#it's bc we are inherently always afraid

[villainsidestep]

'please send asks on anon u literally know how to play these games' nah

[pepprs]

also (this is it i promise) this is why i am so INSANELY excited to have my own room soon. like omg. it is definitely not perfect bc it’s at home and there’s a breaker box in it and you can hear footsteps really loud through the ceiling and also again *it’s at home* when i really need to not be living at home. but the quality of life improvement i am about to have is actually INSANE. i will be able to have a space far away from everyone else where i can sing without bothering anyone and play piano and decorate it (mostly) to my liking and have a desk and draw and paint and do whatever. finally!!!!!!!! that is going to fix me!!!!!

[transmascissues]

it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?

first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.

one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.

this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.

oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.

basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.

but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!

at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.

just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.

[dilatorywriting]

Hi hi! So this is a request for the 4k followers thing and if it sounds like word vomit I apologize cuz I have no idea how to word this. Could I ask for prompt 10 ("I think we should go to dinner first.") with mc x azul? The scenario here is like that one twitter post that was going around awhile ago about how a falls first but b falls harder, with a being azul and how once he realizes his feelings he resigns himself to forever pining from afar bc he's convinced himself that any relationship between them would be doomed to failure since mc is from another world and would have to go home someday. But while mc is a bit dense when it comes to their own romantic feelings they've always been an upfront person and as soon as they realize they like him they kinda just,,,, barge into his office and say so, and I feel like the sentence prompt would be said by azul after a pretty intense make out session (maybe nothing spicy spicy but yeah) where at the end oh yeah he remembers he's a gentleman

Also after a bit of searching I found the twitter post I was talking about

Gender Neutral Reader x Azul Ashengrotto Word Count: 1.5k

Prompt 10: "I-I think we should go for dinner first."

[EVENT MASTERLIST]

Azul had been avoiding you.

Which was so strange and wholly out of character that the first few days of it went by in a weird sort of fugue. You hadn’t even noticed an entire week had passed in blissful, mafioso-free silence until you were heading to your Friday night shift at the Lounge and realized you hadn’t seen your favorite octopus even once. Normally the House Warden was fluttering around you like a scam artist to an old folks’ home. Poking, and prodding, and ‘ah, Prefect, I know you weren’t a fan of the last contract, but perhaps this one would suffice, hmm?’

And when you arrived in the little, employee-only locker room—still fully unbothered and not offered even a single opportunity to sell your soul—you wondered if maybe he’d gotten sick.

You were in the middle of taking some Savanaclaw student’s order when you finally saw him at all. Just a quick glance out of the corner of your eye to catch his shining, silver head of hair popping into his office. You smiled brightly and offered a wave. But Azul only went stiff and closed the door with a bang.

Which was…

Huh.

“Is Azul feeling okay?” you asked Jade between running an armload of drinks to a table of Pomefiore students.

The eel hummed and gave you one of those smiles that never really looked like it was meant to be a smile. “Our fearless leader is clinically sound.”

You frowned. Because that felt like one of the Vice Warden’s non-answers that he’d throw your way sometimes like a taller, meaner older sibling holding your favorite toy just out of reach.

“So he’s alright?” you pressed, hesitant.

“Oh, I never said that,” he chirped pleasantly, before ducking off to go catch the stack of plates that Floyd was in the process of juggling through the kitchen.

The bubbling panic popping in your gut was the worst sort of tummy ache. The kind that spread its miserable pain until it’d left your chest hurting, and head spinning, and something deeply wrong throbbing at the heart of you. Because Azul, despite his inherent tendencies to treat you like a particularly stupid pack mule, was still your best friend. The person you cared about most in all the world! Sure, he enjoyed bamboozling you and your fellow students, but, like he hadn’t done anything genuinely malicious in ages now! Like a paid hitman retiring into selling seedy vacation timeshares.

The idea of him just—just not wanting you anymore struck something horrible in you. Of finally realizing that the silly little human from worlds unknown wasn’t worth the wobbly pair of legs you were standing on. And it left you feeling small, and afraid, and—and—

“Oh? Are you feeling unwell, Prefect?” Jade called from somewhere behind you.

“Does Azul hate me?” you blurted out before you could help yourself.

The eel blinked his bi-colored eyes at you—slow and unbothered. Perhaps a bit surprised, if you had to put a name to the expression. Jade’s face was like that sometimes. An enigma. Like someone had wired him up just slightly wrong when putting it all together. On any other living creature, that sap-slow nonchalance would have certainly bordered on outright boredom, but you knew him well enough to know there was at least something else going on there.

“Why would he hate you?” he asked, equally dripping and slug slow.

“Because—!” you squawked, and waved your hands around your head. “Because!”

“I see,” he nodded. And then latched a gloved hand onto your shoulder and steered you back towards his boss’s office. He didn’t even bother to knock before wrenching the door open and shoving you inside.

Azul looked up with a start, eyes gone wide behind his glasses and jaw slack.

“What’s going—”

“The Prefect is on the verge of psychotic break,” Jade chirped helpfully, with a closed-eyed smile. “Please be delicate with them, hmm?”

And then slammed the door shut all over again. Leaving you alone with the guy who might have only very recently started to hate your guts. Or—or maybe he always had! And maybe you’d just been really, really dumb about picking it up! You wanted to scream. Or hide away forever. Azul looked like the latter was an exceptionally tempting idea, and you could see his blue eyes flicker around the room like he was looking for an escape route.

But the idea of him running away from you, that you’d never see him again—that he didn’t want to ever see you again—had something horribly enlightening clicking into place in your brain.

“Are you okay!” you asked, so loud it nearly rattled the furniture. And Azul flinched in surprise. “Did I do something wrong!”

“What?” he blinked, startled. “Of… Of course not.” He cleared his throat and stood carefully, making his way towards you in the manner one may approach a rabid racoon hiding under their porch. “Perhaps you should take a seat—”

“I can’t!” you cried, frantic. “Not if you’re upset!”

Another of those owlish, outright consternated bouts of blinking. “You can’t sit?”

“No!” you wailed. That prickling, hot, tight feeling nearly overflowing out of you. “Not if it’s my fault!”

His expression twisted up into something mulish and embarrassed, and he reached up to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a soft huff.

“…it’s hardly your fault,” he said, sounding so stupidly sad that you just wanted to—to—

“How can I fix it?” you tried, panicked. Because he didn’t want to be around you anymore, and you couldn’t lose him. You couldn’t!

Azul sighed, gaze shifting away yet again. He offered you a tight, little smile that felt like all sorts of lies. “It’s alright, Prefect. Truly. It’s just something…” he trailed off, that forced smirk twitching off his lips like he couldn’t help it. “Something I’m learning to live with, hmm? Nothing terrible, I promise.”

“You shouldn’t have to live with something that’s bothering you,” you argued, firm. “You’re the king of fixing other people’s problems. You’re more than allowed to use all those connections and stuff to fix your own!”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t really work like that,” he tried, awkward, and you steamrolled on.

“Why not?! You’re amazing! And fantastic! And I love you so much, and you should never have to be upset about anything. And if you’re not in my life for the rest of my life, I’d rather die!” you wailed, and gasped—clapping your hands together like the idea that had just blossomed in your skull was just beyond brilliant. “We should get married!” And then, to sweeten the deal, “Think of the tax benefits!”

“I—” Azul choked, going as red as a tomato. “Y-You—”

“—love you very much!” you finished helpfully.

He ducked his face into his hands, like he could scrub the blush right off his cheeks if he tried hard enough.

“Y-You can’t—” he spluttered into his gloves. “You can’t just say things like that.”

“Why not?” you demanded. “It’s true!”

Azul’s shoulders hunched up like he was trying make himself very, very small. And then after a long moment of near hyperventilating into his palms, he finally looked back over at you from behind the shield of his fingers.

“You…” he swallowed. “You love me?”

You nodded, certain. Becauese what else could that warm, bright, all-consuming thing be in your chest be but that?

“You,” he said again. “Love me?”

“Yes,” you agreed, never more sure of anything than that. “And we should get married.”

Azul choked again and went back to hiding behind his fingers.

“Unless…” you started, trailing off as something horrible and unsure squirmed through your chest. “Unless you don’t want to, of course. It should be your choice too. Just because I love you, doesn’t mean you have to love me, y’know?”

“That’s not what I said!” he squawked, head snapping back up so fast he nearly knocked the glasses off his face. And then he went red all over again, all the way to the tips of his ears, and he was reaching up to pull the rim of his hat down over his eyes with a curse. “I just…” he began, muffled behind the fabric of his overcoat. “Maybe… dinner first?” he choked. “Before the proposal.”

“Oh,” you blinked, startled. “Of course. That makes sense.”

“That makes sense,” Azul echoed, sounding like you’d come up from behind him and walloped him with a baseball bat rather than just suggested a completely rational and beneficial mutual engagement. “I… I don’t know why I’m surprised at all.”

You quirked a brow. “Were you… expecting me to say that?” you asked confused.

This time he did look back up at you fully. Hands lowered, and the shield of his collar gone and all. The smile he sent you was small but so, heartachingly warm that it had butterflies dancing in your stomach.

“No,” he hummed, sounding impossibly pleased. “I really, really wasn’t.”

.

.

[heybank]

DENY PART FOUR

omg here is part four!! this chapter is a little longer (i think)

smut is literally so hard to write bc i'm like wait where is everyone's hands. who's body part is where??? anyway i hope you like it :)

cw: oral (m rec) cumplay, mention of virginity

masterlist here

pogues (nsfw 18+)

they hadn't exactly told the others about their new relationship. they've been lucky so far with john b caught up in sarah and kie is busy with working at the wreck and the new girl she's been seeing and doesn't think we know about.

we've all been so stuck in the honeymoon phase of a new relationship, learning each others bodies and navigating dating as a polyamorous throuple.

grace wishes she could stay in this bliss, cocooned in her boyfriends heat and scents. right now they're in popes bedroom, the three of them squished together on his small twin sized mattress, trying to touch every inch of each other.

you've all discussed about what or how to tell your friends but right now you want to keep it a secret. you're not ashamed but you're a little afraid of possible repercussions you all will face when the truth comes out.

you think john b will be confused at first, he's always been a little thick in the skull but you know he'll come around. sarah will not care at all and probably want to corner you and hear all your juicy details.

kie might be tricky, she's been adamant about the no pogue on pogue macking and now here you are, macking on two of them.

you and jj are kind of lucky in the aspect of your parents literally do not care if you live or die so there's no worry about telling them. pope on the other hand, you're a little worried mr and mrs heyward won't understand or be not so accepting. you know they love pope but ignorance sometimes sticks to your bones and makes people feel certain ways about certain things. pope jokes they'll be happy he's dating you, they love you. they just might not be enthusiastic about trouble maker white boy extraordinaire.

jj says no matter what you'll all have each other and that thought makes you pull your boys in even tighter.

"pope..." you softly ask your brown eyed boy, "can i suck your dick?"

the question and the innocence of how you asked it makes both boys choke on their spit. despite the steaminess of your dream and some heavy petting here and there, none of you have actually gone all the way with each other. you and pope are virgins, jj is the only one with experience. you cringe thinking about your man with other people.

"yeah? you wanna suck my dick pretty?" pope asks, trying to be cool but he's really fucking hyped.

"yeah." you answer shyly. "wanna make you feel good and then i wanna make j feel good too."

none of you have to say anymore words, pope jumps off his bed and walks over to where you were sitting on his computer chair, you pull him in for a hug and give him a soft slow kiss.

"jj, will you teach me?" you inquire.

"yeah baby girl, i'll help you make pope feel really good." he responds.

you kneel down in front of pope, eagerly going to his belt buckle and undoing his shorts. you pull them down his legs and see his prominent bulge in his boxer briefs, precum staining the grey material.

"tease him through his boxers, baby." jj prompts you.

you lean in and nuzzle popes covered dick with your nose and mouth. softly suckling him through the fabric. you moan at his scent. he smells clean mixed with salt water and musk that is inherently pope.

out of the corner of your eye you see jj pulling out his dick and giving it a soft tug. he's getting so turned on watching you give pope his first blow job.

"don't tease anymore grace, please" pope whines.

you nod and slowly pull the boys underwear down to his ankles so pope can step out of them. you see his dick sprig up and hit his tummy with a soft smack and you gasp at the size. he's bigger than jj in length, even tho jjs cock is thicker. you squeeze your thighs together to release some pressure that's been building up in your core.

you gently grab popes dick and give the tip a kitten lick, moaning out loud at the taste.

"go on and lick him, princess. from his balls and back to his tip." jj directs. he's still softly tugging at his own dick.

"will you help me jj? suck his dick with me?" you ask coyly. you know your innocent act turns them on beyond belief.

"yeah? you want me to suck his dick baby? you want that pope?"

the poor heyward boy just looks blissed out, eyes downcast. he just moans and nods in consent. the thought of both his partners sucking his dick together makes him want to nut right then and there.

you move to the side to make room for jj to also sit in front of popes cock. jj pulls you in for a passionate kiss, sticking his tongue in your mouth, moaning a little when he tastes pope on your tongue.

when you end your kiss you and jj both lean in to suckle on popes cock, at this point he's dripping with precum and is so close to busting.

you open your mouth and try to suck his dick down your throat, moving your head up and down causing pope to grab the hair at the back of your head. he doesn't push you further onto his cock tho, ever the gentleman.

while you're sucking his dick jj leans forward and takes one of popes balls into his mouth causing both boys to moan for different reasonings.

you pull off popes cock with a gasp, spit and precum all over your mouth and chin, leaving his cock wet and shiny.

this encourages jj to lean in and continue on what you were just doing. he's never sucked a dick before but he has one of his own so he knows what would potentially feel good.

you raise your hand to jjs hair and begin massaging his head, casual intimacy that you've always had with the boy regardless of sex. you also take note you're still holding popes hand with your other one, essentially connecting all three of you together.

"i'm gonna cum- jj please" pope moans.

"can he cum on my face jj please i want it in my mouth and on my face!"

jj released popes cock with a sly grin and lifts his hand so he can jack the other boy off.

"yeah, you wanna cum on her face pope? make our girl all dirty?"

a few more pumps and pope is shooting out warm streams of his cum, loud moans and cries coming from the heyward boys mouth.

you moan at the feeling of his warm cum landing on your cheek and mouth, causing you to open it and suck down the remaining of popes load.

"fuck that was the best orgasm i've ever had." pope breathlessly says, knees buckling so he can join the two of you on the floor.

jj leans in to kiss you, licking at your face and lips to help clean off popes cum, with a mouthful still in mouth, he leans in and kisses pope, tongues collided and popes release being shared back and forth between the two boys. they are so fucking hot.

once the boys pull away from each other, you give out a giggle and excitedly start pawing at jjs still hard leaking cock.

"your turn!!" you say with eyes full of lust.

you're all at the chateau, sitting around the fire when it's actually pope who slips up. you're all calm and slightly tipsy from beers. pope gets up telling everyone he needs to leave for the night cause his dad needs help in the morning. he plants a kiss on jj without even thinking, moving onto you with ease. he doesn't clock the silence from the rest of the pogues or their wide eyes and shocked faces.

"surprise!" you cheer, blush scorching your face as you grab jjs hand for reassurance. jj reaching out to grab popes and pull him closer in case this goes sideways.

"i fucking knew it!" sarah cheers jumping out of her seat in triumph! "you owe me $5 john b!" she gloats.

uh oh.

taglist: (lmk if you wanna be added)

@theoraekenslover

@redhead1180

@motherfing-stargirl

[thefirstknife]

i unironically hope Eris stays in her Hive form at least physically bc im already loving how both her & Immaru are pointing out Ikora's (and humanity's) inherent dehumanization of the Hive.

Eris being all "If this form does not leave will you still view me as a friend?"

Immaru when asked where the Experiment Subjects come from and responding with "Don't act like you care."

Honestly, it's so good. I really love the Eris stuff and some of these questions being posed. A lot of people react negatively to Eris doing this, forgetting that Eris has already been part-Hive for a long time. She was just hiding it behind the eye cover.

Technically, nothing inherently changed about Eris; she just embraced that part of her. And that's super important for her arc I think because she's been on a journey of accepting her trauma and her losses for a very long time. We helped her face her fears and traumas in Shadowkeep and she came out of it victorious. And the story never treated it as her traumas being gone; she still has them, but she has the means to tackle them and handle them and live with them. Since we helped her, she became more open and more involved with what we do to save our home, even if it meant tackling dangerous things.

And the thing is, now that her traumas cannot be exploited by Darkness anymore, she's capable of involving herself in these things, knowing that she has friends to fall back to and a support system and better mental fortitude. We've seen it through her endurance beneath the Pyramid on Io, and her grasp of stasis, and her dealing with the Crown of Sorrow and egregore and the Lunar Pyramid nightmares. And now with her embracing her Hive self. It doesn't change anything about her, but people prefer when she hides it so they don't have to see it. And she knows it (Sororicide lore book, page 1):

It's a perfect example of how we inherently view the Hive as untrustworthy. Obviously, there are good reasons for it! The Hive have caused immense pain and trauma to pretty much everyone in the universe, Eris included. It must take an incredible strength of character to embrace the fact that you're physically half-Hive, creatures that traumatised you in the first place. No one else has dealt with anything similar so naturally they're afraid for Eris. But I believe in her strength. And so does Drifter and Drifter is never wrong:

He'd read the reports. He saw the theories on VanNet. He didn't trust them. He trusted her.

There's a cutscene that people skip and can cause people not to see it, I recommend replaying the thing on a different character or seeing it online, but it shows Eris taking off her bandage in front of us:

It's such a powerful image to me. A symbol of her taking off her mask. Not pretending to be the same as us anymore. Because she isn't! The Hive are a part of her and have been for centuries. And she's always been in control. Our mistrust has always hurt her, but before this, we could act with pity towards her. Now that she's fully in Hive form, people's perception of her changed, for really no good reason other than prejudice. She is still Eris.

I definitely think that eventually we will have to reconcile with the idea of the Hive not being inherently evil in totality as a whole group of people. Obviously this is going to be difficult, especially when their leaders act the way they do, but eventually I do believe we will have to accept some of them, even if it's only Eris for a start.

[monstersinthecosmos]

Do you think Marius still loves Armand in the last books? Does he want Armand to return to him? Marius seemed to have left him in the past

The short answer is YEAH OF COUSRE HE LOVES ARMAND TO DEATH but let’s talk about this for a minute!

The question of whether or not Marius loves him is the easier one to answer. Armand is one of the great loves of Marius’s life! In the beginning of TVA (when he’s just spent however much time thinking Armand is dead) he’s a DISHEVELED MESS! And at the beginning of B&G he’s super lonely and isolated and seems worried about stuff he’s done recently and people in his life being mad at him. (Benji & Sybelle Incident? Something else?) I think when you look at a vampire like Marius, it’s remarkable that he makes it 2000 years only turning THREE fledglings (not counting when we get to B+S and Viktor bc that gets into like, vampire favors and isn’t really for himself LOL), vs a character like Lestat who made 3 fledglings in his first 11 years. These are the great loves of Marius’s life and not decisions he made lightly! And while I think we can (and have) sort of untangled selfish vs. selfless love in Marius’s life, I think it’s really important that 500 years later he couldn’t forgive Santino. Is that on his own behalf alone or on Armand’s? There’s a lot of unpack but! He loves Armand! He does!!!!!

But anyway on the topic of returning to each other;

I think their last conversation in BCtu sort of opens a door that they’re going to speak to each and work things out. Canonically, that’s all the information we get. We also never explicitly get information about like, what exactly is wrong between them presently. We know that

they had a big fight at the end of TVA but that they calmed down

Armand has been afraid of Marius because he's scared that Marius doesn't still love him like he used to

in ROA Marius said he had the savage & ignorant soul of a child.

I always assume there's just 500 years of tension and conversations they've avoided, but we also never get a confirmation that they HAVEN'T had these conversations off screen anyway. So canonically, all we know is that they just had a traumatic experience and want to talk to each other.

Also canonically, they’re making another attempt at Vampire Commune and we don’t have an answer of like, will it stick this time, will it dissolve like Night Island, is it sustainable AT ALL to have a small group of the elite making rules and holding dominion over an entire culture???????? Reader’s choice lol.

But it leaves a question of like, what does returning to each other look like in this setup—they’re in touch now, they can find each other, they have cell phones, Armand can come and go at the Château as needed, Marius has a room at Trinity Gate, etc. Their relationship is civil and functional at this point. And does “returning” mean to be exclusive companions and to fuck off? Will Marius leave Court? Will Armand come and stay more often?  Idk ! 

These are questions that have 100 different answers because it’s all headcanon, but, what we know by the end of the series is that they’ve gone through something traumatic and Armand and Marius are going to talk to each other. What is that conversation about? What is the result? We don’t know. Armand is letting his FEELINGS THE FUCK OUT in this book as if he's had therapy, and Marius says he thinks Armand is ready to open his heart, if that gives us any clues! But does opening his heart mean "I am feeling vulnerable and brave to tell you how I feel because I almost lost you" or "I'm gonna read you the fuckin riot act because I did that to Lestat as well" ? lol Either way the thing here is that it's ARMAND'S decision and not about whether or not Marius left him in the past.

I think something that often goes overlooked in character discussions is their inherent inhumanity, and I really dislike the “thEyRe MonStErs” easy out of a lot of analyses, because it’s more than that. The entire purpose of the series and the reason the series was unique is that built a world where they’re MORE THAN. It’s not about simply being a monster—there’s nothing simple about it. And not being human doesn’t mean it’s all negative and all evil. What it means is that it’s Extra. They feel things on such a deeper level than we do, their brains function differently, and they’re immortal. They have all the time in the world to forgive each other when they want to, and they’re social creatures who want companions! The older you are, the scarier it is! It’s horror! Like even Marius’s relationship with Mael is so fucking special because like, as much as they put each other off, it’s like, someone they each still have, that’s been constant, and the world would look so different without them.

It just reminded me of this line in Six Feet Under (sorry I’m obsessed, I think everything always comes back to SFU for me LOL) but when Brenda says she used to think as she got older that she’d have more people in her life and that the opposite was true. So anyway for Marius like, regardless of if we want to get into selfish/selfless, Armand is one of the most important people in his life, and has been around for a quarter of Marius’s life, and nothing would be the same if Armand wasn’t around. 

And without the distraction of The Parents in the modern age I wonder if he’s like especially fragile and traumatized about losing people? Is he still traumatized by losing Pandora? And losing Armand the first time? It’s great that they have cell phones and a community now so no one gets too far from each other, but gosh.  

I don’t know what returning to each other looks like, as far as where canon left. Like, does the Château collapse? Is Daniel with them? Asking if Marius wants it is like, yeah maybe he would want Armand around Court more for moral support. And maybe if he decides to step away, and get space, maybe he would want Armand there with him as a safe place to land. When the Court inevitably collapses, will he want someone around? 

In the past, Marius tended to isolate himself in times of stress; is he still like that? Has the loss of The Parents changed this for him? Will Daniel and Armand allow him to isolate? Idk ! !!! 

But anyway sorry I’m rambling but my point about not being human and about being Extra is that there are a lot of parts in the series where vampires have a relationship or forgive each other even after they’ve deeply hurt each other or committed atrocities. Louis and Armand come to mind, so do Louis and Lestat, David and Lestat, Pandora and Santino. Even Marius calming down enough to be in his situationship with Avicus and sorta metamour to Mael. They are not human, they are capable of forgiveness. There are atrocities that humans are capable of never forgiving because we don’t have time to get over it. How can we even know how much time it takes to heal a grudge if we don’t live long enough to test it?

Even knowing that, 500 years still wasn’t enough to forgive Santino for what he did to them. Like sure if we wanna dunk on Marius and remind ourselves that he’s an arrogant self-centered jerk sometimes, and we could say that he’s mad at Santino for what he did to MARIUS—it’s not just the ego this time. He took Armand. He separated Marius and Armand. He destroyed their home. And even if they cooperated a few times in the 20th century, by the time B&G happens, he's been able to read TVA and knows what happened, what Santino did to him, what he did to the boys. (Like, did Marius read TVA? Did Armand ever tell him this privately? We don't know! But we do know that this is now been published for EVERYONE to read which is probably re-traumatizing for everyone involved and now everyone knows hajkgsdl)

So anyway, like. I know this has kinda been a non-answer because we’re talking about stuff that didn’t happen in canon and everything past BCtu is going to be our own headcanons. But I can say: Yes, Marius loves Armand deeply, and vampires are capable of incredible levels of empathy and forgiveness for each other, because their lives are too long and bleak and painful not to.

As to the idea that Marius left him in the past, personally I don’t agree! 

Marius not rescuing Armand from the cult is often misunderstood in fandom, but I could see why someone would point to that as a clue that Marius has left him in the past. It’s not that simple, though. Marius is too injured to save him, doesn’t even know if he’s alive,  and by the time he finally finds Armand he finds the cult situation too complicated to navigate. Don’t forget that Marius has pretty severe religious trauma, and is one of the characters who was turned against his will. By a cult!!! So to see Armand thriving with a cult is so triggering and disappointing, and I don’t think he’s strong enough to risk being rejected if he goes to rescue Armand only to learn he no longer wishes to be rescued. 

I would say that’s very unlike leaving him in the past, it’s more like seeing him as another one that got away. 

And then when they reunite in QOTD it’s during another extremely traumatic event in Marius’s life—we don’t know details about how everyone left Night Island or where everyone went, but what we DO know is that Marius lost The Parents—>Armand attempts suicide about a decade later—>Marius commits the big B+S Fuckup shortly after learning Armand is okay—>Marius fucks off to Scandinavia with Daniel to lick his wounds because everyone’s mad at him. 

VC skips around a LOT, and there’s so much that we don’t learn about, so much that happens between books and off screen. Like, we don’t KNOW how Marius wound up with Daniel. We don’t know exactly how much longer he stuck around in New Orleans after TVA, we don’t know what he and Armand were gonna talk about in BCtu before the series ended. And that’s the enD oF IT THERE’S NOTHING ELSE!

Marius truly doesn’t leave anything in the past, that’s the thing about him.

He’s still traumatized by the way he was turned. He still tries to sculpt his identity around what his life was as a Roman. He committed to the burden of The Parents for 2000 years, even when he was overwhelmed and wished he could stop. He spends centuries painting Pandora’s face over and over and over when he can’t find her. He still thinks Mael is a bumbling redneck from the woods. He still wanted Santino killed, even when they’d been civil with each other in QOTD and up to TVA.

And in BCtu when he’s living at Court he’s like, trying to embrace himself, allowing himself to be a weirdo because he’s around his own kind now. HE QUITS PANTS, YOU KNOW WHAT? HE ALWAYS HATED PANTS, LET’S NOT. 

I think even as humans there are so many things that shape us forever, that we never really move past. Even when we leave something in the past, it shapes us, it allows us to leave it in the past. People and events in our lives carve into us, whether we like it or not!!! And part of the horror of immortality is that it goes on, and on, and on, and on, your physical body gets hard and cold and monstrous, more and more uncanny, physically impervious, but their BRAINS AND HEARTS ARE STILL TENDER!! 

So no, no, I really don’t think Marius ever left Armand in the past. I think he left him to the cult because he thought Armand wanted it, I also think he gave Armand space after a disastrous fuckup. When he goes to speak to him at the end, he says it like ARMAND is the one that’s ready. He’s waiting for Armand! Marius was there the whole time, ready to be called upon if someone needs him! He lives to serve! 

Armand was his baby and one of the great loves of his life, the first (and only) fledgling he made because he truly wanted to. Marius loves him so much!!! 

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I asked my sister for my sweater back?

My sister (28F) is visiting home because she’s experiencing issues with her marriage (I don’t want to (somewhat) publicly dive into details here, and it’s not super relevant, but it is important to note that she’s not doing very well right now, as these issues are recent.) I (25F) currently live with my parents and keep some of my clothes in the dresser in the guest room my sister stays in. (Note: This is at my mother’s request bc it would be a hassle to get a dresser set up in my room due to space.)

I recently put a sweater I like but haven’t had a chance to wear yet in those drawers. She walked out today wearing it; I don’t inherently mind that she’s wearing it, but I’m plus size and she’s not, so finding clothes I like can be difficult, and I’m afraid she’s going to take it with her whenever she leaves.

Obviously I would try to broach the topic respectfully, and I don’t even care if she wears it—I just want to ask that she doesn’t take it when she leaves. But I’m worried about being insensitive during what I know is a difficult time. I know this may seem like a small/silly thing to worry about, especially since she has bigger things on her mind, but while I love my sister, we historically don’t always get along, and even when I try broach topics like this respectfully, it always seems to end in a fight.

WIBTA if I brought it up to her?

What are these acronyms?

[scarrletmoon]

none of this is going to be particularly articulate lmao but anyway,

i’ve already decided to ignore the izzy apologists but there’s something so……healing? about ed being cruel and dangerous and violent and emotional and yet still being treated sympathetically because at the end of the day, he’s shown that he doesn’t actually want to be that way and is terrified of that part of him

and idk, it’s just especially important to me to see a brown man go through that. our anger as POC is always seen as inherently more dangerous even when it’s justified. we can’t talk back, we can’t defend ourselves, we can’t argue that we’re being treated unfairly. so you can forget about having normal human emotions, like being upset that someone broke your heart

and yeah, the way ed acts is vastly worse than like, “curled up in bed eating ice cream alone” (although he WAS in that phase before izzy pushed him). but also getting to see him lash out is kind of refreshing? it’s scary and wildly unhealthy but part of the discomfort of watching him like that is knowing that he’s SCARED. he doesn’t actually want to behave like this bc he’s not the kind of guy who really revels in mindless violence. everything he does this season is a desperate cry for help

and like, i’ve been there? i’ve turned into the raging storm that tries to destroy everything in its wake — not because i don’t care about other people, not because i really want to hurt them the way i’ve been hurt, but because no one seems to see how much pain im in and i don’t know how to ask for help like a normal person. and maybe if i just act like a monster, then i’ll be proving my own point — that im unlovable, that i don’t deserve the friendships i have, that whoever hurt me was right to do so, that there’s something wrong with me for feeling hurt in the first place

and maybe i’m a little bit insane and there’s no fixing me

but then stede still comes back to him after all of it. stede cries by his bedside and begs him to wake up. stede knows everything ed’s done, understands immediately why it happened, understands what ed was trying to say with his actions, and he loves ed anyway.

and that’s what he’s always wanted, in the end — someone to see HIM, to understand what he’s been too afraid to say, to show him the kindness he needs to pick himself up and stop self harming in increasingly dangerous ways

all of that from a silly little pirate comedy

idk, i already know im fucked up bc what normal person would watch those 3 episodes and hardly be phased by them bc they relate so much? but it’s just…..nice. nice to know that it’s not that i’m irredeemably evil. it’s just that i’ve spent my whole life being treated like less than human, and i’m not a freak for being upset by that

(not saying that ed didn’t nothing wrong bc he definitely did lmao, but also the point isn’t to argue about how evil he is)

[beneathashadytree]

U know, i have really a thing for man being a good dad, taking care of their kids w love, idk how to explain it, i think maybe bc i know usually men dont give a shit about their kids and helping their partners im really afraid of ending w a person like that (and thats also one of the reasons why i usually dont trust men and feel like im near a bomb when near then), so when i see a sweet man that love and care about their family i feel theres hope in this world...

If i see a man i like being nice w kids and think they would be a good dad makes me want to make a baby w them rn, but isnt just a horny feeling yk, its also something similar to that warm feeling of seeying something cute.

Would that be the "mother instincts" ppl say women have between their 20s to 30s?

Hmmm… I think I understand what you mean, nonnie. It’s always appealing to know that a man is reliable and loving in that way we wish all parents are towards their children. With how disappointing men are with fatherhood (kudos to the patriarchal society drenched in sexism and outdated roles that encourages them to remain distant, neglectful, or just straight-up awful), it doesn’t surprise me that in fiction people tend to gravitate towards fics about a warm, loving family with such dependable father figures.

Would I call those “mother instincts”? I don’t know, but I don’t think I would, all things considered. I’d say it’s a “you” instinct; only you can trust your gut feeling on this and make that sort of decision for yourself with as little external pressures as possible!!

I believe that a “mother instinct” doesn’t exist inherently but is rather born from one of two things: either gender roles that have been handed down in society, or the growth of your own feelings towards kids as you discover more about your expectations and wants & needs in life. One of those is you being subtly pressured into this by your environment, and one means that you truly do like kids and wish to have them.

Kids are a massive responsibility, so it takes a lot of careful thinking and planning to be able to raise any—and that includes figuring out why you feel like you want to welcome them into your family. Because whether you’re adopting or physically bringing a child into this world, you have to be absolutely 100% certain that this is a weight you can carry on your back. Children shouldn’t have to bear the burden of our own uncertainty.

I hope this makes any sense and doesn’t sound like word-vomit😵‍💫🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽

[visceravalentines]

mr. meg and I were just talking about the difference between 18 superhero sequels and 18 horror movie sequels/reboots and why the latter is palatable and the former is not

we decided that a) sequels are inherent to horror movie culture in a positive way. everyone expects there to be a human cannibal piss fair 4. it's a given. and the discourse around which sequel was better than the other and why is part of the horror enjoyer experience. unlike big box office franchises that are churning out movies no one asked for that don't really add to or change the conversation

and b) horror means to provide you a method of engaging with negative emotions (fear, disgust, discomfort) and achieving catharsis of some kind. and the sea of these emotions has no shore. you can always be more afraid, disgusted, and uncomfortable than you are. whereas I can absolutely hit the ceiling of excitement and awe that comes from watching a man jump out of a plane.

this is not to say there isn't merit to genres besides horror, or that all horror sequels are worthwhile or that all non-horror sequels are garbage. just that the culture around the two is very different and why might that be??? pls share thoughts if you have them, I would love to hear some of your perspectives bc you are all so brilliant and wise to me

[transmutationisms]

i know we just talked about the problems with the overlaying of personal emotional experience with what we see in the show but i found it entirely fascinating (and horrifying) to see someone cry in the exact same way i do. mostly i just do not cry because i can‘t (not even bc i’m a dude, i have a lot of friends that aren’t afraid to cry but i just physically cannot) but there comes a point where, maybe once every other year, the floodgates open and it‘s really this animal spectacle. turns me inside out, is pathetic to watch and leaves me half-dead afterwards. kieran did a beautiful beautiful thing there bc it‘s rare to see such a bewildering crying scene, even though that‘s the reality for a lot of people when expressing their emotions.

yeah it's similar imo to that moment in 'tern haven' where he's like, looking directly at gerri right before their bathroom tryst, and he's looking genuinely horny in a way you still rarely see on tv (most sex scenes are not horny lol). like, both of these moments are this sort of explosion of bodily emotion or affect, which is both terrifying for roman and potentially purgative. it's a good beat for his character because he experiences these sorts of outbursts as a loss of control (part of what logan always saw as effeminate about him; see also his childhood bedwetting) and we can see this throughout kieran culkin's physical performance, where roman is noticeably slouchier and less vertical than the other characters (compare to kendall). so he has this total lack of control over his body, which is inherently a condition logan sees as feminine and disgusting, and consequently roman's emotional expressivity also comes bursting out of him and, in the case of the funeral crying, costs him a certain loss of respect from his peers and business associates. so we can see that this ideal of the stoic, disembodied man is still operative in the roys' world even without logan around anymore, and it's still a standard roman simply cannot discipline himself into living up to.

[chaoxfix]

i have so many fucking thoughts about the miraculous movie.

the motivations and characterization was just seriously rushed. they didn’t show me jack shit, they just needed characters to accomplish certain goals and told us they were doing it and that it made sense, but there was no heart or real motivation.

the songs were generic and had little to no personality, they sound like they were written to be relatable and easily streamable rather than to be character portrayals.

it really feels like they were afraid to really get into miraculous lore, everything was so watered down. it made no sense for them to have a lovesquare rather than ladynoir because adrien and marinette barely interacted.

many of you im sure filled in the gaps by things you know from the series, but that’s not how this movie should function. it’s clearly an au and needs to be standalone. if you hadn’t seen the show, would you really think an adrienette ending made more sense than ladynoir based on how it was set up? on that, were ANY ships set up particularly well? marinette goes from truly being annoyed but chat noir but less than 2 minutes ago was terrified and didn’t want to be ladybug at all but now is sassy to him? not only that but she really wasn’t all that competent and clearly disliked chat, why was he so obsessed with her competence and insistent on being with her? it wasn’t explained well and i felt like the writers just expected me to remember the origins episode instead of what i’d just watched here.

on that note… why does everyone want gabriel to be redeemed so badly? why do you feel it’s so appropriate for him to be redeemed here? not all villains need redeemed. this seems to be the major difference between zag and astruc; chloe and hawkmoth are both redeemed /watered down to be likable in this movie. astruc holds his ground and says some people can be redeemed but not everyone will. like real life. because some people are assholes.

don’t get me wrong, i don’t love lila or chloe’s exaggerated evilness. but 1) it’s a fucking superhero drama, without assholes we run out of secondary conflict inherent to the genre 2) hawkmoths exaggerated evilness is what gives him SPICE, taking it away from him here just leaves him so goddamn bland. oh the terrorist wants to be redeemed bc he was sad about his wife despite saying he had nothing to lose even in the movie with a fucking child? nah. no way. fuck that.

chat noir was fucking weird about his crush. 0/10 from me.

i did like marinettes clumsiness and her general disaster aura and how it has a real effect on whether people like her or want to be around her — the show grew out of this by s2, similar to the montage here, but it’s more prominent here. i like this clumsiness and social anxiety portrayal slightly more. but s1 will always have a bit of my heart for disasternette

very little got explained well; i felt like i was relying on the show for lore to fill in very basic gaps which isn’t good for a standalone movie. the lore in general wasn’t well explained.

the whole time i sort of just wished i was watching this in the show tbh. another what-if situation. i’d love for the alt versions to meet and exchange lives for a day to point out the differences.

no sentimonster adrien here. where is the lore. :(

other ppl said this better but adriens story and motivations are nonexistent or very different to the show to the point of unrecognizability. show adrien wanted friends, movie adrien shuts them out. it’s not necessarily the worst change but it does feel odd.

fart jokes. ://///

nino and alya were cute separately as friends to the lead characters, but the romance subplot between them felt super forced and rushed compared to their real chemistry in the show.

anyways.

the show >>>>>>>>>> the movie

it’s not even a question for me.

also you guys hate on astruc so much but zag seems to be the one watering down characters and making them generic and marketable. astruc has the heart of the series and keeps the characters feeling authentic. he lets them grow in truly unique ways and gives them real goddamn conflict unlike the garbage zag led projects lead to.

[auckie]

Isn’t it crazy how ai helps us see images of hell before we die. But it’s different than people creating cgi or painted images, only slightly bc it’s so good at capturing an air of casual nonchalantness, completely nonplussed expressions of half baked half naked people going about their business as their limbs melt and get ripped apart by dogs. Like it’s not as good as human art, no, but there’s this je ne sais quoi quality that begets the same indifference that I think a demon who’s going to possess or kill you might have? It’s like, that magic touch of terror I get in movies about the demonic or supernatural/paranormal— the creature is probably intelligent, but you just don’t know because it’s not communicating in any meaningful way with you. Either it’s beyond your understanding, fueled by blind instinct or rage or lust in a way you will never comprehend or maybe some other drive that’s behind your reasoning, or it simply chooses not to acknowledge you with anything. Maybe you can’t decipher it or if you or maybe it just doesn’t give a shit bc why would the hunter call out ‘haha fuck you’ to the bunny before shooting and even if he did! the bunny wouldn’t understand. The rabbit knowing of our intricate lives outside of the chase really ruins the animalistic fear. It now knows it will die for a purpose— to be eaten and skinned maybe, made into something soft. It knows that the machine used to kill it took years of refining and precision planning, from blunt instruments of war to flashy tools of entertainment. From rocks and flint to fire and wheels. Maybe it would be willing to die, either in awe of us or such disillusionment of its own short, meek existence.

I’ve lost the plot a bit but that lack of fear is in a lot of horror media, for me, and every now and again I find a sweet spot in literature or art or media where it’s there! but, it’s become more and more rare.

I still have that sense of like. Eugh. Eeaaughwaoh. Hooooo! In some of the ai art I’ve seen. A lot of the videos. It’s similar to the ones I find funny, bc we know horror and humor are so intricately linked. The beer commercial one is priceless for a similar reason; the belligerent lapping and obtuse crowd, the fire growing and the repetitive mirage of music. but I’m not impressed by any of this. I’m aggravated and a bit, not afraid in a singularity kind of way. More like afraid that we have found a way to remove the human ‘known’ from the creation of images— bc ofc it’s making its content *from* our produce, be it real documentation or art, but it’s removing the sense of familiarity from the regurgitation process. It’s like putting water into a filter and out comes the same clear liquid that’s incapable of quenching your thirst, somehow. And it’s a nebulous thing, like if you corrected the unfixed gaze and number of fingers or blurred and amorphous backgrounds, I feel like you’d still feel this sense of loss. Some of the near pitch perfect anime AI pics I’ve seen have it (or lack thereof), but I can’t be sure if it’s just me recognizing the dominant style, yknow how it’s a bit too softly shaded and the line quality? I could be biased but…I dunno man! I can usually tell! And that’s the unsettling part I think, that we figured out how to scrub a sense of self and individuality from something sooo inherently personal, which is like THE epicenter of uncanny valley. To the point that you just know the same way you might feel someone looking at you.

I’m not trying to get all woowoo about computers. I definitely am not one of the people who thinks ai is gonna develop free will and overthrow us. I think that’s a very reactionary and reductive conversation about the actual impact it will have on real people (workforces, artists, the moral questions of like…yknow, the fucked up shit ppl are already feeding into these things) but I think automizing processes always begs the question of ‘what are we losing in doing this?’ Grandma’s homemade jam vs smuckers sugar syrup? What is that ‘homemade quality’ and what things are supposed to be ‘homemade’? Mommy homamos sweater knitted from your cats shed hair vs a sweater made of tissue paper that costs $49.99 from Zara that will last one year, tops. How palatable is the opposite? How much humanity can you remove before it becomes repugnant? Could an ai have shit all these words out? Would it have been a good read? Was this even a good read? There’s an answer, and it’s somewhere between whatever is most cheap, and most marketable.

[flyingwide]

In one interview MPG says he plays sir with just enough likability to keep people tuning weekly and it made me laugh bc one glance at social media proves that once fans saw MPG they were sat for this show regardless of sir’s intentions. Not all but a significant amount for sure. I’m in the camp of yuck-go-away (Gabi being a kid when he took her nullifies any shipping on my part plus there’s so much raw hatred on her part I just can’t see the leap to sexy) but that being said I do think that this show being on network tv makes for an interesting angle because they have to find ways to acknowledge and work around the inherent darkness of the premise which makes for an intriguing story. On the other hand it sometimes comes off a bit too sanitized because of that. The victims are always nice or nice enough, and the villains are mild or basically caricatures. The writing just isn’t there with the missing peoples aspect of the show (honestly it isn’t really there with Gabi and the basement either but I’m more willing to forgive that since it makes for believable messiness) and I hate it because it’s an important issue. Idk. It’s not like I want some misery fest but it’s all so…tidy and dull. Also the emphasis on Lacey and Gabi’s friendship falls flat because they’ve literally never given besties. I buy Margaret and Gabi way more even.

I honestly came into this show for MPG (I had just rewatched Pitch for the 5th time in 2 weeks when I learned it existed) and I’ve been a villain lover since watching Gargoyles at 6 years old (David Xanatos, the man that you are…) so there’s very little he could do that would be beyond the pale for me. A friend noted that they honestly wish he was a little worse because it seems like the show is afraid to have him go too far, which is interesting when they’ve made clear that they have no intention of redeeming him. If he’s beyond redemption, why does it matter that he never goes too far? Just go all in on him being an irredeemable bastard.

I’ve personally made the leap to sexy because how fucky the power dynamics are. She was a child and he was in control. That’s not sexy for me, that makes my skin crawl. But now she’s an adult and she has him at her mercy but he’s shown time and again that he’s not helpless. It’s not a straightforward abuse of power like it would have been when she was 16. They’re not equals now but they’re closer to it. The idea of consent between the two of them would be deeply fraught and that makes the wheels in my brain start turning: what would that dynamic look like? How would it change what they have now? Would it change it? Would it change how he sees her, her purity? I don’t ship it in a “I want them to end up together and in love” sort of way; I want to take a baseball bat to a hornets’ nest just to see what will happen.

I will agree that the writing overall is fairly weak. It seems almost like it’s just checking boxes at some points. I would like to see some sort of overarching case keep coming up in season 2 because Tony’s case wrapped up way too quickly and they haven’t done enough with the idea of Annie to make it compelling. Yet. I think it could get better but it needs to get there quickly.

I like the relationship between Gabi and Lacey but I would like it more if they would acknowledge that Gabi is unintentionally an obstacle to Lacey’s healing. Being around Gabi is impeding Lacey’s ability to move on because she is this big sister figure that Lacey has shaped her life around but that means that her life is shaped around someone intrinsically tied to her trauma. We see Margaret mired in her fear and grief, trapped in that bus station, but there’s much less acknowledgement that Lacey is mired too, held in place by her love for Gabi. I really like the actor and don’t want to see her go but for the character? Lacey, baby, run.

[prongsmydeer]

Ayesha Liveblogs Shrek 1 and 2

"Once upon a time there was a lovely princess, but she had an enchantment upon her of a fearful sort, which could only be broken by love's first kiss." Interesting that they choose 'first' instead of 'true' here

It's always the highest room of the tallest tower. Can't be a princess and afraid of heights I guess

RIP Steve Harwell, and the iconic Shrek song, Allstar by Smashmouth

Honestly, this intro makes Shrek out to be very meticulous, as an Ogre. He's getting all fresh for the day, cleaning out his log gutters, painting an artsy little sign, making himself a little snack, burp-flamethrowing a fire to relax. Am I crazy in saying I understand why people keep romanticizing Shrek

The animation is really holds up, considering this was 20 years ago. Shrek was onto something!

"Ogres, they're much worse. They'll make a suit from your freshly-peeled skin. They'll shave your liver. They'll squeeze the jelly from your eyes. Actually, it's quite good on toast." Can we confirm or deny whether or not Ogres are actually eating people or if this is just something Shrek is saying to be left alone. I would like to know

Even if we deny the inherent sentience of the Donkey and Pinocchio, like the witch and dwarves are fully humanoid, so this collection and "resettlement" for money essentially suggests that one of the main plot contentions of Shrek is the trafficking of people. Why did I never think about this LMAO

I love that Donkey singing "Friends" implies the existence of Bette Midler in the Shrek universe

Shrek is so soft-hearted it takes literally 10 seconds of pleading for Donkey to convince him to have a houseguest for the night

"We can stay up late, swapping manly stories, and in the morning, I'm making waffles." How does Donkey make waffles without hands?

Are those HUMAN eyeballs Shrek is plopping into his martini as a little condiment??? Discuss

Extremely rude of the seven dwarves to knock Shrek's dinner off the table using Snow White's glass coffin lmao

Did they all come bc Shrek is the only one intimidating enough for the knights to leave alone (protection racket for Fairytale diaspora who are victims of democide) or because the swamp is the only fairy-tale safe land (forced displacement under occupation) or both

The "eviction notice" makes it seem like the latter, but I am honestly intrigued by the political implications of Shrek LMAO

""I'm gonna see this guy Farquaad right now, and get you all off my land and back where you came from." Shrek, accidental advocate against settler colonialism

"That's enough. He's ready to talk." How long has the Gingerbread Man been being tortured omg. Also what an evil opening line

"Alright then. Who's hiding them?" This implies that it IS an active form of democide

Fhfkjhfkjhf I didn't remember that Cinderella and Snow White were also Bachelorette options. I love that they have other roles in the movies

LMAO at the Mirror trying to give the Curse Caveat about Fiona and being dismissed. You'd think that'd be part of the intro

"Wait a second. Look, I'm not gonna eat you." Every passing comment in this movie implies more and more that Shrek has eaten people in the past

"Please keep off the grass, shine your shoes, wipe your—face." Hidden memory unlocked lmao

You know, Donkey is as equally responsible for defeating the knights as Shrek is. He holds his own!

Omg @ Shrek inadvertently selling out the Swamp Squatters to the person trying to hunt them

We interrupt this liveblog to present you with a Venn diagram of Ogres and Onions (Shrek 2001)

"I know what I smell, and it wasn't no brimstone." Donkey has some qualms about bodily functions for someone who just pissed out a fire

"Sure, it's big enough, but look at the location." [Laughing] I love the little jokes Shrek makes when he goes to a place

Genuinely endearing how Shrek cradles Donkey's face when assuring him the the lava bridge is fine

[Pats face] "That'll do, Donkey. That'll do." Hahahahah @ Shrek tricking Donkey into completing the bridge by making it too stressful to stay on. Get u a friend who will force u to face ur fears when necessary

"So where is this fire-breathing, pain-in-the-neck anyway?" "Inside, waiting for us to rescue her." Donkey and Shrek said, about both of their future spouses

"Fear's a sensible response to an unfamiliar situation." Donkey provides some fair emotionally-intelligent commentary

"Of course you're a girl dragon, 'cause you're just reeking of feminine beauty." What a compliment!!

"You should sweep me off my feet, out yonder window an down a rope onto your valiant steed." "You've had a lot of time to plan this, haven't you?" "Mhmm." Fiona is so sweet with dreams of romance haha, at least Shrek recognizes that

"Well, I have to save my ass." HAHAHA they said u can use one ass word, as a treat

Donkey is actually incredibly good at communicating his needs to Lady Dragon. Also how do they go from running away from her to her and Donkey having kids hahaha

"Say there's a woman that digs you, but you don't really like her that way. How do you let her down real easy so her feelings aren't hurt, but you don't get burned to crisp and eaten?" I want to know more about the DonkeyDragon love story

"You're just jealous that you could never measure up to a great ruler like Lord Farquaad," said Fiona, with absolutely zero knowledge of who he was

"That's Throwback, the only Ogre to ever spit over three wheat fields." This Ogre constellation story does beg the question of where all the other Ogres are hanging

"Look I'm not the one with the problem, okay. It's the world that seems to have a problem with me. People take one look at me and go, 'Ahhhh, help, run, a big stupid ugly ogre.' They judge me before they even know me." Awww, Shrek

Donkey and Shrek's friendship has genuine emotional depth lol

Why does Lord Farquaad look under his sheets while staring at Fiona like that jkhghjgg. This is a children's movie!

How did Fiona even get food while in the tower??? Did she have to keep singing nearby birds to death, or did they have some kind of carrier pigeon delivery

I do not remember Robin Hood being French jghjkhgjg

"I like an honest fight and a saucy little maid." "What he's basically saying is he likes to get... paid." The adult jokes continue

I ALSO DID NOT RECALL FIONA KICKING ALL OF THE MERRY MEN'S ASSES LMAO:

Hahahaha Fiona and Shrek are so sweet with their fly cotton candy and amiphibian/reptile balloons

"Now, I don't mean to brag, but I make a MEAN weed rat stew." AND Shrek can cook. Entirely self-sufficient and thoughtful man

I also like that they've returned to the sunflower field of the Onion-Ogre debate

"By night one way, by day another. This shall be the norm. Until you find true love's first kiss, and then take love's true form." You know, I have always found it so bizarre the Fiona ends the story as an Ogre, because she is naturally a human, and whether she's a human or Ogre is irrelevant to her and Shrek being in love. But I guess the answer is in the curse, because the form of her true love is an Ogre, so I guess after breaking the spell, she becomes whatever version of a person she fell in love with? It's like the Little Mermaid but if Eric was an Ogre

"I thought you might like [the sunflower] because you're pretty." SHREKKKKKK

"Princess and Ugly don't go together." Fiona looks fine actually, just like a normal person with wide features LOL. I bet there are a bunch of people with Ogre-Fiona features

"Who could ever love a hideous, ugly beast." "I thought that wouldn't matter to you." "Well, it does!" JUST COMMUNICATE

RIP the Donkey and Shrek friendship breakup

HAHAHAH @ THEM CUTTING OUT THE LYRIC "MAYBE THERE'S A GOD ABOVE." Shrek a canonical atheist?

DRAGON AND DONKEY CAME TOGETHER OUT OF THEIR FUNDAMENTAL DESIRE FOR COMPANIONSHIP. GOOD FOR THEM!!

"Can you forgive me?" "Hey, that's what friends are for, right?" Donkey being the number one communicator out of every character in this movie LMAO

"No one likes a kiss-ass." Ass count: 3. They can't keep getting away with this hahahhaa

"Really, it's rude enough being alive when no one wants you, but really, showing up to a wedding!" This is the inner monologue of social anxiety

WOW @ FARQUAAD GETTING EATEN ALIVE BY THE DRAGON. REST IN PIECES

I did spare a moment to think of the legalities of Fiona being married to Farquaad but with his death I suppose she becomes a window of the world's shortest marriage (no pun intended)

Also who is in charge of Duloc now? Fiona? Did Farquaad have an heir? They're really abandoning this lordship LMAO

"I don't understand. I'm supposed to be beautiful." "You are beautiful." Like Grease, the moral of the story is that it's okay to change for a man as long as the man learns to communicate his feelings and rides off into the sunset with you to a sickass soundtrack

(I'll go to bat for Danny also changing tho. I don't know if Shrek changed all that much in this first movie, but he did become more personable. He had so many wedding guests!)

I would like to 1) Examine the continuity of the Three Blind Mice being both the carriage horses and coachman as well as in Donkey's musical number and 2) Examine the disability representation in Shrek. Started off questionably, but arguably ended well in this movie? LMAO

Onto: Shrek 2

I love how the narration for each opening also serves as a character introduction (Shrek for the first movie, Charming for the second)

"Princess... Fiona?" said Charming to Big Bad Wolf, uncertain if it was a furry-adjacent curse

Hansel's Honeymoon Hideaway is a fun little location

I wonder just how many movies and shows in the early-2000s parodied the Spiderman kiss

"I don't know, [Dragon]'s been all moody and stuff lately." Hahahah, foreshadowing the dragon pregnancy

Reggie the Announcer's Solo also implies the existence of Hawaii 5-0 in the Shrek universe

Gjkghgjkhg I'd ask what kind of parents miss their only daughter's wedding, but I suppose it's the same kind of parents who lock their daughter in a tower

"And who says I want to be a part of this family?" "Uh, you did! When you married me!" Men really do be like this sometimes

"It's gonna be champagne wishes and caviar dreams from now on." Donkey is experiencing being a friend to royalty for the first time LOL

Mr. and Mrs. Far Far Away have apparently not heard tell of the Ogre Marriage of Their Daughter

"They're my parents." "Hello? They locked you in a tower." "That was for my own—" "Good. Now here's our chance." I looove the way this dialogue flows into each other, it's a very fun storytelling technique

"I suppose any granchildren I could expect from you would be..." "Ogres, yes." That's a lot of prejudice for someone who's a part-time frog, Harold

HAHAHAHA @ them having a cameo of Prince Charles, who is now King, to the line, "The kind of gal the Prince would date."

Shout out the Bichon puppy, who has nothing to do with any of this

"Whether your parents like it or not, I am an Ogre. And guess what, Princess? That's not about to change." "I've made changes for you, Shrek. Think about that." That's what I'm saying! Fiona gives up the species she was born to, to be with Shrek. Why does she need to be an Ogre? Does she want to, or is it just be with Shrek? Or is because of the spell? Explain to me why she didn't get any agency over who she was, physically

"Fiona does, and she'll never forgive you if you don't [give your blessing]. I don't want to lose our daughter again, Harold." Shout-out Lillian for being a very accepting parent

If the Fairy Godmother and Harold had already arranged a marriage, surely they could've just announced it instead of playing all these games. Fiona was willing to marry Lord Farquaad, she can't be that hard to please

Harold and Lillian's first kiss by the lilypond and the Lady Frog saying, "Do I know you?" are truly the foreshadowing I did not know of the first time I watched these movies

Like Fiona, Doris The Ugly Stepsister is actually a normal woman who is called Ugly for having features that are more wide or perceived as more masculine. People act like there is something crazy disproportionate or out of the norm of how they look (green skin for Fiona aside.) Justice for both of them:

I fully forgot that Puss in Boots is introduced as Antonio Banderas's disembodied voice agreeing to assassinate Shrek

Not the portrait of Sir Justin Timberlake hahahahah

Awwww Fiona was mimicking the words of her childhood doll when she gave Shrek her hankerchief in the first movie!!

SCREAM @ the Chastity Belt World Tour. Who is that a parody of

"Dad. We both acted like Ogres. Maybe we just need some time to get to know each other." Shrek is extended an olive branch while Harold is extending an Assassin Cat

"I say we take the sword and neuter him right here. Give him the Bob Barker treatment." This is a reference I had to google, but apparently, founded an organizatoin and spent millions on neutering animals. ALSO, he died three weeks ago???? How many Shrek-adjacent deaths have there been in the past month

"Come on Shrek, don't feel bad. Almost everyone that means you wants to kill you." Hahahaha harsh but true

"It's not like I wouldn't change if I could. I just, I wish I could make her happy." Fnally, some reciprocity on the changing

"On my honour, I am obliged to accompany you until I have saved your life, as you have spared mine." "Sorry, the position of annoying talking animal has already been taken." Very self-aware of Donkey to say so

I love everything about Puss in Boots, the purrfect character:

Love that Shrek and Fiona have each adopted their own new animal friends in each other's absence

"Be sure and use small words, dear. He's a little slow this morning." Hahahaha Lillian politely calling Harold stupid

"Why don't we just pop in there for spell?" I love Shrek's consistent habit of making jokes about whatever new place he's in

"We represent the workers in all magical industries, both evil and benign. Are you feeling at all degraded or depressed?" "Uh... a little. We don't even have dental." I know it's a bit but I choose to believe that Shrek is pro-union

In this world of Fairy Tales, does it imply that Cinderella and Snow White's stories are non-fiction biographies?

Shout-out to the Helpers of Species Unknown and the employee of the month, Theo:

I did wonder for a moment, as Puss in Boots stared at the Happily Ever After potion, if he was not going to be able to read

"But you love being an Ogre!" "I know. But I love Fiona more!" Awwww Shrek

"A cute button nose?" Wild how Shrek's nose as a human is not that different from Fiona's nose as an ogre but it's fine for him because he's a man. Something something gendered beauty standards

"I'll be true... enough." Hahahaha, the ladies are fun

"Someday I will repay you. Unless, of course, I can't find you, or if I forget." Hahahaha Shrek being very relatable

"What happened to your voice?" "The potion changed a lot of things, Fiona." Prince Charming claims the beauty standard includes not having a Scottish accent (he is wrong)

"She's a princess, and you're an Ogre. That's something no amount of potion is ever going to change." Except it literally did change Shrek into a human LOL and if they wanted the potion to be permanent on Fiona, the Charmings do need Shrek to kiss her

"I hate Mondays." Yet another pop culture reference

"She loves that... Pretty Boy, Prince Charming," said Shrek, as if it had not been canonically established that human Shrek is very handsome

Shrek and Donkey and Puss all attending the nightly Unhappy Hour hahahaha

"You can't force someone to fall in love." "I beg to differ. I do it all the time!" Sinister of the Fairy Godmother to say

Not the Donkey calling out against police brutality and the Puss getting charged with possession of catnip. Feels a little targeted lmao

Shrek being willing to step aside if it's Fiona's choice to leave him but ready to intervene if he know she's being pushed into it ❤️

Joan Rivers the Cartoon is also yet another early 2000s reference.

"That's not my husband," said Fiona, in an unparalleled act of intuition

"Well folks, it looks like we're up chocolate creek without a popsicle stick." I LOVE idioms translated to new circumstances kjhgkjhg

Mongo the Giant Gingerbread wanting the big Farbucks cup. He's so cute!!

Shout-out Shrek 2 for some of the best jukebox musical integration since Ella Enchanted (which, apparently only predates this movie by like two weeks hahaha)

Also shout-out Mongo for literally laying down life and limb for the cause:

Harold redeeming himself from trying to trick his daughter into marriage by taking a magical bullet for her

Also if the magic reflects back on Fairy Godmother to burst her into bubbles, why does it also work on Harold to turn him into a frog? Riddle me that magical logic

"I just wish I could be the man you deserve." "You're more that man today than you ever were. Warts and all." Bold of Lillian to be cool with being married to a frog

"I want what any princess wants. To live happily ever after with the Ogre I married." I once again do not understand why Fiona HAS to be an Ogre to be with Shrek, given that is not what her heritage is, and the being an Ogre was a spell just like this one, but if she wants to choose Ogre life, good for her!

Awwww Donkey is so happy to be a dad to these weird little children: