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kiwikarpart · 5 months

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Rating Every Strawberry Shortcake Design*

I haven't made this clear on my Tumblr before, but I love Strawberry Shortcake. Something about the tv shows and official artwork always puts me in a good mood. So, because I feel like it, I'm going to talk about the designs she's had over the years and give them the tier list rankings.

Before I do that, I have to lay down a few ground rules.

1. I'm not doing every single design. Even if I limited it to one generation, there'd be so many different versions of Strawberry in dresses and swimsuits and winter clothes to rate that I'd never get it done.

2. What I will include are the base designs from official artwork and the tv-show versions if they have notable differences.

3. I'm judging these by the design alone. The artsyle won't factor into my ratings at all.

4. My opinion doesn't invalidate yours. I'm going to point out a lot of issues with some of these designs, but if you like them anyway that's fine. I'm not here to change anyone's mind, I just want to share my opinions.

5. This is how my tier list ratings work:

S tier is rarely objective. It's usually for designs I really like regardless of quality.

A tier is for great designs with little to no flaws, it's one I try to be really objective on.

B Tier is for good designs that for whatever reason, don't impress me like the ones in A or S tier do.

C Tier is for okay designs. They might be boring or get something wrong, but at the very least, they function.

D Tier is for bad designs. I don't hate them, but I don't think they get much right either.

F Tier is for designs that are straight up terrible or ones that I hate. I tend to have strong feelings about anything in this tier.

With all the boring stuff out of the way, I can begin the rating! Starting off with...

1970's Keller design

This is Strawberry's most iconic design, and it's not just because she was the first one. This version of Strawberry went for a bit of a rag doll look and is clearly a baker. That's one of my favorite things about it since none of her future incarnations make that a part of her design. It's a little disapointing since bakery-esque outfits can be really cute, but if it could only happen once, I'm glad they got it right.

The patterns are a little too much for me, with the stripped stockings and the polka dots and the green diamonds and the row of x's on her apron. The use of color more than makes up for that though. I love that they were able to use green and white as accents without drowning out red as her main color. I kinda wish her hat was closer to red than it was pink, but it works fine as is. My final compliment is that the ragdoll elements(yarn-like hair and fingerless hands) make the design better instead of worse. Ragdolls can look a little creepy in my opinion, but the parts of that look this design borrows makes Strawberry look more childish in a good way. Pretty great design, A tier.

1990's THQ Design

So this one is...weeeird. As far as I know, This era of Strawberry shortcake didn't have a specific theme, it was just cute girls doing cute things. If that was all it needed to do, I'd put it B tier because it does that pretty well. It has a cute color pallete, cute clothes, from that perspective it does what it's supposed to do. But since it's supposed to be a design for Strawberry Shortcake, it unfortunately falls flat because of how disconnected it feels. In her last design, she was clearly meant to look like a baker and the giant hat covered in strawberries added to that. But in this one, the fruit theme is very downplayed and the dessert theme is gone in favor of...balet? Sometimes?(It varies depending on the artwork tbh) The only other notable difference is that her eyes are blue instead of brown, which doesn't change anything in my book. It's a good design, but a bad fit for Strawberry Shortcake as a brand. C Tier.

2003 Bandai Design

This version of Strawberry shortcake differs from the original again, this time towards a casual look for kids. The flat mary janes, baggy jeans, and sun hat do a great job pushing that look, and I personally love how she wears the jacket, that's such a kid thing to do!

Aside from the blue in her jeans, Strawberry's color pallete here is pretty close to her 70's design. I think it's a nice way to keep the design familiar without rehashing it, though it does come with some improvements and downgrades. I like that they toned down the patterns, but don't like that red still isn't the prominent color in her design. Baking isn't a big part of Strawberry's character in this generation, so I'm not sure why they didn't add more red(granted, the version used in the TV show does by changing the stripes, but this doesn't do anything for the key art version being judged).

I think this design is solid. It's simple but effective, although I do wish we got to see her wear the jacket. B tier.

2005 Playmates Design

I'm not 100% percent sure if this is her main design from this era or a varient, so take this with a grain of salt.

Either way...this design is AWFUL. This is the 1st time the franchise made Strawberry's main color pink, and I can't stand it. But even if I could, the colors are so saturated it makes the whole fit an eyesore! It's honestly really hard for me to critique this one, but for the sake of you guys I will ignore the excessive use of hot pink to judge the rest of this design.

I also don't like the stripe patterns on Strawberry's shirt. The red stripes only emphazize the bright chunks of yellow and pink, while also blending in with her belt too much. Not surprised if you didn't notice that until now. That's the last of what I dislike...but there isn't anything I like either. I'm pretty neutral on her denim skirt, the sleeve ruffles, and the different hat. This is the only design with, in my opinion, no positive traits. F tier.

2005 Playmates Design, TV Show Version

Feel like I forgot something...oh yeah. This is the same Strawberry Shortcake from 2003, but aged up to make her seem more mature(and to sell more toys but this post isn't about that). Aside from being simpler, this design differs from the last one with different shoes, pants, and a zipped up jacket(that isn't the one from her 2003 design, real shame). Also she's wearing her old hat. It's definitely better than the last design, and it feels like a natural progression from her 2003 design, but it doesn't leave a strong impression.

For one, I don't like pink being her main color and this design does nothing to change that. It changed her hair back to red, but her outfit is still too sparse of it to me. Why did they never try making pink her accent color instead? Still not a fan of the sleeve ruffles either. The idea's cute, but since the rest of her outfit leans toward a casual look, they look out of place. Also the pant lines being under the pant pockets...is a choice. Overall it's fine, C Tier.

2007 Playmates Design

From what I know, this design barely counts since was made for a Strawberry Shortcake video game...but I just love it so much! This design leans into a gardening theme with the boots and denim jeans, but still has a focus on the titular fruit with the color pallette and strawberry patterns. While the actual outfit is pretty cute, it's the color pallette and placement that wins me over. It would've been easier and way worse if they covered her in the bright cherry red. But instead they break it up with softer reds(her hair and hat) or with blue for a nice contrast, while keeping the cherry-red on each part of her design(strawberry clip on top, blouse on middle, and boots on bottom).

I do have a few issues, the polka-dot pattern is a little garish and I wish they put some blue on the top of her design, but those are far from dealbreaking. This is my favorite Strawberry Shortcake design, S Tier.

2009 Hasbro Design

I'm going to be blunt: I do not like most of the designs from this era. They tend to have the same exact issues, so if I make this a series get ready to hear that criticism a LOT. If it's any consolation though, I'd say Strawberry's design is an exception. I like the pastel pink on her clothes and the use of green as an accent color. Making the hat look like a strawberry was a clever way to add the fruit motif into her outfit, and the shirt pattern and is a nice homage to her original design.

I do have some gripes with it though. The biggest one being the lack of red. Why on earth did they ditch the red??? It's even worse here because another character from this era is clearly supposed to have pink as her main color, but they made her share with Strawberry instead of keeping the red from her older designs.

Another small problem is the style of her clothes. They succeed at pushing Strawberry towards a more casual look, but they don't tell us much about her as a character. This generation put a larger emphasis on the characters having their own businesses, but I couldn't tell you what Strawberry's is with her design. One last gripe is the polka dot pattern on her skirt being different from the one on her hat bothers me, but it's not a big deal.

Overall this design is good. It has a nice casual vibe that's complimented with great use of color and color placement. The issues I have with it are small, but they do stop it from being great. B tier, would've been an easy A if her shoes and hair were red.

2019 Wild Brain Design

This design never became canon, but it's practically a rough draft for one that is. BIG emphasis on rough. I didn't hate this Strawberry when she was revealed, but I can definitely see why the rest of the internet did.

The real problem with this design in my opinion is the lack of direction. From what we know about this scrapped generation, it was going to take place in a forest and have the characters use magic to some degree...but NONE of that is present in her design. No fairy wings, no magic pendent or anything remotely fantastical. So that's why it's not an S tier design. But what it does go for doesn't work either. The tutu dress and stockings are a decent pair, but they clash with her shoes and beanie hat. Is she trying to dress for summer or winter? I'm also not impressed with her hair or color pallet despite the extra red, it's too generic to comment on.

Overall this design feels like a 1st draft, and that isn't because of the artstyle. Every part is of her look is either generic or clashes with other elements. There are some good ideas in this Strawberries' design, but as an ensemble they all fall flat. D tier. Don't hate it, but definitely don't like it either.

2021 Wild Brain Design #2

Looks like they did make a 2nd draft for that design after all! Yeah that's why I ranked the scrapped design, so many parts of it are present in this one.

Let's get the negatives out of the way, too much pink, no baker themes, yada yada yada.

As for the positives, most of them are unfortunately pretty light. Not enough to land it in D tier though, because this one is actually cohesive. The setting for this version of Strawberry Shortcake is in the city: no nature, no magic, just slice-of-life. So the lack of magical elements isn't a problem. I also like, say it with me, the color placement. The reds and greens are nice accents and the blue jacket pops against the shades of pink and red in her hair. The only thing that really holds this back is that the outfit's too generic to warrent anything higher than a C. So I'm going to put it in C tier.

And that's all of them(as of now anyway)! While I was working on this I had a huge hyperfixation on Strawberry Shortcake, but by now it's definitely gone away. I can't promise when I'll make another design ranking for this series, but there are still some characters I want to talk about.

#strawberry shortcake #ranking #tier list

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danielstalter · 6 months

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The Babysitter

The Babysitter remains one of R.L. Stine’s most notorious books outside of his Goosebumps and Fear Street titles, and rightly so. Jenny was a relatable and endearing protagonist. Stine did an excellent job with the pacing, slowly building the tension with some genuinely unnerving scenes. On the downside, I had some problems with the motives of the villain and there was some really shoddy police work that was presented as exceptional. I was also baffled by one particular action of Jenny’s mother, which I’ll save for the full review below because of spoilers. I’ll just say that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between bad/oblivious parenting and things that were still considered OK in the late 1980s. Overall, I really enjoyed this one in spite of its flaws.

Score: 3.5 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter/

The Babysitter II

The Babysitter II was a very middle-of-the-road sequel. The characters were solid and by far the strongest part overall. But for every element I liked, there was something of equal measure that I didn’t. The book had some very dated depictions of mental health, which were hard to look past. I hated Jenny’s psychiatrist from the jump. It was immediately apparent he was a bad fit for a traumatized teenage girl. I suppose he sucked in a believable way, but I can’t help but cringe at unhelpful depictions of therapy. It’s OK to break up with your therapist, folks. Jenny certainly needed to. The dream sequences also got really tiring after the first one. Unless the book is about dreams specifically, they just feel cheap. The kid that Jenny babysits for in this round was presented as a menace to society. Eli Wexner is a child genius, he has mood swings, he likes tarantulas, and he can be straight-up weird. I think he read more as an autistic kid with inexperienced and overwhelmed parents than anything threatening. I don’t know if that’s what Stine was going for, but that’s definitely what I got as the story progressed. The other reason I’m being hard on this one is that I guessed the plot twist way earlier than I usually do. I suppose the book holds up as a competent mystery if you aren’t familiar with any other books R.L. Stine has written. For me, it felt like a partial rehashing of the first book and a mix of things I’ve seen repeatedly in the Fear Street books. The Babysitter II wasn’t the worst, and it wasn’t the best. It’s a mostly competent sequel that just didn’t bring anything particularly new to the table.

Score: 2.5 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter-ii/

The Babysitter III

The Babysitter III felt like a sequel in search of a story. I’ll start with the good; at least Jenny wasn’t taking on yet another babysitting job after her experiences in the first two books. It changed the formula by introducing Jenny’s cousin Debra as this book’s titular babysitter. Unfortunately, I still saw the twist ending coming from a mile away. It had too many similarities to other Stine books. Everything he did here, he’s done it before and he’s done it better. There were a bunch of B-plot elements that ultimately served no purpose other than to throw the reader off the real trail. The B-plots are great for this function, but they work best when they also tie back into the main storyline. Almost none of them did. Jenny is also very clearly dealing with PTSD, but no longer appears to be in therapy or have any sort of support system in place. I’m used to dated and problematic depictions of mental health in these books, but this one just felt hard to watch. It was like one long, sad cringe. The book also relied on some characterization changes that I just couldn’t buy into. It made me wish the whole Babysitter series featured a different protagonist in each installment. Because the first Babysitter book was great; I consider it one of Stine’s best. The Babysitter II was less so but not bad. This one just felt phoned in. The ending of The Babysitter III does hold some promise for the fourth and final installment, but I can’t say I have a ton of confidence in that happening.

Score: 1 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter-iii/

The Babysitter IV

I did not go into this book with high expectations, so I was very pleasantly surprised when this book took a fresh direction. The Babysitter III had squeezed every last bit out of using Mr. Hagan as a villain, so I was happy to see that he was barely mentioned all in The Babysitter IV. In a lot of ways, this book was about Jenny reclaiming the narrative for herself. The way that Jenny’s past experiences caused her to question her own sanity at every turn made for a unique perspective that a lot of sequels miss out on. I figured out some of the twist ending early on, but I wasn’t bothered by it. What did bother me was how rushed the ending was. There was a whole other story received in the last few pages that deserved its own spotlight. It was a shame because I really liked the story it was telling, I just wanted more than an eleventh-hour info dump. I can’t be more specific without dropping massive spoilers, but almost all of the issues I had with this book stem from how it ended. I still liked The Babysitter IV more than I didn’t, and I was happy to see the final installment in the series end on such a strong note.

Score: 3.5 Full Review: https://www.danstalter.com/the-babysitter-iv/

#books #nostalgia #fits of nostalgia #book review #rl stine #horror #lit #point horror #the babysitter #90s aesthetic #paperbacks from hell #teen horror

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scuttling · 3 years

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Lean on Me

Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairings: Aaron Hotchner/Gender Neutral Reader Word Count: 4,717 Tags: SFW, Fluff, 5+1 Trope, Obliviousness, Mutual pining, Aaron Hotchner deserves good things, Canon typical injury Summary: Five times you want to kiss the frown off of your boss's face, and one time you actually do it. *Requested by Anon. Link to AO3 or read below! “It doesn’t make sense.”

You stick a tack in a photo of a murdered woman—unfortunately one of many you’ve stuck to this board—and turn to face Hotch, who is looking over your handiwork with a quizzical expression.

“What doesn’t?” He takes a few steps closer, crosses his arms in front of him.

“Why would the unsub leave his comfort zone? The first six abductions occurred within five miles of the college, so why did the seventh and eighth happen almost twelve miles away?” He reaches for the board, traces his finger along the circle Reid had colored in on the map. “We profiled that he’s disorganized and far from confident, so why would he do that?”

He looks over at you, frowns, and not for the first time your gaze is drawn to the little crease between his eyebrows that always forms when he is puzzled, worried, confused, stressed, or otherwise unhappy. In short, it’s there kind of all of the time.

For the first time, though, you think of how easy it would be to lean over, press your lips there, smooth it out, and maybe even get him to smile for a change. He has a great smile, when he lets people see it.

You shake the daydream, rewind back to the question he asked, and wrinkle your nose in thought.

“Maybe his circumstances changed? It's summer now, and there are still classes, but students aren’t living in the dorms. Maybe he moved back home or got an apartment off campus that’s within that area—or a job.” He sighs, runs a hand over the back of his head, nods.

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. That’s good. I’ll mention it to the others.” He pulls out his phone, and you grab another photo, another thumbtack, but something stops you and you lay a gentle hand on his arm.

“You don’t have to think of everything, you know. That’s why you have us.” He exhales, his shoulders losing a little of their tension, and that forehead wrinkle gets a little less deep.

“Sometimes I forget that not everything needs to be done the hard way. Or by me.”

“What? You, Aaron Hotchner, doing things the hard way?” you tease, and you are gifted a glimpse of his rare, unfiltered smile.

“Okay, enough pointing out my flaws,” he says with a raised eyebrow, though he’s still smiling, and as he looks down to type out a text, you remember to pull back your hand.

“I would never.” He looks up from his phone at that—maybe at the conviction in your voice, which you hadn’t exactly intended—and his expression softens further.

“I know you wouldn’t.” You hold eye contact for a moment, and then turn to finish preparing the board, pinning up another photo of another woman and reminding yourself that they need you to focus on the task at hand. Two weeks later, you knock on Hotch’s office door, a stack of completed consults in your hand. He looks up, that familiar notch in between his brows, a scowl on his face; when he sees that it’s you, he tones it down a little.

“Draw the short straw?” he asks, and you figure that’s because everyone knows he is in a bad mood and they’ve been avoiding this office all day. You shrug.

“It was rock, paper, scissors, but yes.” He huffs a short laugh, and you smile, step toward his desk. “Anything I can do to lighten the load?”

“Technically you’re adding to it,” he says with a glance at the files in your hand, and you set them on one of the chairs with a purposefully loud thump and then take the other seat.

“Technically. But technically, you only need to review my consults; I can review theirs. Right?” He mulls it over a moment, like the thought never crossed his mind—of course Aaron I have to do everything myself Hotchner would never suggest such a thing, even as the team sits in the bullpen with nothing to do, seeing who can throw M&Ms into Spencer’s mouth from the furthest distance.

“Technically,” he agrees, and you pluck a pen out of his pen cup and take the first file off the pile, open it in front of yourself, careful not to cut into the workspace he’s occupying. You both smile softly down at your work, and you actively do not think about that wrinkle between his eyebrows.

About an hour later, he reaches for his mug out of habit but finds it empty; you stand, take it in your hand, and he makes a noise of protest.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know,” you say, and you walk toward the door. “I need some too. I’ll be right back.”

You pass through the bullpen—apparently the M&M contest led to a sugar crash, because Spencer is laying with his head on his desk—and grab your cup off your desk, take both to the break room to fill them.

Derek appears next to you as you’re stirring your sugar in.

“Coffee date with the boss?” he asks with a curious expression, and you shake your head.

“Of course not. I’m helping him with the overwhelming amount of paperwork on his desk so his mood improves, instead of just ignoring him.” You raise an eyebrow in challenge, and Derek scratches the back of his head.

“Never thought of that,” he admits, and you pat him on the arm and take your coffees back upstairs.

Hotch looks up at you as you set his mug down, says a soft thank you, and you grab the pile of files you brought up, separate them, and head back downstairs.

“You review mine,” you say to Derek, handing him a stack, “Emily take Spencer’s, Spencer take Derek’s, I’ll take Emily’s.” They look at you like they have no idea what to say, and you just smile, tap the top of Spencer’s head with a folder. “I’ll come back down and grab them in a little bit.”

“Yes, boss,” Emily says, and you grin on your way back upstairs. Hotch is standing when you arrive this time, looking out the window over the bullpen.

“What did you do?” he asks, turning to you, frowning again. You’re so close that kissing that wrinkle would be effortless. All you’d have to do is lean in.

You smile.

“I delegated, Hotch. You should try it some time.” You put your hands on his arms and guide him back to his desk. “Now what can I help you with?”

By the end of the day, his desk is clean and his bad mood is long gone. He closes the last of his files, sighs deeply, covers your hand with one of his, and says thank you.

The next morning when you come in, there is a steaming latte and a cookie on your desk, and you can’t stop smiling the rest of the day. Your next case is draining, children abducted and left for dead, and everyone is on edge, but no one more than Hotch. You’re fairly certain his face hasn’t relaxed since the initial briefing, and he’d be a prime candidate for the old ‘your face will get stuck like that’ joke, if anyone was up to joking.

The team catches the unsub, saves one child, but not until after three are dead; you take a late flight home because no one wants to stay another night in a town it feels like you’ve failed, and everyone curls up to get some rest except you and Hotch.

You try to read the book you brought along—a science fiction dystopian novel, something to get you out of your head and away from real life problems—but you’re a little distracted by Hotch’s sighing. It’s become an every-five-minutes thing, and while you’re definitely on board with sighing as a way to decompress, he’s not decompressing. He looks like he’s in pain mentally, exhausted physically; you’re not sure how everyone else was able to ignore it and go to sleep, but then you figure everyone else may not be as in tune with him as you are. As observant.

As in love.

Not that that matters: you know your issues, and some of his issues, and there’s the whole superior/subordinate thing which doesn’t really do anything for you except give you a stomach ache. It would never work out, even if he somehow, miraculously, were to love you back—and that’s a pretty big if in and of itself.

But still, you notice him, can’t help it, and the sighing is getting to be a little much. You sigh yourself, put your finger in between the pages of your book, and walk over to take the seat next to him; he looks over at you, frowning just like always, and you carefully close his file and set it aside.

Neither of you say anything to the other, just look each other over for a moment, and then you lean lightly against his shoulder and flip back to the beginning of your book.

“I still dream of the island. I sometimes approach it across water, but more often through air, like a bird, with a great wind under my wings. The shores rise rain-coloured on the horizon of sleep, and in their quiet circle the buildings: the houses grown along the canals, the workshops of inkmasters, the low-ceilinged taverns.”

You keep your voice low and soothing, and you are just turning to page fifteen when you feel the weight of his head drop onto your shoulder.

The crease between his eyes melts away in sleep.

You read until you make it home, and you wake him up with a gentle nudge before the rest of the team drifts back to consciousness. He looks at you, blinks slowly like he’s trying to remember where he is, and then gets a little sheepish when he puts two and two together, realizes he fell asleep on your shoulder.

You just shake your head, give his arm a squeeze, and head back to your seat to gather your things. You, Hotch, and Emily are catching the elevator to the parking garage—after staying two hours later to work on some rush consults straight from Strauss—when he looks at something on his phone that makes him groan aloud. You and Emily share a look, and you ask what’s wrong.

“I just remembered I’m supposed to have a treat for Jack to take to school tomorrow and it’s, what, seven thirty?”

“So just stop at the supermarket on your way home; no one can tell the difference anyway,” Emily says, but you and Hotch both shoot her a skeptical glance.

“It’s all about the treats at a school like Jack’s,” you supply, and Hotch looks over at you like he’s surprised by your comment. “If they’re not homemade, the parents talk. Plus there’s probably an allergen list a mile long: no nuts, no eggs, no soy, no dairy. You have to pick him up from Haley’s tonight, right?” You’re pretty sure, but when he nods he confirms it. “So pick him up, go home and get some dinner, put him to bed, and I’ll text you when I’m on my way over with the goods. I have a great recipe for vegan apple cinnamon muffins that will go over really well.”

“You really don’t have to do that; I’ll figure something out,” he says, but you just shake your head and pull up the recipe on your phone.

“Forget it, it’s already done. I have everything I need at home already; let me help,” you murmur softly, and when he looks at you with the furrowed brow that comes with accepting kindness from someone else, you almost forget it’s not just the two of you in the elevator. It’s only when Emily clears her throat that the eye contact breaks. He nods.

“Okay. Thank you; I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” The elevator dings and it stops at the parking garage; the three of you get off and head in separate directions for your cars. “I’ll text you.”

“Goodnight,” Emily says with a grin, and you wave at her, hop into your car, and head for home.

About two hours later, you show up at Hotch’s door with two dozen apple cinnamon muffins, and unbleached, whole wheat flour in your hair, and he has coffee brewing, a smile on his face.

“You don’t know how grateful I am,” he says as he ushers you into the kitchen, takes the boxes of muffins from your hands, and pours you a cup of dark, delicious coffee. You sip it slowly, savoring the taste—you should have known he’d have incredible coffee—even though it’s far too late for you to be indulging. Unless you’re working a case, you usually switch to decaf by three.

“I know you are. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think you’d appreciate the gesture.” You lean forward, open a box, and pull out two muffins, handing one to him. “I made a couple extra so we could taste test; if I accidentally put salt in instead of sugar, you’re on your own,” you joke, and you wait for him to taste it before taking your own bite.

“That’s delicious. There’s really nothing unapproved in here?” he asks, and you shake your head.

“Nope, it’s all healthy and allergen free, except for the flour, but that wasn’t on the list you sent.” He reaches a hand toward you, and you don’t realize, at first, that he’s brushing the flour out of your hair.

“Messy baker,” he teases, and your heart feels really full, being in his kitchen like this, warm muffins and fresh coffee, even if your hair is a mess. You smile, and he smiles back before dropping into that serious expression, eyebrow wrinkle and all. You think about brushing your lips there tonight, but this feels like two steps forward, and you don’t want to risk taking that step back. “Next time I’ll help you.”

“Oh, next time? You plan on needing my baking expertise again? Fair warning, this is the only recipe I know, so I hope you like apple cinnamon muffins.” You take a sip of your coffee, look up at him, and he takes another bite, nods his head.

“I do. Especially these.”

In a perfect world, what comes next would be a cinnamony, coffee flavored kiss, but the world’s not perfect, and you yawn instead. You look down at your mug like it’s betrayed you, and Hotch chuckles low.

“It’s decaf. I know you usually stop in the afternoon; I wouldn’t forgive myself if you were up all night because of me.” You have always been a person who falls in love with all the little details about someone, so the fact that he’s noticed this, remembers this, makes your heart beat a little faster. “I should let you go. You’ve done so much today, between staying late and baking for Jack—for me. You need to get some sleep.”

He’s right, it’s nearly ten, and you should be getting back home, but this is a moment you never want to end.

You just nod, though, and he reaches out to brush his hand over your back when he walks you to the door.

“Thank you again. I really appreciate that you did this for me,” he says, soft, like he still can’t imagine you would.

“You’re welcome, Hotch. Any time, really; I’m happy to help.”

You get home, clean your kitchen, and have a very late dinner, and the smell of good coffee and apples and cinnamon is still in your nose when you drift to sleep. “You didn’t hear what he said,” Hotch snaps almost a month later, with one hand splayed on his hip and the other on the table in front of him. The moment you saw him engaged in an argument with a member of the Sheriff’s department, fire in his eyes, you’d grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into a small conference room, shutting the door behind you. It took almost three minutes of staring at each other for him to say something instead of just glaring at you for interrupting the pissing contest.

“I don’t need to know what he said. I know you, and I know you handle people like that with a quick, sharp remark and then you wash your hands of it. You don’t argue back and forth, you don’t draw it out. You would have regretted it if you did that today, so I stopped you.”

“You think you know me so well, do you?” he asks in an unkind tone of voice you can’t identify, haven’t heard from him before; the expression on his face is familiar, though, a scowl that only puts emphasis on his handsome features—it’s unfair, really.

You exhale, cross your arms.

“Yes, and I know you well enough to know you’re irritated with him, not me, so cut the shit.”

It’s the first time you’ve ever been quite that direct with him, and certainly the first time you’ve ever sworn at him; your immediate instinct is to apologize, but he surprises you by huffing a laugh. The angry lines of his face smooth into something softer.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. He just—I can’t stand people like that.” He scrubs a hand through his hair in irritation. “We’re here to work—to do a job they couldn’t finish on their own. Not to be… objectified.” He mutters the last word, so low you almost don’t hear it, and then there’s a knock at the door. Derek enters.

“Sheriff wants a word, Hotch; do you have a sec?” With one last look at you, he nods, brushes past him to leave the room. Derek gives you the barest hint of a smile. “He was defending your honor, you know.”

You frown. You didn’t know.

“That jerk was talking about me?” you ask, clarifying, and he nods.

“Something about assuming you’re an athlete because he likes your ass. Set the boss man off.” You walk over to him and leave the room together, heading back to your workspace.

“Well Hotch is right, we’re here to work, not to be objectified. I can see how he would get angry.” Derek shoots you a flat, questioning glance.

“You think he’d be getting that worked up if it was my ass that guy was talking about? Or Emily’s?” The two of you stop outside the conference room, and you cross your arms, lean against the doorframe, frown.

“So what are you trying to say? That he sees me as being weak, thinks he needs to defend me? I'm as capable as either of you.” That may not be strictly true, because you’re a little more brains than brawn, like Spencer in that way, but you can hold your own and you thought Hotch knew that.

Derek just laughs, shakes his head, and ducks into the room. You follow, so confused.

“I thought you were just playing it close to the vest, but you’re oblivious, aren’t you?”

“Oblivious about what?” Emily asks, pen between her teeth, feet kicked up onto a chair, and you shrug.

“I’m still not sure. Hotch got into an argument with a deputy about me, and I asked Derek if Hotch thinks I’m weak and that’s why he felt like he had to defend me.” She smiles broadly around the pen, pulls it out of her mouth with a grin.

“Oh, honey. That’s not it. You know that’s not it, right?”

“I clearly don’t know what’s going on at all, so no, if you’d care to enlighten me,” you say, sinking into an empty chair. “I hate it when you guys are cryptic.” You love your team, but they have a habit of doing this all the time, saying things to each other with their eyes, or just a few words that don’t have any sensible meaning that you know of. It’s like they live to talk over your head, to say things without actually saying them.

“Okay. Hotch has a thing for you,” Emily says simply, and you blink.

Well that’s the very last thing you’d expected to hear.

“He absolutely does not.” You look at Derek, who’s making a face like you’re the one being crazy; you laugh out loud, can’t help it. “He does not. I’m pretty sure Hotch doesn’t have things, and if he did, he wouldn’t have a thing for me.”

“Why not? Because that would be too convenient, since you have a thing for him too?” Derek asks, taking the seat across from you, and you grab the nearest case file, flip it open and focus your attention on it.

“I care about him, the same way I care about all of you, and he maybe needs a little more care—but you guys are reading into things.”

Thankfully, you don’t have to say anything more, because Hotch, JJ, and Spencer return, and you all have a lead to work.

You can’t help but wonder if you’re being obvious about your feelings, though, especially later, when you get back to the hotel and the group decides to have a drink at the bar.

JJ and Emily hit the pool table while Derek and Spencer head up for drinks, and you are left sitting with Hotch at the table, pressed together in the inside corner of a booth.

“Tired?” you ask him, because he does look worn out, his tie a bit loose, his eyes a little red. You know he doesn’t get much sleep when you travel, and you can’t imagine he’ll go to bed even when this little detour is over.

“Always,” he sighs, but when he looks over at you, he smiles, just a little. “Just can’t wait to get out of this town.”

“Yeah, it gives Southern hospitality a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?” The people you’ve interviewed today are, on paper, quite respectable, but there’s a Desperate Housewives, ‘everyone is sleeping with someone else's spouse’ kind of thing going on, and it’s honestly exhausting. To your surprise, Hotch laughs.

“It really does. I don’t think I’ve ever missed the quiet solitude of my apartment quite this much.” You lean back against the vinyl of the booth, sigh.

“I miss my apartment, but it’s been too quiet lately. I prefer the sounds of someone else sharing space with me: the coffee maker percolating, the news in the background, the shower running, the sound of flipping the pages of a book or magazine.” You look down at your hands, because you’re getting a little more emotional than you usually let other people see. “Sorry. I’m not typically this open about being…”

You trail off, but Hotch looks over at you, concerned, the wrinkle between his eyebrows even more noticeable when you’re sitting this close. You think, just briefly, of running your thumb over it, but with your luck, Derek or Emily would see, and you’d never live it down.

“Lonely?” he finishes softly, and when you nod your head, he covers your hands with one of his own, bumps his shoulder against yours. “I get lonely too. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” You look up at him, feeling a little vulnerable, and his expression softens. “When we get back, maybe you could come over for dinner some night. Nothing fancy,” he clarifies, and you smile, “just two lonely people being a little less lonely.”

“That would be really nice.” You can see Derek and Spencer approaching out of the corner of your eye, and Hotch must too, because he removes his hand, slips back into the slight, persistent frown you have come to know and love. Derek looks at you, raises an eyebrow, and hands you your beer. You try to tell him to shut up with your face, plan to follow up later to see if that actually worked. “We have an agent down on the second floor,” Spencer says into his comms, and you immediately want to slap him in the back of the head.

“Don’t say agent down, kid; I’m like, slightly wounded at best.” You hold a hand against the stab wound on your side—the unsub honestly just grazed you, and you’d knocked him out with a single punch, which made you feel pretty awesome—and reach out the other so he can help pull you to your feet. Your hand comes up to your own walkie button. “I’m not down, I’m fine—just slightly stabbed,” you add, and Spencer is getting his cuffs on the unsub when Hotch and JJ burst through the doors.

Well, Hotch bursts. JJ follows behind looking strangely winded for one of the most naturally athletic people you know.

“What happened? Are you alright?” he asks, and you lift your shirt to show him the sluggishly bleeding gash.

“I’m fine, see? It’s not even deep. Spencer saw blood and got a little ahead of himself.” You turn to Spencer, who sticks out his tongue, then back to Hotch, who looks haunted and pale, with that goddamn wrinkle between his eyebrows again. He’s bent down, looking over your wound seriously—you’ve had worse, so much worse, that you don’t understand why he’s so worried about it—and then he leans up, presses a hand to your cheek, and pulls you close for a soft, tender kiss.

If this were a movie, right about now a camera would be panning around you in a circle, as you wrap your free hand around his neck, pull him closer, melt against his body like it’s all you’ve been dreaming of for months, and the two of you would break apart smiling, maybe even kiss again.

It’s not a movie, though, so you just bleed out against your hand and freeze, because Hotch is kissing you at a crime scene and you almost got filleted, so you’re not sure if this is a you got hurt, so I’d better kiss you kiss or an I’ve been wanting to kiss you forever, and you got hurt so I have to kiss you kiss.

When he breaks the kiss, you’re both breathing a bit heavily, and you don’t know what to do, so you just lean in and press your lips to that wrinkle between his eyebrows that you’ve been thinking about so frequently since the first time you noticed it. You brush a hand through his hair, and when you pull back, he’s smiling.

“What was that?” He covers your hand on your side with his own and helps get you toward the elevator so you can be patched up by the EMTs; JJ and Spencer are left staring, open-mouthed in your wake, with an unconscious unsub at their feet, but neither of you are concerned about that.

“I’ve been thinking of doing that for months now: to kiss that spot between your eyes so you’ll stop frowning for a change. Since I couldn’t, I decided to find other ways to help you stop frowning so much. It kind of became my life’s mission.” He sighs, puts his arm around you and holds you close while you wait for the elevator to bring you to the ground floor.

“I stop frowning when you’re around because you’re around, not just because of the things you do for me,” he tells you, and he presses his lips to yours for another warm, soft, perfect kiss. “I’ve been thinking of doing that for months now.” You tilt your head, make a sound of contemplation, and he chuckles softly. “What is it?”

“I think those cryptic idiots we work with might be onto something,” you say with a grin, and when the elevator lets you off and Hotch helps you toward the ambulance to be patched up, Derek and Emily are waiting with concerned looks on their faces. They must be pretty confused to see you’re grinning from ear to ear. “Hey, you guys were right; Hotch does have a thing for me!” you call as you walk past them, and when your wound is properly dressed and wrapped, you put your arms around his neck and let him kiss you until the frown and accompanying wrinkle are nothing but distant memories.

*The novel excerpt is from The Weaver by Emmi Itäranta.

Taglist ❤️: @thaddeusly @arsonhotchner @mrsh0tchner @ssahotchie @sleepyreaderreads @mintphoenix @meghannnnnn @disgruntledchowchow @azenpal @g-l-pierce @my-rosegold-soul @ssamorganhotchner @heliotropehotch @angelhotchner @qtip-blog @gspenc @wishuhadstayed

#aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fanfic #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfic #aaron hotchner x reader #hotch x reader #ask answered #anon #prompt #aaron hotchner x gn reader #hotch x gn reader #request

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your-brilliant-lady-m · 3 years

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Part 4 - Basic Concepts of Miraculous Ladybug: Glamour

You can call it however you want: kid's show logic, superhero disguise logic, magical girl show logic, cartoon laws, suspension of disbelief, etc. But the fact that nobody recognises Marinette, Adrien and others when they are suited up IS NOT BAD WRITING. It's one of the main laws of this genre. That's not because characters are stupid, okay? So, being frustrated that everyone in the show acts stupid about this "wearing a mask that covers only eyes" trope is strange. This criticism is not valid or fair.

But, this trope has to make sense in-universe as a worldbuilding and narrative element.

Miraculous doesn't give us much direct information on how glamour works. And in this case, I think we need both SHOW and TELL. Because if you don't establish the glamour rules clearly, you are going to run into problems and create unfortunate implications with your storytelling choices.

Appearance

Miraculous obviously gives our heroes magical glamour. In "Lady WiFi" we find out that masks can't be taken off. It's magic. No other explanation is needed.

Miraculous can slightly change the appearance of users (eyes, face shape, height and hairstyles). People can identify and notice the hairstyles of heroes (numerous Ladybug wigs, statue in Copycat). Jagged Stone points out the change of hair when he mistakes Chloe for Ladybug ("Antibug"). But it's just a costume. There is no magic that prevents Jagged from understanding that Chloe isn't Ladybug. So, how does it work? But it's forgivable because it's cartoon logic. Suspension of disbelief works here, I suppose. I won't judge this too harshly.

Glamour also obviously prevents people from making a connection that Marinette and Ladybug have identical hairstyles. So people know that Ladybug wears her hair in pigtails, but magic does not allow them to notice similarities.

Another important question. Does glamour work on Kwamis? Can they see who is behind the mask?

New York Special makes it clear that magic does not affect robots and they can see through glamour. Does that mean that Markov, AI built by Max, knows the identities of Ladybug and Chat Noir? And it's never addressed.

Plagg in "Frightningale" says that holders can subconsciously choose their superhero appearance. This is actually pretty interesting and I like this idea a lot. Except the show is not consistent with this. The transformation of Master Fu looks identical to Nathalie's. And we have seen how different from each other Ladybug and Black Cat holders looked in the past. At the same time, Master Fu and Nino have different takes on Turtle superhero suit.

Age Glamour

Does age glamour exist? Do people see Ladybug, Chat Noir and other heroes as adults even when they look like teenagers to the audience (their height and build are smaller even when they are transformed)? Is that why no one ever questions the fact that children nearly die on a daily basis?

I mentioned unfortunate implications earlier. Well, this is where they come into play. Let's talk about "Copycat". A lot of people discussed it before me, so I won't bore you with details.

When I watched "Copycat" for the first time Theo's crush on Ladybug didn't bother me, because I thought that he sees Ladybug as his peer, a girl who is about 20-23 years old. Theo is an artist, his character design is that of an adult. He has his own studio, its appearance indicates that he did serious commissions in the past. The guy has no idea that Ladybug is like 13.

But then we get "Heroes' Day" and "Ladybug". And Hawkmoth calls them "kids", which means that there is no age glamour. Others see Ladybug and Chat Noir as teenagers. Perhaps, other Miraculous users aren't affected by age glamour. Therefore regular people see all heroes as adults but other heroes are able to guess their age more or less correctly. But you must spell this thing out because the audience can interpret "Copycat" differently. If there is no age glamour, then Theo is crushing on a teenage girl and he is fully aware of this fact. And this doesn't look good for your show.

The "No Age Glamour" theory is further confirmed in "Sapotis" where Alya just straight up analyses voice recordings and says that Ladybug is a girl their age. If glamour exists then it should also cover technology. Kwami can't be photographed. Face and voice recognition software shouldn't be able to analyse transformed superheroes and detect their identities in any way.

Besides, after "Sapotis" Alya should definitely be sure that Ladybug is not 5000 years old (also not an adult), especially after she wore Miraculous herself and was one door away from detransformed Ladybug.

SEASON 4 UPDATE! There's no age glamour after all.

In "Furious Fu" Su Han calls Chat Noir a child without knowing his identity. It means that everyone knows their superheroes are teenagers. "Copycat" can't be saved from that, uh, subtext anymore. No one questions the danger of their job or the balance of their lives outside of the mask. No one doubts their competence after "Origins" ever again. No one becomes annoyed after being bossed around by two teenagers in spandex. You had many opportunities to drop these details into the narrative. Someone could have been akumatized over this (I will not be ordered around by some magical kids!).

I don't know why writers decided not to use at least this idea and slightly adjust "Copycat" if they got rid of the age glamour completely. It can be explained as kid's show logic, but unfortunately, I'm reluctant to do it. If many characters sympathise with akuma victims on-screen, why not with the teenage superheroes who must fight them?

New York Special had this weird focus on collateral damage out of nowhere (the damage done by sentimonster Robostus) and yet it has 0 effect on the main story. No one in Paris is pissed that their 2 teenage protectors weren't there.

Ironically, "Furious Fu" and that one remark made by Su Han also created unfortunate implications for other moments in the show. Just hear me out. Apparently, Jagged Stone wrote a "thank you" song for Ladybug knowing that she is 13-15 year old child back in "Pixelator". Fandom is more than happy to roast Lila for lying about saving Jagged Stone's cat and him writing her a "thank you" song. Fandom claims that Lila's tale could harm Jagged's reputation, when he wrote a song for teenage Ladybug several weeks prior. Meanwhile, in-universe this lie is 100% believable.

If we put on "realism glasses", then both this whole song situation and Theo's crush in "Copycat" have uncomfortable implications. However, the show's canon can't be viewed and criticised through "realism glasses". I admit that bits and pieces of my criticisms are affected by these "glasses", but, ultimately, I'm trying to be fair and concentrate only on things that can't be justified by "cartoon logic and worldbuilding".

Could the existence of age glamour solve this problem of unfortunate implications and other concerns mentioned above? YES. Is it better for the narrative? YES. Is essential for the story? NOT QUITE. Could the absence of age glamour be called an irredeemable storytelling flaw? NO.

Disclaimer: On a side note, only older audience can notice these implications. Children, the target audience, most likely won't understand this subtext simply because they don't have enough experience. So, perhaps, this criticism is unfair, because these moments only look weird to me as an adult. It's like an adult joke in a cartoon that you don't get until you reach a certain age.

There's nothing technically wrong with adult writing a "thank you" song for a teenager. It's just an expression of gratitude. However, unfortunately, we live in a world, where adults normally wouldn't write songs for teens to express gratitude only. In real life similar actions would imply pedophilia and would be actively scorned by the public. No one would risk their reputation like that even if their intentions were genuinely pure and sincere. But this show can't be viewed through "realism glasses", because it's a cartoon and in certain cases we as the audience must use suspension of disbelief and pretend that certain things are possible for plot to happen.

Su Han also wants to give Ladybug and Black Cat to adults. Why didn't Master Fu do this then? Writers don't give us any explanation. Throughout the show we never question this up until the moment it's revealed that adults don't have time-limited powers. Then comes "Furious Fu". Story suddenly becomes self-aware here. Because apparently nothing prevented Fu from giving the most powerful Miraculous to adults who won't have time limit and will be more effective against Hawkmoth (see part 3 for more details).

I have a very good example of Age Glamour done right. It works in the story. There is no confusion or unfortunate implications. There is like one plothole connected to the glamour (it's been years and I still can't forgive them for Cornelia and Caleb) but otherwise, it's a pretty solid example of both show and tell. Clearly, writers wanted to avoid uncomfortable implications which are present in "Copycat". I am talking about W.I.T.C.H. comic books and animated series.

If you are not familiar with it, I'll give you a brief explanation. The story follows 5 girls, the Guardians of Kandrakar who are chosen to protect their world and parallel ones from evil. They receive magical powers from the amulet known as the Heart of Kandrakar. Their powers are based on elements: fire, water, earth, air and energy. Our main characters are about 13-15 years old. In the animated series they are younger and they attend middle school, making them 12-14 years old. But the transformation makes them look 18-20. They look like young women to each other and to other people. At the same time, people can recognise them, their looks and voice don't change. Most people don't know that they are really teenagers when they are not transformed and these people don't know that magic can make them look older. That's why everyone treats Guardians like adults when they are transformed. Comics establish this fact in the very beginning. In first issues characters state that they look older, we are also shown this multiple times.

In fact, one of the first side plots revolves around the fact that Irma uses her powers to sneak into the disco club to meet up with her crush. Irma is 13 at the beginning of the series, she is a high school freshman. Her crush, Andrew Hornby is a senior guy 17-18 years old. Irma has liked him for a long time and wants to impress him, so she decides to be clever about this. She transforms into her Guardian form of the 18-year-old girl, hides her wings, sneaks out to the club after her parents are asleep without any problem, and meets Andrew, who obviously doesn't recognise Irma in this girl who looks about his age. Smitten Andrew offers her a ride and 13-year-old Irma doesn't understand the implication of that offer, so she accepts. And, obviously, he decides that she is interested in more than just a ride home, since she agreed, and the comic implies that he fully intended for them to have sex in the backseat of his car. But Irma understands the implication only when Andrew tries to kiss her. She panics and turns him into a frog. And she actually pulls this "I need to look mature" trick more than once over the course of the series.

It's not the only situation where this age difference is handled well and makes sense. People who know the main characters in everyday life remark on their older appearance during transformation. Sometimes people flirt with Guardians when they are transformed. In one of the side-novels centred around Cornelia, she is worried that the prince of the realm they helped to save from famine would try to marry her. That never happens, but Cornelia actually brainstorms with her friends about how to tell the prince that she is really 15.

There are many other plot points where this happens, but I think that you got the idea. I really like how "Age Glamour" was handled in W.I.T.C.H.

How do we fix this? Create the situations where people offhandedly mention "Age Glamour" in the presence of Marinette or Adrien, use Kwami for this.

"Don't worry, dear. Chat Noir and Ladybug are adults, who know what they are doing. I am sure that they will handle this. "

Theo could say: "Oh, I wonder which university Ladybug goes to?"

"So, does that mean that other people see us as grown-ups, Tikki?"

A few words and boom, problem solved. Then allow the "show don't tell" rule do the rest.

#miraculous ladybug #ml #miraculous analysis #miraculous meta #ml meta #ml analysis #miraculous transformations #miraculous critical #miraculous ladybug critical #miraculous glamour #superhero glamour #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir

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skipps-writes-for-gojo-satoru · 3 years

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A short thread I found about Gojo's character that helps shine a light to how caring he is:

https://twitter.com/musikawu/status/1376984416485007363?s=19

Also, I actually just realized this recently after rewatching JJK that Gojo got super attached to Yuji really quickly. Gojo not only got very angry on his behalf but went out of his way to ask Nanami for help in caring for Yuji when he's supposed to be the strongest sorcerer. And at that time, Gojo made it clear to Nanami that he didn't ask him to do so due to Yuji's potential as a vessel. Gojo asked Nanami for this favor as an adult who wants to see the growth of a young man. Gojo was very precise in telling Nanami that he was looking not at Sukuna and Yuji's power, but at Yuji himself as not only an individual, but a child that needed nurturing and care. Before Yuji's death, Gojo had already even made preparations to have Yuta take care of Yuji cause he knew something might happen to him- even more development is that despite what Gojo says about himself, he's aware of his own flaws. What he appears to be on the outside is nothing like what he truly feels on the inside. He doesn't delude himself into narcissistic behavior that makes him unable to ask for help. He asks for help willingly and of his own accord- Yuta couldn't even fathom how the strongest sorcerer would face a problem he couldn't solve on his own, but Gojo does. Gojo is smart enough to know he needs to rely on others to move forward, and relying on someone means putting a certain amount of trust there. Gojo puts just as much faith in other people as he does himself, and the interesting part is that while it's more admirable to go out of your way to protect someone else, Gojo never brags about that. He only "brags" about things that will annoy the other person, but really he is only saying a commonly known "truth" in order to rile people up. It may sound like bragging- which it sort of is- but Gojo saying he's the strongest is not a lie. Him saying "I alone am the honoured one" is not necessarily a lie either. People don't call him the Strongest for nothing.

In fact, even more interestingly enough, besides Gojo, who includes Geto when people talk about the "strongest?" Despite being the definite "strongest," Gojo is the one who constantly says "We are the Strongest," not the other way around. He's also mature enough to recognize and point out other people's strengths, such as Mei Mei's, saying she is too strong to cry.

If Gojo truly was a narcissist, he would have mentioned everything else he's done for people, like stopping Megumi's sale to the Zenin clan and getting the Fushiguros financial aid. He could brag about being persuasive enough to save Yuji from execution or even saving Yuta from execution- Yuta becoming a special grade sorcerer soon after Gojo saved him is something you can easily brag about- but Gojo doesn't brag about his personal achievements at all- not in the way that demands respect from others, at least. Gojo only "brags" to tease others lightheartedly and to tick them off a little- and I don't think the demeaning things Gojo says to the higher ups can be used to show he's a narc because *many* people in Gojo's position would have said (and done) much, much worse things.

Also, when Yuji died, Gojo had become so emotional that even Shoko, who had been there since Gojo's youth, had commented on how unlike him it was. People irl really thought it was because Gojo couldn't use him as a weapon against the higher ups anymore, but reading how Gojo had told Nanami that he saw their relationship as an adult and a child makes me think differently. Something very important in the Light Novel is when Gojo tells Nanami that his students, because they are sorcerers, will soon have to "face the evil intentions of sh*tty humans." Not only sorcerers, but "every person has to bite into that bitterness, know what it means to give up, and pile up despairs to become an adult." People like Gojo and Nanami, Gojo had said, are capable of withstanding and releasing the "poison" that runs through the heart. However, the youngsters are more sensitive in that age, and "one poison could destroy their hearts" (I'm sure Gojo was thinking of Geto as he said this). That's why he wants to leave Yuji in the care of Nanami, "an adult who understands other people pain." Not that Gojo is unable to understand pain, but in the earlier events of the Light Novel as context, Gojo is faced with a mother who is mourning the loss of her child. While Nanami tries to gently comfort her and secretly find information on the cursed spirit at the same time using vague words, Gojo's words are straight forward and to the point, which startles the mother. It's not necessarily a bad things, however- Gojo's words had ended up allowing the mother to see her situation as it was without delusions, a tough love situation, so to speak, and the two were able to confirm their intel to be correct. It was Gojo who helped her to heal quicker by allowing her to realize her problem through his cutting words, but I'm sure Gojo realizes his "bad personality,"- which isn't really so bad in some cases- isn't for everyone. Gojo is very aware that people react negatively to his behavior, even if he is unable to understand just how deeply they despise him (*cough* Utahime) In that way, Gojo shows he cares very much for Yuji's mental growth, even in that short period of time, by entrusting his care to Nanami, who he comments would do a much better job than be could.

Therefore, I think Gojo might actually get attached to people more quickly than it might seem like. He also thinks very deeply and no matter how he acts, he's able to recognize others' strengths and acknowledge his own flaws- this is a key part of his character because he doesn't delude himself in his position as the Strongest. To those who think Gojo sees himself as a God, he is far from that behavior, and he is self aware enough to know that people need more to grow than just power and strength. Unfortunately, it seems most people either despise Gojo or are too enamoured by his looks to see past the surface of the more boisterous and childish part of his personality. That's likely the main reason he finds it hard to commit, too.

(More ranting 😭. There was this reddit post saying Gojo's narcissistic enough to be a more evil villain than Sukuna, that he would actually end up becoming the villain- like really??? And so many people really agreed that he's incapable of feeling true emotions that it's absurd. I really can't believe they even think Gojo has a God complex. Someone with a God complex, like most of the other disorders, wouldn't be able to admit their own flaws, let alone ask for help! The fact that Gojo even admits to having a "bad personality" is another tell against that. Sometimes I wonder if people are just projecting, but I also realize it's hard to differentiate between being an ENTP and being a sociopath because of how- on the surface- they seem so similar! But if you just dig a little deeper to look at their roots, they are so completely different it's a wonder how you'd get confused in the first place)

- 🤔

OH I COULDN'T AGREE MORE 🤔 anon here spitting FACTS. Yeah alot of people think gojo's a narcissist with huge ego but that ain't the case at all as explained above. I mean he was put on a pedestal since birth he gotta have some ego in that but that fact doesnt blind him. yeah sure he's the strongest but just one line "I'm the strongest" doesn't mean he's bragging it may sound like it but he's just stating facts he is indeed in fact the strongest in the jujutsu society. He knows he can't do everything on his own I mean why did he even become a teacher in the first place? Becuz he wants to make the next generation of jujutsu sorcerers stronger! No one asked him to do it he himself wanted to be a teacher even though at time he sucks at it.

He genuinely wants to do good not just for himself but for others as well. As interesting as the concept of Gojo becoming a villain it will never happen. Don't judge a damn book by it's cover even if it's a very attractive one hes just such an interesting character its shame most people don't see that.

#gojo discussions #🤔 anon #gojou satoru #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen gojo #jjk gojo #gojo satoru #skipps chat

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ohhthereuare · 3 years

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cannot believe we’re back to shipping wars in the year of our lord 2021 but with the overwhelmingly stupid cancel culture and moral police on every corner making it almost impossible to simply enjoy stuff these days I had to chime in my 5 kruge cents or else I’d choke

nobody gives a flying fuck about who you ship and neither should you because this is very rarely up to you. it’s like a god-chosen enlightenment, a sudden rush of serotonin that mysteriously dictates what’s gonna rock your boat from now on. that is great. grab that wheel and get on with it.

you don’t have to justify any of that. and I wish it was clear enough but apparently it still isn’t that villains are called villains for a reason and murder is murder no matter the motive. we know. trust me we do. but I guess that’s half the charm of a work of fiction that a character can be interesting despite its flaws. hell most of the time it’s interesting thanks to its flaws. when you say you like them it doesn’t mean you run to justify their sins and therefor imply these new moral conclusions to your everyday life and real people in it. it just means that this particular fictional creature makes your brain go happy. be them a ball of sunshine or a ball of darkness. you’ll enjoy their actions in a specific media and then get on with your life as an intelligent, morally responsible member of a society that will definitely not go on a killing spree because a fictional guy in a cool cape that doesn’t even exist did so in a story.

now getting that lengthy introduction out of the way I cannot believe that people cannot engage in an intellectually stimulating critical thinking discourse (that back in the day we just called meta) without criticizing every thing or else apparently they’ll go to literal hell. the Darkling is overall a bad guy and Mal is overall a good guy. that’s what the story it built upon. then again both of them are grey to some extent as people are because they are people. they have thoughts and desires and justify themselves because they believe in a greater good that sometimes they personally created. there’s no reason to compare the Darkling who’s straight-up a millenium-old murderer who just happens to be very charismatic and sexy to Mal who’s more human and the mistakes he makes are less of the murderous nature and as it unfortunately happens he’s just more plain. I’d be happy with Alina ending with either of them, knowing full well that there would be good and bad sides to either of the endings. even if the positive outcome of Alina ending up with the bad guy was only a sense of aesthetic fulfillment. that is all. I can say I see and understand the manipulation and the toxicity and still enjoy a power couple dressed in black cloaks the same way I’d enjoy childhood sweethearts leading a safe and quite life. whatever rocks my boat.

if we look at Leigh Bardugo’s work in a simple, quite superficial way then yes it is the question of black and white, good and bad. but it’s more than that and it’s one of the many reasons why it’s one of my favorite books series ever (let’s not go all JKR on her because as I’ve seen some of you do because apart from obvious situations no creator of anything should to held to impossibly pure moral standards making their work morally flawless because it’s based on their own personal experience and it’s impossible to stop some of it from seeping into the work itself even if you personally might find it problematic but they’re human just like you and me and I cannot believe I even have to type this rn). now I’m not wasting my time writing this essay and you reading it to stir up a ship war and I am NOT here as a darklina shipper because in the end I was quite happy with malina getting their happily ever after. but I cannot STAND this sudden wave of frantic justification and of hate towards it because it’s all missing the point.

the Darkling is a villain. the Darkling is a human being (to some extent). the Darkling is the bad character but he’s more grey than black and it’s Alina’s own opinion. THAT’s what’s so interesting about their relationship. he hurt her and the people she loved and hurt people she didn’t even know only to pin the blame on her to guilt trip her to do his bidding. we know it’s toxic and manipulative. Alina knows that too. she hates him and fears him and at times would kill him without hesitation. but she also comes back to him and can’t help but marvel and his beauty and genuinely sheds a tear when he falls. it’s hard to say whether she loves him to some extent, I think even she wasn’t sure and felt quite guilty about it. there’s was a strange pull she couldn’t deny, a wicked sense of understanding that could not be matched by anyone else. despite their chemistry she couldn’t overlook the murder part and that’s who she chose. that’s also who she became because if she had accepted his offer and went down that powerful path we would have been given a completely different story with Alina being a different character. it’s that magic of fiction that lets you explore such extremes but it still is just fiction. it’s okay to type lengthy essays about it to pick it apart and examine with interest but there’s very little point to criticize something so obvious or defend the impossible.

now still on the topic of the Darkling that’s what I love about the show. how Ben Barnes looked for the human parts in him (which is also literally his job as an actor to find parts of the character that he could sympathize with idk why are y’all so surprised and scandalized and y’all better leave my man Ben alone). parts that might have been lonely and misunderstood because that’s how the Darkling saw himself. he had to justify his own actions somehow because he believed he was right. a bad villain is bad by nature. a good villain makes you question whether he’s really bad, makes you justify his villainous actions with him. showing the Darkling express real emotions towards Alina, hope for their shared future, tears in his eyes as she turns her back on him just made him that much more interesting and multidimensional as a great character should be. a great character can still be a murderer. a murderer can still be a great character. it has nothing to do with them being a good person. but it doesn’t erase the toxic behaviors just by being sexy the same way that toxic behaviors have a hard time erasing the sexy part and if you find it sexy in fiction that’s great go on reblogging passionate darklina gifsets and if you can’t stand it even on paper that’s fine too enjoy your heartwarming malina handholding posts. fill in your “rip to alina but I’m different” preferable scenario and let it bring you joy.

Leigh Bardugo is a great author. Ben Barnes is a great actor. actually all the actors are great actors and they did a marvelous job of bringing our beloved characters to life and we cannot even imagine the burden of responsibility they must have felt. let’s try to be less negative and more grateful for a really well-done book adaptation and surround ourselves with people that share our likes and dislikes in a respectful and positive manner and hopefully not foolishly trust that people can tell the good from the bad in real life and still enjoy both in a work of fiction.

#shadow and bone #sab #shadow and bone netflix #the darkling #general kirigan #leigh bardugo #darklina #spoilers #sab spoilers

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astudyinfreewill · 4 years

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hey this may be a stupid question, but it's already been a long time since ive read trk so i don't remember everything properly, so can you explain to me why exactly ganseys behavior in the book is seen as problematic??

hey! don’t worry, there are no stupid questions in my book. in fairness, it’s not about gansey’s behaviour in trk, it’s about his behaviour throughout the whole series. most of his problematic actions all come down to the same basic flaw: self-centeredness. for all that gansey is a generous and loving person, he can’t help but make everything about himself. he is driven by anxiety to define his place in the world beyond his privilege, yet he is blinded by that very same privilege - a bad combination, and one that leads him to show very little empathy for the people he loves.

like many teenagers, he’s looking for affirmation from his friends... but then resents them for not giving it, while failing to see that (most of) his friends are dealing with traumatic issues. when his friends reject his input - because it is not what they need or want at the moment - gansey always, always takes it personally. at no point does he try to ask himself, okay, if this isn’t what my friends need, then what do they need from me and how can i be a better friend? instead, he goes straight into self-pity mode, complaining that his friends reject his support and walk away from him. thing is... it’s not real support if it only makes him feel better and not them.

i don’t really have the time to write an extensive meta on all of the interactions where gansey’s lack of empathy comes into play, but here’s a list of just the most glaring ones in the series, in no particular order:

gansey consistently tries to pay for adam’s way and persuade him to move in with him, even though adam has told him multiple times that he is uncomfortable with it because independence is key to his sense of self as an abuse survivor. sometimes he does this even when he’s fully aware that it will start a fight. despite that, adam is usually the one apologizing, at least on page

notably in trb there’s a scene where gansey tries to get adam to move in with him, but when adam asks what’s going to happen if gansey leaves henrietta - is adam just supposed to drop out of aglionby and follow him? - gansey doesn’t reassure him that’s not gonna happen. he just says adam will have to start again at a new school.

as i said above, this is not true support because it helps gansey feel better without inconveniencing him, but it is not what adam wants. if gansey wanted to support adam, he’d at least promise he would stay in henrietta for their final year of high school, instead of expecting adam to follow him around the world.

when adam rejects that offer and says he’ll stay in the trailer park, gansey takes it incredibly personally and his first response is to victim-blame adam for his abuse, saying things like: “you let your dad pound the shit out of you. you’re as bad as [your abusive mother]. you think you deserve it.” when adam still refuses to move in, and tells him, rightfully so, that gansey doesn’t know what it’s like for him, gansey follows that up with “don’t pretend you have anything to be proud of”. this is past mean and straight into cruel.

adam is the one who apologizes after this fight. let that sink in.

when thinking back on ronan’s suicide attempt, it is strongly implied in the text - and was made explicit in deleted scenes - that gansey appears to have taken ronan’s suicide attempt not just as a traumatic event, but as a slight against him, and is always vaguely guilt-trippy when it comes up (i.e. you promised me you wouldn’t get suicidal again)

gansey does illegal things on ronan’s behalf, multiple times, without ever wondering if this is what ronan wants, see: bribing school officials to keep ronan in school when ronan explicitly wants to drop out, because staying in school is what gansey thinks he should do. even if gansey’s heart was in the right place (i believe in staying in school), he is essentially involving ronan in illegal dealings against his will.

gansey is happy to share his search for glendower with the others, and delegate tasks to them (adam especially) as long as they do things his way. when adam acts against one of his decisions, gansey is absolutely unable to let that go. and while i understand that he is hurt by the breach of trust, because adam went behind his back, his language is telling: “i did tell him that we were to wait, right?”. you don’t “tell” your friends what they “are to do”. that’s not an equal relationship.

this is also seen in the way gansey acts with ronan in more of a parental role, actively ordering him about. you know there is a problem when an outside character refers to ronan as “gansey’s dog” and neither gansey nor ronan disagree with this.

there’s the infamous hospital scene in trb, too, which has been excellently analysed in this meta post by @bleachersmp3 and @mericatblackwood, but i’ll say a few words about it anyway

in this scene, adam has just been beaten into losing his hearing. he has just come out of the hospital, bruised and traumatised, and has been told he will now have a permanent disability as a result of his abuse. he is now also homeless, because by pressing charges against his father to protect ronan, he has ensured his parents will kick him out for good. so he is forced to move into monmouth - something we have been told from the start of the book he absolutely did not want, because it was critical to his sense of self not to depend on gansey’s wealth. so, he’s bitter about it.

and okay, that’s not entirely fair, because it wasn’t gansey’s fault. but if your friend had just undergone such horrific trauma, surely you would be a little lenient, and understand they’re not being objective atm, right? well, not gansey. instead, gansey launches into a tirade at him: “what is your problem, adam? [...] is there something about my place that’s too repugnant for you? [...] I’m sick of tiptoeing around your principles!”

when adam snaps at him that he’s being condescending by using highbrow words (we can assume that this is a discussion they’ve had before, because adam tries to get gansey to use more everyday words multiple times in the book, especially when it’s clear that blue doesn’t understand something, so it’s something gansey already know adam finds condescending), gansey goes straight to victim-blaming again, this time with a classist twist thrown in: “i’m sorry your father never taught you the meaning of repugnant. he was too busy smashing your head against the wall of your trailer while you apologized for being alive.”

gansey does not apologize at any point after this fight.

when adam sacrifices himself to cabeswater - which he does explicitly to stop whelk from murdering one of them and save gansey - gansey takes it as a slight against him, because it goes against what he told adam to do, and sadly asks adam “why? was i so awful?”, showing he has completely misunderstood adam’s reasons. adam tells him, and not for the last time: “it was never about you”.

it clearly doesn’t sink in bc they have the same discussion in the dream thieves, when gansey again asks him why did he go to cabeswater against his orders. he does this in an emotionally manipulative way, too - implying that ronan and blue both think badly of him while gansey has been defending him so adam owes him. adam again tries to tell him “it wasn’t about you”, which gansey refuses to believe, and reminds adam that the glendower search “belongs” to him. adam replies that if gansey wants adam’s help - which gansey relies upon frequently, as it seems like adam is assigned a very large share of research and coming up with ideas - he needs to treat him as an equal

after the fight, when adam has a mental breakdown due to the combination of stress, ptsd, and magically-induced hallucinations, and is found wandering along a highway, clearly dissociating and undergoing amnesia, gansey is still so bitter about their fight that he contemplates leaving him behind in dc, so that “adam will have to apologize for once” (for once???)

consider all this emphasis gansey puts on how much adam betrayed his trust; consider that gansey then spends nearly two books seeing blue behind adam’s back (starting in tdt, through bllb, and halfway through trk)

consider that despite the fact adam takes the reveal gracefully and thanks gansey for his honesty, when adam later in trk is honest with gansey about his feelings for ronan, gansey’s immediate reaction is to assume adam is using ronan as a sexuality experiment and warns him not to break ronan’s heart, because ronan is just so fragile and adam is just so cold

consider that the only basis gansey has for making this assumption is that “adam has hurt him (gansey) so many times before”, but never stops to think about his own responsibility in their disagreements, or whether he ever hurt adam

as you can see, the vast majority of these are in the first two books, with the exception of the “shovel talk” in trk. i would like to say gansey grows over the series, but i think unfortunately it’s more to do with the fact that starting with bllb, the plot is split between gansey/blue and adam/ronan, so gansey just doesn’t get as many interactions with adam and ronan (he’s still bribing school officials on ronan’s behalf though, including selling monmouth which at the time is where ronan is also living).

gansey isn’t a bad person, and doesn’t (always) mean badly. he does love his friends. unfortunately, his refusal to see things from anyone’s perspective but his own makes him a toxic friend on a great number of occasions.

#trc #meta #gansey #toxic friendship #mp #gotta stop here because i need to work and also i'm getting upset #long post #suicide mention tw #anonymous #answer #my meta

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ophezio · 3 years

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yes, i think harry and luna makes more sense than harry and ginny. hear me out

ok so before any hinny shippers get me, please hear me out. a lot of points might be unjustified but only because jk rowling is a shit written and wrote a lot of horrible tropes. but anyways, let’s continue.

let me start off with harry as a character. harry has always been rather opposed to the fame he receives, and hates when people pay him attention only for the purpose of him being The Boy Who Lived. he always feels rather shut off from the world, even though he clearly has people on his side. you can tell he wishes everyone would just look past his legacy and see him for him. hermione and ron do that most of the time, but still do fall into the trap of seeing The Boy Who Lived first. a lot of people do, and it’s quite understandable as that’s the first thing you notice about harry. but anyways harry is just a boy who wants nothing but to been seen as anything but that. moving on to his personality, he’s very hotheaded and very opinionated, and never lets his opinions falter. he of course has a lot of built up anger over the way people have treated him his whole life. he struggles with people just not understanding him the way he longs for someone to. he wants to seen as an ordinary dude who has emotions just like anyone else, simple as that.

now let’s look at ginny as a character. ginny is a very nice girl who’s an enjoyable person to be around. she’s confident, outgoing, funny, and can bring a good energy to room as all eyes automatically go to her. she’s quite popular as she’s extremely pretty, automatically pushing her up the food chain of hogwarts. also, being on the quidditch team helps with the popularity. so naturally, attention follows her. she’s your stereotypical perfect-girl, which isn’t at all a bad thing as most stories need that girl. the one thing i will say that bugs me about ginny is her judgefulness, especially when it came to fleur. now of course this is just plainly jk rowling’s internal misogyny and pick-girl writing style, but it still is ginny, unfortunately. ginny feels like a person who can be quick to judge a situation for what it is rather than accessing it first. and that isn’t exactly a positive trait.

ginny and harry definitely have a lot of similarities and get along extremely well. they both love quidditch, both are hotheaded and opinionated, and overall have a lot of the same personality traits. most importantly, they share the trauma of being controlled and tormented by voldemort. this is a very big thing to share in common, and is most likely why harry can confide in ginny. but, all the similarities can create a dynamic where they butt heads a lot as you do when someone is so similar to yourself. i know personally when i meet people who are a lot like me, we tend to butt heads more often than not. i can definitely get along with those people though, and have great friendships. it’s just anything beyond that wouldn’t work in my opinion. and that’s why harry and ginny sometimes makes me scratch my head a bit. harry and ginny did work in the books because they were always written to be together. but if we think from a realistic standpoint, it wouldn’t have worked at all. similar trauma would definitely create a bond, but now in a way that could be romantically. you are welcome to disagree all you’d like, but i just simply can wrap my head around it.

moving onto luna as a character. luna is a very freeing character who does as she pleases and doesn’t let others people’s harsh opinions affect her and her hobby’s. people have always talked down on luna, and separated her based on what they see on the surface. they first see her as “loony lovegood” because it’s what their first reaction is. i can see at first seeing her as a bit odd, as she does talk about things that are out of the ordinary. but if you look beyond that, she’s so much more. she’s extremely intelligent (hence the ravenclaw), and has such an open mind that anything seems possible to her. with having such an open mind, she’s willing to see situations as they truthfully are, and would never wrongfully judge as she never enjoys when it happens to her. she listens to people, because she knows she’d appreciate if people listened to her. with this comes her calming demeanor that could especially help when someone’s in a state of panic or is just riled up. luna is a very fluid character who can very relaxing to be around.

harry and luna would more realisticly work, in my personal opinion. if they had been written to be together from the start, more people would agree with any opinions regarding harry and luna. but jk rowling being the shit writer she is, she would rather see the main character get together with the perfect girl with seemingly no flaws on the surface, rather than the girl who clearly does have flaws but is more realistic. ginny was written as jk rowling’s projection, clearly representing what she so desperately wanted to be. if she had just written characters as they should be, ginny would an even better character than she already is.

but anyways, harry and luna. harry and luna relate on many different that in the long run matter a lot more than you might realize. harry and luna have always been objectified for things they have no control over. harry for being The Boy Who Lived, and luna for being herself. they’ve both been on the receiving ends of weird stares and harsh words. hogwarts has seemingly created a lot more problems for them than anything, yet they still manage to find more redeeming qualities than anything. especially with found families. harry and luna both know what’s it like to lose a parent, and what that sort of thing does to you. no one else they know have gone through that, making it hard to connect with others on that level. they’re able to understand each other, and sympathize for each other without it being pity because they know how it feels. and i think this shows when luna comforts harry after sirius dies. she knows the feeling, and makes harry feel known and understood, something he constantly needs from people. he needs people to see him on a personal level, and see him beyond his fame, and see him as harry, a ordinary boy who has just had unfortunate things happen to him. i think luna really gets that feeling, hence why she’s able to make harry feel more comforted about sirius’s death. luna generally has a calming effect, and it works extremely well for harry, who desperately needs a person capable of doing that. luna can see straight though him, and can sense when he’s feeling down and lying about being fine. not many people tell him they can see through him, rather just believing when he says he fine and leaves it alone. luna is very straightforward, and sometimes harry does need that. yet she doesn’t pry for information. she’ll tell him she knows he’s not fine, but she’ll let it go rather that press on him for details. harry is always appreciative of people who don’t pry for details, but when someone can see past your facade yet still give you the space you need, it helps a great deal. especially someone like harry who is only ever looked at from the surface. he’s seen as an object rather than a person. but luna never does that. luna never looks at him as The Boy Who Lived, she looks at him like he’s an normal boy who she just happens to go to school with. harry can talk to luna with fear of being seen just for fame, and can obviously talk to luna without being bothered. people generally avoid luna, and realistically, harry would find comfort in that. harry enjoys when he escapes the fame, and can be normal. luna is one of few people he can be like that with. hence why i would assume harry finds more comfort in that than what’s written in the book. i always take everything in those books with a grain of salt, and this is one thing that i think otherwise on. if these books were more better written, harry would naturally find comfort in someone he can lay low with and find peace with. someone who understands him and wouldn’t turn their back on him. luna is that person. all throughout the books, luna is constantly standing behind harry, never for one second leaving him behind. in the 5th book, she reassures harry that she certainly believes harry and has no reason not to. she also helps harry tell people his truth by putting his interview with rita skeeter in the quibbler. that’s a very important thing for harry, as not many people would be willing to do that big of thing for him, especially during that period of everyone accusing him of being a liar. luna also constantly stands behind harry in the 6th and 7th books. she asks a lot of times if the DA will ever meet again, showing she’s willing to meet again if harry ever speaks the words. after almost getting caught the previous, people might not want to return to the DA so willinging as luna seems to. and in the 7th book, she stands behind him too, comforting him when dobby dies, casting those patronuses when seen harry in danger, and when she offered to cause a distraction so harry could get some privacy after the final battle.

luna is a very strong support system, and never falters her support. this is very important for someone like harry, who a lot of times gets a nagging feeling that people are going to leave him, which is understandable for the life he’s lived. luna is the definition of a ride or die. now an argument i see a lot is harry wouldn’t be good enough for luna. if we look at it canon wise, then yes, i might agree. but that’s simply because he wasn’t written to be romantically involved with luna, hence why it does seem he would be not be good enough for her. if he had been written to be interested in her, it would appear totally different. i mean canon does show us he does care for her and doesn’t think poorly of her. he clearly always appreciates her kind gestures, and he clearly enjoys her presence enough to invite her along to the slughorn christmas party. he wouldn’t have invited her if he didn’t like and care for her, simple as that. if a romance was written and developed between them, things would look a lot better than they do when we look at canon. i personally hate most canon things, so i simply ignore certain canon aspects a lot of times. most importantly being harry being an auror and settling down with ginny. the auror part being because he doesnt like attention from a lot of people, and isn’t ever really shown to be enjoying fighting dark wizards. personally if i had been hunted down by dark wizards my whole life i wouldn’t go into a profession where i’d often be fighting them, but that’s just me i guess. and settling down with ginny just for the fact that usually high school sweethearts don’t make it far out of high school, and i also don’t see ginny wanting to settle down so early in her life. like c’mon, does ginny weasley honestly seem like the type to settle down at the age of 22 or 23? not really. ginny wouldn’t willing give up a professional quidditch career for some kids, let’s be real here. in a most realistic setting, i see harry laying low for a while, living a peaceful life where he doesn’t have to have people constantly prodding him because of his fame. and luna obviously would never settle down early either. they’re similar in that retrospect, and had they been together, would probably live in a cottage where they don’t have many neighbors. i also see them traveling and just enjoying the peacefulness of seeing new things and finding the joy in the simple things. it’s something that would be so important for harry and could truly help with his recovery, because him not having any mental health problems is so painfully unrealistic. and luna would be wonderful for improving his mental health, as she understands him and can see straight through him. also, she’d bring him out of his comfort zone into things he’d never though he’d find himself doing, but enjoying nonetheless. he needs someone to bring out a different side to him, and show him all the different possibilities life has to offer, people i can easily see harry have troubling with seeing the light in life after everything he’s been through.

i’m definitely rambling at this point so let me conclude : i love ginny to pieces, she’s one of my absolute favorite characters. but with the careless way she was written, and the unrealistic terms in which her and harry’s relationship was written under, i can’t help but see harry and luna being a more realistic match.

#harry potter #luna lovegood #harry x luna #ginny weasley #harry potter ships #harry potter opinions #character study #character analysis #opinions #discourse

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a-student-out-of-time · 3 years

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There's a good and a bad way to subvert expectations. Unfortunately what's been happening a lot lately is that many works go for twists for the sake of being twists, the Star Wars Sequels being a prime example of this. Or the later sessions of Game of Thrones. There is a fine balance between being able to surprise your audience and not being extremely predictable.

//I’ve absorbed more complaints and feelings from both those series through pop-culture osmosis than I have from watching them. I’m more of a casual observer, but I do have some feelings on both these points (which I will put under here if you’re interested.)

//tl;dr version: I think we should unbiasedly judge media on its own merits and look over what works internally within the story and what doesn’t, be willing to make our own judgements rather than jump on bandwagons and tell people what they should or shouldn’t like, and not treat opinions as straight facts.

//And also that I’m honestly tired of hearing about the sequels and GoT ^^;

//I disagree with a lot of people on the Star Wars sequels (aside from 9, fuck 9), but I’d rather not start a debate about it nor their quality overall. Only that I think people really overreacted to them and many others jumped on the hate bandwagon when emotions were running high.

//Frankly, many of the criticisms I saw about the films felt either wildly inconsistent about what they’re upset about or what they wanted it to be (7 was criticized for being too much like old Star Wars, 8 for not being enough like old Star Wars) and others felt like they came from bad faith and I can’t take them seriously.

//And yes, the last season of Game of Thrones is trash and wrecked everyone’s storylines for the sake of being shocking, but let’s also be real: GoT was never going to have a happy ending if it wanted to stick to its “realism.” Whoever got on the Iron Throne was inevitably going to have to purge all opposition to consolidate power. That’s just how real revolutions and coups work.

//To be clear, Daenerys’ turn to evil murderousness was stupidly executed, but it wasn’t necessarily unprecedented. What I frankly dislike about fantasy in general is its tendency toward the Divine Right of Kings. That only certain bloodlines have the right to rule and you just need to put the “rightful heir” on the throne. In other words, giving absolute power to a magically omnibenevolent person will fix everything. I may be an optimistic humanist, but I know that simply doesn’t happen.

//The entire point of GoT is that DRoK is stupid and royalty in general really kinda sucks. If you go back, you see most of the lords we follow, including “good king” Eddard Stark, are either totally indifferent to the masses or are completely sadistic and torture them for funsies since the legal system doesn’t protect peasants.

//The Starks are no better than the Lannisters simply by virtue of being overall “nicer” than them. Both sides start wars that get thousands of people killed. Also, everybody loved John Snow, but he also fucking hanged a kid and I’ve never heard anyone bring that up since.

//Most importantly, Daenerys was a likable character with a sympathetic backstory, but even before the last season, she was fully embracing being a Targaryen by blood and was openly murdering people who got in her way while she was conquering territory after territory.

//Yes, a lot of the people she killed were slaveholders, but let’s be real for a moment: not everyone who participates in an evil system is evil themselves. It’s easy for us as the audience to judge them for participating in a slavocracy, but living in one comes with being told slavery is okay. That doesn’t make them evil by nature, just subject to the biases of their culture.

//Also, slavery is evil but conquering people is fine? And burning people to death for opposing you is acceptable since you’re going to be better and free everyone, or because you had a sympathetic backstory? These are the kinds of things that get villains criticized for, but is treated as a necessary evil at worst for the protagonists.

//This is protagonist-centered morality. The show is framing it in a way where you’re being drawn in to see it that way, but also telling you not to see blatant hypocrisies for what they really are. Daenerys was even called as mad as her father by Tyrion. It wasn’t well-executed, but it was going to happen regardless of how much anyone liked her.

//Violence for a good cause is still violence. If you’re going to burn people for disagreeing with you, then say that other people shouldn’t and should listen to others, that’s full-on hypocrisy. That goes for most of the characters in the show, frankly, and the message is executed well for most of it.

//That being said, don’t think this means I think the last season of GoT is good, that the Star Wars sequels are perfect, or that I hate all fantasy books ever. That’s not what I’m saying. I try to enjoy what’s good about them and point out their flaws regardless.

//What I’m saying is it’s important to, when you want to be critical of media, put your feelings and biases aside and judge the media you’re criticizing on its own merits. In my opinion, the claims that the sequels only did things to subvert expectations is unfounded. They were going their own direction, which was admittedly controversial and not what many people wanted, but just because you don’t want it to happen doesn’t mean it’s a bad twist

//Just like how a character isn’t a Mary Sue just because they’re too OP or you don’t like them. That’s not what that term means and hearing people use it like that irritates me. While I do have my complaints about characters, people use that term as if it’s a form of literary criticism that has more use than is necessary.

//If a character is OP, they’re OP. If a character is flat, they’re flat. If a character is poorly written, they’re poorly written. If a character is at the center of the universe and literally everything else exists just to amplify them and their role in things, then they’re likely a Mary Sue/Gary Stu. It’s not a label to slap on a character you don’t like or to give a critique (or complaint) more weight.

//This is why I say DR3 Chiaki isn’t a Mary Sue, she’s just not a very well written character. All Mary Sues are poorly written characters, but not all poorly written characters are Mary Sues. She’s not terrible, but she’s not explored much and her only big roles are being the person who brings Class 77-B together and her death turns them to despair.

//While her death was tragic and brutal, we didn’t really get a good look at who she was as a person beyond just being nice and opening up to her friends. If they’d expanded on that a little more, maybe it would’ve been more effective, but the way she died felt...manipulative and shock baity in a lot of ways since it banked mostly on our familiarity with her despite it being a totally different person.

//DR3 honestly had a whole host of shocky and just plain gross scenes that I really don’t think needed to be there.

//But likewise, if a story has a plot twist that you don’t like, that doesn’t automatically make it purely shock bait or subverting expectations just for the sake of doing so. There’s a difference between “this character was evil all along and there were a lot of clues and we just didn’t want to believe it” and “this character was evil all along for reasons we’re dumping on you now.”

//Just so I don’t seem like a hypocrite, while I personally don’t like what happened with Mikan in chapter 3 of SDR2, it was an effective way of foreshadowing the truth of them being the remnants of despair. It was set up that every had lost their memories and this was a sign that getting them back wasn’t necessarily going to have a good outcome.

//And I’ll be real: I can’t take a lot of the complaints about the Sequels or GoT seriously because much of it carries overtones of racism, sexism and antisemitism. For those more into Star wars, I think you know what I mean already and that’s all I’ll say. As for GoT, I’ve seen reddit posts viscerally attacking the writers directly and even saying that we should’ve expected the ending to suck since it was “written by Jews.”

//Yeah, go figure I can’t read any of that. I know not all people who hated the show’s ending or the films are like that, but it’s impossible to deny that those attitudes are very real.

//In the end, if you want to be critical of media, the worst way to do that is to just watch a video of someone complaining about it for half an hour. Yes, those video essays can be fun, but the only way to be truly critical of media you enjoy is to examine it yourself and look closely at what’s in it and how it’s presented. That goes doubly for shows you like.

//I know not everyone will do that and all opinions are ultimately subjective, but don’t let someone else tell you that you should hate something or that something is bad just because they didn’t like how it ended. Watch or read it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Don’t just follow the crowd and also be respectful of people who don’t agree with you. You can learn a lot when you talk to someone with a different opinion.

#mod talks #mod rambles #a student out of time #just giving my thoughts #Anonymous #cw: racism #cw: sexism #cw: antisemitism

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deranged-ink · 3 years

Text

Dear editor in chief.

Yesterday I was reading a magazine -your magazine- while waiting for my coffee. I´ll admit that I was so into it that, to my embarrassment, I failed to notice the girl approaching until she left the coffee with some croissants on my table. That would be a big mistake if I were reading on the company time.

I was too involved in a single line of your last editorial:

What is your hobby? A simple and dull question, but not to my eyes. I can't help but wonder about what kind of person is asking. Is it someone intelligent? Someone with a really deep understanding of the human nature or just the typical dumb brick monkey behind a typewriter. I can assure you that one honest to god smile cameforth to your inquiry, simply because it is one of those easy-to-answer questions using a triviality, difficult to answer with The Truth.

I suppose that if you force me to answer with nothing but said Truth I would have to admit, with the proper amount of blush on my cheeks, that I like to look at the people, please take note that i am not a stalker, it's just that in order to be good at my job I have to describe myself as a rather avid observer.

I like to look at people, especially on my job. You have to understand, sitting on an uncomfortable chair for countless hours, drinking cheap coffe and killing cigars in some dirty ashtray, just waiting for the phone to ring to do my job... I would have turned crazy long, long ago if I wouldn't found a way to kill some time.

But from my hobby something really good came up.

I learned, no. I found something fascinating while observing these biological machines. Well first, I´ll confess, everything started with a game: Guess what it will do now?

From that game I discovered that all this elaborated, commercialized and consumed idea of freedom is -for most of these poor bastards- fundamentally, a lie . A lie that may or may not be true, that's the beauty of the whole subject. A liar's truth.

Before you burn your brains trying to imagine something like that, let me add something, whatever you imagine, it will be right.

If you think about it, it's a beautiful "oxymoron". Freedom is a useful farse (A dream for the most) where you must be aware of what you do and stop doing. You must fully understand each of your actions from its very root. Thats the really hard part.

Do not get me wrong, I have always said that true freedom is real, a primordial part of what reality is. The problem lies in the excuses that the lower minds uses to escape from the weight of freedom.

They fall for the supposed "unmeasurable plots" of some great powers and some others imaginary enemies (that for some not-even-god-knows reason will try to brainwash or enslave them).

They gave these plotters this divine attribute of being untouchable. And closing their eyes, they turned themselves into beings without a real opinion, without control over their lives. That's nothing short of stupidity. Themselves wrote the fairytale that they now fear, and did it in order of escaping the responsibility of knowing/taking control of their lives.

Themselves choose their imaginary chains and in the same thought, choose the more imaginary saviour that will come to brake them! Just look at those pocket warriors of the social networks, reading only what supports their ideals and burning the rest!

-Oh, traditional book burning! The irony!-

Thats how they define themselves acording their position on said system: left, right, pro-life, pro-choice, feminist, traditional, pro-system, anti-system, pious, atheist.

But what they call "the system" is just a playing field. Not some godwritten rules that will never change.

And there they meet failure without being able to realize that they act as the said system expects them to act. All the pieces on the board have a use. Even when trying to escape, when trying to think and act outside of the box, they only succeed -in a beautiful way if you ask me- to prove that they are wrong.

They do not realize that the system is not a box, but actually a box of many, each box is full of boxes and the fact that you can "get out" of the box only confirms this.

You can -with ease- point out all the poor bastards who buy a t-shirt with the face of Che Guevara (or someother communist symbol). Ironically, they are being part of a capitalist market with them as their target. The same can be said of those really patriotic friends, they really love America and they also really love their flag to be made in china. Sweet irony.

This is the same for freedom. To be free, you must be aware of what you are, truly aware, also accept what you can and can not do and that each of your actions has an effect on the great cosmic pool that is this life, each action is a small or a large stone that falls on water. You will imagine that with so many rocks that big pool is not calm at all. And thats life my friend, actions that modify our actions in one way or another. The real freedom lies in understanding this, accepting it and continuing to live.

Playing "Guess what it will do now?" I had an eureka moment some years ago. From an open window I was looking at the people on the street with my telescope, when I learned something that saddens me: "People" sold their freedom for a manual.

Life is not easy and that´s why most decide to live thinking it is. I honestly ignore the reason behind such a stupid decision. "People" gave away their freedom in exchange of beliefs, just to not question. Just to take the world as it was presented, without thinking, without asking. Only assimilating it and calling it true.

Name your manual however you want... Luck, Destiny, God, the almighty Horoscope, Reptilians or Super corporations that plan to dominate the world. It is in their hands that our world and our lives rest and not on us.

I bet that sounds better than the truth.

Everyone is free to believe in whatever they want, even when those beliefs take away their freedom.

Especially when they take away their freedom

The "manual" depends on many things, such as their upbringing, the books they had read, the books they didn't, their general education, but above all these things, of something greater, something with more force than those preconceived ideas of a man's life being the direct and ultimate result of those first twenty years of his life.

-Those who affirm that are the "intellectuals" who seek to justify mediocrity by blaming society.-

I discovered a truth, a sad truth, that goes beyond. Are you ready? Our life depends on ourselves

-Surprising, right?-.

It depends on our decisions, our actions and how much we want to be ourselves. How much do we want to be free.

For the rest the world you have that manual that handles their lives or that simply points to the people or entities that will do it. Manuals that dictate the routine of each of them, from how, when and where they go to work, to what they stop to eat and why. What they believe in, how they think, how they feel.

So many "children" blame the manual and I can only feel sorry for them.

I can only look at them straight in the eye and say: Do not blame the manual, blame yourselves for accepting it. Blame your weakness for letting yourself be destroyed to that point.

To the point of acting... In automatic, each and every one of "them" lives like this, in automatic.

I say "them" because I do not know if "you", whoever reads these words, also do it. And no, do not let the fact that you are a reader of newspapers, books and intellectual publications make you think that you are beyond this fundamental flaw of the human being. Maybe you are also, a zombie, a computer that acts according to a list of things to do. That is why I refer to them as "It" or "them", maybe you are, or not, so I consider that these words can be one of two uses for you;

1: A call to wake up.

2: A lesson in what you should never do to yourself.

"They" are predictable, "they" are stupid. A person is a completely different topic, the problem is that there aren't many individuals left, individuals are now an endangered specie. But there are many "people". There were many individuals who decided to stop being individuals to become people.

Good people. Bad people. That doesn't matter. Cuz people is predictable. And it's something that in my line of work I've learned to do, it's a fundamental part of it.

For example; Look at this guy, for the last six days I've seen he it come and go, always in the same old beige suit and dull shoes, with its eyes on the ground, dragging its feet every morning. That's when I guess it goes to work. But not so surprisingly, it walks with the same vigor when it goes back in the afternoon. Two days ago was the day of "bring your son to work" but it didn't bring anyone. I got curious so during one impromptu walk to the donut shop I passed by it and could not help noticing that it doesn't have a single ring in its hand, nor a scar, much less any characteristic feature or mark added by life experiences. It was programmed that way, throughout his life it decided to accept what the rest thought of it, from its parents to its classmates, it let each and every one of their opinions form what it is today, unfortunately those opinions were everything but positive.

If forced to guess I would said that when It was a He, was one of those people with an artistic mind, a characteristic completely undervalued by his parents, repudiated by his peers and misinterpreted by his teachers who were unable to see beyond their own mediocrity.

If I have to bet: I would say that he did not grow up in the city, he was born and raised in a dying small town, one of those that somehow still linger in the 21th century. His parents decided that the life of an artist was not for him, that he deserved better, that he had to be someone "normal". He decided to listen to them. And being a person of unique thinking is not difficult to guess that he ended up in an office job that hates, earning a pittance to make his boss buy a new car every year. Thats how He became It.

But it's not the boss's fault, it's just that It is not good at what It does, it's almost like wanting to screw a chair using a rock. The wrong tool for the task. That is why this could be the best thing that ever happened to It, it may be the wake up call that leads It to recover its life. To become a He.

We can also see the perfect opposite; with a badly rolled joint in the mouth, practically finishing learning to smoke without coughing or looking like a complete idiot: A skinny boy in a leather jacket that barely fits him, too tight jeans, expensive but too big shoes, hair full of hairspray and tinted in three shades of pink that I do not have the slightest intention or desire to learn how to differentiate.

I always see him in the same place, the alley that is right beside the donuts shop, pretending to be the most badass punk of the block for hours. Actually, that doesn't seem to be the place he choose to spend every morning, I think that it's the place that was chosen for him.

He is never alone, always accompanied by others who dress just like him, the same spiky hair but of different colors. They skip school to spend their mornings laughing at the people passing by, provoking them, intimidating them, smoking, but until now they have never said anything to the police.

- Every time a cop walked in front of them they just kept quiet hiding their eyes in their expensive last generation smartphones. They even treat the "autority" with the utmost respect! It's funny but sad.-

This is fashion. Just a trend, fighting against the system, to rebel against their parents, against society, to paint walls with messages of anarchy and rebellion. With no actual desire to do so.

Just playing to be free without accepting consequences or duties, to be free to do what you want while keep on sucking from the old tits of your mother, a whole case for Freud to write two more books. Want me to guess? He never felt hungry. He must come from a boring and average middle-high class family. His parents gave him everything he ever wanted, but never a proper slap, must be the only child or at least the youngest of the siblings. And the only reason he plays the whole punk behavior is that he is bored

That's why he came up with this whole idea of rebelling against the system or rather, copied it, like his friends, without noticing the most comical aspect of all this, wanting to be different they all became the same. Acting the same, acting from a manual.

I bet that He will run, shout, beg to the police as soon as he sees the red rush. If he is smart, he will realize that he is wrong, that the system is not the enemy, is not the monster that makes this world the shit hole it is. The actual monster is the man with the rifle.

#writers #writing #prose #books & libraries #literature #ficcion

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cinaja · 4 years

Text

Before the Wall part 29

Summary: Five hundred years before Feyre Archeron is born, the world is much different from the one she lives in. Humans are slaves, seen as little more than animals by the Fae who rule. But things are beginning to change. Talks of rebellion is spreading and on the Continent, some Fae territories begin to consider the potential gain of War. All it takes is one spark and everything will explode.

Masterlist

A/N: There's another time jump of about 10 months before this chapter because this war is seven years and I really need to reach the end eventually.

-----

Drakon didn`t expect his essays to get any kind of attention. No one in international politics ever seemed interested in what he had to say, so the idea that they`d be care about his writing seemed absurd.

But maybe getting captured and tortured by the enemy made him interesting enough that people suddenly were interested in what he wrote. Or he just got lucky. Either way, the essays he published – an analysis of why it was the Fae`s duty as a people to help the humans fight for their freedom – got popular practically overnight with the Fae soldiers. According to Miryam, his timing was perfect. With causalities rising each day, many Fae had been questioning what they were fighting for, and apparently, Drakon`s texts did a good job of reminding everyone what this war was really about and thus increasing troop morale.

Even ten months later, Drakon still hasn`t gotten used to his new popularity.

Sitting on a rock just outside of their current camp with an open book on his lap, Drakon watches the first rays of the sun colour the land in golden light. Before he got captured, he liked to still be asleep by sunrise. But these days, he keeps waking up from nightmares and then, he can`t stand the confinement of his tent. So he usually ends up sitting somewhere outside of the camp long before sunrise, either getting some paperwork done or writing another essay. Like today, when he`s close to finishing an essay explaining why the Fae`s supposed superiority is a myth. He just needs a final argument.

Miryam finds him when the sun has almost fully risen over the horizon. The light makes the tips of her hair glow and makes her look like she`s wearing a crown of fire.

“How is it you always know where to find me?”, Drakon asks with a smile and closes his book.

“You`re a tad predictable.” Miryam plops down on the stone next to him.

These days, their sleeping habits are rather similar. Some days, Miryam will join him outside of the camp. Sometimes, they talk about his writing, about politics and the war. Occasionally, Drakon tells her about his nightmares. She never talks about hers. Other days, they just sit in silence. He has come to miss her when she doesn`t join him in the morning.

“I have a council meeting in an hour”, Miryam says, “Do you want to come?”

“Can`t.” And he doesn`t really want to, either. At Miryam`s insistence, he joined a few council meetings in the last few months, but even though the Council is far more polite to him these days, he still doesn`t enjoy the meetings. “I have a meeting of my own in Erithia in two hours, and I promised Jurian to join him for a patrol afterwards.”

“What`s the meeting about?”, Miryam asks.

Drakon starts drumming a rhythm on his leg. That`s another new habit of his. One of the healers from home suggested he should find something to focus on, a distraction to help him deal with things. He had a list of things one might use and Drakon settled on rhythms. It helps him remain calm.

“Remember this reform for our taxation system we were discussing three days ago?”, he asks. Miryam nods and he continues, “Well, it`s up to vote today, but I don`t think it will pass.”

Miryam smiles and shakes her head. “Only you would sound cheerful about losing a vote.”

“Well, I`m not happy about losing, obviously. But if I lose a vote, it means my system is working.” He shrugs. “Besides, most of the people on my council are smarter than me, so if they don`t allow a law to go through, I`m sure they have a reason.”

“And if the reason is that it doesn`t benefit them personally?”, Miryam asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, who is it that would suffer under your new law?”

“Well, it`s supposed to make the system fairer. No one suffers.” The whole idea behind it is that fewer people suffer. But still, he knows what Miryam is aiming for. “But I suppose there will be an increase in taxes for the rich.”

“And what would you say, how many of your council members are rich?”

“You mean…” Drakon groans. “But they are supposed to represent the people! That`s what they were elected for!”

“I`m not saying they don`t care about the people”, Miryam says. “Just that you might want to take into account that they also care about themselves.”

Drakon rubs face. Either way, if Miryam is right, his system has a serious design flaw.

“So what do I do?”

Miryam shrugs. “How am I supposed to know? I have no idea how laws work, or how to run a country. I just know a thing or two about people.”

Drakon sighs. Maybe if he makes a rule that only half of the seats can be given to people from the upper class? Either way, it means changing the system again.

“Damnit”, he mutters and continues drumming around on his leg.

“Hey.” Miryam moves closer and wraps an arm around him. “This new system of yours is a great idea, really. But you`ve only been doing this for a few years. It`s completely natural that there are still things that need fixing.”

Drakon nods. “I better figure something out, then.”

It will be a ton of work. But well, he knew in advance that changing his countries political system would not be easy. At least he`ll have something new to keep him busy during sleepless nights now.

“Do that”, Miryam says and gets up. “Now, I have a meeting to get to, so I should be off.”

He looks after her as she walks towards the camp. At the edge of the camp, she stops to have a short conversation with the guards. They are too far away for Drakon to hear what they are saying, but the sound of Miryam`s laugh drifts over to him.

Smiling, Drakon turns back to his book. He thinks he might be growing a bit too used to having her around.

----

The meeting has been going on for more than four hours now. Miryam`s magic has been acting up for the last two.

Miryam holds herself so straight it makes her back hurt and tries to focus on the conversation, but the feeling that something is pulling at her becomes more insistent with each passing minute. Under the table, she digs her fingers into her leg so hard that it hurts. Pain, she learned, helps keep her grounded.

“I suggest we join the armies”, she says. Does her voice sound strained? “That way, we cover up for the losses and increase their chances to survive should there be another attack.”

Yes, the strain in her voice is most certainly audible. But since they are discussing how to best cover the loss of another two thousand soldiers, they are all a little on edge. She`ll fit right in.

“That way, we`re down another army”, Zeku points out, frowning at the map in the middle of the table. Little figures mark the positions of the armies. blue for the Alliance, red for the Loyalists. These days, there is no mistaking that there is far more red than blue to be seen on the playing field of this war.

“And if we don`t, we lose both if there`s another battle and they have too few soldiers left to defend themselves”, Andromache says matter-of-factly. The queen looks as tired as Miryam feels, with her slightly tangled hair and the brown skin that lost its usual glow.

Miryam nods at her. “We only have bad options here”, she says, “All that`s left to do is pick the one that`s least likely to end in disaster.” And do it quickly, so that she can get out of here.

Unfortunately, as soon as the matter at hand is solved, there are three more issues for the council to deal with and Miryam is stuck in the stuffy meeting chamber, listening to bickering royals and trying to stir the meeting into a productive direction for another hour. At least her power finally seems to settle down to the point where it`s almost bearable. Miryam leans back in her chair and tries not to let her relief show.

Finally, the last problem has been solved and Miryam thanks everyone for their presence. Ever since her conversation with Grand Duke Zeku, she is acutely aware that her basically leading the meetings does make her stand out in the Alliance, but there`s little she can do about her position now. Their situation is precarious enough as it is, the last thing they need is for her to step back from her leading spot and cause a power struggle amongst the Continental leaders.

At least she manages to get to the door without being stopped by any of her co-councilmembers and finds a Fae guard who is friendly enough to winnow her back to her camp. As soon as she is outside, the last bit of her dizziness passes.

“Evening Tia!”, she calls out to the woman who is currently trying to show a group of new recruits how to properly use a longbow. So far, no success is visible – most arrows miss their mark by several feet – and Tia looks annoyed when she turns around.

“This already looks better than in the morning”, Miryam says with a smile towards one of the recruits who is staring at her with wide eyes. She`ll never get used to the looks.

Tia snorts. “All I`m hoping for at this point is that they don`t hit each other. Or me.” Tia sighs. “You`ve seen to Jurian and Drakon already?” Miryam shakes her head and she adds, “Then you should probably go. They ran into trouble during their patrol.”

Dread settles into Miryam`s stomach and makes it hard to breath. They`re alive, she tells herself, if they weren`t, Tia would have said so right away. “Where?”, she manages.

“Healer`s tent.”

Miryam nods and sets off. She desperately wants to run, but she is one of the camp`s commanders, people look to her for leadership. If she panics, it sends a bad message. So she walks as slowly as she can manage.

Both Jurian and Drakon are in the healer`s tent. Drakon is sitting on a chair. A healer stands behind him and tries to sew a deep-looking wound in his shoulder shut. Drakon looks a bit pale and winces each time the needle pierces his skin, but if he`s sitting up, the injury can`t be too dangerous. Jurian is pacing in front of him, face frozen in rage.

“What happened?”, Miryam asks. Her voice is breathless, even though she walked slowly.

“He`s a stupid idiot, that`s what”, Jurian hisses.

Miryam frowns. Whatever it is that happened between the two, it`s best discussed in private if she doesn`t want the entire camp to know about it within an hour.

“I`ll take over”, she says to the healer, who hands her the needle and hurries out of the room. Miryam quickly inspects the wound – deep, but the weapon didn`t hit anything vital – then continues the work.

“So”, she says, “now that we aren`t giving the camp gossips something to talk about anymore: What`s wrong.”

Jurian just continues to pace, pausing only to glare at Drakon occasionally.

“I made a completely reasonable choice -”, Drakon begins, butJurian whirls around to him and cuts him off.

“You could have died!”, he shouts. Miryam winces.

“I`m Fae. The chances of me dying –“

“I don`t care!” Jurian goes back to his pacing. “You don`t get to walk into a stupid arrow for me! You think I want you to die for me?” Without giving either of them the chance to reply, he whirls around and storms out of the tent.

Well, at least now Miryam knows what the problem is. “So I assume that arrow was originally meant for Jurian.”

Drakon nods. “An ambush. We were half an hour out of the camp when the arrows started flying. One went straight for Jurian.” He shrugs. Miryam wonders if he was this reckless a year ago already.

“Jurian is human”, Drakon adds, like he`s trying to justify his actions, “The chances of him dying were far higher. And even if he would have survived, his wounds heal more slowly than mine do.”

Miryam puts down her needle, reaches for a tin of salve and doesn`t reply. Saying anything on this would feel far too much like making a choice who she would rather see die, whose life she`d save if she got the chance. And she refuses to make that choice.

Drakon clenches his jaw when Miryam applies the salve to the wound, but doesn`t make a sound.

“Maybe you should go after him”, he says.

“I`ll give him a little time to calm down, then I`ll go.” If she runs after Jurian now, she will reach exactly nothing.

She reaches for a bandage and begins to wrap it around Drakon`s shoulder. Somehow, she feels bad about the entire situation. He meant well, and as thanks, he got shot and then yelled at.

“It was a brave thing to do”, Miryam says. That doesn`t sound like she`s telling him to do it again, does it? Just to be sure, she winks at him and adds, “Although I don`t think that will stop Sinna from giving you an earful about risking your life like this.”

“Oh.” Drakon makes a face and gives his shoulder a worried glance. “She`ll never let me fight again if she finds out.”

That seems highly likely. She wouldn`t even be wrong. It is the height of stupidity for a prince without heirs to jump in front of arrows to save other people. Stupid and brave. Miryam smiles. Neither Drakon nor Sinna ever seem to fully realize that he is, in fact, her superior and doesn`t actually need her permission for anything.

“Just tell her the arrow was meant for you, not Jurian.”

Drakon nods, looking relieved. “I`ll do that.”

She finishes the bandage in silence. Then, she passes Drakon his tunic. It is torn and bloody, but still better than running through the camp naked.

“Try to use the arm as little as possible”, she tells him. “I`ll change the bandages and take a look at the stiches tomorrow.”

Drakon nods. “Tell Jurian… Actually, I don`t know what you could tell him. I`m not even sorry.”

“And he isn`t actually angry”, Miryam says, “He just got scared.”

She finds Jurian in the sparring ring where he`s facing off against two opponents. She leans against a fence and watches him disable both opponents within a minute. He helps the two soldiers to his feet and wipes the sweat out of his face, then turns around to her.

“Walk with me?”, she calls out to him.

Jurian nods and follows her through the camp, away from the curious looks of the soldiers. They sit down on the stone where Miryam met with Drakon in the morning.

“He meant well, you know?”, she says softly.

“Of course he did.” Jurian wrinkles his nose. “That`s the damned problem, isn`t it?”

“Well, it`s not like we never risked our lives for his”, Miryam points out with a wry smile. Actually, she`d say that they both did far riskier things than stepping in front of an arrow. “Why is this such a problem?”

“Because…” He hesitates. “I know that the chances of all of us making it out of this alive are slim at most. I`ve accepted that.”

Miryam wants to disagree, but Jurian is right. With how this war is going, they`ll probably be lucky if even one out of the three of them lives to see the end of the fighting. If they win at all. She also knows that the chances of her being to one who survives are low. In the last months, Ravenia already sent three assassins after her.

“But it`s not…” Jurian shakes his head. “It`s not the same if someone else dies for me. Then it`s not bad luck or anything. It`s my fault. And I don`t think I can live with that.”

Miryam tilts her head back and looks up at the sky. That is the curse of their friendship – all three of them would die for each other, but neither could live with themselves if that happened.

“We`ve survived this far”, she says, “We won`t die now.”

Jurian picks up a stone and throws it into the bushes. “You usually lie better than that.”

She turns around to him and looks him straight in the eye. “We`ll all get out of this alive”, she repeats with as much confidence as she can muster.

“Thank you.” He gives her a sad smile. “I almost believe you.”

----

Jurian turns the letter around in his fingers again and again. The paper is thick and surprisingly heavy. Expensive.

The exterior of the letter is as pretty and styled up as the contents. Clythia finds the most beautiful, poetic words to get her point across. She compares him to Lokus, one of the Fae`s legendary warriors, and herself to Eshi, his lover who fought beside him. Jurian may not be very well-versed in Fae mythology, but even without having to ask Drakon, he is pretty sure that Lokus and Eshi were on the same side in their long-ago war. However, that detail doesn`t seem to deter Clythia from waxing poetry about the similarities and how they were meant for each other.

It seems the female who gleefully slaughters his people in battle has a romantic streak.

Clythia ends the letter by asking him to meet her tomorrow. It isn`t the first letter of that kind Jurian receives – Clythia writes him at least once a month – and under normal circumstances, he would have thrown it into the fire like he did with all the others. But this time, he hesitates.

At this point, it is abundantly clear that his side is not exactly winning the war anymore. And the longer this war rages, the higher the chance that someone he cares about ends up dead. If they manage to win at all. But his relationship with Clythia might give them an edge. It could mean the difference between victory and defeat for the Alliance, life and death for his friends.

You promised Miryam, he reminds himself. But she was only ever against the relationship because she worried about him. She thought he wouldn`t be able to handle what being with Clythia did to him. But he can manage. He has to.

A knock sounds on the entrance. Jurian instinctively hides the letter behind his back, then immediately feels stupid. He puts it on his desk and calls, “Come in!”

A soldier pokes his head through the entrance. “Lady Miryam and Prince Drakon need you in the war tent.”

Now, Jurian feels twice as caught. “I`ll be there in a minute.”

Once he`s alone in his tent, he turns back around to the letter. Lips pressed into a tight line, he stares at it. Then, he hastily scribbles a reply and watches the letter vanish into thin air. He spins around and stalks out of the room.

Meeting Clythia is the right thing to do. What does it matter what it does to Jurian if it can help them win this war? That`s what Miryam wants, too – surely she wouldn`t mind. Whatever it takes. That was their deal from the first day on. Well, this is what it takes. Besides, Miryam already told him that she didn`t mind him meeting Clythia. He is making the right choice. The only choice, really. He`ll tell her right after this meeting.

Still, he is sure that the shame is written plainly on his face when he enters the war tent. Miryam is sitting on a chair, knees drawn up to her chest, Drakon leans against the edge of the strategy table. His shoulder healed well and he has been back to fighting for four days now.

“Something happened?”, Jurian asks.

“We got orders from the council”, Drakon says and begins to explain the situation.

Apparently, they have reports of Amarantha`s army being stationed a few hundred miles further north. The Alliance only has a smaller force in that area, and they have been ordered to send reinforcements so that they can ambush Amarantha. Jurian has a hard time focusing on what Drakon is saying. His mind keeps drifting to the letter he sent. Is Miryam looking at him strangely? Surely she notices that something is off.

She looks so tired. These past months have been hard for her. Hard for all them, but Miryam with her tendency to feel responsible for everything is worst off. Maybe telling her about his plan with Clythia isn`t the right thing to do. It will just be one more thing for her to worry about. Better if he meets with Clythia and tells her about it afterwards. He doesn`t plan on more than one meeting, anyways.

“Jurian?”, Miryam asks.

“What?”

“You didn`t hear a word Drakon said, did you?” She sighs. “When is the last time you slept?”

“Yesterday? For at least three hours.”

“Well, that`s more than me.” Drakon grins at him. “I said that I should probably take my soldiers north while you remain here. We`ll be quicker if we don`t have to carry any human soldiers and the order we received said that speed was of importance for this mission.”

Jurian nods distractedly. “Maybe it`s for the best if you take Miryam as well. In case you need magical back-up.”

And as an added benefit, Miryam will be miles away when he meets with Clythia. That way, he won`t even be in a position where he has to tell her in advance. He`ll just meet with Clythia, try to get as much information out of her as possible. After that, he can kill her. He`ll tell Miryam when she gets back. That way, she doesn`t need to worry. It`s a perfect plan.

Miryam frowns at him, though. Too late, he remembers that it has been their unspoken agreement these past few months that he doesn`t push her to use her powers if it isn`t absolutely necessary. In return, she keeps working on the wall and occasionally teaches him a few of the simpler spells. Jurian doesn`t entirely understand where that new hesitation regarding her powers comes from and when he asks, Miryam just keeps repeating that she`s worried about losing control. Not that he`s ever seen that happen.

“Just in case it`s necessary”, he adds and smiles at Miryam.

He forbids himself from feeling any irritation about her hesitance. He`d give his right arm for abilities like hers, but at the end of the day, he knows too little about magic to really understand what she is struggling with.

“Good.” Drakon jumps to his feet. “Then I`ll get my soldiers ready.” To Miryam, he adds, “We leave in an hour.”

----

Tags: @sjm-things @clolikescloquetas @croissantcitysucks

#clythia makes a reappearance!#and things are going downhill #also #I really really love Miryam Jurian and Drakon as friends #which makes what's about to come a million times more painfull #BUT NOT YET!#before the wall #miryam #jurian #drakon #andromache

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chosenfamily-valkyriequeens · 4 years

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Personal opinion: Nesta Archeron deserves better

Nesta is definitely closed off and hurt by what had happened to her, and for completely understandable reasons. It angers me that Rhys is so heartless and an a**hole when it comes to Nesta—like Feyre did go through trauma too, some from their childhood (everyone’s trauma is different yes) but y’all didn’t just expect her to be okay the next day, why would Nesta be any different!

Mor as well is bugging me and she is just acting like a straight up b*tch for no reason besides being jealous and petty over Cassian and Nesta’s budding relationship and Feyre’s hurt feelings. Mor more than anyone should understand what Nesta is going through considering the sexual assault. I hope the two of them realize how wrong they’ve been to treat her so cruelly. Personally I’d like it to be a dramatic Nesta is about to die and they’ve found out the truth about her past and that she’s always loved her sisters and they are like “I’m so sorry please forgive me for being an a**hat” but who knows;)

Nesta’s character is so complex, intelligent and dark, she’s my favorite character out of every book I’ve ever read—and I’ve read A LOT of books. She’s so relatable to anyone who’s felt like the mistreated, worthless, unloved, unwanted, charity case of the family or friend group, when no one valued your side of the story to favor a biased version. And everyone goes through this feeling at least once in their life. This attitude towards Nesta becomes a single story mindset that is so toxic, and the “inner circle”—minus Cassian every now and then( haven’t forgotten about the “your sister care for you and I don’t understand why but they do” part)—is falling into it.

They are so protective of Feyre that they aren’t realizing they are ignoring someone who clearly needs help but doesn’t know how to or doesn’t want to ask for help yet. You can’t pressure someone into asking for help, the have to want to be helped before anything can happen.

I’m not sure how I really feel about her being BANISHED to the mountains with Cassian, I really love them together and want them to be endgame. But how they went about deciding her life without her opinion upsets me. Yes she isn’t in the best to be making life decisions alone, but it’s still HER LIFE she should have a say in what’s happening.

When Feyre was brought to the Night Court it took her months to open up to them, longer for her to even fucking smile! She’d been kidnapped and killed and then she was stuck in a toxic relationship and she needed to figure out how to love herself and be okay with her new body first before she started any type of relationship with Rhys and the inner circle. She didn’t just click her fingers and wish away the pain, it took her a long time to cope with what happened.

Nesta should be given the same courtesy. She at a young age was told she was only good for marrying for status and wealth and having children by her mother who never showed her much attention, her father was always gone and lost all their money putting them all in jeopardy. She wanted to believe her father was the knight in shining armor that would fight for them and save them—but he didn’t. She was almost raped and was sexually assaulted by someone she thought cared about her. Was then later dragged out of her bed and was DROWNED&KILLED turing into a thing she had feared her while life. But not before having to watch as her sister was killed right before her eyes and turned as well. You don’t just get over that with a snap of your fingers.

It kills me that people are so upset about Nesta not stepping up and helping as the oldest. SHE WAS A CHILD, yes so was Feyre but don’t forget that Nesta too was a little girl, heartbroken that her family life was destroyed, her mother dead and her father not the hero she thought he would be. Everyone deals with pain different. She was raised to believe her only purpose was to marry and have children, not go out and kill animals in the woods.

Feyre being the youngest daughter was probably not subjected to the lessons Nesta was to become a perfect wife, giving her more time to be kid and play and be a little bit more outgoing—most likely what lead her to be the provider.

(the reading lessons I feel was unfortunate, she forgot overtime for not practicing—not saying that was her fault ether, but I 100% believe that if Nesta had known she couldn’t read she would have taught her. Just think about it, Nesta loves to read, it’s empowering and she would definitely teach her had Feyre asked for it, because no one knew she couldn’t read, they even mention that in the books, Nesta said she would’ve taught her had she known she didn’t know how.)

Nesta wasn’t raised to be like that, so don’t expect her to just wake up and forget the years of programming her mother had drilled into her head. Let’s also not forget Elian is older than Feyre too, they really just brush over her and ignore that she too didn’t help provide for the family ether, yet the inner circle welcomed her with open arms because she’s quite and shy and won’t fight back or lash out for her feelings being hurt.

Nesta also was probably embarrassed that she didn’t know how to help, and didn’t know how to ask. People tend to skip over parts that they don’t like to focus on the parts they only want to see. Nesta went out and cut the wood when Feyre asked, Nesta went into the woods to go get Feyre back, she offered up her story to the high lords for the war, she wanted to learn how to fight so she would be helpful, how to use her powers, but do we hear anyone talking about that in the inner circle? No. And that pisses me off.

When the two Ravens came after them in the library she didn’t want to leave Feyre alone to fight them. She stayed and only went when Feyre told her to go find help. She wanted them to have an advantage in the war so she stayed and fought, made herself a distraction so they could get to the cauldron and keep the king distracted. Cassian was about to die and instead of running like he told her to she picked up his sword and tried to fight and when it failed she covered his body with her own, they wouldn’t die alone, they’d go together.

Her charter traits amaze me because if she were a male character I’m almost 99% certain none of us would be having this conversation about how “he” is a bitch that doesn’t deserve to be happy. If she was a male it would be socially acceptable that he is this way because he had a “troubled past” and he’s “dealing with it” he can drink and fuck whoever because he’s “healing” and that’s what guys do. No one would question it. The allure of the bad boy is so captivating that we ignore that they’ve made mistakes. But the minute you make them a female the are automatically a bitch and deserve to be hated because that’s not how a female should act.

Double standards exist in the books we read as well as the world we live in. It’s easy to forget that because we want to believe that the fantasy we have created is perfect when in reality it’s flawed. Flawed characters make for the best stories because they are the most relatable and REAL.

Nesta is probably the most real and relatable character to ever be created. She’s made mistakes, she’s made up of flaws, she been hurt but continues to go through life with her head held high. She doesn’t give two shits about what people think of her. She runs her life how she wants it. She doesn’t stand for people treating her like crap. She’s quick to say something back to defend herself or deflect it to something else. She’s intelligent and smart. She knew how many ships were needed to save the humans she cares about others.

But she is also flawed. It’s hard for her to feel emotions, to be open and understand other peoples emotions. She’s quick tempered and hot headed, but she’s also caring and passionate about the people she cares about. She would lay down her life if it meant she would save the people she cares about.

At the end of the war she’s hit with the reality that her father actually cared about them and she watched him be KILLED right in front of her, if that doesn’t speak volumes about scaring emotional trauma I don’t know what does.

She also has to come to terms with the fact that shes killed people. Jus because they were bad doesn’t mean that killing them was easy and didn’t effect her. The power burst saved them all but it also ended thousands of lives, regardless of what they did she has to live with the fact that she has ended another persons life. Even the King of Hybern’s death might not be easy for her to deal with. She ripped his head from his body, that would give any sane person nightmares.

She has had less that three months to cope with her new body and magic and is thrown into a war and watches the people around her are dying. That’s probably why she helps out in the medic tent and tends to the wounded, she can’t really fight so she finds something to do to help.

Side note: when she was helping in the medic tents during the war do you all remember the scene when she noticed Cassian’s hand was hurt? She literally took care of him. She might not show emotion often but when she does it speaks volumes. And then Cassian had to go and rip his hand away from her when Mor walked in. That probably made her feel like he was embarrassed to be seen with her. That’s she’s not worth being around if people don’t like her and will judge him if he’s seen with her.

For her PTSD It mentions how every time she lights a fire all she can hear is bones popping and necks snapping—I wouldn’t want to light a fire ether if that’s all I thought about and heard. The bath tub has me reeling. She’s forced herself to get over her fear because she thinks she deserves the pain is causes her. She stopped eating and taking care of herself because she thought she deserved to punish herself.

And the biggest problem I had with the inner circle—Cassain included this time, was solstice. Not one present for her besides Elain(and whatever the hell cassian threw in the damn river!!), and they practically forced her to go and they didn’t even get her anything! What the heck!!! I mean sure she didn’t get them anything, but she’s never celebrated this before how would she know? And it’s not like she had the money ether. Yes it was Feyre’s birthday but she also probably didn’t know what to get her with the bad place they were in at the moment. And there was not one painting of her in the entire house. I would feel uncomfortable and unwanted too if I was her. They don’t like how she chose to deal with her pain and they try to fix her pain, instead of listening to her pain and what SHE needs verses what THEY think she needs.

They only do what they want because they want to sweep it under the rug and move on. Because they don’t want poor fragile Feyre to feel sad. Fuck them honestly. If Nesta’s not ready to deal she’s not ready to deal giver her her damn space and time.

She needs to hit rock bottom before she’s ready to climb back to the surface. And all the the inner circle has had hundreds of years to cope with their pain and know what works for them. Nesta is a 22 year old women. She’s not developed the right ways to cope with death and tragedy yet, she needs to figure out what works best for her and that’s okay, she should be able to learn what works for her, not be forced to try what works for others.

Nesta is Depressed, she’s shown clear signs of PTSD, as well and Anxiety. You don’t just get over those because people are done with your mopping, they take time and sometimes they never go away you just learn how to cope with them when they flare up. You can’t just stuff it into a jar and hope it never comes out. It doesn’t work that way. And the 500+ year old Fae should understand that!!!!

Her drinking and having sex is her way of trying to feel something as well as not feeling anything. Again if she was a male character no one would be having a problem with this. Cassian and the other go out and drink for no reason and no one gets on them about it. Rhys said the day Feyre was going to marry Tamlin he was going to be piss drunk to not feel anything. And can you imagine what he would’ve been like had Feyre actually married Tamlin? He’d be wreak, and probably end up destroying himself because of his broken-heartedness.

Another thing about her going to the camps is, she has extreme PTSD from the war and from her sexual assault with Tomas. And now she being sent into what will probably be another war. A camp where all males do is fight all day—not good for someone who has PTSD about fighting. A place where women are treated like breeders and objects—not good for some who has sexual assault trauma. And they just expect her to be fine?! Noooooo!!!

She is going to struggle and not in the good way that gets her to feel again. She’s going to be pushed beyond her limits in a bad way and this could ultimately be what destroys her. My only hope is that the other females recognize what’s she’s going through and find a positive way to support her. I want her to have her own group of strong empowering and compassionate females and males in her new friend group.

The inner definitely doesn’t deserve to have Nesta in their “happy little circle” as Nesta puts it. She is someone I’d want to be friends with because she’d go to the ends of the earth to help her friends and the inner circle doesn’t understand that she DOES have a heart, she is just scared of it getting hurt and broken because she let herself love someone and be loved by someone, to only end up getting hurt the same way she did by Tomas. Trust is hard to build when it’s been broken time and time again.

Things I want from ACOSF is for Nesta to get better all on her own. To ignore the inner circle—minus Cassian sometimes, I do love their banter and I want to see some fluff and sexual tension/frustration and smut from them, as well as a good heart to heart with some tears on both sides about their pasts. Her to United the camp lords. Befriend Devlon—have a father daughter relationship with the dude, change the way females are treated in the camps. Come into her powers. Have Cassian stand up to his family and defend Nesta(she’s probs had no one EVER stand up for her before). For her to ABSOLUTELY NOT apologize to the inner circle, they should apologize to her only for treating her like crap and holding her last mistakes over her head like a sword waiting to cop her head off if she makes one wrong move . For Nesta to befriend Bryaxis—OMG how awesome that would be!!! Hahahaha. Maybe The Court of Nightmares cameo. Find out who Cassian saw in the prison, as well as WHAT THE BLOODY HELL CASSIAN THREW INTO THE SIDRA ON SOLOIST!!!! And hopefully the Ilyrians will become independent from the Night Court with the help of Nesta as their newQueen—Sarah has called her a queen without a throne, if this doesn’t happen then I quit. And maybe Cassain ruling with her. Oh and of course NESSIAN MATES AS ENDGAME!!!!!!!!

I hope Nesta gets her deserved happy ending, regardless of whether or not the inner circle is involved in her healing and empowerment. She is a Queen, and nothing will stop her from owning her life and getting her happiness like she deserves!<3

Sorry for the rant:)

#nesta #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas #acosf #sarajmaas #cassian #nessian #queennesta

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beesandbooks1 · 4 years

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Discussion: Give Readers Some Credit.

So. Let’s talk about readers, and authorial intent, shall we?

First a detour. Who here is familiar with the Hays Code? Just in case: in the 1930’s it was established for motion pictures in the USA and presented strict guidelines about what could and couldn’t be put into films. The Code lasted until the late 1960’s but its impact on film is absolutely still seen today, specifically in the rating system for films. The Hays Code dictated various moral guidelines that somewhat stripped viewers of film of their autonomy, implying that the general public wouldn’t be able to distinguish between good and bad or right and wrong without films making it very clear what those lines were. There was no grey area in the Hays Code.

Literature, for its part, has had various formal and informal rules and guidelines applied to it throughout centuries of publishing that dictate who can and can’t read certain topics. I’m not going into a history lesson on that, but suffice to say that at some point just about every person who wasn’t a white cishet man has had a restriction put on them for reading at all or reading certain things. Today, the big issues come down to censorship, banning books, and lobbying against books for a particular reason.

Censorship Today

Censorship is a big ticket issue today, both formally and informally, and internationally. I will admit to having limited knowledge and experience of the kind of censorship experienced in places such as China, but I am aware it is present, enforced, and potentially dangerous. Formal censorship worldwide comes in the form of preventing books being published or translated in the country at all, banning its sale in its original format, and sometimes going so far as to censor access to websites that sell the book and social media platforms where the book is widely discussed. Government level censorship of books generally is inspired by fear of what the books might inspire, from protests to full on coups. Usually, this act of censorship is indicative of larger systemic problems within the government not real problems within the book’s content.

Informal censorship is a bit more complicated, and comes about in a few ways, including straight out banning books in a community which I will discuss in the next section. Informally censoring a book usually comes from a community speaking out against something in the book or something about the author they are opposed to. This differs slightly from lobbying against a book because if a community quietly agrees to censor a book from those in the community that shouldn’t be exposed to it (whether with good intentions or not) they won’t also attempt to have the book banned elsewhere, or turn it into a political topic by protesting the books very existence. More on that later. Instead, this informal censorship is more in line with parents or groups of parents agreeing to forbid their children from reading certain books–usually for moral and religious reasons.

An example of informal censorship from my own life: when I was attending Catholic school as a preteen The Golden Compass was released as a movie. The school itself never released a statement or talked about the book or movie, and the farthest I got to an adult’s opinion on it was when someone asked my religious studies teacher about it and she pointed out that the books are fiction so did it really matter if the subject matter went against religious beliefs? However, the parents of my classmates at least were scared. My mother received an email from a concerned parent who was encouraging all the parents in our class to prevent us from seeing the movie, and that if for some reason one of us did see it to keep it to ourselves so as not to encourage the rest of the kids to want to see it too. This act of informal censorship resulted in a group of preteens who probably didn’t even care about this issue being prevented from reading Philip Pullman’s works or seeing the movie based on them. The parents didn’t want to try and get the books removed from the public library or the movie taken out of theaters, they just wanted to ensure their children were never exposed to it.

Fun fact: the day my mother read that email she came home with the full set of His Dark Materials and later she bought me the movie on DVD.

Banning Books

Banning books is a lot more straight forward than the degrees of censorship. Most readers are familiar with the idea of banned books. Books tend to be banned from smaller communities, such as a town’s library and school, but are rarely enforced at a higher level without censorship getting involved. I’m going to be using “banned books” to refer to that lower level, not government level censorship. Thus, banned books are still purchasable in this context through retailers such as Amazon and chain bookstores.

A banned book can be banned for any number of reasons. I see banned book lists often enough that have things such as “unrealistic female characters” referring to The Wizard of Oz. Many readers who chance upon one of these lists tend to take pride in having read much of its contents, especially depending on the context of the book bans. Some book bans are focused on schools and keeping “unsuitable” material out of students’ hands. This ranges from “this book is too pornographic to be appropriate” to “this book encourages witchcraft and we can’t have that!” While there might be something to be said about schools having age appropriate books available in the library–if the oldest kids in the school are ten then maybe Stieg Larsson’s books aren’t a priority–many book bans are comical in their ridiculous reasoning.

Book bans come from a combination of underestimating the critical reading abilities of others and from fearing what those others might do with the knowledge the book contains. For example, a highly misogynistic person might not want books that portray women in positions of power to become available for the next generation of young girls. They both underestimate the girls’ ability to choose a lifestyle for themselves by assuming any fiction they consume will immediately shape their decision making, and they also fear what the girls might choose to do if presented with the idea that they have options. While many book bans sound like silly reasoning, a lot of them are insidiously chosen as a form of disenfranchisement. Preventing Black readers from having positive role models from authors of color, for example, assists the school to prison pipeline.

Lobbying Against Books

Lobbying against books is where book banning gets more serious. This is the middle step between book banning and book censorship, really. Lobbying against a book is when a group or sometimes an individual take it upon themselves to ban a book for their own community and then try to get it banned on a larger scale. Now, there are times that lobbying against a book is actually done with good intentions and not with the intent of banning or censoring the book. There are times where the author reveals themselves to be…lacking in some way, and that may have affected the writing they produce. I know I’m dancing around some authors in particular, but I didn’t make this post to call out specifics so.

An example of a bad lobbying idea: An upcoming YA release is announced and hyped by excited would-be readers. The book sounds awesome! It’s written by a new author, has really good Own Voices representation, and presents a unique story. It is largely regarded as an excellent contribution to literature by bookish folks. A conservative parent purchases the book upon its release with the intention of giving it to their daughter, and due to their household rules about book content the parent reads the book first to ensure it complies. The parent discovers that the book contains a relatively mild romance plot, but that the main character does have sex in this plotline, though the scene is hardly explicit or erotic. Conservative parent is very worried that reading about the idea of sex will inspire their daughter to have sex and decides this book is dangerous and not suitable for their daughter. Unfortunately, with all the excitement over the book, the daughter keeps asking to read it. Perhaps her friends have all read it, perhaps it’s being pitched by the school library as a great new release, perhaps it’s being developed into a film or TV series that her classmates are excited to watch. The parent now starts telling other parents that they shouldn’t allow their children to read this book or watch anything based on it, largely out of fear that their daughter will be exposed to it somehow. Other conservative parents jump on board, banning the book from their households and attempting to have it banned altogether so as to prevent their kids from getting their hands on it. Perhaps the ban makes it through the school and the public library, but the local Barnes and Noble continues to sell copies and they’re going fast. In order to get the book taken off of a chain store’s shelves, the parents now have to lobby to have the book banned on a much larger scale, so they do so. All because they don’t want their teenagers having sex yet.

An example of a good lobbying idea: A really popular author has come out with a new book. This is his fourth book, and many readers are excited to get a copy and devour it. Book bloggers and other voracious readers have torn through the previous three because they’re witty, have appealing characters, and a unique worldbuilding set up. However, a bisexual reader immediately recognizes that this fourth book has the main character being extremely biphobic. The biphobia is upsetting for the reader, but they persevere because up to this point the main character has been a good role model and perhaps the biphobia is a character flaw that’s going to be called out and corrected. It is not by the end of the book, and the reader is now uncomfortable. Unsure. The reader tells other bisexual readers to be careful, that the content can be triggering due to its biphobia. LGBTQ+ readers in general are warned and slowly become cautious about the books and author in general. The fifth book comes out, and the bisexual reader timidly approaches it with an open mind, hoping that it was just a multi-book character arc. The biphobia continues, reinforced by the positive reception to the character in the fourth book. It’s clear that this is here to stay. The LGBTQ+ readers who are aware of this problem start to speak out, asking others to critically read this book and not internalize the biphobia in it. The author doubles down on the biphobia, defending it when criticized. Now more readers speak out, pointing out that this is potentially harmful, asking other readers to be very critical when consuming the author’s works and to consider ending their support of the author over his remarks.

Why all of this sucks

Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to stripping readers of their autonomy. Think about people who argue that some books are bad because a character in them does bad things. The majority of those that read the book probably recognize those bad things for what they are, and know that the character is nuanced and not always right. But there are those that would lobby to have the book removed from all reading spaces because the character that does bad things might be appealing to an impressionable reader and encourage them to do bad things. This is a very narrow-minded view that is also highly condescending. Teenagers can read a book where a seventeen-year-old has sex without immediately going out and having sex themselves. Readers in general deserve the credit to know that not everything that happens in fiction is realistic or positive. If a reader can tell the difference between reality and fiction, they can certainly make their own choices in real life without being unduly influenced by the actions and thoughts of fictional characters.

This belittling fear that certain readers are too impressionable to be exposed to certain media is astoundingly simplistic. We have to give readers more credit than that. Sure, there will be books that need to come with content warnings, trigger warnings, and disclaimers. There are some authors whose racism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism (among other things) leak into their writing and those books when read need to be read with the knowledge of that. There are even some books that are irredeemable from that standpoint and it is absolutely a valid choice to refuse to read books by an author whose morals go against your own. However, not everything someone views as morally wrong is also unnuanced when presented in a text. Additionally, not every reader takes what they read at face value. Many readers appreciate a well written villain while also recognizing why that character is a villain. Many readers also appreciate flawed main characters who aren’t always correct but are allowed to make mistakes.

As bloggers we are in a position to point out the nuance in such books. Reviews are excellent for helping readers figure out whether a book will be too far over the line for their moral compass, if there’s something in the text that matters for them or not. However, we have to give readers some credit. Just like in communities that would censor and ban books, sometimes book reviews overlook nuance. They make hard lines around characters saying that something is problematic and therefore the whole text is corrupted, or misidentifying an action or a thought as a moral or ethical opinion. I am not exempt from this, there are certainly times where I draw a hard line in the sand that I refuse to cross for any book regardless of the praise it receives. But I also recognize that there are other readers who will cross that line and read certain texts and find value in them where I didn’t. I have to give those readers credit and believe that they will also be able to see the negatives of the text and not internalize or forgive those.

#bookblr #books

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go-gently-please · 5 years

Text

cherry ~ vampire!au (part 2)

~ pairing: human!BTS x vampire!OC

~ genre: vampire!au, smut, angst, sprinkles of fluff

~ summary: you begin to adjust to life with your seven new human blood bags, pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the transition is going. But good things never last forever, and you discover that controlling yourself is not as easy as you thought.

~ warnings: profanity, blood

~ a/n: this is kind of a filler chapter, i’ll admit. i’m not happy with it, but i’ve rewritten it so many times that i think this is as good as it’s going to get

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 (coming soon)

links in masterlist!

You couldn’t remember the last time you were this nervous, which was saying something considering the fact that you were immortal.

The boys were moving in today, and for the last few hours you’d been running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Your apartment was cleaner than it’d been in years. Windows washed, floors shined, every surface wiped clean. Not a spec of dust had survived. Everything was immaculate.

You’d spent what felt like forever preparing all the guest rooms, scrutinizing even the smallest detail. You’d even stayed up all night researching human nutrition so you’d be prepared to properly take care of them.

It was then that you realized all you had in your kitchen was coffee, alcohol, and an unnecessary amount of sweets. You’d immediately gone to the grocery store and bought enough food to feed an army, making sure the fridge was fully stocked with protein, juice, and fresh fruit.

It’d been a few days since you’d met with them at the cafe, and in the meantime you’d been trying to get to know them better.

Most of them were starving artists. That’s how they all knew each other: through art school.

Jimin and Hoseok were dancers, with Jimin studying ballet and contemporary and Hoseok working as a hip hop teacher. You should’ve guessed, they both had the body for it.

Namjoon was a freelance writer, and he made most of his money selling poems and short stories. You could already tell that he was the most intelligent and well-read out of all of them.

Taehyung was a painter. His style immediately intrigued you, colorful and youthful like his personality. You’d already bought three of his paintings. One was hanging in your living room.

Yoongi and Jungkook, the quietest of the group, were trying to make a name for themselves in the music business, Yoongi as a producer and Jungkook as a singer.

Jin was an aspiring model, working gigs here and there. His family had money, but was very conservative, and they’d cast him out after finding out that he was bisexual.

It couldn’t have been easy for them, struggling to pay the bills and stay in their one tiny apartment. Financial instability was often an unfortunate circumstance of pursuing one’s artistic passions.

But none of that mattered anymore. Now that they were under your care, you planned on spoiling them to no end. You couldn’t help but think about how good Jimin and Yoongi would look in some Chanel, and you couldn’t wait to dress Taehyung up in Gucci.

You nearly jumped out of your skin when the doorbell rang.

You hopped up from your spot on the couch, sending your cat flying, and hurried over to the mirror hanging by the door. Fixing your hair, your eyes ran over your reflection. You were dressed more casually today, wearing a cream-colored sweater and jeans.

Staring back at you in the mirror was a mask of exhaustion. Bloodshot eyes, under eye bags, skin drained of color.

You really needed to feed. Your body was starting to deteriorate from the lack of nutrients.

You desperately hoped that your problem would be solved soon; you could practically taste their blood on your tongue, sweet and smooth like a fine wine.

After determining that your appearance was as good as it was going to get, you opened the door.

“Hello!” You were barely able to control your excitement. “Please, come in.”

They all crowded into the room, and what they saw made their jaws drop.

The space was wide and welcoming, definitely bigger than what they’d expected. Everything was sleek and white and expensive-looking.

Directly opposite them was a wall made up of entirely windows. The busy cityscape extended out before them like an ocean. They imagined how beautiful the sunrise would be through a wall of all glass.

The open floor plan allowed them to see the sitting area, kitchen, and office space all at once. The living room area was occupied by a semi-circle of couches gathered around the TV, which was three times the size of the one they used to have.

There was a large table near the glass wall that was covered in scattered papers, stacks of books, dirty coffee mugs, luxury brand lookbooks and magazines.

“Woah.” Hoseok said in awe.

“What? What is it?” You frantically looked around the room, searching for even the tiniest flaw.

Did you forget something? Did you leave out a pair of dirty underwear? Did you leave your favorite vibrator lying around?

“It’s just…your place is so nice.” Taehyung said, looking around with wide eyes.

“Yeah, it looks more like a penthouse than an apartment.” Jin added.

You bent your head to hide a smile.

“Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”

They timidly stepped further into the room, their heads swinging back and forth as they looked around. Then, a noise broke the awkward silence.

Everyone whipped around to stare at the source of the sound. Your cat had it’s head poked out from behind the couch, trying to get a peek at the new visitors.

“Who’s this?” Jimin said like he was talking to a baby, squatting down to hold his hand out to the cat.

“Oh, that’s Yuki. She doesn’t really like people, so I wouldn't—”

The cat nuzzled her head into Jimin’s palm, eyes closed, the low rumble of her purring filling up the room.

You trailed off, shocked at her reaction. Yuki wasn’t a people person. Every time you had company over, she flinched away from their touch and hid in your bedroom.

You stared in absolute disbelief as she rolled over to expose her tummy. Jimin’s ringed fingers nearly disappeared in her thick fur.

“I’m guessing you like animals, then?” You asked, chuckling.

Jimin smiled down at the cat as he scratched under her chin.

“Eh, they’re alright.” He said sarcastically.

You suggested to go get the rest of their bags so you could help carry them up. They led you down the staircase to the lobby where a pile of luggage was waiting.

You approached the largest out of all of them, a big black suitcase, and moved to grab it.

Apparently, Yoongi had the same idea, because you both reached for the handle.

He’d gone straight for the suitcase once they’d gotten downstairs, and you wondered what was in it that was so important to him.

Your hands touched as you moved to take the bag, and Yoongi let out a soft gasp when your fingers brushed his, so quiet that you only heard it because of your attuned vampire senses.

His was so warm. You were suddenly aware of how his entire body was radiating heat, radiating his heavenly aroma. You wanted more than anything to drag your lips across his neck, trace the veins, and sink your teeth into his perfect pale skin.

Resurfacing from your daze, you focused back on his face. You realized that this was one of the first times he’d actually made eye contact with you. He was staring at you intensely, mouth slightly parted as his eyes seemed to pierce straight into the furthest, dustiest corners of your brain.

Oh no, you immediately thought. I freaked him out. He felt how cold I am. He’s probably disgusted. He’s probably horrified.

Yoongi seemed to snap out of it, breaking his gaze to look back at the suitcase.

“I’ll take this one, it’s really heavy.” He said.

You grabbed it before he could, picking it up like it weighed less than a pillow.

“I got it. You know, vampire super strength and all.” You said, picking up three more bags and carrying them with ease. You felt him staring as you walked up the stairs.

“So, there’s only five bedrooms, some of you will have to share.” You said shyly, hoping to God that they would be okay with it.

“Five?” Jin blurted out. You fiddled with the sleeves of your sweater.

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Is that going to be too much of a problem?”

“Problem?! That’s more rooms then we had in our whole house!” Jin said.

“Yeah, at our old place we had to share two bedrooms, and we had bunk beds so we would take turns sleeping on the couch because of the odd number.” Hoseok said.

You let out a breath, relieved that they weren’t upset over it.

Honestly, you felt bad for them. From what they’d told you about their lives, they were barely getting by. Jimin was still a full-time student paying off loans. Jin, Yoongi, and Jungkook found work wherever they could, and the only way Namjoon and Taehyung made money was if their work sold, which wasn’t always a guarantee.

You couldn’t help but feel like you were taking them under your wing, giving them a better life in a sense. Well, quite literally since they were about to be evicted and homeless.

“Should I give you the tour?” You asked when everything was loaded inside.

They all nodded, eager to look around the impressive space.

“So, downstairs is the living room, kitchen, music room, lounge, and first bathroom. Please make yourselves at home and do whatever you want with the TV. I have an X-box and PlayStation and you’re free to use those too.”

That made Jungkook’s head pop up, ears perked in interest.

They followed you as you ascended up the floating staircase.

“Upstairs has the five guest rooms, my study, two bathrooms (but one of them is connected to my room), and the spare room, but that door’s always locked.”

Before they could ask why, you stopped in front of a row of doors and showed them inside.

Each guest room was as beautiful as the rest of the house. Each contained two queen beds, clean sheets tucked in all neat and tidy, two walk-in closets, and all manners of shelving and cubbies to store their belongings. It was far nicer than their old bedrooms had been.

Jin and Namjoon were already picturing all their collectibles and figurines displayed on the shelves. Jungkook had already picked a designated spot to set up his gaming computer, and Yoongi was eager to lay out all his equipment.

You could tell they were excited, itching to discuss who would get each room, so you decided you would let them get settled.

“Are you guys hungry?” You asked. It was seven o’clock. Humans usually ate around this time, right?

They all nodded vigorously.

“Alright, why don’t you start unpacking while I make dinner.”

The second you were out of earshot, they burst into a fit of chatter.

“I’m rooming with Jungkook!”

“I get the biggest closet!”

“I want a room that doesn’t have to share!”

Of course, what would be considered out of earshot for a human doesn’t apply to vampires, so you heard the whole thing. You giggled at their antics as you walked down the stairs to the kitchen.

As you put the pasta on the stove to boil, your mind started to wander.

You sincerely hoped they would enjoy it here. You wanted to make your home as welcoming as possible, you wanted them to feel comfortable.

The incessant growling of your stomach interrupted your thoughts. You sighed, looking down at the your hands, the skin turning ashy in color as the veins bulged. It wouldn’t be long before your eyes started turning red. Your hair would streak gray and your lips would turn dry and cracked. You would slowly start to look more and more like a corpse until you fed.

It had to be soon. You didn’t want to scare them with your lifeless appearance.

But how were you supposed to ask? They were just starting to settle in, the atmosphere was still filled with tension. You didn’t want to make them feel pressured by asking so early, that might scare them away. No, you were going to have to wait for one of them to initiate it.

The smell of the pasta sauce simmering in the pan did nothing to curb your appetite. You could eat regular food, you could appreciate the taste, but it had no nutritional value, and it did nothing to satisfy your raging hunger, especially now.

You perked up when you heard movement in the hall. Footsteps started to patter down the staircase.

The boys all filed into the dinning area, their eyes landing on the table that was already loaded with food.

“Take a seat, boys. I’m almost finished.” You said as you drained the noodles. They all sat at the dinning room table, muttering to themselves about how quickly you had gotten everything together.

You set down the pot of steaming pasta, the scent wafting into their faces, next to the basket of rolls. They started to dig in, and you giggled at their shocked faces when you proceeded to open a wine bottle with your bare hands.

You sat there, practically chugging your wine as they ate, hoping that the alcohol would help to satiate you. How lucky they were that they could silence their hunger so easily.

“You really didn’t have to go through so much trouble for us.” Namjoon said as you topped off your first glass.

You smiled at him.

“It was my pleasure! I want to make sure you are as happy as possible here.”

Namjoon smiled back at you, and you almost melted when you saw his adorable dimples.

“Thank you. We are very grateful for your hospitality.” He said.

He was the leader figure of the group, you could tell. He always acted polite and respectful, and his intelligence seemed to ooze out of all of his mannerisms.

By the time they’d finished eating, you’d polished off two more glasses. You were getting more and more agitated. Just watching them made your stomach growl.

You could smell each of them distinctly.

Jin was mature and flavorful, complex but smooth. Yoongi was savory, musky. His blood would compliment anything. Hoseok was bold. His scent was almost overpowering. You could already tell he had the strongest taste out of them all. Namjoon was rich and alluring, he’d pair well with chocolate and fruit. Jimin was the sweet one, you were already craving him. Taehyung…oh, Taehyung. You couldn’t wait to get your hands on him. He was so decadent, he’d have no problem satisfying you. And last but not least, Jungkook. He was light and fresh, but definitely packed a punch, there was an undeniable tang in the scent his blood.

“Um, Charlie?”

You blinked, refocusing on the situation at hand. It was Jimin who had spoken.

“Yes?”

“Are you alright? You look a little…are you feeling okay?” He was studying the way you were licking your lips over and over again, how your eyes were clouding over.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little…hungry.” You said it before you could think about how they would react.

They all looked at each other.

Shit. I shouldn’t of said that.

“Uhh…I’m gonna get started on the dishes, excuse me.” You stammered out. The chair screeched as you jumped to you feet. You started to flee to the kitchen, but one of them stopped you.

“If you’re hungry, we can help you with that.” Yoongi said.

Your head snapped around to stare at him. Was that Yoongi who had spoken? Yoongi, the one who’s only looked me in the eye once this entire time? The one who’s probably scared shitless of me?

“You’d be willing to do that?” Your mouth was already watering.

Yoongi cracked a gentle smile, and oh my god you almost pounced on him.

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” He said.

Looking around, you could see that they were all staring.

You didn’t know, but they were all itching for an experience with you, for you to suck their blood and give them the high that Jimin had been talking about ever since you first drank from him.

You swallowed hard, trying to control yourself.

“Okay, just let me clear the table.”

With shaking hands, you loaded all the plates into the sink and worked to slow your breathing, which was rapid with excitement.

Finally, finally, you would be able to feed. This would be the first meal you had in days.

They were all waiting anxiously in the living room when you finished, fidgeting in their spots on the couch. You took the seat between Yoongi and Jin.

“So, who’s it gonna be?” You said, breaking the silence.

Without hesitation, Yoongi rolled up the sleeve of his white button-up and bared his wrist to you, looking right into your eyes as he did it.

Everyone, including you, was shocked at his boldness. Yoongi was quiet normally, and he’d been especially shy with you.

This showed just how eager he was.

Back when everyone was getting their bags, Yoongi had gone straight for his equipment. It was in a big black suitcase that was heavy enough to make him struggle every time he carried it.

When your hand had touched his, Yoongi remembered feeling electricity shoot through him. Your skin had been cool and incredibly smooth, he wanted nothing more than to reach out and interlace your fingers with his.

It must’ve had something to do with the natural allure that all vampires had, all those pheromones and chemicals they released that were designed to attract humans, but it was safe to say that he was successfully ensnared.

You took hold of his arm as you drew him closer.

“If you want me to stop, just say “cherry.” Okay?” You asked.

Yoongi nodded. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed the lump in his throat.

Light as a feather, your lips grazed along the inside of his wrist. You could feel his pulse pounding through his skin.

“I still need your permission, love.” You said quietly.

Yoongi’s breath was shaky as he wet his lips to speak.

“Drink from me.”

He shivered when he felt you smile against him. And then you were drawing your lips back and sinking your teeth into his skin.

The first thing he did was wince. You reached down to give his knee a reassuring squeeze.

Then he sighed and sank back against the seat as the endorphins washed over him. Gripping him tighter, you started to draw the warm, fragrant liquid from his veins.

He was even more delicious than you had anticipated. His taste was sharp and pleasantly tart. You gripped his arm with both hands as your fangs pierced deeper.

Yoongi’s eyes were closed as his chest rapidly rose and fell. His mouth was slightly ajar as he drew in quick breaths.

You closed your eyes and moaned with your lips firmly attached to his skin. You couldn’t have asked for a better meal.

“Harder.” Yoongi muttered, eyes still squeezed shut.

You were happy to oblige. Digging your nails into his arm, you willed your fangs to grow longer, sharper.

“Ahhh…” Yoongi groaned from deep in his throat. “Ahh fuuuck…”

That’s it, sweetheart, you thought. Give in to me.

Sweat started to bead on Yoongi’s forehead. His black hair stuck to the damp skin, hanging in front of his eyes, which were still tightly closed. His unoccupied hand gripped the edge of his seat.

He sucked in a breath through his teeth when you started to sweep your tongue over his skin.

Aww, look how sensitive he is. What a sweet little thing.

Even though your jaw was clamped around his wrist, you smiled.

Yoongi shivered, letting out a wobbly sigh.

Before you could take it too far, you ripped yourself away from him.

His eyes stayed closed for a few seconds, still in a daze, before he opened them and looked at you with wide kitten eyes. His chest was heaving like he had just finished running.

“You alright, darling?” You asked, sweeping the sweaty mess of hair from his eyes.

He just nodded wordlessly.

You smiled at him and took up his wrist again. Bringing it to your lips, you licked away any remaining droplets of blood and licked at the wound so there would be no bruising left behind. It’d be a shame to mark up such a beautiful set of hands.

For the first time in several minutes, you were aware of the other boys presence in the room. They were staring at the both of you with blown-out eyes, darkened with an emotion you couldn’t name.

Jin’s ears were bright red, as well as Jungkook’s cheeks and the entirety of Hoseok’s face.

Jimin had his bottom lip trapped between his teeth. His cute plump cheeks were tinted a pretty shade of pink.

Taehyung’s mouth was hanging slightly open in slack-jawed ‘o’ position, and Namjoon was sitting there like he’d just watched one of those sex-ed videos from middle school of a woman giving birth.

Hoseok was the first one to break the silence.

“I-Is…is that enough…for you?” He asked after clearing his throat.

You turned to look at them, eyes running over their anxious faces. They wanted to know if you wanted more.

“Taehyung.” You said.

He immediately looked at you with wide, hopeful eyes.

You gestured him over, and he quickly planted himself in the seat next to you.

To everyone’s surprise, you moved to straddle him. You yanked his shirt open to expose his gorgeous collarbones, running the tip of your finger over the golden skin of his chest.

Taehyung looked up at you with an expression that could’ve easily been mistaken for fear, but in reality he was exhilarated, hanging onto your every action as he waited for your next move.

You loved this. Having seven beautiful men, all of them considered out of your league, wrapped around your finger. You felt drunk with power.

You smiled that wicked smile of yours, leaning towards him to let your breath tickle the goosebumps that had risen all over his skin.

“May I?” You asked.

He nodded furiously. You raised an eyebrow at his lack of words.

“Yes. Please, drink from me.” His low voice rumbled in his chest.

That sly grin stayed plastered to your face as you lowered yourself over his body and pressed your mouth to the juncture of his shoulder. Your lips grazed over the elegant curve so lightly that it made Taehyung shudder.

The next thing he knew, your fangs were lodged deep in his neck. He let out a deep growl that made your stomach flip.

A burst of flavor hit your tongue as you gripped his biceps, keeping him in place. One of his hands was clenched around your waist, while the other was on the small of your back, pulling you closer.

You hummed to yourself contently as you felt his luscious taste fill your mouth.

Taehyung’s deep voice was making you weak. He kept moaning and groaning in that low timbre, sending vibrations through his chest and straight into your body.

Your hand snaked its way into his hair and tugged his head to the side, giving you better access to the veins criss-crossing his throat.

“Nngh…” Taehyung squirmed underneath you.

Massaging his scalp, you increased your pace. The more stimulation humans got, the better it felt.

“Yes, yes…faster.” He mumbled.

Your hand slid out of his hair and down the side of his neck to trace the curve of his clavicle.

Once you were satisfied, you pulled away from him, licking the side of your lips. You rolled off of his legs and slouched against the couch cushions. Leaning your head back with closed eyes, you sighed deeply.

“Thank you.” You said as you felt the dull ache in your stomach fade.

The room was silent as you caught your breath.

Once you’d come down from your high, you opened your eyes and stood up, making your way over to the kitchen. You fetched two juice boxes and tossed one to Yoongi and Taehyung.

“If it starts bleeding again let me know, but you should be fine.” You said.

The two of them nodded with their lips wrapped around the thin straws. You held back the urge to chuckle at how adorable they looked, like two children following strict orders from their mother.

The burst of energy left you with a sense of newfound confidence in the whole situation.

Maybe this could really work out, you thought as you brimmed with optimism.

…I don’t have to be alone anymore.

You looked up at the group of men, all seated in your living room, every single one of them willing and eager to fulfill your every need.

You smiled to yourself. Yes, this will work. You would make it work. How hard could it be?

~~~

2 WEEKS LATER

“Get your lazy asses out of bed and come eat breakfast!” Your voice carried through the whole apartment.

“I’m right here! Why are you shouting?!” Jimin said from his position on the barstool across from you. His hair, still wet from the shower, made him look like a blond hedgehog.

“Sorry.” You said, pushing over a bowl of oatmeal.

Bare feet padded down the stairs. Jungkook trudged into the kitchen and plopped down at the bar next to Jimin, rubbing his tired eyes.

“M’rning…” He mumbled.

“Morning.” You set out an assortment of buttered toast, eggs, fresh fruit, and yogurt with granola.

Yoongi dragged himself into the room, looking just as tired as Jungkook. He took one of the three cups of coffee that you’d already poured, and sipped it with his eyes closed.

“Why do you insist on making breakfast so early?” He whined.

“Because I have to leave early for work and I need to make sure that you all eat.” You replied as you stirred creamer into a travel mug.

“We do eat.” Taehyung insisted as he entered the room in his matching polka dot pajama set.

You looked at him through your eyebrows.

“I need to make sure you eat something that has nutritional value.”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

“Goooood morning!” Jin said cheerfully as he skipped over to the counter.

Everyone groaned simultaneously. Jin shot them a disgusted look.

“Who woke you up with a fucking suppository?” He snapped as he took the second cup of coffee.

“Charlie.” Yoongi said accusingly.

“You guys are babies. I’ve been up since four.” You said.

“You don’t sleep!” Jungkook interjected.

You puckered your lips in a defeated expression, then grabbed your to-go cup and moved towards the front door, your heels clacking loudly.

You took one last look in the mirror. Hair pulled back, pressed white button-up, tight black pants.

You grabbed your bag from its hook and tossed it over your shoulder.

“I’m leaving for work!” You called out to the boys.

They all responded with a chorus of goodbyes, wishing you a good day.

“Wait! Charlie, are you hungry?” Taehyung asked, holding out his bare wrist.

“I’ll be good for a while. Thank you, Tae.”

He flashed you a boxy grin, and you walked out into the hall and closed the door behind you.

It had been surprisingly easy getting used to their presence in your home. They were all relatively easy to get along with, despite their different personalities, and you found their company very enjoyable. Even though it'd only been two weeks, it felt like they been living with you for months.

Sucking their blood quickly familiarized you with their habits and preferences. You knew who was masochistic (Jimin, Jungkook, Yoongi) and who was sadistic (Jin, Namjoon, Taehyung, Hoseok). You knew who liked it rough (Hoseok, Namjoon, Yoongi) and who liked it soft (Jin, Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook).

Things were looking good. There was no tension, no problems that came with the new living situation. None of the problems you'd expected to present themselves were apparent.

But good things never last.

The first incident occurred on a busy Monday afternoon. You were having a difficult day at work. Deadlines were looming, stress levels were high, and coffee was being consumed in unhealthy amounts.

“Charlie, here are those reports you wanted.” Your secretary plopped a stack of papers on your desk.

You sighed and rubbed your temples.

“Thank you, Melody.” You said, exhaustion heavy in your voice.

“Are you alright?” She put a warm hand on your shoulder.

Her scent flooded your nose. You hadn't fed in a few days, and you were starting to feel the side effects.

She was cute, with plump pink lips and warm doe eyes that screamed innocence. You may or may not have checked her out a few times.

You drew in a long, slow breath, trying to control the sudden urge to pin her against the wall and wrap your hand around that pale, delicate neck of hers.

“Yeah, I'm good. Just tired.” You said once you'd willed your fangs to stay put.

She smiled at you.

“Try not to work too hard, boss.” She gave your shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“I'll get you a cup of coffee, okay?” She said.

You nodded as you felt your tense muscles start to relax. Melody always knew what you needed.

“With cream and tw—”

“Two sugars, I know.” She grinned as she disappeared through your office door.

You sank down in your desk chair with a groan. You couldn’t wait to go home and feed.

The rest of the day crawled by at a snail’s pace. By the time you dragged yourself through the front door of your apartment, you were ready to gouge your eyes out.

Instead of the silence you were used to, you were greeted with pleasant chatter and sounds of movement. That was another good thing about the boys arrival, you always came home to company instead of solitude.

Crossing the threshold, you hung up your coat and dropped your bag.

Jungkook and Taehyung were sitting on the floor in front of the TV, locked in a fierce gaming battle. Jin was in the kitchen wreaking havoc.

“How are you so bad at this? I’m playing with my eyes closed!” Jungkook teased.

“You’ve played this before! This is my first time!” Taehyung shot back.

Jungkook poked his tongue out at him and Taehyung snatched his controller, holding it out of his reach.

“Hey! Give it back!”

Hoseok walked over to them and grabbed them both by the ear.

“Would you two stop acting like children.” He scolded, pulling them apart with a sharp tug.

“Ow! Hobi, let go!”

“He’s being a sore loser!”

“What are you two heathens up to now?” You called, gaining their attention.

At the sound of your voice, everyone perked up.

“Charlie, you’re back!” Jungkook said in delight.

You beamed at his cute bunny smile.

“Do you guys know where Jimin is?” You asked.

“Probably in his room.” Taehyung said as he focused back on the TV.

Your excitement grew with every step up the stairs. Jimin would be just what you needed, something sweet to satisfy your cravings.

You tapped softly on the door.

“Come in.”

He was sitting at his desk with his headphones in. His face lit up when he saw that it was you.

“Hey.” He said, eyes crinkling as he smiled.

“Hey.” You went inside and closed the door behind you. Jimin’s increasing heartbeat was fully detectable by your sensitive ears.

“You busy?” You asked.

“No. What do you need?” His eyes were wide and hopeful.

You looked down at the floor, fidgeting with your hands. No matter how many times you did it, you still felt slightly embarrassed to ask.

“...I’m hungry.” You said quietly.

Jimin’s cheeks bloomed in a faint blush. He shyly looked at his feet.

“Okay.” He stood up and sat on the bed, wiping his sweaty palms on his pants.

You approached him slowly, trying to build up your confidence.

Jimin gulped as you moved to sit on his lap, legs on either side of his torso. His eyes were locked on your face as you brushed his shirt collar aside.

Licking your lips, you leaned over him and pressed your mouth to the hollow of his throat. He moaned softly when your fangs penetrated.

You hummed against him when his overwhelming sweetness met your tongue. Compared to some of the other boys, with their hearty, salty flavors, Jimin was such a nice treat.

Gulp after gulp, you swallowed him down.

“Yes...oh, yes...Charlie—ah.” Jimin’s voice was high and breathy as he stuttered between gasps.

You always tried to ignore how worked up they got. Yes, you were fully aware that it felt good to humans, you were perfectly knowledgeable about the orgasmic feelings of pleasure that came with feeding, but you couldn’t help but feel that sometimes they took it too far.

You saw the way they all looked at you, you noticed just how nervous you made them, but it wasn’t uncommon for humans to become unnecessarily attached to the ones feeding on them. It came with the intimacy of the relationship. Feeding was such an intense experience, they associated the source of their pleasure with the one giving it to them: you.

It happened with a lot of vampires and their suppliers, you’d witnessed it too many times. The human would get overly attached, often initiating romantic or sexual feelings.

But it wasn’t genuine. It wasn’t real.

Vampires were predators. They were designed to lure and ensnare their prey.

The only reason any of them felt anything towards you was because you could give them what they wanted. They weren’t attracted to you, they were attracted to all the chemicals your body was expelling in order to catch your food.

That was the only reason why seven men, all incredibly out of your league, would ever be interested in you.

It was never a good idea to be romantically involved with your supplier. Every vampire knew that. It was messy, complicated, and always ended badly. Plus, how could anybody ever feel good about themselves in a relationship where one half was only in it because they were practically hypnotized?

You shifted uncomfortably as Jimin started to writhe and wriggle in ecstasy. His hands gripped your thighs on either side of him and squeezed.

“P-Please...please, more—ah, more...”

He sounded so sweet and desperate that you just couldn’t say no to him.

Obliging his request, you did something you knew he liked: you grabbed a handful of his hair and tugged.

He practically squealed.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t a good idea, you thought. Now he’s only going to get more excited.

Then something really bad happened.

You felt a very prominent, very noticeable bulge against your crotch.

Oh, shit. I shouldn’t have sat on his lap.

Jimin grabbed your waist and started to grind his hips into yours.

“Mmm mmph...” He moaned. “Mm...Jagiya.”

You froze.

You knew they were from Korea despite them speaking perfect English. Some of them had started calling you “Noona,” and when you asked Jin about it he explained that it was an honorific. When you asked him about some other words in Korean, he told you. Jagiya was one of them.

You scrambled off Jimin’s lap. He stared at you with big, confused eyes that made him look like a puppy that had just been scolded.

“What? What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Uh, nothing, I just have to...I have to do something.” You hurried towards the door and left him sitting there staring after you.

Fleeing to the safety of your bedroom, you slammed the door and leaned against it, sighing deeply with closed eyes.

What have I gotten myself into?

a/n: eh, like i said not the best chapter. it’s going to get better trust me! pretty pretty please with a cherry on top tell me what you think! what do you think will happen next? what kind of “complications” do you think our OC will encounter?

@rainbow-pandacorn @boononx @vannilacake

if you want to be tagged just let me know (✿◠‿◠)

#bts #bts vampire au #bts ot7 #bts fanfction #park jimin #jungkook #bts hosoek #bts jin #min yoongi #kim namjoon #kim taehyung #sub!bts #dom!bts #bts x oc

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bluehhj · 4 years

Text

(don’t) love me ˀˀ three

(DON’T) LOVE ME [“LISTEN TO ME” SPIN-OFF]

CHAPTER 03 || M.LIST

WORDS: 1.7K

a/n: after so much waiting, here's another chapter of '(don't) love me', listen to me’s first spin-off. and don't forget it is narrated from chaerin's point of view, ok? see you at the end!

Two months later, I began to feel truly guilty.

Guilty for knowing that I was wrong and still not regretting anything.

We were no longer on vacation, obviously, when my professor asked us to do some work and my class was sent to the library.

My group was the same as always. The four of us agreed that we worked well as a team and were much more skilled together than in the company of others. I got the introduction part, Jungkook and Tzuyu chose the development and Minho took the final considerations. The work was done in record time and, as a bonus, we gained several free minutes until the next classes began.

Tzuyu complained of hunger several times while we were still writing, and after much insistence she managed to convince only Jungkook to accompany her to the food court. Minho refused because he needed to finish some late exercises. I no longer accepted because Seungmin was there, on the other side of the library, so focused on his book that he didn't even seem to notice me.

Our relationship entered a stage that, when we couldn't exchange many words during the day, was as if a sense of incompleteness arose. I don't say it was easy to get to this point, for Seungmin avoided getting too involved in the first few weeks, but failed in every attempt. I failed too.

Our work was too close for our desire to meet to be contained, and from time to time, he was already visiting the store at the end of his work every day, and we talked until we lost track of time. Sometimes I got home too late and lied to Jisung, saying I was working overtime, and he never suspected that I was actually sharing his place in my heart with another guy.

By the way, our engagement was still the same. Jisung knew superficially about Seungmin, but he didn't mind that, because he saw us only as friends, and it made me feel strange from time to time.

I shouldn't compare them, but my treacherous mind wouldn't obey me. At other times, it pleased me to know that Jisung trusted me to the point that, for example, there were no bouts of silly jealousy that could easily wear us out, as in many relationships. However, as I got used to Seungmin's sweet personality, I realized how much my fiance was... Short with me.

Jisung didn't do that to bad, but the fact that he almost never verbalized his feelings suddenly bothered me. I was important in his life and knew it without having to hear the confirmation coming out of his mouth as he constantly demonstrated with his gestures. However, I began to feel a little empty, as if things were getting cold, although not long ago none of this bothered me and I liked his way of being so much that I wouldn't change anything at all, if I could.

Plus, I grew up watching my dad call my mom "sweetie," just as my mom always called my dad "love" or something similar. Jisung just called me Chaerin, and it wasn't as if I was asking for a flood of affectionate pet names, but being next to such an unromantic person generated some frustration.

With Seungmin, however, it was all much lighter and more pleasant.

I didn't think straight before getting up and going to his desk.

In fact, I've never thought straight since the day I met him.

Seungmin looked up from his reading when he finally saw me. The beautiful smile that appeared on his face warmed my heart and made me smile too.

"Hi Chae!" he said excitedly and pulled the chair next to his own for me to sit down. "I was thinking of you just right now."

"What did I do this time?" I asked humorously as he closed the book and turned his attention to me completely.

"Nothing, silly. It's just that I got that old movie you wanted to watch, my aunt had recorded it on a DVD."

I don't think there are many people who trade the stuffed Netflix catalog for feature films from the last century, but I at least do it quite often.

The other day Seungmin and I discussed my interest in Top Gun. I said I wanted to watch again, considering it had been a long time since the last time and several details had been erased from my mind. He laughed, lovely, and said he would fix it. Less than a week has passed and here we are.

"Oh really?" I smiled, but I was also worried because Seungmin already had several things to do during the day and still cared about something so silly that I told him just by saying. "You needn't have bothered with that, dang."

"I didn't bother, Chae," he answered in such a sincere way that I felt unable to doubt. Seungmin looked even happier after seeing me smile at something he did. "Can we watch together?"

"We should," I corrected and again didn't think much when I squeezed his hand on the table. He startled a little, but then slowly intertwined our fingers. "Thanks, Minnie," I said quietly, watching him melt. Maybe I may have melted too. "You're the most considerate person I have ever met."

With a flushed face, he tried to hide a smile but couldn't, what made me want to squeeze him in a hug.

"And you're the most amazing person I've ever met, Chae," he returned. But unlike him, I was nothing incredible, just a flawed and stupid girl who had been doing more nonsense lately than usual. Seungmin, however, didn't care about my mistakes. I even think he liked them and, apparently, everything else as well. It is unfair, but it is reciprocal. "Then thanks, too."

And as always when we were together, time went by very fast.

We said goodbye after we forced ourselves out of our waterproof bubble and I followed Minho out of the library while Seungmin found some classmates and took another path.

Minho was always so cheerful that I often couldn't handle his chatter without getting a headache, and as much as I complained and told him to calm down for just a minute, I missed his energy when I saw him so quiet.

"What happened?" I asked when we were leaving the building. "Are you sad?"

He walked a few feet more without answering, until he stopped, looked up from the floor and looked at me strangely. He seemed more disappointed than hesitant to say whatever was bothering him.

"It's been a while since the others and I have noticed something," he began. "And I won't judge you or get in too much of your life, but it's my obligation as your friend to warn you when you're making a mistake, so don't get me wrong about it."

I knew what he was referring to before I even heard the rest, but I remained silent and let Minho continue.

"I don't know what Seungmin has that hooked you that way, but I think the least you can do, at least here at the university, is disguise. Everyone in the library noticed you both. You think it's fair to do this with Jisung?"

"What do you mean, noticed you both?" I raised my eyebrows, truly confused. "We were just talking."

"No, Chaerin, you are never just talking, it's much more than that" Minho started to get angry, and I understand him. Since his ex-girlfriend dumped him for someone else and didn't even bother to give decent satisfaction, he has become adamant about any kind of infidelity. His willingness to squeeze my neck, therefore, is justifiable. "It seems like a movie scene, you know? You look at each other in such a passionate way that I wouldn't be surprised if Careless Whisper or the Titanic theme song started playing out of nowhere!"

"You're exaggerating."

"No, I'm not! You got so stupid over this boy that you no longer have control over your actions. You don't even realize, Chaerin!"

I parted my lips, but no word leaked out of them. Valid arguments were something I didn't have at the time, because I knew I was wrong and nothing I said would be enough to soften my increasingly frequent slips.

"You regret?" Minho then asked. "Be honest, do you feel like stopping all this?"

The answer must have been written on my forehead, for Minho didn't have to watch my silence for more than a few seconds to take a deep breath and shake his head in the negative.

"He doesn't deserve it" I also didn't need anything more explicit to know that he meant Jisung. "I know very well what it's like to trust someone and have a broken heart in the end. It hurts a lot, okay?" there was a pause. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something, but even my head I couldn't lift. "You fell in love with someone else and I don't condemn you for that, because it's not something you can choose or control, but taking it forward without being honest with your fiance is selfish."

"But then I'll hurt him" finally I spoke again, unfortunately saying nonsense.

"You're going to hurt him anyway!" Minho spread his hands on his own jeans, perhaps thinking of doing the same to my face. "But it will be less worse if he knows the truth from you than from other people."

I closed my eyes and ran my hands through my hair, pulling the strands back in an act of pure frustration.

"I've never been so confused," I confessed. Although Minho was mad at me, I was sure he would stay there for me, as he always did. "I like Seungmin, but I can't just throw an engagement in the trash. It's too early for that."

"And what do you intend?" he crossed his arms. "Are you going to keep lying to Jisung until you decide which one you want to stay with?" the irony in his voice mingled with the annoyance. "You're not like that, Chaerin. Stop it, please."

"I don't know how to stop" in my case, it was despair that stood out more than anything.

"You'll know when you make a decision." he adjusted the shoulder strap on his shoulder and left me alone after completing, "Just don't take too long, or you'll end up without either of them."

And as much as I wanted to disagree, my conscience shouted out loud that Minho was right.

I needed to choose between my fiance and my unexpected case.

「❀」

a/n: I said I'd update quickly and it took me months, dammit

but today's chapter was a little longer to make up :))

did you guys notice the contrast between the relationship that jisung had with chaerin and the relationship that jisung has with jinah? even when they were fine, jisung wasn't usually affectionate or anything like this with chaerin. but with jinah he's always like "my love" and it is only because of her that jisung learned to be a little more cute in that sense

hopefully I'll come back earlier this time hehe see you later <3

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