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tryingmybestpls · 4 years

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Not A Team-Part 1: The Start

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: The Reader tries to live a normal life, but her memories won’t leave her alone. Rhodey comes to visit the reader with a proposition.

Rating: T

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: Talks of death, talks of mental illness, mentions of feeling alone

Four Months Ago

"Y/N, do you think you can tell me why you're here?" The female therapist asks, clicking her one before setting it down on her notepad. The ex-hero shifts on the charcoal grey couch, wanting to be anywhere but here. While she knows that the room should be sort of calming, but it has the directly opposite affect on Y/N. Her stomach is twisting in knots and she feels like her breakfast is going to come up.

"I was told I had to come here." Y/N replies, looking down at her chipping burgundy nail polish. There was hardly any color left on her nails, but what was left was stubbornly holding on, a constant reminder of what she had painted them for.

"Yes, but why were you told to come here?" The doctor-whose name was escaping Y/N at the moment-pushes, shifting in her own seat. Y/N continues to stay silent, which makes the therapist sigh, "Look Y/N, you have to be here. The only way you are able to get out of this is when I am able to determine that you aren't a danger to yourself or others. The government needs to know that you are okay. It's apart of the Acco-"

"I-I messed up. I messed up bad." Y/N cuts her off, wanting to get this all over as quickly as possible.

It's the understatement of the century. I messed up bad. That's what you say when you crash your car or get too drunk and text your ex. "Messing up bad" doesn't land you in court mandated therapy. No, Y/N hadn't "messed up bad", but she couldn't say what she had actually done. Even if she couldn't get the words out of her mouth, she was well aware if she had done. The smell of burning flesh used to be something she would wear like a perfume. Now it threatens to invade her nose, forcing her to go back to that night. Y/N tries her best to ignore it, but it's so hard to forget a smell like that.

"And when you say mess up-"

"I used my powers and people got hurt." Y/N answers, her hands getting hot. She glances down, trying to will away the heat and the fire that will surely follow. The therapist writes down a few more notes. Y/N finds herself hating the way the pen scratches at the paper, the sound almost deafening.

"Is it hard to control your powers?" The doctor asks, to which Y/N immediately shakes her head. She looks back up at the therapist, clasping her hands tightly together. Y/N is trying to look as normal and okay as possible, hoping that the therapist believes her little act.

"No. It-They're just slightly influenced by my emotions and I was just really emotional that day." Y/N replies as she feels the heat move away from her hands. She shifts on the couch, hating the attention she's getting right now, hating the way the therapist's eyes seem to notice every little movement and thought. The therapist writes that down, nodding.

"Why were you so emotional, Y/N?" The woman questions. The ex-Avenger looks back down at her hands, her wedding ring shimmers in the light that's streaming through the windows. Just seeing it makes her stomach sink, her throat tightening with that same emotion.

Now

Y/N has always hated silence.

It's the reason why she loved being in the city so much. It was constantly awake. There was never a moment of silence, no the city was always screaming and shouting. Y/N had welcomed the sound with open arms. Even when the Avengers moved out of the city and went upstate, it was still loud. Everyone kept different hours, everyone had different tasks so the base was never completely quiet. Life on the run with Steve, Sam, Wanda, and Nat wasn't quiet either. The five of them were a family, always constantly talking and bickering.

But now, she lived alone.

It was raining out today. The incessant pounding of the water droplets against the roof and the ground outside provided a much needed melody as Y/N moved around the house. Boxes still littered the rooms, precariously stacked on top of each other. She's been leaving here for a while, but some boxes she can't bring herself to unpack. For example, the large one in the middle of the living room that was labeled "WEDDING DRESS + BOUQUET" was now being used as an impromptu side table. Another one that was shoved into the second bedroom had "PICTURES FROM COMPOUND" scrawled on the side in sharpie. She doesn't think she'll ever open that one, not knowing how she handle all of those memories.

Y/N forces herself to pick up one of the boxes in the kitchen, this one labeled "WINTER CLOTHES". Usually, she would be outside tending to the garden (her therapist had told her that she needed a hobby to keep herself busy) or doing small tasks that needed to be done. However, because of the rain she was stuck inside with all the boxes that she had yet to unpack. The box is heavy, most of the weight most likely coming from her bulky winter coats.

Y/N had left the city she had loved so much, packing up her life to move to a small little house upstate. The city didn't feel like home anymore. Living in Steve's apartment without him felt wrong. It had never felt like home, didn't feel like she belonged there. They never lived at the apartment together, they didn't share any memories here. No, this place was all Steve. She was constantly surrounded by Steve-his things, his memory, his smell. It was suffocating, being surrounded by a man that had abandoned you.

Five years she was gone. Five years he had grieved and mourned over her and then-almost immediately when Y/N came back, Steve decided he didn't want to stay with her. He didn't tell her what he was going to do. Maybe he knew that if he had, she would've tried to talk him out of it. Y/N knows that she would've begged for him to stay with her. She was a. proud woman, but she wasn't proud enough to beg.

She had expected him to come back to her. Y/N thought he was going to return the stones and come back. She had thought they were going to be able to continue where they had left off, they were going to able to be together after all this time. They were finally going to be able to settle down and start that family that Steve had always hinted at. Get a house with a white picket fence and get a cute little dog. The fucking American Dream.

And then he had came back as an old man, with a gold wedding band that she hadn't given him on his finger. Steve gave Sam his shield and his legacy, no longer able to carry the mantle of Captain America. And Y/N-well Y/N's world just crumbled around her, her dreams shattering because Steve decided that he was going to move on.

She still loved him, she even still loves him now. It was impossible not to love him, even though he had left her behind. Y/N tried her best to hate him-told herself that Steve had betrayed her and that he didn't want her. She tried to tell herself that Steve didn't even love her, because if he had loved her why would he be so willing to abandon her, especially after he had just got her back? It didn't matter how much he hurt her or what he did to her, Y/N's heart would always belong to Steve whether she liked it or not.

Feeling incredibly conflicted, Y/N had forced herself to stay her by husband's side as he got sick. She didn't ask for an apology, even as Steve told her over and over that he was incredibly sorry for what he did. Y/N knew that he wasn't actually sorry because if he was actually sorry, he wouldn't have lived an entire life with Peggy. She wouldn't tell him how hurt she was or how looking at her wedding ring made her feel sick now. No, Y/N had played the role of the dutiful wife. She held his hand as his condition worsened and made sure his affairs were in order. Her feelings didn't matter as she tried to make his last days more comfortable.

And then he died.

Steve died, leaving her behind. She didn't dare talk about what had happened, what he had put her through. Y/N, even with all of the bullshit he had put her through, didn't want to tarnish his legacy. Steve Rogers was a hero and she wasn't going to be the one that ruined that for everyone. Even Sam tried to ask her if she was okay and she had just brushed it off, telling him that she was glad that Steve had picked him to carry on the legacy attached to the shield he had received.

Y/N had tried to carry on after Steve was buried, but it was hard. She was dropped into a world where all of her friends were gone, a world that had moved on without her. It was a world that she didn't belong in and she knew it. Y/N tried her best to return to normal, but she quickly learned that there was no such thing as the normal she was used to. Everything felt wrong, felt off in some minuscule way that made her unable to adapt to regular life again.

Y/N just kept bottling up her emotions, the pressure continuing to build up as the days went on. She was drowning it and there was no life preserver in sight. Everyone else went back to normal, going back to school or getting a job or finding ways to get busy. Y/N knows that she should've gotten help, that she should've tried talking to someone, but she didn't. Maybe a part of her didn't want to admit there actually was a problem, that Steve hadn't been the perfect husband and she felt abandoned by the man she married.

And that had led to her completely losing it.

Y/N would later be told that it was a nervous breakdown. A nervous breakdown. She felt-and still feels-like that name wasn’t what she experienced. It was so much more than just a nervous breakdown.

It had led to innocent people getting hurt, people that hadn't cause her pain, people that were most likely suffering just as much as she was. Her emotions were just too high and her powers-her powers decided to act on her impulses and her feelings. She had just been so God damn angry at Steve-

Y/N has to drop the box she was holding, her hands growing hot. She mutters curse words as she hears what sounds like glass shattering inside the box as she forces herself to calm down. She does the breathing exercise that the therapist had told her to do, attempting to rein in her emotions. Her eyes shut, breathing in through her nose, and out through her mouth. Y/N tries to pull the heat back inside of her, but it just won't go back in.

Her heart is beating fast in her chest as she quickly moves back into the living room, her feet carrying her to the front door. Her bright red hand grabs ahold of the doorknob, throwing the door open.

The rain is much louder now, making it almost hard to see with how much is coming down. It hits the ground violently, a cold wind trying its best to cool Y/N off, to no avail.

She quickly walked down the steps of the porch as the heat crawled up her arms, her temperature rising. Y/N knows she won't have the time to take off her clothes and she also knows that she's gone past the point of attempting to rein her powers in. Her hands catch first, bright yellow and orange flames quickly covering her skin, coating them until no skin remained.

The flame crawls over her body, burning away her clothes before the flames take over her entire body. The rain turns into steam as soon as it hits her fire covered body, a cloud surrounding her. Y/N feels more relaxed as the flame licks at her skin, covering her from head to toe. It's easier to calm down after she does this, getting some of those stronger feelings released in order to return back to normal.

Hours later while she is in the middle of cooking, someone knocks on her door. Y/N sighs softly, putting her slotted spoon back down on the counter, quickly wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She makes her way to the front door, not bothering to look through the peephole before she opens the door.

Rhodey stands before her, dressed in far more causal clothing that he usually is in. Y/N's eyes are immediately drawn to the thick manila folder in clutched tightly in his hands. He gives her a small smile. Y/N knows that he isn't just here to visit. No one ever comes to visit.

"Hey." Rhodey says gently, almost as if he's testing the waters. They haven't seen each other in a few months, not since the events that had led her to moving all the way out of here, not since she got out of the psych ward she had voluntarily gone to after her accident. Voluntarily is the wrong word here. The US Government had all but strong armed her into going.

"Hi. Uh-Here, come in. It's cold out." Y/N responds, opening the door a little wider. Rhodey's smile grows as he steps inside. He stops for a moment, looking around at her home. It's small, almost more of a cottage than an actual home. He takes note of the lack of any personal items, no pictures out on display, no tchotchkes. Boxes still litter the living room even though she's lived here for a few months.

"It looks good. Real cozy." Rhodey comments as Y/N shuts the door. She nods, giving him a polite smile as she moves past him to go back into the kitchen.

"Why'd you come by? I know it isn't for dinner." Y/N cuts straight to the point. She doesn't even bother looking at him as she checks to see if her pasta is ready. Rhodey's smile falters for a moment while she strains the pasta. He clears his throat, quickly regaining his composure.

"I-Well I stopped by because I wanted to talk to you about something." Rhodey walks into her kitchen, leaning against the counter as she pours the pasta back into the now empty pot. Y/N holds out her hand for the folder, which he immediately hands over. She flicks through it, seeing the plans for an exhibit honoring her husband. Rhodey shifts slightly as he sees her eyebrows knit together. As she goes through the pictures, she can see that it wasn't in the preplanning phase. They had their exhibit ready, all done up with a fresh paint job.

She's seen the exhibit before. Y/N had teased Steve constantly over it, thinking it was the funniest thing that he had a whole exhibit dedicated to him, a man who couldn't even use a cell phone. Steve told her once that he didn't mind the teasing, told her that it was one of his favorite things about her.

But that was then and this is now.

"The Smithsonian wants to expand their exhibit on Steve. I don't exactly see why this has anything to do with me." Y/N's eyes catch on a picture of her and Steve at their wedding, big stupid smiles stretched across their faces. The page notes possibly names for this part of the exhibit, all of them making that emotion crawl up into her throat.

"They want you to speak at the opening. You and Sam." Rhodey answers, watching as her face drops. Y/N closes the folder, still looking down at it. The papers suddenly feels like they're a million pounds, weighed down so many memories. For a second, Rhodey gets his hopes up, thinking that she is actually considering it.

"Get someone else to do it." Y/N tells him, handing the folder back over to the man. Her voice is a lot colder than it was before and her friend could practically see Y/N building her walls back up. Rhodey sighs, holding it for a moment before setting it down on the counter.

"They want people who knew him, Y/N."

"Then get someone else because I sure as hell didn't." She snaps, the fire on the stove growing. Y/N quickly shuts off the burners, shaking her head, "Ask Barnes, ask literally anyone else."

Rhodey opens his mouth before shutting it. He didn't know how to respond. He knew that his friend was upset, but as soon as Steve did what he did, she had shut herself off. Rhodey had tried and tried to get through to her and after what she had did...Rhodey knew she was going through a lot and that Y/N wouldn't tell him or anyone else how she was feeling. She just wasn't that type of person, never has been.

Y/N swallows the lump in her throat that threaten to swell up, serving Rhodey a plate full of food without him asking if he wants one. She ignores all the memories that flash in her mind, trying to keep it together. She hands the plate to Rhodey without saying a single word before serving herself . Y/N grabs them both drinks and napkins, moving around the kitchen in complete silence. They both sit down at her little table, the only sounds being the two of them breathing and their forks hitting their plates.

"How are you doing?" Rhodey breaks the silence, looking across at her. Y/N pushes her food around her plate, shrugging her shoulders.

"Doing better. I go to therapy once a week like I'm supposed to. It's-It's a lot easier to breathe out here." She replies, setting her fork down. Rhodey gives her a small smile.

"I'm glad you're doing better. I'm sorry I haven't been checking in on you. I know you wanted space and some time." He says softly, to which Y/N shakes her head, taking a sip of her drink. She knew that Rhodey felt guilty over her situation, but the man has enough on his plate. He doesn't need to adding 'taking care of Y/N' to his long list of tasks.

"You've been busy. There's a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done and you shouldn't have to be checking in on me." She looks up at him attempting to give him some peace of mind, "I'm doing better, I promise."

It wasn't the biggest lie she's ever told. She was doing better, but she still wasn't herself. Although, Y/N didn't know if she could ever return to being herself pre-Blip. Before all of this shit, she had Steve to lean on. Now...well now she didn't have anyone, and she didn't want to burden any of her friends with her issues. They had their own shit they were going through. They didn't need to deal with hers.

Later on, long after dinner had finished and the rain decided that it was done working for the day, Rhodey stood up from his spot on the couch. Y/N smiled warmly at him, walking with him to the front door. When they step outside onto the porch, the night air is cool and calm, the lovely smell of rain surrounding them.

"Y/N, I just wanted to say that I didn't want to ask you. I know-I know you're still healing. They told me I had to ask, but I didn't want to. I just want you to know that." Rhodey suddenly announces, turning towards her. Both of them were barely illuminated by the porch lights and the light spilling out from her front door. Y/N nodded, that lump in her throat returning.

"I know. I know, Rhodey." She replies, her voice cracking slightly. Y/N stands there for a moment, both of them looking at each other before she decides to throw her arms round him. Her friend is a little surprised by the action, but hugs her back happily. Y/N shuts her eyes for moment, resting her chin on his shoulder. He rubs her back soothingly, wondering if this is the first hug she's had since Steve's funeral. They pull part, once again looking at each other.

"You take care of yourself okay? I'm going to try to come and visit more, but I need to take care of yourself." Rhodey tells her, giving her a kind smile, "And don't be afraid to text, okay? You can tell me about anything, it doesn't even have to be important."

"I'll be sure to text you all about the growth of my sunflowers and whether or not I am capable of fixing a sink." She teases, which makes the man laugh.

"That's all I ask. It was nice seeing you Y/N." Rhodey tells her, making his way down the steps of his porch. Y/N leans against one of the posts, wrapping her arms around herself.

"It was nice seeing you too." Y/N responds as she watches him walk over to his car. He gives her a small wave before climbing inside. She stays on the porch until he drives away, not moving until she can no longer see his tail lights.

Y/N relaxes her shoulders, sighing softly as she turns on her heel and walks back inside. The ex-hero shuts and locks her door. She walks back into the kitchen, gathering the discarded and used plates. As she is putting them in the sink, her eyes land on the manila folder resting on the counter.

Y/N knows that Rhodey most likely deliberately left it behind. She reaches out and picks it up again, a picture slipping out and falling into the floor. Y/N bends over to grab it, holding it gently between her thumb and forefinger. She flips it over, being greeted with the sight of her husband smiling back at her. Y/N knows the picture well-it's one she took.

She finds herself smiling back at him, her finger tracing over the image. She took it after a mission. Steve's hair is a mess from his helmet, his face dirty and he has a split lip. The shield is propped up in the seat beside him and he's just smiling at her. He looks incredibly tired, but he's still smiling at her. This is the Steve she fell in love with, the Steve that had promised to give the world. The one she had seen herself raising a family with.

Y/N leans against the counter, resting the photograph beside the open folder. She flicks through it again, her eyes studying the exhibit dedicated to her and her relationship with Steve Rogers. 'Two Heroes United' was the name they ended up on. It makes tears brim in her eyes as she looks over all of the pictures that make up this part of the exhibit. While normally she didn't like sharing her personal relationships with the world, this felt okay somehow, it felt almost cathartic.

She shuts the folder, taking another glance at it. Her finger traces the embossed Smithsonian logo on the cover of it. If she did it, she wouldn't be doing it alone. If Sam could do it, it couldn't be that bad.

Right?

#steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #captain america x reader #chris evans x reader #bucky barnes x reader #sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #tfatws

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maplecornia · 3 years

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chapter 21

𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔱: 3.72K

𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: You watched them from the sidelines ever since you were a young teenage girl. Now you’re grown up, they’ve returned after 2 long years and everything has changed. What happens when you pull back the mask and find the darkness within? What happens when you see that they’re broken?

𝔞/𝔫: in regards to the banner above...yes tae if i also looked like you i would want to kiss myself too

Some people are connected.

Aren't they?

When you meet them, it’s as though something clicks. Something inside that tells you some unimaginable being has brought you together. A hidden string tying you to the other, drawing you slowly across the universe just to meet each other.

And once you’re connected…

Do you ever really let go of them?

Groaning, Taeyhung turns over in his bed for the thousandth time.

Why is this so hard?

Letting out an exasperated sigh, he lies on his back, sheets and comforter scattered, as he stares up at the ceiling. Glaring up at it with his eyebrows furrowed tightly together, he purses his lip into a pout, his jaw set defiantly.

“This is your fault.” He mutters underneath his breath, before running his hand absentmindedly through the tangled locks of his hair. “I don’t know how...but all of this is your fault.”

When the ceiling doesn’t answer him, he gives it a look before rolling out of bed, not really caring if he brings the covers along with him. As they fall from the tangles around his body, and rest safely on the floor, he catches the reflection of his eyes in the full-length mirror he keeps expertly held on the sliding door which hides his clothes closet. Biting his lip, he hesitates a bit before heading over to the mirror and taking his reflection in.

He’s grown a bit taller...perhaps half an inch. Don’t worry Namjoon hyung, one day I’ll be as tall as you. Though he smirks a bit at the thought, it quickly vanishes as his gaze travels to more points in his reflection. His dark glazed eyes, his mess of curls resting on his head, his slightly pale lips. Almost despondent, he pulls aside the already halfway buttoned down shirt and presses his fingers against his stomach. He smiles back to when all that was there was a soft belly. When he didn’t care as much.

When did he start caring?

Was it when he saw everything that ARMYs felt about him? When he realized just how double sided they could be? Was it when he realized that they really did care what he showed them? That if he showed them who he really was…

They would just walk away?

He knows he probably shouldn’t have read those comments, that he shouldn't have seen what some people have said...but did they forget that he could see everything they said?

Did they forget how much he gave...how much he sacrificed for them?

And when he shows them all of him…

The good and the bad…

"Kim Taehyung seems a bit rude…

He doesn’t care at all about BTS.

You think he needs them? If he were given a chance he would just leave.

Kim Taehyung is too moody. He’s happy one moment but sad the next.

Don’t you think fame has changed him? He seems so cocky.

What’s wrong with Kim Taehyung lately? Doesn’t he seem depressed?

Honestly, if I had to put my money on it, he’d be the first one to leave.

He’s so untalented.

BTS is filled with a group of 6 very talented, beautiful, and handsome young men. And then there’s the roach called Kim Taehyung.

Why doesn’t Kim Taehyung just leave? If you’re really bored with everything by now, why don’t you just leave?

Do us a favor and stop pretending.

Just leave."

Taehyung winces at the overwhelming amount of bad memories slamming into his inner consciousness. He tries to forget them, but every time he looks in the mirror, he can see them reflected back at him. As though they were burned deep into his skin. As though the sign of hard muscle beneath his fingertips is a scar he can’t escape.

The only thing he can remember, the only thing he can think about when he sees himself, is what they have molded him into.

The beautiful, the perfect sculpture which they call V.

Defiantly, flames burning in his eyes, he meets his gaze in the mirror. Anger and hurt mixing together into one painful chaos inside his chest, his gaze darkens before he swings back his fist and rams it deep into the mirror. As the glass shatters and sharp, iridescent pieces dig maliciously into his skin, he breathes heavily and glares up at his broken reflection. Into the dull dim hue of his hazelnut haze.

Eyes which have changed from bright beautiful saucers that could only see the sky...

To a gap of emptiness which cannot be filled.

Reflecting the cold abyss he feels in his own heart.

As thick blood begins to numbingly ooze from the cuts in his skin, he hardly flinches. The iron taste playing sinisterly on his lips, he can’t help but relish in the pain. Is this what he deserves? Is this what they want now that he’s not who he was before? Now that he’s grown, changed even the slightest bit? He almost wants to push his fist deeper into the glass, deepen the pain, all to distract him from the roar in his ears.

The constant screaming inside his mind.

He did everything they wanted him to do. He smiled for them, hid the inner part of him screaming, brushed away any hateful comments, any people who hurt him, and laughed through all the pain. He became a bigger person and grew.

He did it all for them.

He did it all for the sake of BTS.

Because he loved ARMY. Because he loved his hyungs.

Because this was his dream.

He became the man they all wanted.

He became V.

So why?

Why is it the moment he starts to let go of the mask, the moment he starts to become himself in front of their eyes...

Why do they turn against him as though he had never existed in the first place?

As though they didn’t beg him to hide.

As though all his efforts…

Meant nothing after all.

The worst part of it all…

Was that he let go for them.

Because he wasn’t willing to say goodbye.

The soft ring of his alarm breaks him out of his thoughts and his hand falls to his side as he turns to the sound. Sighing, he runs his hand through his tangled mess of hair picking up a tissue on the way to his dresser, and wiping off the thin trails of blood the cuts brought forth. In the back of his mind, he scoffs at the fact that that’s the third mirror he’s broken this week. Perhaps he needs a break. Looking up at the ceiling, he takes a deep breath.

A break from myself.

Picking up the phone he quickly dismisses the alarm, and finds himself staring at the lock screen in dismay.

To this day, Taehyung still uses the Galaxy BTS phone made especially for them and ARMY. Jimin absolutely loved the thing, and Taehyung treasures it with a quiet wonder. When he finally moved everything from his old phone to this one, he used it daily, even if it wasn’t always in front of the cameras. Back then when they had to leave for a while, looking at it gave him strength to go on. To head back to them. To see ARMY again.

Looking at it now, he wonders if it’s actually real.

If the love ARMY gives them…

Isn’t all just a lie.

When the phone buzzes suddenly, Taehyung lets out a small yelp, fumbling as his phone flies halfway in the air. Luckily, he’s able to catch it before it falls. Letting out a small breath of relief, he checks the random message that has popped up on his lock screen, peering to see who it belongs to.

Eyes widening, he nearly drops his phone again.

Stumbling to catch it, he falls on top of his pile of sheets and blankets, but thankfully the phone falls in his outstretched hands securely.

It's you.

Why is it always you?

Shocked, he slowly unlocks the phone, opening your little message. As it pulls up on his screen, he softly smiles.

Good morning, Mr. Pan.

It's such a simple message. Such short, sweet words said out of consideration and kindness. You sent it as a second thought, somehow knowing that he might need a smile after the amount of trouble he must have gotten in yesterday. He doesn't know this. All he knows is that a mere mention from you has made everything all right again.

It clears his mind, allows him to focus, saves him from the darkness continuing to choke him in its hold.

He picks up his phone and presses a button, before holding it up to his ear. It rings into the dead silence for a couple of seconds, making Taehyung a bit nervous. For a moment, he doesn't know if you're going to pick up, but once he hears the familiar click and the steady sound of your breathing, he can feel a rush of relief spreading through his body and leaving nothing but happiness.

"Hello?" You nearly whisper, a bit in shock. He can hear it over the phone and, sitting up, he doesn't notice as the gorgeous smile grows.

It’s funny how he didn’t realize until he heard your voice, that his head and his mind was filled with thoughts of you.

On the other line, you smile softly, finding the same truth.

Was it only yesterday that your dream came true?

He finally did it. He spoke to you.

Things should be over right?

But you find yourselves wanting…

More.

"Good morning." He teases in response to your recent message and you have to refrain yourself from groaning in embarrassment. "Did you sleep well?"

Hearing his innocent voice and the deep lure to it so early in the morning makes you wonder if you're dreaming. Smiling on the other line, you cup your hands around your phone, pulling it close to your cheek and smile, unable to stop the happy pink hue from creeping onto your rosy cheeks.

"Yes." You reply, a bit of excitement creeping into your voice from the giddy fact that you’re talking to him. "I slept like a baby...what about you?"

You decide to keep from him the fact that you hardly slept last night. Your constant nightmares and terrors of panic scared you. They made you afraid, thinking that if you closed your eyes, you would once more be lost in a deep sleep. Trapped in the hidden corners of your mind.

He smiles on the other line a bit sadly, deciding to keep the fact that he didn't sleep half the night to himself, lost in the whirlpool of hateful comments and slurs towards him. Towards BTS. He decides to hide the truth that the only thing that was able to let him sleep that night was the sight of your phone number held tightly within his hands.

"Yeah...yeah I slept alright." He says, unable to mask the catch in his voice. Your eyes widening in concern, you open your mouth to ask if he's alright, but he quickly clears his throat and changes the topic.

“How’s your ankle?” Even though you know he asked the question to change the subject, you can't help but wince.

Your ankle hasn’t shown much improvement.

The swelling has gone down and you're able to stand on it, but every time you try to walk, numb pain still courses up your veins. It's still pretty bruised, but what is there that you can do? You've already slipped on an ice pack, wrapping it carefully around your ankle to prepare you for the day, but you know it's going to be quite the uncomfortable ride.

You hesitate, pondering whether or not to tell him this, but he continues on the other line.

“Yen?” The way he whispers your name makes you melt inside. So concerned and full of worry, you wonder if you truly deserve this small blessing. The blessing to know someone like him. “Are you okay? Does it still hurt?”

The blessing to be able to speak to him.

Smiling, you shake your head before responding, slightly struck speechless.

“Yes, I’m fine...your ice pack yesterday really helped so I’m all ready to head to work today. Don't worry, I’m fully prepared with an ice pack of my own in case the bruise starts to bother me…” You start rambling, trying to reassure him that everything will be fine, while on the other line, his eyes go wide with protective anger.

You’re doing it again.

Forcing yourself to continue, when you should be looking to take care of yourself.

Not the other way around.

“No.” He says interrupting your slight tangent, and you flinch, pausing and your grip clenching tightly around the phone. You knew this would happen. You knew that he would be upset. That’s why you shouldn’t have said anything. Somehow, this frustrates you. You know it shouldn’t, after all he’s just looking after you, but you can take care of yourself. You aren’t some damsel in distress that needs saving.

Trying hard to forget what you’d rather not remember, you sigh, massaging your temple.

“Taehyung, I’m fine. I really am--”

“I don't believe you. And even if you were telling the truth, you should at least rest it for a day at least! Do you want to worsen it because you decided to push yourself?” Shocked at his sincere and concerned tone, you really don't know what to say. You know he’s right, but you can’t help but feel that if you listen to him, if you rest easy for just today, you’ll be letting someone down.

Namjoon is waiting for you.

He doesn’t know that your ankle is bruised, nor that you could sprain or quite possibly break it if you try to come into work today. But you’ve already been late once before. Today was supposed to be your first official day on the job. He was counting on you to be there.

Hoping that he’d be able to rely on you.

You can’t help but feel that if you decide to stay...that you'd be letting him down.

You don’t want to let him down.

You can’t let him down.

Glancing down at your ankle, you grimace a bit as you bitterly smile.

This is just a minor bump in the road isn’t it? All you're doing is offering a small sacrifice so that you can be there for him. So that you can carry out your job, your obligation as his manager. He should know that you will always be there to help. Isn’t that what a manager should do? You have a duty, an obligation...a simple bruise shouldn’t get in the way of that. After all the ways you let him down yesterday, and the kind way he treated you in spite of that...isn’t that the least you can do? You can afford to give something in return...after all he’s given you already.

Yes...this is nothing…

Taehyung wouldn’t understand…

Right?

Taking a deep breath, you respond to him.

“Taehyung, I really appreciate your concern but…”

“If you say you’re fine I am going to come to your apartment and force you back into your bed.” He replies so steadily and sternly that it’s hard for you to conceal your burst of laughter. He hears, however and grows a tiny bit offended, not willing to admit that the sound of your laughter brought a little bit more light into his clouded mind.

“You think I’m joking?!” He shouts on the other line, and you can’t keep it back anymore, your laughter spilling over and melodiously carrying itself through the line and into Taehyung’s small, scattered room. He smiles at the fact that he was able to make you laugh, although it wasn’t his intention. That just like that...you were able to make everything seem alright again. It’s almost as though a mere smile from you, a simple laugh escaping from your lips…

Makes the world a little bit brighter to him.

“I-I’m sorry…!” You manage to gasp out between your small fits of giggles. “It’s just the thought of you walking over here all angry and trying to force me back in bed…” You break off at the end, your sweet melodic laugh ringing high in the air once more, and he can’t help but crack a smile, eventually laughing along with you. After a moment, once the laughter subsides, each of you glance toward the phone as though that would help you see the other's face, or at least imagine it as though you were standing right next to each other.

Taehyung smiles a bit before glancing away and closing his eyes in serenity.

“Yen?” he murmurs softly, his eyes opening a fraction of an inch as he stares into the distance, almost imagining your smiling face right in front of him. At the sound of him saying your name once more, your eyes flash towards the phone, a bit surprised. It takes you a moment, but you eventually answer, a small smile growing on your lips.

“Yes?” you respond, your hands once more finding themselves cupping around the phone almost as if you held onto it a little bit tighter he would magically stay with you just a little bit longer. Offer you this comfort for just a bit more.

Is that too much to ask?

You know it is and yet you can’t help yourself from wishing for it.

Wishing that you had...more.

“I want you to know that I’m saying this with the best interests for you in mind.” He answers, and your brow crinkles a bit, wondering what he’s going to do this time. Taking a deep breath, he ponders whether or not to say the words, but he decides to do it anyway. Your safety is the most important after all.

“Don’t come to work today. Please stay home, and take care of yourself. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Startled, you open your mouth to answer, to refuse the kind request, to let him know that you’re going to head to work anyway, but he’s already hung up the phone, leaving you dumbfounded. Your heart pacing a million miles per hour, his last few words lingering in your mind.

I don’t want to see you get hurt.

“Who gave you the right?” you murmur softly, your hands rising furiously to hide the growing hot blush against your cheeks against your will. The hot tears that begin to push against your eyes, threatening to escape out of the cage you have held them in for so long.

“Who told you to care so much about me?”

Taehyung, after hanging up the phone, has completely forgotten about everything else but you. He smiles a bit sheepishly at the cheesy things he’s said and stares at the empty screen where your profile pic rests, safe in his contacts. He can’t help but wonder how you do it.

How with a few simple words…

You make everything okay again.

Turning to his closet, he starts to pull out a couple of clothes to wear that day, as he dials a number on his phone. Once it starts to ring, he places it on his dresser, putting it on speaker phone so he can hear the clear annoyed voice that answers, no doubt being distracted from an important source of work.

“What is it, Taehyung?” he snaps, tired and worn-out, and Tae smiles at the familiar greeting, as he pulls off his shirt, avoiding the cracked mirror beside him.

“Nice to talk to you too, Namjoonie. How's the album coming?” He responds playfully, and Namjoon on the other line can't help but smile. He adores that nickname, and it definitely puts him in a better mood. Just like Taehyung knew it would. Turning back to the screen of the computer, Namjoon can't help but sigh. There’s a whole lot of work to be made with the album...and such little time to do it in.

“Well...it’d go a lot faster without interruptions like this. What is it Taehyung-ah? This better not be a prank call or something for a Vlive…” Namjoon begins, his tone warning and Tae can’t help but laugh. He shakes his head, pulling down his pajama pants, and deciding to replace them with plain blue jeans. They don’t really have dance practice planned today, just a bunch of meetings and preparations for the album...maybe even a photo shoot.

“You know I try to stay away from Vlive’s nowadays.” Tae replies, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but failing miserably. At the comment, Namjoon can’t help but feel a stab of pity and regret. He knows that it’s a sensitive topic for Tae now...especially with what happened the last time Taehyung held a Vlive….he shouldn’t have mentioned it so soon.

“No it's not...Namjoon it’s about Yen.” Tae explains, and at the mention of your name, Namjoon sits straight in his chair, work forgotten, and mind focusing on you.

“What? Is she okay? Did something happen? Is she--” Voice heavily decorated with worry, Tae has to bite back the laugh that threatens to be released. Is this how he sounded to you? No wonder you started laughing at him. Smiling softly at how open and kind Namjoons heart is, Tae shakes his head once more, pulling on a grey hoodie.

“Actually I wanted to talk to you about that.” Tae replies, as he pulls on his socks, and rummages for his jean jacket. Namjoon waits a bit impatiently on the other line, trying his best to be polite and wait for Taehyung to finish. Once he finds it, Tae lets out a small cry of victory before looping his arms through it and finishing his look. Picking up the phone as he grabs a plain white mask and heads for the door, Taehyung smiles slightly at his victory.

Try to refuse staying home after this, my Wendy.

Just as RM opens his mouth to demand a straight answer from him, Taehyung replies, leaving behind the mess he had made just moments before untouched and forgotten.

“Namjoon...could you do a favor for me?”

𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔢: this chapter was kind of sad...

chapter 22 here

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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

Text

3H and Bleach: Where the Fuck am I

So, I’m finally hunkering down and trying to write out this post lmao. I’ve mentioned here and there how my personal experience with the 3H’s fandom is similar to my experience with the Bleach fandom’s in more than one way, and - look. Like, I get there’s definitely a semi-universal thing that goes on across all fandoms. I don’t mean for this to say that this only happens within these two fandoms, because duh, of course they don’t. But!! This post is partly me wanting to air years long annoyance towards the Bleach fandom that just so happens to coincide with my feelings towards the 3H fandom, sooo... yeah lmao

I’ll probably be skimming over some bits about 3H, since most people who come across this will already be familiar with what I’d be talking about in that regard vs Bleach, so just a heads up

Note: This is gonna talk about Bleach which will spoiler territory (writing this off the cuff so not sure where this is goin’ yet lmao but I know that much), so if you don’t wanna see that then don’t read this post lol, I know for sure I’ll be spoiling something ahhhh... noticeable, lol

Ableism against the mentally ill

Now, most people reading this post will be familiar with the blog and how this very, very much applies to 3H, but for the sake of this post I’ll lay it out anyway with a brief summary

Dimitri and Rhea are both characters within 3H that suffer from severe trauma that heavily impacts their mental state. Both are the sole survivors of a horrific slaughter, with that slaughter redefining who they are and leaving a permanent marker within their minds in some way (Dimitri with having auditory and visual hallucinations, Rhea with having obsessive tendencies towards bringing her mother back from the dead). Specifically in CF, both characters are set up in the plot as antagonists, with both characters having to relive their trauma in some way due to the actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them (for Dimitri, having his home be razed to the ground and everyone he cares for dying around him, for Rhea having someone use her mother’s mutilated remains be used to end her and her race) and express extreme anger towards Byleth and Edelgard before they are killed to progress/end the story

Now, uh, sad shit right? Not exactly fuckin’ happy sunshine rainbows. These two characters are put through the wringer and are then murdered. They are rightfully not the fuckin’ happiest because of what happened to them before and what happens to them within the present story. But we’ve heard it all before: “They were crazy!” “They couldn’t be reasoned with!” “They had to be put down out of mercy because they were too ~far gone~ to live happily!” “They needed to be killed for the good of everyone!” It’s an extremely ableist rhetoric that gets passed around the fandom as though it’s totally fine to directly state that mentally ill people should be put down if they’re deemed a “lost cause.” Especially worrying because. You know. If they are a “”””lost cause”””” then it’s directly and specifically because of actions Byleth and Edelgard take against them.

But how does this remind me of Bleach? What kind of similar extreme, worrying ableism exists there? Well, let me introduce to best girl a certain character with... a reputation, to say the least:

Meet Momo Hinamori.

Holy shit it’s so weird writing this out because I’ve been wanting to for years but have never worked up the nerve to do it lol

It should be noted, in the Bleach verse there’s two worlds out of three - Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, though I’ll only be talking of the former - that deal with “souls” (the essence within a living human). Souls age far more slowly than human bodies do in terms of body, not necessarily the mind (so a teenage soul will likely behave as such for a long while) so keep in mind that I’m going to be using numbers that may seem weird to someone who hasn’t seen Bleach lol. With that out of the way, here’s a similar, if longer for context to those who haven’t seen Bleach, summary for Momo’s character as it relevant to this post:

Momo is a character in Bleach that grows a deep admiration towards Sosuke Aizen, a respected captain of the military force called the Gotei 13. She comes to views him as the most important person in her world due to him both noticing and paying direct attention to her as well as saving her and her friends’ lives during a training mission gone wrong while she was younger. Note that “younger” here means 40 years ago from the start of the story. Aizen would praise her all the time, allow her to sleep over in his quarters, would drape his cloaks over her when she looked cold, and would overall treat Momo as though he was his daughter for most of the time we see them interact in the beginning portions of the show. Note that none of this is sexual in nature, nor is it ever implied to be seen as such. That’ll be important later in this post

To make a long story short, Aizen comes to betray her. He stabs her through the chest and shows and tells her that she never meant anything to him, throughout the 40 years they’ve known each other (which, mind, for a soul Momo’s approximate age 40 years is still a noticeable amount of time), and he was only using her to help bolster his image as a loveable captain so that he can hide his plan from everybody that much easier. He did horrible things to Momo - from setting her alarm clock back to a later time so that she would more likely come across his pinned, bloody fake corpse. to framing her childhood friend for the apparent murder and tricking her into fighting that friend, to far later in the series tricking that friend into stabbing her (hypnosis shit, to sum that up) for literally no stated reason - that ended up mentally breaking her. She couldn’t believe that the last four decades were all nothing but lies and she fell into a deep denial about Aizen’s true nature - someone else made him do everything he did, she must have missed something that would have warned her about Captain Aizen’s unfortunate situation that forced Captain Aizen to hurt her and everyone else. This denial would take the majority of Bleach’s entire runtime for her to get over completely, with her having hiccups in her recovery even as she works up the nerve to fight him.

Now, uh, also not the fuckin’ funnest of times to be had here. The deep, long-running mental and psychological manipulation of what approximates as a teenage girl from a trusted older figure is something that is very clearly horrific and bad of the older figure, right? Like, we’re on the same page here on that?

This wouldn’t be in this post if that was the case. No, Momo was the one constantly on fire for what happened to her. She was one of the most hated characters in the western audience, and there were endless jokes about “lol look at Momo, the pincushion!” “Crazy bitch Momo, better watch out!” making fun of her and her trauma relentlessly. If you managed to find a Momo fan in the early 2000′s you should have also bought a lotto ticket because holy fuck, everyone hated her. She acted in a startlingly real if deeply uncomfortable way in regards to years long manipulation and she was lambasted for it. She didn’t immediately get over decades long psychological abuse and she was called useless, weak, a horrible representation of female characters, stupid - you name it, she was likely called it. To this day I still tense up when I hear that someone likes Bleach and they mention Momo at all because I’m always thinking “does this person think this abuse victim is dumb for being abused?”

Dimitri, Rhea, and Momo are all victim-blamed to a disgusting degree in the 3H and Bleach fandoms. Dimitri and Rhea are always hit with “well if Dimitri hadn’t have fought back against Edelgard/Rhea caused the “”tyranical systems” in the first place, nothing would have happened to them!” and Momo was constantly hit with” well, it’s not Aizen’s fault Momo was so clingy to him, what could he have done!” and I get so fuckin’ mad dude.

But for Dimitri and Momo specifically, there’s one thing in particular that caught my attention:

The “Rejection Theories”

This had my head spinnin’ a bit when I first heard it, cuz I had managed to avoid the theory for a while in the 3H’s fandom, but apparently a sizeable amount of people seem to believe that Dimitri wasn’t just mad at Edelgard in the Holy Tomb because of... you know *waves hand* fuckin’ everything, but that the primary reason for his anger was that Edelgard... rejected his advances to her? And that the dagger he gave to her when they were 13 was a phallic symbol of baby Mitri’s want to have sex with Edelgard? And. Like. What in the fuck are you talking about.

But like?? Bleach did this shit too with Momo?? It was also a sizeable amount of people - not everyone, but a noticeable amount - that believed that Momo was just mad that Aizen wouldn’t sleep with her? You’d see it pop up in fics so often, that Momo would want Aizen to fuck her and she’d “go crazy” when he denied her and Momo was actually just this shallow bitch who wanted a good fuck like... what.

Like, when I first heard the Phallic Dagger take the first thing that came to mind is “wait Momo was also accused of just wanting to have sex with the person who traumatized her wtf”

“Actually it was the perpetrators that should be forgiven because lonely and also some shit about ruling better”

Those in the 3H fandom know how often the “Edelgard was lonely!” line gets thrown by just about every one of her stans. Edelgard was lonely and couldn’t trust anyone, so of course she did what she did! If she had someone near her she could trust she wouldn’t have acted like she does in the rest of the game! Nevermind that she “gets” this in CF in the form of Byleth and still acts just as shittily as she does in the other routes, or how being a little lonely doesn’t fuckin’ mean you get to start war. But anyway, we also hear that Edelgard was justified in doing what she did because her ruling Fodlan would have lead to more peace in the end, once she got rid of the power structures in place now (except that doesn’t happen but whatev I guess lmao)

Aizen? He was lonely too! He was far too strong for anyone to truly be able to understand him, and so he tragically fell down a dark path. If he had known someone who could be considered an equal to him he would have never done all the horrible things he did. And the Soul Society is unjust! It needs to be reformed! So him slaughtering hundreds of thousands of souls at the minimum to harvest all of their power to use as his own is justified because it’ll be used to create a more just society under his rule!

Like. Y’all. Lowkey? I’m so fuckin’ glad Edelgard proved herself to be just as fuckin’ awful with Byleth as without because this shit drove me up the fuckin’ wall back in the day. There was 0 ways to prove that Aizen would damn sure be just as fuckin’ bad if he had an “”equal”” to stand by him than if he didn’t, and I get to kinda be right because without fundamentally changing these characters’ backstories they would not give two flying shits about whether or not they had someone “equal to them” (which is still kinda degrading to think about anyway).

Now, this is where I move away to a different topic lol

A split in the narrative cause divides in the fandom

With 3H houses this is really fuckin’ easy to point at: there’s 4 routes, three consistent stories and one radically different story, and that difference in story causes heavy contention within the fandom. It’s very obvious so I won’t go over it much.

But how in the fuck is there a divide in Bleach? It’s not a fuckin’ Choose Your Own Adventure manga, it’s an anime and manga showing off the characters of Bleach’s stories and interactions (with, you know, plot and shit thrown in).

Well. It’s more accurate to say the anime told a story about the characters, and the manga told... the story about the characters.

In terms of plot, the anime didn’t change much from the manga, but hoo fuckin’ boy, did they change shit about some of the characters. Specifically, they changed a shit ton about three characters: the two main protagonists, Ichigo and Rukia, and another main character, Orihime.

Orihime. Got. Fucked.

The anime would make her far more ditzy and clumsy, her crush (turned growing love later on in the story) for Ichigo during more deeper moments that showcases her feelings for him were downplayed if not removed entirely in exchange for talking or thinking about food, key moments she has with Ichigo early in the manga were cut or deadass changed to something else in the anime, some key moments with her relationship with Rukia were cut, her backstory was watered down - so much of Orihime was fucked with in the anime (her fuckin’ introduction was changed drastically). Meanwhile Ichigo and Rukia were given moments that didn’t exist in the manga, they have filler arcs (remember those lmao) that would be stuffed with shit ton of moments for them that have no basis in the manga, other characters would change their behavior from the manga to reflect a sort of “thing” going on between Ichigo and Rukia.

Look, guys, the anime fucked up so bad the fucking mangaka, Tite Kubo, has said he gets stomach aches watching the early anime because it was that awful. And this divide between the anime and manga’s portrayal of these three character helped spawn the ship war of Bleach: Ichiruki vs Ichihime (oh but more on that in a bit). It tanked Orihime’s popularity because people thought she was the stupid dumbass that would stumble ass first into situations when that wasn’t her character at all. And because the majority of anime watchers only watch the anime... yeah, you can see where this went. So just like in 3H in Bleach you have these radically different tellings of the same characters that drove a big-ass wedge in the fandom

Marketing

Imma be transparent, like I’ve said before I managed to avoid nearly every marketing tactic for 3H so it’s a tad hard for me to speak personally, but from what I’ve been told Edelgard was heavily marketed towards the player base pre-release. She was the poster child of 3H, she got the figma, she was in the spotlight - unless you cleansed your board of 3H content you knew exactly who she was. On top of that, it doesn’t stop in-game - loading screen messages would assume you picked BE, Adrestia is the first option to pick when you want to impress one of the lords in the prologue, the BE class is the first option to pick in choosing which route to play, every character has some moment in the game post ts where they express sympathy with the woman who waged war on them for five years (even characters with no business doing so, like Seteth entertaining the idea that maybe Edelgard isn’t that bad during Myrddin). With all of that good PR for Edelgard in and out of the game it heavily impacted how people saw her, and much of it is used by stans to justify her being a good guy (mostly in the game marketing) despite everything else in the game clearly showing that Edelgard is the bad guy

With Bleach in that regard... you have Ichiruki

holy shit it’s so weird talking about Ichiruki i’m still lowkey nervous about talking about them lmao

With Ichiruki stans, they would cling onto outside material that promoted Ichigo and Rukia together as proof that their ship was going to be canon. Spreadsheets, calendars, poems (some of which didn’t even apply to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship but they insisted they did anyway), novels - outside material that either wasn’t canon or didn’t pertain to Ichigo and Rukia’s relationship. They would shove it in the face of Ichihime shippers that “see, we have all this stuff for us! We ain’t starving tonight!” when the canon (note: in the manga particularly) would clearly show Ichigo and Orihime’s relationship being the one that leans romantic in multiple significant ways. They would latch onto irrelevant shit that ain’t had nothin’ to do with anything and wave around as a paragon of romance when it literally wasn’t even canon

Just fuckin’ ignoring the creators deadass

Creators and developers of 3H: Edelgard is the typical Red Emperor the only difference is Girl

Stans: that’s just a headcanon

Kubo: Ichigo and Rukia have a platonic relationship and I’ve publicly said this since 2008

Stans, now, to this day: Ichigo and Rukia were robbed

Making people reject what they’re stanning for

I’ve seen a few people express that the more they interact with the fandom and see what her stans are doing, the more they grow to dislike Edelgard despite (some) initially liking or even loving her. To put it simply, the same thing happened with Ichiruki - hell, this happened with me with Ichiruki. I can’t fuckin’ stand the ship anymore because every time I think about it I’m reminded of the absolutely rancid, disgusting things Ichiruki stans have to done to others in the fandom, and even after nearly five years after Bleach has ended I still tense up when someone says they like Ichiruki over Ichihime precisely because of the behavior of the stans, just like I side-eye people who say Edelgard is the best lord. Do they like them because they simply prefer them over the other(s) and they’re not totally fuckin’ bonkers, or are they totally fuckin’ bonkers.

And, like, that’s not fair! I know that! But I can’t help but think that when such a loud amount of people act in such deplorable ways just because someone didn’t like a bunch of lines on paper/pixels on a screen.

To all the nice Ichiruki and Edelgard fans, hope y’all are havin’ a nice day.

Long, crazy ass explanations as to why X =/= X (and if anything actually means Y)

Teacher theory for 3H. How Edelgard totally didn’t hire Kostas to kill Dimitri and Claude and was only thwarted because Claude booked it, but how she definitely actually meant to simply scare away the teacher that was with them so that Jeritza could be pulled from his already existing position in Garreg Mach to teach one class so that Edelgard can kinda keep a sorta closer eye on exactly one of the other classes (and just do shit all about the other one I guess), because Jertiza’d be able to gleam so much from teaching a class for a few hours a day I promise

But for Bleach, you also have one particularly infamous theory positing shit that don’t real, with enough renown to be known by a specific name, and that’s the Lust Arc = Fail essay

To explain what the essay is about, I have to set the scene up a bit. Imagine, you, with your tiny little monkey brain, are watching Bleach, and you get to the part where Main Boyo is fighting against Villain to save Girly. Other Guy is there too - this is important. Main Boyo tries his hardest to fight Villain, but is ultimately shot through the fucking chest with a laser from Villain and dies. Like, for bit actually dies. Girly breaks down, has a straight up mental breakdown because she always “knew” that Main Boyo could do anything, and now he’s been killed and is dead in front of her. She screams out Main Boyo’s name, hysterically begging him to save her and protect her because holy shit the love of her life has been brutally murdered in front of her what the fuck. But Main Boyo, from literally beyond the line of death, hears her pleas and snaps back to life as a monster, with the sentence “I MUST PROTECT” repeatedly running through his head and being the only sentence he ever says while in this form, with him fucking destroying Villain and even going so far as to directly hurt Other Guy when Other Guy tries to stop Main Boyo from utterly stomping on Villain. Girly is the only person Main Boyo does not directly hurt, and when Villain is damn sure gonna fuckin’ kick the bucket that is when Main Boyo reverts back human. Everyone is more than a little shocked at what happened, but it’s clear from how relieved Girly is when Main Boyo comes back safe and sound that while this event fundamentally will change their relationship (and it does), it is still one that is extremely strong and they won’t let it get between them (and they don’t).

Now, when looking at the summary, you, with your absolutely miniscule peanut of a brain, might come away thinking, “Hm, Main Boyo might kinda care for Girly given that he literally rose from the dead to protect her and only her and went back to normal once she was safe” and you poor fool would be oh so wrong, because actually, this is all proof that Mian Boyo doesn’t care for Girly and that Villain actually cared more for Girly than Main Boyo ever could.

Without diving too deeply into the absolute lunacy of the Lust Arc = Fail essay, that was its main premise. That Ichigo, after rising from the literal dead directly after Orihime begged and pleaded that he protect and save her and then going on to protect and save specifically her (as Uryu - Other Guy - is also a friend of Ichigo’s and got his fucking arm cut off by Monster!Ichigo), is proof against Ichihime being romantic in any way and was not, in fact, a fuckin’ giant neon flashing sign that read THESE TWO ARE GONNA GET TOGETHER. It was the dumbest shit ever, but Ichiruki stans, much like Edelstans with Teacher Theory, clung to it like white on rice. It didn’t matter how much it was utterly debunked, it didn’t matter how the base premise was stupid as fuck, they point to it as the pinnacle of meta for their respective fandoms in their respective spaces.

And all of this leads me to um... the one I’m kinda the most worried about?

Stan Behavior

Edelstans are their own unique brand of awful in that that the shit they spew is particularly... worrying (”genocide isn’t bad if they aren’t human and also they kinda deserved it” “imperialism isn’t that bad really” the mentally ill should be put down if they’re deemed ~too far gone~” among other... wonderful takes...), and their behavior is also quite shitty, harassing content creators that go against the Approved Opinions (Ghast) or forcing people to take down fanart and in general infecting nearly every Rhea space with all kinds of disparaging comments no one asked for. They actively make the fandom a worse space, and when they flare up it’s almost always noticeable (again, Ghast)

Bleach?

Oh boy.

Guys. If you weren’t there for the Canonization of Ichihime (2016). You dodged a fucking bullet.

The outrage was out-fuckin’-rageous. Their behavior was some of the worst reactions anyone has ever seen come from the canonization of a ship in a shounen. This includes, but is not limited to:

Someone tearing apart all 70+ volumes of Bleach and burning it in their bathroom

In fact, multiple people tearing up Bleach and burning it, while keeping the Ichiruki moments and taping it to their walls

A Rukia cosplayer, in Rukia cosplay, printing out the final color spread of the end-game couples and their friends lounging about - with colored ink and all - and burning it, while filming herself doing so

Ichiruki porn being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being accused of grooming a 15 Orihime cosplayer with no proof

Tite Kubo being accused of lying about his various health issues

Ichigo and Rukia being drawn cheating on their spouses with each other - and some of that also being sent to Tite Kubo

Tite Kubo being chased off Twitter by Ichiruki stans... again

Ichihime shippers getting sent death threats

Ichihime shippers getting called delusional for thinking their ship had a chance before the endgame couples were revealed, and then being called delusional for thinking their ship had any real basis and wasn’t pulled “out of nowhere”

Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because of Orihime being shown in an apron in the last chapter and Ichiruki stans jumping to the conclusion she became a housewife, and then Tite Kubo being accused of hating women because when it was revealed that Orihime has a job in a bakery to pay for college later they insisted what Kubo should have done was have Uryu, who’s a doctor at that point, pay for Orihime’s college instead of having Orihime pay for it with her own money

And mind you, this is only the stuff I’ve personally seen and experienced

I am hoping and praying that Edelstans never get as bad as Ichiruki stans did in 2016, but with how otherwise similar they are my hopes are dwindling more and more. I guess I can take solace in the fact that they aren’t quite... that bad yet? In terms of actions, at least? Their sentiments though are infinitely worse, so like... cool

#what the hell do I even tag this #i guess like #fandom observations #fandom critical #fandom criticism #yeah shit got BAD in the Bleach fandom in 2016 #and I fear what the return of the anime is gonna have in store #things already don't look good in the 3H fandom so like... yeah #wanted to get the Bleach rant off my chest for a long ass while now lol so glad I could do that #again wanna reiterate that this isn't exclusive to Bleach and 3H this is just my experience with them

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glitxhwayventeen · 3 years

Text

Lonely Hearts Club

Seokmin: Chapter 3 (I Wanna Know)

Characters: Seokmin x female reader

Genre/Warnings: multi-member au (different scenarios), werewolf au, fantasy, angst, fluff, genocide mentions, runaways, mental illness (depression implied), sexual mentions, crying, mentions of death, mentions of violence. Any others will be put as warnings when future chapters are thought up/written.

Author’s Note: Your girl is in some serious fucking pain but she managed to get another chapter out because she couldn’t sleep! So low and behold, I give you a decent chapter for DK

Please remember that all of these chapters and the content within them are a work of fiction! They’re just for fun/entertainment!

Bold= Dialogue Italics= Thoughts

🥀 & ☁️

Lonely Hearts Club Master List

Chapter 3: I Wanna Know

You were in heat for a few more days. Seokmin stayed with you the whole time and took care of… your every need. Though he looked worn out, he didn’t complain once. He liked that you let him help you. And he was hoping now that your heat was over, you’d let him in a bit more.

Your legs felt like jello, your hair looked like a birds nest, your skin was covered in variously healed bruises. You were a mess. But it was still time to go back to the pack. You made a promise and you always followed through with your promises, even if you were in a horny induced daze when you made it. You were just hoping they wouldn’t know, or at least, wouldn’t make a big deal out of what had happened.

Seokmin helped get you back to your feet and get dressed, putting your arms through your tank top and putting you in your shorts one leg at a time. He had already managed to get himself together as he had woken up earlier than you had. He figured you’d be in worse shape than him after everything… everything you’d been through and he wanted to be sure you were as okay as possible before you started your journey back home.

“There we go, all done!” He chirped after finally buttoning the last button on your jean shorts.

He took a step back to look at you. Aside from the bruises, you physically looked pretty normal now that he had helped you tame your ridiculously tangled hair. But he knew the pack was gonna smell you. You smelled like him from the week of animalistic sex sessions you two had been having due to your heat. It was unavoidable. He knew they’d all know you two slept together the second you walked through the door. He just wasn’t sure how you’d react to their inevitable and unavoidable teasing.

You quickly looked down after you had seen your reflection in one of your buckets of water, “I look like a walking disaster.” You muttered.

“It’s not THAT bad…,” He failed miserably at reassuring you, “But it doesn’t matter anyways, we’re mates. It doesn’t matter if we slept together or not. We would have eventually anyways” Seokmin tried to reason, bringing himself to walk up to you and hold your small hands in his large ones hesitantly.

“They’re all gonna make fun of me.” You pouted at him, looking down at your feet and smiling a bit in embarrassment.

You had never really taken the time to look at him before your whole mating fiasco happened. You had done literally everything in your power to avoid him at all costs so you wouldn’t catch feelings for him. But now that you had spent a good portion of time alone with him, you realized just how much bigger than you Seokmin was. He always seemed so… subservient around the pack that you never really gave his physical appearance much thought when it came to size. He must’ve been almost a foot taller than you, and now that you had seen him shirtless and naked, you also knew just how much muscle he actually had. He was MUCH larger than you had thought. Even his feet looked like they could crush yours with one fast stomp.

He held back a giggle at your cuteness before he spoke up, “They won’t make fun of yoooou. Especially because you could EASILY beat most of them to a bloody pulp with your special wolfie powers and all.”

“Aya! They’re not special ‘wolfie powers.’ They’re just my normal powers. And it’s not my fault you guys are more diluted forms than me.” You chuckled, playfully smacking his toned chest with your hand.

He cocked his head to the side at your statement, “Is that how it works? The longer the line the less of a wolf you are?” He asked curiously while bringing the back of your hand up to his lips and giving it a chaste kiss.

You almost laughed out loud at his question before you remembered that he didn’t grow up with other werewolves. He was a bitten wolf, not genetically a wolf. You remembered that Seungcheol had told you that no one in his family had ever been a wolf before him. He probably had no clue how it all worked, especially since his pack wasn’t always the best help when it came to educating each other on important matters. You felt a little guilty for thinking he was just being sort of dumb. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know anything about it. So you held back your little outburst and nodded instead.

“Yeah basically. I mean, most genetic lines now can still obviously transform, but they’re still not…” You tapped your chin with your index finger for a moment while thinking of the correct words to explain what you meant, “As much of a wolf as me.” You decided.

Your mate was watching you intensely, listening to every word you said closely, as if he was learning the most important information he’d ever need to know,“I’m honestly probably more wolf than I am human. But most modern day wolves are more human than wolf, that’s why it’s relatively easy for them to assimilate into human societies and blend in.” You informed him, the both of you gathering the rest of your things and making your way out the cave to the path leading back to the forest.

“But hiding our eyes isn’t always easy!” He interjected with enthusiasm you found oddly cute, “If we get too emotional, the potions disintegrate and our real eye color shows. So it’s not really SUPER simple with us.” Seokmin responded, grabbing your hand closest to him and interlocking your fingers.

For a moment, you wanted to pull away from him and push him for initiating the sudden contact. But you also promised him that you’d give him a chance and that you’d try to be the best mate to him that you could be. Plus, the warmth of his hand felt… kind of nice on yours. So you kept your hands together, giving his fingers an involuntary squeeze that made Seokmin’s face light up.

“I suppose you’re right. But really, as long as a wolf can keep their shit together, they can seem very human. When my people were still around, we were very obviously NOT human. We couldn’t be even if we had tried.” You casually let out, skipping over a large rock in your way.

“What were your people like?” He questioned, genuinely wanting to know what your life was like before you lost everything. His pack had tried to ask you before, but you’d always clam up and make up some excuse to leave the conversations. He was hoping with it just being the two of you, you might actually be okay with sharing some more personal information with him.

You waited a moment before you spoke up. What WERE your people like? It had been so long that you hardly even remembered anythings about them. You usually tried to push away all the thoughts of them because remembering all you lost hurt too much. But when he asked you the question, it was like everything came rushing back to you all at once.

Your family, your tribe, your traditions. You remembered how the tribal elders used to let you sit in on council meetings because your father insisted you needed to know everything there was to know about running the tribe. It made you feel so important when he did that, like you were his pride and joy. You thought about all the times you had sat next to your mom as she cooked up potions and remedies in her old stone cauldron for the healer to use on the sick and injured. She always cared so much about everything and everyone around her, you always loved to help her help people. And you could all but see your 11 big goofball brothers running up to you holding their latest hunting prizes with the most giant toothy grins they could muster. Those dumbasses, they always made the most of life. You missed them so fucking much.

Everything started swirling around your head and it made a huge smile appear on your face with watery eyes at the thought of your early life. Seokmin took notice and felt a bit proud of himself that he had made you that happy, you had never beamed a smile that big before in front of him or his pack.

“My people… they were… they were just-” You paused, “They were just the most amazing family a person could ever ask for.” You started, wiping away a sudden tear that had fallen down the side of your face from the memory of them, hopefully before your mate could notice. Of course, he still saw, but he said nothing because he knew it would upset you.

“They were always just sooooo happy. I remember every night was basically like a huge party. We’d all dance and sing around the campfire, there’d be elders telling stories and offering the young words of wisdom while the parents would scold us for interrupting anytime anything got cool or surprising.” You sadly laughed, “We were all just… one big happy family. Even if I wasn’t actually related to all of them. I can’t really explain the connection I felt to them… it was just as strong as the one I had to my biological family.” You sighed, finally reaching the edge of the forest and finding the proper trail for the both of you to set towards home.

He could hear the pain in your voice as you spoke of your past life. You must’ve really missed them. But there were so many questions he still had. What about your actual family? Did you have brothers or sisters? What kind of life did you have? How did you sleep or eat? Where did you come from? But he knew he shouldn’t ask so many at once, he didn’t want to overwhelm you or hound you with his thoughts all at once. So instead, he asked just one question he knew he should probably know the answer to: “What- What happened to them?”

His words made you halt your movements for a second. Remembering that day wasn’t something you liked to do. In fact, you went to great lengths to avoid the memory. It haunted everything you did. Every minute of everyday was plagued with the thought of their demise. You had nightmares every night. You saw their hallowed faces in every person you met. You smelt ash and burnt flesh more than you smelt anything else. Their screams were still stuck to your mind like gum on the bottom of a shoe. It tore you apart to think of it. But still, you knew he deserved to know. You’d want to know if you were him.

“They were… they were massacred.” You sadly shrugged, biting your lip to keep yourself from letting sobs out. He stroked your hand in his in an effort to soothe your sad soul. You took comfort in his small affectionate touch, it grounded you and pulled your tortured mind back down to the conversation you were having.

You took in a deep breath, “It was just any other day, at least, to me it was,” you gulped before you continued, “I was helping my mom with some new herbal remedies for some of our sick warriors when suddenly we heard this loud BANG. My mom wasn’t a wolf, in fact, back then no female was. Well, no female but me that is, but that’s beside the point,” you shook your head and tried to get yourself back on the topic at hand.

“I could feel the vibration under my feet. It was a cannon, but we didn’t know that then. They weren’t really used in our part of the world, they’d freeze in the cold weather and couldn’t always light at the altitude that my village was set on. But somehow, the Cossacks found a way to make them work… they always found a way…” you stated flatly, looking up to the sky out of respect for your fallen family.

“They were upset that my pack had killed some of their soldiers that had hurt a group of women in a neighboring tribe. So they punished us the only way they knew how: by brutally murdering everyone and setting everything they could on fire. Fire’s one of the few ways Icyan wolves can actually be killed. They killed almost everybody. As far as I know, Cyrus and me were the only ones who got out.” You swallowed back the lump stuck in your throat as you and Seokmin continued onward to your destination.

Now this question really worried him, he wasn’t sure if he even wanted answers to it. But he, again, wanted to know more about you and how you got to him. He’d figure it out eventually, might as well try to get it out of you today while he had you going already.

“Can you- can you tell me a bit about him…?” He almost whispered, afraid to say it any louder as he didn’t want to upset you.

“W-What?” You asked for clarification.

“I- I Wanna Know more about… him… Can you tell me about him?” Seokmin stuttered out. He was still unsure if he should’ve said it to begin with, but he couldn’t help it. He had to know more about the man who had you crying constantly over him.

You turned your head to look at him, “About who? Cyrus?” A bit of fear crossed your face as you attempted to confirm what he asked.

“Y-Yeah. He was your mate. And Jun kind of explained what you told him had happened to him the other day, but I don’t know much about him. Like how you two got out. Or why he died…” He looked you in the eyes and say that tears and immense sadness had began to pool in them, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to! I just figured… that it would be better to get it out in the open now…” Seokmin bit his lip as he waited for your reaction/response.

“Cyrus was… Cyrus. He is- was… my best friend.” You sighed defeatedly out loud before you continued, “He always took care of me. He imprinted on me right after I was born, so he was always there for me.” You started, still trying to find the right words to emphasize what he meant to you. But it was hard, you weren’t very touchy feely like Seokmin was. Feelings were all new to you, so you weren’t sure how to share them aloud.

You didn’t want to upset Seokmin by speaking too fondly about your past mate, but you also couldn’t help the pang in your heart you felt Everytime you heard Cyrus’s name. Part of you wanted to never speak of him again, another part of you wanted to never shut up about him. Your mind was full of conflict but your heart was full of sorrow. How could you possibly ever forget Cyrus enough to have a new mate? How could you ever emphasize how important he was to you when Seokmin, your current lover, was holding your hand? How were you supposed to pick and choose such things when your heart was pleading for a break?

“Wait- he imprinted on you right when you were born? I didn’t know that was possible…” he lost steam towards the end of his sentence and started to mumble while rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

“Oh no! It wasn’t like that!” You stopped him before he could get any further, “See, Icyan wolves start to shift really soon after birth, like only a month or two after. So it basically means that we’re able to phase our entire life. Cyrus was only five years older than me. He acted like an older brother to me until I hit 16 ish. But that’s when it all went wrong…” You held back a whimper that was threatening to spill past your lips.

“But the day everyone was killed, my dad and the other wolves came to defend out den. I was hiding in the hut while my mom was trying to do a protection spell. But they had killed most of our warriors already when they tried to save their families. We’re very protective of the ones we love” you sniffled slightly, still trying to hold your emotions back but obviously failing miserably.

“Cyrus came to find me after his family was killed. It was his instinct to protect me first, even though he loved his parents, they had each other still. And I was his mate, that’s how we work, mates and children before anyone else. He came into our home and tried to comfort me. We all thought we were gonna die. They had already killed my brothers by the river bank, it broke my parents. They saw red. But they knew I was still alive. So, before the Russians stormed our hut, my dad told Cyrus to take me and run as far as possible for as long as possible, so he did. After that, we were alone, but we had each other. It was like that for a few years. But then… I turned 16 and everything went to hell.” Your lip trembled and quivered with guilt.

Your current mate whined at your sadness, he wanted to help you, but he knew there was nothing he could say or do to make you feel better. So he just kept rubbing the back of your petite hand and giving you his full undivided attention. You had heard his whine, but you knew it was just because you were upset, so you gave him a small depressed smile before you kept speaking.

“Well you know that he- well that he’s obviously dead. Otherwise we couldn’t have imprinted on each other. But I’m sure you want to know… why he died” you mustered up all the courage you could before finally explaining it all to him, “He saved me. I fucked up. I was spotted by some towns people and he took the fall so they wouldn’t take me instead. Our wolf forms were similar. All Icyan wolves are white, we can just have different patterns to us. The villager that spotted me didn’t see the black spot on my head, he just saw a huge white wolf. They followed me back to our den and they were met with him. He refused to let me go. He was a telepath and he was an alpha. He ordered me to hide and he told me he loved me before he gave himself up to the angry mob.” You stopped walking and let the tears brimming your eyes freely fall.

Seokmin stood in front of you playing with your hair sweetly, trying to give you something to ground yourself and distract you from your heartache. It killed him to see you that way.

“I couldn’t- I couldn’t refuse his order. He was- he was my alpha. So I had to stay and watch them take him back to their town. I left after that to try and find him, he never told me that I couldn’t. But by the time I got there- they- they-” you sobbed out while bringing your shakey hands to your face, “They had already started torturing him. There had been reports of two huge wolves in the area and they thought he would lead them to me if they hurt him enough. But he never did.” Seokmin pulled you into his chest as you cried, barely able to breathe as you convulsed into loud whimpers and wails.

“I- I felt everything. Every cut they made, every punch, every hit. Because I’m of my shaman bloodline, I felt everything he felt, I- I’m an empath. He figured out I was in the crowd and just kept telling me that he loved me telepathically. That it wasn’t my fault. But- But how could it not be- be my fault?” You stuttered as you gripped onto Seokmin’s shirt for dear life, “I got him killed!” You all but screamed, crying into your mate’s chest so hard he was worried you’d pass out.

Seokmin just let you cry. He couldn’t imagine the guilt and pain you must have been feeling. He just held you and shushed you and told you that everything would be okay. But how could you be okay? You lost everyone in the most awful ways possible. No wonder you didn’t want him around before. If he were you, he wouldn’t either. He wouldn’t have wanted to risk losing MORE people.

He knew you thought it was your fault, but it wasn’t. If the roles were reversed, he knew you would’ve done the same thing as Cyrus. Just like he always knew that if push came to shove, he’d do the same exact thing your past mate had done to save you. You were his whole world, he’d never let anything or anybody hurt you if he could help it. He’d defend you with his very last breath if it meant you got even a second longer to live.

After a while, your breathing evened out and your sobs became just tears. Seokmin pulled you back up from his torso to look you in the glistening eyes. He quickly wiped away any water that had streamed down your face in the process. He really wanted to just kiss all your tears away, but now wasn’t the time for that.

“I’m so sorry (Y/N). I wish I could take away your pain. But I can’t. The best I can do is promise you that I’ll always be here for you.” He assured you, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ears.

“Even if I start crying over my dead mate?” You tried to sound sarcastic, but you honestly felt too weak to. It probably came out as more of a whine to him.

“Even if you start crying over him. Or if you miss him. Or even if you just want to talk about him. Or any of them. It’s okay. I understand and I’m here for you, no matter what.” He pecked your nose softly and gave you the most loving eyes you had ever seen.

You couldn’t help but pull him into a sweet, thankful kiss, attempting to show him how grateful you were for him with your actions rather than your words that always seemed to fail you. Once you pulled back, you realized just how tired you were. Seokmin seemed to pick up on it to because, suddenly, you were in his arms being carried through the woods bridal style. You gave him a look of uncertainty, he just nodded at you and gave you a loving smile, signaling that he would be okay to walk back the rest of the way to the house with you in his arms.

You wanted to protest it all for his sake, but your eyelids felt too heavy. So instead, you just snuggled your now swollen face into his chest and let the darkness take over, feeling safe in his arms and knowing he would never let anything bad happen to you. For the first time in a long time, you felt like maybe everything would be okay.

(Updated 9/17)

#seventeen #seventeen angst #seventeen au #seventeen fanfic #seventeen fluff #seventeen smut #svt au #seventeen x reader #svt seokmin #seokmin imagines #seokmin x reader #seokmin angst #seventeen seokmin #dokyeom #svt dk

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twisted-leader-of-something · 4 years

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Supporting Characters - Faustina's Family

Picrew link for credit: https://picrew.me/image_maker/43383

Oberyn Leshy

Full Name: Oberyn Averey-Leshy

Gender: Male

Age: He will not say it out loud in front of Quentin because of Rasul calling him a creep the first time he told Quentin and Rasul his age when Quentin was really little, but according to Lilia and Malleus he is a little older than Malleus by a few decades.

Birthday: December 31st

Height: 6'7 or 201.95 cm (includes his horns)

Eye Color: Light Green with Dark Blue and Light Brown specks.

Hair Color: Natural Blonde, but some say it's a Light Green Color.

Family: Father, Mother (Sick with an Terminal Illness) Younger Brother, Wife, Child, Two Sons and a Daughter (Living)

Occupation: King of the Forest Lands/Fey King/Father

Dominant Hand: Right

Favorite Food: His Wife's Meringue Cookies/Meringue in general

Least Favorite Food: Lemon and Lime Tasting Foods

Likes: Being around with his family, his Family in general, walks in nature, pranking others

Dislikes: Mining areas, Malleus and Lilia's protectiveness over Quentin and Quentin being avoidant and/or cautious of him

Personality: Quentin describes Oberyn when he was courting Faustina when she younger as really, really creepy. She says he always was near Faustina and treated her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered and acted really horribly to anyone that wasn't her, even to Faustina's own family that he was trying to get into the good graces of which the family put up with for a reason Quentin doesn't know. Quentin says she remembers she always felt uncomfortable being near Oberyn because she felt he'd kill her if she turned her back to him, so she'd cling to Rasul like he was her only safe haven. Which Oberyn gave her the nickname 'Little Rabbit' after he noticed how frightened she looked around him, which only made Quentin avoid Oberyn even more due to her fear getting far worse. Malleus and Lilia described Oberyn in a similar way, saying he tended to become obsessed with things at a whim to an creepy extent, he also had habits of horribly pranking people and had to be taught to be a decent person because he was not well liked by most Fae, who just put up with him and avoided him for generally not being great to be around. But when he met Faustina he completely changed around the Fae to a nicer Fae prince, as an lovestruck idiot for Faustina who seemingly made him switch personalities overnight. Which is why almost every Fae in Oberyn's life encouraged him to go after Faustina to make sure that change would be permanent, so he did and after a month of courting Faustina (and messing up the Desmona's life in the process), Oberyn convinced Faustina to marry him and run away from her old life, which she did. After years of being settled, Malleus and Lilia say Oberyn become less and less obsessive in nature and more pranksterish in nature. And once he had children, his obsessive tendencies seemed to disappear, as if he understood his role as a leader and a father then. Lilia also mentioned after Quentin Overblotted and Faustina had mental issues (because she realized that she'd almost lost her family) Oberyn realized that he'd messed up those eighteen years ago by taking Faustina away from her family and decided he'd try to fix those mistakes with Quentin, especially after he figured out Mr. and Mrs Desmona and Rasul were dead, he also became a better family man than he used to be because of Quentin's Overblot.

Quin Leshy

Full Name: Quin Kit-Freya-Leshy

Nickname(s): My Precious Bumblebee (by their father)

Gender: Identifies as Genderfluid, will not say biological gender

Age: About 14 years old despite looking not much older than Quentin's age

Birthday: May 24th

Height: 5'8"

Eye Color: Light Blue with specks of Black

Hair Color: Dyed Red with semi-faded Dark Blue tips, and a set of briads that are colored a dark Purple and Black.

Family: Father, Mother, Aunt, two younger brothers and a younger sister.

Occupation: Crown Prince/Student

Dominant Hand: Left

Favorite Food: Seafoods/Macrons

Least Favorite Food: Sugar cubes

Likes: Exploring places and generally being alone, Libraries, and Sleeping in

Dislikes: Politics, His parents' antics and lovey-dovey relationship, and certain religious organizations.

Personality: Quin is a described by most people as not very talkative unless you're in their family and acts like a little kid at times despite their capacity for maturity. Malleus describes Quin as someone who really doesn't fully understand the consequences of their actions but since they are so young by Fae standards it is forgivable. Lilia says Quin's similar to Jack and Jamil in that they're tsundere and also pretty gifted and passionate in more than one way but they doesn't understand how to use it yet. Around Quin's biological family, Quin is like the other caretaker for their siblings when their parents are too busy being lovey-dovey or busy in general, and Quentin even comments on this saying Quin acts like Rasul when she was sick when they are like this. Around Quentin, they seems to be really socially inept with her because when she does something Quin seems to stutter anything she says or asks them to do or is really bad at paying attention to her (which Malleus and Lilia tease the living daylights out of them for until they admit to Lilia they're really nervous about their aunt since they're not sure how they're supposed to treat Quentin without crossing any personal boundaries) but Quin seems to care deeply for Quentin as a family member as Oberyn mentioned after Quentin Overblotted, Quin visited her in her dreams while in the WORS facility almost as often as Faustina did, and changed their name after her's while she was in her coma because they were extremely worried that she wasn't going to make it, later on in personal stories it is seen that Quin does get better with theit fear of hurting their aunt with help from Lilia, and they're able to be comfortable in Quentin's presence as she becomes closer to her in-laws.

Ollivander Leshy

Full Name: Ollivander Leshy

Nickname(s): Ollie (by his siblings, mother and much later his aunt), Livan (by Silver and Lilia), Vandie (by Malleus) My Precious Ferret (by his father)

Gender: Male

Age: 12 years old despite looking in his teenage years

Birthday: September 2nd

Height: 5'7

Eye Color: Light brown with small specks of red

Hair Color: Natural Blonde

Family: Father, Mother, Aunt, Older Sibling, Younger sister and brother

Occupation: Grand Prince/Student/Apprentice Animal Caretaker

Dominant Hand: Ambidextrous (Mostly Right)

Favorite Food: Honey Butter with breads

Least Favorite Food: Lemon foods

Likes: Caring for and being around animals, the Vanrouge family and his own family, and big feasts and parties.

Dislikes: People or animals being upset or tense, people getting into fights, and Sebek being protective of Malleus when Ollivander's around.

Personality: According to Silver, Ollivander is a pretty good person to be around due to his kind nature and interesting ways of thinking but can be stubborn at times and not willing to listen to reason until he gets hurt. Malleus says Ollivander's a social and kind person like Kalim, but Ollivander inherits Lilia's sassiness and more of Silver's and his own lack of ability to read social cues with people normally (despite his great social skills) from being around the Vanrouge family while Ollivander was trying to get Silver to teach him to speak with animals. Around his family however he acts like a little kid, constantly asking for affection from Oberyn, Opal and Quin and often is the one who needs to be told to act more mature so he'll set a better example for Roxana and Caspian, which is something Quin and Ollivander often get into fight over, but at times he can act mature, but those times are really rare. Around the Vanrouge family, however, Ollivander acts very mature for his age and really tries to be polite around them, but more often than not he'll slip up and show his more childish nature, which Lilia actually seems to like a lot and Mallues and Silver seem to like more than Ollivander's more mature side. Around his aunt Quentin, he acts similarly to Kalim, spoiling her and acting like a ball of energy but much later after he learns from Silver she's had issues with trying to bond with her nieces and nephews despite her still trying to get over her brother in-law's actions' consequences on her life, Ollivander tones down his ball of energy persona and becomes more relaxed and personal with Quentin.

Roxana Leshy

Full Name: Roxana Leshy

Nickname(s): Roxy (by her siblings) Anna [pronounced An-a] (by her mother and much later her aunt), My Precious Butterfly (by her father)

Gender: Female

Age: 10 years old despite looking like she's in middle school

Birthday: April 22nd

Height: 5'5"

Eye Color: Black with grey and brown specks

Hair Color: Natural Brown with dyed Black tips

Family: Father, Mother, Aunt, Older Sibling and brother and a younger brother

Occupation: Grand Princess/Student/Classical Artist

Dominant Hand: Left

Favorite Food: Anything with the real s'mores taste (she dislikes when you just put s'mores flavoring, make it authentic)

Least Favorite Food: Sour tasting foods

Likes: Drawing and Painting, Spending time with her Family, and studying Divination

Dislikes: Astrology, studying for long periods of time, working with technology in general

Personality: According to Quentin, Roxana is pretty quiet and keeps to herself unless you ask her something and when you do she comes off as really shy similar to Idia. But, once Roxana gets to know you and becomes comfortable around you, she's a very curious and philosophical soul who really seems to want to understand everything and figure out how it ticks. Not out of malicious intentions like Azul, but because she seems to want to understand everything around her because she honestly wants to see how the world works, especially after she learns about her mother's, uncle's, and aunt's past. Roxana is also compared to Quentin a lot in terms of personality as well by Lilia, Malleus and Silver, and by most who meet her, despite some differences between the two. Around her family, Roxana is a lot more relaxed a seems to be more cheerful no matter the circumstances, even around Quentin, whom she seems to follow around like a baby duck at times.

Caspian Leshy

Full Name: Caspian Leshy

Gender: Male

Age: 6 years old despite looking much younger

Birthday: June 1st

Height: 3'5"

Eye Color: Hazel-Green

Hair Color: Natural Black

Family: Father, Mother, Aunt, Older Sibling, Brother and Sister

Occupation: Grand Prince/Student

Dominant Hand: Right

Favorite Food: Marshmallow or marshmallow tasting

Least Favorite Food: Anything that tastes like Lime

Likes: Playing outside and exploring, anything involving creative thinking, and his Aunt Quentin

Dislikes: Being sent away by anybody, sitting still for long periods of time, and trying to speak with older people

Personality: According to Quentin, Caspian is a ball of energy and seemly has no end to his energy. Caspian also is often the one of Faustina's family who tires her out first due to his energy that she's not used to being around. And like Roxana, is a curious soul about his surroundings. He also can't hurt a fly, which makes him good at working with most creatures, plants and people. She also states a lot of people count him as cute, like Lilia which he will use because of being taught to use his gift of being cute.

#[ character content ]#twisted wonderland oc #twst oc

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awesome-bamon · 6 years

Text

Reylo fandom is worst than the TVD fandom.... (Long post)

Thoughts have come into my mind about how the Reylo fandom is worse than the TVD fandom. And now I’m going to explain why and write out my thoughts.

First let me make this clear that all of the ships on TVD whether they’re canon or just fanon, are toxic and have their abusive elements/factors to them. Every single male character on the show that the women characters are shipped with have a history of being violent, abusive, murderous and have their fair share of heinous, violent crimes against other people.

And they all have shown violence towards those they are shipped with or have has scenes where they have abused, physically hurt or even attempted to kill the women that they are shipped with. One could say that they have committed violent, heinous acts on the same level as Kylo Ren has.

And I’ll also make it clear that the TVD fandom is similar to the Reylo fandom or any other fandom with an abusive, violent, problematic male character (who has a history of murdering or abusing people). In the way that the TVD fandom makes excuses for their fave problematic, white male character. In how they woobify him, come up with metas and long explanations to absolve and exonerate their faves malicious actions and crimes. Especially with the violent/abusive acts committed towards the woman that they ship him with.

How they all insist and say that their fave can just be changed through the love of woman, how all it takes is the woman that they ship him with coming along to “fix” him and to heal him, making him decide to never do another violent/abusive act for the rest of his life. And that if the woman character would only accept him, embrace him and forgive him for all he has done wrong that he’ll just change into a better man.

That her love for him or his love for her can magically heal him (without any type of effort to actually change as an individual or taking it upon himself to change, instead of relying on the love/acceptance of a woman.) (The Abduction as romance video really made a good point in how the entertainment industry sells how all it takes is for the right woman to come along for a man with a history of being awful to be able to magically change his ways overnight). In reality it would take self reflection/self work. So, the idea of a woman loving/accepting a man into being good or that it is her job to babysit him, parent him, and coddle to him to make sure he behaves him and doesn’t go out and do something awful is an idea that needs to be gotten rid of in society all together.

So, this pattern of justifying a problematic male fave’s actions and not being willing to hold him fully accountable for it is something that happens across all fandoms and not just the Reylo fandom.

More than once a Reylo Stan has brought up me being a fan of Damon Salvatore saying “Well, you ship Bamon.” As a counter point to my views against Kylo Ren.

Yes, Damon has done many horrible, selfish things. He has done over his fair share of cold blooded murders and heinous actions. He has shown violence towards women. And as I said every ship on TVD has is toxic and has it’s abusive factors. Including Bamon. Which I admit and make no excuses for.

Not saying that fans should be forbidden to Stan for male villains or problematic male characters. Just that they acknowledge their fave for what he is and not attempt to woobify him or coming up with metas to absolve him of his violence/abuse. And not try to turn his ships into something that is healthy when it is not.

Again you could say or believe that Damon’s heinous actions are equal to Kylo’s and that he isn’t any better than Kylo Ren in relation to that. Yet, Damon has usually been mentioned as a counter point to me making posts against Kylo/Reylo.

Like they’re trying to say that I an a hypocrite or have double standards. But, what they either miss or over look is how the Reylo fandom is still bigger hypocrites when they try to deflect to me shipping Bamon.

Which brings me around to the point of my topic. Most of the TVD “rival” ships have one problematic male character with a history of violence, going up against another problematic male character with a history of violence. So, in the ship wars of the TVD fandom you would see. “Well, your fave’s murders, abuse, awful acts were worse than my fave’s murders, abuse,awful acts. Therefore he is the better love interest for *fill in blank* TVD female character.”

Outside of the ship/fan wars. I’ll admit that when someone has a problem with Damon, they had perfectly valid/righteous reasons to call out his history of violence and murders. And are correct in pointing out his abuse/ harmful actions against women.

Still the TVD fandom is one problematic white male fave against another problematic white male fave, who have both murdered and abused. So, it can be truly said about how all of the ships are toxic and no ship is truly healthy. And that no male character on TVD is really morally superior over the other.

Now, I say that the Reylo fandom is worse because unlike the case of TVD, with Finnrey vs Reylo. You have one side with a problematic, violent white male character. With a history of violence and a history of murdering people. Who has hurt/harm/nearly killed the woman that he is shipped with.

Then the other side with the black male character. Who suffered through being kidnapped and forced to be raised into a cold blooded killer. Yet, still choose to break apart from the, refusing to murder and instead fleeing so that he could join the light and fight on the good side against those which kidnapped him, stole his child hood and tried to get him to do their ill will.

And since he escaped the side of evil. He has done nothing but risk his life/well being to become a hero to defeat the evil side. Plus met this woman who fighting for the resistance, therefore joining her and wanting to fight by her side. He grew to care for this woman. Showing her nothing but love, appreciation and respect. Do all that he could do for her well being. Cared deeply about keeping her safe and away from harm. Risked himself when she was in harms way. And has a true heart of good and the desire/will to do right.

But, despite this black male character’s pure heart of gold and his caring and appreciation for the heroine of the story. You still see Stans of the problematic white male villain go out of their way to demonize the black male character. Trying to find reasons for why everything that he has done is some how wrong, malicious or secretly filled with malice. Or somehow bad and “villain like” in some form.

Especially in his scenes/actions with the heroine. As they try to break down scenes to convince people in the fandom how his actions/words towards her are somehow “toxic”, “unhealthy”, “mean”, “abusive”, “Stalker like” or somehow “disrespectful of her agency.”

While at the same time justifying their problematic white male fave. Who actually did the things they accuse the black male hero character of doing towards the woman. While they come up with novel metas to absolve and exonerate their fave, making long explanations to woobify him for why he really isn’t truly at fault or to be blamed for his decisions. How he really couldn’t help but to be the way that he is because of his abusive child hood, rough life, his manpain, or his mental illness. (Again this type of thing you see across all fandoms). And how he is just an misunderstood soul at heart.

Those who mention Damon to try to deflect, just highlights the hypocrisy and the double standards of the Reylo fandom all the more. Because they have to go outside of the Star Wars fandom to point out another problematic, white male character like their own.

Yet, if we keep the discussion within the Star Wars fandom and it’s ship wars. Then we’re talking about Finn vs Kylo. Those in the TVD fandom have valid reasons to point out Damon’s history of shitty behaviors (whether or not everyone agrees with the same ship).

But, with Finn there are ZERO reasons to demonize his actions. Because NOTHING he does has been any where near on the same level as the awful things problematic white male faves have done. NOTHING Finn has done towards Rey is unhealthy, toxic, or abusive. While Kylo’s actions with her are all of that.

The only people who take Finn and attempt to twist his actions in the movie, into something bad, awful, and “villain like”, are Kylo Ren Stans. The only ones who try to demonize, criminalize Finn’s scenes with Rey are Reylo Stans. Who have an agenda to demonize Finn because they want to uplift, praise and crown Kylo Ren as being the better man/love interest. In their attempt to paint Finn as the truly unhealthy man in Rey’s life and Kylo Ren as the truly loving one who has her best interest at heart, they reach so far that their arms can stretch out and touch the moon.

So, desperate to absolve the white man that they will work extra hard and are hell bent all trying to paint the black male character as someone who is really bad, mean, or disrespectful towards the heroine character.

Before someone wants to come at be with the deflection of “Well, you stan for Damon.” Then I hope that the Reylo Stan has called out their fellow Stans when they see them attempting to demonize/criminalize Finn. They can’t be pointing out how any other fandom Stans for a problematic, white male fave. If they themselves are hell bent on or are okay with their fandom demonizing Finn who decided to fight for the good side and who has truly cared for, love, respected and appreciated Rey.

So, that is how the Reylo fandom in a certain way is worse than the TVD fandom.

#Anti Reylo #Anti Kylo Ren #Finn's relationship with Rey #TVD #Star Wars #Problematic relationships #Toxic ships #Long meta

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shaykeijser · 7 years

Text

riverdale 2x16

here are my thoughts/reactions to this weeks episode that no one asked for, which will include spoilers (obviously) so i’m putting them under the cut. i’ve already watched the episode so these aren’t my first reactions technically but they’ll be the same.

caution: i’m not a fan of jughead or the core four. so i’ll be poking fun/getting annoyed at them.

- why did betty not go straight to alice with the dna test? why would she give chic, who she thinks is capable of hurting her, the opportunity to last out at her? i also still don’t get why she didn’t just get a normal dna test. like you’re a journalist, get the full truth, not just some of it

- i fucking called it!! why do ya think hal wanted nothing to do with chic? remember when he said “you’re letting this stranger into our house”? he wouldn’t call his own son a stranger

- fp is the dad and that’s the facts (that wouldn’t make bughead wrong don’t even try to defend that)

- chic is such a good creep IM LIVING FOR IT

- if it wasn’t a for-profit prison it wouldn’t be the worst idea. but it is so :///

- southside high was falling apart at the seems. the old students were aware of that and were plenty happy to go away! yes the lodge’s had other intentions with shutting down the school, but overall it was a good thing. there’s other, more valid reasons to not like the prisons that aren’t being talked about!!

- lol we know that veronica running for stuco wouldn’t end up well

- fred getting more screen time <333 (even if i don’t totally agree with him)

- does everybody at this school watch the same tv shows how is jughead quoting scandal (which i had to google) universally understood? i’m actually a sophomore and my friends and i quote vines.

- why isn’t ronnie defending herself? she gave that look to archie so he could defend her. where did kick ass veronica i don’t take no shit’ lodge go??

- ‘hunger strike for southside high’ BOI

- ‘for it to re-open’ i had to pause this when i first watched this scene. he went there for like 2 weeks. toni was his only true friend for the majority of it. he didn’t like the idea of it and didn’t like what he had to do to survive there. the other students were happy with it closing!! why you gotta be so extra?? and if he really wants to get out of riverdale to be a writer he shouldn’t be trying to go back to a school that had teachers who gave up hope on their students

- ew ethel (i was eh with her all together but i’m still >:( over how she got mad at veronica for what hiram did to her father. veronica was one of the only people who was comforting her and tried to make amends. we can’t forget that when that all was going down veronica didn’t like her dad)

- WHY ARE KEVIN AND JOSIE SITTING ALONE

- wait jk i remembered

- HAHAHA ok i’m josie (don’t get me wrong i like veronica and is the only tolerable lead for me atm but that slushie thing is really funny. it was sorta uncalled for, but she is working with her father soz)

- props to veronica for being the bigger person in this scenario

- 'what are the odds your father’s gonna be the first inmate in that prison?’ #boomroasted #thatwasatheofficereference #didanyonegetit

- lol at least veronica kept her cool for a little bit (go her btw)

- MY POOR CHERYL NO

- mama blossom is shady and nana rose is sassy

- that tea’s gonna be poison i’m calling it

- why would ethel’s dad want a job at the prison? he was a businessman

- veronica’s own parents are threatening her UGH

- power to veronica for wanting to run but this isn’t gonna end well

- TONI’S HOT & even if her audition flopped cheryl still would’ve made her member #lovemybabies

- tbh i didn’t like the lodges being the main plot point and i’d still prefer for the serpents to get more screentime than them BUT this is getting interesting

- drag him archie

- i want to see other south siders fighting for this why does jughead get to be the leader of this revolution (that i’m here for!! except for the school thing bc it doesn’t make sense)

- y’all have been having friendship problems since the ms. gr**** thing i think the trains have been getting closer than you think jug

- FINALLY, THE CHONI I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

- something bad is gonna happen to cheryl i’m calling it, and nana rose

- (about what betty said after cheryl opened up) betty let chic into her and her family’s life can she not just be cautious from a distance and let her mom enjoy having her son back

- of course toni’s in the bed you sly little bird cheryl

- y’all gonna fuck? kidding this the cw that’s only for het couples

- THEY GONNA KISS AWE

- ok fuck why can’t we have some happiness for once

- penelope and claudius pushed her, i mean penelope had obviously prepared a back up plan incase she didn’t die (mentioning sundowners syndrome)

- #ProtectCherylBlossom

- aw archie’s mom is back i’m happy

- YES SCHOOL THAT BOY FOR DISRESPECTING FRED GO MAMA ANDREWS

- charles melton looks really hot with a bruised face oi oi (so does jordan connor)

- that lowkey sounds like a bribe veronica....

- fang, toni, and pea are in this scene?? new favorite scene

- honestly, if any other serpent was the one in jugheads spot i think i would be all for it lmao

- i thought mary (andrews) was gonna also give archie the safe sex talk that he archie never got dang

- mary’s giving good advice though let’s just hope archie will listen to it

- I LOVE KEVIN

- kevin had the right to tell chic, she was the one who forced him into the poorly planned catfishing (like seriously - she shouldn’t have been there and they shouldn’t have done it at a school). kevin has barely got any good storylines that actually continue and i’m so damn happy that he’s sticking up for himself. betty only reaches out to him when she needs help.

- betty talking about her darkness and saying ‘darkness’ in general is the most cringey thing ever. she has some sort of mental illness. i don’t know what but they shouldn’t have taken this ‘darkness inside of me’ approach.

- i wish V tried to become josie’s friend before asking her for an endorsement. actually, i wish the show resolved their friendship ages ago. they’re the one of the few WOC and overall i’m tired of girl x girl friendships being ruined like this

- it’s got so bad that veronica had to bribe josie to endorse her. i know this isn’t gonna go well

- sweet pea looking like an out of focus snack <333

- DRAG HIM JUGHEAD (lol you can tell how much i don’t like archie being up hiram’s ass that i’m praising jughead)

- give betty cooper therapy, you cowards

- ‘i caught the black hood’ bitch no you didn’t that hoe still out there & i’m taking that theory to the grave

- sheriff keller woah i forgot about him

- my boy fp!!

- omfg imagine when betty tells jughead that chic’s dad isn’t hal they better have him be like “...what if it’s mine” (i just realized that sorta sounds like jughead saying ‘what if the kid aka chic is mine’ and that’s not what i meant, i meant that chic’s dad is jughead’s dad but that made me laugh so i’m keeping it)

- oh sHIT something’s gonna happen @ this concert/rally for veronica’s campaign thing

- kevin’s filming it yeps something’s happening

- ope i knew it ethel is passing papers out

- woop there it is

- i don’t ~really~ get why betty’s mad

- JOSIE’S APART OF IT WTF I DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING but i should have :(

- this show tries to be all about female empowerment but then they have two girls banding together to bully an already manipulated and hurting girl. smh

- again, i don’t ~really~ get why betty can’t trust her anymore

- :((( i feel so bad for ronnie. she’s being manipulated by her parents and i really want her out of lodge industries. she’s taking blame for the shit that her parents have done

- THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

- HAHAHAA THE WIG OH MY GOD

- “i was guessing” congrats betty, you’ve played yourself

- the offer that hiram made to fp actually sounds nice :((( if only he wasn’t so shady

- archie is so far up hiram’s ass he sounds exactly like him

- YOU GO MARY! SCHOOL YO CHILD

- finally a parent (alice) talks bout safe sex to their kid (betty)!!! my mom is gonna be so happy when she watches this episode (yes i watch riverdale with my mom, no it’s not awkward during sex scenes because we watch every show together so we’re used to it)

- “absolutely not.” keep telling that to yourself alice

- alice cooper is my favorite cooper

- “he’s dangerous.” bitch so are you? you held a lighter up to his face?

- i thought alice killed that drug dealer is that what betty is saying he did

- cheryl doesn’t have red lipstick on in this hospital scene something’s gonna happen

- nana was being poisoned by the tea :((

- i guess i’m remembering this wrong i thought alice shot him (about the scene in chic’s room)

- how did betty not remember that he didn’t touch anything

- CHERYL DROP AND ROLL OUT OF THAT CAR NOW

- look at archie being all smart aw

- why is betty next to kevin?? stay away from my baby (kevin)

- this scene is actually really powerful? even though them chaining themselves to the school is a repetitive and cliche thing to do, the aesthetics and the filming of it is really cool

- can we see all those young serpents more often pls

- what is jughead talking about why does he think they’re gonna lose riverdale high? is it because of veronica running? bc no one’s gonna vote for her after those flyers

- uGH i can see him being a good president

- why is betty so done with her and veronica’s friendship? i really don’t get why she’s so mad at her?

- jughead, betty, and fp all living together. that’s a concept

- SOMEONE WRITE A HEADCANON OF ALICE BUSTING INTO THE TRAILER TO GET BETTY BACK AND THEN WE GET SOME CUTE FALICE ANGST

- i’m happy mary’s staying bc maybe with her around we’ll get more fred screen time #canyoutellilovefred

- FUCK YEAH FRED IS RUNNING

- toni topaz is the caring type of girlfriend who goes to her girl’s house when they aren’t in school pass it on!!

- but really though where is cheryl what are they doing to her

- CHERYL DOESN’T DESERVE THIS SHE’S BEEN EMOTIONALLY ABUSED FOR YEARS AND HAS LOST A BROTHER, FATHER, AND BEST FRIEND

main takeaways

~ veronica is being manipulated by her parents and doesn’t deserve half of the shit that’s getting thrown at her

~ jughead is still cringey and extra

~ toni is the girlfriend of all of our dreams let’s be honest here

~ cheryl blossom doesn’t deserve this bullshit

~ betty cooper is mentally ill

~ chic is fp and alice’s son

~ #FredForMayor

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scripttorture · 7 years

Note

When is it justified IN STORY to use torture? And when is it offensive/unappropriate to use? I.e. is it fine to be used to emphasize the cruelty of a villain, give hero (who is or whose loved one is tortured) a stronger and personal motive to go against the villain, complicate villain's organization by having torturers in it, etc.?

I understand where you’re coming from with this question but it isn’thow I tend to approach writing personally. I don’t think there are any hardrules for writing. There are certainly a lot of offensive or inappropriatedepictions of torture in fiction but I don’t think that’s ever down to onesimple thing.

Essentially I don’t think that there’s a straightforward formula whichleads to good or bad depictions of- well anything really. Stories are oftenmore complicated than that.

The things I’d say are always a bad idea are less to do with thenarrative reasons for using torture in a story you’ve suggested and more to dowith tropes that are actively harmful.

Tropes that encourage torture are clearly never a good idea.

Showing torture leading to accurate information is not just inaccurate it’s also used to supportarguments ‘for’ torture in real life. Depicting victims as ‘broken’ andincapable of any sort of recovery can be harmful to victims and depicting avictims’ recovery as a point when they are completely without symptoms isunrealistic and also harmful to victims.

But I don’t get the impression that you’re talking about that sort ofthing. The question and the examples you’ve used seem to be more about whentorture is used in a story then how it’s used in a story.

And I generally tend to think in terms of how it’s used.

Let me give an example- Remember Batman:The Dark Knight?

There’s a pretty famous scene in the movie where Batman tortures theJoker in a police cell. And as a single scene I actually think it’s reallygood. The script and the acting make it very clear that torture isn’t working. The Joker laughs at Batman and in the endBatman gets the information only because the Joker always planned on giving itto him.

But the movie as a whole isn’tsaying that torture doesn’t work: it’s saying the Joker is a special case. It’sfeeding into the trope that the Joker is mentally ill and therefore dangerous, and it’s his difference here, him being (in his own words) ‘a freak’ that we’resupposed to believe makes him capable of withstanding torture.

What torture is adding to the story in this case is a load moreunfortunate implications.

Let’s contrast that with the way Terry Pratchett uses torture in Small Gods.

The setting for this story is a fictional theocracy, a country governedby strict religious principals which include a ‘Quisition’ that torturesheretics. Pratchett doesn’t give us a lot of gory scenes instead he shows his characters responding to atrocitiesthey witness and feeling helpless trapped in powerful systems they don’t feelthey can change.

The book uses torture as part andparcel of a broken system. A part that galvanises several of the charactersto try and produce change in their country.

What torture is adding to this story is emotional depth and a passionateargument for making a better world.

And I think that’s the best way to approach the question of whethertorture ‘should’ be in a story or not. What is it adding to the story? Is it inkeeping with the tone, the setting, the plot? Is it actually having an effecton the characters?

Generally speaking I think if you don’twant your characters to be marked by an experience for the rest of their livesincluding torture in any capacity probably isn’t a good fit for the story.

It is also, generally speaking, an extremelygood idea to keep in mind the norms of a time period when writinghistorical fiction.

A piece of historical fiction, set in the New World during the era whenslavery was legal should almostcertainly include the torture of black people.

Because to do otherwise is to ignore the widespread atrocities andgenocide that occurred during that period.

There’s a certain amount that I personally apply this argument outsideof historical fiction as well. I think about whether torture would be likely in a given scenario and sometimes I includeit on the basis that I believe it would be incredibly likely.

I also sometimes don’t includeit and prevent my characters from wandering into situations where it would belikely. If I’m trying to tell a light hearted funny story then the chances aretorture does not have a place in that story.

I won’t say never, because I know that joking and making fun of awfulthings can be incredibly helpful for some people, especially victims. There’s adifference between laughing at the people who are suffering and laughing at thepeople who cause suffering or the situation. My personal judgement of my ownwriting ability is that I couldn’t successfully use this sort of humour. Somepeople can, but I advise treating it with care.

There are times when torture is, for whatever reason, a key andessential part of the plot.

This can be handled very well and it can be handled very badly.

I’m not a great believer in piling trauma on characters for the sake ofmaking them more ‘interesting’. Especially since I think this is oftenaccompanied by ignorance of what…the mental health symptoms look like in thelong term. In my opinion trauma itself does not make a character moreinteresting, the way a character behaves and their relationships to others arewhat makes them interesting.

Something that doesn’t come up in fiction as often as I’d like is usingtorture to talk about the systems that cause or support torture.

Fiction talks about individual villains an awful lot, and it often doesso poorly.

But torture in reality is never ‘just’ about the actions of individuals.It is ignored or condoned by an entire system.

One of the things that the PrincessBride handles very well in its depiction of torture is motivation andstructures. Wesley is tortured because he’s offended the nobility. And themovie doesn’t depict this as purely the actions of a corrupt or evil official,it doesn’t suggest that torture is the product of individual evil. It suggests,correctly, that it is the product of an unjust system.

It’s also worth mentioning that there are different ways of including torture in a story. Torture can be mentioned andshown to have an impact on the characters without it being a strong focus ofthe story.

I’ve used it to talk about unjust systems and the corrupting effect theyhave on people. I’ve also used it to talk about strength and courage- not inthe sense of victims resistance to torture but in the sense of people puttingthemselves in situations where they know they could be tortured in order to achieve something.

That narrative- of characters risking their lives and health for agreater good- is something that appeals to me in fiction. And in the context oftorture it echoes real life. Human rights defenders are regularly targeted for torture.

The two situations you mentioned particularly, giving the hero more‘motivation’ or showing the villain as especially cruel….I think that withtorture particularly those are plots that can easily backfire. In roughly thesame ways that they backfire if sexual violence is used instead of ‘normal’torture.

I don’t think every story needs the villain to torture in order to showthey’re cruel. I think that sometimes using torture in this way ends up seeminggratuitous and cheap. It can become an over the top description of sufferingthat falls into tropes about victims ‘breaking’ and torturers being ‘tough’.

It can, in essence, use torture thoughtlessly with no understand of whatthe consequences of torture are forthe victim or torturer.

It can be done very well. Pratchett uses torture, at least partly forthis in Small Gods and I think itworks well. But he also shows the villain as cruel outside of the context of torture and he uses torture to talk aboutsocieties and how people excuse or accept cruelty.

Usually when I think of this motif I think of bad depictions of torture and torturers. I think of Game of Thrones and victims beingdepicted as ‘broken’. I think of StarTrek: Deep Space Nine and torturers being depicted as intelligent, capableof consistent lies and mentally healthy.

That isn’t to do with the motif itself: it’s to do with how it’s used.It’s making torture cheap because it has few consequences for the characters,or lazy because it’s a ‘simple’ way to take a character out of the narrativewithout killing them.

The comparison I keep thinking of is rape. There’s been a lot ofbacklash recently against narratives that use sexual violence casually. Forexample stories where the love interest or female relative of a male hero israped by a villain in order to hurt the hero or so that the audience can seehow ‘bad’ the villain is.

Which makes me wonder- if it’s not OK to use sexual violence in this waythen why is it OK to use torture instead?

And narratives do regularlyuse torture in ways that they would not use sexual violence.

Common plot lines that come to mind are characters lying about beingtortured, characters being treated as though they are (or should be) 100% finebecause they are no longer being tortured, ‘good’ characters torturing and thenarrative treating this as acceptable because that method isn’t ‘real’ tortureor because the character is ‘good’. Those are plots I’ve seen in kids shows thatwould not treat sexual violence the same way.

My point is that both of these things are terrible and they should notbe treated cheaply or lightly.

But, for me at least, that still doesn’t lead to a simple and easy listof when a story is ‘ok’. So much of that comes down to execution, to the waythe story is written, how the plot unfolds, how the characters develop.

There are ways to do the plots you’ve mentioned well. Mostly I thinkthat comes down to respecting the victims, treating them as people rather thanplot devices.

To a lesser extent I think it also involves being reasonable towardstorturers: torture affects them too and it severely inhibits their ability tofunction in society. Portraying them as hyper-competent is, I think, part ofthe problem.

In essence I don’t think this is about when it’s justified so much as it’sabout why a torture plot should be inthe narrative. What does it add? Is it necessary? Is it realistic? Are thevictims treated as people? Are the torturers? Does it fit the setting? Does itfit the emotional tone of the story?

Does it justify real world abuses?

Most of the blog is about avoiding that last one. That doesn’t make theothers less important. And if you want to write about torture you really needto think about your story and all of those points. I feel pretty confidentpointing out when a story is condoning torture and whether it’s realistic.

But ultimately the person who knows best whether it fits into your storyis you.

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw rape #writing torture #torture plots #torture victims #torturers #torture apologia #ways to write torture #this got long #Anonymous

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noexit-ff · 7 years

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24.

Ant placed his hands on my shoulders “you ready for the interview now?” he said in my ear, nodding my head “one minute” I said to him, climbing up on the counter “one minute, can I have y’all attention” I shouted in the store “and ya’ll, if you can hear outside” grinning wide, I am amazed by the love I am getting for this pop up shop in LA, I might need to open an actual store “I just want to say thank you to everyone supporting me and my movement, I will be back and I will take pictures with y’all as much as I can. Y’all causing the stock to sell out but thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I just need to an interview” Cass held his hand out for me to take, I snorted laughing jumping down “I don’t need your help” laughing at him “wait here” Ant said to Sinko “the man of the hour is here Chris Brown” the guy said, Complex came out to interview me. I don’t really like doing interviews but it’s for my clothing line, I want it to do well “I’m Joe” shaking the guys hand “hello” smiling at him “Alexis” the lady said, shaking her hand “it’s so good to meet you, I owe it to Ant for getting this interview for me” sitting down in the seat “it’s all good” some guy passed me a mic, Ant walked over to me “private questions kept to a minimum, I got you” he said as I dapped him, he knows I hate interviews.

The female interviewer cannot stop staring at me “so Chris, it’s a pleasure speaking to you or even being here. I am a big fan of you and your work, you’re the hardest working artist in this industry. You do everything, I was thinking is there something you’re not good at?” I chuckled bringing the mic up “erm” I paused “nah, I am good at everything. On a real though, I just try things, if you ain’t good at it then you keep trying until you are. If I do something I am passionate about it, no matter what. I could be cooking chicken and you best believe that would be the best chicken you will eat. It’s just something I always keep in my mind, I never lower my standards and I am the way I am now. I love everything, art, sports, fashion, media. I do anything” sitting back in the chair “this is a good thing because there is a lot of people out there that do give up or don’t venture out, this is the difference about you. You see it in your clothing line, do you have all saying in it, in what happens and what gets released?” Joe asked “I have a say in it all, this whole Black Pyramid movement is mine. I am proud at what it has become, the next step is it’s own store. Also I have the thing with Puma coming up, I am in talks. I also have the Fenty-Brown Puma in New York, then also Puma Black Pyramid. The only way is up for this brand” both of the interviewers stared at me all wide eyed “so is this Fenty Brown thing, is it just you helping out or?” Alexis asked “it’s me and Rihanna designing clothing for everyone, general I will be doing men’s and she will be doing it for the ladies. It’s a big thing to be doing this, Rihanna had some say in it for it to happen and it did” I had to big up my wife “that is good to hear for you, it’s a shame Rihanna is not here?” he asked “yeah, she gone to Hawaii without me too. She told me and I couldn’t go because I am busy doing the album that is coming, very soon. Like next month soon but if Rihanna was here, she would be here with me” I had to clarify.

Pushing through the crowd with my bodyguards, waving at the fans as Cass pulled me into the SUV. The fans are crazy as shit, laughing as I shuffled into the back so the boys can get in. I miss Robyn so much, I wish she did come but she is in Hawaii and has been there for a week now. We talk every night and day on the phone but I said to Robyn to take her time with this, I spoke to Jen and she says she is ok and is relaxing, cried it out. Only thing I can do is support my wife, I want her to feel better inside. I won’t front but I can mentally rest too since she has been away, I do miss my wife. The home is lonely, I’ve had my homies over because I hate the home being so quiet. She should be coming back soon, I think she said she is meeting me in New York actually and that is in a few days. It’s not long left because I just want to have sex so much.

Hawaii is so damn beautiful, just peace. I have not answered a single call unless it’s Chris, I am just so happy and I feel good about me “you’re awake, these came for you” Jen placed roses and a small box on the table “from Chris?” I questioned, making my way to the table “yes, someone is missing his wife a lot” smiling down at the roses and picking up the card, reading the card aloud “to my shawty, I miss you so much. Christopher” I cooed out “I hope he doesn’t think any of this was easy, I miss him so much” pulling the chair back “I said one day but one day wasn’t going to do nothing, I wanted to Chris but mentally my mind was so lost. I felt like I had to keep Chris close. I still feel the urge to run to him, seeing his pictures out out there. He is on his own, I feel so bad but I feel more bad that I did what I did to him, throwing a plate” opening the box up “I am glad to see you more upbeat, those morning beach walks and meditating is working on you. How did it feel? To be with your own thoughts, just you speaking to other women that miscarried? And people that got abortions” I froze with the box in hand “a relief, to know that I am not alone in this and I wasn’t being selfish. I can’t thank you enough Jen for getting me in that, to know my secret is safe there. I didn’t want people to know but that burden has been lifted, like I am forgiven. I appreciate you did that” Jen smiled at me “I knew I wouldn’t help but women that have felt the very same pain can help” smiling a little “a lot of them lost their partners for this and I didn’t want that, I was driving myself crazy thinking I will lose Chris” shaking my head thinking. I didn’t want to lose Chris in this.

Opening the box “what did he get you?” picking out the charm for my Pandora bracelet “he got me a charm” turning the heart around “he put the date we got married” I feel so choked up “he is a romantic at heart, he cares and I am glad you have found your inner peace” swallowing back the lump in my throat “the ladies in the group treated me like a normal human, I have never felt so normal. When they said it wasn’t my fault, I cried Jen. It was ok Chris, and family saying it because they would but when I spoke on what happened, they said it’s not my fault, the miscarriage was not my fault either” I can’t wait to see my husband “you look better” placing the charm back in the box, I need to place that on my bracelet “I feel it, I am not blaming myself. I feel happier, the burden is gone. At first I thought it was Chris, he needed to clarify to me he cared but it wasn’t. That was just the icing on the cake, he didn’t fill it. It was me all that time” Jen sat across me “you are glowing my friend, happiness. I didn’t know you threw a plate at Chris, that what pushed you?” nodding my head “slipping back to my old ways” I shuddered at the thought “I am glad nobody is hurt, so can we speak on last night though” she said “what about last night?” I don’t even know what she is speaking about “I heard someone being sick, I mean it’s not been just last night. You have been sick since you have been here, you’re not ill are you?” shaking my head “I know it’s a subject that means a lot to you but these are pregnancy signs beautiful, I am glad you haven’t been drinking at all. I am not going to keep saying it to you but you are trying with Chris so you could be, don’t mind me” swallowing hard “I did assume I am but I hate getting my hopes up, I don’t want to say it to Chris either” I shrugged “ok, I get it. You don’t want to tell Chris but Robyn you need to check, you’re being sick and you and I both know those are big signs” she is not wrong at all.

I don’t know what to think “you and Chris didn’t really wait and it’s been weeks, it can take six weeks for your period to come back right?” nodding my head “it’s been longer hasn’t it? You want me to get some tests for you?” shaking my head “if I am going to use tests I want Chris to be there, I want him with me. I last time didn’t really give him a good experience, even if I am not then least I have my husband to support me, I just don’t want to get my hopes up” Jen cooed out “I get it, I think you are” smiling wide “I will be keeping it a secret for a while, my body seems to not like keeping babies. I can’t deal with having other people watching and saying things. I will be so nervous about this, I will be a mess” I know what I will be like “I want to witness this, I think you are. Not to sound like your mom, you was very ill and sleepy with the other baby right?” biting on my nail “I was constantly tired, sleeping. Not wanting to get out of bed, I won’t lie but I am sick a lot. My skin is a little bad too, out of nowhere too” Jen placed her hands together “I praying so hard for you, I want to hear. I am so nervous but excited for you, I mean all the joys is when you are trying” she is not wrong, it is fun trying “when I get back, well to New York. Chris and I need to talk and I am in the right mind to do that, I won’t mention about the test yet. I am just so happy, I feel so, I don’t know. I feel free, in my heart I just feel good. I needed to talk about it to other people that went through it, to hear their stories though. Some had still born babies, my heart fell. Imagine going through the whole thing, giving birth to the baby that died. I needed to stop being so selfish because there is other women in worse situations but I was so blind sided by mine” I keep speaking about this but to hear their stories, something I will take with me.

The boys love my home and I don’t blame them, it’s a dream motherfucking home. It has everything “imagine the house party here though Chris, think about. This whole thing opens up, like an open home. We should have one” Fresh said, shaking my head “this is a family home so no” Robyn will murder me too, turning around to walk back inside the home. I haven’t spoke to Mijo since that day, he really pissed me off. Saying shit like does Robyn throw plates at me still, was it supposed to be funny. I don’t think me and that nigga will ever be cool anymore, hearing the buzzer go off. Placing the bottle of Champagne down making my way to the secruity cameras, seeing the SUV parked to the side. Pressing the intercom “who is it?” I questioned, whoever this person is cannot get even through the gates, this shit is gated community “I have Monica Fenty in this car” the guy said, pulling a face “what” I said aloud by mistake “I mean ok” letting the security open the gate for them, what are they doing here.

I have my homies here, I didn’t really want this because Robyn is not here either. Pulling open the door seeing my family in law “Majesty is here” I smiled, she jumped at me. Picking her up “Chris Brown” she hugged my neck “it’s uncle Chris” seeing a suitcase, I am concerned “hello Chris” Monica kissed my cheek “hey Chris” Noella walked in, no Rajad or Rorrey which is good. Closing the door “so how come you both here?” Lo froze seeing Monica with a mouth full of food “Hi Rihanna’ mom” glaring at him “nigga, go away” Majesty giggled “go away” she repeated “hello young man” Monica looked at Lo up and down “I hope they paid for the food” I can’t believe the in laws are here “where is my daughter?” she asked “uh, she is in Hawaii” I said, which I am not lying about “she went Hawaii a week ago? Why is she there, are you home alone then? She said she would be back, that liar” Robyn is good at telling stories “well Robyn said to come, I am here because Rorrey has this clothing he is doing, I come to support and my daughter said to stay here” she knows I am home alone, why would she do that.

I didn’t bother to kick my friends out just yet, jogging up the stairs with my phone to my ear. Why wouldn’t Robyn tell me “hello” Robyn said down the phone “why is your mom at the crib?” I said straight up, the phone fell silent “oh” is the only thing she said “I thought she was joking, this was a while ago. I am sorry, I guess my mom can look after you?” Is Robyn being real “right, can you please come home now. I am done being here with no wife, I just feel a little lonely now” I just want her home now “I will come back now, I will get the jet ready. My mom is a pain sorry, I miss your face anyways and thank you so much for the charm. I saw your little interview too, you look so handsome” grinning wide “thank you baby, I will be waiting. I will pick you up from the airport?” I want to see her so much “yes, pick me up. I will text you when I am about to land. I love you” I am just so happy that she is coming home, thank god for Monica coming here now.

#Chrianna #Chrianna FF #Fanfiction

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woozapooza · 5 years

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Poldark: The Verdict

THIS POST IS SO LONG OH MY GOD

I haven’t read the books so idk how much of the stuff I’m praising or criticizing comes from the books.

Really wish Ross hadn’t raped Elizabeth, folks. Really cannot get past that. But other than that, it was a good show. Beautiful visuals, memorable characters. I have seen a lot of criticisms I agreed with and a lot I didn’t.

Uh, rapist tendencies aside, I’m not a big fan of Ross. Obviously I don’t want my protagonist to be perfect, but sometimes it felt like Ross wasn’t even really trying all that hard to improve. His tendency to keep Demelza in the dark is really annoying. He doesn’t tell her when her BROTHERS ARE ON DEATH ROW. He sneaks off to duel Monk Adderley and just before the duel starts he whispers like “forgive me Demelza” or something like that, so you know he knows he’s doing something wrong BUT HE DOES IT ANYWAY. And even in the very last episode he’s sneaking around with Tess and the French guys, leaving Demelza to think he’s lost interest in her. I’ve only seen the show once so I don’t have the best grasp of everything that happened, but based on my limited memory I feel like Ross doesn’t really make an effort to change very often. Even when he comes home after his night with Elizabeth, he seems more concerned with how Demelza is reacting than with the fact that he betrayed her.

DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER. I liked that his indiscretion with Keren Daniel (which, by the way, he never made excuses for and which he regretted because it was morally wrong—take notes, Ross—actually, I might make a separate post about this) came up in the finale. It felt like the show was saying “this guy doesn’t just exist to be friends with Ross and take care of people and display good values, he’s his own character with his own journey.” Sure, it’s a little weird that Caroline would bring it up in the context of her jealousy of Kitty, when he wasn’t being unfaithful with Keren because he wasn’t in a relationship at the time, but hey, sometimes people say things that don’t make sense when they’re in their feelings, and besides, the point (from a plot standpoint, not from Caroline’s POV) was to spur Dwight to confront Ross about acting in ways that hurt people. And what a satisfying confrontation! Sure, it would have been more satisfying in a context in which Dwight wasn’t working with incomplete information and therefore Ross would actually be convinced to change his behavior in the present moment, but “Ask George. He lives with [the consequences of your actions] every day” was a real oh snap moment. Dwight is so much better than Ross. As I’ve said before, why isn’t the show called Enys?

George second best character. WHAT a dude! WIthout reiterating everything I said in this post, the show was definitely unfair to him. He is not as evil compared to Ross as Debbie Horsfield wants us to think. I wish his s5 arc had been a little less all over the place. He’s having delusions of Elizabeth, he’s abused by Doctor Whatsit to the point that he tries to kill himself, he bonds with Dwight, he apparently forgets that he was ever mentally ill (???), he’s working with the Slavery Guys, he can’t condone collusion with the French, he kind of neglects Valentine but then in the finale he’s like VALENTINE IS MY SON NOT YOURS, at the very last minute he has some genuinely positive interactions with Ross…? That’s a lot to process. Well, taken in isolation, his scenes in the finale were SO good. WHEN HE SUDDENLY SHOWS UP AT THE DUEL AND SHOOTS HANSON AND THE FRENCH GUY! WOW! I found it hard to explain why Hanson and Merceron’s complete lack of integrity was such a dealbreaker for him. Unless I’ve forgotten something, that could have been better foreshadowed. But still! I feel like it’s basically the law that if you’re going to such a consistent, long-lasting, not to mention interesting antagonist, by the last season of the show you have to give them at least a little redemption, not because no bad person ever stays bad all their lives (I’m not talking about full redemption anyway) but because it’s just boring to not follow through on the promise of the character showing some decency. Despite what some reviews I’ve read have implied, George was never a one-dimensional villain to me and I would have been really disappointed if his dynamic with Ross ended where it began.

Caroline third best character. It was nice that she and Dwight got to do something new in the final season, but their conflict all felt so forced, both Caroline’s bitterness and Dwight’s impatience. While I was relieved that Caroline’s jealousy didn’t play out as the tired old “oh no my heterosexual partner is paying attention to a person of the opposite sex, there can be no innocuous reason for that” trope, I found it hard to buy that Caroline contrived her jealousy of Kitty because she was afraid to open her heart to another child. That’s an incredibly elaborate excuse not to have sex with Dwight. I guess I can buy it slightly more if I assume that her insecurity wasn’t 100% feigned...but in that case, I still have a hard time buying that Caroline would suddenly be all that distressed about her husband seeing her as vapid and sheltered. Also, I was disappointed that it was implied that Caroline wanted to have more children after Sarah died. It had been refreshing to have a female character in a period drama who was not the maternal type. I know Dwight loves kids but he’s got friends who have kids that he can borrow.

The Ross/Demelza aspect of the first three episodes was super rushed. They had, like, no chemistry for the first two episodes, then in the third episode they have sex AND get married?! Is this really how we want to introduce our main couple?

One thing I respect about this show is that it frequently surprised me with its willingness to have things go irreparably wrong. For example, I thought Francis wouldn’t drown; I thought Geoffrey Charles and Cecily would get married; I thought Morwenna would get custody of John Conan. But none of those things happened. The show can be sappy, but it’s not that soft.

I respect the show trying to deal with mental illness in a way that’s both sensitive and historically plausible, but the results were mixed. You have that wonderful storyline about Caroline not understanding that Dwight has PTSD and Hugh coming along to help him process, and then at the episode either Hugh or Dwight says that while Dwight isn’t fully healed, he’s moving in the right direction...then after that Dwight never shows symptoms again, and the only time I can think of it even being mentioned was when he was trying to reach out to Morwenna. (Side note, I was sad that Morwenna shot down his attempt to relate. I understand that his trauma was not identical to hers, but it would have been nice if later on she had been like “actually, can we talk some things out?” Fanfic idea, anyone?) On the other hand, Dwight’s interest in mental health in season five is a nice bit of continuity—not explicitly linked to his bout with PTSD, but I know from interviews with Luke Norris that the connection was very intentional. In Morwenna’s case, her trauma lasts longer than an episode, which is a step up from Dwight’s case, but letting go of John Conan and becoming ready for another child apparently cures her fear of physical intimacy all at once. Finally, George’s delusions of Elizabeth...give way to amnesia? That was weird, but his s5 storyline allows my main man Dwight to be the voice of justice and compassion.

Apparently unpopular opinion, but I liked the inclusion of the Ned storyline. I liked the concept of Ross coming face-to-face with his own flaws in Ned, even if I feel like he didn’t really use that experience to change much.

Tess was a pretty pointless character. She kind of reminded me of Sarah Bunting from Downton Abbey in that her unpleasant personality is used to make her political opinions look bad. Except at least Sarah was actually sincere in her opinions and not just trying to get in her married boss’s pants. Idk which storyline is more annoying. But I actually liked the part in the finale where Demelza expressed sympathy for Tess. It shows progress from her attitude toward Elizabeth back in the day.

I know it’s in the books but LOVEDAY IS A TERRIBLE NAME WTF DRAKE

Cornwall pretty.

Overall grade: B+. I really wish I could give it an A-, but, well the main character is a rapist but isn’t treated as such. Ugh, let’s not end this post on such a heavy note. DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER DWIGHT BEST CHARACTER

Oh, that reminds me! Anyone want to recommend me any juicy Warlenys fics? :)

#x #Poldark #Anna watches tv #Anna watches Poldark #verdict #rape mention

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ariel-the-rebellious · 7 years

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All About Ariel

Trigger Warnings: Mention of Death

Basic Information

Full Name: Ariel Nerissa Triton

Nickname(s): Red, Guppy, Little Juliet/Juliet (Jim)

Age: 18

Date of Birth: February 19th

Hometown: Swynlake, England

Current Location: Swynlake, England

Ethnicity: White

Nationality: British

Culture: Mermaid

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She / Her

Orientation: Heterosexual

Occupation: None

Magick: Mermaid

Living Arrangements: Lives at home with (most of) her family

Language(s) Spoken: English, a small amount of French

Accent: British

Religion and Beliefs: Mermish

Political Affiliation: Liberal as all hell

Social Issues: Ariel firmly believes that all people should be considered equal. Whether it’s Magicks, Mundus, LGBTQ+, or POC, etc.

Physical Appearance

Face Claim: Katherine McNamara

Complexion: Clear, porcelain skin. She takes good care of it.

Hair Color: Red

Eye Color: Blue

Height: 5′2

Weight: 115 lbs

Build: Slim

Tattoos: None at the moment

Piercings: Basic ear piercings

Scars: A couple random ones on her knees/hands from getting hurt while playing or rough-housing, one on her arm from her trip to Hell, etc.

Common Hairstyle: Usually down in it’s natural waves with a strong side-part and long, swept up bangs. But sometimes she curls/straightens it and/or braids parts/all of it. She plays around with styles when she feels like putting in the effort, but most of the time prefers it down or in a pony.

Clothing Style: Very relaxed. She likes to be comfortable, so she is pretty much always wearing sneakers and jeans with a comfy top. She does accessorize every so often, and she likes shirts with words or quotes on them the most. She gravitates towards dark greens and purples.

Mannerisms: Agile when it counts, but a bit clumsy when she’s distracted. She bites her lip when she gets nervous or embarrassed - or flattered. She bounces up and down on her heels when she gets excited.

Usual Expression: Happy and friendly!

Health

Overall (do they get sick easily?): Mermaids start to get sick after about a day and a half of not being fully submerged in water, which means that technically Ariel does get sick easily. As long as she keeps up with her water submersion, however, Ariel tends to be pretty healthy.

Physical Ailments: None.

Neurological Conditions: Sight ADHD, Depression, Anxiety

Allergies: N/A

Sleeping Habits: Ariel used to have a fairly healthy sleep pattern, but since her trip to Hell it tends to wane in and out of healthy patterns due to her nightmares. She doesn’t get as much sleep as she should.

Grooming Habits: She takes very good care of herself. If she’s dirty, she’s going to shower at the very least, if not take a full on mer-bath. She keeps her hair groomed and her body moisturized and she even uses some of Alana’s skincare products. She doesn’t keep up great with her nails other than trimming them when needed and painting them every so often.

Eating Habits: Ariel is a vegetarian. It was her personal choice after seeing a few documentaries that scarred her when she was younger. She still gets a little horrified when she sees people eating fish or meat and such but for the most part, she does not judge. She just can’t stomach it, personally. Other than that she has a pretty balanced diet.

Exercise Habits: She doesn’t go out of her way to exercise, but swimming comes with the territory of being a mermaid, and she does tend to run out of sheer bursts of energy a lot of the time. (She also likes to climb trees and other athletic things.)

Emotional Stability: Ariel is honestly ruled by her emotions. If she’s feeling strongly one way or the other, it takes her over completely. It’s why she’s so headstrong and stubborn, but also why she’s so passionate and caring.

Sociability: She is extroverted. Very much so. She may claim she likes her alone time for adventuring, but she always ends up missing people and needing to be around them in order to recharge her energy.

Body Temperature: It pretty much comes and goes depending on the weather. She does get cold easily, though.

Addictions: None.

Drug Use: The occasional puff of a joint or bite of an edible.

Alcohol Use: She drinks when the opportunity arises, but has not drunk to excess yet.

Personality

Archetype: The Rebel

Positive Traits: Compassionate, adventurous, confident, passionate

Negative Traits: Stubborn, headstrong, prideful, rebellious

Good Habits: Taking care of her skin

Bad Habits: Biting her bottom lip, picking at her nail-beds or nail polish when she’s upset, not submerging herself in water often enough for a mermaid

Goals/Desires: To eventually move out and travel the world

Weakness: Her family, her friends, being a mermaid, her mental illnesses, Jim

Fears/Phobias: People finding out she’s a mermaid; being poached

Secrets: That she is a mermaid; that she went to a sea witch for a spell

Regrets: Going to a sea witch and buying a spell.

Proud Of: Her choices and vision for life; playing the lead in Romeo and Juliet, stabbing a Gorgon in the eye in Hell to escape

Embarrassed By: Mundus seeing her in her mermaid form; her occasional clumsiness

Attitude: Optimistic, sometimes to a fault - she can be too friendly and expect the best out of everyone, even those who don’t deserve it.

Pet Peeves: People who feel they are superior to others for whatever reason; being negligent or harmful to the environment/those around you

Inner Conflicts: Wanting to stay with her family and make better connections with all of her sisters and wanting to leave Swynlake and travel the world.

Motivation: Everything in Ariel is motivated by passion. It is what drives her every action, big or small.

Hobbies: Swimming, running, dancing, skipping (anything that requires legs basically,) hanging out with friends, and going in search of myths and legends (and adventure!) Also writing lyrics/playing guitar.

Talents/Skills: Ariel naturally has a very good voice and a knack for lyric-writing, but she doesn’t tap into it as much as she does her acting abilities. She is very good at guitar and has a talent for learning how to play music.

Intelligence: Ariel is very wise at times, but has a lot more potential if she can get past her lack of motivation when it comes to basic school subjects.

Driving Style: She’s a little over-confident, but surprisingly not terrible.

Favorites, Likes, and Dislikes

Weather: Sunny Days!

Color: Purple

Music: Mostly “mainstream” alternative music or pop

Movies: Moulin Rouge, Wonder Woman, documentaries, etc

TV Shows: The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, etc

Books: YA Novels, Shakespeare, and anything by Ellen Hopkins

Magazines: Seventeen, Cosmopolitan (though she’s not a magazine sort of person, really.)

Sport: Swimming

Beverage: Water, Raspberry Tea, Chocolate Milk/Hot Cocoa

Food: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup, anything sweet or salty

Animals: All, but especially dogs

Quote: “Though she is but little, she is fierce.”

School Subject: English

Possession: The ring her mother gave her when she was young

Websites: Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Youtube

Favorite Toy or Game: As a child, anything she could play with her sisters, in or out of water, she loved. Group games like tag or hide and seek or truth or dare were just a few of the many games the girls were always playing. As for Ariel’s favorite toy, growing up she always would play with playdoh. She loved making things, and those things were sometimes also messes. Now that she’s older she does like board games or good-old-fashioned races and the like, anything active.

Family

Father: JEFF Triton (FC: Sean Bean)

Mother: Athena Triton nee Oceana (FC: Julianne Moore) [DECEASED]

Father’s Occupation: CEO of Triton Industries

Mother’s Occupation: Homemaker

Siblings: Attina, Andrina, Aquata, Arista, Adella, and Alana

Birth Order: Youngest

Children: None

Other Close Family: Melody Oceana - cousin

Pet: None (wants one sO BAD THOUGH)

Family’s Financial Status: Wealthy

Relationship With Family: Ariel fights easily with both her father and her eldest sister, Attina. She can also have typical sibling spats with some of her other sisters, too. After buying a spell from a sea witch her relationship with her family has become very rough. She is closest with Alana and Adella.

Home Life During Childhood: Ariel’s childhood was pretty great. Before her mother’s death, the Triton family was always spending time together and having fun. Their mother’s death took it’s toll on them for a while, and added strain to some relationships, but they still remained together and very close.

Bedroom Through The Years: Ariel’s bedroom used to be a chaos of interests. Between fairy-tale related decor and action movie posters; a strange collection of magick and mundu-related items - her bedroom always seemed to be in a state of disarray, and the constant mess did not help. Over the years she’s gotten a bit more organized, and recently her bedroom has taken on a more ~adult~ feel, and is very hipster in nature. (Basically a lot of warm colors and minimalist decor.)

Best Memory: When she was really little, her Mom would sing to Ariel and her sisters and it lit up the whole entire room.

Worst Memory: It’s a mash up of watching her mother die over and over in Hell, dying herself in The Hunger Games, and the agonizing devastation she felt when she woke up after the sea witch’s spell. Also up there: finding out her mother died, and finding out Alana almost died.

School

Type of Student: Ariel has a lot of potential, but doesn’t apply herself as much as she should unless she’s actually interested in the current task or subject at hand.

Extra Curricular Activities: Theatre

Best Subject: English

Worst Subject: Science

Popular or Loner: In-Between. She was popular for a hot minute, and now she’s dropped a tad on the chain. But she is very charismatic, and always able to find someone to talk to.

Schooling: Graduated from Swynlake Secondary.

Current Details and Relationships:

Town: Swynlake, England

Home: Triton household, a decent-sized manor where she lives with four of her sisters as well as her father. It is a cozy, two-story home that is never boring, and they have a pool with a secret tunnel that leads into Atlantis Lake for all their mer-needs.

Neighborhood: The Woods (Gated Community)

Car: N/A

Love Life: Currently dating Jim Hawkins, and very in love

Best Friends: Fivel, Deb, and Jim

Other Friends: Jake, Bambi, Kiara, Callie, Marie (ish)

Enemies: None atm

Past Lovers: Dash

Extra

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

MBTI: ESFP

Enneagram: 7w6, The Enthusiast/Entertainer

Temperament: Sanguine

Hogwarts House: Huffledor

Moral Alignment: Chaotic Good

Primary Vice: Pride

Primary Virtue: Kindness

Element: Water

Dream Career: Actress

Dream Life: Married and head over heels in love, traveling the world for a few years, and then eventually settling down to have one or two kids.

Important Events: -When the town was thrust into Ancient Greece, Ariel went on a journey through the Underworld with Jim, where she was forced to face her mother’s death and other horrors. -In February of 2018 after an explosive argument with her father she purchased a spell from a sea witch to bring back their dead mother. What she got instead was a one-night dream that spanned a week and affected her entire family in which their mother had never died in the first place. Once the dream ended, Ariel still had no voice and her mother was always dead still, and this ruined her relationship with quite a few of her sisters. She is still making up for it. -The fire at Prom 2018 scarred her and she is now afraid of fire. -She died in The Hunger Games in August 2018 and that now haunts her as well.

#bdrpedit #bdrphc #hc #a #bits #this was my first time ever making one of these kinds of aesthetics i like it #finally did one of these too #i needed a break from my one-shot #about

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anarchxst · 7 years

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6 BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

I love writing and so, naturally, I love reading. Even during my deepest and darkest moments when I didn’t have the motivation to crack a book, I loved reading. While I was sitting down to write the latest chapter of the book I’ve been working on, I thought about my style and how exactly I got to a place where I started thinking, “Actually, yeah, I want to be an author.”

It went back to a handful of books, dating all the way back to my fifth grade English class. That was the class that I was lucky enough to have a teacher that not only believed in introducing kids to more than the fanciful stories we were so used to. We were given stories based in real life, that weren’t afraid to teach us about the world and the harder parts of being human. Not only that, they all featured female protagonists. Thank you for that Mrs. Kernop.

Since that class, I’ve developed my own taste in novels, most of which are contemporary young adult. I’ve learned so much about myself through these books and I recommend all of them. While I will describe what I got from each of these stories, I won’t be putting any synopsis for them but I will link them to their corresponding GoodReads pages if you like to look them up!

Honorable mentions go to Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle ( Avi ) - Teenage girls could have just as interesting adventures. Assigned gender roles are for losers. The protagonist can be the hero and the villain. Survival is its own story. (read in 2000)

Speak ( Laurie Halse Anderson ) - Being quiet doesn’t make me boring or make my story less important. What people see is hardly ever the truth. There are people who want to hear what I have to say and are willing to wait to hear me say it in whatever way I need to. I am more than what I appear to be. (read in 2004)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ( redacted lol ) - Characters grow up, change, develop. Same with people; they grow up. Not everyone will believe in me but that doesn’t mean my cause isn’t worth fighting for. People with more power than me will always try to keep me down but they can’t shut me up. They can’t destroy an idea. Fighting back is more than fighting; it’s living your life when it’s hard. (read in 2006)

Fangirl ( Rainbow Rowell ) - Fanfiction doesn’t make me a bad writer. Writing in 3rd person isn’t emotionless or “boring”. I’m good but I can always be better. Write out the hard stuff. Happy endings don’t mean that the story ends. There is life after the ending. There is a life waiting for me to work for it. Let yourself experience new things when they are presented. Trauma and mental illness can create broken people but even with missing pieces, (both in spite of them and because of them) you can create beauty. Not everyone will stay. That’s on them, not you. (read in 2015)

Before I Fall ( Lauren Oliver ) - The people on the other side of bullying are still human. Everyone’s story is important. The world around you is just as cruel as it is beautiful. It’s up to you to choose which is more important. First person isn’t always childish. The story inside a person can be just as big as any epic adventure. You are the master of your story. Finish it, even if you’re scared, even if it hurts. (read in 2016)

Every Exquisite Thing ( Matthew Quick ) - Fitting in is never mandatory. There are no right answers or right people. There is you. You can control you. The future is decided by you and nothing is written in stone. Look at yourself from outside your own point of view. Find you. People can be more than people; they can be larger than life experiences that we learn from but they don’t dictate how we live our lives. It’s okay to leave. I’m taking the road that feels right for me. The only person I want to make proud is me. (read in 2017)

#books #ya books #young adult #reading #my ramblings #opinion article

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papas-con-aceite-y-mucha-sal · 8 years

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abri-chan ha respondido a tu publicación: abri-chan: The only problem with Shinji x Kaworu...

It would be very shallow to ascribe his personality faults to his depression. There are depressed people that are not “shits”. The rest about bitches and sluts is just biases against females. Doing what she wants, doesn’t make Asuka a bitch. Sleeping with who she wants, doesn’t make Misato a slut. You can argue there is no such thing as a “slut”, just people wanting to control your freedom. Anyways, those are both great characters. Cannot say the same for Shinji.

Misato doesn't even sleep with other people apart from Kaji as shown in the Ep #19 when Kaji sees her smoking after having sex, and she comments how she only does that after sex so he's the only one who knows this. There's a certain incident with Shinji in Ep#23 and later with EoE but even that (an act which would have had terrible connotations and consequences had been consumated; the only proposition is enough of an issue, I am not trying to excuse it) went nowhere. She could have had sex with Makoto and took advantage of him thanks to his crush on her, as it was something she knew, yet she never did something like that. (Makoto’s very cool dude too.)

And sure, even if she had slept with every adult around Nerv she'd be in her right of doing so. That’s not the point. The point is that she still doesn't adhere to a 'slut' definition if we define that as 'sleeping with many men'. I’m not saying that’s neither good nor bad. What I’m saying is that label is wrong.

Asuka being a 'bitch' (taking the definition as bitch as ‘an annoying/whining woman just for the sake of’) is not a good definition either. When Asuka is ‘yelling’ at others it’s mainly because she’s in a stage she’s either a child nor an adult and then acts like such (and some of those times people know better and don’t feel personally attacked, see for example Shinji and Misato reactions at the beginning of Ep #16), she’s resorting to her main defense mechanism because she feels threatened, or a combination of both (there are also others reason and this is summarizing a lot, of course, but this isn’t an Asuka analysis). And she feels threatened by Shinji, very. Or to be more exact it’s her vision of Shinji what’s threatening her, what’s threatening her position as the best pilot, something she has been working for her entire life. With Rei is the same with the addition Asuka’s projecting herself onto Rei. Asuka as well has been dragged and used by other people her entire life and didn’t mind dying when she was a child as long as it was an order from her mother, just like Rei is a tool for others and didn’t mind dying as long as it was an order from the commander. Misato takes Kaji away from Asuka, and that’s one of the reasons once Misato and Kaji are back together Asuka and Misato’s relationship goes to shit (from Asuka’s part, she either ignores her or gets mad at her without listening to anything). You could go on and on but as I said, this isn’t an Asuka analysis. She still has many good points and her good moments such as when she complimented Shinji in Ep#15 for playing cello, or took both the Children and Misato to a cheap enough place for Misato’s poor wallet, and to a place where Rei could eat with them knowing she’s vegetarian (in Ep#12). Her slash towards characters like Shinji or Rei is more of a defense mechanism than an act purposely done to hurt them. She’s living as she’s learnt. Is her attitude excusable, or even healthy for her? No, it isn’t. But it’s understandable. Calling her 'a bitch' is unnecessary. Kinda misses the point.

Rei being a 'doll', being 'cold' or 'emotionless' isn't true. She's someone who has been one with the HIP since her very birth. It's her reason to exist because it’s for what she was created. People never gave her anything else so she only does what she can, the few she has learnt. Did you see the kind of place was she living in? Yet I don't see you replying to that part, you've blatantly ignored her. Rei’s a very important, strong and good character. Should I assume you are implying Rei is like certain people love to paint her then? A submissive, emotionless robot? A non-character? Even when she ended up getting out of the hands of the person who made her out to be like that in EoE and did her own thing? Even when she refused orders of retreating in Ep#23?

I feel the same with Shinji. That's my point.

For Anno, Misato/Shinji parallels were a very important point of the show. So let’s see.

Misato went mute for two years after 2I, a traumatic event where she lost her father and watched everything being destroyed behold her eyes.

Shinji not only had to suffer the events of the first episodes: getting in a huge machine where he felt all its pain shortly after arriving into a new city, fighting Angels (from what he got flashbacks and other typical symptomatology of PTSD), the change of the environment, reopening old wounds with her father, etc. He later lost first his friends, then Rei, then Asuka broke down, then Misato broke down too, then had probably one of the best times of his life (’Before with my sensei, everyday was a calm day, I did nothing, I just lived’) once he met someone who said he could be loved, that he was worthy... and had to kill that same someone just shortly after. Shinji had to kill a human that felt exactly like him (’he was like me and like Ayanami’). A human dying was something he had tried to avoid since Ep#3 with Toji and Kensuke, in Ep#6 with Rei (he went running to her once he had the opportunity and nearly burned his hands to get her out alive asap), in Ep#10 with Asuka (jumping into the magma with no special protection when even Asuka was having troubles being equipped with it to save her life), in Ep#18 with Toji again (where he claimed he preferred his own death over the risk of harming/killing him), yet he finally killed another person. That was when he finally lost all touch with reality.

He later watched the 3I unfold behold his eyes and entered in the entire world population’s conscience.

I don’t think I need to add much more.

>It would be very shallow to ascribe his personality faults to his depression

But many of them, for not saying the majority of them, ARE a cause of his poor mental health. Again, this is not an excuse, this is an explanation. This is a kid who grow up with depression since he was four, five at most. And then you have PTSD added in the top of the cake. He even has actual phobia towards people according to Schizo/Parano, it’s what’s written in his profile. I’m not good enough at Japanese but it more or less says ‘from the shock of both the death of Yui and the abandonement of his father, Shinji grow extremely introverted and developed an interpersonal phobia/anthrophobia’. You can see this in how Shinji is always seen alone by himself feeling an incredible and bottomless loneliness, in all of those times he's seen with people and yet he prefers to maintain a certain physical distance from them, mentally complains about the noise they make or how alienated he feels (Ep#12), rejects them, or runs away from them (the entire Ep#4, all the times he hides he’s awake to not establish conversations, etc).

>There are depressed people that are not “shits”

First, there are many types of depression, and secondly, everyone gets affected differently because everyone has an entire world inside of them, so they have different internal variables. It IS a mental illness, and because it affects your mind, it makes you do shitty stuff (or do you think Misato making advances towards Shinji in Ep#23 is something she would have done had her been mentally fine at that point?). That much is truth. Any psychologist you ask, or any psychology book you consult, will tell you this.

Were those people living in a both post-apocaliptic world while fearing a new apocalypse, experienced death of a mother at three, abandonement of a father at four, grow up with a distant tutor, were commanded by their father to pilot giant robots, and went through all I’ve already mentioned during the Misato-Shinji parallelism?

And, if Shinji is 'shit', then how 'shit' are the people who have shaped him as the person he is (as Rei points out in the last two episodes, you’re shaped by your bonds with others)? Even the person at charge of him for a decade didn’t seem like he cared enough about him. We only see he made him play cello, but Shinji doesn’t even know things normal kids do at his age: simple things as swimming (Ep#16), how good it is to have a family (he is envious of Asuka, believing she had it, Ep#22) or how the warmth of another human feels (Ep#26). As it was pointed out long ago, everyone around Shinji had their own problems: they all 'carry a wound in the heart and a sickness in the soul’. But many of them knew how messed he was and can be accused of negligence because of how blatantly obvious is the only thing they needed was the pilot, not the person, and thus acted as such. They can be accused of the same when it comes to Rei and Asuka, of course.

Do you see now how tricky all of this can get? Things in Eva are not black or white, and I don’t think the show is written for people to think it is. It’s too complicated to simplify it like that.

I'm not trying to excuse his actions nor I excuse the actions of the others. As I’ve said many times in this post, it’s an explanation. Does Shinji have bad traits? Yes. Is Shinji a good character? Yes. He shows both bad and good traits, and he's well written; he has a solid character arc. He goes under character development (both regression and progression) and under character analysis in a couple of chapters, and in the end reaches a conclusion, a very positive one actually. If there's something the last two episodes teaches you is that you can always get better, and that things can get better as well. Of course, you have to work for it.

To end with, I think there's definitely something worthy in the awful mess that Shinji is when Adam decided after meeting him humanity was worth saving and, few time later, Lilith decided that he was worth enough to become a God (again, EoE).

#abri-chan #sal salada

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sebastianshaw · 3 years

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For new mutuals, on Munday I like to talk about just, like random shit in my life. Today I’m gonna talk about my dad and my parents in general. I’ve sadly come to realize over the years that I’m actually UNUSUAL in having parents who love me, never hurt me, and did more or less everything as they should have in regards to raising me, up to and including acceptance of my sexuality and taking my mental illness seriously, getting treatment for me, and coming at it from a place of “we love her” and not “we want to fix her” Like, I won the lottery in almost every regard here. Another thing I’ve started to learn is. . . .apparently it’s unusual my dad does the dishes and his own laundry and takes the garbage out? Like I’ve been seeing discourse about how the same guys who preach about communism on Twitter aren’t doing any “division of labor” in their own homes, or dudes who brag about “gender-nonconformity” and “challenging toxic masculinity norms” by doing superficial, fun, aesthetic things like nail polish and makeup still aren’t ready to do things like their share of the housework. My dad is the most masculine dude I know and loathes socialism, but it’s a standing rule in our house that if one person cooks and the others partake, the others do cleanup. Most of the time, my mom makes dinner (we fend for ourselves the rest of the day; dad actually makes me breakfast each morning because he’s sweet like that) and dad and I clean up, do the dishes, etc. The rest of division of labor goes more along the lines of either responsibility (who made the mess) or physical ability (who’s strong enough to do it) and my dad does a lot of stuff that doesn’t NEED doing but my mom WANTED him to do, like buying a bunch of pine straw bales, carrying them to the backyard, and spreading them over the garden for her. Under the Georgia sun. I honestly had no idea this was unusual until I started seeing other people talking about how uneven things were in their household, being expected to do chores their brothers weren’t, etc. I have a brother, but he’s not my dad’s son, though my dad did legally adopt him. He’s also ten years older than me, so our chores were more based on, again, physical ability, since he could do a lot more than me and my sister. I don’t think anything was ever divided by gender. My parents certainly never mentioned it, and I can’t recall them ever making me feel bad for being female. My mom actually defines as a feminist too, though she never brought that up to me until I was an adult also defining as one. I don’t ever remember my parents EVER pushing ANY ideology on me, tbh, of any sort. I know I did get the idea that girls were inferior from SOMEWHERE though because when I was around six I told my dad I was “sorry I’m not a boy” and he straight-up said he was glad I was a girl. I think he was fed up with boys from my brother and figured they were all trouble like he was (which is funny because I was also a ton of trouble, just in different ways due to my mental issues) I think if there is a difference between how my family treats gender, I would say that my dad is softer on girls, even girl animals. I think he’d be WAY harder on me and less accommodating of my weaknesses and childish traits if I were a man or male-assigned at birth. Weirdly though, bringing it back to girl animals and boy ones, I’d say he genders them WAY more than he does people, like he emphasizes my male rodents as being “badass” and “tough” and ready to beat up/eat other animals, even much larger ones, which he doesn’t do for the girl ones. I definitely don’t recall him doing THAT with my siblings and I. Also there was never any talk when I was growing up of “when you’re married” and my mom has never bothered me or my sister about grandkids, etc. So, I dunno, I guess this comes off as bragging about how oh so progressive my upbringing was, but it’s more like, wow, I am realizing yet another way I got pretty lucky with my parents

#out of shirt #munday #mun monday

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wylthefluffer · 4 years

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I'm a bit triggered. There's this YouTuber I like to watch who is controversial. He's trans. I won't name him nor will I respond to any comments asking who he is or if he is X person because this is not a call out post.

I like watching his videos because of the scientific accuracy, how he cares about transgender people, and his advocacy. However, some of his videos trigger me because when talking about controversial trans topics that stray away from the gender binary, although he supports non-binary people, he sometimes is too quick to judge some non-binary identifying people online and to laugh at them, sometimes, because they don't make sense to him.

I am a scientific person. I am also very psychologically based in most of my approaches. I tend to keep more towards the impartial area when judging new situations, when there is no clear answer.

I have a few things I want to go over today. Dysphoria and transness, the pronoun argument, and labeling of sexuality by non-binary identifying individuals.

Dysphoria has long been thought to be necessary for being trans. Most binary trans people I see will agree with this. I did as well, until I had an essential piece of new information explained to me by a very gracious person here on Tumblr.

A transgender person is a person who does not identify with their assigned gender at birth. No "dysphoria" is mentioned here.

Now I know that you're thinking. What causes one not to identify with one's assigned gender at birth? Gender dysphoria? Well, that's what we believe. However, what causes one to identify differently is a condition called gender incongruence, which, if you have too many symptoms of gender incongruence/they are too severe one would be considered to instead have gender dysphoria.

Now, a person can have absolutely NO connection to being female, but not feel compelled to transition. Why? Although they feel a disconnect to being female, and were assigned female at birth, this person may be able to live with their female body, because their body itself does not cause them distress. They see their body as, for the most part, matching their true gender, or at least not contradicting it. This gives them not enough reason to transition, and transition might actually upgrade their gender incongruence to gender dysphoria. That would cause them to want to detransition to a body that makes them more comfortable. However, this person, although not feeling compelled to transition, still doesn't feel female. And that's okay.

Would I be alarmed to see a transgender male who didn't transition because they did not feel dysphoric enough about their body? Sure. But this is an uncommon occurrence. It can still happen, and those people should be left alone. We have better things to do then to try to hammer it into their head that because they won't transition they can't identify as a male. Society does that enough already.

Gender incongruence is a valid condition, but it is one that people can live with without medical intervention. It's like having dry skin. It's valid, but you don't need to see a doctor for it. Just get some lotion. You don't need medication. A simple fix for gender incongruence is to live as authentically you as possible.

If someone wants to identify with aquagender or whatever, fine. Leave them be. Does it sound silly? Sure? Does it keep them saner than trying to call themselves a girl? Sure. Leave them alone please.

Pronouns are a way to refer to someone or something without using its name. For English especially it is a necessary thing, to avoid redundancy.

Social dysphoria, believe it or not, is real. All binary trans people know this. How would you feel if someone insisted on calling you a she when you were a he? You would hate it. Especially if you are trying to transition. Then what is wrong with someone asking you to call them they? It hurts them just as much when you refuse to use any other pronoun for them than the binary ones. Non-binary dysphoria is just as real. Dysphoria causes non-binary people depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts too. So any time you refuse to use they/them it is just as bad and just as ridiculous as when you refuse to call a trans man he/him. It's not that hard. Just refer to them like you don't know their gender. You probably don't know their gender anyways because dysphoria for non-binary people varies a lot and not every non-binary person feels like the same gender as every other non-binary person. If they are female and don't get too surgery, fine. That doesn't mean they have nothing to be dysphoric about. There are more things about being female than just a chest that this non-binary person could be deeply upset about. They don't look androgynous enough for you? Get over it.

If a gender incongruent person asks you to use they/them, the same thing goes. They're still living a lie using the wrong pronouns. Get over it.

As for the argument about neo-pronouns, just stop. Most people don't use them. Gender incongruent people seem to use them a lot. That's fine. If it's hard for you to remember them, then let them know, but don't make fun of people because they don't want to be viewed as the same as most non-binary people. They are not the same as most non-binary people. Yes, some pronouns sound dumb even to me, but it's not about me. If you don't wanna deal with it, don't deal with it. At least use they/them pronouns for the person. And people who use neopronouns, if someone uses they/them for you, at least they are showing you enough respect to recognize you are trans. The world isn't ready for you yet. Progress can only move so fast. If you find people willing to use your neopronouns, then great! Hang around them more.

Should someone be thrown in jail just for using the wrong pronouns? Of course not. Knowingly using the wrong pronouns? Debatable. If this person is using the wrong pronouns and they are embarrassing someone by outing them to the whole class, using their transness to mock and bully them, and encouraging other kids to misgender them? Then yes, that person should be fired because at that point it's beyond freedom of speech. It's abuse. Verbal abuse is punishable by law and if they find that teacher or whatever responsible for some kid taking their life or hurting themselves, they can face jail time. It's still abuse. Perpetuating a mental illness and denying someone healing over a simple me change or pronoun is ridiculous and cruel. People suffer because of gender dysphoria, and the longer you refuse to call them their name or their pronouns, the longer you are keeping them trapped in a nightmare which seeks to kill them. Stop it.

If you use the wrong name/pronoun by accident, then yea, it's okay, but be nice when you are corrected and make an effort to change. Correct yourself when you slip up. Religious liberty is no excuse to be abusive. If you are using your religious beliefs to put down other people for being transgender, for having a mental illness, it's terrorism. Plain and simple.

Millions of people with gender dysphoria take their lives because of the illness. Don't make it worse.

And lastly, labels used by non-binary people to describe their personality. Now, most of this is over non-binary people (AFABs in particular) calling themselves lesbians. Now, yes, lesbians are girls who like other girls. But, see, non-binary people don't really have a word they can use to describe being attracted to girls/guys without being made fun of. People already make fun of any sexualities past the main accepted few. Lesbians are protective over their word and identity, as well as a lot of binary trans and binary cis gender people. The reason this word is being used is because non-binary people don't have words to tell people, "I date girls" or "I date guys". There is only gay, and gay only works towards non-binary people. If you exclusively date female or male identifying people then you deserve a word to describe it. So, instead of making fun of seriously non-binary people calling themselves lesbians and saying how much they're trans-trenders, shut up and just say, "You guys deserve your own word."

Thank you, this has been Will, an aro ace dysphoric non-binary trans person.

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