#it's fascinating that I have a hard time liking morally grey characters but this awful little dumbass is just fine

[running-in-the-dark]

I don't think I've mentioned how much I love Dan Fielding yet today, so: I love him I love him I love him

[sammygender]

i actually. oh my god. it’s been so long that i’ve forgotten about the absolute insanity of s4. i’ve become acclimated to sam mistreatment by the show but i genuinely think s4 is SO fucking insane because like. it’s back when supernaturals good! and yet! sams narrative arc is INSANE! in a fascinating and yet genuinely awful and horrifying way!!! and like. is that intentional?? spn is a horror show surely it’s intentional but did they actually realise what they were doing can i realllly trust that? is it smart and meta because when you put thought into it it’s really fucking clever but did they actually or did they genuinely unconsciously think dean is the actual moral compass of the show and that disobeying him is blasphemy?? or is that an intentional writing choice a la family is hell a la god is a nuclear familial patriarch?? i like to think the latter but

like. supernatural is an experiment. an experiment in how many times you have to state something about a character, even if it’s directly Not What Happens and actually genuinely false, before a fandom will accept it as 100% true. an experiment in, well, if you never directly call out that your protagonist is an unreliable speaker and narrator, will your fans ever realise?

and the answer for the first is Pretty much you can just say it once - i think as soon as most people heard ‘dad said i have to save you or kill you’, they internalised it as Sam WILL go evil and Dean will have to save him or kill him and what’s more, Dean has the right to make these choices, because everything about Sam is obviously inherently Dean’s. nevermind that sam has always tried so hard to be good and his most ‘morally grey’ era in the show is during active manipulation and is still just because he is trying SO hard to do the right thing. and the answer for the second is They will never realise, because most fans still think that dean saying sam chose a demon over him means it’s what happened.

and i don’t even know if the writers knew what they were doing during any of that. i have to believe some did. hopefully most. but i don’t even know anymore late season sam writing has made me so much less optimistic. maybe they just believed dean was fucking correct

[tleeaves]

The Fictional Crush Line-Up For 2023 and Beyond

Was going to do this sooner (as in a review on the year based on the new or resurfaced interests I picked up, with aforementioned fictional crushes along the way), but I wanted to collect art for them all too and then I also had to try and remember them all. But here we are. If I'm missing any, I'll either have to edit and or reblog to include them.

See if you can spot any common threads (it may get trickier as the list goes on, just be warned). This goes almost in chronological order. But order does not in any way reflect my level of brainrot and obsession with each.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE FRAGILE THREADS OF POWER, BALDUR'S GATE III, AND ARCANE: LEAGUE OF LEGENDS (SPECIFICALLY REGARDING VIKTOR).

Consider yourself warned.

Victor Vale (Vicious by V.E. Schwab)

Victor and his revenge story are kind of responsible for kick-starting my journey of self-rediscovery these past twelve months, in a strange and roundabout way. He made me want to stick up for myself and what I wanted out of life. Sure, he's extremely morally grey in a concerning way, and yeah, we don't normally encourage revenge, but I found him a comfort at a difficult time. But also, I could totally fix him (no one can and it's no one's responsibility, yet the sentiment is still there). I'm not usually one for blonds (I am a liar) but his cold aesthetic is oddly pleasing. There's nothing I understand more than an awe that rots into resentment and envy while maintaining the same thread of fascination with someone. "Victor Vale was not a fucking sidekick" is just a, mwah, chef's kiss line. Honestly, I have less of a crush on this guy, more of an understanding that I appreciate. Also, I haven't even mentioned the chronic pain implications and canon uses of his powers. But that might be for another time.

Viktor (Arcane: League of Legends)

Another Viktor with chronic illness themes and whose (in LoL lore) regard for a partner in science goes sour over time as they pursue different objectives (not seen in the Netflix series yet, of course, it's too early for glorious evolution). This guy always comes back to rot in my brain, and I cannot wait for season 2 later this year to see what comes of his arc. I'm planning a fanfic involving him, Jayce, and maybe/sort of Jinx, based on a dream I had months ago but still have swirling in the soup that is my consciousness. There is something so pretty about this guy. If I was more confident in my sketching abilities, he'd end up being my muse way too often. Viktor's character to me is kind of a tragedy personified, and I love a good tragedy. Oh, and his voice actor?? Amazing. There's some debate over how authentic he sounds to Eastern Europeans, but the accent aside still, he sounds sooo good. I want to sit in on a lecture where he speaks about literally anything for two hours.

Kell Maresh (A Darker Shade of Magic; The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab)

Usually, I don't talk about Kell because of how silly I feel like my crush on him is. I identify with Delilah "Lila" Bard throughout ADSOM and even Threads, so I hate further mentioning how much I actually think about Kell because I'd have to fist fight anyone who said I only relate to her because of Kell when that's not the truth. And yet, there's still enough differences between Lila and I for me to be like "if I had to pick a woman in the Schwabverse..." But also, MAYBE I JUST THINK KELL IS GORGEOUS, OKAY? 🫣 Maybe I like that he starts as a somewhat naive prince who's had things both easy and rough in life (wanting to be loved by the only family you know and not feel like you're only there to protect your adoptive brother whom your parents tried to tell you both was not actually your brother and you should stop treating each other as such is VALID, argue with the wall, also he's the bodyguard and eternal worrier (yes, worrying) for Rhy and he's taken lives way too young). Maybe I like that he fell first and fell hard for Lila (okay, but if we're getting into the nitty-gritty, she did flirt with him first multiple times, but she would never admit to actual feelings), that he's the male love interest without reservations for once, leaving it up to Lila and whether she's open to love for once in a story. And yeah, okay, maybe I like that he's actually some kind of a prince charming, the sort you always secretly dream about, you know? Shut up. I like his stupid magic coat too. He's clever, but occasionally actually unbelievably dumb, he's funny and witty yet he knows when to keep his mouth shut (and is usually the one hauling others out of a scrap because of their own smart mouths), he cares too much about his family, AND DID I MENTION HE ALSO HAS CHRONIC ILLNESS THEMES THAT BROKE MY DAMN CHRONICALLY ILL AND IN PAIN HEART? I've said too much already, but there. He's a guy.

Miguel O'Hara (Spider-Man: Across The SpiderVerse)

This is the one my sister teases me most about because she doesn't get it. To be honest with you all, even I don't know how to explain it. But this guy. Miguel. There is something about him that I just abdkjdjsdv, you know? Is it the tragedy? The moral greyness? The fangs? His insane height? Just his fanon self? The fucking muscles?? I don't know. But I will defend how interesting he is as an antagonist until the cows come home.

Elliott (Stardew Valley)

Oh... boy. Sometimes, I realise I have a type. It's pretty guys who are hopeless romantics that write novels and poetry. Maybe it's just this one guy. But wow, it works on me. I'm writing a fanfic about him because I need to. There's only 400-odd words to it so far. It was not long after I met him in the game that I decided I had to wife him up. I planted that pomegranate tree early, because it's his favourite fruit for those who don't know, and he loves receiving them as a gift. I got ducks so I could give him their stray feathers. I learned how and when to find lobsters and catch crabs because he loves those too. If I'm out of gifts, I go get a coffee for him because every writer needs their sustenance. Literally, by Spring of Year 2, we were married, and I wondered if perhaps I might have been a little too single-mindedly pursuing every one of those cut scenes when I should have been taking it a bit slower and making it less of a mission. Don't know what to tell you, I went crazy. I fully believe in the headcanon that he gets up early just to go through his haircare routine. Is he pretentious? Maybe. Does he lay it on a little too thick that he's scared of dying alone? Well, okay, yes. Does it bother me that as a househusband he doesn't help out more on the farm? Occasionally. But there's also no one else I'd rather be with (and I developed a sprinkler system specifically so there was less work for me anyway and so now I don't mind at all when he isn't helping). And I can't believe my sister ever introduced me to Stardew Valley because I am now mentally ill about a videogame character made of pixels. Yes, I make wine just for him too. Hush. I spoil him daily now that we're married. Our first child is a son named Ernest. I was debating between Ernest and Edgar, and honestly, I think I should have gone with the latter, but I chose the former. All the dialogue from Elliott is so frickin' cute.

Astarion Ancunín (Baldur's Gate III)

And do you know what the worst part about this one is? I still haven't actually played Baldur's Gate III. I know, I KNOW. A crime. I'm working on it. But you best believe I've watched every cutscene I can, every scrap of gameplay dialogue, all the choices, the different endings you can get with him (Ascended breaks my heart every time -- I don't care how hot he is, it's not what he would have wanted, he doesn't love you like he used to anymore, and he's not as happy as he could be), and I've listened to all the interviews with Neil Newbon and the writer for Astarion about him. This fruity traumatised vampire haunts me. I want to hold him gently and caress his face and tell him he's beautiful and what he looks like to me since he hasn't seen his reflection in centuries and I want to make sure he knows he's loved. I want him to bite me and drink my blood too, but that's not as important. Does it weird me out how much he reminds me of Prince Charming from the Shrek franchise and Preminger from Barbie: The Princess and the Pauper and then aesthetically Asra from The Arcana: A Mystic Romance? Yes. But Astarion's also his own character and I'm in love with his smile and goofy lines.

Settrigh "Sett" (Heartsteel; League of Legends)

This... might be the lowest point, actually 💀 My sister would agree. Because it's not enough to crush on book characters, show characters, and videogame characters -- while technically this guy is a videogame character and was part of League of Legends waaay before the music video, it was the PARANOIA music video that got me. So, even fictional characters made/involved in music videos are not safe from my heart. Because, as I understand it, OG Sett is a bit different from Heartsteel Sett, and I've found I usually prefer reading about the interpretation of the latter in fanfic more than the former. I mean, I still really, really enjoy fanfics where he's The Big Boss of the pits, and or his other background/lore is included, but I've read some where his old personality is a bit Yikes. The golden retriever energy is my favourite era of his if we can call it that (I still headcanon him as a part fox Vastayan, you can't convince me otherwise so go argue with someone else about it, not me). And honestly, I think I might have read more fics involving Sett in 2023 than I did any of the other characters on this list. Which is saying something since he's not as popular as a few of them. He's a pretty guy and I wish to bite him. Lovingly.

Mizu (Blue Eye Samurai)

Oh woman. Mizu is... is... she's basically my wife. I know she's all our wife, but like just let me dream a little here. As soon as I finished the series, I was opening up Tumblr, Pinterest, and AO3, my holy trinity of fandom. My platonic wife was sending me TikToks of our shared fictional wife. Mizu can wind up non-binary, male, female, I honestly do not mind because I am in love with any version she is/becomes (for now, I interpret her as a woman in disguise, but if that changes, I'll absolutely change how I refer to Mizu). She is a tragedy wrapped up in revenge because of a rotten love and unfortunate parentage and time period. I want her as much as I want to be her. Also? I go insane over her little smiles and smirks. I LOVE when we got to hear her laugh, even if it was mostly the flashbacks (do not mention Mikio near me; if he wasn't already dead, I would kill him). Also, who doesn't hate their British/white half, ahaha, oh my god, I know mixed ethnicity is a hot topic for people who do not want POC whitewashed in media, and I fully understand that, but I do appreciate seeing parts of myself in mixed characters like the conflict between trying to be more like one side than another. I'll also admit it: she does indeed look hot covered in blood and carrying a sword. I'll see myself out the door. I've been wanting to write a fanfic about her but I'm still stewing over ideas. Mizu is also probably my first truly major crush on a fictional woman (other than my childhood crush on Helga Sinclair from Atlantis: The Lost Empire). Vi from Arcane comes pretty close, but I see too much of myself in her that it gets weird.

We'll do some honourable mentions for characters from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim since I've gotten into that again.

Brynjolf, Hadvar, and Nazir, I wish I could mod my gameplay so I could marry you. The developers hated their men-loving gamers (I know the women-lovers complain about Serana, but she will never be as heartbreaking as Brynjolf, I don't care if she recognises proposals only to decline them). I mean, Brynjolf is the Tamriel equivalent of Scottish, he calls you "lass/lad", has got a smoothass voice, supports you through so much of the Thieves Guild questline, has a wicked sense of humour, and then when you finish the questline, it's all "sorry, lass. Got important things to do. We'll speak another time" 😭 You can't even recruit him as a follower. He says nothing when you wear an amulet of Mara. I play on a fucking PS4, I can't do mods to marry him or get more dialogue.

(By the way, on my most recent playthrough, Lydia died when I fought the troll on the seven thousand steps, and I am still mad about it. It used to be difficult for Lydia to die, that was why I brought her everywhere, and now I have to become Batman "I work alone". ESPECIALLY after Benor then died on the way up to Paarthurnax. I still can't believe that happened, I should have told him to stay behind and wait for my return.)

Also, every time I play, Derkeethus is so bugged, I can't even rescue him let alone marry the guy, which was disappointing because he seemed nice.

Argis the Bulwark, Vilkas, Farkas, Rayya, Aela the Huntress, and Marcurio, you are all marriageable and live in my heart always. Marcurio was the first I ever married, I think. Three guesses why I chose him (it's the sarcasm, wisecracks, and general sense of humour) (maybe the long hair too). Has anyone noticed how there doesn't seem to be marriageable options among the Khajiit characters?? Why do you think that is? I just checked the Skyrim marriage wiki and this is what it has to say in the trivia: 'There are no Khajiit spouses, however; since the majority of Khajiit in Skyrim are traders or travelers from Elsweyr, they probably have families back home. Additionally, Khajiit characters talk about home a lot, stating how much they miss it and how cold Skyrim is; thus, they probably do not want to marry and settle down in Skyrim.'

Heart-breaking. Oh well.

And that's the end of the line-up. If you read through this, Divines bless your goddamn soul. Psycho-analyse me based on them, I dare you. Or just judge me. I'd like to see either. And if you can find something in common about them all (you don't need to consider the honourable Skyrim mentions), please let me know, because I am personally at a loss.

[karl-raccoon-in-a-teacup]

slams down characters

oda, ango, and dazai aaand akutagawa

Oh you just sent me an entire feast okay. We'll go in the order they're listed, so first: Oda

First impression

Oh hey it's a fairly reasonable guy. In Bungou Stray Dogs. How ni- oh he's so dead.

Impression now

He's a really well-excuted character for the role he serves in the story, and while I more appreciate his role than the character himself, his vibes are on point.

Favorite moment

God Dark Era's so fucking good as a whole but. Honestly. The moment after the kids explode- the line about how he only realized he was the one screaming when his throat started hurting absolutely makes me feral oh my god.

Idea for a story

A continuation(?) of this fic I wrote where I sort of elaborate on the relationship he and Ango develop, and what his life in the Port Mafia is like now that... well.

Unpopular opinion

Dazai and Oda are just platonic friends. It's not a one-sided crush, it's not a papa-son adoption, it's not a brotherly thing, it's a friendship. Maybe it's the aro-aceness but I really do think their relationship is at it's most powerful when it's percieved that way.

Favorite relationship

Buraiha Trio is iconic okay. The Oda-Dazai dynamic means so much to both of them

Favorite headcanon

Despite most assuming that the line in BEAST means Oda dies in every universe but BEAST, I take the line to mean that there are universes where he lives, he just doesn't become a writer like he wants to. And that is just as heartbreaking.

Now Ango...

First impression

Damn... that's rough buddy.

Impression now

Pathetic wet cat of a man and god there's so much sadness in him.

Favorite moment

Gonna be honest it's a tie between one of his most tragic moments (the trio's final time in Bar Lupin as he says he wishes that someday in the future they could come back here again) and one of his "Let me use my tragedy to move me forewards" moments (when in Anne's Space he tells Mushitaro to wait, that this is why he used the Seventh Agency's services, that he had to make amends to an old friend AAAAAAAAA-)

Idea for a story

A continuation of the PM Ango AU because the man is already so, so sad, and that AU just. Does not help make him any less sad.

Unpopular opinion

I like Odango as a ship and I like exploring it as such, but I don't think of as it as canon or interpret canon through that lense.

Favorite relationship

Do I even have to say the Buraiha Trio? (But Mushitaro and Ango's dynamic and the places it could go is a close second.)

Favorite headcanon

He has more moles than the one on his face, you just never see them because the man wears a full suit all the time. But he has them, I promise you.

Onto Dazai:

First impression

Gonna be honest a guy trying to off himself should not be this funny but like. It is extremely funny.

Impression now

A morally gray character I can actually comfortably call morally grey is so, so nice, and I do like that despite his awful past he's trying very hard to do good. Can't call him a good person, but he's doing good things, good for him.

Favorite moment

That one fairly early scene in the Ranpo episode where they have to pull him out of the river, probably.

Idea for a story

Hm, I don't usually write Dazai-centric stuff? (With the exception of the Copycat one) but either something focusing on him and Chuuya's dynamic in the Agency Chuuya AU, where Dazai has to reconcile the boy he met all those years ago with the man he's now coworkers with today... or a scene from a different AU, where Dazai meets a Port Mafia boss at a cafe, and the two of them talk about the tragedy that befell Mori Ogai four years before.

Unpopular opinion

SKK is a fascinating and dynamic ship, but I think the fandom is really sleeping on exploring his dynamics with other characters, especially in AUs that tend to center around SKK. It's not something I feel super negatively on, just a bit oversaturated with it.

Favorite relationship

I am once again holding up Buraiha Trio as my favorite canon example, but I also love to deconstruct the SKK dynamic in settings where they aren't Double Black

Favorite headcanon

...Y'know what I don't. Have one. Uh.

Well onto Akutagawa!

First impression

(Seeing how he treats Higuchi) Oh he's a misogynist okay.

Impression now

A silly little scrinkle boy who needs some work, but I do adore him <3

Favorite moment

Y'know that scene where he's fighting Atsushi and when he gets kicked back we get a flashback to Dazai kicking him back like that, and every moment prior gets recontextualized as we realize that Akutagawa is a direct victim of Dazai being at his worst while Atsushi is directly saved by Dazai being at his best? Yeah. Yeah that.

Idea for a story

I do want to continue his story from my Copycat AU one day, but I just... don't know how to, unfortunately.

Unpopular opinion

I don't ship him with Atsushi. I understand the appeal and say go on shippers! I just personally don't wanna explore their dynamic romantically speaking.

Favorite relationship

However shipping aside I do still find the Akutagawa-Atsushi dynamic very compelling, and I hope we get to see more of them in the future.

Favorite headcanon

Y'know that fish-eye look he does in Wan. With the blank stare. He does that in canon too.

[greenerteacups]

13. worst blorboficiation 

(Ref: this ask.)

Ooh, boy. I mean, it's Snape, yeah? It's gotta be.

This isn't even really the fandom's fault, in my opinion. Around Book 5, Snape's character takes a hard pivot from Antagonist into Morally Grey Deuteragonist, and we start ramping up to the big reveal at the end of Book 7, which is his childhood friendship with Lily. Cool. Interesting. Unfortunately, the books do this by immediately shotgunning the core of his character for 1-4, which is that he is a total jackass to children, and quite seriously abusive to unpopular kids like Neville (threatens to kill his pet, quite possibly would've if Hermione hadn't intervened) and Hermione ("I see no difference" when her teeth are jinxed — sir, that's a thirteen-year-old girl. Crucio is not enough). Up through Prisoner of Azkaban, he's an stunted bully who takes his feelings out on children; then he kind of disappears for a book, and when he comes back in OOTP, he's overshadowed by Umbridge, who's so astonishingly cruel it makes him look almost valorous in comparison. Then you get HBP, and his pact with Narcissa, which aligns him with Dumbledore and also casts him in the role of protecting a child (FOR ONCE), and by the time DH rolls around, it's been so long since we've seen him as he was in Sorcerer's Stone that we've mostly forgotten how awful he actually was. (True, he killed Dumbledore, but that only reads as a strike against him on your first readthrough of the series; if you know what's actually going on, it's another mark in his favor.)

I mean, stuff like this happens all the time, where First Installment Weirdness gets overlooked for the more interesting character work that follows. But I think that Deathly Hallows, and in particular the Epilogue, make him out to be this sad martyr who led this deeply unlucky life, when the reality is that he is everything that's wrong with himself, and he caused every problem he ever had. Which is such a goddamn fascinating character anyway I don't know why the books didn't stick with that instead of the trite martyr shit.

I should admit that I am guilty of doing this — my fic "The Climb" is a Severitus story that spins Snape in a very different direction than he goes in canon, basically diverging from the Potters' death, and it definitely leans into the Soft Snape trend. Climb!Severus is my blorbo, and I'm guilty. (That's the third act twist of this post, right, that the worst blorbo is one of MY guys.) But that's because I so dearly wish that the Severus from 5-7 had been there all along, so that we wouldn't have to sit here wondering why Harry Potter named his son after the teacher who made his best friend cry.

[kinsey3furry300]

5 ships I hate, why I hate them, how to (kinda) fix them, the better ships you should be doing in that universe, and why you should ignore me and keep writing them if it makes you happy.

Note: this is done for amusement, please don’t be offended; I’m not attacking your ship, I’m just listing some ships I do not always care for, and how I think they could be improved, and maybe made brilliant, by clever writing.

In no particular order, and focusing on ships that often annoy me, with no attempt by me to say anything meaningful or popular about the current state of any particular fandom. I’m also a firm believer in the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad ship, only a badly executed ship, so my objections to these is less a dislike of shipping, or the paring, and more that they raise writing issues that I think are difficult to fix in a satisfying way. That’s why in a lot of the examples below I prefer AU ships to ones that try to messily work it into the cannon. Anyway, enjoy... I guess?

 Marco x / anyone (Animorphs)

Why I hate it: Animrophs is an intensely character-driven story, where the tension of each book comes from the conflicts, external and internal, that the five Animrophs (and Ax) face during a long, hard, traumatic war.  And while several of the character are paired off romantically, it’s always to emphasise character conflict over their different points of view. Jake and Cassie are a pair because Jake’s struggle with having to make hard, grey, morally ambiguous choices as leader is highlighted by Cassie’s burning need to make the right choice, the lesser evil, the choice that leaves some small shred of humanity and dignity and kindness left in this bleak world. Tobias and Rachel are a pair as their arcs deal with literal and figurative loss of humanity, as the slow accumulation of trauma over time turns these happy(ish), normal kids into psychologically ruined husks of their former selves and destroys them slowly, one fight at a time.

Marco’s arc, isn’t about either of these things: Marco’s arc, is about the bright, clear line between A and B, between problem and solution. Marco is a utilitarian, a pragmatist: his concern isn’t the burden of leadership, or the cost of the decision, but about how to put that all aside and make hard decisions that actually work regardless of cost. It’s not about what to do, the path is obvious: the bright, clear line of ruthless logic, but how to do it. His match, his counterpoint, the other character who’s all about the logic of taking awful decision in a way that actually works for the team, and his foil, his female counterpart in this, is not a romantic partner, but his mother: Visser one, making the exact same hard, difficulty ruthless decisions using logic and maths, but for the other side of this war. A romantic paring gets in the way of this arc because a partner doesn’t help him with that bright, clear line, and worse, any attempt to pair him of with either Rachel or Cassie breaks up not only a cannon paring, but their respective character arc.

How to (kinda) fix this: Marco’s arc is, at the end of the day, a trolly problem. So make sure whoever you ship him with is one of the people tied to the tracks. Introduce a character he crushes on, and then in the second act reveal that they are either a Controller, or in the family of a Controller or the proximity of the target of their next mission in a way that will make them collateral damage ,and let Marco struggle with what happens when that bright, clear logical line from A to B cuts through someone he actually loves; you know, like it did with his mother. See, even trying to fix this ship is weirdly Freudian.

The far better ship you should be doing: Ax x / EVERYONE. Ax in human form is described as a worryingly pretty, worryingly androgynous male of indeterminate race. He is a literally Bishonen alien hedonist with no familiarity with human senses, poor impulse control in human form, and no knowledge or understanding of human courtship rituals, and he can shape-shift, including into other members of the core team if needed to compel a mission, he calls Jake his prince,  and he is incredibly close to Tobias, the lonely outcast woobie that the LGBT fans adopted as their poster boy. Come on, the potential for shipping, both with wacky hijinks and sad, tragic star-crossed lovers’ trope is endless. Every line dedicated to Marco shipping is a line of text that could be dedicated to Ax trying to eat a Cinnabon erotically on his first date as a human and hulking out mid way because he forgot just how good they are. What could be better than him leaning into to erotically kiss a team-mate, and then fucking up due to his failure to understand human mouths, making weird mouth sounds, and then licking crumbs of the table in the middle of the mall, in front of the entire school, while his crush awkwardly tried to pretend this is normal? What’s wrong with you Marco-shipper people, do you hate fun?

 Riz/Tem (beastars) Why I hate this ship: Okay, just to quickly ask a question, to people who un-ironically like this as a serious ship and not a dark joke, just one little question: What’s wrong with you? I mean,are you okay? Keep taking the meds: the show is VERY clear on that point.

It’s like those people who say Joker X Harley Quinn is their ideal dark, edgy relationship: no it’s not, it’s abusive! Morticia x Gomez is dark and cool but CONSENTUAL and HEALTHY. This… this is a deeply imbalanced person murdering someone and telling themselves after that fact it was special and rare and magical. ITS HOMICIDE! And even if you write that out (and you shouldn’t, because that changes the character arc of every other major character) it’s still got more red flags that a soviet military parade. This is the botulinum of a toxic, one-sided teenage infatuation. Riz’s entire arc is about how he projects his thoughts and feelings about himself onto this idealised, made-up version of his and Tem’s relationship which, from Tem’s point of view, never existed. Riz never loved Tem: he loved the idea of Tem, the idea that someone would see the real him, see his inner pain and accept him anyway, but he never once told Tem this. He didn’t warn him “Hey, because of you I don’t feel I need my meds any more, do you mind if I try not taking them and we can meet and talk about this in a safe, well-lit pace?” He’s not honest with Tem, and on top of that It doesn’t make sense from the point of view of either of the characters for them to be actually, romantically in love (although  they were clearly close friends), because it undermines and cheepens Riz desire to just be seen and accepted for his real self, and the cannon Tem X Els ship. It also doesn’t make sense from a story point of view: Riz is a shadow archetype for Legosi. He’s what Legosi would have become if someone hadn’t interrupted his attack on Haru. That’s why Legosi needs to beat Riz with his own hands: because then he’s beating the darker version of himself he’s been carrying with him, and he can finally move on with Haru guilt-free. Having Riz and Tem’s relationship actually be what Riz imagined it to be undoes that. It undoes Riz’s interesting, dark inner struggle between truth and fantasy, it turns Tem’s tragic, unsolved murder that sets the entire story in motion into a just sort of weird Romeo-and Juliet suicide. It’s ruins the character arc not only for Riz, but for Legosi, and also, by extension, Louis and Haru, because Legosi’s internal angst over whether or not herbivores and carnivores can have a relationship as true friends needs this example of a tragic, flawed, toxic, failed friendship to bounce off of.

How it could (sort of) work: an AU where Riz’s attack on Tem is interrupted and Tem lives with a slight arm injury, and doesn’t tell anyone out of his complex feelings for Riz. Meanwhile, that bunny girl from the gardening club had been brutally devoured and Rz and/or Tem are so horrified with how close this was to their own near-miss, they start to investigate the murder, and in doing so get caught up in Louis’ inner struggle. Because that’s how the story needs to work, it’s about duality and struggle: and if Riz takes Legosi’s role, and by dating a herbivore he de facto takes the role, so Legosi must take Riz’s. This could be a great AU!

The better ship you should be doing: Pina/Riz (with a dash of Pina x Els), no, seriously, I’m not shitposting. You want to give Riz a redemption arc with a cute woolly boy? How about a story where Pina, out of a need for closure about at happened to him, starts to visit Riz in jail and they talk, mockingly at first, confrontational at first, but later Pina slowly becoming more fascinated in Riz and Tem’s life and asking Riz for more and more detail until they both bond over their shared traumatic experiences and their sense of loss for Tem’s senseless death, Tem’s unfished life casting a shadow over both off them. Eventually, the two of them find, from Legosi who still has the diary, that Tem had planned out an elaborate and beautiful first date with Els that he never got to take her on, and Riz, guilt ridden and sad than Tem never got this beautiful moment, decides to ask Pina take her on that date for Tem, with Riz coaching him by phone cyano-de-Bergerac style, Riz finally getting some closure that he helped one of Tem’s wishes come true and finally acknowledging to himself that Tem had a life and loves outside of him that were cut of short by his actions, and just crying over his lost friend, as Pina and Els slow-dance in Tem memory. Or if you just want to see Tem awkwardly date a carnivore boy from school, why not something less creepy and more wholesome and ship him with Jack? That would be cute AF, and more importantly, not romanticize brutal murder. Or an AU where everything is happy and nice, I’d argue at that it’s no longer Beastars at that point, but if it makes you happy, go for it. Let’s not shame anyone here.

 Snape X Lilly (Harry Potter)

Why I hate this ship: honestly, it’s not for the reason you think; I just like Snape too much as a tragic character, and making him in any way happy destroys his arc in my opinion.  The objection’s others have raised: that Snape acts in a worryingly possessive stalker-ish way towards Lilly, and that if Voldemort had gone for Nevil rather than Harry as a child Snape would have remained a loyal death eater, are true and I acknowledge them as having some validity, but that’s not why I can’t stand this ship. Snape is supposed to be a morally and emotionally complex, tragic figure. That “After all this time?” line was the best line in the Deathly Hallows.  Snape is supposed to show the equality destructive and redemptive power of  love. It’s sort of trinity: Lilly shows the pure power of true, unconditional love in her sacrifice to save Harry, Voldy shows what self-destruction and cruelty a life without understanding love leads to, and Snape sits somewhere in the middle: his one-sided  un-requited love being both the cause of his darkest, and his greatest actions. His curse, and his redemption, fall and rise. Making him happy messes that up.

How to (kinda) fix this ship: make them miserable. Make them fall for each-other only to be pulled apart by circumstance (you know, like they were in the darn original source material). You’re serious about making this a tragic, dark romance? Don’t ship them when they’re at school: Ship them during Voldemort’s rise to power, in the 80’s, after Lilly is married. Have the original Order of the Phoenix send her to meet with Snape and use their previous relation to try to milk some information out of him. Have her feel conflicted about it, have James furious about it, but have her do it anyway for the greater good. Have her meet up secretly with Snape who is angry and distrustful, knowing his must be a trap, and talk. Have the relationship slowly build over time against the backdrop of a cold-war spy thriller, as Lilly slowly realizes that she has some lingering feelings for Snape, but can’t reconcile them her loyalty to the order and her family. Make this a love story of conflicted feelings, divided loyalties, and spy-work against the background of drawing war-clouds. Have Snape offer to leave Voldemort, if she’ll leave the Order, and run away with him, but by that point she knows she’s pregnant and chooses to stay, out of loyalty even though she’s crushing on Snape. Have him show up at the rendezvous expecting for her to be there only for James to lead an Order Ambush, and a fight to ensure, on top of Tower Bridge in the howling wind and rain, Snape surviving but having his spirit crushed and fleeing before Lilly can tell him her true feelings. Make it big, and melodramatic, but above all, make it tragic.  Because that’s the only way Snape works as a character. Always.

The better ship you should be doing: Ginny X Nevil or Luna x Nevil: You want tragic lovers, at school, with divided loyalties, who never get together in the main cannon because a Potter ruins it and gets the girl? Ginny X Nevil. Write what was happening that final year Harry wasn’t at school when they took Dumbledore’s Army and make it work in earnest. Heck, you could even have Snape, as headmaster, hated by them but secretly trying to protect them as a secondary character to their secret, forbidden love. You don’t want to break up Harry X Ginny? Luna X Nevil is sweet and wholesome, but also tragic as they never get a chance, having their school life taken over by the horror of that final year and the need to fight for their very souls in a school run by Death Eaters and the trauma of the Battle of Hogwarts meaning that in order to put away the past and move on, they need to leave each other behind. Hell, do an AU where they canonically end up together, why not? They deserve happiness.

 Dean / Sam AKA Wincest (Supernatural)

Why I hate this ship: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. Several times.

How you could (sort of) fix this ship: You can’t: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. I guess a body-swap arc could fix this, as it’s less squicky if its just their bodies with someone else’s minds,  but seriously, the reasons why this shouldn’t exist are extensively covered in the show, and it was hilarious.  To be honest, I don’t hate this ship done as a joke, but I have seen some dark spots on the internet, and I can say with all honesty it’s not always treated as a joke. Some folks are really invested in this, and all I can ask is, is your home life okay?

Now, done as a joke, I’m 110% behind this. This is exactly the sort of insane wacky bullshit that makes for a good crack-fic. For example imagine that the supernatural threat of the week was book that made anything written in it come true, and the brothers are trying to find and destroy it, but they keep getting distracted by their burgeoning romantic feelings for each-other, and suddenly realise that the owner of the book is a fan on the in-universe novels, and writing slash-fic in the book. They need to find the writer before they make them do something they’ll both regret, but it’s just so distracting when Sam’s beautiful eyes are right there and- dammit, Sam, it’s happening again! Make Sam less concerned and even a little amused, with it, but make Dean hate what’s going on. Especially when the writer’s description suddenly makes Sam noticeably better hung that him. Make the villain turn out to be Becky from “Sympathy for the devil” and end with them trying to take the book away as she writes frantically to force them to do her bidding, and you’ve got yourself a good fic.

The better ship you should be doing: Cas/Sam or Cas/Dean or Cas/Sam AND Dean fic. Duh. Once again the show-runners beat the fans to the mark and pointed out that this is the best ship, and then they took it away just to fuck with us.

 Any Katniss ship that ignores her obsession with Emotional Security Logic. (The Hunger Games)

Why I hate these ships: Katniss is, briefly put, a mess before the books ever start, her father’s death and harsh upbringing have arguably given her PTSD before she ever volunteers for the reaping, and it doesn’t get better from there.  In psychology, Emotional Security Theory (EST) is a hypothesis that the heightened emotions surrounding repeated violent exposures leaves children vulnerable to dysregulated distress responses and eventual psychopathology, aka, why Kat be so messed up.  Her internal monologue makes the books completely clear that her choice in partners is not motivated by normal affections, but by deep, deep fear. A fear of loss, abandonment and death that leads her to make every decision about what minimises her, and her sister’s, exposure to potential physical and emotional harm. It’s frantic, fraught, cold survivalist thinking. And the other characters in the book notice and acknowledge it! “Which of us will she pick?” “She’ll pick whoever she can’t survive without.” Kat doesn’t like herself for it, but she does eventually admit to herself that she makes her decisions like this.

How do we fix this ship: Ship Kat with whoever you like, but give her a good reason to pick them: and in Kat’s mind “A good reason” is based on Emotional Security Logic, she needs to have a pressing reason why this ship makes her and her sister safer. Do that, and you’ve got yourself a good Katniss story. Don’t do that, and while you may or may not have a good story, the person staring in it isn’t Katniss Everdeen anymore.

The better ship you should be writing: Finick X Annie. Or, Haymitch prequel ships

FinAnn. This, this ship has some real potential to it, and is criminally underutilized. Finick and Annie’s relationship is one of the most tragic and romantic in the story, and has so much to offer. Or, if you want to have a hard-bitten character from district 12 struggling with trying to find love in the hellish combat of the games, do a prequel in which Haymitch finds love in the capitol during training, but loses then in the area and turns to drink as a result. Heck, you could even have some fun with this and turn it into a dark comedy, or a great tragic love story, whatever you like. It’s got potential, and his backstory is vague enough you could do a lot with it.

So, tell me below why I’m wrong, and have fun with your writing: just because I hate that ship doesn’t mean you should. Enjoy yourselves.

I’m off to write awful Ax/Pina/Luna Polyjuice’d into Nevil/Cas/Finick fiction set at an anime high-school that fights a magical war against other fictional schools, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[vampish-glamour]

About the whole anti vs proshipper thing.

I consider myself to be more pro friction than anything else.

I've always liked moral dilemmas and issues with no clear cut right and wrong. With irl things that's something that's hard to talk abt cause those dilemmas affect real people. Whereas in fiction, you can look at the motivations of a genocidal dictator (or any other kind of evil/cruel person) and not feel bad abt it cause... they're not real. You can even sympathize with some of the things that they went through and understand how those events led to them becoming how they are at that point in the story.

One of my favorite books as an antagonist that is practically a mirror image of the protagonist. They had near identical pasts, expect the protagonist had a few key moments in his life that saved him from becoming as bitter and jaded and cruel as his counterpart. And it's fun to think about how little things can affect a person's world view and to think about how good people can become bad and vice versa depending on the situation.

There's a lot of nurture vs nature.

Sorry if this is kind of disjointed and ramble-y but I always hate it when people say that somethings shouldn't be allowed to be portrayed in fiction...

I used to say I would never get into this discouse because of how confusing it is, and I am still struggling to keep track of what the terms mean lmao. I think what you mean is that you're on the "Shut up and let people enjoy things" side?

I LOVE analyzing stuff, especially character's personalities and motives and all that. I find it so fascinating. And I make it no secret that I adore villains or morally grey characters. Tbh I find that I start liking a character more when they start going down that road (See; Ainsley from Prodigal Son lol she's a queen), and it's always weird to me to see people trying to say that that's Wrong and Bad.

I always joke that when a fictional character I like does some bad things, it's fine because I like them. This extends to murder; if a character I like kills people, it's fine and I support them. For fuck's sake this does not in any way mean I support real life murder!!! 😂

Whereas in fiction, you can look at the motivations of a genocidal dictator (or any other kind of evil/cruel person) and not feel bad abt it cause... they're not real. You can even sympathize with some of the things that they went through and understand how those events led to them becoming how they are at that point in the story.

THIS EXACTLY.

That sounds like such a good story. I love the idea that people can be raised similarly yet turn out completely different in the context of protagonist vs antagonists. Again I point to Prodigal Son, because of the sibling dynamic. The siblings were probably raised almost identically due to being siblings... but it seems like there's some key differences in how they were treated that influences how they turn out as adults. With Ainsey and her brother I think there's lots of room for nature vs nurture, and I wish there was another season to explore it in. I've recommended the show before and I will shamelessly recommend it again 😛. (And yes, the serial killer is my favourite character and I am in full support of his "hobby", thank you for asking)

Anyways, I agree. I hate it too, because part of the reason fiction is so great is that it allows for what is unthinkable irl to be portrayed. You can have the most morally awful characters and spend time exploring why they are the way they are, without disrespecting their victims. Because their victims don't exist.

[geshertzarmeod]

Favorite Books of 2020

I wanted to put together a list! I read 74 new books this year, and I keep track of that on Goodreads - feel free to add or follow me if you want to see everything! I’m going to focus on the highlights, and the books that stuck with me personally in one way or another, in approximate order. Also, all but two of them (#5 and #7 on the honorable mention list) are queer/trans in some way. Links are to Goodreads, but if you’re looking to get the books, I suggest your library, the Libby app using your library, your local bookstore, or Bookshop.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell, illus. by Ned Asta (originally published 1977). I had a hard beginning of the year and was in a work environment where my queerness was just not welcomed or wanted. I read this in the middle of all of that, and it helped me so much. I took this book with me everywhere. I read it on planes. I read it on the bus, and on trains, and at shul. I showed it to friends... sometimes at shul, or professional development conferences. It healed my soul. Now I can’t find it and might get a new copy. When I reviewed it, in February, I wrote: “I think we all need this book right now, but I really needed this book right now. Wow. This book is magic, and brings back a sense of magic and beauty to my relationship with the world.” Also I bought my copy last July, in a gay bookstore on Castro St. in SF, and that in itself is just beautiful to me. (Here’s a post I made with some excerpts)

Once & Future duology, especially the sequel, Sword in the Stars, by A.R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy. Cis pansexual female King Arthur Ari Helix (she's the 42nd reincarnation and the first female one) in futuristic space with Arab ancestry (but like, from a planet where people from that area of earth migrated to because, futuristic space) works to end Future Evil Amazon.com Space Empire with her found family with a token straight cis man and token white person. Merlin is backwards-aging so he's a gay teenager with a crush and thousands of years of baggage. The book’s entire basis is found family, and it's got King Arthur in space. And the sequel hijacks the original myth and says “fuck you pop culture, it was whitewashed and straightwashed, there were queer and trans people of color and strong women there the whole time.” Which is like, my favorite thing to find in media, and a big part of why I love Xena so much. It’s like revisionist history to make it better except it’s actually probably true in ways. Anyway please read these books but also be prepared for an absolutely absurd and wild ride. Full disclosure though, I didn’t love the first book so much, it’s worth it for the sequel!

The Wicker King by K. Ancrum. This book hurt. It still hurts. But it was so good. It took me on a whole journey, and brought me to my destination just like it intended the whole time. The author’s note at the end made me cry! The sheer NEED from this book, the way the main relationship develops and shifts, and how you PERCEIVE the main relationship develops and shifts. I’m in awe of Ancrum’s writing. If you like your ships feral and needy and desperate and wanting and D/S vibes and lowkey super unhealthy but with the potential, with work, to become healthy and beautiful and right, read this book. This might be another one to check trigger warnings for though.

The Entirety of The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty. I hadn’t heard of this series until this year, when a good friend recommended it to me. It filled the black hole in me left by Harry Potter. The political and mystical/fantasy world building is just *chef’s kiss* - the complexity! The morally grey, everyone’s-done-awful-things-but-some-people-are-still-trying-to-do-good tapestry! The ROMANCE oh my GOD the romance. If I’m absolutely fully invested in a heterosexual romance you know a book is good, but also this book had background (and then later less background) queer characters! And the DRAMA!!! The third book went in a direction that felt a little out of nowhere but honestly I loved the ride. I stayed up until 6am multiple times reading this series and I’d do it again.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. I loved this book so much that it’s the only book I reviewed on my basically abandoned attempt at a book blog. This book is haunting, horrifying, disturbing, dark, but so, so good. The character's voices were so specific and clear, the relationships so clearly affected by circumstance and yet loving in the ways they could be. This is my favorite portrayal of gender maybe ever, it’s just... I don’t even have the words but I saw a post @audible-smiles​ made about it that’s been rattling in my head since. And, “you gender-malcontent. You otherling,” as tender pillow talk??? Be still my heart. Be ready, though, this book has all the triggers.. it’s a .

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. This book called me out on my perspective on love. Also, it made me cry a lot. And it has two different interesting well-written romance storylines. And a realistic coming-into-identity narrative about a Black trans demiboy. And a nuanced discussion of college plans and what one might do after college. And some big beautiful romcom moments. I wish I had it in high school. I’m so glad I have it now! (trigger warning for transphobia & outing, but the people responsible are held accountable by the end, always treated as not okay by the narrative, and the MC’s friends, and like... this is ownvoices and it’s GOOD.)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. My Goodreads review says, “I have no idea what happened, and I loved it.” That’s not wrong, but to delve deeper, this book has an ethereal feeling that you get wrapped up in while reading. Nothing makes sense but that’s just as it should be. You’re hooked. It is so atmospheric, so meta, so fascinating. I’ve seen so many people say they interpreted this character or that part or the ending in all different ways and it all makes sense. And it’s all of this with a gay main character and romance and the central theme, the central pillar being a love of and devotion to stories. Of course I was going to love it.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom. “Because maybe what really matters isn’t whether something is true, or false. Maybe what matters is the story itself; what kinds of doors it opens, what kinds of dreams it brings.” This book was so good and paradigm shifting. It reminded me of #1 on this list in the way it turns real life experience and hard, tragic ones at that (in this case, of being a trans girl of color who leaves home and tries to make a life for herself in the city, with its violence), into a beautiful, haunting fable. Once upon a time.

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver. I need to reread this book, as I read it during my most tranceful time of 2020 and didn’t write a review, so I forgot a lot. What I do remember is beautiful and important nonbinary representation, a really cute romance, an interesting parental and familial/sibling dynamic that was both heartbreaking and hopeful, and an on-page therapy storyline. Also Mason Deaver just left twitter but was an absolutely hilarious troll on it before leaving and I appreciate that (and they just published a Christmas novella that I have but haven’t read yet!)

The Truth Is by NoNieqa Ramos. It took a long time to trust this book but I’m so glad I did. It’s raw and real and full of grief and trauma (trigger warnings, that I remember, for grief, death (before beginning of book), and gun violence). The protagonist is flawed and gets to grow over the course of the book, and find her own place, and learn from the people around her, while they also learn to understand her and where she’s coming from. It’s got a gritty, harsh, and important portrayal of found family, messy queerness, and some breathtaking quotes. When I was 82% through this book I posted this update: “This book has addressed almost all of my initial hesitations, and managed to complicate itself beautifully.”

Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro.  I wasn’t actually in the best mental health place to read this book when I did (didn’t quite understand what it was) but it definitely reminded me of what there is to fight against and to fight for, and broke my heart, and nudged me a bit closer to hope. The naturally diverse cast of characters was one of the best parts of this book. The romance is so sweet and tender and then so painful. This book is important and well-written but read it with caution and trigger warnings - it’s about grief and trauma and racism and police brutality, but also about love and community.

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden.  This is a sci-fi/fantasy/specfic mashup that takes place in near-future South Africa and has world-building myths with gods and demigoddesses and a trip to the world of the dead but also a genetically altered hallucinogenic drug that turns people into giant animals and a robot uprising and a political campaign and a transgender pop star and a m/m couple and all of them are connected. It’s bonkers. Like, so, so absolutely mind-breaking weird. And I loved it.

Crier’s War and Iron Heart by Nina Varela.  I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVED the amount of folktales they told each other with queer romances as integral to those stories, especially in Iron Heart. A conversation between the two leads where Crier says she wants to read Ayla like a book, and Ayla says she’s not a book, and Crier explains all the different ways she wants to know Ayla, like a person, and wants to deserve to know her like a person, made me weak. It lives in my head rent-free.

Queen’s Shadow by E.K. Johnston @ekjohnston . I listened to this book on Libby and then immediately listened to it at least one more time, maybe twice, before my borrow time ran out. I love Padmé, and just always wish that female Star Wars characters got more focus and attention and this book gave me that!! And queer handmaidens! And the implication that Sabé is in love with Padmé and that’s just something that will always be true and she will always be devoted and also will make her own life anyway. And the Star Wars audiobooks being recorded the way they are with background sounds and music means it feels like watching a really long detailed beautiful Star Wars movie just about Padmé and her handmaidens.

Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story by Jacob Tobia. I needed to read this. The way Tobia talks about their experience of gender within the contexts of college, college leadership, and career, hit home. I kept trying to highlight several pages in a row on my kindle so I could go back and read them after it got returned to the library (sadly it didn’t work - it cuts off highlights after a certain number of characters). The way they talk about TOKENISM they way they talk about the responsibilities of the interviewer when an interviewee holds marginalized identities especially when no one else in the room does!!! Ahhhh!!!

Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie. Disclaimer for this one that the author was rightfully criticized for writing a Black main character as a white author (and how the story ended up playing into some fucked up stuff that I can’t really unpack without spoiling). But also, the author has been working to move forward knowing she can’t change the past, has donated her proceeds, and this book is really good? It has all the fanfic tropes, so much delicious tension, a totally unexpected plot twist that had me immediately rereading the book. This book was super fun and also kind of just really really good Star Wars fanfiction.

How To Be a Normal Person by T.J. Klune. This book was so sweet, and cute, and hopeful, and both ridiculous and so real. I had some trouble getting used to Gus’ voice and internal monologue, but I got into it and then loved every bit after. The ace rep is something I’ve never seen like this before (and have barely read any ace books but still this was so fleshed out and well rounded and not just like, ‘they’re obsessed with swords not sex’ - looking at you, Once & Future - and leaving it there.) This all felt like a slice of life and I feel like I learned about people while reading it. Some of the moments are so, so funny, some are vaguely devastating. I have been personally victimized by TJ Klune for how he ends this book (a joke, you will know once you read it) but it also reminds me of the end of the “You Are There” episode of Xena and we all know what the answer to that question was.... and I choose to believe the answer here was similar.

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. I wish I had this book when I was in high school. I honestly have complicated feelings about prom and haven’t really been seeking out contemporary YA so I was hesitant to read this but it was so good and so well-written, and had a lot of depth to it. The movie (and Broadway show) “The Prom” wants what this book has.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. I never read horror books, so this was a new thing for me. I loved the feeling of this book, the way I felt fully immersed. I loved how entirely queer it was. I was interested in the characters and the relationships, even though we didn’t have a full chance to go super deep into any one person but rather saw the connections between everyone and the way the stories matched up with each other. I just wanted a bit of a more satisfying ending.

Honorable Mention: reread in 2020 but read for the first time pre-2020

Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. I couldn’t make this post without mentioning this book. It got me through this year. I love this book so much; I think of this book all the time. This book made me want to find love for myself. You’ve all heard about it enough but if you haven’t read this book what are you DOING.

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan @sarahreesbrennan​ . I reread this one over and over too, both as text and as an audiobook. I went for walks when I had lost my earbuds and had Elliott screaming about an elf brothel loudly playing and got weird looks from someone walking their dog. I love this book so much. It’s just so fun, and so healing to read a book reminiscent of all the fantasies I read as a kid, but with a bi main character and a deconstruction of patriarchy and making fun of the genre a bit. Also, idiots to lovers is a great trope and it’s definitely in this book.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This book is forever so important to me. I am always drawn in by how tenderly Sáenz portrays his characters. These boys. These boys and their parents. I love them. I love them so much. This is another one where I don’t even know what to say. I have more than 30 pages in my tag for this book. I have “arda” set as a keyboard shortcut on my phone and laptop to turn into the full title. This book saved my life.

Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This book hurts to read - it’s a story about trauma, about working through that trauma, healing enough to be ready to hold the worst memories, healing enough to move through the pain and start to make a life. It’s about found family and love and pain and I love it. It’s cathartic. And it’s a little bit quietly queer in a beautiful way, but that’s not the focus. Look up trigger warnings (they kind of are spoilery so I won’t say them here but if you have the potential to be triggered please look them up or ask me before reading)

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.  When asked what my all time favorite book is, it’s usually this one. Gail Carson Levine has been doing live readings at 11am since the beginning of the pandemic shut down in the US, and the first book she read was Ella Enchanted. I’ve been slowly reading it to @mssarahpearl and am just so glad still that it has the ability to draw me in and calm me down and feels like home after all this time. This book is about agency. I love it.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman @chronicintrovert . I’ve had this on my all-time-faves list since I read it a few years ago and ended up rereading it this year before sending a gift copy to a friend, so I could write little notes in it. It felt a little different reading it this time - as I get further away from being a teenager myself, the character voice this book is written in takes a little longer to get used to, but it’s so authentic and earnest and I love it. I absolutely adore this book about platonic love and found family and fandom and mental illness and abuse and ace identity and queerness and self-determination, especially around college and career choices. Ahhh. Thank you Alice Oseman!!!

Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray @claudiagray​ . I have this one on audible and reread it several times this year. I love the fleshing out of Leia’s story before the original trilogy, I love her having had a relationship before Han, and the way it would have affected her perspective. I also am intrigued by the way it analyses the choices the early rebellion had to make... I just, I love all the female focused new Star Wars content and the complexity being brought to the rebellion.

[darrowsrising]

You should talk about Serafina. I think her story is fascinating even if I didn’t like her in the sequel trilogy.

In the same way as Augustus, Darrow was her man that came from the sky and destroyed her home.

Erm...idk, I kinda feel bad for not feeling for Sera at all when uou put it like that, but at the same time I am kinda rolling my eyes a little at her.

Look, I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble on here. This is just my opinion, my take, please don't be upset with me and don't take my words as an offence.

I had a tough, emotionally draining week and my mental health is not so great, so maybe it's that speaking, but I genuinely am tired of having to feel pity for all these characters that have even the slightest connection with Darrow or Darrow's crusade destroyed their comfortable little lives in some way or the other.

I mean, I understand why Darrow is a villain in some people's stories, I understand why they have a bone to pick with him and I understand that Darrow or any hero for that matter isn't completely hands-free of blood (unless it's a kid's show). More than that? I simply can't muster.

I understand that Darrow's plan to make sure the Rim does not come to destroy whatever the Rising will build before it even started caused colateral dammage and loss of lives. I accept that as one of those morally grey moments that can make sense, but doesn't make them less harsh.

That being said, everything Darrow has gone through starting with losing his father and until now (and certainly a long time after as well) just makes me say 'cry me a river' to those characters that try to justify their actions with 'Darrow made me do it' and come up short. Want pity? Idk, go to a White or something. I feel sad for them, don't get me wrong...I just can't pity them, because they make it hard and I don't feel up to the emotional burden.

Ajax au Grimmus Raa has been treated as less than human, as a failed experiment, saw the only person that ever loved him get massacrated on live holoNet, everyone else abandoned him or forced him to live up to their expectations and he has been groomed and abused by his aunt and has a superiority complex to make up for the fact that he's been treated so poorly. Now that is a character that I can fully feel evrything for, pity and sadness included in equal mesures - Darrow and his friends came and took away from him the only good thing in life.

Seraphina au Raa wanted glory most of all - proving herself, getting faster through the ranks, whatever made her tick. She bargained and sacrificed a lot to that end. Darrow made her do it? Well, if it wasn't Darrow, she's still want a piece of the pie, so she would have found another thing.

What Darrow did was a betrayal of his allies, but his allies stopped being his allies the moment he left the Rim - they would have attacked from behind to protect their precious ideals, because they couldn't have left the Rising to prosper anymore. That is simple fact, the Rim is still very much fascist, even though they are pretending honour about it.

I am not saying Seraphina isn't right to feel what she is feeling or despise Darrow for what he did, of course. It's just that pity doesn't suit her at all, especially because she doesn't actually care about the losses, she cares about war or some revenge scheme that suits only herself and maybe the Raa name - which I think it's awful, but if even Raas use honour as some sort of façade, that says a lot about the system. I pity the innocents that lost their lives in the crossfire, I pity Aeneas au Raa, a bit, because we didn't get to know hin that much. But Sera or Dido or any other Rim proeminent character? Not really.

For a lot of characters in Red Rising, Darrow seems to be the Big Bad Wolf, and it's understandable and true and interesting, because it's an aspect of humanity that rarely gets discussed in storytelling. Change isn't always rightous and pretty, sometimes it requires underhanded tactics and harming some people, simply because there is no other way. Of course, the circumstances must be of such a nature to justify some things and I am reffering to those particular situations.

Cassius was the paragon of Gold perfection until Darrow 'came down from the sky and destroyed his world'. Killing Julian was not something Darrow wanted, but he says it himself 'no one ever cared about what he wanted', no one ever gave him a choice. Of course Cassius is right to feel what he felt about Darrow killing Julian and being lied about it. What wasn't ok was to pretend honour of his revenge.

Again, it's interesting to see Darrow having to live with himself and push through, it's also interesting to see consequences of his actions manifesting through other characters that are clearly too biased to be fair, yet not too wrapped up into it not to wank it as some rightous scheme.

But am I actually pitying any of the Bellonas? No. Not even Cassius. I pity and feel sad for Julian, because he was an innocent in all of this.

I am too drained at this point to feel much pity, Dark Age did take a lot out of me. If I am required to feel for every poor soul that stood in Reaper's shadow and died or survived to see their loves ones killed, then I would better get out of the fandom, because I genuinely can't. I care a sufficient amount for the mains and some of the side characters. It's all I can do for now.

Sorry if this came out harsh, sometimes I genuinely feel bad that I don't care enough for some characters, but there is real life too, I require emotions for that too. I can't just go feeling bad for every character, it has to actually make me feel things and it doesn't happen that often (in DA it happened a lot, just not with Sera, lol). Idk if that is bad or good, it's just how I feel at this point.

Howl on!

[spockandawe]

11, 12, 46, 60?

Coming right up! :D

11. Tags You Mostly Filter On Ao3 For

Ah, you’ve made a critical mistake here, which is that... my brain has been largely broken and I have not read much fanfic in a long while, I mostly add things to my ‘marked for later’ pile :p I’ve got one or two authors that I know I adore and can keep up with semi-reliably, and once in a while I manage to consume something, but it’s not often, and that limited reading capacity is spread across all of mxtx and meatbun’s books

I will say that something I see a lot of for mdzs and which I have severely limited patience for is the ‘modern au’ concept. I’m not super opposed to it, and every so often I see a setting that’s perfect, like the yi city coffee shop au, but it’s... not very much my jam. There are exceptions, like just yesterday I added an xy/nmj fic to the marked for later pile, or there’s a wangxian + a-yuan adoption/immigration fic that I read and loved, but I usually won’t dip into this tag unless someone I trust is specifically recommending it to me

12. Saddest Moment

Oh, I know that the cliff scene is an easy target, even though it’s only the show, and it is very good, plus earlier in the nightless city when wei wuxian starts laugh-crying on top of the roof, or even earlier before that when the yunmeng siblings are tied up and being sent away on the boat and they’re all crying and holding hands underneath zidian.

But I read the book first, and this line absolutely destroyed me. It’s not a sharp pain, more of a quiet ache that gets worse the more you linger, but it still hits me terribly hard.

“Suddenly, he felt that the world had no place for him, despite how large it was.”

46. Favourite Fanfic / A Fanfic You Want To Recommend

HMM. Well. As I said, I’ve been absolutely awful at reading for a while now. But one of those authors I’ve managed to keep up with is the lovely @veliseraptor, and I can’t recommend just one fic, so I’m recommending two (I’m recommending them all, but I’m talking about two). First! The songxuexiao slow burn enemies-to-lovers, morally grey epic, if living can be this. And second! the yunmeng reconciliation + wangxian wedding fic that I never knew I needed so desperately, With Absolute Splendor. Both of these are unbelievable, and they star my two favorite hopeless disasters from this story, xue yang and jiang cheng. They both take emotional side threads from the show that end on a sad note, and put in the time to turn things around and bring them to a solidly constructed, happy conclusion. I love the main story, but I also love being happy about my favorite not-wangxian children, and the book/show don’t necessarily put the time in to do that for me, but these fics absolutely do.

60.  Favourite Character Development

xue yang xue yang XUE YANG

Oh my god. I love him. I would love him as a one-note villain, but you know what I love even better? The growth from itinerant serial killer to contented homemaker. And... it’s not exactly character growth, but I love the gradual reveal of his backstory as he gets more entrenched in his home in Yi City. It gives so much more depth to his character, and adds extra flavor to his changing priorities in the yi city flashbacks. It’s sort of like... mxtx gave us a very simple, flat character in Shen Jiu at the start of svsss, and flashbacks gradually add depth that make me hurt terribly on his behalf, and Xue Yang isn’t as central to this story as Shen Jiu/Qingqiu is in svsss, but she really has this knack for setting up an unsympathetic character and then sucker-punching me later with feelings. 

The thematic parallels between Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao, and Wei Wuxian have been discussed in a lot of depth by other people, and I’m not going to retread that ground, but it does fascinate me to realize that of those three characters, all of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are overflowing with potential, Xue Yang was the one who settled on the most reasonable life goals. Wei Wuxian set his heart on protecting the Wen remnants and became the Yiling Laozu, Jin Guangyao clawed his way to the top of a major sect, Xue Yang... wanted to live in boring poverty, but boring poverty with a house and a family that were his. I’m not going to rehash all the meta I’ve written about him before, and it goes without saying that canon hurts me very much when it comes to his ending (seriously, go read that fic I linked above), but I love seeing a character make that emotional journey through ‘what do i want? what will make me happy?’ and settling on something so quiet and domestic, especially someone with the background he has. I just. I love him, your honor

[leahazel]

More about my morally-grey heroines and their messed-up relationships

I wanted to elaborate on this post I wrote about D&F and BFS, but it turns out that adding readmore links to reblogs is a PITA, and I just now that this is gonna turn into a fucking novelette. 

So here we go.

Time to go into some detail about this!

Let’s define our terms:

“Decline and Fall” is my 120K+ series of loosely chronological, interconnected short fics, set in a tiny fandom for a visual novel that’s been in alpha development since 2015. For the record, the word count disincludes unfinished drafts, and stories that I’m holding back because they’re based on canon spoilers.

“Blood from Stone“ is my 100K unfinished Skyrim WIP, which began as a response to a kink meme prompt, and is not so much a rarepair as a non-existent one.

Both of these stories centrally feature young female protagonists and their sexual relationship with a much older man. Both heroines are... “grey” to say the least.

Let’s compare our fandoms, shall we?

Skyrim is a juggernaut fandom for a super-popular RPG which is part of a 30-yo franchise. The setting is moderately dark and casually sprinkled with murder cults, cannibalism, secret police death squads, and the prison industrial complex. The player character can be a thief and a murderer and everyone just learns to be okay with it because the only alternative is a fiery apocalypse. They also rob graves for the lulz.

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem is a pinkie-toe-sized fandom for a hybrid RPG and dating sim where attractive young people flirt and date for the purpose of brokering world peace. The setting is one where you can actually broker world peace effectively. The player character can perpetrate a fair amount of proxy violence, but maintaining a good reputation dishonestly is legitimately difficult.

Now, let’s compare our heroines:

Corinne is a 24-year-old bounty hunter who became a folk hero, a soldier, and a cult assassin. She’s living alone and working for a living since she was 18. She’s never been in love, but she’s had multiple sexual and romantic relationships in the past. I deliberately wrote her as being very sexually confident and self-assured. She also has combat training, magical training, her special Dragonborn powers, and an incalculable amount of social clout. By every metric, she’s a powerful character. Though she can talk her way out of a tight spot (all my favorite characters can), she can also fight her way out.

Verity is (at the beginning of D&F) not yet 18 years old. She’s a princess from a very conservative kingdom who was raised to become a barter bride in a diplomatic marriage. The values that were passed to her were duty, tradition, and absolute obedience. Her primary skills are social, charisma, eloquence, and persuasion. Then she was dropped into the deep water of a diplomatic summit and had the weight of future history put on her shoulders, without ever having been taught how to make her own decisions or live with her regret.

To sum up, we have one hyper-competent, confident, and independent badass, universally recognized as powerful and dangerous, and then we have someone who’s basically a deconstruction of a traditional fantasy princess.

Okay, what about the more specific setting within the game world?

BFS is set in Markarth, arguably the most corrupt city in Skyrim, and the site of a localized war, on top of the 2-3 other wars that Skyrim has going on. The city is controlled by the cartel-like Silver-Blood family, and their enemies are swiftly and brutally eliminated. The rule of law is a joke. When the player character arrives at Markarth, they witness a chain or murders and are drawn into a conspiracy that sees them sentenced to life in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. The ruling elite suppress the native underclass by a variety of inventive methods. The roads into the city are controlled by the remnants of a violent but failed uprising, and this uprising is actually the origin story of Skyrim’s entire civil war storyline.

D&F is set in Revaire, explicitly the most violently war-torn of the seven kingdoms. Once the epicenter of a conquering empire, it was a country full of arts and culture, until a bloody coup slaughtered the entire royal line and instituted a new and more brutal regime. The new regime is on shaky grounds and foresighted people predict its imminent fall to rebel forces. So much, so canon. In D&F, I made a point of developing the new royals and their small coterie of supporters, as well as illustrating their constant struggle to conceal how widely reviled they are by the populace, and most of the former nobility. Their apathy to the plight of the common people is underscored in contrast to Verity’s compassion, which is ridiculed as a sentimental feminine affectation.

I’m attracted to certain themes, as you might have noticed.

Now, we get to talk about love interests.

Thongvor Silver-Blood is rather anemically characterized in Skyrim’s canon, so much of the information that I include in BFS is inferred. From his limited number of dialogues in the game, we know that he’s politically ambitious, a Stormcloak supporter, easily angered, and that he has one legitimate friend in the city. Like most Skyrim characters of his age bracket, he served in the Great War. He’s defined by his relationship to his generational cohort. In BFS, he’s def8ined in contrast to his brother. Thonar is comfortable being thought of as a villain. Thongvor still needs to believe that he’s the good guy. And I’m gonna get more into that in later chapters, too.

As a love interest, he’s initially in awe of Corinne, and always genuinely adoring, but more than a little jealous and possessive. BFS is not a story about love redeeming bad men (don’t get me started), but Thongvor shows different sides of his personality to different people, and the side that Corinne gets to see is much nicer than what most people do.

Hyperion Asper is a character of my own devising, whose existence in 7KPP canon is purely implied. We know his children, Jarrod and Gisette, and we knew that he organized a coup to seize the throne. I posit him as a tyrant and unrepentant child-killer (not directly stated in D&F, at least not yet). He’s ruthless and manipulative and his sole purpose is maintaining a sense of personal power. I structured him as the bad example that Jarrod tries -- and fails -- to live up to.

As a love interest... look, he’s a man who’s cheating on his wife with his son’s wife. He seduces Verity and manipulates her, and takes a special delight in pushing her buttons. All his compliments to her are mean-spirited and back-handed. He’s also jealous and possessive... which is especially pathetic, since he’s jealous of his own son, whom Verity doesn’t even like. His rage is a constant implied undercurrent in the narrative.

And the relationship dynamics themselves?

Corinne kisses Thongvor, proposes marriage to him, and then sleeps with him before riding off into mortal danger. She’s fond and affectionate, but she shies away from intense emotions, whether negative or positive. Since they spend most of their time apart, their marriage has been defined by Thongvor yearning like a sailor’s wife, while Corinne ran around doing violence and crime. They only just had their first fight. It will change when they get to spend some more significant time together... but on the whole, their marriage is fairly happy, and the emotional dynamic favors Corinne -- so far. It’s not a pure gender reversal, but that element is definitely dominant.

Hyperion starts seducing Verity on their very first meeting, and relies on a combination of magnetic attraction and Verity’s inexperience in life to keep her coming back, against her better judgment. Their relationship is mutually defined by a combination of attraction and resentment of that attraction. The danger of the situation is an essential element, to the point where it’s hard to imagine their affair would survive without it. It’s a puzzle and a battle, a source of fascination but not of comfort. There’s lust involved, and curiosity, but not a shred of love or even like. The closest thing to genuine affection is when Verity briefly imagines that there could be a version of Hyperion she actually liked, cobbled from his various, hidden good qualities. Any trappings of a genuine relationship are deliberately discordant.

I have tried, more than once, to imagine an alternate universe in which these two could be happy. It can’t be done. they are a study in dysfunction.

So where’s the similarity, with all these differences outlined?

Corinne’s choice to marry into the Silver-Blood family makes her complicit in their rule of the Reach, corrupt and reactionary as it is. Her reluctance to accept being called by their name reflects a reluctance to confront unpleasant truths that’s fundamental to her character. Choosing to be one of them affects and will continue to affect how other people see her, mostly negatively, and mostly without her being aware of it. Being Thongvor’s wife has gained her enemies. The fact that she doesn’t share his more reactionary views is something that they’ve both chosen to elegantly ignore, but the rest of the world won’t be so generous.

Verity’s choice to marry into the Revaire royal family makes her complicit in their violence against the forces rebelling against them, albeit in a more subtle way. Her personal dislike of Jarrod and the fact that their marriage was purely political will not absolve her in anyone’s eyes. Neither will her compassionate and charitable character, which can only be seen as a fig leaf to the Revaire royals’ general brutality. She has lost at least one good friend -- who will never see her the same way, since she chose to throw her lot in with his enemies. She will go down in history as an Asper wife -- but if she’s lucky, not just as that.

Both Corinne and Verity choose to accept some of the violence of the system that they live under, in order to serve their own lofty, long-term goals. Both of them are more image-driven than they care to admit, and though they are genuinely caring and compassionate, they will readily sacrifice compassion in service on their goals. They are queens (or queen-like figures), one-degree-of-separation members of the ruling class, implicated but not directly in control.

And their relationships serve to highlight what they are willing to accept, even though it goes against their conscience.

Is there a conclusion to be drawn here?

Sort of. I want to write about power, compromise and complicity. For whatever reason, it turns out that yw/om relationships are... a really good vehicle for exploring that. I can’t really explain why that is, just yet. I just... have had these thoughts floating, unstructured, in my head for months on end. I needed to get them out on paper, and give them some semblance of order.

I don’t even know why anyone but me would read this, as long and meandering as it is. But having it accessible might be of use to me.

[ziracona]

ive spent all day reading your dbd fic and i have sooooo many feelings about all of them that i dont even know how to put into words. your grasp on the characters is just so incredible, there were characters i didnt know or care about who i now absolutely love and would do anything for purely because of how you wrote them and made me connect to them. i've been reading a lot of dbd fic despite only having played (and failed at) one entire game, and your characterisations will always be my gold star i think, no other has ever seemed to capture the characters so genuinely in a way that doesn't just also excuse their actions, i love how indepth you go into the moral ambiguity of it all. either way, out of all the fandoms im in no other fics have ever just made me actually feel so much, made me physically ache and hurt with what's happening to these characters.

i also really love your character interactions, found family is my all time favourite trope it makes me all gooey and tender even when its also angsty and made me cry like your anna fic did (my mom 😭). also love the dumb teenage antics and interactions between joey & quentin in both their fics, and im also ridiculously invested in them now when before i couldnt tell one legion from the other 😭 i already loved quentin from watching noes but your joey pov and the glimpses into his psyche and history and feelings has won me over too.

ive also set aside my entire weekend to read and absorb and analyse and contemplate and ponder in living memory, im beyond excited 😌😌😌 sorry for this ramble i was just emo

TuT God this is all so sweet I have no idea how to respond! Thank you! 😭💙

I am so glad you enjoy how I write my kids! Character is my favorite story element (surprising no one I’m sure lol), so I am always thrilled when people like how I do that! TuT ahhhh that’s so sweet; thank you! And I am really happy tou enjoyed my like, secondary humanity & virtue ethics study threads—dbd is /such/ a complicated and intricate situation for the charcaters in it, and there’s just so much fascinating black and white and so much grey to just kind of try to think about. Any individual living through either role in the realm would just have so much awful shit to unpack, and god even being one of the sympathetic killers even if you were lile, Rin and had no control, or Adiris and lied to, it would be so hard to get over or through what you did and experienced and even know /how/ to move on. I really like realism and complex character study, so I was living getting to just dig into personal journies for 20+ major charcaters. AH and I am so happy you really enjoyed that side of it in particular too! It’s one I only hear people bring up every so often and I am always ecstatic.

Seriously, thank you so much. Knowing I was able to create that level of emotional impact is priceless to me. TuT💙💙💙 Thank you. And I am glad you like the Found Family! Damn if that isn’t just the best ever trope. ^u^ 💙 I love it. Life really just kind of is all about hope and trying to become a better person each day and learning to know and love and forgive yourself and do the same with the people you gravitate to who are worth it and find you worth it and become the family you both deserved I cry. 😭 Ahhhh and Half-Life! That one messed me up too but god, she’s trying and they’re both so awkward and uncertain and sad but sweet and trying. Eeehhh, yeah! The JoeyQuin fics are so fun to write they vibe so well, and I am so happy you’re invested in them!!! Me too bro, haha. I am working on NDF rn because I really want to update it’s been too long. TuT

AH!!! A fellow NOES2010 fan! Bless; loved him in that too. I am so glad you love my son and I hope you continue to get the best of times watching the poor boy try to do his absolute best while suffering. 😭 Love him.

Also WHOA, holy shit! I wish you the best of luck, but don’t push yourself! ILM is a fucking /long-ass/ fic, and while I know someone read it in two days once, I truly live in awe of anyone who did it in two weeks or less. Godspeed however it goes speed wise though, and thank you so much for this incredible comment, and I hope you enjoy! 💙💙💙 Seriously I cannot thank you enough for giving me such a meaningful and sweet message to read and taking time out of your life/day to brighten mine. It means more than I properly know how to express.

Goodnight, and I hope you enjoy ILM! I think it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written.

[praisetheaxolotl]

I’d like to get your thoughts on this, hope this is okay!

Look at this quote from this article:

“It’s easy to pick on the “this wouldn’t be happening if these characters were coded as male,” but it’s nonetheless true—as a fan of the unrepentantly (gloriously) awful Bill Cipher, among others, I can promise you I see it regularly.”

I immediately thought of this blog when I read this. 

Not saying you’re misogynist, of course. This blog is just so fascinating, and for someone to dismiss it all like that is frustrating. 

I mean, of course they weren’t referring to you directly, but still. 

For someone to brush off people’s interesting, thought-provoking theories as nothing but misogyny is kind of close-minded, in my opinion. 

But this makes me curious. Do you think you’d still feel the same way about Bill if he was more feminine-coded? Would it matter?

And what do you think about that statement? Are you as annoyed by it as I am?

It’s always alright to get my thoughts on certain subjects, Anon! And lucky for you, I have lots of thoughts on this.

First of all, thank you for liking my blog! I put a lot of work into it, and I still look back on everything I’ve done here fondly. This blog is my only fandom-specific blog that’s still semi-active even after I’ve left the fandom. 

And, about what you said about misogyny... I don’t actually think that’s what the article is talking about. It’s not misogyny for someone to pick apart Bill Cipher, but it’s misogyny if someone offers that level of potential depth to a male character while instantly condemning a female character. 

But... honestly, from my experience? These two groups of people are different groups. 

I used to run in those “anti” circles, back in 2015? 2016? Before the whole “SU criti/cal” thing started to become popular. But I could still kinda see hints of it? It was back when SU was hailed as THE perfect show, before people knocked it off the pedestal they put it on. 

Anyway. These people hated redemption arcs. They saw Bill as this irredeemable monolith of a character, and any alternate interpretations were met with outright malice. I got called out once for, and I am not joking, headcanoning Bill as an abuse victim. They claimed I was “excusing his actions,” but when I asked to please show a screenshot of where I said that this excused him, they couldn’t. Because I never said that. 

(I ended up publishing the whole headcanon on my main blog, and people loved it. That reception is what pushed me to create this blog.)

I don’t doubt at least some of those people became the type to nitpick SU. So I feel that the same people that nitpick male characters are also the type to nitpick female ones. They’re just nitpickers with a black-and-white sense of morality.

But there are always exceptions to the rule- people who love morally gray male characters but hate morally grey female characters. Yes, some of these motivations may be spurred on by misogyny. But what frustrates me is the initial assumption of malice. I’m not saying the article itself is guilty of this, as it seems to be speaking to a general problem, but more those tumblr posts or tweets trying to “call people out” if they gravitate towards more morally gray male characters than female ones.

Which brings me to my answer to your question: No, I don’t think I would like Bill as much, had he been a woman.

But please let me explain first. 

First, you need to know some facts about me:

I am transmasculine. (Not a trans man- I’m nonbinary.)

I have a personality disorder. I’m not comfortable disclosing which one, but it’s one of the cluster B ones.

I was abused, and my reaction to the abuse was extreme anger and irritability. (Hence the PD.)

Another important fact is that my abuser was a woman. She’s my mother. I had to live with constant emotional abuse, gaslighting, neglect and other forms of malice for my whole life. I’m still not free yet, and I’m turning 20 in a month. (No, literally, exactly one month to the day.)

I was abused my whole life by a vindictive, manipulative shit of a woman, and it made me into a vindictive, manipulative shit of a person. The key difference is that I am actively trying not to be a vindictive, manipulative shit.

When I pick apart asshole male characters, I see myself in them. I do a deep dive into the whys, the hows the whos of why they ended up the way that they did, because it makes me feel liberated. It’s personally liberating to see someone like me, whom everyone sees as a monster, have a backstory that shows that monsters aren’t born, they’re made. It’s liberating to see them try and change, it’s liberating to give them someone to help them change no matter what, it’s liberating to look harder. Because that’s what I wanted. I wanted someone to look at me and see past the violent, angry 15 year old that I was, and actually help me. I wanted someone to see I was a victim, that I didn’t like being the way that I was. I wanted someone to help me and be there for me, even though I was messed up and awful.

(But don’t feel too bad for me- A few years ago I met someone wonderful through this very fandom who was exactly the kind of person I needed. And last November I proposed to him and he said yes!)

When I see a morally grey female character... all I can see is my abuser. I see in them the person that hurt me. I don’t want to look deeper, just as I don’t care about my mother’s long rambles about how shitty her childhood was. Was she also abused? Yes. Do I care? Nope! I don’t feel that same drive to pick apart female characters that act like the male ones I like, because of my trauma.

 And honestly? Just because I gravitate towards male characters more doesn’t make me a misogynist. How I treat actual real life women does. I do examine my behavior to make sure I’m not being misogynistic- in fact, it was worry that I was being misogynistic in my dislike of these characters that made me think hard enough to have such a long answer to your question. 

Maybe someone liking only male characters is an indicator of misogyny. Maybe it isn’t. I’m not shy about talking about what happened to me but people should not have to disclose their traumas in order to be “allowed” to consume fiction in a way some stranger doesn’t like. 

And there actually is a specific subset of morally grey female characters I like: my own OCs. 

I guess it’s the fact that I created them and thus can control how they act? They’re all assholes and I love them so much, but I don’t feel that same aversion as I do with characters that aren’t mine. Because the lack of control I had over my own abusive situation is what fucked me up so hard, but now I do have the control. If I watch a TV show, I don’t have any control over what the characters do, they’re not mine. But I do have control over my OCs.

(Psst- if you wanna see those OCs, I’ve since moved to the Invader Zim fandom, and am working on a HUGE fic series for it. (It’s not published yet- I’m working on it behind the scenes.) Those OCs I’m talking about star heavily. Here’s my blog, if you’re interested. I kinda wanna do some metaposting for that fandom, too, but I’ve no idea where to start. I love the Irkens, though, haha. Anyway if any of you happen to like IZ and have a meta-question for me... the askbox IS open!)

Anyway. This got really long. But misogyny in fandom is a thing, and the article does call it out well. I just get frustrated that people immediately assume malice. The statement does annoy me, but because it does happen if the characters are coded as male, too. I see it all the time. People just tend to either be fans of the morally grey, or... not.

[bravadoseries]

I was wondering, since f4 and xmen are joinig MCU, which of those characters would Audrey become friends with if she had a chance? I totally see her being a friend with Sue Storm.

hello !!! i have been meditating on this and here are my takes for which characters audrey likes and dislikes: 

friends: 

sue storm: you’re totally right i think audrey finds that sue has like a calming presence.  i think she’s in awe of sue when she meets her and sue is like oh yeah i can turn invisible and turn other things invisible too and like turns audrey invisible and she just thinks she’s the coolest person ever after that 

logan/wolverine: i think audrey’s just fascinated by logan and how he obeys his own moral compass rather than what’s prescribed to him as right or wrong, and how human he feels in that he sometimes betrays his morals just because he’s like a Person and he’s imperfect.  they also bond over their shared weird aging

 magneto: okay controversial perhaps but i think okay au where audrey like ages normally and then slow ages when she hits her twenties but i think audrey would be involved in the mutant rights movement.....and i think she would agree with magneto that more intense action needs to be taken and they can’t just assimilate and wait for acceptance.  she’s not a mutant (technically) but she’s like solidarity w the mutants bc her dna sequence being fucked has also given her weird powers and abilities

jean grey: audrey and jean totally vibe if they meet .... like they both have these unhinged sides that they are trying to keep quiet but they feel comfortable and safe around each other

the thing: ben and audrey are literally best friends no further questions...

deadpool: audrey gets along with deadpool sometimes and is exasperated with him for the rest of it.  at the end of the day, she likes him though.  

jubilee: audrey just vibes with her

storm: audrey thinks storm is really hot and has a big crush on her from the moment she meets her

foes: 

professor x: they’re not foes but audrey thinks he’s a bootlicker and focuses too much on assimilating/waiting for acceptance/waiting for people to like him.  she also thinks he’s manipulative while erik is more earnest 

reed richards: audrey just thinks he’s kind of an egoist and doesn’t get what sue sees in him lol...she accepts that they are in love but she’s also like....why.......

scott summers: scott makes one rude comment about something when they get to the base and audrey uses that to justify disliking him forever even though he’s not like that bad 

rogue: audrey doesn’t totally understand rogue....also rogue is kind of an angsty person so audrey is just like I don’t understand what you’re saying any of the time . ever so Yeah they don’t ever really connect

johnny storm: there’s just something about this guy that unnerves her....but she can’t quite put her finger on why...

mystique: audrey has a hard time vibing with raven but she thinks that she’s cool

[theeternalspace]

In Memoriam 7

Summary: The metal tree had always fascinated the Prince.

Only, it wasn’t a tree.

And, as it turned out, he wasn’t really a Prince. Instead he was… a side of someone’s personality? He doesn’t remember Thomas, or the other sides, those who call themselves his friends. He doesn’t really remember anything, not even his own name, no matter the efforts of Patton, Logan or Virgil. He must venture back into the Wardrobe door, back to the metal tree in an attempt to recover his missing memories and regain everything he has lost.

But perhaps some doors are best left closed for a reason. And perhaps some personas should remain in the ground where they have been buried.

Story Warnings: Sympathetic/Grey Deceit Sanders. He is trying his best you guys. Anxiety. Self doubt and self loathing. Fantasy fighting. Verbal fighting. Threatening behaviour. Blood and injury. Memory loss. Drowning. Near death.

Previous || Next

Roman hated to admit it, but he was freaking out right now.

And not just a little freak out either, he felt as though he was currently in the grip of some intense emotional storm that wanted to drain him dry. He somehow felt even more lost and confused than he had when he first stepped out of the wardrobe and found out that actually he knew nothing. Roman had hoped that a little one on one time with one of his friends, while on a quest would help solidify who he really was. 

In some ways it had. Virgil assured him that a lot of the things he found himself instinctively doing were familiar acts that he would have done with his memories. That helped, a lot. To know that he seemed in many ways to be the same person that he had been before. Virgil and the others clearly cared about him a lot so he had to be a good side, a worthy side. He helped Thomas and Roman was looking forward to finally meet him. Or meeting him again, rather. First meeting from his point of view but not from Thomas’ and that was the important thing surely.

Memory loss was confusing. And everything he did was just making him freak out a little more, no matter how hard he tried to remain calm. It made a strange fluttery feeling rise in his chest, some kind of mixed pleasure and horror. It was good. It was all good? He was a good side and he was still that same side now.

Roman found himself examining those traits rather closely regardless. 

He was brave, he was reckless at times. He really did go off on quests and act the prince, and slay the monster. Charging directly at an enemy to protect a hiding friend was apparently par for the course when it came to him. As did falling for foolish tricks and eating magic jelly. Sure it had looked rather delicious, but not delicious enough that he should have risked everything just to taste it. It was yet another thing that made Roman uncertain about who he really was. 

He seemed... nice? Roman wasn’t completely sure what to make of himself, beyond the hope that he was good. He seemed a little too... fast at times. Too quick to jump onto a thought or an action and just do it without stopping to wonder if it was the right thing to do. Like the jelly. 

Roman thought back to all the items he had looked over in his room, things that clearly meant a lot to him because he had kept them, had placed them where he could see them all the time. Most of the posters and stuffed animals left him feeling... not cold exactly. But detached from any positive feelings. They were, again... just nice. Cute too, but he didn’t love them in the way he used to love them. How could he, when he didn’t understand or know the stories and movies they came from? 

Then there was the issue of Virgil.

Virgil wasn’t a villain, that much was obvious. He had been so scared about admitting what he was to Roman and although he knew that anxiety didn’t sound like the greatest thing in the world, there was no way that Virgil was anything other than what he appeared to be. Someone trying so hard to do the right thing, and fighting for it every step of the way.

What could be more noble than being afraid, admitting you were afraid, but then managing to do it anyway? 

Something niggled at him though, an itch at the base of his skull that refused to be rubbed away. 

Virgil had been truly scared to tell him what he really was, as though he feared his reaction more than he would normally. Roman couldn't get the image of Virgil's face out of his mind, that broken hearted look when Roman hadn't instantly said anything in response to his grand admission. He seemed devastated by the silence but there was more than just an awful pain in that expression. There had been... acceptance?

As though he had thought from the start that Roman would react badly to the fact he was Anxiety, or worse, that he thought Roman should react badly to that information. Perhaps it was just the way Virgil was. He was nervous after all, constantly worrying about things and maybe he just automatically thought the worst.

Somehow, despite having no memories, Roman had no doubt that it wouldn't be the first time that Virgil had vastly over exaggerated in his own mind a worst case scenario. Especially since, as it turned out, he was Anxiety and that was a lot of what he probably did. 

Yet that didn't seem to explain everything, not completely.

It had to be exhausting to be Virgil all the time. Constantly on your guard, constantly waiting for the shoe to drop, for something to happen that would justify the negative behaviour and feelings. He was Protection of a sort after all and it pleased Roman to think that he had been right. Even if Virgil might not see it - chronic low self esteem appeared to be another aspect to Virgil’s trait. Roman knew him as a protector, constantly jumping in to warn of dangers, always fighting to defend someone else, doing whatever he could to keep everyone safe.

Roman knew him as a worrier, someone who could see danger a mile away, whose mind was constantly busy, whirling away as it tried to work out every possible threat it could. 

Roman knew him as a hero because of all of that and so much more besides. 

Maybe that hurt and acceptance had purely been because that was how Virgil was trained to view the world around him. 

But maybe it was also something to do with Roman too. Patton hadn't wanted to tell, told Roman it wasn't his place, which even at the time had seemed odd and off. As though there was something almost wrong about Virgil, as though there was something shameful about his defining trait.

Surely Patton didn't think ill of Virgil?

The moral side always appeared to be so warm, so friendly. So full of love and close to all of them. Roman couldn’t bare the thought that it might have been a trick, that Patton wasn’t as open as he seemed. It was too cruel a trick, to believe that Patton had been playing him with his apparent caring when in reality he thought Virgil was a danger simply for being Anxiety. 

Then again, the other option, that perhaps Roman had once thought ill of Virgil and would revert to that thinking again, was too even more painful, too painful to even think about, Roman cutting off the thought before it could fully form within him. If he refused to give it credence then it couldn’t be true. 

He didn’t really know what to make of any of this information. He didn’t know how he was supposed to react to Virgil’s news and the other sides’ own reactions had made him feel as though he had somehow gotten it wrong. Roman hated this feeling of trying to swim through dangerous currents in the dark where he couldn’t see any rocks or traps. It was exhausting. 

Roman just wanted to remember again. He wanted to be himself again, because things had to make a whole ton more sense when he could remember all the nuances of his own character. When he knew exactly where he stood with everyone and all the things he couldn’t help but feel they were keeping from him. Roman wanted to know who he really was, he wanted the world to start to make sense again. For things to stop hurting so much, to stop being so confusing and for the pieces to click satisfyingly into place. 

He needed to calm down, Roman could feel his heart rate picking up the longer he worried about everything he was missing.

Ironically, Roman felt that the best person to ask for help would be Virgil himself. If anyone knew how to handle the emotions that were hurtling through him, it would be Virgil because he had to fight these kind of bad thoughts all the time surely? He would know how to distract himself properly, how to push them from his mind and focus on anything else. 

But Roman didn't want to bother him. He didn't want to add to his stress and his cares. Virgil was clearly worried about so much and the last thing Roman wanted was to place his own shallow little worries on top of everything else that had to be bugging him. Roman just needed to battle through this on his own, needed to work out how to deal with the raging dumpster fire his feelings seemed to have turned into.

“I can feel your nerves you know.” Virgil’s voice was grumpy, the other side rolling his eyes a little from his position beside him, the two on horseback once more, making their way through the snow. “I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but you need to chill.” 

Easier said than done.

Roman knew he needed to chill out. He also needed to let those emotions out, to scream and cry at the world, to rant about how unfair it was and how hard this was. He was surrounded by strangers who all had their own ideas about the sort of person he was and Roman had no idea which of those views were right or not. They were all different, which was only to be expected but that didn’t make his own internal storm any easier to deal with. He needed to break down and hopefully feel better because of it, but at the same time, Roman didn’t want to give in to his weakest and worst emotions. He wanted to be the strong prince Virgil apparently thought he was.  

“Hey, hey Ro, look at me?” Virgil was suddenly leaning in front of him, Roman blinking a couple of times and he didn’t remember stopping yet Bree had come to a complete halt, Hwin shifting a little to stand beside him, clearly having turned around to do so. 

There was a worried expression on Virgil’s face as he stared at him and Roman didn’t understand why. So he had clearly zoned out for a moment or two, so what? It wasn’t a terrible thing and he was clearly fine so why was Virgil staring at him in a mixture of horror and pity? Roman opened his mouth to say something - what, he wasn’t quite sure - before closing it again, feeling a thick and heavy lump in his throat, something that no matter how hard he swallowed, he couldn’t force down. 

“Roman... are you okay?” Virgil’s voice was far softer than it had any right to be, one hand lifting to pat lightly against his own cheek. 

Slowly, Roman lifted a hand to his face, brushing against his cheek in a mirror image of Virgil. He pulled his hand back, staring dumbly at his now wet fingertips. 

He was crying.

When had he started crying? 

“Okay, you know what, this isn’t working,” Virgil still looked concerned as he spoke but there was a determination in his eyes that told Roman his friend had decided on something and wasn’t going to move from it easily. 

“It isn’t?” Roman forced out around the thick knot in his throat that still refused to go anywhere. He didn’t think he liked where this was heading. Virgil lifted a hand to rub nervously at the back of his neck, Roman’s eyes following the motion as he did so.

“We can’t just keep... wandering around in the snow, hoping to find some clue. The sledge was a dead end, in that it didn’t tell us where to go next here, but we still have some clues to what happened. If we can’t go forward to solve this, then the only answer is to go backwards.” 

“Virgil, you’re not making any sense, what are you saying?” Roman had a pretty good idea he knew what the other man was saying but he didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to believe he was right. 

“I’m saying... we should go home Roman,” Virgil told him with a heavy sigh. Roman instantly shook his head and no, no, they couldn’t do that! That wasn’t how the story was supposed to end! They were meant to discover the source of the problem and deal with it. They were meant to defeat the evil and restore his memories before returning in triumph. Not crawling back with their tails between their legs and nothing solved. 

“You mean give up,” Roman replied, dimly aware that he was still crying. Silent tears that seemed to flow without any input on his end and why couldn’t he stop crying? Roman lifted an arm, sleeve wiping roughly against his eyes as he tried to swipe away all the tears and it just wasn’t fair that he was crying now. They seemed to be numbing tears more than anything else. They weren’t letting him get his emotions out, they were just making Roman look weak. What was the point of that?

It just made Virgil look at him with that heartbroken expression and that hurt so much more than Roman would have thought possible. It felt as though metal bands had fastened themselves around his heart, clamping down on it and pressing tight, leaving him broken and breathless. It was clear enough for Virgil to see it, which made him look even more upset, which in turn led to Roman feeling more upset. A vicious circle that never seemed to want to end. He gave his eyes a final, last desperate rub, pleased that the tears seemed to be finally coming to an end. Maybe he had just run out of tears. 

“This place is hurting you and we don’t know where to go next. It’s not a defeat, it is... just a retreat to find a different way to attack. I am not giving up Roman. I just can’t stand this.” Virgil told him seriously. 

Roman frowned a little as he considered the words. Virgil was right of course - they had no idea where to go next and had been travelling for what felt like hours now, just following a track left in the snow with no rhyme or reason. They had no idea where to go next, no clue they could follow. It was hard to even come up with a suggestion as to what they could do instead and Roman had no idea, no plan of his own they could follow. He didn’t want to give up but Virgil was making a lot of sense. 

“Okay.”

“... Wait really? Okay? Just like that?” Virgil looked far more surprised than he really had any right to be, some of the fight draining from his body as he realised Roman had actually agreed with him. It made the bands wrapped around Roman’s heart gave another squeeze as he wondered if he had ever said that to Virgil without the fight that the other side had clearly expected. Virgil knew what he was doing, he knew more than Roman at any rate. 

“Well yeah... I trust you and your judgement Virgil.” Roman didn’t think he was saying anything ground breaking although really if Virgil had been surprised he had just agreed with him, he should have known that saying something like that would be important.

Virgil’s eyes grew wide as he said those words though, a glassy sheen covering them for a moment before the other side blinked a couple of times, snapping back into his careless looking attitude. Left shoulder rose and fell in a crooked shrug, something a little too casual to really feel real for Roman and it was obvious that his words meant a lot to the other side.

Somehow, that trap around his heart constricted again, tightening ever further and he didn’t know how he could handle the pain, the sensation of his heart being crushed under the weight of his choices and how different they were from the choices he had apparently originally made. Tears pricked at the corner of his eyes, threatening to fall again and it seemed as though he hadn’t run out of tears after all, hadn’t even come close. Roman wasn’t going to cry though. He wasn’t going to let Virgil think he had done something to make him cry.

Roman wasn’t even sure anymore why he wanted to cry. Frustration at what he had lost was rapidly crystallising into anger, rage directed inward at himself and only himself.  

“That’s cool,” Virgil said gruffly, offering Roman a crooked smile to go with his shrug, something small but there. It felt like an honest expression, a smile of thanks, of relief, dare Roman even think it, of joy to know that Roman thought that of him. 

He really had never said anything like that before, had he? He had never been honest about how he felt, had never encouraged Virgil, never tried to lift him up and Roman couldn’t think of any excuse that could possibly justify such behaviour. 

“Home then?”

“Home,” Roman agreed, the word still sounding a little funny, a little foreign coming from him. What was home anyway? Patton and Logan were home. Thomas was home and he was impatient to actually talk to him, to gain some understanding as to what role Roman actually played. It was all very well to say he was Creativity, to say that he was a prince that went on noble quests but what did that actually mean in practise? 

Maybe they would find the answers they had been seeking when they returned to the house in the mind. For all they knew Logan and Patton between them might have come up with a solution already and were just waiting for them to get back. Then there was the jelly that Virgil still had on him, who knew what secrets Logan could unlock within it if he had to, who knew what he could find out. If he could discover the poison, that was a step closer in making the antidote and before Roman knew it, he could be back to his old self again.

Maybe things would work out. 

And maybe... maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he didn’t get his memories back. Maybe the Roman they all knew wasn’t as good as any of them liked to hope. Maybe this was his go at a second chance at being a better friend. The sort of Roman he was meant to be. 

Maybe he could become a new Creativity, one that could say nice things to his friends - let alone call them his friends - without them looking as though he had just proclaimed his deepest, most heartfelt love for them. It shouldn’t shock Virgil as much as it had done, just to say he trusted him and Roman knew he needed to change. 

He needed to become someone that didn’t have an aching heart.

With a click of his tongue, Roman gently urged Bree to move, letting the horse turn away from the endless white of the path to nowhere and instead returned to the... well, endless white of the path that lay behind them, the prints of hooves the only thing breaking up the monotony of white and even they were starting to be lost under the endless falling snow. At least it gave them something to follow for now. 

Thoughts were swirling as they made their way back towards the Wardrobe and actual warmth which, if nothing else, Roman was looking forward to. He wanted to do something fun with Virgil, but what?

Roman looked down at the snow, an idea forming in his mind. 

--

Time was one hundred percent messing with him in this world and Virgil was one hundred percent done with the reality defying laws of physics that did whatever they pleased depending on the moment. 

They had been travelling for over a day and a half since leaving the Wardrobe and striking out first to the sledge and then the camp overnight. Not to mention the hours upon hours of travelling as they had moved from their camp in their aimless wandering. 

It should have taken them at least a similar time back, Virgil resigning himself to another night of guarding Roman - and this time hopefully not letting his friend down by falling asleep - and yet the sun was just starting to sink under the horizon as they reached the clearing that housed the lamppost and beyond, the way back to the mind. They hadn’t even passed the snow covered remains of their campsite, and Virgil knew it couldn’t have snowed so much as to obscure all traces completely. 

Time and distance were pressing in on themselves, twisting around so that things happened faster than they should. It was infuriating and the only reason Virgil hadn’t completely lost his mind over the whole thing was the thought that at least it was almost over. He was clinging to that thought, almost chanting it to himself that this was almost done, that they just had to get back through the Wardrobe and they would be back in a place that made a little more sense at least. Virgil knew the rules in the mind, he knew how things worked.  

“This is where Hwin and I must part ways with you both. We have our homes to return to, but should you ever require our assistance again, simply place your hand upon the metal tree and call for us. The message will be sent and we will respond,” Bree announced grandly, coming to a stop to allow Roman to dismount. Hwin and Virgil followed suit a few seconds later and as grateful as Virgil had been to having a lift, he had to be honest, he was happier to be using his own feet again. He couldn’t help but feel a lot more steady walking than balanced atop a horse. 

“Thank you Hwin,” Virgil murmured softly, reaching up to pat her neck carefully. Just because he was glad he was able to walk once more didn’t mean he had to be rude and he was appreciative for her help. They wouldn’t have been able to get nearly as far as they had without them. 

Or maybe they would. Reality was confusing here after all. Regardless, they wouldn’t have been able to find the sledge without Bree helping and it was just good manners to thank them. No point making extra enemies, especially when Virgil had so many of those to start with. 

Virgil might not know a lot about friendship and people in general, but he knew enough to know you were supposed to thank them when they did something nice for you.

“My pleasure Virgil. Don’t forget Bree’s words, they go double for me and for you. I am here if you have need of me,” Hwin promised, her voice gentle yet there was an undercurrent of seriousness to it, an intent as though she was saying more than the words would originally imply. That or Virgil was getting overly paranoid. 

Either was about equally likely.  

“Okay...” Virgil said slowly, turning the words over in his mind, trying to gleam some understanding as to what she could be trying to tell him. Maybe he was just overthinking it, and Hwin didn’t know what to say either. She didn’t seem eager to say anything else, to offer any hints as to what she could mean, the mare simply looking at him for a couple of moments longer.

With a soft stamp of one of her front hooves, Hwin turned away, starting to move through the forest away from them and no doubt towards the area that she called home, Bree a length or two behind her. Or else she was moving away to a place that didn't exist because Roman hadn’t imagined it into existence yet, with the possibility that the pair of them might vanish from the world completely once they left the little bubble that Roman and Virgil were currently in. 

Maybe, in a way, they were heading to their death, written out of the story like minor characters, never to make an appearance again. Perhaps her words had been that, a silent plea that he had ignored because he was socially incompetent and didn’t understand. 

That was another reason why Virgil didn’t like going to the Imagination - he got way too dark and real about things like that. Either he refused to engage in the scenario at all, which normally lead to Roman pouting and claiming he was ruining the scene, or else he did engage. And then got invested in the characters as actual people and had to deal with the heartbreak of losing them forever when Thomas and Roman eventually got bored with whatever it was and forgot about them. When that happened that area of the mind would eventually get replaced by the newest obsession that had gripped Thomas. 

It probably wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone to learn that Virgil listed separation anxiety among the many, many anxieties that plagued him. 

Part of Virgil knew it was foolish, because Hwin, Bree and the White Wizard himself weren’t real and so it was technically impossible to be upset that they were gone. They were literally characters, a twisted mix of something Thomas had once read and the spin Roman put on them to make them his own. That was even worse, because Roman worked so hard on all his characters and he made them all have their own little quirks which made them so much more than the versions on paper. Which meant Virgil got that much more attached to them and right back round to the pain of losing them.

Losing fiction characters and being upset by it, how pathetic was that? 

By that same logic of course, Virgil, Roman and the others weren’t real either which Virgil knew but he tried to save those kind of existential crises thoughts for early in the morning when he and Thomas had nothing better to do. There was so much about the Sides which made no sense, the way in which they could like things that Thomas didn’t or vice versa. 

He was certainly going to be thinking about this topic long into the night when he had nothing else to distract him, that was for sure. But for now, he had something else to focus on, he had this moment and that would have to be enough. 

Virgil watched the pair ride off, following them until they had vanished completely between the trees before sighing heavily. This was it. They had made the choice and they were going home where hopefully Logan would have come up with an answer. Where they could be safe at least. He had been surprised Roman had agreed so easily and some part of Virgil couldn’t relax, waiting for the trick, the sting in the tail. 

Things were never that easy and he was used to having to fight every step of the way just to be heard. To have someone, anyone, give in so easily to him, just made Virgil that much more anxious than if he had to prove his point. Virgil started to turn back towards Roman, thoughts still twisting and squirming inside of his mind. Which was pretty much par for the course really and would cause him problems down the line when he wanted to sleep. That was future Virgil’s problem, present Virgil had enough on his plate as it was without thinking about that.

“Okay Rom-” Words were cut off by a snowball direct to his face, the coldness making him gasp slightly as he was suddenly blinded by white. Everywhere white. 

For a moment it felt as though as his brain had completely disconnected and all he could think was a low frequency static that just buzzed in the back of his brain. Words started to form in his brain once more, slowly coming back online but little more than one thought at a time, mental fingers struggling to find anything to grip onto in order to climb back out of the white hole he had been thrown into. 

Snow.

Face.

Cold.

Shock.

Snowball?

Laughter - mean? 

No, not mean, not mocking. 

Light.

Bright.  

Roman

No rock.

No... rock? 

Virgil lifted a hand slowly, wiping some of the snow off his face, small chunks dropping from his fingers to land harmlessly on the ground beside him. His fingers were cold from where he had touched the light flakes, and the snowball hadn’t been packed very tight. It had still mostly been fluffy snow instead of ice pressed down.

There hadn’t been a rock inside of it. Well of course there wouldn’t be, would there. This was Roman after all, this was his friend, someone he could trust. There was a difference between knowing that however and actually knowing it, between believing it down to his bones and his body was a lot less trusting than his mind. It had flinched and sought to protect itself without giving him that extra second he needed to know that it was safe.

Some part of Virgil was still grappling with the fact that there really hadn’t been a rock inside of it and he had just had his first, genuine snowball flung at him. 

He gaped at Roman who had formed another snowball and was standing a few feet away from him, a bright grin on his face. 

“Ready for more?” The words were clearly taunting and yet the tone of voice wasn’t. Teasing perhaps, but friendly, excited for a snowball fight. Roman pulled his arm back and he seemed to slow down, his movements becoming that much more exaggerated, Virgil almost able to see what he was going to do a second before he actually did them. 

Fight or flight kicked in, Virgil ducking and diving to the side, using a nearby tree as cover as he scooped up a handful of snow of his own, frantically patting it into a ball. He had no idea what was going on or why Roman had decided to start a snowball fight of all things but there was little time to wonder and worry about the why when he was stuck in the middle of it actually happening. 

He heard the snowball impact against the tree he was hiding behind and again, the sound was fairly soft, the projectile coming apart the moment it hit anything hard.

There wasn’t a rock in that one either.

In the back of his mind, Virgil wondered how many snowballs Roman was going to throw before his mind and body got the message that there would never be a rock or any other nasty surprise hidden within. When was he finally going to get it through his thick skull that they didn’t want to hurt him?

Even as he was thinking that, Virgil was moving, slipping from tree to tree, always using them as cover as he started to circle Roman. He needed to keep moving, keep him distracted while Virgil planned his next move, his brain working overtime. This was different though, this was almost good because his brain was working on something positive, on a task that he could actually do. 

Another snowball flew overhead, Virgil blindly tossing his crudely made one back in Roman’s direction. It probably wouldn’t hit but then the intention wasn’t to actually hit but to simply disorientate Roman, to make him underestimate him and give Virgil another few precious seconds to get behind another tree and away from any new flying cold menace. He might still not understand the why, but that no longer mattered, not with adrenaline pumping through his veins. 

If Roman wanted a fight like this, he was going to get one. It was never a wise idea to take on the literal representation of fight or flight and he had no idea who he was messing with. This was one fight that Virgil was going to win. 

[daturanerium]

i’m finally all caught up with @thepenumbrapodcast​ ‘s juno steel stories! here are my discordant thoughts on the story and the characters.

(i did this with the magnus archives season one, too! check it out here.)

SPOILERS FOR JUNO STEEL from s1e1 to s3ep2

general plot stuff:

this show. THIS SHOW. is written so well. the characterization is top-notch. the characters are fleshed out and interesting and engaging and they all grow and change and are affected by people and environments and time and events. they’re not static in the slightest.

i haven’t come across a story that deals with depression and suicidal idealization so well. i’m thoroughly impressed with how the writers both portrayed them and how well they have (so far) portrayed the healing process. wowowow.

THE LGBT REPRESENTATION IS OFF THE CHARTS. QUEERS LISTEN TO THIS SHOW. they have a nonbinary politician?? mlm romance and kiss in the first episode???? main character is nb with he/him pronouns??? SO MANY BADASS SAPPHIC SPY/MAFIA COUPLES.....IT TUGS AT MY HEART. the big strong guy is asexual??? i could go on for days but spoilers! just know that genuinely, you will not be disappointed.

this show has two main focuses/themes: trust and the future. it’s been so fantastic to see how juno and the other characters view both themes and how they changed themselves and/or others while encountering those themes in their everyday life.

ramses o’flaherty and the entire plotline that came with him was absolutely top-notch. it blew me away. ramses is a true complicated character, a grey area that makes you question everything you believe in. the storyline tackles politics, morals, and values while keeping it exciting and entertaining. it’s definitely one of my favorite storylines ever.

the writers are truly incredible. i’m really in awe. they inspire me!  i wish i had the energy right now to give them the praise essay that they deserve but i’m really tired and i want to get this posted. someday!

the worldbuilding is the perfect balance between two extremes that a lot of scifi authors really struggle with. juno explains how a (sort of) functioning mars city works in a way that feels natural and easy to understand, and the world he describes is both familiar and fascinating. although the environment is different, the audience is all too familiar with corruption and capitalism and classism. they keep the world relatable while giving it some really new and funky details (do i want a cat with six eyes and a stinger? of course! do i want to step outside for more than five hours and get radiation poisoning? that’s up for interpretation). they also chose a great route in making this story take place in the aftermath of (what seems to be) a galactic war instead of taking the traditional Save The World, End The War scifi route. it’s refreshing, and again, relatable (especially to me: i was born after 9/11 and have lived through the entirety of the war in afghanistan so the underlining feeling that hyperion city has that Something is Going To Go Wrong....i feel that).

there is so much more i want to say but this has been sitting in my drafts for weeks and i want to get it posted!

tl;dr: juno steel is really a fantastic work of art. it’s engaging and relatable and teaches valuable lessons about healing, trusting, and moving on in ways i have never seen another piece of media do so successfully. please give it a listen if you have a chance!

some character/character arc thoughts under the cut :)

juno:

god so dumb. just so fucking stupid. i love him.

i’m going to be honest. s1 and the beginning of s2 Juno was really hard for me to listen to. the way he treated others obviously was, to put it lightly, not the best (the monitor incident with rita comes to mind; i really hated that). it almost got repetitive, and since i’m already not a big fan of the depressed-asshole trope i was kind of hanging by a thread by the time ramses came around.

god am i glad i stuck around. his character growth and maturity within the second half of season two and the beginning of season three has been so satisfying! it hasn’t been perfect, but that’s part of the reason why it’s so good--it’s realistic and believable. he’s realized where his faults lie and is making a physical and mental effort to better himself. he’s even doing it verbally, explaining to people he trusts (rita) that he’s trying to be better and then actually acting on it. too often we see the depressed-asshole say the “i’m trying to be better!” line but don’t see any actions following it that signify that effort--that was my fear going into this. but that’s really, truly not the case here, and it’s such a breath of fresh air. plus, in-canon-wise, i’m so happy for juno he’s come so far!

okay nonbinary king i see you

GET THIS LADY A CAT PLEASE.

that moment during the end of s2 when he found that baby rabbit in the sewers.....god.

juno appreciate rita challenge (accepted!)

his voice......is so soothing. except when he yells but he’s better now we’ve established that

i LOVE how as soon as he figures out that he likes you he sticks to you like glue. that’s super funny and cute and also fits him perfectly

miss dahlia rose if you’re out there.....

his complicated relationship with ramses was so fascinating and important. i loved listening to that storyline.

juno: “there’s no way in hell i’m doing this, fuck off” juno, five minutes later: [is doing it]

that’s pretty much the beginning plot of every episode lol ur so valid juno we love u

he’s ability to make the dumbest decisions continues to astound me. he likes to talk about how mick is always getting himself in trouble but god juno you’re really not one to talk

the fact that, in a world that literally runs on tech, he has no idea how a coms works. that’s so fucking funny. if you ignore the backstory that comes behind it.

did juno ever tell alessandra that he made it out of the desert alive or is she just out there in hyperion city somewhere mourning him with her wife?

i already sort of wrote on juno’s backstory but it’s so good. so good.

he’s so fucking soft. he loves so much!!!! and that scares him!!!! but he’s working on it!!!!!

rita:

is she the love of my life or do i just relate heavily to her? who knows

actually no we’re gonna talk about this

rita penumbrapodcast, queen of adhd. queen of oversharing. queen of tangents. queen of love. queen of excitement. queen of caring for her friends more than herself. queen of incredible intelligence shown in an unconventional way. queen of being underappreciated.

s1 and the beginning of s2 really stung me because i’ve been in rita’s positon--used as a punching bag by someone i care deeply about because it’s better me than someone else, because i’m willing to sacrifice my own health and safety for the sake of giving them an outlet. we put it under the guise of “helping”, but we don’t realize until later that it’s really not; we’re just letting them get away with hurting themselves and hurting us. the monitor incident comes to mind again. i actually had to pause and take a step away after hearing juno yell and the glass break--although my abusive friendships thankfully never got violent, that kind of unbridled anger was all too familiar and i was begging out loud for her to leave. she handles it like a champ, and i honestly can’t say whether or not that’s a good or bad thing: good because she knows he doesn’t mean it or bad because she’s used to it? because it’s later revealed that juno’s treated her poorly from the first day they met. i was really worried that their relationship was going to end up being static, “depressed-asshole bullies quirky female sidekick and she never fights back because she loves him” trope. but, thankfully, they’re not!

towards the end of s2 and the beginning of s3 we didn’t just see growth in juno, we saw growth in rita. she confronts juno through a thetabot down in the sewers, calling him out on his self-destructive tendencies and his habit of doing important things without anyone else’s help (in this case, disappearing for weeks without telling her where he was). she points out that maybe the only way for him to appreciate her is for her to do the same thing--disappear for weeks, forcing him to realize just how much he needs her. thankfully, this is after juno’s Big Realization, and he sincerely apologizes for his treatment of her and assures her that he’s trying to be better. (and, side note, but that apology was a good one. a really good one. he verbally acknowledges his many mistakes, including the one rita specifically mentioned, acknowledges that he does not deserve her forgiveness, tells her what he’s trying to do to be better, and then apologizes and asks for her help. that’s good. take notes, people.) later that season, she takes initiative for what seems to be the first time, coming up with a solid, well-thought-out plan, enacting it on her own, and saving both an entire city and her boss. you could probably hear my cheers from wherever you are on earth, because they were there and they were loud! rita saving the day mixed with juno breaking through the mind control with his overwhelming love and appreciation for her.....god. good stuff.

rita buying juno’s office as a surprise for him.......i Will cry

literally she’s just so wonderful i love her so much

every time she talks i’m like [one billion heart emojis mixed with like forty crying emojis]

RITA SPINOFF WHEN. i come from the critical role community so yall know for a fact i’ll back it on kickstarter

once her and juno’s relationship reaches a healthy balance (and they’re already well on their way which i’m so happy about!) they’re going to be so good together. so powerful. the Ultimate cheery vs broody relationship (although juno is less broody at this point and more....gentle asshole. we love growth). they were unstoppable before, but now? god help the galaxy lol

the fact that rita can just casually hack into literally any system in the galaxy is so.......impressive? hot? yeah.

please get this woman a girlfriend and a cat

rita x franny xoxo

RITA BACKSTORY WHEN. PLEASE KEVIN AND SOPHIE PLEASE AS A RITA STAN I AM POLITELY BEGGING YOU.

rita is now in space, which is an interesting development. i just.....”rita in space” is not something i would have ever guessed at a week ago

wait oh my god.

i was sitting here thinking rita has some sort of trust fund/is secretly rich and that’s how she bought juno’s office and kept it afloat, but with the most recent episode’s developments it’s probably equally if not more likely that she either hacked into the nearest bank to give herself the creds needed or hacked the person she was buying it from to make it seem like she had made the payments. i literally adore her whoops

the little rita episodes make me so happy and i hope we get more of them!

tldr: i love her and she deserves the world and more, i’m glad her relationship with juno has changed into something a lot healthier with juno’s Realization mid-season-two, i hope she realizes the hero she already is in season three

peter:

.........oh how the turntables.

peter, season one: juno come with me so we can be together forever and travel the galaxy! i think i love you! juno: aw babe i wish i could but i’m sad and the city needs me :( peter, season three, when handed the opportunity to travel with a healing juno through the galaxy on a silver platter: actually fuck this lol i have One Job and it is to Only Think About My Current Assignment. this is smart and healthy.

this man.....this man right here officer. stole my fucking heart.

i don’t really have an essay for him because we haven’t seen enough of him to really gauge his character development beyond an obsession with debts and his aging. i’m guessing that will change this season though

the debts....what are they

can rita hack in and pay them off

god wouldn’t that be so funny. he spends his entire life trying to pay off these impossible debts and it’s stressing him out to the point where he feels he can’t focus on anything else. and one day he comes to the fam and explains everything and rita’s like “oh shit that’s easy i’ll take care of that right now!!! why didn’t you say something sooner” and hes like “what” and she’s like “yeah!” and he’s like “holy shit” and then he gets married to juno and they live happily ever after the end.

no but real talk

these debts. there’s a lot about them and the way he talks about them that really worries me. i feel like having them be simple money debt would be too easy, so maybe it’s something medical? that would explain both his obsession with his aging and his uncharacteristically excited reaction to the healing mother prime (i think that’s what it was whoops).

he also mentioned someone else before juno, someone that had some pretty strong romantic undertones. maybe they’re sick? but peter doesn’t seem like the type to throw away a relationship like that so quickly, so it doesn’t really match up that he would have someone sick and waiting for him but he’d still go after juno in season one. hmmm.

this one’s a real mystery lads. you think you have something figured out about peter nureyev but it just gives you more questions.

peter is the one mystery juno can’t solve. god, that’s good.

his voice is so good. i don’t remember who his voice actor is but they’re doing a fantastic job thank you!!!!

i actually don’t picture peter like how he’s portrayed in the official art and fanart? i wish i was an artist so i could draw him the way i see him but alas. (i still really like his official design tho!)

listen. you give me a mysterious thief that doesn’t exist and i am Forced to love him. i have a type.

thankfully peter seemed to come around during the most recent episode (s3e2 the man in glass) so i don’t think we’re going to get a repeat of season one. these debts, whatever they are, are definitely going to cause problems. i can’t wait to see what the writers do with this.

(my only fear is that it will end up fitting the “gay character has a sickness parallel to aids and it is incurable” trope. although the writers have so far done a fantastic job of writing queer characters and worlds as well as turning tropes on their heads, so even if it may seem like that’s the case in the beginning, i’ll most likely stick through it to see where they take it. i trust them).

peter i know you’ve never had a family in your life but. im gonna tell you a secret here. found family is cool and good and you’ll like it if you give it a chance.

i love him and as soon as i cut my hair short i’m gonna cosplay him. fashion king

peter nureyev makes me want to fall in love

watching (listening) to juno grow and mature was already fantastic, but to see it through the eyes of someone who respects him, cares for him, and loves him deeply? good lord.

the way peter talks about juno.....yeah.

and peter as an individual....WOW. master thief, yes wow impressive! but his growth is already focusing so much on trust and it’s been written so well. i can’t wait to see how much he continues to grow and learn to trust this season!!!

i would love to see him continue to narrate s3. i think it’s a really strong change of pace and it also puts some extra emphasis on juno’s growth while focusing on peter’s motivations and inner thoughts. i’m genuinely fine either way tho!

tl;dr: i love u emo boy i love u i love u