#so a couple of months ago one of my friends made a racist joke in the groupchat not outright malicious but more like mocking the whole blm
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Anyway to sum up the information I just put out (+more) about ukrainia/nbimbo:
A few months ago they made a joke saying people shouldn't body shame Ghislaine Maxwell because she is a "grieving Jewish woman"
I said I didn't want to see them on my dash because of that antisemitic joke and because they reblogged from antisemites and fascists.
Today, Agent @feeblehomo reblogged my screenshot of that post.
Someone who disagreed with my post called me a homophobe and told UK that homophobes were calling them a fascist
UK is like huh why? That's weird.
Their friend is like "idk maybe it's because you're mutuals with freesmegmafactory lol anyway sapropel sucks"
UK is like ugh they blocked me so I can't even address the callout
I scroll through UK's blog back a week to collect screenshots. In these screenshots, UK reblogged from an open terf and multiple antisemites.
One of these antisemites, freesmeg/mafactory has posts about Jews that are like "my mouth waters when I see ethnic Jews mm yummy" and "Trisha Paytas [who is a fat person and a Messianic "Jew" kind of] is a thinspo Jewish icon"
Another antisemite is theehors/epussy who reblogs from fist-fu/ck who, until my screenshots of their blog circulated a couple of weeks ago, had a swastika on their blog title. They also reblogged Holocaust photos of burned Jew corpses.
Another person in their circle andykaufm/anisntdead has a post something the lines of "mmm Jew titties put them on my body"
All these people reblog from multiple antisemites and racists
As I'm compiling these screenshots, one of UK's friend messages me and reblogs my post and tells me, a gay Jew, that I'm not going to heaven and that I'm an "ugly ass cracker faggot" (so obviously these guys don't care about homophobia but that's no surprise)
Also while this is happening, UK targets Agent and says she's ugly and that she needs to be "put down." Agent is a Jewish woman so this is yet another part of the pattern of UK and their friends being extremely inappropriate about Jewishness, and the bodies of Jewish women in particular, as inferior or hypersexual.
Anyway yeah so that's what all this is.
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12. Roommate AU
I love jilytober prompts because I don’t need to come up with titles for things. Also, if anyone is looking for a job in which they don’t get paid, I will hire you to name things for me.
WC- 1.8K
“Listen Red-”
“My name is Lily.”
“Yes, Red, listen. I know that we put an ad in the paper, but that was to upset the roommate that we had to kick out.”
“Yeah, it’s still a sore subject, but we hate him now.”
Lily looked back and forth between the three boys before her and frowned. “Okay, but you put out the ad. And the price for the room is like, the best in the city, and I really need a place to live. Like, yesterday.”
One of the three had been quiet since she’d walked through the front door and so she looked at him now, wanting to see if she could make headway with him, since the one that kept calling her ‘Red,’ didn’t seem as sympathetic.
“I mean, it’s not very fair to put an ad out, if you had no intention of even-”
“We can interview you.” The quiet one said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I mean, we do have an empty room after all. Just because we don’t need a roommate-”
“James.”
“Prongs.”
“Let’s just think about it.” James said. “We did put the ad out. And she said that she needs a place-”
“James,” The one with sandy hair sighed and shook his head. “It’s always the redheads with you.” He muttered quietly, and so Lily assumed that she wasn’t supposed to have heard that.
“Please. I have a sob story if you need to hear it.”
“We’ve all got a sob story, Red.”
“Yes, but my sob story is currently happening. My mum died a few months ago, and my sister sold our parents house, which I was living in. So I had to find a new place to live. My childhood friend let me move in with him, but I found out yesterday, that not only is he obsessed with me in a yucky kind of way, he’s also a white nationalist. Like he’s in a cult and everything and I can’t stay there anymore. I don’t even want to go back to get the rest of my shit.”
The three boys looked at her and then at the two bags at her feet.
“That’s all you have now?” The sandy haired one asked.
“Yes. Well, no. My friend Mary, her parents let me put some family memory type stuff in their garage. I’m glad I hadn’t gotten the chance to bring that to the city yet.”
“Alright fine. We’ll interview you. But don’t think you’ll be getting any sympathy points from me.”
“Sirius,” James sighed, running a hand through his hair.
“What?” He looked at Lily and raised a brow. “Are you a tidy roommate?”
“Yes.” Lily nodded, glad that she’d managed to get her foot in the door. “I always pick up after myself.”
“Do you cook?”
“Not for you I won’t.” He cracked a smile.
“Do you have a job?”
“I do. It’s a shitty job, but I’m working on it. I have another semester left of school. If I had a better job now though, I wouldn’t be begging you for your extra room.”
“So a job and school? How often would you actually be here?”
Lily paused for a moment. “I’m a bit of a homebody to be honest. But I do work thirty hours a week and I’m in class for another sixteen hours. Would you like me to promise to stay away from you? I can do that.”
“No, I think I’m starting to like you.” Sirius grinned.
“You’d need to move in tonight then?” James asked.
“I would,” Lily nodded. “Like I said, I can’t go back there.”
“We can go for you.” Sirius shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind rattling the pants off of a piece of shit.”
Lily bit her lip and looked down at the ground. She had no doubt that these three men would succeed in intimidating Severus, but she didn’t want them to go there either. “My stuff isn’t even packed up. I appreciate the offer, but what you just suggested sounded a bit like sympathy.”
Sirius shook his head and the other two laughed.
“No. Offering to kick the snot out of a racist bastard is simply a hobby of mine. I’m still not sure if I’m going to let you have the room.”
“It’s my house. I’m going to let her have it.” James said. “Remus, are you alright with that?”
“Excuse me,” Sirius widened his eyes and shook his head. “I’m in the middle of-”
“Yeah. I don’t have a problem with it. Welcome to the club, Lily,” He reached out and offered her his hand. She took it and sighed in relief.
“Okay, thank you, but now I have some questions for you three.”
“Oh do you,”
“Yes.” Lily nodded, looking at each of them in the eye. “Are any of you going to murder me?”
“If I was, I wouldn’t tell you.” Sirius grinned.
“Yes, I know. But my sister said that I had to ask.”
“I’ve never murdered someone before, so the odds are low.” Remus shrugged.
“I’ll just say ‘no,’ because I’m not, you know, insane like these two.” James shoved Remus’ shoulder.
“Alright.” Lily took a deep breath and tried to exhale the weight of the world that she’d been carrying around today. If this had fallen through, she would have had to get on a train and beg Petunia for a few nights on her couch, or just called London a bust and gone to live with Mary in Ireland.
But she wouldn’t have to do that now.
She was somewhere safe. Probably. They all seemed fairly harmless anyway.
“I can show you where the room is,” James offered.
“Am I just supposed to pretend like you two didn’t just get us a new roommate without asking for my vote?”
Lily had the feeling that Sirius was simply giving them all a hard time, but she folded her arms over her chest and huffed. “Look, Sirius, if you don’t want me here, I’ll leave. I can figure something else out.” She reached for her bag and stood up, pulling the strap over her shoulder. “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or-”
“Lily,” Sirius looked a bit stricken. “No, I’m an asshole, you’ll get used to it. You can stay.”
She smiled at him. “I know, and now you have to stop complaining about it.” She winked at him and then turned to James, hoisting up her second bag. “Lead the way.”
Sirius started laughing and James looked plenty amused as well.
“You’re going to be trouble, aren’t you?” James asked as they walked toward the stairs.
“No more so than he is.”
James laughed. “Hopefully less trouble than he is. He is a lot of trouble.”
“Yeah, I kind of guessed that.”
“I thought I was going to have to yell at him when you grabbed your bag and pretended you were leaving.”
“All jokes aside, I really do appreciate you all letting me stay here. What did your fourth roommate do to get kicked out?”
“It wasn’t just one thing.” James shrugged. “But a couple of days ago, he uh-” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Well, it wasn’t actually me that he hurt, so I’ll have to let Sirius and Remus tell you. And they will, because they both want to take every opportunity to bitch him out that they can.” Lily smiled at him and he smiled back before reaching out and pulling a door open. “And here is your new room.”
It was entirely empty aside from a stripped bed. No furniture, no hangers in the closet, no lamps or rugs or posters. This room looked as though it's been abandoned for a while, not just since the other day.
“I know you just met us and so you’re not comfortable with us helping you out, but when you’re ready, we would like to help you get your stuff back.”
Lily let one of her bags drop to the ground, the one that didn’t have her laptop in it, and sighed. “Thanks, but I’m not sure that it’s worth it.” Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she knew that it was either Mary, asking if she was alright, or Severus, asking her where she’d gone and when she’d be back. “I didn’t even tell him that I was moving out. I’d rather him not know anything about where I went or who I’m with now.”
“Was he your b-”
“No.” Lily shook her head. “No, we reconnected at school after my mum passed. But then I found out that he transferred to my school when he found out that I was there. He printed off photos from my social media- I don’t know. I just didn’t feel safe there anymore and Mary told me that if I get murdered because I didn’t trust my instincts then she’s not going to come to my funeral.” James let out a soft laugh.
“Is Mary your sister?”
“Yes, but not by blood. Petunia is my actual sister, but we don’t get on well- Why am I telling you all of this? Mary is my best friend and she is also a bint and lives in Ireland.”
“People tell me things all the time. It must be my charming smile. I put people at ease. It’s how I got stuck with both Sirius and Remus.”
“You didn’t get stuck with us, you prat.” Sirius came up the stairs and leaned against the wall in the hallway. “I’m the one that’s stuck with you.”
“My parents adopted him when we were twelve.” James said. “I found Remus at school when I was nine. We’ve been inseparable ever since.”
Lily nodded.
“Do you need help unpacking, Red?”
Lily looked at Sirius, her bags and then the lack of stuff in the room. She laughed and he smiled at her.
“I’ll go and fetch you some clean linens from the closet.” James offered.
“And you two made fun of me for putting extra sheets in there!’ Remus shouted from down the stairs. “What do you all want for dinner?”
“Pizza,” Sirius shouted back.
“We had pizza yesterday, Sirius.” James reminded him. “Make your lobster mac n’ cheese, Remus!”
Lily picked up her bag again and moved into the room, setting them down on the bed and then unzipping them.
“Red?” She looked over at Sirius. “You good with lobster mac?”
She smiled. “Yeah.”
“Good.” He turned and walked off.
James came back with sheets, pillows and a comforter. He helped her get the fitted sheet on the bed before he bowed out and gave her some time to herself as well.
Things had been shit for a while now.
But she had the feeling that she’d just lucked into something quite spectacular.
#jily#jilytober#jily fic#fel writes jily#marauders#they were ROOOMMATES#though it's the very start of that trope
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Reporting back on this whole "how is life as a new attending" thing: well, the good news is I have money and a lot more time. The bad news is I'm still me.
So we're buying a house--it's taking forever but it's also a really great house that's not like a mansion-mansion but is light-years beyond what anyone else I know my age who isn't a doctor or the child of rich people can afford--and I'm really, really excited about it. But I'm also still depressed, on an SNRI for it, getting godawful night sweats because of the SNRI for it, and prone to severe acid reflux and chronic nausea. Also, there's a random spot in my right lower quadrant that occasionally hurts like hell for no apparent reason and deep down I'm terrified that it's my appendix thinking about getting real infected and rupturing, or an ovarian cyst that starts to torse and then de-torse, or an endometriosis explant that's going to finally burrow all the way into my intestines one of these days and give me, I dunno, sepsis or a hemorrhage or something. Any one of those could spontaneously become a life-threatening surgical emergency with no warning. So yes, I still have anxiety.
I have started to resume something resembling a normal human sleep schedule. I only took a week (technically just under a week) off after graduating from residency. I'd already passed the boards so as soon as residency was officially over and my program director submitted the final things I was board-certified. Which is fucking bananas! I'm still me! I'm still just a weird chump with frizzy hair, two to three chins at any given time and slowly developing jowls, a mustache and over the last couple of years a beard I savagely beat into submission with my favorite tweezers every fucking day, the short-term memory of a goldfish, zero ability to remember anyone's face or name but a near-godlike recall for bit-part actors in television shows based on just a few seconds of hearing their voice, a long-term obsession with Sherlock Holmes since the 4th grade back in the early 90s long before Moffat put his greasy mitts all over them, and some weird kinks I literally never talk about because I don't want to. I am such a peculiar, obsessive, hoarding, strident freak! And now I'm a board-certified physician. Jesus Christ. The only thing worse than knowing that I'm a doctor is knowing that my classmates are doctors. Not the ones from residency, they're all cool, but the ones from my actual medical school. You know! The ones who accidentally boned the same woman on an away rotation they did sequentially and then made homophobic jokes about sloppy seconds! Those ones! The ones who wore shirts with boner jokes on them to class while being devout Mormons who thought women belonged in the kitchen! The one who said awful things about Tamir Rice and then said he couldn't be racist because his nephew was black! THOSE ASSHOLES! THEY'RE PROBABLY ALSO DOCTORS NOW! I don't know for sure because I'm not friends with any of them on Facebook because they're horrible assholes and I called them all homophobic and racist and sexist to their fucking faces, but DON'T TRUST DOCTORS UNTIL OR UNLESS THEY SHOW YOU A REASON TO.
Anyway, I've been finding some solace in obsessively looking at different things I might get for our house. We're closing soon, thank God, but the current owners wanted to stay until the end of August because they're building a new house and it won't be done until then (and do I believe it will actually be done then? No.) and we wanted to be very attractive buyers in this godforsaken housing market where you have to bring an elephant's weight in gold and several wine bottles of your own blood to even get a chance, so we said sure, so we're still a month and a half from moving in. UGH. It's worth it, but it's giving me all the anxiety. I feel paralyzed, because I can't do shit about most of the planning and decorating until I'm actually in the space. And somehow I can't do any of my other hobbies, either. I can't write. I can't bake. I've been getting stoned more often than usual, but I did that on Friday night and frankly it just annoyed me because I didn't enjoy losing the ability to string my thoughts together. Sometimes I'm really in the mood to get stoned and it feels lovely and freeing, and sometimes it's just an annoying hindrance.
And I can't drink because my acid reflux is so bad right now. I doubled up on the omeprazole, which I never tell patients to do, and it did help some, but I'm still always one acidic beverage away from feeling like I'm going to die. I threw up a couple of months ago and I honestly think it was from just having too much acid in my stomach for my body to cope with. So naturally I'm worried I've got one of those crazy tumors, starts with a Z, Zollingers? that tells your stomach to make acid. Do I? Almost certainly not! Will that stop me from worrying about it? Boy howdy, no!
However, I have had some really nice moments. Last week I had a patient who had a history of migratory polyarthralgias. He'd never been definitively diagnosed, though he'd been tentatively diagnosed with gout based on presentation and placed on allopurinol. He was sitting in my office with a huge, swollen, painful knee, and I thought, well fuck it he needs a knee aspiration. Have I done one of those before? No! But I've put enough corticosteroids and hyaluronic acid into knees that I figured I had a good shot at getting something out, and it wasn't pretty but I did it. I got a good sample of knee juice all by myself. It felt great. For me. The patient was in a substantial amount of pain. However, it did give us a definitive diagnosis--birefringent monodium urate crystals! That's gout, baby! Sure, it presented a little weird, but because I stuck a big-ass needle into his knee now we know for sure and I wrote him for colchicine, which somehow no one else had???? despite the diagnosis of gout on his chart???????
I haven't really felt completely at sea much at all these first couple weeks of being an attending. I have an MA who is a sweet ray of sunshine and she is very determined to do a good job, and we get along well. I'm slowly settling in. I feel more and more like a real doctor and less like some crazed impostor wearing a doctor suit every day.
There's bad stuff, plenty of it, but overall I'm feeling pretty lucky. Mostly. Except for how today I had a bunch of caffeine and dairy, so my stomach is telling me that this was a Mistake. But! In counterpoint, the Baskin-Robbins Flavor of the Month was really delicious, and I regret very little. Not nothing, but very little.
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What you think of fetus V who said in front of everyone "You seem to really like men" to Jimin? Youthful ribbing? Or a moment of insensitivity ? FWI saying you like girls or guys? Or calling close same sex friends u a couple? is actually common where am from. This has happened in my friend circle too actually. Except all of us are hets so no one take it seriously. Cant think a closeted person would find it that funny. Jimins lack of denial or even laughing it off always stood out to me tho.
What do I think of that comment?
I think we both know very often when people say they think a man likes men, they mean to say they think that man is Gay and very often when the g-word is used in a sentence, it is not meant as a compliment- imma give it to you straight, no bs. Lol.
The parlance gay and variations of it, in my opinion, is often used ubiquitously and traditionally as a slur slang among ignorant, non-progressive, anti homosexual individuals and is often rooted in malice.
And when malice isn't intended, ridicule is. The sad fact is, people adopt the terminology as ammunition to blatantly attack, dehumanize, belittle and strip away the dignity of queer folks and when the term is used in reference to non queer people it has a similar effect. It degrades them as well through the irony and humor of comparing them to gay people.
Gay jokes, if you will, is a subtle art of passive aggressively slurring gay folks if you think about it. I mean let's be honest.
Personally, I don't think Tae's intentions in that moment were malicious at all. I don't think he blurted out those words with the intension to ridicule Jimin either- stay with me. It will make sense in a bit.
But he called Jimin gay nevertheless. His comment if a joke, I'm afraid, reinforces these bizzare stereotypes of masculinity and promotes toxic rhetorics prevalent especially within Kpop shipping communities where every Male idol interaction is hyper sexualised and romanticized thus, suggesting a man cannot love another man, be affectionate or be fond of them unless they secretly lusted after them and harbored a desire to lay down pipes in their behinds- which, honestly is crazy coming from a guy with a cultural background such as the Korean culture where kinship is commonplace but more on that later.
I think whatever which way we want to look at it, it was an insensitive comment especially if you believe he meant it as a joke. It was definitely not his most woke moment, socially and culturally- and that's putting it lightly.
That 'gay' comment to me is right up there with all the problematic statements some, if not all, of the members have made over the years- the colorism, racist jokes, the ' eww, you too black,' 'akekeke- you too tanned shoo,' implying if you're black or tanned you are ugly. The fat jokes, the misogyny and misogynior- please don't ask me to give you examples of these. I don't want to ruin BTS for you. Lol.
There are commentaries on these out there on the internet. You can look it up for yourselves- You welcome. Lol.
For the record, BTS have since retracted, acknowledged and apologized for most of these questionable moments throughout the years and so we cannot hold it against them, forever- not to make excuses for them but they are human too. They learn, they unlearn, they make mistakes, they correct them, they grow and as NamJoon said, they really were a bit 'unsophisticated' and rough around the edges in their earlier years- even if it was just five years ago from now, chilee. They is a mess. Lmho.
I think it's all part of the human process honestly- don't worry BTS, I have a lot of space in my heart for y'all to be human and still love ya. Keep going sweeties. Y'all's doing greatness de la grande kind!! Bless y'all.
In V's case he was, since that incident, put as a judge on a show that allegedly featured queer folks and he seemed more welcoming of them than the other judges on the panel, excluding RM of course.
A year later, he would make a song that the LBGTQ plus fraction of Army would rally behind as a highly pro gay song- Stigma, which I find debatable but whatever. I mean, just because JK has stars, clouds and the sky in his lyrics don't make him an astronaut or an environmentalist fighting the good cause for the climate but to each his own.
Stigma was still something, I'll give him that.
Flashforward to five years later, and he would be recommending songs by gay artists, appreciating and promoting gay art and the artists behind them, sporting rainbow outfits, designing a BT21 character that is genderless, incorporating sign language in his speeches- he polished up. Woke the hell up. Politically correct. Yadda yadda yadda.
I think, like some of the others, he too learned his lesson. It's not ok to trivialize the oppression of others or make light of it-
Now that we've gotten the woke bit out of the way, on to our shipping business. Follow me, chop chop. Lol.
Firt of all, I don't think that moment is a big deal. But I find it interesting nonetheless.
Do I think Tae was teasing Jimin in that moment when he made that statement? It's not quite easy as yes or no.
Personally, I think he was clocking him.
This interview was conducted at a point in the timeline where I feel Jimin was shedding his image as the Maknae obsessed hyung in the group. He was coming into his own and embracing himself for who he is and that I think included his sexuality.
Prior to, he had in my opinion, since debut, slipped into the role of the queer jest of the group supplying queer humor and entertainment for listeners at radio shows by offering himself up for ridicule as the 'gay guy' within the group- I hated every bit of it. Lol.
You'd often hear the members refer to him as the one good with the guys, the boy in love with the Maknae- There is still a fraction of Army that see him as this persona but he has since outgrown that label and that phase.
RM was basically the Black jest of the group, offering himself up for ridicule for his darker skin tone right down to his blaccent. Can you do your black accent? They will ask him at interviews and he would proceed to deliver a walmart version of the Black American English. Sigh.
Compared to the previous year where he literally gasped and panicked when the members hinted at his sexuality or made statements that put his sexuality into question, Jimin seemed more in control and mentally prepared during this interview.
When the question was asked of him, the question of why he liked JK, his instincts it seemed was to steer the conversation away from his sexuality- a tactic the rest of the members would employ to avoid discussing Jikook a few months from that interview...
I mean, when Tae asked Jimin on JK's birthday that same year what he wanted to give JK, RM cut in before JM answered. Jimin had done the same thing when in an interview JK was asked if Jimin wasn't his style and JK was stuttering not knowing what to say in response. JM asked him not to answer the question.
When interviewers ask these questions, they do so for entertainment purposes- because who doesn't like gay jokes, amirite?
For heterosexual idols I assume it's not slippery slope for them to engage in these kinds of humor. They can play gay without risking exposing their heterosexuality and when they do play gay it's for jest.
It's not the same for queer idols I think.
Jimin was basically done being the butt of the gay jokes in 2015, he was done selling himself as the JK shit rainbows and I'm the unicorn fixated on him kinda person and it reflected in that conversation.
'I don't like everything about this boy. He ain't all that. But he is the Maknae and he cute so whatever' lol.
Like I said, I think Jimin was steering the conversation away from his sexuality but Tae's comment steered the conversation right back to it. 'I just think he likes men.'
Most South Koreans I've met in person and on the internet spend a considerable amount of time and energy trying to dispel the western notion of gayness projected on to Korean men for their skinship culture.
We like to glamorize gayness in these streets but in reality gay is stigmatized especially in places like South Korea. People don't readily read gay in Male interactions unless they were being homophobic or socially unaware.
To me, Tae's statement was more of an observation about Jimin, one which he felt a need to contribute to the discussion they were having, perhaps to provide insight into the inner workings of Jimin rather than as a joke or jest- or may be he did both.
Jimin managed to avoid opening himself up for the gay jokes and to this Tae then responded, I just think you is gay sir- The emphasis has been mine. Lol.
The thing about Tae is, in the earlier days he used to have a habit of 'exposing' Jimin whenever Jimin told half truths and what not.
For example, in 2014 during an interview when JM was asked what he wanted to do on his free days he had said he wanted to spend time with his family or something and Tae immediately checked him saying he was lying. Jimin then said he wanted to be with Jungkook which had JK fuming.
Was he teasing JM when he called him out for lying about his true desires? May be but I think he meant it too. Know what I mean?
He did the same thing when during their Paris VLive, Jimin got nervous when JK was singing 'know you love me boy, so that I love you,' in the background and Tae asked Jimin if he was nervous. Jimin snapped out of whatever whipped trance he was in and asked 'why would I be nervous' or something along those lines.
Why would Tae assume JM was nervous listening to another man sing? And why would Jimin be nervous in the first place?
And if at an interview Jimin is asked, why don't you like listening to the Maknae sing and JM responded that he is cute but he can't sing and Tae says well I think listening to Jk sing makes him nervous- would that be youthful ribbing or tea? Do you see where I'm going with this?
I see Tae as very observant- If not more observant than Jk. Their jokes are punchier because it is rooted in truth. He is stating his opinion, his observations and when he felt JM's answers were dishonest or inconsistent of his general notion of him, he called him out on that.
It's like him saying JM likes to pretend to be drunk in order to tell Tae he loves him- allegedly. Was it funny, yes. Was it a lie? I don't think so.
Jimin likes to pretend, we been knew. His boyfriend don spilled that tea already. I mean Jk said JM faked being asleep when he noticed the cameras filming him. He said also JM knows he is cute so sometimes he intentionally acts cute.
Tae used to tease Jimin a lot- hell he still teases him a lot to this day. Lol. Had Jimin looking at the back of his head like he wanted to quick punch him in the throat in the recent run, chilee. Lmho.
But you gotta ask, where is the lie in all those jokes?
The question I ask myself, and I think we ought to ask ourselves as shippers is, what about Jimin gave Tae that impression of him in the first place?
What made Tae, coming from a culture and background where 'gay' is a taboo and skinship is prevalent assume that if Jimin liked JK then it was because he liked men or was gay?
Even if Tae meant it as a Joke- no one laughed. Lol. That awkward silence that ensued... now that's how you know he had deadass made a 'gay comment' for real. Lmho.
They were all silent, waiting for JM's response and only laughed when JM responded to Tae- isn't that how it usually goes when you are the one queer person at the het dinner table? The tasteless jokes, awkward silences and stares? Just me? Oh, never mind then. Keep reading. Lol.
Imagine if JM hadn't responded or had gay panicked like he did a year before that interview, when RM revealed JK had been sneaking into JM's bed at night?
Dude was legit ready to throw JK under the bus had it not been for the shady camera guy behind the cameras. Deadass, Jimin was pointing accusing fingers at JK and everything- so much for gay love. Lmho.
The question still remains, what makes you look at your heterosexual friend and go- hey, that's gay. Think about it.
If Tae thought Jimin liked men, even as a joke, it's probably because Jimin had been giving him a reason or reasons to believe he actually liked boys beyond the usual daily doze of gay prevalent within K-culture.
It's similar to JK feeling uncomfortable when Jimin in 2014 described their relationship as one between love and friendship. Jimin responding with male friends can love eachother too without being gay would imply JK was interpreting his words and actions towards him as laced with romantic and sexual subtext or intent.
Now why would JK assume this if men touching men and feeling up on eachother in their culture was a normal thing?
There are gay men in Korea you know?
Tae and Kook were both hyper aware and curious of Jimin's sexuality in that period- for different reasons of course. In my opinion.
Not sure if Jimin's androgynous features played a role in these suspicions and assumptions they had of him in the early days because androgynousity in men is often ignorantly profiled and stereotyped as queer.
Tae seemed convinced JM was queer at least and JK was projecting his own queerness on to Jimin a lot- cough, cough.
It seemed to me also that Tae for whatever reason had the impression JM had a thing for him? I'll save my VMin agenda for delulu Fridays but chilee I don't know, Jimin has been on an agenda to friendzone that man since those manly mans thawed off his chest. Lol.
VMIN... ok.
I mean Jimin's response to Tae was more to deflate Tae's ego than to deflect or evade the issue and I wonder why. 'You are so full of yourself' 'I may like men, but I don't like you' and Tae responds with 'really' as if he's been challenged or dared- ever had your straight friends assume you like them just because you are queer?
Anywho, for whatever reason, Jimin seemed to be the only member in the group around the early days whose words and actions were put through the queer litmus test.
Also, I think a distinction ought to be made between calling two same sex friends a couple and calling them gay.
Calling two friends a couple is inconsequential- except when their sexuality is on the line. Calling two same sex friends you know are straight a couple is nothing but a gay joke.
BTS do this all the time. Jimin called Namjin a couple, Tae kook a couple, himself and Suga a couple, himself and JK a couple.
Jk has equally referred to others within the group as a couple, made heart signs above them, and have even held his chest and said he never thought he would fall for a guy.
In none of these instances did he or any of them imply that they or the persons they were referring to were queer or liked men and I wouldn't make much of such comments.
When JK was called out for gifting a present to Jimin and not the others, Tae teased JK as well and his gestures implied to me, 'it's ok to like him, I know you like him, you like JM don't you, uWu' and other variations of these.
But he in no way hinted at the sexuality of JK explicitly or implicitly- not in a way that prompts a response or rebuttal from JK like it did in Jimin's case.
I guess what I'm saying is that, that moment is nothing but something at the same time. You look at Tae's personality and his reputation within the group as the one with no filter who blurts out things that often has BTS running helter skelter- that 'I want to see your children" comment at Festa almost gave RM an aneurysm. Lmho.
Then they had to literally take his mic away from him when he started talking about meeting a pretty chick or something at a fansigns.
You consider the history between him and Jimin, the context behind that comment and the things that was said after that comment- the interviewer said 'well JK is really handsome...' which means he took the 'joke' Tae had made to mean JM had romantic interest in JK- something I feel JM was trying to avoid.
I don't think Tae meant anything by it. I don't think he knew at the time JM was queer but I do believe he suspected he was.
Hope this helps,
Signed,
GOLDY
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open letter to fenrir wolf: plague edition
Wolf, if you can hear this, it’s 2021, and it’s a plague this time around. my first letter was supposed to be an offering, not a goddamn invitation.
I remember the weekend before quarantine began, dancing (badly) with my Freyan friend at a pub last saint patrick’s day, the band joking about the elephant in the room, saying that everything was fine, they were all the way up on the stage, they wouldn’t get anyone sick. I had been thinking about the previous saint patrick’s day, but even then, even through my drunken haze and bitter memories, I thought I could hear a note of desperation in the singer’s voice; I remember the tremble of quiet dread. I told myself to stop being paranoid. everything’s always a false alarm, until one day it isn’t. this saint patrick’s day, against my better judgement, I went to a bar alone because I’d just bought a red dress, and honestly, because I needed to be away from my in-law’s house for a little while longer. I sat down and took off my mask once I’d entered one of the few places you’re allowed to irresponsibly have your mask off in, and it feels weirdly intimate to let people see my face in public by now; back when all I had was a black bandanna, I used to pretend I was an Old West outlaw, and wonder if I’ll ever grow out of pretending to be a cowboy from the movies…or if I I’d have the opportunity to. I had a couple beers, wondered for a few stupid moments why everyone was wearing green and shamrocks, and made idle small talk with the bartender while I stared blankly ahead and wondered how it could be a whole year, and also how it could be only one year, and how it is that all the world’s people let the rich and powerful shovel us by the millions into our graves.
when it started, they told us not to buy masks. everyone was panic buying everything else, and they wanted to make sure they didn’t run out for hospital workers and such. i was able to get some bandanas for me and Tyr’s kid before they ran out, while the TV was still discouraging us from buying them if they mentioned it at all, not to mention the current president’s rabid followers screaming at you in public for defying their leader’s lies that the virus is a hoax and the mass graves in italy and new york are fake news. he rolled his eyes at me at the time, but now the party line is that everyone ought to be wearing two masks if you can. no one seems to remember stuff like this; but then why should they, when the news is showing the last head of state’s supporters storming the capitol? panic buttons had been ripped out; someone refused to call the national guard over and over again, while the racist mob built a noose outside, breached the perimeter, and went looking for politicians to kill because they weren’t going to let their god-emperor stay in power. for aspiring revolutionaries, i must say they weren’t very ambitious; they killed a cop and got shot just to do nothing but take selfies once they got in and found no one inside to kill; they even walked obediently in line between the little velvet ropes on their way in. the only saving grace is that, since their god-emperor has spent 8 months telling them anyone who wears a mask is a pussy and a communist, they all left their hoods at home and many were identified. reports of off-duty cops being among the attackers trailed in. I worked customer service for 9 hours wondering if I was wasting precious time I’d need to look into getting a passport.
it almost worked, Wolf. Just like the nukes almost flew in the 80’s and the climate change is almost certainly going to reach the point of no return within a decade. how many almosts do we have left? Will we keep going from reckoning to reckoning of our own design, playing chicken with nature instead of trying to throw off these shackles and just live, until one day our luck runs out? I suppose that always was the plan on some scale, but I hoped we’d at least get to walk on another planet first. How can this be the end of history, with that great ineffable blanket of stars above us that we haven’t yet explored?
It was only a month or so ago that a blizzard hit Texas -not just where I used to live, where blizzards are rare but fierce and we build our houses to withstand them, but deeper south where a light dusting would make local news for weeks. the strain was too much for the grid; the politicians had made sure the state’s not connected to the rest of the nation’s infrastructure, so entire cities lost power…the poor parts of the cities, anyways. people were circulating infographics on how to resist hypothermia along with pictures of icicles forming on ceilings of their apartment buildings. then the stories started pouring in. children found huddled in their trailers around their younger siblings to try and keep them warm, dead of hypothermia. old ladies’ frozen bodies found by family who’d seen her alive and well mere days ago. families trapped in their houses, built to stay cool in the brutal desert heat, buried by the snow and unable to eat, stay warm, dig their way out, or call for help. some politician lost his job for telling people to stop asking for help because “the strong will survive”. the masters of our world, the ones that stand smugly guarding the gateways from this world to a better one and slaughtering all who approach, really think that surviving because you’re rich and powerful, because you struggle so little that life itself is something you take for granted, is the same thing as survival of the fittest. i saw my peers laughing and saying Texans deserved it for voting the wrong way, and I think something broke inside me, because when that rage erupted from that ugly hidden place that is always burning my hands shook and I wanted to howl until my throat started to bleed and I could’ve summoned you with all the hate that came over me, and who’s to say I didn’t, the way things are going? and this is the new normal, for the rest of my life if not for the rest of our species’. we are guaranteed so little time, and yet we throw it over our shoulders with both hands so we can make the numbers on our ATM screen go up. i feel like i would do anything to guarantee the survival of my species, but I can’t deny some part of me believes we deserve this.
because if this is really it, Wolf, people will blame you, but we are the ones who built this world. I wont bore you with more politics, but the scientists knew how to prevent the worst of it from day one. all we had to do was shut down industry for a few months -and oh, how I remember thinking I could almost hear you laughing as I watched them talk about it on TV as though they might actually try and save us, knowing deep in my bones that the movers and shakers of our species consider it no contest at all, between sacrificing billions in profits and millions of lives. they may be lying bastards, but their devotion to greed is as eternal and sincere as was your promise to make the ones who bound you pay -and they have no qualms about paying the same abominable price. My anger is making me reckless, and I know it, and I know that they always say you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you -and maybe it’s true, but it’s also true that they’re only feeding us at all because they know hungry people may swallow them whole. how can I blame the plague or the storms or the riots for our doom, when the extent of the death they’re causing are only the consequences of human actions? how can I hold my livid need to get back at the bastards with my duty to my own humanity in the same body, when they crash against each other like two asteroids headed in opposite directions?
we just heard that vaccines are available in our state, right when I was halfway through writing this. I’m sure it’ll be weeks until we can breathe without fear, Wolf, and even then, the storms and the riots, the coming famines and wars, means that reprieve will be small and bitter and filled with irony and dread. I’ll be sure to give you some raw meat and take a shot of that godawful whiskey so you can laugh at the face I make. sometimes I wonder if you’d be on my side, help me and my friends break their haughty power, reclaim the world, and start rebuilding the forests we squandered in our ignorance and greed, were you given the opportunity. I’d like to think so, and it seems like the kind of thing you’d be into -but then, we’ll never know, will we? Despite all I’ve said, I still hold out stubborn faith that one day humanity will learn that so long as one of us is imprisoned, none of us are truly free. We're not like you, so you'll have to take my word for it: humans need mercy like wolves need to hunt. Just because we can technically stay alive in these chains that force us to forget that the humans' only true strength was always only their cooperation with each other, doesn't mean it's good for us to live this way. If we can learn that we are strong enough if we stand together, we can take them down before they take us and countless other species down with them. People have been certain the world would end before; and they’ve all been wrong so far. perhaps it’ll take more than this to kill us.
-but that’s the thing, isn’t it? more is coming. it always has been.
But I really, really want to thank you for dancing 'til the end
You found a way to break out
You're not afraid to break out
#death tw#idk how to tag triggers on this it's kind of a lot#processing covid trauma in this one be careful#spilled ink#smarmyanarchist#the song at the end is also an absolute bop about the apocalypse which is oddly cleansing. just trust me janalle monae is always right
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Adapted from Shiny Pink: Sissify Yourself BlogSpot
That’s Sasha and Kasumi. They ’re not your friends, it’s just that you work for Sasha’s father, Mr Wang. Sasha is a spoilt rich girl because of her father, while Kasumi is more of a trailer park Asian tramp. Sasha is best friends with her though and together they party like animals all the time. doing drugs and fucking like whoever, whenever. You’ve never liked either of them, you have even talked to Mr Wang about the need of his daughter to stay away of Kasumi and everything. He ignores you, you’re just a worker bee in his company, nothing to do with his precious Daughter. Both girls know about you, though they have never raised an issue, for them it has always been as if you don’t exist. A month ago you saw them at a bar close to work. You were with your friends, they were partying as always. One of your friends said a racist joke about them. Everybody laughed. and then another joke was made, and then another. Kasumi and Sasha heard you and your friends and they argued back. In fact, they wreaked havoc. Your friends became even more offensive. started calling them names like Asian sluts, cheap whores etc and you were caught in the middle of it. Sasha asked you to do something about your friends. Everybody stopped for a second waiting for your answer on this. You thought about it, but you couldn’t disappoint your friends. so instead of an answer you just made an offensive impression of the way they talk in China. It was an unforgettable moment for your friends. Sasha and Kasumi said nothing else. they just left. humiliated. you remember your friends keep telling them nasty stuff as they were leaving… Two weeks later something terrible happened. It was Friday night and you were at the same bar. This time you were alone, waiting for a friend. That’s when you saw Sasha and Kasumi, right next to you. It was sudden, you just smiled politely; they seemed pretty OK despite what had happened the last time. They even bought you a drink, said it was their way to make peace. You smiled again. That’s the last thing you remember from that day…
Two days later you woke up in a bed. You had no idea where. They heard you screaming so they came in. You were up looking at yourself in a mirror. There was no body hair on you whatsoever. but that wasn’t everything. Most parts of your body were covered in tattoo, and not just any tattoos. You had little fairies and stars and butterflies and rainbows painted right above your cock! You had pink fairy wings inked on your back and a tribal tramp stamp right above your ass, but that wasn’t the worst part either! You had weird symbols inked all over you; Asian symbols. You had 2 anime girls on your feet and all kinds of Chinese letters on the rest of your body. If anyone saw you now, they would say you’re some kind of a fucked up gay boi with a fetish for anything Asian or something, you even had a tiny Chinese flag on your heart! They both giggled so much at you. They started explaining the meaning of those letters. You found out you had “Sasha” typed on the one arm and “Kasumi” on the other. you had “ASIAN PRINCESS” on your waist and “ASIAN POWER” on your ribcage. Finally, you had “GAY” on the left butt cheek and “PRIDE” on the other. you even found out you now had a belly button ring with some Asian symbol charms. You wanted to kill those girls, you wanted this madness to end. You wanted it to be a fucked up dream and nothing more. but unfortunately it wasn’t. You were there, handcuffed by some Asian whores, tattooed like some sick gay slut. Sasha was smiling, asking if you had finished admiring their work. Then she told you to sit down and shut up and listen how it’s gonna be from now on… “You think I’m stupid? You think i don’t know about you? You think you could go on telling those fuckin shit about me forever? hah?? Well, i got news for ya! Listen…” “In order to keep your pathetic little life, you have to pay the price, which means doing what we say. Firstly you will keep the tattoos and the piercing, never trying to go anywhere to get them removed, and not only this but whenever me or Kasumi think of adding something we like on you, you will have to go get it put it all by yourself. So, you can say whatever the fuck you want about to anyone about your tats, but if i want to put "Asian Fuckdoll” in your face, you’re gonna go to a tattoo parlour and ask for it! Understood? Anyway, we decided not to be so harsh on you, for now, so at the moment all your tattoos can be covered by your clothes. We want you to keep your life after all. but if you ever do anything to upset us, your first butterfly will be inked on your neck! OK? Next, as from this Monday, you will officially be our friend. which means no more shit about us anymore. OK? i don’t care what the fuck you’re gonna say to your filthy friends about your change, but YOU will never show any kind of disrespect to us or any of our friends. OK? And if a fight or some shit emerges, you’ll know which side to pick now. right? And i don’t care if it’s between us or your fuckin family we’re talkin about!! You’ll be OUR BITCH!! Thirdly, you will go out with us once per week and watch out, fucker. Since most times it’s just gonna be us girls maybe a few of our bff’s, you will NEVER hit on any of us! So, don’t think even for a sec about fucking us or our friends or anything! OK? You ’ll be with us just because it’s “fun”! And if any of us ever tries to hit on you, you will reject her immediately. in fact, you’ll have to make sure that none of us hits on you, because for every friend of ours that hits on you, we will add a gay thing to you to do. so, keep your distance and be sure that you be a good friend, because you don’t want to strut around like Beyonce! OK? Also, again as from Monday you’ll have an official girlfriend. Kasumi!! OK? i’m sure your friends wouldn’t see it coming, but you’ll make up some shit about her to say to them. And she’s not gonna be just any girlfriend. You’ll act like crazy about her. You’ll talk about her as if she’s the woman of your dreams. You’ll never get to touch her though, so you’ll have to be careful with the lies that you’ll say about my friend. she has to come up as the one who pulls the strings. OK? Two more things. First, for you to constantly remember your place and never even think about yourself as being better than us, once per week you will have to suck a guy and let him cum wherever he wants on you. and don’t worry, since you’re new to this and you don’t know all the gay spots and how to find a man, we will guide you on this. We don’t care if you want it to be quick or anything. It can be however you want. what matters here is that you have a different man cum on your face, every week. If everything goes OK, in a year from now you’ll have tasted 52 different guys, in 2 years 104, in 3 years 156, and then we’ll be in a place to talk about us being sluts or not. As for privacy, again it’s up to you. We can be nice and keep it a secret and Kasumi can always be your alibi. As i told you. we don’t want you to ruin your life. you just have to pay. After all, i’m sure that after the first few guys, you ’re gonna be OK with it. It’s gonna be more like a weekly thing that has to be done, you know? Kinda like paying a bill or something. no one has to know anything. I’m sure in time you’ll see how much it’s NOT a big deal! and then you’ll know how wrong you were about us… And secondly, as from this Monday, you will start learning Chinese… i know it’s hard, baby, but think of the bright side: you can talk more with us cuties! You know, Kasumi said, like, she wanted to see your friends’ faces as she goes to your office and you start talking to each other in her native language. I know it’s bad, honey, but as from this Monday and i guess for the rest of your life, you’re gonna start taking Chinese lessons. I’m sure it’s gonna help you get more in touch with our beautiful culture anyway and I’m telling you: you’re gonna love it! We’ll even talk chinese when we go out so that we help you! Don’t worry, we’ll tell everybody your great grandmother was Asian and you want to keep your roots alive! OK?
She gave you one more week to decide. Now you have to choose… will you be keeping your social status intact and lose any kind of self respect and dignity from your old friends, becoming a puppet in the hands of a bunch of Asian sluts? Or do you rebel and fight for your independence and pride against a couple of psycho girls who will try to ruin you? Do you take the deal?
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For your writing project about falling in and out of love: I fell in love with a friend (not a close one) I had known for about ten years and I had a crush on him for almost that long, yet I was always too shy to tell him. He was a year older than me and very funny and talented. I remember always laughing really hard at his jokes and when I look back at my favorite moments from high school and middle school (which were some of the darkest years of my life), a lot of them involve him. I always used to always tell myself I couldn’t possibly fall in love with him until after we at least started dating, but there was one day when I watched him perform a song on his acoustic guitar at a concert and it literally felt like we were the only two people in the room, even though it was packed full of people, and that was when I knew I had fallen hard. We were in a few musicals together and were cast as love interests a few times. Though we never kissed or anything for those roles, but I always loved being on stage with him and being able to hold his hand and say all those things that I secretly felt but was too shy to say to him. There were a lot of instances where I accidentally moved towards him during a scene when I was supposed to be standing still or a couple times when I almost kissed him during really charged moments between our characters. I remember once when I held his hand (the first time I did after realizing how I felt about him— there’s a lot of opportunities to hold people’s hands in theater!) I literally felt like fireworks were going off, the same way you feel when you kiss someone.
Part of the reason I never told him was because by the time I got close to working up the nerve, he had a girlfriend. To this day, she was one of the kindest people I have ever known. I didn’t want to disrupt anything because I really cared for them both and wanted them to be happy, even at the expense of my own happiness. I tried to get over him a few times when he was dating her but it was almost impossible whenever we would hang out with our friends, and I always wanted to be his friend if nothing else, so I would bury my feelings. Their relationship really wasn’t the best (they managed to bring out some of the worst aspects of one another) and broke up, but even then I couldn’t feel happy about it because I knew he was hurting and I didn’t want to make a move when I knew he was grieving his relationship. By the time I worked up the nerve again, he started dating a different girl and I felt like my heart had been smashed into a million pieces... but even then, I could seem to get over him. I would get drunk and cry about him at parties and I didn’t believe anyone who told me that I could do better or that I would meet someone better suited for me because it didn’t seem possible... and then the pandemic happened.
The pandemic put a barrier between us and was a very physical sign that made me slowly realize we would never happen as a couple, which was a difficult thing to comprehend. I have always been a romantic and believed in soulmates. By this point in my life, I had convinced myself that he was mine and that it was only a matter of time before we got together, and it was always really easy to slip back into that mindset whenever I saw him again, but with a pandemic disrupting everything, it was easier to actively resolve on getting over him— at first, it was more tabling the idea of getting together in the nearish future but resolving to be with him if things worked out much later in our lives, like in a very rom-comesque way. When I started committing to that, I slowly started to love myself more and realize I had incredibly low self esteem and had overlooked some of his more glaring flaws because I didn’t believe I could find someone who watched my exact standards. I began to understand that we were just also incompatible with one another— for example, I hate being late to the point of showing up incredibly early to things in order to avoid it, whereas he habitually shows up an hour late to just about everything with Starbucks; I always told myself that I could change him, which I know now was an unfair expectation. As time went on and I slowly realized my worth, I also came to realize that even if he were to ever ask me out, my answer would probably be no because I was now just a whole different person who had grown up.
But the falling out of love process was an incredibly painful one. I cried myself to sleep a lot of nights. Like I said, I really thought he was my soulmate and that we were really destined for one another, so when I understood that we weren’t, it made me cynical about the whole concept of love for a while because it felt like everything I had ever known about it wasn’t real and that I had been stupid for being so naïve. I was angry with myself for a while and angry at him, too, because I was hard for me to comprehend that I was falling out of love with someone who hadn’t done anything wrong. I had been so convinced that my love for him was so strong that it would take something monumental, like him suddenly revealing himself to be the antithesis of what I thought he was (ex. a cheater, abusive, racist, etc.) for it to ever shake, yet he hadn’t done anything. He occasionally made some poor decisions (like an ugly tattoo or smoking) but it wasn’t anything regarding his moral character that changed who he was. It was me who was really changing and maturing.
I’ve only seen him once since falling out of love, and there were still those lingering feelings of my teenage self lurking beneath the surface. It really threw me off and I found myself distracted by his hands as he played his guitar and my heart would beat fast when he would talk directly to me or blush, but I was more clear-headed than I have been in a long time, almost clinical. I was able to think through my answers to his questions without stammering them out and I was nowhere near as nervous as I once was around him. Part of it might just be my own growth, but certain things he did that I once would have been swooning over didn’t affect me at all. I was upset when I went home because I wasn’t as far along in my moving-on process as I wanted to be and I definitely cried to some sad songs that night, but in the end I was grateful for it because it felt like a check-in to gauge how far along I really was. Back then, I was still in sort of a “maybe one day” phase; now I’m in a “probably not”. I think there’s still a part of my teenage self inside of me yet that still loves, but every day that goes by, I feel less and less like her and more like an adult.
I still sort of feel cynical about love but the one thing that has helped me is reminding myself that I will fall in love again someday with someone who will love me back and he will be right for me. He’s not going to be a perfect person by any means but we will be more compatible. I know I haven’t met him yet but I am really excited to meet my person, even though for the first time in my life I’m enjoying being single. I’m also loving the person who I have become and all the growth I’ve made— for example, a month ago I would have cried while writing and reminiscing about all this, but I didn’t get teary once! As hard and as agonizing as it was at different points, I’m so glad all of it happened because it made me who I am today.
Sorry for writing an entire novel here, I hope it was useful for what you are writing! Have a wonderful day my lovely, I hope this helps you write whatever wonderful thing you are planning!!!! 💜💜💜
this. this is just about the most beautiful thing i have ever read. oh my goodness gracious.
can i tell you lovely anon, that i could physically feel your growth within every single word? the way you described your friendship with this boy in the beginning... it reminded me of how i felt about a boy when i was a teenager. i was head over heels for him, though i never admitted it to myself until years later, after we stopped talking. your feelings felt so genuine and pure and just about every lovely thing you’d expect from a teenage romance. and as i continued reading on through your story and found myself heartbroken for the both of you, i can see just how much you’ve grown -- not only in the sense of recognizing that he wasn’t the one and letting him go, but also realizing your own worth and what you want out of love.
i felt so deeply every ounce of your heartbreak. i remember the boy i loved was with someone the entire time we were friends. i met him when he was in a relationship and we stopped talking just a few months after they had broken up. they were together for years, and i loved him every single second of every single day. that was over ten years ago now. sometimes i think of him and wonder how i’d feel if i ever saw him again. sometimes i feel like a sixteen year old again when he creeps into my thoughts. the nerves sometimes trickle back too, but he’s married now. i didn’t realize it until after we had stopped talking, but i so desperately wanted to be with him, and i was broken for years afterwards realizing we never would be.
please, do not apologize for writing a novel. this is exactly what i was looking for. thank you for being brave and sharing your story with a complete stranger. i’m just in awe of you as a person and your outlook on love.
i have such a difficult time telling myself that i’ll find the right person and he’ll love me and i won’t have to doubt anything. it’s something i struggle with every single dang day. but your words have moved me. you absolutely will find the right person, and he’ll love you and every single thing about you, and you’ll remember this boy who you loved when you were young and remember why you two never ended up together... because the one you’re meant to be with is getting to you as fast as he possibly can.
UGH THIS IS EVERYTHING. it brought me back to years ago. thank you so very much for sharing. this was just so fucking gorgeous jegnolvadnsf i cannot.
#writing project#YES CAN YOU HEAR ME CRYING???????#emotional OVERLOAD rn omfggggggg#this is gorgeous#you beautiful human you#asks#anon
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To Be So Lonely [Draco Malfoy] 27
Rating: M
Pairings: Draco Malfoy/OC
Chapter warnings: Numb! Suicide Thoughts! Verbal Abuse!
CHAPTER MASTERLIST
MY MASTER-LIST
“And then? What happened?”
“Nothing,” The girl shrugged her shoulders as she sat on the floor of the greenhouse surrounded by growing vines leaning her back on a wooden table on which dozens of colorful pots which held some strange and most peculiar plants. “I told them about it.”
“My father will hear about this!” Daphne paced around the Slytherin Common Room late one night. “He’ll know what to do,” She said referring to the fact that her father was a fearsome prosecutor in the Wizarding World.
Normally Tracey would’ve made a joke of Daphne sounding like Malfoy, but it really wasn’t the time or place. The Quidditch fanatic was sitting with her head ducked in between her hands.
“Don’t. There’s no point,” Nel let out a drained and exhausted sigh. “Ellar Lestrange is practically ‘untouchable.’”
“Why is he?” Tracey suddenly snapped her nostrils flaring as she sat up erect. “Why is he so damn godly and untouchable? Just because he’s a Lestrange?” She spat out the last name with resentful bitterness.
“We have to do something,” Daphne insisted. “If not, he’s going to do the same thing- perhaps, something worse to somebody else,” she stressed the somebody and the importance of holding him accountable for his assault.
Despite Daphne’s insistence and Tracey’s frustration Nel remained silent. She had her knuckles pressed to her lips and she seemed lost in thought, head pessimistically shaking slightly from side to side.
“What can we do?” She gave them both a defeated look. She really had turned ever nut in bolt in her head endlessly trying to think of a way to even things out – even a way to hurt Ellar Lestrange.
“Please,” Tracey scoffed, dark eyes rolling. “Everybody has a weakness. We just have to find out what his is!” She said determined, her expression mimicking her friend who was sitting next to her in the black leather sofa.
“Yes,” Daphne began murmuring. “Yes, yes, yes…” She anxiously paced over, and over which made Elowen dizzy. It seemed like the lightbulb went off when she finally stopped and clapped her hands together. “I’ll write to my cousin in France. Perhaps she knows a thing or two.”
“I’ve also written to Professor Lupin. Maybe he knows a thing or two as well.”
“Lupin?” Daphne wrinkled her nose in distaste at the werewolf. Why? Her knitted brow said. Nel ignored it.
“A werewolf? Teaching?” Nathair interrupted. “Filthy,” He hissed. “I’ve seen them, lost packs hunting together in the Forbidden Forest. Formidable creatures.”
Irritated Nel lightly flicked the tip of the snake’s snout. The adder hissed at her in response flashing its large fangs. She seemed unfazed by this gesture. “Most creatures seem to agree with me.” It spoke to her as it coiled around her neck seeking the warmth of her human body.
“Professor Lupin is a good person. He could be a vampire for all I care.”
“Walking leeches,” The adder added to the bloodsucking creatures.
“What if I was a werewolf?” She mused more to herself with her arms crossed and resting on her knees. “Maybe then I’d have a pack to run around with,” her voice dulled into a pessimistic feeling as the waves of loneliness and missing a family that there never was came. “I also am already formidable.”
“Oh, I know what are,” The serpent whispered in her ear.
Upset, lost in thought Nel dusted the dirt of her clothes and left the greenhouse with the snake snuggly coiled around her neck. Her shoulders were pessimistically slung. She rounded behind the greenhouses and sat behind them on a small grassy hill that overlooked the Whomping Willow and Hagrid’s Hut and pumpkin patch. The Forbidden Forrest bordered in the distance.
“What do you think I am?” She asked solemnly fisting some grass in her hand and ripping it up from the ground. She met the adder’s beady red eyes with a profound sadness. It seemed like the more she dug into her past, the more she questioned and wished to know who her family had been or if she still had one the worse things got and the uglier her past appeared to be. Perhaps… it was best this way. Perhaps there had been a reason for her abandonment at Wool’s Orphanage all of those years ago.
“You’re just a silly little girl who’s afraid of water with too much time to spare. Shouldn’t you be reading? Or doing somebody else’s schoolwork?”
“I hate reading,” She huffed humorously. Maybe Nathair was right, maybe she should use her time wisely and continue working on other’s assignments. After all the more financial cushion she had the better for the future. Inhaling a deep breath, she held it for a moment before ripping a strand of weeds rather aggressively and releasing the blades of grass for the wind to carry. “Maybe you’re right. You’re a snake and have always been a snake and I’m just a stupid girl and I’ll always be a stupid girl.”
Nathair’s loud hiss made her head rapidly tilt to the side.
“Self-depreciation does not suit you,” it advised.
Rising to her feet again Nel rose and brushed the few strands of greenery in her hands.
“Terribly hiding spot if you ask me,” A familiar voice broke the momentary peace. The snake hissed slightly at it and hid its head and tail inside the student’s sweater and underneath her coat.
“It’s that boy that looks like there’s something stuck up his-,” the snake whispered into her ear. She ignored it. “Maybe it’s all that cologne he wears. I can smell him from a mile away.”She ignored Nathair’s comment, no matter how humorous she found it.
“If I was hiding you wouldn’t find me,” She shot back at Draco without missing a beat.
He stood a couple of feet away with his hands sank into the pockets of his dark coat. Hair parted on the side, bangs falling across his forehead. “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said his lips twisting into a frown.
Not a lie.
Her frown turned into a scowl as she marched past him. Or at least attempted to.
“I don’t understand why you’re so damn upset,” He followed his temper quickly flaring in frustration.
Not wanting to engage she walked away from him. After being on the verge on an ongoing identity crisis that seemed to be reoccurring every couple of months, she really wasn’t in the mood to argue.
“Nel, come on,” He implored. He stopped following when he realized she wasn’t going to stop in her step. “You’re not a mudblood.”
Halting she turned and zeroed in on him with a deathly glare.
“I’m going to bite him.”
“Would it matter?” She snapped furiously at his filthy comment. “What?” He looked startled at her sudden rage.
“Would it matter if I was?” She marched up to him. “Would it make any difference to you if I was a muggle or mudblood or whatever disgusting and prejudiced, racist, narrow-minded spat of a word you use to call these people?”
He looked startled at her question. “Of course, it would,” He admitted with narrowed eyes looking at her as if she had just grown a second head. She was questioning an ideology that was deeply rooted inside of him. The Malfoy family, like many others privileged wizard families, had reaped and sowed from with their elitism in the Wizarding World. It was a dangerous ideology that had been planted in his young brain and nurtured to grow into a toxic vine that seemed to both wrap and stretch to ensnare every aspect of his life.
She pursed her lips and slowly nodded her head understanding, “Right.”
“But you’re not,” He insisted arching his eyebrows. “You’re a Parselmouth, you’ve clearly got some wizarding blood in you.”
She opened her mouth ready to protest that the status of her genealogy was absolutely nonexistent.
“I don’t understand why you’re so angry.” He was sincerely flabbergasted.
“I don’t understand why you hate them so much,” She shook her head just as perplexed. “What did they ever do to you?”
She stepped closer still looking at him in disbelief waiting for a logical reasoning to his rooted prejudice.
“Well, the other sort,” He scratched the edge of his nose before running a hand through his bangs as he fidgeted uneasily. “They’re just not the same, are they? They haven’t been brought up our ways.” He reasoned with ease.
“Just like you don’t know theirs,” She retorted sharply. “Draco, I was brought up with muggles. Wizards and muggles are more alike than you think.”
His eyes widened and eyebrows arched at what he took as a serious offense. “Nel, we’re biologically superior to them. You can’t argue with that.”
Okay, true. A muggle really was no watch for a wizard. The average wizard’s lifespan extended to more than 200 years while muggles only lived a fraction of those years. Her silence was her answer.
“Don’t be a traitor to our blood,” he spewed words hailed by pure blood supremacists.
“Please?” He added, his eyebrows knotting in the center of his forehead after hearing her silent response.
“Being with them, muggles,” He spat the word out with disgust. “It shows weakness in one’s character. They’re filthy. Brutal, uneducated in our ways- they use their hands,” He raised his pale hands in front of his chest and lightly waved his fingers “To do things. Like muggle-brawling. It’s barbaric,” He scoffed in disgust.
“Those aren’t your words,” She glared at him. He was sounding more and more like Lucius Malfoy by the minute. He stood in silence looking at her with pleading eyes. As he asked her to agree with the ways he was so sure of.
“I am my father’s son,” was all he said.
The two shared a silence. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t pleasant. It was heavy and lingering and allowed the other to know where they stood in this argument.
“I see we’re not going to reach an agreement,” she said quietly now averting her gaze from his. The scaly texture of the snake hidden underneath her clothes a reminder her she had places to be. Sensing she was about to walk away Draco summoned every ounce of strength that he had, and once again spoke.
“Nel,” He attempted to catch her eyes with his. “There’s something I have to say to you.” One of his hands which had been nervously twirling the emerald ring his mother had given him was now pulling at one of the velvet black buttons of his coat. He tried his best not to fidget as he remembered the conversation, he had had with Theodore Nott what now seemed to be ages ago. He had insisted that he tell her whatever it was that had been keeping him up at night and always had him starring at her lost in thought in Transfigurations class. He tried to ignore his pounding heart.
He had a feeling she wasn’t going to take whatever it was he was about to say well.
“Whatever it is- I don’t want to hear it Malfoy!” She barked eyeing him from head to toe as if he was covered in filth. His vulnerable body language completely going a miss to her.
“Give me a moment,” He demanded entitled reaching for her shoulder boldly stopping her from taking a harsh turn when it happened.
Draco let out a small yell and immediately flinched bringing his hand back to his lip biting down on the fresh venemous bite.
Nathair revealed himself from the inside of Elowen’s clothes and crept out resting like a diamond patterned scarf. The adder’s snout was open in a dangerous snarl as it bore it large fangs in a threatening snarl. Its body was still as it coiled aggressively sensing its master had been threatened.
“Your snake! It bit me!” Draco cried out. Eyes wide at the stinging realization.
‘Disgusting!’ Nathair spat out in a pronounced hiss. ‘And I won’t hesitate to do it again pretty boy!’ Nel looked at the snake in astonishment, sure she was upset but she wasn’t expecting her pet to attack!
“It bit me!” Draco cried out exaggeratedly. “I’m going to die!” He shouted dramatically holding his hand which was beginning to turn pink and swell from the venom of the adder.
Oh boy, this is the same person that had been kicked by a Hippogriff and had the ‘bloody chicken’ almost beheaded.
“Draco,” Nel began slowly and carefully inching closer towards him. “Get that damn thing away from me!” He looked at the snake with fear. The girl paused and picked up the snake from her neck before putting it down near the front of the green house. ‘Never put your fangs in the hands of the ungrateful,’ The snake sneered in disappointment at what it perceived to be a lack of thankfulness. Its master gave it a warning look that could be interpreted as an ‘We’ll talk later.’ The snake slithered away complaining about how disgusting human flesh tasted even tossed a ‘Swine’ somewhere in its rant.
“Okay- you need to calm down,” She approached him with a wary look hands stretched out hoping he would become more appeased.
“Are adders venomous?” He asked with a panicked expression. All the blood seemed to have drained from his face.
For a second she pondered if she should lie or not.
“Yes,” Nel responded carefully hoping not to elicit an explosive reaction from him.
“I’m definitely going to die!” He wailed in desperation. She instantly regretted telling him the truth. Merlin, he was acting like a child. It was only a snake bite. Didn’t he worship serpents? His whole family being in a House with one in its crest, even wearing one engraved on one of his rings?
“Adders are venomous, but their bite is rarely fatal. If anything, it’ll just swell up for a couple of weeks. The venom might cause some damage and discomfort, but certainly nothing fatal,” She explained calmly. Or at least she wished she could’ve completed that short explanation. Instead, halfway through Draco’s eyes seemed to go blank before his body tilted forward as he collapsed, his body going limp.
xxx
Madame Pomfrey walked across the Hospital Room with ease as she retrieved something from her cabinet of special potions and ointments.
Nel sat on a chair with her arms crossed a bored and unconcerned look on her features as she looked down at the pale boy in the hospital bed.
Hearing the sound of chattering enter the Hospital Room, Nel looked up and waved at her two friends that entered the room and immediately rushed towards the bed standing across from their sitting friend.
“What did you do to him?” Daphne asked her eyes wide in awe as she looked at the unconscious Slytherin in the bed.
“I love that you assume this was my doing,” Nel sniggered proud at the formidable reputation she had built for herself in her past 4 years at Hogwarts.
“A snake bit him,” She explained in brevity.
“Is he-?” Tracey asked as she looked down at her school mate with a concerned look. “Not that I’m concerned or anything, but- this means there’s a slot in the Slytherin Quidditch team!” She finished her sentence in an eager and upbeat tone.
“We thought something happened to you!” Daphne whipped up a note that had been sent by owl that in six words read: Come to the Hospital Room. – Nel.
“Be more detailed next time, Stars,” Daphne shook her head irritated from the panic attack she had suffered from rushing to the Hospital Room.
Nel apologized for the worry she must’ve caused the two.
It was then that Madame Pomfrey shooed the two Slytherins from the side as she walked behind them and poured what looked like pumpkin juice and placed a bar of fudge on the stand next to Malfoy’s bed. His hand had already been lathered with ointment and bandaged.
“Mr. Malfoy will be just fine; he can leave as soon as he wakes up. Nasty little shock is all,” Pomfrey explained before once again retreating.
Both Tracey and Daphne looked at the back of the Healer as she retreated and back to their friend.
“He fainted?” Tracey failed to hide her laughter. “He actually fainted?” She held her stomach as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard. Even Daphne couldn’t stop her giggling.
“Not before throwing a fantastic tantrum,” Nel added joining them in their laugh.
“How did that even happen?” Daphne asked.
Nel shrugged. “Accidents happen in the greenhouse all the time,” she said dismissively really not wanting to explain she had been venting to a snake.
“And you two were there – together?” Daphne’s eyebrows arched so high up they almost vanished into her hair line. Eyes wide. Tracey who looked like she hadn’t been thinking about the scenario now looked intrigued by the blonde’s question.
Nel felt like she was on the hot seat in the middle of an interrogation she really didn’t feel like answering.
“Malfoy,” She derided with an exaggerated overemphasis. “You know how he is,” She let out an irritated sigh. “Just wanted to torture me.”
“What was he doing in the greenhouse?” Daphne pressed heavily sensing there was a missing piece to this story.
“Looking for me,” Nel retorted sharply and much more rapidly than she intended. She bit her tongue rapidly switching topics before she could ask any more questions. “Anyway- I wanted to read to you two the letter I got from Professor Lupin.” She said digging a hand into her coat’s pockets and whipping up a wrinkled and crumbled letter.
“Right here?” Tracey asked wondering why she would read the letter to the two of them in the middle of the Hospital Room. Her dark eyes looked down at the sleeping boy.
“He’s passed out.”
“You know, you don’t have to wait for him to wake up, right?” Daphne asked her eyes squinting as the edges with heavy suspicion. She was observing her friend closely waiting for her skin to flush or for her to stumble on her words and reveal a glimpse of sincere emotion.
“I feel obligated,” Nel responded cooly leaning back on her chair with her arms crossed. She pretended the hot flash that she felt behind her neck wasn’t really there.
“Sure,” Daphne responded with a satisfied smirk. Her suspicions had been right all along. Theodore had also slipped to her about a little talk he had had with Draco only a few weeks ago.
Tracey appeared to be clueless to all this.
“Anyhow-“ Saintday cleared her throat and she brought the parchment paper Lupin had written to her eye level. She skimmed over most and simply read over the relevant parts of it.
‘Ellar Lestrange comes from an ancient wizarding family of pureblood fanatics. Many practice the Dark Arts and have been known to be vocal and the most loyal supporters of You-Know-Who. His father Rabastan has been in Azkaban for the violent torturing of two Aurors. His mother Cloelia, I believe it is rumored feigned being a victim of domestic abuse as a way of being coaxed into following You-Know-Who.’
Nothing they didn’t already know.
“Is that true?” Tracey asked sounding concerned.
“If she lied that’s really messed up!” Daphne said in awe. “We should always believe victims but this-“ She hesitated to finish her sentence and instead decided to remain silent.
Nel thought about all of the mental and physical abuse she had endured when living under Cloelia’s roof. She liked to think that a victim would never do something so monstrous to another person, much less a child. However, maybe she was more than familiar with torture methods having picked them up from her husband.
Still, with the Lestrange’s one never knew.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him,” Nel responded in a dull tone, her expression pained as she continued to read. The possibility of Cloelia being a victim of a life of domestic abuse no matter how far-fetched was possible.
“Like I said- they were known to be some of You-Know-Who’s most loyal followers. I can’t help but get an ill feeling when I think about the strange reason, they must’ve had to adopt you. I wish I-“ Nel stammered and soon lost her voice.
Again, nothing they didn’t already know.
Tracey and Daphne asked her to continue. When she didn’t and they noticed her glassy eyes, they became concerned. She kept the next part to herself.
‘I wish I could do more for you Nel. I would be proud to be your guardian, but due to my condition I’m afraid it is not safe and would make the adoption process impossible in the eyes of any court.’
“Sorry,” The girl mumbled weakly as she wiped the inside of her eye with her thumb fighting back the tears that had threatened to spill.
The thought of having an adequate guardian. Somebody as kind as Professor Lupin. Someone that didn’t scream, yell, lock you in a room, or hurt you – It seemed like such a far away ideal. A dream the girl had long accepted would never become a reality.
“I would advise you to do everything in your power not to return to them this holiday.”
She lowered the parchment down to her lap and sucked the inside of her lip in deep in thought. The majority of information was useless. If anything, it only confirmed what the three already knew, that the Lestranges were in fact very dangerous people.
“So, what are you going to do then?” Tracey asked. “You could come home with me for the holiday if you’d like,” She offered kindly willing to provide a sanctuary to her best friend. Nel’s face lit up. That would be ideal! The two would have the best time going to Quidditch matches and staying up late talking about the best and worst flavor of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Jellybean or watch Muggle films
“Really?” She answered loudly grinning broadly.
“Wait-“ Daphne interrupted the moment the two were sharing. She also didn’t offer her home. Knowing full well what would happen to her and her guest if she even dared bring home somebody whose surname wasn’t listed in the Sacred Twenty-Eight. “That doesn’t tell us anything about Ellar. Nothing we didn’t already know,” She said returning to the focus of the conversation.
“I heard back from my cousin in France,” she began. “She used a very colorful language to describe Ellar. Said he’s a – what was the word she used? ‘Manipulative snake,’ that he can be downright foul. Apparently, he event went a far as assaulting a muggle-born witch that worked in the same Department. It got so bad she eventually quit.”
“Like- sexual harassment?” Tracey squinted.
“Does it make a difference?” Daphne arched an eyebrow. “Not that my cousin ever did anything to stop it-“ She admitted regretfully. “But this is exactly what I am trying to say!” Daphne slapped her hand on her thigh as she continued to speak her tone becoming louder and more passionate.
“You’re clearly not the first girl he’s done something like this to – and you’re obviously not the last. Who knows how many more survivors there are-“ Greengrass didn’t realize the shift in emotion in her friend’s whose face twisted into a confused expression? “Survivors?” She coughed with disdain.
“-If he did this to you, and to this girl, he’s going to do it to someone else!” She finished with a concerned look. “We have to do something about this.”
“What do you recon we do?”
“I also heard back from my father,” She began to explain. “He said this is very serious. However, he says conviction cases for these types of crimes are very low. The success rate of a conviction in England is 5.7%.”
“5.7?!” Tracey’s mouth went a little slack.
“And that’s coming from an even smaller percentage of victims who actually speak up.” Again, Nel lightly flinched at the word ‘victims’ it wasn’t something she would ever wear as a label. If anything, it was something she saw as a branding to her identity. She wouldn’t allow Ellar, Wool or whoever to have that type of power in her life.
Daphne took in a deep breath before continuing. “He also said it’s going to be even harder to prosecute considering we have no physical evidence including your memories which most Wizarding courts consider to be unreliable, and even if we did - The Lestranges have too much power in the judicial system.”
“Bunch of crooks,” Tracey shook her head disappointed biting down on her thumb as she appeared to be deep in thought.
“You have to do something about this Nel,” Daphne insisted. Her friend looked at her with a pure look of negation. “As much as we hate him, you have to tell the Headmaster.” She looked between the two girls.
“Tell Dumbledore?” Eyes were wide in disbelief at what the Slytherin had just suggested.
“I can already tell you what would happen if Dumbledore knew,” Tracey leaned back on her chair. “Absolutely nothing,” She said pessimistically. “We’re Slytherin. He hates us.”
Daphne’s shoulder’s slumped in defeat.
Going to Dumbledore had also been Nel’s first instinct. Something Snape had strongly advised against. His reasons unknown as the old bat kept his agenda so cleverly hidden. Regardless, there had to be a valid reason. Either Snape knew no good would come from it or he was protecting Ellar Lestrange. There was no in between and Elowen wanted to find out which it was.
“Trace is right,” Nel admitted sadly. “He was already expelled from Hogwarts once. What are they going to do him? Expel him from Beauxbatons?” It was a hard pill to swallow but people like Ellar Lestrange – privileged entitled, monsters – more than often got away with only a slap on the wrist.
“The least he can do is protect you,” Daphne continued pressing.
“I’m not telling Dumbledore. Why are you being so pushy?” Nel scowled bothered on how much her friend had been insisting she tell the truth to Dumbledore. Daphne looked greatly frustrated.
“This is such bullshit!” The Parselmouth angrily kicked the hospital bed making the boy in it let out a deep brown and the sudden disturbance. She seemed to ignore this.
“You need to do it Nel,” Daphne again insisted, this time her tone stern. “You’re a victim.”
“I am not a victim,” The other snarled in denial. “I refuse to allow this, or any other sad incident define my life!” The girl said terribly upset speaking through gritted teeth. “Do you know what would happen if I told on every single person that’s ever-“ She brought herself to a halt before emotionally shutting down. Both Daphne and Tracey saw the distant look in her dark eyes. “This is my battle to fight.”
“We’re here to help you. You don’t have to do it alone,” Tracey said gently. The tension increasingly growing between the two parties.
“Alone. This is my battle to fight alone,” She corrected defensively isolating and building high emotional walls around herself. Her head hurting and suddenly feeling hot as an incoming migraine began to set in.
Tracey looked wounded. Daphne’s nostrils were flaring. “I can see we’re not going to agree,” She retorted flatly.
“I guess not,” was the other’s answer, her tone made it seem as if her mind was many miles away in some distant faraway place.
Daphne stood up and angrily walked away without looking back. Tracey called after her. Her eyes darting between her blonde and brunette friend. With one last woeful look towards her friend, with a tucked tail she followed after the blonde.
Sitting alone in the Hospital Room the orphan pinched the bridge of her nose in great frustration and lowered her body to bury her head on her knees. If only life were as easy as Daphne made it seem. If she told on Ellar odds were, he would only receive a slap on the hand and he and his terrible mother would come after her with a blind wrath. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She was betting this was what Snape was afraid would happen.
She fought back the tears that were threatening to spill and sucked in an exhausting breath as she tried to think of nothing.
“You can’t tell Dumbledore,” A throaty voice interrupted. She didn’t move an inch but heard Draco’s sheets moving as his body shifted positions. “It’ll only make things worse. My father always says he was the worst thing that ever happened to this place.”
She could hear him drinking the juice that Madame Pomfrey had left out for him.
“You heard everything?” She asked meekly.
“You wanted me to. If not, you would’ve left,” He rationalized.
“Touché,” She said sitting up using both of her hands to comb all of her hair and bangs away from her swollen face. Not wanting to think about Ellar, the drowning or her awful fight with her friends she looked at him with a lopsided grin and instead decided to bully him.
“Is it true you fainted? Like- actually fainted?” She joked mocking him just like he had done to Harry the year before.
However, he didn’t laugh.
“You sent your pet after me,” He ignored her jab and downed the rest of his juice.
“If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it myself,” She answered her voice returning to an unfriendly tone.
“Right,” He agreed. Afterall, she wasn’t the type to shy about this kind of thing. Considering he wasn’t freaking out about the snake bite Nel assumed he had also overheard everything that Madame Pomfrey had said about his condition and the status of his health.
“That git,” The words rolled out of his lips in a dangerously angry voice. She looked at him confused and noticed how his hands were tightly clenched into balling fists. “I’ll make him pay. I promise.”
She knew that if Draco was anything he was determined. She had no question he meant what he had just said. Yet she couldn’t help but be confused by his words.
“You don’t have to do that,” She squinted perplexed. “Not for me. I can take care of myself,” She said lowering her head, her voice dropping to a whisper as her hair once again came down hiding her emotion. After all this was her own fight, one she wanted to win or lose alone.
She sat with her head lowered and her shoulders tensed when she felt a soft hand gently press against her forehead. Keeping her gaze lowered, she allowed him to push her brown hair out of her face and comb it over her forehead.
He let out a small chuckle. Nel wasn’t sure whether it was at the strange expression she must’ve been wearing or at the thought of whatever evil plan he was crafting to hurt Ellar. “I’ll enjoy this,” He said maliciously.
Something about the way he said it embarrassingly made her heart skip a beat. Draco was now sitting up still wearing his weekend clothing. He had brought his uninjured hand to his chin and was twirling one of his rings with fascination as he looked deep in thought. The slightest of growing smirks on his face as he concocted the fatal details of his vengeful plan.
“Wait-“ She paused snapping out of his charming behavior. “Let me get this straight. You can do this for me- but you can’t learn to accept muggles as your equal?”
“Muggles are dangerous,” he began to explain lowering his hand and relaxing in his bed. Hadn’t he just said wizards were superior? “I’m not contradicting myself. What I mean to say is- haven’t you paid attention in History of Magic?”
Obviously not. Merlin’s beard it was the most awful class in all of Hogwarts with Binns mindlessly lecturing which seemed to go on for hours and hours.
“Muggles used to persecute our kind, burn us at the stake, drown and torture us.” Nel visibly recoiled at the mentioning of the word drowning. “They singlehandedly almost destroyed our kind and forced our world into hiding. It shouldn’t be like that.”
She pondered on his words for a moment. “You have a point,” She finally agreed with him. “But I know muggles. They are more scared of us than us then we are of them. They fear what they can’t understand. I don’t blame them for-“
“For what? For massacring hundreds of our kind!” She wasn’t expecting him to raise his voice.
“How many of them have we killed?” She shot back just as loudly. “Hundreds? Thousands? How many did You-Know-Who kill? Or your father?” She spat coldly.
Ouch.
He grew silent at the mentioning of his father’s illicit activities as a Death Eater. His icy eyes were hard when he looked at her. For once Malfoy didn’t have a snarky comeback or any colorful words to throw at her.
“Don’t. Bring my father into this,” He sneered out in drawled out sentences.
“He’s cruel and vile and I will be bringing him into this as long as he continues to poison your mind. Go out there into the real world and once you’ve seen what it’s like I’ll let you make up your mind about it. Because you know what-“ She hadn’t meant for it to happen but her eyes began to water, her voice cracked at the emotional exhaustion of the day something he had not been anticipating happening. “As of right now,” She broke, trying her best to hold it in together, to not allow the stinging tears from spilling. “I have met many, many more cruel wizards in this side of the world than in the other and that’s from someone that was raised by Cordelia Wool,” She let out a doleful weak laugh.
“Who’s Cordelia Wool?” Malfoy asked after a moment as he racked his brain for any instance in which she might’ve mentioned it. He remembered her saying Wool’s more than once. Maybe this is what she meant.
One hot tear followed by another which meant it was time to go into hiding being the recluse she was. “Forget it,” She said rising from her chair wiping her tears and walking away without bidding him goodbye or good riddance.
Draco tossed his head back and looked at the ceiling feeling a great frustration. Why was it that something always come in between them and royally fucked things up? Perhaps it was better to leave things the way they were, spare her the pain as Theodore had once suggested.
However, looking up she was horrified to see Professor McGonagall standing in the entrance of the Hospital Room. The look in her eyes severe, lips drawn into a thin line. It could only mean one thing.
Fuck.
“Ms. Saintday, the Headmaster has requested to see you.”
Xxx
Dumbledore’s office was warm and welcoming like it always was. McGonagall escorted Elowen into the office keeping a close mistrustful eye on the student.
Walking in she crossed paths with Daphne Greengrass whose gaze was hard and did not meet her friend’s as she brushed past her on the way out.
Fucking Daphne.
Nel felt the pits of her stomach bubbling with rage. Looking at her. Tracey following behind with an apologetic look and then back to Professor Snape and Professor Dumbledore who gravely stood before a fireplace both wearing solemn expressions on their faces. It was obvious Daphne had croaked.
Elowen was livid. How dare she. This was her story to tell, NOT HERS.
Nel was the affected one, NOT golden haired, precious, privileged, beautiful, Daphne Greengrass. A deep scowl formed in her features as she shot a chilling glare to the girl’s retreating back.
“Ms. Saintday,” The Headmaster acknowledged her momentarily seizing her attention. “It’s been a while since our last visit,” He said smiling at her softly. The man stood tall as he usually did, wearing his half-moon glasses holding both hands resting on his lap.
Snape looked at her with a condescending look.
Nel remained silent at the greeting ignoring it.
“Ms. Greengrass and Ms. Davis have just come to me with a most serious concern,” Dumbledore began. “Perhaps accusation is a better word of choice.”
Her mouth felt dry. McGonagall was still standing behind her. Snape’s bottomless eyes carefully fixed on her. Dumbledore looked as if he was attempting to pry into her mind with his twinkling blue eyes. “Before any actions are taken, we wanted to hear the story from your own account as it happened.” He stretched out a hand signaling for her to take a seat before the fireplace. She did no such thing and remained standing looking at the two with hard eyes.
The silence was deafening with the exception of Fawkes combing over his feathers and the fire softly cracking in the background. She could also feel the eyes of the many former Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts’ looking down at her in judgment.
She could feel him now physically attempting to pry into her mind. She emptied her head out of all thoughts and the vision of a safe shut tightly and the dial spun hiding away her thoughts and secrets.
“Your master has taught you well Elowen,” Dumbledore commented at her growth in occlumency. Wait- how did she know that word?
Occlumency, the art of magically closing one’s mind against Legilimency, or mind readers. She didn’t know how, but somehow, she knew what the word meant.
Again, she did not say a single word. His eyes moved over to Professor Snape who uncrossed his arms and from inside one of his sleeves pulled out a small vial containing no color and bubbling slightly. “Know what this is?” He drawled out; his voice emotionless.
“Bubble bath soap?” She retorted with dripping sarcasm.
Snape did not seem amused.
“Veritaserum,” He responded. “Three drops of this and You-Know-Who himself would spill his darkest secrets.” She looked at him incredulously. Certainly, they weren’t hoping to use it on her. “The use of this on a student is regrettably forbidden. However, seeing as Mr. Lestrange’s involvement in this anecdote cannot be ignored and since he is no longer part of this institution my hand might just slip on his pumpkin juice and we might have to hear his version of the events.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” She lied flawlessly as if her life depended on it maybe it did.
Snape exchanged a look with Dumbledore.
“Elowen, Ms. Greengrass claimed that Ellar Lestrange lured you into the docks some time ago. There he not only threatened you, but he also made an attempt on your life mocking and attempting to drown you in the Black Lake. Is this true?” Dumbledore leaned forward as if attempting to pull the truth out from her.
“It’s a lie.” She answered flatly.
“Elowen,” He pressed again this time taking slow strides around her almost like a shark rounding its prey. His eyes looking for any sign of betrayal. “This is a safe space. This institution does not tolerate the harassment of others. Much less if it endangers the life of one of our students.”
‘Rich coming from the same people that allowed Slytherin House and others to bully me for the majority of my time in this institution,’ she thought with bitter resentment.
“Ellar Lestrange is my adoptive brother. Why would he hurt me?” She probed in her best reasonable logic. “I’m just as aware of his reputation, sir, but tell me- this being true, what reason would I have to protect him?”
Dumbledore nodded his head slowly. “Ms. Saintday, if you confide in us. I can assure you that no harm will come to you. The steps that would follow would be taking Mr. Lestrange’s witness, then contacting his parents, and then-“ She had to interrupt. “And then what? He’d be expelled from Beuxbaton and transfer to Durmstrang? Just like he did from here, right?” She responded with snark.
Dumbledore allowed her to continue.
“I think the real question here is why Ms. Greengrass and Ms. Davis would make up such an elaborate lie.”
Again, silence as the three professors exchanged knowing looks.
“Saintday has a point,” Snape suddenly broke the silence. She tried her best not to look at the Professor with surprise. So, he was siding with her. She was holding up her end of the bargain and keeping her mouth shut to what had happened. Her suspicions were correct. If anything, Ellar would only receive a slap to the wrist, get away with it and then she’d have to deal with Cloelia’s blind wrath. To her it seemed like they were in the same page.
“I assure you I keep a close eye on my House Headmaster. Specially on Saintday who seems to have the keen ability to surround herself with... trouble. I can assure we would not be standing here having this hopeless discussion, if I had caught wind of this rumor before.”
Dumbledore stopped now holding his hands behind his back as he gazed at the fire deep in thought as he marinated on the Potion Master’s words.
“For as much as you persuade Ms. Saintday, I don’t believe you,” He looked back at her with a mistrusting gaze.
“But you believe Professor Snape, sir,” Nel shot back her body language mirroring the Headmasters.
Behind her McGonagall looked at the interaction with concern.
Snape gave Dumbledore a look that seemed to say this conversation was over. After all, they had no arguments if they didn’t have the main witness admitting to the events. However, unknowingly to the student all of this had been pre-rehearsed and already discussed amongst the two men.
“Very well,” It seemed like Dumbledore had given up. “But do tell me Elowen, and I hope you are truthful. How do you fancy your new guardian Ms. Cloelia? Real nit-picky student from what I recall.”
It was lie, after lie, after lie. Nel had never lied so much to a person before. She was surprised at how easily the lies slipped from her mouth. She wasn’t aware that Dumbledore didn’t seem to believe a single word that came out of her mouth and if she did, she didn’t care. Instead, the Headmaster was looking at her moving mouth and edging grin with a fearful eye. It wasn’t the first time he was witness to it, but the shadow of a lonely orphan boy from a familiar background who also possessed the affinity to speak to snakes and the ability to flawlessly lie was instead standing before him.
His assumptions, as always had been correct. Despite Severus best efforts to protect her. Nel Saintday was beyond salvation. The evil within her louder and bolder than ever. It was then that Dumbledore decided that “The Girl Who Died” would have to return and die at the hand of her creator.
Professor Snape walked Nel down the stairs of Dumbledore’s office and lead her down to the dungeons and to his office. His hand in the form of a C was angrily pressing on the nape of her neck as he quickly ushered her inside of his office.
“Let go off me!” She slapped his hand away and looked at him with a furious expression. “I am not a child anymore!” She heaved drained from the restless day she had had.
“You insolent, stupid, dunder-head, foolish, girl!” He exclaimed and whipped his wand behind him to lock the door of his private office. This spew of insults and verbal abuse coming from the Professor was sadly not unfamiliar to her. She wasn’t expecting him to be so upset.
He was acting as if she had signed someone’s death sentence.
“Shut mouths catch no flies,” He raised his want in offensive. Triggered she did the same not blinking afraid the professor might strike her. After all, it had never stopped anyone before. Putting on a brave face, she attempted not to show the fear she felt or how her knees were trembling as she expected to be gravely wounded. There was no way she’d be able to take on a Hogwarts Professor, much less somebody as ruthless as Snape.
“Foolish girl. You had to open your damn mouth and babble to Greengrass, Davis and Merlin know who else.”
“What Lestrange did was fucked up and you know it,” She spat vulgarly not minding she was speaking to an adult. Neither lowering her trembling hand or stance. Jaw clenched tightly as she hoped her focus would be of an advantage to her. Snape’s body mirrored her own.
Just looking at her made an emotional wound on his chest soar with painful heat and a burning guilt. Dumbledore felt Elowen was beyond reason. That her nature had long ago sealed her fate. That, that awful curse that branded her face had also sealed this same destiny.
But he liked to believe otherwise. He liked to believe she could be good. That she had a choice.
There was no use in beating around the bush when it came to discussing why it was best not to take any action in punishing Ellar Lestrange with the juridical system involved. Both saw the bigger picture and were in the same place. Snape wasn’t protecting Ellar, he was protecting her, but why?
“He can’t kill you,” He said directly.
“Why?” Her sharp tongue followed suit.
“You serve a very specific purpose for the Dark Lord and have been placed under the custody of the Lestranges because of it.”
“Right,” she answered with a deep canyon forming in between her brows and a tightly clenched jaw. “That I gathered. A Parselmouth orphan taken into the home of one of Voldemort’s most loyal followers I could hardly expect it to be charitable.”
“Good, you’re catching on. Perhaps you have matured since last time we met.”
She ignored this. Whatever he meant by saying last time. This conversation. This scenario it almost felt like it had happened before as if they had already had this conversation, but something had gone awry wrong. It was almost like dejavu.
“You’ve been teaching me occlumency, not how to control my emotions or whatever bullshit that was.”
Snape remained silent. It was true.
“Why?”
“You will find that just like today the ability to hide one’s thoughts is a useful one and I haven’t the slightest doubt that others, witches and wizards more dangerous than the Headmaster might even rely on sadistic methods of torture to pry the truth from your big mouth.”
“Who else knows about the incident with Ellar Lestrange?” He questioned.
“No one,” She lied without hesitation. Snape whipped his wand, and a red spark stung her arm like a pinch, she winced at the sensation. “Dare you use my own spells against me.”
“Draco Malfoy,” She spat truthfully with a look of concern. “He won’t open his mouth.
“I trust he won’t,” Snape added swiftly knowing well that Draco Malfoy had more on the line than Elowen did. Being directly related to the Lestranges he wouldn’t raise any hell towards them. Nel decided to keep what Draco had promised her to herself. Snape slowly lowered his wand and guard. Elowen didn’t. “He’s got more bidding on the line than you do if he spreads your precious little secret.”
She bit her tongue standing angry and frustrated. “Why does he want me? What does he want from me? What could I possibly give him? I have nothing. NOTHING! I am nobody,” She heaved as her emotions came crashing like waves and spilled like tears. Like broken risks, recordings of Wool telling her she was worthless, locking her in the Chokey, Lucy going missing. Not having a parent, a name, a single galleon owed to her worthless life. This life that Elowen had been given… She didn’t want it. It was numbing moments like this that made her feel like it wasn’t worth living.
“Same reason he wants Potter,” Snape cleverly lied to hide the Dark Lord’s true intentions and motives.
“To kill me,” Nel nodded and lowered her wand slowly as the horrible realization sank in. The only reason Ellar hadn’t killed her that one night or Cordelia had all summer long was because they were saving her like a pig for slaughter. She thought about the way most of the Purebloods looked at her, the way Mr. Malfoy always so strangely looked and fixated on her. He obviously knew this – How many more people knew? Did Draco know?
“He need not bother, at this point I’ll do him the favor myself and give up on this miserable existence.” She wasn’t expecting her wand to fly out of her hand or for Snape to look at her with such fury, in his eyes was reflected a broken look. Again, Snape was haunted by the dark flashback of the night Elowen came to be during that obscure evening all those years ago. The guilt of the atrocious things he had done still rocked him to his core.
“I do not take threats such as suicide lightly Saintday,” He warned her. “I still expect many things from you, cowardice, is not one of them,” he glowered with cold contempt.
Snape again pointed his wand at her and Nel flinched expecting him to wound her instead a chair behind her crashed into the back of her legs forcing her to sit down. Emotionally defeated she complied and sat, wiping away the numb tears that slid down her emotionless face. She now felt a burdening guilt at the words that had just left her mouth. Where had that venomous thought come from? The terrifying thought made her body violently shake as the tears continued to spill.
“I will not apologize for my tone or harsh words towards you,” Snape began harshly now speaking in a collected and calmer voice. Hands behind his back as he stood tall looking down at his student. “Life is hard. We learn and we grow and I’m afraid I will not allow you to have a choice in this or leave us behind to pick up the broken pieces of your short, sad and pitiable life,” He soothed in his own twisted way. Words which didn’t alleviate her pain or made her feel any better about the horrible thought she had just had.
“It is her purpose,” Dumbledore said coldly with much indifference. “As I’ve told you before, it does not matter where Elowen Saintday resides, the Dark Lord will find her. How many more lives must be lost?”
Snape swallowed hard displaying the slightest glimpse of emotion. Be it his guilt, he always felt a sense of responsibility to protect the creature sitting before him. He had brought her to this world and because of that this monster was his responsibility. Burden or not.
His alcoholic muggle father had once walked out on his mother and him, be of relationship to this child or not, would he be able to do the same?
Was this something he had inherited from his bastardic nature?
No, that wouldn’t be him. He wasn’t his father. With a deep sigh he approached her and stood before her. She sat deep in thought, miserable, friendless having pushed everyone who cared about her away. She was so lost in thought she didn’t hear the Professor clearly saying her name until he knelt on one knee meeting her eye level.
How many times had he had the poor girl crying her eyes out to him? How many times had he failed in his ways to show her the smallest glimpse of humanity?
“Nel,” She stopped sitting with a surprised look on her swollen, red face. She couldn’t remember if he had ever addressed her by the name, she considered to be her own. “Look at me,” his voice was softer than his typical nasal tone. She obeyed, nastily sniffing and wiping the snot that was coming down her nose.
Seeking the bits of humanity that were left in him Severus chose to look inside his heart. What would Lily say? What wisdom would she provide to the broken girl sitting in the Potion Master’s office chair.
“I understand,” He spoke in brevity. He chooses not to divulge any details about his personal life. “Perhaps I was out of line,” He admitted regretfully. “I’m aware that I can be rather harsh, but I want you to understand it comes from…” He paused for a moment masterfully and very carefully picking the words he would say next. He’d never vocally admit to it coming from a place of care.
“I want you to be strong. Life isn’t easy. We both know yours hasn’t and it is not going to get any easier.”
She didn’t respond to his unfamiliarly kind words.
“Just know,” He said placing his large hand on her upper arm in a familiar way hoping to comfort her. His brown eyes zeroed in on her dark ones and maybe from up this close Snape looked human and not like a giant sulking bat. He smelt of salts and other potions ingredients. Even the middle of his forehead was sunken in genuine concern.
It took great will power to make the following promise. A promise he intended on keeping.
“I will do everything in my power to protect you.”:
Unsure of what came over her the girl threw her arms around the professor and held him tightly. He held the child back.
#Draco Malfoy#Draco#dracomalfoy#dracomalfoy ff#draco malfoy fanfiction#Draco Malfoy x oc#Draco Malfoy FF#Draco Malfoy ff#x oc#slithering oc#Slytherin oc#draco x reader#y/n#wattpad#fanfiction#hp fanfiction#Harry Potter#harry potter oc#harry potter fanfiction#harry potter fanfic#ff#Adam driver#snape#Severus snape#tom felton#dracotok
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Thoughts on “Terror of the Arctic” (2005), aka, “I listened to the Doctor Who audio drama episodes about the lost Franklin Expedition so that you don’t have to!”
Alright terror-friends, this was not how I expected to spend my day, but I have now listened to all eight episodes of the 2005 Doctor Who Audio Drama series “Terror of the Arctic,” featuring all of the ~ familiar ~ icy ~ boys ~ meeting the infamous Doctor.
With arguably more horrifying sexist/racist content than the 2007 Simmons novel, this audio drama actually predicted a lot of the tropes that Simmons popularized, including ship-board conflicts that escalate to stabbings, the appearance of supernatural creatures from Inuit oral traditions, and even a squick-y romance between Crozier and a much younger Inuit woman.
To clarify, I do not recommend you listen to these episodes. They’re a hot mess, and a really jarring departure from the beauty of The Terror (2018).
HOWEVER I highly recommend you look below the cut for episode-by-episode notes about the first Franklin Expedition adaptation that has well and truly driven me up the wall. So, welcome to the world of “Terror of the Arctic” (2005), featuring:
Crozier, (pronounced "Crow-zee-eyy,”) a polite door-mat of a captain with an agonizing lack of snark and minimal personality beyond “the only white man who can magically fix racism.”
Fitzjames the “proper English officer” who has every prejudice you can imagine – and a couple more you can’t.
Le Vesconte, the irrepressible lad with an inexplicable American accent and extreme boy-scout-gone-crazy energy.
Sgt. Tozer, who has a bad habit of punching people in the face even though his superior officers haven’t yet told him he’s allowed to do so.
Also featuring: Cybernetic Tuunbaq aliens! Complete breakdown of shipboard protocol! Expected amounts of cannibalism! And more! (spoilers, obviously)
Episode 1
– We start with a mandatory brief appearance from the Doctor and his companion Christine. I don’t (initially) hate this iteration of the Doctor – he’s very paternalistic and old-fashioned, but at least the voice actor’s competent. Christine’s voice, tragically, is high-pitched beyond all reason and laced with a variety of odd dialectical features. Some quick research reveals she’s supposed to be a 15 year old from medieval England. She sounds neither like a teenager nor a medieval person. From the very beginning, her character seems very infantilized, and plays into a lot of the Born Sexy Yesterday tropes, even if she and the Doctor aren’t a thing.
– Next, we have Sir John Franklin giving the “we’ve been stuck in the ice for nine months, here’s what you missed” sum-up.
– Sir John’s voice is gravelly 👏 as 👏 fuck; also, I don’t think that the phrase “to sugar-coat it” was a common 1840s expression? Correct me if I’m wrong history folks.
– Crozier shows up to give his “we should start walking out now” speech, minus any passion or conviction whatsoever; he bends immediately to Franklin’s whims. Crozier’s voice is quite high-pitched, and Sir John pronounces his name “Crow-zee-eyy.” (Update: everyone pronounces it this way!!! Uhmmm!) Though I struggle to judge accents, Crozier’s Irish accent sounds... leprechaun-ish. It’s not Jared Harris by a long mile.
– Not gonna lie, I kind of love how much Fitzjames sounds like a posh bastard. He immediately gets into a one-sided shouting match with Crozier and has to be reprimanded by Franklin.
– Lieutenant Irving appears on the scene; I don’t know what Irving’s accent is, but it sure is something.
– All of the officers seem to currently be on the same ship for some reason but I don’t know why. We’ve met Sir John, Crozier, Fitzy, and Irving, and Gore’s been mentioned, as have doctors Peddie and Stanley. And they’re all in the same boat. Guess we’re just ignoring Terror for now?
– Franklin begins narrating as he writes in the log-book: “11th June, 1847.” Oh BOY guess what day it is!!
– RIP Franklin (surprise, surprise). We have no real idea yet how this has happened.
– Fitzjames, talking to Sir John’s mysterious corpse: “Captain, what could have done this to you?”
– Fitzjames: “We have a killer loose on this ship” (Fitz gets ALL the best lines, apparently. Do they make sense? No. Are they hilarious? Yes.)
– Irving is shockingly nonchalant when the Doctor and Christine appear from nowhere out on the ice. Why is Irving so chill when he thinks that these two people are the lone survivors of a DIFFERENT failed expedition?
– Fitz apparently has refused to let Crozier start the walk-out after Franklin died. (Um, that’s not how the chain of command works?)
– We learn that Beechey-boy Braine apparently died of sudden-onset-scurvy. What is sudden-onset-scurvy, you ask? We do not yet know.
– Irving, happily describing their recent course of action: “...Ignoring the advice of our ships’ ice masters...” Oh god Irving don’t sound so happy about that. Blanky’s going to take an ice-axe to your head. (Tragically, Blanky does not appear in this show.)
– Lieutenant Gore has ALSO died of sudden-onset-scurvy. RIP Graham Gore.
– Is the Doctor going to focus on the existence of sudden-onset-scurvy? No, we’re gonna hyperfixate on the high officers-to-crew death rate! And he’s going to infodump about officers’ privileges TO Irving, an officer, and muse about how odd it is that more officers than crew are dying when the officers get all the best food!
– Fitz, the “proper English officer” apparently has managed to get about half the men to refuse to follow the orders of their expedition commander, because he happens to be Irish. Babe, this is a really bad look!
– Irving, our good Christian Irving, just swore “By Jove” in a weirdly sexy voice.
– Tozer has Extreme Deep Voice.
– Irving: “There’s something odd about them I just don’t trust.” Why on earth wouldn’t you trust two strangers who wandered up to you on the ice and asked if you were “human,” John Irving? What’s “odd” about that?
– The Doctor only remembers that he does actually know the events of the Franklin expedition after he reads the entire Victory Point Note.
– Irving has suddenly decided to threaten to shoot the Doctor and his companion. Irving promptly gets attacked.
* jarring transition to triumphant Doctor Who music *
Episode 2
– The ~mysterious~ attack on Irving has left weird wounds on Irving’s neck. I’m calling it, Ice Vampires!
– We have an Edward Little appearance! His voice is so sweet and gentle! And then... “I’ll have Sergeant Tozer shoot you both where you stand!” Okay, maybe not... (Update: Little is, in fact, very awful to several people. As we will see, all of the lieutenants and marines swing between weirdly nonchalant dudes and trigger-happy maniacs.)
– Tozer just punched the Doctor’s lights out, unprompted.
– Crozier: “Good old John Peddie... he’s like a brother to me.” Well THAT’S not a friendship I expected.
– So Dr. Peddie has brought a young Inuit woman in to Crozier’s cabin to have a “lovely chat.” Awkward book!Crozier/Silna energies. The woman’s name is Liak. She speaks with a vaguely Spanish and/or Italian accent.
– Liak: “I have been with my tribe. They would not allow me to come back to see you.” / Crozier: “Why? It’s not because of Fitzjames is it?”
– (It’s not because of Fitzjames. It’s because of evil spirits, obviously.)
– The Doctor, once they get back to the ships, explaining to the higher officers what’s happened: “Mr. Tozer got all excited and could no longer restrain his Neanderthal-like impulse to start clubbing things.” Boy this by show is NOT for Tozer fans. (Note: Tozer is standing right there? In the room? When the Doctor says this?)
– The Doctor just dropped an f-bomb?????????? And not as an expression of shock, but a hard-core sexual use of the f-bomb. Literally, he said “you can let Tozer fuck me again” – did I mishear this????????????
– Irving’s dying words: “I was attacked by a large silver creature with claws!” Wait did Dan Simmons rip off a fan-made 2005 Doctor Who Audio Drama?
– RIP Irving, first confirmed victim of “Tuunbaq the First.”
– Fitzjames is SO racist, throwing around a lot of “savage” and “barbarian” words. Why are you letting this man walk all over you, Crozier?
– Crozier: the first person who has the correct reaction to two weirdos appearing on his boat (aka shock and surprise, rather than worrying nonchalance followed by unprompted extreme aggression.)
– Fitzjames literally laughed after being informed that Irving is dead. (Like Crozier’s bad Raft of the Medusa joke, but SO MUCH WORSE.)
– RIP Ice Master Reid, actual first confirmed kill of “Tuunbaq pre-Tuunbaq,” several weeks ago, apparently??
– Okay so Fitz here is obviously meant to be a horrible person, but I have to acknowledge that he’s making a few good points: (1) the Doctor has admitted that he has a “sailable” ship, and it’s pretty rude of him to not even explain why he’s unwilling to help these dying men, and (2) it’s been bothering me the whole episode that the Doctor hasn’t been calling officers by their titles, and frankly, I do think Fitz is within his rights to demand the Doctor call him “Captain Fitzjames” rather than “Mr. Fitzjames” on Fitz’s own ship. Like, it’s not that hard.
– The Doctor’s first example of “ways the Franklin crew could mess up the time stream” is the insane scenario: “what if one of them married the mother of Winston Churchill.”
– The “Tuunbaq: The Prequel” can talk!!!!!! “Hello meat!!!” it says, gleefully.
– Tozer is just the fucking most. He punched the Doctor AGAIN.
– Crozier just “Mr. Fitzjames”ed Fitz!! And Fitz backed down! Crozier finally grew a spine! Just in time to decide to commandeer the Doctor’s ship.
– The Doctor’s ship inevitably disappears before it can be commandeered. Because of course. (Things and people disappear and get transported to different places and later times all through these episodes for timey~wimey~reasons.)
Episode 3
– A conversation between the two named female characters (Liak and the Doctor’s companion Christine)! What will they talk about? ...Their dead fathers. Ah. Hmm.
– This show is not sophisticated enough to handle a “white man’s disease killed my father” subplot. And yet, Liak’s father died of TB he contracted from the white men. I’m *worried*
– To help Liak overcome the superstitious antagonism of her “tribe” after her father’s death, Crozier apparently gave a bunch of food to the Inuit, which is an... interesting take. (One Irishman’s grand gesture fixes racism!)
– Magical Inuit shaman powers are only inherited through the male line (The racism and sexism in this is palpable.)
– So “Tuunbag Episode I: Revenge of the the Tuunbaq” is actually a larger coalition of aliens, run by a being called “Matriarx.” Can we decide whether woman are powerless victims or power-hungry monsters, please? Both is just greedy.
– RIP Strong (another tragic case of the triple threat: sudden onset scurvy, lead poisoning, AND Tuunbaq attack)
– Wait WAIT the Tuunbaq gave Strong the lead poisoning AND the scurvy by biting his neck and sucking his blood, stealing nutrients and leaving lead in their place: Ice Vampires!! I called it!!!
– Groups of people Fitz has verbally degraded: the Irish, the Inuit, all women, and now “common folk.”
Episode 4
– Le Vesconte’s first lines! He sounds like a Boy Scout, by which I mean he sounds about 16, and has an American accent? Also, Fitz pronounces his name “Leh-vay-cont”
– An AB named “Seeley” is writing an account of the events that are happening, perhaps as this show’s version of Bridgens and/or Peglar? Also Fitz is REALLY opposed to Seeley writing this, because Fitz hates “common folk” that much, apparently?
– RIP Seeley, we hardly knew ye.
– Major episode events: the walk-out begins, leaving Terror and Erebus just as the boats slip into another dimension because of alien reasons (this didn’t age well, now that we have the shipwrecks). Also, there’s an Inuit woman who is in league with the cybernetic-alien-Tuunbaq-vampires.
Episode 5
– As soon as the walk-out begins, the cybernetic-alien-Tuunbaq-vampires begin attacking.
– Boy Scout Le Vesconte: “I have an idea! If bullets won’t stop them maybe an axe will!” I mean, this is stupid enough for our Dundy, but he follows it up with “Murderers! I’ll hack you to pieces!” and rushes them like a child and has to be rescued. (Also Crozier is way WAY more concerned for Le Vesconte than Fitz is, though Fitz leaps into the rescue effort and Crozier... does not do that. He’s doing a lot of standing on the sidelines and bemoaning his dying men.)
– Peddie is basically just Crozier’s all-purpose lieutenant at this point. Little and Hodgson whomst?
– Le Vesconte, Fitz, and Tozer get struck by lightning WHILE fighting the Tuunbaq, and some Frankenstein stuff seems to happen, because Fitz now has the munchies. But like, the ominous munchies.
– Le Vesconte’s in something like a coma. The dumb boy-scout.
– While explaining why the Netsilik have legends about these aliens as “evil spirits,” the Doctor implies that errors in the historical record happen “especially” in oral traditions. Can we stop insulting the Inuit oral historians please?
– The cybernetic-vampire-aliens can mind-control their victims sometimes. Calling it now: Fitzjames is under the mind-control already.
– Liak is revealed to possibly be in cahoots with the aliens, because she has a necklace that her sister gave her that’s actually an alien tracker.
– Fitzjames, upon learning that Liak may be in league with aliens, attempts to physically kill her with his bare hands, and has to be restrained.
– Crozier hears murmurs about mutiny, and assigns this poor Marine named Hopcraft to find out more about the mutiny and report back to him. Next morning: RIP Hopcraft, first victim of the “we’re knifing each other” stage of events (aka this show’s Irving.)
Episode 6
– Lieutenant Little, who got separated from Fitzjames and Crozier, tries to comfort ship’s boy Chambers, whose use of the term “panic attacks” is a little anachronistic; a small gripe in the grand scheme of things.
– The Tuunbaq-aliens attack Little’s camp and wipe them all out, leaving Little to the last. Edward Little, a British Christian naval officer in the 1840s, gasps out “I’ll see you in Hades” as his dying words. (Someone write me Little/Irving neo-pagan fanfic for this mess?)
– The Doctor is playing detective, trying to solve Hopcraft’s death. He finds footprints, and both Liak and Tozer are missing.
– The Doctor calls attention to Tozer’s “enormous feet.” Weird.
– We have our first cannibalism! Perpetrated by Tozer, and uhhhh oh great we’re eating Dr. MacDonald for dinner tonight.
– Le Vesconte woke up from his coma just in time to brain Tozer to death.
– The Doctor: “There were no women’s bones at any of the sites [of the lost expedition remains]” that’s a hilarious comment given that one study suggesting as many as four female skeletons.
– RIP Le Vesconte, from his wounds, offscreen!! Nooo!!
– Tozer (and Fitzjames, and a few others), because they all got struck by the lightning, now have Frankenstein’s cannibalism curse. They all hunger for human flesh.
– Fitzjames is now a sneaky murderer-cannibal who manages to gain Crozier’s trust before turning around and trying to butcher him. As least my evil boy is smart?
Episode 7
– The big bad reveal: it’s Liak’s secret evil sister! (Just like Season 4 of Sherlock!) She’s been helping the Tuunbaq-aliens the whole time because she hates white men! Because they gave her dad TB and one of them broke her heart! Thanks, it’s bad!
– The Tuunbaq-aliens eat Liak’s sister anyway because they do not care.
– Liak, Crozier, the Doctor, and Christine are left to defeat the Tuunbaq-aliens.
– Fitz feels a little bad about eating people I guess? Also Fitz is “weak” and can’t resist his hunger and all those fun tropes.
Episode 8
– Fitzjames gets a redemption arc via heroic self-sacrifice narrative, complete with death via horrid gurgling. “He sacrificed himself in a last act of humanity.”
– The Doctor agrees to give Crozier a lift to somewhere a bit further south, on the assumption that Crozier will settle down with Liak and live with some “tribe” of other Inuit people that neither of them have ever met.
– There’s a parting joke about Crozier enjoying drinking wine that did NOT age well.
And that’s all, folks! Hope you... enjoyed?
#the terror#the terror amc#terrorposting#not putting a dw tag here#because im being really mean about this#and if you're a fan of the dwad i'm sorry#not my jam but whatever makes you happy#franklin expedition fictions#just to be safe#cannibalism cw#murder cw#sexism cw#racism cw#fitzjames abuse cw#they butchered my boy
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About me taking breaks from this blog
Hey everyone!
You might have noticed that I’ve been taking intermittent breaks from this blog. I try to announce it when I am, because falling off the face of the earth isn’t exactly courteous of me.
I’ve been getting a lot of asks asking if I’m alright and/or if there’s a reason why I’m kind of shutting myself off.
And here’s the thing. I know I don’t technically owe anyone an explanation for why I’ve been doing that.
But I do want to give one.
So think of this as more of an update I guess? Anyways, update under the cut.
Warning: it’s long.
So, about why I’ve been taking breaks/why I haven’t been as interactive lately.
I’ve been rolling this around for a long time and trying to form the words to express all this.
There’s several major factors going on here, but the TLDR is I have an issue with feeling guilty about everything, even when I have no obligation to a person or situation, and it’s tanking my mental health.
1. The first, and most inconsequential, is I’m back to school.
I’m a full time college student generally and have been since I started this sideblog. But as of this semester, I’ve officially transferred to a new university, which means school is taking up more of my time.
I’m also in an honors program now, which means maintaining a 4.0 is—for financial reasons—more important than ever. I’m a bit stressed out, I’m not gonna lie!
Also, the switch to remote has been a particularly rough one. I’m having a really hard time defining the boundary between “school and homework time” and downtime, which means anytime I spend not doing homework is really just spent with me feeling overwhelmed with guilt that I’m not trying to get ahead in class.
2. The world is kind of going through shit right now.
I’d be a liar if I said the state of the world isn’t killing my motivation. There’s a lot of shit going on, and it’s overwhelming. It feels like the second we slow down to catch a breath, a new tragedy hits.
3. My depression is kind of killing me.
Like everyone, isolation is fucking with me. It has the fun side effect of piling onto my depression, so I’ve been really having a hard time finding the will to do anything, even things I enjoy.
This also links to that feeling of guilt over not being productive: I want to do something I enjoy, but I can’t because I’m consumed with guilt over the fact I’m not meeting some perceived “productivity quota”, so instead of doing that work, or doing something I enjoy, I do nothing. I’ve been sleeping more these past few months than I ever have, but I’m still tired all the time.
4. Family matters.
I’m lucky in that I’m quarantined with my parents, so I have some interaction, but that also means that I am quarantined with my abusive father. As a closeted, nb gay mixed-asian, being forced to spend almost all my time with my violently racist, homophobic and transphobic white dad has been uh. not great for my mental health.
He also just finished his second round of treatments and we’re waiting on a prognosis to see if he’s cancer free or not, so I’ve been grappling with my extremely mixed feelings surrounding him (as well as the fact that I’ll likely be outed at some point and have to plan for an emergency exit when I live in a different state than the rest of my family and the majority of my friends in the middle of a pandemic) for the past six months or so.
5. I have been teetering dangerously close to full burnout for about five months now, and I think it’s finally hit.
Like I mentioned, I’m sleeping more than I ever have in my life. I’m tired all the time, and I keep getting hit with waves of just. really aggressive sadness and isolation. I’ve cried more in the past month than I have in uh. years.
Writing fanfic is a hobby. The problem is, my hobby overlaps with my major: I’m a creative writing major, so a lot of my creative energy has been going towards that.
Trying to balance both is a really tricky line to walk, and I just can’t do it right now. I’m struggling enough with class as it is, so content creation has fallen to the wayside, and I feel really shitty about that, especially since it’s something I enjoy.
I also felt like I always had to be “on”/accessible for this blog. (This is a personal problem that stems from growing up in a very service based culture, and one I’m working on, but it required time away and better boundaries on my part.)
6. Increased sense of alienation from the fandom at large.
This is kind of linked to 5.
Being able to keep anon on is really important to me, I know I personally don’t always feel comfortable sending asks to people off anon (I’ve joked before that even with users I’m genuinely friends with, I send asks on anon bc I don’t want them to feel like I’m waiting on an answer).
I only answer about a quarter of the asks I receive (I won’t say a quarter of the asks people send me given tumblr’s tendency to eat asks). About a third of the asks are: asking me when a fic of mine will be updated/a wip will be posted, accusing me of something, flat out rude/hateful, or asking really invasive personal questions.
I’ve gotten a few asking me to elaborate on specific traumas that I don’t think I’ve even mentioned on this blog, which is both violating and extremely entitled: as if someone else gets to decide if my trauma is legitimate enough or something.
There are also the asks that I either don’t have the energy to give the love they deserve and avoid because I feel guilty about that, or just flat out I don’t want to answer.
But deciding not to answer the asks sent in good faith makes me feel incredibly guilty and ashamed. This, again, is a personal problem, and one I’m working on.
I also feel my hyperfixation on opm beginning to fade.
But generally, I just feel less connected to the fandom. It’s mostly because my lack of spoons means I’m not reaching out to people as much, but there are other factors too. It sounds dramatic, but I’m still a little shaken by the spat I had with another opm blog a couple of months ago.
And generally? I don’t think the fandom is as active anymore anyways. Some small, self-absorbed part of me still blames myself for some of that, because the timing of the fandom dying down and fracturing came right after the dispute I mentioned.
7. I really want this account to stay associated with happy things, and I’m not feeling too happy right now.
This blog was one I made because I enjoyed opm and wanted to have fun with it. I still love opm, and I love some of the friends I’ve made on here, but I just. I don’t feel the love for the fandom as a whole right now, and given all the negative emotions/things I just laid out, I’m worried about it somehow rubbing off on this blog, both for me, and for the people who follow me.
---
So yeah, that’s what’s going on on my end. I’m trying to stay positive and take care of myself, but I’m beyond overwhelmed, both for reasons related to, and entirely unrelated to this blog.
I want this blog to feel positive, and I worry this feels like I’m fishing for pity. That’s not it. I just need to get it off my chest, and kind of lay out where I am for you all, because I care about you.
Anyways, that’s all I got. I don’t know if I’ll delete this for now, but for the time it’s up, I’ll have it pinned to my blog.
Love you all, and be gentle with yourself.
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Shadow and Bone (Netflix) Review
Disclaimer: I started this post as a review for both Shadow and Bone the television show and Six of Crows the book, but as I say later on, the show review got much too long. Stay tuned next week for Six of Crows review, and maybe even a Crooked Kingdom review if I finish it before then.
When I asked what people wanted to see in this space, the most requested content was book reviews. Fun fact: I’ve been reading the same book for like two months. It is a long book, and not that easy to read. I still haven’t finished that book but I did finish another one which I will not be reviewing today because I feel the need to discuss the Netflix show Shadow and Bone first. (The book I finished is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, but we’ll get to that next week. I promise.)
Shadow and Bone (Netflix)
A week and a half ago I decided to watch Shadow and Bone on a whim, it is not what I’d usually be interested in but I am very prone to peer pressure and everyone on my tumblr dashboard was watching it. I watched it all in two days while I neglected my novel revision because I was down in the dumps. Was it good? Sure. Did I like it? Less sure.
The show follows a large cast of characters surrounding a central plot of Alina, a regular everyday map maker, finding out she is some sort of saint that can reunite these two nations that have been separated by a large slice of darkness that is full of monsters. It’s a pretty standard YA fantasy plot, she gets sort of kidnapped by the general of one of the armies who sweet talks her into believing that he wants to get rid of the darkness together. (He doesn’t). She has a childhood best friend, Mal, who is obviously in love with her and does some crazy stuff to get back to her and it’s all very romantic.
I’m sure anyone who has read the books, or even watched the show, is pretty angry about that synopsis but you get it, right?
From what I understand as someone who has not read these books, the show combines the original plot of the book Shadow and Bone, the first book in the Grishaverse series by Leigh Bardugo, and a new plot following the characters from Six of Crows. The events of Six of Crows happen after the events of, I believe, all of the Shadow and Bone books, so their inclusion in this is entirely new. (I believe. I probably should have done some research but this is what I’ve gathered from Tumblr.)
This results in a show that jumps around A LOT, which could have been confusing but I think it kind of worked in a way. I think they gambled on quality by including the crows, but in the long run it worked and everyone who wanted the crows involved were happy. I have one, tiny, small, complaint about it though and that is the inclusion of the Nina and Matthius plotline.
Nina is introduced as a grisha (sort of like a wizard, if you’re not familiar) who is supposed to help the crows kidnap Alina (the main character, very important grisha), but she gets kidnapped by witch hunters. That is her only connection to the main plot until the end, the rest of her scenes chronicle her time with Matthius (one of the witch hunters who she saves and then they fall in love, it’s very romantic). These are scenes taken from flashbacks in Six of Crows, except portrayed in a much shorter amount of time IMO.
My problem with these scenes and this subplot is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot at all. I understand why they included it, I’m sure the fans wanted it, but I guess I just think it should have been included as a flashback later on when the characters become more important. (Kind of like it is in the book.) I also have a problem with how it sort of felt like insta love between a “witch” and a “witch hunter”, a little problematic in my opinion, but that’s getting too into the details.
A couple other negative notes: I’ve been told that Alina wasn’t intended to be Asian (or shu, as referred to in the show), and that any of the seemingly random racism in the show was added in because she was in the show. Obviously, I loved that they made the choice to make the show more diverse than the book might have intended, but I felt like the racist remarks were unneeded. They added nothing to the plot ultimately, and felt out of place since the cast was so diverse.
I think it was clear the show was made for people who have read the books, and I personally think that should not have been the case. I wasn’t really well versed on the lore of the grishaverse, and this first season didn’t provide me with enough information in my opinion. A fantasy show should spend more time lore building, I did just sort of feel confused a lot of the time.
Believe it or not, I actually did like the show! Just not for the plot. What I did like about the show was all of the characters. I really liked Alina despite my usual predisposition to not like main characters, I thought her and Mal were really cute. I liked that the misunderstanding of their letters being intercepted was smoothed over quickly, and that Mal was so accepting of Alina’s newfound power. I liked how the show jumped between the crows and the main plot until the end when they finally overlapped, with the crows joining the fight against the general who was actually trying to grow the darkness (called the fold). I love a good branching story that joins at the end.
And ultimately, I love lovvved the crows. Their scenes were the best, and I think that is possibly because they weren’t coming from a book besides the Nina and Matthius scenes. Also because the characters themselves were the best.
As I mentioned earlier, the crows were trying to kidnap Alina for a job. They’re a part of a gang, or are going to be, I don’t remember whether they already are in the show, but they take a job to kidnap Alina that offers a crazy amount of money. I should probably explain who the crows are, Kaz (the leader of sort, dark brooding sort), Inej (Kaz’s right hand woman, the spy of the group), Jesper (gunslinger with jokes, I love him), and then also Nina and Matthius but they aren’t involved in this season.
Their scenes were like a heist show suddenly, and I thought their dynamic was incredibly entertaining. Kaz is like all emo and dark and evil, and Inej is soft, religious, and also sort of dark and against killing people but...... she does......... for Kaz, and then Jesper is like the mood maker. They have to pull all these crazy stunts including disguising as entertainers, Jesper hooks up with a stablehand at one point trying to procure a horse, Alina straight up just locks herself into their carriage. The hi jinks, the banter, the longing looks between Kaz and Inej! The absolutely subtle way they did the Kaz and Inej relationship, knowing that at the start of Six of Crows (years later) they're still just pretending to not be in love. Needless to say, I finished the show and felt like I absolutely HAD to read the Six of Crows duology.
Which I think I’ll write a review of in another post because this got way longer than I intended it to!
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week (probably) for a Six of Crows review.
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STARDEW ADMIN
here i’m going to talk about what happened and everything in between because there are some narratives out there that i don’t like and i didn’t have a chance to speak for myself because i was in class and had hw. take it as you will. but, i will not be disclosing any personal names!
me and my friend decided to make stardew back in october, but it ended up being a lot more than what my friend, and i, could handle so i brought in some people i thought were my friends to help me run it. we had our issues, we didn’t do everything that we should’ve and we had a SHIT reputation that we 100% deserved. it made me wary of adminning, so i kind of spaced a little bit (which was easy to do being back home without decent internet to even run tumblr)
fast forward a few months and we bring on a new admin, B. (this happen about two weeks ago, i believe). everything was fine and chill and we were just vibing while my other two admins, C and B1, needed the extra help because i was slacking in the admin department. which, i don’t blame them for. B1 decided to bring in B as an admin while i was asleep, without asking me or C about it. at that point, the logins had been shared and it was too late for me to voice my concern or unwant for it because she was already acting as admin.
i was already in a pretty bad mental space with other stuff that had been going on and i was sick, so i was very on the fence with staying or leaving, but i inevitably stayed because they wanted me to be there.. and they were my friends, so i did!
now, a few days ago, my ex admin ,that helped me create the group, was talking about wanting to join again with our mutual friend (who they had a ship with in a previous rp). it was all jokes at first, but once sharing that want in the admin group chat that we had, B1 and B were quick to judge it off with nasty comments and not even taking it as a joke. i was continuing on as it was, even throwing in things back. here’s some screenshots with MY input as well so y’all can see where even I went wrong:
the above screenshots are when it was initially brought up, even i was going along saying that i agreed she shouldn’t be in the rp, but that was because i didn’t think my friend was serious. the second i found out she was i quickly changed up my story. i got into a call with her and my friend who had helped me make the rp originally and she expressed how upset she was because these people loved her character “isabella” from a past group we were in with her. it got to the point where she was talking about never playing this character again, and stepping down from rp entirely because she felt BAD that people hated her character this much to the point where she was being denied in a group that was run by her FRIENDS.
fast forward a couple hours after the phone call ends and i say my apologies to her myself, i message the discord and ask them to apologize (unfortunately i’m not in the discord anymore, but i sent it to our imessage gc too bc it was ignored for a hot minute in the discord):
now, i’ll admit how i said it was very pointed, but it’s not how i meant it originally. i was mad and upset that i was 1. being put in a weird, uncomfortable position, and 2. my friend was hurt. it was met with backlash and them basically trying to make it seem like they weren’t in the wrong for what they were saying, and saying that they were going to delete/ignore her app entirely, and because i was “agreeing with them”. when, i was joking they were serious. a simple apology really isn’t that hard, right? evidently it was! they were pretty much refusing to apologize because they didn’t feel that they had to because it was their opinion. it’s two little words: some i had already spoken to the individual myself. once i realized the harsh messages back and the way everything was handled, i decided to step down, as an admin and member. which, i said in the group chat myself. i even had a closing message on my character about how i loved the group for 5 months and that the admins would do right and keep it alive just fine.
i had no harsh feelings (except the fact that my ‘friends’, minus C, hadn’t even tried to check up on me to see how i was feeling after everything, but that’s not important, really). i had made my amends, but when you’re with something for that long, you develop and attachment to the group.
after about 5 days, i messaged C talking about how i wanted to come back (this happened last night), and she met me with a weird feeling of basically being like ‘oh.... but there’s other rps in the tags!’, so that was already red flag number 1.
which, i STILL feel that i have every right to return to a group i MADE. not as admin, but simply as a member. and i didn’t feel like me wanting them to apologize for upsetting someone and putting me in a weird position was really ALL that deep to warrant discomfort by ME. i was wrong!
i woke up this morning and saw that they accepted SIX apps, but mine wasn’t there. C said it wasn’t intentional and that they were just waiting to discuss it because they didn’t know how B would feel! turns out, they were already on the fence of me joining and it was intentional! as a quote from B1, “part of me says no, but part of me says yes i’m conflicted and waiting for B”.
i was also met with harsh assumptions towards my intentions and sincerity saying i was joining “out of spite” when i had told C last night that i was bored and wanted to rp... i checked the tl daily while i was gone because i missed it.
in no way did i say they STOLE my group because they did not, NOR did i have any knowledge about one of them being “racist”, everything that was thrown out today was my first time hearing it, too. what my friend posted is not what I’M saying. all i was saying was that i was unfairly denied a spot back into my group for reasons that are petty and unfair, nor do i think it should’ve been taken to the tags in such a manner. but i will not shame my friend for trying to stick up for me when they knew i was hurt, even if it was done the wrong way.
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Tuesday SFW: AU/Trope
@winterironmonth
+++++++++
“Um, honey? What’s this?”
“I think it’s a baby.”
“Looks about right. And how did you get said baby?” Bucky resists the urge to facepalm.
Tony shrugs, still staring at the infant in his arms. “A lady dropped it in my arms. She said she it was mine and she was done taking care of it.”
“Do you think it’s yours?”
“No, but I wasn’t going to drop it on the streets. I’m heartless, but not that heartless.”
“Tones, you are not heartless. Did she just give you the baby, or… Like what’s it’s name? Where’s the birth ceritificate and social security number? How can we actually take the baby in?”
“There’s a baby bag right here… are you actually considering this?”
“Only if you want it, hon. Let’s get the baby back to the tower and then we’ll go from there.”
Fifteen minutes later, the pair has the sleeping baby on the table and are going through the baby bag. There’s a manilla folder with the baby’s birth certificate – born 9.23.2018, sex F, name Venus Elaine Ramierez, mother Adele S. Ramierez, father unknown – and her social security card. There are a few outfits folded neatly in the bag along with a set of baby toys. The mother had also helpfully included some baby food.
“Well, at least she’s done nursing,” Bucky sighs. “Do the dates add up to her being yours?”
Tony counts back in his head, “She’d have been conceived in January 2018. We didn’t get together until April 2018, so there’s a chance when I was wallowing in my feelings for you. I can’t say I remember though. But we can get a paternity test. If she’s not mine, do you not want her?”
“Tony, we never really discussed adopting, but I want to let you know that I am all for it, but I don’t want to get into something that you’re not comfortable or happy with. If you don’t want her, I’m sure you know several adoption agencies that could get her settled with a good family. If you do, well, I guess we’ll read a couple parenting books.” Bucky lifts Tony’s chin so he’s looking at him. “You don’t have to make the decision today or even next week, but right now she’s in our care until you make it. I’m gonna call Happy to see if he can procure us a cradle.” He pecks Tony’s cheek as he walks out, phone to his ear.
Tony sits at the table, staring at the baby for a few minutes before he rouses himself and calls Helen Cho. “Good morning Doctor, or is it evening in Korea?”
“It’s morning, Tony. What can I do for you?”
“Hypothetically speaking, if someone dropped a baby in my lap, told me it was mine, and ran off, would you be able to do a DNA test for me?” He queires.
Helen laughs, “That sounds very hypothetical. I could, but I will be in Korea for the next two months or so. If you need or want it sooner than that, I can recommend a close friend of mine who can do it all under wraps. Let me know, and I will send you her information.”
“Do that, and I’ll let you know what I decide. Thanks again Doc. I owe you one.”
“Just let me know when Thor gets back,” she jokes. “See you, Tony.”
A few moments later, a contact pops up under the name of Imani Nahas. FRIDAY pulls up an online file, and after close evaluation, he types up an email to her.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Secret Tests
Attachment: nda.pdf
Good afternoon Dr. Nahas,
This is Tony Stark. You were recommended to me by Dr. Helen Cho, a good friend of mine. I have a procedure I need done that needs to be kept out of the news due to those who may be affected.
Please see attached NDA and advise if you would be willing to help me out.
Best Regards,
Tony Stark
He sits back and waits for her reply.
A half-hour later, Bucky comes back in with the crib. He sees Tony sitting on the couch in the living room with Venus in the crook of his left arm, typing away on the tablet with his right. He smiles. Tony will do just fine as a parent.
+++++++++
Dr. Imani Nahas waits at the front desk of Stark Industries for her clearance badge. She’s not sure what to expect, but she hopes for the best. The woman at the desk eyes her hijab as she hands over the badge. “Take the elevator to the left. You’ll need to scan this badge.” As Imani walks away, she hears the woman mutter, “I hope Stark knows what he’s getting into. Not the first time, this place was blown up.”
She almost turns around to argue because wow, rude, but she shakes her head and marches to the elevator. When she scans her badge, the doors open, and a voice with an Irish lilt says, “Welcome Dr. Nahas. Boss is upstairs. I am alerting him of your arrival.”
“Thank you.”
Tony Stark is there to meet her when the elevator doors open. “Good morning Dr. Nahas. It’s nice to meet you. When you are comfortable, I will take you to our medical room.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stark. I am ready when you are.” She smiles and gestures for him to lead the way.
“Call me Tony, Mr. Stark was my father.” He takes her to the medical room where she sees Bucky Barnes holding a… a baby? “Dr. Nahas, a woman dropped this little angel in my lap about a week ago, telling me she was mine. I am planning on keeping her either way – as long as the adoption agencies ok it – but we just want to know if she is, in fact, my biological daughter. The NDA is, I’m sure you know, needed to prevent this from reaching the press as we want her to grow up in a life that’s as normal as possible.” He fiddles his hands nervously.
“Listen, Tony, it’s ok. I won’t question or tell. You’re paying me enough to keep my mouth shut,” She responds.
The corners of his mouth turn up. “That was kind of a joke. Helen told me I would like you. Are you able to perform a paternity test?”
“Yes, I can. You guys can stay in the room if you would like, but first, Tony I will need a urine sample and a cheek swab.”
He winks at her and leaves the room. Not 10 minutes later he is back with both things. Well, at least he was prepared. There are so many times, a DNA test gets delayed because the man cannot urinate. Imani figures that’s how you determine whether or not the man wants the child.
She performs the test and tells them it will take a couple days. Tony tells her to keep the badge until she comes back with the test results. “Sure that sounds good. And I, um, don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but the lady at the front desk seemed to think I would blow up the building…”
“That’s not ok. Is it Marlene? If so, she’s already been written up for other racist comments. Short, curly white hair, bright pink lipstick?” When Imani nods, he groans. “Thank you, I will take care of it.”
After the elevator doors close behind her, he looks at Bucky. “Let me get Happy on the phone. He knows their hours. Hey Hap? Who’s womanning the front desk? Marlene? We’re going to have to let her go. She made a Islamaphobic comment to my guest here. Tell Adria to call her in for a discussion before she leaves today. Thanks Happy.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. Nahas brings back the test results two days later. “I’m going to just leave these with you, ok? Have a great day, Tony, and let me know if you ever need me.”
Not long after she leaves, Bucky finds Tony staring at the unopened folder. “The tests come back? Are you ready to see if you have a daughter made from your own flesh and blood?”
“Yeah, I think I am ready. Although it doesn’t really matter either way.”
The results come back to a 98% match. Tony’s eyes tear up as he looks at the happy baby girl in the playpen. “Hello Venus. Daddy’s here.” He whispers.
#winteriron#winteriron fics#winteriron month 2020#accidental baby acquisition#fluff#tw: islamophobia#just a tiny bit
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Friends
Hello internet peoples, I was recently given a writing assignment in my history course and wanted to share the resulting work. I am also including the assignment prompt in case someone else feels inspired to writing something.
Prompt: Assume the role of a fictional character either living during, or perhaps fighting, the Second World War-what might it have been like for a Polish citizen in 1939 during the German blitzkrieg, a Jewish inmate surviving in a Nazi death camp, a British pilot during the air war over London, a member of the French resistance during the Nazi occupation or perhaps an American in the midst of the Ardennes offensive.
The title I gave to the assignment was Friends, hope you like it and if you see this feel free to leave thoughts or criticism, always looking to improve.
Friends
Do I regret what I did? Others like me would say no, but I would say that I do, with every fiber of my being I regret it. I was seduced by power, fame, and glory and could no longer tell right from wrong. What we did was wrong, what happened to the world was wrong, my hands will forever be soaked in the blood of millions of innocent lives for the part I played.
It had started subtly at first, propaganda posters started popping up everywhere, there were ads run in the newspapers and the media. They were printing and spreading blatant racist lies, I wish that where was it stopped, where we stopped. But we didn’t and before I knew it turned into something worse than anyone could have ever imagined, and millions of people were dead.
“But why?” It was one the first questions that I remember asking my mother; this is also the moment that I mark as the start of one of the worst periods in Germany, in the world, and in my own life. “But why?” It was the first question that I had asked my mother the day that she had hunted my down and demanded that I stop playing with my childhood best friend, I didn’t understand it then but things had started to change, and not for the better. “A good German boy like you should not be playing with the likes of him. He’s unclean,” those words made no sense to me as a child, he didn’t look dirty to me, he looked like he always had, his curtain of black curls partially covered his face and his brown eyes glinted in the sunlight. But my mother still pulled me away from him, that was the last time I ever played with Avi … or saw him ever again. Things were changing rapidly I was just too young to know it, I was innocent in the way that children are, blind to the politics and prejudices of the world, I didn’t know what she meant when she said that Avi was unclean. When asked about it sometime later she never elaborated, I never questioned it after that I imagined that my mother had her reasons. It was not until much later that I realized why she never told me. Avi was a Jew.
In the meantime, war came and went, the Great War as it was called at the time. It was fought because of rising international tensions between nations and because of an assassination that threw the world into chaos. It was the war that claimed my father’s life and nearly claimed my own. Germany had been in the war, of course, we were we had allies to help and we kept our word and helped them. This was a mistake. The consequences of Germany’s interference in the way came swiftly and without mercy. They were unfair to both Germany and her people; I shared this opinion with anyone who would listen. Many agreed of course, but none listened with as much fervor as a man I had recently met in the army, this man and I became close and I began to call him a friend. This man was Adolf Hitler, at the time I had met him I had never known a better man. We joked, laughed, and conspired together.
One day Adolf came to me and urged me to join him at an event he was attending, I didn’t refuse the invitation. It was a meeting, more like a rally really, for a group called National Socialist German Workers’ Party, these people shared my views, so I joined almost immediately. I deeply regret this decision; these people were the people that would come to be known throughout the world as Nazis.
Adolf was far more ambitious than I was, and he spoke more passionately about the issues facing Germany; he also pushed more and more people to join our ever-growing party. Because of this, the party insisted that he become its leader, and Adolf insisted that I be by his side. At the time I thought it was a great honor, I was moving up in the ranks and was granted more power. I didn’t consider what this meant for everyone that wasn’t the Nazis. Later, by a crazy stroke of luck, the Nazis were steadily seizing power, and Adolf and I were the two highest-ranking members in the party. Our power grew still, however, when Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany. This when things went from bad to worse.
Adolf came to his inner circle one day and said that something was to be done about his enemies, his political opponents, and the Jews and communists. I was the first to suggest banishment from Germany, if they were no longer in the country, they would no longer be our problem. He like that idea, but he didn’t want to afflict the Jews upon someone else. “A prison then,” I suggested to him. Somewhere where opponents and communists would no longer be an issue. “An inescapable camp that houses prisoners and Jews,” that was exactly how the man sitting across from me, Heinrich Himmler, pitched the idea. Adolf loved the whole concept, we later decided to call these places concentration camps. At first, it was just for political prisoners and communists, we could keep an eye on them, and they couldn’t spread their disease. That didn’t last long; it quickly became a death camp for anyone who was sent there. This is when I started to have doubts about what we were doing, we had been spouting this rhetoric, but I never thought that we would end up in a position to act upon it. Now that we had I didn’t think that I had to the stomach for it. I remained silent and faithful to my friend.
Soon we had taken the whole of Germany and parts of other countries like Austria. I thought we were going to stop, the Jews and communists and any other who would stand up to us had been thoroughly crushed under our feet and we ruled the nation. However, Adolf was ambitious, he wasn’t satisfied with just Germany. He began to talk of bigger things, things like freeing the world, not just Germany, from the Jewish plague and spreading Nazi influence. I mean we had rounded up a majority of the Jews and put them into concentration camps, we had also crushed anyone who dared oppose us, what more could he want. The world seemed to be the answer. I asked him outright if he was sure, we already had Germany and various other countries; the world sounded a bit too ambitious to me, but he questioned my faith and asked where my loyalties lie. With my friend, of course, but faith was starting to waver, I was starting to find out that I didn’t have the stomach for some of the things Adolf wanted.
All of a sudden, we were at war, I warned Adolf that he was being too ambitious, but he did not listen, now he had gone too far. Other countries had gotten involved and instead of dominance, we were now fighting for survival. I thought that The Great War was bad, the war that followed Adolf’s takeover of Poland was a bloodbath, millions were dying daily to gain barely any ground. Millions of people were laying down their lives to try and stop the thing that my friend had become, I wish that I could do the same. I was blinded by my loyalty and our relationship; he was my oldest friend and I watched with complacency as he became one of the worst serial killers the world would ever come to know. I too had a part to play in all of this, I encouraged him in the early days and I stood silently by as things went from bad to worse, during this time I had many chances to stop him, to end the war early and I took none of them. I tried once, I intended to kill him, I had the gun to his head, but I could not pull the trigger. It did not matter; we would not be alive for much longer.
The might of Germany had been tested and exhausted, the 1000-year Reich was crumbling around us and yet people still remained hopeful that we could win this war that we had been losing for the past couple of months. This was the end, everyone knew it, Adolf most of all. Our last conversation happened in his bunker, a place that he seldom left these days. He asked to speak to me. He said that he was sorry for what he had put me through, but that he wouldn’t apologize for what he, we, had done. I got to be part of something great. We had changed the world, if only for a moment. Shortly following this meeting Adolf took his own life he had taken a cyanide pill and then shot himself.
It’s bittersweet news, look at what we have done, we held an entire nation in the palms of our hands, but at what cost. Look at what it cost to get us here, we slaughtered people because they were different than us. Looking back on it now, in my final moments, I don’t know if I agreed with the anti-Jew messages or if I was just trying to find the easiest way to get revenge for Germany’s mistreatment all those years ago. It’s funny looking back at it now, my first friend, my best friend in the entire world was Jewish and now I have unreservedly slaughtered his people. I don’t know how I ended up here, but I pray to his God, to Avi’s God that he has mercy on my damned soul.
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2020.....
Wow, it’s been almost TWO years since I've posted anything on here. I’ve thought about it from time to time, but never sat to actually say anything. I just looked at my last two posts....so funny. This is why I'll probably always keep this....just to look back, see where I was, who I was.
But back to 2020 bc HONESTLY this year is the one to go. down. in the mother. fucking. books.
2019 was literally the best year of my life. It was the year I did the most traveling, the year I made the most money...it was like, perfect until the end. I went to Puerto Rico and St Thomas....Atlanta, Boston of course, MARTHA’S VINEYARD FINALLY and even though I've been there 100 times, this was the absolute best. Of course having Dameo was a plus, getting to show him my childhood summers, but Unc let me use the Mercedes which I legit fell in love with, we met Danny Glover which was crazy, I got the brass ring on my first try lol, and we had a lot of good food. LA, was amazing, I miss it so much....NY.....I feel like I’m missing a city, oh yes, dc! That was a fun drunk night.
Late November for Britt’s bday we all went out and that was the first time I was ever real life drunk around his fam, but it was so much fun. The next week....nana passed. It was sad, weird....I hadn’t lost someone in a really long time, and I was there to see some of her last lucid moments. We definitely got closer over the last two years or so since I visited her a good amount, and it made me more sad than I thought. I’m glad I got to have those moments with her, it was cool to get a grandmother again. Made me miss nanny a lot though...
A few weeks later, we found out I was pregnant! It was planned, we were excited although tbh I was kind of freaking out. A baby??? Like a whole ass human? No more weed, liquor, or runny eggs??? HOW SWAY! I don’t think I was ready yet, and a few weeks after that, RIGHT before Christmas, RIGHT before we were going to tell the family, I had a miscarriage. Goodness, I really wasn’t ready for that, at all. Obviously it’s common, but I never thought I’d have one....I was healthy, in a healthy relationship....happy....how the hell did this happen? Unfortunately we already told our moms at that time, partially to help cheer ang, and I knew my mom would be hype as well. I knew it was early, but I told some close friends as well. The pain I felt from that, I just didn't really expect. It was, really sad....I delayed our trip to Boston twice because I really just couldn’t bring myself to leave the bed and sit on a train for 6 hours. I almost canceled altogether but KNOWING NOW THAT THE FUCKING WORLD WAS GOING TO SHUT DOWN, I'm really glad we still went. It was reassuring to get my hugs from my mom, cry it out with her, and see the fam. Except Kendall was such a douche that visit *rolls eyes*. I did get to go see the friends pop up which LEGIT made my whole holiday. As such a huge fan, it was AMAZING, simply, amazing, and I got to enjoy it with my two older cousins and of course, the Dame.
So that brings us to the new year of 2020. 2020 the year I think EVERYONE thought was going to be amazing, and maybe it will be. Maybe everything that’s going on albeit sad, overwhelming, insane....is in fact the year we all really needed. The Amazon was on fire, forever and as someone who truly cares about global warming that was super stressful. We almost had WWIII thanks to good old Trump, but boy oh boy....that was just the tip of the iceberg. A few weeks later AGAIN, I call my dr telling them I still haven’t gotten my period, my boobs hurt, and wtf is going on? She tells me to take another pregnancy test, which I thought was a joke because I JUST had a miscarriage weeks before, and yes we had sex, but we were ‘careful’. COME TO FIND OUT, my ass is pregnant again. I was, very confused...a little upset because I was planning on waiting a bit before trying for real again. I mean we just dealt with so much loss between nana and the miscarriage, I hadn’t even fully processed what my body just went through. I remember angrily buying the test because, those shits aren’t cheap.....peeing with the door open with Dame downstairs, (not at ALL romantic like the first time I told him) and looking down like....wait. “WHAT THE FUCK” about 3 times was said, I explained to dame this indeed does say I’m pregnant, but how??
30 minutes later, the world finds out Kobe Bryant died. There were a lot of emotions that day for sure. Even though I wasn’t a die hard Kobe fan or anything, for some reason this one really made me sad. Maybe because I was currently listening to a book his personal coach wrote; relentless....which is REALLY fucking good.
A week later, I'm confirmed via bloodwork that I am indeed pregnant and it’s time for take two! I didn't get excited until I passed my first trimester, just in case...but now at almost 26 weeks, I’m really excited to meet her. My babygirl! It’s still wild to know I’m about to be a mom, but I’m really pumped for both of us and I know we’ll make great parents.
Ah yes, the mid march, covid 19 hits America. I was supposed to go on a three city tour to the west coast which I was very much looking forward to, before the world stopped. In fact, it was that very weekend, right after we had our ultrasound, the first and only visit Dame was allowed to come in, that everything stopped. A week or so later, a mid level of depression kicked in for me, which lasted about a month. I couldn’t believe that after WEEKS of puking and being dead ass tired, I was finally ready to work again, but I was Essentially unemployed. The west coast gig was a cute check, I had multiple events coming up that got canceled....weddings that got postponed, and all I could think about was I’m about to have a kid with no money. I went almost two entire months without making ANY money....luckily unemployment kicked in and I got a couple of grants I applied for because I really don’t know what I would’ve done. My mom of course was in my corner, and Dame would start working from home, but still fully employed so at least we wouldn’t be homeless. I knew there were hundreds of thousands of people in my boat, if not worse but I couldn’t help but be consumed with not making any money, and my 2020 year essentially being wiped out.
Again, this was supposed to be MY year. Be a parent, make a lot of money, and I felt like I just fell flat on my face, in mud, and was suffocating.
America’s approach to covid was trash, more and more people died...I was worried about my mom and aunts as they're older and more susceptible. This is the longest I've gone without seeing my mom, but thanks to technology! We literally FaceTime every day.
I almost forgot! Red literally almost died. He got attacked by a pit that lives up the street and it was one of the scariest things I ever dealt with. We just came back from a cute little drive, it was absolutely beautiful out, and I just remember parking, letting him out for a walk, looking at a dog running but I couldn’t tell if it was on a leash or not. I then realized nope, this bitch is not on a leash, crossing the street, and watching it whip its head at me and red and sprinting across the street to attack him. I was absolutely terrified. My baby red, is literally getting mangled by a fucking pit by the neck. I’m also pregnant and scared the pit is going to attack me, that my stress is going to cause another miscarriage, and that I’m probably going to watch red die in front of my eyes. I completely blacked out on the woman who was sloppily running to get her dog off of him. Had it been a minute more, max, he would’ve been dead. I still picture it sometimes and it legit makes me so sad, but luckily he pulled through after about a week of healing, and a huge bloody abscess that needed to be drained.
THEN about a month ago now, George Floyd was killed on tape by a cop and it changed the world. Between Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Abery dying and being cooped up for months in the house, major cities went up in flames, literally. It was a revolution that Is still happening which has caused corporate America to shove ‘black lives matter’ down our throats like black people just popped up, shown privileged ass white people who refuse to try and understand, racist fucks that just hate us so much....and the list goes on.
That’s been our year so far! and it about to get shut down again because because aren't taking covid seriously.
Pregnancy has been really interesting though....not at all like what they show on tv and the movies. I’ve been emotional as hell crying over my body changing....constipated af to the point where I now celebrate any time I shit, hella uncomfortable....but I know when we see her face it will indeed all be worth it. Doing this back to back though like Dame envisions....I don’t know man lol. We shall see. She's due in about 3.5 months. Check in before then....
Tdot, out.
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