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discountenancer · 1 year

Text

Here’s why Jasnah and Hoid is a great ship:

It’s not a ship.

It’s a stopgap.

I think Jasnah and Hoid do, on a personal level, enjoy each other. I do not think Brandon is writing them to last, and that’s intentional.

Jasnah finds Hoid to be an intellectual equal—“after all this time” implying she has never encountered someone who could be on her level before. She finds him “fascinating”. She needs his knowledge to save her planet and people. She doesn’t trust him. The text says this directly.

Additionally, they’ve been ‘together’ for what can’t be more than a few months. I don’t remember how long between Oathbringer and ROW, but it’s not long. People don’t fall in love that fast, and both Jasnah and Wit are too smart and risk-averse to let themselves do such a thing. They are not in love. They are doing a very strange form of dating, on top of which they are facing down Odium. No walks in the menagerie for them, just a constant barrage of stressors on all sides. They are under a great level of stress and not doing anything remotely close to courting or dating, physical affection from Hoid aside. Jasnah doesn’t even call him Hoid, so it’s unclear if he’s divulged that name to her despite telling Dalinar and Kaladin, who forgot or refuse to use it. The text is clear that he has told her some things about himself, like not being Alethi, using some power of physical transformation, and being immortal, but she’s stymied on anything else. I don’t think she’s the sort of woman who would insist on calling him Wit in private if she knew a more personal name, but I could be wrong.

So: Jasnah needs Hoid as an ally, needs his vast knowledge of all things Odium/Rayse, and perhaps fancies him as a future partner (“curious how the relationship would develop”). She doesn’t seem to be betting on Hoid 4 Life, but is enjoying the comfort it provides in the moment.

What does Hoid get from this?

First, he gets his dick wet. Jasnah’s canonically very beautiful. The benefit there is obvious.

Secondly, he gets to influence her decisions. He is shifting the boulder to roll in the direction he wants. Hoid is after something, and we don’t know what it is. I do genuinely believe he wants Odium contained—having a God roaming around the universe who wants Hoid specifically to die would doubtlessly be a big ol’ wrench in whatever his plans are. Hoid can do his work much more effectively at Jasnah’s side than on his own. He gets into the Big Important Meetings and knows all of the Plans being made. He gets to cast his vote. Jasnah takes his opinions into consideration.

They are both deriving an immense benefit from their relationship. Don’t let the sex fool you into thinking it makes what they have deeper than it is—as an ace person, I believe Jasnah sees sex as a necessary compromise in maintaining the relationship (“she could provide the intimacy he desired….this was not a new experience for her”). This is unsurprising. Sex is a small price to pay for, uh, saving the planet from an enemy you only recently learned exists and also happens to be the god of hate incarnate.

Brandon has said of the pairing "Wow, that's a really great and a really terrible match all at the same time, and that's what I'm looking for, in a lot of ways.”

Great match for intellectual brains and snark. Terrible match because something is being set up under the pretense of what we are assuming is a sloppy last-minute ship randomly set up in the second half of ROW.

There’s a WOB about how Jasnah and Hoid perceive power—I cannot find it, so here’s the paraphrase I’m drawing on:

“we should be concerned about how both Hoid and Jasnah view power and that’s what drew them together”.

Jasnah and Hoid are creatures of philosophy. Jasnah values the masses over the individual and Hoid values the individual over the masses (“[he] is legitimately empathetic to the individual”; telling Dalinar he would watch Roshar burn to get what he wants while devoting time and risk to helping various characters through rough spots). This is where their attraction to power and how they subsequently use it will put them at odds. They do not have the same goal, though they don’t know it—or perhaps Hoid does already, but is playing the game. Jasnah wants to save Roshar. Hoid wants to save Roshar, but more importantly, as he’s said, he wants to save his own interests.

Jasnah is brilliant, but I do think Hoid is conniving enough to manipulate her. “Yes, he did seem genuinely fond of her. He said it had taken him by surprise as much as it had her” (ROW 99)—this does not mean romantic relationship. It could. It could also mean a general fondness, like a dear friend. We have not seen Hoid or Jasnah exactly palling around with anybody on their own. We don’t know if they’re awash in good judies. They are two very smart people burdened with difficult tasks. Jasnah didn’t like Wit when we first saw them interact. Now they get along and playfully banter. That’s some unexpected fondness for sure. Trauma bonding, baby! It’s a hell of a drug!

Jasnah and Hoid are not fated to be together. They’re not supposed to be convincingly in love, because they aren’t. They are together purely by circumstance and their time is largely consumed with trying to stop Odium or Jasnah picking Hoid’s brain for her scholarly pursuits. Their relationship is, for now, enabling them to tackle the task in front of them. They are together for now, to save Roshar for now. After the battle of champions in SA5, it’s anyone’s guess—mine is that Jasnah will use what she’s learned against him somehow, and he will oppose her directly in pursuit of his own unnamed goal.

There will come a day where they realize the next obstacle they face is each other. They are locked in an embrace with knives in their hands.

TL;DR: Jasnah and Hoid are not in love and it’s okay if you don’t think they’re a good match, because they aren’t, and Brandon has said as much. Their relationship is setting up a mighty, mighty plot point in the back half of Stormlight.

#stormlight archive #cosmere #jasnah kholin #Hoid #jaswit #hoidnah #LISTEN LINDA LISTEN!!!!!!!!!!

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razberryyum · 5 years

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The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 4 (spoilers for everything)

(covers mainly MDZS chaps 13 and 14)

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰

(a 🐰 is earned every time there is a WangXian scene or even when they’re just thinking of each other…more than one 🐰 can be given based on the level of WangXian-ness in a scene)

I loved and enjoyed all of Wei Ying’s “Notice me Wangji-senpai" moments in this episode, but my favorite has to be the one above: the way he tried to play off Lan Zhan totally ignoring him by blaming the other man’s hearing makes me laugh out loud every time I watch this episode. It’s just too adorable. Even though Lan Zhan is clearly still annoyed with him, I like how it’s also obvious that Wei Ying is slowly but surely burrowing his way into his psyche and taking hold there by either not leaving him alone or just being himself which is ample to constantly draw Lan Zhan’s attention to him. It‘s as if Lan Zhan’s life was a calm pond and Wei Ying was a beautiful, lively carp that suddenly decided to just jump into his waters without permission, taking liberties by swimming and splashing around, basically causing ruckus in every corner of his pool. Naturally, Wei Ying’s actions perturbs Lan Zhan to no end at first, but at the same time, he is also leaving an undeniable impression, so that eventually, when this carp leaves Lan Zhan’s pond, he can’t help but constantly think of Wei Ying and even miss his disruptive presence, thus naturally paving the way for the escalation of his affections that follow later on.

Whereas with Wei Ying, I think he simply enjoyed irritating this fuddy-duddy at first, but eventually, his light-hearted teasing probably became just a little more meaningful and he started looking forward to getting a reaction out of Lan Zhan because it provided him with genuine joy and satisfaction, until those feelings grew into just joy from being around the other man and interacting with him.

Ultimately that’s a big reason why I love their relationship: the development and progression of their feelings for each other makes a lot of sense to me. The phrase “opposites attract” has never been more applicable in terms of Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, but at the same time, they still share enough things in common—such as their moral code and belief system—that makes them absolutely just perfect for each other. I can imagine a future for them right from the start, whereas with other couples in stories, regardless of their sex, I’ve had difficulty believing they should be together other than because the plot requires them to be. I think the drama really succeeded in showing us why it’s completely logical that these two people would be drawn to each other, that they almost can’t help but be drawn together, by actually showing us all these little precious moments between them as they occurred, which the novel for the most part only described in an after-the-fact manner. While subtlety has its merits too, I do appreciate the more clearly illustrated path The Untamed decided to take for WangXian.

Along those lines, I also appreciated how CQL chose to show us the first time Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao met and their instant connection. Honestly, when I first saw this moment…

I immediately thought they were going to be a couple too, like Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, and I was totally on board, until I found out from reading comments here and there that I shouldn’t be because this ship was bad news. I was disappointed of course and even tried to withstand its alluring call for a while, especially after reading the book and finding out exactly why this wasn’t a ship I wanted to board since it was on a one-way ticket to hell and heartbreak basically. But the drama just made it so damn hard to resist, and before I knew it, I was lowkey hooked. Much like with WangXian, I was surprised at how much the show was getting away with in terms of XiYao:

I mean, big bro Xichen totally stroked Meng Yao’s finger there, right? First time I saw that, I remember rewinding a few times just to check and and make sure and if it’s just an optical illusion, that’s a damn convincing trick. Amusingly enough I thought at first Wei Ying was seeing the same thing and was reacting in disbelief to that moment, until I realized from his angle, there’s no way he could have seen that small gesture and he was just responding to that (ugly) incense pot.

After finishing the series, I have to admit I’m pretty much a full-on XiYao-shipper now, which is really out of character for me because I usually prefer ships with happy endings. I have to blame, or rather, give credit to the two actors portraying LXC and JGY (Liu Haikuan and Zhu Zanjin, respectively) for conjuring up these feelings in me because they had so much chemistry together, which honestly at times rivaled that of Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo’s chemistry. I just love how LXC’s expression softens every time he interacts with JGY and even from their first meeting, it’s obvious there were genuine feelings of respect and gratitude behind Meng Yao’s reaction to LXC.

Take the moment above as an example: the extreme admiration emanating from JGY after seeing LXC exhibit his fluting powers had to be for real since there was no reason to react just for Nie Huaisang’s sake. I can totally imagine hearts fluttering all around him as he looked upon XiChen with those wide, innocent-seeming puppy eyes of his. And when he bade his farewell to big bro later on in the episode, I loved how the camera lingered on LXC’s hands as Meng Yao moved away after saluting him, just to reiterate the intimacy of their brief physical contact.

I also appreciated the small, seemingly trivial moments before and after he meets up with LXC in that scene, where Meng Yao is first ignored by the two male sect disciples walking by him and then later on by two female disciples. Contrast that with how LXC immediately praises Meng Yao and recognizes him as his peer from the get go, going so far as to refer to himself by his own name (“Xichen”) just to reinforce their equality, it’s no wonder JGY was instantly drawn to him. I would go so far as to say he probably fell for LXC right from the start; doesn’t even matter if it might be only in the platonic sense, man was smitten no matter how anyone chooses to categorize his feelings.

XianQing? No thank you

When I first watched this episode, I still had the stormy cloud of fear that Wen Qing would eventually be the love interest that comes in between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji hanging over me due to some rumors I came across prior to even watching the show. As a result, every time Wen Qing and WWX would have a scene together, I would view it with trepidation as I was certain it was yet another building block to something undesirable, with the ultimate goal of mutating the relationship at the core of MDZS. If I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I was even able to rest easy until after Wen Qing’s passing and knowing for certain that the “danger period” was finally over, even though I had already grown to like her character. I still have complaints about how they altered her personality for the live action, but at least now, when I watch the scenes she shares with Wei Ying, instead of being filled with anxiety, I am actually more fascinated. I can still see the ghost of what Team CQL had initially intended with Wen Qing and WWX in a lot of their scenes together, before the fans’ uproar thankfully forced the producers to change their minds and stick with the source material. This scene wasn’t one of those moments, but with revisiting each episode, I actually look forward to picking out which scenes were feeding into their ship because of the way they were shot and how the two actors were directed to perform during the scene, especially Meng Ziyi. I’m glad I can actually sit back and have fun with all of this now.

XianNing? I can’t

I can see why some folks support this ship, and upon first viewing I thought this was a cute moment as well, but of course, I simply can’t go there since my heart already belongs to WangXian. And now, after having read the novel, all I could think about is how much I wish we got the archery contest at the Cultivation Conference. I’m glad we got to see it depicted in the donghua; it was as amazing as I hope it would be, but it’s a shame we didn’t get to see it in the drama. Since the producers had mentioned releasing specials of extra scenes that they couldn’t fit into the flow of the show, I hope the archery contest will be one of them. I don’t know where it would fit in in the timeline though…I guess it could happen while they were all held hostage at Nightless City, so the reason for the archery contest will have to be changed, but then maybe that’s the impetus for Wen Chao’s decision to force everyone on that dangerous quest to the Xuanwu cave: he’s so pissed off at losing at archery on his own turf that he decides to try to get all the sect kids killed. Either way, I hope we get to see the contest in live action form one day.

Wei Wuxian is so smart

I loved this scene. I love how WWX schooled everyone with his inventive fourth reason. He’s so awesome. That’s really all I wanted to say about it.

Random Bits of Randomness

I don’t think there’s anything wrong the color function on my tv, so please explain to me how that can be considered “purple” in any universe??

All I could think about in this scene is how disgusting that fish must have tasted cuz it looked awful, and I think Xiao Zhan even mentioned in an interview that it was gross. What probably made it taste worse was the fact that he kept on eating it from the stomach side, which can be really bitter. I think Wang Zhuocheng (Jiang Cheng) was eating it from the same side as well and I just can’t help grimacing every time I see this moment.

Odds and Ends:

I don’t really have any questions from this episode, but I did wonder if Wen Qing ever actually attended classes while she was at Cloud Recesses or did she just spend all of the time wandering the back hills, throwing her needles at barriers, cuz that’s not suspicious AT ALL. Unless I just happened to have missed her every single time in class, even though you would think it’s easy to spot her red in a sea of white…if that’s the case then I probably need to get my eyes checked.

Also, I wish we got to see Shijie draw her sword. She carried it around in the beginning, but I’m kinda bummed that we never saw her actually use it. I’m sure she is completely capable and would’ve looked just as badass as the boys.

And bless Uncle Lan for his brilliant idea of making Lan Zhan enforce the disciplinary action on Wei Ying, thereby allowing the boys to have valuable alone time in the library pavilion to further nurture their bond. In retrospect he probably regrets that decision, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s one of his best one he’s ever made.

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winterywitch · 7 years

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anyway heres a summary of my discourse beliefves:

cishet aces/aros do not belong in gay spaces, bi spaces, lesbian spaces or trans spaces

for me my whole life the LGBT community has been more than that. my perspective is not that of some sad brainwashed child, forced into being more ~tolerant~ than i should be. i genuinely believe and have always believed the LGBT community is more than that, and im not just gonna drop that anytime soon, because i dont think the right to only consider the LGBT community as for “SGA and trans” people is liberation.

therefore cishet aces/aros belong in ace/aro spaces, which for me, count as LGBT.

but not gay, bi, lesbian or trans spaces.

there will be overlap because they are LGBT. but no, cishet aces/aros should have no claim to anything specifically for the L, G, B or T of the community.

for me the community is

Lesbians

Gay men

Bisexuals [SGA or not - as an SGA bi person, i get to speak on this.

Pansexuals

Trans people

Nonbinary people [counting agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, etc. non-cis, non-binary identities]

Intersex people (of course should they want to - the point of this list isn't YOU HAVE TO BE LGBT it's You Can Be Included)

Queer people [anyone who isn't cis or isn't het, including aroace people. non sga bi people im a little iffy on re: them 'reclaiming' queer]

Allies [i think this is important for people in the closet, as long as we dont let cishets get too big for their britches]

Aroaces

and hell, here’s a + to include anything i might have forgotten

aroaces are not functionally cishet.

straight privilege is straight privilege. it isnt not-homophobia privilege. to experience straight privilege you must be straight.

they definitely benefit from not experiencing homophobia. they can be absolute dumbasses abt homophobia for that exact reason.

but they dont experience straight privilege, because they’re not straight. that is all straight privilege has ever meant for me in my LGBT community.

cishet aces are cishet, and also aces. this means they benefit from cis privilege and straight privilege, but aphobia weighs down that straight privilege because they dont perform straightness in the Right way. i dont believe this necessarily makes them systemically oppressed the same way we are. but i dont believe aro or ace identities are privileged either.

there is no coherent Ace Community boogieman that is unanimously a bunch of homophobic, transphobic, racist jackasses, and if you believe that, you are a complete dumbass

yeah, the ace community is comprised of white cishets but, im gonna wager even more commonly, its comprised of literally every LGBT identity and race you can imagine. the ace community is not the white cishet community. it’s the community of everyone who IDs as ace or aro. this is not white cishets as a rule, as a majority, or even half the time.

that being said, inclusionists can say some stupid, shortsighted shit sometimes that is completely ignorant of LGBT history/oppression. i dont agree with the implications that i dont stand for every single thing they say and will not be held accountable for every single thing they say.

similarly, unless you wanna be held accountable for every single thing your side says/does before being allowed to call us out, uh, dont expect the same of us. the onus for this is on exclusionists, i have been around long enough to know you guys started this one. it is up to you guys to start being decent on that one, and then we’ll follow suit. those of us who dont are jackasses.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their abuse or rape took place. that is called gaslighting, and no, you don’t get to throw a fit when someone calls this what it is. when you call a rape/abuse survivor an annoying disgusting freak for daring to talk about why their rape/abuse happened (since they factually know why it happened and you dont) and then proceed to insist that your headcanon of their trauma is the correct interpretation and theirs is not because theyre a filthy cishet ace (which they rarely are), that is quite literally the definition of gaslighting. and hey, don’t do it.

you are never at liberty EVER to explain to an ace person why their parents forced them into Therapy Specifically Designed To Convert Them Away From Asexuality (which may have a more efficient, shorter name). you dont know how that therapy worked or how the therapist worked because you werent there. you dont know that it was only because of homophobia so therefore this person has no right to claim their own trauma.

not everyone you hate is a cishet ace. don’t call people cishet aces unless you know for a fact they are cishet aces. i imagine you wouldnt want to call a trans lesbian a cishet, which exclusionists have done too many times for me to count. your platform should not be “you said something stupid and harmful, youre a cishet ace,” it should be “you said something stupid and harmful, end of statement.”

for some reason this is a controversial point in some discourse circles, but no one owes you sex. your partners don’t owe you sex. relationships do not equal sex. relationships do not even equal romantic love. relationships are a decision between multiple people on closer emotional intimacy.

if romantic and sexual aspects of a relationship are necessary for you, that’s understandable and okay! but you aren’t OWED that. people don’t need to out themselves as aro or ace for you. people dont need to feel pressured to give you anything they dont want to give. and you dont need to stay in relationships that dont make you happy.

allosexual privilege is not real. no one but white cishet men are 100% celebrated and privileged for experiencing sexual attraction. even white cishet women are oppressed for their attraction in many ways, and repressed from early childhood - so you can imagine how absolutely horrific sex-based oppression is for the LGBT community. we are not celebrated for sexual attraction, we are treated like we are dirty, and we are sexual predators.

WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, yeah, sometimes we are definitely, blatantly favored over aces, and people run around saying asexuality is unnatural, and sexual attraction is what makes us human. this is harmful and damaging, and it shouldn’t happen. i dont consider it systemic oppression and it definitely does not make allosexual privilege a thing.

calling people allosexuals is not something i condone. its not comparable to “cis” as a label, because cis people are an actual oppressor class towards trans people - non-ace LGBP folks are not towards ace people.

intracommunity bigotry is real and it is traumatic. people devalue it constantly and pretend it’s just a slap on the wrist, but it is an absolutely traumatic thing to have to face every day of your life. but it isnt the same as OPPRESSION, and we dont have to conflate the two concepts for intracommunity bigotry to be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

similarly, dont call people REGs unless they are not only aphobes but also truscum or TERFs. i also personally dont really believe in equating aphobes with truscum/TERFs but i dont believe in silencing trans people who openly talk about the similarities, either.

dont call people AERFs unless youre a trans woman holy shit

as someone who was directly affected by the truscum discourse when it happened [not debatable, by the way], this is pretty much recycled truscum discourse in my eyes. you dont need to lecture me on how its not.

just because someone on the “other side” called something you did ableist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc., does not mean you get to shut your eyes and plug your ears. ESPECIALLY if you are part of a privileged class relevant to that accusation. for example as a white exclusionist you dont get to ignore the concerns of inclusionists of color or lecture them on the racism of the ace community. for example as a cis inclusionist [or honestly, even just a non-trans-woman inclusionist] you dont get to ignore the concerns of trans exclusionist women or lecture them on the similarities between TERFs and exclusionists.

“aspec” is not exclusively for the autistic community and i have NEVER seen claims that it was until ace discourse started. thats transparent as fuck to me and youre not fooling anyone. dont just make shit up lmfao

jokes about how Oh Lol Cringe aces inherently are, arent funny especially considering how many of these Jokes are steeped in anti-autistic ableism

idk when this happened but recently ableist jokes are the new Hot Topic of Comedy and thats like, mind-numbingly bad

i dont care what side youre on, IF YOU ARE USING THINGS LIKE FICTIONAL CP/PEDOPHILIC SHIPS/INCEST/RAPE CONTENT TO COPE WITH YOUR TRAUMA, YOU BETTER BE DOING THAT SHIT IN PRIVATE, ONLY SHARING IT WITH LIKE-MINDED, ADULT SURVIVORS, AND NEVER LETTING THAT CONTENT CIRCULATE OUTSIDE OF THAT GROUP. end of story. no ifs, ands or buts about it. speaking as a survivor who uses stuff like this to cope, being a survivor does not give you a free pass to, inadvertently or not, contribute to the pedophilia and circulation of grooming material on the internet. it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a survivor to not continue that cycle. if you avoid that responsibility, you have no right to play victim or pull the “im a survivor ;-;” card when people call you out on this.

educating kids on asexuality is not pedophilia, grooming or sexual abuse. jesus christ lmfao you dont have to assume people word it in a way thats inappropriate or predatory just because theyre pro-ace. kids NEED label/identity options, they are discovering who they are and without a label that fits for them, theyll likely feel like shit. let them have their labels. knowing about asexuality might greatly improve their life if it fits them!

for this reason, stop being weird about mogai labels/trying to “ban” them from everyone’s vocabulary/trying to turn them into some Cringe Joke that is only about Cishets Trying To Be Special. they didn’t fuck over EVERYONE.

inclusionists, in advising kids and questioning people who ask you for answers, be more open-ended. the insistence of “oh youre not a lesbian you’re a quioromantic demi-homosexual!” without also making it ok to just be a lesbian is what hurt and confused so many people on their journey to discovering their identity and its why they resent the whole mogai thing, fairly so. make it okay to just be a lesbian, or just be gay, or just be bi, or just be trans, while letting people know their other, more specific options.

asexuality is not an NSFW or TMI orientation

ace headcanons arent INHERENTLY homophobic, racist or ableist. they absolutely can be and ive seen that shit with my Own Two Eyes [pure innocent baby ace autistic papyrus headcanons back in the undertale fandom (shudders)], but they are not INHERENTLY so.

headcanons for characters with marginalized identity labels that arent identical to the ones you headcanon that character with are not oppression. and you dont get to police this shit as if its factually wrong

absolutely zero sexual interactions with minors ever, thanks!

trying to Bother The Pure Aceys by talking about sex is unacceptable

posting bullshit in ace positivity tags is unacceptable

stop calling people doing nothing but talking about their experiences “freaks”???

dont engage in the whole Oh There Are Valid Identities And There Are Special Snowflake Identities thing its not a very good look

biphobia is its own thing independent of homophobia

biphobia perpetuated within the community isnt necessarily systemic oppression but its traumatic and wrong and shouldnt be treated like some Lol Cringe Joke

you cant just say UM THAT LITERALLY NEVER HAPPENS???? when someone calls your side out on shit lgfkhghgfh especially when it literally does, all the damn time

ace [IRL person, whether or a celebrity or god forbid a flat out bigot] moodboards arent funny

you shouldnt agree to sex that you as an ace person dont want in a situation that you can control if the sex happens or not, but the pressure to provide sex to a non-ace partner is very real. stop blaming ace ppl for that pressure lol speaking as a victim of coercive sexual abuse, you cannot blame the one who didnt want it, even if they COULD have spoken up.

you’re not a bad person for wanting sex if your ace partner doesn’t. there is nothing immoral about not being ace. you just dont get to have sex anyway and you arent owed it if you are set on this committed, monogamous relationship - if sex is a big deal to you, you need to leave that relationship or work out an open situation.

laughing off peoples’ experiences as The Discourse is completely unacceptable, it encourages people to shut up and never analyze themselves and their identities

its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the ace character is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their non-ace partner

similarly its not cute in your ace ship headcanons if the non-ace partner is an asshole that rolls their eyes @ or judges their ace partner

you dont get to tell people “ok you identify as heteroflexible but ACTUALLY you’re [insert identity]” literally ever, i understand the concern with people using “safe” identity labels to avoid facing their LGBT identities but acting on that concern in that way is not concern, its concern-trolling and its not fuckin okay.

legitimizing your own identity by delegitimizing the identities of others is bad

DO NOT, AND I REPEAT, DO NOT, BLANKET-TERM PEOPLE AS QUEER, LITERALLY EVER. DONT DO IT

DONT FUCKIN DO IT!!!!! NOT EVERYONE HAS RECLAIMED THAT SLUR, AND IT IS 100% A SLUR ON TOP OF BEING A CULTURE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY

JESUSS CHRIST DONT FUCKIGN DO IT!!!! WHEN YOU REFERENCE THE QUEER COMMUNITY YOU BETTER ONLY MEAN PPL WHO CALL THEMSELVES QUEER AND HAVE RECLAIMED IT/ARE PART OF THAT SUBCULTURE

we need more nonsexual, non-alcoholic spaces for LGBT folk that are safe for minors, trauma survivors and ace people, but thats not our fault, the prevalence of sexual and alcoholic spaces exists because we were literally not allowed to exist anywhere else until very, VERY recently, and even now it’s a Barely thing

you cant tell someone their experiences didnt happen like my god

we think ace discourse is about more than cishets because exclusionists make it about asexuality as a whole. you guys cant make it about more than cishets and then be like But Ok It’s Just About Cishets You IRrational Crazies?? :/

yes self harm through exposing oneself to the discourse tag is possible, no it’s not funny, no it’s not just ~cishets~doing that, triggers are not exclusive to PTSD survivors, shut the actual fuck up

you dont have any room to comment on the validity of quasiplatonic relationships if you’re not in one, most of the time you guys complaining about them and saying theyre Special Snowflake Things dont actually know what they are. mind your own business lol let people live

if youre not intersex, you dont get to tell people that the intersex community doesnt wanna consider itself LGBT, so they are wrong for saying intersex people are allowed to consider themselves LGBT. youre not being a good ally. sit down, shut up and let intersex people talk amongst themselves.

[to be added to at some point im sure]

asexuals STOLE dragons from CHILDREN to make themselves seem PURE AND INNOCENT, the MONSTERS

#discourse tag

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sixmorningsafter · 7 years

Text

Chapter 14 Review - Intimacy and evasiveness in equal measure

Thank you so so much for this chapter; you are freaking awesome. At this point, your fic is longer than most PhD thesis. You’re completely bonkers, in the absolute best way. Please never change. Seriously, the level of interactivity in this fic is such fun and thank you for encouraging that. Some of the recent fancasts have been beyond amazing.

Gabi: “the level of interactivity in this fic is such fun” - you mean how I take fifty fucking years to respond to reviews that legitimately make my life!?!?!?!?! THAT LEVEL OF INTERACTIVITY!?!?! LMAO, gurl, can I just say before I dive into any of this that this review literally made me go back and edit some parts, that’s how helpful it was, and yet here I am, answering it an entire CHAPTER LATER!? For some reason the feedback for fourteen was really slow at first and then all of a sudden like 10 giant reviews came in at the same time, and I just took way too long to get around to all of them and kept answering the short ones first (because they take less thought/time), and then once I was done answering the short ones I was drained because I’m weak and wouldn’t survive the winter. BUT HERE I AM. Ten years later. Ready to friggin go. LET’S DO IT.

Firstly, I can’t believe you stopped before the Steroline sex! Rude. I would have been devastated (melodramatic OTT much) had you not given us one of the best SC kisses ever. Honestly, I think I might have sighed a little out loud. And after Stefan’s stupid assed, jealousy mental meltdown, Caroline demonstrates exactly why he has no need to be jealous in one sentence - “Damon could do all those things without it once being intimate.” It’s really obvious that ‘intimate’ is a mental thing for Caroline, I loved watching the switch click in Caroline’s mind from non intimate to intimate. Oh Caroline - you poor silly girl, you’ve got it bad!

Gabi: So, the plus side of answering this once 15 is already up is that I don’t have to feel bad about blue ballsing anyone anymore, muahahaha. Steroline sex is officially up and out there and there’s no taking it back now. Re: 14, though, love alllll of these insights and the particular moments of theirs that you choose to compare and contrast. They’re both stupid levels of in denial here, but the good news is the end of 15 and hopefully the majority of 16 is a bit of a new era for them - one where they actually try, I don’t know, communicating? It’s going to be wild.

The part where they are watching YouTube videos together and eating Caroline’s secret food stash (naughty Caroline keeping treats from the other inmates of 2B - tsk, tsk) was very sweet and surprisingly intimate in it’s own right. I love how they have elements of easy friendship that they don’t even seem to recognise. I’m very interested in how their sexy timez are going to go because they could be hot, sweet or kind of silly/jokey or maybe all three. I think it’s going to get intimate whether Caroline likes it or not; Stefan may even bust out some of his Disney Prince romance vibes. I’m so intrigued as to who their third wheel could be.

Gabi: I really enjoyed writing that scene for exactly that reason - that somehow, these two super awkward people with a bunch of confusion and tension between them keep finding themselves in random moments of easygoing camaraderie, and all it really takes for that to happen is time and/or a distraction. I’m trying to hint at a possible future for them that doesn’t have all of this drama, that’s actually driven by a genuine enjoyment of spending time together and light-hearted banter and a warm hum of affection, but their poor coping/communication skills from their past experiences are just getting in that way of it. And hahaha, re: sexy timez, now you know! Disney Prince romance vibes definitely happened and Caroline, well... had some conflicts with it. As for the silly/jokey thing, I wouldn’t rule that out just yet for future scenes.

I know you are trying to achieve balance between your characters. At this point, I feel I know a lot about Stefan, Bonnie and Caroline, but with Damon, he’s still a mystery.

I both love and hate that we don’t know more.

Love - because I know you are being all clever and writery and keeping it from us on purpose. That having us see Damon through the other characters’ eyes is a clever way of 'revealing’ titbits without revealing them. Even Damon’s internal monologue is super evasive and kind of shallow (compared to Bonnie’s about him which was downright hilarious and completely nuts especially the hitman, Bonnie the world’s most boring mark lmao).

Hate - because I am such an impatient spoiler seeking nut bag, I need to know everything! Look honestly though, if you had told me before this started that I would actually be interested in Damon as a character himself, not as Bonnie’s boyfriend or Stefan’s brother, I would have scoffed at you. See Gabi, this is the power you wield. Use it wisely! Mwah ha ha.

Gabi: SOOO it was definitely still in the typical evasive flashes-of-insight format that Damon’s PoV tends to operate in, but I think 15 hopefully gave you a little more of what you were looking for regarding him? His guard was forcibly down for a bit, and his head went more into his complicated relationship with his mom, and part of the reason why I didn’t tie his panic attack fully up in 15 was because I’m carrying that arc into 16. There’s definitely aftermath, there’s definitely Bonnie the Hufflepuff making him feel unsettling things and think more about his life, and there’s also some Kai/Damon stuff that’ll have echoes of Damon/Tyler. So much more Damon ahead! And GURL, you don’t even know how happy it makes me to hear that re: ‘if you had told me before this started that I would actually be interested in Damon as a character’. That’s like the biggest compliment to me for some reason, like it gets me so hyped, so thanks so, so much for telling me! It’s tough to get people to like characters even when they’re blank slates, so getting someone to actually come around to someone they weren’t about before is like YAAAAAAS.

In all seriousness, Damon didn’t deserve the kicking he got from Stefan in the opening scene. Sorry Stef, that was uncalled for even if Damon did start it. While this scene was all about Stefan’s pov and his reactions, Damon’s evasiveness is totally in character. Even though he’s oh-so-not-bothered, Stefan’s assessment of him has to smart a bit. I hope these two crazy kids work it out. I need my drigh!brotp back together. (Quick aside about Stefan – I hope at some point, he’s going to fess up that it wasn’t about Damon, Bonnie, Caroline or even Elena. It was about his own feelings of insecurity. It’s like Bonnie’s rampage of self-destruction as the person most hurt by this is himself. It’s actually very canon Stefan.)

Gabi: He definitely didn’t deserve it, and I wanted to write it that way because I wanted to show that Stefan, like everyone else in this godforsaken headache of a story, is a flawed character who gives into emotional reactions and insecurity sometimes and acts out. Like I really wanted to make it clear that Stefan was in the wrong there, and I really wanted to do it at Damon’s expense because at the shallowest of glances, Damon would be the guy you’d assume can be asshole sometimes and Stefan would be the guy you’d label as the patient, understanding saint, and 14 chapters in, I really wanted to flip that. As harmlessly trolly as Damon can be to Stefan about Caroline, turns out that Stefan is the one who drew first blood between them, you know? And I think you’re totally right about the oh-so-bothered-but-not-really thing re: Damon - he’s been called terrible things his whole life, so he’s learned how to let them slide off him like butter, but even butter leaves a trail, you know? They definitely add up to a perception he has of himself that’s probably darker/less flattering than it needs to be, and Bonnie absolutely confronts that in 16. She’s kind of like, ‘hey, newsflash dark and twisty, you’re a good guy’. She has a little speech I’ve written out that I really like. Lots of feelsiness coming in 16, man. Including Stefan insights and realizations about insecurity!

I’m still super interested by Damon’s two identities. Are the two different dates of birth significant? Him not mentioning anything after Bonnie fessing up to poking in his wallet - evasive much? So he doesn’t take his Fell ID out normally? I need more details, here, stop trying to kill me.

Gabi: lololol, got a little more of this in 15! I’m not sure how much was obvious from the story because Damon’s thoughts about his past always come out super jagged when I write them (and obviously I know the whole thing ‘cause I’m making it up, lmao), but I think I gave enough to kind of explain why he had that ID on him? Maybe?

Bonnie telling him all about her sex dreams had him speechless and I loved that. Yes, he was very much – that’s ok Bon, sexy daydreams are fine, but I still think there was an element of him being chuffed about it. That was really cute; I liked that his reaction wasn’t to grab her and lay one on her - she did that instead (oh Bon, you saucy minx). I loved their kiss, so hot; I really like their connection, it has a more brutal honesty to it than Steroline’s. By that I mean that Caroline lets Stefan get away with more introspection because that’s what suits her, whereas Damon pushes Bonnie to lay out her soul for him because he really wants someone to do it back to him, deep down. I may be over analysing this and be completely wrong.

Gabi: LMAOOO, ‘you saucy minx’ - she really is. And Damon is all about it. And no, you’re 100% spot on in your analysis of the two ships, assss usual - I think that’s a brilliant way to put it. Damon doesn’t wonder as much about Bonnie because he pushes, in more ways than one, till she gives him answers. He’s confrontational. Blunt. And Bonnie needs that, because her insecurities and problems are so deeply, deeply entrenched into her that they’re basically covered in layers of cement. You can’t slowly uncover that, you need a jack hammer (vs. for Caroline and Stefan, the wounds are still a little too fresh and shallow for a jackhammer to do anything except make it worse. They need the gentle discovery). Damon’s a bit of a paradox in that he’s either 100% blithe and flippant and dgaf, or he’s 100% blunt and real talk, and generally he uses the first mode to evade and the second mode to investigate. Problem is, Bonnie’s a bit of a jackhammer herself, and I think 15 was the beginning of the tide shifting to Damon being the one under the spotlight. And we’ll see how he likes that moving forward. Payback’s a bitch.

Did I detect that Damon might have a slight bird phobia? A dove in your shower is never good, but he seemed more than a little nervous. Also how is his hand doing? Dr Bon needs to follow up her patients better. I am kind of surprised how prompt he was for Kai’s dinner. Does Damon have immaculate time keeping? Or he is genuinely terrified of Kai? I guess I’m kind of struggling to find Kai scary, a bit loopy, somewhat odd, but I was really surprised that Damon would be scared of him (I have blanked out the crossbow in his face episode). We know he can handle himself in a fight (thank you for that Caroline) and he’s survived that gunshot as a child. Damon strikes me as being hard as nails (except around Bon) - Kai should be a cakewalk. Does he recognise something in Kai that he might have experienced in his past? Chapter 15 should be illuminating - I really hope we get plenty from his pov. I can’t wait.

Gabi: You did and it was totally unintentional. I actually went back and read over the way I’d written it after this feedback and totally got the same vibe (it was meant to be humorous but definitely came across as a little deeper than that), so thanks so much for pointing this out! I did a few little edits that I think put forth a more accurate picture of both the bird reaction (annoyance, bafflement, Damon in general being a growly diva) and his immaculate time-keeping (which was definitely supposed to be the focus more so than any actual fear of Kai, which, lmao, I think 15 makes pretty clear doesn’t exist). I think I could maybe argue that getting attacked by a dove in the shower could carry a bit of trauma from his basement-with-rats days, but even so, he’d hide that, so. Edited and more accurate thanks to bomb feedback!

ANYWAY, THIS IS ONCE AGAIN 600 YEARS LATE but oddly, it was kind of fun answering it with 15 already written? In any case, I’m so friggin’ sorry it took me this long to respond, and your feedback, as always, is one of my fave things about writing this fic because it’s always so hilarious and insightful. Thanks so, so much for this review, and hopefully 15 delivered the things you were after and 16 will deliver them even more. LOVE YA, BABE!

#reply #six mornings after #review #14 #lmao first I wrote '16'#and then I wrote '15'#and then I was like WAIT NO '14'#yikes #submission #anyway this was rad and still makes my day so #thanks so much babe #janet's the best

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