#that the lack of such is a valid enough reason for authors to quit writing on here and in general?

[hannie-dul-set]

You telling people what to do with their blogs on this app screams entitlement. You have no right to tell people this isn't the app for them just bc they prefer to browse and not interact lmao who do u think u are

you always have the freedom to browse and not interact, and i just as well have the freedom to block whoever i want!

i'm not forcing anyone to rb my works. i'm just saying that if you enjoy a piece of content on this site, it is the barest minimum to click on that tiny button at the bottom of the post. you don't even have to add your comments (but that would be nice too!) you don't even have to exert a minute of effort.

and again, that's the only way for the content you enjoy browsing so much to gain traction - in turn support the creators that churn out said content that you prefer to browse!!

may i also bring to light once more that blank blogs are not simply an interaction issue. again, if you have nothing on your blog, many creators including myself will simply assume you're one of the many, many bots causing issues for this site. call me entitled all you want, but i don't think i'm wrong for asking for the bare minimum for the things i put out!

[takaraphoenix]

Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…

That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.

Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D

Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.

1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable

In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.

The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).

There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.

Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.

2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights

I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.

Let me explain that closer through this ship.

Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.

A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.

And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.

Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.

Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.

It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.

Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.

And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.

Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.

(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)

Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.

Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.

3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship

A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.

But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.

Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.

And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.

I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)

The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.

And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.

Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it

[kingkatsuki]

Tag warnings : Mentions of pedophilia and sexualization of characters.

Hi Jo… I just read the post about Kitten’s work and honestly. I feel the same. Not enough authors out there get credit for what they write and instead they get insults for it. Another thing on a different side note, that I have to mention is the sudden need to call out people on their writing. Recently, there have been these accusations of writers being pedophiles and people sexualizing minors just because they decide to age up a character and write fiction on them. Like… mate. I was a year younger than Bakugou when I liked him. Now that I’m older than him and an adult, who is reading mature themes and enjoying it I’m considered a pedophile? He can’t age as he is a character. And the reason I have the urge to bring this up is because I am actually a writer. I have a blog and it is empty because I am worried that soon I won’t be writing for myself anymore and constantly criticized by these so called “saints” who throw a heavy term with around acting as if they know what is supposed to be valid and what isn’t and in turn start questioning myself. I do want to write. I really do. I want to provide people comfort and something that can make their day and interact with them even if it is a small thing through my writing. But I am so tired of just thinking and overthinking whether it would be worth it? Can I do a good job at it? And because of that… I have lacked motivation. I will cut my rant short as I have a lot to say…If you post this, please know that I am grateful. And I hope to make my writing appear soon.

I’ve seen a lot of this going around again, and definitely on the artist side on Twitter. Some of the reasoning behind it and the arguments that people are using have blown my fucking mind. I could go into a long rant about how idiotic these people are and how wrong they are but there literally is no point even trying to decipher their stupidity, and I could feel myself losing brain cells when I read some of their posts.

Bottom line is these same people that are trying to defend a fictional (fictional as in NOT REAL) character over real life victims are the ones that need help and common sense but unfortunately common sense cannot be taught.

If only these people would spend even half as much time advocating for real life victims but it seems like they would rather go after people who are quite literally minding their own business and creating content that isn’t hurting anyone. It’s a shame they seem to lack the imagination that others do when we age up characters and build our own worlds around them.

I hate to say it but this only seems to have happened in the last few years and as someone who’s been in fandom since I was like 13/14 I’ve never seen anything quite like this happen before, so it seems like it’s these new kids inserting themselves into places they don’t belong to try and gatekeep the fandom for themselves. This warped sense of white knighting that they’re trying to change the way fandom has worked for years.

Please don’t let these mugs ruin it for you, I promise there will be people out there who are excited to read your writing and you could be the biggest comfort to so many people!

[probably-haven]

after binge reading i have come to a new revelation: I’m not a fan of most Xiaoven fanfics

Don’t get me wrong, I love the ship and its one of my favorite to think about.... but most of the fanfiction for the ship just- doesn’t sit right with me for a number of reasons. 

Disclaimer: these are personal opinions from my own taste and are in no way an attack against any authors out there, because frankly fanfic authors are great and not like i could do better lol. As these are personal opinions, I acknowledge here and now that a number of people disagree and that they are under no obligation to change their opinions in any way as it is not and never will be my intention to tell others what they should be thinking That said- read at your own risk if you want- meh, anyway-

time to share some opinions that have been on my mind lately

The biggest reason.... is how they handle Xiao. And I don’t even mean mischaracterization because Xiao is such a complex and yet simultaneously simple character that as long as you’re somewhere in the range of “Xiao vibes” it’s really hard to write him out of character because of his complexities. What I mean is something that i actually completely agree with as being accurate to his character. In nearly every single fanfic I’ve seen, there is some element of idolization that Xiao has for Venti, or for the sake of reference, Barbatos. He tends to think himself beneath Barbatos and/or indebted to him, whether that be because he’s an archon, because he saved him, or simply because of Xiao’s tendency to dehumanize(yes i see the irony in that word usage) himself.  This by itself isn’t an issue but its often how this trait of his is treated.

Imma just list a few ways I’ve seen this be handled within Xiaoven fics. - It isn’t handled, it’s just there and accepted as a part of who he is in the story - It isn’t handled but his trait is treated as source of humor within the story - Venti(and others) roll with it (finding humor in it, just cant change it, encouraging it, making jokes about it, etc.) - Venti takes advantage of it(whether accidentally or purposely) - it’s actually addressed(by Venti or someone else or the narration- can go a number of ways, but just- even a brief reference to the fact that its not a good mindset fits in here) - savior!Venti(Where venti disagrees with it but the way it’s written gives off “god among mortals” vibes- like he’s just being humble and truly is above him in reality) - its the focus of the story  - not directly addressed but shown to be destructive.  - they chose not to not include this in the story’s characterization of Xiao(just saying that this is valid ahead of time) Theres others but i have a lot already.  Note that I tend to read more ‘serious-toned’(idk if that makes sense) fics so that may skew my perception

Now there’s a few that i have issues with on their own- both instances of it not being handled, Venti(and others) rolling with it, Venti takes advantage of it(purposely(and without good intent)), and savior!Venti. Xiao not only has this trait, but he is unfamiliar with what is normal in relationships or emotions as a result of isolation and inexperience. He is also either not aware of or not concerned with what is considered strictly “healthy.” Combining these makes for a rather dangerous combination and just accepting it as “oh he’s just like that, it’s who he is” or making it out to be something funny- It’s not wrong or bad by any means necessarily, and I could still possibly enjoy it to an extent depending on a series of different factors, but its- not as often.  Even in the case where I do enjoy reading it however, I would still feel uncomfortable sharing it with or recommending it to others because in the first instance it feels like normalizing a destructive and dangerous mindset, and in the second case it does the same while simultaneously making a joke of it. It’s the same deal with Venti or other characters rolling with it, but that’s probably gonna be mentioned later too. Not to say that this is a “wrong” way to handle it, that it makes the fic bad, or that authors even are normalizing anything by doing so, just that in my specific instance- not a fan. 

I’ll get to the others when i talk more about Venti, but for now: It’s the focus of the story. I think I saw like... 2? where the story was like- focused on this and why its a problem which- power to them, address those real world problems like a boss- but also i wouldn’t actively seek it out or anything- like, good job, but doing so just leaves it open neutrally for other factors to decide how good a story i think it is. 

not directly addressed but shown to be destructive. You’d think i wouldn’t like this- but frankly in fanfiction not everyone wants to address every character flaw verbally because it can through off story, narration, dialogue, and general flow to do so. This can be with an event, an action, a dialogue, a mere comment, making it actually fit into the it’s actually addressed category except that its- subtle enough to make its own category. plus i live for show not tell- in everything- its a thing. im- very much a fan of when the fics do this but the subtlety is easy to miss and its not common so- 

It’s actually adressed- doesnt have to be a lot- just mention anywhere or imply anywhere that maybe idolizing someone as a god and savior and being in a relationship with them while having little knowledge of standards, emotions, relationships, or healthy behaviors in general- maybe isnt the smartest idea in the word. (”Call me Venti, not Barbatos” by itself is not enough to fit in this category tho as a note)

-

Now lets talk about Venti...

uh.... those who have followed me for awhile will probably already know this but... I have a lot of opinions on Venti and a pretty- “niche(?)” perception of his characterization that isn’t shared by a lot of others- so I don’t actually read as much Venti fanfic in general as you might expect because I often end up disagreeing with how writers portray him, which again, in no way is their characterization wrong, but- “their perceived truth” conflicts with “my perceived truth” and by extent so does the characterization, though neither is any more correct than the other from an objective point of view, if that makes sense... but anyways now that that’s said, moving on before this becomes a philosophy lecture, as fun as that would be for me.  I’ll try to keep my “perceived truth” out of this for the first bit. 

Venti’s response to this: 

He rolls with it: this depends on the mood of the fanfiction. If they dont put a lot of stress on that trait of Xiao’s it totally fine but if the trait seems to be a major part of Xiao’s character, it seems like normalization once more. (more on this later)

he takes advantage of it purposely: if its an AU or something and Venti’s like a villain(i saw a few) then- villain venti isnt my cup of tea but i have no qualms. If they don’t portray Venti in a negative light while having him take advantage however that’s a bit uncomfortable to read for me because it feels like normalizing taking advantage of that mindset as well as the mindset itself. However, i did see a number of instances of Venti using it as leverage for like- self care- which i definitely have no qualms. Xiao: [insert probably destructive idolizing statement about being indebt] Venti: How bout you pay me back by actually sleeping for once smh or other variations are okay and depending on the vibe are actually a really fun dynamic as long as it doesnt turn into romanticizing or normalizing it, y’know?

Venti accidentally taking advantage of it.... I love angst- and in most of these theres a sense of guilt when he realizes- and i just think thats a lovely way of addressing the dangers of such a mindset for both sides. As long as it doesn’t keep repeating to the point of romanticization its totally cool to read in my eyes(not irl ofc). If Venti never realizes he accidentally took or is taking advantage it feels a bit like normalization, and if he does but just- doesn’t care thats- a rip.

savior!Venti...... i- i hate. the story giving off vibes that Xiao’s mindset is technically correct while Venti oh so humbly tells him to treat him as an equal like the wonderful and charitable person he is.... i just- no. of course thats over dramatizing it- I think the main thing that gives it this vibe is when Venti doesn’t seem either concerned, surprised, uncomfortable, or otherwise have a negative feeling towards Xiao’s mindset. Just- it makes the whole thing weird in my eyes when Venti doesnt really seem to have his own reason to oppose the mindset idk- 

-

fact time!

Venti is the god of freedom. His backstory is freeing Mondstadt from a god’s tyrannical reign. His origin is a windsprite, just another breeze bringing changes for the better. His form is a nameless boy who played an instrument and then died, thus failing at his only dream and only ever accomplishing anything because of the help of others. He slept for a thousand years after the archon war to avoid putting Mond under the rule of yet another tyrannical god. He only even became a god because Andrius chose to let him. He wouldn’t have even had that chance if the nameless bard had survived, he’d remain just another wind while his friend ascended to godhood. Venti sacrifices his own power for his people’s freedom. 

now that I’ve laid out a number of canon facts, time for opinions:

Venti has little to no desire to be seen as a god. He thrives in, comes from, and emphasizes a lack of superiority in quite nearly everything. The first Ragnvindir, who canonically turned his back on Venti after Decarabian’s fall, likely did so because one- he anticipated power would corrupt and Venti would soon become just another tyrannical god, two- he suspected Venti used the nameless bard in an attempt to rise to godhood, or three- idk insert other possibilities to acknowledge again that i could totally be wrong.

Look me in the eyes and tell me Venti wouldnt trade godhood for his friend in an instant. His godhood was only granted to him because his friend died and could easily serve to constantly remind him of what could have been and what he lost. Venti takes no enjoyment from being seen as superior and in my opinion, I feel that it could actually make him largely uncomfortable when his divinity and abilities as an archon get involved-

also self promotion for my favorite posts- check out #archon war era venti if thats interesting to you

so anyway Venti rolling with it or making jokes about it just doesn’t sit right with me.- 

-

Okay! enough talking about that mindset!

idk- i have... a few/lot of other gripes and stuff or just things that kinda throw off the vibe for me but that’s the main one plus my general personal pickiness when it come to Venti fanfics- but this has gotten long enough already- 

idk i just felt like rambling about it and i haven’t done a long post in a while so-

again, I love the ship and its actually one of my favorites- just the fanfic isnt my thing..... that doesn’t mean i don’t still love it and come up with a whole ton of brainrot and ideas on it tho lmao

[iamanartichoke]

[please blacklist spoiler tags: #loki tv series spoilers, #loki series spoilers, #loki spoilers]

Yes, I did just watch episode 2 at 5:30 in the morning.

No, I am not sorry. Not at the moment, although when I inevitably crash later this afternoon, I will be.

Just some very, very quick - and scattered and messy - thoughts: That is a straight up lie; they’re definitely scattered and messy but not very quick at all.

Under the cut for spoilers and length.

I’m going to start with Loki’s characterization. My honest opinion is that Loki’s overall characterization feels like a fic characterization. He definitely is not Avengers Loki, like, at all. I don't know if Tom just, like, forgot how to play that Loki or ...?? That, or Loki was so much more mind-controlled than we realized and getting hulk-smashed just completely reset him back to zero but also fucked him up a little bit and affected his personality, kind of like how some people completely develop weird new personality quirks after a traumatic brain injury.

… yeah, I think that’s where I’m gonna land for now. TV series!Loki feels like a more-or-less canon version of Loki, but if that Loki got hit in the head really hard and now he’s just a little bit fucked up but overall no worse for the wear. Which - it may be that it’s so early in the morning, but that’s actually really fucking funny to me, lmao. God, I kill me. It’s not funny.

No, but, that’s pretty much how I feel. He’s ooc but he’s also ic, and the reason I’m not particularly bothered by the inconsistency, for lack of a better word, is because that’s what pretty much every fic Loki already feels like to me? (Including my own, so I’m not, like, saying that in a derogatory way.) Which is why I say Loki feels like a fic!Loki and to try to explain it better - there is always, for me, a little suspension of disbelief that I employ when I read fic. The reason for that is because the context, the plot, and the dynamics of the fic are usually pretty different than what we ever get in canon, so it becomes a matter of taking film!Loki and, like, bending him a bit in order to fit him into the perimeters of the fic.

The result ends up being that I don’t see the exact Avengers!Loki or TDW!Loki, and thus by definition the portrayal is ooc, but the version that I do see feels like a genuine extension of the canon version, possessing enough of Loki’s overall traits and characteristics that he feels authentic, albeit a bit pretzeled for the new context.

I honestly think that’s something that’s unavoidable, just due to the fact that in fic - and now, in this series - there are a lot more variables at play than there are in the films, wherein Loki is not just a supporting character but also the villain/antagonist and is therefore very limited in what he does/what the narrative allows him to do. When those limitations are taken away, what are we going to see? Probably a lot of different things, and yeah, a lot of them are going to feel a little ooc. And, like in fic, even if the characterization mostly lands, there are definitely bits and pieces (some fics more than others lean this way) where the author didn’t stick the landing or got carried away or otherwise probably forgot for a while that they were writing Loki, not their own OC.

That’s the point where it strays into cringe territory for me (and where the ‘heh, he’s Loki but with a brain injury’ aspect comes in), but while I had to consciously decide to just ignore those moments, overall the tone in this episode felt a bit more balanced between the new, the old, and the cringe, and less whiplash-y from the beginning of the episode to the end.

… I have no idea if that makes sense, but what I’m basically saying is that while I am enjoying this version of Loki, I do recognize all of the ways he’s ooc but, unlike how I feel about Ragnarok!Loki, the ooc-ness feels genuine and unavoidable rather than just a fundamental and careless misunderstanding of the character altogether. In other words, I feel like any ooc-ness here is happening despite the writers taking care to do their best, and isn’t just a result of Loki being lazily written by a person or persons who just doesn’t want to bother with him at all.

Again, I don’t know if that makes sense, but fuck it, there we are and I’m moving on.

I liked all of the little details, including again, things that felt straight out of fic, like Loki asking Mobius why he has the jetski magazine. (Also, if any of my thorki friends read this, was I the only one who noticed that when we see Loki reading the magazine, it just happens to be open to a page with a picture featuring a jet skier who looks like Thor? l.m.a.o.)

Loki interrupting things to explain the difference between illusions vs the other power (I can’t remember which one, off hand, and if I stop writing to go look it up I will lose my train of thought and not finish this) was great, but his overall input and contributions to the missions inspired very mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I loved that the narrative, via Loki, is reminding us of all these things that he’s capable of that the films generally left out or brushed aside or ignored - but, every time he spoke, he was met with eye rolls and sighs and just a general feeling of “someone please shut this guy up” and I didn’t like the narrative treating him that way.

But also, it’s understandable bc none of the people on his team are actually on his team. None of them want him there (story of Loki’s fucking life), none of them trust him, and none of them are particularly interested in hearing what he has to say. So it’s like, I understand why they reacted the way they did, and I don’t think their reactions are meant to support an overall narrative undermining of Loki’s skills and input - but, the tone is hard to read for me bc I am very defensive and protective of Loki. I can’t quite determine the line between the TVA agents being unreliable narrators (ie, they’re annoyed by Loki bc of who he is to them, but that doesn’t mean the audience is supposed to feel the same) and the TVA agents validating that Loki is just being a nuisance (and, thus, the audience is supposed to feel the same).

That is, I know how I am consuming the narrative (that they’re unreliable narrators), but I’m not sure if that’s how tptb are intending for me to consume the narrative - and I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it’s worth mentioning.

In general, I really liked, again, Loki existing in his own space and watching the way he carried himself. I especially found it interesting that his hands were almost always in his pockets - for one thing it's a stance I tend to imagine him taking often in fic, but also it’s kind of a weird choice bc pockets don’t seem to be a thing in Asgardian clothing. It makes me feel like Loki is the kind of person who never knows what to do with his hands but is always conscious of them, as is common among anxious and self-conscious people, and I just find that relatable on a weird level.

I am really kinda torn on Mobius in this episode; when not interrogating Loki, he’s much less antagonistic toward Loki and therefore I’m more inclined to take-him-or-leave-him but I’ll go ahead and take him I guess. Yet at the same time, bc he’s not interrogating Loki he’s also not trying to put on a show for Loki and when you take that away, he really doesn’t seem to like Loki at all. It supports that Mobius only wants what Loki can do for him and doesn’t actually particularly care about him as a person, which is fine and more or less what I figured, but it contributes to me not really being able to decide how I feel about him in general. Idk, though, I kinda like their dynamic? Like I want them to end up friends?

Regardless, Tom and Owen have amazing chemistry and it’s really funny to me bc (not to be a jerk) I honestly didn’t know Owen Wilson could act. Like, I’ve never seen him in a role where he wasn’t just playing Owen Wilson. So for him to not only be playing Mobius so well but also having such chemistry and a sense of holding-his-own against Tom Hiddleston is like, color me surprised but pleasantly so.

I like B-15 a lot, even though she obviously hates Loki, so idk why I like her but I do. I like Renslayer less, but meh. (Side note - when I was in undergrad in Syracuse, I took the Amtrak from Syracuse to Boston and back more than a few times, for reasons that aren’t relevant, and that route always had a layover at Albany-Rensselaer and every single time I see Renslayer’s name, I want to call her Rensselaer instead.) Shout out to the guest appearance by Casey, sorry Loki stole your juice lmfao.

The moments from the trailer that were very cringe were less so in context (though still kinda cringe, tbh). I think we’ve seen most of the content from the trailers in the first two episodes now, though, which means going forward, it’s going to be like 95% previously unseen material (aside from the brief apocalyptic shots and so forth).

One thing I fucking loved was how Loki, reading about Ragnarok, was visibly affected and even teared up a bit, and you could tell he was in his feels about it, but then later when Mobius expresses sympathy, Loki is just like, “Uh huh, very sad, but anyway.” It was a subtle (well maybe not that subtle) but effective way to remind us that what Loki presents to other people is more often than not a mask and he keeps his true feelings close to the chest. It makes last week’s breakdown have even more of an impact, I think, bc clearly Loki was at the end of his rope to allow himself to show that much raw emotion and vulnerability, but also - for me - there’s a niggling little doubt there that wasn’t there before, in that there was probably more performance in it than I thought.

By which I mean, I think his reaction to the film of his life when he was alone was genuine but, while I previously thought his admission to Mobius later was also genuine, I now think was probably half genuine and half performative. I know others already figured that out, but I’m a little slow and, also, I don’t mind changing my opinion and interpretation from week to week.

Along the same lines, I wasn’t exactly surprised to see that Loki is “undercover” in the TVA, but it was nice to see it acknowledged fairly quickly. Not sure I buy that Loki wants to overthrow and rule the TVA - it’s still a little too “Loki only wants a throne” for me, but again, just because that’s what he told the variant doesn’t mean that’s actually what he’s after.

And, finally, I like the variant, I love Loki’s reaction to seeing her, and while I realize that the show has acknowledged Loki’s gender fluidity and we’re meant to assume that Lady Loki (I guess? Not sure if we’re going with that or not here) is Loki, I saw a theory somewhere about how this is actually not Loki-Loki, but - I wanna say her name Sophie but that’s the actress, again I can’t go look it up bc I will lose my train of thought - but it’s a character who is similar to Amora and who was created by Loki and models herself as Loki but she’s actually someone else.

Ugh I can’t remember the details of the theory, but I am kinda going with it bc I don’t think that Loki would look so - not surprised but just kind of “oh, well, I wasn’t expecting that” if he were seeing the female version of himself. Like, he doesn’t seem to recognize her the way I assume he would recognize himself, male or female. Not only does that make me feel like she’s actually someone else, but also not recognizing her as the female version of himself doesn’t necessarily mean Loki doesn’t recognize her at all. He may very well recognize her as this other Amora-similar character and, if so, I really want to see how that character fits with MCU Loki (as I think she’s a comic book character but, again, I’d have to go back and find that theory).

Edit: I found a version of it here.

Overall score, B-. Mostly solid, but needs moar Loki breakdowns and tears. (That's just me, don't fucking judge me.) Also, I really hate that we have to wait a week between episodes. I wish they were following Netflix’s method of dropping the entire season at once but, then again, if they did that, I’m not sure any of us would survive.

I gotta get ready for work and I deleted and rewrote so much of this and it still seems nonsensical to me, lmfao fml. Anyway feel free to interact/send me asks/whatever, it’s going to be a long fucking day with all of this on my mind. I’ll be working my way through my dash as best as I can.

Oh, also! Loki is so fucking pretty in this episode! The TVA suit is ugly, but he makes it work, and his hair's combed nicely and he looks like he finally got an opportunity to sleep and shower and eat something and, yknow, it's working for him.

[raptured-night]

Do you believe Snape was prejudiced against muggleborns in his teens? I want to believe he was but there are just several facts that don't allow it. For example- He called himself the Half Blood Prince indicating that he was proud of his half blood status. But if he hated muggleborns for having muggle parents or having 'dirty' blood, then why was he so proud of his blood status. Shouldn't he have hated it like Voldemort did?

I believe that Snape’s experience with prejudice was decidedly more complicated than someone like Lucius Malfoy’s or Bellatrix Black’s would have been. Importantly, although Ron does tell us that a larger majority of witches and wizards were either half-blood or possessed some degree of blended Muggle and magical heritage due to the sheer fact that the magical community consisted of a significantly smaller population than the non-magical and there was no way around inter-mingling with Muggles if they hoped to preserve their society (in fact, I would theorize that some of the “eccentricities” and emotional instabilities that we saw from some of the pureblood families were the byproducts of too much inbreeding as a result of a small pool of pureblood families marrying into each other again and again), I would argue that Snape would still have entered Slytherin at a distinct disadvantage.

Significantly, we lack sufficient information on the Prince family to definitively argue whether they were even a pureblood family (if so then it would seem they weren’t counted among “The Sacred Twenty-Eight”) or not and while it has become a popular fanon theory that the Princes were a pureblood family, akin to the Malfoys or Lestranges or Blacks, the absence of information does make it impossible to say that canonically the Prince family were a pureblood family and not just a magical family who may have had a more blended heritage (a more mixed-lineage could even go towards explaining how Eileen came to meet and marry Tobias). Unlike Tom Riddle, Snape’s familial background may not have been vague enough for him to be able to claim ties to any ancient or illustrious pureblood family (as we saw Umbridge do when claiming an unverified connection to the Selwyn family) in order to overshadow his Muggle heritage. Thus, where Riddle was able to enter Slytherin as a half-blood orphan and declare himself Salazar Slytherin’s chosen heir courtesy of his connection to the Gaunt family, at most we see that Snape privately claimed his connection to his mother’s family in the guise of “The Half-blood Prince.” 

Arguably, that provides us with an important contrast to Tom Riddle and some insight into adolescent Snape. Where Tom Riddle uses his connection to the Gaunt family as a means of fully rejecting his father’s Muggle heritage and validating his Muggleborn prejudices by declaring himself Salazar Slytherin’s heir, there are different implications to a young Snape writing: “I am the Half-Blood Prince” in his mother’s old Potions textbook. Rather than using his mother’s magical lineage as a means to entirely divest himself of his father’s Muggle heritage, it would seem that at the point when Snape scrawled that statement into his textbook he was far more set on acknowledging both his magical and Muggle status within the wizarding world in a way that I would argue doubled as bitterly sardonic and challenging. Indeed, the very statement: “I am the Half-Blood Prince” connotes defiance on his part; a suggestion that at one point in his life Snape seemed very set on proving his worth on his own terms as a half-blood from an impoverished background who was nonetheless still “half a Prince,” and that he would defy anyone who might have told him that he did not belong. This does seem to conflict with the idea that all of Snape’s adolescent years at Hogwarts were marked by him having the same deeply ingrained prejudices or the exact ideological beliefs that purebloods like Lucius Malfoy might have. 

If we look at the classifications of Muggle-born, half-blood, and pureblood as allegories for certain racial and ethnic statuses (and that purebloods represented the group with the greatest hierarchal advantage and most privilege) then the extent to which various wizards or witches that came from non-pureblood families could nonetheless still claim some vague status as purebloods could be looked at as allegorical to the concept of “passing privilege.” Ergo, Tom Riddle was able to convincingly “pass” as a member of the pureblood elite by claiming his connections to Salazar Slytherin through the Gaunt family. Furthermore, he completely abandons his more obvious Muggle-given name of Tom Riddle and chooses a name (i.e. Voldemort) that allowed him to further obscure his lineage. I would argue that, in contrast to Voldemort, Snape did not have passing privilege coming into Hogwarts. The very nature of the way he claims his connection to his mother’s magical lineage seems to suggest that an adolescent Snape was aware that his half-blood status was not something he could conceal or entirely rid himself of in the way Tom Riddle was able to do (and again, the very nature of the statement “I am the Half-Blood Prince” does seem to suggest he may not have wanted to pass himself off as more of a pureblood). 

Which brings me to the issues of indoctrination and internalized prejudice. Significantly, I believe that a young Snape may have been aware of anti-Muggleborn prejudice even before he arrived at Hogwarts. The pause after Lily asked Snape if her being Muggle-born would make any difference at Hogwarts was poignant and suggested an existing knowledge on Snape’s part. Which begs the question of how he became aware of the existence of such prejudices? The logical answer is that he learned about them the same way he learned about the other aspects of the magical world, from his mother. It is even possible that in some of the arguments between Tobias and Eileen he may have witnessed both anti-magic and anti-Muggle prejudices from them. When asked by Lily if Tobias liked magic a young Snape deflected by observing Tobias “didn’t like anything much,” so there is a basis to argue that magic might have been a point of contention for Tobias. Likewise, one could make the case that Eileen also lashed out and a young Snape might have overheard her criticizing Tobias on the basis of him being a Muggle. Notably, Snape has to catch himself when he almost dismisses Petunia as “just a Muggle” when Lily is upset after arguing with Petunia (who demonstrated her own seeming magical prejudices by calling Lily a freak) shortly before boarding the Hogwarts Express. 

Overall, I would argue that if an adolescent Snape came to Hogwarts with any overt prejudices they were more likely anti-Muggle prejudices than they were anti-Muggleborn prejudices. Indeed, while a young Snape does hesitate before reassuring Lily that her Muggleborn heritage would make no difference, he does seem rather (naively) convinced that her magical talent would be enough for her to avoid experiencing any anti-Muggleborn prejudice while at Hogwarts. Alternatively, he frequently disparaged Petunia --who in turn targeted him for his class status-- for being a Muggle. I would theorize that a young Snape who might have been disillusioned by a father who is strongly implied to have been potentially abusive to his mother (and quite possibly him) and antagonistic towards magic and who would have potentially overheard any anti-Muggle sentiments spoken by his mother would have arrived at Hogwarts with an existing prejudice against Muggles if not yet Muggleborns.

From there any progression of anti-Muggle to anti-Muggleborn would have been the result a few complicated factors ranging from: his frequency of exposure to a culture of prejudice within Slytherin house by a certain number of vocal and influential peers, the issue of the existing stigma surrounding Slytherin house and how the culture of Hogwarts seems to reward disenfranchisement of Slytherin by the other houses and teachers, Snape’s own growing sense of alienation and disenfranchisement as his bullying by the Marauders escalated and Dumbledore and other figures of authority failed to adequately respond which would have made him more vulnerable to grooming and radicalization, Snape’s own lack of privilege (i.e. his lack of passing privilege, his half-blood status, and his class status) in Slytherin house making it more necessary for Snape to conform with to avoid drawing a target onto himself by members of his house (particularly when he would already feel a lack of security outside of his house due to the Marauders and seeming institutional biases against Slytherin house at Hogwarts), and any internalized prejudices Snape carried as a result of any resentment he may have felt towards his Muggle father, Tobias. 

I’ve written about this before but I believe the road to Snape becoming a Death Eater was a complex one. In contrast to the Malfoys, the Lestranges, or the Black family Snape was not born into wealth and privilege. He had no claims to “The Sacred Twenty-Eight,” and no real social standing. In terms of hierarchy, and to borrow from Slughorn, Snape “did not have much to recommend him.” These aspects of Snape are imperative to understanding what might have led to him becoming a Death Eater and not just in the context of fictional analysis, either. In a very real-world sense, Snape provides us some insight into the ways that adolescents can become radicalized or groomed into extremists groups, gangs, and cults. It is a gross oversight to lump Snape into the same category as Lucius Malfoy because Snape’s reasons for becoming a Death Eater and the outlook of any prejudices he held would have been very different due in large part to his blood status, class status, and social standing. 

Lucius Malfoy supported Voldemort and became a Death Eater because he regarded Muggle-borns as a threat to the privilege he already held in wizarding society; he became a Death Eater because he was motivated to hold onto his privilege, which is why both he and Narcissa Malfoy were willing to set aside their blood purity ideologies and turn away from Voldemort when it became clear that Voldemort was an even greater immediate threat to them than Muggle-borns. In contrast, Snape held no significant privilege in wizarding society; he was not a pureblood, he seemingly could not pass as belonging to one of the “Sacred Twenty-Eight,” and he came from poverty and of a low-class standing. Rationally speaking, Snape did not become a Death Eater because he had reason to believe Muggle-borns were threatening his privilege in the wizarding world because Snape did not enter into the wizarding world with significant advantages or privileges (indeed, as a half-blood his position in a world dominated by Voldemort’s ideology would be far more precarious which is why I suspect that the alternate future we saw in Cursed Child where Voldemort won saw a post-war Snape relegated back to a mostly invisible role as potion’s professor at Hogwarts again while someone like Umbridge with more passing privilege was upgraded to the role of Headmistress). I would argue that prejudice against Muggle-borns was not even a driving factor in why he became a Death Eater (although he might have had what he felt were valid reasons to believe that inter-marriages between Muggles and magical people didn’t need to continue and that Muggles like Tobias were only a danger to them and their world) so much as the promise of power, protection, and belonging. 

Which brings me back to the driving force behind a lot of the radicalization of adolescents we encounter in a very real sense. A common factor, the one which renders them most vulnerable, is their feelings of disenfranchisement and their disillusionment with a society that not only seems to not work for them but is unfairly designed to work against them. In a fictional context, Snape manages to encapsulate the idea of the angry young person whose outlook and future prospects seem hopeless (regardless of any innate talents, ambition, or hard work on their part) and who feels unfairly attacked by institutions and systems beyond their control. More than any prejudice as a motivating factor, I would argue that a young Snape would have been very vulnerable to grooming from peers like Lucius Malfoy who could build off any existing anti-Muggle prejudices he might have carried while also promising him a chance for greater social standing and influencing power. 

It is important to keep in mind that even in his own house he was dismissed by Slughorn, who famously cultivated a social networking system of carefully selected students he felt had the most potential. Thus, one can imagine an ambitious young Snape who once looked to Hogwarts as an escape from his circumstances on Spinner’s End and who seemed to defiantly insist upon making a name for himself on his own terms (i.e. “I am the Half-Blood Prince”) having all his childhood ambitions gradually disappointed; over the course of the seven years he would spend as a student at Hogwarts he would be confronted by the cruel reality that life in the magical world was no less fair to him than life in the Muggle world had been. Enter the likes of Lucius Malfoy (who also is symbolically the first person to extend Snape a hand of welcome at Hogwarts after running up against James and Sirius on the train) and other impressive peers from pureblood families and one can begin to see what some of the allure of the Death Eaters might have been (that’s not even getting into the fact that the Marauders had so staunchly aligned themselves on the opposite side so it would also have felt like a natural extension of the lines that had been drawn at Hogwarts in choosing the side in opposition of his school-hood enemies). 

The extent to which Snape carried any significant anti-Muggleborn prejudices (that is not to say that he didn’t carry Muggle-born prejudices to some degree but that those prejudices were not so significant in his consciousness that we could argue they were the main motivating factor in his decision to become a Death Eater) is, I believe, debatable. Certainly, he called Lily a Mudblood in a moment where he had been rendered powerless and emasculated and Lily later claimed that Snape “called everyone” like her Mudbloods (which I suspect was supposition and hyperbole on her part; otherwise, it paints Lily’s character in a less sympathetic light wherein we discover she was willing to overlook Snape’s use of slurs up to the point she was no longer the exception when it came to him using them) but even that instance could stand as an example of assimilation. Whether Snape was remaining silent while his peers used derogatory slurs around him or he chose to use them in his company, the instance where Snape was put under pressure and the language asserted itself is a testament to the way existing in an environment of prejudice and allowing it to go unchallenged can lead to us internalizing those prejudices. Indeed, when Snape later refuses to allow Phineas Nigellus to use the slur in his company can be looked at as an example of Snape having learned from the mistakes of his youth and taken the initiative to proactively challenge prejudice whenever possible as an adult. 

Ultimately, I believe Snape did internalize ideas of anti-Muggle prejudice but I also would argue that that was not the primary reason or driving force for his becoming a Death Eater. I believe there were a number of factors that led to that choice and it was primarily the allure of power and security that proved the most appealing to him. There is also a strong case of naivete to be argued on Snape’s part, in that he --like Draco-- seemed not to fully recognize what he had signed up for until the reality of it hit home. That Voldemort would target someone he knew, a formerly treasured childhood friend, appeared to bring home to Snape the reality of what he had become a part of and who he had pledged his allegiance to. I would also argue that early on, Voldemort appeared to have been willing to recruit gifted Muggle-borns into his ranks, so it is also quite possible that during the first war Voldemort’s rhetoric might have been slanted more firmly against the idea of Muggle incursions in their world or the way the Secrecy Act disenfranchised their people rather than a blatant call-to-arms against members of their community that, while Muggle-born, were still magical and ran the risk of alienating people away from public support. 

That is often the case with extremist organizations; they test the waters and start with more palatable or deceptive “populist” messages with a broader mass appeal before they introduce their more extreme views by degrees. We have seen some of this with the Trump administration, who began under more innocuous slogans like “Make America Great Again” and have only become more emboldened since in their dog-whistles to white supremacy and ideas of nationalism (e.g. Trump has even openly come out and declared himself a nationalist in past interviews following the Charlottesville attack on protestors and his refusal to condemn those actions). Significantly, in the first war, we know that Voldemort had enough popular support his followers were able to outnumber Dumbledore and his Order by twenty-to-one. I would argue that was achievable only if Voldemort first entered the scene under a more flexible message that allowed him to draw in members of the wizarding world with more casual prejudices towards Muggle and build up his inner circle of the more extreme Death Eaters like Bellatrix and Lucius who held the strongest anti-Muggleborn prejudices. 

Finally, I believe that the likelihood of internalized prejudice cannot be underscored. Someone who may have grown up with an abusive Muggle father, like Snape, could have internalized prejudice about his half-blood status as something with the potential to mark him as inferior. His resentment of his father becoming a resentment of Muggles, in general, is the very sort of toxic cocktail that could lead a young Snape to align himself with a Voldemort who his peers assure him can understand him and his hatred of his Muggle father. In that scenario, Voldemort is merely someone sympathetic to his situation; someone who validates his belief that Muggles are a danger to the magical community; that they are to blame for keeping their kind oppressed and forced to remain in the shadows; they are a poison to their society, etc. Additionally, being at Hogwarts and feeling as if the majority of the school were rooting for him --and his house by extension-- to fail would have only strengthened a culture of peer pressure, allowing house-mates from the most influential families to set the tone within the house, decide house politics, and enforce a group-think where the consequences of going against the popular narrative are complete ostracization within one’s house and no protection from the ostracization Slytherin students can expect to face in general. Thus we have Snape, a half-blood from poverty and a preexisting internalized prejudice against his potentially abusive Muggle father coming to Hogwarts and being sorted into a house where his options are to choose between his house being his only respite from the institutional biases of the school at large or a place where he’s further alienated from everyone else except the people out to get him can also get him where he sleeps. Indeed, the very fact that up to SWM, Harry observes that Snape was “clearly unpopular” might suggest that Snape had been reluctant up to that point to fully assimilate into the ideologies of his house and his friendship with Lily led to some friction (it might go towards explaining how Sirius and James could publically humiliate him to onlookers and not a single member of his house come to his defense). 

All this to say that I suspect that Snape’s path towards becoming a Death Eater happened by degrees. I would argue that he might have arrived at Hogwarts with some internalized prejudice against Muggles but an ambition to prove himself on his own terms (i.e. as “the Half-Blood Prince”) and a belief that raw talent and hard work would be enough for him to distinguish himself. When those ambitions proved faulty and when faced with seemingly insurmountable institutional biases within Hogwarts and slim prospects outside of Hogwarts that was when he became disillusioned and more susceptible to the ideological grooming within his house. That is why these contradictions in Snape may not be contradictions at all but rather more insight into the way a small boy who managed to seem impressive talking about his future would become a Death Eater. He may have started off with a certain degree of faith in the idea that gifted people like him and Lily could take the world by storm; that he could succeed as the Half-Blood Prince and she as a Muggle-born and no one would question their right to be there or their place in the world. Sadly, by the time he left Hogwarts, both he and Lily had had that innocence stripped from them and the choices he made would take him far from whatever ideas he once had as a boy for their future. 

[rollychan]

Not trusting Marvel or Disney is perfectly valid and all but I think that dropping hints that an organization is evil and/or corrupt but not fully saying it within the first two episodes isn't inherently them not making up their minds as much as possible foreshadowing. If you just show they're bad right away it would have less of an impact.

They're giving us all the subtext that the tva are awful and authoritarian. If in the end they don't commit to them being awful, I'll agree it's bad writing. But not revealing it this early in the series isn't bad writing. In fact it'd be worse writing to give it away that soon.

Yes, it's normally perfectly fine to do that, I agree. I love good villain reveals as much as the next person.

The thing with the TVA though is that there is nothing subtle about their authoritarian and deeply inhuman actions. That's not really subtext, it's text. Or if it is supposed to be (subtle) subtext, it's badly written subtext because it's very in-your-face. They literally, in front of our eyes, destroy whole timelines and purge variants for not owning tickets those variants didn't even know they absolutely had to have so they wouldn't be "erased." Prisoners are dehumanized - there is a literal robot that erases their clothes. Mobius argues in favor of determinism and not free will. The only subtlety about it are the posters people have noticed that aren't in the focus.

This got rather long so the rest is under the cut.

Before finding out what other fans and reviewers and the people creating the show themselves were saying, I had the same opinion as you, anon. I am still holding out hope they'll deliver on what I think they have pretty clearly shown (I'm with you on the authoritarian / dystopian coding of the TVA, though I don't quite agree it's subtle or just subtext), but seeing those interviews and reviews? That made me doubt it a lot. Had I not seen the interviews etc. or known about them, I'd still be very convinced they'll turn the TVA (or at least the Time Keepers) into the final / actual antagonists. A part of me actually is still that stubborn and convinced of that, but another part of me is jaded when it comes to Disney and Marvel. At this point I actually hope it's Disney's / Marvel's irrational fear of spoilers that makes them force people who worked on the show to give such shallow interviews and professional reviewers to act like they've never reviewed a thing in their lives.

With something that is so in-your-face, I wouldn't expect a villain reveal, but rather an escalation, as is the tradition of dystopian novels and some movies at least (haven't watched that many movies so I can't actually say and I don't want to make assumptions.)

I think I got carried away somewhere in the middle there, sorry, anon. Back to the second part of your ask.

For me, it's not so much the impact of the reveal that is important here but that they have to reveal the TVA as actually really bad in the first place that's bad writing. They clearly are. Nobody should look at what they are doing and think "yeah, that's how it's supposed to work, looks fine to me" and nobody should be on the fence about it / doubt that they are doing very wrong things. The individuals at the TVA may not be "all bad" as Loki put it so well, but what they are doing there based on their orders is. I think this would tie into the "escalation" that I mentioned. None of the dystopian novels I've read lacked impact and it was pretty clear from the start that the authorities are very tyrannical dictators (or otherwise didn't care about individuals.)

(little aside here: if not for the interviews and reviews, I'd actually have believed they were going for an "escalation" route. But the PR they're doing is messing it all up. There's also the fact that this is a Disney show and not a dystopian novel turned series. If this were a dystopian novel, it'd be obvious the TVA is a tyrannical organization and the author wouldn't have to make that explicitly clear by saying it, it'd be pretty clear within the first few pages, like in 1984. "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" and the mirror and recording devices mentioned would be enough, and if not, the protagonist mentioning that simply writing a diary is cause for a death sentence should be. But it's not a dystopian novel. I find the lack of seriousness around what the TVA do a bit worrying for that reason. Context matters, and so does meta-context.)

I don't know, I just think that if people will be surprised about the TVA turning out to be the bad guys here, we as a human species have fallen pretty low not to recognize it.

That said, I'm oscillating very much right now (after the second episode) between a more positive and a more negative opinion of the show. The main reason for that aren't the themes or the TVA though. I like the themes they picked up. I just hope they continue to deliver on them (they did explicitly mention determinism vs free will again so this gives me some hope.)

[be11atrixthestrange]

Step 8: Navigating Arguments

Also, for all those asks for a Romione first time... this the chapter for you!

From 12 Fail-Safe Ways To Charm Hermione Granger

As your relationship deepens, expect disagreements to surface. All couples fight, but pay attention to the way you fight. Do your best to establish healthy and productive habits by focusing on your own feelings and actions, and never attack your partner's character. Remember that you're arguing with someone you love.

******

Ron and Hermione were no strangers to fighting, and ultimately, Ron was thankful for that. Their friendship was based on an argument— If Ron hadn't called her a nightmare back in their first year, she would never have ended up crying in the girls' bathroom. And if she hadn't been crying in the girls' bathroom, she wouldn't have needed saving from a Mountain Troll.

That was the argument that began their friendship, but there were many more that defined it. In the third year, he thought he'd never talk to her again because her cat definitely ate his rat. But as it turned out, Crookshanks was innocent, his rat was really a middle-aged killer, and he missed her so much that he would have forgiven her even without those valid reasons.

Their fight at the Yule Ball in their fourth year also stood out as a defining moment. Hermione still thought of that as the moment when he finally realized she was a girl, but she was wrong. That was the moment he knew that other people realized she was a girl, and he convinced himself he was entirely undeserving of her attention.

He still cringed when he remembered their estrangement during year six, which Hermione now referred to as 'The Lavender Days." It might have taken a canary attack, but that fight showed him that they ultimately felt the same way about each other. Dating someone else for five months might not have been the most efficient way of discovering that, but it ultimately worked..

They could fight like dragons, but they always resolved them, even back when they just called each other friends. Their fights didn't end when their relationship began, and it would have been naive to assume so.

They argued about where to spend holidays, and splitting their vacation time equally between the Burrow and Australia frequently required a spreadsheet and a third party. They argued about dirty dishes, and messy rooms, and what to make for dinner. They even rowed about muggle movies, and whether to watch a romantic comedy or an action film. Ron only doubled down on his opinion there, because he believed more men needed to admit their love for romance films.

Ginny and Harry jokingly referred to their bickering as foreplay. Despite his initial embarrassment at their observation, he knew there was some truth to it. Their arguments remained a constant feature of their relationship as they progressed from friends to lovers, but making up— that got much better.

Before, when they were just friends, making up meant a handshake, or a hug, or a promise that they could talk to one another again. Now, making up meant hours in the bedroom, under the covers, naked. He'd developed a certain pride in how many ways he could say "I'm sorry," without speaking a word, and she'd gotten quite good at convincing him that all was forgiven.

Today he was pretty confident that they could get through any fight, but it hadn't always been that way. The first few major arguments of their relationship didn't have a solution in sight, and it took time to figure out how to row with one another in a way that didn't deepen their divide. When long estrangements ceased to work, they had to figure out how to fight productively, which took time. Sharing his feedback on their relationship was risky, but Ron soon found out that with that risk, came a big reward.

******

Harry and Ron both moved into Grimmauld Place and started Auror training soon after Hermione and Ginny left for Hogwarts. The long, empty schedules of summer felt so far away when they were suddenly faced with twelve-hour training shifts. Ron jumped into training enthusiastically because it was something to do, and it filled his time enough to get his mind off of missing Hermione.

He looked forward to writing her lengthy letters once a week, describing his days in as much detail as he was authorized to give. It was no substitute for talking to her, but it was the closest thing he had, so he cherished that time. She wrote back too, and he tried to imagine what it would be like to be with her at Hogwarts, based on the details she provided in her letters.

Luckily, Ron didn't have to wait until the Christmas holidays in order to see her. Her birthday fell on the first Hogsmeade weekend of the year, and he was able to get a day off of Auror training to meet her. It was a weekend to remember— they started at the Three Broomsticks, and caught up over a few rounds of butterbeer. Ron learned of all the details about school life that she hadn't mentioned in her letters, and she surprised him by agreeing to take a few shots of firewhiskey. They inched closer to one another with each passing sip, and it wasn't long before Ron was grateful they'd picked a booth in the back of the bar, hidden from view.

He could have stayed there all day, with Hermione in his lap, tasting the alcohol on her breath, but eventually, Madam Rosmerta forced them to leave. Madam Rosmerta who? Ron could hardly remember why the barmaid had caught his attention for so many years at Hogwarts. Bloody mental, he was. Madam Rosmerta was far from his mind when he pulled Hermione into an empty alley behind the bar, slipped his hands behind her thighs, and picked her up. He pressed her back against the brick wall as she wrapped her legs around him, and he wondered how many more secret Hogsmeade snogging spots they'd never gotten the chance to discover.

School must have picked up in October, because her letters were shorter. He still enjoyed reading them, but even more, he wished he could be there to relieve some of her stress— preferably in an alley behind a bar. He did his best to fill in the gaps, kept his letters as long and detailed as possible, and hoped that they'd be able to catch up fully during their next Hogsmeade weekend.

It was the end of October when he saw her again. They had planned to meet at the same place. Unfortunately when he arrived at the Three Broomsticks, the private booth they had enjoyed last month was taken, so he set himself up in one nearby, and simply hoped Hermione would see him.

She came rushing in after Ron had already finished his first butterbeer, and apologized for her lateness. Although he was well aware of her tendency to lose track of time in the library, there was a part of him that felt slightly offended. He didn't want to spend his only day with Hermione brooding, so he ordered a few more rounds of drinks, and listened intently as Hermione filled him in on the details of the previous month. She spoke of her homework load, her Head Girl duties, and lamented her lack of free time to write to him. He slipped his arm around her, stroked her hair, and pushed aside the hurt from earlier. It wasn't long before she was leaning against him, stroking his thigh, and he turned to kiss her.

It wasn't as frenzied as last month. She never made it to his lap, and Madam Rosmerta didn't need to kick them out. When they strolled down the high street, and he tried to guide her into that empty alley, their empty alley, she resisted.

"I have to get back to the library, Ron."

She looked away when she said it, and Ron assumed it was so she didn't have to see his face fall. He sighed.

"That's ok," he said, and he wrapped her in his arms for another kiss before letting her go. It was shorter and more chaste than he wanted it to be, but he cherished the contact either way.

He continued to write to her after that weekend, and she continued to respond, but her letters grew shorter and shorter. It seemed she had written most of them in the library in between essays. Based on her rushed responses, school was overwhelming. She had taken on more NEWTS than anyone else, and it was all starting to catch up to her.

He wanted to believe that was the only reason behind her disappointingly concise letters, but his resentment was growing. He was busy too, and he still looked forward to spending hours writing to her, because had no one else he wanted to share his life with. An old insecurity began to resurface with every hastily written note— he knew it was mental, but maybe she had someone else to talk to, so writing him felt redundant.

Before their November Hogsmeade weekend, Ron booked a room at the Hog's Head. He knew better than to think she'd be able to spend the night with him, but it meant that she could see him two days in a row, and there'd be a place for her to really unwind, away from the prying eyes of anyone at the Three Broomsticks. They still met at the bar, in the same private booth as their first trip.

Even though he expected her to arrive late and slightly frenzied, he was still annoyed when she did. He offered her a butterbeer, partially hoping that she would catch his stiff tone, but she didn't even notice. Hermione started rambling on and on about her schoolwork, her Head Girl duties, and the stress she felt at school. He listened intently as she described her daily life in detail, and he couldn't help but wish she had included it all in her letters.

They left on their own when the pub closed, and no one had to kick them out. Hermione turned toward the road that would take her back to Hogwarts, and Ron reached for her hand.

"Don't go back yet," he said, pulling her back around to face him. "I got us a room."

He expected she'd need some convincing, and was prepared for it.

"Ron, I can't stay the night—"

"I wasn't expecting you to!" he assured her.. 'I just figured we could use some alone time. And then you can come back tomorrow." He tugged on her arm, trying to pull her into his arms, but she resisted.

"Ron, I can't—," she looked at him apologetically. "I don't have any free time tomorrow."

"It's a Sunday, what else have you got?" he was still holding onto her arm, half-heartedly trying to pull her into a hug, but she just stood still, unresponsive to his touch.

"I have a meeting with the prefects, four essays to finish, and I need to start revising for exams."

"That's a lot for a Sunday," said Ron, noting the hint of frustration in his voice.

"Well I scheduled everything on Sunday to make room to see you today, so yeah, it's busier than normal."

Her words felt like a punch in his stomach. "Well thank you for making room for me, Hermione, I'm sorry I'm hard to fit into your schedule."

"Ron," she said, sounding hurt. "You can't be mad about that."

"Well, I'm upset," he returned. Something, whether it be anger, frustration, or hurt was boiling up inside of him. "It kind of sounds like you don't want to be around me."

"That's not true!" she said. "I just wish you had told me."

"I wanted it to be a surprise."

"I hate surprises," she said. "If we had planned this out earlier, I might have been able to schedule around it." She had slipped out of his grasp and was now facing him with her arms crossed.

"Plan it out? You hardly write to me anymore. I have no fucking clue what's going on in your life, how am I supposed to know what your schedule looks like if you don't talk to me!"

She took a step back, looking affronted. "Ron I write to you every week."

"And you hardly say anything."

"Well I'm sorry my letters aren't detailed enough, I'm doing my best to keep up with yours."

Ron froze, playing her words over and over again in his head. She was making room for him. Doing her best to keep up with his letters. Adjusting her schedule to fit him in. All of it sounded like he was just another chore on Hermione's to-do list. A burden.

"Do you still want to be with me?" The words were out of his mouth before he could think to filter them.

She stared at him, her lip quivering. "Of course I do. Why would you say that?"

"It just sounds like I'm stressing you out," he shrugged. He felt his own face burning hot, and even though it felt like a regression of their relationship, he willed himself not to cry in front of her.

"It's not you—," she started.

"Is there someone else, Hermione?" He braced himself for her answer.

"No! How could you think that!" She was crying now. He wanted to run to her and wipe the tears from her face, but he willed himself to stay rooted to the spot.

"I just had to ask," he said, as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

Ron watched the image in his head of how he'd planned the night dissipate. He and Hermione were supposed to be enjoying a bottle of wine in their private hotel room right now. He'd hoped they'd spend this night reconnecting, both verbally and non verbally. He definitely hadn't planned for them to be standing five feet away from each other in a cold alley, arms crossed, and holding back tears.

"I really should go back," she finally said, avoiding his eye contact.

"Fine," he said, resisting the temptation to pull her into a hug, kiss her, and tell her he loved her. He knew she wouldn't respond with the level of enthusiasm that would make him feel any better.

"I'll see you at Christmas."

"I'll see you at Christmas," he responded stiffly. He waited until she walked away before he let his tears fall, and disapparated back to Grimmauld Place.

Ron approached letter-writing with far less enthusiasm after their fight in Hogsmeade, but was grateful for some correspondence, however flat it seemed. They wrote to each other simply to make plans for the Holidays. Hermione was planning to spend the first week of Christmas at Grimmauld Place with him, before spending the second half in Australia with her parents.

He was pleased to learn that he was still invited to visit her parents, but unfortunately, Auror training didn't leave him with a long enough break to join her. His anxiety to see her again was growing, but he had no idea what to expect from their reunion. They had a lot to discuss since their last Hogsmeade date. Although he was committed to a calm conversation, they didn't have the best track record when it came to rational discussions.

Luckily, any tension he felt quickly melted away when she arrived. He felt a wave of relief when she collapsed into his arms as soon as she saw him, almost knocking him over.

"Hi," she murmured into his shoulder.

"Hi," he said, chuckling. "I missed you."

"I missed you too." She held him at arm's length, and lovingly brushed some of his fringe away from his eyes.

Ron smiled and tightened his grip on her waist, tugging her closer. Their lips met, and she moved her hands from his shoulders to his hair, and at least for a few moments, they forgot about any potential arguments on their horizon.

The conversation didn't come up until later that night. When she slid under the covers with him and her head landed on his chest, he automatically turned toward her and tangled his fingers in her hair before kissing her firmly on the top of her head.

"I love you so much," he told her.

"I love you too," she said sincerely. The unexpected wave of relief he felt indicated a fear he hadn't yet recognized he had. "You know that, right?" she continued, now looking up at him.

Her head slid off his chest and they turned to face each other. "Yeah. I know that."

She turned her gaze to her hand, which was tracing the scars on Ron's arm. "What went wrong?"

He knew they couldn't avoid the conversation any longer, so he took a deep breath before answering. "I know you love me, I just didn't really feel that way over the past few months." He felt her stiffen in his arms, and he tensed too, preparing for an angry retort.

But it never came. Instead, Hermione's eyebrows furrowed and she propped herself up on her shoulder. "You don't?" she asked in a small voice.

At this point Ron was aware of his own insecurities, and knew full well that Hermione might call them out. There was a part of him that wanted to shove this conversation under the rug, because he thought he shouldn't be insecure, and it might come across as needy, and she might not find that attractive. But he also knew that this was simply how he felt, it was affecting them, and it was valid even if it didn't make sense to her. He took another deep breath, and spoke with a shaky voice. "I questioned it a lot over the last few months, to be honest."

Hermione's eyes watered with tears, but she didn't say anything. She gently nodded for him to continue.

Ron hadn't really prepared to elaborate, which he now realized was a mistake. He didn't have a solution for her, and he didn't have a reason to tell her that didn't sound like blame. But he had her attention, so he continued, hoping the fact that his words weren't perfectly curated didn't come back later to bite him. "We hardly spoke. Your letters were so short. I couldn't help but feel like you rushed them, which made me worry you thought writing to me was a chore. Then our Hogsmeade weekends didn't go as planned, and I just kind of spiraled into thinking that you didn't miss me, which made me worry that you didn't love me—"

"That's why you thought I had met someone else? I had no idea you felt that way," she said, cutting him off. She snaked her arms around his neck so she was pressed up against him. "I'm sorry, Ron."

"It's ok," said Ron, even though it wasn't.

"I was just so stressed with school, and I couldn't really spend time with you, so I did my best to focus on classes so I didn't miss you too much. I thought if I could just get through this year, then we could go back to how things were over the summer. And honestly, I did think of writing to you as a chore, because it was a horrible substitute for actually talking to you, and just made me miss you more. I dreaded it."

Ron's stomach sank when she said that. Writing to Hermione was his favorite part of the week, and the fact that she didn't feel the same way really stung.

They laid there silently for a while, as neither seemed to have much to say. What was there to say? He hated it when she didn't write, and she hated writing to him. It seemed like there wasn't a solution.

"What do you want me to do?" she eventually asked.

Ron winced. He didn't want to tell her she had to do anything. He just wanted it to be simple.

"Ron, I'm not good at this," she said.

"Not good at what?"

"All of it," she said, motioning around her like she was referring to the room they were in. "I'm not good at being a girlfriend. Reading your mind. Knowing how to make sure you know I love you. Writing it in a letter doesn't feel sincere to me."

"That's not true," he told her. "You're a good girlfriend." Although she had a point, something was missing, and there were many times this past fall when he had felt like he didn't even have a girlfriend. He didn't know if he could make it six more months like that, unless something changed. "I just hate how much happened this fall that I knew nothing about. I just want to know everything. Sorry if that sounds needy."

"So you want me to write to you more. Is it that simple?" she asked earnestly.

Ron groaned. "Hermione, it's not a want. I need you to write to me more."

She looked at him contemplatively. "If it means that much to you, I can do that."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I didn't know how it made you feel when I didn't write."

"Even though you hate writing to me?"

"Ron I don't hate writing to you. It just stresses me out and makes me sad," she turned to look him in the eyes. "But it's better than knowing you feel like this."

"Thank you," he said. He pulled her back in for another hug, this time turning to his back so she was on top of him. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it felt a lot better that she knew how he felt. "I love you."

"McGonagall did say," said Hermione thoughtfully, before she shook her head, evidently deciding against continuing that thought. "I love you too."

"What did she say?" asked Ron.

Hermione sighed. "She said I could use her floo in emergencies. But on second thought, I don't think she would consider needing to see my boyfriend an emergency."

"Can you ask her?"

"Ron—"

"Please."

Hermione sighed, then nodded. "I'll ask her. Because I love you."

Ron beamed at her, then captured her lips with his. A year ago, Ron had just returned to the horcrux hunt, and would never have dared to tell her he needed more from her. Back then, he was simply grateful she was speaking to him, and he figured he'd spend the rest of his life making up for leaving her. They really had come a long way, and maybe he had finally done enough to earn his keep.

Ron felt her snake her arms around his neck, which only made him want to kiss her more fervently, so he did. He pulled the hem of her shirt up and off her head, before tugging at his own, and tossing both to the side of the bed.

He smiled at the view before him. Some things he would never get used to. His lips crashed back into hers before he trailed kisses down her neck, dragging his hand from her breast to the buttons on her jeans. She helped him slide her jeans off until she was down to her knickers, and then shimmied his way back up to her smiling face for another kiss. He kept his lips on hers as he kicked his own trousers off, and when they broke apart, she moved her mouth to his neck. Ron felt her teeth gently bite down into the soft flesh of his neck and he groaned almost involuntarily.

"Fuck, Hermione."

He felt her hand slide down his body and slip inside his pants. She smiled approvingly at his very evident excitement to see her, and shifted lower on his body, trailing kisses down his stomach. Ron propped himself up on his elbows just in time to see her tug his erection free from his pants, and slide her mouth over the tip.

"Merlin," he heard himself say before he collapsed back on the bed in surrender, tangling one hand into her messy hair while the other gripped his bedsheets. His heart rate picked up when she dug her fingers into his thigh, and he knew she had to feel his pulse against her tongue. He quickly lost interest in controlling the volume of his voice, and it didn't take very long before he felt himself spill into her mouth and unleash a string of expletives when she swallowed.

He had barely recovered when she kissed her way back up his torso to his neck. She turned to her back, and tugged his arm so he shifted on top of her. "I love you," she whispered in his ear.

He pressed his lips to her neck, contemplating his many options for returning the favor. "Love you too."

He placed his forehead on hers to look her in the eye, and felt himself growing hard again when she bit her lip and looked at him shyly. "What do you want me to do for you?" he whispered, before leaning in for another brief kiss, gently tugging her lower lip with his teeth when he pulled away. "I'll do anything for you."

Hermione smiled sheepishly at him. "I did the charm."

Ron raised his eyebrows. "The charm?"

She nodded.

Ron felt his stomach tighten in nerves. At this point, they had pretty much done everything they could do without having sex. They'd been dancing around the topic for quite some time, so he had an inkling that it would come up over the holiday. But he stopped himself from getting too hopeful since things had been feeling off between them. "Are...are you sure?"

She nodded again. "Do you know your charm?"

"Yes," he said. "I know it."

"So, you should do it then," she said. "Unless you need more time to recover."

They both glanced down between them, where Ron's erection was awake and ready to go. Hermione chuckled.

"I don't think I need any more time." He shifted off of her and reached for his wand, before pointing it at himself and muttering the incantation that his brothers had embarrassingly made him memorize years ago.

Hermione hooked her fingers over the hem of his pants, and slid them down his legs. He stepped one leg out at a time, until he was completely starkers. Even though she had seen him naked many times before, he suddenly felt exposed. His face was red when he tugged at her knickers. She lifted her hips for him and he pulled them to her ankles, before she kicked them off and onto the floor where the rest of their clothes lay.

He steadied himself on top of her, shifting his hips between her legs. "One more time, you're sure?"

She nodded and opened her legs wider in answer.

Ron looked down and used his hand to rest himself at her opening. "Just tell me if you need me to stop, ok?"

"I will," she said.

He pressed forward, guiding himself slowly into her, watching her facial expressions for any sign of discomfort. When she looped her arm around his back and encouraged him closer, he pressed a little more firmly, and watched his erection start to disappear inside her.

He heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see she was wincing.

"Sorry!" he said, and he started to pull out, but she gripped his hips with her hand to stop him.

"No, stay," she said. "Just go slow."

Ron took a deep breath and pressed himself back in until she winced again and he stopped. "Is this ok?"

"Yes," she said, a little more high-pitched than normal.

"Ok," he answered, but he didn't move.

"You can go further."

"I don't want to hurt you," he said as he dropped a kiss to her lips.

"It's not that bad," she said sympathetically.

Ron chuckled. "That's what every guy wants to hear on their first time."

"That's not what I meant," laughed Hermione. She wrapped her legs around his lower back and pressed him the rest of the way, letting out another sharp exhale as their hips met. "Ok, let me get used to you."

Ron stayed perfectly still, save for his lips, which went immediately to her neck as he kissed her right below her jawbone. "Get used to me, huh?"

"Well yes," she said, running her fingernails up in circles on his back. "You're quite big."

"That's more like it," he said. He gently tugged some of the soft skin on her neck between his teeth, and could almost feel her rolling her eyes.

"Ok, you can move now," she said.

Ron propped himself back up on his forearms, and dropped another kiss to her lips, before he slowly started moving his hips back and forth, sliding in and out of her. "This ok?"

She nodded, and he continued. It wasn't smooth or graceful by any means, quite clumsy actually, and Ron was grateful for all the time they had spent in bed together before this moment. He was with the only person he trusted to share this awkward attempt at sex, and the self-consciousness he could have felt was far overshadowed by his gratitude for Hermione in that moment.

He watched her focused expression, which was distinctly different than the one he saw when she was about to let go, and he was relieved that he knew how to please her in other ways. He had a backup plan.

He steadied his hips to kiss her again. "I love you so fucking much," he said when he broke free. He knew he wouldn't last much longer, so he propped himself up on his arms again and picked up the pace of his hips. "Fuck, Hermione," he said as she tightened her legs around him and tugged on his hair, and soon enough he buried his face in her hair, muffling the sound of her name that escaped his lips.

He collapsed on top of her, and she untwined her legs from behind him. With one last kiss, he rolled off to his side, and turned to face her, smiling. "I love you too," she said. He ran a thumb across her cheek.

He smiled. "That was brilliant. For me."

She simply smiled.

"I'm sorry you didn't—"

"It's ok," she interrupted. "I didn't expect it the first time."

He slid his hand from her cheek to her breast. "We still have time," he said, eyebrows raised. She grinned and closed her eyes as dragged his fingers down her body, gently parting her legs for his fingers.

"We have our whole lives," she said. He smiled as she bit her lip, and he slipped his fingers between her thighs.

Our whole lives, he thought. He could deal with that.

[polandspringz]

Poland’s Thoughts on the OM Angel Event

AKA- I’m trying to bridge this divide in the fandom that only seems to worsen with every piece of new content

So, I just finished the new event, but before I even finished it I saw in the tags a lot of people posting about it and the majority of the reactions were negative. There’s a chance I’m reading the language in the posts a little too strongly, but I think that a lot of this anger towards the developers is misplaced, and this isn’t just limited to the OM fandom, but it is one example that can be representative of a growing issue in how we as fans consume media and interpret content, especially when it extends to how we interact with the creators of said content.

To begin, I understand what people are angry about with this event. They disliked the way the brothers were forced against their will (consent is a term I am seeing thrown around on a few posts) to act righteous, due to the bangles Simeon gave on them that were imbued with magic. People are upset seeing the brothers acting so unlike themselves, Diavolo’s role in it, as both an instigator and bystander, and how Simeon was characterized throughout this event as he largely did not see much wrong with what was happening.

I think the reason so many players are leaving this event with a sour taste is because of the lack of closure. I was taking notes on the entire event and waiting for the end to undo everything like usual and we get the characters discussing how happy they were to be back to normal again or we at least get some of their own thoughts on the experience. I was surprised that we did not get that this time, instead, we only see all the brothers continue to act unlike themselves under the spell, way too cheery and perfect with only Lucifer having partially broken the spell and watching on amused, acting as another bystander in the event. We are given the implication that the rest will return to normal in due time (somewhat like the ending of the Paws event, if I am recalling correctly) but it’s not concrete enough. We should have been given at least an extra few lines of dialogue of the characters back to normal giving their comments on the situation they went through, but because we didn’t, they don’t have any autonomy still, and we as the players are left uncertain about what is our interpretation and what is canon.

However, despite us missing this ending scene, I think the narrative of the event is undeniably still about the idea of one’s true self being important, flaws and all, and I think a lot of players are missing this concept.

When I said earlier that I think many fandoms are suffering from this problem, I’m referring to this problem where fans will gleam a theme from a work, often times it is a theme meant to showcase something problematic, and then the fans will turn on the authors and go “well it’s problematic so the creators’ are in the wrong”, forgetting that the only reason they’re interpreting it as being wrong is because the creators’ intentionally added that frame into the story. I have more strong feelings about this in the BNHA fandom, but for now, let’s stick to the OM fandom and this specific event:

1) Players are mad that the brothers were forcibly changed and not acting like themselves.

This is a valid thing to be angry about, but I am surprised seeing how many people are ignoring the fact that you as the player are given options to acknowledge that you dislike the “righteous” way the characters are being forced to behave. There are multiple points throughout this event where, when the brothers are apologizing or explaining the MC how much they’ve changed, that you can chose an option to say “I liked the old you”, “There’s something off,” or something akin to that. OM does have an issue with a lot of the dialogue options for the MC being a bit too passive, but in this event, you are not forced to like the behavior. During my playthrough of it, I actually refused to kiss some of the characters and almost exclusively told them I disliked the way they were acting even if it was something good like giving to charity in Mammon’s case.

In terms of the brothers’ being forced to act this way against their will, although the overall event does not paint this in a dark tone (it treats the brothers’ actions the same way it does any of their individual scenes with MC in other events), there are pieces of dialogue that help create this theme of choice and free will. In the first set of lessons, Beel says to the MC “It’s something I want to do, not because I’m obligated to.” A few lessons later, Belphegor says “It’s the first time I’ve felt so free.” There is blatant irony in these lines because we as the players know that there is nothing about freedom or wants/personal desires coming from these characters in this state. It’s not even dramatic irony because the MC witnessed and knows that the brothers are under a spell, hence why you can still say you miss how they were acting and that Solomon even acknowledges that things feel wrong. When I see players comment about how they are upset about the brothers being forced to act this way, I don’t understand how they are mad at the writers when it is written in the way that you are supposed to know their words are disingenuous. I will admit that the light hearted tone does offset it and make it seem as if the developers are painting their actions in a good light, but we as the MC are constantly given the option to say that something is wrong. This is not a matter of the developers seeing it as a “good” thing, but they leave it up to the player to make the choice to choose whether to embrace the way the brothers are acting as a positive thing (and personally all the options where you agree with the controlled actions of the brothers’ made me feel as though- if I chose them- that MC was not in a healthy, truthful relationship with the brothers).

In terms of the “consent” argument being thrown around, it is a valid word choice to use in this situation, however, I am surprised to see no one talking about the scene with Lucifer directly involving consent with MC. In lesson 1-12, when you are in his room with him, he asks you to get on the bed, and then pushes you down before the spell controlling him corrects his actions and he apologizes. It is not shown that he pushes you, but the flow of the scene is this-

Lucifer asks MC to get on the bed. Noise is then heard as if someone was putting weight on the bed and Lucifer says “You really trust me quite a lot,” before he says “I didn’t mean to push you down like that.”

Some players may have read it as the MC getting on the bed themselves, and whether Lucifer pushed them onto the bed is debatable, but it’s heavily implied that he at the very least pushes you down onto the bed. I think if anything, the use of the word consent in terms of this event needs to be applied here, as Lucifer forces the MC down without their consent (player is not given an option about whether to comply with his request) before the angelic-form makes him apologize for what he did. I normally am against the people who dislike how evil the demons act (they’re demons! They’re meant to be acting sinful or wrong or disagreeable with our own morals) but I just thought that if people are going to talk about consent in terms of the brothers, we should acknowledge how the theme of consent and choice is also shown in scenes like this, where the spell on Lucifer actually does a good thing by correcting his behavior when he was doing something wrong.

However, there is one more point I want to make about this event, and it follows this discussion about the demon’s behavior-

2) This event, had it been given closure, would’ve had a strong theme of accepting oneself.

This is most clearly seen with Levi and Satan. With Satan, we are aware of his dislike of his rage, his wrath. He does not like to get angry, and puts on masks to try and seem better than his core sin makes him feel. However, when he gets turned into an angel, he specifically says:

“Perhaps that’s why I feel so strange. I don’t feel like myself at all. I end up thinking about if I were an angel, would i have looked and felt like this? And then... I get a foreboding feeling. Like, my heart... becoming tranquil. Normally, that wouldn’t seem like something bad right? Something isn’t right.”

Once again, I would like to point out that the reason that players are able to look at this event and say, “The brothers are being forced to not act like themselves, and that’s bad and upsets me as a player” is because the writers themselves are writing into the story that it is bad. Satan is directly acknowledging that he dislikes what is going on, hence why we as players can say that something is wrong. This isn’t my core analysis of this dialogue, but once again, it is something I am growing tired of seeing people attack or complain about the creators for writing something that is “bad”, as if the creators did not write in the fact that “this is a bad thing.” You can criticize media and the way things are written, but if you are going to ignore the fact that what you’re claiming the writers are ignoring has already been written, your criticism holds little weight.

Moving on, my main takeaway from this scene was that Satan, a character who has spent so long loathing his anger and how he loses himself during it, was upset by his lack of it. We as the MC got very little dialogue in this scene to push the idea further, but to me it was clear that had the story been given more closure, or the events having more story to include more focus on each character, we could have gotten more of a direct statement from Satan of something like “I always disliked my rage, but without it, I don’t feel like me. I’m who I am because of my rage, it’s not something I should be ashamed of.” If that had been included, I’m sure players would have once again been much happier about this event. However, we shouldn’t need such a direct statement of character development to understand that development has happened. One of the biggest techniques about writing dialogue is the idea that when people talk, they don’t say everything, which I see a lot of fandoms griping about when characters don’t directly express things like trauma or abuse in concrete terms or have conversations where they directly say things like “You did something bad to me and I won’t forgive you for that” (I can’t think of the best example right now because it’s 2 AM but again, I have better examples when talking about the BNHA fandom). Ernest Hemingway and his iceberg technique focused on this idea of people rarely saying what they mean, and it’s a much more realistic approach to dialogue.

I’m not saying the writing of OM is anything near the works of great writers. However, I am saying that we shouldn’t need characters to be so unnatural and direct in their dialogue to be satisfied that development has been had or resolution has been met. It’s not natural for them to outright say so, and as readers we shouldn’t need such explicit confirmation of such things (note: when using “confirmation” I am only talking about instances of development, and not things like confirmed representation of LGBTQ or characters expressing their sexuality. Those are entirely different situations requiring different discussion. Please do not misconstrue my words).

Back to the themes of the choice and accepting oneself, I want to end this on the character that truly got the short end of this event- Levi. Levi was so instantaneously changed to have righteous actions and a similar mindset, and there was very little discussion on it within the game itself. However, although Levi does not express much outside of his “controlled” state in this event, when he talks about his “old lifestyle”, we as players can still get a lot from it:

“Huh? My identity? Was my identity solely based on me being an otaku? I’ve been using anime, manga, and games to hide all this time... Always looking down on others while locking myself away in my own world. But not anymore! Instead of spending all my time and energy on 2D stuff, I’m going to spend it on nurturing my relationships in the real world. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

It does not sound wonderful, because it brings up the questions of “Was there anything actually wrong with Levi’s lifestyle to begin with?” Sure, he was a shut in, and that can’t be healthy, and he had a bad self loathing issue, but, he found happiness in anime, manga, and games. He found happiness in sharing it with you the player. We know this from the main storyline, and so we know that Levi is obviously not truly thinking this, but unfortunately we never get to see a conclusion of his thoughts on this, and he is given no autonomy by the end of the event to comment on his words here. I will agree with people that Levi’s is the most upsetting, partially because it makes my fanfiction writer mind spin into thoughts of him trapped inside his body wanting to keep his things but being forced to throw them out. That is upsetting. But it is not something we should be attacking or getting mad at the writers for, because if you are reading the story right, it can be seen as meant to evoke that reaction. Likely if you are Levi stan, this scene upset you, and you should be unhappy to see him acting this way. You should know something’s wrong, because there was nothing wrong with how Levi was living before. But, the last big theme of the event is the idea of good vs. evil, or right vs. wrong, and as we are playing a game where the main idea is to romance demons, we are always going to be skewed to see the traditional “good” side (of Simeon and the angels) as not truly good, and the “bad” side (of the demons) as not really that bad. We can sympathize with them, we understand and feel upset at seeing them slighted by what is considered “good. I saw one person bring up the idea of this event evoking questions of ethics, and I agree, but I’m better at explaining things through philosophy. This event, especially for Simeon’s character, brings to mind questions of if the Celestial Realm in the game’s universe is actually good and has the best interests of others in mind, or if it is actually deeply flawed by its staunchness to what is considered goodness? (We can see similar discussions in shows like Good Omens.)

To conclude, I just want to finish up on Simeon’s character in this event. I saw many exclamations of “why would he do this? What’s wrong with him?” and I like to present the idea that Simeon is much stronger of a manipulator than we have been viewing him through the lens of “holy angel”. He writes TSL based on the brothers, he likely views them as content to inspire him. He does not care for them as deeply as we as the fandom may be twisting him to be. Overall, I find all these problems with reading and analyzing media to stem from people having trouble interpreting morally gray characters, themes, and actions, and often they claim an author is making something black and white when the author is actually directly telling the reader things are not black and white. OM is such a small fandom in the grand scheme of things, but rather than me rehashing an argument in a much larger fandom, this seemed like a refreshing, safer place to start.

If you read through all this, I do hope you enjoyed. My ask box is always open if you want to hear more of my thoughts.

[quinn-tessence]

Nocturne for a Clown

Part 3

Summary: you're tormented by the realization Arthur is the killer clown on the news, yet no bone in your body feels any different for him. Not even Casanova's advances could sway your from wanting to hold Arthur in your arms and alleviate his sorrow. He's had a bad day, and retreats on your couch, broken and confused.

Length: 5k words

Warnings: mentions of murder, lack of remorse, guilt and grief, seeking comfort where he'd never had it from. Smut with dear Arthur that could cause a rush of tremors, be warned. 🤭❤

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You sat and watched. Then watched and watched some more. There were no words, no voice, no sound coming through your gaping mouth as the skin on your lips almost started to crack. It made sense. The blood, the bruise, the liberating sex, the wretched guilt. Oh God, what has he done?, you repeated in his voice over and over, that impossible puzzle putting itself together before you as you hid your gouging eyes underneath heavy, sweaty palms in a much too similar reflex to his own.

What has he done? He'd been beaten down surely, given his frail nature you could see how he'd be fluent in being at the receiving end, but as grievous as the thought was, it made it no less valid. This was bad, he’d land straight into Arkham if you picked up that phone to call the authorities, the way a considerate citizen would, as if Gotham deserved any at all. But you weren't one of them, were you? Never had you really fit in, yet you tried for the sake of appearances, it had become so burdening of late, only the thought of Arthur could provide the comfort you'd been seeking.

The news reports kept blaring, yet all your compassion overflowed for the clown, had you been able to see things objectively you'd still think he was hero. Three fewer assholes in Gotham, only a million more to go, you heard an inner voice say, even if you knew that was enough reason to throw you into the depths of Arkham Asylum. You'd sadly known that place from family, and you never wanted to set foot in that Tartarus again, but perhaps the apple didn't fall far from the tree. You couldn't stomach the thought of Arthur sitting opposite the glass wall from you, so dozed up on sedatives he'd hardly even recognize you. No, no, no. You wouldn't let that happen, and yet he'd need his own time and space to process.

You resisted the urge to bang on his door and ask for a full account, it felt as if you were a passenger on a derailing, speeding train. Regardless of how breathtaking the turquoise water under the rails, your gut wrenched at the thought of plunging into it head first. You were a decent swimmer, but you knew you’d be incapable of fighting those waters from swallowing you whole. You'd just given yourself to him, entirely and shamelessly, and regret was nowhere in sight. Had you been the forth prey of his killing spree, he would have killed you already. Yet he did the exact opposite, in distress and quivering like a leaf, but it was your door he opened after his rupture. He trusted you to keep this secret for him. And you welcomed the trust.

Within a few days you noticed you'd returned to your bad habit of unconscious nails biting. As if the deafening tumult between your temples wasn't enough, you also had to self flagellate as you desperately waited in silence.

You were busy enough at work, and the newest addition to your team had become daring enough to invade your private space little by little. Tall. Lean. Broad shouldered. Curly caramel hair and eyes of obsidian, winking at you shamelessly each time he passed by you. Patrick was a force in his field, yet he rolled his eyes and tongued his cheek whenever you'd call on him for a task, as if wanting to taunt you. Quite quirky and unprofessional, but restrictive enough to question yourself if you were merely projecting. Not once had he failed to deliver, on the contrary, yet that sly attitude never left him. Hm. The distraction was welcome, but it was nothing more. You'd catch yourself staring through him, picturing sparkling emeralds and cocoa, having to snap yourself back to reality before he'd think it was him you were aching for just like all your infatuated colleagues.

He must have checked with your giggly girlfriends before casually slipping in an invitation to your favorite bar after hours, casual drinks with a few colleagues, of course. Perhaps you should have politely declined, but you needed the respite from the heart wrenching torment, even if just for a few hours.

As empty as the venue was, he insisted on strolling in your visual field, intriguingly charming, maybe a bit too charismatic. It was time to maintain a level of dignity with your colleagues and remove yourself before getting into a state where you'd find yourself in Arthur's apartment, this time fully conscious. Yet Patrick gallantly offered to drive you over, posing a certain concern for your safety alone in the streets with a murdering clown on the loose. HA! You giggled at the joke being on him, silently talking to yourself. No thank you, you rascal, protection from that clown is the last thing I need. He insisted on paying for the taxi at least, and you’d had two drinks and wanted to be home already.

The thunderstorm washed the streets rapidly as you entered your building. You loved ravenous thunderstorms, especially as they traversed the sky over your cozy apartment bathed in lily scent. You took comfort in the hot shower and the chilly air in the room, lightning bolts clearing up the sky for a flash of a second as you wrapped yourself in the bathrobe, ready for Murray's dry humor.

Oh God! Your heart leapt to your throat as a soaked silhouette bathed your floors in cocoa flavor. At last.

‘Arthur! You scared me!’ he lay motionless, your words passing through him as if he wasn't even there. ‘Is everything ok?’

His damp fingers absently traced a faint line over the glass of your coffee table, his body slouched and stiff, the edges of his hair dripping on the couch.

‘I had a bad day.’

The words had come from a deep dark pit inside his chest, a wretched misery draped across his face as you kneeled next to him, cupping his cheeks. You'd ached to see his sparkling jades, yet you'd met them covered in a thick coat of tears, on the edge of dropping.

‘Arthur, what happened, sweetheart? Talk to me, please' He was so tired and withered, not even the wicked cackle would surface in this state.

‘I had a bad day…’

‘You said that, sweetheart, tell me what happened. Are you hurt?’

‘Kitten. I've done something… I…’ for seconds he tried to articulate, but the cackle fought its way up his throat.

‘Arthur shhhh. I know it was you. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, I won't force you… I won’t judge you for it, I promise. Just sit with me for a second’ his head already leaning on your chest, your palm caressing his piercing bones, even through sets of clothes. He sat sedated, limbs heavy, flesh trembling, voice cackling in wrenching anguish for what felt like minutes on end.

‘You do?’ he asked between ruptures as if to steer his initial subject into whatever you'd conveniently brought up.

‘I do. I knew it the moment I heard the news after you stormed out. I saw the blood and the bruise on your face. You won't find any judgement here, I promise. I know you needed time to process, but you’re here now. Shhh' you almost cradled him in your arms, the most powerful instinct to protect him even from himself overbearing. He was all bone and sinew, like a hungry lone wolf, but there now was a sinister vibe to him.

‘Good. I'm glad you know. I lost my job that day, and then they attacked me in the subway, beating me to a pulp. Hm. Now you'll know that killing them hasn't bothered me at all. How's that for casual conversation?’

An unnerving tremor slid down your spine at the tone of his voice. You'd known him for a while, yet this resentful sneer was far from something you'd expect from timorous Arthur. Dreadful it's what it was, spine-tingling, intriguing, you were utterly mad to clasp this deranged man to your bosom when another prince charming just waited for one damn look from you. Who cared, you thought, Gotham’s gonna claim all of us sooner or later.

‘All I want is for you to be safe, Arthur. I won't tell anyone, but you need to be careful, sweetheart, you can't be saying things like those to anyone, please'

‘I have no one to tell, Y/N. And you’re not just anyone. You know. I’m still here, although you could have thrown me in police custody for the past few days.’ The cackles had given him a short respite, even if still lingering on the edge of bursting. He wheezed heavily before speaking. ‘My whole life I didn't even know if I really existed. And today, I feel… hollow…’

You'd asked and asked again as you touched his face and held it close to yours, his forehead as cold as the thunderstorm outside this comforting protective bubble.

‘My mother had a heart attack. She's in the hospital. Hah. My mother…’ a late instinct turned your skin to prickles hearing him speak from a different octave, a thick air of mustering resentment filling the room. ‘I had a few days to myself and I decided to deliver a letter to Thomas Wayne from her, seeing how he never bothered to write back. I'd told you she worked for him 30 years ago, and I read it although I shouldn’t have. I'd never known my father, but the letter said it was him. I confronted my mother and she told me everything about the two of them. But… instead of some warmth or a bit of decency, he told me my mother was insane and that I had been adopted. That and a punch to the face is what I got. Hm. Who am I, then? You tell me'

Your own eyes on the brink of overflowing, your soul coiled. You couldn't do much, but he needed comfort. Where would you even start, though? His tone of voice, the grief weighing him down, the droplets off his wet hair disintegrating whatever pieces were left of him, a question mark in stead of whomever he thought he'd been his whole life. Yet he didn't expect comfort. Such a foreign concept to him, as if reserved only to an elite he was not part of and would not dare intrude upon. You could easily hear how he'd just laugh it out into his pillow at night, his cries stifled, lacking a corner of privacy and personal intimacy where he could really build up that forced smile he'd put on every next day. You’d go utterly mad if you were in his shoes, no comfort and no expectation of it. So used to being overlooked, deep down he knew he was alone, and that filled him with fear and hopelessness. So you shushed and nuzzled him to your chest, hoping the warmth of your body would be soothing enough for the chaos that he was.

‘I don't know who I am, kitten. So I went down to Arkham and stole my mother's file just to find that he'd been right. The… horrors… she subjected me to as a child had gotten me locked up in Arkham years ago, but now I think I was just trying to hide from her, from this rotten city, from this world. I felt safe in that white room, ironically. When they released me, the heavy medication was supposed to make me feel better, instead it suffocated even my most basic impulses.’

Laughter ripped at his throat and pulled his face into a grimace, your palms clasping him so tightly you were afraid you might smother him. How much pain and grief could a man take, his poor soul must have been bound to an eternal rock, forever pecked by hungry vultures.

‘How can you even welcome me into your home if I don't even know that much? I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. I should go, no need to burden you with any of this' he meant every word, as he kissed your hands with teary lips and dragged himself half upright.

‘Don't go' you close to begged. ‘Please stay.’

The grooves in his forehead you loved, just as the distinctive scar on his upper lip and the deep dark eye bags crowning his jades, his state of mind added another couple decades to his age. As you took him in through your pores, you remembered the shy clown peering through the shelves, and how the makeup would do the exact opposite of its intended purpose. Somehow he'd been unaware of how the makeup brightened his eyes to a clarity and sharpness you could cut yourself into. It was endearing how he'd stared at you when you'd first seen him wearing the costume, thinking he could hide under that mask when really it only brought him to life, his facial expressivity more riveting than ever. Yet he was here with you, more Carnival than Arthur even without the paint, as broken as a mirror in infinite shards.

‘Will you still have me here after this?’

‘I would. Please. I'm glad you came here after all this instead of going back home.’

The thought he'd ever been intimate with a woman before you had dissipated in an endless pool of murky turquoise, the genuine surprise in his eyes cutting you to your bone. There was no question, you knew.

‘Thank you, kitten. I'll stay, if you want me here'. There was no hiding anymore, you'd made it sparkling clear by being an accessory after the fact.

‘I do, Arthur, so much. I wanted you here… since you held that elevator for me, yet somehow we always missed our moment. No need to thank me…’

Had it not been for the roaring thunder, he'd probably hear your galloping heart, yet his composure betrayed just that acknowledgement. Every fiber in your body ached to touch his soul and mend it. The erotic tension you couldn't deny, but that wasn't anywhere near the reason why you'd willfully allowed yourself to become his accomplice. He sat back down, timidly reaching for your hand with his own smooth fingers, to place it on his cheek, now as warm as to ignite all the fires inside you with only one touch. Regardless of the endless torment of his life, it was so effortless to feel safe in his presence, even if he'd just killed three men in cold blood and joggled his life as he balanced on a thin string.

‘But I want to. Will you... let me thank you?’ his eyes had meekly turned to yours with a restless heeding for that glimpse of complicity you'd joined in a few times before.

‘If you insist, sweetheart, I guess you already did. You're welcome.’ And through that smile you could feel your body radiating as intensely as a candle flame in the dark. You’d tripped and fell into feelings for him, and nothing could brush them off.

‘No... I really want to thank you, kitten...’ Painfully slowly, he drew himself closer to you, a cocktail of demureness and ardor shaping his beautifully chiseled face into one that you'd missed your whole life, without even knowing. ‘I want to... put my mouth on you...’

Oh… He'd shown you a short, blissful glimpse of this other Arthur, the less tense, less uptight, more daring when he'd taken what you both wanted. There was always a limit to his courage, and yet he’d usually fall back into the timid, maiden like demeanor that he was. This felt different though, as there was a glimpse of unbridling in the way he inhaled, in the twitch of his contoured eyebrow, his whispering husky voice demanding consent. He needed this. Perhaps it would help deafen the torment for a quiet minute, and you were willing to let him try. Oh, who were you fooling, your heart had leapt at the thought of this since you saw him motionless on your couch, albeit in your mind the roles had been reversed. You'd bitten your lip instinctively, a most nonverbal cue of compliance to his plea, and within a short second he was tasting it, sucking it, biting it gently, as his nimble fingers strolled so tenderly through your hair to uncover your face, your eyes already deeply sunk behind fluttering eyelids.

‘I want to feel you shiver in my mouth' he whispered with a faltering voice, taking in all of your scent through avid nostrils. ‘You always smell so good, so clean… I want to taste you…'

So tender he was, you'd forgotten what it felt like to be wished for, body and soul alike, yet his palms willingly showed you a striking contrast to the tenacious Arthur who'd barged in days ago, as if your skin was porcelain and he wouldn't want to break you. He uncovered your naked skin underneath the fluffy bathrobe and smoothly tasted the growing prickles with curious fingertips, lowering himself towards your thighs at a painstakingly slow pace that would soon have you beg.

Pulling you to the edge of the couch where he’d slid himself, he finally broke the jarring tension of his eye contact just to move his head lower, descending decisively. The instant his curious lips parted, a shiver jolted through your flesh and your heart leapt into a marathon, you let yourself fall into his mouth without any control. How beautiful he was, you reminded him over and over as your fingers slicked his damp hair back, curling it around his ears, uncovering his furrowed forehead and perfect chiseled jawline. The sight of him between your thighs was no stranger, but you’d only seen it from afar until now, deep within the corner of each of your fantasies. Such a kind soul he was, but that mouth a wretched devil… oh my…

For a second he looked as if he'd forgotten all his sorrows as he strolled his tongue over your petals, tasting your skin one inch at a time, gently exploring to test your every reaction to his laps, his eyes fascinated with each of your whimpers. The throbbing love button he'd unveiled, a curiosity he had to touch with his tongue to feel the pulsation, your purrs a source of the validation in an endless sea of self doubt. Taking his time, curiously exploring this newfound medication for his sorrowful blues, he quickly grew hungry and greedy as an addict for a stronger fix, yet somewhat cautious to not overdose. His dilated basil eyes etched onto your contorted face, delighting in each tiny reaction he drew from you with his mouth, yet the catalyst to set you fully ablaze were his own moans as he enjoyed himself enjoying you. Oh God, what is he doing to me, I never want him to stop…

You’d thought you'd be the one comforting him, but it seemed as if he was doing it for both of you. His eyes moved around maniacally, taking in the shape of your naked breasts, of your nipples hardened at the thunderous air in the room, your moans guiding him into a delicate rhythm that could make you climb walls, even with the clumsiness that came with tasting a new person. He couldn't be a novice, although his curiosity was striking and enticing. Regardless of all that sorrow he'd brought with him, he curled a satisfied smirk under his scar and an impertinent twitch of his eyebrow sent you into a frenzy. His jades dilated at seeing your lips bitten, your eyebrows furrowed, close to crying in ecstasy, unable to move at the pleasure he gave and gave some more.

The mercury in your thermometer jumped at knot speed towards one big show of fireworks whose fuse got consumed by his kindling flame at a slow pace. Thoughts of his recent killing spree rushed through your mind, yet you were as high as a kite. You didn't care. So you let them ooze out to leave a hazy emptiness behind to be filled with all this spectacle of indulgence.

The pleas were whimpering whispers as you arched and etched your fingers in his smooth cocoa hair to anchor him, the other palm clenching a poor throw pillow to deformation. You hips guided by the rhythm of his palms on your waist, your moans deepening as he'd made you move onto his face, using it as a fine tuned instrument to orchestrate the crescendo of both your pleasure. Now that all your 8000 sensory nerve endings could light Gotham for Christmas if visible, his tongue flickered around your pearl, feeling the climax building up towards that overwhelming rapture. Moans turned to shrieks, toes and fingers clenched in reflex, his eyes and mouth on you as he winked from under long dark eyelashes. You combusted so powerfully into his mouth, within a few blissful seconds you'd left him glistening in traces of yourself.

Only as you quivered your last drop of pleasure in his mouth did you realize why he'd needed this so badly, he craved the validation of being a man even if his identity in shatters. It was one thing to have no identity, but another to not even be a man. Pleasuring you was one damn win that would hold his feet on the ground if he did it right, and that he could control. He had been scrutinizing you as you gasped for air, your eyebrows furrowed almost painfully, your flushed delicate muscles still throbbing under his tongue.

‘Oh, Arthur, that was… amazing…’

Still lingering his lips onto your inner thighs, he kissed tenderly as your flesh still twitched. You wanted him even more now than you did before. But tonight should be about him, even if he'd taken the lead so gracefully, so skillfully, so deliciously.

‘Yeah…’ the shyest smile draped across his tinted face, 'I felt that, kitten. I've… never really done this before…’ You'd known, deep down, and yet hearing him say the words was the most tender of piano nocturnes to your ears, so you latched at his mouth to taste him through your flavor, one that if you could bottle up, it would drive mankind rabid into destructive adoration.

Come here, Arthur, you whispered as you pulled him next to you, the puzzlement over his arching eyebrows an absolute delight you'd dreamt of relentlessly. He didn't fight it, yet the stiffness in his bones betrayed an urge he'd palmed away many nights without resolution, anxiety creeping over him at the realization it was now staring him in the face.

‘Wh… what are you doing?’, you shushed him as a response.

‘Kitten, please, don't feel like you need to give me anything back…’

‘Who said anything about giving back? I'm taking this for myself, Arthur. Let go, baby, let me take care of you'

‘Kitten… ohh' his eyes went straight to the back of his head, heavy eyelids covering his jades, his lips parted as your fingers traced the bulge straining his pants to suffocation. ‘Ok…’ he exhaled anxiously, a timidly bouncing knee betraying the rush of emotion flowing through him as you dragged his clothes over his head, his pants crowning the floor within a few seconds, leaving him naked to your hungry gazes.

The flickering light of the candles reflected over his protruding ribs as if a part of his body had caved in under the weight of his shoulders, his palms on your face strolling and tasting the reality of your flesh, he must have thought you were a side effect of his medication. Yet the prickling shivers traversing his body as you trailed your fingers over it were not. You reached for his lips as you lay him across the couch, your breasts invading his chest, the warmth of your body soothing his anxious trembling. That defeated look on his face, so vulnerable he'd made himself to you, he had nothing to give yet you still wanted him. He was mystified with even the remote possibility, let alone you giving him that adoration he'd chased endlessly, but never caught.

‘You are so beautiful, Arthur, let me show you, please…’ He was your paradise lost in the depravity of Gotham, a villain in itself, weighing down on each of its residents and having chosen Arthur to crush mercilessly under its own lack of a well defined identity, ready to teach us all lessons in humility that could lead to desperation.

He nodded shyly, his jades coated with an acute layer of yearning over something he'd never been given before. His body was a withered Stradivarius, abandoned in the corner of a cold, damp world, subjected to years of weathering and painful lack of any care, no wonder he was so feeble in between your fingers. But his strings were steel, and steel doesn't weather. It would naturally respond to external factors just like anything else but no amount of forcing, pushing, suppressing would bring out the brilliant austere sound it was designed to bring. Had he been less frail, you'd relate him to a cello, one that needs to be held tight to one's chest before playing it, where its resonating chamber rests upon the artist's heart as she moves the bow on the saddest of instruments. Yet he was so fragile, the wails of his chords almost bringing you to tears as you ghosted over them, testing what amount of pressure would bring the vibration, how to explore the potential of the sound and bring it closer to perfection. You were there to give him all that, to polish all the dust away, his wrinkles, his chiseled edges, to practice on his strings and validate his worth until he felt himself a Stradivarius for the first time in his life. He'd been blessed with a beautiful instrument that could bring such intense sensory bliss if only he'd find the right hands, and you longed to play him through the night, to tear your fingers into his chords and to sing his melancholy away.

What a trembling mess he'd become as soon as your lips strolled down his neck, the smell of rain and cigarettes off his skin intoxicating you into indelible addiction. The farthest you went, the more you saw how little he expected that you'd turn your full attention to him, as if never daring to expect anything other than what you'd allow him to take. You kissed your way down from his chest, palms exploring and fondling every bony texture, every inch of soft skin until reaching an extremity that felt to your fingertips as both together. Trembling, he slicked back his hair and sunk deeper into the couch, scrutinizing your face in detail and feeding you those micro expressions of Arthur and Carnival together, the twitch in his eyebrow a give away that you'd be playing for an audience of two tonight.

So immersed in the overflow of sensation he was as you took him into your mouth, his only verbal response a muffled ‘F-fuck, kitten', but his whole body screamed a different story of twitches at the touch of your tongue and lips. How demure the sounds he made as he shivered over and over, his eyes shut tightly, his mouth half open, heavy breaths raising his chest, quivering lips alternating silent approvals or four letter curses, as if careful to not be caught. So painfully expressive, all you wanted was to see him melt under your touches like silver over a burning flame without a hurry in the world, your tongue tracing a tale more evocative than any words could ever express.

With each stroke of your lips, he let go to all but that intense pleasure, as if your mouth held the power to oust the very fabric of reality, offering him an escape into a wonderland he'd been denied entrance all his life. He wants to be wanted, needs to he needed, lusts to be lusted for, his quivering lips more than enough validation for that thought. As you felt his muscles unwind, his fingers tremoring, his breath traversing his trembling body, you'd made him float in an isolation tank of indulgence. When you stopped, his voice would growl and whimper in reflex, the purring sounds begging for more. Some would call it schadenfreude, you called it your tiny overdose in hearing him say 'please' as you teased and inflamed him. His taste in your mouth, his smooth texture, his delicate skin, you wanted nothing more than to lock that door and trap him in this perpetual state of bliss. For eternity wouldn't be enough to put together all his broken pieces, but it would be a start.

The meekness in his jade eyes was wrenching, yet as he looked into yours, you quickly understood why. You couldn't hear his silent whispers, yet you knew he was begging for more as the throb in your mouth intensified and his whimpering green eyes slid to the back of his head, his palms clenching the couch so forcefully he could tear into it. It mattered no less as you felt him completely let go throb after throb, his body convulsing in spasms, the taste of him ambrosia hidden from all other mortals.

His head sunk deep in the couch pillow, his arms and body heavy and immobile, breath ragged, he giggled for the first time that day, a laugh so genuine it felt foreign to both of you, a rattled stranger you both wanted to welcome in and nurture back to his feet. As he lay sprawled on your couch, naked and ecstatic, you wished he was happy, for once. You needed a minute to freshen up, and as you returned to shut the windows and lay a blanket over him, he'd almost dozed off from exhaustion.

You sunk next to him as slick as a cat, laying him onto your chest and fondling your fingers in his damp cocoa hair, his limbs latching at you rendering you almost breathless with the radiating warmth of his body.

‘Kitten, I… I don't know how to thank you…’, he whispered in the nook of your neck, asleep had his flesh not sweetly twitched him back to a half awake state. ‘I've been off my medication for a few days, but I might have found an endless supply of pure morphine…’. His body had finally rested its convulsion, his limbs falling heavier, his breath slower, within a few seconds of his thought his eyes already moved spastically under heavy eyelids.

He was right, he'd found pure morphine, and so had you. It would consume you both, but him in your arms was that feeling humanity had sought since its birth. A once in a lifetime adventure they'd write sonnets about in the past, one that was yours to experience and live through with Arthur. That morphine had just kicked in for both, and you were floating on a cloud high above the thunder slowly roaring away in the night.

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

Thank you for reading this far! ❤

A special thanks to a few of the lovely people in this community that inspires me to keep putting my odes to Arthur on paper:

@wuika @iartsometimes @impulsiveclown @arthurflecc @littlebird92 @life-or-something-like-lt @jokers-puddin-pop @arthurfleckownsmysoul @jokersdoll @bananabreaddough @paperorigami @ransomguest49 @daydreamhustler @arthurjokersgirl @forever-fleck @sweet-nothings04 jokerlicious @ajokeformur-ray @shaw-2000 @jaraysha1121 @jofic059​ @shit-i-love-clowns

[a-written-dream]

Attack on Titan ch.139 spoilers

Okay, so I know a lot of people are going to be talking about what they didn’t like with the final chapter, and how disappointed they are and yada yada, and I get that, because following a series and having it end usually results in some level of disappointment (it’s fricking hard to write a good ending, isn’t it? And trying to tie everything up in a way that is both satisfactory to the author and everyone else even more so) but

I wanted to write down a few things I liked with this final chapter, because while I’m not entirely sure yet about my own satisfaction with the end, there are still things in there that I really enjoyed and that made me feel happy with the chapter. These aren’t meant to be facts in any shape or form, just things I picked up from the chapter that I enjoyed or which brought me satisfaction or happiness (as painful as it was)

(This was meant to be a short bullet list of a few things and turned into 3k of semi-analysis oops my bad)

The one thing I knew I wanted out of this chapter was to see things from Eren’s perspective, to get an understanding of why in the world he’d gone and decided that not only was destroying the world a good idea, but also pushing away his friends and telling them (pretty obvious) lies. There were so many things still left unanswered that I felt required an explanation from Eren’s side, and I really think this chapter delivered in doing that. There are still a few things I’m a little confused about, but I think I’ll need to do a proper read through of the whole manga to truly get it.

I really liked that we got to see Eren sharing his perspective together with Armin, that Armin was the last character we get to see together with Eren when he is alive. I haven’t read most of the manga, but from what I’ve heard their friendship is given even more depth than in the anime, and I really enjoyed the way the anime portrayed it. As a person who prefers platonic relationships in (canon) media, it means a lot to me that it wasn’t the love interest who got the last meaningful interaction with Eren. It shows just how important Eren and Armin’s relationship is and is a nice nod towards the fact that Armin was the one who sparked the flame in Eren that lead him to feel caged and crave freedom in the first place (I’m sure you could do an entire analysis on this but I haven’t spent near enough time analysing the manga or their relationship to be able to write one); I suppose I just think it fits very neatly in with the story and the importance of Eren’s different relationships.

I loved how dark AoT was – genuinely and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that that terrible and horrifying things happened, and this extends to the fact that Eren turns into the villain. But, despite this, I’m still quite happy that what he does isn’t entirely his own doing. Or, rather, that he does what he does to rid the world of Titans (which, additionally, was his one purpose and promise all along, wasn’t it?). He sees the future, a future without Titans, and he does what he needs to do to get there, even becoming a mass murderer (80% of humanity, though? Jeez Eren, little overboard maybe). We see previously how much it hurts him (e.g. when he’s in Liberio and cries about the young boy he meets), and then again in this chapter – and rather than being a monster, he becomes a martyr (I am a sucker for martyrs and guilt-ridden characters, so the fact that my love for Eren has only grown with this chapter makes total sense). But, I do want to point out also that while we see that he’s doing it for reasons that aren’t entirely selfish (though they are by no means selfless), we are still told that he thinks if he didn’t know the others would stop him, he would have flattened the earth anyway. I really like this small, one-panel detail because it makes the rest of it seem more likely. Isayama doesn’t twist Eren’s personality to fit the narrative and happy (”happy”) ending he wants; Eren has always had an anger in him, a selfishness, a misplaced belief that the world should be his. He is by no means a truly good person, never has been, but he can’t easily be placed into the ‘bad person’ camp, either. I think, in some senses, that this chapter really caught those contrasting parts of his personality, his grey morality. He is selfish and full of hate, but he’s also so many other things. He cares about his friends, so so much, cares about the people of Paradis, and at the end of the day, doesn’t that make him a little less selfish, if he’s willing to throw away his own humanity to save his friends (and isn’t that a theme that runs through the series? Remember Armin saying both that to ‘defeat a monster you must throw away your humanity’ and ‘someone who cannot throw away everything, cannot achieve anything’). While I definitely think it would have been cool to see Eren full of hatred to the point where there is none of the good in him left, I’m happy that we got to see him feel love. In some ways, it feels like we got to see him the way we used to know him, back before the time-skip, back before the weight of his own consciousness and guilt made him turn his back on that hope that still lived in him somewhere.

This isn’t something that I noticed/thought about myself when I read the chapter, but I saw someone point it out on here and it really struck me. Eren keeps his promise, to see the world with Armin. While they are talking, they get to explore together (the volcano and the lava, walking through the snow and seeing the northern lights above a snow-covered mountain range, finally getting to the sea) and it’s such a sweet, sweet thing that I barely know what to do with myself. I think, once again this really nicely fits in with what made Eren.. well, Eren, in the first place. That wonder and want in Armin’s eyes to see the outside world. And for Eren to uphold that promise, to the extent he can, is just so sweet, and really says something about Eren’s personality (he cares, he’s always cared, maybe he even cares too much).

I’ve seen some people complain about Ymir being in love with Karl Fritz, and I think it’s a valid thing, but I have to say I personally didn’t mind it. People fall in love with people who are bad to them, it happens, and as an explanation to why Ymir has obeyed his (and his ancestors’) command for 2,000 years, I think it works out. But, what I liked the most about it, is the fact that Mikasa is the one to show her that you can love someone and still let them go, you can love someone and go against them. I was happy already in the last chapter when it became clear that Mikasa would be the one to kill Eren, because to me it was her way of becoming her own person, in a way. Because while it’s clear after this chapter that Eren did, at least to some extent, want them to stop him, none of the others technically know this. So Mikasa isn’t stopping him for him, she’s stopping him for the world, and she’s stopping him for her. It’s her way of, after years of living and fighting and doing things for him, becoming her own person and doing something that isn’t for him. I thought it was a nice end(-ish, it’s not the last we see of her, but regardless) to her character development and her and Eren’s relationship. I also like how it furthers Mikasa’s importance to the story. I don’t think she’s been one of those female characters that exist only to be the main character’s love interest, and while her ending the age of Titans is directly linked to her love for Eren, it feels like it’s so much more than that.

Now, I know this is by no means healthy, but. I actually really liked the way Eren reacted to Armin talking (teasing him?) about Mikasa finding someone else to love with ease. Sure, that possessiveness is unhealthy and toxic, but it also feels so much like Eren. He wants the whole world for himself, so why wouldn’t he want Mikasa to himself too? And the fact that he tells Armin not to tell Mikasa because he does want her to be happy, at the end of the day, even if it isn’t with him, once again falls in line with his deep care for those that matter the most to him. I really think Eren’s character is incredibly interesting (in case I hadn’t made that clear by the endless amount of words above) and I really like how this chapter portrayed that. Is he a good person doing bad things? A bad person doing good things? Or simply a person doing what he thinks he needs to in order to get where he wants and to protect those he cares about? Another thing that I really like about his outburst is the fact that he does it in front of Armin. He dares to (essentially) throw a tantrum in front of him, saying something – that Armin even goes to say is ‘pathetic’ – for only Armin to hear because there’s a trust there that runs deeper than anything they share with anyone else.

As a person who is very supportive of platonic physical affection (I think there’s a huge lack of it in media and I think it’s a shame that physical affection should be limited to romantic and/or sexual partners), the fact that Armin and Eren hold hands (both in this chapter and in the rest of the series) makes me very, very happy to see. I am entirely on board with people who would have seen them end up together as something other than friends (I definitely see the chemistry there and kind of ship it myself), but I also love the fact that they are two friends (best friends) who are physically affectionate with each other every step of the way, including at the end (this goes for the hug too). It’s refreshing and nice to see and I think it speaks volumes about how much they care for each other (regardless of what way that may be, but I’m happy that it is platonically in canon because in my humble opinion there are too few platonic-but-still-affectionate relationships out there).

We know that Eren sees how it ends, with the others killing him and stopping him from eradicating humanity, so we know he can essentially see the future (memories from the future – I really love that), but what we also know is that he can only see his own future memories. He sees his own future memories through his father, but because there is no Attack Titan to follow him, no next Attack Titan whose memories he can see, it’s safe to assume that he can’t see anything past his own death. This makes him saying that the one who’s going to save humanity is Armin, just that much better. Because Eren isn’t saying it because he’s seen it, but rather because his belief and trust in Armin is so large and runs so deep that he simply knows that Armin is going to save them, believes it with his whole being.

The bird. I don't even know if there's any need to elaborate on this; I'm a sucker for reincarnation (and meeting in death, which is why I've loved the reoccurring visits from the fallen Survey Corps) and both Armin and Mikasa getting something from the bird (Armin getting a feather, maybe something of a nod to the seashell; Mikasa getting the scarf wrapped around her again) was very sweet. Another thing I literally just realised is that Eren becoming a bird is absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful, because birds are a symbol of freedom, are they not? (This realisation literally hit me in the face with pain, don't mind me) I think this can be viewed in two ways: either, it is only in death that Eren finds freedom (which is rather sad), or Eren is granted freedom, like he's always wanted, even if he couldn't have it while he was alive (not sure I'm making the distinction clear, but to me there's a large difference and I'd like to believe it's the second one: Eren deserves the freedom he finally receives).

Levi saluting. I can't be entirely sure, but if I remember correctly, this is the first time we've seen him salute? He did 'salute for' Hange in some ways, but it's not quite the same. I don't know all that much about Levi's backstory and his relation to the Survey Corps (besides obviously having a lot of comrades and friends he cares deeply about), but to me him saluting at the end is a sort of acknowledgement to everyone's sacrifice, a sort of 'We did it. It wasn't in vain. You are all the reason we made it this far and I am proud to have stood beside you'.

When I drafted this I wrote down 'the seashell' but right now I can't remember exactly why I liked that, but looking at the panels it clearly has some significance. I can't explain why I liked the fact that Armin gave it to Eren, but I do. It felt important.

While we get to see why Eren is doing what he's doing, given a bit of an insight into what made him do what he did, his actions – in my opinion – aren't excused. There's no 'oh it's okay you killed 80% of humanity but it's entirely reasonable because you did it for your friends'. Yes, Armin thanks him, but he does explicitly call Eren a mass murderer, not letting us or Eren forget what Eren has actually done, regardless of why he's done it. There's no excusing killing that many innocent people, regardless of why, and Eren and Armin know this too; Eren knows that there is no forgiving what he's done, that there is nothing left for him but to die because there is nothing he or anyone else can say or do that will warrant him another shot at life after what he's done.

I'm a sucker for angst and character death (don't ask me why, I honestly couldn't tell you. It simply tickles my fancy) and the fact that Eren dies at the end is right up my alley. Not only does it make my angst-loving heart go 'woo', but it also wouldn't have made any sense to keep him alive, in many ways. So while watching Eren die broke my heart, it also felt like an fate true to the story and to Eren's character and his decisions.

As viewers/readers I think most of us have known the potential that Armin holds since the first season, and it wasn't too surprising when Levi chose Armin over Erwin, but in this chapter we really get to see that it was a good decision on Levi's part. Because just as Eren says, Armin is the one to save humanity (or at least the one smart and compassionate enough to get close). Armin is the first to know what to say to ensure the Eldians' safety after the Titans are gone, is the one who comes up with a plan to stop Eren (I think? My memory might be failing me here), is one of those who are going to bring peace back from Paradis. I don't necessarily think there was any need to 'prove' that Armin was the one who deserved to live, but this chapter really shows that regardless of who 'deserved to live', Armin is a strong and capable character, fit as the 15th Commander of the Survey Corps, that has fulfilled his potential. It just really drives the point that Armin wasn't a bad choice, that maybe he was even the right choice.

And finally, I like the fact that it is left open ended. There has been a lot of resolutions, a lot of things finally resolved, and I think it's all been tied up pretty nicely. But I also enjoy the fact that peace isn't certain, nor is survival (because, is it ever?). Isayama doesn't give us everything, doesn't tell us exactly how things pan out, how life and the world after Titans might look. Rather, he allows us to build our own interpretation of how the world might rebuild itself and which routes the characters choose to take. In some way, it's so much more satisfying to have an open end like this, because it both allows the readers to explore their own interpretations of how the story might continue, but also because life in itself is open ended and the end of one struggle doesn't mean the end of all struggle. That's not to say that I think the series ended on a pessimistic or dark tone, because I really didn't. It's a good ending, a happy one, but it doesn't stray too far away from the darkness of the rest of the manga (though I must admit I was expecting a little darker ending, but I'm not necessarily disappointed). It's a hopeful ending, but not a naïve one, and I really like that.

Oooh boy this became a lot more than I expected it to oops. This was not meant to become analysis, but here we are. Might do a tl;dr later lmao

But yeah I just wanted to spread some positivity in these trying times, and I know that endings can be disappointing, so I thought sharing my own positive reactions to certain bits of the chapter might help someone else enjoy it a little more!

(Also ngl I just wanted to write stuff down because I wanted to remind myself why I liked it, and once I started writing I couldn't stop, so there's that).

[paintedpoems]

Black Water Arc: War of The Water Tyrants.

“Wind’s ontology refuses to take separateness as an inherent feature of the world. […] And this is, in part, wind’s value—it has an existential precondition that appears only in the context of contact. Wind is touching, mutual, moving.”

 — Cymene Howe, Ecologics

 It seems overly contradictory to start a piece about water tyrants with a quote about the wind, doesn’t it? In actuality, readers of the novel would find this comparison immensely appropriate. This is because although black water arc is about the head-to-head battle between Shi Wudu and Hexuan; the center point, the cause and the final effect of this whole arc is Shi Qingxuan. 

 “Existential Precondition” or fate. It is ironic that wind is described as such because that is essentially Shi Qingxuan’s inherent problem and “Refuses to take separateness” was Shi Qingxuan’s ultimate solution. 

Short Summary:

The infant Shi Qingxuan has a curse placed upon them. The curse prophesied a life full of unfathomable hardships for Shi Qingxuan and that is now their fate. Their brother, Shi Wudu, who is extremely protective of his sibling, is bent on saving Shi Qingxuan from this curse. Shi Wudu being naturally gifted eventually ascends as a god, he uses his position in the heavenly realm to then help his younger brother ascend to godhood as well. It is eventually revealed that Shi Wudu secretly changed his sibling’s cursed fate with another person of similar name and better fortune. 

The person in question is Hexuan. Hexuan was fated to live a prosperous life and ascend as a god but instead lives with tragedy latched onto him. He goes through poverty, false accusations, abuse and all of his loved ones die under heartbreaking circumstances. Hexuan eventually dies and returns as a vengeful ghost bent on punishing the one that had wronged him. Hexuan wants justice and since the gods refuse to pass judgement, he decides to come to a verdict on his own. In short, that is what black water arc is about: Judgement. In a grey situation, where exactly do we place the blame?

 On Morality:

Shi wudu verses Hexuan, ‘The war of the water tyrants’ dilemma, is one of the most mind-blowingly well thought out cases of grey morality in literature. It is no secret that the reductiveness of morals into “good” and “evil” categories is one of mxtx's main themes often explored heavily in her previous works. The author rejects the absolute extremes in character viewpoints, both in her protagonists and antagonists and applies the concept in varying thoughts including race and politics. 

The difference in this arc however, is the projection of the audience’s principles into each character. That is, between Hexuan and Shi wudu, she never specifies who the antagonist is. It is left to the readers to explore, reflect and come to an understanding on what exactly it is like to venture into the grey zone. Neither of the two were selfishly driven, none of their initial intentions stemmed from hatred. It was familial love that drove them to hurt one another, familial love that blindsided them. In their quest to protect and to avenge their family, innocent family members lost their lives or were hurt; on both their parts. This is where the definitions of victims and perpetrators get skewed. It is so skewed in fact, that the only valid testimony left is the reader's sentiments for the characters and their own self-principles. 

 From Shi wudu’s “Everything I have today, I fought for myself... I will change fate that I do not possess. My fate is up to me and not the heavens” is the will to fight predestination. Verses, Hexuan’s “What right did he have to suck another’s blood, trample another’s bones to reach the skies, and still maintain a peace of mind. Enjoying all such luxuries without any sense of burden?” the victim of the change in predestination. Two strong, commendable principles, founded by righteousness but blinded by arrogance and hatred. Later, to maintain a peace of mind, Hexuan tramples on Shi Qingxuan and in the process of fighting for oneself, Shi Wudu ultimately changes Shi Qingxuan’s fate for the worse. 

We even witness the Shi Wudu’s blindness take a terrible turn at the very end when he attempts to strangle his own sibling that he fought to protect all this time. His belief that Shi Qingxuan will not be safe without him, his lack of trust in his own brother, is part of his arrogance. 

In return, we see Hexuan’s blind hatred falter for a moment when he keeps giving Shi Qingxuan chances for safety. At the finish line, we see both the water tyrant’s own morals and goals swap. This change in attitude towards Shi Qingxuan’s future is another outstanding ploy by mxtx because expectation of a good outcome is the core of morality. In the end, the readers simply wish for a good ending for Shi Qingxuan and when Shi Wudu decides he is going to die together with his sibling, it confuses the audience. There is a shock factor added, you perceive Shi Wudu as the protector and he pulls the safety rug from under your feet. Instant shock and confusion violating the purity of the absolute good, so the reader’s immediate reaction is to look for safety in the not-absolute evil i.e. Hexuan. However, when Hexuan does not provide that complete comfort at the end, only slightly appeasing everyone, it stings. Reinforcing that cognitive blend of mixed morality into reader’s beliefs, further skewing the curve. 

 It is this kind of writing that creates a split in the fandom, not in a bad way, but more in terms of sparking a conversation about where people’s individual morality lies. Each character has their past, their reasons, their flaws and goodness and it gives the audience something to root for. In addition, the rooting is not a hundred percent good versus bad, because each character’s choices are equally flawed. The fandom selects a side but with one foot still lingering on the other territory. Siding with Hexuan but understanding the reasoning behind Shi Wudu’s actions or siding with Shi Wudu but sympathizing with Hexuan’s pain and loss. The uneven split is how you know the characterization was not mediocre.

In regards to characterizations, Shi wudu and Hexuan are too similar. Their personalities, personas, auras; the proud, stubborn, intelligent water tyrants. We speak of these likenesses because Shi Qingxuan lives through this battle and will never be able to unsee the similarities. Hexuan remains, a walking reminder of Shi Wudu. This feels deliberately done as the final stab to the readers, so that Shi Qingxuan and Hexuan’s relationship remains unmendable. 

 Pure Point of Views, Shi Qingxuan and Xielian: 

Wind is invisible, its apprehension comes from its exposure to objects or in this case other people. Shi Qingxuan is air, pure, lively and touching, forming a comforting contact with everyone they meet. The kind of character that brings about a reader’s protective instinct, in a sense, if anything were to happen to them it will infuriate and break the audience. A classic plot device to draw emotions from the readers. Why must this innocent child suffer for the sins of their brother? But, mxtx urges us to rethink this by wondering the same for Hexuan’s family. They were innocent too, why did they have to die on this path? Why is Shi Qingxuan’s innocence valid and not theirs? The audience feels for Shi Qingxuan because we have become familiarised with them. Shi Qingxuan has now made that connection with the readers, the wind has touched their hearts versus only receiving glimpses of what was Hexuan’s previous family. The effect is lacking that familial impact, that bond. Classic writing schemes, beautiful.

At the end of the clashing of the waves, the person left with the permanent scars was the blameless Shi Qingxuan. Their life was molded and directed into this final point without their control, as if caught in a sea storm. The one that paid for this feud was ultimately Shi Qingxuan, the person neither of the other two wanted to hurt.

 Another classic writing device I want to finally explore and praise is the use of the narrator to throw the audience off the culprit’s scent. The mystery of Black Water Arc was quite simple actually, mxtx layed out all the clues and hints for the audience out in the open. Like Xielian himself states later, the simplest answer was always visible, he was just overthinking things. And if Xielian, the semi-narrator, overthinks then the audience will overthink. Xielian, an intelligent and the fundamentally good person, exudes a trusting aura. The audience cannot help but trust his judgement and perception of things, it is a credibility built from our experience with his mystery solving abilities in the previous arcs. 

The reason why the black water reveal was so impactful and shocking was because of Xielian. The semi narrator continuously made excuses for MingYi, his subconscious trusted him, even if he had his suspicions. He didn’t enforce them strongly enough, leaving the audience to believe Xielian was merely exploring a wrong option for the sake of eliminating possible culprits. The audience was not viewing MingYi as a culprit, rather they were waiting for Xielian to come to the inevitable conclusion of his innocence. An item to quickly cross off the checklist so that they could finally pursue the “real” culprit.

MingYi couldn’t use the Earth Master Shovel? Xielian makes the excuse for him before the audience can even dive deeper on that thought. HuaCheng draws suspicion back to MingYi and Xielian immediately doubts his most trusted confidant’s assumptions. Xielian trusts MingYi, so we trust MingYi against our better judgement. When the narrator has left no room for mistrust, how can the audience hold their stance? 

The proficient push and pull charade played out by Hexuan and Huacheng is another impactful factor that took part in diverting Xielian’s mistrust. The nefarious roles they played policing and suspecting each other, from Hexuan’s “don’t you have spies in the heavens?” to Huacheng’s lie detecting dice game. The solid plan of the two suspicious individuals doing the dirty work for Xielian, did not allow Xielian to mold his thoughts in his own way. He was led astray whilst the other two worked together to draw trust onto each other. So, the audience did not have room for doubt either. 

In addition to all of that, the most fundamental foundation to Xielian’s trust for MingYi was that fact that he was the one who saved him from Huacheng in the first place. Simply because of the ghost city arc, we already place Huacheng and Hexuan on opposing sides rather than assuming they were accomplices. Furthermore, because of Xielian’s trust in Huacheng’s intellect and his belief of Huacheng’s prejudice against MingYi; he would constantly monitor Huacheng’s reaction to his own deductions. Unfortunately, Huacheng was a terrible basis point and by the time Xielian realizes it, it is too late. An ingenious tactic. 

The author led us off track in such a brilliant manner, I had to sing praises at the end of this piece. The way our mind perceives people or situations, is the essence of our moral compass. The mind is subjective, so subjectivity in judgement is ever present, ever grey.

Notes:

This unforgettable and excruciatingly tragic arc is an important turning point in the book and we are all aware that it does not need a special summary. However, I wanted to start with a bit of a reintroduction, just to stay true to the essay tradition. Is this an essay? A think-piece? An analysis? I would not dare shame any of those academic classifications by claiming to be writing as such. 

I hope this was enjoyable to read.

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[justshekthings]

just for a moment - park jisung fanfic (part 1)

“Continuing to run you turn around with a huge smile across your face, locking eyes with the boy whos awestruck expression turns into a comforting smile. Somehow without even knowing each other's names you both felt as if you've managed to escape reality, like the two of you were the only people in the universe, a feeling so rare, a scene only in movies, an occurrence never forgotten and yet was just experienced by these two individuals, even if it was just for a moment.”

Park jisung  x reader 

Word Count: 8731

Reading time: 1h 7m

Italics = thoughts

“normal” = spoken 

*IMPORTANT PLEASE READ*

Authors note: Since this a fanfic, therefore fiction, there story is set in your last year in highschool with the rest of the dream members who are all the same age. The school year will also be following the korean academic year system, just for some realism. I also made up a few characters with a korean name generator so please don’t overthink! I will also be releasing this story 4 chapters at a time with 3 parts in total, making a total of 12 chapters #quickmaths. Apologies in advance if my uploads are slow or my grammar is awful. Make sure to like and comment any suggestions or thoughts, but try to be kind, it’s my first time writing a fanfic. 

Enjoy reading~

March: March, although somewhat an afterthought or rather a shadow of winter, left with only it’s remains, it sets the groundwork for the rest of the year. March plants seeds that grow from mere sprouts to full grown plants during the course of the year. 

It’s early March, the month when the snow starts to thaw in preparation of the well anticipated season of spring. The feel of the winter air has managed to remain in Seoul, resented by the thousands of students forced to return back to school for the first semester. One of those poor unfortunate souls is you, y/n l/n, an 18 year old girl and you’ve come back to start and, hopefully, finish your senior year at Seoul Highschool. Although what does seem to make your experience there a little more bearable are your two friends Seo Kyung-Hu and Hu Mee-yon, while those two have been friends since primary school, you only met them in Middle school when you first transferred and they being the only nice enough kids willing to approach you, the three of you clicked instantly and ever since your trio have stayed a complete set.

Unlike your two friends, you could care less about school purposefully staying up late in hopes of sleeping through your alarm and having a valid excuse to miss the first day of school. And your plan worked… to some extent. Your mother on the other hand was keen to send you to the school you paid money for, as you should. You were fast asleep dreaming about exo performing as ot9 was suddenly awoken by the screaming of your mother. “YAH Y/N WAKE UP AND GET TO SCHOOL BEFORE I TAKE ALL YOUR EXO POSTERS AGAIN!” hearing that was enough to make you jump out of bed and start getting ready, not without a few complaints of course. Walking into your washroom you take one good look at your face in the morning, “oh god” you’re at least grateful your skin decided not to break out on the first day of school however your face was still puffed and quite dull. You continued washing your face, brushing your teeth and putting on that god awful, ugly, disgusting, and horrific uniform, as you described. Objectively your uniform wasn’t at all bad however you had the tendency to well… overthink. (the uniform looks like the A-teen beige uniform)

It being 8:35 and school starting at 8:45, you speed walked and slightly ran to school attempting to cut the initial 10 min walk in half with at least 5 mins to spare just in case. Fortunately enough you managed to get there on time to check what your classroom was, before the bell. Room 215? Ok… WHERE IS THAT AGAIN?! Somehow the break managed to erase most of your memory of the school, although there wasn’t much worth remembering about your most hated location on planet earth. You run around frantically desperately trying to find your homeroom before a teacher, or worse a hall monitor. You stop in the middle of an empty hallway to text your friends where the hell room 215 is, until you hear a unfamiliar voice reach out to you, “Are you lost babygirl” WHAT THEEE it took a second for you to process what the guy had said until out of instinct you start to laugh uncontrollably with your eyes starting to tear up. You turn around, hand holding your stomach, “What did you just say?” you ask, unable to take the male standing in front of you seriously. He stares at you, seeming to enjoy that you understood his reference, “What so you’re telling me you’re not totally turned on by that comment?” With a slight over exaggerated gasp at the end of his sentence, obviously showing that he was joking. “No no your question was valid just-” unable to finish your sentence you rerun the moment that had just unfolded through your head, succeeding in making you burst out in laughter again. His voice cuts through your laugh, “No but seriously you seem lost” finally regaining your composure, you take a minute to examine his appearance, and his attractiveness, and realizing you’ve been staring for a bit too long you panic quickly trying to cover it up, “YEAH UM i'm lost do you know where room 215 is?” “New student?” “no just dumb” He laughs at your honesty and points you in the right direction like a true gentleman. “Oh my god thanks so much, hope I see you again cute stranger!” you end your sentence with a wink and then run off after getting a glimpse of his dumbfounded expression although close enough to hear him yell out, “The name’s YangYang!” 

The odds were in your favour managing to slip into class before your teacher arrived and you had a mini-mental celebration before choosing to sit in the empty window seat in the middle row with an empty seat beside you to limit the amount of human interaction you get. Sitting down in your seat and see the teacher walk in and start the generic beginning of the school year talk, you text your friends to pass the time, who were lucky enough to have their class together, while the class goes through the course outline. After waiting a few minutes at the front, you see both of your friends, Kyung-hu and mee-yon or as you called them kyuhu and mimi to simplify their names, walk out and you guys greet each other before the three of you walk in the direction of your neighborhood, talking about what you all did during the break, all the annoying teachers and most recent gossip. 

You’d notice that the first week of school would follow this routine, passing by quite quickly and finding it uneventful as your teacher didn’t give a lot of homework as it was the first week of school. During the first week you concluded that there was no one in your classroom, or in the school for that matter that piqued your interest except for the fellow that helped you on the first day but has managed to slip your sight every time you scanned your surroundings to find him. Although just as fast as the first week passed by, the weekend went just as fast, and based on how your school operates, it’d be the only free weekend you’d have in a long time. And much to your dissatisfaction, you found herself in the same situation from a week ago, tired, lazy and lacking any motivation to go to school. Despite this you actually made an effort to wake up early, too early, to get ready for school to escape the never ending nagging from your mother over calls from the office over your tardy attendance. After eating a good enough breakfast, you open your door expecting a cold breeze to meet you as it did last week but to your surprise the outside was bright and dry, with no traces of snow, almost as if the weekend magically changed Seoul from winter to spring. However the leaves on the trees would need a lot more time than a weekend to grow back to their former glory. Remember when I mentioned you woke up too early, you were exactly two hours early when you arrived at the school, which suddenly made sense to you when you realized that no one in your house was awake yet and the roads in your neighborhood felt deserted. After walking around the campus you finally settle on a familiar tree on the outskirts of the school grounds, its location the very reason why you and your friends chose it as your casual lunch location for the past two years. You set your bag on your lap hugging it like a pillow laying your head on it for support and almost immediately you start drifting off the sleep. 

Unbeknownst to you, your perfect sleep would be ruined by one Park Jisung, you see park jisung made the mistake of waking up 20 mins before school started not taking into account it was his very first day at the highschool and he was bound to get lost on the way to school and if he even managed to find the school, he’d have no idea where his classroom as he also missed orientation for all new students. Late and lost, jisung looked around the front of the building in search of someone to help him but since school had already started most staff and students were already inside. Although it would’ve been easier for jisung to walk inside the building somehow he noticed a figure under a tree not too far from him, jisung assuming it was a student figured it’d be easier to ask a student then suffer a scolding or even awkward small talk with a teacher. He runs up to the sleeping person under the tree and realizes it’s a girl from the long hair and skirt, legs criss crossed under a bag you is hugging and sleeping on. Reluctant to grab your attention, awakening you from your slumber, but he must do so if he ever wishes to get to class. “Excuse me?” Jisung repeats this a few times first with a shy voice growing in volume in desperation to wake you up. In your dream EXO OT9 were just about to sing love shot, one of the comebacks lay missed out on, when you heard a reluctant voice repeatedly saying excuse me disrupting your peace and not to mention exo’s performance. Jisung seeing that his voice was not enough to wake you up he starts to get physical. You try to ignore the voice hoping it’d go away until it actually starts poking your shoulder, now you have no choice but to let go of your perfect dream and wake up to respond to the thing that dares interrupt your nap. Jisung notices the girl moving, satisfied that he finally woke you up, he watches as you yawn and rub your eyes, cute he thinks to himself admiring the girl’s sleepy and adorable state. You open your eyes to see a timid but tall boy crouched beside you, finger still pointed after persistently poking you. “Yes?” glaring at the poor boy with the rudest voice you could muster expecting him to get the hint to leave you alone. “U-um can u help me?” Looking at the nervous state of the boy you empathize with his confusion seeing as you were in a similar dilemma a week ago. Softening your expression you say, “yeah what's up?” using a tone completely opposite of the one a second ago, causing Jisung to relax and become more at ease after noticing your change in attitude, “oh can u tell me where this classroom is?” Jisung points at his paper, saying Room 215. He watches your face light up, “Oh! That's my classroom you can just follow me!” And you give the boy an eye smile, happy that you can help him and possibly become friends with the boy. Jisung’s ears turn pink admiring how cute your smile is and touched by your hospitality. you stand up dusting off your skirt and checking if you had any dirt on your clothes or legs. Putting your backpack on and adjusting the straps you ask the boy what time it was. “Oh it's 9:00 am” Jisung says to you sheepishly hoping he doesn’t shock you by how late they both are, “OH SHOOT'' After hearing the time realizing just how fucked you were, acting quick you grab the new boy’s hand and start running towards the building. Jisung trailing behind the small girl is blushing due to the sudden skin ship and can feel his heart pounding due to the spontaneousness of the girl's actions along with the running not at all helping with his heart rate. Running across the field underneath the sunlight causes an increase in heart rate, a mutual feeling felt by the two, but you both recognize it as a mere adrenaline rush as you both try to take in the predicament you find yourselves in. Jisung staring at the hand who had taken his own so boldly, looked up staring at your hair that had turned from a raven black shade to a chocolate brown in the sunlight admiring how it swayed while you ran. Continuing to run you turn around with a huge smile across your face locking eyes with the boy whos awestruck expression turns into a comforting smile. Somehow without even knowing each other's names you both felt as if you've managed to escape reality, like the two of you were the only people in the universe, a feeling so rare, a scene only in movies, an occurrence never forgotten and yet was just experienced by these two individuals, even if it was just for a moment. 

April: April bears us spring, which in turn prepares us for summer. The weather is unlike any other, it follows the frigid temperatures of winter and yet precedes the intense heat of summer, the month is in equilibrium. 

You watch from the safety of the other side of the field as Jisung is teased yet again by his new found friend group. As cliche as it sounds he managed to land himself with the “popular kids'' group despite this school not caring much for social norms, even if there was a popular group it’d be them and they’ve accepted him wholeheartedly as if he spent the last two years with them. Much to everyone’s surprise Jisung was capable of fitting in despite him being the new kid and it being the last year, it was almost as if he was the missing part of their friend group. The group consisted of Chenle, Renjun, Jeno, Jaemin, Haechan and Mark and they weren’t just popular, they were rich and attractive as well. “Oh how he’s blossomed” you say to yourself while admiring Jisung for coming out of his shell and express himself freely “Oh god please don’t tell me you just said that” “You sound like a pedo” As if on cue your two friends arrive at your spot under the tree, slightly creeped out by your confession. “YA I didn’t mean it like that!” you say pouting at your friends' judgmental remarks. “It’s just that he’s grown so much and it’s only been a month'' taking one last glimpse at Jisung having fun before turning to your best friends who have already started to eat. “Jisung was an innocent shy boy when you met him, your maternal instincts kicked in when you first saw him, so helped him out and get comfortable at the school and now you feel like you’ve raised him but now that he’s found a proper friend group you’re sad blah blah blah yes we get it.” Shocked and speechless at what Mee-yon just said, you shake your head looking down before resting your head on your arms placed on your knees while meeting their gaze, “Did I really sound like a pedo?” this time Kyung-Hu was the one to reply “yes you definitely did” nodding innocently while getting it to you straight. And with that final blow you hide your head in your crossed arms similar to a fetal position, accepting your defeat at their teasing. 

As you hear your friends move on to a new topic you just keep your head down too tired to raise it and decide to take a mini nap to hopefully make up for the 3 hours of sleep you got the night before. It wasn’t like you and jisung falling off bothered you that much you actually rarely thought about it, but for some reason today you were bothered. I guess we were never really friends. I guess more like friendly acquaintances? What about the time we hung out after school or skipped class together, did that mean anything? You sighed letting go of the memories of jisung and started falling asleep unaware of the glances from the same person you were just thinking about. You dreamed about the day you two met, after getting too tired to run the whole way there, since the two of you were already late you decided to just walk the rest of the way to your classroom while in the school, to give Jisung a mini school tour. “You just transferred here right?” “yeah I used to live in Inseon” “so why’d you decide to move here and transfer just a week after school started?” “My mom got an unexpected promotion she couldn’t refuse so we had to move to Seoul, but you sure ask a lot of questions'' you remember him teasing you for that “Well do you blame me? I’m curious.” You catch him off guard by your retaliation, “so do you miss it?” asking another unexpected question that causes a change in mood after bringing up his old home. “Of course I do, I grew up there, I had friends there and I had memories” you turned around noticing his melancholy expression while reminiscing and looked at him with concern, feeling sorry for the boy who was just staring at the ceiling almost as if he was trying to find something that was not even there. He notices the silence and makes eye contact with you realizing he must’ve worried you. “Oh but it’s better this way!” He says happily to ease your obvious concern and you stare at the nervous boy, eyebrow raised not convinced by his sudden change of heart. You let it go and the two of you walked a little bit more in silence before stopping, well at least you stopped, Jisung was absent minded enough to not realize you had stopped walking and bumped into back, you instantly looked up and stared at the boy directly over you. Jisung as the shy boy he was, panics and steps back slightly red which causes you to chuckle at his innocent behaviour. “Well here we are room 215” but before jisung was able to walk into the classroom, you turn around and stop him holding out your palm showing the universal symbol to stop, before extending it as a handshake. “Before you hear it from anyone else, I'm y/n” while grinning from ear to ear and jisung grasps your hand and gives you a light handshake, “hi i’m park jisung” returning you the same enthusiasm through a smile. After holding each others hands a little longer than expected, you let go awkwardly and enter the rowdy classroom filled with talking, laughter and pure ruckus. 

You didn't know one was capable of dreaming of a memory but you just did, and just as it was before, your nap was interrupted by noise, this time in the form of whispers, many whispers. You lift your head using your right hand to rub your eyes to adjust to the light and you meet eyes with the very boy you were dreaming about. “Jisung?” you ask with open eyes, confused and surprised. “O-oh hi y/n we meet here again” he answers, scratching the nape of his neck sheepishly. His friends beside him, snicker at his awkward response and continue laughing amongst each other mocking him, jisung notices this and pretends he’s about to hit them so they’d stop making you feel uncomfortable. He looks back at you even more embarrassed to explain his presence in front of you, “so-” “Why are you here, and where's kyung-hu and mee-yon” You notice that your two friends are nowhere to be found and you become more and more anxious being alone with practical strangers. “Funny you should mention that, they actually-” “We went to get some snacks!” Although kinda mad at them for leaving you alone, at least they showed up before this conversation could get any more awkward than it already was. Jisung feels quite relieved sparing him from the awkward exchange however his friends can’t get enough of his uncomfortableness bursting out in laughter when he was interrupted, not once but two times. Jisung and his friends move themselves to the tree beside you guys resting under the shade after mee-yoon and kyung-hu return back to their seats. After waiting until they were at a comfortable distance you start yell/whispering at your friends, “WHat the fuck guys you dont leave me alone with strangers!” “Oh don’t worry at least you finally talked to him instead of staring at him all day. Plus we needed to get enough snacks for all of us and we all know one person can’t carry all of that food. So please consider this strawberry milk as an apology.” Kyung-hu offers you the drink with Mee-yoon nodding her head in agreement. “Ugh I guess this was worth that horrible experience”  you take your favourite drink after barely eating anything due to your lack of appetite. 

The bell goes off and everyone starts to leave the field and head under the main building including you and your friends and since those two had a class together you took a different hallway hearing footsteps behind you before realizing the only person that could’ve been behind you was someone in your class, god please kill me now. And before the awkwardness kills you, you turn around and break the silence “hey thanks for watching me while I slept I understand my friends prolly asked you to do it as a favour and I really appreciate it” Jisung looks up after staring at his feet initially scared to stare in your direction. “No problem, i'm sorry that woke you up from your nap under that tree, it feels almost like deja vu” Both of you shyly laugh at his reference to your first encounter reminiscing the past memory. “Tell me park jisung why is it always you that must ruin my napping time? What have I done to deserve such cruelty.” Your exaggeration and choice of words managed to put a smile on his face and even a chuckle out of him. “Hey that's not my fault you’re obsessed with sleeping under that tree.” “But it’d be a waste not to, the weather this time of the year is just right, you can feel the heat but it's not overbearing it comforts you, it doesn’t require you to add layers nor remove any. We don’t need to change, not one bit. I can’t afford to take these moments for granted.” Jisung stares at your back taken aback by your sudden seriousness, not to mention the topic being the mere weather. Coincidentally the roles were now reversed, it was now Jisung that was perplexed by the change of mood similar to how you were a month ago. Although he could tell your words held more depth than they let on and decided not to speak on the matter moving on with the conversation. “But seriously no need to thank me after all I do kinda owe you for helping me out, plus you’re my friend, actually my first friend at this school” flashing you a smile which eases the awkwardness of your conversation. “Friend?” you widen your eyes at the title, unaware he saw you like that considering the limited time the two of you spent together. “Yeah that's what you call people you care about right?” your eyes follow his figure with a speechless expression on your face as he passes by you and walks ahead to go back to class, but just before he walks in he steps back to look back at you, “are you coming, friend?” before winking at you, emasked in the sunlight coming from the classroom, changing his eyes a lighter shade, before completely walking into the classroom. He leaves you baffled and blushing at his new found confidence and you are still processing what just happened, did he just wink at me? You shake your head trying to forget his words in hopes of calming your heart rate and enter your classroom sitting in your seat, on the other side of the class. Despite how much you try to hide your embarrassment, you just couldn’t hide how pink your ears were, same as jisung who might have put on a brave front, is slightly regretting and yet at the same time, proud of what he said. Both of you refusing to look anywhere else but down and especially not at each other, lost in your own thoughts but if the both of you had just looked at eachother even if it was just for a moment, you both would’ve found out something crucial about each other. 

May: May does not only serve as the last stretch of spring but as a period of freedom. It enables the ability to be free enough to have dreams and independent enough to act on them. 

Unlike the last two months you and jisung actually managed to talk more, although more doesn’t necessarily mean a lot but considering you and him have only shared a few meaningful conversations over the span of two months, your current relationship was a huge upgrade. Disregarding the occasional partner project or pairing in physical ed, in which you and jisung had always chosen each other considering both of your friends were in different classes, you’ve developed somewhat of a casual and low maintenance friendship, that didn’t need frequent conversations but had few but worthwhile moments, all of which were cherished by the both of you, as they reassembled the same serenity the two of you shared the first day you met each other. The moments you shared rarely felt forced and if they were, due to the immature pressures of both of your friend groups, the two of you had no trouble slipping into your own world. As naive as it sounds the friendship the two of you shared was purely platonic, no doubt there were moments of butterflies and heart racing however it only lasted just for a moment, quickly fading away. However someone you were interested in was the guy that helped you on your first day, although all that you knew about him was his name, yangyang. 

You and your two friends approach the stands taking your seats to watch the soccer game hosted by your school after getting invited to sit beside jisung and a few of his friends to cheer on Jaemin, playing as a forward and Jeno, the goalie. As you look forward at the field and someone wearing the number 24 caught your eye. You found the haircut and build of number 24 familiar. You struggled trying to figure out just where you saw someone with similar features as 24, but it was only until he finally turned in your direction, getting a good look at his face. “That's him!” you accidentally stood up, hands covering your open mouth and jisung who was having a conversation with his best friend chenle, turned around to look at your stunned expression. “Hm? What happened?” You looked around embarrassed by drawing attention to yourself and sat back down awkwardly, leaning towards jisung who sat in the row in front of you to whisper, “do you know who number 24 is?” “Yeah that’s yangyang but what about him?” “Yeah I KNOW what his name is, but like who is he?” “I hope you realize how stupid you sound, but why are you asking me, I’M the new kid remember? Not the person who has been attending this school for the past two years.” Jisung raises his eyebrow to you confused as to why you don’t know who this guy was, expecting the both of you to have already met at least once. “So what you’re basically saying is that you got nothing?” “No I never said that, for your information yangyang is our age but he only transferred here last year from Germany. I guess he keeps himself lowkey, soccer is really his only extracurricular.” “bruh you should’ve just led with that, not with any of this new kid bs” “I think you meant to say thank you” Jisung gives you a deadpan look disappointed by your ungratefulness, you catch a glimpse of his face and laugh at how annoyed he is. Hoping not to make your friend upset, you lean in and stick out your tongue playfully in a teasing manner before flashing him your signature smile, “Thank you Jwi~”. Taken aback by his nickname (jwi means mouse in korean) along with the hint of aegyo in your voice, blood rises to his cheeks and to his ears but before you properly see it, he covers his face with his hands while looking down although his ears, like always, were giving him away. 

But before you could tease him the announcer's voice filled the outdoor stadium, “Ladies and gentlemen the game between Seoul Highschool and Apgujeong Highschool is about to commence!” Suddenly you hear everyone in the stands start screaming yelling to the top of their lungs. “We will first introduce the starting lineup of the home team, starting with co-captains Na Jaemin and Lee Jeno!” You, jisung and both of your friends stand up and start cheering on the duo running onto the field, as you have become quite friendly with jisung and his friends so it was only fitting for you to support them. After their introduction you paid no attention to the remainder of the names until, “Now introducing number 24 yangyang!” Your head that was previously resting on your palm was raised after hearing that familiar name and you lean in trying to get a closer look at him before going beside jisungs ear. “Ya” Jisung, scared by the sudden noise, flinches back leaning on to chenle, who was too distracted talking to Renjun to notice his best friend but jisungs reaction does cause you to grin. Pointing at the smiling boy on the field, you say “Do you know what class he’s in?” “Oh him?” He takes a double check looking you up and down weirded out by your enthusiasm and interest in the soccer player. “Yes we were literally talking about him like 10 seconds ago” you rolling your eyes at his forgetfulness, you find it hard to believe he could be this oblivious knowing he was acting like this to tease you. “Yeah I know what class he’s in” you glare at the boy already knowing you’d have to do the most for him to finally spill the tea. “Uh would you like to tell meee?” you, not caring if you seemed desperate. “Lemme think, hmmm yeah no i'm good” “YAH PARK JISUNG'' you see his amused expression before coughing to regain your composure and trying another strategy “Can u please tell me~” you try to act as soft and cute as possible and although aegyo tears away at your soul, you know jisung couldn’t bare the sight of it. “STOP OH GOD” He tries to cover your face so he wouldn’t need to watch your aegyo any longer but you being determined, keep dodging him so he could see every cute action you’d do. “Please jisung~” “OKOK FINE JUST PLEASE STOP!” You quickly change your expression to a serious one which slightly scares jisung “so tell me what his classroom is” you say in a threatening tone while stabbing his ribs with your fingers causing him to flinch away, he sighs and slouches showing his surrender, caving into your antics, “fine it’s room 105” “Thank you! See that wasn’t so hard now was it?” You happily smile at him but you can see he obviously didn’t reciprocate the same feelings of joy and instead glaring at you. “Easy for you to say I have to bleach my eyes and tend to my wounds” Jisung cries out while holding the ribs you just stabbed, you roll your eyes yet again and scoff at his over exaggeration. “You’re such a kid.” “I'm legit older than you soo you’re the child here” him feeling proud at his comeback, looks up to catch your reaction but you’re pouting, hand crossed over your chest upset by the undeniable fact, which he finds kind of adorable. “Anyways why are you so interested in this guy anyways? Do you like him or something” jisung asks with his eyebrow raised while poking your leg suggesting that you do hold feelings for the boy, you feel your face become slightly hot by his suggestion. You swat his hand away and say, “N-no, the answer is no. How can I even like him, I hardly know anything about him. I’m just...” “you're just?” you start glaring him for interrupting your sentence and for teasing you. “I’m just interested” you finally end your sentence returning a playful wink to jisung just as he did a month ago. “Uh huh” Jisung says with a suspicious tone before turning around showing his back to you and properly watching his friends play in their first game of the season. Not satisfied with his answer you decide to talk a bit more, “what, can’t a girl be interested in a guy? I can’t just sit around dreaming about the day he approaches me, when I want something, whatever that may be, I go get it! Plus don’t you have anyone you’re interested in?” Still refusing to turn to you, you assumed he was just ignoring you, not paying attention to your question but jisung’s act backfired when you noticed his ears turn pink after hearing what you asked. “Heoll~, our jisungie has a crush?” (heol is korean slang for omg) you start shaking his shoulders out of excitement of this discovery. Still not looking at you, jisung puts his head in his hands to hide his embarrassment, amused by his timidness, you try to make him turn to you but he won't budging, unable to look at you to spare himself further embarrassment. In truth jisung didn’t have anyone he was interested in, so he was confusing himself but it was probably the question itself and the possibility of him having a crush that made him embarrassed, or at least that’s what he told himself.  “Yaaaaa jisunggg tell me~” You say in a teasing voice but realizing your strategy wasn’t gonna make him turn your way, you smirk hoping that if anything were to get him to turn around it’d be this. So you start tickling him hoping he was even ticklish which fortunately he was, severely ticklish at that too. He starts to spasm due to the tickling laughing uncontrollably using his hands to block your hands and move away from your grasp. “YA STO-” turning around to yell at you, unaware at how close you got when trying to tickle him, he stops mid sentence finally realizing the lack of distance between the two of you. He takes a small gasp interrupting what he was going to say, speechless by the sudden eye contact, but it’s too late your eyes were already locked. “Ah there you are~” you say that in such a gentle tone that it was more of a whisper, inaudible to anyone besides you and jisung. Once again you guys find each other in the sunlight, which lights up both of your eyes making them seem as clear as honey, unaware of everyone standing up, cheering as yangyang just scored a goal. Both of you too lost in each other's eyes to notice anything else besides the smallest details in each other's iris’. However the gaze is suddenly broken when you look around and realize the cause of celebration, clueless to jisung's lingering gaze. “Oh my god look yangyang just scored a goal!” You tell the boy in front of you eyes glimmering with admiration, much to jisung's displeasure. Jisung was slightly upset at the soccer player who was the reason for breaking your eye contact, along with the fond expression brought to your face when looking at yangyang rather than himself. And although jisung might never admit it, deep down he’d wish for you to look at him like that even if it was just for a moment.

June: After months in the cold waiting for the arrival of summer, at last June has arrived. The month does not only represent a drastic change in temperature but in emotions as well, this month is when mere feelings can finally develop, for better or for worse. 

“I like you” the words you hear coming out of your newest friend, whom you’ve become quite close to and bonded with over the past month. “Yangyang I-” “it’s okay you don’t have to answer, I just wanted to tell you” The boy says before winking and smiling at you with confidence. In the distance you could hear his friend Hendrey call out to him in a distance and you see him turn around to wave at his friend and turn back around, “anyways y/n I kind of need to go now, my friend is calling me” He says scratching the back of his neck, reminding you of another male friend of yours, using his thumb to point back to hendrey. He runs off to his friend, not forgetting to turn around, giving a cute wave before Hendrey wraps his arm around his shoulders walking off to who knows where. Now you’re left alone dumbfounded, behind the school building with a stunned expression, while physically you look as if your mind is blank your thoughts were far from that of panicking at your friends sudden confession. In retrospect you were kind of expecting this to happen as at some point considering your relationship was never just friends, you yourself started talking to him with slight romantic interests involved. Although it was, at least for you, a bit too soon. Still baffled by recent events you failed to notice the running footsteps of two boys come from behind you. “YA CHENLE GIVE THAT BACK!” You remain stuck in your headspace as both boys suddenly stop when they notice your strange figure and start whispering to themselves. “Yah isn't that y/n?” Chenle says to the jisung who steps closer to get a better look at you standing alone, he turns back to his friend “Uh yeah I think so?” There’s a second of silence as the boys try to figure out the odd circumstance, before Chenle says, “oh well HAVE FUN!” sticking out his tongue and running away while laughing uncontrollably hoping jisung doesn’t try to go after him after successfully figuring out his password and stealing his phone. “YA” jisung lets out a heavy sigh giving up trying to get his phone back and turning towards the dazed girl, shaking your shoulder a bit to get you out of your trance “Y/n?” “H-huh? Jisung? W-what're you doing here?” “I should ask you the same thing, I mean you're all alone out here” “Oh I was? I guess I didn't notice.” You shake your head trying to forget yangyang’s confession and bring yourself back to reality not noticing jisung turning his head to the side to hide the slight blush after seeing you in a confused state. Confused as to why he had suddenly spaced out looking in another direction, “Jisung?” You ask him while tilting your head cutely, an action jisung was still able to see in his peripheral vision which made him want to keep his head turned away even more. It was now you trying to get his attention so you smile realizing the irony of the situation,”Y-yeah?” “You wanna go to class now?” You say smiling before walking ahead of him with a slight skip in your step. “Yeah sure” you hear him say awkwardly following you to class. The two of you walked in silence from that moment on side by side, you taking a few glances to check up on him as he did with you and whenever you two did make eye contact you both gave each other a smile that although a bit awkward, was comforting in some way. 

It was almost a week after yangyangs confession and since then you’ve fortunately managed to avoid him, still confused with what your answer, but it wasn’t whether or not you had feelings for him or not because you knew the boy could make you laugh, smile and give you butterflies at soon as you laid eyes on him, but you felt as if it was rushed. You considered it as only a crush than deep feelings for a committed relationship, simply put it was too early. And yet you knew you’d regret rejecting him because you didn’t want your relationship to end, rejecting him would risk losing, what would've been a perfect relationship due to your own indecisiveness. Ugh I hate feelings, you trying to decide your answer, was exactly what caused you to get lost during your late night walk you took to clear your head. Realizing that you’d been spacing out, you take a look at your surroundings and you had absolutely no idea where you were. “Oh shit” although what you could recognize is a neon sign at the end of the street that spelled out Convenience Store with a couple tables and seats at the front for eating. Feeling your stomach give a loud growl, you unlock your phone just to check if you have time to spare to eat some ramen, before your mom yells at you for staying out too late, 9:00 only? “OK! Lets go!” you celebrate to yourself, pumping a fist in the air before skipping towards the store and greeting the cashier. While you run your finger through the shelfs scanning the inventory trying to find your favourite ramen, “cheese ramen, cheese ramen, cheese ramen” All of a sudden you hear the door of the store open due the iconic bell and you hear a voice, a male voice greet the cashier as well, “Good evening~” FUCK! You instantly recognize the voice cursing inwardly at the chances you’d bump into him at a convenience store of all places. You immediately move to the next aisle, away from the entrance praying that he wouldn’t see you hiding behind the end of the aisle. “This literally cannot be happening to me” “What can’t be happening to you?” you let out a shriek, jumping back startled to hear ANOTHER voice. Please don't be him, please don't be him, you open your eyes that were shut due to fright, to look up at the stranger that just scared you “J-jisung?” “Yeah who else?” You wonder why you didn’t recognize his voice initially but you see his confident grin while looking at your distressed state, it somehow pleased him to see you like this. “So you gonna answer my question or are you gonna keep on staring at me?” Realizing you must look completely crazy, you fix your posture to look at jisung straight in the eye, “none of your business.” And you walk away from the boy taking your former spot using the aisle to block anyone’s view of you. You occasionally peek your head out just to check on the whereabouts of the mystery boy and jisung takes notes of this, standing behind you, hovering like the giant he is. He chuckles at your childishness, “who are you hiding from?” He asks out loud not caring if anyone heard him, you panic quickly putting your hand over his mouth to shut him up. “Jheez can u be any louder? Plus did I not make it clear, none. of. your. business.” Jisung pouts at you before licking the inside of your hand causing you to let go of him and give him a look of a disgust while you try to wipe his saliva off your hand with your sweater, but all he does is flash you a playful smile satisfied with your reaction. You roll your eyes at jisungs shenanigans and turn around to continue your spying seeing that the boy stayed by the cashier examining the gums and candies. Jisung follows your gaze tryna figure out just who you’re so afraid of before realizing who it was and his smile then turned into a thin line. “Him?” “Ya what do you mean him? That's yangyang!” You hit jisung offended by his reaction to your crush. Jisung flinches pretending that your hit actually hurt, “yeah did I stutter?” you ignore what jisung just said, too focused on predicting the movements of yangyang, maybe focusing too hard that just when you thought he was going to leave without noticing you, you two accidentally make eye contact and you quickly hide behind the aisle hoping he didn't see you. With your chest going up and down, you struggle to control your heart rate placing your hand on your chest to hopefully help lower it down. Jisung widens his eyes seeing you so flustered, “why what happened?” he looks at you, concerned thinking you’re having a heart attack. “He saw me” you slide down now sitting on the floor with your legs folded in front of you while you hide your face in your hands breathing into them, trying to calm yourself down. “What am I gonna do, what am I gonna do” you continually repeat those words slightly scaring jisung in the process, although after seeing you in this condition he realized he needed to help in some way. “Okok just stay here” patting your head before walking off leaving you to curl up on your own. Jisung walks down the aisle that yangyang just saw you in, already meeting face to face with the boy that had walked in your direction trying to check if it was really you or a hallucination. He stops when he sees jisung, taking a step back confused as to why he’d see him there of all places, “Jisun-” “Oh hey Yangyang funny seeing you here, isn’t it a bit late tho? Based on what jeno and jaemin were talking about I swear you guys have soccer practice in the morning tomorrow at 6, no?” Jisung interrupted yangyang, rambling on about a made up soccer practice, jisung thought of on the spot, while putting his arm around the clueless boy's shoulders pushing him until they made it out of the store and before yangyang could process what was happening. “O-oh they never told me we had practice” “oh well good thing you heard it from me, tho you might wanna double check just in case, ok?” “y-yeah ok, but wait-'' but before jisung could hear his question concerning you, and then be forced to answer it he turned around and walked away allowing the convenience store door to shut thus ending their interaction, leaving yangyang completely dumbfounded as to how he ended up outside of the store instead of inside looking for you. Jisung gives a sigh of relief upon returning to the scared figure on the ground in front of him, “It’s okay now” you hear those comforting words escape his mouth and you lift up your head to look up at him, “is he gone now?” Suddenly, jisung feels heat rise to his cheeks when looking down at your curled up body, resembling a scared child and somehow your question triggered a protective instinct in jisung, who felt the need to protect you from all the things wrong in the world well at least all the things that you couldn’t protect your own self from. Finally calming down after your nervous breakdown you stand up wiping away the dust on your clothes before turning to jisung with a smile on your face, “Now let's go eat some ramen!” 

Both of you walk out of the convenience store after finding your cheese ramen and his spicy one, cooking it using the hot water at the store. You both sit down on one of the tables in front of the store met with a cool breeze that cooled the two of you down a bit from the summer heat. After taking a few bites and many loud slurps from the ramen, the two of you take your time to chew creating a moment of silence so jisung turns to you, “so you wanna tell me what happened in there?” You feel obligated to give him an explanation especially after how he helped you out, swallowing your food you lay your chopsticks down and explain to him the situation of yangyang confessing to you and you being nervous and confused. “Heol, yangyang actually likes you? Whaa” You throw a piece of your trash at him offended by his question, “Ya what do you mean actually liked me, what is their not to like” you say while flipping your hair back confidently, “Mhm you keep telling yourself that” his comeback slightly surprising you but you stop there not trying to take anymore insulting comments. “Ok but I was really nervous back there, if I wasn't so antisocial or if I actually understood my feelings then maybe yangyang and I would’ve already been dating and doing whatever couples do.” Thinking about the possibilities you pout and shove a bunch of noodles in your mouth to chew angrily, showing just how stressed out you were. Jisung lets out a laugh which earns a glare from you after being charmed by your inexperience and instead of making fun of your fantasies with yangyang, he empathizes with your situation thinking of a mature answer to help you out. “Do you seriously think anyone understands themselves? Because they don’t. People may put on a convincing facade but trust me when I tell you everyone is just as confused as you are. We’re teenagers for god sakes, we’re supposed to be going through this. You may not know what you want now, but in the future you will and how are you ever gonna figure it out unless you try? I have no idea what you’re feeling right now but I do know it’d be a waste to push those feelings aside because you’re scared. You’re the only thing stopping yourself and for whatever the reason is to why you're scared, whether that be getting hurt or getting embarrassed, just know it's natural and what’s meant to happen will happen but only if you allow it to.” In awe of jisungs words and yet curious as to how he developed all that wisdom. You stare at him, trying to read his face trying to understand what he was thinking. Instead you notice the soft glow of the neon sign on his features, his hair and face slightly lit up. You soften your expression while examining the details of the boy in front of you, who’s sitting with a slight slouch while spacing out, looking down at his ramen that makes you giggle inwardly because it looks like he’s glaring at his own food. You notice just how innocent and vulnerable he looks, and yet on the contrary you are unable to understand his thoughts now matter how you try. You find yourself spotting traits about jisung that you never realized before, like the glimmer in his eye or the sound of his sniffle while eating hot noodles, or how his cheeks puff out in the slightest and his hands inter cross when trying to focus. Even if he was sitting right across from her, he felt beyond reach and in the perspective you found jisung in, he was what they call picture perfect. If only I could just read his mind, even if it was just for a moment. However you stop yourself from staring at your friend for any longer and look down to take in his words, the same words that caught you off guard. You take a minute to absorb jisungs advice and just as quickly as yangyang said those three words to you, three words of the same nature slip out of your mouth, delivering the long awaited answer you were trying so hard to figure out, “I like yangyang.”

If you were able to read this far, I love you~

[burnedbyshoto]

Writers Block

pairing: todoroki shouto x reader

warning: upsetti-spaghetti, fluff

word count: 1,454

a/n: so, I wrote this last night as something super self-indulgent. I had a second thought as to whether I should upload this, but I think this is something that all of us writers experience at one point. writers block. since october i’ve been heavy in writers block and entailed in this story below is every frustration I have, every annoyance I have. it’s hard and its frustrating. I wish that it wasn’t something that is as common as it is, and I want to get over this writers block because I love writing. im getting there I know it, just not quite there. thank you for reading this, and hope you enjoy. this is also for any and all people experiencing some sort of block.

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You stared at the blank screen in front of you.

Your fingers hesitated above the worn keys as you contemplated what to write next. What should it be? Who should it be about? Why were you writing this?

Why were you writing?

The screen fades into subtle darkness as you’re unable to think of anything, and your frustration rises as you slap your hands against your face. Why couldn’t you write? Were you out of inspiration? Was this a writer’s block that seemed to weigh on you for months now? Are you writing because you loved it or because you wanted the recognition?

Countless unfinished drafts sat in your documents, untouched prompts swam in your head, and yet whenever you sat in front of your computer ready to work, your creativity diminished. You had no inspiration and every word you thought about leaving you questioning if what you were doing was correct.

Writing was among the hardest things you’ve ever done. It was your saving grace and it was your downfall.

Were you writing for you or for them?

“You know, you don’t look okay, love,” a voice whispers in your ear.

Your body is tense with suppressed annoyance, suppressed anger, and bitterness. The tension in your jaw comes undone and the pounding headache eases, but as you move to speak you realize how thick with emotion your throat is. So, you stare at your boyfriend who stands behind the chair you sit in. His fingers resting on your shoulders as you lean back onto him.

“I’m just trying to write,” you murmur as you stare at the blinking line of the cursor. You need to write something— anything really. Yet you couldn’t think of a single word to write.

Everything seemed too cliche when you tried to write and you were sick of it.

“Why do you write?” Shouto asks as he gently massages your terse shoulders.

A sigh escapes your lips as he works out stiff knots in your skin and you shudder as his hand warms up pleasantly around your spine.

“I don’t know,” you groan as he works out another knot.

“Don’t you like writing?”

“I guess,” your eyes fall as tears prick the back of your eyes.

Why would you say that? You loved to write, it was calming and therapeutic. It was an escape from reality and it was something that gave you joy to see others appreciate as well. Right now it seemed that you couldn’t remember your excitement. It seemed you could only focus on the nonsensical reasons for your turn off to writing.

“Then why do you continue?” Shouto continues to prod as you moan softly against his touch. “If you don’t like something, why do you keep forcing yourself to do it?”

“I-I don’t know,” you barely manage to speak as embarrassment and sadness fill your being. No one would care that much if you left after all. Sure, maybe one or two would be sad and express that fact, but they’d move on. They would manage. “...it’s an obligation.”

“You write for random people on the internet who have infatuations with an anime character,” Shouto chuckles as he gets you to stand and sits down, pulling you back onto his lap. You’re silent as you curl into his chest, your arms wrapping around his neck. Your cheek lays against the soft material of the sweater and you can only hear his steadily beating heart. It’s quicker than normal, but again, his heart rate was always much higher when you were around. “While I’m not sure if I regret making you watch the anime with me, you’re certainly not obligated to write for them. You are busy with other things, you are busy living your own life. They can and have to understand that your life comes before them.”

His hand strokes your back as tears silently fall down your face, “It’s n-not that, Shouto.” He nudges you softly with his nose and you give a wet snort as you sigh. “It’s just… I don’t feel competent anymore. Everything I write is out of place, nothing I write seems to gain any attention, and it’s disheartening. I hate feeling this way— I hate feeling like I’m ungrateful for what I have, but that’s how I feel.”

“What’s wrong with feeling that way?”

“People have it worse than I do! My achievements aren’t entirely normal so how can I complain when people don’t have it the same?!”

Shouto’s lips pursed at your exclamation, his eyes searching your tear-soaked gaze intently as he tries to figure it out. Your eyes flutter closed when he presses a soft kiss to your chapped lips, a soft sob shoving out from your mouth as you pull away, your head shaking.

His fingers, however, move to your face, gripping your tear-stained skin as he forces you to look at him. “There was this annoying, wise, and beautiful woman who told me that your griefs are valid, no matter how much more significant the pain is. Y/n, you’re in a slump right now, you’re not feeling okay! It doesn’t matter if you have one follower or one million, your feelings are valid. If you want to be upset, be upset! There’s always something upsetting when you go out of your way for things and they do not have the recognition you want from it.”

“That was a ‘this rule doesn’t apply to me’ rule,” you weakly giggle as he buries his nose into the crook of your neck. “But I know that, yet every time I feel upset I remember that people struggle constantly, and I can’t do anything about them. I’m lucky to have what I do, so my problems are just so… so dumb!”

“It’s okay,” Shouto promises as he rubs circles into your back, but you’re not done yet.

“And I’m in this fucking slump! I’m exhausted from writing! I put in so much effort into everything I do, and everyone expects that I don’t! I’m fucking sick and tired of people not liking my things, I’m tired of people not fucking sharing my shitty writings, I’m tired of seeing a lack of goddamn comments. I want more but no one seems to want to give it to me?! Am I that fucking horrible that no one wants to uphold those standards to me? Am I just some shitty-ass charity winner in the author category?! I want to be more but I’m not good enough and I’m just so tired!”

You’re sobbing into Shouto’s shoulder as this wave of pressure releases from you, and you shrink against him further as you feel light again.

“Then I’ll support you,” Shouto whispers after some time. “I love your writings, and I’ll do more to make sure that you’re seeing that I love it too. But how do we get you out of this slump?”

You sniffle in gratitude and embarrassment as you slam a hand against his chest.

“I’ll cry if you do that…”

“It’s a good thing I have so many tissues then.”

“I think… I just need to sit down and write,” you mumble, addressing the slump part of your questionnaire. “I just need encouragement.”

“Well,” Shouto chuckles as he shifts you around so that you can face your laptop on the table. “I think I can handle the encouragement, you handle the amazing writing.”

Your fingers fall onto the weathered keyboard and key by key you type. This is a piece for you, a piece to make you feel like you can write again. Writing is your domain and it’s something you were destined to do, or else why did you start to begin with?

The world went silent as the story flowed mindlessly from your head to your fingers, and Shouto’s calming whispers and touches only fueled you on as one sentence became a paragraph. One paragraph became a page. One page turned to many and soon enough you had typed your last word.

Everything felt like it was frozen in time as you realized what you had managed, and tears welled back into your eyes as Shouto hugged you in pride and excitement.

You did it.

Maybe you weren’t out of this slump right now, but you managed to get something done. That was more than what you had expected of yourself and you screamed in delight as Shouto picked you up and spun you in his arms.

Delighted giggles escaped your lips as he peppered kisses against your face, words of encouragement heavy on his lips as he kisses you again and again. It wasn’t until you had started crying again did he stop.

“...Shouto?”

“Hm?”

“I l-love you.”

“... I love you more.”

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message to be apart of my taglist

[goodshipsherlollipop]

Self-interview (but not really) Part 2

Thanks again @sherlollyappreciationweek

Comp1mom

Q: What made you decide to create a “Christian” version of Sherlock?  According to the BBC version, he is a self-avowed atheist.

A: When I look at Sherlock’s true nature, I see such potential for him as a Christian.  He exhibits so many characteristics that we, as Christians, try to show - forgiveness of wrongs done to him (note how he doesn’t fight back when John assaults him); sacrificial love (his willingness to die for others, as in TRF); the desire for true justice, the way Moriarty says he’s  “on the side of the angels”.  At least for me, I was intrigued by the idea of converting him to Christianity, to give him a true purpose for his life that has eternal consequences.  

Q: Do you think that portraying Sherlock as a Christian is important? Why or why not?

A: I am always hopeful that people will read and see the validity in my reasoning for him becoming a Christian, given how often he has escaped death.  Quite often, in stories, Molly puts the question to him - Why are you still here?  Why have you escaped death so many times?  That should be enough to make anyone reevaluate their life’s purpose.

Q: Molly Hooper is the one who proselytizes him, right? Why do you use Molly? Why not John, who must be a believer in Christ in some way or he would have had a problem with christening Rosie?

A: For me, it HAD to be Molly.  Her character and the way she behaves in the show is consistent with the behaviour of a Christian.  She loves Sherlock unconditionally; she sees beyond the detective persona to the real man beneath.  She needs to be the catalyst for Sherlock to be open to the idea of Christianity, because he loves and trusts her.  John, although he certainly believes in God and has some Christian (or Catholic in my story canon) background, does not live a life that is consistent with Christianity and its ideals.  He has multiple sexual partners.  Although I think he is an ethical man, I don’t believe he has the kind of sexual morality that is typical of committed Christians. Identifying yourself as a Christian because you were raised in a Christian home and went to church, does not make you one if you display behaviour that is contrary to what the Bible teaches.  Either you’re committed to what you believe and try to follow what the Bible teaches, or you are not really committed to your faith, (not that Christians are perfect - far from it, but we do try to follow what the Bible teaches, and we feel guilt when we fail).  There’s a difference between being a Jesus fan and a Jesus follower.

Q: What evidence does Molly use to convince Sherlock of a Higher Power?

A:  In various stories, Molly points out the beauty and balance of creation, that it does not make sense for that balance to have occurred spontaneously.  She also points out the complexity of the human body and how it is built with all its systems designed to work in harmony.  Personally, I believe these two facts are huge considerations, and that it takes far less of a leap in logic to believe something created this beauty, rather than it happening spontaneously.  Molly also points out the fact that Sherlock has been spared from death so many times and asks him to question why that is so, whether there is a higher purpose to his life because of that.  

Q: How do you maintain Sherlock’s acerbic wit and still have him believe that Jesus Christ is more than a swear, is a deity, the Deity?

A:  I try to show that Sherlock is not the “perfect” Christian.  He has many years of conditioning in one type of behaviour, and that is something that is going to come out from time to time. I don’t find it as difficult to write him as someone who does not use the name of Jesus Christ in a profane way, because he doesn't talk that way in the show (unlike John). Personally, I am also not comfortable in writing (or reading) stories that use the name of Jesus Christ as an expletive.

Q: What does belief in Jesus Christ do for his detective work? Or does it influence his detective work?

A: Oh, I definitely think his faith adds an element of compassion to Sherlock’s detective work.  He is no longer answerable only to himself, but he is trying to behave in a way that displays his faith and pleases God.  That means thinking before he speaks, caring about the people involved in the case, rather than just the case itself. His motives, to glorify God in his work, are his priority.

Q: Is there any evidence in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing that Sherlock Holmes believes in Something Higher than himself?

A:  I absolutely believe ACD’s Sherlock believed in God, which is one of the reasons I felt it believable to change BBC Sherlock’s atheistic stance.  ACD’s Sherlock mentions Providence, as evidenced in this quote from The Naval Treaty.

“Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

Also, in The Boscombe Valley Mystery, when Sherlock lets a dying killer go, he says, “You are yourself aware that you will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes.” This implies God will judge the man after he dies.

Penelope Chestnut

Q: How long have you written  Sherlolly stories? What made you start writing?

A: A dear friend of mine recommended watching Sherlock, and my husband and I binge watched it in the summer of 2017.  After the final episode, I was so sad that the Sherlock and Molly dynamic was not resolved, I was moved to write a happy ending for them.  My daughters have been involved in fanfiction for years, so I knew people did this kind of thing.  My intention was to write a one-shot happy ending for them, just for my own satisfaction.  After I wrote it, though, I found I didn't want to let the characters go.   I had fallen in love with their story, and I wanted to keep writing for them.  60 chapters later, I decided to start publishing my story, A Journey to Love, Faith and Marriage.  This was just over 3 years ago, on November 7th 2017,  when I joined fanfiction.net.  I later joined ao3 as well and was publishing on both sites for quite some time.  I've had a better response though on fanfiction.net, so have pretty much limited myself to that site over the past year and a half.  I continue to make revisions and correct errors on my fanfiction.net stories, while I don’t really do anything on ao3. I have been likened to a writing machine on a couple occasions.  To date, on fanfiction.net, I have published over 1.9m words.  Putting that in perspective, in three years I've published the equivalent of more than 7 volumes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the longest book in her series), or close to two and a half volumes of the Holy Bible.

Q: Do you have a certain routine you follow when you write?

A: I don’t have a set daily routine, but I do set myself a goal to complete a certain amount of work per week.  This has changed over time.  Currently, I set myself the goal to write at least one chapter of a story each week, to keep myself in line with my publishing schedule of one chapter per week.  If I am writing an installment for my COVID-19 series that is published in addition to my regular publishing schedule, I still try to write that in addition to my usual chapter writing for the week.  So, at times I write more in a week than other times. I am also working on revising one of my AU’s into a Christian historical romance I hope to publish professionally next year.  

Q: What is it like being a Christian author?

A: It brings me joy to spread a Christian message through my work, but, like anyone else, at times I do suffer self-doubt.  I've questioned in the past whether my limited audience makes worthwhile the enormous effort I put into writing these stories.  It can definitely be discouraging to get very little return on your work, and I have a bad habit of comparing myself to more “popular” writers in the fandom.  I am, however, getting better at recognizing my own self-worth, having confidence that the lack of readers is not a reflection on my ability and talent as a writer, but more a reflection on the general lack of interest from the majority of Sherlolly fans in reading stories with Christian themes and the values that go along with it (particularly sexual purity outside marriage). Just as I don’t care to read stories of characters with a colourful sexual history because I don’t agree with that kind of behaviour due to my Christian beliefs, I imagine those without similar beliefs are probably not interested in reading about sexual purity or abstinence before marriage, as it is not something they can relate to. Thankfully, I am blessed to have a small but vocal support group who really give me the impetus to keep writing these Christian stories.

Q: Are there any devices you use in your writing as a legally blind author?

A:  As I mentioned earlier, I absolutely would be lost without my iPad.  Actually, it is the larger sized iPad Pro.  I would also be lost without programs that give me the ability to resize the font so I can read it!  Thank God for technology!

If you made it to the end of this two-part interview, I hope you enjoyed getting to know my writing journey better.  God bless!

[prettywordsyouleft]

heyy I requested a Jinyoung pirate au for Chelle Chats somewhen at the end of last year and I wanted to ask for a continuation. Only if you have ideas for a continuation though! If not I'd like to ask you how you deal with when you start stories but as some point the plot just goes downhill? I don't know if you've ever experienced such a thing but I find myself enthusiastically starting a story but after a short while I always lose my creativity and it always ends up going into the same direction..

Hey anon!!! 

Can I be honest? I’d love to write you a second piece in this world, however, I’m actually planning on writing it out further into a series. I’m trying to figure exactly how to expand the world, as it’s one of my upcoming projects to tackle! Your request really sparked something in me to create this into a fully fledged world. I hope you don’t mind me not writing anymore now, and can look forward to the series (though, I will be making it a JB and Jinyoung one, sorry!)

As for your question, yes, I struggle with this feeling often. It’s the reason I probably will never write a novel. I lack in long-term commitment to a project. For me, I start out super excited, but either get bored, want to start other projects (this is really the biggest issue) and need to finish it first, or external pressures/opinions make me jaded.

For me, I think it’s best that I write the entire series from start to finish before posting it, as I’m more likely to stick to my concept and excitement if I do it that way. However, I tend to only succeed in doing this with shorter stories (4-7 parts). 

If I get impatient and start posting something early, before finishing the series in full offline, I manage to make the stories longer. There’s pros and cons to this... I’m inspired by the feedback I’m given and sometimes it shapes the world in a way I didn’t expect but it’s a pleasant surprise. Other times, it makes me feel a little suffocated and I just want to finish the story and escape that feeling. 

I place a huge amount of pressure on myself to perform well - not just as a writer, but in all aspects of life - and this itself can kill my creativity. 

How do I deal with this?

To be honest, not very well. I’m still learning what works for me and what doesn’t, even after years of writing. I think mindset helps a lot too. Reminding myself that I’m doing the best I can as the writer and person I am now is something I do quite a lot. In the Elizabeth Gilbert book Big Magic, she explains the concept of honouring the writer you are at the time, and supporting that instead of being upset you didn’t do enough or reach the envision you had in your head quite as closely as you hoped to. Writing is an evolving process, and there’s never a point in a writer’s life where we’ve reached our limit. Even a well-published author always has room to improve!

I also try to step away if I can and not force myself to write. Alternatively, writing something else to ensure the lack of motivation for the current story’s journey isn’t an overall block is something I check out. Can I still write a well-rounded story outside of this one? If so, what do I need to do to come back to this world? If not, then what is the reason I’m struggling to write overall? 

Asking yourself questions is the best option for finding solutions. If all fails, and you find yourself heading along the same way of ending a story yet again, maybe look into why you do that. Does the story ending that way upset you, or does it complete that world? If it’s the latter, perhaps it’s a part of your engrained style? I myself try to come full circle in almost every story I’ve written. I’ll tend to find something from the first part to connect into the last one. I do it so often now that half the time, I’m not even aware I’ve done it until I reread it and am pleasantly surprised. 

If it’s ending doesn’t please you, then maybe the story isn’t done. You have further options to continue it, hiatus it, or scrap it. Some ideas aren’t meant to make it to fruition and the fact that you put in the effort into that world is still valid. It still gave you experience and allowed you to play around with characterisation and world-building, etc. 

I’m sorry for this ramble (it was 3x in length but got a little too off tangent, haha) but hopefully you’ll find something in this reply that assists you in figuring a way to get through this.

And just keep writing... whether on that idea or something entirely new. The more you write, the more you develop natural understanding of how you write and what could be a problem for you now might just solve itself along the way, or open new paths for further enjoyment as the writer. 

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My ask box is open for this week’s Chelle Chats!