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sunshine-zenith · 10 months

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A thought — Ballister and Ambrosius’s relationship probably wasn’t public in the movie until the end. They probably weren’t secretive about it, given how Todd (someone neither of them like or would confide in) was clearly antagonistic to Ambrosius after Ballister’s jailbreak, but even then that just might be because their connection was well known — they liked each other more than any of the knights liked them, most being neutral overall to Ambrosius and outright bullies to Ballister. No one in the public seems to know about them

Media perception is a reoccurring factor in the movie, with the opening scene giving exposition in the form of a news cast. During it, Ballister is shown to be controversial, with a there being a few comments questioning the Queen’s choices related to him. Ambrosius is also brought up as someone everyone’s looking forward to seeing officially knighted, with no one questioning his relationship with Ballister or even bringing it up

While everyone is fearing and hating Ballister after the Queen dies, Ambrosius is still popular among the masses — people stop him in the streets to get his autograph. Nimona, who admittedly probably didn’t do much digging into Ballister beyond the initial news reports on the Queen’s deaths, seemed surprised that Ballister and Ambrosius had a connection. She even had an “ohhhhhh” moment after picking up on their vibe the first time they saw each other post-arm chop (and yeah she initially calls Ambrosius Ballister’s nemesis, but she clearly clocks that something romantic was going on given the “arm chopping is not a love language!” comment). She also asks if he wants to die in a (literal) closet, which like. Y’all.

Before the Queen’s death, all their PDA is in private (on the catwalk) or subtly around other knights (helping each other put on their armor with lots of heart eyes and lingering hands). Otherwise, their interactions are those of Two People Who Are Close but aren’t necessarily explicitly romantic (Ambrosius wanting to throw hands on Ballister’s behalf, teasing each other, Ambrosius cheering with the crowd). Granted, there wasn’t a lot of screen time for them to just be happy before Everything Went Wrong.

We can’t really judge whether they were private from their interactions after the Queen’s death, since most are focused on a “so this traumatic thing happened and I don’t know where we stands right now” vibe or have them just fighting. The three times Ambrosius says he loves Ballister, one was just the two of them on the catwalk, one was in a mental rant and not actually out loud, and one was while they were trying to hide their identities. Ballister continues to defend Ambrosius, saying he’d believe them if they could just talk and that the arm thing is just “complicated,” “part of their training, up until Ambrosius outright tries to arrest them (which might as well be a breakup without saying “we’re breaking up”).

In the comic, the Director says she knew about their relationship and that she disapproved. Given how much she manipulates things, it wouldn’t surprise me if she knew in the movie, and encouraged them to downplay things at least — “you should keep your private lives private so you don’t taint your public images/yes we support you, obviously, but you’re here to protect the people, not show off to them/you don’t want to overshadow things with more controversy, wait a few years until after you’re knighted/what if this is just a phase, it would be a mess to clean up if you go public now/people will talk if they hear Gloreth’s only current descendant, a promising young man, is being courted by someone they aren’t certain about who comes from nothing and can’t pass your genes on/you have each other, shouldn’t that be enough?/etc.”

We don’t see them be in a relationship publicly until after the wall — the symbol of fear of the unknown, systematic abuse and oppression, refusal to learn and grow, and let’s be real homophobia/transphobia — comes down and the Director — the one going to murderous extremes out of fear of change — is dead

I dunno. This movie is a large celebration of being queer, but it’s also about how queer people are demonized by society to the point of everyone suffering. Ambrosius is the model minority everyone loves but no one knows because all eyes are on him; Ballister is both tokenized and targeted from the moment the public meets him, having to prove himself over and over until the public unquestionably turns on him entirely; and Nimona is called a monster for just being herself. All three already had to hide who they really were. I’m not 100% sure if Ballister and Ambrosius were out or not about being together, but it’s not a stretch to see, and it fits in with the themes/arcs of this movie

#this is a mess #nimona #nimona movie #spoilers #ballister blackheart #ballister boldheart #ballister x ambrosius #ambrosius goldenloin #the sun shines #meta #cy meta #long post #broke 100 #broke 500 #broke 1000

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the-final-sif · 5 months

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Putting everything else aside for a moment and the fact this is most likely fake it; is buck fucking wild to see twitter losing it and declaring that a 19/20 year old and a 16/17 year old sexting consensually back in 2019 is """pedophila""" and """grooming""" like. Listen. My friends in high school were fucking at that age and the only one who ended up traumatized by it was me because I got abandoned to do the groupwork by myself. I also had to handle at least one of their breakups which was awkward as hell.

In college I had to listen to the 17 year old in the dorm next to mine get her back blown out every goddamn week because she was horny as hell and hadn't been able to get laid before college. I know at least one of the guys she brought around was like 23. Most were around 20 because the 18 year olds were apparently all still fuckboys. She was nice and again, I was the only one traumatized by thin dorm walls while she had several excellent evenings.

Turns out people in the real world fuck and they don't always care about what age the government has decided you should be allowed to fuck at. Teenagers are dumb and horny and sext each other even when it's illegal or a bad idea. In other news, water is wet and it gets cold during winter.

If you're gonna make up fake shit, goddamn, at least make it something I should actually care about. Because while I do think it's fake, I also don't give a shit about what some horny teenagers were doing 4 years ago.

#sif speaks #dreamwastaken #discourse #drituation #I literally could not care less if this is or isn't true #Even if I think it's bullshit given the timing #like #if I'm gonna judge that I also need to back and judge I knew in hs #at least one of whom are now married with a kid

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sugar-omi · 2 months

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Hello ! I was mentally torturing myself and I thought that I could share my heart wrenching thoughts. (No I'm not utterly traumatized, in a good way I promise, by the cheating on Cove with Baxter fic.)

Buuut... in step 3, if we like Cove and didn't confess he does. It's an adorable moment however, Cliff's reaction about our new baby couple left me wondering. He says that MC and Cove's relationship will either end up with the breakup of a lifetime or a marriage. Even if, it is meant to be a lighearted comment, it says a lot. So don't you think that MC's could feel pressured (by their family) to date Cove, even if they like him ? MC could be in love while also being so confuse about their feelings for him and being unable to say if they're just trying to fulfill their families wishes.

That was a lot, so feel free to answer or not. Sorry for my English and have a good day ! :p

no bc i think about this a lot, but in the way of how would i act if this was actually my life? n i also think about loving cove so much, it feels like an obsession, loving him so much that it chokes you up.. i just get this so much n im really glad you brought this up bc i wasn't sure how to bring it up myself!!!

tags : Angst / Hurt/Comfort, ramble. a very big ramble.

synopsis : MC is very overwhelmed by their feelings for cove, and the expectations of others.

your whole life has been this small town, this sleepy street out of an even sleepier town. the most excitement and life you get is from your neighbor, someone who has always been there since life began to matter.

and even if you have a bunch of friends from school, there's a big difference between them and someone you see every morning and before bed.

you have to find opportunities to see them, to see derek, to see lee, but seeing cove tomorrow is always guaranteed.

so it's obvious you'll catch feelings for him, and if those feelings turn to love, it's such a strong feeling for someone so young. it's a feeling that'll drown you, choke you up, it keeps you up at night and you feel like you could cry because everything about cove is so perfect, he's so lovely and kind and he turns what could be a nightmare into a dream.

but it's such a fragile feeling, and it takes something so small to break it.

even if it's obvious, so obvious that cove loves you back, especially when he asks you on a date. but just like he's worried about, what if this feeling between you is just because of how small this town is, and the even smaller distance between you and him.

and that your families are only so close because your parents have been conspiring on you two since before you even knew of each others existence.

and that you have only had this many opportunities to fall in love because his dad bribed you to be his son's friend, your parents urging you to be kind to the new neighbor, your sisters insistent teasing about your 'baby boyfriend', lee asking about the obvious tension between you when you're 13 and can't even breathe the same air without blushing.

even derek asking if you like anyone, and you can't forget baxter asking how long you and cove have been living together...

there's no way that the nosy neighbors and passerby's haven't made comments about you and cove. i won't even bring up your school mates, who are probably relentless about how close you are.

someone definitely tells you that cove likes you. and tells cove that you like him.

as if you didn't know, as if it wasn't so obvious there was something.

so many people dangling this tension in front of your face, teasing you, prodding you. so many people, especially the older folk, anticipating the obvious. or what they think is an obvious ending to the story of two neighbors.

it's scary. because what if this feeling is just anxiety? what if this feeling is just built off all the nights you fantasized about him? built off all the times your sister visualized your wedding to cove over dinner.

what if the heat in your cheeks is just because your classmates are yelling across the hall about you liking cove, or cove liking you.

what if it's just because the teacher is telling you two to "get a room" or "you can makeout later, get to class!"

and god the way cove looks at you. the way he acts around you, the things he does for you.. it just makes your heart flutter more. so much more

but it also scares you. what if you disappoint him? ruin what you have? it terrifies you. and your feelings terrify you even more.

you're so in love with him you feel like you could fly. you would give him the world, sun, moon, and stars. you'd hand it all over to him on a silver platter, and still give him more.

it's all scary.

such intense feelings, and so many expectations. all that combined with your overthinking, your fears that eat you up in the night.

you can't be at fault for not confessing, or rejecting cove. but why does it hurt so much?

it haunts you for a long time, the guilt, the look on cove's face, trying to avoid why there's awkward tension between you... but i hope you get over it. even if you don't, i hope you realize why you did it

it was easier to dissect your emotions from everything else once you've had a chance to grow and experience life outside sunset bird.

and your and cove's worries about your relationship and feelings only being true and sturdy because of all the adults around you urging you together, is easily found false (to an extent, everyone still brags about setting up certain events to get you two close) when you two are still a thick as thieves

so if you or cove confess in between step 3-4, or you or him confess in step 4, i hope you feel comfortable accepting it now that you don't feel as much pressure having a happy ending with cove

and even if you do, you're the only one cove will want, so take your time, and maybe this time, you can get through your fears with a little communication this time?...

#olba #our life: beginnings & always #cove holden #cove holden x reader #cove holden x mc #ramble #hurt/comfort #angst

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jeon-ify · 3 months

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that night- j. yunho- pt. 4 (teaser)

a/n: hello! what are our thoughts so far? this is a part 4 teaser cus im on writers block so enjoy this

warnings: sad!yunho, supportive!mingi, making out?, yeosang, wooyoung and seonghwa make an appearance !! that’s it. lmk if i missed anything

genre: drama, romance

enjoy!

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yunho can’t remember the last time he had fun. he also can’t remember the last time he smiled.

there yunho was, putting on the black shoes you got him 7 years ago for his birthday, finally putting them to use. he slid on the dust brushed shoes, alongside a black button-up that hugged his figure so beautifully, almost making the buttons seem as though they’ll burst.

he buttoned his slacks, sprayed his tobacco vanille cologne and headed out the front door of his home.

he felt like he needed a drink before he’d be social again— not making any friends or conversations other than his best friend mingi.

he pulled out of his driveway and into the parking lot of the night club down the street front your home. he passed by your home many times, tempted to come home to you and lay with you.

his phone rings, reading ‘mingi’ on the caller ID.

“yo, where are you? are you not coming?” he yells. the music masked by laughter and heavy chatter filling yunhos speaker.

“i don’t know man, that isn’t my scene.” yunho hesitates. he’s parked outside of your apartment, watching how your lights occasionally turn off and on throughout the night. he sees your door close as you leave. he ducks his head and whispers to mingi, in hopes that you won’t see him.

“man you have 10 minutes. get your ass over here.” the phone call comes to an end, yunho’s eyes filled with tears. he doesn’t want to leave where he most belongs. he finds a home within you, but you really don’t know where you stand, whether it be with yunho or yourself.

driving away, yunho gives into going to the party mingi wants him so bad to come to. maybe it’ll get his mind off you.

he arrives after 8 minutes exactly, tears dry around the corners of his almond eyes. he walks into the party, greeted by 3 of his high school friends at once. the first one has sharp eyes, a muscular build and very pale skin. the second one being the loudest of the bunch, and the third being honey-toned with a slim figure, who looks like Toothless.

“yunho— woah, are you high, bro? the fuck did you take?” wooyoung asks. after 6 years of not seeing his friend, that was the hello yunho was greeted with.

“ignore him. how have you been? how are things with you and y/n?” seonghwa pulls him in for a hug, as he questions with no idea as to what brought yunho to this party tonight— getting his mind off of what he did to you.

yunho scoffs, holding in everything he wants to say, but deciding he’d rather sweep it under the rug. though he wants to so badly talk about it, he doesn’t want to hear any more of the ‘oh you fucked up’ or ‘you’re insane’ or ‘why would you do that’.

yeosang just watches, waiting for his turn to greet his friend. as he continues to greet him, yunho spots mingi in a crowd, motioning for him to come over to the area mingi was standing in— crowded with people none of them knew. yunho took this as a chance to finally let himself go for just tonight.

“you’re here! guys, this is my best brother, yunho. yunho went through a traumatizing breakup a while ago and is trying to get his mind off things.” he spills his friend’s story to strangers, though it makes yunho feel at ease, knowing that mingi was there for him.

“mingi… who is that?” yunho has to triple check to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him. he sees a woman with the prettiest hair, the keychain hanging from the black purse he vividly remembers at your apartment. he also sees black heels that belonged to you years ago.

what are you doing here?

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lyricailove · 3 months

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It's funny seeing posts trying to say Debbie is worst when 1. she's not and 2. moralizing over which sibling is the worst misses the point of the show entirely. From the beginning, it's shown that Frank and Monica have severely traumatized their kids and left them with no guidance and very little moral compass. What little guidance they do get is from Fiona who received zero from Frank and Monica. So I don't find it productive to point fingers at any sibling and label them the worst because they have to build morals on their own. They weren't taught any better. It's why they rarely do that to each other apart from the moments in which they are at odds with each other, which they do because they were brought up by Frank who has the emotional maturity of a preschooler. To be honest, take any one character out of Shameless and put them in another show and they would be the worst character on that show. But Shameless is a show that's very much about: These are bad people who do bad things but we love them anyway. The show ending with most of them in a relatively stable place shows that they can be better.

*I don't care what the show says, Debbie does not leave with Heidi. She heals from her breakup and finds a nice place for her and Franny to live. Fuck JW

#Mine #Shameless #Shameless US

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erasawordsmithofsorts · 2 months

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this is a really long post and you dont have to read it, its more of a word vomit towards the end but its really detailing my experiences with 5sos c: (its kind of sad but it means a lot to me that i finally put this into words)

i love 5sos. like a lot more than i could put into words. i have such a long and extensive history with this band that its just so much, like.

ive been a fan of 5sos since july 15th, 2014. i was 5/6 years old sitting on the front porch of my grandma's house with this girl i was friends with. she showed me some of their songs and i was in love. i didnt stop listening to them for years, they were my everything. idols, best friends, family, everything. and the only reason i stopped listening to them ever is because of some really heavy traumatic events that happened to me when i was 8-10 years old.

fast forward a few years, i start dating this guy. this guy really liked 5sos, he got me back into 5sos. my brain was so traumatized, it blocked out most of my memories with this band, with the fans of this band, etc. and him getting me to listen to their entire discography? yeah that brought them flooding back.

yet i still stayed, with him and the band again. this guy became really toxic. we argued every night, he blatantly ignored my needs, he got mad at me for getting more 5sos streams than him, he made fun of me for only listening to their old stuff. he acted like i hadnt told him, "hey, some really fucked up things happened to me in 2014-2016 and i forgot pretty much everything from those years so i kind of obsess over them"

but me and this guy were ldr, my mom took my phone, i texted him through a friends' phone. he starts cheating on me. i come back, my mom is having heart surgery, and he tells me i have to break up with him. so i do.

i break up with him, i go through the shit, i get pissed off, i get upset, i cry. i cry a LOT. and for a bit i didnt listen to 5sos. and then i get back into 5sos, because im not gonna change who i am at my very core because some idiot guy who was 'there first' made it about him. i'll make it about me again, i will obsess over it, i will go back to being six years old crying on the front porch with my best friend. i will go back to being a kid who didnt know why people didnt like her.

and i did. im back there, im who six year old me dreamed of being. sure, i have my days where the only thing i can do is cry and try not to hurl myself down a flight of stairs, but im still here arent i? ive made it to the age i always dreamed about being, havent i? im still absolutely in love with the same exact bands, the same exact places, the same exact aesthetics.

5sos is why im me, like that is such a beautiful and poetic thing to me. im still here because of a band, im still here because some guys that at the time were across the world gave me some motivation to keep going? of course im gonna love them. of course im gonna advertise the shit out of them. of course im gonna know every detail i possibly can about them.

like, i mean yeah, i took a little break. but i was forced to by my own brain. and even then, what helped me start healing form that trauma? 5sos. what helped me start healing from that breakup? 5sos.

tw for s/h + suicidal stuff under the cut! its nothing bad bad, just mentions attempts and stuff but its talking about getting better :3 tl;dr in bottom of the cut!

its so weird to say that "this guy who doesnt even know i exist, saved my life" but its true sometimes. like i was in such a bad place when i was younger that i couldnt function. yearly, i was being checked into psych wards. they never helped. i tried therapy, i tried medication. nothing worked.

and then 5sos came back into my life and i finally felt whole again. i finally felt like i was me again. i had been self harming since i was in the third grade, and once you cope like that for so long, its really hard to stop.

but i finally made the decision to get clean, i finally said "enough is enough, i dont want to be like this anymore. i wanna live and be healthy, i wanna live and be happy, i wanna wear shorts, i wanna wear skirts, i wanna wear short sleeves and tanks, i want to wear dresses without sleeves that show my thighs a little. and would ashton or luke or michael or calum really want me to do this to myself? no, no they wouldnt, get your shit together era." and so i did? i got it together, i made my life work. i started looking for the good again, i started behaving like a little kid that knew no bounds again, i started acting my age. i started loving me again. and thats powerful? thats metal as fuck.

the app that i use to track my clean streak has a section for "reasons to stay clean" i have pictures of my friends, my animals, and most importantly, the guys that finally inspired me to pick myself up off the floor and put myself back together.

because i did, i really had to scrounge up the broken pieces. i really had to dig deep and try and piece them back together. and it took work, and im still working on it. and even though ive been clean from s/h for three months, the urges are still there and every time theres just that little voice in my head that takes on ashton's that goes "hey dont, its not the right way." and every time i feel like the world is over, like i dont have anything else, it's always just a reminder.

there will be something else, no matter what theres gonna be something else. no matter what, the suns gonna rise again. no matter what, something good will come of all your pain, all your struggles, all your heartbreak, all the tears. the sleepless nights, the trauma, the guilt, the anger, the fear, the sadness, all of it. it means youre human, it means youre alive. it means good things are gonna happen, you just gotta wait for it. you gotta pick yourself up and keep going. keep fighting, keep running, keep walking. hell if you have to, keep crawling. keep crawling while youre crying. dont look back, youre not going that way. think of how far your faves have come, think of how your younger self wants to know what theyre gonna grow up to be. think.

its not over, it will never be over. pain is human, youre human. youre experiencing life as it was meant to be experienced, its okay to have off days.

tl;dr 5sos + me have been together since i was six and ashton irwin has quite literally kept me alive and from destroying myself mentally and physically for nearly ten years. cool beans bro

#5sos #5 seconds of summer #5sosfam #luke 5sos #ashton 5sos #calum 5sos #michael 5sos #luke hemmings #ashton irwin #calum hood #michael clifford #word vomit #stream of consciousness #late night thoughts #era talks about 5sos saving her life for the second time #era's blog #era posting #-era

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theloveinc · 1 year

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I love ex boyfriend bakugo so much you don't even know

actually i do know because i feel the SAME. my love for ex bakugo is unyielding. endless. forever. and i actually wrote a bunch for him a couple months ago when another anon brought it up but... got scared they'd hate what i had down so i....... put it on the shelf. i'll have to find it maybe... if ppl want.

ANYWAY... like. there is truly just no way to go wrong with him. there is just no universe where he isn't either a depressed, miserable, longing ex or an kind, gentle and regretful one (or some variation of). even when he's angry, it's mostly just at himself for being a douche who managed to lose you, and HOW CAN U NOT LOVE THAT??

it's so ironic bc he's such a prickly pear but... he just loves the hardest out of any + everyone. not that i don't imagine the others and just as caring... but for bakugo, it's almost a religious experience, you know? never a phase or an era or something he just does but a... idek. life commitment? goal? achievement? something to be maintained and treasured? all of the above. EVEN IF he's not that good at it (at first... which is debatable anyway), that's still how he feels.

so when u break up... that can't be the end of things. like really i can only imagine it happening circumstantially, cuz i genuinely think that any issues you bring up with him (aside from work maybe), he'd take BEYOND seriously.

too gruff and private? suddenly he's telling u every single emotion he has and asking if he's being too rough. too anal and uptight? suddenly the kitchen is a mess and he hasn't even noticed. hell, even too busy? he'll do his best to fit a whole evening with u in his schedule (he hates mornings more than anything but takes the ass crack of dawn shift just so u can have dinner together most night)... it's like !!!!!!! + reminds me of that post i made talking about how pro heroes are so hard to breakup with bc even when ur pointing out their flaws, they're so used to constructive criticism, they don't even notice ur being insulting LMFAO😭

that aside tho, i can never imagine a bakugo breakup!au without them... you both back together at some point. even if it's ten or fifteen years later like... he spent all that time trying to get better for u... even if he didn't think you'd really come back. (or, as i was trying to write, you breakup with him and he just... doesn't fucking believe u LMFAOOOOO and shoves his booty back into his rightful place sadjkfhakjdsf)

(and bc i have i-can-fix-him disease, i also like bakugo who went thru a traumatic breakup w/ someone who wasn't u... and then five/ten/fifteen years later, you're the one to teach him to love again. or maybe that's not that unique of me LOL).

#bakugo #anyway #this is a mess im sorry but WAHHHHHHHH ADJKFLHADSHFB. I LOVE U BAKUGO IM UR BIGGEST FAN I NEED U #whenever i read breakup angst i'm like #he broke up WITH U. we get back together <3 #and god like. reunification / older dating aus #like i sometimes i dont even imagine the dating i just imagine me telling him all his exes are sh*t (not you but imaginary ppl)#and him being like <3 #LOL I'M TOXIC #and also the other ex thing i wrote i didnt like bc it ended up being more story than thought #but it was basically abt like... u know. u break up with him over slight miscommunication #and he doesn't even realize??? he's just like ok were taking a break for a couple days lol.#and then ur like no bakugo we broke up lmfao #and he's like. uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh absolutely not and calls u every day talking like ur boyfriend until u. realize #he's serious abt changing #ANYWAYYYYYY SORRY FOR THIS IF ITS NOT WHAT U WANTED BYE #caitie things #gen #anon

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littlealeta · 11 months

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Why Catherine Needed Rin

I know a lot of people criticize Full Body for things like its transphobia and the inclusion of Rin. While I do agree that Rin could've been written better in terms of the story, I am not at all mad at the inclusion of Rin and her different personality at all. In a game where everything and everyone is constantly traumatizing and treating the main character like he's the devil, it's nice to have a character that sees past his flaws and anxiety for the caring person he truly is. And that at the end of the day, despite his mistakes, he's just a sad, anxious, traumatized dude who needs a hug and a real friend. Their relationship is honestly really sweet, which made me feel really disappointed that Atlus couldn't include her for the whole Classic route. I mean, imagine Rin comforting Vincent after his breakup and getting beaten by Catherine. She could've been the one to save him from the beating!

Rin is truly the breath of fresh air the game needed. She's such a pure-hearted character that she becomes the only person who Vincent truly feels happy around. We don't see him stutter, yell at, or overall feel uncomfortable around Rin. She is the only person who never yells at or criticizes Vincent. She lets him be himself, even if it may not fit with what other people expect for someone of his gender and age. Vincent does lash out once but it was very minor, he had a lot on his mind, and he apologized afterward.

Rin, in my opinion, made Catherine a slightly better experience. One of the reasons I didn't like Catherine was because everyone in the game is kinda shitty and I especially didn't like all the pressure everyone put on the main character, who was going through a tough time and like me, has trouble making decisions and is possibly autistic.

Everyone else is just horribly written because of how surface-level they feel. They all are selfish and/or whiny jackasses with no rhyme or reason, no self-awareness, and no character development. Vincent is definitely the most complex character in the cast because while he is a selfish, whiny jackass, he has his reasons (his struggle with his toxic relationships and being forced upon while drunk) and he grows as a person. And he's often aware and guilty of how selfish he's being. They try to develop Orlando, but was also implied to already have been a jackass in the past and he brought the emotional damage onto himself by hurting his lover with his bad decision-making, so no sympathy for him there. Also, please be more considerate of your best friend who is going through an extremely horrible life crisis. Erica is definitely bitter and cynical because of the treatment she gets from her friends, but she's also very self-righteous herself and likes to force her own biased morals and feelings onto other people. It also doesn't make sense at all why she would not tell Toby about her gender when the game now takes place in 2019 where there should be less stigma against trans people. Toby is just... a stupid selfish whiny brat. Like dude, you're close to my age and yes I can be whiny and selfish, but not to that extent. Grow up, man. Katherine is just so stupid to me. I know she's trying to be the logical one, but she's just so stupid in her determination to get her lover who she's clearly unhappy with to marry and have a family with her, not understanding that logically, Vincent is not fit for serious relationships let alone with her and she makes no attempts at fixing their relationship. She tends to be unnecessarily nitpicky and bossy toward Vincent even for little things like not getting out of bed while she's SITTING ON HIM. And the Boss is just... a classic power hungry self-righteous dictator, just on a fantasy level. He's the villain so whatever, I guess.

Vincent did not deserve either atherine in the original game because neither were good to him. I theorize that maybe the loved ones he has are in some way responsible for the mess he became. Because I can't imagine having such a toxic community like that around and being acting like my normal nice self to them. I would act a lot worse than Vincent ever has (cheating aside). I think he's way too forgiving how he still keeps these fake ass "friends" around that constantly tells him how much he sucks because he can't make decisions and runs away from conflict and act like Katherine is an angel who Vincent should stick with despite their obvious communication issues. Yes, Vincent has flaws, but I would not want to be around someone who's constantly treating me like I'm the worst person ever and pressuring me to make decisions faster.

If you think Vincent is an evil person or that he deserves everything he gets, shut up and have these pictures of Rin and Vincent being sweet together.

#catherine full body #catherine game #vincent brooks #vincent x rin #katherine mcbride

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oaxleaf · 1 year

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mag 81 - a guest for mr. spider

a very consistent trait in jon is that he needs to feel like he's being treated with respect and dignity. in mag 193 (i think?) rosie very much notes his uptight nature and desire for being seen as proffesional. i think the way he describes himself as a child very much reflects that. how he despises any implications that he's not as smart or competent as adults around him. it's easy to dismiss children as being ridiculous, but people often forget that kids do have deeper inner lives and reasons and logic behind why they do and think what they do. yeah, it's often very flawed, but that's not an inherent stupidity but rather out of a lack of experience. i think kids that grow up as outsiders, kids who are traumatized, and kids who've always been told that they're 'mature' or 'old souls' or whatever especially go through this. which, well, these mostly fit in on jon

(can you tell that i relate to all of this lol?)

anyway. isn't it fucked up how jon mentions being an orphan once and it's never brought up again? like i said, i do definitely think it affected his personality, because kids that go through something traumatic like that (and let's not pretend it isn't traumatic. it might not be life-changing ptsd inducing or whatever, but it's still trauma) often end up socially awkward because they can't connect to kids their age but they have very little in common with adults regarding life experience. so i do think it had some major impacts on him, but jesus christ this guy is really fucked up and traumatized for it only to be mentioned once

oh, and georgie's her :) i love her and i really do think she deserves more attention. aside from her spat with jon at the end of s4, she's probably the most genuine relationship he has in his life, aside from martin. they knew each other before the supernatural bullshit really manifested in their lives and she's so quick to take him in and let him stay. i don't think many people would do that for an ex with whom you had a cannonically really bad breakup with several years ago. i'd love to just see more of her and know how she thinks about and views things

#i don't know if there's much sense to this beyond ramblings #but in my defense i am sick and in pain and my brain feels on the verge of implosion #and it might be covid so...#tma #a mag a day #mag 81

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sickness-health-all-that-shit · 21 days

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hello! i was watching ian and mickey scenes through *the* youtube channel, i'm not too deep into the lore of the fandom but! i read that noel wanted to be paid more for his role which is why they wrote him off on s6 etc. reading some comments through clips from the other seasons he is not in i saw that the ''reasons'' as of why ian seems not to care of him was because of his medication and pretending to keep himself steady but with s7 it went down after seeing him again + monica's death (and that's also why he's maniac again :0) thankfully right after they're back together which makes my serotonin skyrocket! i mostly read fics that are a sort of fix it or with mickey coming back right after monica dying etc. i didn't know about these infos before so i thought it was kind of fanon that ian goes maniac because of that and that he never said ''i love you'' to anyone but mickey. i wanted to ask you what is your take on ian's feelings when mickey wasn't around? gotta say that it makes me feel way better knowing that despite their effort to remove mickey from the series they managed to make it was all about him/leading back to them together! i hope i didn't disturb you with this ask but im having feelings!!! eheh

hi there! totally valid to have ✨feelings✨ about this, especially when you first start diving into their history and relationship!! my own deep-dive under the cut:

I do believe Noel left bc of contract renegotiations, yes. and after that fans were not happy with (and were very vocal about) the show trying to 'replace' Mickey with other boyfriends for Ian and having Ian badmouth Mickey etc. anyway, if we're keeping this to in-universe explanations as to how Ian felt about Mickey during those seasons, my interpretation is this: at the start of s6, Ian was in a very, very bad place. we see that at some point he started taking his meds (despite his previous refusal to do so like during the breakup in 5x12) but he's very clearly going through depression at that stage. let's keep in mind that at the time he was dealing with accepting his diagnosis, something he struggled a lot with both bc of the comparisons with Monica and bc of how much he valued his independence, so acknowledging the need for outside help and someone to care for him when he's not feeling well is particularly hard for him. he also just came out of a long period of being unmedicated--I've seen people suggest symptoms first started manifesting at the end of s3, and might've influenced his decision to go off to the army with everything that that brought as a consequence and all the choices he made as a result of that.. his life had changed dramatically in that period (he dropped out of school, left his home and his siblings, worked in nightclubs as a minor and of course he went through all that traumatic stuff with Mickey from 3x06 onward) so at the beginning of s6 he makes the decision to basically just put all of that behind him. Ian has a tendency to compartmentalize, which means he took all the bad things that had happened to him up until his diagnosis (and everything that reminded him of that, ie Mickey) and tried to forget about them, so that he could move on in some way. of course at this point Mickey was in prison and expected to remain there for the next 8 to 15 years, so that was another thing Ian made the decision to put out of his mind, bc it all hurt too much to deal with. so he made a new life for himself. which I'm very proud of him for! I love his journey to become an emt <3 dating-wise, choices were made. not necessarily by Ian though, by which I mean he kinda fell into those relationships, going through the motions because of how uncertain he was feeling at that time, and ending up dating people that should've maybe definitely had been fuck buddies at most. anyway, let's not dwell on that ajkds and let's get back to Mickey. the whole 'out of sight out of mind' thing obviously crashes and burns for Ian once Mickey shows up again, right there in front of him. that rush of deep-buried feelings must have been overwhelming. and yeah, I do agree that Ian's manic state through s8 was probably a result of the double hit of Monica's death and losing Mickey again--for all Ian knew, for good this time. and he absolutely never said I love you to anyone but Mickey, bc he's never loved anyone but him. they were it for each other from the start!! thank god the show finally got with the program at some point lol and gave us the happy ending they truly deserved ❤️

#answered #anons

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tryst-art-archive · 1 year

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Context: 2012, pt. 8? 9?

Turns out a thing I thought happened Later happened in 2012, so we've gotta hit this point, too.

This particular story is a traumatic one for me, but a large piece of it is other people's trauma, so it's going to be a bit more summary than usual, per my "Do no harm to others" policy for the archive.

I'm also going to consolidate events that took place over many years into one story contained in one post, for coherency. So, a lot of this happened before 2012 and some of it happens after.

There's quite a lot in the way of heavy topics, so if emotional abuse, depression, or suicide are topics you're not up to engaging in, then you should probably skip this one.

Background

I mentioned previously that there were three female friends who emotionally abused me. This is about the third, who we're going to call Cat for convenience.

I don't know exactly when the abuse started. I don't think it was immediate, but I do think it was in swing by high school. Most her tactics revolved around manipulating other people into doing what she wanted and undermining self-esteem. When she was having trouble getting her way, she'd grab the other party's wrist and steadily increase her grip until it hurt, sometimes twisting or using both hands if she needed to. She never left marks.

College increased the distance between us, but not right away. At my suggestion Cat and my bestie, Deer, began dating, and that relationship proved to be a tumultuous one. Cat enacted the same controlling, emotionally abusive behaviors on Deer that she had enacted on me. However, in Deer's case, it was more severe and more direct and typically centered around gender, sexuality, and their disparate interests.

By that I mean that Cat was attempting to mold Deer into the partner that Cat wanted. She was adamant that Deer, who at the time identified as a cis girl, present exclusively masculinely, becoming upset whenever Deer showed signs of femininity. She derided Deer's interests while demanding that Deer participate in her interests and hobbies without complaint. She also tended to foist labor onto Deer by pointing to learned helplessness on her own part; for example, getting Deer to make box mac because Cat claimed to not know how to boil water. (Not a joke.) They additionally had recurring disagreements around sex, in which Cat reasonably would express disinterest in it but much less reasonably would make Deer feel disgusting and morally wrong for having sexual desire at all.

All of this occurred without any of us realizing abuse was occurring, although the people in Deer's and my friend group expressed the opinion that Deer should break up with Cat. We could see dysfunction, even if we didn't grasp the scope.

Their breakup arrived early in 2011, which brought with it an aggressive and rebellious performance of femininity on Deer's part and a nearly immediate improvement in their mood and self-esteem. Moreover, Deer became rapidly much more like themselves than they had been for the past couple of years, and it wasn't long before they and Coyote began dating.

As for me, the distance between me and Cat increased by virtue of her being around the places I hung out less frequently, but we remained friends, and I walked the delicate balance of being retaining a certain degree of neutrality.

However, I'd intended to step away from my high school friends since high school itself, and I often viewed get-togethers as an obligation. This wasn't entirely fair to the whole of the group; much of my irritation about school itself was misdirected toward them, and a lot of the rest of my desire to walk away was, unbeknownst to me, about removing myself from the emotional abuse I didn't realize I was experiencing. I took the opportunity of Cat's reduced presence to increase that distance, but I continued to see both her and our larger friend group on a semi-regular basis.

So 2012...

Around the time that my gentleman caller and I broke up, Cat told me that she was feeling suicidal over text. Naturally I sat and talked with her while she grappled with the feeling; suicidal ideation is practically my area of expertise.

As our conversation progressed, she eventually accused Deer, my best friend of a decade at that point, of sexually assaulting her while they were dating.

Let me be clear: Deer never did that. I know this because the event that Cat described was analogous to an event Deer had described to me at the time when it happened, so I had Deer's side of the story already. What had occurred between them was that Deer had attempted to de-escalate and manage a situation by walking away until they had calmed down, rather than snap at Cat. At best what Cat was wrangling with was an unfortunate miscommunication--and if we accept that caliber of miscommunication as assault, then I have never met a single human being in my life who hasn't been assaulted.

This is an incredibly unpleasant thing to talk about, as such. It's absolutely critical to listen to victims, but likewise abusers frequently use the language of progressives and psychologists in order to frame themselves as victims of their abusers. Maybe Cat believed what she told me, maybe she didn't; I'll never know for sure. What I do know is that she brought this to me as an attempt to split me from my best friend of ten years, whom she had a personal grudge against and who threatened Cat's control over me, and she did this at a time when I was exceedingly vulnerable, being recently heartbroken.

It was a situation in which Cat was using white, gender-conforming womanhood to twist the narrative of her victim reacting reasonably to her abuse. I, personally, feel Cat was acting in bad faith based on everything else that happened in our friendship. However, I'd argue that even if you wanted to take Cat's version of events as the truth and assume good faith on her part, then you must also take Deer's version of events as truth given in good faith--in which case we have two victims with no aggressors. You have to accept that two conflicting realities can simultaneously be true.

And this is what Cat's assertion did to me in the moment. It was 2012. It was still five years before I'd go to therapy meaningfully. It was when I still subscribed to the binary morality that Christianity had bred in me. I was in a rough place, and a long-time friend was telling me that a person who I can credit for my ongoing presence in this world had done one of the few things that I find irredeemable.

My worldview and reality fractured instantly.

From that day onward, I began to perceive of reality not as a singular thing that we're all in on, but as a set of loose commonalities shared across and infinitude of realities. Every individual person is a reality unto themselves, and the common "reality" is just the parts the majority of us can agree on--the parts we can measure and attest to as a shared experience, essentially. In understanding this, I understood how there can be multiple truths at once, how there can be no good guy or bad guy in a situation; how "good guys" can hurt other "good guys" and how "bad guys" can do good things. I understood nuance; I understood that moral absolutism is innately foolhardy and more religious than not. I understood that almost nothing can be sorted as categorically always wrong nor can any one punishment be applied as a blanket to all sins.

Unfortunately, none of that told me what to do in the moment, and after muddling my way through the conversation and assuring Cat was stable enough to be left to her own devices, I spent some time thinking over what I'd learned, processing it, and then I shared it with Deer--which didn't exactly help them, but it was their business. They needed to know, from my perspective.

PTSD

The precise order of operations and years these next events occurred in I'm not so sure of, but they are the key points.

Deer demonstrated clear signs of PTSD--particularly around sex and desirability--following their relationship with Cat. This included such trademark signs as panic attacks when presented with a trigger, and fortunately their new partner, Coyote, was able to respond appropriately to the situations when they arose.

After a time, Deer began seeing a therapist about the recurrent breakdowns, and their therapist diagnosed them with PTSD as a result of emotional abuse perpetrated by Cat. As Deer learned about this and began to work through it, they also told me about the things they learned, and it slowly became apparent that it wasn't just Deer that Cat had emotionally abused; it was also me, and it was still happening.

It took me a very long time to reach a state in which I fully accepted that the emotional abuse had occurred and began pushing back against it, but the realization did sink in, and as I became more certain--more able to see what was happening--I got angry, and I little by little withdrew from Cat, even knowing it would cost me the rest of that friend group to do, with the intent to simply disappear like a ghost, as I'd done successfully in both prior instance of emotional abuse from a friend.

But Cat was not going to let me go without a fight.

How Dare You

One day, Cat called me out of the blue and told me she intended to kill herself.

I was, immediately, furious. I had by this time grown to loathe her, was trying to wriggle away from her, and what i saw when she said this was that she probably wouldn't follow through but if she did and I did nothing, I would be culpable for her death. In other words, she had made me responsible for her life--and the audacity made me see red.

Still, I completed the phone call successfully, obtaining reassurance that she'd do her best to not act on the impulse, and then we hung up. I stood where I was for a moment, thinking, and then made some phone calls; I looped Cat's best friend and parents in.

Here's the thing about that: Cat was in a different state than most of her support network. None of us could get to where she was in less than 2 hours, if memory serves. I therefore knew that involving people besides myself had very high odds of getting her hospitalized; I knew, from my own experience as a suicidal person, that hospitalization would be the last thing she'd want.

This was always the real struggle when talking to a fellow suicidal: do you bring in the big guns in case they make an attempt, saving their life in a literal sense, or do you protect them by managing the situation one-on-one, thereby saving their life in a practical sense? Choosing the former could lead to the person cutting you out of their life in fury, in retaliation for their messing things up for you, but choosing the latter might leave you with a dead friend.

Just this once, the decision wasn't hard: if she disowned me for sending her to the hospital, then that was a bonus.

She did, in fact, get put into inpatient for a time. I'd estimate maybe a month, during which period she called me a couple of times. One of those she did call me out for making the call, but then thanked/forgave me. Her parents sent me a thank you gift that I always felt guilty about.

The abuse resumed as normal on her return, but I had reached a breaking point. The clock was ticking.

The "Cat" Box

One of the curious things about my friendship with Cat was that we had a way of communicating tacitly that didn't align with the near-telepathic communication Deer and I were capable of nor the silent, deductive communication I'd shared with my former gentleman caller.

No, this was entirely different and unique; it was an understanding of certain similarities we shared that we shared with no one else. Qualities that we both kept quietly under wraps but which guided our actions more often than not. I suspect that we'd learned them in the same way: as a defensive mechanism against our own, original abusers.

These were, universally, our worst qualities. They were the things that made us manipulative, the things that made her emotional abusive, the things that made me act like a jealous, crazy partner.

When I became consciously aware of this--which I remember explicitly occurring on an occasion when we met up at a Panera--I mentally took all of those qualities and put them in a little white box which I called The [Cat] Box, and I resolved to never behave in those ways again.

This was shockingly effective. It turns out having direct examples of what to do or not is a really useful learning method for me; any time I saw myself behaving in a slightly dubious way, I would weigh the action I wanted to take or the thought I was having or the thing I wanted to say against The Cat Box and ask myself, "Is this something Cat would do?" If the answer was "Yes," then I didn't do that thing.

It made me, unequivocally, a much better person.

It also moved me closer to getting away from Cat.

The Escape

The end of my friendship with Cat felt somewhat abrupt. We'd been on a couple of outings on which she'd suggested I move in with her and some high school friends rather than staying with Deer and Coyote, and I'd turned her down repeatedly. At the time, I had some frustrations with my living arrangement (which I no longer remember the details of), but they weren't anything major. She seized on those complaint with an eagerness that gave away her ongoing intention to drive a wedge between me and Deer.

There came a day on which a text conversation between us led to her asserting very incorrect and insulting things about Deer and Coyote, particularly asserting that they were bad for me and responsible for my mental ills. I became immediately furious and told her off directly--which I don't think I'd really done directly before--pointing to how Deer's presence in my life was one of the only truly good things I had going for me, and Cat was way, way out of line trying to insinuate otherwise.

The conversation ended there, and that was the end of it. I was finally free.

Aftermath

But... I did have trauma about the whole thing. I never received a formal diagnosis, but I had obvious triggers and could be put into a panicked fight-or-flight response if something reminded me of Cat. I was terrified of her for a very long time, would react with panic if I saw women with hair similar to hers, and was constantly worrying about whether she'd try to retaliate against me and Deer for escaping her.

I functionally cut ties with all of my former high school classmates, to avoid the inevitable drama that would arise from trying to explain why I was no longer willing to spend time with Cat, and accepted that they'd likely always have an incorrect impression of me. It wasn't what I wanted, really, but it was a necessary sacrifice to be safe from Cat.

Over time, the sore spots healed, and on one occasion years later I accepted an invite to spend some time with a subset of the high school friend group that didn't include her. At that meeting, I observed that most of the girls attending, some of whom were roommates of Cat's last I'd heard, were behaving largely condescendingly toward me. This wasn't for class or stature reasons, but rather it was apparent that they didn't want me there. I concluded that, at some point, Cat had spoken poorly of me, and so they saw my being present as crossing a line.

I ignored it. By that time (much closer to now than not), I'd grown into my own and developed a strength of character that wasn't easily bruised the way it once was. They were exhibiting a childish, "mean girls" behavior, which only showed me that they weren't people I wanted to connect with. Likewise, even among the people who were friendly, there was only one I had any interest in reconnecting with. These, I saw, were not my people; my teenage self had been right about that. The things that mattered to me, that I found value in, they looked down on, and the method of socializing for many of them was predicated on belittling others to bolster one's own ego. I didn't need that kind of energy around.

Following the event, I got a text from Cat--the first since the disagreement years ago--looking to reconnect. I told her in polite but certain terms that I wasn't interested. I heard nothing back, but I felt proud to have come far enough to set a boundary like that. It wasn't something the old me had been able to do.

#emotional abuse #suicide #10s #2012 #Age 21 #context #info #me #healing

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the-daily-scrommit · 1 year

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January 8, 2023

Jan 8, 2023 - Fifth entry

6:51am

Last night was a restless night. I went to sleep late and didn’t sleep very consistently at all. My ex called me last night too (I did end up texting them to call if they wanted to and had the energy), and we had a nice little conversation about their day. I was in little space throughout that conversation and kept checking in with them to make sure they were okay with it, and they were. They reassured me that they didn’t think me being little was romantic, and I said thank you, clarifying that the potential for it being romantic wasn’t where my concerns were; instead I was afraid of being little because they’re my friend, and I’m not ever little around my friends.

Speaking of being little around friends, I’m meeting up with one of my friends to be little and snuggle tomorrow! I’m still a little anxious about it but I’m so excited because I haven’t seen this friend in a while and they’ve always been so gentle with me. I’m really looking forward to cuddling someone again and being so small and vulnerable with someone I trust, even though it’ll be scary to be seen in such a raw emotional state as that.

Right now, as I write this part of my entry, I sit in my car, warming it up before work. I’m still anxious about work, though my anxiety and dread isn’t nearly as bad as it was my last few shifts. I really think I’ll be okay today. I don’t have much else to do today, thankfully. The only other responsibilities I have are going to the store with my family, and even then that isn’t something that I /have/ to do if I don’t want to or feel like I can’t. The rest of the day beyond work will be restful.

-6:59am

2:47pm

Work wasn't too bad today, thankfully. It felt weirdly slow, even for a dreary day. I made it through and took a good nap once I got home. I definitely feel rested now and I'm glad I was able to fall asleep and stay asleep for a couple of hours.

I dreamt about my ex-partner again; they've been frequenting my dreams quite a lot since the breakup. I've never seen anyone- not even through some obscure representation- in my dreams this frequently. Not my long-term high school ex, who I was with for two years, not my family members, not even anyone who has seriously traumatized me in my nightmares. But I've been dreaming about them on and off since we started talking.

This dream was pleasant, as are most of my dreams involving them. We were on a trip together, I think to Hawaii, with one of their parent's families, our mutual friends, and one of my parents. The two of us were very close, definitely acting with a level of intimacy, but I'm not sure if we were a couple in the dream. Knowing we might not have been brings me a level of comfort. I was still so comfortable with them, unafraid to ask for help, physical or otherwise, unafraid of judgement of being close to a person who brought me comfort as I rode through a new experience.

I wish I had more experiences like that with him while we were a couple. Now I get to hope that I have experiences with him like that as friends moving forward.

-2:58pm

9:38pm

My mental resolve has dropped sharply over the last hour, give or take. I'm feeling so many emotions, so many conflicting emotions. I texted a friend earlier:

"I'm in this weird limbo of I miss them but I don't

And I love them romantically but I don't

And I feel better but I don't"

And it doesn't stop there. I'm jealous of the people they might be talking to, might be driving around and cuddling in the back of their car, but I'm glad they're meeting new people and getting themselves out there and keeping themselves busy while they heal and learn and take their time away from me. I want to cry and scream and laugh and smile and hug them romantically and kiss them platonically and talk to them for hours and never talk to them ever again. My brain and my heart are emotional dumping grounds right now, for better and for worse.

I keep breaking down like I'm going to sob for hours but only the smallest tears leave my eyes, only after having to forcefully squeeze them out. And then, just moments later, it all goes back, deep inside my chest. Everything tightens again, as if being locked up with indestructible chains. I know these chains aren't actually indestructible, but they feel like it with how much they tighten around my already taught ribcage.

I'm trying to focus on tomorrow, on being small and cuddly with such a close, long term friend, but it's hard when my heart wants to pull back to my ex-partner. I want to reach out to them, text until they answer, call and say that I absolutely need to talk to them right now, but I know that I don't need them right now, nor do I ever. I do want them, that much is undeniable, and I won't try to deny it. I don't deserve to lie and deny myself of feeling those emotions, that raw, human desire.

I want to write more and get more off my chest but I feel like at this point I'd just be writing in circles, repeating over and over how much I miss them, how jealous I am, how happy I am that they're experiencing more of life, how proud I am that they're doing so much for themselves, how much I wish I was there, how glad I'm not, and so much more over and over and over and over again.

-9:53pm

2:32am

Today has been rough but I've had a lot of support from people I care about so much. It's been hard reaching out and being vulnerable but I did it and it's helped so much. Turning in for the night, I'm so anxious and emotional, but I feel like I have hope again.

Goodnight, take care; I am sending you love <3

#journal entry #daily journal #the daily scrommit #breakup #healing #self care #2:53am #January 8 2023 #my friends are so important to me

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xtruss · 1 year

Text

Psychology: This Drug Can Mend a Broken Heart! A New Therapy Promises to Take The Sting Out of Traumatic Memories.

— By Shayla Love | December 14, 2022

On Valentine’s Day in 2016, Anne Lantoine received not flowers, but divorce papers. In the months preceding, she had been preparing for her family’s move from France to Canada—or so she thought. She arrived in Quebec early with one of her three children, who was preparing to start college there, while the other two remained in Europe for school. Her husband stayed behind to manage the sale of their house in Marseille.

Then the realtors began to complain, through a barrage of calls and emails, to Lantoine. Her husband was not acting like a man who wanted his house sold. He wasn’t answering phone calls and was never available for showings. In January 2016, Lantoine called him after yet another complaint from a realtor. The next morning, he sent her an email with a notice for a court hearing, and she discovered her husband had actually filed for divorce, without telling her, months earlier.

That February, she finally got the paperwork, not from her husband, but from her real estate agent. “It was not my last shock,” Lantoine, now 59, recalls. “I also discovered that my husband’s mistress was living in my home.” These revelations were a huge blow practically: It disrupted the immigration paperwork, and Lantoine and her daughter lost their visa applications. But the searing pain was in the betrayal and deceit.

“It doesn’t erase what happened to you. It just changes the impact it has on your life.”

“I became very anxious and had constant nightmares,” she says. “I was tired all the time and had panic attacks each time I opened my mail or my emails, or when I had an unidentified phone call.”

Though the details of each case vary, romantic betrayal through infidelity, abandonment, or emotional manipulation can upend one’s life in an instant. For Lantoine, her future plans, and the person they were attached to, were suddenly gone, and her functioning along with them.

Exhausted and an emotional wreck after almost a year, Lantoine learned about a clinical trial at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, a Canadian psychiatric hospital in Montreal, that sought to ease the pain of romantic betrayal. The study did not rely on traditional psychotherapy sessions. It claimed it would dampen the emotional reverberations of what happened to her by pairing a beta-blocker medication called propranolol with a series of “memory reactivation sessions.” She signed up.

It sounds like science fiction, or science romantic-fiction. The 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind often gets brought up, says Michelle Lonergan, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa who led the trial as part of her Ph.D. In the film, a couple, post-breakup, use a service to erase their memories of one another in response to the suffering of heartbreak.

But the experiments that Lantoine enrolled in were an attempt to use a very real feature of the brain—albeit one we’re still learning the ins and outs of—called memory reconsolidation to attenuate agonizing romantic memories.

COMFORTABLY NUMB: When a memory is remembered, or retrieved, it can be momentarily destabilized with a drug therapy, numbing its emotional pain. Image by Max4e Photo/Shutterstock.

“Memory reconsolidation” describes how, when we recall a memory, it can become pliable. There is hope—and some intriguing early data—that, at the moment of recollection, we might be able to intentionally change a memory and make it less burdensome. This ability to modulate distressing memories is being investigated as an intervention to treat post-traumatic stress disorder,1 addiction,2 phobias,3 and is thought to have promise for depression or anxiety more broadly. It rests on an idea that’s emerged from our understanding of memory over the past few decades: Memories are not fixed, even the ones that haunt us the most.

Described this year in the Journal of Affective Disorders, the study Lantoine enrolled in is the first application of a memory reconsolidation-focused treatment for adjustment disorder resulting from romantic betrayal.4 (Adjustment disorder is defined as an emotional and behavioral maladaptive reaction to a stressful event, but not a life threatening one, so it doesn’t meet criteria for PTSD.)

Unlike Eternal Sunshine, Lantoine’s memories didn’t vanish in a dramatic collapse of a beach house into the Montauk coastline. She still had the declarative memory of what had happened.5 But, as Lantoine describes it, the memories were no longer debilitating.

“The treatment doesn’t remove the remembrance of the events,” Lantoine says. “It just removes the pain that was associated with the events. It doesn’t erase what happened to you. It just changes the impact it has on your life.”

When a memory initially forms, or is consolidated, it relies on chemical interactions between neurons in our brain. When a memory is remembered, or retrieved, it can be momentarily destabilized while those same chemical processes reconsolidate the memory.

“We feel that our memories, whether they’re conscious or unconscious memories that influence our behavior, are fixed and rooted in fact,” says Joff Lee, a professor of memory neuroscience at the University of Birmingham who was not involved in the trial. “But actually, pretty much everything that we know about memory suggests that these memories are malleable, and they change for potentially good reasons.”

When presented with new information, it’s helpful for our memories to be able to update so that we can learn and adapt to our surroundings. By hijacking this feature, researchers have shown in animal models that when memories become labile, it’s possible to intervene.

“Visualize A Monster, With Big Long Claws, Digging Deep Into Your Heart, Ripping Your Heart Out While You Are Still Breathing.”

More than 50 years ago, scientists found they could induce something called “post-retrieval amnesia.”6 Rats could forget a fear response if given an electroconvulsive shock at just the right time to interrupt the reconsolidation of that memory. The study was one of the first to challenge the idea that memories, once formed, were unchanging. There are now dozens of animal studies that show that when drugs are given to block the molecules needed for memory consolidation, memories seem to vanish, even when those memories aren’t new.7

It soon became clear that memory reconsolidation could be a powerful therapeutic tool. But the methods used in animal studies to interfere with reconsolidating were often harmful to humans. Enter propranolol: a common beta blocker used for lowering blood pressure as well as for treating anxiety and preventing migraines. Propranolol impairs adrenaline hormones in the brain and is thought to impact the production of other molecules needed for memory reconsolidation.

Starting in the early 2000s, researchers showed that, in rats, the drug could have similar post-retrieval effects as the more toxic compounds. And in 2009, researchers found that propranolol could help people disengage from a learned fear response.8 In this study, scientists showed human participants images of spiders, paired with an electric shock. One day later, some were given propranolol and others a placebo. On the third day, when participants saw the same images, those who had received the placebo noticeably startled, a physical manifestation of the fear response usually paired with a negative emotional state. But those who had been given the propranolol no longer had that reaction. These participants could still remember what had happened to them; propranolol didn’t erase the facts. But they no longer exhibited the biological signs of being afraid.

Researchers soon began applying these findings to try to treat severe conditions, such as PTSD. Alain Brunet, a psychologist and researcher at the Douglas Institute and McGill University, and senior author of study Lantoine participated in, described in a 2018 paper that people with PTSD who took propranolol and received six 25-minute trauma reactivation sessions had fewer PTSD symptoms compared to a group that underwent the same sessions paired with a placebo. (He has even trademarked “Reconsolidation Therapy,” and the “Brunet Method,” which describe the protocol of pairing propranolol with memory retrieval sessions.)

Brunet has long felt that reconsolidation therapy could have wider appeal. “We wanted to broaden the uses of reconsolidation therapy,” Brunet says. So he and his team went looking for people suffering from an unfortunately common adjustment disorder—that spurred by romantic betrayal.

Anne Lantoine was of course not alone in suffering heartbreak in Quebec. Brunet and Lonergan recruited 61 people in total who were cheated on, abandoned, wiped out financially, “all kinds of horrendous stories,” Lonergan says.

The participants described being unable to sleep, gaining or losing weight, starting smoking, losing their hair, and suffering from nosebleeds. “It hurts everywhere!” as one 44-year-old woman described in a follow-up qualitative paper from the research team.9 “Your throat hurts. You can’t breathe. When you think about it you hurt … You have these really graphic images, and you can’t block them, there’s nothing you can do. It’s in your face all the time.” A 44-year-old man described his intrusive thoughts replaying “like a movie all the time.”

Being reminded of their former partners was especially distressing, like the anniversaries of when they discovered they were being cheated on, seeing photos of them online, or even seeing people who walked or talked like their former partners.

Even If We Can Change Memories, Should We?

“When I really knew that he had betrayed me, the pain, and the torture it was like I had been cut off at my knees … if you want to visualize you know like some sort of monster, with big long claws, and just digging deep into your heart, ripping your heart out while you are still breathing and alive and very conscious, and taking a bite out of your heart right in front of your face, that’s what it feels like,” a 50-year-old woman said.

In the trial, there was first a four-week waiting period when no one got any treatment. This limbo served as the control condition against which to compare the treatment. Then each person wrote a narrative of their betrayal, in as much detail as possible. In five memory reactivation sessions, they read their own descriptions one hour after taking propranolol. Compared to the waiting-period, the researchers found there was an overall significant reduction in symptoms, including intrusive thoughts, avoidance, and hypervigilance, as well as a decrease in anxiety and depression, starting after the first session. Up to four months later, those benefits remained.

“They were really in trouble,” Lonergan says. “And so we offered them treatment. And luckily, for a good chunk of them, it really seemed to work.”

The memory reconsolidation theory tells a tidy story about how practitioners might be able to help people, at least emotionally, rewrite their narratives. But does it tell the full story?

Lonergan acknowledges that there might be other factors at play. For example, the empathetic support in the retrieval sessions could have played a role in participants’ improvements, and she hopes to do future work on Adjustment Disorder and romantic betrayal with a full placebo group, the way the PTSD trial ran.

Lee thinks we should also have some humility about which mechanisms these therapies might be tapping into. Memory reconsolidation is likely a complex process that co-occurs with many other cognitive and neurobiological systems.

If Just The Facts of a Memory Remain, Can We Really Say It’s The Same?

This is underscored by the fact that results of reconsolidation therapies have not always been consistent.10, 11 Several studies have failed to replicate,7 and some even found reconsolidation attempts can lead to adverse events.12, 13 A randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled study in smokers from 2015 didn’t find any effect on physical reaction after being given a dose of propranolol.14 Three other placebo-controlled studies in people with PTSD also didn’t show any reduced symptoms.15

There could be rules and caveats to using memory reconsolidation as an effective tool that we simply don’t understand yet. Other research into memory reconsolidation has found, for example, that updating an existing memory is most effective when the brain gets just enough new information, such as a new stimulus in place of an old one that had triggered fear or loathing.16, 17 If the new information introduced is too strong, a brand new memory might be created instead of an alteration to the older memory, and the two memories will compete. “Those are all technical things that people are still figuring out,” Lonergan says.

Nevertheless, given its promise, attempting to use memory reconsolidation in therapeutic interventions seems obvious to Brunet. If we know that sometimes memories are malleable, why wouldn’t we try to target that, he says?

But Even If We Can Change Memories, Should We?

Memory researchers Tom Beckers and Merel Kindt raised this point in a 2017 review.7 “Concerns have been voiced as to how desirable of a therapeutic goal it is to make people forget about significant events that have happened in their personal lives and that may play a central role in defining who they are,” they wrote.

Is it okay if just emotional parts of memory are being stripped away, as long as the declarative elements remain?

In his 19th-century essay, “What Is an Emotion,” psychologist William James challenges us to try to imagine an experience of emotion, like anger, without the elements of a racing heart or flushed face. If just the facts of a memory remain, can we really say it’s the same, once it’s been neutered of its emotionality?

But that’s somewhat the point, Lonergan says. The people in the study were not able to move on or find peace after what happened to them. Emotional memories are not sequestered to the mind. These individuals needed the intensity of the emotions dialed down so that they could sleep, eat, and resume normal day to day functioning. “We’re not specifically targeting and removing them from people’s brains—they still remember what happened,” she says. “But instead of being a traumatic memory, it’s just a bad memory.”

Further, our ability to update and modify our memory is built into us—whether aided by a drug or not. Other forms of psychotherapy similarly seek to change our relationship to and framing of our memories. The goal of a targeted, pharmaceutical intervention would be to achieve that result by way of going after the memory directly.

Lantoine says, five years out, she still feels the positive effects from the treatment. It was an improvement that came after about the third reactivation session. The daily torment she had felt receded into the background.

“It’s like a chronic pain you get rid of,” she says. “A bit like the scars I have on my knee and on my hip: I can see them, I remember I got them after painful surgeries. I remember I felt this pain. But they are not painful anymore. Those events have left scars in my brain,” she says of her experience of betrayal. “It’s impossible to forget what happened and to erase those scars. But they don’t hurt.”

— Shayla Love is a Freelance Science Journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. Lead image: Graphics Master / Shutterstock

References:

1. Brunet, A., et al. Trauma reactivation plus propranolol is associated with durably low physiological responding during subsequent script-driven traumatic imagery. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 59, 228-232 (2014).

2. Exton-MCGuinness, M.T.J. & Milton, A.L. Reconsolidation blockade for the treatment of addiction: challenges, new targets and opportunities. Learning & Memory 25, 492-500 (2018).

3. Maples-Keller, J.L., et al. Targeting memory reconsolidation to prevent the return of fear in patients with fear of flying. Depression and Anxiety 34, 610-620 (2017).

4. Lonergan, M., Saumier, D., Pigeon, S, Etienne, P.E., & Brunet, A. Treatment of adjustment disorder stemming from romantic betrayal using memory reactivation under propranolol: A open-label interrupted time series trial. Journal of Affective Disorders 317, 98-106 (2022).

5. Otis, J.M., Werner, C.T., & Mueller, D. Noradrenergic regulation of fear and drug-associated memory reconsolidation. Neuropsychopharmacology 40, 793-803 (2015).

6. Misanin, J.R., Miller, R.R., & Lewis, D.J. Retrograde amnesia produced by electroconvulsive shock after reactivation of a consolidated memory trace. Science 160, 554-555 (1968).

7. Beckers, T. & Kindt, M. Memory reconsolidation interference as an emerging treatment for emotional disorders: Strengths, limitations, challenges and opportunities. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 13, 99-121 (2017).

8. Kindt, M., Soeter, M., & Vervliet, B. Beyond extinction: erasing human fear responses and preventing the return of fear. Nature Neuroscience 3, 256-258 (2009).

9. Lonergan, M., Brunet, A., Rivest-Beauregard, M., & Groleau, D. Is romantic partner betrayal a form of traumatic experience? A qualitative study. Stress & Health 37, 19-31 (2021).

10. Drexler, S.M., et al. Effects of postretrieval-extinction learning on return of contextually controlled cued fear. Behavioral Neuroscience 128, 474-481 (2014).

11. Hutton-Bedbrook, K. & McNally, G.P. The promises and pitfalls of retrieval-extinction procedures in preventing relapse to drug seeking. Frontiers in Psychiatry 4 (2013).

12. Kindt, M. & Soeter, M. Reconsolidation in a human fear conditioning study: a test of extinction as updating mechanism. Biological Psychology 92, 43-50 (2013).

13. Soeter, M. & Kindt, M. Disrupting reconsolidation: pharmacological and behavioral manipulations. Learning & Memory 18, 357-366 (2011).

14. Pachas, G.N., et al. Single dose propranolol does not affect physiologic or emotional reactivity to smoking cues. Psychopharmacology 232, 1619-1628 (2014).

15. Wood, N.E., et al. Pharmacological blockade of memory reconsolidation in posttraumatic stress disorder: three negative psychophysiological studies. Psychiatry Research 225, 31-39 (2015).

16. Chen, W., et al. Destabilizing different strengths of fear memories requires different degrees of prediction arrow during retrieval. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 14, 598924 (2021).

17. Sinclair, A.H. & Barense, M.D. Prediction error and memory reactivation: How incomplete reminders drive reconsolidation. Trends in Neuroscience 42, 727-739 (2019).

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no-reply95 · 2 years

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Do you think George Harrison’s behaviour during the Anthology project was justified? All the stories I’ve heard indicate he wasn’t in the best of spirits during it, largely because he was only in it for monetary reasons over financial troubles, and overall seemed cynical to the very idea of looking back at Beatles history and “Beatles historians” (it’s why he pushed Lewisohn out of the Apple Corp circle). Obviously this wasn’t unprecedented for him (we saw in the Get Back doc how grounded and snarky he could be) but his post-breakup souring with Paul seemed to really cloud him, sadly. What do you think?

Hi anon, thanks for the ask! :)

I think I’ve seen most of Anthology. George didn’t come across overly bitter, or anything like that, according to what I remember of the TV series. However, as far as George not wanting to continue working on Now and Then (it was meant to be the third new single released on Anthology along with Real Love and Free as a Bird but George vetoed it) and some of the awkwardness between George and Paul in the scenes where they were jamming together, I can only speculate on exactly what was behind it.

As you mention, George was in financial difficulties as a result of the mismanagement of HandMade films by his manager/former manager Denis O'Brien. This was the second time (after Allen Klein) that a management relationship had ended in the courts, and with George financially worse off, so I think it's natural he felt jaded and that perhaps coloured some of his reactions in Anthology. To make matters worse, I'm sure it wouldn't have been a great feeling for George to have to go back to the Beatles, almost cap in hand, because of his personal financial issues. Being as financially aware as he was, it wouldn't have escaped his knowledge that, due in large part to the management of the Eastmans (who George, along with John and Ringo, had rejected in 1969) Paul was incredibly wealthy so the difference in their financial circumstances and their relative need for the project/for the project to be a success, may have added a negative undertone to George's interactions with Paul. I don't really think he would have missed Anthology, even if his financial circumstances were better, because then he would cede too much control of the Beatles' narrative to Paul, but it can't have been fun for him to feel that, in terms of his participation, his hand had been forced.

There's also the issue of just what Anthology entailed. 25 years had passed since the break-up and, although there were plenty of good memories associated with the band and their career together, they had to relieve the trauma of the breakdown of the band and the intra-band relationships. I've heard discussions about George being the reason why Let It Be was never re-released, I think he found it particularly hard to go over the more traumatic parts of the band and 1969, especially, was a tough year for him, quitting the band, marital troubles with Pattie, the chaos at Apple and the arguments between Klein and the Eastmans... The bad always tends to outweigh the good so I can see how having to rehash a part of his life, that he would rather forget, would have been hard and, understandably, brought out some negativity from George.

There's also, as you mention, the tension between George and Paul. I believe the only time George and Paul worked on a recording together, pre-Anthology, was on All Those Years Ago in 1981. I think there was also a plan to have George contribute to Wanderlust, on Paul's Tug of War album, but for whatever reason that fell through. Unlike George and Ringo, who had played together with no issues both during and after the Beatles, George and Paul did have a much more difficult time and, as a result, didn't really collaborate at all after the Beatles break-up in 1970. The fact that Anthology was only the second time, in 25 years, that George and Paul were collaborating musically again, to me at least, suggests that there would have been a lot of awkwardness and it would have been hard for both George and Paul not to think back to the Beatle days, which would have dredged up negative memories for them both, but particularly for George who felt overshadowed by Lennon-McCartney and never felt that he was a good enough guitarist for Paul's exacting standards. That's why George insisted that Jeff Lynne serve as the producer for Anthology, he wanted someone in his corner in the studio and, after years of complaining about George Martin's favouritism of Lennon-McCartney (a charge George Martin accepted and admitted), he wasn't about to agree to any dynamic where Paul's opinions would, again, be favoured over his. I don't think the Anthology sessions were a shitshow (Paul liked Jeff Lynne as a producer enough to ask him to work on Flaming Pie) but I do think it's notable that after recording two songs, George was done. I think too much time had passed and he did want to maintain a friendship with Paul, if that meant putting a stop to their musical collaboration, so be it.

As far as George's cynicism to Beatle biographers, I do think that was part of the reason why he was wary of Mark Lewisohn but it isn't all of it. The story goes that Lewisohn was one of a select group of people to have special access to Abbey Road. I believe he conducted an interview with another Beatle biographer, Mark Hertsgaard, at Abbey Road and granted access to certain recordings as part of this interview. Lewisohn hadn't asked the Beatles/Apple for permission to do this so when they found out, apparently, Yoko and George were livid and wanted him immediately kicked off the project but Paul stuck up for him and he was able to remain. I think Lewisohn relates that story in one of his podcast interviews but not sure which one -sorry! Generally, like all the Beatles, I think George was really wary of outsiders exploiting them, and that extended to their history. As much as we talk about Phillip Norman hating Paul, his hatred for George in Shout is just as pronounced, if not more so, so I can see why the thought of having people like Mark Lewisohn (who assisted on Shout) around would have put George on edge.

Finally, there's also the nature of the Anthology as a TV series that, I think, would have been off-putting for George. The last time the Beatles had tried to create a TV series was for Get Back in 1969 and George's abiding memory of that time was arguments, culminating in him quitting the band. Anthology wasn't a fly-on-the-wall documentary, so the cameras wouldn't have been as intrusive, but for the less scripted sequences, like when Paul, George and Ringo are jamming together, I can see George getting flashbacks to Twickenham in January 1969 and that causing him to seize up and look anything but relaxed in Paul and Ringo's company.

So the above is just my, more or less, off the cuff thoughts on why George maybe wasn't always a picture of sunshine and light during Anthology. The nature of his financial troubles cheapened his involvement from the get go (rather than a want it became a need), having the cameras intruding on what should be a private jamming session between old friends would have made things awkward and the lack of collaboration between him and Paul, in the intervening years since the break-up, probably meant that a lot of the issues they had around musical collaboration had been left unresolved for 25 years. Getting back into a musical relationship would have been an awkward, and maybe even painful, experience for both George and Paul, but particularly for George, who I think really respected Paul's musical ability so, for his guitar playing to have been criticised and undermined by Paul's direction and insistence on playing guitar solos himself, I think deeply hurt George and maybe, even with 25 years having passed, that hurt still remained.

#the beatles #george harrison #paul mccartney #ringo starr #beatles anthology #george and paul #mark lewisohn #anthology isn't one of those things i have a super strong opinion on because i've barely watched it #not even sure i've seen the full jamming scenes properly #hope my ramble was okay but if i've missed anything please shout anon #asks #final ask of 2021

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lioncunt · 3 years

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any way the wind blows review!!!

gonna put it under a cut but tl;dr i really really loved it and even the things that i was on the fence about i’ve decided i love as well lmfao

so i kind of knew going into both this and wayward son that the plot wouldn’t really EVER be as narratively satisfying as carry on’s. it would definitely be interesting and have a lot of cool thematic elements, but in terms of being a grand deconstruction of the “chosen one” genre, it couldn’t ever get better than carry on. and i’m so happy rainbow didn’t try to MAKE it that. she didn’t pull a supernatural and up the stakes to impossible, outlandish degrees. both wayward son and awtwb had realistic, fascinating plots that served as a metaphor for the internal struggles of the characters.

the reason i’m beginning this review by talking about the plot is because it’s what i’ve seen the most criticism directed towards. and like i DO get it, i also was taken aback at first at how the actual plot is kind of background noise for the first couple hundred pages. but like...i think it WORKS. again, this whole trilogy is a deconstruction. that’s its PURPOSE. obviously it’s doing other things as well, but it started by taking this well-worn and well-loved trope and completely turning it on its head, giving us permission to acknowledge all the damage it causes and how our love of this type of story is honestly kind of harmful. we turn off that part of our brains when we read harry potter or something else with traumatized child protagonists, in order for us to actually enjoy it, but the simon snow trilogy has always said, “hey, this is kind of fucked up, huh? you’re allowed to think that.”

anyway, the way that translates to the plot here is that there’s not always some huge mystical big bad, or obviously evil antagonist. the horror can be going on in the world around you, in the background of your day-to-day life dealing with your own shit, creeping up on you until suddenly your loved ones are spouting off nonsense that is an absolutely CHILLING allegory for eugenics, by the way, which i’ve seen NOBODY talk about. the clear political parallels were so well done, but not heavy-handed, and they worked wonderfully as an ending to this story. simon at the end being a target for an angry mob, who are victims of intense ableism themselves (the metaphor of being a weak mage = having a disability), how these religious extremists will point at what they deem abnormal and use them as a scapegoat, the disgusting “survival of the fittest” mentality leading to “i can make this society great again” - it was all just incredibly well written, in my opinion. and the fact that it happened so slowly, in the background, made it all the better. you don’t really notice how bad it’s getting until it’s BAD.

it also, again, works so well as a manifestation of the characters’ inner strife. others have put it better than me already, so i won’t talk about it too much, but the fact that the book is saying you don’t need to be like everyone else in order to accomplish great things and have a good life, you don't need to have magic, you don’t need to be human, you don’t need to be neurotypical or able-bodied or straight or white or ANYTHING these people will have you believe in order to make you obedient to them and hateful to others -- it’s fantastic.

this kind of segues into the other big criticism i’m seeing, which is simon and baz’s one-day breakup. again, this has already been analyzed well, so i won't ramble about it, but wayward son was their breakup. metaphorically speaking. and i’m glad that it didn’t take some big, grand moment for them to get back together, even though it would have been narratively cathartic. that’s not how life works - it was so much better and realistic to have simon face the harsh difficulties of TRYING than dragging out a separation plot line that would have added NOTHING to his character. or baz’s. the only thing about their entire relationship that i would have done a bit differently is shorten the timeline, because a year and a half is a very long and honestly unrealistic time to go in a relationship without talking about sexual history or going on dates, even if there’s a lot of baggage. but that’s not that big a deal and i’m easily able to look past it.

(as a side note I'm getting annoyed at seeing all these takes that there’s too much sexual content. like i get it because the first two books are solidly YA and this is being marketed as YA even though it’s definitely NA, but like....sex is important. sex scenes and sexual content are an extremely important part of depicting the human experience. and lack of sex as well!! every single intimate scene between them was NOT super graphic and had such incredibly important significance narratively and character-wise - and yeah that includes any kinks that were brought up, like jesus they’re in their 20s and have been in a non-sexual relationship for a year and a half i think it’s pretty fucking relevant that there are intimate scenes!!! anyway moving on.)

i really loved penny and shepard’s plot - their relationship was so wonderful and charming and excellent for their characters, and i only wish we could have gotten their demon plot threaded into the larger picture, because after shepard was cured it felt like they were just standing there. that’s one of my very few complaints about the book. but they’re such good characters and i love them SO MUCH.

AND THANK GOD FOR AGATHA AND NIAMH. like i cannot put into words how fucking happy i was when i realized where that was headed. the cinematic nature of agatha and niamh helping the goat give birth while simon’s flying in the chapel and being targeted by a mob was just. so cool like i can’t even describe it it was so coooooool and then agatha and niamh KISSING and agatha found her PLACE and I'm so happy for her.

just in general the characters and relationships were fucking exquisite. i can’t help but love the way RR writes, especially her dialogue. it’s so real and three dimensional and her characters truly come alive and i care about them and love them so much. i’m so happy they’re happy, i wouldn’t have been able to stand it if they weren’t.

and everything got wrapped up so well in my opinion!! i don’t know what the hell people are talking about when they say they still have questions, like girl what about??? simon found his family, simon got a sword that isn’t tied to trauma, baz found out that he’ll get to grow old with simon, all their families are okay, penny and shepard are in love, agatha’s herding goats and a lesbian, there will probably be new threats and antagonists but they'll be able to handle them, life will continue to be difficult but they’ll get through it like WHAT do you not understand what’s not clicking i genuinely want to know.

ok actually i have ONE single question and that’s. did baz pick up the sword at the end. because the way it’s written it sounds like he did and i like do not understand that at all. someone answer please.

anyway that’s my review 10/10 would recommend

#any way the wind blows #awtwb spoilers #simon snow #snowbaz #carry on

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