#in the moment it mattered i chose to defend my character over hers

[viridianevergarden]

So it seems that one of the main gripes that antis have about elriel is the way Azriel worded his big question to Rhys. That the way he said it screams entitlement to Elain? I’m going to break this down a little.

"The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it's possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another."

I really don’t think anything is wrong here.

Consider how Azriel is for a moment. He is of a more sophisticated character and he talks that way normally. The sentence is structured poetically, yes? Azriel is of a poetic sort, as we have seen on many occasions.

Azriel is referring entirely to the numerical imbalance that is present between the 3 to 3 ratio because that’s what it is. A numerical imbalance. Thats why Elain is referred to as “the third”. Weren’t Nesta and Feyre referred to as the “two”?

But it’s only wrong that he referred to Elain as the Third? Okay.

He wasn’t specifically referring to the sisters individually. He was referring to them alongside his brothers as a group. Of course she is the Third, because that is what she is. You’d think an English class would teach that.

This doesn’t mean that he sees her as an object.

Its quite the opposite that he sees her as such, given the fact that this man -across 4 books- has risked life and limb for her, spent time with her, gave her his dagger for her own safety that no one else has ever touched, actively sought her out on many occasions, and defended her against Nesta and *Lucien? Come on now. Let’s be real.

*Voicing that she doesn’t even want him in the BC is a defense in her stead.

No one does all that to slip under someone’s dress or get into their pants. Across 2 years mind.

The “given to another” line really isn’t serious just like the aforementioned.

She practically was given to another. She was thrown at Lucien, as per Lucien’s pov, since he’s oh so important. The cauldron shackled her to him as he is to her. It’s merely an observation. No entitlement.

The way Azriel spoke about Lucien regarding the blood duel, fighting him and beating him, etc. People think that Azriel is screaming entitlement by merely stating that he’d beat him? Oh lord. After Rhys and the narration confirmed that it was true? Spending precious page space to make that known?

Not entitlement. Merely stating the obvious, an observation just like the rest. A truth that SJM was trying to convey.

And don’t start with the “He’S a HiGhLoRd’S sOn, He’D bEaT AzRiEl.” Respectfully, silence. Highlord power is passed on by the death of the current highlord. Highlord esc dominance ≠ highlord power. SJM spent page space to make the fact that Az would win known, get over it.

Then they have the matter of “well why didn’t he fight Rhys back and confess his love for Elain then?”

There’s three answers I can give:

This is a BC, he won’t do that until it’s in a book that he actually stars in as a main character, which obviously is the next installment.

Azriel, as a person, feels he should not love her. That he does not deserve her. That he taints her very being. And that she is too good for him and Lucien. So that statement would be completely out of character for him to do so here. This man hates himself so much that he feels he doesn’t have the right or reason to fight for his love for Elain. So he won’t.

Rhysand himself.

The explanation on Rhysand:

Rhys shut him down as soon as he walked in

Taunted and antagonized him

Threw wild assumptions at him

Instigated

Threatened him

And then immediately proceeded to shut him out

He effectively gave no room for Azriel to open up. He didn’t even ask Azriel what was happening or what he felt. It was an immediate attack as soon as he walked into the office.

“Are you out of your mind?”

Being shut down instantly

“What of Mor?”

Antagonized and taunted

“you think you deserve to be her mate?”

Wild assumption

“So you’ll what? Seduce her away from him?”

Instigated + assumption

“Snarl all you want. But if I see you panting after her again, I’ll make you regret it.”

A threat

“Get out.”

And shutting him out

After throwing knives of assumptions at Azriel, trying to bait him with Mor, he threatened him and then kicked him out.

Rhysand is at fault for not creating a safe space for his brother to explain. Azriel merely gave him curt answers in response because that’s all he allowed him to do.

It’s only salt in the wound that we know that Rhys knows of Azriel’s self worth/esteem issues and still treated him this way. But given the time this BC took place, I’m cutting Rhys some slack.

Again, keep in mind that Azriel won’t fight for his love because he feels he has no right or reason to. Not right now.

Could his question about the sisters and the cauldron have been worded better? Sure. I think it was worded well enough though because it explicitly states the disparity that he sees in a logical fashion.

Azriel isn’t entitled, he doesn’t feel entitled.

The irony of it is that some people think he is all the while the man feels as though he doesn’t even deserve to be in any close proximity to Elain. To be around her and to see her light.

People fail to consider the emotional and mental state of Elriel, completely ignoring their words that made it so obvious of what they’re thinking and feeling and wanting all so they can determine what they want them to do instead.

Very ironic indeed.

[sunshine-jesse]

In defense of Andrew Graves: A character arc in one sentence

HEY! I rewrote this essay and fleshed it out a lot. I'm keeping the original here for posterity, but the new version renders this one completely obsolete. Find it here!

I've focused a lot on Ashley in my past writings. She's my favorite character in the story (and depending on how episode 3 pans out, maybe ever) and I'm pretty mortified by how some parts of the fandom have reacted towards her, so I pretty much made it my life's mission to push back against that. From highlighting the ways Andrew mistreats her, to coming up with justifications for her behavior that aren't just being a manipulative bitch, I really wanted to prove that a more favorable picture of her could be painted than most were willing to.

But in doing so, I've left Andrew in the dust.

In highlighting his flaws and the ways he mistreats Ashley, I think I've implied a level of intentionality to his actions that I don't believe he has. Most of his worst actions are spur of the moment, or caused by a fundamental conflict that exists between his desires and his idea of the way things should be. That doesn't excuse them, obviously! But they do reveal interesting things about his character and how it develops over the course of the game. He starts out as a doormat, but eventually settles on either his bitterness or a sense of calmness and acceptance, both over Ashley.

But what exactly causes this change?

There's plenty of reason to believe that he was slowly evolving before the story took place, but within the context of the work itself, I believe there are two points where he can no longer ignore the changes that have happened to this point, both of which are in the first chapter: The killing of the warden and the 302 lady. In the first case, he was forced to do it to protect Ashley in a way he hadn't done before, or depending on how you look at it, since the death of Nina. But the intentionality was the key point here. After this point, he calls Ashley Leyley, which may or may not seem important at this point, but it's something I'll draw attention to later, so keep that in mind.

Next is the killing of the 302 lady, which is the much, much bigger point. We don't learn much about it until later on- as at first he just gives an excuse about the nail gun that doesn't line up with what we see on the map- but during the dream, it's revealed it was a calculated, intentional killing that he did to make sure there was no evidence left behind, and because Ashley (supposedly) would've wanted him to do it anyway. I say supposedly because Ashley herself doesn't seem to ever want Andrew to kill for her past Nina's death, because he only ever kills for her to defend one or both of them. If you want more evidence that violence for violence's sake isn't something she wants, look at this part in the final dream:

A knife isn't what opens the door, despite it being placed on the ground in that very map. While it seems obvious that the knife (violence) would be the key to solving the puzzle, it's put there explicitly to show you that it isn't. It's not what she wants; what she wants is a flower.

So, why is this important? Why am I centering Ashley- again- when this essay is supposed to be about Andrew?

Because I think it's important to point out the discrepancy between what he thinks Ashley wants, and what she really wants. When Ashley starts to grill Andrew over the killing of the 302 lady, he gets mad. Very mad. Ashley sees it as pointless, as him covering his own ass, but he genuinely did it for her sake, because he thought that's what she wanted, and that it'd make her happy. But what makes her happy isn't violence- or any similarly extreme action for that matter- it's attention and validation. Something he's always reluctant to give her, despite the fact that he always chose her over the alternatives. But despite making that choice, it's always empty and meaningless, because in Ashley's mind, he never did it for her sake.

And hoo boy, does he not like it being framed like this.

But is she wrong, though? He WAS the one who chopped up the Warden, and he WAS the one who chose to kill the 302 lady. Violence is his job, it's all he knows. He has to do it to take care of Leyley, right? To protect her? To keep her happy? Then why doesn't he ever acknowledge it? Why does he never admit that he did it for her sake, to keep her happy?

Because he doesn't know what he sees her as.

In his unique dream sequence, he sees two versions of Ashley; the child version of her- Leyley- and the adult version of her- Ashley. And the differences in the ways he interacts with the two of them are stunning. Leyley is an obstinate, annoying child. She's the one he NEEDS to take care of, and he hates that. He hates Leyley for what she did for his childhood. He hates that he needs to provide for her. He has the option of trying to kill her, even, over something as small as a candle!

But in the room with all the murders, the gilded cage, he sees Ashley as an adult. This version of Ashley is stuck in a closet that he himself has to open- and to choose to see. Their interactions are calm and friendly. She teases him a bit, sure, but she's still helpful, and they have fun together. He doesn't need her, and she doesn't need him. He needed Leyley- needed the candle- but here, there are other limbs strewn about for him to take. And, crucially, he doesn't even have the option to kill this Ashley for one of the limbs.

And during the choking scene, he lets her go the moment she acknowledges that he doesn't need her anymore.

What he really wants is Ashley for Ashley's sake. Not for what she can provide him. He doesn't even need her for sleep, he just wants her. But Ashley has trouble acknowledging this, because he's never before shown that WANT. Only a NEED. She keeps trying to find ways to make him need her, because she's never seen what his desire for her is really like. She's only ever seen him desiring someone else, someone other than her. She's only ever seen him as Andy, because she's never truly seen Andrew, only the violence he can inflict on others. Andrew, meanwhile is arguably further along in the realization of their relationship, because he can see and acknowledge both sides of Ashley.

He can see Leyley, the needy, bratty child who always needs his attention, that he needs to provide for. The one he hates and wants to get rid of. The one he kills for to protect. And he can see Ashley, the one who engages in friendly and cute banter with him. Who comforts and shows him physical affection. The one he loves. The one he kills for to make happy.

He just can't choose which one he wants to see. Every outside influence- from his parents, to Julia, to Nina- makes him see her as Leyley. Ashley herself makes him see her as Leyley too, whenever she brings up all the things he did for her, and calls him Andy, his child self, instead of Andrew, his current self. And as long as he sees that child, he feels like one too, and can never give Ashley anything that comes from the heart.

But he really, really wants to see Ashley as an adult. He wants to take pride in her, how much she's grown, and how driven and competent she really is.

But god damn, does that bitch ever make it hard.

But in the end, it's him who has to make the choice how to see her. Ashley can only see what she's shown, but Andrew can choose.

And in the basement scene, he makes that choice.

If Ashley refuses to leave him alone with their parents, that's it. In one of the most critical and important moments of his life, she couldn't give him the space needed to make up his own mind. She couldn't treat him as an adult. She couldn't see him as Andrew. If she does give him that choice, she chooses to acknowledge that Andrew is an adult who can be trusted to make his own decisions, even though she (perhaps foolishly) believes that this choice lines up with her own interests. And frankly it does either way, but in accepting their mom's offer, her chooses to see her as Leyley once and for all. He chooses not to reciprocate what Ashley showed him. He does it because he needs to, not because he wants to. Because it's his duty, not his desire.

But if he WANTS to?

That respect becomes mutual.

In choosing to treat each other like adults, to treat their relationship as one of desire rather than need, Andy starts to die. From that point on, their relationship becomes a lot more friendly, lighthearted, and playful. They ironically start acting more like children, but to quote CS Lewis:

"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence."

He's not ashamed of being playful with Ashley, or showing affection towards her. He's grown up. He finally sees her, and himself, as an adult- although he still doesn't show that in full until much later on (more or that later). But in Decay, he still sees her as a child, and to an extent, probably himself. Let's compare the ways in which he reacts to being called Andy. In Decay, he lashes out at Ashley and gets angry, even threatening her. But in Questionable Burial, he calmly says that Andy is dead and doesn't need Ashley's comfort, but still tries to reassure her that she's still needed. He's not ashamed of or hostile towards their prior dynamic, because he's grown past it. He still recognizes Ashley's need to feel needed, but he still RECOGNIZES it, where he was hostile towards it before.

It's a display of respect towards her feelings.

This interaction doesn't happen in the Sane ending, however. He doesn't play games with her and is just a lot less fun to be around all together. Why is that? Because he still hasn't yet shaken viewing Ashley as Leyley there. He still views her as a burden, as someone who needs taking care of. He's calmly accepted that, too, mind you, but he lacks respect for her because she's still a child, in his mind. But in Questionable?

The vision did more than just make him extremely embarrassed and lay his deepest desires bare. It forced him to recognize Ashley as an adult. When choosing between "Never" and "Never say never," if Never is chosen, the burden of thought is lifted off of him. But if Ashley chooses "Never say never!", he has to reckon with the fact that Ashley is an adult, someone who can consent to those kinds of things. Someone who MIGHT. Someone who has agency, and can make her own decisions. And more importantly… someone who can trust him to make his own.

Whether he desires sex or not is secondary; he's always had those feelings and has always been ashamed of it. But now that the part of him where that shame came from is dead and buried, there's no childish impulse to grow up. There's no attachment to the hate and bitterness he had before. Look at what he worries about when he picks up that she's uncertain or confused about who he is now:

This is the one sentence I was referring to in the title.

It's her feelings.

He wants to be fun to be around. He wants to make Ashley happy. He loves her, and not as a romantic interest or even as a sibling. He loves her independent of all that baggage.

He loves her as a person.

In learning to respect Ashley, our boy has finally grown up. But there's a certain intimacy to being hurt by someone else that Ashley isn't getting in this ending, and now she has to reckon with that. And that's really, really hard to do when you're so used to being hurt.

Especially when you're no longer around someone who wants to kill the part of you that needs nurturing the most.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

IT'S 11:30 PM BUT I AM HAVING THOUGHTS

THOUGHTS ABOUT APOLLO AND ORESTES

I HAVE NOT READ THE ORESTIEA BUT DW I HAVE IT AND I'M GONNA READ IT AFTER THE ILIAD

I MAY HAVE MORE THOUGHTS AFTER THAT WE SHALL SEE

I made my Apollo & Cassandra post a while back so now it's time for Orestes :)

just. ahhhh. how do i begin.

at the beginning i guess.

Orestes is a young child when he's smuggled out of Argos. By his sister to keep him safe when their father is murdered by their mother. He's a young boy exiled from his home because of the actions of a vengeful queen.

Years later, he receives a mission from Apollo - kill his mother to avenge his father. And he does just that.

Apollo was a young god, not even born yet, when he was exiled from the very earth by a vengeful queen. His mother fought and ran to find a place to deliver him and his own sister to safety. In his mother's honor, he goes out of his way to kill those who dare to harm her - Python and Tityus, to name a few.

The parallels get me okay? Even if it's not a deadringer, they are sill there.

Apollo defends his mother while Orestes kills his.

Orestes was ordered to kill his mother while Apollo murdered others for Leto on his own accord.

And what REALLY gets me is their different motivations in this situation - Orestes believes he's avenging his father, the man he never quite knew. Apollo meanwhile wouldn't loose sleep over Agamemnon's death.

Apollo wasn't aiming to avenge Agamemnon. He was avenging Cassandra.

But he couldn't tell Orestes that, now could he? After all, what was a mere slave girl from Troy to Orestes? Especially since he didn't know her at all.

Avenging Cassandra wouldn't be enough to convince Orestes to commit matricide. So Apollo uses Agamemnon's death as incentive for Orestes.

And it works. Apollo's goals are met - Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are killed, and Cassandra's soul can rest easy now in Elysium.

He could cut his losses and leave Orestes to the Furies. He no longer has anything to do with this.

But Apollo stays with Orestes. He helps him rest in Delphi before getting him a headstart to Athens. He defends him in court from the Furies, in front of the jury of Athenians and Athena herself. He puts himself firmly on Orestes's side and uses whatever means necessary to get him off the hook.

And if that means manipulating the city of Athens via their sexist ideologies? It's free real estate. When you're in court, you use whatever you can to help your client.

And Apollo wins. Orestes is free to go, and the curse of the House of Atreus is gone for good.

just. vibrating from this. the similarities between Apollo & Orestes in their youth that diverges in stark ways. How Apollo could have dropped Orestes the moment his own goal was finished, but chose not too - he chose to take it a step farther and get rid of that curse for good. So Orestes and his family could live in peace.

When I first heard about the Oresteia, and what Apollo says to free Orestes, I had a hard time reconciling it. Apollo just didn't give off those sexist vibes to me (as a matter of facts, very few gods do - after all, they appear how they want when they want. gender is meaningless to gods.).

But I did some digging. Some thinking. And really, Apollo is quite in-character during the trial - he's in Lawyer Mode. He manipulates the system to his advantage as well as the Athenian citizens with their misogynistic beliefs.

Because think about it. Apollo uses the argument, in brief terms, that a mother has no claim on the child because they are only for making babies. This gets half of the Athenian jury to immediately side with Orestes.

Is this a bullshit argument? Absolutely. But sometimes a bullshit argument gets your client out of trouble and that's the job of a lawyer - to help their client.

For a closing statement, I also want to say that I don't think Apollo himself believes that sexist opinion. After all, Leto was the one running around the world to find a safe place to deliver him and Artemis - Zeus did very little to help.

It was his mom who did all the work, and Apollo is very clearly a mama's boy.

Plus, 99.9% of the people Apollo hangs out with are women. Leto, Artemis, the Muses, Athena, Hecate, Aphrodite, ect ect

There's no way he actually buys that argument. He just used it to gaslight the very-sexist Athenians into voting in Orestes's favor because godsdammit that curse needs to go!

thank you for coming to my TEDTalk. I have feelings. goodnight now. happy new year. i shall post a snippet of a storyboard idea for my mythology series tomorrow that features apollo & orestes because I HAVE FEELINGS.

[arcadiabaytornado]

Who are your top 10 misunderstood characters from Life is Strange and Telltale’s The Walking Dead and why?

Kate (LIS) - Kate isn't misunderstood the same way Rachel and Chloe are, but I do think she's often portrayed as much more feeble then she actually is. For example: Kate stands for herself plenty in game. If you tell her to wait for more proof, she'll send Max this text. "Max. Sorry to have bothered you by asking for your advice. I guess I shouldn't do anything but let people enjoy my video all over the world." She'll also bluntly confront Max if you don't intervene when David's in her face. Don't get me wrong, Kate IS an utter sweetheart, but she's not a doormat either. She has a bit of a bite on multiple occasions.

Max (LIS) - Max is similar to Kate for me. I think she's often portrayed as much more feebly then she is. Some people treat her like she's a ...well...doe but she has a very strong bite to her! I mean, she's back with Chloe for 48 hours at most and she pulls a gun on Frank and maybe pulls the trigger. Also, if you don't side with Chloe for a choice, Max is very sassy about Chloe's objections. Chloe will say something like: "If you only you told David it was your joint," and Max will go "Oh, sorry, I was to busy saving your life. 🙄" Max is a very strong character, so I'm shocked that a lot of people see her as being super delicate. She's the furthest thing from a doormat.

More Undercut

Rachel (LIS) - Rachel deserves better. I can't even really get into this fully on this post because I want to keep my reasons shortish (well...short for me) but for a very quick and not detailed recap of my thoughts. 1. We don't even know if she cheated on Chloe, so, no, she's not the devil for sleeping with Frank. 2. Rachel is manipulative to a certain degree, but there's no indicator that she was an evil serpent women who only spoke in lies and manipulation. 3. There's plenty of in game evidence that she cared about Chloe. We can argue all day about whether she was ever in love with Chloe or not, but there's more than enough to back up that she at least cared for her.

Chloe - I'm going to make short points with her like I did with Rachel because this another topic I could make a full rant about. 1. She is mean, but some people really exaggerate the extent of it. 2. She's not evil for being mad that her best friend who ghosted her figured out how to work a phone when Kate called. 3. She's not a bitch for not liking her Step Father who is abusive to her. 4. She's not terrible for having a tense relationship with her Mother, who made it very clear that David is more than important than her. 5. Women are allowed to be flawed.

Ryan (LIS TC) - I will defend Ryan until the day I die. I know it isn't his best moment if he doesn't believe Alex at the end...but of course he doesn't believe Alex in all the endings?? Jed is his FATHER. A father he's close with and has been told his entire life is a hero. Then Alex (rightfully) bursts in and pops his bubble, and in the moment, he doesn't handle that well unless there's a lot of confirmation that his loving father is actually a hidden monster. And yes, I know that Steph backs up Alex no matter what...but Jed isn't her Dad, and she isn't as connected to the town, or it's stories, as deeply as Ryan is. She loses way less if Alex is telling the truth, while Alex's (rightful) honesty destroys what's left of Ryan's family after he already lost his Mother.

Violet (TWDG) - I've always thought it was weird how upset people got when Vi betrayed Clem in the cells. First off...Clem betrayed her first?? Vi spent the entire game defending Clem when no one else would. When AJ killed Marlon she stood in front of them with a cleaver to protect them from the other kids. When everyone voted to kick Clem and AJ out, she was the one shouting from the rooftops that it was unfair. When Clem and AJ came back, she was the one who insured that they could stay. And yet, when Clem saw her in danger, she chose not to save her. It's not shocking that she feels so upset, but it did shock me how fans reacted to it, and I'm someone who saved and romanced Louis! I mean...how unfair is a betrayal really if they stab you with the same knife you stuck in their back?

Louis (TWDG) - It's crazy how much of Ryan's paragraph I could apply to Louis. Of course he gets mad when Clem's murder toddler, who has never been taught restraint, puts a bullet in his best friends head. Marlon had given up. The gun was no longer in his hands. Clem had it handled peacefully, and then the situation ended with a bullet. I totally understand why he was mad, and I even understand why he wanted them to leave and not come back. He was mourning, and his pain is made even worse if you had Clem appeal to him because he helped disarm Marlon and that led to his death. So, in other words, I think his rage in episode 2 is very understandable. Plus, he moves on from his anger and apologizes for kicking them out in...Episode 2. The same episode the anger starts.

Sarah (TWDG) - People complain about her being a burden so much, but honestly that's Carlos's fault. She never really got a chance to be a survivor in the apocalypse because she was sheltered non-stop, and there's multiple moments that imply that she could have made it if things were different. I don't FULLY blame Carlos for sheltering her since I understand wanting your child to grow up in peace instead of surrounded by horror...but he really screwed her over. I think people should be way harsher on him than her. Sarah was doing her best. Carlos was not.

Ben (TWDG) - In the same manner as Sarah, people often complain that he's a burden. And...he kinda is, but also he's also literally sixteen years old. He makes bad choices because he's naive, not because he's malicious. Also, I know he indirectly got Duck and Katjaa killed, but the bandits were threatening to kill EVERYONE in the group if he didn't slip medicine to them. What Ben did got Katjaa and Duck killed, but who's to say the bandits wouldn't have kept their word and killed the entire group if he had refused. He was put in a no win situation, and honestly I just so much pity for him. I'm glad my Lee looks out for him.

Jane (TWDG) - Jane is...weird because she is a bad person but also some people act like she never cared about Clem and had entirely selfish motivations. She cared about Clem enough to teach her how to survive, which is something she never bothered to do with Sarah, even though she needed a mentor much more than Clem. And for as much as I disagree with her of philosophy of "never trust anyone, people are bad," I do think she was genuinely trying to help and giving what she thought was good advice. She also comes back and saves the group during the shoot out for Clem's sake, which proves that her motivations aren't entirely selfish...just mostly.

[bestworstcase]

Hello and good day. I hope that this isn't too much to ask, but what are your thoughts about Adam? It has always been my belief that Adam and Yang are mirrors to each other. Well, Adam has a lot of things to connect with Team RWBY, moreso with Yang, I think. Just wanted to hear your thoughts about Adam, I guess. Thank you.

i rattle him around in my brain from time to time. a lunar eclipse. he and yang are absolutely character foils; power vs strength, cruelty vs compassion, spite vs love, revenge vs justice. he refuses to control his temper, yang is defined by her meticulous control over her anger. moonslice and burn are almost the exact same semblance, even. a dark mirror.

he’s also doing… something… thematically salient to summer rose. which is what i’m picking over in that linked post. i’m not sure what it is yet but the setup is pretty evident.

tbh i think the narrative is far more sympathetic to him than most of the fandom cares to admit. the triumph and vindication burns bright when adam realizes he’s lost in V5 and runs away—that’s the moment where the narrative framing is like “fuck yeah, the bastard got what he deserved.” but when he dies? there’s just exhaustion, pain, and relief that yang and blake survived. it’s not played as a proud or happy moment. it just sucks so much that they had to go through this ordeal and it’s pitiable that he chose to waste his life on this. blake breaks down crying and all she and yang can do for a moment is cling to each other.

like. -> “there’s no cause to celebrate/another soul consumed by hate and spite/another destroyed life/there’s no pleasure, there’s no joy/it’s just the story of a boy who lost his way/into shadows strayed/he’ll see the light of day/nevermore”

he chose over and over and over again to be cruel, letting his anger rule him. chose to be vindictive, chose to pursue vengeance over justice. chose to hurt people. every time he was offered an out, he refused to take it and brutally punished the people who gave him second chances. sienna, blake, yang. in the end, he left blake and yang with no other choice but to kill him before he killed them. but… the narrative still mourns the person he could have been, if he’d made better choices, if the world had been kinder to him.

there is no question that blake and yang made the right call. they did everything they possibly could to avoid killing him, and they had every right to defend themselves when he refused to stop.

BUT,

it’s sad that they were forced to do that. it still weighs on blake’s conscience as a terrible ordeal and a choice she never wants to have to make again. because killing another person—no matter the circumstances—is horribly traumatizing. and that’s why the narrative refuses to frame his death as a triumphant moment. (the same thing happens with jacques’ murder in V8: it’s sudden and shocking and unjust and there is zero satisfaction in watching him die. and it’s terribly unfair to weiss, who specifically chose not to leave him to die. rwby is a story where every life matters and every death is sad.)

great character. the final battle between him and blake/yang is done really well and one of my favorite fights in the show mostly bc it brings the foiling between him and yang into really sharp focus. “what does she even see in you?” is such a raw fucking line because the things blake sees in yang are exactly the things she once saw in adam: he’s so consumed by his obsession his vengeance his spiteful rage, he’s strayed so far from the person he was that he can’t even recognize her when she’s staring him in the face.

i do think that when adam was 16-17 at the very start of his character short, he was genuinely a lot like yang. angrier and more aggressive, because his mentor encouraged him to be that way, but i think his ideals were true and his commitment to the cause of his people was genuine.

he was only a kid the first time he killed someone—sixteen, seventeen, about the right age to be enrolling in one of the huntsmen academies. and i truly do not think he meant to kill that man; he saw a dangerous person running towards his already-wounded leader with a gun and reacted. and this?

this is a lot.

no matter the circumstances, killing another person is traumatizing. after this happens, adam slowly straightens up and sheathes his weapon, then just stands there frozen, staring at the body, until the other assailants make noise and he startles. his face falls when ghira says “that wasn’t necessary.” he’s slow to turn around, but he does, and he listens quietly to what ghira has to say to him. he didn’t mean to. he can’t be older than seventeen. he is in shock—he doesn’t know how to react, how to feel, and like any teenager would, he looks to trusted adults for guidance. (much like yang looks to ironwood and qrow after she hurts someone by mistake.) ghira starts to scold him (not ideal), but sienna cuts him off and calls adam a hero, and then everybody starts to fucking cheer; “that was amazing!!”

this moment, while adam was reeling and unsure, this is when adam desperately needed to hear from an adult in the middle. ghira is right that using lethal force wasn’t necessary; sienna is also right that adam likely saved ghira’s life by taking action. what adam really needed to hear was “you were right to take action, but this man was not such a grave threat that he needed to die. why did you react the way you did?”—not to be scolded or lionized, but to be treated like a teenager who made a bad choice for a good reason and given support and understanding so that next time, he would know what to do better.

instead he got swamped with praise and the came away from this experience having learned that Killing Humans is Cool and Awesome and Heroic, Actually.

(i have a secondary thought here that the white fang’s fatal weakness—under both ghira and sienna—is treating children like adults. if adam had been an adult when this happened, he wouldn’t have been so dependent on his mentor and his leader to guide his reaction and an adult would be better equipped to hold “that wasn’t necessary” and “he saved your life” as non-contradictory ideas. similarly, ghira and kali respecting blake’s decision to stay with the now expressly militant white fang when they left sounds great until you remember that she was twelve years old at the time and then they didn’t contact her in any way for the next five years. it is… probably not a coincidence that adam’s splinter group skews young.

not that teens can’t be good activists but good activism does require pragmatism and emotional maturity and an understanding of nuance, and if you throw a teenager into a high-stress organization where they’re involved in often-violent direct action and give them zero guidance beyond “here’s how to fight!” because they’re assumed to have adult-level maturity and critical reasoning, then… yeah, you’re going to end up with an extremism problem. the kids are not going to just magically know the difference between tactical violence and violent revenge.)

anyway, i really like his character short. i think the narrative is very sympathetic to the boy he used to be and the thread of sienna inadvertently enabling and reinforcing his violent tendencies is interesting. my sense is that in the beginning she sort of used adam to score a point against ghira in their clash of opinions over the direction of the white fang, and later made a habit of being overly indulgent with him and turning a blind eye to his excessive violence—like.

during the fight in the SDC building, sienna rips through the AKs just as ruthlessly as he does, but once the human security personnel arrive, her tactics immediately change. she uses her whip to snag a man’s gun and yank it out of his hands, flicks bullets away, disarms, trips, disarms, trips, disarms, trips. the only time she uses the bladed dart, it’s to disable her opponent’s weapon. meanwhile adam is hacking and slashing behind her. she stops him when he moves to kill an man who’s disarmed and on the ground. faced with living opponents, sienna holds back and fights strictly to disarm. adam is not like that, and she knows it and presumably doesn’t approve—she doesn’t kill anyone herself, and intervenes to stop him from killing—but it’s also clear that there were never like. Consequences. she never took him to task for crossing these lines. as his leader she had a responsibility to do so, but she kept letting it slide until it was too late.

(tbh i think the biggest disappointment i feel regarding her death is well never find out why she cut adam so much slack. did she want to believe he was better than that? had she known him for so long that her memories of what he was like as a teenager blinded her to the adult he was becoming? was it that she found him too useful or realized he was too popular to chastise, finding herself in the same trap she once sprung on ghira? did she, like blake, convince herself it was just “accidents” or “getting carried away” and ignore the warning signs that it was a deliberate pattern? was she like the albains, fully aware that he was dangerous and unstable but confident that she could control him? there’s so many possible reasons she might have had and i think it’s unfortunate that her motives and her side of the relationship didn’t get explored at all.)

also this is stupid and doesn’t matter really but he’s not a fucking bull 😭 those are goat horns. he’s a goat. A GOAT!!

[lunamond]

I want to preface this with the disclaimer that I really like Rheanyra. This is not meant as a way to bash her character or minimise the way she, as a woman in Westeros, has been harmed and discriminated against.

However, I have a lot of trouble with how Rheanyra, especially in relation to Alicent, has been discussed in the fandom, for that purpose I will analyse young Rheanyra and focus on her personal flaws (sth that I consider essential to good characterisation).

There is a big trend for audiences to latch onto a favourite character and perceive the entire story through that lens. Everything that benefits this singular character is good everything that inconveniences them is bad. (This is of course is not an issue exclusive to hotd)

As side note: I don’t think this is necessary a problematic way to engage with media, as long as you're capable of recognising that other people will engage differently nor prescribe moral value to real life people based on who they chose to root for.

However, once you start analysing the show critically this method starts becoming very flawed. Alicent as a character especially suffers a lot in these interpretations.

(This does also go in the other direction as well, with people twisting the story in way to bash Rheanyra in favour of Alicent)

It is baffling to me at times, looking at the distorted way some people engage with young Alicent and Rheanyra, and this weird need to portray Alicent as villanous or scheming from the very beginning.

(While I personally love Alicent as character young and grown-up, I'm aware that she, especially as an adult, doesn’t appeal to everybody, which is why I focus for this on young Alicent)

So, let's actually look at the first 3 Episodes and analyse Alicent and Rheanyra's relationship.

Episode 1: Alicent and Rheanyra are totally in love best friends. Rheanyra is the more impulsive one who doesn't always like the duties that come with her status as princess, while Alicent is the more anxious one who cares a lot about her and Rheanyra's responsibilities.

This is ultimately the last time Alicent and Rheanyra were on good terms, without anything standing between them. So both their perception of each other will always be coloured by this prior relationship and the intimate understanding they had of each other when they were still 14 years old.

Episode 2: Alicent has been ordered to keep her inappropriate meetings with the king a secret, Rheanyra is starting to feel the pressure of being the heir. At the end, the betrothal is announced, which ultimately leads to the break up of their prior relationship.

Episode 3: Their relationship has been in shambles for almost 3 years at this point. (Aegon's 2nd name day + 9 months pregnancy + whatever length of time passed between Ep2, the wedding and the start of the pregnancy)

Alicent repeatedly makes overtures to Rheanyra in an attempt to repair their relationship, which Rheanyra continuously shots down (sth that presumably has happened multiple times over the last years).

It also bears mention that even in moments when Rheanyra is not present Alicent still defends Rheanyra's claim to the throne. She does this both in private, as well as publicly.

This is one of those situations that perfectly demonstrate Rheanyra's character flaws.

While this is a very difficult situation to navigate from Rheanyra's position, her former girlfriend, who has now become her stepmother has given birth to a son who puts her own position into question.

She also is slowly growing up and becoming increasingly aware of the reality of what the expected role of a young noble women means in her society.

This is a lot of stress for a teenage girl to deal with, and you know what, I get it.

As a teenager, I personally have been quite unpleasant to be around in much less stressful situations.

However, as far as her treatment of Alicent goes, this is where a lot of my sympathy ends, because no matter what your personal opinion on adult Alicent and her actions might be, THIS Alicent has done none of these.

Alicent is a childbride, who has been martially raped, and put through teenage pregnancy (twice at this point!).

By cutting her off for this, Rheanyra is essentially punishing the victim of her father’s crime.

It is pretty clear that she redirects the hurt and betrayal she feels onto Alicent, because ultimately in the context that both of them grew up Alicent is the easier party to blame.

Rheanyra is definitely not on great terms with Viserys either, however she is still willing to engage with him.

So, yes, Rheanyra is isolated and feels lonely. She tells Viserys that:

"Nobody is here for me"

But she is actually wrong.

Alicent is there for her.

Alicent repeatedly tries to connect with her. She supports Rheanyra, she does so when they are with lady Redwyne, she pushes back against Otto's attempts to push Aegon as heir, she talks with Viserys ensuring that Rheanyra will have the free choice for her future consort.

It is especially ironic, when this last act becomes part of the reason Rheanyra and Viserys reconcile at the end of the episode, while Alicent remains estranged.

It is also quite interesting, how Rheanyra refers to Aegon as Alicent Hightower's son, essentially distancing herself from both of them. Further illustrating the way in which she is completely unwilling to engage with either of them.

Despite this little bit of agency afforded to Rheanyra, she is still expected to take a husband and bear children. This is of course, especially traumatic for her considering her mother's fate.

However, every single girl born to a noble family in Westeros lives under these same unfair conditions, including Alicent.

Rheanyra and Alicent actually do have quite a lot of parallels, both being young girls who feel alone and isolated at court, both their mothers dead and both having complicated relationships with their fathers.

And while it is not enough to free her from these restraints this misogynistic society placed on her, Rheanyra occupies a very privileged position.

She is royalty, a literal princess who has the distinct advantage of being named heir to the throne and future ruler of the the 7 kingdoms.

(Viserys did do a pisspoor job of actually preparing and supporting her for this role, though)

The most glaring embodiment of Rheanyra's privilege however is Syrax.

She has a literal flying weapon of mass destruction at her beck and call.

A privilege no other non-Targaryen noble women has. (Except for Laena)

So, yes, Rheanyra is still subject to misogyny, but Syrax provides her with a certain level of security no one else can claim, because if it is ever necessary she will always be able to relie on a show of force via dragon (which we see demonstrated in ep2).

All of this reveals the inherent tragedy that is at the core of the narrative.

Alicent and Rheanyra are both condemned to the same fate. They both are forced into marriage/s and the role of motherhood, they are robbed of their girlhood, lost their mothers and were subject to their father's whims, and ultimately in history both will be relegated to the role of mother and wife to much more important men.

Rheanyra struggled and fought against unequal traditions to hold the highest position of power anybody (men or woman) could hold, but still she falls victim to the patriarchy.

Alicent who does her duty, plays by the system and rises to the highest position acceptable for a woman to hold, being the mother to a male heir, will still ultimately be torn down by the patriarchy.

This is the only fate any woman can expect in the patriachical system that exists in Westeros, no matter how pious or rebellious she was.

But the most tragic part in all of this is the fact that, despite their shared plight Rheanyra and Alicent's relationship had to be sacrificed for the sake of this senseless struggle instead of allowing them the comfort of each other.

[ayaz--ates]

I'LL MISS YOU FOR ALL THE DAYS:

Same as part one. I'm sorry I did this to you, my man. You are and will always be one of my most beloved characters. ♥ Date: March 16th, 2024. Warnings: Drug use, overdose, implied prostitution, character death, sad times, both Kate and Ayaz having a mental breakdown.

‘The place in Wood Green we had to shake down last week. He’s there.’ ‘You’re sure?’ ‘I wouldn’t have said anything otherwise.’

“Imagine being this much of a fucking disappointment…”

As he restarted the engine of his Aston Martin—cautious about idling this long anywhere in Haringey lest he end up on bricks—the man muttered away angrily to himself. Tossing his phone into the front passenger seat in frustration, Ayaz quickly pulled out into the sparse, late-evening traffic.

It was like babysitting a grown fucking adult.

In fact, that was precisely what it was.

Rumours had been circling around Haringey in the weeks since Valentine’s Day—unfortunately, he spent more than enough time there these days to have picked up on it—and he’d heard all about Berat’s fight with Kerem over Nevra. Speaking of fucking disappointments. The apparent year-long relationship was something he’d bring up with her another time, but her ex-fiancé had evidently made his feelings on the matter known. Even if a conversation with Giordana regarding their date had set his mind at ease about Berat’s mental state, Ayaz was still concerned.

In the blink of an eye, that man could and would spiral…

The few Rutherfords he trusted with the task asked why he cared enough to have people keeping an eye out for a Turk at all, let alone reporting in when they thought he might’ve been gearing up for his next fix. A waste of manpower, someone had the gall to suggest. Ayaz must have missed the part where he’d asked for their opinion on how he chose to conduct business in his borough.

His thumb tapped impatiently against his steering wheel as he hit a red light.

How the fuck was Berat still sinking this low?

How could he put Nevra through this if she really meant that much to him?

When Ayaz had beat the shit out of him the first time—punch after punch to a face that ended up so mangled it was almost unrecognisable—it’d been for Ceren. Partly for himself, too, he supposed. The man had been so fucking blasted on heroin and whatever else, he hadn’t even managed to keep it together long enough to make it to her funeral. Hadn’t even said goodbye. And the truth was, as soft a spot as he would always have for Berat, Ayaz would never be able to forgive him for that. Not when he knew the waste of space was his cousin’s whole world.

This was for her, too, he assured himself.

Not for himself.

Not for the memories he still clung to of looking out for him when he was a tragic kid trying to find his way in a new country. Not because he’d once seen him as a little brother, and that kind of bond never really went away completely no matter how much bad blood was spilled between sides. Because it’d never really been Berat that’d turned on him or his family. Ayaz recalled vividly a moment after they’d been cast from Haringey when he’d dared come back to visit his cousins, and whilst everyone else circled like predators, ready to be the ones who got to claim an Ateş, Berat had been the only one to defend him. It’d ended up violent, but Berat had stayed with him.

No doubt he’d paid for that. Maybe Ayaz would pay for this one day, too.

Getting to the run down club had taken a lot less time than he’d been expecting, Allah'a şükür. Maybe he’d be able to make it inside before he even had chance to get a needle.

Ayaz was going to drag him the fuck out of there and give him the hiding of his life.

If being with Nevra was what he wanted, if a relationship with Leyla was what he wanted, he was going to stop fucking up, because they deserved better.

The car had barely stopped before he was in the street.

It truly was an awful area to find oneself; a shit stain on the borough in its entirety, which was saying something when Haringey was exactly that to London. There were scantily clad women gathered around the doorway, cocaine at their noses, drinks in their hands, a sway to the hips that said come inside. There was shattered glass. Boarded up windows. Even the sign overheard was missing a letter. It looked exactly the type of place where you could slip into the basement and shoot up.

They didn’t even try to hide it.

When the security guard outside caught sight of Ayaz, he looked petrified.

“Berat Yalaz, is he here?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, he went insi—”

Ayaz didn’t give him the courtesy of finishing because it was all the confirmation he needed. The Rutherford weaved through the Saturday night crowd, ignoring people who recognised him, ignoring the people heckling him, and focusing solely on the staircase across the room that he knew took anybody who wanted it right into the pits of hell.

The man guarding the top of the stairs had tried to stop him until Ayaz had put a gun in his face.

He’d been less confrontational after that.

“It’s almost like you ignored our little talk entirely, Deniz. So are you deaf or fucking stupid, because I very specifically remember telling you not—”

—to sell to Berat Yalaz.

The women were so pale and grey, one could’ve been fooled into thinking they were translucent. They were skin and bones and sunken in eyes and gaunt faces with shadows that made them look twenty years older than he was sure they were. The room smelt of damp and piss and reminded him a bit of the tube but without a coherent crowd, and if it hadn’t been for Berat, he would have been quite literally anywhere else. These people deserved to be subservient when they lived like animals and his disdain was radiating.

“You need to leave right now, Ateş. You are not welcome here.”

“I don’t remember asking for permission.”

There were two men passed out against a wall, but neither were the one he was looking for.

Someone was getting their dick sucked. Another ghostly woman cried in the corner.

They’d been so sure he was here, and yet…

There was a commotion coming from behind one of the curtains that sectioned off the room into semi-private areas for those who’d pay more. Checking them had been his next priority, but now that his attention had been drawn to the sound of muffled crying and something rustling just ahead, he knew where he was going to start.

“Ayaz,” Deniz continued, angry now as he limped after the Rutherford lieutenant. “No!”

The man dared grab for the shoulder of his jacket with his grubby fucking hands and absolute fucking audacity. The action was timed perfectly with Ayaz reaching out for the dank curtain and tossing it aside, and even though Deniz had tried to yank him back, the old man’s frailty betrayed him. It might’ve taken a moment for Ayaz to register precisely what he was looking at, but it would’ve taken much longer to be removed from the situation before he could.

And that was unfortunate for everybody in the room.

The rustling was coming from a comically large, cloudy sheet of plastic.

The crying was coming from the girls attempting to use it to roll up a lifeless body.

And for a moment, he felt himself falter.

“We didn’t know, Ateş. It was a bad batch, or maybe it was laced with fentanyl or—”

The words were wasted when all of a sudden everything seemed to go very quiet. Deniz might’ve been attempting to explain himself to avoid meeting a similar fate, and yet all Ayaz could hear were the whimpers of the women who seemed to think themselves to blame as opposed to the piece of shit behind him. An unfocused gaze dropped down to Berat’s face; eyes opened but empty, vomit very obviously starting to dry around his face and neck and at his shirt and…

“Look, maybe Kerem will be okay with this after everything that happened…”

Whilst he might not have heard the excuses, Ayaz had sure fucking heard that.

What?

Until that fleeting moment, it’d been his intention to drag Deniz out into the streets of Haringey and make an example of him like he fucking deserved. A reminder that when he said something, demanded it, he expected people to listen. But, as if he no longer possessed control of his body at all, the very same gun he’d used to scare the guard just upstairs unloaded two piercingly loud shots right into Deniz’s terrified fucking face without so much as a hint of what was to come.

Let’s see how much he’d have to say after that, huh?

And he was shaking now as the body hit the floor. Not like the women who had retreated in fear that they might be next, but enough that he’d almost lost the weapon in his hand.

Almost stumbled into the wall beside him.

Ayaz had expected to come here and scream obscenities at him. Tell him how much of a waste it was that he’d lived whilst Ceren had died and how he wished every day that’d been different. Maybe throw a few punches to bring him back to reality, and maybe a few because he wanted to, and perhaps, in a worst case scenario, get him back to Tottenham so he could sober up before he could do any of those things…but this?

Suddenly, he felt ill.

“Is he dead?”

It seemed stupid to ask when he hadn’t moved an inch since he’d gotten there. No breathing, no blinking, no choking…

“We tried—we tried to help him but—”

“Why didn’t anybody call for help?”

“Sir, we’re not allowed to call for help.”

Ayaz reached a hand up to his mouth. It’d been out of exasperation, shock, and yet he found himself using it to stifle a sob he hadn’t even known was building. As if it was the first step in a chain reaction, his vision went blurry with tears, and he dropped to a crouching position beside his old friend as if it might once again afford him the ability to breathe.

When he reached out to feel for a pulse, he already knew it was in vain, but what if they were wrong? What if they’d assumed the worse in haste, and…

“I’m sorry.”

The woman didn’t dare reach out to him, but the pain behind her eyes was so sincere when she muttered the words, he couldn’t help but wonder how many times she’d been in a situation like this before tonight.

Berat was dead.

Berat was dead, and he decidedly couldn’t fucking breathe.

‘Look after him once I’m gone, won’t you? We’ve never been away from each other before, and I think it’s going to hurt him…’

Ceren’s words echoed in his head, mocking his abject failure, and he’d never been horrified to recall any part of her until that moment.

How little would she think of him now?

When his cousin had pleaded with him to keep an eye out for Berat in spite of the fact they’d chosen different sides, she’d meant because she was headed to Porto Velho with her Rutherford boyfriend. It’d all seemed less serious, less important. And then she was gone, and suddenly a mild concern sounded more like a dying wish. If only she’d known how much he’d end up hurting, maybe she wouldn’t have asked something so monumental…

Ayaz pinched at the bridge of his nose, damp from tears.

Took a deep breath as his eyes once more focused on Berat.

The realisation he’d never speak with him again weighed heavy.

That he’d likely never see him again, more so.

As he pulled out his phone to call one of people, his voice was so thick the first few words of his statement had been lost entirely:

“I need a couple of cars here now. Deniz is dead. I want these girls out of here.”

“Is…what’s going on? Are you good? Did you find Berat?”

“Just send the fucking cars, Greg.”

[ireneksstuff]

Rant below

I'm sorry the fuck did WE do???

Like I think this whole thing started mainly with crows being mad ab the fucking eyeball lore rp, and some of them literally overstepping tubbos boundaries, being borderline ableist, and then accusing him of spreading homophobic rhetoric (and I'm not just referring to that ONE person, that post had like 15 reblogs with people agreeing with them and a lot more likes)

And when we rightfully called them out, they all doubled down until their OWN streamer called them out (bc tubbo addressing it did nothing)

And then sunny happened. Sunny had been expecting good things from phil and tallulah and chayanne bc tubbo spoke very highly of them. And even if it wasn't for tallulah s distrust, which I can write a thesis about tbh(since I think it's unfair to expect sunny to be ok with people disliking her for where she was from) Phil's language was insensitive towards a very traumatized kid that he had not build a stable relationship with. That's a fact. He didn't talk to empanada like that, so why did he towards sunny?

Yes, he did not mean to do that. But the Tubblings used it as an opportunity to have an angst moment. And crows fucking LOST IT. Like no we do not hate Phil guys.We love that old man. We can still make angsty theories with his interactions with sunny.

ALSO, when it was PHILS turn to take lore srsl, he acted the same way he did always due to not realising the gravity of tubbos' death. And that is not a bad thing. But when the Tubblings, instead of getting upset ab him not participating seriously in the lore,we chose to add it into the story, crows were all over it with meta reasons for why we shouldn't do that.

Like do you want serious lore or not? Pick one

I'm not here to pick a fight. Many tubblings have also gone to crows blogs and have sent hate and death threats which are NOT acceptable no matter what.

I'm just trying to point out that the pure hypocrisy that some crows have shown has made tubblings be fed up with this bs. Cause we expect the hate now.

Again we love phil. I was a crow first and i know thats the same for many of us.

However, EVERY time that he interacts with tubbo or when bolas are mentioned, I just feel the exhaustion of preparing for the disaster that my feed will be, due to like 3 crows starting shit, and then tubblings defending themselves.

I'm not kidding. Every tubbling was ready for war on twt when they did the prank, and we were relieved that at least we had the doozers with, so we wouldn't face this shit again on our own.

I am tired of this shit. I love hanging around in Phil's chat when he's playing qsmp. But when I read chat messages like these, I'm just angry? Disappointed that this is still happening? Like you can claim that we are toxic all you want, but so far, every time our communities have been at each others throats its been the crows picking the fights(and no making angsty hc ab the possible perception of a characters behavior does not count, it's normal fandom behavior)

Even while writing this, I had to check my language like 10 times to make sure I didn't piss people off for no reason.

Whether you like it or not, the toxicity didn't start with us

[starlight-shades]

Called Home to the Depths of the Forest Ch 2

• summary – Ghost, retired from the military, finds a pair of orphaned werewolf pups. He calls the only werewolf he knows for help. Soap and Ghost become (not so) reluctant dads.

• rating – M

• wordcount – 3.3k

• warnings – references to Ghost's backstory, mentions of previous character deaths

• This is my first fanfic, so please let me know if there's anything I forgot to tag. Feedback is welcome and encouraged

Read on Ao3

Chapter 1 Chapter 3

There was some sort of feeling in his chest that Simon struggled to describe. He and Johnny sat on the bench he had on his porch as Ailsa and Duncan explored the area around his cabin. 

 After their bath, it became evident that they had to relieve themselves when Duncan pissed all over himself in the tub. After cleaning him off again, Simon and Johnny took them outside since they were in no state to be using his bathroom. 

They were just spending time in the sun now, getting some much needed fresh air.

 “Why won’t they shift back?” he asked, his voice low. 

 “Probably feel safer like this. They’ve got a way to defend themselves if they need it where they don’t in their human shape. I suspect it’s all instinct for wee ones like this after what they went through,” Johnny explained.

   Outwardly, they seemed fine enough, Ailsa chasing her brother in a friendly game of tag, weaving through the rocks and bushes around them, but Simon knew, perhaps better than most, that these sorts of things left lasting scars, even if no one else could see them. They still startled at every unexpected noise, no matter how small.

 “What are we going to do, Johnny?” He sounded lost even to his own ears.

 Johnny let out an exhausted breath. He still hadn’t had a chance to get some sleep. 

 “Fuck if I know, Si…” 

 “I had hoped you would,” Simon laughed mirthlessly. “That’s why I called you.”

 Johnny chuckled, dragging his hands down his face. “Unfortunately, I ken shit-all about kids. There’s not really a possibility for them in my pack, so I haven’t had to think about it.” 

 “The fuck does that mean?”

 “Oh, uh…” Johnny looked a bit sheepish. “It’s just the three of us, me, ’n Price, n’ Gaz. And none of us can get pregnant as far as I know so…”

 “No kids,” Simon finished for him. 

 “Yeah no kids.”

 Silence fell between them. It was uncomfortable in a way that had not happened in their relationship before. To be fair, Simon had mostly been a reluctant participant, but Johnny had somehow managed to keep any potential awkwardness at bay. Now that they were getting more personal than he had ever anticipated, Simon found himself lost for words. 

 “I mean, could you take them?”

 He shot Johnny a wildly incredulous look, coughing as he choked on his own spit.

 “Hear me out! Hear me out!” he started, hands up to placate Simon. “They’ve already gotten attached to you, and you seem to have done alright so far…”

 Dragging his gaze away from Johnny, Simon stared out at Ailsa and Duncan as he caught his breath. 

 They had moved on from their earlier romping and had begun investigating one of his dormant garden beds. Ailsa looked up at him and they just stared at each other for a moment. Her brother chose that moment to trot over to them with a stick in his mouth. He proceeded to stop in front of Simon, his eyes darting up to look at his face then moving away again. 

 A soft smile on his face, Simon gently reached out to take the stick, not quite sure what Duncan wanted from him. His smile faded to a perplexed look when Duncan backed away from him, taking the stick out of reach before he could grab it.

 “Si, look,” Johnny said gently, so he did. 

 On the very tip of the stick was a ladybird. A little red jewel crawling about without a care in the world. 

 “Oh…” he breathed. “That’s lovely, Duncan, thank you.” 

 Apparently, he just wanted to show them the bug as he turned and bounced his way back to his sister, tail wagging. 

 The two men lapsed back into silence as they watched the children together. Simon clasped his hands together.

 He could get used to this. It wasn’t anything like the life he had imagined for himself; Simon had quickly let go of any imaginings he had of being a father when he was still a child himself. But in this quiet moment, with the sun streaming through the trees, and a gentle breeze passing through, with the pups playing together in the dirt, and Johnny by his side, Simon found that he was content. 

 His life had been bloody and dangerous for so long. He had been broken beyond repair and put back together to become a new creature several times over. Could he do it again? This time not through violence, but through a more radical act. Could he choose to take in Ailsa and Duncan in all their innocence? His hands, stained in every way imaginable, would be the ones to guide them through life if he decided to do this. Was he even capable?

 Images from another life flashed through his mind. Laughter from another child, abruptly silenced. Warm smiles and family photos and the happy ending that didn’t last nearly long enough. The smell of copper, oppressive in the air. 

 Was he truly a different man now? Was it enough? 

 He looked at Johnny.

 Maybe he wasn’t enough on his own, but if he had a partner in all this…

 “Okay.”

 Johnny startled, looking back at Simon. 

 “What?”

 “I’ll take them… if you help me.” He had to chew through his ingrained reluctance to ask for assistance. 

 Johnny’s whole expression softened. “Of course I’ll help you Si. Anything you need.”

 “I—I need you to be in this with me, Johnny. I can’t do it by myself.”

 He absolutely melted at that, reaching out to place his hand over Simon’s, still clasped tightly together. 

 “Okay,” he whispered. “You and me.”

 His eyes were so impossibly blue. Simon could get lost in them if he let himself. He could feel the warmth from Johnny seeping into his hands, feeling like it was life creeping back into his soul. 

 The moment was broken by the loud call of a crow. It startled the pups who immediately bolted to Simon. 

 Johnny burst into laughter at the look on his face as he was suddenly swarmed by a combined 45 kilograms of werewolf pup moving at speed. 

 The rest of the day passed in a blur after he had finally voiced his decision to look after Ailsa and Duncan. He and Johnny discussed logistics while the pups wrestled in front of the fireplace that they had lit to chase away the chill of an early spring evening. They would all live together, in Simon’s little cabin, at least for a little while. Johnny would move in with them. At least as long as it took for the pups to get comfortable with them as their guardians and shift.

 “We can reevaluate then,” Johnny proclaimed with a grunt of affirmation from Simon. 

 They lapsed back into a comfortable silence as they stood in the kitchen, preparing dinner for the four of them. Simon bit back a smile as he watched Johnny with his own knife and cutting board that he had brought from the place he lived with the rest of his pack. The pups had needed an afternoon nap and he ran back for supplies. Now they had enough plates and silverware and glasses for all of them. Simon wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

 He had also brought some of his own things, and had fully dressed in his own clothes upon his return. Simon really didn’t want to examine his feelings about that.

 “I’ll need to go into town again tomorrow,” he announced, abruptly changing the subject. It had been weighing on him.

 “Okay. I’ll stay and watch them?” Johnny asked, a little unsure what Simon wanted from him. 

 He nodded. “I don’t have enough to keep up with four people. And they’ll need things of their own.”

 Johnny gave him that cocksure smile he had grown familiar with. “Of course.”

 Simon’s brow furrowed as he thought out loud. “And we should probably let them know what’s going on. I don’t want them to feel like I’m leaving them here and not coming back.”

 “Oh Si,” Johnny murmured. 

 There was far too much of something in the way he looked at him. 

 Turning abruptly, Simon turned the stove on. They lapsed into silence. Taking a chance, he stole a quick glance at Johnny, and the way he moved around the kitchen with ease made him realize that he had no need to feel awkward. Johnny had let it go. He wasn’t going to push him. Simon felt a weight lift from his shoulders that he hadn’t noticed was there. 

 “What’s a wolf’s favorite time of the year?”

 Confused, he looked up at Johnny only to find him smirking like he had a secret.

 “What are you on about?”

 “The howl-o-days.” 

 Simon’s blank face was not enough to keep the shit-eating grin off Johnny’s face. 

 “Two goldfish are in a tank.”

 It was Johnny’s turn to look confused. Maybe it was his deadpan delivery, but it was not immediately obvious he was telling a joke of his own.

 Simon continued, unbothered. “One turns to the other and says ‘You know how to drive this thing?”

 Johnny’s grin returned.

 With a small smile of his own, Simon said “Little army humor.”

 “Very little.”

 They finished cooking in that comfortable silence, plating up four servings and setting two of them at the table while setting the other two on the floor where Ailsa and Duncan could reach. The sound of the ceramic hitting the hardwood was enough to have the two of them come running, without the need for Simon or Johnny to call them.

 Simon sat perched on a stool he had had tucked away somewhere while Johnny sat on his only chair at the table. They sat opposite one another, but where they could still see where the two pups were happily munching away at their supper. 

 “Ailsa, Duncan,” Simon started, making his voice as soft as he could. He set his fork down and made eye contact with the both of them. They stopped eating. “Tomorrow, I’m going into town for supplies. You will stay here with Johnny. He’ll be looking after you with me from now on, alright?”

 Duncan darted a look at Johnny and quickly dropped his gaze back to his plate, but not going back to his food. Ailsa stared at Simon and cocked her head.

 “Can you nod so we know you understand?”  Johnny asked gently.

 Slowly Ailsa nodded her head a few times. Duncan gave one that was almost imperceptible. 

 “Is that okay, Duncan? That Johnny will watch you tomorrow?” Simon asked him directly. Something was bothering the boy, and he wasn’t sure how to get to the root of it.

 The pup gave another nod, still not looking at either of them. 

 “Is something else worrying you?”

 A quick shake of his head. Simon glanced at Ailsa as she shifted towards her brother, nosing at his face. She licked at his muzzle and nudged him with her paw. 

 “It’s okay if you’re sad,” Johnny told them. “You’re safe here, and Simon and I will do our best to take care of you, but we know we can’t replace your mum and dad.”

 Simon slipped off his stool to sit on the floor with them, only hesitating a moment before gathering Duncan into his lap. The little wolf sunk into his arms, whining softly. He imagined he would be crying if he was in his human shape.

 “It’s going to be alright,” he murmured into his fur, stroking him softly on the back of his head.

 Ailsa started whining as well, pushing into Simon’s lap alongside her brother. He didn’t exactly have enough room and had to shift a bit before he wrapped his arms around both of them, holding them as solidly as he could. 

 Echoes of his own grief flashed through his mind before he pushed them away. He had dealt with it. It was time to dedicate his energy elsewhere. 

 Simon startled when he felt the heat of Johnny’s arms around him. Wordlessly, he gathered him into the embrace as well. They were together, the four of them, and they’d get through it… somehow…

 Dinner was a subdued event after that. Ailsa and Duncan weren’t up for much after the reminder of their parents’ deaths, eventually falling asleep in the combined warmth of their bodies. 

 Simon prepared to take the exhausted pups down the hall to his bedroom, accidentally waking them as he moved to get up from the floor. He wasn't sure how to hold both of them comfortably in his arms. Luckily, he was rescued.

 “Och little one,” Johnny cooed softly, scooping Ailsa into his arms.

 Rising with Duncan, he padded down the hallway on soft feet, Johnny behind him. It was far too domestic, and yet some fragile part of him fluttered. Could he grow used to this?

 Maybe he actually wanted to…

 He pushed into the bedroom, the bed still made with military precision. There was a single window with the curtains drawn, letting in the light from the moon. His rather spartan furnishings had never been an issue before when it was just him, but he found that they looked inadequate now. 

 With one hand, he pulled back the comforter and settled Duncan in the depression where his body would normally settle, leaving enough room for Johnny to slide in beside him, tucking Ailsa next to her brother. They almost immediately began crying again until Simon settled into the bed with them. It took him a minute before he began stroking down their backs, hoping that this was what they needed. 

 Their fur was thick between his fingers. Not as coarse as he expected. After their bath, he could see that Ailsa had the typically grey-wolf coloring. Her fur was a warm grey on her back, fading to a soft tan, almost white in some spots. She blinked up at him sleepily. Duncan was darker, the grey of his darker spots was almost charcoal. His underbelly was a sandy brown. As Simon stroked through his fur, some strands of red glinted subtly in the light.

 “I’ll, uh, be out in the living room…” Johnny whispered to him, with a thumb hooked over his shoulder. There was a soft, knowing smirk on his face that Simon decided not to interrogate in front of the little ones.

 On his way out, Johnny flicked off the big light, leaving only the moon to illuminate the room. A cry from Ailsa had Simon turning on his bedside lamp, casting a warm glow through the space.

 He was a different man than the one who used to be a child. Simon felt so far removed from his youth. It was like he had been born when he clawed his way from the depths like a Lazarus risen from his own Hell. How could he have any idea what a child would find comforting? 

 But this? Their pain? Their grief? This was something he understood. He wished they didn’t know what the blood of their parents looked like, but they did. And their parents were gone. It was just him and Johnny. 

 Flashes of the brittle fear he saw in their mother’s eyes haunted him. Ghost had been the reason for fear like that before. He was just as much a monster as the hunters he had killed. 

 Duncan nosed his way closer into Simon’s side, startling him from the dark turn of his thoughts. Big brown eyes framed by the most delicate-looking lashes gazed up at him. The boy gave him a soft yip, as if expecting something. 

 “I don’t understand…” he whispered, all his concerns about his capabilities as a guardian racing back to the forefront of his mind from the shallow spot they had sunk to.

 Duncan just flopped further on top of him, now laying half of his body across his lap as Simon leaned back against the headboard. Ailsa once again came to his rescue, nabbing the dog-eared copy of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” from the table at his bedside. With new, baby-tooth shaped indents, she plopped it into his lap and settled down, mirroring her brother on his other side. 

 Smiling softly, he rubbed her ears in a silent thanks.

   He began reading, starting at the beginning rather than the spot where he had left off. Simon had reread it enough times that he could probably recite certain passages from memory. 

 The low cadence of his narration was enough to begin to lull both the pups to sleep. 

 When he was sure that the woes of Victor Frankenstein and sent them off to the warm embrace of dreams, Simon dog-eared the page he was on and set to extracting himself. Before long, his movements had woken them up and set them crying again. 

 Johnny ducked his head into the door at the sound, but chuckled at the scene before him. “Don’t think you’ll be sleeping anywhere else, Si.”

 “Oh piss off,” he retorted before remembering the young ears. Shit. He was going to have to get better about that.

 “Sweet dreams,” he sang, leaving them once again. 

 When they saw he was settling into bed for the night as well, Duncan and Ailsa quickly went back to sleep. Exhausted, he joined them.

A howl woke him. It resonated deep in his bones, leaving him shaken and reaching for the gun he kept in his bedside drawer. 

 Ghost quickly cleared the room, finding no threat, but before he could put the pistol away, Johnny burst into the room. 

 “Put that away!” he snapped, moving to the crying pup in the bed. 

 Simon wiped a hand down his face, flicking on the safety and returning the firearm to it’s spot in the drawer. He turned to investigate the writhing mass of distressed puppies.

 Johnny was softly cooing at them, stroking Duncan whom he held in his lap.

 “Oh it’s alright, darling. You’re going to be okay.”

 When he realized he has Simon’s attention as well, he crawled out of Johnny’s lap and into his own, pushing past his sister who was whining softly as well. Already wrapping his arms around him and pulling him close, his mind caught up. 

 “Did you have a nightmare, love?” he whispered, pulling away only enough to look him in the face. 

 He refused to put distance between them, chasing after him as he nodded. Simon held him close again, moving up and out of the bed to pace along the bed, gently bouncing him the way he used to do with Joseph.

Glancing back at the bed, he noticed Johnny had gotten under the covers, crawling in to curl around Ailsa as she watched them, her expression worried.

 “I’m going to go out into the living room. Get some sleep,” he murmured to them. As he stepped out of the bedroom, he heard Ailsa’s soft whine and Johnny’s quick reassurance. 

 Duncan still hadn’t settled, so he continued, walking back and forth along the length of the living room. 

 Evidence of Johnny’s presence was everywhere, from the blanket strewn along the couch where he had been sleeping, to the duffel bag in the corner, to the leather-bound sketchbook on the side table. 

 “It’s going to be alright,” Simon spoke quietly into the fur on Duncan’s head. His ears twitched, brushing the velvet-soft fur against his lips. 

 Another cry, quieter this time, was his response. 

 It took about another forty minutes before Duncan fell back asleep in Simon’s arms. They had eventually made it onto the sofa, but he carefully stood up, returning to the bedroom. His mind was utterly blank beyond the need to get back to sleep, so it didn’t faze him when he returned to find Ailsa and a shifted Johnny curled up together in his bed. Simon just pushed Johnny further over, and crawled in with Duncan. 

 His last thought before he fell into a dreamless sleep was that he ought to get a bigger bed. 

[writingsofwesteros]

Biblical Verse

AN: Hi, here is a sneak peak that I hope you all enjoy - I know my writing sucks at the moment. Thank you to all who helped with the world building, please continue ;)

Soft criticism is welcome but i might cry if its harsh ;)

I did want to do more detail so it could be different.

The mother character is quite mysterious and may not even be a 'good' influence on Michael....which makes me think of a certain character...oopsie

“25 years ago, God disappeared. His angels held man responsible and declared war on humanity. The Archangel Gabriel led this war of extermination, hoping to rid the world of humans and claim dominion over it. Some higher angels refused to take sides, but the lower angels joined Gabriel. These lesser spirits lacked bodies, so their first line of attack was to steal ours. But Michael, the greatest of all Archangels, chose to fight for man. With his help, the survivors struck back and built strongholds to defend themselves. Soon, word spread of a baby Michael had saved, a child who would grow up to be mankind’s savior. This Chosen One would be known by the markings on his body. Finally, Gabriel and his army retreated, and we were left with the realization that not only are angels real…they are our most hated enemies.”

******************

Chapter One 2025

Michael stared ahead to the dim lights of the city below; his expression as ever was blank and the ever vibrant violet eyes that unnerved many were piercing still. The chatter of the lower classes hummed to him even at the great height he perched at whilst the cold, winter breeze moved in. The larger, cotton curtains were no barrier as they fluttered around his larger frame. Still, the archangel showed no sign of caring for such coldness as his memories of the past engulfed him. Bowing his head, Michael stared at his slender fingers; so unlike his real form but the quarter of a century inside this body brought him comfort now. Still, he could not help but shiver at the unnaturalness of it all. He had to remember that he was not one of them; no matter how with ease he could slide into their existence. Baelon was unfortunately right about such things not that Michael would ever admit to that.

“You are thinking too much.” Michael hummed in agreement as the soft, always wanted voice entered his mind. His mother was never too far, the angel thought to himself as he finally moved. “Mother….” Michael greeted aloud; that stone face of his softening if only for a mere second. “I did not know you had arrived.” A raised eyebrow was his only answer and it was enough for him to bow his head once more. The familiar scent of her brought Michael some comfort as his mother began to step forward; her hand as ever reaching out to his. Usually, the angel was adverse to touch; but never from his mother. Her free hand slowly moved into those bright, silky locks of his. They were usually tied back like the soldier he was but in his home; his place of rest - Michael could be free, especially in the presence of his mother.

“What has got you so worried?” His mother continued as she brought him against her chest in an embrace Michael always longed for, not that he would ever admit to such a thing. The soldier inside him was engraved; his mask forever in place. Her familiar comfort had the angel burrowing into her neck; the scent of his mother allowing his eyes to rest. The soldier inside him was engraved; his mask forever in place. “I fear Gabriel is building up strength. I feel a change in the air.” Any words the angel was going to speak were stopped by an added presence he felt. Easily, Michael’s protective nature that was near legendary kicked in as those big, bright eyes of his flashed to the opening door. “Michael…calm yourself…” His mother’s voice whispered as her delicate, ringed hand settled on his chest. The thin, royal purple of her dress flowed as she turned to face the door.

[anticomedygarden]

this is a character study of sirius black. this is taken directly from my main blog, but it's honestly written more like a fic so here you go

also i did a lily and snape one as well

-

so, first, we must agree: walburga hated sirius and vice versa. to walburga, sirius was a muggle lover and blood traitor. he was the son she couldn't control. to sirius, walburga was the mother he never wanted, and she certainly wasn't the mother he could make love him (even though she was his mother and therefore supposed to love him). so this makes death eaters, voldemort, and the rest of his backwards family the people she chose over him.

it doesn't matter how old one is, how terrible one's parents are, or how undeserving one thinks they are, rejection (read: hatred) from a parent hurts. it's traumatizing. it's awful and it impacts every aspect of a person's life. it affects their relationships with other people, it pits them against the rest of their family, and it makes everything that parent likes over them feel gross and evil.

at this point in his life (the hogwarts express), sirius has already figured out his family is evil and doesn't ever want to be like them. he can't imagine anyone ever choosing this life (his life).

enter snape. sirius knows nothing of his home life. snape knows nothing of his. all they know is that their own homes suck and that hogwarts is a potential permanent escape.

for sirius, hogwarts is friends. it's people who care about him, and not just his usefulness to the family. they care about him as a person, and none more so than the blood traitor and the half blood werewolf.

but then there's snape. who is in slytherin. who makes friends with the blacks and malfoys. who somehow gains their favor. the boy who sirius sees as lily's half blood friend with no reason to hate the muggle borns, is somehow becoming what his parents wanted him to be.

it's little things at first. a stinging jinx here, a color changing hex there. maybe some mundane little pranks. then, as snape reciprocates and becomes more ingratiated within slytherin, and thereby the blacks, it grows. it's no longer a small feeling of annoyance. now it's becoming hatred. it's becoming jealousy.

because why should his mother prefer this slimy, annoying little arse over him? what does snape have that sirius doesn't? why should snape want sirius' family, when sirius' family is one of the worst in the world? beyond that, why is snape so eager to join the group that's hurting people? hurting people snape grew up with? hurting lily? what does snape have against remus, the best, kindest person sirius knows? at this point, sirius can't find fault in his actions against snape when everything snape does is so clearly to gain favor with the people ruining sirius' life as well as his friends' lives.

i don't think sirius bullied snape because he thought snape was the weird kid or because it was easy or any of the typical reasons we here in anti bullying seminars in grade school. to me, sirius saw snape as everything he wasn't, but everything his mother wanted him to be. to sirius, snape was the death eaters. he was voldemort's youth campaign, he was what was manipulating his little brother, and he was everything his family believed in. this absolutely doesn't excuse bullying someone, but, as i've said before, snape gave as good as he got. (not to mention, snape went after remus, and he lashed out at other people that weren't even involved, like lily, harry, neville, hermione, ron, several other young kids, etc. that's also inexcusable.)

as for james, he would have done anything for his friends, even if that meant morally compromising himself to make sirius forget about his horrible mother. (which is also a problem - james' actions are less defendable than sirius', but at least he realized what he was doing was wrong. again, not excusing it, at all. i stand behind lily and her "arrogant toerag" comment in that moment, but not snape. never snape)

in conclusion, bullying is bad in any form, but reciprocity can be just as bad as instigation, and as i've said before, good characters are ambiguous, but in order to be ambiguous, they have to be morally grey. fucking no one is perfect.

[chamomile-g-tea]

i feel like i need to address the gt ms situation once more.

I was the only person responsible for any of this. If anyone has anger or disappointment about the situation it should be directed at me, not her. most recently I made the mistake of lashing out and making a public post out of a personal selfish meltdown in response to her post simply explaining the situation and damage i had done from her side. And that’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what went wrong with everything else, in a friendship I alone turned toxic for her with my own shortsightedness, selfishness and personal flaws, exploiting her creation. She deserved absolutely none of this.

I haven’t known how to go about addressing any of this situation because, if i’m honest, i lack the maturity and the tools to handle it with the amount of carefulness it deserved, but since I’ve become aware of the hate she’s received I feel it’s extremely important that I emphasize again none of this was her fault. She did her best to deal with a person who couldn’t see her boundaries and crossed them repeatedly, and she was right to do everything she did to attempt to preserve herself, her space, and her creation. I regret that I didn’t emphasize this to you all earlier from my side. I know there’s nothing I can do to reconcile this massive damage. I’m so sorry.

[faelapis]

there seems to be a lot of people talking past each other in wwdits fandom right now. some seem to think the reason fans are upset is because nandor did a bad thing, and that they're just too stupid to realize its supposed to be a bad thing he has to learn from.

given my own history of defending steven universe when the fandom is upset about characters doing bad things, you'd think i would side with the people defending the show, but... no? not this time.

there's a pretty big difference between "characters doing something bad" and "other characters (namely, marwa) only being treated as props in that arc rather than getting character arcs, agency or focus of their own."

now. some who know me from SU may protest that i defended SU despite how, for many, it felt like jasper in SU future was used as a prop for steven's development - even being brutally murdered so that steven could angst about it. isn't that the same thing?

and i totally get that argument. but i think this is a great teaching moment to talk about the difference between what "seems" like similar instances of characters getting screwed over for another's development.

because i don't actually think that's what happened with jasper. at least, not to the same extent. i think the scenes between steven and jasper serves them both and gives them what they "need", not what they "want": brutal awakenings that how they've perceived themselves, others and the world is wrong.

steven wants to help others. he wants to see himself as a good, helpful person. someone who is heroic and guides others to the correct path in life. he wants, in essence, to be a "good" diamond, even if he doesn't realize that's what he's trying to be.

in his interactions with jasper, he is confronted with that reality - when she sees him as a diamond, he's forced to realize that that's the logical end point of his desires: trying to be the perfect hero who controls, guides and leads others. this is then reinforced in the next episode, where he's terrified of seeing a version of himself in white diamond. it also shows that he can straight up do bad things, not being the perfect helper boy he thinks he needs to be.

for jasper, she is given what she "wants" temporarily - a brutal, overpowering diamond who dominates her and so earns her loyalty through violence and might.

but then, after her symbolic rebirth, that is taken away. that might seem like a bad thing for her, but that's what she really needs - being confronted with the fact that she can't rely on a diamond to give her life meaning. he can abandon her, he is not beholden to being her worship object. she can't chase that fantasy anymore. so in the last episode, she has to let steven go and seek help at little homeworld.

would i want jasper to have more focus? sure. but she was brought back from the dead for a reason. she was given a symbolic second chance to start her life fresh, and chose to go to little homeworld. steven didn't tell her to do that, he just told her to find something better to do with her life. and that's what she's trying to do.

its not a perfect ending for jasper, no. i would've liked to see more pathos and an onscreen moment of healing, but like... its clearly not just about stevens arc. if it was, why revive jasper at all? steven would've still felt like a bad person if she was dead-dead, arguably even moreso. no, she's revived because she was symbolically dead long before that became literal - sitting alone in her empty, tomb-like cave without ever daring to move forward. its about her being confronted with having to live without a diamond. starting her life over. trying to make the best of it.

in short, even if you can criticize SU for its treatment of jasper, i think there is a real effort to give her something she "needs" independent of stevens arc. jaspers been chasing her past all her life, now she's forced to look towards the future.

looping back to marwa - her "want vs need" doesn't matter at all. because it can't. she's not herself, she is a prop manipulated by nandor into being whatever the story demands. even if nandor learns from it, even if he realizes what he did was bad, its very possible marwa will get nothing out of that.

the reason i think so is because the ending of freddie frames itself like marwa being "happy" now. like both guillermo and nandor "letting go" of freddie/marwa and letting them be "happy" together. her total lack of agency is lampshaded as a bad thing earlier in the episode, but ultimately, both main characters come to the conclusion that as hard as it is for them, they need to let them go, to live their bliss as copies of the same white dude.

which is kind of fucked up, if you ask me!

its not marwa living her bliss. even if you argue it "fits" her, that someone curious and scholarly would like to travel the world, ending up with someone intelligent who appreciates art and history... its not really her. its her being in the sunken place, a passenger to a totally new personality thats overtaken her body.

yes, they might fix it in the finale. yes, i'll gladly eat my words on this. but right now, it really, really looks like the narrative frames this as a happy, or at the very least bittersweet, ending for marwa. sure, she may not be herself, but she's "happy" and away from nandor, so its fine, right? right?

to which i say no. its not fine. and no amount of nandor's potential character development will change that.

[decennia]

I don't know who needs to fucking hear this, but I'm about to say it with my full chest:

SEVERUS SNAPE DESERVES NO RIGHTS, I SAID WHAT I SAID.

Why? I'll tell you why:

Let's start with Neville Longbottom. Often the butt of the joke, Neville was often played up for comedic effect, so I can understand why we never took the implications of his boggart seriously.

But the fact of the matter is: Neville Longbottom was more terrified of his potion's teacher than he was of Bellatrix Lestrange, a woman who was a proud Death Eater who tortured his parents into insanity, a fate several people throughout the series state as "worse than death."

I've heard the argument from Snape Apologists that Boggarts are "superficial" creatures, so they don't go much deeper for a fear of yours, and, having gleaned a recent and prevalent one, will shift into that. Hence why it would be Snape, who recently tormented Neville, rather than Bellatrix, who Neville has never met.

It still stands, however, that Bellatrix is a known Death Eater, and Snape was just his potion's teacher.

We also see from Harry's own experience with the boggart, that the boggart hesitated before turning into the dementor. It "chose" which of Harry's fears to become, Voldemort, or fear itself?

Now, because I always listen to both sides of a story, try and see it from both perspectives before I draw a conclusion, I asked myself "why?"

There never is a good reason for abuse, but I still tried to look at it from Snape's eyes. And the conclusion drawn was literally the same as almost every single motivation for every one of Snape's decisions: because of Lily.

Neville was born several hours before Harry, and was a contender for being "the Chosen One" (the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies) but Voldemort chose Harry.

By Snape's logic, it meant that if Voldemort had chosen Neville, Lily would've still been alive for him to woefully pine for from a distance.

And so he takes it out on a fucking c h i l d.

He abuses him, torments him, and even forces Neville to poison his pet toad, Trevor, who has been shown to be of incredible significance to Neville.

And when the potion doesn't poison Trevor? And actually proved to be a competent potion? Snape made his displeasure known by deducting five points from Gryffindor.

I know that's not a Big Deal™ in the grand scheme of things, but we have to remember that Neville was a CHILD.

Moving on from Neville, let's get to: Lily.

Remember what I said before, about Lily being his end-all and be-all for everything? I meant it.

I'm not saying she was the sole reason Snape became a Death Eater, but she was the "last straw."

Snape's dislike for muggles stemmed not from Lily (of course not, he loved her), but from his father. Yes, I remembered his father, Tobias Snape. The muggle, the abuser. Apples and trees, I guess. From what I recall, Tobias was never physically abusive towards Eileen, Snape's mother, but he was emotionally and mentally abusive towards her. This would be cause for resentment for any young child growing up in that environment.

But, for a moment, may I direct your attention to Harry James Potter?

Who grew up that exact same way with the Dursleys?

Who was also neglected (Severus was said to have ill-fitting, mismatched clothes, sound familiar?) but who also did not have Eileen there to protect him?

And did Harry ever become a member of a muggle hate group? (No. The answer is no, in case you all didn't remember that Very Important Detail of the series).

So, yes, Snape was abused, and no, I am not condoning it, I do sympathize with him on that front: no child should ever go through that. Ever. No matter the fucking child, there is no good reason for it. But do I condone his actions later on in life? Absolutely not.

Because he called Lily a "filthy mudblood."

Not just "mudblood", but a filthy one, too. And why did he do that? Because she defended him against his bullies. Yes, Sirius and James were bullies, I guess everyone's faves are a little problematic in this bitch.

And not only did he call her that, but he also was besties with people who fancied themselves the next generation of Death Eaters.

And when Lily asked him if he STILL intended on becoming one, he never gave her an answer, prompting her to sectumsempra all ties with him. Meaning, she probably gave him multiple chances to not be a raging bigot, none of which he took. Love of his life my fucking toe, gtfo—

Also, Snape obviously knew what his "friends" were doing at the time. Particularly, and especially, Mulciber's attack on Mary Macdonald.

Now, we can't talk about Lily without talking about James and the Marauders.

I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN THAT THE MARAUDERS BULLIED SNAPE, OKAY? But listen up: still not a good enough reason to join the wizarding world's KKK. Actually there is no good reason, period, end of message, send tweet.

He loathed them so much, he literally gave zero fucks about their wellbeing.

Even though! Sirius' biggest crime against Severus is jokingly telling him to follow Remus Lupin under the Whomping Willow during that time of the month.

And Severus would swear that James' biggest crime against him (after "stealing" Lily, of course) would be stopping him from encountering the werewolf and saving his fucking life.

Where the fuck was that reciprocated energy when Snape KNEW that James was also marked for death?

Also, are you going to tell me, that with his ear so pressed to the ground about news on Lily, that he didn't know who the real rat was? That he didn't know that it was Peter Pettigrew? This is speculatory, but... Snape had to have known that Sirius was not the betrayer, he must've at least known it was Pettigrew, meaning he let an innocent man waste away in Azkaban and for what? Something that happened when they were kids? I wonder why Sirius is a "stray dog" idk probably because someone let him rot in Azkaban for thirteen years?

Don't even get me started on how he literally stepped over James' body to get to Lily's while Harry sat there crying. Please. Or the fact that he only wanted Lily spared? He literally said "yes, only her, please, Dark Lord, fuck that newborn"?

OKAY AND MY FINAL POINT BECAUSE THIS GOT TOO LONG AND HONESTLY I'M LITERALLY WAY TOO FUCKING ANGRY AT THIS POINT... I PRESENT TO THE COURT: THE CARROWS.

Severus had been made headmaster of Hogwarts, and what does he do? Allow the Carrows to torture muggleborns and first years. Eleven year olds. Disgusting. Please. What the fuck.

I don't think Severus Snape died a fucking hero, or in "penance." NOT when twelve hours prior, he'd been turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to eleven year olds screaming as the Cruciatus Curse was used on them.

Also, James never sexually harassed Lily? Wanna discuss sexual harassment? How does "waiting outside the Gryffindor common room until someone lets you in even though it has been made very clear that the person you want to speak to doesn't want to speak to you" sound?

I am not denying that Severus Snape is a tragic character; he's a very complex and somewhat interesting one, even. All I am saying is that I don't think saying "always" on the brink of death excuses any of your past actions. He's a martyr at best — having his sins "forgiven" by sacrificing himself for a just cause.

Yes, this is a hill I'm willing to die on. But, as always, I am open to a respectful conversation (not argument, conversation). If you disagree, I'd love to hear why. Try and change my mind; as long as you do so respectfully, I will hear you out.

[purebarnes]

‘infinity war cast play: family feud

ꜱᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ ➢ following along the family feud that the cast of the avengers played during infinity war

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ ➢ 1.8k

ᴅɪꜱᴄʟᴀɪᴍᴇʀꜱ ➢ fluff, sweet/jealous seb, funny marvel moments in general

ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ ꜱᴘᴇᴀᴋꜱ ➢ wanted to start this idea but never got to write it, hope it gets love since it was fun to write and i just enjoyed it in general

every time you and the cast would wrap up a movie was great because it meant you guys would have interviews and press tours to attend. for you, the games and trivia games were the ones you all really enjoyed because it just would be chaotic.

still it would a great time, you got along with everyone so no drama would surround you guys which was a good thing when you work with other actors. when you first started working with marvel, you hit it off with mackie at first, during captain america: the winter soldier.

your publicist makes sure you had time to move things around so that you could make it the live event with the rest of the cast.

you and sebastian were together but didn’t live with each other since you two were still waiting for the right time to move in together. anthony would tease you guys, saying you’re both married but not being committed. all jokes aside, you two did love each other but time would take it’s course and you would be happy soon enough.

when you arrived surrounding to the Los Angeles press junket, you met a few co-stars back stage. obviously you saw all the girls—with you adored. when you saw your boyfriend, you ran sneakily behind him before scaring him slightly. he jumped back from his seat where he was talking to anthony and letitia about something.

anthony looked up seeing your face, “you finally showed up. he was getting worried.” he chuckled before getting up to hug you while you hugged back letting go to see letitia and greet her as well. you turned to sebastian seeing that he was wearing something remotely similar to your outfit.

he wore a black and white stripped jacket which you wore one like that but it was a tad different with a matching skirt. he eyes you up and down seeing what you were wearing this time, letitia gawked at the couple matching even if it was accidentally. “you guys look so cute.” she squealed rapidly pointing at both of them as they both chuckled.

anthony hummed, “huh. what’s up with matchy matchy?” he questioned them as sebastian shrugged honestly not getting how they would of done that. the man obviously thought she looked gorgeous in that skirt and jacket so it didn’t bother him at all. “i think you look beautiful.” he admired you as you blushed and buried your head in his crock of his neck while thanking him.

anthony rolled his eyes until the russo brothers came telling everyone that it was time to start the family feud game and start the live broadcast. you walked towards everyone, where the russo brothers went to place you all in teams: blue vs purple.

anthony and joe did anything to keep mackie and seb from the opposite teams to not create that much chaos or to create it which didn’t matter. you went on the blue team with chris, scarlett, letitia, anthony and bautista. then the red team consisting with benedict, zoe, mark, chris hemsworth, pom and sebastian.

you greeted your team waiting for them to start as you made small talk with anthony and dave as you were in the middle of both of them. once the russo’s started—it was all chaotic from that point. “why don’t the blue team introduce themselves.” joe spoke looking at the blue team.

everyone from the team would get and when it got you mackie, he just was being a fool but so hilarious whenever he spoke. “i’m anthony mackie, i’m a libra.” bringing up his sign for anyone. “I’m y/n y/l/n.” you would smile when it would get to you.

the other team would do the same, then making the russo’s to explain how the game would work and all the rules. once you all got the hang of it, chris and zoe ended up being the first ones to make it and compete against each other. “which infinity war character would put on the best concert?”

zoe getting it first because pratt was slow, said his character which she got right being the first one on the answer board. benedict would repeat zoe’s answer not understanding the concept of family feud as the whole blue team would tease him on that. “good answer!” anthony laughed making you look up and chuckle as he defended himself.

“i’m english! whoa, stop.” joe explained it the english man and he looked relieved after he got the idea, getting the right answer again. when it got to sebastian he said dr. strange and got it correct then getting close to three strikes when it was at zoe.

the russo’s giving out clues and hints didn’t make the blue team wasn’t pleased because it was too easy for them. “what! you cheatin, you think steve harvey would give a hint?” chris would yell out to joe then you would agree with him. them all laughing at chris getting annoyed but not in a serious manner.

you would see that they would go and talk and you stopped them as they weren’t exactly playing the right way. “wait? you guys can’t confirm.” you spoke up pointing at zoe trying to talk to pom and the rest of her team. joe would confirm that, that would be true.

zoe trying to get another clue but the blue team interfering with her telling her no more clues. “okay, you know what. basta. i’m going to say rocket.” when her and benedict got them wrong it would be time for the blue team to steal.

chris would pull you guys together to confirm he answer but mackie kept repeating where their clue was—you would remind him that you thought that was the clue. “what? no, that’s their clue! who producing this?” you would look over to see them talking about who to pick. “well if it’s a guardian... then who did we already say? we said drax, already said star lord, we said rocket. so groot?” you implied.

letitia nodded when chris still wasn’t sure if that was the answer looking at the camera trying to get an answer from the fans. “feed me the answer. mackie says it groot but i don’t trust mackie—yes, you do!” mackie would say.

“i say trust him—thank you!” you would say making anthony hugging you when sebastian would glare at him making him laugh out loud looking back at him. letting go and telling joe that, they picked groot for the answer. “do they say groot for the win?” joe asked making the board ding causing the blue team to cheer for the win that they just got.

the next question being who would they take to prom... as letitia would take your answer, you’d have to figure on out when make chose his answer. “as much as i don’t like him. and his great hair.. uh bucky.” anthony paused. obviously getting the right answer and it being number one. anthony would look at sebastian but he would shake his head getting flustered.

it was your turn and you couldn’t say anything because you honestly had no idea, “alright y/n, you are up.” you hummed trying to see if you could think of someone on the spot. “look around.” they would try to help you to get a answer, anthony looking at you grinning.

“come on. imma look away cause you’re thinkin about me.” he would say looking the other way dramatically making you laugh then patting his shoulder clicking your tongue. “okay, i’m going to say uh... the falcon, sam wilson?” anthony grinning at you tilting his head while showing his bicep.

sebastians head rapidly going up when she chose anthony, “boo!” he booed putting a thumbs down and blowing raspberries at her direction. everyone laughing at his jealousy as you frowned feeling bad, “i’m sorry!” you quietly said as joe kept moving on. “alright facebook did you say sam wilson?” he asked the board and it dinged making anthony cheer at his name on the list.

almost finishing the questions, it was between mackie and hemsworth picking who would win in a staring contest. going around the purple team, they all started to get all the answer right and it went to seb. he looked around stoping at you and just staring, “i’m going with y/c/n.” you shook your head then waiting to see the answer. “did you say y/c/n, the sorceress?” he got that right making them all cheer.

they all go in a line getting all the answers right when seb was up again, “don’t screw it up bucky like you always do.” anthony yelled out making him stare up at him intensely, “what did you say to me—you heard what i said.” they kept going back and forth with each other.

you kept trying to contain yourself from laughing as they were so childish between themselves. “i’m gonna go with the falcon.” sebastian said staring at him continuously. when it came on the screen, you put your head down in disbelief.

the next round was you and sebastian and when you didn’t go up because you didn’t know it was your turn, joe told you to go up. you looked at him and walked to him. you put your hands in your pockets, seeing seb waiting for you. “oh oh. this is about to become intense, girlfriend vs boyfriend.” joe teased when you smiled and put you hand over seb’s.

you pulled away getting ready to answer your question and you probably knew it would work out because you hated being pressured. anthony russo looked at both of you and mentioned how you guys were matching, “you guys are matching, just noticed that—isn’t it cute!” letitia yelled but getting shushed by you.

“okay, which infinity war character takes the longest to get ready in the morning?” when he announced it you did your best to press the button by sebastian had quicker reflexes then you. you groaned watching him chuckle, “i swear my button is broken.” you complained but it was all jokes because you just lost.

“i think it works—mmh, no it’s broken. hurry say your answer.” you rolled your eyes wanting to hurry and leave, “downey. tony stark.” when the answer popped up you rolled your eyes, swatting your hand away. seb went over to hug you as you sighed but hugged him back anyway.

the ending was horrible because the opposite team won making you annoyed... you ended up having a good time with your friends. you walked passed all of them to use the bathroom and you went to open the door, you were tackled by some hands making you squeal.

you turned around to see sebastian and you sighed then when you composed yourself, you hit his shoulder. “don’t do that. i was about to hurt you.” he chuckled lowering his hands to your waist and pulling you close. “i missed you.” he mumbled kissing the side of your cheek. “we have to hurry for the press, then you can miss me even more.”

[wisteriabookss]

An Extensive Analysis of Eris

The recent excerpt from ACOSF has got this fandom spinning on it’s head because it includes a feral-smiling Eris waltzing with Nesta. As a result, people have now delved deeper into his character and whether or not he deserves a redemption arc (or an arc of any kind). 

So naturally, he has been compared to Rhys, because Rhys also appeared to us in the beginning as a cruel, cunning person, who was eventually revealed to have a bigger heart, and a valid excuse (at least amongst the IC) for his behavior.

I made this post to mainly catalogue all that Eris has done, analyze his actions, see if he indeed can be compared to Rhys, and to determine whether or not he should have a redemption arc. 

What We Know So Far

Our first mention of Eris is in ACOMAF, when Rhysand is explaining to Feyre what happened to Mor. I could put the quotes here, but just to save some time I’m gonna make a long story short.

Mor’s father, Keir, declared that she was to be sold in marriage to Eris. Eris is known for being cruel, and Mor begged Rhys to stop it. Rhys brought her to the Illyrian camp for a few days, and she decided to sleep with Cassian in order to ruin her “pure” image. Because she slept with Cassian, Eris refused to marry her. Said, “she’d been sullied by a bastard-born lesser faerie, and he’d now sooner fuck a sow.” Her family, although it’s not said explicitly, basically beat her, and then dumped her body on the Autumn court border with a note nailed to her body that said she was Eris’s problem now. Eris left her for dead in the middle of their woods.

Now, we’re going to look at what he exactly said during this event, given to us from Mor’s POV in ACOFAS:

“Don’t touch her.” Those steps stopped. It was not a warning to protect her. Defend her.

“No one touches her,” he said. Eris. “The moment we do, she’s our responsibility.” 

Cold, unfeeling words. “But—but they nailed a—” 

“No one touches her.”

A pale, beautiful face appeared above her, blocking out the jewel-like leaves above. Unmoved. Impassive. “I take it you do not wish to live here, Morrigan.”

He must have read it in her eyes. A small smile curved his lips. “I thought so.”

Eris took a step away. Someone behind him blurted, “We can’t just leave her to—” 

“We can, and we will,” Eris said simply, his pace unfaltering as he strode away. 

“She chose to sully herself; her family chose to deal with her like garbage. I have already told them my decision in this matter.” A long pause, crueler than the rest. “And I am not in the habit of fucking Illyrian leftovers.”

Now that we have Mor’s side of the story, we’re going to look at what Eris has said about that fateful day during a discussion with the IC in ACOWAR:

Mor snarled, rattling the glasses. “You never gave any evidence to the contrary. Certainly not when you left me in those woods.”

“There were forces at work that you have never considered,” Eris said coldly. “And I am not going to waste my breath explaining them to you. Believe what you want about me.”

. . . .

A frown at Mor as he drained his wine and set down the goblet. “I’m surprised you still can’t control yourself around him. You had every emotion written right on that pretty face of yours.”

“Watch it,” Azriel warned.

Eris looked between them, smiling faintly. Secretly. As if he knew something that Azriel didn’t. “I wouldn’t have touched you,” he said to Mor, who blanched again. “But when you fucked that other bastard—” A snarl ripped from Rhys’s throat at that. And my own. “I knew why you did it.” Again that secret smile that had Mor shrinking. Shrinking. “So I gave you your freedom, ending the betrothal in no uncertain terms.”

“And what happened next,” Azriel growled.

A shadow crossed Eris’s face. “There are few things I regret. That is one of them. But … perhaps one day, now that we are allies, I shall tell you why. What it cost me.”

A main takeaway from this is that there seems to be much more to story of what happened between Eris and Mor.

Does that mean him leaving her in the woods is excusable? No. Absolutely not. He didn’t try to take the nail out of her (which would’ve been the bare minimum), he didn’t alert Rhys that she was there, he didn’t do anything to help her. He started to make the situation even more traumatic by saying vile things to her. Whatever reason he gives for not helping her will be just that: a reason. But not an excuse. Those are two very different things.

Eris say’s that leaving her there is one of the few things he regrets. There’s something in that. I’m not saying under any circumstance that he should be forgiven because he feels guilty, thats stupid as hell, but it is showing that he’s not some apathetic, other-worldy evil person. There’s some semblance of a conscious in him. 

He also say’s that one day he’ll tell them why he did it and what it cost him. By what it cost him, I’m guessing he’s talking about the cost of ending his betrothal to Mor, because I can’t think of what he lost by leaving her there. 

I don’t think there’s been any mention of someone getting revenge on Eris because A.) Rhys told Feyre that, “Azriel found her a day later. It was all I could do to keep him from going to either court and slaughtering them all.” and B) her family was obviously going to do nothing cause they’re the ones who hurt her.

I’m not going to try and theorize what cost Eris had to pay. It obviously is something (or someone) important to him.

But to me, one of the biggest things we got from this discussion is that it seems Eris knows Mor is gay. That secret smile of his that had Mor shrinking, the way he says he knows why she slept with Cassian, and that he gave Mor her freedom by ending the betrothal without giving a reason . . . he knows.

He knew she was gay, so he ended their engagement, no questions asked. And then Mor was dumped in his woods, and he did nothing to help. 

Morally grey, indeed.

(P.S. To the person that posted something along the lines of, “I can’t wait to see Mor’s face when she see’s Eris dancing with Nesta,” . . . get help)

Another excerpt I wanna look at also happens during the recent discussion we’ve just seen, but it has to do with Feyre and Lucien.

“You hunted me down like an animal,” I cut in. “I think we’ll choose to believe the worst.”

Eris’s pale face flushed. “I was given an order. And sent to do it with two of my … brothers.”

That little hesitation before he says ‘brothers’. . . sus. That’s all imma say. (maybe there’s more than one illegitimate son in that family . . .)

“And what of the brother you hunted down alongside me? The one whose lover you helped to execute before his eyes?”

Eris laid a hand flat on the table. “You know nothing about what happened that day. Nothing.”

Silence.

“Indulge me,” was all I said.

Eris stared me down. I stared right back.

“How do you think he made it to the Spring border,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t there— when they did it. Ask him. I refused. It was the first and only time I have denied my father anything. He punished me. And by the time I got free … They were going to kill him, too. I made sure they didn’t. Made sure Tamlin got word—anonymously—to get the hell over to his own border.”

Where two of Eris’s brothers had been killed. By Lucien and Tamlin.

Eris picked at a stray thread on his jacket. “Not all of us were so lucky in our friends and family as you, Rhysand.”

We see another semblance of conscious here when Eris refuses to take part in the slaughtering of Jesminda. To even be in the same room as it. He then made sure that Lucien wasn’t going to die by making sure Tamlin was at his border. 

I’m not putting these quotes here to say, “Look, he cares about stuff , so let’s excuse everything he’s done.” No. There is no excusing any of his actions. Just like we can’t excuse Rhysand’s behavior in the first two books, or Cassian’s, or Nesta’s, or even Feyre’s, etc. But what we can do is see the reasons for their actions, and try and understand why they acted the way they did. They have their reasons, and Eris has his. (P.S. I’m not trying to compare what they’ve done, I’m just noting that they all had reasons to do what they’ve done, and they all deserve to be heard out.)

Comparison To Rhys

As I said earlier, Eris has drawn a lot of comparisons to Rhys. I agree with most of them.

This fandom has catalogued all of Rhys’s questionable actions like . . .

*TRIGGER WARNING: words like sexually assaulted*

Rhys sexually assaulting Feyre three times in the first book by drugging her, and then compelling her to give him lap dances in front of the folks Under The Mountain. He then displayed Feyre again in a sexual manner in the second book in front of The Court of Nightmares as, and I quote, “The High Lords Whore.” 

In both situations he could’ve done things so much differently. In the first book, he could’ve just, oh I don’t know, kept her in her cell? Or maybe brought her upstairs as a normal person?

And in the second one she literally could have been ANYTHING else. Everyone thinks she’s his prisoner, so why didn’t they go with that? Why couldn’t he have just dressed her in some raggedy-ass clothing, messed up her hair, and then tell her to act super stoic or frightened? Really Rhys, she just had to be your whore? (I know it was consensual but that doesn’t make her persona okay. He could’ve picked literally anything else)

Did he have his reasons for doing this? Yes. Does his reasons excuse what he did? No. You don’t have to make everyone else around you act a part just because you do.

So while we may not excuse Rhys’s actions, we can understand his reasons even if we don’t agree with them. Same with Eris. We know Eris has his reasons, and I doubt we’ll all agree with them, but he still has them.

Let’s also not forget that Rhysand made a deal with Eris and Keir that he would support Eris’s claim to the Autumn Court throne when Eris decides to kill his father for it. He also allowed Keir and his court to come into Velaris, and even though they’ll be turned away by every vendor, he still allowed them in. While he had his reasons for doing this (the Darkling army for ACOWAR) he still did it. It still hurt Mor.

Redemption Arc 

My biggest hesitation in thinking Eris will get a redemption arc is wondering where it would fit in the books for him to have one. We don’t know how if his waltz with Nesta is just a one-time thing or if it’s a result of a friendship between the two. The second book is supposed to be centered around Elain, Azriel, and Lucien, so that could also be a spot where he get’s an arc, maybe through a relationship with Lucian or Azriel. 

Either way, I’m not gonna bring down the hammer and say that he shouldn’t get a redemption arc. Tbh, the term ‘redemption arc’ kinda annoys me because it shouldn’t be about redeeming what was done in the past, but more about learning from past mistakes and taking the initiative to grow into a better person. That’s what I want for Eris. He’s not going to magically be revealed to be this super sweet fun-loving guy like Rhys. I don’t want him to be revealed like that either. 

I just want to see more of his character, see why he is the way he is, and, like i’ve said a million times in this post, know his reasons for acting the way he does. 

One last thing before I go. I’m not interested in seeing any relationship blossom between Eris and the IC, or Nesta, and I think it’s unlikely anyways. There’s a possibility for them to have an understanding, sure, but no friendship. I know there are some people who automatically adore Eris because they hate Mor and that’s just stupid. Mor isn’t my fav either, but I won’t cheer Eris on just because he hurt her. 

That’s all I’ve got. If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you. Really.