#hatred and love don’t have to be mutually exclusive

[slavonicrhapsody]

just remembered that like a year ago someone got mad at me for saying that rykard would have resented radagon. do people seriously think that mr. “leal hound of the golden order” and mr. “lord of blasphemy” are having weekly father-son brunch

[isycamor]

i do kind of have mixed feelings about the armand reveal i will not lie. but at the same time, I think we forget that we still do not have all the information (lestat’s pov, and armand’s unfiltered pov of the trial, maybe even sam’s pov loool). also i don’t think this was particularly ooc nor do i think that it flattens armand’s character.

one,i think him doing this is completely in line with what we have seen from his character thus far. at this point (ep4/6 in paris) imo it is clear that he is feeling unloved/rejected on some level by louis [dreamstat haunting their relationship was the proverbial shoe waiting to drop; there was always a lingering feeling of inadequacy armand was feeling in his relationship with louis and considering his history (his trauma) we know how deeply this would affect him]. madeleine semi-confirms that there’s a sort of wall in the vulnerability of the loumand relationship when she asks louis why he doesn’t tell armand he loves him. armand is a character that desperately wants to be wanted, is desperately insecure, and on top of that, like assad said in an interview, very forward thinking. i think he really did not think his relationship with louis would survive — not with the burden of lestat, the burden of claudia/madeleine, and honestly i think it was coupled with a lot of self-hatred. the coven was a far more reliable decision for him. louis, throughout their relationship, was not a very consistent partner if we’re being honest (and i say this as a ldpdl apologist every tongue that rises against louis shall fall unless in defense of claudia). he refused to join the coven, he was constantly haunted by lestat in vital moments of loumand relationship development, he and armand were on verryyy different wavelengths about the labeling of their relationship, madeleine’s turning in itself i think also put a major strain in their relationship, etc. i don’t say this to excuse armand, but to contextualize his feeling of isolation within the relationship.

and thinking about his history, his trauma, i really do think that he would latch onto whatever seems to be the most consistent. he yearns for that commitment, and to feel wanted; and if he was not feeling that with louis, he would make the decision to stay with the coven. years upon years of abuse, and having that abuse be tied with a twisted sense of worship with marius, I believe has stunted armand significantly. armand is cunning, manipulative, whatever, but he really does not like being a leader. he leans into subservient positions constantly, and i think this is a pattern of learned helplessness that would explain why he perhaps may have felt as though he “could not prevent it” wrt the trial. i think him honestly believing he could not prevent it and also directing the whole thing are not really mutually exclusive here.

i don’t think this diminishes his love for louis at all either, he loved louis before during and after the trial, and the trial’s preparation. this was done in response to feeling unloved by him, not in response to not loving him. and i think, at least within the show’s presented narrative thus far, witnessing the actual trial along with lestat’s action versus his own inaction at its conclusion perhaps really put his guilt and regret into perspective which led to him saving louis from the wet room. and after finding a way to be with louis again (claiming to have saved him), and having louis speak to his commitment to him (even if it was done as a way to torture lestat), made armand solely focused on preserving his relationship with louis in any way possible - and unfortunately that meant also preserving this big lie. armand isn’t some supervillain that secretly wants louis dead - he did genuinely spend his life trying to make up for it. he is desperately desperately lonely and he has lived centuries feeling inadequate and unloved. this deep deep insecurity and attachment to preserve feeling loved/wanted drives his actions in paris, in san francisco, and in dubai.

so no! i don’t think it reverses any development of his character at all! honestly, apart from delainey’s claudia, armand was my shining star of season 2. assad played him brilliantly, and i don’t think this finale diminished the complexity assad (and the writers) gave to this character at all.

(i also think having this revealed and what this will do to armand’s psyche (as a character who i think is really really afraid to look inward) is such fun setup for season 3)

[angrylittletrashpanda]

On "alysmond" and "helaemond"

For some reason, there’s a petty war going on between fierce “helaemond” and “alysmond” stans. Fr, I totally don’t understand why should those ships be mutually exclusive? If “helaemond” actually becomes the show canon, I can totally see Helaena breaking up with her brother-boyfriend after B’n’C. IMO Aemond’s recklessness and long-harbored, ill-concealed hatred for Luke , contributing to Jaehaerys’ tragic death is a reason enough for Hel to stay away from him, never mind how dear the siblings (with benefits) used to be to each other. In this scenario, Aeamond could pursue a relationship with Alys, never mind his previous (more or less romantic) engagement with Helaena…

In addition, if “helaemond” is confirmed, this subplot doesn’t necessary have to be some fabulous love story. I mean the siblings *may* have been getting along with each other pretty well , and I really enjoy the idea of young Aemond having a crush on his big sister. I find it really cute, that’s all. In my opinion teenage Aemond, doubtlessly familiar with the idea of “courtly love” (I’m guessing this concept could exist in the quasi-medieval Westeros), might have enjoyed performing the role of righteous knight, worshipping his “future queen” from afar , as if there was a “secret RPG session”, going on but in his head. Frankly speaking, the young !Knight Aemond and his !Lady Helaena don’t even have to get sexually involved and their “forbidden love” could remain just cute, childish crush, as the time goes by turning into mature friendship, mutual care and understanding. Perhaps older Aemond, driven with his sense of responsibility, would want to become a proprer father figure/ role model for his little nephews and niece? I like to think well-educated, smart  Aemond, familiar with the story of Daenys the Dreamer, and keeping his sister company more often than her joke of a husband, found out Hel was a Dragon Dreamer.

On the other hand, we cannot rule out Helaena and Aemond becoming lovers, but IMO such a scenario would be pretty dark. It seems to me it could happened only if the show version of Helaena remained childless after two or three years of marriage (yet again, I am speaking about the show counterpart of the FnB Helaena, who canonically bore the twins about a year after she had wed Aegon) and Aemond started to fear someone like Larys Strong would simply get rid of Hel, so that the WIDOWED crown prince could take another bride. So, Aemond shared his fears with his sister, and the siblings agreed they ought to cuckold Aegon in order to secure Helaena’s position as the future queen, and thusly save her life… It’s possible the righteous prince Aemond , loathing the mere idea of fathering bastards, could have secretly married his sister (it could have been a traditional Valyrian ceremony, which still wouldn’t make the whole situation any romantic).  However, even as a “secretly married” couple, who could grow to quite enjoy performing their “conjugal duty”,  Aemond and Helaena could remain but “siblings with benefits” (which sounds awful, but given they’re Targaryens, it kinda makes sense) and never develop romantic feelings for each other. In this scenario, they could be still sleeping together after Aegon’s heir had been born, just out of sheer need for comfort, closeness or affection, or simply willing to reduce stress, feel better or have fun.  Messed up as Helaena and Aemond seem, they could have perceived sex as yet another form of bonding…  Whatever could have been going on between the siblings, their breakup after Jaehaerys’ death appears inevitable.

 As far as Aemond’s relationship with Alys is concerned, I wouldn’t call it an overly romantic love story, either. Let’s say it out loud – in spite of her sharp wits, charms and whatnot, Alys was a prisoner of war and even if Aemond had fallen madly in love with her, I would risk saying she wasn’t in the position to truly reciprocate his feelings. Thanks to Alys’ good looks, the prince “generously” spared her life, there’s no two ways about it, BUT however “besotted” Aemond was with Alys, becoming his “war bride” literally meant she was chosen to be a freakin’ sex slave. In my honest opinion, the woman deserved better and I don’t believe she reciprocated his love. Alys certainly was not in the position to fully consent to be the prince’s paramour, although I can totally see Aemond developing genuine romantic feelings for her – however twisted it may sound. It seems to me in the very beginning, it was just about lust, but later on, the prince could have taken to the “witch” because of her personality and even become fascinated with her supernatural powers. Frankly speaking, I am not the fan of the “Alys casting a love spell on Aemond” theory. She might have been using her totally prosy, feminine charms in order to endear the prince to her, and thusly make sure she would be treated as well as she could possibly be under so dire circumstances. And no, I don’t mean Alys was just offering Aemond sexual favors. Intelligent person she no doubt was, the “witch queen” could do her best in order to forge an emotional bond with Aemond, too. For instance listening to what the prince had to say and showing him affection. Paradoxically, learning Aemond’s story could make Alys take to the prince at least a little, since in this scenario, she could realize in spite of coming from different social backgrounds, they shared a bunch of experiences. For instance, earlier in her life, unwed and pregnant Alys, born out of wedlock herself, had been no doubt an outcast – just like Aemond the Kinslayer, having blood of his close relative on his hands. Could it be a reason enough for Alys to start sympathizing with Aemond? Yes, indeed. In addition, the “witch” had lost both her child and their father – even if  we are not familiar with the details and the moment she met Aemond Alys was probably over it. If the “helaemond” theory is confirmed, Aemond gets involved with Alys when his first “girlfriend” is also like dead to the world, not to mention the fact his son and/or nephew died gruesome death.

Here, I would like to admit I am not a fan of fetishizing Alys’ age and deeming her a “milf”. The woman was certainly more than just her looks and age. If Aemond had actually loved her – which I find highly probable  - there must have been something more than just physical attraction! In addition, in the quasi-medieval world of Ice and Fire, girls in their early teens are considered eligible maidens, so in this universe, it isn’t out of usual for women in their late, if not mid-twenties to become grandmothers! Taking the fact FnB is supposed to be a historical source by a bunch of unreliable narrators, we don’t actually know how old Alys was. If we rule out the ageless witch/ red priestess theory, we could safely assume she was, for instance, in her 40s or 30s, but knowing the Westerosi customs, well, it is still possible she was just a few years older than then-twentyish Aemond. There is also an option Alys didn’t even exist and all the war bride/captor romance was made up by pro-Black maesters and scribes, willing to paint the prince in a negative light. After all making some lowly born wet nurse his wife, Aemond would insult House Baratheon, impudently breaking the pact which had to be sealed with his marriage to Lord Borros’ daughter. You just keep in mind both the Witch Queen and Aemond’s bastard son disappear  from the “historical chronicles” shortly after the Dance ends. In addition, stressing Alys’ alleged “old age”  could have made him look ridiculous in the eyes of Westerosi readers.

Personally, I prefer to imagine Alys existed, had prophetic skills and played a significant role in Aemond’s life. Perhaps at some point, she even developed some sympathy and twisted fondness for the prince (still her captor and, yes, her rapist) but never had second thoughts about having kept it to herself that Aemond would meet his end in God’s Eye and no one could blame her for it.

To sum up, I think shipping Aemond with Helaena does not automatically make the shipper anti-“alysmond”. In my view, adding one more (for want of a better word) romantic relationship to Aemond’s arc makes sense. It could be an interesting way to show how the character’s attitude towards his love interests and his interactions with them evolve as various experiences are shaping his personality. I would never pit Helaena against Alys. They’re two different women and the fact at some points of their lives, they happened to get involved with the same guy does not make them natural born enemies. In my honest opinion, if the show version of Helaena had a chance to meet Alys (here, I mean my own idea of this character, since we don’t learn much about her from FnB and her show counterpart is still a mystery), they would become… good friends.

[i-d-e-g-a-f]

Its almost entertaining that any post that expresses dislike for kataang will get responses of “oh you just think zukos hot and are self inserting” even if the post never mentions him. Like I dont have strong feelings about zutara they could be friends or a couple i dont care. But I dont like kataang because it reminds me of how i was treated/viewed by guys who had a crush on me growing up. When I was a kid watching atla on my bulky square tv I was also noticing that some of my friends saw some idealized version of me (i wasnt this articulate about it then but still) and got upset when i didnt live up to it. The ship I dont like is the one I projected on. Why is the assumption the other way?

i completely get u anon. i love zutara but i don’t care if people dont love it i am just like,, vehemently anti kat*ang. i think i have a post about the my hatred for one and love for the other can be mutually exclusive 😭😭 like i hated kat*ang LONG before i started shipping zutara, partially due to the stuff u mentioned

[good-to-drive]

would you say the vilification of john in the media is somewhat related to a widespread lack of understanding/empathy towards mentally ill people & drug addicts?

he obviously fucked up and hurt many (if not most) people in his life, that goes without saying. that pain he caused is very real and valid. he WAS violent, understanding 'why' doesn't take that away. i mostly refer to the "he was unredeemable; hate him or you're as bad as him" mentality.

Thank you so much for this ask, I think that's a really good point! To me it sometimes feels like a lot of people think of blind hatred as a moral high ground, and feel that speaking with compassion or understanding about someone who’s done something wrong means you may as well have done it yourself.

I think sometimes we want “bad guy” and “victim” to be mutually exclusive roles, in the sense that acknowledging that someone like John was acting from a place of pain can be very offensive to people who feel this negates his “badness”. Blind hatred feels like a moral high ground by comparison because it makes no attempt to see a victim in a bad guy, or vice versa.

But acknowledging that trauma and/or mental illness can sometimes mean you don’t know how to relate to yourself or others – and that this likely doesn’t make you irredeemable if you have the right kind of help – does a lot to prevent people from actually engaging in destructive behavior. Which is enormously helpful for the people who love them and are exposed to their destruction. So in a practical sense I don’t think it’s harmful to have or want an understanding of what drove John’s actions. And I don't think that's the same as justifying, either, but I guess that's just a personal feeling.

All that being said, there are definitely some people out there who I will never be willing or able to have compassion for, so I’m not putting myself on a pedestal here for not blindly hating John. It’s just that, in my life, understanding the really fucked up parts of mental illness and addiction – even when it’s harmful and off-putting and disturbing – is actually more helpful than flattening the horrible complexity of violence and addiction down to “it’s because he’s bad”.

Which is also not me declaring a moral high ground – I’m just saying that blindly hating him and rejecting any desire to understand where his fucked up shit comes from probably isn’t a moral high ground, either.

I think I basically just said what you said, but wordier lol. My only real point is that acknowledging the link between pain and maladaptive behavior shouldn't be offensive to people. It's one of the most basic things about being a human.

(I actually think this mindset is somewhat prevalent in analysis of Paul, too, though in the opposite direction. Less “you’re making excuses for him by acknowledging his maladaptive schemas may come from a place of pain” and more “you’re trying to negate his pain by acknowledging that it may have resulted in maladaptive schemas.”)

[brysbeddixt]

This is something that I’ve been thinking about ever since my Merlin BBC special interest recycled itself (as my long-term SIs often do); but I think lumping BBC Merlin into the tumblr-favorite queerbait shows of the late aughts/2010s (i.e. Sherlock and SPN) is doing it a disservice.

To me, Merlin is queer in largely the same ways that a lot of BL C-dramas are queer, and likely for much the same reasons. The political climate at the time would not have allowed for an explicit, out-and-proud queer relationship on not only British but American mainstream television. When it was first airing, at least in the US, it had a PREMIERE Sunday night 8 o’clock time slot. I have fond memories of tuning in with my family every week, because in addition to it being mainstream, it was a FAMILY show. The attitudes surrounding LGBT narratives in 2008 simply wouldn’t have allowed for an explicitly queer romance in such a show.

But implicitly? The romance is very much there, and in my humble opinion not at all queerbait. Arthur marries a woman, but his relationship with Gwen is never as deep or touched upon as his relationship with Merlin. That’s not saying he doesn’t love her (I am FULLY against Gwen-bashing in all forms, she is LITERALLY a Queen and I love her), but real adult relationships can be complicated. Arthur loves Gwen, and he loves Merlin. Merlin’s love for him is evident. Gwen loves Arthur, but she also loved Lancelot. These things do not have to be - and are not- mutually exclusive.

There is something so undeniable about the fact that Arthur and Merlin love each other that even now, 15 years after the show first aired, there are still people who wholeheartedly believe in that love. And not with the bitterness that is largely held towards Johnlock or Destiel, which absolutely WERE queerbait. BBC Merlin leaves you with none of that bitterness, even despite the ‘bury your gays’ trope being present in the series finale. Coming back to my BL C-drama comparison: if a C-drama has very evident BL themes, it MUST end either unhappily or at least ambiguously. I see the series finale of BBC Merlin in much the same light.

Of course there’s also the metaphor for “having magic” as being queer, which is touched upon beautifully in this video by Alexander Avila, and so I don’t feel the need to elaborate on here by virtue of having nothing to say that Alex doesn’t already.

I was still a young child when Merlin was airing, and thus wasn’t around for fandom discourse at the time. Perhaps there was a JLC-type movement, I KNOW there was a vitriolic hatred for Gwen in some circles. But to me, the fact of the matter is that Merlin and Arthur being romantically attracted to each other is intentionally, subtextually evident in the show’s writing; but it could never be more than that because of the attitudes towards LGBT romances in media at the time.

[aegidiusrex]

Being aromantic but emotionally intense myself as a person, characters who don’t feel love normally or straightforwardly and/or experience attraction in an unconventional way really grip me, and Gil & Luis hit that spot for me so well… sometimes I think I simplify them down to a “mutually unrequited love/mutual emotional constipation but secretly they’re in love” kind of dynamic purely for ease of communication, because communicating in trope speak is effective in fandom spaces, but that’s not what they are tbh.

Gil’s feelings for Luis are like, I have soft humiliating feelings for the human that you are, but I hate the figurehead you also are, and those two sides of Luis’ persona have no hard dividing line so he feels those things for Luis very much together at the same time. He’s also attracted to/aroused by the opportunity to dominate Luis BECAUSE he often dislikes Luis and feels powerless under him, so he’s not exactly repulsed by Luis’ cruel side either. Gil is also riddled with Stockholm syndrome and he knows it, he knows that his feelings are muddied by his literal dependence on Luis as his master & captor, he NEEDS Luis’ continued favor or he will literally die, so he can’t even trust his own feelings or his attachment to Luis as being from a genuine place in his heart. And when he does feel some genuine longing for something real with Luis, he feels so much guilt and self loathing about it that it makes him feel better to just withhold this from Luis to the point of hurting Luis with his detachment. He knows Luis wants to make a real connection with him and he denies him because he wants Luis to suffer a little bit too. So it’s not exactly that he’s uncommunicative about his true feelings because he’s embarrassed, or because he believes they’re completely unrequited, but because he knows he can’t have anything with Luis anyway so he might as well dangle that out of Luis’ reach. The one thing he has the power to deny Luis is his heart.

Which is the thing Luis wants the most! Deliciously! Luis’ feelings for Gil are based on this strong attraction he has to authenticity, new experiences, adrenaline, a relationship he could never have with anyone else. The nature of Gil’s feelings matter very little to him. Gil’s hatred is just as valuable as Gil’s love because it’s real and it’s for Luis specially and exclusively. Luis spends so much energy trying to draw out ANY genuine reaction from Gil because he loves seeing that kind of authenticity directed at him, as someone who is constantly surrounded by disingenuous manipulators. Luis himself is a disingenuous manipulator. He has never known anything else. So when Gil looks at Luis with the undisguised intent to kill him, Luis is immediately addicted to it. Many people hate him and would love to see him dead but they smile and play nice and pay him empty compliments. He loves the unique danger of going to bed with a man who could, and would very much like to cut his throat in his sleep. It’s not really clear if Luis just doesn’t have the perspective to take this danger seriously or if he is subconsciously self destructive. I think the latter fits very well with his character. Luis is the type of person who sees a priceless porcelain vase that’s very significant to its owner and has this compulsion to smash it. And I think since he sees himself as this valuable commodity, since that’s the only way anyone has ever seen him, there is something attractive to him about being broken and defiled by somebody who sees no inherent value in him at all. He could not ask anyone but Gil to fuck him the way he wants to be fucked, and on top of that, Gil gets just as much out of it as Luis does. Fucking is the surest way for Luis to draw out Gil’s true nature. But Luis is greedy and he wants to know that Gil’s heart is all his, too, whatever is in it, and Gil will never give him the satisfaction (of knowing that it absolutely is.)

[meanderingfamilytree]

Contains: M!Bailey, GN!Reader, incest

Imagine that you are Bailey’s child, but brought up in a orphanage all the same. It is a choice purely out of convenience. Everyone knows that you are Bailey’s child, even Bailey himself, but that doesn’t keep you safe from his fits of anger at the orphan brats, nor the paper thin walls of the orphanage bedrooms. It’s rather easy to forget that you are different from everyone else, sometimes. To just pretend that fucking bastard isn’t, actually, your biological father.

Perhaps you would even prefer that. To be an orphan and nothing more. But it gets increasingly hard to ignore the resemblance between you two as you grow into your features, with a rather uncannily similar scowl that you both tend to make when displeased. You try to scrub free the hints of him from your body; bleaching your hair blond, wearing contacts, never wearing black that Bailey exclusively prefers. Yet your efforts are futile. You are still his child, despite it all.

Bailey never seems eager to do much parenting, except the occasional, rather dismissive question on whether you haven’t dropped out of school yet. So it surprises you when he doesn’t start asking for the weekly payments that all other orphans after reaching 18 is expected to make. Despite your better judgement, you ask him why. He looks back at you incredulously, as if you had asked him why the sky is purple. I don’t know if it had slipped your dumb little mind, but you are my child, not an orphan, the last time I checked. And your money is mine, anyway. Why would I take it? You scoff at that answer. Because really, that is some prime bullshit.

This precarious balance of mutual distaste continues until you feel a need to barge into his office one day, demanding him to let Robin go. The negotiation never had any hope to sail smoothly, not when he asks if you have any money to pay him off then. You don’t. You didn’t make saving money much of a habit, not when you never had a nefarious figure in your life demanding payment at the end of each week. When you tell him just that, he shrugs. As if that’s the end of the conversation.

Something burns fiercely within your stomach. Not quite hot, no, but a stilted coldness that expands by the second. It is pure madness as you impulsively start to unbutton your shirt, pull down your trousers. That certainly gets his attention, as he chokes on his own breath.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asks. Perhaps. Probably. Do most people strip in front of their absent and despicable father as a method of payment? You doubt it.

“I heard from a few of the the older orphans that you can be persuaded to take this as payment instead. Is that untrue?”

“You are,” he looks positively murderous now, “my child.”

“I’m not your child,” you snap. “You don’t get to call me that. Not you.” And you are grateful for your hatred towards him, truly, because you don’t think you could stripped down in such a manner in front of anyone you love. Bailey’s eyes land on your now bare chest and the panties discarded on the floor, and there, there is the evidence of his guiltiness. He can no longer feign innocence, now when something primal flickered in his eyes for a second. You straddle his lap without shame, kiss him hard and sloppily, feeling the scratch of his hastily shaved chin. It tastes like any other man; funny, you expected kissing your own father to be wildly different.

It is like any other cock when you are bouncing on it, too. He whispers in your neck that you take after your whore mother, who apparently had a nice piece of ass. You moan, all loose and soft, despite wanting to claw his eyes out. Fingers grip your waist to use it as a convenient handle to slam your body down, hard, on his cock. For someone so reluctant in the beginning, Bailey is awfully eager now.

When he comes inside you, it is warm, dripping, enough to finally quench the burning fire in your stomach. You shudder, laying limply against his chest, breathing deeply. Though a sudden, unexpected urge to cry threatens you, you wish it away quickly enough by thinking of Robin. Your consolation is the fact that Bailey looks as stricken as you feel inside.

So when he orders you to get the fuck out, you obey him—for once. For this is payment done, a debt dusted. And if your hole still is wet and aching from the fucking, you try not to think about it too much while you limp back to your own room. Bailey will be thinking about it, instead, for the entirety of next week.

[olympianbutch]

i hope this makes sense, but i've had this back-and-forth with my faith in my head for years and in light of your recent post i was wondeing - if you're in the headspace to talk about this - what your thoughts are on the theoi and their relations with otherwise bigoted worshippers. ex: if a bunch of terfs claim to hear from Aphrodite that trans women aren't real women, what am i to make of that ? does their bigotry distort how their receive messages from the theoi, and in which case, does that mean the gods support of me and my queer fellows in my mind are also our own distortion ? are they being guided towards a better mindset and being given the benefit of the doubt ? if i (a trans man) think i'm talking to a loving Aphrodite while a terf thinks they are talking to a radfem Aphrodite, what makes any of this matter ? if the theoi would give their love to those who wish me dead, what is the purpose of my faith ? i've never known how to make sense of this, but it won't ever stop me from loving the theoi (particularly my relationship with Dionysos - i mean, cmon, there's nothing cisgender about him)

I promise I haven't been ignoring your ask, anon. I've just been taking some time to mull over this, and it really got me thinking.

The cognitive science of religion posits that every human being comes equipped with a sort of "spiritual toolbox." This means that evolutionarily, we hominids are prone to exhibiting or exercising religious thoughts and behaviors. How these thoughts and behaviors manifest is incredibly diverse. Seriously, you would be astounded by the cultural and religious diversity of our species. And historically, diversity has been met with either fear or hatred (though these are by no means mutually exclusive).

I believe that fear and hate are contrary to our nature because it inhibits progress (evolutionarily, we are an incredibly progressive species). I think that the gods—being the governors of nature—would oppose that which is contrary to progress. And thus I believe that the gods do not inform or support or arbitrate transphobia (or any kind of bigotry, for that matter).

My feelings on this aren't exactly convoluted, yet this is a topic that requires a full range of thought. So, I consulted two of the smartest transsexuals I know (@ofsappho & @hekateanfoodie) to see what they had to say about this:

Areia says . . .

"To speak from a more personal perspective, the truth is, as a queer/trans person of color, I have no idea whether or not what people who want to hurt me and see me dead and claim that they speak to my gods experiences are 'real.'

I have no way of externally verifying what is going on with them.

But I look for the theoi in my life and i see that divinity everywhere. I love how this poem describes it. Personally? In my opinion, divinity is inherently subversive and outside the 'norm' and unconventional.

The gods do not love what hurts that which they love, I know that to be true

If they think the gods hate me and they speak for the gods, that is blasphemous

And impious

That is objectively true

So I guess… I look and see how the gods love me everywhere and how divinity seeps through the cracks of ordinary life and celebrates the extraordinary. Being transgender is a calling and I would not experience it if the gods didn’t intend for me to walk this path."

Mika says . . .

"I’m going to use Christianity as the biggest example here because it has the largest pool to pull from. I also don’t think tackling this question from a theological standpoint is entirely helpful because theology is too subjective for us to find any meaningful discourse. Also it’s too easy for the other side to react with the same argument of 'this is what I believe.' (Though we can talk about orthopraxy and how belief is secondary so really all this is a moot point to begin with!)

Regarding the point: religion can be used for either oppression or liberation. Which is entirely up to you. MLK was Christian, as was Adοlf Ηitler… but if we were to ask the majority of people on earth who god favors which do you think the consensus would be? If we were to ask who was more worthy of heaven, Harriet Tubman or Christopher Columbus, who do you think the consensus would agree upon? The point here is that regardless of personal belief—Liberation. Is. Just.

And we can talk about who Aphrodite loves more based on personal experience with the divine until we are blue in the face, but who do you think is more rewarded on earth? The TERF, or the trans masc butch with love for all?

I personally think that what we do on this earth matters more than what we do in the afterlife. As much as Orphism and eschatology fascinates me- contemplating death is meaningless if you didn’t do anything here to make conditions for everyone else better. The ground we walk on is holy. The way we conduct ourselves while walking Earth is observed by the gods.

And if you spend your time trying to invalidate your fellow humans- instead of making life better for them- the ground you walk on will be blighted.

That’s like not religious contemplation that’s just a fact lmfao. If you spend your time conceiving ways to make other people miserable for existing you will blight the earth. Lmfao."

I don't exactly have any concluding thoughts (,: I just think we would benefit from chewing on these ideas for a while

[achilleslyre]

https://www.tumblr.com/achilleslyre/724388003890561024/httpswwwtumblrcomachilleslyre724382558166630

Sasuke wasn’t only motivated by the love of his family when he wanted to kill Itachi. He was also manipulated by his brother into seeking revenge, and hating his brother to be able to defeat him. If Itachi hadn’t manipulated Sasuke and made him believe that he had to be lonely to be powerful, Sasuke probably wouldn’t have tried to avenge his family the way he did.

And I don’t really see how Naruto’s actions are rooted in hatred? His actions are more based either on his desire to be loved, or on his own love. Naruto wasn’t full of hatred because he had Iruka and Sasuke.

that’s completely irrelevant, loving his family and being manipulated aren’t mutually exclusive… both exist with each other.

naruto wants to become hokage to prove the village wrong and gain their attention because he’s so angry by the way he’s been treated as a kid. he literally has an entire mini arc in which he literally faces the hatred inside him… the dark naruto? the “true” naruto… it is literally addressed there that he does so much bc he holds hatred for the village erm.. ok

[bonafake]

hello, all! it’s been literal years since i’ve used this tumblr, but i've got an important update.

someone recently let me know that ffn might be going down, which made me reassess my decision to host my harry potter stories on that platform exclusively. regardless of whether the platform goes down, i think that it’s worthwhile for me to repost my harry potter works somewhere more secure. over the next few months, i’m planning on moving my stories over to my ao3 (here). i’ve posted some other stories here, but i’m planning on archiving absolutely everything, along with a few little things i haven’t yet posted, and some other stuff that i’ve deleted. i also want to archive your comments, because i really value the feedback and interaction that i had with the harry potter fandom, both here and on ffn.

secondly, i also wanted to share some of my current thoughts on harry potter as a fandom and my subsequent plans for my in-progress works. at the moment, i have no interest in continuing to write for harry potter. this decision is based largely on j.k. rowling’s deeply hateful and harmful rhetoric about trans people, especially trans women. as a queer woman of color, i never want to participate in systems of oppression and hatred, and i feel that supporting rowling by writing about her works ultimately harms trans people. for that reason, i don’t plan on writing any more harry potter stories.

with that in mind, i don’t think that i’ll be able to finish my current works in progress, magnum opus and common misconceptions. however, i’ve plotted out the remainder of both stories, and i plan on posting those notes to give readers a sense of closure. because neither story is finished, both will be marked as incomplete, and i may eventually come back to work on them sometime in the future. i also want to post some of my unpublished (and unpolished!) bits and bobs that i think are interesting. i’m not planning on editing anything - if i do, i’m certain i won’t end up reposting it at all!

additionally, i wanted to note that i’m involved in a few other fandoms under another pseudonym. mutuals, if you’d like that information, please send me a message and i’ll be happy to give it to you.

so, that’s what’s going on with me! please do feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions or thoughts!

much love, bonafake

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | fake marriage au [18+]

in holy matriphony ch1. he said yes!! congrats!!

ᰔ pairing. fake marriage au - neighbor&realtor!gojo x nurse!reader (ft. choso x reader & suguru x reader)

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is your extremely annoying next-door-neighbor who you're pretty sure is the most insufferable man you've ever met. given the fact that you exclusively work the night shift at a chaotic emergency dept, just got broken up with your boyfriend of seven years, n have been taking care of your sick mom ever since her multitude of diagnoses, yet somehow your neighbor is the main source of stress in your life should speak volumes. but when your mother's medical bills start to skyrocket more than you can manage, and you learn that said neighbor of yours has the best private health insurance in the country, you ask him to enter a matrimonial agreement with you for the spousal benefits all in the name of saving a few hundred thousand dollars. but you'll have to see if suffering cohabitation w him is worth any amount of money.

ᰔ genre/tags. fluff, smut, angst, enemies to lovers (sort of), annoyances to lovers (that's more like it), small town romance, fake marriage, next door neighbors, lots of bickering, suburban shenanigans, slow burn, mutual pining, gojo likes to play house but you don't, hatred for the american healthcare system, gojo always forgets to mow the lawn, jealousy, an insane amount of profanity; btw gojo in this fic is in his mid 30s n reader is in her late 20s

ᰔ warnings. reader in this fic has a sick mother w alzheimer's & cancer so there is secondary medical angst!!

ᰔ chapter. 1/x (probably 10)

ᰔ words. 7.8k

a/n. hellooo omg welcome to this debut chapter!! tysm to everyone who wanted to be on taglist for this!! i was gagged at the amount of people!! yall are amazing omg n thanks for supporting my works :''') hope you enjoy this chapter and i will see all you lovelies at the bottom <33

nav. ch1 :: ch2 :: ch3 :: ch4 (pending)

Love thy neighbor.

Cherish thy neighbor.

Tolerate thy neighbor.

Peacefully coexist with thy neighbor. 

Fuck thy neighbor? No, wait, not that one.

It’s murder thy neighbor. That was the phrase you were looking for.

Murder thy neighbor so gruesomely that you’d leave no trace behind. Murder him and bury him somewhere no one could ever find him, so that even in millions of years from now when some other highly advanced mammalian species overtakes the planet and embarks on journeys to acquire fossils, thy neighbor will still never grace the atmospheric oxygen of the earth ever again. It’s the punishment he’d deserve for thoroughly pissing you off at the worst times possible and in the worst ways possible. The smallest of prices to pay.

“SATORU!!!” you yell, storming up the sudsy driveway of your next-door neighbor’s house at eight in the morning, clad in your dirty scrubs from the hell of a night shift you just endured working at the hospital, glass containers inside the lunchbox you were holding hitting painfully against the poor joint in your knee but you just don’t care. Anger is all you can see right now.

Your neighbor (derogatory) stands there in his pajamas with a spray nozzle in his hands, passively spraying water across the top surface of his car, and when he sees you, he pulls his left airpod out of his ear and looks you up and down once. You’re pretty sure there’s steam coming out of your ears. “Uh, do you mind? I’m trying to wash my car.”

“How many fucking times do I have to tell you not to park your stupid boat in front of my driveway?!” you yell at him, voice hoarse and nails digging into the skin of your palms by the clench of your fists.

“Hm?” he leans back a little to glance past you to his boat. “Oh, you mean my 2023 Boston Whaler 220 Dauntless with low profile bow rail welded stainless steel, Mercury FourStroke hydraulic power steering and, not to mention, a platinum gelcoat hull? That silly old thing? It’s not even parked in front of your driveway.”

“Yes. It is. Are you blind? I can’t move my car into my garage, hence why it’s running idle on the fucking street right now. Your boat’s on my property.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Uh. Yuh-huh.”

“Honey. I’m a real estate agent. You don’t think I’d know where my own property line starts and ends?”

“Park. It. On. Your. Drive. Way.”

“I spent a lot of money on that boat,” he sighs, “I intend to show it off on the street. Stop acting like there isn’t more than enough room for your tiny prius. It’s not my fault you have the motor skills of a toddler and don’t know how to pull into a driveway,” he pauses for a second and tilts his head upwards in thought, “Oh. Motor skills, haha, get it? Fuck, that’s funny. Hold on, I gotta jot that down,” he pulls his phone out of the pocket of his cotton plaid pajama pants, “my niece would love that. She gets all giggly about puns these days. It’s her birthday next weekend, by the way, turning five.”

“Oh, right,” you scratch the top of your head (been too busy to wash your hair), and realize the ponytail you threw your hair up into at the beginning of your shift last night is now barely hanging on for dear life, “I forgot to tell you, but my cousin said he can’t rent that pony out for her birthday party anymore. Apparently it died.”

He stares at you. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“Mm.”

He shrugs. “That’s fine, thanks anyway,” he swipes up on his phone, “they had crazy hair day at my niece’s elementary school yesterday, wanna see a picture?”

“Sure.”

He turns his phone to show you. “My sister let her cut her hair a little shorter this time since she wouldn’t stop asking. I guess all her friends at school were cutting theirs short too so they wanted to be matching.”

“Aww,” you pout with a small smile when you see the picture, “I think it suits her. That’s a lot of glitter though, y’know that stuff’s really bad for the environment.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, turning his phone screen back to face him, “anyway. I was halfway convinced you just came from some crazy hair day when I saw you stomp up my driveway just now.”

“I’m gonna guillotine your head off with the trunk door of my car. Now move your boat.”

“Hold on one sec,” he says, holding a finger right up to your face, and you flinch backwards slightly before going cross-eyed to stare at it, and then you’re glaring at him again. His phone is ringing in his hand. “I gotta take this.”

“Wha–” you try to interrupt him, but he just says shhh and shakes his finger in front of you, which makes you want to bite it off.

“Hi, Donna!” he exclaims into his phone, “so good to hear from you. Oh, no, not at all, you caught me at the perfect time. I’m just washing my car. Nah, you’re not interrupting anything.”

The urge to smack him consumes you.

“Oh okay, cool, I’m glad you took some time to think about it. Let me know when you want to meet again, if you’re still interested in the house, we can make an offer. Uh huh. Yeah. Sorry, what’s that? Oh,” he pulls his phone from his ear to look at the time, “yeah, that’s fine. Is that the one on 6th street? Sure, I’ll see you then. By the way, how was little Tommy’s soccer game yesterday?...Aw, that’s okay, he’ll get the next one. Hm? Yeah, what’s up? Oh, you know that I’d love to, and there’s no one that enjoys your green bean casserole more than I do, but I’m actually busy tonight! I know! Bummer! Maybe some other time? Alright. Yeah, thanks, you too. Take care. Bye.” He presses the end call on his phone, and there’s an awkward silence as he narrows his eyes at the screen in concentration for a moment while typing something onto it, and then the corner of his eye catches sight of something in his periphery, that something being you, and he jumps a little.

“Oh fuck,” he places a hand on his chest and exhales, “I didn’t know you were still standing there.”

“I’m seriously going to whack you across the face with my lunch box right now.” 

“That gigantic industrial lunch box you carry around for your 12-hour shifts?” he points at your hand, “you’d have blood on your hands. I’d be dead.”

“Yeah, that’s the goal, idiot.”

“You’re so fucking violent, jeez, I bet the inside of your head looks like the inside of Jeffrey Dahmer’s. How do you sleep at night?”

“With fifteen milligrams of melatonin, blackout curtains, a satin sleeping mask, and in the mornings.”

“...that didn’t make you sound like any less of a serial killer.”

“Whatever, at least I don’t have a complex for elderly divorced women. You know that what you do for work isn’t any better than prostitution, right?” 

“Okay. Now I have to hear where you’re going with this.”

You cross your arms across your chest, and your gigantic industrial sized lunch box with the millions of glass containers inside of it hits your hip painfully, enough to warrant a wince, but you keep a straight face as to not show any weakness. “You flirt with vulnerable women who have just gotten out of probably extremely heartbreaking marriages from their cheating country golf club husbands, and pretend to care about all their drama, just so that they’d buy a house from you. I literally heard you say to a lady the other day,” and you do your absolute best to mock him in the most insulting way possible, “‘it’s okay Lorraine. If you’re still struggling to fill your new house with someone new too, then you know where to find me.’”

“Yeah. She wanted to rent out her guest bedroom. I was gonna help her look for tenants.” 

“O-Oh,” you stutter, but stand up straighter, “doesn’t matter. You still pimp yourself out for a sale.”

“So what if I do? I’m hot, why wouldn’t I take advantage of that? You could’ve done the same thing too, but you didn’t, and now you’re stuck working miserable nursing shifts that are probably taking years off of your lifespan.”

“You’re the one taking years off of my lifespan. Now move your fucking boat.”

He sighs and slips his phone back into his pocket before walking past you to your car, that still had the driver’s side door open and was idle in the middle of the street.

“W-Where are you going?” you ask.

“I’m gonna park your car in your garage for you,” he says, waving his hand up in the air dismissively because he knows you’re about to protest, and then he ducks his head into your car, reaching his arm in for the lever that moves the seat backwards, and adjusts it all the way back before he’s able to take a seat at the wheel. And your yelling is a pestering he pays no mind to as he shuts the door.

“Wait– I didn’t give you permission to–” you shout as you step into your driveway, holding your arms out because you’re scared he’s gonna chip off your side mirror on the stern of his boat, but he deftly pulls your car into the driveway. He also almost runs you over in the process.

When he gets out of your car inside your garage, you storm right up to him and yank your car keys out of his hand. “You almost flattened me over my own driveway.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been standing there,” he easily retorts and leans against your car before crossing his arms over his chest. “Also, case proven, there’s more than enough space to pull your car in. You’re just piss poor at parking.”

“I swear to fucking god. If you’re ever in a life-threatening emergency and wind up at my hospital, your emergency isn’t going to be the thing that kills you, it’s gonna be the cocktail of deadly meds I inject straight into your veins. And I’ll have it charted like it was a death of natural causes.”

His brow furrows and he frowns, but it’s in that sarcastic way that tells you he’s not threatened by you, and the idea of using the taser in your purse on him is briefly entertained in your mind, “I’ve got Kaiser, hun,” he says, “I wouldn’t go to just any regional hospital for healthcare. Put some damn decorum on my name, Jesus.”

“How is it you’re stupid, an asshole, have a sick fetish for elderly women, and also somehow classist at the same time? Can you pick a struggle please?”

“Stop saying I have a fetish for elderly women,” he hisses at you, “especially with that loud obnoxious voice of yours. Our neighbors are gonna think I’m a creep.” He pretends to shiver.

“But it’s true. I bet you lost your virginity to a fifty-year-old cougar the day you turned eighteen. And to one that was probably grooming you even before then, too.”

His eyes widen. “Damn. How’d you know.”

“That you’re a victim?” you ask, tone derisive, “your entire personality is living proof. Please seek help.”

He rolls his eyes. “I was never groomed, and I didn’t lose my virginity to an elderly woman,” he corrects you, “...although said woman was a little older than me.”

“I’ve literally got no fucking interest in this conversation anymore. Get the fuck out of my garage,” you practically spat at him, “the last thing I need to deal with after getting off of a 12-hour night shift is coming home to your stupid face out on the street.” You push past him, making sure to nudge him with your shoulder but he hardly budges, and you lose balance from your own attack, and now you’re doubly pissed off before you make it to the door with your keys jingling in your hand to find the right one to unlock it.

“Good night,” he calls out to you, and you click the button on the garage door so that it starts closing, and watch him as he panics before ducking his head underneath it to make it outside before you can essentially lock him to rot inside of your garage, and then you shut the door behind you, finally inside the comfort of your home.

Ah. Silence.

But it was never a comfortable one. 

“Mom?” you call out as you open the door out of the laundry room to make it into the living room, and your eyes scan the floor. You don’t see her in the kitchen, or on the couch in front of the TV, sometimes she spends time in the pantry room but she’s not in there today. You round the corner over to where the front entrance of the house is, and you see her standing there, peering out of the window to the other houses on the streets. She holds her hands loosely behind her back, and she’s so still she could be a statue.

“Hey,” you say to her, softly, so as not to startle her. “I’m home.”

She looks over her shoulder at you, and you realize her line of sight was set to next door, where you see Gojo has resumed the wash of his car. “Why are you yelling at that sweet boy across the lawn?” she asks you, “he helped me fix the air conditioning last week.”

Your eyes widen slightly, but then you sigh. Typical Gojo getting involved where he should really just mind his own business. “I’m pretty sure by fix you mean he just pressed a bunch of buttons on the thermostat until it started working again.” 

She doesn’t respond as she continues to stare out onto the street, tilting her head slightly while deep in thought, like she’s trying to make sense of what she sees. 

“Mom,” you gently tug her sleeve, “I think you should get away from the window and get some rest. You look tired, and I need to take you for chemo in the afternoon.”

She gently pulls her elbow away from your grip of her sleeve and turns to look at you. “Mom?” she repeats after you, “why are you calling me ‘mom’? Who are you?”

Your blood runs cold from her words, but you don’t have the time or the luxury to react in the way that you want to, and so you suck in a deep breath. It was one of those days. But it’s cruel that she’ll remember your neighbor and not her own daughter. “I’m your daughter,” you gently reintroduce yourself, to the woman who gave you life, “I know that might be a little weird to hear right now.”

“No…” she says, “I think that makes sense. I’m sorry, dear, I think I have a bad memory these days.” She looks at you with concentration, studying the features of your face. “My daughter, yes. You look…oh, dear, you look like you should sleep.”

You nod slowly, releasing the breath you were holding. “Yes. You too, mom.”

You place your gigantic industrial lunch box on the kitchen counter, and come back to hold your mom’s hands as you lead her to her bedroom downstairs. By the time you fix her a small meal in the kitchen, bring it to her and make her eat so she can take her pills, she’s ready to take a small nap and you know that you’ve earned some sleep now too.

The upstairs master bathroom beckons you the second you get upstairs, and even though you’ve been using the master bedroom & bathroom in this house ever since moving your mom downstairs four years ago since she had trouble getting up the stairs, it still feels odd to stand in front of the sink without a stool underneath your feet, like what you had to when you were a kid and your mother would braid your hair. You’re a grown woman now, and as you stare at your reflection, you’re not sure if you can recognize yourself anymore. But rather than dwell on if it was because of any profound reason, you figured you just needed a shower and to get some sleep before you have to wake up again in five hours. Exhaustion is evident on your face, and you swipe under your eyes to get the smudge of mascara off before it tattoos your skin forever. 

Hot water on your skin does little to help your drowsiness, but at least now you feel clean of your shift, and then you remember there are blood stains on your shoes from the stab wound patient that rolled in at 2AM last night, and you should really let them soak for a few hours while you sleep, but you just can’t bother right now. Instead, you slip into something comfortable, draw your curtains back to mimic the dead of night in your room as best as you can, grab the bottle of melatonin sitting at your nightstand and pop a few tablets, feeling feverish as you slip into your sheets. You pull the comforter up over your eyes, a decision that is less ideal than using a sleeping mask since you’ll be breathing your own carbon dioxide until you fall asleep now, but it’s okay. It’s cozy under your blanket. Just this once. And you count sheep to make you sleepy. At least until the melatonin beats you to it.

—

“You’re looking better,” Dr. Johnson says to your mother as he accesses the port on her chest, “were you able to get a good rest?”

Your mother nods and points to you. “My daughter made me take a nap.”

“That’s good,” he coos, “it’s good to get rest before chemo. Your daughter really cares about you.”

“I know,” your mother smiles up at you, “I’m so lucky.” You return her smile with one of your own.

Dr. Johnson starts to push the line of chemo into your mother’s port as she sits on the chair in the treatment lounge, and then stands up from his rolling chair before the nurse quickly moves to twiddle with the drip of the IV bag. 

“Ready for consult?” he asks you.

You grip your binder to your chest. “Yeah.”

You walk into the doctor’s office, one you’ve more than familiarized yourself with over the past couple of years, then take a seat across from Dr. Johnson’s desk as he clicks through his computer before handing you a copy of your mother’s recent lab work.

“Her tumor markers are rising,” you say as you sift through the papers.

“They are, we’ll likely switch to monitoring them every four weeks going forward. But it’s okay, not to worry,” he says, “tumor markers can raise for all sorts of reasons unrelated to cancer.”

“She had a cold last week,” you say, “maybe it’s the inflammation?”

Dr. Johnson lets out a small laugh. “I’m sorry, y/n, sometimes I forget you’re a nurse.” He hums to himself as he pens down something on the notepad in front of him. “When was your mother’s last PET/CT scan?”

“It was in February,” you say, “she’s due soon. I was going to ask if you could order one for her.”

“Yes, I will, I’ll do it right now,” he says as he types something into the computer. “You still have the standing orders for her routine lab work, correct? Do my MAs need to send you the scripts?”

“No, that’s okay, I got them already. Good for six months,” you reassure him.

“Alright, perfect.”

There’s an awkward silence that settles in the room as you shift in your seat with the binder in your lap, full of all of your mother’s medical information and emergency department discharge packets and recent lab work and imaging. You mess with the plastic cover on top of it nervously.

“It’s good she remembers you today,” Dr. Johnson comments, “I remember last week you were upset she didn’t.”

“Oh,” you say, “yeah, I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s hard.”

His eyes leave his computer screen for a second to look at you. “Are you doing alright?”

You nod slowly. You had to be alright, you had no other choice. “I’m fine, thanks,” you say, “um, actually, doc, I just wanted to share with you that I’ve been keeping track of my mom’s Alzheimer’s progression.” You open your binder in your lap, pulling out a packet of papers and placing them on his desk, turning some of them towards him but he doesn’t really spare a proper enough look. “I’ve just been noticing she’s progressively worsening a bit faster than her neurologist had projected.”

“Okay,” he says, sounding curt, and that nervousness comes back. But goddammit, you’re a nurse, you know how to deal with stubborn doctors. And it’s for your mother. There was no one else left to advocate for her except you.

“I was just wondering if we could also order a brain MRI for her?” you ask, “just to rule out anything…her brain fog has been bad, worse than usual, and I’m just really worried about metastasis, especially if it’s a glioma, I’d just want to catch it as soon as possible.”

You have sympathy for oncologists, really, you do. They must deal with paranoid family members all the time, but how could someone blame another for wanting what’s best for their loved one? You don’t think that’s an empathy that anyone should ever lose, regardless of how long you’ve been practicing medicine. 

He sighs. “There’s no indication for that right now, not with her response to treatment as well as her lab work. I’d suggest we just wait on her next PET/CT results, and we can go from there. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”

“I know,” you say, “but her next scan isn’t for another couple weeks, plus the week it’ll take to have it read, it’ll be far out, so…if we could just order it now?”

He interlocks his fingers and places his hands in front of him on the desk, looking at you with a stern face, but he glances down at the paperwork you’ve sprawled in front of him with scribblings of all the detailed notes you’ve been taking of your mom’s responses to her Alzheimer’s treatments, with time stamps and descriptions of her mental state, and his furrowed brow relaxes slightly. He breathes in deep. “Alright. Fine, I’ll order one. I highly doubt we’ll find anything, though. But since there’s no clear clinical impression warranting a brain MRI right now,” he mentions as he directs his attention back to his computer, “I don’t think insurance will cover it for you with the diagnoses I put in.”

“That’s okay,” you quickly respond, “I’ll pay for it.” 

You collect your imaging orders from the medical assistants at the center of the oncology floor. The chemo nurse, Mai, informs you that your mother still has about two hours left before her treatment is done, and she gently suggests you go eat something while you wait. You tell her it’s okay, that you want to wait with her, but she tells you the hospital cafeteria is serving tater tots today for tater tot tuesday, and those tater tots are to die for. But before you go downstairs to the cafeteria, you find a few minutes to cry in a one stall bathroom.

—

“God damn,” you hear your coworker, Hana, dreamily sigh as she leans on the handle on your standing mobile nursing work desk, and you trail her line of sight to the tight asses of the EMT men that walk by while rolling a stretcher. “It’s like being hot is a part of their job requirement.”

“Uh-huh,” you agree mindlessly as you try to catch up on charting for the rounds you just ran on your patients around the emergency department beds.

4/20/2024 0200: patient notified of the importance of taking ibuprofen. Attempted to give pt the medication. Pt responded “suck on this, bitch”, gestured to his general groin area, then threw ibuprofen tablets at RN. pt upset and requests narcotics instead. Informed MD of pt’s behavior and request. MD will not order narcotic pain medication at this time. Will continue to monitor

“How’s your mom doing?” Hana says, interrupting your typing as she turns to face you now.

“She’s okay,” you say, continuing to punch keys as you stare at your monitor, “she has a PET/CT soon. It’s always nerve wracking when the next scan is coming up.”

“Have you given hospice any more thought?” she asks.

You stop typing and stare blankly ahead at your screen as your heart sinks a little. You have given hospice more thought, and you came to the decision about a week ago that you would go through with it. It’s becoming so increasingly difficult taking care of your mom at home, more than you can manage with all of her doctor’s appointments, radiation appointments, chemotherapy appointments, all of which happen during the late mornings or early afternoons so you can’t even properly rest on most days that you come home from night shifts. Even though you only work three shifts a week, you can’t remember the last time you got a full, uninterrupted eight hours of sleep because of how messed up your circardian rhythm has become. You were practically a walking zombie, and you hardly felt like a person anymore. You’re not going to switch to the day shift, because that would make it difficult to take your mom to her appointments, and also because you get paid extra with the night shift differential, and above all other necessities, what you really needed right now the most was money. Forget the fact you’re still in debt from nursing school, but you co-signed on the medical loans your mother had taken out for treatments, and five years of high acuity medical bills was a living nightmare. And you were living that nightmare. 

“I did,” you say, “I’ve been looking into hospices, but a lot of them are further away than I’d like.” You glance down at your keyboard. “I…I’m going to miss having my mom home. Even though it’s hard to deal with her mood swings and stuff sometimes, I just think the house would feel really empty without her.”

“Aw, my dear,” Hana sighs and rubs her hand up and down your arm soothingly, “I’m sure you’d love to have her home, but I think it’s becoming too much for you. I say this with love and care, but I can’t remember the last time I saw you genuinely smile.”

Your eyes widen slightly from her words, and you release some of the tension in your shoulders, tension you didn’t even realize you were holding onto during this conversation.

“It’s too much for just one person,” she continues, “while I understand you want to spend more time with your mom, the quality of time you’re spending with her could be so much better if you had some weight lifted off your shoulders, where you’re not worrying about her medication schedule or doctor’s appointments or blood draws and all that.”

You nod slowly and manage to give her a small smile, then place your hand over hers that was still soothing over your arm. “Thanks, Hana. I know, I appreciate you looking out for me. I…I think I’ll look more seriously into hospices. It’s just they’re really expensive, too, so I have that to consider as well.”

“Hmm,” she withdraws her hand from you and juts her bottom lip out as she looks up at fluorescent emergency department lighting. You hear a patient cough in the distance as your senses take in the ambient environment once again. “Y’know, there’s this really great new hospice in town that functions as a general facility and also helps manage a lot of chronic diseases too. They have nurses there that do blood draws and everything, and they also transport patients to their affiliated hospital for treatments, like dialysis and chemo and stuff. My friend’s mom has breast cancer and was recently accepted into that hospice,” she tells you, pulling her phone out and looking through some of her messages, “I think it’s only a fifteen minute drive from your house.”

You tilt your head at her with interest, wondering why it didn’t come up on your provider search through insurance, but regardless, it sounded too good to be true. “It’s probably really expensive. My mom’s under the state insurance right now, but I’ve explored government insurance plans too and they’re still really pricey. I just can’t afford it, not with all of her cancer treatments, and adding her under my insurance isn’t really going to be any better either.”

She groans. “I know. What’s with our healthcare plan? You’d think as a hospital, they’d choose better plans for their employees,” she sighs, and then stops to read some of the messages on her phone, “but my friend said that her husband was able to add her mom as a dependant, and his insurance covers 90% of it. I’m sure it depends on the illness, but they only pay a few thousand per month out of pocket.”

You blink at her. “Really? T-That’s insane…do you know what insurance her husband has?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a Kaiser facility.”

“Oh,” you sigh, “well, they wouldn’t accept state insurance. That’s a private HMO.”

“Shoot,” Hana looks at you apologetically, “I’m so sorry, love, I forgot about that. Sorry to get your hopes up.”

“That’s okay,” you smile at her, “thanks for trying. I’m glad it worked out for your friend, at least.”

Hana glances at her watch and realizes her break is over, so she heads back to her side of the emergency department, and you’re left standing at the nursing station with thoughts running through your head now, and still catastrophically behind on charting.

Hmm.

Kaiser.

You swear someone mentioned that to you recently.

Or maybe you were just remembering another one of those ads you see on television at night. No, no, you’re pretty sure it came up in conversation with someone, but you can’t remember when or why or what or where or who. Hmmmmm. Kaiser, Kaiser, Kaiser. 

Nope. Nothing.

Oh well, maybe it’ll hit you later.

—

It hits you in the form of an intrusive memory when you wake up on a Thursday afternoon in a cold sweat after having a hallucinogenic melatonin dream where you were getting chased by a giant rabbit (don’t ask). 

Kaiser.

Gojo said he has Kaiser insurance. 

And the idea that comes into your head after that is so ridiculous, so absurd, so positively bonkers that you have to slap the sleepiness off your face for a second to make sure you’re still not in some dream state of living, and the harsh sting on your cheek proves that you’re not. And the idea still persists. And now you’re swinging your legs over the edge of your bed, and grabbing your laptop, and opening it, and inputting your pin, and then spending a good three hours researching if this little idea of yours actually has any good level of merit to it, if it could even succeed, if it was even legal? You even find yourself on the phone with insurance representatives, and you stare at the tens of thousands of dollars of debt on your Excel spreadsheet where you keep track of your finances, and you feel the exhaustion in your bones, and you also remember how fucking annoying Gojo is. And yet still, the idea persists. 

And when the pieces of the plan start to unfortunately fall into place, you say, fuck it. What was worse than potentially getting into six figures of debt? It’ll be fine.

But you can only hope he says yes.

.

.

.

[reading commercial break]

hello!! this is ellie, the author. so sorry to interrupt, there is still a bit left for this chapter, but i just wanted to jump in here real quick to explain for some of my readers that may not be american so they may understand reader’s desperation to financially cover the costs of her mother’s healthcare bills. this story is set in suburban america lol, where the healthcare system is so messed up honestly, and this excerpt from the book the body by bill bryson kinda explains:

“Where America really differs from other countries is in the colossal costs of its health care. An angiogram, a survey by The New York Times found, costs an average of $914 in the United States, but only $35 in Canada. Insulin costs about six times as much in America as it does in Europe. The average hip replacement costs $40,364 in America, almost six times the cost in Spain, while an MRI scan in the United States is, at $1,121, four times more than in the Netherlands. The entire system is notoriously unwieldy and cost-heavy.” p360; “...America spends more on health care than any other nation–two and a half times more per person than the average for all other developed nations of the world. One-fifth of all the money Americans earn–$10,209 a year for every citizen, $3.2 trillion altogether–is spent on health care.” p359

unfortunately, a lot of how much you end up spending at the end of the day, depends significantly on the health insurance that you have. it could make the difference of spending a few hundreds to a few thousands to a few tens of thousands and beyond, just based on the insurance plan, even if the illnesses/treatments are exactly the same.

but yeah, just wanted to provide that context lol!! so you must understand reader’s desperation to save a buck!!! 

ok back to regularly scheduled broadcasting!! 🧚‍♀️💕✨

[end of reading commercial break]

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.

—

You’re sitting at a table outside your favorite cafe in town, leg bouncing up and down underneath the surface impatiently and nervously, and you glance at the time on your phone for the fifth time within the past five minutes because you’re unable to alleviate any of the anxiety you’re experiencing right now. You hear the jingling of the cafe door behind you and then you’re a little startled when someone emerges in your periphery by your side.

You look up and see Gojo standing next to you, and you see he already went inside and grabbed a coffee to-go for himself.

“Hey,” he greets you.

“Hi,” you say with a small wave.

He takes a seat across from you. “What did you want to talk about?” he asks while he settles in and smooths down the fabric of his suit jacket. He’s not wearing a tie, and has a couple of the top buttons of his shirt undone to reveal some of the skin at his collarbone. Probably to seduce the divorced single moms, you think. “And if you called me here to try and convince me for the millionth time to pitch in for that fence you built six months ago, I’m just gonna say no again. I didn’t even want that fence built in the first place. It fucked up the roots on my avocado tree.”

“It’s a joint fence. Neighbors usually pitch in for that kind of stuff, asshole. At least normal neighbors do. You know I talked shit about you to everyone in the neighborhood when you refused to pay and all of them agree that you’re being a stuck-up prick about it?”

“You know that I also talked shit about you to everyone in the neighborhood and they said the same exact thing about you?”

“Wha–” you gasp, blinking a few times from the betrayal, then mutter “...those two-faced bitches” under your breath.

“So,” he pulls his sleeve back to glance at his watch, “what did you want? I’ve only got thirty minutes to talk before I need to head to an open house.” He brings his cup of coffee to his lips.

“Oh. Right. Just a favor,” you say, “I was wondering if you could marry me.”

He almost spits out his coffee.

“E-Excuse me?” he croaks out, exasperated, and he’s coughing a little bit as he hits his chest with a fist to alleviate the irritation in his throat from some hot coffee that went down the wrong pipe.

“I mean, if it’s not an issue, I’d really appreciate it if you could marry me,” you attempt to clarify, but you realize you probably should’ve thought a little more about how you were going to ask him this, and now you’re too deep to backtrack, so you just hope you’ll find the conversation along the way.

He’s looking at you like you’ve got six heads, brow furrowed and mouth hanging open slightly with that what the fuck? face you see him wear sometimes. But then he sits up a bit straighter, expression morphing into a curious one as he studies your face, head tilting a little in his scrutinization. Then, his face relaxes entirely. He has this knowing look as he nods up and down slowly, like he just figured something out, and then he sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose in some type of faux frustration. And you don’t understand why you’re already seethingly angry about what he’s going to say next.

“Oh god,” he sighs, “I knew this day would come.”

“Huh?” you squeak out.

“Listen,” he says as he crosses his arms, but one of his hands comes out from where it was tucked in his elbow to waive around in the air as he articulates his words, “I know that I’m very charming, and handsome, and chivalrous, one might say the modern knight in shining armor–”

“Satoru.”

“–and yes, I’ve seen the way you look at me,” he dramatically sighs, “when I’m taking the groceries up the driveway…when I’m out mowing the lawn…when I stretch on the sidewalk before I go for a run. I feel your eyes on me like a hawk. Quite frankly, you look at me like I’m a piece of meat, and I feel very violated by it sometimes–”

“What the fuck are you talking about???”

“But I get it. Really, I do. There’s no need to be embarrassed about it–”

“I’m not embar–”

“It was really only a matter of time before you would do this. So overcome by your feelings for me that you just had to go against the grain of centuries of matrimonial standards and swallow your gigantic pride to propose to me.” 

“Oh my god, what the fuck are you saying–”

“But,” he says, collecting himself now, and taking in a deep breath, “my answer is no. I mean, I shouldn’t have to explain why. But I will. First of all, where the hell is my ring? Secondly, why aren’t you on one knee in front of me right now? Also, in a cafe? Really? I thought you would’ve known I’d have liked something a little bit more romantic than this. Y’know, private, but also where my family’s somewhere around the corner. Maybe by the beach–”

“Can you stop talkin–”

“–while the sun is setting, and I’m wearing a nice dress, and there’s bubbles in the air and rose petals on the sand, and you tell me how enamored you’ve always been of me, and how you can’t wait to spend the rest of your life with me,” he indulgently sighs, “I mean, it’s every guy’s dream. But nooooo, of course you’ve got no taste or sense for romance in any capac–”

“OH MY FUCKING GOD, FORGET THIS,” you stand up out of your chair, fast enough to where it almost falls backwards, and you grab your purse to sling over your shoulder, “I cannot believe I actually thought this plan would ever fucking work.” You’re about to walk away from the table, because you’re realigned with the wisdom of exactly why you can’t stand this man, when his hand reaches out quickly to grasp onto your wrist, to keep you still, and you jump a little from the contact. You look down, his hand unrelenting in its grip as his knuckles flex slightly, and you’re not sure if he’s ever touched you from how foreign the sensation feels.

“Wait,” he says, and when you look at him, his eyes are a little wide like a puppy, “you’re being serious?”

You yank your wrist out of his grip, but the warmth of his touch still lingers, and you wrap your own hand around it to distract yourself from it. “Why would I just ask you to marry me out of nowhere if I wasn’t being serious?”

He gives you a look like the answer to your question is obvious. “Uh, to fuck with me?”

You’re still holding onto your wrist, protectively pressing it against your chest with your back turned away from him slightly, and you look up at the sky for a brief second. Hm, perhaps you could have brought the favor up a bit better, and you realize it might’ve sounded insane on his end, and you’re also still thinking about the tens of thousands of dollars you could save if he said yes, and so you hesitantly open your body language up to him again.

“Just sit,” he sighs.

You take a seat across from him again, hands finding the warm coffee cup in front of you and you purse your lips together before tucking your bottom lip under your front teeth. You take a deep breath before speaking again. “I…I’m being serious. I was wondering if you could marry me as a favor, and not because I think you’re some type of irresistible man candy, god, where do you get your gigantic ego from?”

“I–”

“Rhetorical question, shut it.”

He blinks at you. “What favor are you asking for that’ll be satisfied by me marrying you?”

You twiddle with your thumbs. “I want to put my mom in hospice,” you say, eyes flickering down slightly because you’re worried you’re about to tear up from the words, but when you realize you’ve got enough conviction not to, you look back up at him, and his eyes on you are a little too observant, “most of the hospices in town are further away than I’d like, and really expensive, but I heard there was a Kaiser one nearby…and that a lot of the costs are covered by insurance. So, if you married me, I could send my mom there. And also, under your insurance, the care network would be better, so I could get her a new oncologist and neurologist, and I’d know she’s being taken care of. And…” you clear your throat, “well, it’ll be a lot less expensive, so I can start to catch up on…well, whatever, you get the picture.”

His eyes narrow at you in thought, and he glances at your hands on the table that are nervously fidgeting, and then his eyes meet yours again. “I’m not sure if you can add a…spouse’s parent to a healthcare plan?”

“You can,” you say, “I already called to ask.”

“Oh.”

“Mhm.”

Gojo hums to himself, laying his palms flat on his thighs and rubbing them back and forth on the taut fabric a few times as he thinks with his gaze set off somewhere in the distance. It seems like he’s running through some algorithm of thoughts in his head, and then he slowly nods to himself when he’s made a decision.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” he says.

“Y-You will?” you ask him. You’re uneasy at how easy it was to convince.

“Yeah. I like your mom. She’s a sweet lady, and I want to see her get better.”

His words touch you. And not from the distance of a ten foot pole like you’d usually allow, but more intimate somehow. And you get the feeling you should thank him, but you’re still pissed off from when he almost ran you over on your own driveway earlier this week. 

“Really?” you make sure, almost like you’re hoping he’ll change his mind because now you’re suspicious as to why he agreed so quickly. And you realize he’s already making you paranoid.

“Yeah. I’m saying yes to your proposal, y/n,” he says, “I mean, a marriage is just a legal agreement. Not a big deal. I’d want a prenup though, for obvious reasons. In case you’re a gold digger.”

You roll your eyes. “You’re too cheap to even pitch in for a fucking fence. You think I’d believe you’ve got any gold to dig?”

He sighs. “I said in case.”

“Well, anyways, we can work out logistics and paperwork or whatever later,” you say, and you extend your hand out for him to shake it.

He raises an eyebrow at you. “Um. You’re going to make me shake your hand over this?”

“Yeah,” you shrug, “it’s the diplomatic thing to do.”

“Yes,” he says, “for a diplomatic agreement.”

“Precisely,” you say. “That’s exactly what this is.”

He hesitantly brings his hand up to shake yours, but you quickly withdraw yours at the last second. “Nevermind. I don’t want to touch you.”

“Okay,” he easily accepts, “not how I expected to celebrate getting engaged, but whatever. By the way, when’s the wedding? Are we doing, like, a shotgun destination type vibe? Or something a bit more grand?”

“Just be at the courthouse at noon on Sunday.”

“What?! This weekend? That’s too soon,” he panics, “I need time to pick out a dress, and I need to figure out who my bridesmaids are going to be, and–”

“Satoru. Seriously. Just–...just shut the fuck up. Before the headache that you’ve already given me gets worse.”

You two sit in silence for a moment, him just mindlessly staring at a butterfly that landed on the plant at the center of the table, and you just stare off into the void past him while contemplating every life decision you’ve ever made. But that’s how it always was between you two. As much as you hated to admit it, you were jealous of him in a lot of ways. In every way that you were fucked up, he was nonchalant without a care in the world. You wish you knew what that sort of peace felt like, and you wondered if he could show you. Maybe someday when he doesn’t piss you off.

“So,” he interrupts your thoughts, “are you gonna take my last name?”

“Fuck no, I’d rather die.”

“Alright, jeez, I was just asking.”

.

.

.

[end of chapter 1]

a/n. yayy!!! he said yes!! omg congrats on ur engagement!! haha this was a lot of fun to writeee :'') i've got sm fun ideas for this fic. yea this chap was supposed to be longer lol there's still some groundwork to lay w the side quests, but will def cover more of that in the next chapter!!! tysm to everyone that wanted to be on taglist omg i hope that you enjoyed <33 love uuu guysss smmmm also my bad if some stuff doesnt make sense i'm tryna be less perfectionist when i'm editing so that i don't go insane 😍

➸ take me to chapter two!

taglist: @tremendousbouquetflower @cowgirlcujoh @joemama-2 @shinypearlywhites @sykosugu @lovebittenbyevans @luqueam @bloopsstuff @horisdope @alwaysfreakingout @crammingqueen @rideofthevalkyriess @lavender-hvze @gojocock @ceni707 @jxvajxy @catobsessedlady @madaqueue @bbyxxm @gojostit @nixie-19 @cheezitcracker @polarbvnny @cactisjuice @sleepyyammy @lysaray @k4tsukiis @kortanasworld @megumisthirdog @slut-4-gojo @drakenswifeyy @njoxuzi @elernity @jujutsubaby @secretmoneybearvoid @bunny-lily @strawberrygirl0 @httpxxg @bsdicinindirdim @v4mpieres @nanamis-baker @therealestpussyeater @air3922 @13-09-01 @marija4674 @whereflowerswenttodie @geniejunn @bakuhoethotski @ricaliscious @77uchiha77 @hellowoolf @tobaccosunbxrst @possumwho @nvrgojover @kittygrimm88 @samistars @shiin-ye @billiondollarworth @mmeerraa @fjorjestertealeaf @reinam00n @semra4 @st4ryki @new-weather47 @coltsgf @meownuuuu @strawnanamilk @lees-chaotic-brain @ironhottubstranger @spindyl @aise-30 @dunghirse @r0ckst4rjk @44ina @4y3sh4 @lindyloomoo @sweetpo1son @levisfavoriteteashop @delfiiii @fushitoru @gojosimp26 @beabadobeee @astrokenny @horisdope @muchlov3ashley @geniejunn @the-dark-creature @gojonegs @ritzes28 @mo0nforme @drownedpoetss

hope yalls fries never get soggy ever 💕

[crisishauntline]

There’s something devastating about trying to share something you love with the person you love and they just fucking hate it. No matter what you say about how it has shaped and healed you, how it isn’t so different from the things they love, how not having the same favorite things as someone else is different from being incompatible with them… what you get over and over again is not disinterest, not dislike, but hatred and disdain and hurt.

I don’t know how many more times I can have this conversation with L about the false dichotomy she’s constructed between religion/spirituality/mysticism and science. I understand how weaponized religion has hurt her, as a colonized person, a queer woman, a scientist. But it really hurts me that she can’t see how much more there is to these things than one strand of Christianity. It hurts that she can’t see the divinity in science, and the science in divinity. That nothing is sacred to her. That in this conversation suddenly everything must have a “point” or a useful purpose—even though I know that’s not how she feels about art, or music, or a host of other things that enrich our lives.

She asked me what divinity is to me and said she wants to understand. When I told her it was chaos and wholeness, hope, wonder, confluence, grace, she bristled and asked if I thought she was devoid of those things. That reaction made me so sad.

Of course I don’t think she is devoid of those things. I see all of them in her in such great abundance that it overwhelms me at times. Because she is divine to me. And because loving her is divine, just as learning and scientific inquiry and philosophy and homoerotic mysticism and folklore and cryptids and wordplay are all divine, divine, divine, divine, divine! I am bursting with eagerness to show and share all this abundance with her—yet when I tell her about it, she only hears me somehow telling her what she lacks.

My heart feels sick. I don’t know what to do with this feeling. We’ve talked and talked and that hasn’t helped at all. She said she felt I wasn’t even trying to listen to her and asked if she’d had no impact on me at all. Which also made me feel like shit. I rushed to reassure her that she had and that I would try to listen harder, but fuck it, I was listening. I validated everything she said, even the things I didn’t agree with, and I agreed with every positive personal value she expressed. The best she could offer me, for all her avowed effort and attention to listen to me, was to begrudgingly remark, “if it’s any consolation, I don’t think humanity will ever outgrow religion anyway.” That was not fucking consolation. That was the same disdain and condescension dressed up as a concession.

All I needed was for her to acknowledge that the beauty and value I find in religion/divinity is real and valid, at least to me. I didn’t need her to adopt my worldview, but just to imagine a world in which our values coexist. I certainly don’t see them as being in conflict or mutually exclusive. But I think for some reason, she needs to see them that way.

A lot of it boils down to, I think, the sense I have that she wants to meet my needs, but at the same time thinks that if I “really” loved her and saw her, my needs would be different. And if my needs don’t change, I must not see her or love her enough to not throw her away again. If she doesn’t change me, she must mean nothing to me. I understand the wounded place it’s coming from, but hey, call me an asshole bc I think that’s a false, unfair, and immature way to relate to someone you love.

[luck-and-larceny]

Nymeia, the Spinner: 12. Describe an instance where your character experienced a direct consequence of the ‘butterfly effect’. Halone, the Fury: 1. How protective is your character over their possessions and/or loved ones? Menphina, the Lover: 6. How romantic is your character?

OOC: Oh man. This is gonna be a long one. Please buckle in for what amounts to a short story with that first answer. Sorry!

Describe an instance where your character experienced a direct consequence of the ‘butterfly effect’.

"Ok. Sure. Let's think of a fun one.

There is a crooked businessman named Wayward Sun. He opens a ton of businesses and then runs them poorly and treats his employees like trash. My biggest dream is to drain him of so much money and reputation that he can never open another one. I’ve done this a few times and we now have a healthy, mutual, absolutely raging, burning hatred of one another.

So here’s the story:

I needed to get into an exclusive club he started for wealthy socialites. Boring. Those are a gil a dozen. But this one was his and that meant I needed to fuck it up. I knew that he had a safe in his office and that the office was behind the front desk.

The problem was that he had an amazing employee working there named Delilah who he loved to abuse and for whatever godsforsaken reason just let him bully her. She never moved away from the front desk. She was irritating in just how competent she was at her job. No trick I tried would ever get her out of the way long enough for me to get to that door to unlock it.

I figured I’d just have to make do. I’d have to pin my hopes on luck. One evening I decided I’d just have to go in disguised as another employee during a busy period and see if I could figure out another way inside that office or, at the very least, a different, fun way to fuck things up.

I got myself ready. And at the exact moment I burst in the front door in disguise, Wayward Sun had decided to fire Delilah because he said she’d left the safe in his office open. She was beside herself tearfully apologizing as she asked for her last check. He howled at her to leave his establishment and hand him her keys. She politely handed them over (she should have thrown them at his face) and left distraught. And Wayward Sun? He didn’t pay any attention to who most of his employees were. He saw me and told me that I needed to man the front desk for the rest of the night.

And handed me the keys.

And then he left! The front desk was unmanned and the office door was left unattended. And I didn’t even need to use my lockpicks on it because I had the key! I slipped inside to find that Wayward Sun, who had just fired an employee for not closing his safe, had left his safe wide open to do so. Inside was a significant amount of gil (obviously) and more paperwork that detailed other locations he was considering opening up with that gil. Just on a lark, I also decided to also take every important paper off his desk. And wouldn’t you know it? I found on the top a list of all the employees and where they lived.

To make it clear that his real worst enemy was himself, his second worst enemy was me, and that Delilah had nothing to do with this- I carved a beautiful picture of myself into his incredibly elegant and expensive desk with a letter opener I found sitting prettily on that desk. It took more time than I wanted it to, so I was forced to just use ink on the wall to get my point across: “It’s me again! Thanks for the keys!”

And, of course, now that I knew Delilah’s address, I went there to drop off the money. I snuck in and placed it at the foot of her bed with a note telling her to find a way to share it with the other employees at the club if she could and gave her the address of a newly vacated apartment to move into. I knew it was newly vacated because it was mine and I had vacated it, on a whim, just that morning.

How protective is your character over their possessions and/or loved ones?

"My items and the people I love don’t need me to protect them. If you are able to steal my things, I think you should have them (right until I steal them back). If you attempt to hurt the people I care about I imagine they will fuck you up much worse than I ever could."

OOC: There are a few items that if you steal them from her she will lose her shit. I could put what they are here- but it might be more fun if I don’t!

She is pretending like she isn’t often a malicious, chaotic tornado of sheer spite when people she cares about are attacked. What a lie. She isn’t over-protective of people. And she’s not remotely possessive. But if someone does manage to hurt someone she cares about or threatens to do so while she is nearby, that person is in for a world of pain. Perhaps not physically. But she will do what she can to ruin that person and will not rest until she is satisfied. Yay?

How romantic is your character?

“Eh. If you give me roses they're just going to die. I'm not good at caring for things. Or people."

OOC: She's a remarkably romantic character no matter how she might try to deny it. There's inherent romance in believing that things are going to go exactly how they should go (even if that means badly) and that every single thing–even the mundane– especially the mundane– is beautiful. She is passionate about and swayed by music. She is moved by thrills and mysteries. She loves people. Not just as individuals, but as a whole. Everyone has their own story, their own quirks, their own desires, their own motivations…

She's a con artist and often exploits those things she loves about people buuuut-

I'd say the degree to which she secretly is inspired and moved by the world and the people around her is deeply romantic.

Thanks for the Asks! Sorry it's so loooooong.

[stackthedeck]

your TikTok comments asking for you to dive into parkner… please roast the shit out of them since it only exists because of racism

I don’t know if it’s fair to say they only exist out of racism but yeah that’s definitely part of it.

Like here’s my theory for Peter Parker shipping, you’re limited to four options 1. Canon girlfriend 2. Best friend 3. Bully 4. Superhero team up of the week. You can have variations and combinations of this. Like Felicia is 1 and 4, Johnny is 2 and 4, Harry is 2 and 3. The problem with mcu Peter is that there is no option 4 other than adults because until very recently he was the only teen hero and even know you can’t ship him with Kamala or America because they’re both a little too young and it spits in the face of comic canon

Okay so you’re exclusive an mcu fan and you want that action packed battle couple that Peter is treated to in the comics fandom. What are your options? Aging Peter up? Nope you’re only into him because he’s a teen hero and you’re a teen. You’re options are the first glimmer of legacy characters in the mcu. Shuri and Harley. Shuri is the future black panther, we’ve seen her a little bit in combat, but she’s a tech genius and can totally help Peter on world saving missions. Harley was supposed to be iron lad (I think he was put into the comics and then that did happen?? Don’t quote me on that) he’s close to Tony Stark and he’s a tech genius. They can bond over their mutual love and/or hatred of Tony, they can be rivals, Harley can build his own suit and Peter can fawn over this mysterious new hero, Harley can resent Peter as Tony’s favorite intern and be obsessed with Spider-Man. Like this is the spideytorch of thing mcu

The first Peter/Harley fic on ao3 is from 2018 so people weren’t shipping this before Peter’s solo movie so yeah not ideal. Like Ned and flash are great ship options for Peter if you absolutely have to have dude slash like this is very much an anyone but a person of color situation. But also like it’s an interesting ship. I really liked iron man 3 (minus the plot but the character moments were great) and it was disappointing to never see Harley again because he was a character with a lot of heart and potential.

Ultimately I think this ship is a symptom of the mcu revolving around tony Stark. If Peter wasn’t turned into a baby iron man, no one would even connect him to Harley. But also yeah it’s weird that these two characters who have never met in canon are shipped together more than Peter and his best friend who happens to be not white. Peter/Harley has almost 3k fics on ao3 but Peter/Ned has about 500 that’s ridiculous that being said Peter/Michelle has almost 7k but Peter/Mary Jane has a little more than 1k. Meaning the new inter racial couple is more popular than the white couple that’s been together for decades. This might not be an mcu fan problem. It might be a dude slash fandom problem

[camelotsheart]

I think it's really interesting how one of the worst barriers in BBC Merlin is ignorance.

Almost everyone in the show is trying to do the right thing from their perspective. It's the ignorance of certain things that makes their actions seem wrong to different people, and it’s easier for the audience to relate most with Merlin because he knows as much as they do. Morgana (at least up till the end of s3) and the sorcerers supporting her are trying to engage in revolution to free themselves without knowing that Arthur is the one destined to free them. Arthur is trying to protect his people. Merlin is trying to do both, but with the knowledge of his and Arthur’s destiny.

How many of the sorcerers who attacked Camelot knew of Merlin and Arthur's destiny? I can only remember Nimueh, who's antagonism seems to be more of a personal hatred of Uther and his betrayal, similar to how Morgana's hatred of Arthur overcomes her sense of justice in s4 and 5, and Mordred, who I think would at least have second thoughts of opposing Arthur had he knew Kara was given a chance. It's very telling that Alator was quick to change sides after he learned of Merlin's identity despite supporting Morgana before. He even says that there are many people like him who are willing to sacrifice their lives to bring about the golden age.

Was Alvarr and his band of renegade wrong? Was Mary Collins wrong? Was Edwin wrong? Were the people who wanted revenge upon Uther for the loss of their loved ones wrong? Is it wrong to understand Kilgharrah's motives when he attacks the kingdom who killed all of his kind and entrapped him in a dungeon for 20 years? Everyone plays with different views of right and wrong because those views are not centralised in the first place. This is what makes the series so interesting - because it wants the audience to have stakes on both sides of the conflict.

This works for Arthur's side too. Arthur's most positive views of magic comes from season 1. That's because in that season the memories of the druid raids are closer to him than in later ones, and also because he is given more positive experiences with magic (the ball of light, Will, the unicorn, etc). However, after that point all the magic that he encounters, according to the knowledge which he possesses of the situation, has been used negatively.

He nearly dies because of a creature of magic, Sigan tries to take over Camelot, druids kidnap Morgana, a troll uses his father to take over Camelot, Gaius nearly dies because of Aredian,  Morgause tries to use him to kill his father, a shapeshifter kills Camelot's citizens, the undead attack Camelot, a dragon kills innocent people, a goblin wrecks havoc, he is nearly killed in a tourney by the use of enchanted swords, Morgause and Cendred use Elyan, Gwen and Morgana to get to him, Dragoon tries to bring dishonour to Camelot by enchanting him and Gwen, Morgana betrays Camelot, Gaius is tortured (yes, his actions does play a large part in this and he is shown to wrecked with guilt by it. There's a reason why in the next episode he talks so highly of Gaius), a monster of magic kills people in outlying villages, Morgana takes over Camelot and kills innocent people again....

The only positive experience he has with magic in seasons 2 and 4 is the knowledge that Dragoon tried to save Uther. And yet in season 5 he still stops a sorceress from being executed despite people claiming that her magic brought down a plague upon the village. He still gives Mordred a chance to become a knight (I hc that Arthur knew Mordred was a druid, but not that he had magic. Mordred was half naked when being treated by gaius in 5x05. Arthur would have seen his druid mark, unless he came in after Gaius bandaged him up. He also doesn't question how Mordred knows Kara, a druid). He still believes that in his heart, he should save Mordred and lift the ban, but his mind - his experiences - become an argument against his heart. And it is a strong argument from Arthur's point of view. You could say that Arthur was a hypocrite when he used magic to save Gwen and Uther, but you could also say that there was a part of him still hanging on to his views from season 1. What Dragoon and Dolma says to Arthur in both occasions regarding magic echoes Arthur's own views at finding a poultice at Gwen's - to save her dying father, that doesn't make her guilty of creating a plague. One's the act of, of kindness, of love, the other of evil. I don't believe evil's in this girl's heart. / There is no evil in sorcery. Only in the hearts of men. / I know you have suffered because of magic, as many have. But not all magic, and not all sorcerers are the same. I wish only to show you that magic can be used for good. And I think that after 5x09 Arthur does internalize Dolma's saying. He never once speaks against Kara's heritage as a druid when he talks about or to her. He explicitly states that her wrong is in murder, not in possession of magic.

This is what Merlin understands - that the conflict comes mainly from differing points of views caused primarily by ignorance of the prophecy itself. Merlin sees in 2x08 that Arthur is completely able of accepting magic and going against Uther, just like he knows that those who possess magic have an ultimate right to fight for what they believe. As one of the most informed people in the show, this is the line that Merlin tries to straddle everyday; to give his people freedom by making Arthur the king he is destined to be, even if to outsiders the two seem mutually exclusive. 

The true wrong of the show was to place that burden on one shoulder alone.