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My McLuhan lecture on enshittification

IT'S THE LAST DAY for the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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Last night, I gave the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Transmediale festival in Berlin. The event was sold out and while there's a video that'll be posted soon, they couldn't get a streaming setup installed in the Canadian embassy, where the talk was held:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

The talk went of fabulously, and was followed by commentary from Frederike Kaltheuner (Human Rights Watch) and a discussion moderated by Helen Starr. While you'll have to wait a bit for the video, I thought that I'd post my talk notes from last night for the impatient among you.

I want to thank the festival and the embassy staff for their hard work on an excellent event. And now, on to the talk!

Last year, I coined the term 'enshittification,' to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers, it really hit the zeitgeist. I mean, the American Dialect Society made it their Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I'm definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what's enshittification and why did it catch fire? It's my theory explaining how the internet was colonized by platforms, and why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, and why it matters – and what we can do about it.

We're all living through the enshittocene, a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit.

It's frustrating. It's demoralizing. It's even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the 'great forces of history,' and into the material world of specific decisions made by named people – decisions we can reverse and people whose addresses and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für Englisch Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

But in case you want to use enshittification in a more precise, technical way, let's examine how enshittification works.

It's a three stage process: First, platforms are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Let's do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook is a company that was founded to nonconsensually rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that.

When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and k-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It told them: “Yes, I know you’re all using Myspace. But Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire, who spies on you with every hour that God sends.

“Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world, and we will compose a personal feed consisting solely of what those people post for consumption by those who choose to follow them.”

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end-users. Those end-users proceeded to lock themselves into FB. FB — like most tech businesses — has network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined FB because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But FB didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. You and your six friends here are going to struggle to agree on where to get drinks after tonight's lecture. How were you and your 200 Facebook friends ever gonna agree on when it was time to leave Facebook, and where to go?

So FB’s end-users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then FB exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end-users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers, and publishers.

To the advertisers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? We lied. We spy on them from asshole to appetite. We will sell you access to that surveillance data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting, and we will devote substantial engineering resources to thwarting ad-fraud. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.'

To the publishers, FB said, 'Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? We lied!Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link, and we will nonconsensually cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetize as you please, and those users will become stuck to you when they subscribe to your feed.' And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too, dependent on those users.

The users held each other hostage, and those hostages took the publishers and advertisers hostage, too, so that everyone was locked in.

Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialing down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers.

For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen by a person.

For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt, until anything less than fulltext was likely to be be disqualified from being sent to your subscribers, let alone included in algorithmic suggestion feeds.

And then FB started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting fulltext feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetization, via the increasingly crooked advertising service.

When any of these groups squawked, FB just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learned in the Darth Vader MBA: 'I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.'

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus, and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders.

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service but I can’t bring myself to quit it,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit? Get me the hell out of here!” is razor thin

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then FB discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword.

If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go, too.

That’s terminal enshittification, the phase when a platform becomes a pile of shit. This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech bros euphemistically call 'pivoting.'

Which is how we get pivots like, 'In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called "metaverse," that we ripped off from a 25-year-old satirical cyberpunk novel.'

That's the procession of enshittification. If enshittification were a disease, we'd call that enshittification's "natural history." But that doesn't tell you how the enshittification works, nor why everything is enshittifying right now, and without those details, we can't know what to do about it.

What led to the enshittocene? What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants? Is Mercury in retrograde?

None of the above.

The period of free fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google's enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company's AI panic (excuse me, 'AI pivot').

And it can't be Mercury in retrograde, because I'm a cancer, and as everyone knows, cancers don't believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that's a sign that the environment has changed, and that's what happened to tech.

Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honorable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality, and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses.

First: competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Second: regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Third: self-help. Computers are extremely flexible, and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-complete Von Neumann machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company's shareholders. Think of a board-room table where someone says, 'I've calculated that making our ads 20% more invasive will net us 2% more revenue per user.'

In a digital world, someone else might well say 'Yes, but if we do that, 20% of our users will install ad-blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, forever.'

This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory maneuver will prompt their users to google, 'How do I disenshittify this?'

Fourth and finally: workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn't mean that tech workers don't have labor power. The historical "talent shortage" of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage over their bosses. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another job – a better job.

They knew it, and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures of the tech mission.

That's why mottoes like Google's 'don't be evil' and Facebook's 'make the world more open and connected' mattered: they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It's what Fobazi Ettarh calls 'vocational awe, 'or Elon Musk calls being 'extremely hardcore.'

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn't flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines.

So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical 'campuses,' with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered – rather than being made to work like government mules.

But for bosses, there's a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission, namely: your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage, and threaten to quit.

Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification,

The pre-enshittification era wasn't a time of better leadership. The executives weren't better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power.

So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded until it dissolved, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittoscene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modeled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan.

But starting in the neoliberal era, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called 'consumer welfare,' which held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant it was the best store, selling the best product – not that anyone was cheating.

And so all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed small companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with 'predatory pricing' that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold.

When Diapers.com refused Amazon's acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100m on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar, and shut them down.

Competition is a distant memory. As Tom Eastman says, the web has devolved into 'five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four,' so these giant companies no longer fear losing our business.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Laugh In, an AT&T telephone operator who'd do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying 'We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.'

Today's giants are not constrained by competition.

They don't care. They don't have to. They're Google.

That's the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint – regulation – was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can't agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can't even agree on how to cater a meeting where they'd discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel.

Five companies, or four, or three, or two, or just one company finds it easy to converge on a single message for their regulators, and without "wasteful competition" eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

Like Facebook, handing former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg millions every year to sleaze around Europe, telling his former colleagues that Facebook is the only thing standing between 'European Cyberspace' and the Chinese Communist Party.

Tech's regulatory capture allows it to flout the rules that constrain less concentrated sectors. They can pretend that violating labor, consumer and privacy laws is fine, because they violate them with an app.

This is why competition matters: it's not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers, it's because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there's plenty of things we don't want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse, and that's fine.

They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. After all, they had less to lose. We don't want competition in commercial surveillance. We don't want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook – who pretend they are called Alphabet and Meta – have been unscathed by European privacy law. That's not because they don't violate the GDPR (they do!). It's because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU's most notorious corporate crime-havens.

And Ireland competes with the EU other crime havens – Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands – to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment for all sorts of crimes. Because the kind of company that can fly an Irish flag of convenience is mobile enough to change to a Maltese flag if the Irish start enforcing EU laws.

Which is how you get an Irish Data Protection Commission that processes fewer than 20 major cases per year, while Germany's data commissioner handles more than 500 major cases, even though Ireland is nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent.

So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app; just like Uber can violate labor law and claim it doesn't count because they do it with an app.

Uber's labor-pricing algorithm offers different drivers different payments for the same job, something Veena Dubal calls 'algorithmic wage discrimination.' If you're more selective about which jobs you'll take, Uber will pay you more for every ride.

But if you take those higher payouts and ditch whatever side-hustle let you cover your bills which being picky about your Uber drives, Uber will incrementally reduce the payment, toggling up and down as you grow more or less selective, playing you like a fish on a line until you eventually – inevitably – lose to the tireless pricing robot, and end up stuck with low wages and all your side-hustles gone.

Then there's Amazon, which violates consumer protection laws, but says it doesn't matter, because they do it with an app. Amazon makes $38b/year from its 'advertising' system. 'Advertising' in quotes because they're not selling ads, they're selling placements in search results.

The companies that spend the most on 'ads' go to the top, even if they're offering worse products at higher prices. If you click the first link in an Amazon search result, on average you will pay a 29% premium over the best price on the service. Click one of the first four items and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average you have to go seventeen items down to find the best deal on Amazon.

Any merchant that did this to you in a physical storefront would be fined into oblivion. But Amazon has captured its regulators, so it can violate your rights, and say, "it doesn't count, we did it with an app"

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would sure come in handy. If you don't want your privacy violated, you don't need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad-blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each others' throats, unable to capture their regulators.

Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn't just the ability to flout regulation, it's also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today's tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling Myspace users they needed to escape Rupert Murdoch’s evil crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, 'Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here'

It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your Myspace username and password, and it would login to Myspace and pretend to be you, and scrape everything waiting in your inbox, copying it to your FB inbox, and you could reply to it and it would autopilot your replies back to Myspace.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple's market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac – so that offices were throwing away their designers' Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator – Steve Jobs didn't beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office.

He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office, and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could perfectly read and write Microsoft's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on Earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: 'Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?'

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD.

Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced.

Try to scrape all of Google and they'll nuke you until you glowed.

Tech's regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001

It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work – things like ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone – with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine for a first offense.

This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations

Here's how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform, in an anticompetitive acquisition. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90% of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on their platform sell with Amazon's "digital rights management," which locks it to Amazon's apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90% of the market.

If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon's encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a 5-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offense.

That's a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it's also harsher than the punishment you'd get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck-stop. It's harsher than the sentence you'd get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

So think of our ad-blockers again. 50% of web users are running ad-blockers. 0% of app users are running ad-blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that's a felony (Jay Freeman calls this 'felony contempt of business-model').

So when someone in a board-room says, 'let's make our ads 20% more obnoxious and get a 2% revenue increase,' no one objects that this might prompt users to google, 'how do I block ads?' After all, the answer is, 'you can't.'

Indeed, it's more likely that someone in that board room will say, 'let's make our ads 100% more obnoxious and get a 10% revenue increase' (this is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website).

There's no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn't install a counter-app that coordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold.

No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete, or in other words: 'IP law.'

'IP' is just a euphemism for 'a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers.' And 'app' is just a euphemism for 'a web-page wrapped enough IP to make it a felony to mod it to protect the labor, consumer and privacy rights of its user.'

We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.

But what about that fourth constraint: workers?

For decades, tech workers' high degrees of bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators so they could violate our consumer, privacy and labor rights. Even after they created 'felony contempt of business model' and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers' sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses' worst impulses

Today, the response to 'I refuse to make this product worse' is, 'turn in your badge and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.'

I get that this is all a little depressing

OK, really depressing.

But hear me out! We've identified the disease. We've traced its natural history. We've identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labor.

To reverse enshittification and guard against its reemergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it's actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They're blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics.

Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this – we just stopped enforcing them in the Helmut Kohl era.

I've been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I've never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren't taking this laying down. The business press can't stop talking about how stupid and old-fashioned all this stuff is. They call people like me 'hipster antitrust,' and they hate any regulator who actually does their job.

Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has run more than 80 editorials trashing Khan, insisting that she's an ineffectual ideologue who can't get anything done.

Sure, Rupert, that's why you ran 80 editorials about her.

Because she can't get anything done.

Even Canada is stepping up on competition. Canada! Land of the evil billionaire! From Ted Rogers, who owns the country's telecoms; to Galen Weston, who owns the country's grocery stores; to the Irvings, who basically own the entire province of New Brunswick.

Even Canada is doing something about this. Last autumn, Trudeau's government promised to update Canada's creaking competition law to finally ban 'abuse of dominance.'

I mean, wow. I guess when Galen Weston decided to engage in a criminal conspiracy to fix the price of bread – the most Les Miz-ass crime imaginable – it finally got someone's attention, eh?

Competition has a long way to go, but all over the world, competition law is seeing a massive revitalization. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 80s – but it's awake, it's back, and it's pissed.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding 'with an app' to their crimes and escaping enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they're starting to figure it out. This year, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the federal European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in Europe's notorious corporate crime havens like Ireland.

In America, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You people have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988.

The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a right-wing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren't even all that embarrassing!

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn't confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulently racist loudmouth and a crook who served as Nixon's Solicitor General.

But Congress got the idea that their video records might be next, freaked out, and passed the VPPA.

That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. Nineteen. Eighty. Eight.

It's been a minute.

And the thing is, there's a lot of people who are angry about stuff that has some nexus with America's piss-poor privacy landscape. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a Qanon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama Bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that Red State Attorneys General are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action – which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy – would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There's a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That's a lot farther away, alas.

The EU's DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You'll be able to use Whatsapp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind.

But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU's got nothing for you.

This is an area ripe for improvement, and I think the US might be the first ones to open this up.

It's certainly on-brand for the EU to be forcing tech companies to do things a certain way, while the US simply takes away tech companies' abilities to prevent others from changing how their stuff works.

My big hope here is that Stein's Law will take hold: 'Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop'

Letting companies decide how their customers must use their products is simply too tempting an invitation to mischief. HP has a whole building full of engineers thinking of new ways to lock your printer to its official ink cartridges, forcing you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink to print your boarding passes and shopping lists.

It's offensive. The only people who don't agree are the people running the monopolies in all the other industries, like the med-tech monopolists who are locking their insulin pumps to their glucose monitors, turning people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers.

Finally, there's labor. Here in Europe, there's much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the latest salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy (Musk is the most Edison-ass Tesla guy imaginable).

But even in the USA, there's a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers are realizing that they aren't founders in waiting. The days of free massages and facial piercings and getting to wear black tee shirts that say things your boss doesn't understand are coming to an end.

In Seattle, Amazon's tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon's warehouse workers, because they're all workers.

The only reason the tech workers aren't monitored by AI that notifies their managers if they visit the toilet during working hours is their rapidly dwindling bargaining power. The way things are going, Amazon programmers are going to be pissing in bottles next to their workstations (for a guy who built a penis-shaped rocket, Jeff Bezos really hates our kidneys).

We're seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labor, with self-help bringing up the rear. It's not a moment too soon, because the bad news is, enshittification is coming to every industry.

If it's got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying 'It's OK, we did it with an app.'

From Mercedes renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dishsoap, enshittification is metastasizing into every corner of our lives.

Software doesn't eat the world, it enshittifies it

But there's a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.

Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive, it's unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be skeptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn't "enshittification" the same as "capitalism"?

Well, no.

Look, I'm not going to cape for capitalism here. I'm hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy – if there was ever any doubt, capitalism's total failure to grapple with the climate emergency surely erases it.

But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and wooly internet, a space where people with disfavored views could find each other, offer mutual aid, and organize.

The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crapgadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand-names, and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn't more important than the climate emergency, nor gender justice, racial justice, genocide, or inequality.

But the internet is the terrain we'll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it's joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device.

We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to coordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, and save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said 'It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.'

And it may be true that the law can't force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut-bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation.

But it can make that exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn't think you deserve it.

And I think that's pretty important.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel/a>

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

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#pluralistic #transmediale #lectures #enshittification #big tech #berlin #mcluhan lecture #Youtube

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flawdchaos · 2 months

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Spilled Drinks

Robert Rosenthal x Reader

Word Count - 1,735

authors note : hello friends, i have never written anything like this before and posted it. i had some free time today and an idea and dreamt this up. it is far from perfect but i hope you enjoy it, nonetheless. thank you!

The muffled yelling of multiple voices was enough to drag Y/N out of the daze she had fallen into. Her workday had started early and ended late leaving her feet and head throbbing - a shower and her bed, more of a cot really, were calling her name. Her venture to the communal showers she shared with her fellow nursing staff was quickly interrupted as Violet and Helen crossed her path.

With a tilt of her head Violet spoke up. “And where do you think you are rushing off to?”

“To shower and get some sleep.” As soon as the final word fell from Y/N’s lips her two friends were quickly shaking their heads in protest.

“You promised! You always say a person is just as good as their word. It will just be for a drink or two and then you can come and get as much sleep as your heart desires. I swear to you.” Violet said, wagging her finger in front of Y/N, like a mother would do a troubled child.

After a brief glare between the two women, Y/N sighed, hung her in defeat, and turned back in the direction of her bunk.

“I don’t even know what to wear to an army base bar. Those men already don’t take us seriously and you think this is gonna make it any better?”

“The more you fight it, the worse it’s gonna be Y/N. Just for once stop living and breathing being a nurse and just be a girl surrounded by a bunch of good looking men.” Hazel spoke up for the first time that night before being met with another glare from Y/N’s direction.

Y/N knew both her friends had a solid point. In the ten months she had been working at Thorpe Abbotts she had never allowed herself a break. She did her best to maintain a positive reputation among the men she treated but her friends, and now even herself, had noticed that the weight of the job had begun to take its toll. A night away from the blood, cries, and medicine couldn’t be all too bad - for her sake.

The August heat was enough to force a light sweat upon the girls as they journeyed from their bunks to the bar. As they stepped inside the building, Hazel quickly pulled her powder from her purse and turned to Y/N blotting away at certain areas of her face.

“You have to talk to at least one man tonight. One. And not someone you’ve treated.” Violet stated and lightly shoved Y/N forward to the bar, shooing with her hand. “Get a drink, enjoy the night.’

“One cosmopolitan, please” Y/N stated after reaching the bar, flashing a smile. She hoped and prayed, as the guy poured away, that the alcohol would be enough to calm the nerves she felt bubbling in her stomach. They only increased as she looked around and spotted Colonels, Captains and Majors. Leaned against the other side of the bar were the now infamous friends, Buck and Bucky. Gale Cleven was nothing but kind and a gentleman but Y/N had overheard talk of a girlfriend back home and John Egan, well, he was John Egan. There was nothing else to say. A few months prior, during a training exercise he wound up hurt and sitting in front of her in the infirmary bay, clutching his elbow with a shit eating grin plastered to his face as she wrapped his arm. Conversation flowed easily with the major but Violet had urged her to speak to someone new.

The bartender brought her from her daze as he placed the drink in front of her and she quickly took a sip. As she pushed back from the bar, she ran directly into a tall frame that had tried to squeeze in beside her, red juice spilling on both of their newly starched clothes.

Before an apology could tumble from her mouth, the man was already grasping her arm to steady her and ushering for his friends to grab a towel from the bar.

“I am so sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t watching where I was going and I ju-” she cut his rambling off

“No, that was all my fault. I was lost in thought and then - oh my god” taking a quick glance down to the tan and brown jacket, her eyes shot open even wider, “your uniform. I can’t believe I got that all over your dress jacket.”

An arm reached between the two of them holding a towel that Y/N quickly grabbed and started dabbing along the man’s chest, steadying herself by grabbing onto his arm.

“This is the first night I ever came out and I just ruined someone’s jacket, oh my god.”

A large hand landed on top of hers, stopping her from continuing her attempts at cleaning up the mess she, well both of them, had made.

“I promise you, ma’am, it was my doing. Let me order you another drink. This ones on me.”

For the first time during this whole encounter, she looked up to the man she had lost her Cosmopolitan to. She was silent as she stood with his hand still over hers, quickly losing her will to deny the drink once her eyes locked with his blue ones, a small smile adorning his face. All she could do was nod. He took a step forward, placing his hand on the small of her back to turn her with him towards the bar.

“A cosmo, right?” he questioned and a small nod was directed his way. “Another cosmo for the lady and whisky, neat, for me please?” The bartender quickly got to work leaving the two strangers standing closely together in silence. The man quietly cleared his throat and stuck out his hand.

“Robert Rosenthal, but most of the guys call me Rosie.” Y/N took his outstretched hand and lightly shook it up and down.

“Y/N Y/L/N”

Robert grabbed the drinks the bartender sat before him and motioned his head towards an empty table across the dance floor.

“Would you like to grab a seat? I think you owe me at least a conversation after this.” he said, looking down at the tan shirt that was now stained slightly pink. A small smile made its way across Y/N’s face.

“It’s the least I could do.”

Robert led the way to the table, nestled in the corner and sat the drinks down. In a swift motion he pulled a seat out and ushered Y/N to take it. As soon as he sat down, a wave of confidence overtook Y/N’s once anxious mind.

“So, Rosie, what is it that you do?” she asked, raising the glass to her lips. She had some worry that the appearance of a woman drinking alcohol would be ‘unladylike’ but all of her care went out the window when she realized with everything she had seen and done, it was the smallest token of appreciation.

“I’m a pilot. I’ve been flying for a while now.”

“Are you any good?” she teased.

“I sure hope. I have learned the hard way making impressions isn't all too easy here. I just embarrassed myself in front of those two majors.” He said, moving his head to the right.

“Buck and Bucky?” he answered with a small nod. “Don’t sweat it, Buck is too nice to make fun of you and Bucky will forget about it in about two hours when the whisky finally hits and his favorite song comes on.” Rosie cracked a smile at her, shaking his head at the thought of the once intimidating major belting out show tunes.

“Thank you, that makes me feel better.”

“Anytime.”

Rosie took a large gulp of his drink and leaned forward on his forearms.

“So, Miss Y/N, how did you wind up here in paradise?”

“I’m a nurse. I’ve been here almost a year. I still don’t know what I'm meant for.” She admitted, lifting her glass to her mouth to slightly hide her face.

“How do you mean?” he quipped.

She took an inhale, taking a moment to carefully collect her words.

“It’s not easy. A lot of these guys come here, make friends with their crewmates and drink and sleep their feelings away. I can’t really blame them. They’re fighting a war for Christ's sake. But, us women, see what comes back. The trauma, the injuries - all of it - and we get sideways looks for drinking a shitty cosmopolitan every once and a while.” she laughed sarcastically as she finished the rest of her drink. “I love helping people but it gets hard.” He nodded, looking down at his own drink and giving it a swirl.

“I never thought of it that way. You ladies get the best and worst of us.”

She sat for a moment, looking at her hands folded in her lap.

“Do you see those two girls over there?”

“By the bar?”

“Mhm. Those are my friends. They have spent the entire ten months we have been here urging me to come out, get away from the bubble I've made for myself and I fought against it until tonight. I thought it would be a disaster. Then I got here and got a drink and told myself it would be fine, only to spill it all over you.”

“Y/N, it's really no bother.”

“I know, because as crazy as it sounds - I am so glad that I did.”

A small crept across Rosie’s face as he sat back in his seat, downing the rest of his whisky.

“And why’s that?”

“Because, it gave me the perfect excuse to talk to you Mr. Rosenthal.” cheeks turning bright red as she directed her eye contact towards him.

“Well then, I’d be a fool not to ask for a dance Mrs. Y/L/N.” standing from his seat and outstretching a hand, which Y/N gladly took.

Together, hand in hand, they walked to the dance floor where Rosie pulled her close. Y/N settled her head on his chest, watching as their feet moved in harmony.

“Oh, and Y/N,” he spoke up with a small smile perched on his lips, leaving her to tilt her head up towards the pilot “, the next round is on you.”

#masters of the air #robert rosenthal #rosie rosenthal #masters of the air imagines #masters of the air x reader #rosie rosenthal x reader #rosie rosenthal imagines #john egan #gale cleven #john egan x reader #gale cleven x reader #bucky egan x reader #buck cleven x reader

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valkyrieromanoff · 1 year

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IMAGINE PEDRO PASCAL X ACTRESS!READER

Summary: You and Pedro answer some internet questions.

Warnings: Implied romance, friendship,fluffy

I was up at the crack of dawn watching The Graham Norton Show due to my unhinged obsession with Pedro Pascal. That's where my hypothesis about Helen Mirren became more credible. I really hope you enjoy it, though.

"Hello, I am Pedro Pascal." He introduced himself, waiting for you to do the same. "And my name is Y/N, and today we are going to answer some questions from the Internet." You said as Pedro shook the jar with the questions written on small pieces of paper."Let's see what the first question will be." He said, turning the jar over so that you could pick one up. "What was the last song you listened to?" He leaned over to your side, reading over your shoulder. "Do you remember?"

"Let's dance by Bowie. I listened to it in the car when I was coming here." You said, leaving the paper on the table. "Whenever I'm feeling down, I put this song on, and everything is better. What about you?"

Pedro paused to think, looking distractedly to the side. "Someone sent me this video with the song Hey sexy lady and this has been on my mind since then."

"I think I know which video you are talking about." You laughed, raising an eyebrow. He chuckled and laid his head on your shoulder. "Well, next question. Are you good with accents?"

"Are you?" Pedro asked, as you shook your head negatively. "Come on, it shouldn't be that bad."

"The best I can do is a terrible British accent." And I'm not being modest; it's truly terrible." You rectified it, laughing. "But you, on the other hand, are good at it."

"I try; I've done a few different accents." Pedro said, moving his shoulders as if to ask something. "This is the way." He said it in his SNL Valley Girl accent.

You smiled as you shook the pot and motioned for him to take the next question.

"Recommend a book." He read, then tossed the paper aside. "I think I've mentioned this book before, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is a landmark in Latin American literature and well worth the read. Besides dealing playfully with social and economic problems, it talks about family, friendship, and love."

"That sounds interesting." You commented. "I would recommend Normal People by Sally Rooney. It's a great book, which in addition to telling the story of Marianne and Connel, deals with topics such as mental health, social classes and makes us reflect on how we impact people's lives and how they impact us."

"Nice." Pedro agreed, waiting for you to take a question.

"What is your celebrity crush?" You asked, and you can't deny that you were curious to know his answer.

"Tough question, there are so many people I admire." He began, adjusting his glasses. "However, if I had to pick one, it would be Helen Mirren since Excalibur. Oh Morgana Le Fay has awakened something in me.""She's wonderful." You agreed, taking a moment to decide. "My celebrity crush is Tessa Thompson; that woman is amazing. She could punch me in the face and I'd thank her for it." "Whoa!" Pedro muttered in surprise. "I don't even know what to say." He joked as you pushed him lightly to the side.

"We only have two more." You commented, looking through the last few papers. "Let's see what the question is." You said, unfolding the paper. "Were you a good student? Were you Pedro?""I was a student." Pedro paused. "Maybe I got into some trouble." He joked, holding your arm as he laughed, "But they were always normal things, like skipping class or forgetting to do an assignment.""I guess I was a good student; I got good grades; I was a little nerdy; and I never got into any trouble." You spoke, throwing a lock of hair back."So, you were a good girl?" Pedro asked and you bit your lip."You could say that." You mumbled, holding the jar for him to pick up the last paper.

"What's the one thing you wish you could tell your younger self?" He read, looking thoughtful for a moment. "I would say that everything would eventually work out and that some things tend to take longer to happen. And to never, no matter what, stop being who you are."

You smiled, gently touching his shoulder. Pedro stared at your face and returned the smile.

"I'd tell her to not be so hard on herself and to try to enjoy the moments without worrying so much about the things she can't control." You said sincerely. "Well, it looks like the questions are over."

"It was a lot of fun answering them; I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did." Pedro spoke, smiling. "Until next time." He said, and made the peace sign with his fingers.

"Bye." You spoke, waving to the camera.

#pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal imagine #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x actress reader #actress!reader

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alwaysforevermaybenever · 9 months

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YANDERE EX-HUSBAND: INTRODUCTION

× cw: general yandere stuff; malaysian/cantonese slang; reader is implied ethnically chinese (read her dialogue in Steven He’s accent); reader is also female; obsessive behavior; bribery; stalking; being held at gunpoint(?); threats; felony; implied murder; controlling behavior

× note: it's basically renheng/uncle roger and auntie helen

⌗ your beloved ex-husband? Hah! He’s no better than a plate of burnt egg fried rice with no spring onions or meat from a kopitiam(coffee shop). In fact, you’d pick studying at art school over looking at his face for a single second, even if it means your mother disowning you.

⌗ Unfortunately, even after getting divorced, you still live together. That’s because the house is bought under both your names, so you can’t just kick him out. And it’s not like you’ll have enough money to buy a new house after selling your current one, because half the money goes to him. Tsk. What a nuisance…

⌗ Yala, he’s handsome and rich, but he’s such a jerk and a micromanager! He always insists on telling you how to cook your signature noodles. (Mind you, you grew up learning how to make that. Your ma made sure of that.) He didn’t go to culinary school, so who is he to tell you that, huh?

⌗ You can’t stand being married to such a pompous man like him, so you locked yourself in your room on the wedding night. No way you’re gonna do anything with that eyesore (metaphor). That’s why five months later, after countless arguments and fights, you divorced him.

“Haiya, he CEO of a company, his net worth 1 billion. But he cannot even cook rice or defrost chicken for me when I ask him to? And you ask why I divorce him ah?” *slaps table*

⌗ However, your ex-husband doesn’t really care about your rants or complaints. You’re talking for hours on end about him, so that’s already a win in his book. He’s always on your mind!

⌗ He fully expected you to divorce him. That’s why he insisted on buying the house under both your names - you can’t get rid of him that way. All long as he’s under the same roof as you are, he couldn’t be happier. He eats the food you cook (leftovers because you’re used to cooking for all your relatives during family dinner), rolls on your perfectly made bed while you work your accountant job (in one of his other companies that you don’t know he’s the CEO of) and plays the picture perfect husband when your mom drops by (your 28501864817 relatives marching right behind her) with mooncakes and tangyuan (because she’ll beat you up with the tea set heirloom passed down forty-five generations when she discovers that you’re divorced with no sons!!).

⌗ How did you even get married to him if you hate him that much? Well, long story short, your mother and his mother are best friends, and their husbands are brothers, which made daily reunions even longer because they had so much to talk about. When they noticed that he showed interest in you as a child (one time), they decided that you two would get married when you were of age. While you were resentful that you were essentially forced into an arranged marriage, you pushed through it for the wedding ang pao (red packets) and tax benefits (at least until you divorced, which was when you started working and putting that science stream (not art!) degree to use).

⌗ You hate your ex-husband, but you do admit that he’s a good wallet. Besides, it’s not like he’s obsessive or possessive or a micromanager who stalks you when you go out or a genuinely bad person who commits felonies because he found out you were searching for potential bachelors because after all you’re in your prime! Right? And besides, who wouldn’t want to date and eventually marry you? But don’t worry your pretty little head because he’ll take care of them since he’s the only one you’ll ever need. Yeah, you’re divorced but who’s to say you can’t get remarried? Not the law!

⌗ And if he has to drag you screaming and kicking and cursing him (and his ancestors) to the ancestral plane and make you stand by the altar, that’s what his strength is for! And if he has to pay hush money to all the people present that’s ok, cuz he’s not rich for nothing and the relatives aren’t greedy bloodsucking money nabbers (me) just for show.

“Once again, until death do us part, my love… You at the back - put down that phone. I’ll pretend you weren’t trying to call the police, for the sake of this auspicious occasion. What do you mean my wife is being held at gunpoint and trying to punch me no she isn’t.”

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lizzybeth1986 · 3 months

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Hana and Madeleine: When You Reward Your Favourite Bully with One of Her Victims

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The "Romances" That Didn't Happen

Previous - Maxwell and Penelope: When You Like the Side Character So Much, You Gift Her A Shiny New LI

A/N1: Apologies, again, for the length of this. There was so much damn retconning to wade through that it felt like a rollercoaster to write. There is also not going to be a lot of Hana in this, as I needed to unravel so many inconsistencies in Madeleine's writing. I also didn't want this to become a repeat of my essay series on Hana (which you can read here).

CW: Descriptions of bullying and intimidation, as well as dismissiveness of the same both in canon and from fandom. A mention of the 'infertility' plotline written for Hana in TRH1. Mentions of parental abuse and neglect.

In every other essay in this series, it's been important for me to analyse the potential of the pairings TRR went for. No matter how badly PB handled them later on, one could find promise in the possibilities of these pairings, and if written well they could result in a sweet, happy ending for the LIs we didn't marry. With a better sense of balance from the writers and less vitriol and double standards (in some cases) from the fandom, they could have worked.

Not so for this pairing.

In the case of Hana and Madeleine,it would have been far far better if this pairing had never happened at all. The problem wasn't just in the development; the roots of such a pairing itself were rotten.

(White) Female Antagonists

Before I delve into the characters involved in this pairing, it's important we take another deep dive into a narrative practice we often see with PB. Their blatant favouring of specifically white female antagonists.

Now, it's not as if white men in antagonistic roles don't get favourable writing from their teams and adulation from sections of the fandom (one has to only look at some of the posts Gaius Augustine of BB, Caleb of Hero, and Kane of TE got - just to name a few). But we also often see fans of such white women decry the (very little compared to their black counterparts) condemnation that their faves get for their actions in comparison to both antagonistic and romanceable white men. Such readers often neglect to acknowledge exactly how much the narrative bends over backwards to accomodate them, in a way that they never have done for even mildly hostile/wary black and brown women. And often this is with ample support and encouragement within the fandom itself.

One cannot even pretend this is a recent development. The early books had their fair share of white-woman-adulation and you can see some of the patterns that would solidify in PB discourse already take shape in their early books.

One excellent example of this is TCaTF. Compare the treatment that white women like Helene Leventis, Hex and Zenobia Nevrakis are given, to what Rowan Thorn - a black woman - gets. Helene is allowed to escape never to return, or join Kenna, despite being the woman who killed her mentor and close friend Gabriel. Hex is well known in the series for her sadistic torture devices and for destroying an extremely prosperous kingdom. Yet, she is captured - alive - and there are two options that allow her a bit more mercy, and only one that recommends the harshest of punishments. Rowan in the meantime only betrays Kenna if the latter is an absolute tyrant to her, and letting her go if she betrays her is touted as a failure. Her loyalty doesn't ensure she will live like Diavolos' does - you can in fact leave her to die if you don't have enough diamonds/prestige points.

The Freshman was an improvement on this: even if Becca Davenport started out as a classic college mean girl, her redemption arc involved her needing to work to regain trust with the group and her best friend Madison, regardless of the MC's fondness of her. Her housemates immediately set her straight when she lashes out at them at the beginning of TS, and Becca has to plan for almost a-book-and-a-half to get her friendship with Madison back to normal again.

Sadly, this is something that rarely ever happened again. Discrepancies in character treatment became more and more obvious as the years passed. Books where black and brown women behaved even mildly unimpressed or catty with the MC, showed them either suffering grievous fates or written out of the narrative (eg. Scarlett not even getting a proper future in the VoS bonus scene) or being mistrusted and misunderstood constantly by the MC and their friends (Aurora). Books where white women could cause grievous harm depicted them being let off without so much as a slap on the wrist (eg. Aunt Mallory of RoE being rewarded with a happy life, a man and reconciliation with the niece she tried to kill and the daughter she emotionally abused).

(Screenshots from SavageLordBarlow's YouTube channel)

Perhaps the worst and most obvious case to date was that of Vanessa Blackwood of MoTY, who called a young child "guttersnipe" within minutes of encountering her, outed a lesbian teacher, encouraged her son's bullying, provided legal counsel to the MC's ex husband just to see the woman suffer, and engineered a plot to frame the MC for theft so she could lose her job. Once Vanessa had crossed her limits, PB ensured they laid on the sympathy narrative thick, having her show sad faces when the MC scolded her in a paywall scene, punishing only her brown lackey (both the white people involved - Vanessa and Guy - are never named when Tallulah is exposed, even though she literally stole jewellery and framed the MC for them). In the series finale, Vanessa was rewarded with a cushy diamond scene where the MC can choose (in what is the understatement of the century) to call her "classist and a little bit racist" - all she is given at the end of the book is an extremely softball form of criticism.

Compare this to Xanthe of ACOR, who had far less power, who was repeatedly slut shamed by the MC and others for doing her job, and whose end was met in a "comical" scene that implied she'd been sold into sexual slavery while two black members of her scholae gloated over her plight (in a manner so uncharacteristic of them that even players who didn't necessarily like Xanthe were shocked. I would highly recommend you read @cassiopeiacorvus' excellent essay on her, "Xanthe: Courtesan, Rival, Pawn").

In an essay I'd written years ago, I'd noted the following:

"Check out who the narrative rewards you for treating well, as opposed to who will be made to support you either way.

You're allowed to show basic decency to a black or brown woman. But you're expected to show kindness, understanding and empathy to a white woman, and richly rewarded if you do. In some cases you will also face consequences if you don't. (Fandom - take note of the difference, and be sure not to forget it)."

Madeleine Amaranath is probably one of the best examples of this - with blatant retcons, unfounded adulation and obvious pandering lasting over five books.

Rules of Engagement

When we look at the full cast of TRR, we find at least six characters who are callbacks to its sister series, Rules of Engagement. Leo, Constantine, Regina, Bastien, Madeleine and Rashad (the last one was an addition from TRR2 onwards). Part of TRR's appeal as a series was its ability to reference the earlier one through these characters, but this time from the PoV of Leo's younger brother instead.

Madeleine appeared in only 2 chapters in RoE. She was Leo's fiancée, in an arranged match that not only their parents but their citizens expected, unfazed by the "commoners" Leo brought to his bed and secure in the knowledge that no matter who he slept with she would eventually become his Queen. Leo dashes these expectations, however, by abdicating his claim to the throne - whether the RoE MC chooses him or not.

At this point - when TRR was barely even a concept - Leo was a clear fan favourite. Players liked the idea of romancing a rogue prince from a fictional European country; it meant they could revel in the luxury of touching royalty, while being away from all the hard, unsavoury parts. The Madeleine angle provided them with a rival to fight off, and at the time that was all that mattered.

Was Leo's behaviour in RoE, towards both the RoE MC and Madeleine, dishonest? Definitely, but not many seemed to care much at the time and it hardly created a dent in his fanbase (most of the criticisms against him and his cheating ways and irresponsibility would emerge later - when the Leo stans became Drake stans, and it was more convenient to badmouth Liam's family).

Jeffrey Herdman, a Junior Game Writer with Pixelberry for over 7 years, was a part of both the RoE and TRR teams, and proudly admitted in the TRR2 pre-release interview, to being the one in charge of writing Madeleine:

Q: Very funny. (Just so we're clear, Jeffrey is joking. Sort of.) Out of curiosity, who's your favorite character to write in The Royal Romance?

Jeffrey: Madeleine. It's fun to write someone who's constantly trying to spin a situation to their benefit, and making power plays along the way. I've actually been writing for Madeleine since her appearance in Rules of Engagement: Book 2, so we're practically besties.

Excerpt from The Royal Romance: Book 2 Interview

(If we were to compare this adulation of the character from Jeffrey, to the person who wrote Hana - head writer Jennifer Young, you'd find a surprising difference. In this very interview Jennifer talks about enjoying the process of writing Hana, but pointed to Drake as her favourite LI - "In my personal game, my love interest is definitely Drake, and I totally make Kara write him just so I can read his scenes and enjoy the romance. =)".

Perhaps if Jennifer had spent less time fawning over Drake, and more time doing Hana's story justice, that LI wouldn't be stuck in a situation where the team constantly erased her experiences and history to benefit their favourites)

When you look at Jeffrey's open admiration of Madeleine, and trace her fairly choppy and largely incoherent narrative journey through the books...a lot of things begin to make sense.

TRR1 - Would a TRR1 Madeleine Have Been A Better Fit for Hana?

When you look at the first book, you can tell that the possibility of any of the other alternative pairings besides Liam and Olivia wasn't really entertained. There is no buildup at all for Maxwell x Penelope, Drake x Kiara - and not even a single direct interaction between fellow competitors Hana and Madeleine. In fact, TRR2 often had to cover up for the lack of interaction in certain cases by making the alternative LI come up with justifications for why they weren't approaching the LI before.

There is maybe one implied interaction between Hana and Madeleine, that I don't think even the writers paid much attention to at the time. In the pie baking scene in Applewood, Hana is assigned to Madeleine's team if the MC doesn't take her along. Whichever group Hana is in, she is in charge of the pie design.

In the diamond scene, she takes the MC's suggestions and gives her advice on the amount of apples required for the filling. Given that she gives credit to the MC (in front of Queen Regina) in this option, and doesn't not do the same for Madeleine, it is likely that she was allowed to decorate for the other team, but not with much input from the captain.

This pie has a rose design, which is beautiful but lacks the intricacy and the challenge of the Cordonian Royal Seal, which the MC can suggest in the diamond scene. It's possible that by default, Madeleine handled the baking herself (since Penelope couldn't even boil water and in fact is so distracted she unwittingly helps sabotage the pie), and Hana was assigned strictly decoration duties. But even these possibilities rely on conjecture and guesswork, with no real dialogue or interaction shown.

There are no other scenes where the two women talk or do anything together. Hana may be present in one or two scenes where Madeleine is speaking (such as the dining scene in Ch 17 where Madeleine tells the court ladies about the upcoming Engagement Tour), but the two never directly engage with each other. It's more likely that (like Maxwell and Penelope, or Drake and Kiara), the writers may have thought of Hana and Madeleine only in the second or third book - more likely the third, but there are possible hints in TRR2 if you squint.

Hana is an interesting anomaly among the cast of TRR. She is both Cordonian and foreigner; the ways of the Cordonian court are, in equal parts, both familiar and confusing to her. This serves as an double-edged advantage to the MC - Hana is both skilled and knowledgeable enough to ease her into the culture, and isolated and vulnerable enough for the MC to step up as a hero on occasion. We also find out in Lythikos (TRR1 Ch 7) that she was so deep in the closet that she couldn't fully articulate her struggle to love the romantic English noble who wanted to marry her, in the presence of the woman she was slowly beginning to love. Within the competition itself, Hana is shown having a hard time finding people who will associate with her, often shown left out of events and her yacht party abandoned during the Regatta. The broken engagement could have a hand in making her appear to be struggling in the competition, but tbh Olivia is the only one who brings it up. Overall, she does well in the competition, but gets little credit for the same.

Madeleine is the polar opposite of this. Even though the ladies of the court initially view her with a mixture of pity and respect (due to her broken engagement with Leo, and her position as a Countess and winner of the previous season), their views on Madeleine once she enters the competition range from anger (Olivia), to speculation (Kiara and Penelope), to indifference and later suspicion (the MC).

Madeleine comes into the social season with several advantages: her pedigree and her years of experience at court. Both Bertrand and the MC note that Madeleine hails from a "powerful family" and "is immersed in the intrigues and maneuverings of courtly life", and therefore the MC is cautioned by Applewood to pay more attention to her than to Olivia. If the MC fails to win court favour, both Penelope and Kiara show allegiance to Madeleine. Where Hana is shown to be vulnerable despite her skills, charm and intelligence, Madeleine is meant to be viewed with respect even by her peers - and expected not to return that respect to others unless they're the king and queen.

I often view the Madeleine of Book 1 (and early TRR2), and the Madeleine of the latter half of Book 2, as two separate people (more on that in the next section). Early Madeleine was depicted as a clear threat. While she does nothing too out-of-pocket during the competition, her threats to the MC once she is (optionally) the favourite frontrunner, her singular focus on only the king and queen (and largely ignoring the Prince), and inability to respectfully lose, ensure that the reader registers her as a figure of danger early on. The first time she (optionally) faces an obvious loss and sees the MC crowned as Apple Queen, Madeleine tells her to "savour these moments. You may never hear the phrase again".

Her very extreme attempts to belatedly win Liam's favour after ignoring him the entire season (we later find out that she barged into his sleeping quarters the previous night and suggested the arrangement that Liam speaks about in TRR2), earns her speculative looks from the MC and wariness from Liam himself. Given that the outcome was so different in TRR2 but the buildup to said outcome was so rushed and chaotic, there is a 70/30 chance that Madeleine's buildup in Book 1 was meant to highlight her as someone with the capability to harm the MC, rather than just as a red herring. At the very most, Book 1 would highlight her as powerful, with the intention that Book 2 would follow through with showing her as a cog in a very vicious machine.

But because Madeleine's actions in TRR1 don't result in any direct harm, it's honestly hard to envision her as dangerous beyond the subtle threats (that people could brush off as basic rivalry) and rank classism.

Would Hana's pairing with the Madeleine of TRR1 have worked? It's equally hard to say. If we take only Book 1 into account, and ignore the very real possibility of a threat that Madeleine represents, there's a sliver of a chance that such a pairing could work...if Madeleine works on herself. At this point she hasn't manifested as a direct threat to Hana in a way that, say, Olivia has - and all the MC has at this point are theories and speculation. You'd have to probably change half of Madeleine's characterization, but it could be workable if the foundation for such a pairing was mutual respect from the start.

Still, when you take into consideration that Madeleine being involved in the plot against the MC was a very legitimate possibility, it's hard to see any opening for this pairing. Even Penelope - whose coddling from the narrative knew no limits - was no longer entertained as a potential alternative romance for an LI the moment her role in the plot was uncovered. If any harm was done to the MC, and Madeleine was found to be behind it, there is no way Hana would even be allowed to entertain the thought of her as an alternative LI at all.

You see - hurting Hana is no big deal. But hurting the MC and still getting an LI to show interest in you? Now that would be beyond the pale!

Madeleine: A Red Herring...Or A Villain Retconned?

As I have mentioned earlier, there is one writer - who has seniority in the company because of his many years there, who has always been in charge of Madeleine's writing, and who has always loved writing her. On close inspection one can say for certain that Jeffrey Herdman had a fair bit of sway in the team itself, especially from the fact that one of his weirdest writing suggestions - the MC's supposed obsession with hats - was retained in the books as a gag for a very, very long time (TRF finale livestream interview). When you take both Jeffrey's sway in the team, and the writing of Madeleine in TRR2 and 3 (and beyond), one can make several educated guesses about what Madeleine was built up to be, and how that changed midway.

Plenty of fan posts written in the gap between TRR1's finale and TRR2's release, took for granted that Madeleine would have some role to play in the plot against the MC. While one may assume this was due to "jealousy" from players or "hate for a bitchy character", there were enough signs in TRR1 and 2 that this was the route the narrative was initially planning to take with her.

The MC does voice suspicions of Madeleine in the first book - mostly after Madeleine herself voices threats to the MC during the Apple Queen ceremony. Madeleine also looks apprehensive at the (optional) public support Liam shows towards the MC at the Beaumont estate, and even shows him a suspiciously huge amount of attention at the Coronation. The MC even confronts Madeleine during the Coronation festivities when she gets a note threatening her to withdraw from the competition, believing it was sent by the latter. But beyond this, Madeleine's own words in TRR1 often sound ominous and laced with subtle threats. Still - going by just TRR1's evidence, Madeleine could still work as a good red herring, since she's not exactly crossed a clear line with anyone yet.

TRR2 seems to go in one direction when it comes to Madeleine's arc, then makes a sharp pivot in the opposite direction post Chs 7 and 8. The first half of the book has both the MC and Liam regard her with doubt and suspicion, especially when the MC learns that Madeleine had come to Liam's rooms the night before the Coronation, and insisted he continue the relationship with the MC on the sly while making her the queen. The book presents several contrasts between Madeleine and the MC, presenting their possible ruling styles and envisioning how each woman would fare as a future queen.

In a diamond scene in TRR2 Ch 4, Liam asks the MC how she would handle a plate of curry chicken falling on someone - an incident that has already occurred in some playthroughs to Madeleine (who got recognizably frustrated and called the whole episode "a disaster"). In contrast, the MC can claim she would either defuse the situation with humour or help clear the mess - both of which establish that unlike Madeleine the MC knows how to adapt to different situations, and prefers to find a solution rather than take her frustrations out on everyone else. Liam points out the differences between the two women as the MC "having perspective... every gaffe isn't a disaster".

Multiple scenes in the story focus on Madeleine's rigidity, her inability to adapt, her hunger for power, her belief that becoming queen gives her a free pass to be a tyrant, her hubris that allows her to outright harm some of her ladies in waiting and believe she will never face consequences, and her overall lack of real impact during her own engagement tour (only if the MC fails miserably does the Italian statesman Francesco even mention Madeleine). A lot of this buildup indicates that she won't be as effective a queen as other characters claim she will be.

Her overall behaviour in the first half of TRR2 seems to highlight overconfidence, and a willingness to overstep every possible boundary in the belief that nothing will now prevent her from getting what she wants ("the best part about being Queen is that I don't have to explain myself to anyone. Including you."). Even though she isn't queen yet, both Madeleine and everyone around her behave as if she has already been crowned! That kind of overconfidence - especially from someone who should know better than anyone that winning the competition doesn't necessarily mean she'll be crowned - makes more sense when she is aware that there are powerful people (like the former king and her aunt, the former queen) to back her.

There is also the fact that Penelope's involvement in the plot never got any proper buildup. There is just one scene, in TRR2 Ch 6, where she speaks about feeling uncomfortable at parties and balls, and how much she hates crowds. The reveal of her being the culprit is in Ch 7; the reveal of her social anxiety is in Ch 8. Before this, you have zero indicators of her being involved in this level of deception - even though her history of "social anxiety" should have ideally made that kind of subterfuge difficult, and she should have been able to leave a few tells, signalling her guilt. It is very clear on rereads that Penelope's involvement in the plot was a last-minute narrative decision.

But perhaps the strongest evidence that TRR2 was originally meant to establish Madeleine as part of the plot against the MC, is a line from the very first scene of the book. When a confused MC asks Bertrand how it's possible for Liam to break his engagement, Bertrand mentions a constitutional provision:

"The king is able to change his selection in specific cases for the good of the nation". The MC being proven as framed and unfairly disgraced achieves very little in this context, because the focus is clearly on the king's final choice. This means that the engagement cannot be voided on the basis of the MC being innocent, but on the basis of Madeleine being unfit for the role.

What happens to this "constitutional clause" once Penelope is declared the culprit among the court ladies rather than Madeleine? It disappears completely. If she was really meant to be a red herring from the start, the team would never have added this line in the first place. Nor would they have left the "buildup" for Penelope's anxiety till Ch 6, just one chapter before her reveal. If Madeleine was really meant to be a mere red herring from the start, there would have been more than just one crumb presented for that trail.

It is highly possible that the team had plans for Madeleine to be involved in the plot, or in something shady enough to justify breaking the engagement. It is just as highly possible that Jeffrey, the writer in charge of her character, allowed his favouritism for that character to dictate his writing of her, and convinced the team to change the trajectory of the story to benefit her.

Hana and Madeleine - The First Half of TRR2

Most of the interactions between Hana and Madeleine in TRR2 are overshadowed by one incident in Ch 7 - the one most popularly known as "the chocolate incident". Madeleine was already not too popular as a character when this scene came out, but her admission that she wanted to break Hana crossed enough of a line that a number of players would bring it up as a reason for why they couldn't ever like her, no matter how often she was retconned in canon.

A common misconception made about the "chocolate incident" from Madeleine lovers and haters alike, is that it's viewed as a singular episode rather than as an escalation in an ongoing pattern of threats that Madeleine was already making to Hana.

Viewing it as an isolated incident is precisely what allowed both Madeleine stans, and the canon narrative itself, to severely downplay what Madeleine did, and what she openly declared she would continue doing to Hana. Therefore, it is essential to look into Hana and Madeleine's interactions before Ch 7, as well as the context behind Hana's return to court and the very real and grave threat that Madeleine represents to Hana specifically.

To do this, we must first look into how Hana's return to court (after her parents forced her to leave post Coronation) is depicted. There are two versions of this story - Madeleine's version...and the truth.

Madeleine's Version: "If it wasn't for me, she'd still be on the other side of the world. I've heard dogs remember those who feed them. I hope you'll keep this in mind and remember that dear Hana is here by my personal invitation". This is a half-truth at best and ironically, this is the version Hana sticks to. She is never allowed to tell us differently.

The truth, as said by Liam to Hana post Coronation: "I am the King of Cordonia. I'm sure Lady Madeleine knows that if she wants to keep our engagement, she'll have to give me something. Perhaps I can convince her to make you part of her court". Hana never gets to tell us this. That honour is given to Drake!

Even after the MC (optionally) gets to know this truth, she never talks to Hana about it, and Hana is never allowed to veer from Madeleine's narrative even in private. In the process, Madeleine gets to use her half-truth as a form of blackmail - threatening Hana at least twice to send her back to China if she paces even one toe out of Madeleine's arbitrary line.

In TRR2 Ch 4, Madeleine is shown antagonizing her entire court (ordering Penelope to get lemonade and comparing her to dogs, telling Kiara to exoticize herself by not speaking in English [which itself has colonial/Orientalist connotations]). But none is more ominous and disturbing than her subtle threat to Hana before introducing her to the two suitors:

Being sent back to her parents is a terrifying prospect for Hana...for two reasons. For one, Hana is committed to being there for the MC, to contributing to her investigation (and she does! Massively. Perhaps more than anyone else in the group). For another, she is just beginning to realize what a damaging environment her parents' house is, and she also knows they are already growing suspicious that she hasn't found another suitor yet. By the end of this conversation, Hana is visibly distraught... to the point of needing moral support (something she rarely asks for herself).

Remember - this is an arbitrary rule Madeleine comes up with, that applies only to Hana. In the same conversation, neither Kiara nor Penelope are placed under this kind of pressure. Though Penelope claims in Ch 6 that her parents won't allow her to come home if she doesn't get a suitor, Madeleine doesn't levy any other threats of this nature on her (she harms Penelope in other ways).

Madeleine is aware that Liam was the one responsible for Hana's return. It is implied that she is also aware that neither Liam nor Hana can say this in public. By this coin, she'd know that she shouldn't be the one who can take a call on sending Hana back - Liam is. Yet she issues this sort of a threat, and worse still...is allowed to get away with it through Hana and the MC's silence, both in private and in public.

Unlike the MC and Olivia, the other three ladies of the court are present in official positions to the future Queen, and are expected to publicly pledge loyalty to her. The narrative of TRR2 alone seems to give the King's fiancèe powers and influences similar to an actual Queen Consort's. And Hana, Kiara and Penelope aren't just random "court members" - they are Madeleine's ladies-in-waiting. They cannot even speak to certain people unless she approves of it (Ch 1), she orders them around with the disrespect that many in that nobility reserve for their servants (Penelope in Ch 4), she publicly humiliates and insults them if they make a single mistake (eg. Penelope not getting a metallic dress in time for the bachelorette), and she can get away with causing them grievous harm (Hana). There is no actual point to any of this behaviour - it achieves nothing and (by the narrative parameters of the third book) is actually foolish, because Madeleine's actions could cost the royal family their relationship with the Great Houses. Neither the MC nor Liam (the actual monarch), would be allowed by the narrative later to abuse their power the way Madeleine can, in a position that isn't even hers yet!

It is easy to view Madeleine's interactions with Hana and Penelope especially, as just some regular mean-girls shit, with all the excuses, justifications and crocodile tears that the fandom can shower on said white/white-passing mean girls. Canon itself encourages this reading when they use the word "hazing" to describe what Madeleine put Hana through. But when we speak of Madeleine's behaviour in her engagement tour that way, we miss a very important aspect of her dynamic with these two women. They are no longer competitors or mere allies. They are not just people she knows in court.

They are not Madeleine's equals. They are her employees. She is directly in a position of immense, unquestioned and unchecked power over them. Publicly, she has the authority to invite them into her court, and to throw them out of their jobs. It is from that lens, that we must view her behaviour, especially in Ch 7.

The "Chocolate Incident" and Its Aftermath

Another reason to believe Jeffrey's favouritism for Madeleine allowed for an actual change in the story, is the way this above scene - and the ones preceding it - were handled immediately in both the immediate and long-term aftermath.

Often dubbed "the chocolate incident", this scene takes place in Italy (the first stop of the engagement tour) during Madeleine's bachelorette. For anyone who has forgotten the incident, Madeleine's ladies-in-waiting are supposed to organize different fun activities for her bachelorette, and the MC uses each event as both a PR exercise and an opportunity to check the credit cards of the ladies.

The final activity is Hana's, an intricately-planned chocolate fondue party complete with chocolate-themed games and treats. If one reads too much between the lines, one could maybe notice the tiniest sliver of a romantic hint in Hana's conversation with the MC over her confusing an actual bachelorette party with the show The Bachelorette (It is just as possible tho - if not more - that this is a comic aside pointing to Hana's lack of exposure to modern media).

However, things take a turn for the worst at this juncture. Madeleine heavily berates Hana for not knowing that she is "allergic to chocolate", accusing her of an attempt to murder and even threatening to remove her from her position in court. This leaves Hana so distraught that she ruins her own dress in the process, and is damn near inconsolable. The MC can - if she chooses - comfort Hana along with their friends. At the end of the night, a heavily drunk Madeleine gleefully admits she lied about the allergy and gloats about wanting to keep hurting Hana till she breaks, because she "wants to have a little fun".

She claims, when asked why, that it's because "everyone wants something, but the nice ones like Hana don't even have the decency to act like it". Which sounds like the sort of sick logic that fandom often happily accepts from their favourite white antagonists, where they can project whatever sob story they want to make such a reasoning palatable. Such attempts ignore the fact that Madeleine is torturing someone for supposed "duplicity" when she is herself well-known for being insincere.

Later, when it was convenient for the fandom to hate on Hana, she would be either blamed for the torture Madeleine put her through (because she was "weak" or "too nice", or that she was "spineless and deserved this treatment". I even saw posts that claimed it "wasn't that bad" (in the case of one particularly memorable instance, a Madeleine stan went so far as to say, agreeing with a post expressing a fondness for Madeleine: "...before anyone mentions the chocolate prank: Did Hana die, tho?"). Some also tried to reason that it was fair for Madeleine to target Hana, either to showcase her "wiles" or because of her sad sad childhood.

As I pointed out earlier, every single one of these takes tend to downplay Madeleine's bullying/abuse so that it sounds more like a schoolyard squabble that happened only once, rather than a person in power consistently placing their employee's job under threat, with the stated intention of harming them mentally and emotionally on a regular basis, until they experienced a breakdown. The center of this conflict isn't about different people with different approaches. Nor is it about court maneuvering or wiles because honestly, nothing worthwhile was achieved through Madeleine's abuse, and she had no purpose for doing those things beyond deriving a sick pleasure from other people's suffering.

It isn't about nice vs tough, nor ambitious vs generous, nor "naive" vs "jaded". It is about a gross power imbalance. An imbalance that results in the exploitation of the more vulnerable party...which is later brushed aside by the one who claims to be the latter's "friend" like it means nothing.

Structure wise, one can see striking similarities between this chapter, and TRR1's Ch 7, where the MC can view Olivia in a new light in the first half of the chapter, but be disturbed by her vindictive nature by the end of it. Here too, the MC comes into the investigation of the credit cards fully expecting to see Madeleine as the culprit. Over the course of the evening she finds Madeleine treating her ladies-in-waiting badly, but also calling out the press for targeting only the MC but staying silent on Tariq's involvement (ironically, Madeleine herself didn't exactly believe the MC if she tells her she was set up). She is also shocked when she realises Madeleine isn't the culprit at the club. Still, the court is given a rude shock when Hana is accused of putting Madeleine's life in danger.

Clearly the aim of such a chapter was to make the MC soften a little towards Madeleine, while still keeping some of the antagonistic tension. However, the more direct impact of Madeleine's huge ego trip on Hana made the harm far more visible than Olivia's jibes towards a woman who was far away...plus the scenes that followed in the former sequence centered Drake, far more than the ones in the latter that involved comforting Hana.

Madeleine's bullying also clashes - quite conveniently - with the reveal of Penelope's betrayal, so that the latter overshadows what Hana went through altogether.

It is important to note at this point that the MC is the only person not directly tied in an alliance to Madeleine (besides Olivia and Maxwell, who are then missing at the fashion show backstage scene in Paris) who knows Madeleine's intentions towards Hana. She is the only person present at the event in Paris, who knows that Madeleine intended to continue harassing her until she broke. Hana herself is never made fully aware of this, and if she is left in a vulnerable, dangerous position while on her mission to support the MC's investigation - then the fault lies to a large extent with the MC for keeping silent, rather than protecting her friend from someone who fully intended to hurt her.

I say this because in France (Ch 8), the MC's exposing of Madeleine is by choice, rather than default (this essay has a full breakdown of said scene). Moreover, the option where the MC can "expose" her will result in Madeleine lying about the act being an "official hazing" she does for all her ladies-in-waiting. Not only does the MC neglect to contest Madeleine's claims (or even tell Hana the full truth in secret), she also parrots Madeleine's lie in a conversation with Adeleide in NY, as if it were the truth (Ch 14).

Remember how I mentioned Jeffrey - the writer who was in charge of Madeleine's scenes and sang her praises in TRR2's pre-release interview? His influence here is obvious in the way the narrative sharply pivots away from Madeleine's characterization so far, to engage in a full-blown pity party.

The abuses of her power (towards Hana and Penelope in particular) stop. The parallels that canon makes between Madeleine and the MC as future Queens, stop. No reference, ever, is made of her actions before Ch 8.

For over seven chapters, Madeleine largely fades into the background - sometimes there will be scenes where she is present, but without any dialogue or actions. Sometimes she may make a catty move like getting the MC to pick up her wedding ring, but from a safe distance. Because she doesn't openly antagonize anyone or show up much in Chs 9-15, the sense of distance could allow some to soften in their memories of her. Especially when the only strong reminders of Madeleine in these chapters come from Adeleide, her mother.

Adeleide is an important cog in the machinery that resulted in the retconning of Madeleine's character in TRR2. Without her, Patriotic!Madeleine wouldn't have become canon. Adeleide sets the stage for this extremely inaccurate reading of her, with complaints on two occasions about how Madeleine is "putting too much pressure on herself" and working too hard. Which contradicts her very real actions in Applewood and Italy, where she regularly antagonized her entire court and where she doesn't get much notable approval from foreign dignitaries (Signor Francesco) unless the MC is that bad.

The narrative, at this point, expects us to view her with sympathy, as someone who could have been "an excellent queen" (Adeleide's words, not mine). The stage is clearly set so that we pity her when Liam calls off the engagement and she loses this position, that we can see her loss as "unfair". It ensures that there is an overflow of sympathy for Madeleine's plight, especially since she had already lost her chance to become Queen once before with Leo. By this point, many readers had actually forgotten the "chocolate incident" altogether, and were more than willing to view Madeleine as a patriot who wasn't given her due. A description that, ironically, more accurately fits Hana.

Is Hana Really Just A Nice Girl who Never Fights Back?

As I mentioned before, Hana's "niceness" and "weakness" were sometimes presented in fandom as justifications/reasons for Madeleine's bullying of her, often in an attempt to shift blame or make it sound like Madeleine's stated "reasons" (in TRR2 Ch 7) to hurt her were legitimate. Almost as if to say that Hana was targeted because she presents herself as an easy target.

To be clear, I don't subscribe to such a train of thought myself. Different people react to bullies and abusers in different ways - and not being able to push back aggressively in tense situations doesn't make anyone a lesser person. In fact, canon itself doesn't mind providing a "weaker" person protection against someone like Madeleine...as long as that person is Penelope. So we cannot even claim that Hana's "weakness" is why Madeleine targets her, or why the MC shouldn't have to protect Hana better.

Canon also doesn't help much in this respect, especially with their preferences for the meaner white women. In fact the narrative doesn't even allow Hana the chance to speak up in private against Madeleine's half-truths about her return, and she is made to easily accept Madeleine's "hazing" excuse. Let's not even get into how she speaks about Madeleine in TRR3. Additionally, no one in Hana's own friend group provides adequate protection or support - they stay silent where it counts.

But is Hana really that incapable of fighting for herself? According to the finale of TRR1, no.

Even though the scene is hidden behind a paywall, Hana's pushback against Olivia's treatment of her during the social season is strong, decisive and done entirely on her own initiative, with no prompting or involvement from the MC. She is honest about the ways in which Olivia has hurt her, but also makes it clear that Olivia's opinions and vitriol no longer matter - effectively reclaiming her own power in the process.

Such a scene is a clear indicator that Hana is capable of pushing back, and isn't afraid to speak truth to power - as early as TRR1. While one could say that as a diamond scene, it is possible that it can't be fully shown as canon - there are ways the writers know how to incorporate such things. Often, they have managed to write in similar scenes or the same information into free scenes later on (eg. the selling of Liam's bachelor party photos, which wasn't even that important to the story of TRR2). Hana could have had a free pushback scene with Olivia if the writers really wanted to give her one.

That aside, it's safe to say that there is a precedent for Hana being able to fight back before TRR2, and canon could have found ways to ensure that she could safely do so with Madeleine too. Or at least have more protection and care from her friend group, if her position as lady-in-waiting prevented her from speaking out. Penelope got to demand protection later on, after all - and she wasn't even our friend.

We must also take into account the positions of power that Madeleine, Olivia and later even the MC hold. Madeleine is a countess in line to become queen in TRR2. Olivia is a duchess, and the MC herself is given this honour in Book 2. Hana - despite her skills, knowledge and charm - never gets lands, nor a title unless she marries the MC. Hana's experience in Cordonia isn't just about "other women" being mean to her with the MC being "not like other girls" - all three of the above women are in positions of power over her, and even the nicest of them uses her more often than she helps.

TRR2 doesn't exactly build Hana and Madeleine as a pair. In hindsight one can read romantic hints into Madeleine's mocking usage of the word "darling" around Hana, Hana's attempt to replicate The Bachelorette for Madeleine's bachelorette party, and read parallels into both their toxic family histories (particularly Hana with her mother and Madeleine with her father). But there is no actual romantic content there that one could find with the other three pairs, which leads me to believe that Hana and Madeleine was only taken seriously as a romantic prospect in TRR3.

How did Madeleine become the final romantic choice for Hana, and no one else? Because the relationship was never made Hana's benefit - it was for Madeleine's. Given all the evidence laid out about TRR1!Madeleine, TRR2!Madeleine and including hints that she may have actually been written as the villain at some point, it's more likely that Madeleine's main writer ensured some changes in the writing of his favourite character midway into the story, resulting in her staying longer in court and several retcons that painted her as a tragic heroine and completely erased any actions that contradicted such a narrative.

This specific narrative also seems to draw upon a narrative trope that is seen sometimes in certain stories featuring queer couples - the Armoured Closted Gay. It is employed often enough, mostly to show the pervasiveness and immense pressure heteronormativity can have on some queer people - that sometimes, they hate themselves for not adhering to the norm and therefore project that self-hatred onto people like them. PB had done a similar kind of story in TF and ILITW - with Zig and an aggressive teammate Manny (but with discussions on sexual harassment and about being closeted) and with Lily Oritz and her crush Britney. Unlike Zig's and Lily's cases though, this sort of narrative hardly centers on Hana.

Hana is hardly treated as a person in her own right in this narrative. She is treated as a "consolation prize" for Madeleine's "good behaviour" and "hard work". Which is still a really, really hard story to sell when one of the characters states outright that they'd abuse their power over the other till she breaks.

So how does PB get back from that kind of cruelty, and convert it into an actual romance?

Madeleine in TRR3 - The Royal Retcon

(In order: MC complimenting Madeleine to Godfrey (Ch 3), response to Madeleine's "send my regards to Hana (Ch 9), Madeleine asking for a dance (Ch 16), Optional response about memories of Madeleine's bachelorette in Hana's Vegas diamond scene (Ch 16))

By gaslighting an entire fandom, of course.

TRR3 requires us at the very start to do two things - to recruit Madeleine into replacing Justin as our press secretary, and to convince her family to join the Unity Tour so that Cordonia knows its nobility stands with the Crown. Until this point, we've only had hints of Madeleine's so-called "patriotism", mostly from Adeleide. TRR3 Ch 3 goes full force on this reading: having Madeleine claim (in the most positive option) that all her efforts to become queen was "for my people...it was always for Cordonia", having Hana claim that Madeleine "would mostly likely take a bullet for Liam... because you'd never leave Cordonia without a King". Coupled with Godfrey and Adeleide's toxic family dynamics, the story is set to push forward a narrative where we are meant to sympathize with her and preferably downplay her behaviour from the previous book.

Throughout Madeleine's tenure as press sec, we are expected to laud her "work" - even though the truth is that she makes our work harder by giving us heavy folders and 100 note cards of materials just minutes before our meetings, and leaving out important information (like Zeke) for us to scramble about and find. Where during her time as future queen, her ladies-in-waiting were expected to have every detail perfect as per her desires otherwise face her wrath - as our employee, we are expected to appreciate efforts alone, and be lenient when she doesn't follow our rules (eg. wearing gold for our bachelorette when she was supposed to wear muted colours, trying to sneak in a white dress to our wedding). Most of our responses to her "work" involve fulsome praise, or at most a very light criticism that still claims she's good at her job (she isn't). And it isn't just the MC - even Justin (who recommended her) and Hana are made to sing her praises.

Having canon claim Madeleine does a good job when she actually doesn't is... frustrating, but not as awful as the retconning they do for her past behaviour. But it is part of a pattern that whitewashes Madeleine altogether so the readers can consider her deserving of the rewards that the narrative so badly wants to give her, whether her actual conduct matches up to these fulsome praises or not.

One clear tactic that is used to achieve this, was to have the person she harmed the most, speak of her in glowing terms. In TRR3 Ch 3, you have at least two instances during the "Cordonia's Most" game where Hana uses the game to compliment Madeleine. Here, she compliments Madeleine on knowing how to "charm a crowd...her confidence and poise", and claims her to be very patriotic. If the MC refuses to coddle Madeleine during their private conversation, the onus to be kind to her rests solely on Hana's shoulders, where she is required to say, "maybe it's time to see if you can catch more flies with honey". Hana is also shown wanting to include Madeleine in group activities (TRR3 Ch 6, before going to the spa), in the same way she tried to include Olivia in TRR2. When we're shown a Hana who is not only willing but enthusiastic to speak to Madeleine, it further encourages the reader to befriend her - almost as if to say, "if Hana doesn't mind being friendly with her, why should you?".

And this wouldn't be possible at all if canon was honest about Madeleine's conduct in TRR2. So much about Madeleine's advice to us in TRR3 directly contradicts her own behaviour as future queen in TRR2 ("having an entourage isn't about vanity...it's about support"). Had canon actually been honest about her conduct, this statement would be viewed as extremely ironic, a huge portion of the blame for Penelope's reluctance to return to court would be (rightly) placed on Madeleine's shoulders and we would be able to call her out specifically on her tyrannical behaviour as future queen, as well as her inability to adjust her work to suit her client now. We would not be placing Madeleine on a pedestal ad nauseum, or paying much attention to her childish complaints that her "efforts" are going unappreciated.

Whenever the early part of the engagement tour is referenced, it is spoken of in the vaguest, most milquetoast terms. The narrative will speak vaguely of "meanness", but never actually specify what Madeleine did. The closest we get to any sort of confirmation of this is in the Costume Gala (Ch 9) if the MC warns Madeleine to stay away from Hana...and even there, the MC just says she did "mean things". Which is the mildest possible way I have seen of someone describing a person who gloated about breaking Hana. Like the word "hazing" from the previous book, all these vague references leave it to the readers' faint memories, or imagination, to figure out what Madeleine did.

But all of these are just hints at best, and most of what we could assume of the writers' intentions came largely from guesswork. There was constantly a sense of something not being right, but many of us at the time couldn't completely articulate it. That is, until Ch 16, and only if we pressed a specific option in the Vegas diamond scene, in just Hana's playthrough:

Unlike the previous scenes - which were mostly attempts to obfuscate the events of the previous book - this scene replaces what actually happened with blatant lies. Not only does it wipe out entirely what Madeleine did, replacing it with a casual comment from Hana about her "fun side", it also smears Kiara for something she didn't do at all during the bachelorette (for clarity, Kiara found out she was a great dancer, and looked quite annoyed if the MC chose a wrong dialogue option as an excuse to see her card. The MC never saw her lashing out at Penelope during this event). Even if the MC and Hana were so drunk that night that they wouldn't remember events clearly (which isn't how they're depicted at all when the "chocolate incident" took place), it wouldn't be replaced with things that never actually happened. The writers were more than ready to throw Kiara under the bus to make Madeleine look better, and have those lies come out of Hana's mouth (and mind you, Hana liked Kiara so much she chose her to be her MoH in Ch 18 of her playthrough, so it can't even have been spite towards Kiara on her part).

In contrast, Penelope is allowed to be open about Madeleine's mistreatment of her. In fact she cites it as the main reason for her reluctance to return to court, and even complains at the MC if the latter asks her if she didn't get the memo on the bachelorette dress code in TRR3 Ch 16 ("oh no, no, it's like Madeleine all over again!"). The group is required to protect her from Madeleine; in Ch 4, when Penelope is upset at the very sight of Madeleine, Drake comes to her rescue and reassures her ("She's with us, Penelope. We won't let her bite."). While Madeleine herself is protected from any consequences for what she did to Penelope (besides an optional tiny jibe in Ch 4), the MC and her group are required to reassure her that they will never allow it to happen again. In a very disgusting contrast, the narrative pushes Hana at the forefront of the diamond scene with Madeleine, without ever considering her comfort or safety around the person who wanted to break her. Not only does the group involve her without ever asking her if she wants to be part of it - Drake and Maxwell safely distance themselves when the time comes for Madeleine to speak personally about her troubles, and the MC can choose not to be sympathetic in certain dialogue options. Which means that the onus to comfort and persuade her is largely on Hana's shoulders. We must also remember that, unlike Penelope, Hana is deprived of the full truth of Madeleine's intentions in the last book too.

Where the writers were ready to at least admit that Madeleine's behaviour affected Penelope deeply, they went to the extent of completely rewriting the narrative of her TRR2 bachelorette to erase what she put Hana through.

The "Romance" in TRR3

(First four screenshots from my playthroughs, next four from the Adventure...Romance...Thrills YouTube Channel, and the final row's screenshots from the Annabelle Lee YouTube channel and the Skylia YouTube channel)

The Hana and Madeleine "romance" is hinted at in 5 scenes (4 in other playthroughs, and just one in Hana's own). As with most of the other romances, Madeleine's feelings are the most prominent. To the more romance-coded overtures, Hana's reaction is usually shock and disbelief, with a small suspicion over whether Madeleine is doing this to trick her into humiliation later. But the narrative gives her very little opportunity to even talk about anything related to Madeleine, especially anything negative. You do have a scene at the finale that is meant to provide closure, but not in a romantic way. This scene is very different from the others, and in some ways puts an end to the possibility of this relationship happening anytime soon.

How did we get from those scenes to this final one in Ch 22? It would be useful to look at the scenes, within the timeline of TRR3's release and with the context of fandom reactions.

1. The "Cordonia's Most" Scene (Ch 3)

This diamond scene is written to give the MC/reader a bit of background on Madeleine's past and family, which will prove useful later when she has to convince the Amaranths to fix their relationship with each other. It is set against the background of a drinking game where an asker can quiz everyone else about who would be the most likely to do a particular action. Hana references Madeleine twice in the game (in a very complimentary manner), and Madeleine references Hana once. It was her comment about Hana being "stupidly sweet and perfect" that caught the attention of some readers and made them wonder if that was the route PB was planning to take with Hana. This dialogue shows up in Hana's route as well.

In later chapters, we see instances of Hana trying to include Madeleine in group activities...such as in Ch 6 where she invites the latter to come with them to the spa after the football match with Jiro and Camellia.

2 and 3. Cross-Referencing Each Other at Costume Gala (Ch 9)

This is a very interesting development, at an equally interesting time. Around the time Ch 9 released (end-April 2018), PB announced that TRR's team would be taking a hiatus, mostly to work on "some exciting stuff" during that break. It also gave them the time to work on certain things the fandom was demanding, and do away with others due to stan vitriol (Kiara's attraction towards Drake being one of them). The next chapter would only appear a month and a half later (mid-June).

Ch 9 sneaked in a scene that hinted at Hana and Madeleine as a romance option, but in a way that made it very hard for players to notice on a casual read. The scene is split in two parts: the MC can choose to speak to either Hana and Olivia, or Maxwell, Justin and Madeleine. Hana and Olivia's scene shows the two commenting on Gala outfits, which kickstarts a conversation about diplomacy vs bluntness. The latter option explores a variety of topics, mostly revolving around an appreciation for Madeleine's "great work".

Both Hana and Madeleine reference each other in their scenes. Hana's dialogue depends on whether the MC is her fiancèe or not; in other playthroughs, she admires Madeleine's costume, the compliment on her good looks very personal. In her own playthrough, she compliments Kiara's outfit but in a more distant fashion ("subtle and clever, just like her...very well-chosen"). In Madeleine's scene (which is the same across playthroughs), the ending involves her telling the MC to "send my regards to Hana", in response to which she can choose a line of questioning (which ranges from "protective towards Hana" to largely indifferent. In all three options, thankfully, the MC can close with "don't let me catch you antagonizing her", but that really is one small mercy in a pile of blatant retconning.

What marks Hana's dialogue about Madeleine as an LI-specific option, is that she says something entirely different if the MC is getting married to her. This is an indication that the dialogue was intended to be read as romantic, and that it couldn't be said by an LI who was already in love and ready to marry the MC. Pretty much in the same way that Olivia in Liam's playthrough cannot hold his hand in Applewood or dance with him in Vegas.

I wrote an essay on this at the time - both on the possibility of the pairing and why it was a bad idea - and the overall response I received at the time was mixed. Those who remembered exactly what went down at Madeleine's bachelorette and weren't her fans hated the prospect, but some weren't as convinced and some refused to believe it would happen. So there was some pushback for it, citing Madeleine's "chocolate incident" (thankfully, since there were players who had forgotten about it), but it was very low-key and didn't gain much traction.

4. An Offer to Dance in Vegas (Ch 16)

The most obvious indication of Hana and Madeleine being a romantic possibility was in the Vegas chapter. It was impossible to miss for people who didn't romance Hana. This scene, again, featured only in playthroughs where Hana wasn't getting married - which meant that many Hana-romancers didn't get to know of this pairing unless they were told by a friend or saw any such posts on their dash (some even found out years later, to their shock and dismay).

The mild pushback from Ch 9 resulted in a scene where the writers could be emboldened to continue writing this pairing, but confirm (in the vaguest possible way) that Madeleine treated Hana badly. Madeleine's non-apology "apology" really reads more like an attempt to get into Hana's pants than actual regret, and is followed by a reaction from Hana that is confusing in its mildness. Hana is surprised at the offer to dance, asking Madeleine whether she's trying to trick her. While the mild suspicion is a slight improvement from Hana's fulsome praise and enthusiastic attempts to involve Madeleine in group stuff in previous chapters, it still downplays what Hana suffered at Madeleine's hands by making her present the weakest, most milquetoast examples of "fooling someone", examples that pale miserably in comparison to what Madeleine actually put Hana through.

With both the "stupidly sweet and perfect" dialogue and this scene, you'll notice that Madeleine is not only the one who initiates the conversation, but is also the only one with an actual voice in these exchanges. Forget having an opinion on whether she wants to have anything to do with Madeleine or not - the narrative doesn't even give poor Hana the opportunity to properly react beyond mere shock.

There was a stronger reaction to this scene than to the Ch 9 one, because it was way more visible (though you could avoid it just by letting Madeleine stay in her hotel) with Madeleine's romantic intentions on full display. Her asking Hana for a dance immediately after the no apology made it pretty obvious. Players who didn't see the Ch 9 scenes or who didn't believe the divergences meant anything, now couldn't deny that this was positioned as an alternative romance. Additionally by this time, those who forgot about the "chocolate incident" did get reminded of the exact scene, so the vagueness with which Madeleine "addressed" her actions in TRR2 felt criminally inadequate for a number of readers.

Most of us, however, didn't know about the retcon in Hana's Vegas scene, until years later. Those who didn't do Hana's playthrough would have had no idea, and those who did more likely chose the more romantic options.

5. "Jealous?" (Ch 20)

This scene is unique in that the option shows up across all playthroughs, but the specific reaction only shows up in two of them. It's understandable that Hana stans would have missed this - the dialogue is an option, the response is very fleeting and you would have to look through the same option in other playthroughs to recognise the variations.

In the cases of both Drake and Maxwell, Madeleine's response to this jibe from the MC is "ugh, please". Dismissive, almost mocking the idea that she would have any interest in them. In Liam's and Hana's cases, she appears shocked for a minute, then composes herself and gives a more neutral response ("I...I refuse to dignify such a ridiculous question with a response"). In Liam's case, one can safely assume that even though she had no romantic interest in him, she was still on the verge of marrying Liam and that alone would make the situation awkward. In Hana's case there is really no other reason for her to feel that awkward besides having lingering feelings that she cannot suppress.

While this version of the scene doesn't feature in playthroughs where she is single at all, it's still a very strong indicator of authorial intent. Even in the face of backlash against the pairing, the writers clearly wanted to continue hinting at the possibility, if they were slipping in hints of Madeleine's feelings for Hana as late as Ch 20 (just two chapters before the finale). The most plausible theory for this inclusion would be that the backlash was a lot more than it was after Ch 9, but not entirely enough to do away without the pairing completely...yet.

6. "I Wanted To Break You" (Ch 22)

No one knows what happened between Chs 20 and 22, and there's little I can think of that would account for such a quick change in such a short span of time. The finale has a scene featuring Hana and Madeleine, that begins by drawing more obvious parallels between the two women and their families (until now, the parallels were not as pronounced. It's not exactly a great parallel to begin with, since Madeleine has at least one supportive parent and doesn't get punished to the extent that Hana has been, if she openly protests against her parents' methods. But in TRR3 the narrative sometimes does use Hana's toxic parental situation as a parallel to garner sympathy for Madeleine's).

However, once the parents are out of the picture, the attention then turns to Hana and Madeleine, setting the stage for either a romantic confession or a full apology. This time, canon opts to go for the latter.

Unlike all the others, this scene is bluntly specific not just about what Madeleine did but what exactly her intentions were. It has her use the word "break"; it has her actually say the word "sorry". It allowed Hana, for the first time, to fully hear the truth about the harm Madeleine planned to wreck on her. And most importantly, it also allowed Hana her own voice in response to Madeleine's revelations, making it very clear to her that her forgiveness needed to be earned, over a period of time.

The dialogues used to talk about Madeleine's bachelorette in the finale are poles apart from the language they'd used earlier ("hazing", "put my ladies through their paces", "mean things", "refuse to coddle", "wronged"). The finale scene was a more accurate return to the original language and purpose of that bachelorette scene. In fact it sounds less like what canon had been attempting to gaslight their readers into believing thus far, and even seemed to borrow verbatim from the language of the readers who closely followed this issue.

One could call it a good closure scene on the surface level...but there are many, many problems with it.

One was the reaction of the MC. Her angry "excuse me?" in response to Madeleine's confession is still a very obvious retcon. It may have been done to preserve the myth that the MC is a good friend/wife to Hana, but reads as extremely dishonest when you remember that canonically, the MC knew the truth about Madeleine's intentions the whole time and just chose to leave Hana in the dark. It's an attempt to make the MC seem protective that ultimately rings false.

Another is the excuse Madeleine gives for why she targeted Hana. "I wanted to push Hana too far, and for her to drop the nice-girl act once and for all! Only, it isn't an act, is it?" My response when I first read this was "if Hana was faking it...so what. So fucking what. Who was she harming". Coming from the reigning queen of duplicity herself, Madeleine is really not in a position to be judging anyone for putting up a front. This also ties into the hollowness of the motives PB tried to belatedly cook up for TRR2 Madeleine's bullying - no matter what canon says to whitewash her actions, her attempts achieved nothing, did no good for Cordonia, and would likely have led to a very fractured court if the Unity Tour was held while she was queen.

Ultimately, the possibility of this pairing becoming canon was laid to rest in the final chapter. One could interpret Madeleine's promise of a starting gesture ("know that if anyone at court gives you trouble, I can make them regret it") as a possible opening to something more, but considering the earlier backlash, that was unlikely.

TRH - Madeleine Gets The Penelope Treatment, Hana Gets Her Entire Childhood History Retconned.

An interesting development that came up when TRH dropped was the departure of Jeffrey Herdman from the team, most likely because he was heavily involved in the writing of its Renaissance-era spin-off The Royal Masquerade. He would return, by TRF (he is part of their finale livestream), but by then his pet favourite character was likely gone.

TRH has a different set of circumstances, and different power dynamics. The MC is settled into marriage and trying for a child, the LIs are working in the council, Olivia is upgraded to cosplaying spymaster and the side characters go on with their lives. The first book of TRH seemed to do a surface-level recognition of some of the complaints certain readers had in previous books, but their favourites and the people who wouldn't get much attention or appreciation, remained the same.

TRH1 was a time when the writers praised Hana and claimed in a livestream that she was the kind of LI they would love to marry, but also where they gave her a condition that (inaccurately) made her unable to safely carry children (just for the MC to be the mother of the heir) and forced her to be immediately okay with that fate. As the sequel series progressed over the course of 4 books, the erasure of all that Hana was in the past was subtle and insidious - the narrative often compared her to Olivia and found her lesser, she was never allowed to even mention her home place China and worst of all - the writing completely retconned the emotional abuse she suffered at home by claiming it emerged from loving protection, from wanting to keep their daughter away from a cult. And even though Hana's discovery of her sexuality was described by Kara as a "journey that she's still on", no attempts were ever made to show her exploring what she likes romantically, or to show her dating. We don't know if she's involved with anyone, we don't know where she lives, we learn very little of her interests beyond what benefits the MC at any given moment, and the narrative never fails to remind us that they like Olivia more than they like her. Hell, they still encourage Olivia to keep insulting and degrading Hana! Hardly the behaviour of writers who love a character so much they would marry them irl, honestly.

On the other hand, Madeleine wasn't very prominent in TRH1, but gained notoriety in the next two books. The first book has her occasionally engage in inappropriate, invasive badgering of the MC to get pregnant quickly, and she continues to pretend that her doing whatever she likes without ever consulting the person in charge is professional behaviour (eg. Setting up the presscon about the MC's pregnancy announcement. She never even considers whether the MC would be comfortable announcing this pregnancy or not at this time). She gets to deliver a small bit of foreshadowing in the second half of the book (an early hint about Queen Eleanor's pregnancy, though Madeleine's awareness of it hardly makes sense when you look at the entire TRH series, and it never comes up as a point again). Her father being exposed as the traitor who poisoned the former queen builds up to a storyline that benefits her the most in the long run.

Hana is given one chapter where she can call Madeleine out on her entitlement (Savannah's bachelorette). She doesn't insult or berate Madeleine in TRH1 Ch 7, but is refreshingly no-nonsense and will not put up with Madeleine's constant whining about an event she had invited herself to. It's a small, cold comfort, since Hana's actions here are tied to making Savannah's bachelorette a success rather than for herself - but it's still gratifying to see Hana in a position where she can call people out without having to worry about the repercussions. Especially when the narrative disrespects Hana in so, so many other ways for the rest of the series.

In the same chapter, the ladies of the court are given an opportunity to talk about their love lives. Of the four, two women can speak about the people they like (Penelope about Ezekiel by default, and Olivia about Liam if you choose), and one only mentions him by name if the MC is married to someone else (Kiara, about Drake, if you choose to ask her over Madeleine). Madeleine doesn't mention anyone at all, insisting that marriage is something she will only consider for the benefit of her country or estate. This was a relief to players who feared that PB might attempt to push the possibility of romance between Madeleine and Hana again.

Though Madeleine doesn't get the romance that PB so desperately wanted to gift her in the last series, and she isn't given any further romances...the narrative clearly wasn't done pandering to her, even though Jeffrey was not officially a part of the team.

Remember how in the previous essay, we explored the levels to which PB encouraged players to coddle Penelope? Entire chapters would be spent just making her feel comfortable and safe, in encouraging her to help us. No actual initiative or enthusiasm from her end, even if her actions caused the problem or there were lives and reputations at stake. No, Penelope's comfort and happiness should be front and center.

Now think of that treatment, but on steroids and lasting for two whole books. That's what Madeleine's story - starting from TRH2 - looks like.

TRH1 ends with the reveal that Madeleine's father, Godfrey, was involved in the assassination of Liam's mother Eleanor. So a certain amount of narrative focus on Madeleine was expected, perhaps. But the second book doesn't stop at just that.

We are not merely asked to be kind to Madeleine. No, kindness towards Madeleine is expected of us. The warning issued in TRH2 Ch 4 promises "consequences", which means we know straight off the bat that we will be punished if we're not nice enough. It insists we take note of her "fragile state", and give her the mercy and compassion she had never given to anyone in her court.

To give Madeleine the smallest of credits, she acknowledges this just two chapters prior to the oath ("in the past, our positions were once reversed and I was...unkind to you. I had no reason to expect any kindness from you..."). However, this admission does sound disingenuous in the face of the narrative's implicit demand that we treat her nicely. Because if she did recognise her own past behaviour in TRR2 esp as hurtful, and herself as not exactly deserving of kindness, then it makes no sense for her to judge people for behaving exactly as she expected. A genuine redemption arc would have been one where she understood no one owed her kindness after what she'd done, and still determinedly forged ahead to do good for her country. After all, the narrative wanted us so badly to believe this woman was patriotic, right? If her "patriotic spirit" was so tied to her ego that you needed to pamper and praise her every five minutes, just for her to not support such an obviously-foolish tyrant as Bartie Sr, then it can't have been as strong as canon so vehemently claimed.

TRH tracks our "treatment" of Madeleine over 2 books and 10 distinct scenes. Of these, 6 scenes allow us to choose between kind responses and unkind ones, 2 others require the player to choose one among multiple options of people, and 2 scenes are check-in dialogues rather than actual choices (which means that the player doesn't choose an option, they just find out through such scenes whether they are winning Madeleine's favour or not). I imagine that the first category is the most important, with the second being options that you don't necessarily need to choose Madeleine for if you want to go for one of the others, as long as you pressed enough "kind" options.

To elaborate, here's the breakdown:

Kind/Unkind Responses

- House Amaranth's pledge (TRH2 Ch 4). Notably, the "most hurtful" one doesn't even accuse her of anything - it just tells her that the family needs to earn back the Crown's trust. Compare that to Madeleine's accusations to Hana that she was trying to kill her and deserved to lose her position in court. You know, the cruel treatment that some Madeleine stans claimed "wasn't that bad".

- Carrying the Heir's train at Anointing Ball or not (Ch 5)

- Deciphering Madeleine's conversation with Godfrey on his boat (ie whether she is betraying or helping the MC) (Ch 6)

- Acknowledging Madeleine's help in capturing Godfrey, at the Gratitude Ball (Ch 7)

- Gently encouraging Madeleine into being Penelope's bridal attendant, rather than mocking her (TRH3 Ch 2). There is no longer any need to acknowledge Penelope's earlier fear of Madeleine - we are expected to forget entirely that she was the main reason why Penelope didn't want to return to court in TRR3.

- Trusting Madeleine to help with investigations at Fydelia (Ch 6)

Choosing Among Multiple People:

- Speaking about loyalty before making a pledge to the Heir. Other ladies of the house are also presented as choices (TRH 2 Ch 14)

- Babysitting the Heir during Fox Hunt. Other choices are Regina and Savannah (TRH3 Ch 10)

Relationship Check-in:

- The way Madeleine greets you at Fydelia (Warm Welcome/Cold Front) (TRH3 Ch 6)

- Whether Madeleine helps you escape with the Heir in Ch 13, or allows the child to get kidnapped by Godfrey in Ch 15 (Desparate Times/What Goes Around)

The ending of TRH3 has Madeleine either thriving and inheriting her mother's estate, or being merely fired from her job in Royal Communications (a better punishment would have been to strip the entire Amaranth family of their lands, but I digress). She is notably absent in TRF, possibly because she wasn't entirely very popular to start with and two whole books of coddling her didn't exactly help matters either. As one of the junior writers in the TRF team said, "some people exiled her so..."

The first few opportunities to win her over, notably emerge from attempts Madeleine makes to assure the Crown/MC of House Amaranth's loyalty, and you will find that even at an early stage she expects to be included in sensitive discussions that call for discretion, and to be constantly praised for her efforts. Let me give a reminder, again, that she hardly ever gave any praise to the women working for her, and in fact punished them just to keep them constantly in fear of her.

I know it sounds like I'm labouring too much on this point, but it's important to understand just how much effort the narrative had put into coddling this one woman. Chapters and chapters of branch coding, writing two routes, title cards, dialogues, rewards and consequences.

This is similar to the way the narrative encouraged kindness and sympathy towards Penelope, but it's now over a lengthier period of time and with more drastic consequences. We were required to coddle Penelope over a chapter each in three specific books, or be deprived of her support/help. We are required to constantly shower Madeleine with praise and sweet words over the course of 31 chapters, or she will help an unscrupulous Regent-Elect kidnap our child. She will even openly accept that the only reason she put a mere child through that, was because we weren't nice to her ("Wouldn't you have done the same to me? You've made it abundantly clear you see me as the enemy").

But if the MC deserved a punishment this cruel for just mocking Madeleine at every turn, then what punishments should Madeleine get for what she put her own ladies-in-waiting through? What should she get for planning to "break" one of her courtiers? A second broken engagement doesn't seem entirely enough by such parameters.

Then again - as I said before, the narrative deliberately shifted the goal posts for what a potential royal could and couldn't get away with, in the time between Madeleine's engagement tour and the MC's marriage, for this very reason. So that Madeleine would never have to face the kind of constant censure the MC and Liam would face regularly. Among characters in canon, or among largely biased stans in the fandom. Speaking of which...

Fandom

Madeleine's popularity has always been a mixed bag, ever since TRR2. By TRR2, there were people who loved her for what they thought were her craftiness and wiles, some who suspected her to be involved in the plot against the MC, and a number of Liam stans had reactions that ranged from stanning, to indifferent (after all, both Liam and Madeleine showed a mutual disinterest towards each other), to slightly jealous (after all, she was still his fiancée).

But it was Madeleine's treatment of Hana in Ch 7 that definitely crossed a line for quite a few. It was so unwarranted, and her justification for this act so inarguably cruel, that it turned several people off her immediately. The way canon dealt with this was to make her feature less in the story until the memory of the "chocolate incident" was faded and almost forgotten, and then encourage fans to sympathize with her.

The gamble definitely worked, with plenty of help from hardcore Madeleine stans who often downplayed what happened to Hana ("a prank", "making Hana cry just once" were some of the terms used to describe it). By TRR3, I recall having to remind some of my mutuals what actually happened in this scene - their own recollections of it were that vague. The Hana and Madeleine ship would have died a far quicker death if more people remembered this incident as it was shown, and not as narrative wanted us to remember it (and also, if more people cared that it was Hana being hurt, rather than their fave white girl/boy).

Madeleine gained some popularity among the wlw crowd - a couple of them did have a soft spot for stoic, aggressive or women often labelled as "bitchy" (I know a few who also showed a similar amount of love for ACOR's Xanthe or BB's Priya, to be fair...but the adulation for the white female antagonists was a lot more), and Madeleine clearly fit that bill.

A point that often came up from Madeleine stans who were wlw (and reiterated with other mean-girl characters) was that grey-shaded and villanous male characters weren't subject to as much censure as their favourites were. While there is truth to such an argument, it fails to take into account the role race often plays in the way some "mean" women are loved and certain others are scorned. Madeleine clearly did not have the scale of hate that a Xanthe or even a Kiara (who isn't even on the same level) got. In fact when it suited them, many in the fandom were more than ready to view Madeleine as a victim when Liam broke his engagement with her.

Madeleine's "patriotism" - as I've now clearly established - was a retcon made to erase the worst aspects of her characterization. Sometimes it was used to make people feel sorry for her losses, other times it was made to cover up her actual behaviour in TRR2. But there were very few readers who didn't consider it an undeniable fact. Even among those who were indifferent towards her. For instance, in an anon ask that compared Madeleine and QB's Poppy, a poster responded that "the difference between the two was that Madeleine had a sense of duty, and Poppy was just petty". In TRH3, players who claimed that "we can all agree Madeleine is fully redeemed" when she worked with the MC to protect the child from Bartie Sr, stayed mysteriously silent when the other consequence (her helping in the child's kidnapping because she didn't like the MC's pettiness) showed up.

And while these responses could be attributed to the way canon gassed Madeleine up in TRR2 and 3, some of these players had no problem nitpicking the political savvy or work of certain other (CoC) characters, esp Liam (often bashing them for "throwing parties every day", even though the general populace was depicted as being happy with their rule and influence. Mind you, no prompting from PB was necessary to bash these characters). So why were these parameters never applied to Madeleine? Why was practically no one asking what the political relevance of her bullying (as future Queen) was, or why we were expected to sing her praises for poor time management or terrible work ethics towards her boss, or ask what work she actually did in canon as Royal Comms Director? (There is a reference or two to the position, but you aren't shown that many instances of her doing much work). For quite a few, the fact that she walked around with a job title in TRH was more than enough (somehow Kiara never got this kind of fandom treatment despite being part of the Diplomatic Liaisons department).

How does this adulation for such a heavily retconned character, affect the way the Hana and Madeleine ship was viewed? For one, it meant that readers bought into the retcons easily enough that Hana's pairing with her was seen as an extension of her "redemption arc" by some.

Take the example of the various posts that argue in favour of this pairing, or fic that features them as a couple - a lot of them center Madeleine: her pain, her history, her reasons, the correctness of giving her a reward. Hana is barely mentioned or given much attention in these arguments - and often when she has any sort of voice, it is only there to humanize Madeleine. Supporters of this pair often took stances that were either ready to throw Hana under the bus, act like she hardly mattered, or treat her like some sort of blank slate to scribble their adulation for Madeleine over.

Hana is often viewed as less worthy of a focus - she is often the benevolent saint who forgives Madeleine because she "worked so hard to be better". Often it never matters to get into detail why Hana thought Madeleine earned her forgiveness, what Hana's perspective was, what journey she went through to get such a point. Because if Hana's journey really mattered in such a ship, the most pressing questions would revolve around why Hana should ever trust a person who wanted to break her in the first place. Why she should feel safe around such a person. Why her own friend group wouldn't want to protect her from such a person.

Some readers would bring up their parallels as daughters brought up in families that didn't value them, but neglect to take into account the nuances of those dynamics (Madeleine's mother at least wanted to be supportive, and no matter how bad things got, Madeleine was never in danger of being disowned. Hana was, repeatedly). Nor is it fully honest about how Madeleine was comfortable being a perpetrator of abuse, in contrast to Hana's own deep discomfort with the idea of controlling her partner.

In certain cases, I can maybe see this attitude in fandom emerging from an acceptance of the narrative's retcons as truth. But I also think there were as many readers who were just inclined to liking the mean white girl, and finding justifications and excuses for her behaviour.

Fandom's attitudes towards Hana herself often played a small role in how Hana's end of this story was ignored too. When TRR3 fucked up her arc phenomenally (by rushing her parents' turnaround from disowning her to supporting her in Ch 15), it became popular to view Hana as a lesser character, and the "meaner" white women as better. People who wanted other options for female LI often took their frustrations out on her, calling her "weak", servile and submissive, dismissing her honest accounts of the treatment she faced even from her own parents as "whining". If that was the way people preferred to view her emotionally abusive childhood...then what can one expect from such a fandom when she was being outright bullied?

Fandom was already comfortable with the idea of erasing Hana in their content, or replacing her with either their fave white girl (or an equally white OC esp in their fanfic - but more on that in a future Hana essay). So neglecting to center her in what would have been her only canonical alternative romance wouldn't be too difficult for some people.

Which merits the question...is there a way to write about (or write fic for) such a pairing, in a way that centers Hana, respects her story, makes it clear that she has the right to never forgive Madeleine no matter what she does to "earn" it - if that was what she wanted? I highly doubt it. You'd have to completely change Madeleine for that to happen, and that would more likely result in a situation where you were too busy working on her as a character, to give Hana the attention and focus she deserved.

And that's a real pity, because there's plenty to explore about Hana if you actually take the effort to look.

Conclusion

In a lot of ways, once the team had decided upon making Madeleine into a more positive character, they tried to draw a little from Olivia's arc to replicate its success. You can see some of these parallels in the way TRR2 structured the bachelorette as a semi-callback to the childhood- reveal-mocking-Savannah sequences in TRR1 Ch 7. Both chapters gave you reasons to start seeing these women in a different light, while still feeling free to dislike them. In both chapters they also targeted LIs - the only difference was that Drake's diamond scene post that confrontation centered him, and Hana's parallel diamond scene a book later...centered everyone else.

That attempt in TRR2 didn't work for several reasons - the timing wasn't right, Madeleine's cruelty had gone too far for some, the retconning hoodwinked quite a few people but not enough.

So when they tried to pair her up with the victim of her bullying, and twisted canon to make it happen - enough readers emerged to call it out, enough people pushed back by Ch 16, and the possibility of this alternative pairing garnered enough dislike that not only did the writers have to backtrack, but they also had to wipe away their past retcons and write in a scene where Madeleine gave Hana the full, unvarnished truth about the "chocolate incident". Hana was, thankfully, given a chance to give Madeleine her most polite "no".

And although that ship would never be brought up again, the team (even without Madeleine's top writer Jeffrey) still attempted to make pampering and uncritically praising her a narrative priority. She gained a bit more popularity during this time period - quite a few were inclined to feel sorry for her (especially considering the way her father's crimes affected her social standing) and saw only what happened if you were consistently nice to her.

But there was also a significant section of people who were tired of the constant coddling, and who didn't like that it was demanded of the player (when there were far more deserving WOC in the same book, who didn't get this level of kindness). It was significant enough that Madeleine wasn't given any scenes in the final book, and the writers cited her lack of popularity as a reason why.

As a Hana fan myself, it was a relief to see Hana not be paired up with her bully. But it was also immensely disheartening for me to see that "ship" get as far as it did, and to see the narrative do so much more work for Madeleine, than they did for Hana even in the follow up series. It was even more disheartening to see so many in fandom follow suit.

By now, we have explored 3 out of the 4 alternative pairings that TRR put forward for the LIs. They all vary in terms of buildup, attention, and payoff. But there are several things that are common about them. They all have either significant histories with the LI, or the narrative thinks they share something in common. The moment an "alternative" option ends up harming the MC, they are no longer suitable as an option because of the LI's loyalty towards her.

But perhaps the most common factor among the three women we have explored so far is how the LI is expected to treat the alternate, no matter how jealous the MC is allowed to get, no matter what the alternate themselves may have done in the past. The alternate is supposed to be treated well. With respect, with kindness, with compassion.

Betrayal doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Bad behaviour doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Disregarding consent doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Classism doesn't allow an LI to treat their alternate badly. Not loving them back doesn't allow it either. Not even extreme levels of bullying...allows an LI to disrespect them.

In the next essay, we will see if any of these rules apply to our last alternative LI - Kiara.

Next: Drake and Kiara.

#essay series: trr's alternative lis #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #hana lee #madeleine amaranth #trr meta

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apomaro-mellow · 1 month

Text

Every Baby Needs a Daddy 16

Part 15

The next day, Steve was probably the clingiest he'd ever been. He thought his heat had ended but the new pack bonds brought on a new crest of lust. For the first time since he had arrived, he ate breakfast with everyone in the kitchen. After the meal, Steve made himself comfortable in Eddie's lap.

Eddie and Jeff were talking about concepts for the next album. Gareth was nursing his coffee, still waking up. Grant got up to refill his own mug and Steve's eyes followed him like a hawk. Eddie was pretty attuned to Steve's wants and needs. And when he felt Steve's fingers brush against his lips while staring at the unaware beta across the room, he had a pretty good idea of what his baby wanted.

"Remember sweetness, you gotta use your words. The boys don't know all your tells yet."

Steve whimpered and whined at first, but not longer after he was purring as Grant ate him out on the counter.

Soon enough though, it was time for Corroded Coffin to return to the public eye. And almost just as quickly, the fans with a keen eye noticed a certain omega showing up much more. Not just on Eddie's arm but the rest of the band's as well.

The more it was seen, the more permanent Steve's position appeared. It was February when the competing hashtags #ccomega and #notouromega showed up. Of course, the overwhelming majority of the fans were in the camp of 'neither one is gonna fuck you, so stop wasting your time arguing about it'.

Eddie was reading through a couple of argument threads, snickering to himself when Steve stepped out of the dressing room.

"What about this one?"

The outfit consisted of tight leather pants, a blazer, and a mesh shirt under that. Eddie's hands fell to the magnetic force that was Steve's nipples and started playing with them through the shirt. He let that be his answer and the online comment wars were forgotten for a moment. The new outfit was for an award show the band was attending and throughout the whole thing, Steve ignored his own reserved seat and stayed planted in Eddie's lap.

Given that it was an award show, many eyes were on it, even those not typically concerned with celebrity gossip. When it started spreading to such a degree, even THEY couldn't ignore it. Helen Harrington should have known something was up the moment Irene got that nasty look in her eyes, taking a sip of her champagne flute before speaking.

"Of course, we can't all have such famous children. Steve has been in so many magazines these days. I think the last one actually caught him with his pants down", Irene laughed haughtily.

Helen's face was tight with control. "You're such a charmer Irene. Not most people would admit to reading such tabloid trash."

It was reaching their circle of colleagues, which meant something must be done about their son. She and her husband Richard discussed as much. Steve couldn't be allowed to drag their name through the mud like this anymore.

-----------------------

Steve had basically taken up residence in the band's house. He slept in Eddie's room, which was now functionally his as well. Every morning he woke up with their scents mingled and it made his omega purr with satisfaction. He liked whenever the rest of his pack's scents lingered on his body too. Every time he went out, people knew who he belonged to, even without a bite.

But the thought of getting a mating bite did intrigue him.

He wasn't sure how to bring it up though. They'd already taken a major step in their relationship. Asking to be mated forever seemed like asking too much too soon. But relaxing in the living room, warming his alpha's cock with his mouth while daytime television played on sounded perfect.

And everyday with Steve was perfect in Eddie's opinion. Valentine's Day needed to be more perfect. He had a hunch why Steve was spending February 13th with Jeff and Gareth. It didn't make him any less crabby about it though and unfortunately Grant was left to deal with his crabby ass. He was even crabbier when he realized Steve had awakened much earlier the next day and that Eddie wouldn't be seeing him until evening.

CC had a radio interview and Steve was off doing who knew what. Eddie had half a mind to send him relentless thirst texts but instead just made sure he remembered they had reservations at a private restaurant. Eddie sent a car to get Steve and by 8 they had both arrived. Eddie was practically drooling at the silk shirt Steve was wearing.

And the thrill of later events got to him as he put a hand to Steve's back and felt something lacy underneath the shirt.

"You got a surprise for me, baby?"

Steve's smile was coy. "Maybe. Maybe I did a little shopping and I needed a couple of extra eyes to make sure it looked right."

Well that explained why the other two tagged along. And Eddie was only a little jealous that they got to see his present early. Only a little. Steve was pressed to his side for the entire dinner, feeding each other and feeling his surprise just under the silk.

"Baby, I don't think I can wait any longer", Eddie murmured against his ear.

"I can't either", Steve whispered back, legs rubbing together.

There was no way they were making it back home. Steve needed Eddie inside him now and he let him know that by letting out quiet whimpers directly into his ear. Eddie bit his lip, getting a naughty thought in his head.

"I've got an idea...if you're into it."

Steve was definitely into any ideas he had and soon the bill was paid and they were rushing back to the car Eddie had driven here. Eddie started driving with one hand, then other cupped Steve between the legs. It didn't take long for Eddie to find what they needed.

A 24 hour car wash.

They both climbed into the backseat as soon as the car was set on the track. Steve sunk down on Eddie's cock and rode him without an ounce of shame, letting his voice ring out among the noises of the brushes and soap and water. Eddie knew he must have hearts in his eyes, watching this beautiful creature, shirt falling open to reveal the dark green lingerie underneath.

When they came, they only had a few moments to make themselves decent as the car started to exit the wash. Steve didn't even try, just lying in the backseat with his pants off while Eddie scrambled back to the front. With very little regard for much else, Eddie peeled out of the parking area to preserve Steve's modesty.

Meanwhile, Steve had few qualms about having his cunt out in the backseat. This time of night, it was dark besides a few streetlamps. he reached down to feel his own wetness mingling with Eddie's cum. Eddie wasn't playing any music, so the sound of Steve's pussy sounded like it was echoing in the car. This man would be the death of him.

The rest of the night was spent in romantic bliss, just the two of them. But Steve had already given the rest of his pack chocolates.

The next morning, Steve's dream of a domestic life with Eddie was interrupted by his phone ringing. Eddie groaned at the intrusion and Steve reached out to grab it and see who was calling him. The number had no name attached, but he knew it by heart. He'd known the number since he was young but it had been years since he'd called it. Or since it had called him.

He ignored the call to stop the ringing and cuddled back up to his alpha. Eddie was all who mattered right now. Not them. He ignored the call that came a couple of hours later, and the few that came the next day as well. He didn't even listen to the voicemails left for him. Whatever they had to say, couldn't be anything good.

It was two weeks later when he got his first piece of mail since he started living here and who else could it be from but his parents. He leaned against the fridge as he opened it, finally curious enough to find out what they wanted.

"So what'd they send you?", Eddie asked before spooning some cereal into his mouth.

For a moment, Steve simply stood there, mouth agape as he read the envelope's contents.

"Sweetheart?"

"My parents.... sent me a cease and desist letter."

Part 17 (final)

Tag Team CLOSED

@awkotaco24 @lingeringmirth @littlewildflowerkitten @estrellami-1 @tartarusknight @velocitytimes2 @mrsjellymunson @trashcanniballecter @paintsplatteredandimperfect @a-little-unsteddie @sllooney @starman-jpg @oxidantdreamboat @xxbottlecapx @newtstabber @tiny-enthusiast @desidrarry-wolfstarshipper @y4r3luv @hello-fellow-nerds @anonymousbandgirl @alyelf @potato-of-the-lord @beckkthewreck @croatoan-like-its-hot @pluto-pepsi @abstractnaturaldisaster @ellietheasexylibrarian @eyesofshinigami @dragonmama76 @greatwerewolfbeliever @chaosgremlinmunson @blackpanzy @millseyes-world @batxsignalsx @lilpomelito @goosesister @libraryofgage @aresthelostboy @royjaimie4eva @silenzioperso @she-collects-smut @lost-wondering-souls @eddielives1986 @marklee-blackmore

#apo writes #stranger things #steddie #omegaverse #a/b/o

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morganbritton132 · 1 year

Note

The juicy drama of Steve still inviting his mother to things, though?

I know you said in the tags she has never come but I am living for a very petty Eddie seeing Steve’s mom after all these years and going “you look great, Helen. Haven’t aged a day since you begged me not to marry Steve.” (Not sure if you’ve named Steve’s mom yet. Helen is just my head canon name for her.)

I’m not sure if I’ve named Steve’s mom in this AU yet or not, but she is universally known as Angela in all my work thus far so I’m going to keep it the same here.

Steve might have had virtually no contact with his mother over the years despite numerous attempts to reach out to her, but Eddie has.

Eddie has a tour bus and final say over their touring schedule, and Angela Harrington still lives in Hawkins. Eddie is a petty bitch when he wants to be, and trust him. He wants to be.

He always ensures that Corroded Coffin plays at least one gig that’s close enough to their hometown that they can make a day trip. Some might say that he’s keeping close to his roots and others may say that he’s giving the band a chance to visit with family, but Gareth knows Eddie too well.

Wayne doesn’t live in Hawkins anymore and Eddie would only ever step foot in that town to cause a problem, so he tells him. He says, “Don’t get arrested” and then he goes to see his parents.

Eddie paints pentagrams on his fingernails and lines his eyes with the darkest liner he has, and then he makes his way up Loch Nora with the windows down and the music loud. He parks in front of the Harrington residence and he pounds on the door until someone answers it.

Angela never looks older than she does when she’s glaring at Eddie and it makes him smile, “Hiya, Mom.”

She never slams the door in his face despite how much she looks like she wants to. It would cause too much of a scene and Eddie has caught her in the middle of her book club – a bit of good timing on his part (and a lot of listening to Steve Facebook stalk everybody that has ever lived in Hawkins). She looks him up in down like she’s already annoyed, puts her hands on her hips and says, “Absolutely not.”

Eddie’s already slipping passed her by then and into the house. He looks around like he’s never fucked her son there before and says, “Wow, Ang, it almost looks like a human being with a functioning heart lives here.”

She hisses at him to get out of her house or she’ll call the police, but Eddie just got here. And anyways, he’s too busy introducing himself to her friends, “Hi. Hi. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about me from Angie. I’m her son-in-law.”

Gosh, some of these girls are young enough to not know that Angela abandoned her son because one of the girls says, “Oh, I didn’t know she had a daughter.”

“Yeah, no,” Eddie says, pouring himself a glass of their champagne. “She doesn’t. A son. Hot as hell, great ass, wonderful person – he’s fantastic. That’s actually why I’m here, you see.”

“My girl, Angie, here married a violently homophobic man and when he kicked her son out, she didn’t do jackshit about it. Still hasn’t,” He continued, despite her actually picking up the phone to call the police. His smile dropped a bit when he made eye contact with her, “But Richard is dead now and there’s nothing stopping her from reconnecting with her kid, right?”

Eddie’s smile picks up again when he addresses the rest of the book club, “You see, a couple years ago, Stevie went back to school to get his masters. He’s has a few sets back - ‘cause he’s still got that head injury, Ang. The one you never ask about – but he’s set to graduate end of the semester. I just happened to be in town and though, you know what?”

“Wouldn’t it just mean the world if his mom came to his graduation?” Eddie continued. “You know, since you missed the high school one.”

“I think you’d do very well to leave now, Mr. Munson,” She tells him, and Eddie makes a big show of listening to her. He leaves behind an invitation to the party that Joyce is throwing for Steve and the info of when graduation actually is.

Eddie doesn’t see her if she’s there, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time looking for her. He’s there to see Steve walk across the stage and to cheer him on with his real family.

#Eddie gives her two months after Richard’s funeral to reconnect with her son before he decides to make himself her problem #eddie munson tiktok saga #steve harrington #eddie munson

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ganggangscenarios · 1 year

Text

Neighbours Know My Name

Jungkook x reader

Summary: He's just a friend of friend, right?

Contains: Infidelity, Sexual content, Mature language

🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍

“This is the last time. “ you moan before his lips briefly capture yours.

He pulls away with a sickening smirk plastered across his face. You were annoyed at how good he looked right now.

🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤

He turned up to your regularly scheduled group dinner, dressed in all black, his newly grown hair, cascading around his face and he brushed it back.

When you first met him, he was nothing but a friend of a friend.

Jimin introduced him to the group.

“This is Jungkook. He’s basically my little brother.”

"I'm taller than you." The taller man remarks.

You watch as the older man pulls ‘jungkook’ down to his level and ruffles his hair.

“Yah!” Jungkook exclaims, pulling away.

You pointed out the two free seats, and that was the first mistake. Jimin sits next to his girlfriend at the far end of the table. Whilst jungkook was left sitting in the empty seat next to you. He settles into the group effortlessly, easing into the conversation, cracking a few jokes, making the whole table erupt in laughter. Naturally, the table breaks into to smaller conversations, you take the opportunity to learn more about the handsome stranger. He recently moved out from his parents’ house, Jimin and his girlfriend took a big step and moved in together, Jimin made a deal with his landlord, he had to find a new tenant for the apartment, so he could get his deposit back, as he was moving out before the lease was up. He offered the apartment to Jungkook who was looking for a place to live.

Jungkook was friendly and flirty, he almost made you forget that you were in a relationship. Well, you couldn’t really forget, but it wasn’t helped by the fact that your boyfriend decided to ditch you for the 5th time in a row.

By the end of the night, everyone was warm and full of wine, Janelle, Jimin’s girlfriend was cuddled up under his arm, her eyes hazy from the sweet mist of the wine she had been nursing all weekend.

All the other couples around the table, mirrored the ‘IT’ couple of the group, all wrapped up together, covered in a thick blanket of romance, sharing a few kisses and whispering sweet nothings (and other things) to each other. You and Jungkook are the only ones who aren’t coupled up, seated a few inches apart. But he is close enough for you to be entranced by his cologne, for you to feel the heat radiate from his body. You stare at his hand resting on his thigh, maybe it was the wine coursing through your system or maybe it was the fact that you hadn't been intimate with your boyfriend in a while. But you were having impure thoughts about that hand, wishing it was on your thigh instead, slowly inching up your skirt. Your train of thought is interrupted by your close friend, Helen.

“Jonathan, couldn’t be bothered to join us tonight ?” She asks sarcastically, snuggled up under the arm of her boyfriend of 2 years.

Your boyfriend, Jonathan, wasn’t popular with your group of friends, he had only joined in group activities a handful of times and at the times, he had been antisocial and made the two of you eave early.

“No, he did some time overtime tonight, he would’ve been too tired to join us after.” You take a large swig of your wine.

You hated feeling like the pity party of the group, the only one who was left out of couple trips and planned outings. It didn’t affect you before, you didn’t mind tagging along, being the only single person, as you got along well with everyone, and everyone was very respectful in terms of flaunting their relationship. But you were in a relationship, and now you were the only one without your partner.

Your eyes focus on your glass, you can feel eyes on you, looking at you with pity. They felt bad for you, but you didn’t want to hear it, everything they were thinking, you had already thought a hundred times over.

Then you feel a warm feeling on hand, just for a second. Jungkook had squeezed your hand, offering you a quick smile and a comforting touch.

He was shocked to hear that you had a boyfriend, and even more shocked to hear that your ‘boyfriend’ treated you so badly. He had only heard a snippet about your relationship, but from your reaction, he could tell that that wasn’t even the half of it. How could someone who looked like you, had your personality, be treated so badly, be so neglected?

He must admit, when he heard that you were in a relationship, he was bummed. You both got along so well throughout the evening. And he must admit, he found you attractive, from the first moment he saw you. The whisky he had ordered was running rampant through his blood, if he remained unaware, he would’ve had enough liquid courage to ask you out on a date at the end of the night. Or if he ordered another glass of the silky brown fuel, he would’ve made a move. A way from everyone else. Maybe he would’ve offered to walk you to the station, or wait with you for a taxi.

And that’s what he did, he ended up waiting with you for a taxi. But the evening took a twist. He got in the taxi with you. As you offered him a nightcap. You told him that you weren’t ready for the night to end yet, your boyfriend had gone to sleep and you didn’t have any to call to keep you entertained once you got home. There was a certain tone of voice you had when you said ‘entertained’. It was a tone of voice that you shouldn’t’ve had, not as a woman in a relationship.

🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍

That’s how you ended up here, on your back in the back of his car, thankful for his tinted windows and the privacy of your building’s parking lot. You came down to tell him that you couldn’t see each other anymore, that you were doing something bad. Well, you were. You were the one in the relationship, Jungkook, was the single one. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. You were the one who was unfaithful. Sneaking around in the middle of the night… and day.

It had started with you leaning through his rolled down window, hair hanging over your shoulder, dangling in his car. And that’s how he got you. He switches off his engine, his hand reaches out of the window and brushes the hair out of your face, his fingertips, dancing along the soft apple of your cheek.

You melt under his touch.

“Y-you can’t come up.” You choke, moving back.

He pouts, look up at you from the low seat of his fancy car. His big brown eyes looking up at you.

“Why not?” He asks.

He wasn’t one of those playboys who just took advantage of lonely woman. He genuinely cared about you and had feelings for you, but he couldn’t be too open about that. Anytime he even got close to being frank with you about it, you pushed him away, like you were doing now. Cutting off all intimacy. That’s why you were talking to him through his car window. The last time you were together, you were both lying there, basking in the afterglow of great, no, mind-blowing sex. He was staring down at you as you lay in his arms. His eyes scanned over your gorgeous face. Without thinking, he let it slip.

“I’m falling in love with you.”

And you shot up, almost head butting him in the chin, with the quickness of your movements.

He shakes the memory from his head.

“You know why.” You whine, wrapping your cardigan tightly around your body.

He unbuckles his seatbelt, pushes the button that operates the engine and steps out of the car. He closes the door.

He moves closer to you.

“I don’t know why. I just came to see my friend, so we can watch the new season of ‘you’ together. If you don’t want to do anything, then we won’t. You know I’m not like that. I would never do anything to hurt you. I care about you-r, I care about your incapability to stay away from spoilers.” He briefly touches your shoulder.

Just as you were about to speak a car pulls into the parking garage, you turn to look at it, your eyes grow double the size. You scramble to open the back door of car and pull him in as you duck in the back. You close the door and you pull him down on top of you.

“What? What happened?” He asks frantically.

Your heart beats at a thousand miles per hour.

“I just saw Jonathon. I-I told him that I wasn’t home, why is he here?” Oh my God

! I can’t go back up there. He knows the passcode. I left a half eaten cookie on the counter, I think my coffee is still hot! Why would h-.”

Jungkook presses his lips to yours. To calm you down, but mostly because he wanted to, you were under him, face so close to his.

His hands flick your cardigan open and rest on your waist. He feels you relax and kiss him back. Your lips hadn’t met his for only one week but it felt like an eternity, he finally felt like he could breathe. You wrap your arms around his neck, hands running up to his neck, fingers dancing along the nape of his neck, flirting with the long hair at the back of his head. Your tongue comes out to dip into his mouth, briefly swiping along his bottom lip, teasing his lip ring. The same lip ring that made you feel things you know you shouldn’t be feeling for another man, another that wasn’t your boyfriend. You let your legs fall open, letting him get comfortable between them. His hands travel from your waist up to your breasts, gently caressing them, before squeezing them. The softness in his hands makes him moan in your mouth. His delectable moan wakes you up from the trance you were currently in, you slowly pull away from this kiss.

“W-we shouldn’t.” You breathe out, trying to steady your breath. It was a near impossible task, as you feel his fingers dance along the waist band of your shorts.

Jungkook doesn’t speak, he uses his lips for something else, he places soft, wet kiss down the length of your neck. His lips meet your collarbone, he was so close to your chest. It was stupid idea to go and talk to him wearing a tank top.

“Jungkook.” You say his name, but it comes out as moan.

“Jonathon.” You say.

Jungkook stops in his tracks. Jungkook liked to trick himself, that you weren’t in a relationship, that he wasn’t ‘the other guy’. When he was with you, it felt like you were all his, and he was all yours. But then there were moments when reality hit him like a truck, when you said your boyfriend’s name or when came face to face with him. And he had to act like he was less then a close friend. Because if your boyfriend even saw you together, heard the way you guys spoke to each other, he would know how Jungkook felt about you, and how Jungkook thinks you feel about him.

“What about him?” Jungkook grits his teeth, moving his hands away from your body. He makes a point not to make eye contact with you.

You grab his chin and look him in the eye, making your heart beat that much faster.

“We have to wait until he leaves… Because if you fuck me while he’s here, he’ll definitely notice we’re in the car…” You kiss him again, slipping your tongue into his mouth.

You feel him twitch against your leg, you smirk into the kiss. You pull away again, making him chase your lips.

“Not that he knows what I really sound like when I’m being fucked right.”

Jungkook smirks, he couldn’t help it, he loved an ego boast, especially from a woman he had feelings for.

Jungkook rubs you through the thin fabric of your pyjama shorts, he feels the fabric become slick with your arousal.

“No panties?” He cocks an eyebrow.

“I was at home!” You exclaim.

He moves the shorts to the side to expose your core, he mutters under his breath, something in his native language. Hearing him speak Korean in his deep voice did something to you, a flush ran through your body.

He brings his middle finger and ring finger to your mouth.

“Suck.” He commands.

“We have to wait until he’s gone, I haven’t heard a car y-“ You begin to ramble.

“Suck. Or I won’t be so patient with you, and I won’t wait until he’s gone, he’ll hear us and so will the rest of this fucking apartment complex. So suck.” He looks at you with pure lust.

You open your mouth and his fingers make contact with your soft pink muscle. You tongue twirls around his digits, your saliva dripping down his tattooed fingers, making them glimmer. He moans as he pulls them in and out a couple of times before pulling them out completely.

His fingers drag your wetness up your slit to your button, rubbing a couple of times, he watches as your body twitches in pleasures. He slowly sinks his fingers into you, leaning back down to you, to place a kiss on your lips. He slowly fucks you with his fingers, coaxing moans out of you, that you try and keep hidden behind your bitten lip. But he wants to hear them. The back of the car is cramped, but he is making it work. He drops his head down to your chest sucking the skin ever so gently, becoming rough every few seconds.

His fingers slow and then take a deep plunge into you, curling in as they do. Hitting your g-spot. You gasp in pleasure, your mouth falling open, breath stuttering at the over intense feeling of pleasure.

“I’m g-gonna cum.” You choke out, lips tracing his ear.

He brings his lips to yours, needing to feel your lips on his as you came.

“Cum.” He commands, moving his fingers teasing your clit with his thumb, stimulating you inside with his godlike fingers.

“Only I can make you feel like this. Only I get to see you like this. Hear you like this.” His voice echoes in your ear, as your body trembles with pleasure.

You let out a low, breathy moan, feeling your release drip out of you and onto his fingers.

Your chest heaves from the energy consuming orgasm. He smoothly takes out his fingers and drags them up your slit, run them over your sensitive button, you close your legs around his body as he does. His hand rests on your waist.

You could feel him hard against you as rests between your legs.

“You’re so hard right now.” You practically moan, pushing your crotch up to meet his.

He groans and looks down, his long hair flopping over his eyes. Your hands run through his hair, wanting to see his eyes. You stare into the deep brown pools before kissing him.

“This is the last time.” You say before kissing him once again.

You wanted to mean it this time, you loved the way you felt when you were with Jungkook. But you hated the way you felt after, when it all sank in, you were unfaithful to your boyfriend. You had been for the past two months. Since the first night you had met Jungkook.

You push the thoughts to the back of your mind as Jungkook pushes into you. With every thrust, the negative thoughts fell out of your head, as you were being fucked dumb. Forgetting even asking Jungkook to wait. The car rocked with every thrust, your moans echoed throughout the parking lot.

You both finished quickly, happily satisfied. Jungkook pecked your forehead as he got off of you, tucking himself back in his jeans. He reaches into the middle console and grabs baby wipes, he wipes his release from your stomach, before pulling out a couple more wipes and cleaning you up.

You mutter a quick thank you, adjusting your shorts and tank top. Sitting up, you pull your cardigan up around your shoulders.

“I’ll see you at Hannah’s BBQ. Thanks for today.” You say, slipping out of his car.

Before he could say anything, you were already in the elevator. He sighs, getting out of the backseat. He approaches a trashcan, throwing away the crumpled remains of your dalliance. Hopping in the driver’s seat, pushes the button to start the car, buckles in and pulls away.

You could smell him all over you, all over your skin, all over your clothes. You wanted him. Not just sexually but in all ways. You were too much of a coward to break up with your boyfriend and take the plunge. What if it ended up the same way?

Your relationship with Jonathon didn’t always feel so bland, at first you found him sweet, and you looked forward to experiencing that sweetness every time you saw him. At first, you liked that he was dedicated to his work, you thought that it demonstrated commitment and investment in the future. But then the sweetness got boring, he was afraid to touch you, no matter how many time you had discussions, you were shy of communicating (well now it seemed like you were).

Now, the ‘commitment to work’, got in the way of personal time, he didn’t have time for you, he was always working. Even when he wasn’t at work, he was thinking about work. You just weren’t compatible, you needed to be an adult and talk to him about it. But you were reluctant to.

The elevator arrived at your floor. As you walk out, lost in thought, you slammed into someone.

“Honey?” The voice said.

You looked up.

“Jonathon.” You say, forcing a smile.

He was dressed in a suit, his tie loose around his neck.

He gave you a quick hug, pulling back to look at you.

“I thought you were out with friends?” He questions, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

Jonathon had noticed that you had been distant. You hadn’t been replying to his texts as often, or picking up his calls. But when he did see you, you seemed… different. Almost happier until he tried to get closer to you, engage in conversation, thats when you shut down, becoming quiet.

“I felt sick, so I decided to stay in. I went to tell them I’m not up to it. They were waiting for me downstairs.” It was almost unsettling how the lie fell out of your mouth.

He takes your hand in his, rubbing your knuckles with his thumb.

“Aw sweetie. Good thing I’m here. Sorry I’ve been so busy. I’ve taken the afternoon off so I can take good care of you.” He guides you to the front door of your apartment.

As you’re about to enter your passcode into your door, fingers trembling, as Jonathon wraps his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder. You hope he can not smell Jungkook’s cologne on you, or the smell of sex seeping out of your pores.

Suddenly, your neighbour comes out of their apartment.

“Hey Julie!” You greet her.

She looks upon you and the man wrapped around you.

“To be young and in love.” She sighs.

You laugh and roll your eyes.

“You’re 25.”

She laughs with you.

“Yeah but I’m not getting it like you.”

She gesture at you as Jonathon pecks your cheek.

“All my dates end in less than satisfactory ‘activities’. I bet you don’t know the name of my dates.”She crosses her arms and leans against the wall between your two doors.

You freeze.

“So this is the awfully skilled Jungkook. I owe you a round of applause sir. You have her screaming all hours of the day.”

Jonathon arms drops from your waist, he stands up and approaches Julie.

“Jonathon.” He says to her.

“Jungkook? The walls aren’t that thick.” She peers over his to see you shaking your head fiercely.

She gulps.

“Well, I’ve got to go. It was nice meeting you.” She says before running, taking the stairs, rather than waiting for the elevator.

Jonathan turns to you.

“Who the fuck is Jungkook?”

#jungkook smut #jungkook x reader #jungkook scenarios #bts angst #bts fanfic #bts smut #bts scenarios

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cindylcuwho · 1 month

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¡ sad girl bit , the prologue ♥︎ !

“ ⭒.‧ we just don’t talk , ive been having selfish thoughts ‧. ⭒ “

more to come 👾

* ⋆ . · ⋆ growing up, children are usually blindsided by the fun of living to realize who they are and that they will eventually change and grow apart.

when the pair was the ripe age of seven and sitting a table twice their size sharing rainbow goldfish during rainy recess, matt and y/n swore to never turn their backs on each other.

the changing part of growing up did take place in the early stages of puberty. not only their bodies grew, their personalities had a big factory reset.

y/n took the high road. she saw an opportunity and took it without any thought. soon, she was being praised for her endless amount of work effort, getting nothing lower than a B+ on almost every assignment.

matt, however? he went from the acne prone loser that trailed behind to being voted one of the most good looking guys by the end of middle school. even helen keller would be able to see he was a sight for sore eyes, and could get any girl he wanted.

he was no longer the sweet boy that would give y/n the rest of his cheez its if she didn’t get packed any. now he was unrecognizable, her “best friend” was now hiding behind a front that contained of tattoos, earrings, endless amounts of parties, and even smoking cigarettes that’d he’d ’accidentally’ blow in the face of whoever was talking to him.

matt became infatuated with the effect he knew he had, and god did he use it to his max ability. but after the millionth girl stared at him with heart eyes - like he was some piece of meat, y/n grew tired.

she didn’t feel like his best friend, and instead felt like she was at competition with other girls .. for the spot next to him.

y/n never even thought of liking matt in that way, she thought that was more than obvious. but with the amount of dirty looks and snarky comments she’d get from matt’s little entourage of girls for just sitting next to him, she realized people didn’t view it that way.

the duo refused to see the flaw in the relationship was them now being polar opposites, and instead just blamed it on each other always being busy with something. after all, it was normal for friends to take breaks, right?

though, soon the late, returned later, replies to text messages and quick ‘hey, i’ll see you at lunch,’s but proceeding to never show turned into them just being two random kids in the crowd that happened to go to the same school.

matt got swept with the popular crowd and soon had himself a girlfriend, vanessa, whilst y/n was just on the ‘well known’ side, trying her best at keeping her head down and buried in books to pass the time.

almost the entire high school experience was spent with the two forgetting what the sound of their voices -which in their last moments was spent talking over each other- sounded like.

with the final school year, y/n decided to take a step back from the big textbooks and finally wanted to enjoy living life a teenager as much as she could.

fixing her cropped navy blue tank top, y/n walked through the halls of somersville high. her locker was luckily not that far from the corridor doors. the soft clicking of her boots against the tiles was drowned out by many students doing the same.

the short walk was soon joined by y/ns best friend, audrey. “mills, are you even paying attention to me?” audrey whined out her last name, stopping herself from rambling about the night before until y/n took out her right earbud.

“uh– yea, totally.” she mumbled, struggling to enter her lockers code. luckily, the squeaky door budged open for y/n to put her stuff inside.

audrey didn’t bother repeating what she was saying and digged in her light pink backpack to fetch her gum container. she unwrapped the stick, revealing the artificial blue before shoving it in her mouth as she held out another piece for y/n to take.

y/n politely snatched the stick, giving her a quick smile in substitute of a ‘thank you’ and copied the actions of chewing. “i wish i had your first period” audrey muttered. y/n cocked her head to the side, unsure of why.

“my first period is agriculture. do you really wanna being getting dirt in your nails and learning about dead animals first thing after you wake up?” y/n half joked. she truly enjoyed the class, and found being outside half the time quite peaceful but sometimes the teacher would go to unnecessary lengths as he explained certain stuff.

audrey shrugged at the words, “well, no. but you have a cute teacher and cute kids in there.. it’d be worth getting dirty.” she wiggled her dark blonde eyebrows as she spoke.

she watched as her friends face morphed into disgust. “did you just call mr. richards cute? ew! girl, he’s married!” y/n held the face, finding it unbelievable. audrey only shrugged, “nothing wrong with finding someone attractive. it’s not like i’m gonna sleep with him.”

the girls chuckled. y/n swung her backpack over her shoulder, beginning to walk deeper into the school than she already was.

“i’m so glad we share fifth period today, i don’t know what i’d do if we didn’t have a class together!” y/ns groaned out. the two jogged up the mold blue stairs, both of them having a class upstairs.

audrey nodded her head, her bleach blonde hair shaking along with it, “especially ‘cause we have ms. gomez in that class! i swear she has it out for you!” y/n quickly agreed, waving her hands dramatically as she talked about the times her third period teacher singled her out.

the girls neared a classroom door. both stood outside saying their goodbyes before the bell finally rung and audrey walked further down the hall to her own class, leaving y/n alone.

she walked into the class, quickly finding her seat in the near middle of the sea of desks. she pulled her notebook from her bag and laid it on the desk, the edges of the book were slowly were unsharpening and the marker that spelled out her name was already fading even though it was only the beginning of the second quarter.

the final bell rang, signaling all those that still roamed the halls were officially late. an equal amount of chatter was heard from every side of the room, students busying themselves with ‘good mornings’ as the teacher took attendance.

mr. evans looked up from his computer, “is matthew sturniolo present?” he called out. some students looked around the room confused, matt didn’t take agriculture last quarter so what was the point in joining now.

“uh- i saw him outside! he was smoking, though.” someone said. y/n tried her best to not scrunch up her face at the mention of smoking. she couldn’t tell if it was because he was doing it, or because the student felt right to snitch about it to the teacher.

mr. evans let out a quiet ‘oh’, and continued to silently take attendance, ocassionally lifting his head to make sure the student he was marking was in fact there.

talking filled the room again. y/n joined in on hearing about how her classmates weekend went, but quickly snapped towards the door when she heard the familiar squeak.

in finally walked matt. he was wearing a simple plain white tee and black jacket, along with black cargo pants and white air forces to match. he waited by the door for the teacher to notice his presence, which didn’t take long.

“you’re late, matthew.” mr. evans crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. matt shrugged, “got lost on the way here.”

“do you at least have a slip?”

matt fumbled through his pockets in search of the white late slip he was given. as he recklessly searched, a small box of cigarettes fell to the ground. mr evan’s shook his head, “hand it here, matthew. hate to do this on your first day in my class, but i gotta give you detention.”

he rolled his heavy blue eyes, leaning down to pick the carton up and handed it to mr. evan’s, along with the late slip. mr. evans gave him an apologetic smile, “okay!” he clapped his hands together to pull the attention to him, “obviously, matt is new to this class and needs somewhere to sit, is there any empty desks?”

no one bothered to point a desk out. mr. evan’s eyes scanned the room, landing on the desk directly in front of y/ns. “there,” he pointed, “you could sit there for now in front of y/n. y/n raise you’re hand!”

y/n, kind of confused, shook her head, “but.. that’s where sammie sits?” she informed. mr. evan’s shrugged at that, “i’ll just have to move her then, matt, go sit.”

“but she’s my partner..?” mr. evans ignored her, and began to talk about the agenda written on the whiteboard.

matt held a small smirk as he walked down the small isle, stopping before y/n. he stared at her for a couple seconds, but continued to sit down when she refused to give him attention and directed it towards the lesson.

as he sat, the smell of his cologne mixed with the fresh scent of cigarettes filled her nostrils. once the smell faded from rancid to sweet, y/n couldn’t help but be entranced by it.

she never thought the new smell of her old best friend would be the thing she focused on for most of the 75 minutes of class, but here she was.

as mr. evans rambled on, matt shifted in his seat before turning over to face y/n. “hey.” he whispered. y/n only blinked at this, they haven’t talked in forever and the first thing he has say is ‘hey’?

she gave him a soft ‘hm?’, not looking to engage in conversation. “where’ve you been?” matt cocked his head to the side. she looked away from their teacher, making prominent eye contact with him.

“just.. around.” she answered, keeping it short. “not around me, though?” the words rolled out smoothly, but y/n could’ve sworn she was about to get hit by an 18 wheeler.

“why would i be?” she broke the contact, looking down at her notebook as she scribbled hurried notes. “i don’t know,” matt answered, “ya know, i missed you.” he confessed.

she nodded, not wanting to talk anymore in fear of having to break down the unresolved ending of their friendship. “we should hang out sometime.” he suggested.

y/n shook her head, “i’m busy.” she stated. matt furrowed his eyebrows, “cmon, it’s me.”

“matt.”

“y/n.” he pushed. “most girls would kill just to even talk to me.” y/n rolled her eyes. of course matt would view this as an ego boost.

“we could catch up on stuff.?” he suggested again. y/n began to tune him out, no longer wanting to talk. “you can ignore me all you want, but that doesn’t replace the fact i was your savior at one point.”

“my savior?” y/n scrunched her face at that. matt nodded, “i deserve particular credit for making you into.. this.” he looked her up and down. matt couldn’t see much of her outfit, but the slight show of cleavage definitely made up for it.

“this,” she motioned down to her body, “has nothing to do with you.” matt nodded with his everlasting smirk, not believing her for one second.

“will you think about it?” he pleaded. y/n looked back at him. matt held a sad expression in attempt to persuade her.

“mr. sturniolo! please face the front.” mr. evans called. matt sighed, giving y/n one last look before turning.

y/n stared at the back of his head for the remaining minutes. she was unsure of what he truly wanted, but the want of knowing was already breaking through the ‘i don’t need him’ walls she once set in her mind.

— ꒰ 🍒 ꒱ story idea and plot created by me ! 2044 words

— ꒰🔥꒱ click HERE for sad girl bits playlist !! if you have any song suggestions for the series pls lmk :)

— ꒰ 💭꒱ this is such a roller coaster lmaooo lmk if you like it tho : ) also reader is lwk viewed as olivia rodrigo .. cus we love liv and needed a fc anywayyy

— ꒰❣️꒱ semi taglist ! @junnniiieee07 , @tillies33ssss , @medilovesmatt ( ❤️ ) comment if you wanna be added :)

— p.s this is the matt we’re talking abt rn just look at my man

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irradiatedsnakes · 2 months

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the Big TMA Furry List

this list with commentary/choice rationale below the cut :] i wrote a lot of thoughts down do please check it out.

jon: common raven

martin: tan jumping spider

sasha: southern flannel moth

not!sasha: red postman

tim: jackson's chameleon

melanie: eastern copperhead

georgie: triceratops horridus

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

jane: cabbage white

michael: spiny softshell turtle

helen: common hermit crab

oliver: black vulture

peter: risso's dolphin

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

jude: black kite

agnes: ???

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

jared: american dog tick

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

dekker: mouflon

gertrude: great tit

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

manuela: gray long-eared bat

rayner: olm

salesa: sea otter

simon: dodo

elaboration below !

jon: common raven

this was a choice i made before i even finished listening to the podcast back in 2020. jon's 1000% a bird to me, and the curious nature of corvids works well here. plus, i think a bird so universally ominous as a raven works perfectly as a horror protag :P i used to draw raven!jon with a couple troodon traits, mostly just cus it was fun, but i wanted to make my designs more grounded for this iteration. made them plantigrade, didn't get silly with body styles like i have with mp100 designs.

martin: tan jumping spider

if you've been here for a while you'll know that my furry martin has gone through about two million iterations. he started off as a european pine marten, to bold jumping spider, to chinese pangolin, to nine-banded armadillo, finally to nurse shark.

out of all of these the spider and the shark are my favorites. i wanted to go back to the jumping spider though- the design is really fun and i wasn't able to get the expressions right, but i'm more confident in my skills now and i'm having fun with the design. i may revisit nurse shark at some point. i switched from bold to tan jumper- i originally chose bold just cus they're my favorite jumper, but their stark black/white and iridescent aqua coloration just doens't work for martin. so, the tan jumper!

sasha: southern flannel moth

another old choice. species chosen because of a friend's fic, pharos by right (another i'm planning to reread now that i'm dipping my toes back into tma..)! southern flannel moths are poofy and orange, and their caterpillars are those super painful teddybear ones. i really like the design.

not!sasha: red postman

wanted to have her be another lepidopteran, and with all the many examples of mimicry among the group i thought red postman was a fun choice. doesn't look anything like a southern flannel moth, but that's sort of the point.

tim: jackson's chameleon

yet another choice from the oldtimes- most of the main characters are, i've mostly switched around the more secondary chars. first suggested, i believe, by @/ofdreamsanddoodles. i think there's something very fun about chameleons being basically a living mood ring & tim's Descent s1-3 showing physcially not just through the worm scars but through like, constant stress coloration during s3.

melanie: eastern copperhead

one of my favorite choices. i have a young copperhead specimen named after her. this one is quite vibes-based, but i do really like the copperhead as a viper that is not deadly. and i'm always a sucker for the "animal perceived as scary and violent that in actuality only strikes when under extreme stress" thing in furry assignments.

georgie: triceratops horridus

another favorite choice. visually, i really like how this works out, and trikes as a social and protective animal works well. she's literally got a shield on her face. horridus was chosen because i like the shape of the head and horns better than prorsus.

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

got a little cat/dog thing going on for dasira. i like the inversion of the usual cat/dog dynamic with their unhealthy devotion instead, and visually it just works very well for them both.

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

yeah i know this one's an exceedingly obvious choice.

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

it's the institute logo! it's him! barn owl for elias specifically because of its very sleek look, designing him went fantastically. also, i can make the eagle owl's face disk work as a mimicry of ben meredith's muttonchops, which i think is a fun design bit to give to magnus.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

certified gerryguy @/gerrydelano's choice. to quote a discord message from 3 years ago (sorry ron): "i feel like.........my INSTINCT is some kind of canine because like. the whole symbolism thing about being either an obedient or rabid dog. something something muzzled all your life. being a dangerous figure if people only see the silhouette but you just want scritches and nobody'll get close enough to you." black dog symbolism + breed which has ears cropped and tail docked, unecessarily molded for a Purpose which the dog has no say in

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

sort of my original choice- she used to be part white-booted racket-tail, part anna's hummingbird. kept with the racket-tail cus it's fun and very cute. i've had a couple people express surprise that she wasn't a spider, but i think that's way too obvious. hummingbirds, though- they steal the webs of spiders to use as material to make their nests, but can sometimes become trapped in the webs and eaten by the spiders themselves. which is probably the metaphor-via-fursona-assignment i'm most proud of in this whole list

jane: cabbage white

the cabbage white is a butterfly whose caterpillars are routinely parasitized by the parasitoid wasp the white butterfly parasite. in case you're not familiar, parasitoid wasps lay their eggs on (usually) caterpillars, which hatch on the still-living caterpillar, devouring it from the inside before eventually emerging from the consumed husk of the host. also, i really liked the image of parasitoid wasp larvae emerging from an adult butterfly, rather than a caterpillar.

michael: spiny softshell turtle

for michael and helen, i wanted to choose animals which were, in some way, their own home. turtle is an obvious choice- and spiny softshells are a favorite of mine, and sufficiently strange-looking.

helen: common hermit crab

see previous entry. also please google "hermit crab without shell"

oliver: black vulture

bit of an obvious choice, but i adore vultures so i had to. black vulture chosen because i think the monochrome color scheme + straighter face work better than a turkey vulture for him

peter: risso's dolphin

i really like the idea of a cetacean for peter and the lukases as a whole, a famously social animal for the seemingly contradictory nature of this lonely-but-huge family, plus with so many cetaceans being endangered getting that lonely angle (risso's specifically are not, though, as peter is lonely through his own choice, not by circumstance).

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

it's a dimorphodont. he feels like a pterosaur to me, and i like the idea of a vast avatar as a usually short-flying arboreal species, for the unnaturality/contrast of it.

jude: black kite

black kites are one of the species of kites known to intentionally spread fires by picking up burning sticks to flush out prey.

agnes: ???

the only one i'm still undecided on. will update.

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

i can't top that

jared: american dog tick

great choice from @/magnusarchivememes. Takes Your Blood And Gets So Big

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

vaguely russian animals that are large and imposing but remain somewhat generic. which is the hog and which is the bear is not consistent.

dekker: mouflon

dekker has very much mammal vibes to me. the mouflon is a neat species of wild sheep. i think the noble, imposing but kind image of the ram works well for dekker as that sort of true-good hero figure, and mouflons in particular are very nice looking with good shapes. the statement giver in distant cousin describes dekker as "though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me." which i think this sheep works well with.

gertrude: great tit

i wanted all the main eye avatars as birds, just like how i give them all glasses. just a fun little treat for me. great tit was chosen for gertrude as a kind of classic british bird, and as tits in general are VERY fiesty despite their round and adorable appearance. i really like this image of a great tit posing with a dead mouse like it's a hunter with a trophy deer. the cheek markings also work really well to bring to mind the image of old person jowls.

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

vibes. also i like the idea of him as a spoiled domestic animal. if i remember correctly, this was also @/ofdreamsanddoodles' suggestion

manuela: gray long-eared bat

she's a bat. what's to say. WELL actually okay there's the perception of bats as blind but actually having quite good vision which i think meshes in a fun way with the dark, and the way manuela does her sciency stuff.

rayner: olm

i mean, yeah

salesa: sea otter

largely design-oriented, suitably scruffy. ocean animal with strong social bonds, it was a slam dunk soon as i thought of it.

simon: dodo

how couldn't i, come on.

#tma #furry tma #save

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marybeatriceofmodena · 1 year

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A'ight, what is it about Anne Brontë and Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I keep seeing stuff about how Anne is the unproblematic Brontë sister and that's what kept me away from her books lol

*kracks knuckles* All right. So, remember how the Brontë sisters wrote three novels simultaneously? Charlotte wrote The Professor, Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, and Anne wrote Agnes Grey. The two latter got picked up by publishers, but The Professor was rejected, so Charlotte finished up Jane Eyre and sent it to a publisher, who accepted it immediately and had it published before Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey got printed. All three of them wrote under pen names (Charlotte was Currer Bell, Anne was Acton Bell, and Emily was Ellis Bell), because they knew their novels were, say, a little controversial, and that if it was known they were women, their characters would be judged and immediately associated to their works. So needless to say, they were VERY supportive of each other, because they knew no one else would. (Their father was also supportive, but they published their novels without telling him at first but once they did, he was very encouraging, thankfully.)

It's easy to see why Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights would be considered controversial in their day (they still kind of are today given the Discourse(tm), lol). Agnes Grey, while it didn't do as well as JE and WH, was criticized for being a little too... let's say, honest about a governess' day-to-day life, when Anne wrote it drawing from her own experiences as a governess. The thing with Anne is that people find her stuff a little moralizing, but it was in her best interest to present Agnes as virtuous given how she made little secret of how poorly governesses could be treated, since it wasn't that rare they'd be accused of profiting from the families they were employed by, when there were abuse cases more often than not.

Then The Tenant of Wildfell Hall came out, and that's when criticism started to fly. May Sinclair (an early 20th century suffragist) would later write that the scene where Helen (the main character of the novel) slams her door to her husband's face had a reveberation that was heard throughout England. It's the story (in case you don't mind getting spoiled for a 150-year-old book) of a lady who marries a Victorian fuckboy called Huntington, ends up in an abusive household where her only comfort is her son, and once she realizes that her husband is becoming a bad influence on her child, she leaves him and manages to hide in a house that her brother is willing to rent to her, while she tries to earn a small living by painting. And people lost their shit, because according to them, Helen was a bad woman for leaving her husband, even though she did it to, you know, get her son out of a toxic environment. If Charlotte criticized anything about the novel, it's that she thought some aspects of Huntington were depicted too graphically, but they mostly had to do with his alcoholism and his adultery (this is important: those critcisms have nothing to do with Helen, or how Tenant is shade thrown at Charlotte and Emily's works). That might have been because Anne got some inspiration for Huntington from Branwell, their brother, who was also an alcoholic and got fired from his job as a tutor for having an affair with the lady of the house. Charlotte was pretty fed up with Branwell at that point, and while Emily was the one who got along with him best, they had some pretty big fights because she was in no way a pushover (so the belief that Charlotte and Emily idolized Branwell while Anne was the only one who saw through his BS is also, incidentally, BS).

So, why did Charlotte stop Tenant from being re-printed after Anne's death? Simply put, the criticism against it was getting worse, and people were defaming Anne's character because of it. Charlotte had had her own share of troubles with Jane Eyre - she dedicated the second edition to William Makepeace Thackeray (of Vanity Fair and Barry Lyndon fame) because he was her favorite author, without knowing his wife was institutionalized after suffering from severe post-partum depression. And that led, of course, to people speculating that Jane Eyre was semi-autobiographical, and that Charlotte was Thackeray's mistress. (I mean, it *is* semi-autobiographical, but Thackeray had nothing to do with it.) So she was understandably a little on edge, and while she edited Agnes Grey for a reprinting after Anne's death (given there were a lot of spelling mistakes and the like in the first printing), she asked for Tenant to not be reprinted to protect her sister's memory.

So no, Charlotte did not block Tenant from being as well-known as Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre because she was "jealous", or because she was mad that Anne was "throwing shade" at her and at Emily. She was protecting her sister's reputation, because she wasn't even alive anymore to speak for herself and mount any kind of defense, and that was while Charlotte's own reputation was under fire, after she had lost the two people who had supported her the most - Emily died in 1848, and Anne in 1849. To try to pit these sisters against each other, when two of them died far too young and the surviving one had to pick up the pieces and defend them against public opinion - it is simply distasteful, and it needs to stop.

#Anne Brontë #Charlotte Brontë #Emily Brontë #the tenant of wildfell hall #jane eyre #agnes grey #wuthering heights #literature #english literature #also: tenant is great and you should definitely read it

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doomsdaybby · 5 months

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chapter one: pre-soak. laundromat!steve au x fem!reader mini series. you can find the blurb here 🫶🏻

content/warnings: strangers to lovers, barely any plot (no twists or turns, just watch two cuties fall in love), no use of y/n, fluff, mutual pining, steve is such a sweetheart, soft!steve 🥹, steve being a lovesick puppy, reader is just a little mean, jealous!steve at points, ronance bc I love them, eventual smut (not this chapter), she/her pronouns and physical female descriptions used for reader character throughout.

word count: 2.9k

I do not proofread my work, so please be forgiving of any mistakes.

Suds N’ Sparks Laundromat. Spring 1989.

Steve Harrington works round the clock shifts for exactly four dollars an hour to make ends meet. From sunrise to sunset, his life was surrounded by flickering yellow lights (if you looked closely enough you could see the moths that had scuttled too close to the hot bulbs), emptied pockets of spilled quarters on countertops and the rhythmic mind-numbing rumble of washing machines that soon became white noise.

Steve had already run through exactly eight job positions in the last four years. Don’t ask him how, he seems to never make it stick. The conclusion drew to him a while back that he was the world’s biggest fuck up, and that’s the way it was supposed to be.

It wasn't all bad, he worked alone, the regulars were nice enough and the paycheck was on the surprisingly sunny side compared to Scoops Ahoy, Family Video, camp counseling, that one busboy position that lasted five minutes, and the paperboy, and… you get the point.

It was working well enough for him right now, covering the rent and bills for his and Robin’s shared apartment, and of course gas money, whilst saving him a little extra on the side for whatever his heart desired, and that was all he could ask for. Besides, there weren't many openings left in Hawkins for him to fall back on, almost every business manager the town had on offer had mindlessly sifted through Steve Harrington’s glistening -eye roll- resume since the fall of 1985 at one point or another.

He had to somehow make this one last longer than 8 months, his new year's resolution, or else Steve would surely have to pack up his shit and leave.

Though for right now, the laundromat put an undetermined stop in the infinite revolving door that was his employment track record, and it felt like a small sigh of relief that the customers actually seemed to like him. A lot.

Mrs Fletcher, who insisted on Steve calling her by her first name Helen (he never did), brought in exactly two baskets of laundry at precisely 5pm every Friday evening. Not a minute early, not a second late. Mrs Fletcher was a single woman in her mid to late 50’s, give or take, and was not resistant to the irresistible Harrington charm, despite Steve never uttering a single flirtatious syllable in her direction.

He was woefully made aware that she was single because she made an intentional point to mention it every. single. week. Divorced, husband left her in a bunch of debt yada yada blah blah. Whatever. You would think that he was joking, a tad on the dramatic side maybe, but Helen managed to slip it in there at one point or another during each conversation.

She actually lived on Maple Street, only a couple houses down from the Wheeler’s. Steve remembers her kind waves and cheery ‘Hello’s’ to him and Nancy during their highschool sweetheart days. But since word most certainly got around in Hawkins, once Jonathon Byers took his place linked hand in hand with his past burning flame, it wasn't difficult to put two and two together that the pair had split. So once Steve appeared at the closest local laundromat, Helen Fletcher was positively thrilled.

Steve was in the thick of his routinely one-sided chat with his admirer, elbows resting spread east and west on the counter and arms stretched out in front of him in closed palms, eyes beginning to glaze over since having swapped her one dollar note for four quarters almost twenty minutes ago. Though the shrill ting of the doorbell thankfully pulled him from the jumping record that were his strained, yet still polite, ‘uh huh’-s and ‘oh really’-s.

Robin stumbled through the door, a pull-string hamper hanging heavy by the crook of her elbow, Nancy linked snugly in the other. They both cheesed wide at Steve’s unfortunate current predicament, seemingly unaware of the disapproving grumbles and wary eyes of the few balding middle-aged men slouched on the wooden chairs opposite the rowdy dryers, newspapers held up to their brows.

Though they continued with grace, still very much knitted as one strutting hip to hip and sharing an all too knowing glance, one that only read trouble and hours of persistent teasing that Steve was bitterly well acquainted with. Robin slings the hamper onto the counter that sat at the very back wall with a leaded thud, requesting smaller change in favor of a one dollar bill outstretched in her hand, much like her new shoulder buddy, who is now non-discretely grumbling behind her teeth.

Robin notices, and turns to flash the older woman a pearly ear-to-ear grin, blinking her eyes as if to say ‘need something?’. Helen glowered, lips curled up in clear aggravation. Nancy disguises a poorly hidden grin behind a wipe of her mouth, and Robin’s off-putting aura worked its well-oiled charm as Mrs Fletcher went about her business. Seven days of rest, and Steve felt like he could breathe again. At least she took the hint?

“We did laundry two days ago” Steve looks disappointed, jaw falling somewhat slack.

“You’re so right. But, uhm, we had a problem” Robin’s lips downturn with a shred of guilt, albeit short lived, her left eye creasing under the lower lash in a semi-squint.

“Problem? What problem?”

Nancy’s cheeks are sucked in, rows of teeth biting the inside to stifle her giggling, accentuating her structured features. Though Steve couldn’t put his finger on what was so funny.

“We tried to make dinner. Dinner involved red wine. We drank some of it, it was good, and then we kindaspilledsaidredwineverywhere” She finished in a hurry at the conclusion, speaking incoherently from the corner of her mouth.

Now the ceaseless snickering made sense. They were not drunk by any means, but a little too merry and conversing an octave too high for the closing curtain of Steve’s shift. Ten hours of staring at the same four plant-lined poorly painted carolina blue walls was enough to make anyone go stir crazy. Though in the warmer months the breeze was admittedly very refreshing with the door wedged open, so that was a perk.

Steve tips out a hand to take the bag from Robin with a sigh, a deepening crease in his brow and not enough confidence in his chest to watch the two flounder and fidget with the washing machines.

“You’re not angry?” Nancy taunts, almost expectant, with rounded eyes and fingers now laced with Robin’s as they turn to follow Steve to the large island of cheap wood and steel legs that stood point blank in the middle of the room, the swirling barrels of damp and drying laundry surrounding it.

“Ask me again tomorrow” he responds with an exhausted huff, a hint of a scoff. Steve empties out the soiled linens onto the countertop, surveying each garment to assess the damage.

“Jesus, did you guys rob the liquor store?”

Surely they had used more than one, maybe even more than two bottles of wine for whatever they decided promoted them to culinary artists for the evening. More snickering, though they both prodded and knocked one another at the hip. If Steve rolled his eyes any harder they would spin out of his head.

So Steve guided Robin and Nancy to the chairs opposite where he was shoving clothing one by one into the drum of the washing machine, eyeing them warily like toddlers in a playpen, wishing that they would quieten down before the disgruntled muttering of the elderly man at the other end of their row of chairs transitioned into uncensored hate speech.

Steve resorts to mumbling to himself about how they were going to eventually get him in big trouble having to defend them from their own big mouths, and the potential consequences of said unfiltered big mouths, one day or another. He reaches into the bottom of the hamper to pull out a mauve coloured table cloth, that was now three quarters a giant violet stain.

Steve is too tired for a Friday evening and he wished that the last forty-five minutes of his shift would wrap up as swiftly as it was for his two hysterical friends to fuck up a brand new table cloth. He grasps the material edge to edge in his fists, obscuring his view as he begins to walk forwards, ignoring the familiar ting-ing of the small bell above the janky door, as Robin and Nancy exchanged grimaces and mocking chastising in voices that were supposed to resemble Steve’s scoldings.

Though Steve doesn’t quite make it to the washer, instead crashing chest first into your towering and, for lack thereof a better word, foreboding laundry basket, thus by default, you. Your walkman clatters to the black and white tiled floor, Fleetwood Mac cassette striking loose to slide under an adjacent tumble-dryer with a grainy swish. The headphones dislodge from the plug-in, now hanging lopsided from your ears as your ass smacks to the ground, a dull painful shockwave radiating up your tailbone.

“Fuck!” a curse exclaimed in unison, and Steve is already hauling himself up off the floor, “Watch where you’re fuc-” a helping hand in front of your face before you can even finish your sentence, teeth clacking shut in silence at the unexpected assistance.

“Could say the same to you” Steve replied, back twinging as he lugs you up off the floor, “Sorry, it’s been a long day and-” he looks at you properly then, and absentmindedly squeezes your hand in kindness. You watch him expectantly, dusting off your flared jeans with your free hand, wincing something awful as you cup your lower back.

“Shit, shit” He starts quickly, eyes growing partly wide with urgence, forgetting that you were about to rip him a new asshole. “Are you okay?” his brows pinch to mirror yours, gaze flicking in a hurry from the pained expression on your face to the palm nursing right above your tailbone. It was genuine, his concern, you can hear it in his buttery tone.

“No,” you respond in a way that delivered meaner than you intended, before saying a little kinder, “That really fucking hurt”. You release a breath of a laugh, barely there but it could still be heard whilst Steve steadies you, hands still firmly clasped together. He’s warm, maybe too warm, skin soft and his hands are much larger than your own.

“Hey, didn’t you work at that ice cream place a couple years ago? At the mall? Obviously before it burned down and everything” You ask, eyes curious and voice blanketed in familiarity. Steve blinks at you, blindsided by how the now setting sun reflects in your gentle glassy stare, and you realize that you’re still holding hands.

“You flirted with me once, desperation must be your thing” you continued with a small chuckle when he didn't answer, a jab at yourself rather than him, the previous question more rhetorical and an obvious nose-dive attempt of a dialogue starter.

You release him lightly, and Steve becomes aware a little late when you eye him warily, brows pulling together in an uneasy crease, slightly taken aback by his silence. The patch of stillness was awkward, though it gave you a moment to survey him.

“He’s not much of a ladies man anymore” Robin chimes in with a jump from her seat, the saving grace to the now painfully uncomfortable atmosphere. Steve runs a hand down his face, partially catching his lower lids. Please, God, if you’re listening, just fucking kill me, he thought to himself.

You hum, and Steve’s cheeks dust the rosiest shade of pink when you give him a once over, though you’re leaning a little away from him now. His blue green long sleeved is bunched up to make a three quarter length, though his left has slipped down to his wrist now. Two shiny metal buttons are undone, a sliver of a white undershirt peeking through at the collar. There’s a faded spot of spilt laundry detergent splashed right where his heart sits.

Robin is never going to let him forget this moment for the rest of his life.

Steve was a very handsome guy, you couldn’t deny that. You even thought he was pretty cute the few times he served you raspberry ripple ice cream with sprinkles on top. The sailor outfit was a nice touch, though he clearly never got much action. You were lucky enough to audience some of his failed pick-up lines back then. Poor thing, his ego must have been so battered and bruised.

Your mouth curls at the corner fondly, “Uh, thankyou, by the way. For helping me up”.

“I should have watched where I was fucking going” Steve says, finishing off your earlier snipped jab, eyebrows hitting his hairline and dusting his hands off on his jeans. He dips his face away, but you can see the rippling of smile lines that adorn his cheeks.

“And yeah, yeah I worked at Scoops. You from around here?” Desperate to change the subject, the tips of his ears were flaring up. The regular A/C now didn’t feel like enough, he was hot with embarrassment. You're beginning to pick up the dropped laundry now with Nancy and Robin’s help, after setting your lonely headphones and busted walkman onto the counter. Steve also resumed his previous task.

“I’m from Roanoke, you know, just outside Fort Wayne?” Steve nods, still focused on the wine-stained linens. You continue, “My Dad lives out here, so I've been back and forth, more so the last couple years since I left high school”. Steve makes a mental note, no wonder he can’t quite place you.

“When’d you graduate?” he asks, and Robin winces though she doesn’t really know why. Steve glances up from Nancy’s soft blouse in his hands, running the fabric through his fingertips as he watches you.

“‘82” your nose wrinkles, quickly darting a pair of red underwear into the machine next to Steve. He pretends that he didn’t notice. You were older, even if it was just a couple years. Steve liked that.

“Why move out to Hawkins?” Nancy invades with interest, though you welcome the extra input with grace. It had been a while since anyone had shown this much interest in you. Your lips twist faintly in contemplation, not wanting to overshare whilst seeking their prolonged attention for as long as you could have it. Greedy, really. But it felt nice, normal.

“Change of pace. I like it here” you answer her question with honesty, which was accepted for what it was. Though none of them really understood why you would like Hawkins, almost everyone in the small town wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible.

Steve Harrington stayed later that shift, the extent of his fatigue and burning desire to collapse in bed numbed by this new infatuation. Maybe the reminder of having the weekend off was enough to ice the burn. You shared enough but too much considering the three before you were strangers, though not even an hour with them and you felt like you had known them for years.

You spoke mostly with Robin and Nancy, Steve chiming in here and there. His gaze was either trained on you or his fidgeting fingers the entire time it took for your laundry to wash and dry. The girls were giggling, and he managed to get a good look at how your under-eyes crinkle when you smiled, the inattentive purse of your lips when you just sat and listened, specks of mascara dusting underneath your lashes where you had been clumsy.

This might become a problem, he thought.

“See you around, sparky” You wave once your now pristine laundry was folded into the basket a whole ninety minutes after your crash to the floor, a natural charm laced in the flash of a closed mouth smile, a cordial wave to your new friendly acquaintances. Steve felt the air settle once you left, he blinked, his heart had skipped a couple beats. You’d forgotten your tape, your walkman, and your headphones.

Steve raises a hand from the counter, fingers twiddling kindly in your direction. The upturn of his mouth is completely unfeigned, and it makes his stomach twist and his legs feel unsteady.

Robin and Steve turn to look at eachother, hands on his hips and a couple beads of sweat stippling his hairline. She’s smiling, an evil thing with no malice behind it. Nancy's lower jaw is sitting loose, her lips parted, watching Steve as if the stars are aligning before her very eyes.

“Robs,” he deadpans, a warning. “Please. Don’t say anything” he feels the blood rushing to his cheeks, rubbing the back of his neck with clammy fingers.

Nancy and Robin crook their necks to peer at each other, Nancy’s bottom lip is firmly tucked into her top row of teeth, a grin spreading wide. Robin’s mouth is purely hanging open in amazement, and Steve braced himself for what was to come.

They both inhale and Steve screws his eyes closed with a steady inhale through the nose. Reels of kissing noises are thrown his way, the two women’s puckered lips and incessant snorting makes Steve want to crawl out of his skin. He can’t hear whatever raised-pitched fun they’re making of him, drowning it out as much as he is able whilst fishing the car keys from his pocket. Another perk of the job, considering the laundromat was twenty-four hours, he didn’t have to close.

“You guys are assholes” Steve remarks, but the glimmer of a smirk remains just the same.

thankyou for reading this if you made it to the end! 🫶🏻 pls reblog & comment if you like this! I haven’t written fully like this in a good while so i’m feeling pretty anxious. much love x

dividers by @inklore 🩷

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