"I wanted to bring here everyone that should get on their knees for Saeran. Me, that woman, and V..."
Saeyoung Choi is not a man of mercy. He is a hellbound force of retribution with nothing left to lose. Those who hurt his brother will pay for it in blood.
What if Saeyoung had brought V to the cabin too?
Warnings: Major character death, murder, suicide, arson, death by fire, unhinged Saeyoung.
Read on AO3
A/N: "Hey Luc, didn't you post this already?" Yes. And then I edited the post fifty times and added an AO3 link, so I wanted to make a neater post.
Anyway, I wrote this at midnight because the thought wouldn't leave me alone. I wonder what Saeyoung's plan was if he'd gotten all three of them to the cabin like he'd wanted in VAE. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be pretty. And I think seeing both of the people he blamed Saeran's death in front of him... the thought that Saeran wouldn't want revenge wouldn't stop him. Not this time. The world needs more unhinged Saeyoung. Let him be angry and terrifying.
I'm normally not a fan of unhappy endings, so maybe a miracle happens. Maybe Saeyoung ends up with a cool scar to match his brother's. Maybe not. Who knows.
There is an old clock in the cabin. Saeyoung isn't sure how it still works--it's not like anyone who comes out here is about to change the batteries or anything. Yet it works, filling the tiny wooden building with a steady tick, tick, tick as the seconds go by.
It's fitting, really. It's as if the universe is counting down the minutes. How many more does he have? Maybe it's only a few. Perhaps as much as an hour. Certainly not much more than that.
Tick, tick, tick.
He had already sent Vanderwood outside. Well, forced them out might be more accurate--they could tell something was wrong with Saeyoung. Of course, they knew about his brother by this point; they knew he was going to grieve, and grieving people do weird shit to cope. And Saeyoung is a weird guy to begin with. But something was just... off. It was a feeling in their gut. Something snapped in that kid's brain and Vanderwood wasn't keen on leaving him to his own devices.
"I'm not leaving you by yourself so you can do something stupid," Vanderwood had said.
"I know exactly what I'm doing, Vanderwood." Saeyoung did not shift his gaze away from the cabin's other two occupants. "It's in everyone's best interest if you wait outside."
"I told you I'm--"
"Get the fuck out!" Saeyoung snapped, briefly looking away to shoot a glare at the other agent.
Vanderwood had been momentarily stunned into silence. They yelled at Saeyoung on a regular basis--the kid had caused them so many headaches over the years--but never had Saeyoung snapped back like that. He would make smartass remarks, god knows he was full of them, but he never yelled. If he had ever been truly angry with Vanderwood, he had never shown it.
There was a long silence, broken only by the ever-present tick, tick, tick of the old clock. Then, Vanderwood had sighed and stood from their chair. "Fine. But if I think you're about to do something that will endanger both our lives, I'm coming back."
"You don't have to worry about that. Just wait outside, Agent."
Something about the way he said that sent a chill down their spine. Maybe it was his tone, now constantly laced with barely-restrained rage. Maybe it was the fact that he called them Agent. Maybe it was instinct. But after another moment's pause, they stepped outside the cabin. They reached into their pocket for their cigarettes, only to find them gone, along with their lighter. Must have left them in the cabin. By the time they turned around to check, Saeyoung had already latched the door behind them.
So now it's just the three of them, three people tied together by one unbreakable thread. Three people who weren't human anymore. Three monsters. Three killers with blood on their hands. The worst kind of scum, all responsible for taking the life of an innocent--someone too kind and pure for this world.
Saeran may have been the one to detonate the bomb that destroyed Magenta, but the three who sit in the cabin--Saeyoung Choi, Jihyun Kim, Rika Kim--are the ones responsible. They all killed Saeran. Saeran's blood coats their hands and would never, could never, be washed away.
Tick, tick, tick.
V, ever the mediator, is the first to break the silence. "Luciel--"
"Why?" The word tears itself from Saeyoung's throat, finally pushing past the lump of rage and guilt that threatens to strangle him.
"I'm sorry, Saeyoung," Rika says. "I'm so sorry for everything that happened. If I could go back, if I could trade my life for his--"
"You have no right to say that." Saeyoung spits, standing abruptly. "You have no! Right!"
Rika falls silent, her hollow-eyed gaze dropping to the floor. Saeyoung hates it. Her demeanor only angers him further. How dare she play the victim? Maybe the 'it's all my fault, I'm the worst, I deserve retribution' thing would garner sympathy from other people, but not Saeyoung. He, in fact, wholeheartedly agrees. It is all her fault. She is the worst person in the world. She does deserve retribution. The same goes for V and himself.
"Luciel--" V tries again.
"And neither do you!" Saeyoung's venom now turns to him. "Don't you dare say anything about sacrifice. It means nothing. It won't bring him back. It won't change what you did to him."
Tick, tick, tick.
"I trusted you," Saeyoung says. "I. Trusted. You. You promised me--you swore to me that you would protect him! How could you--" his voice cracks. "How could you do that to him? Saeran was good. Saeran was innocent. Saeran was kind, and gentle, and he deserved to be loved. But you--you--"
He lets out a frustrated noise, unable to turn his thoughts into words. His mind is nothing but a loop of rage, rage, rage. Rage and vengeance and shame and guilt.
"You killed him," he finally growls. "Both of you killed him. And... so did I. Every one of us is responsible for what happened to him."
"Luciel," V tries again. "We--" he sighs. "Please, Luciel... if anything, do not blame yourself--"
"How?" He snaps. "How?! I trusted you both to look after him. To care for him. To treasure him. And instead, you manipulated and brainwashed him. You tortured him just like our mother did." He feels a twisted sense of satisfaction at the pained gasp Rika lets out, as if she's been stabbed through the heart.
Saeyoung decides to twist the knife further. "Actually, you were even worse than our mother. At least she never lied to us. We knew from the beginning that she only wanted us to get money from our father, that she never loved either of us. But you? You lied. You promised to protect us, to help us. But in the end you were just the same. You gave us hope only for your own selfish needs.
"Saeran spent every day of his life living in fear while you beat all the kindness and gentleness out of him.
"And you--" Now he speaks directly to V. "You did nothing to stop her. Fuck all your excuses. I don't care about your sacrifice. You were only ever concerned with her. You were only ever protecting her. If you had really wanted to protect Saeran then you would have saved him from her. You can martyr yourself all you want, it won't make you any better than her."
Tick, tick, tick.
The air in the room shifts abruptly. It's charged, thrumming like a livewire. The explosive anger evaporates in an instant; it's replaced by something far more terrifying.
"All of Saeran's killers must be held responsible for what happened," Saeyoung says. His anger is no longer a raging inferno. Now, his anger is like ice. It's calm, now. No less intense, but calm. As if he had long ago decided a course of action.
Tick, tick, tick.
Saeyoung crosses the room and reaches for something behind one of the chairs. He wonders, briefly, what his brother's last moments were like. How did the bomb detonate? Had Saeran simply pressed a button and ended it, or was he forced to sit there and listen as a timer counted down his last minutes on Earth?
Tick, tick, tick.
Rika does not react, but V's eyes widen when Saeyoung lifts a large, red plastic canister from behind the chair. "Luciel, what are you--"
Saeyoung unceremoniously upends the container in the middle of the cabin's main room. The liquid quickly soaks into the carpet and the wood flooring, and the heavy smell of gasoline fills the room.
Tick, tick, tick.
"Luciel! Wait, let's talk about this--" V has risen to his feet, but freezes when Saeyoung pulls a beat-up zippo from his pocket.
"Talk?" Saeyoung says, laughing. "Talk?! You had years to talk, V, but you stayed silent and let Saeran suffer. The time for talking has long since passed."
Tick, tick, tick.
He flicks the lighter open with a small metallic clink.
"Saeran wouldn't want this," V tries. His half-blind, once-honest eyes are wide and desperate.
"Don't you dare speak his name!" Saeyoung shouts. "You don't deserve to say his name."
"Please--"
"It doesn't matter anymore what he would have wanted."
It's then that V notices the tears running down Saeyoung's cheeks, the tremble in his voice. Had he ever seen Saeyoung cry before?
"He's gone. And he's never coming back. And those responsible need to pay for it.
"Heh... you know, this is the first time I wished I could get into Heaven," Saeyoung continues, voice breaking. "Just for a few minutes. Just long enough to apologize to Saeran. For everything. For not being able to protect him. For leaving him. For being a terrible brother. For betraying him. For failing him. Beg for his forgiveness. All of us should."
Tick, tick, tick.
Saeyoung lets out a low chuckle. "Knowing Saeran... he would probably forgive us. Not that any of us deserve it. So perhaps it's better this way."
Tick, tick, tick.
"Take your revenge, Saeyoung." Rika's voice is hardly above a whisper, yet it seems so loud in such a small space.
Tick, tick, tick.
Saeyoung lowers himself to the ground, thumb on the wheel of the zippo. The gasoline soaks into the legs of his jeans. His head feels light, and he's not sure if it's from the fumes or if it's a weight lifting off his shoulders.
Tick, tick, tick.
"You wanted us all to be a family, right?" He says.
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It's wild to watch the phrase "tumblr sexyman" morph into "man that tumblr thinks is sexy," because when I first saw the phrase come into use, I always saw it used in reference to the phenomenon of "when presented with a wide array of fictional characters, tumblr will always pick the skinny white man to obsess over, and if the fan-favorite character has no canonical human appearance, the fandom will inevitably create a popular fanon of the character as as a skinny white man."
When I hear "tumblr sexyman," I think of Cecil Night Vale being constantly depicted as a skinny white man instead of literally anything else. I think of the background character white men who get elevated over protagonists that are women, people of color, or otherwise not the white man power fantasy.
"Tumblr sexyman" is, like. An insult. I DON'T want any of my blorbos to win a "tumblr sexyman" poll. "Tumblr sexyman" is the exact opposite of what I want my own OCs to be. If any of my characters ever get called "tumblr sexyman," I will have to immediately re-evaluate myself and the art I'm making.
it’s honestly crazy that like. in theory literary icon jean valjean would do crazy numbers on tumblr, fanfics, etc. he’s a dad. he’s canonically hot and ripped. he has a tragic backstory and self esteem issues. he’s got nuclear levels of catholic guilt. he’s even unmarried so you can old man yaoify him to your heart’s content. man was built in the blorbo factory. but the book he’s in happens to have 20 college age twinks and the musical film based on the book came out in 2012, creating the perfect storm of oncelerfication that defines the fandom at large to this very day. anyway they could never make me shut the fuck up about you jean valjean
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Like there is a difference between "My trauma creates impulsive urges and has changed my instinctive reactions to be irrational, I need to relearn shit." vs "I'm traumatized so I Can't Help It and you're not allowed to expect better of me"
Direct byproduct of being neurodivergent and growing up isolated from your peergroup is having no idea when it's appropriate to define someone as your friend
Is this person I met yesterday my friend? What about this person I've been talking to every day for three months? What about this person I've known since middle school? Is friend a title I have to earn? What are the limits of friendship? Is it a static state, make-or-break, or is it some endless dance-dance-revolution style cavalcade of prompts and challenges and social cues I have to hit perfectly to keep it up? Does it bend? Does it break? I don't fucking know man I just work here.
i still remember when the dude doing my autism assessment asked me how many friends I had, and I was like "okay but how are we defining friendship?" and he just like, stared at me for a second and then wrote down some notes
everybody: you’ve got to advocate for yourself in medical settings!
medical professionals when a patient advocates for themselves in a medical setting (x100 if that patient is a part of any minority): damn. you’re a hypochondriac crazy bitch who has every mental illness and is seeking every narcotic in existence. that’s the only reason you’d be disappointed in the care you’re receiving here. in retaliation, we will be even less helpful and less sympathetic. our jobs are hard. people are dying. we don’t have time to deal with anyone who is slightly inconvenient for us.
it is like. i am deliberately not posting that much about the nolan odyssey because i don't have much genuine interest and i find the whole like outrage theater people do at adaptations to be exhausting and unproductive and often misguided + i don't really care what celebrities are doing. but zendaya's 3000-year-old iranian earrings are like. such an on-the-nose fuck you. like 1. you can practically feel the stylist going "oh, it's old, it must be on-theme!" without really considering that ancient cultures are not interchangeable. but also 2. there's a very clear and important difference between ancient greece and ancient iran, in that there's a reason zendaya isn't wearing ancient greek artifacts on her ears--ancient greece has a cultural cachet that ancient iran does not, by virtue of its position as the perceived origin point of "western" (white) civilization. they are just interchangeable enough that zendaya can wear the artifacts of one civilization to a premiere of a work based on the mythos of another, but just different enough that she can get away with one but not the other.
and of course there's 3. which is that modifying and wearing a cultural artifact of dubious provenance taken from a country the us is actively bombing (and in doing so presumably destroying plenty of historic buildings/artifacts) asserts a certain lack of respect for and/or sense of ownership over that country's people and culture. and obviously this is what makes it seem like such a specifically heinous move.
Really important to note when it comes to (3) that the elite (and frankly Orientalising) appropriation of ancient Near Eastern artefacts as jewellery has a long colonial history. Cylinder seals are these little cork-shaped cylinders with pictoral or written designs engraved on them, and work the same way as a signet ring in that you could roll them over wet clay to leave an impression of the engraved relief on the clay to dry. They look like this:
(Cylinder seal of First Dynasty of Ur Queen Puabi, found in her tomb, dated circa 2600 BC, with modern impression. Inscription: 𒅤𒀜 𒎏 - Pu3-abi(AD) Nin - Queen Pu-abi. Nicked straight off Wikipedia as it's a fab comparison of seal / relief.)
In the British Museum you can find "Lady Layard's jewellery". Austin Henry Layard is a guy whose academic efforts I'm admittedly very indebted to. He was passionate about Venetian and Roman glass and did a great job re-popularising both styles in the UK, but more importantly he was the assyriologist who excavated Nineveh and the Library of Ashurbanipal—where we've found the majority of the Gilgamesh tablets. Pioneer figure in terms of Near Eastern archaeology... but check this out:
This is a necklace Layard had made for his wife. It uses real cylinder seals.
To quote the British Museum's entry on the item: One cylinder seal is Akkadian (about 2200 BC) and four belong to the second millennium BC, but eight are late Assyrian (about 1000-612 BC). Late Babylonian and Achaemenid stamp seals (about 600-350 BC) are used for the pendants and clasp.
Enid later wrote in her diary that, when they dined with Queen Victoria in 1873, it was 'much admired'.
Ancient Near Eastern artefacts, repurposed as jewellery in a set that doesn't give a single fuck about accurately dating them, let alone treating them with the sort of respect you might perhaps expect of items over four thousand years old. Instead they've become a mark of elite colonial status, an Oriental curiosity utterly separated from their historical context. They're 'old'. They're non-descriptly 'other'. Time and place dissolve into an attractive and vague exoticism.
All while the place these seals have been appropriated from is busy being exploited by the very empire this "jewellery" is being shown off to!
So to bring it back to your third point: you're absolutely right!!! And this has precedence dating right back to the start of Western study (and plundering) of the Ancient Near East. It's a carelessness, it's an ignorance of historical context, and it's explicitly colonial.
pupgender is just as much a serious gender as woman, mew/mews pronouns aren't less respectable than she/her or he/him, being stargender isn't any more "silly" or "frivolous" than being a man, being xenogender isn't the gender equivalent to playing with toys we ARE our genders no matter how playful with gender a xenogendered person is
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and if i said nolan's odyssey starring no greek actors and with no recognizable aspects of greek culture or involvement by greeks, is the direct legacy of white supremacist colonialism that treated ancient greece as not just the pinnacle of ancient culture, but of an artificially created "european" culture, which white western europeans and their settler descendants, as the new pinnacle of culture, were the sole spiritual inheritors of.
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.
29th June 2026.
This year's Strawberry Moon was extremely low in the sky, which made it look very large and bright. (A perfect photographic opportunity!)
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I love visiting people who have some kind of pet reptile because they're always like "would you like to hold the reptile" and I'm like "of course I would" and then the rest of the conversation happens with me just holding a random reptile and the reptile Has No Feelings about the situation. They always just sit there, probably vaguely wishing to return to their heat lamp but clearly exuding an energy of This Might As Well Happen. and then I put it back in its enclosure and go home and the reptile very clearly has no strong feelings about the situation.
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