grin on her face as she nods her acknowledgement of the shop’s two new customers, before reaching into an alarmingly tall jar of liquorice labelled ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ and popping a sweet in her mouth.

“Alright?” she greets as they come closer. She’s not wearing a uniform of any kind, but despite the lack of a name tag, Lucy decides it’s safe to assume the woman in front of her is Flo.

Holly manages to find and order the most healthy and nutritious items the cafe has to offer, then turns to Lucy.

“I’ll have a black tea,” she says immediately; there was never any doubt about that. She considers getting something substantial for lunch, like a sandwich, or soup, but... “And a lemon drizzle, please.”

Holly flashes her a mildly disapproving, but friendly look. Flo appears to nod her head in approval, but Lucy sees her hair moving more than she does her head, so she can’t be quite sure.

Not long after, their lunch is gathered onto a tray and transported to one of the few tables.

“Thanks, Hol,” Lucy says, taking her mug and plate from the tray and placing it in front of her.

“It’s alright.” Holly swishes the bag in her mug of green tea around, then tries a spoonful of her soup and makes a pleased sound in the back of her throat. “This place isn’t what I expected,” she whispers, “but this soup is divine. I can see why Annie likes it.”

Lucy tries a forkful of her cake and almost mimics the sound Holly made seconds before, but stops herself just in time. “God,” she nods. “That’s good.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Flo pop another liquorice whirl in her mouth.

“I know I took you here to take your mind off of things, but”—Holly takes a sip of her strangely coloured tea—“I feel like you could benefit from talking about it just a little bit.”

Lucy makes a face.

“Come on. Tell me more about your pieces! I’ve been so busy preparing for that shoot I’ve not had a real chance to talk to you about it.”

“Oh, alright,” she resigns, stuffing another forkful of cake in her mouth.

She’s pleasantly surprised to see Holly stay engaged while she drones on about life, death, skulls, and cats in cemeteries.

“Oh, that all sounds incredible,” she says, and just like with Jessica earlier, Lucy can tell she genuinely means it. Her heart soars. “You have to send me pictures of them next time you’re in the studio.”

“That’ll be next Monday,” she says, and her heart drops a bit when she remembers again that it’s a mere two days away. “We’re gathering up all ten pieces and critiquing them together. I’m supposed to help edit the other pieces, and they’re supposed to edit mine.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know,” she sighs, “it depends. If they think my pieces are good then no, it’s not, since they’ll probably only find minor things to point out and alter. I think it’ll be like that with my drawing. But the sculpture…” Lucy groans and takes another bite of cake. Holly gives her a pitying look. “I’m way too inexperienced with clay. I wanted to push myself, but I know they’re all gonna rip it to shreds with criticisms.”

“You don’t know that for sure. Everyone else in your group is probably feeling the same way as you.”

That sounds familiar, Lucy thinks.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Hey, chin up,” Holly smiles. “At least you’re confident in one of your pieces. And if, worst-case scenario, the others do find a lot of things to point out about your sculpture, then at least you can say you had the guts to push yourself out of your comfort zone and do something you normally wouldn’t do. Not every artist can say that, Lucy.”

She’s silent for a moment, and mulls over Holly’s words while taking a long swig of her tea.

“I s’pose you have a point.”

“Of course I do,” Holly beams.

“Thanks, Hol. I mean it.”

“We’ve got each others’ backs, Luce.” Holly reaches over and covers Lucy’s hand with her own. “Now. Tell me how you and Lockwood are doing.”

Later that evening Lucy’s sitting in bed, soaking up the warmth of her covers and the cat curled up on her lap as she mulls over the wording of a text. Talking to Lockwood has become such second nature in her nightly routine that she feels as though something is off, or missing, if there isn’t at least half an hour spent reading and writing texts on her phone before she heads to sleep.

To: Lockwood

youve never actually told me why people call you lockwood

To: Lockwood

does anyone ever call you anthony?

In the time that it takes for Lockwood to read her message and respond, she reaches to scratch behind Skull’s ear, but being half-distracted by keeping an eye on her phone screen means she misjudges, sticks a finger in his ear, and promptly earns a harsh scratch on the back of her hand. She’s wincing and rubbing at the swollen, red gash when a reply comes through.

From: Lockwood

My family does.

From: Lockwood

And I prefer to keep it that way. It feels odd, for lack of a better word, to hear anyone but them use my given name.

To: Lockwood

what about tony? ever been called that?

From: Lockwood

Tony?

From: Lockwood

Unfortunately, Kipps has formed a habit of using that.

From: Lockwood

But please try to avoid using Tony, or Ant, or God forbid, Big A. I’ll have no choice but to block your number and throw your mobile into the Thames, if you do.

To: Lockwood

duly noted

To: Lockwood

…has someone actually called you big a?

From: Lockwood

A boy I met on my single outing during Freshers’ week. I’ve not looked in his direction since.

To: Lockwood

wow tony, thats harsh

From: Lockwood

I cannot believe you would betray me like this, Lucy Carlyle.

end note: referencing actual scenes from the books in this fic is my new favourite hobby.

#lockwood and co #lockwood & co #lockwood & co fic #lucy carlyle #anthony lockwood #locklyle #czenzo.fic #misdial

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kareofbears · 4 years

Text

precursor

“Get out.”

The room drops to absolute silence. Everything stills, halted by Ryuji’s words. Only Akira remains unaffected—leaning against the back of his chair, hands still in his pockets, gaze cool.

Haru is the first to react. “Do…” Her eyes dart to Akira’s. “Were you talking about—”

“No. Everyone but him,” he jerks his head to the staircase. “Out.”

—

read on ao3 or below the cut

“Get out.”

The room drops to absolute silence. Everything stills, halted by Ryuji’s words. Only Akira remains unaffected—leaning against the back of his chair, hands still in his pockets, gaze cool.

Haru is the first to react. “Do…” Her eyes dart to Akira’s. “Were you talking about—”

“No. Everyone but him,” He jerks his head to the staircase. “Out.”

No one calls him out on his tone, not with the way Ryuji’s gripping the edge of the table like a talisman—a prayer that prevents evil from coming. Akira doesn’t know who the evil is in this situation.

Eventually, chairs scrape against the wooden floors as they all peter out and down the stairs, one by one. Each of them glances back at the two boys who remain, a leader and his right-hand man. It doesn’t matter what superficial titles they gave themselves; Ryuji will always hold one over him.

The bell chimes quietly from underneath their feet. They were alone.

He watches Ryuji. The way his knuckles are white, the way his eyebrows are scrunched. The way his posture is so rigid that he can tell it’s uncomfortable even from across the table. The way that Ryuji isn’t watching him back.

“You piss me off.”

Akira raises an eyebrow. “Right now, or—”

“Fuck you,” he spits, and Akira tries not to flinch. It’s not rare for Ryuji to drop an f-bomb, but it’s almost never directed at him, and definitely not with this much venom seeped into it. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“That.” Ryuji gestures with his free hand. “You say words that don’t mean jack, tryin’ to make a joke out of a time like this. You’re acting like I’m not sitting here, wanting to hurl my fist into a wall because of the shit you’re trying to pull. I just—” His knuckles go impossibly paler. “You don’t give a damn, Akira. You don’t give a single damn.”

“You think I don’t care?” his voice comes out dangerously soft.

“I didn’t say that—!”

“Because it sounds like that was what you were trying to say.” Akira leans forward. “If there’s one thing you can’t point at, Ryuji, is that I’m somehow lazy, or careless. You can’t say that I haven’t put every single fiber of my being into this—”

“And I’m not. I didn’t, and you’re shoving words I never even said down my throat to justify the bullshit that you want to do!”

He grits his teeth. “It’s not bullshit.”

“It so fucking is, Kurusu, and you’d be the biggest moron in this goddamn planet if you’re going to try and talk your way out of that one. What you want to do is irrational, it’s fucked, it makes no sense.”

“What part of this makes no sense to you?” Despite his best efforts, Akira is beginning to feel the rise of frustration in his chest, the hurt of Ryuji’s critiques piling on him. There’s something deeply unsettling to have Ryuji openly defy him. “Because frankly, I didn’t hear you give any other ideas.”

Ryuji’s eyes widen before barking out a biting laugh. “Oh, good. Low blow, going for that one. Where’d you hear that, the cafeteria? During gym class?”

The length of the table stands between them, but it feels like miles. “I meant that there’s no other choice but to do this, and I need you to get that through your head.”

Akira catches a glimpse of Ryuji’s palm, bright red and covered in splinters, as he lets go of the wood’s harsh ledge to aggressively scrub at his hair. “Yeah, sure! No other choice than to do this, yeah? No other choice than to lose the fucking love of my life to that shit-eating detective and the bogus cops crawling around town? Of course, there’d be no other option than to do that, right?”

“Unless you have any other ideas, then yes, we’re going for that one.” He can’t help it anymore—Akira reaches forward and snatches the pen on the table, flicking and spinning it in his hand rapidly. It does nothing for him. “But I haven’t heard anything half-decent, and it’s not like we can magic one up within the week.”

“Cut that out. I hate it when you talk down to me like that, patronize me like I don’t get what’s going on.” Ryuji’s eyes narrow. “You know what I do understand though? Something you conveniently didn’t bring up because you can’t bear to go through what you’re going to do to us once you go?”

He does. He doesn’t say anything.

“That literally—literally any of us can go in your place, Kurusu. We can tell Akechi that we called you the leader as a precaution, that we didn’t trust him yet—”

“That’s enough.”

“We’re not bound by blood to shove you in an interrogation room twelve meters underground. He’d believe it—that snarky bastard would probably eat that shit up, give us an attaboy for being so careful—”

“It won’t work.”

“We can discuss it, as a group this time, and talk out who’d be willing to go. Obviously, Futaba’s out, but I wouldn’t be opposed to me—”

“You’re not going.”

Akira’s breathing hard, enough that he feels his bones rattling from within. He’s shivering, he realizes. Pushing the thought of Ryuji in that room, by himself, at the mercy of Akechi’s hands away from himself, he refocuses his attention back to the present.

“Is it because of him?”

The light flickers above them. Akira meets Ryuji’s eyes.

“What did you just say to me?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Ryuji stares back, searching. “Are you pushing to go because of him? To see him?”

Akira barely heard what he said, with his ears ringing as loud as they are. The air inside his lungs feels like it got sucked out until there’s nothing left—a sucker punch to the gut. Akira would have taken that over hearing those words.

He didn’t realize he had stood up until he was grabbing Ryuji’s collar and pulling him close. It’s the red one, his favorite. A bright shade that’s so fitting for him that it’s nothing short of uncanny. It stretches unpleasantly under his fingers.

“How can you possibly say that? How dare you?”

“Am I wrong?” His head is tilted up in an angle, arrogant in a way that makes him feel queasy, angry, uncomfortable with something he can’t name. It leaves him unable to speak for a moment.

Ryuji steamrolls past the beat, words coming out of him without pause that only ever comes out when fury and desperation take over. “You love me, I know that more than anything. But sometimes I can see it; the way you look at him, the way you talk to him, and I know why. I know that it’s part of you to help people like us, people like him, I know that. But—”

“You’re wrong.” Akira furiously wipes away the stream down his cheeks. Hurt. That’s what it was. Mountains of it. “So damn wrong.”

“If I’m wrong, then why? How?” his voice cracks. A hand grabs Akira’s wrist, its grip stronger than steel despite how much it trembles. “How are you so willing to leave me?”

The heat of anger and frustration seeps out of him in one fell swoop. The torment of his words stemming from eyes that Akira had learned and relearned thousand of times. It leaves him feeling hollow. Tired.

He releases Ryuji and lets his head fall on his broad shoulders, inhaling. Bar soap and laundry detergent from when they went grocery shopping last week.

Arms encircle his waist, and a chin hooks onto his shoulders, locking perfectly in place—even their bodies don’t know how to be angry at one another.

“It’s because I can’t leave you,” Akira says eventually. “It’s so I never have to leave you again.”

“I know.”

“I’d never, ever let any of you do it for me. Even if it kills me.”

Arms tighten around him. “I know that, too.” A beat passes. “I love you.”

Akira closes his eyes and lets it wash over him. “I know.”

Neither of them apologize. It wouldn’t change what Akira has to do.

He feels Ryuji’s warmth through his thin shirt and tries not to think about how cold the interrogation room will be.

#akira kurusu #ryuji sakamoto #persona 5 #fanfic #mine #fic tag #akiryu #pegoryu #they love each other and theyre best friends #but they doesnt mean they dont fight

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hamliet · 4 years

Text

Am I My Brother’s Keeper?: Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng

Or, how the two most virulent Wen-haters in the story tragically mirror each other in far more ways than just their issues with the Wens.

I’ve written about MDZS’s use of character trios as a narrative structure before (here and here). In this meta I’m going to talk about the main three and the Venerated Triad. I’ve also written before about how Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao’s relationship (however you interpret it) parallels Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian’s, with Lan Xichen as a strong Lan Wangji foil (fitting, as they are the “Twin Jades”), and Jin Guangyao as a strong Wei Wuxian foil (as Wei Wuxian himself acknowledges in the story’s final chapter). So let’s talk about the third member of these trios: Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng, who also closely foil each other... in particular, through their respective relationships with Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian.

But wait, you say. Jin Guangyao killed Nie Mingjue, which parallels Jiang Cheng killing Wei Wuxian!

True. There are some parallels between Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao (such as JC killing WWX to avenge JYL, even though she wouldn’t have wanted that, and JGY doing it when NMJ hurts NHS, even though NHS adored NMJ), as well as between Chengxian and Xiyao, but this is not a meta about those specifically.

Nie Mingjue tried to kill Jin Guangyao in life (twice), and actually does do so in the end, and Jiang Cheng helped kill Wei Wuxian even if he did not do it directly. The reason both Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng were able to treat their brothers like this was because of their immense privilege, the privilege neither acknowledge until it is time to weaponize it. In those moments, both chose not to empathize but to see their brothers as an “other” instead of as someone they loved (and I do think both Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng loved Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian in a realistic, flawed way). In the otherizing of their brothers, both Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng put on robes displaying society’s flaws as blatantly as Sect Leader Yao does, but with a lot more humanity than the flat, static Sect Leader Yao. Thus, MXTX tells us we cannot even “other” society as a whole.

If this sounds like I’m hating on either character, I’m really not intending to. They’re great characters and I enjoy both of them (Jiang Cheng’s one of my very favorites), but they’re flawed, and in fact that’s the whole reason I like them. But I do admit this essay will be scathing to an extent; just know it doesn’t touch on my whole opinion of their characters, and isn’t meant to excuse Wei Wuxian (who had a savior complex) and Jin Guangyao (who sought society’s approval to his own doom); I’ve just previously excoriated those two.

I. Defining Justice as Trauma

Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng both lost their fathers to Wen Ruohan (as did the Lan brothers), and both vowed to wipe out the Wens as a result. However, both of them fail to think about the Wens as people, and wind up, well, becoming eerily similar to the worst Wens.

Jiang Cheng has lived through the pain of losing everything (status, family, home) and he not only refuses compassion for the two Wens who saved him so that he could fight to get those things back, but inflicts the same traumas on them. In fact, Jiang Cheng’s reaction to Wen Qing’s predicament post-Sunshot campaign is paralleled explicitly with Nie Mingjue’s:

Jiang Cheng’s brows were knitted. He rubbed the vein that throbbed at his temple and soundlessly took in a deep breath, “… I apologize to all of the Sect Leaders. Everyone, I’m afraid you don’t know that the Wen cultivator whom Wei WuXian wanted to save was called Wen Ning. We owe him and his sister Wen Qing gratitude for what happened during the Sunshot Campaign.”

Nie MingJue, “You owe them gratitude? Isn’t the QishanWen Sect the ones who caused the YunmengJiang Sect’s annihilation?”

...

Lan XiChen responded a moment later, “I have heard of Wen Qing’s name a few of times. I do not remember her having participated in any of the Sunshot Campaign’s crimes.”

Nie MingJue, “But she’s never stopped them either.”

Lan XiChen, “Wen Qing was one of Wen RuoHan’s most trusted people. How could she have stopped them?”

Nie MingJue spoke coldly, “If she responded with only silence and not opposition when the Wen Sect was causing mayhem, it’s the same as indifference. She shouldn’t have been so disillusioned as to hope that she could be treated with respect when the Wen Sect was doing evil and be unwilling to suffer the consequences and pay the price when the Wen Sect was wiped out.”

Lan XiChen knew that because of what happened to his father, Nie MingJue abhorred Wen-dogs more than anything, especially with how intolerable he was toward evil. Lan XiChen didn’t say anything else.

There’s a lot of irony in this. Wen Qing didn’t speak up because she wanted to protect her little brother--something Nie Mingjue should have been able to relate to, considering he sent Huaisang to safety in the Cloud Recesses during the war. Also, I mean, Nie Mingjue, you didn’t exactly rise up against Wen Ruohan until you knew you had the forces to win. He likely spent several years in begrudging deference to him, even sending Nie Huaisang along as tribute when Wen Chao demanded it. Jiang Cheng starts to do the right thing in this scene by speaking honestly about Wen Qing, but then Nie Mingjue reminds him of society and propriety, and Jiang Cheng backs down, crushed under society again. Both of them commit sins of omission, in that they stand back and allow society to belittle and vilify people.

The “sins of omission” is a motif that continues in both Nie Mingjue’s and Jiang Cheng’s arcs. For example, Jiang Cheng stood by to let Mianmian be brutally killed in the cave of the Xuanwu of Slaughter, and even stood by to let Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan die too as they protected her. He goes on to blame Wei Wuxian for the deaths of his family because of Wei Wuxian saving them. Nie Mingjue keeps the truth about the saber spirit from Nie Huaisang, and additionally, the very same conversation about Wen Qing referenced above, Nie Mingjue is directly stated to know Jin Guangyao is lying to help his father, and he says nothing at all even though Wei Wuxian’s life hung in the balance. (It then karmically backfires on Jin Guangyao).

Jin GuangYao came to save the day, exclaiming, “Really? That day, Young Master Wei busted into Koi Tower with such force. He said too many things, one more shocking than the next. Perhaps he said a few things that were along those lines. I can’t remember them either.”

... As soon as he heard it, Nie MingJue knew that he was fibbing on purpose, frowning slightly.

...

One of the sect leaders added, “...Excuse my bluntness, but he’s the son of a servant. How could the son of a servant be so arrogant?”

With him having brought up the ‘son of a servant’, naturally there’d be some who connected it to the ‘son of a prostitute’ standing in the hall. Jin GuangYao clearly noticed the unkind stares.

While Nie Mingjue is quick to accuse Wen Qing for her inaction but languid with his own, this isn’t exactly unique. He also is quick to accuse Jin Guangyao of standing by as Jin Guangshan manipulates to acquit Xue Yang for his crimes against the Chang Clan. (I’m not defending Jin Guangshan or Jin Guangyao in this.) How dare they stand there and not argue for justice?

In spite of Nie MingJue being a junior to Jin GuangShan, he conducted himself in a strict manner and refused to tolerate Xue Yang no matter what. With an angry lecture, Jin GuangShan was left with no words and a great deal of embarrassment. Nie MingJue, as the irritable person he was, unsheathed his saber on the spot with the intention of killing Xue Yang. Even when his sworn younger brother LianFang-Zun, Jin GuangYao, attempted to ease the situation, he ordered him to leave. After a harsh scolding, Jin GuangYao hid behind Lan XiChen, not daring to say anything else. In the end, the LanlingJin Sect could only give in.

But, Nie Mingjue never offers a critique of Jin Guangshan when Jin Guangshan lied to Nie Mingjue’s face about Meng Yao. He discovered that Jin Guangyao’s stepmother is routinely beating him, and Nie Mingjue does nothing. Even if his hands were tied, if he really cared about doing the right thing, why didn’t he intervene somehow, some way, for his brother? If he really cared about holding people responsible for their actions, about making sure justice was served above everything else, why is it that the only person he consistently holds accountable is Jin Guangyao?

Could it be that, much like society, what Nie Mingjue was angry about was not injustice, but actually his hurting self? His hurt pride, his hurt child self still reeling from the cruel way Wen Ruohan betrayed his father and left him to die an agonizing death?

Likewise, Jiang Cheng knows, when he leads the siege at the Burial Mounds against the Wens, that no Wen there is dangerous. They are all elderly or children, not soldiers. He knows even that his sister died saving Wei Wuxian’s life, but chooses to ignore her wishes to satiate his own anger and the inner child inside of him still crying in loneliness. No one had ever chosen Jiang Cheng: his mother viewed him as a disappointment, and his father preferred Wei Wuxian, but Wei Wuxian promised to stick by Jiang Cheng no matter what. When Wei Wuxian breaks this promise, Jiang Cheng never gets over this, and carries out revenge on him for choosing actual justice over staying close to Jiang Cheng (looking back, this adds a symbolic irony to Jiang Cheng refusing to intervene and save Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan in the cave: they are both the people who will be his siblings’ spouses).

But the sad reality is, it’s a false dichotomy. Wei Wuxian did not choose the Wens over Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng, like society, chose society and conformity over Wei Wuxian.

I’ve said it before, but while Jin Guangyao isn’t correct that the siege on the Burial Mounds is “all” Jiang Cheng’s fault, he’s not wrong when he makes this point:

“But what you have to understand is that, for what happened to Young Master Wei in the end, you are responsible too and in fact, you are very much so. Why did so many people crusade against the YiLing Patriarch? Why did they shout their support, no matter if they were involved or not? Why was he one-sidedly condemned by so many? Was it really their sense of justice? Of course not. A part of the reason is you.”

...

“… Back then, the LanlingJin Sect, the QingheNie Sect, and the GusuLan Sect had already finished fighting over the biggest share. The rest could only get some small shrimps. You, on the other hand, had just rebuilt Lotus Pier and behind you was the YiLing Patriarch, Wei WuXian, the danger of whom was immeasurable. Do you think the other sects would like to see a young sect leader who was so advantaged? Luckily, you didn’t seem to be on good terms with your shixiong, and since everyone thought there was an opportunity, of course they’d add fuels to your fire if they could. No matter what, to weaken the YunmengJiang Sect was to strengthen themselves. Sect Leader Jiang, if only your attitude towards your shixiong was just a bit better, showing everyone that your bond was too strong to be broken for them to have a chance, or if you exhibited just a bit more tolerance after what happened, things wouldn’t have become what they were. Oh, speaking of it, you were also a main force of the siege at Burial Mound…”

II. Privilege

The main villain of all of MXTX’s novels is privilege (I’ve touched on this here and here and here). Unfortunately, both Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue are heavily infected with it, and it’s partially why they treat others as they do.

Jiang Cheng speaks negatively of Mianmian in chapter 56, noting that she’s probably just the daughter of a servant. When Wei Wuxian challenges this by pointing out he is also the son of a servant, Jiang Cheng expresses that Wei Wuxian is somehow different (and to be fair, he is indeed treated with more respect because of Jiang Fengmian’s background with Wei Wuxian’s mother), but the implication is also classist. Ironically, again, when Jiang Cheng will not speak up for Wei Wuxian or Wen Qing during that same conversation referenced earlier, Mianmian does; though Nie Mingjue expresses admiration of her for doing so, he does not do the same.

Additionally, Jiang Cheng says the following about Jin Guangyao:

Wei WuXian, “Isn’t Jin GuangYao here now? Jin GuangYao seems so much better than him.”

Jiang Cheng... “So what, if he’s better? No matter how much better he is, no matter how clever, he could only be a servant who greets the guests. That’s all there is to his life. He can’t compare with Jin ZiXuan.”

This pretty much sums up how society treats Jin Guangyao, and Jiang Cheng doesn’t think to question it. Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, points to Jin Guangyao’s character, which at that point looked decent (even if... later... sigh). Additionally, it’s hard not to see this as a commentary on how people think Wei Wuxian should be acting. Even though Jiang Cheng is, er, wrong about how far Jin Guangyao can rise, he contrasts with Jin Guangyao in how Jin Guangyao builds the lookout towers to provide justice for the common people, while Jiang Cheng encourages Jin Ling’s initially snobbish behavior (leaving common people in traps).

Not only that, but Jiang Cheng routinely commits atrocities under his protection as a sect leader. He’s described as having whipped the flesh off the backs of people accused of demonic cultivation, and supposedly no one arrested for that survived his tortures (ironically, Wen Ruohan is also known for torture). As someone pointed out once, the people who would turn to demonic cultivation are likely those unable to form golden cores (Wei Wuxian), or those taken in as disciples too late/too untalented to do so (Mo Xuanyu); Xue Yang was also taken in late as a disciple, but is noted to be unusually talented. The interesting thing is that all three of these people are from impoverished, humble origins. Thus it’s very likely the people Jiang Cheng was arresting and torturing to death were not wealthy cultivators (not to mention other sects would complain if so), but common folk.

As for Nie Mingjue, Jin Guangyao goes further than Wei Wuxian and directly attempts to challenge Nie Mingjue to acknowledge his privilege with brutal honesty on his own part, only for it to go... poorly.

Nie MingJue, “There’s no need for explanations. Come back to me with Xue Yang’s head in your hand.”

Jin GuangYao still wanted to speak, but Nie MingJue had already lost all patience, “Meng Yao, don’t speak such pretentious words in front of me. Your whole thing stopped working on me since a long time ago!”

Within a second, a few degrees of unease flashed over Jin GuangYao’s face, as though someone with an unmentionable illness was suddenly exposed in the public. There was nowhere for him to hide.

He spoke, “My whole thing? Which whole thing? Brother, you’ve always yelled at me for calculating people and being too dishonorable. You say that you’re a proud, righteous person, that you aren’t afraid of anything, that propen men shouldn’t need to play with schemes. That’s fine. Your background is noble and your cultivation is high. But what about me? Am I the same as you? First, my cultivation isn’t as firm as yours. Ever since I was born, has anyone taught me? And second, I have no prominent background. Do you think that I’m in a steady position, here at the LanlingJin Sect? Do you think that I can rise into power the moment Jin ZiXuan dies? Jin GuangShan would rather bring another illegitimate child back than want me to succeed him! You think that I should be afraid of nothing? Well I’m afraid of everything, even other people! He whose stomach is full believes not him who is starving.”

Nie MingJue replied coldly, “In the end, all you mean is that you don’t want to kill Xue Yang, that you don’t want your position at the LanlingJin Sect to waver.”

Jin GuangYao, “Of course I don’t!”

He looked up, unknown fires dancing within his eyes, “But, Brother, I have always wanted to ask you something—the lives under your hands are in any regard more than those under mine, so why is it that I only killed a few cultivators out of desperation and you keep on bringing it up, even until now?”

Nie MingJue was so enraged that he began to laugh, “Good! I’ll give you my answer. Countless souls who have fallen under my saber, but I’ve never killed out of my own desires, much less to climb up the ladder!”

Jin GuangYao, “Brother, I understand what you mean. Are you saying that all of the people you killed deserved their deaths?”

With courage gathered from nowhere, he laughed and walked a few steps closer to Nie MingJue. His voice raised as well, asking in an almost aggressive manner, “Then, may I ask, just how do you decide if someone deserves death? Are your standards absolutely correct? If I kill one but save hundreds, would the good outweigh the bad, or would I still deserve death? To do great things, sacrifices must happen.”

Nie MingJue, “Then why don’t you sacrifice yourself? Are you any nobler than them? Are you any different from them?”

Jin GuangYao stared at him. A moment later, as though he had finally either decided on something or given up on something, he replied calmly, “Yes.”

He looked up. In his expression were some of pride, some of calmness, and some of a faint insanity, “I and they, of course we are different!”

Nie MingJue was infuriated by his words and his expression.

He raised his foot. Yet, Jin GuangYao neither avoided nor took defense. The kick landed right on him, and again he rolled like a pebble down Carp Tower.

Nie Mingjue, here, is being compared to two other people: the man who kicked Meng Yao down the stairs at a brothel as the man dragged Meng Shi outside naked to humiliate her, and with Jin Guangshan--the very person Nie Mingjue’s enraged with--by doing the same thing: kicking someone he views as lower than himself down the stairs. Instead of addressing the actual problem (Jin Guangshan), he finds a scapegoat. It’s not a good look. All three of these instances are linked with society standing by and allowing it to happen, with a few exceptions: Sisi intervenes with Meng Shi, and Lan Xichen intervenes to stop Nie Mingjue from killing Jin Guangyao.

Nie Mingjue never had to kill to climb the ladder within his sect. He did have to kill to climb the ladder in the cultivational world--and he actually did so, through killing the Wens. Yes, I know Nie Mingjue killed the Wens because he wanted revenge for his father and protection for himself and his brother, but the problem is... that’s exactly what motivated Jin Guangyao: protection. Jin Guangyao just had more to fear than Nie Mingjue.

The irony of the above scene that Jin Guangyao knows killing is wrong, but it’s how to survive in this world, so he does it anyways. Nie Mingjue thinks the problem of someone thinking they are entitled to kill can be solved by killing the one who says such a thing, because he’s entitled to kill someone who thinks they’re entitled to kill-- You get the point.

That sad thing is that being shoved down the stairs doesn’t even end that scene. Nie Mingjue directly attempts to murder Jin Guangyao:

Just as Nie MingJue unsheathed his saber, Lan XiChen happened to leave the palace to see what was going on, concerned after having waited for long. Seeing the situation before him, he unsheathed Shuoyue as well, “What happened, this time?”

...

Nie MingJue, “... I know what I’m doing. He’s beyond hope. If these keeps on going, he’ll do the world harm for sure. The earlier he’s killed, the earlier we can relax!”

This does not at all justifying Jin Guangyao’s subsequent murder of him, but again, Jin Guangyao kills to protect himself, and he’s not without cause for fear of his life (this does not justify, because neither is Nie Mingjue entirely without cause, but people have gotta acknowledge that reality).

III. Reasons to Kill

I often see Nie Mingjue held up as someone who judged people based on their actions and was countercultural in that he was willing to stand up to Jin Guangshan when Jin Guangshan wanted to acquit Xue Yang of slaughtering the Chang Clan. However, this is decidedly not the case. Nie Mingjue is very much acting within society’s principals here (calling someone else out is hardly unique or noble: see, Su She, Jin Zixun, etc.) Nie Mingjue stood up to Jin Guangshan then because the crime was so severe he knew he might actually be able to win; otherwise, he let Jin Guangshan do as he wished.

To illustrate this, I’ll share the piping hot tea a commentator spilled on one of my fics recently, because she says it perfectly:

She isn’t wrong. You can hold Xue Yang--and Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian, for that matter--responsible for their actions and also point out the hypocrisy of a society that holds to ideals of how people behave, yet is constantly making exceptions for themselves. Nie Mingjue does just this by demanding Xue Yang’s head as a price for not killing his own sworn brother. Jiang Cheng does just this by murdering the older, helpless Wens at the Burial Mounds, and turning his back on the Wens who saved Jiang Cheng’s own life.

Why do these characters kill?

Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng killed out of revenge to honor their families and save themselves.

Jin Guangyao killed to get his father to acknowledge him as his son, and then in revenge when he realized he never would, and to save himself.

Wei Wuxian killed out of revenge and then out of despair--really, revenge against the whole cultivational world that had set him up for failure no matter what he did.

Xue Yang killed out of revenge for his little finger.

What do all of these have in common? They reveal what each person prized.

Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue prized the honor of their culture and of society.

Wei Wuxian prized his loved ones.

Jin Guangyao prized himself as his father’s son, a sort of combination of JC/NMJ’s status love and WWX’s wanting to be loved.

Xue Yang prized his body.

Xue Yang seems condemnable on paper, but let’s look at this a little deeper: what else did Xue Yang have? Nie Mingjue inherited a sect and had his beloved little brother, men who would die for him, people who admired him. Wei Wuxian had his loved ones, and then they were gone. Jin Guangyao had his dead mother’s wish for him to be approved for by society, and a famous father. What exactly did Xue Yang have besides his own body? He didn’t have parents, as far as we know. What else was he to value? Why is Nie Mingjue venerated, and Xue Yang condemned? Why is Jiang Cheng allowed to torture the poor under him for so many years, just because they reminded him of his brother, and Xue Yang hunted down?

The only answer is privilege. It’s privilege that allows Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng to decide when and how they want to enforce justice, and if they do at all. It’s privilege that they had families to avenge. It’s privilege that enables them to commit atrocities and get second, third, fourth chances. It’s privilege of his birthright than enables Jiang Cheng to never once die in the novel (Nie Mingjue not so much). But when Nie Mingjue dies, he seeks revenge on his murderer, not justice. He kills countless others in his quest to kill Jin Guangyao, people who had nothing to do with his death, and he could have killed his own brother. Even when he succeeds he ends up battling Jin Guangyao in a coffin sealed for a hundred years--hardly a victory.

So since we’ve brought him up, let’s talk Xue Yang and the Yi City trio now. The “judgy” member of the Yi City Trio is decidedly not privileged (A-Qing, as @thisworldgodonlyknows wrote about her, foils Nie Huaisang, but also she foils Nie Mingjue), and her character reveals these precise flaws in Nie Mingjue and Jiang Cheng. She is a beggar girl and a thief, but she seeks justice for Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan out of nothing more than love. She herself does not kill, and frankly I’d say she is the moral backbone of the series more than any other character (along with perhaps Mianmian). She was never a part of society, after all.

A-Qing dies young, alone by a river, mutilated. She has no privilege, but her spirit survives as a ghost solely because of her desire to ensure justice for Xiao Xingchen and for Song Lan. Her condemnation of Xue Yang is at first admittedly selfish--she was jealous--but then honestly understandable and easier to swallow, since she came from a similar background. But because of this, and because A-Qing is willing to empathize, she ends up understood and her wishes fulfilled. In the end, Song Lan leaves with the remains of her soul, determined to heal both her and Xiao Xingchen.

As I wrote here, A-Qing is also faced with a dark version of herself in Xue Yang. Similarly, Jiang Cheng is faced with a dark version of himself in both Su She (jealous of Lan Wangji, jealous of Wei Wuxian; he calls out their arrogance) and in Jin Guangyao in the temple, and only then is he able to move forward and grow. Nie Mingjue, unfortunately, did not recognize the dark version of himself in Jin Guangyao, and ends up trapped with him.

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nezumiismissing · 3 years

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Control Through Culture and the Lack of It

Ok so before we get started here I would like to just give a big thank you to everyone who came to my panel during the convention all the way back in September and listened to me ramble out the first draft of this! We had some great discussion and everyone brought up great points that all came together to make this post happen, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as good without all of your input! I also profusely apologize for taking this long to get this done, but sometimes you have 18 college credits and 30 hours a week of work that have to come first! Now, on with the topic:

When we look at the city of No.6, we see a world that appears, for the most part, free of any defining cultural characteristics. It would appear, in fact, that as part of the city’s construction, what we would normally associate with such a society’s culture has been purposely removed as a factor in the citizens’ lives. The “removal” of culture as a contributing factor in the city of No.6 is highly effective in what it was meant to do; separating citizens from the “other” while reinforcing the identity of citizenship and treating it as not only a good thing, but the only acceptable way of being. In the minds of the citizens, this is a functional system, as they are the ones who have benefited from it, and they are able to live comfortable lives free of the suffering that is inflicted upon “others”, creating the sense that despite their internal differences, they still constitute a distinct group. But while at the citizens’ level they have been chosen as existing on the top, the picture is much different for those ruling the city. While the nonexistence of culture functions as a way to dehumanize outsiders and reinforce No.6′s position as superior (ie. it does not need culture to be a complete society), it also serves as a highly efficient way of making sure that the citizens are also unable to truly empathize with and care about the other citizens, or any other humans for that matter. Because the city is all they know, and they have been conditioned to not be able to understand anything outside of that context, the “othering” of those outside the walls by the citizens and No.6’s government becomes that much easier, as the understanding of “citizen” to those in the city is equivalent on some level to their understanding of being human, making anyone outside of the citizen category not only lesser, but also not fully human, and justifying the violence used against them for the purposes of supporting and expanding the city. In a less explicit way this is also functioning within No.6, as citizenship is viewed as a single, mostly homogenous group, and so it becomes impossible to view the lower classes as being treated unfairly. In their eyes, citizenship is equivalent to safety from injustice, and so any violence or mistreatment experienced by a citizen is justified based on their perceived noncompliance with the city’s norms.

By removing culture entirely from the picture, No.6 not only limits what its citizens are able to express in terms of art and politics, but also in their own self-expression and understanding of the human experience. This is probably most clear with Safu, who at the beginning of the story shows an almost complete inability to recognize and express basic human emotions in a way that would be seen as appropriate and useful to the average person reading/watching the story. This type of behavior, shown more subtly by several other characters throughout the story, distances us from them. While the lack of any existing social norms would usually allow space for us to impose our own norms onto the city, which in many cases is what happens, these micro level interactions, instead of coming off as a blank canvas for us to fill in, instead are just off-putting and strange, completely distanced from what we would recognize as a normal interaction, and that distance is perhaps the clearest example of culture we get to see in the story, as it reflects a set of norms that is completely separated and distinct from what we are used to seeing.

No.6 as an entity exists to alienate its citizens from the rest of the world, positioning them as existing “elsewhere”, and as being “other”, with No.6 existing as the “real” world. However once we, and Shion, are removed from this context, first through his meeting with Nezumi and again when he moves to West Block, we see that while No.6 exists as a template upon which to place our own social structures and systems, it is the “elsewhere” and “other” that I think ends up being more relatable to most of us. Even if we haven’t lived in extreme poverty or experienced much in the way of suffering, the West Block is a world that, more than anything, feels human. There is culture in the West Block; we see the food people eat and what an average day looks like for those who live there. We understand the issues that they face on a daily basis because they are concrete; hunger, violence, homelessness, much different from the highly technical and abstract problems facing those within the walls. There is diversity among this group, but there are still norms in place (no matter how questionable) that hold it all together in a way that feels organic and far removed from the isolated, expressionless world of No.6.

So, it should also be stated at this point that when I reference No.6’s “removal” of culture, this is not an entirely accurate description of what is happening. At its core, culture is simply social aspects of a group that differentiate it from another group, and that is something that can never be fully and purposefully removed. But what the city does do in order to replicate this effect is remove other groups as a point of comparison, leaving only one culture to be learned, accepted, and practiced. We can say that No.6 has no culture only because the citizens do not perceive that other people live any differently than they do. And as we see with Safu’s travels to No.5, as well as our own experiences learning about the city, the realization that other ways of living do exist completely shatters the illusion of No.6 as a perfect society, making its issues immediately clear. No.6 does have a culture. It is a culture of authoritarianism, nationalism, and isolationism. The city is to be worshipped and given absolute loyalty, to the point that social activities not in the city’s interest come with harsh punishments, and knowledge of anything outside of the city is limited only to those who have demonstrated an extraordinary level of commitment to the project, intentionally or not. While social norms and laws are generally viewed as overlapping but distinct, with many norms not legally enforced and many laws viewed as universal rather than cultural, in No.6 there is no such distinction.

So where do we, the reader/watcher, fit into this equation? I mentioned at the beginning that the lack of easily identifiable culture in No.6 is what makes the city and the story easily relatable to us, as we are able to layer our own culture and ideas on top of what is otherwise a blank city. But if No.6 does have a culture as described in the last paragraph, then where does that leave us? Now the easy answer here is that in recent times (including when the novels were originally written) many places around the world have faced an increase in the types of ideologies that make up No.6, and our viewing No.6 as a reflection of our own society shows an understanding (either implicit or explicit) that this shift in dominant ideology is occurring in the real world, that authoritarianism is still a prevalent part of our lives. But that answer is no fun, and is actually extremely depressing, so I’m going to point out some other aspects of the relationship between No.6 and our own world as well.

Although the culture of No.6 does exist, it isn’t blatantly discussed or shown in a way that most people would traditionally associate with “culture”. We don’t generally treat government and political ideology as part of a society’s culture, as so much of our everyday lives is determined by norms and practices that aren’t necessarily directly dictated by political systems. This is why No.6, despite having such a strong presence, also feels so blank. It looms so large over the events of the story and yet, once we are outside of it, we see that it has basically no impact on everyday occurrences outside of its walls. Unlike the West Block, where we see so many of the things we associate with culture; food and music and marketplaces and so on; No. 6 just doesn’t really have any of these, and what does exist doesn't really have a distinct form separated from any other modern industrialized nation. It is easy for us to imagine then, that perhaps the people in No.6 live similarly to us, that they share many of our values and understandings of the world, and have the same everyday concerns that we have. So much of what we use to understand a society is just not mentioned that the story basically forces you to impose yourself and your worldview onto it. It forces you to take part in the story and forces the story to take a shape that makes societal critique impossible to ignore.

On the other hand, besides just having a feeling of being more “alive”, the West Block also has its reasons for being the more relatable of the two places, at least for a solid chunk of the people who are going to be experiencing the story. Despite the fact that the structure of No.6 is meant as a representation of the issues found within the modern industrialized world, the position from which we are seeing those issues is skewed. I have touched on this in my post about Getsuyaku, and will definitely go into more depth on it in the future, but outside of Lost Town, No.6 exists as an upper middle class utopia only. There is no room in their world for regular working people, or those framed as being “unproductive” in society, such as the elderly. While wealth is a complicated topic when talking about No.6, class is not, and it is clear that the ways in which class manifests are strikingly similar to the real world. So where does West Block fit into this? Well, the reality is that a significant percentage of the people reading or watching No.6 do not belong to the upper middle class, or even the middle class. A lot of us are working class or poor (or both depending on how you categorize classes), and even if the West Block is a somewhat extreme example, those people, along with those in Lost Town, have far much more in common with us than those living in the regular districts of No.6 or in the gated area of Chronos. So while the city may reflect our own society in significant ways, and accurately describes the “culture” of that society, it only does so through the lens of someone who is successful within that structure, leaving it “blank” and without culture for those of us who have not had such an experience and view that position as something completely distanced from ourselves, or that we only encounter from a subordinate position.

In the world of fiction, there basically are no rights or wrongs when it comes to writing culture. That’s kind of the point of fiction. And to a certain extent every story is going to have some aspect of the society it was written in in it, because culture is just an unavoidable part of every person’s life that dictates everything about how they see the world. But through the story of No.6 we get to see that influence from several perspectives, both within and outside of the story, showing not only a reflection and critique of our own society, but the ways in which the positions of the characters and ourselves changes how we perceive that reflection. Ultimately every society is controlled through culture, and systems are in place to in turn control how culture functions, creating an endless loop of changes and reinforcements. To, in any concrete way, remove culture from a society is a fundamentally impossible task, and yet the illusion of removal is very much real, created not through an active effort of removal, but through the elimination both of comparable groups and the perception that any culturally significant differences may exist within the original group.

I could probably go on, but I’m getting away from the main topic, so I’ll stop here for now. The topic of culture in No.6 is really fascinating and something I definitely want to write more on in the future, but it will have to wait until I finish a couple of my other drafts first! So like always thanks for reading if you made it all the way to the end, and I will hopefully have at least a short thing done in the next couple of weeks or so!

#no.6 #no. 6 #no.6 analysis #long post #hello!#i finally return!#yes this was supposed to be done in September please do not remind me!#my brain would not shut up until this was finished though so here we are #not sure how im feeling about this one?#it took so long to finish that I think I lost most of the original concepts I had #so its a bit all over the place #but got to touch on some cool topics so thats all that really matters!#thanks again to the folks at the con last year!#could not have done this one without your input!#original

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neuvillette · 4 years

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Francis is perfect for England.

England is self-critical to the point of almost self-hatred in some regards, but he's also unrivaled in his pride. Much of this is a facade, of course, but some of it is actually a genuine expression of his attempts to like himself. Being constantly denigrated/neglected as he was growing up made him much more vocal about his self-praise (even if it's ingenuine praise he doesn’t think he deserves) to make up for the fact that he wasn't really getting it from elsewhere. I think most people around him just see this as arrogance (which it is sometimes, to be fair, especially during his adventuring days). His incredibly opinionated nature means that he comes of as aggressive to others, which he is when he believes he’s being more logical or correct (which is often). He loves physical labour, walks, anything to stay active, but a good mental challenge is incredibly fulfilling to him as well. He also has a strong tendency to overwork himself, he is prone to melancholy, and dwells too much on how and why he's alone, often to the point that he overlooks the smaller ways he makes others happy. He doesn’t really realise that he has much, if any, positive impact on others, which leads him to believe that he’s a worse person than he is. He is incredibly stubborn, but his sense of duty often makes him cave in to doing things he would prefer not to, which generally is work or war. He is almost defined by this strong pull of duty, of being a gentleman, of Englishness to a harsh degree. This impossible standard also makes him ashamed when he obviously can't live up to it, and this shame is something he believes others feel about him as well. To him, when he cannot fulfill an expectation, it's not only himself that feels regret, it's that everyone is looking down on him. This also makes his responses to other people less than friendly, often incredibly defensive (which for him looks like outright vitriol to others sometimes) which isn't doing him any favours when he's trying to not push people away. He's a hard nut to crack, so it's understandable why some people just choose not to even attempt to deal with it at all. He is, however, irredeemably sentimental deep down, and such a softie that he's actually quite ashamed of himself over it. He’ll buy sweeties for kids that can’t afford it, help people across the street, spend time he should be working on paperwork helping out anyone in need (which occasionally gets him scolded for being late, only leading to more self-doubt as to how good he actually is). He’s a quite masculine person, being a drinker and pub-frequenter. While he does hobbies traditionally considered “feminine”, he tries not to think about how this “brings him down” in other people’s eyes, though he does have layers of toxic masculinity to him. This often is worsened by his “stiff upper lip” mentality. No whinging about anything, from physical pain to emotional anguish, a lot of which he considers pathetic if he does it, but natural if someone else does. His double standard for behavior and tolerance of pain is something really clear in his relationship to other people, especially kids, the elderly, and strangers in general. If he caught a kid, or anyone else, spouting the mentality he enforces on himself, he’d instantly rebuke it! Sentimentality is a very, very difficult layer to find within him, though, and it usually only surfaces when he's in massive amounts of emotional anguish. That's when he gets quite retaliatory, like with Alfred when he was breaking away. A lot of this also has to deal with his absolute emotional ineptitude. If he's writing alone, or talking to someone he's not especially close to, how eloquent he is! His poetry is almost unrivaled and he's decently good at reading the room, so to speak. He also can be quite the flirt (though never in a real romantic sense)! Old women love him over that, they think he’s the sweetest young lad they know. This demeanor goes out the door the moment he feels "attacked" in any way, though, which most often is when he's feeling insecure. If that's the case, watch him try to struggle to get a compliment out, or to say anything other than a nasty insult meant to express an entirely different (often more favourable) message to the recipient. What he means to say as “you’re looking nice today” often comes out as “you don’t look as crap as usual”. The reverse is true too, when he means to say “I’m glad you’re spending time with me”, what comes out is “Wow, you’re wasting your time talking to me?” What a mess...

That's just why Francis is perfect, though. His stubbornness is most certainly a match for England's in most regards, and in some cases even trumps it, generally with things like his determination to weasel England's genuine emotions out of him. Francis is self-confident, too, and why wouldn't he be? Harsh comments can effect him, of course, and he is also sentimental, but the fact that he's much more open and honest about his emotions makes him generally easy to talk to and communicate with, as well as more impervious to critique. Unlike England, he's not ashamed of who he is or how he feels in practically every regard. He's unabashedly himself. He takes no shit because he knows what he wants and deserves, so if his bosses or anyone else tries to overwork him? Nope. He wants a coffee break because that's what's good for him, so he's going to do it. This makes him distressed when people he cares about aren't as rigorous with their own self-care, appreciation, and praise. This doesn't come up too often with Gilbert or Antonio, though Gilbert is quite similar to England in many regards, but boy does he have a field day with England. Often times he gets frustrated with him, though, since he just doesn't understand why he let's himself get pushed around, ignored, etc, and this only gets worse when England responds with "well maybe you should work harder?" Francis usually throws back a "You wouldn't expect others to do this, why do you do it to yourself?" The answer is obvious and Francis knows it. Many people can't see past the rough exterior, and Francis has had his fair share of "fuck it, I'm done with you" moments too, which are entirely understandable. But then he remembers the little kid crying over being abandoned again, and he understands how that's led to how England reacts to things now, and he wants to show him that the world isn’t out to get him and that the viewpoint on life of his that has been reinforced is a lie. Francis is just emotionally fluent, and that means for basically everyone. A lot of it is just intuition, or just some weird ability of his, but since he holds real love for everything in his heart, he also has an odd and immediate understanding of things on a level England can't feel immediately. This means basically every tactic England generally uses to evade other people, their judgement, or even his own feelings, is completely transparent to France. Other people think England is honestly boasting and degrading others after someone else does a good job? Francis finds it kind of sad how hard England is trying to hide his own embarrassment or feelings of ineptitude. England is leaving meetings early and says he has better company to look forward to, and everyone thinks he's haughty? Francis is surprised England feels so left out and alone that he has to pretend to have better friends. This goes the other way as well! When England feels snubbed by someone, Francis is there to reassure him that it’s a misunderstanding. Alfred’s being himself again? It’s alright, that’s just his way of expressing himself, he’s not trying to be hurtful. Francis is good with interpreting between England’s emotions and other people’s, which is something England REALLY needs. Is this intuition of his always functioning, however? Nope! Francis can be quite the drama queen, and that primarily shows up when England genuinely rebukes his earnest attempts to make him feel better, or when other people are really caught up in whatever (admittedly) idiotic thing England's done most recently. This has gotten the pair into a history of misunderstandings that even a language barrier can't hope to achieve! Still, once he's able to have a one-on-one again when their both in a better frame of mind, it's not difficult for him to sort things out again. England hasn't felt heard most of his life, and Francis is a great listener and a master at emotional intelligence. Francis doesn't really hold much shame about himself or shame others (unless their clothing is just TOO atrocious), so he's a natural at working through those problems with England. From England's perspective, though, he's just... fascinating. He finds Francis arrogant, not because he thinks Francis doesn't live up to the standards Francis espouses, but because he DOES find Francis that great for the most part and thinks it rude to show off so much! He thinks Francis is too blunt about things to the point of rudeness (in a VERY distinct way from America since Alfred typically does this without the tact Francis has), but that bluntness makes Francis open and accessible to him in ways that others aren't. He can be far too silly and frivolous, but England needs that so he’s not such a hardass, which Francis often reminds him of. Francis is also impeccably charming and is one of the only people who give England the precise praise that makes him feel so unequivocally good and appreciated...But he sees France be just as kind to everyone else and he feels like he's been used. The thing is, though, that they both get under each other's skin. That makes them so quick to bicker, of course, but England needs someone he can be quick and witty and his own Austen-like figure with that can stand up to the challenge. He goes easy (or what he thinks of as easy) with people he cares about, but that's often still too much for most people, but not for Francis. Francis is as quick as a whip, too, and he's not one to shy away from many challenges, even if he is still a bit of a scardey-cat with some things.

Not to mention that England finds Francis so dumbfoundingly attractive and is his best partner in bed as well... England's feelings of inferiority means he needs reinforcement, but not so much that he feels he's being pitied or looked down upon, and Francis does this naturally. England often feels he no longer has control of the direction of his life, that he's not as strong, as dutiful, as capable as he once was. I feel like that's why he'd not really ever bottom in bed, he already feels that he doesn't have that power in his day to day life and he wants a place to find it during sex, and that fits perfectly into what Francis needs as well. It's also a trust thing, I think, where when England is able to take charge, he's given real trust from Francis that he can't really find anywhere else. When England needs to feel like a powerful king, Francis gets gratification from helping him fulfill it. On the rare occasion that England just wants something caring, a place to feel that he's in control and can express love and tenderness for someone, Francis makes sure he's in charge and comfortable with how he does it it, which is key to him not being ashamed. They both also have equally ravenous libidos so that's a plus, too. Also Francis has a phat ass and his moans are really hot in bed.

Check out this link for a look at Francis, and why England is Francis's perfect match as well!

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misterbitches · 3 years

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i live in a universe where if i were to walk down the street i could get murdered willy nilly cos im black but men are out here going around being like “my boyfriend and i met when he was a junior in high school” i don’t believe in jail and i try not to make jail jokes but HOW IS THAT FAIR? JAIL!!! GUILLOTINE!!!! GET THIS MAN A RETIREMENT FUND AND A THERAPIST

that dialogue was fucking embarrassing. he shoulda just said “im 12 yrs older than him” no one needs to know u were 30 dating a 17 year old u insecure freak. retire bitch and get away from her

i wanted muren so badly to be like “LMAO SRY didnt mean to seem surprised i just like men my own age i guess?” i wouldnt have even apologized if i was surprised. my friend was dating someone ten yrs younger than him and i made fun of him for it and he was like “i know” bc he does know.

just a tip: i don’t like getting hit on by men way older than me, a lot of people don’t. i’ve had men who are 36 interested in me when i was 23, and i reciprocated, but now as i am 29 and older i realize how much it confused me and how i didn’t like it.

age gaps are what they are. ther’es many times i do not like it especially if it is a pattern (this is what happens in tv shows and movies and the opposite of that isn’t gay age gaps or power imbalances or women much older than a younger man ok that’s not progress it’s just peopl ewanting to be like cis men and no one wants that) and esp if the person’s peers are all their ages. people seem to forget that we travel in the same social circles on purpose due to our environments and also our world experiences. the only way to meet an older man is outside of school and yet adults can’t seem to control themselves?

i saw this person who was one of the editors of sexual hegemony (a book on capitalism and homophobic laws and sex basically idk google it it’s interesting) and he was trying to have a foucultian outlook (i hate focault btw doesn’t mean what he says wasnt interesting but it does mean i am not okay with psychosexual philosophers who take advantage of people. the only testament against him having reltaions with younger people is a bunch of young people i nfucking tunisia and there’s an excuse that he wasn’t a fucking pedophile he was those ebebebbeopopopo people and it doesnt matter when ur in fucking tunisia as a white french algerian fucking preying on children) how age of consent laws desexualize younger people. they were passed for abunch of reasons like any law but here is the thing

we have no business in being in spaces to determine children’s sexual identity and teenagers in their own realm. THEY need to figure it out. our job as adults is to PROTECT THEM full stop. not intrude on their lfe and not give them the tools to decide for themselves. age of consent laws are meant to protect not to facilitate children against some boogeyman of sex. the issue is the way our society views it but young people are sexual AS YOUNG PEOPLE. it has NOTHING to do with adults and it shouldn’t. that’s why it is extra fucking intrusive when you are literally wedged into someone’s life who you have no business being around. it’s only by fucking circumstance. it’s abysmal and not cute.

what this tells me is that the age gap is salacious. not in the way that i was 23 and a man was 36. in the way that he was 17 and this dude was 29. that’s interesting right? it’s “oooh” and it means we shouldn’t balk at it. saying 12 years would have sufficed, raises some eyebrows, and we can figure out the dynamics after but you just had to put that in BECAUSE YOU FUCKING LIKE IT but the thing is there’s no part of it that was fun. i’m just going to assume you like fucking teenagers bc that’s what it’s telling me lmao

i rarely talk about this couple but to put them in my eyeballs and then have that stupid conversation it was insulting lmao god please get a fucking script supervisor fuck but none of them care about sotry or any of what i fucking laid out. how stupid and careless and just unfun. i don’t like it. also ew at the idea of 2 tops and 2 bottoms talking oh my god i am gonna give myself a heart attack i’m already so fucking anxious i have to see my family lemme chill

im 29 and feel bad having a crush on a 23 year old CELEBRITY ok and i SHOULD feel ashamed and it’s not even a big deal that’s how everyone should approach life tbqh u walk around like ur 100 yrs old to avoid children. oh what’s that this korean cebrity learned english and moved to america to start a family with me and i find him very hot and i like his voice but we’re 6 years apart i’m not sure if i would work (how fun of a drama would that be. pointless and ridiculous. i love it.)

oh there’s a great review on CMBYN and its history and how the isolation and seeclusion was so fuckign capitalist bougie patriarchy and yea idk if anyone is interested. i think it’s ironic the ending for the people in CMBYN irl bc it’s just. so indicative of this shit. i dont like guadignino (idk is that how u spell his name) and think he’s not a great....person or director (i love the look of suspiria tho likke visually and edited. the DP was thai btw! he did an amazing job!!!) but it critiques this film from a perspective of someone who clearly at least cares about artistry, no matter how poorly i think he executes it, and just how hollow it is. the thing about “escapism” is that it relies on the harsh realities of the world to make it opposite, everything has context, nothing is apolitical. to make something that exists in a vacuum is negligent and it doesn’t help you escape it makes you even more tied to this world and its flaws because it doesn’t do anything to mitigate it.

people view it as like “we can put something stupid on screen and people have to accept it in this world” but that isn’t how IT WORKS. you hvae to build up the stakes of the world. but i can’t see introducing some “taboo” (see: stupid) elements and pretending the escapism is seeing this and allowing it. how could it be when the problem is the nature of the rship itself? what world are you taking us to? and why does this world ignore the pressing realities? and i wouldnt say either of these are explicit escapism (i think i hate that word now) becuase um they arent. this fantastical generally rich people escapism isn’t about bending things that don’t work to mold it into our society because WE DO THAT ALREADY it’s about taking those things and twisting them to something we can accept and like or something that has real consequences for people. it’s so funny how marketing and the idea of pc culture and shit and conservative ideology seeps into these. they have an explicit interest in holding the status quou of taking advantage of people and using their power; age is a huge structure to do so. in this society when we struggle why would its existence not be challenged? because rape, ridiculous rships, abusive rships, torture etc is a power move, conservatives rest on it and people who gain power. what about that is appealing? making it gay? well, no. especially because men DO have power.

every fucking thing in BL is a reflection of of patriarchy honestly. i can admit that and i’m not okay with it but it’s consumption. there’s a way to make this decent or entertaining without it being so fucking poorly done. and atp i dont even want to call things bl it’s a tv show just bc it’s for a certain audience doesnt mean anything do better idiots

#i am soooooo #history 4 #history 4: close to you #history 3 #history 3: make our days count

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