#let me have a toxic relationship with my fictional murder husband

[askew-d]

Can I ask, who are your top favorite romantic couples (can be canon or non canon) of all time from any media? Why you love them? Thx :D

here i go with another grand list that i was very happy to write! i’m in love with these asks, really. i’ll mention all of them, but at first i was in doubt if i could include one that isn’t ‘canon’, but rather rpf. either way, i added bonus couples for good reasoning! let’s go.

1. wangxian (lan wangji x wei wuxian), from mo dao zu shi — they are THE moment, they are THE couple, they are THE goals. who ever could have imagined someone would come up and write a troublemaker who falls into demonic arts and gets reincarnated to fight together with a sucker-for-rules expressionless man and make it work? they fit into any au as well, this fandom rocks. my lovely cultivators!

2. kagehina (kageyama tobio x hinata shouyou), from haikyuu!! — i dont even play volleyball. i dont even like sports! why do i love this anime and this duo specifically so much? they are so passionate about their hobbies, the rivalry and frenemy relationship? the POTENTIAL. the STORY they have. the "someone better will come and find you" promise. sheer beauty. they are silly and fresh and cute and i dont think i'll ever get tired of it.

3. yizhan (wang yibo x xiao zhan), from the untamed cast rpf — i know all the problematics about writing real person fiction. i KNOW, okay?? but people, let me like them and support them in peace?? 😔 i have so much love for these men, and its overall hella fun following their life unfold, even if they are not working together anymore. nonetheless, they are my dose of serotonin when i need it.

4. daiharu (kambe daisuke x katou haru), from fugou keiji: balance unlimited — i will not scream for a seson 2 here. i will scream for more FICS of them here! there ain't enough! its not even about the 'sugar daddy' appeal, its more about the 'partners in (solving) crime' appeal. oh and also the 'i hate you you arrogant prick but i WILL do anything for you' part. everything and every detail of this show.... seriously though: gold.

5. hilson (gregory house x james wilson), from house m.d — oh, my sweet stupid and repressed doctors, i would do unspeakable things for you. wilson has been through every hard moment of house's life. you can name them, he's been there. through every ridiculous situation of his too. it is overwhelming, honestly. the ending couldn't have been more reasonable and fitting for them, in my opinion.

6. hannigram (hannibal lecter x will graham), from hannibal — this gif alone of them with scratches and smiling conspiratorily to each other sums up their entire dynamic. they're toxic and no one's doing it like them. like, yeah, no shit, who would even dare, right? murder husbands can do anything and eat the rude as much as they want, i will be sipping on my drink and watching intently. (man truly looked at this detective he framed for murder and said he would remember their moment together forever??? just dont throw him in jail then???)

7. shiguang (lu guang x cheng xiaoshi), from link click — these pretty boys traveling through time invented the concept of yearning, and i will not explain more to not give season 2 spoilers. i fell in love with them as soon as i saw the first shot of the anime. it doesnt help that they have the same dynamic as wangxian, too. cheng xiaoshi, my beloved, you would never do anything to harm anyone (not purposefully) and i (as well as lu guang) worship you 🙏

8. renga (hasegawa langa x kyan reki), from sk8: the infinity — let's be true tho, can they never do a sports anime without pulling up homosexuals?? not that im complaining at all. please continue, in fact. every couple in this story is valid (adam does not exist), and i love this spirited, young concept of redescovering the beauty of a hobbie. lovely, all of them, but most specially my langa and his admiration for reki. their dynamic has no complications, its just so sweet.

9. moshang (mobei jun x shang qinghua), from the scum villain self-saving system — i will not share a pic of moshang official art because i find shang qinghua appearence too much childlike and annoying, meanwhile i find him much more interesting in the book and fanarts. in any case, i love this couple more than the main couple simply because our airplane-bro can make everything so hilarious. there are fics of them out there which are peak entertainment (check this one!). mobei's tsundere attitude and shang qinghua's shamelessness are a great combo.

10. hualing (hua cheng x xie lian), from heaven official’s blessing — the longing is unbearable. hua cheng loves this man so much, for real. waiting 800 fucking years?? being his most devoted believer? can you believe the audacity?? my man, though he has low self-steem, does anything to protect his god. he doesnt care about any realm. he only cares for xie lian, his dear god. they are the cutest couple.

bonus: aziracrow, johnlock, tododeku, victuuri, blackbonnet, mafuyama, redblue (from this is how you lose the time war).

these are my favorite ships ever! they are what i scream about alternatively, and when i say so, i'm not joking. one week i'm freaking out over new link click content and in the other one i'm reviewing house m.d episodes. my life's a circle with my favorite ships in it and i ain't regretting anything.

thank you for asking, by the way! big hugs! 🤍

[vole-mon-amour]

you're fucking WEIRD for being pro ship.

telling me you see a relationship that is evil and toxic and abusive and rapey and you're like "yeah! they belong together and anyone else who doesn't believe that is wrong!"

fucking abuse apologist or some shit. you ship RHYS and JACK? complete noncon takeover of one's body? hello??? allegory for rape??? or did that just zing by you?

there are PLENTY of better consensual ships you fucking freak

proship means ship whatever the fuck you want, let other people ship whatever the fuck they want, and not bully real people over fictional ships, whatever the content of those ships is.

people like you are why I'm proship.

if you're so insistent on talking to me (you came into my ask and started being an asshole), then learn to mind your own business and curate your own experience, learn to have fun, and learn not to be a bully. and then maybe we can have a conversation like two adults. that is, if you're not scared to write me off anon (and if you're not blocked by me already lol).

p.s.: oh yeah, babe, you jerked off to that fiction so ethically, you're totally going to heaven.

p.p.s.: I find it funny that the post that triggered you wasn't even about rhack (been following me much?), but since you're insisting, yes, Rhys and Jack are totally kissing, making love, and terrorize the entire universe together. they're the murder husbands. good for them. (and in another universe Rhys is totally a siren that will protect Jack with everything he's got in him, and Jack will do the same for Rhys. they're totally in love.)

upd: and to be clear, rape is absolutely not my thing and is actually one of my triggers, but I don't go around bullying people for shipping it. seriously, grow up.

[a-hopeless-romantic-fanatic-blog]

One Piece - shipping drabble

Law x Nami

Just some silly, incorrect quotes about marriage and being in a relationship with pictures! That I personally think fit really well with the LawNa dynamic!

( I also think it is neat and fun to explore that possibility and idea between these two fictional characters)

Rating: SFW

Warnings: some minor bad language, but nothing too bad.

...

I am aware this isn't a popular ship, but any form of hateful or negative comments will not be tollerated. You can like what you like and that's fine~ Because we all want to have fun, and a good time here! A wise person once told me: "If you got nothing nice or actually constructive to say, then probably don't say anything at all."

Let's spread love and kindness. Not hate and war.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ･:❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤍🩶🖤🤎

If you wanna see other stuff check out my

Main Shipping Harbor! Lots of verity there~

Heads up!

So marriage isn't just between a man and a woman. Marriage should be all about being with the one you love regardless of their gender or ethnicity. So long as it's not toxic or against the law (like actual cringe stuff)

Then go for it! Get out there and find love in whatever way makes you and your significant other happy~

Okay now that's outta the way...

To this self-indulgent drabble~

...

Sleeping together:

"Some mornings, I wake up grouchy. Other mornings, I just let him sleep." -Nami

(Quote from:Unknown - Marriage humor of great men and women.)

"Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open." -Law

(Quote from: George Bernard Shaw)

...

The benifits of being married:

"Why do married people live longer than single people? I think it’s because married people make a special effort to live longer than their partner—just so they can have the last word." -Nami

(Quote from: Janet Periat)

"Look, you want to know what marriage is really like? Fine. You wake up, she's there. You come back from work, she's there. You fall asleep, she's there. You eat dinner, she's there. You know? I mean, I know that sounds like a bad thing, but it's not." -Law

(Quote from: Robert Barbone - Everybody Loves Raymond)

...

Tolerance and Compromise:

"I love you no matter what you do...

...

... but do you have to do so much of it?"

-Law and Nami

(Quoted from: Jean Illsley Clarke)

...

A doctors' take on marriage:

"Marriage is like vitamins: we supplement each other’s minimum daily requirements."

-Law

(Quote from: Kathy Mohnke)

...

It's totally normal:

"My husband and I have never considered divorce… murder sometimes, but never divorce." - Nami

(Quote from: Dr. Joyce Brothers)

"And she might be a pain in the ass. But she's my pain in the ass." -Law

(Quote from: A Very Potter Musical)

...

Extra benefits:

"I married for love, but the obvious side benefit of having someone around to find my glasses can not be ignored."

-Law & Nami

(Quote from: Cameron Esposito)

...

Vows

"The first draft of my vows, which I wrote the day after we got engaged, clocked in at around 70 pages."

-Law

(Quote from: Leslie - Parks and Recreation)

...

This was meant to be.

"I never fell in love with you.

Falling is an accident.

No, I walked aggressively

towards love for you.

It was on purpose and

with purpose." -Law

(Quote from: f.k.q)

...

The greatest thing...

"My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me."

-Law

(Quote from: Sir Winston Churchill)

The End~

...

Picture/Art work credits:

Law playing with Nami's hair by: Unkown

Law and Nami in a comfy place: saram_80

Nami putting her lip gloss on Law: @ZSxJvsKNpB7AVoE

Law fighting with Sanji and Nami trying to stop them: One Piece Episode - 913

LawNa week day 4: Height Differences - Unknown

Straw-Hat's and Nami laughing at a not so amused Law: shevoj

Nami beating everyone up. Including Law: Unknown

Nami helping Law with his Dressrosa disguise: Unknown

Law passed out at his desk, and his crew sneaking in with gifts for him: Unknown

Law and Nami meeting at Sasbody: xMinyuV

Nami whispering something into Law's ear: Unkown

...

I do not own any of the pictures above nor characters from the One Piece franchise, but go give those artists and Anime/ Manga some love if you can!

And if you know who any of the "Unknown" Artists are, please send me a link to their portfolio (if it also includes the picture that's excellent too!)

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Want more? Check out this other LawNa Drabble I did (warning it is kinda sad).

Also, my main Shipping Harbor. For even more stuff to explore here on this blog!

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Like what you see? Consider sharing and / or leaving me a tip! Thank you, and I hope you have a lovely day~

[puntointerrogativo]

The “if your ship has not been deemed toxic by some rando on the net it’s probably not sexy enough” post made me go on a walk down shipping memory lane: did I ever have a ship that would not be considered toxic*? (If anyone wants to share theirs I’d be very curious!)

In vaguely chronological order:

Tokyo Babylon/X 1999 Seishirou/Subaru: underage, age gap, sworn enemies, attempted murder, kinda successful murder (or suicide, really), completely fucked up, Seishirou is a Total Bastard (TM) ✅

Vampire Chronicles multishipping galore: LOL. Also it was at the time Anne Rice was rampaging all over fandom, which deserves a double LOL ✅ And another ✅ for tv show loustat.

X Files (which I didn’t even *watch*) Mulder/Krycek: they…mostly communicate through punches, lies, blackmail, and the occasional cheek kiss ✅

ACD/Grenada Sherlock Holmes Johnlock: the most “wholesome” ship on the list and it’s a cocaine addict and his (at times married) exasperated bff in Oscar Wilde London. Toxicity by randos standards unsure ❓

Harry Potter (which I only started reading because I stumbled onto ->) Drarry, Severus/Draco, and a dash of Draco/Albus Severus: uh, violence, obsession, problematic faves, underage with a student, underage with the son of an old obsession. ✅✅✅

Brokeback Mountain Jack/Ennis: Well, healthy it was not. How could it be? It was damn heartbreaking. Still, I *remember* seeing people calling it toxic ✅

House MD House/Chase: older, addict, occasionally violent, verbally abusive boss and his kinky, walking daddy issue wombat ✅

The Silmarillion Maedhros/Fingon (not shippy but let’s not forget the KidnapFamily and my special soft spot for Maglor & Elrond) LOL. The actual ship would probably be considered the least problematic, mostly because Fingon died before the second kinslaying, but the Feanorians and toxic go hand in hand. And as soon as you say kidnap!family ✅

The Borgias Cesare/Anyone Really: …it’s Cesare Borgia. I’m going with ✅

Batman Bruce/Tim: Let’s see *checks notes* underage, incest, lies galore, paranoia, mistrust, trauma, one more fucked up than the other. Also, I like them kinky. This one gets ALL THE ✅✅✅

Hannibal nbc Murder Husbands: LMAO Hannibal beat Seishirou for the Total Bastard Crown when he attempted to saw Will’s skull open to eat his brain ✅

Sherlock bbc Mycroft/Lestrade: well, it’s a pair the favorite spares ship because bbc Johnlock never clicked for me. Too irritating. (Let me tell you, it made watching the fandom flail about queerbaiting an experience). It could theoretically be perfectly fluffy but it’s a bit difficult *not* to have a toxic relationship with British Government Bastard Mycroft -my favorite- in the mix ✅

Blahmood: Rpf with age gap, commitment issues and an allergy to labels? I bet some rando would weave the toxic flag pretty hard ✅

*I was mostly thinking by randos standards but…well, I like Fictional Bastards

[homoeroticvillain]

when the first selfship playlist i actually make is a midori one :/

[tsukikoayanosuke]

I read your one article about Mallyuu. I agree with you for the most part, since I don't think their dynamic is nearly as strong as the game makes it out to be. But, I disagree about your point saying that Malleus would turn down Yuu based on the fact that they're a human. If anything, it strengths that possibility.

From a strictly folklore prospective, fae often kidnap mortals. They do this for a wide variety of reasons including get servants, midwifes, human sacrifices (yes, really) and pets. (It also makes Malleus look like a dumbass for being surprised that humans age, since he should've seen kidnapped human servants in his court age and even Sebek's father. But I digress.) In the case of Malleus, sometimes they kidnap anyone with a uterus to their courts to be their partners and to have many babies with them in order to further their family lines. There was even a type of Irish fae that was tasked to do pretty much just that--kidnap mortals to be the wives or husbands of the fae monarch, making them able to have babies with them.

While I know that the TWST fae aren't the same as the ones in folklore, I think some of that would stay consistent like the court being happy for Malleus to get a mortal partner since he can now produce an heir (depending on whether or not they have a uterus). Either way, it's great yandere material.

Thanks for your opinion. And this is an interesting look of fae folks that I myself not familiar with because I'm from outside Europe and generally has neutral opinion on mythical things.

I do want to point out something, at least two things.

About the royalty marriage. You said it yourself that fae would kidnapped mortal husbands and wives to produce heirs.

But put an underline on produce heir. Now, remember that TWST's MC is gender neutral and, taking a page from what you said, might not have a uterus. Malleus clearly has a penis. I know some fans predict he has two gigantic penises, but that's not the problem. The biggest problem is, if MC doesn't have an uterus, how would it benefit Malleus or the court? It's one thing if the MC is a female OC or self-insert, but canonically we don't know if the MC has a dick or a pussy. With Malleus being the crown prince, the legacy of his family is important. I imagine the court doesn't want to waste their long time to marry the prince who won't get a heir.

But one point, and it is a point I always wanted to express myself is the last part: "It's a great yandere material."

Oh boy, we have a storm. You've open the pot, anon.

I'll be blunt: I don't really like yandere. I mostly have mixed feelings about it. I don't like possessive people. I don't like people who would kill their rival. I don't like people who locked their love ones to "protect" them. I know I joked around that my main OC has yandere tendencies, but I played that as a bad thing. My biggest worry is what if people sees yandere/possessiveness as a romantic thing, the same way they see toxic/abusive pairings as true love. Not to mention the often misrepresentation of yandere. Some might straight see yandere as murderer because the whole "I'll kill everyone to keep my love one for myself", even though it's more to that. It's about the dread of knowing that there's someone who keep watching you, not about the killing. Let me say this: murder is not cute. Yandere is not a cute quirk.

Now a big question that I myself can't asnwer: If, for example, we see a yandere character who locked their partner, drugged or put a spell on them, and not letting them go outside for their "protection". Is this a romantization of abusive relationship?

Now, as I said, this is fiction. You can like yandere but doesn't support abusive relationship obviously. However, we can't deny the fact that some people might see this as a real romantic thing. Like what happened around teens after 13 Reasons Why.

And now the major demographic of TWST is teens and young adults. If, for example, Malleus does ended up locking MC up, how will they see it? Will they see it as romantic or toxic? It also depends on how the game will portray it.

Now, this is not the first time Disney ever do this, see The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Tangled. However, it's between an adult and their child so there's nothing romantic about it, heck nothing familial about it. Those are straight up child abuse. Malleus, despite his olden age, can be categorized as a teen in some eyes (like how I see him as). If Malleus does the same things as Frollo and Gothel toward the MC, do you see this as teen romance or abuse toward the same age?

Here's the thing. I don't really mind if Malleus ended up locking MC is it portrays as a bad/toxic thing. I wouldn't see anything romantic about it. But if there's a slight hint of romance, that's where I draw the line. If MC actually get scared of Malleus because of this, I can see Malleus as a success. But if not, then this is not for me.

But that's my two cents. This is not me saying that all yandere is bad and we should just stop making yandere. Fan contents for yandere are honestly great, even I enjoy them. But when it comes to canon material, I really hope they don't go down the yandere route.

[venusluvrr]

The Psychological Horror Manhwa “Killing Stalking” is not a Romance, but an Emotional Series Depicting the Codependent Relationship Between Two Ill Individuals

Content Warning!!: contains mentions of sexual abuse (rape) and mental illness.

Killing Stalking is an immensely twisted webcomic series, mainly popular within the Yaoi community for its boy on boy focused plotline. The story follows characters Yoon Bum (Bum), a shy, scrawny young man with a haunting past filled with abuse, and Oh Sangwoo (Sangwoo), a younger man who also has a quite damaging upbringing but masks it perfectly with his vibrant, extroverted personality. After being saved from a rape attempt during his time serving in the military, Bum develops a crush on his saviour, Sangwoo, from which an unhealthy obsession starts to arise and he eventually finds himself locating and breaking into the man’s home one day when he’s out. When he does, he discovers a terribly injured woman being held captive in his basement, and with further evidence, soon comes to the realization that his crush is actually a serial killer -- hence the name “Killing Stalking,” as Sangwoo kills and Bum stalks. For a very specific reason though, Sangwoo decides not to kill the man that had been stalking him, and instead holds him hostage in his custody. From here, the story goes into exceeding depth of the abnormal, toxic, and manipulative relationship the two form during their time spent together. By just the mere description of it, it’s a bit concerning to know that a large portion of readers still support Sangwoo and Bum’s relationship. In other words, they believe they truly loved each other and that the story was not only horror fiction but a romance as well. One could easily come to this conclusion by basing their relationship on the few parts within the novel where they showed affection towards each other -- for example when Bum allows Sangwoo to hug him to sleep when he suffered through the night, or my personal favourite, when Sangwoo buys Bum a stuffed frog keychain after finding out that he had an affinity for such creatures. But we cannot simply dismiss the underlying factors of their relationship because of some cute things they did that made our heart melt -- Sangwoo still abused Bum at his leisure which makes those moments quite meaningless in the sense of it all. What Sangwoo and Yoonbum shared can’t be classified as “love,” because even with their peculiar bond and endearing moments, the psychological damage they both endured played a bigger part in the way they perceived each other.

Many toxic relationships start out lovely and glamorous until the couple have become comfortable enough to start revealing some bad habits, but in Sangwoo and Bum’s case, they were already off to a bad start, as the reason they remained with each other was solely for reasons pertaining to their poor mental health.

At the time Sangwoo saved Bum in the military, Bum still suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) -- a disorder he inferrably developed due to the fact that he grew up being constantly physically and sexually abused by the people around him. People with this illness may easily develop an infatuation for a person who shows them even the least bit of care; It can reach the point where they begin to idolize them and see them almost as a perfect human being -- which is exactly how Bum viewed Sangwoo after he helped him to escape a rape attempt. The likely specific term for what Sangwoo was to Bum is a Favourite Person (FP). To an individual suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder, their FP is everything -- their self-worth, identity and emotional dependency all rely on this one person, making them the center of their lives. In contrast to this sincere fondness, the only reason Sangwoo kept Bum alive was because of the man’s resemblance to his late mother -- the one person in his life who he truly loved. While his father was abusive and negligent, his mother tried her best to care for her son even while her own mental stability wasn’t so great either. Even though it was implied that he was responsible for the murder of both his mother and father in high school -- getting away with it scotch-free because of how perfectly executed his plan was -- he still shared a special bond with the woman, allowing her existence follow and continue to torutue him mentally as he grew older. When he saw Yoonbum, he felt as if she had been somewhat resurrected, or at least he could pretend so by dressing him up in his mother’s clothes and making him cook and do the chores; He also played the husband role by abusing and assaulting Bum just as his father did to his mother -- mostly just out of his own nature. Sangwoo had his own issues, “mommy issues,” and he initially needed to keep Bum alive so he could fulfill his own longing desires. Knowing the man’s character though, things wouldn’t end there and instead headed down a very gruesome and frightful path.

The very reasons that the two were drawn to each other we’re even more evident the longer they lived under the same roof. While Yoonbum continued to recall the perfect image he had of Sangwoo in his head, Sangwoo continued to manipulate the man in order to satisfy his own needs. A healthy relationship cannot be based on deceit, because one person will end up victimized instead of loved.

Oh Sangwoo is a sadistic sociopath with a history of kidnapping, abusing, raping and torturing innocent people, and because of his illness, he shows feels and shows no remorse for his actions and even proceeds to kill off his victims as they pleaded in objection. What some people don’t understand is that when Sangwoo met Bum, the only reason he treated him differently was not because he thought of him as special, but because he had a personal agenda that included making Bum think that was the truth and that he was indeed the favoured victim among many. It’s no surprise with the man’s manipulative personality that he would enjoy planting a lie in Bum’s head to make him stay and continue to do as he says, and this is confirmed whenever he returned back to his old destructive habits even after showing the man acts of affection. Yes, Sangwoo spared Bum’s life, clothed him and fed him, but as their bond grew, his narcissistic attitude was still more apparent than ever.

Upon meeting Bum for the first time, Sangwoo didn’t hesitate to aggressively break his ankles to prevent his mobility, he left the man within the dark confinement of his basement for a certain period of time before letting him out only after he had gained his trust. He made him sit in a chair to wash dishes and make dinner because he could no longer stand. Sangwoo also constantly dragged Bum down with derogatory words and statements every chance he could get, this included calling him a “retard,” and referring to him as a “disgusting” and “filthy” human being. As confirmed by the author, Sangwoo is also heterosexual, which is further proved by the homophobic remarks he made towards a significantly older man who was sexually attracted to him while murdering him with Bum’s aid. This fact alone is another one that should justify a strong point that demonstrates the true hostility of their relationship -- Yoonbum never gave his consent to have sex with Sangwoo, nor did he allow it to happen because “he wanted it.” He specifically used phrases such as, “No,” “Stop,” and “It hurts,” implying that sometimes there was no mutual agreement when they had sex and Sangwoo had actually raped him several times.

People with Borderline Personality Disorder have been reported to have difficulties seeing the faults in their partner -- this explains why Bum still held on to him. He chose to stay when he had the chance to escape, and with tears rolling down his face from excruciating pain he still told Sangwoo he loved him. In a scene where Bum is left alone with the police as they investigate the suspicions they have surrounding him, he questions them saying, “Could you kiss somebody like me? Could you love somebody like me?” As he believes nobody but Sangwoo could answer yes to those two questions, convinced that Sangwoo really does have feelings for him. It’s saddening to know that the poor man had successfully been lured into a trap, and because of his mental health it would be much harder for him to realize it.

To the readers that think, “Sangwoo and Yoonbum needed each other,” -- You’re not completely wrong. They did need each other in the way that they found somewhat of a saneness from each other’s presence, each using one another to each other’s benefit. But being together at the same time built on their insanity, as the presence of Sangwoo’s mother seemed to grow even more prevalent with Bum, who resembled her, also in the picture, and Yoonbum growing so unhealthily attached to Sangwoo that he constantly feared of abandonment and turned the sociopath into the only source of his happiness. They needed each other, but not for the right reasons. They were attached to each other, but there was no love, otherwise it would reflect throughout the story. One of the most debate-worthy scenes that challenge this fact is when Sangwoo is reported by an old lady in the hospital, the one that had ended his life, that he was calling out Bum’s name throughout the night as he lay in his deathbed. Those were his final words, and Yoonbum’s final word was also Sangwoo’s name before he was very well implied to have been hit by a car while he chased an illusion of the man he “loved.” Even I almost felt that this was solid proof that even through the tough and terrible of their relationship, deep inside, the two really were in love but could not express it in the right way due to their mental health issues -- after all, what someone makes of their final moments before death is much more meaningful than most of what they've done in their life entirely. But I came to realize that the only way I could support this relationship would be if they had met in an alternate universe where they did not suffer from such dreadful childhood trauma that made them into the hurting individual they had become before meeting each other. As difficult as it is for me to picture the two with different partners, it would be best if the two had not met at all as they only fed into the severity of their conditions.

[alastaircarstairsdefenselawyer]

Monet Issues

Happy COI day! Here's some no-longer-canon-compliant angst because apparently the book itself isn't going to be enough for me :) 

No spoilers here, but I know not everyone is checking tags and such right now, so I'm going to tag a few people who have interacted with my fics before (lmk if you don't want to be!). Don't feel obligated to read this though, it's a little dark. @littlx-songbxrd @alastairxcarstairs @dianasarrow @doitforthecarstairs @archeronesta @thechangeling @styxdrawings @upsidedown-cats @fictionally-fantastic @thomas-gaypanic-lightwood

Fanfiction Masterlist

CW: mention or discussion of alcoholism, physical abuse, bullying, and toxic relationships

(title from the song Monet Issues by Chase Petra, which I may or may not have listened to on repeat while writing this)

Out of all of the people he’d ever snapped at, Alastair Carstairs had never lost his temper with his mother. Not until today. 

“He’s the same. He’s the same as he was last spring, before he left, the same as he was ten years ago. He is never going to change. Not for Cordelia, not for you, not for the baby. Why are you still doing this to yourself?” he pleaded. 

His mother smiled and sighed. “That’s enough, Alastair joon. Your father is flawed, but he loves us. He’s trying. You’ll understand one day, once you’ve fallen in love and started a family of your own.” 

He narrowed his eyes. “Fine. Just answer one question then: if this child is a boy, will you allow him to do everything I was forced to do?” 

She hardened her expression. “Joonam, that’s just what family-” 

“No. Cordelia never did those things, did she? I never wanted her to. You never wanted her to.” 

“That was different. She’s… Well, she has a big heart, you know. I knew that you could handle such a burden, azizam. I know that it was difficult, but look at the man that you’ve become. I’m so proud of you. These trials life brings us… they only make us stronger.” 

Alastair could feel his stomach twisting as his mother spoke. “No.” 

“Alastair-” 

“No! I never asked for this! I never wanted this! You told me that I needed to be head of the family in his absence, but now that he’s returned, it’s as if the past six months never happened? As if the past decade never happened? He has been absent for ten years. Cordelia was allowed to simply be a child. Because she had a ‘big heart,’ you say? What about mine? Was it always small, or did you, did Father make it that way? Because I genuinely cannot remember a time before. When was I meant to just be a child? When you sent me away to school, to meet all of the boys who were allowed to simply grow up and make mistakes and learn from them while I was busy trying to keep my father alive and my family together? I didn’t need to be stronger. I was a child!” His voice cracked. “I needed to be loved and protected! I needed someone to take care of me, not the other way around! I needed to feel safe! I was a child!” 

He clenched his fists at his sides, seeing white. “It didn’t make me stronger. It made me- it made me broken. It made me bitter and angry, so much so that I pushed it onto everyone else. It made me a monster. Do you know how awful school was? They taught me to hate myself. I became a bully because it was easier to hurt others than let them hurt me. I let nearly every part of me die, just trying to survive it. I knew someone who didn’t, a fourteen-year-old boy who I watched die. And yet I preferred that over the idea of returning home and dealing with Father’s illness again. Do you want to know the truth?” 

He took a step closer to his mother, her expression hard and unreadable. “The truth is that the moment I met someone who I thought might actually take care of me and protect me, I ran to him. I trusted him like I’d never allowed myself to trust anyone. And I stayed with him, even as he lied to me, as he left me cold and alone night after night, as he made it clear time and time again that he would never prioritize me over his own whims and desires. I wanted so badly to feel loved that I gave him all I had, all of my time and energy and attention, knowing that he would never return any of it.” 

He took a step back, finally feeling the tears that had spilled down his cheeks. “I’ve realized now that I deserve better. I deserved better. You deserve better.” He lowered his voice and looked down. He knew that his mother loved him, that Cordelia loved him, that maybe even Elias loved him, in his own way. He just wished he never had to wonder whether his life would be different if someone had cared about him. “I know… I know you love me, that you love all of us. I know that you didn’t have many choices. You were in a terrible situation. But I can’t stand here and watch you sit in your denial any longer, knowing the prices we have both paid for it.” 

He stared at her, waiting for her to respond, but she did not. Alastair did the only thing he knew left to do: he turned and left. As he started towards the staircase, he stopped and spoke one last time. “You were meant to protect me, and you did not. That’s okay, because I’m learning how to be whole again. I’m finding better ways to survive. I am mending my own heart, alone, because it is my only option. But I want to make one thing clear, this is not meant to be the price of family. This did not make me strong, and you have nothing to be proud of.” 

Finally satisfied, he retreated to his room without waiting for a reaction.

***

Sona returned to her room after her son stormed off. Her eyes scanned her dresser, a quiet mess of makeup, perfumes, Elias’ house key. She’d only just given it to him, but it was pointless. He always lost them. At least today, he’d forgotten them in their own home, and not at a bar or on a park bench or in some hansom cab halfway across the city. She looked up at her reflection in the mirror, at the purple spot under her eyes, at the wrinkles now set into her face, and thought of the days when she was younger. Did she always look older than her years?

Elias had been older than her, of course. Much older. Despite her young age, she’d been a widow. Not just a widow, but accused of murder. Despite all that had happened since, she could still remember clearly going before the Mortal Sword, confessing all that had happened, and watching herself acquitted and her husband’s death swept under the rug by a society that did not wish to face the reality of what she had endured. 

She’d been frightened, terrified, certain that no one would ever love after what she had done. She’d always known that her life would be difficult, that it would be unlikely for her to find a respectable husband, that she would never marry for love. Theodor was supposed to be a catch. She was meant to be the luckiest girl alive. She was young and naïve and blood spilled for it over, and over, and over, until she broke. Until everyone around her could see that she was broken. 

She thought that Elias would make her whole. She believed that he would take care of her, that he would love her, that he would provide. She hadn’t known how she could be so lucky, twice. 

Now, she wondered if she should have taken off on that milking cart. 

She’d thought about it many times, what her life could have become if she’d simply left. If she’d run away, away from the Shadow World, away from all that knew her past. She could have started over as a mundane. 

She always pushed the thought aside. If she had run, she would never have had her children. 

Her children. 

Their lives had been much more difficult than she’d dreamed of. They were never going to be easy, not being who they are, not in this world they lived in. Some pains were unavoidable. 

Some were not. 

Alastair had been a happy child, once. He’d carried so much love in his heart, perhaps even more than Cordelia ever had. That is why, when he learned the truth, he agreed so readily to help. Because he loved Cordelia, and her, and Elias, so much. He did not yet know that for some, the cost of love was pain and hopelessness. 

She allowed him to pay that price, the same one that she had paid, because it was easier than accepting the truth. Even as she watched him grow more and more anxious, as dark circles imprinted themselves under his eyes, as Risa shot her disapproving looks every time she asked him to look after Elias, or take care of Cordelia, or clean up some bottles, she allowed that price to be paid. 

She thought that the Shadowhunter Academy could be good for him, that perhaps it would benefit him to be away from the house. She was a fool, and by the time he first returned from school, she could see that the little boy she’d once known had disappeared. 

She could see him again, now, fighting to be heard. She could see that her son was finding himself again, but that it was a slow and painful process, and that he was still very far away. She wondered where her old self had gone, and if she could find her, or if she even still existed at all. 

She’d always known that Alastair was similar to her. Too similar, it seemed, and now, he had made the same mistakes she had. She knew the pain he felt too well, the pain that she could see in his eyes, hear in his voice. She’d thought that was love, but it was not. She’d learned the hard way, and now Alastair had, too. She knew that it was not a coincidence.

You had the biggest heart of them all, she wanted to tell her son. It’s still yours. I’m sorry.

She did not know how. 

She rested a hand on her swollen belly and thought about taking care of an infant while also taking care of her husband. She could no longer not ask anyone else to do it for her. 

For this baby, still unmarred by life’s hardships, for Alastair, for Cordelia, for herself, she took a deep breath and gathered her husband’s few belongings. She threw them in a suitcase, along with a short note, and placed it on their front steps, locking the door behind her.

A/N: Thanks for reading! The Farsi words are just terms of endearment, like “my dear.” I just want to say that I don’t necessarily think everything that Alastair said or Sona thought is true (or that Alastair even believed everything he said), I was just trying to get inside their heads a bit. Forgiving (and blaming) parents is really hard and complicated, and I really wanted to explore how Alastair felt about Sona a bit more. 

[jebazzled]

They can’t ALL be serial killers: keeping your villains funky fresh

Ah, villains. Spicy assholes. Tricky buggers.

Villains can be very intimidating to write: writing requires you to put yourself in the shoes of another person, which is one thing to do with a decent person. But when you are putting yourselves in the shoes of a bad one - whether it be someone who is simply not very likeable or someone who functions in an antagonistic capacity to a story or rp universe’s hero - well, it can be uncomfortable. 

I didn’t start writing villains until well into my rp career, and I can’t think of a single character I wrote in my undergraduate creative writing degree who was an asshole. I now write a small handful of them - and like most things, I don’t think writing a villain is quite as scary as we sometimes build it up to be in our minds!

That said, writing a villain is an exercise in nuance, and this is something that is often missing from antagonistic characters. In this tutorial, we’ll talk about what makes a villain, and what makes a villain a well-rounded character. 

Triggers, mentioned largely in passing as examples: criminal activity, murder, assault, child abuse, car accident, drunk driving, animal abuse

What makes a villain?

Generally, when we talk about villains, it’s in the context of a narrative, some sort of overall plot theme where there is Good and there is Evil. Think: Death Eaters, the Dark Side, the Horde, the Daleks, the Orcs, etc, etc etc. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m talking about characters who serve in that antagonistic role, but everything can also be applied to characters who are just shitty people without a part to play in any larger scheme. 

In a plot context, per Oxford Languages, a villain is “a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.” To be important to the plot, you do have to post, and if that’s something you’re struggling with, you might want to check out my Writer’s Block TED Talk ;)

A villain can have any number of reasons for being Like That: perhaps they were raised with a particular worldview, or were targeted by a negative influence at an impressionable and vulnerable stage, or genuinely believe they are doing the right and good thing. Maybe they’re just an asshole. In-character, your character likely doesn’t identify as a villain (because everyone is the hero of their own story) and in-character, your character might have friends, allies, and others with varying knowledge of your character’s misdeeds. 

However, out-of-character, you and other writers should recognize that your character is a shitty person. Writing one-dimensional, universally terrible assholes isn’t much fun, though. Which is where nuance comes in. 

Give your character other traits than “evil.” 

Unless your character is THE Big Bad - the Voldemort, the Sauron, the Hordak Prime - there is no reason for them to be Ultimate Evil, and writing them as an endless wash of evil will be boring for you to write and boring for other people to read. Your character should be something other than naughty. 

Using my own handful of villains/bad guys as examples, since obviously I take my own advice, and with apologies that 99% of my rp writing is in the HP verse:

Claude is a Death Eater as well as second-in-command of the magical mafia. He’s an expert blackmailer, has no qualms with murder, and can get pretty gruesome about it if he’s pressed to make a point. He also doesn’t drink, is a devoted father (has framed finger paintings in his study! drinks the pink lemonade his daughters love in crystal rocks glasses!), uses weird slang (”beat it, bozo!”) and takes the family spaniel on daily walks through Kensington Gardens. 

Cleo is a Death Eater and a lifelong bully, prone to theft, physical abuse, and with a knack for the Cruciatus Curse. She’s also deeply insecure, with an unshakeable need to be seen as useful; she’s competitive, and she’s horny enough to drop her purist pretense if a Muggle girl is what’s easiest to get her rocks off. 

Sadie is a squib spying on Order-organized safehouses for the Death Eaters. She’s also intensely curious and ambitious, determined and self-directed, and if she doesn’t understand emotions, it certainly doesn’t stop her from understanding how to manipulate them to maintain the illusion that she is not a threat. 

All three of these character concepts are more compelling than:

Veronica is rude, hates people, is outwardly mean to everyone she meets, uses cultural slurs on the regular.

We get it! Veronica is a shitty person! What else is she? In real life, shitty people typically do find camaraderie somewhere, somehow. Maybe Richie is a total asshole but has made a lot of money from his hedge fund, and he is generous enough with his yacht, ski condo, and jet that he has an entourage he thinks are genuinely his friends. Maybe Kaiytlynn is selfish and entitled, but her access to the entire royal family of Spain keeps her gainfully employed, and she’s genuinely good with her bedazzled bra business. Maybe Claudia is a giant racist, and she’s also YouTube’s most popular craft video creator. 

In real life, maybe there are some shitty people who exhibit fully antisocial behaviors and are rewarded for it. But this is fiction writing, and moreover, it is collaborative fiction writing, and Veronica is not a character who is fun or enjoyable to plot with. Antagonistic plots can have more trouble finding their footing than strictly romantic ones - but they can be fun and rewarding, provided that the antagonist is a compelling one. 

Let your character be something other than “evil.”

Give your character a cover.

More specifically than a trait other than “evil,” give your character a cover. By this I mean: give your character an angle that obscures their true colors, something that lures people - good people and bad people - into a sense of safety. 

Give your character something that keeps other characters from taking one quick look at yours and immediately clocking them as a bad guy. 

In real life, it often takes time to realize toxic people are toxic. In real life, people enjoy circumstances that make people less likely to view them as toxic - just look at the number of people who think Jeff Bezos’s obscene wealth is a marker of his merit as a human being. 

If your character commits a murder a week, is actively abusive to everyone they meet, and has no relationships with any other characters who might vouch for them - idk, man, I think your character is going to get caught! If your character is a quiet and unobtrusive owner of a vintage boutique, however? Well, they certainly don’t scream “IT’S ME! I’M BAD TO THE MOTHERFUCKING BONE!”

In the case of my bad guys:

Claude is a doting husband and father, notably not ascribing to purist tendencies that discourage women from work outside the home. He does legitimate work in real estate and investments, in addition to his shady dealings, to have a legally-sound paper trail should he ever be investigated. His family money funds an entire wing at St. Mungo’s Hospital, and he contributes to political campaigns for centrist politicians. He presents as a harmless goofball. He killed a man well before he turned seventeen. He almost went to Azkaban before graduating from Hogwarts. (”Oh, but he’s on the straight and narrow now!”)

Claude’s cover is that he masquerades as a genuinely good person, and a nice person. When people think about his old-money Sacred 28 family and what that might mean for Claude’s political activity, they also think about how he is a Gryffindor - not known for churning out Death Eaters - and they think about how he doesn’t seem intense enough to be a Death Eater. They don’t suspect enough to have much to go on. 

Cleo works as an Auror, and she’s genuinely good at her job - if only because she manipulates cases away from incriminating Death Eaters and their allies and occasionally Imperiuses a contact or two from her days as a Knockturn Alley bouncer to frame them for a crime. She doesn’t use slurs like “mudblood” at the office and doesn’t talk about blood status there, either. She doesn’t pretend to be nice, and her honesty there makes it easier to believe she’s not pretending when she does her job. It helps, too, that she is not Marked. 

Cleo’s cover is that while she seems like an asshole and is an asshole, she works in the agency tasked with eliminating Dark wizards and she’s good at her job, as far as anyone can tell. She is an asshole, but there isn’t reason to suspect she is an asshole who is part of the Death Eaters, and it is not illegal to be a dick.

Sadie goes out of her way to be friendly to every new safehouse occupant, acting as a guide to newbies about how to live in the shadows. She performs the role of caretaker, therapist, and confidant, carefully doling out the reveal that she is a squib for sympathetic effect. 

Sadie’s cover is that she manipulates other people into viewing her as too weak to be any kind of threat, and she intentionally manipulates people into relying on her for support and guidance. 

If your character is not experiencing social repercussions for being an asshole, they need to have a cover. If they are being an outright asshole, this should negatively impact them somehow. 

An outright asshole might be stuck in a dead-end job because no one wants to promote someone who’s not a team player. An outright asshole might be super lonely without the self-awareness to realize that their garbage personality is the reason for their romantic troubles. An outright asshole might not be able to talk their way out of a problem. 

If your character is an outright asshole and experience no repercussions whatsoever, they’re probably a bit OP. 

Give your character a motive. 

Now the big question: why is your character Like That? Like, for real. It’s so easy not to be a dick. Why are they a dick? What’s in it for them?

Yes, some characters might be an asshole because they think it’s fun and they like to watch other people suffer. But if all your characters are like that - isn’t that kind of boring?

If all your characters are like that - are you actually writing distinct, well-developed characters, or are you just spitting out the same edgelord with different faces?

Some of your character’s reason for being a dick can be because they think it’s fun. It can’t be the entire reason. It especially can’t be the entire reason all the time. 

Of course you can come up with a big tragic reason why a character is an asshole - but it truly doesn’t have to be that deep. (Tips on tragic backstories here.)

Of my baddies:

Claude is a purist because someone has to be a lesser class, and it’s sure as shit not going to be him! Claude is a Death Eater because his father saw a business opportunity - both direct work (e.g. the DE contracting Claude and his goons out for a hit, trafficking dark goods, doing deals with purist groups in other magical organized crime outfits across Europe) and indirect work (e.g. having stronger appeal to some of the most influential wizarding families.) He doesn’t love being branded with the Dark Mark (HE is the master of his fate, goddammit!) but hey, it’s a living.

This is a motive centered around financial gain and expediency. Claude is shitty to value money over human life, and he has no qualms about violence - but the motive is not “fun.”

Cleo is a Death Eater because, as a girl from a pureblood family of no importance, she recognizes that many of the people in the Death Eaters are important and influential, and she wants that kind of power. Additionally, she does get a kick out of violence, but she’s a weapon more than she is a fighter: she’s a tool who needs someone to wield her, to give instructions, to give her purpose. The Death Eaters offer both.

This is a motive centered around status and around order - Cleo being a person who needs order externally forced upon her. 

Sadie is working for the Death Eaters because she believes they will win the First Wizarding War, and she wants to secure a place in their new order - ideally something more than she had previously as a squib. She figures if the good guys are really good they’ll forgive her for keeping herself alive - but that the bad guys won’t forgive disloyalty. Also, her boss in the Death Eaters indulges her research in the Dark Arts, which is fun. 

This is a motive centered around security and self-satisfaction. It’s very selfish and cold, but it’s not, like, Sid from Toy Story. 

Why is your character Like That? What do they get out of Being Bad? What do they like about it? What purpose does it serve for them? 

If you can’t think of a reason your character would be a Bad Guy beyond that you want to write a Bad Guy, you should probably rework the character. It’s tricky to write someone who really should just be a Good Guy as a Bad Guy because, depending on your site’s setting, you might end up being a Bad Guy Apologist, leaning into the positive qualities of your character without writing them as an actual villain/antagonist/baddie - and remember, Death Eaters are shitty people! Antagonists antagonize! They should be complex, but you should never lose sight of an abusive class being abusive! 

And finally,

They can’t all be serial killers.

It’s tempting, since we’re writing fiction here and we all love drama, to reach straight for a Big Evil when we’re writing a baddie. They murdered ___! Egads!

If all of your baddies murdered their spouse/parent/sibling, again I ask you: are you actually writing distinct, well-developed characters, or are you just spitting out the same edgelord with different faces?

(If all your baddies specifically murdered a woman, might I ask you to examine this choice? Misogynistic violence is not a shortcut to character development.)

Cast of characters aside - what is it your character does that makes them evil? It is worth noting that bad behavior exists on a spectrum, and to jump to the far end of that spectrum without building the character up to it is often jarring and confusing. There are many, many things your character can do that might contribute to their Bad IdentityTM without killing anyone!

Baby Bads: No one gets hurt in a serious way, but the character is unpleasant. Think: a schoolteacher might not let you go to recess. You might get detention. Examples:

petty theft

general assholery

bullying

lying, small & large scale

general unkindness

minor manipulation for personal gain

Middling Misdeeds: These might cause some harm - physically, emotionally, or otherwise - but there’s some room for smart-talking or otherwise evading major consequences. Think: suspension. Examples:

larger theft and other money-related naughties: money laundering, ponzi schemes, etc

physical assault/battery

blackmail

bribery

large-scale manipulation for personal gain or for fun

hate speech (to be clear, I, JB, think this is way more than middling, but in art as in life, a lot of characters are going to do it and get away with it.)

Terrible Transgressions: The far end of the spectrum of antagonistic behavior. If your character is doing this shit, it shouldn’t be coming out of the blue. If your character is doing this shit, there’s got to be a character-driven reason beyond “flavor.” These are things that would get you expelled and moved into criminal court. A lot of things that are viewed as standard topics requiring a trigger warning fit into this category. 

murder

sexual assault

torture

child abuse

It’s easy in rp, where there are often way more criminal types in a character population than we hope exist IRL, to forget that murder is.... like.... it’s a BIG DEAL. It’s not something everyone has done. And thank dog, right?

If you’re attached to your character being someone’s cause of death, for specific character-driven reasons, you might think about alternatives. For example, if you hope to convey that Brandon Baddie is a callous asshole, instead of having him kill his roommate over a household chores dispute, you might have him drive drunk, hit a pedestrian, get out of the car, see the body, and drive away. If you hope to convey that Sandy Sadist is cruel, you might have her threaten her sister’s dog, but not actually hurt it, enjoying the fear of the sister and of the dog more than she would enjoy actually hurting either. If you hope to communicate that Ruthie Reckless is thoughtless, you might have her driving 100 mph speeding to the edge of a cliff while her father sobs in the passenger seat, stopping just inches from the edge. 

There are so many ways to make a point. If you’re going to kill someone to make a point, do it sparingly, and with very deliberate purpose.

Whether you’re starting your first villain or hoping to hone your villainous sword, I hope you found this tut helpful! Best of luck, and happy writing!

[scrimmification]

taking a self care day and was instantly hit with temptation so u know what. here’s that dhurkemara essay. but it’ll be under a cut because i’m polite like that

the following is some canon facts sprinkled in with mostly my own headcanons and opinions. but i’m right about everything. cw for mentions of trauma and aa6 spoilers.

i should actually start this by saying that i see a lot of polycule dhurke/amara/jove or dhurke/amara/datz and while it is cute i feel a bit weird about using a poly relationship as just a “oh he has two hands” solution to love triangles. not that poly relationships aren’t valid, but it’s usually just people putting characters together without thinking about how the dynamic would even function. as if a polycule is a band-aid solution.

but that’s not important because this essay is about why dhurke and amara should just be friends (post SOJ)

i do not respect capcom or its canon, but here’s a bunch of canonical soj facts that are kinda fucked up;      - when nahyuta is born, amara is 19 and dhurke is 20      - when the palace fire breaks out, amara is 21 and dhurke is 22      - there’s a gap of approximately 8 years of time where dhurke thinks amara is dead before they reunite and have rayfa (they’re each around the age of 30 at the time)      - there’s a period of time anywhere from 9 months - 1 year that they’re living together again before rayfa and amara are both kidnapped      - following this, dhurke never sees his wife ever again

because i have extreme brainrot, i sat down and feasibly considered the amount of time they would’ve been together. like, genuinely face to face together. if you only take into account the numbers the game gives you, then that means out of 25 years of marriage, they only see each other for about 3 of them. i tend to tack on an extra year or so for dating, but that’s still a really short amount of time, with almost all of it being before the palace fire ever happened. not to mention, they married incredibly young, and amara is royalty. typically royal families will push for children to be wed as soon as they come of age. 

there’s also the fact that canonically, dhurke was not wealthy to any degree. he mentions in a throw away line having a bunch of weird odd jobs including both farmer and street performer (side note, street performer dhurke is hilarious). considering amara was basically hailed as a goddess by virtue of existing, i kind of doubt they were childhood friends or anything before that. my own hcs for how they met and got married initially tend to fall into a romeo and juliet style of mushy romance. plucky lawyer steals the heart of the queen with his humble charm and promises to whisk her away kind of thing. idk i do actually think they were very in love when they were younger, and maybe like... TOO in love, but my essay and thoughts tend to skew towards characterization through how the two of them grow through their traumas. so let’s just go in order of events here;

the palace fire

i do not care what capcom tries to tell me, dhurke has burns. if amara has a giant chest mark from being in the fire for a very short amount of time, dhurke would have full body burns from literally breaking into and out of a burning building. do you know how hot fire is? it’s fucking hot. it’s also genuinely terrifying. my point is i hc dhurke has some form of pyrophobia.

the years after the palace fire and before rayfa is born aren’t given much canon information, but it is stated that amara is convinced dhurke was out to kill her and willingly lives in the palace outside of the public eye. she’s convinced that dhurke is evil and was trying to kill her for at least twice as long as they were married. that kind of skews your perception of a person, no matter how much you might have once loved them. even if you STILL love them, it’s different. feelings change with time, and i think that’s a really fun thing to explore in fiction. 

the rescue/rayfa’s birth

so here’s where i add the drama. just sprinkle it in. there’s a very sneaky line in the game that they kind of slip in during dhurke’s recounting of events around the time rayfa was born, and i have not stopped thinking about it for 2 years.

so plot wise, when apollo presses dhurke about lying about amara being dead, he talks about how he (somehow) got a tip that amara was alive and still being held in the palace. he broke in to save her and potentially run away with her, datz, and and nahyuta into safety, but they add something else in there. dhurke has a moment where he says she didn’t initially believe his innocence. and it’s kind of just played as a joke.

but because i like conflict and i do not write dhurke the same hyper-toxic-masculine way they do in canon because i think Men Should Be Allowed To Have Feelings i thought. man that must fucking suck. everyone in the entire kingdom thinks he’s the devil, and the one person he’s been doing it all for the sake of - his wife - initially doubts his innocence. of course this is obviously an understandable response. she was basically trapped and gaslit for nearly a full decade over an event that nearly cost her her own life (and would have to instead come to terms with the fact her own sister wanted her dead) but like it still. it would still suck to hear that from your spouse?

they were together for under a year, and in this time rayfa was born. this is probably my favorite window of time to explore a dhurke and amara relationship adapting because they would be such different people now. time already effects how you personally grow and adapt, but the kind of horrors they went to would drastically change them both. neither of them would be the same kids they fell in love with, and dhurke had just shipped one of his kids to america in an attempt to protect him. he’d already be down bad, but to have to deal with that, his wife not fully trusting him, nahyuta not knowing their own mother and most likely not trusting her initially, and also an entire pregnancy... that’d be an incredible amount of stress, on top of the fact they’re both living under the law. 

(sidebar; because of how weird they had to twist the timeline to make it so apollo was gone before rayfa was born so they never met, i tend to headcanon this as dhurke trying to send both his kids to america to protect them, but not being able to initially send nahyuta because of their royalty status, and it quickly becoming too late.)

something else that confused me was why the hell they’d even have another kid while they’re both trying to save themselves, and that... uh. okay maybe this is an unpopular thing to say in terms of headcanon, but i actually believe rayfa was an accidental birth. like logistically, if you see your wife for the first time in almost a decade, you’re going to do Something. and you don’t have protection in the mountains. i’m just. i’m just saying.

but all of that being said, more than anything, i think they’d still be in love during this point. or more accurately, i think they’d be trying to convince themselves they’re still in love. they wouldn’t be the same people anymore, but the only thing dhurke has left is his family. it’s the thing he’s fighting for, and amara would have just been told she can’t go back to her sister for her own safety. there’s this kind of pressure to stay together for both themselves and their kids. there’s also a part where dhurke implies that the two of them were planning on trying to escape khura’in together and cross country lines before shit hits the fan.

turnabout revolution

so if you’re a coward who actually considers canon, after rayfa and amara get kidnapped, dhurke never sees them again. sure, he gets spirit channeled by amara in the final trial, but he never sees her face to face, or gets a chance to speak with her. if you’re like me and simply refuse to believe your favorite characters die, then that means there’s a 14 year gap between the next time dhurke and amara speak to each other.

what’s the first thing amara does when they see each other again? accuse him of murder.

in fairness, she’s under threat of blackmail to do so. she’s trying to protect both her children at this point, and clearly had a role to play in inga’s murder herself that she doesn’t want to admit to. but at the same time, when apollo reveals that dhurke was actively hiding evidence because he still loved her, she seemed genuinely surprised. this revelation is the thing that gets her to actually go against ga’ran’s plot. there’s also the obvious point of her picking her children’s safety over dhurke’s entire revolution, and what he’s been working on for her sake for most of his life. and honestly I thinks she made the right and most understandable choice. the real part that makes me think they wouldn’t get back together after the events of soj (provided dhurke isn’t an epic ghost guy) is,

amara chooses her own safety over dhurke’s, while dhurke chooses her safety over his own.

dhurke’s a very hopeful character, a very jovial one. throughout all his screen time, there’s no point where he genuinely thinks nahyuta has betrayed him. there’s no point where he thinks apollo isn’t capable of handling the case without him. he clearly cares a lot about his family, and would do anything for them. this includes amara. he’s not asked to hide evidence for her sake, he just does it. at the risk of undermining his entire revolution and destroying it entirely, he tries to hide evidence that’d implicate his wife of murder.

amara’s more of a realist. she doesn’t give up information until she absolutely has to. she doesn’t even admit to loving dhurke until the last moment she’s on screen. the only lines in the game she has as herself are during the trial, and half the time she’s just telling everyone how horrible and awful and terrible her husband was. and again, i must say, this would probably suck to hear.

the aftermath

the country is kind of a little fucked after soj. sure, it ends on a positive note, kind of, but there’s both a lot of political stuff to fix. and a lot of family stuff to fix. dhurke basically has to rebuild his relationship with every single one of his family members (and in rayfa’s case, from scratch). while I do think marriage is important and stuff, I don’t think it’d be... the most important.

what i’m saying is i think they’d be friends. even if they stayed married, they’d have to relearn almost everything about each other. they haven’t seen each other in forever, and also amara just threw dhurke under the bus. that’d sting! i think he’d forgive her for that, but it’d sting. knowing your partner would have willingly let you and your entire cause go up in flames sucks. it all sucks. soj is a very downer aa game.

and also i value m/f friendship a lot. i value older adult relationships a lot. i value exploring unfortunate and uncomfortable themes in learning to grow as a person and dealing with your own trauma a lot. i think there’s a lot to explore in characters like dhurke and amara. alot of people prefer thinking about the relationships between nahyuta and apollo and rayfa as siblings, which is great! but... i don’t know. i really like fictional dads. i like thinking about him getting more time with his kids. i like thinking about amara learning to become a person instead of a revered goddess. i like them becoming real people instead of just figureheads in a political war.

also i think dhurke and datz should kiss because they raised kids together in the mountains for 20 years

[celestialholz]

... I know, right? ‘Where the hell have you been, woman?’ I hear you all shouting from the rafters, and to that I say: the world has fucked me, and not in a good way. I don’t have a job any longer, I probably won’t have an apartment shortly, but what I do have is the ability to write good and ridiculous Qcard again thanks to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest and I’ll be damned if I squander it! For the uninitiated, the contest aims to find ‘the worst opening lines in all fiction that will hopefully never be complete', and naturally I took one look at this and went ‘inspirational, stunning, fantastic, drown me in it’ because I am absolutely wild. So with my grand thanks to the genius that is Mr Archer, welcome thusly to a little thing I like to called Timed Out. :D

Have missed this, honestly... (Selma, I know you’ll want in, and thus @q-card ^_^)

--------------------------------------------------

Q of the Continuum hovered in silence, peering dully through a galaxy-wide nebula of dimness, with the exact same grimace he’d been sporting since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomena known as time, twelve centimetres ago.

“Well, it could be worse,” he thought aloud, rationale not quite keeping up with his inner mutterings. “Who even needs time? I’ll just... I’ll just pretend it never happened. No one will even notice, it’ll be absolutely fine!” 

He sighed deeply, dispelling particles of nebula across light... inches? Furlongs? Something non-timey, he imagined. 

His siblings were going to kill him. 

“It could be worse, it could be worse,” he murmured as a sort of enigmatic mantra, wincing at the sheer chaos; trillions upon trillions of threads were scattered where they’d once led to individual worlds and lives beneath the blankness, the grandest and most horrific tangle of wool in the knitting box that was the universe. “I can absolutely fix this, completely -”

He tugged at sixteen ribbons simultaneously, all of which crumbled to atoms beneath his touch. Well, what was sixteen mortals having no perception of their own mortality, or their wedding anniversaries, or their children’s birthdays? Who would even notice? Certainly not them... 

Were entities supposed to covet large quantities of stiff alcohol? Perhaps Jean-Luc would have something relevant, a nice dose of mental clar -

Oh stars, he realised silently. Merde!

He snapped instantly, summoning his beloved captain; Jean-Luc Picard stood stock-still, frozen in a moment, brow ironically risen as he stared unknowingly into the dust of shattered time.

“Well, mildly awkward,” Q began at a man who definitely couldn’t hear him, feeling a practice run may be in order. “You see, dear, this was the linear progression of the universe, but you know of course that I like to tinker whilst you’re at work...” He cleared his throat pointedly, started again - that would hardly pass.

“’What’s this, darling?’ I hear you enquire affectionately, not at all furiously... well, my precious captain, I’m glad you asked! This was time, and now it’s slightly... exploded, but -”

His head spontaneously fell into his hands, a moan of sheer despair rising in an anguished muffle. Maybe he should summon an impenetrable wall, hide behind it for the rest of... space, he assumed. Perhaps several billion metres’ worth.

Never mind his siblings, his husband was going to murder him fathoms before they even realised his cataclysmic idiocy.

What is it humans say, Q - ‘rip the band-aid off’? 

He stood a little straighter, grimaced painfully, concentrated, and clicked; Picard’s physical form miraculously began to ignore the fact it was outside the time that no longer existed, though he seemed rather surprised at his position in open space, and even more astonished at what was before him.

“Q? What in the name of - where are we?” He snapped. “I’m rather in the middle of something -”

“Oh, I’m sure you were absolutely swept off your feet,” Q breezed, “but you’ve no need to worry about that any longer, I assure you... or possibly ever again.”

There was an awkward pause, charged by the most caustic of glares.

“What the hell have you done?”

He should vanish, Q knew in the protracted few millimetres, or send him home, find a way to fix it alone, because how in the cosmos’ name was a mere human meant to help with this, however extraordinary he was? 

‘Communication is key to this relationship’s success, Q - if we are to flourish, you must explain your actions when necessary, and I mine.’ It had been whispered against his human shell in the dead of evening, a soft understanding, and he’d shivered against the silent vow of the promise his eyes offered.

“You’re going to grievously overreact, Jean-Luc.” 

“That is a distinct possibility, yes.”

How very reassuring. He swallowed, spun the man to the madness before him.

“So, once upon a -” wonderful phrasing there, Q... “That whole ‘time’ thing, mon capitaine, the one you really enjoy following the regular mortal pathway of?”

Picard paled four distinct shades, and Q absently checked he’d oxygenated him sufficiently.

“That’s... time?!”

“It was,” the god corrected, wishing the thankfully intact fabric of reality would swallow him, essence and all, where he hovered. “It’s a comprehensive mess, now. We are thoroughly timed out. Out of time, my dear. Do hope your uniform’s a timeless fashion -”

“Fix it,” Picard commanded simply, eyes ablaze with the fires of supernovas. Q rolled his own in exasperation.

“If I could just fix it, do you think we’d be having this conversation?”

Fury and despair in flawless equilibrium met him, and he subtly shifted in discomfort.

“Are you trying to suggest that time itself is irreparably fractured?”

Good galaxies, they’d gotten to raised voices... “Well no, not quite. I’m trying to suggest that it doesn’t exist at all. No connections, threadbare, mostly gaseous... a comprehensive disaster, if you will.” He cleared his throat, chancing a glance at his livid husband. “You’re not appreciating the flippancy.”

“Indeed not,” snapped Picard. “You will fix this, dammit!”

Q was glad one of them had some level of confidence, at least. “I’m going to try very hard, Jean-Luc. What would be helpful is a good mortal perspect -”

Ah, he realised. I’m in love with one of those.

He levelled the still-enraged captain with his most curious gaze, glimmer of a smile tugging at lips. “How good are you at sitting still, dear?”

Picard pursed lips primed to throw the most toxic of statements at his usually beloved before Q tilted his head in deferrence.

“... Might be for several hundred light-kilometres... fear not, I faithfully promise to keep you alive!”

“Consider me reassured,” Picard spat, before letting loose a frustrated sigh that sounded rather more like a snarl. “Will you at least grant me a seat, then?”

-------------------------

“Right!” Q muttered three weeks on, having finally reestablished the concept of a week in the past several light millimetres. Seconds had almost reappeared - he estimated it would take an extra quarter-parsec or so. “Almost done, dear - did you perhaps need a break? I could chill some wine -”

No, Picard thought at him coldly, unable to do much else whilst he was viewing the whole of space-time through a wide-angled lens - ‘I need someone who understands linearity, dearest! An electron microscope of simplicity. I avow you shall forget everything you ever learned!’ He took a brief second to twitch just slightly, to pointedly sharpen a dulled glare of utter rage. Finish the damned job!

“Duly noted, just thought I’d ask...”

... He was definitely going to be sleeping on the couch for a good while to come, he knew in defeat.

---------------------------

“Well, that was educational,” Q had murmured eventually, withdrawing from his husband’s mental space completely at last. It had been two million, four hundred and nineteen thousand, two hundred and six seconds, a concept that finally made complete sense again. He could divide it down to the yoctosecond, round it up to the closest eon, meet himself in the middle and long-multiply the distance in working days from Saturn to the lower atmosphere of Betazed at warp three and a half.

It might well take at least that long for Jean-Luc to forgive him, he thought dully.

Well, at least they had the luxury of allowing him the time now - and if he snuck in silently next to him once he was asleep, altered his mass to nothingness to remain undetected, he wasn’t about to mention it.

“Goodnight, Jean-Luc,” he announced mildly, readjusting a blanket slung haphazardly across the couch.

“I hate you,” his husband replied frostily. “Lights.”

He knew better than to click them out. “Oh, you don’t.”

“I really wish I did, sometimes.”

Q grinned merrily, hiding it behind the covers of Shakespeare’s complete works.

[explosionshark]

Thanks for recommending Gideon the Ninth! It was so good! Do you have a book rec tag I could check out? :)

honestly i should, huh? i’ve read more books than probably ever before this year and i’ve talked about ‘em intermittently, but not with a consistent tag. i’ll recommend some right now, though, with a healthy dose of recency bias!

sf/f

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon - a truly epic fantasy novel with one of the most beautiful, satisfying f/f romances i’ve ever read. the novel takes account nearly everything i hate about fantasy as a genre (overwhelmingly straight, white, and male centric, bland medieval European settings, tired tropes) and subverts them. incredible world-building, diverse fantasy cultures, really cool arthrurian legend influence. one of my favorite books i’ve ever read tbh.

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir - which you’ve read, obviously, but for posterity’s sake i’m keeping it here! sci-fi + murder mystery + gothic horror. genuinely funny while still having a super strong emotional core and more than enough gnarly necromantic to satisfy the horror nerd in me. makes use of some of my favorite tropes in fiction, namely the slowburn childhood enemies to reluctant allies to friends to ??? progression between gideon and harrow. absolutely frothing at the mouth for a sequel.

the broken earth trilogy by nk jemisin - really the first book that helped me realize i don’t hate fantasy, i just hate the mainstream ‘medieval europe but with magic’ version of fantasy that dominates the genre. EXTREMELY cool worldbuilding. i’ve definitely described it as like, a GOOD version of what the mage-vs-templar conflict in dragon age could have been, with a storyline particularly reminiscent of “what if someone got Anders right?”

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone - i’m not usually big on epistolary novels, but this one really worked for me. spy vs spy but it’s gay and takes place between time traveling agents of two opposing sides of a war. the letter writing format really plays to el-mohtar’s strengths as a poet, the unfolding love story is weird and beautiful. it’s a really quick read, too, if you’re short on time or attention.

empress of forever  by max gladstone - i just finished this one this week! if you’re in the mood for a space opera, look no further. imagine if steve jobs was an asian lesbian and also like not a shitty person. this is where you start with vivian liao. you get the classic putting-the-band-together arc with beings from all across the universe, your romances and enemies-turned-friends and uneasy alliances all over the place. really satisfying character development and some extremely cool twists along the way. it’s just a fun good time.

the luminous dead by caitlin starling - this one rides the line of horror so it’s closest to that part of the list. it reminds me of the most inventive low budget horror/sci-fi films i’ve loved in the best way possible because it makes use of the barest narrative resources. it’s a book that takes place in one primary setting, featuring interactions between two characters that only meet each other face-to-face for the briefest period. the tension between the two characters is the most compelling part of the story, with competing and increasingly unreliable narratives and an eerie backdrop to ratchet things up even higher. the author described it as “queer trust kink” at one point which is, uh, super apt actually and totally my jam. the relationship at the center of the book is complicated to say the least, outright combative at points, but super compelling. plus there’s lost of gnarly sci-fi spelunking if you like stories about people wandering around in caves.

horror

the ballad of black tom by victor lavalle - we all agree that while lovecraft introduced/popularized some cool elements into horror and kind of defined what cosmic horror would come to mean, he was a racist sack of shit. which is why my favorite type of ‘lovecraftian horror’ is the type that openly challenges his abhorrent views. the ballad of black tom is a retelling of the horror at redhook that flips the narrative by centering the action around a black protagonist. 

lovecraft country by matt ruff - more of what i just described. again, lovecraftian themes centered around black protagonists. this one’s especially cool because it’s a series of interconnected short stories following related characters. it’s getting a tv adaptation i believe, but the book is definitely not to be missed

rolling in the deep / into the drowning deep by mira grant - mermaids are real and they’re the ultimate deep sea predators! that’s really the whole premise. if for some reason that’s not enough for you, let me add this: diverse cast, a romance between a bi woman who’s not afraid to use the word and an autistic lesbian, really cool speculative science tangents about mermaid biology and myth. 

the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson - it’s halloween month so i’m thinking about hill house again. one of the greatest american ghost stories ever written. especially worth the read if you follow it up w the 1964 film adaptation (the haunting) and then the 2018 netflix series.

the hunger by alma katsu - i’ve always been fascinated by the donner party even though we now know the popular narrative is largely falsehoods. still, this highly fictionalized version of events scratched an itch for me and ended up surprising me with its resistance from the most expected and toxic racist tropes associated with donner party myth.

wounds / north american lake monsters by nathan ballingrud - nathan ballingrud is my favorite horror writer of all time. one of my favorite writers period regardless of genre. in ballingrud’s work the horror is right in front of you. you can look directly at it, it’s right there. but what permeates it, what draws your attention instead, what makes it hurt is the brutally honest emotional core of everything surrounding the horror. the human tragedy that’s’ reflected by the more fantastic horror elements is the heart of his work. it’s always deeply, profoundly moving for me. both of these collections are technically short stories, but they’re in the horror section of the recs because delineations are totally arbitrary and made solely at my discretion. 

short stories

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado - tbh i almost put this in w horror but there’s enough weird fiction here for me to be willing to straddle the line. it was really refreshing to read horror that centered queer women’s perspectives. the stories in this collection are really diverse and super powerful. there’s an incredible weird fiction piece that’s like prompt-based law and order svu micro fiction (go with me here) that ends up going to some incredible places. there’s the husband stitch, a story that devastated me in ways i’m still unraveling. the final story reminded me of a more contemporary haunting of hill house in the best way possible. machado is a writer i’m really excited about.

vampires in the lemon grove by karen russell - my friend zach recommended this to me when we were swapping book recs earlier this year and i went wild for it! mostly weird fiction, but i’m not really interested in getting hung up on genres. i don’t know what to say about this really other than i really loved it and it got me excited about reading in a way i haven’t been in a while. 

the tenth of december by george saunders - i really like saunders’ work and i feel like the tenth of december is a great place to start reading him. quirky without being cloying, weird without being unrelatable.

misc

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid - there’s something really compelling to me about the glamour of old hollywood. this story is framed as a young journalist interviewing a famously reclusive former starlet at the end of her life. the story of how evelyn hugo goes from being the dirt-poor daughter of cuban immigrants to one of the biggest names in hollywood to an old woman facing the end of her life alone is by turns beautiful, inspiring, infuriating and desperately sad. by far the heart of the book is in evelyn finally coming out as bisexual, detailing her decades-long on/off relationship with celia st. james, another actress. evelyn’s life was turbulent, fraught with abuse and the kind of exploitation you can expect from the hollywood machine, but the story is compelling and engaging and i loved reading it.

smoke gets in your eyes by caitlin doughty - a memoir by caitlin doughty, the woman behind the popular ‘ask a mortician’ youtube series. it was a super insightful look into the american death industry and its many flaws as well as an interesting, often moving look at the human relationship with death through the eyes of someone touched by it early and deeply.

love and rockets by los bros hernandez (jaime and gilbert and mario) - this was a big alt comic in the 80s with some series within running on and off through the present. i’m not current, but this book was so important for me as a kid. in particular the locas series, which centered around two queer latina girls coming up in the punk scene in a fictional california town. the beginning starts of a little sci-fi-ish but over time becomes more concerned with slice-of-life personal dramas. 

[argyle-s]

On Supercorp

So, I am aware that, among certain circles, I have a bit of a reputation as an “anti”.  Anti-Supercorp, Anti-Lena.  I’ll admit, the reputation is well deserved.  I have, over the past few months, made a lot of anti-Lena posts.  Since Septemper 25 of this year, I have posted more than two hundred posts with the “anti lena luthor” tag.

Now, I’ve never really been a quiet fan.  Even before I started making posts tagged anti lena luthor, I was on the Sunshine Protection Force’s block list, because I dared to make a meme for a ship that Vv doesn’t approve of as a gift for a friend.  I once dared to point out that Kara was more likely to go to Alex with a question about something she didn’t understand, and got called a ‘granny stanning fuck’.  I got harassed to the point of taking down one of my fics because a bunch of teenagers in the Sanvers fandom didn’t like me writing about Alex and Maggie engaging in self destructive behavior.  Oh, and I had dared to write posts criticizing Lena’s behavior.

But why the sudden, vehement dislike of Lena and the Supercorp ship?

In order to explain that, I have to explain a bit about who I am.  I am a 43 year old bisexual trans woman.  I transitioned about 2 months after my 42 birthday.  I grew up in a deeply religious, homophobic, transphobic home.  My grandmother and her second husband were my primary care takes for the time I was about 6 months old, until he died when I was 16.  I finally managed to move out when I was about 21.  By the time I moved out of my grandmother’s house, I was already involved with a woman who was ten years older than me.

I was abused for the first 34 years of my life.  First by my Grandmother and her husband, then by my intimate partner.  When I was a child, I got the full buffet.  Mental, emotional and physical abuse.  My Grandmother liked wire and plastic fly swatters.  Her husband liked leather belts, his firsts, and on one notable occasion, a buck knife.  I at various times watched him try to murder one of my uncles with said knife, and try to choke my brother to death.  He was a prescription drug addict, and his moods were as unpredictable as his choice of drugs each morning.  I met my ex, who was my first girlfriend, when I was 19 and she was 29.  She spent two years grooming me.  We first slept together when I was 21 and she was 31.  We were together for 13 years, and the best thing I can say about her is that she never hit me.  The physical abuse stopped when I was sixteen and my grandmother’s husband died, but not being hit doesn’t mean that twenty-two years of my life weren’t filled with horrible abuse and violence.

I eventually escaped.  I got lucky.  My brother got remained to an abuse survivor, and the more she and I interacted, the more she picked up on the signs of abuse.  It took her years to coax me into standing up for myself, and when I finally did, when I finally stood up to my ex and said ‘you’re abusing me’ she immediately threw me out.  It was honestly the kindest thing she’d ever done for me.  She literally released me from the promises and commitment I had made to her, and let me walk away from the hellscape of that life with a clean conscience.

I walked away, but not without lasting injury, and permanent scars.  I have depression, anxiety, CPTSD and an eating disorder.  I’ve spent long periods of my life dealing with suicidal tendencies.  And I was, at the time I walked away, a 34 year old closeted trans woman.

What does all of that have to do with Supercorp you ask?

Pretty much everything.

Kara Zor-El has been my favorite Superhero since I was about 8 years old and say the Helen Slater movie for the first time.  Up until that point, Superman has held the crown, but I felt a much deeper connection to Kara than I ever did as Clark.  It would be decades before I really understood why she resonated so strongly, but my love for Kara has always been there.

Then 2015 rolled around, and Supergirl premiered, and I was blown away.  This was a version of Kara that I connected with so much more deeply that any other version.  This was everything I had ever wanted.  I fell in love with the show, and with Kara Danvers.  I felt a kinship and a connection to the character at the time in my life when I was struggling deeply with depression and anxiety.

As ridiculous as it may sound, Supergirl was a lifeline.  The show filled me with so much hope that I could survive, that I could make it.  Kara was a roll model.  She’s been through something horrible, and she came out of it and all she wanted to do was help.  And no matter how hard things were, no matter how cruel the world was to her, she still had hope, she still had strength, and she still did everything she could to help.

I came out the summer between the first season and the second.  Told the world that I am bisexual, that I have gender disphoria.  I did it in the wake of the Pulse Shooting.

A few weeks later, I got Kara’s symbol tattooed on my arm.  Below it are Cat Grant’s words.  “Hope in Stronger Than Fear.”  I did it as a reminder to myself.

Then season two started.

I admit, I didn’t pay much attention to Lena at first.  Cat, who I loved was gone, and I was swept up in Alex’s coming out storyline.  Lena was just kind of there.  I didn’t really connect to her.  But what I did see...  It bothered me.  The alien detector storyline in her second episode left a sour taste in my mouth.  The fact that she put Kara's life on the line by telling Lillian that Kara was investigating her.  It wasn't really until the end of Ace Reporter (2x18) that I really noticed just how uncomfortable her character made me.  There was something about that final scene between her and Kara that just didn't sit right.  Looking back, I think it's because that's the first time (at least that I remember) that Lena shifts the responsibility for her behavior onto Kara.  It's subtle, it's all the in the subtext of what she's saying, but it's there.

The next disturbing moment is in 3x02, and the confrontation between Kara and Lena.  Kara sets a boundary.  She tells Lena the problem she is having in personal, and that she doesn't want to talk about it at work.  Lena, instead of respecting that boundary, instead of backing off, immediately punishes Kara for daring to not share every detail of her life.  Yes, Kara was not doing her job, but Lena's obviously knew Kara was having issues, and she came down on Kara the way she did to punish her for having boundaries and feelings.

From there, Lena's actions towards Kara get more and more questionable, and I will not go through and innumerate all of them.  I've done so in a number of other posts.  But there is a slow but steady building of a pattern of abuse between Lena and Kara, with Lena as the abuser and Kara as the victim.  It gets progressively worse.  The pattern is clear.  Lena expects Kara to be completely emotionally available to her at all times.  She feels entitled to Kara's every thought and feeling.  She expects and allows Kara to perform all the emotional labor in the relationship.  And any time Kara doesn't to all of this, any time Kara sets a boundary, or isn't available at Lena's whim, Lena punishes Kara for it.  The clearest example of this, prior to the Lex reveal, was in American Dreamer (4x19) when Lena lays into Kara for not being there for her.

And ultimately, that's what is going on in season 5.  All of Season 5 so far, with the exception of Crisis, is Lena's attempt to punish Kara for not making every single part of her life available to Lena.  And there is a dangerous level of escalation to Lena's abuse that we see, even before the season starts. In the preview, we see that there is a clear desire, on Lena's part, to physically harm Kara.  It wouldn't actually be the first time.  Lena allows Kara to get hurt by not telling her that the forcefield will hurt her if she uses her x-ray vision on it back in The Fanatical (3x19).  It's a horrible moment, but I'm not including it in the pattern of abuse directed towards Kara, because at the time, Lena didn't know Supergirl and Kara were the same person.  I realize some people are going to point out that what was say in the VR simulations were just that, simulations, but Lena does, eventually, especalate to physical abuse in Tremors (5x07) when she cages Kara in ice and exposes her to Kryptonite.

Now that I've laid out all the back story here, let's address the original question.  Why am I so vehemently anti lena luthor and anti supercorp?

Because watching Kara and Lena's relationship feels very much like watching the nightmare of my relationship with my ex play out in front of my eyes.  The slow escalation of abuse.  The gaslighting.  The punishment for having feelings.  The inability of Kara to hold any part of her life back from Lena without being punished for her.  Kara is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.  She has been for 35 years.  I feel a personal connection and kinship to her, and watching her be abused so badly and so long, until we get an entire episode like The Wrath of Rama Khan (5x08) where she sounds like nothing so much as a battered woman defending her abuser, is painful.  But worse than that, watching the Supercorp fandom glorify and romanticize it, watching then take delight in "the angst", is horrifying.

Kara is being abused by Lena, and the Supercorp fandom is out there cheering Lena on.  They are claiming that the abuse is absolutely justified by the fact that Kara kept a secret.  They are baying for the escalation of violence against Kara by Lena.

It's disgusting.  It is.

I don't expect this post to change the minds of the Supercorp die hards or the Lena die hards.  But there are people in this fandom who are going to see the fandom holding up Kara and Lena and screaming 'relationship goals'.  I hope they see this post, because there are people out there who genuinely need to hear that the dynamic between Kara and Lena isn't health, it isn't okay, it's nothing to be emulated or envied.  The relationship between Kara and Lena is sick, and toxic, and abusive.  If anyone *ever* treats you the way Lena treats Kara.  Run.  I don't care what you've promised them.  I don't care what committments you made.  Run.  Just run.

Because that kind of abuse will wear you down, it well tear you apart.  It will make you long for death.  It will make you dream of putting a gun in your mouth.

I know.  Because it did all of that to me.

That's why I have two hundred plus posts tagged anti lena luthor.

But I'm not tagging this one that way, because it's not hating on a character to tell the truth.  And the truth is, Lena Luthor is an abuser, and she's a villain.

[fletchermarple]

Quick Review of the True Crime Books I Read in 2019 (Part 1)

Review of Books in 2018 Part 1 and Part 2

Review of books in 2017 Part 1 and Part 2

Review of books in 2016 Part 1 and Part 2

Review of books in 2015

Reasonable Doubt by Steve Vogel: One of the best titles I read this year was this very thorough account of the Hendricks murders, a mother and her three kids who were butchered with an ax and a knife in their home in Illinois in 1983. The husband and father, David Hendricks, was sent to prison but acquitted in a second trial seven years later, because there really wasn’t any concrete evidence against him other than a dubious motive. Vogel is one of the journalists that covered the case from the first day and he does a great job of going deep into the investigation and the trial, and also into who David Hendricks and the victims were. I’ve seen people comment that this book takes you to the jury box and I think that’s an accurate description, because you’re constantly weighing the evidence and trying to come up with a fair verdict. Vogel eventually reached the conclusion that Hendricks wasn’t guilty (at least in the legal sense) but he tried his best to portray all the evidence as fairly and balanced as possible, letting the readers come up with our own conclusions.

Wrecking Crew by John Ferak: This book is a slightly more in depth retelling of what you saw in the second season of Making a Murderer and a completely unnecessary read, in my opinion, unless you’re a die hard fan of defense lawyer Kathleen Zellner or are so convinced of Steven Avery’s innocence that you just want to read all over again why the police and the state of Wisconsin have screwed him over endlessly. My problem with this book is that I don’t feel it even tries to be a nuanced portrayal and investigation. The author is clearly set on showing what a corrupt system surrounds the whole Avery case, but at times it really seems like it’s just Zellner talking through him instead of it being an independent analysis, so I really struggled with its credibility. And I’m one of those that think the Avery case is very messed up, can’t imagine anyone who is convinced of his guilt enjoying this.

Obsession by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker: As always, former FBI profiling pioneer John Douglas offers a great selection of chilling cases with poignant and intriguing analysis, in this case focusing on crimes against women that involve stalking and rape. It’s not his best book and it feels a little dated at moments, since it was published in 1998 and for example the whole first section of the book talks about some unidentified serial killer in Wichita that we now know it’s Dennis Rader. Douglas also does something I haven’t seen in other books of his, and includes quotes and opinions from other people: one of them is Linda Fairstein, who maybe at the time of this writing was some champion of women’s rights but now we are aware of her unethical actions in the Central Park Five case and her connections to rapist Harvey Weinstein, so eww. There’s also a large section about a victim advocacy group and some of their recommendations and while it’s important information it kind of drags and, again, feels very dated in this day and age.

Murder in the Stacks by David DeDok: The case in itself is certainly interesting: this book covers the murder of  Betsy Aardsma, who was stabbed in the middle of Penn State’s library in 1969, and to this day no one has been convicted for it. Investigative journalist David DeKok goes pretty deep into Betsy’s life and in his own theory of who killed her, exploring the alleged culprit’s life as well (and boy is he a piece of work). It’s always both thrilling and complex to read a non fiction book claiming a version as an absolute truth, but I’ll say that DeDok certainly makes a good case to support his claims. That being said, Murder in the Stacks wasn’t the most compelling read in terms of narrative and I’ve already forgotten big chunks of it so I’m not sure if that’s very promising.

Cold Kill by Jack Olsen: Jack Olsen is one of the better respected true crime authors, even though reading his books you’ll often think you’re actually reading fiction. His writing style, which I can only assume comes from thorough and rigorous investigation, is getting in the minds of the people involved in the crimes, in this case, one of the killers, so by the time the crime actually happens you’re deeply invested in these people and everything is more impactful. Cold Kill tells the story of David West, a guy with some serious issues and conceptions about women and life, and how his toxic relationship with a woman named Cindy Ray Campbell (who at times makes Karla Homolka seem saintly) led to the murder of two people for no good reason other tan greed and stupidity. It’s a very well written book and the case in itself is both sad and fascinating. Recommended.

Targeted by M. William Phelps: I was thoroughly confused by this book and the author’s intentions. It is presented as an “excellent piece of journalistic investigation” into Tracy Forlson, a sheriff’s deputy who was convicted for murdering her boyfriend but she claims she was framed because she was accusing her department of sexual harassment. The summary of the book will tell you that it will “lead to questions about her guilt”, but to me at least that wasn’t true. This book more seemed like a personal vendetta of Phelps against Forlson because, as he says through the story, he felt she was trying to manipulate him and his ego couldn’t handle it. It’s a weird, ranting book with large sections of his interactions with Tracy and constantly repeating that she’s a CONVICTED MURDERER and how dare she tell him this or that, all after another ranting prologue of Phelps whining about the reputation of true crime authors. I finished the novel not coming even close to doubting Tracy’s guilt and pretty annoyed with Phelp’s defensiveness and arrogance.

A Clockwork Murder by Steve Jackson: Steve Jackson is very good at bringing to life lesser known crimes, which is kind of surprising because the crimes he writes about are often horrific. In this case, the book covers the abduction and murder of Jacine Galinski in 1997, although it mostly tells the story of the two killers, George Woldt and Lucas Salmon, a pair of despicable, sick human beings who you get to know more than you’d like to through Jackson’s compelling narrative. Can’t say it will be a book you’ll never forget but it’s certainly worth the read if you’re interested in the workings of criminal minds.

Precious Victims by Charles Bosworth Jr. and Don Weber: I quite enjoyed Silent Witness, another collaboration between Bosworth and prosecutor Don Weber. This book is not as twisty or compelling as that one but it is about a more well known crime, and the one that really jump started Weber’s career. In 1986, Paula Sims reported that her newborn daughter Lorelai had been kidnapped by an armed man. Her body was found some time after in the woods behind her home. Then in 1989 lightning struck twice and Paula again called police to say that her newborn daughter, Heather, had been kidnapped as well (by now she was living in a different place and had another son). Heather’s body was found in the garbage can of a park. With no real evidence of kidnapping and such a ludicrous story, Paula was eventually convicted of murder and is currently still in prison, where she eventually confessed to both killings. In November 2019 she asked for a new trial, claiming that she suffered from postpartum psychosis, but if you read this book you’ll doubt that’s true. Remember this was written by the prosecutor, and the theory presented here is that neither Paula nor her husband Robert (who was pretty shady but never got formally accused of anything) wanted girls and that’s why she got rid of them. You can expect a fairly awful portrayal of Paula here, as a woman who rarely showed (or felt) any emotion. Still, the book is quite interesting, especially during the trial process.

[sleepingfancies]

We Need to Talk About SJM

I was recently anonymously asked what exactly my issue with Sarah Jane Maas is, and ended up writing what was essentially a thesis paper about it. Unfortunately, Tumblr pulled a Shitty Website move and deleted everything I wrote under the ‘read more’ tab, so I’m compiling my reasons here on a masterpost, for your reading leisure.

EDIT: Read more tab continues to not work for me, so I apologize to all of you who have to suffer through this. I’ll tag is as a long post accordingly.

Let’s get started

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Reason 1: She preaches messages that no young girl needs to (or should) hear.

Granted, I know the a lot of the YA genre are adults who are no strangers to smut and aren’t phased by toxic behavior in characters. But on the same token, a lot of the YA genre is fueled by young girls age 12-20. Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend like girls in that age range aren’t reading/writing smutty fanfiction or dating. I know they do, I did, most of my friends did. But at that age, young girls are still trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be, including in terms of relationships. That’s where my problem with Maas comes in.

Maas writes, almost exclusively, toxic relationships - at best. Straight up abusive at worst. At one point in ACOTAR, I had to put the book down because I was so disgusted by what happened. Rhysand assaulted Feyre. I’m not kidding. He kissed and groped her against her will, telepathically asked whether she was wet about it, and wondered aloud what she looked like naked. The entire goal of doing this was to piss Feyre’s then-boyfriend off, and for Rhysand to assert his dominance as a Fae lord or whatever the fuck (y’know, like rapists do). Feyre was left shaking, nauseated, and scared for her life. But the worst part? It was written like this was something sexy and desirable. Literal penetration was all that stopped this from being a horrifying rape scene, and I couldn’t believe Maas wrote about it like some hot erotica. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t cute. It was disgusting, violating, and I was furious when I read it (especially given Feyre actually ends up with Rhysand eventually. What the fuck).

In Throne of Glass - and subsequent sequels - there are couples (namely Rowan and Aelin) who quite literally spit on each other, punch each other, and bite each other. No, not “love nip” bite, I mean “I’m trying to tear your skin off” bite. But we’re meant to believe they’re endgame, meant to be, and a totally healthy relationship. Let’s not even get into emotional abuse and manipulation, because holy fuck does every single character in these books act like a goddamn villain if we were to go over that in detail. All you need to know is that “if you don’t do xyz then I’ll leave and never come back” “what made you think I cared about you? You’re nothing to me. Just kidding, I love you” and similar sentiments are rampant in these series.

While we’re here, what is up with this “mates” nonsense? Every character pairing we see by the end of the ToG series has a “mate,” and swears off everyone they’ve had before, claiming them to be “false mates.” This whole “mates” business sounds a lot like somebody desperately trying to reassure their insanely jealous partner that they don’t still have feelings for their ex. That’s not healthy! That’s not okay! Your exes helped you narrow down your search. They helped you understand yourself more and what you want (or don’t want). And y’know what? It’s okay to have happy memories with an ex. It’s okay to not hate your ex. Telling young girls that all that matters is their future husband (which erases LGBT+ girls, as well as straight women who don’t want to get married) is harmful as hell, and contributes to the idea that a girl is only “complete” when she finds her “soulmate.”

Girls 12-20 really do not need to be given the message that it’s normal - nay, romantic - for their partners to hit them, humiliate them, or assault them. You may be saying, “Clara, come on, girls know fiction isn’t reality and no girl is actually going to stand for that kind of thing in real life.” But I can’t tell you how horribly my own view of relationships was corrupted for several years after all the books I read as a tween where the protagonist had to defend her flirty boyfriend from the advances of other girls. I didn’t trust boys not to cheat on me. I didn’t trust my girl friends not to try and steal a boyfriend. I thought girls who dressed up and wore makeup and dated a lot were sluts. It took me years of conscious effort to unlearn those ideas. Fiction can and does influence the reader. So again I say: teaching girls that it’s “hot and sexy” when men literally abuse you is not a message a 12-20 year old should be hearing. Ever.

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Reason 2: What exactly does Maas want her readers to be?

Y’know, Maas thinks Caelena/Aelin is a role model for young girls. But here’s a brief list of things Celery/Alien has done throughout the Throne of Glass series:

1. Tried to smash a flower pot over a girl’s head for showing interest in courting Prince Dorian. Despite said girl literally being present at the castle for that purpose and Caelena was not.

2. Very nearly murdered Dorian for absolutely fuckall reason, and then she got mad at Chaol for trying to stop her (keep in mind: Chaol and Dorian are supposed to be best friends. So like... yeah, he’s gonna come to Dorian’s defense).

3. Straight up said, “if I get bored being queen I’ll just go and conquer more lands for my kingdom.” Imperialist there much, Aelin?

This is Maas’ role model material? Half the shit she does from Heir of Fire onward could be described as “war crime” and the other half could be described as “selfish.” Maas seems to think that a shit ton of half-baked “witty” lines and a few “badass” fight scenes completely makes up for having an amoral character as the protagonist you want to flaunt around as an icon for young girls.

It would be one thing if Maas said, “I don’t want anyone to be like Celery/Alien. She’s not a good person and I want my readers to be able to identify how and why she isn’t a good person. The moral is what not to be like.” But she does the opposite and claims time and time again that Celery/Alien is some kind of feminist warrior, when in fact Celery/Alien is the very epitome of white feminism and false feminism. She’ll be all kinds of gung-ho for herself, but as soon as another woman mentions her own unique problems or lifestyles, Celery/Alien thinks she’s a “whiny bitch,” “dumb slut,” or something similar. Celery/Alien ends up looking down her nose at basically every other female character. The lack of female friendships in Maas’ books is frankly astounding.

No girl needs to be Celery/Alien. Celery/Alien is not a role model, she is not a feminist, she is not a figurehead of a well developed female character or even a compelling antihero. She’s sexist, she’s misogynistic, she has serious anger issues, she’s manipulative, she’s abusive. This is not who young girls should be looking up to.

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Reason 3: Maas has no place in the YA genre.

I’m not really sure I need to elaborate much on this. Let me give you a scenario:

Imagine you’re at a book signing for your fans. They’re mostly girls 15-20, so you kind of just sign their copies without thinking much about it. But then a smaller girl comes up to the table, you ask her age, and she says “I’m ten.” A 10 year old girl is standing in front of you, clutching her copy of your book where you wrote and published the scene, “he buried in to the hilt and roared. Over and over he spilled inside of her, the lightning outside flashing soft and lovely long after he stilled.”

Look me in the eye and tell me that shit is appropriate in the YA genre. At all. Ever.

You wanna write romance? Go for it. It can be cute! It can be healthy! It can be intriguing! But this? This? This is just... erotica. If you’re publishing stuff like this in the YA genre, in a book that isn’t even on the ‘tween/teen romance’ shelves, then you better be ready to take full responsibility for teaching 10 year olds what a blowjob is, what an orgasm is, what BDSM is, what a fucking foot fetish is.

I know JK Rowling isn’t the most popular right now, but even she did better than this. The first 3 Harry Potter books you can generally find on the children’s/middle grade shelves. They were cute, fun little adventures about wizards and magic and fantastic creatures. Books 4-7? Those are on the YA shelves. People are dying, magic is dangerous, fascist organizations are on the rise -- it isn’t fun for Harry anymore. It isn’t about the wonders of magic. It’s about life or death, war, and fear. So yeah, of course those book aren’t going to be on the children’s/middle grade shelves! They’re dark! They’re scary! That kind of material shouldn’t be advertised as appropriate for younger kids!

Maas never extended that courtesy. Maas took her books full of badly written erotica and plopped them down right where all the rest of the completely tame YA books went, because she wanted the sales. She didn’t care if she was exposing kids who were too young to explicit sex scenes. She never posted a disclaimer, she never posted any kind of warning on social media when the books came out. Nope. She just silently took advantage of the market knowing she’d get more sales in YA. But it has no place in YA. It’s not YA. And I don’t think I’m ever gonna be okay with that.

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Reason 4: Diversity? Never heard of it!

Maas’ books are so incredibly white and straight that it’s painful. Rowan and Aelin? White and straight. Feyre? Rhysand? Chaol? Dorian? Manon? Hey, you guessed it! They’re all white and straight (despite Chaol, Dorian, and Manon being heavily LGBT+ coded for like, the entire series till the last book)!

“He looked at his friend, perhaps for the last time, and said what he had always known, from the moment they met, ‘I love you.’” (Queen of Shadows)

Hello? Sarah Jane? I’m all for male friendships, but there’s male friendships and then there’s actual romance. Chaol and Dorian are about as gay-coded as they could fucking get. And this isn’t even the only time this happens! Check this out:

“Dorian surged from his chair and dropped to his knees beside the bed. He grabbed Chaol’s hand, squeezing it as he pressed his brow against his. ‘You were dead,’ the prince said, his voice breaking. ‘I thought you were dead.’” (Queen of Shadows)

But wait, there’s more!

“‘I’m not leaving you. Not again.’

Dorian’s mouth tightened. ‘You didn’t leave, Chaol.’ He shook his head once, sending tears slipping down his cheeks. ‘You never left me.’” (Queen of Shadows)

I mean come on, Sarah!

Also, Manon. My girl Manon hated men, pretty explicitly, for the entire series. In case you don’t believe me:

“There were few sounds Manon enjoyed more than the groans of dying men.” (Heir of Fire)

Oh, and other characters even imply Manon has never had a heterosexual relationship in her fucking life. See:

“‘That golden-haired witch, Asterin...’ Aelin said. ‘She screamed Manon’s name the way I screamed yours. How can I take away somebody who means the world to someone else? Even if she is my enemy.’” (Queen of Shadows)

Tell me that’s not gay as fuck. I dare you.

Manon had a whole lot of love to give women! She was always affectionate towards other women. Particularly Elide. This is a woman who was about as lesbian as you could get. Had no interest in men, every interest in women, rejected typically expected roles for women (getting married and having kids, etc.) but guess what happened? Guess what fucking happened?

This warrior who was friends with and rode on a big fuckoff wyvern completely and totally submits to Dorian as her lover. I don’t mean that metaphorically. They literally do some BDSM shit where he’s her “master” and she “kneels to him” or whatever the fucking fuck. This entire thing pissed me off more than Chaol and Dorian being all “no homo bro,” because Maas used every possible symbol and subtext for Manon being gay, and then said “just kidding!” Her relationship with Dorian came out of nowhere. All of a sudden she was just as thirsty for mediocre dick as Aelin.

At this point I honestly have to wonder if Maas is really this ignorant or if she’s - dare I say it? - taunting her readers who have complained about the lack of LGBT+ representation. Maas has, historically, not reacted well to people criticizing her work. I would not put it beyond her at all to intentionally queer-code characters only to turn around and rip the rug out from under her readers by pairing them up in heterosexual relationships. And not only is that shitty writing, but it’s... really malicious and rude.

Of course then there’s the issues with racial representation. Again, Maas doesn’t even try. She includes 13 characters of color only to immediately kill off all of them in a suicide pact. So there’s that. Not sure I need to say more than that.

Maas knows what diversity is, but as per her famous quote, “I just don’t want to force diversity into my books.” So. Y’know. Writing a black or gay character (or!! God forbid, both black and gay!!) is asking a little too much of her, apparently. She doesn’t want to force anything as unbelievable as someone who isn’t white or straight, don’tcha know? In these books about fae people and dragons and gods fighting mortals and explicit erotica, an LGBT+ character or a character of color is high fantasy, not YA. *Sarcasm*

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Reason 5: The woman can’t write.

This is pretty straightforward. She cannot write. My proof? She plagiarizes the living fuck out of everything she can to avoid actually writing her own original work.

1. “You’re gonna rattle the stars.” - from Disney’s Treasure Planet

2. “The Queen Who Was Promised” - from GRRM’s ASOIAF, where Dany Targaryen is often toted as the exact same thing. Oh, and The Prince Who Was Promised prophecy in ASOIAF also mentions Azor Ahai being “the Heir of Fire” so, uh.... yeah.

3. Aelin basically being Aragorn. Lost royalty spends years as an outcast, denies their claim, teams up with elves (fae in Aelin’s case) to defeat a greater evil, becomes known as the people’s champion, falls in love with an elf (fae) and makes them their consort, crowned by the people, ends their coronation scene with a “you bow to no one” (I’m not kidding).

4. Nehemia dying for Aelin and it later being revealed that Nehemia was “grooming” Aelin to face great evil, and potentially give her life to stop it. How much you wanna bet Maas tried to give Aelin a name as close to “Harry Potter” as she could get?

5. Manon lighting a series of beacons across a mountain range to call for aid during war. I mean seriously? This is one of the most iconic scenes in Peter Jackson’s rendition of Lord of the Rings. It’s moving, it’s powerful, it’s awe-inspiring. And Maas knew it. So she just... took it. I don’t have a lot of respect for writers who can’t write their own moving scenes.

6. Kingsflame blossoms, which only bloom when the rightful monarch is on the throne. So... the White Tree of Gondor. Got it.

7. The Hand of the King being a royal court position. Like... jesus. GRRM, come get ya world-building, SJ stole it again.

8. A paralyzed Chaol has a specialized saddle made for him, because he wants more than anything to ride a horse again. GRRM! Please! She’s taking Bran Stark’s story now!

And besides all of these horribly plagiarized points, there’s nothing even slightly compelling about these books. There’s literally zero substance, and the last few books in both the ACOTAR and ToG series have been nothing but a smut-fest. Plot who? We don’t know her.

Trauma, both physical and mental, is erased at the drop of a dime (Aelin lost physical scars, Chaol’s paralysis was basically cured, series of events that should’ve left characters absolutely fucked just... didn’t phase them). The battles are rushed and sloppily written, and Maas has a particularly nasty habit of focusing on exactly the wrong people in the middle of what should be an action packed scene. Instead of showing alliances forging and plots being made behind people’s backs, instead of showing us people gearing up for battle by saying tearful goodbyes to their infants and spouses, Maas shows us Rowan and Aelin banging on a beach, or a tree, or a ship, or wherever the fuck they happen to be at that moment.

None of these characters lose jack shit. There is no sense of urgency or stakes, because we knew since Heir of Fire that Aelin and her precious uwu fae “mate” would be just fine. Why? Because nobody shipped Rowaelin as hard as Sarah Jane Maas did. Consistently the only people who suffer in these books are background characters (who, coincidentally, are almost always the characters of color and LGBT+ characters). By the end of Kingdom of Ash, literally everyone is fine. And paired off to be married, too! Because a happy ending isn’t a true happy ending if it doesn’t end with Babies Ever After and everyone in a heterosexual relationship, of course, right?

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Reason 6: World-building doesn’t even go here! Sorry, she just wanted to be a part of something.

Maas’ world-building is... how do you say... shitty. New lore pops up in every book, having never been mentioned before, and is for some reason of utmost importance (but only for this book. It’ll be forgotten again as soon as it isn’t relevant). Religions who? Culture where? History what? None of these things exist in Maas’ world. None.

Now before anyone jumps down my throat with “but The World of Throne of Glass is coming out this year!!!1!1!!” let me gently establish something. Speaking as a fantasy author: if you do not have your most basic world-building - that being religion, culture, language, and history - already established, then you have no business making a “world of” book to cover all the bases your ass never bothered with in the original series.

I said what I said.

Tolkien and GRRM are masters of world-building because they spent decades working to forge their worlds before they ever put a pen to paper and wrote their stories. Not to toot my own horn, but my own fantasy series has been developing for almost 7 years now. What am I doing with it? I’m outlining governments in different societies, why people came to worship what they do, and I’m making a fucking world map on my bedroom floor (that now has cat paw prints on it, so it’s not exactly final product material anyway).

I give not a single hoot for Maas’ “The World of Throne of Glass.” She could be saying anything she wanted to and it would all just have to be canon, because she’s establishing what this world is after already finishing her series. Yes, it does piss me off, because it’s pretty obvious she didn’t have a clue what her world was, or who was who, or why things were the way they were. She made shit up as she went along, nothing more. There was no grand scheme. There was no planning, and it shows.

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TL;DR: I have a lot of issues with Sarah J Maas’ writing, including her world-building and handling of diversity. But most of all I despise the potential impact she has on the YA genre and on the young girls reading her work. They deserve better than this. They deserve better than Sarah Jane Maas.

[incandescent-eden]

STORY MASTERLIST

A (not so) comprehensive list of all the things I write about, all of which are subject to change at any given time because I do a lot of refactoring!

LOOOOONG POST INCOMING I write... a LOT, and I have... MANY projects :) Feel free to ask me about any of them! :)

With love <3 Continue reading below the cutoff if you want to know the basic rundown of my worlds and works!

ANGELVERSE:

This universe encompasses all of the angels and demons I like to focus on. Works in the angelverse will likely be about Faraday (formerly known as Efrem), a demon lieutenant, Ezekiel, a young angel, the archangel Uriel, or angel Raguel / angel Sophia (their stories are intertwined).

The main concept I have on Angelverse surrounds Faraday, who has grown into himself as a demon and made something of himself. He finds it impossible to shake who he was before. The question comes up during an important meeting between Heaven and Hell of whether he is truly Faraday or Efrem, his own self that he has shakily become, or the self he inherited from being his father’s son. There’s also brotherly angst between Faraday and Ezekiel, who refuses to let go of the past. (If you look at my old works tagged ‘ezekiel,’ you’ll see Ezekiel used to be a part of Faraday/his ‘ideal’ self, which is why new Ezekiel, separate from Faraday, reads so differently.)

The Raguel and Sophia stories are also closely linked to characters Andromeda and possibly Zachariah. Andromeda’s father runs a cult and has captured an angel in his attic. When Andromeda finds the angel (Sophia), her otherwise “normal” life is thrown into disarray as she starts unraveling threads about her father’s actions as a cult leader. If Zachariah is to be a part of it, he would be living with Andromeda’s family, having run away from his past.

Prominent characters in Angelverse include: Faraday, Uriel, Ezekiel, Stena, Michael, Ramiel, Raguel, Sophia, Zachariah, Ambriel, Ruhiel, Gabriel, Raphael, Luci, Bee, Sasha, Saoirse, and Heather. With the exception of Sophia, all names ending with “el” are angels, while the rest are demons. Also, I say prominent, but like half of these characters are from a bygone era (2018 when I first created them).

TW/CW for heavy religious (Christian) imagery, emotional abuse, violence, transphobia mentions and cult talk. Additional content warning because I tend to write angels as LGBT, but I recognize that some people are not comfortable with this affiliation with Christianity.

LUXTRURA (NOTE: LUXTRURA IS ON PERMANENT HIATUS):

Luxtrura is the name of a fictional country in ye olde European fantasy style, and I haven’t thought of a title for the WIP yet, so I mainly tag it ‘luxtrura’ or ‘luxtruran trio.’ This WIP is a fantasy / dystopian / political intrigue about an uprising in the kingdom of Luxtrura run by an inexperienced king and corrupt nobles all vying for the crown.

Luxtrura (at the current moment) follows the life of His Majesty Devron Fharren, the Eighth Fharren King, who inherited the crown by kingdom decrees at the age of 21. Unlike most kings, Devron has only had seven years of proper royal tutelage on statecraft, having only been named heir to the throne when he was 14. He soon finds he has inherited a kingdom that has been deeply wounded, that his people hate him, and that he has few allies among his own country’s nobles, his friends, and neighboring royalty. Revolution is brewing, and he has a choice to make: to claim his birthright or to help his people.

Prominent characters include: Devron Fharren, Eden Barison, Mili Starr, Plumeria Rwalke, Lilia Tao, Rassaya Tao, Andrea (a mysterious stranger who gives only her first name), Jakob Fiyre, Cordelia Fiyre, Liseline Fiyre, Sonja, and Orange and Rouse (the dragons).

TW/CW for violence, sexual assault mentions, transphobia mentions, political talk, blatant classism, and death.

GLOWING EYES:

A “what-if” scenario where Victor Frankenstein and Dorian Gray had met and become friends and also Frankenstein wasn’t a man and was named Viola and was not a pleb weakling like Victor. Also Dorian Gray is fat because I said so.

This story reimagines the Frankenstein and Dorian Gray cast as students in their final year of the prestigious University of Ingolstadt, with Frankenstein having returned from a year off during which she was suspended for [redacted] reasons. The vibe we’re going for is dark academia, but I don’t think they ever actually do any learning?

Prominent characters include: Viola Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Elizabeth Lavenza, Henry Clerval, Basil Hallward, Deukalion, and special shoutout to Justine Moritz and Sibyl Vane because I didn’t want to put them in, but they definitely deserved better in the source material.

TW/CW for death, violence, toxic/obsessive relationships, grave-robbing, body part mentions (eyes, limbs, etc), and mentions of the Devil. Basically, if it was a concerning part of either the Frankenstein or Dorian Gray stories, it will still be concerning.

Fun fact, there is a Glowing Eyes playlist that I am NOT too ashamed to share with the public! :D

HELEN OF LEGEND:

A retelling of the Helen of Sparta story that explores Helen’s thoughts and motivations. Who was the woman behind the face that launched a thousand ships? And did she ever even want those ships to be launched? (Spoiler alert: the answer is no.)

Helen of Legend gets pretty heavy handed because I get really mad about people lauding the Greeks as the end all be all of culture, and I’m still really mad about how people dress Millie Bobby Brown up like she’s 25-40, so make of that what you will.

On the bright side, Helen of Legend is a sapphic retelling!

Prominent characters include: Helen, Leda, Menelaus, Clytemnestra, Penelope, Theseus, Aphrodite, Paris, Cassandra, Hector, and Hecuba.

TW/CW for misogyny, implied past sexual assault, sexual assault mentions, mentions of spousal and emotional abuse, people being generally creepy about bodies, people being creepy toward children (Theseus), cities burning, subtle classism, and death.

OF DANCERS AND DREAMERS:

A musical about Anne-Marie, a non-binary Vietnamese lesbian born into a wealthy family, and Jules, a Tunisian baker’s daughter who is working her way into the Paris ballet. Anne-Marie wants to be a designer, but their mother, Mme Trinh, has other plans. The year is 1884, and it was hard for the Trinh family, as immigrants, to establish their foothold in society, and Mme Trinh will not have her child throw away the family’s hard work. One day, while at the ballet, Anne-Marie becomes smitten with Jules, a ballerina with the most dazzling smile. They find solace in sharing their passions with one another and become friends, each eventually realizing they have fallen for the other in a time that is unfriendly to both of them.

Prominent characters include: Anne-Marie, Jules, Victor, Mme Trinh, and Amandine.

TW/CW for subtle homophobia, classism, mental illness, and parental guilt tripping/emotional toxicity.

THE LYRE EFFECT:

A play about life after death, and what it means to live and love. This play follows Patroclus upon his death, desperate to return to Achilles. He meets the reluctant Eurydice, embittered by decades alone in limbo halfway between life and death. Together, they almost throw someone off a boat (is it really murder if they’re already dead?) and have a chance to tell their stories, stepping out from the shadows of their more famous lovers.

I took a lot of liberties with this, so Orpheus is a woman (wlw OrphEurydice), and I would like for both Achilles and Patroclus to be played by trans men, and for all of the characters to be played by non-white actors.

Prominent characters include: Patroclus, Eurydice, Achilles, Orpheus, Apollo, Hades, Charon

TW/CW for talk about death

SPEED ROUND (OR: THINGS I WRITE ABOUT THAT AREN’T AS AMBITIOUS JUST YET/AT THE CURRENT MOMENT):

Here Lies Forever - a story focusing around two young people, Medb Flaherty and Virgil Sutherland, growing up at an orphanage amid war, abandonment, and sickness. Medb is a blind writer who dreams of traveling the world with Virgil, her best friend since their teen years, but when the war strikes too close to home, Virgil leaves Medb and their peaceful student life behind to join the army. Unwilling to let go, and recognizing the pain Virgil is in, Medb takes it upon herself to save Virgil, the both of them haunted by the ghosts of their pasts.

On the Corner of Maple Street - short stories about the lives of Sarah and Evangeline together, two lesbian women who met when Sarah was 28 and Evangeline was 31. Sarah was a toy maker and Evangeline was an actress. They have a son named Oliver, who’s now in his forties, and they’re grandmas to all the neighborhood children. They live on the corner of Maple Street :)

Partager Un Reve - short stories, often romantic, about two circus performers, Alyona Ledbedeva (who does aerial silks) and Li Mey Ri (an acrobat). They’re cute together, there’s not really much to say here.

Claire  - there’s a really old novelette floating around on my account and you can find it if you search Claire, but like it’s OLD. An 18th century French lady who contracted TB and died but was brought back by a necromancer named Cecil (Cecil is the character of my friend @sinnabon-cosplay !) and is now immortal. Fun times with Claire and Anthony usually involve lamenting the fact that they’re stuck as teenagers.

Miscellaneous - miscellaneous demon and monster characters like Alexander, Felicity (both vampires), Sparrow (succubus/Heather’s youngest sister), Zephyr (fae, husband of Spar), Lycan (she’s... a werewolf), and so on. Not really connected to a plot

Performing Possumhood - uh this was a play I wrote with my friend @holdingonmyheartlikeahandgrenade for a 24 hour play festival, it’s about a guy named Thomas who becomes herald for a kingdom and then on his first day of work, the king dies, and his son becomes king, except the new king??? is a possum???? and like no one does anything about it, so Thomas just feels like he’s going insane, poor guy (also everyone else is named Thomas except the king, whose name is His Majesty King Parthur Pencildragon of Alpacalot)

Nordic questing team - I’ve literally written nothing for these fools, but I’m tempted to make it into a dnd campaign! The characters I have are Val (short for Valnotte) (she’s a nokke), Hanne (human poison seller who wears an eyepatch just because), Fur (short for Bjorgolfur, he’s a werewolf who left his pack because he was too good at being alpha wolf but he didn’t want to be alpha, he wanted to press flowers and have a cute little cottage by a cliffside with a pretty garden damn it), and Bo (full name: Boscobel Blue, he’s a cow boy. Literally. He has cow ears and a big septum piercing and a tail. Also he’s a shepherd. His sheep are carnivorous :))) Make of that what you will)

Alice x Secret Garden - another play but where Alice Liddell and Mary Lennox are 18 years old and find themselves in Wonderland, after Mary is jaded from the end of WW1 and is frustrated at her friend Dickon’s marriage proposal, and Alice runs away, trying to retain her childhood as best she can

Retellings - I do myth and fairy tale and folk retellings! :) You can search ‘Tithonia’ for my sleeping beauty retelling, and I wrote Orpheus and Eurydice a while back. Still working my way through Icarus :’) Also ‘Mermaids Can’t See’ is a retelling of the classic mermaid story but written as a ??? field guide? journal entry? notes about mermaids?

If there’s a work you want specifically about a character, I always tag characters, and I also will tag character introductions and pictures/references of them as “beanpuff char[]”!