#comment if this has ship names I should tag

[nalyra-dreaming]

What do you think about Jam RPF? I don’t know why, when some people voice out their opinion about being uncomfortable that others shipping Jam irl on X, then they will get bullied by majority of the fandom there like, it’s just a joke etc but then keep making sexual tweet about Jam wanting to do each other so bad like ??? And they normalize it there on X where Pippa or Jacob could see it. Back in 2022, only few in the fandom doing RPF, now that this show is getting bigger I feel like majority of this fandom now support this Jam RPF thing *sigh* not about friendship anymore but they even make tweet hoping Jam cheating on their partners like stop it kids

Okay the latter is out of line, definitely.

Generally, and while RPF isn’t really for me, I am of the mindset that it’s to each their own as long as it’s not where “they“ can see it, if that makes sense.

RPF has always existed, and it happens in all fandoms I believe.

Jam are in a league of their own, in many things, and they gave us that Jam Reiderson name themselves. In a way it was inevitable 😅

But everyone should still take that mental step back and remember they’re talking about real people and not the fanon version that’s in their heads I guess. Not just in RPF, but also other things like tagging and comments etc.

These are real people.

Treat them as you would if you would encounter them personally. Imho.

And keep anything else in private spaces or on Ao3.

[doromoni]

Off Track Pace | MV1 , ?

Ships Max Verstappen x presenter! Reader , ? x presenter! Reader , Platonic! Charles Leclerc x presenter! Reader

Genre : Fluff , Angst

Sub tags : mutual pinning , She fell too early , He fell too late,

Summary : A new f1 presenter and journalist has entered the paddock and she brings chaos along the way. And as competition looms , will the current Champion be as fast outside the track?

Face claim: Sofia Wylie

A/N : I’m so sorry luvs! I’m working on updating Clash of Champions , i promise ~ it’s my uni’s finals exams so I gotta focus on that first… so here’s a peace offering.

Part 2.

Media day, usually on a Thursday — a day that most Formula 1 drivers dread. A day where cameras followed their every move, interviews with journalists that twisted their every word and silly PR stunts forced on them by their teams. It used to be just all racing and winning podiums, but modern Formula 1 is all about media politics and sponsorships.

If you were to ask any driver on the grid if they were given the chance not to do PR, they would say yes to skipping it. But not everything about media day is horrendous.

Not when a new motorsports journalist joins the paddock that was an absolute sweetheart and delight to have around. A natural on the job — she always made sure that every driver that she interviewed was comfortable and enjoying their time with her and the segment.

the.Y/N

liked by skysportsf1 , lissiemackintosh, f1 , and 689,270 others

the.Y/N first day on the job? . i’m not nervous, you are! (She said literally shaking)

skysportsf1 Welcome to the team Y/N! ❤️

the.Y/N thank you kind employers. 🤍

lissiemackintosh Babe!! It’s finally official. Congratulations!

the.Y/N Thanks to you Babe!! I swear I would’ve been lost without you 😭

User1 who is she?

the.Y/N literally no one

User2 Ohhhh a new commentator? 🤔

User3 maybe she’s a journalist?

scuderriaferrari the kids had fun. They want their clay statues on display!

User2 Clay statues?? Hello?? Wut?

User3 Same question, Clay statues??

the.Y/N wait and see 🤷‍♀️ , the interview would drop tomorrow? Maybe~

User4 Its her first day and she literally had an interview with Charles and Carlos in Ferrari???

the.Y/N well no , the first interview was with Lewis Hamilton … so. 🤭

User5 WHAT?? Ok , queen slay!

User4 damnn , imagine being new to your field and already interviewing the big guys.

mclaren Do us next please 🙋‍♂️

redbullracing get in line!

the.Y/N gotta stop by Aston first , sorry besties.

User6 OK WHAT IS HAPPENING, ms. Y/N who are your connections 😭 i want in.

User7 why are all the teams here??

Y/N L/N was the F1 presenter and journalist who put drivers willingly out of their comfort zones and made them try something new. You genuinely loved what you do and you were passionate about it. You never showed partiality among the drivers, you treated everyone with the same attitude — this earned the respect of all drivers on the grid.

You were quickly becoming a paddock favorite. The fans enjoyed the content you put out and the drivers looked forward to your interview when they saw your name on their schedule.

Interviewing with you usually meant cheat meals and unusual activities that you thought they would like.

the.Y/N

liked by charles_leclerc, carlossainz55, maxverstappen1, and 740,155 others

the.Y/N maybe bowling isn’t the best idea. @charles_leclerc you suck, ngl. New vid out on Monday at the sky sports channel🤍

charles_leclerc i hate you ❤️

the.Y/N no you don’t 😌

charles_leclerc no, i don’t

User1 I love their dynamic so much!! I need more of the Paddock siblings pleaseee

User2 I can’t wait for more of Y/N bullying Charles into weird things and Ferrari doing nothing about it🤣

landonorris but why is charles in a cowboy costume?

the.Y/N i dunno? He just showed up in that 🤷‍♀️

charles_leclerc You told me we were riding horses and you wanted me to wear smth cowboy!!

the.Y/N oh yeah! Lmao

landonorris should i feel bad?

the.Y/N Nope. He’s happy either way. Aren’t you @charles_leclerc?

User2 NOT THE LMAO . Y/N thank you being you

User3 Y/N giving us Cowboy Charles , yes ma’am

User3 JUST DATE ALREADY!

the.Y/N EW. No

charles_leclerc Ok , the ew was unnecessary. But same. No thanks :)) i’m not dating my sister .

User4 Charles call y/n his sister 🥺

However, No matter how much you tried to keep things professional by being just a driver: journalist, something your boss commented during a quick meeting because fans kept shipping you with every driver. What you found weird is that most drivers you see as older brothers and some even uncles (don’t tell Nando). Plus most of them had girlfriends!

Nevertheless, your relationship with them seems to always end up with them hanging around your office at Sky, whenever they are free. Even the older drivers like Nando, Lewis and even Nico and Kevin use your office as an escape from the chaos of their motorhomes.

You didn’t mind hosting the older drivers in your room, as they were usually tame and kept to themselves as they read the books on your shelves in peace. They usually plop themselves down your couch and place the oversized plush you always bring on their lap. They always brought you snacks, so you looked forward to the times when their heads popped in your door and asked if they could come in.

But when the younger drivers visit your office? And if they came in groups — which they usually do. Oh boy, it was either a clusterfuck of them stealing snacks from your secret stash or your office becoming a den for hot gossip in the paddock usually led by the one and only Charles Leclerc.

Case in point. You now have Charles, Carlos, Max and to your surprise Checo in your office. The older Spanish-speaking driver was a rare visitor, but a welcome one nonetheless.

But considering the topic in discussion, you understood the presence of the two Red Bull drivers.

You were in the middle of typing away on your laptop when suddenly they barged in with ice cream tubs and spoons at hand then found a spot to sit and made themselves comfortable.

“Is Newey leaving Red Bull?” Charles asked Max and Checo, as he scooped a bite from his ice cream.

“We have no clue! Christian is saying nothing to us. Nothing” Max exclaimed exasperated as Checo nodded in agreement.

“So Adrian Newey is moving to Ferrari?” You questioned as you pointed your spoon at Charles

“Y/N, I love you like a sister and I know that you’re incredibly smart, but sometimes you are stupid. We’re clueless in Ferrari, hence my question ”

You threw your wooden spoon at the Monaco-born Ferrari driver. Which he easily avoided thanks to his fast reflexes. Freaking f1 reflexes!

“ I wasn't the person who got named for being stupid— HEY! Max give that back!! You don't even like salted caramel” You were trying to rebut Charles’ insult but were distracted when Max took your ice cream for himself.

Max just shrugged and placed his half-consumed chocolate brownie fudge ice cream in your hands — his spoon still in it. You didn’t complain further as you took his spoon and took a bite yourself. Yum! Brownie fudge is your favorite.

“Dude, what is even going on inside Red Bull? What was Horner under investigation for?” Carlos pressed on, trying to find answers. You were curious yourself

“Everyone is being weird. They’re keeping things from us. “ Checo added. You knew that they were truly left in the dark because if they knew they would’ve spilled instantly. NDAs be damned.

“Every interview, people keep asking if we know something! one more journalist and I swear I’ll run them over with my car! I hate each one of them” Max grumbled to himself.

You coughed. You knew that you were an exception but you couldn’t help but mess around with your friends.

“Don’t even, Y/N. You know you don’t count. “ Max waved you off.

“Wow! Thank you for that babe. Way to make a girl feel special” you said jokingly to the Dutch driver, as you winked dramatically. To which he only rolled his eyes — making you and the rest of the drivers laugh.

Max was immune to your flirting, unfortunately. It sucked especially when you had a tiny …. Ok big … HUGE crush on the 3 time world champion.

Max to you was like an Older brother’s best friend — Where you were the little sister crushing on him and you didn’t have a chance. You knew that like the other drivers, he just saw you as a little sister. But still you couldn’t help but fall the star driver of Red Bull.

Everything started when you brought your niece to the paddock because your sister had an emergency. You were scheduled to interview Checo in the RB motorhome and your niece was starting to feel fussy and you were slightly panicking on what to do— when Max suddenly came to your rescue and took your niece out to ice cream.

You admit you found Max attractive even before— like so damn attractive, but that was it— nothing more. But when you found Max carrying your niece in his arms as they played inside his garage, you knew that you were a goner to the charms of Max Verstappen.

You have been pinning for Max for a year now. You wished that you had the confidence and courage to just confess. But the fear of rejection freighted you, so you settled to just keep your friendship with the devastatingly handsome Red Bull champion.

As time went on, and nothing but friendship between you and Max developed — You’ve come to terms with the process of letting go of your feelings. Even when you’ve already met his mom and sister, hung out in his yacht and spent nights over his place when movie nights with Charles and his girlfriend went too late. You knew not to think anything of it.

And you were right to think nothing of it. Because not a week later, rumors had spread all over the paddock that Kelly Piquet had set her eyes on Max. You didn’t believe it at first, but when you saw with your own two eyes them engaged talking happily in his garage. The sparkle in Max’s eyes had solidified your will to move on.

A few weeks had passed and Kelly’s presence was constant in the paddock. Everyone had speculated that she had become Max’s girlfriend. But no one was sure, not even you — Max had been silent about it.

You tried to be happy for them you did. But you can’t blame yourself for wishing that it was you instead. Even to this day, you are still trying to forget and bury your feelings for Max.

“Y/N? Y/N? Oi Y/N” You suddenly were startled out of your thoughts. You forgot that you were still with the drivers in your office.

“What? Sorry, I just remembered something. What did you say?” You asked Charles as he was the one who called you.

“I asked if you had an interview today” Upon hearing the words of the Monegasque, your eyes grew wide as you remembered that you did have a job to do and you were indeed almost late.

“SHIT! I DO I’m late! “ You suddenly sprang up from your seat and quickly gathered the things you needed — while the 4 drivers looked at you with amusement.

“Who’s scheduled for you today, Y/N?” Max had also sat up from his seat and gave you an opened bottle of water.

You received the bottle from Max. You didn’t have to thank the driver — just one look from you and he knew.

The other drivers looked amongst themselves as they saw your exchange with Max. Everyone had a knowing look on their faces.

“I'm going to Mclaren today! I have the whole day with Lando. “ You said as you closed your once abandoned laptop and placed it in your bag — the one Max gave you on your birthday.

“What have you planned for Lando, Y/N?” Checo asked curiously. He still remembered his interview where you both made bracelets and stuffed toys for his daughters — his daughters loved it and went to sleep with it every single day.

“Oh! I’m taking Lando to a rage room, then drive-thru for food.” You explained happily to the older Mexican driver.

“Which part of that is the interview?” Charles had interjected

“While we eat the food in the parking lot, duh,” You said as if they should’ve already known. Well, they should by now.

“You know Y/N, Lando likes you right? ” Carlos had suddenly dropped a bomb on you. You didn’t expect it at all.

“What?” Max had suddenly said — catching all of you off guard. You didn’t understand, why Max had reacted so suddenly. But you pushed that aside for now as you continued to stuff everything you need in the bag

“What do you mean, Lando likes me?” You asked Carlos, with your eyebrows scrunched together.

“He likes you. Like you know? Take you out on dates and all that” Carlos replied as he gauged your reaction.

“Ohhhh, that’s cute! how did you even know about it, Carlos” you asked not taking any of it seriously.

“Cute?” You heard Max muttered under his breath.

“He told me. I won’t spoil anything else. I’m not even supposed to say that he likes you, but oh well.” Carlos shrugged as he finished off his ice cream.

“What do you think about Lando?” Charles suddenly asked you. The Ferrari driver leaned forward

“Will you date him if he asks you ?” Checo then joined the conversation.

“ You should say yes, I mean you two are the same-“ Charles had suddenly grown excited.

“Ok whoa, calm down dads. He hasn’t asked anything yet! “ you exclaimed

“But will you say yes if he asked?” Max then asked you, his eyes piercing your soul. After all of the other questions, Max was the one to Catch you off guard.

“Uh yes, I guess? I mean, why not? Lando is fun And he is single right … ” You were panicking so you said yes, even when you knew that you weren’t ready for anything like that since you still held feelings for Max.

“ YES! I thought that you-“ Charles wasn't able to finish his sentence when you cut him off.

“OK, bye guys! See you later. I need to go!” And just like that you were gone, leaving the four drivers in your office — not letting them question you further.

“I swear, that kid is weird.” Charles shakes his head from side to side at your actions.

“Lando likes Y/N?” Max had asked again just to make sure that he had heard the Spaniard correctly.

“ Lando is a good kid. They’ll make a good couple, no?” Checo asked no one in particular, as Max was not moving from where you left him.

“Wait, wait… since when did Lando like Y/N?” Max asked confused, looking green with jealousy. Fingers tingling as they clenched on itself

“Well he was interested in Y/N since the beginning but he backed off since everyone thought that you two had a thing” Carlos explained as he stood up and went to raid your snack stash.

“Yeah, but now you’re with the daughter of Piquet. what’s her name again? KELLY! yes, kelly. So Lando is taking his shot” Charles added

“You knew? Charles, you knew about Lando?” Max was aghast at the knowledge that was just receiving now.

“Well yeah? I was the one to encourage him to ask Y/N out. ” Charles shrugged nonchalantly. He knew about your feelings for the Red Bull driver, but he also saw how hurt you were when Max started seeing Kelly out of nowhere. Charles wanted to help his friends — specially the ones that he grew to love like his own sibling in any way that he could. Plus it was time for Y/N to have fun, and Lando Norris is exactly that.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Max was conflicted. His emotions growing uncontrollably by the second.

“ Mate, we haven’t seen you for how many weeks! You were always out with your new girlfriend. Even Y/N had no contact with you “ Carlos explained to Max.

silence filled the room, when suddenly pings of notifications sounded all over the rooms.

And Charles couldn’t help but whistle.

“Well he sure does move past” he had added.

Your story

As Max looked at his phone. Your Ig story flashed. His heart had started to hurt and the feeling of a pit in his stomach grew. it was as if someone punched him right in the gut.

And another notification ping had popped . And it only made Max’s stomach churn even further.

landonorris

[lemotmo]

Some of them clearly got the point of Tim's call-out.

Q. What did you make of Tim's interview? I realize the bulk was Lonestar but the fandom stuff was interestingly phrased. The fact that so many people involved with the show, and now the showrunner himself, are openly discussing how bad things are cannot be a good sign. I know we had some fans who were saying we could 'bully' Tim and the show into giving us more Tommy but I think that was a massive mistake in hindsight. I think certain people got carried away and went way too far. Weather their intentions were ever bad or not I just think some people took the bullying idea too far. I'm a little worried we may not see Tommy at all now.

A. The bullying idea was always going to be a massive mistake. Normally you can take Tim's interviews with a bit of 'lol, why is he so dramatic' because he's not immune to getting his feelings hurt, and using his interviews to tell people that. In this case though it was definitely a direct callout. I have been here from the beginning and the show has never experienced anything close to what they have experienced this off-season. It's one thing to root for a particular show ship it's another thing entirely to openly send, and openly encourage others, to send hate to the cast and creators of a show. Then those same fans dragged the lighting director, director of photography, show directors and professional media members who have covered the show for years into their bullying game as well. It was insane, pathetically immature behavior. At times it was also incredibly disturbing. And every single bit of it can be traced back to the cameo videos. The second the storyline they were paying to be told didn't match the storyline we were actually watching they revolted.

And unfortunately because I think Tim, and ABC, just didn't think they were anything worth paying attention to initially, he was allowed to do them way too long. The more he did the more obsessed with him that particular group of people became. This has nothing to do with 911. Those people aren't at all interested in 911. Their entire interest is Lou and Lou alone. It's a small group of people. A small sick group of people who created a bunch of separate accounts in order to appear to be more people than they actually are (and they were stupid enough to openly admit that is what they did). Then that small group of people got together and from every single one of their many accounts they attacked as a group. They started with Oliver. They pointed out that Oliver wasn't interacting with Lou or engaging with any of them, or B/T content, and decided, at least initially, that he was solely to blame for B/T not getting the attention they thought it deserved, again the Buck part they don't care about. They were upset that they weren't seeing more of Tommy and they blamed Oliver for that. Suddenly Oliver was being tagged in posts that were calling him unprofessional, immature, bratty, selfish, and because of course, homophobic (they're really not a bright group of people). However instead of taking their bait and engaging with them, Oliver, rightly, blocked them. Meaning they needed a new target. Briefly it became Tim because their moronic leader screenshot a message she sent him that he, stupidly, responded to. She took that and spun and ENTIRE relationship theory and spread it through her many accounts. Tim then admitted in another comment that he actually didn't know what she was talking about but didn't want to be rude by continuing to ignore her so he responded to her. He then said that was a mistake and he wouldn't be responding to anything else. And he hasn't (she should be very embarrassed by his interview today because he may as well have used her name). And the show also continued to not align with her/their theory and they got more upset. Then found a new target.

Throughout the season Oliver did what Oliver has always done. Oliver posted, liked and promoted Eddie/Buddie/Buckley Diaz family content. He has always done this. This was nothing new. But it infuriated Lou's fans and they turned their anger on Ryan. Suddenly Eddie was the worst character in the history of television. He was an abuser (to Buck especially), he was a user (of Buck especially). He was a terrible friend (to Buck especially). Depending on the day he was either a deadbeat dad or obsessed with his kid in an unhealthy way (they couldn't ever really decide which way to go on this one. That opinion was dependent on how the poster felt about Chris). When that attack didn't really get the attention they were begging for, they changed direction and made it personal. Post after post, that Ryan was always tagged in, calling him racist, a deadbeat dad, an asshole, unprofessional, manipulative and controlling of Oliver (wtf, god they really are a stupid group of people), a whore (I actually read that one myself, it was a trip), a terrible actor that only has a job because Tim thinks he's hot. And so on and so on. At first Tommy didn't kiss Eddie because Ryan is homophobic and refused to do the storyline, then Tim, very publicly, corrected that lie so Lou's fans had to pivot and said Lou actually refused to do the Eddie storyline because he knows Ryan isn't a good guy ( a special kind of crazy that makes me need to drink ). Then they sunk to their sickest, lowest, most pathetic, vile, disturbing, and inexcusable moment. Ryan did a podcast where he discussed his past mental health struggles and suicidal thoughts. They went into the comments on the podcast and told Ryan that they wish he had committed suicide. That if he had killed himself then Tommy could have his screen time and they wouldn't have to see Buck have scenes with Eddie. Not only did they leave those comments (the podcast has since deleted most of them, thankfully), they sent similar messages directly to Ryan on Instagram. Knowing he would see them. It was appalling and very, very disturbing. The cameo videos ended fairly shortly after. These people are sick. They get zero sympathy or understanding from me. It's a fucking television show. Tommy is not a real person. Ryan is a real person.

As for maybe not seeing Tommy at all, I would imagine conversations have certainly taken place. He was never sticking around permanently. The conversations most likely involved deciding if they needed him at all, and if they did, how many actual scenes did they need him for. I don't work on the show, but if they decided he wasn't necessary to the storyline, and they could get away with his stuff happening off screen I would imagine he's been dismissed. They probably decided they needed him at least for a few scenes though. Unless other things happened behind the scenes we're not aware of he will be around the first few episodes at least and then and probably no more. He can take his tiny army with him when he leaves. No one will miss them.

Okay, just ... yeah, all of this. It's crazy how these people did all of these horrible things in the name of... a ship? I mean, what?

I've been in fandom for a very long time and I have been shipping characters for a very long time, but I've never seen behaviour like this. Behaviour where people think they are justified to bully, harass and vilify the actors playing a character on a TV-show. To the point where they get blocked by the actors and crew.

I don't understand what would drive someone to do that? I genuinly don't.

These are the kind of people that need to put down their phones forever, go outside and touch all the grass they can touch. After that they should never watch 911 again. If you don't like something, just walk away. I have done that before. Shows don't always go where a fan wants it to go.

Look. I want Buddie. You all know that. I'm 99% certain that we're getting Buddie in season 8. But, if it turns out we won't, which is always a possibility since I don't know what Tim is cooking up, I will be disappointed, but I won't start spewing hatred all over the place. I will just take a step back and focus on other things in life. I'll keep shipping Buddie and read fanfiction. I'll be fine here in my Buddie corner of the Internet with my Buddie mutuals.

So yeah, this is insane behaviour to me. I truly don't get it.

Thanks Nonny for dropping this in my inbox!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting these anon OP updates instead of reblogging. Don't get mad at me. There is a reason for it and it's all done with consent from the OP. You can find out more about that here.

Remember, no hate in comments or reblogs. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of the anonymous OP’s posts, you can find all of their posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

This is a fandom thing

AITA for accusing that publicly someone of intentionally posting their fics whenever I posted?

For context, I am autistic and write some fics that I post on AO3. But I ended up deleting my account there because some people started leaving me pornographic comments on the fics. All those comments were deleted along with the stories.

I will get to the main story now. I posted fics for a ship that I liked, but I also noticed that the fics barely got any views. So I decided to check the tags and see that someone else had also posted something which pushed my fics down from being the top post. I thought it was no big deal at first.

The second time I posted a fic for the ship, the same person also posts something around the same time. Once again, their fic pushed mine down from being on the top. And from what I saw, they got twice as many viewer interactions as I did. I thought that maybe it was just a coincidence that they posted when I did.

But then it happened a third time, then a fourth time, then a fifth time. Every time I posted for that ship, they posted something for that ship. I spoke to some friends about it and they said that they did not think it was just a coincidence. They were sure that this person was doing it with malicious intent.

Why would they think that you may ask? Because before I started posting my fics, I had said that I did not think it was fair that the ship had more fics for the male version of the mc than for the female version of the mc and that we could band together and post more fics for her. And then that person had made a since deleted post about how "female [character name] stans are the most annoying and obnoxious people in existence. All they do is boo hoo and whine when they don't get their content. If they are so upset, then those dumbasses should make the content themselves."

I decided to message this person because I saw that they had a tumblr account, and they just ignored all my messages. I ended up joining a discord servers they were in and I messaged them about how they kept posting fics when I did. They ignored my dms but were active in the servers. Since they kept ignoring me, I called them out in the server. Only then did they respond to me. They told me that it was just a coincidence and that I was just being overly sensitive. The other members in the server got on their side and called me rude and unprofessional for not keeping it in dms. I told them that I tried to but I kept getting ignored. The other members told me not to take the fic posting thing seriously and that it was no big deal and that I should just drop it instead of being upset.

I kept quiet after that and went back to posting fics for the ship, but the same person continued to post whenever I did. I pointed it out to the rest of the server and they called me an asshole for bringing it up again. So I just deleted everything on ao3 and left all the servers. I feel like giving up on writing now. It sucks because that was something I loved doing, but this experience has soured it for me.

So AITA for accusing that publicly someone of intentionally posting their fics whenever I posted?

What are these acronyms?

[buddierecs]

near death experience buddie fics

all of these are general audience, teen and up or not rated (no smut) make sure to kudos/comment on these amazing works :)

still by: brewrosemilk "for the first time, buck longs for a bullet wound to treat. dirt to dig at. a door to break through. something. there’s nothing. “your guess was correct, diaz,” the bomb technician tells them, as he gestures to the orange circle. “you’re standing on a large sensor plate, wired to a detonator. It’s incredibly important that you don’t move. don’t shift. when you put your weight down, it was like cocking a gun - you take your weight off, this thing is powerful enough to take the entire house with it." word count: 9.3k important tags: angst, humor, love confessions, first kiss all that we intent is scrawled in sand (and slips right through our hands) by: withmeornotatall "buck and eddie get trapped together, time is running out, and eddie doesn't want to die alone" word count: 6.9k important tags: earthquakes, major character injury, whump, hurt!eddie diaz, love confessions, first kiss, getting together take this heart, put yourself in it by: smilingbuckley "on his way to eddie's, buck gets into a car accident. he asks ravi, who happens to be a responder to the scene, to call eddie so he can confess his love before it's too late." word count: 1.8k important tags: car accidents, getting together, angst, whump, blood and injury, hurt!evan buckley, worried!eddie diaz across the stars by: ummrys "nasa astronaut evan buckley is presumed dead and abandoned on mars. despite everything, he lives to tell the tale." word count: 75k important tags: space au, based on 'the martian', pre-relationship, hurt!evan buckley, hurt/comfort, mutual pining, grief, slow burn, love confessions if i should fall by: elvensorceress "a accident leaves the love of buck's life dying in a hospital, leading him to evaluate the life he has, the life he wants, and where his heart belongs" word count: 23k important tags: injury recovery, angst, hurt/comfort, feelings realisation, getting together, pining!eddie diaz, demisexual!eddie diaz when your world is on fire by: smilingbuckley "the 118 responds to what should be a normal house fire only to find out that one of their own is stuck inside and believed to be dead." word count: 6k important tags: major character injury, hurt!eddie diaz, burns, explosions, established relationship, presumed dead, grief, hurt/comfort i love you (it's ruining my life) by: smilingbuckley "thinking they're about to die, eddie confesses his feelings for buck to chimney... except they don't die, and now he has to deal with chimney's inability to keep secrets" word count: 6.2k important tags: love confessions, secrets, misunderstandings, light angst, getting together, team as family, emotional hurt/comfort, pining!eddie diaz when we grow up, our shadows grows up too by: dylaesthetics "buck and maddie find themselves on the brink of death, but only one of them can make it out alive." word count: 7.9k important tags: protective sibling, feelings realisation, maddie buckley ships buddie, worried!chimney han, worried!eddie diaz something about sacrifice by: rogerzsteven "buck and eddie are trapped in a call, both of them being injured. buck does everything he can to save eddie, even if that means risking his own life." word count: 5.7k important tags: hurt/comfort, whump, hurt!eddie diaz, injury, angst, major character injury cliffhanger by: pansys_goth_gf "buck and eddie get into a car crash and wait for help to arrive." word count: 3.4k important tags: car accidents, major character injury, love confessions, pet names take in all the colors before they fade to gray by: roisindubh86 "eddie confronts buck, has a realization in the middle of an argument, and just when he thinks it can't get worse, he gets a call from texas that pulls the ground from beneath his feet, figuratively spoken. (the universe is watching. if the two firefighters don't get their act together, the next collapse will be the literal kind.)" word count: 37k important tags: pining!eddie diaz, feelings realisation, friends to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, family feels, hurt!eddie diaz, getting together

[izukuisbaby]

⊹˚.⋆ OUR FAVOURITE DILFS WITH A FAMOUS S/O - JUJUTSU KAISEN

℘. flora's notes : I've had this idea forever but I couldn't manage to write it UNTIL NOW. my idea was that reader is a model so it's kind of based on that, though you are free to be famous for whatever reason u want 💀

℘. send me a request ! : i would love to write this for other jjk characters (especially TOJI) but please give me ideas cuz i can't find anything :((

℘. gn, male, female reader 💓

m.list | comment and reblog if you enjoyed ! i am not posting at peek hours i would rly appreciate it if u could reblog w related tags 🥰

★ 𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐔 𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎

℘. he 100% stalked you on your socials and knew everything about you

℘. it's also very likely that he slid into your DMs shamelessly

℘. something cringe like : " what a pretty human in a pretty restaurant, we should go there together sometime 😏"

℘. but we all know this mf, he didn't stop at ONE DM

℘. no, his name is elegantly followed by "9+ messages" all of them being cringe pick up lines to beg you to go on a date with him 😍

℘. and you eventually agreed but it was mostly for him to leave you in peace

℘. he was convinced you'd fall for his charms and unfortunately, he was right... can't blame you I would too

℘. and since your first kiss - which was an officialization of your relationship to him - he would not shut up about it

℘. everytime y'all are out in public he makes it clear he's your boyfriend for the paparazzis

℘. gojo loves attention... so he LOVES paparazzis

℘. he thinks y'all are the most goal couple to exist and brags about it

℘. "y/n, can you imagine what other people must think of us : "the strongest and the most famous (your job of choice), they were meant to be"

℘. you have 100% your own ship name and fanpages, you're labeled as the "hot couple" who is edited on tik tok 24/7

℘. I don't think I insisted enough on how he BOASTS about dating you to whoever shows a spark of interest in his life

℘. the poor nanami hears about it every second of the day and is FED UP with it, but his last straw was when gojo was talking about you to a curse they were suppose to eliminate...

℘. he has you and him on a fun fair date as a wallpaper and purposely leaves his phone on during meetings so everyone can see he's dating you... and also to get yet another occasion to brag

⊹

★ 𝐍𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐈 𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐎

℘. HE WOULD BE SO SUPPORTIVE

℘. he will attend all of your shows and interviews, always on the front row. sometimes walking for a show can be pretty stressful for you but seeing his angel face calms you down and gives you back your confidence in an instant <3

℘. ... he's very active on LinkedIn and he reposts your achievements/front pages with a professional yet sweet and admirative commentary

℘. he likes to go backstage before your shows so he can give you one last forehead kiss and compliment

℘. never hesitates to tell paparazzis to back off, he doesn't like his privacy invaded but he will gladly take pictures of you with a fan for them

℘. his favourite photo that he has everywhere is one a selfie you took before a show with a world renowned brand. you looked so stunning and confident, it never fails to make him smile when he looks at it

℘. i feel like he didn't really know you, just saw you from one or two front pages but it didn't click until you told him you were a (your job)

℘. i don't know why but i think you would have met on a dating app 😭 like nanami is tired of being single and he told gojo about it WHO OBVIOUSLY WAS KIN ON HELPING ! and he got to discover your personality first, which is the most precious part of you in his opinion

℘. because yes you ARE attractive but no one but him knows the part of you that is the most beautiful and he loves that

℘. i think he can't help but be a bit jealous that people simp over you so he would never refuse to take a cute picture for the world to see

℘. on your third date, he asked you to be his partner and gave you a ring as an officialization. since them, you've been wearing it as a lucky charm and you never take it off

© izukuisbaby. comments appreciated ! although do not modify, translate, copy, claim as your own or repost on any app/platform/social media (this applies to all of my content)

[hauntedhowlett-writes]

title: hokaanir riduurok

pairing: din djarin x non-mandalorian female reader

rating: explicit (18+ minors DNI)

word count: 6278

summary: 

hokaanir riduurok - the mandalorian joining ceremony during which one warrior submits themselves to their intended, allowing their flesh to be carved with a symbol of their unity.

or: you marry a mandalorian and their weddings are a little different than you’re used to

author’s note: a gift for @dindjarinslegs , who’s beautiful brain sparked this whole work. the term of endearment “pirun’ner” comes from this list by user @starrypawz . if you enjoy this work, please consider leaving a comment or reblogging!

content warnings/additional tags: explicit sexual material (18+ minors do not interact), no use of y/n, very plot heavy porn, writer considers ‘din’ to be the mandalorian’s first name, exploration of Mandalorian customs and lore, use of Mando’a, ceremonial scarification, mentions of blood and wounds, use of weapons, use of aphrodisiacs, wedding ceremony, oral (f receiving), unprotected p in v, creampie, mild/moderate breeding kink, cum play, multiple orgasms, vaginal fingering, biting/marking, thigh riding, dirty talk, praise, pet names, reader i have taken liberties. let me know if there are any missing!

You’re washing a dish when you hear the metallic clang of heavy beskar approaching. You turn, ready to greet the Mandalorian, only to find Din holding a blade out to you across both palms, helmet tilted down and feet planted wide. You glance at Grogu, who offers only a slow blink of his large dark eyes and a twitch of his ears in answer.

“Uh…Din? What…what are you doing?” You ask. He lifts his helmet, dark visor obscuring your view of his face but not the white hot feel of his gaze across your skin. 

“In Mandalorian culture it is tradition to present our intended riduur a blade with which to complete the hokaanir riduurok,” his modulated voice explains. 

“Right, right. Of course,” you mumble. You dry your hands on the apron around your waist. “What uh…what’s that, exactly?”

“The Mandalorian joining ceremony.”

You blink. “Joining ceremony? You mean like…marriage?”

“To Mandalorians it is more than marriage but…yes.”

“Din Djarin, is this a proposal?” You ask. You can’t stop the broad smile spreading across your face as you approach him. 

“Yes, cyar'ika,” he murmurs, armor heavy arms wrapping around your waist when you’re within arms reach. “Is this an acceptance?”

He tilts his head, pressing the cold beskar to your forehead. A keldabe kiss, he’d told you once.

“Of course.”

________

Din calls the Armorer following his proposal. She, along with Bo-Katan, have chosen to remain on Mandalore with a number of Mandalorians who wish to rebuild the planet to its former glory after the fight against Moff Gideon.

“She has accepted the blade,” Din tells the Armorer’s hologram. 

“It has been a long time since the Tribe has seen a proper Mandalorian wedding,” the Armorer says. “Even longer since the sands of Mandalore have borne witness.” She pauses, helmet tilting to the side. “Did you tell her the significance of the blade?”

“I told her it was for the joining ceremony,” Din replies. He should have known the Armorer would see right through him.

“Yes, but did you tell her its purpose? How she is meant to carve her possession into your flesh to be kept with you for the rest of your days?”

“I may have neglected to provide that much detail.”

The Armorer sighs. “I would suggest you bring your aruetii to Mandalore ahead of your joining ceremony. We will have much to discuss.”

“We will endeavor to arrive within the next lunar cycle,” Din concedes. 

“This is the Way,” the Armorer intones.

“This is the Way.”

________

“I can't believe I’m visiting Mandalore,” you say excitedly. “I’ve never even been off Nevarro.”

Din is strapping you into the co-pilot seat of the freighter ship he’s borrowed from Karga’s fleet. While he’s content to fly and sleep in his Starfighter, he said he wants you to be more comfortable during your first trip off-world.

“Stop moving, pirun’ner,” he says, fitting the straps across your chest. You wiggle again, just to be stubborn, and he huffs a laugh, tapping his helmet to the crown of your head. 

“You know, you’ve never told me what that means,” you say as he takes a seat in the captain’s chair. You watch as he confidently moves through the pre-flight motions, flicking switches and pressing buttons, inputting coordinates and checking gauges. 

“The literal translation from Mando’a is ‘my water’,” he says. “Water begets life. Without water, there is no living.”

“Din…,” you murmur, words getting caught in your throat. “Makes me feel bad for the nickname I give you in my head.”

He turns his head, somehow managing to look affronted despite you not being able to see his face. “And what nickname is that?”

“Tin man,” you joke. 

“But…this is beskar,” he says, clearly not understanding your joke and you can’t help but laugh. 

The nickname comes from the early days of your relationship with the Mandalorian. 

As Nevarro’s resident baker, you’re familiar with the locals and even more familiar with the gossip around newcomers. The town buzzed with excitement when one of the Mandalorians that defended the trading town had returned and settled on the outskirts with his son. 

The first time you saw him was when his son made a cookie float off your display and into his little green hand. The Mandalorian had shown up while you were bent to the little creature’s level, asking where his parents were.

“Grogu,” his modulated voice chastised. “We talked about this.”

He was clad head to toe in the beskar armor you’re now intimately familiar with, but you didn’t know that at the time, so you called him ‘tin man’ in your mind. You didn’t learn his name until around the third time he’d visited your bakery.

The ship jerks harshly in take-off, breaking you from your trip down memory lane. Your fingers curl nervously against the armrests of your seat.

“Does that usually happen?” You ask.

Din must sense the anxiety coming off of you in waves. He reaches a gloved hand over and rests it over yours. “You are safe with me, cyar'ika. I would never let any harm come to you.”

You smile at him, the tension easing from your shoulders. You turn your hand palm upwards to fold your fingers between his.

“I know.”

________

Later, in the pitch black crew cabin, you’re curled against Din’s body on the scratchy cot as the ship’s autopilot continues your voyage, reveling in the feel of him against you without all the beskar and weapons. He feels human like this, soft, yet somehow still your solid pillar of strength in a galaxy not built for gentle things.

“Tell me about Mandalore,” you murmur. 

“It’s not the same as it once was,” he replies, his unmodulated voice deep like the vastness of space beyond the ship. “It’s harsher now. War ravaged. For a long time we were told it was not even fit for life.”

“Were you raised there?”

“No. I was born on Aq Vetina. There was…a raid. My parents were killed. Battle droids. I was raised as a foundling on Concordia, Mandalore’s moon.”

“I’m so sorry, Din,” you whisper. You trace your hand up his chest and neck until you can cup his stubbled cheek in your palm. 

“I didn’t set foot on Mandalore until recently. I had…removed my helmet, in the presence of others, which goes against the very tenets of The Creed.” He takes a deep breath. “I was an apostate. Dar’manda.” 

“Seems kind of harsh.”

He chuckles. “You and Bo-Katan will get along well.”

“You still wear the armor,” you point out. “If you’re not a Mandalorian, is that allowed?”

“By bathing in the Living Waters in the Mines of Mandalore, someone who is dar’manda can seek redemption. It was a long shot. The Mines were thought to be destroyed.”

“But they weren’t?”

“No. The planet is more hospitable than we were led to believe, even in its ravaged state. It’s why Bo-Katan is able to rebuild, to reunite what once was broken.”

“So, you were able to bathe in the Mines then?”

“Yes. I have redeemed myself in the eyes of the Creed.”

Your mind conjures an image of your Mandalorian, tall and broad though his face is nothing more than a blur, stripped of his armor as he wades into a pool of water. You rub your thighs together, hoping the friction eases the ache forming between your legs.

“What are you thinking about, pirun’ner?” Din asks. His voice has gone lower, darker, and his hand presses you closer to his body. You realize you’ve been caught.

“You,” you reply honestly. He shifts, running his hand down your waist and over the curve of your ass, not stopping until his hand grips behind your knee and drags your top leg across his hips. Your hips shift against his leg.

You’ve not seen your Mandalorian’s face or body before, but you know the feel of it intimately. The hard planes of muscle in his arms and chest, the softness of his tummy and the thickness of his thighs. The stretch of him inside you, the bite of his teeth and strokes of his tongue under the cover of darkness.

“Is my riduur feeling needy?” His hand urges your movements, your hips now rocking steadily against his thigh. Your moan is breathy and desperate in the small, dark space.

“Not your riduur yet,” you gasp. Din’s warm hand grips your chin, tilting your face upwards. You feel his nose trace along your cheek as his mouth seeks out yours in the dark. His lips are warm as they move against yours in a slow, burning rhythm that matches the slide of your pussy over his thigh.

“The next time you cum, after tonight, you will be,” he groans. Your hips stutter, your release hitting you like a burst of light, sparkling at the corners of your vision. He kisses you deeply. “Sleep now, ner’karta.”

Your heavy eyelids obey his command.

________

Two figures stand at the mouth of a cave as Din lands the Alanar N3 Light Freighter on the surface of Mandalore, a woman with bright red hair and blue armor and a helmeted figure with copper armor and a gold helmet with spikes.

“Welcome,” the redhead says as the two of you approach. “It’s been a long time, Din Djarin. Hopefully you will not need rescuing while you’re here this time.”

“Bo-Katan. Or is it Mand’alor Kryze, now?” Din replies. She smirks. 

“Alor Kryze will suffice,” she corrects. Din bows his head in respect before introducing you by name to Bo-Katan and the other Mandalorian, who identifies herself as the Armorer you’ve heard Din speak about at length.

“We have much to show you and discuss,” the Armorer says. She regards you. “Follow me.”

You glance at Din, eyes wide. He gives you a nod, squeezing your hand. Taking a deep breath, you follow the Armorer’s retreating figure as she enters the cave. You meet her at the edge of a cliff that overlooks what appears to be a bustling city.

“Wow,” you mumble. 

“It has taken much effort to restore the Mine City to functionality. But it is prospering.”

“How do you get down there?” You ask.

The Armorer chuckles. “We fly. Come closer. We will go together.”

“Oh, uh. Okay.” You step closer and she wraps an arm around your waist, the jetpack on her back igniting as she takes a step over the cliff. You scream, clinging to her shoulders and squeezing your eyes shut.

Your feet hit the ground and you slowly open your eyes. At this level, other Mandalorians bustle about, some with helmets and others without. There are even children running through the streets.

The Armorer releases you once your footing is solid. “Come, we will visit the Living Waters.”

You trail after her again, head swiveling as you take in the city. Some of the Mandalorians look at you curiously as you pass, and you wonder what they must think. From what Din has told you, his Tribe is very secretive. Do they worry you’re a threat? The thought almost makes you laugh.

She leads you deep into the Mine City, down from the street level until you’re standing at the bank of what appears to be a lake, stone steps descending into the dark depths.

“These are the Living Waters of Mandalore,” the Armorer says. “In the days before the Great Purge, the Living Waters saw many ceremonies. Initiations to the Creed, joinings, the adoption of foundlings, the merging of houses. It is the lair of a Mythosaur, a great beast tamed by Mandalore the Great, the first ruler of Mandalore.” 

“There’s something down there?” You ask. She tilts her head.

“Allegedly. Mythosaurs have not been seen in many moons,” she replies. “Your joining ceremony will take place on these steps. Has Din spoken to you further about what that will entail?” You shake your head. The Armorer continues.

“It begins with a proposal. A Mandalorian warrior chooses a riduur to whom they will submit themselves, body and soul, for as long as they continue to live. The warrior presents their intended with a blade with which they will perform the hokaanir riduurok.”

“The ceremony consists of three parts,” she continues. “The dinui, or gift, where both parties have selected a weapon to give to their warrior.”

You blink. “He’s going to give me a weapon?”

“Yes. It will be forged specifically for you,” she confirms. “And you will select one for him as well.” 

“The second part of the ceremony is the riduurok, or the vows. You will drink spiced wine from the same chalice before reciting the traditional Mandalorian vows.”

This, at least, sounds familiar to you. Vows were common in the few wedding ceremonies you’d seen on Nevarro.

“Finally, the hokaanir. You will take your blade and cut your unifying symbol into his flesh, just above his heart. Then, the covert will host a celebration in your honor.”

“I’m sorry, I have to do what?”

The Armorer tilts her head. “We are a warrior people. Our loyalty is demonstrated with honor and blood,” she offers in explanation. When she’s met with silence, she continues. “I am happy to help you choose a weapon and unity symbol for your ceremony.”

“Thank you, Armorer,” you reply honestly. “For sharing everything with me.”

“This is the Way,” she says, bowing her head. “Do you have any questions?”

Only about a thousand, you think. But there’s one you’ve been wondering about since landing on the planet and being introduced to Bo-Katan, a Mandalorian who showed her face.

“I hope this isn’t insensitive but…you and Din always wear your helmets, right? But Bo-Katan and some of the other Mandalorians…they don’t. Why is that?” You ask carefully.

“The Tribe follows the Creed as described by the Way of the Mandalore. There are other interpretations of the Creed that do not consider the removal of one’s helmet grounds for exile,” she replies. “We are learning to live in harmony.”

“With your Creed…will I ever be able to see Din’s face?”

“As his riduur, he may choose to show his face to you and your future warriors.”

You blink. “Future warriors?”

“Your children. Foundlings or by birth.”

You hadn’t considered children before. Of course, you adore Grogu, Din’s adopted son, but growing your family? Now that the idea is planted, you can’t shake the roots loose.

“Shall we discuss weapons, then?” The Armorer asks, breaking through your racing thoughts.

“Let’s do it.”

________

“You really didn’t tell her anything about the ceremony?” Bo-Katan asks as she walks with Din through the restored Mine City. Din is in awe of the progress that’s been made since the last time he was here. There are a surprising number of Mandalorians now residing in the city, Alor Kryze’s unification efforts clearly working in her favor.

“I haven’t even witnessed one myself,” he says. “In the covert, they only recited the vows. There was no ceremony involved.”

“It’s certainly an experience. And for an aruetii, it may be challenging. We are born and raised as warriors. Blood is nothing to us.” She pauses. “Speaking of raising warriors, where is your son? I miss the little womp rat.”

“He and Karga will join us for the celebration.”

“Din Djarin,” the Armorer calls. He turns just as you collide against him, your arms around his waist. He tips his helmet to your head. 

“Pirun’ner,” he says, holding you to his chest. The reunion is short lived.

“We must discuss your joining ceremony,” Armorer says. “Join me at the Great Forge.”

________

The heat from the fire that burns within the Great Forge is stifling and oppressive. Sweat beads on Din’s temple within moments of stepping foot into the cavernous space.

“Your aruetii was rather surprised by our customs,” the Armorer says. Din can feel the judgment in her gaze, even through the helmet. “But receptive. She will do well.”

Din nods. “Thank you for taking the time to explain it to her.”

“She has chosen a weapon and a unity symbol. Have you given thought to her weapon?” The Armorer asks.

“A vambrace,” Din says easily. “A defense weapon. With shields and a comms unit. Nothing she could accidentally hurt herself with.”

“A fitting choice. It is settled. Your ceremony will commence in two days, upon the completion of your weapons. This is the Way,” she says.

“This is the Way.”

________

Bo-Katan helps you dress for the ceremony in a dress made of material so soft and light, you worry it will disappear into thin air. It reminds you of some of the gowns you’ve seen in holovids from Coruscant, white fabric draped over your shoulders, plunging in a deep V down your chest and falling to the ground, secured at the waist with a broad belt of beskar and crystal. When you ask her about it, she looks away.

“It belonged to the last true leader of Mandalore,” she says, not inviting any further questions you may have. “Women would normally wear ceremonial armor as well, but since you are not a Mandalorian, exceptions can be made,” she says. 

“Have you seen many weddings, Bo-Katan?” You ask. Din was right when he said you would get along well with the new leader of Mandalore. You’ve been enjoying getting to know her over your last two days on the planet. 

“I helped prepare for a few, before the Purge,” she replies. She adjusts the strap of your gown on your shoulder. “But the ceremonies are private. A leader in the community helps to guide the couple through the stages before taking their leave once the hokaanir has been performed.”

“Oh, why’s that?”

Bo-Katan smirks. “The ceremonial wine will have certain…effects on you that you will not want someone to bear witness to.”

“Maker!” You hiss. Your eyes go wide as she laughs. “Are you joking?”

“Guess you’ll have to find out.” She guides you out of the room and down into the city, where the Mandalorians are prepping for the celebration that takes place after the ceremony. There are flags raised with a familiar Mudhorn skull and others with what Bo-Katan explained was the skull of a Mythosaur, the symbol of the Mandalorians.

Helmeted Mandalorians tip their heads as you pass, while those not wearing helmets hold their fist across their chest. You feel nervous but excited and your heart races with each step closer to the Living Waters.

Bo-Katan leads you down into the depths, the sound of a crackling fire growing louder as you descend. As your eyes adjust to the dim glow of the firelight, you notice two figures standing at the top of the stairs to the Living Waters.

They turn as you approach. Your steps falter as you take in your Mandalorian’s attire.

Rather than the silver beskar and flight suit you’re used to seeing him in, Din now wears a pair of black linen pants belted with beskar tassets that hang to his knees. A black cape hangs down his back to the floor, held in place by impressive spiked pauldrons, a heavy chain sitting at the base of his throat. He still wears his familiar silver helmet.

As he turns to face you fully, your mouth goes dry. He’s shirtless beneath the cape and pauldrons, the tan skin of his chest and abdomen on full display. The firelight illuminates the muscles you’ve traced with your fingers and mouth but never with your eyes.

Perhaps most surprising, however, are the black tattoos that adorn his chest, swirling lines that stretch from his collarbone and down his pectorals until coming to a point right above his belly button. Shiny scar tissue catches the light - a large one on his hip that looks like a blaster shot, thin lines that bisect his tattoos and deeper gashes near his ribs. Your fingers ache to trace them as you commit them to memory. 

Bo-Katan gives you a little nudge, urging you forward until you’ve joined Din and the Armorer at the stone steps. She takes her leave with a nod of her head and the Armorer regards you both.

“Shall we begin?” Her modulated voice asks. 

“Yes,” Din’s modulated voice replies. His bare hand reaches for yours, fingers wrapping around your palm and easing the wild beat of your heart. 

“We will begin with the dinui. You have each chosen a gift that befits your riduur.” She turns, hefting a large ax-like weapon from the low wall behind her. “Din Djarin, your riduur has chosen the munit'kad halberd, the Mandalorian vibro-ax. A weapon worthy of the head of Clan Mudhorn." 

Din takes the ax, testing the weight of it in his hands. A twist of his hands activates the sonic blade, the beskar glowing blue. He swings the ax in a wide arc, slicing it through a nearby stone that crumbles to pieces.

Another twist of his palms and the blade goes still. He hands the ax back to the Armorer, who places it back on the wall before picking up a smaller item.

She holds the item to you as she says your name. “Your riduur has chosen a vambrace, fitted with a communications unit and defensive shield projectors.”

The Armorer gestures for your arm, securing the beskar vambrace to your forearm. It looks similar to the ones Din wears, reaching nearly to your elbow. There’s a screen that lights up when you tap it. You press at it again and a circular shield projection emits from the device, startling you and making you laugh.

The Armorer taps at the screen, making the shields disappear. She unclasps the vambrace from your arm, setting it beside the ax. “Din Djarin, do you accept this gift that your riduur has selected?”

“I do,” Din responds.

The Armorer says your name again, dragging your attention from Din. “Do you accept this gift that your riduur has selected?”

“I do,” you repeat.

The Armorer turns and picks up a chalice. “You will now consume the tal’galar, a symbol of the Mandalorian lives lost before your union.” She passes the chalice to Din, turning her head to allow him the privacy to lift the bottom of his helmet. You follow suit, training your eyes to the floor.

He passes the chalice to you. You glance briefly at the dark liquid before bringing it to your lips and taking a sip. It’s warm, thicker than you expected, but sweet. As you swallow, that warmth intensifies and it feels like it’s already suffusing through your veins, making you feel tingly. 

The Armorer takes the chalice from your hands, setting it aside. She picks up the blade that started this whole series of events, the one Din presented you with in your kitchen what feels like ages ago, and your hands start to feel sweaty. You swallow nervously, heart beating wildly in your chest.

“You will now recite the vows,” she tells you. “You will repeat after me.” Din reaches for your hand and the feel of his skin against yours is electrifying, lighting up every nerve ending. “Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde.”

Din repeats the words in Mando’a, the deep timbre of his voice like silk. You want nothing more than for him to pull you closer, to whisper those words in your ear. This is your husband - this fierce warrior, this gentle man, this loving father. A wave of emotion clogs your throat, making it hard to swallow as you watch him.

“We are one together, we are one when parted, we share all, we will raise warriors,” the Armorer repeats in Basic. You echo the words back, eyes glued to Din’s helmet. His fingers tighten briefly around yours as you finish the vow.

“Din Djarin of Clan Mudhorn, do you so submit yourself to your intended, until your final battle has been fought?” The Armorer asks. 

Din drops heavily to his knees, chest heaving with breath. “I do.”

She turns to you, holding the blade across both palms. You take the weapon in hand and face Din. You feel hot all over, like anything you touch may catch fire in your wake.

“Your riduur has chosen to symbolize your unity with pirun,” the Armorer says. “You may begin the hokaanir.”

________

Every moment in Din Djarin’s life has led to this - kneeling at your feet and staring up into your beautiful face as you ready yourself to unite your souls. A fire burns in his veins and his body aches with the need to touch you, his cock straining in his pants.

The tip of your blade drags across the skin of his chest and his breath catches at the prick of pain. He can feel his skin splitting in its wake, the sharp sting and burn of a new wound quickly morphing into an ecstasy that has him gasping.

The blade lifts from his skin and you begin the second line of the symbol. His hands curl into fists against his thighs, body fighting against the urge to wrap you in his arms and claim. 

Din can feel the blood sliding down his chest, little rivulets trailing from the most significant scar he’ll ever receive. When his eyes find yours from behind his visor and he sees his own bottomless lust reflected back at him, his restraint frays further. 

You start the third and final line of the symbol, an inverted triangle that represents pirun, water. His water, his life, his everything. He can’t help the moan that breaks free, echoing in the cavern. 

He reaches for you, gripping your hips as his head bows forward and he gets his first glimpse of his hokaanir, the cuts you’ve made over his heart with so much focus and care, stark red against the tan of his skin and bisecting his mandokar markings. His heart swells with pride at carrying a piece of you with him forever.

Din distantly registers the blade leaving his skin and the echo of retreating footsteps but all he can focus on is getting his hands on you, rucking up the gauzy fabric of your gown until his fingers are tracing the soft skin of your thighs. You drop to your knees, your own trembling hands sliding up his arms.

“Take it off,” Din commands. “My helmet, take it off, cyare.”

“Are you sure?” You ask, even as your hands grip the heavy beskar. 

“I’ve never been more certain.”

________

You slowly lift Din’s helmet, revealing a strong, stubbled jaw, plush lips, a prominent nose, soft brown eyes and curly dark hair. You set his helmet to the side without daring to take your eyes off of him, the sound of beskar hitting stone echoing through the cavern. You bring your trembling hands to his jaw, smoothing your thumbs across the high point of his cheekbones.

“Din,” you whisper. His hands wrap around your wrists, steady where yours are not. “Maker, you’re so beautiful.”

He smiles and it feels like a blaster shot to the heart to finally see it, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners and his mouth tilts up a little higher on the right. He wraps a hand around the back of your neck, pulling you forward for a sweet kiss, his lips moving gently with yours.

It doesn’t stay gentle for long.

Din’s lips turn insistent, hungry, bruising in their quest to conquer yours. His teeth nip at your lower lip, making you gasp and he uses it to his advantage, his tongue tangling with yours and exploring to its content.

His hands explore your body, tugging roughly at the straps of your gown until your breasts are exposed to the cold air of the cavern. His lips leave yours, kissing down your jaw and neck, sucking bruises into your sensitive skin.

Your own hands explore his chest, fingers ghosting over the fresh wound of his hokaanir and coming away sticky with blood. He moans against your skin each time your fingers catch on the angry red lines. 

“You feel that, cyare?” Din asks. He takes your hand, holding your palm to the mark. “A heart that beats blood only for you?”

He doesn’t wait for a reply before he’s moving, his body urging you down onto your back, eager hands rucking up the skirt of your gown up to your waist. He presses your thighs apart, settling on his belly between your legs, his thumbs parting the lips of your pussy for his appreciative gaze.

“I’ll never have you in the dark again,” he says, brown eyes meeting yours. “Not when I know what it’s like to see you in the light.”

With his gaze still holding yours, he licks a broad stripe through your folds. His eyes flutter shut as he groans, savoring the taste of you on his tongue. When they open again, there’s a hard gleam to them that wasn’t there before, a mischievous glint that has your breath catching at the intensity.

“Remember what I told you, cyare? On the ship?” He asks. His thumb circles your clit, broad swipes over the sensitive nub that have you crying out, the sound echoing around you. “That the next time you came would be as my riduur?”

Din slips two fingers into your soaked entrance, curling them against your front wall as he sets a pace that has your hips chasing after his hand with every withdrawal. Every movement of his fingers inside of you feels hotter, stronger than it ever has before. Maybe it’s the wine or maybe it’s just Din, unmasked and all yours, but you’re already so close to coming from just his fingers and his words and the look in his eyes.

“Want you to cum on my fingers first, want to see it,” he says, and that’s all it takes to have you clenching tightly, tiny supernovas behind your eyelids as you come undone. “That’s it, ner’karta.”

He doesn’t remove his fingers, instead dipping his head and licking at your sensitive clit and making you cry out, already oversensitive. 

“Din, Din, Din,” you pant, fingers digging into his curly hair and pulling tightly. He groans against your cunt, working his hand faster as his lips and tongue drive you to a second orgasm before the first has even subsided.

He growls when you nearly knee him in the head with your thrashing, removing his fingers and shoving his arms beneath your thighs, rising to his knees and bringing your body with him. Your upper back rests on the ground as your hips are suspended in his hold, your pussy completely at his mercy as he devours you. 

Din’s fingers dig into your ass, grip as strong as the beskar armor he wears as he holds you steady, his tongue working you into a frenzy. The dull spikes on his pauldrons press into your thighs, the discomfort a direct counterpoint to the pleasure he’s lavishing you with.

He sucks on your clit, rolling it between his lips as he hums, the last tether of your control snapping as you fight against his hold, your second orgasm washes over you like warm starlight in your veins. 

Din eases you through it, pulling away only when you start to whine. He presses kisses to your thighs and bites at the sensitive skin, sucking marks into your flesh to match the possession you’ve carved into his.

He finally lowers you to the ground, setting you gently to the cold stone. His eyes are hungry as he stands, removing the beskar tassets and tossing them aside before shoving the black linen pants down his legs. He unclips the cape from his neck, laying it on the ground. 

He reaches a hand out to you, pulling you to stand when your palm fits against his. His hands cup your face, kissing you fiercely, the fire igniting in your core despite how boneless you feel from the two orgasms he’s drawn out of you.

“Ner’riduur,” Din murmurs against your lips. His hands unlatch the belt at your waist and he sets it aside with more care than he’d given to his own ceremonial items. He slides the fabric off your body until it pools at your feet. “Lie down for me.”

You do as asked, settling on the black cloak. He drops to one knee, then the other, crawling over your body, looking every inch the fierce warrior that he is, black tattoos and scars shifting over well-earned muscle. His cock presses to your hip and he groans, shifting until his length glides between your dripping folds.

“Ni kar'taylir darasuum,” Din says. He takes himself in hand, pressing the thick head of his cock to your entrance. “I love you, pirun’ner.”

“I love you, Din Djarin,” you reply as he presses inside of you, the steady stretch of him making you gasp. You glance at his hokaanir, the skin splitting as he thrusts into your body. Fresh beads of blood form along the lines, dripping from his chest to yours. 

Din grunts, hips slamming against yours. You moan and reach up to wrap your arms around his shoulders, pulling him closer and seeking his lips with your own. It’s more of a messy press of your mouths than a kiss, the sharing heated breath as his body works against yours.

He dips his head to your neck, sucking more bruises to your skin as he murmurs dirty praise in Mando’a and Basic.

“So fucking warm and wet.”

“Made just for me, weren’t you, ner’karta?”

“Jate riduur’ika.”

You push him up, shoving frantically at his shoulders until you’re able to reverse your positions, him lying beneath you as straddle his waist, his cock never leaving you. He presses so deep inside of you like this it makes you shiver. 

“Want you to fill me up, Din,” you say, hands pressed to his chest to give you leverage as you move your hips over his cock. His eyes flutter shut as he moans, the sound making your head feel fuzzy. His hands grip your hips, tight and possessive as his fingers press bruises to your skin. “Please, please, please.”

Din plants his feet against the ground, meeting each movement of your hips with a powerful thrust that makes you see stars. Your muscles tighten once more as you pulse around him with another wave of release that you can feel soaking his hips.

You collapse forward against his chest, his arms wrapping around your waist as he pounds into you from below, chasing the release he so deserves. You press little kisses to the skin you can reach as he uses your body to take his pleasure.

With a final harsh thrust he holds your hips tightly to his, his cock pulsing deliciously inside of you as he groans your name in prayer and ecstasy. He works his hips in tiny movements as he empties inside of you.

Din’s movements eventually slow to a stop, both of you panting as you try to catch your breath. You lift up, looking down into his face and smoothing the sweat damp hair from his forehead as he looks up at you with an expression so full of love you want to weep with the force of it.

“Pirun’ner,” he whispers, cupping your cheek. “You‘ve given me the greatest happiness.”

You press a soft kiss to his lips, your smile hard to fight as you do. You hold each other for a long moment as your adrenaline and euphoria settle and Din slips from your body. He gently eases you to the side, urging you to lie on your back. 

He stands, grabbing something from the low wall, dipping it in the water and coming back to kneel between your spread legs. His eyes are dark as he looks at your swollen pussy, glistening with your combined release.

Din swipes two fingers through the mess, pressing them slowly inside of you and making you whine. When he appears satisfied, he wipes a wet cloth through your folds, cleaning you up.

He smoothes the cloth through the dried blood on your chest as well, gently wiping it away. When he’s done, he presses a trail of kisses from your belly to your throat before meeting your lips, slow and languid.

“As much as I’d like to keep you beneath me, we have a celebration to attend,” he says. “Let’s get you dressed.”

He helps you into the dress and belt and you help him fasten the cape back around his shoulders when he’s dressed himself in the pants and tassets. Your hands smooth other the black tattoos on his skin.

“You’ll have to tell me about these one day,” you say.

He pulls you close. “Mhi me'dinui an. We share all. I will be glad to teach you more of our customs.”

You grin at him. “We have many days ahead of us, Din Djarin.”

“I like the sound of that, pirun’ner.”

________

When you arrive at the celebration, a loud cheer moves through the crowd, the sound roaring in your ears as you hold tight to Din’s hand. 

High Magistrate Karga approaches the two of you, a wiggly Grogu leaping from his hold and running towards Din, who scoops him up from the ground, holding him in his arms. A little green hand reaches for you, wrapping around the finger you offer him.

Bo-Katan and the Armorer stand nearby, watching the new clan of three. 

“A successful joining,” the Armorer says.

“Mandalore is healing,” Bo-Katan replies. “This is the Way.”

“This is the Way.”

Want more Din Djarin? Check out my masterlist

[diorsluv]

feather , part 17

“ like whatever, you’re a waste of time ”

series m. list previous chapter next chapter

( socialmedia!au )

jackhughes

liked by _quinnhughes, yourusername, markestapa, and 83,048 others

jackhughes ok guys let’s balance things out 🙏

tagged: yourusername, _quinnhughes

view all comments

yourusername EWW u said u weren’t gonna post that blurry pic of me 😰

yourusername um but also the caption?? wym 😭

→ jackhughes don’t worry abt it

→ _quinnhughes it doesn’t mean anything dw

→ trevorzegras jack wants a little peace in his life that’s all

→ colecaufield he’s mr miyagi

_quinnhughes the shopping cart was kind of uncomfortable

→ yourusername awww r u a little butthurt

→ _quinnhughes actually yes my butt does hurt 🤬🤬

trevorzegras isn’t that lake pic like really old

→ jackhughes yes

→ yourusername he has the chance to use it now bc he never posts me 🙄

rutgermcgroarty i’m scared another war’s gonna happen and i’m hiding out in your comments

→ jackhughes ur safe here bro dont worry 🫡🫡

→ markestapa me too

→ luca.fantilli i’ll protect you 😘

→ yourusername oh god should i be scared too

→ rutgermcgroarty you ARE the war yourusername

→ mackie.samo dude you weren’t supposed to tell her that

_alexturcotte i miss the lakehouse days let’s do it again

→ jackhughes well its definitely not gonna be the same as it was before

→ _alexturcotte dammit ur right

→ yourusername what why? am i the only clueless one here

adamfantilli i take it lil drizzy hasn’t seen it yet

→ edwards.73 BRO

→ markestapa DELETE THIS RN

→ yourusername seen what?????

→ dylanduke25 it’s too late now theres no point in deleting 😔

username26 NONONO GUYS WE HAVE TO KEEP HER FROM SEEING IT

username10 another war is brewing

username6 it’s the end y’all

username59 okay but like why should she care if she’s in a relationship

username70 well it was nice knowing all of you

username35 lord you’re all so dramatic SHE HAS A BF so it shouldn’t matter

missseraphina

liked by lhughes_06 and 1,001 others

missseraphina we messin around or nah? 💘

view all comments

username3 yall this is kind of embarrassing!

username85 LMFAOOOOO

username23 i swear to god this is luke hughes

→ username74 who?

→ username59 i mean he did like the post

username14 oh. my. god. is this why all the guys were panicking on jack’s post???

username32 aw i’m happy you found someone!!

→ missseraphina not official yet haha

username50 so… dryshughes is never happening is it

→ username61 the ship has officially sunken 😔

lhughes_06 maybe

liked by missseraphina

→ username75 NOOOO

username97 this is it yall. i cant live knowing theyre both in separate relationships.

→ username46 BUT HOLD ON NOW, HERS IS FALLING APART AND HIS ISN’T EVEN OFFICIAL YET

→ username17 uhh who r we talking about lmao

yourusername oh

this comment has been deleted

next chapter notes ) how are we doing yall.. ik ik it’s chaotic and shit BUT YOU’LL GET WHAT YOU CAME HERE FOR SOONNN and yall kept complaining abt bookmark but yall should really b complaining abt misssera whats her name HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONEEE (i originally didn’t plan to post this on jan 1 but it is what it is 🫣), sorry for starting the new year off with even more drama lmfaooo

tags: @aliaology @hockeyboysarehot @absolutelyhugh3s @jackquinnswife @freds-slut @love4ldr

[robinbuckleysfringe]

paper rings

a joseph quinn social media au

pairings: joseph quinn x keery!reader

warnings: pronouns for reader vary between she & they, I've tried to keep it as gender neutral as possible even tho I do use female faceclaims

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*madelyncline has posted*

tagged yninstagram

liked by rudeth, hichasestokes, josephquinn, florencepugh and others

madelyncline surprised my bestie on their trip to LA. happy birthday flower 🌼

View comments

madelyncline photo creds for the 1st pic to @/rachelzegler who helped set up the best birthday surprise

> madelyncline and of course photo creds to @/rudeth for the 3rd photo of me and my bestie goofing around on set

yninstagram aww, thank you maddie 🫶🏻❤️. love you and can't wait for more onset chaos soon!! 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

yninstagram and thank you to rach for somehow keeping this whole thing a secret 🫶🏻❤️

> rachelzegler happy birthday babes. love you big time 😘🫶🏻

maya_hawke happy day of birth to the best on screen girlfriend ❤️❤️

> yninstagram love you maya!! 🫶🏻❤️

joekeery you're old now, happy birthday y/n

> yninstagram shut up. 26 isn't old 😤

josephquinn happy birthday y/n xx

> yninstagram thanks joe. come to LA soon so we can hang before I leave for Charleston!!! xx

hichasestokes happy birthday 🌼

> yninstagram 🫶🏻

gatenm123 happy birthday y/n. thanks for being the best on screen sister ❤️

> yninstagram aww, love you gaten. miss you already 🫶🏻❤️

florencepugh happy birthday babes!! have the best day, you deserve it!! 💕💕

> yninstagram love you flo!! 💕💕

zendaya happy birthday y/n, miss you!! x

> yninstagram thanks hun. miss you too!! xx

user omg happy birthday y/n!!!

user their friendship >>>>>>>> everything else

user does this mean we're getting OBX3 soon??!!!

> yninstagram soon!! I promise as soon as we get a date, you fans will be the first to know!!

☆☆☆

y/nupdates | Y/N spotted getting all cosy with her stranger things costar, Joseph Quinn, in LA this week

View comments

user omg are they together??

user they're so cute together oh my gosh!!!

user omg new ship???

> user2 yes!!!! what would their ship name be tho??

user I wonder if they're dating

> user2 I wouldn't be surprised if they were tbh

> user3 thought y/n was dating Rudy Pankow, her OBX costar, no?

> user that was just a rumour I think. neither of them confirmed anything

user have you seen the way he looks at them?? someone get me a man who looks at me like joe looks at y/n 🥺🥺🥺

user they'd make such a cute couple if they're not already dating

> user2 so true!!!

user omg I hope its true that they're dating. but even if they're not and they're just friends, that's cool too. they should be allowed to be happy regardless

> user2 THIS ^^^^

☆☆☆

*yninstagram has posted*

tagged obx, madisonbaileybabe, madelyncline, hichasestokes, jonathandavissofficial, carlaciagrant & rudeth

liked by josephquinn, rachelzegler, joekeery, drewstarkey and others

yninstagram we are so back baby!!! season 3 of the beach show is officially in production!! 🏖🫶🏻❤️

View comments

user OMG YES!!! CANT WAIT FOR THIS SEASON!!

user I've been waiting for this one!!!

millybobbybrown girl, isn't this like your 5th project in a row or something? pls take a break

> yninstagram my 3rd. but yeah, I hear you. I'm taking a long ass holiday after we wrap this season

> millybobbybrown I bet you're exhausted

> nattyiceofficial y/n, hun, please make sure you're resting xx

> yninstagram love you guys 🫶🏻🫶🏻

obx P4L!!!

> yninstagram P4L bby!!!

josephquinn good luck with your next project, you busy bee 🐝 xx

> yninstagram haha thanks joe xx

rachelzegler I love seeing you win at life but pls come back to LA, Lenny misses you 🥺🫶🏻

> yninstagram I miss you too!! come to Charleston!!! 🥺🫶🏻🫶🏻

> rachelzegler getting on a plane rn

> yninstagram bitch, you better be 🫶🏻

☆☆☆

been a few weeks since I posted part one of this little series, apologies for that. hope you enjoyed reading this chapter 🩷

[quixotical-lymbo]

hiii could I request a tiny fluff/crack fic of just Macaque x Waking x gn!reader going to couple therapy (Sandy could be the therapist if you want cause it's silly) cause they have a bickering problem (reader has a hot temperament too)

and basically the three of them try to work it out even if they keep throwing snarky comments and everything

Pairing: Wukong x Macaque x gn!Reader Rating: SFW Summary: Mixing monkeys and therapy isn't a good idea.  Warnings/Tags: Silly banter, Sandy trying his best, Mo cameo, canon typical violence, therapy, Sandy is NOT licensed, and crack. Word Count: 600+ words

It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. 

Sandy's eyes flicked between all three of his 'clients' and sipped his tea. Clearing his throat caught the attention of two of the monkeys sitting beside each other. 

"So, uhhh, does anyone want to start us off with a 'I feel' statement?" Sandy smiled.

"I feel like this is a waste of time." 

"I feel like someone should have thought about that before being the reason we're here in the first place." 

"I feel like I want to strangle someone." 

"...great…great start everyone!" Sandy weakly applauded. 

"Look, Sandy, as much as we appreciate this, I don't think we-" 

"-Nonsense! If MK entrusted me to help you three through your issues, then I am more than happy to help!" Sandy's eyes shimmered. "I wouldn't wanna let my little buddy down!" 

"...right," Wukong deflated as he realized there wasn't any way of getting out of this without feeling guilty. Sandy nodded and turned to you, who was sitting with their arms crossed over their chest and their eyes studying the decorations on the walls of his ship. 

"How about you tell me what brings you all here with me today?" Sandy called out your name as he reached for his cup of tea again. Macaque, who sat in the middle of both of his partners, tensed as he tapped his sharp nails along his arm. Wukong, much to his nonchalant attitude, looked carefree but he was nibbling on his bottom lip as his brow furrowed proved otherwise. 

"Where to fucking start," You glanced at the blue gentle giant, who's smile did nothing to ease the flames of anger that began to rise. In fact, you rose from your seat and began pacing around the room. "Let me begin, those two always arguing like an old married couple for every single decision we have to make as a throuple-" 

"Hey! We don't bicker every time."

"-and do you know how infuriating it is to argue over what we should eat every.single.night?" You sent a mean look at Wukong who stuck his tongue out at you.

"I think that's a bit of a stretch." Macaque met your dirty look with his own shit-eating grin/scowl. 

"Don't get me started on how long it takes for us to fuc-" 

 

"-OOOOKAY!" Sandy jumped up from his seat and held a hand to stop you from continuing. "I think I have an idea on what we should do to help you guys!" 

 

"Oh really?" You sat back down, arms crossed, and one leg over the other. Your glare didn't relax until you felt something soft cuddle into your bicep. You peered out of the corner of your eye to see Mo rubbing his cheek against your arm. Despite your contorted face, you grabbed the kitty cat and placed him on your lap to pet. 

 

"Yep! It's simple really," Sandy pulled out a chart from behind the couch. "You guys can take alternating turns on who chooses what for that day!" 

Sandy pointed to a purple square on a random Tuesday. "Here, Macaque gets to choose what you guys eat for dinner, where you'll go on dates, and all of that good stuff!" 

Sandy pointed to a (f/c) square, "And then you'll choose, and vice versa for monkey king!" 

"Why am I last?" 

 

"Don't complain." 

 "I am not-" 

"If you two don't shut up and listen to Sandy, I'll make you shut the fuck up." 

Both monkeys winced before following your command. 

"...right," Sandy continued. "If anyone has any complaints or starts a fight over something that could've been communicated properly, then they lose a day and it's given to the next person who's supposed to choose next." 

"Alright, sounds good," You rubbed under Mo's chin and felt yourself relax as the cat purred. "We'll try that, thank you, Sandy." 

"Yeah, thanks!"

 

"Hm." 

"Great! I'll see you guys next week then! Keep me updated, you silly gooses!" Sandy took Mo from you before ushering you all out of his boat. He closed the door and slid onto the floor while sighing. 

"They're gonna fight again, aren't they?"

Mo shrugged. 

🍜 - I do not give permission for anyone to translate, copy, republish, or plagiarize any of my written works. I provide no permission for any of my literary works to be used in artificial intelligence. sparkle banner(s) by @adornedwithlight !!

[angstychilz]

Join the Winterkov Cult

So.... episode 6, huh. I'm just gonna be frank and say that I 100% ship the Winter King with Simon. These two old men should kiss, and I'm not about to act like I'm saying this in a joking way either. However, I do have a few things to say in regard to this ship.

Firstly, I get the people that don't ship Winterkov or say that they're joking whenever they make post about it, but there are people that do genuinely ship these two together. I get how self-shipping has gotten a bad rep due to the oncler and certain undertale shippers, but at its core, shipping is just supposed to be in good fun. Winterkov in itself is goofy in a way that's all in good fun.

If that makes you uncomfortable, that's also valid. Just don't tell me about it, and feel free to block. I don't really post on Tumblr much, but if I start to, one can possibly expect some Winterkov propaganda. Of course, the power of old man yaoi changed that.

If that makes me cringe...

✨️ Besides y'all, cringe culture is dead. ✨️

Also, in regards to the name, can we all just simultaneously agree to use the tag of Winterkov over Simoncest? The name Simoncest makes me think of incest which just isn't the case at all for this ship. Winter and Simon are two completely different characters, and the name Winterkov just sounds so much better. Plz and thank you.

That's basically everything I wanted to say. If there is anything else, I'll likely add it in the comments or make a follow-up post. Feel free to take this pic as a small treat to keep y'all warm on the road.

Art of Simon and Winter kissing was made by my good friend @veereality on Tumblr!

Anyway, ✨️Winterkov✨️ >>>> 🤢Simoncest🤮, I think they're pretty neat, and thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

[aimportantdragoncollector]

Event Announcement!

Three Weeks of Trioholders is an event in dedicated to shipping the first three One for All holders in fics and art, hosted by yours truly. I commissioned the lovely announcement art from @poysean5. This event will run from Monday October 30 to Sunday November 19 2023!

Rules:

I will be accepting not only Trioholders (Yoichi/Second/Third) but also Duoholders (Yoichi/Second aka Ichinii), Yoichi/Third, and Second/Third. Basically, if your fic or art romantically ships the first, second, and third One for All holders in any combination/pairing, then it counts. I just picked the event name to be alliterative.

There will be both an art and writing category.

You may submit as many entries as you’d like. However, you will only be eligible to win once in each category.

The minimum word count for a fic is 1,000 words. Drawings must be colored.

AI (artificial intelligence) art or writing is NOT allowed.

I will be accepting any degree of heat for the romance, from mild crushing to NSFW.

The romance does not have to be the sole focus—for example, if you wrote a crack fic about the vestiges with a side of romance then that would be accepted. At the least, two of the first three One for All holders should be main characters.

Collaborations are allowed, though you can only win one prize for the group.

I’m not picky about time zones so I will count anything submitted until it is no longer Sunday November 19th anywhere in the world (GMT-12 is the last time zone.)

Prizes:

First place in both art and writing will receive a fic of a minimum of 3,000 words from me (Katydid on Ao3) based on a prompt of your choice. Second place in both art and writing will receive a fic of a minimum of 1,500 words from me. Honestly, if you participated in my One for All October contest last year, you know when I write prizes, I tend to go over the word count. I will also be offering an undecided number of honorable mentions (awarded with snippets) depending on how many submissions I get. One honorable mention will be given out randomly to ensure that everyone has a chance to win.

I reserve the right to ask for a different request if I do not feel capable of writing the prompt.

Submission:

Please use the tag Three Weeks of Trioholders if you submit your entry on Tumblr or Archive of Our Own. Also, please @ me (aimportantdragoncollector) if you share on Tumblr. If you post elsewhere online, then you can message me, send me an ask, or leave a fic comment with a link to your entry. Twitter or Fanfiction.Net entries are welcome, just please send me the link to make sure I see it. If I haven’t reacted at all to your entry within four days then you can assume I haven’t seen it and contact me again. I reply to all comments on my fics, and my tumblr asks will be open for the duration of this event.

Please contact me here on tumblr if you have any questions. I’m excited to be hosting this event, and I can’t wait to see what gets created!

[lizzybeth1986]

Drake and Kiara: When You're Fucking Racist

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

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

A/N: Again, apologies for the length. There was a LOT to unpack in this one!! I'm really, really not going to be nice to Drake here. It was harrowing to go through a lot of these scenes again and I honestly don't have the patience or inclination to sugarcoat any of it.

CW: Mentions of gun violence and minimization of trauma. Mentions of racist fan vitriol towards a black character. Examination of the Jezebel stereotype.

Whenever I think about how unhinged the hatred towards Kiara (and especially towards Kiara's attraction to Drake) was, a specific edit comes to mind.

On the surface, it looks quite simple. Kiara in a white wedding dress, Drake right next to her in his blue formal suit. Both of them are smiling at the viewer. The background is a beautiful forest, and the entire picture is bathed in a lovely, muted sepia tone. A sweet, simple wedding scene.

The caption underneath this edit?

Classify under things no one asked for.

Kiara's dream come true!

The tags read "#i barf a little looking at this" and "#i must post to share the suffering". You find out in the comments that the OP created this edit inspired by one of the many fics where Kiara was Drake's stalker, and intended to make her creepy and deranged (but ultimately failed).

The comments are...tbh, things that this fandom has long since normalized and shrugged at when it comes to Drake stans. Multiple puke-face emojis. Multiple gifs signaling disgust. One stan even equates the ship name (Driara) to the word diarrhoea.

"She looks very stalkeresque and white "I drugged Drake so he's marrying me" wedding ready!"

"Well it's close to Halloween so we should expect scary shit"

"THAT is why I made that bitch my Maid of Honor...so she got the message LOUD AND CLEAR...it ain't NEVER gonna happen honey" (right below a barfing gif)

I wish I could say this example of Kiara hatred was the worst of the lot, or even the only one. It wasn't. I'm not sure even an entire essay would be adequate space to explore the sheer levels of vitriol, hatred and double standards dumped on this one character.

Until now, we've seen examples of alternative LIs that were treated with respect. With adulation. Often with kid gloves in case we hurt their poor lill fee-fees. Up until now, no matter what an alternative LI may have done, the LI matched with them wasn't allowed to treat them badly, nor was the MC able to get away with hurting them without punishment.

But in this series, Kiara was, is, and will always be an anomaly.

The Jezebel Stereotype

In most media, black women in particular tend to be subjected to a variety of stereotypes that often have serious, real-world implications. The Mammy, the Sapphire (that over time evolved to what we now know as the "Angry Black Woman" stereotype) and the Jezebel, being the most prominent ones among them. In this essay, I will be focusing specifically on the last.

An article in the Black Then website explains the definition and history of the trope this: "The portrayal of black women as lascivious by nature is an enduring stereotype. The descriptive words associated with this stereotype are singular in their focus: seductive, alluring, worldly, beguiling, tempting, and lewd. Historically, white women, as a category, were portrayed as models of self-respect, self-control, and modesty – even sexual purity, but black women were often portrayed as innately promiscuous, even predatory. This depiction of black women is signified by the name Jezebel."

So it isn't altogether uncommon to see stories where black women are juxtaposed against "pure", "innocent" white/white-passing women, and viewed as lesser. PB hasn't exactly escaped these stereotypes in their stories either - though there are a variety of characters and character types, we can't deny that there was a time when a black woman was made the antagonist, often in ways that were meant to measure her up to the MC/another white woman to her detriment.

(VoS screenshots from the HIMEME YouTube channel, ACOR screenshots from Vika Avey's YouTube channel)

Two very prominent examples of PB using this trope are Scarlett from VoS, and Xanthe from ACOR. There are other black women who serve as antagonists but in a more professional space, but these two particularly are measured on their attractiveness, sex appeal and "purity" in the narrative in comparison to either the MC, or someone close to them.

In VoS, Scarlett Emerson and Kate O'Malley are the sisters of the two male LIs (Grant and Flynn), but their treatment couldn't be any more different. Scarlett's role in the book is pretty short-lived. She's very prominent in the first half of the book as Kate's potential MOH who secretly hates her, before it's revealed in Ch 5 that Tanner was cheating on Kate with her (and that she'd loved him since she was a child). Notably, in that very scene, the MC places most of the blame on Scarlett (rather than on Tanner for choosing to betray his fiancée) by labelling the act as her seduction of him.

Thereafter she is either only mentioned, or has blink-and-you-miss-it appearances in one or two chapters. We see her in the "memory" portion of the bonus scene, but we are never shown what her future is like (even as minor characters like Miss Harleney get one!). Her bonus scene shows us how her bracelet ended up on Tanner's boat, and it is an uncomfortable scene to get through. Tanner berates Scarlett for having sex with him a week before his wedding, but it is she who points out that he asked her to come there! Yet the MC and others view her as the temptress who "seduced" Tanner, as if the man had no mind of his own.

The narrative often juxtaposes her with Kate, the pure, innocent, sweet fiancée (and she actually is! No pretence there) and the fandom lapped it up. There were many demands for Kate to be upgraded to LI status, which eventually resulted in PB allowing us to marry her if we chose. As I mentioned earlier, both Scarlett and Kate are sisters to two of our LIs - but one is made an LI, while no one bothers to even imagine what the other's future entails.

An even worse fate greets that of Xanthe, the sole female antagonist in ACOR. The slut-shaming and disgust over her overt sexuality is far more blatant here. And it is extremely ironic for Xanthe to be viewed in this way, because the MC herself is a courtesan and uses wiles to get men to do her bidding. While Xanthe herself is not perfect by any means - she is depicted as xenophobic and callous, going as far as to mock Syphax when he is sent away to a possible death as a gladiator - the MC's targeting of her goes beyond just her "righteous indignation" and develops into a form of hypocrisy. She has no qualms mocking Xanthe for her direct approach or her skimpy red dress (even though the MC herself wears a skimpy red dress and can seduce a man in a temple not too long after).

The end Xanthe meets is horrific in its implications - the black matron of her scholae (who began by promising the MC herself that "you need do nothing against your will") sends her away to sexual slavery in Sicily, while the black man who was one of the few bastions of morality in the book, escorts her, smiling, to the ship that will take her there. As far as the narrative is concerned, the end was well-deserved...even though PB has had no issues allowing white women to do far worse without any punishment.

We cannot view what ACOR did with Xanthe in isolation. They had built up to it early on - from the MC's reactions towards her, her patrons' dismissiveness of her, the MC's LIs' viewing her with derision and zero respect. The MC - despite her own unscrupulousness - is viewed as the "noble whore" to Xanthe, yet it is clear on even a surface read that there is not much difference between the two women.

The Jezebel stereotype, ultimately, is about dehumanizing the black woman it focuses on, so that her actions and choices are viewed as deviant from what is "normal" - feeding into either responses of disgust and derision, or a desire to objectify her. To some readers, it makes whatever awful or comparatively unfair end they meet, more palatable. Scarlett and Xanthe are not viewed as people by the narrative - especially not the way the MC of their books or even white female antagonists are. No one cares for their backstories, coos over their losses, wonders if they are okay. When they meet their inevitable end, the characters and so many in the fandom alike just shrug and move along.

How does a character like Kiara fit into this? Her smarts and linguistic talents are her most prominent traits, and while she does have feelings for Drake, she never really acts out-of-pocket towards him (more on this later). So at least from what we see in canon, there's very little about her that seems to apply to the Jezebel stereotype. Yet, the fandom is not only inclined, but eager, to view her as one. Kiara's feelings have been viewed in a far more predatory light, perhaps more often than any other female character in the series. Why is this so?

A response I have often seen - on reddit, on Kiara's wiki page, at times on Tumblr too - is how there is a "certain something" about Kiara that people "just don't like". Many players who prefer Penelope to her are often very aware of what she has done, but still insist they like her far more than they do Kiara. On a reddit thread about questioning the logic of having Kiara and Penelope as options for the MC's MOH in TRR3, certain players commented thus:

"I don't know why, I just dislike her a lot. Penelope is fine to me, but Kiara irritates me." (said commenter is an Aerin stan)

"I liked Penelope, I thought she was nice. But Kiara got on my nerves."

In her book, The Sisters Are Alright, Tamara Winfrey Harris makes an eye-opening (to me at least!) observation about how misogynoir works:

"Misogynoir, abetted by dehumanizing caricature, is like water. It fills its vessel, taking many forms, and then overflows, creeping unnoticed into the cracks of things, rotting the foundation. It spreads a belief in Black women’s inherent wrongness." (Italics mine).

Now of course, if I were to ask the current fandom, they would come up with a range of reasons. Some that emerged from fandom myths and became more popular than the truth in time, some from PB's excessive pandering to players that hated her. But the root of it all is in a certain "je ne sais quoi" that makes her automatically unappealing, resulting in those readers leaning towards misreading or misremembering her scenes, misrepresenting her motives, or watering down the impact of worse actions from whiter women. It results in a group of writers (who have thus far gone to the extent of retconning the worst of a white woman's actions just to make her look good) leaning into such readings, even when they're not true.

TRR1 Kiara: Pragmatic Courtier or Backstabbing Snake?

"Kiara is fake", "Kiara is a snob", "Kiara is self-serving", "Kiara promised to be friends with us but dropped us like a hot potato the moment we became unpopular". These are some of the most enduring takes about Kiara in the past few years, and readers who say this usually bring up a vague recollection of TRR1 and 2 as proof. Mostly that "Kiara was our friend" in the first book, and left us hanging at the beginning of TRR2.

Is that reading based in fact, though? Let's take a look at TRR1!Kiara and find out.

We are introduced to Kiara (along with Penelope, and standing next to Hana) in TRR3 when we meet Liam's other suitors. Olivia introduces each woman differently, and the descriptor she uses for Kiara is that she is the "daughter of a diplomat and fluent in ten languages" (note: Kiara never boasts of her linguistic skill, Olivia does. Nor are there any scenes of her looking down on anyone who doesn't speak her mother tongue French, unless of course you accidentally ask her to sleep with you).

Both she and Penelope note immediately that the MC doesn't quite fit in - if the MC questions the women about being allies with Olivia, a woman who calls them "harpies", they view that as an overreaction. When the MC tells the ladies at the Derby about getting lost, Kiara finds her tardiness and inability to fit in, a sign that she cannot keep up with the competition. Until the chapters in Lythikos, Kiara's and Penelope's characterizations are almost interchangeable, personality-wise. It is likely the team envisioned them more as European nobility rather than specifically Cordonian (based on Olivia's introductions), and they are both depicted as poised, refined and aware of their place in court.

It's in Lythikos that Kiara, at least, begins to show a more distinct personality (for Penelope it's after the Regatta). Unlike the rest of the court, who watches Olivia's unwanted kiss on Liam with either mild shock or disinterest, Kiara is angered by what she sees as a very obvious power-play - which gives the MC the opening she needs to gain an alliance.

Now this "alliance" scene of Kiara's is interesting, for two reasons. One is that fandom often uses this scene to establish her "double standards" in TRR2, claiming that Kiara opted to be friends with the MC. Yet nowhere in the scene does the MC or Kiara ever suggest a friendship with each other - they both agree to an alliance. Furthermore, this is an arrangement that benefits the MC more - there isn't exactly anything she contributes (or is expected to contribute) to Kiara from her end. Kiara's promise is that she will put in a good word in the MC's favour, and she upholds that promise throughout the social season.

Another is that among the courtiers, Kiara herself is the first person to identify and respond to the MC's potential if she shows it at the Derby and the tea party (though Hana is also a courtier, I view her strictly as an LI in this context - since her support is by default and is founded on a more emotional basis). Not many nay notice this, but there is a distinction between how Kiara responds to an MC in a successful play vs a failplay...in a way that none of the other suitors do. Take note of the screenshots below:

The top two pictures in this collage are dialogues that feature by default. The bottom two, however, are dependent on branch-coding. They only appear IF the MC has managed to win the approval of the King, the Queen and the press. If you don't succeed in the same, she will not mention your performance in the social season at all, nor will she say anything about the value of your alliance.

That is a far bigger deal than most players of this series realize. It means that Kiara has been watching us closely, and has understood our potential over the course of just three court events. Only two other characters are shown tracking our progress this way: Bertrand (who is our sponsor, so he has to keep track) and Queen Regina (who can guess already her stepson's feelings for the MC, which automatically makes her a person of interest). For Kiara to understand the MC's capabilities, and to openly admit she has potential this early in the competition - it takes a high level of rationality, honesty and pragmatism to come to such a conclusion. Unlike Olivia (who lashes out in jealousy at the MC), Penelope (who has to be told why exactly it's good to have allies), and Madeleine (who dismisses us as competition until it's too late), Kiara actually views the MC with a discerning, impartial eye and an objective approach.

So on the surface, it appears as if Kiara is written by a team that likes her! You could almost be convinced that they thought she was cool but were forced to pander to "crazy Drake stans" in their writing later (which is an argument I have heard often). After all, she's established as beautiful, skilled, smart and observant. You wouldn't do that for a character you don't like, right?

But even as early as TRR1, a disdain for Kiara creeps in from the writing that you rarely see for any of the others.

This is especially apparent when you look at how Kiara's proficiency with language is spoken about. It is supposed to be her most visible skill - Olivia identifies her by it, we see her peppering her English sentences with French words (of course, many may argue that she doesn't exactly sound like an actual French person...but let's remember that her writers aren't exactly very used to the language themselves or interested in doing extra research for authenticity!). As we approach the end of the first book, there are at least two dialogue options that result in people doubting her abilities or mocking her for speaking only English and French most of the time.

In TRR1 Ch 16, Madeleine optionally speaks to the MC over phone (believing her to be a reporter taking her interview) about her thoughts on Kiara. Kiara's tendency to speak mostly in French and English is supposed to be a sign that she "exaggerates her accomplishments". Mind you, this is from the same woman who claims to be the best choice for Cordonia despite her poor strategies and her antagonizing potential allies during the engagement tour (TRR2); who complains if the MC doesn't compliment her for mediocre work as a press sec (TRR3). The MC can also choose to diss Kiara in a similar way, treating Kiara like she is a circus performer and her skills as if they are meant for the MC's entertainment. The only solace I could derive from this dumpster fire of a dialogue option, was that Kiara managed to shut the MC up with her multilingual response.

No other time are we allowed to call a courtier's abilities and skills into question. The MC accepts on faith that Olivia is a badass with great fighting skills. Same with Penelope's ability as a seamstress. The MC is never even allowed to have legitimate complaints about Madeleine's work as press sec, besides maybe that she could "be a little nicer". So the fact that the writers not only have other characters doubt Kiara's talent, but also allow people to mock her about it in all three books...is really something.

Another possible indicator of this disdain is the fact that Kiara is the only suitor who never gets a chance to actually interact with Liam on-screen. Even Penelope, a fellow minor character, can approach and talk to him twice...and her gift to him is shown in Ch 18 whereas Kiara's and Hana's aren't. Despite the fact that Kiara is a potential suitor, the story never allows her to interact with Liam. She doesn't exactly have any interactions with Drake in this book either, but honestly nor does any other couple have much time together besides Liam and Olivia.

Drake and Kiara hardly seemed to be a possibility back in TRR1. Drake himself didn't seem to associate with anyone besides the MC and the group in the first book (and even with the group his interactions were infrequent). Kiara herself doesn't have many scenes that aren't related to the court or to the competition, even once she is no longer participating. The closest she comes to any sort of association besides Penelope, is a friendship with Hana that begins sometime before the Fox Hunt. Drake and Kiara never actually have any scenes together, or interactions, or references. It is likely that the idea to pair them up was entirely a Book 2 thing.

On a fandom level, neither Kiara or Penelope garnered much attention or fan reactions. They weren't noticed much, nor did you see their scenes too often. Probably that is why it was so damn easy to remember Kiara's entire equation with the MC wrong. Why certain stans of the book were able to get away with misrepresenting the relationship between her and the MC in TRR1, to hate on her in TRR2. I will not deny, though, that certain dialogue choices from PB (like "I thought we were friends!" in the Fydelia scene) may have had a hand in those beliefs becoming the "truth".

TRR2 Kiara - Pragmatic Courtier or Backstabbing Snake (Part 2)

I plan to get into the way the Drake and Kiara angle is framed in canon, but before that it's important to tackle that one elephant in the room - Kiara telling the MC the alliance is over. Because very often, people used this scene (coupled with their misinterpretations of Book 1) as their "justification" to hate her. Often, people would choose the ruder options (such as the Christmas card dialogue) and assume that Kiara was rude by default, rather than as a consequence of the MC's behaviour towards her.

Kiara and Penelope are the first to express surprise at the MC's return (and their reactions are shown as representative of the rest of the court). Kiara in fact is shocked that the MC dared to return (which is kinda warranted! Several people in these early chapters view that as a risky move, a gamble that could backfire on her. That's why Bertrand gets her a press secretary). Their scene with the MC immediately follows the MC's conversation with Liam and Madeleine (and mind you, in the option where the MC can tell her she was set up, Madeleine herself voices disbelief of the same. Conveniently, this is never used as a reason to hate her). Both women let the MC know of their change in status, and therefore the change in their relationship with her.

What gets missed overall, is that Kiara is a lady-in-waiting (which is an actual role with specific duties) to Madeleine, which means her loyalty now has to lie with this woman whether she likes it or not. For her to even agree to approach the MC and explain the situation, is a risk. In at least two dialogue options in this scene, she tells the MC straight-up that they will be in trouble if they're even seen talking to her (this becomes a moot point by Ch4, mostly because Madeleine herself is shown talking to the MC and allowing her into conversations in public, once Hana arrives).

Penelope is often viewed in a better light in this scene because of her obvious friendliness and her sadness at no longer being the MC's friend, but once you have the reveal of her being a traitor, her behaviour in this scene seems wildly disingenuous, and I'm surprised more people didn't call her a fake when the reveal came out. She had to know the allegations against the MC were fake when she rushed to hug her, having been an integral part of that fabrication. It makes her lament when she's caught, in the failplay, ("I can't do anything right. You were never supposed to find out!") that much more chilling. She is eager to have the benefit of the MC's friendship and emotional support, without ever being honest about her role in smearing her reputation.

The other was that - no matter what you may choose to think of this scene - Kiara was placing herself at risk to let the MC know it was over. Approaching the MC was the right thing to do, but what is never spoken about is the fact that it was also a brave thing to do. Rather than ghost the pariah of the court and never give an explanation, she tells her honestly what the situation is, and strives to protect her impulsive friend (who could get both of them in trouble) at the same time.

When you view Kiara's actions from that lens - when you look at the facts - suddenly the claims that Kiara was "fake", "a flip-flopper", "a backstabber", "unscrupulous and self-serving", sound pretty hollow.

TRR2: The Drake x Kiara "Romance" Begins...and So Does the Vitriol

So...an interesting thing about the general reaction to Kiara in the early chapters of TRR2. I was new to the fandom when this book was released. There was an annoyance at Kiara when the first chapter came out, but to my surprise it didn't exactly become full-blown hatred until she started showing an interest in Drake in Ch 3.

This book is often used as a reference by Drake stans when they speak of Kiara as an obsessed, stalker-type, sex-hungry woman - often in contrast to their "pure", "innocent" MCs. Basically...the Jezebel. But the five scenes we see of this ship in the book itself tell a completely different story:

1. Drake Helps Kiara Lift A Heavy Beam (TRR2 Ch 3)

Chapter 3 is perhaps the first time we see an indication of Kiara's attraction to Drake on a physical level. The scene takes place at the barn raising, but only if we choose to stay with Drake over Hana for the barn raising activities. Kiara shows up in a rather pitiable state - her friend Penelope abandoned her for thirty whole minutes, leaving her to lift incredibly heavy beams alone. Drake helps Kiara and mildly chides her for not asking for his help, and Kiara stares at his bare chest, mesmerized.

She isn't exactly alone in this - the MC herself ogles at his bare chest at one point (if we go by the lines in the narrative that read "his muscles glisten in the sunlight" which is def from the MC's PoV). This scene was meant as fanservice for stans who wanted to drool over Drake's physique for a bit, and belatedly build up an alternative (at least for all three male LIs, they were trying to do this in TRR2).

The MC can either point out Kiara's obvious attraction towards Drake, or suspect her of being part of the plot. This will not be the last time the MC or the group will view her with suspicion, with little to no basis in fact. In the option that calls attention to Kiara's attraction to Drake, she is shown covertly sneaking a second look at him. Drake is shown with a visible discomfort at even the idea that Kiara could like him, one that only the MC notices considering she is working in proximity with him.

The reaction to this was instantaneous from several Drake x MC shippers. One or two glances at Drake's chest was enough for Drake stans to begin typing posts in capslock, screaming "BACK OFF KIARA HE'S MINE". The excuses given at the time were that the MC didn't get much opportunity to romance him (Drake was trying to refrain from kissing her in Ch 2 because he felt guilty), and largely-inaccurate judgements of Kiara's character. Jealousy of this kind is sometimes seen as the norm when you have a popular ship and a third angle is created, but this was about to take form in some...very disturbing ways in later chapters.

2. Kiara was Once Savannah's Friend/Kiara's long-standing crush on Drake (Ch 4)

A misconception I often see in the fandom (particularly in relation to how Kiara's feelings for Drake aren't given the same level of consideration that Olivia's for Liam is) is that Olivia's are "more genuine", and Kiara's are "mere lust" or "only physical" and this is probably why she's not given as much respect as Olivia was. Even though, tbh, Kiara was far, far more respectful of Drake and his personal space, than Olivia was of Liam in TRR1.

Leaving aside the obvious problems with that train of thought (viewing sexual feelings as "lesser" just because they're not rooted in some intense emotion), this is not even true, and the first part of the Driara garden party scene is proof enough. Kiara says, straight up, that Drake had been "such a good friend to [Liam]. It's part of why I always liked you." (Bold mine). If the MC voices doubts about this (likely incorporated for readers who would question it as a retcon...and it was a retcon since they didn't interact in TRR1), Kiara tells her that she doesn't wear her heart on her sleeve, which actually matches her practical approach to most things. In fact just a few scenes earlier, when the MC questioned her about wanting a husband (when she'd mentioned earlier about wanting to join the ministry), Kiara informs her that it would never hurt to have both. So it makes sense for her character if she's someone who kept her feelings for Drake a secret, especially while in a competition for winning the Crown Prince's hand. But we cannot, in any honest capacity, claim that Kiara's feelings for Drake weren't deep enough, or lasting enough, or genuine enough. At least based on the evidence we have.

Another point this scene brings up is Kiara's friendship towards Savannah. Up until this point, the only people who did reference her were Olivia, Drake and Maxwell - and Olivia's mockery of especially seemed to imply that the ladies of the court weren't very nice to her. Kiara's account is very different from this, and actually quite affectionate ("she was one of us", "she was coming along so well in learning French"). It's not the closest friendship, but Kiara did care enough to tutor her in the language and clearly missed her. It is possible that this scene was positioned to both build up to the alternative romance and foreshadow Savannah's presence in Paris. There is a lot more that could have been done with this angle, but perhaps that is a discussion for another section.

3. Never-Have-I-Ever (Ch 9)

This is a small option in a drinking game - the MC can get to say "never have I ever had a crush on Kiara", and loses, because Drake says she isn't his type (ironically he claims he isn't her type in the next chapter). It's interesting that he does consider her as not as bad as some of the others in that group.

3. Flirting with Drake in Paris (Ch 10)

For five chapters, we don't see any more hints of this romance. We see Drake in plenty, and we see quite a bit of Kiara. But none of it shows them together.

Kiara's scene with Drake at the tea party, is in some ways a continuation of his diamond scene with Savannah. He knows now where his sister is and what her big secret was, but this scene is where he realises how little he actually knew about her, if even her "noblewoman friend" knew she had intentions to go to Paris and he, her brother, didn't. This scene also takes place at what I call a "rest period" in the story - the group has just come out of a high-intensity altercation with Bastien, and it is one chapter before the major reveal about Constantine. So the MC can relax a little, some of the loose ends of previous stories can be tied up, and we get a vibe check on at least two alternative ships.

Drake is rather civil to Kiara in this conversation, mostly because he's trying to get information about his sister out of her. There isn't much he contributes besides this - it doesn't seem to matter much to him that Kiara was a rare friend among the court to Savannah (tho TRR3 would later retcon this), and when she talks about herself he doesn't pay much attention. Kiara does make an attempt at a light flirtation which goes largely unnoticed.

The MC's response when she first sees them goes three ways - a neutral comment about the petit-fours, a "matchmake-y" comment that points to them that they "look cozy", and a "jealous" comment about interrupting them. The third one especially results in Drake inadvertently confirming he doesn't think of Kiara in a romantic light, and Kiara appearing disappointed. Remember, at this point she doesn't see much evidence that Drake and the MC romancing him are an item.

The follow-up conversation with Drake, too, follows along similar lines. The neutral comment just asks him about the information he gathered from Kiara, the "matchmake-y" one points out she has feelings for Drake and the "jealous" one is... something.

The third response is very obviously crafted for the more possessive Drake stans to get satisfaction from dissing Kiara, perhaps in a more aggressive way than the Maxwell stans could. While the Maxwell MC can pass an insult or two to discourage Penelope, the Drake MC will go as far as to tell him he belongs only to her, and can threaten to "push her into the petit-fours".

Ironically, this scene follows a scene with Olivia about her lingering feelings for Liam - and Olivia's grief, the MC's clear sympathy and Liam's concern for Olivia are all by default. There is a certain level of sensitivity the Liam MC is required to have for Olivia that is never once expected of the Drake MC, and that plays out in very dangerous ways in the next book.

This scene, again, brought forth rather violent reactions, and in fact the language of the MC's responses itself seemed to encourage that kind of response. A poster later compiled an entire set of these responses ranging from mocking, to "back off, Kiara!" to straight up demands for murder (I couldn't link to this post because the names of the people involved were included in it, but I do have quite a few of those screenshots for reference).

After this point, you don't see any more scenes where Kiara actively flirts. In fact for most of the second half you see her and Penelope very rarely. So it does feel really wild in retrospect that "obsessed Kiara" became such a popular interpretation, after one checking-out scene, one flirtation and one rather sweet and genuine compliment of him as a person.

4. Pranking Kiara (Ch 17)

A pattern you would have noticed by now is that there is a bit of a mean streak in Drake for Kiara that is either very dominant or latent, based on whether the MC tries to encourage him, or shows jealousy towards her.

And this isn't necessarily an indicator that he can never be interested in Kiara. A distrust for nobility is almost a norm for him at this point, and let's not forget that Drake's first few interactions with the MC too didn't exactly leave her with the best impression of him either. Kiara initially being on Madeleine's side at the beginning of the story could be a factor in some level of disdain too. Such complications could - in a good story - add layers to a potential romance in the future if that was the direction the writing was going for.

Around the MC who doesn't mind them as a pair, he shows a small sliver of an inclination towards Kiara herself. His response if the MC points out that Kiara was flirting with him (Ch 10) is that he doesn't believe he is Kiara's type, not the other way around. In this scene, a drunk Drake who is encouraged to write a "nice note" to her as a prank, can write "your hair is pretty and your French is totally not stupid". Both of these lines present a sign of a possibility that a romance could happen. His behaviour when an MC casually hints at this possibility, is of someone who may like this woman deep down, but show it in very strange ways (akin to the age-old metaphor of the "boy who pulls the pigtails of the girl he has a crush on"). They wouldn't have even needed to show his responses in this way if they weren't trying to hint at a possibility.

His response to a "jealous" MC is to delightedly bask in her possessiveness of him, and to go hand-in-glove with her as she insults or suggests violence on Kiara in any way. Now one could perhaps headcanon this as a behaviour that comes from being unused to female attention focused on him, coupled with his affection for the MC - but when you take into account his behaviour towards Kiara herself in TRR3 as well, there seems to be a blatant lack of consideration or compassion towards her as a human being. Compare this, again, to the way Liam's behaviour towards Olivia is written in canon, and interpreted by the fandom. Liam is expected to be kind to her, even if he's clueless about her feelings or if she is harming him (eg. Even when she kisses him, he cares enough to opt for a reaction that will not publicly humiliate Olivia).

Not so for Drake. He is very happy to follow in the MC's lead, even in hurting Kiara. And in this scene, he pretty much kickstarts it with the suggestion of a prank.

Drake knows where Kiara's room is (thanks to a nameplate on the door, and the familiarity of the hallway, which he likes for the view outside) and wants to prank her. The MC can either accept or refuse. If she accepts, there is one nice option, and two distinctly mean-spirited ones. The first proposes to mess up her book organizational system, and the narrative describes the attempt as "ruining any semblance of order to Kiara's bookshelves". These are materials she likely requires for her career as an aspiring diplomat, or even books she uses to update herself on the world. But to this MC and Drake, her work and interests are little more than a joke.

The second one is not only aggressively mean - it also is an attempt to ruin her personal space with her personal items. Going by the array of haircare the narrative mentions, maintaining her hair is very important to Kiara (I am not equipped enough to speak about black women and their relationship with their hair, but this option did make me very uncomfortable, because of the little I've seen on how essential regular haircare and good products can be for many black women). Not only does the MC suggest using all that product to render Kiara's bed practically unusable, she also insists Drake waste the full bottle of said product. Because, yknow. "It's a prank. Go big or go home". Drake has one moment where he tries to be less mean in this option (when he attempts to use less of her hairspray), but the moment the MC encourages him towards a crueller direction he does not hesitate. In fact, when the MC first suggests this option, he regards her with something approaching awe, and praises her as "an evil genius".

There's a mean streak in Drake here no matter which option you choose. If you do go for the nicer one, he complains at first that it's not exactly a prank and in fact does claim that they "could still put glitter in her cupboard" as an alternative prank. But the other two options encourage the player to give full vent to whatever underlying frustration/enmity/hatred one could possibly have against Kiara, goading a drunk Drake to be merciless towards the things in her room, in her absence.

Maybe, perhaps, one could just view this as a "fun vent" for the "possessive stans". It allowed the Drake MC and her LI the chance to gang up on her, mock her and cause her discomfort through things that were clearly important to her, treat her like the butt of their joke, and get away with it. When you encourage that kind of hatred with your writing, it can go into some very dark, disturbing places. And it did, especially in TRR3.

The overall response to this scene didn't show much, since it was just one small sequence in a larger scene - and most of the focus was on the heartfelt bonding between Drake and the MC when he takes her to his "special hideout" and his reveal about his motives behind calling the MC by her surname.

Many Drake stans, however, took note of this specific section, and took their interpretations in a completely different direction. Questions were asked about why Drake knew about Kiara's room - completely ignoring that he frequented the hallway regardless for its view and her nameplate is literally placed outside her door - and several fans suspected the two to be involved in an affair just on the basis of him knowing where her room was. These suspicions, again, would crop up from the fandom in a more dramatic way in TRR3.

5. Drinks at Homecoming Ball (Ch 19)

This scene takes place in the finale, just before Kiara and Penelope apologize jointly to the MC for their comments in the beer garden.

Drake is, quite predictably, at the bar in this scene. In some ways one could draw a parallel between this one and the "bar" scene between him and the MC in TRR1 - the only differences being that the two were alone in the first, and that he and the MC are free to romance each other now. However this time, the two ladies of the court could also communicate with him about drinks, and he could use his knowledge of alcohol to guess their preferences.

The scene with Kiara is, again, written to be both a possible sign of familiarity and a diss (mostly the second, I think). With Penelope he just vaguely mentions cocktails and focuses on the decoration for the drink - with Kiara he is able to name the specific wine even though in TRR3 he has no idea what tannins are. There are ways one could envision that as a sign that he notices more about Kiara than he lets on.

The diss, of course, comes with his claim that no matter how top-shelf the wine is, it will still always be "old grape juice" (which is a very strange thing to say because most alcohols are fermented from basic ingredients be it fruit or grains - where did he think his high-quality whiskey that he regularly carries around in his personal flask came from??).

Kiara's attempt to impress him is pretty obvious, but the diss isn't something that weighs too much on her mind. There are less indicators here of a dejection if he brushes her aside, unlike the scene in Ch 10 - she just looks a bit surprised he could guess the exact drink she wanted. Kiara in this scene is more likely to shift gears to something more important. In this case, that is apologizing to the MC for what she views as poor behaviour that sprung up under the influence of alcohol, and offering her an olive branch (the specific apology is for her asking the MC if she came to gloat, not for telling her the alliance was over at the beginning of the tour. In that scene specifically she feels she has nothing to apologise for, and I'm inclined to agree for the reasons I stated in that section).

The overall pattern for this ship seems to indicate that it's...kinda there in case the MC doesn't want to pick Drake, but I always feel like they focused a lot more on the jealousy options and didn't spend enough time to see what a possible relationship could look like. They do claim later that Kiara's affections were supposed to be one-sided, but the buildup at least seemed to indicate some small baseline of interest from Drake's end, even if shown in some rather bizarre ways. However, because there seems to be very little respect for this character already, having the MC threaten violence and having her and Drake overreact over what were essentially harmless interactions from Kiara's end really does indicate that the writers didn't mind taking potshots at her whenever they felt like it. Like I've said before, the trashfire that was Kiara's treatment in TRR3 didn't develop overnight.

Smart, Skilled...Disliked?: Kiara and the Writing Team in TRR3

On 25th Sept 2023, PB released a two-chapter series on Storyloom called "Choices Secrets", which involved at least three writers (Andrew, Kara and Chelsa) talking about ideas and plots and backstories that didn't make it to the released book. In one section, Kara Loo speaks specifically about the ending of TRR2:

According to this account, the original idea was to kill off Olivia and possibly use that as a segue into the Nevrakis plot of the book, since her aunt and Justin were the real villains at the end of the series. When they decided to keep her alive in the series, Kara mentions finding "more members of your group get injured, like Drake".

Interestingly, Kara referred to "members" in the plural, and Drake is the only person from the core group to get shot. So it's just as possible that the choice to have Bastien, Justin/Anton and Kiara sustain injuries, was made once they decided to do away with the storyline about Olivia's death.

Olivia got spared because her writers cared for her. Kiara was likely one of the people injured in her stead, and probably the only one out of them (except for the one who was the main villain) who wasn't getting a prominent scene that focused on her being a survivor of the attack until some readers protested (the entire intro of TRR3 was dedicated to Drake recieving tender care from the MC, Bastien gets showered with concern and care from Constantine, Liam and optionally the MC. The MC comes to the estate, makes a perfunctory mention of the injury once and proceeds to emotionally blackmail Kiara into joining the tour. Let's not even talk about Lythikos. That shit warranted its own essay). No matter how much you downplay the situation, the truth is that Kiara got grievously hurt in a terrorist attack and her writers didn't think it was important enough to address.

I often wondered in the beginning, why Kiara was chosen for this. A close friend at the time theorized that perhaps it was done to ensure Madeleine would become our press secretary, because there was no way the MC would be considering her for this position if someone less hostile (like Kiara) was around. Another wondered if we might get opportunities to address palace security through the experiences of the survivors. Being a Drake x Kiara supporter at least by the end of TRR2, I wondered whether it was a coincidence that they both were injured at the same ball, and the possibility of the two bonding over such a painful experience.

Well. Boy was I about to be disappointed.

Because why did Kiara have to be so badly injured, if it was going to amount to nothing? If they weren't even going to address it in her own home? If - after even players who didn't care much for her, noticed the silence around that attack - the best you could offer was a scene that followed the MC and her friends suspecting the victim of this attack??

Had I looked at Kiara's narrative treatment (from TRR1 onwards) closer back then, perhaps I wouldn't have expected so much. It would have occurred to me that maybe they hurt Kiara the most, because they cared for her the least. Kiara is viewed as smart, poised, talented. Madeleine even calls her "one of the more competant courtiers" at some point. But that doesn't always mean that the team that writes her deems her worthy of respect.

For one, the writers tend to lean more into fandom perceptions of her in this book, rather than looking at their own canon. Kiara being a snob is not canon - that is ridiculous considering that she was such good friends with Savannah, and her support of the MC when she fits in well. Kiara acting like her linguistic skill makes her better than anyone else isn't canon either - nor is she obliged to speak in all ten languages on a loop just for the MC's or Maxwell Beaumont's entertainment. Kiara being perpetually mean to her best friend is inaccurate at best - she is often frustrated by Penelope, sure, but she spends far time and energy helping her than anyone else in that court.

Yet the narrative gives both these statements as dialogue options for the MC, where she can bitch about Kiara...but somehow only ever allows the same MC to be nice and caring and loving to Penelope - never once reminding her of the hell she'd put the MC through in the past. And because the fandom expected the Kiara-Penelope friendship to focus only on Penelope, PB got away with having Kiara's "best friend" stay conveniently silent as the MC berated her in her own home. The narrative even threw Kiara under the bus in TRR3 Ch 16, in order to make Madeleine look better in Hana's memories of the TRR2 bachelorette, claiming falsely that Kiara shouted at Penelope so much while drunk, that the latter was brought to tears. There is way more energy spent in painting an inaccurate and negative portrait of Kiara, than there is in showing the truth.

For another, the way the courtiers' and their parents' agreement to join the tour is coded...is extremely suspicious. When you compare both a successful and a failplay, you will find that all the parents have the chance to reject the MC's proposal to join the tour...except for one. Kiara's father, Hakim. In a failplay where you purposely do all the wrong things...out of the entire group of people who are still doubtful about supporting you, only Kiara and Hakim join your tour by default, without any expectation of a reward (Madeleine demands her own department after the wedding). They will be a part of it no matter what you do, no matter your failures, no matter how badly you treat them.

Hakim may have joined mainly to confront his old friend the King, but he still stays on even after Constantine dies. The writers made sure to branch-code things in a way that Kiara and Hakim could never drop out even if the MC was awful to Kiara, and never once acknowledged what it must take for them to do that. After Kiara herself had been fucking stabbed!!!!

Joelle, Kiara's mother, and Ezekiel, Kiara's brother, can reject the offer if they aren't impressed with the MC, but out of these two characters only one is viewed with respect - the one they were going to pair up with Penelope.

The narrative doesn't mind letting the MC mock Joelle for her passionate support of the arts if she doesn't win her approval, and her insistence that it is the sign of a thriving kingdom...and they make her sound petulant and churlish in response to that mockery. This despite the fact that in a successful route, she says one of the most profound political statements in the books:

"Hakim and I don't just want Cordonia to remain stable and peaceful. Those are blessings, naturallement, but our kingdom can do so much more than just survive."

In contrast, when you look at the same failplay, Emmeline and Landon are treated with far more respect from the narrative, even though Hakim and Joelle's plans for the country would benefit Cordonia as a whole. Drake looks up to Penelope's parents as an inspiration, especially if he's going to become a duke. Meanwhile Hakim actually acknowledges Drake and his bravery in a way that none of the other dukes and duchesses did, and Drake never gives a shit.

Emmeline can accuse the MC of not taking their situation seriously, if she does a bad job at the polo match, and the MC only has the grace to look contrite rather than lash out at her. Landon himself is never judged for coddling his daughter the way he does. Their focus on Portavira rather than the country is respected, and the MC not meeting their demands is viewed as her weakness, not an overreaction from their end. They never get the snarky responses Joelle gets, where the MC can outright call her "a handful" in front of her own husband.

And then there is the matter of how PB deals with the problems of all the court ladies.

(Screenshots from the Skylia YouTube Channel)

The period of the Unity Tour isn't exactly an easy time for anyone. The LIs each deal with their own shit, and the ladies of the court themselves have their own reasons for being reluctant to return. The entire point of this tour is to address their specific concerns as well as that of their families', because without the courtiers themselves we wouldn't have as strong a court.

In Madeleine's case, we have to talk to her through a diamond scene and then educate her mother on her ways of mourning lost opportunities, among other things. In Penelope's case we are required to give her complete protection and emotional security, for her to even bother joining the tour (there is branch coding where she can refuse to be a part of the tour at all). Even for Olivia - who is already an ally - the diamond scene encourages us to stand up to her aunt, by letting Olivia know that it is valid for her to lean on others for support without being considered weak.

But for Kiara? The best we can come up with, while in her duchy, is some version of - "You're smart. You'd know that if you left now, people will say bad things about Cordonia and then it would be your fault". You either manipulate her, or insult her as being a useless excuse of a diplomat. As I mentioned in another essay, Kiara's comfort is a non-factor. The gap between the care we were expected to give to Madeleine and Penelope, and what we deign to give Kiara in Castelserraillan (which is...well...nothing), is massive. And this gap would only increase - not reduce - in the books to come.

It might seem a bit irrelevant to talk about this, especially when this essay is about Drake and Kiara. But it's important to take note of this inherent disdain the writers had towards this one character - and people close to her. Because it is only too easy to pretend that the writers "got scared of the crazy stans".

Of course the stans had a huge, huge role in this. Of course their vitriol and racism succeeded in bringing about (what I consider) one of the most disgusting dialogue options in this series...or perhaps in any series. But I doubt those "crazy stans" would have gotten this far, without a team that didn't mind being cruel to Kiara.

When the Fandom and Canon are both Heartless: Drake and Kiara in TRR3

As I've mentioned in previous essays in this series, playthrough divergences truly begin in TRR3 (eg. While the playthroughs acknowledge who you chose as endgame by end-TRR2, you can still access diamond scenes through a small tweak that allows you to romance other LIs). And whichever LI didn't get engaged with the MC had indications of a new romantic possibility coming up. These were scenes you wouldn't find in your own playthrough with that LI as your fiancé/e.

Kiara doesn't appear in TRR3 until Ch 7, when the entourage comes to her estate Castelserraillan. There aren't a lot of Drake and Kiara scenes themselves, and I will get into why, section by section.

1. Kiara Greets the Group at Castelserraillan (TRR3 Ch 7)

Many Drake stans - once they found their MCs engaged to Drake in TRR2 - seemed to be practically giddy at the prospect of showing off their newly-engaged status to Kiara, and hurting her through the news. They were perhaps more excited about this than their upcoming wedding.

Well, they got that chance in Ch 7. In every other playthrough, she still holds the same feelings for Drake, and compliments his suit as Drake awkwardly fails to meet her eye. In his specific playthrough, Drake defiantly shows off his relationship with the MC, and Kiara shows a slight wistfulness before she forces herself to be normal then wishes the happy couple well. You'd think that would be enough to satisfy the stans who had been baying for her blood all of the previous book.

A throwaway line about Drake knowing where Kiara's room was, had already raised the heckles of a whole bunch of his stans. Kiara's "wistful look" in her first TRR3 scene somehow added fuel to that fire. Suddenly, you got to see a raging torrent of posts demanding to know if Drake had had an affair with Kiara. Fanfic had already been written about Drake cheating on the MC with Kiara by this point - and some of those headcanons and fanfic hinged on making Drake the innocent/vulnerable one, taken advantage of by this sexy, obsessed woman who would be either a danger to him or would be juxtaposed with the "pure", "virginal", "perfect" MC. Drake would never be the problem here, and none of the stans screaming over the possibility of Drake sleeping with Kiara would dream of blaming him for it. No, Kiara was predatory, Kiara was obsessed, if anything happened between them it would be likely Kiara's fault.

This is where it's important to note, again, that none of the more obvious signs of the "Jezebel" stereotype seem to be used in canon for Kiara. While cruel in her own way, the TRR MC doesn't exactly slut shame her or believe Drake will be unfaithful to her, Kiara isn't accused of seducing (or even trying to seduce) anyone, and she actually places respectful personal boundaries for herself in her attraction to Drake, that she never crosses. She may indulge in a light flirtation with him, try to impress him or simply talk to him - but you will never catch her forcing her sexual attention on him like Olivia did with Liam. Yet in popular fanlore, even Olivia's feelings were often cast in a far more noble light in contrast to Kiara's.

In her essay, The "Offending" Breast of Janet Jackson: Public Discourse Surrounding the Jackson/Timberlake Performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII, Dr Shannon. L Holland explores the historical and contemporary uses of the Jezebel stereotype in depictions of Black women in popular culture and discourse, especially in contrast to white masculinity (which in these contexts, is often viewed as innocent and blameless - and much of the blame lies with the Jezebel figure). The "Jezebel" stereotype "has come to symbolize both a malign, cunning sexual object and an autonomous, liberated sexual agent" - she is at once an independent sexual being making her own choices, and someone who is "incapable" of reining in her sexual appetite...and is therefore often depicted as not only a threat to the "purer" (and often "whiter" or "lighter skinned") woman, but also dangerous for whoever she is "obsessed" with. And we see this time and again in the discourse around Kiara - the fanfic that depicts her in a range of scenarios (stalker, obsessed lover, abusive girlfriend who will break a bottle over Drake's head, at times even descending into murderer to get the man she wants). Which is how we wound up in a position where Kiara even breathing the same air as Drake was viewed as a threat.

It didn't matter that he was flaunting his love for the Drake MC in that playthrough to send a message to Kiara, or that he stayed silent with the others as his wife badgered her into joining the tour. It didn't even matter that Kiara never got a diamond scene the way the two other women did, despite being the most harmed among the ladies. What mattered was that Kiara existed. Her damn existence was the threat.

2. Cheering for Drake's Victory (Ch 10)

Ch 9 of TRR3 was released to players on April 27th, 2018. Immediately after, a mid-book hiatus was announced, mostly to work on some new art (very possibly the red pandas), work on the wedding, and make changes (such as shifting diamond scenes from character-centric ones to LI specific - they'd already started making changes to LI diamond scenes). The book would return 2 months later, in June.

In a livestream before the hiatus ended, the writers had made it very painfully clear that Kiara's feelings for Drake was one-sided. And by that I mean they really emphasized on the one-sidedness of her affection, almost as if to reassure the panicking stans. This would manifest in any future interactions between the two - both in Drake's single and engaged playthroughs - and any hope that such a pairing would even be hinted at was over. But there was one variation that the team had perhaps neglected to edit out.

A small one-word depiction of Kiara cheering Drake when he wins his duel against Neville, joining his friends to praise him. It really isn't much - just Kiara saying "bravo!" before Savannah rushes up to hug him, which is replaced by a scene of Drake himself going up to the MC and passionately kissing her in his own playthrough. What is definitely striking about this depiction is that Kiara was clubbed with his close friends and his sister, rather than the second group of people that largely represented the larger court (Rashad and Queen Regina) who offer their congratulations.

Given the way the writers wrote any remaining interactions between Drake and Kiara, and the fact that this small appearance doesn't really amount to anything, it is possible that this variation was part of an earlier draft that involved other hints, that the writers failed to notice when they put up Ch 10. If they had, I'm pretty certain it wouldn't have stayed in the book.

3. Leaving Court + Wedding Conversations

Remember how I kept stating in this essay that the narrative was going to take their enthusiastic pandering of the "possessive stans" end of the fandom, to some dark, disturbing places? Well, here we are.

Tbh, the writers could have just stopped showing any interactions between the two, or given Kiara another boyfriend if their aim was simply to show that Drake and Kiara would never be endgame. They had done that with Maxwell and Penelope already...oh. I forgot. They actually wanted us to care for Penelope.

Up until this point, Drake's mean streak re: Kiara was present, but not really as obvious as it gets here. PB takes that cruelty several steps further in these two chapters, starting with Ch 11. Ch 11 was fanservice to the people who shouted abuses and "joked" about killing Kiara in every chance they could get. Ch 12 showed this sentiment at its worst, covered it up with enough fluff so it would be harder for people who liked Kiara to notice...and let those players get away with it.

In Ch 11, Kiara approaches the MC and her group to inform them that she is withdrawing from the tour. Drake is the first to respond to this, remaking at the suddenness of the departure. The MC can speculate on a couple of things, ranging from sympathy (that she might be afraid), selfishness (that she is "bailing out" on the MC) and suspicion (that she is hiding something).

In all three options, a pensive Hana expresses sympathy and encourages the group to "reach out". In all three options, Drake will only view Kiara as a suspect.

Mind you - according to Ch 12, Drake is saying this knowing Kiara was injured at Homecoming Ball...and knowing exactly which weapon she was injured with. Aware that she has gone through an event as traumatic as that (if we go by his "just one step at a time" monologue to Kiara), better aware than most how it would feel...he still opts to act like her motives should be suspicious.

This is further emphasized in the Drake playthrough, through the armory scene that the MC takes with Maxwell.

As I've mentioned in the post on this scene, it is divided into three halves. The first half deals with whoever the MC rejected (either Liam, or Drake in Liam's playthrough). The third is buildup to Lucretia's plans to usurp the throne. The second is supposed to be about the excitement among the members of the court for the wedding, and of course as the only people who come for the tour by default (and Madeleine is already taken for the first scene), Kiara and Hakim are used for this scene!

I will only focus on the Drake version of this scene today. There are a few things you notice straight off the bat:

1. Since this is Drake's playthrough, the narrative seems to do away completely with any lingering feelings Kiara may have had are done away with. In this scene she is quite happy about Drake's wedding - in fact, practically chipper. Literally nothing about her behaviour here serves as a reminder that she once had feelings for him.

2. Drake's response to Kiara attending his wedding ties in pretty well with his earlier default suspicion of her. Unlike Hana who is surprised but also happy that Kiara is attending, he seems to voice it as a doubt or a question. While that makes sense and there is continuity, it's pretty awful that he is allowed to suspect her like this and feel no remorse when the truth about her is revealed.

3. Now as I said in the post, this scene is meant to be a buildup to Drake's ice-palace scene. He speaks about wanting a private, country-style wedding in a natural place there, and Kiara's gentle teasing in this scene is supposed to be an indicator of how much he dislikes the usual fanfare. Okay. Fair enough. You're uncomfortable with the fancy decorations and the insane planning, fine.

4. But it's Drake's attitude towards Kiara in this scene that leaves a bad taste in the mouth (unless you were one of those Drake stans that liked to threaten murder on this character ig). The narrative really went out of their way to make him sound uncommonly angry with her, just for asking about his wedding. He angrily hisses at her to keep her voice down the moment she asks about the wedding, and then lashes out the moment she teases him about his love for the MC and his reluctance to be very public about it in that context. Of course, people who either liked Drake or hated Kiara would downplay this scene - either blaming Kiara for not magically knowing his likes or dislikes, or acting like Drake's behaviour in this scene is no big deal.

And his explanation in the ice palace scene really doesn't cut it as a reason for why he should be this pissed off at Kiara's excitement. There is no real bitterness or resentment tied in with the fancy trappings that are mentioned in that specific scene - it's just that he likes simplicity better. If Kiara doesn't know him well enough to understand that - it's because he has never properly talked to her. She made attempts to converse whenever she could. You can claim he never owed her a conversation - but in that case she doesn't owe him a complete understanding of his wants either. He could have just politely answered the question and changed the subject, or quickly took his leave.

He is well-versed enough in court etiquette by this point that he could have managed to sound civil enough. That he could have made a quick, polite exit. But no, he gave her the kind of anger that one reserves for someone who is kicking a puppy or stealing candy from a child, instead. And it was Kiara's grace that allowed her to view that awful behaviour in a more positive light.

It's pretty clear this scene - and to some extent the framing of the next - was made specifically for those Drake stans who were screaming and throwing tantrums about a possible affair. It was to highlight that there was no way Drake could ever return Kiara's feelings - and the only way they could do that was by making sure he treated her as rudely and inhumanely as possible.

I didn't think it could get any worse than this, when I saw this version of the scene...but then I saw Ch 12.

The Talk

If you were to speak just about fandom reactions to this scene...the responses to Kiara chronicling her trauma after Homecoming Ball, were pretty positive. Plenty chose the middle option "You're suffering from the trauma of the event. You need help", and cooed over Drake's touching little monologue about "taking it one day at a time".

I admit at the time I was fooled too. But one thing did niggle at me as I played both this option, and the "understandably cautious" one (I would later understand that the latter was not very good either - it has a thin veneer of "validating" Kiara's feelings, but it still has the MC and Drake expecting her to put their needs before her own safety and sanity).

Drake was reassuring to an extent in both options, sure. But why were his responses so different? Why was his answer to Kiara so closely tied to whatever point the MC was making, rather than independent of it? After all, he was the one who should be able to better relate to Kiara - wouldn't he have thoughts of his own here? If the MC chose that horrible final option, Drake would correct her and comfort Kiara instead, wouldn't he? Wouldn't he???

It was only when I (reluctantly) pressed that third option ("not as driven as I thought you were") that I understood what Drake's role in this scene was.

He wasn't going to be there for Kiara. He wasn't even sympathetic to her! It wasn't even going to be about two traumatized people connecting over their trauma. Drake was a puppet. He was there to parrot whatever garbage came out of the MC's mouth.

Because in the third - and most horrific - option, the MC is allowed to minimize Kiara's trauma, and mock her ambitions in the face of what she has just gone through. Drake is allowed to agree with her ("sometimes ambassadors have to work in dangerous areas"). Kiara is forced by the same narrative to find value in these words.

And all of this, stems from a scenario where Drake and the MC go in suspecting this woman from the jump. Where Maxwell is happy to make jokes about her being a suspect. Where the only two decent people in this group - Liam and Hana - are conveniently written out of the scene, ensuring that these ghouls can act the way they want around Kiara, and get away with it.

Not once is Kiara herself ever allowed to know that the group suspected her by default, nor is she allowed to go through with her intention to leave court. The very roots of this scene are rotten.

Very often, when this scene in particular is addressed, not many people actually address Drake's behaviour here - or in the previous chapter. Stans will vaguely, and conveniently, blame the group as a whole rather than their favourites. Such a tactic allows them to never name the specific people or specific actions, and therefore the main people involved in speaking to Kiara the way they did never have to be held accountable. This is particularly relevant in the case of Drake.

It was Drake's idea to interrogate her. He was the one constantly harping about her "suspicious behaviour". He was the one aware of what happened to her yet chose to think of her as shady. He was the one who should have known better, yet was absolutely game to minimize her trauma or engage in emotional blackmail. And neither he nor the MC came out of this conversation feeling anything resembling remorse. Because, apparently, they never did anything wrong.

They got what they wanted. At best, Drake and the MC manipulated this woman (again) into returning to their court. At worst, they badgered and bullied her into that decision. Either way, she was going to return, and the narrative was going to pretend that the MC and Drake were great people for making it happen.

I have heard some justifications over the years for Drake's behaviour here. One is that he "tends to act like an asshole to everyone". Another is that Kiara is a noble so he was never going to see her in a positive light. Which is hilarious to me, honestly, because in the same book you have Drake reassure Penelope - the woman who had made the MC the target of a reputation-ending scandal - and comfort her when she sees Madeleine. If this was really about the chip on the shoulder he had for nobility, why was he so kind to Penelope? And if Penelope's mental health warranted a change in mindset and behaviour from Drake's end, why was Kiara not worthy of that as well?

The truth is this. Drake was allowed to express his mean streak to a black woman, bully a black woman (the pranks), lash out at a black woman (the conversation at the Lythikos Ball), suspect a black woman, and finally minimize her trauma if the Duchess he had a crush on wanted to. While being overly protective and chivalrous to the white woman who actually did harm her. No matter what way you spin it, that is what Drake's behaviour - especially in TRR3 - is.

The way the team trampled over this "pairing" post that miniscule hint in TRR3 Ch 7, would make a rampaging elephant look like a ballerina in comparison. They wanted to make it clear after the hiatus that Drake x Kiara would never happen, in any eventuality, in any future, in any universe. And no matter how much we pin this on "crazy stans" (who do hold some responsibility for sure, for their own veiled racism), it's a fact that the writing team was comfortable doing this. They had already found other ways to pile disrespect on their sole recurring black female character - what was a little more?

TRH and Beyond: Taking Away What Was Left of Kiara's Remaining Fanbase

Given all the narrative back-and-forth and shadiness, I'd have to say the end Kiara got in TRR3 was comparatively...decent. Not great...not exactly satisfying...decent.

Her fighting off the assassins at the boutique ("not again...not again!!") was the highlight of that scene. In Hana's playthrough, Kiara was her MOH by default, and the lines the MC could give if you chose her in other playthroughs was pretty sweet. At the end of the book, her father would make Kiara his heir, after her older brother Ezekiel abdicated. There were still things I was always going to hate (such as the fact that we could lie about "having Kiara's back" - we absolutely did not) about the aftermath, but all in all as a fan...I could maybe envision a fairly happy ending for her with what we got.

The next series, The Royal Heir, would debut on June 2019, almost a year after TRR3's own debut. This would be the first series that would go completely LI-divergent, spanning four books. It started out as an attempt to envision the future (and pasts) of the main characters, as well as tie loose ends...but descended into an incoherent, retconning mess with each book.

Kiara doesn't feature much in Book 1, but is pretty prominent in certain chapters like Ch 7 (Savannah's bachelorette), Savannah's wedding, and the Apple Ball in the finale. You'll often find a marked difference between the way she is looked at for most of the book, and how the MC speaks to her in TRH1's finale.

Savannah's bachelorette, for instance, features all the ladies of the court in Texas, with new "country" looks and engaging with Texan culture. Here, too, you see a sign of PB leaning into popular perceptions of Kiara rather than remembering their own writing, when we see how Savannah praises the MC by default but has very little to say about her former friend Kiara. Since Savannah's return to court in TRR3, the team seemed to have forgotten that other ladies of the court weren't very nice to her, and Kiara was the only one concerned for her. They have Olivia act sweet and caring towards Savannah in both TRR3 Ch 17 and TRH1 Ch 7, conveniently forgetting the insults she piled upon Drake's sister in the first book. Savannah never has to talk about Kiara's friendship at all, other than a teasing comment hinting at her French lessons. Savannah was never expected to have any gratitude or affection towards Kiara even though she was the only woman who cared about her in court before she left.

An interesting thing to note in the diamond scene of the bachelorette is the way the courtly ladies' previous/current "romances" are framed. Kiara's, in particular, warrants a lot of discussion. Unlike Olivia (who can address her feelings for Liam regardless of playthrough, if asked, and can actually show some level of resentment towards him for not picking her), Kiara's feelings are addressed only if the MC isn't married to Drake. If she is, Kiara mentions a fondness for "rugged, down-to-earth men" (which the MC and Penelope perceive to mean hunky and muscular), and avoids mentioning his name at all.

There are two very interesting things to note about this sequence. One is the pattern of how, and how far, are Olivia and Kiara are allowed to address their feelings for these men. Not only is Olivia allowed to be open about her feelings and her bitterness (despite Liam actually romancing her in TRR3!), the narrative demands our respect for her position and plight. The Liam MC lauds her honesty and her decision to move ahead, unfazed even by her anger for something Liam didn't even owe her. In contrast, in the Drake playthrough, the writing makes sure Kiara never mentions him by name. And not only that, when the MC and Penelope tease her about her romantic preference, she is shown to stammer and seems downright afraid of the MC.

The fact that there is such a gap in how Olivia and Kiara are allowed to act about the men they love, and the fact that this gap was normalized so much in fandom discourse that it didn't even warrant a discussion, tells us plenty about the fandom too. The fandom position has almost always been that Liam owes Olivia love, appreciation, kindness. And that Drake owes Kiara nothing, not even common human decency. Which is why the fandom wants Liam punished for the high crime of not loving Olivia back. Which is why Drake is allowed to treat Kiara like an irritating pest at his best, and like utter garbage at his worst...and almost no one so much as bats an eyelid.

Since most of the story of TRH1 seemed to revolve around the ranch, the ladies of the court made minimal appearances and most of those were in keeping with patterns established in TRR3 (except for maybe Olivia's spy scenes). Some of their parents - too - feature in Royal Council scenes: Godfrey and Landon are part of this council and are seen during the MC's announcement - no one from Kiara's family, besides her brother Ezekiel who is dating Penelope, make any appearances in this book. Towards the end of the book, however, you suddenly find a scene or two where the narrative is suddenly, and inexplicably, syrupy sweet to Kiara:

(Screenshots from the Skylia YouTube Channel. 1-5 are from Ch 18, during the council meeting. 7-10 are also from Ch 18, at the start of the ball. The last two are from the finale as buildup for the pregnancy photoshoot)

There are indications of Kiara's diplomacy and good advice in other parts of the book too (such as her suggestions for dealing with the foreign royals at the baby shower) but never were the praise and compliments as obvious as they were in the last two chapters of TRH1. Kiara was given a quippy dialogue to spout at Godfrey, who would later be revealed as the murderer of Queen Eleanor. All three of the MC's dialogue options in response would praise Kiara by default (a rarity). King Bradshaw would shower her with compliments too about her talent and expertise. And when Kiara approached us with an offer for a pregnancy photoshoot, the MC could cheerfully say "for you, Kiara? Of course!" as if they'd been bffs from the beginning.

There isn't any obvious reason why we saw this sudden change, but I can make an educated guess or two. A pattern that commonly emerges with attempts to address something that would benefit Kiara, is that the writers often only do it when enough people complain; that was how we got the horrible Lythikos sequence. Midway through TRH1, I managed to put up an essay exploring Kiara's treatment (centered around the Lythikos sequence in TRR3 Ch 12) in comparison to Penelope's and Madeleine's. It did not receive an immediate fandom wide response, but several readers did come away from that essay feeling like Kiara really got the short end of the stick, compared to all the other court ladies. I'm not sure whether that essay had a direct impact, but those three scenes PB added to the finale chapters do make me wonder. Was the team trying to prove to the fandom that they did like Kiara and wouldn't personally sabotage her, either for their own enjoyment or to pander to a section of the fandom?

If they did, then that plan didn't last beyond these two chapters.

Another possibility of course was to give Kiara something slightly positive before they did her dirty - again - in TRH2 and 3. Because in those two books, they managed to first make her - along with the rest of the council - party to a vote (that everyone was involved in, including the LIs!) that would later prove detrimental for the country. They would then have her be the only heir involved in the notorious Coventus Nobilis, which ensured that anyone who wanted to hate Kiara could tie her to her vote in favour of Bartie Sr, without ever asking any further questions. This was a far more successful attempt, because most of the fandom already believed the misconceptions of Kiara's characterization to be truth, and these storylines simply added fuel to the fire.

Kiara's biggest supporters tended to be a section of the Liam fandom, as well as wlw stans who tended to like most of the courtly women. Having her vote for Bartie at the end of TRH2, and her explanations in TRH3 about the "MC's ruling style" (which was really canon's way of making sure she did more a silent diss on Liam) was written specifically to place a serious dent among her fans who liked Liam. And sadly, it worked in part. Because even if one considered Kiara's thoughts on "reactive ruling" accurate, it was a fact that the nobility (she included) would have to be blaming Liam for something that the entire Council voted for, and that Liam and his friends fixed on their own.

Making Kiara the lone person to voice this argument, made her a target in this fandom. I mean, people were ready to praise Madeleine and speak of her as loyal (eagerly ignoring that she was actively involved in the child's kidnapping if you didn't coddle her enough), and badmouth Kiara in the same breath, claiming that Kiara wasn't worth forgiving and people should just get over Madeleine's deeds in the past.

This resurgence of hate didn't just erupt out of nowhere. Once they finished spending two chapters on two-second compliments to Kiara, PB reverted in the next two books to some of their usual patterns with her. For instance, remember how I mentioned that PB had an obsession with never letting Kiara and Liam interact? In TRH, they repeated this pattern, but with the Heir. The only scene Kiara has where she can so much as touch the heir is in the last part of TRH3, if you choose for Kiara to read to her. Penelope is regularly allowed to hold her even though she has often placed this child in dangerous situations (on one occasion, Kiara herself had to stop her) - even Madeleine is given an entire babysitting scene to win her favour. But Kiara is the only lady of the court who is made to stay away or care for the child from a distance.

Kiara's family (besides Zeke, and just because he is Penelope's fiance/husband) is subject to disrespect in this book too. Hakim and Joelle were both conspicuously absent from the pregnancy announcement presscon in TRH1 (where Landon, Godfrey and Bartie Sr somehow featured!!), and future books would either retcon the family or force them to do things the other families didn't have to do. In TRH2, the MC takes a tour of the Great Houses with her newborn daughter, and each house is expected to pledge loyalty to her and the crown in different ways. Hakim is written as "bending to his knees" for the child. This is something only Adeleide and Madeleine - whose house, might I remind you, are considered the house of traitors at this point - have to do. Landon and Emmeline are never expected to express their loyalty to this extent.

In TRH3, the narrative callously pushes the Therons under the bus to make the Ebrim family's reluctance to help the MC make sense - the Therons are now "traditionalists" who frown upon scandals and may not allow Zeke to marry Penelope on the account of her past annulled marriage (this makes no sense when you take a closer look at the Therons themselves in TRR3 - they're a far more balanced, far more progressive family than any of the other Great Houses. They even took Zeke's abdication well!). Furthermore, you'll notice that the framing of Penelope's past with Guy is worlds apart from the disdain the narrative shows for the Therons during the flower festival. It is notable that in the latter, the black women are depicted very negatively - Kiara is shown unable to manage her own competition, Joelle is depicted as pompous and incapable of losing gracefully, Drake gets to take sarcastic potshots at Lerato for trying to charm the MC into voting for her and Drake into convincing her to vote. Meanwhile white people like Landon and Marguerite are presented in a just as humourous but less mocking light (eg. Landon moving his table courteously before flipping it in the flashback).

Even into TRF (Ch12), the narrative gives us choices where we can stand up to people criticizing Landon and Emmeline's parenting ("Duke Landon and his wife raised a kind, generous daughter..."). We are allowed to be far less critical of the Ebrims overall, we are allowed to be more charitable even in the dialogue options for suspecting Landon than we are of Kiara (think of how Maxwell can suspect that Kiara was planning to betray us all along). At the end of the Flower Festival, Kiara is made to appear contrite as the MC can choose to either demand she make this right before the latter can forgive her, or indicate that she never will. Ironically, a Penelope who can choose her fancy wedding over the safety of the MC's child never has to face words that harsh.

You will also notice if you look more closely, that the narrative continues to frame events surrounding Penelope and Kiara in opposing ways. Penelope is perpetually viewed as a victim, and Kiara constantly as a suspect.

We are expected to support Penelope, and to mistrust Kiara. And even though Kiara's feelings had long since become a thing of the past, Drake still maintains his animosity towards her and her family. And like everything else, it is so normalized at this point that you barely even notice it anymore.

In TRH2, Drake is allowed to tar all nobles with the same brush because of Godfrey's actions. Though his statement about the nobility ("We can't trust any of them to have Liam's back...not unless it's in their own selfish interests") is about the entire nobility, it is striking that he says this just before they go to Castelserraillan. The Therons are also the only noble family that Drake makes sarcastic comments about (in reference to Liam informing us that their province is a trade hub, Drake quips that "they are going to want to trade babies with us"). These snide comments he rarely makes about other noble families, and serves as a sharp contrast to how he treats the Ebrims (during Penelope's wedding festivities, he is unnaturally invested in Penelope getting a happy ending with Ezekiel). We can't even claim that his behaviour towards Kiara is in line with his disdain for nobles, because Penelope is proof that he is perfectly capable of showing compassion to most of them!

TRH3 ends with Kiara doing an apology tour of sorts - diplomatic missions aimed at improving Cordonia's international relations. TRF finds almost all the ladies of the court - even Olivia - in very minimal roles, as the focus shifts to the Via Imperii. Still, the narrative makes more references to Penelope than to Kiara, to the extent that the epilogue ends on both the MC and Penelope celebrating their pregnancies (Penelope's first and the MC's second) together.

Overall, you will find that the narrative repeated certain patterns with Kiara - the tendency to find her suspicious, purposely limiting scenes with important characters like Liam (TRR) and the heir (TRH) while the white courtiers get almost unlimited access, the discrepancies in expectations for her vs other ladies (eg. Madeleine is hailed for being "good" even though that is solely dependent on how you treat her. Kiara is largely ignored whenever she does help, and attacked when she is written to support the enemy). Drake - even as a former alternative to her, who should have gotten over whatever nonsense beef he'd had with her earlier - is allowed to make snide remarks about her home and family.

It's pretty clear they could do this because they could get away with it... because most of the fandom made it so easy for them to get away with it.

Fandom

When I look back at how the perception of Kiara in the fandom progressed over the years, I find it half-amusing, half-sad how much of it is rooted more in fanlore, and how little in actual fact. And this is something you couldn't just pin on "crazy Drake stans" - they were the biggest promoters of these lies and misconceptions, sure, but normally analytical, commonsense readers often believed that Kiara was fake and a snob and awful to Penelope too.

I get some of it, given the timing of Kiara and Penelope's scene at the beginning of TRR2. It takes place at a low point in the MC's story, a time when she isn't even sure the LIs want to support her. Coupled with that is the lasting image of Penelope hugging you and complaining about Madeleine, making you feel like she's more willing to give you a sliver of solidarity. Coupled with that, is Olivia's newfound popularity in the fandom - once she emerges in Ch 5 of that book, fans believed they found their wildcard who would stand by them in complete solidarity among the ladies of the court (did they ignore Hana's already massive contributions to the investigation? Yes they did. Yes they did). Madeleine herself is shown giving quotable quotes about female solidarity and Tariq's guilt in TRR2 Ch 7, which - coupled with Justin's high praise of her - made people want to find things to like about her too. Penelope's own betrayal was overshadowed by an expectation to support a person with serious mental health struggles.

Kiara's the only one who doesn't get such backstories or explanations. So at least in the heat of the moment, in reading those chapters between weekly gaps, it makes sense that a false impression of her got somewhat solidified.

But when you build your interpretations out of lies and misinterpretations, how does it become so valid that even the writers bend to it and prefer to show that?

Every fandom has its "crazy stans". And this instance wouldn't be the first or last time they are pandered to. But when the same stans get backed up by the "saner", more commonsense members of fandom; when even neutral readers promote versions of a story without actually looking at the scenes in question - that's when a fandom is in danger of turning a "headcanon" into canon.

Kiara being a horrible friend to Penelope wasn't canon. Kiara being a snob was not canon. Kiara being creepy towards Drake wasn't canon either. Especially when you take the fandom response to Olivia's forced kiss on Liam into account.

And that brings me to another point. I had been asked once why I felt the need to compare Kiara to the other ladies in my defenses of her. It's important, when we speak of the kind of hate Kiara received, to understand how a lot of flaws that the entire court has (eg classism) is often pinned onto a lone person, and how several white female characters could get away with worse behaviour while Kiara alone was slammed for harmless interactions.

This is most apparent when you look at how Olivia's violation of Liam's consent is perceived, vs Kiara's harmless flirtation with Drake in TRR2. Which woman had fans foaming at the mouth and wanting to kill her? Which woman was given dozens and dozens of fanfic and content that depicted her as creepy, desperate, downright obsessed with their man? Which woman got the "oh well, he doesn't owe her anything 🤷🏽‍♀️" vs a "he doesn't love her back?? WHAT AN INSENSITIVE ASSHOLE!!1111"?

Perhaps this Olivia/Kiara comparison is where the fandom's tendency to cast Kiara into the Jezebel stereotype is the most visible. Kiara's very act of talking to Drake sometimes is registered as a threat to those stans, and it reflects in the way they speak of her, the way they speak of their MC's own relationship with Drake in association with her (eg. the number of posts rejoicing at the thought of showing off their "engaged to Drake" status at Kiara's estate), the way they're allowed to dehumanize her and villify her (eg. The edit I mentioned at the beginning). This is often encouraged by their friends who are fans of other characters, and you can see that in sharp contrast, Olivia - despite her actions in Book 1 and her resentment of Liam for not loving her back in other books - is still often viewed with sympathy and respect. Her feelings - still viewed as genuine, even pure. To the point where PB eventually allows Olivia to constantly address her feelings about the MC's and Liam's relationship, while forcing Kiara to not even utter Drake's name in his playthrough.

But you see this with other characters, and in other contexts too. Particularly how Madeleine can be duplicitous, hypocritical, and power-hungry, and it's Kiara who is called these things despite her actual honesty in canon. Madeleine can get away with actually helping Bartie Sr kidnap the MC's daughter in TRH3 without a murmur, in the same fandom where people can curse Kiara for voting for Bartie Sr "to take the child away" (despite her telling the MC and spouse that she was promised they would have custody of the child, therefore the claim that she "voted to take the child away from their parent" is inaccurate).

You saw some of these discrepancies in how Penelope and Kiara were spoken about too - Penelope's crime in TRR2 was considered easily forgiveable, while Kiara's innocence is constantly called into question. Kiara was often viewed negatively for what the fandom perceived as "meanness" to Penelope (when it was in fact Kiara worrying about how Penelope would fare when she wasn't around) while Penelope herself was never expected to be a good friend to Kiara. An interesting thing to note about the fandom response to Penelope and Kiara showed that often when posters wanted to hate on Penelope, she and Kiara would be clubbed together, almost as a unit. This was especially prevalent in TRH3. It was easy to express hatred for Kiara independently, but most posts that showed a dislike for Penelope (besides from specific Kiara stans) would often tie her with Kiara, as if there wasn't much to hate about her otherwise.

It is important to line up whatever hate Kiara gets with the responses to the other women - especially in the face of what the latter are allowed to get away with. In doing so, you get a better sense of what is allowed for a certain subset of women, and what isn't allowed or permitted for black women specifically.

Often, the fans who would not hesitate to call her alone fake, opportunistic and creepy were WOC, and there have been cases where some would use their identity as WOC to shield themselves from the criticism concerning their vitriol. It would often descend into "I don't hate her because she is black, I hate her because {insert inaccurate/false/convoluted justification here}". It didn't matter that much of this information wasn't based in fact, or had a heavy bias that they never applied to anyone else. It only mattered that because they were WOC, somehow that meant that they couldn't possibly be racist. That their unfounded hatred for Kiara had to be legitimate. As if there was no chance that someone who was WOC couldn't be antiblack too. I mean, the ultimate proof of this could be found in TRR itself - the two head writers of the TRR/H/F series' are Asian women - who have a pattern of liking mean (white) women, and who didn't mind throwing the black woman and her black family in their story repeatedly under the bus, who didn't mind minimizing and retconning the abuse and childhood trauma that the darker-skinned Asian woman in their story went through.

Overall, it is possible that the fandom did take some of their cues (for their impression of Kiara) from the inherent disdain found in canon itself. But many of them also misinterpreted several things about Kiara, then didn't bother to revisit those biases with a critical eye, or even try to see if they were wrong. And that baseless hatred fed the already-existing disdain that Kiara's own writers had towards her. Resulting in the kind of horrific, racist garbage that we got to see in TRR3, and the constant attempts in canon to pull her down in TRH.

Did Drake and Kiara Ever Have A Chance?

There have been various opinions - from both Kiara fans and haters - for why a Driara ship would never work. He hates nobles, she won't like his disdain for art and culture, he likes the simpler life, she's a snob...so on and so forth. Many people will agree it's not a great ship, but of course with differing opinions on why.

I, however, often wondered at possible scenarios where such a pairing could work. The magic of shipping is often that you can play around with personalities and pair almost anyone, and find enough reasons to explain why they would tick. And in Drake and Kiara's case, personally, I do feel like it's a complicated question to answer - primarily because I feel like the authorial intent at the beginning may have been very, very different to what finally happened in Drake's story.

A lot of Drake's early writing focused on the reasons behind his mistrust of the court and his tendency to view the people he loves who are part of it (eg. Liam and later the group) as anomalies. There are two ways you could take such a story in TRR2 - you could either get him to admit to the flaws in his own thinking (thereby providing a more nuanced insight) and allow him to grow from there, or you could just have him double down on his biases and never change beyond the superficial. The team of TRR - esp the head writers, Kara and Jen who were both v fond of him - definitely seemed to go in the latter direction.

Drake's prediction in Coney Island does indicate that he should let go of the past, and I honestly feel like the sequences where he learned about Maxwell straining House Beaumont's finances to help her, and Kiara and Savannah's friendship, could have been turning points for him if the writers weren't so obsessed with proving him right all the time - even when he was supposed to be wrong. Maxwell and Kiara, in their own ways, were proof that not every noble was the same, nor would every noble treat the commoners around them all the same way. However, the narrative trampled all over this possibility in TRR2 Ch 9, where Drake could optionally claim that the Beaumont brothers (among others) were "just looking out for themselves, no matter the consequences", or later when the narrative had Savannah be grateful to him for breaking her confidence to Bertrand, and have Maxwell try to earn his forgiveness in Ch 12 rather than the other way around. It allowed Drake to be selective about the nobles he admired or defended, while still free to treat certain others like garbage.

I could easily envision a Driara pairing for most of TRR2. I could even see it as potentially salvageable in certain parts of TRR3. But the moment they had Drake readily suspect her, the moment the team thought it would be okay for Drake to even suggest minimizing her trauma...that option was no longer worth seeing. Not for Drake, but for Kiara. Drake would have to be the worst possible guy I could find for her, in such a scenario.

But I could see potential in a storyline that had Drake understand that some of these people weren't the monsters he so desperately wanted them to be. In one where he could hear about Kiara's friendship with his sister, and learn about a whole new side of her. One where he maybe felt insecure ("I'm not her type") and could be reassured by a woman who had likely held a torch for him since they were teens/young adults. One where they could reach out to each other in their pain and trauma, and find solace. One where Drake knew that the family he may be marrying into would respect him, and his father too. There were possibilities there.

It would still take more work - his mean streak for one would need to be reduced by more than a half. A lot of it, of course, was kept for the Drake stans, but it really doesn't add much to Drake's character besides making him a mean-spirited, hypocritical bitch who only targets the lone black woman this way (and Olivia occasionally, if she goads him). If the narrative did want to keep a characterization where Drake acts weird around the girl he likes, they could - but that story would need a lot more work to be palatable.

All of this is to say that regardless of personal bias, there were possibilities there. There was a sliver of potential. And if they wanted to let go of that potential midway, they didn't have to go about that the way they finally did. They could have just worked on creating another love interest for her. They managed to create a brother for her overnight just so Penelope could have a boyfriend; they could have easily done the same for Kiara.

Multiple factors went down that explain why the Driara ship didn't take off. But many of them boil down to one specific root cause - the white women (whether they caused actual harm or not) needed to be protected, needed to be cherished. The black woman who dared to ask for the same things from their pet LI, would be viewed as a threat, a villain, a creep...just for breathing in his direction.

And her writers cared so little, that they took the fanon perception for her and stamped it onto their canon, like it was the truth.

They didn't do any of this for the woman who forced a kiss on a prominent LI. They didn't do this on the woman who betrayed the MC and set her up for assault. They didn't do this to the woman who bullied the lone female LI, and swore to continue doing so till she broke.

They did this for the one woman who was fairly innocent of most of these crimes, actually respected the LI and treated him well.

They did this because they could get away with it. Because they were confident that the fandom they wrote the story for, would let them get away with it. And tragically...they were right.

--

Resources I used to learn about the Jezebel stereotype:

The "Offending" Breast of Janet Jackson: Public Discourse Surrounding the Jackson/Timberlake Performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII by Dr Shannon Holland

Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, the Jezebel and white masculinity by Khadija Mbowe (I actually got the recommendation for the first paper from this video essay).

From Mammy to Jezebel: The Portrayal of Black Women in American Cinema from the BlackThen website

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for bitching about fics I dislike on my blog?

as a foreword, this is kind of a non-issue and no one's ever told me to stop, but I'm curious what other people think of fandom etiquette.

the fandom: a fairly small one. 2.4k fics on ao3 small. I recognize most people posting in its tumblr tag small. if I tell you the name of the source you'd almost definitely be able to find me small.

the source: pornographic, which means everyone involved is or should be an adult. it's BL with a switch MC, but the fandom overwhelmingly prefers bottom MC/top LIs (love interests), to the point where I've had people be astonishingly rude to me because my favorite character is a bottom LI and some of my friends have been outright harassed for the same. I used to not care about sex positions in the slightest, but now when I see bottom MC fanworks I can't help but remember how poorly I was treated.

the fics: wildly and inexplicably popular, even though they are, frankly, poorly written. it's eternal bottom MC turned up to 11, complete with copious amounts of OOCness in order to turn every ship into the worst ye olde yaoi gender roles dynamic you can imagine. it's things like MC, canonically a 23yo plank of a dudeguy, being written as a big titted milf in his 40s (which is made more confusing by the fact that one of the LIs is already a big titted milf). it's also things like the MC being written as disliking sex and having to be coerced into it when one of the most charming things about him is that he's a hilarious sex pest, or writing the LIs sexually harassing the MC when they really would never do that. I've likened it to replacing the characters with OCs that share the same name and my friends have agreed with me. I'm honestly convinced that the author and his readers don't actually like any of the characters if they feel the need to change everyone so thoroughly.

why I might be an asshole: it's assholish to hate on free fanworks, and I've bitched about these fics on my public tumblr blog. the fandom is small enough that there's a non-zero chance of it getting back to the author and a reasonable chance that fans of the fics have seen my bitching. I'm probably projecting the hostility I've received onto someone who's done absolutely nothing to me, and I am absolutely just straight up jealous that their fics get better stats than mine. I may also be being an asshole to myself, because being critical of other people's fics has made my hypercritical of my own.

why I don't think I'm an asshole: I think everyone has the right to be bad at things, but I also think everyone has the right to be a little hater. I don't put the fandom tag on these posts; they stay on my blog and my blog alone, and if later on I feel like I was unfairly vitriolic I'll delete the posts. I only post on tumblr because I'm certain the author in question only uses twitter, which dramatically lowers the odds of him stumbling across my posts. the fics are so popular that it's definitely possible that their fans would see my posts, but I think it's unlikely that they'd bother looking at my blog because 99% of my posts are about one of the bottom LIs. I have never and would never leave comments on the fics themselves, and I generally try to keep the bitchy posts to a minimum; it's far from a constant thing.

tl;dr - I publicly bitch about fics that (in my opinion) are poorly written and extremely OOC, under the assumption that it's unlikely the author would ever see it. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[shygirl4991]

Valentines Test

A gift for @alianarepasa Happy Early Valentines Day! Summary:  SMG3 and Fours fighting has gotten worse over the past week, being done with the fighting SMG1 and two slap a bracelet on the pair forcing them to swap bodies. Now the boys must go on several outings to find the spark to swap them back.  

Tag: Fluff, bodyswap, confessions, first kiss

They have had it with all the fighting at the castle, SMG1 told the pair that they needed to start getting along or else their meme powers won't work. Since then everything they have attempted to make them grow closer just made them fight,  annoyed at how at the results of the training One and Two created a special bracelet for them. At the next training event they slap the bracelet on them “These bracelets are to measure your meme energy, if the numbers are high then nothing should happen but if they hit low numbers well you two will be in for a surprise!” 

The pair exchange a look before SMG3 scoffs “Please the only reason we end up fighting is because this idiot doesn't know how to follow instructions.” hearing this SMG4 glares at Three “WHAT?! I follow instructions!” SMG1 sighs seeing that an agreement was about to happen, worried SMG2 chimes in “Hey you two why don't we do some basic practice!” It was too late as the boys had already started to argue about who pays attention more in their training and who was the better guardian. The bracelet started to beep loudly, Hearing the beeping SMG1 and Two nod at each other and run out of the room, Three looked at his wrist confused before a blast of light hit the guardians. Both men were on the floor groaning as SMG1 walked back in, sighing “Now your real lesson has begun. You two have been fighting way too much for this to be normal, so your lesson is to fix the curse me and Two put on you.”

SMG3 gets up from the floor confused “Curse?” he covers his mouth confused as to why he heard his ex rivals voice. He turned his head to see his body getting up looking around confused, they made eye contact and realized what the curse is they pointed at each “WE SWAPPED BODIES!?” One nods pointing to the bracelet “Once you two have settled whatever is going on the bracelet will be able to track your link, the moment the link is stabled you get your bodies back.” Two nods handing them a packet with locations for the pair to go to. Three glares at the man in his body, then starts reading the pages “ I HAVE TO ACT LIKE FOUR!?” The day couldn't get worse. Two claps his hand opening a portal and throwing the pair to their first location, a park with a valentines event going on.  They blink, exchanging looks, in the whole mess of training and doing their jobs the men forgot that today was the day of love. Shroomy sees them and waves at them as he hands the pair heart necklaces, amusingly enough Three got a purple heart and Four got the blue one. 

“Hiya fellas! Happy you can come, partner up we have fun games for you two to be a part of!” The mushroom man walks away as the two men stand there looking around the park in shock, Three sighs “We have to partner with each other, it's the only way to get our bodies back.” He puts the purple necklace on the faces Four waiting for an answer. Nervously he puts on the blue necklace “We have known each other for years, but I have no idea how I can act as you for this whole thing! I mean you cheat your way to victory, I can't do that!” Three scoffs “I can cheat for us, being you will make it easy after all you have the perfect eyes,” Four blushes at the comment. With them coming to an agreement they sign up as the ship name that Boopkins told them a few months back, they then line up with the other couples. The first game was a race across a landmine field, Four looked nervous at the floor while Three rolled his eyes “Don't make me look like a bitch come on!” Something felt weird as Three ran; it was as if was lighter on his feet. On instinct he did a front flip avoiding the explosion as he lands on his feet he turns in shock “You could just fucking do that?!” Four rolled his eyes walking up the Three “Nice cover on acting as me dumbass, but yes im very um flippy.” 

Three started to look at Four’s body in awe causing the other man's face to go red, he grabs Three and starts to drag him “Please stop checking me out!” hearing that Three blushes “Oi! I wasn't checking you out that be gay!” an explosion happens causing Four to jump grabbing onto Three. They both noticed the strange looks they were getting, slowly they pulled their hats down to hide their faces. Round one was done and both men were already done, Four fell to his knees “Ugh i hated all that, how is avoiding landmines a way to show love with your partner!?” Three shrugs “Cause you didn't use them as bait? The hell do i know what goes through shroomys head.”

A loud bell rings letting them know round two was starting, this one was an obstacle course, Three blue eyes twitch as he looks around “We could try to cheat around some of the paths…”  he walks up to Four and switches their hats “Mind if i wear my hat for this, dont care doing it anyways!” Four would be annoyed by the man's tone but he was too happy to have his own hat back. They walk to the starting line waiting for the sign to start the track. As the gun fires the couples start to run, Three takes Four’s hand and pulls him. Running hand in hand they would pull each other out of danger, with a smirk from Three he slips his hand under his hat taking out a bomb. Four lets go of Three’s hand in surprise “Why do we need bombs?!” He watches his partner turn, lighting the bomb and throwing it at the group behind him. The other couples scream running away as the explosion causes rocks to fall covering the path, Three being distracted didn't notice a medium size rock was coming at him. Seeing this Four picks up Three pushing on out of the way, Three opens his eyes to go red in the face when he sees Four on top of him. 

Three wasn't sure what could be doing this, maybe it's their cosmic link or maybe it's because he knows the soul in the body. The point was Three did not see himself in that moment, he saw SMG4 in his clothing looking down at him with concern filling his eyes. “You okay Three?” Four gently caressed Three’s face, they both got lost looking into each other's eyes as if something was pulling them closer. Hearing someone smacking into the rocks Three knocked down they both quickly get up “I’m fine let's hurry to the finish line!” as they run they don't notice the light flicker in their bracelets. They make it to the top and smile at each other, Meggy smirks seeing the pair “SMG3 and four? You two together for a couples challenge?” Both men get flustered taking a step away from each other “Listen squ- er Meggy nothing weird is happening with us two, we uh did it for the prize!” She points to the poster showing that the prize was a romantic trip to a ski lodge. Four blushes and steps in front of Three “What he means is…i wanted a vacation so uh,” he looks around before snapping his fingers “To advertise my cafe!” 

Meggy sighs giving them a small smile “You don't have to hide your relationship with your friends, we will accept you both!”  Three’s face goes deep red “WHAT?! FUCK THAT I WOULD NEVER DATE THIS IDIOT!”  Meggy stares at him wide eyed “whoa sorry Four didn't think.. You get that upset, “ Four sighs smacking Three “Ignoring him, thanks Meggy for being understanding but nothing is going on.” she stares at the pair confused. She gave them a look and was about to ask another question before Boopkin came in. “Hey guys, surprise you two are here!” 

Three  gives an awkward wave “Oh you're here too, are you guys helping host this?” Boopkins nods “Yeah! I didn't think you two would join this together. I'm so happy for you two!’ He walks to hug Three thinking he is Four.  Seeing this Three steps away from the fish only for the child to keep trying, Meggy and Four stand there watching Three scream as he runs from Boopkins attention.  Meggy looking at the pair steps in front of Three “ you love hugging Boopkins Four is everything okay?”  hearing this the man stood still as Boopkin hugged him. Four holds back laughing as he sees the amusement on Three's face, noticing Four finding the situation funny he walks over to the man.

“Find it funny huh?” Four gets nervous seeing the murderous look coming from him, Meggy watches as Tari walks up to her “Meggy everyone is here wondering what the hold up is.” She points to the pair in a fight while Boopkins attempts to get them to stop.  Tari frowns walking up to them showing them a rubber duck  “Come on guys we are friends here, let's get along, don't want to make archibald upset!”  They both glare at her and cause her to run hiding behind Meggy.

Meggy sighs blowing a whistle to get their attention “FINAL CHALLENGE GO!” she turns to comfort Tari, making Four feel guilty. As they walk to face the final challenge, four starts to think to himself why have they been fighting so much? He watches Three smirking seeing as the challenge was about climbing, he was all for doing the challenge given Four’s body was flexible and easier to move. While Three’s body was more built for strength. Four thinks back at what started their constant flights only to get interrupted by Three walking up to him “Hey idiot, you think we fooled your friends back there?” 

Four sighs looking back at his friends and smiles seeing Tari feeling better “Hopefully we did, but we have a bigger issue than that. Three i wanted to as-” the bell rings letting them know it was time. Four looks at the packet that was given to them as Three gets ready to climb up the tower to get the flag, he looks at the other locations and sighs. He wanted to get this body swap problem out of the way before he had to talk to more of his friends, he watches Three climb and jumps when someone touches his shoulder. Melony smiles at him “Sorry! I heard from Meggy that you were acting weird. Is this about Four?”

Hearing this caught his attention, taking a deep breath he played along. “Yeah..we have been fighting more, feels no matter what we do we just fight,” Melony nods rubbing her chin thinking. She then smiles and shows her notepad “Oh yeah! Why not draw what you want from him,” she shows him a drawing making him blush “like you did when we talked last time!” Taking the drawing he smiles softly, now he understands why they have been fighting so much, how could he be so blind. “You dumb tsundere,” thanking Melony he runs to the goal waiting for Three. His heart was starting to beat fast as he saw Three sliding down with the flag, the man smirking at him showing off the flag. All Four can think about was making Three’s drawing come true, the moment Three crosses the line he jumps up “Hell yeah! Finally we are done with this shit!”

Four walks up to the excited Three and surprises him by lifting him up and spinning him around, they both start to laugh from the excitement of winning. Melony gives a thumbs up to Four hoping to encourage him to make the move. He finishes spinning Three pulls him in without a second thought and kisses the man, the other contestants gasp while Meggy chuckles “Nothing happening huh?” Three getting over his shock kisses four back, the bracelet starts to beep loudly as a bright light covers the pair. They pull away surprised to see each other, the bracelets then unlock falling to the floor. They both laugh hugging “Thank god i'm back to being my sexy self again!” Four chuckles pulling away from the hug looking at him “Right you're the sexy one…oh uh..” they turn to see the group of people recording them while their friends were cheering them on.

Their face go red realizing they just kissed in front of everyone “Oh fuck…UGH WHY DID YOU DO THAT IDIOT!?” Four flashes the drawing Three did of them kissing “Cause you're such an idiot you couldn't tell me you had feelings for me!” Three takes the drawing then looks at the crowd before whispering “With our past i didn't think anything could happen…”

Four gives him a loving smile “Well it's happening and all it took was a body swap heh,” Three let out an awkward laugh taking Fours hand and running from the phones, he knew tomorrow SMG1 and two will learn about how their test went. Three wanted to dig a hole and die in it when that thought came to him, he turned to see Four holding his hand smiling “So..what does this mean for us?”

Four hums looking around to see if they were alone “I wouldn't mind trying out being a couple! Three blushes and nods “I would like that as long as you don't get us body swap again!”  Four laughs looking at the packet “Hey if we run out of date ideas maybe one in the future can spice things up!” Three groans as Four teases him on the way home.

[twig-tea]

oh my god if you don't like wandee goodday let it fucking go already or at least don't put it in the tag, as if you're not watching so much worse lol

I'll take this opportunity to remind folks that tumblr is an experience you can and should curate for yourself!

If you don't like what someone has been saying about a particular show, you have options: You can unfollow or mute them for a period of time, or filter their specific tags. If you don't like what I have to say, for example, but still want to follow me for the other content I reblog, you can mute the tag I use for all of my original content, "typed so that I can stop thinking it". Block people who engage with content in ways you don't enjoy. You can always check back in and unblock or unmute later, it doesn't have to be dire or permanent.

If you don't want to read negative posts, when a post starts "I'm going to be talking negatively", stop reading. Why do that to yourself?

I don't agree with the philosophy of leaving critical commentary untagged, so my advice on this one is: Don't assume a shared tag will be curated for your taste. As general etiquette goes, if you're shitposting a show I can understand leaving the tag off, and I wouldn't tag e.g. a ship name if I were to talk negatively about an actor in that ship, but serious engagement with a show deserves to be in the tag for that show whether or not it's positive. I like thinking critically about the media I consume, and sometimes that means I'll have negative things to say. I for one find it useful to see the negative comments in a tag alongside the positive; if I'm going into the tags, I want to know what folks are saying in general, not just on the positive side.

[Slight aside re: which shows I choose to publicly criticize. I do consider the origin of the media when deciding what to say about it, but one of the largest media conglomerates in Thailand doesn't need protection from my opinion. So in the case the original anon is referring to here, I weighed the positive benefit of having like-minded folks commiserate with my experience and weigh in with their own insight over the potential pitfalls of highlighting the negatives in, for example, a show that really needs a signal boost in order for anyone to even know it exists. If I'm being negative about a show on main and tagging it, it's generally because I either wanted to warn folks or wanted to commiserate with like-minded people. Again, if you don't want to see that, there are options available to you as per above!]

Finally, if you get rude anonymous asks, consider turning them off. [I wanted to own here that the onus is on me as well to similarly curate my own experience as needed.]