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iris-nonsense · 8 months

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Okay i finished All for the game and i have many many thoughts since these books have taken over my brain unfortunately.

I want to preface everything by saying that the series is bad BUT i don't think that it's that relevant. Like from what i know these were self-published on a blog and i doubt that they ever saw a professional editor, no publishing house ever touched them, so judging them as one would judge a professionally edited book is not fair and to be completely honest there are books, even popular ones, that are worse than these on every level.

Now that this out of the way here's my thoughts on aftg in no particular order

I love the main trio sososo much. Probably the main reason why i enjoyed this as much as i did is them. All of their interactions are immaculate. I hoped for a three-way relationship till the end

Neil is such a good protagonist. He's insane but he's convinced that he's normal. The fact that he can't shut up sends me every time and even funnier is that even if everyone knows that he can't keep his mouth shut no one does anything to stop him ever, they just let him. And he is so ace you can't change my mind

I love Andrew he's so edgy. And even if he's so incredibly edgy his backstory still hits hard. Kinda disappointed that all of his obsession with Kevin basically disappeared in the last book (with a couple of exceptions) for no good reason, i wanted it to be more prominent in the resolution but it just fizzled out

Kevin. Kevin is my fave. I love him to bits. He is the dark haired deuteragonist of a sport anime. He is the Kageyama of this series. He has two mood 1 being obsessed with exy and 2 having a panic attack 10/10. And i don't care if he has a girlfriend, to me he is ace. The author can say what they want but i don't give a shit. Ace icon that only think about sport and have mental breakdowns

Speaking of Kevin's girlfriend Thea... she's the most weird character in the books. She's name dropped out of nowhere halfway through book 2, then she's never mentioned again till the second to last chapter where she appears for three pages, she does nothing relevant for the plot and she disappear again. She's one of the few characters who has a proper physical description so we know she's hot but her impact is zero. You can remove her and nothing will change. Kevin would have ended up there even without her so why even include her? Like girl you're hot but who are you and what are you doing here?

Talking about hot girls, Allison is my queen. She's iconic, she never said anything wrong ever in three books. She is the only one asking the real questions and she deserved more pages. She and Renee should have kissed at the end

The only thing that keeps the series from being set in generic contemporary times is the way Matt styles his hair. That is so mid y2k every time it's mentioned i got whiplash

Sad that the slurs disappeared after the first book i found them funny and a good way to convey the year the story is set in

The "your intricate and endless daddy issues" is one of the best line ever written it will never leave my vocabulary

Riko has the worst daddy issues imaginable which is 1 funny 2 makes him a good character and i almost feel for him... but then i remember he hurt Kevin sooooo

Jean is pathetic in a endearing way. But he's french and that makes hin lose a lot of points

I'm sad that the Trojans are there for only one chapter i wanted to see more of them

The way Neil talks about Kevin is hilarious. He can't stand him but he talks about him like the second coming of christ. Everything would have been solved if they just had a make out session in the locker room

Still not over the fact that while this books are very much about sport the yakuza is a prominent part of the story. Like that is an important part, half of the books are about it

The ravens are the least serious element in all of this. There's tension about Neil's lies being unveild and Kevin general well being and you are worried for them... and out of nowhere appears the villain team of a children's cartoon with all of them with the same clothes and walking in v formation how am i supposed not to laugh! And how is no one asking questions about them?? After 5 years of living in a cult they are released into the world and you are telling me that they are well adjusted enough to not rise any suspicion about what is going on in there?? No one is asking why there are living quarters in a bunker under a stadium?? If only one person says something after they graduate they will be fucked, there's no one with a family in that team? Why does the yakuza let this happen?!?!?!

The 16 hours long days during the holidays will plague me till the day i die it makes no sense and i find it hysterical. Why are they doing it? Don't know but they do

Riko has a spit kink i said what i said

#i have more thoughts but this is it for today #i still have all of the extra material to go through this mean i'm still not done with these characters yey #if it wasn't clear i loved the books they were a ride and an experience even with all of the bad #i also bought the physical copies and i expect some bad quality for them can't wait to have them in my book shelf #aftg #i'm not tagging all the characters #aftg spoilers

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guenole-rainbird · 1 day

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Thoughts on the shoot

The minimal pre-prod

I don't think the shoot was planned out. There seemed to be a lot of tension on set, and communication seemed pretty poor. Except for Marcin and April, no one knew of the shot list or even part of the shot list days before the shoot. I’ve still yet to see any complete shot list or storyboards. Rebecca’s opinion seemed to be discarded at every turn in the creative process.

The shoot was quite rushed, Ethan did not get the shotlist early enough to be able to do a proper production schedule.

Because of the dates being settled last minute, I didn’t have enough time to request time off from work and therefore missed the first day of shooting as well as the end of the second day.

I stepped in to help Ethan complete the props that were needed for the film as I don’t think we would have gotten what was needed. Also because of how shallow the characters are, no one really knew what the box of trinkets from the past should have in it beyond a photo, and it didn’t seem to matter. Although maybe a minor thing, if the writer can’t tell me what the character has kept secret in a little box for 10 years, he probably doesn’t know his character very well. It’s just a wasted opportunity to do some background storytelling and to give meaning to what the actor is interacting within the scene.

Day 1: I wasn't there

I was at work, Emma Leaks took over for sound, she did a very good job.

Day 2: I was partly there

I had to leave early again due to my work schedule.

I didn’t really like the cinematography. I thought the frame was much too wide for the tight space we were shooting in, resulting in huge sections of the frame (sometimes more than 50%) having no purpose. Moreover, some shots resulted in the actor's head being cut off frame. The Film seemed underlit, the brightest spot in the frame (i.e. what people usually pay attention to the most) was often a random wall to the side of the frame. We also had zero coverage.

I did voice some of my concerns and other members of the crew echoed them, but they were ignored. My role was sound so I didn’t insist too much either.

Day 3: Probably the worst day

The DOP forwent the production schedule, and we wasted a lot of time deciding where and how to place the camera for the corridor shot.

The atmosphere on set was very poor on this day, nothing seemed very planned out and they were obvious disagreements between cast members about decisions that should have been figured out before the shoot.

Me and Ethan, seeing how we had no coverage decided to add some close-up pickups shoots to help the editor. We added the shot of the box on the bed, the shot of the pictures getting displayed on the bed and the tying of the shoe laces — all shots that although not incredible found themselves useful for the edit.

Day 4: The best day

This day was more chill, Marcin had left and April was too sick to work. What we call the 2nd Unit (Rebecca, Ethan, Flow and Me) shot what was left of the flashback projection and also did some last-minute ECU pick-ups to alleviate the poor coverage from the days before.

Overall everything was last minute, the script was getting worked on a few days before the shoot, the shotlist was supposedly getting decided on the day before and me and Ethan were scrambling to get the props after the shoot had already started. I don't think we did a very good job and compositionwise and coverage-wise, this film has in my opinion the worst cinematography of any project I've been on.

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hybridzizi · 10 months

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I took like 3 months off of work to try and figure out my migraines and I’m going back to work tomorrow so I guess now is a reasonable time to try and collect all my discoveries and suspicions.

Triptans are incredible because they actually make the migraine go away! The downside is apparently they have a risk of making the migraines worse if I overuse them and the line for what “overuse” is seems to be very very fuzzy. This makes me reluctant to use them as much as I probably should and means I should really try and find the source of the migraines if I can.

Cold does seem to help dial down the intensity of the migraines. If the migraine gets bad enough it’s not really noticeable, but if I can catch it early wearing an ice pack as a hat or taking a cold bath can delay the migraine a few hours (which is usually enough time for the triptans to kick in).

Apparently I have pretty bad TMJ and also arthritis in my jaw. I have a little device to stick in my mouth and some stretches that are supposed to help with this. The device does not noticeably help my migraines (though hopefully it will keep my teeth and jaw from getting more fucked up) but the stretches and also trying very hard to notice when I clench my jaw and stop doing that seem to help.

My favorite stretch is the one where I just stick a thumb in my mouth and pinch the masseter muscle really hard until it relaxes. It doesn’t stop the muscle from tensing but it at least resets the tension I’m carrying back to zero. I’m supposed to do this one like once a day but when my muscles start going crazy I do it like every couple hours.

I did try botox, which did nothing for me, but that appointment is where they found the jaw arthritis so net helpful even if I wish the botox helped me as much as it helped my siblings.

My entire body tenses up when I’m on my period and this makes the jaw clenching much worse.

I have tried switching birth controls to help with this. It might have helped a bit? Or possibly it’s just the other stuff I’m doing keeps the muscle tension from getting too bad. The muscles are still tensing up for about a week every few weeks but they don’t seem to be getting as tense.

Started taking muscle relaxants. My doctor wants this to be temporary because there’s no good research on the long-term effects of the ones that don’t interact with my other meds. Tragic. But they are helping a ton for now!!!

I am annoyed to admit it, because my physical therapist was trying to sell me on fucking homeopathy, but physical therapy was enormously helpful. Gave me some good stretches, told me to start using a lacrosse ball as a foam roller (which is honestly such a fucking life saver when every muscle in my body is trying to tense up!!!), and told me to fix my posture.

The posture thing seemed like it was helping except that I wasn’t being very consistent about it so I got one of those awful devices that glues to your back and buzzes if you slouch even a little bit. I hate it with every fiber of my being but also it seems to be helping incredibly.

I did a sleep study and they think I do not have problems but they cannot tell for sure because I didn’t fall asleep very deeply because sleep studies are the worst.

I have an upcoming eye appointment. I think my vision is good but wouldn’t it be dumb if I just needed glasses?

#migraines #personal #bodies

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shurisneakers · 3 years

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shut in [8]

Summary: When your high profile mission goes terribly wrong, you’re forced to hide in a safehouse with a man you’ve never met before. With seemingly nowhere else to go, you’re forced to work together to figure out who is trying to have you assassinated before it’s too late. (Sam Wilson x Reader, Hitman AU)

Warnings: cursing, implied abuse, death, implied ptsd, injuries, guns, anxiety

Word count: 4.2k

A/N: oh my god oh my god sam stans how are we feeling djkghdfjkhgdf. no thoughts only sam wilson in ep1 of tfatws <333

i also appreciate feedback so if you would like to, please consider dropping me an ask or comment ly guys!!

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Shut In Masterlist

“Hey, I’m just going to step out for today.” You looked up from the doodle you were making on the corner of the paper. “Catch you later? Just find me if you need anything.”

“You okay?” You automatically sat up straighter, blanket creasing under you. Something was amiss in his body language.

“Yeah, just-” He seemed like he was struggling for words. “-Brooklyn.”

You didn’t get what he was making a reference to until it suddenly dawned on you.

It was the codeword he had suggested right at the beginning of your time in the house. If he was in danger you were sure he’d tell you, at least an inkling of information.

But no, this was for some time alone, further confirmed by the distant look in his eyes.

“Oh.” You blinked. “Take all the time you need. I’ll be here if you need.”

He gave you a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, turning around and leaving the room.

You were left staring after him, the drawing you were making of the house layout discarded on the bed. You were working on strategies, vantage points- anything that could help in case something went wrong.

Was it because of the dumb ‘moment’ you had shared two days ago? It didn’t seem like it because he hadn’t brought it up at all and God knows you would never. Was it something else that had happened, something you did?

Stop overthinking. He probably just needs a day to himself.

You had spent almost a month in each other’s company and he had never once complained. He had a tendency to be petty about minor inconveniences, like you trying to watch a movie when his favourite segment on the local news channel was going on. He liked the cooking show they hosted.

He had never made it a point to specifically tell you that he needed some time to himself, much less use the word.

“Get yourself together,” you whispered to yourself, shaking off the nagging feeling you had.

If he had an issue, he would have voiced it. He never shied away from doing that before and you knew he wouldn’t start now.

You forced yourself to think about something else, grabbing the copy of American Gods you had already gone over once before but were subjecting to a reread. Opening the page you had last left it at, you were determined to distract yourself.

Nearly twenty minutes later and exactly zero pages since you had started, you realised that no matter how much you forced yourself to get into it, you went over the same line over and over again, not a single word registering in your head.

“Motherfucker,” you groaned, letting the book fall on your face. You took a long look outside the window, mind drifting.

It was a nice day out. Maybe some sun would help.

You lifted your legs off the bed, taking your book with you to the kitchen. You could get a nice sandwich-- the same as the last three fuckin’ weeks but you digressed-- a glass of water, and you could sit outside for a while. A mini picnic.

You opened a new packet of sliced bread, taking two out before stopping. You pondered over whether you should make him a sandwich for when he returned, knowing that he didn’t eat lunch before he left.

You thought about it for a good minute before rolling your eyes, pulling out two additional slices to make him one as well. It was just a sandwich. It wasn’t a big deal.

Tucking your book under your arm, you carried your lunch and a glass of water to the patio around the back.

The wind rustled the leaves and the sun wasn’t harsh. The low buzz of insects was the only sound that kept you company.

The air was crisp and you instantly felt better than you had all day in the room.

Setting your stuff down on the bench, you sat down, inhaling deeply.

The book suddenly didn’t seem so impossible to complete as you tried once more, slipping into the pages easily. Even after you finished your food, you continued to lounge about there, too engrossed and content to move.

You didn’t notice the afternoon go by, evening coming and going just as swiftly. You swatted at the occasional fly but nothing else bothered you.

It felt like summer break. At least what you thought it would feel like. You never had one, being homeschooled about things from various people in the organization. There wasn’t a singular, long break. You were just forced to adapt.

You didn't know how to deal with the suffocating realisation of knowing there were so many things you missed out on. It grew the longer you spent time away. You just shoved it away, forcing yourself to deal with it another day.

He comes back when the sky is slipping into shades of orange, a backpack on his shoulder. There was a patch of sweat around his neck and his head was hung low as he walked.

“Hey,” you hoped it didn't look like you were waiting for him. It could easily be taken as you camping out there, waiting for your husband to return from a hard day in the fields.

Sam looked up at your greeting. You noted that the bruise on his nose was starting to change colour but the swelling had reduced from how bad it used to be.

“Left you a sandwich on the counter if you’re hungry,” you added. He nodded in acknowledgement, making his way up the stairs and into the house without another word.

You let out an exhale, feeling a little better knowing that he was at least back in one piece. No reason to believe otherwise other than the anxiety you had developed over imagining the worst case scenarios.

You picked up your book again, intending to finish off the last bit before you went back inside for the day.

About half an hour later Sam re-emerged from the house, your attention snapping to him as the door opened and shut. He had changed into a new pair of clothes, looking a little cleaner like he was fresh outta the shower. He had a sandwich in his hand that he had already taken a few bites out of. You wondered if it was the one you left for him.

You didn’t expect him to take a seat next to you on the bench. He didn’t look at you or open his mouth to talk so you followed suit. You continued reading, or at least tried to, as he just sat there, finishing his sandwich without any kind of other interaction.

There was a strange tension he wasn’t addressing. He instead leaned back, arms crossed behind his neck to support his neck and closed his eyes. His foot tapped against the wooden floor and rather than getting annoyed, you found solace in the repetition.

“They recruited me on this day,” Sam said to no one in particular. His eyes were still closed and his feet still tapped against the ground. “Parents died when I was a kid, I got shifted around orphanages and homes a lot. Finally Ransone had someone pick me up.”

You closed your book softly, setting it down beside you. That’s what was bothering him.

Secret adoption is what they called it officially in the business, but around the organization it was just known as the recruitment process. Every record of Sam being alive would have been destroyed to maintain anonymity.

To the world he just… disappeared.

It was a day that clearly brought with it so much pain. You were too young to remember when you joined, and no one had kept track either. You supposed it was for the good.

It was supposed to be a happy day, one filled with new beginnings. Maybe that’s what he would have thought when he got picked. It’s what you did.

“I’m sorry,” you said, not having anything else to offer. You relieved your memories everyday in your head. Having a morbid anniversary of sorts would no doubt drain the life out of you; remembering one singular day that would trigger the rest of the decisions you made in your life.

He didn’t say anything in return. You turned your attention to the sky, finding it easier to look at that than the disturbed look on his face.

“Do you regret this?” he asked out of the blue.

“All of it,” you replied, without skipping a beat.

“Every single one, huh?” Sam’s one eye opened to peer at you.

“It wasn’t up to me to take someone’s life away.” You were just a child. You knew nothing other than what you were taught; so then why was it so fucking hard to forgive your past self for straying into this. “Even once I realised that I couldn’t leave.”

You didn’t form any relationships while you worked with Ransone. Whoever you did allow yourself to care for ended up dead or worse, sometimes as a cruel lesson to not make friends in the organization you worked in because all they served as were distractions and liabilities. Others were plain scum; people who you knew were using you but you didn’t care. The loneliness hurt worse.

“What about you?”

“I’d give anything to go back and change things,” he admitted. He didn’t have a say either. It didn’t make things easier.

“You regret all of ‘em too?”

“Mostly,” he said. “One of them I don’t.”

“That one must have deserved it then,” you deduced. It was the only logical explanation you could think of; the worst of the worst.

“Nah. I let him go.”

It took a while to register what he said.

“What?” You twisted your body to look at him.

“First mission I ever did.”

His hands were shaking lightly, barely holding on to the gun. This wasn’t what he was taught. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

He had already managed to get his way into the house through the back. His partner had taken care of most of it and Sam only had to knock people out. He hadn’t had to kill anyone yet.

But now his partner was injured outside the door. Quick shot to the leg, a punch in the face and he was out cold. Sam was already in the master bedroom by the time it happened. He had no idea about where his partner was, only the crippling fear of being left alone and the nerves from the threat posed to him if this didn’t go right.

He knew he didn’t have enough time. He had only a few minutes to kill him and get out of there before his family returned.

The man itself was sitting at the study table, his back towards Sam. Just pull the trigger and get out of here. It was deadly silent.

“I know you’re here to kill me,” the man said suddenly. Sam nearly jumped but instead tightened the grip on the gun.

“Stay where you are.” He sounded confident.

“I’m not planning on going anywhere.” His chair swiveled around, letting him face Sam. His hair was white with a beard that matched. He was dressed down in his pajamas, a robe covering him. He didn’t look nervous.

“Stop talking.”

“You’re younger than what I expected,” the man observed, not paying heed to what Sam was in. He was a considerable distance away. “You’re not even legal yet, are you? I got kids, I would know.”

Sam didn’t say a word, only lifted his gun up to align with his forehead. “I said, stop talking.”

“I’ve made mistakes. Several, actually,” he mused, “It’s why your boss sent you here. I’ve accepted my fate.”

“Then it should be easy.”

“Oh, it never is,” the man chuckled. “It doesn’t get lighter. You learn to ignore it but it’ll weigh on you for the rest of your life.”

Sam’s jaw clenched. It would get easier. It had to.

“I doubt that’s what you heard, however,” he continued. “Ransone’s a bit… unstable. It’s in his blood, but you- you don’t look like you could live with it.”

Ransone’s history was well known enough that rival gang leaders knew it too, apparently. The man would have been delighted at his infamous reputation.

Just shoot him. Just shoot him and end this.

“What’s your name?” the man asked, taking a sip from the tumbler he had in his hand. “You’re going to be the last person I talk to. It’d be nice to have a name.”

“Sam,” he whispered, inwardly cursing himself.

“Sam. That’s a strong name,” the man said, clicking the roof of his mouth with his tongue. “Are you sure this is what you want to do, Sam?”

It wasn’t.

“I don’t have a choice.” He hated how defeated he sounded. It was a weakness.

“They want you to believe that. It takes away your freedom. I would know, I’ve used it.” The man smiled, setting down his glass. “I’ll tell you this though, Sam. You always have a choice.”

“Stop talking, man.” Sam pulled the safety off.

“Once you go down this way, there’s no way you can escape. Someone will always have to die; either him or you.”

“That’s not true.” He could leave at any time. He just needed-

“You’ll see for yourself.” The man leaned back on his chair, resigned. “But for now, go ahead. I’ll make it easy for you.”

He simply closed his eyes and sat back.

You waited for Sam to continue.

“Couldn’t do it,” he said, shaking his head lightly. “Son of a bitch got in my head and I knew what he was doing too. Told him to get the fuck out before my partner shot him in the face.”

“Does Ransone know?” You were still reeling from the incident he recounted. You didn't know what else to say.

“Holds it over me every damn day,” he scoffed. “Some fucked up way of saying that I owe him one.”

To be frank, you were surprised Sam was still alive to tell you. Everyone knew that Ransone forgiven the first mistake someone made, but this was huge. If it were anyone else, he would have had someone try out a hundred different ways to push Sam to the brink of death and back; having him begging for the release that death would bring.

“He hasn’t ever cashed in that favour?”

“He did. Had me take out the leader of the Ten Rings after that.”

“So then why did you still continue?”

“I did something extremely dangerous a couple of years ago that he found out about recently. Used that to get me to come for this mission.”

He didn’t elaborate what he meant and you didn’t ask him to. You supposed it was a story for another day. This was heavy enough.

“He wants to get rid of me as much as I want to get away from him, trust me. We’re the weird, toxic relationship those self-help Instagram pages warned you about.” Trust Sam to make a dumb joke during a conversation like this. “Probably the only time someone from the gang let their target go and not died.”

That wasn’t as true as he thought he was but you didn’t want to seem like you were one-upping him. You didn’t want him to think you were making this about you.

“You remember the big break you were talking about?” you tread carefully, gauging his reaction before you continued. “The one that pushed me up the ranks or whatever.”

He gave a small hum of acknowledgement, bringing his hands from behind his head to fold across his chest.

“Similar story, ‘cept Ransone doesn’t know.”

“What?” His eyes shot open. “How?”

“I was so tired of him treating me like a child. Everyone around who joined after me was out there doinghardcore missions and I was stuck with petty shit.” You didn’t know any better. You wished you had. “So he told me if I made it through this one, he’d send me on more.”

This wasn’t your first mission. You had handled hits before, mostly in the shadows, from a distance.

This was different. It was broad daylight, waiting behind a wall near the gated entrance of the house for a car to pull up.

A challenge, Ransone had posed, with strict instructions to do it in broad daylight. If you got out of this undetected, he’d consider sending you on more sophisticated missions.

“Highly stealthy. They’re dangerous,” you were warned. “You won’t know what hit you if you’re caught off your game.”

The low rumble of the car outside the gate alerted you of your target’s arrival. The gates weren’t going to open, the guards were dead.

The car stopped, waiting for the path to open up. When it didn’t the car’s engine slowed to a stop. The man in the driver’s seat got out to open the gate, giving you a clear shot.

You took a deep breath, clenching your eyes shut for a second before taking aim.

The body hit the gravel and you quickly made your way to the car. You could see the woman in the backseat gaping at where the man was standing a few seconds ago. She was struggling against the door, trying to escape.

She finally succeeded, the door opening suddenly as she stumbled over herself trying to get out.

“Stay there,” you commanded. She slowly looked up at you, face white as a sheet.

“Please,” she croaked. “Don’t hurt us.”

“I’m sorry.” You truly were.

Her face changed, dropping the facade immediately. She just looked on in acceptance, not making an effort to move. Manipulative. She almost had you convinced

You held the gun over her, pulling the trigger. A single shot. Her body slumped over.

You stared at her in silence, expressionless. You let out an exhale, tucking the gun back into the waist of your pants, stepping over her body to leave.

A small, staggering breath made you stop in your tracks. It was so slight you barely heard it. You took a step back, trying to trace where it came from.

You ducked your head to peer into the car, your heart stopping. Your hand instinctively reached for your weapon.

“What the-” you muttered, facing a boy who looked only a few years younger than you. He was staring straight ahead, muscles in his jaw tight.

The son wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be abroad, according to the case file. Unless there were two of them you didn’t know about, this boy wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Listen,” you began, but he didn’t look at you. Just stared straight ahead, body trembling. He was scared. He didn’t show it.

“Show no mercy,” Ransone’s voice rang in your head.

“He’s a child,” you murmured to yourself. Your gun felt heavy in your hand.

Show no mercy.

You could only imagine what would be in store for you if you returned to Ransone with some tale of sympathy. This boy was only a few years younger than you. He didn’t have anything to do with this.

Show no mercy.

“Kid,” you called out. He slowly turned his head. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“What?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“Leave. You can’t be seen if someone comes back,” you urged. “I won’t be able to help you.”

“You killed my mom,” he jeered, unmoving.

“I’m sorry. I had to.” Your voice was quiet. Your hand clutched at the hood of the car to keep your balance. “But I don’t want to hurt you. Go.”

When he didn’t shift, you slammed the hood of the car, scaring him enough to pull at the door and stagger out of the car.

You turned your back to him, not waiting to see where he was going. The more deniability you had, the better.

“Did he make it?”

“He did,” you divulged the information you had found out a while ago. It was a messy confrontation to say the least but you got out unscathed.

“And Ransone doesn’t know.”

“There’s no record of this kid. He thinks he was at boarding school.” You shrugged. “Wasn’t going to correct him either.”

“If he did find out-” Sam trailed off.

“I’d be dead,” you concluded. “Being his favourite wouldn’t matter.”

“Why was it such a big deal, this mission?”

“She was a part of a major gang that Ransone was losing to.”

Sam just nodded knowingly, looking ahead again. You knew he’d done missions like this as well. Things like this were common so it didn’t need further elaboration.

“This job sucks,” he let out.

You gave a short laugh. That was an understatement.

“I want out. Can’t keep doin’ this for much longer,” he continued, however, to your surprise. “Don’t wanna keep doin’ this.”

You bit your lip, eyebrows knitted in concern. “You will.”

“How?” You hadn’t seen him like this before, this hint of desperation in his tone that left as quickly as it came. “I’ve tried, everything just comes up short.”

“I’ll help you.” You wanted to, God you did.

“You gonna kill him for me?” He looked at you. “‘Cause that’s really the only way out of this.”

If you were pushed to the limit, if he was on his knees in front of you and there was a gun in your hand pointed at him; would you be able to pull the trigger? Would you be able to kill the only constant you’d had for more than half your life?

“I can’t,” you muttered, dejection making its way into your thoughts.

“I know,” Sam said softly, “I wouldn’t ask you to either.”

You took a moment to observe him. The sun did him good. There was a soft glow to his skin, the colours of the sunset dancing in his dark eyes. Laugh lines were becoming more prominent around them, only adding to its charm.

He was a good man. He deserved better.

“I’ll find a way,” you sounded determined, “I promise.”

You didn’t say that very often. Your word didn’t mean a lot to people in the business, but it seemed to, to him.

“Thank you.” He appeared taken aback but didn’t show it in his words.

You simply sent him a smile, a reassurance. You knew what you had to do, just weren’t sure how.

He was right. There wasn’t a way out of it other than the one he proposed, but it wasn’t an option. You had to find another.

You would. You’d figure it out.

“It’s Cinnamon, by the way,” he said without any context.

You looked at him in question.

“My embarrassing nickname.” This was not where you saw the conversation heading but you were delighted all of a sudden. “My ma used to call me that all the damn time. Mortifying.”

“Cinnamon and Buttercup.” You didn’t bother hiding the grin that spread across your face. “World’s best assassins.”

“If that name ever leaves this conversation, I’ll know who to murder.”

“You couldn’t even if you tried,” you said playfully, nudging his shoulder.

He shrugged, face relaxed. “T’was worth a shot.”

An unintentional pun you snickered at. You didn’t tease him any further, just filed the name away as a memory. Maybe you’d use it later.

“Have you ever let anyone go after that?” You didn’t want to keep coming back to this conversation but you liked having someone to relate to.

“No.” Sam shook his head. “Didn’t want to test my luck.”

“Me too.” One had been enough. You lived in fear for so long, waiting for someone to pull the plug and tell him what you’d done. That fear only grew everyday, finding a place at the deepest corner of your mind to fester.

“It’s what I meant when I said Serpentine had a motive to want me dead,” Sam said, piquing your interest once more.

“Huh?”

“The man I was supposed to kill- he was their old head. He disappeared after that and no one heard from him but it pissed off everyone, right from Ransone to their stupid gang’s janitor,” he explained, your eyes going wide with every word. “So the irony is, if we’re right, I might have led us into this situation. They’re looking for revenge.”

“Holy shit,” you uttered under your breath.

“I just assumed he died of old age if someone didn’t get to him first. He looked like he was one birthday away from the grave anyway.”

“How are you still alive, Sam?” you asked in wonder.

“I’d do it again.” He laughed, a deep one from his stomach.

He was reckless, clearly. Happily and unashamedly so. And if you continued to hang out with him after this was over, he’d probably get you killed in some stunt or two.

But maybe you’d deal with that if the time came.

He leaned back again, this time no creases on his forehead from stress. He looked at peace.

You sat together in silence. You occasionally stole glances at him as the sun set in front of you, a small smile on your face.

You leaned your head on his shoulder tentatively. You could feel him tilt his head to look at you and you prepared to have him ask you to move.

It never came. Instead, he scooted closer to you, letting you rest against him more comfortably. Your heart skipped a beat; barely but surely.

A realisation quickly hit you, suddenly before consuming you. Your stomach sank.

“Fuck.”

Next part

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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What I Thought About "Knock Knock Knockin' on Hooty's Door" from The Owl House

Wow. They are really pushing it for that secret message, huh?

Anywho--Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons!

I think it goes without saying at this point that Season Two of The Owl House is setting itself up as a season without filler. Now, filler episodes aren't always bad. Yes, it hurts when a series turns away from the main plot for a week. But at best, they're utilized as a chance for the writers to play around with the characters and developing said characters without it relating to the overarching story. So, some people who see that consider it a bad thing that a series doesn't have that many filler episodes.

I like to call those people: F**king morons.

Don't get me wrong, I see where some of you are coming from. And I'd be willing to agree...if The Owl House was a plot-driven series. Which it's not. It is a character-driven series. Because for every plot thread and narrative that the show presents, they always relate to the characters and develop them further each time these threads get brought up. For example, look at "Knock Knock Knockin’ on Hooty's Door" (It pains me just to write that). Several narratives move forward, and it’s all done to make the characters grow. And to explain how requires going into spoilers. So keep that in mind as you continue reading.

Now, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Hooty: Might as well start with the character that this episode is about.

To tell you the truth, I wasn't a huge fan when I found out we're getting a Hooty-centered episode. I've grown to love him over time, but he is a comedic character that's best used in small doses. Primarily due to how his voice is grating to me (My ears are still bleeding...). With that said, I do really love his contributions in "Knock Knock Knockin' on Hooty's Door" (Seriously, there couldn't have been a less awkward title?). Hooty's antics when trying to help everyone are as hilarious as they are heartwarming. He deeply cares for his friends but just doesn't understand how his plans could do some unintended harm, which is pretty lovable if you ask me. We also get some surprisingly great insight into his character, as he feels insecure about basically being the comic relief who doesn't really do that much other than being funny. Rarely do you get that level of dimension from a comedic character, and it's even more uncommon for that to work out as well as it does here. It once again proves just how competent the writing is in this series to the point where we get an episode about Hooty, and it's funny and heartwarming instead of being annoying. And whoever is responsible for that, you're the best.

Lilith’s Letter to Hooty: I mean it when I say that I love how Lilith kept her word about her and Hooty becoming penpals. Their friendship was something I would have never expected to love, and I'm still shocked that it works so well, so seeing it continue like this just warms me to the bone. Plus, it is pretty sweet that Lilith's kind words are what inspired Hooty to do what he's done in this episode...meaning it's Lilith we should thank here--SON OF A WITCH! Even when she's gone, she's still working her way into my heart!

King going through Puberty: What?! KING IS EVOLVING!

(There, I made a Pokemon reference. Do I get my cookie now?)

Eda Keeping Herself Awake to Train Herself: I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that this has everything to with Raine getting captured last week. If Eda was still the most powerful witch in the Isles, she might have actually saved them. But she isn't, and now the love of her life is in the clutches of a tyrant planning something that could potentially be the end of everything. So I can understand Eda pushing herself to her limit to get back on top again, as I would probably do the same. It's not healthy in any way, and Eda would be doing more harm than good. But when it comes to the people you love, logic doesn't always win out in the end.

Luz Wanting to Make her Way into Amity’s Heart by Making the Echo Mouse Happy: ...That's it. I Just...I just love everything about it, ok?

This was also when I knew that I was wrong to doubt that there would be zero Lumity in this episode. I realize my follies now, and I humbly apologize.

Hooty Teaching King About Demons: This was so funny. So, so funny. Probably doesn't come as a surprise, especially since The Owl House proves itself as a comedy before, but the jokes have never hit as frequently and as hard as they did here. From Hooty getting offended by King's dance to him and Dana's insert wanting a "DNA sample," everything managed to successfully make me lose my s**t. It does come at the expense of King suffering, but I can stomach that much more than if it were Eda or Luz. And, as a bonus, we get lore about how demons work, added with another great joke of King getting in trouble with Hooty for saying he already knows this stuff. Humor isn't always the show's strong suit, but when it works, it f**king works.

King Wanting to Know What he Is: But despite how funny King's vignette was, we still get to see more of his character grow. We learn that he's frustrated now that there's this big question mark over his life now, feeling extra angry that his father "abandoned" him to leave such a present mystery. It shows the hidden resentment he has that Lilith inadvertently brought out, made even worse when King's father hasn't responded to the video yet. King hasn't really gotten that much development until "Echoes of the Past," so it's pretty cool that the writers haven't really slowed down on it. Especially when it leads to these great moments of King venting his frustrations.

King’s Shouting Powers: KING learned FUS RO DAH!

(And now that's a Pokemon reference AND a Skyrim reference. WHERE'S MY GOSH DANG COOKIE!?)

Eda’s Nightmare: If King's vignette hits you hard with the laughs, Eda's will absolutely hit you harder with the feels (never make me say "feels" unironically again). Knowing that Eda's life got thoroughly screwed over by the curse is something we could figure out on her own. But seeing just how much the curse ruined her life and tore apart relationships that mean the world to her really does a swell job at ripping apart the soul. What's even more tragic is, technically speaking, it's all sort of Eda's fault too. She kept hiding the curse, refusing to be a burden to others who would do all they could to help. If she had only been open and honest, things probably wouldn't have changed much, but they most likely would have been better than they are now.

Eda Attacked her Father as the Owl Beast: ...I don't know what I was expecting when "Keeping Up A-Fear-Ances" hinted that there was some possible tension between Eda and her father...but it definitely wasn't this.

The fact that we see blood where his eye used to be doesn't make things any happier, either.

Raine Broke Up with Eda: Before we get into anything else, let's celebrate the fact that it's now confirmed that Eda and Raine really did use to date in the past. Because this show is just f**king phenomenal with its LGBTQA+ representation!

But, seriously, this is a fantastic reveal that goes far beyond just shipping...well, sort of. It shines a new light on Eda and Raine's interactions from last week, revealing that while they're not a couple anymore, they still very much love each other. It helps make their last interaction especially tragic, as they were both on the same page now and could very well be together again. Only for them to be forced apart for the second time in a way that's much worse than the first. And I frickin' adore that this series changes the impact of one episode one week later. Again, it shows just how competent these writers are, and kudos to them for making something so...perfect.

The Moon Person: WHO THE FU--Nope. Nope! We have more than enough mystery bulls**t to deal with through CreepyLuz and Philip Wittebane, so I am PUTTING YOU ON THE BACKBURNER FOR NOW!

(They're probably nothing more than a one-off character, anyway)

The Owl Beast and Eda are Connected: Through visuals alone, we, the audience, can clue into what the curse really means. The Owl Beast doesn't want to be a part of Eda as much as she doesn't want it to be a part of her. Whether they like it or not, and they very much don't, they're stuck together. The thing is, and this is what I love the most, they still decide to make the best of their situation rather than let it ruin their lives even more. This might be the best possible turn Eda's curse could have made. It'll still affect her, and there are probably more negatives than positives, but at least now, it's not the worst thing in the world. And I feel like that's all anyone can ask when in a position like her own.

Eda's “Pretty Dream”: I don't know what emotions are toiling inside me more with this moment. Awe and wonder over how beautiful Eda's dream is, or heartbreak over the implication that she has only had nightmares since getting cursed...I'm gonna say both. Yeah, it's definitely both.

Eda’s Harpie Form: Well, fan artists are gonna have a field day with this...especially the freaks.

(You know who you are. And you're weird!)

Luz Calling Amity a “Cotton-Candy Haired Goddess”: ...Have I ever mentioned how much I love this show?

Hooty Kidnapped Amity: ...Hooty, if your stupidity wasn't charming, I would be more than willing to call the authorities over how you kidnapped a girl in your version of a knapsack and locked her in the basement. For that is going to ring SO MANY alarm bells in people's heads.

Amity and Luz Stuck in a Tunnel of Love: *Smacks lips* Mmm. The adorable awkwardness of this moment is just *chef's kiss* magnifique!

Luz being afraid of getting made fun of:

Amity’s look of hope: I mean...just...f**king--LOOK AT HER:

That is the look of a girl who, while embarrassed as hell, still is ecstatic to learn for a brief moment, everything that she is hoping for has a high chance of being real. Who, in their right mind, wouldn't go "Aw!" at something so pure and innocent?!

Luz Destroying the Tunnel of Love: This is how to effectively utilize dramatic irony. The audience can understand why Luz is tearing the place apart because she explicitly states that she's afraid of Amity rejecting her in the end. They also know that's bogus, thus making it extra painful to watch Amity's heart break more and more with each second (which is perfectly represented through Amity's expressions). You feel bad for both of them, and even worse when you know that it can easily be prevented by the simple art of communication. That's what makes it great dramatic irony. Knowing the point of view of each character results in a scene that evokes emotions in two different ways.

Hooty’s Breakdown: This was...genuinely hard to watch. Not that it was badly written, far from it. It just...hurt seeing how destroyed Hooty was when he realized he failed the people he has such an admiration for. On the upside, a wholesome moment follows soon after as the Owl House gang tries to reassure Hooty that he's done a lot of good that night. It's a pure action that shows even though Hooty gets on their nerves all the time, they still care about him...damn it. I think I'm gonna cry.

Eda’s Advice for Luz: ...Eda...You're the best.

You found out that your surrogate daughter wants to ask a girl out, and not only were you quick to deliver the best possible advice ("Just go for it!"), but you also quickly reassure her that it doesn't need to be perfect.

And you know what? That's it. Eda is the best cartoon mom! She might not technically be Luz's mom, but I don't give a s**t because she is the best!

Luz and Amity Ask Each Other Out: Shh-sh-sh-sh...

Do you hear that?

...

...It's the sound of dozens of Lumity fans collectively losing their s**t...and I'm one of them.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

HOO-HOO-HOO-HOO!

IT!

IS!

CANON!

AH-HAHAHAHAHA!

HOLY S**T! Holy s**t! Holy s**t...might just be the best way I could possibly describe this! Finally, after all the waiting, speculating, and praying, THESE TWO IDIOTS FINALLY GOT TOGETHER! AND IT WAS PERFECT! I mean, it was awkward as s**t, but that's what makes it perfect! You know why? You wanna--Hey! *snaps fingers*. You want to know why? It's because they're teenagers. Of f**king course, it's going to be awkward! This is their first relationship, so there will be a lot of missteps along the way. And that, in itself, brings me to the best (second best part?) thing about it happening in episode eight of the new seasons. Most endgame couples get together in the climax or even at the end of the series. But to have them get together this early on, means there will be quite a few episodes dedicated to showing them grow as a couple.

And better than that--EVEN F**KING BETTER THAN THAT--dozens of kids are going to see these two, a realistic depiction of young love that just so happens to involve two girls, and are going to learn once and for all that there is nothing wrong with being who they are. That fact alone is f**king incredible. Yes, it sucks that season three got cut short, and we'll have even less time with Luz and Amity, but knowing how many kids have felt seen today almost makes it worth it in the end.

And if I see one mother f**ker saying this was poorly paced, I might just hunt them down for SPORT...Sorry if that was an overreaction. I'M JUST SO HAPPY! Because they're happy! Look at them. Listen to them! It's so...GAH-HAHAHA!

“They’re adorable! And deserve all the happiness!”: You're darn right, Hooty! You're darn right.

King’s Father(?) Shows Up: What the--WHAT?! They're doing this now?! Here?! After everything else?

Oh, man. What could this mean? What dynamic changes will this cause in the main cast? How could the writers fit this in during the next two episodes? And what--

Hooty Eats the Letter: ...Pfffft--HAHAHAHA!

Oh, man...I should be mad, and I wouldn't blame others if they are...but that is too much of a brilliant f**k you that I can't help but appreciate it. Bravo writers. Bravo.

WHAT I DISLIKED

...Dislikes? Dislikes? You would honestly believe that after everything I witnessed in this episode, that I would have the gull to list anything wrong with it?!

HOW DARE YOU ASSUME THAT I WOULD BE SO CALLUS TO--Actually, I do kind of have an issue with the episode's title. It's just too much of an awkward mouthful for me to get behind. I understand that the writers wanted to sneak the K into the secret message, but were there really no other titles starting with K that they couldn't come up with?

But that's just a personal issue, and in no way do I think anybody else would feel the same way. Especially with how well-written everything else is anyway.

IN CONCLUSION

"Knock Knock Knockin' on Hooty's Door" (title aside) is another A+ episode. It was hilarious, heart-wrenching, and downright adorable while keeping me entertained with every minute. I'm sure there are some issues I was willing to ignore due to how expertly written everything else was, but why bother looking for the chinks in the armor when I could just enjoy a perfect episode for being so...perfect! Some of you might be willing to disagree with me, but to that, I say: Don't knock it till you've tried it.

(Now, if you don't excuse me, I'm going to go lie down. It's...It's been a day.)

#the owl house #the owl house season 2 #the owl house reviews #the owl house spoilers #toh spoilers #toh hooty #king clawthorne #eda clawthorne #raeda #luz noceda #amity blight #lumity #lumity is canon #what i thought about

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favberrys · 4 years

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No one asked this and no one cares, but here’s my personal opinions about every glee ship:

Finchel: they had their cute moments, but in general I really dislike them as couple. They brought the worst out of each other when they were together, Finn made Rachel insecure and was also incredibly possessive of her (not in a cute way) and Rachel pressured Finn too much. She wanted to control him and often tried change him, they’re too different and not compatible. I think Rachel needs someone more simalar to her or someone who can understand her, because Finn really didn’t get Rachel.

Klaine: I’m neutral about klaine, I don’t hate them, but simply I’m not invested into this ship. They aren’t toxic, but I think their relationship has many issues and is a little unhealthy sometimes.They had a good start, but as the show went on they got worse. I love Blaine, he’s my gay son, but he was too jealous and controlling about Kurt. Kudos for the gay representation, i acknowledge their huge impact on the lgbt community

Brittana: wow what can I say about them ? They’re everything, best friends to lovers excellence. Brittana had a rough start, but their dynamic became a beautiful and mature relationship in which they always supported and loved each other. Even when they dated other people, Santana and Brittany respected each other. It had and still has a huge importance for the sapphic community, it is good representation and one of the first big teen wlw couples. Brittana are the definition of soulmates

Quick: absolute trash, Puck got Quinn drunk on wine coolers and then had sex with her while she was still drunk. There was nothing consensual about that. The fact that rib never acknowledged this is disgusting. They had very little interactions, their relationship was not developed. Puck and Quinn have literally nothing in common, they’re not compatible in any way and them getting together at the end always irked me because in s3 Quinn said she didn’t care about all the boys she dated in the past. If you ship them idc it’s fine, but I hate this pairing. It’s a huge no from me, I think Puck liked Quinn only because she was hot.

Faberry: THEY’RE MY RIDE OR DIE YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT THEY ARE TO ME. Enemies to lovers excellence, I know faberry was queerbaiting, but I still ship them after all these years. They have chemistry, lots of yearning and sexual tension, impossibly high angst level. This is the only pairing in which I will accept the trope “homophobic jock falls in love with the person they bully”. At first they were terrible to each other, but they managed to built a nice relationship and I seriously think Rachel was the only one for Quinn because she was the only person who always showed Quinn love and support even when they were enemies. I also think that Rachel felt something more than platonic for Quinn at some point (always ranting about how beautiful Quinn is ? That’s gay)

St berry: I like them, I know they had little screen time and they weren’t even supposed to be a thing according to rib (bc they planned on making finchel endgame), but I think they’re compatible, Jesse is probably the only person who could keep up with Rachel. They have many things in common and even though he was shitty to her at first, he redeemed himself. Rachel and Jesse have good romantic chemistry and excellent musical chemistry, their duets are amazing. I’m happy they got together in the end.

Pezberry: oh boy they’re so hot together, lots of sexual chemistry, they could have been enemies to friends to lovers excellence or at least friends with benefits, but ryan murphy is a coward. I enjoy their scenes, they’re hilarious together and always make me laugh. I think they’re a pretty explosive duo, pezberry has great musical chemistry, all their duets are iconic and there’s a lot of sexual tension between them, they’re definitely compatible in bed but idk if they would last in a long term relationship.

Quinntana: this pairing was very random in my opinion because Quinn and Santana lowkey hated each other and always wanted to destroy each other, BUT they are very hot together, they’re probably the most gorgeous couple on glee because both dianna and naya are insanely attractive. Quinntana gave me my sapphic!quinn rights and I’ll be forever thankful about that, they’re compatible in bed, but I like them only as friends with benefits. I don’t see any romantic chemistry between them, mostly because they were always competing about who was the hbic of the school. I don’t think they would last as a stable couple. I wanted to see more of quinntana though.

Fabrevans: if Quinn had to end up with a man, the only heterosexual Quinn ship I tolerate is fabrevans because Sam was really kind, sweet and good to her. Sadly she wasn’t very interested in him, he was just the hot new guy soon to become quarterback and I think she dated him for popularity. I don’t think they would have lasted in a long term relationship, they were cute together romantically speaking but I don’t ship them.

Samcedes: should have been endgame, definition of wasted potential

Tike: should have been endgame, even though I don’t care about Mike and Tina they were really good together, the love was genuine. Tike is one of the few heterosexual couple I don’t mind

Artittany: is a huge no from me, they had zero chemistry and he treated her like trash, artie deserved to be cheated on lol (I’m joking no one deserves that but I really don’t like artie because he’s sexist, misogynistic and he also treated all his gfs like crap)

Seblaine: I honestly don’t see it, Sebastian was definitely interested in Blaine, but Blaine always only had eyes for Kurt. Still I think they should have dated in s6, it would have been fun to see Kurt jealous about his nemesis dating his ex bf. I like the idea of Seblaine having a one night stand, but I don’t ship them as a couple. I also don’t like Sebastian very much, sorry.

Fuinn: A HUGE NO, they were aesthetically pleasing together, but that’s it. They didn’t have sexual tension, they just had tension. Fuinn is a little dysfunctional in my opinion, they get together, they break up and then start dating again just like finchel. I honestly don’t think they were in love, but they cared about each other in a platonic way. Finn wasn’t a good boyfriend to Quinn and Quinn constantly manipulated him. I don’t like them as a couple, they’re too messy.

Blam: best friends to lovers excellence, lots of wasted potential. I’m not saying they should have been endgame, but Sam and Blaine should have dated. I like the idea of Sam discovering he’s bi or pan and exploring his sexuality with someone who cares about him. They have chemistry and I like their dynamic. I also fancy their duets and I think they could have fallen in love with each other.

Hevans: ok if I squint I can see it, they had potential, Kurt was definitely attracted to Sam and Sam was kind of curious about him, I’m sure he admires Kurt and cares about him, but I don’t ship them together

Sebtana, Finntana, Pucktana: ABSOLUTE TRASH DON’T SHIP CANON LESBIAN CHARACTERS WITH MEN, IT’S INCREDIBLY HARMFUL AND INVALIDATING. There are so many heterosexual ships, why do you have to take away from the gays the few lgbt characters we have ?

Quinncedes: i don’t ship them romantically, but I ship them as best friends. I wished their friendship was more developed, Quinn and Mercedes were so good to each other.

Quinntina: have they even interacted with each other ? (Lmao I’m joking again don’t get pressed, you can ship what you what). I don’t ship it, they’re cute and I lowkey like Tina, but it’s not my cup of tea. Still it’s a wlw ship, so I don’t have anything against it.

Wemma: no

Artie x Tina: I don’t even know their ship name, imagine how much irrelevant they are to me. Again I don’t like how artie treats women, I don’t ship them and Tina deserves better than him.

Samchel: underrated af, i’m not saying they should have been endgame because they wouldn’t have lasted in a long term relationship, BUT they were cute together. Sam was really good for Rachel, he made her more humble and helped her to heal after Finn died. They deserved more development and had a lot of potential. I don’t remember what happened in s6, but I liked samchel dating, I don’t mind them as a romantic couple, even though they’re not very compatible.

Brochel: it was not as bad as rib tried to make us believe. I don’t ship them but they have sexual/romantic chemistry and also musical chemistry. I’m neutral about Brody and Rachel, he was hot, but he was also incredibly boring and one dimensional

Julyberry: the sexual tension between them is so high, i loved it when they did all that jazz, I think they should have been fuck buddies or had a one night stand. Lots of sexual and musical chemistry, i lowkey ship them bc milf!kate hudson rights. Maybe after Rachel graduates at nyda, they could date

#these are just my thoughts #my personal opinion #don’t attack me #pls I’m just expressing my thoughts #and I haven’t said anything offensive #so don’t be a dick #glee #tv show #glee ships #glee characters #glee meta #non canon ships #canon ships #wlw ships #mlm ships #straight ships #otps #notps

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tarhalindur · 3 years

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Higurashi Gou final thoughts pt. 1

(Spoilers go under a cut:)

Taking this by arc:

Onidamashi-hen: The best executed first cour arc by a significant margin. Probably not coincidentally, it stays the closest to the structure of the OG arc and thus keeps more of OG’s tension ratchet than the other Gou arcs. I have two main issues, and I’m pretty sure both of them can be firmly pinned on the anime staff rather than Ryukishi07 himself. First, it pulls its punch on the stealth sequel aspect. I’m not entirely sure that going for a stealth sequel was the correct decision (it’s a cost/benefit tradeoff), but if you do you’re going for the wham of the sequel reveal, and the anime undercut this by putting the Rika/Hanyuu scene at the start of episode 2 rather than the end of the arc. Second, it overdoes the final Rena fight, making it so over-the-top that it’s difficult to take seriously. Neither of these issues exist in the manga (which has a believable amount of stabbing and has the Hanyuu scene at the end of the arc where it should be), and in the former case we also have a Ryukishi07 interview indicating that this was a change requested by the anime staff, so this goes on them. (Interestingly, by way of contrast I think this approach might actually work well for the Mieruko-chan adaptation that Passione has coming out later this year.)

Watadamashi-hen: The core issue here (above and beyond fridge logic after Satokowaski-hen) is the finale, which landed like a wet fart. It both escalates from zero to 100 *way* too fast and has the worst case of “tell don’t show” in the neo-question arcs - we learn about every single dead body in the arc from Ooishi’s end-of-arc narration. That’s relatively defensible for three of those bodies, which we only learn about secondhand even in OG Watanagashi-hen (though IIRC in OG two of those bodies have foreshadowing from rumors earlier in the arc, and unless I’m forgetting something that’s absent here), but all five? Yes, keeping Keiichi locked away from the final showdown removes fridge logic issues, but you have prominent security cameras - you can at least have him see the aftermath of the showdown on the screens (and freak out because of it). Adding insult to injury, the Keiichi vs. door scenes are also so over-the-top as to damage willing suspension of disbelief. The 0-to-100 issue is harder to fix, because the one thing Watadamashi did right was put the Rika-loses-it scene as an end-of-episode cliffhanger, and “Keiichi et. al. are about to enter the Saiguden” probably wanted an end-of-episode cliffhanger as well for discussion purposes (it might have been able to get away with using the commercial break). The simplest fix is the same one @tsuisou-no-despair floated: cannibalize an episode off of another first cour arc.

Tataridamashi-hen: Amusingly, I think Gou has retained OG’s tradition of having the Tatari- question arc being the weakest question arc. As I see it there are two interlocking core issues here which boil down to the same issue. Tataridamashi-hen goes for a very unconventional method of building tension: it doesn’t, instead relying on the viewer’s realization that something bad has to be coming to do so for it (the old “that can’t be right, we’ve still got twenty minutes left in the episode” reaction I more commonly associate with things like police procedurals). The problem is that this runs into the Endless Eight lesson: even flawless metatext should not be used at the expense of enjoyability of the actual text. And while the arc got some leverage out of “when exactly is this going to diverge?”, there’s a point much like Endless Eight itself when you realize where it’s going to diverge (i.e, not until the end) and that until then you’re sitting through the same events you remember from OG. It works about as well as it did for Haruhi. (Unless you’re a new viewer, but in that case staying too close to Minagoroshi-hen has other issues.) Worse, unlike Minagoroshi-hen itself (which did something similar to build tension but a) non-source readers hadn’t seen it before so it wasn’t foregone the same way and b) you had several more episodes after the subarc for the main event) the arc ends almost immediately after this. (The simplest fix here might have been cutting down on the arc time by speedrunning Minagoroshi events, reducing the amount of time you’d have to wait. You could even have a couple of obstacles collapse faster than expected; this late in the first cour it would serve as foreshadowing for Satokowashi-hen, and would also deal with unfortunate implications concerning the village’s prejudice considering that the staff knew Satoko was going to be the culprit. Trimming an episode would also neatly solve the issue of where to get an additional episode for Watadamashi-hen from!) The good news is that the final confrontation is the best of the first cour arcs (it’s somewhat more realistic than the other two, actually not that far behind some of the more memetastic OG moments except for Teppei’s eyes, and not showing Ooishi’s rampage is forgivable given that they knew they would be actually showing it in Nekodamashi-hen), but that’s damning with faint praise.

Nekodamashi-hen: The best Gou arc. The episode 15 jump cut is the stuff of legends and the best scene in the show by a sizable margin (the one thing the director does well is black humor, it seems), while the rest of the arc isn’t as good, it’s far shorter on demerits than the rest of the show. The one really, really obvious demerit is that they really didn’t need to spend half an episode on the intestines-ripping scene (if Ryukishi07′s comments are to be believed, once again we’re pinning this on Passione), but effects on my stomach aside there are worse issues to have.

Satokowashi-hen: And here we have the other side of the coin; this is the worst Gou arc, and it’s the one spot where I’m pretty sure Ryukishi07 himself gets some of the blame. There’s a few issues here. First, the single most obvious dangling plot thread from Matsuribayashi-hen (Satoshi’s fate) is effectively dropped despite being directly relevant to the other dangling thread that was picked up (how Rika treats Satoko and vice versa); this includes missing an opportunity to show Satoko’s character arc through different responses to learning about Satoshi’s condition. Secondly and compounding, Shion is also dropped along with the Satoshi thread; AIUI this is kind of understandable given final Satoko/Shion interaction in the Matsuribayashi-hen VN (which IIRC never made it into the anime), but dropping her without explanation still leaves something that looks awfully like a plot hole since a single conversation with Shion is potentially enough to stop the events of this arc from ever happening. (”Character X had information that would have stopped the tragedy but never had an opportunity to tell anyone” is a classic tragedy trope, but you should really have a *reason* for that character never having the opportunity as opposed to just having them vanish without explanation.) Finally, there’s just the general issue that while the ending points for both Rika and Satoko are reasonable the path they take to get there just doesn’t quite add up. I can kind of get there via a combination of “blame the director” (the loops montage could and should have easily shown Satoko’s deteriorating mental condition as she watched - using interlaced cuts to her face with changes in facial expression is a classic method) and mind caulk (Rika was exaggerating for effect when she described her desire to go to St. Lucia’s as a long-time thing and it only really kicked in after Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko originally only planned to suicide in Matsuribayashi-2 and only took Rika out with her as a crime of passion after feeling betrayed, hence the next few loops lacking her murdering Rika) but being mind-caulkable is not the same as actual good execution.

I mean, I’ve banged on this drum before, but... the basic concept works. Really well. Satoko’s abandonment issues and Rika’s treatment of Satoko are two of the major dangling plot threads from OG Higurashi (*eyes both Minagoroshi-hen and anime-only Yakusamashi-hen*). It makes perfectly good sense that the latter comes back to bite Rika, especially in a sequel literally titled “karma”. I already suspected Satoko was on the autism spectrum based on OG, her being ADHD in addition to or instead of that makes perfectly good sense given those conditions often overlap. Rika’s desire to escape the well morphing into a desire to escape Hinamizawa entirely? Sure, just present it as that. Satoko steadily losing her support network as her friends are torn away from her by changing life circumstances, then going to a boarding school that she hates, that strips the rest of her support structure for her and starts to take even her one remaining friend (her childhood friend, no less - and one that Satoko is at this point attracted to romantically in true osananajimi fashion) away from her, and then starting to snap with some prodding from a certain witch? That’s a compelling story idea! But as present it just doesn’t quite work, and that’s on the execution.

(Side note: I wonder if some of what went wrong with Gou was just the kind of production issues endemic to modern anime, amplified by the pandemic. I remember at least one comment/blog post somewhere in the wake of WEP’s issues noting some of the effects that production issues can have on an anime, and one of the things they noted was excessive slavishness to the source material as a time-saving measure; that sounds awfully similar to some of Ryukishi07′s comments about how he didn’t expect Passione to take his script quite so literally, and to my admittedly untrained eye it sure looked like there were a bunch more other animation studios than usual mentioned in Gou’s credits...)

Final score: depends on your exact rating system, but given the range I’m looking at I can’t see how I can give it any score other than 3.4/5 for obvious reasons. (Pending Sotsu, anyways. It’s possible that Sotsu will resolve some of these issues - in particular, Ryukishi07 always has struck me as the kind of author who would get a kick into baiting us into falling for the same twist twice; it’s not impossible that the apparent lack of unreliable narrators so far is a double bluff, and that could affect the “question arc” scores in particular. More on this in a forthcoming solution space post.)

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agentrouka-blog · 4 years

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Jon and Ygritte - rotten moral code? Nah, just setting up Jonsa.

If there is one thing that had me uncertain if Jon is good enough for my Darling Angel Sansa, it’s this:

He could feel the throb of pain where her arrow had gone through the meat and muscle of his thigh. He remembered the old man's eyes too, and the black blood rushing from his throat as the storm cracked overhead. But he remembered the grotto best of all, the look of her naked in the torchlight, the taste of her mouth when it opened under his. Ygritte, stay away. Go south and raid, go hide in one of those roundtowers you liked so well. You'll find nothing here but death. (ASOS, Jon VII)

Gosh, it was sure bad when she murdered that innocent, unarmed old man. But wow, what a hottie. “Go south and raid”? Raid?? Seriously, you want her to kill even MORE innocent people because it’s such swell fun for her? What the hell is wrong with you??

Ygritte was much in his thoughts as well. He remembered the smell of her hair, the warmth of her body . . . and the look on her face as she slit the old man's throat. You were wrong to love her, a voice whispered. You were wrong to leave her, a different voice insisted. He wondered if his father had been torn the same way, when he'd left Jon's mother to return to Lady Catelyn. He was pledged to Lady Stark, and I am pledged to the Night's Watch. (ASOS, Jon VI)

Wrong to leave her. Hm. Yeah. If that’s your preferred lifestyle, Jon. By all means.

And, dude, I get that your relationship with Catelyn was very painful and that you never even met your mother, but that comparison is just insulting to BOTH women. And Ned. By all the Seven, get a grip, Jon.

"Who is Ygritte?" Donal Noye asked pointedly.

"A woman of the free folk." How could he explain Ygritte to them? She's warm and smart and funny and she can kiss a man or slit his throat. "She's with Styr, but she's not . . . she's young, only a girl, in truth, wild, but she . . ." She killed an old man for building a fire. His tongue felt thick and clumsy. The milk of the poppy was clouding his wits. "I broke my vows with her. I never meant to, but . . ." It was wrong. Wrong to love her, wrong to leave her . . . "I wasn't strong enough. The Halfhand commanded me, ride with them, watch, I must not balk, I . . ." His head felt as if it were packed with wet wool. (ASOS, Jon VI)

This is one of the few things I find deeply, deeply disconcerting about Jon. This willingness to overlook the murder of an innocent man, to let it be overshadowed by the memory of, essentially, her naked chest.

Jon Boy, I get that you were a love-starved little bastard weasel and you miss the intimacy of a relationship, but she is literally a cold-blooded killer. And she treated you like a possession. How are you justifying this.

Seriously, the only saving grace here is that Jon is maybe 15 or 16 and emotionally starved and has zero experience with what a good relationship would be like. Ygritte was neither particularly warm, nor smart (AT ALL!) and I cannot judge the funny. But she most certainly was a violent, murdering invader. And Jon really really really wants to be in denial about that.

At the worst, this tells us Jon is extremely superficial in his core values. A sham of a character. But that doesn’t gel with what we’ve seen of him elsewhere.

At best, however, this underlines how very very very much Jon longs to be loved, how much it will mean to him when he experiences it. This is the only interpretation that ameliorates his moral failure here just a little bit. This angle also gives us a glimpse into the future.

We already saw Jon mature a lot over the course of AFFC and ADWD. He does still refer to Ygritte in his head as a mentor. But the romantic relationship fades far into the background. He has better priorities, but that longing for love is likely not dead.

GRRM is obviously setting up something to do with Dany, here. Violent invader open to romance… It’s Dany. GRRM either means to create plausible doubt about Jon’s true feelings if he wants to toy with the reader about political!Jon, OR to set up another bout of actual denial if Jon is bound to Dany on an honest, emotional level.

But.

The first option will be tricky to pull off, without erasing Jon’s POV for far too long, so why bother for just one short-term surprise? It’d be as bad as the show. GRRM is better than that.

If it was the second option played straight, I would lose all my respect for Jon. And I would find it boring. It would mean that Jon has literally not grown, at all. It would mean that whatever relationship he develops with whatever Stark he encounters before Dany - Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon, Benjen, I don’t even care - would not have enough depth to outweigh whatever an emotionally stunted child woman (fascinating character arc, but really, she’s not that interesting on an interpersonal level) can offer him. He would be as ignorant about a proper relationship as he had been with Ygritte. As willing to compromise basic moral standards for emotional comfort and a good time between the sheets.

Or GRRM is simply setting up a contrast.

The fact THAT Jon was having these extremely questionable impulses of bargaining when it comes to Ygritte’s character back when he was a wee little stupid baby, actually makes me fairly confident that he won’t struggle so hard do the same with Dany when he encounters her as a “man grown”.

Because there would be absolutely nothing interesting about Ygritte 2.0. with dragons. Murdering invader who looks good naked, yay! My family disapproves: what surprising, heart-rending tension. She kills people but she is so pretty: what inner turmoil. She is miraculously pregnant with the fruit of our incest, but I love her, it’s all good. Go south and raid, Dany Darling! I am aghast by your killings but, gosh, so torn because you are so full of.. um.. yeah. No.

But it would be very interesting to see Jon understand the difference between a good and a bad relationship. To track his actual growth by seeing him reevaluate what he thought he knew with what he learns. To see him struggle not with melodramatic denial but with guilt for an emotionally vulnerable monster, and with horror when he discovers she is possibly much cleverer and even more dangerous than he even thought.

Basically, what would be much more interesting, would be Jon underestimating her, rather than being in denial. Being in denial about Dany’s nature, or bargaining over it, makes Jon a boring, repetitive fool. Underestimating how far she will go, while being fully aware of her nature, that’s the stuff of horrifying surprises.

But in order for Jon to mature emotionally to such a degree, he will first have to experience a relationship that is not abusive but nourishing, and feel loved and accepted. Not even necessarily romantic, but simply close, positive, trusting. And in order to do it in an interesting, non-redundant way that shows us something we have not seen before, it almost HAS to be Sansa. Which brings us back to how very very very much Jon craves just such a thing. So much he was willing to downplay the vile horror that is murdering innocent people because the person who did it had “loved” him and he wasn’t ready to let go of that.

Arya, Bran, Benjen, Rickon, all the Starks already love him. It’s Sansa who’s a mystery box in terms of interaction. Basically, their relationship, in order to set Jon up on a trajectory to stay interesting, has to be a very positive one. It doesn’t have to be perfect, obviously, but overall very positive. Warm, funny, smart. Life-affirming. Embracing.

And unless Jaime-Cersei-Brienne is supposed to be the apex of romantic tension in the books (Love Arianne, but she is not “big” enough to carry the books on her amazing shoulders.) then Jonsa is basically inevitable.

There is simply not enough emotional tension in a platonic Stark family v. Targ family feud. Certainly not between the Starklings. Why have two Stark sisters unless Jon’s relationship with them is going to be markedly different? Especially with the level of importance weddings and babies have carried up to now. It is literally inevitable that romance will be central. Even if GRRM means to end it tragically, which I don’t think he will, Jonsa will have to be a thing, a BIG THING in order to provide emotional growth for Jon, a contrast to his relationships with Ygritte and Dany, a pay-off for all of Sansa’s romantic disasters and - obviously - for RLJ. Because only Jonsa is unlocked by the reveal of that secret. Because Jon’s main arc is not the road to Targaryen kingship. It’s the road to home and family. There is only one thing in that direction that RLJ makes possible: marry a Stark. And there is nothing to be gained by Jonrya, their love was already perfect. And he probably can’t continue the Stark line by marrying Bran. Just saying.

In order for Jon’s questionable, immature thoughts about Ygritte’s murdering actions to lead anywhere at all, he will have to overcome them. The most interesting way for him to do that would be by experiencing an actual, positive love story, where he doesn’t have to be in denial about his lover’s vicious nature, and experience actual acceptance and tenderness. You know, that exotic stuff where you’re not threatened with violence, called stupid, angrily yelled at for disagreeing, being shown zero interest in the things you care about… You know, the kind where you don’t have to commit or condone murder in order to be loved. Where someone might actually, I don't know, try and pull you away from the murderous brink.

So, out of the darkness of those horrifying Jon thoughts about Ygritte, I kind of draw a lot of hope for Jon’s future.

#asoiaf speculation #asoiaf #jonsa #anti-ygritte #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #sansa stark #ygritte #my posts

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100 rewatch: 5x04 Pandora’s Box

Another excellent episode, maybe a little less action-packed than Sleeping Giants but still fast, full of tension, new information, and many warm reunions and nice character moments - which are important to see before all these characters start having conflicts and many of these relationships get strained to the point of almost breaking later in the season.

This one picks up immediately after the last scenes of both 5x02 (the bunker - cliffhanger with Kane as one of the fighters in the pit) and 5x03 (Eden with Bellamy, Clarke and the prisoners after Bellamy has negotiated with Diyoza, Raven and Murphy on Eligius 4), brings everyone together*, as the prisoners open the bunker and Wonkru finally gets out - and ends with the conflict that means that war between Wonkru and the Eligius prisoners is imminent. The Pandora’s Box has been opened, to use another one of Bellamy’s Greek mythology references. (Oddly enough, he makes that reference in the next episode, not in this one.)

(*Well, not everyone - Monty, Harper, Emori, Echo and Madi are MIA this episode. hiding somewhere in Eden, before they also reunite with the rest of Spacekru plus Clarke plus Wonkru in the next episode.)

If I hadn’t seen season 5 before, I’d be thinking “Will this be the best season of the show?” It is by far the season with the strongest beginning - before the plot starts to drag, building conflicts within both camps. so that war would not happen until the two-part finale. Strong beginning, strong ending, poor middle part.

After the epic Bellarke scene at the end of 5x03, this episode delivers their actual reunion, with another one of those incredibly intimate and intense hugs that Bellamy and Clarke are known for. They tend to grow in intensity, and I’ll just say this: when Tumblr flagged gifs of this hug as “explicit”, well - for once I could see why poor Tumblr bots were getting confused:

A reunion after 6 years, during which Bellamy believed Clarke to be dead, while Clarke didn’t know if Bellamy was alive but still called him on the radio and talked to him every day for 2199 days, has to be pretty epic, and this scene delivers. It seems almost like Clarke - who had been badly tortured - wasn’t entirely sure if that was really Bellamy who emerged out of the darkness to save her, of if she was imagining it, with the way she says “You are really here!”, while crying out of happiness. The intimacy in the body language and the way they look at each other is also reflected in Clarke telling him “And now you’re home!” This goes way beyond how platonic partners and non-romantic best friends interact with each other. The scene is not just acted but directed and shot in such a way that anyone who would see it without knowing Clarke and Bellamy’s actual relationship status, would get the wrong (?) idea. For a moment, they even look like people who have been caught making out, like they don’t want these strangers to witness such an intimate moment.

Even if she did not see this scene in particular, it’s no surprise that Diyoza assumed Clarke and Bellamy were a couple (“the hostage taker and his girlfriend”) after what she saw of their interactions. Really, who wouldn’t?

Bellamy quickly updates Clarke on how everyone is - Madi, Spacekru, acknowledges that Clarke has saved them all (something multiple people do in this early part of the season) and that all of the people who went to space are safe. (”Murphy, Monty, Raven?” “Echo and Emori”. - But why the Harper erasure? This is one of the very few lines in this episode that feel wrong. She’ one of the Delinquents both of them have known since they landed on Earth and Clarke would logically care about her more than Echo, who, she barely knew and who was her enemy 90% of the time. )

Another beautiful reunion happens by radio - Murphy and Raven learn that Clarke is alive. Murphy smiles the moment he hears her voice, and Raven, teary-eyed, thanks Clarke for saving their lives. The Spacekru have been criticized a lot in the fandom for not appreciating Clarke’s sacrifice, but it has to be said that, right after they learned she was alive, they all acknowledged it and expressed gratitude. (Some of them were just later angry at her and not so ready to try to understand her perspective after living isolated for 6 years.) This is one of the very few moments of happiness in season 5 (whenever I see that screenshot of Clarke and Bellamy’s big smiles, I mistake it for a moment for a BTS photo. That’s how rare it is to see characters looking happy on the actual show.)

…………………….

Meanwhile, over in the bunker, no one is happy. and everything is dark, sad and disturbing. Octavia is full Blodreina and acting like a Roman Emperor, deciding if gladiators get to earn their freedom or not. because even being “the last” doesn’t necessarily earn you freedom now - it all comes down to the Queen’s whim. Kane is forced to fight in the pit again tomorrow. I suppose they already have the next batch of fighters ready - it would be a bit weird if she expected a bunch of new “crimes” tomorrow. But things must have gotten progressively worse if they’re now having death matches every day. If they had been condemning people to the pits at that pace throughout those 6 years, even more than 1/3 of the Wonkru would be dead.

One thing I had not noticed before - there is a singer, singing an anthem or ceremonial song before the fights start, and it is the same woman who sang the Coalition anthem in 3x03. This somewhat changes my views of the way Grounder clans chose 100 people to survive the bunker. At least one of the clans was smart enough to include a musician, rather than a bunch of warriors. There should have been even more musicians and other entertainers (you’d expect a culture like Grounders to have some sort of epic poetry!), as that would’ve helped the life in the bunker much more than warriors (and there could have been entertainment that does not include killing). But this was probably an exception, because this person probably had a high status as a ceremonial singer.

Our first look at Abby after the time jump - and she is obviously in a bad state and pill-addicted, and both she and Kane look tired and worn down. He is protecting her and taking the guilt for her crime - stealing pills, since Abby is obviously in no state to fight - and on her part, Abby wants to confess and spare him. But Indra - who has been helping them and is clearly unhappy with the way Blodreina is ruling - is more rational and knows Kane winning is the only way to save them both. Kane, however, is choosing to take a stand and refuse to fight.

Kane and Abby got a lot of flak from the fandom and were accused of hypocrisy for their attitude to Octavia later in the season - with the argument that Abby was the one who persuaded Octavia to go through with cannibalism and killing people for refusing to ear, and that Kane knew Abby’s role in it but blamed Octavia. All these arguments presume that they were blaming Octavia for the cannibalism and everything else that happened the Dark Year. But in fact, there’s zero indication that this is what they blamed her for, and it’s pretty clear that the reason why they - and others - have issues with Blodreina is that she’s been ruling by fear and throwing people into fighting pits for all sorts of reasons, and generally being a scary tyrant/leader of a cult of death and violence. Yes, as we learn later, Abby was a crucial part of how Octavia turned into that person, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is that person now, that she has absolute power in the bunker, and people have been living in fear of her.

Kane tries to plead with Octavia when she comes to tell him he has to fight, and at this point, he seems to still believe she could change and start making better decisions. What feels a bit off to me is that he says he’s been silent for too long - this can’t be the first time he’s tried to change her mind? He would have probably had a lot more chance to succeed if he tried much earlier. We get the first mention of the infamous “Dark Year” (this is also the episode where we first hear “All of me for all of us”) and see Octavia getting upset at its very mention (a reveal will be dragged out for 6 more episodes). It’s interesting that Jaha and Kane both mentioned Aurora Blake’s fate in their speeches to Octavia, but they used it to say completely different things. Jaha was saying that this is what you have to do, execute everyone who is the “enemy” because they endanger your survival in any way, even if it’s having one more child. Kane was saying that’s what they shouldn’t be doing anymore, she shouldn’t be doing what they did on the Ark, but do better. Octavia ended up taking Jaha’s advice, which shaped her as leader, for better or worse. (Mostly worse, IMO.) She could have maybe taken Kane’s advice years ago, but now it’s clearly too late.

If anything, Kane’s refusal to fight makes her more determined than ever to break him - she doesn’t want to condemn him to death, she wants to break his resistance and his stubborn insistence on morality. I don’t approve of all of Kane’s later actions in season 5, but it’s really not hard to see why, after these experiences and everything in the bunker, he thought Blodreina’s rule was the worst thing that could happen.

And then - like a Deus ex machina, the bunker door opens and Bellamy is literally coming down from above, into the darkness of Octavia’s underground realm, as the savior, bathed in light, It’s the second episode in a row where he comes as a Big Damn Hero in almost dreamlike scene, from a POV of a woman in his life, this time his sister. For a moment, Blodreina is Octavia again and hugs her brother. Clarke comes down a moment later (but she is not bathed in light - she looks at the Blake siblings from the shadows.)

Instead of hugging, Clarke and Octavia greet each other with a forearm handshake - which is quite an interesting choice, particularly since (thanks @jeanie205) this is apparently a type of greeting associated with Roman generals greeting each other. (But only in Hollywood movies, It wasn’t a thing in actual Roman history.)

In addition to all the reunions, some characters meet for the first time - such as Octavia and Diyoza, who are about to become rival leaders on two sides of the war. Who could have known what their relationship would turn into in season 6 and season 7?

I love the way that everyone - Bellamy, Clarke, Diyoza and the rest of the prisoners - have the “WTF is this” look when they see the fighting pit (which is all covered in blood - apparently, they don’t wash it. It’s an aesthetic, I guess.) Bellamy soon asks Octavia what the heck she’s doing (and guesses exactly what inspired her: “Someone must have read Ovid one too many times). It’s an experience she hasn’t had in years - to have her decisions questioned by someone who’s not one of her subjects and not afraid of her.

More reunions follow: Clarke and Abby, Bellamy and Miller (another relationship that will turn sour in the rest of the season), Clarke and Kane.

Meanwhile, on Eligius 4, Raven finds more info about Diyoza backstory - Colonel Diyoza was "something called Navy SEAL" (it makes sense that Arkers wouldn’t know about such things), decorated for valor three times, before turning into a rebel/terrorist, and leader of a movement called United Liberation Army. As we see in these articles, civilians died in these attacks, which is something Diyoza regrets in season 7 - even if her cause was right, her means were wrong.

Raven and Murphy have some fun playing soccer, but they’re also worried about the fact they may need to murder 283 people. Raven finds it hard, so Murphy offers to do it to spare her. It’s typical for their relationship that Murphy tends to see Raven as someone better and more moral than himself (in spite of the fact that she once tried to sacrifice him instead of Fin), while Raven often says disparaging things about him, even though she is fond of him.

One thing I found a bit odd that Murphy at one point says: “Why do you have to always be the one to sacrifice?” - even though this was just the second time Raven has decided to sacrifice herself, and he wasn’t even around for the first time - trying to blow the bridge in 1x10. But Murphy seems to have a somewhat idealized view of Raven, driven by his guilt over crippling her and his self-loathing. Or maybe he meant the others in the group in general. as he sees himself as the selfish cockroach as opposed to them. (Note: I initially wrote this in my 5x03 review, before I realized it was actually said in this episode. That’s what happens when you finalize posts after having seen two episodes ahead.)

Raven and her future love interest Shaw try to outsmart each other in hacking (Raven even kind of flips a bird at Shaw at one point - it’s like they are having a digital meet cute without having even met.)

But when Diyoza finds a way to outsmart Spacekru by suffocating Raven and Murphy - Raven tells Murphy to pull the lever (usually Clarke’s job) and kill the prisoners; and when he hesitates, she goes into her fierce/ruthless mode and goes “Fine, I’ll do it”, before Murphy comes up with the smart solution that prioritizes survival and also doesn’t include mass murder - a win-win, except it also takes away Bellamy’s leverage.

I wonder where the standoff between Wonkru and the Eligius prisoners would have led after Diyoza took Abby and Kane with her and announced her people were taking over Eden? Would war still have been inevitable? I can’t see Octavia giving up on Eden so easily. In any case, the war here was started by an idiot who shot an incredibly destructive weapon at Octavia just because her arrogant Blodreina grin pissed her off. (This guy, called Szybunka, is a part of McCreary’s faction, and here we first learn that they are preparing a rebellion against Diyoza, though McCreary thinks it’s still not time for it.)

A lot more deaths were prevented by Shaw, Major props for him in this episode both for that, and because he is the first person to finally make the point that there are so few people left of the human race and that it is incredibly stupid to kill more of them

Octavia immediately blames Bellamy for everything - even though he was the reason why she and Wonkru got out of the bunker instead of being stuck there forever/ And this time, I’m sure this was 100% meant to highlight that she has a habit of unfairly placing blame on Bellamy whenever something goes wrong in her life.

Body count: I haven’t been doing these for a while, but now I’m doing the body count for the entire season 5 so far:

Wonkru - we learn in this episode that, out of the 1200 people in the bunker, there are 814 remaining. So, 386 - almost a third - died during those 6 years. That includes 3 people who died in the fighting pit. An additional Wonkru member is killed by the idiot Szybunka while protecting Octavia, leaving 813.

Eligius prisoners - two of the party on Earth were killed by Madi and Clarke in 5x01, Four more were killed in 5x03 - one shot by Clarke, another one mercy killed by Diyoza after getting into one of Clarke’s traps, two more shot by Madi to save Bellamy, Monty, Harper, Emori and Echo. On the ship, Kodiak, the big guy Diyoza activated as a weapon (”activate Kodiak!”) was killed in self-defense by Bellamy with help from Echo and Raven. And in 5x04, Szybunka is killed by McCreary for his stupidity. This leaves 282 prisoners on the ship and an unknown smaller number on Earth.

Rating: 8/10

#the 100 #the 100 season 5 #the 100 rewatch #pandora's box #the 100 5x04 #bellamy blake #octavia blake #clarke griffin #charmaine diyoza #marcus kane #abby griffin #raven reyes #john murphy #bellarke #indra #indra kom trikru

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beyoncesdragon · 4 years

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title: tongue tip trip

➳ pairing: harry styles x reader, best friends to lovers trope but a bit different.

➳ summary: Harry eats edibles and you come to the rescue...despite almost four months of no talking and zero communication.

➳ warnings: Harry eats edibles, swearing and some fluff, it’s also fan fiction so its ✨unrealistic✨ okay, also its 1AM I wanna sleep

➳ a/n: I love this one tbh. but please don’t do drugs children

Jeff hardly ever called you. Even when Harry and you had still be close, him calling you was a rarity. But when he then did, you couldn't help but feel a bit worried at the sign of his user ID flashing up on your phone. This time was no exception, but besides worry there was also surprise and a whole bunch of uncomfortable memories and unsaid words. You hadn't heard from him (or Harry) in weeks. Sure, Jeff and you still sometimes texted a bit, you also were still in good contact with Claire and especially Mitch and you still got along. Harry and you...well, that was a different and longer story.

Harry and you used to be very close friends. Means, helping him what socks to choose before performing-close friends. You had met a year in Harry going solo, you a simple assistant engineer and him the highly praised Popstar. The two of you had quickly bonded over a few glasses of chilled white wine in the humid air of Jamaica and soon your friendship blossomed in the most beautiful ways. Well it did until you, obviously, started to feel a bit more for the singer. Now, that alone wasn't a problem itself, the fact that Harry knew (you had told him after a few weeks of awkward suffering) wasn't either. The problem was that Harry acted like a dick to anyone you brought around, up to the point where you seemingly couldn't ever date again. Of course Harry wasn't a straight up asshole to them, he still had a reputation to maintain, but he knew how to get under their skin. Just toying with their self-confidence and subtly making them feel like the biggest losers. Oh and, the absolute worst part, all whilst having a girlfriend himself. Which eliminated the possibility of him having feeling for you as a reason why he acted like a jerk. And that angered you more and more and it all escalated in a big, nasty and hurtful fight, around four - five months ago. Since then you hadn't talked, texted or seen each other.

It had been a big change of habit not to get up and first check the phone for messages of him, or simply FaceTime him to check up on his schedule. No spending time at cafes or at the studios with him and the rest of the team. Lucky thing you had other jobs running, on other albums and in other studios around Malibu than his.

He was currently recording music at the Shangri-La studios in Malibu, maybe ten minutes from your flat by car. Which had been described as a "lucky and obviously unplanned extra" by Harry himself, followed by a cheeky grin. You had just rolled your eyes, but secretly happy that he had cared about you being near during his writing process. But now it only left a sour aftertaste in your mouth.

With a sigh you pulled the key out of the ignition and picked up the phone. You figured you could also wait in the parking lot for a few more minutes.

"Hello?"

"Sweetheart? Jeff's here..." you hummed softly, leaning back.

"Hello there Jeff. Everything alright?" you could hear him cough slightly, before he answered with a weird lilt to his tone. He sounded somewhat stressed out. "Yeah, everything's fine...how have you been?" you shrugged lightly, inspecting your nails.

"Fine. Working and stuff. I guess same for you?" he was quick to agree, again with that weird cough.

"Everything okay Jeff? Something happened?" you finally asked, tired of his obvious tip toeing around the real issue. He knew that you weren't so stupid to believe that Jeff had just called you to check up on you at five in the afternoon.

"Well not...quite. I - uh...it's because of Harry. Now, listen, I know the two of you did not part in like, the best ways but..." you couldn't help but close your eyes with a slight wince, "...but you've got to believe me, it's an emergency, kinda." You just sighed.

"Kinda?" he hummed, saying nothing for a few seconds. "Do I need to talk to him?" you asked into the silence. Jeff was quick to say no however. "Uh...rather not, actually." You blinked surprised.

"Rather not? Is he drunk?" not that this would be a first, Harry being drunk caller by nature. If he was lucky he then would find himself calling someone like Paul, his old bodyguard, few months ago maybe you, just not one of his exes or someone else you probably shouldn't call anyways – especially not drunk. But this time it didn't seemed to be like that, since Jeff answered hesitantly. "Not exactly, no." your frown deepened at his words, feeling slight annoyance creeping up. "Jeffrey! What's the matter? Is he hurt? In an accident? Called his ex? Called Zayn? What is it? Just tell me already!"

Jeff sighed deeply. "He's high." A relieved huff left your lips. That wasn't half as bad, wasn't it? "That's it? Little weed hurts no body, besides I would've been more concerned if he would've drank. Besides, he almost never does weed..." Jeff interrupted you quickly. "Not exactly weed sweetheart. You remember the uh, edibles I told you about, the ones we stored in the fridge..." A deep groan escaped your lips.

"Are you kidding me?" you groaned, shaking your head. "Well no. However, he accidentally bit of his tongue tip, few minutes ago." Your hand dropped from the steering wheel and smashed down and you accidentally honked, immediately getting confused and outraged looks from the cars passing by.

"He did WHAT?" you meant to hear a smile in Jeff's voice, underneath all the layers of just mild concern. "Yeah's a little unfortunate." you just huffed. A little unfortunate, if that's what they decided to call it, then fine. Nonetheless, Harry should probably visit a doctor. "Can he still sing?" you asked, somewhat defeated. The noise behind Jeff increased, you assumed that he was entering the studio again. "Hold on a sec...can you hear him?" And oh how you could hear him.

He was singing, no yelling on top of his voice, trying to outmatch the speakers that were thumping Paul McCartney's "Too Many People", though unmistakably mumbling a little. Just the sound of his voice made your heart clench in pain a little.

"Yeah I can." You mumbled, wishing for Jeff to talk over Harry's voice again. "So his career isn't in danger right? Means I can just..." Jeff sighed deeply, pleadingly.

"Y/N, please...he needs medical care." You pouted displeased, spinning the car keys in your fingers. "And you cant drive him because...?" this time he definitely laughed. "What do you think? Harry being the only one on drugs?" you shrugged. "You don't sound like you would bite your tongue off..." he just huffed. "That's because I only had a glass of white wine, but never drink and drive..." you let out a loud laugh, starting your car. "Oh sure! And don't mix drugs with alcohol, right?" he chuckled softly. "Course not. We're that responsible, you know." you just hummed unconvinced, sighing again.

"Okay fine. I'll pick him up." Jeff released a long breath before thanking you warmly. "Thank you so much, angel...how long will you take, you think?" your eyes darted from the rear-view mirror to the road behind the parking lot, before you shifted the reverse gear again to leave the parking.

"About 10 minutes? Maybe?" you guessed, eyeing the traffic suspiciously. It wasn't rush-hour just yet, but there were still plenty of cars on the road. "Okay...oh hi Harry." You immediately tensed up, swallowing hard when you heard Harrys deep voice again.

"Who y'takin to?" Harry spoke as if he had a full mouth, trying not spit out its content. "Oh just...Y/N." Jeff answered truthfully. Harry then said something you couldn't quite understand before Jeff ushered him to go away again with the words; "She'll come in a few minutes anyways." It made you swallow heavily; had Harry asked to talk to you? You stopped the thoughts and focused on the road again. "I'll see you in five." And with that you hung up.

❦

Harry and Jeff were already waiting in front of the studio when you pulled up, Harry having a bloody cloth pressed to his mouth. They looked like father and son, right off the principal's office for starting a fight on campus. It almost made you laugh. Then your eyes met and the amusement left your body as quickly as it came. You were not ready to face him again, even after all those months.

"Thank you so much Y/N, I owe you...you good H?" Jeff asked as he opened the passenger door. "Yeh, m'fine, fanks." Harry mumbled, eyes darting up to meet yours, just to look away immediately. "We'll be back soon." You sighed, not yet ready to properly greet Harry. Or look at him, for starters. To be fair, he wasn't doing any better. "Sure. I hope he doesn't bleed on your seats." Jeff joked, well aware of the weird tension. You just shrugged, waving him goodbye. "See you in a few Jeff." Or not, but you didn't know that yet.

The ride was almost completely silent expect for the time where you asked if he was okay and he mumbled a "yeh". The radio was filling the silence and you were glad for it. The songs weren't that good at the moment, you just wanted something to be loud and talking, even if it was just the obnoxious radio host who kept cutting off the songs. That was until "Change" by RM and Wale started to play and you perked up immediately. A happy smile crept on your face as you recognised the tune. You yourself had helped with the song and you proudly acknowledged the credit they gave you. You hadn't expected it to be played over here in America, but you were happy it was. Harry had obviously noticed your change of behaviour and carefully peaked over.

"Y'know tha'shong?" you nodded, momentarily forgetting that Harry and you hadn't interacted the last ten minutes. "Helped write it. With Namjoon, aka. RM and Wale." Harry nodded slowly. "Ish Namjhoon f'om...?" he tried and you nodded. "BTS? Yeah." He just nodded again. The next second Wale already mentioned BTS in his verse and Harry huffed. "Oh."

"I've sheen - seen the pictures of you n'him." you quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah? Well, he was nice." Harry nodded again, another stolen glance into your direction. "Lishten..." he started but you cut him off. You already knew what he was about to say anyways.

"Let's not have this conversation now Harry. Please. Let's talk when there isn't blood gushing from your mouth." He nodded, but his shoulders relaxed a little bit. After all, he was glad you were up to talk, even if it wasn't just right now, but a bit later on. He had time anyways. He peaked over again, taking in the sight of you. Your hair was now longer than last time and your face somehow sharper – maybe you had lost weight. Also, there was a soft frown etched in between your brows, and there wasn't this soft glow you've always carried in your eyes. Long story short: You looked worn out and stressed, and Harry couldn't really tell if it was because you were sat in the same car as he was, or if it had to do with something else that was going on.

"How're ya?" it slowly got painful to speak, the edible was definitely wearing off now, but Harry still tried. He had missed your voice after all, it didn't matter how cold your tone had become. Just at the mentioning of that Namjoon you had sounded more like the Y/N he knew.

"I've been okay. Had lots of work...different countries and continents. S'been a busy few months." You felt unsure as how to talk to him, of you were fully honest. Should you say that you had absolutely hated working in Malibu since the fight? Should you say that you hadn't slept properly because you hated having fights with friends? Especially close friends? He probably knew anyways. Harry always knew somehow.

"I wont ask you about yourself until your tongue is patched up again, though. So you better shut up Styles." He chuckled softly, and the hint of the old Harry and Y/N relationship seemed to spark up again. The last five or so minutes were spent in silence again, but comfortable this time.

❦

Luckily Harry did not go recognised by anyone else than the Doctor. And the doctor probably only realised fully, because she asked for the name. Harry, still not fully functionable, had then looked over to you, expecting you to do the talking. Which made sense, of course, but truth behold, he had just forgotten his middle and last name. And the address of the place he was staying at (the studios) was completely wiped from his memory. He was lucky you were with him. It also turned out that he had completely bit off a few millimetres of tongue, a clean bite. You had almost gaged at those words and Harry had supressed a grin. It meant that Harry needed no stitches (apparently it was sort of possible to stitch a tongue back together), but daily check-ups and cleaning or cleansing of the mouth was mandatory.

"Check the injurie daily for changes in appearance or feel. Wounds in the mouth that are clean and healthy may appear light pink to white." She had started to almost exclusively talk to you, aware of Harry's partly delirious state, giving you all the information you needed to patch him up a bit. You nodded slowly.

"Alright. Just...how do you cleanse the mouth?" The Doctor gave you a kind smile. "Very easy. Rinse the mouth with a saltwater solution after eating to ease pain and keep the wound clean. That is very important, so the wound doesn't infect. The saltwater solution is just one teaspoon of non-iodized salt mixed in one cup of warm water." You nodded slowly. "One last thing: if the colour of the wound changes, starts bleeding again, swells up or you notice a visible deformity, immediately come back. Also, if the pain intensifies and does not improve within two hours of taking over-the-counter pain medication, such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen, have somebody call us, or better come around. That is all we can do right now."

You were almost happy when you could leave the hospital with him, especially because Harry now grew tired and needy. You weren't sure if the disappearing edible had that effect or if you had just forgotten how clingy Harry could get, but you had troubles getting him to let go of your arm and sit into the car. And your deeply hidden and buried feelings for him slowly made an unwanted comeback, and you were not quite excited for that. You should've known that they would come again, after all, you never really got over him in the first place.

Harry insisted on you staying the night. He blabbed something about risk of getting kidnapped and abused at night alone (not entirely wrong, sadly) and him not letting his friend leave at hours that late and also he apparently needed you if something happened again. He just wouldn't admit that he couldn't let you walk out the door because he feared you wouldn't come back. as if you could just do that after today. But whatever it was, you did stay. In one of the three bedrooms of the Studio you had claimed a bed, and even got some spare clothes for sleep from Claire herself. You had called her, asking for them, as they had all already left.

Just when you thought you were done for the day, teeth brushed and dressed in Claires 1975 shirt size XL, you hear a knock on your door. "Come in?" You knew it was Harry, that wasn't the part that surprised you. the part that surprised you, was that it was Harry with a tray and on that tray were cups and kettle and it smelled like camomile tea and honey. And cookies, with chocolate chips even and some grapes.

"Hi." He just whispered, embarrassment written all over his face. "Hi?" you weren't sure how to react to this but quickly patted on the bed next to you. "Wanna sit down? Or wait, sHit down, as you would say it." He giggled softly, before he nodded and carefully sat down opposite of you, balancing the tray carefully between the two of you.

"I figured it would be better to talk now in peace? If you're up to, f'course." You couldn't help the small smile that crept onto your face. "Shure." You mocked his lisp and he huffed at that, swatting his hand into your direction. "Shtop it really hurt." You just rolled your eyes at him, motioning towards the tray between the two of you. "That's very cute by the way. I love camomile tea with honey." He grinned smugly. "I know." The tea steamed softly when he poured it into the cups, his brows furrowed in concentration to not spill it on the sheets. You watched him with a fond look in your eyes. You hadn't been fully aware of how much you had really missed him in all these months. Right now it felt like the feeling was overwhelming and would crush you out of a sudden.

"Everything a'ight?" Harry's concerned voice ripped you from your thoughts and you blinked quickly. Your eyes had started to water and you looked away embarrassed. "Yeah...guess I just missed you." his eyes immediately went soft, and he set the cups down on the tray.

"I missed ye too." He said, sounding a bit helpless. You cleared your throat, shaking your head quickly.

"Okay so what happened that day; Harry I want to sincerely apologise. What I said went too far." He just smiled softly. "I should've went first. S'my fault after all, let's not beat around the bushes. I am sh-sorry. I shouldn't've said all those things, it was truly horrible. You're not clingy, you don't ever bothered me and also, the men you brought around weren't all dicks. And yes I did ruin it purposely." He couldn't even look at you anymore, shame so obvious in his face and voice and body language. "It's fine...I could've dated anyone anyways that time." You tried softly, swallowing down the "Still can't, believe me, I tried." He just shook his head. "No, really Y/N, that was extremely hurtful and inappropriate and I was the biggest...dick to do all that. I am so sorry. You had all right on earth to walk out like that. and to call me a heartless, self-absorbed douche, I guess I deserved that...that and all the other things you called me." that did make you laugh a bit.

"Arrogant son of a bitch? That one?" he grinned softly. "Exactly that one. I uh, used that, by the way. In a song, I hope you don't mind." Your eyebrows shot up at that. "You called yourself an arrogant son of a bitch?" He nodded sheepishly. "An arrogant shon of a bitch who can't admit that he is shorry, and I quoted that." you laughed now, loudly. "Bit harsh, innit?" he shrugged, coquettishly raising the tea cup to his lips. "Heard it from shomewhere." You just hummed softly, lifting your cup as well.

A deep sigh rose your chest as you looked at him again, that bright flicker in his eyes again, that lopsided smirk he wore so well. You knew that your crush was back on fully, but right now you didn't even minded it. Harry gave you a small smile, the mischief slowly draining from his green eyes. he seemed to catch on to that shift of your emotions and carefully placed his cup down on the tray, before then carefully placing the tray on the floor and opening his arms.

"C'mere?" you did, immediately.

And for the first time in months you could fully relax. Surrounded by Harry's scent in Harry's arm and listening to Harry's heartbeat. Completely absorbed and surrounded by everything you loved. "Sorry." You mumbled into the fabric of his shirt, feeling how his arms tightened around you. "Me too. I fucking misshed you." you chuckled softly. "Misshed you too, shon of a bitch." His laughter sent vibrations through your body.

"About that Korean dude..." Harry suddenly asked, making your peak up to him. "Namjoon? What about him?" he cleared his throat. "Just...did you like, date or something?" you grinned softly.

"Pretty sure he had something going on with a girl the time I was over there. Maybe he still has. Why? You wanna scare him off again?" he just laughed. "I don't do that anymore. I was just...curious you know. You've always had a thing for these Korean men." You grinned softly.

"Are you now talking Stray Kids or Bangtan or EXO or GOT7..." Harry groaned, "so what. You got something to say about that?" he shook his head. "Course not." You hummed. "And what do you mean, I don't do that anymore? Why did you even do it, like in the first place?" Harry sighed very deeply at that.

"I guess because...okay, promise you listen to the end and don't get upset with me too much, yeah?" you frowned, a bit mentally preparing yourself for whatever was about to follow.

"Okay? Promised."

"Alright, now...I think I couldn't just...let you be and date who you want because I am a very selfish person? I know I know, you probably think: but selfish about what and I can only confess...probably you? No, not probably, I am sure." The words were bubbling out of him as if someone flipped a switch and now he couldn't stop anymore. "I couldn't see you date someone else and...give them all of your attention. And I know, I myself was in a relationship during that time, I know, but I just...I can't describe it." Your eyes grew wider and wider with every hasty rambled sentence and your lips were slightly parted. "It was as if was...jealous, which is weird because I wasn't into you then, no offense please, I mean I had a girlfriend..."

"Hold on, what do you mean, wasn't into you then?" you cut him off and Harry literally froze. His eyes went wide with realisation and his mouth opened, as if he would try to reply something; but there was no sound. All he could think of, was one word, all in capital letters and blinking red: fuck.

"I uh, did I say then?" you clicked with your tongue, an amused grin flitting over your face.

"You did." A blush now covered his cheeks and he cleared his throat eagerly. You moved away from his embrace to get a better look at the man sitting in front of you.

"You did say then. Something changed?" your tone was joking but hidden beneath the layers of sarcasm there was a flicker of something else...hope.

"I...I mean I don't...would it be like...do you still feel the same?" you didn't immediately answered, trying to process what you were hearing. After weeks of pinning and then months of not talking at all, he was confessing – or somewhat confessing – that there was a chance that he now actually liked you back? How was that even possible?

Harry however read your silence as something else than confusion and being overwhelmed with the situation. His face fell from nervous to disappointed and hurt, though he tried to mask those emotions quickly. "Which is of course fine and like, obviously you don't, I mean..." he spoke, and it wasn't entirely clear if he was talking to you or himself.

"I didn't even answer H." you mumbled, tilting your head. "Of course you di- wait what do you mean?" there was this same spark of hope in his voice as there had been in your voice. "If I told you, that nothing changed, what would that mean?" you breathed after a second of hesitation and staring into his wide eyes, filled with fear, nervousness, hope and...vulnerability. At your words there was a small smile that started to tug on his lips, like a light igniting his eyes.

"It would mean that I...uhm, I would then shoot my shot?" you couldn't help it.

"Was that hard to say?" he blinked confused. "Shoot your shot..." you teased and he groaned loudly. "Oh hush, you are unbearable." You giggled, winking obnoxiously. "You decided to eat those edibles. Also, I am worth a shot, no?" he huffed, leaping forwards to pull you back into his arms. "Oh definitely..." you grinned up at him before your breath hitched in your throat at the realisation of his sudden closeness. Eyes flickering to his lips you just waited. But when he leaned in you cleared you throat softly, making him halt. "Before you do that...just please tell me why now." He never moved back just pressed his lips together for a second, thinking of the right choice of words. "In those month where we didn't talk, I had a lot, and I mean a lot of time to think and reflect about the whole situation. About you, about how I felt about you and your partners, how your confession had changed the way I saw or felt certain things...also, Jeff's talked a lot with me about it. The fight and stuff. And then when I saw you again I just...knew? I don't know..." you cut him off with a short nod.

"Okay that's good, now kiss me please." He just laughed before finally, finally closing the gap between the two of you.

And your lips on his made him feel better, lighter and higher than any fucking edible could've ever made him feel.

here are flowers for u, if u rly read this ily 💐💐💐

➳m.list ➳h.s. m.list ➳wattpad

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notjanine · 3 years

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2020 in books!

the only kind of new year’s resolution i made as a naive baby last january was to try to read 40 books for the year. (i read 37 in 2019, for context.) well, with all of my commuting time eliminated and an increased need for immersive escapism, i ended up surpassing that goal three times over lmao (thanks library ebooks!)

idk how to summarize my year in books in a way that makes sense but

(f) = fiction, (nf) = nonfiction, (p) = poetry.

books that rewired my fucking brain:

braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer (nf)- GOD?!?!?! good. dr. k is right. ostensibly a book about plants, but actually a book about shut up and go outside. consumerism and capitalism are doing their damnedest to fuck you up, but you can just choose to value different things. take care of yourself by taking care of your environment. etc etc.

wasp by richard jones (nf)- lissen. when i got this book, my wasp-phobia was so severe that i had to put it away face down on a high shelf because there are wasps on the cover and i couldn’t bear to RISK even GLIMPSING them. now i am like... a wasp evangelist. (also due to the bugs 101 course on coursera it’s so good.)

wag by zazie todd (nf)- i have a dog, but i am NOT a Dog Person (i.e. i love my dog, but please keep yours away from me, thanks.) this book helped me understand my little guy better, plus it gives actionable tasks and activities to do with and for your pup! plus, y’know, learning about things you’re scared of helps to lessen that fear. i’d recommend this to anyone who has, wants, or regularly interacts with a dog.

a closed and common orbit by becky chambers (f)- is this series complete fluff? absolutely. am i fundamentally different after reading this one? maybe.

the best we could do by thi bui (nf)- this is so far outside of my personal experience but somehow still made me come to peace with my relationship with my mom?? and it’s barely even about that?? idk. this is probably objectively the best book i’ve read this year.

books that were just fun as hell:

mexican gothic by silvia moreno-garcia (f)- this book made me YELL out loud

death on the nile by agatha christie (f)- i grew up on agatha christie shows, but never actually read her before this year! she really was That Bitch. read this before the movie comes out

cosmoknights by hannah templer (f)- i read this in one sitting through the worst headache i’ve had in years. it is a goddamn DELIGHT. this book has everything: spaceships. mech suits. fighting the patriarchy. a perfect otp. fun art in bright colors with clean lines. onomatopoetic WAPs from before the song gave that hilarious context. 800 lesbians. this is an antidepressant in graphic novel form.

stiff by mary roach (nf)- ms. roach is like the 4th most represented author on my bookshelf because she 1. stays writing about shit i’m interested in and 2. manages to talk about gross and ridiculous things without resorting to sensationalism. it takes skill to write a hilarious book about corpses.

black sun by rebecca roanhorse (f)- excellent sexual tension between a horny siren pirate and a hot doomed... monk, kinda? set in the pre-columbian gulf of mexico with magic and shit.

cuisine chinoise by zao dao (? n/f)- this graphic novel about chinese food history/mythology is BEAUTIFUL.

the color of magic by terry pratchett (f)- you’d think a hardcore douglas adams stan would have gotten to this sooner, but no, i had to date a nerdy white boy to get here. it’s fun though! i’m not gonna read them all, but this one was good. bonus: contains one (1) great himbo.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir (f)- like 500 pages of action and mystery and jokes and space necromancy. harrow the ninth gets a special mention bc it has a meme reference that took me out so hard i had to close the book, lie down, and groan for an entire minute before continuing.

other minds by peter godfrey-smith (nf)- i love octopuses. on one tma bonus ep, jonny sims says that if a creature can choose to do evil, then it’s a Person. octopuses are People. but anyway frfr this has an explanation of the evolution of consciousness that is cool af. (this one is much better than the other recent popsci octo book which i will not name out of politeness.)

the perfect predator by steffanie strathdee and thomas patterson (nf)- i read this bc my microbiology prof recommended it and it’s cool as heck! it’s got adventure, drama, mystery, Science-with-a-capital-S. i’m biased bc i’m a bit of a microbes nerd, but i had a blast with this. (but only bc we know going in that everything works out okay; if i hadn’t known that, i would have been TOO stressed!)

books that were a little less fun but still very readable:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite (f)- i couldn’t find this as funny as other people bc i, too, have a beautiful sister who’s an insufferable narcissist, so it hits a little too close to home, but. it is a wild ride.

piranesi by susanna clarke (f)- idek what to say! i went into this one blind just bc it had a cool cover and title, so i guess i’d recommend that for other people too.

the sixth world series by rebecca roanhorse (f)- monster hunting! a post-apocalyptic take that doesn’t feel tired.

the shades of magic trilogy by v.e. schwab (f)- easy escapism. some ideas feel a little first draft-y, but idk, it’s also a pretty simple premise (which isn’t a bad thing). it’s a decent urban fantasy set in ~georgian?-era london. very actiony. suffers from a bit of i’m-not-like-other-girls disease, but i didn’t even notice until book two or three, so.

the only good indians by stephen graham jones (f)- starts off a little ??? (and reeks of being Written By A Man) but picks up. the pacing’s great and there’s just a super fucking cool monster.

robopocalypse by daniel h. wilson (f)- this reads like a tv miniseries so much that i can’t believe it isn’t one yet.

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg (f)- not my usual cup of tea, fiction-wise, but still compelling. a fresh take on the white-male-english-professor-self-insert? but not insufferable. gets weird!

spinning silver by naomi novik (f)- rumplestilstkin, but make it interesting! a great, richly-told fairy tale, but like, large scale. good to read on a cold day while you’re wrapped up in a blanket with some hot tea.

interior chinatown by charles yu (f)- compulsively readable. a couple things bugged me, but not enough to make me dislike it. a fun companion piece to how to live safely in a science fictional universe. i like this guy’s style.

cannibalism by bill schutt (nf)- COOL. mostly covers the animal kingdom (fun), spends too much time on the donner party (less fun), ends with a SPICY take on prions that i cannot get out of my head!!!

buzz, sting, bite by anne sverdrup-thygeson (nf)- BUGS! broad but not overwhelming, neither dumbed down nor overly scientific, short enough to finish in a day or two. recommend this to literally everyone.

books that made me want to read everything else in the author’s ouevre:

the time invariance of snow by e. lily yu (f)- this FUCKS but it’s too short!!!

an unkindness of ghosts by rivers solomon (f)- okay this book is SO good and so well-written and interesting and blah blah blah all the good things, but... the whole time, i was just like?? why???? why is this what you’re choosing to write about??? (i did also read the deep and blood is another word for hunger after this one, and i did like them both, especially the latter, but i think they can do better! like i think they could write a perfect book and i am gonna be *eyes emoji* until then.)

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson (f)- a fine debut novel, but i want to see her do something a little more... idk, refined? i think she overreaches here, like it’s a little... idk looper? this is how you lose the time war? there’s a better comparison, but i can’t think of it, but you get the idea. and then halfway through it shifts gears to mad max. there’s something weird about one of the central relationships, like it’s not complex enough to take as long to resolve as it does. idk idk. there are just a lot of little nitpicky things. it’s not bad! but i think she can do better and i look forward to finding out.

postcolonial love poem by natalie diaz (p)- thinky! like i tried to read this before bed, but it’s not the sort of thing to parse out while you’re falling asleep, it requires more attention than that.

books that Learned Me Somethin:

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty (nf)- i am a self-professed death obsessed weirdo, fascinated by death and mourning, but i didn’t know all that much about what happens to a body between the dying and the funeral! this book isn’t big, but it covers a lot and doughty’s writing style is engaging and honest. it’s very memorable.

queer by meg-john barker and julia scheele (nf)- i’m gonna be totally honest and say Queer Theory is above my intellectual pay grade, but this book takes you by the hand and explains the basics.

vitamania by catherine price (nf)- LMAO my fellow americans, never take a supplement. this book is great and well-researched, but normal folks don’t need to read it, just listen to season two of the dream podcast, which definitely cribbed from this.

vegetable kingdom by bryant terry (nf)- this is a fine cookbook, my favorite of his that i’ve read so far. gets a special mention bc i had a religious experience just reading one of his kohlrabi recipes. absolutely gutted that i didn’t have an opportunity to try it this year, since the pandemic put the kibosh on all family bbqs.

the best american food writing 2020 edited by j. kenji lopez-alt (nf)- this really is just a great collection.

are prisons obsolete? by angela y. davis (nf)- yes.

i moved to los angeles to work in animation by natalie nourigat (nf)- before reading this, i had basically zero knowledge of how the animation industry works. now i know like three things.

the secret lives of bats by merlin tuttle (nf)- BATS! okay this book is more about the adventures of being a bat scientist than it actually is about bats, but there are bats in there. insectivorous bats basically shit glitter, you should know this.

books from valuable perspectives:

hood feminism by mikki kendall (nf)- a breakdown of who’s getting left out of feminist spaces, why that’s happening, and why it shouldn’t be happening.

all you can ever know by nicole chung (nf)- a (transracial) adoptee’s take on adoption and learning more about her birth family. the personal storytelling of this one really stuck with me.

motherhood so white by nefertiti austin (nf)- a single-mom-by-choice’s take on the foster system/adoption process. walks you through some things i always wondered about and some things i wouldn’t even have thought about.

this place by kateri akiwenzie-damm et al (? n/f)- i, like a lot of non- native americans, only know that history in broad strokes. getting this many highly specific stories in one dense and beautiful book felt like a lucky find. and taking that perspective into the future in the context of that history is v good.

empty by susan burton (nf)- eating disorder stories are important to me bc i care about food so much. this one is so relatable- not in its specificity, but rather its generality. it’s easy to empathize with her perspective because it’s like, Oh, i don’t have that exact problem, but i struggle with different problems in a very similar way. (feels like the opposite of roxane gay’s hunger, in a way.)

obit by victoria chang (p)- this exploration of grief is... woof.

short story collections are hard to evaluate bc you’ll never read one where every single story hits but i generally enjoyed these:

a thousand beginnings and endings edited by ellen oh and elsie chapman (f)

how long til black future month? by n.k. jemisin (f)

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (f)

books i revisited:

the broken earth trilogy by n.k. jemisin (f)- i read the series backwards this time and like... i can’t really find any faults in these books, man. they’re just the best.

everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by jomny sun (f... but is it really?)- half of this book’s sales are from me buying it for other people bc it’s the only way i know how to say i love you. i reread it every time just to make sure it still feels right and it always does.

other honorable mentions:

white is for witching by helen oyeyemi (f)- not to pit two bad bitches against each other, but this book does what akwaeke emezi’s freshwater was trying to do. it’s a little weird, a little haunted, a little of a lot of things. read this only in the dead of winter. (and with stephen rennicks’ score for the little stranger playing in the background.)

homie by danez smith (p)- there’s a lot going on here, but this just made me crack a smile a couple times in a way that no other book of poetry has ever done.

the murder of roger ackroyd and murder in mesopotamia by agatha christie (f)- That Bitch!

blues by nikki giovanni (p)- she sure has some Things To Say

the three-body problem by cixin liu (f)- interesting concepts, but... idk something’s missing? felt weirdly soulless to me. i’m probably not gonna read the sequels. but it did make some points!

the sisters of the winter wood by rena rossner (f)- i’m a slut for shapeshifting, okay. but this is a good fairy tale, it works!

parable of the sower by octavia butler (f)- i read this in march, when the pandemic was just kicking off and boy that was not the right time. def my least favorite of hers so far, but an octavia butler i don’t love is still better than a hell of a lot of other books. no idea when or if i’ll get to a good enough headspace for the sequel.

faves:

saturnino herrán by adriana zapett tapia (nf)- i got to learn new things about my mans and see some of his paintings i’ve never even seen online! GOSH.

on food and cooking by harold mcgee (nf)- yeah yeah, i’ve already mentioned this book half a dozen times on here this year, but i don’t care. this book lives off the shelf in my home bc i reference it like every other fucking day. this book is a part of me now.

#long post #final total for the year will be 120 by the end of the day!#and i had a pretty good hit rate. would probably recommend at least half #and only outright hated four

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skinfeeler · 4 years

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between good posts, miscellaneous aesthetic content, and astounding selfies, sometimes the mask slips and it becomes obvious that i am an extraordinarily troubled person. why? well, there are many reasons. but i can give you a microcosm from the sort of things that are done to me to make me this way, even by other trans women.

this is a vaguepost about me with zero notes. let’s break it down! but before we break it down, let’s take it at face value. the kind of picture she’s painting here insinuates that perhaps i horribly mistreated her and then, in HAL fashion, made sure she was exiled from all the communities we shared using vague accusations and extremely loaded language. something like that.

factually, the opposite happened. we’re all familiar with reversal of accusations done by people who hold power over these they hurt, aren’t we? so here are the disturbing and crude circumstances from which this disgusting screed emerged:

we initially shared an online space together. at some point we started conversing privately. as almost the first thing she said to me, she confided to me that she used to hate women like me: brash. assertive. confident. self-loving. not afraid to take up space or to refuse to put up with mistreatment. the product of a ceaseless struggle against conditioning to let people exploit me, abuse me. one of two directions each trans woman can take, the other one to become fragile and let oneself stay fragile.

she said that once she met me and got to know me, she dropped this worldview and seemed embarrassed she ever held it. in response, i, simply grateful to not have someone reject me for being the wrong kind of trans woman — an etymological baeddel, if you will — told her that i understood, since i know people like me aren’t allowed to exist. i wish i hadn’t.

because she didn’t drop it forever. she only dropped it conditionally.

we had a dalliance of sorts, and eventually it turned out to be deeply unhealthy for both of us, so i broke it off for both our sakes. i told her that it was probably for the best that we ‘stopped talking’, by which i meant to not contact me individually and to refrain from using group environments specifically to solicit me. i hoped that this reduction of contact, while making room to share the same spaces, would be better for both of us than our unhealthy and mutually damaging association.

then soon after day her girlfriend who shared the same space and who i still spoke to told me — as part of a larger diatribe concerning a reciprocally harmful situation — the following.“It’s ridiculous - it’s a completely irresponsible way to handle a sitution with someone you're supposed to share a community with. You completely disposed of her. You forced her out.”

alongside this, a series of quotes from hot allostatic load on her blog, very clearly meant for me.

apparently respect for the dignity of trans women like me ceased the moment i denied someone access to me— respect from her, and the people i thought were close to me but who were apparently still quite willing to suddenly assume the worst when i was simply trying to set boundaries. i wasn’t setting boundaries as a real trans woman may be entitled to, i was forcing people out, i was made the aggressor simply for daring to set boundaries based on a prior judgement that was made the moment people met me and the way i talk, the particular trauma responses i have. what might be praised in a more feminine and mild-mannered (trans) woman was in me, proof of guilt and evil.

it didn’t matter what actually happened, what exactly both of us respectively did to each other. what mattered is how she felt. how she felt aggressed against by the wrong kind of trans women daring to deny her access to her body and person.

other people got involved and other conflicts got aggravated. she kept stoking the fires— other situations, if they were resolvable beforehand, weren’t because of the poison she put in people’s heads about me. through all of this, neither she nor her girlfriend were ever in the slightest genuinely repentant for the way they made it difficult for me to set boundaries.

all of this happened in the acute aftermath of me being raped in an alleyway — an event they had knowledge of — during the few months after. i was so, so carefully trying out if it was even possible for me to be intimate with others. it was, briefly, until i pulled out, until i told people that i felt violated by things that happened.

and all of that, all of my attempts to set boundaries and to protest against violations committed, were not even met with direct answers or where not possible, dignified resignations to that fact and attempts to atone. instead, what happened is that they leveled narratives at their friends and girlfriends until they felt so overwhelmed that people refused to sincerely listen to my side of things and i was put in a position where all i was to do to make amends for my own actions, with everyone else completely protected. i was told people are very upset, that i had made them feel very bad, and this hurt is what ended up mattering, not what they did to me.

it broke me, for some time. i behaved disrespectfully and harmfully to a number of people in the months after. i was in such an aggravated state of trauma from having it be repeatedly proven to me that my body is fair game for anyone’s carnal drives that i was oblivious to the ways that i was exhausting people by trying to play politics in a vain attempt to get some recognition for what happened to me and how it was enabled, facilitated by both perpetrators and others in that space.

and then, eventually, after months of building tension and stress which nobody felt able to resolve, nothing could have happened but that i was forced out of the one space where i was told that the bad kind of trans woman could belong and be treated well, too.

that we could ‘build alternatives’ to the traumatic things that are done to us and then do to ‘each other’ (although really, just to those among us who aren’t deemed worthy of protection).

---

i do not believe she is actually a predator— i am not from an english-speaking country, and my throwaway post in which i said “no sympathy for sex pests who got rejected months ago and still whine about it” was based on an understanding that it meant someone who harmed others in the context of sexual interactions, but not necessarily an actual ‘predator’, insofar that essentialist, individual, reactionary idea of one who does harm actually holds meaning to me. certainly she is not as bad as actual literal alleyway rapists, not that it is fair or reasonable to have it fall to me to reassure anyone of that.

however, she is oblivious to the fact that reacting to people setting boundaries in this way and that projecting transmisogyny on them along the lines she did damages their ability to set boundaries in the future, especially since i was recently raped, which she and everyone else involved knew about. she’s not a predator, but her behavior chipped away at my ability to set boundaries and is completely irreverent of them regardless of context or intent. most consent guides have vile things to say about those who hear that they hurt others, freak out in an emotionally incontinent way and make it everyone else’s problem instead of working towards taking responsibility. unfortunately, she made it so that this behavior ended up being enabled and rewarded, simply because the way in which she was violent is not seen as violence by many in our circles.

i stopped taking progesterone. i refused to be intimate with people. i wanted to be sexless and recoiled at all expressions of attraction from others, experiencing them as a prelude to violation since i couldn’t conceive of people being into me and acting on that in a way that wouldn’t end up humiliating, traumatising, heartbreaking. i didn’t feel like i could exist with other people anymore, and believed that never, ever would i be treated in an equitable way where my hurt matters just as much as theirs.

i don’t want to be sanctified over my own mistakes i just want to get treated as all the other people who made awful, horrible ones— i wasn’t, people refused to level with me about it until they had already made up their minds about me and cut me off first individually, then collectively. i was treated as a perpetrator by default.

even with what i did and my role in all of this, i did not deserve to be treated this way.

---

i didn’t make any actual threats. what i did was the following.

if i don’t stop it from happening, a payload of information about the actions and identities of people who violated my boundaries will be released, with the understanding that this only happens if i don’t periodically reset a timer when it will be uploaded, with the understanding that this will only happen if i die. this gives me some sort of comfort that if i kill myself, i’ll at least get to finally have the voice which people with immense amounts of social capital are preventing me from having, inadvertently or on purpose. if all of this kills me, does she really believe she deserves to get away with it, my voice forever lost?

i also made a post that next time someone forces me into something i don’t want, i won’t freeze up— if it is a physical situation, i know i will fight back and win against someone literally sexually assaulting me, that is what the post was about! that’s not even something she wants (presumably). so to make this out as some threat against her is frankly preposterous, and i can’t really find any way to take it as another cynical attempt to portray me as the wrong kind of tranny: the one without a lithe body and who doesn’t perform a fetishisation of her own (pretended) lack of power over others well enough, with the wrong set of traumatic personality alterations.

---

allow me to end with a few choice screenshots from this person’s blog, and an ask she sent me to circumvent my block on discord.

what’s the deal with people who have a certain access to feminine fragility (cis women, certain kinds of trans women) and comparing people to their abusive fathers?

stop postmodernising about my boundaries. please.

what’s worse? ending something awful for both of us as well within my entitlements, or circumventing a block in order to chastise me for it as a prelude to unleashing the full power of the whisper network? i guess all things are fine when the first is done by a trans woman who can deadlift 1.5x her bodyweight and the second is done by a trans woman who prides herself on being sensitive and who is just so easy to hurt— not like she has plenty of means to passively aggress or cut trans women like me off from their support networks, murder them in a thousand ways which our community sanctifies, which is exactly what she did, both while we knew each other and after.

this, for months and months and months. making me wonder what the next way she will hurt me is going to be.

---

it is a genuine relief to hear that this person never wanted to see me again. because of her behavior, i was under the distinct impression she wanted me back in some sense. you may see why when you look at all these strange attempts to undermine the boundaries she knows i struggle to maintain.

all this talk invoking the concept of radical transformative justice after she did her best to escalate situations to get me exiled simply because i didn’t want to have a personal, individual association with her. it’s not enough for her that she managed to get rid of me, me daring to feel hurt by it is another violation of the values that were supposed to prevent what happened to me from happening, in fact, me feeling hurt is portrayed as worse as what she did to hurt me, and as invalidating any demand i have at all to be treated with any dignity or receive any defense or protection from anyone at all, simply because of the way it made her feel that i dared to be hurt by what she did.

what matters is what happened. what matters is what people did. what matters is what factually happened, not transmisogynistic interpretations of it, forgotten at convenience by the people who were there. what matters is who is decided to be worthy or unworthy of protection, who is actually capable of being hurt instead of considered unrapeable, unviolable, invulnerable and dangerous for it, which frankly, seems what patterns of ‘disposability’ always seem to revolve around. it is disturbing that this language was invoked to ironically, argue the status of my body as public property at pain of isolation.

what matters is power, and statements like “i don’t hate you” are cheap from those who will always have the social capital to hurt me like this so long as the gendered heuristics of the circles we share remain hegemonic.

#likes only.

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ailuronymy · 4 years

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Book Club: Tallstar’s Revenge, chpt. 1-9 overview.

Thoughts on the new Windclan, courtesy of famed Erin Hunter impersonators:

“DIRT BOYS!! LET'S MAKE THEM ALL DIRT BOYS!” -- K.

"I understand we've stressed extensively that ALL Windclan love running and are skinny binches and need to be under the sky or they're sad, BUT half the clan has always been buff as fuck and live like moles :) :) we just didn't mention it before because it wasn't important to Harry's journey :) :) :)” -- S.

For this first share, we’ll keep to the questions posted earlier in the week so that there’s some kind of structure to what we’re doing! Please feel welcome to do the same and @ailuronymy + use the tag #ailuronymy writing challenge. Happy reading and I’m looking forward to seeing your feelings about this book.

1. First impressions?

S. better than Bluestar's Prophecy. K. Not as bad as BP but also hoo boy, you peel back the onion and it only gets uglier the more you think about it huh K. Me, reading the book initially: Wow I actually kind of enjoyed this! Me now: I See. I See The Truth.

2. How did you feel reading this section?

S. mostly the usual amount of exasperation! But it was also fun and I like Tallpaw K. About the same! Not as bored as BP, and I do like Tallpaw, so that's a blessing in disguise.

3. What chapter did you find most interesting/moving/effective, and why?

S. probably the one where Heatherstar causes a ruckus and acknowledges Tallpaw's best interests. There was genuinely tension and it was refreshing to have a character in authority actually act reasonably towards Tallpaw. K. I agree, that one had me really excited to read.

4. What chapter did you find least interesting/effective/most frustrating, and why?

S. I honestly struggled with chapter eight. If I have to read too much action being described, I black out. I just find it so boring. That's not actually a criticism at Erin Hunter. I just have a short attention span for people Doing Things that aren't talking, sword-fights, having big emotions, sex, or any combination. And even then, the sword-fights and/or sex still have to keep to a reasonable word limit or I wander away. I'm the worst. I'm literally like a child who only wants to eat sweets, but in written form. S. I forgot basically all of chapter eight for the above reason of being terrible, so that's on me.

K. I have nothing written at all about Chapter 7. I liked seeing the apprentice training being like, at least marginally different than Thunderclan's but also It Sucked Bad Chapter Moving On.

5. Is there a passage that stuck in your mind–for good, or not-so-good reasons? What is it, and why did it stand out? Try breaking it down and analysing what this passage does and how.

S. I actually had a nice time reading about Plumclaw and Tallkit interacting. She was talking him through having his first mouse, I think, and it was genuinely sweet and moving in a way that Erin Hunter's writing almost never is. There was a legit connection and for a moment, I actually believed in these characters as people who lived together and actually have relationships and care. That’s really what I’m about, so it was a pleasant surprise to find in this book.

K. I have two brief passages for different reasons: “He’s my son,” Sandgorse snarled. “I’ll decide his future.” Heatherstar stiffened. “I decide the future of my warriors.” LOVE Heatherstar showing the fuck up. Absolute legend. K. “Tallkit heard worry in her mew. “Is that why we tunnel under the moor?” he asked. “To hide from the dead warriors in other Clans?” — First tunnelling mention! The idea of Windclan taking shelter from/expertly evading the ghosts of their enemies because of their speed is honestly pretty fun, but I don’t trust the Erins with it one bit. K. This kind of legend is something I think I'd much prefer in like, a Watership Down style myth or story? K. But not if Erin's touching it. S. I was like, "oh this is the sickest thing you've ever--no no no no no" K. (oh, and just for fun, one of my other fave quotes was Dawnstripe saying "We guard the edge of the world." That felt cool.)

6. What themes did you notice in these chapters? What motifs or repeated symbolism/description appeared to you?

K. Love is a big one, obvs. K. Also, lots of stories and storytelling? Which feels just like Erin slapping more bullshit in here but like, that feels kinda relevant.

S. I struggled to find cohesive themes in this chunk, except I think division? The division between the tunnellers and moor runners, between Tallpaw and his mum, between Heatherstar and her clan. That's really what popped for me.

K. Oh, and like... expectations. The clan's expectations of Heatherstar, Sandgorse's of Tallpaw, Tallpaw's expectations for himself.

7. How do you feel about the characters, their motivation, their choices?

K. They're like. Not the worst? Lots of them fucking suck, as usual. But I'm at least very happy that I actually want to see Tallpaw succeed and grow. Also Heatherstar and Dawnstripe and Barkpaw are great.

S. I like Tallpaw! That's a lot of projection on my part, but I've found him a lot less grating than Bluepaw (who I also wanted to love). S. One of my first major aggravations in the early chapters is Shrewpaw. He's unbearable, and what makes him so is the one-note bullying. It's the equivalent of reading someone go, "I'm not touching you," in an annoying voice for nine chapters, which I feel is another example of Erin Hunter's habit of repetition. There was less of that in this book than BP, but I still counted a few instances of cats having the same conversation a few times. S. The other cat I can't stand is Sandgorse. My god. That moment when he tells his literal infant son to go cheer up his depressed mother made me just about scream. S. “Go cheer up your mother, child” GO CHEER UP YOUR WIFE, HUSBAND

K. This is where it's gonna get interesting, because I think my fucking senses were dulled by how much Erin fucked up dads last time, because I didn't hate him off the hop!

S. To me, he smacks of a lowkey toxic masculinity. And the kind of emotional manipulation he does makes me [narrow eyes]. S. (I didn't take very good notes about this bit, because I forgot. I only have "Sandgorse is such a loser" but I trust past me's judgement).

K. I strongly do think that my impression of Sandgorse is different if only because I think I was so tired at seeing all the non-existent dads in Bluestar's Prophecy that the fact that he actually has conversations with his son and wife for more than like, a sentence, made me go "Oh thank god" And maybe this too is a bit of a projection, but I sort of initially saw him as like... that well-meaning dad who tries to be nice but still manages to fuck up and not actually listen to what people need at all. Like, the classic stupid dad in a bad TV movie who has A Dream for his kid. Where he doesn't mean to be an asshole, he just thinks he's right and that his kid agrees with him because Why Wouldn't He. So I think I took a lot of his dialogue and actions to be a bit more well-meaning-but-still-not-great rather than fully toxic. Obviously it doesn't end well for anyone, but I guess I've just seen too many father figures go around with nice intentions who have absolutely Zero ability at reading a room let alone their kids

S. I think for me, that is the problem. And I think I am less forgiving towards it.

K. Stormtail [Bluestar’s father, Bluestar’s Prophecy] feels like more of the asshole dad, to me, but like. They're both different brands of Not Good.

S. Stormtail is super just a complete prick, no doubt. I think Sandgorse is more engaged with his kid, for sure. But I think it's a very hollow engagement, because he denies everything about Tallpaw's actual personality and desires and just sees him as an extension of himself to control. Which is sort of parental abuse 101.

K. Oh, and while we're discussing them: Palebird huh. Again, Erins, can't write a woman, but like. I don't know, I think that like... she felt like a neat character for the first chapter and now they're doing their Bad Things with her by making her boring and Just Sad and kind of useless in the background for them to mess with and probably kill off later. Like, she doesn't have a whole lot of personality, but she could. S. I think I'd like all the characters more if I spent less time with them. Like, I think for me, the pace is too slow, the dialogue is too long, and because of that, I get bored and annoyed with the characters. Whereas I think if it was only a couple of chapters, forcing the dialogue to be more punchy and illuminating of their character, and less mired in sadness (Palebird) or digging stupid holes (Sandgorse) or bullying (Shrewpaw), I'd have a lot more fun. But as it stands, Palebird starts talking and I start zoning out because they've really done her so dirty in this.

8. If you could ask any character in this section a question, what question would you ask them?

K. Heatherstar: How does it feel to be the baddest bitch in the room at any given moment K. Palebird: Why the FUCK are you with this bastard K. Sandgorse: WHY are you LIKE THAT ALL THE TIME

S. Barkpaw: what is it about learning medicine that you love? Or.... Barkpaw: how did you decide to give up your future with others, for a future in medicine? What was that decision like?

K. A more serious question from me, hehe: Tallpaw - If no one was watching, what would make you happiest to do or say? K. Shrewpaw: What about yourself do you feel most inadequate about? What part of that drives you to act towards others like you do?

S. Shrewpaw: what's your fucking damage, buddy?

9. In your opinion, what is “world-building” and how important is it to you as a reader (or writer)? How do you feel about the world-building of these chapters so far? If you could, would you change anything, and what would you change?

S. Oh, I hate it. S. What's hilarious is that for maybe the first time ever Erin Hunter is putting effort in. You can see how hard they're working to make tunnelling sound "cool" or relevant, how they're describing all these tunnel-related skills and techniques the way they do with fighting or whatever. S. And the irony is it's such a wasted effort because personally? Could not care less. This world-building enraptures me none amount and I spend the whole time scoffing like, sure Jan.

K. One of my notes off the hop is: "I know that Erin’s trying to like… make Windclan look unique by adding these new positions, but just labelling some warriors as “moor runners” doesn’t cut it. Their job is: “hunting and patrolling the borders”. That’s just? An average warrior thing to do? It’s not special, and naming it something fancy doesn’t make me feel like you’re actually adding anything to Windclan’s mythology here." Which is really just tunnel adjacent, but it's still relevant.

K. Other choice tunneling notes: "...Listen, I get it, inter-clan conflict is wonderful. But WHY do the moor runners and tunnellers hate each other? If the tunnels are so important to Windclan’s way of life, SURELY the above-ground warriors would feel respect for them? And if Windclan holds such value in their tunnels (Palebird literally just said that the tunnels mean they’re “stronger and cleverer” than the other clans), then WHY would Windclan cats hate them for it?? To have this weird seemingly generational distrust between the two castes is just. Fucking bananas." k. "Hey Erin: Why introduce the tunnellers at all if you keep putting them down and saying how much worse it would be to be one. What’s the point."

S. “I'm still not over the fact they're [Erin Hunter] like... "what can we do to make Windclan, the clan who famous won't even build nests because they like to live under the stars, special and different from the rest... oh I fucking know."

K. "Why is no one in charge in this clan that’s been a tunneller?? Heatherstar and Reedfeather just… fully don’t understand tunnelling and tunnellers needs?? If I were making this system, I’d have it be mandatory that the leader and deputy have to be one from either caste." S. Why not just ban it already. S. I mean, the book tries so hard to convince us tunnelling is useful. I believe none of it.

K. ALSO why don't the tunnelers b a t h e K. "They're permanently soiled with dirt and soot" DO THEY BATHE??? DO THEY?? WHY DO YOU HATE THIS NEW CASTE THAT YOU SEEM TO LOVE? K. Erin Hunter: look at my cool new worldbuilding set! I'm going to shit on it for an entire book

K. Like. I'm having a hard time pinpointing what I would do better, but like... I think I want it to feel 1) more cohesive and believable. 2) It needs to be useful and cement this clan as a group of living, working people. It has to make some kind of sense (to an extent) but also have a purpose! 3) sometimes worldbuilding doesn't need to be "uhh they need more jobs" sometimes it can be "we have this myth about running faster than the ghosts of our enemies" and that's just as successful if you do it right. Like, Erin thought you needed to entirely overhaul Windclan and make them Different to make them better. Instead of working with what's already there!

S. I personally feel it doesn't take much to make the clans really different from each other, and it's more the subtle things that make huge differences, not--like you said--more jobs or anything. Really don't want to blow my own horn, but like, to use the chapter I just wrote as an example: just by making elders vote to make major decisions alters the clan significantly. That's just one thing, that's putting different emphasis and a new swing on a preexisting facet of every clan. But immediately you get the effect and it has run-on effects too, which is what good world-building should do. It should be hard to remove any one piece without the whole castle crashing down. And this book is basically about how removing one “major” piece (tunnelling) effectively didn’t change anything, really. K. It just doesn't feel right to me! It's too big a change to feel natural, let alone how fucking bad it is.

K. And like, honestly, the Erins even did okay with just highlighting the territory and environmental differences! I've read all the different fucking ways they can write a forest after 30 books and they really have written them all. Even just making THAT a focal point helped to make this book feel somewhat distinct and fresh!

S. One of my long-standing gripes with Erin Hunter is that their environments are boring and basic and they need way more close detail on plants and whatnot but that is a personal preference, and not actually a flaw. Although admittedly, if you do spend time making an environment interesting, it turns out that becomes a reason to read and a pleasure, instead of something you have to trudge through to get to the Actually Good Bits. But that's not what they're about and I can acknowledge that, if not respect it.

Extra notes:

S. [Sandgorse’s] basically the dad equivalent of a pageant mum? K. Yeah! K. Sports Dads are just Pageant Mom Regional Variants. S. Oh my god.

K. The story isn't about [Palebird] and at this point it just feels kind of sad to have her onscreen. S. Yeah, I get the feeling she exists to make Tallstar feels unloved, basically. K. Which sucks! S. "Your mum likes your dead sibling more" is uhh a brutal way to tell a story, Erin.

K. For one: Barkpaw is... the best cat S. YES S. My boy. K. The Erins only know three medicine cats: Softe, Don't Fucking Touch Me, or The Only Reasonable Gay

K. 1) “Tallpaw swallowed a purr. “No racing, I promise. No having fun whatsoever on the dawn patrol.” I Love Him. 2) Dawnstripe seems nice and I think she and Stonepelt need to be friends. 3) I loved Tallpaw's little chase sequence and how clever he is :>

S. I just can't get over how much it breaks my suspension of disbelief to imagine cats digging. S. Of all things. S. I can tolerate the bullshit fighting better than I can believe cats digging with any efficiency whatsoever. K. They remind me of the Meerkats from Lion King 1/2. K. And I. K. Despise. K. That film. S. Windclan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U76zyUFg3Xo K. PLEASE END MY SUFFERING

K. I think what pisses me off about [Shrewpaw] the most, sidebar, is that he's like this from the start. Who is teaching him this??? Who is raising this little monster boy???? Who in Windclan is just? rearing xenophobes???? S. Like, he's newly born and walking around being a little fascist. S. And no-one is doing anything about it! All the adults are like, "huh, yeah, kids, am I right?" K. He isn't even as cool as Thistleclaw! He's just a little mean weasel boy! S. Sandgorse is literally like, "yeah that little weak moor runner punk child, what a coward, scared of getting sand in his eyes." Like, that's not the right response At All. K. EVERYONE IS SO RACIST ALL THE TIME SEND TWEET S. And none of the moor runners are being like, "hey stop calling him wormcat, his name is Tallpaw and he's your clanmate." S. Additional sidebar: Shrewpaw calling Tallpaw "wormcat" is my favourite thing in the book. S. It's like if I walked up to a nerd I didn't like and was just like, "lol wormboy." S. Devastating. K. RIGHT S. It's so funny. I was literally there like, "okay this is bad behaviour, Shrewpaw, that's not the right way to act, but also? fucking hilarious." K. It was funny at the start and now that it's his Thing it's even more funny. Like you can't think of anything better to say that you keep invoking the "Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy?" goof at all hours. S. It kind of reminded me of the time I was teaching and I had to put a ban on the word "Elmo" because the kids kept basically making it a slur on each other, but it was also the funniest thing and it was SO HARD not to fucking lose it. S. Me, being a good teacher: "All right, that's enough, no-one is allowed to call anyone else 'Elmo' anymore." S. Me on the inside: [dying]

#ailuronymy book club #tallstar's revenge

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laughingpinecone · 4 years

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Trick or Treat 2020 letter!

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

All requests are art or fic - for art, the stuff I like is the kind that depicts the characters doing something. I’ll always be happier with a very simple drawing of two characters walking together or sharing a cup of coffee than with an ambitious composition that looks like an Avengers poster. I also enjoy seeing them wear different clothes, getting a feel of what their fashion sense is like beyond their canon outfit(s).

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic, hurt/comfort or just comfort from the ample canon hurt, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, canon-adjacent tropey plots, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploration of secondary bits of canon, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played straight, sensory details, sickfic, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, nerdy canon references, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Hurdy

I love the game’s world and all the little stories and legends that fill it. Great atmosphere, great lore, so if you feel like getting a little worldbuildy and indulging in the scenery and its story, please do! A focus on the sense of camaraderie in a caravan would also be great (like people could do on Gamecube.....). Hurdy’s a bit of an odd duck for that theme, but maybe he hitched a ride at some point? With whom? Amidatty or De Nam maybe, among the nominated characters? I love the whole cast so anyone goes. Do they travel together enough for them to cotton onto the weirdness of the whole Gurdy situation? Got any run-in with Lady Mio? Or what’s his status after the miasma is lifted, can he go back to Tipa, can he/they begin to heal? What does healing even look like for him and Gurdy?

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down... him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles... I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back. Dreaming Sissel but he’s strange... and wrong?

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right... I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being into it is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business)

Kentucky Route Zero: Carrington, Cate

Act after act, intermission after intermission, I somehow didn’t see the arts rising to such a dominant theme in KRZ and it’s stuck with me since the ending finally hit. It’s great and moving. So! Who better than good ol’ antler man to linger in those feels! Carrington’s playwright adventures or Carrington&anyone you fancy, either way I’d listen to him ramble for a week and I would like to know more about his big dramatic plans. Or maybe him helping someone, more or less accidentally, by offering his unique takes? Overriding my “no canon retellings” DNW for a hot second, did he ever figure out what was going down in the Death of the Hired Man (or Nap of the Hired Man as the case may be) interlude?

For Cate, I’m mostly interested in two things: life on the river and mushrooms. Maybe both! The Echo river ecosystem is intensely fascinating to me as opposed to life on the surface and life on the Zero, and yet all these environments are permeable. So what’s a moment in her daily life that encapsulates the river? Someone they picked up on the Mammoth, a strange island that popped up at some point? Cate&Will bonding extremely welcome, I’m love Will. And then there’s the mushroom hunting. I don’t know much about mushrooms, but I do know that they’re cool. Cate seems to agree, so if you’ve got a story or pic in you about her and them mushrooms, I’d love to see it.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. If &Manley or &Brighton, I am not interested in more lenient takes on their characters than canon’s. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?"/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue."? btw that ‘emphatically yes xeno’ from my general likes is only applicable here I guess so: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like...

Shenmue: Qiu Hsu, Xianzi Bei

Cormorants... kung fu... cormorant kung fu. They turned out to be my faves in a very likeable cast and I’d love to see either or both of them slice-of-life-ing it up in Niaowu, or anywhere up or down the river. The rest of the cast is welcome to join! Did Ren end up at Liu He Hall for whatever reason, or did Shenhua chat up a cormorant, as she does? Id love to see a spookier mood too! Ghost story time in Liu Jiao shrine maybe?

The Silver Case: Catherine, Kodai Sumio, Kuroyanagi Shinko, Kusabi Tetsugorou, Macalister Edo, Morishima Tokio

I‘m all for the surrealism, big things being introduced and never picked up again, Rashomon’ing it up with six explanations for the same thing where no single one can be true, people dying and then popping up again like nbd... maybe the thing I like the most is characters transcending their humanity and looming over the dystopian world like ominous avatars. Correctness’ first ending had me swooning, that kind of mood is unparalleled. I have played TSC, FSR and 25W so far and have vague memories of K7. I’m aware of the “everything’s connected” readings but that’s not my main interest in these games. Mainly I see Lospass as a real island but also a metaphysical place of transformation first and foremost, where strange things happen that don’t make sense elsewhere, but I’m good with anything that works for your story! There are a few & prompts for these fine folks in my Press Start letter [here].

For Catherine, I’d love to see something along the lines of her YAMI appearance, on Lospass on her own or hanging out with another character of your choice (or Tokio again). Sumio leaves me at a loss for words... if you’ve played 25W, maybe an expansion of his [intense ethereal whooshing] moment? He’s a gust away from vanishing from existence altogether... &Sakura and/or &/Tetsu if you want. Or his time in prison or a return to Lospass or whatever’s going on with that one, really. For Shinko I’m itching for different team-ups! Throw her at anyone you like and see what happens! FSR-era Tetsu could be cool, or off-the-grid Tetsu, or Tetsu&anyone... as for Edo, I’d be curious to see his pov on anyone and anything! WAS the Flower Sun and Rain the friends we met along the way? And Tokio... oh Tokio. Something about older Tokio and his gaggle of tulpas (Slash and whatshisface from YUKI who looks suspiciously like YAMI Tokio himself?)? Any...thing...about any part of his life from Lifecut onwards? Any portentous encounters?

#here we go again!#letter

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

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Book Review

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: historical fantasy

Part of a Series? Yes, #1 of 2 (so far)

Summary: 1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.

***Full review under the cut.***

Trigger Warnings: violence, blood, racism (including micro-aggressions)

Overview: I honestly picked this book up based on the cover alone, knowing nothing about it when it crossed my path in a used book store. The premise was interesting, so I decided to give it a chance. While the book started out ok, it eventually took me about a month to get through the novel. I’m not sure if it’s because this book just ended up not being for me, or because there were some major inconsistencies with pacing, a lack of suspense or thoughtful character development, etc. All I know is that for me, personally, the book didn’t quite click, though I do commend it for creating a vivid atmosphere and exploring the lives of Japanese immigrants in Victorian London.

Writing: Pulley’s writing had its ups and down for me. On the one hand, I really enjoyed some of the whimsy, as well as descriptions of sounds filtered through Thaniel’s synesthesia (he associates a color with every sound). I also liked how Pulley described the sensations of things (how things sounded or smelled or felt), and there were some nice moments where the prose was almost poetic. On the other, Pulley’s prose noticeably left out things such as what characters were feeling at any given time, so there were long stretches where only actions were described or what things looked like without any emotional impact on the character. There were also times when I wished Pulley have given more background information or explained things more directly so that I could have a better understanding of what was going on or why characters were acting a certain way. Pulley also wrote her character interactions a bit awkwardly. While some of this awkwardness can be put down to the charm of the book as a whole, there were moments when it was distracting. For example, when Thaniel and Grace meet for the first time, it seems like they go from zero to best friends in the span of an evening, to the point where they decide to marry (a strictly business transaction, not romantic) after knowing each other for maybe 48 hours. Grace also validates Mori’s secret using a method I found odd and frankly, not convincing. Moreover, Thaniel is offered a job with some famous musicians seemingly out of nowhere and with very little justification. Even accounting for Mori’s special ability, for me personally, it stretched the bounds of believability more than the futuristic clockworks or fantastical phenomena. Finally, for reader who are wary of racism in their books, this novel does have a few characters who are racist towards Asian immigrants. While there isn’t any extreme, graphic violence, white characters speak of them as simplistic, “dirty,” etc. and frequently use the term “chinaman” or “oriental.” I don’t think the author herself is (actively) prejudiced - I think these things are included in the name of “historical accuracy.” But none of the characters are called out or correct their behaviors, so it was a bit irritating.

Plot: I don’t intend this to be mean, but I can’t remember many events that happened in this book. The overall plot seems to present a lot of things that are good on their own, but somewhat disjointed when strung together to make a narrative. In other words, this book seemed to me to lack overall shape. I understand that the novel is supposed to be a “slow burn” mystery, but I think “slow burn” is best when things are shown to gradually build on one another, and while some parts of this book did that, some didn’t. Not much work work is done at the novel’s outset to make the reader invested in the mysterious appearance of the watch or the fallout after the bomb. While I got the sense that this book was supposed to be finding out who the culprit is (is it Mori? Irish nationalists?), I wish Pulley had done more work at the beginning to create some suspense or a more compelling mystery, because there weren’t really any personal stakes for Thaniel, nor did I care much for the characters at Scotland Yard or about the politics between England and Ireland, or even England and Japan, because they just didn’t have enough of a presence to be felt. Honestly, I don’t even think the focus should have been on the bombing the whole time - I think, given the book’s structure as it is, the focus should have shifted (and to some extend, it does) to the relationship between Mori and Thaniel, perhaps becoming less a story about the bombing itself and more about Thaniel’s growing attachment to his friend and how that creates conflict in his life. I think the book was trying to do that, and the relationship between Thaniel and Mori was well done in that it made me not want Mori to be accused of the bombing, but too often, it seemed like the mystery took a backseat and there wasn’t enough tension in the story to make me feel like Thaniel was being torn between his friend and his job (or his friend and his country). Or being torn as to how to deal with the revelation that Mori has special abilities.

Characters: Pulley’s main characters are themselves very interesting on paper. Thaniel is a telegraphist who wanted to be a musician, but works a job to help support his widowed sister. Grace is a female physicist, headstrong and opinionated, not afraid to bend the rules in order to pursue her desires. You’d think that with such wonderful archetypes, they’d be fun to follow throughout a narrative, but unfortunately for me, it was extremely difficult to become invested in them, since their motives and feelings were so often obscured. I never quite got the sense that I understood why they did certain things or what they were feeling at a given time; all of that had to be largely inferred. I also didn’t get the sense that their goals were major parts of their lives - Grace probably had the most high-stakes goal in that she desperately wanted to continue her research, but it seemed like Thaniel forgot about his sister for large stretches of time and didn’t have much of an attachment to his job or country to warrant it being a huge influence on his life. I also had a hard time connecting to Grace initially because she gives off very strong “I’m not like other girls” vibes. One of the first things we see her do is go to a suffragette meeting, and she’s not shy about expressing her disdain for women who are interested in domestic work or express opinions on appearances, voicing aloud that she’s atypical because she’s educated (”properly” educated, mind you - she also looks down on women who are going to college to study the classics). She started to grow on me over time, but then she treated her maid horribly by pretending to threaten her job, and just like that, I was irritated by her again. I did enjoy her dynamic with the character Matsumoto - that was well done, but again, I found Grace herself hard to like. Mori is probably the character I was most invested in, simply because I didn’t want him to be arrested by the police. His relationship with Thaniel was probably the most well done in the book; I liked that Mori was kind but firm with Thaniel, as well as with everyone else around him, and that he was portrayed as a mechanical genius. In fact, I did appreciate that there were multiple Japanese characters in this book, blowing through the popular claim that there were few people of color in England before a certain date. I also liked how many of these characters varied in personality and avoided the worst Asian stereotypes.

Other Atmosphere: For all the complaining I’ve just done, I do think this novel does a good job of creating a Victorian atmosphere. The sights and sounds of 19th century London are quite vivid and immersed me in the setting quite easily. The clockwork elements were also well-incorporated in that it gave the novel a steampunk feeling without an overabundance of mechs or airships. It was a good balance of history and fantasy, leaning more heavily on the history to keep the fantastical elements rooted in something that felt real.

Continuing on with the series? Probably not.

Recommendations: I would recommend this book if you’re interested in clockworks, steampunk, Victorian England, and Japanese culture.

#book reviews

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