#occasionally it's worth asking 'how am i supposed to interpret this scene'

[queerfables]

Refreshing to see so many reaching bad faith takes about characters played by two white men for a change.

[theviscountbridgerton]

Hi I wanted to asked you a question. I've never heard of the books until I saw the trailer and thought it looked light and frothy and something to fill the P&P/Emma shaped hole in my life so I started looking into it and I keep seeing fans talk about a scene and that it's bad. I've read through your blog and picked up some of the details but I think I'd like to know what to expect because I'd rather be spoiled than triggered. How bad is it? It is more GOT than P&P?

Hi Nonny, it’s definitely more P&P than GOT. 

However, yes there is a scene in The Duke and I book that depicts a rape. It was probably not intended to be interpreted that way, and it’s not treated as rape in the books but it is unequivocally rape. 

I am 99.9% certain That Scene will be changed in the series (and I’ve discussed how I would change it before) but obviously we won’t know for certain until we start getting reviews. 

The rest of the answer is below the cut because obviously it might be triggering and it is spoilery for the books, even if they change it on the show itself.

Trigger Warning: There’s a description and discussion of a scene that depicts male rape below the cut.

(If I need to add additional trigger warnings in this post or in the tags, please let me know.)

When Simon and Daphne get engaged, Simon tells Daphne he can’t have children. She’s upset to hear this as she has always wanted to have children, however she loves Simon and decides that he’s worth it. (She also has no choice at this point, but that’s another discussion.) Daphne assumes that Simon can’t have children because he’s infertile. The truth is that Simon doesn’t want to have children because of his own traumatic childhood. 

On the night before their wedding, Daphne receives the worst wedding night talk from her mother that’s ever been committed to paper. We learn that Daphne is incredibly ignorant about sex. She’s shocked to learn that people do it for pleasure, she doesn’t know the mechanics of sex and doesn’t understand how babies are made. Violet, a grown woman and a mother of eight children, does very very little to educate Daphne on the subject and leaves Daphne feeling very confused and still very ignorant. At first, Simon tries to avoid having sex with Daphne but after he hears how little she knows, Simon realises he can use her ignorance to his advantage. He has sex with Daphne, but instead of ejaculating inside her, he withdraws and ejaculates on the bed sheets instead. 

I personally think that the problem of consent in the relationship begin at the point Simon starts having sex with Daphne while lying to her. Simon has told her that he can’t have children, so Daphne believes that what they’re doing will not result in a pregnancy. That’s obviously bullshit. The pull out method is a terrible method of contraception. Simon is an intelligent, educated, sexually experienced man who has traveled the world. He knows that he’s engaging in a sexual practice that could result in a pregnancy but he has not informed Daphne of this. He has not given her a choice in participating in this. Whether or not she wants to have children, it is wrong to engage in risky behavior when she’s not fully informed or hasn’t consented to it.

This carries on for two weeks until Daphne has a conversation with the housekeeper who makes a remark about good healthy seed quickening the womb. That night, after they’ve had sex and Simon has once again climaxed in the sheets, Daphne puts two and two together. She confronts Simon about lying to her, he gets defensive. They argue. Daphne tries to talk to him about it the next day, but Simon shuts it down completely.

That night, Simon goes to his bedroom expecting to find Daphne legs akimbo and instead discovers that she’s locked herself into her own room and refuses to let him in because she isn’t going to sleep with him anymore. Simon reacts like an asshole. He threatens to break down the door until she lets him in, he grabs her roughly, he demands that Daphne sleep with him and when she refuses, he tells her three times that he owns her and can force her. Daphne stands her ground and argues back, and she makes Points! 

Simon leaves, gets drunk and returns. He’s super drunk and a little pathetic and Daphne takes pity on him and lets him sleep in her bed.

Up to this point, Daphne is 100% in the right. 

This is where we reach THAT scene.

After a few hours of sleep, Daphne wakes up to find a Simon sleeping soundly beside her and sporting an erection. 

Daphne felt the strangest, most intoxicating surge of power. He was in her control, she realised. He was asleep, and probably more than a little bit drunk, and she could do whatever she wanted with him. She could have whatever she wanted.

Daphne starts fondling him and Simon wakes up under ministrations. Daphne climbs on top of him and begins to have sex with him. Simon is conscious and appears to be enjoying it, even urging her on. He is still drunk however and when he realises what’s happening he tries to stop Daphne but can’t pull away as he’s pinned down.

His eyes pinned upon her with a strange, pleading sort of look, and he made a feeble attempt to pull away.

Daphne is fully aware that he does not want to continue. She knows he does not want to come inside her. She knows he’s trying to stop her. She knows that if he was sober and could get away, he would. Daphne persists despite all that and forces him to climax while still inside her. 

Once it’s finished, Simon is upset with Daphne and starts speaking with a stammer, a childhood impediment that he worked hard to overcome. He’s upset that Daphne’s actions have caused him to stutter and leaves the room. He later leaves Daphne. 

She wasn’t ashamed of her actions. She supposed she should be, but she wasn’t.

It’s never really addressed after that. Simon tells Daphne that he left because he was upset at himself for losing control of his stutter. Daphne doesn’t ever express regret for her actions, but she is surprised to hear that Simon left because he didn’t like how he’d reacted and not because of what she’d done, so on some level she has realised she crossed a line. She never apologises. 

The romance genre, and particularly the historical romance genre has traditionally had a problematic grasp on consent. The Duke and I was published in 2001, the conversation around consent has moved on a lot since then. The books are set 200 years ago, when there was no conversation about consent. Simon absolutely acts like an asshole and I feel there’s a murky issue of consent related to what he does with Daphne too. None of that makes what Daphne does acceptable. 

I’m really, really hope that I’m right and we won’t see the scene play out the same way in the series.

That scene, is by far the worst thing that happens in the series. There are problematic elements in the series and occasionally wades into murky areas of consent in other books but nothing that comes close to rape again. The series is is a fun, romantic read but there’s drama and angst too. Up until that scene, I was really enjoying The Duke and I, and I liked Daphne and Simon even though I thought they both acted very selfishly at times, particularly in what they put Anthony through. I find it very hard to like or enjoy The Duke and I now.

[donnerpartyofone]

reasons my i am probably too sensitive to have anything to do with other people

including other people’s drama that has absolutely nothing to do with me

i started reading this person’s new webcomic on instagram a month or two ago, and what started out as a fun little time killer that i looked forward to every day has started making me so uncomfortable that i wish i’d never heard of it. it takes place right now, in an especially embattled US city, and it’s about the dysfunctional lives of a bunch of shallow millennials, set against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous country in an unpredictable state of revolt. it’s solidly engaging, convincingly characterized, and rendered in a unique funny animal style; i wasn’t surprised to discover that it’s going to be published soon by the most reputable publisher of this sort of thing. at first, i was impressed by it because i thought the behavior and dialog of its insecure young people was so well observed. it felt like one of the only things of its kind that i’ve read, more or less about real people living right now, that was neither a broad ugly satire, nor a pretentious drama exaggerating the specialness of its characters. the other thing i liked about it was that while it was largely about their sex lives, it didn’t seem at all sexy to me. the artist has a kind of distorted, rough-hewn visual style that i thought put some emotional distance between the overheated state of the characters, and the real consequences of their decisions. then it all got weird.

the artist stuck a really long, graphic sex scene in the middle of story that made me think...oh, maybe i AM supposed to be getting off to this? that’s weird, this all seems really bad to me, like every character is just mindlessly, selfishly bent on destruction and not doing much to make me like them, and i’d been reading along thinking “god i’m SO GLAD i’m not in my 20s anymore and i don’t have to deal with people like this--or with the pressure to act like this, as if using sex to create drama and being ‘crazy’ is the ultimate thing a person can do with their life”--and then suddenly it felt like maybe the comic was actually some kind of celebration of this lifestyle, or at the very least it’s an intensely sentimental portrait of a time of life, and of types of people, that i cannot imagine feeling sentimental about. then something else happened that made the comic even MORE uncomfortable to read, somehow: it had been gaining traction at an amazing pace, with tons of people leaving comments to the tune of “noooo don’t do it!”, the way you would yell at someone in a horror movie not to go back for the cat, as each character made the worst possible personal choice in every daily installment. the “don’t go in there!” response seemed pretty natural to me, but then the artist stepped in and made this announcement threatening to stop doing the comic altogether if the readers wouldn’t stop criticizing the characters. pretty much everyone in the comments was like “???”. many apologized if their comments were offensive, although they had no idea what they could have said that was wrong; other people, who seemed more sure that they were the ones being accused, said that they thought you were SUPPOSED to feel critical of the characters’ obviously bad decisions. that was how i felt, and at that point i was just enormously glad that i never comment on shit online or get involved in any type of community shit, especially when the artist started explaining laboriously that all of the characters represent some facet of the artist themselves and so therefore none of them are meant to be seen in a bad light at all and they’re all meant to be loved unconditionally and if you find yourself thinking mean things about the characters then you are effectively shitting all over the artist as a person. a lot of readers fell all over themselves to be supportive, and i just thought...this isn’t something you should support, though. it sucks that the artist is feeling so sensitive, but they’re about to have a book out in the world where they won’t have any ability to threaten readers who are “reading it wrong” or having incorrect thoughts about it. i mean...life is full of uncomfortable experiences and people you can’t relate to, i really don’t think we should be promoting this hopeless sanitization of all experiences in which trigger warnings used to be something that protected traumatized people from being randomly confronted with traumatic material, and now they’re used to just make sure nobody ever has to hear anything they don’t like, ever. anyone who cares about this artist should be helping them understand that they cannot control how people read their book or how they feel about each character and story in it. or failing that, they should be encouraged to just turn off instagram comments. but because of all this drama, i found myself reading all the comments obsessively--something i did when the blowup first happened, because i couldn’t find anything in there that i thought was mean or offensive, which added to my uncomfortable fascination with the whole thing--and that’s when i spotted a comment where somebody asked the artist is this was a furry comic. i wish this didn’t blow my mind, but it kind of did. i mean, it’s a book where almost all the characters are animals, and they occasionally have a bunch of raunchy sex. i think that if you’re a furry, meaning you’re interested in that sort of thing, this book is completely available for you to enjoy however you want. but this person needed the artist to FORMALLY CATEGORIZE IT as a furry comic. what the fuck is the meaning of that? it struck me as something that people in fandoms do, where they need every single thing to be labeled to death in an intensive and intractable way like it was science, the Final Word on everything in the universe, and they like *argue with each other* about whether they’re *allowed* to ship certain characters together or imagine them doing specific things, which is something you would only worry about if you thought the topic represented a literal material reality that could be adversely affected by people’s improper thoughts. i mean imagine if you felt that way about your jerkoff fantasies about fictional characters? that your horny thoughts are up for debate by hundreds of people you don’t even know? imagine feeling like that about OTHER PEOPLE’S jerkoff fantasies, like it’s worth fighting over and trying to CONTROL? like holy fucking shit you guys, STOP IT. it would even be one thing to ask the artist if THEY were a furry, which may or may not be anybody’s business, but to ask whether interpreting the comic through a furry lens is ALLOWED is like...well, actually, maybe it’s exactly in line with the artist’s recently expressed attitude, that you’re forced to think of the book in exactly the way that they personally think about it, or else you should have your reading privileges revoked. so now i’m still reading the comic, sort of compulsively, because i’m a little addicted to the soap opera of it and i’m ALSO a little addicted to the soap opera of the artist battling the readers over finding the correct orthodoxy for reading the comic--there’s a particular guy i’ve become aware of in the comics community because he is always harassing people with this mix of really caustic sarcasm and really bitter political self-righteousness, and he was surely the main person who was being “mean” to the characters, and HE’S STILL DOING IT IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, because i guess the artist would rather have problems with people than simply block them and eliminate them from the equation? but the whole entire thing is making me so uncomfortable i can hardly stand it. reading about like, dumb hot chicks with no self-control, and smug young shitheads who use the veil of progressiveness to hide or justify their predatory sexual behavior, and grownass adults who start drama with 20 year olds in order to feel relevant, AND being forced to know that the artist intends for me to embrace and adore all of this bad shit--like, people and things i left behind in real life, because it was all bad!--with ultimate love and compassion, or else they reserve the right to claim that they’re being personally attacked, has just become too much to take. it’s starting to make me feel sick. i really need to take the reigns on this thing. as much as the artist needs to forget about this control fantasy and stop being so precious about what they’re doing, i need to stop subjecting myself to something i find painful, embarrassing, and frankly creepy, if i ever wanna get back to a state where i have less to complain about.

tl;dr: stupid hipster is too sensitive to read a webcomic by a stupid hipster who is too sensitive for anyone to read their webcomic.

[cortibah]

 Have tiny, hilarious fic.

Inconveniences of Shared Living

Warnings: none

Nobody was quite sure when or how it became standard practice that, should one want some alone time with someone, John’s tent was the place for it.

Nobody was sure when it started, but John Marston knew it would end now. If it wasn’t dealing with far too many and concerning smells, it was the (frankly horrifying) wet patches, or it was the clothes left behind. (He had long since made it clear that any clothing left behind was his by default, but so far all he’d gotten from that was some mismatched socks.)

But the last straw? That was all the times when he had just gotten comfortable and was right about to drift off, and then at least two people (sometimes more) would stumble in, occasionally step on or kick him, notice he was still there, and then either throw him out of the tent, or yell at him and then throw him out of the tent.

“It’s my goddamn tent,” John muttered ineffectually after another incident, bleary-eyed and clutching a blanket around his shoulders, shivering in the chilly spring night. “Can’t even sleep in my own damn tent...”

He’d tried to keep people out, but most of the methods he’d chosen also made the tent impossible for him to sleep in. He was still finding crumbs from the time he’d upended the breadboard over his bedroll in an effort to discourage everyone. And the less said about the time he’d deliberately pitched it underneath a tree that was very popular with the local bird life, the better.

But he had a perfect solution now: Cain.

Cain, the dog, who everyone loved even when he stole food right off of your plate.

Cain, who thought that if two people were sitting close together, he belonged right in the middle.

Cain, who in addition to being a dog who very much liked to be the center of attention and join in on all the fun human activities, was shockingly heavy for a dog of his size, and not easily made to move.

“Good boy,” John murmured, scratching the dog’s ears as he curled up next to John’s feet. “Now... stay. Stay... good boy.” It took many days of careful encouragement with bits of jerky and plenty of ear scratching, but eventually, Cain got the message that this was now his bed as well. It was a little awkward to have to curl up on his side to avoid kicking the poor thing in his sleep, but John didn’t mind it so much. The minor discomfort would pay off.

Not two nights later, the camp was woken up by Karen’s scream, and Sean yelling, “Get out ya mangy mutt! Fuck off!”

Cain’s joyous barking told John that Sean had just done the worst possible thing, which was to throw something for Cain to chase. A few minutes later there was another round of heavily-accented shouting, more barking, a sound John tentatively identified as ‘Sean MacGuire having a very heavy dog, or possibly Karen’s foot, collide with his balls’, and then a very red-faced Karen storming back towards the women’s lean-to as an equally red-faced and limping Sean stormed back towards the scout’s campfire.

John just grinned, as Arthur struggled to breathe through his laughter. Only Abigail silently shook her head.

“What?” John asked, the laughter still in his voice.

“The dog, really?” Abigail shook her head again. “Why not just move your things?”

“Then they’ll just do it wherever I move to, this is better.”

“Mm. This won’t turn into a problem at all,” Abigail observed airily, and gave Arthur a very meaningful look.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” John asked, looking from Abigail’s disappearing back, to Arthur’s worsening laughter. “Arthur, what’s she talking about?!”

John discovered several weeks later. Several weeks of blissfully uninterrupted sleep, several weeks of sleeping on a real bed with a real mattress in Shady Belle, and several weeks of that real bed being all his own. The next day after Abigail had moved into that room, in fact.

On the plus side, John reflected as Hosea pulled the bandages tight, at least Abigail hadn’t been the one who had screamed when sixty pounds of over-excited dog had landed on top of the both of them. And he’d managed to keep it to very pained wheezing noises, at least until he’d tried to move Cain and something had sent a fiery lance of pain through his side.

It had not been helped by Arthur being the one to investigate the noise, and standing in the doorway for a good five minutes staring at the scene of very naked Abigail, very obviously naked John, and Cain sprinting out of the door, having finally realized that he had done something wrong.

It had been Arthur’s inability to laugh himself half into fainting quietly that had brought Karen and Mary-Beth to investigate - thankfully giving Abigail enough time to get decent, while John tried to get enough pain-free air to communicate that he was pretty sure he’d broken something.

Arthur eventually correctly interpreted John’s wheezing noises, and, wiping away tears of laughter as he went, got Hosea. Cain had managed to break one of John’s ribs.

Cain was promptly barred from the room, much to Jack’s disappointment. Arthur and Hosea were left leaning on each other, laughing to the point of tears yet again as they listened to John trying to explain why.

“But Papa-”

“No buts, Jack! It really hurt when he jumped on me!”

“Well- well maybe you and Momma should leave room for him then!”

John gave Abigail a helpless look, and she just smiled and shook her head. “Told you that you’d regret it.”

“Well- what am I supposed to tell him? I can’t tell him... you know...”

“I ain’t the one who let the dog in,” Abigail said over her shoulder.

John sighed heavily, and groaned as Jack said, “We could make Cain his own bed, then!”

“No! No, Jack... I-I don’t want him to be in the room at all, alright?”

“But why?”

“Because... because he snores, okay, Jack? He snores, and it- it keeps your momma awake.”

“...you snore,” Jack retorted.

“Wh- yes, but your momma’s used to it-”

“I’ve never heard Cain snoring,” Jack added, earnestly. At the poker table, Hosea collapsed into his arms, as Arthur stopped making any sound at all, still shaking with laughter.

“W-well... and he chewed your momma’s shoes, too. He can’t be in there if he’s going to chew things, Jack.”

“Momma didn’t say anything about that.”

“Well that’s because Momma doesn’t know,” John said as quietly as he could, getting down to Jack’s level. “Okay? It’s a secret. I’m gonna go buy Momma some new shoes, so she doesn’t notice. But I can’t do that all the time. So you gotta keep Cain out of the room, okay?”

“Oh... okay,” Jack finally said, and then very quietly handed John a dollar.

“Uh... what’s this, Jack?”

“To help you get new shoes for Momma,” Jack whispered. “Don’t tell her! She gave it to me to give to Uncle Arthur for taking me fishing.”

“I won’t tell her if you don’t,” John whispered back, ruffling Jack’s hair. “Now run along, ‘fore anyone sees us.”

Jack took off, and John sighed and sank into a heap on one of the stairs. It could’ve gone better, and now he was definitely going to have to buy Abigail a pair of shoes - what size does she even wear? - but at least he hadn’t yelled at Jack, and... well, Jack would figure it out when he was older, right?

John wasn’t going to be having that conversation, anyway.

As he passed by the campfire, Abigail called, “So you’re off to get those shoes, right?”

John internally cursed at the peals of laughter. “Yes, dearest, I am!” he called back, as cheerfully as he could manage.

Twenty dollars later, John decided that it had all been worth it to finally have a bed more-or-less to himself.

Now if he could just get Cain to stop scratching at the door all night...

“No,” Abigail mumbled drowsily. “No more scheming.”

---

A/N: So, I wanted to imply here that Arthur’s dog Copper similarly had no sense of decorum and would just show up at the worst possible moments.

This is loosely based on a number of true stories from myself, my ex, and mutual friends of ours, who have all lived in shared houses and/or had pets with no consideration for privacy while also having partners. It can seem embarassing as hell at the time, but if you can laugh about it a few years later then it wasn’t that bad. 

With that being said? Don’t have sex in your friend’s beds. They have to sleep there. C’mon, guys. Don’t be gross.

[inkabelledesigns]

Hey guys, Kat here, and today I have some stuff I’d like to talk about. My mental health has been very weak in the past month and a half, maybe longer, and I’d like to talk about it for a second. I know this isn’t usually the thing you come to my page for, and you’re not obligated to read it, though I’d appreciate it if you did. This is really important to me, and I feel sharing what I’m going through could be beneficial, we might be feeling the same way on some things.

Now I want you to know, before I go any further, that I’ve cried myself to the point of dehydration every time I’ve tried to write this, which is about twenty times between the audio recordings and the things I typed out, I stopped counting after that. I wasn’t in a stable mindset, and the internet doesn’t need to see me like that. I have a lot of posts that never make it online for that reason, the whole world doesn’t need to know what I think, I need to employ a filter.

But there’s a difference between having a filter and feeling like you don’t matter. And that’s a balance I’m still learning how to strike. I’ll be real with you guys, more than half the time, I feel like I’m worthless. There are lots of factors that tie into this. I struggle to be social, and often times unless I make the first move, no one chooses to talk to me. I always have to start the conversation, and I’m not good at that, especially when a lot of the time, I’m met with what I read to be disinterest. 

Notice my wording there, “what I read to be,” I’m saying that I recognize there may be a fault in my logic. I recognize that because I am on the autism spectrum, I have a very different lens on the world compared to most people, and because of my lens, I read things in ways not everyone might think to read them. I’m not great at recognizing social cues, I wish people would just be direct and say what they mean with me so that I understand what they need. But I’ve learned that we live in a world where we need to read into things to understand them, and when I read into things, sometimes it goes in a direction it’s not supposed to. This is especially problematic when talking through text online, where the tone is difficult to read and interpret. I’ve tried my best to be understanding, but sometimes I make mistakes, bad mistakes. It got me into so much trouble when I understood even less at the age of 14 when I first came online. People made fun of me constantly for things I couldn’t help, instead of helping me to navigate it. Socializing, my artistic skills, all of it, I was trained to feel like less of a person and didn’t have a way out that I could see at the time. And it continued well into adulthood. I still feel like I’m bothering people by wanting to ask them something in a DM or talk about something in a group setting. 

I feel bad for wanting to be human, some days I feel like I’m not human because I don’t act the same as everyone else. Because I’ve been labeled as too sensitive in a world where I think everyone is too mean. I cry a lot when people aren’t looking, I don’t want anyone to see me cry anymore. They’re just going to hurt me more. It’s slowly gotten worse, to the point where I feel like no one wants to know what I think, no one cares about me as a person, as an individual, just for what favors I can do for them or what jokes I can tell. I feel like people only keep me around to boost them up, and it doesn’t always come back around.

But I can’t say things like that, because my mind is a horrible liar, right? My friends do care about me, don’t they? Don’t they love me? Don’t they want me to be happy too? I know I want them to be happy, I love them, even if I don’t always know how to show it. And that’s what I need to have click, that right there. My understanding of love is different! I am an individual with a unique set of experiences that make me, well, me! And the way other people are, they’re them! They’re so beautiful and uniquely them! And because we come from different places, we express our love differently. Sometimes it’s through art, sometimes it’s words, sometimes it’s how excited we get to see each other, how much we spill our guts, sometimes it’s quiet handholding, sometimes it’s tiny stuff that we don’t notice at first. So I have to conclude that people DO love me, I just don’t always speak their love language, I don’t always know how to translate it so that I can understand what it all means. It’d be nice if there was a textbook for it, but there isn’t. We’re left trying to figure it out, can’t generalize an experience.

Sometimes we try to translate it. Online, I see a lot of people who determine their value with numbers, with subscriber counts and followers, and I wonder, why? Any number can be big depending on the scale. 10 people can be a lot of people sometimes! I’ve never felt a need for millions of people in my life, what I want for myself are a few genuine relationships, people that will laugh with me, talk with me, listen with me, people that I can invest a good amount of time in and know that it’s worth more than gold. I want to KNOW people, not just know of them but know firsthand how wonderful they are. I hope someone wants that for me in return, to know me. But humans don’t say things like that, we either spill everything online or say nothing at all, it’s too extreme. We’re so focused on a big picture, but the details are blurry, we miss so many roses to smell.

I don’t pay much attention to numbers, but occasionally I’ll notice them. One thing I am guilty of is checking my A03 inbox. As you may have noticed, I posted a fic recently, Too Many Eyes, which deals with my take on someone else’s content. One of the things I live for is hearing what people have to say about my work, about how it made them feel is my favorite thing. Because even though it’s brief, it means so much to me that my work got you thinking or got you to feel something, that’s such an amazing thing to do, isn’t it? So I read the tags on the few reblogs I get, I grin every time someone has something to say. It lights up my world, even if those things are so few and far between. I wish more people took a few minutes to say something thoughtful. Whenever something is said, I always make it a point to say something nice back. You helped me to feel good, so of course I’d want to do the same for you, what goes around comes around! 

Admittedly though, this fic may be a bad example. Not a single comment has been left, but I have received several lovely tags and a few private messages about it, and even though I’ve already said it, thank you again to those of you that said something and took the time to talk to me. You have no idea how much that means to me. Sometimes I get really insecure about my work, on top of my insecurities about who I am as a person, and I worry that my work is no good, or that people don’t really care about what makes it mine. Case in point, this fic deals with someone else’s content, a few someones who are well known in the BATIM community that are popular for very good reasons. They’re genuinely great people AND they have good work, a rare combination to find. But I worry people only like my take on it because it’s familiar to them from someone else’s work. None of my other works have received any attention since posting this fic. There was another fic I wrote that people seem to know me for, Raindrops and References, my most viewed A03 fic dealing with another popular content creator’s AU. My other works, the ones that were purely my content, never get as much support, if any at all. This happens with my voice acting too. What’s the role you all know me for on this page? Clara, from one of the many Nutcracker adaptations out there. Maybe you know I’m also Rouge the Bat in a lot of fan projects too, or that I used to run an improv group, but Clara is the one that gets notes, she’s the one I still see likes and reblogs for, something that I’m in that doesn’t feel like mine. Even if I wrote the script, did the voice, edited the audio, it doesn’t feel like it’s mine, it always feels like it’s someone else’s and they love that person’s work, not mine, because they don’t stay to look at anything else. And my fan art, same deal. I hardly ever post it, because as stated before, I was trained to feel bad about it. 

But when I start thinking things like this, I have to go back and remember that it doesn’t matter what lots of people look at, because the thoughts that matter most are from the people it was made for. Tak and Star, behind the scenes and in public, have been so sweet about Too Many Eyes. I consulted both of them on the draft before I posted because I wanted to be faithful to their content as well as meet their approval, and to this day, they’ve given me the best compliment an artist could ever ask for, one so wonderful that I would frame it and hang it on my wall. And the other star, responsible for Inky Eyes Golden Heart, what she said publically on the fic itself, that line about how for the first time she felt like she was in her world, authentically, and was surprised by everything that happened in it, that it felt like everything she imagined for it, THAT right there, that was satisfying, that was the most wonderful feeling and I STILL go and read those words when I’m having a bad day. And the nutcracketeers, we’re all so eager to share, and the voice stuff especially, It’s a joy to pull out Clara’s voice and make everyone weak in the knees. Hell, any work I get to do with AJ is a joy, he’s asked for my help on a lot of projects, and it really tests my abilities. He’s a great castmate to have. THESE are the people I make things for, individual people, and equally importantly, myself. My work is one of my ways of expressing my love, expressing a lot of things. I have so many stories to tell that I want someone else to hear. And how could I forget Margin and Cyber? We’ve all had our fair share of craziness lately, but these two are the people I make stuff with the most, not for, but with, and they are the most wonderful partners in crime ever. It’s so great to have them! There are so many more from all these circles, so many more that I want to mention at other points in time because they’re amazing people and deserve to feel loved. As it stands though, this is getting a little long.

My point in all of this is that even though I feel awful, eventually I come back to realize that I’ve got something wonderful. I still don’t want to depend on people so much, I want to love my work for being my work regardless of what the public perception is. This is actually why I got into doll making in part. I’ve never been good at sculpture and wanted to prove I could do it, and it’s such a great media to work with, and it feels like it’s mine. I don’t need to care what anyone else thinks of it, I love it, and that’s what matters. I want to love my work in all its forms, and more importantly, I want to love myself. Because while there is a separation of art and artist, art is an expression of thoughts and emotion, it’s communication, and it’s a part of us. I want to love being me, I want to do what I can to share my love and have it be felt by those around me, and most importantly, I want to be healthy about it. There’s a lot of things I’m not healthy about. How much time I spend with the screen, not getting enough exercise, overeating because darn it I really love food, my perceptions of the world and the constant frustration with it, and all the other stuff talked about today. I want to be better, and happier. I’d like to have the courage to share a little more of what I love online, be it things I’m making or things I’m feeling, because I want to use what I’ve got to become better, and maybe what I’ve got can help someone else if I share it. Don’t know until I try, right? 

Thank you for listening to what I had to say. I hope that it gave you something to think about, and I hope that it gives you a new perspective when looking at what you can make. You are an individual, there are so many wonderful things about you. And even if the entire world doesn’t know it yet, the important thing is getting you to see it. We all need love, and we’ll all find it if we keep looking, but don’t forget to love yourself, okay?

[pinkbubbles-and-bigtroubles]

Colour Me In (Part 5)

Eliza gasped as a blue butterfly landed on her nose and giggled when she looked over at Calum. He had a yellow butterfly in his dark curls and his mouth was hanging open, eyes wide as he fed several others from his hand. He'd brought her to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

They'd started in the butterfly jungle and Eliza swooned at Calum trying to be extra careful with the tiny delicate creatures.

Next was the aviary where Eliza stared at the birds the zoo keeper brought out one by one following along with the script on Calum's phone. He seemed a little more skittish around the birds as they were brought up close, but he tried to play it off.  She marveled at the colors, and judging by the way Calum flinched when it opened its beak she guessed it was very loud.

Calum bought behind the scenes tickets so they learned about kangaroos for about an hour, even holding and feeding a baby roo. The park employees teased Calum about being a natural, being from Australia and all. Eliza noticed the side glances cast her way, some girls nodding at her and smiling in appreciation of the man she was on a date with. Other females shot her looks of pure envy and venom, but Eliza ignored them, she was too happy to care what anyone thought.

They grabbed a quick snack before Calum took her on a caravan safari through the Asian and African savannah. Calum had preloaded the guides script into his phone so Eliza could read along, but he kept poking her and pointing, signing “What's that?”

She'd sign back “lion, rhino, antelope,” and so on and the tour continued. A couple of kids sitting in front of them turned around to watch the impromptu lesson and were soon asking their own questions.

Calum grinned watching Eliza answer every one while still paying close attention to the animals they were there to see. He brushed a curl off her cheek tucking it behind her ear earning him a smile that made his heart catch in his throat. He took a video of her teaching the kids to sign “giraffe” and he couldn't help but think she'd be such a good mom someday. The thought unnerved him for a second, but he squeezed her knee and smiled back. The kids got distracted by their parents who felt bad intruding on what was obviously a date, and Eliza snuck in a quick kiss, pressing her lips to his briefly, just long enough to let Calum know he was already in too deep.

The safari was about two hours long with Eliza alternating between signing for Calum and the kids and holding his hand enjoying the scenery. Every now and then resting her head on his shoulder so her hair tickled his face, and he noticed it smelled like honeysuckle flowers and coconut. Cal couldn't remember the last time he'd taken a girl out on a date and he'd never done anything like this before.

By the time the tour was over they were both hungry and the parents of the two kids offered to treat them to lunch at the restaurant on that side of the park. They wandered back through the park deciding to try the zipline even though Eliza objected not wanting Calum to spend any more money. He overruled her objections and flying above the animals she was glad he'd insisted. He'd gone first so he was waiting when she landed. Eliza was so overwhelmed at the days experience, and this gorgeous man grinning at her with his arms out, she couldn't help but throw her arms around his neck and pull him in for a kiss. His hands tangled in her hair and his tongue parted her lips when they were asked to move along. Calum frowned as he pulled back, leading Eliza back down the trail.

They held hands as they made their way out of the park, stopping occasionally to look at an exhibit and even popping in to feed some colourful lorikeets. Eliza laughed when Calum seemed to finally be warming up to birds until one pooped right in his hand. He looked so embarrassed and grossed out, she felt bad for him but laughed harder as she handed him a wet wipe. They stopped at the petting kraal so Calum could brush a goat which Eliza just had to get video of.  

They made their way to Calum's car, and he acted like he was gonna reach around to open the passenger door for her. Instead his hands found her waist backing her against the car. Eliza stood on her toes tilting her head up as his mouth came crashing down on hers continuing where they'd been rudely interrupted. The kiss was deep and passionate, his hands running down her sides gripping her hips, her fingers pulling his curls as her teeth grazed his bottom lip. He started to dip down to kiss her neck and Eliza pushed him away, suddenly.

“I'm sorry I'm sorry” she signed, wide eyed and shaking her head. She grabbed her phone.

I can't have marks on my neck. Where my mom and boss could see them.

Calum backed up and nodded before leaning in and kissing her lips again.

If I ever leave marks, they'll be where no one can see them.

Eliza's jaw dropped and Calum burst out laughing. He opened the door for her, before walking around and getting in himself.

I'm still hungry, let me buy you dinner

That's not how this is supposed to work ya know

Calum was using voice to text so he could talk to her while driving.

Don't care, you just dropped several hundred dollars taking me out today, I can buy you a pizza.

Okay fine, but let's go back to the hotel and let me get a quick shower before we get dinner.

Shower? Where?

I got a room this morning because I figured I'd be too tired to drive back tonight after getting up that early to drive down

How much is this costing you?

Don't worry about it, I can afford it and it was worth it to come see you.

Eliza got freshened up in her room and changed into a yellow sundress with sneakers and a white denim jacket over the dress. Calum was at her door looking handsome as always in a black tank top with an unbuttoned red shirt over it. Ripped black jeans and boots with his hair still wet from his shower, Eliza had to fight the urge to forget about dinner.

The desk clerk was a fan and insisted they try her favorite restaurant about twenty minutes away. The menu was California cuisine with a Greek twist. Eliza skipped it and went straight for the kebab, the smell of the lamb meat already had her mouth watering. Calum followed her lead and it was a slow night so the owner was also running food. He stopped to chat them up and they had a laugh how international the table was, a Maori-Scottish man on a date with an Portuguese-Iranian woman at a Greek restaurant in a Mexican named city eating Turkish food.

He insisted they take a shot of Ouzo on the house, only relenting when Eliza explained she was Muslim, insisting Calum take two in her place.

Calum texted her can you drive a stick? Eliza nodded with a wink and he took the shots. He nursed a beer for the rest of the night not wanting to get silly around Eliza. The liquor got him feeling a bit loose and he couldn't stop touching her. He kept playing with her fingers, rubbing her shoulder, bumping her knee with his, Eliza wasn't drunk but felt intoxicated by the attention.

The food was amazing finally breaking the spell as they concentrated on their meal.

Afterwards they were absolutely stuffed but the owner insisted they take some of his wife's famous kourabiedes, Greek walnut sugar cookies, with them to go.

They got back and Calum walked her to her room. Eliza stopped and pulled out her phone

I want you to come in and hang out, but I don't want you to think this is an invitation to fool around

Okay but you're looking really pretty tonight so I can't promise I won't try and kiss you

I'll consider myself warned

They ended up sitting on the bed holding their phones to chat. Calum was sitting up with a pillow behind him with Eliza sitting between his legs, her back resting against his chest. They were both fully clothed although she'd changed into yoga pants and an oversized t shirt with a sports bra underneath and Rocket and Groot knee socks.

If you're trying to look unappealing, it's not working, but what's with the socks

Maggie is Rocket and I am Groot

He giggled and she looked back at him receiving a kiss before settling back against him.

They stayed that way until after 2am. Cuddling and texting eventually putting one phone one the charger while they passed the other back and forth. Calum talked about his two girlfriends in high school and how awful he'd been to them. He'd had sex for the first time at 15 and he was embarrassed to admit he honestly couldn't tell her how many girls he'd slept with. After that he told her about the girl who'd convinced him he was finally in love. She'd been a drummer and a tattoo artist about a year older than him. He'd become jaded when that fell apart piece by piece until they hated each other. He never missed them as a couple, but sometimes he still missed her.

Eliza nodded she told him about her first boyfriend, Miguel who'd been deaf like her. They'd met at school, as there was only two high schools in the district that had ASL interpreter. They'd dated from sophomore to senior year, and he'd been the one to take her virginity, convincing her they would marry after college and live happily ever after. She found out he was cheating a week before graduation. Her second serious boyfriend was Patrick who she met in literature class her first week of college. They'd been together a little over a year despite Maggie and Kevin never being fully happy with the relationship.

As far as sex was concerned she and Miguel had been kids, sneaking around, figuring things out together, and it had been enjoyable. Patrick had been boring in bed, she knew enough to know that. When she'd gotten the courage to suggest trying something different he'd turned it around on. Patrick had blamed her extra weight and her lack of experience for his poor performance. Their relationship crumbled quickly after that.

Eliza felt suddenly bashful explaining her limited sexual experience and prowess.

I hope if something ever happens you won't be disappointed

Eliza felt Calum's whole body tense up as he read that.

You could never disappoint me, don't ever think that.

He turned her head so she was looking at him and mouthed “Never” before pulling her into a kiss.

Soon they were tangled together in a flush of heavy breathing, roaming hands and passionate kisses. Calum stopped and pulled away watching her face. Eliza was still unsure if she was ready for this and Calum understood that. He got up of the bed and helped her up.

“Not yet” she signed.

“I understand” he signed back before kissing her forehead. “I should go get sleep.”

He kissed her goodnight and went to the desk to see if he could keep his room until Monday.

The next day Calum slept till 10 but Eliza was already up and ready with a bagel sandwich and a coffee for him. She'd decided that since Calum had planned yesterday, and it had been expensive, that today would be the opposite.

They went to Balboa Park to explore the gardens. She only expected to be there a couple hours but the place was huge and breathtakingly beautiful. They marveled at the stunning Spanish-Moorish fountains in Alcazar Park, took pictures at the lily pond in front of the Botanical Building and delighting at the rare orchids inside. They grabbed a light lunch before heading to the carousel.

It was a gorgeous historic menagerie carousel with many animals to choose from.  Calum picked a horse but Eliza wanted the dragon. She smiled the entire ride her eyes kept wandering around taking it all in. Calum's heart was in his throat, and he couldn't stop staring. Reputation be damned, he liked this girl, and he had to make sure she knew.

The rest of the short day was spent wandering hand in hand through the Memorial Rose Garden, Calum memorizing which flowers were her favorites. Then the Japanese Friendship garden where they enjoyed strolling through authentic buildings and reading the exhibits.  He stole kisses walking down the paths before standing behind her holding her and resting his chin on top of her head while they silently watched the koi ponds.

Calum stepped back and turned her around to face him and raised his eyebrows carefully signing “want girlfriend my will.”

It took Eliza half a second to realize what Calum just asked her.

“Of course” she signed back at him beaming before raising up on her toes to kiss him.\

@wildhearthood @kiiiimberlyriiiicker1995 @cal-puddies @biba3434 @babygirlcashton @angelbabylu @itstheholls @5sos-ficssmut @cal-pal-cuddles @calumh-excess @1dthewantedlove

[gatesofember]

1/3 Hi! I just wanted to send a message about the AM au. I LOVE reading it, and a friend and I bond over it, and we just wanted to tell you that we read the au because of your writing, and how beautifully you handle the balance of “but this is historically more accurate” and “but this makes for a better story”. And we’ve both been seeing how much you seem to feel pressured to include an explicit consummation scene in the story, while you don’t seem to feel like it fits, and for what it’s worth,

First of all, I’m sorry it took me like a week to get around to answering this. I am now a foster mother caring for an teeny tiny perfect adorable kitten who needs attention at all hours of the day.

I am so flattered that you and a friend have bonded over my fic and I love to hear how much you appreciate all the work I’ve put into it! I definitely try to find a balance for the au - both between historical accuracy and good story and between what I want and what the readers want.

Early in my fic-writing career, I promised myself that I’d never take requests or commissions. Commissioned and requested fics of my favorite writers had always fallen short for me and I suspected that was because the writer wasn’t enjoying themselves. My worst fics are the ones I don’t have fun with and my worst scenes are the ones I want to skip. It took me a while to come to this conclusion, but the way I see it, if I don’t want to write it, no one will want to read it. Whenever I get to a scene that’s dull or tedious to write, I know I’m doing something wrong. I ask myself, “How can I reframe this scene? What might make it more interesting? Is it necessary? Should it be replaced?” Thinking like that has rescued so much of my writing. I dropped many scenes from “The Whitethorn Hearth” because they didn’t fit and rearranged a lot of the events to improve the flow. I over-wrote chapter 3 and I struggled to pull the chapter together because it was such tedious work. When I caught myself thinking, “I just want to get this chapter over with,” I finally stopped and said, “What is going on right now that’s preventing me from enjoying myself and how can I fix it?” So I took a step back, figured out what was wrong, and ended up really happy with the chapter.

When I started this au, I promised myself that I wouldn’t let audience reactions change my vision for the story. I’ve done my best to stay true to that, but I’ve definitely been influenced. I wanted to write a historically-inspired drama about two people in an arranged marriage, but story veered toward romance because I felt like that was what readers wanted. Mostly, the betrothal part of the au became longer and more detailed than expected. And that wasn’t always a bad thing! I mentioned some of my regrets about the engagement in the guide, but I prefer some of the changes. Originally, Nico and Will didn’t actually say the “L” word until after the wedding, but I’m much more pleased with “The Whitethorn Hearth” than the initial wedding plan. But on the downside, the late changes meant I was unprepared. Because I didn’t take the time to reframe the story, many of those changes were poorly executed.

What I regret most is how much Will’s character fell flat. I only intended to write a few fics about the betrothal, enough to establish Will as a pure-hearted boy who’s always been surrounded and protected by good friends, a loving family, and his connections to powerful people. He starts out innocent and underdeveloped in contrast to Nico, who carries a lot of baggage from his past. AM au Will was also supposed to contrast with canon Will, who I interpret as hardened by the loss of two brothers and fighting in two wars. AM au Will’s character was supposed to develop while he struggled to live far away from his family, to find his place in a new home, and to figure out his relationship with his husband. Unfortunately, because of the extended betrothal phase, I was stuck on the innocent, underdeveloped Will for a long time. I should have reframed the story to figure out how to make him interesting and dynamic in the early story when I realized I’d spend so much time writing the betrothal phase. But at least now that the wedding is over, I can save Will’s boring character and we’ll watch him grow into the war-hardened yet still calm and kind Will Solace we know from canon.

As far as explicit sex is concerned, the reason I started writing smut was because I felt like there was a tragic lack of good, non-underage content in the Solangelo tag. I thought, “hey, I’m a decent writer, maybe I can do something about that.” Then people liked it and they wanted more. But…smut is kind of boring to write, honestly. There’s a formula to it: describe the action, describe the sensation. Maybe add a bit of fun dialogue, possibly some romance, but once you’ve written a few smut fics, you’ve written them all. Sure, you can try different positions, different types of play, or different anatomies, but at the end of the day, it’s still just describing physical arousal. A lot of the time, if you change the setting, the universe, or even the characters, you can still copy and paste the actions and sensations. Smut doesn’t have much room for creativity. I always tried to make mine different; I did my best to frame it to be unique to the setting and I used a lot of dialogue to showcase the characters’ personalities and relationship. Even then, it got boring after I’d written a few, and although I said no whenever someone made a request, I still felt like I had to keep writing smut even though I wasn’t having fun.

Thankfully, I’ve gotten a lot better about staying true to myself since my smut-writing days. If I have a hard time writing the consummation fic, I plan to stop and ask myself why, then find a way to fix it. I don’t think it will be very pornographic. The purpose of the consummation fic isn’t to elicit the reader’s sexual arousal; the purpose is to tell a story of the developing relationship between two characters, specifically them figuring out their sexualities and physical compatibility. It’s also meant to have a slight commentary on how heteronormativity has influenced same-sex sexual practices in the au, with hints of existentialist questions like “What defines sex? What is its function as a non-reproductive practice, personally, interpersonally, and societally? Where does the definition of sex begin and end, and what actions count as sex? Is there an objective definition, or is it entirely subjective? And if it is entirely subjective, can we say that sex exists at all?”

But mostly it’s full of absurdist comedy with a dash of dirty humor, plus some romance.

So no, I don’t want to write smut. But I do want to write the story of Nico and Will hilariously making complete idiots of themselves while trying to figure out anal. If I focus on the aspects of the story that I want to write, then I’ll have fun doing it.

Thank you for your support and for reminding me not to let myself be influenced by expectations. I think most readers will be ok with my choices. I occasionally get comments that are rude, demanding, or entitled, but the majority of my feedback is wonderful and supportive! And if readers are dissatisfied by the level of explicitness, they can fuck right off and find a different fic to read. I’ve already contributed enough smut to the Solangelo tag. It’s my au and I’m going to do what I want!

[dev-fiction]

Rules: Answer 22 questions, then tag 22 people.

Tagged By: @h4harts  Thank you for tagging me!

Nicknames: My name can be mashed into a number of different nicknames, although the only ones to really use these are my parents. Rosie, Rolleycoaster, Ro-Ro, and simply ‘Dev’. My papa calls me an assortment of Italian pet-names, but I don’t know how to spell them, so...

Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Height: 4′9

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff - I get Hufflepuff in every quiz I take. I guess it’s just meant to be.

Sexuality: Bisexual.

Last Thing Googled: “Mr. Beans Daughter” (my friend asked me if I knew what she looked like aha).

Favorite Musician(s): Eve, Kikuo, Starbomb, Ninja Sex Party, Mother Mother, Mystery Skulls, and Caravan Palace. Please check them out, they’re all worth a listen! Especially Eve...

Earworm: The song that the Other Mother in Coraline hums during the kitchen scene near the end. I find myself humming it all the time; it soothes me out.

Following now: Primarily humor and fandom blogs. I also follow quite a few art blogs!

Followers: 87

Do I get asks: Occasionally! Thank you to everyone who has sent me an ask in the past <3

Sleep: I usually sleep between 10-15 hours - even occasionally upwards of 20. I’m trying to cut back and force myself into a more healthy schedule, but it’s a bit rough. Hopefully seeing a doctor about it soon! :D

Lucky Number: I’m not really sure :sweats:

What I’m wearing: My favorite pajama’s! A short sleeved top and shorts; they’re very soft and loose. They’re black with white spots and a little bow where the hem meets.

Dream Job: I’m not really too sure on this one. I suppose I’d like nothing more than to work on something from home. Due to physical and mental limitations, I don’t think I could ever have an office job aha. Maybe something art or writing related!

Dream Trip: Yakushima. I had to do a report on Yakushima when I was in high school and everything about it enthralled me. While I’d love to visit Japan in general, Yakushima is by far my favorite location. 

Favorite Food: Ever since I was a little kid my favorite food has been green bean casserole. My mom would make it every year for Christmas and it has such fond memories attached to it; plus it tastes pretty good too! Other than that I would have to say Silver Noodle Soup.

Instrument(s): I never really played any instruments growing up.

Language(s): English and Sign Language! My ASL is incredibly rusty and I still have a lot to learn, but my mom was an interpreter for the deaf before going deaf herself, so it holds a lot of meaning to me. My mom is trying her best to teach me and I can’t wait to learn! I took Japanese in high school, but the lessons never really stuck.

Favorite Song(s): All of the Kagerou Project songs, Additional Memory, Tokyo Ghetto, Say It, Ghosting, Sleep Awake, the Entire Starbomb Album, Green, and Sister

Random Fact: I am absurdly fascinated with the art of animation. Everything about it makes me extremely excited and sitting down to watch a beautifully animated film/short/video is the absolute highlight of my day. I get so excited/passionate about it that I usually have to take a break to rant or exercise the adrenaline out of me. So far the best film I’ve seen, that’s made me the most excited, was Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse

Aesthetic: Autumn. I love everything about the Autumn aesthetic; my room is even Autumn themed. The smell of pumpkin spice, chilly weather, and Halloween on the horizon...it makes me want to curl up with a book in an over-sized sweater and watch the changing leaves fall away. I also really like pastel pink.

Pass to: I don’t really have anyone to tag, sorry aha.

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman Annual #2

Previously in FUCKITY FUCK FUCK I FORGOT THERE WAS AN ANNUAL AS WELL: Diana prepared to face down her most terrifying foes yet: the Dark Gods.

Who or what are the Dark Gods? Dunno.

What do they want? No clue.

What is this awesome and terrible power that they wield? So far, mostly just the ability to shoot lasers out of their eyes and incite people to deliver badly-written villainous monologues.

Why are we supposed to be so pants-pissingly afraid of them? Because James Robinson told us so.

Last issue ended with the Dark Gods manifesting over Washington DC, at which point it was revealed that they are… giant floating statues, I guess? But, like, scary floating statues. With lasers. So scary.

And then moments later, a couple of Star Sapphires arrived to whisk Diana away so she could appear in this shitty annual.

Diana is teleported to the Star Sapphires’ home planet of Zamaron, which is heavily battle-damaged.

The two Sapphires who brought her here are called Miss Bloss and Miri Riam, who are apparently pre-established minor Green Lantern characters — something I had to figure out on my own, because Robinson just assumes we all known them, and that Diana does too (I’m reasonably sure they’ve never met). The one time his overexplaining might have actually been useful, and he couldn’t be arsed taking a panel or two to make introductions.

Diana yells at them that she’s too busy to help with whatever their deal is, and launches into a recap of last issue. But, you know, that was all of two weeks ago, so by all means, spend a page getting us up to speed.

She’s also still throwing around ‘crazy’ and ‘insane’ like they’re going out of style. 

“…and although I’m not certain — the woman who told me was insane at the time--“

How about ‘possessed’, ‘out of control’, ‘somewhat incoherent’ or ‘compromised’? Any of these would be more accurate in this context, as well as not equating mental illness with dangerous and violent behaviour.

But anyway, essentially Diana says ‘my world is being attacked by the Dark Gods and it’s my fault’, and Miss Bloss is like, ‘well, if that was your fault, then our thing must be your fault, too’, and points up at the giant floating Dark God statue thing that Diana has somehow failed to notice until this exact moment.

Oh, goody.

Diana starts questioning them about what happened.  Honestly, that’s really all she does these days.  If she’s not delivering plot recaps herself, she’s setting up allies for flashback-exposition or allowing villains to monologue at her. Oh, sure, occasionally she fights somebody, but mostly she’s just a vessel for tedious exposition.

Miss Bloss describes the Dark God’s attack:

“Even to recall it now, it feels like a dream or vision from another world. Almost like we were looking at ourselves from outside of it all.”

The first time I read this, I took it to be a figure of speech. I interpreted it as an expression of Miss Bloss’s deep level of shock at the devastation she’d experienced, that it still felt unreal, as though it had happened to somebody else.

I was giving Robinson too much credit: he meant it literally.

As we’ll learn in a few pages’ time, one of the Dark Gods has some kind of power over people’s perceptions, enabling him to induce in others a sense of unreality and dreamlike detachment. We’ll learn that the Dark Gods have deliberately used this ability in order to confuse enemies and limit their ability to respond to or even comprehend attacks.

Frazer Irving — who illustrates the flashback, along with a couple of other scenes in this issue — plays into this well.  His stylised art and colour work lends a somewhat eerie dreamlike quality to his pages, creating a sense of altered reality.

Unfortunately, Robinson can’t write dreamlike.

So what in theory should be an eerie, confusing, unreal flashback instead just turns into Miss Bloss telling us that her memories of the attack are eerie and unreal and hazy… aaaaand then proceeding to describe the attack, the enemy, his name, the concept he embodies, his powers and the precise reason why he was able to kill so many Star Sapphires, all in exacting detail. 

The Dark God who attacked the Sapphires is called Karnell and he calls himself the god of love, but the love he embodies is dark and gritty and edgy and corrupted. He can sense any ‘impurities’ or ‘flaws’ in a person’s love and rub it in their faces. When he does this to Star Sapphires, something something their rings freak out and they spontaneously combust.

Diana asks, ‘yeah okay, but you didn’t know that this was my fault when you dragged me here, so what gives?’, and Bloss and Miri are like, ‘welp, our leaders are all dead, Carol Ferris is busy in another comic, we all frankly suck, and you were a Star Sapphire once in that Blackest Night crossover event.’

At which point I went, ‘wait huh what??? but that was before the New 52 reboot!’, before remembering that Geoff Johns’ entire preboot GL run survived the reboot for no other reason than because Geoff Johns gets whatever he wants.

Diana agrees to lead the Sapphires against Krakoom (I’m sorry, I’m not going to bother to learn his name, he’s not worth that kind of time), and the Sapphires respond by giving her the Nazi salute due to an unfortunate artistic miscalculation.

Diana: And if I am going to stand among you — fight alongside you — let me look the part. Sapphires: As you wish it, so do we, Wonder Woman… be a Star Sapphire once more.

And with that, they give Diana a makeover.

It’s not a bad costume, especially when you compare it to her Blackest Night design. That one tried to ape Carol Ferris’ hideous then-costume, which featured hip cut-outs and a plummeting neckline that ended around the crotch area, by giving Diana a bathing suit with hip-holes and a bared midriff. This design retains many familiar Star Sapphire costume elements — the stiff pointed white collar, the combination tiara/mask, the starburst symbol, the long gloves and high boots — without going into creepy male-gazey territory.

buuuuut it also looks like Diana is wearing a pink apron over her usual costume, and that is something I cannot get past. It also varies wildly across the issue, depending on which of the four credited artists is drawing it.

By the way, I say ‘makeover’ because despite violet blaze on her right ring finger, it took me several times flicking back and forth before I was certain that Diana had been deputised into the Corps as opposed to just being given a new costume in order to “look the part”, as she put it. I know this sounds like it should have been self-evident, but Robinson gives absolutely no indication of any deeper change in her. Not even lip service to the fact that Diana is connected, through the power ring, to the emotional spectrum and the violet energies of love.

Contrast this with Diana in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3:

“Extraordinary. All of them, in their way, have tried to explain it to me before. Hal, John, Kyle… even Guy, may Ares watch and aid him. But it defies all attempts. There is no way to describe it. What it is to wear a power ring, and feel emotion made manifest. To wear fear on anger or will or hope on one’s hand… To wear love. Too beautiful for words…”

There’s a lot about Wondy’s Blackest Night tie-in that’s flawed and frustrating and flat-out bad, but this page gets it right. If you’re going to make Diana a Star Sapphire — going to give one of the most loving hearts of the DCU the power to channel her love into tangible power — then you need to acknowledge the weight of that.

In this comic, it’s as insubstantial as a costume change.

Flying up to confront Kratakoa, Diana wonders if she could really have summoned the Dark Gods. Supergirl said she brought them into this plane with a careless wish, and… oh, come to think of it, she did inadvertently make a wish during the recent Dark Nights: Metal crossover, while coincidentally handling some magical wishing metal. But nah, that couldn’t possibly have done it!

She reaches the big floaty statue and a bloke with spiky wings emerges from it. It’s Klangalang, and he’s got his monologue cued up and ready to go!

He opens with a fairly standard ‘ahaha, I’ve been expecting you, hero!’, and the implications fly straight over Diana’s head.

Kibble: You came, Amazon! Sooner than I expected, too! Good… I’m going to love this! Diana: You’re some kind of seer, too? You expected me?

Let’s review: The villains Diana supposedly summoned, the villains who have been trying to kill or neutralise Diana before she can interfere in their plans, have attacked the Star Sapphires in advance of their invasion of Earth. Despite not knowing about Diana’s connection to their attacker, the Sapphires reached out to her for help, teleporting her away at almost the exact moment that the villains launched their opening assault. Now the one villain who hasn’t joined the invading force is cackling that he’s been expecting Diana.

Even a half-competent hero should be able to join the dots and realise they’ve been deliberately lured away. Not so Robinson’s Diana, who gazes at him wide-eyed and demands, ‘omg, u expected me? are u psychic or sumthin???’

After a couple more rounds of obscenely dense questions from Diana (along with another out-of-character ’crazy’ slur), Klunk ends up having to straight-up spell it out for her. He also explains how she summoned the Dark Gods.

Krunch: You wished for the gods’ return. Well, here we are. Here I am! Diana: Like a dream, but yes, of course. But I meant the Greek pantheon, not— Krump: Gods! That’s all you said.

Small nitpick: Diana would not think of her gods the “Greek pantheon”. She’d be more likely to call them “the Patrons”, “my gods”, “the gods of my people”, “the gods of Themyscira”, “the gods of Olympus”, “the Olympians” — she knew them as all of these things long before she knew Greece, or any world outside her island home, existed. The only reason she might refer to them as “Greek” is for the benefit of people in Man’s World, as a point of reference.

More importantly, are you friggin kidding me, the friggin layers of incompetence here from our supposed hero

accidentally makes a wish while wielding a weapon of magical wishing metal

manages to make the vaguest wish possible, opening a loophole for THE WORST GODS to infiltrate reality

immediately forgets she ever wished it

why would she even wish for that?! her gods haven’t gone anywhere!

To be somewhat fair, the reason she doesn’t really remember it is that “the God With No Name” (YES REALLY) made it all feel like a dream so that she wouldn’t realise she’d made an irresponsible wish and needed to immediately rally everybody together to resist the Dark Gods.

Except… that in itself doesn’t make any sense.

There are two possibilities here: the Horse With No Name could have clouded Diana’s memory of making the wish after the Dark Gods were pulled into this reality — in which case, why? How would she even land on the conclusion that she’d accidentally summoned some evil gods that she’d never heard of, when her intent was to call on her own gods and she’d had no indication that it had even worked?

Alternatively, he clouded her mind in the moment of the wish, to render her thoughts vague and imprecise and open the door for the Dark Gods’ invasion. Which doesn’t work either, because it turns out that the Dark Gods are pretty pissed off at being pulled out of their awesome reality.

King Koopa: War was declared the moment you dragged us from our home… our beautiful world — which you regard as the ‘Dark Multiverse’ — we see as a paradise… where we were more than even gods to our worshippers… we were everything!”

So basically their plan is to turn Earth into a desolate hellscape just like their home.

Diana, who has already been told that Kraig is a god of corrupted love, conveniently forgets this fact just so that Robinson can tell it to us again.

Diana: You call yourself a god of love. What kind of love wants to be feared? Love is unconditional. KHAAAAAN: Spoken like the addled naive romantic I expected. Love always comes with conditions. Sometimes, I confess, I question… am I god of that love, of those conditions behind it? But then I realise… I don’t care.

Cool story. Glad we can agree on one thing, at least.

He monologues for a couple of pages about how he’s going to open her eyes to the truth of how horrible and selfish and corrupt love is, then draws Diana into his mind so that he can monologue some more.

We learn that the world of the Dark Gods was forged by a group of divinities called Titans, “much like the reality of your own Greek pantheon” (incorrect, you’re thinking of the Protogenoi; the Titans were the second generation of gods). But because these Titans were hardcore, they did it by smashing five other realities together. And into this terrifyingly dark edgy metalscape came… +~teh D4rK g0dz~+

Robinson then undermines the super-extra-double-dark feel he’s going for with another embarrassing name and an accidental rhyme.

“We Dark Gods followed, as gods do. King Best and then the rest.”

KING. BEST.

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to Kalamazoo’s dark edgy totally original backstory!

In fact, this is so dark and edgy and original that I’ll throw in a quick content warning here for descriptions of domestic violence and shittiness towards sex workers.

“You’ll meet a boy — his mother broken by a wanton father who forced her to cheapen herself further with wraiths and under-beings. The mother died — beaten to death. When he saw her blood still dripping from the fists of his father, the boy ran, fearing the same fate. The boy loved his mother, but hated his father and the world. Both emotions — love and hate — burned so brightly that even from within the darkness of our world, their glow caught the eye of mighty King Best.”

Domestic violence! Sexism! Slut shaming! Fridging! It’s like a game of grimdark bingo!

After three goddamn pages of this, Diana suddenly twigs what we all figured out eleven pages ago, ‘oh now waaaaaait a minute, you didn’t lure me here so that your buddies could invade Earth while I’m distracted, did you?’

Klinger responds by almost murdering Diana, and is only stopped by the intervention of the Star Sapphires.  They all retreat, and Diana proposes a new plan: all the Sapphires will channel their energy into her, something something, true love wins the day.

So Diana flies up to Kimberley, sword held aloft and blazing with violet energy, and announces, ‘boy did you make a mistake when you told me that you used to be a sad boy child! now I have only love in my heart for you!’

Karma Khameleon is like, ‘oh no, love! my one true weakness!’, and I’m like, “d… didn’t we just have this story?”

Then Diana straight-up stabs him with her love sword, and Korgo fades away with an ‘I’ll beat you next time, Captain Planet! Next tiiiiiime…’

Diana farewells the Star Sapphires, and Robinson shoehorns in this bit of virtue signalling:

Miri: Please… Diana, think of us as your sisters, too, for all time. Diana: Or “brother,” I notice. Miss Bloss: Love is love, no matter who bears the heart.

This is a welcome and needed change to the Star Sapphires. The fact that they have been portrayed up until this point as an all-women corps (with the exception of a few briefly deputised blokes) is bound up in ugly gendered ideas, exemplified by Geoff Johns’ comment in 2009 that “anyone can join, but most men are not worthy”.

But there’s something gratingly self-congratulatory in the execution of this course correction.  Robinson’s doing the absolute bare minimum here — including one or two male background characters in a handful of panels — and flagging it as progress with a phrase associated with the LGBTI community.  We haven’t even seen a single named male Sapphire, let alone one with a speaking part; I think it’s a little premature to be looking for kudos. And either Miri or Miss Bloss could very easily have been replaced in this story by a new male character.

The Sapphires teleport Diana back to Earth, where she finds DC a smoking ruin. And as the air clears, she sees—

—wait for it—

—this is truly shocking and terrifying—

THE DARK GODS MADE A MEGAZORD

THEY MADE A FUCKING MEGAZORD WITH THEIR DUMBASS FLYING STATUES

A GODDAMN MEGAZORD WHO WHAT HOW WHY.

Diana’s face does this:

[loquaciousquark]

30th Wintermarch. Sunlight peeked through the cloud cover for almost a full two minutes this afternoon and I nearly took flight from joy

I’ve been reading Art and Shame: Forbidden Wonders of Faith by Foisine De Petitforet, and aside from the forbidden wonder of Foisine’s name, I am vastly intrigued by the asides she keeps adding in the margins of the more controversial pieces. One of them talks about how she believes the absence of clear power always leads to the worst person possible seizing it, and I couldn’t help but think about Kirkwall.

The viscount’s seat has been empty almost three years now. There are more templars than city guard in the streets these days, and Aveline says Meredith’s officers keep coming to her demanding she account for herself whenever she makes a decision that doesn’t involve them. She’s refused them so far--she says she won’t ever turn over the city’s authority to what ought to be a Gallows-restricted arm of the Chantry, no matter how much they press, but Donnic looks uneasy when she says so.

Well, it’s not

Hm. I was going to say it’s not any of my business, but somehow it feels like everyone will be caught up in it whether they like it or not. (Elthina would prefer not, according to Sebastian, but I think she thinks Meredith and Orsino are more reasonable than history has shown me.)

Well! I shall remain optimistic. Until the city starts coming down around us, anyway, and then I shall take my dog and my favorite blanket and flee into the hinterlands to live as a hermit for the rest of my days, eating rabbits and the moss that grows on trees and shaking my staff at passersby.

13th Guardian. Shocking cold front came through last night--all the world’s icy glass. Very pretty and violently annoying, especially when one’s great hall holds heat as well as a linen dropcloth

Was at Elegant’s today for tea, and Tomwise came! It was the first time she and he and Worthy and I had all been in the same place since before I moved to Hightown. Had a marvelous time reminiscing about simpler (poorer) years, and then Elegant’s husband came in to say hello and we all went prim as roses. He knows, I think, but he’s awfully dour about questionable legality, so she’s asked us to avoid the more overtly murderous stories when he’s around.

Reminds me of Stinton, to be quite honest, with the difference that Elegant seems to genuinely like her husband. Curious!

Tomwise did say business has been worryingly good lately. He said the Coterie’s been ordering poisons in bulk, that everyone seems to be feeling the tension lately. Not much any of us can do for it from Elegant’s tea-room.

Oh! And Elegant told me Aveline’s not the only one with Chantry bells ringing--Jule and Pelarie are getting married in the summer! I’m to be invited over Lady Ashbridge’s objections as I’m the one who introduced them. I’m so glad for them--and if nothing else, they’ll be able to get away from their mothers now. Oh, good for them both. Maker keep them in health and happiness, at least until they’ve managed their own place.

19th Guardian. Not quite as cold, but "brisk” is the most generous of interpretations

Rarely does a trip to the market leave me quite so wrung. Then again, rarely do I eavesdrop quite as blatantly as I did (I’m normally much more surreptitious), so perhaps it’s what I deserved.

I just wanted some sweets. There’s a chocolatier beside Jean-Luc’s who makes the most amazing honeyed almonds and nut brittle, and I thought it might be a nice surprise tomorrow at cards. Merrill’s been bringing this sweet dessert-y liqueur along lately, and it seemed like it would match well. (I also managed to find the owner of that little carved figurine with “Bright Heart” engraved on the bottom--turns out it belongs to a little girl who lives just down the road from Jean-Luc, a gift from her father for her seventh birthday. It had fallen out of her bag and he’d taken her all over the city without luck. Glad I could find that one’s home again.)

Anyway, after I finished off the first little bag of almonds myself and had to go back for a second to actually bring to WG, I was walking back through the Hightown Market and happened to glimpse Orana standing at a stall I didn’t recognize, one of the new ones that came in with that Orlesian caravan last month. It was covered in fancy silks and the trader wore a silk half-mask lined in jewels. (I wish I were joking. And considering I strongly doubt an Orlesian would be caught dead in paste rubies, that mask was almost certainly worth more than my entire wardrobe.)

She was asking about a pipe. I knew why the moment I saw it--it’s perfect for Bodahn--he’s been looking for something like it for years, as long as I’ve known him. It was made of meerschaum and had a lovely intricate geometric pattern carved into it. Very beautiful and very dwarvish. And very expensive, which is why the merchant wore a sneer so enormous it knocked his mask askew.

I tell you, journal, I was ready to storm him like the Black City. I was halfway across the square when I saw Orana draw herself up in that way that usually means I’m about to be crushed like a beetle, so I--well, I stopped, and ducked in the most awkward fashion behind Hubert’s stand so she wouldn’t notice.

Orana’s trade is very good. I forget how good, sometimes, aside from the occasional odd sentence structure, because she has hardly any accent. That changed for this merchant. She went full Tevinter on him--cold as ice, her accent thickening with all those heavy vowels that could make anyone sound noble, even a slight elf of barely twenty, and even though she didn’t raise her voice in the slightest she made it perfectly clear that her patronage was an honor to him instead of the other way around, that everyone in this city knew who she was and in whose household she served, and that if he didn’t improve his demeanor immediately he would find his tariffs of import abruptly so high he’d have to forgo the feed for his mule and pull his silken cart himself.

Flames, but he went white. Gave her a mighty discount, too, and flinched when she scattered the coins on his stand instead of handing them to him directly, as if she couldn’t bear to touch him. I didn’t even know her face was capable of haughty. Haught?

I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d half a mind to go after her and make sure she was all right, if nothing else, but then who should come around the corner but Fenris, and when Orana saw him she went straight up and said something in Tevene I couldn’t follow. He looked concerned, but not unduly so, and said something back in the same language, and then he turned and went with her back up the stairs towards the Amell estate and out of sight.

I’ve been thinking about it all day.

Did she learn that behavior from Hadriana? She must have--I can’t imagine someone as gentle as she says her father was teaching her such things. It was certainly effective in putting that snide little man in his place, but...surely it must rankle to have to pull on lessons learned during slavery when you thought you were free, learned from someone infinitely cruel, who taught only by example on you and on the ones you loved.

Or is it worth it? If the payoff is forcing someone to respect you at last, when no one ever has before. When no one ever thought they should.

I wondered if Danarius

I think Merrill would say everyone ought to respect everyone else just because they’re people. I wish someone had taught the Orlesian merchant that lesson.

I asked Varric to help temporarily misplace some of his paperwork on the way out, though, just out of spite.

25th Guardian. Drizzly, chilly

Fenris said Orana was a little shaken but otherwise all right. She hadn’t meant to make a scene but his mask had reminded her of a man who used to attend Hadriana’s parties who made the slaves’ lives miserable, and she grew so angry she had to stand up for herself, and by proxy for them. She hadn’t thought it would work quite so well and was a little afraid he’d come after her, which is why she’d asked Fenris to help her get home.

He didn’t elaborate further, and I didn’t ask. Even I can tell when there are parts of a story I’m not meant to hear.

I will say Bodahn adores the pipe, and Orana looked so proud as she gave it to him that it all seemed worth it. Though I suppose that’s for her to decide, not me.

(I’d still very much like to give that fellow a knock right over the Hightown wall. Hmph.)

9th Drakonis. I hate Drakonis. What a miserable month

Letter from Carver today I’ll tuck in for safekeeping later. He reminded me of how he and Bethany used to talk in their own language and make me so angry at being left out. For whatever reason they’d slowly stopped using it as they grew up, and I’d forgotten all about it... Apparently there’s a set of twin sisters in one of the Warden units and they can read each other so well they don’t even have to speak.

I wonder if they have a sister at home waiting for their letters too. I’m wondering all sorts of things these days, it seems.

14th Drakonis. Toby took two steps out the back door this morning and immediately came back in soaking wet and exceedingly indignant

Spent most of the morning’s trip out to the Coast wondering why Fenris’s scarf looked so familiar. I’d forgotten it’s the one I’d given him two Satinalias ago, oops. At least it looks very warm.

Came home in time to hear Orana reading off a shopping list to Bodahn, and had the realization three damned years late that for all the time I spent teaching Fenris to read, it never one flaming time occurred to me to ask if Orana could.

Bodahn said her father had taught her a handful of letters in secret, and Bodahn himself had taught her the rest, a few months after she’d arrived. He didn’t mention it because it was right after Mother had died and he’d thought I’d had enough on my plate.

Not too much for that, though. I wish he’d told me. I wish it had occurred to me any moment before today.

He said she had been a very quick study but hadn’t wanted me to know, in case I’d been angry she’d learned. Then she’d grown to understand us all better, but by that time it hardly seemed worth bringing up because everyone around her was reading, anyway.

Damn.

Damn!

25th Drakonis. Almost comfortable outside, which is saying a great deal

Got Orana a little journal. I haven’t the faintest idea if she’ll use it, but burn me at the pyre if she doesn’t at least have the chance. 

Had such vivid dreams of Fenris last night I was quietly panicking about desire demons all morning, but Merrill says she’s not noticed anything lately. (That could be because she’s been so deep in the mirror issue she hasn’t seen daylight in weeks, but who am I to break mirrors, no matter how much I might wish to?)

In other news, Aveline marries in just under six weeks! Had Sebastian and me over yesterday to help her with a few details, since Sebastian has an in with the Chantry and I have exquisitely fine taste. And the willingness to carry things from room to room, which I suspect is more the purpose Aveline wished. She said Donnic intends to ask Fenris to stand up with him and she wanted to be sure I was all right, since I’m standing up with Aveline. Of course, said I, almost entirely meaning it, but it was at least enough to convince her to drop the subject.

I made her show me her gown at the end. White and gold, and Merrill’s going to make her a crown of marigolds for her hair.  She will be beautiful. Is, too, but when they open those doors Donnic will see the light of the Maker coming to meet him.

Aveline told me (very gruffly) that she’d sent an invitation to Isabela’s last known location, but hadn’t heard anything in return. She knows as well as I do not to expect anything from that quarter. If three years without my scintillating company hasn’t brought the pirate wench home again, Aveline’s wedding hardly will either.

Ugh.

I know very well that the only reason I’m so bitter is that I miss her dreadfully. How tedious, to be so aware of one’s faults and too stubborn to do a single thing to rectify them.

19th Cloudreach. The sun shone today so brightly the sea nearly looked warm

Drowning in wedding preparations. Should I ever marry, I will stand before a Chantry mother with no one else present and not an ounce of cake. I’m not even sure I’ll allow my spouse-to-be to attend.

25th Cloudreach. Went out without coat or scarf today and skipped across Hightown at how light it felt

Anders has been rather withdrawn lately, so I went to Darktown this morning to help him out at the clinic. I’d made up some potions and poultices from the cache of elfroot we found rooting out those slavers last month, and I thought that’d be enough to please him. Instead he looked hollow-eyed and thin as paper, and barely said “thank you” before asking me to help him dig through sewer waste. 

He looked as bitter as he did during that whole mess with Alrik a few years ago, down in the tunnels beneath the city. There weren’t even any innocent girls to nearly kill this time, so I haven’t any idea why he’s so faint.

He did say there had been unfortunate circumstances regarding certain underground factions. He wouldn’t tell me anything else.

That man used to trust me, once.

30th Cloudreach. Promise of clear warmth on the horizon--it better follow through, too, or I’m taking it straight to Andraste

Night before Summerday, and the night before Aveline’s wedding! She’s staying here at the estate tonight so we can all help her get ready tomorrow. It’d have been a shorter walk to the Chantry from the barracks, but she’d have also had to walk through the barracks in her wedding dress, and even now I think there are some things she’d like to keep private. Even if she does look splendid in this gown.

We hosted a small dinner for her and Donnic tonight--the big wedding feast will be tomorrow, but this was just for us and two of Donnic’s brothers. Anders came--I doubted, but he did--and Merrill, and Sebastian and Fenris and Varric, and everyone was so civil to each other I nearly fainted from shock.

One of Donnic’s brothers also asked to take me to dinner some time, which was very funny. Not at the time--I know my eyes flickered a bit helplessly between all involved and utterly oblivious parties scattered across the room--and then I shrugged and said I was complicatedly in love with someone who either complicatedly returned the sentiment or just deeply enjoyed stringing me along, but I’d look him up should it ever fall through. He laughed and thanked me for my honesty, and brought me another glass of wine to drown my sorrows.

I asked Aveline, later, how she was feeling. Bittersweet, she said... she had been thinking of Wesley a great deal, and wondering about Donnic’s parents, and daydreaming about how their lives might change over the next few years. She said she’d worried about falling in love again, once upon a time, until my mother had sat her down and talked the sense right into her again. She’d told her hearts always found a little room to grow, no matter the scars, and that happiness could sometimes be all the sweeter for the grief that came before.

I will say only it had better not show the slightest peep of a cloud tomorrow. After everything else, she deserves to have decent weather on her wedding day.

1st Bloomingtide, Summerday, clear as a glass and warm and beautiful in every way, thank you Andraste for your kindness, I’m blowing you dozens of kisses

They are married. Beautiful weather, and a beautiful ceremony--as I’d thought, Donnic nearly toppled over as he and Aveline came out the doors towards each other and he tripped twice walking her down the aisle to the Chantry mother. Merrill’s marigolds shone in the sun like little suns of their own. She’d done a circlet of sorts that trailed down in the back and wove through Aveline’s hair, which was loose for the first time in my memory and softened her so much I should hardly have recognized her if I hadn’t been the one helping her do it.

Donnic looked marvelous, too. He wore a simple brown suit and a white vest with just a trim of gold around the buttons--a sound decision, given he’s so steadfast and calm, and leagues better than the flashy embroidered nonsense all over the last society wedding I attended with Mother. Not that I think he could see a thing aside from Aveline’s face the whole hour the mother spoke, anyway.

Fenris and I were right behind them, and I’m delighted to report, journal, that I was so preoccupied with my overweening gladness for Aveline that I handled myself with more aplomb than I’ve ever managed in my life. He wore the same coat he did the night he came to the Champion’s ball for me, and I must say it looked sharp as a knife next to my own dark yellow gown (less fine than Aveline’s, naturally, but it was kinder to me than some shades she nearly chose).

I will also say I was very, very pleased at the attendance. More of the guard came than I expected, and all our friends, of course, and Donnic’s enormous family, but so too came quite a few friends of both Aveline and Donnic I hardly knew aside from the faces. We didn’t quite fill the Chantry, but it was awfully close, and anyway they all looked glad enough for the two of them I was satisfied.

The feast after was enormous and had excellent wine. Varric found some artisan pâtissier straight from the Winter Palace who is the direct cause of my pants not fitting tonight, and between the glorious Fereldan-style flat cake and the three-tiered champagne glass tower, it’s a wonder anyone will be able to roll out of bed tomorrow.

Aveline and Donnic are away tomorrow morning for a honeymoon in Orlais. No one will say precisely where, though I’m certain Varric knows, and for once I’m glad she’ll be away so long. We’ve all promised to keep an eye on the guard in her absence, just in case the templars begin edging somewhere they shouldn’t. (Not, in retrospect, that I’ll likely be able to do much, but a promise is a promise.)

They played Fereldan fiddle songs once everyone was deep enough in their cups to dance without worrying about what their neighbors might thing. I haven’t danced the River Dane’s Line since Lothering, though more people knew it than I’d thought, and then they played Those Sweet Brown Eyes, Oh, and before I could help it I looked over and saw Fenris across the room looking back at me. It was the same tune we danced to a hundred years ago at the Hanged Man for Satinalia, when Mother was still alive and I was wondering if we’d ever be friends again.

He smiled when he saw me looking. Neither of us danced--the whole room was between us, and by the time I’d have reached him the squares would have been set, but I could see the memory was as plain for him as it was for me, and as pleasant.

He did come over after and compliment both my dress and the decorations (part of my wedding present). This time I had the presence of mind to admire his coat in candlelight, instead of the shadows behind shrubbery, and it looks as good on him as I’d thought. It has just the barest lining of gold thread at the sleeve cuffs and the trim of the wide belt, and he wears it so very well.

One final note, and then I must sleep: towards the end of our conversation, Donnic’s brother (the middle one, who asked me to dinner the other week) came up and joined us in the conversation. He said nothing overt and was as pleasant throughout as any family of Donnic’s ought to be, but at the end he bowed over my hand and told Fenris that should he ever cede the war, he’d be happy to take up the colors in his place. 

Fenris looked confused long enough for me to stumble over some nonsense explanation as Donnic’s brother left, but I’m certain he put it together soon enough. One day I should like to meet someone who declines to heckle me to my face.

It was a beautiful wedding, though.

[ayanxmi]

♚ ♢ ✎

The mun’s interpretation - ( accepting )

♚ - Do you agree with fandom interpretation of your character?

Well, there would have to be a character for me to agree with to begin with… and that’s typically the problem that I have seen with Rei in the Evangelion fandom over the decade. Rei is, without a doubt, the most popular character in the show since primarily I’ve dealt with people who cared little for Shinji and his problems, thinking him as a whiny shit, and also couldn’t put up with Asuka’s level of bitchiness, thinking her as completely ungrateful. I can argue against both since I’ve seen the series to death and, honestly, I can see the merits in every single character in this holy-mess-of-philosophical-fuckery. Rei, however, rarely gets talked against at all. In fact, very few people even talk about her at all when you get to the fandom about her. They either complement her ‘ beauty ’ and say she’s ‘ precious ’, or simply acknowledge her presence and don’t consider her greater role in the overarching story and just see her as a background character, and that portrayal isn’t typically much better when you looked over quite a few fan-fictions like I have over the years. 

The same is true there as Rei either does nothing, or she’s there to provide a tragic element or do exposition and that’s it, and the few stories that have her do anything at all present her as the Rei from the dream world in the last episode / Angelic Days, which while not bad at all ( in fact, one of my favorite interpretations of her in this regard comes from the fanfic Nobody Dies, who’s a psycho-super genki stalker who loves to meme and has godlike powers, sneaking around and surprising people in ways that not even Batman can outclass ) it still fails to properly portray Rei Ayanami. And really, I think the problem comes down to a failure on Hideaki Anno’s part because, as it’s been said, Rei was actually intended to be creepy and unnatural, someone who’s supposed to look human but not quite to the point to allow for discomfort. Unfortunately, the idea was presented far too subtly I feel to properly convey what they wanted to tell the audience about her and instead, way too many people sympathized with her and wanted to hold her like she’s precious and really needed to be protected or dismiss her for being extremely shallow, something I have a problem with most, if not all, characters who are described as an ‘ Rei Ayanami-type ’, because they wind up doing the same thing repetitiously and don’t even bother to give a reason why, making a ‘ moe character ’ ( which makes sense since Rei was the character that, sadly, gave birth to moe ) that needs to be protected and, consequentially, has absolutely no depth whatsoever because they are repeating the same thing without understanding who Rei Ayanami actually is.

Rei Ayanami is, like they mentioned in their intention, is someone who tries to be human but clearly isn’t. Her emotional capacity & growth is heavily stunted. Her inability to truly die has left her without a concept of fear and, thus, without a concept of self because there’s nothing truly about her that she’s afraid of showing to people. She does what she does because she must, but she is also aware of the fact of who she is and that no matter what she does, it’ll never amount to anything for too long because she’s aware that everything’s going to end by her hands anyway, so she has an extreme lack of passion in anything that doesn’t have the name Ikari, as they are the only people who give meaning to her purpose. She lacks understanding of being a person, and yet, is simultaneously wise and knowledgeable enough to tell people at a glance and see their pain. The best way to describe Rei is that, while she lacks it’s depth, she’s still as far and wide as the ocean. What you see is exactly what you get, but to comprehend the sheer size of everything she is so mind-boggling it can’t be easily quantified in a few words.

So, the short answer is that while I can see why she’s rarely focused on by people compared to Shinji and Asuka, I also can’t agree to them because I understand there’s more to her character that can’t be ignored. It’s that simple.

♢ - What’s your opinion on different interpretations of your muse?

Honestly, I’ve always loved to see other people take a crack at a character I play ( or other interpretations of character in general ) because it’s always been fun to see what other people see and both complement and argue from a different perspective. It’s why when I play with my Ryuko, I always value other Ryuko’s and their interpretations, even if I’m slightly guarded and argumentative about things I see them do that I can’t see either the character nor my interpretation doing. It’s still fun to see it.

Rei is very much the same way. Even in spite of what I said is the common problem in the fandom above, I still appreciate any and all interpretations whether they themselves fall into the same conundrum or not, because they still focus on her specifically and they must see something in her that’s worth focusing on and developing in some way. So, really, they just ramify the fact of what I said about Rei being as far and wide as the ocean. They really are another view into that ocean that is Rei and it’s truly enlightening to see someone else talk about Rei and what they think or feel she is, even if I don’t necessarily agree with that viewpoint. I joke about how Rei is my baby and all ( I also joke about how much shit I am too ), but it’s honestly fun and it really helps both me and the other person to question what we see there and help us get a better grasp of her character.

✎ - What do you wish the author would reveal/had revealed about your muse?

Though a lot of my opinions of what Hideaki Anno should have revealed are far and wide ( namely, a real explanation on what the hell Adam & Lilith are beyond the small hint we got in NGE2, or why Kaworu is really confusing to follow with all of his timey-wimey talk ), I’m typically satisfied with a lot of the mystery we get with Rei because, well, she’s just that. A mystery. Someone you aren’t supposed to understand well, but know enough to want to ask questions and think on why she’s like that. So, specifically talking about what I think Hideaki Anno and Gainax should have revealed about her doesn’t really work because she’s already, in my mind, perfectly described in the series if the subtleties are paid attention to, and it’s fun to quiz in on who she really is because of those subtleties.

But, what I can say I would like to have been more elaborated is what in the hell those apparitions of Rei actually were. Like the image we see at the very beginning of the series of Rei in the middle of the street before vanishing despite being wounded and across town, or how she repeatedly appeared in Shinji’s dream-state in ep.16 & 20, conversing and interacting with him as an actual entity rather than a figment of his imagination ( something the manga hints even more towards, especially when Shinji’s trapped inside Unit-01 ), or in the two scenes in End of Evangelion where she’s standing over Misato while she died or at the very end where she’s floating in the red sea looking back at Shinji before vanishing. We get a hint at quantum mechanics and metaphysics being involved in ep.23, and I have my own opinion on it, but the lack of direct elaboration at all does have me pulling hair occasionally.