#surprise motherfucker your own kid is definitely queer

[iavanr]

im so frustrated every time I talk to my dad and it somehow devolves into him spouting transphobic sentiment (usually in a huge reach leap of logic that immediately devolves our conversation). This is a new development. I'm so tired. Transphobia is what it is but I hate how it's genuinely rotting people's brains and stopping them from having more nuanced conversations bc they think whipping out their transphobia card is this huge gotcha. U fucking dumbass you've gotten stupider. Love how he was using it to argue for eastern culture being superior bc we're more controlling and disciplined etc etc "look what happens when westerners give their children too much freedom"

[peachscribe]

peach’s summer book list

i had a lot of fun compiling the list of books i read during the 20-21 winter, so i decided i would do a summer one as well! i still have a lot of books i own but haven’t read, so im definitely not lacking in material

if you didn’t see my winter list, how my book list works is basically like this: i read a book that i own but have not previously read, write a short summary immediately after finishing the book, write down my thoughts on the book, and then provide a rating for the book. i also might include background info on why i read this particular book/feelings about the author, but that depends on the book. that’s how each entry works

without further ado, let’s get started!

1. Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

okay so i absolutely adore another book by andrew smith (written after grasshopper jungle) called the alex crow. it’s one of my favorite books of all time, so naturally i wanted to see if grasshopper jungle would make me feel similarly. just like the alex crow, grasshopper jungle’s plot is. so fucking weird. it stars austin szerba, a teenage polish kid who lives in ealing, iowa, and is often sexually confused regarding his girlfriend shann and his best friend robby. and in ealing, iowa, austin and robby accidentally and unknowingly unleash an unstoppable army of huge six-foot-tall praying mantis bugs that only want to do two things: fuck and eat. and i just have to say: andrew smith’s got an absolutely dynamo writing style. alex crow is similar, where it’s a book about kind of everything all at once, framed in a moment centering around teenage boys. it’s fantastic, and it’s more than a little gross, and i love it. this book made me feel so many things, and i thought austin was such an amazing narrator and main character to identify with. this book has it all: shitty teenage boy humor, fucked up science experiments, and poetic imagery that will make you want to cry. and explicit lgbt characters.

412/10 andrew smith what do you put in your water i just want to know

2. Burn by Patrick Ness

patrick ness has written a plethora of some of my favorite books (such as a monster calls, the chaos walking trilogy, and the rest of us just live here) so when i saw this one in the store i knew it would be a great one. burn is an alternate history fantasy that takes place in 1957 frome, washington, during the height of the cold war, and it begins with a girl named sarah and her father hiring a dragon to help out on their farm. but there’s not just dragons, farm living, and cold war tensions; there’s also a really shitty small town cop, a cult of dragon worshippers and their deadly teenage assassin, a pair of fbi agents, and a prophecy that sarah’s newly hired dragon claims she’s a part of. i think eoin colfer’s highfire was on my winter list, which also featured a story that included dragons and shitty cops, so when i first began burn i thought it was funny to have two books that had both things. you know, if you had a nickel etc etc. but that’s really where the similarities end because burn is entirely it’s own monster (dragon). burn is entirely invested in its world, and its fascinating. not only that, i had no clue where the book would take me next. there were so many surprises and amazing twists that honestly just blew me away. this book also includes beautifully written complicated discussions on family, race, and love - it features interracial and queer romances as the two most prominent romance plots which was such a nice surprise from a book i wasn’t expecting to have that kind of representation. this book is witty, fast-paced, and a very heartening read - i absolutely adored it.

9/10 dragons and becoming motivated by the power of love and friendship are so fucking cool

3. As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann

i hate this book! as meat loves salt is a historical fiction novel which takes place in seventeenth century england, which is going through a grisly civil war. the protagonist, jacob cullen, is a servant for a wealthy household and is engaged to another servant in the house. but due to certain events that are almost entirely jacob’s fault, he flees the house and is separated from his wife. from there, he joins the royal army and meets a kind soldier, ferris, and the two become fast friends. jacob and ferris’s relationship begins to bridge past friendly, and jacob struggles with his homoerotic feelings as well as the growing obsession and violence inside him. also, they try to start a colony. listen, i don’t know how to describe the book because so much happens, but it basically just follows jacob and all the terrible decisions he makes because he is, truly, a terrible person. ferris is kind and good, and jacob is scum of the earth. he sucks so bad. the entire time i was reading this book (which took absolutely so long), all i wanted was for jacob to just get his ass handed to him. i wanted to see him suffer. and it’s not like i just personally don’t like him - i believe the book purposefully depicts him as unsympathetic even though he is the narrator. i did enjoy the very in depth and accurate portrayal of what life would’ve been like in seventeenth century england, and i think it was interesting to read a character that is just the absolute worst person you’ve ever encountered and see him try and justify his actions, so if you enjoy that kind of thorough writing, then this book would be perfect for you. however, i did not see that bitch ass motherfucker jacob cullen suffer enough. i’d kill him with my bare hands.

2/10 diversity win! the worst man on earth is mlm!

4. This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

i know ive had a friend tell me how great one of schwab’s other book series is, but truthfully i bought this book because the cover is sick as hell and it was on a table in the store that advertised for buy two get one free, i think. something like that. anyway, this savage song takes place in a future in which monsters, for whatever reason, suddenly became real and out for blood in a mysterious event nicknamed the phenomenon. august flynn is one of these monsters, but he takes no pride in that fact and only wants to feel human. kate harker is the daughter of a ruthless man and is trying her hardest to be ruthless, too, but deep down she knows it’s just an act. their city, verity, stands divided, and kate and august stand on either side - but when august is sent on a mission to befriend kate in the hopes of stopping an all out war, the lines begin to blur. this book rules. august and kate are such interesting and dynamic characters, and the narrative is familiar while still being capable of twisting the story around and taking the feet out from under you in really compelling ways. this savage song is part of the monsters of verity duology, and i can’t wait to dive into how the story continues and finishes.

11/10 sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover

4a. Our Dark Duet by Victorian Schwab

this is the sequel and finale for this savage song and i’d figure i’d update everyone: fantastic ending, beautiful, showstopping, painful.

12/10 loved it and will definitely be keeping an eye out for schwab’s other books

5. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

oh boy. okay. white is for witching is about a house, and it is about the women who have lived inside of it. when her mother dies abroad, miranda silver begins to act strangely, and there’s nothing her father or her twin brother seem to be able to do about it. she develops an eating disorder and begins to hear voices in the silver family house, converted to a bed and breakfast by miranda’s dad; and she begins to lose herself in the house and the persistent presence of her family legacy. white is for witching switches perspective dizzingly and disorientingly between miranda, her twin eliot, miranda’s friend from school named ore, and the house itself. this story is a horror story as much as it as a tragedy as much as it is a romance as much as it is a bunch of other things. oyeyemi brings race, sexuality, nationality, and family into this story and forces you not to look away. this book is poetry.

(like i mentioned briefly, this book heavily deals with topics of race and closely follows miranda’s eating disorder. read responsibly, and take care of yourselves)

15/10 this book consumed me and i think i’ll have to read it another 10 more times to feel it properly

6. These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

okay. okay. strap in for a ride. these violent delights is a romeo and juliet style story, taking place in glittering 1920’s shanghai. the city stands divided - not only between the foreign powers encroaching on chinese land, but also between the scarlet gang and the white flowers, who are at the height of a generations-long blood feud. juliette cai, heir to the scarlets, has recently returned from four years abroad and is determined to prove herself ruthless enough to lead. roma montagov, heir to the white flowers, is standing strenuously on his place as next in line due to a slip up four years prior and is desperate to keep hold of his title. and in the midst of juliette and roma’s burning history with each other threatening to combust, an unnatural monster lurks in the waters of shanghai, loosing a madness on scarlets and white flowers alike. this book has it all - scorned ex lovers, political intrigue, deadly monsters, and all set on a glamorous backdrop of the roaring twenties. i absolutely was enraptured by this book and the way it plays around the story of romeo and juliet so well that it easily became it’s own monster, but with the punches and embraces of something classically shakespearan. gong does just an absolutely breathtaking job of fitting this fantastical story amid the larger world of shanghai and the real life historical events that had shaken the city to its core. completely immersive and outstandingly heart racing.

17/10 i was chewing on my fingernails for the last thirty pages and will continue to do so until the sequel is released (our violent ends, 16 nov 21)

7. The Antiques by Kris D’Agostino

you ever heard of the american dysfunctional family story? this is most definitely that. at the same time george westfall’s cancer takes a turn for the worse, a hurricane hits the east coast, and suddenly all at once the issues of his health, the hurricane, and all three of his children’s achingly dysfunctional adult lives are crashing into each other. reunited by george’s death, the westfall siblings have to face their grief, each other, and the problems in their own lives they attempted to put on hold while planning their father’s memorial. this is a nice story about grief and loss and love and somehow finding the humor amidst it all.

(this book does include a depiction of an autistic child who does experience several pretty bad meltdowns due to ignorant people around him not understanding how to cater to his needs. im not an authority on what depictions are or are not harmful, but i do believe this depiction is ultimately loving and well-intended.)

7/10 it made me laugh and cry and was generally one of those books that somehow hit you close to home

8. Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill

fierce fairytales is a poetry anthology that reimagines classic fairytales from a modern, feminist viewpoint, acknowledging that the line between hero and villain, monster and damsel, are not as clear cut as the classics try to make you believe. this book also includes illustrations done by the author herself, which i think is really cool. my personal favorite story reimagining was the story of peter pan and captain hook, called ‘boy lost’ which looked at how peter and hook’s relationship began and rotted. all in all, i think this collection of stories had a lot of important things to say and said them in frank, easy to understand poetry and prose.

7/10 beautiful message and pretty prose, but at times a little cliche

and that’s all from the summer! my fall semester starts tomorrow, and overall i feel very good about all the reading i did this summer. i even read four other books not on this list for work! so i definitely feel like i made the most out of my time, and im really glad i was able to read so many stories that made me feel a variety of different things

thanks so much for reading this list, and let me know if you read or have read any of these books and tell me what you think of them!

happy reading<3

[bronte-deserves-better]

Hey @stars-and-splendors! I was your secret santa for the kotlc fandom gift exchange. Sorry this is a little late- I meant to give it to you Christmas day or the day after, but the fic got away from me a little...I hope the wait will have been worth it! 

Without further ado, I present to you: 4.5k words of Keefe and Fitz trying to dance around their feelings for each other, feat. a few moments of shitty parents and some very tired friends/sisters. 

Title: to find what you’re looking for

Summary: 

The war is over. The Neverseen is defeated.

In the new, peaceful world, Keefe and Fitz are attending the Elite Towers, soon to graduate. Yet both of them feel like they're missing something. When Keefe comes up with a scheme to prank their parents, both of their worlds may change forever- with the help of a few exasperated friends and supportive elder gays, of course.

Wordcount: 4514

Warnings: homophobia, internalized homophobia, swearing.

AO3 Link

(Actual fic under the cut)

“Hey. Psst. Fitz.”

Fitz jumped, startled at the voice. “Keefe? Where are you?”

“Over here. Ditching class. Like usual.”

He followed Keefe’s voice to the secluded little hallway that the other boy used for ditching, finding Keefe sprawled out on the bench as usual. “What are you doing here?”

“Ditching class, like I said. What about you, handsome?” Keefe flashed a smirk, which Fitz knew meant he meant that in a joking way. Or, figured, at least.

“Also ditching class.”

“Seriously? That’s not like you, Fitzy.”

Fitz shrugged. “I’m feeling rebellious lately, I guess. It just seems like we’ve all been through so much and yet adults are still trying to tell us what’s good for us, like we weren’t the ones who defeated the Neverseen.”

“Fuck, yeah. That’s definitely. Yeah.” Keefe stared at the ground, suddenly serious. “Everyone’s been like that, huh?”

“Well, not everyone, I guess. Sir Tiergan’s not bad about it, but he fusses so much about me and Sophie.”

“Oh, right, you’re supposed to be in telepathy. Won’t Sophie notice you’re gone?”

“Yeah, but that’s why I’m out here. No one will find me.”

Keefe nodded and patted the bench next to him, straightening up a little. “Come on, there’s room for two.”

“Thanks.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, staring at the white walls of the Level Six wing.

“So,” Keefe said eventually.

“So.”

“You wanna spill about what’s bugging you so much?”

Fitz could feel himself tense, but he forced his muscles to relax a little. Keefe just cared about him because they were friends. Yeah. “I don’t know. I just feel directionless. Like, we defeated the Neverseen and did this whole big thing, and now it’s over. It feels like- no, it is like- I’ve been fighting this war my whole life, Keefe.”

“Cause your dad-“

“Sent me to the Forbidden Cities when I was a child to search for Sophie.”

“Kinda a dick move of him, really.”

“N- Yeah. Yeah, it was a dick move of him.”

Keefe scooted a little closer, and Fitz’s breath caught just a tiny bit. “Hey, I know what it’s like. I mean, my dad never sent me to do illegal shit for him when I was a kid, yeah, but I mean….yeah. Mommy dearest and all. My parents are shit in a different way than your dad, but I get it. So I guess what I’m trying to say is…I’m here for you, and I know that sounds 100% cheesy but I really do mean it.”

“Oh. I mean, thank you. I should probably tell you I’m here for you too, since that really is true as well.” Fitz’s brain was not functioning, he decided.

“Ah, I knew that. You all told me so much back when mommy dearest was fucking up my life. Still, I appreciate it.”

“It’s always been true. Even when we were fighting over Sophie.”

Keefe snorted. “That was weird, honestly. Like, it was so obvious from the start that she wasn’t straight. Must’ve been pretty wild for you when she ended up with your sister, though.”

Fitz shrugged. “I had been over her for a while.” And questioning his sexuality, but he wasn’t going to tell Keefe that. Backers didn’t do that. Vackers weren’t gay- well, except Biana. But that was okay, Fitz knew she wasn’t any worse for it. Still, it wasn’t like he was gay.

“Fitzy boi, you with me?”

“Yeah sorry. Got lost in thought. What were you saying?”

Keefe grinned. “Well, I was saying that on the topic of shitty parents and gayness, I have an excellent way to piss off both our parents.”

“Go on?” Fitz was pretty sure Keefe’s plan would be ridiculously over the top and hilarious, but he was pretty ready to go along with whatever.

“Right, so, you know how there’s an end of year ball for Elite Tower students? Cause we have to be ready for the nobility and all? What if we went together?”

“Are you asking me out?” Fitz blurted.

“Ah, I wish. Nah, I’m asking if you’ll be my fake date to a ball so my dad will have a heart attack. If you’re okay with that, that is. Like, no pressure.” Keefe suddenly looked shy, and Fitz could hardly refuse that look. Besides, it would be fun to give his and Keefe’s dads a collective heart attack.

“Okay, I’m in.”

-

The next two weeks were spent plotting and planning as to how they would pull this off, with Sophie and Biana as their enthusiastic wingwomen.

“Okay, so, Biana’s already planning you guys’ outfits,” Sophie told Keefe as she walked back into her room at Havenfield, where Keefe was currently visiting.

“Tell her to make me look fabulous,” Keefe declared with a great deal of drama, doing his best to flop back onto the bed.

“I will, trust me. But I wanted to ask you about some other stuff related to this, since the Vackers are outfit shopping and you know I don’t do that.”

“Ok, fire away.”

“One, are you asking Fitz to this thing to piss off your dad or because you have a crush on him? Two, how dramatic should your prom-posal be?”

“As dramatic as possible.” Keefe hoped against hope Sophie would forget about her first question. “Like, we’ve got to be extra about it.”

“Ok. And about my first question?”

“I....I’m doing this for a lot of reasons. One, Fitzy boi needs to lighten up a bit. Two, I love him. Three, I would kill to see my dads expression when he finds out.”

“I kinda figured.”

“I’m that obvious? Guess I’ve upped my flirting game.” He shot a wink to Sophie, who just sighed.

“Keefe, you’re never as subtle as you think you are.”

“Damnit.”

“Yeah. Apparently your lack of subtly is only matched by my obliviousness.”

“Well, thankfully for me, Fitz is just as oblivious as you.”

Sophie sighed. “He’s going to find out someday. I did, you know.”

“Well I’ll make sure that day is far away, because he’s way out of my league.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nopity nope nope. You two deserve each other, and I mean that in a good way.”

“Stop being so nice,” Keefe whined.

“No can do. Now let’s plan how you’re going to dramatically ask him to elf prom.”

-

The ‘promposal’, as Sophie had deemed it, took place in the atrium of the Gold Tower. They had agreed that Keefe would do the asking, since Sophie was far more interested in arranging a dramatic proposition, and Biana was far more interested in making sure that the two boys would look fantastic for the party. So all Fitz had to do was hang around and wait for his best friend to show up.

Thankfully, Keefe didn’t keep him waiting long, sweeping into the room like he owned the place. Maybe he did own Foxfire, really, the gorgeous boy who could charm people with a wink. He was certainly charming Fitz, not that Fitz was going to tell him that.

“Hello, my dearest Fitz!”

“Hey, Keefe.”

“I have a question of utmost importance for you.” By now, Keefe had come close enough that Fitz could see a hint of a blush staining the other’s pale cheeks.

“Oh, go on?”

“Wellllll.” Keefe dragged out the word, fidgeting with something behind his back, which he whipped out to reveal a gorgeous bouquet with flowers of silver, gold, and elegant teal. “Will you be my date to the end of year ball?”

This is staged. This is all staged. He’s not really interested in you, Fitz reminded himself. Still, he must have sounded a little breathless when he replied. “Yes, I would love to.”

“Well then I shall await you at the bottom of the staircase two weeks from now!” Keefe bowed dramatically and handed him the flower arrangement.

“I’ll be there,” Fitz promised quietly, flowers tickling his chin and Keefe’s grin making his cheeks heat.

“Oh, wonderful.” Keefe smirked again and practically danced away as the rest of the prodigies stared at the two of them.

-

“I hear you caused quite the scene today.”

Keefe jumped, looking around and then finally down to see who had said that. “Oh, hi, Councillor Grumpypants. What are you doing here?”

Bronte glared at him without much real anger. “Sophie and I’s session is in this tower, remember? I’m just waiting on this landing because someone’s using our classroom right now.”

“Right, gotcha.” Keefe fiddled with the hem of his tunic, trying not to seem too nervous. “Do you disapprove of scene-causing? Seems like a pretty old and grumpy thing to do.”

“Ha ha. I might have few qualms about distracting other prodigies, but I see no harm in you asking Fitz to the end of year ball. Honestly, it doesn’t seem all that surprising that you did.”

“Do I vibe as that gay?”

“I have no idea what you mean by vibe, but yes, I assumed you were queer.”

Keefe snorted. “Okay, so even the old people think I’m hopelessly in love with my best friend.”

“Well, not exactly all that,” Bronte said dryly, “But as the…how did Zarina put it? ‘Gayest motherfucker on the Council’, I know a baby queer when I see one.”

“Gayest motherfucker on the Council…that’s fabulous.”

“Indeed. Now I have a session to get to, and I’m sure you do too, but…good luck with your date.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sure it will go well, and trust me, Leto will shut down anyone who tries to give you shit for it pretty damn quickly.”

“Good to know.” Keefe watched the older elf hurry away and up the stairs, muttering under his breath about ‘need to get an actual timepiece one of these days’. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all…

-

Fitz was pretty sure both Sophie and Sir Tiergan could tell he wasn’t actually concentrating that day in telepathy, too busy thinking about teal-and-silver flowers and Keefe’s little blush. Could Keefe really like him like that? Why did he even want Keefe to like him like that?

Sophie didn’t seem to mind, just sending him a few knowing looks, although Tiergan seemed vaguely worried. “Fitz, are you with us?”

“Oh, yeah! Sorry, Sir Tiergan.”

“There’s really no need to call me sir,” Tiergan sighed, for about the thousandth time since Sophie and Fitz had started telepathy sessions together. “Really. And no need to apologize either, you just seem a little distant today.”

“Probably got a lot on his mind,” Sophie spoke up, nudging Fitz gently. “I know I’d have a lot on my mind if someone brought me flowers and asked me to a ball.”

“Ah, yes. Do try to concentrate on your telepathy, but I can understand that.” Tiergan shot Fitz a gentle smile, and Fitz ducked his head and nodded. 

The session went by fast enough, and before Fitz knew it, the session was over and Tiergan was asking him to stay back. “Not for long, I don’t want to make you later, but I figured I’d check in.”

“O- okay.”

“See you, Fitz!” Sophie called. “I’m going to go tease our lovely friend about how blushy he gets around you!”

“Bye,” Fitz called, and Tiergan smiled again.

“I was actually going to talk to you about that ‘lovely friend’, assuming that’s Keefe?”

Fitz stared at the slightly shorter elf, debating what to say. “Yeah- yeah, that’s him.”

“I guessed so.” Tiergan fiddled with his sleeves for a moment, seeming uncharacteristically hesitant. “I wanted to tell you that you two are very brave for this- it’s not unheard of, but it will be a shock. That, and I hope it will be somewhat easier for you than it was for me when I was your age.”

“You’re-“

“Have you seen the way I look at Leto?”

Fitz had to admit that was a fair point. “I guess I should have known earlier, but I didn’t want to assume.”

“Very polite of you, but I would find it more than fair to assume my queerness based off my general demeanor,” Tiergan said wryly. “Anyways, to bring us back around to our original topic of conversation, I also wanted to let you know that you have Leto and I’s full support. If anyone gives you shit for this, I want you to tell me and I will ensure they don’t get away with it.”

“Benefits of having the principal for a boyfriend,” Fitz muttered before he could think to stop himself, and then clapped a hand over his mouth. “I’m so sorry, I’ve been hanging out with Keefe too much.”

Tiergan flushed lightly. “No, no, you’re right. Though I will say, Leto has spent a long time trying to protect students who are cast out or fall through the cracks. Now that he’s in a position of power, neither of us have qualms about using it to help any student who could use it. So please, come to me or Leto if you need anything, or anyone bothers you. And I’m not saying that because I pity you or anything of the sort, but because I wish some adult had told me this when I was your age.”

“Oh.”

The older elf smiled sadly. “Indeed. But now I get to make sure the next generation has it better than I did, and that’s something.”

Fitz nodded. “I think that’s a really kind thing.”

“Thank you. It’s really the bare minimum of what I could do, but…somehow I never find the time to help out as much as I would like.” Tiergan glanced at the clock. “Anyways, I’m making you late for your next session, so hurry on your way. You can tell your mentor I kept you late and to take it up with me if they’ve got a problem.”

“Okay!” Maybe this wasn’t such a terrible plan after all…

-

The end-of-year-ball was approaching quickly, and Keefe’s nerves grew as quickly as the days between now and then passed. Which was very quickly, what with finals coming up. Fitz and Keefe were studying for them together, of course, which made for a lot of late nights in each of their rooms in the Silver Tower, laughing, talking, and pretending to quiz each other on the material but not getting far without getting distracted. Fitz was always beautiful, Keefe thought, but perhaps the most lovely when he was sitting in the cozy room, laughing at some silly thing Keefe had said or brandishing flashcards mock-sternly. His eyes shone a little in the silvery lighting, and his hair fell across his face cutely, and Keefe might have been a tiny bit in love. Just a bit.

So they kept hanging out together, one night after another. Sometimes they talked about fun things like baking or pranking, sometimes they talked about serious things like the past or the Black Swan, and (rarely) they studied. And before they knew it, they had passed all their finals and it was time for a ball.

-

Fitz fiddled with the clasp of his cape one last time as Biana put the final touches on his hairstyle. “Are you sure this is good enough?”

“Please, I know good fashion when I see it.” His sister flipped her hair, and then shot him a reassuring smile. “Keefe will pass the fuck out, in a good way. And all the stuffy nobles will think you look fabulous right before you dance with one of their sons.”

“How do you pass out in a good way?”

“I mean that you’ll knock everyone dead. Boys. Honestly.”

Biana turned him around to look at himself in the mirror, and Fitz did have to admit that she’d done a good job. He was wearing an elegant tunic in a shade of medium blue, nearly cobalt, and a much darker jerkin over that which faded from green to blue with elegant silver embroidery over it. His cape followed a similar color scheme, and it fit perfectly, falling around his shoulders and down to the ground, where the hem was also embroidered with silver and tiny flecks of lumenite. Biana had styled his hair slightly asymmetrical, more so than he would usually wear it, and sprinkled tiny bits of silver across that too. He didn’t know if he was drop-dead gorgeous per se, but it was an outfit he could feel confident in.

“Okay, you did a good job,” Fitz admitted.

“Of course I did. Now get on down there and knock them dead.”

His nerves only increased as he descended the staircase, despite his endless repetitions of ‘it’s not a real date’. It didn’t matter how much he said that, the fluttery feeling in his stomach about Keefe seeing him all dressed up was not going away.

When he reached the bottom, Keefe was already standing there, and Fitz momentarily forgot how to breathe. The other boy’s equally intricate ice blue jerkin matched his eyes perfectly, and his blonde hair had little bits of pure gold braided into the parts that were long enough to do small braids on. The rest was artfully messed as ever, but in the sort of way that made you think Keefe had spent a long time getting it perfect. His silvery boots made a click click noise on the silver floor as he stepped to greet Fitz, and Fitz had to blink a few times to get his mouth to work again.

“Hey there, Fitzy boi.”

“Hey.” It was a pitiful greeting, but it was the best he could really manage at the particular moment. “You look…really incredible.”

“And you’re as stunning as ever.” Keefe’s grin seemed less confident than usual, a hint of genuine shyness behind it as Keefe ducked his head a little.

“Flatterer.”

“Only the right level of flattery for you.” Keefe extended his arm. “Shall we go?”

Still barely breathing, Fitz took his arm as they headed for the Leapmaster.

-

Fitz was stunning. Beyond stunning. He was some entirely new level of gorgeous that Keefe would have to invent a word for when his brain started working again, which he doubted would be anytime soon given Fitz’s close proximity to him. Standing at the bottom of that staircase, all dressed up in his finery, he had truly looked like an heir to the Vacker Legacy, but he was so much more than that. Whether he’d been born a Vacker or into the least-well off Talentless family, Fitz would always have been kind, unique, handsome Fitz, and Keefe would have loved him just the same. Keefe doubted the courage and strength that Fitz always carried with him would be any different had he been born to a different family, doubted there was any universe in which Fitz wasn’t his gorgeous, fierce self.

He managed to concentrate enough to get them safely to the ballroom, although if he hadn’t, he had no doubt Fitz would have more than made up for it with his ridiculously strong concentration. Speaking of strength, Fitz was gripping Keefe’s hand tightly as they arrived, and Keefe squeezed back gently, staring over the crowded ballroom.

Tonight, nobles, parents, and Elite Tower students all mingled, a preparation for balls and parties that the Elite Tower students would likely attend later in life. It was a much looked-forward-to event. And Keefe and Fitz, two male prodigies, would be attending it together, which was an extremely rare occurrence. In fact, Keefe could already see people staring at them in their position on the landing.

He squeezed Fitz’s hand again. “Let’s go down to the dance floor, shall we?”

Fitz nodded shakily, and they descended the staircase arm in arm. The staring only increased, but if Keefe pretended that it was just girls staring at him in Level Four because they thought he was hot again, he could mostly ignore it.

What was harder to ignore were the furious parents sweeping over to them.

“Keefe, I can’t believe you would disgrace the family like this-“

“So good to see you with your friend, Fitz.” Alden looked like he was speaking through gritted teeth. Keefe would have liked to punch those teeth right out of his mouth.

“I know, Keefe is a wonderful boyfriend.” Fitz’s voice was calm, but electric blue spirals of fear drifted through Keefe’s emotional ‘vision’.

Before Alden had a chance to say anything further, Della lightly tugged his arm. “Let’s go say hi to the Glixina family, darling.” She shot them a tiny smile, prompting a wave of soft purple relief from Fitz as Alden allow himself to be dragged off.

Unfortunately for Keefe, Cassius was not so easily dissuaded. “Really, Keefe. Parading around with boys on your arm-“

“I make my own choices,” Keefe muttered.

“And is one of them this?”

Keefe forced himself to look up and smirk. “Nah, I didn’t choose to fall in love with him. Just to ask him out.”

Cassius sputtered more, but before he could gather the coherence to say anything, Tiergan had come sweeping over with all the frozen grace of a swan. “Excuse me, Lord Sencen. My dear friend Leto would like a word with you about your son. I’m sure you understand that some matters are very important.”

“Well, Sir Tiergan, I’m in the middle of speaking to said son currently.”

“This truly cannot wait. Please, follow me.” Tiergan swept away again, practically dragging Cassius in his wake.

Sorry about that, Tiergan’s voice echoed in Keefe’s head. Leto will thoroughly lecture him about all this, I promise. And you don’t have to talk to him anymore tonight if you don’t want to, we arranged the ball and we can keep him away from you.

Keefe startled, squeezing Fitz’s hand. “Fitz-“

“Yeah?”

“Can you transmit something to Tiergan? He just told me that he’d keep my dad away from us, I want to thank him.”

Fitz flashed a tiny, hesitant smile. “As you wish.” He closed his (stunning, lovely) eyes briefly, and then blinked them open again. “Sent. He says ‘of course, let me know if you need anything else’.”

“Thanks, Fitzy boi.” Keefe offered a grin of his own. “Now that the parents are out of the way…may I have this dance?”

“Of course.”

The dance steps were familiar, and that was lucky, since Keefe wasn’t exactly paying good attention to what he was doing. Not after everything that had just happened- and not when Fitz had a hand on his waist. Elven music wasn’t as good to lose yourself in as the human music Sophie had showed him, but Keefe found it pretty easy to get lost just focusing on Fitz. The music swirled around them, and the floor was steady under their feet, and even the stares of others weren’t so noticeable when it was just the two of them dancing together. One step. Another. Always in rhythm. Keefe wondered a little if this was what it was like for Cognates, if their minds synced the way dance partners who knew each other well did. He had to admit to a little jealousy that he would never know what the kind of bond felt like, but…hey. It was pretty okay to be an empath, especially since he could see Fitz’s bubbling pink-and-blue happiness float through the air. It might have been a difficult, nerve-wracking entrance, but Fitz was happy to be dancing with Keefe and that was all Keefe could really ask for. Although…Keefe frowned at the slight mist of green sorrow hanging around the other, tempering his joy and keeping the bubbles from floating as far as they should have.

“Hey, Fitz.”

“Yeah?”

“You good?”

“Yeah- yeah, I am.”

They took another few steps in silence.

“Hey, Keefe?”

“Yeah?”

Fitz sucked in a slow breath, and a few lines of tension pulled around his form. “When you told your dad that you had fallen in love with me…”

Shit. “Yeah?”

“Your heart didn’t skip any beats.”

It was Keefe’s turn to suck in a breath and try to find something, anything to say in reply to that. “Maybe- I mean, I was mostly trying to piss him off.” He could feel his treacherous heart skip one-two-three this time.

“I felt your heart skip that time.”

“Okay, so….maybe I liked you. A little. Or a lot. And maybe I think you’re handsome and brave and kind and all that, and maybe I asked you to the ball partially because my dad would be mad but partially because I just wanted to be with you but you’re Fitz fucking Vacker and I’ve never had a chance-“ Keefe forced himself to take a breath and a step back from Fitz, unable to bear feeling the other’s emotions as well as his own right now.

“Keefe, wait, I-“ Fitz reached out a hand, and then pulled it back. “I love you too. And I think you should know that because no matter how much better you think I am than you, or whatever, you’re always going to be the guy who pulled me out of my shy little shell as a kid and then kept doing it, over and over and over. You’re always going to be the guy who stuck with me even when I was a major jerk, the guy who helped pull me out of my shell again and realize I wasn’t as straight as everyone thought. And more than that, you’re Keefe. I know you think that’s a bad thing, but it’s not. It’s the highest compliment I could give.”

People were staring at them again.

Keefe barely noticed. “Give me your hand.”

“As you wish.” Fitz held out his hand, and Keefe pushed his empathy out to the other. A little hint of fear, of nervousness… lingering joy from the moments before, and beneath that, glowing golden hope. No guilt, no shame. Nothing to make him think Fitz was in any way lying even if what the other boy had just said seemed too good to be true.

“You really- you really love me like that?”

“Yeah.” Fitz laughed, a little sadly. “It took me forever to notice, but I should have known the day you asked if we could go to the ball together. Or before that, even.”

“Well I fucking love you too. Have since we were young, really, but Sophie fucked with my brain and I didn’t see it until you and Sophie broke up. I thought I was jealous of you, but...all this time, I’ve been jealous of her.”

Fitz’s smile was so, so gentle. “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize.”

“And I’m sorry I didn’t just ask you out the day I suggested this whole fake dating,” Keefe joked. “Seriously, you took your time, but…that’s okay. I was willing to wait.”

And the gorgeous teal-eyed boy who Keefe was starting to realize might be his reached out a hand to cup Keefe’s cheek. “Do you mind if I kiss you?”

“What a scandal it’ll be.” Keefe wasn’t sure he was actually breathing. “But no, I don’t mind.”

So Fitz kissed him in front of the entire goddamn ballroom, and Keefe couldn’t have been happier.

[ashenpages]

17 questions 17 people!

I was tagged by @pompous-hat, and they very graciously called out one of the fics I posted at the beginning of the month, and have just been generally sweet, so I’m going to go ahead and do this for them!

Nickname: I’ve had the nickname “Tree” a lot growing up because my IRL name is shortened to “tree-sa” when people are talking quickly in a West-coast American accent. I tend to go by “Ash” on here. =)

Zodiac: Aries

Height: 5′ 9″

Hogwarts House: JK Rowling can eat my entire ass for being a TERF and for constantly writing everyone in my house like they’re an asshole instead of in the house that motherfucking MERLIN was in. *indignant huff* Anyway, I’m a Slytherin. Well done to the fans reclaiming the Wizarding World as our space. Keep up the good work.

Last thing I googled: Google Translate for Spanish to English because someone left a wonderful comment on one of my fics, and I only knew enough Spanish to get the gist and needed help understanding the details.

Song stuck in my head: Bury the Light by Casey Edwards, which is Vergil’s theme for Devil May Cry 5, which I am playing constantly now that Vergil is out and playable! (I’m a really big Devil May Cry fan, have been since I was in high school).

Number of Followers: 306  O.O I didn’t know there were that many of you still here. Thanks for sticking around! I hope you won’t get fed up with my multi-fandom fics and reblogs!

Amount of Sleep: It fluctuates a lot. I’ve been working from home since March, so sometimes I get to nap. Can be between 6 hours and 9 hours. I get more sleep on weekends.

Lucky Numbers: 3, 7, and 11

Dream Job: I’m a progressive, so my dream job would be no job at all--which is not to say I don’t want to work. I do, I just don’t want to have to have a job to survive. I want to work on things that bring me happiness, not because I have to pay rent and put food on the table. I’m currently in Book Production at the comics house I dreamed of working for when I was at university. It’s a fun job, and allows me to use my creativity in a way that still leaves me enough creative energy to work on my fanfics and my own original writing projects in my off time. I’m very defensive of my writing time, and sometimes sacrifice sleep to it, though. So even though I’m definitely working a job that is a dream job right now, I’d love to do it or only 30 hours per week instead of 40.

Wearing: Champion Blue Breath of the Wild tanktop, and cozy fleece pajama pants.

Favorite Author: Picking a favorite is always so hard. I read a lot of queer graphic novels and comics. I really liked The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. I adored Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki. I really, really love the short four volume manga series Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani. I love old Victorian era stories too, like Frankenstein and Dracula. Jane Austin and the Bronte sisters are really fun for me too. And I love Diana Wynne Jones. Tamora Piece got me through my childhood.

Favourite Instrument: I love all kinds of flutes. I’m biased, having played it in school, but I love the sound of different kinds of flutes, and swoon every time I hear jazz flute or Celtic penny whistle or reedy wooden flutes. I love a spirited harp as well, and it’s difficult to resist cello.

Aesthetic: A friend once described my look as “butch high femme” and I love it? I have an undercut and like to wear lipstick, boots, and flannel button downs. It’s definitely the look of a Pacific North West queer kid. =)

Favorite Song: Dearly Beloved from the Kingdom Hearts franchise. I know it may sound cheesy, but that series has been going for so long that there are so many versions of Dearly Beloved, and it always makes me feel things. I also collect game soundtracks, so maybe this isn’t actually all that surprising. I go back to the .hack//Infection soundtrack for similar reasons. 

Favorite Animal Noise: I grew up in the woods, so I find the singing of coyotes to be very soothing. I also like the songs of crickets. And I know it’s not an animal sound, but the sound of rain goes hand in hand with these other two for me.

Random: I’m married to my platonic life partner. That confuses a lot of people, but it makes us happy. =)

I don’t typically do these things, so I don’t think I’ll tag anyone, but if you’re one of my followers and see this and want to do it and share with me, please do copy this and tag me so I can see your answers and celebrate them with you!

[airagorncharda]

Surprising no one, I have some Fucking Thoughts about Infinity War:

(I don’t know if it actually is, but this FEELS like the longest post I’ve ever written. And that is impressive because I am a long winded motherfucker on a good day and because it’s literally ALL negative)

So first off, I Did Not Enjoy this movie. For my complete list of things I DID like, read this very short post instead. If you enjoyed the movie and don’t want to read somebody absolutely slamming it, you should probably leave now.

Secondly, if you don’t want spoilers I’m not sure why you clicked the readmore, but you’ve now been warned: 

SPOILERS past this point!!!!!!!

I disliked this movie so much that I need to break down the varying ways I disliked it into fucking sections. So starting right off:

I find shock value character death to be cheap and lazy.

And boy did they go hard on the shock value character death. Boy, oh boy. BOY oh boy, did they ever. That was pretty much the entire movie.

If you can’t make the stakes feel high without death, you’re a bad writer. If death is the only card you know how to play, you’re a bad writer. 

I was expecting the characters who’s actor’s contracts are up to get killed off as a cheap and lazy way of explaining why they’re leaving. I was instead handed a movie in which literally everyone ELSE died for even cheaper and lazier shock value reasons that are almost certainly going to get undone (and thus be made pointless) in the next film. I was not impressed. 

The writers are painfully white, and refused to stop reminding us.

When the setting of the movie shifted to Wakanda, I wanted to be happy to see Wakanda. But I wasn’t, because the whole reason we went to Wakanda seemed to be so that the racist ass writers could jerk off while watching Wakanda (and Wakandans) get wrecked (and killed in horrific numbers), all so Wanda (who the MCU super duper whitewashed) didn’t have to kill her white robot boyfriend. 

“If Wakanda falls, it will have been for a noble cause” said the racist white writer puppeting T’Challa. 

Prioritizing the feelings of a white girl and the life of her white boyfriend over not just the hypothetical “half of the universe” Thanos thing, but also the very immediate and literal danger to the lives of ALL OF WAKANDA AND ALL OF THEIR FRIENDS was absolutely bewildering levels of antiblack racism and I was just sitting there shaking my head through it all. It was horrible. It is horrible. I cannot believe that line from T’Challa even made it into the movie. “A noble cause” my ass, that’s so violent, what the fuck.

The writers are painfully heterosexual, and refused to stop reminding us.

Again I scream at Wanda and Vision. Wanda and Vision, who I was hyped about being brought into the MCU because I liked them in the comics, but who have been a constant frustration and disappointment (whitewashed and underutilized as they have been) since their introductions. 

Also Quill and Gamora. 

Like, the writers couldn’t figure out a way to make the story interesting or have stakes without threatening hetero’s heterosexual feelings and heterosexual partners. They just.... couldn’t....................... do it............

Like, lets be real. If the lives of literally half the universe was at stake, everybody I know would be like “sure, I’ll die for that cause”. The conflict felt fake as fuck. People who are that selfish aren’t interesting, and half the characters they made that selfish didn’t used to BE that selfish.

Also, like, Gamora demanding Peter promise to kill her was weird on multiple levels. 

She definitely could have been like “I know the location of an infinity stone, and I know he’ll be able to get it out of me if he gets me alone, so I need you to kill me if that happens” but instead she was just like “I can’t give you a single explanation or detail, just promise me you’ll murder me because you love me so much.” Bad writing. 

And I feel like for Peter specifically, asking him to do that was really cruel. His whole issue with his parents was that his dad murdered his mom, like... asking him to kill her seems extra cruel? And she would know that. Doesn’t she have other friends? Couldn’t she have asked Peter to, like, not get mad at Rocket if Rocket kills her for the same reason? Or Drax? Why did it have to be Peter?? Why ask the person who’d be most emotionally traumatized by having to kill you to be the one to kill you if necessary? And why have her remind him of the death of his mom as a way to convince him to kill her? Bad writing.

Also Bruce and Nat were never interesting to begin with.

Also also Tony talking about wanting kids to a very obviously frustrated and uninterested Pepper was weird and uncomfortable. I feel like we’re supposed to be getting some sort of “they should have kids!” vibe but all I got was a “she doesn’t want to have kids and he’s not getting the memo” vibe. I also am very tired of “my partner wants me to stop being a superhero, guess I’ll feel conflicted but do it anyway but also not break up with them” narratives. Bad.

Thanos’ “random” selection of half of earth didn’t seem that random to me. Like, at all.

The shot of Wakandans dying wasn’t half of them dying, it was like 90% of them dying. And if you pay attention to who disintegrated, it’s.... 

T’Challa (black king of a powerful beautiful African nation, the most technologically advanced nation in the world)

Bucky (disabled and neuroatypical)

Sam (a black man)

I forgot to watch the end credits scene because I was so mad but apparently NICK FURY disintegrates in it, my blood is boiling with rage.

Apparently Maria Hill also disintegrates in it, so there goes a strong female character too.

Again I point to the, like, 90% of Wakanda who survived the combat turning to ash anyway.

Mantis (a woman, played by a Korean actress)

Wanda (a woman. Also whitewashed, but Jewish and Romani in the comics)

Groot (played by a man of color)

Peter Quill (played by one of the three white Chris’ in the movie, but dating a character played by a black woman, so of all the white men to die I find this suspect as fuck)

Drax (played by a Filipino actor).

And that’s not to mention Heimdall (a powerful black man), Loki (who is queercoded, and actually queer in the comics) and Gamora (played by a black woman) who Thanos also killed.

“Random.”

Right.

Except the movie was written by people who clearly have a bias and think it’s quality entertainment to watch PoC and marginalized people in general die. And/or they wanted most of those characters out of the way so Infinity War 2 could focus on the white dudes. Which brings me to my next hated point:

Infinity War 2.

Just.

Fuck that.

Fuck that cash grab bullshit of splitting major motion picture movies into multiple movies for no good reason. Fuck letting people go into a movie with a cliffhanger not knowing it’s going to have a cliffhanger. Fuck forcing people to commit to a years wait for closure on a plot without agreeing to. 

People don’t go to superhero movies to watch the villain win, motherfuckers, we want to see HEROES win! It’s supposed to be a movie that feels GOOD to watch because you can pretend for 2 hours that good people triumph over bad people, and we fucking NEEDED that 2 hours of escapism right now! We did not need a movie about a megolomaniac who wins the election and ruins the lives of everyone we love! We didn’t pay for that shit!!!! 

I mean, I didn’t pay for anything, I watched a bootleg version while curled up in bed, but if your movie hadn’t been a sack of cash grabbing propaganda horse shit I WOULD have paid to see it.

Also. 

People are “SPECULATING” a bunch of stuff like “Dr. Strange did what he did to ensure the eventual defeat of Thanos!!” and “everybody who got disintegrated is going to be resurrected in the next movie!!” but like... it’s not speculation if it’s obvious as fuck, guys. Don’t give the writers more credit than they deserve (they deserve zero credit). Don’t act like it’s not obvious and predictable when it is. 

1) Dr. Strange was not being subtle. “I’ve looked at all the potential outcomes and foreseen one in which we win” “We’re in the endgame now.” “It was the only way”. That’s blatant. That borders on heavy-handed. 

2) Most of the characters who died have movies scheduled. They’re coming back. This is not unclear.

As a result... their deaths don’t even feel real, they just feel like racist shock value fodder deaths. I’m not sad about it, I’m furious at the writers. They just killed them off so they could watch them die, and/or so they could avoid utilizing them. And that’s... so gross.

Ending a movie with the genocidal villain winning is not edgy or whatever. It’s just dissatisfying and, especially in the current climate of the world, it feels violent. 

Like, I’m mad that they split the movie, because it’s a cash grab, and then ending it on that note was just violent.

I guess the writers just really hated Ragnarok (and Black Panther).

Cuz like... they just completely wrote Ragnarok out of the MCU, made the whole movie pointless, and backpedaled on everything it accomplished. 

Ragnarok: “Asgard is destroyed, but it’s okay because the people of Asgard survived, and can rebuild somewhere else. Thor lost his eye and his hammer, became a leader to his people, learned that he didn’t need a weapon to harness his powers, and Thor and Loki finally managed to be a team again. Heimdal is given the credit he deserves as a hugely important part of Thor’s life. Also here, have an AMAZING black female character! The story ends with hope for a ship full of refugees.”

Infinity War: “Thor immediately gets a new eye, all (or maybe half??? it was really unclear) of the other Asgardian refugees are slaughtered off screen (big middle finger to refugees and also hope) and then Thor goes off on his own so he’s not really a leader anymore, Loki and Heimdal are dead within 5 minutes of screentime, Valkyrie doesn’t exist, and Thor’s entire plot in the movie is about how he needs a new weapon because he can’t be useful without one :)”

Me, who enjoyed Ragnarok: “wow, fuck you”

Similarly, after watching all the characters from Wakanda in Black Panther be written as their own people, whose stories and lives didn’t revolved around white people... their white-prioritizing characterization in Infinity War, as well as the IMMEDIATE choice to fucking wreck Wakanda at the first available opportunity, was a real fucking let down and kind of a slap in the face.

Peter Dinklage played a literal (though giant?) dwarf??????????

I FEEL LIKE THIS IS FUCKING OFFENSIVE??? Honestly I’m just so so tired of this poor guy getting hired only for roles where his dwarfism is a character trait. He’s a really good actor and I wish he got hired to play characters other than “the dwarf” every fucking once in a while, like jfc. 

(Side note apparently he’s been cast as “the dwarf” in a movie adaptation of the awful book “the dwarf” so that’s... happening........ i guess...................)

I FEEL like this role was particularly weird and maybe particularly offensive, but maybe I’m wrong, idk.

Also his actual visual design was bad. I looked up the character (Eitri) from the comics, and he looked pretty cool in the comics and animated show. He did not look cool in this movie. 

Bendick Camdsfgbitch has too big of a role.

Literally I’ve never met anybody who cares about the Dr. Strange movie or MCU character. The only people who care seem to be Sherlock stans who cannot let go and still think Bean Cummerbund playing [an intolerable asshole who we’re told (but not shown) is smarter than us, who never lets the audience in on his genius] is compelling. 

He’s boring, he’s an asshole, he’s playing an arguably whitewashed role (which is a pattern for him) and he’s not even playing it in an interesting way. Stop trying to make Dr. Strange or his actor happen. We don’t care.

And if the whole two movie plot is going to be about how he really did outsmart Thanos, the supposedly super smart supervillain, then I’m extra super bored as fuck. And so far that’s... super predictably what’s going to have happened. 

It was just really poorly written??

Idk, like it wasn’t even... funny... or good. All the lines were either predictable or they didn’t make sense. And everybody felt slightly (or severely, depending on the character) out of character. 

The plot is fucking garbage, AND THANOS IS TOO

The concept of the world being overpopulated (and that that’s why resources aren’t available for everyone) is an irl lie, my guys. It’s not true. It’s a lie perpetuated by racists and xenophobes and rich assholes who want to excuse letting people die of starvation rather than give up literally any of their giant Scrooge McDuck style piles of money to allow even the most minimally necessary distribution of resources.

We HAVE enough resources to feed and clothe and house and care for everyone on this planet, we just DON’T DO IT because of the bigotry and selfishness of the 1%. 

Also, “Genocide will fix all the suffering in the world” is literally nazism.

AND LIKE!! If the POINT was that Thanos was a space nazi and needed to be killed as a result, because his views are fucked up and have no basis in reality, and nazism must be stopped at all costs-- that could have been okay??? EXCEPT THAT’S NOT HOW THEY HANDLED IT!! Instead of going “Oh, yeah, Thanos is super fucked up and no one should agree with him or his actions or his ideology” they showed him in this weird and uncomfortably reverent light, and gave him this weird and uncomfortable side arc about how much he wuvs Gamora (that’s why he abused her, you guys-- it was because he LOVES her so much). So we’re supposed to like, feel sad for him or something? Oh no, nobody understands him and his logic, he HAS to do this to SAVE everyone. Oh nooooooo. 

But really, he’s a genocidal scrotum-faced piece of shit abuser, and his entire narrative felt like a nazi who abuses his kids just sucking his own dick on screen, and it was NOT enjoyable to watch, or compelling, or edgy. It was just gross, and violent.

ALSO there was NO REASON to give him that backstory. There was no reason to explain his desire to kill everybody. We already knew he wanted to kill everybody. That was already known, and we did not need an explanation about why. Like, they built toward this movie for ten years and they STILL dropped the ball by ignoring 90% of their own goddamn source material that built up to it in the first place.

Plus, Thanos’ plan was to kill half of everybody in order to save the other half, out of a warped sense of... mercy.... Except literally nobody wants him to do that, including (he said) himself. He doesn’t enjoy it. Neither does anybody else. Everybody is trying to stop him constantly. WHY CONTINUE IF LITERALLY NO ONE WANTS YOU TO, INCLUDING YOURSELF?? It just doesn’t hold up or make any sense as a plot once you think about it for ten fucking seconds...??? How did this ever get past the editing stage???

Additionally, Thanos’s visual design was way better in the end credits cameo he had like 10 years ago. This guy was not visually threatening to me, and did not read as powerful or ancient or anything. He didn’t even read like he was an alien, he was just an asshole, and it didn’t impress me like it was meant to.

If the only way to make your villain seem competent is to make your heroes suddenly incompetent, you’re a bad writer.

How did Loki, god of mischief, fight Thanos? KNIFE TO THE FACE!! FRONTAL ASSAULT!! Of... of course that failed? And furthermore, why did they make it a point to remind the audience repeatedly that Loki is a god, right before Thanos killed him by just, like, choking him/snapping his neck? Apparently that’s how you kill a god? Seems like it should be harder than that.

Why didn’t Dr. Strange do his “check all the different realities” thing when they first heard about Thanos? Why didn’t Dr. Strange chop off Thanos’ arm with a portal like his buddy did with one of Thanos’ underlings?

Why didn’t anybody just shoot Quill when he was obviously about to become a problem?

Why did Quill, who had been willing to kill Gamora himself earlier in the movie, suddenly go off the handle at the worst possible moment upon finding out she was already dead? And why was his response so minimal? Like I get that he’s grieving and stuff, but you need to be able to compartmentalize that shit at least a LITTLE bit, buddy-- and if you can’t, then you need to do something bigger than just like punching the guy. At least shoot out his eyes or something.

Why didn’t Thor aim for Thanos’ head? (and for that matter in all the bazillion timelines Dr. Strange looked at, why were there NONE where Thor aimed for Thanos’ head???)

Why did Wanda decide her boyfriend was more important than literally everybody else ever, especially when Thanos winning would mean Vision dying anyway, so like... I get that killing your bf would be traumatic, but suck it up? Why didn’t they consider breaking the stone and THEN reviving Vision? He’s not a human, he’s synthetic, so why would they assume he wouldn’t be able to be rebooted later with a different power source? And why did they gamble half the universe and actively throw away Wakandan lives for him?? I JUST???

The Hulk got his ass kicked by Thanos (a weird scene; why does Thanos know WWE wrestling moves??) so he just... stopped helping. Like, that could have been interesting, if it wasn’t a general theme throughout the movie that most of the characters conveniently stopped being good at what they’re good at so that the plot could progress with adequate Drama. 

Basically I just wanted to scream “get it together!” at most of the cast of this movie throughout the whole film. Don’t nerf your cast to make your villain seem stronger than he is. If you can’t make him stronger on his own merits, you’re a bad writer. 

I don’t understand the reality stone (or how Thanos used it).

It seemed to change whatever he wanted, but... only while he was focusing on it? Or only while he was nearby? As soon as he left, Drax and Mantis reverted back to their normal forms, so does he need to be in the vicinity for it to work? Or was it like an illusion? If so, that’s not changing reality. 

And either way, the ways in which he DID change reality were bizarrely whimsical and made no sense for his character. Like, he kept turning everything to bubbles. If somebody bought him a bubble wand, would he have stopped murdering everyone? Is that his aesthetic? Bubbles and spiralized people? 

Or was that the aesthetic of the stone itself? Because that’s weird too. 

That scene where the ladies fought the lady villain.

On the one hand, I’m glad there was a lady villain and her design was cool, and I’m glad whenever there are scenes where there are no men and only ladies. 

ON THE OTHER HAND I’m fucking tired of the trope where male heroes fight the male villains and female heroes fight the female villains because.... ??? Because they’re fighting someone in their own league? Or because men can’t hit women? Or something?? I find it very weird and suspect whenever a combat situation gets evenly split up between the genders. 

Wanda's powers >:(

Wanda is more powerful (by a LOT) in the comics than she is in the MCU, which is sort of understandable because she’s pretty universe-breaking levels of OP in the comics (like, one time she literally broke the universe), but it’s also pretty frustrating as a fan of comic!Wanda just how MUCH they nerfed her for the MCU. HOWEVER! In this movie they implied that she IS more powerful than she’s seemed up until now. 

And then they barely used her at all. 

I, a fool, thought maybe they were going to do something interesting about her magic. With the repetition that her power mirrors that of the stone, I thought maybe she was going to kill Vision, and then Thanos would use HER instead of the stone because she’s got it’s power inside of her. 

But no. 

They couldn’t have done something interesting where a woman has a role beyond “she’s precious to a Man and therefore important”. Nope.

Every Single Scene was a foregone conclusion.

Honest to god, I don’t remember a single scene where I was like “gosh, what’s going to happen next??” Every single scene was just me thinking “I know exactly what is about to happen, and I don’t want it to” and then I was right, and disappointed.

Every part of this movie was predictable with certainty, except I suppose for the scenes where I thought “surely they wouldn’t do something so weird and/or boring as what it seems like they’re setting up here” but then they did anyway.

Why did Tony think Steve would know where Vision was when Tony didn’t? And why was he right?

They just never explained this and I found it utterly perplexing. 

Tony was like “Probably Steve Rogers would know where Vision is” and my friends and I had to pause the movie to compare notes and be like “wait, why? Why would HE know?” and none of us could figure it out, and then the movie never explained it either.

Nebula was underutilized.

I was just really frustrated at how few scenes she was actually in and how little she was allowed to DO in a movie completely centered on trying to fight the guy who tortured and experimented on her for her whole life. Like, she was in it and she was relevant, but mostly only as a set piece, not a person. But I guess they couldn’t figure out how to make her Precious To A Man, so she didn’t really matter to the writers.

My only hope is that she’s vitally central to the next one, but like... I expect literally nothing good out of the next movie, so it’s not exactly a thriving hope.

The female characters were all underutilized.

The writers are misogynists and you could tell by how few lines any of the women had when they weren’t being shown as Precious To A Man. Which female characters got to be involved in whole entire conversations (rather than just one-off lines)? 

Wanda (while being Precious to Vision)

Gamora (while being Precious to Quill, then to Thanos)

Pepper (while being Precious to Tony)

Honorable mentions for Mantis, Nebula, Shuri, Okoye, and Nat for having a handful of lines each in the entire movie that was HIGH KEY centered on white men. 

The Thanos Fandom

I’ll leave off on people who actually LIKE Thanos right now, because I assume they’re mostly eugenicist nazis and aren’t worth my time.

No, I’m talking about people who like him AS A VILLAIN and think that the movie did a GOOD JOB of making him clearly and wholly and unequivocally a villain who the audience should clearly and wholly and unequivocally feel antagonistic towards. 

It didn’t. 

The movie portrayed him as someone trying to do “the right thing” who has to “make hard choices” because of his “tragic past” which is NOT an acceptable portrayal of a genocidal megalomaniac-- ESPECIALLY not in the current climate of the world. 

If the audience is not explicitly told how to feel about a villain (by point-by-point countering and condemning them), the lowest common denominator of the audience (which is not a small percent of said audience) is going to interpret the villain’s tragic backstory as justification, their “hard choices” as being worthy of empathy, and their worldview as something worth considering. Especially if you write them as such, and ESPECIALLY if they WIN. 

And yet all I keep seeing is people who want to justify enjoying the movie (unnecessary: you can enjoy it and admit it’s content is bad at the same time) by yelling “Of course Thanos’ is CRAZY-- that’s the point!! People complaining about it aren’t giving the audience enough credit!!”

Please read this relevant post talking about Fight Club (and Mad Max). 

“Media designed to teach morals often backfires [because] just exposing [people] to bad behavior is enough to make them internalize that the behavior is [...] acceptable for people to do, [especially when a] movie only really devotes 5% of its screen time to explicitly denouncing [said bad] behavior, and that [...] only arrives at the very end of the film.” 

--a summarized quote from the above, much longer, post.

This is extra EXTRA relevant if you have to WAIT A YEAR before you even GET to the “consequences” part of the morality story. “The typical adult audience member does not think critically enough about film media to process this moral” is a true statement even when the moral is in the last 10 minutes of a 90 minute film-- it’s WAY more true if the moral doesn’t come until A FUCKING YEAR LATER. Another relevant quote from that post is “The director has the responsibility to clearly spell out to the audience the difference between supporting a behavior by depicting it, and criticizing it by depicting it.” This movie half assed that at best. 

Another relevant quote: “Every villain is the hero of their own story. And when the villain is the narrator, the audience is hearing the version of the story in which the villain is the hero, and the audience is moved by that perspective.” 

Thanos was in charge of the narrative of the entire movie. He was functionally the central and thus main character on which the story turned, made clearest by the end screen “Thanos will return”, which up until now has been reserved for PROTAGONISTS. That’s what I’m talking about here. 

He was the villain, but he was also functionally the main character, and the narrative did not put in the work to properly condemn him or his actions. They spent all their time and energy making him fake deep, and then threw a couple “You’re insane!!!” lines in there from heroes to cover their asses that really didn’t have any effect on Thanos whatsoever.

Also please consider that “He’s just CRAZY!! That’s why he’s violent and evil!!” is a tired and ableist trope used primarily to villainize real mentally ill people and to let white men (who are not mentally ill) off the hook for violent toxic masculinity. Mentally ill people in reality are disproportionately likely to be the VICTIMS of violence, not the perpetrators, no matter what media would have us believe. 

Thanos isn’t crazy, he’s a self absorbed, entitled, genocidal megalomaniac, and calling him crazy is a cop out. 

Assuming everyone understood that he’s purely and simply wrong is giving the audience WAY too much credit, especially when his motivation is based on a fabrication that the writers seemed to actually believe. 

No one in the movie said “Thanos, our world isn’t overpopulated-- people in power are just greedy. If you’re going to kill anybody, kill those people. Don’t ‘randomly’ kill half the populous when some people are actually at fault." No one in the movie said “Your logic is based on fallacy” they just said “I don’t care about your logic because murder is always wrong (except when I do it).” Most or all of the protagonists in this series have killed people. I’m not saying they were wrong to, necessarily, but saying “You can’t just kill people” rings hollow from these characters in particular, especially when they’re actively trying to kill Thanos as they say it. Again, they’re right to do that, but IF they’re doing that, they need to be written to have a better argument than “Murder is wrong!” 

Basically the writing of this movie, where the heroes clashed with the villain, was just countering a fallacy that major parts of the audience may actually believe with some fallacies that fall apart at 10 seconds of critical thinking. Therefore, plenty of people will walk away with the wrong message.

ESPECIALLY when you depict Thanos in a reverent light, and have an entire subplot about how much he Loves the daughter he abused and continues abusing and then murders on screen. ESPECIALLY when he faces no genuine threat throughout the entire movie and then wins at the end, and the consequences for his actions have to wait a YEAR to be seen.

Thor "needed a weapon" to survive after taking the full force of a star??? I dont?? Get that.

That’s it, I just don’t understand it. 

Eitri the dwarf was like “BUT YOU’LL DIE!!!” and Thor did the thing anyway (predictably) and didn’t die (predictably) but was sort of dying for The Drama (predictably) and then Eitri was like “He needs the weapon!! to live!!!!!” and I still don’t understand what that meant or why. 

Relatedly, I don’t understand why Groot’s arm is an adequate substance for Thor’s anti-infinity-stone-weapon, when Groot #1 was obliterated by an infinity stone. Am I remembering that right? I don’t understand this. It feels like somebody thought “Hey you know what would be cool?” and that was literally the only thought process behind it. Nobody thought very hard about this before writing it into the movie. Though to be fair, that tracks with pretty much everything else in this movie, so why not, I guess. 

Also stars are way bigger than that, that was not a star. Just saying.

The Red Skull cameo made no sense.

I understand that the tesseract spat him out somewhere else in space, and I’m fine with that (like, that could have been interesting actually), but I don’t understand why he ended up as, like, a ghost doing the bidding of the soul stone or whatever??? Do the stones interact? Did the tesseract tell the soul stone to fuck that guy up cuz he’s an asshole? Was that just the effect of being transported too close to the soul stone? I don’t... understand that at all.

And, in line with the rest of the movie, he was very out of character.

“Thanos is sad because he LOVED Gamora”

Then he shouldn’t have fucking killed her. 

Even the smallest violin in the universe playing “my heart bleeds for you” would be too much. Fuck that guy and his fake depth.

Look I’ve touched on this multiple times already, but I keep coming back to it because it’s absolutely one of the worst things about the movie. 

If they wanted to make a point about Thanos' abuse not being mutually exclusive to the emotional experience of love on his part, they really should have hit it home instead of letting it just flounder. Abuse and love are not mutually exclusive, and we DO need more media that acknowledges that, but this is not how to portray that.

Gamora (or literally anyone) needed to actually SAY “I don’t care if you love/d me, you HURT me. You ruined my life. Your love is worthless and changes NOTHING.” 

Gamora suffered under his abuse pretty much her WHOLE LIFE and then he KILLED her. And he did it BECAUSE he “loved” her? And it was done to give him some sort of fucked up complexity/depth? That’s fucking violent. 

They didn't go hard enough on any of their character arcs/points

like... Steve was clearly shut down and depressed but that was never addressed. 

What was that about Tony wanting to stop being a hero and settle down and have kids??? They spent like 5 whole entire minutes (which is a long time in a movie actually) setting that up as a plot point and then never addressed it again. 

Bucky looked so tired when he saw the arm, like you could see on his face when he realized he was being sent back into war. Another assignment. Gotta kill more people. He looked so TIRED but then the next time we see him he’s smiling at Steve, and it never got addressed (AND THEN HE DIED SO???)

Bruce and Nat shared like one line, and then never spoke again (and while I’m not interested in them as a couple, that still felt weird). 

Rhodey went against that hologram asshole’s instructions and then it never came up again.

Rocket talking to Thor, asking if he’s okay, and Thor saying basically “I have nothing left to lose so I’ll be very useful” never became relevant. Rocket saying “Well, I mean, I’ve got a lot to lose actually” also never became relevant. 

Dr. Strange’s whole “duty” to protect the stone was supposed to be more important than anything, and yet it was not in practice more important than... like... anything, tbh. Nor did he have to deal with the consequences of failing his duty, even a little bit.

Vision was having headaches and then it turned out to be the stone, like, warning him about Thanos or something?? Never became important. 

Bruce couldn’t get the Hulk to help out. That’s... that’s it, that’s the whole character arc, he just couldn’t get the Hulk to help out.

Peter Quill was asked by Gamora to kill her. When the time came, he was actually willing to, but was stopped by an outside force. This was never addressed again, and then they both died. Cool. 

I understand that they might be trying to introduce all these plot points so they can address them in the second half, but.... like........... half these characters died already, and also that’s not a good way to write a two-movie story. Series’ need to have satisfying arcs within each independent installment. This movie did not.

((You may have noticed, also, that most of the characters the movie TRIED to give actual character arcs to, even if they failed, are white men. I noticed that too.))

Characters who have barely if ever been allowed to know happiness or contentment or safety, and then just die, are not enjoyable character arcs, fuck off.

Especially Bucky, but also somewhat true for Gamora, Mantis, Wanda (plus I’m still mad about Pietro). Don’t kill characters who’ve never really gotten to live well. Don’t make characters who only get to suffer and then die. Character arcs like that are almost always written by white male writers about marginalized characters, and it just feels violent. 

Steve’s new shield was weird.

I was actually hyped about T’Challa being the one to get him a new shield, because then it’d still be made of vibranium!! And everything from Wakanda so far looks rad as hell. But, uh... I wasn’t a fan of the design. It doesn’t look throwable, or big enough, or particularly useful. It didn’t do anything cool that I noticed. I thought maybe it was going to have a force field like the shield capes W’Kabi and the other male warriors used in Black Panther, or something else technological. Instead it just, like, gets 4 inches wider if you... put it on... or something??? Mediocre. Not worthy of having been made in Wakanda.

I just wasn’t a fan of pretty much any of the new designs they added to this movie (except the new spider suit, and that one lady villain; but that was really it). 

“All the stones together can alter reality!! Obviously the only solution is murder.”

I know everybody has said this, but why... didn’t Thanos just... create more resources. If the problem was too few resources, why didn’t he snap his fingers and make more??? If you have the ability to alter reality and remake the universe with a snap of your fingers, and your intentions are to improve the quality of life of all people’s throughout the universe, why the fuck is your only solution “murder half of everybody”?? 

And why would you murder a RANDOM half of everybody? Why wouldn’t you murder, like “the half of everybody who is the shittiest to other people, on a planet by planet basis” or something? Like, if your intentions are truly benevolent but you also truly can only use murder to improve the universe (which, like, is a very VERY bullshit “if” but I digress), why would you think the best use of murder would be “random”? That just seems like a privileged person trying desperately not to sound bigoted (while sounding bigoted nonetheless). 

So it doesn’t matter if they’re a mass murdering dictator, or a serial killer, or a sexual predator, or a corrupt politician lobbying for a skewed distribution of resources based on bigotry? They’d still only have a 50/50 shot at dying, even though you claim to be doing this for the betterment of the remaining people’s quality of life? 

What about communities that have already suffered genocide? They have to suffer that again, because you can’t get your head out of your ass long enough to comprehend the nuance of this bullshit situation you’ve created?

What about people who are studying genetically modified food to make resources more plentiful? People who spend their whole lives making hugely positive differences in the distribution of resources? People who are just good, and care about others, and take steps to improve the lives of others, people who aren’t going to fuck up the paradise you want to create? They also have that same 50/50 shot?

And if your goal is only the deaths of 50% of the people in the universe, what about bus drivers who are actively driving buses? What about surgeons who are in the middle of surgery? What about people driving cars on the highway? Killing half the population instantaneously would result in way more death than just half the population. 

This plan falls apart more and more the more you think about it.

"The biggest cast of all time” and NOBODY is queer. 

Like, there are two characters in the entire MCU who could conceivably be considered canonically queer: 

Valkyrie, because she was supposed to have a scene indicating her canon bisexuality. And even though they cut it, it was IN THE SCRIPT so it’s halfway canon.

Loki, but only because he’s queer (genderfluid and pansexual) in the comics. So like, he’s NOT canonically queer in the movies, but he’s also not specified as NOT queer, so...? The writers definitely didn’t intend it, despite queercoding him, but we can pretend. 

And in infinity war, Loki dies 5 seconds in, and Valkyrie straight up doesn’t exist. So????? It was boring and sucked.

They attempted to address the MCU Villain Problem, and failed.

The MCU villain problem, AKA the villains in most MCU movies are forgettable and boring because they and their schemes always came as an afterthought. 

Recently, to address this, the formula (as seen with Killmonger and the Vulture) seems to be "a villain that needs to be stopped, but who is understandable and maybe even relatable and likeable". In both the case of Killmonger and the Vulture, this worked (not perfectly, but it did). They made the villains PEOPLE outside of their villainy. They made them complex, and it was compelling and therefore memorable and interesting. 

They tried to apply this formula to Thanos... in the worst possible way. 

As I’ve already talked about. They tried to make him complex to avoid their usual villain problem, except in the process they MADE HIM THE PROTAGONIST. There wasn’t a hero protagonist. There was only Thanos and a lot of heroes trying to stop him, and posing no real threat to him or his plot at any point.

And the heroes OPPOSED him, but they did not properly condemn him or his logic, and then he won.

Fatphobia and emasculation aimed at Quill for the lulz  

They wanted Peter Quill to be threatened by Thor for some reason, and the way they chose to do that was to make Quill’s friends call him “one sandwich away from fat” and thus “not a man”. 

Then he started vowing to commit to a better exercise routine or something, and tried to lower his voice to sound more like Thor. Bless Thor for not understanding what was going on and thinking Quill was mocking him (aka, not thinking of Quill as having anything he’d need to compensate for), but Quill being threatened by Thor, as well as his jealousy of Gamora’s attention to a “more attractive” man, honestly just felt like the writers scrambling for a reason to give the characters conflict, and settling on a toxic and offensive trope. 

Especially because Chris Pratt is In Shape. He has like a six pack. He’s objectively NOT fat. If he were, and they mocked him for it, that would be fatphobic and shitty, but the fact that he’s NOT just makes it baffling on top of being fatphobic and shitty. It’s like those makeover movies where they put glasses and baggy clothes on a conventionally attractive woman and then claim she looks terrible. 

Bad.

There were better options for Thanos' reasoning and the writers... really should have taken them.

I have HEARD that the comic version of Thanos’ motivation was “He’s in love with the embodiment/god of death, and wanted to kill half of everybody to impress her” and to be honest that would have been a better option.

(Side Note: Maybe the use of Hela as the Goddess of Death in Ragnarok is why the writers of Infinity War hated Ragnarok. Maybe they were mad they couldn’t use her for this movie, and that’s why they murdered and buried everything Ragnarok accomplished with such thorough dedication.)

Other better Thanos motivations just off the top of my head: 

He wanted to take over/colonize/enslave other planets to house his own people who DID use up the resources on their own planet.

There’s actually something ELSE he wants to use the Infinity Stones for, but he needs to kill tons of people to get it, or to get the Infinity Stones.

He was cursed to be immortal and will not be allowed to die until he kills enough other people.

He needs to trade like 10 million souls to the embodiment of death to bring someone he loves back from the dead.

He plans to harvest people from a bunch of different planets to produce a youth serum for alien elites-- (no wait that’s the plot of jupiter ascending)

He just hates people and thinks people should die.

He literally eats people, and he’s enormous so he needs to eat a lot of people.

Just saying, all of these are better motivations than “I’ve just gotta murder people cuz if I don’t then people will run out of food, and then they’ll die. I don’t WANT to, nobody else wants me to either, but I’m going to anyway. I’m sad about it.”

"We don't trade lives" 

This was a line from Steve about killing vs not killing Vision, and in the subsequent context of the movie, it’s violent as hell. 

“We don’t trade lives” he says, to discourage Vision from consenting to death to save everyone. Then he/they take Vision to Wakanda where Wakandan soldiers lay down their lives by the dozens to hundreds to protect Vision. Vision, who was willing to die. 

Steve Rogers is a soldier. He KNOWS that trading some lives for other (hopefully more) lives is how this is going to go. He knows. This was like the “Language” line from Avengers; it doesn’t make sense for the character.

But even beyond that, as I’ve said, they are absolutely going to-- and for that matter they were PLANNING to trade black Wakandan lives for Vision’s safety. And even if that weren’t a plot point, they’d be planning to potentially trade their OWN lives for those Thanos would kill if (when) they fail. 

“We don’t trade lives.” Yes, you do. Of course you do. And the audience knows it because the audience has seen all your other fucking movies. 

Why couldn’t the writers take a breath and stop trying so hard and just let the characters say what they mean. “I don’t want you to die.” “Please let us try to save you.” 

Why couldn’t they have just, like, made up an actual reason why they couldn’t afford to lose Vision? Maybe Vision’s headaches could have been actually utilized as a warning system? Maybe Vision could have communicated telepathically with Tony’s AI all the way through space, so Vision was their only was to know what was going on with Tony and Co.? Maybe destroying the stone while it was inside Vision was massively dangerous (like, could have gone off like a bomb or something....? I mean he CAN use the stone like a laser, maybe trying to destroy it would make it detonate.). 

THERE WERE OPTIONS. Instead they went with the absolute fallacy of “We don’t trade lives,” delivered by a character who would never have said that, and followed by the traded lives of MANY black people for one white man.

Bad.

The Soul Stone has really low standards for supposedly having high standards

Why require somebody to go through with a whole test of “give up the thing or person you love most” to acquire the Soul Stone? Like, the explanation “A soul for a soul” was kind of cool, but what does that have to do with love? It’s not the Love Stone, it’s the Soul Stone. Love doesn’t have anything to do with that, and even if it DID, Thanos’ version of love should have made the stone go “Um, I think the fuck NOT, you abusive motherfucker,” instead of “Sure! I’ll hand phenomenal cosmic power over to you because you just seem super legit. Nothing could go wrong here.”

Was the love thing even real, or was the Red Skull just bein’ his racist self, and wanted to watch Gamora get tossed off a cliff because he’s a nazi and bored as hell?

Furthermore, why did only one of the stones require a test? Is the Soul Stone just really needy? What is the deal with these stones??? Nothing was ever explained at ALL and it made NO SENSE.

Gamora deserved better, and so did every audience member who’s ever been abused.

I’m just gonna circle back to this point and address it head on.

Here’s a great article on this subject from somebody better equipped to address it than me.

But basically just... fuck the writers for showing us her power, and then making it pointless. Making her stab Thanos in the throat and then allowing him to wave it off like it didn’t happen or didn’t matter or like he was just testing her. Fuck the writers for letting her be murdered at the hand of the man who ruined her life, to further HIS goals, and to give HIM ‘depth’. 

If she doesn’t get resurrected in the next movie and deliver the killing blow, I will be even more furious than I already am, and that is honestly already an impressive level of fury. 

God I’m so fucking glad I didn’t pay to see this garbage fire of a movie.

[lollytea]

So like I know the good chunk of the snack pack is queer, and like they've all got each other and are super supportive of each other, but like how did their respective guardians all initially react to their kid when they came out to them? Just because I'm still working those bits out in my own head. All I really had thought about was Rosiepuff, as you know, and she's not alive in A Little Change ;w;;;

I’ve thought a few of these over in my head so I should probs write em out somewhere. Okay I’ll give like the official A Little Change Snack Pack parent reactions. If you’ve got like different ideas on what their parents are like in the human au, feel free to disregard. All this is pretty flexible

Branch and Creek: Just gonna get them out of the way first. They kept their mouths shut. Both of them were in households with a lack of communication. There was no coming out to speak of.

Poppy: Our Lord and Saviour Mayor Peppy is a middle aged and thriving bisexual and y’all can fuckign fite me on this. Ofc he was delighted when his daughter came out to him cuz shes comfortable enough to talk with him about it and hes really emotional about that and now he can proudly refer to them as a “Queer Household” FUCK YE BBY GIRL ITS YOUR NIGHT LETS DO WHATEVER YOU WANT WANNA PIZZA WITH GUMMY WORM TOPPINGS??? YOURE FUCKIN GETTING IT I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. But like Peppy. Dude. Its Wednesday. Your kid has school in the morning and you two are watching Shrek movies and eating terrible pizza til fuckin 1am I don’t care if youre both queer youre both equally irresponsible I hate y’all

Suki: I feel like Suki never really officially came out when she was younger. Back when she was a teen, she acted more as an “Aggressively supportive ally” who got real excited over positive LGBTQ news on the TV and frequently brought up gay rights at the dinner table. Her parents are a pair of really quiet, really sweet librarians. They’ve never had a bad word to say about Suki’s blatant bi behaviour and were just chill in general. She never felt she needed to spell it out to them unless she ever were to bring home a girlfriend. Plus she wasnt entirely sure if they were familiar with bisexuality and her dad’s kinda half deaf so explaining it might take a while. TECHNICALLY she’s still not out to them in A Little Change. Like she hasn’t been dating Chenille that long but yeah, she does plan on telling them in the coming weeks. I can assure you they’ll be cool with it and she knows they will. (Sidenote: She has 2 brothers and a sister who she told casually years ago.)

Smidge: Smidge’s parents caught on pretty early that their kid might be trans. Like they were fairly young parents who had some trans friends so this wasn’t all that unfamiliar to them. They noticed as far back as Smidge’s preschool years and while they reasoned that it COULD just be a phase or whatever, they’d be prepared for whatever gender their kid turned out as. Meanwhile Smidge, who was having none of this beating around the bush shit, wasted no time in telling them that she wanted to be referred to as a “She” from now on. Tbh I think out of everyone, Smidge’s coming out was the most natural. It happened when she was real little so it didn’t take all that long for them to adjust to. She never did come out as ace. Like she probs will someday over a nice family dinner. But for now, she’s good.

Chenille: Now, I’m not gonna say the twins’ parents are homophobic. Well, maybe some internalized stuff they gotta work on. But they were very heteronormative in nature. Like they were definitely the type of parents who would call every boy their little girls played with “boyfriends.” They never meant any harm by it but it did irritate Chenille a lil bit. But yeah, they didn’t have any real beef with LGBTQ people, they were cool with all the Love Wins stuff but all of it just wasn’t relevant to their lives. It just never occurred to them that they’d have a gay kid y’know? They always thought queer folks were rarer then they really are. Well sURPRISE. Okay, they were pretty stunned once Chenille came out to them. But the knee jerk reaction to her confession is “We love you.” Like they’re surprised, they’re a little uneasy and it might take them some getting used to. But gotta assure the baby girl they love her. That’s important.

Guy Diamond: Listen to me. Mama Diamond is old. She’s tired. This goddamn country has aged her like you wouldn’t believe. She has seen the worst in people and so much of it has been because of prejudice. And while she MAY have had some issues with LGBTQ as a whole 20 years ago, those days are dead and gone, man. Because motherfucker, there is no way in hell she’s going to become like the people who treated her like shit when she first came here. HER SON IS GAY (”Bi, mom. Its bi.”) *HER SON IS BI AND HE IS A BEAUTIFUL, KIND AND TALENTED BOY WHOM SHE ADORES AND IF ANYONE HAS A PROBLEM WITH HIM YOU CAN MEET HER IN THE FUCKING PIT

Cooper: Honestly, I feel like when it comes to him, it was a casual chit chat over the dinner table. Coop’s mom and step-dad are just asking like “Sooo girlfriend?” And he just shakes his head and says he’s not interested in having one. So then Step-dad tentatively tries “Uhh….boyfriend?” Coop grins at that but shakes his head again. “Neither. Just don’t want that. Don’t think I ever do.” And that’s that. His parents nod along. Like they don’t really know about aromantic as a concept but hey, they aint gonna push the kid to date. Leave him be. They’re a chill as heck family.

Biggie: Was really close with his mom and came out to her like a year before his dad. Like out of everyone, Biggie was most definitely the one to cry while coming out. His mom cried too cuz fuck he needed to get that trait from somewhere. But yeah, it was a messy, mushy “i love you I love you I love you no matter what, you’ve grown up so much, I love you, I love you, thank you for telling me,” kind of coming out. Biggie and his mom are both emotional messes. His Dad was different. His dad just….didn’t know how to accept this development. It was kinda uncomfortable for him. I feel like it was at least….hmmmm 2 months. An awkward 2 months where Dad doesn’t know what to say to his kid so he barely says anything at all. It’s hard on Biggie, man. Fuck. But yeah, they do talk about it once Dad sorts his issues out and realizes he’s gonna lose his boy forever if he keeps this up. So he tells Biggie straight up that this is taking some time to get used to but he’s still his son and he still loves him a lot and he’s working on it.