#I never want to rush fics

[leftdestiny-posts]

Finally got the fics that I hoarded in my drafts down to 26, but now those who remain are like 5k-15k words long so I'll probably have to sit down for those on a weekend or smthn XD

[lighteyed]

can it be easy this once? / steve harrington

summary: steve accidentally gives a stupid answer to your honest question. (best friends with benefits pining idiots to lovers, fem!reader)

unedited we die like men & title from the alcott by the national ft taylor swift hehehe enjoy

It started as a means of comfort after Starcourt, when he was bloody and bruised up but you took him home and got closer, closer, closer, until it turned into a mess of blurred lines and panting breaths, lips swollen for reasons other than being hurt, for better reasons, reasons that brought forth safety and relief for the two of you. You both tend to hunger for such things. It’d been good, easy, for a bit there. Lately it’d felt like the intimacy was threatening to choke you. Like you’d never met a form of  closeness you didn’t cling to. And God, did it feel like you were clinging. Craving an unwarranted change. Was it so unwarranted? You weren’t sure, you could never tell.

    The air in his room is hot and sticky with summer, the ceiling fan providing the barest relief, your bare skin providing the slightest bit more. You stare all around his room, taking in all the stark traces of him, though in truth it doesn’t betray much, just as he attempts to. It’s a plain room, plaid walls, matching curtains, his desk messy and cluttered, all the dresser’s drawers slightly ajar like he spent a touch too long shuffling through all his clothes to determine which outfit would be best, which, knowing him in the way you do, he probably did. You knew he wasn’t as secure as he liked everyone to believe. Steve Harrington tried his best, but sometimes you saw right through him.

     Other times he was harder to read. It was probably purposeful, layers of protection built around himself. Don’t love anyone, don’t let anyone love you, and you won’t get hurt. People can only hurt you if you let them. Steve wasn’t letting anyone anymore. Definitely not his parents, definitely not Nancy Wheeler, definitely not random girls who would inevitably end up disappointed with him. He swore it all off. He was a hopeless romantic who never wanted to be in love again. You understood it for the most part. Or you attempted to. It was hard when you were halfway (maybe more than halfway) in love with the guy, in his bed most nights, in his company most days, acting like a couple without being an established couple because he was too hesitant and you were too gentle to be pushy.

    He nudges you lightly, naked chest peeking up from his covers, naked everything else kept firmly underneath. “You okay? You’re quiet.” He sits up so he’s level with you, and you avoid eye contact by leaning down toward the floor to grasp for the shirt he let you borrow, a faded Spider-Man one he insisted was from middle school. You didn’t entirely believe him, but maybe it was just funny, and kind of sweet, to picture Steve sleeping in a Spider-Man shirt and keeping it a secret just for himself. You pull the shirt on over your head, and before you can do it for yourself, he reaches for your hair and takes it out from where it’s caught under the shirt. The familiarity of it makes you flinch. You can have sex with him all you want but God forbid he’s the slightest bit loving outside of that. It confuses you, the softness in the touches that aren’t in bed with him. If he holds your hand in any context other than bringing you as into him as possible while he slips himself in and out, you lose all sense of normalcy between the two of you. You can’t be normal when he’s holding your hand and stroking your cheeks and being kind, soft, adoring Steve, without being your Steve.

     “I’m fine, I’m just…” You reach for your shorts at the end of the bed. Steve watches you get dressed with his eyebrows scrunched together, confused. You’re not usually in a rush to leave after you have sex. Not that he wants you to. He likes that you stay until day sinks into night and he drives you home and waits to repeat it all again. Waits to see you, generally. And it’s not sex every single time. You drag him to see whatever’s playing at the Hawk and he makes you sit with him at Family Video on slow days when it’s just him on the clock and a single tumbleweed blows through the store instead of any customers. He drives you just about anywhere you ask and he lets you put on any cassettes you want in his car even if he hates what’s playing. It’s nice, the friendship part of all of it. If you had to give everything else up and just keep the friendship you’d be willing. He’d be willing. You consider it. “Nothing, just tired, probably gonna head home,” you smile at him over your shoulder before pulling on your socks and it’s half-hearted and he knows it.

    “What? You can sleep here, you know that,” he waves a hand around the room, trying to catch your gaze, but you avoid his eyes again. Descending light slants in through the curtains and envelopes him in gold. He glows, he’s so pretty. His hair is messy from where you heatedly ran your hands through it, but it still looks nearly perfect. The fact that he always looks so good infuriates you.

    “No yeah, I know, I wanna like shower and stuff too, and I left my new book at home and I wanted to do some reading,” you bluff calmly, standing up from tangled bedsheets and roaming the room in search of your sneakers.

   “That Stephen King scary clown book? I’ll take you home and you can come back and read it here, so you don’t get scared,” and he knows you won’t get scared and that you love horror far more than he ever could but he just really, really doesn’t want to be alone. Why would you go when everything’s right here? His parents aren’t home and something about you leaving makes him antsy and desperate. When you still refuse to look at him he feels himself, his confidence, growing smaller and smaller. “Did I- did I do something?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound as pathetic as it does.

   You whip around to face him, finally, finally, and touch a hand to his face. Relief floods through him at the heat of your fingers. “No, of course not, it’s all me, okay? I’m all sweaty and awful.”

    “You look beautiful, I swear,” he squeezes your hand and you feel like you’re drowning. It’s hard to breathe, your chest tight. “Are you sure you’re okay? You can talk to me, it’s me.” He scoots closer, if that’s possible. “You’re one of my best friends, we tell each other everything.” You look up toward the ceiling, inwardly groaning. Best friend.

   “You do this with all your best friends?”  

    “Well, no, Robin wouldn’t touch me even if she didn’t like girls-“ He feels himself starting to grin, teasing smile lilting at his lips.

     “Steve!” You’re laughing a little and so is he as you push his arm back. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

    “What’d you mean, then?” He’s still smiling, that entrancing, deliberately pouty, lazy smile. Vaguely smirky. You don’t know if it’s deliberate, a ploy to distract you, con you into staying, make you less prone to saying what you want to say, but you press anyway, even though he’s making you want to lean forward and endlessly kiss the smirk off his mouth.

   “I just think, I don’t know… you’re not seeing anyone else, right?”

   “’Course not, why, you got other plans after this?” He grins again. You roll your eyes. He makes it so hard sometimes.

    “Steve,” you whine, “I’m so serious right now.”

    “Okay, okay. No, you’re the only one for me.” He means it. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever heard. “Are you seeing anyone else?” He asks you like it’s the easiest question in the world for him to ask but honestly he’s shitting his pants a little. He’s not sure what’d he say if you said yes, I am, and I think we should end this, which is where he’s assuming the conversation is going. You’ve got we shouldn’t do this anymore written all over you in his eyes and he’s steeling himself for the heartbreak.

     “Does it look like I am?”

     “Does it look like I am?” He repeats back, and he reaches for your hand in that too intimate way of his, takes it all careful and slow. “What’s this about?”

     “I just, I just think, that, you know, I’m not seeing anyone, and you’re not seeing anyone, but we’re sorta… seeing each other, yeah?” You gesture between the two of you. He nods. He’s staring at you very intensely, waiting for you to get your words out. He’s still waiting for you to say you think this whole thing has been a very bad mistake, a miscalculated judgement on your part, you should go back to the way things were, so he’s not expecting what comes out of you next. “Shouldn’t we be, like, official, then?”

     And instead of throwing up all the ways he so badly would love for that to happen, he chokes out, because he’s stupid and speechless, “Official?” And the way he says it, like it’s a curse when it’s only his disbelief that you’d want that with him after all this time, makes you immediately go into panic mode.

    He quite literally sees the way you lose any sense of confidence in your question and he immediately tries to take it back as you stand from his side and start trying to force your words back in your mouth, too. “Fuck, forget I said anything,” you mumble, spying your shoes shoved under his desk where you’d comfortably kicked them off. You hasten to put them on as Steve scrambles up from the bed and starts dressing, matching your frantic speed.

    “Hey, wait, that’s not what I- I didn’t mean it like that-“

     “It’s fine, Steve, I get it, I totally do, this isn’t that for you, it’s fine-“

      “It is, it is-“ but you’re not hearing him, your mind is already elsewhere. It’s in your own bed in the quiet, alone with your thoughts and not with him, mercifully not with him. You need this one mercy, “I’ll drive you home, babe, c’mon, I’ll explain everything, please-“

    “I got it, it’s fine, I’m fine, you don’t have to explain, okay? I got it,” and you don’t just walk out of his house and down the block to yours, you absolutely flee. You take Steve’s heart with you.

      He’s pacing the floor behind the register at Family Video three days and three shifts later, practically clawing at the walls of the place, and Robin is pulling her hair out at the sight of him in distress this way.

     “What did you do?” She finally breaks, flipping her magazine shut.

      “What? How do you know it was me?” He stops pacing. He hadn’t even noticed he was doing it.

       “You’ve had three shifts and she hasn’t visited one single time. She always visits. And I know I didn’t do anything wrong, because I never do anything wrong, so, what’d you do?” Robin places her hand under his chin and stares at him expectantly.

      He huffs, his hands on hips. “Maybe she did something, Robin, did you ever think of that?”

     “Definitely not,” Robin retorts, waiting for Steve to be serious.

      He deflates. “Okay, it was me.”

      “I know that, now continue.”

      “We were, you know,” he tilts his head down and raises his eyebrows and widens his eyes.

     “Having sex, sure,” Robin bobs her head. A customer in the nearest aisle frowns and shuffles toward a different section further away from the two of them.

     Steve shushes her. “I wasn’t trying to say it so loud.”

    “Having sex,” Robin repeats, louder this time, not bothering to fight back a laugh at Steve’s exasperated expression, “continue.”

      “Well, after that, she started asking if, if I was seeing anyone, which of course I’m not, because, you know, I’m into her, obviously, so I told her I wasn’t, and she said she wasn’t, so she said maybe we should be official.” Steve hesitates to say the rest of what happened. He still can’t believe all he could do when you said the words was repeat them back to you with that stupid look on his face instead of giving you the biggest, loudest declaration of love in a big, messy, pathetic, devoted way, the way he pictures himself when it comes to you, messy and pathetic and devoted, and he replays that moment back to himself all day long, thinking of everything else he could’ve said to make you understand.

    “That’s what you want, isn’t it? She’s all you talk about all day long, you want to be with her, don’t you?”

    “Of course I do!” He snaps, dragging a hand across his face. “But when she said it I just couldn’t get the words out and she got, she got so sad and she left without me being able to explain anything and she hasn’t answered the phone which, yes, I’ve been calling, and I don’t know how to do this.” He’d never been good at school but he knew he’d get a Grade A in Pitiful.

    “Do what? Tell a girl you love her? You’ve been in relationships before, Steve.”

    “I know, but…” he sighs. “I’m different now, like, it’s not as easy anymore, for me, and I- I don’t want her to get hurt, and I don’t want to get hurt, it’s like, everything used to be my fault, and I wasn’t as good as I could have been, and I don’t want to break anything, I don’t want it to get fucked up, because it’ll be my fault, and I can’t do that again. Not to her.” He swallows, the words harder to come by than he would care to admit. “I’m a little… I’m a little in love with her, I think.” This is said quietly. It frightens him to say it out loud. He’s gone over it in his head, those words, so few of them, but they say so much, and it’s scary. He hasn’t said them to someone in years. The last time he did he got so brutally hurt he thought he’d never recover. But he had. So why was it still so scary?

    “A little bit?” Robin teases, but it’s all love for him, truly.

    “Alright, a lot in love,” he concedes. He wants to get used to saying it. He wants to say it to you. For real. Loudly. “I still don’t know how to do this, though. Not anymore.”

   “Come on!” Robin gets up from her stool and places her hands on his shoulders. “You’re supposed to be Steve Harrington. You were using those…” she pauses for a beat and then, “charms,” the word is said with the smallest hint of sarcasm but she persists nonetheless, “on tons of girls in high school and at Scoops! Now whip them out again for our very nice friend that you sometimes go to town with!”

   “When did any of those charms,” he says it with a matching sarcastic tone, “work aside from when I was sixteen and an idiot?”

   “You might not be sixteen anymore but you’re still an idiot, if that helps.”

    “It doesn’t but thank you for the encouragement.”

    “I’m just saying!” She exclaims, throwing her hands up and returning back to her seat. “Putting yourself out there is always gonna be scary, but you can’t let that stop you. You’d actually be an idiot if you let that stop you. Are you just never gonna see her again? No, because you’d go insane. It’s not like what you did was all that bad anyway.”

    “You really think so?” He perks up a bit, needing that confirmation that he isn’t a totally awful and irredeemable person. It’s easy for him to fall headfirst into that spiral of thinking. It was a trap set with the most accessible, perfect bait and he somehow always found himself walking straight into it without stopping to think if he was being fair to himself.

    “You’ve both been in bad spots, you reacted the way you did and she reacted the way she did out of what was most likely panic and embarrassment. She’s definitely not even mad at you. Probably just, again, embarrassed. If you explain I think it’ll all be okay, Steve, I swear.” Robin can’t take much more of this conversation circling around, as much as she loves Steve and wants to be there for him, she would love him even more if he acted on his feelings and allowed himself some happiness for once.  “So do you think you can you, like, maybe go tell her so she can keep visiting us at work? I need more company than just you and Keith and these customers with no taste,” she complains, glaring at the closed door that hides Keith, in all his absolute glory. The customer from before hears her comment and storms out. Robin rolls her eyes.

    “Right, yeah, tell her I love her, tell my best friend I love her,” he frowns, nerves creeping up the back of his neck. “Maybe you could just call her first and ask-“

     “Steve! I am not meddling in your love life like that when you already know everything there is to know!” She throws her magazine at him. “She said she wants to be with you, go be with her!”

    “Alright, alright!” He waves his hands dismissively. He begins to pace again, this time his eyes held to the clock. Robin groans. There’s still three hours left of their shift.

     You’re in your room wallowing, or doing what’d you call attempting not to wallow but failing at it miserably. You haven’t touched a single page of your book, mostly content to just listen to sad records and more or less stare at the wall. It was stupid, you knew, to behave in such a way over some guy. But it didn’t feel like some guy. It was Steve, after all. It all felt deeper than just some guy. You two had been through a lot together, more than most people have been, and if you’d just ruined your friendship with someone you always felt safe, felt at home with, over feelings you couldn’t control and probably would be better off not having, you were going to need some serious therapy.

     It probably was silly of the two of you to start this thing up anyway, you reason, fighting back your urge to do any further crying into a pillow. You try to focus on painting your nails a nice shade of dark blue but it reminds you of Steve’s old Scoops uniform and of that night (and all that nights that followed) so you stop in the middle of your second thumb and grab nail polish remover and start scrubbing away at your finished right hand.

“Fuckin’ ridiculous,” you mutter, the cotton ball in your hand soaked through with blue and your nails discolored and muddy. “I am ridiculous,” you say to yourself, shaking off your wet hand. Your room is filled with the smell of acetone and disappointment. You think about lighting a candle when your doorbell rings. You debate answering it before it rings again. And then again. And again, more frenzied this time.

    You open the door to a distressed Steve. His cheeks are red and he’s breathing like he can’t anymore. He’s not the multi-star athlete he was in high school, he realizes in this moment. “Did you- did you just run here from work?” You ask him, but he’s already too close to you, not answering your question, gazing at you because simply looking isn’t enough and has never been enough. He is gazing. He is flush with adoration. It’s hard not to bloom under that radiance. He makes you want to forget everything and go back to plush lips on hot skin and the quiet contentment that came alongside being with him in those first few months. You back up a little into your doorway but he steps up to you, following your steps. “Where’s your car-“

    “Forget that for a sec,” he says, and you stop talking out of surprise. “Just, just tell me if we do this it’ll be okay, and we won’t be terrible for each other, and we’ll be good,” because he needs to hear it, even if it’s ridiculous and he’s jinxing it before it’s begun he needs to know you’re right there with him. “Like, just tell me it can be easy this once. If you broke my heart I don’t know if I’d be able to handle it. ‘Cause I love you. I do. And I want this.” And you get it. He’s letting you get it. He’s letting you all the way in. You realize, flustered and basking in it, that he’s the first one to say those words. That you hadn’t even said them when you posed your first question. But he’s saying them out loud and it’s brilliant and beautiful. He is beautiful.

    It makes you want to weep, the love that swells here, out in the open. “Fuck, Steve, what type of girl do you think I am, breaking the heart of the guy I’ve been in love with since he started sneaking into my bedroom?” He smiles. He glows. It’s so beautifully Steve. Maybe it can be easy.

    When he kisses you, he proves it: the ease, the tranquility. He is fervent and burning. Everything is urgent with Steve. Especially kissing. He captures every bit of you immediately. His touch is light when he urges you out of your doorway and into your living room so he can shut your front door and quit giving the neighbors what he’s sure is the show of a lifetime. It is for him, at least.

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Man.... I can't stop thinking about Pac and the Risus Pill arc

Pac saying he took the pills because he didn't have any other choice, he was so hopeless he wants to take them until he doesn't remember anything

Pac saying "At least I’m not crying in some random corner in the Island expecting my friends to come save me, and nobody comes save me"

And then the thing he said immediately before that: "I lost my friend, I lost my friend’s friend, I lost my Egg, I lost my child, I lost everything, I'm– I was completely hopeless– so yeah, maybe I wanna be drugged and live my miserable but happy life. At least I’m not in that saddest place anymore."

The blood at Chume Labs

The three graves at Chume Labs

The message he wrote to Cellbit asking Cellbit to kill him if things got too bad, then changing it and saying "lock me up" instead.

The conversation with Fit, Fit pleading with him, and Pac saying "I don’t want to go back to that bad and sad place."

Pac, despite his grief and depression, finding an antidote and saving himself (with the help of his friends)

Literally everything from the Risus Pill arc makes me so heartbroken

[summercourtship]

I think it's funny (and a bit sad) when people say they want to write fanfiction but "the fandom is dead."

write it anyway. put your love and passion into something. even if it doesn't get attention, it's good for the soul. (also I don't want to say this as a fact but I like to think that fic readers can tell subconsciously when something is a passion project and gravitate towards them).

also there is probably at least two people who will look for fics even in dead fandoms.

[scribe-of-elysium]

Quietus: Status Update

Hello, Tumblr followers. I've started working on the next chapter of Quietus. I'm aiming to write up until Sakura's Rebirth, which will be covered in the next 2-3 chapters, depending on whether I split the content. So there will be a few more updates until we get to that point.

After that, I'll be formally Discontinuing the story because I sadly have no time, inspiration, or motivation to keep working on this project as things stand. It's a commitment I can't make; I have too many responsibilities, too little free time and can't be as active as I used to be, unfortunately.

This is not an easy decision for me to make, and has been on my mind for the last year. I'd been wanting to stop sooner, but I pushed on, hoping I could continue it, but it's now becoming really difficult to find the time and effort the story requires to maintain its quality.

Placing the fic on hiatus indefinitely as I have in the past pressures me to keep thinking about it knowing updates are anticipated and is counter-productive. It also feels unfair, like I'm constantly leaving readers hanging and waiting with the regular starting and stopping, and I'd rather just be honest that I've been struggling with it at this point.

I can't force myself to write something rushed, either I give 100% or nothing. If my circumstances ever change and I can pick it up again, I'll return to announce that, otherwise, I want to sincerely thank everyone who was still following and reading up to this point, everyone who patiently waited for updates all these years, and everyone who took the time to interact, comment, share, recommend, make art or commission it. I appreciate my readers and their support more than I can express on here.

[mwagneto]

gomens fandom having a normal one (take under the cut)

[gothic-mothic]

“Sometimes, at the most unfortunate times, I think about us. I picture us outside and I wouldn’t bring much attention to these thoughts if it were simply us standing in the open but it’s much more than that. I imagine you and me in another life; a life were we do laundry together and go grocery shopping. I see myself cooking breakfast for you and I see you setting the table. I imagine waking up next to you every morning and going to sleep beside you every night. Such small trivial things but in every thought we’re happy, — it’s silly isn’t it?”

[thedeathdeelers]

idk i feel like we’ve already talked about this (we did!! it’s here!! by the lovely @mac-lilly) but a sweet home alabama-ish juke au. yknow. childhood friends to lovers to strangers to enemies to lovers again

mostly for this scene:

“nice dress,” he shouts over the rain and the sound of waves crashing against the shore. “where’s your husband?” he barely throws a glance at her, his eyes quickly averting back to his task at hand — burying the rods deeper i to the sand.

julie is drenched from head to toe, her wedding dress ruined, her hair a nightmare — her make up is probably leaking all over her face, and her feet are aching. but as she gets ready to give him her answer, she can’t help but smile — a genuine one.

“i’m looking at him,” she says simply.

luke stops moving, his back to her as his arms hang on either side of the metal rod he was now gripping with a little more force than necessary.

for a moment neither of them say anything, with only the sound of nature roaring around them.

it represented them well — the pouring rain, the crashing waves; the thunderous clouds and blinding lightning: it was a lot, all-encompassing and overwhelming.

their love was a force of nature, and they both knew it.

luke slowly turns around, hands dropping to his sides.

“what are you talking about?” his eyes scan the darkened area behind her, trying to spot the blond head he knows will inevitably pop up. “where’s nick?” he finally asks when he fails to see him.

“he’s not here, luke,” she says, taking a step towards him. luke’s eyes are back on her, as he watches her warily. what was she up to? torturing him until the last minute?

“he left for new york an hour ago.”

just hearing the name of the city that had become julie’s new home reminds luke why he had tried so hard to guard his heart.

he nods brusquely at julie, walking past her as he shouts over his shoulder.

“you should hurry and catch up to him — wouldn’t want to miss your wedding night.” he grimaces as the words leave his mouth, instantly regretting it.

he sounded petty. and he also definitely didn’t want to picture julie on her wedding night with someone…..that wasn’t him.

luke stops to pick up his equipment off the ground, shaking his head as he digs around in the sand to make sure he doesn’t leave anything behind.

“i’m not joining him.”

luke stops moving, his fingers freezing mid-search as her words slowly sink in.

she couldn’t-

she didn’t-

“we didn’t get married, luke.”

her words hit him like a bag of bricks, dropping everything he had picked up as he slowly straightens up, his back still to her.

he takes in a deep breath- and another, eyes closed and fists clenched as he tries to squash down the hope that stubbornly started rising up in his chest.

“why not?”

“apparently,” she starts, her voice slowly getting closer. “…we’re still married.”

luke’s eyes snap open at her statement, swirling around to find her standing only a few feet away.

“still married? but i signed the papers, just like you asked me to.”

“yeah well turns out…i kinda forgot to.” she shrugs, shoulders moving up and down as a small smile makes its way on her face.

“forgot?” he asks incredulously. “forgot?”

luke groans as he rakes his fingers through his hair, letting out a humourless laugh.

“julie,” he says, eyes on hers. “what do you want?”

“you,” she answers simply. “you were my first kiss,” she continues, taking a step closer. “and i want you to be the last.”

that throws him off for a second, recalling a time when they were kids and julie had told him the exact same thing.

they were older now- things were different…right?

luke just shakes his head to clear it, and asks again.

“no i mean- what do you want to be married to me for anyway? wasn’t nick what you were always looking for?”

julie shakes her head as her smile turns blinding, taking a step towards him, and then another, until she was crowding him, standing in his space.

“so i can kiss you whenever i want.”

she grabs his drench collar, and pulls, until he was only inches away.

“and no luke, it was always you.”

[absolutely-not-my-main-blog]

I love all the love coming back for Mr. Tibbs, an icon, a hero, the real mvp of the show

[icyfox17]

Why does my writing feel bad everytime I try to write for a new fandom??

Like. I know my writing is good, I usually like it considering I write what I wanna read. But for some reason?? Writing for new fandoms feels like Im offending the writing gods and every word feels so awkward and out of place and AAAAAAAA

[tennessoui]

i think it would be really fun (for me) (sorry) to do like. some sort of holiday fic giveaway of a chapter/oneshot of one of my fics/aus set during the holiday season?

(i know i know it's the first day of autumn in america time, but look these things take time ok)

but like a giveaway where people vote on which of my fics/aus they want to see a holiday installment for (like KUWSK, PBATMB, sugar daddy anakin, crossed the stars to be lovers au, smithsonian au, king obi-wan au, regency au, use my body to break your fall, t&t au, etc etc etc)

but like what would be the best way to even vote. tumblr ask??? google form (this is my work brain)?? tumblr reply?? smoke signals??? thoughts and prayers?? ehhheuuahhheuhh??

[iridescentis]

missing a semester abroad rn

michael come back michael

[skywitchmaja]

even before the transphobia came to light— jkr’s writing can be sooo cruel towards woman & girls for as much as she used to be celebrated as a ‘feminist’

like ginny is introduced as ron’s kid sister who has this big girlish crush on harry. this is mostly just very embarrassing for both of them. it’s fine, they’re middle schoolers.

then ginny has to be the damsel in distress for the second book finale which means she has to be vulnerable, she has to be manipulated (by voldemort’s diary), she has to do bad things (while possessed), and most of all, she has to be helpless and she has to be saved. this is some harrowing shit for an 11 year old to go through, but we don’t get much about it from her perspective bc it’s mostly there so harry and ron can be heroic and strengthen their friendship. ginny is still in the role of damsel by the end of this book.

a couple books later jkr decides to start setting up romances, so harry has a crush on cho chang bc she’s good at sports (which is cute). unfortunately for him, cho is dating harry’s cool seventeen year old crush friend & competitor, cedric digory, so harry is just crushing away, and cho doesn’t have much to do except for politely turn him down. ginny isn’t really important this book, irc i think she goes to magic prom with neville. ron and hermione have their own issues, but this book is mostly set up (both relationship wise & in the greater voldemort plot).

then in the fifth book, their relationship comes to fruition bc cedric died so now cho is single. she’s drawn to harry bc he was friends with cedric & he was there when cedric died , and she hopes that they can process their grief together. unfortunately, harry is having a lot of difficulty processing his grief, so he reacts badly when cho cries or wants to talk about cedric bc it reminds harry of his own feelings he’s trying to avoid. this would be fine on it’s own, except the fandom didn’t recognize harry as an unreliable narrator and began characterizing her as being “whiny” and “weak” and “annoying”. and it would seem like a fandom issue & not jkr’s misogyny, hermione even stands up for cho (although much of that grace is lost when cho/her friend narc to umbridge). meanwhile, ginny is getting cooler and cooler— joining the quidditch team, joining dumbledor’s army, dating boys to let us know she’s moved on from her childhood crush  on harry, and most importantly, joining harry & co at the climactic fight against voldemort, as a hero this time rather than a damsel. why is this a bad thing? it’s not, we love to see a girlboss winning.  but they way jkr writes romance puts these girls in opposition to each other.

in the sixth book, harry realizes he has feelings for ginny, and she is everything cho is not. actually, cho is what ginny used to be, and vice versa. to make sure we know ginny is no longer the vulnerable, emotional, “weak” girl harry saved in the second book, jkr gives these traits to cho instead, as she’s incredibly emotionally vulnerable after losing her first boyfriend, and was hoping that harry would be there for her when he couldn’t.  in dating cho, harry realizes that the reality of being in a relationship with someone is very different from crushing on them from afar, and while cho may be pretty & nice & good at quidditch, she isn’t someone he wants to date (again, mostly because they have incompatible ways of dealing with grief). which is fine, they’re kids, they’re still learning about themselves and other people.  except the fandom/jkr didn’t really delve into that complexity, and it was almost always reduced to saying that cho was “wrong” for harry and ginny is “the right one”.  she does this, proving one love interest is “right” by showing another as “wrong”, in an even shallower way with hermione, ron and lavender brown.  it’s exponentially worse because cho, and lavender in the first five movies, are non-white characters. 

harry starts to catch feelings for ginny, which has significantly more depth than his crush on cho because he’s known her for so long, but he still admires things like her skill at quidditch (lol), and how cool and popular she is, as well as her strong will and sense of humor.  but in order to be valid as a love interest according to jkr, ginny has to shed the traits that characterized her as a damsel in distress in the second book, ironically, a role that is often filled by the love interest.  this is actually kind of subversive, but not necessarily in a good way– rather than rejecting patriarchal lens of reducing women to “damsels”, jkr simply pushes this lens onto cho, (not with a rescue plot, but with character traits), saying that damselization is bad, not because it’s bad to objectify women, but because some women are badass and cool and “don’t need to be saved” and the ones who are weak and emotional and do need to be saved are worthy of derision. this pushes the burden away from the male gaze that sees women as damsels and onto women and girls who must reject “damselish” or “feminine” traits.  harry realizes his feelings when he sees how different ginny is now from the girl who had a huge crush on him, the girl he had to save from an evil snake, the girl who was sensitive and helpless, because she isn’t those things anymore.  but cho, from harry’s perspective, is. harry avoids her like he avoided ginny in the first few books bc their emotionality makes him uncomfortable. to be fair, harry doesn’t hate cho for these traits anymore than he did ginny early in the series, but the fandom certainly did (i use past tense bc the fandom now is… idek) and i believe jkr does too. 

by the end of the series, harry has cool, tough, funny, pretty, quidditch star, ginny weasley, and to be honest he really doesn’t share a lot of vulnerability with her.  even when he’s worried about being possessed by voldemort, he doesn’t think to ask ginny what that was like when it happened to her, because he “forgot”.  in the last book, harry even breaks up with her for several months “to protect her” rather than taking her on a dangerous camping trip with ron and hermione. this is reasonable enough, and i think it’s good that the series ends with the same trio it started with, but it does deny harry and ginny’s relationship opportunity to develop because they only really see each other at the very beginning and the very end of the last book.  so ironically, a lot of people don’t like harry and ginny as a couple (especially in the movies) because jkr was so sparse with vulnerability in their relationship.  both girls, both relationships, suffer from this “sensitive” vs “resilient”, or more shallowly, as it tends to be perceived, “weak” vs “strong” contrast between cho and ginny.  but ultimately, ginny is rewarded for shedding her girlish emotional sensitivity while cho is punished, not just for her own but for ginny’s as well, because she’s taking over ginny’s role as “emotionally sensitive girl” so ginny can rise to the “cool girl” pedestal now that someone else is being looked down upon for having feelings.

[superconductivebean]

#596: wright has accidentally destroyed hp timeline but doesn't know it yet

ancient magic is no shit

[toxicityriot]

I ain't never written ✨spice✨ before this shit is wack as fuck trying to set up lol.

Hope you release Chapter 7 within a week... Or two... Motivation and distractions have been kicking my ass lmfao. Worst timing ever lol.