#that's inevitable. being good at something is great but has no implications on other people

[fulgursmediaanalysisdrama]

Nihilism is a positive, life affirming philosophy. Something my christian mother couldn't, or didn't want to, understand

And Schoppenhauer is interesting but only worth anything when you conclude he is wrong

Berserk as a Nietzschean Tragedy — Art, Morality, Affirmation by Jonas Čeika

[satyricplotter]

pairing: dick grayson x reader

word count: 3.2k (i think?)

warnings: rape mention (as per dick's canon)

notes: i keep thinking of applying one of my favourite manga/manhwa tropes with dick specifically, because it works so well, but i don't particularly care to put in the work of setting up that it'd take for it to land as well as it could. maybe later. as it is, i'll give you the quick rundown because i spent two days writing it lol

something ugly about you has made you undeserving of romance. you have spent your entire life puzzling out what it is and how to fix it. nothing much is special about you: the matter’s far from isolation, or becoming any particular sort of pariah. perhaps that'd be easier to explain. no. people leave you alone, your friends cherish you, your family loves you. it is not that you have not known affection, but that you have and so when you crash against the wall that horrible first time, it hurts all the more.

nothing changes after that. there is always a limit to where your interest can reach, unnamed but palpable. a line you cannot cross. it seems to you as if the entire world has reached a silent consensus during a meeting to which your attendance was not required and your input unnecessary. why would it be? this is not about you. after all, your ability to love has not become impaired. you like people. you’ve fallen in love. but who has ever loved you back?

this one facet of life has been closed off to you entirely, and you’ve been chased away from all attempts to form a romantic bond with unspoken threats of shame and implications of disgust. (a bit much of a display just for the offense of being little old you. you come to regard the matter so as you grow older and start curating some self-respect. it still stings as badly as scrubbing your skin raw under hot water, but not all the loathing is directed inward nowadays.)

regardless, you’ve learnt that you are undesirable, and nothing you can say or do will change that. you must be content with the other shapes that love can take. nothing that you want matters whatsoever.

you meet dick grayson one summer evening under exceedingly normal circumstances. you do not know about heroes or rogues, no batmans or nightwings. the person that crosses the threshold is none other than dick grayson, the handsome young man. suspicion does not cross anybody’s mind, and if it does, it comes only a good couple of thoughts after his darling smile and shapely thighs.

obviously you like him immediately. what’s not to like? he’s gorgeous.

you react to him with the tense wariness of someone hardened by years of useless crushes. trying to avoid him. trying to be normal when you invariably cannot. it’s fine. it’ll be fine.

you still crush on him.

it’s inevitable, at this point. he’s too pretty, too smart, too kind not to draw you in. every interaction comes a rush of exhilarating fear. at times, you manage to subdue yourself into normalcy, hang out with him with as much naturalness as you can muster. but then he does something particularly attractive and you’re back in square one, shoulders drawn together and so short with him he probably gets emotional whiplash. it’s as exhausting for you as it must be for him, and he still reacts to it with grace. it doesn’t help.

through your concerted efforts to be normal, or at least appear as much, you and dick become friends. not great friends, mind you, but good enough that you start hanging out on your own without any of your mutual friends present. and you only spend about three hours total pondering the meaning behind the phrasing of his texts. that’s gotta be some form of progress, right?

he sits at a little table away from the window, and beams when you arrive. coffee’s on him and conversation’s on you. you’ve got more in common than you first thought, but you go back and forth between imagining it must be fate and squashing down delusion, telling yourself you’re blowing it out of proportion.

at one point in time, a beautiful, sultry-looking woman approaches the table.

this sucks, you think, glancing away from dick’s bland mask of politeness. all of it is hopeless and it still sucks.

you and dick tense immediately, like you both know what’s coming. sure as ever, the woman smiles and asks for his number. you look away politely, sip at your drink. the proximity makes it useless to pretend you’re not eavesdropping (though it can hardly be called that when she came to your table), but you take care not to make any faces that’d give away the little storm brewing in your stomach.

you think about running off to the bathroom, get as far as shifting on your seat when dick shoots you a troubled look. the woman’s been at it for a little more than is appropriate. a minute or so more of insistence and she’ll be stretching the boundaries of her own dignity too far. you look away with pressed lips and move your hands under the table.

your alarm beeps.

“oh, shit, dude,” you gasp, hoping to land somewhere in the ballpark of realism. “It’s almost seven. we’ve got to go, or else we’re gonna miss the movie.”

dick gives the woman his apologies and swiftly runs out of the café with you hot on his heels. on the way to the movie theatre, you wanna ask the million questions running through your head—why’d he reject her? didn’t he like her? did he not think she was pretty? who is pretty for him? what’s his taste in partners? is he seeing someone?—but you know it’s a futile endeavor. what will you even get out of that? it’s clear dick didn’t enjoy the interaction either. you make small talk about something else, trying to draw his attention away from whatever conflicted feelings he’s moored in right now. just because you like him doesn’t mean you can’t be a good friend to him.

it’s a short walk. soon enough, he’s all smiles again. in the line for the popcorn stand, another two girls come up to him, this time much younger than you two. he’s nicer with them than he was before, but he rejects them all unequivocally.

“doesn’t it annoy you?” you can’t help but ask. when dick raises an elegant eyebrow, you panic and backpedal so hard you might as well have driven a truck through a storefront.

“a bit,” dick says, ignoring your rambling. you shut your mouth firmly closed when he gives you a sidelong glance, and continues, so very casually, “it’s worse when it comes from a friend rather than a stranger. so many people just try to befriend me because they’re looking for a relationship, or they want access to my body. it’s… tiring. i’m sure you can relate.”

“ah,” you say. your tongue feels numb, but you’re burning up under the weight of his gaze. “no. I don’t really get harassed like that or, um, asked out.”

“huh.” dick blinks. “really?”

“yeah,” you force out. blessedly, the attendant calls your attention. you jostle dick forward. “look, it’s our turn.”

dick orders popcorn. you get a large slushy that you’re not gonna finish. you make him pay. he complies with no question. inside the theatre, you spend all two hours and sixteen minutes of the showing in absolute silence. it is not so strange to be fixated on the movie, but you’re usually a little more chatty. under normal circumstances, you’d eagerly take the opportunity to lean closer to him, whisper something about the main character’s penchant for gummies and its relation to the degradation of the American working class. he’d glance at you and thoughtfully smile, and you’d catch a whiff of his cologne when you straightened.  for the rest of the movie, the twinkle of his eye as he forwent the film for your conversation would be all you’d think about.

such is not the case now.

you can tell when you’ve been summarily dismissed. in fact, you appreciate when people are subtle about their rejections. it’s always all the more humiliating when they feel the need to bring it out into the open, like your affections have been so blatant they must be commented on, debated.

the rest of the evening is spent convincing yourself that this is good, that this means it’ll be better for yourself going forward. you’ll be less distracted, if anything. dick’s attempts to discuss the movie with you afterwards fall flat, as the only thing you really want is to get home and stare at your ceiling.

when you’ve reached your apartment door, and are turning to enter after a hurried goodbye, dick calls your name.

“look,” he says, running a hand through his hair unsurely. “I don’t usually do this.”

oh, no. dread fills you up. he’s breaking up with you and you’re not even dating.

you swallow. “dick—”

“I like you a lot,” he interrupts. your teeth clang the way you shut up so fast. in fact, you feel a little dizzy. he continues before you can even process that first sentence. “I think you and I could be really good friends, and I’d love if we could continue seeing each other to, you know, hang out and talk. I do truly appreciate your insight. is that okay?”

you blink fast some three or four times. it must be comical, the face you’re making, because the corner of dick’s lips pulls upward despite him trying to keep a serious air.

“I thought we were already friends…?” you say, at a loss for anything else to say.

“yes!” he beams. “we are.”

“okay,” you respond, perplexed. this is so far out of left field. “um. text me when you’re home?”

“yeah.” he grins. gorgeous grin, to be sure, but why? “for sure.”

“cool.” you give him an awkward thumbs up and scurry inside.               

it is… baffling. you spend all of that night wide awake and pondering. dick must’ve misconstrued something, or either you missed a crucial step in your relationship. otherwise the end to that evening makes absolutely no sense. the only thing you can conjure up is that dick must reject a lot of people who, like he said, try to befriend him only to get with him or worse, only to fuck, and it’s not very likely most of those people stay in his life once it is clear he won’t budge on the matter. the fact that you didn’t immediately turn your back on him must’ve come to him as a pleasant surprise.

it’s sad. like, really fucking sad, actually.

that very sadness—and the memory of his handsome, bright grin—turns your outlook inside out. why do you like dick? clearly he’s got the looks and the personality, but do you really know him? what do you know of him? you make a list of things you’ve learned about him in the short time of knowing him. it’s not long.

you come to the conclusion, mortifyingly so, that you don’t, in fact, like dick grayson. that, if anything, the only thing you like is the idea of the boyfriend he could be, which is not the boyfriend that he is (you know nothing about that). it’s the social acumen inherent in bagging such a hottie, and the sparkling sexual attraction bound around it, that really prompt your crushing. it’s not dick as a person. frankly, you think, a little hysterically, could be anyone, really. didn’t even have to be dick. he was just there, the handsomest person in the room. an apt target for the voracious hunger of your heart. you’d mooned and mooned over him for ages and it turns out it wasn’t even about him.

god, you’re such an asshole.

in penance, you endeavor to actually get to know dick without the embarrassment of a crush between you. and it does, in fact, help. dick’s eager to get to know you too, now that you’ve both formally acknowledged you’re friends (such a weird practice, fresh out of kindergarten behavior, but, as you soon find out, dick is weird about plenty and not entirely well-adjusted as an adult). you go on outings together, attend one another’s events, text sporadically throughout the day. you learn which video games dick likes, you tell him which movies are your favorites. it’s fun and light and uncomplicated now that you’ve freed yourself from the constraints of romantic expectation.

not everything’s good. dick’s got bad habits, which grate on you. is it so difficult to put the stupid toilet seat down? can he not learn to chop vegetables in chunks smaller than an elephant’s baby teeth? can he, for the love of god, stop yelling at the tv during horror films?  he’s got some serious character flaws, too. you find about those a lot more slowly, but they don’t cause too much trouble.

you fight one or two times due to dick suddenly abandoning you in the middle of an outing with no regard for your safety, and his tendency to get pissy instead of saying whatever’s upsetting him upfront when he knows, you’ve warned him that you’re stupidly thoughtless about your actions at times. all those are things you wouldn’t have come to experience if you hadn’t given the man a chance to actually be a friend. it’s kind of heartening, actually, to have come so far.

sometimes your crush rears up its head in the middle of nowhere. it’s kind of hopeless by now, but you can’t help the fact that dick’s attractive. neither can he, anyway. you just watch him sometimes, the way the sun hits his eyes, lashes sweeping over his cheeks. it makes you go tongue-tied and silly, but the moment always passes. it has to pass. you struggle against it, recall every time dick has upset you or insulted you in one way or the other. some days it’s easy as buttering toast, others you can barely think around the searing heat of your desire. those are bad days for all involved.

one evening, when you’ve grown close enough you’ve begun to think about dick grayson as maybe, possibly, only-if-he-says-so-too your closest friend, he tells you about catalina.

he does it over the phone line, during your almost-nightly calls. over the months, you’ve taken up the practice of teasing him about handsome people he clearly finds attractive in a desperate bid to divert attention and train yourself for when you have to do it for real. this is not one of such cases, and as soon as you realize this, you sober up immediately.

he says it so simply. talks about it like it’s just a hazard of life. there’s a tight hardness at the edge of his voice, but other than that, he speaks like it’s normal Tuesday for him.

not so much for you.

“is it okay if I come over?” you request over the line.

for a moment, the only thing you hear is dick breathe. “yeah,” he croaks, and you’re bolting out the room immediately.

you don’t know how to react to this other than with a shaky sort of desperation. it’s been years since it happened. there’s nothing you can do about it now. there’s something big he’s leaving out, which you notice but don’t point out. a big lump forms on your throat as he speaks. dick tells you when you arrive that the woman is behind bars for an unrelated crime and the only way you stop yourself from wishing ill on her out loud is the fact he looks so politely disjointed, you know your fury will only startle him.

and you feel it so frightfully, the fury.

you love dick, you realize. beyond the fancies and the underlying attraction, you love dick as a person, as a friend. he’s one of yours now.

the evening morphs into a casual sleepover. you don’t interrogate him, and he seems torn between wanting to say more and grateful you’re not prying. you keep yourself open to the possibility, but also try to comfort him as best you can. you make dinner. you put on a movie. you talk and joke and quietly watch. he invites you on the bed with him because his couch is a nightmare to sleep in and his guest room is “unavailable”, whatever that means. you don’t even think about it, just follow.

lying together under the sheets with the lights off, the rest of your feelings bubble up to the surface.

you ask before you clasp his hands between yours and look into his shiny eyes in the darkness. you try to tell him, how this single evening and all those that came before turned over your loyalty to him. how he can come to you for anything he ever wants or needs—your ear, your care, your protection. how much you appreciate his trust and how much you wish you could make anything, everything better for him. how much he deserves it.

“I’ll never leave you now,” you vow with fierce conviction, searching his eyes for any signs of doubt. any other time you would’ve questioned this statement with the sheer weight of infinite possibilities, but not now. tonight, truth is absolute and in your hand. “they will never take me from you. I will always be on your side, by your side. i’m serious, grayson. you’re not getting rid of me.”

a glimpse of  a watery smile is the only thing you see before dick throws his arms around you and buries his face in your neck. “couldn’t dream of it,” he whispers into your hair.

you hug him back as tightly as he is, murmuring platitudes and running your fingers through his hair. he falls asleep like that, in the cradle of your arms. he feels secure enough to do so, and you feel both proud and nauseous about it considering the secret you keep.

that he’s told you this at all, that he’s trusted you with such a thing—you know how big it is. you know you can never betray him.

you consider your inherent monstrosity, that little unspeakable thing that bars your from that special kind of love. you understand, firmly, that any desire you feel will never be received eagerly and joyfully. not by him or anyone else.  in silent fury, you vow to die before you be like her, to bestow upon this man your grotesque wanting with no regard for his own desire, for the integrity of his being.

that night, you press a kiss to dick grayson’s hair and let him go forever.

.

the next morning, dick watches as you leave. you turn back one last time to wave at him from the parking lot, a bright smile and tussled hair you didn’t bother to brush. you wear out the clothes he lent you to sleep, so harried last night in your haste to come over that you’d simply forgotten to pack pajamas. he suspects you hadn’t planned to stay the night at all, but he’d been damned if he’d let you go yesterday.

you’re pretty. he’s always thought so, but this morning, you’re prettier than ever. it’s the radiance of your heart shining through.

I will always be by your side, you’d said last night. you’d meant it completely, then. dick had been dazed, overcome. he couldn’t take the brightness of your eyes, the surety of your affection. he’d buried his head in your neck and fallen asleep breathing in the smell of your shampoo. in the morning, he’d woken up with your fingers carding through his hair and the gentle warmth of your body against his.

that was nice. he wonders what he has to do to make it happen again.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Has anyone asked you about erisol?

If no, then what's your opinion on them! :-)

I feel like people will be upset at me for this, but a completely platonic and completely lukewarm mutual dislike... they don't really like each other, but take no great issue with each other either. The boys are not fightingggg

So like. A common thing in fandoms is taking things at face value and not really reading any deeper into them. You see this a shitton with Eridan in general - lots of people take it 100% at face value that he's a casteist genocide liker, when it's pretty clear upon further examination that he's pretty much lying about being casteist and doesn't actually want to murder his friends. So, at face value, Eridan hates Sollux, and either wants to do spadesies with him, or go ashen with him. And so this has become a really popular ship, but the thing is... at basically every turn, the story kind of goes out of its way to point out that there's actually nothing between them. At least romantically.

See, Eridan does not actually hate Sollux, at least not to the level of pitch/ashen. TWICE before Sollux and Feferi start hanging out all the time, we see Eridan commenting on Sollux in a fairly neutral-negative way - the first time calling him "a drama machine" and noting that "it is fuckin pathetic," and the second time as "the dead guy who saved [Feferi]". And let's be clear about the former, Eridan is just kind of Like That, he's rude as fuck even about people he LIKES (calling his BFF Karkat an "assblood" and sarcastically referring to Feferi by her royal titles), so that's actually one of the less nasty things he's said about someone.

Meanwhile, on Sollux's end, he LITERALLY says "not interested" to what he perceives as pitch/ashen advances from Eridan. Like, actually just says those words out loud. Not even in a pesterlog, he actually just says those words with his mouth.

So it seems to me that there's a pretty clear case to be made here that Eridan and Sollux kind of just... don't really give a shit about each other, and probably wouldn't have interacted in any substantial way if not for Feferi's involvement. Especially because Eridan's chosen method of hitting on Sollux is with casteism, something he's already faking in the first place.

If we really want to dig into this, though, it's kind of - in my eyes - a lukewarm case of the hedgehog dilemma. They're a bit too similar, and it winds up causing them both mild pain to get too close.

They're both nihilists that kind of hate themselves. Sollux's mutated brain causes him a not-insignificant amount of discomfort, his visions of the future and of the "imminently doomed" have made him lose a lot of hope, and he blames himself for killing Aradia, something so painful that he didn't tell anyone else she died, to the point where most of the team - including Terezi and Tavros - had to find out after entering the game. Meanwhile, Eridan struggles with the perceived inevitability of a lifestyle that causes him nothing but distress, and his constant, overwhelming anxiety about it leads to constant stressing over whether or not he's "good enough"; whenever he's in severe emotional distress, he starts beating up on himself.

They also both front at being more okay with their problems than they actually are. Sollux has his 1337 hacker, two cool for you persona that he puts on, and Eridan is always trying to be the big bad sea dweller. For example, Sollux goes "I'm not trolling the humans, it's beneath me," but he's in Jade's trollslum, so the implication there is that he totally did try trolling, it went badly for him, and now he's pretending that he was always better than that. And I don't think I need to tell you how hard Eridan works to try and present himself as badass and scary and totally not deep in the throes of emotional anguish at all times.

And these are the similarities that ultimately make Erisolsprite so stable. Erisolsprite speculates that maybe the reason he hasn't exploded yet is that deep down, he loves to suffer. The truth is, there's nothing between the two that's really so objectionable that they would ACTUALLY hate each other; Eridan isn't actually casteist, and Eridan never really hated Sollux in the first place.

Neither would they bring each other any comfort or joy - Eridan doesn't have any sympathy for Sollux's baggage, since, like, what, he only killed ONE person, and was even under mind control, so it's not like it was really his fault. He's a drama machine. And Sollux wouldn't have sympathy for Eridan's problems, partially because they manifest in such cringeworthy, embarrassing ways (and Sollux is highly sensitive to not being cringe, seeing as he's always commenting on other people being embarrassing or overly earnest), and partially because - I mean, fuck it, he's a rich-ass sea dweller who doesn't need to worry about being harvested to be a battery for a living ship. And also he's an idiot.

That's kind of what their relationship is to me, you know? A tepid and lukewarm dislike. They're just similar enough to each other to understand the other, and just different enough to be like "ugh, but that guy suuuuuuuucks". It's very funny, but not really a ship, hahaha.

So what you really get from that is two guys that just kind of dislike each other. Not vehemently or diametrically enough for pitch or ashen, and not a trace of the requisite pity for flushed or pale. When you throw the two together into one sprite, it won't shut up about how much it hates itself, how each part of itself is flabberghasted by the other, and how much practically the only reason it doesn't explode is a resounding "meh."

Eridan likes to validate his despair; ironically, since it's all he's ever known, it's where he feels comfortable - and nobody would provide better doomscrolling material than the doom player. Similarly, Sollux likes to torment himself, suffering his guilt in silence, and Eridan has SO MUCH to feel guilty over. Combine them into one entity, and you have a guy who can reach SUCH levels of revelling in his own misery, you don't even KNOW.

Not that it's healthy or positive for either of them... just that it would be incredibly stable. It's their worst tendencies being satisfied by each other. Maybe that's a form of leprechaun romance, but it's certainly not a quadrant.

[tuiyla]

Hi! No pressure of course but is there any chance you could share some thoughts on 5.07 specifically? It’s considered a high point I think, and it’s obv a crucial one for Spike’s ch and his relationship with Buffy.

I'm determined not to let this one sit for months on end uwu

So, Fool For Love, great episode! Even just aesthetically it's very well put together and I really enjoyed how it rhymed with Angel 2.07. I feel like the watching order didn't matter though I did watch ATS and therefore Angel's POV first. It was about time we got some Spike flashbacks and I have to say they delivered. The Angel-related ones as well but the second Slayer subway sequence was just something else. Not that this was the first episode to do so but 5.07 really proved just how far BtVS has come and what they can do in just 45 minutes of television. Also, unrelated to other flashback thoughts but when they cut to 1998 with Spike and Dru I was trying to place it in my head and at first I was like "okay so like 20 years before Buffy." Lmaooo joke's on me for often forgetting how old BtVS is as a series. I feel at liberty to call it old as a fellow 1997 baby.

I thought the premise of getting Buffy and Spike to talk about Slayers and fighting and death was a little forced, Buffy getting injured all of a sudden and all. But it doesn't take away from how good what follows is and I'm glad the show returned to what was used to introduce Spike, the fact that his two Slayer kills are what really give him his reputation. And if anything, Fool For Love is just the hammering home of Spike's "violence and sex are the same" thesis. I know that's a theme throughout the show because duh, vampires and their metaphors and what with all the slaying, but Spike as a character really embodies it. And there are many interesting implications to consider about him willingly chasing Slayers, the people most likely to kill him. There's really a lot to say about his hedonsitic tendencies and this embodiement but I don't think I could add anything that people smarter than me haven't already offered all thoughts on haha.

I also appreciated that Spike was once again established as an unreliable narrator, one who boasts and and all but who has an emotional truth to speak of. His origin story of when he was still human checks out with everything he does as a vampire and I'm curious where the series will go with him. Because he is a soulless vampire and I'm sure there will be many an exploration of that and what it means for the concept of love, but at this point in the lore it's also been made pretty clear that one's human self influences their vampire one. And William was kind of... all about love? As a true romantic Victorian poet. And, particularly if we consider love(/sex) and violence the same, Spike's all about that too. So you know, I buy that he really does love Buffy. I think it started as lust and as obsession, but at this point in the story it is love. I was afraid the episode would end with Buffy pissing him off and several episodes would be about Spike acting all scorned and spiteful so the ending scene was a nice subversion. It made Spike's genuine affection all the more clear, because he is still a petty spiteful vampire who doesn't take rejection well but he also saw that Buffy was hurting and demonstrated that he has empathy. It's strange, sure, but I'm kinda digging the way the show is portraying it.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Spike and, inevitably, Spuffy, but now that I'm well into season 5 I have to say that I get it. And this is more in general rather than specific to the episode, but I think I get it. I proceeded with caution because fandom hype can be so misleading and I'm extra cautious of once bad boys for whom fandoms have soft spots. Very often I don't feel like the characters deserve it beyond being played by attractive white men. But from the start Marsters' performance as Spike has been unabashedly delightful and particularly from season 4 on it's been so easy to want to root for him. I won't yet say either way in terms of Spuffy because I don't yet know where I'll fall with them, but... I get it. Yeah, I can totally see why people would dig this. I have to say, some of Spike's pitiful attempts at just being in Buffy's presence rang all too true to me. Granted I'm not a soulless vampire, just a useless lesbian, but still.

What else to say specifically about the ep, hmm. Honestly not a lot, just that it was good. I know that might not sound like I'm appreciating the quality of eps like this appropriately but that's just because I'm speeding through episodes and processing everything at once. I do think Buffy s5 and Angel s2 are really really solid seasons of television with some truly exceptional episodes, 5.07 among them. The interplay of the flashbacks and Spuffy in the present and the line blurring and disappearing by the end are chef's kiss. I'll have to see Their Story unfold fully before passing verdict on the fight scene but yeah, it's great TV. And dare I say, Buffy was showing signs of being attracted to Spike herself just not realizing it yet. That's the vibe anyway, just like it took Spike a while to have that 'oh' moment. We've all been there.

[bethanydelleman]

Why Did Fanny Not Explain Henry’s Character to Sir Thomas?

She longed to add, “But of his principles I have”; but her heart sunk under the appalling prospect of discussion, explanation, and probably non-conviction. Her ill opinion of him was founded chiefly on observations, which, for her cousins’ sake, she could scarcely dare mention to their father. Maria and Julia, and especially Maria, were so closely implicated in Mr. Crawford’s misconduct, that she could not give his character, such as she believed it, without betraying them. She had hoped that, to a man like her uncle, so discerning, so honourable, so good, the simple acknowledgment of settled dislike on her side would have been sufficient. To her infinite grief she found it was not.

When I imagine how it would have gone if Fanny did start to speak about her cousins, it does not end well for her...

To begin with, Fanny, who is in extreme distress at the moment and is not a great speaker at the best of times, is trying to explain to her uncle what happened. It's a long story, basically from Sotherton until the end of the play. She’s unlikely to be that clear. This is a time that Sir Thomas doesn’t even want to hear about, and he will probably focus on Maria’s conduct, which he knows from his own observations was not proper towards her fiance. When Fanny starts to explain that Henry was flirting with both of them, I can imagine Sir Thomas saying something like:

“Well he’s a charming young man, are you sure you didn’t read too much into his lively manners? Perhaps he is only a little injudicious in his attentions. Perhaps you misunderstood.”

Then Fanny has to explain the play, which again, will probably make Sir Thomas more angry at his daughter (and perhaps his other children) than Henry. But I still think he might not even believe her, which leads him inevitably to Edmund.

Now things really go downhill fast for Fanny, because Edmund is completely willing to excuse basically all of Henry’s behaviour, especially once he hears about the proposal. We know this because that is what Edmund in Ch 35. So Sir Thomas talks to Edmund, Edmund says, “We were all wrong together in the play. I didn’t think Henry showed any partiality for Julia, that was just people hoping too much. He's just charming.”

Also, remember that everyone except Fanny likes Henry. Edmund was excited to see Henry come back to Mansfield. Sir Thomas likes him.

Fanny would probably be in a worse position with the Bertrams at this point (and not just because shooting the messenger is indeed a real thing) because Sir Thomas would think she’s being ridiculous. He trusts Edmund to be the clear-eyed rational child and he doesn’t know that Edmund is completely blind when it comes to the Crawfords. Really, as an excuse “I don’t love him” works better. It is subjective and Sir Thomas can’t really prove Fanny wrong. But “He has bad principles” is objective and now Sir Thomas thinks Fanny has poor judgement and no legitimate reason for refusing Henry. And Fanny has been forced to disparage the Miss Bertrams.

I really think Fanny made the right decision to just not say anything about the play.

[arcademgmt]

and now i talk about the way yuki presents himself and his emotions and how it ties into his relationship with kieran. Nightmare incoming

so when yuki speaks on his Not So Great past experiences to people i think he walks a very treacherous line bc there is an inherent emotional aspect to them and like. he has to share emotions sometimes for the sake of other people. the only time he's really willing to do to it is if he thinks it'll help someone else. for example he has to do it to show dahlia he understands her plight. he has to express to kieran how Not Fun things have been for him to a degree.

however! he fine-tunes the way he talks about it to make it as unspecific as he can i think. like he will acknowledge the existence of that guilt and such but not his very specific experience with it and personal thoughts. and he's pretty good at being avoidant about it in a way that makes it seem like he has it under control.

he just kind of hopes nobody thinks too hard about the implications and if they do he can skirt around it if they ask and make it sound like he's got it all together.

it's interesting because i think like. generally speaking he isn't great with words right. like when he is speaking candidly. but if you pay attention you notice when he talks about this kind of stuff, it sounds like he's speaking naturally until you remember HIS way of speaking naturally is kind of scattered. like this is all shit he has rehearsed in his head a million times and just managed to figure out how to intone himself to make it SOUND natural.

so tying into all of that. an important facet of kieran and yuki's dynamic before the ending of ID is that the yuki kieran is that kieran is idolizing is a very idealized version of yuki. like... he is Blinded by this idea of someone strong and kind who seems to go on all these crazy adventures that he's only ever dreamed of right. because he felt like that kind of fantasizing was the only thing he ever really had and now that he sees someone ACHIEVING that he's like. that needs to be me. and i feel i need to Prove to him that it CAN be me. but here's the thing right.

kieran (albeit in a very strange way) is only seeing what he WANTS to see here. he is not seeing what got yuki to this point. he is not seeing that that is NOT something you would ever want to go through. and while he should not be putting yuki on a pedestal the way that he does or behaving the way that he is by any means. it is not entirely his fault for not seeing just how bad it really is because yuki is a fucking professional at hiding the circumstances that got him to where he is and the feelings that come with it. he is excellent at maintaining the persona of a friendly, extroverted open-book type because to a degree... he is actually like that! he genuinely is very friendly and extroverted but the open book part isn't as simple. he's open until you start asking about. certain personal things. and the way he avoids it/plays it off makes it seem like he's made peace with it/has his feelings under control and just prefers not to discuss it for personal reasons when the truth is he Absolutely Fucking Does Not Have It Under Control. in floretverse canon it is essentially inevitable that if you are the kind of trainer like yasuta or yuki you have been and will be exposed to Horrors Unfit For The Human Experience. and kieran does not know this. the first idea he gets of it is after the terapagos battle in which yuki just like. makes frighteningly intense eye contact with him (keep in mind that this is also the first time kieran REALLY looked into his eyes) and basically goes "you do not want to be me i promise" and does not elaborate further. and that's when it starts to sink in that there is more that he doesn't know. because in all reality he hasn't known yuki that long and Couldn't know and it makes him feel terrible for being so naive about it.

not only does kieran feel terrible about being naive about yuki's situation and how he glorified it in his head but now that he's picking up on how. Off. yuki is because he's really paying attention now. He's Worried. and if anybody knows what it's like to avoid talking about something and will be able to spot it from a mile away even at its most well-hidden it is him. he's already seeing what yuki's doing. all he had to do was get out of his own head and look a little closer. interesting because he spent so much time trying to get into yuki's head before he kinda snapped out of it but the yuki he was trying to replicate sort of. Wasn't real. but the second he is not so blindsided by his own desires and this Idea Of Him that he's created…!

[ciaossu-imagines]

hiiii!! pros and cons of dating yamamoto (khr)?

Hello, hello! Of course, my dear anon!

Pros

Yamamoto has a very unique skill at making people feel at ease and important and seen and it's no different with his partner. Any partner he has will always find him a great listener for their problems, will find any successes, no matter how small, heartily celebrated, and will end up feeling like the most fascinating, beautiful, amazing person when around Yamamoto, especially so when given his undivided attention.

His partner will find themselves gaining not just a lover but an entire family. Tsuyoshi is an involved father and would want to meet anyone Takeshi found that important and he would immediately treat Takeshi's partners as family, sometimes even after they broke up. He'll end up spoiling Takeshi's current partners, sometimes just as much and if not more so at times, as Yamamoto does!

The most fun dates in the world. Honestly, no lie. Yamamoto has so much energy and loves trying new things and he will actually put a lot of work into planning dates. But because he is so active and so fun to be around just by himself, even the lower key dates will end up feeling like amazing experiences!

Cons

Yamamoto, while objectively a pretty great partner, can also be very, very oblivious to some things. It would take a while for him to even have realized you were interested in him and even longer to have started dating you, as he's not much into dating anyone he doesn't know well and isn't already friends with. He'll be oblivious to certain things throughout the relationship, like indications that you want things to progress in the relationship, indications that you want things to turn physical, how important certain things, dates or actions are to you. It's not that he means to ignore these or isn't paying attention, it's simply that sometimes he just simply doesn't see them, especially if you're only throwing subtle hints. Honestly, it's normally better to state plain out what you want or how important something is in the relationship so you guys can find a compromise or have discuss it or he can give it to you because hints or implications will always miss their mark when it comes to Yamamoto.

I really, really hope you aren't jealous at all. Yamamoto is a good looking guy, very friendly, and he will always have admirers. Sometimes it might even look like he is being flirtatious with others, though it will always be just him being his usual very friendly self - he would never once think to be disloyal. But admirers there will be and he'll have plenty of people who will want to spend time with him or will want his attention, to say nothing of his involvement and time spent with Tsuna and the family, and jealousy of all that, while he would do his best to understand, would inevitably tear apart his relationships unless his partner handled it well.

Going along with that....any partner needs to understand that, while Yamamoto will love them, they will always come in second place in some ways. He has so much going on in his life between family, baseball, the Mafia, and friends and is so busy that he won't be able to make a lot of time for them. Constant quick answers to texts or daily dates are not something he'll ever be able to do! He'll try his best but he can sometimes leave his partners feeling lonely, unwanted or second-best. He hates knowing, if they tell him this, that he is making them feel that way but he really is only one man with so much going on, that if they cannot appreciate that he is trying his best and demand a lot more of his time, he may leave the relationship rather than keep failing them or hurting them, no matter how much he did love them.

[popmusicu]

                  The biggest negative criticism of today’s most popular music (which can be resumed to urban music, mainly Reggeaton and Trap) has come from older people who disapprove the road that youth culture has taken by expressing assesments such as that it’s not only way too simple and dumb but that it’s also disgustingly over sexual, that the clothes used by its fans and artists look ridiculous, that it lacks artistic depth and that it promotes values that are harmful for society in general. This argument usually receives a response that leaves it apparently null, with no convincing answer back  opening at the same time an interesting subject about the spirit of counterculture. The response I’m talking about is the idea that, just like it has happened many times over music history, these genres will become more appreciated and respected with time. This argument in sustained in the similarity between the criticism of different genres over music history: just like Trap and Reggeatón, rock music, for example, the most prestigious form of Pop music, was criticized during the 60s and 70s for being too sexually lascive,for wearing clothes and haircuts that were too messy, for excessive use of recreational drugs and for promoting a kind of music that strayed too far away from traditional good music (classical, for example). By this logic, urban music could easily become in the future just as prestigious as rock music is nowadays, an idea that sounds in todays light, by the low, improbable.

                It is a strong argument. After all, it can’t be denied that the criticism of both genres is indeed scaringly similar. In my opinion though, it doesn’t really hit the center of the problem. For me, there are in Reggeaton and Trap, good an bad artists, good and bad music, just like in every possible form of art that exists. To dismiss a genre as completly infertile and just bad, is an excessively simple aproach. On the other hand, to dismiss the bad opinions that older people have about these genres just as something that old people will always do, may be a right intuition but it shouldn’t let us make the mistake of leaving it at that. This phenomenon has bigger implications than this ageist argument shows at first. It’s not that older people just can’t keep up with younger music, it’s rather that younger music is aesthetically stressing the world as we know it in such a radical way, that the world older people have witnessed, created and comfortably relaxed on is inevitably changing on them. Trap and Reggeaton have aesthetic implications that affect not only youth culture, but also pop culture and culture in general, including sexuality, drugs, fashion, violence, song’s production and much more, including the understanding of Rock. If a great part of society still doesn’t understand why youth and pop culture is changing in the way it is, it’s because they aren’t even aware of what kind of meaning and reason is behind the aesthetic shift that is being promoted by the youth. They can ony sense the inminent change from the surface. But just like it always happens, at the end of the present decade the world will have changed into a whole different thing. And with that, also every little thought scheme and feeling sense will have changed too. We must dive in the specifics of the tension between old and new aesthetics, investigate where does it express itself and the meaning behind such change, meaning that will never be one dimensional or simple. Only by diving Deep into todays spirit of counterculture we’ll be able to understand this problem better.

Gabriel Godoi

[angeli-marco-writes]

Sherlock Holmes - Kiss Me, Mr Detective

A/N - Season 1!Sherlock, the cutie. And friends to lovers. Two of my favourite things. I do not own Sherlock Holmes, the character, the universe, the adaptations or anything: this is a work of fiction set on the BBC adaptation of Sherlock. Did I still write 8.2k words (exactly) for it? Yes. I also don’t own the song or the lyrics used within, and if you fancy it, listen to ‘Kiss Me’ by Ed Sheeran while reading.

Warnings - Bad language. Mentions of murder and drug usage. Mild angst. Smut, loss of virginity, masturbation, oral m receiving, penetration, unprotected sex, so 18+.

Summary - After a fight with John leaves Sherlock feeling particularly down, he calls on the one person who is always there to support him. Only tonight, it’s different. Feelings come to a head, exploration ensues, but is this just a one time thing? That depends on whether she stays the night...

TO SHERLOCK, it’s just another normal day, whereas to John? He’d rather not admit how regularly these awful days roll around. Sure, the case didn’t go as well as it could’ve, and Sherlock admittedly could’ve made much more of an effort to comfort John after the apparent ‘heartbreak’ he endured. He just could not understand it. Why the hell was John so emotionally responsive to a case they’d been on for less than twenty four hours which turned out to be a bust anyway? 

“You are absolutely unbelievable!” 

“People die every day, John. You’ve killed people, as have I. It isn’t that great a surprise.” Sherlock deadpans, picking up his teacup, raising it to his lips, drawing a long sip from the warm liquid. 

“Oh, yeah, of course. The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone, that never mused on sorrow but its own.” John mocks. “Do you not even care that people are still dead despite the fact you solved the case?”

“They’d be dead either way,” he reiterates, “at least we got to them before they completely decomposed. Will me caring about them stop them from being dead? No, Dr Watson, it will not.”

“Sherlock!”

“John!” He mimics. 

John slams his hands down on the desk, shaking the wood and everything resting on it, surely sending the vibrations through the floor and notifying Mrs Hudson of their ‘domestic’ as she so likes to call them. The buffalo even begins to swing. John’s tea is long forgotten, but Sherlock’s is keeping him grounded, calm, as John waggles his fist in Sherlock’s passive, blank face. 

“You-” he pauses, gulping down breath. “You are a fucking machine, I can’t even deal with you right now. How dare you be so cold hearted and untroubled by this. You’re a disgrace.”

As if he hasn’t heard that one before, Sherlock scoffs. 

Placing his teacup back down with a clink, he stands, the darkness of the night, of the room, closing in on them both. Nights like these really are danger nights, any night John leaves him. That’s what's coming next, but there isn’t a thing he knows to say or do to prevent the inevitable. He’ll simply just text Her instead, she’ll keep him grounded. 

“Why? Emotional context? Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow, whether raised at a puppet show, a funeral, or a battle, is your grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior should be always apathetic.” 

With a huff like a bull, John viciously turns on his heel, blaspheming under his breath, cursing Sherlock out. He reaches for his coat and snatches it off the stand, slamming the door open. 

“MACHINE.” John screams before pulling the door shut with a great slam, seething, the coat stand still rocking in his wake. 

John’s footsteps thunder down the stairs, but before he’s even gone, Sherlock’s phone is withdrawn, and he’s tapping out a message.

Can you come over? Please? SH

It wouldn’t usually bother him as much. The case didn’t phase him, at all, but John’s opinion did. It always does. But today was a particularly long day of being brutish and rude, cold and distant, his usual and true self, but John’s more and more impatient with him now. 

Being called a ‘machine’ is, again, nothing unusual, but this time it stings a little more than usual, especially after his recent arrest, and a fallout with Molly. He only has one person left, right now, who doesn’t hate him. His longest friend, the one he keeps away from it all so as to not tarnish her life with his misdeeds; Y/N, the one he can always rely on.

He knows she’s arrived by the sound of his window crashing open. Crawling up the bricks, skimming the drainpipe, latching onto the ivy; it’s her usual manner of entry. She never uses the door. 

Putting his cups and saucers into the sink, he makes his way through the house, opening his bedroom door to find her already sitting there on the bed, her coat hung up on the hook, her work clothes clinging to her body. 

“Hey there Mr Detective, you okay?” she asks as jovially as she can muster.

The way he ambles across the room, his dressing gown floating behind him, and slumps down onto the bed, instantly tells her he’s not okay at all. She can’t help but to look upon him sympathetically, edging a smidge closer to him, until he’s prompted enough to wrap his arms around her torso, finding his rightful place tangled around her. She knows him well enough - his past, and his current life - to realise she’s the only person he’s ever felt comfortable enough around to do this with, and that brings her a certain swelling pride in her bosom, one that doesn’t go unnoticed by Sherlock as he feels her skin heat up against his cheek. 

It doesn’t take long, either, for his head to follow suit, burying into her chest. He’s always, always had a thing for her boobs, ever since they were in uni together. 

That’s something so special about the two of them, he doesn’t have to say anything for her to know he’s not okay the way he does with everyone else. And naturally, he can read everything about her in a split second.

“I’m here, bud.”

Above all else, he just needs to know someone is there for him in moments like these. The world is cruel to him, and Y/N wishes more than anything that it wasn’t. Upon instinct, her hands stray, one to his back, pressing against the silk of his dressing gown, the other cradling his long neck, fingers knotting in the dark curls there. 

She isn’t sure how long she stays there, simply holding him, feeling every twitch of his muscles, every breath of his against her skin, but she likes it. Of course she does, every time she likes it. Sherlock brings her an inordinate amount of comfort at the best of times, today is no exception, especially with what the day has held. Even when she’s the one comforting him, he doesn’t realise how much he helps her too. 

His flat is so familiar, his bed as comfortable as her own. She knows his sock index, she’s studied his periodic table over his shoulder more times than she’d care to admit, and she even has her own toothbrush in the bathroom in case she has to pop over for an emergency freshen up. Sherlock has, and always will be, her first port of call, and that she remembers as she shifts further onto the quilted bedspread, her phone on his oak bedside locker. 

His head begins to stir against her chest, his curls tickling her collarbones, small hums escaping his lips as he pushes himself up, his elegant yet trembling hands still splayed on her waist.

“I could feel your heart beating weirdly, what’s wrong?” he asks, quirking his eyebrows. 

“Just the usual.” she vaguely replies.

Sherlock isn’t having it, though, and scans her a little more. “You’re still in your work clothes.”

“Great deduction. I was hoping you’d go a little deeper, though.”

“You hate wearing work clothes longer than necessary, which means you had plans straight after work, considering you finished… five hours ago? That’s your usual time for today. Counting overtime, forty five minutes, walk to your car, another ten, but your umbrella wasn’t working, round that up to an hour, leaving at 6. You arrived home, no, not home, at your boyfriend’s house for dinner. However, you’re not comfortable enough with one another yet for you to use his shower, or perhaps you are, but you elected not to, and stay in damp clothes that only had seventeen minutes to dry with the heater on in your car for the journey there. You ate dinner, Mexican, had a glass and a half of five percent wine, realised you couldn’t drive, but you didn’t particularly want to stay. Nonetheless you sat and watched the telly with him for hours, football, I can see the dreariness in your eyes. I know how much you hate it, and frankly, same. You stayed for almost all of the match, seeing as you’re now sober, but something else happened.” She lulls her head to the side, prompting him, her smile not meeting her eyes. “As soon as the match ended, he tried to make a move on you, he pressed his mouth to yours, he tried to push his hand up your skirt;” his throat bobs with a vicious gulp; despising the thought of anyone else laying a finger on her, “you swatted him away, rightfully so.” 

He pauses a minute, his harsh tone of voice and his sharp face softening. He can see the vulnerability in her eyes, her walls about to crumble. This woman he appreciates so much. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

Smiling melancholically up at him, she brings her hand back to his hair, her fingers carding through the soft curls. His face buries back into her chest just as her voice offers a broken whisper, “I broke it off. I was the one who couldn’t commit this time.” 

And as she lays her head on top of his, her breathing more shallow, resounding in her chest, he dwells over those very words. The way she said them, not to mention the words themselves, hold a myriad of meaning. What could she possibly-

Oh.

The subtext, yes, impeccable. She’s always had a way with implications and subtext, always knowing that the likelihood of him actually picking up on it is little to none. But now, now he’s become trained to her, her way of life, her way of thinking, her way of speaking. This is too good an opportunity to miss. If she means what he thinks she means, ever hopeful, then this is completely unfamiliar territory. 

Gathering all of his courage in one deep breath, he begins to pepper kisses on her skin. The faintest brush of his lips on the tops of her breasts, all that’s available to him with her shirt the way it is. He feels her heart flutter, her breathing stutter, but despite the chemical flush of her chest, he still isn’t quite sure she likes it. Not until he feels her grip on his hair increase, and he glances up to see her head thrown back. Her spine delicately arches against his hand, thrusting her chest further into his face. 

His nimble fingers reach for her buttons, undoing the top two, giving him space enough to find the valley between her breasts. Lathering kisses there, licking the swells of her boobs, his tongue pulsates with the increased thrumming of her heart. The sensation is new, so unbridled, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with the stirring in his loins right about now. That unknowing is only further amplified by the sound that rips from her chest when he involuntarily bites down on the supple flesh. It couldn’t be… a moan?

Sure, he understands the chemistry of it, the reactions that occur in the synapses of the brain, the pheromones and hormones released when one is aroused, but this is all new to him. And, from his embarrassingly basic level of theory, surely that doesn’t start until some more stimulation on other parts of the body commence? Nipples, perhaps something lower down… then again, what does Sherlock know?

Of course it’s an intimate moment, the closest he’s been to a woman before, and maybe that’s why he freezes, stops, and she tugs his head up by his hair, her gentle, pleasured smile with her lips softly parted deepening the look of bewilderment painted onto his face. Her eyes are twinkling, alight with an excitement he hasn’t seen for far too long. 

“What are you doing?” she whispers. 

He shrugs his shoulders with a sudden force, his dressing gown falling off a little. “I don’t know. But now I feel like I read your pining words all wrong.” 

She gasps, a wheezing sound, sucking the air from the room. She smacks his arm gently, muffled by his button-down and dressing gown. “I wasn’t pining! I was saying.”

“Hmm, same difference.” 

Everyone must acquiesce when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. “But no, you didn’t read them wrong at all, but I know you don’t see me that way, you don’t feel things that way.” 

He pauses, his beautiful plump lips pursed, fidgeting on the bed. Brushing her hair off her face reveals the pain she expressed. However, her eyes glued on his, sadness is betrayed in every line of his young, clean-shaven face. His entire bone structure is taking a nosedive. 

“For you, I’ve been feeling everything from hate to love to lust, and I guess that’s how I know I want to hold you close.”

“Sherlock...” she whispers, her singular word an inflection of surprise. 

Never tearing his eyes from her, his hand comes up to her cheek, rubbing his thumb over the slightly blushing skin, searching her face, with his big blue eyes, for a shred of reluctance. But, all he sees is her, so he elects to do what his heart is yelling at him to do for once, and kisses her breathless. His full lips holding hers, his one hand on her face, the other still wrapped around her back. Hers fly around his neck, clinging to him for dear life.

It doesn’t take long, their movements steadily heating, for their previously slow, intimate kiss to grow into something more, Y/N pulling herself up from the bed and making herself comfortable on Sherlock’s lap. His breath hitches in his throat, a cute little hiccupping sound escaping his lips in between embraces. 

As much as he loves just this, soft caressing and gentle petting, he just knows she wants more. He does too, that much is evident from the length prodding at Y/N’s inner thigh as she moves gently on his lap. She won’t make a move, though, he’s too inexperienced, and she’s too much of a sweetheart to corrupt him, so she thinks. Ever since he first saw her, she’s been corrupting him slowly. He didn’t realise at first, but over the years, he began to understand, and now he’s in too deep. 

For Y/N? It’s always been him. Every breakup she’s had, she’ll come to Sherlock’s flat, full well knowing the real reason she broke up with them, because she couldn’t commit, because she was too caught up on him. 

Skimming his hands beneath her shirt, he savours the press of his hands on her bare skin, warmth seeping from her body into his, his fingers dancing along her spine. Electricity shocks her in bursts, unlike anything else, from his touch alone. 

“May I take your shirt off?” he asks. 

“Fuck, yes.” she groans. “May I do yours?”

“Be my guest.”

In a tangle of limbs, a few buttons pop off, and eventually, two shirts make it out the other side, tossed from the bed and into the laundry pile. Aka Sherlock’s floor. He’s like that: sock indexes, yet he won’t get a hamper. A walking contrast.

His thumbs press beneath the band of her bra, savouring the pressure of the flesh that falls into his hands, but that’s as far as he gets. 

“Never undone a bra before?”

He shakes his head sheepishly. “I know the theory. Just… you always wear peculiar ones.”

“I wear relatively normal bras, and this one is certainly bog standard. Had I known you’d be undressing me Mr Detective, I’d have worn something nicer.”

“Just do it for me.” He requests, chuckling. 

She unfastens her bra, and allows her breasts to spill from the cups, into Sherlock’s awaiting hands. The gasp that erupts from him sends Y/N’s brain into overdrive. He’s cupped her chest through her shirt before, buried his nose into her cleavage countless times, but never before have they had such skin on skin contact. Her lips press to his neck, shifting her closer to him. Sucking on his pressure point, she receives a similar gasp in response, only this one is more guttural, more a sound of pleasure than surprise. He’s wilting from a single kiss to his neck. 

“Has no one ever given you a hickey?” She husks in his ear, her voice alone sending tremors down his spine. 

“N- fuck, no.”

“I’ll make it worth it. All of this.”

“I know you will.”

She fuses her lips onto his again, savouring the faint hesitations as he grapples with his breath, eager to get some control on his mind with all that’s happening. Never did she ever think Sherlock would be here beneath her, his rough fingertips brushing over her peaked buds, and his palms dancing over her waist. Never did she think she’d hear him whisper his next words, either, not in a million years. 

“More.” he pleads. “Can we do��� more? Whatever that entails?”

“That depends what you want to do.”

“Get me out of these damn trousers. They're rather uncomfortable.”

She snorts lightly, a piggy like sound, the one they bonded over all those years ago. “I can feel why.”

“I imagine you want out of your work trousers, too.”

“God, yes; they’re ghastly.”

“I don’t think so.” he hums. “You look nice.”

Her cheeks begin to burn, blood rushing to colour them, betraying her true feelings, but as he tweaks her nose playfully, the little snort escapes again. 

They were in the dining hall, second week of university, almost ten years ago, and Y/N was sitting with her friends, downing enough coffee to sink a ship, eating her hangover away, when her friends decided to make her laugh with tales of last night's drunken events. Unbeknownst to her, one of the greatest minds of the twenty-first century was sitting just a few seats down on the half-empty bench, watching her perceptively in his periphery. That’s when he first heard the sound. The cutest thing, and it startled him into action, beginning his deductions almost instantly. Admittedly, her student ID on the table aided him a little. 

He shocked her from her haze, too, as soon as he spoke her name. 

“Y/N, eighteen, jurisprudence first year, freshers week over with. You left a boyfriend back home, but you’re more sad about leaving your dog, as I would be. You don’t particularly care about law but know it’s a good undergraduate to receive anyway. Dyed hair, extrovert, killer hangover, and apparently there’s a little piggy living inside your nose. Sherlock Holmes, would you like some aspirin?”

“That’s weird; what are you, some kind of detective?” She asked, sans malice, a playful bounce to her words. 

“Chemistry, going for a masters. But I do like the mystery, yes.”

“So you’re… bright. Nice to meet you, Sherlock, and it seems you know almost everything you need to know about me. But yes, I will take that aspirin, if you don’t mind. How was your weekend?”

He smiled at her, the first true smile he’d given in a long time. “It was nice, thank you.”

And thus a friendship was born, all because he heard her little piggy snort. 

Her slender fingers work wonders with the fastener and zip of his suit trousers, and even manage hers too, all within the space of a few seconds, but Sherlock is reluctant to let her go, even just to get her trousers off. 

“I need to sit up, just for a minute.”

“No.” Sherlock commands, insistent. “We can make this work.”

“Sure we can, but it won’t be very comfortable. Come on.”

She’s barely peeled away from him and wrestled hers off before he’s drawing her back in for a kiss, his trousers settled just above his knees. 

“Sherlock,” she protests, mumbling against his lips, her hands on his heavenly, broad, muscular shoulders. “Sher!”

Her squeal at his sudden tug on her panties disappears, captured by his eager mouth. And in fact, her panties seem to disappear along with it, thanks to Sherlock’s swift movements and nimble hands. Maybe he’s had some experience to be so good at this…

“You sure you wanna go this far?”

“More sure than I’ve ever been. I need you.” 

He takes a deep inhale, dropping his forehead against hers, his breathing coming out in bursts as he tries to get a grasp on the situation. “Kiss me.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice, instantly getting to work on the waistband of his boxers as his tongue lavishes her own. His hips rise briefly, just long enough for her to tug the elasticated material from around him, slipping past her, and then he kicks it into their growing pile of clothes. His length falls into her awaiting palm, and-

“Wow.” She exhales in amazement. “If I’d known you were packing this much, I’d have jumped you long ago.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Absolutely not, until tonight I thought you’d just laugh at me.”

He pecks her lips affectionately, “Never. You’re bloody beautiful, I’ll let you do anything to me.”

“Hmm, anything, you say?”

Stifling a chuckle against her neck, he recommences, “Maybe not anything.”

Yeah, that's definitely the right call. Still, she finds herself all but clawing at him, her breath hovering teasingly just over his lips, their noses touching, her hands clamped to his cheeks, feeling the building heat there. She must be making such a mess of his bed right about now, but for one night? It can’t matter.

This is a one time thing, it has to be. Sherlock just needs to release some tension, she just so happens to be there. Still, she can’t prevent the little glimmer of hope shining through at the possibility of this being a more-than-one-time thing. The moral compunctions of their friendship after this don’t matter anymore, because he’s leaving a fire in his wake, his delicious fingertips digging bruisingly into her bum before trailing lightly up her spine, skimming her shoulder, brushing her neck - arched for him to reach where he wants, able to mark her as his own - and finally slipping over her lips, taken obediently by her awaiting mouth. Christ, if there’s one thing she hopes for tonight, it’s that his actions never relent.

Whether it’s what he intends to happen or not, his fingers in her mouth give her an idea, one she prays he goes along with at least a little, so she pulls away. The dirty, telling smile on her face hints at what she’s about to do, lending Sherlock to shift a little more up the bed, his eyes following her every move. Hands splayed on his thighs, her small fingers gripping onto the fine hairs there, she begins to take his tip into her mouth, never once breaking eye contact with him. Yeah, this is what’ll drive him insane. 

Inch by inch, she takes him into the welcoming heat of her mouth, pulling off slowly, only to go down again. She adds her tongue into the mix at some point, too, and her hand, on what she can’t reach, tickling his balls, but further than that, his mind is blank. Hot white, washed with pleasure. The sounds he emits are other worldly, so much that he has to muffle himself with his own hand; what would Mrs Hudson say? He’s always had such control over his mind and body, but this… he’s slowly losing all semblance of control, and he’s not even mad about it. What he does know is that there’s a building heat in his abdomen, a coil about to spring, and his cock is beginning to twitch. If she keeps going this incredible way, her teeth grazing him ever so gently, adding another new sensation into the mix, he’s inexorably going to finish before he can help it.

“As much as I adore your torturous ministrations, I think I need to be inside you…” He husks, his voice deep.

A smirk gracing her lips, she looks up at him through half-lidded eyes, mischief glinting in her pretty little mesmerising eyes for a second, before she hollows her cheeks and takes him wholly, allowing his length to slip partially down her throat. Her moan reverberates around him, and Sherlock begins to thrash above her, scrunching the duvet in his hands, not caring if it creases. If there’s one thing Sherlock hates, it’s creases. And being called a machine by his best friend. Right now, though, it seems as though every misstep in his day has led him here, into the welcoming heat of Y/N’s mouth, taking him so eagerly, her tongue lapping at the vein on the underside of his dick, a string of saliva remaining as she pulls away. 

“I think you’ve got a couple of rounds in you, Mr Detective. Can you do that for me?”

“Y-yes.” He stammers, his head tossed back in pure ecstasy a moment later as she begins to work on the head with kitten licks. “But… can I s- fuck me, say something?”

“I plan on it.” she chuckles, “anything.”

She goes back to peppering kisses all over his member, tip to base, brushing his balls, working her way back up. 

“Touch yourself f- for me.”

“What? Why?” 

Her tone is more inquisitive than anything else, but upon that playfully rueful look in his lust-darkened baby blue eyes, she knows he’s going to get her back for this little display, and he’s just worked out how. It works both ways, she can prepare herself for what’s to come next while pleasuring him. And he gets to watch. It’s a win-win for him. Maybe he likes this sex thing a little more than he’s letting on. 

“Are you sure you want me to? I’ll just make a mess on your sheets, Sher.”

She swallows him again, bobbing her head up and down on his length a few times while he grapples with literal reality. He’s teetering on the edge. One more move, and he’s a goner. His head is already against the wall, lolled there. 

“I don’t care about the sheets, darling, I need you ready for me.”

She gulps, nods, and reaches one hand around her, skimming over her stomach, until it nestles between her thighs. She rubs her thumb over his tip, collecting the pre-come beading there, while she rubs over her throbbing pearl, pressing softly. Then, as she inches down on his cock, taking him in her mouth, she also collects the slick from between her thighs, and uses it as a lube to push a finger inside herself. Of all the times she’s touched herself, she never imagined, even in her wild Sherlock fantasies, that she’d be doing it with his dick down her throat. With every bob of her head, she scissors herself more, sinking back onto her fingers. 

“I think I’m-” Sherlock begins to say, his words cut off by an utterly obscene moan splitting the air. 

She hastily abandons her one post, and wraps both of her hands around his girth, working on what she can’t fit into her mouth with her increased speed, licking and suckling his head as he begins to fall apart, coming, with a scream, down her throat, his one hand clamped over his mouth, biting down harshly to silence his cries; the other buried in her hair. 

His whole body falls lax, completely spent, meanwhile, Y/N savours every drop she’s been able to draw from him. He softens in her mouth, allowing her change to slip away from him, grasping a tissue from the bedside to wipe away any excess. That’s certainly something she never thought would happen… 

He’s calm, though, smiling lazily through hooded eyes, his breathing regulated once more, making beckoning motions to her with his big hands. He’s placated, though, and sliding her hands into his, she’s allowed time enough to get into place, smiling softly at him, raking her fingers over his scalp in a comforting way. Even as she sits herself on his lap, she can feel him hardening beneath her ass, slowly but surely. She was right about him, he’s definitely got another round in him. 

“Do you have a condom?” he asks. 

“No, sweetheart, they’re in my other bag. I didn’t plan on getting any for a while… do you?”

“Not in here, that I’m aware of. John may have stashed some in my less favoured dressing gowns or socks, and he definitely has some upstairs, but I’m unawares.”

“I’m gonna sound crazy here, but do we need one?” She says hesitantly. His eyes widen, he cocks his head to the side. “I was tested after my last partner, I’m clean, and on birth control. You’re a virgin. There’s no point, is there?”

“You have a considerably good point.”

With that, energy rejuvenated a little, he wraps an arm around her body, flipping them over so he’s on top, shadowing her, looming over her, gazing down at every inch of her naked beauty.

“Take your time. I’ll be your safety.”

“I know.” he whispers, a tearful smile making its way onto her face. “Thank you.”

He needn’t say more, because she already knows why she’s being thanked. For her kindness, for making him so comfortable, for accepting the fact he’s still a virgin in his late twenties and, if he’s being honest, has no damn clue what the practicality and reality of sex is. Sure, he’s seen porn. He’s also looked at John’s laptop. But that doesn’t prepare one for when the moment comes. It’s like all of that goes out the window, and he simply remembers the first time he opened a biology textbook at secondary school, pictures of flushed organs staring back at him, desperately waiting to be relieved. That’s what his own coock is like right now, already hard again, virtually pulsating with hunger in his palm. He strokes himself a couple of times, glancing down at Y/N’s wide eyes.

“Are you okay? Can I…”

“Yes, Sherlock,” she chuckles, “whenever you’re ready.”

Now, he thinks. He rubs two digits through her folds, gathering her wetness, enamoured with the way it glistens on his fingertips. Tentatively, he brings his fingers up to his mouth, swirling his tongue around them to get a taste. Eyes rolling into the back of his head, he moans. She’s better than any cup of tea he’s ever had. 

His cock slaps against his lower stomach pleadingly, so he grasps it in his hand, and begins to enter her, pushing gently, feeling every flutter of her walls. Her arms fly out, hands grasping his shoulders, nails leaving crescent moons in their wake at the delicious stretch. It’s nothing like they’ve ever felt before. 

“Can I move?” He asks, balls deep inside her, their pelvises flush against one another. 

“Please.” She all but begs. 

Before doing anything else, Sherlock hooks one strong arm around her body, malleable in his hands, and holds her chest against his. Her breasts push into his skin, her nipples gaining friction from the dusting of hair there. Her one hand cups his slender neck, the other, his sharp cheek. Their eyes meet in a fierce gaze of burning intensity, and he begins to move. Slow, calculated, sharp thrusts punctuate her core. With every heavenly stroke, he can feel the ridges in her velvet walls, squeezing around him unwittingly.

“Jesus,” she cries, her clutch increasing. 

“Hmm, not quite.”

The smirk in his words is quite literally audible. He’s so cocky, so full of himself, and fuck if she can’t feel another gush of arousal coursing through her, drenching his cock. How does he manage to be so attractive when he’s so dishevelled?

“Is that good?” He asks, unsure.

“So good.”

She brings her legs up, skimming the clenched backs of his thighs, until they wrap around him, drawing his hips into her at a new and improved angle. Heels digging into the base of his spine, he begins to move with a new purpose, his thrusts more passionate as his breath is drained from him by her kisses, his eyes alight with a new flame. 

“Oh my God, Sherlock.” She pants, pulling him in for a kiss he greedily returns. 

He drives his hips deeper, squeezing his fingertips into her supple waist bruisingly. It’ll be a mark that she belonged to him once, even just for one night. That’s when he reaches that special spongy spot that makes her entire body buckle. She all but screams, pressing into him wholly. 

The coil is building, ready to break. He seems to be nearing the edge, too, his member twitching inside her when he buries himself particularly deep. She’s oh so fucking close… She licks into his mouth filthily, desperately clashing her teeth with his, eager for his kisses to tide her over. Silence her. Shifting his supporting hand, he trails one dextrous finger around to circle her clit, adding the faintest pressure for a moment. She mewls as he groans into her hot skin, clawing at him, entirely at his whim. Now he knows where to press, he settled his grip back around her, and draws her in close. This time around, he bends his knees a little more to measure his movements more carefully, ensuring that he ruts up and brushes her sensitive bud with his pelvis, helped by the extra friction of his neatly trimmed pubic hair on every thrust within her, his tip just scraping her g-spot.

“I- Sherlock, please tell me you’re- oh sweet mercy- close.”

He grunts softly in her ear. “So close.”

Their lips meet tenderly, passionately, in what they acknowledge to be a final kiss, moans mixing between them, savoured by the other. 

His thighs clench, her legs tighten around his waist, and finally, her sweet walls flutter, squeezing him as she reaches her climax, his not following long after, spilling inside her, painting her soft walls white, marking her. 

“Y/N,” he cries in ecstasy as his orgasm reaches him. “Sher…” she repeats, her saving grace as pleasure washes over her entirely. 

Their whole bodies wind up pressed together, bound together as one, skin on skin completely, becoming one another. 

He lets her down gently, unravelling his grip, unsurprised when their sweaty skin sticks together. Her long legs unfurl, splaying in a butterfly. Sherlock tumbles ungracefully away, somehow landing with a certain gangly elegance on the space of mattress beside her, his arm instinctively flying over to place on her stomach, the skin hot and flushed red. Her chest moves hastily up and down with the thrumming of her heart, while his barely shifts despite his shallow breaths, his white skin glistening in the moonlight. 

“Are you okay?” He huffs, turning on his side. “You look pretty fucked out.”

His baby blue eyes train instantly on her nipples, hard in the open air. This is the first notifier, the first inkling she has to feel self conscious, so she draws the sheet up around her as best as she can. Sherlock’s not having any of it, taking a stronghold on her arms, and pulling her until she’s lying on him, naught to separate them. 

“I’ve never been this close to anyone physically and y'know.” He hums tiredly. She’s never heard him sound tired before… 

She smiles up at him as best she can, “Are you glad?” 

He begins to hold her ever closer, squeezing her tighter, feeling every ridge of her body. 

“I’m so glad that you were my first, in so many ways.” 

Praise from Sherlock is a rarity, and she’ll take it as and when she can, savouring every moment, this time by holding him like a koala, her grip not wavering. 

“I’m glad too, Mr Detective.”

He brushes a kiss to her cheek, “As much as I like this, we need to get you cleaned up.” 

A supporting arm beneath her bum, he picks her up, and unsteadily ambles into the bathroom. 

“I don’t know much about this, but I know you should probably use the toilet, should you want to avoid a UTI, so if you’d like me to leave…”

He sets her down on the loo seat, cupping his hands over his nether regions, and he hurries to grasp for things, until she puts her hand on his arm, squeezing in a conciliatory manner. 

“You do remember the camping trip, don’t you? You really don’t have to leave just because I have to pee, you never did before. In fact, you frequently annoyed me with it if you had a particular point to make, steadfastly refusing to leave the bathroom after following me in there when I went to pee. Why does this change anything?”

He shrugs, dropping whatever was in his arms, “It just doesn’t feel the same now, though.”

“Ooo, and now Mr Detective feels things.” She jokes, poking at his ribs. 

He recoils, chuckling with her, “Only for you.”

As Y/N washes her hand, Sherlock begins to wrangle with a floorboard, clattering about until he eventually pulls out a small lock box, from which he withdraws a packet of brand new marks-and-spencer's ladies briefs. 

“Why the fuck do you have these? Anything you wanna tell me?” she asks, eyes wide.

“John’s idea. He has plenty of girls over here who frequently stay the night, simply a precautionary error.” He takes a beat, gargling with some mouthwash, “they’re clean, new, I just don’t like the idea of you in dirty underwear, and I know how reluctant you are to go without them whenever you’re not in your own bed. I stayed with you enough nights in university to know that.”

Those nights were awfully painful. She’d take the floor, he’d take the bed, and every time she’d have to wash the sheets. He’d sweat and vomit, shake and cry, plead for the pain to be over. He wouldn’t go to hospital, he wouldn’t call his brother, he’d just turn up on her doorstep, high as a kite, almost in tears, knowing he’d gone a little too far. And each time, it was a little farther. 

“Thank you, Sherlock.” 

She takes them from him, and begins to shimmy them up her legs, only prevented by Sherlock moving to grab a handful of her arse. 

“Hmm, I like this. Fancy another round?” He smirks. 

“I’m too tired, babe. Give me a bit.” 

He can see the lazy smile on her face, the tiredness in her pretty eyes, so he wets a flannel, and begins to clean her up with gentle movements between tender kisses.

“How do you know how to do all of this?” She asks, inquisitive more than anything. 

“Instinct, I suppose. I never read or learned about it, seeing as I never thought it would happen.” 

She snaps the waistband before moving her hands to his waist, leaning up onto her toes to reach him, kissing her softly. 

“Look at you now.”

After brushing their teeth in an amicable silence, their pinky fingers overlapping on the porcelain of the sink, he aids her back to the bedroom, settling her on the bed. She has things here: deodorant, toothbrush, moisturiser, and yet somehow she doesn’t have underwear, even after all these years. Perhaps that's one too many things to explain… 

With superfluous extravagance, he throws her his shirt, offering her a wry wink. She finds a blush clawing its way onto her cheeks, dumbfounded. It smells like him, just like a forest glade if it was rained on by tea and cigarettes. Maybe he’ll let her keep it as a memory.

In such a short amount of time, she’s learnt that he has a very sensitive neck. Very. A single kiss there has him biting back a moan. A low one at that, considering his deep voice also drops almost an octave when he’s aroused. His nipples are almost as sensitive as his neck, and he rather likes it when she tugs on them unwittingly. 

His first orgasm comes quickly, but his refractory period is astonishing, and it takes longer to achieve a second high, long enough to make her come more than once, she assumes, though her first orgasm was mind blowing enough for two. Perhaps that’s just because it’s his first time, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

What’s the point in learning all of this if, once he comes around from his post-orgasmic haze, he’ll pretend like it never happened, in typical Sherlock style?

The shirt, though a small gesture, means a lot, and her vision begins to cloud as she looks down at the black cotton. 

“You mean you want me to stay?” She croaks.

Sherlock turns to her from his set of drawers, his face full of apparent obviousness, brows furrowed in that cute bewildered way. 

“Of course I want you to stay.” He states, like it’s the plainest thing in the world, like it’s stupid for her to even ask. But she’s silent, and when she says nothing in response, he launches into a long winded explanation: don’t show sentiment. “I- I just mean, i-it’s midnight, I’m not having you out in London alone. You stay with me. Only if you want to as well...” 

She nods eagerly, “Yes. Yeah, course I want to stay.”

He all but leaps access the room, jumping onto the bed, before planting a proper smooch on her lips, grinning down at her. He slips into his usual side of the bed, and she takes hers, rolling to look at him.

“Don’t get cold.” He warns, tucking the duvet up around her shoulders. She giggles like a child, that small snort sounding again, prompting Sherlock to press his thumb to her nose like a button. “How are you… feeling?”

“I’m fine bub, really. That bloke doesn’t matter to me at all. Bit of a scumbag if I’m honest. You’re the one I’m with, the one I wanna talk about. How are you feeling? Must’ve been a pretty big blow up with John for you to call me and be so... teary.”

He sighs, crestfallen, “He called me a machine.”

Her gasp pierces the air, her hand flying to his hair, stroking in consolation, cooing senseless reassurances to him. She’s done this innumerable times, but now it feels different, like there’s no barrier. 

“He’s done it so many times that it needn’t bother me anymore, but the way he looked at me, like I was this abhorrent monster, especially after the day and the disappointing case we had, it got to me. I hate having feelings.”

“You don’t have to hide them with me, though.”

He hums gently, burying into her chest. “I know. That’s why I treasure you so dearly.”

“That means you also have to trust me, and you’re not going to like what I have to say.” His chest heaves, shifting her whole body. That’s his way of giving in. “Please just talk to John. You know that whenever he leaves, he’ll come back, and try to pretend it never happened. He needs to know you’re human and that he upset you, but also that the case upset you as well. No one’s superhuman, and once you let John in on the fact that you’re not a machine, things between you will be so much easier, because you might agree for once.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He grumbles. 

He pulls her into his warmth, hooking her leg around his as he snakes his arms around her back, breathing deeply from the crook of her shoulder. She begins to pepper kisses on his salty skin, savouring the taste with every small swipe of her tongue.

“Your heart’s against my chest, your lips pressed to my neck,” he breaks off with a faint whimper when she sucks a little harder, “I’m falling for your eyes, but they don’t know me yet.”

“Of course they do,” she whispers brokenly, hoarsely, “they’ve always known you.” She swallows thickly, “Does that mean it’s a feeling you’ll forget?”

“No, I don’t think I ever can.”

The silent words that pass between them both are so special, too special to be spoken aloud. ‘Think I’m in love now.’

“Kiss me like you wanna be loved.” He begs. 

And really, who is Y/N to deny him? They just stay that way a little while, revelling in their lazy kisses, until she begins to fall asleep. It isn’t the first time she’s fallen asleep in his bed, not by any means, but it’s the first time she’s fallen asleep in his arms. She isn’t mad about it.

“Settle down with me, cover me up, cuddle me in. You were made to keep my body warm.” She smiles into her words, and embeds herself into him, entirely covered by the duvet, spattered in his kisses, safe in his arms. Sherlock feels safe with her legs around him, her fingers in his curls, holding himself against her. Amicable silence is how they drift off, Peaceful.

John re-enters 221B at a respectable hour. He got a fair amount of sleep on Greg’s sofa, having no girlfriend in the picture right now, but not enough to deal with Sherlock just yet. Not before his coffee. He expects to see Sherlock sitting in the exact same spot as when he left, perhaps just with a refill of tea, his fingers still steepled beneath his chin, eyes closed yet wide awake. Instead, he arrives at a seemingly empty, considerably clean flat, with no Sherlock in sight. Perhaps the unsleeping man must actually be asleep, he thinks, so he quietens down, and toes off his shoes before wandering farther into the flat. Even if the man does piss him off extraordinary amounts, perhaps he should just check he’s okay…

He gives the bedroom door a quiet rap, listening in momentarily before pushing it open. Frankly, he’d rather have found Sherlock with a cigarette in hand and the whole flat torn to shreds for the level of surprise he gets upon reaching the bed. His first idea is to scream bloody murder, but that might annoy Mrs Hudson, and upon stepping closer, even in the sliver of daylight through the curtains, he sees the duvet riding down a little. The last thing in the world he ever thought he’d see: Sherlock in naught but boxers pressed against a half naked woman, his palm splayed on her bare thigh. Sherlock? Spooning? It seems so, his entire body pressed to this woman. John feels himself go rigid, his feet glued to the floor, his gaze unmoving from shock. 

It takes his phone to buzz in his pocket to get him moving, and when he does, all he tries to do is balance precariously on his tip toes in a wry attempt to get a birds-eye view of the whole thing. He’s not disappointed, or disturbed, once he does, though, his army agility proving useful. Sherlock’s hand is holding her, fingers entwined, just next to her chest. He wonders how comfortable it is, but if they’re staying this way, it can’t be too bad. Maybe all Sherlock needed to loosen up was a good shag. 

She’s wearing his shirt, too; Sherlock’s black dress shirt from the previous day. And Sherlock? He never seeps in anything less than a full set of pyjamas, he’s weird like that . 

This girl begins to stir, her lips parting gently, small hums escaping. Next, her eyelids flutter, and her hair shifts on the pillow. He didn’t make any noise, did he? John was specifically careful not to, just in case. He doesn’t fancy Sherlock’s wrath just yet. 

One eye opens, and she whispers, almost incoherently, “Hi John.”

How she knows his name and who he is, he’s not at all sure, because he doesn’t think he’s ever seen this face in his life. The hair is familiar, and maybe, if she were more awake, he’d recognise her smile, but he’s never seen a woman in Sherlock’s company beside Molly Hooper. Speaking of… 

Before he can even say anything, though, before he can ask who she is or if she wants tea or if she date-raped his roommate, she’s mumbling, and detaching her hand from Sherlock’s, rolling over. Dumbfounded, John just stands there and watches her cuddle into Sherlock’s chest, her arms wrapping around his torso like second nature. Even in his sleep, not consciously thinking about his actions, he grips her back - one hand resting just above her bum, and buries his nose into her neck.

John can’t help but smile to himself. Maybe their fight was for the best if Sherlock now has a girlfriend, someone he turned to for solace. So, he grasps for the top of the duvet and pulls it up over both of their figures, reaching their shoulders, and leaves, staring wistfully for a brief moment at the seemingly happy couple. 

The weight of the duvet of what startles Sherlock, though, stirring him a little, inviting him to him against Y/N’s skin, smiling with eyes barely open. This is really nice, he thinks to himself, not waking up alone. 

She smiles back blearily, and in her morning voice, whispers to him, “Kiss me Mr Detective.”

[fatehbaz]

hi maybe you’ve written about this before but i’m working for someone who is part of the ecological landscape alliance and we’ve been having big talks about the concept of “invasive” species vs “native” plants and how the concept is rooted in xenophobia, and also talking about how maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad?? this goes against everything i’ve ever heard anyone talk about invasive species but i really don’t know all that much about it. sounds silly maybe coming from a farmer but i really don’t have a super firm ecological understanding, most of my plant knowledge is agricultural based and im really curious to learn more and was hoping you could point me in the right direction?

Yes, I definitely run into this disk horse all the time. Especially the “maybe invasive plants aren’t that bad” discussion. It seems the native/alien stuff is most often mentioned in disk horse about the Anthropocene. Basically, you’ll sometimes see statements like: “Is anything really natural in the Anthropocene?” I have also seen, and spent a lot of time contemplating, how belief in the categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in discussion of ecology might be rooted in or at least inadvertently support racism/xenophobia.

But I am still wary of the “native vs alien” and “no creature or landscape is really natural, not any more” disk horse, at least as explored by some white/settler-colonial academics, for exactly the same reasons: because it might be rooted in or support racism/xenophobia. Because the proposal that “nothing is native, nothing is invasive” itself can actually engage in a sort of “settler absolution” that obscures how there really is a contrast between imperial and Indigenous peoples, and the “nothing is natural, nothing is invasive” proposal could excuse the colonial/imperial introduction and expansion of monoculture by accepting the spread of industry/agriculture/non-native species as an inevitability. And these concepts can actually work to generalize conditions of ecological degradation and apocalypse, as if to say that “all humans now live in such a damaged world, we’re all victims” (even though many non-white, especially Indigenous, people actually bear most of the violence and burden of living in “post-apocalyptic” ecologies.)

But actually, I don’t think I can be too helpful here.

I still have a lot of contemplating to do, about how categories of natural/invasive in ecology might support the violence of categorizing people as natural/invasive. Don’t really know where I stand yet, y’know? So I don’t want to be too quick to come to a conclusion. I don’t even really want to offer opinions here. That said, I am very sensitive to language, and the language that I use. So I do appreciate that there is an effort to interrogate the negative consequences of describing things with words like “alien”. Also, the categorizing of lifeforms is and always has been a mess.

I don’t have many reading recommendations. The “native vs alien” and “nothing is really native, actually” proposals are concepts that I brush up against but don’t read too deeply into, even though this disk horse has been popular-ish in dark ecology and academic ecology/environmental studies circles for at least 10 years or more by now.

I guess, for my thoughts on native vs alien, what counts as “natural”, invasive species, and how the disk horse can excuse settler-colonial/imperial racism, I would point to this post I made about Pablo Escobar’s feral hippopotamuses in Colombia.

One introduction to the concept, which I think is an enjoyable read (though I don’t necessarily agree with all of his implications), is this essay by Hugo Reinert about the category of “natural” and the “purity” of a species: “Requiem for a Junk-Bird: Violence, Purity and the Wild.” Cultural Studies Review. 2019.

Anna Boswell’s very famous article about stoats and non-native species in Aotearoa kind of dances around this same issue of naturalness: “Settler Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State.” Animal Studies Journal. 2017.

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Generally, I agree with the implication that there is no “remote” or untouched corner of the planet where ecology has escaped human influence.

On that aspect, here’s a post I made about “planetary urbanization”.

But the native/alien disk horse can be extended to problematique degrees, with proposals that sometimes remind me of sci-fi goofiness, like fans of dark ecology or weird fiction or Mieville/Van der Meer got a little too excited about “the boundary between human and other-than-human has become so blurred that there may as well no longer be distinctions between native species and invasive species”, like they got a little too drunk on theory and just decided that “everything is in flux!”. Criticisms, then, of the “nothing is native” disk horse include how this oversimiplifies ecology and might enable/excuse settler-colonial invasion.

A lot of the “invasive plants are good, actually!” disk horse I’ve seen shows up in Australian literature written by settler scholars, which might be pretty telling.

Basically, it seems some scholars will take Alfred Crosby’s “neo-Europe” and “ecological imperialism” concepts, and then say something like “look, the damage is done, so much of Earth’s soils/landscapes are altered by introduced plants that we may as well accept it as the new baseline/normal ecology, and work from there.” As if to point at how North America has been entirely overrun by non-native earthworms and then to say “well, the worms are going to inevitably destroy hardwoods forests, soils of the Great Lakes region, the boreal-temperate transition zone, and maple trees which supply place-based maple syrup foodsheds, so we may as well accept that we live in a damaged world.”

I don’t know if I’m entirely satisfied with this.

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Other related concepts brought up in the same  discussion of “nothing is really native” might include “invasion biology” and “assisted migration.” I see these concepts brought up in academic writing from the University of California system, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and “environmental humanities” generally. Basically, these writers/scholars will point to the past ten thousand-ish years of the Holocene, and how humans have had such profound influence on global ecology that “introduction of non-native species” and “mass-scale anthropogenic climate/ecological change” are not just recent developments since Industrial Revolution or Indus/Yellow/Mesopotamian statecraft, but even older. For example, I’ve talked a lot about how, in the Late Pleistocene or early Holocene, the Asiatic steppes and parts of the Great Plains could have apparently been more like intermittent woodlands before humans engaged in deliberate fire-setting to better target megafauna herds, meaning that the human role in creation of vast “naturally-occurring” grassland regions may be underestimated. This dove-tails with the better-established fact that the forests of Central America and eastern North America in the early Holocene were/are actually more like cultivated food forests managed by Indigenous people.

The argument, then, may also point to yams, sweet potato, and coconut as examples of creatures with what now appear to be “old” and “established” widespread transoceanic distribution ranges which actually may have been introduced via assisted migration by humans.

The argument, basically, says: Well, let’s say hypothetically that humans didn’t play a role in spreading sweet potato or coconut. By chance, if ocean currents “naturally” introduced these species, if these plants “naturally” colonized whatever lands they were swept off towards, doesn’t this mean they could essentially be “natural” to anywhere they might arrive and successfully establish themselves? Therefore, does it really matter if humans helped them get there?

This seems to be related to the “no plants are actually invasive” proposal. As if to say: “If English pasture grasses have successfully reproduced themselves in Patagonia, Aotearoa, South Africa, the Canadian prairies, etc., what does it mean that their migration was assisted by humans?”

But this is where I have reservations: It wasn’t just any humans that “assisted the migration” of monoculture grasses from Europe to the prairies of Turtle Island. It was specific humans, with deliberate intent, upholding specific institutions, protecting their own well-being at the expense of other humans and lifeforms, enacting specific violence against specific victims.

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Another aspect of this which I see mentioned often is how early human/Polynesian settlement in Oceania and the South Pacific is an example of how mass anthropogenic ecological change doesn’t always involve statecraft, mass mono/agriculture, and imperialism. Aside from the famous decline of creatures like the moa, Polynesian islands were also home to relict species of large land turtles and ancient terrestrial/semi-arboreal crocodiles until human arrival in recent millennia. Writers will also point to human settlement in the Caribbean, where human arrival coincided with extinction of remnant populations of endemic Pleistocene ground sloths. (This also happened on Mediterranean islands, which hosted endemic species of hippopotamus and goats until recent millennia.)

Again, though, this is where white/settler-colonial academics advocating “nothing is natural” can kind of obscure settler-colonial violence, by pointing to history of anthropogenic environmental change and saying “see, all humans provoke extinction.”

Thus, you’ll see these scholars invoke Anna Tsing or Donna Harraway, referencing the “arts of living on a damaged planet” or “living in post-capitalist ruins.” Essentially, advocates of “nothing is native, any more” might say “we all live in a post-apocalyptic world now, so we should get used to it.”

This, coming from white/settler-colonial academics, sometimes rubs me the wrong way, as if it’s sort of like wish-fulfillment, or “an adventure” for comfortable white academics to engage in low-stakes thought experiments about extinction, naturalness, and apocalypse from which they’re actually largely insulated, at least compared to the poor, non-white, non-academic people who cope with the worst of environmental racism and ecological collapse.

This, again coming from white/settler-colonial academics, is also of course more than a little grating, since it kind of co-opts or culturally appropriates the “Indigenous/Native people actually live in a post-apocalyptic world” concept proposed by Indigenous scholars. It kind of takes from Indigenous/non-white people, and then generalizes the apocalypse as something that all humans now live with in seemingly equal measure, obscuring the fact that many people are actually forced to cope and/or live with more-serious-of-an-apocalypse than others.

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At the end of the day: Sure, kudzu or English pasture grasses or coconuts or European earthworms or domesticated cattle might be generalist species which can successfully inhabit landscapes across the planet. So whether humans introduce them via agriculture, or whether they "naturally" expand by some accident or by drifting across ocean currents, they might exist in this strange ontological space between "native" and "alien" which confounds human conceptions of what "belongs"? And this is worth considering! This is good to think about! But there are still, and always have been, those "small" landscapes, those isolated pockets, those relicts and remnants in shaded stream corridors, where small populations of endemic species teeter on the verge, with highly-specialized adaptations to highly-specific microhabitats. You're not going to "assist the migration" of or "accidentally introduce" a cave-obligate salamander from a limestone cavern or a temperate rainforest-dwelling land-slug to a desert biome.

But, again, I still think it is good to stop and ask ourselves whether categories of “natural” and “alien/invasive” in ecology make sense, are outdated, or if they reinforce racism/xenophobia. And, again, I haven’t read enough -- I haven’t grappled with these questions enough -- to have an opinion which I’m comfortable sharing, so I don’t want to discourage this disk horse too much.

Anyway, hope some of this is interesting. Sorry. Again, I don’t really have any good recommendations.

[esther-dot]

Hello! I gotta admit... maybe coz I keep seeing D*ny month stuff in the asoiaf tag... but I feel kinda bad for these stans who genuinely think the series is about Targ restoration. I mean, interpret the book however you want, whatever, but man... I don't get it. There's obviously such a diversity of opinion in the fandom, but the idea that Targ restoration is a good thing and the end goal, that's something that really stumps me. This is why I'm so uninterested in HoTD... the Targ exceptionalism really rubs me the wrong way. And it's an exceptionalism that is unique to them — the Lannisters are just immitators, though they come close. Like sure, believe in your own worth, but the exceptionalism when it comes to their genes, their right to conquest, to commit incest etc... it's so tied to the Targ identity, and that's an identity that D*ny utilises, so the argument that she's an exception to the rule (HA!), that's she's somehow better, and therefore worthy of the thrown, doesn't wash for me. It is elitism taken to the nth degree in an already elitist system, which just because it's elitist... doesn't obsolve it of criticism!! Anyway, I guess time will tell... just had to rant! Really enjoy your blog btw <3

I enjoy a good rant!

I griped some about Dany’s intentions/continuation of Targ norms here:

(link)

I don’t think people can truly argue Dany is distinct/unique among Targs when she is about to do exactly what Targs have done before. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Also, a point is made about her not wanting to hear about the bad things in her family history, she doesn’t even want to hear about Rhaegar losing, only his victories. The author is telling us she has picked up the legacy of her family without understanding their pitfalls, without giving proper consideration to how they wronged others, without understanding the perspective of the people she determines to rule. We all know that’s foolish, it’s destined for failure, so I don’t understand why we are expected to pretend that a) anyone will be happy about it, b) that it ends well for Dany. We know it won’t.

Your point about the Lannisters being wannabe Targs is good because most people recognize the darkness there, and yet, we aren’t permitted to point to the fact that the author has them playacting as Targs? I mean, the implication is that those ideas aren’t good, right? Let’s pause and think about what it means to believe that one isn’t accountable to anyone or anything. What is the inevitable result? Of course they’ll abuse their power, of course they will wrong people, of course we should be happy for their rule to end once and for all.

No one is arguing that feudalism is a great system, but for the Starks there is a sense that they must earn and keep the respect and trust of their people, that they have obligations there and part of that is because their power is derived from people, their ability to call their banners. You take that away, you give someone a dragon, and that means they have the ability to crush people into obedience, to rule by fear, in a way that others can’t. To minimize that, to make light of having that power and wielding it to conquer without understanding why your family was overthrown in the first place…to act like the story isn’t going to condemn that legacy of war?

I do feel bad for Dany stans who don’t know better because they believe they need to accept the view of the anointed ASOIAF fans who push this stuff. BNFs, even those who know Dany will burn KL, refuse to allow that to mean anything about Dany and just sorta…allow their theories to absorb it as if it’s a fun little detour before she goes back to hero-ing. I don’t feel bad for those fans because they know better, they just won’t admit it. But, for the average Dany stan… I think TWOW will be very upsetting, and if we get it, ADOS will be so much worse than the GoT finale. So yeah, I feel for them. They’re being misled.

As for HotD, I think Targ stans will be pandered to (again) and miss the underlying idea (again), so I won’t be watching. I will enjoy whatever gems Sansa fans/Jonsas retrieve for us though.

Thank you so much for the message, anon!

[pocketsizedquasar]

it’s been a bit now so. misc 200/end of mag in general thoughts? under a cut because this is a bit long, and i will preface this to say that i mostly enjoyed the episode but this is going to be mostly my criticisms, bc i feel like the good parts have already been well covered by people other than me. so yeah just a warning this is mostly crit

- it’s Still very hard for me to parse how i feel about this episode, but i think after sitting on it for a bit, i’ve come to the general conclusion that i am very satisfied plot-wise (in terms of tragedy/the structure of tragedies, the open-endedness of our ending, the general Writing TM), but not so much satisfied character-wise (in terms of arc and relationship resolution). I think we deserved more resolution on wtgfs -- i wanted more with them! more with melanie and jon; more with the melanie and georgie and basira’s side of the plan. more than that really small tidbit that we got at the end! and... honestly? a little bit more emphasis on the weight of Jon actually dooming other worlds in the end, and what that means for Jon and for wtgfs/basira. Especially with the context of the consequences re: the Web...won. no caveats or complications, the Web got. Exactly what it wanted.

- on that note,  From a uh. Critique against capitalism standpoint I’m not sure how I feel about the ending? And I don’t really want to. Read too much into what isn’t there? But I mean mag has long been a pretty explicit anticapitalist narrative so...? Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the implications of WTGFs and basira basically just being treated as narratively right in terms of letting the eldritch evil stand-in for capitalism have whatever it wanted and feeding it and doing exactly what it asked them to do. and having Little consequence as a result of that. Obviously they’ll still face loads of hardship, but that comes from the apocalypse, not from, like,.,, doing the direct bidding of the Capitalist Monster/System/etc to be clear, i’m not like...mad they made the “wrong” decision; there was no wrong or right decision here. but I am a little upset that for all they spent 199 discussing the various consequences of each choice, we got to see very little of that actual consequence playing out...none of the survivors seem to really be carrying the guilt or even the full understanding of what they did, because they never saw the suffering they could create as anything more than a hypothetical. i feel like we could have spent just a bit more time with them dealing with that. a bit more time even with jon dealing with that, a bit more time spent on jon changing his mind. other people have said as much better than me but. yeah

- i feel like there was a lot of character stuff brought up in s5 and especially act iii that i would’ve loved to have seen more resolution of. why have that whole thing about Georgie telling jon to give melanie his last words himself, if Jon was going to come back but then never bring that up again (full disclosure this is smthn that @pronouncingitwang​ brought up!)? Why have Jon say he was “going to go  apologize to [his] boyfriend”/Jon tell Martin multiple times that they were going to talk about their fight “later” and then not have that happen on screen? Why did we have two whole episodes of cultist interactions if they were just going to be removed off screen? Why have martin’s “I’ll get jon to destroy me like the others” decision if that doesn’t really come up? what about salesa!! why tell us melanie hating jon is a projection of her self hatred and then not bring that up again? why give annabelle all those juicy interactions with martin and then turn her into a monster when jon shows up, why give her so much character and backstory and then so thoroughly remove her agency? why have all these really cool parallels between jon and annabelle if annabelle is just going to be this monstrous and agency-less plot device with no follow-up? what happened to her!

- on that note...annabelle. They... really took this character who is a Black woman and who had so many parallels to Jon and who they could’ve like. very easily Actually made into a protagonist of color (because we only got one!! and she’s a cop!!!!) (or if not protagonist, at least smthn more sympathetic), (which wouldn’t have negated previous racial problems w tma, but would’ve shown growth from them) and made her a scary monster who just Serves her capitalist entity overlord without personal agency and then bows out when she’s no longer needed...you can have whatever diagetic/watsonian explanations you want for how 197 went, like sure she was just ~being dramatic~ and putting on a show for jon, but all that is still something the writers Decided to do in the real world, and the racial implications of her character arc are just. not great. and her character had So much more narrative potential. idk i will forever be salty about annabelle

- i Still Don’t Like the web being sentient!! i said this after 197 and i’m sayin it again! i think it makes it less frightening and less interesting! with the End being aware of its own, well, end, I actually thought that worked, and i really liked the corpse routes ep, but for some reason I didn’t with the Web? which seems hypocritical of me, I know, but, look: The embodiment of the fear of dying being aware of and welcoming its own dying emphasizes the inevitability and the truth of that fear. Which is why it works for the End. It’s still not recognizably /human/, because it is inexorable and certain, in a way nothing human can be. So its awareness of its own end DOESNT feel like flattening the worldbuilding. And using my own logic, I guess sure you could say the embodiment of the fear of manipulation and schemes being capable of scheming does the same thing but it. It rly doesn’t feel the same to me? Bc that’s rly a fear borne of human sentience & behavior. and so to give it that sentience makes it feel more human, and less interesting within the context of the horror. this is definitely just a personal taste thing as far as how i like horror and eldritch deities and such but yeah.

- i liked the statement a lot like, as a little self contained story? it was really nice to have jon give us one last story before the end. I thought that was sweet and i liked how the statement was written! on the same note though, i could’ve also gone without knowing like. the entire cosmology of how the fears came into being. again, just a personal thing, i don’t like my horror to be known, even at the end of it all when it doesn’t matter what we’re still scared of anymore. I just. I want my fears to be frightening and beyond comprehension and unknowable. it just leads me to have more questions than i really need at the Final episode? i would love to keep the jon giving us one final statement thing, and you know what? i would've loved: statement of the archivist, regarding jonathan sims. no idea what you’d do with that but it sounds cool in my head.

- very minor and very specific-to-me thing but i Don’t Like that basira got to be the Last Words...sorry y’all I just don’t like basira i can’t get behind trying to make me feel sympathetic for a cop who stood by and let people get murdered by the state for years and only felt bad about it bc fearpocalypse i just can’t. i don’t like her never have never will and also melanie and georgie are right there why didn’t they get to have the last words it would have been so much better ... why not have the person who loved jon and Knew very deeply his tendency to self-sacrifice say something or why not the person who is in-canon very similar to Jon and self-admittedly projecting her self hatred onto him say some sort of her own attempt at peace why not either of these two ahhhh

- i uhhhh. really liked jon killing jonah. jon for once getting to be angry for himself. that felt really nice. no ceaseless watcher nonsense either, just him and a knife and beating the shit out of this guy who even now continues to underestimate and belittle him. and i liked jon doing what he did in general -- i actually changed my mind on this; i really didn’t like it at first but i do now. i’m sad that it came at the expense of his promise to martin, but it makes sense and...i don’t want to say jon was right, because i again don’t think any of the decisions were right per se, but in terms of like... not doing what the “elder fear deity who wants to feed on fear and pain for literal eternity” wanted... yeah. i get it. he would never have been able to go along with that willingly. and he really shouldn’t have been, considering all that he went through being a puppet for said elder fear deity. and from a tragedy standpoint too, i actually think it’s a really really well written end for him. considering how my favorite tragedies are structured and how the way out has to be presented to us, but the tragic hero Ultimately will always fall back on their faults, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. hamlet is granted a way out and he doesn’t take it; he always always hesitates. captain ahab is granted the chance to turn and leave his chase and love instead, and he doesn’t take it. orpheus turns around. etc etc. I think it was also really lovely that jon got a twist on that, that in the end he did change, for just a moment, and chose love instead. even in the face of all the horror that that might mean. i really like that he and martin are together, wherever or however they are. that martin is allowed to feel (rightly) furious and betrayed and still so, so unconditionally in love. 

idk i have more thoughts probably but again they’re very hard to parse and mostly just getting into the super specific realm which i don’t think is particularly helpful

i have a lot of feelings for jon and martin and their ending i think it was the best possible ending we could’ve gotten for those two and i Am really. I just have a lot of feelings.

[itsclydebitches]

I was once more thinking of vol 8 and other works to compare it to. I hit Harry Potter, specifically Order of the Phoenix. Literally all that happened there showed a much better "proactive Hero" and "Big Bad vs Big Good" battle that it feels unfair to compare. What say you Clyde?

It's been a very long time since I read Order of the Phoenix, but putting aside that and the series' problems with representation (something that always feels like it needs to be acknowledged when discussing HP nowadays), Rowling did a good job of setting up both motivation and justification for Harry's actions. Which isn't to say that he was never wrong — quite the opposite, especially in OotP — but that Harry's involvement in this war is justified in a way that Ruby's involvement is not. He's not just generally active (no tea sipping equivalent scenes), but we understand why he's the one taking that action.

Harry is an unwilling participant forced to fight due to a prophecy, so when he stumbles along the way, we as the reader are understanding because jeez, what else what he supposed to do? Literally no one else can do this and he's trying his best. Ruby, in contrast, is not necessary to this fight. We might have gotten that with her silver eyes, but we didn't, so when Ruby willingly steps up — or, in Volume 8, forcibly takes control — and then gets upset because things didn't go well, the viewer (or at least some viewers: us) are far less forgiving because she demanded this responsibility and then found she didn't like having it. When Harry rushes off to the Department of Mysteries, endangering many of his friends in the process (even if they volunteered) we understand that this action is done out of love. We've spent five books establishing Harry's desire for a family, it's literally his greatest wish according to the Mirror of Erised, so going after Sirius, while reckless, is such an in-character, relatable, human decision. It's integral to who Harry is as a person. Compare that to the lack of work done surrounding Summer and the unanswered question of why Ruby is fighting Salem. Because it's the right thing to do? Great, fantastic, but uh... that doesn't really explain or justify why she's leading the charge when all these other huntsmen — with the same goals, more experience, better plans, etc. —are trying to do The Right Thing too. When thinking about HP vs. RWBY, my mind always goes back to that moment at the end of the first book when Harry tries to tell McGonagall about the stone and she brushes him off. "Ah," I thought later. "That's why three 11yos are going off to save the magical artifact when there are adult, full-fledged wizards around to do it instead. The kids tried to turn hand this off to the adults and the adults failed them." Now, combine this with Harry's growing tendency to go it alone, the implication that Dumbledore may have been allowing him to face certain threats to get stronger, each book's individual situation like a hidden chamber that only Harry can enter, his Godfather being on the run, a magically binding contract that keeps him in a competition because the bad guys are specifically after him... Harry is at the heart of the story. He's integral to it, his part in the fight inevitable, so all that's left is to see how he bears that burden.

Ruby is not integral to this fight, her presence and even her silver eyes are not necessary, her facing down Salem is only inevitable from a meta perspective regarding expectations for a protagonist (and then, in Volume 8, Ruby didn't face her.) There's no clear personal motivation to drive her. There's not even a Guardian's of the Galaxy-esque motivation in the form of, "We'll step up because no one else will." Others do keep stepping up and Ruby keeps forcing them to follow her instead, insisting that her way is better. Only problem is, it's arguably not and that's when she has a plan at all. It's like if instead of going after the stone because his professors won't, or going after Sirius because he loves him, or going after Voldemort because a prophecy and a life of having a saving-people-thing has pushed him to that, Harry made his way to the front of this war Just Because, rejecting everyone else who fought in the first war, has more experience, and actual plans along the way. Why does he do this? Because his name is in the title of the book, I guess.

RWBY throws in lost of classic ideas and setups, but doesn't seem to understand their point. Even something as simple as that Big Bad vs. Big Good conflict in Volume 8. Putting aside how muddied this has gotten between the Gods' involvement and Salem's dip in the grimm pool, Volume 8 took the threat of our Big Bad arriving with an army and... ignored it. Instead, they ran with Ironwood as the primary antagonist of the volume, the guy trying to stop Salem, a previously established ally, the guy who just gave up his arm to capture another clear-cut villain, and who throughout Volume 7 demonstrated none of the manipulation we would attribute to a Dumbledore-like figure. Rather than running with their Big Bad's arrival, RWBY asked how they could force one of the good guys to become a bad guy instead, hence the sudden shooting of Oscar and murder of the councilman. This is a far from perfect comparison (and I take my virtual life in my hands bringing up another controversial character lol), but it's a little like if after we learned about which side Snape was truly on, he suddenly tried to kill Hermione, succeeded in killing a minor character like Professor Flitwick, and then made plans to destroy all of Hogwarts. Meanwhile, everyone is ignoring Voldemort standing on the front lawn because the narrative randomly made Snape the biggest problem instead. So a lot of the fanbase is like, "Yeah he's absolutely a dick and his horrific past/contentious choices are the point of his character... but he's also supposed to be one of the good guys at the end of the day? And the Big Bad is right there? We can argue about how 'good' Snape is until we're blue in the face, but he's no Voldemort. Why did you feel the need to chuck the morally gray character off the deep end for our heroes to oppose when our primary antagonist is literally right here, trying to kill them?" From this, to introducing a dead mother that in no way motivates our cast, to having Oscar face down Salem with an improvised weapon instead of Ruby with her eyes, to giving Penny an arc about accepting her android body only to rip it away, etc. etc. RWBY continuously throws out ideas without understanding what they're meant to accomplish. There's a lot to criticize about Harry Potter nowadays, but a lack of logical development isn't one of them.

And just to chuck in another text — because I too think about what has done Volume 8 themes better lol — consider: Loki. Stop reading now if you don't want spoilers, but a couple episodes in Loki and Sylvie end up on a dying planet that is only evacuating the rich. That's said overtly in both the dialogue and visually in the mise-en-scene, with poor people screaming that only the rich are getting tickets for the rocket and elaborately dressed elites enjoying the comforts of that ride. Then, just as they're about to escape, leaving the rest of their world behind, a piece of the moon hits the ship, either killing them instantly or stranding them with the people they abandoned. And I thought to myself, "See, this makes sense in a way RWBY never did." Evacuation was never about wealth in RWBY, despite what the fandom continually claims. Ironwood was trying to evacuate everyone and only stopped because they all assumed Salem would be killing them momentarily. This situation included Relics and a Maiden that would easily turn the tide of the war, meaning their safety influenced the whole world, not just these people. Mantle was not necessarily about to be destroyed — indeed, we find out later that Salem had no interest in it — and it was always a bad faith (and OOC) assumption that Ironwood was leaving his kingdom for good. The story doesn't even acknowledge the huge number of Mantle citizens already on Atlas when the attack begins. I was just sitting there thinking, "This two episode mini conflict in an insane show with alligators and time shenanigans somehow holds up better than RWBY's 27 episodes that are trying to be deep. How does that happen?"

[kj-1130]

Feelings Suck

Uswnt x reader

⚠️T/W: implication to emotional/verbal abuse? Bullying, lil bit of self-harm maybe? lemme know if it’s something else.⚠️

Main Masterlist

Your first call up to the national team came when you were 16. This had been your dream since you first started watching and playing soccer. Being able to train with such inspirational and empowering women was amazing.

When you arrived, you were kind of shy at first. You honestly didn’t expect to be called up again, so you figured there was no point in trying to get to know everyone and develop relationships.

Much to your surprise, you had been asked to attend another camp. Then, you started to get to know the ladies more and you learned that they were amazing people.

The women were so understanding and just nice in general. If only the media and your classmates had been the same.

Before you had been called up, you weren’t very popular at school. Many didn’t notice you were there; you were essentially invisible to everyone even some teachers. But after you made your debut, things started to change.

You had never yearned for popularity, but hoped it was the good kind if it ever did come to you. But when it came to you, it came fast, hard, and unexpected yet not the way you hoped.

People started pointing out flaws; saying you weren’t good enough to be playing with such great athletes or that you didn’t look like other soccer players.

Not only that, but the media had ripping your ass as well. Almost every time you looked, your social media was full of your mistakes. From compilations of your greatest fails to commentators.

The supposed fans of the Uswnt, were absolutely ruthless to you. Always saying that you didn’t deserve your spot and anybody was easily ten times better than you.

You had your teammates and surely they’d understand what you were going through. The thought of asking for help had crossed your mind multiple times; when you saw Christen just watching television the first time you were roomed together. Or when you and Tobin had spent the day together going to get lunch. There were plenty of times you could’ve reached out, but the constant overthinking and weight you had on your shoulders told you otherwise.

You tried not to let it get to you, but when you hear something so much you start to believe it. If being on the national team gave you this much baggage, you’d rather be invisible like before.

You always thought that you’d burden people with your problems. Everybody has issues of their own that some didn’t know about, but they carried on. That’s what you thought. If people can get through their issues then so can you.

Day by day, the team noticed that your behavior had changed. You didn’t talk as much and you weren’t as chipper as usual.

You didn’t do your daily morning yoga with Christen often opting to do some light training instead. You no longer went skateboarding with Ash and Tobin, but spent your time in your hotel room looking at stats or ways to improve your play. It didn’t matter to you how much time it took.

You just wanted someone to recognize that you’re something; that’s what you always longed for. Each time someone said something about your horrible play, your parents were only being proved right. They always told you that you’d never get anywhere with the sport; that there were athletes much better than you. But you always pushed past that, desperate to show them that you could and would make it. Yet now, it just seems like they were just telling the truth.

You had gotten off the phone with your parents not long ago. Both of them screamed at you for a good thirty minutes, complaining that you had wasted their money on soccer. Complaining that you had no right to be such a bad player when they gave you everything you needed. Of course you felt guilty; they manipulated you to think it’s your fault.

So here you were once again, sitting at the hotel’s desk trying to get it together. You had training in an hour so you had to suck it up.

Before you could start getting ready, Alex, your roommate, came in with Kelley, Allie, Christen, and Tobin.

You quickly wiped away your tears and hoped you didn’t look like you were about to breakdown. Thankfully, luck was on your side today.

Alex came over and sat on her bed along with Kelley and Allie, “Hey kiddo, we’re just gonna hang out for a bit til training. What were you up to?”

You hadn’t really been doing anything since the phone call so you just came up with a lie, “Nothing much. Just on my phone.”

The women had started engaging in conversation, so you decided to just get ready.

Grabbing your clothes, you went to take a shower. Once you stepped inside, you tried avoiding the mirror all together, but it was so hard. It was right there; right in front of you. It was impossible for you to ignore.

When you turned and got a glimpse of yourself, all you heard were your classmates. ‘You’re too big to be a soccer player.’ ‘You’re never gonna make it big.’ ‘You’re worthless, whatever you do is for nothing.’

You blocked out their voices, but soon came your parents’. ‘You’re wasting our money.’ ‘You’re not good enough’ ‘We should’ve given you away when we had the chance.’

Those had been things you’d heard before; the last one always hitting you the hardest. Maybe they were right. Maybe you were just a nobody with no guaranteed future with this sport. Maybe you should just quit it all...

Christen had gone quiet after you made it into the bathroom. She noticed some of your odd behavior especially quick since she didn’t have her yoga buddy anymore.

The others kept talking but the more the forward thinks about it, your mood has surely been dampening. You hadn’t spoken to her about anything, but she hoped that you did feel comfortable to speak to her when you were having problems.

Christen speaks up as she no longer can keep this to herself, “Has anybody else noticed (Y/n)’s been acting weird lately?”

The other athletes in the room contemplate for a second before nodding their heads, already trying to figure out what was wrong.

Kelley had been scrolling through social media at the time and happened to come across some comments, “Uh, guys? I think I have an idea of what’s going on.”

Everyone in the room immediately snapped their heads over to the defender and crowded around her. Allie was the first to see and started reading one, “‘(Y/n) (L/n) honestly needs to be removed from the team. Literally anyone would be a better choice, like come on.’ That has over one hundred likes. There’s no way she hasn’t seen any of these.”

The women all shared sad looks. Christen was about to say something but you opened the door, having finished getting ready.

Everyone scrambled back to their respectful spots and you raised an eyebrow at their frantic behavior.

Shaking your head, you decide to go down to the lobby to be alone and hopefully clear your head.

Before you could even make it to the door, someone had called you, “Hey (y/n)?”

You sighed before answering, “Yes, Alex?”

“Where you going?”

You just wanted to go somewhere without being questioned for once. You understood that you were the youngest, but the level of overprotectiveness these women have is off the charts.

“No, I’m not leaving the hotel. Yes, I have my phone. Yes, I have my key card. I’m just going to the lobby to chill for a bit before practice.”

You had been through the exact same interrogation almost every time you wanted to leave your hotel room.

Luckily, before Alex could grill you any further, Christen stepped in, “It’s fine (y/n), just go ahead.”

You muttered a small bye and walked out the door. When you were halfway down the hall and heard the door close, you let one of your tears fall.

-

When it was time for practice, you had just been off your game. You were missing shots you normally wouldn’t, your tackles were messy, and everything was just an overall mess right now. And everyone else could tell.

Every word read or that was spoken to you were just in your brain, making themselves at home. They were right there, always reminding you what a failure you are and that you’ll always be one. They were there letting you know that your parents were right all along. They were there making themselves known in any way possible.

You were so close to breaking down at this point. Vlatko took you off the field and told you to get yourself together. You honestly didn’t know if you could anymore.

You were so close to breaking and didn’t know if anyone could pick up the leftover pieces.

Sitting down on the sidelines, you immediately put your knees to your chest and tucking your head in between them. You tried to calm down, but it was so hard. Your senses were dialed to 11 and everything was too much. You decided to get up and go to your bag where you kept your phones along with your earbuds.

You quickly scrambled to get them on; anything to block out the chaos of your brain was good at the moment. All unaware of the worried eyes on you.

In that moment, the team had decided to get to the bottom of this and help you.

-

You shouldn’t have expected to be able to hide this forever. You shouldn’t have expected to be able to use homework as an excuse to not hang out forever.

When there was a mandatory team bonding called in your and Alex’s room, you knew something was about to happen. Whether that something was about to benefit you was the question.

When you got to the hotel, you expected that you’d be able to shower then relax a bit and prepare yourself for the inevitable conversation you were about to have with all 20+ women on the team.

So when you did step out of the restroom, you absolutely did not expect over 40 eyes already on you.

“Nope.”

“Ah, ah, ah, no,” Ali said while walking over to you, dragging you with her to her spot and pulling you onto her lap. Your eyes widened slightly and you immediately moved yourself to the spot next to her.

Everyone was thinking similar things. You usually loved your cuddles and they’d always make you feel better if you were stressed because of school or anything else.

“So,” Ash said, “you wanna tell us what’s been going on?”

You simply looked down at your fidgeting hands and shrugged your shoulders. “What’s there to tell?”

Ali shrugs her shoulders as well, “Oh I don’t know. Maybe how you were off your game today.”

When have I ever been on my game?

“Or how you’ve been distancing yourself from everyone.”

I don’t deserve to be here anyway.

“Or—“

“Okay, okay. I don’t know what you want me to say,” you muttered.

You were panicking. This is overwhelming you and you didn’t really want to have much human interaction after training.

“Look, you don’t have to go into detail,” Tobin said. She was always chill and her demeanor relaxed you a bit. “You can just give us a gist and let us help you. Please, (y/n). We care about you and your behavior shows something is wrong. Let us help.”

And there was the guilt trip.

Tobin’s words started to make you tear up.

After much hesitation you decide to say something (more like mumbled).

“They say things.”

Ali takes your face in her hands and lifts it up, forcing your bloodshot eyes to make contact with hers.

“Can you speak up sweetie?”

“They say things,” you spoke with a tremble in your voice.

“Who says things?”

“Everybody. They all do.”

Every woman in the room shares glances. They knew you were still going to school when you didn’t have camp so hate could be extended there too.

Christen decides to contribute to the conversation, “You know what anyone says isn’t true, right?”

You shrugged again.

“(Y/n),” Kelley spoke sternly.

“What?” You finally snapped. Every word after this just spilled out of you like a dam.

“I’ve been hearing it for the past 17 years, do you not expect me to believe it! I see it everyday, there's no hiding it.”

There it was. You snapped. Everything was coming out. Your body shook from sobs and Ali quickly pulled you closer into her embrace.

There was no dry eye. No one knew of your home situation and now the cat’s out of the bag.

“(Y/n),” you were pulling your hair; the pain always grounded you.

“(Y/n)!”

“What?!”

Ali grabbed your wrist and gently yanked them from your head.

“You’re having a panic attack. Breathe.”

You were shaking your head, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

It took at least 10 minutes to calm down. The team gave you a few more minutes to regroup.

When you became more aware of your surroundings, you realized how much your head was hurting.

While you were hiding in Ali’s shoulder, everyone asked questions.

“What do you mean 17 years, (y/n)?” Casey asked.

“My parents. They say stuff too. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s just go to sleep, alright?” Ali always knew how to calm you down.

You nodded and hummed into her neck and fell asleep soon after.

From then on, the team was going to protect you. How? They didn’t know at the moment, but they were absolutely determined.

[bigskydreaming]

#when i read about tim i often kind of come to the idea that he's relatively self centered#and that can be both a flaw and a strength#but he doesn't often consider other people's feelings and circumstances#like when dick made damian robin he didn't really consider the situation from anyone else's view#or in his origin story#he doesn't seem to consider how dick would feel about hearing how tim was affected by dick's parents' death#or with the spyral situation#or in regards to him earning robin#and its pretty consistent in fandom characterization even if a lot of writers don't seem to be aware of it#its interesting cause i think its something i think he has in common with bruce#its honestly a surprisingly consistent thing from what i see#and it can be a strength to#it can absolutely lead to some confidence and self actualization#as well as being able commit to fixing something and working hard at it#because you believe you can and don't think anyone else can/will do it via @emenerd

Y’know, what’s interesting to me about these points is the fact that like.....Tim having tendencies towards self-centeredness is actually something that COMPLETELY makes sense and can be quite sympathetic in light of his backstory of having neglectful parents.

In an age of armchair diagnosticians eager to label anyone who expresses a controversial viewpoint while centering themselves as an example, as like, having a narcissistic personality disorder (and with the loaded implication that this makes them a bad person even if its true, instead of just....having a disorder, yay weaponizable ableism) like, it can be important to add in distinctions that even tendencies that share overlap with a lot of things born of entitlement, etc....aren’t always necessarily proof of that.

For instance, in Tim’s case, an overemphasis on himself and his own position in situations and arguments can very reasonably be attributed as a coping mechanism he developed in an attempt to acknowledge and address self-esteem issues he sees himself as having, DUE to parental neglect.

Its not that he thinks he’s the most important person in the room, necessarily, its that he spent so many years not even being considered a person in the room, that now he OVERCOMPENSATES on his own behalf, in an attempt to remind himself that no, his opinion and feelings and situations do matter.....and because he like most of the Bat-characters has a tendency towards hyper-fixating on a problem they’re trying to address, this can also understandably create a kind of tunnel vision. Where he’s so busy focusing on what he’s diagnosed as an actual issue he has that he’s trying to address or make up for, in order to build up his self-esteem....that he neglects to keep everyone around him equally centered in his interactions with them, and remember that like, they have their own issues and ignoring that to focus entirely on his own runs the risk of negatively impacting them in the exact same way he’s still learning to cope with having been negatively impacted in his development as a child.

None of this makes him a bad person, or is stuff that can’t be addressed and developed just by paying the appropriate attention to it and his interactions.

SO the issue I tend to more often have....

Is with how often in fandom and fanon we hear references to Tim’s neglect and emotional abuse and how this impacted him.....much in the same way we see Jason and Cass and Damian and Dick’s various forms of abuse and the developmental impact it had on them....

BUT there tends to then be a disconnect, IMO, because that acknowledgment of the WHAT of Tim’s neglect and abuse and the HOW it hurt him.....isn’t often followed up by an examination/awareness of how it also SHAPED him.....at least, not compared to how discussions/fics about say, Jason’s abuse tend to point out the latter as much as the former.

And this is a big part of my gripe with the ways abuse is centered and tackled as a topic in fics and fandom discussions, because its so often capitalized upon as a defense or shield for a character from criticism, stuff like that.....without ever actually EXPLORING the topic itself, or the FULLNESS of the impact it can have.

But only in regards to some characters.

What I mean is like....we see a lot of focus on Jason’s childhood abuse, yeah? And this often is then connected through headcanons, meta and fics to various aspects of Jason’s characterization as a teenager, and as an adult as well.....with a tendency towards anger or violence, abrasive personality, etc. Don’t get me wrong, its usually presented as such in a SYMPATHETIC light, especially when raised by fans of Jason themselves.....but his abuse is very much present and centered in fics and discussions as something that not only impacted him and made him suffer, but something that actually shaped him to varying degrees as well....with a lot of focus then in fics of him as an adult, like, paid to him going to therapy and unpacking his childhood abuse in an effort to WORK on these aspects of himself that make his present day life harder or less healthy than he’d like it to be. The issue of how his abuse lent itself to various behaviorisms is raised in order to address various byproducts of his abuse as FLAWS that he seeks to eliminate, in order to make himself happier and make himself someone that people want to be around more.

And again, don’t get me wrong - for the most part, this is a GOOD thing. The caveat here is just a personal dislike I have for how often these narratives smack of a kind of saviorism, and act like it was only through the grace of Bruce and becoming part of the Batfam that Jason’s ever afforded the opportunity to better himself as a person. I dislike the hell out of this because it not only pairs all too well with a lot of classist shit, it feeds into the singular narrative we’re so often presented with by media about abused kids: the myth of the victim being destined to become a victimizer, it all being an inevitable cycle. The reason this myth is so easily perpetuated is the exact reason I’m so critical of the saviorism in a lot of abused-Jason fics.....people can very easily fall into the trap of assuming that abused kids are likely to grow up to be abusers because they never have anyone to TEACH them that abuse is wrong, or to lead by healthy example. 

The harm of this perception is that it kinda throws under the bus every kid who never lucks out and gets a Bruce Wayne style savior swooping in to not only save them from their abusive environs, but TEACH them that they deserved better and that abuse is wrong. 

Because its like, uh, the thing is, plenty of abused kids who never get a personal mentor or savior figure are fully capable of figuring out for themselves that they deserve better and that people hurting them is wrong, because it makes them feel bad and they don’t like that? 

Many abused kids don’t grow up in a media vacuum where they simply have no access to glimpses of lives different from their own.....we see kids having happier, healthier family lives on TV or in books and are able to figure out that society overall thinks that’s what family is SUPPOSED to look like, and its ours that is the aberration? 

The very fact that we’re taught or have it instilled in us by abusive parents that like, we’re not to bring up instances or examples of our abuse to teachers or friends, that its a SECRET, is like, usually a dead giveaway that there’s something WRONG with it that we’re being instructed - and enforced with abusive consequences - to keep from alerting others to....like, this is basically a blaring siren to a lot of us that no, what’s happening to us ISN’T normal and acceptable, and that’s literally WHY the parent we’re afraid of is so insistent on us keeping the facts of it hidden? 

And so like, tons of abused kids figure out for ourselves the difference between right or wrong, based off nothing more than our own feelings about things and a desire to not be like the people who make us feel miserable - like, never underestimate the power of spite to like, keep a kid from growing up doing the same thing to others that was done to them, lol. 

But point being, lots of kids never get a Bruce Wayne figure to take them away from their abuse and also teach them that they never deserved it and how not to pass the hurt forward by doing the same things to others. And its kinda condescending as fuck that we so often see narratives that take it as so obvious it barely merits commenting on, that like, ‘of COURSE abused kids grow up to become abusers if they don’t have someone else step in and show them a better way’....mmm, no. Fuck that. But you get what I mean.

So like, its a mixed bag. Its a good thing, to see Jason-centric stories that show him addressing his childhood and seeking just a more fuller, happier, healthier life for himself. Its a less great thing to see this narrative presented as all encompassing, with it never being raised that no, Jason actually could figure out he deserved better and how to treat people in ways he’d want to be treated even without a billionaire guardian angel.....NOT because the narrative wherein someone helps an abused kid figure out what was wrong about how they were treated is like, NEVER valid....but rather it just becomes a problem when looked at as a data point against the larger tapestry of fandom-wide works....and noticing that this specific narrative is pretty much the ONLY one raised or treated as valid. With it just being ASSUMED to be the natural course of events and characters, rather than just....the direction society overall has their perceptions of abuse steered towards due to a singular and constantly reinforced abuse narrative shown to us in media.

And the way this all plays back into my point about Tim and what took me down this road in general.....

Is that disconnect I was talking about, lies specifically in HOW Tim is often acknowledged and regarded as an abuse survivor due to his emotional abuse and neglect......with this abuse and its impact on HIM often taking center stage, much the way Jason’s abuse and its impact takes center stage in his narratives.....

BUT with a key difference being that while a lot of Jason’s narratives go on to denote the specific ways his abuse helped SHAPE him and his interactions with others, and raise and address the ways in which he can better himself and his relationships by unpacking all of this openly....

Most of the stories about Tim’s abuse/neglect tend to just STOP at the awareness of its existence and impact on him. Never taking it that one step further to examine how those specific forms of abuse could have additionally SHAPED him....in ways that sometimes negatively impact those around him and his own loved ones, even if this is completely unintentional on his part. The difference, the disconnect, lies solely in how rarely its ever acknowledged that Tim’s own upbringing can and does play directly into how he interacts with people later on in life.....and in ways that he’s fully capable of addressing and bettering himself so as to be happier and healthier just in his own life, and in his relationships, as someone others want to be around.

Aaaaand once you actually examine or consider WHY there’s this discrepancy between the full ramifications of Tim’s abuse and that which various siblings of his underwent, when there’s full agreement that what he did go through absolutely can be termed abusive as well....like, its the implications of what about Tim makes him more naturally resistant or whatever to being shaped by his abuse in ways that have actual negative impact on others in his life, whereas the same isn’t true of say, Jason.....that’s when the red flags start to go up for me, and the unintended subtext starts to get Less Than Stellar, IMO.

Anyway. Just food for thought on the subject of Tim, his upbringing, the various impacts this had on not JUST him but also on how he interacts with others, and ways in which all of this compares and contrasts with how the subject of abuse is raised and depicted in regards to other Batkids.

[mermaidsirennikita]

bridgerton--the good, the bad, the ugly

The short of it: Bridgerton excellently captures the tone of Regency romance novels and offers a lot of escapism and great sex scenes, but could definitely use some serious work in terms of how it depicts race and it should have made some further alterations to the dated and flawed source material.  Definitely loved a lot of it and am hotly anticipating the second season, but I want to see more work done and I HOPE that this encourages the adaptation of better (and less inherently flawed) romance novels.

Now for the longer take.

The Good

Bridgerton depicted sex and romance in a way that is totally different from anything I’ve seen in period dramas, for sure, but possibly different from anything I’ve seen on TV.  The romance of it all was woven into almost every aspect of the show. There is the handsome and seemingly severe but extravagantly wealthy and sexually adept duke sweeping into town.  The (multiple) rakes who just want to have fun while also being hot messes.  The awakening of female sexuality and the copious use of the female gaze.  (Note the pretty modest and minimal focus on female nudity, while we get plenty of lingering shots on Simon.).  People want love!  There is pretty minimal violence and perhaps the most physically violent scene involves Simon beating a man up because HE IMPEACHED DAPHNE’S HONOR~.

The sex scenes themselves focused on Daphne’s pleasure for the most part, and were probably among the best I’ve seen since Outlander in terms of chemistry, in terms of the visuals, in terms of focus on sex as an act of emotional connection and FUN. Yes, there was some Unlikely Vaginal Orgasming, but we also saw Simon tell Daphne about masturbation.  On the wedding night, he was pretty clearly touching her to help her enjoy it.  He ate her out... a good bit.  

And aside from that, we got all of the grand speeches, the stolen glances and touches, an excellent buildup of sexual tension that led to some pretty hilarious moments.  

I also really enjoyed many of the performances on this show.  Rege-Jean and Phoebe had great chemistry and excellent back and forth.  Jonathan was a GREAT Anthony.  I would argue that as lackluster as I found his relationship with Siena (more on that in a minute) it largely existed as a way to set him up for his romance with Kate.  He now has even more of a reason to be down with love, as opposed to solely relying on a kind of flimsy tragic backstory.  Additionally, his overprotectiveness of Daphne added tension to the story and made him a source of comedic relief for me?  I loved it.  Give me disaster Anthony all day; can’t wait until he falls to the enemies to lovers trope just like Simon fell to his FLAW-FREE fake dating plan.

A lot of the changes I found were really good.  Obviously, it was important that the show incorporated greater diversity (though they need way more).  Benedict was INFINITELY more fun and interesting than he was in the novels, and acted as another standout for me.  As much as I hate Portia Featherington, I think that the elevation of her to a proper villainess is probably necessary and Polly Walker excels at those types of roles, though they need to maybe have her be less like, actively racist.  I adored the addition of Queen Charlotte; she was excellent comic relief.  Lady Danbury’s expanded role and relationship to Simon was one of the best moves they made.  It touched my entire soul.

Buuuut....

The Bad

The show needs to work on casting more men that are frankly on Rege-Jean’s level.  It feels a bit awkward to see a guy that is by most people’s standards kind of stunning and then.... Colin looks twelve.  Lord Philip is like... a farm guy.  Get rid of the sideburns, we’re in romance novel territory.

In the same note, the girl who played Siena wasn’t a great actress and wasn’t super stunning, so even though I’m fine with her being a placeholder....  Eh.  Go for better casting.  The woman playing Madame Delacroix would’ve played that role so much better and I really enjoyed her dynamic with Benedict because she was just fun.

Frankly, I don’t know what the fuck they’re going to do to make me want to watch Penelope and Colin fall in love.  Their book was already a bit basic--fun, but far from revolutionary.  I don’t really get why they would receive attention similar to that of Kate and Anthony, basically.  The issue is that Colin, again, looks and sound rather young and twerpy.  It obviously wasn’t great for him to be tricked into raising another man’s child, but.... For fuck’s sake, how much would that have affected his life on a practical level.  He’d never know unless he was told, thanks to the lack of DNA tests.  He was marrying far out of his league in terms of attractiveness.  He’s a rich white guy in England with a supportive family.  

I really disliked the fact that Colin told Marina in his huffy little tantrum that he would have married her anyway--because would you have, buddy?  Really?  The thing is that Marina had no way of knowing that and her entire life (and the reputations of her cousins) was on the line.  She didn’t know if she could trust Colin to keep her secret.  They barely knew each other.  He basically came off as a whiny child and I’m fine with him staying in Greece if that’s the plan.

Penelope was just... psychotic.  And that was really disappointing, because I love Nicola and would love to have loved to see the fat girl get her sexy love story.  But first off, lol, it wouldn’t have been sexy because Colin was miscast.  Second, she basically tried to destroy Marina’s life and that of her sisters?  And herself?  Because Colin?  Because Colin, a guy who hasn’t even shown any amount of attraction to her at this point?  Her tears, her whining, it was all too much.  Penelope was dealing with a crush and Marina was dealing with the real Grown Woman issues of a child out of wedlock and as it turned out a dead lover and they were not on equal footing.

I mean, Penelope could very well make a great villainess at this point, and if done well I’d embrace it.  But I do not know how the fuck they can make me interested in her love story.  And the idea of her basically being launched into villainy because she was this chubby white girl obsessively jealous of a beautiful black woman...... not a great look.

The show definitely needs to explore diversity in terms of sexuality too--I don’t think it’s correct to read Benedict as straight because he still seems to be open to exploring.  Once he has more screentime, I think he could totally end up being bisexual, and it’s possible that the writers were trying to feel the audience out in terms of their receptiveness to taking a straight character who has a big straight love story in the books and making him LGBT+.  Eloise could also easily be a lesbian, and I’d be thrilled to see that happen.  They need to do something to expand the world, and if there are 8 Bridgerton kids, all of them being straight as an arrow seems SO unlikely.

The Ugly

Obviously, the rape scene was bad and should have been written out.  Simon could have gotten caught up in the moment and blown up at Daphne after he accidentally didn’t pull out in time.  Men.... accidentally don’t pull out in time... a lot.  That’s how babies happen.  It would’ve been believable, and due to our sympathies being with Simon largely, I don’t think he would have become irredeemable if he was more at fault than Daphne.  

As it was, I will say that the scene was somewhat better than it played in the books because Simon was conscious and totally sober, and it was a bit?  Confusing?  That he didn’t just roll Daphne over and pull out?  Because she wasn’t really clearly trying as hard as she was in the book to wrap her legs around him and hold him tight.  But it remained a rape scene.  The show also did a better job, I think, of establishing how fucked up it was that Simon took advantage of Daphne’s lack of knowledge.  Whatever he said about thinking she knew what was up--he knew she didn’t even know about masturbation.  He had to know she wouldn’t understand what pulling out meant.  He did very clearly mislead her to think that he was sterile and therefore denied Daphne her ability to give informed consent.  Did that justify what Daphne did?  Nope.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  But both of them did a fucked up thing and I think that we honestly could’ve stopped at Simon’s misleading.

The issue too is that this leads into a bigger problem the show had.  It wanted to include diversity (yay!) but did not consider the total implications of what was happening (not yay).  Daphne and Simon’s dynamic is inevitably influenced by the fact that she’s a white woman and he’s a black man, regardless of whatever handwaves happened.  This influences the sexual assault and makes it even more messy.

Speaking of mess, I’m not sure what exactly would have fixed the “we don’t want this to be a colorblind casting” issue... but the explanation they came up with wasn’t good.  Never mind that this makes everything SUPER confusing (racism is over like..... maybe 50 years MAX after Queen Charlotte’s marriage if we assume she was a teen when she married and is in her 60s now?) but Lady Danbury’s dialogue explaining this was HORRENDOUS.  “One of them fell in love with one of us”.  The implications are awful.  I don’t know if perhaps setting back the integration of society centuries earlier would have helped?  But this wasn’t it.

Additionally, the writers and casting directors didn’t seem to get that diversity is all well and good, but what about the fact that almost every black character has a light skin tone?  Why are there so few black female characters?  Why is Marina, the most prominent woc on the show, given the “pregnant and desperately trying to trick a man into marrying her until her jealous white cousin fucks her life up and she is humiliated into settling for a loveless match” plot?  I desperately hope we see her next season, falling in love with Sir Phillip or perhaps having experienced a plot twist that gives her someone else...  And she better not die. Eloise can find someone else if Marina really ends up with Sir Philip.

Ultimately, again, I really loved the show.  But it needs to work on some things.  I think that a lot of its issues can be addressed and fixed in a future season, and I HOPE they do that.