#I simply cannot imagine cheating on any of these men

[snail-day]

SNAIL, MY FAVORITE TUMBLR CREATOR, THE REASON I BREATHE—SOMETHING SOMETHING BLAH BLAH. How do you think yandere JJK men would react if the reader cheated?

Lowkey, I’ve been watching #ihatemybf vids on TikTok, and when I tell you I’ve LITERALLY BEEN CRYINGGGG—THEY’RE SO FUNNY. And I’ve also been so annoyed at the fact that any time I search “JJK angst,” on tumblr It’s always us getting hurt… 😪😪😪 Like yeah, I guess we can’t avoid that if they’re a yandere, we’re obviously gonna get hurt somehow in the end, BUT STILL, I WANT THEIR BITCH ASSES TORN UP.

Like, imagine Satoru—the most handsome man ever, basically everything you want in a man—beautiful, strong, loyal, smart, just everythinggggg… but he gets cheated on. LMFAOOO, THIS SHIT IS KILLING ME.

(This lowk might just be projection, tbh.)

(FUCK MY EX.)

(MEN AIN’T SHIT!!!)

Also, I hope you’ve been eating and doing well! Remember, it’s totally fine to feel unmotivated or just not in the mood to write💞💞💞💞

Alright babygirl where the FUCK did you find that photo because its...UGH. Thanks I hate it. ALSO SORRY ABOUT YOUR MANS, men aint shit :( Gotta leash them up or something to stop them from acting like dogs.

Anyways do you like have a death wish...or something? Cheating on your yandere? YEESH. Okay, I had to really think this one out because they're psycho as is but when you have the audacity to cheat on someone who's madly in love with you...well you're not going to drive them away.

Characters: Satoru, Suguru, Sukuna. (I couldn't imagine you getting the chance to sleep with anyone else with Nanami around...I think you'd just become either his child or his pet no in-between)

TW: Yandere behaviors. Death. Cruel and unusual punishment (knife play, blood/cum play). Suguru and Sukuna is a ...gore fest and a little fucked but what did you expect. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat MDNI

Gojo Satoru (You really did it this time.)

At first, he doesn’t believe it. You? His darling? His precious, delicate love? Cheating? That doesn’t make sense. It’s absurd - ludicrous even. You adore him. You belong to him. Every fiber of your being should be his and his alone.

However, the proof is undeniable. Overwhelming. Disgusting. Suffocatingly enough, you didn’t even have the audacity to use a condom, didn’t even attempt to mask your betrayal. The sheer audacity - the filthiness of it - hits him deeper than any wound ever could, slicing through his heart like jagged glass.

For the first time in his life, Satoru feels like a fool. A pathetic, naïve fool. Like everyone else, you used him. Just another disposable plaything for your own amusement. He thought you cherished him, wanted him for who he was - not his power, not his name, not his abilities, but him. Just him. But no. In the end, you were nothing more than a lying, deceitful, backstabbing wretch - just like the rest.

So why should he treat you any differently?

The next time you wake up, the world feels smaller. Suffocatingly tiny. An eerie, hollow void of nothingness. The warmth of comfort - gone. The furniture? Stripped away, leaving nothing but the cold, unwelcoming embrace of hardwood beneath you. The windows? Sealed, bolted shut like a prison cell. The doors? Locked, impenetrable. And your ankles - bound in thick, heavy chains, the metal digging cruelly into your fragile skin, bolted so firmly into the ground that there’s no mistaking it - you are never leaving.

You could scream. You could cry, plead, sob until your throat is raw and your voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper - but it wouldn’t matter. None of it would matter. Satoru doesn’t care anymore. He doesn’t look at you the same way. The love - the insatiable adoration, the playful obsession - has vanished. What remains is something chilling. Hollow. Empty. Like you don’t even exist.

He barely acknowledges you. A ghost of a man you once knew, now a distant shadow that lingers just to keep you confined. He comes and goes as he pleases, leaving you to fester in your isolation. When he does speak, his voice is nothing more than an arctic whisper - cold, detached, indifferent. You’re lucky if he feeds you more than a single meal a day. He used to dote on you, spoil you, worship you. Now? You aren’t even worth his time.

At first, you think this is a punishment. A cruel, twisted lesson meant to make you break - to make you grovel, weep, and beg for his forgiveness.

But then, days turn into weeks.

And you realize - this isn’t a punishment.

This is abandonment.

He isn’t torturing you. Not physically. He doesn’t starve you to death, doesn’t strike you, doesn’t lay a single hand on you - not even to hurt you. He won’t. You could beg him - plead for something, anything, a reaction, a slap, a violent scream - but he won’t give you the satisfaction.

Because you are nothing now.

And yet, he will never let you go. Never set you free. No one else will ever have you. You will remain his - not because he loves you anymore, but because he refuses to let anyone else touch what was once his. Even in this desolation, even in this silent, torturous existence - he still owns you. Forever.

Geto Suguru (Oh god. Oh no. Oh yes?)

Yeah, he’s not going to kill you. But that doesn’t mean you’re getting off easy. Not even close. You made the most unforgivable, brainless mistake of your life - fucking one of his disciples. In his temple. On sacred ground.

He lets you finish, of course - because he’s generous like that. Magnanimous, even. Standing there, watching, arms lazily crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable except for that maddening smirk tugging at the corners of his lips. A smug smirk, like he’s already decided your fate, like this is nothing more than mild amusement to him.

He watches the poor bastard rut into you, completely oblivious to the way death lingers inches away, waiting, hungry. Fucking you like he’s not moments away from the most gruesome, agonizing end imaginable.

And then, just as you're coming down from the dizzying high of your climax - just as your breath shudders, body quivering - his curse strikes.

Teeth sink in, and the man inside you doesn’t even get to scream. His head is torn clean off mid-thrust, the sound of crunching bone and ripping flesh slicing through the air like a grotesque symphony. Hot, sticky blood erupts, painting your skin, spraying across the altar, dripping from the walls in thick, warm rivulets. The body collapses on top of you, weight heavy, suffocating. Cock still buried deep, still twitching, still spilling into you even in death.

And Suguru?

He doesn’t say a single word.

No anger. No shouting. No theatrics. Just cold, effortless dominance.

His fingers curl into the nape of your neck, iron-tight, unyielding, forcing your face down - straight into the mess. Into the warm, viscous pool of blood and cum, the sickening mixture coating your lips, your cheeks, seeping into your skin.

Like a misbehaving puppy who pissed on the floor.

The message is clear without him needing to say a thing. This is your doing. You caused this carnage, tainted his temple, dirtied yourself beyond salvation. And now? You’re going to live with it. Marinate in it. If you’re lucky (and you aren’t), your only punishment will be licking up every last drop.

Because he’s so sweet for not killing you, right?

Ryomen Sukuna (You really must have a death-wish)

Sukuna doesn’t just kill the pathetic bastard who dared to touch what belongs to him. No, that would be too kind. Too merciful. Instead, he annihilates them.

Flesh peels from bone in gruesome ribbons, sinew snapping like fragile threads. Blood erupts in violent bursts, splattering across the walls in grotesque, abstract strokes - an unholy masterpiece painted in suffering. The air is thick with the stench of iron, of death, of ruin. By the time he’s done, there’s nothing left of them but a mangled heap of unrecognizable gore, twisted beyond comprehension. Not a man. Not even a corpse. Just chunks of flesh strewn about like discarded meat.

And yet, his fury still burns. Still festers, ravenous, insatiable.

Because the real problem - the true betrayal - is still alive.

You.

His fingers tangle in your hair, yanking you forward with the brutal ease of someone dragging along a disobedient pet. Your scalp burns, your neck twists at an unnatural angle as you stumble after him, barely able to keep up. The doors to his domain slam shut behind you, the echo ringing like a death knell. A final, inescapable sentence.

By the time he throws you to the cold, unforgiving stone floor, your body is trembling. Trembling from fear. From exhaustion. From the soul-crushing realization that there is no escape. No salvation.

Sukuna looms above you, his presence suffocating, oppressive. His gaze - deep, dark, unreadable - bears down on you with something caught between cruel amusement and pure, unrelenting fury. The kind of fury that doesn’t fade. That doesn’t forgive.

Then, he speaks.

"Spread your legs."

The command is low, almost teasing, his lips curling into something resembling a smile. But it’s not warmth - it’s mockery. Amusement. As if this is all some sick, twisted game, a test you’re already failing. You're not fucking yourself out of this one.

You hesitate.

Big mistake.

Before you can react, he’s on you. There’s no warning, no hesitation - just raw, unfiltered force. Fabric tears like paper beneath his claws, your clothes shredded apart as if they were never meant to shield you in the first place. A gasp rips from your throat as he forces you down, pins you beneath him like a predator securing its kill. His fingers grip your thighs, prying them apart, firm, unyielding. You are nothing more than a thing to be owned, to be branded, to be ruined.

His smirk widens at the sheer terror on your face.

"Now, now," he croons, dragging sharp claws down the softness of your belly, trailing lower, lower - stopping just above the most sacred part of you. Hovering over the vulnerable flesh of your lower abdomen. The place only he should have ever touched.

His other hand moves with a terrifying slowness, fingers wrapping around the worn handle of a blade. Dull. Rusted. Not sharp enough for a clean cut - because why would you deserve a sharp one?

Your heart stops.

He sees it. Feels it. Loves it.

"You want to whore yourself out?" he muses, voice dripping with mockery as he presses the frigid steel just below your navel. Just above where your body still trembles from the remnants of the defilement. "Then let’s make sure everyone knows exactly who you belong to."

Then - he carves.

Letter by letter, he slices his name into your flesh, slow and deliberate. R Y O M E N S U K U N A. The jagged edges of the blade drag through your skin, splitting it open, ensuring the wound will never heal cleanly. Ensuring the scar will never fade. The pain is excruciating - white-hot, blinding - searing through your senses like a burning brand. Your body writhes, your screams echo through the chamber, but he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t waver.

He drinks in every sound. Every sob, every whimper, every desperate tremor of your form beneath him. By the time he’s finished, blood weeps down between your thighs, pooling beneath you like a sacrificial offering.

His gaze softens - not with kindness, but with satisfaction. Admiration.

"Beautiful," he murmurs, running a clawed finger over the fresh, raw wound, smearing the crimson letters like a painter admiring his own work. Then, just to be cruel - because of course he is - he leans down. His tongue, warm and sinfully long, drags over the fresh wound, lapping up the blood, savoring it.

You shudder between sobs, body caught between agony and humiliation.

"Try to spread your legs for another man now, pet." His voice drops into something dark, guttural. A growl laced with venom. "See what happens."

For a moment, you think it’s over. You think - maybe - he’s done with you.

"Run."

Your breath hitches. Your entire body stiffens.

He tilts his head, eyes gleaming with wicked amusement, with insatiable cruelty.

"Run," he repeats, slower this time, drawing the blood from his fingers with a lazy flick of his tongue. "And if I catch you… well."

The smirk stretches - sharp, monstrous.

"We’ll see if I let you live or not."

The air is thick. Suffocating. Your pulse thrums in your ears, heart hammering so violently it threatens to burst from your chest.

You know what you should do.

The only question is, will you make it?

[mariacallous]

Hi mariacallous! Some of my friends have started spouting the 'abortion is a class issue because rich women always have access to abortion' BS, and I was wondering if you had any resources/articles etc that might be helpful in convincing them. Sorry to barge into your inbox!

The notion that rich women will be fine, regardless of what the law says, is probably comforting to some. But it is simply not true.

Yes, abortion bans will disproportionately affect poor women and women of color in a country that already has appallingly high maternal mortality rates, no federal paid family leave and little support for parents who struggle to provide for their children financially. As Rebecca Traister pointed out in New York magazine, this is nothing new: The Hyde Amendment and state restrictions have already made abortion effectively inaccessible to many women without means or mobility.

But we should not lose sight of the reality that the Supreme Court decision has created a crisis for all American women. Even the richest Americans — the one-percenters and the upper middle class — will not escape the effects.

Attenuating the rights of half of the population will have systemic effects akin to climate change. Just as no amount of investment in Mars-bound space colonization, air-conditioned bunkers and private firefighting services will save the rich from terrible outcomes if the planet becomes uninhabitable, the rich cannot avoid the effects of the overturning of Roe. Residents of blue states won’t be exempt. And men who think the ban won’t affect them are mistaken; it will affect women they know and love, and it will change the political economy in which they live and operate.

The persistent myth that the wealthy will be unaffected is predicated on the vague notion that they’ll be able to find and purchase abortion pills by mail, travel to places where abortion is legal or get abortions from local providers willing to break the law.

And sure, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which a red state one-percenter has his daughter or wife airlifted to another state for an abortion — or, potentially, for in vitro fertilization, if it becomes illegal to terminate embryos. We are accustomed to different rules and privileges for the wealthy, and witness these injustices daily. People with more money and privilege conferred by race and class — people who have access to better lawyers — experience our justice system differently. They also get better health care and pay less in taxes as a share of income. We hold the rich to a lower, not higher, standard and tacitly accept that they will get away with cheating various systems.

But the wealthiest are in for some unpleasant surprises when it comes to abortion. The scenarios in which a woman needs an abortion include medical emergencies in which any delay in treatment can have severe, even fatal, consequences — and in those circumstances abortion pills obtained by mail won’t help.

One in 50 pregnancies in the United States is ectopic, for example, in which a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. The embryo must be removed, and delaying that treatment can result in sepsis, internal bleeding and death. Placental abruptions must be addressed immediately to avoid extensive bleeding, renal failure and even, in some instances, death.

Any woman who finds herself in either of these scenarios is not going to be able to pack her bags and go for a long drive. Even for someone with the means, an airlift to a medical facility in another state may not be quick enough to save her. She will need to be treated locally and immediately. Some of the bans going into effect around the country include medical exceptions for these situations, but if there’s any ambiguity about what the law allows, the time it takes a medical professional to consult a lawyer may be the difference between life and death.

Some states are expected to try to ban interstate travel for abortions. Bans in Texas and Oklahoma leave room for that possibility. Planned Parenthood’s Montana branch has reportedly decided that it will no longer provide medication abortions for patients from certain states where bans are in effect or in the works, citing the “rapidly changing” legal landscape. It’s also clear that many Republicans view the Roe reversal as an inroad to a total federal ban. If they gain electoral victories in 2024, this is a very likely outcome, and in that case there will be no blue state abortion clinics to travel to. Even now, the lines and waiting times at abortion clinics in safe haven states are likely to get very long.

Many people also assume the wealthy can always find a local doctor willing to perform an abortion, even in a state where it has become illegal. This seems unlikely. While some providers did flout the law and provide women with abortions before Roe in 1973, the ubiquity of digital surveillance and other mechanisms for violating the privacy of women seeking abortions have made it far more difficult for them to do so privately and safely. Trigger laws are already forcing medical professionals to consult lawyers before they provide care, and laws that criminalize abortion leave health care workers with little incentive to violate them. When faced with the prospect of prosecution or losing a medical license, how many doctors will take this risk, even when money is offered? Meanwhile, anti-choice conservatives are already working to make it harder to obtain abortion pills.

Some believe abortion bans won’t affect them because they’ll never find themselves in need of an abortion. Conservatives might imagine the typical woman who needs one fits an archetype: poor, single, liberal, promiscuous, anti-family and irresponsible. But most women who get abortions are already mothers (60 percent). Nearly half of abortion seekers live below the poverty line, but a significant portion are not poor. (Women with higher incomes have more access to contraception, but that dynamic might change if the Supreme Court follows through on Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion to revisit earlier rulings, including the right to contraception.) Conservative families also include teenagers and young women whose privacy, autonomy and ability to seek medical care, regardless of whether their parents approve, will be severely compromised by abortion bans.

The reality is that women from every demographic need abortions. Well-off conservative women are not immune to contraception failures, gynecological emergencies, miscarriages, incest or rape. Many women find that despite their beliefs, carrying a pregnancy to term is just not something they can go through with, for a range of reasons. Pregnancy itself can be life-threatening for women with certain existing medical conditions, and even for women who don’t have those risks, it is life-altering. The kind of person who might need or want an abortion is, put simply, any person capable of getting pregnant.

Women will die because of this — disproportionately poor and middle-class women but not just poor and middle-class women. Rich women could just as easily suffer and die, too, even those who think that they would never need an abortion or that they would never be denied essential medical care in the United States of America in 2022.

There will be other effects: Roe is a privacy law, and there are implications for the ruling outside of the issue of abortion. Forced birth will take women out of the work force in an already tight labor market. Women could be treated like criminals for having miscarriages, which are incredibly common. And women who are pregnant when their partners don’t want them to be will be more at risk for domestic violence and homicide. Individual wealth won’t prevent these outcomes, either.

It is, of course, true that the wealthy are the least vulnerable in the new post-Roe world, and this is not a requiem for them on a tiny violin. But it is important for all parties to understand that all people are going to participate in this nightmare, whether they realize it now or not. The wealthy unfortunately have an outsize influence on politics, so how much the bans harm them, inconvenience them or enrage them will most likely affect the will of politicians to vote for and maintain abortion bans.

The overturning of Roe will affect all of us. And if you are lucky enough to be wealthy, your money probably won’t shield you.

The Persistent Myth That Restricting Abortion Rights Won’t Affect the Rich

the problem is that it's a class issue, but not only in the way they think, and the point is that all women are impacted by it, but obviously some way more than others

[tryndei]

idk why but i am becoming more and more repulsed by romantic relationships and sex and now it's not only because i can't stand the cult of marriage reproduction and childbirth in general but also because i see the way people in media talk and joke about this shit how they call people with whom they were in relationship before their "exes" like it's the only quality that this person has after breaking up with them and simply this whole culture of hating your ex and being enemies with them and if not then you are probably cheating on your current lover because you still talk to this person HOW STUPID IT IS-

i do not even mention that most of people immediately change their lovers if something is slightly wrong with them as it's so easy for them to replace the person they "loved" with another and another and another this invokes RAGE in me like where is the love where is the romance you are talking about??? it seems like it's easy for people not to understand those who they remain in a romantic relationship with but to call them abusive and "narcissitic"(and rn i am not saying that you should endure poor treatment from another if some genius already is on their way to accuse me in lack of comapassion towards victims)

the way people think that jealousy is normal and attractive and that you should "fight for your love" is a good thing and completely not stupid awful and selfish and how people try to convince you that you will change your mind about marriage and having kids not because they ACTUALLY CARE for you but because they WANT you to change your mind because they hope that you too will not be able to live without someone by your side because these people are OBSESSED with sex and they don't understand it and try to enforce it on people that are disgusted by this shit calling them weird and ill like bro you are the one who whines about being single or talks about your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/ex and your ships or that you are horny all the time get help + the fact that almost nobody believes in men and women being capable of building friendship with nothing romantic or sexual behind it or without being both gay or aroace irritates very much. WE ARE NOT IN KINDERGARTEN

and the way some people talk about friendship no because someone actually thinks that friends cannot hug and kiss each other say "i love you" and just be affectionate and considerate towards each other because those are things that only lovers do it concernes me i am afraid to imagine how they treat their friends(if they have any)

no now i understand why i am so repulsed by romantic relationships and sex.

[thotferatu]

Maybe..

perhaps now that I'm nearing 30 and have all but accepted my status as a woman who will surround themselves with lively friends and their children, inserting myself as the auntie that comes and goes as my friendships with those people wane and wax -- I can accept that maybe the reason I simply cannot see myself as someones second half is that I was simply never desirable.

I was late to bloom, not finding much success "dating" until late in highschool. I was always too plain, to odd, to loud, to awkward. There were nicer girls with better clothes and narrower smiles who didn't seem weighed down by the anxiety of a puberty ridden teen.

Except it wasnt all that, was it?

In highschool I dropped a fair amount of weight, though looking back I was never truly fat. Just a but untoned, a little chubby, but hardly fat. Not the weight I am now by any margin.

and yet that was when boys flocked to me -- when men flocked to me. I was groomed by a man almost 7 years my senior though now I understand his only attraction to me was that I was young and stupid, then I dated within my own age range, but as soon as they discovered I was not the "happy to be here" girlfriend they were expecting .. Well, lets just say I never got invited to dances.

A few short relationships happened after I came of age. Only a few months, here or there, and I found myself lacking in the intimacy department. They moved too quickly, too harshly, and I was cold to the idea.

But I still tried to be a good girlfriend.

One person said kissing me was like kissing their sister. Another saw me in my expensive nightgown I'd bought, covered in frills and lace and a beautiful baby pink, and simply went back to watching youtube. He never bothered complimenting me either, even as I tried my hardest to appear beautiful in the weeks that followed. Another would scold me for seconds, reminding me that I was "getting heavier".

We broke up a week later.

I was an easy out of his last relationship, I realized, and he cheated on me with someone he had said was his cousin.

I simply wasnt desirable.

To awkward, to demanding, to set in my ways -- especially as I continued to age.

Now I find myself still largely untouched, unable to imagine myself in a happy and healthy romantic relationship. I cannot imagine myself as equal to another in that setting; I'm not pretty enough, nor interesting enough, and Ive no experience physically being a "loving" partner.

I know being in a relationship, getting married, is not lifes goal. It was something I actively dreaded as a small fundamentalist child -- but I cannot help but wonder now if something inside of me is deeply broken.

If I truly am simply that undesirable, if there is an essence to me that drives people away. Forever a member of a found family, but never anything more.

Perhaps I should be thankful of that, of how people grow to see me as kin so quickly.

It means I'll never truly be alone.

[minnie-cai]

THESE ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE MOVIE NOT SHOWING US HAPPY HEALTHY THRIVING TASHI!!

i saw someone post a cut scene of stanford!art and tashi from the script and it dawned on me that the movie does not show us tashi loving art.

it made me so upset that they had these scenes and they just didn’t have them in because it was so obvious in the scene that she loved him and i firmly believe people hate her because they never see a good side of her.

in her relationship with art if you don’t notice details in the movie it simply feels like she settled for him because patrick wasn’t there when she needed him most and that’s because we never see her happy with art. we go from tashi having the toughest time in her life and being injured while being with art to tashi being in an unhappy marriage and cheating on art.

what we don’t see at all is these moments of support art showed her in this tough time of her life, in this moment in her career where she saw her dreams crumbling right in front of her and art was there.

the fact that we never see tashi being in love with art means one thing. it means that while the movie spent plenty of time expanding on patrick and art’s characters, it neglected tashi’s emotions to “a cold bad bitch that’s really passionate about tennis” and that is exactly why we cannot comprehend that she ever felt happy with art.

we can’t imagine her happily married, we can’t imagine her being happy, we can’t imagine her loving her daughter. we never see any of that.

the most true, heartfelt emotion tashi shows is when she gets injured and it’s heartbreaking and i wish we could see more of that because i just know zendaya would’ve done an incredible job and it would connect us to the character a lot better.

she is the main character but we know truly nothing about how she feels while we know so much about the men in her life and it feels extremely unfair knowing that the men’s wrongs are forgiven because they are attractive and tashi is just another woman in media, getting hated on because she has complex emotions and hot men in her life.

i’ve never seen anyone talk about Tashi being pregnant with Lily. OBVIOUSLY in the world that this is JUST a movie, Zendaya is Zendaya and her body tea. but like in the movie that frame supposedly carried a child. also with how cold Tashi is to Art, i wonder what state of mind she was in when she was pregnant with his child. he loves his daughter a lot, she’s his lock screen. i just can’t imagine her pregnant like she must have been huge with her frame. i just think about it like it’s… it’s a movie. obviously not real. but in the cinematic world of challengers that must have been interesting. just thoughts.

[bigstripeylie]

Ghosts theory- “sucked off” edition

Apologies for the title.

I have a theory about how each of the ghosts in Ghosts has a parallel with another Ghost and how this could be the key to them finally being able to move on, or “be sucked off’ as Mary would say.

Putting it behind a cut as this is extremely long and rambly. Spoilers for pretty much every episode of Ghosts

First of all I was listening to Mat and Jim on the Empire Spoilers podcast and Mat said something really interesting about how he intended “you stays how you dies” to refer to the ghost’s mental and emotional state, as well as physical. So Thomas always being obsessed with seeking love is because he died broken-hearted and Fanny always being so grumpy is because she died angry at her husband. 

I believe, therefore, that if the ghosts were able to overcome each of their emotional blocks that would be the thing that would allow them to move on. Furthermore, each of the ghosts has another ghost that seems perfectly suited to be able to assist them in that.

Let’s go through them:

Thomas- Thomas died believing his love never loved him back and now is forced to spend eternity seeking for love as a ghost. If Thomas was able to find someone who could reciprocate his affections, this would the resolve that issue. In the Series 2 episode “About Last Night” when Alison drunkenly tells Thomas “if you were alive and I was 200 years older, then we might have…” we hear a choir start singing and Thomas is pulled, as if compelled, through the wall, similar to how Fanny is pulled forwards towards the window to jump when she “doesn’t even realise [she’s] doing it.” Thomas desperately craves love and affection from another person, but in life was constantly rejected by the people he loved most. You know who else that sounds like? Kitty.

Kitty- Like Thomas, she is from a wealthy family who sheltered her a lot growing up, but is ultimately good and tries to be honourable. Kitty also craves love and affection as well as companionship and she tries to seek it, first in Eleanor and then in Alison (because Alison reminds her of  Eleanor, like how Alison reminds Thomas of Isabelle). However it comes up again and again that Kitty’s relationship with Alison isn’t as fulfilling to her as she would like it be because her being a ghost prevents her from sharing every activity with Alison, and Alison cannot show her physical affection. Kitty is trying to recreate aspects of her relationship with Eleanor using Alison as a substitute but this isn’t very healthy for her, as it simply traps her in the constant state of seeking affection that will not or cannot be returned fully. We don’t know the exact circumstances of Kitty’s death but after Series 3, if seems likely that her sister was in some way involved. Maybe what is keeping Kitty trapped as a ghost is her need for approval and love that she never got in life? But by seeking it in people who remind her of Eleanor exclusively, she is further trapping herself.

If Kitty and Thomas could find love with each other, they could each fulfil the other’s need for reciprocated affection. They are both equally needy so this quality wouldn’t likely annoy the other. Kitty seems to genuinely enjoy high romance in earnest and in finding an outlet for her love in Thomas, she could finally move on from her sister. Thomas would also find someone to love him and could devote himself completely to someone who would actually return his love, instead of fruitlessly pursuing women who remind of Isabelle’s rejection. This could lead to the resolution of both character’s finally moving on from their deaths.

Next up, let’s look at The Captain-

The Captain’s central conflict is obviously his sexuality. I believe that the resolution to this conflict would be him finally accepting and coming to terms with being gay and feeling comfortable with that part of his  identity. Which ghost could best help him in this?

Fanny. 

Maybe not the answer you were thinking, but hear me out. The Captain already has a strong positive relationship with Fanny built on mutual respect. He is more likely to value her opinion as an equal that any of the other ghosts and he seems to align himself with her on most issues. Which makes his choice to go against Fanny and defend the same-sex wedding and its guests to her in “Perfect Day” really remarkable.

In “Perfect Day”, Fanny expresses some pretty disapproving remarks about the wedding guest’s attire and some homophobic opinions about the same-sex wedding in general, which prompts the Captain to defend one of the guests to Fanny. “It’s chic, it’s now, and if it makes her feel fabulous…”

Imagine a scene where The Captain has to defend himself towards Fanny in a similar manner after coming out, showing that he is finally accepting of his sexuality as being the right thing for him. 

Anyway, that was a slight digression…

Fanny is still struggling to deal with the circumstances of her own death which was brought about in part because she caught her husband having an affair with other men. Fanny needs to accept and come to terms with the fact that her husband didn’t love her and that while he was obviously wrong for murdering her, she needs to move on so she can stop reenacting it by jumping out the window every morning. Because she died feeling angry and betrayed, she is trapped in that state in death. Discovering that one of her closest friends is gay and realising that it is possible for someone to be both gay and a good person might prompt her to think differently about her own life, as she started do with Humphrey in Perfect Day. 

The Captain, in turn, could be driven by Fanny’s ability to accept his sexuality into thinking ‘if she can accept that part of me, then maybe I can too.’ Personally, out of all the ghosts, I think it could only be Fanny who could prompt him to think that because it would mean the most to him coming from her.

Humphrey- Humphrey died because he was trying to protect Sophie, who rejected any attempt to get to know him and who he believed didn’t even like him. In death he is trapped in a state of being a selfless self-sacrificing people-pleaser and desperately wanting to be included in the other ghost’s activities, even allowing himself be kicked and thrown around if it means he can just be involved. In ‘I Love Lucy’ he even attempts to make a relationship with Fanny work, showing he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of others.

Julian, by contrast, is the most selfish of all the ghosts at Button House. Deep down he feels guilty that his selfishness negatively affected the relationship with his daughter but seems not to be consciously aware that he feels like this. Julian’s selfishness to not spend time with his family ultimately leads to his death in Button House, as he neglected his family to spend more time at work and was clearly cheating on his wife, showing he is driven by selfish impulses.

If Julian were to perform a completely selfless act to the benefit of Humphrey, then Humphrey would get to feel as though someone was putting him first for once and valuing him the way he seeks to be valued. Julian would also break the pattern of selfish behaviour that caused his downfall.

The rest are little less well-defined:

Pat is the probably the ghost that we know the most about, through seeing his death and actually meeting his family in “Happy Death Day”, to the numerous anecdotes he reveals about his life throughout the show. However, I can’t decide for sure what is the thing that is keeping him a ghost. Pat himself seemed to think it was that he was missing his family, but this was ultimately proved wrong after he saw them again in ‘Happy Death Day’. Even meeting the boy who killed him and forgiving him in ‘Perfect Day’ didn’t cause him to move on. It could be something to do with Carol’s affair with Maurice but I just don’t know for sure. I like the idea of him fitting in with the plague ghosts. I think his personalty and leadership style would get along better with them than say, The Captain, who is too authoritarian. I also think Pat is someone who thrives in a group setting.

Robin and Mary are also tricky to work out what the thing keeping them as ghosts is because we know so little about their lives and deaths compared to the other characters. I think these are the only two ghosts who have not yet received a flashback to their lives. We know that Mary was in some way involved a witch-trail and this has traumatised her. Robin also has experienced a lot of trauma in his life but he seems to be more philosophical about it and accepting of it. He shows great empathy towards others both in trying to comfort Pat about his death in “Happy Death Day’ and Kitty in “About Last Night’, he could use his experience of trauma to help Mary deal with hers. They both seem to be looked down upon and ‘othered’ by the other ghosts due to their perceived lack of intelligence even though they are both very emotionally and socially intelligent.

If anyone has any thoughts about these last two pairings or any of the others, then please reblog and add your take!

I am not in any way saying that I think this is what will happen in the next series or what even I think should happen, but that this is one possibilities for much further down the road when the ghost are all ready to move on.

Also I have spent way too much time thinking about this…

[okohs]

AOT (SNK) HEADCANONS

What their favorite curse words are or which ones they would use in a modern setting. -Includes the Warriors ofc ^^-

TRIGGER WARNING: you guessed it. Curse words and mentions of slur usage (slurs not included ofc).

Eren (S1-3): he would definitely go with the usual “fuck” and “bitch” but have an unhealthy obsession with words related to balls that everyone hates and makes Mikasa give him dirty looks every time he says one.

“Bro you fucking piece of shit, I swear I will kick you in those fucking hairy bollocks you call a face”

Eren (S4): this man just says the most offensive slurs (unprovoked and with no visible emotions) that make the entire room go QUIET.

Mikasa: doesn’t curse too often, but when she does, she mostly uses some Japanese curse words that she picked up from her mother, such as:

“くそ! (kuzo!)”: meaning “fuck!”

“ちくしょう (chikushō)”: meaning “oh shit”

“わるがき (warugaki)”: meaning “brat”. Mostly used towards Eren when she is annoyed.

Fair to say that she doesn’t shout them, she just says them in a low voice.

Armin: we all know it’s really unlikely that he’ll ever insult anyone during an argument, but for some reason i feel that he enjoys to say things like “holy guacamole!” when he stubs his toe in the couch and stuff like that djdjdjhs

Sasha: loves weird word combinations and long curse words to say at any given moment such as: “what in the mother geewillikers’ bazooka trunk is that?!?”

No one really knows how she comes up with these.

Connie: DEFINITELY uses stinky and ass way too much.

“Hey Connie, yo mama-“

“LISTEN YOU STINKY ASS MOTHE-“

Jean: is the one who actually makes the “yo mama” jokes to Connie ALL the time. He likes to get creative.

“Hey Connie, yo mama so fat that Thanos had to snap twice”

“Hey Connie, yo mama’s forehead so big that she can make a pita out of sourdough bread by giving it a headbutt”

Historia: on a daily basis, she uses refined curse words to refer to the people that she dislikes, such as “bastard”, “miserable”, “wretched” and such, but OH- we all know that when she’s either comfortable or really mad she can say (and probably knows) more curse words than everyone in the troops combined.

Ymir: she just needs cursing to live and most of her sentences consist of phrases with random curse words intertwined into every single one of them. Special mention to “shit” because she likes it a lot and most things that aren’t related to Historia are just “shitty” to her.

“I SWEAR TO GOD REINER YOU SHITTY FUCKING DICKHEAD! STAY AWAY FROM HISTORIA”

Erwin: oh, our good suburban dad Erwin. He really likes “bloody hell” and will throw random dammits at small inconveniences like “staining” his shirt with a little bit of coffee or a pen falling from his desk.

Levi: he will for sure call everyone an “asshole” because he simply thinks everyone is. Period. He doesn’t care who you are. To him, everyone is just a “stupid asshole that doesn’t deserve his time and effort”.

Yes. He learned this word from Kenny. Now cry.

Hange: they absolutely love researching funny and currently unused curse words on the internet just for the laughs. Hange doesn’t really feel the need to curse at everything and everyone, but will randomly throw some of the ones they learned when everyone is angry and cursing to just “get in the mood”.

Ymir: “he’s just shitty, I guess…”

Connie: “JUST SHITTY? HE FUCKING SUCKS ASS”

Hange, passing by: “zooterkins! he sounds like a zounderkite. Did you two know that is the victorian word for idiot?” *laughs and leaves*

Reiner: his favorites were “son of a bitch”, “motherfucker” and “whore”, and he mainly used them to insult fellow men when he was at Paradis. Now that he’s back in Marley, he just doesn’t have the energy/tries to avoid doing it for the kids.

Bertholdt: my good man right here would never insult anyone but himself when he is frustrated (which mostly happens in his mind, of course), but sometimes, when he says these things out loud, they’re like:

“Come on Bertholdt you’re such an idiot!”

“Dumb. I am dumb. Goodbye”. *storms off in tiny anger*

Annie: is definitely beyond basic “rat kid insults” (in her words) like “pussy”, anything to do with balls, “whateverfucker” and randomly saying “fuck” or “shit” in every sentence, so she usually goes with the useful basic when needed:

“Fuck off”. Yep, that is definitely a favorite.

Pieck: definitely knows how to curse properly but chooses not to, so don’t be fooled. She might look soft, and she is. But she has also been on too many missions with too many soldiers and definitely knows way more insults and jargon than you.

She doesn’t really have a favorite one, though. She just enjoys the looks on people’s faces when she lets them know that she understood every single word that they said and that “calling her a “carechimba hija de su puta madre” won’t suffice”.

Yelena: will straight up HEX you in russian and occasionally bring up some slurs💀. I know, I’m sorry Yelena but we all know it’s true ㅠㅠ

Zeke: this man is still -sadly- not over “balls and penis curse words”, so you can imagine for yourself what his common expressions are and how he goes from “ballsack sucker” to whatever sounds like it.

Porco: uses the classical “fuck”, “shit”, “bitch” and so on, but additionally tries to incorporate curse words or even slurs that he doesn’t know how to use or what they mean and their implications, only to be met by Pieck’s stare seconds later; and you guessed it: she usually has to explain to him what they mean and why he shouldn’t be using them.

Falco: will mostly say those weird “filtered bad words” that are children-safe, such as “fudge nuggets!” and “snickerdoodle!”, but you cannot tell me that Gabi hasn’t taught him the actual stuff and he secretly uses “shit” on the internet and some others slip out when he’s playing with his friends and gets mad at Gabi for cheating.

Gabi: knows the entire classic curse word dictionary. Occasionally uses slurs pretending she didn’t know that she couldn’t say them.

One day, she called Falco a “piece of pixelated b*kk*ke” because she heard it somewhere and thought it meant “shit”, so Pieck had to step in and age-appropriately explain that it was something that “bad men did to punish women in Japan and that it was not funny at all”. Gabi never said it again.

Casually picked up “suka” from Yelena because she thought it sounded funny.

[misscrazyfangirl321]

consider: modern, mundane au where James, John, and Nikola are all lowkey Competing for a very tired and uninterested Helen's heart? Bonus points for Nigel being the only one n o t interested and Helen going to him for help/commiseration.

“Alright, everyone, it’s time for the last dance of the evening, so grab that special someone; it might be your last chance.”

Helen grimaces at the host finishes his spiel. She’s already done far too little dancing at this party (she loves to dance, but so many here would take her dancing with them as a declaration, which it most certainly wouldn’t be), and now she won’t be able to have the last dance. Not since he’s framed it as some epic moment of romance. 

Her gaze wanders the room, and she isn’t the least bit surprised to find Nikola, John, and James, all from different corners of the room, making their way to her. She downs the rest of her drink in a single gulp, fully prepared to simply bail early, but a hand on her arm stops her. She turns to scowl at the intruder, stopping short when she realizes who it is. Immediately, all of her irritation falls away.

“Nigel?”

He grins. “May I have this dance, Miss Magnus?” 

Oh, what she’s done to deserve his friendship, she has no idea, but she’s eternally grateful for it. Still... “Are you certain you wouldn’t rather share it with your wife?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “I can dance with my wife any time. How often do I get to rescue my best friend from unwanted admirers?”

She smiles, sparing a glance to Jeanette for permission. The woman simply lifts a glass, nodding with a smile of her own, and waves impatiently to the dance floor. It’s all Helen needs to take Nigel’s arm, letting him guide her out onto the floor.

Pointedly avoiding the eyes of the men stopping short around the room, she settles into a dancing hold, amazed by how comfortable it is with someone who isn’t trying to woo her. She’s always been able to simply have fun with Nigel, without the pressures John, Nikola, and James (though the latter does at least try to hold back some) always bring. 

Belatedly, she responds to his words from before, as they sway around the room. “I thought Nikola was your best friend.”

Nigel rolls his eyes. “Not after that last match, he isn’t.”

Helen laughs, the tensions of the night fading in a moment. “Why you continue to bet against him, I have no idea.” 

“Because he’s cheating, and one day I’ll figure out how.” 

These men truly are ridiculous, but she can’t imagine life without them (even if she wishes certain ones would take a step or two back). 

“Thank you, Nigel,” she says quietly, and he tilts his head to the side. 

“For what?”

“For...” For being there. For knowing how to be a friend, instead of following her around like a lovesick puppy. For making her life easier, simpler, in spite of the complications. For everything. “... Dancing,” she finishes finally, and he grins.

“Don’t mention it.” 

She does care for the others-perhaps could even fall for them, under different circumstances. But their friendships with her are all too important to her, and she won’t delude herself; she knows their friendships with each other would break down if she chose one (John and Nikola, especially, would turn on each other). She cannot be the reason for that happening. 

But those thoughts are far too heavy for such a fun evening, so she chases them away, focusing instead on playful banter with one of her oldest friends.

[shit-talk-turner]

Or maybe there are no interesting women around Alex? Or at least women who are not strangely controversial - unlike some of his girlfriends making many people bothered by their strange and uncultured social media activity. Is it a romantic vision of a relationship between two artists? Or about a woman who finally seems interesting? Or… Or is this fandom lacking a female character to identify with? And it would be nice if he fucked someone we like? Someone we can relate to?//

Yes, I probably think it's for these two reasons, that is, apart from Alexa who I think the guy was really in love with (take nothing away from Arielle and Taylor), I don't think any other of his exes, much less his current girlfriend, are stimulating for him, in fact in my imagination, I would see Alexandra as a similar spirit to Alex, I think their union could have a good response both artistically speaking (because we  all see how they let themselves be influenced by one another's style after having written together BoS, in fact I find that in the second Savior's album there is something of Turner, just as in Tbhc there is something of Savior) and perhaps in a romantic sense. But at the same time I think that Alex probably needs girlfriends who don't have anything to do with what he does, because maybe many men feel scared of a realized and autonomous woman, in short, a person who does not necessarily need the presence of a man who guides her into whatever she does like a "loving daddy", or he simply prefer tall, skinny, blonde models just to some extent "show up"? "to be able to boast" of having all these apparently confident girls next to him, simply to mask a hidden insecurity of him? (This is not to say that Alexandra cannot play this role in the best possible way ... I mean she IS BEAUTIFUL, she is blonde and all the rest and in the past she has also done some shotting, but maybe in addition to being a beautiful girl she has a thinking brain ? Doesn't she just be condescending? Here's this I think scares a lot of men and maybe Alex too?)

Also I agree with the second reason you gave, I sincerely feel that I could identify myself more with a girl like Alexandra than with one like Louise who seems uninterested and boring, and I could die of joy if he wakes up a morning and decide to leave Louise and maybe have a reunion with Alexandra, have a coffee together, maybe at the Mustard Seed Café👀 and think about "making up for lost time" (but I realize that it's just a fantasy, not to mention that Alex would become a serial traitor, who at the stroke of 3/4 years of engagement looks for "stimulation" elsewhere, cheating on his current girlfriends ... imagine Louise and Taylor who suddenly become BFF for this thing🙈)

In the end Alexandra unlike Louise and Taylor (although she (Alexandra) rarely does), relates to fans and always seems very polite, sweet and helpful.

P.s. I also apologize for the essay😬

NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR ESSAYS THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ALEX/Alexandra Savior OR any related figures!!!!!!

[the-great-bbe]

Ready or Not!

Rhaenys crawls under her father’s bed. Mama was quite clear: they were playing hide and seek, and Rhaenys needed to hide her best from all the men looking for her. She stifles a giggle into her little hands. After the count of ten—ready or not, here they come!

or a quick little fanfic, about our favorite game of hide and seek :)

Lyrics of “The Hide and Seek Song” copyright by Headquarters Music.

Who wants to play a game? It’s time for hide and seek!

--

Mama kisses Rhaenys’s forehead. Egg sleeps in his cradle, despite all the noise coming from outside. It sounds scary out there, but Rhaenys is safe with Mama and Egg. Mama will never let anything bad happen to her, not even the nightmares that scare Rhaenys in the middle of the night.

“Let’s play a game, my sweet.” Mama’s hands are shaking, and her voice is high pitched. But everything must be fine, because they’re going to play a game. And not just any game, but hide and seek! “Listen carefully. Many men will try and find us, but we can’t be found by anyone. When the game is over, I’ll come get you myself, do you understand? You must hide very well, not even Balerion can find you.”

Rhaenys nods. “I’m good at this game, Mama! I’ll hide forever and ever and then we’ll have honey cakes after dinner.” Maybe if Rhaenys hides the best she can, Mama will let her have two entire honey cakes!

Mama kisses her again, and hugs her so tight that Rhaenys squeaks against her shoulder. “My little sunshine, I love you so much. Now hide. Hide!”

Rhaenys scurries off. Mama is really worried even if she didn’t say so. This game must be very important—perhaps Grandfather is playing too, even though he never plays games. So where should she hide? Maybe behind the barrels in the wine cellar, or in the gardens? No, beneath Papa’s bed! No one ever goes in his room anymore, and the space is so small that only she and Balerion can fit!

She tiptoes up the stairs, and closes the bedroom door so that it’s almost shut but not entirely. Closed doors are more suspicious in hide and seek, after all. Then she tucks herself beneath the bed, and arranges the heavy bedspread so that it’s not wrinkled. Rhaenys shimmies to the very edge of where the bedframe meets the wall, and waits.

She waits, and waits. She almost wants to go back and ask Mama for how long they’re supposed to play, and how many players. But instead she wiggles with anticipation. Mama was quite clear: they were playing hide and seek, and Rhaenys needed to hide her best from all the men looking for her. And Rhaenys is the very best at hiding! She stifles a giggle into her little hands. After the count of ten, or maybe a hundred—ready or not, here they come!

Rhaenys spies a shadow by the almost-closed door, and holds her breath.

-- Run, run, run! Time to run and hide!

Run, run, run! And now I’m going to find you, scurry off into the darkness.

Hurry, I’m behind you!

Don’t you speak! Hide and seek!

--

“Myrcella! Myrcella, where are you?”

Myrcella bites her lip. Joffrey is no good at being a seeker, he gets too angry and starts shouting for her and the servant children. And of course the servants come out, and Joffrey is so mean when he catches someone! But not Myrcella—she is the very best at this game, and she would rather fall asleep beneath this dusty old bed than let Joffrey win.

Mother tells her to let Joffrey win, to keep him from throwing a tantrum, but Uncle Tyrion says that it’s good for even the Crown Prince to be told no every now and then. She sniffles. One of the serving girls showed her this hiding spot, saying that no one ever looks under here since it’s so deep in Maegoir’s Holdfast and who can fit beneath a bed anyway?

Why does the Hand even have this room—maybe this is where Lady Lysa is supposed to sleep, instead of in Lord Littlefinger’s rooms. Myrcella isn’t supposed to know about that, of course. But she knows a lot. She knows that Joffrey isn’t going to be a very good king, and that Mother and Father should’ve never married, and that the mean old black cat Tommen wants to catch had another owner before. Myrcella heard Uncle Jaime speak about him once, and the person who owned the cat before. Uncle Jaime says many things about before Myrcella was born, but only when he is drunk and sad.

She twists a bit of string around her string until her finger turns purple. By now Joffrey must have found Sweetrobin and Tommen. She hopes that Sweetrobin cried and punched Joffrey in the nose. He gets to hit Joffrey without getting in trouble, since his father is the Hand. Myrcella is just a girl though, and must be a sweet little lady who lets Joffrey do whatever he wants. Last time she complained to him about cheating in games, he bit her ear. Mother wiped her tears and told her to bear it with a smile. Myrcella stopped complaining after that, but it still burns in her stomach.

Father says he won’t be like this forever, at least. Myrcella hopes so. She imagines him fully grown, but still the same way, and instead of twisting her arm he twists her neck. Just like Tommen’s kitten that bit him once. Joffrey let the poor little creature under Tommen’s bed, and Tommen screamed about monsters for weeks afterward. She sighs. There aren’t any monsters here that Myrcella doesn’t already know.

Myrcella hears footsteps down the corridor and holds her breath. Oh, if Joffrey finds her, he’ll tug at her hair and scratch at her arms! He’ll be so horrible, he always is! She’d rather die than be found by him!

--

Tiptoe through the cellar or crawl under your bed.

Anywhere you’ve fled, I am going to find you!

Stay inside the shadows, all you girls and boys.

Don’t you make noise, or I am going to find you!

--

“Are you afraid?” Myriame asks Arya, but she shakes her head. She refuses to be afraid. Not now, when they’re still hiding from the men who took Father away and locked Sansa in her room.

She shivers and Myriame pats her arm. She’s one of the serving girls—Arya heard Father call them Lord Varys’s little birds, once. Before everything went so wrong. But when Father was taken, a group of serving girls took Arya by the arm and hid with her in an alcove. They cut her hair, they dirtied her face, they shredded her fine dress and pinned a dirty pinafore to her shoulders. No more Arya Stark, just Nan. Nan, amongst Myriame, and Celia, and Delight, and Sera. Just another serving girl hiding behind curtains, nor beneath the bed.

“It will be alright,” Myriame whispers. “The only ones who go down here are us. Everyone else gets caught like Princess Myrcella. Those men won’t ever get us.”

Arya shivers. No one speaks of Princess Myrcella and how she disappeared without a trace. Did bad men steal her away like Father and Sansa? She dares to ask, “How do you know?”

But then their breath because there’s men outside their room. Their voices are harsh and drip with ill intent. One of them calls Sansa a whore and Arya wants to stab his eyes out with Needle. But then they enter the room and she squeezes her eyes shut and holds her hands over her nose and mouth. They can’t find her. They can’t! They’ll take her away from Father and Sansa, and who knows what they’ll do to Myriame!

There are four beds in this room, a servants’ dorm. Arya dares to peek. They check beneath one bed. Then another. One of the men cackles, “I can smell you, little girl! Where are you hiding?”

Neither of them dare to breathe. The man says in a high pitched mockery voice, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Arya burrows into Myriame’s side and waits to die. There is noise, yelling, shouting, terrible noise. Then there is heavy silence, only broken by Myriame’s breaths. Arya doesn’t dare open her eyes. Not for a second.

Myriame murmurs again that it will be alright, but Arya keeps her eyes firmly shut, counting the seconds.

--

Run, run, run! Creep up on my grave!

Run, run, run! Stalk the night away!

Scuttle off into the night! But what’ll be behind you?

Don’t you speak! Hide and seek!

--

Tywin barricades the doors shut in his wrath. How do two grown knights go missing in daylight?! And not just any knights, but his own—he needs Gregor Clegane’s bloodlust to scour the Riverlands, like a beast on a leash. And Amory Lorch is slime suited for the most unsavory tasks that Tywin cannot do. But they are gone, disappeared without a trace.

Just like his granddaughter Myrcella.

He sheaves himself onto his chair and pours himself a goblet from a blood red decanter. Years have passed, and still Cersei blames the Dornish. But even Tywin can’t point the finger at them, as there is no evidence at all. Myrcella simply played hide and seek one day, and was never found. Most likely some depraved monster of a servant took the girl for his own desires and threw her into the Blackwater, a fate entirely underserved for anyone of House Lannister. The fact that the girl was too sweet to harm a fly just makes the wound sting greater. Without her calming influence, Joffrey is an unhinged little bastard, and Tommen a spineless fool. What is Cersei teaching her children?

Not to mention she’s let both Stark girls escape! First Arya in the chaos after Eddard Stark’s arrest, then Sansa from a barricaded room! Last Tywin heard, they were both back in their mother’s custody at Riverrun. And Robb Stark is proving himself to be a wolf on the battlefield—he’ll have to deal with the boy himself. If he can stop him from overtaking the Riverlands and spilling into the Westerlands! Tywin could gouge his daughter’s eyes out for her folly. They will never get Jaime back, now that they’ve lost their bargaining chips!

Tywin hears footsteps lead up to his door and barks, “I am to be undisturbed!” He doesn’t hear them head back down the stairwell, and he growls to himself. Idiots, he is surrounded by idiots! He stalks to the door and swings open the door.

There is no one there. He blinks, then closes it. He turns back towards his chair, and the window is open. Cold sweat beads at his brow. He never opened that window, and yet the curtains blow in the wind.

A princess and two knights go missing in broad daylight without a trace. This must be the work of faceless Men from Braavos, paid to…to what? Myrcella is an obvious target, if less obvious than Joffrey or Tommen. But why Clegane and Lorch? Perhaps this is a Dornish ploy, as revenge for Princess Elia and her children—

Something falls over in his adjoined privy and Tywin swears he hears footsteps come up the stairwell once more. He steals into his bedroom without so much as a whisper, as one breath. He must hide. The wardrobe’s doors are swinging in the breeze. The Faceless Man will hear him close them, surely. But where else? His heart pounds in his temples and his vision swims. By the gods, are they already inside the room?

He looks down. It is insulting, but his only choice. Tywin squeezes himself beneath his bed and pushes himself towards the wall. The walls themselves are hollow, to allow the servants to attend without disturbing his betters. If he can find the trapdoor without alerting the assassin, he can survive this.

He is Tywin Lannister, the true ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. He will not die here! He holds his breath, and wills his numb hands to stop shaking.

--

Like a frog inside a skillet, a lobster in a pan.

You don’t understand that I am going to find you!

Be still as a mountain and quiet as a mouse, ‘cause any little sound,

And I will surely find you!

--

Joffrey is dead. Joffrey is dead! And the castle isn’t safe! Tommen scurries into an abandoned room deep in Maegor’s Holdfast. There’s just a trundle bed in the corner, boxes piled on top of each other in the center, and dust coating everything. Once, Myrcella showed him this room while playing hide and seek—but that was when she was still here. Even years later, no one understands what happened to her, or to Gregor Clegane, or Amory Lorch, or to Grandfather. Mother blames the wicked Dornish. Joffrey blames evil Northmen magic. But Tommen knows, he knows that it’s the monsters. He has seen them in the night! They are in the walls! They are beneath the beds!

Tommen told Margaery to run before he fled the wedding feast. He hopes she survives. But he can’t think of more than finding his hiding place. He’ll never make it out of the castle, not with the smallfolk starving and so angry at them. He’ll sneak out at night, before the monster goes feeding. And then he’ll head…somewhere. Anywhere but here!

Try as he might, Joffrey haunts his steps. His bloated purple face, the bile and blood spilling down his chin to pool in Mother’s lap. Mother screamed and screamed when he died, like the day when they couldn’t find Myrcella or Father. The monsters must have killed him too, like everything else in this castle. And now he is alone!

Tommen shrieks, and claws at his hair. He can’t breathe! They can hear him! They can smell him! He is next!

He crouches down on the bed in the corner. He wills himself to breathe but he’s too afraid. Joffrey is dead! Myrcella is dead! Grandfather is dead! Will they ever find his body?! Tommen chokes on his sobs and his entire chest aches. He hurts. It hurts. The fear, it hurts, make it stop—

He collapses to the ground. He writhes, and scoots beneath the bed, and muffles his screams into the dust and the dark.

--

Tick—tick—tock, are you ready or not?

Tick—tick—tock, listen to the clock!

Hasten off into the black, don’t waste another heartbeat,

Don’t you peek! Hide and seek!

--

Dragons roar from over Kings Landing, and Cersei sobs into her hands. She should be on the Iron Throne to meet the usurpers, but then they burned her Kingsguard at the gates and—and she panicked. She ran, and hid beneath a servant’s bed.

King Aegon Targaryen the Sixth, come back from the dead! With silver-gold hair and bronze skin and indigo eyes, thirty thousand Dornish spears at his back and that miserable little chit Shireen Baratheon as a bride with the Stormlands as her dowry! And Daenerys Stormborn, Queen Beyond the Sea, come to help her nephew claim his throne with their shared dragons! They each ride one, with one reserved for the sister that Lannister men murdered along with godsdamned Elia Martell! Cersei could scream, but then they’d find her.

She must escape.

If she makes her way back to Casterly Rock, then she shall be saved. No dragon can defeat the heart of the Westerlands! Cersei can still salvage this, even with all her family dead and her dreams scattered to ashes in her throat—

At least there is no valonqar. The prophecy took her children from her, but her neck is still her own.

At least she got to hold Joffrey as he died. Myrcella and Tommen had no bodies to bury. He was her first, and her last, and she prays that he found his siblings from wherever those wretched monsters stole them away.

Muffled footsteps creep from beyond the corridor and Cersei can’t breathe. A servant? A Dornish spear? A Dothraki? Daenerys? Aegon? A monster?

Bare feet enter the room, splattered with dirt and blood. One of Varys’s little birds? They skip to the edge of the bed, and a sweet voice rings out, “Found you!”

Swift as night and brutal as the Blackwater, a hand reaches under and grips Cersei by the hair. She screams as she is dragged out, and then she can’t scream because hands are at her throat and twisting—

--

Let the countdown begin!

10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1!

--

Rhaenys peeks out from behind the door. All is still and silent. Not even the flies are buzzing. She stifles a giggle into her hands. Aegon raises an eyebrow, and she explains, “Everyone always hides under the bed. A child’s mistake, it can be forgiven with time and wisdom.”

He shakes his head, before resting his chin on her head. “You’ll never need to hide beneath the bed again, I swear it.”

“I know.” She trusts her brother. She loved him before he could even remember her face, of course she trusts him. Him, and their aunt Daenerys, and their family in Dorne, and all her friends hiding in the walls—Rhaenys shall never be alone again.

Her family are in the throne room, and she shouldn’t keep them waiting. How happy they will be to see her! How happy she will be to see them! The weight of years of hiding bows her shoulders. It is time for her to stop hiding, stop seeking, stop this game and take her place in Aegon’s circle. He will be so proud to see how she’s survived. Mama would be proud. But Rhaenys…well, old habits die hard.

She shimmies beneath the bed and pulls Aegon down with her. He laughs and she lets the shadows become her. Just once more. Once more, the darkness becomes her. Rhaenys bares her teeth in a grin. What better tool for a new king than a monster who knows where everyone hides? Aegon survived the last game between them, and she’ll keep it that way.

She tells Aegon to count to ten, and he holds his breath.

A clock ticks somewhere.

There are many who covet the throne. And the countdown begins anew.

--

Ready or not, here I come!

[agent-jones]

In Defence of Gwendolyn Elizabeth Cooper

Okay, I want to start this out with a few DISCLAIMERS. First, this is probably going to be a long post, so buckle in. Second, I just want to say upfront that I DO NOT CONDONE the mistakes Gwen has made. Defending and understanding her are far different from actually condoning what she’s done and I figured I would put that blanket statement right here at the top. I know she did Bad Things. This isn’t to excuse that, it’s to explain, maybe, why she did what she did and perhaps people can gain a new perspective on Gwen Cooper in the process.

Okay. Leggo.

I asked for people to send their reasonings for not liking Gwen and I did get a few responses, so THANK YOU to those who messaged me! Everyone was very polite about it and I’m very grateful for that. The overwhelming reason people seem to hate Gwen is how she acted in regards to her relationship with RHYS. There is a lot to unpack there so I’m going to put all of the Rhys stuff in one section, and then move on to the other reasons I’ve seen about the fandom.

Rhys

Cheating on Rhys with Owen.

The thing about Torchwood is that they deal with the shittiest parts of the Universe. Suzie was right about that. Gwen came in not really knowing what she was getting herself into. Suddenly, she’s thrown into this chaotic, messy environment where she’s almost killed on basically a daily basis and she comes home from work and she can’t talk about it. She has to pretend to Rhys that she spent the day pushing paperwork, when actually the deadliest alien in the Universe tried to cut her head open with scary conversion tools and a member of their team ended up being the reason for it. She deals with trauma on a daily basis and the one person she should be able to talk to, who should be able to hold her and let her fall apart to him, isn’t allowed to know. Of course she feels isolated, wouldn’t you? Our partners are supposed to be the people we go to for support and help, but she literally cannot tell him a single thing about her life anymore. But she gets home and she has to it there and think about everything that scares her and all of the horrible things she sees, the death and destruction and tragedy, and she can’t say a single thing about it.

So, of course the idea of being with someone she can talk to is tempting, being with someone who shares her experiences and can truly empathise with her fears and help her through this new, and tragedy-filled, way of life. Why wouldn’t she want that? Owen offers it. Owen. Who knows she has a boyfriend, who literally says “I torture people in happy relationships,” comes to her and says “you can share these things with me.” And lost and unable to talk to anyone else but him, she gives into the temptation. Because, maybe this is better for her than having a partner who can’t be allowed to know the new Gwen Cooper: Torchwood Operative. Maybe she can finally have someone who will hold her and help her through things she can’t share with her boyfriend.

Flirting with/“Throwing herself at” Jack

Not going to lie, this one really bugs me when I see it. Why? Because Jack Harkness instigates pretty much every flirtation they have. The gun range scene: Jack sensually moving against her body to “show her the proper way to shoot.” Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: that cellar scene, where he caresses her arm and gives her this line about coming back for her [ after he had just said the same thing to Ianto so ]. Her wedding: the nostrovite was the one to lean in to kiss Gwen, the one to say “sometimes you meet someone who knocks your world off--” whatever the wording is. That nostrovite, using Jack, knew that he flirts with her like that, for it was the one making all of the moves. 

Jack is this enigmatic, BEAUTIFUL man who swoops into the life of Gwen Cooper, shows her that the Universe is bigger than anyone could imagine, and flirts with her, looks at her like she’s the most special human being on Earth. It’s no surprise she got a crush. It happens. But never, does she throw herself at him, in fact he always seems to be the one trying to do something, even though he also knows she has a boyfriend and consistently reminds her to keep hold of that life. Yes, she kissed him in Day One. But you know who else kissed Jack Harkness even though she had a boyfriend? Martha Jones. People make mistakes. It was the heat of the moment where Jack saved this girl that Gwen cared for and was so scared was going to die, she saw Jack act gentle and kind and yes, she made a mistake. But, it happens.

If you’re going to crucify Gwen for making very human mistakes such as this, it’s unfair to crucify her and not the men who played just as big of a role in it. They’re in no way innocent and to turn Gwen into this horrid, cheating slut and not condemn the men for knowingly throwing themselves at her despite her relationship status is really, quite frankly, sexist and a double-standard. 

Drugging Rhys

A horrible decision. Wrong. Yes, she did something incredibly invasive and absolutely not okay. She did it because she was spiraling. The thing with Owen had ended and I truly believed Gwen realised that she needed and loved Rhys, that he was the man for her and she needed to hold onto that. But, she was still holding back secrets, there were still things she couldn’t tell him. She was feeling guilty and wanted to tell Rhys the truth. But, if he left her because of it? That’s it. She loses her life outside of Torchwood, she loses the one thing keeping her grounded on Earth as the Universe tears into her at work. Of course she’s terrified and yes, it made her do something incredibly not okay. She took away Rhys’s ability to choose for himself.

She shows remorse for this, obviously, when she refuses to retcon Rhys at the end of Meat. She won’t do that to him again, won’t take away his right to know what he knows. And then again at their wedding. Jack offers them both retcon and Gwen says no, no secrets anymore. In that moment, Rhys’s face almost seemed disappointed that they weren’t going to forget that hellish day, that maybe he wanted to remember it in a way that didn’t involve aliens and their families almost being torn to shreds. But, Gwen has learned from her mistake. She won’t do it again.

Also. Gwen is not the only team member who has done something like that, in fact they all have:

Owen: took away the agency of two people by spraying them with a perfume that made them want to have sex with him. Two people who didn’t want to before they were drugged. That is date r*** and it is very bad. But, Owen is forgiven by the fandom for it. He’s loved and not bashed.

Jack: literally retcons anyone who talks to him for too long.

Tosh: dug around in the inner-most private thoughts of the people around her, invaded the deepest crevices of their minds and peered in on their secrets. This is absolutely not okay.

Ianto: clearly took advantage of and manipulated Jack in order to save Lisa. Got two innocent people killed, nearly got the entire team killed, and then allowed Jack to be given to slave traders and killed, before changing his mind and rescuing him. These are really horrible things, and yet he is the fan favourite. 

Gwen has done no more wrong than the rest of the team. This is the point of Torchwood: flawed human beings doing what they can to save the world and that “flawed” descriptor is for Gwen too. 

“She’s a Bitch”

Oh I’ve heard this one a few times and it always confuses me. She’s a bitch? When? When was Gwen ever mean to anyone? 

When she thought the thing about Tosh’s boots over jeans look being out of fashion? First, it was her private thought that Tosh had no business listening to. Second, it wasn’t thought in a mean-spirited way, she was simply making a fashion observation. We all do it. It does make us bitches to point out when things have gone out of fashion. Tosh was more of a bitch to Gwen when she found out about her and Owen in Countrycide “didn’t take you long to get your feet under the table.” That’s a bitchy and petty thing to say, but no one is calling Tosh a bitch.

Is she ever a bitch to Rhys? Not that I remember [ of course beyond the everything up there ]. But, there are moments where Rhys is a total ASS to her. Her new boss runs up to her saying there’s an emergency and that she’s needed, what does Rhys do? He screams at her “SIT THE FUCK DOWN, GWEN”  in front of her boss. That is not an okay thing to do, ever. Then, there’s the moment in Adrift when he says something like “sometimes I really hate you, Gwen.” He says this to his wife because she’s going through something very hard on her that is making her question the Universe and because it’s swaying her decision on if she wants to bring kids into the world, he says he hates her. At this point, he knows what she sees, knows what she goes through on a daily basis and doesn’t bother to take into consideration that she’s stressed and traumatised when trying to get her to make huge life decisions.

Gwen has emotions, but she’s never flat out mean to people, but there have been times where others have been cruel to her, and they aren’t hated for it.

“What she said at the end of Meat was uncalled for”

This is what she says:

GWEN: But none of you have any partners outside of this. JACK: But we understand how you feel. GWEN: No, you don't. No, you don't, Jack. You all think it's cold and lonely out there. But it isn't for me because I have him. 

She isn’t wrong. She doesn’t say anything cruel about the team. She points out the fact that they can’t understand what it’s like to have to hide her ENTIRE life from her partner. Jack and Ianto have a relationship, they’re partners yes, but they can actually talk about how hard the job is, they can talk about Torchwood and the shit they see and how it affects them. Is it so wrong for Gwen to say they can’t understand how she feels that she can’t? The entire team apart from her have been so entwined with Torchwood for so long that they don’t have lives outside of it, and that’s what she’s saying and she’s not wrong. Why hate her for pointing out the truth because she wants to be able to talk to the person she loves about the harder parts of her life?

“She acts superior to the team”

This one I see a lot. That people seem to think she somehow acts like she’s better than them, that she acts righteous somehow. But, that’s not what she’s doing. I’ve made a post about this before, but I’ll sum it up here. Jack hired Gwen because he needed someone with a new perspective, someone who could see how what they do affects civilians and help them use that to work better. He brought her in to remind them that they need to do better by the people of Cardiff. 

And that’s what she does,

She calls them out for being callous about Carys because that’s what Jack hired her for. The girl was dying and to her, it seemed like they didn’t care and so she spoke up, like Jack had asked her to do. She realises that she’s wrong in a way and she adjusts how she goes about it. Jack consistently reminds her why she was brought on, to call them out when they needed it and to remind them that there are human beings that are affected by what they do and they should care. And then when she does that, the fandom hates her for it. Don’t hate her for doing the job she was brought in to do.

Her Miracle Day speech

The Gwen in Miracle Day is not the same Gwen who peered over that parking garage barrier to spy on Torchwood. She saw the worst of the Universe, she watched as so many people died around her. Her friends all died horrific deaths. She was yanked by Jack into this whirlwind of a life, into the chaos and destruction that was Torchwood-- and then he left her. 

GWEN: Are you ever coming back, Jack? JACK: What for? GWEN: Me. 

He says nothing and leaves anyway. She begged her best friend to not leave her, after the last of her friends was killed, and he basically said she wasn’t worth staying for. How could she not be broken after that? As two people very close to me have said [ credit to @cxptained​ and @agent-sato​ ]: everyone else on the team was brought into Torchwood already broken, Torchwood took them in and put them back together again. Gwen came into Torchwood whole. She had a life and was happy. She lived, but she was SHATTERED. Torchwood took her and broke her. 

So yes, she says something that is horrible. She says that when everyone else died and she survived, she felt better than them. But sometimes we have thoughts that we don’t control, we have thoughts that we know are wrong. She knows it’s wrong. Eve’s acting? You can tell that she had those thoughts and that she felt horrible for having them.

Not to mention, she says this as she’s trying to get her baby daughter back from strangers who have kidnapped her. She’s desperate and terrified and angry and her daughter is in danger. Her mental space is horrible right now. She was abandoned by Jack, broken by Torchwood and when he appears again and she’s dragged back in? Her daughter is put in danger. But she also missed Torchwood and Jack. She’s terrified and lost and conflicted and she said something bad. But she knows she is wrong.

And So...

Gwen Cooper is a human being. She is a character in a show where ALL of the main characters are written to be flawed and complicated and to make mistakes while saving the world. She was put through so much and it seems as though she’s blamed for the fact that it changed her and led her to making decisions she may not have made had Torchwood not dragged her in.

She deserves more than how she’s treated by the fans.

[foodienamedmaddie]

Week 11, Blog Post Due 11/4

Q1. How often do you see online activism? 

Online activism is very prevalent in my social media. This is most likely due to the fact I follow activist accounts, and the majority of the other people I follow repost and share activism-related posts. I use social media as my main source for flow of information, so I am informed to a greater extent than I would be should I not follow these accounts. Although I do more to support organizations, my following is a form of support for the organization. Sandor Vegh notes, “Activists now take advantage of the technologies and techniques offered by the Internet to achieve their traditional goals,” as they should (Vegh, 2013). Technology- as we have seen- can heavily influence a movement. Positive steps toward a goal can be achieved with the help of technology and using it for the spread of information, calling out injustices, organizing online and in-person protests, along with countless other purposes. 

Q2. What are factors to consider when differentiating between cyberattacks?

To get to the root of cyberattacks- similar to almost every offensive incident- one must look at specifics to investigate the issue. These factors that need to be surfaced include the attacker and victim, how and how often these attacks occur, why the cyberattack happened, and the resulting impact of the attack (Vegh, 2013). Investigating these I can imagine is challenging, because there are no two occurrences that are the same. The goal of cyberattacks vary, with some goals being to “gain dominance by causing damage or compromising the opponent's information and communication  system, to express disapproval, or simply to raise public awareness” (Vegh, 2013). 

Q3. What role does Black Twitter play?

Black Twitter plays an enormous role in publicizing the truth of victims of police brutality. They clear misconceptions of victims being perceived as poverish criminals. Black Twitter shows that men including Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin are human. Media tries to shift the focus of the reality of the event to the victim’s “past” based on pictures pulled from social media, which is crippling and detrimental. Thankfully Black Twitter has cleared misconceptions and reached a large audience to shed light on the truth about injustices. Though like Lee states, there needs to be redefining of sorts, because while there are hashtags that have the intent to spread information, they are misperceived widely (Lee, 2017).  This goes without saying that the news media needs to reform immensely. Their methods of sharing stories are crooked.

Q4. Did you play any online games when you were younger that resembled the capitalistic country we live in?

If I remember correctly, in the early Sims games, characters work to gain money. Or cheat to gain. In today’s society this is a similar structure, because obviously people work, but when faced with the challenge of blocked opportunities to work, crime may occur to gain items they cannot afford. It reflects a similar form of domestic life in our physical world although lacking several limitations we as society face. It can be played as an escape from one’s personal daily life, and create a virtual life of how they wish their life to be (although this can be harmful). 

Lee, L. A. (2017, March 5). Black Twitter: A response to bias in mainstream media. MDPI. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/1/26.

Vegh, S. (2013, August 21). Classifying forms of online activism: The case of cyberprotests again. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203954317-9/classifying-forms-online-activism-case-cyberprotests-world-bank-sandor-vegh.

[lgbtqia-representation]

Monogamous Trap

Monogamy is yet another game at people trying to continue the cycle of heteronormativity that sadly even the LGBTQIA community falls into the trap for. However, with powerful forces backing this idea ranging from religious doctrines to national laws, it is easy to understand why this entire realm of relationships is brandished.

Under the realm of non-monogamous relationships there are far more than most would like to acknowledge ranging from the number of partners to inherent rules. To start simply is the difference between “-somes” and polyamory. “Three- “, “four- “, etc. -somes are specifically used to reference the idea of an intercourse-based relationship that has little to do outside the bedroom. Pretty much any relationship that has aspects outside the bedroom is more likely to be referenced as a throuple or polyamorous relationship. There are obviously going to be people who do not use the “more standard” language so specifically asking someone about is the best bet in any situation.

Aside from just numbers there is also “attitude” towards the relationship. What I mean by this is whether it is “open” or “closed”, or perhaps somewhere in the middle. An open polyamorous relationship can have a few different concepts such as each individual partner can look for other partners or it might mean the relationship is open to adding new people to it. This concept might be hard to understand if you only view relationships as a line. Instead think about each individual letter in the alphabet and imagine those as ways to depict different relationship set ups, you might be getting close to the vast number of options out there.

Just based on all of that it almost becomes easier to understand why the community is so misunderstood. There is no guide nor clear idea of what any given relationship would look like. This is one of the big controversial issues as to why the community is not so accepted into LGBTQIA despite clearly being a sexual orientation. This community receives backlash from the queer community as well as from society itself, this is sadly one of the most outcasted sections. This even comes down to the fact that many within the community wonder if this should not be in the community because it should be its own category of identity, relationship style perhaps. In a way it is ironic that it is not considered its own category whereas when looking at the animal kingdom one of the earliest facts for any animal we learn about is what is its mating style- for life or season being one of the largest aspects to that question. So, if we analyze an animal's mating partners why are we so weird about humans having those same sorts of characteristics?

As I mentioned earlier, this could largely come down to the idea of laws and doctrines working to guide the perceptions of “normal” relationship styles. This is a concern for the whole of the LGBTQIA community and yet they cannot even find safety within that community. Despite same sex relationships being actively opposed in most religions, many within the relationships still actively practice, believe, or agree with the ideas presented in their previous religion. This is one of the reasons so many people think it is wrong. Other people completely misunderstand the fundamental concepts of a polyamorous relationship which is communication between all partners. Many people say that these sorts of relationships are simply an excuse to cheat on each other with no consequence. Whereas when examined and understood, these situations are heavily communicated about from beginning to end to ensure all partners are content and satisfied. If someone cheats, they are not protected by the polyamory umbrella if anything they disrupted the core values of the system.

One of my biggest struggles with this community is that lesbians and bisexuals are often overlooked in this community. There is a prevalence or assumption that only gays and straight women primarily operate these kinds of relationships. This dynamic is often turned into the idea that straight women simply want another guy or are willing to let their male partners experiment as opposed to women having this sexuality. Countless articles are written about why men should join a threesome at least once listing off all sorts of benefits, that I do agree with- but that are not dependent on sexual or gender identity. They included:

It forces you to work on jealousy issues.

It forces you to become a better communicator.

Can get different needs met by each partner.

Two heads are better than one (intellectually speaking)

Two Shoulders to cry on

Cuddling

Your family triples.

Your friend group expands exponentially.

You have an additional hand parenting.

The sex

(Zane)

On the other hand, Females simply looking into this community are deemed to be “sleeping with enemy” which erases the entire concept of a three women relationship, which is entirely possible. This also works to marginalize female bisexuals despite them being approximately 60% of the bisexual population.

This sadly more comes back to gay men being fetishized as well as being more accepted in society due to them being a larger percent from the beginning. Also, celebrity inclusion, with many stars and actors suddenly coming out as being part of throuple with two, if not three, males, exposure is distinctively increasing for them while women are seemingly at a standstill. Stars like, Frankie Grande, brother of pop sensation Ariana Grande, even publicly announced his participation in one of these relationships.

Frankie even comments on his own impact and inclusion in the community, “A lot of people come up to me and say, “Oh my God, you are in a throuple? I am in a throuple,” ‘the star said. ‘It’s been cool to see people do that as well. Love is love is love is love.’” (‘Love is Love’)

Women even in their sexual identities are still looking to be fully accepted and noticed. Only with time and strong efforts can this hopefully change.

In Netflix’s new show “Insatiable” is another mainstream media representation of polyamory which ironically very accurately depicts the plights within this realm. “During the season finale, Bob A. [left in the above picture] speaks about his poly relationship (at this point still intact), explaining how embracing his identity as a poly bisexual man makes him feel "loved completely" and fully "satisfied."” (Foreman) This was a wonderful depiction of what polyamory actively works to achieve, a balance between the partners that allows each of them to feel satisfied and safe within the relationship. In contrast, “Bob B. [right in the above picture] unexpectedly breaks up with them. He explains, "I didn't agree to a relationship. I just thought the three of us would have sex sometimes so she would not feel left out.”” (Foreman) Whereas this shows the darker side of it, where certain relationships/individuals do not understand the poly individual(s). This specific instance Bob B. Believes Bob A. to be completely gay, negating his bisexual identity, as well as preventing him from balancing the two relationships to at least meet his desires. This especially shown when the women (center of image) and non-polyamorous Bob (right) confront the bisexual and polyamorous Bob(left) into picking only one of them when it is clear throughout the entire series, he truly loves both.

Resources:

Barrett, Kim. “Does Polyamory Fall Under the LGBT+ Umbrella?” Medium, Polyamory Today, 25 Jan. 2020, medium.com/polyamory-today/polyamory-and-the-lgbt-community-3a8a52debbc3.

Foreman, Alison. “We Need to Talk about That Throuple in 'Insatiable'.” Mashable, Mashable, 20 Aug. 2018, mashable.com/article/insatiable-throuple/.

Lewis, Jessi, et al. “The Great Divide: Polyamory, 'Throuples' and the LGBTI Community.” Star Observer, 18 Dec. 2016, www.starobserver.com.au/features/in-depth-features/great-divide-polyamory-throuples-lgbti-community/154564.

Outmagazine. “10 Reasons Every Gay Man Should Try a Throuple Once.” OUT, 17 Oct. 2018, www.out.com/lifestyle/2018/10/17/10-reasons-every-gay-man-should-try-throuple-once#media-gallery-media-1.

Rosenblum, Karen Elaine, and Toni-Michelle Travis, editors. The Meaning of Difference. 5th ed., McGraw-Hill Education, 2008.

Tabberer, Jamie. “'Love Is Love': Frankie Grande Reveals All about His Three-Way Relationship.” Gay Star News, 23 Nov. 2018, www.gaystarnews.com/article/love-is-love-frankie-grande-reveals-all-about-his-three-way-relationship/.

Wandrei, Karin E. “'Sleeping with the Enemy': Non-Monogamy and 1970s Lesbian-Feminists - Karin E Wandrei, 2019.” SAGE Journals, journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460717750074.

Image:

“Polyamory Infinite Heart Love Honesty Communication Vinyl: Etsy: Polyamory, Polyamory Relationships, Polyamory Quotes.” Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/144326363036694494/.

“Throuple.” Facebook, www.facebook.com/pages/category/Musician-Band/Throuple-645110832488889/.

[kkintle]

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Quotes

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

“I always loved you, and if one loves any one, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be.”

“Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off.”

Then, for the first time, grasping that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing in store but suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life was impossible like that, and that he must either interpret life so that it would not present itself to him as the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself.

“Some think marriage a game; for others it is the most serious business of their lives.”

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” (...)

“Vengeance is mine,I will repay.”

“Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault—all my fault, though I’m not to blame. That’s the point of the whole situation,” he reflected.

There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself.

They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth.

He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.

He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.

“Why, of course,” objected Stepan Arkadyevitch. “But that’s just the aim of civilization—to make everything a source of enjoyment.”

Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Levin’s, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class—all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class—she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.

‘Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy loving-kindness.’

“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

There are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good.

(...) If one forgives, it must be completely, completely.

Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Kitty knew where she was she found herself not merely under Anna’s sway, but in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married women. Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the unflagging eagerness which persisted in her face and broke out in her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look in her eyes, which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.

“So now you know whom you’ve got to do with. And if you think you’re lowering yourself, well, here’s the floor, there’s the door.”

“With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better,” (...)

“Well, there’s nothing to be done. . . . It’s not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new way. It’s nonsense to pretend that life won’t let one, that the past won’t let one. One must struggle to live better, much better.”

“Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.”

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

As though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other.

“ (...) ‘No one is satisfied with his fortune, and every one is satisfied with his wit.’ ” The attaché repeated the French saying.

He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder.

“ (...) There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian’s women . . . Women, such as one sees in dreams . . . Well, these women are sometimes to be met in reality . . . and these women are terrible. Woman, don’t you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it’s always perfectly new.” “Well, then, it would be better not to study it.” “No. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.”

In the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year’s leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass. “Imagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!”

“Count the sands of the sea, number the stars. (...)”

“The great thing’s to keep quiet before a race,” said he; “don’t get out of temper or upset about anything.”

He was angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right.

This child’s presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him farther and farther away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.

(...) like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!”

(...) “we mustn’t forget that those who are taking part in the race are military men, who have chosen that career, and one must allow that every calling has its disagreeable side. It forms an integral part of the duties of an officer. Low sports, such as prize-fighting or Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But specialized trials of skill are a sign of development.”

“Who are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness’ sake don’t suppose,” her eyes added, “that I would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.” “I like you too, and you’re very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time,” answered the eyes of the unknown girl.

“Perhaps so,” said the prince, squeezing her hand with his elbow; “but it’s better when one does good so that you may ask every one and no one knows.”

“But time’s money, you forget that,” said the colonel. “Time, indeed, that depends! Why, there’s time one would give a month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn’t give half an hour of for any money.

“ (...) I’ll be bad; but anyway not a liar, a cheat.”

“(...) while you have at your disposal a means of helping them, and don’t help them because to your mind it’s of no importance.” And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so undeveloped that you can’t see all that you can do, or you won’t sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.

“I imagine,” he said, “that no sort of activity is likely to be lasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that’s a universal principle, a philosophical principle,” (...)

Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

“No,” he said to himself, “however good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love her.”

He experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and take interest in other things besides his tooth.

“It is a misfortune which may befall any one. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only thing to be done is to make the best of the position.”

And it was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her.

“To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to work too.”

Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal affairs as he is.

“The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas.”

When Sviazhsky had finished, Levin could not help asking: “Well, and what then?” But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why it was interesting to him.

“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten—death.”

The position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary painful ordeal which would pass over.

By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber.

She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.

Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind.

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.

“It is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!

(...) no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, (...)

“What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other—in loss, in death—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one must act,” said he, as though guessing her thought. “One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live á trois.”

“One may save any one who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to her salvation, what’s to be done?”

“What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces any one, you know.” “Yes; that’s true,” said Levin; “it generally happens that one argues warmly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to prove.”

(...) he had firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear out of his heart his regret at the loss of her love, he could not erase from his memory those moments of happiness that he had so little prized at the time, and that haunted him in all their charm.

“Doubt is natural to the weakness of mankind,” (...)

“There’s some sense in this custom of saying good-bye to bachelor life,” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “However happy you may be, you must regret your freedom.”

In reality, those who in Vronsky’s opinion had the “proper” view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all this into words.

The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.

Never did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill with him, (...)

And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first.

He knew that Vronsky could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Vronsky’s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.

At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame some one else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction

“He’s just one of those people of whom they say they’re not for this world.”

He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul.

One may sit for several hours at a stretch with one’s legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there’s nothing to prevent one’s changing one’s position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them.

She had prepared everything but the words she should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.

(...) and slightly turning, was saying something to Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of injury.

“You think he can’t fall in love,” said Kitty, translating into her own language. “It’s not so much that he can’t fall in love,” Levin said, smiling, ���but he has not the weakness necessary.... I’ve always envied him, and even now, when I’m so happy, I still envy him.” “You envy him for not being able to fall in love?” “I envy him for being better than I,” said Levin. “He does not live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that’s why he can be calm and contented.”

“I don’t think anything,” she said, “but I always loved you, and if one loves any one, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....”

“It’s our Russian apathy,” said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; “we’ve no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.”

But her chief thought was still of herself—how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever-growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether they hindered his freedom.

“But you say it’s an institution that’s served its time.” “That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more respectfully. Snetkov, now ... We may be of use, or we may not, but we’re the growth of a thousand years. If we’re laying out a garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s stood for centuries in the very spot... Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won’t grow him again in a year,” (...)

But, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.

“If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it’s true, as papa says,—that when we were brought up there was one extreme—we were kept in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it’s just the other way—the parents are in the wash-house, while the children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children.” “Well, what if they like it better?”

(...) felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain on his attention.

Anna had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and Levin saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the portrait, in a dark blue shot gown, not in the same position nor with the same expression, but with the same perfection of beauty which the artist had caught in the portrait. She was less dazzling in reality, but, on the other hand, there was something fresh and seductive in the living woman which was not in the portrait.

Anna talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.

If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!”

There are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way.

Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.

But as he looked at her, he saw again that help was impossible, and he was filled with terror and prayed: “Lord, have mercy on us, and help us!” And as time went on, both these conditions became more intense; the calmer he became away from her, completely forgetting her, the more agonizing became both her sufferings and his feeling of helplessness before them. He jumped up, would have liked to run away, but ran to her. Sometimes, when again and again she called upon him, he blamed her; but seeing her patient, smiling face, and hearing the words, “I am worrying you,” he threw the blame on God; but thinking of God, at once he fell to beseeching God to forgive him and have mercy.

In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.

She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having got an object for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she transferred her jealousy from one object to another.

This irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given her. “I don’t expect you to understand me, my feelings, as any one who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,” she said.

For an instant she had a clear vision of what she was doing, and was horrified at how she had fallen away from her resolution. But even though she knew it was her own ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself from proving to him that he was wrong, could not give way to him.

“(...) What’s so awful is that one can’t tear up the past by its roots. One can’t tear it out, but one can hide one’s memory of it. And I’ll hide it.”

“He thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as any one in the world knows me. I don’t know myself.”

“We all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice.”

“Yes, of what Yashvin says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds men together. No, it’s a useless journey you’re making,” she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach and four, evidently going for an excursion into the country. “And the dog you’re taking with you will be no help to you. You can’t get away from yourselves.”

Then she thought that life might still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her heart was beating.

“Yes, I’m very much worried, and that’s what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there’s nothing more to look at, when it’s sickening to look at it all? But how?”

“There’s no one I should less dislike seeing than you,” said Vronsky. “Excuse me; and there’s nothing in life for me to like.”

And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish, made him for an instant forget his toothache.

And he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time, at a railway-station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last moment. He tried to recall his best moments with her, but those moments were poisoned forever. He could only think of her as triumphant, successful in her menace of a wholly useless remorse never to be effaced. He lost all consciousness of toothache, and his face worked with sobs.

Levin felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.

(...) something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this condition.

“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life’s impossible; and that I can’t know, and so I can’t live,” Levin said to himself. “In infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.” It was an agonizing error, but it was the sole logical result of ages of human thought in that direction. This was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Levin had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as any way the clearest, and made it his own. But it was not merely a falsehood, it was the cruel jeer of some wicked power, some evil, hateful power, to whom one could not submit. He must escape from this power. And the means of escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means—death.

Whether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays he avoided all thought or talk about it. Reasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it. So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.

“Then she recovered, but to-day or to-morrow or in ten years she won’t; they’ll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skilful, soft action shakes the ears out of their husks. They’ll bury her and this piebald horse, and very soon too,”

“Yes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,” said the prince. “That’s true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.”

“The people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,”

“Were you very much frightened?” she said. “So was I too, but I feel it more now that it’s over. (...)”

“What is it? you’re not worried about anything?” she said, looking intently at his face in the starlight. But she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at him.

“No, I’d better not speak of it,” he thought, when she had gone in before him. “It is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words. “This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith—or not faith—I don’t know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul. “I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”

[mihrunnisasultans]

Have you seen TSP promo for 2x04 yet? Based off what we see, I have three predictions for this episode: 1) Catherine is pregnant with Mary 2) Henry begins his affair with Bessie Blount 3) Meg falls for Angus and loses the Regency of Scotland to Albany

2)  While I’m not surprised by any of this, I hate what’s coming for Meg. Unfortunately, her life turned upside down after King James IV of Scotland died at the Battle of Flodden. She marries two more times for love, but Angus and Methven played on her emotions and used Margaret for her status—ultimately, cheating on her and stealing her money. She was living in poverty and forced to be supported by her son. Her first husband, James IV of Scotland, was the only one who truly loved her.

3)  Angus (and then Methven) will be Meg’s undoing. They charm her into thinking it’s true love, but both men married her for her status. They cheat on Margaret and steal her money. The only one who truly loved her was King James IV of Scotland. CAN WE REWRITE HISTORY AND BRING BACK RAY STEVENSON???

4)  It was very clear that TSP pulled out all the stops to make Angus look as sweet as could be in 2x04: Grief, but I can’t fall in love with his character because I know what’s coming. Angus ruins Margaret’s life. He cheats on her almost immediately and threw her into poverty for years. What’s worse is Methven does the same thing to her. I wish Meg had been told the advice she gives her character: “Stay! Away! From! Men!”

Hello Anon or Anons because I don’t know whether all messages in my inbox are from the same person or not, sorry for replying after a few days (which is still quick for me lmao), but I’ve been very tired & busy lately.

I’ve now obviously seen the whole episode and definitely enjoyed it most of all eps this season (it’s still TSP though) and then I learned it was written neither by Frost nor her Eastenders boyfriend, so this explains it I guess lol.

But honestly enjoyed bigger focus put on Tudor sisters’ storylines instead of devoting whole ep to how “awesome” Harrykate are. 

Honestly the way they write Angus at the moment just makes it sooo hard to suspect what is going to happen. If I hadn’t read some history, I would have been convinced he was a harmless dude and wouldn’t have suspected anything.  You can’t even accuse Meg of naivety because it’s hard to see it coming. He’s helpful, but not in creepy see-what-great-guy-I-am way because he does not overstep, but truly reacts appropriately when she needs some assistance, is not afraid to cry and show grief, talks about God and the poor and how this is more important than war, actually killing a person for the first time is a big deal for him (now compare it  with Frost’s KoA who couldn’t rest until she was able to do so ... she was truly given many toxic masculinity traits as EmPOwErEmEnt, I want to SCREAM), quotes More, is romantic, sweet, courteous.. ideal guy or not?

Likely will emerge a huge hypocrite soon, unless EF changes his character due to lack of screentime and Meg’s only problem will be paying a price for following her heart. Because that’s the problem that we have just 5 episodes left and still so many years & issues to cover? They will definitely arrive at the Great Matter and yes Henry haven’t even begun his womanising ways. Add Mary’s wedding drama with Brandon to come too. Ah and the completely uneccessary, but inevitable Maggie/More affair, which I now lost hope will be a platonic thing when we learned he is actually  satisifed with his wife and marriage except for “cold bed” (worst part of the episode, YIKES).

Same with Bessie, EF calls her a snake, but so far we’ve seen a friendly, caring girl, who is loyal to her mistress & not even any sexy seductress. She does not seem to be even interested in Henry, unless something’s already been going on and even the audience does not know it, and she expresses interest in Brandon as smokescreen. There’s like a lot of characters that will need to have a turn of 180 degrees with respect to how they are presented and so... little time for it? Henry also needs to get mad in accordance with spoilers LOL. I know characters might have hidden motives, but it’s hard to imagine EF doing it right and convincingly eh. IDK about Bessie, it’s possible EF calls her a snake simply because she will sleep with her mistress’s husband & interferes in “great luv” and does not realise it was really dangerous to refuse the king if he decided on you, and so far we truly haven’t seen her trying to catch Henry’s eye, plotting to get him or anything of that sort. No hints of any such behaviour as well.

I can’t ship Meg with Angus at all knowing what is to come, but at least we can’t accuse Meg here of being naive or stupid because he truly seems like such a nice guy with good morals. Maybe she should watch out for his flattery, but then would not a besotted man tell his object of affection she’s best queen eva?

Poor, poor Margaret :(

And yes we are definitely missing actors with charisma like Ray Stevenson, I still just cannot see Ruairi being a convincing tyrant or madman (hahah) NGL.

[luxurylives]

Missing Pieces Part 6

Pairing: No pairing  

Book(s): Ride or Die: A Bad Boy Romance               

Word Count: 2,363

Rating: T (Mild language)

Summary: Ellie and Toby find Colt; Logan and Vanessa come to an agreement. 

Author’s Note: Part Six! I’ll wait to post the rest on the last day 😊 Pixelberry Studios owns the characters. The De la Cruz family is from High School Story (I chose first names for Bartholomew's parents). Thank you so much to those who read!

 Tagging: @liam-rhys @desireepow-1986 @mfackenthal @rodappreciationweek @brightpinkpeppercorn @leelee10898 @choicesarehard @client-327

A lot was riding on tonight, Logan was in trouble, Colt was up to something, and someone was after the Mercy Park Crew. The only thing Ellie felt was fear and uncertainty, lately, she had begun to wonder what her life would have been like if she never got involved with the Mercy Park Crew. However, the answer to that has remained a mystery. 

“Ximena sent me a text, she just arrived at Lilac Palm”.

Ellie snapped out of her thoughts and turned to Toby who fell into step beside her. “Good, where is this club anyway?”

“Just up ahead,” Toby said. 

Soon they arrived at a building in an alley with a few people standing around. As Toby approached the door, a man from the nearby group approached Ellie.  

“You look familiar”.

Ellie swallowed as she turned to face him, he looked identical to Detective Wallace. “I— “. 

“Did you used to bartend at the Ostrich Garage?” 

“Oh...no sorry” Ellie answered calmly. 

“My bad” the man backed away to join the group he was with earlier. 

“Ellie,” Toby said. 

Ellie turned to see Toby standing in the doorway of the club and quickly walked over to join him. As they crossed the threshold, thick, smoky air greeted them along with the sounds of upbeat Latin music. Many patrons flocked to the dance floor while others sat at their tables smoking and drinking. 

“Full house,” Ellie said as she took in the vibrant atmosphere. 

“If you think this is full, then you should see this place when Matt Rodriguez shows up, it is packed”. 

Ellie gripped Toby’s arm and motioned her head towards the bar. “Look”.

Toby averted his eyes and his eyes widened. “There’s no way…but why?”  

Both of them watched in complete shock as Vicente approached Colt. After a moment of speaking, they retreated to a back room.

“What the hell is doing?” Toby asked worriedly. 

Before Ellie could respond, she watched two burly men take their place on both sides of the door. “We’re about to find out”. 

“You can’t be serious, running off to Detroit? Especially now?”

“I know someone that I can stay with until things cool down”. 

“Just you?”

Logan sighed and shook his head. “Look, we have to split up”.

“Well, I think that is the worst thing we could do right now”.

“Vanessa, Javier knows we are in Massachusetts and for all we know, he could be in Birchport too”. 

“Logan, you cannot keep running! And I’ll be damned if I get sucked further into this black hole you and your friends created! My parents have a summer house in Nantucket, we can go there and hideout. I’ll call my Dad and tell him what is going on, we can get you a lawyer— “.

Logan shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No”.

“Logan!”

“Vanessa, too many people are involved in this already. I can take you to Nantucket but after that, I am going to Detroit…alone”.

Vanessa stared at him, only this time, really seeing him. 

“We need to split up”.

“Aren’t you supposed to meet Ellie?”

“I’ll just have to postpone that until the dust settles”.

“And if it doesn’t?”

Logan shrugged and gazed out the window. “I’ll figure it out”.

Vanessa shook her head, there was no point in arguing with him and deep down she knew Logan was right. Javier was after him, not her so it was best if they split up now. “So when do you want to leave?”

“We’ll sneak out during the barbeque”.

“You’re going to need transportation to Detroit so keep the car, I’ll come up with something to tell my grandparents,” Vanessa said. 

Logan stared at her quizzically. “They won’t suspect anything?”

“You’re looking at the girl who went streaking on a public beach while intoxicated, they’ll draw their conclusions first and ask questions later”. 

“Alright, with that said…are you ready?”

“Now or never”.

Logan walked over to his bag and began packing while Vanessa entered the bedroom to do the same.

 “How are we going to get close to them?” 

Ellie’s eyes swept over the crowded club and towards the guarded door. “Well, there’s only two of us...maybe one of us could distract the guards?”

“Eh...” Toby’s voice trailed off as he looked at the burly men near the door. “Got any other ideas?”

Ellie turned to see the man who approached her earlier, enter the club and head towards the bar. After exchanging a few words with the bartender, he began walking in their direction. 

“Toby, forgive me”.

“What?”

Ellie mustered up all of her strength and shoved Toby, who lost his balance and collided with the man she met earlier who stumbled into a nearby group of people. 

“What the hell is the matter with you? Watch where you’re going!”

Toby stared at the man for a second but then saw the altercation caught the attention of the men guarding the door. 

“How about you watch where you’re going!”

The man stepped up to Toby and shoved him, who shoved back. Suddenly, both men guarding the door left their post to intervene. 

Ellie maneuvered around a few people and slipped through the door, only to find herself in a small hallway. 

Bzzzz bzzzzzzz

Ellie quickly answered her phone as she neared a room with the door cracked. “Hello?”

“It’s Ximena, look I’m at Lilac Palm but it's dead…that Vicente guy isn’t here…”.

“He’s at the club, whatever is going on he is in on it too”.

Ximena sighed and shook her head. “Okay, I’ll head over, it’s close by, right?”.

“Yea but hurry, I had to think fast, and I may have complicated things”.

“Got it,” Ximena said and hung up. 

Ellie crouched behind some crates and boxes nearby as she leaned towards the door. 

 Colt Kaneko casually took a sip of his beer as Vicente narrowed his eyes at him. Ever since the Mercy Park Crew had split up, he was hellbent on continuing the legacy his father created. However, doing so from scratch was no small feat. 

Luckily, he was able to track down Mona, and together they decided to infiltrate and conquer. He figured, what better way to do this than to go after the people his father had unfinished business with? He’d be making an even bigger name for himself and continue his father’s legacy. 

“I just got word from David that Logan is in Boston”.

“Good, you can thank me for tracking down Zoe and Rita and passing that information to him anytime,” Colt said. 

“Hm, we’ll see about that” Vicente took a sip of his beer and slid his phone back into his pocket. 

“Look, I want to know if we have a deal? You know where Logan is, and I gave you all the information that I have on Mona”. 

Vicente stroked his chin and gave Colt a dubious once-over. “What about Toby, Ximena, and Ellie?” 

Colt slid a folder towards them. “Still working on tracking down Ellie but here’s where I last saw both of them”.

Vicente opened the folder and began sifting through Colt’s notes. 

“Well?”

“I’m suspicious Kaneko, you aren’t like your father, not sure what to expect with you. I will wait until Ace gets here”. 

Before Colt could respond a man, a few years older than him, sauntered into the room. Colt looked up from his seat and instantly recognized him, Bartholomew “Ace” de la Cruz from the Crimson Santos. 

“Sorry got held up, Vicente your guys told me there was a fight out there”.

“I’ll check it out once we’re done here”.

Bartholomew turned his attention to Colt and gave him a quick once-over. “Teppei Kaneko’s son, in the flesh. So what do you have for us?”

“I have notes on Toby and Ximena and Vicente was just telling me Logan is in Boston”.

Vicente passed the notes to Bartholomew who began skimming the pages and eyeing the photographs. 

“Nothing on Mona?” Batholomew asked as he looked up at Colt.

“No,” Colt said. “Besides, she was working with the Brotherhood, do you want to deal with someone like that?”

Bartholomew exchanged a look with Vicente before turning his attention back to Colt. “Are you familiar with ‘Walang Wa’?”

“So you’re schooling me now?”

“I don’t think you’re in the position to be a smart-ass,” Vicente said. 

“No I want to hear this, have you heard the phrase or no?”

“No” Colt answered sharply. 

“It means no mercy,” Bartholomew said. “It is also the motto of the Crimson Santos”.

With a stoic expression, Colt simply nodded his head. “Alright”.

“And what we will show you if you are playing a game here”.

Colt shrugged and shook his head. “I just want us to work together”. 

“I think we need to recap since your memory is shit, Kaneko. Teppei stole two cars from my father years ago, which caused a lot of problems— “. 

“Couldn’t have done too much damage, I hear, Cesar and Althea are doing fine with the B&B”.

Bartholomew took a deep breath and silently counted back from ten. “As I said, your father stole the 67 Komoda and the 54 Aeon SX from us, but he didn’t stop there, he tipped off a P.I. and we ended up having a mole problem”.

Colt stared back and squared his shoulders. 

“My father was only able to do so much with that…hence why he is in Massachusetts and now I oversee things here. Now, the Mente Kings...Vicente, do you care to elaborate?”

“Sure, I guess Teppei never told you about a drifting competition in Tokyo?”

“Pop mentioned it was against some guy from Las Mente” Colt answered coolly. 

“Hm, well that guy was Felix Curbelo, my brother” Vicente said. “Your father cheated and stole fifteen thousand from us. Once Felix got back to the states, interestingly enough, we also began to have a mole problem”.

Colt’s jaw worked as he eyed both men sitting across from him. 

“Javier and Ace played soccer at Terman U. Imagine my surprise when he came home to visit and told me the Mente Kings and Crimson Santos had something in common—Teppei Kaneko and the Mercy Park Crew”. 

“I get it, you’re pissed which is why I want to resolve this. I can find Ellie and easily bring her to you and believe or not, what’s in that folder should be enough for each of your guys to find Ximena and Toby”. 

An eerie silence swept through the room as Vicente, Bartholomew, and Colt engaged in an intense stare-down. 

“And you want cars and some money to get started?”

“Yeah, do what you want with them and all three of us can work together. Run this city, who knows? Maybe takeover”. 

“Hm, as nice as it would be to inflict pain on the LAPD, I’m no longer interested,” Vicente said.

Colt bit his lip, usually, he was more confident, but now he felt backed into a corner. 

Bzzzz bzzzzzzz

“That would be me” Bartholomew pulled out his phone and immediately a smiled appeared on his face. 

“Good news?” Vicente asked.  

“My old man just confirmed Logan is at their B&B. David and Javier are heading over there now”.

“Alright, so you have Logan”.

Bartholomew bit his lip and shook his head. “Alright, Kaneko here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll have my guys follow up on Ximena and Toby”.

“And I’ll tell David, Javier, and the new girl to bring Logan in,” Vicente said. 

“But we still don’t have Mona and Ellie,” Bartholomew said as he tapped his fingers on the table. 

“As I said, I will bring Ellie to you and trust me, you do not need Mona” Colt replied. 

“I’m holding you to it” Bartholomew answered sternly. 

Colt shook his hands with both men and exited the room. As soon as he was in the main area of the club, he pulled out his phone and texted Mona.

I just spoke with Ace and Vicente. David and Javier are taking you to a B&B owned by Ace’s parents. That’s where Logan is. You know what to do. 

Within minutes Mona replied to his text. 

Got it. I hope you’re right about this. Not comfortable infiltrating the Mente Kings and screwing with that Filipino gang in the process. One of my ex-girlfriends did some work for them, they are not to be played with.

As Colt passed by the crates and boxes, he typed out a reply. 

Look it's easy, you bring Logan in. Once all of us are together we overthrow and take what is rightfully ours. I know what I am doing. 

Back in the room, an eerie silence swept through the air as Bartholomew and Vicente sat drinking their beers, both deep in thought. 

“Were you buying any of his crap?” Vicente turned to Bartholomew. “I mean this is Teppei Kaneko’s kid we’re talking about”.

Bartholomew set his bottle down and shook his head. “My thoughts exactly, I trust him about as far as I can throw him”.

Vicente took another sip and set his bottle down. “You know a few weeks ago, this chick joined the Mente Kings, goes by the name ‘Gwen’, good driver, fast and reliable…but something about her doesn’t sit right with me”.

“What does she look like?”

Vicente pulled out his phone and passed it to Bartholomew who started laughing. 

“What’s so funny?”

“That’s the chick from the Mercy Park Crew. Shaw told me about her while we were playing cards one night. I bet she and Kaneko are up to something”.

Vicente tossed his phone on the table. “Maldita sea”.

“Let me guess, you sent her to Massachusetts with Javier and David”.

Vicente silently tapped his fingers on the side of his bottle and shook his head. “Kaneko is up to something…what should we do?”

Bartholomew set his bottle and turned towards Vicente. “We kill them”. 

As soon as Ellie heard the words, she crawled out of her hiding place and scurried towards the exit, she had to find Ximena and Toby and fast.