#nothing and no one is perfect but you can love wholly because or despite flaws

[forcebookish]

at a point in my fandom life where if someone says "it's not perfect but--" my instant response is yes it is

[benjaminmoorepaint]

red: the color of...grantaire?

Figured I might do another meta post like the one I did for Marius to address the myths and misconceptions surrounding certain characters, so it's Grantaire's turn!

I'm sure we all know Grantaire quite well...a sensitive starving artist, with his Apollo as his muse, and a cynic who pragmatically points out the flaws in Enjolras's idealism, which they quarrel over.

Let's unpack that!

Grantaire is most likely middle class if not wealthy, he is certainly not poor. We don't know what he's studying (if he's studying at all) but he is nevertheless a quintessentially Parisian bourgeoise "student", much like Bahorel. "A rover, a gambler, a libertine..." As the foil of "severe in his enjoyments" Enjolras, Grantaire is a pleasure-seeker, indulging in the excesses that Enjolras disdains.

Again, though we don't know what Grantaire is studying (and I suspect he's just Bahorel-ing it) he's clearly an educated man, judging by the references he throws into his speeches, and he mentions that he once was a student of Gros.

So is he really an artist? He might have been an apprentice at some point, but it's clear he was not particularly enthused by it. After all, discipline is something that Grantaire…lacks. And because it's Grantaire, you can't completely discount the idea that he made it up just for a pun (though I do find that unlikely.) But it's a triple (quadruple?) play--it's important not to take this quote too far out of context because he's actually saying several things here.

It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; rapin is the masculine of rapine. So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you are worth no more than I am. I scoff at your perfections, excellencies, and qualities. Every good quality tends towards a defect [...] there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in Diogenes’ cloak.

Gros was a well-known neoclassical painter of the time, and I believe Hugo's inclusion of him here is a jab at the neoclassicists, as Grantaire doesn't seem to care for him.

There's a pun! "Rapin"--term for a painter's assistant--is the masculine of "rapine"--to steal.

So he likely means he stole the apples intended to be painted for a still life, which fits his careless attitude... but he's ironically putting himself down for it too, and at the same time

putting his companions down, saying they're no better than him even if they do have more "good" qualities because each good quality has a corresponding downside, so what's the point, really?

You can see that even in this small sample of his speech that Grantaire often has layers upon layers of meaning in what he says. He's a smart guy! But that means you can't always take what he says at face value, as Hugo says, he's constantly "reasoning and contradicting" himself. So let me invite you further down into what I think his real meaning is here (though now firmly into the depths of my own conjecture, so others may have different interpretations.)

I would speculate that "the rest of you" who he professes to mock refers mostly to a specific person, you can probably guess who. After all, Enjolras is surely the paragon of virtue among them, and you could certainly argue that his good qualities edge on being flaws. I think Grantaire is right about that, and it's a sort of theme we see pop up again and again--the Bishop's generosity does hurt the women he lives with, Valjean's self-sacrifice hurts Cosette, and Javert is someone who's tipped all the way over to his virtues being vices.

But like, man, come on. Seriously. "I scoff at your perfections, excellencies, and qualities." Dude. We all know that you're obsessed with this man.

And you might notice that this is just a whole lot of Grantaire talking and talking over people, never letting anyone else get a word in. It's not a debate, Grantaire never actually debates anyone, let alone Enjolras. The idea of Grantaire debating Enjolras and making him see the flaws in his idealistic revolution is wholly a fandom invention.

The closest we get, really, is Grantaire trying to convince Enjolras to send him to the Barriere du Maine...and Grantaire doesn't come out of that looking so good.

“Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu’s?”

“Not much. We only address each other as tu.”

“What will you say to them?”

“I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles.”

“You?”

“I. But I don’t receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. ‘The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.’ Do you take me for a brute? I have an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hébertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand.”

I won't bother going too in-depth here since you're probably familiar with all this--Grantaire talks a big game and then fails to follow through. And we see one of two red waistcoats mentioned, neither of which are worn by Enjolras.

Grantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Café Musain. He went out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.

“Red,” said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras. Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast.

So yeah, it's actually Grantaire who wears red, at least canonically! I know their popular red/green color scheme comes from the musical, but it might be fun to reverse it sometimes...I think Enjolras would look great in a nice emerald green, and he'd be more likely to wear that, actually.

Why? A red waistcoat like would be a very obvious, in-your-face political statement--perfect for Bahorel, the other red waistcoat wearer, but Enjolras is actually a lot more reserved and less reckless than fandom sometimes makes him out to be. Wearing something that blatant isn't really his style.

The real question is, why does Grantaire, of all people, own one? Why has he read Prudhomme and the Social Contract and the Rights of Man?

Grantaire is not a super sympathetic character. He's a man of means, talent, intelligence...and he wastes those gifts and privileges on doing nothing, he has no aims in life, he does not aspire to do better or make the world better. He may be Enjolras's foil but I would also contrast him with Feuilly, who has spent his life dedicated to improving himself and the world despite the challenges he's faced. He's obnoxious to women, denigrates his friends for their beliefs, and is generally useless. He's given the opportunity to change and he squanders it. He's not so much cynical (because that's a belief) as he is indifferent, which is arguably worse. His indifference can certainly be read as symbolic within the group, their belief versus the apathy of the world.

But, layers upon layers...Grantaire does have a good heart hiding underneath all that. What I've been getting at all along here is that he does care; he may say he doesn't, he may even believe he doesn't, but he does, clearly, care. He says he hates mankind; he loves people. He says he scoffs at his companions; he admires them. He declares himself indifferent, yet he can't help but talk about the sufferings of the world.

Which isn't to say that simply caring absolves him of anything. Up to this point, he's still just been a useless layabout. What does absolve him (narratively speaking) is the first time, possibly the first time in his life, that he chooses to act. He chooses to take a stand. And this transfigures him, as Hugo says.

Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.

At the last moment, he chooses to believe, and Enjolras finally accepts him.

One last thing: Grantaire never calls Enjolras "Apollo". Furthermore, he's actually the only one who couldn't have called him "Apollo". The only line where this nickname is mentioned is as follows:

It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: “There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo.”

Who could have called him that? Not Grantaire, he was fast asleep during the whole thing. So I choose to believe it was Prouvaire…he would.

[a-very-tired-bitch]

My new favourite movie: Handsome Devil

WARNING: I will be using words such as ‘queer’ and ‘gay’ to describe both real-life people and characters. This isn’t a warning for LGBT+ people existing (because, guess what, they do), this is just letting you know that I’ll be using these words and I know that some people may have experienced them in negative context and may not like them/may feel uncomfortable with them so I just wanted to put this out there and that I am in no way using these words negatively. Anyways:

I am utter trash for good queer stories in the media because, like most people who are like me, I’m constantly looking for some form of representation. So, when my friend insistently told me that ‘Handsome Devil’ was a really good film with gay characters, I was all in (even if it was a bunch of cis, white guys again). And, as you know, I loved it. Not only was the soundtrack amazing, the actors did a brilliant job (*ahem* Andrew Scott, my beloved), I completely lost my shit and I want to talk about it.

DISCLAIMER: These are just my interpretations and I’m not criticising any opinions that are different to mine. Just explaining why I disagree or why I saw the thing differently. Also SPOILERS.

1. Conor’s handshake with Pascal.

I saw this only like twice, but the two interpretations of this moment that I saw talked about Conor forgiving Pascal with this action when that clearly wasn’t what the movie was going for.

So, up till this point, Pascal has been a homophobic character, outwardly antagonistic towards Dan Sherry who is suspects is gay, even completely rejecting Conor, despite his previous adoration of him due to his rugby talent, because he is gay. And this type of authority figure is something that has failed Conor before, most painfully in his dad.

So why would he hold out his hand in forgiveness? Inspired by Ned, he played the second half of that rugby match for himself - not for the Wood Hill College rugby team, but for his own team made up of him and Ned. And this handshake represents the growth it took for him to do that (even if he was thrown in the deep end by Ned smh), that he’s stepping up to be the bigger person and that he recognises the work that went into this win, even if Pascal turned on him in the end but that it doesn’t mean forgiveness.

And that’s a really fucking badass moment.

2. The flawed mentor figure.

This was probably one of my favourite parts of the movie. Because this is something that we don’t see often at all in queer storylines. Whenever we see a movie or show with young queer characters getting help or advice from older ones, the mentor figure is usually portrayed as idealistically as possible: their advice is flawless, their life is put together, they’re out and proud etc. And Handsome Devil upturned that.

Dan Sherry is placed literally in the role of a mentor being Ned and Conor’s English teacher, but he’s not perfect. He’s in a place in his life where he’s come to terms with his sexuality, but he’s not in a place where he’s as confident as you’d expect for a character in the role that he’s in. And his advice is representative of that: on the rugby field, he doesn’t tell Conor to go out there and own the day, he tells him to keep it to himself for the moment, to keep hiding it just for a little while, that it gets better, that one day he won’t have to hide anything. And Conor immediately calls him out, asking why ‘never use a borrowed voice’ doesn’t apply to him. Dan obviously knows that the answer is ‘because this is different’ but he can’t bring himself to tell Conor that because sexuality shouldn’t be exempt from his advice and the fact that it is hurts them both.

And so, because of his characterisation in this movie, portrayed beautifully by Andrew Scott, we see him grow. It’s not just some proud smile as he watches Ned and Conor develop as people, it’s actual character growth because he sees their bravery and brings his own sexuality to light when he invites Arthur to the rugby match. You can see his nerves and his hesitations in the same way that you see Conor and Ned’s nerves and hesitations which creates such good depth in this movie.

3. They didn’t kiss.

I know some people didn’t like this. And I understand why - it’s a deviation from the standard formula, so it feels a bit like we were cheated out of a romance. But, I honestly feel like the ending we got was the best ending for the movie.

(Before we go on, I do want to quickly clarify that there’s no way their relationship is wholly platonic because Conor has this smile that is only directed at Ned when Ned’s not looking and there’s nothing heterosexual about Ned saying ‘all I can hear in my head is your voice and it makes me want to follow you’, so they’ll probably get together over the course of the rest of their time at school.)

Firstly, I think them getting together by the end of the movie would have been a bit rushed, especially since most of the shit that went down happened in the week before the rugby finals and they really didn’t talk to each other at all for that whole week so there are definitely some conversations that need to happen before anything romantic happens. They need to forgive both themselves and each other (yes, it could be argued that Ned outing Conor is worse than Conor shoving Ned to the ground but that doesn’t cancel it out).

Secondly, the movie ending was perfect. It’s a moment of euphoria for the both of them - Conor saves the match and Ned saves his friend. They have their moment of quiet happiness in a very-not-bro-hug an the team immediately jumps on them to celebrate. It’s a satisfying high-note to end on which is so wholesome and so well rounded-off but it leaves enough room for fan works and imagination which really is the best sort of ending you could get.

Everyone go watch Handsome Devil.

[blossom-hwa]

Sometimes - SEUNGMIN

Angst. Angst galore. I beg you please, please, PLEASE check the triggers before you read this - it is part of my zombie apocalypse universe for Golden Child and as such, there is a LOT of blood, gore, and death. 

Another brief note - I mention other members here, but that is no guarantee as to whether or not they’re dead or alive by the end of the series :) so don’t make any assumptions except on one obvious character skjnkgh

ps what the fuck is up with the lack of usable gifs of one bae seungmin on this site I'm disgusted

Pairing: Bae Seungmin x gender neutral!reader

Genre: angst, zombie apocalypse!au

Triggers: semi-graphic depictions of death, blood, gore in general, allusions to suicide, suicidal thoughts

Word Count: 1.8k

Sometimes, Seungmin needs a reminder that he is still alive.

Golden Child Masterlist

Sometimes Seungmin wakes up and he’s on the ground because at some point during the night, sleeping on even a thin mattress felt so alien on his back that he had to roll off onto the floor. Sometimes he wakes up and looks around and suddenly he’s back home (is it still home, if it’s been years since he left?) but in an unfamiliar house, scanning the windows for any semblance of white skin veined with black, hungry eyes peering in through the glass.

Sometimes Seungmin wakes up and he isn’t a singer, isn’t an artist who plays for the masses on his old guitar, but a survivor instead, unable to eat more than half a granola bar for breakfast because that’s all he ever had to eat for months. Sometimes he wakes up and forgets to brush his teeth even though the bathroom is right there because he didn’t have a toothbrush or toothpaste, much less the water to flush out his mouth when he was on the run.

Sometimes Seungmin wakes up and all he can see are two bodies full of blackened, bloody bites, dried crimson pooled next to bullet holes in the sides of two heads with guns lying nearby because they chose to die rather than condemn themselves to an existence manned by a flesh-seeking daze. Sometimes he wakes up and can’t register your sleeping body next to him, warm, alive, because all he can smell is decomposing flesh and all he can see is death and all he can feel are cold, clawing hands dragging him down, down, down into flames that char his skin until you shake him out of his haze (assuming you aren’t having a nightmare of your own) and remind him that there is still life buried beneath the ashes.

Sometimes Seungmin wakes up and nothing is okay.

Those days, his fingers tremble on his worn guitar. The strings feel strange beneath his skin – it doesn’t matter that he’s been playing this same instrument for years and counting. Those days, his head is empty and full all at once, the smell of decomposing bodies everywhere no matter where he locks himself away. Those days, his eyes grow wild and haunted at the slightest touch – a hand too warm reminds him of Donghyun’s fever, a bead of blood brings back Jibeom’s old wound. He hangs onto life by a thread thinner than his guitar strings, which is ironic and depressing all at once because sometimes, the feeling of those same guitar strings digging grooves into his skin is the only thing that reminds him that he’s alive.

He finds a comment on his song calling him sensationalist. He finds another on an interview article that decries him a murderer of innocents (of course it doesn’t matter that these innocents were trying to kill him first). People walk around him on eggshells, not daring to touch, speaking in quiet tones so as not to set him off but all Seungmin wants is for people to shout, to yell, to tell him or show him they’re alive by the sound of their voice or the subtle warmth of their skin because on days like these, everyone looks like a walking corpse and Seungmin thinks he’s dead.

Maybe he should be dead. Some people certainly seem to think so. He’s killed, murdered, admitted to it, even. He’s written songs and spoken in interviews about holding the gun, pulling the trigger, watching bullets split heads of wild hair and shrunken eyes, shooting people who asked, pleaded, begged for it because they didn’t want to die of the bite on their skin, they just wanted to finally be at peace –

But a murderer is a murderer, no matter how noble his intentions.

Seungmin folds himself in, those days, clutches his guitar even if his fingers can’t strum the strings, holding onto a piece of existence that feels real, that feels real, that he knows has to be real because he bought it when he was alive, fully, wholly alive. He knows he was alive. He knows he was alive. He knows he was alive because you were there and you were alive, standing next to him at the counter as he paid his hard-earned money for the beat-up guitar, holding his hand on the walk back home.

Home. That’s a tricky word right there. One syllable, four letters, easy enough to say but harder to define. Where is home? Is it in the house he left behind, always believing he would see it again before the virus outbreak? Is it in the apartment for which he never paid his last month’s rent, money rendered unnecessary after death crashed over the city in waves? Is it in the university hospital where he spent half a year, working alongside surviving friends to save as many injured as he could despite the fact that his hands were those of an artist and not a doctor, just to give them a better chance at life when they inevitably went on west?

Maybe those were homes, temporary homes where he felt, even if only for brief moments in time, accepted. Cared for. Loved. People helped him heal there, washed deep wounds with clutched hands and warm hugs, occasional kisses on the forehead from those he loved the most.

But the people were the permanent homes, the homes that stayed with him even after the buildings went, even after they themselves went. Some have stayed while others have gone, but they all reside in his heart, and on days when everything is wrong and nothing is okay and Seungmin can’t remember what it feels like to be alive, he reaches into the recesses of his memory and counts them, one by one.

Mom. Dad. Seungho. Yerim. All lost in the first outbreak, barely weeks after the initial explosion. He cried so much after that initial phone call that by the end of the day, even ice couldn’t bring down the swelling around his eyes. Before Seungmin left the hospital for good, he went back to his old apartment and shoved a photo into his pocket, a photo of all five of them when everyone was still alive. He still has it – worn, crinkled, fading at the edges. It lives in his wallet, a reminder of times past, but also a reminder that they’re always with him.

Jangjun. Jangjun’s partner. Joochan. Youngtaek. He remembers his best friends and roommates from before the outbreak, people who loved him and whom he loved back. Their laughs cut through the groans and screams of death that play and replay in his ears, their smiles spilling pale light and warmth that wraps around his shoulders like a blanket or a shawl. Remnants of laughter settle in his skin and Seungmin is reminded of the first rays of dawn, the first rays of hope, cutting through a gray sky of death.

Donghyun. Jibeom. Sungyoon. Jaehyun. Without those Seungmin met during the outbreak, when he made his escape, he doesn’t know what he would do. They have held each other together, propped each other up on days when they have to clutch the backs of chairs so onslaughts of memories don’t pull them down, days when they forget that they’re safe, that they’re sound, that they can’t be hurt any longer by the gaping jaws of white faces marred with blackened veins. These four names have embedded themselves within his heart, burned their mark with so much warmth and love that there is no way he could forget them even if he ever wanted to (and there is no reason he ever would).

There are more names, so many more. Seungmin remembers them all, sifting them through them one after another, replaying his memories for every one. But always, always he puts one person last, a person with a name he clutches even tighter than he hangs to the thread of life, because without this name, this person, there is no life.

Y/N. Survivor. Healer. Partner, significant other, but so much more. Seungmin is a songwriter and has been for years at this point, but even now, he still can’t find the words to summarize your existence. You are more than life itself, an angel from the heavens to help him find his way through a world buried knee-deep in ashes and death.

You aren’t the end all do all, of course. There are days when even your voice can’t cut through the agonized screams playing on loop in Seungmin’s head. There are days when he can’t stand your touch, can’t process it without feeling the cold fingers of a dead man walking, reaching out with shriveled skin to clamp his shoulder and bite through skin. There are days when you sink into your own mind, eyes shut tight against memories painting the backs of your eyelids, screams building in your own throat and tears sliding down your face when you remember what you’ve had to do, what you’ve had to live through, what choices you made and regretted or didn’t regret but feel like you should –

But Seungmin never wanted a perfect solution, never even expected one. You are all he needs – flawed, imperfect, riddled with rips and holes in the fabric of your existence but still somehow whole. Living. Breathing. And even on his worst days, opening his eyes after reliving a haze of fire and ash to see your face, to feel your touch, to hear his name fall from your lips…

Seungmin feels a little more alive.

Sometimes Seungmin wakes up and the world feels like it’s splintering at the edges. He wakes up and everything is tinted red and black with blood he’s spilt and ash he’s burnt, and suddenly he’s back in the barren landscape of broken glass and abandoned buildings, paranoia throbbing in his lungs. Sometimes he wakes up with death painting his vision and memories caught in his throat, aching to release themselves in raw, choked scream, and the thread binding him to life begins to wither again, fraying at the ends from the fire of his memories.

And then your hand closes over his, reaching up to brush back his hair as the sound of his name from your voice pulls him out of the daze. Your touch coaxes his body out of the memories, fingers wrapping gently around the thread that anchors him to life and strengthening it with your love, with your warmth, lending Seungmin the knowledge that you are there. That you understand. That you will love him, always, mending his broken pieces and tying his threads together the same way he does yours.

It’s not perfect. It never will be. Seungmin is certain he will have flashbacks and breakdowns far into the future, and you’re of the same mind. The experiences you’ve had can’t be unseen or undone, ever. Neither of you even wants them to. But when Seungmin can’t handle remembering, can’t handle the flashes of gore and death that he had to see, even had to contribute to, the warmth of your touch helps him forget until he’s ready to remember again.

“I love you,” he whispers into your shoulder, arms wrapped around your waist.

You lean back, kiss his forehead. Smile. “I love you too.”

Sometimes, Seungmin wakes up and nothing is okay.

You remind him that things will be, someday.

If you enjoyed, please don’t forget to reblog and leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Thank you for reading and have a lovely day <3

(1 reblog = 1 prayer for things to be okay once more </3)

[bandomslayed]

I’m not saying you should focus more on racism, I’m just saying that that’s something that the community as a whole needs to focus on and try to repair, I’m sure they all already know that people don’t like their ships. If that’s an issue, then groups can have a strict age limit. Easy solve. The other things are things that can be taught and learned but with hostility all that’s going to happen is a deeper divide. You said you wanted to argue with people about the things you don’t like that they do in this community. I’m paraphrasing, but why not instead want to educate them. No one will ever react well to feeling like they’re being ridiculed or patronized. People worth spending your time on are the ones you can talk to without it being a shitshow. We’re having a dialogue. I’ve felt this entire time like everything I say, someone is going to search for one thing to deliberately misinterpret or magnify unnecessarily when, if there’s something that they have an issue with, it could be a perfect opportunity to educate me instead of people being hostile. I’m college educated and can think critically, I’m moderately well spoken, I’m open to instructive criticisms and discussing things that aren’t agreed upon so I’m just sort of confused by the fact that what I’m saying is being picked apart by other anons and to a degree, you. You all want to change my mind about age gaps, despite me being with someone older irl and feeling safe and genuinely valued for the first time in a relationship in my life so why do you think that calling my dead grandpa names, redirecting the conversation and then kinda mocking me when I attempt to understand wholly and agree with some of the things you’re saying? That’s not going to convince me or anyone else. It just makes people feel defensive. Reiterating here that I’m not saying YOU specifically need to talk about racism more, and I’m not trying to diminish your experience or anything like that In just saying that those topics (discrimination of any kind, abuse of any kind) in the community are things we should be discussing instead of ships we think aren’t comfortable. I feel uncomfortable with relationships in real life and in rp all the time but that isn’t up to me to say it’s wrong or bad. It’s no ones right to tell any two consenting adults that what they’re doing is wrong. But it is a human right to tell someone when they’re being insensitive, and that’s a flaw in the community that people can be educated on and learn to handle with more sensitivity and knowledge but we’re never going to reach that point if we’re all just hostile and cruel to one another. Also reiterating that I’m not using personal examples to get cred, I just like examples because I think using them shows where I’m coming from so that any person who wants to have a dialogue can have a frame of reference for why my opinions are what they are on any topic. If I’m wrong, or insensitive, or just kinda dumb I want to know that but simply telling me I’m wrong or insensitive or dumb doesn’t teach me how not to me. And this doesn’t just mean me, I mean the whole community. It will never improve if we all just talk about the things we don’t like and give no feasible solutions.

alright i see what you want so let me switch to my white pleaser voice and deliver since you're so keen on being patronizing and in the same breath, acting like me taking what you say "the wrong way" is the problem. in bullet points so next time u come back to keep going at it u can pinpoint exactly what it is i misconstrued because u will do it anyway.

you're asking the community as a whole to care more about racism but you're talking to me who's leading the conversation in the first place. i understand you didn't imply i specifically should care more about it, but you're still using racism to discredit my point of view on age gap relationships being an important topic to discuss as well, and watering it down to just me not liking people's plots when that is not the message.

nobody is telling anyone how to live their lives. im bringing awareness to the fact that this culture is not okay. it's dangerous to our young. it NEEDS to be uncomfortable to you (you, plural) to invite to this so called critical thinking.

im not saying your partner doesn't have a right to be loving or grandpa and grandma had abuse masked as a good relationship. im saying, since it needs to be spelled out with no room for misinterpretation; the culture behind someone 10+ years older finding it completely okay to pursue someone that much younger — especially when we're talking 18 - 30 age range — needs to be looked at more closely. it's not safe in general. do exceptions exist? absolutely, but the whole two consenting adults point is a terrible one to make when at 18, you're considered that when you're still essentially just a child.

a strict age limit, which most groups adopt now, does little to actually prevent age gap relationships within roleplays. moreso, uneven power dynamics within plots being glamorized. my boss is not over 5 years older than me, but he is my boss. kpop boybands don't have age gaps of 10+ years in groups, usually, but there is a leader most times acting like a father figure, not to mention korean culture is heavy on emphasizing age-related hierarchical order, so a literal still wet behind the ears child establishing a romantic connection with someone who is not their equal? dangerous.

now let's halt. i already told you, i don't give a shit about respectability politics. it is not my job to be nice and educate anyone. and i don't mean just on this blog... most of you whites have come to assume and expect, even, that poc will be subservient, docile, and always willing to switch and nicely explain to you why the very core of the way you think about the world because you grew up sheltered w/e is not the whole picture for everyone. the worst part? most of them do. most of them do put their thinking caps on and write these novel worthy, intelligent, respectful, calculated think pieces only for the white in question to turn around and still deem it aggressive, etc. i don't do that. that is labor that most of you do not deserve.

the implication that there are feasible solutions for these problems that don't require for people to literally rework their entire mindset is naive at best. what am i supposed to do? be like nooo don't be racist, racism is bad BECAUSE it hurts people. i think all of you are old enough to know that by now. you definitely have enough internet exposure to know that, even if you grew up in all white sundown town america.

i explain my points. i actually explain my points more than the average person, yet here we are still saying im not doing enough to educate those around me as if it was my responsibility to change the way people think with sugar spice and everything nice so they feel their hand is held and it's safe to make a mistake that will consequently hurt other people as many times as they need to make it to finally grasp the reality of it and be able to just... not do that in the future. when no. no. when you hurt me, im allowed to react emotionally, not intellectually. when im angry and upset and still explaining why, its YOUR job to swallow it down and listen to what im saying, because YOU hurt me. i don't owe you civility (again; you, plural). i especially don't owe you civility when ive given you nothing but in the past and the end result is still me being an aggro freak who doesn't care for your precious feelings.

you're also assuming things. for example, assuming that im mocking you specifically when i really have not done that. if im going to mock you, im going to reply to your anon and say "okay stupid", then yeah, im mocking you. otherwise? don't assume im directing anything at you.

we're having a dialogue and this whole time all you've done is tell me to stop talking. your messages have all, in essence, said, if people want to date other people who have a shitton of years on them, that is not a problem and you look prettier talking about something else. yes, that's also paraphrased. you didn't say that, of course, but why are we still here if not because you feel personally scrutinized over the reaction to the life examples that you willingly provided?

nobody is trying to change YOUR mind, you're just not willing to consider that your age gap relationships that have been beautiful and loving and safe coexist within a culture that is wicked. a person who's 10+ older than me, 24, has no business seeing me as a potential partner. it's not appropriate. yet if they do, and i also see them as a potential partner, there's nothing inherently evil about that specific instance. it is the circumstances (past), that lead to this kind of thinking in the first place what im asking everyone to analize and understand. and it does matter. it matters as much as racism, abuse, ooc mistreatment of rp partners. again, issues do not queue and wait for something to end so they can begin anew. every conversation i choose to have i consider worth having. you're free to stay out if you don't deem it important.

you're exhausting me thinking by turning my inbox into ap debate we're achieving grand things sooo hope this helps 🖤

[thekidultlife]

The Most Convenient Escape | Jihoon Soulmate! AU (1)

⍟ Pairing: Jihoon x fem!reader

⍟ AU: Fantasy/ Soulmate AU

⍟ Genre: ANGST, SLOW BURN, fluff

⍟ Warnings: swearing, mentions of abuse, drinking, and sex

⍟ Word Count: 4.5k

⍟ Synopsis: For all your life, you have a deep disdain towards Soulmate Bonds, so much so that you are able to writeopinions about it in a local newspaper. However, as life would have it, you wake up one day bonded to a person you hardly knew. Throwing in an investigation, annoying roommates, and a revolution looming just beneath the surface, you had to seek for the most convenient escape.

CHAP 1 | CHAP 2 | CHAP 3 | CHAP 4 | CHAP 5 |  CHAP 6 |

AN OPINION ON THE SOULMATE BOND by Alex Fireflower

The Porta Persa Edition, August 17

If the appeal of romance and the idea that a person whose devotion to us shall surpass eternity exists in our midst, among the younger generations, if there was any doubt in this matter, then the recent excitement for the coming Soulmate Bonding Ceremony is its colorful illustration. Alas, our dear friends of the State! It is once again time for the great and olden tradition of Soulmate Bonding. Here in this land of abundance and prosperity which gifts are said to be owed to this venerable ceremony, we must lay upon our trust and our fate to ancient magic, which we wholly believe shall lead our hearts to our destined soulmate--our lifetime partner, the other half of our soul, and so on. 

Yet our dear readers, allow this humble editor to argue the opposite. 

 It is established that the magic of Soulmate Bonding allows two persons, at most random strangers, to be paired together for a lifetime; sharing either emotions, thoughts or senses. Such a practice has always been placed under a rose-colored light by the government which, if simplified in broad terms is, in our opinion, a blatant propaganda for an obsolete tradition which endangers the wellbeing of our citizens, a practice which limits responsibility and free will, core values of which this land has been founded upon.

 If we shall suppose that a relationship between soulmates is perfect and blessed upon by the great heavens, then cases of arguments and cases of abuses would not exist as pests of our society, the destroyer of families and the trauma of children. If soulmate relationships are the pinnacle of success in family life, then divorce laws do not have any purpose to exist in our civil code, as custody battles do not have a place in our respectable courts. We are all blinded by the garish lighting provided by this dictatorship; through their flowery and romanticised propaganda we hear in the radios everyday as we sit down for breakfast or as we enjoy our pudding after dinner. This poor excuse of a government which has deceived its own people, seeks absolute authority through the most invasive ways known to man, inside the most intimate partnership a human being could experience in their entire life.

 By consuming this tomfoolery, we become puppets to romance, to impossible dreams, thus vulnerable to the mandates of this dictatorship. It is said that men, whose eyes are set high above the heavens, are doomed to fall off the cliff’s edge. There ought to be balance between idealism and pragmatism, lest we suffer the consequences of our own torn expectations of a perfect relationship and a good life. By relinquishing our right to choose, to exercise free will, we then must forget our roles as individuals, solely responsible for the effects of our choices. We then shall blame it on neutral magic, on fate and the Universe, the mistakes of our own doing. Aye indeed, let us ought to create the most convenient escape from our own flaws and our indecisiveness. Let us forever be destined to depend our lives upon the forces of the Universe, upon accidents of Nature!...

You smelled like ink. 

 The ugly, artificial scent of a printing press; ink. You had it on your hands as well, catching a freshly pressed newspaper as the midnight breeze blew upon a stack by the window. It was late yet the machine kept whirring, pressing, printing as piles of paper grew into hills and mountains of South Porta Persa.

 It would truly be unlucky to trip and make a mess of everything right now, you thought, inspecting the warm paper for any misspelt words or misaligned layouts with a careful eye. 

 “Good enough for' ya, darlin’?” A voice deep and rumbling interrupted your close inspection, his tone mischievous and mirthful as he wiped his hands clean on his trusty apron, the metal wrenches on it clattering about.

 It was good ole’ Jupiter, the ruler of the mechanical movable type in grand Porta Persa, a man late in his forties with a receding hairline to match. You had always liked him since you were a child, in his long beard and ink stained hands, and his various adventures at sea in his large Galleon. Yet now he is a master of the press, and you were his client.

 Giving a satisfied smile, you shrugged, placing the newspaper on top a stack without minding. 

 "Better than anywhere else, my good Sir," you replied, a trace of a laugh hinting to escape. "Nowhere I can trust The Porta Persa Edition to anyone other than in your expert hands." 

 He chuckled, his belly rumbling; just as anyone named 'Jupiter' should be. "Then I'm honered lass! As I'm honored to be Alex Fireflower's avid reader!" 

 "Oh stop flattering me," you chuckled, patting his shoulder. "Ah, it seems quite late now, isn't it? I better go." 

 Jupiter nodded. "Aye lass, you're movin' to the Academy tomorrow, innit? Ya should hurry home now before anyone catches ya!" 

 "Aye, captain!" You replied in a singsong voice, quickly moving to the exit. "Oh and please tell Soonyoung, if he comes over later in the morning that I need help with the bags! Thanks, Jupiter! May Jove kiss you on the asscheeks!"

 Kissing his cheek goodbye, you bounced down the stairs as you heard him bark in laughter and raced back to the home you have been staying since you were a child. Even as a daughter of the city alchemist, you lived humbly with your father in a two-story house with a style akin to stale bread. Yet he was usually absent, either in the homes of the sick or in some faraway place hunting ingredients for his potions. It didn't matter to you anyway. 

 Snuck behind the back door, you eventually reached your room and lit a gaslamp on your otherwise messy desk full of paper and books. It never gets cleaned up in some way or another, you thought.

 Sitting on your bed, you watched the glittering lights of Porta Persa at midnight, wondering if Alex Fireflower's words in that widely popular newspaper would lit a fire in people's hearts. Despite your young age, being a writer in a prolific paper was anxiety inducing, knowing how much words could stir up a person's sentiments.

 From afar, you could hear a faint melody of a love song between lovers, soulmates. A concept you disdainfully look down upon, if your writings were any indication to that. The bonding ceremony never sat well with you. You never understood those who excitedly and eagerly surrender their life to the whims of coincidence and then live to become happy. It was either a pretense or an 'anyone will do' type of situation. 

"Oh, isn't the ceremony later in the morning?" You remarked, peaking at the calendar on your desk. You shrugged. 

In any case, you have been prepared to deny this unwelcome intruder. It took a while to research but there were ways to suppress the connection between soulmates, mostly elaborate spellwork and potions. Yet you have been ready for years, almost a decade: casting spell upon spell on yourself and drinking disgusting potions, truly glad that you had an alchemist for a father. Now nothing will stand in the way between you and your aspirations. 

Getting a bit sleepy, you snuck in your sleeping gown and laid on the bed. Closing your eyes, and for once, leaving the rest for the Universe's turn in this game of chance. 

The next thing you came to was a dull throb on your head, something akin to a mediocre hangover, and a loud rapping on your front door. It was late in the morning. The birds were chirping, the loud clattering of bustling human activity and Soonyoung’s rather energetic shouting on your front door was grating on your ears. 

You tried to think of any reason why you were particularly not feeling a hundred percent today yet was once again interrupted by Soonyoung calling you out. 

Rolling off your bed however, made everything come crashing down on you. You lurched on the floor, thinking about throwing up yet none came, only your empty coughs and an uncomfortable pressure on your diaphragm were there. Your limbs were weak and trembled as you tried to lift your leg up, inevitably stumbling back to the floor and hitting your back against the bedpost in a painful thud. 

What is this…? 

In your pain, you grit your teeth, unable to utter anything with your dry throat. You tried to massage your temples to alleviate the throbbing, yet that was the exact moment you realized what was actually happening. With eyes as wide as saucers and a heart rate that seemed to increase in great increments, a cold sweat ran down your spine as you saw what was on your wrist. A cynical grin on your lips, you scoffed at the chances.  

 “...dammit,” you squeezed out, glancing at the bracelet-like tattoo around your wrist, in its clear straight horizontal bars and iridescent shine whenever you turned it around. You almost laughed at how ridiculous things were. Your greatest nightmare has happened while you were asleep. A bond has been formed. 

Finally having some sort of clarity, you were suddenly feeling much better, knowing what to do next. Dragging out a chest underneath your bed, you fished out a concoction which would weaken the suppressants you had induced upon yourself over the years. 

This was the side effect, you considered as you took the potion in one swallow. The suppressants would make you feel terribly ill, more so because this was day zero of the bond, but it will effectively block out the connection. On the other hand, you can weaken the blockage, yet it would as well restore the connection between you and your soulmate.

You cringed at the thought, yet there was no other choice. Today was moving day and you knew, without a doubt, that left alone for any longer, Soonyoung would break into your house, worrying something had happened to you. Something  did happen, yet it was none of his concern.  

And speaking of the devil, there he was rushing into your room; panting and sweaty from probably climbing the terrace and into one open window, as you hid your trunk of potions back under the bed. 

“Y/N! “ he  shouted, barging inside and spotted you dusting your lap as you stood up. “You weren’t answering the door, so I--“

“I’m fine,“ you interrupted, sensing energy forming at the base of your stomach as it wells up and stretches into a thin string. Hopefully, the amount of potion you drank was not too strong enough to lower your walls.

You shook your head. “Anyway, can you help me with my stuff? They’re already down the hallway, so we only have to carry them to the terminal.” 

“Oh, sure, sure. But seriously, are you alright?” Soonyoung asked, noting you were more closed off than usual. You only turned your back at him and walked towards your closet. 

“I’m fine, Soonyoung. Don’t worry,” you dismissed him. “Now, could you please allow me to dress myself up?” 

He was quiet for a while but eventually nodded, and left you in your ministrations. Sighing as he closed the door and disappeared, you struggled to keep yourself up. Just by lowering the suppressants, a tidal wave of thoughts barraged inside your head, immediately overwhelming you. They were obviously not yours and now you wondered if this was your connection, and if your soulmate was also thinking what you were thinking at that moment. Before you could arrive at an answer though, the thoughts once again stopped and your mind calmed down. 

You breathed in and out. There was no way you could truly understand what was happening. You can only form conjectures and draw theories yet none of them were absolutely irrefutable. You couldn’t understand why it suddenly stopped, but  nevertheless it was a welcome development. You can finally finish your chores without disturbance.  

As soon as you were done, you went downstairs to look for Soonyoung who seemed to have been waiting at the drawing room. He had already hailed a carriage to carry your belongings to the terminal, so you guessed it was only you they were waiting for.  

“I hope no one has called the police when you climbed through the terrace again,” you greeted him with a smile, your personal trunk on your hands.

“Nah, they know it’s just me,” he replied, grinning back as he took your trunk. 

Soonyoung was a childhood friend, the heir of a fine and lucrative shipping company among many in Porta Persa. He has a natural talent in mischief and a bundle of energy, yet surprisingly hard working. Together with you and Wonwoo, who was another friend, Soonyoung was currently preoccupied with The Porta Persa Edition as one of its editors. 

"We'll be seeing more of each other from now on!" He remarked excitedly, helping you up the carriage before joining in as well. "If you know what I mean." 

You sighed at his rather indiscreet methods of discretely conveying that you three were running a rather controversial newspaper. 

"How was today's paper though?" You asked as the carriage began moving and jumping around the cobblestones. 

Soonyoung grinned victoriously. "Folks were deliciously eating it by the news stands and Wonwoo said the Parliament and the Royal Elders were absolutely livid with Alex Fireflower's piece!" 

You feel a sweatdrop roll down your cheek. 

"It's kind of scary with the way you say that," you replied, and then continued with a more confident tone, "but I'm glad they got the message. People need to wake up from this farce." 

"You seriously hate the soulmate thing, huh?" Soonyoung commented. "I mean, I can't really say anything since I don't have my bond yet." 

You glanced at him, thinking of your own bond and instinctively hid your wrist underneath your gloves. 

"Lucky for you."

By the time you both arrived at the terminal, it was all a breeze from there. The teleportation portals were not as busy compared to other days, thus with just a cart and Soonyoung by your side, you have officially moved to the Royal Academy of Porta Persa. 

The Royal Academy of Porta Persa, or just the Academy, was a state-ran university, yet the most prominent among other universities in the area. Atop a hill overlooking the main port, it was constantly covered by wisteria and cherry blossom trees all year long thanks to magic, painting a surreal landscape for all of Porta Persa to see. 

"Even if I've seen this from my window every night, this is still quite a sight to take in," you exclaimed as you both walked towards the dormitories. 

Soonyoung gave a small smile. "I was like that last year, you know."

Due to the prestige of the Academy and its quality of education, only a select few can attend its venerable halls of learning: the elite and the intellectually gifted. You were lucky to be part of the latter group. The entrance examinations were intense yet you still made it, happy that you were finally able to attend their Effective Journalism class which was the reason why you wanted to go in the first place. 

"I'm sure your dorm master will tell you later, but I'm going to say it anyway," Soonyoung started as he pushed your cart up a slope. "In the dorm rooms, the ladies and the gents are separated."

He made it seem so controversial that you made a deadpan look by the time he finished talking.  

"I think that should be obvious by now." 

 "Eh? But aren't you disappointed? We can't brainstorm article ideas together with Wonwoo, you know!" 

 "But we can just talk in the courtyard." You shrugged, not really getting Soonyoung. 

 "We can't just talk in the courtyard! People will know we're The Porta Persa Edition!"

You stopped walking. "Soonyoung, the newspaper is registered in your name. I think, except my identity as Alex Fireflower, this is no longer any secret." 

He gave an exasperated sigh. "You're such a killjoy!"

"Oh, look. We're here," you pointed out, totally ignoring Soonyoung's comment. 

The girl's dormitory looked especially lavish with marble and ornate columns. Lilac wisteria trees dotted the surroundings, creating a flowery curtain around the dormitory. On the entrance way though was a female guard and the dorm master.

"I think I can manage from this point on," you said, taking the cart from your friend's grasps, "Thanks for your help though! I'll contact you later!"

"Oh if you say so then! Hope your roommate's nice though!" he replied, taking a step back and giving a small salute. "I'll wait for you and Wonwoo in the dorms! See you!" 

You gave a cheeky smirk and saluted him back before pushing your way inside the dorm. As you entered, the dorm master welcomed you with a polite smile in her dark floor length dress and clipboard in her hands. She was an older woman yet lacked the frightening aura dorm masters seemed to have. 

"Good morning! You are Ms. Y/N, I assume?" She asked and you nodded, showing your identification pin as proof. 

"Well unfortunately, we don't have any room in the main building, which is why we have decided that incoming students have to stay at the refurbished building." She started as she began walking you across the courtyard. "There were a lot of students last year, we really had no choice."

"I see. Well, I'm ok with anywhere, to be honest. As long as I have a bed and a desk to write on," you replied, gazing at the fancy architecture prominent among all the buildings. 

She chuckled. "Don't worry. The rooms are considerably bigger in the renovated building with a private bathroom and a small kitchen, though you have to share it with another person."

"That's quite fancy, huh? Looks like I still have my luck today," you replied with a chuckle, pushing your cart forwards. 

Shortly, the building you were to stay for the rest of your years in the university pulled into view. It was indeed massive and frighteningly grand, and seemed like only the rich can afford such residence, which definitely worried you. It would be quite difficult if you got paired with a snobby and spoiled princess of some far away land. 

Entering the building, you noticed that the hallways were no different with its golden inlays and dark marbled floors. Ceiling to floor windows graced on your left as the dorm master led you to the third floor (via an elevator) and to a wide ornate door. 

"I think it's this room." Fishing a set of keys from her pocket, she opened the door and led you inside.

To no surprise, it was an extravagant room. In your front was a sofa set by a fireplace which serves a sitting room for guests. The common room proper was separated by french doors and a wall of glass which looked like sets of windows.

You slowly took it in, unused to this kind of place. Taking a step forward, you looked around: there were fresh roses on the side table, bookcases filled with heavy tomes and encyclopedias, a scent of nearby cherry blossom flowers from an open window. 

This was definitely not what you had expected. This large room fit for royals was not what you had in mind when you imagined yourself living in the dorm rooms of the Academy. And it frightened you. 

"Do...do I have to pay for this?" You asked the dorm master who was waiting for you at the doorway. 

She smiled. "No need to worry, Ms. Y/N. All of your expenses here are paid by the state."

"Is it really alright for me to be here…" 

Your words faltered, thinking about how lucky and privileged you were to be living in this kind of place in the next few years, while there were others who stayed in a much humble dorm room. 

"Is it not to your liking?" The dorm master asked which you immediately denied. 

"No, no. This is good," you said. Too good even.

Your thoughts you flushed out before it could convince you to just stay at your family home. That would definitely not be ideal at all. Tentatively opening the french doors leading to the common room, what you saw was definitely not what you expected. 

Fresh from an immersive bath was a man, not much older than Soonyoung, in his half naked glory. 

"Who on earth are you?" He asked and you froze. 

Frozen because all you wanted to do was to wake up from this horrible nightmare of a day, or you wanted to evaporate there at your very spot from sheer embarrassment. 

Without a word, you immediately closed the door and ran back to the door where the dorm master was looking at you in confusion. 

"This…! This room is clearly occupied! By a man!" You nearly screamed at her, yet still held a bit of your composure. 

You could still see the afterimage of the man in your mind, his dark black hair wet, his toned body only covered by a mere towel. You furiously tried to erase it out of your eye sockets before you sink into the gutter.

"Huh? But the records say this room is occupied by Iris Appleby," she replied in panic, checking her clipboard over and over again. 

In the midst of her checking, the man emerged from the bedroom, now much more appropriate in trousers and a button up. He seemed to be a bit annoyed from the disturbance, you noticed. 

"I assume there must be some problem here," he said coolly, hands in his pockets. 

If anything, you thought the dorm master had seen a ghost from how pale she got just from taking a glimpse of the man. 

"Sir Lee Jihoon! I must apologize for this inconvenience!" She exclaimed tearfully. Her panic had doubled and was now frantically checking the records.

You blinked several times upon hearing the name, and then finally, it clicked a second after. 

The youngest parliament member, huh? 

"I'm sure there was some mistake! We thought this room was occupied by someone else, Sir! And it's the only available room we have!" The dorm master cried, and you grimaced. 

"Alright, madam. Please take a deep breath," you told her, patting her back. "We could check if there are other rooms left, okay?" 

"I already did through the clipboard! We have the dorm rooms monitored by magic tracing, yet in some way, only this room was registered with a wrong name," she replied as her shoulders sagged. 

"I don't mind her as a roommate," the third person involved finally spoke. "The rooms are separated and we only have to share the bath, the kitchen and the common room anyway." 

The dorm master seemed hopeful for that solution as she gave you a questioning look. Lee Jihoon also glanced at you, his sharp eyes seemingly judging. 

It's either here or back at home, huh? There was no way you're going back. 

"As I said earlier, madam, I can sleep anywhere as long as I have a bed and a desk," you replied with a reassuring smile and then gazed at Jihoon. "It's not really as bad as it looks." 

Ecstatic with your answer, the dorm master shouted her massive amount of gratitude and bowed farewell after giving you your keys.

Turning around, you faced Lee Jihoon who had his arms crossed, and an unimpressed look on his face. 

"I'm Y/N! First year History of Magic major! Nice to meet you, my roommate," you cheerfully introduced yourself yet was met with only sheer silence. You narrowed your eyes at him.

"This is the point where you also introduce yourself while shaking my hand and we then go on with the particulars of our own lives, never to interact again except when sharing the kitchen and the bath," you continued, clearly irked. 

He raised his brows at you in amusement. Taking your hand, he shook yours firmly. 

"Lee Jihoon, Magical Law, 2nd year. A pleasure as well," he replied, and then gave the most sarcastic smile you've ever seen, if you've ever seen one, before dropping your hand.

"Let's actively avoid each other from now on," he replied with his back turned. Walking away, Jihoon waved at you and then went towards his own room. 

Alone, the silence was empty. Yet you simply shrugged at the whole event. Having a politician as a roommate was way better than a princess.

Dragging your cart of belongings inside, you went to what you assumed was your room, opposite to Jihoon's. You noticed that the common room consisted of another ornate fireplace, a large gilded table and a high tech kitchen fueled by fire-charged stones. There were also a few pieces of expensive decor which would really suck if you managed to break one. 

The common room was fancy, and your room was, of course, no different. It was a bit bare yet it was already filled with furniture. The canopy bed was at the center; a tall curtained window behind it, as well as a set of chairs just in front of a fireplace. A desk and a few bookshelves was at the far right, near the door. Your closet was a walk-in type, you observed, yet immediately grimaced, knowing you never had that much clothes in the first place. 

Huffing, you sat on a lounge chair at the end of the bed. (It wasn't dusty, thank god.) Yet today was by far the most exhausting day you had. 

Removing the glove on your right hand, you checked if the soulmate marking was really there or just an early morning nightmare of yours. It was still there though, glistening against the midday sunlight from the window. 

It looked innocent that way, just black horizontal bars. Yet its meaning was something you wished did not exist at all.

--!!

All of the sudden, you felt a sharp pang on your head, followed by a sound of static on your ears and a barrage of muddled thoughts in your head. You grabbed a fistful of your hair to at least calm it down a bit yet it was for naught.

A bad migraine, you convince yourself. It was definitely not.

Struggling at the lounge chair for several minutes left you panting and nauseous. There was no solution to this as this was of course the result of you tampering with the connection. You felt like banging your head on the wall because of the pain and because of your own sheer stubbornness, yet that wouldn't really solve anything, will it?

Before you could even contemplate asking your roommate for help, the pain and the overwhelming confusion disappeared and left you in a state of clarity. 

Exhausted, you closed your eyes and sighed.

"I never knew you detest me so much, my dear soulmate." 

Those were definitely not your thoughts.

CHAP 1 | CHAP 2 | CHAP 3 | CHAP 4 | CHAP 5 | CHAP 6 | * A/N: HII! This is Hyeri!! (I deleted my first post ;;w;;) It’s been a long time! Here’s a JIhoon fic to start things up! This, I guess my goal for this is to deconstruct the soulmate au??? Srsly, I’ve been watching a lot of anime reviews...

[kendrixtermina]

Hey, I love your FE3H essays and analyses, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on what Edelgard and Hubert were up to in chapter 6? I assumed the situation was similar to chapter 8, and they didn't know of Flayn's kidnapping until after the fact. I've since seen people saying Edie and Hubert were actively complicit in what happened that month, but to me considering Edie's hatred of human experimentation and Hubert's dialogue that month, that doesn't seem to fit.

First, thanks!

It’s genuinely ambiguous. 

Keep in mind that Edelgard thinks that Flayn and Seteth are complicit in Rhea’s crap and knows they’re older than they look. Flayn looks like a schoolgirl but so does Kronya. She certainly did keep Rhea in the basement(though it’s definitely the slitherers that wanted her kept alive for their blood experiments, perhaps in part to ressurect the liberation army - in CF where Edelgard is already securely in power by the time she confronts Rhea, she simply kills her)

The Slitherers are also doing their demonic beast experiments - they likely would have done those wether Edelgard cooperated or not, but she IS making use of them. 

She certainly hates human experimentation but I don’t think there’s any act that she would always 100% reject on principle, but judges according to the long term end result. Of course this is not a dichotomy wether ppl suffer or not is PART of the end result and I don’t think she ever forgets that.  Basically she’s more utilitarian than Kantian. (that would be Dimitri)

(Claude is also utilitarian but a different sort. I can’t remember the proper terms rn but utilitarian rationales can be characterized into “minimize loss” and “maximize gains” variants. )

No one ever said Edelgard was a perfect person with no flaws- this might be one situation where she’s genuinely guilty of an unscrupulous act. 

It’s not wholly impossible that she thought that it was acceptable for one person to become a test subject if it helps her get on the throne (which would have been difficult without buying off the slithers somehow - and without power she can do nothing, including get rid of them) 

Especially since she doesn’t know that Flayn is largely innocent, but believes her to be Rhea’s accomplice, and hence, guilty of much worse. (Let’s appreciate the irony that even Rhea’s arch enemy didn’t think she’d deceived even her own family) - despite the misinformation in play this is a genuine downside of a more drastic decisive MO after all incomplete information is a fact of life. 

One place to look is Edelgard’s battle quote with the death knight - in chapters 8 or the cindered shadows map she’s like, “WTF are you doing here leave now”, whereas in chapter 6 she simply says “There’s no way around it… “ which isn’t unambiguous one way or the other but could just as easily mean “Okey seems like we’ll have to fight to keep up the charade (that we’re both in on)”

On the other hand it’s not impossible that she really didn’t know at first and hence, that the attempts at sleuthing that we see are genuine, until they find the passage in Jeritza’s room, she realizes what’s going on and gets in her mask to call him back/ ask him what’s going on. 

I say this mostly because the slitherers sure don’t keep her informed on what they do (it would be stupid of them to do/ think they have her that well under control) - we see Arundel asking to borrow the death knight but as we didn’t see the previous conversation where they made that request we don’t know how much he told her about what he needed the backup for, their cooperation was probably a series of individual quid pro quos more than anything. “Get us the crest stones and we will back you instead of PM Aegir/ will not interfere with you taking the throne” etc.

There is definitely a great and often underappreciated deal of double-agenting going on in part I, in which Edelgard pretends to work both for the slitherers and the church (in her capacity as a student) so as to spy on and sabotage them both (*Leaks Solon’s location to Byleth* ”Oh, I had to fight Solon! I would have blown my cover if I hadn’t, it was definitely to fool the church not because I want you all dead or something” - she used the same tactic quite openly with Cornelia in cf) where she helps to fight and investigate the slitherers cause she really wants to know what they’re up to for her own purposes and she can use Byleth & the knights to do that just as she uses the slitherers to get the means to act against the church. She definitely made the deliberate decision to leak info once it became aparent that Solon and Kronya were far too dangerous and destructive to be kept under control. 

Solon is the only one who remotely manages to pass for a human, Arundel, Cornelia and Kronya are just obviously creepy - but then again its a recurring theme that the Agarthans underestimate the surface dwellers and see them as basically animals.

I just don’t know if this is an example of it. All in all the fact that she makes a masked appearance in which she explicitly declares herself,  leads me to lean towards thinking that she knew and was willingly cooperating in this particular instance. 

The slitherers meant for Flayn to be “found” eventually (once they had their blood samples) to get Kronya planted as a spy, and Edelgard certainly knew about her, if definitely not about her precise mission.

Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to making a ff that shows part I from Edelgard’s pov focusing on all the double agent antics. 

[builtperil]

😈 —— senses and odd headcanons

TAGGED BY: ( STOLE IT FROM @stagtic awhile back COUGH hi bby )

TAGGING: @fromnobodytonightmare​​, @dcllysnetwcrk​ ( do it for a muse u don’t usually talk about hee hee ), @hatescout​, @heartxeyed​, @astronomxnov​, @lovsiik​, uhhhh can I get a fuckin’ burger, mutuals ???

1. WHAT DOES YOUR MUSE SMELL LIKE?

--- chemicals that can sting nostrils if approached too close / the metallic stench of ore & the white-hot burn of scrap / the chill of air conditioned clothes / the musk of hard work & effort that’s yet to be hidden / the bleach of printer paper / mint-condition offices & atypical ‘ workplace ‘ type smells, with fresh supplies & such.

The above is GENERICALLY what I deem Dexter typically smells like - given a good chunk of his days is spent in the lab, though it also highly depends on what he’s been doing that day, be it IN the lab or elsewhere. More often than not, however, he does smell very chemical-y & sharp - especially his hair ( given it in particular is made from chemicals ); consider it a sign you’ve gotten way too close when you’re either in a daze or your nose is aching, both due to the scent’s strength. Dexter for one, either can no longer really detect it or has grown too used to the smell to comment.

2. WHAT DO YOUR MUSE’S HANDS FEEL LIKE?  

When gloved? Extremely warm & soft, ridges poke subtly from the inside - making for a bumpy texture over smooth latex. Indentations of wear, especially over the tips & edge of the glove’s entrance, depending on how long he’s worn a single pair.

When ungloved? Calloused & warped, rough, --- & typically pruny a lot of the time. Thanks be to his working habits & scars, his hands feel comparable to leather with few areas wholly smooth & without flaw, the noticeable ridges of disturbed skin acting as their starting points. 

Healthy skin, sitting inbetween portions untouched feel soft & cushy, white as a sheet & full of life, even if often times a little damp & clammy.

3. WHAT DOES YOUR MUSE USUALLY EAT IN A DAY?

Next to your usual 3 meals a day + dessert ( if possible ), which his mother tries to supply with enough of each food group, Dexter does try to attempt to cram in a couple snacks & sweets inbetween. It’s rather easy, considering his mother also appears to make a lot of baked goods for her household; a couple cookies there, a slice of pie there, some candy if allowed. Snacks aren’t as frequent at home as they are when he’s out & about; he has to keep that energy up, after all! -- In which case, if he hasn’t packed himself anything, he’ll take what he can get from the shops around.

( 6 more to go !!!! putting under the cut because this post is LONG )

4.     DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE A GOOD SINGING VOICE?

I am VERY MUCH not a musical expert, & I’m probably the last person to deem someone’s voice as as good or not. But personally? I would deem his voice is only a few steps above being. Not Good. It’s not completely horrible to listen to, but it’s nowhere near sounding perfect either. 

With an accent as thick as his, I imagine it gets in the way of sounding coherent more often than not to a tune; this is also accompanied by a range that can frequently dip a bit deep & bellowing, akin to an opera singer - & a very amateur one at that ( yes, ironically enough - thank ‘ LABretto ‘ for this ). He’s also not much of a musical maestro, so with no practice to his name, I imagine when singing, he’s VERY off key & hitting all the wrong notes; this is to say, if the above issues don’t lead to his downfall first. 

TDLR; Too deep, off key, & too accented; these were the ingredients chosen to assure that Dexter would not be a singer as an adult. But if nothing else, you can hear him without your eardrums bleeding out, it just doesn’t sound too good.

He’s just better at speaking, & that’s what there is to it!

5. DOES YOUR MUSE HAVE ANY BAD HABITS OR NERVOUS TICKS?

Many! On the front of bad habits, Dexter habitually participates in:

cracking his knuckles ( though ironically hating when other people do it ) / snoring / messing with wounds / the occasional binge eating & missing meals / fidgeting / playing with his fingers or clothes / grinding his teeth / biting his nails / gloves ( biting through the gloves even ) / periodic procrastination / neglecting manners && I know there’s probably a few more outstanding habits he’s gained over the years, which I’ll list at another time.

Nervous ticks especially include nail biting & fidgeting, accompanying a prominent stutter & frequent pauses in his speech, flared temper, averting eye contact, & casting his hands every which way: behind his back, in his pockets, clasping them together, -- etc. 

6. WHAT DOES YOUR MUSE USUALLY LOOK LIKE, WEAR?

Thickly rimmed, blue lensed glasses & latex gloves are a must with any outfit he dons. Including those essentials, his everyday outfit goes as follows: a chunky, collared labcoat - plush to the touch, black leggings, & black zip-up boots ( because despite being a genius, he can’t tie shoes ).  If he’s not wearing his usual outfit, he’s ideally wearing something comfortable: long sleeved shirts / oversized clothes / thin pants / sweaters -- something concealing but very comfortable & loose.

Clothes aside: he’s fat, skin near white as paper ( though still healthy ), UNGODLY small, shaggy brick-red hair that peeks in handfuls from behind his head in a cut similar to be/verly mar/sh’s ( IT 2017 ) do after making it shorter, & typically a little tired looking.

Just your stereotypical nerd look!

7. IS YOUR MUSE AFFECTIONATE? HOW MUCH? HOW SO?

Welcome back to another ‘ yes, but it’s conditional ‘ headcanon!

Though Dexter might often portray himself about as affectionate as a cactus, it can come in GREAT SUPPLY to a select few amount of people. Affection goes to those whom he respects or otherwise admires in some way, to friends, to family to a degree, special interests - of course; @ those he generally is fond of. It often comes in the form of complements, smiles & laughter, & minimal touch - like handshakes or the rare embrace of a hug. It depends on the relationship & how deeply both parties are involved in it, but the above increases steadily as bonds strengthen & continue. 

Just as an example: if Dexter absolutely LOVES someone ( not romantically, specifically ), he wants all of their attention & gives them ample amounts of his affection through touch, wanting to be touched, & affectionate gestures. It’s a BIG step up from Dexter’s shy-away from physical & emotional contact, & it requires a lot of trust to even allow someone in his bubble of space, let alone wrap their arms around him & let himself relax in that space. 

I've talked about Dexter’s views of love & affection a LOT in the past, so I’m trying to keep this relatively short but ! Dexter can be very affectionate, but only to those that earn it through trust & security & catch his eye in particular.

8. WHAT POSITION DOES YOUR MUSE SLEEP IN?

Catch Dexter flat on his back most of the time, splayed out in a starfish position & ready to take up as much room as possible. The longer he sleeps, he’ll stray into the opposite position, curling into a small ball & taking as little room as possible. Of course, it’s not this black & white, & he moves around a lot in his sleep a lot - kicking at sheets & getting himself tangled in blankets, but back & ball are his go-to start & end positions in bed.

dexter, asleep: photosynthesis. Photosynthesis.

9. COULD YOU HEAR YOUR MUSE IN THE HALLWAY FROM ANOTHER ROOM?

NO DOUBT YOU COULD. Dexter is just a loud person, whether he thinks he is or not. Be it due to something he’s doing, from lab work to even just reading a book - it’s typically a surprisingly noisy activity. 

You could definitely hear him if he’s talking to another person; he’s incredibly animated, his voice changing pitch to describe something with emphasis or even if he’s just getting loud because he’s upset, he has a mouth & he must scream at the other.

Even when he’s ALONE, he’s not utterly silent; he’ll hum, whistle, even talk to himself if only to fill the void of silence. A little funny that he constantly begs for quiet & peace when he himself can’t even supply it.

In short, why does he exist

[themattress]

I Grade: Lusamine

The first female Big Bad of a Pokemon generation...what the Hell went so wrong here!?

Games: In Sun/Moon, Lusamine is the Big Bad. There is no question about it, there is no adversary higher on the totem pole. And not only that, she is one of, if not the most terrifying villains the franchise has ever presented. Completely out of her mind and detached from reality, self-absorbed to the extreme, prone to raging mood swings, devoid of morality, and worst of all a textbook abusive, narcissistic parent to her children Lillie and Gladion, the president of the Aether Foundation is very easy to fear and loathe. And refreshingly for the franchise at this point, Lusamine doesn’t actually have a huge, destructive, high-stakes goal in mind. There’s a chance for mass destruction in Alola because of what she pulls, but that’s not actually the point. With her, it’s more personal: she wants to enter a world where she can be with what she loves most, the Ultra Beast Nihilego (which her twisted mind deems to be perfect, “beautiful” children that need her as a loving mother), even if it means abandoning her mistreated actual children and hurting or killing the Pokemon closest to them to do it. Clearly, this bitch is another Ghetsis: excessively vile and wholly irredeemable. Right?

......RIGHT?

Yeah, wrong. Bizarrely, Game Freak didn’t seem to actually realize just how badly they were portraying Lusamine, as it wasn’t their intention. In their minds, Lusamine was a tragic villain: a woman broken by the loss of her husband to an Ultra Wormhole experiment gone wrong, becoming possessive over her children in a misguided effort to not lose them too, and then getting addicted to Nihilego toxin while trying to find a way to get her husband back. The toxin messed with her mind, amplified all of her negative qualities such as her possessiveness toward her children to the extreme, and gradually shifted them to be directed solely toward the source of the toxin itself: Nihilego. This is why by the end of the story, Lusamine is treated as redeemable, with Lillie making strides in reconciling with her offscreen and even traveling away from her found family in Alola to go find Lusamine special medical help in Kanto.

But this just failed to come off to the majority of players. Not only is most of the necessary backstory spoken of above buried within the postgame and relayed by sources other than Lusamine herself, but all of the actual scenes in the game with Lusamine do way too good a job hitting close to home for players that have either had or known people who’ve had abusive, narcissistic parents. The child abuse angle is portrayed so strongly that any nuance gets lost in the shuffle. An astonishing number of players don’t even appear to remember Lillie reconciling with and going to help Lusamine at the end, their memory selectively stops at the powerfully-delivered speech from Lillie: “Children are not just THINGS that belong to their parents! We're not made for you to just discard when you get bored with us! That is terrible, Mother! You are terrible!"  The idea of Lusamine being redeemed and reconciled with her children is not a happy one to them, and so they ignore it and continue hating her.

This backlash clearly caught Game Freak off guard, and they made an effort to rectify it. In Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon, Lusamine’s trajectory is changed. No longer falling prey to Nihilego toxin, she is still a highly flawed and arguably abusive parent and still commits morally reprehensible acts, but now it’s for the greater good: she wants to stop the looming threat of Necrozma from destroying Alola. Her backstory is mentioned by her in the story, and it becomes clear that she’s truly motivated by her foolish pride, feeling as if defeating Necrozma will validate her self-absorbed self-image of a savior and make up for the fact that she couldn’t save her husband and drove her children away in becoming too protective of them. When she is thrashed by Necrozma and causes it to get loose and create the very threat to Alola she was hoping to prevent, Lusamine undergoes some serious self-reflection and character development for the rest of the game: reconciling with her children, making peace with the fact that she’s never getting her husband back, fixing the harm she had the Aether Foundation cause, and overall having a clear and efficient on-screen redemption.

BUT, unlike with Cyrus in Platinum where issues he had as both a character and as a villain were corrected, here Game Freak was so concerned with correcting Lusamine’s character that they neglected how she was as a villain. Since they removed the main factors that made Lusamine such a memorably terrifying villain in S/M, she now comes off as a retread of Zinnia, the antagonist of OR/AS’s postgame Delta Episode. This in itself still might have not been too bad since she still plays this antagonistic role quite well, but then the game goes and has Lusamine made to look like a putz compared to other villains not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. First she’s beat down by Necrozma, then she’s sold out by her own underling Faba, and finally she’s held hostage by Giovanni. None of the Big Bads of the previous gens have been treated this way, as is reinforced in Episode RR where they all get to shine, so it happening to the first ever female Big Bad kind of feels like a slap in the face for many. 

The IOS game Pokemon Masters continues Game Freak’s course correction by showing us S/M’s Lusamine after she has recovered from Nihilego’s toxin, and we actually get to see her redemption process onscreen as she struggles to be a better, more selfless mother to her children and move beyond the immense guilt she feels for hurting them so badly in the past. Much like in US/UM, she still has her moments of shallowness and narcissism, but the fact that she’s aware of these flaws and is working on self-improvement makes them forgivable.  

Lusamine, when taken as a villain in S/M, is great. Lusamine, when taken as a villainous character in US/UM, is great. The problem lies in the fact that there is almost nothing in common between the two depictions of her, which while having an explanation behind it (one is juiced up on Nihilego toxin and the other is not), it still doesn’t change how jarring it feels. On the whole, the score for Lusamine in the core game series is dead middle. A good villain, but she could’ve been so much better if she was properly thought through from the beginning.

Score = 3

Anime: OK, I probably should be angry at how Lusamine is portrayed in the Sun & Moon anime series. She’s a silly, zany, energetic womanchild as opposed to a refined, graceful professional, she isn’t a villain at all since her evildoing in the anime’s Nebby arc is given to Faba and she only becomes an antagonistic Ultra Beast hybrid against her will, and furthermore she is the furthest thing from a depiction of the Gen VII Big Bad in that she is actually a Big Good: as the commander of the Ultra Guardians, she is who Ash and his friends take their orders from in their missions to defend the peace in Alola. I imagine that many people who were fans of Lusamine as a villain took this as an egregious betrayal.

But with that said, I just fucking love her! Because she appears so regularly and has interactions with so many different characters, this is the most fleshed out Lusamine in the franchise, the most real and human-feeling in spite of how comically she often behaves. The tragedy of the loss of her husband and the troubled relationship with her children manages to be kept in tact even without making her a villain, and she naturally has the happiest resolution out of all versions of the character. So despite not being evil, she’s still a fabulous Lusamine.

Score = 3.5

Manga: The chief human antagonist in the Sun/Moon Chapter, Lusamine is very well-portrayed here....for the most part, anyway. She starts off as mostly an adaptation of the S/M games’ version, but Yamamoto takes great pains to draw her a certain way - ridiculously widened eyes and a near perpetual smile on her face - to make it abundantly clear to readers that something is wrong with her, that this isn’t her normal state of mind and she is clearly badly drugged up on something (Nihilego toxin). It’s similar to this manga’s N, except...good. Because the manga can go darker than the games, we actually get to see flashbacks that show her emotional abuse of Lillie under this state, and they are extremely unsettling.

She reaches her peak when her insane goal is revealed: rather than want to go to the world of Nihilego, she’s been so intoxicated that her “love” has spread to all Ultra Beats and she wants to bring them all to Alola in order to make a paradise for them where she can be their mother. And she succeeds, too! But even that isn’t enough for her, and so she sets out to capture fucking Necrozma because she feels like only then will her paradise be complete! This leads to the highlight of her role in this arc: “Mother Beast” Lusamine vs. Necrozma! Seeing the Big Bad of S/M and the Big Bad of US/UM go at it is exhilarating to witness.

But there is one HUGE flaw holding this incarnation of Lusamine back from total greatness: it turns out that her losing her husband, getting hooked on Nihilego toxin, and everything bad that transpires with her...was facilitated by Faba. Lusamine’s personal agency that makes her story more tragic is neutered in favor of making some douchebag man responsible for it. Maybe Kusaka did this because he was worried about the readers being able to accept Lusamine’s redemption otherwise, given the reaction to her in the S/M games, but it was still the wrong call to make. He was doing so well with this Lusamine, combining the best from S/M and US/UM in her, and was building her up as the biggest human antagonist in the arc, the penultimate threat before Necrozma...and he blew it. Oh well, she is still effective in the role he has her play, and I consider this problem to be more of Faba’s than Lusamine’s.   

Score = 3.5

TCG: Lusamine debuts with the “Lusamine” card in the Crimson Invasion expansion, staged as the person who is responsible for unleashing Ultra Beasts into Alola. While not to the extent as Lysandre, Lusamine also proved to be troublesome to official tournaments and her card banned from any Expanded format games played in them. The same card was reprinted in the later Ultra Prism set, with Lusamine now being in her notorious Mother Beast form.  

In the Lost Thunder set, Lusamine and her Aether Foundation return to cause more trouble, with Lusamine getting a new “Lusamine” card. This time it was a rule on the card that you can only have one of it in your deck, and you can only play it under specific circumstances. 

Score = 3

Other: In the Pokemon Evolutions web series, Lusamine shows up in the 2nd episode “The Eclipse”, voiced to perfection by Dawn M. Bennett. She’s adapted from Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon here, abusively sneering at Lillie about how useless she is and how only she can be the savior that Alola needs. This makes it all the more satisfying when she’s reduced to a cowardly wreck following the beatdown Necrozma gives her, while Lillie is actually able to face her fears and stand up to the monster alongside Selene in order to rescue Nebby.

Score = 3

TOTAL FRANCHISE SCORE = 3 out of 5

Lusamine is a good villain in the franchise, but it will likely always be a point of frustration that she couldn’t become a great one. Everything about her on paper seems like it would make for one of the best antagonists we’ve had to date, but it just didn’t stack up that way in execution. Whatever the medium, Lusamine ended her run not looking like the Big Bad of Gen VII, with Necrozma, Giovanni, or even Faba upstaging her in that position. And that is extremely disappointing, given how many people had wanted a female Big Bad for years and were so excited that we finally seemed to have one. But hey, she tried. Kudos to her for that, at least.

BONUS: Which version is my personal favorite?

While on a strictly personal level I love the anime’s version best, when I have to choose which Lusamine works best in the villainous role she was created for then I’d have to go with US/UM’s version. While her constant getting nerfed annoys me, she still is effective as the source of all the conflict in the main story (even Necrozma would not have been the threat it is without Lusamine provoking it). And cutting down on all the craziness and child abuse, no matter how memorably terrifying that made her, did wonders for making her a nuanced foe. 

[theabyssalmuses-archived]

no, really the MAIN thing to remember about ‘Otis Vondork’ is that he just...doesn’t stand out... except; the fact that he doesn’t stand out means he stands out. Make sense? No? Ok good keep reading it will eventually. 

He is basically just an ordinary man there is really nothing overly special about him. He lived his life as an engineer and made a tidy living for himself...he didn’t experience anything particularly bad or particularly good. There were hardships, sure, stuff like workplace injuries and debts and other things that come with living as a human- and there were simple pleasures too, like getting shitfaced drunk and partying or watching his favorite movie BUT 

none of that is particularly extravagant. He lived his life as an ordinary man, there is nothing special about him fundamentally. He could have been anyone, and yet --

The fact that he’s so ‘ordinary’ is what makes him so special. He could have been anyone, but he was him. No matter how ‘ordinary’, all humans are 100% distinct and unique. in all the universe, you will never find 2 humans who are 100% identical (unless they’re direct clones but that’s a fringe case) 

In his regular verse, he’s exposed to all kinds of wild and crazy shit- everything from Serial Killer Plant Ladies and Demon Kings to the entire expanse of the Multiverse and everything in between. Fantastical and Ridiculous things constantly happen around him. In a way, this is where the whole idea of him being a ‘protagonist’ comes from because it feels as if all of these things are happening ‘to ‘him because they are. He has almost 0 control of these ridiculous happenings and yet almost all of them at the very least involve him somehow. 

Otis, as a person, is very very normal and yet his life is very much NOT so.

This, in turn, has created a weird sort of situation where his ‘humanity’ shines as something ‘extraordinary’, despite he himself remaining as ‘nothing special’  Despite having nothing of note, in a way, he embodies ‘humanity’ 

He is kind and caring without thinking, and for the sake of others, he puts himself in danger without a second thought. Wholly accepting the ‘good’ and bad’ of life, be it in other people or himself, he takes it all in stride- 

“Good People? Bad People? ...I guess they do exist, but...there’s no use focusing on ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’. The world isn’t so clear cut...if you ask me...it’s about who you are now, and who you plan to be... or something like that. At any rate, it’s best to just take this kind of thing in a case by case basis....at least...I think so. Even if you’ve done bad things in the past...if you just keep moving forward, I think it’ll be okay...probably.” 

Which, again, is likely where this idea of him resembling a ‘shounen protagonist’ comes from, since a lot of this stuff is similiar...but ultimately the reasoning and cause are different. 

Yeah...the easiest way to put it is to say Otis represents ‘Humanity’ in perhaps it’s purest form...but that doesn’t really do anything for him. It doesn’t grant him any special powers, nor is it anything to do with the fate of the universe. He doesn’t do magic, nor does he have any increased resistances or ‘special talents’ 

He’s just a human through and through, and yet even so- 

He still manages to do some incredible, impossible things, even as a human. He survives amongst (and befriends too, quite often!) all manner of crazy, dangerous and sometimes downright evil individuals, all while shrugging it off as if it’s normal. “ It’s who they are now and who they plan to be that matters, right? They aren’t planning on hurtin’ anyone right now, so they’re fine in my books.” 

It’s not a superpower or special ability...it’s just called being Human. 

And with humans come flaws. Obviously, Otis is not a perfect individual. While he’s caring and kind, he can also come across as cynical and cold at the same time. He closes off his feelings a lot, and he has a bit of an alcoholism problem. While generally perfectly tolerant of others regardless of many factors- he also holds some prejudices (though he does his best to keep them to himself...)...that is to say, when it comes to ‘Robots’ or ‘Androids’...it can only be called ‘Robophobia’. 

“O-Oi, calling it that is...ah, well...It’s not like I’m afraid of them, or hate them or anything...but, i mean...It’s just...if someone built them to be like a human, that doesn’t mean they are, does it? If all their actions can be predefined by numbers and stuff...ah, y-you know? I think the less said on this the better...Ahah...” 

( Yes, he doesn’t quite understand how robots and androids can be seen as ‘people’ ...We’re working on that, though. Given that he’s an engineer, you can kind of understand where that kind of belief comes from...but it’s still an issue. Thankfully, there are several people in his life who constantly bully him over it do their best to correct his thoughts on the matter.)

But- he still won’t treat them any different...It’s all internalized, after all. Even if a robot was about to be hit by a car, or shot...he’d still put himself in danger to help them. 

And of course, 2 of his most defining traits... 

Stubbornness + Pride.  They go hand in hand with each other, really. Otis is an extremely stubborn man, sticking to his own beliefs and ideals like a mollusk to a rock. That isn’t to say he’s a close-minded individual..he’s capable of changing his opinions quite easily when supplied with relevant information...but only he can change what he believes.  

And that’s why he almost never gives up. Just like before, that parallel of a ‘shounen protagonist’ comes up again. His stubbornness means he’ll keep on doing something even if that something is merely living. He won’t give up because there are people he cares about, there are smiles he wants to protect. He may not be a ‘hero’, but he at least wants to make those precious people happy. 

And even then-! Even if he had nothing left, even if he had no one left who was important to him, he still would not give up. His logic would just be 

“Well, i’ve already come this far. What a waste of time it’d be to stop now.” over and over again, ad infinitum until his body gives up under the strain of his mental fortitude. Although he’s never had much of an opportunity to put it to the test in his main canon (thankfully?), it is there- waiting. 

It’s this stubbornness..which is definitely a major flaw, it’s caused so many arguments, that allows him to stand before Gods and Demons as nothing more than a mere human- and tell them he won’t accept the ‘Fate’ they’ve written for him, nor will he simply roll over and accept it. 

Honestly, how is this man even alive...he really should have died, doing stupid shit like this...I guess he’s surprisingly lucky, too? 

TL;DR: Otis is a good boy and i love him so fuckgn much  ; ; 

[manonmidgen]

OH HUNTER; IF YOU DIDN’T WANT THE BEAUTIFUL SO BADLY, PERHAPS YOU WOULD’VE FOUND IT IN YOUR SPIRIT SINGING SOFTLY.

❝ she thinks that she’s the worst so she acts like she’s the best. ❞ NANA KOMATSU? No, that’s actually MANDOLYN ‘MANON’ MIDGEN. A SEVENTH YEAR student, this GRYFFINDOR student is sided with MCGONAGALL’S ARMY. SHE identifies as CIS-FEMALE and is a PURE BLOOD who is known to be CONCEITED, FAKE, and FICKLE but also HARD WORKING, ENCHANTING, and MAGNETIC.

tw. bullying.

links. pinterest.  spotify.

stats.

MANDOLYN ‘MANON’ MIDGEN ,

7th year gryffindor. Pureblood. Prefect.  President of the potions club.

Gemini Sun / Sagitarrius moon / Scorpio rising.  / born 20th june 1:12pm

wand: hawthorn / dragon heart string/ 14 1/2″ / brittle

patronus: would produce a swan if produced. 

NEWT classes: potions; herbology; charms. 

favourite subject: potions. least favourite subject: history of magic.

electives: divination & care of magical creatures.  

character inspo: mia thermpoplis ( princess diaries. ) caroline ‘ cool girl’ ( snotgirl. ) lottie person ( snotgirl. )  | albums : melodrama by lorde / lush by mitski

see more here ! 

bio. ( this got long, but i can offer you this meme in this trying time. ) 

IT’S TOO UGLY TO BE HUMAN. IT’S TOO UGLY TO BE YOU. CHILDREN ARE SCARED OF THE DARK; THERE IS NOTHING REAL TO BE MADE OF IT.

the midgen family , a lesser thought of pure blood family with nothing else to really say about them ; they say that the families money dates back to them having a stake in the creation of butter beer but there’s little to no historical archives to support this.   they, for the most of history, had simply just been; been nothing iconic or memorable but simply just existed in the sidelines. a safe and cautious place to be.

Madolyn Midgen,   the youngest of the midgen family tree and only of her generation, the first and only born of Eloise Midgen.   Although Eloise did marry,   a lovely pureblood named Rupert, the condition came that their child would keep the midgen name.         the midgen’s for long had only been blessed with a single heir each generation,    almost always a female, so the stipulation had been written into the family.

Most people don’t describe childbirth as the most beautiful things,  the babies red, screaming, and unkempt ; but most get over this hurdle in a few days. yet madolyn seemed to stay that way. her limbs not growing as they should, her face unexplainably red, and flaky, the puffs of black hair doing nothing to disguise the ugliness of the baby --        apparently the sight of her face alone was enough to cause the rest of the reception to burst into tears.

I THINK PERFECTION IS UGLY. I WANT TO SEE SCARS, FAILURE, DISORDER, DISTORTION.

minging midgen.

that was the smart name the 5 year old boys made up for her;       and like the world on atlas’ back, it was the burden that the ugly duckling carried with her - shackled with - for the rest of her childhood years.

Elementary school was just more of the same;  the girl that people would ask out for fun, for laughter, despite any kindness she might have held in her heart, her attitude couldn’t sway people to look past her stout figure and cystic acne. mud would poured in her hair; snails placed in her shoes; people who touched her were said to be cursed with germs -- ;      her attempts to make friends went most often in vain and her birthday parties went by every year without a single card or cake.

It caused Mandolyn to develop crippling anxiety;  body dysmorphia; the over emphasis of her flaws in her own eyes. she’d pick at her arms and glance at any mirror that she walked by ; any laughter that she heard she’d automatically assume it was about her.

this led to a shy girl ; who constantly burst into tears and without a single back bone in her body-- her spine would bend in on itself as a shield from any jeers,  but it also left her extremely comprisable to any suggestions. she would often just go along with anything suggested because of the concept that if she did what they say; maybe they would like her; maybe they would leave her alone.

she became the easy pickings of pranks, jeers, a punching bag with the stability of wheat.

Already at the ripe age of 10 years old mandolyn had been duly crushed by this role that she played in life, despite any encouragement from her mother or father.

They promised her it would get better, and it did. And luckily, after a few more years or two of sucking it up, it finally did.

AND SUDDENLY I AM A PHOENIX FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH AND IT WOULD ALMOST BE BEAUTIFUL IF THE WORLD WAS NOT ENDING

When she arrived to Hogwarts, she was sorted into Gryffindor which people assumed must have purely been a family heritage decision, as no one would ever think the girl who seemed to hunch in on herself so much she could roll down a hill could ever be a gryffindor.

The first two years of school were almost entirely uneventful,  of course, 11 years old love to pick on each other, and the rampant bullying followed her like wild dogs wherever she went, but she was slowly growing out of the childhood pudginess and gaining some length to the otherwise stumpy limbs she’d been born with. Mostly, she continued to fulfil the role she had played in primary school ; though, the presence of a few true friends made it somewhat bearable. they were thick as thieves;  completely nonjudgemental of each other, and for a second, it seemed that mandolyn was gaining some sort of confidence, but still, no independence of back bones -- - she simply just continued her childhood pattern of following.

The changing moment ( the birth of the phoenix ; the ugly duckling shedding the grey coat ) was three days after her 14th birthday, her third year, when spectating an impromptu game of quidditch left her in an awful face cast the likes that meant she had to momentarily drop out of hogwarts; a Midgen tradition to do as soon as something went wrong; She had to miss the last month of summer semester — and like the ugly duckling came back like a swan.

The late bloomer blossomed, and the magical cosmetic surgery didn’t hurt much either. But more importantly, the change in look seemed to go hand in hand with a change in confidence (the one bubbling now bloomed). The once shy and inept Mandolyn became well spoken ; charming ; magnetic ; alluring to the point that nobody recognised her at the beginning of the fourth year.

So Mandolyn rebranded herself as Manon, she says it means french for beautiful. Finally, she managed to receive the attention she had been almost dying for since she was a young child, at only the price of 2 months of education and weeks sat in a hospital.

But whilst her face became beautiful,     her personality soured slightly, which was noticeable to almost all of her actual friends ( the three of them that existed. )

Her personality became as fake as her face as she lied, cheated, and smiled politely to try and weasel her way into the social scene she had so longed to become apart of. She became liked, and popular, but at what cost ? The price of being able to have genuine human connections with most people.

Whom once was a genuinely nice girl, scared of human confrontation and going with the flow to avoid any problems grew a spine. and also a bite. she became snarky, slightly argumentative at times, and wholly competitive with being pretty and popular as her only real intentions. she began to care a lot less for anything genuine unless that genuine thing would benefit her in some regards. but despite the presence of a slight back bone, it was still as brittle as her wand,   she would still do anything for attention, to prove to herself that she was liked and popular.          easily manipulated & entirely fake.      the not blonde barbie doll with as many clothes and switching professions & friends. ( and ACCORDING TO THE RUMOURS; SHE’S FILLED WITH JUST AS MUCH PLASTIC ! )

in her fifth year; mandolyn is made prefect, she’s told by the head of gryffindor that her change in courage, determination, and ‘standing’ up to her bullies was a comendable feet, and in collaboration with her good grades and her pristine record, she was a great candidate for prefect.  mandolyn took the opportunity with open arms for she thought it would only help to bolster her now growing reputation.

YOU ARE STARING OUT AT A WORLD ON FIRE COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW UGLY YOU THINK THE ASHES ARE.

When the deaths hit, and the world suddenly became a lot darker than Manon could ever realise, her well perfected facade started to crumple, and the idea of popularity no longer seemed as ideal as it did in the past.

Perhaps it was longing for the simpler days without death around every corner, but she’s begun to doubt who she really is — and her impromptu decision to change her name is only aiding in adding to her identity confusion.

Part of her decision to aid in Mcgonnogal’s army is down to Manon trying to follow what she believes is the righteous path; fighting against the darkness that is seeping in through the cracks in Hogwarts stone walls. Because in Manon’s mind,   she feels that as soon as that problem is resolved, all of the issues that are surfacing in her mind will suddenly disappear — just like what happened when she got her magical face list.

wc.

less wanted, and more connection ideas to start plotting ;

- core long term friendship group,            the few friends manon had before she was ever manon-- the non-judgemental, supportive friend group who was always there for mandolyn to cry on // most likely might have felt spurned after manon’s re-invention of herself, or might have been passively against her new personality, or supported her new found confidence [ the current logistics are very easily changeable ~ ! ]

- the new influence of friends,                 the group of friends, or partying group, that manon wedged herself into after she re-invented herself as cool and ‘beautiful’ ( in her own opinion. ) // probably a friendship group built more on benefit and falseness than any actual emotion. [ again current logistics are very changeable ; it’s just a broad sentiment of ideas. ]

- the bullies,                 people who teased mandolyn because of her cystic acne, short limbs, uneven bone structure and poor posture -- and may have continued to after she rebranded herself.

- the love interest,               manon is more into girls than boys, but is very fluid and casual with her relationships so any long term interest is probably going to have some sort of angst based on that -- alternatively, i’m all for hook ups and one time things in building a web -- as manon most likely wanted to date as many people as she physically could to bolster her new reputation. 

- i’m obviously 100% open for more open plotting ;or filling any connection ideas anybody else has, so please feel free to message me surrounding that ! i’m really excited to be here and plot so !! yeah !!!

[ellerevelle]

okay so im feeling crazy and detached again (as usual lately)

but instead of spiraling into absolute fucking panic, I’m deciding to take today to just ... not wholly subscribe to this manner of thinking BUT. JUST FOR NOW. I feel like taking some of the craziness flack off myself and blaming it on some shit outside of myself. Because feeling this weird and detached cant all just be me. So here’s a brainstorming of whats got me fucked up, in no particular order: 

Trump is our stupid President

That guy who told me he loved me daily and asked me to be his girlfriend after basically living with me immediately after meeting me and I fell for hard despite a ton of red flags CHEATED on me while I was away visiting home. 

And then blamed it on MY bad communication? fuck that guy. 

But now I see one of the girls he slept with (multiple times, three days in a row) I see her everywhere all the time in everyones instagrams, at everyones parties... ugh. 

Um. People are dying. Close to me. More importantly and spefcifically women I love are dead. 

I didnt get to see Inga before she died. I was too busy forging a relationship with CHEATER GUY. Didnt get home in time to see her. Talk to her. 

Grandma. This has been the whole first year without her, come November. Its subtle, but terrible and I hate it. She was my last matriarch. The last woman who’s blood is in me. 

because Mom’s dead too. And has been since August of 2015. 2015, right? God it feels like forever ago now, probably because I’ve pushed it away. She died unexpectedly and NO ONE IN MY FAMILY HAS SAID THE WORD SUICIDE OUT LOUD even though thats what happened. She OD’d on prescribed opiate painkillers to escape her depression. And we NEVER talk about it. 

So I kindof feel insane. Not talking about things that are clearly there. Like, are they not clearly there for anybody else? Now all my women are gone. My brother literally avoids talking about feelings. My dad is a little more receptive but is more the comforting type than the forthcoming, express onesself type. Getting sentimentality out of my brother is like pulling teeth sometimes. But yet if his son does something cute, its God’s Work and he cant help but cry and get that beautiful lovie squishy look on his face. 

I’m jealous of my own nephew. I see the way my Mom loved me, in the way my Brother loves his son. And I miss being that perfect to somebody. My Dad loves me forever and always and there isnt a word for how grateful I feel for our relationship. I dont take that for granted at all. It actually kindof scares me because... hah, well what if Dad dies? Like, before I’m ready? I’ll be even MORE fucked! 

Anyways. Austins been pissing me off. I’m sorry but although Polyamory is possible and cool and im sure quite beautiful for many, 

The Austin poly scene is fucked and tainted and a bunch of slutty people having orgies and not TALKING about anything and its ruining the healthy vibe poly is incumbent upon. 

So, whatever I’m angry. So fuck that noise. 

I feel like because of cheater guy and my anger at the psuedo poly orgy sexy bullshit scene in Austin, I feel like I’ve broken up with a whole group of friends. Like, I dont want to be around any of it. I dont want to see you eat mushrooms and twerk. I dont want to see your stupid, super naked outfit. I dont think its hot you carry a flogger or can pole dance or slink around like a tarantino character. It used to be hot and thrilling and fun, when I felt like it was connected and for love and sharing and caring. But now it all just is slutty and vapid and useless and cold. Like a sad clown. And thats not sexy, its dark and desperate. *this is about both VERY particular people and broad general strokes. There are several extremely amazing friends in the scene and outskirts thereof that truly inspire me and dont fall into this catagory in my mind, although they’d probably still be angry with me for dissing things ^^ the way I just did but. fuck it, this is MY journal entry and I can be irrational if I want to. 

You cant be open fucking minded ALL the time. Sometimes people really arent acting with anyones best intentions but their own. I’ve used up SO MUCH FUCKING ENERGY making myself soften and open and “woke” and trying to go with everybodys flow. And I’m exhausted and over it. I have my own principles and theres nothing wrong with having differing opinions than someone else. 

All summer I’ve been feeling like I’m a bad person for not liking or not understanding this hyper sexual scene in Austin. I thought, “why am I shaming a scene thats giving me opportunity to really shine and be free?” when, in an IDEAL world, yes thats what the scene could be. But in what actually fucking unfolds -- humans SUCK and dudes SUCK and girls SUCK and everybody (especially when horny) are fucking STUUUUPIIIIIDDDD and ideals get thrown out the window! people arent nearly as “woke” as I gave them the actual credit for. Seriously. So! I’m fuckin OUTTIE! 

I’ve felt broken up with a whole scene. FUck cheater guy, fuck poly, fuck orgies, fuck people who are reckless with my love. 

Back to the list:

I’ve been eating too much out of boredom. Which I’ll blame on lack of quality social interaction in this town. Where are the scholars? Where are the sexy edgy BRAINY people? I’m tired of hot people in little clothing in the summer. 

Ah! Another thing for the list. its been TOO FUCKING HOT OUT. FOR MONTHS. 100 DEGREES FOR MONTHS. thats enough to make anyone insane. 

So i’m sick of teenie boppers in their nothing outfits in the heat. 

I want old smart people in peacoats. I miss books and weather and frowns. Irritable debates about literature or physics or religious theories. 

I only like my own brand of cigarettes. 

My roommates are annoying me. I dont really like my house anymore. Theres too many humans and not enough square footage. Four people to one kitchen is TOO MUCH SHIT. EVERYONE BUYS THEIR OWN BANANAS AND THEY ALLLLLL GO BROWN ON THE TABLE. thats four peoples worth of bad bananas. FUcking stupid. 

I dont have a hairdresser here. Sometimes when I feel shitty I like to throw money at the problem. Buy something. Get a haircut. See a show. Etc. 

And my hairdresser love is in Philadelphia and getting a flight to get a haircut is slightly insane (without a longer visit)

I miss Adam. 

What else can I blame my upset on. Shitty politics, shitty weather, shitty social sexual scene in my town, I dont like my house, I dont like my hair. Its too expensive to live here. No one in my immediate acquaintance or friend circle seems interested in the sort of romantic relationship I’m seeking, nor if they did does anyone have the “it” factor I look for which I’ll *try* to describe maybe in another post. 

So. I sit inside my room and try to fix stupid remedial things as if itd make a big impact. I tidy and put away clothes in attempt to feel less cluttered but am too scared to make BIG cuts and BIG changes. So instead I light insence and watch netflix and eat too much. I have started going to Barre3 again more and have been semi regular with therapy so thats something. 

I really ought to start doing “morning pages” like the book Fiona loaned me suggests in its FIRST GODDAMN CHAPTER. But, alas, I am lazy. 

No, I have become recently lazy. 

I’m spoiled. I dont do things I dont want to do. Its a major character flaw. I only push and struggle if I see worthyness in it, and lately theres been serious lack of evidence of that in, well, anything.

 #depression! 

so, I guess in summation- because nothing has been a WORTHWHILE struggle, EVERYTHING feels like a struggle. Humph. thats... thats not good. But it does, because i dont see the worth in a lot of goals or tasks or even relationships, (and i dont mean the greedy “what can I GET for ME out of this!” sort of b.s.) (I mean the... conserve precious energy, is this going to teach me something or help me grow as a person or bring love into my life sort of vibe) ...

when I dont think the energy expenditure is going to pay off, I dont do it. Or I do it half way or lazily or with tentative fear. I guess I could do an experiment and just do everything with HOPE and see if my energy put in will get a different result... but. like. I feel like I did that all summer and he cheated on me. And my “friends” said “dont be angry, be poly” and I couldnt call on my Mom or Grandma and so I call on eating and isolation and running away to visit home where no one cares I dont have a job. where the house is big and the air is cold and my friends are smart. 

I really miss Kristian. That was one of the greatest feelings of self love in my entire life. I felt like, if someone that special noticed ME. Saw ME. Little old, semi chubby, not famous ME, and wanted me around for a couple tour dates. Then I ought to believe in myself TOO. I wanted to dance, I wanted to make art, I wanted to take photos, I wanted to be bold, I wanted to be humble, I felt so open and content with myself. I was motivated to work out, I was motivated to eat healthy and clean and small portions. It was easy. It felt so fun. I loved him. I dreamt big. My imagination was so warm and excited. My inner critic was GONE. 

But he faded away. He got back with his ex. The shooting star left the sky. I’m still grateful for the experience at all, but. 

I feel a little stupid for thinking anything could’ve happened. 

And I truly miss feeling so special and excited about life. 

I dont want to run away from Austin out of fear. But I cant tell if I’m unhappy and want to leave genuinely, or if this is the spoiled part of me thats like, “this sucks, lets leave.” instead of pushing though, curating something better with some struggle, and sticking it out. 

How do people make big life decisions like this? I feel like thats what marriages do. People stay together and fight. But sometimes they get divorced anyways, its just been longer. More years wasted. When maybe it wouldve been healthier to leave sooner and cut the cord and be free to live without, sooner. 

I really like a lot of things about this city. But I really dislike a lot too. And I cant tell where I want my life to go, in a grand sense, so its hard to pick which attributes will matter in the long run. 

I dont think I should leave yet. Maybe a new house. Or like, serious efforts to declutter this one. Is this just excuses? Ugh. 

Declutter this house. If that doesnt feel better, leave the house and move to a new part of austin. If that doesnt feel better, leave austin. 

I need a job. 

[eqcentriceqclectic-blog]

Inherited Demons

2019/12/07 – Nothing Right

Nothing I do is ever right. In His eyes, I will always be a feral horse that needs to be put to the whip. If I don’t and I get free, he hopes that my freedom in the wild will end in cold realisation in my last moments as I am beset by wolves. Even, if objectively right, it is as if an offense on his very existence—as if he were a god or a ghost and disbelief in him would condemn him to abyssal oblivion. And so, being right or doing well is actively discouraged—either through deafening and oppressive silence, or through roaring rage and insufferable indignation. He may be seen as quiet, but that is not to be taken as docility or humility—no; it is a sinister and seething silence. Normally, improvement is supposed to be seen as positive.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve either wanted to run away from home or outright kill myself. It desperate times, they’ve been my mantra or my prayers to soothe my wretched soul. What stopped me from running away? Fear of failure. Fear of strangers. Fear of retribution. An incompetency instilled in me long ago. One I replicated and instilled in a brother placed into my charge, even as a shell of a person—shattered shards looking for a reflection. It wasn’t until that reflection attempted to kill himself that I realised what my shoddily-assembled puzzle-of-a-person had done. I had become that which I had despised all my life--that dictatorial and patriarchal demon for which is suffered beneath had impregnated in me a piece of its insidious soul. It had gripped me in its agonising grasp, and regurgitated the darkness imparted to it, into my screaming-tear-streaked face. And thus, the cycle would continue like a horror-franchise that just won’t die. That was the day I realised—despite my love for the pure curiosity and optimism of children and the undeniable yearning to cradle and raise small-beings of my ghostly-ovaries—that I could not perpetuate this curse. To adopt a family-less entity into this story would be tantamount to sacrificing them to the demon that inhabits our family-line with my own bloodied hands.

I remember when I was bird-sitting Rita (a cousin’s feather-child) and He attempted to interact with it while wildly inebriated—like he enjoys doing—and held out his hand. Rita, as finicky conures tend to be, bit him HARD as she did not know him and did not like him. I feared for that bird’s life as I recognised the drunken rage that overtaken his alcohol-laden-bubbly-demeanor, as he shouted some profanity at the bird. I called out, to let him know I was present, and explained to him why she bit him before telling him to leave her alone.A similar incident happened years ago when I had my bird, Vira. She was a feisty bird and I loved her bravery and assertiveness but the curse infused in me by Him did not make distinctions between humans, non-human animals, plants, or inanimate objects. She and my brother have both bore witness to the same rage and self-perceived-indignity-fuelled-wrath I bore witness to growing up. I loved her dearly, but could not reconcile my own behaviour—I could not split this demonic presence within myself with the love I had for all living things as they both were a part of who I was and it was maddening. But as with all things deeply-unsettling, we seek to take flight from it—as is natural—to get as far as we can from it and forget about it so we can go about our days. To face it, would be to face the demon—itself, a part of you—and to face your own guilt and culpability in its sins, for without you, it would not be able to do its work as a formless, parasitic, lifeless virus. To face your own guilt and responsibility in hurting others is a terrifying thing; it chills you to your core and tears it to shreds because you want to believe you are a good person who does good things, and when you are not the hero of your own story, then you can never be a hero in any story—if you are the villain in your own story, then you will be the villain in all stories.

Looking myself in my own shattered mirror, I could finally see the demon bleeding forth from behind my ill-assembled portrait… I could only play at perfection for so long before all the mismatched pieces fell apart and revealed the vast darkness that mocked me beneath. Like a self-indulgent actor without a true mirror to look into, I enchanted myself with delusions that I was not He and that I was above that which lurked at the bottom of every bottle. And all the while, I was a cheap imitation of him—like a copy-cat-killer imprinting on a serial-killer worshipped by the media. I didn’t need alcohol to justify my crimes, for I had a divine mandate bestowed upon me by my ancestors, which was bestowed upon them by successive emperors, and god-kings before them, and thus the gods themselves. Chinese patriarchy is as insidious a poison as it is insipid as it permeates into every aspect of life in the family. It may not have been such a poison, but it certainly is now. As they say, “Power, absolute, corrupts—absolutely.”

In Chinese culture, there is a powerful emphasis put upon passing on the family name—so much so that female-infanticide was a widespread practice in China. My grandmother used the phrase ‘tuang-tong jeng’ frequently when urging her living descendants to procreate and pray for sons. Also present in Chinese culture is the misguided belief that because all elders are to be afforded respect, it automatically blesses them with the power to always be right—no matter the circumstances. It can be seen in dazzling display with successive Chinese-emperors slaughtering countless people over the millennia, simply for disagreeing or embarrassing the father-of-the-nation with reality and truth. Is it not why the satirical fable of the Emperor and his “new clothes” exists? An emperor that is willfully-blind is one that is indulgent and willfully-negligent—and those that could not see beyond their own gilded mirrors, often led to the starvation of the masses they were given dominion over, and ultimately, their dynasty’s demise. Once they lost their divine mandate, another emperor would rise and a spoiled descendant of his would lead it to ruin, in cycles unending.

After help assembling my mirror to match those that see me for who I am, only now am I able to see the apparition hiding behind it. As puppet-master and puppet entwined as one, it is my responsibility to sever those strings that snake around my offending limbs. It is my responsibility to cast off the shadows that shroud me, as it has become me. It has infused into my essence and become its own—my own—demon, separate from His, but no less His satanic-spawn. Only after acknowledging its existence, screaming its name, can I even begin to excise it like the viral cancer it is. The process is never-ending, for if you ever believe you have destroyed it, your complacency will allow it respite to recover and thus spite your own efforts to defeat it in the first place. We must always strive to be better, despite our accomplishments and desires to revel and relish our achievements—for idle hands do the devil’s work. Resting on our laurels is like laying and brooding upon our nest-eggs atop a poisoned heath—our savings and our accolades will rot along with us. We’ll only fester along our heaped up hoard, as a magnificent dragon does upon all its glittering greed. If I’ve gleaned anything over the past two or so years, it’s that our own pride and arrogance will always be our downfall. It understand that it was my own hubris in believing I was less of a terrible person than he was, only to find myself, one day, staring back at Him in the mirror. I saw me, regurgitating exactly what putrid horrors was spat into my own face, at someone else—someone I was told was below me—simply because they were younger or less of a person than I was. And that is how He still sees me: lowly, basal, lost, stupid, barbaric, “sub-human”—and worst of all—a child. And one that is unbridled, feral, and wild—but worst of all, “uncontrollable”. And, also, wholly unimpressed with the infallibility of the patriarchal parental dictatorship to which begs rebellion and resistance.

I will no longer scrape my head at His feet simply because he decided he would do the “holy” duty of acceding to his mother’s wishes of him to marry a woman he didn’t know, and would never love, and bear for him a son he could present to his parents—just because he is my father and my elder. He is as flawed as we all are and I will not grovel at His feet simply because he thinks he is my superior simply because he is my father and my elder. Respect is earned—not demanded—and throughout the years, my respect for him corroded away until there was no flesh left to burn off. Similarly, I have but few happy memories of Him, as the visceral emotional abuse and on-going threats of physical abuse incinerated the vast majority of them as Vesuvius did the people of Pompeii, or the atomic bomb did to the people of Nagasaki. Neither annihilating disaster completely removed the people from existence, as there remained ashy shells or radioactive shadows in their wakes—such are my happy-memories left, as obtuse imprints in the eroding beach-sands: as vague stories of ‘Snow Black and the Seven Dwarves’, as ephemeral visions of rehabilitating young birds blown to the ground by torrential storms, and as echoes of lessons on why not to step on ants. Stronger and clearer are the memories of being slapped for protesting against a particular untested brand of pizza or being chased with a large wooden stick purchased from Home Depot for refusing a hair-cut from Him. Another, particularly, peculiar poison of His was his inherited creed of beating his own child if that child was bullied to tears (or into action)—a shadow he internalised from his own father when being bullied by neighbourhood Vietnamese kids for being Chinese, back in Vietnam.

Growing up as a child in a house-of-cards propped up by two maternal hopes for their fifth-born children was a bittersweet hell, as many are—sweet enough for hope to grow but not enough to survive under the withering harsh bitterness. Perhaps it’s more of a purgatory: not horrible enough to cause one to kill oneself, but just enough to wish so. Those two grandmothers were my oases of love and care in an arid dusty desert of moonless, endless, nights. They were my guiding stars, above all the rabid fighting and gnashing teeth of childish gore-cloaked-hyaenas that called themselves my parents. My grandmothers were the life-sustaining waters, and my parents were the malarial insects that abated my existence. When my brother attempted to kill himself, I came to find out—of course, through another one of their petty and accusative arguments—that neither of them ever dreamed of having children and raising them. Why? Because they were still children, themselves—they were mostly raised by their elder siblings as their immigrant parents worked to carve a life in an increasingly hostile environment. That environment they grew up in abruptly changed as conditions in Vietnam deteriorated and they it was decided that they all needed to flee through hell and high-water (and marauding pirates). The Peter-Pan-like situation became even more so during His teen and young-adult years; formed here, in Canada, under his elder brother and without parents or grandparents to guide these “Lost Boys” fell into a world of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and guns that their new peers immersed them in. His elder brother went from a sixteen-year old running a small textiles business that employed workers in Vietnam to an alcoholic who would gamble his way into a depression in Canada. He would go from an inquisitive child making toys out of trash and sticks and swimming in monsoon-flooded roads to a teen drinking himself into a stupor and smoking until his adult teeth would become grey and lined with tar. Children raising children does not yield the positive results, and least of all depressed children raising children—this is true of my parents, and of myself. I had no business being in-charge of my baby brother—absolutely zero—especially with the foul fecal froth spilling from their mouths, to mine, as it then spilled down to my younger brother as I abused him emotionally, verbally and physically as my parents did to me. As explained in the paragraphs above, it did not occur to me until later what I was doing was wrong—it was just what I’ve known and what I felt.

I started to notice how my cousins, aunts, and uncles would look at me as I terrorised my brother over his mistakes—or my perception of his mistakes and improprieties. My logical reasoning at the time was that, “I’m not allowed to do that; why is he?” They always looked startled—or, “unsettled,” maybe is a better word—at my outbursts and threats. I remember once, in a restaurant—where I sat next to him while we were seated amongst our cousins and the adults were sat across from us—where he refused to eat a certain food and I became unreasonably enraged at him and I threatened to cut the head off of the stuffed toy (acquired from Midway arcade in Niagara Falls) if he did not eat it. I had stunned everyone and their hearts broke for my brother, just a young child being terrorised by a teen sibling. Breaking this cycle of abuse was tough—especially while still being abused, yourself. After, breaking free from physical (less so, emotional and verbal) abuse, all the injustice and indignity and rage continued spilling on to the easiest and most vulnerable target, who—under patriarchal rules—would lack arbitrary familial immunity from my wrath and cruelty. Where I could verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse him for whatever I wished, I could only cry, whimper, cower, and hide. However, I did exact vengeance upon them by hiding or damaging the belongings of my parents in protest of their mistreatment of me. There was one instance when I was about six or seven and I fled out of the back of the house after having been shouted out of the tear-stained washroom I had locked myself into on the top floor of the house. On my way passed the car, after deciding that I would run away from home, my eyes burned with salted indignation and so I picked up a stone from the gravel bed and scraped profanities onto the car’s paint and transferred my raw emotions into words. I dropped the stone and continued past the garage and through the laneway until I reached the side-walk, still crying. I stood there, thinking, and came to a realisation that I could not go any further—for if I did, I would be kidnapped and killed by a stranger. So, I walked down to the corner and right back to the front of the house and down the alleyway back to the backyard and back into the house where my parents were still searching—His wooden stick still in-hand—without a clue that I had tried to run away (or that I had keyed words of profanity on to the car with a pebble).

In 2017, when Grandma first became weak after years of mismanaging her own hypertension-medication, I became involved in her healthcare in the balmy month of July. Before then, I didn’t even know she had hypertension and thought she took medication just because it was something a person did when they got as old as she did. After accompanying grandma and Him to both the hospital and her nephrologist, I began researching Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). I learned about how the kidney can be damaged by high blood-pressure and looked into the medication she was taking, going so far as to see which medications could be contra-indicated. I advised Him that grandma’s medication (since she became inconsolable and beyond fearful for her life and no longer was able to manage them herself and became paranoid that we (including the doctors) were trying to poison her and began refusing to take them for a while) should be split into two as then the hypertensive-medications were be better able to manage her blood-pressure through the day instead of causing a sharp drop for the day while allowing it to rise again in the evening--one of her medications for hypertension-management was even specifically designed to be taken at night which is when blood-pressure is supposed to naturally drop. He likes to take credit for this. He also likes to take credit for what he didn’t even believe for a long time—her weakness that started in the first place. When her health was declining in April of 2017, after her nephrologist cut her off from the round of erythropoietin he had initially put her on in the winter prior, He did not believe that it was her health, but her age. I would become increasingly frantic in asserting that this was the reason as the months dragged on and by July, she could barely get out of bed because of how anemic she was. I, unlike He, had done research into what “erythropoietin” was and why she needed to take those shots. I was upset at her nephrologist for cutting her off from those shots because he thought her red-blood-cell count was too high (after a blood-test in March/April) and he’d see her back in three months (this was the cadence of her visits to him: every three months, so approximately four times a year). Again, by July, she was so weak that He took her to the hospital twice in the latter half of that month and once in August where I accompanied them after ending my seasonal job a few days prior. I urged him again that it was the lack of erythropoietin shots and resulting anemia that made her so weak—but he again asserted that it was because she was old. Thankfully, the nephrologist prescribed another round of erythropoietin shots (one shot, every other week, for three months—so six syringes in total). However, the ordeal and fear of death had warped her mind—the nurse at the nephrologist’s office told us that because her GFR was so low, she would likely need dialysis but that dialysis for people aged eighty and up were too at risk of developing a central-line infection—and surgery for a kidney transplant would provide an ever higher risk of mortality. She also told us that she most likely only had two-years left to live—guess what? It’s been over two-years now. I guess it’s the same for when Push got the morbid news that she only had three months left to live and lived another three years. Anyway, I digress. After horrifying and terribly painful months of trying to sleep with an insomniac grandmother in the next room having an end-life crisis, chanting all through the night of her tragic ending, and trying to manage her anxiety, panic, and paranoia in the day-time after both He and mom went to work, and brother went to school, she snapped and her dementia advanced by leagues. In the years prior, I started to notice she became much less brave and much more reserved and careful—in addition to misplacing her watch and other things that told a story of short-term memory loss. She became a lot less aware of her surroundings where, before—as a mischievous little child—I would stand behind the wall at the base of the stairs and try to surprise her but just get a sweet old smirk and an adorable elderly quip as she walked by her silly grandson. However, ever since reaching ninety, just walking to her room and asking what she was watching would startle her half to death (and our floors are obscenely creaky)—she became a lot less aware of her surroundings and where things (or people were). Around this time, she also started to hear ringing in her ears when there was only dead-silence. After she became increasingly unhinged and violent, there became a need to hospitalise her—not for her weakness or anemia, this time, but for her aggression. She probably had not slept for over a month, by this point, and this was most likely the source of said aggression, paranoia, and anxiety. On the car ride there, she was openly hostile to Him while he was driving and my attempts to stop her so as to avoid having a car-accident turned her aggression towards me. When finally passing triage and reaching the waiting area of the emergency department, Grandma continued her violence, painfully hitting Him and I with her gold-and-jade-laden rings. When a room finally opened up, she refused to go and wanted to go back home (even after days and days and days of wanting to be taken to the hospital) and when we tried to gently push her towards the room, she suddenly turned around, and as it with the power of all the elephant matriarchs of the world pushed me and Him out of the room and began assaulting us before the nurses quickly called for orderlies and security to bring her down and tie her arms and legs to the hospital-bed in the room. Because of what had just transpired, she was upgraded to the sub-accute emergency section with a room closer (and facing) the nurses-station. She was sedated with haloperidol through injection because she refused to take an oral dose but during the process Him, I, a nurse, and two security guards needed to hold her down and she still was almost able to bite the nurse (and myself). After that, we were put into contact with the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to discuss placing her in an assisted-living facility and both 4th Uncle and He were seriously considering it and passed on the responsibility of coordinating with LHIN to me due to my higher education and superior command of English. They also put in a referral for us to the hospital’s geriatrics department and scheduled us to see a Dr. Cheng at a later date after the attending physician provided a temporary round of anxiolytics (lorazepam). When taking the lorazepam, she was much more docile and also able to sleep and it felt like we got her back from the throes of insanity—that is, until we had to take increasing doses and it became unfeasible to continue. Her violent tirades returned, along with her insomnia and we went to see the geriatrician. He proved to be—not just incompetent, but—wildly careless and inadequate; his bed-side manner was shockingly crass and crude. He never really listened when we came in for the appointment and seemed in a hurry to get us out the door with a new round of pills for her to take: haloperidol, sertraline—you name it, she probably was prescribed it. Some of them were worse than others, like haloperidol which left her a stumbling and drooling mess—taken long enough, left her bid-ridden and Him changing diapers and bed-sheets. Eventually, I decided it was time to stop seeing the geriatrician as I was also so upset with his flippant demeanor when at appointments in his office. He took a little while to convince, as He was afraid of Grandma reverting back to her violent and difficult self even though I was the one home alone with her while everyone else was gone for a majority of the day at work or school. As that was the case, the representatives from LHIN mostly dealt with me when they came by the house whether it was the social-worker on the case or the professionals she would send to the house. The most helpful professional was an occupational therapist who educated me upon dementia and Alzheimer’s as well as providing emotional support and advice on the situation with the geriatrician and his exceedingly terrible medications. Before this, in my ignorance, I was yelling and screaming at Grandma, confused as to how she could go from a completely normal and loving grandmother who I would give up the my own mother for to someone I was afraid of being around. After the occupational therapist left, my relationship with Grandma started slowly shifting back to one of positive interactions and normalcy. He, however, refused to read the educational materials the occupational therapist left to enlighten us on Grandma’s dementia because he refused to believe she had dementia because of how quick and abrupt the change was. He wanted to believe that she was doing this on purpose and after retiring before the Christmas of 2017, would often get into drunken tirades and yell so loud you could hear him throughout the house and even in the backyard. This continued afterwards, as well, and followed the cycles of her decline into bed-riddance (either from the anti-psychotics prescribed by the incompetent geriatrician, or the lack in erythropoietin) and ascent back into insanity and unnatural strength. In another descent in early 2018, after her nephrologist AGAIN decided that her RBC-level was too high and cut her off from erythropoietin for another three months, I again became insistent that He call the nephrologist to prescribe another round of shots. He was stubborn, as always is the case, and believed that her being bed-ridden and defecating in a diaper meant that it was her time—as if you were just born with a pre-determined age at which someone would die at. I was enraged so I took matters into my own hands after getting home from work one day in May and called the nephrologists’ office and angrily berated the secretary, to which she told me that all we had to do was call in after running out and they would send the prescription and shots to the pharmacist and we could pick them up. I sat there after the call, part-relieved that it meant Grandma wouldn’t have to go through another round of panic and part-annoyed that He did not want to do it because of laziness and self-importance (the belief that He is smarter than I, even without doing any research or having any prior knowledge about anything, even though He was always the one who took her to the nephrologist’s and family physician’s appointments). He does the same with plants and ended up condemning our eight-year-old starfruit plant to die in the cold, despite my protest. He always thinks he’s the smartest person, regardless of what experience/knowledge he has or doesn’t have in a particular subject—and I’ve inherited a similar manner of speaking-as-a-matter-of-fact-ly, as if I was 100% sure about what I was saying (which often gets me into trouble).

Depression In every waking day, the demon lurks within your shadow—always just out of the corner of your eye. As that sun sets and the lights go out, that shadow becomes an all-consuming spectre that fills the room as much as it does your mind—it eats that light your try to light inside, unhinging its jaws and swallowing the sun whole like a constrictor after it had crushed all the air from your lungs. A breath-taking darkness sends your heart into a frantic panic, straining and screaming and searching for every last bubble of air in the blood starting to leak from your eyes. Crimson tears streak down, acrid and burning, like streams of fiery lava making their way to the salty sorrowful depths of the oceans. Your head is feverishly throbbing with starvation, suffocating and drowning in itself as it melts from the draconic hell-fires lit under you by the shadowy-figure. You are more palatable to it when scared out of your mind and injuriously maimed by your own hand, so it eats at you night by night, piece-by-piece—it could be days, months, years, or even decades—but it is patient and diabolical. You are to it, like finely aged-wines or cheeses are to a wealthy connoisseur with too much money to know what to do with.

An Unwelcome Stranger Is His child, in his home, being a burden upon him. It doesn’t matter if this person does anything good, because—ultimately—this person is a stranger. A worthless stranger borne of his flesh and blood, that only continues to feast like a fat leech, engorging itself on His blood.

[emzamozeby]

(contains spoilers) GOT finale

Can we just talk about Game of Thrones for a second? (Because, let’s be honest – who isn’t? – sorry to all the non-watchers who really couldn’t care less) There’s been so much disappointment surrounding the last season, and I don’t want to say rightly so – but rightly so? I didn’t hate this season, but I also didn’t have any overwhelming feelings towards it at all. I would have preferred to hate what happened with a burning fury, or to be so overwhelmed with joy that I would be forever satisfied, but instead I didn’t really feel anything.

I actually felt more towards the last episode, in particular, after. Thinking about the first few seasons for these characters, what had happened to them and where they ended up – but I did not feel that during the episode, it was more of a reflective afterthought. Like, ‘huh, that’s over.’

Like I said, I did not hate how it ended, it just felt almost...too real? It ended logically? Logical is a very forgiving word for the ending, but the idea that all these people suddenly agreed that the wisest (and most moral?) amongst them should be King, (which yeah does make sense) didn’t seem to work in the world of Thrones. Technically the ending was completely correct, that’s how it should end up; goodies win, baddies don’t. But that’s where my issue is! 1. It’s a show with dragons, we ain’t got time for logical and “reasonable” endings. And - 2. The whole point of thrones was that there were no goodies or baddies, we saw everything from the characters’ perspectives - all the characters -  you were never really meant to believe a character was wholly good or bad – just human. The finale definitely wanted its audience to believe the “goodies defeated the evil”

There were so many seeds planted in the show, not just in this season, but previous seasons, that were left to die. One that springs to mind is Dany claiming she can’t get pregnant, and scenes and scenes of discussions about it, about how Jon wants a family, and that fear that she can’t give him one. Arguably it could be seen as how Dany’s rise for power made her forget her wishes for a family, (or if she ever did really want one) or more tragically, just when it finally crossed her mind again, the hope of love and power, is when her love literally stabs her in the heart.

I know the writers probably wanted us to feel most sympathetic towards Jon – but Dany is the tragic hero of all this. Her death had been predicted by majority of viewers, and we all knew it needed to happen – but it still fucking hurt. Cause she’s a great character, a great flawed character, (who despite everything still believed her and Jon could work, because love is always what fuelled her) and who deserved a better ending – AND THAT’S WHY HER DEATH WAS A GREAT MOMENT! 

This is what a lot of the season was missing, tragic endings that were necessary, and not just ‘cause they had nowhere else to go. A lot of the deaths this season felt a little too “perfect,” yes they were sad/tragic, but they all died how they probably would have wanted to go out? E.g. Lyanna taking down an undead giant, Jorah protecting his queen, The Hound finally getting his revenge, Jamie dying with the woman he loved etc.

With Dany though, it was the worse way she could have possibly died – and that’s why it worked. I hated how she died, but that scene was the one moment where I actually felt something, the one time the writing lended itself to some emotion – reminding the audience of how far she had come, this little girl just wanting to rule the world, because that’s all she had ever known. A woman completely ruled by her emotions to the very end – and that’s what did it - her love killed her. Not just literally in the form of Jon Snow, but her love for Missandei, her love for her lost family, her love for change – she was forever blinded and it was her undoing. Just when she’s about to get everything she’s been working towards – she dies.

To the people that said all the seasons of Dany doing good was for nothing, and that she suddenly snapped into becoming the Mad Queen, I do disagree with; this was building for a long time. It was incredibly well put by Tyrion about wherever she goes, she kills bad men, and that people cheered her on. As just as it may have seemed at the time, (I was all for the burning of the khals, thinking how badass she was), they were tyrannical ways of ruling. She “liberated” people by brutally murdering others – all she had ever known – and had always been successful with. We were just blinded by her “goodness.” Yeah she had good intentions, so we kinda forgave how she got there. 

She didn’t become the Mad Queen suddenly; I don’t think she ever became the “Mad” Queen. Dany had her own perception of what was right and wrong, she always knew what choices she was making, she always knew the weight of them, and she always had a clear purpose, as wrong as it may be to others, it was never because she suddenly snapped - she was always going to destroy King’s Landing. But she often, if not always, lay the blame of the destruction she caused at the feet of the other rulers, whether it was the slavers or Cersei – she never actually took full responsibility – because she thought was right. (Others may justly argue that that does make her mad, but I never viewed her as insane, just blinded by her perception of the world).

I think Jon should have died. (As well as Dany, not instead of). I genuinely do think I would have been more satisfied with the ending if he had. It made little sense how the Unsullied, and especially the Dothraki, were happy to keep him as a prisoner FOR WEEKS, for KILLING the QUEEN they all followed and fought for. Surely they would have executed both Tyrion and Jon, without a ruler telling them what to do, especially Tyrion as that was what Dany had ordered. Yeah Greyworm is tactical, so maybe he realised killing them without consulting the houses was a bad move – but also, why would he consult the houses? (Did he send ravens out? Cause Tyrion and Jon sure didn’t!) Greyworm didn’t respect the Western Lords or lands, he was only following Dany, who was now dead?! So actually, why would he care to consult them?

(Maybe Bran “saw” what happened and was like, I’ll be sure to invite all the people that will definitely say ‘aye’ when I’m crowned).

If Jon had died, been executed – whatever, I personally think it would have made Tyrion’s choice to support Bran make more sense, seeing as he’s been raving about how Jon should be the rightful king, basically suggesting he do the deed of killing Dany! Yeah, maybe he had time to reflect, but you think he’d mention it?

I think there should have been more of a threat, more tension! Maybe they planned to execute Jon, but the North, (yeah the whole north!) and other Lords, come riding up being like ‘oi, stop that!’ and the Unsullied and Dothraki are ready to fight the North etc. And maybe Jon’s death is what warrants peace, maybe Jon’s death is how Sansa negotiates the freedom of the North, to stop the Unsullied coming to kill them. It’s terrible for them to lose family, to lose the old King in the North, but if it means peace and liberation etc – he accepts his execution for treason – because at the end of the day, it was treason – welcomes it even, hating he had to kill the woman he truly loved. And maybe the whole reason he came back was so he could die to “save” the world from Dany, and to ensure peace after it. I don’t know, it’s a bit farfetched, and yes, there are loads of issues with this idea, but we needed something! Not just, off you pop back to the wall – bye. Maybe cut the hand he killed Dany with off – another one-handed monarch-slayer. Just something!

Speaking of Jon, addressing people’s views that his whole heritage arc was wasted, and what was the point of it? The point was that it was the undoing of Dany. She would never have felt betrayed by Jon, for his choice to tell his sisters the truth, she would never have felt completely lost and alone because of it, she would never have doubted the people around her, believing they would always love him more. (Of course, Jon always did have love of the people, but the point was, he became a HUGE threat to Dany because he suddenly had the only thing she had over Westeros – that she was the rightful heir – and just like that, she wasn’t – and she knew they would pick him over her). If Jon’s heritage hadn’t been revealed, there is a possibility (small, I know), that Dany wouldn’t have acted as she had, she wouldn’t have felt as helpless? So she may not have burned down King’s Landing with Jon by her side, with complete trust and love in each other. So yeah, there could have been more done with this plot arc of Jon being a Targaryen, (wasted opportunity for Drogon not to burn him and for him to remain unscathed – just saying), but it was never pointless.

(Though I do believe Varys was completely wasted! Where did all those scrolls that he sent out go? His death seemed to be only for a petty “told you so” moment, rather than propelling the plot forward?)

There were plenty of missed opportunities throughout the season and in the finale, and unfortunately it didn’t leave the audience wishing it wouldn’t end, but merely wondering when it would. It was a neatly wrapped up finale, with a feeling of content left in Westeros. Bran the Broken, (and unknowingly wise) is King, Tyrion is his Hand, the small council are full of the fun characters that the audience have always loved, (oh hi, Bronn, by the way, nice to see you), Brienne gives Jamie a just ending, Pod’s a knight, (his first duty is to wheel his king around), Greyworm heads to Naath, as he planned with Missandei, Arya gets to travel as she’s always wanted, Sansa is Queen in the North after fighting for its freedom for so long, and Jon finally pets Ghost.

Too many happily ever afters – even if they were terrible and difficult to get to, with tragedies along the way, it suddenly felt too easy, even though as an audience we know how far all the characters have come, and how much they have fought – it still felt a little too perfect, with the characters all ultimately getting what they wanted. 

It would have been great if the series ended with Jon walking into the forest, with the distant sound of three horn blasts – giving the audience a little more intrigue and tension to end the series. (Yeah, I know, that doesn’t make sense, the whitewalkers are dead – but would have been a great moment).

The season has been flawed, but there have been some beautiful moments, some great acting, particularly from Emilia Clarke and Peter Dinklage, (the heart-breaking scene of Tyrion finding Jamie and Cersei this episode broke me), amazing cinematography, and the overall production value has been ridiculously high and mind-blowing. It unfortunately wasn’t the final season everyone wanted, but that didn’t make it bad. We weren’t shocked by the ending, as maybe the writers hoped, but merely surprised and at times confused, with a feeling of lacklustre. I personally was still very much invested to the end; I was never bored during the episodes. But ultimately, I was not as connected to the characters as I had been in previous seasons, which is where this season’s greatest failing lied.

Game of Thrones has always been about the characters, and when the audience stop feeling a true connection to them, that is where, and why, it lost its impact.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

What If modern Jamie and Claire after they get married in a church/castle visit Jamie's parents graves. So he can kinda tell them how happy he is. I just saw some pics of Kit and Rose Harington doing this and it kinda made me cry.

The ride from thechurch had been flirty and loving –– fingers tangling warmly, lips dancingcoyly, double entendre falling easily from our mouths. It was almost as ifneither of us knew where we were headed.

But just metersaway from our destination, Jamie had stopped. His hand released mine and hislips had fallen still. My fingers scrabbled over lace and mesh, beading andsilk organza, to retake his hand.  Inthe moments since he had pulled back from my touch his palm had gone clammy.

We parked the carat the gates to the cemetery and walked together up the hill, my dress hitchedcarefully up around my ankles.  Wordless,I paused just in front of him, turning and slipping my arms around his waist.

“Mo chridhe.”

“What is it?” I rested my hands on his forearms, drawing him closer. “Second thoughts?”  My breath was coming a little quickly, having matched his broad stride to the top of the hill.  

He wet his lipsas he shook his head, apparently unable to find words for whatever it was thathe was feeling. “No, no,” he mumbled, head shaking again. “Nothing like that. No.”

I faltered slightly on my heels as he stepped even nearer, insinuating his leg between mine despite the awkward barrier of my dress. Our bodies connectedalong the front in a perfect seam. He was closer now than he had been when he kissed me at the wedding ceremony. 

I felt the bump of his chin on the top of myhead as he nodded at some unasked question, his fingers curling into lace andmy flesh.

“I’m the luckiest man on earth today,” he mumbled, brushing the burst of beading up the side of my dress.“I wish they could have seen ye. Sae perfect wi’ those tears in yer eyes when ye said ‘yes, I do.’ Ye looked like ye could set me ablaze with a single look.”

“They were there,” I whispered, bringing myhands under his suitcoat and rising up the straight line of his flank. I believed it wholly, too. They were there in spirit, but also in every word he said, the way love poured from the way he looked at me and said his vows.

Even with thelast-minute gaffes, our day had been utterlyperfect. (A hole through two layers of my dress where Geillis had stepped on the train as I took a step, a song I had never heard before playing as I walked down the aisle, Jamie getting down on his hands and knees at the alter in a kilt to find my ring after it went falling and rolling under the altar when young Jamie hiccuped.)

The chapel was filled with the family that became our family when we each uttered “I do” and the group of friends webrought together agreed to support us when asked by the priest. Lit bycandlelight, my tears had mixed with Jamie’s on our lips when he kissed me.  

“I canna explainto them what ye mean to me and the way ye make me feel.”

For a moment Ibit down on my lower lip, fingers rising up his back.  “They already know. Mine do, too. I mean,they know that I’m going to be okay… because of you… with you.”

“Aye, they do,”he said as he exhaled a deep breath that made his chest relax under my fingers.He released a shuddering rasp of a sound as he brought his hands to my hips. “Maybegive me a minute alone wi’ them?”

“Of course,” Iwhispered, pulling back only slightly so I could look up at him.  His eyes were traveling over row upon row ofgrave markers. He did not loosen his hold on me. “Take the time you need.”

When he steppedaway, he continued to hold my hand until only our fingertips were touching. Andthen he took one more step and another, until he was standing over the looming marker of his parents’ gravestone.

After a longmoment, he turned and looked at me.  I took it as asignal, pulling my dress up and making my way to his side.  

After a beat, a squeezing pulse of his hand, he said, “Christ, I love ye and canna do this alone. I dinna have the first clue of what to say.”

“Would you mind horribly if I said something? I mean, can I say something?”

He cleared histhroat, an emotion-filled sound that stood in where “yes” would not quite come. As I lowered myself to the ground, hemade thick protestation, “What are ye––”

Turning over myshoulder, I gave him a look and he lowered himself down beside me, arranginghis kilt over his knees.

Bringing myfingers to the cool stone in front of me, I sighed a little and tipped my headto rest on his shoulder before I spoke.  

“Iwish I could have met you.  I am the onewho has the honor of loving the boy you raised to be a man, a perfectly flawedman.  He is half of me.  The better half.  And when I need him to be, he is the whole ofme.”

Jamie’s handreached out and covered mine, pressing my palm flat against the stone.  

“Most peopleleave little in the world when they go. Money and property, sure, but legaciesare rarer. And this man… he… he…” I stumbled a little over my words, choking onthe feeling rising and buzzing like bees up my throat.  

Thelogical part of me had shut down entirely and I was speakingentirely on impulse. 

“Jamie is a testament to the two of you. And he loveswholeheartedly, unreservedly, with such an unquestioning inclination to self-sacrificethat it sometimes frightens me.”

Jamie turned hishead, his lips meeting the top of my head and lingering there after a kiss, hisbreath warm along my scalp.

“He’s quick to asmile and I catch him looking at me sometimes… it takes my breath away.  And he has such a sense of humor, you’d beproud, even if he thinks fart jokes are funny.”

“Hey,” hemumbled, a slight chuckle making his shoulders vibrate. “She doesna mean that, mam. I’d never...”

He turned his head just enough that his cheek rested on my head now.

“I was no’ sure ‘boutwhere I’d be wi’out Claire.” I leaned closer into his chest, feeling the eventhrumming of his heart through the layers of his wedding finery.  “She makes me so verra happy.  Happy in a way I didna ken I could be –– thatanyone could be.”

“Ye’d love her,mam.  She is sharp and decisive.  She keeps a mean garden. She fixes me when I fall headlong into some daft injury or another.”

My hand found his bare knee, a wandering thumb traveling the length of a paper-thin silver scar along the kneecap (rugby when he was twelve, falling onto a rock, crying as his mam bandaged it and his da told him “ye’ll pick yerself up this time and again and again, lad”). I had traced the scar with my mouth and fingers probably a thousand times.  I knew the arch of it, the slippery feel of it under my touch. Knowing it, knowing its story, and knowing him was a comfort.

“And da, she’d give ye a run for yer money atchess.  Good God in heaven, she’s clever. Lord knows she runs circles around me. Evenwhen she’s pokin’ fun at me, I love her. She doesna run from tellin’ me when I’m bein’ a fool and she keeps me sane.  Ye ken I say this grudgingly, da, but ye were right. Ye just ken when it’s the one ye love, the lass who is destined to be yers. And ye just ken when she loves ye back.”

Our hands fell.

One large, warm hand trapped my fingers against his knee. I turned my hand so our palms met. Lifting my headfrom his shoulder, I caught his eyes. They were glistening with a thin film tears, but he was smiling –– a radiant, about-to-burst-at-the-seams look.

“And I canna waitfor ye to see where we end up. Together.”

[toonstarterz]

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #141

The first half of Golden Week is over, and Tomoko has found herself the object of “platonic" affection for four different suitors. And as our intrepid heroine muses over the which of them to pursue, out of nowhere comes the dark horse. Once thought to be missing in action, this little girl, having been there since the very beginning, threatens to overtake the competition in one psychotic swoop. 

Chapter 141: Because I’m Not Popular, I’ll Go to School with Kii-chan

The things that Stuffed Yuu-chan and Pals have seen...

Ah, the classic Introvert Burnout. I had a feeling Tomoko would be drained after having what may have been the most socially stressful time of her life. Not simply for being social, but for how much she had to navigate as a fish out of water. Each “date” involved a new experience for Tomoko to address, and that much effort at once can be really exhausting for a layabout like her.

That my friend is what we in the TvTropes community call, “Tempting Fate”.

Heeeeeere’s Kii-chan!

Can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this entrance. We all know who Kii-chan is. But even those outside of the loop would get a feel for who she is. Adorable and sweet-natured, but disturbing due to an apparent lack of negative emotions (even when appropriate). Ah, Kii-chan, it’s been far too long. 

Nothing to say here, really. Just think it’s a particularly lovely picture of Tomoko. 

Because the popularity of a manga series is largely dependent on real-time reception, it’s very common for mangakas to add new, “popular” characters, or give the spotlight to characters who’ve been out of focus. Watamote is no exception. It may seem contrived to bring Kii-chan back after being gone for a while, but it works here because it relies on Kii-chan’s character to it, instead of a series of implausible plot developments. Kii-chan is just considerate of her cousin’s schedule–that’s all we need.

The first hint of Tomoko’s reawakening as the role model onee-chan. 

One of the perks of being a sporadically-appearing character is that you can really see just much the art style has evolved since the character’s last appearance. For Kii-chan, she hasn’t really changed much design-wise other than being a little taller. But even then, the linework is much cleaner and consistent this time around, which compliments the more “everyday slice-of-life” approach Watamote’s been embracing. 

If only she could grow a nose.  

The best thing about this type of censorship is that you don’t necessarily have to understand what's being censored. All you really need is a bit of context to put the pieces together. The outlines are detailed enough that we can see the characters as some kind of humanoids with animal features. And given what we know about Kii-chan, it makes perfect sense.   

Y-Yeah, I...I’ve totally heard of that show.

Other than the whole Ucchi situation (which is slowly becoming an unintentional blessing), this is the last of the misunderstandings that still needs resolving. It’ll be hard, though, since this particular issue isn’t that troublesome. For now...

Look at that platonic sibling bonding.

Perhaps I’ve been conditioned by manga/anime, but I find it refreshing how Watamote has managed to develop the Kuroki siblings’ relationship while avoiding any incestual subtext. Lots of series oversell the sibling relationship by having them be overly affectionate and clingy. With Watamote, their bond feels organic because they don’t have to be touchy-feely. An unspoken quality time is all there is to it.

It’s hard to get a read on Tomoko’s emotions here, but at the very least, she seems troubled. It could very well be that Tomoko just realized that she’s changing in regards to the media she consumes. The former her would’ve probably jumped on the Kemono Friends bandwagon, but the reality is, Tomoko’s otaku interests are being compromised by the mainstream, at least as mainstream as rap battles get. 

But the kicker is...she realizes this change isn’t all that bad.

Of course, nothing beats watching anime with your psychotic cousin. 

The whole “pet-sitting” relationship they have here is a tricky one since each side is trying to accommodate the other based on “flaws” that don’t exist (or no longer exist). This usually results in an endless cycle of misunderstandings that lead to nowhere, but this confusion has transcended that cycle to develop into a progression of sorts. Similar to the Ucchi situation, the absurdity became so frequent that it just became reality. One that each side has been influenced greatly from.

With her constantly adorable face, you forget that Kii-chan is a middle-schooler and is therefore old enough to know about things like sex and perversion. Like Yuu-chan, she may look innocent, and while she was aware of such things as a kid, she didn’t really get it until they approached high-school age.  

You know, I read this really good manga called Kaguya-sama: Love is War (shameless plug, I know), and they actually had a chapter about a rap battle a while back. Given that both series tend to be up-to-date on contemporary trends, it makes me wonder...has rap suddenly become a hot thing in Japan? Or has it always had its niche audience?

I’m sure many fans knew that this was going to be an inevitable development whenever Kii-chan showed up again. Unlike Tomoko’s school friends, Kii-chan wasn’t there to see the slow, gradual growth of Tomoko’s character, so it must have hit her like a ton of bricks to see her precious onee-chan go from helpless loner to mature teen in the blink of an eye. 

Sometimes I wonder just how pitiful Kii-chan thought Tomoko really was...

Why would you censor Disneyland now of all times?

Those of us who were clamoring to get close-ups of the photos taken in the Disneyland arc finally get their wish.

The Kowarith photo is my favorite, even though two-thirds of the people in it are faking their asses off. While that may be my personal bias towards the Tomoko-Yoshida-Yuri trio, I think it reflects a better sense of kinship between the girls. The effort is there, phony as it is, to support each other in an awkward situation, which is fundamentally what the series is all about.

The assumedly Fireworks photo is also pleasing, make no mistake. You can definitely feel more genuine emotions (or lack thereof) being expressed than in the other photo. But this focuses more on the individual than how they work as a collective group, despite there being more people. The girls ultimately look like six different colored Skittles–part of the same package, but each unique.    

Could this be the start of Kii-chan revitalizing her perception of Tomoko as a super popular girl? I sure hope so.

How ironic. Kii-chan’s perspective of Tomoko is starting to grow ever so gradually on the upside, whereas Tomoko’s perspective of Kii-chan grows more and more negative.

Hang on, is that supposed to be some fake Dragonite shirt? Neat.

At this point, people assuming that Yoshida as some kind of punk based on her looks is a dead horse of an issue. Some stereotypes exist for a reason, I suppose.

I see your game, Nico Tanigawa, using a deliberately vague line about “two girls” to make your readers overanalyze a single panel. All I have to say to that is that I am completely and utterly guilty.

One of the girls is probably Yuri, if only because she’s the only girl to appear in both photos. As for the second girl, your guess is as good as mine. I’m inclined to say Ucchi because if Kii-chan only has their appearances to go on, then Ucchi and her emoji-face make quite the impression.   

I’m getting Yuu-chan vibes here with the way Kii-chan phrases half-insults with a friendly demeanor. 

+ 1 TO THE HAREM.

Kii-chan is definitely that relative you leave a self-imposed boundary on. Fine in small doses, like at parties and family gatherings, but long-term exposure is unhealthy for the brain. This isn’t even a wholly exaggerated fantasy on Tomoko’s part. Okay, the eating bit is a little much, but given that Kii-chan allegedly dreams about treating Tomoko like a pet, the latter is right to be a little concerned.

There needs to be an AU one-shot of Tomoko, Tomoki, and Kii all going to the same school at the same time. Right. Now. 

I do appreciate that despite Kii-chan’s deteriorating sanity, Tomoko doesn’t view her as a lost cause and even tries to put a positive spin on it. Reconciliation Arc is a-go! 

Did Kii-chan really have that big of a growth spurt, or has Tomoko just reached her peak in height? Not sure how far the genetics will go, but Kii-chan becoming taller than Tomoko is only going to make her even more intimidating. 

This little scheme of hers is definitely reflective of the “old” Tomoko, but there’s a nice reversal going on here. Instead of Tomoko trying to make things sound cooler than they actually are, she’s trying to make things seem worse. Of course, Murphy’s Tomoko’s Law states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Especially if Tomoko wants it to go right. 

Ah, Ogino. The only character whose relationship with Tomoko has remained relatively unchanged despite indirectly having the most impact on Tomoko’s life.

Better update her Wiki page now. 

It’s pretty telling how it’s these two who cause Tomoko the most grief. It’s not the delinquent who routinely bashes her face in, not the pervert(s) lusting after her little brother, and not the otaku who passive-aggressively teases her. As for why, I think it boils down to the fact that Ogino and Kii-chan challenge her comfort zone the most. It also doesn’t help that Tomoko doesn’t interact with them as often as the others, so she hasn’t really had the time to get desensitized by them.

This freakin’ teacher, man.

The second worst part of Ogino’s “help” is that she never actually lies. Sure, she exaggerates to hell and back, but it’s always loosely based in reality, like some cheap movie adaptation of a best-selling novel. 

But the worst part of it is...you can’t hate Ogino for it. Her personal assessment may be founded on largely suspect reasons, but it’s still an honest assessment. I have no doubts that Ogino really is proud of Tomoko, and that’s exactly why she’s the best worst teacher.

That’s true. If Ogino gave that spiel to people like Hijirisawa or Hatsushiba–y’know, people who don’t know her as well–they might actually buy that crap. But people who know Tomoko like Yuri or Nemo, people like us, can tell that Ogino’s sugarcoating the whole thing. Kii-chan, with her terrifying skill for knowing too much, is no exception.  

Ah, I see. This is one of those put-all-the-secondary-characters-who-we-haven’t-seen-in-a-while-into-one-chapter chapters. 

Can’t complain, though. I like Itou. 

“Or something” can also be translated as “lust after Tomoki”. 

We don’t really have much to go on for how Itou views Tomoko, but I think it’s reasonable to think that she may not see her in that good of a light. Not only did Tomoko give off a weird impression when she played off the whole fist bump thing, but Itou’s “powers of perception” probably made her aware of Tomoko and Komiyama’s frenemy-ship, hence her “warning” that Komiyama was around.

The Inherent Awkwardness of Second-hand Relationships: The Life of Tomoko.

Betcha’ no one saw this interaction coming. Whether it’ll lead to anything more remains to be seen. Itou’s still got the whole “friendship potential” going on with Futaki, but given that she has the tolerance to BFF Komiyama, I see no reason why she can’t befriend a psycho like Kii-chan. 

That desire to “loudly blow” is Kii-chan’s inner demons screeching out in desperation for release. I pity the fool who unleashes the beast.

That does sound like your typical amateur definition of a psychopath, doesn’t it?

For the record, I don’t actually believe Kii-chan is a psychopath, despite the jokes I made. There are way too many moments that discredit such a claim. Now, if you were to accuse Kii-chan as being some sort of deviant (sexual or otherwise) I might see that. But ultimately, I think Kii-chan was just a victim of having her innocence shattered too fast and too soon, which made her more, uh, crafty than Tomoko could handle. 

Man, it’s been a long time while since we last saw Dicky-chan, hasn’t it? Hope we get to see more of her (and Sayaka, for that matter) after this chapter.

I love how even when she’s collecting masturbation material, Komiyama has to hold her camera phone all lady-like. If the term “purevert” ever needed a concrete definition, this girl would be it.

Main Character privileges, that’s why. 

Get. The. FUCK. Out. Of. Here.

With each subsequent appearance, Komiyama’s standard for what constitutes a bitch primed to steal away her Tomoki-kun falls hilariously lower. It’s not enough that a girl in their class makes two seconds of eye contact with him, nosiree. Any girl with an inkling of a relationship with Tomoko is not immune, even if it’s his own damn cousin. Granted, I don’t think Komiyama would be so pathetically scummy as to confront Kii-chan about it like she did to Yoshida.

...I hope.

“Best friends” may be stretching it now that we’ve gotten this far in the series. However, there is one aspect of Tomoko and Komiyama’s relationship that triumphs over all the others:

Absolute candidness. Even now, the only one who gets to see the complete, raw package that is Tomoko Kuroki is Komi-something. While Tomoko has made substantial friendships with the likes of Yuri, Nemo, and Katou, Tomoko still restrains herself just a tad lest she pushes them away. It’s only with Komi that Tomoko bears her full ugliness, which I think has developed into some freakish level of respect/understanding that none of the others can claim.

Damn, even the bishounen dude gets to make an appearance. All we need know is Lethal Chef Girl to make a cameo and I’m set. 

Nope. Any game is an away game when your “harem” shows up to cheer you on.

A few people have expressed discontent with how the chapter seems to end so abruptly, and it’s a fair criticism. It may be the lack of a “Next time...” tagline throwing people off, but while this chapter indeed ends at an odd point, it’s not that unprecedented. Some of the previous chapters ended this way, like that time Komi was all “Oi!” at Yoshida at the cafeteria, which indicates that this chapter is likely one of those series-of-vignettes that also doubles as a build-up chapter. 

On a positive note, while the chapter does feel prematurely ended, how the next chapter plays out if it is connected to this one is sure to be a surprise.