Chase's 'it's Tuesday I still like you' bit was fucking unhinged can we talk about this?

Infinite Stars. | Prologue.

Description: They say that stars align. Stars are always finding one another. Whether it’s in groups or further apart, they find each other. Y/n was an outsider, extremely smart. Smarter than many in her class, she’s in college to be a criminal psychologist and hopes to work for the FBI. She’s had a rough past, past that she never talks about. College was her life. She dedicated her life to books. And then, she meets the young, sexy, and delightful football coach.. Rome Avery. Whom, well.. was something of a whole new… light.

Proofread? Yes/no.

Warning(s): This story will contain mature content that is not meant for anyone younger than 18+. Mentions of drugs, rape, abuse, age gaps, sexual harrassment, may have some dark humor and racial content. This story is based in college and we all know the upside and downside of college, if you are unable to handle any of the things I’ve named. Do not read any further. (Rome does not commit any violent acts!-aside from sexual choking with consent!)

“You’re actually pretty for a darkskin girl,” Hunter teased, leaning against the bar at the party that Golden was talked into coming to by her best friend, Chey. This was obviously much of her scene but yet, she was here for the time being. I guess that’s all that mattered. She snapped her neck over at Hunter. There he was, white-gingered male with freckles. She slightly rolls her eyes. “You ugly for a white boy.” She spat. He started to say something but was interrupted by some other man. “Coach..” Rome directed him in the other direction. This was a constant issue, people always thought that was a compliment when it really wasn’t. Most times she would even be over looked because she was darker. Her friend, Chey got more love than her cause she was brown skin and thick. She looked up at Rome. “Thank you, but I could’ve handled myself.”

Rome nods. “I have no doubt in my mind that you can,” Rome was never one to join his team at their celebrations, but since this was a team party at a public place, he decided he would attend to make sure things didn’t get too out of hand. Every part of Golden wanted to leave this party but she couldn’t leave her friend Chey, she was the designated driver. “Why’d he call you coach? Aren’t you a little young to be a coach?”

“I’m probably more close to you in age than the assistant coach. I’m twenty-five.” He chuckled. She looked him over, he had a baby face. He looked so young, although twenty-five year olds still looked young you could tell their age in some form of their faces and she couldn’t tell with him. His skin was as smooth as a baby’s bottom aside from the few scars on his face. “Still young.” She stated, ordering another soda on the rocks, looking over at her friend as she grinded on some random. She had been trying to set Golden up on dates and getting her with different men, she wanted her best friend to find someone. She wanted her to stop burying her face into books. But Golden didn’t want a man. Her only desire and focus was on her studies. Taking a pull on the straw to get the taste of her coca-cola, she shifted her body in the chair. “So what’s your name?” Rome was just trying to make small talk, ordering something a little stronger than water. At this point, he was off the clock and although he still wanted to make sure his team didn’t party too hard, didn’t mean he couldn’t party himself.

Golden wanted so bad to dismiss herself from this conversation, she was anxious. She had a minor exam next week but she wanted to be on her A-game. She hasn’t yet flunked out and she was not about to start that now. “It’s Y/n, but my friends sometimes call me Golden.” He smiled. “I like that, it suits you.” He smiled. Y/n turned her attention to him and smiled, his smile was beautiful. Out of the plenty of dudes she’s seen at this college not one was as well groomed, put together as he was. His teeth were perfectly straight and white. His nails were clean and looked to be manicured. He wasn’t too forward either and maybe because you were a student here, and he was a teacher but, he couldn’t help but be curious. You were the youngest college student to attend at this college, you were seventeen but like it’s been said, you were very smart and very intelligent. “Hey bestie!” Chey grinned, hugging all over you. “Why aren’t you out having any fun? It’s a party. Don’t be such a prude.” Rome slightly chuckled drinking his glass of henny. “I’m not a prude, I’m just the designated driver and I can’t be drunk and getting you home. Now can I?”

“Oh don’t worry about me. I’m going home with Dustin tonight,” she pointed over at some random dude from across the room.

You furrowed your eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s a good ide–” She shook you. “Girl, loosen up. Damn.” She smacked her lips walking off, you made sure to get a good look at Dustin. Rome watched. He fixed his leather jacket. He leans over. “She’ll be alright. Dustin’s a good kid.” You frowned. “And how would you know? Just cause he’s on your team doesn’t mean you know your athletes. You could be covering for their shit.” Rome was insulted. “I’m insulted by your thoughts of me. I’m not one whose apart of rape culture. If anything like that happens on my team, I’m not standing for it.” You brushed him off, worried about your friend but you couldn’t protect Chey. She was gonna do her regardless, you just didn’t want what happened to you to happen to her. You trusted easily and it got you in a rut. You shook your head deciding you would just let loose tonight. I mean what’s the worst that could happen? You ordered two of your go-to drink.

By now, you had had two drinks and you were almost if not entirely tipsy. You were a light weight; so it didn’t take much to get you drunk, it had been so long since you drunk or had fun. So you decided to just have fun tonight, not stressing or worrying about studying. Maybe you wanted to get laid tonight, who knows. It’s been awhile. You found yourself dancing on the dance floor, it felt good letting go. Hunter tried to sneak his way up on you, wrapping his arm around you. His southern drawl whispering into your ear, “You’re so beautiful, you know that?” His hands guided down your side, you elbowed him in his rib. “I do. Leave me alone.” Hunter muttered. “Bitch.” He held his rib, you wanted everything to beat his ass but you were in a good mood and didn’t need him ruining it.

Rome watched you from afar, he found you to be one of the most beautiful women he had indeed laid his eyes on, you were gorgeous. He licked his lip drinking the last of his drink making his way to the floor. “May I?” You giggled slightly. “I don’t know, may you?” He chuckled and smiled, his team had left after awhile. So it was just the two of you. You were both all on each other, looking him in the eyes before turning so my back against his chest, slightly grinding on him. He held my waist. The night felt like it was young. Soon I felt kisses on my neck, I leaned my head to the side. Pulling away, I smiled. “I’m drunk but, I’m not that drunk… and we shouldn’t be doing this.” He looked me in the eyes. “If that’s what you want, but I would like to get to know you more.” You smiled. “Sexually though, right?” He chuckled. “Maybe but not just sexually.”

Tags:

@skyesthebomb

@zenxn20 @bbygirlchristina @laylasbunbunny

So, the good news: Ghetsis was not redeemed, he isn’t going to have a relationship with N moving forward, and although N was shown to wish things could be different between them, ultimately the whole situation was treated with the seriousness and gravitas that it deserved and N never once forgot the abuse that Ghetsis put him through, nor was he at any point willing to just brush it aside. In that regard, I’m very glad for how Masters handled the situation. 

With that said, though, the writing in Masters made me realize something else about how child abuse stories are handled in Pokémon, and that something else is . . . not good. Namely, I’ve realized there is a significant difference between how child abuse stories in Pokémon are handled depending on whether the abusive parent is blood related to the child or not.

First and foremost, let’s get this out of the way: There is a social stigma in Japan against adoption. This isn’t to say that children never get adopted, but that culturally adoption is looked down upon in comparison to having biological children, and as a result there are only a few hundred adoptions each year in comparison to the thousands of kids living in orphanages. (Although this isn’t purely stigma, since in Japan the biological parents can still retain legal guardianship over their children in the orphanages and can therefore prevent them from being adopted by families as well. They don’t do this maliciously, but instead might think, “I will be able to care for my child later” even if that never comes to pass.) Additionally, I’ve read before that the stigma is why adopted children often don’t refer to their adopted parents as “mother” or “father” but I can’t find that source now, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, the point of me saying all of that is: Japan has a stigma against adoption and Pokémon is a video game series created by Japanese people. Therefore, it stands to reason that Japanese cultural beliefs (such as the importance of blood family over adopted family) can make its way into the series, even if the series itself is a worldwide phenomenon that they know will absolutely stretch beyond Japan’s borders . . . and I think that’s what has happened here, intentionally or otherwise. Basically, whether an abusive parent in Pokémon is redeemed or not seems to have very little to do with the severity of the abuse (including that which is shown to the audience), but instead everything to do with whether their children are biologically related to them or not.

First, let’s take a look at the abusive parent that was redeemed, Lusamine. In Sun & Moon specifically Lusamine is not once shown being anything but abusive to her children. Lillie tells a story of how Lusamine was kind to her a couple times in the past (dancing in the rain, co-sleeping when Lillie was sick), but that falls in line for abusive parents. Abusive parents generally aren’t abusive 24/7; there’s a well-known cycle of abuse which contains a “honeymoon period” stage in which, typically after an apology and a promise to do better, the abuser treats the victim kindly, which usually results in the victim believing that the abuser really does love them and that whatever abuse comes later (and it always does come later) is in fact the victim’s fault on some level, for failing to keep things stable. Regardless, we know that not only did Lusamine abuse both Gladion and Lillie terribly in the past (to the point where Lillie has trauma surrounding even the clothes she wears and has trouble getting new ones), but we also see her verbally and emotionally abuse them on-screen, and then we see her attempt to murder Lillie during the climax. While Lusamine was retooled into being a well-intentioned extremist in Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon, we again see her verbally abuse her children on-screen, to the point where when Hau says that Lusamine really isn’t a bad person after all, we see Gladion grimacing in the background. All told, we see Lusamine emotionally, verbally, and (with her attempted murder in SM) physically abuse her children on-screen, and yet she is still forgiven by them pretty much immediately, redeemed, and treated as if they’re a happy family with just a few unfortunate bumps in their history. I’ll note here, for anyone who isn’t already aware, that Lusamine is Gladion and Lillie’s biological mother, and this is obvious by how similar they all look even if you weren’t told repeatedly.

Now let’s look at the abusive parent that is not redeemed, Ghetsis. In the first set of Unova games, Black & White, most of Ghetsis’ abuse of N happens off-screen and isn’t revealed until the climax. Ghetsis had N raised in a castle underground where he was cut off from society. He was brought pokémon that had been abused so that he could be manipulated into thinking that all humans abused pokémon and that pokémon needed to be liberated therefore. Because Ghetsis needed N to act as King of Team Plasma and control the legendary dragon, Ghetsis didn’t directly abuse N during this time. Instead, he neglected him (N was primarily raised by his sisters, Concordia and Anthea), and psychologically abused him via manipulative lies about what the rest of the world was like. It isn’t until the climax when N has decided to disband Team Plasma and listen to what the player has to say that Ghetsis brings out the verbal abuse, calling N “a freak without a human heart” and revealing that he was only ever using N all along. In the sequel games, Ghetsis is similarly openly hostile to N again, showing that he has no intentions whatsoever of being a good father to him. He’s pretty terrible to him, even if we didn’t see very much of it (particularly in comparison to what we saw with the Aether family, whose abuse was also much more realistic than N’s situation), and pretty much no one would want him to be redeemed. But also it’s important to note that N and Ghetsis, despite having the same hair color, are for whatever reason NOT biologically related. 

And this is hammered home time . . . and time . . . and time again, particularly in this Masters event.

Now, I think most of us would agree that it would be hard to find a woman who would want to procreate with Ghetsis. Granted, Ghetsis isn’t the type of person who would care about consent, but I do think it’s reasonable to assume that Game Freak probably wanted to avoid those thoughts, even though it could have been very easily solved by having a female Sage who was also Ghetsis’ baby mama / wife (similar to how Ariana, one of Giovanni’s executives, is very obviously Silver’s mother). So I mean, from a taste standpoint, I can see why they wanted to go the adoption route with Ghetsis, even though they still made him and N have green hair despite not being biologically related for some reason.

But.

I still think it’s noticeable that they have the irredeemable abusive parent be the one who both had the least amount of on-screen abuse (and also the least realistic abuse) and also be the adopted parent, versus the one they bent themselves into pretzel shapes to redeem be the one with the most on-screen abuse (and most realistic abuse) who also happened to be the biological parent. The message that sends, to me, is that it doesn’t matter how badly you abuse your children in this world so long as you are their biological parent. In the end, you will be forgiven and they are beholden to you as family. Versus if you’re an adoptive parent . . . well, you were never as important anyway, so. I mean, why else would Lillie leave her loving adoptive parents of Kukui and Burnet to go back to her abusive mother in Sun & Moon? Clearly the blood ties were just that much more important. (Granted, Kukui and Burnet hadn’t officially adopted her, but they as good as. I’ll never stop being infuriated by that ending.)

 This is, to a lesser extent, even shown with Giovanni and Silver’s situation. Giovanni was, to our knowledge, never actually abusive toward Silver; in the one conversation we see them have in HeartGold & SoulSilver, Silver’s main issue is that he doesn’t understand why Giovanni is disbanding Team Rocket after losing to Red, and also he doesn’t get why Giovanni needs so many underlings to begin with. He thinks Giovanni is weak, and Giovanni just tells him that he’s wrong without really bothering to explain things. At most, Giovanni is aloof and distant with Silver, which makes Silver angry, but Silver’s bigger issue is with Team Rocket as a whole. Giovanni’s definitely not a good father, but he’s not an abusive parent on par with Lusamine or Ghetsis from what we’ve been shown, and the implication is there that they could potentially repair their relationship in the future. Even in this event, the tension between them wasn’t bad, just complicated.

But . . . they’re also biologically related. Silver is Giovanni’s son, we’ve been told this a million times, and it’s very obvious that Ariana is his mother. They’re biologically related. And so, even though Giovanni is routinely touted as one of Pokémon’s most fearsome villains, Silver will never actually cut him off completely / be able to do that because Giovanni is his biological father. The fact that Team Rocket is based on yakuza probably complicates things even further there, but all the same. If Silver had been adopted by Giovanni, I’m pretty positive that Giovanni wouldn’t care / Silver would cut him off entirely. It wouldn’t be seen as a “real” family.

And this all bothers me, because not only was my biological mother abusive, but my stepmother was the only one who treated me as a mother should treat her child. Similarly, my biological sister was complicit and even participated in the abuse I suffered as a child, but my stepbrother whom I’ve known practically my whole life is the sibling I’d ride or die with. To me, biological ties mean jack shit. Family doesn’t begin or end with blood; to treat non-blood relations as lesser is something that will never fail to raise my hackles. So to see it handled this way in one of my favorite franchises of all time . . . yeah, it’s more than a little upsetting. I understand why it’s happening, I’m fully aware of the cultural context that this series is being written in, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it, because I don’t.

And before anyone gets it twisted:

Both Lusamine and Ghetsis can rot in hell, NEITHER should have been redeemed. This is NOT me complaining about Ghetsis being treated as the piece of shit he is, but rather my anger at the fact that Lusamine got a pass because she birthed the children she abused, and Masters making that abundantly clear by having N and Ghetsis state in every single chapter of this event that they weren’t blood related. 

But anyway, it’s nearly 4am, and I need sleep. I can continue being angry about Pokémon’s handling of abusive parents at a later date.

                         THE SPRING NARNIAN GIFT EXCHANGE.

                 for: @oflucyandlorien from @noctusfury.

lost & found.

G-rated, K-rated language, one-shot, 2.6k words. Angst, hurt/comfort, romance, and found family.

Set in the Golden Age, after the events of "The Horse and His Boy".

Cor | Shasta/Aravis, Cor | Shasta & Pevensies, Aravis & Pevensies.

<><><><><><><>

Summary: The Pevensies have disappeared, and Narnia and Archenland are in an uproar. Archenland offers to help the Narnians search for their lost monarchs. Cor | Shasta reflects on the impact the Pevensies have brought on him and his family, along with their disappearance. Meanwhile, Cor and Aravis also deal with budding feelings towards each other.

<><><><><><><>

Note to Giftee: So I have to say that I was very excited to have received your request. I've been WAITING and WAITING to write a fic for Cor/Aravis, or something in the HHB universe, but between them and Golden Age Pevensies, it was kinda difficult figuring out what to write. But I figured I might as well do both.

What was a surprise was that instead of this remaining a one-shot, this story is beginning to grow into a two-shot, perhaps even a three-shot. So I'll tag you if I end up working on/finishing those following parts.

Also, sorry for the bad title. For some reason I couldn't think up anything that could fit this fic. So if you have any ideas, let me know. ^_^

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this fic and that I was able to incorporate the things you most enjoy. Thank you for the opportunity. ^_^

<><><><><><><>

It had been a year later, a year since the events of the Battle of Anvard, when Anvard had received the shocking news: the Kings and Queens of Narnia had disappeared during a hunting trip! Vanished! Cair Paravel was in an uproar!

 When Cor — formerly known as Shasta (though still sometimes called that by his more intimate friends) — first heard the news, he was shocked. Took him time to process that, no, he wasn't mishearing the information just given him.

 Then came the denial. This simply couldn't be true. Of course they didn't disappear! They were fine! Perhaps they had forgotten to bring word to Cair Paravel that they were extending their hunting trip. Surely not all of the Monarchs of Narnia could've disappeared at once… could they?

 When they had been told that it had been two weeks since they had left on that hunting trip, and that the Narnians were still searching for their Monarchs all throughout the realm, dread seeped in. Accusations of treachery, abductions, assassinations even flew in the air, and their natural enemies, the Calormene Empire and Telmar, quickly fell into suspicion.

 Corin, his brother, was the first to voice out this conviction. "It has to be the Calormenes! It has to be!"

 Others began chorusing this as well. "They've been coveting the lands of the North for ages!" cried one of the court elders. "Acquiring the Kings and Queens of Narnia as hostages would be just the sort of bargaining chip they'd need to pressure us into submission!" another wave of shouts and debates issued forth in the king's court.

 While it had been a year since the conflict with Prince Rabadash — now Tisroc (Emperor or King-of-Kings in the Common Tongue) of the Calormenes since the passing of his late father (though some wondered, even among his own people, whether or not the Tisroc died from assassination rather than natural causes) — and even though Rabadash had more than shown that he was a passive and 'peaceful' ruler in the short time of his rule, there had been rumors that Rabadash had been scheming to find solutions to redeem his recent disgrace at the hands of the Narnian monarchs. So this wasn't a possibility that could be ignored.

 That being said, Cor knew that just speculating on what happened wasn't going to get them any closer to finding the lost Monarchs of Narnia. His father, who had been quietly observing the pandemonium in his court, seemed to agree with this, as he cleared his throat and ordered for silence. "Please, friends!" he implored, his usual jovial countenance had long past fled. "Now's not the time for speculation. The larger issue at hand is trying to locate their persons. Should we not instead try to find figure out where they could be and try to bring them back to their respective residence, in a speedy and safe manner?"

 Several of the councilors had the decency to look sheepish or shame-faced at the king's gentle admonishment. Cor looked at his father thoughtfully. He knew how much the Pevensies meant to King Lune. He saw how they interacted and from what Corin and their father had told them, the Pevensies were like family to Anvard's royal family. Ever since the Monarchs of Narnia began ruling Narnia, and the first delegation had been sent to Archenland, King Lune and his late wife, who had no children at the time, had practically adopted them into the family and became their foster parents of sorts, and the 'diplomatic missions' between the two royal houses were more familial visits and holiday repasts in all but name.

 Cor, for his part, despite only having known the Pevensies for a little over a year, had grown to think of them as elder siblings and it was no secret that the Twins — Corin in particular — idolized the Kings of Narnia (the Queens, too) and were always thrilled whenever they came to visit, and vice versa. Naturally, Cor tended to favor King Edmund, the first of the Monarchs that he had met and interacted with in Tashbaan on his Quest to reach the North. Now that he was Archenland's Crown Prince and Heir, he had a lot of education to catch up on, and the younger of the Narnian kings had been the perfect tutor, patient and thorough. Cor was, in particular, interested in legal administration and law, similar to the Just King himself, and they had many long discussions concerning the matter.

 Aravis, Cor knew, had grown quite attached to the Queen Lucy and they had often gone into the gardens and had done many outdoor activities, as well as telling each other stories and lore from their respective cultures. Being an only child, Aravis never had the benefit of sibling companionship (aside from some cousins), and the Pevensies, Queen Lucy in particular, became a sort of big sister figure for her. And the relationship really improved her mood over this past year. Cor tried not to notice how pretty she looked among the copper leaves — a Queen of Autumn. He tried not to notice the radiant glow on her face, the Spring in her smile, and the chimes in her laughter.

 He tried not to notice a lot of things where Aravis was concerned. It tended to muddle the mind and leave him utterly confused. And warm. Particularly when she smiled at him. (Since when did her eyes shine like the black pearl that he saw a fisherman catch back in Arsheesh's village?)

 But she wasn't smiling now. Aravis was sitting next to King Lune's throne to his right, and worry for her friend clouded her face. Fear, even. The expression made his heart ache, and he had to stop himself from going over and comforting her. Now wasn't the time or place.

 But what he could do is help his father alleviate the situation. "May I propose something?"

 Cor almost shrunk back against his seat as the whole room — including the Narnian messenger — turned to look at him expectantly. His father most of all (Aravis was also giving him a surprised look, and the boy was trying not to fidget).

 "A proposal, you say, Cor?" inquired King Lune, stroking his beard out of habit. "Do tell, my boy, do tell!"

 "Why don't we discreetly send search parties to Narnia to help in the search? I mean, we know that the last place they were last seen was in the Western Woods, right? Let's start from where we know they could be and then work our way from there. We should be able to find them eventually with added assistance."

 While there were many who were still reserved doubts, there were others who nodded slow approval and even threw each other hopeful glances and murmurings as they voiced their consent.

 King Lune was looking at Cor proudly. "Hah, excellent idea, my boy! Splendid! You're picking up a thing or two, it seems." he turned to the nobles expectantly. "Any objections?"

 One lord tentatively raised a hand. "I do, my lord."

 King Lune gestured for him to continue. "Speak, then, Lord Galen."

 Lord Galen turned to Cor, his face the picture of skepticism. "If I am to understand you correctly, you're proposing to send search parties to Narnia to speed up the search?"

 Cor wasn't sure where he was going with this, but decided to humor him. "Yes?" he then cleared his throat and emended his reply with a more resolute, "Yes, I am."

 "My issue with this idea is this:" continued Lord Galen, "how do we do this, per your suggestion, without attracting the attention of our enemies, such as the Calormene Empire and Telmar. When word eventually reaches them, they'll chomp at the bit to race each other to be the first to capture Narnia, and indeed Archenland, as well. What say you to this?"

 Once again, Cor felt a multitude of gazes expectantly awaiting his response. He gulped. "Well, I…" from the corner of his eye, Cor could see Aravis giving him an encouraging gesture with her hand, and continued, straightening himself and trying to make his voice sound more confident than he felt. "Obviously, we can't neutralize completely the possibility that the enemies' spies will find out eventually…" he looked at everyone in the room, and they nodded their agreement, silently prompting him to continue, "therefore, the only option to counter this is to use that information against them."

 That got their attention. "How so, Cor?" asked his father.

 "Simple: by making them believe it all to be a cunning ruse," Cor explained, beginning to warm up to the subject. "A selected and trusted retinue of Archenlanders ride to Narnia, such as myself, Corin, Aravis, several of the lords, and, of course, various guards and servants, etc, etc, under the guise of having been invited to Cair Paravel for a social event. We will remain for two weeks, secretly helping in the search for the Pevensies, while the festivities and games that will happen in the palace will provide us with a distraction…" he paused, thinking of his next words before continuing. "Meanwhile, the nobles of Narnia and Archenland will provide a double ruse, in which they will hold a 'secret meeting' while the games commence. They are to drop hints and to make sure that they are overheard, with enough discretion to make it believable; that way when they rendezvous to a vacant room or tent, it'll spike the spies' curiosity enough to venture there in order to collect any supposed important information for their masters. Doesn't matter what the topic's about, so long as it's a ruse with some truth implemented in it for validity's sake.

 "Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Archenlander and Narnian search parties will search high and low for the Kings and Queens of Narnia as thoroughly and quickly as warranted. I recommend some look-a-likes to play as decoys of Their Majesties, so as to appear altogether present, yet distant, in order to prevent spies from getting too close. Some of them I recommend to join the parties, dressed in the Narnian garb or armor to hide their identities and to keep the ruse alive for as long as possible. In this way, we could use these search parties as mere 'patrols' to act as if we're searching and vanquishing any enemy presence in the realm, such as, for example, the Fell-Beasts.

 "This will serve two purposes: One, it will keep the Narnians from panicking and thus increasing the chances of instability in the realm as well as the likelihood of our enemies finding this out and using this to their advantage. This, of course, cannot happen. And two, it will allow us to search for the Pevensies freely without worry of discovery, since it will be known that it's merely routine patrols and war games in order to bring further stability into Narnia and to increase the bonds between Archenland and Narnia.

 "Naturally, those of us among the royal family must remain in Cair Paravel in order to keep the ruse up, or else it might raise suspicion. And we'll only be there for two weeks before returning to Archenland. Of course, if we needed more time, we could extend it to a month, and use the excuse of the young Princes — Corin and I — wanting to stay in Narnia a bit longer and the Pevensies having given their permission to do so.

 "That's pretty much all I can think of at this moment…" Cor finished sheepishly.

 The audience gave a stunned silence before murmuring amongst themselves concerning the plan. King Lune was more ready with his opinion.

 "Excellent idea, my boy!" praised his father, stroking his beard thoughtfully, a proud smile on his face. Cor looked to Aravis, who wore a stunned expression, before giving him an approving smirk.

 And it was doing some strange sensations in his stomach, and a quick beating of his heart.

 What was this?

 He quick shook himself of this as his father called for attention. His father stood up, his huge girth, as always, making whatever action he did look comical, regardless of the seriousness involved, his normally deep and jovial voice turning most solemn, indeed.

 "Right! If we're all in agreement, then let us make haste to Narnia and find their lost Kings and Queens. Let us pray that we find them soon and that they've not come to harm." the King turned to the Narnian messenger — a falcon — who was busy combing through his feathers with his beak in preparation for the return journey. "Will this suffice, friend?"

 The falcon, Takar by name, stopped what he was doing to tip his beak and spread his wings in the customary sign of respect by his kind. "Arrah! Aye, King Lune! Takar hath no objections to this scheme. If thou wilt permit me, Sire, Takar shalt fly forthwith through the south-eastern gales, as true and fast as one of yon Queen Susan's arrows. Thou can rely on Takar to inform me fellow Narnians of thy plan!"

 "The Lion be with you, friend. Safe journey!"

 "Arrah! And to thee, Sire! Mayest the winds favor thy back, and mayest the Great Lion be with thee all thy days!" And with that, the great falcon took off and flew like an arrow from a bow.

 King Lune then turned to his councilors. "And may Aslan be with you all, and I pray that the Monarchs of Narnia will soon be found and restored to their thrones and our hearts.

 "Now let us prepare."

 The courtiers dispersed to prepare for the coming journey, and just as Cor was going to leave and make his own preparations, Aravis made her way towards him. She gave him a congratulatory smile. "That was well spoken, Shasta," she said softly, her Calormene accent folding around his old name like a warm blanket. Only in times like this, when it was just them, she would use his old name from their past life, neither of them having quite gotten used to his real name in the past year. It was always a comfort for Cor whenever she said it, her voice like a cool and soothing balm that calmed him whenever he felt the stresses of his sudden heirdom overwhelming him.

 Cor shrugged self-deprecatorily, feeling a little self-conscious. "It was nothing. King Edmund deserves the credit; it's how he thinks. Whenever one of us visits, he's sort of been teaching me these kinds of things, along with administration and law. I've just been parroting what he said."

 "But isn't that where greatness comes — by walking in the footsteps of and learning from those who have walked the paths less traveled?" she asked him with a raised eyebrow and an inquiring smile. Aravis stared at him thoughtfully, and regarded him for a moment.

 "W-What?" Cor stuttered, not used to the intensity of Aravis's gaze.

 She simply smiled and began walking away. But before she left, she turned to face Cor, the look in her eyes sincere. "You know, I believe that, when the time comes, you'll be a great king…," before adding with a teasing look, "Prince Cor." With a giggle, Aravis left the throne room for her own chambers to prepare for the journey, leaving Cor to stand there with a flustered and surprised look on his face, before shaking himself and moving on to his own room, deep in thought.

 To him, it was her eyes that Prince Cor found to be the most dangerous feature that made up Lady Aravis — those eyes as dark as black pearls.

 And yet, Cor couldn't wait to greet those eyes again.

CC1 - The Myth

OR why am I subjecting myself to this nonsense?

As I have mentioned, a friend of mine began reading The Book, and sent me some choice excerpts.  I became intrigued.  Not because it’s good, it actually seems pretty creepy, but because I think Si accidentally wrote a paranormal romance.

So before we even start the book, there’s a disclaimer. IDK if it was in the original book.  It begins “Dearest Gentle Reader,” which is not a great start if I’m the one reading because I hate that sort of affectation in writing.  

Like, if someone writes “dear readers” in a fanfic, it has to be really good for me to continue reading.

This disclaimer is basically saying that although 2012 was such a long time ago, and Simon was an ignorant fool when he wrote this, he can’t be bothered actually editing it properly, so please forgive him ahead of time if he did something wrong.

If you ever find yourself writing something like this, you need an editor.

Just so you know, nothing happens in this chapter.  It’s supposed to be an introduction to Simon and how he’s a monster, but you do NOT need a whole chapter for that.

Simon also really needs an editor.  There are multiple sentences in this chapter that lack correct sentence structure.  

For example, in the first paragraph we have this “Yes, I eat people, though the correct term is anthropophage”.  For this sentence to make sense, anthropophage would need to mean “eating people”, as in the act of eating people, it would need to be a verb.  So, when I google this, which Simon tells you to do, I get this result

An anthropophage or anthropophagus was a member of a mythical race of cannibals

So anthropophage doesn’t refer to the act of eating people.  It’s a noun.  It refers to not just cannibals (which Simon maintains he isn’t) but a specific race of cannibals.  

That sentence makes no sense.  And there are plenty of similar sentence constructions throughout this chapter.  I’m not going to point out all of them, except where they affect the narrative, because we’d be here all day.

After Simon begins his “succinct” first paragraph, in which he repeats himself four times, he decides to open with how we must be feeling.

As many of you may know by now, I am not a fan of being told how I must feel, whether that is to my face, in a blog post, or in a book, so he’s losing me.

I also really hate Simon’s “voice”, because it’s really inconsistent.  He veers wildly between what I assume the author thinks is some sort of period affectation, and modern English, when he could have chosen one.  

This is partly because the person writing doesn’t have a style, and partly because they haven’t had their work edited.  And because Simon doesn’t research.  The best way to mimic a style of writing from a certain period is to read things from that period. You can’t just shove words like “one” or “quaint” into your writing and expect it to sound authentic.

Anyway, Simon’s long and belaboured point, is that everything we think we know about monsters is wrong.  He spends another 3 paragraphs reiterating this and then passes up the opportunity to use the phrase “you may not believe in us, but we believe in you.”  This is a good phrase, human minds like repetition.  Instead we got “you may not be afraid of us, but we are still here.”

Disappointing.

Then we have some maths and may I just say, if maths is not your strong suit, do not try to put it in your book.

Simon has heard that up to fifty thousand people go missing every year.  He doesn’t know that, he’s just heard it, so from the outset, he’s not even using facts.

For some reason, he thinks missing people must either be murdered or assume a new identity. Those are the only two options he has.

In reality, a huge number of missing persons are not exactly missing, they’re people escaping abuse situations, and they get reported missing by their abuser.  Those people aren’t assuming a new identity or dead.

Simon also thinks all humans dump corpses in national forests.  I don’t know why he thinks this.  I expect there’s a lot of cleanup after dumping someone in a park.  Would it really be worth your while to drive all that way when there’s probably somewhere closer in a city where you could get the job done?  This is what cement boots are for, right?  I also don’t think murderers go to all that trouble of dumping a body just to leave it out in the open like that.  They’re going to at least dig a grave.

It’s also apparently unfeasible that anyone could adopt a new identity without a single hitch.  But you don’t actually have to adopt a new identity seamlessly to “go missing”.  The going missing part is just where you drop your old identity.  Hitches in adopting a new one are a separate issue.

Or maybe I’m just sensitive to this because I’m trans.

And then, in explaining why he isn’t going to claim his species is completely responsible for all missing people… Simon cites two things that do not cause people to go missing as examples for humanity’s awesome cruelty.

Awesome?  Not awful?  Okay then.

I understand that he’s trying to make a point, the theme of the book is obviously “humans are more monstrous than a real monster”, but the point loses something if you make it with a stupid example.

Oh and then we come to my favourite part of this chapter.

It is an experiment. A point. An argument for the furthering of knowledge. Mixed with a little boredom, if I am honest. You are a test subject. By reading this, you give consent to tell me what I need to know.

An experiment isn’t supposed to be making a point, Simon.  That’s not what experiments do.  Also, what is that last sentence?  Is he a mind reader now?  

I think Simon may be a little fixated on the “by <performing act> you give consent” concept.  But if you are telling someone something, you’ve presumably given consent.  The act of communicating with someone actually implies more consent than reading a book.

Now I’m gonna skip down to the part where he decides I don’t believe him.  I hope this telling me what I think isn’t going to continue all through the book because I’m not sure I can handle it.

Also, Simon really wishes this book had ended up on CW network. I know this because he says how disappointed he would be if that happened.  I personally wouldn’t write anything about the possibility of my book being adapted for screen in the book itself.  It kind of sounds like you think it’s your due when it’s really not.  Or like the only reason you wrote the book was to get rich off it.

There is one notable part of this chapter, and it’s this

If you are hoping to hear my account of slavery, you should know that I was fixated upon the flavors of meat raised in the terroir of Virginian tobacco plantations, and didn’t even notice the skin color of any given human.

We all know how Simon would excuse this, he’d say it’s not his fault he’s a monster blah blah blah.  But honestly, this is racist.  Even setting skin colour aside, is he trying to tell us he didn’t notice some humans were being treated as chattel?  I would think that’s something he would need to keep abreast of, considering he says he targets his food according to whether they’d be missed.

He also says his purpose isn’t to rewrite our past, which gives a great indication of what he thinks the past is (all the big events you learn about in primary school, no society and culture).  But that’s exactly what he wants to do.

Skipping down some more, over the part where he says if I find him funny, to consider he may not be kidding – it’s okay Simon, I’m laughing at you, not with you – and the part about diaries being a proper pursuit.  Even past the insult about mentally ill people.

BECAUSE THEN WE GET

“harangue me about being a second-rate author; but please be polite.”

Does Simon know what harangue means?  It means a tirade.  It’s not polite.

Another paragraph about how we shouldn’t care about his feelings because he doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.  And this next bit.

“You are encouraged to embrace this tale however you see fit, communicate with its author any way you can”

Except, apparently, from creating a tumblr blog, that is very wrong.

And that’s it!  Literally nothing happened.  Hopefully things get more exciting in Chapter 2.

🩸Diabolik Lovers where everything is the same except I’m the mc🩸

*An: This was just a random idea that I had so like don’t expect it to be serious and yes I’m going to be doing this with More Blood (also if the grammar/spelling is messed up...deal with it <3)*

Ep 1: 

when ayato took the phone I would be like "I'm happy you ain't dead but gimme my damn phone back"

nah if that was me I would be struggling way more and telling him to get off like who he thinks he is pushing up on me and we don't even know each other name

ayato: "you already know I'm about to take you" me: 👁👁💢 take what bitch

instead of pancake he would call me melons or sum cuz I got them big honkers and like I know that but him telling me that would make me so upset and I would call him a perv  

When laito and kanato licked me I would stand up and be like "what's up with yall and licking me plus where did you even come from" 

bruh ion like reiji but I would say "thank you finally someone with sense who isn't obsessed with licking me" 

ayato: "yours truly is going to take her every first experience" me: you have too much nerve

when reiji said the stuff about being impolite I would say "sorry about that but these other guys have been impolite to me and it's just made me feel unwelcome" because I would think he's different than the others  😞💔 oh how wrong I would be

them: talking bout brides and sacrifices me: ion like neither of those options 🧍‍♀️

Laito would not get away with calling me bitch-chan he can use kitten or sum but he ain't calling me no bitch ✋✋

please when Subaru broke the phone I would be like "BRO DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THAT COST WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU" 

me seeing Cordelia "IS THAT THE GRIMM REAPER"

ep 2:

laito: "are you tryna come onto me" me: no you're the one tryna come onto me leave me alone 

I would tell ayato to stop calling me melons and he wouldn't I would already be so done with him and then when he says my opinions don't matter I'll be like "and ur opinions don't matter to me"

reiji: "unless you want a whipping don't try anything reckless" me: a what now 😳

when ayato tells me to make takoyaki I would be like "I don't know how to cook I can barely do myself a grilled cheese sandwich so either do it yourself or teach me" 

I would smack ayato but I would probs still get bitten </3 a for effort at least

me 🤝 Yui: both drowning

ep 3

reiji: "one of these days I will take you aside and discipline you thoroughly understood?" me: oh so u one of them kinky motherfuckers gotcha 

I would tell ayato he got problems on sum sadist shit talking about feel more pain I would be suffering (literally and mentally) 

"No shu I did not come in here to see you naked I just wanna clean myself I'm leaving tell me when u get out" and then he wouldn't let me go 😐

Shu pulling on the hair reminds me of when my momma used to do my hair shit hurt :,)

shu: "think twice before contacting me again" no need to tell me again 

bro I would tell laito "ion belong to no one plus I didn't even consent to be a prize in this game I'm not an object" and he would be like "but you are an object your only purpose is to feed us your blood you will come to realize that soon kitten~"

ep 4

kanato going wild that I got him coffee me: 😟 it's not for all this sir please

nah right when laito's hat got taken off I would have been tryna run but he wouldn't let me go again a for effort. but that whole church scene I would genuinely be terrified and be crying and struggling so hard :,) it would probably turn him on becauses a sick bastard ✋ (I feel like he has a dacryphilia kink but then again what kink doesn't laito have)

ep 5

Yui needs to stop saying sorry but I would just look at kanato like 😟 therapy you need it and that's a factual statement 

my gag reflex would come when kanato kisses me I'm sorry pfft I don't even know why but I feel like it would 

when reiji said he wouldn't make tea for me I would be like "that doesn't seem like good manners to me 🙄"

I would be like "what did you put in the tea this better not be no get out shit"

this is when I would pop off at reiji and be like "you talking about me being impolite for coughing while you put something in my tea that's ruder than anything you damn hypocrite I can't believe I thought you were different"

ep 6

kanato on the edge would make my intrusive thoughts go wild like "what if I just pushed him off and dived out right after him" 🙈 

right when I see the doll room I'm not gon even step one foot in the room and I'm gon run away gives me Annabelle vibes I hate it

I would take up Subaru's offer but I would be like "but yall said I would die if I tried to escape" and when he gave me the knife I would be like "say less sheshhh thanks dude" 

I would threaten laito with my new acquired knife like🔪>:(  but when he says murdering is love to vampires I would be like "shit are you serious if it makes you happy then obviously I don't wanna do it now"

ep 7

me seeing the triplets as lil babies "they look kinda cute but this means that vampires can age but when to they stop aging-" *cue me rethinking the whole vampire lore*

Cordelia yelling at ayato and telling him to be the best "no wonder he's such a narcissist looks like all of yall need therapy and not just kanato"

ep 8

me looking into all the diaboys memories: I thought I had family issues but yall have mega family issues 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

ep 9

me when shu pins me down: OH NAH IM NOT TRYNA RECREATE WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CHURCH WITH LAITO-

"women are terrifying" sir if anything I'm more terrified of u stop sucking my dang blood please

me seeing Richter for the first time: how you a vampire giving off vampire hunter vibes it must be the coat-  

ep 10

"have you become afraid of us now" bro I always was-

sees Cordelia again "oh shit something bad is about to happen ri-" *gets possessed*

as for eps 11 and 12 I had nothing to add lol

legally i have to give you intern 2

em you have awoken an ungodly beast inside me so i need to warn everyone that this post is. incomprehensible. but so is mymusic so i guess we're all used to it.

How I feel about this character:

i watched mymusic as it was airing/running/coming out specifically bc i'm a jack stannie, and as a kid melvin was my second favorite character (w scene being in first, obvs) for mostly that reason. he basically hovered around this ranking until my most recent rewatch in the summer of 2020, which was actually spurred by some events in my personal life that vaguely reminded me of scene's season two arc w jeff, and i thought it'd been a funny/nostalgic way to get my mind off things.

(i want to side note here that -- i know you didn't ask, but -- i love jeff. i have since i was a kid. like, obviously not as a person but i think he's honestly the best written character in the series, w indie close in second. idk what it says about the f*nes that their most interesting and well rounded characters are the villains, but i digress. to this day i'm salty that jeff never got added to the theme song and wasn't really included in promotional merch.)

however, in said rewatch, certain things about how he was written started to really get under my skin, and certain moments in particular have really stuck out to me in a negative way. like, for the entirety of season one and a good chunk of season two he's one person, and then he leaves mymusic and we have an entirely different person, but not in a nuanced character building sort of way.

i've said a few of these points before but i'll repeat them here regardless. at the risk of sounding like i've put on a tin-foil hat, it's my sneaking suspicion that scindie was supposed to be endgame, but since fan reception to it was pretty neutral, and scenechart stans were, at the very least, more vocal, changes were made to the intended finale, which is why in the last scene he's basically just. indie. like, if everything about the show was exactly the same but indie was the one who had ended up w scene in the end that would have made so much more sense since a) scene had a crush on indie that he/everyone knew about and b) indie was kind of a dick despite the half-assed attempts at redemption, so both combined make it slightly less weird/out-of-nowhere that he kisses her w/o her consent (since, even though like. implied consent is not real at worst and a fuzzy subject at best but you could argue that scene would want indie to kiss her); and this isn't even taking into consideration that c) melvin is heavily queer-coded in both seasons, with his friendship with nerdcore being, dare i say, homoerotic at times, and his arc about leaving the company and changing his name mirroring nerdcore's almost perfectly (with nerdcore being a character who b*nny [at least] has all but confirmed is actually gay).

i've also been on the fence about melvin's behavior in that final scene making more sense for indie's character being an intentional decision as a way of shoe-horning in a theme about the lasting effects of abuse/cycles of abuse/the corruption of power but i also don't think the f*nes are smart enough for that. however, for the sake of defending my straw theory, i also point to the scene where indie comes to visit the acid factory after melvin told him to shut up, and we see melvin use reggie as a foot-stool, going as far as to say that it feels good to do so (which, in all honesty, i think is a bit that was entirely improvised, since the f*nes were "notorious for never saying cut" [paraphrased from a bts video], but work w me here). he's also given a seltzer mug that perfectly resembles indie's kombucha mug. in these moment melvin is directly emulating the behavior of his previous abuser, purposefully or not, literal moments after being promoted to an equal position of authority, which was totally just included as a joke, but could also be argued is meant to show that he's becoming indie; or, if we acknowledge that the f*nes have no fucking clue what they're doing and were just directing like chickens with their heads cut off, it at least shows that melvin's new position of power is leading him to understand where indie was coming from, which is supported by their conversation in the finale.

the following contains a couple brief mentions of irl sexual assault so if that's something you'd like to avoid skip to the next section!

HOWEVER, that alone isn't what i have a problem with, since i think melvin is completely justified in being a dick to indie (and also reggie enthusiastically consents to being used as an ottoman so good for him i guess). the issue comes completely in how he treats scene in the scenes where the f*nes clearly thought what they were writing was super romantic. like, the fact that the only thing he's got hung on his cubicle wall is a single picture of scene taken from the fucking opening credits (like. how hard would it have been to have. literally any other photo[s] esp since there's an abundance of cute bts pics of the cast in costume that could have been put there) and him scrolling through her twitter at work really creep me out (and at the risk of oversharing the weird, like, social media stalking angle really fucks w me bc that may or may not have been the exact fucking thing i was trying to escape in rewatching mymusic in the first place). also, having him sexually assault scene as a means of comforting her after she had just been sexually assaulted in the same way by someone else was... a choice (which is also, uh, personally familiar).

again, i recognize that demonizing melvin wasn't what the f*nes were trying to do here, and i perhaps seem hypocritical for opening liking jeff, but what makes jeff work is he's intentionally "the bad guy." having melvin do the same things as indie and jeff uncritically only proves further that the f*nes can't write for shit, and ruins his character which had, up until he quit mymusic, been unironically good. like, it's obviously not beneficial that the exact asshole things he does are personally triggering, but the character would still be a mess and i would still dislike him regardless.

i want to say though that jack delivers a surprisingly great performance despite how shoddily his character is constructed and how little experience he has as an actor. like, it's clear he was having a lot of fun on set and i would love to see him in something, like, good; i think he could pull off even like, guest television roles, which is a lot more than can be said for other youtubers.

-----

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

nerdchart should have been canon i'm sorry. i know that close, nonromantic male friendships are valuable, esp between queer men, but also gd wouldn't it have been baller to have a canon interracial mlm ship. like. c'mon. and they could have been such a good friends to lovers story! we already got to see how melvin was the only person nerdcore could really be himself around so it would have been so cool if melvin's self-advocacy arc/flowchart arc had revolved more around nerdcore with a little role-reversal! and then they kiss! like god intended!

also i ship him and indie bc i'm a grubby little gremlin man ohoho. enemies w weird sexual tension? sign me up. not even enemies to lovers i'm not saying this one should have been canon i just love the vibes. do you think melvin and indie ever explored each other's bod-- *gunshot*

-----

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

i wish him and scene had just been bros. god remember in season one when they were just bros that was the life.

alternatively, i wish we'd seen more bonding w him and metal, as a means of reconciling that. uh. moment from season one. along similar lines i would have loved to see him get closer w rayna in a similar way to how she bonded w nerdcore in season two. i think that could have also worked to show how she'd grown between the two seasons.

-----

My unpopular opinion about this character:

HIM. AND. SCENE. SHOULD. HAVE. JUST. BEEN. BROS. (though i think my general dislike of him is pretty unpopular, lmao).

when the show was coming out i don't think it's unfair to say that scenechart/scenetern 2 was the most popular ship (aside from potentially techstep whatever) but luckily we're all gay and have better taste now. unfortunately i totally fell into this camp and scenechart was even my otp for years (until it was arguably more unfortunately usurped by reddie in 2019) and i didn't even realise that it's a hot mess until, again, the summer of 2020.

when actually watching the show the choices the f*nes made in regards to how the ship actually became canon are so odd and out of place, too? okay, so, on one hand everyone just shipped scenechart bc it was the whitest hettiest ship in the show (esp in season two when idol left) aside from scindie (and we already discussed what's wrong w that). but, on the other hand, lainey and jack clearly also just got along? and i suspect that lainey probably also admired jack's work and was happy to be working with him bc we have so many shots throughout even the first season when the ship wasn't the intended endgame of lainey scene looking really fondly at jack melvin at times when it doesn't make much sense at all, esp since she's smitten w indie? this trend continues into the second season which arguably works but it still seems really out of place for him to be the one to ultimately make the first move on her since it's clear she was the one crushing this whole time and also he's gay! this bitch is gay what the fuck!!

-----

One thing I wish had happened with this character in canon:

at this point i'm struggling to think of anything i haven't covered yet. oops.

i've talked at length before about how he should have been a woman/lesbian, but the tl;dr is that it would have solved a lot of the queer-coding "problems" that just didn't get resolved in the show. if he'd been a lesbian then not only would the friendship w nerdcore still made sense, but scenechart would have as well (not even mentioning that both of scene's other relationships w men make a lot of sense as comphet anyway).

here are some people who claims that, it is permissible to drink alcoholic drinks such as (araq and beer) excluding the wine, to the limit that will not get a person drunk, referring to Imam-I Azam Abu Hanafi and some companions of Prophet Mohammad (sallallahu aleyhu vesellem), what is the truth behind these rumors?

In our religion any drink, little or much, that gets a person drunk are all rendered as haram (illicit). Islam has rendered all sorts of drinks that gets one drunk haram (illicit) and prohibited believers to drink any of them. A true Muslim should stay away from alcohol and drugs. In the Noble Qur'an, the following is stated “O ye who believe! Strong drink and games of chance and idols and divining arrows are only an infamy of Satan's handiwork. Leave it aside in order that ye may succeed. Satan seeketh only to cast among you enmity and hatred by means of strong drink and games of chance, and to turn you from remembrance of Allah and from (His) worship. Will ye then have done ?” (Al-Maidah, 5/90-91) That verse clearly expresses the profound reasons for the alcohol prohibition.

In the Hadiths, using/drinking every sort of substances that intoxicate people is strongly prohibited. As a matter of fact, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: “Every drink that makes you drunk is haram (illicit).” (Bukhari, Wudu, 71; Adab, 80; Muslim, Ashriba, 7); “If a large amount of anything causes intoxication, a small amount of it is also prohibited .” (Abu Dawud, Ashriba, 5: Tirmidhi, Ashriba, 3).

As it can be understood from the hadiths above, drinking alcohol, whether a little or too much, is haram (illicit). If a person does something that is illicit it means that person has committed haram and committed sins. That person who has committed sins should abandon that misdeed and should repent as soon as possible. May Allah forgive the sins of those who repent.

Today, there is a consensus among all the medicine scientists about the harms of alcohol on human health. The statistics and the attempts of prohibition by some states are the most revealing proofs of the economical, social and moral harms of alcoholic drinks.

In order to make the issue to be more thoroughly understood within the basic Islamic perspective, we deem it suitable to present some rules and explanations listed as below:

1. The fatwas (religious advisories) about the matter given by mujtahids of Islamic law such as Imam Azam does not mean that some of the alcoholic beverages are not illicit. The fatwas of those scholars of Islamic law, is either misunderstood or their fatwas are for those drinks which do not include alcohol. To interpret those fatwas as alcoholic drinks are halal to drink is against the standpoint of the community, against the spirit of Islam and against the Shari'a. If a large amount of anything causes intoxication, a small amount of it is also prohibited. Those who say you may drink are mistaken.

2. Every drink that gives you drunkenness is illicit. However, there is a difference between wine which the Qur'an says haram and the other alcoholic drinks. Wine itself alone has been considered unclean. If wine was spilled on a dress, it would make that dress dirty and leave stain and it should be cleaned. The other alcoholic drinks apart from being illicit are not unclean as wine. For instance, drinking cologne is haram; however when using it for cleaning ourselves there is nothing wrong with it.

3. Alcoholic drinks such as beer and raki are illicit according to Imam Abu Hanifa, too. What Abu Hanifa says not illicit are the unfermented juices made of fruits and grains such as barley, wheat and honey. They do not have any intoxicating effect. However, since the intoxicating effect of beer and raki is obviously known, it is undoubtedly illicit according to Abu Hanifa.

It would not be permissible to rename drinks as beer and raki and declare them halal while they are illicit to drink. Furthermore Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) foretold that his community would drink alcoholic drinks called with different names and warned them to avoid doing so.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) says: Verily and undoubtedly, there will appear people among my followers who will drink alcohol and call it by another name and women will sing and play stringed instruments above their heads. May Allah sink them under earth! And turn them into pigs and monkeys. (Nasai, Ashriba 41; Ibn Majah, Fitan, 22)

In another hadith, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) says: “From among my followers, there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk, the drinking of alcoholic drinks, and the use of musical instruments as lawful. And (from them), there will be some who will stay near the side of a mountain, and in the evening their shepherd will come to them with their sheep and ask them for something, but they will say to him, 'Return to us tomorrow.' Allah will destroy them during the night and will let the mountain fall on them, and Allah will transform the rest of them into monkeys and pigs and they will remain so till the Day of Resurrection” (Bukhari, Ashriba, 6; Abu Dawud, Libas, 6)

Those hadiths deliver a clear and certain judgment that is rendered for those who stick to those names and shapes of what Allah has prohibited and accepting as halal by twisting the meaning without observing the truth and the real purpose behind it. In addition, those hadiths blame those who turn to cheating by having illegal sexual intercourse (committing adultery) under the name of marriage, drinking alcoholic drinks by calling them nabiz, etc., wearing silk under the name of garment. If changing the names and shapes would provide the change of rules and truths, the faith would be deteriorated, the Shari'a would be altered and Islam would collapse. Hadith is the proof against those things which are inexorably rendered haram; they will remain so even though their names are changed. It is because the judgments depend on the meaning and to the purpose of the proceedings not on the external appearance of them. Those hadiths indicate us that those who turn to cheating in order to render what Allah ordered Haram (illicit) as Halal (lawful) will be subjected to a great deal of harsh torment. And that the judgments depend on the causes, that the cause of alcohol that makes it haram is the intoxicating effect and that when that effect is eminent, changing the name of it will not keep it out of the judgment and that it will be considered an alcoholic drink and will be rendered haram (illicit). (Ibn Hajar, Fathu’l –Bari, Beirut, 2000, X, 56)

4. According to the Islamic belief and the belief of Ahl Sunnah, nobody is innocent but the Prophets. Even the greatest companions of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and the greatest mujtahids of Islamic law might make mistakes in their jurisprudence. In Islam, the principle: “There are two rewards for a mujtahid whose jurisprudence is correct;, and there is one reward for a mujtahid whose jurisprudence is wrong. ” shows that mujtahids might make mistakes too. About a subject with different jurisprudence, the opinion of the majority of Islamic scholars' community will be accepted as principal, and the fatwa is released according to that opinion.

The path where the ummah (faithful community) should walk is the path of the majority of Islamic scholars’ community, which is the largest path of Islam.

Those who leave the opinion of the majority of Islamic scholars' community aside and try to manipulate people through marginal fatwas by knowingly or unknowingly are conducting people away from Allah's consent.

As a matter of fact, according to what is reported from Abdullah B. Umar, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: “My ummah (faithful community) will never come together and agree on depravity. Never depart from the community because Allah's protecting hand is on the community.” Haythami emphasized that that hadith reported by Tabarani was sound. (Majmau’z-Zawaid, 5/218)

As it can be seen, that hadith clearly tells people to follow the path of majority of the Islamic scholars' community because when it says the ummah and community it means the majority of the Islamic scholars' community (Multitude of Ulama). Those who are not Ulama do not have the competence and authorization to say wrong or right about a subject. It indicates that accepting the jurisprudence which is against the opinion of the majority of Islamic scholars' community, even if they belong to Imam Azam or Imam Nahai or Imam Shafii, is against the order of that hadith. Besides, the fatwas of those Islamic scholars do not indicate that alcohol is halal (lawful). There is a case which originates from the misunderstanding and the misinterpreting of those fatwas. We have already explained what Imam Azam's fatwa means before.

Abdullah B. Umar narrates: Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: “Every drink that gives drunkenness is wine, and every drink that gives drunkenness is illicit (haram).” (Muslim, Ashriba,73,74; Abu Dawud, Ashriba,5; Tirmidhi, Ashriba,1; Ibn Majah, Ashriba,9; Ahmad b. Hanbal, 2/16,29)

According to another narration: “Every drink that gives you drunkenness is wine, and every wine is illicit. (Haram)” (Muslim, Ashriba, 75)

It is a mutawatir hadith reported by the twenty six companions of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). It is also the opinion of the canonical community. (W. Zuhayli, Takhriju Ahadithi Tuhfati’l-fuqaha, 3/449) Wine (Hamr) is not only the name of what is made of grapes but it is the name of every alcoholic drink that gives drunkenness. It is because the word Hamr (wine) means the one that covers the mind (consciousness) and it has all the content that makes one drunk.

According to what Bukhari reports from Aisha, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said:”Any drink that gives drunkenness (has the properties of giving) is illicit (Haram).”(Bukhari, Wudu,71; Ashriba,4)

According to a narration reported from Jabir, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said:” If a large amount of anything causes intoxication, a small amount of it is also prohibited”(Abu Dawud, Ashriba,5; Tirmidhi, Ashriba,3; Nasai, Ashriba,35; Ibn Majah, Ashriba, 10; Darimi, Ashriba, 8; Ahmad b. Hanbal, 3/91). Ibn Hajar emphasied that the hadith was sound. (at-Talhisu’l-Khabir, 359-360)

About the matter, the following hadith is also significant: Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: “if a faraq of anything causes intoxication, a handful of it is also forbidden. (Tirmidhi, Ashriba, 3; Abu Dawud, 5; Musnad, 6/71, 72, 13) “Faraq” is an old measurement unit which is a container that is equal to approximately 43,5 kg.

As Ibn Munzir states whether it is hamr/wine or not , If a large amount of anything causes intoxication, a small amount of it is also haram. (Awnu’l-Mabud, 8/181-Shamila)

According to hadith scholars (Avnu’l-Mabud ibid), the soundest hadith regarding the issue is the one reported by Nasai, from Sad b. Abi Wakqqas: ”the Messenger of Allah (pbuh), forbad the small amount of a substance that intoxicated when taken in large amounts.” (Nasai, Ashriba, 35)

As it is seen, the soundest hadith also emphasized the same truth about the matter.

5. Every interpreter of Islamic law took the hadith as it would mean in his own time and place where he lived. However, the Messenger of Allah (pbuh), used it in another meaning. He would stick to the general meaning of the matter more than the lexical meaning of the word thinking that it was a rule to take the lexical meaning.

As a matter of fact, when some scholars heard the narrations that permitted drinking nabiz (wine), they thought it meant an intoxicating drink that they knew in their time and place. However, in many hadiths, the meaning of that word is explained clearly. According to them “nabiz” meant fruit juice in which dates, dried raisins, etc are added in order to sweeten and that is drunk before it forms foams and becomes intoxicant.

Similarly, some scholars took meaning of the word hamr as it was present in their dictionary; they thought it was “grape juice that became intoxicant by forming foams”. However, in many sound hadith, it is explained that meaning of the word hamr includes every drink that intoxicates.

6. Even though there is a misunderstanding that some scholars like Abu Hanifa did not lay it as a condition for alcoholic drinks other than wine to be intoxicating to be haram, the community of scholars rejected that judgment.

On the other hand, there is a big possibility that those scholars were not aware of those hadiths which had not been compiled yet at those times.

Hanafi sect's famous hadith scholar Imam Tahawi stated that the hadiths about the matter were sound but they were interpreted in a different way. (Ibn Hajar, Fathu’l-Bari, the explanation of the hadith in question)

In addition, we should not forget the fact that the Imams of Four sects also said:“If you see a hadith which contradicts a judgment that I gave, smash my words on the wall and act in accordance with the hadith.”

Since we have all those true hadiths in our hands now and it is obvious that the common opinion of the majority of the Hanafi scholars and especially Imam Muhammad (pbuh) about this matter, of course, a god-fearing person would not follow any path but the common path of the community of the scholars and hadiths and would never suggest anyone anything against that opinion.

Reasons Why I Don’t Like Barchie

Let me start off by saying that I don't really have a ship for any of the teens really. There are some that I like more than others and there are a couple that are 100% my NOTPs (Barchie being one of them), but I'm not a Bughead stan, a Varchie stan, a Beronica stan, a Choni stan, etc. I mainly focus on the plot and the parents. Ships aren't my main focus most of the time. But I haven't been able to watch this season since Barchie got so much bigger and I'll tell you why.

When I started to watch Riverdale, I was 100% in Betty's shoes. I had a big crush on my best friend and I thought that eventually we'd end up together and when I thought he liked me back, I got rejected just like Betty and was expected to continue to move on as best friends as if nothing happened. But just like Betty, it was too hard and too painful. That happened to me irl only about a few weeks before I watched it happen on Riverdale and I went through that heartbreak all over again. I've seen shippers praising the exact scene where Archie broke Betty's heart after the dance. I don't understand why you could praise a scene where he HURT her. It would be the same vice versa....if she had broken his heart. Either way, it's not romantic at all. She went into her room and probably cried that night. Something I know well about feeling unwanted.

I know several people blame Grundy for that, but that doesn't make any sense. Here's why. Archie never looked at Betty the way he looked at Veronica THE SECOND, she showed up in Pop's her first night in Riverdale. Right there is a clear sign that he wasn't interested in Betty. He proposed to her when they were younger, yes. But they grew up, still really close to each other, and he never asked her out. Meaning he either didn't see her the way he saw Veronica that first day, or he really did just want to stay friends with Betty. Back to Grundy. People say that Archie felt drawn to Grundy so he rejected Betty. But if it were because of Grundy, why, only two episodes after Grundy leaves, did Archie go straight for VALERIE and NOT Betty? Grundy left in Season 1, Episode 4. Which means Archie could have gotten with Betty (if she really was his first choice) in Season 1, Episode 5. I know, I know. It was too soon, right? Hm? Then why did Archie get with Valerie in Season 1, Episode 6? That's not even that much longer after Grundy left. So when people say that Archie has loved Betty this whole time, it doesn't feel true to me, because if she really was his first choice, he would've gone right to her once Grundy was gone, but nope. He chose Valerie first. Also...he kissed Veronica in Episode 1, which shows that Grundy was definitely not stopping him from kissing other girls. They both KNEW Betty liked him yet they kissed anyway even though they WERE just gonna stand in the closet and not do anything till time was up, but they kissed anyway because they were attracted to each other. If Archie was attracted to Betty from the get-go, he wouldn't have held back from kissing her the moment he knew she liked him. He liked Veronica that way, not Betty. So I'm debunking the Grundy theory.

Another thing that bothers me is when people call Jughead "Betty's rebound" off of Archie. Hm...if that was true, I doubt she would've stayed with her "rebound" as long as 4 years. Especially since Betty and Archie have both been single at the same time yet she still chose Jughead over him. She fell for Jug after he finally gave her back the stuff she's been waiting for from Archie. So Jughead was and is not a rebound. If anything, Veronica was ARCHIE's rebound. But not from Betty. FROM VALERIE. He got drunk af at Jughead's birthday party because it was right after Val left him for being a terrible boyfriend (which he clearly is) and after Val threw her drink in his face, he got more drunk and then Veronica kissed him and he was like "Oh, sure. I'll sleep with you since you kissed me and I'm upset and Val left me."

Back to Archie being a terrible boyfriend (aside from when he was with Josie). With Val...he ignored her and only gave her attention when he was gaining something with his music. Then Cheryl's family gave him an opportunity to go to a good music school, so boom, he ignored Val's wish not to be Cheryl's date to her family Maple Gathering. Dumb move. No wonder Val told him she was done. Then...with Veronica, he kissed Betty. But then Betty was not interested (Hmmm, because she loves her “”rebound”” Jughead so much). And then Veronica told Archie to stay away from Hiram and what did Archie do? Completely ignored her and got stuck in some big mob mess and illegal shit. Then he broke up with her over the phone when she was trying to support him. So she got with Reggie who treated her so well (yes, they had problems too) but he was so whipped for her, let's be real. He did everything she wanted and he would've done anything for her. Then they had their issues and broke up but they were about to get back together, LITERALLY, just as Archie showed up and was all "I love you. Come back to me" and Veronica was obviously still not over him, so poor Reggie had no chance and then Veronica got back with Archie who she should not have gotten back with. She was amazing to him (all of his friends were) when his father passed away. But VERONICA talked him out of saying that his father would be ashamed of him and she made him see otherwise and told him that Fred would be proud of him. That's a GOOD girlfriend. Meanwhile, Archie still has eyes for other girls (Betty now apparently). But anyway. I'm just saying that Betty AND Veronica both deserve a better guy than Archie Andrews.

I just don't see why any girl on this show would be shipped with him. Remember when Veronica decided to kiss Jughead to even the playing field after they told Jug about Barchie kissing? Archie looked pissed. Like wtf? You kissed Betty when you were STILL WITH VERONICA. At least Betty and Jughead were over at the time. I don't believe Archie had a right to look so mad about Jeronica's little fun/platonic kiss when what he did was behind Veronica's back and while they were still together. Her and Jug "getting even" was right there in front of the other two and playful. Nothing to be angry or possessive about Archie. Jeez.

The only time he was an outstanding boyfriend was with Josie and that was the only time I was actually EXCITED to watch Archie scenes. They were great together and they both EQUALLY supported each other and helped each other through things. Not to say that Archie doesn't have good qualities, because he does. He's been trying to clean up Riverdale and he helped Veronica figure out how to get Hiram to fight through his sickness. But I just really can't see him with Betty after everything they've been through without each other. They barely talk anyway till now when they're FAKING being together.

Bonus: There are people who talk about how Archie and Betty doing investigations together are better than Betty and Jughead. But the only time Betty and Archie did an investigation together was to figure out who the Black Hood was and they ended up unmasking the wrong person. Their janitor, who was actually innocent. So clearly, Betty and Jughead are a better team. Not to mention, Archie can really be one of the biggest dumbasses in Riverdale.

THE COMICS: Yes. I know they are canon in the comics. But we well know that the comics and the show are VERY different (Did you know that Penny Peabody and Fangs Fogarty are supposed to be endgame like they are in the comics??? But Riverdale made Penny a 30 year old and Fangs a 16 year old, so that became a "NO" right away. Hence...the difference between the show and the comics). Also....there are comics where Betty kisses Archie behind Veronica's back when Varchie were together and she kissed him without his consent in the dark when he thought he was kissing Veronica (A BIG "NO"). So the comics aren't really a good template to follow. Especially since nowadays, I really don't see chemistry between Lili and KJ. Their fake kiss in the music room (I've seen it on Twitter, because I still haven't seen 4x16) was so awkward and weird to watch. It was so bad. Idk. I can't get behind it.

THE FORBIDDEN LOVE: I don’t understand why people call them forbidden, when they’re both Northsiders who grew up next door to each other and they were never forbidden from being friends. They’re not a forbidden love. Bughead was at first because he was from the Southside and Alice didn’t want Betty to be around Jug or Serpents. But Barchie is definitely not forbidden love. If it is now, then it’s because they would both be cheating and that is disgusting.

Anyway, I haven't been able to watch the season since 4x15, because all of this fake Barchie nonsense legit makes me ACTUALLY sick to my stomach. Cheating really is not okay at all and them pretending that Archie cheated on Veronica and that Betty would get another boyfriend SO FAST after she was framed for MURDERING HER OWN really does not sit well with me or my stomach. The writers are NOT doing this right. If they wanted Barchie to be together....the best way to have done that would have been through them ACTUALLY breaking up with their s/o and then becoming close friends again AND THEN moving around to that romance. But this fake dating and fake cheating stuff is disgusting and I don't think I'm gonna continue season 4 if they become canon that way. Just no.

Reviewcaps: Star Vs: Club Snubbed

Dance week kicks off!  I finally advance in the tomtrospective as Star makes the critical mistake of listening to ponyhead and causes a dad fight that threatens to spill into an international incident unless she and Tom can get along. Tom dosen’t know how to be nice under the cut. 

And we’re back! As I put in my latest amphibia review a combination of a busy few weeks and other things to cover has kept me from doing more reviews, and as such I left this on the backburner. But I decided that just ain’t right so this week, i’m not only bringing back the tomtrospective, but i’m doing a whole bundle of dance themed episodes because as i’ve made clear in the past, and making clear for you I love em. I never went to my own school dances and the one dance I went to for Demolay was fun enough, so that mixed with the shipping, hilariaty and usual good quality brought to these affairs made me want to do a theme week after Owl House last week, but ennui made me reconsider. So now i’m re-reconsidering. Lucky you! With that we can move on.  Unlike the last few tom reviews, this one.. takes place after about 80 pounds of plot have happened, so it’s time for a fuck ton of exposition to refresh your memories:  PREVIOUSLY ON STAR VS:

OH GOD WHY OKAY i GET IT THE GAG’S OVER... MOVING ON TO THE ACTUAL EXPOSITION. YEESH But yeah since we could largely sidestep the main story since tom came in literally before it in season 1 and it was irrelvant to him in season 2, I have a lot to cover.  Over the last two seasons, Toffee, a septarian warrior who assinated moon’s mom despite her almost brokering peace between monsters and mewman when Moon was just a teenager, plotted and schemed to destroy all magic, having star nuke the wand to spilit it in half, manupliating ludo from the inside of his half and then using his new existance as pure magic to slowly destroy it from the inside while using ludo as a puppet when necessary. Meanwhile , Star started to catch feelings for Marco just as Marco was getting somewhere with his crush Jackie Lynn Thomas, who star was being his wing man with unaware of her own feelings. This came to a head when a dance, yes another one, happened where Jackie asked Marco out on their first proper date, Star was jealous but couldn’t figure out why and this distracted her enough to let Ludo sneak in with his army of rats and then take the book.  Stars parents, in a suprising move for her mom more than her dad, accepted what happened and trusted her, though Moon started covertly working to get the book back under the nose of her allies in the magical high comission. Meanwhile Toffee revealed himself, while Star finally did realize her feelings for marco and proceded to supress them.  This all came to a head in the last two episodes of season 2: First Star had her song day, which meant having a song wirtten about her which was honest.. a bit too honest as it revealed her parents hiding the book, leading to the people being upset with our king and queen and the commission understadanbly being pissed Moon didn’t tell them sooner. Oh and the song also, without star’s consent, revealed she’s intrested in marco... right in front of Marco. And this part is actually really important to today’s episode but we’ll get to that.  Star continued to deny having feelings for Marco instead of working through them as the school year ended, while Moon and the comisson lead a raid on the monster castle, which will also be important later, TOffe was headquartered in. Things quickly went pear shaped, with Toffee easily murdering most of the comission, including moon by sucking out their life force to increase his own power, since their all made of magic, and only lekmet, the comisson’s wise sorta leader and team healer, surivived, using the last of his own life force to save moon before ending up as a pile of dust and a horn with Moon quickly escaping with the rest of her allies.. and Toffee omniously saying he was coming for Star and his finger.  Moon naturally panicked and told star they were leaving, possibly forever, for her own saftey, and Star confessed how she felt to Marco.. in front of Jackie> Which is never dealt with even when Jackie comes back. 

Also this confession isn’t dealt with until near the tail fucking end of season 3. God dammit star vs , just god damn. Anyways Moon tried to both hide star and ressurect her commrades, while a miserable Marco headed back to mewnit o find her only to get captured with river when Ludo, under toffe’s advisment, took hte castle.. and not under his advisment destroyed the book and it’s keeper and local asshat glossaryck.  Star eventually said “Fuck that” to “Hide and hope he never finds us” moon learned some lessons about racial tolerance she promptly unlearned next season, and Star dove into her wand with Ludo’s help, as Ludo had started to catch on to the frequent blackouts. Turns out that was toffe’s plan as he apparently kills star, and finished off magic and now restored, just casually walks off after easily taking out star’s allies.. including a greiving moon and marco. Also marco punches a whole in his chest. 

But STar manages to restore magic, unlock her butterfly form and reduce Toffee to a puddle of goo which Ludo finished off.. which also means moon’s attempt to dicker Eclipsa out of freedom just got undone. Yayyyy! I mean oh no.. no no I mean yay. She’s the best part of season 3.  So ALLL of that was to get to the status quo at this point: Marco goes home after a few weeks where again, the confession thing? Never brought up, while Star vows to stay to be a better princess. And yeah this does bring up one of Season 3′s biggest issues as despite Marco having dimensional scissors, the show constnatly acts like he can’t you know visit or vice versa. They just use the other dimension thing as a lazy excuse to write the earth side cast out even though....

I went with a Picard  one because why not. I get it being HARD for either ot make time for the other.. but make that a PLOT POINT instead of saying “oh you have to pick one”. Because it makes no fucking sense. Especially since star can still CALL THEM, so there’s no sense in them being absent from each other’s lives. Just schedule. Jesus. And it only gets WORSE from there.  Yeah see Season 3 is where the quality starts to get... 50/50. And unlike Amphibia where the last few weeks before marcy have been more one mediocre episode and one great episode the qulaity here is more “some great episodes, some utter abominations of episodes that destroy character or any semblance of plot” and some just okay ones too. Thankfully the first few from the season we have to cover for Tom, for the boy, are really good.. but we’ll get into the shit soon enough.. and somebody’s gotta shovel it. And so it might as well be me. But for now instead of shoveling horse crap we’re shoveling giant piles of sugar so pitter patter, let’s get at er, this is club snubbed.  It’s 2017, a winter’s ball and the butterfly family.. is actually not doing great, as most of the other kingdoms seem to view them as week for the whole rat invasion thing.. or at least the spider bites do. Yup this is where we meet the king, queen and daughter penelope. Aka two assholes who are dumb and I hate them and their precious daughter who I hope overthrows them. To thorw back to my loud house reviews, I hate them more than rusty. And look at him. LOOK AT HIM. 

The one in the center. Look at him. LOOK AT HIM.  Okay my irational hatred of the little prick, which isn’t entirely irrational aside the spider bites are rude, condescending, and really need to be overthrown so Penelope can take their throne. I just hate htem.. but unlike Rusty they don’t show up as much and that’s literally all I can say nice about htem. Penelope seems nice and I wish she got more screentime and she has an intresting romance we’ll get into in a few episodes, but  they are just.. their the kind of people you don’t want to be trapped in a room with alone for a prolonged amount of time. The kind of married couple other married couples, I conjecture i’m single and very lonely mind, are awkwardly roped into spending time with and then have to get drunk to ignore them sniping at each other or that ends in a who’s afraid of virginia wolfe situation. Thankfully their barely in this episode I just felt like getting my hate out at them since i’m probably not covering surviving the spider-bites for a while.  Anyways while they snipe at River who fires back “They were really big rats’ and I mean.. who does that.. who comes to someone elses house and tells htem they suck under their breath.. I mean rich assholes obviously, I answered my own question there but at least do it at your own house or on the carraige ride home sheesh. Your lucky river didn’t elbow drop both of you. It’s what you deserved.  Okay enough bitching about this stuff, the asshole kingdom, and penelope, along with all the other kingdoms of mewni are here for the silver bell ball, an annual tradition to reinvgorate the ties between kingdoms. It’s also how star and tom met, and that’s the topic of discussion with Star and her best friend, Pony Head... of the pony heads. Why yes a major chacter on this show is a talking horses head who acts like a mean teenage girl. And why no I have no idea where her species food goes or how she digests it, I frankly don’t want to know. Some things are better left unknown.  Anywho yeah this is my first review with ponyhead in it and she’s a divisive character to say the least. Some hate her , some love her, some REALLY hate her.. me.. I find her 50/50. Sometimes she can be really funny and entertaining and a good counterpoint to star, other time she’s obnoxious and a waste of hte wonderful Jenny Slate’s talents. This time she’s more obnoxious as this entire plot is partly her fault, btu we’ll get to that. We do get her and star scoping out the other royals, though Star’s unintresteds since she knows all of them, and Pony is only intersted because Larry kelpbotom got hot.. just like archie. And he’s got abs, just like archie. Two sentences I never would’ve said for years and years but that’s what Riverdale does to you. Back on topic the two talk Tom’s transparent absence and them having met and ponyhead having predicted drama. the two then horse around a bit before moon dickishly shushes them. Star only goes along with it because she’s trying to be a better princess, hence her staying on mewni at all now the danger’s passed, but yeah... even with moon’s backstory this moment just.. isn’t every plesant. Because while her backstory explains al ot, it dosen’t forgive how she treats star at times, as all star was doing here was being a normal teenage girl and not kicking her door down or anything. Star greets the other princes and princesses, including penelope, all of who I wish had more screentime. “Sigh” It’s then we get TOM. Horay!. And his family! Double horay, Queen Wrathmelor Lucitor and King Dave Lucitor. And yes I love how , just like the prince of the underworld is named Tom, the king, even if by marraige presumibly, is named dave. King Dave. I love it. Dave is a normal sized guy while his wife is giant.. and I can conjecture how they had tom but this isn’t hte place for that. The point is their perfectly lovely people, and I like that they zigged from where they were likelky orignally going with tom having abusive parents. INstead as far as I can figure they merley spoiled him and that combined with growing up in the unusual enviroment of the underworld and their own unresolved anger issues meaning they never thought to teach him how to deal with them properly. More on this later.  Anyways tom is here and in shades, because his parents are good people and River warmly greets the lucitors. IT’s time for the ball to get underway. 

Glad you asked. Basically each prince or princess asks each other prine or princess to dance, until everyone's dance with everyone. Simple. However suprisingly for him, Tom picks princess Jags to dance first. It’s then Pony ruins everything because she’s Ponyhead, and i’ts her special life skill. She tells Star tom’s “Club Snubbing” her... basically showing intrest in other girls to specifically act like he isn’t intrested.. which to be fair....

DOES sound like something Tom would do.. and what Pony’s doing to Larry because she’s a terrible person. It isn’t what he’s doing, we’ll get to the why at the right time, but it’s not unfair of star to suspect that. 

So Star decides to get even, pettily, by dancing with rich and talking him up and each keeps picking the other royals.. which worries dave and river because of course it does. And yeah star is being petty here... but I get it and sympahtise with it. Tom’s pulled some really manipulative shit the last few times he’s been around and she’s likely sick of it. She probably even got second hand sick of hearing what he did to marco. 

So she’s probably just fed up with his bullshit.. and she still DOES think he’s cute, as was made clear by his first proper apperance, she’s just tired of him being a jackass about perusing her when she’s no longer intrested. Which is fair. Tom is trying to be better.. but i’ts understandable why Star thinks he’s just still doing the same old shit just on a diffrent day.  So it comes down to both of htem with Moon hoping star dances with tom.. and naturally, still pissy she dances with Manfried , the butterflies butler, who’se delighted.. a bit too happy.. someone call the police.  Anyways Dave and River start to argue over whose club snubbing who.. as I said Tom has his dad, and his moms but again future episodes, anger. Dave is more controlled because he’s had more life experince but it’s clear enough stress can cause him to snap, as we see here.. he just dosen’t have his son’s demonic powers thank god.. he is clearly built under those robes though.. or at least you know skinny but a bit muscular. I mean otherwise Wrath would be a widow after tom’s conception. 

But tom just.. walks out sadly instead of reacting which further pisses star off and she follows. But this time as i’ve been making clear.. Tom has genuinely changed. He’s NOT doing some creepy scheme to manipulate her into taking him back, he learned from last time.. and from song day. See I told you it was important. He figured she was with Marco now, and isn’t mad as he puts it.. he saw it as a wake up call. She’s not into him and probably won’t be.. granted I thought he’d already learned that lesson, but i’ll let it pass. The point is he decided to give her space by not asking her and would’ve if she asked him. He was genuinely trying to be nice and respectful to her. And here’s where I can finally stop shit talking tom for the most part which thank god. I love the guy, I wouldn’t be retrospectiving him if I didn’t love this character and see him as my own surrogate fictoinal son. But I had to be honest and who Tom is at first, isn’t a good person.. but this episode and others give more weight as to the why, as well as show him genuinely TRYING. He wants to be better he just dosen’t know how... as is highlighed with star not wanting to be ignored, and Tom flipping out in a demonic rage  “I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE NICE, AT LEAST GIVE ME CREDIT FOR TRYING”.  Which is what I put a pen in earlier with his parents; His parents are genuinely nice good people.. but the underworld is a diffrent, dangerous place with diffrent standards. So they likely didn’t realize their son had a troubling anger problem because of that, because a lot of the underworld is wild and vicious, until he started harassing star and doing something that raised a real red flag passed normal underworld standards. The two then quack quack bicker bicker in the sky, with an extra sized extra angry cloudy. CLOUDY YAY.. until a chair passes throught he window.  Our heroes run in to see the dad fight as esccalated to a wrestling match, and is about to esclate to an international incident. Star, seeing this can’t possibly end well, finally asks tom to dance which he agrees to not wanting to see a large bearded man beat up his dad. Probably how Domink Mysterio felt a few weeks ago honestly. And his entire life.  And then we get the dance.. and it’s fucking gorgeous. It’s slow and methodical, with the two at first doing this reluctnatly.. but as it goes on their walls break and the two genuinely have fun and it turns from two exes stiffly doing a dance to keep their dads from killing each other,... to somethin genuinely romantic and visually gorgeous as butterflies and flames errupt from their repsective feet before carrying them into the air and creating a beautiful tornado together. Disney really knows how to do a good dance sequence... maybe not gay representation until last week, and even then they had to be dragged into it more on that another time, but .. damn if they can’t animate pretty. It’s a genuinely beautiful sequence and easily tops the one from Blood Moon Ball.. not an easy feat mind as I say this with no bisas. I may not LIKE starco, at least not without some heavy continuity revisions.. but that dance was objectively good and so’s this one. The two land, moon rings the fucking bell to end things because again sh’es kind of a dick, and Wrathmelor causes earthquakes with her claps and reign of lava mom tearfs. Aww what a sweetheart. 

So Tom asks star for a corn shake, which she accepts, aww and Ponyhead is carried out by an entorauge. Eugh. The two laugh adorably together at her shenanigans, for some reason, to close out the episode.  Final Thoughts: Excellent even better than I remembered.. though it still has one or two problems, like what tom’s really doing being kinda obvious based on his body laungauge and middle part being mildly repeititive. But it’s all overridden by great character work, goregous animation and some neat world building as we meet the rest of mewni , most for the first time. I do genuinely wished they’d done more with them. And honestly.. tom and star are more adorable than I remembered. I think a combinaton of star’s later actions and the fact i wanted my starco dammit and figured tom wouldn’t last, I was mostly wrong as it took almost two full seasons for them to break up and we’ll get to that, so I had no real investment. I was annoyed he was seemingly just being throwni n the way as an obstacle to the main ship hwen they clearly changed their minds and he became more.. and then exactly that later because I can’t have nice things. We’ll get to that. But yeah a solid, enchanting episode and a good start to dance week. If you have a star vs episode you want me to review, just hit me up in akss or subits or comission it directly using those same options, or any other cartoon for that matter and follow me for more reviews as I cover Amphibia every week and will return to regular ducktales coverage at the end of september. Tom will return shortly. Until then stay safe, wear a mask, and later days. 

Do you condone/ship incest? I was reading your rules and got confused about your sentence where you said if people are uncomfortable with fictional consensual incest this isn’t the blog for you. Except Incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction

hi there, friend, how do you do?

while i'm not particularly fond of anons (nex time you'd like to discuss something regarding my rules and/or character portrayal, i strongly encourage you to do so via ims - i don't bite, and if our points of view don't quite match? that's alright, i promise i'll leave you in peace :) ) for various reasons, i'm so glad you've read my rules (that probably makes you one of the few who follow me - at least i presume you do, idk - who has done so, so thank you so much!), i cannot stress enough how important they are to me. if i happen to follow you, rest assured that i have read yours (unless, ofc, i couldn't find one in your blog - in any case, if i happen to accidentally break one of yours, just hmu or gimme a nudge).

considering that you've asked more than one question, i'll answer to you in separate sections - needless to say that while i break it down your questions, the answer might become a little longer than usual (again, i'm sorry). i'll keep this tagged, in case any of my followers don't feel like reading about this. without further ado, let’s dive in.´

“do you condone/ship incest?”

short answer? nope. but that is not a black or white question i’m afraid. no, i – nox, the human behind this blog of fictional characters – personally do not condone incest , never have and never will, and  don’t ship it. i do, however, ship consanguinamory on rare occasions, and when i do happen to write it i never do it in a good light.

for those who are not familiar with the term, here’s a little bit of info about it x && x. in short, the key difference between them is: incest is usually linked abuse (a fictional example that can be used, taking in consideration one of my very own muses, in this case is margot verger – who was sadly abused by her brother in the hannibal books) while consanguinamory (the lannisters, for example, or even the sharpe siblings from crimson peak are examples of consanguineous relationships) is the consensual romantic and/or sexual relationship between members of the same family who are of consenting age.

[ personally, i find both of them gross as fuuck irl but when it comes to fictional works i may get over this first disgust and ponder more on that && take in consideration the characters arch, plot, thoughts and the whole world they are set in. ]

i suppose the turning point here is the consent. i never, never, condone any sort of abuse – not in fiction and neither in real life – and while it’s a subject that bothers me to no end in real life, when it comes to fiction i am less inclined to project into them. i may write dark and toxic relationships, but i obviously do not condone them. that’s the point here – people on this hellsite usually mix the two together (condoning something and shipping/writing it, that is) when in fact they shouldn’t even be in the same box to begin with.

let’s say you write a fictional serial killer – norman bates, tate langdon, hannibal lecter, catherine tramell (that chick from basic instinct), patrick bateman, mrs lovett and sweeney todd, kai anderson, bellatrix, grindelwald and voldemort (the list of plausible examples could go on forever…) – here and ship with them; does it mean that you, the writer, condone every single action and choice your muse does? if writing something purely fictional equals to condoning it in real life, well… the world is even more fucked up than i first thought.

you see, in this little exercise in imagination, you could’ve easily picked a good guy or gal to write, the hero; the goody two shoes. why didn’t you? well, it’s complicated to pin point why some are drawn to darker works of fiction and characters while others are not, i suppose each individual has their own reasons && i can only speak for myself when i say that i am drawn to these sort of fictional works because they the safest way to explore dark topics that pertain to human society. on my side, it’s nothing but raw curiosity.

there’s also the issue of how different cultures see these relationships. in case you haven’t noticed, i am not from the states but actually from brazil. especially in the rural area, it’s not uncommon for second cousins to date or even marry (ew, i know, pretty gross). that’s something that is luckily falling out of practice, but you can easily find it, more so in the poor rural areas that are really far from the cities.

you may have noticed that most of the sources for the terms come from a blog that advocates real life consanguinamory – but make no mistake, i don’t support it. these were the only places i���ve found as sources in a quick look online. i don’t support it irl, but whatever consenting adults are doing amongst themselves is no concern of mine – i have no say on the matter and all in all, i don’t give a damn. i just don’t like it. everything i’ve discussed here is related to fiction, consent and is only ever related to people of consenting age.

“i was reading your rules and got confused about your sentence where you said if people are uncomfortable with fictional consensual incest this isn’t the blog for you. except incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction”

to be honest with you, anon, i couldn’t possibly see how you’ve got confused with this. i thought i was pretty clear with that, but perhaps not. sorry, my english is not perfect. however, with the risk of sounding like a meme, i said what i said. if you personally feel uncomfortable or even triggered with fictional consensual incest otherwise known as consanguinamory, maybe my blog isn’t for you. not because i – as the mun –  condone it, but because i might mention it or even allude to it when i write certain characters. again, consent is the main thing here – you won’t ever see me writing that awful part of margot’s past, but i might mention it on some threads as it is part of her trauma but i will write jaime’s feelings regarding cersei and joanna’s love for tywin – and that should not be overlooked.

“except incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction” 

so far so good, am i to assume that you also believe that “murder is murder, regardless of if it is fiction or not”? should we call the police on, idk, george rr martin for killing....hell knows how many characters...at this point i’m sure not even he knows. leaving my petty comment aside (it’s the arthritis, i’m always annoyed when in pain), i see where you’re coming from; fair enough.  but you missed a big point here – consensual. i do not write abuse, even to the muses who – in the canon source material – have done so    ( like jaime lannister himself – who’s in a consanguinamorous [therefore, falling under the category of fictional consensual incest] relationship with cersei – who abused his sister next to their son’s dead body [ yeah, jaime apologists, i’m out to get y’all...jokes aside, i do not acknowledge people claiming that cersei manipulated him into going to bed with her, while they are both shitty and toxic as fuck people, their relationship is mutually messed up – gag if you must but jaime lannister is far from innocent angel ] )     in the past. i. don’t. write. it. but i do write jaime’s feelings for cersei because they are canon and are also a big part of the character he became.

all of that, of course, has to do with my own position on the “war” between the people who believe fiction has a great power and influence over reality vs the ones who do not believe in that. personally, i find it hard to believe that fiction is a brainwashing tool rewiring people’s brains  - i find the idea itself ludicrous, the ones who strongly stand for that aren’t that different from flat-earthers and people who believe in reverse racism tbh – but i do acknowledge the influence media has on society. its not nearly enough to turn someone to the “dark side” alone by itself – those who claim that videogames, for example, made them violent most likely already had something different and perhaps wrong with them before the games triggered something. i don’t believe that media creates things on people, but brings buried things (fears, feelings, emotions, hopes) back to the surface. it’s all about the stimulus.

if you wanna be scared, watch an horror movie; if you wanna be happy, a comedy video.  wanna feel warm inside and live unrealistic romantic expectations vicariously through fictional characters? read a 50.000 words slow burn fluffy happy fanfic of your otp at 3 am even though you gotta wake up early in the following morning....

point is, they are not creating things, they are bringing forth responses from you that were already there in your brain (everybody has laughed before and felt fear, it’s part of human development). and how you react to certain content is entirely to you and your past. say, if you drowned as a kid on the sea - and had trauma from that - the idea of watching titanic is not so fun, is it?

it’s not my place to decide what you should do, that is entirely your own choice to make, just be aware that, as i’ve stated before countless times, i may write dark topics that may or may not be triggering to some.  i do so because it is my blog, and i don’t react so harshly to this content (in fact, i love horror, thriller and dark fictional stuff – meanwhile i dread the thought of rom coms, hell knows why??) for i am lucky to be able to separate fiction from reality. basically, whilst writing a villain, i myself do not become one in real life – that part remains in fiction only and doesn’t affect me.

that is not a constant, sure. i don’t just write dark shady stuff – there’s plenty of fluffy shit on my blog, but i like to warn people beforehand to make sure we are all on the same page. it’s for your own comfort, i suppose, because i may not understand certain points of view on fiction but i will always defend your right to be comfortable and safe.

so yes, if you aren’t feeling well at that notion, please unfollow and block me if you must – i never wish to cause any discomfort to anyone – however, before you do so (that is, if you do so) i beg you to just send me an im warning me beforehand, please? that way i can block you – and your other blogs as well – so the chances of me running into you again and causing you discomfort will be minimal. that way we’ll both be on own respective lanes and happy about it. i mass follow very often and don’t usually know which blogs belong to whom (uh, did that make sense? my latina ass is not used to using whom in a sentence....), i may follow another blog (or the revamped blog) of someone who has blocked me and never even realise it – that’s not me following you around and stalking like a total creep, that’s probably me not even remembering who you are. again, sorry – i don’t mean for this to come off rude or anything but???? its the truth? you know the drill, big following list, big followers list (well, big for me tbh, i cannot remember the name or alias of 600 people for the life of me, excuse me if my memory doesn’t serve me right), hard to keep track. there will be no witch hunts, at least on my part, because i deem them to be childish and way too dramatic for my taste. if you’d like to speak in private, adult to adult, i’m always game – i dread vague posting, i personally see it as a pathetic and weak trait. 

as long as you’re civil, so am i.

either way, do whatever makes you feel comfortable and safe on your blog – your  mental health is far more important (to me, and hopefully to you as well) than a hobby, than tumblr, rp or whatever fictional stuff someone’s writing or reading; you are responsible for your own online experience, and i am responsible for mine. that’s an empowering thing that should be reminded more often.

i truly hope i’ve managed to answer whatever doubts or questions you had in mind, if not my ims are always open and so is my discord. once again, thank you for reading my rules and stay safe!

edit; my dumb ass forgot to drop my disco handle, since i change often. it currently is   DOCTOR BITCHCRAFT !!! | 𝒏𝒐𝒙#1398

An anon sent me a series of asks to my main blog, but since they mentioned my commentary a few times in it, I feel like it'd be more appropriate to consider them commentary asks and answer them here. Hopefully anon still follows this blog too and will see this!

Dude I watched a complete playthrough of the drv3 a while ago and I just realised what was fucking me up about Kaito's: in his "ultimate fantasy" or whatever, he doesn't think his crush will return his feelings. Right now I think that's to do with his issues with close relationships that you brought up in your commentary, but do you have any other ideas?

thinkin about my earlier ask about kaito's love suite event ... does the dream continue for him when he leaves the room? cause if it does, it likely ends with his ideal turning out to reciprocate his feelings which is kind of sad because of the friendship issues you mentioned in your commentary, but if it doesn't continue afterwards it means he so thoroughly believes that his friends (/fantasy rival) dont care about him beyond his ability to be inspiring that he cant imagine it even in his ideal

WAIT is momota's ideal, a rival, someone who doesn't have the same expectations of him to be strong that a sidekick would have?? like yeah there are some expectations of always being ready to compete and all that but it's more an expectations out of spite deal than expectations to be invincible ideal. for them to even be properly competing a rivalry has to be somewhat close to equal: momota mentions he and his rival being at a complete tie, so his rival doesn't expect him to be invincible.

sorry i keep sending you asks about the love suite event, i read a post recently about momota not believing his ideal would return his feelings and i can't stop thinking about it

So, uh, this has been a bit of a ride for me.

Fun fact: Kaito's Love Suite event was, until today, the one bit of canon Kaito content I had not seen and had no intention of ever seeing. As you can very much gather from all my grumbling about amatonormativity in the commentary, particularly in the first post for Salmon Team, I do not like it when romance gets unnecessarily shoved into my adorable friendships and my characters who usually prioritise friendship over romance. If Salmon Team had not also been heteronormative on top of its amatonormativity and had therefore shoved romance into every character's scenes, including the guys', I wouldn't have covered Kaito's Salmon Team content at all. It’d be the same as how I didn’t cover Kaede’s FTEs because they’re pretty romantic; I'm just not remotely into that, and when such content does exist, I'd rather skim over it and think about anything else. So any of Kaito’s content that really actually was a victim of this mode’s amatonormativity (and let’s be real, while the Love Suite scenes are available in the main story, they really shouldn’t have been and should just be considered Salmon Team content) was not something I ever even really wanted to see in the first place.

The entire concept of how the Love Suite scenes work also makes me deeply uncomfortable even aside from the part where it's glaringly just a cheap excuse to throw in some unneeded romance. The subject has a dream where they act out their ideal fantasy at Shuichi, except Shuichi is awake and conscious and will remember it, and the subject doesn't know this? And Shuichi apparently has to play along and do what they want him to do, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes him, or they'll "have a bad dream" or something, as if their comfort matters more than Shuichi's does? That is massively violating the concept of consent for both people involved here. Ugh. Ughghghgh. And from the handful of scenes I have actually seen (which is admittedly not the worst ones), the writing does not remotely acknowledge how gross and fucked-up this is and just plays it like it's totally okay. Ugh. No.

Of course, there was a small chance that Kaito's scene was an exception to this nonsense and actually had something interesting going on in it that I'd like to see (Rantaro’s and Ryoma’s are actually pretty interesting, from what I remember!). So I had my friend antialiasis, whose judgement I trust on these kind of things, read Kaito’s scene before me and give me a summary. The topic of it seemed kinda fun albeit not especially deeply interesting, but then she described it as "not textually romantic but pretty clearly trying to be shipbait". So I pulled a big Nope on that and decided it wasn’t worth it and I'd be happier never seeing the scene after all.

It was therefore very deliberate of me that I completely ignored the fact that this scene even existed for my Salmon Team posts. I was kind of quietly hoping nobody would notice or care - and I told myself that if someone did care and asked me what I thought about it, they'd have to make a very convincing argument for it being relevant to Kaito's issues for me to decide it’d be worth me cringing my way through the romantic undertones to see the issuey part.

And, well, congratulations, anon, I guess you basically just made the impossible possible, because I went and read it just now.

Aaaaaand it was even more eye-rollingly shipbaity than I was expecting it to be and really not worth it for me at all.

Not that this is your fault, anon! I am not mad at you and there's no need to apologise. I'm really happy that you cared so much about my input on this, not to mention very impressed that you did manage to convince me the scene might be relevant enough to Kaito's issues to catch my interest. I'm also thrilled that you're using ideas you learned from me about Kaito's issues to have been thinking about this yourself even with parts I never talked about! That's exactly the kind of thing I hoped my commentary might do for people!

I'm just mad at the game's writing for being a huge fucking disappointment. Please rest assured that any frustration I express here is entirely directed at the game.

Long story short: I'm not convinced this is a legitimately well-thought-out piece of character writing for Kaito that actually has any deliberate connection to his issues. It just reads to me like whoever wrote it saw the Love Suite thing as an excuse to throw in something shipbaity and romantically-undertoned involving Kaito, and they decided that someone like him would work best with the stereotypical "rivals to lovers" trope, so they just threw together a scene about that.

There's no reason to buy that Kaito's "ideal fantasy" would even be with a romantic interest in the first place. He's literally not shown giving the slightest fuck about romance at any other point in his story! Romantic relationships are not inherently the highest relationship ideal (any claim that they are is amatonormativity speaking and needs to go away), and Kaito in particular definitely seems to be someone who would understand that.

It is interesting to think that Kaito's idea of his relationship ideal could be a rival - someone who's essentially more of an equal to him than a sidekick. All the points that you make on that topic are really great and insightful, and that’s what made me want to check out the scene! But then the scene just goes and shifts to being all about how Kaito has very-obviously-implicitly developed romantic feelings for this rival, and ugh no no no this is not the point and not necessary. If Kaito really did subconsciously think of a rival as being his ideal relationship, someone who's his equal and to whom he doesn't have such a huge responsibility to never let down, that alone would be the point, and his subconscious wouldn't go and then make it about romance!

If this scene is about Kaito's issues as you propose, then it’s as if the writing is trying to insist that Kaito subconsciously knew that he needed to have this arguably more healthy, essentially-equal relationship in order to be able to achieve romance, because romance is obviously the highest goal and what he's really wanted all along and if only he got over his issues then he’d be able to have that in reality! and NOPE nope nope nope that's amatonormative and tedious as all hell and get that bullshit away from Kaito. (The actual "ideal" relationship Kaito should be striving for, though he wouldn't understand this himself, is something like the one I talked about at the end of Salmon Team, in which he's learned to open up to Shuichi and ask for his help too and they are friends and equals who support each other, and that doesn't need to involve romance to be an ideal end goal!)

But also, because the writers of this scene are being so eye-rollingly amatonormative about things, I'm not convinced they even actually thought as deeply as you have about the implications of the rival thing. If they understood Kaito's issues about heroes and sidekicks and friendship to that extent, then they'd probably also be able to grasp the idea that romance isn't the goddamn point here.

So, yeah. You're free to continue to interpret it the way you've been doing if that floats your boat, anon, but my take on it is just that I don't think the writers cared.

I'd also like to throw out there, while I'm here being a Grumpy Aro about things, that someone not expecting their crush to reciprocate their feelings isn't that sad and tragic, at least not from where I'm standing - it's just sensible. Sure, platonic affection is expected to grow naturally through shared experiences and hangouts, to the point that someone feeling like their friend doesn't consider them a friend in return is tragic and probably rooted in some kind of issues. But while romantic attraction can sometimes arise, from all sorts of interactions, it’s never a thing that should always be expected to do so, and it literally can't happen in certain orientations a lot of the time. Not expecting romantic feelings to be reciprocated doesn't have to be related to any kind of lack of self-confidence; it should be the norm. It's just statistically unlikely that they would be.

Like yeah, sure, obviously most people with a crush would like it if it was reciprocated, and so there's no harm in asking. But if the other person doesn't reciprocate, then it's not their fault and not their problem, and it's also not the first person's fault for "not being good enough" or anything like that. That's an attitude that I wish I saw more of outside of aro circles, and it's also something that I'm pretty sure Kaito would already understand and agree with. Respecting other people's autonomy, acknowledging that they exist as their own person outside of how you feel about them and not making their lives about you are all principles that are already a big part of how Kaito treats others, in any context.

[follow-up post to this]

When Consent Goes Haywire

I recently came across a phenomenon called “flirting without consent”. For anyone in the 21st century, consent has become a hot word, but this concept appeared to me like the bastard child of a movement with good intentions. 

There’s no denying that there’s a history of men “crossing the line”, and while we can rail on men for not “teaching children properly” or setting a good example, it’s just not that simple. 

Ok, for the record, rape and assault are inexcusable. The reality is that sometimes consent is set aside and men openly violate a conduct of trust and a communication of trust (i.e. a no means no). But sometimes it’s not that, and there’s more to understand. Sometimes, a woman says no but is less insistent on that no. Sometimes a person goes along with what’s happening only to feel some sort of perceived injustice after the fact, but not during. And it’s moments like these that have proven this decade to be a confusing whirl of legalities regarding consent. 

This isn’t to blame women or to defend the men who have clearly crossed a line and that’s not the purpose of this article. It just means there are more factors to consider before coining a concept like “flirting without consent” because there are deeper implications something like this has on future interactions. 

Before I get into it, let me just say I GET IT. I get why this concept exists. But can we understand that flirting is an ORGANIC and NATURAL part of human interaction? It’s part of social intelligence--picking up on if someone is responding to your advances or not. It’s a way we let someone know we’re interested and a way we gauge the level of interest that someone may or may not have in us. Put guard rails on this organic process and very quickly you lose a lot of what romance and courtship is about, which in turn makes men seem inherently awkward, boring, and stale when that’s the bag of tricks that was given to them.

Of course things get tricky with flirting. Some people don’t have good social intelligence and don’t read social cues very well. And that makes things vastly more complicated. Add to that the fact that everyone’s experience of romance and courtship can be drastically different and that everyone’s preferences are different. There are women who preach that guys “need to be more aggressive” and welcome the bad boy attitude, there are some who like to be the one who leads, and then there are those who like to set clear expectations. Tone of voice during a conversation, body language, and the level of relationship that two people have all come into play. At the end of the day, everyone falls on a different part of that spectrum of experiences which informs their decisions, their ability to pick up on social cues, and how they perceive a given action or inaction. In short, things become exponentially more complicated. Oh, and that’s not even including whether or not they’ve had drinks.

The need for some sort of structure is understandable. But consent to flirt is not that. A structure like consent to flirt is essentially a form of gatekeeping—a way to justify swiping left IRL just because you think you’re not interested. We can agree that there are some things that are clearly over the line, vulgar, and inappropriate. That’s what we as a society have termed, “harassment” and “sexual harassment”. Both are obviously wrong, and consent to flirt tries to wrap the idea of harassment under the gallant flag of “transparency”. Really, it’s like slapping a Smart Water label on a bottle with your normal house tap water—it’s a gimmick, a fluffy phrase, while providing no clarity to the confusion of consent. 

Bear with me here with what I think could be the worst case scenario, but with something like consent to flirt, a girl could sue a guy who came up to her at a bar and gave a compliment to strike up a conversation. You could argue that even a positive comment that was stripped of any sort of sexual or inappropriate intent was perceived by the woman as “crossing a line”. That’s how romance dies. That’s how courtship becomes a bureaucratic, robotic transaction that deems your advances appropriate or inappropriate based on whether or not you have “premium” features. Again, probably the worst case scenario.

Even so, the question remains, how can you really know if someone isn’t right for you? Feelings change. Perceptions change. And consent to flirt destroys that opportunity for learning and discovering aspects of a person you would’ve never expected to see or know. This isn’t to say that we can’t form judgments about a certain person because in a way, that’s inevitable. 

When we get down to it, what a concept like “flirting with consent” and consent in general seems to reveal about the heart of our broader culture is the desire to set intentions and expectations. Why do celebrities get into problems with consent? Why does anyone get into a problem with consent? Precisely BECAUSE no one knows when or where consent is necessary. You might be saying to yourself, it’s simple: no means no. Consent seems like a very obvious thing when you put it strictly in terms of “no means no”. It’s a good rule of thumb to go by, but realistically as we’ve seen, a variety of factors complicates even a simple construct. 

So what do we do? How do we mend this broken system? We need a simple construct where consent is already implied. What is that construct? The oldest form of love, courtship, and romance in the books: marriage. I know what you might be thinking, but hear me out. 

Call it the idealized form or what it should be, but marriage is a covenant, a promise between two people who have essentially AGREED in the presence of witnesses, to being with each other. Keyword: AGREED—from the very beginning of anything happening. Within this covenant is a sense of trust. You have roles, you know who the other person is, and you know what to expect within this relationship. But let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean one person can do whatever they feel like or that they’re entitled to the other person in any sense. It doesn’t mean one person loses their individuality or their autonomy. It doesn’t rule out the possibility of bad things happening--they still do. It’s just that when it comes to the issue of consent, there are certain things that aren’t totally uncalled for. 

Marriage maps out and clears out the murky forest of consent. You can be flirtatious, you can be suggestive, you can have intercourse—because you both agreed to it! It doesn’t mean you can’t get uncomfortable about certain things but you still have that sense of TRUST that allows you to express that discomfort openly, safely, and unabashedly. That trust and that relationship takes you so much farther with someone you know and love than with a complete stranger, where it may be awkward to voice a concern at the risk of appearing inexperienced or being a mood killer. 

But doesn’t this agreement exist already even without marriage? Aren’t there plenty of extramarital relationships that demonstrate that level of agreement? Isn’t that what consent is all about? Yes, our culture of sexual freedom and companionship have applied the blueprint of  marriage to relationships without the words and the paperwork of marriage. Yet that’s where it falls short--the lack of a proper covenant. The very existence of millions of relationships in this moment is dependent on a commitment that isn’t real. Sure there’s a verbal recognition of some sort of feeling of commitment but that’s all it is: a feeling. And for anyone with an inkling of experience in a relationship, feelings can and do change. If that’s the case, then commitment can change. 

Marriage brings into focus a certain expectation, which is that while your feelings can change, your commitment shouldn’t. That’s the point of making vows to one another and that’s the point of “til death do us apart” even if many would consider it just an antiquated trope that romantics and movies say. Some might say that there shouldn’t be any labels on a relationship and that love is love. Sure, but is love only love when you feel like it? Shouldn’t it go beyond just a purely personal emotional satisfaction? 

None of this is meant to be accusatory towards extramarital relationships or to say that marriage is the cure-all. It is however, to draw attention to the idea that “labels” if you will, help us know exactly what something is and know what to expect from it. You don’t look at a strawberry and say “I don’t like putting labels on it,” because then it becomes very difficult to describe what to do with a strawberry. Do you eat it? Do you use it as ink? Do you throw it like you would a baseball? On that note, labels help you understand what to expect: what you get from a strawberry is very different from what you get with a strawberry milkshake, a strawberry smoothie, or strawberry milk. Without a name for a strawberry or any produce for that matter, the produce aisle would be chaos.

Sure, a strawberry is not a relationship. But the same logic applies—relationships have the potential to be utter chaos without the label. A boyfriend or girlfriend who runs off is theoretically off the hook. A label-free relationship can invite multiple people into it and people do. But it breeds a nebulous and subjective ground of emotions and expectations that can’t be adequately expressed or fulfilled. In other words, there’s no consistency. And when there’s no consistency, what can and can’t be done can change. It’s your word against theirs. It’s your feeling against theirs. 

That “label” of marriage gives a greater sense of security. It helps us to know that the intimacy that happened the night before wasn’t “a mistake”. It gives us emotional fulfillment and the expectation of that fulfillment. It doesn’t leave us hanging in the wind. 

No, this is not a call to get married and this is not a judgment on anyone on how they pursue relationships. It’s to address and contemplate why our culture (and most probably the entire world) struggles with consent. Consent to flirt doesn’t make things any easier or any clearer in that struggle. In fact, it moves in the opposite direction of what we need. It cripples the creation of organic relationships and enables an even more confusing set of rules under the guise of honesty and transparency. Consent as a whole is crucial, but pursuing it and being an advocate for it requires us to exercise caution with careful consideration of the words we attach to it. No matter our zeal, we can’t push for it blindly. Specificity is important, but not all specificity serves to clarify.

Rung Meets Deadlock

a WIP from the Decepticon!Rung au

this’ll probably be part of a bigger day-in-the-life fic but I’m not gonna get back around that any time soon... so here’s what I’ve got for now!

--

When Deadlock appears in his quarters, without fanfare or warning, Rung doesn’t seem anywhere near as nervous as he ought to be. He ought to be very nervous. 

Everyone knows what Deadlock does. And although the Decepticon army’s CMO has never been formally introduced to him, Deadlock knows his reputation precedes him. Just like Rung’s reputation precedes him…

“Oh,” Rung says, as he turns on the light to find Deadlock sitting in his chair, “hello.”

It would be an understatement to say that Rung isn’t at all what Deadlock expected, after what he’s heard swirling through the grapevine. He’s small, but Deadlock was prepared for that. It’s the lack of weaponry, the lack of armor, the lack even of meaningful surgical implements or scientific kibble. If Deadlock were a less hardened mech, he might find the confidence of it frightening. 

In the second between turning from the door and spotting Deadlock, Rung goes from looking visibly weary to looking cool and sturdy and patient. It’s an impressive trick. Not that Deadlock doesn’t know plenty of ‘Cons who can switch on a new face at the flip of a switch, but the fact that he’s doing it now, under these circumstances? Well that’s not a bad show.

Rung considers him for a moment. Deadlock passes the sharpening stone down the blade of his sword with a sharp, grinding note, letting the flat of it rest across his knees like a quiet promise. 

Something flickers in Rung’s expression, but under the glasses, it’s nearly impossible to read. “I don’t normally take appointments in my quarters,” he says, “but if there’s something you don’t feel comfortable discussing in my office, I could make an exception.”

“You know who I am, don’t you?” Deadlock says, testing the blade edge with his thumb. He’d been reading through some of the files on Rung’s recreational datapad in the quiet before Rung’s arrival, but he set it aside a while ago. He doesn’t know how to feel about the correspondences he’s stumbled across, the ones saved deep down in the memory banks. Lord Megatron and the CMO, bantering. Discussing theater. It boggles the processor.

Rung’s expression goes a little tight. “Yes, Deadlock, I know who you are.” He comes across the room, laying down his work ‘pad on the desk as he goes. “If this is about Turmoil, believe me you’re not the first to ask, but I’m afraid there’s really nothing I can do at this point.”

Deadlock tilts his head. “Soldiers often ask you to work on their officers?”

“Work on,” Rung repeats. He frowns, like the phrasing bothers him. “Occasionally, people do ask for me to intercede with their superior officers on their behalf, yes.”

“And Megatron lets you do that?” Deadlock says, which is more or less the reason that his sword is still sitting across his lap and not inside of Rung’s spark chamber. If the things he’s heard are true, he wants to know how much of it is sanctioned. Part of him bridles from the very thought--Megatron, of all mech, would never, could never--but the rest of him is a grim pessimist, and if there’s rust rotting at the heart of the Cause, he intends to know about it.

Rung opens his mouth. For a second nothing comes out. 

“Well, as much as he can, I think. I used to have more leeway. Recently I’ve been… encountering friction,” he says, after a moment. “Megatron actually offered to do something about Turmoil for me, once. Perhaps I should have taken him up on it.”

Do something about…? What’s that supposed to mean?

Rung pauses, at the edge of the berth. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I know it’s unprofessional, but I have these aches. Would you mind terribly if I…?”

Deadlock doesn’t know what he’s asking--whether he can sit down, maybe?--but ne nods anyway. He can never help but indulge a medic when they talk like that. The wear and tear medics take kind of gets his engine going.

What Rung actually does is reach behind himself and disengage his dorsal kibble. It comes away easily, leaving the flat, smooth panel of his back as if it was never there. The moment the wheel-pack hits the floor, Rung relaxes visibly. 

“Sorry,” he says again. “Old injuries.”

“You’re filed as a non-combatant,” Deadlock says, narrowing his eyes. He would have prepared differently if he had known otherwise. Of course this isn’t an official visit; he hasn’t been briefed, there could be clearance above his standard clearance...

“Oh, it’s not combat,” Rung laughs, “I was taken apart by the Functionists several times, and they were more interested in the taking apart than the putting back together. I wasn’t always reassembled perfectly.”

Ahah. Deadlock leans in. “Is that where you learned the mnemosurgery?”

Rung goes still. His spark flares, deep in his chest, visible through the glass panel inset there. “I’m going to make Starscream regret his decisions with such a deep and abiding shame that he will spontaneously confess to every lie he’s ever told,” Rung says, in a voice that is cold with rage. “I thought officers would know better than to believe those rumors.”

Deadlock sits back. Rung is visibly livid, fingers rapidly tapping against the edge of the berth, glaring at something only he can see.

“Every time I walk into the medical bay now, there’s some poor spark that nearly climbs out the airlock trying to get away from me,” he vents. “I never thought I’d have to put up with fear at the sight of my face, it really is too much. Too much by half. What did I join this movement for if not to ease the friction on the ones who took the best of worse options, and now I find that my simple presence--”

He slumps, digging his fingers under his glasses to rub his optics. 

“He thinks he’s helping,” Rung says to himself, the way that you mutter an old calming mantra. “He thinks he’s helping. Never mind that I never asked for his help, he only understands one kind of strength, and he thinks he’s helping.”

“Who’s that you’re muttering about?” Deadlock asks. So far nothing about this encounter has been up to his expectations and what can he say? He’s curious.

“Starscream,” Rung says, like it’s unimportant, like it’s obvious, like it isn’t Starscream, living embodiment of a knife in the back, the silver-tongued terror himself.

“Starscream doesn’t help people,” Deadlock says with a sharp laugh. “Except himself, obviously.”

“I suppose he’d like us to think that,” Rung says, not sounding particularly amused. “He started this whole-” Rung waves a hand, “-shadow play rumor. That I’m some kind of mad scientist routinely bending people’s processors to… I don’t know what, people usually fill in that part themselves based on whatever frightens them most. I wouldn’t know how to execute a mnemosurgery if my life depended on it.”

“Uhuh,” Deadlock says. He smiles, indulgently, but doesn’t relax. Everybody knows the old saying: never trust a person with their needles in your neck.

“I don’t know what to do about this,” Rung sighs. Then he stops, and he looks up sharply. The point of his gaze is like the wicked tip of a paring knife. “Did you come to me,” he says, “to have someone shadow played?”

Deadlock could probably just kill him now and swing by the commissary for a bit of a job-well-done reward, but something about the way Rung looks through him--looks into him--has him almost breathless. He feels something in the strut of his spine, in the edge of his spark.

“I was sent to have someone taken care of,” he says, playing vague and uninterested even as his sensor net tingles.

“Well I can’t help you,” Rung says, sharply.

“Is it a money thing?” Deadlock asks. He wants to see what it’ll take to make the CMO break his pretty, professional facade. “Money ain’t an issue for me.”

“It’s not money,” Rung retorts. There’s a distinctly icy chill in his bearing now, in the set of his slim shoulders. “I can’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. Money is not the issue.”

“Now don’t act like you’re so above it all,” Deadlock tells him. “We all know what almost happened to Megatron. Shrinks like you signed off on shadowplay all the time, even before.”

Rung rubs the seams of his faceplate, a grimace distorting his mouth. “Personality adjustments, you mean,” he says. “Yes, we did sign off on those, didn’t we.”

Rung draws his hand back from his face and stares at it. The fingertips where the wicked needles would emerge are at the moment only blunt and dull.

“It was supposed to be controlled. Ethical. There were complicated, nearly byzantine steps--red tape a mile long--countless hoops you had to jump through in order to even think of ordering the procedure. You needed two medical professionals to sign off on it, you needed next-of-kin consent, you needed stacks of evaluations and trials and affidavits... We had no idea at the time--I had no idea--how easy it would be to simply walk up to a surgeon and then walk away, no one the wiser…”

“You don’t gotta convince me, Doc. I’m just here to do a job.”

The truth is, though, that Rung’s act is pretty good. Not too over the top, not too woe is me. Just the right amount of bitterness and self-reproach. Deadlock wouldn’t be surprised if there’s even some truth to it.

“Believe it or not,” Rung says, rubbing his fingers together, “PA was invented to help people. We were supposed to be healers. Mainly people with suicidal code glitches--involuntary prompt recurrences, intrusive thoughts, anxiety feedback loops--that sort of thing. And then it was approved for hallucinatory syndromes. And then for violent offenders. And then for anti-social personalities… and then you turn around and every empurata sentence has a PA order attached to it, and you don’t know where the line broke but it’s somewhere long behind you, and you can’t do anything but…”

He drops his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says, optics flickering as if they had been rebooted, and then he puts on a smile. “I find my regrets catching up with me more and more these days. Who is it you wanted help with? Maybe this is a problem that can be solved with mediation. I can’t promise you I’ll have much political clout, but I’m a fairly good problem solver.”

Deadlock watches him, tracking every motion, every micro-expression. This really isn’t what he was ready for. Polished? Posh? sure. Eloquent, light-fingered? Yes. The quiet nightmare, Megatron’s pet abomination, a medic gone so thoroughly rotten that his very touch corrupted? Deadlock had been more than ready to put an end to that--

The mech in front of him is visibly weary, sore and soldiering on, old in a way that is almost disorientingly palpable. 

“You and the boss, huh,” Deadlock says, his processor still whirring. “Always wondered what was up with that. Everybody knows he’s got a thing about needles.”

“Are you speculating about my personal life?” Rung says, with some measure of exhausted humor. 

It’s not exactly unknown that Megatron and the CMO have a personal understanding of some sort or another. The medics all seem to know something about it, especially here on the flagship, and Deadlock spends a lot of time in the medbay, laying the sweetness on whoever happens to be on shift that day. 

That’s the other thing that made Deadlock hesitate, when he got the order. See, he hangs out with a lot of medics. He’s got a type, what can he say? He’s a sucker for a flash of medical red and a boxy chassis. And the medics around here? They talk about Rung like he single-handedly wrangled Luna 1. Most places Deadlock goes, the staff warm up to him fast. He likes them, and they like the security of having someone strong and scary around to back them up when front-liners start throwing their weight around. It’s a no-brainer. Symbiosis. 

Here on the flag-ship, the medics carry themselves differently. They don’t exactly tell him no, around here, but he thinks--given the way Rung has said a couple times that his influence is on the wane--maybe there was a time not that long ago that they would have. You know what Rung will say, he hears them remarking to each other; Rung won’t like that, Rung won’t be having with this, wait until Rung hears about this--

And, more quietly, more softly: has anyone brought him his--no, I’ll take it, I want to check on how he’s--well he’s always doing it to us, I think it’s plenty fair--

It’s not that medics are always good judges of character. They put up with him, for one thing. Bad people can be convenient, even useful. The indiscriminate fear of prey can lead to all sorts of ugly compromises. But there’s a way people talk about the monster they know, and it’s not the way they talk about Rung.

Familiarity prickles on the back of Deadlock’s neck.