#which does kind of make me want to do a reread

[temikoangie]

Tenko being a buddhist and keeping true to these beliefs even when it's not the logical thing is what makes Tenko my fave so while I understand why people w some types of religious trauma would dislike that part and interpret the master as a bad influence, as someone whose religious trauma was getting my religion demonized, seen as toxic and dismissed, it works for me as much better to interpret him as well meaning. I actually think I've seen way more people portraying him as toxic than anything

i wanna quickly preface this right now tht I Am Not a Buddhist Nor do i practice Buddhism so if i ever get something wrong here Please do correct me im entirely open to crticism on that part. ( i realize now i didn't end up going indepth to your religion as i expected but i am Very much open to feedback if desired)

personally if people Do interpret master as a toxic influence Solely because of the religion that he himself raised tenko in, i think theyre!! very horribly wrong ! there is nothing wrong with that at all, tenko's beliefs really do align very similarly. however my main ick with the master that tends to get overlooked is How he essentially treated the whole ''hating men'' thing.

Tenko, canonically told us themselves, that they use their neo-aikido abilities to go out every day & night, to help bring justice. Whether it's helping an elder cross the street, tracking down a thief or even sexual predators on the train !

the 4th dialogue especially concerns me, seeing there wasn't any limit on what situations tenko is essentially sent in to diffuse. and it seems like they've been doing this since they were young! ( at least young enough that it would've seem like they've been doing this for... practically their whole life) Who knows what kind of things tenko was exposed to !! and in the next FTE we pretty much get a confirmation as to why tenko hated men, and it was because their own master reinforced the idea that men shouldn't ever be touched, lest your abilities gets drained out. I get that the master is trying to shape up tenko's moral compass (hence stuff like ''No getting excited about the holidays, dont eat 3 more sweets per day, dont touch men etc etc)

(thisis also the same fte where tenko ''finds out'' that their master is a man and completely freaks out )

i get what the master is trying to do here but like... that's definitely not something you should say to your Very Impressionable Child who's already seen things they probably shouldn't have to experience at their age. there are definitely less.. traumatizing ways of doing this.

Did the master intend to do this maliciously? or did he meant it well and didn't realize the profound effect it would have on his Essentially Foster child ? who freaking knows. the game never really gives us any better hints for either side, but regardless of intention, it's still not a very smart thing to do to this traumatized person with emotional dysregulation .

now going back to the buddhism ppl who insinuate that master is a bad influence on tenko Solely because his religion is stupid and kind of weird! like idk how explain it to you but i don't like the attempts of demonization of other religions that isnt your typical Evangelical Christianity type thing. ppl who think that Is the Reason to interpret master as toxic is ! wrong ! and Should reevaluate why they see master as toxic ! and i am here Personally to tell you that Maybe master shouldve idk. taught him to redirect his energy to something else entirely ! that doesn't involve giving him a freaking savior/caretaker complex! people shouldnt use this as a chance to demonize buddhism!!!

[infizero]

his faceeeeee someone get me OUT OF HERE

[lustfulslxt]

Ruin Me - Chris Sturniolo

summary : chris accidentally sends y/n a text meant for nate, ultimately fessing his desire for her. y/n takes action into her own hands.

warnings : swearing, smut, slight daddy kink

a/n : based off of these texts

—

The silence feels incredibly loud as she stares down at her phone with her jaw dropped. She can’t even count how many times she’s reread the last few messages she’s received from Chris, who’s only just a story below her.

She has been spending the past few nights over at the triplets’ house, which is a common occurrence, seeing as her and Chris are best friends. She never once thought her presence was anything of a burden for any of them. Her mind immediately ran with the worst with Chris’ first few messages.

However, as she continuously reads the last couple over and over, she can feel a foreign feeling building inside her. A feeling she’s never felt for Chris until now, or more so one that she’s kept beneath the surface in favor of their friendship.

The longer she takes to respond, the more anxious she makes herself. She’s conflicted. Does she go downstairs? Does she text him back? Does she set boundaries?

Her decision is made when she finds herself subconsciously making her way down the stairs leading to his room, fully ready to give in to temptation.

As she stands outside his door, her heart and mind are racing. Is she really doing this? Before she can talk herself out of it, her fist is knocking on the wooden door.

On the other side, Chris is frozen looking at his phone. Read 10:56 PM. It’s currently 11:10 PM. His nerves are bubbling and anxiety is brewing in his stomach. He can’t help but feel like he ruined everything.

As soon as he hears knocking on his door, his face drains of color. He can only assume it’s Y/N. With slight hesitation, he makes his way over and opens the door.

“Hi.” She whispers with a small smile.

“Hi.” He breathes, then continues, “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I never wanted to make you uncomfortable or anything along those lines. We can just forget I ever said anything.”

“Can I come in?” She asks, ignoring his statements.

He opens his mouth, only is at a loss for words, and opts for opening the door wider for entry. She strolls in, stopping in the middle of the room, and turns back to face him. He slowly shuts the door, his heart rapidly pounding in his chest, unsure of which direction their conversation will go.

“So-“ He begins, only to pause because he’s waiting on her to say something.

“Do you talk about me often?” She asks.

He stammers, “W-what?”

“You said you meant to send that to Nate.” She reminds him, “Do you do that often?”

His cheeks grow hot as he scratches the back of his head. “Um, kind of. Yeah, I guess so.”

“Can I see?” She asks him, eyebrows raising.

His eyes widen, his lips curving inwards. “I-I’d rather you not.”

All she does is nod, standing there in silence.

“I’m sorry I made things awkward.” He groans, tossing his head back at his own stupidity.

She walks over to his bed and sits on it, kicking her feet. He only watches her, attempting to get a feel for what she’s thinking. Usually, he can read her through and through, but he’s much too nervous right now to even comprehend anything other than the fact that he’s screwed things up.

“Boy, stop standing there and come sit down.” She rolls her eyes.

He quickly shuffles over to the bed, sitting next to her, but makes sure to leave at least a foot gap between them. She glances at the space and rolls her eyes once more, sliding over until their bodies are aligned side by side.

“Can you please say something?” Chris asks, eyes wide. “I’m like freaking out over here and you’re not saying a single word. Let me know what’s up.”

“I wanna see what you say about me.” She repeats, nodding towards his phone beside them. “Either that, or the pictures that I know you have.”

“Y/N, come on!” He whines.

“Okay, fine.” She shrugs, standing up to leave.

He quickly wraps his hand around her wrist, tugging her back to the bed. As soon as she’s seated, his fingers are working on his phone, reluctantly pulling up what she wants to see.

He gives her a nervous glance, only receiving a pointed look from her. Taking a deep breath, he slowly gives the phone to her, which she eagerly takes.

As she scrolls through his camera roll, her mouth slowly falls open. At this point, Chris is pacing in front of her, his breath seemingly caught in his throat.

His phone is completely loaded with numerous pictures of her. Some are just selfies of them together, her alone. Others are random off guards that one would take of their best friend. Then, there are the not so normal ones.

Y/N looks up at Chris, causing him to halt his movement under her stare. He turns to her with a sheepish look on his face, and she can’t help but smirk a bit.

“Out with it.” He rolls his eyes, laying his hand out as if indicating for her to speak her mind.

“You’re a little freak.” She giggles.

He chokes on his saliva, as her response was unexpected. “Okay, can we move past this now?”

“No.”

“No?” He repeats, his face falling.

She shakes her head with a hum, “I could’ve swore you said you want me convulsing under you?”

She goes to pull her phone out to show him the messages when he quickly steps forward, stopping her from pulling up the facts to prove her statement. His hands are holding hers in place, their eyes locking.

It feels as if everything around them stopped, like they’re the only two things that exist. Their breaths become uneven due to their close proximity. Their heartbeats racing to become one. In this moment, nothing else matters.

Y/N swiftly tosses her phone aside and grabs a fistful of his shirt, yanking him down onto her. Their lips meet for the first time ever, finally crossing that forbidden threshold.

Relief floods through Chris, soon being replaced by excitement and desire. He’s been longing for this moment for what seems like forever. The feeling is surreal, he can’t help but put everything into their kiss. Y/N feels almost content, like this is that one thing she’s been missing in life.

Their kiss soon escalates, growing hot and needy, the two of them desperate for one another. Chris places one of his hands on her neck, softly gripping it, his other hand setting on the bed beside her head. Y/N runs her hands up his torso, wrapping them around his neck and moving them into his hair.

Chris quickly breaks away, “I want this, you, more than anything, but I don’t want to ruin anything between us.”

Y/N’s face flushes a rosy color as she stares up at him. Her hand meets his cheek, softly caressing it as she admires his beauty. She leans into him, planting multiple soft open mouthed kisses on his lips. She places one more, deep and passionate, savoring the taste of him on her tongue, and pulls away, tugging his bottom lip between her teeth.

“Ruin me.”

Those two simple words went straight through Chris, traveling all the way down to his dick. It begins throbbing with need, hardening beneath his pants. He stares into her eyes for another second before slamming his mouth on hers, yearning for all of her, and gladly accepting everything she’s offering.

His grip around her neck tightens, pulling her impossibly closer as their kiss grows hungry. Their tongues meet in a wet and sloppy frenzy, tangling together in an intricate way. Heavy breathing fills the air, along with the smacking of their lips.

Desperate for more, Y/N bucks her hips up into his, the feeling of his erection digging into her core, eliciting a moan from her mouth. Chris’ eyes damn near roll to the back of his head from the sound she makes, and he’s determined to hear more of it.

His mouth pulls away from hers, strings of saliva keeping them connected. He begins kissing down her jaw, his tongue gliding between his lips. He travels lower and nips at her neck, leaving a trail of saliva in his wake. He breathes her in, becoming intoxicated by her sweet scent. The smell of her peach shampoo and her vanilla body wash consume his senses, causing his mouth to water. His teeth graze the sensitive skin, sucking and biting on it, bruising it by the time he pulls away.

Y/N is left breathless beneath him, her mind foggy with lust. She can feel her heart thumping in her chest and she’s sure he can feel it too. Her hands stay tangled in his hair, holding him flush against her as he works her neck. Her skin is burning with desire and she’s never been so pleased with her impulsive decisions the way that she is right now.

Chris’ hands slip under her shirt, running up her abdomen. She feels like she’s on fire beneath his touch. His hands make their way over her bra, harshly squeezing her breasts, pulling another moan from her throat. He’s practically getting drunk off of her sounds, soaking in every little whimper and whine that falls from her lips.

He pulls back from her, swiftly removing his shirt, his chain dangling around his neck. Y/N sits up to remove hers, with his eager assistance. His hands go behind her back, unbuckling her bra, letting her shake it off her arms. He quickly flips her over so she’s bent over the side of bed.

Leaning over her, his erection presses into the back of her thigh, causing her to moan in anticipation. He moves her hair to the side and presses his lips against the back of her neck, causing goosebumps to form on her skin. She’s barely holding it together with the way his entire being consumes her. She’s relishing in the way his mouth feels on her, the way his hands caress her, the way his needy cock is pressed so hard into her, desperate to be buried inside her sopping core.

Chris continues working down her back, his tongue gliding over her smooth skin, nibbling on it every which way as he goes lower and lower. His fingers hook into the waistband of her bottoms, swiftly pulling them down, along with her panties. He tugs them further, until he’s able to pull them completely off and discard them to the side.

He pauses, taking in the way her glistening pussy peaks from between her thighs. Her plump ass looks so squeezable and he just wants to lose himself in her. His hands engulf her cheeks, kneading with the perfect amount of pressure, slowly pulling them apart as he massages them in circles. He can see her lips opening, exposing her entrance, as he does so, causing him to groan in satisfaction.

“Can’t wait to feel you around me.” He hums, spreading her legs apart to see more of her.

She only lets out a whine as the cool air meets her hot center. Her hands grip the sheets beneath her as her pussy clenches around nothing. Chris admires her desperation from behind, a proud smirk pulling to his lips.

He leans down and sinks his teeth into the plush skin of her ass, eliciting a pleased moan from her. His tongue slides between his teeth, soothing the sharp pain. Peppering wet kisses along the fat, he brings his hand to her inner thigh, slowly trailing upwards towards her core.

“D-don’t tease.” Y/N whines, pushing herself back into him.

“Shh, gonna make you feel so good.” He mumbles against her ass.

He latches his mouth on the plump tissue, sucking down and biting it, leaving purple and red bruises. His fingers slither up against her pussy, sliding along her folds, pulling another lewd moan from her.

He gathers her juices with every swipe of his fingers, leaving her legs damn near trembling. She’s never needed something like the way she’s needing him, tears almost pricking in her eyes from her desperation. Finally, he presses two fingers into her entrance, a long moan falling from her lips from the way he fills her.

“So fucking wet for me.” He groans, bringing his face closer to her heat.

His tongue flicks over her outer folds, her arousal coating his tongue, causing him to hum at the delightful taste. Pulling his fingers out, he replacing them with his tongue. Continuous moans leave Y/N’s mouth as she indulges in the way he devours her.

His hands grip her ass, spreading it as he dives in deeper. His tongue slides down to her clit, lathering it with his saliva. His nose presses against her entrance and he can’t help but breathe in her natural scent, his cock throbbing from pleasant smell.

“F-fuck, so good.” She cries out, pressing her face into the mattress.

Licking all of her juices up, he sucks her folds before pulling back, leaving her breathless, whiny, and dissatisfied.

“Can’t wait any longer, baby.” He breathes, “Need to feel your sweet little pussy squeezing my cock.”

He pulls at the drawstring of his sweats, loosening them enough to pull them and his boxers down. His dick springs out, bouncing up against his abdomen. He hisses from the cool air, eager to feel the wet warmth her pussy provides. He grabs the base of his member, pumping it a few times, before swiping it in her folds to lubricate it, and aligning it with her entrance.

He slowly sinks into her, moans emitting from both of their mouths. She squeezes her eyes shut from the slight pain as he bottoms out, filling her up entirely. His hands tightly grip her hips, throwing his head back from the sensation her soft walls provide.

“So tight.” He grunts, slowly pumping in and out of her. “God, I knew you’d feel good, but this is unreal.”

Y/N moans from the feeling of him fucking into her, along with his naughty words. She can’t help but clench around him, pushing back into him further.

Chris picks up the pace, his pelvis slamming into her ass as he buries himself in her. The sound of their skin slapping fills the room, their pants and moans adding onto it.

His hand travels up her back, wrapping around her hair, yanking her head back. He uses it as leverage to speed up his thrusts, digging deeper into her core. His tip repeatedly kisses her cervix, pulling loud pornographic moans from her mouth.

Her face contorts in pleasure, her body ridden with euphoria as he fucks into her so good. He leans over her, his bare chest firmly pressed against her back. His hand wraps around her chin, pulling her head back as he looks down at her, admiring how fucked out she looks. Drool falls from her mouth, her eyes rolling back as he digs deep.

“Mmm. You love being fucked like this, don’t you?” He groans into her ear.

She cries out in broken moans with every thrust, “Y-yes, yes. You feel so good, so so good daddy.”

His pace falters at the name that fell from her lips, taken aback by her sudden use of it. It ignites something animalistic in him, causing him to thrust deeper and harder. He lets her head fall back into the mattress, pressing both of his hands into her back as he drills into her.

Tears fall from her eyes at the overwhelming pleasure, she could practically feel him in her stomach. Their bodies glisten with perspiration, their skin sticking together everything they connect.

“Fuck, so good. This pussy was made for me, no?” He grunts as he continues pounding into her.

Y/N’s mind is hazy with bliss, unable to form a single word in response to his question, only giving him loud moans that fuel his ego and bring him closer to his release.

“I asked you-” He starts, rough strokes in between his words. “-a question.”

“Nghh. Y-you, just for you.” She forces out through her moans.

“Oh, I know it, baby. All for me.” He moans, “Just wanted to hear you say it.”

The building knot in her stomach tightens before snapping, bringing on her orgasm. Her legs tremble beneath him as she clenches around him, her juices pouring out of her and coating his dick, producing a squelching sound as he pumps in and out of her.

“Such a dirty girl.” He pants.

Hips sputter and his pace grows sloppy and erratic, his release sneaking up on him. His hands grip her ass, squeezing it as he moves it up and down against him. His stomach tightens, his thighs slightly shaking as his hot cum spurts out, painting her inner walls. Both of them moaning from the feelings, he stills his movements after a few more pumps.

He slowly pulls out, wincing from the feelings and collapses right next to her. She turns her head to look at him, her face flushed red and her damp hair sticking to her forehead.

“Still look as good as ever.” He smiles at her, pulling her hair from her face.

“You owe me $50.” She breathes, matching his smile.

He stares at her in shock, “Wait, what?!”

“Plan B, dummy.” She giggles.

“Hm. Now it’s dummy, two minutes ago it was daddy.” He teases.

—

taglist : @luv4kozume @worldlxvlys @flowerxbunnie @sturniolowhore @creamoncreamoncream2 @lvrsparadise @iluvm4ttsturni0l0 @tillies33ssss @mattsfavwh3re @its-jennarose @sophssturn @defnotayonna @ksskianshd @d0wnbad4chris @braindead4l @avasturn

[cybernaght]

The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain 

As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.

This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.

Part one. Fanon.

The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe. 

Recognition comes into this. There is a reason so many protagonists of romance novels have a “blank slate” problem. Even when they do not, we love characters who are like us or versions of us that we would like to be. And when we say “we”, I also mean, “me”. 

(I remember very clearly this realisation hit me after a whole season of Doctor Who with writing which I hated utterly when I questioned why I still clung so incredibly hard to Clara Oswald as my favourite companion. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh. Well. That would do it, wouldn’t it?)

Then, there is projection, and, again, this is a neutral statement. Projection exists, and it is completely normal and, dare I say it, valid way of engaging with — well, anything. Is the character queer? Trans? Neurodivergent? Are they in love? Do they like chocolate? Are they a cat person? Well, yes, if this is what the text says, but if the text does not say anything… You tell me. Please, do tell me. Because, in that moment of projection, they are yours. 

And then, there is fandom osmosis, and that is the most fascinating one of them all, the one that is not very easy to note while you are inside the echo chamber. It’s the way we collectively, consciously or not, make decisions on who or what the characters are, what their relationships are, and what happens to them.  

(Back when I was writing egregiously long Guardian recaps on this blog I actually asked if Shen Wei’s power being learning actually was stated anywhere in the canon of the show. Because I had no idea. I have read and reread dozen of fanfics where that is the case, and at some point through enough repetition, it became reality.)

We are all kind of making our own reality here, aren’t we? 

Back when things were happening in a much less centralised manner - in closed livejournal groups, and forums of all shapes and sizes - I don’t remember there being quite as much universally agreed upon fanon. Frankly, I don’t remember much of universally agreed upon anything. But now, everything is in one place: we have this, and we have AO3, and it’s wonderful, it really is so much easier to navigate, but it’s also one gigantic reality-shifting echo chamber, with blogs, reblogs, trends, and rituals. 

Accessibility plays its part, too. If you were, say, in Life on Mars (UK) fandom between seasons, and you wanted to post your speculation fic, you had to have had an account, and then find and gain access to one of the bigger groups (lifein1973 was my poison, but ymmv), and then, if you feel brave you may post it, but also, you may want to do so from your alt account if you wanted to keep yours separate, and then you would have to go through the whole process again. And I’m not saying that fan creations then were somehow inherently better for it than fan creations now (although Life on Mars Hiatus Era is perhaps a bad example - because some of the Speculation Fic there was breathtaking), but there is something to say about the ease of access that made the fandoms go through a big bang of sorts.

(I mean, come on, I can just come here and post this - and I am certain people will read it, and this blog is a pandemic cope baby about Chinese television for goodness sake.)

The canon transformations that happen in the fandom echo chamber truly are fascinating to witness as someone who is more or less a fandom butterfly. I get into something, float around for a bit, then get into something else and move on. I might come back eventually when the need arises, but I don’t sustain a hiatus mind-state. This means that when I float away and return, I find some very intriguing stuff.

Let’s actually look at Good Omens here. Season two aired, and I found it spectacular in its cosy and anguished way; deliberately and intelligently fanfic-y in its plot building; simple but subversive, and so very tender. (I will have to circle back to this eventually, because, truly, I love how deliberately it takes the tropes and shatters them - it’s glorious). And, to me - a person who read the book, watched the first season, hung around AO3 for a few weeks and moved on - absolutely on-point in terms of characterisation. 

So imagine my surprise when the fandom disagreed so vehemently that there are actual multi-tiered theories on how characters were not in possession of their senses. Nothing there, in my mind, ever contradicted any of the stated text, as it stood. This remained a strange little mystery until I did what I always do when I flutter close to an ongoing fandom.

I loaded AO3 and sorted the existing fic by popularity. And there it was, all there: the actual earth-shattering mutual devotion of the angel and the demon; willingness to Fall; openness and long heart-aching confession speeches. There was all of the fanon surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley, which, to me, read as out of character, and to one for whom they became the reality over the last four years, read as truth. 

Again, only neutral statements here. This is not a bad thing, and neither this is a good thing, this is just something that happens, after a while, especially when there are years for the fandom-born ideas to bounce around and stew. I can’t help but think that so much of what we see as real in spaces such as this one is a chimaera of the actual source and all the collective fan additions which had time and space to grow, change, develop, and inspire, reverberating over and over again, until the echoes fill the entirety of the space. 

Eventually, this chimaera becomes a reality. 

Part two. Microanalysis 

Here are my two suppositions on the matter:

1. Some writers really love breadcrumb storytelling. 

Russel T Davies, for instance, on his run of Doctor Who (and, if you are reading it much later - I do mean the original one), loved that technique for his seasonal arcs. What is a Bad Wolf? Who is Harold Saxon? Well, you can watch very very carefully, make a theory, and see it proven right or wrong by the end of the season. 

Naturally, mystery box writers are all about breadcrumb storytelling: your Losts and your Westworlds are all about giving you snippets to get your brain firing, almost challenging you to figure things out just ahead of the reveal. 

2. We, as humans, love breadcrumbs.

And why wouldn’t we? Breadcrumbs are delicious. They are, however, a seasoning, or a coating. They are not the meal. 

Too much metaphor?

Let’s unpack it and start from the beginning.

Pattern recognition colours every aspect of our lives, and it colours the way we view art to a great extent. I think we truly underestimate how much it’s influenced by our lived experiences.

If you are, broadly speaking, living somewhere in Western/North-Western Europe in the 14th century, and you see a painting in which there is a very very large figure surrounded by some smaller figures and holding really tiny figures, you may know absolutely nothing about who those figures are, but you know that the big figure is the Important One, and the small ones are Less Important Ones, and the tiny ones are In Their Care. You know where your reverence would lie, looking at this picture. And, I imagine, as someone living in the 14th century, you may be inspired to a sense of awe looking at this composition, because in the world you live in, this is how art works. 

If you, on the other hand, watch a piece of recorded media and see the eyes of two characters meet as the violins swell, you know what you are being told at that moment. You don’t have to have a film degree to feel a sort of way when you see a green-tinged pallet used, when cross-cuts use juxtaposing images, or notice where your focus is pulled in any given shot. This stuff - this recognition of patterns - has been trained into us by the simple fact that we live in this time, on this planet, and we have been doing so long enough to have engaged recorded media for a period of time. 

As humans, we notice things. Our brains flare up when they see something they recognise, and then we seek to find other similar details and form a bigger picture. This often happens unconsciously, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes we do it on purpose: finding breadcrumbs in stories is a little bit like solving a mystery. It allows us to stretch that brain muscle that puts two and two together. It makes us feel clever. 

So yes, we love breadcrumbs, and, frankly, quite a lot of storytelling takes advantage of this. It’s very useful for foreshadowing, creating thematic coherence, or introducing narrative parallels and complexity. It’s useful for nudging the viewer into one or the other emotional direction, or to cue them into what will happen in the next moment, or what exactly is the one important detail they should pay attention to.

Because this is something media does intentionally, and something we pick up both consciously and not, it is very hard to know when to stop. We don't really ever know when all of the breadcrumbs have been collected. It becomes very easy to get carried away. There is a very specific kind of pleasure in digging into content frame by frame, soundbite by soundbite, chasing that pleasure of finding. 

But it is almost never breadcrumbs all the way down. They are techniques to help us focus on the main event: the story. I truly believe those who make media want it to reach the widest possible audience, and that includes all of us who like to watch every single thing ever created with our Media Analysis Goggles on and those who are just here to enjoy the twists and turns of the story at the pace offered to them. And I think, sometimes in our chase to collect and understand every little clue we forget that media is not made to just cater for us.

One can call it missing a forest for the trees. But I would hate to mix my metaphors, so let’s call it missing a schnitzel for the breadcrumbs. 

Part three. The Conspiracy Brain. 

If you are there with me, in the midst of the excited frenzy, chasing after all those delicious breadcrumbs, then patterns can grow, merge together, and become all-encompassing theories. Let’s call them conspiracy theories, even though this is not what they truly are.

So, why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

One, Because We Have Been Lied To. 

All conspiracies start with distrust.

If you are in fandom spaces - especially if you are in fandom spaces which revolve around a queer fictional couple - especially-especially if you have been in such spaces for a period of time, you have most certainly been lied to at one point or another. 

We don’t even have to talk about Sherlock - and let’s not do that - but do you remember Merlin? Because I remember Merlin. Specifically, I remember the publicity surrounding the first season, with its weaponised usage of “bromance” and assertions that this whole thing is a love story of sorts, and then the daunting realisation that this was all a stunt, deliberately orchestrated to gather viewership. 

And, because we were lied to in such a deliberate manner for such an extensive period of time, I genuinely believe that it forever altered our pattern recognition habits, because what was this if not encouragement to read into things? Now we are trained to read between the lines or see little cries for help where they might not be. Because we were told, over and over again, that we should.

(Yes, I think we are all existing in these spaces coloured by the trauma of queer-bating. I am, however, looking forward to a world where I can unlearn all of that.)

Two, Cognitive Dissonance.

The chain reaction works a bit like this: the world is wrong - it can’t possibly be wrong by coincidence - this must be on purpose - someone is responsible for it.

Being Lied To is a preamble, but cognitive dissonance is where it all originates. In so many cross-fandom theories I have noticed a four-step process:

A) this is not good

B) this author could not have made a mistake 

C) this must be done on purpose

D) here is why 

(Funny thing is, I have been on the receiving end of the small conspiracy spiral, and it is a very interesting experience. Not relevant to this conversation is the fact that a lot of my job revolves around storytelling. What is relevant is that my hobbies also revolve around storytelling. And one of them is DnD. Now, imagine my genuine shock when one of the players I am currently writing a campaign for noticed a small detail that did not make a logical sense within the complexity of the world, and latched on to it as something clearly indicating some kind of a secret subplot. Their thinking process also went a bit like this: this detail is not a good piece of writing — this DM knows how to tell stories well — this is obviously there on purpose. It was not there on purpose. I created a clumsy shorthand. I erred, in that pesky manner humans tend to. And, seeing this entire thought process recited to me directly in the moment, I felt somewhere between flattered and mortified.)

This whole line of thinking, I think, exists on a knife’s edge between veneration and brutal criticism, relentlessly dissecting everything “wrong”, with a reverent “but this is deliberate” attached to it like a vice, because it is preferable to a simple conclusion that the author let you down, in one way or another. 

Three, Intentionality 

I believe that there is no right or wrong way of engaging with stories, regardless of their medium, and assuming no one gets hurt in the process. While in a strictly academic way, there is a “correct” way of reading (and reading into) media, we here are largely not academics but consumers; consumption is subjective.

However, this all changes when intentionality is ascribed. 

The one I find particularly fascinating is the intentionality of “making it bad on purpose” because, as open-minded as I intend to always be, this just does not happen.

It certainly does not happen in long-form media. Even in the bread-crumb mystery box-type long-form media. 

When television programs underdeliver, they also underperform, and then they get cancelled.

If all the elements of Westworld Season 4 that did not sit together in a completely satisfactory way were written deliberately as some sort of deconstruction for the final season to explore, then it failed because that final season will now never come.

(There will likely never be a Secret Fourth Episode.)

And look, I am not here to refute your theories. Creativity is fun, and theorising is fantastic. 

But, perhaps, when the line of thought ventures into the “bad on purpose” territory, it could be recognised for what it is: disappointment and optimism, attempting to coexist in a single space. And I relate to that, I do, and I am sorry that there is even a need for this line of thinking. It’s always so incredibly disappointing that a creator you believed to be devoid of flaws makes something that does not hit in the way you hoped it would. It’s pretty heartbreaking. 

Unfortunately, people make mistakes. We are all fallible that way. 

Four, Wildfire.

Then, when the crumbs are found, a theory is crafted, and intentionality is ascribed, all that needs to happen is for it to catch on. And hey, what better place for it than this massive hollow funnel that we exist in, where thoughts, ideas and interpretations reverberate so much they become inextricable from the source material in collective consciousness. 

Conspiracy theories create alternate realities, very much like we all do here. 

So where are we now?

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong; what is true, and what is not. We are all entitled to engage with anything we wish, in whichever way we wish to do it. This is not it, at all. 

All I am saying is… listen.

Do you hear that echo? 

I do. 

[miley1442111]

thank god for dr. spencer reid

a/n: this was written with a fem!reader in mind but imagine what you want, reader has a period (same girl) :) spencer us such a cutie in this :)))))))

summary: your shitty family is in town and spencer is away, what will you do?

pairing: spencerreid x reader

warnings: heavy family issues, mentions of stress and sickness, very brief mention of abuse (litch not talked about just referenced dw), kinda cursing (just realised i've never warned this before... opps) and i might've missed some!

My eyes are glued to the screen with a perpetual frown playing on my lips. It’s hard to try to care about my job when I have this looming feeling of dread hanging over me like a cloud. Spencer has been MIA for days now. He left in a hurry on Monday night for a case. It’s Saturday now and he hasn’t been responding to my calls. On top of that, I have dinner with my mother and father. Both of them make it abundantly clear that they’re disappointed in my career choice, which is ridiculous because I’m a lawyer. Not the right kind of lawyer they constantly say. I’m an environmental lawyer and I make good money. The only way to satiate their insufferable whining is with Spencer. They love him. They probably love him more than me at this point. Alas, I will just have to deal with them alone tonight. And today has already been one hell of a day. First, Morgan called me,asking where Spencer was, telling me that they finished and that they should be home soon. He had not come home yet. Secondly, I feel like shit, an allergic reaction, my period and some random nausea all add up to making me feel itchy, gross, and practically vile all over. Thirdly, a huge pimple has decided to pop up on my face and  just know my mother will comment on it. My mother is one of those women who look effortlessly put-together 24/7. I am not one of those women. She does not like women who don’t look effortlessly put together. Aka, she barely tolerates me. 

I sigh and close my laptop screen, unable to reread the same few sentences again and again, hoping that they would get into my brain. I’m defending a client, one of my firm's biggest clients, in court next week. They were accused of illegal dumping (dumping they did not commit) and now they’re being sued for 2 million dollars. I slump out of my desk chair and out of my home office, locking it behind me for the weekend ahead. If I have court next week and Spencer is coming home after a difficult case, then we’ll need a day or rest and relaxation together. That is, if he even bothers to come home. I busy myself with getting ready and try to push those thoughts out of my head. 

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last hour of my life has been 60 minutes of absolute misery. Why did I ever accept this invite? My mother excuses herself to the bathroom and my father excuses himself for a cigarette, I nod along. Then it hits me… my dad doesn’t smoke anymore. I stare at the door and before I can stop myself my face contorts into a frown once again. Amelia, my sister. The sister that I haven't seen in years. The sister that bullied and abused me throughout our teenage years. Fuck. 

“Amelia?” I question, looking at the blonde woman who looks… different. She’s obviously older than I remember, and a bit more… I don’t know how to put it. Her blonde hair surpasses her waist and she seems to be pregnant? Her blue eyes seem dull and lack a certain vividness they used to sparkle with. She’s the typical peaking in high-school mean girl who became a nurse girl. I honestly can’t believe I used to look up to her. 

“It’s so good to see you!” She smiles, one of her fake-bitchy smiles and I grimace as she tries to hug me. “I just wanted to know how you’re doing, especially with the baby on the way, I’ll need all the help I can get!”

My heart drops. “Oh!” Is all I can manage. She sits in the seat beside me and I instinctively move further away. Just as I think this stupid dinner can’t get any worse, her pervy fiancé, Johnny, walks in.

“No Spencer?” He smirks. “What? Did you two break up? He was always too vanilla for you, you need a real man-” 

“No, sorry. I was just late. I had to come straight from the jet,” Spencer smiles from behind him. My parents' eyes light up, as Amelia and Johnny’s faces fall. I smile appreciatively at him as he hands the flowers he brought over to my parents and sits beside me, a comforting hand on my thigh. 

“How’s work, Spencer?” My father asks, his undivided attention on Spencer.

“It’s good, strenuous but good. Our cases recently haven’t been too difficult- though there was one that had a puzzle I thought you might enjoy…”

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I walk inside our house behind him, a million thoughts at once flowing through my head. We walk to the kitchen, he sits me down and takes off my shoes for me, a true gentleman. 

He presses a kiss to my cheek and smiles. “You look beautiful.”

I just nod back, a small smile on my lips. 

“Is everything alright?” He asks, turning to me, his hands resting on my waist. 

“Fine,” I tiredly smile. “Just… you know, it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“You know, saying that makes me worry more, right?:” He smiles softly, though we both know he’s serious. 

“I just… I can’t believe she just showed up, like 7 years  of not seeing her and she just shows up? Like it’s casual? And then asks for our help with her baby? Like she did nothing to me? Like she-” I stop myself, determined not to cry right now. 

“Angel, it’s ok, let it out,” he soothes, a hand on my back, rubbing comforting circles. 

“I don’t want to cry though, they’re not worth crying over.”

“Then how about we get ready for bed, yeah angel?” He offers, a tired look in his eyes. I nod and press a soft to his perfect lips. He smiles against my mouth, his hands finding the sides of my face. I run a hand through his hair. He pulls away softly, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I smile. “Thank you for coming, my knight in shining armour.” 

“I enjoyed it. Watching your father fail to solve a simple puzzle was amusing.” He smirks, a mischievous glint in his eye as I roll my eyes. 

“We’re not all geniuses,” I remind him. 

“You are.”

“And how am I a genius?” I chuckle.

“You’re dating me, you clearly have superior taste and intelligence,” he says matter-of-factly. I gigle at his antics and kiss him again. He pulls away and grabs my hand, leading me into our room. We both opt out of brushing our teeth and washing our faces, a makeup wipe sufficing for removing my makeup. He pulls me into bed with him, and finally, after a long week, I finally lie down in bed with him, his arms around me in a bear-hug of sorts. This is heaven. He’s my knight in shining armour. Thank God for Dr. Spencer Reid. 

[youuuimeanmee]

Get ready with me to be surprised with

✨️Anya's Origin✨️

Hint: Romania

I had some free time, so I reread the latest chapter of Spy x Family, chapter 92.

Barbara said she and Sigmund were in Covenia for awhile. We know Westalis and Ostania are a reference for the West Germany and Eastern Germany, so I wondered if Covenia is based on a real place too. I was bored, y'see.

I quick-searched a country name that ended with -nia, but no luck.

I remembered a theory that Anya is more superior in Classical languange because she might've come from a place that uses that languange. A wild idea popped up to me that Covenia still uses (or references) that language. Since Sigmund has many classical books, it's not a stretch to assume he learned that language because he used to live in Covenia. Based on that assumption, I searched what country is still using Latin languange, what languange that references Latin.

... bingo.

Covenia and Romania. Who would've thought.

I searched where is Romania located because my geography sucks.

Oh it's in Europe, great! And it's close with Ukraine too, Russia...

Wait. I thought the story is based in the '60s, so, could they be related at that time?

Wow, so they ARE related.

And the timeline matched with SxF's world too.

When I clicked the "Romania" word, I stumbled on this.

.....

Could it be,

Anya originally comes from Covenia, which is a reference to Romanian People's Republic?

Does it mean the organization that experiment on Anya is based in Soviet?

And to think that Sigmund, a well-known neurology professor, used to rehabilitate wounded soldiers in Covenia... Is it really a rehabilitation though?

*cold sweat*

Anyways.

If Anya really comes from Covenia/Romania, the initial spelling of her name would make sense then, but I have zero idea about Romanian alphabet to confirm it.

Of course I searched it.

The Romanian alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Romanian language. It is a modification of the classical Latin alphabet and consists of 31 letters, five of which (Ă, Â, Î, Ș, and Ț) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language

Oh shoot it's getting warmer.

Double check to make sure, I tried to look if [î] is really the replacement alphabet for [y].

OH SHIT.

K, Q, W and Y, not part of the native alphabet, were officially introduced in the Romanian alphabet in 1982.

Now it makes sense. No wonder Anya spelled her name like that.

It's because in the place where she came from, the alphabet Y wasn't used yet. And it's not supposed to be Ania either; it's Anîa. But I doubt a small child like her would understand the difference between i and î.

Summary:

Anya might've come from Covenia/Romania. It explains her initial name and her excellence in Classical language.

The organization that experimented on Anya might've come from the Soviet.

Sigmund might have some connections with Anya more than we thought; the theories were right on track. Because he studies neurology and lived in Covenia for some time, he is fluid in Classical languange and he knows how to make learning more fun.

I wanted to try searching what kind of brain-related research did Soviet do at that time, but then I might come up with lobotomy or some dark shit and I'm not prepared for that, so I'm gonna let the sleeping dogs lie until we get more informations from Endo.

Annd that's it. I'm very surprised with this finding. My quick 5-minutes search turned into 2-hours brainrot. And my hands are still cold. I'm not sure if it's intentional from Endo or it's just some happy coincidence, but at least I'm more aware with Covenia now.

Thank you for following me in this short journey! Byee 👋

[bella-rose29]

Breathe

Elrond x gn!reader (Rings of Power)

not me coming out of my cave to post an Elrond fic then leave again 👀

also not me not writing anything for over a month (probably, I haven't counted) and then coming out with a near 5k fic oops

the original title for this was 'is he dead or not??? who knows' but I think this one is good too

Word count: 4.9k

Warnings: I think I killed someone writing this/made them need a lobotomy so consider that a warning to anyone who's gonna read (sorry), mentions of death, war, wounds, a child crying, the photo I'm gonna use is a warning in and of itself, I think that's it?

I feel I should add that this fic is actually happy (eventually) 😂 I reread the warnings and thought 'oh oops'

tagging @oblivious-idiot and @uku-lelevillain but if anyone else wants to be tagged in future Elrond works then let me know!

You could not breathe. 

It would eat you alive, all this waiting, chewing on your insides until it worked its way outward and left you but a shell of the person you used to be, and you wouldn’t have any way of stopping it. Your lungs felt tight as you cradled the head of a sobbing child, his mother dead after birthing him and his father out in the fray with the rest of the soldiers of Middle-Earth. He was young, had barely seen his homeland, let alone the world, and he had never seen war before. You were not so lucky as he - war had been your upbringing. You could fight as well as any other of the elven soldiers, but somebody was needed to look after those who could not, and so you had volunteered along with a small band of others: retired fighters and those looking to start out and join the ranks but were not quite good enough yet. You had trained them over the last few days that you had all spent in the safe hold, taking them through the basics of how to grip a sword and the best way to gut an Orc should they break through and make it to the doors of the underground cavern serving as your shelter. 

The child in your lap had stopped sobbing, his cries turned to sniffles, and you carefully lifted his body to nestle into your side. He was too young for war, you thought again, taking in the small points of his ears and the lack of angles on his face. You attempted a smile, hoping it would comfort him a little as you pushed a strand of his hair behind an ear, and whispered to him. “All will be well. They will return to us victorious, and we shall have no need of too many more tears.”

“But how do you know?” Children were inquisitive, which most of the time you adored, but when you are attempting to raise the spirits of a boy who does not know if he will ever see his father again, the questions become rather irritating. 

“Because I have seen many things, and because our armies are strong. They will defeat the darkness and bring light to our lands once more.” It was the best you could do when you did not truly know the answer. You had learned the art of rhetoric years ago, when Elrond Peredhel had first come to Lindon and had quickly discovered that for the elves to see past his half-elven status he would need to become invaluable, or risk being an outcast in the race he had chosen to be counted among. You had been the first to greet him, intrigued by this visitor from the Havens of Sirion when you had been born in Lindon and raised there, and he had been grateful for your tour and kindness. He had spent many an hour sat with you, commenting on his meetings and the politics of Lindon, and how he carefully navigated clashing personalities and difficult conversations, and so you had learned. 

You used it now, that knowledge that Elrond had provided in all those hours, to comfort this child. He had since taken to playing with a stick on the floor next to him, leaning further away from your side to entertain himself as he drew patterns in the dirt, and it gave your lungs the much needed space to breathe a little more. 

It had been hours and hours since the army had left, heading out onto the battlefield to meet Sauron’s forces, and you were getting impatient. Elrond had gone with them, determined to provide what help he could no matter your protests to him entering the fray. You had trained him up, knowing that he could hold his own but wanting to be sure that he would be alright, and when you had suggested that you go with him while tightening the straps of his armour he had placed his hands over yours (his hands were too soft - far too soft for someone about to go into battle), gently coaxing them from where they had fretted with the leather and returning them to your side with a sad smile. “You must stay here, melethel, and protect those who cannot fight.” The term of endearment never failed to heat your cheeks, or send a warmth up your neck and through your chest. “For my peace of mind, please stay here.” He had let go of your hands at that point, moving them up to rest on your shoulders as he looked into your eyes. A lock of hair had fallen over his face, and before you could think you were pushing it back into place, wondering if you had imagined him leaning into your touch that lingered a moment too long for two elves who were only friends and nothing more, his eyes fluttering closed for the barest fraction of a second before he was looking at you again, or if it had truly happened. What you were certain was real was the soft kiss he placed on your forehead, lips brushing the skin with such care and tenderness while his hands on your arms squeezed like you would disappear that it made your eyes sting with tears you refused to shed. Elrond would not see you cry, not now, not when there was a chance it could be the last-

No. You would not think that way. He would come back alive, and if he was hurt then you would stay by his side until he was healed, and then you would continue your lives as you had before - content and in friendship. 

It wasn’t how you wanted things to be with Elrond, which was why you could not breathe. What if he was one of the fallen, and you never saw him smile again, or gaze in wonder at the golden leaves of Lindon or cast a wry glance your way in a council session when somebody said something he thought was silly and knew you would be thinking it too, your eyes already seeking him out? What if you never heard him sing again, or write poems about trivial matters that seemed so important to him? What if you never got to challenge him to a duel again, laughing when your swords clashed and rang out in the clearing you always fled to, and calling him a cheat for tickling you after you pinned him to the floor?

And what if you never told him how you truly felt? That from the moment he had seen you try not to show your tears after climbing too high in a tree and falling, grazing your knee and cutting your calf, and had rushed to your aid because that was what Elrond did, you had loved him. He had been so calm, so gentle that night, the lights of others long gone out as they dwelt in near darkness while your lanterns stayed lit as you gritted your teeth and washed the cut of dirt and bark. You had barely heard him come in, his knock as quiet as your tears, but when his hands wrapped around your own and took the cloth from you, dipping it again in the bowl of water to your side, you barely startled. He had not been in Lindon long and yet already you knew him and his movements as though they were your own, and you trusted him enough to see you so vulnerable, and from the way he had looked at you that night he knew it. Your love for him was strong and true and the greatest thing you had ever felt, and for years you had passed it off as a friendship so powerful that the bond between you was unbreakable. You had friendships like that with others, so it would not have been out of the ordinary to have one more person whom you would love unconditionally until your light died, but when he had been kneeling by your side and cleaning the gash on your calf with a tenderness you had only read about, you had known it was different. 

The child beside you now dropped his stick, the movement bringing you out of your thoughts as he scrambled instead to his feet and started to push through the gathered people to make for the doorway. 

The doorway which was now opening, a messenger stepping through. You stood up, air catching in your throat and making you nearly choke on spit as you struggled to breathe again. Your hand flew to your opposite wrist, under the fabric of your sleeve and touching the chain that rested around the base of your hand - a gift from Elrond in the early hours of the morning before he had left for battle and after he had kissed you on the forehead. “To remember me by,” he had said, a sadness settling over his features that you hated. He unclasped it, gesturing for you to hold out your wrist, and when you complied he had linked the chains so carefully, fingers brushing the underside of your forearm so lightly it sent chills darting over your skin like minnows in a stream. His hold had lingered, and your breath had been held while time seemed to stretch on more than usual for your kind. 

Elrond had that effect on you, it would appear. Making you breathless was a skill of his you weren’t sure he knew he possessed, and at this current moment you wished it was a skill he had never mastered. Your throat felt tight while the messenger caught his breath, tired from sprinting from the battlefield. The fight was over for now, the question was simply who had won.

“Sauron’s forces have been pushed back, and the majority slaughtered. We have won this battle!” the elf cried, and the first wave of relief washed over you and the crowd. The second would come when you knew who was alive out of those that had been sent away that morning, and who would not return this night. 

The thundering of footsteps could just be heard over the cheers of the people gathered in the safe hold, and the first of the elven soldiers appeared in the chamber, tiredness being replaced by joy at seeing their loved ones again and embracing them with a fierceness that even Sauron could not comprehend. There were too many similar soldiers, their armour all the same and their faces all dirtied, and it was a long few minutes before you caught sight of the elf you were searching for. You were sure your face was blank and cold, and your eyebrows furrowed as you attempted to see past the hordes in front of you, but the moment a head of unruly curled hair glinted under the torchlight, clearly moving from soldier to soldier and asking if they were alright, you knew it was Elrond. He seemed to sense your gaze on him, turning his head to look over his shoulder and seek you out, finding you within seconds. He is alive. Elrond is alive. It was a mantra, playing over and over in your head as your feet numbly moved you forward while he did the same, pushing through people to reach you, and before you could truly register it you were in his arms, the coldness of your previous gaze melting and turning into warmth as you looked at him, tracing the small cuts on his face and wrapping your other arm around his waist. He was dirty, and bloodied, and shaking from the cold or from the fight or from something else entirely that you could not name, but he was alive. You squeezed his waist, pulling him closer to you, but didn’t miss the slight wince on his face as you did so. “Elrond, are you hurt?”

“I am fine, melethel. Just a scratch.”

“Do not lie to me, Elrond. Come, let’s get you cleaned up and out of your armour; it must be heavy on your shoulders.” He did not reply, only giving a tired smile in its place, and let you take him by the hand to the room you had commandeered for you both when you had arrived. There were two raised cots, not that Elrond had slept much, as he had been needed in meetings to discuss battle strategies and had, in his usual fashion, not stopped working until he was content that his plan would work. You closed the door behind you and pointed to one of the cots, not looking at him as you told him to sit. He did so in a daze, fingers picking at the leather straps that you had done up for him that morning. It was long past nightfall now, and Elrond likely had not rested since he woke up. You gathered your medicines and poured a dish of water, moving to sit on the stool that Elrond had pulled up for you and putting your supplies on the side table to help him with his armour. You worked in silence, removing piece after piece of metal until it sat on the floor in a neat pile and you had better access to his wound. Cautiously you pressed your fingers to the edge of the cut, trying to gauge how bad it was and immediately regretting it when he hissed in pain and tried to move away. You snatched your hand back, eyes snapping to his face to see it scrunched up in pain. “Elrond,” you spoke, voice quiet in the near-empty room as you placed your hand on his fist. “Elrond. It is alright. Here, help me get this off of you so I can clean it.” He softened, features settling back into a face you knew better than the wrinkled nose and squeezed-shut eyes, and smiled a little as you started tugging at his undershirts.

“You know, if you wanted me to take my clothes off you could have said it earlier.” Had you been standing you were sure your knees would have given way and caused you to hold on to something for support. He must be delirious from the wound, or the amount of time spent on his feet fighting. Elrond never said things like that: not to you, not to anyone. You forced a glare onto your face in lieu of a response, hoping he hadn’t noticed how much he had affected you with one simple sentence, and started to gently pull the fabric up. 

“Stop jesting, Elrond. I need to clean your wound. Unless you would prefer I left you here to get an infection and suffer?”

“You rather enjoy leaving me to suffer, melethel. You do it whenever we fight.”

“I always help you up off the floor after I wipe it with your backside,” you indignantly replied. You were glad he was talking - the silence had been strange. Normally you would not mind sitting in silence with Elrond, but that was when you were safe in Lindon, books in your hands and paper rustling as the pages turned, not when he had just fought a bloody battle and could have died. 

“I recall that last time we fought it was I who helped you off of the floor,” he mused, and you swatted at his arm. 

“Shush. I let you win that one. Now stop talking and help me; your limbs are gangly.” He let out a noise of disbelief at that but lifted his arms anyway, wincing when the shirt went over his head and pulled at the skin of his side. An Orc had found a gap in his armour, pushing its blade through and marking the side of his body with blood. You held your breath at the size of it, and when Elrond asked you how bad it was you answered with your eyes still on his side. “It is… it is nothing I cannot fix.” He seemed content enough with your response, nodding and leaning back on his hands to allow you more room to work. He grunted in pain when you raised the cloth to his skin and started cleaning away the blood and sweat that had stuck there, but otherwise was silent while you worked. 

Time is a strange thing for elves: your lives are so much longer than those other races of Middle-Earth and so often you do not perceive it in the same way - twenty years for some may be the blink of an eye to an elf. You could not have been cleaning and stitching his wound (he had cried out more when the needle had pierced his flesh) for more than an hour or so, and yet it had felt like an eternity. When you were finally done, his wound covered in an elvish salve to stop infection and the spread of whatever evil was in Orcish weaponry and stitched up with a fine thread that would dissolve harmlessly into his skin over time, you brought out another cloth and poured fresh water to clean his face. He was caked in dirt and blood and grime, sticking to his fair skin from all of the sweat he had created in exertion, and if you did not know Elrond like the back of your own hand then you would not have recognised him at all. 

“Let me,” he said, pushing up off of the cot and moving to where you stood by the basin. His hands covered yours, gently attempting to pull the cloth from your grasp and do the rest himself, but your grip was strong. 

“No. I have been sat around doing nothing all day and I might just explode if I do not finish looking after you.” He smiled, the barest of things as the corner of his mouth pulled upwards a little, and his eyes softened. How he could be soft after everything he had seen today amazed you. It had taken you years to stop guarding yourself after you first fought in a battle, not letting anybody see any vulnerability in case they took advantage and thought you weak. It was part of the reason you stayed behind: you had not wanted to find out what would happen if you fought again, not when Elrond had come into your life and, piece by piece, dismantled your high walls. 

“Alright, melethel. Alright.” He had always insisted on calling you that, saying that it didn’t matter that the pair of you were not courting, and who were you to refuse him when he spoke so sweetly? He settled back against the counter, letting his feet drift apart a little so you had room to stand between his legs. He closed his eyes, trusting you to take care of him, and for the first time since he had returned he looked at peace. He seemed unsure where to place his hands, hovering for a moment between your waist and the wood of the cabinet top he perched on before deciding on the latter. You worked away the dirt, revealing more clean skin with every swipe of your cloth, until eventually you were looking at the face of your friend as you remembered it. His hair still needed a wash, as did the rest of him, but Elrond was here, in front of you and more like himself than he had been since he had left in the morning. 

“I think you had more soil on your face than the grounds of Middle-Earth,” you joked, rinsing out the cloth again before bringing it up to his face to wipe the remainder of the grime away. He opened his eyes, a childish grin appearing on his face at your words. 

“Then you have done a fantastic job in removing it all.” He paused, then narrowed his eyes at you in playful suspicion. “At least I assume you have removed it all, and haven’t just smeared it all around my face?” He poked a dirty finger into your cheek, making you laugh and jerk backward to stop him spreading muck everywhere. Elrond stopped moving abruptly, catching your hand and studying a finger. “You’re bleeding.” He blinked at the dried blood on your pointer finger. “Or is that mine?”

“Oh. I had not even realised. I must have stabbed myself with the needle earlier. Really, it is nothing, Elrond.” He didn’t let go however, still looking concerned that you had hurt yourself while tending to him. 

“But if you are hurt-”

“Which one of us was brutally stabbed by an Orc blade? And nearly died?”

“I did not nearly die, melethel, you are being dramatic.”

“As are you, Elrond. I barely even noticed the prick of the needle.” He had brought your hand close to his face, and somehow your body had gone with it. The hand that held the cloth was bracing your weight next to Elrond’s hand, your fingers just touching, and your face was so close to his that you could feel the soft brush of air that he let out every time he breathed. It was so typical of Elrond to be more concerned for others when he himself was the one that needed to be worried over, and it only made you love him more. 

“If you say so,” he hummed, shifting his hold on your hand so that he could bring his lips to the tip of your finger where you had stuck yourself with the needle, pressing the smallest kiss to it. Your breath caught again, and he noticed the hitch. “Melethel? What is it, did I hurt you?” His eyes widened and he rushed to rectify the mistake he thought he had made. “I am so so sorry, I did not mean-”

“You did not hurt me, Elrond, for goodness’ sake!” You cut him off, exasperated and feeling very warm. 

“Then why-” he broke off, eyes searching your face and studying the most likely very visible flush to your features. “Oh,” he said, softer than a leaf of one of the trees of Lindon falling to the earth. You swore his pupils dilated a little, and he tilted his head back ever so slightly as realisation dawned on him. “Oh.” He let go of your hand, fingers slowly moving to your jaw to turn your face back towards his after you had looked to the side in an attempt to hide from the intensity of his gaze. 

“Elrond, what- what?” Your hand he had been holding was now on his shoulder, keeping you upright along with the arm he had somehow snaked around your waist, pulling you even closer to him. 

“Are you- do you…” he fumbled over his words, something he very rarely did, and through the haze of wondering how you had ended up in this situation, his fingers cupping your jaw while his other hand rested on your lower back and he stared into your eyes, flicking between them both to see if he could read you, you felt a swell of pride that you of all people had made Herald Elrond of Lindon speechless.

“Do I what?” you asked, as gently as you could. The hand you had rested on his shoulder was now toying with a strand of hair that curled under his ear against his neck, your other braced on his chest (which you were just now remembering was unclothed), and a small smile was on your face. You knew that he knew the truth now - how could he not? But he wanted to hear it, as did you, because the fear that he might be wrong was lingering and if he was wrong, he might hurt you, which was the last thing Elrond ever wanted to do.

“Do you feel it?” he whispered, eyes similar to that of a wolf cub you had once seen, wide and innocent, but entirely Elrond in the blown out pupils and spark of knowing that he carried. His nose was brushing yours, breath fanning over your face, and now it was your turn to tilt your head back to meet him. “Do you feel that whenever we are apart… your heart aches for the space where I should be stood? That whenever we are together I am complete because you are there and you are so bright and wonderful that you take my breath away more often than I would care to admit - do you feel that too?”

“How could I not, Elrond? How could I not feel that?” You felt the tension dissipate from his shoulders, his body sagging forwards into yours just a little, the action causing his face to come even closer to yours, angled slightly upwards from where he was an inch lower than you sat on the cabinet. 

You couldn’t breathe again, but this time it was because Elrond had pressed his lips to yours so cautiously that you thought you might melt into him. His fingers on your jaw were warm, not urging you one way or the other but just anchoring you, as he always had done from the moment you had met, letting you decide what happened next. You broke off first, resting your forehead against his and catching your breath, and he swallowed thickly, moving to place tiny kisses against your jawline and cheek, pausing only to murmur your name into your skin. Your hand buried itself in his hair, fingers tangling in the curls and knocking out the dust and dirt that had stuck there. It had long since dried of sweat, but the strands were greasy and needed washing, and that thought combined with the memory that he had a wound in his side were enough to make you pull back even further. “You should have a bath,” you said when he looked up at you with adoring but concerned eyes. He paused for a moment, frozen in place while he contemplated what you had said, and then he chuckled, the sound low in his throat. 

“Are you saying I smell, melethel?”

“Yes. Come, I’ll get a bath ready for you.”

“And if I would rather stay here?” His fingers had started lightly stroking your jaw, and with the way he was looking at you it was becoming harder and harder to leave his embrace. You managed to wrinkle your nose and step back, a strength you hadn’t known you possessed taking over and making you move. 

“I’m not kissing you again until you have bathed, Elrond.” He sighed dramatically, retracting his arms and standing up, wincing slightly and favouring his non-injured side while you started transporting water from over the fire.

“Truly? You really would leave me here?”

“If it gets you over here faster, then I shall get in with you.” You had never seen the elf move so quickly before, pulling off his boots and drawing out towels for when the bath was finished with. He hesitated with his trousers, then decided to keep them on, glancing at you to see what you were doing. You were already watching him, making a decision of your own before starting to pull at the strings holding your robes together.

“You don’t have to-”

“Oh I’m keeping my underclothes on, but I shall likely sink right to the bottom if I keep these thick robes on.” He looked relieved, and you stifled a laugh as you headed for the dresser where your clothes were kept, pulling out a pair of fresh trousers. “Here, get changed first if you’re keeping trousers on; you’ll dirty the water immediately.”

He complied, heading behind the partition in the corner of the room and re-emerging a few moments later to find you already in the bath, eyes closed in contentment at the feel of the warm water on your skin. Elrond lifted your head, pushing you forward gently so that he could clamber in behind you and settle back against the tub. You heard him grunt when his wound his the water, and turned to see his face scrunched in pain. “Are you alright?”

“I am alright. Just don’t lean on my side.” He helped you turn in the tub so that you were sideways against him, his wound kept out of the danger of being pressed down upon. 

You stayed in the bath until it got cold and your fingers wrinkled, having washed the dirt off of each other with one of the towels Elrond had brought over, and then when you got out you dried each other off and redressed in fresh clothes, hanging up the wet fabric and making for the bed, curling up next to each other, your head on his chest. Sleep came easily to you, Elrond’s body creating a warmth under you that made up for the dying fire in the cold room, and at some point your breathing matched his. 

For now, you could be content in peace. Another battle would come, the war not yet won, and Sauron’s armies would be at your doors again soon. But not yet. They would need time to gather strength again, to marshal and be ready, and so you had time too before Elrond had to leave again, and time to breathe before you would be sat waiting, and waiting, and take in air before it was stolen from you when he kissed you goodbye. 

[sporesgalaxy]

The way Dungeon Meshi does gender makes me insane. It’s stated over and over that Falin and Laios really are more similar than anyone is looking for- Laios directly states as much at one point, Marcille mentions it when Falin wakes up the first time and starts bemoaning not eating any monsters, the magic mirror story even has fem!Toshiro crushing on Laios- but Laios is so protective of his little sister. Laios leaves home to start making a life he can one day share with her. And she leaves magic school because he has failed, and failed so hard that she’s worried that she might never see him again if she lets him leave without her. He wants to protect her from the way the world treats him, but he does not or does not want to understand the terrible truth- the world will never treat her as harshly as it does him, because she is a pretty ‘quirky’ girl and he is a big autistic man. Falin is happy, doing well in her own sphere, making a single friend (because she is still autistic, and has struggles of her own, even if they’re a different kind), but Laios still feels a need to protect her because his experience of this world has been nothing but cold shoulders and distrust all the way down. This story makes me want to sprint into the river. Laios and Falin are the best characters of all time.

Ouhhhhh I dont have time to reread dungeon meshi to give you good sources but based on my doodoo memory and vibes therein: I have to disagree that Falin was necessarily doing "well," and I especially disagree that the tragedy here is that Laios was doing something unnecessary by trying to make a place in the world for him and Falin.

Falin gets along seemingly ok in the world but it's because she's agreeable to a fault .

What's so interesting to me about the Touden siblings is the different ways they've learned to deal with being The Odd Man Out. Laios set out to try and forcefully carve out a PLACE for him and Falin in the world, where they could both openly and unabashedly be themselves.....Falin stayed behind, and learned how to hide the things that made her stick out too much, and how to appease people on the verge of rejecting her and Laios.

That can be functional, but it isn't good. It isn't happiness. It hurts in a million tiny ways every single day, to hide yourself out of fear of rejection like that.

At school, Falin must have spent a lot of time alone before she befriended Marcille, since Falin was familiar enough with the surrounding wilderness that she knew where that small Dungeon opening was. She sought out what happiness she could by following her unusual passions in more private ways, where no one would judge her for it. Falin didn't expect anyone NOT to judge her for her "weirdness" before she met Marcille, so Falin didn't even try to connect with anyone before Marcille at a level more personal than "classmate." That's not doing well. That's not living.

This kind of self-isolation is a coping mechanism for neurodivergence that functions for a while, but it eats away at you. Falin considered marrying Toshiro despite not loving him, essentially because it seemed like the normal thing to do and she didn't think she'd get another chance to be married at all. What if she had gone through with that, or something similar by the same reasoning? Laios lived in a state of being rejected over and over, which obviously hurts like hell. In contrast, Falin was willing to live a life she never wanted just to avoid total rejection. That can be incredibly painful too, in its own way.

Falin and Laios were BOTH tragically fighting doomed battles to find a place for themselves in the world during the time they were separated. Working together, supporting each other, they're able to do a lot more. Cries.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

hi! sorry if you've answered this already, i tried to search your blog and didn't find much, but we all know the tumblr search function is...uh...but i'd be deeply curious to hear your thoughts about Stephenie Meyer's "The Host," specifically re: treatment of the issue of souls' colonization and possession of other species...and obviously, since i'm asking you, an animorphs blog, this, my curiosity is definitely coming from a place of comparison to animorphs, but that doesn't have to be your focus!

from the posts tumblr's search algorithm did grant me, i gather you see it as wanda unlearning the colonizer's propaganda stance she takes at the start of the story, which i agree with!

but i guess every time i read it, i really can't help but feel...unsatisfied? with the way it actually engages with the horrors and colonization of it all?

sort of like, okay, The Host is this one very individual YA romance story in a sci-fi setting, which is obviously different from a heavily-Star-Trek-inspired middle-grade series about guerrilla warfare and is going to grapple with these issues differently...but still! i don't leave feeling satisfied with how it engages with consent of "host" bodies the souls are in, and i don't feel satisfied with how it engages with the souls' systemic behavior!!! but i can't really put my finger on why, and i just...was curious, i guess, whether this was something you had thoughts about.

(full disclosure: i'm asking you specifically because one of my HUGE points of existential dread on my first adulthood reread of The Host was how Jodi never wakes up, and her boyfriend just starts implied-dating the soul who's in her body? or how kids who are infested from birth are just...gone, and they were like "well sweet we can just put Wanda in there, this is a perfect solution!" and that I think hit me so hard in comparison with having read Eleutherophobia--which is, by the way, a masterwork of fanfiction that wrecked me, overwrote canon a little bit in my brain, and I think fundamentally changed how I see the possibilities of writing and narration, so, you know. thank you for that!)

(also like, i know there's different worldbuilding where it's implied most hosts just...go away...but do they actually? because Mel and the Seeker's host are still there, which kind of implies to me that it's more of a problem than the souls want to admit?! and even outside humans, all the memories, and compulsions toward certain behaviors are still there! what makes a person in this universe of Meyer's?! it's kind of fundamentally horrifying?!)

apologies for this extremely long ask, haha, and i hope you're doing well, love your blog, your writing, and all your thoughts!

Oh my god, ALL OF THIS. I thoroughly enjoy the first 98% of The Host. It's a romance novel about consent! Where the characters have to struggle to resolve the plot in a way that gets the permission of everyone in the love quadrangle to boink everyone else, and spends over 500 pages doing exactly that! It's anti-imperialist as fuck! It's got an amazing supporting cast, like every Stephenie Meyer novel! The imagery is unparalleled in its richness and coolness, because Stephenie Meyer! I've written fan fiction about it! I have an extremely normal relationship with Kyle O'Shea!

And then Sunny. And then Wanda's unnamed second human host.

I think that Meyer, either because of romance genre conventions or pressure from publishers, felt she had to write a happy ending. But the book does such a good job of setting up an unresolvable moral dilemma — either Wanda gets to be with Ian, or she does the right thing by giving Melanie's body back — that there is no path to a happy ending. If Ian did as Wanda asked and sent her in a jar to some other planet, romance fans would feel cheated. If Doc did as Melanie asked and let Wanda stay in her body, then the book's anticolonial message would be for nothing.

But resolving it through PARASITING A KID IN A VEGETATIVE STATE? What if Doc makes Wanda a nice robot body? What if Wanda stays in a jar, but Ian finds a way to join her in the jar? What if she and Melanie set up a time share? Uuuuuugggggghhhhh. The Host was THIS CLOSE to being the best anticolonial novel ever written, and then falls on its face inches from the finish line.

Which, aside, is the reason I don't think Animorphs would ever work with a happy ending. "Happy" for the protagonists would never be morally okay in the bigger story.

[silverwhittlingknife]

OKAY SO i have been rereading dustorange's wonderful post here about Dick in an UtRH-esque scenario where he dies & then comes back to life

AND I HAVE INCOHERENT BRAINSTORMING THOUGHTS:

so first, i think Robin!Dick would be just as hurt by the discovery that Bruce has a new Robin, and brood about it - but i think the shame of having died would stop him from confronting Bruce about it the way Nightwing!Dick does in canon.

and I do NOT think that he would expect Bruce to kill anyone for him (or even be upset that he doesn't? I just don't think this would be a consideration for Dick. he's gonna be fixated on "I failed." so he'll be upset about being replaced but not about the lack of revenge. and if Bruce did take revenge, i think he'd actually feel angry and betrayed about that because it'd feel like the choice was taken away from him, a la how upset he gets when he thinks Bruce has arranged to have Zucco killed - even if he intellectually knows that Bruce wasn't deliberately undermining himbecause he didn't know Dick was gonna come back to life.)

anyway so what WOULD he do??

what comes to mind is something along the lines of "Dick obsessively keeps an eye on Batman & Robin even while telling himself that he's not"

and then - say - if it's Robin!Tim (i feel like this has to be Tim because in the world where Dick dies there is no way that Bruce is voluntarily picking a new Robin), then maybe the moment when Dick steps in is when Bruce is in danger & he's furious / critical of Tim for not protecting Bruce well enough

and i feel like that's how he'd channel the hurt feelings - it'd all be deflected under shame and obligation, and then translated into the anger of "you replaced me & yet you're failing to do the job that you're supposed to do" (which is actually about projection/self-hatred because Dick would actually be mad at himself for having died & not doing that job anymore)

and Dick wouldn't want to see Bruce at all because of the shame over dying & subconscious fear that Bruce doesn't want him back, plus every little thing that Tim does differently would drive him NUTS because it implies that maybe the way Dick did things wasn't good enough for Bruce

i'm actually kind of fascinated by this now. because i am me and i have (1) obsession i am mostly invested in the dick & tim side of it sdfsdfds

so i'm picturing Tim very stung by whatever critical things Dick said to him & tracking this mysterious vigilante down, and then Dick doesn't want to spend ANY time with him BUT he's also subconsciously desperate for news of Bruce!!! so then something something Dick starts sorta training him a la Tim's various contacts with edgy non-batman-aligned vigilantes, and Tim's very defensive about how he IS a good robin so THERE but of course he's also defensive because he's secretly worried he's not good enough.

normally i would have tim Recognize dick since recognizing dick is tim's most basic skill HOWEVER i think it would be much more fun if tim doesn't recognize him so he can give dick a speech about legacy & the first robin: "i do x and such because that's how the first robin did it so it is Objectively Correct." which Dick will find incredibly infuriating but will be unable to counter since he cannot counter with 'the 1st robin was ME'

…hmmm i do think Dick ought to be angry about SOMETHING about batman's methods/attitude just because that's more dynamic? I feel like in order to make the adaptation work, there ought to be SOME kind of argument with Bruce right before he dies that he can still be mad about, a la the garzonas fight for Jason and Bruce. unsure what though?

okay let's see: I feel like Dick's main arguments with Bruce aren't about vigilante issues per se so much as they're about working in a team - so e.g.

1) Bruce being controlling/demanding, and 2) Bruce being secretive and doing stuff behind Dick's back, and 3) Bruce not allowing Dick enough autonomy, 4) just generally a perceived lack of trust.

SO maybe whatever The Frustrating Thing that bruce was doing when dick died is a thing he's STILL doing with this new robin, and dick is getting frustrated all over again sorta on tim's behalf but mostly on his own behalf because he never got to resolve this with bruce

but anyway that way when Bruce finally spots disguised!Dick, then they can have the fight again before Bruce realizes who he is <3

[prince-liest]

was recently talking to a friend about qi rong which then lead to me going on a reread of my favorite qi rong fic EVER, and now I’m in my feels about him, his relationship with his family, and his relationship with xie lian and guzi.

I just love qi rong a lot. to be clear, he’s a horrible little gremlin and that is a lot of WHY I love him - but I also think that fundamentally qi rong is a character who is super traumatized but does not receive sympathy for that trauma because he is not traumatized in a “palatable” way which is a trend that starts when he is young and just never ends, canonically, at any point in his life

right from the bat: the first 5 years of his life, he's being physically and emotionally abused, he's cast out to live in a shed, his mom is forgotten by her family. by the time she finally escapes his abusive father and goes back to the palace, her elopement with him has been swept under the rug and most people don't actually know what happened - and are then weirded out by her and qi rong, causing all the children and even most adults around qi rong to basically refuse to interact with him. so he's abused and hated, then isolated to the point where nobody talks to him, nobody plays with him. the one time he thinks he succeeded at attempting to make some friends, it turns out that they tricked him into writing a death wish for himself and his mother on his lantern.

and all the while, he's watching xie lian and the adulation he receives, not understanding why xie lian gets those things and he does not. everyone always says he looks like xie lian. he’s even called xiao jing, like he’s a mirror of the crown prince. what’s the difference?

and then xie lian himself is the only person aside from his own mother to be genuinely kind to qi rong. qi rong is desperately lonely, envious and fixated on the cousin that nobody will stop comparing him to, and then said cousin is the only person to reach out to him with kindness. of course he wants to attach himself to xie lian and emulate him.

unfortunately for both of them, then his mother dies - not just randomly, but specifically in defense of xie lian’s mother, and having extracted a promise for xie lian’s parents to care for qi rong. however, things don’t actually change at that point. sure, they take him in and buy him whatever he wants, but as far as love and care are concerned, xie lian is really the only potential source of those things left for qi rong. xie lian is also a teenager with a lot of pressure on his shoulders and a lack of understanding of difficult situations. of course he doesn’t know how to raise his traumatized, misbehaving cousin! and nobody else bothers to. it’s deeply unfair for xie lian to be used as the singular tool to discipline and direct qi rong, and that directly contributes to their extremely soured relationship.

now that qi rong’s mother is dead, there is nobody left around that actually wants him or is willing to put effort into properly raising him. when a kid turns out as wild as qi rong - that's not just random happenstance, that happens because they weren't parented right (or at all). he acts out in increasingly insane ways for the attention everyone hates to give him - anyone's, but especially xie lian's, which sucks for xie lian because it should have been his parents providing qi rong with an authority figure and source of love, not xie lian's teenage self. and people respond by waving him off, giving him whatever he wants just to make him go away, and ignoring him, because he has a deeply off-putting personality.

and it causes everyone around qi rong to resent him in this vicious cycle that escalates his behavior because he doesn't know what else to do - until eventually even xie lian, the one person that he really looked up to, hates him too.

obviously qi rong is an awful person by the point we reach in canon, but I also think that if he had received regular hugs as a child and maybe some actual parenting from someone who didn’t beat him, instead of just being given a bunch of money and being told to fuck off

specifically because he was weird and traumatized and unlikeable

things would have turned out very different for him. because he very clearly tries - that’s one thing that’s very clear in the flashbacks and even continues to modern canon: qi rong really tries to get love and attention, and when that doesn’t work, he just escalates to “any attention, bad attention, attention that proves I’m worth something, proves wrong all the people saying the supposedly-amazing cousin that took away my only source of kindness when he started hating me, is so much better than me”. he starts out an awkward, off-putting kid and ends up the night-touring green lantern. of course he holds enough resentment to end up a calamity. his cannibalism shtick doesn’t even read as genuine to me, it just seems like he picked out “what’s the worst, most attention-grabbing thing I can possibly be to pre-emptively justify everyone’s disgust in me” and landed on that.

(see also: I think it’s hysterical that he has very strong opinions and abilities as pertains to gourmet cooking, and then just uses them to lure in victims so that he can have his meal of Raw Unseasoned Human Flesh. you can’t tell me he’s doing it for anything other than the bit at this point.)

and that’s also why I think his weirdly wholesome relationship with guzi also makes a lot of sense. qi rong is a shockingly decent father to him (eventually), probably in part because he overidentifies with guzi also being abused by his father, but also, because guzi is literally just a kid and therefore is not someone that yet has the capacity to have all these preconceptions about qi rong, nor for qi rong to read into his words and be insulted, because. that's just a kid. there’s nothing to read into.

I think his treatment of guzi (eventually) shows that he's capable of being at least kind of decent (or at least functional), he's just never been in a circumstance where his trauma and relationships let it happen. his material life was always supplied for, but his emotional and familial environment in xianle was invariably toxic for him.

anyway, I think qi rong needs a shower and a hug, in that order, and then to be forced to learn to interact with people who don't immediately assume the worst of him. thanks for coming to my TED talk, I know it was long as hell.

[ventismacchiato]

42 behind the lens — curtain call !

epilogue

scaramouche x gender neutral reader

It’s at the times between recording scenes where you really get a glimpse at your lover.

His sweat stained hair and tear stained cheeks from a rather intense scene never get old. You were feeling rather fond as he made his way over to you, falling into your director’s chair and heaving a heavy breath. The only one other than you allowed to sit in it.

For a mere moment, you both simply look at each other. You guys were on break so a few conversation topics come to mind, it wasn’t often you guys got to speak as lovers rather than coworkers during work. And while they’re all things you’d like to talk to Scaramouche about, you realize you don’t need to force conversation with him.

There’s a hue of weariness that shows in Scara’s eyes, but you can tell that he’s happy. He’s doing what he’s been striving to do for all his years at university, so of course he is.

You search his dark eyes for his thoughts, too. When your eyes meet Scara’s he let’s out a tired smile.

“I missed you,” he easily says. The words come out easier than they would’ve years ago.

Your heart skips a beat, even years later.

“How? We’ve been working together all day,” you say.

“Do I need a reason to miss the person I love?” Scara scoffs, looking away from you to study the script he brought with him.

It isn’t the first time Scaramouche had told you that he loves you, but it’s never stopped holding the same weight it did the first time he’d ever said it.

It’s a rare type of love. The kind that exists so rarely for people in this industry and that lead lives similar to your guys’.

His loves makes you feel alive everyday. And Scara should know it, you should tell him more often—even if it’s rather dramatic for midday on set for their most recent project. It’s something you’d bring up at night that you two could laugh about in bed. Even if it catches Scara off guard.

But Scaramouche’s love caught you off guard, too, and every second you got the privilege to spend with him was a gift.

And as you stare at him, fiddling with the sleeves of his costume and eyebrows scrunched as he mouths his lines, you couldn’t help but feel your heart grow heavy.

“I suppose you don’t,” you reply, a minute too late, but Scara still chuckles at your response as he tosses the script aside.

“What? You’re not going to say it back?” he teases, “And I thought I was the emotionally constipated one.”

“Oh, fuck off,” you mutter, hitting him on the shoulder, “I love you, too. I guess.”

“Archons, you’re worse than me.”

“No, you were much worse when we were younger!”

“It was hot and mysterious when I did it.”

“Uh huh, just go back to set I’m sick of you.”

“Weird way to say you agree but okay.”

“Go!”

.

.

.

୨⎯ THE END ⎯୧

behind the lens !

masterlist — prev

author’s notes — and that’s a wrap folks! hope the ending wasn’t awkward i just wanted it to be short and sweet. anyway, thank u to everyone who read and kept up with this fic, means a lot to me that this blew up as it was smth i wrote for myself. if ur rereading this or are a reader in the future ty to you too! i appreciate the silent readers, anons, and ppl who left me sm cute comments and reblogs. u guys made writing it more fun and easier to ignore the not so nice ppl. i cant reply to everyone but just know i do read every ask and comment i get! i do hope to see u guys in my notifs in the future even if i don’t write for genshin anymore, but if not then i’m glad you gave my writing a chance <3 have a great day/night byebye

synopsis — you, better known as STARDUST, and BALLADEER have always been in competition for the top streamer spot on twitch, which is especially impressive since the two of you have never shown your faces. you’ve never been on good terms, constantly one-upping each other in matches and getting into petty arguments on twitter, causing your fans to also dislike each other. that’s until BALLADEER does a face reveal that breaks the internet with his good looks…which makes you realize it’s the same guy you went on a date with last night. the type of date that made you crave to see him again. the only problem was he didn’t know you were STARDUST and he was way different behind the lens than he portrayed himself online to you. should you keep your identity a secret to salvage the relationship or just let him go?

taglist — @captainzep @elysiumarchieve @plinkuro @sakkakuu-squared @eliqusgenma @vuvulia @kunikuzushiit @ins4nebish @stxrgxzxr @lilacponds @uma-umie @mitsukifilms @caesars-bubbles @wheneverthesunrise @its-like-twilight @kazuhalvrr @erosdevil @thenightsflower @p1utto @noodleshark420 @lxry-chxn @court-jester-stuff @lauragalliart @veyu002 @kaeyas-eyepatch-69 @leathernourishingshoepolish @courtneydefender @drunkwithfever @exhaustedcommunist @vincanzu @ainlaw @ovaliz @kitsuvil @whatamidoing89 @celestair @kunihaver @kazioli @xiaosoneandonly @cridtiins @cherrybeomgyu @asukahiriko @moon-320 @orionicchaos @cartierfiles [1/3]

[webfilledhead]

muscle memory

tasm!peter parker x reader

Angst then kinda fluff? My first time writing for him be kind to me

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟

Your night is quiet, you were getting used to quiet evenings. It was weird at first, it felt almost empty. You had so much time now, you spent most of your nights in your room studying for exams that were weeks away. You would sit at your desk and reread paragraphs that slipped your mind the first couple times as you played the news on your tv as background noise.

This night was similar to most, you were actually getting work done this time. You had three assignments done and one to go. The downside to this was that they were due next week and when you finished you would have no work to do and would probably end up reading your assigned readings early.

As you’re about to start your last assignment you hear tapping. You brush it off the first time. The second time it is impossible to ignore since you weren’t just imagining it like all the other nights before. Your breath catches in your throat as you realize the second you turn around it’s over.

You turn in the chair of your desk.

Sure enough there he is. He’s wearing his Spider-Man suit, he’s resting against the windowsill like he can’t bear to hold his own weight. The second your eyes landed upon the torn chest of his suit and the bloodied exposed flesh your movements were muscle memory.

It has been two months since you have done this but your movements are quick and sure. You opened the window and half carried him half dragged him to your bed no questions asked. You remove his mask and the upper half of his suit with deft fingers. You paid no mind to how he smelled like he spent his afternoon swimming in the sewers, maybe you noted it a little. You quickly analyze his injuries as you pull the now dusty first aid kit under your bed out. You didn’t have one before you met him, now you keep it under your bed for easy access.

“Sorry I’m getting your bed all bloody,”he groans out softly which makes your movements come to a halt.

You look at him, really look at him. It’s been two months since you’ve seen him up close and not just on the news. You haven’t seen him since he broke up with you, claiming it was too dangerous for you to be around him. You were so angry at first but now after sixty days you’ve grown numb. Your feelings are starting to bubble at the surface again as you gaze into his chocolate brown eyes. His stupid doe eyes.

You take a deep breath and tell yourself you can be angry later. You need to focus on the task at hand, another assignment really,“It’s fine everything can be washed away.”

Your words carry weight that you want nothing to do with. Everything can’t be washed away, some stains are stubborn and never leave. You know you can’t wash him away no matter how much you try that much is evident with how your ears always perk up when his name is mentioned in the news.

Before he can get another word out you exit your room, head to the bathroom, and get two clean towels and dampen them. You also get him pain medicine from the medicine cabinet. You give him the pills wordlessly with your water bottle that was at your desk.

With the damp towel you begin to clean off all the dried blood and grime so you can get a good look at how bad his injuries really are. You’re gentle as you wipe at his warm skin. The only sounds in the room are the quiet news channel now forgotten on your tv and his soft winces every now and then.

Once his chest is clean you can see he has three long gashes, they aren’t too deep they’re much shallower than you expected, the longest one runs from is upper right pec down to his left side on his lower ribs. As you use the clean towel to clean the wounds again he tries to speak again.

“It really isn’t okay, when did you get white floral bedding? It was dark purple a couple days a-” Peter cuts himself off realizing the implications of what he just said.

You feel slightly embarrassed at how happy you feel hearing that. He still cares for you, you hoped he did somewhere deep within you. Despite everything you still miss him and his constant need for first aid.

“You’ve been watching me,” you don’t ask it’s more of a statement since he just confirmed it. You start applying Neosporin to the gashes.

You can feel yourself folding like origami so you make sure not to look in his eyes. Not to look at his stupid sheepish smile. You can’t do this.

“Why would you ever suggest that? I just mean you used to have purple bedding,”He mumbles trying to cover up for himself as he attempts to sit up to look at you better.

You gently push him back down as you get butterfly bandages from your first aid kit. You use them in the deepest sections first since you don’t know if you’ll have enough for the entire length of the wounds.

“Why are you here Peter?”

You blurt your question out with no thinking prior to it. You know why he’s here, you’re the only person who can take care of him. You’re the only one who knows his secret, the only person he can let his guard down to. The only one who will open your window to him in the middle of the night no questions asked.

“I found myself coming here like I always did after getting beat up. I missed you,”he says so sincerely it hurts.

Your hands stop again for the second time. They begin to shake slightly when you hear his words. You hadn’t seen him in so long and the first time you do he comes back to you all beat up and bloody. You take in your proximity to him for the first time since you dragged him to your bed. You’re leaning over him awfully close to him so you can get a better look at his wounds. He’s warm, his skin is soft when your fingers brush against it, he’s so Peter.

You don’t say anything, not knowing how to reply. Knowing him this doesn’t mean he will want to be in a relationship with you again. He’s so stubborn.

You don’t move away when his hand reaches up to cup your face, his thumb brushing against your cheek,“Do you miss me too?”

The answer to that question is obvious enough he just wants to hear you say it. You can’t, your pride won’t let you. You can’t be left to lick at your wounds alone again.

“You’re so unfair, Parker,” you mumble as you keep your eyes away from his. You focus on the tiny cuts on his chest now, keeping yourself distracted. It’s hard to distract yourself when his hand leaves your face to your waist to keep you close.

It’s not fair that he comes to you in the middle of the night all beat up and bruised after not seeing him for two months and asks you this. It’s not fair that he can just show up whenever he wants and leave whenever he pleases.

Then he gives you that stupid smile of his. That very same smile that never fails to make you melt and give into whatever he has to say. You move your hands from his chest to his face and start cleaning up his face with soft touches.

“I know I’m being unfair, I just can’t stand being away from you anymore,” he says making your brows furrow in confusion.

Then the ugly feelings you pushed down start bubbling at the surface once more,“You can’t just leave me then come back after two months expecting me to welcome you back with open arms.”

“I know I messed up, I know that but I want to make it up to you. Just answer this please: do you miss me?” Peter asks as he tugs you closer to him, you lose your balance and end up with one hand braced on the bed beside him and the other on his shoulder. You’re so close to his face and those pretty brown eyes are looking at you in away that makes your breath catch in your throat.

You try to pull yourself away but his arm that has snaked its way around your waist keeps you planted,“Yes, but Peter you can’t jus-“

Your words are effectively cut off by Peter pressing his lips against yours. It’s sweet, a sweet familiar warmth you missed so much. You wish you could blame muscle memory on how quick you are to melt against him and kiss him back.

[atopvisenyashill]

patterns of abuse with jaehaerys

this post made me deeply depressed and i reread f&b which was my first mistake.

tldr i’m making the argument that jaehaerys definitely sexually abused saera and alysanne, and likely viserra and gael, and also i hate this man. if you disagree and want to say so *nicely* that’s cool but if you hardcore love jae and don’t want to hear criticism, maybe just scroll past bc i’m not nice to him at all (obviously, i’m accusing him of csa lol).

breaking this down by each woman, so there’s 6 sections: saera, viserra, daella, gael, alysanne, and alicent.

saera targaryen

If she were the king’s firstborn, or better still his only child, she would be well content. Instead she finds herself the ninthborn, with six living siblings who are older than her and even more adored. Aemon is to be king, Baelon most like will be his Hand, Alyssa may be all her mother is and more, Vaegon is more learned than she is, Maegelle is holier, and Daella…when does a day go by when Daella is not in need of comfort? And whilst she is being soothed, Saera is being ignored. Such a fierce little thing she is, they say, she has no need of comfort. They are wrong in that, I fear. All men need comfort.

that’s septon barth’s opinion on her and barth is always right. simply put, she’s a deeply neglected child who acts like a brat to get her parents attention because she’s learned the only way they’ll pay attention to her is if she’s causing a problem.

Before she was eleven, she was stealing wine and ale instead. By twelve, she was like as not to arrive drunk when summoned to the sept for prayer.

The king’s half-witted fool, Tom Turnip, was the victim of many of her japes, and her unwitting catspaw for others. Once, before a great feast where many lords and ladies were to be in attendance, she persuaded Tom that it would be much funnier if he performed naked. It was not well received.

stealing alcohol at 10 and being a committed alcoholic at 12 is not normal behavior. it is a sign of something deeply at wrong at home. also, the way she kind of, sexually humiliated tom, someone who is too “innocent” to even realize she’s sexually humiliating him…gives me the ick re: how she views sex.

Saera had learned the art of getting anything she wanted from her father: a kitten, a hound, a pony, a hawk, a horse (Jaehaerys did draw a firm line at the elephant). Queen Alysanne was far less gullible, however, and Septon Barth tells us that Saera’s sisters all misliked her to various degrees.

i don’t like this. nothing wrong with giving your child gifts (see ned going above and beyond to get arya not just instruction on how to fight but also a specific style that would gel with being smaller than your average opponent) but in conjunction with “jaehaerys ignores saera unless she’s pressing him for an expensive gift which he immediately gives her and alysanne doesn’t get why he caved so quickly” its an alarming dynamic.

also speaks to how isolated saera specifically was, that the only siblings that like her (aemon and baelon) are usually out and about, and there’s a clear wedge between saera and her sisters, even viserra.

The screams were coming from Tom Turnip, who was lurching helplessly in circles trying to escape from half a dozen naked whores, whilst the patrons of the house laughed uproariously and shouted on the harlots. Jonah Mooton, Red Roy Connington, and Stinger Beesbury were amongst those patrons, each one drunker than the last. They had thought it would be funny to see old Turnip do the deed, Red Roy admitted. Then Jonah Mooton laughed and said the jape had all been Saera’s notion, and what a funny girl she was.

again with sexually humiliating tom.

it continues with her friends. it’s not unusual for a 15 year old girl to want to fool around with other 15 year olds but alys and perri are all guilt ridden and upset and alys is with child. it reminds me a lot of cersei sexually abusing taena in affc. when she’s caught (now, mind you, she’s been marched in front of her parents sitting on the throne and not brought to them in their private rooms. she’s being treated right off the bat as if she’s guilty of a crime and not guilty of being a shitty teenager):

“She went from denial to dismissal to quibbling to contrition to accusation to justification to defiance in the space of an hour, with stops at giggling and weeping along the way,” Septon Barth would write. “She never did it, they were lying, it never happened, how could they believe that, it was just a game, it was just a jape, who said that, that was not how it happened, everyone likes kissing, she was sorry, Peri started it, it was such fun, no one was hurt, no one ever told her kissing was bad, Sweetberry had dared her, she was so ashamed, Baelon used to kiss Alyssa all the time, once she started she did not know how to stop, she was afraid of Stinger, the Mother Above had forgiven her, all the girls were doing it, the first time she was drunk, she had never wanted to, it was what men wanted, Maegelle said the gods forgave all sins, Jonah said he loved her, the gods had made her pretty, it was not her fault, she would be good from now on, it will be as if it never happened, she would marry Red Roy Connington, they had to forgive her, she would never kiss a man again or do any of those other things, it wasn’t her who was with child, she was their daughter, she was their little girl, she was a princess, if she were queen she would do as she liked, why wouldn’t they believe her, they never loved her, she hated them, they could whip her if they wanted but she would never be their slave. She took my breath away, this girl. There was never a mummer in all the land who gave such a performance, but by the end she was exhausted and afraid, and her mask slipped.”

What does Jaehaerys ask after all of this? “Have you given any of these boys your maidenhead?” Her response:

“True?” said Saera. It was in that moment, with that word, that the contempt came out. “No. I gave it to all three. They all think they were the first. Boys are such silly fools.”

Now mind you, Alyssa and Daella have both died of childbirth recently and her parents are mad she had sex as a 16 year old bordering on 17 year old, and not the fact that she like, at best peer pressured her besties into having sex and now one of them is pregnant. jaehaerys has only asked if she’s still a virgin.

“I will be married,” the princess said. “Why shouldn’t I be? You were married at my age. I shall be wedded and bedded, but to whom? Jonah and Roy both love me, I could take one of them, but they are both such boys. Stinger does not love me, but he makes me laugh and sometimes makes me scream. I could marry all three of them, why not? Why should I have just one husband? The Conqueror had two wives, and Maegor had six or eight.”

i keep trying not to give my opinion and just lay it all out but the thing is i’d just be reposting the whole scene because it’s just filled with so much weird sex stuff. if you don’t remember it, go reread it. it doesn’t feel (to me) like regular “george is bad at writing sex” vibes but “george is purposefully trying to skeeve you out” vibes but i am willing to admit i could be wrong and he really just doesn’t understand what he wrote.

anyways remember how i said saera acts out to get attention from her parents? all she’s done here is act out, her “crimes” are basically nonexistent; beyond how alys feels about being pregnant, saera consensually had sex with boys around her age who aren’t married, and then blithely compared herself to some asshole relatives. if your teenager idolizes dick cheney that’s probably worrying but not a crime! this is not how jae treats it however.

When the princess heard his words, she rushed toward him, crying, “Father, Father!” but Jaehaerys turned his back on her, and Gyles Morrigen caught her by the arm and wrenched her away. She would not go of her own accord, so the guards were forced to drag her from the hall, wailing and sobbing and calling for her father.

The king was angry and unyielding, for his shame was deeply felt, and he could not forget Saera’s taunting words about his uncle’s wives. “She is no longer my daughter,” he said more than once. Queen Alysanne could not find it in her heart to be so harsh, however. “

saera tries to escape.

This time the princess was not allowed to return to her own chambers. She was confined to a tower cell instead, with Jonquil Darke guarding her day and night, even in the privy.

Princess Saera watched from the window of her cell. Jonquil Darke, her gaoler, made certain that she did not turn away.

that’s as her dad is murdering stinger btw. is he a creepy 19 year old? yeah. but like, making your 15 year old watch you murder her 19 year old trust fund baby stoner boyfriend sure is something.

so then they sent her to the silent sisters where she’s beaten all the time and has to pray all the time and she runs away, becomes a sex worker and literally never looks back.

The truth did not come out until a year later, when the former princess was seen in a Lysene pleasure garden, still clad as a novice. Queen Alysanne wept to hear it. “They have made our daughter into a whore,” she said. “She always was,” the king replied.

“You need her as a Dornishman needs a pit viper,” Jaehaerys said. “I am sorry. King’s Landing has sufficient whores. I do not wish to hear her name again.”

but before we move on, let’s look at one more related ick, when saera’s sons show up to the great council:

From Essos came three rival competitors, grandsons of King Jaehaerys through his daughter Saera, each sired by a different father. One was said to be the very image of his grandsire in his youth.

after her drinking, acting out, and jaehaerys’ focus on calling her a whore, explicitly pointing out that one of her grandsons looks just like jae is a choice. i know they’re super inbred. it’s still uncomfortable in context.

viserra targaryen

alysanne makes no sense here but i’m just gonna quickly explain instead of lay it out or we will be here all day bc viserra’s engagement is completely nonsensical. theomore manderly is old, ugly, has a shitton of heirs, and viserra clearly doesn’t want to marry him. also if she wanted to be queen, why is she going after baelon, aemon is still alive. anyways jaehaerys is no help here, then she goes to baelon for help, but she’s also super drunk.

Frustrated, Viserra next turned to her brother Baelon in hopes of rescue, if court gossip can be believed. Slipping past his guards into his bedchamber one night, she disrobed and waited for him, making free with the prince’s wine whilst she lingered. When Prince Baelon finally appeared, he found her drunk and naked in his bed and sent her on her way. The princess was so unsteady that she required the help of two maids and a knight of the Kingsguard to get her safely back to her own apartments.

she gets drunk with some friends again, goes riding, breaks her neck. i wanted to point out this pattern of drinking and acting out at a young age. as well as this pattern of targaryen daughters who aren’t “meant” for a brother and are promised to men who are old and with heirs

daella targaryen

i wanted to add daella because her getting married at 15 makes as little sense as viserra, and her match to a old man with several heirs is equally nonsensical. but also this:

“I would never marry her,” the boy said, in front of half the court. “She can barely read. She should find some lord in need of stupid children, for that’s the only sort he will ever have of her.”

where did vaegon get that mouth.

Daella was not clever, even her septa had to admit. She learned to read after a fashion, but haltingly, and without full comprehension. She could not seem to commit even the simplest prayers to memory. She had a sweet voice, but was afraid to sing; she always got the words wrong. She loved flowers, but was frightened of gardens; a bee had almost stung her once.

Jaehaerys, even more than Alysanne, despaired of her. “She will not even speak to a boy. How is she to marry? We could entrust her to the Faith, but she does not know her prayers, and her septa says that she cries when asked to read aloud from The Seven-Pointed Star.”

The queen always rose to her defense. “Daella is sweet and kind and gentle. She has such a tender heart. Give me time, and I will find a lord to cherish her. Not every Targaryen needs to wield a sword and ride a dragon.”

so daella is 12 at this point.

Her sixteenth nameday was fast approaching, and with it her womanhood. Queen Alysanne was at her wit’s end, and the king had lost his patience. On the first day of the 80th year since Aegon’s Conquest, he told the queen he wanted Daella wed before the year’s end. “If she wants I can find a hundred men and line them up before her naked, and she can pick the one she likes,” he said. “I would sooner she wed a lord, but if she prefers a hedge knight or a merchant or Pate the Pig Boy, I am past the point of caring, so long as she picks someone.”

i just don’t like this. other “simple” targs are not required to marry, like vaella and aelora, two of daeron ii’s grandfaughters so i don’t get why daella is pressured into marrying before she’s even of age. at least jae 2 forced rhaella and aerys because of a prophecy? what is jae’s reasoning for so sexualizing his daughter?

gael targaryen

this one is definitely a reach but i’d like to point out that this is basically all we know about gael:

Princess Gael, a sweet, shy child of seven, became the queen’s constant shadow and support, even sharing her bed at night.

and our information on how she dies is so shady:

A sweet-natured girl, but frail and somewhat simpleminded, she remained with the queen long after her other children had grown and gone, but in 99 AC she vanished from court, and soon afterward it was announced that she had died of a summer fever. Only after both her parents were gone did the true tale come out. Seduced and abandoned by a traveling singer, the princess had given birth to a stillborn son, then, overwhelmed by grief, walked into the waters of Blackwater Bay and drowned.

how does gael get pregnant by a traveling singer when she never leaves her mother’s side? why doesn’t anyone in court know gael got pregnant and killed herself until after aly and jae both die and how was this even found out?

am i implying that jaehaerys sexually abused all four of his daughters? yes because he literally sexually abuses his own wife.

alysanne targaryen

“I am forty-two years old,” she told the king. “You must be content with the children I have given you. I am more suited to be a grandmother than a mother now, I fear.”

King Jaehaerys did not share her certainty. “Our mother, Queen Alyssa, was forty-six when she gave birth to Jocelyn,” he pointed out to Grand Maester Elysar. “The gods may not be done with us.” He was not wrong. The very next year, the Grand Maester informed Queen Alysanne that she was once more with child, to her surprise and dismay.

he uses the birth that killed their mother and that is condemned by rhaena and alysanne as reckless and cruel of rogar to force on her. that birth.

at this point as well, he had abused saera and daella, then they’re gone, then viserra starts drinking and dies, then jae marital rapes aly into having gael, giving him access to another young girl to abuse…i’m aware this is a very uncharitable reading of him but…

alicent hightower (and kind of alyssa targaryen)

Ser Otto’s precocious fifteen-year-old daughter, Alicent, became his constant companion, fetching His Grace his meals, reading to him, helping him to bathe and dress himself. The Old King sometimes mistook her for one of his daughters, calling her by their names; near the end, he grew certain she was his daughter Saera, returned to him from beyond the narrow sea.

saera is the one he fixated on yet again but notable that he’s fixated on his daughters as he dies and not his sons, despite jaehaerys turning to drink after aemon died bc he was so upset.

He announced his intention to wed Lady Alicent of House Hightower, the clever and lovely eighteen-year-old daughter of the King’s Hand, the girl who had read to King Jaehaerys as he lay dying.

The Hightowers of Oldtown were an ancient and noble family, of impeccable lineage; there could be no possible objection to the king’s choice of bride. Even so, there were those who murmured that the Hand had risen above himself, that he had brought his daughter to court with this in mind. A few even cast doubt on Lady Alicent’s virtue, suggesting she had welcomed King Viserys into her bed even before Queen Aemma’s death. (These calumnies were never proved, though Mushroom repeats them in his Testimony and goes so far as to claim that reading was not the only service Lady Alicent performed for the Old King in his bedchamber.)

i know it’s just mushroom being a perv but a rumor that 15 year old alicent “serviced” jaehaerys existing besides rumors that he mistook 15 year old alicent for the daughter he last saw when she was 17 - and viserra was 15, gael 19, and daella 15, all around alicent’s age and all died before age 20. all the targaryen girls that weren’t born “for” a brother exit the narrative after some sort of sexual abuse that centers around jae, as teenagers; daenerys was born for aemon, alyssa for baelon, and maegelle for vaegon before they both fucked off and maegelle was too pious (and too old). this idea of being “for” a brother leads directly to alyssa’s death before 30:

“You were made for battles, and I was made for this. Viserys and Daemon and Aegon, that’s three. As soon as I am well, let’s make another. I want to give you twenty sons. An army of your own!” It was not to be. Alyssa Targaryen had a warrior’s heart in a woman’s body, and her strength failed her. She never fully recovered from Aegon’s birth, and died within the year at only four-and-twenty.

and alysanne being “for” jaehaerys is how he excusing sexually abusing her into a risky pregnancy. essentially what i fear is that because saera, daella, viserra, and gael aren’t “for” someone, jaehaerys gets it into his mind that that are for him. even without him raping them tho, that subtext is there! he is entitled to saera’s virginity and calls her a whore multiple times, even decades after she’s left, and murders her boyfriend in front of her. he claims a weird sexual ownership over his neurodivergent daughter daella and his alcoholic, depressed daughter viserra, and we get zero information on gael’s pregnancy or his reaction to it. but jaehaerys deciding his daughters are “for” him certainly has a basis in canon just judging from the erratic and worrying behavior of his younger daughters.

jaehaerys is a creep and i hate him and i don’t know how much of this is on purpose (like, will aegon vi or dany find out jaehaerys was a shady pedo and it shatters their world? will dunk and egg find it out and it affects their plot somehow? did george just put it in there to make a comment on power and monarchy and misogyny, similar to aegon iv raping the bracken women? or is just there for window dressing creepiness, like “i will pepper in the fact that jaehaerys is sexually obsessed with his daughters” thing?) or if george just made jaehaerys sexually obsessed with his daughters on accident?

on the one hand, it seems out of character for george. he romanticizes drogo thru dany’s eyes but it’s clear he’s meant to be seen as a creep (dany talking about being pregnant followed by “she had just turned 14” is sickeningly jarring for a reason) and also, drogo dies bc of his own pride. sansa doesn’t like any of the old dudes touching her; she is at least marginally freaked out by her wedding night, the unkiss, and lf & dontos taking liberties with her, and rightly. the story that’s told about the mountain raping a girl and making the father pay him is meant to disgust us. the walk of shame is a harrowing chapter to read, because whatever cersei’s crimes, this sexual humiliation is not something she deserves. on and on. yes, we all hate the way arya is sexualized in the mercy chapter, but crucially, she’s not blithely and happily seducing these pervs, she’s going hard candy on their asses. is this just messy set up for something like that?? i think, given how little dany knows about her family’s crimes that somehow learning jae sexually abused (and maybe even impregnated) his own daughters after she herself experiences sexual abuse would be huge. the same goes for aegon vi learning that sexual abuse runs rampant in his family tree; would he empathize with saera hiding out in essos to escape the sexual abuse of her father, see some of elia and his own plight in her? in gael?

or did george really just. not realize how sexually obsessed jaehaerys was with his daughters?

idk how to end this. where’s the winds of winter george i need answers.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading updates: august 2024

the good news is that I did a lot of reading this month, the bad news is that honestly? I think that my birthday month has had the biggest percentage of literary letdowns, duds, and outright bullshit than any other month of this year so far.

but at least there's plenty to talk about, so let's get going!

Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power (Devon Price, 2024) - uh oh gamers, we're starting on a doozy! I've enjoyed both of Price's previous books very much, but with Unlearning Shame I couldn't help but feel like I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I wasn't getting what I had signed on for. the issue, I think, could be corrected by an adjustment to the title, which seems to be promising a very broad tackling of the concept of shame and is therefore making some pretty big promises. in reality, the book is much more narrowly focused than that, interested primarily in the shame that arises in the activism-minded when they feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of awful things in the world and their perceived inability to do anything about it. fairly early on Price introduces an apparently relatable anecdote about himself and a friend having mutual breakdowns in a grocery store because they were both so paralyzed by the conundrum of trying to buy the most ethical groceries possible, and I realized this book was maybe not really for me or my particular experiences with shame. I think this book will be really helpful for a lot of people for sure, would love to pass it on to a lot of my freshmen, but overall it did not live up to the expectations I brought to the party.

A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) - so I wanted to reread this because someone on here sent me an ask about, I don't know, my favorite required high school reading or whatever, and I said it was A Separate Peace but then I realized it's been over a decade since I read the book and I had to go see if it still actually held up. and god, does it EVER. this is such a brutal and heartbreaking novel, beginning in the last carefree summer that best friends and roommates Gene and Finny will experience before their final year at their boys' private school and their seemingly inevitable draft into WW2. although Gene is seethingly jealous of Finny's seemingly effortless charisma, popularity, confidence, and athletic prowess, the two boys are also inseparable - until a tragic injury changes the course of Finny's life forever. this book is a mess of unspoken pain, from the looming end of innocence on a global scale to the intimate ache of loving your best friend so, so much and having no healthy way to express it because you're a repressed little rich boy in the 1940s.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea (Rita Chang-Eppig, 2023) - Chang-Eppig's debut novel follows the career of Chinese pirate Shek Yeung, also known as Zheng Yi Sao, immediately following the death of her husband, fearsome pirate Sheng Yi. you've probably seen a post or two about her floating around on this very hellsite, calling her a pirate queen and accompanied by this image:

Chang-Eppig isn't interested in portraying Shek Yeung as any kind of heroine or feminist icon; over and over again it's acknowledged that she's simply a woman who has survived massive hardships and will do whatever she needs to do to survive. manipulation? spying? extortion? torture? murder? you name it, she's done it, and she does not feel remorse. while the novel wasn't a knockout for me either in terms of plot or prose, it's nice to see an entry into the trend of "retelling" stories from history and mythology centered on women that isn't determined to justify every step a maligned woman ever made. Shek Yeung is what she is, and her story makes for a gritty, bloody adventure.

Victim (Andrew Boryga, 2024) - this book is pure sleazeball fun; if you've ever wondered what I consider a romp, this is it. Victim follows our manipulative king Javi Perez as he builds a writing career for himself by turning in one essay after another about racial discrimination that he never really experienced, inventing stories of hardship caused by racism and poverty from his college application essay to his school newspaper to the story that finally brings the whole lie crashing down when he stretches the truth too far. the novel is written like Javi's apology in the wake of getting #canceled, and while I do sometimes feel that this premise makes some of the writing seem a bit implausible (why would you admit that!!!) it's a fun setup for a scandal that would have been a bloodbath on the twitter of old. come get your mess!!!

Bad Girls (Camila Sosa Villada, trans. Kit Maude, 2022) - this is my first time reading Sosa Villada's work but OH BOY, do I need to seek out more. this is a skinty little novel following a dramatized account of the travesti (or transgender) women who live and sell sex in Córdoba, Argentina. the women build an unsteady but beautiful and magic-infused family under the protection of the ancient Auntie Encarna. the protagonist (who is named Camila Sosa Villada, no relation I'm sure) watches as her unconventional family grows, changes, and frays over time, struggling to find ways to stay afloat in a world that see them as disposable. Sosa Villada's turns of phrase are brilliant and searing, and she weaves fantastical elements so nimbly into her narrative that it's utterly believable to see women becoming animals and courting headless men in the streets of a modern city. strongly recommend for fans of Kai Cheng Thom's Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Aileen Morteon-Robinson, 2000) - this book serves as a scathing literature review indicting Australia's white women anthropologists and feminist scholars for the ways in which they've dehumanized and discredited Aboriginal women, stripping them of the right to be authorities of their own experiences and barring them from a white-centered feminist movement. Moreton-Robinson's account is excellent, contrasting the wok of white women academics with the accounts of Aboriginal women to reveal exactly how massive the disparities in understanding are. as a USAmerican previously aware of Australia's colonial history but unfamiliar with the specifics, it was jarring to discover exactly how similar the mechanism of colonial violence are between my country and Australia, with countless genocidal parallels to be drawn. one particular highlight of the book comes via my purchase of a 20th anniversary edition, which includes a new post-script by Moreton-Robinson in which she dissects and responds to various criticisms of the book at its time of release, taking several critics to task for the belittling tone they used to describe her work and the tools white feminists use to absolve themselves of blame in the face of critique from women of color. fascinating and thorough articulation of Moreton-Robinson's point, and deservedly blistering. I love when academics call each other out by name.

The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Sabrina Strings, 2024) - so the thing about this book is that there are really good PARTS. Strings is still an excellent historical writer, and I found a lot to appreciate in, for instance, the segments on the history of Black American pimp culture and the analysis of Playboy and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl. the more personal segments, where Strings contorts herself to fit her own failed relationships into the narrative she's building, are decidedly less consistent in their quality, with some feeling like they would have been better off staying between Strings and her therapist. there's a long and convoluted digression about Sex and the City, and a strange anecdote towards the end in which String recounts a phone call with a friend's college-aged son who, String believes, was masturbating during the call. a yucky experience, to be certain, but I'm not sure it justifies Strings filing a police report against the youth and his mother, who she accuses of having groomed her on the son's behalf. she also casually drops in the same chapter that she considers herself pansexual because she's attracted to trans men in addition to cis men? idk man!!! this book was so uneven that I found myself genuinely questioning whether Strings' first book, Fearing the Black Body, is actually as excellent as I remember it being. I'm pretty sure it is, but god it sucks to get shaken so hard that you have to wonder!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (Phoebe Gloeckner, 2002) - another book that I had to read for class, years ago! I read Diary of a Teenage Girl in one of my gender and women's studies classes in my undergrad, for a class with a title along the lines of Girlhood Stories in Fiction and Film. Gloeckner's novel (though heavily informed by her own life, she insists that it's a work of fiction) sees its young protagonist, Minnie, navigating a great deal of sex, alcohol, drugs in 1970s San Francisco. I started thinking about the book because I was listening to a trio of episodes of You're Wrong About in which Carmen Maria Machado guests to talk about the pervasive sham that is Go Ask Alice (great series, check it out) and I started thinking about Diary, which is so much less preachy and didactic and is, you know, actually drawn from a real teenage girl's diary, unlike Go Ask Alice, and lacking Alice's preachy didacticism. as a diary based on a real diary this book is largely lacking in any particular plot (the most consistent through line is Minnie's ongoing and tumultuous sexual relationship with her mother's 35 year old boyfriend), but if that's not a turn off then you'll find yourself rooting for Minnie to find her way all the way to the uncertain but ultimately optimistic conclusion.

One and Done (Frederick Smith, 2024) - okay, so. this is a romance novel that I picked up because I saw a review talking about how it's an incredibly realistic depiction of working at a university. now that's obviously an insane thing to look for in a romance novel, but I like romances, ESPECIALLY gay romances, and I work at a university, so I figured sure, I'll bite. spoiler alert: it's not great. I posted some examples of the prose here, and even if the two protagonists talked like actual human beings it wouldn't make up for the stale-ass plot or devastating lack of chemistry they have going for them. more like One and Glad to Be Done With This Book That Isn't Very Good, am I right, ladies?

Seduced (Virginia Henley, 1994) - guys, I'm gonna be so fucking real with you. this is the most batshit novel I've ever read, period, let alone the most batshit romance novel. this book was the winner of a poll I ran on patreon last month in which my wicked patreonites got to nominate romance novels of their choosing for my next reading project and voted amongst themselves to crown a winner, and against all odds and my own light attempts to sway the voters, Seduced won it all. this book has everything: a historical setting, a bold young lady disguising herself as her own brother, wildly unchecked orientalism, a murderous cousin, high society scandal, and some of the most torturous sex scenes I've ever encountered in my life. truly this write-up cannot do justice to what I have experienced; I've already promised by patreonites that I'll have to do a little youtube live in order to fully express the extent of my dissatisfaction.

and that was the month of August, babey!!!

[loving-and-dreaming]

messy r.l x reader

remus lupin x reader

you are messy. remus is messy. yet somehow it works. 

Word Count: 1.1k

a/n: please be kind. I haven't written in a year and I didn't reread it so there are TONS of mistakes. It just came to me so I wanted to write it down

This party is the last place you wanted to be right now, but Lily can be very persuasive. Looking at your beautiful redheaded friend and all the other people at the party you do not feel like you fit in. You are not by any means ugly, but you are not a hot girl. You are not a soft girl. You are just you. And most days that is enough, but sometimes, just sometimes, it doesn't feel like it is. And that is precisely why you begged Lily to let you stay home, but she was having none of that. Therefore you have staked claim on the very ugly, but yours for the night, couch. Your couch, yes yours, which you have glued yourself to, seems way too inviting to leave, yet the need to get a new drink has a much louder call. Heaving yourself off the couch, you head to the kitchen. On the way to the kitchen to bump into a boy you have seen around who reminds you of sunshine and books(maybe because his face is always in a book). However your need for a drink outweighs the desire to say hi. Moving around the kitchen like it's yours simply to make yourself a drink and get back to your couch as soon as possible. Your trek back to your very lovely couch is interrupted when you spot a very cute guy with tattoos and black hair. He stole your spot! How dare he… I mean let's be real, that was your spot! Sticking your tongue out at him, you turn on your heels and head to the only other place you can think of. The bathroom. At least it is quiet in the bathroom. The craving to be away from the noise and a place to be where you know no one is going to be, you head to the upstairs bathroom. Opening the door, the state of the bathroom, shocks you. It is not the typical bathroom you would see in a party, no one throwing up, no one making out, no trash all over the place. Instead it is an immaculately clean bathroom, sending up a silent thank you, you hop on the bathroom counter. Since you can no longer hear the music you take matters into your own hands and play some music from your phone. Not in the mood for loud obnoxious music, you settle on your soft playlist. The kind of music that makes you feel like you are floating on clouds. Eyes closed, drink in hand, body swaying you start to enjoy yourself. Yet all that is stolen from you as the door creaks open. How could you be so dumb that you forgot to lock the door, rolling your eyes and cursing to yourself you open your eyes to see who has interrupted your paradise. You get ready to give some attitude, you are at a party you didn't even want to go to, your couch was stolen by some hot guy, and now someone finds you in your bathroom paradise. The audacity. All of that is on your tongue when you see sunshine and books boy. “Sorry to interrupt you, love. But I need an escape for a moment. Could I crash your solo party?” How his words are literal sunshine as well is beyond you, yet here you are. Eyes open, mouth ajar just staring at him.

The sound of a lighter opening is what snaps you out of your thoughts. “Um yeah sure, as long as you don't mind the music I needed a moment too.”

“Are you here on your own violation, or friends?” “Ah I would be here because my lovely friend, and roommate, does not think laying in bed is an adequate plan for a friday night. You? Friends or your choice?”

“Seeing as it is my house, I feel I could answer that one of two ways. However I will say that it was not my first choice of plans tonight. Curse of having roommates I suppose.”

With wide eyes you slide off the counter and prepare to leave, “Oh no. Is this your bathroom? I just picked the one farthest away from the noise, I am so sorry. Let me get out of your hair.” However your plan to run away was crushed when you felt a hand on your wrist, and my goodness how does his skin feel like sunshine??

His soft voice floats through your head, “Wait before you go at least dance with me, I loved the song that was just playing.” He uses his grip on you to turn your body around and join his.

With a blushing face and quiet voice you ask, “Can I at least know your name? I keep calling you sunshine, and as cute as it is, I'm sure it’s not your name.”

“I kind of like sunshine, but it is Remus. Now I need to know yours, although I'm okay calling you what I've been calling you in my head.”

You go to tell him your name but stop. With pink dusting your cheeks you ask, “What have you been calling me?”

“Well angel seemed fitting” he says with a shrug. With a roll of your eyes you whisper your name. Swaying back and forth in sunshine-i mean remus’- arms feels like a dream, but like always dreams are not meant to go on forever. Remus leans down and whispers in your ear “Would you like to get out of here?” No dream has been shattered as fast as this. Not only did you finally have sunshine boy(as he will forever be nicknamed by you and lily) in your arms he goes and says some dumb shit like that. Clearly your face showed how upset you felt about that statement because the next thing you know he is panicking “No! Wait. no! Not like that. Oh my gosh, this is what I get for trying to be smooth. I meant to literally get out of the bathroom and go on a walk outside. It is a nice night and clearly neither of us want to be here. Oh look at that I am rambling.” He clearly is now nervous, scratching the back of his neck and looking anywhere but you.

It takes everything in you not to laugh at him, you can only imagine how he feels. So instead with a small smile and hand on his arm you say “it's okay, sunshine. I'm just as messy as you. Why don’t we get out of here?”

Since then neither of you have looked back. He is your sunshine and you are his angel. You are messy. He is messy. But together you work wonderfully.