RedColoredPanda

Delta Slim drinks because he's traumatized by the horrors Black people of his time face. And he's kind and compassionate, encouraging and reassuring Sammie, and sacrificing himself to save everyone else.

Pearline literally saved Sammie's life and sacrificed herself to protect him, a boy she had only known for a day. It shows her kindness because she could have easily stayed back when Remmick tried to bite Sammy and not endangered her life more than necessary.

The movie shows us that preachers blindly condemning those sinners are wrong: Sammie is only alive because drunkards, philanderers and gangsters (Smoke) gave their lives to protect him. They are people, with flaws and qualities.

what do you mEAN its out there?

& zoeys like. its a demon cucumber. it was unholy what it did to me. you were there, you remember

rumi: i quite literally will never forget

zoey: it wasnt natural. its out there. alive. waiting. waiting for me to lower my guard

mira: i actually hate that im never gonna be able to eat cucumber again. because you're right

zoey: BECAUSE IM RIGHT

zoeys, uncommonly serious: rumi. i need u to be honest with me

rumis: omg????? okay?? yes ofc??

zoey: did u poison me with that demon cucumber four years ago

rumi: okay goodnight zoey

zoey: DID YOU DO IT. DID MY BELOVED GIRLFRIEND TRY TO KILL ME

rumi: it wasnt a demon it was rotten

zoey: ..... but did u -

rumi: NO. i didnt leave it there & i didnt tell u to eat it & also i didnt try to poison you????

zoey: ... will u protect me from-

rumi: if there is such a thing as a demon cucumber. i will protect you with my fucking life. but there isnt. and i didnt poison you

rumi & mira: what the fuck

& then one day randomly she just starts using social media again & everyoen is like. so glad that u are back, did u have a fun break, why did u stop using social media did u just need a break?

& rumis like oh i got banned

& fans are like YOU GOT BANNED? BY FAKETWITTER?

& rumis like lol no zoey & mira banned me from using my phone

& some fans are like whoa controlling much

& rumis like. perish? they were right

& zoeys like we had to take her electronics off her bc she kept taking them apart. rumi started watching self repair videos to relax on our hiatus & then took it way too seriously & now all of the stuff in our house has been pulled apart

rumi: AND PUT BACK TOGETHER. BETTER.

& zoeys like. how many backflips do u think i can do in a row

& miras like. hm. 12?

& zoeys like. surely its more than that

& mira shrugs shes like idk lets go see

(cryptic spoilers)

Ahhh, much better 😌

Wips under cut

(feel free to ignore the rest of this because i am about to YAP)

Eventually, failing to complete the trio, both fragments debut separately—Rumi as a solo act, Zoey and Mira as a duo. It’s immediately clear what they’re supposed to be and they’re all obsessed with each other

But Third doesn’t hesitate to tell Mira and Zoey what Rumi is and that the feeling is a trick, and Rumi knows exactly what they’ll have been told, with Celine right over her shoulder begging her to be afraid enough to survive

And yet

The pull is still there

Like, Zoey pretends she only listens to all of Rumi’s songs as “knowing your enemy,” but Mira knows better. Still, she’s aware of how Zoey hates when people are angry with her, so she tries to swallow her initial response. (The conversation still doesn’t go well)

Mira can swear she’s angry that she was too slow the first time they run into Rumi at the same tear in the Honmoon—a tear she might well have caused—but it’s obvious to Zoey that she’s more shaken than she’s letting herself feel. (That conversation just doesn’t happen)

Rumi can know that they’re only being civil because of the multitude of eyes on them, but that doesn’t keep her from thinking about maybes, getting distracted as the morning wears on a little and Mira cracks a joke and Zoey looks at her like she’s saying ‘she’s hilarious, right?’ and everything feels like it should be—

@crypticparableprowler What would this be if they didn’t?

Celine did her damnedest to find Rumi, if not her partners, then someone. Pretty much every trainee at Sunlight within five years of her age on either side has spent a while with her. They’ll tell you different things—sweet, awkward, cocky (with the begrudging admission it was well-earned)—but. None of them clicked.

Rumi was always too scared, in the end. Of how unsafe being that close to demons would be for them. Of how unsafe being that close to her would be for them.

And now she’s fighting both sides of the war, alone. Celine does her best, but—that’s only so much, anymore. Maybe Mira and Zoey only come after her when the opportunity is shoved in their faces, consumed by bigger and badder and more immediate threats, but they still do.

The first time, they’re too slow to land a hit. The second—

It’s hard, fighting each other. The Honmoon hates it, Rumi hates it. But this is all just a trick, and it’s likely that only once Rumi’s gone will they be able to find their third.

Sometimes, it’s almost fun. Almost easy to forget. And others…

Mira sees the blood on the street every time she closes her eyes for days. Her hands shake at the thought of forming into fists. It was Rumi’s eyes, you know? They’d looked so… human. Maybe Mira’s the monster they always said she was

Zoey, though—Zoey saw the claws and the heard the way Mira cried out. She’s got a demon to take down.

(And, speaking of: Rumi doesn’t really know why they let her hide what she is. Why there hasn’t been a mutter to a reporter about a skin condition, at least, or—god forbid—tattoos. A quick way to fuck her career up, not having an industry-perfect body, even if the world wouldn’t understand the ugliness the patterns really are)

Rumi doesn’t even really process what happened. All she knows is the sounds of one of hers crying out in pain, the half-harmony of their songs weaving together cutting off. She doesn’t think, she just moves

(Mira doesn’t even really process what happened—just Zoey, bleeding, and Rumi standing right there.)

Rumi doesn’t go home. Well, ‘home’ is complicated these days. Technically, she’s trying to live by herself for the first time, and that’s where she means, the little apartment where her neighbors are that girl group Celine had debuted right before her, the ones who had always been nice and call Rumi their honorary maknae

She doesn’t go there.

Instead, she blinks and she’s pasting on a smile through the lobby of Celine’s building, trying not to be too obvious about how she holds her side. She calls Celine from the elevator, blankly tells her that she’s pretty sure the wound cauterized itself. She thinks she might be in shock, and she really, really wants her mom

(They go home.

The words are gone.

They can’t say it out loud.

It’s a trick, it has to be. It has to be or else they—

But they both know it’s real. They both know they did.

Pink smoke DID come from the wound when the blade sank in.

The Honmoon DID shake at Rumi's pained scream.

Zoey and Mira cannot tell if this is worse, or if it had been worse if she HAD turned to ash and smoke.

The next time they saw her at a public function, she flinches away from them.

She manages to disguise it as anything else in case someone is watching them, but Zoey and Mira can tell. And she's subtly trying to stay on the other side of the room and keep as many people as possible in between them.

She'd never done that before.

They try to approach anyways, not really sure what they're going to say to her, when they get intercepted by someone they werent expecting and had never met before.

Celine.

When she heard about the social event, she knew Rumi and the other two would all have to attend. She found her own way to get invited and told Rumi to pretend she wasnt expecting to see her there.

She stays subtly between them and Rumi the whole night, without making it look like she was chaperoning Rumi (who already had to deal with nepo baby accusations). She made sure to go talk to Rumi whenever the other two split up. She kept up a subtle but sharp glare the whole time.

Zoey never expected to be glared by one of her childhood idols with such anger.

Mira cant help but realize the Third Sister never acted as protective or as warm towards them as Celine is acting towards Rumi.

Someone in the crowd DOES call Rumi a nepo baby in zoey and mira's earshot, and it suddenly strikes her that there were THREE sunlight sisters.

One hates Rumi and wants her dead.

One raised her and showed up to protect her.

One, they have been told, was her own mother. She is dead. She cannot be asked what she would have wanted or who she would have sided with. She cannot be asked to explain herself.

She doesn’t have much more to say. Her voice falters, distressed. She gets angry, switches from fumbling rationalizations to asking them why exactly they want to know, if they’re having doubts

And it’s… it’s a nasty argument. It’s hard, because Third might never have loved them but she’s been their mentor for years. She’s always been steady and practical and objective and willing to change when she realized something needed changing. This side, rigid and fearful and mean? It’s not something they ever thought they’d see

Rumi doesn’t show up quite as often, especially when the tear is close to Mira and Zoey’s home. They listen, keep their distance, try to manage the guilt sinking deep into their bones

(They’ve struck glancing blows before, always gotten a return in kind or a retreat. But this—this was enough that it could’ve killed her. Most demons, it would’ve. It was never a game, but it’s definitely over now.)

(It’s harder, without even the not-quite-trio they had before. But they knew it would be.)

(And—they can’t help themselves. They hesitate. It’s impossible not to wonder, once you’ve met one exception. But these demons never seem to want anything but human souls, just the way they’d been taught.)

The rumors spread, of course, blind items and social media stories and a photo of them looking at each other the wrong way at an awards show. No one knows what happened, and it’s not like they worked together too much before but—the rumors spread. That something did. No one likes that idea—their idols having a problem with one another

Rumi knows Celine would immediately throw out the idea of her working with Zoey and Mira again if she heard. So she doesn’t bother checking in, just nods

Is there a problem? Bobby asks, like he can see something he’s didn’t mean him to. Quiet, caring. He’d have a restraining order for her before she could blink if she let on a hint of them having hurt her

Rumi rolls her eyes and shakes her head, promises him it’s all just baseless gossip, and she has no idea what he could possibly be talking about

(They just want her dead, and it’s entirely understandable. They know she’s a demon. She’s trying to fix the world and fix herself but she’s not sure if she’s doing more harm than good some days.)

(…Most days.)

Rumi thinks about that photo of them again, the way it almost looked like all of them were cringing in pain, not just her.

It’s easy for the camera to lie, and easy for it to catch things it shouldn’t.

So where last time, she’d run and let Celine hide her, this time, she’s on her best behavior. Perfect show smile, no hesitation, bouncing on her heels as Mira awkwardly explains the dance they’re doing. All she has to do is her job—if only they’d play along

(Zoey and Mira are absolutely fucking floundering in the face of this level of whiplash and do not know what Rumi’s up to. Like, if they could just get her alone then maybe they could apologize start some kind of dialogue? But she’s acting like it never happened—hell, she’s acting like she has no idea what a Hunter is in the first place.)

(Honestly, if this is what Mira deals with when it comes to Zoey’s emotional avoidance, she kind of gets why it makes her so frustrated now. She’s about ready to pull a Mira and just blow this whole thing open right here, right now, collateral damage or no.)

(Rumi can’t be their third. She can’t be. Because Zoey is all the family Mira has and if Rumi is supposed to be Like That and Mira has—

She can’t be. Not someone who looks at her with nothing behind the eyes because Mira already fucked it up.)

zoerumi: idiots that dont know what they’re doing

rumira: idiots that only think they know what they’re doing

So first of all, their weapons insta kill all demons. You never see them do more than one hit if they use their weapons, most of the fight is just them trying to hit the demons once.

With that in mind, WHY WAS THIS NECESSARY?

OR THIS?

SHE BEAT A DEMON'S FACE IN WITH A FUCKING HOT ASS KETTLE. NO FUCKING REASON TO DO THIS SHE COULD'VE ENDED THEM RIGHT THERE

AND THIS ONE'S GLIDING ON THAT MF. NOT NECESSARY WHATSOEVER!!!!

Like they were really just in it for the love of the game. They have a passion for whooping ass. They wake up excited as hell to jump some demons. If black air force energy was a kpop group it's them. They're on demon time quite a lot for a group of demon hunters. Shit the demons probably talk about them like dudes from Chicago talk about King Von, like they're probably genuinely terrified!

Like they're probably down there telling stories like:

"I look away for two seconds cuz the purple one swung a whole uncooked octopus at me and when I turn around the other two are using my boy Lenny as a jump rope"

"Gwi-ma you don't understand, I can't go back out there. THEY BEAT ME. WITH A PACK. OF RAMYEON. AND THEN THEY PROCEEDED TO SEASON ME."

"They folded up my cousin and used him as a couch for them to play fortnite on... I've never been the same since..."

Honestly, I don't think Rumi was scared ENOUGH of the others finding out about her patterns. Imagine you're half demon and you just watched your best friends whack-a-mole with your brethren as the moles. Like how did watching them write Takedown make you nervous but not the looney tunes ass torture methods they were pulling out every fight???

soloist Celine

bonus: little rumi waiting for her in the dressing room </3

did you guys see huntrix's new photoshoot? (2/3)

did you guys see huntrix's new photoshoot? (1/3)